MRS3 The Velvet Hand (37 page)

"Did you use one of the empty boxes to mail the clarium powder to Mrs. Marlin?"

"Yes, Madame," he said, with rising excitement.

"This will be it, then, I fancy," she drawled. "You had better take charge of it, Mr. Dockra." She handed it over. "You will find the name of the maker stamped in the tin."

A little sound of wonder travelled around the room.

Amid an electrical silence, the mysterious man in the case was led into the room and told to sit down in the chair at the foot of the bed. I shivered with repulsion at the sight of the murderer, as I then supposed him to be. He looked like a murderer, which murderers seldom do: a Hercules of a man, now somewhat gone to fat, with a ridged, bony head and completely brutalized features. The sort of man whose only retort is a guffaw of coarse laughter. His little swimming pig eyes held no expression whatever. The coarse and dirty clothes betrayed his occupation. He wore no overcoat.

"What is your name?" asked Mme Storey mildly.

"Henry Hafner," he growled.

Instantly Dr. Brill cried out: "That is the voice I heard over the telephone!"

It was on my tongue's tip to echo him. I too recognized that growling voice! But Mme Storey has taught me to restrain my impulses at such moments. I could see that she was annoyed by Dr. Brill's cry. She looked at Mr. Dockra meaningly. He said:

"There must be no interruptions, or we will have to clear the room."

In order to lull his suspicions, my mistress was adopting a painstakingly friendly attitude toward the brute. "Married, single, or widowed?" she asked.

"Single, 'm."

"Age?"

"Fifty-one."

"I shouldn't have thought it," said Mme Storey politely. "How long have you lived in Stanfield?"

"Eight months, 'm."

"Then you're not well known here?"

"No, 'm. I keeps myself to myself."

"What is your occupation?"

"Sort of odd jobs, 'm. In the winter I tends furnaces. Summers I gardens and mows lawn.... Can I make a statement?" he asked.

"I'd be glad to hear it," said Mme Storey.

"Well? 'm," he began with an aggrieved air, "when this guy here"—a jerk of the dirty thumb in Crider's direction—"come to my room and says, 'Come with me,' I says, 'What t' hell,' I says, 'a man's got his rights. A man's house is his castle,' I says, 'who are you to come buttin' in here?' He says: 'I'm Madame Storey's man,' or some such name. Well, I don't know who Madame Storey is, and I tell him so. 'Show me your badge,' I says. And he ain't got no badge. 'Nothin' doin',' I says, 'get the hell out of here.' Then he tried to drag me, and I pasted him one and we mixed it up, sort of, till the cop come. The guy tells the cop the Public Prosecutor wants me. He didn't tell me that. Soon as he says Public Prosecutor, I goes with him like a lamb. I just want you to get me right, lady: I don't set up to resist no lawful authority."

"That's all right," said Mme Storey; "your resistance to my agent will not be counted against you. Let us get on. I understand that you attend to the furnace in this house?"

"Yes, 'm."

"How long have you been working here?"

"Since the fire was lighted last fall."

"Who got you the job?"

"I got it by astin' at t' kitchen door."

"What time do you come here every day?"

"A little before seven in the morning, and again between nine and ten at night. At this house they won't give no key, so I has to wait for the cook to let me in mornings."

"Then you enter by the kitchen?"

"Yes, 'm."

"Why don't you use the door direct from the yard into the cellar?"

"Is there a door from the yard?" he said with a cunning look. "Oh, sure, I mind seein' that door on the cellar stairs. But that there door has been bolted up since before my time. I suppose the missus wants the kitchen help to keep tab on all who comes and goes in the cellar."

"You came back a second time this morning, didn't you?" said Mme Storey carelessly.

The little eyes darted an uneasy look in her face; but he answered readily: "Yes, 'm."

"What for?"

"Well, you see, 'm, the first time I come the fire was so near out I couldn't fill her up. I just had to put a little on and wait for it to catch good. So I told Mis' Morris, that's the cook here, that I'd be back."

"What time did you come back?"

"Some'eres about nine."

"Where had you been in the meantime?"

He named three houses that he had visited.

"But it wouldn't take you two hours to fix three furnaces."

"No, 'm, I was waitin' round to give the fire time to burn up good."

"It wouldn't take two hours for the fire to come up."

"Not if the dampers was opened right, 'm. But they won't let me do that here. Burn too much coal. They buy it every month, and I gotta make two ton last out. They ought to burn four."

"I want to fix the exact time of your return, if I can," said Mme Storey. "Did you meet the letter carrier making his first round?"

"Not that I rec'lect."

"Are you sure?"

It evidently occurred to Hafner that the letter carrier might have been questioned. "Sure, that's right, I met him," he said. "I just forgot for the moment. Fella name of Smitty. Me and him's well acquainted."

"Had he been to this house, or was he on the way here?"

"He'd been."

"Had you been waiting for him?" asked Mme Storey slyly.

But she didn't catch him. "Why should I?" he asked with an innocent air.

"I don't know," said Mme Storey, just as innocent. "What did you do when you came back?"

From this point on he weighed every word of his answers. As you have perceived, he was by no means as stupid as he looked. That debased exterior concealed a world of low cunning. He made a good witness for himself.

"I went down cellar."

"Did you find anything out of the way there?"

"No, 'm, nothin' out of the way. The fire was still sulkin'. I opened all the drafts and went up to the kitchen while she burned up."

"Right away?"

"No, 'm. I can't say as it was right away. I fooled around a bit, watching her—drawing out a clinker or two. Then I went up."

"What did you do in the kitchen?"

"I sat down and talked to cook and the girl."

"Oh, you sat down and talked. What about?"

"'Deed, I can't tell you that, 'm. Nothin' particular. Just talkin' like." Then, reflecting, no doubt, that the cook was at hand to corroborate this part, he added: "But I remember one thing."

"What was that?"

"While I was sittin' there cook wanted to send the girl down cellar for potatoes and I stopped her."

"Why?"

"Because of the coal gas. The furnace was givin' out gas somepin' fierce. I had opened everything up to drawr it off, and I opened the cellar window, too. I told the girl she better wait awhile."

"But you just told me you'd been fooling around down there."

"Oh, I'm used to the gas. Don't notice it a-tall."

"Did the furnace often give off gas?"

"Yes'm. Plumb wore out that furnace was. Weren't no use to complain. Wild horses wouldn't have drug the price of a new furnace out of the old missus."

"Then you went down cellar again?"

"Yes, 'm, I went down again."

"Closing the cellar door after you."

"That was along of the gas."

"Oh, I see. Did the girl go down with you?"

"No, 'm. She didn't come down till I hollered up that the gas was out."

"How was the fire then?"

"Not so good. I fooled around awhile yet, waitin' for it, then I couldn't wait no longer, so I fixed it up the best I could and left."

"Did the girl get her potatoes?"

"Oh, yes, 'm, she got her potatoes all right."

At this point the questioning was interrupted by the entrance of Stephens, the second operative, who had come out from town with Crider. He stood just within the door, waiting to catch his mistress's eye.

"Well, that's fine!" Mme Storey said to Hafner; "just excuse me a minute while I speak to this gentleman."

Stephens handed her a slip of paper on which was a written memorandum. After reading it Mme Storey folded it and kept it in her palm during what followed. I guessed by that that it was something of first-rate importance. Hafner's little eyes watched her with an agonized curiosity. He would have given something to know what was written on that paper. Mme Storey then whispered further instructions close in Stephens's ear, and he left the room again.

Up to this moment Mme Storey had shepherded Hafner along so gently that he thought he was picking his own way. He was cunning, but not cunning enough. He thought he was getting along fine; but I, who knew Mme Storey so well, could see that by the apparently plausible answers she was drawing out of him she was making him weave the rope that would later hang him.

I say hang him, but of course I could see by this time that he could not be the principal in this affair. He had no access to the upper part of the house; and he had nothing to gain directly by the death of Mrs. Brager. He was a tool in the hands of one of the three interested persons. I glanced at that precious trio where they sat in a row on the couch near the door: La France, Oneto, Chew. Each face showed the same wary mask, each was awaiting Hafner's answers with the same secret tenseness. Were they all in it? I wondered.

Mme Storey now changed her tactics. With an unexpectedness that caused the witness visibly to jump she said: "Hafner, for what reason did you follow my car back to New York night before last?"

He made his eyes as big as possible with astonishment. "I never followed you, lady," he said in an aggrieved voice. "I never seen you before I come into this room."

"I saw you." (This was not so, of course.)

"Maybe you did, but I wasn't follerin' you.... What kind of a car was I in?"

My mistress bit her lips to control a smile. Brute though the man was, his readiness of wit pleased her. "Never mind that," she said. "You followed me and my secretary to the Restaurant Lafitte on Park Avenue. You then went to a pay station near by and called me up."

"You're mistaken, lady. If somebody called you up, it wasn't me."

"You should butter your voice before you call up folks on the 'phone," remarked Mme Storey dryly. "... Who pointed me out to you and told you to follow me?"

"Nobody, 'm, because I didn't foller you. I ain't been to New York since Christmas."

"Well, let's get back to the cellar," said Mme Storey. "You say the second time you went down you didn't see anything out of the way."

"No, 'm. Nothin' out of the way."

"Well, that's funny," said Mme Storey carelessly, "because when I went down I immediately noticed that the tops of all the hot-air pipes leading out of the furnace had been dusted off."

Hafner's eyes flickered with fear; but he answered without hesitating: "You don't say. Must 'a' been done after I come up, for that would be a thing I'd notice. Everything down cellar was covered with dust."

"Yes. Seems funny anybody would go to the trouble of dusting off all those old pipes."

"You're right, lady." She had him sweating now; but his answers still came out pat. He started to pull a handkerchief out of his back pocket and then shoved it back again.

Mme Storey's voice rang out: "Give me that handkerchief!"

Jumping to his feet with a snarl, he clapped his hand over the spot. But resistance was useless, of course, in that crowd. The handkerchief was taken from him and handed to my mistress. It showed the unmistakable dark brown stains of thick dust. Mme Storey gave it a flirt, and a little cloud of fresh dust flew out of it.

"How did it get so dusty, Hafner?" she asked softly.

His tongue failed him then. "I—I—I—" he stammered—"I used it to dust my room with this morning. I hadn't nothin' else to use."

"Your room must have needed it," remarked Mme Storey, looking at the thick brown accumulations on the handkerchief. "Mr. Dockra," she said, brusquely raising her voice, "I would like to have this man searched."

Hafner crouched; showed his teeth like a trapped animal; glanced desirously toward the door. Useless to think of escape. Mr. Dockra called two of his men in.

Mme Storey said carelessly: "I expect to find on him a pair of pliers, a pair of gloves of some sort, a knife—of course, the knife won't prove anything, because every workman carries a knife. If you can also find some scraps of rubber and wire, it will help prove my case."

While the man was being frisked, she turned indifferently away. One after another the objects she had named were thrown on the table: the pliers; a pair of coarse cotton gloves, new, but stained on the palms with the same brown dust; a penknife; two pieces of rubber which looked as if they might have been cut from an old inner tube. Only the wire was missing.

Mme Storey glanced over these things. "We can do without the wire," she said.

Everybody else in the room looked on open mouthed, like a crowd of yokels at a side show.

"These gloves I think were worn for the first time this morning," said Mme Storey, calling attention to their clean backs. "What did you want gloves for, Hafner?"

"To protect my hands," he muttered.

If you could have seen those dirty, calloused hands! A laugh travelled around the room.

Hafner sat down again, breathing hard; but he was not yet beaten; for when Mme Storey said: "Has there been anything wrong with the heating flue leading to Mrs. Brager's bedroom?" he answered readily:

"Not as I knows of."

"Because the next thing I noticed in the cellar," she went on, "was that that flue had been disconnected and joined up again. There was an edge of bright tin showing at the joining of the old pipe. It was at the point where the horizontal flue from the heating chamber joins the vertical flue which runs up through the walls. There is a sort of square tin box there, which receives the round pipe from the furnace."

My mistress's quiet, matter-of-fact voice was too much for Hafner's nerves. "What's all this about?" he suddenly burst out. "What you gettin' at, anyway? A man's got the right to know what he's suspected of!"