Part 13 (1/2)

The nervous wreck made himself more understandable.

”Perhaps, Jarvis,” he said, shrinking to one side like a man in sudden pain, ”the gentleman can't see how to reach that large door. A little more light, half an inch-not a fraction more!”

”Don't bother,” Hastings told Jarvis. ”I'm not going quite yet.”

”Leaping crime!” moaned Mr. Sloane, digging deeper into the pillows, ”Frantic imps!”

”I hope I won't distress you too much,” the detective apologized grimly, ”if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the circ.u.mstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and, irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it.

This is a serious business----”

The sick man sat up in bed with surprising abruptness.

”Serious business! Serious saints!--Jarvis, the eau de cologne!--You think I don't know it? They make a slaughter-house of my lawn. They make a morgue of my house. They hold a coroner's inquest in my parlour.

They're in there now--live people like ravens, and one dead one. They cheat the undertaker to plague me. They wreck me all over again. They give me a new exhaustion of the nerves. They frighten my daughter to death.--Jarvis, the smelling salts. Shattered saints, Jarvis! Hurry!

Thanks.--They rig up lies which, Tom Wilton, my old and trusted friend, tells me, will incriminate Berne Webster. They sit around a corpse in my house and chatter by the hour. You come in here and make Jarvis nearly blind me.

”And, then, then, by the holy, agile angels! you think you have to persuade me it's a serious business! Never fear! I know it!--Jarvis, the bromide, quick! Before I know it, they'll drive me to opiates.--Serious business! Shrivelled and shrinking saints!”

Arms clasped around his legs, knees pressed against his chin, Mr. Sloane trembled and shook until Jarvis, more agile than the angels of whom his employer had spoken, gave him the dose of bromides.

Still, Mr. Hastings did not retire.

”I was going to say,” he resumed, in a tone devoid of compa.s.sion, ”I couldn't drop this thing now. I may be able to find the murderer; and you may be able to help me.”

”I?”

”Yes.”

”Isn't it Russell? He's among the ravens now, in my parlour. Wilton told me the sheriff was certain Russell was the man. Murdered martyrs!

Sacrificed saints! Can't you let a guilty man hang when he comes forward and puts the rope around his own worthless neck?”

”If Russell's guilty,” Hastings said, glad of the information that the accused man was then at Sloanehurst, ”I hope we can develop the necessary evidence against him. But----”

”The necessary----”

”Let me finish, Mr. Sloane, if you please!” The old man was determined to disregard the other's signs of suffering. He did not believe that they were anything but a.s.sumed, the exaggerated camouflage which he usually employed as an excuse for idleness. ”But, if Russell isn't guilty, there are facts which may help me to find the murderer. And you may have valuable information concerning them.”

”Sobbing, sorrowing saints!” lamented Mr. Sloane, but his trembling ceased; he was closely attentive. ”A cigarette, Jarvis, a cigarette!

Nerves will be served.--I suppose the easiest way is to submit. Go on.”

”I shall ask you only two or three questions,” Hastings said.

The jackknife-like figure in the bed shuddered its repugnance.

”I've been told, Mr. Sloane, that Mr. Webster has been in great need of money, as much as sixty-five thousand dollars. In fact, according to my information, he needs it now.”

”Well, did he kill the woman, expecting to find it in her stocking?”

”The significance of his being hard-pressed, for so large an amount,”