“I wish I could go away,” she breathed pathetically.
“There will be no need of that,” put in Markham. “You’ll be safer in New York. We are going to keep the nurse here to look after you, and also put a man in the house day and night until everything is straightened out. Hemming is leaving today, but Sproot and the cook will take care of you.” He rose and patted her shoulder comfortingly. “There’s no possible way anyone can harm you now.”
As we descended into the lower hall Sproot was just admitting Doctor Von Blon.
“Good God!” he exclaimed, hastening toward us. “Sibella just phoned me about Mrs. Greene.” He looked truculently at Markham, his suavity for the moment forgotten. “Why wasn’t I informed, sir?”
“I saw no necessity of bothering you, doctor,” Markham returned equably. “Mrs. Greene had been dead several hours when she was found. And we had our own doctor at hand.”
A quick flame leaped in Von Blon’s eyes.
“And am I to be forcibly kept from seeing Sibella?” he asked coldly. “She tells me she is leaving the city today, and has asked me to assist with her arrangements.”
Markham stepped aside.
“You are free, doctor, to do whatever you desire,” he said, a perceptible chill in his voice.
Von Blon bowed stiffly, and went up the stairs.
“He’s sore,” grinned Heath.
“No, Sergeant,” Vance corrected. “He’s worried—oh, deuced worried.”
Shortly after noon that day Hemming departed forever from the Greene mansion; and Sibella took the three-fifteen o’clock train for Atlantic City. Of the original household, only Ada and Sproot and Mrs. Mannheim were left. However, Heath gave orders for Miss O’Brien to remain on duty indefinitely and keep an eye on everything that happened; and, in addition to this protection, a detective was stationed in the house to augment the nurse’s watch.
XXII
The Shadowy Figure
(Friday, December 3; 6 p.m.)
At six o’clock that evening Markham called another informal conference at the Stuyvesant Club. Not only were Inspector Moran and Heath present, but Chief Inspector O’Brien25 dropped in on his way home from the office.
The afternoon papers had been merciless in their criticism of the police for its unsuccessful handling of the investigation. Markham, after consulting with Heath and Doremus, had explained the death of Mrs. Greene to the reporters as “the result of an overdose of strychnine—a stimulant she had been taking regularly under her physician’s orders.” Swacker had typed copies of the item so there would be no mistake as to its exact wording; and the announcement ended by saying: “There is no evidence to show that the drug was not self-administered as the result of error.” But although the reporters composed their news stories in strict accord with Markham’s report, they interpolated subtle intimations of deliberate murder, so that the reader was left with little doubt as to the true state of affairs. The unsuccessful attempt to poison Ada had been kept a strict official secret. But this suppressed item had not been needed to inflame the public’s morbid imagination to an almost unprecedented degree.
Both Markham and Heath had begun to show the strain of their futile efforts to solve the affair; and one glance at Inspector Moran, as he sank heavily into a chair beside the District Attorney, was enough to make one realize that a corroding worry had undermined his habitual equanimity. Even Vance revealed signs of tensity and uneasiness; but with him it was an eager alertness, rather than worry, that marked any deviation from normality in his attitude.
As soon as we were assembled that evening Heath briefly epitomized the case. He went over the various lines of investigation, and enumerated the precautions that had been taken. When he had finished, and before anyone could make a comment, he turned to Chief Inspector O’Brien and said:
“There’s plenty of things, sir, we might’ve done in any ordinary case. We could’ve searched the house for the gun and the poison like the narcotic squad goes through a single room or small apartment—punching the mattresses, tearing up the carpets, and sounding the woodwork—but in the Greene house it would’ve taken a coupla months. And even if we’d found the stuff, what good would it have done us? The guy that’s tearing things wide open in that dump isn’t going to stop just because we take his dinky thirty-two away from him, or grab his poison.—After Chester or Rex was shot we could’ve arrested all the rest of the family and put ’em through a third degree. But there’s too much noise in the papers now every time we give anybody the works; and it ain’t exactly healthy for us to grill a family like the Greenes. They’ve got too much money and pull; they’d have had a whole battalion of high-class lawyers smearing us with suits and injunctions and God knows what. And if we’d just held ’em as material witnesses, they’d have got out in forty-eight hours on habeas-corpus actions.—Then, again, we might’ve planted a bunch of huskies in the house. But we couldn’t keep a garrison there indefinitely, and the minute they’d have been called off, the dirty work would’ve begun.—Believe me, Inspector, we’ve been up against it good and plenty.”
O’Brien grunted and tugged at his white cropped moustache.
“What the Sergeant says is perfectly true,” Moran remarked. “Most of the ordinary methods of action and investigation have been denied us. We’re obviously dealing with an inside family affair.”
“Moreover,” added Vance, “we’re dealing with an extr’ordin’rily clever plot—something that has been thought out and planned down to the minutest detail, and elaborately covered up at every point. Everything has been staked—even life itself—on the outcome. Only a supreme hatred and an exalted hope could have inspired the crimes. And against such attributes, d’ ye see, the ordin’ry means of prevention are utterly useless.”
“A family affair!” repeated O’Brien heavily, who apparently was still pondering over Inspector Moran’s statement. “It don’t look to me as though there’s much
