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She gave it to him. He wore a soft hat pulled down on his head and she thought a pull-on sweater, one of those with a high rolling collar which covered the lower part of his face. But he made no effort to attack her, and perhaps the most unusual thing about it was that he thanked her when she gave him the bag.

He took it and moved quickly back among the trees, and Peggy ran as fast as she could to the Lancasters’. She had been in a bad state when Ellen let her in, but she had only said that she had hurried and that she had lost her bag while running.

“And the next morning,” said Annie with unction, “when Ellen opened the porch door to get the milk, there was that bag hanging on the doorknob. All her money in it, too! If that’s not the act of a lunatic, then I’m crazy myself.”

I did not tell Mother. She was sufficiently uneasy as things were, and I gathered that she had demanded a police guard for our house that night. Which was perhaps the time when the Commissioner sent for Inspector Briggs and asked him if he would like the library on Liberty Avenue as headquarters for his operatives on the case! Or—I believe he added—should he wire the governor to send the National Guard!

Mother was very silent that night. Conditions in the house next door were simply lamentable. Mr. Lancaster had not spoken since Sunday night and was slowly sinking, and Margaret was a ghost. She did not eat or sleep, and she scarcely spoke.

“Really,” Mother said, “I don’t understand her, Louisa. She will hardly go into her stepfather’s room! I relieved the nurse for sleep this afternoon, and Jennie did it yesterday. Yet she has always been devoted to him. She is not like herself at all.”

The verdict of the inquest over Emily had been much the same as that over her mother. It had not taken long, and the funeral was to be the next day. Margaret had returned from the inquest only to shut herself in her room, and Mother had not seen her again.

I watched Mother as she talked. She was excited and unusually loquacious, but in spite of all that had happened I came definitely to the conclusion that night that Mother had shown a certain relief ever since Emily Lancaster’s death. It was much the same as she had shown that day when she had sent for Mrs. Talbot. She was bitterly sorry for Emily, but it was as though some doubt in her mind, some suspicion, had been definitely allayed by it.

It was that night that George Talbot was released on bail as a material witness. The ballistics expert of the Department was, I believe, still firing test bullets out of George’s automatic and examining the results under a microscope, for late that night he telephoned in to Headquarters a rather surprising report. George was on his way home by that time, angry and bewildered as well as more than a little frightened; and it was several days before he knew anything at all about that report.

“I’m not committing myself yet,” said the expert cautiously, “but what it looks like to me is that somebody has switched the barrels of two pistols. Mind you, that’s only a theory so far. The bullet that killed Emily Lancaster came out of this barrel. That’s certain. But I’m not sure it was fired out of this gun.”

T
HAT WAS ON TUESDAY
night.

Perhaps I have said too little so far about the effect on our community of our two murders. That belongs here, for it directly affected our situation and what was to develop out of it. Because of it the local hardware dealers were busy selling extra bolts and locks, and also chains for entrance doors; and because one woman in our vicinity had bought such a chain for her front door, that Wednesday found us at the beginning of a new mystery and another tragedy.

The reign of terror, as the press called it, was never limited to the Crescent. The public was convinced from the start that a homicidal maniac was loose in that part of the city, although statements from the nearby State Hospital for the Criminal Insane had shown not only that no such patient had recently escaped, but also that an hour-by-hour check was made of all patients and all attendants.

The rumor persisted, however, and the killing of Emily Lancaster, apparently as motiveless as that of her mother, served to magnify it. Our delivery boys ran in with their parcels of meat or groceries and got away as fast as they could. No children slipped into No Man’s Land to play, and many of them were escorted to school and back again. Servants in the early morning peered out of windows before opening kitchen doors to take in the milk. There were no curious crowds watching from beyond our gates; and at night those people who were compelled to pass the Crescent on Liberty Avenue chose, not the long area bounded by the Wellington and Talbot hedges, but the other side of the street.

To all this had now been added the attack on me. One tabloid came out with the statement that there had been thirteen people on the Crescent at the beginning of our troubles, and went on at length to discuss the number thirteen and the almost universal superstition concerning it; the fact that no house in Paris bears that number, that it is left out of Italian lotteries, and that the superstition itself runs back into Norse mythology, although in Christian countries it is supposed to have originated from the Last Supper.

What is important in all this is that the Crescent locally at least had become taboo, a fact which left us without possible witnesses for the remainder of that dreadful week, and without even our rare visitors from other parts of town for a far longer period.

For on that Wednesday we were involved in another mystery and another death.

There is so far as I know only one coincidence in this record, and that was that the day of Emily Lancaster’s funeral was also the anniversary of my father’s death. Yet it was to have its consequences.

For twenty years Mother had observed this anniversary in almost ritualistic manner. Thus in the morning, accompanied by my Aunt Caroline, my father’s remaining sister, she visited the cemetery, and generally had a discussion and a quarrel with the Superintendent over the condition of our lot. From there she went into the city to lunch sadly but substantially with Aunt Caroline, after which they took a drive to Aunt Caroline’s husband’s grave, and the morning’s procedure was repeated there.

On this particular morning therefore the only variation was that the two first witnessed the final rites over Emily Lancaster, and on the departure of the funeral procession of cars, carried out the usual program. With a difference, however.

It was after one o’clock, and I had managed to dress and get downstairs, when Mother called me on the telephone in an exasperated voice and demanded to know if I had heard from Holmes and the car.

“From Holmes?” I said, astounded. “I thought you had him. Where are you?”

“I’m at the cemetery with your Aunt Caroline,” she said shortly. “That wretch drove us here and then simply drove away again. And the Superintendent has gone to lunch and the office is locked. I never heard of such a thing! We’ve walked for miles.”

Well, I must admit that the picture of Mother and Aunt Caroline in their best black left stranded at the Greenwood Cemetery was almost too much for me. It is miles from anywhere, and I doubt if either of them has walked four blocks in as many years. But I agreed that it was dreadful, and to send a taxi for them at once. Which I did immediately.

When I turned it was to find Annie at my elbow.

“I suppose that Holmes has gone, miss?”

“How in the world did you know?”

“Because he carried his clothes away last night,” she said promptly.

“Why on earth didn’t you tell us that?”

“And get my throat cut?” she said darkly. “No, miss, I know my business and I value my life.”

I went back to his room over the garage at once; and discovered that Annie was right. He had slept there; with a guard around the house he had been no longer needed inside it. His bed was untidy and his bathroom had been used. But his closet was stripped bare of clothing and his battered suitcase gone from under the window where it always stood.

There was no question but that Holmes had gone, and it looked just then as though a three-thousand dollar car had gone with him.

Mother got out of a taxicab shortly after that, and limped into the house. What with the heat, her heavy black and a very considerable indignation, she was in a state of almost complete demoralization.

She sat down in a hall chair and closed her eyes, and she said nothing whatever until Annie had unlaced and taken off her shoes. Then:

“That wretch!” she said. “I never did trust him, and I never will.”

“And right you are, ma’am,” said Annie. “You’ll be lucky if you ever see him or the car again. That’s what I think, besides making you walk on that bunion in this heat. Look at it!”

“That’s arthritis, Annie,” Mother said sharply.

We got her upstairs and into bed, and I turned on the electric fan. Then Mary sent up some luncheon on a tray, and what with rest and some food she grew more calm. It was not until she was comfortable and quiet that I told her that Holmes’s clothes were gone and that whatever his reason might have been for leaving her and Aunt Caroline in the cemetery, it had evidently been planned at least a day ahead.

After that I notified the police, but it was half past two by that time, and too late, as we knew later on.

So far as we were concerned, the remainder of the day was uneventful. At three in the afternoon I saw Bryan Dalton, perhaps less florid than usual but impeccably dressed, get out his car and drive off in it. But I did not know then that he was on his way to a downtown office, where the District Attorney and two or three other men were grouped around a desk on which were lying, carefully tagged, a handful of scorched buttons and two irregular pieces of window glass, held together more or less neatly by two rubber bands.

“Then, as I understand it, you do not identify these buttons?”

“How can I? I suppose automobile overalls are much alike. I wear them to save my clothes.”

“But you admit burning your overalls the night following the murder. That’s the fact, isn’t it?”

“Admit? What do you mean admit? I burned them, certainly. It isn’t the first time I’ve done so, either. You can ask my man, Joseph. I wear them until they’re soiled and then have them destroyed.”

“Precisely. But isn’t this the first time you’ve done it yourself, Mr. Dalton? I mean, hasn’t this Joseph always done it before?”

“Perhaps. I don’t remember. And before I go on, I want to know my status here. Am I under suspicion, or am I merely to help you with your investigation? If I’m under suspicion I shall want my lawyer.”

“In a way, everyone is under suspicion just now,” said the District Attorney smoothly. “I can only remind you that an open statement of fact has never hurt an innocent person, and that I don’t think you have been particularly open so far. Now, as to this—er—exhibit under glass. You know nothing about it?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“You could not, by examining it, even venture a guess as to what it is? Or has been?”

“I have examined it. I don’t know what it is.”

And it was then that the District Attorney received a note in Herbert Dean’s writing, read it and laid it on the desk before him. When he looked up his examination took a new and different angle.

“Mr. Dalton,” he said, “do you know of any poison ivy around the Crescent? In that vicinity, I mean.”

“Poison ivy! Are you trying to be funny?”

“I’m afraid not. It’s entirely pertinent to our inquiry.”

Bryan Dalton shook his head.

“I don’t know of any,” he said. “I suppose you fellows know what you’re talking about, but—poison ivy!” Then he smiled rather grimly. “You don’t know us or you wouldn’t ask that! Of course I can’t speak for the waste land behind us; although I’ve never noticed it there.”

There was, I believe, a pause here. The District Attorney picked up the note from the desk and handed it to the Commissioner, who looked surprised but nodded. And it was the Commissioner who, note in hand, asked the next question.

“Just how long,” he inquired gruffly, “on the afternoon of Thursday of last week, did you stand beside the Lancaster woodshed, Mr. Dalton?”

He must have looked around him then at that ring of intent faces, all turned toward him. There was no pity in any of them. They were hard; set and grim, like those of men peering into a microscope at some imprisoned insect. Probably after his habit he ran a finger inside his collar, as though it was too tight for him. Then he smiled again.

“I suppose if I refuse to answer that it will be held against me!”

“I can only repeat what I said before, Mr. Dalton.”

“I was there perhaps ten minutes.”

“You are certain that is all?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“Will you explain just why you were there? There must have been a reason. If you’ll tell us that reason frankly, I assure you we will hold it as confidential—unless, of course, it turns out to have an important bearing on the case.”

But there he surprised them.

“Why I was there had nothing to do with this inquiry,” he said shortly. “If you want a reason for your record put it down that I was hunting for a golf ball. That’s as good as another. It’s as far as I care to go anyhow, and you can take it or leave it.”

That practically ended the interrogation. There was not a man there who did not know he was concealing something, although they could not be certain that what he concealed had any bearing on the case. But there was also not a man there who did not believe that he had lied about his ten minutes, and that he had stood beside the woodshed of the Lancasters’ long enough to smoke almost in its entirety one expensive Belinda cigar, made for him in Havana.

“Although,” as the Inspector said to me a long time afterwards, “that in itself didn’t mean a lot. It was pretty hard to believe that in the half hour to forty minutes he was there that afternoon he could have smoked a cigar of that size and still killed the old lady. And he wasn’t smoking either when his butler saw him go or when he came back.”

A little statement which once more bears out my conviction that from the very start our servants knew more of our crimes than we did.