CHAPTER XXIII
A BOX OF CROWN DERBY
We got her into the room and on the couch before I knew her. Her fairhair had fallen loose over her face, and one long, thin hand clutchedstill at the bosom of her gown. It was Ellen Butler!
She was living, but not much more. We gathered around and stood lookingdown at her in helpless pity. A current of cold night air came up thestaircase from an open door below, and set the hanging light to swaying,throwing our shadows in a sort of ghastly dance over her quiet face.
I was too much shocked to be surprised. Burton had picked up her hat,and put it beside her.
"She's got about an hour, I should say," said one of the newspaper men."See if Gray is around, will you, Jim? He's mostly here Saturday night."
"Is it--Miss Maitland?" Burton asked, in a strangely subdued voice.
"No; it is Henry Butler's widow," I returned, and the three men werereporters again, at once.
Gray was there and came immediately. Whatever surprise he may have feltat seeing a woman there, and dying, he made no comment. He said shemight live six hours, but the end was certain. We got a hospitalambulance, and with the clang of its bell as it turned the corner andhurried away, the White Cat drops out of this story, so far as action isconcerned.
Three detectives and as many reporters hunted Schwartz all of that nightand the next day, to get his story. But he remained in hiding. He had astart of over an hour, from the time he switched off the light andescaped down the built-in staircase. Even in her agony, Ellen Butler'shate had carried her through the doorway after him, to collapse on thestairs.
I got home just as the cab, with Fred and Edith, stopped at the door. Idid not let them get out; a half dozen words, without comment orexplanation, and they were driving madly to the hospital.
Katie let me in, and I gave her some money to stay up and watch theplace while we were away. Then, not finding a cab, I took a car and rodeto the hospital.
The building was appallingly quiet. The elevator cage, without a light,crept spectrally up and down; my footsteps on the tiled floor echoed andreechoed above my head. A night watchman, in felt shoes, admitted me,and took me up-stairs.
There was another long wait while the surgeon finished his examination,and a nurse with a basin of water and some towels came out of the room,and another one with dressings went in. And then the surgeon came out,in a white coat with the sleeves rolled above his elbows, and said Imight go in.
The cover was drawn up to the injured woman's chin, where it was foldedneatly back. Her face was bloodless, and her fair hair had been gatheredup in a shaggy knot. She was breathing slowly, but regularly, and herexpression was relaxed--more restful than I had ever seen it. As I stoodat the foot of the bed and looked down at her, I knew that as surely asdeath was coming, it would be welcome.
Edith had been calm, before, but when she saw me she lost herself-control. She put her head on my shoulder, and sobbed out the shockand the horror of the thing. As for Fred, his imaginative temperamentmade him particularly sensitive to suffering in others. As he sat therebeside the bed I knew by his face that he was repeating and repentingevery unkind word he had said about Ellen Butler.
She was conscious; we realized that after a time. Once she asked forwater, without opening her eyes, and Fred slipped a bit of ice betweenher white lips. Later in the night she looked up for an instant, at me.
"He--struck my--hand," she said with difficulty, and closed her eyesagain.
During the long night hours I told the story, as I knew it, in anundertone, and there was a new kindliness in Fred's face as he looked ather.
She was still living by morning, and was rallying a little from theshock. I got Fred to take Edith home, and I took her place by the bed.Some one brought me coffee about eight, and at nine o'clock I was askedto leave the room, while four surgeons held a consultation there. Thedecision to operate was made shortly after.
"There is only a chance," a gray-haired surgeon told me in brisk,short-clipped words. "The bullet went down, and has penetrated theabdomen. Sometimes, taken early enough, we can repair the damage, to acertain extent, and nature does the rest. The family is willing, Isuppose?"
I knew of no family but Edith, and over the telephone she said, withsomething of her natural tone, to do what the surgeons considered best.
I hoped to get some sort of statement before the injured woman was takento the operating-room, but she lay in a stupor, and I had to give up theidea. It was two days before I got her deposition, and in that time Ihad learned many things.
On Monday I took Margery to Bellwood. She had received the news aboutMrs. Butler more calmly than I had expected.
"I do not think she was quite sane, poor woman," she said with ashudder. "She had had a great deal of trouble. But how strange--a murderand an attempt at murder--at that little club in a week!"
She did not connect the two, and I let the thing rest at that. Once, onthe train, she turned to me suddenly, after she had been plunged inthought for several minutes.
"Don't you think," she asked, "that she had a sort of homicidal mania,and that she tried to kill me with chloroform?"
"I hardly think so," I returned evasively. "I am inclined to think someone actually got in over the porch roof."
"I am afraid," she said, pressing her gloved hands tight together."Wherever I go, something happens that I can not understand. I neverwilfully hurt any one, and yet--these terrible things follow me. I amafraid--to go back to Bellwood, with Aunt Jane still gone, and you--inthe city."
"A lot of help I have been to you," I retorted bitterly. "Can you thinkof a single instance where I have been able to save you trouble oranxiety? Why, I allowed you to be chloroformed within an inch ofeternity, before I found you."
"But you did find me," she cheered me. "And just to know that you aredoing all you can--"
"My poor best," I supplemented.
"It is very comforting to have a friend one can rely on," she finished,and the little bit of kindness went to my head. If she had not got acinder in her eye at that psychological moment, I'm afraid I wouldfiguratively have trampled Wardrop underfoot, right there. As it was, Igot the cinder, after a great deal of looking into one beautifuleye--which is not as satisfactory by half as looking into two--and thenwe were at Bellwood.
We found Miss Letitia in the lower hall, and Heppie on her knees with ahatchet. Between them sat a packing box, and they were having a spiriteddiscussion as to how it should be opened.
"Here, give it to me," Miss Letitia demanded, as we stopped in thedoorway. "You've got stove lengths there for two days if you don't chop'em up into splinters."
With the hatchet poised in mid air she saw us, but she let it descendwith considerable accuracy nevertheless, and our greeting was madebetween thumps.
"Come in"--thump--"like as not it's a mistake"--bang--"but theexpressage was prepaid. If it's mineral water--" crash. Something brokeinside.
"If it's mineral water," I said, "you'd better let me open it. Mineralwater is meant for internal use, and not for hall carpets." I got thehatchet from her gradually. "I knew a case once where a bottle of hairtonic was spilled on a rag carpet, and in a year they had it dyed withspots over it and called it a tiger skin."
She watched me suspiciously while I straightened the nails she had bent,and lifted the boards. In the matter of curiosity, Miss Letitia wastruly feminine; great handfuls of excelsior she dragged out herself, andheaped on Heppie's blue apron, stretched out on the floor.
The article that had smashed under the vigor of Miss Letitia's seventyyears lay on the top. It had been a tea-pot, of some very beautifulware. I have called just now from my study, to ask what sort of ware itwas, and the lady who sets me right says it was Crown Derby. Then therewere rows of cups and saucers, and heterogeneous articles in the samematerial that the women folk seemed to understand. At the last, when theexcitement seemed over, they found a toast rack in a lower corner of thebox and the "Ohs" and "Ahs" had to be done all over again.
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Not until Miss Letitia had arranged it all on the dining-room table, andMargery had taken off her wraps and admired from all four corners, didMiss Letitia begin to ask where they had come from. And by that timeHeppie had the crate in the wood-box, and the excelsior was a black andsmoking mass at the kitchen end of the grounds.
There was not the slightest clue to the sender, but while Miss Letitiarated Heppie loudly in the kitchen, and Bella swept up the hall, Margeryvoiced the same idea that had occurred to me.
"If--if Aunt Jane were--all right," she said tremulously, "it would bejust the sort of thing she loves to do."
I had intended to go back to the city at once, but Miss Letitia's boxhad put her in an almost cheerful humor, and she insisted that I go withher to Miss Jane's room, and see how it was prepared for its owner'sreturn.
"I'm not pretending to know what took Jane Maitland away from this housein the middle of the night," she said. "She was a good bit of a fool,Jane was; she never grew up. But if I know Jane Maitland, she will comeback and be buried with her people, if it's only to put Mary's husbandout of the end of the lot.
"And another thing, Knox," she went on, and I saw her old hands wereshaking. "I told you the last time you were here that I hadn't beenrobbed of any of the pearls, after all. Half of those pearls were Jane'sand--she had a perfect right to take forty-nine of them if she wanted.She--she told me she was going to take some, and it--slipped my mind."
I believe it was the first lie she had ever told in her hard,conscientious old life. Was she right? I wondered. Had Miss Jane takenthe pearls, and if she had, why?
Wardrop had been taking a long walk; he got back about five, and as MissLetitia was in the middle of a diatribe against white undergarments forcolored children, Margery and he had a half-hour alone together. I hadknown, of course, that it must come, but under the circumstances, withmy whole future existence at stake, I was vague as to whether it wascolored undergarments on white orphans or the other way round.
When I got away at last, I found Bella waiting for me in the hall. Hereyes were red with crying, and she had a crumpled newspaper in her hand.She broke down when she tried to speak, but I got the newspaper fromher, and she pointed with one work-hardened finger to a column on thefirst page. It was the announcement of Mrs. Butler's tragic accident,and the mystery that surrounded it. There was no mention of Schwartz.
"Is she--dead?" Bella choked out at last.
"Not yet, but there is very little hope."
Amid fresh tears and shakings of her heavy shoulders, as she sat in herfavorite place, on the stairs, Bella told me, briefly, that she hadlived with Mrs. Butler since she was sixteen, and had only left when thehusband's suicide had broken up the home. I could get nothing else outof her, but gradually Bella's share in the mystery was coming to light.
Slowly, too--it was a new business for me--I was forming a theory of myown. It was a strange one, but it seemed to fit the facts as I knewthem. With the story Wardrop told that afternoon came my first glimmerof light.
He was looking better than he had when I saw him before, but the news ofMrs. Butler's approaching death and the manner of her injury affectedhim strangely. He had seen the paper, like Bella, and he turned on mealmost fiercely when I entered the library. Margery was in her oldposition at the window, looking out, and I knew the despondent droop ofher shoulders.
"Is she conscious?" Wardrop asked eagerly, indicating the article in thepaper.
"No, not now--at least, it is not likely."
He looked relieved at that, but only for a moment. Then he began to pacethe room nervously, evidently debating some move. His next action showedthe development of a resolution, for he pushed forward two chairs forMargery and myself.
"Sit down, both of you," he directed. "I've got a lot to say, and I wantyou both to listen. When Margery has heard the whole story, she willprobably despise me for the rest of her life. I can't help it. I've gotto tell all I know, and it isn't so much after all. You didn't fool meyesterday, Knox; I knew what that doctor was after. But he couldn't makeme tell who killed Mr. Fleming, because, before God, I didn't know."