MRS3 The Velvet Hand (34 page)

"Why should I have killed her?" asked Mrs. Marlin quietly. "I had everything to lose and nothing to gain by her death."

"We can see that now," said Mr. Dockra, "but you may have had expectations of something different."

"Mrs. Brager was continually telling me that I need expect nothing at her death."

Mr. Dockra permitted himself an incredulous smile.

"Madame Storey heard her," said Mrs. Marlin.

"Did you?" he asked of my mistress in surprise.

"Yes. Two days ago, on my first visit to Mrs. Brager, I heard her use these words to Mrs. Marlin: 'I warn you, miss; I warn you as I've warned you a hundred times before; you'd better take care of me if you know what's good for you, for you won't profit one cent by my death. Not one cent!'"

Mr. Dockra coughed in a disconcerted fashion. "Hm!—Ha!"

For fifteen minutes longer he kept after Mrs. Marlin, leading over the same ground, without succeeding in tripping her. She answered apparently without even stopping to think. Her indifferent air was exasperating to her questioner. I need not repeat all this, since nothing new was brought out.

The prosecutor was interrupted by another of his men, who whispered a communication in his ear.

"What! another lawyer?" said Dockra. "Well, bring him in."

A young man with a keen and resolute face entered briskly. He and Mr. Dockra were acquainted; rivals possibly. They exchanged curt nods.

"Well, Blick?" asked the prosecutor.

The newcomer wasted no time in beating around the bush. "I have a will," he said crisply, "drawn up by me at the request of Mrs. Brager and signed by her. Her instructions were that any time I should hear of her death I was instantly to proceed to her house and take charge."

"What is the date of this will?" asked Mr. Dockra.

"February tenth—one week ago."

"Ha!" cried Mr. Dockra; "let us hope that this is really the last one!" He held out his hand for it.

An uncomfortable premonition of the truth came to me. I waited on tenterhooks.

As Mr. Dockra read, his face became suffused with gratification. "Ha!" he cried again, in quite a different tone. "Just what I expected. Listen!" He read a single sentence: "'All the rest and residue of my estate I hereby devise and bequeath to my loyal friend and servant Mrs. Clare Marlin.'"

Mrs. Marlin leaped up with a cry of the purest surprise. "Oh! I never knew!"

Mr. Dockra smiled. I groaned inwardly. Not that I doubted the poor girl; the production of this latest will did not really alter the status of the case; but I foresaw what capital the logical male mind would make of it.

"Under what circumstances was this will made?" Mr. Dockra asked.

"Six times during the past two years," Mr. Blick answered, "Mrs. Brager has come to my office and instructed me to draw up a will of this nature, each time with a new date."

"When was the last time?" asked Mme Storey.

"Just before Christmas, Madame."

"And the time before that?"

"Somewhere around Thanksgiving."

"Then it is clear she always intended Mrs. Marlin should inherit," said my mistress. "The other wills were merely blinds."

"Quite so," said Mr. Dockra.

"I never knew!" cried Mrs. Marlin, like one stunned with surprise. The dawning gladness in her face was eloquent of the truth of her words; but that logical man refused to see it.

"Who came with Mrs. Brager to your office?" he asked.

"She was alone," replied Mr. Blick. "She always came alone."

"She pledged you to secrecy?"

"She did. She said nobody was to know about this will but herself, myself, and the beneficiary."

"The beneficiary, eh? Well, there you are!" cried Mr. Dockra, spreading out his hands.

"She never told me!" cried Mrs. Marlin.

"I am sorry, my dear Mrs. Marlin," said Mr. Dockra, delighted at having seemed to prove Mme Storey wrong, "but circumstances are against you. I shall have to detain you in custody for the present. You may wait in one of the rooms upstairs, where you will not be the subject of vulgar curiosity."

The poor girl, still dazed, was led away by a policeman. She glanced imploringly at Mme Storey and at me. We smiled at her encouragingly; it was all we could do.

When the door was opened the Hon. Shep Chew was to be seen hovering outside. He had evidently witnessed the coming of the new lawyer and was visibly tortured with anxiety to know what it portended. He stuck his head into the room.

"Can I be of any help?" he asked insinuatingly.

Mr. Dockra ignored him; to give him credit, he had no use for the slimy hypocrite. It was my mistress who, with her most winning smile, invited him in.

"Another will has turned up," she said, "post-dating yours. It leaves practically everything to Mrs. Marlin."

You should have seen his face!

"Unfortunately," Mme Storey went on, "there are some very unpleasant circumstances—very unpleasant circumstances..."

A crazy hope sprang up in his eyes. Naturally, if Mrs. Marlin could be proved to be guilty of the death of Mrs. Brager, her will would be set aside and his be good. "Of course," he said eagerly, "none of the rest of us ever doubted who did it!"

"But how?" murmured Mme Storey as if more to herself than to him.

"Haven't you brought out the facts about clarium gas?" he asked.

"What is that?" asked the prosecutor sharply.

"Dr. Sanford Brill's discovery. He has produced a gas which is instantly fatal to all breathing creatures. They wanted Mrs. Brager to finance him. He came here only yesterday, and gave her a demonstration. She turned him down."

"Ha!" cried Mr. Dockra. "Let this Dr. Brill be brought here immediately," he said to his clerk. "And if he is giving demonstrations of his gas, let him be prepared to give me a demonstration."

Dr. Brill was that unusual type, the stalwart young scientist, a man of intellect and muscle. I could readily understand how Mrs. Marlin had fallen in love with him. He had a handsome head, covered with tousled, shining black hair, and deep, brooding gray eyes. His look was at once open, thoughtful, and manly. What was more, the carelessness of his dress suggested that he needed a woman to look after his clothes and to see that he was properly fed. He had not the least notion of how attractive he was.

Such a man, buried in his laboratory, would be the last to hear a piece of news. He was shocked beyond measure to hear of Mrs. Brager's death, and demanded to be allowed to see Mrs. Marlin. When this was refused him, when he understood that Mrs. Marlin was suspected of having had a hand in it, his amazement turned to anger, and I thought we were going to have a fight on our hands.

"What nonsense!" he cried. "How could she have done such a thing?"

"By means of clarium gas," suggested Mr. Dockra, watching him.

All the anger suddenly went out of Dr. Brill. He paled and his eyes widened; he became very quiet. The prosecutor, of course, did not fail to mark these evidences of an inward dismay. A man like Dockra, I may say, the clever, ambitious opportunist, was perfectly incapable of understanding one of Dr. Brill's type; consequently, he disliked him at sight, though he was careful to preserve the outward forms of courtesy.

We had Dr. Brill into Mrs. Marlin's room, and the investigation proceeded.

"Please tell me about this clarium gas," said Mr. Dockra.

"It is a discovery of mine," said Dr. Brill, "a gas lighter than hydrogen, lighter than helium, and which may be produced at a fraction of the price of helium."

"Poisonous, is it not?"

"Yes. That's the trouble with it."

Mr. Dockra stared. "What's it to be used for, then?"

Dr. Brill looked at him as much as to say: "What a foolish question." "It solves the problem of the navigation of the air by heavier than air vessels," he went on, as one might explain to a child. "By the use of clarium airships may be made much smaller, hence more manageable, and the cost brought within the limits of commercial possibilities."

"Where did the name come from?"

"I called it after Mrs. Marlin, whose name is Clare."

"You are engaged to marry Mrs. Marlin?"

"Yes."

"Why have you and she not got married before this? ... I hope you will pardon these personal questions, Doctor. In my position I have no choice but to ask them."

"I have no objections to answering any proper question," said Dr. Brill simply. "We have not got married because we could not afford to."

"Then clarium has not paid?"

"I have not tried to realize on it as yet. I do not consider that my work is complete. Though I have tried to keep it as much of a secret as possible, such things will leak out; and I may say that I have been approached by an agent of the government with a handsome offer for the formula, besides a very good contract to take charge of the manufacture. But I declined the offer."

"Why?" asked Mr. Dockra in astonishment.

"Because of the poisonous nature of the gas."

"Oh, you are afraid that it would kill everybody who handled it."

"Not at all. Safeguards could easily be provided against that. I manufacture it and experiment with it without the slightest danger. What I fear is that, in case of any trouble, the government would turn it to the uses of chemical warfare. By increasing its density, a simple matter to a chemist, it could be made frightfully destructive. I could not take the responsibility."

"What are you going to do, then?"

"I shall not let the formula out of my hands until I have succeeded in making the gas harmless. It may be done. But it will take time."

"Meanwhile you need money," suggested Mr. Dockra bluntly.

"I do," returned Dr. Brill, with his admirable simplicity.

"Mrs. Marlin tried to interest Mrs. Brager in the discovery."

"She did."

"Please describe what happened when you gave your demonstration in this house yesterday."

"It was a very simple demonstration," said Dr. Brill. "That was all I was permitted. It was held in the double rooms downstairs. Besides Mrs. Brager, Madame La France, Mr. Chew and Mr. Oneto were present. And Mrs. Marlin, of course."

"Had you ever met these people before?"

"Never. But Mrs. Marlin had talked to me about them."

"What do you mean by saying you were only permitted a very simple demonstration?"

"The whole atmosphere was antagonistic. Of course, I had expected it would be. Mrs. Marlin had warned me that nobody yet had ever succeeded in getting Mrs. Brager to put up money for anything. So it was just a forlorn hope. Still, I might have succeeded in interesting the old lady if it had not been for her hangers-on. They acted as if I was threatening their interests."

"Well, describe the experiments."

"I had brought with me three little tanks containing respectively hydrogen, helium, and clarium; and a handful of rubber skins, such as are used for children's balloons. I blew up a red skin with my breath, a green skin with hydrogen, a yellow skin with helium, and a purple skin with clarium."

"Suppose the purple balloon had burst?"

"It would have done no harm—such a small quantity of the gas, unless it had burst directly in my face. And I took care of that. Clarium rises very quickly."

"Go on."

"The red balloon fell to the ground, of course; the other three rose. I then demonstrated, by using small boxes of matches as units, how much more weight the purple balloon would support than either of the others."

"I suppose many questions were asked you."

"Oh, innumerable questions," answered Dr. Brill ruefully. "Most of them quite beside the point."

"And then?"

"Mr. Chew said: 'But how do we know that this is clarium, this helium, this hydrogen?'"

"A natural question?"

"Oh, quite. I would not have expected Mrs. Brager to put up her money without engaging some qualified person to check up my claims. But Chew's tone suggested that I was trying to cheat her, and she believed it. And—well, that was all. I was given no opportunity to prove my claims."

"It was a bitter disappointment?" suggested Mr. Dockra.

"I can hardly say that," answered Dr. Brill composedly, "since I had expected nothing else."

"I suppose you and Mrs. Marlin often talk about clarium?"

"It is often mentioned between us, naturally. We do not discuss it because my thoughts on the subject are of a highly technical nature that she could not follow."

"But she is fully informed as to the properties of clarium?"

"In a general way, yes."

"Dr. Brill, are you prepared to give me a demonstration of clarium?"

"I am." The doctor opened his satchel and showed us a small tank. "I have brought the same container that I used yesterday." He then produced a small pasteboard box and opened it. "I have also several ounces of the powder of clarium."

"Be careful! Be careful!" cried the prosecutor sharply.

"In powder form it is entirely harmless," said Dr. Brill with a smile. To prove it, he put the powder to his nose and smelled of it. Little prickles ran up and down my spine.

"How is the gas produced?" asked Mr. Dockra, still fearful of the stuff.

"By heating the powder in a retort."

Mr. Dockra sent outside the room, and one of his men came in carrying a cage with a canary in it. I do not know whether they had found it in the house, or had sent out for it. I foresaw what was coming, and shivered.

"What I want," said Mr. Dockra, "is a demonstration of the effect of clarium gas on a breathing organism, such as this bird."

"Nothing easier," said Dr. Brill, rising.

"Not here!" said Mr. Dockra.

"There is no danger," said the chemist. "An infinitesimal amount will be sufficient. If the cage is placed up high the gas will lose itself under the ceiling. A few minutes after its release it becomes innocuous. All I require is a piece of impervious material such as rubberized cloth."

One of the detectives handed him a raincoat.

"You have not given Dr. Brill the customary warning," remarked Mme Storey.

Mr. Dockra looked annoyed. "You understand that the result of this experiment may be used against you later."