“Read me one or two and I may be able to give you a few suggestions.”
Appleton blushed and reached for the poems.
“No? Well, after all I guess it might be wiser if I read them myself. Hearing them read aloud by someone else may give you a better perspective. One is apt to be overcome by the power and the beauty of one’s own work. Let’s see.”
He picked one out and read it aloud. Appleton listened in horror.
“ ‘Melancholia,’ by Peter Appleton, for Albert Singer. Now that’s very nice. Not the pleasantest choice of subject, perhaps, but we can’t have everything. ‘She stood alone, distant, wondering — like stardust on a heathering heath — ’ ”
He squinted at Appleton.
“ ‘Like stardust on a heathering heath,’ ” repeated Jupiter in an awed voice. “That’s rather beautiful, Peter, it is indeed. What is stardust, by the way? I’ve often wondered. And ‘a heathering heath’? Do heaths heather? Was she ‘wondering like stardust, or does that mean she looked that way? Those are little points that bear watching.”
“Give me those, please, Jones.” Peter was near tears.
Jupiter held up his hand. “You are overmodest, Peter. You will have to learn to take the bad along with the good. Perhaps if you took notes on what I’m telling you it would help. Oftentimes some minor point will be forgotten in these little chats of ours which would help you in your work.”
Appleton looked as if he were either going to cry or jump at Jupiter. Jupiter was wondering which it would be when someone knocked on the door.
“Come in,” yelled Jupiter cheerfully. The evening was picking up again.
Mr. McFeathers, a “Yard Cop,” was at the door. He was an intimate friend of Jupiter.
“Good evening, Mr. McFeathers,” said Jupiter, getting up. “Come in!”
He shuffled into the room. “This is a garstly thing, Mr. Jones, a garstly thing.”
“It is,” said Jupiter. “Have a drink.”
He cocked his head. “Well, it is a mite cold to-night. . . .”
It was the same old ritual. Jupiter knew it well. He poured some whiskey in a tumbler and handed it to Mr. McFeathers, who tossed it off straight. Appleton didn’t say anything.
“Ah!” said Mr. McFeathers. “I hear ye found the body, son. And that Sergeant Rankin is handling the case. I know him well — only a Sergeant, but a smart man at that.”
“He seems to be,” said Jupiter.
Appleton said, “I think I’ll run along, Jones, if you don’t mind. It’s . . . it’s getting late.”
Mr. McFeathers waved him aside. “Don’t go, son, I just dropped in to see how things were going. I’m on dooty, y’ know.”
“Really, I think I ought . . .” said Appleton. Jupiter was thumbing through the poems. Among them he found a letter that was obviously in a different handwriting. He held it up. “This yours, Peter?”
Appleton looked at it. “No, it’s not.”
Jupiter handed him the poems. “Well, if you must go you must. I should have liked to read more. You know, Mr. McFeathers, you ought to get Mr. Appleton to read you some of his poems. I think he has a future, a definite future.”
Mr. McFeathers and Appleton left together. Jupiter read the letter. The last part was interesting: “I refuse to go on this way, Albert; you must believe me. I am a woman, not a schoolgirl, and I refuse to be treated like one. After all that has happened you must see the sense in this. We have got to come to a decision soon, I can’t stand it. Please be fair about this. You know that I would do anything in the world for you, but if I found that you were not serious about this, I do not dare to think what I would do. Believe this! Don’t come to see me, but write soon. All my love, Ruth.”
When he had finished it he mixed himself another drink.
“This is too much,” he moaned. “The mind staggers. Whoever Ruth is, she didn’t know when she was well out of it. I suppose I had better put the letter back. After all, I have to leave the Inspector something to go on. I wonder if he’s seen the poems already? If he has, there’ll be hell to pay, but we’ll have to risk it.”
After he had replaced the letter in Singer’s room he began to undress.
“Well, Jones, you’ve spent many interesting and diversified evenings in your brief but hectic career, but nevertheless and notwithstanding, you must admit for sheer entertainment this leads by a furlong. Also, young man, you’ve got yourself very pleasantly intoxicated.”
He fell into bed.
CHAPTER VIII
OVER the dubious aroma of twenty-five hundred coffee cups floated the remarks of Harvard undergraduates and professors discussing the murder. No one talked of anything else, naturally. Total strangers spoke to one another. The murder had become a giant leveler. In every dining hall there was buzzing. Most were shocked, some were amused, none were indifferent. Hallowell House alone was subdued; people whispered, the maids moved softly; this was the centre — it had happened to them. Every face turned toward the door when someone entered; they were looking for celebrities. Things had leaked out; Hadley had been questioned; Sampson had spoken to the police; and Jones . . . No one came but Mr. Swayle, who kept appearing importantly in the hall and looking around. They were tired of him. Everywhere the talk went on: —
“What do the police think?”
“You can’t tell.”
“Let me see that paper when you’re through.”
“They’re all the same; they don’t know anything, either.”
“You know, I saw this queer-looking guy wandering around outside the House about seven last night.”
“Yeah, sure you did. I suppose he had a knife in his hand.”
“I saw a woman come out of Singer’s entry about six-fifteen.”
“Why not? It was ladies’ visiting day; there were women in every entry.”
“Not like her.”
“Shall we send for the police to get your story?”
“Oh, shut up!”
By nine o’clock
