Three hours later I went up to bed. I had not seen Alison alone again. The noise was at its height below, and I glanced down into the garden, still bright in the moonlight. Leaning against a tree, and staring interestedly into the billiard room, was Johnson.
XXIX
In the Dining-Room
That was Saturday night, two weeks after the wreck. The previous five days had been full of swift-following events—the woman in the house next door, the picture in the theater of a man about to leap from the doomed train, the dinner at the Dallases’, and Richey’s discovery that Alison was the girl in the case. In quick succession had come our visit to the Carter place, the finding of the rest of the telegram, my seeing Alison there, and the strange interview with Mrs. Conway. The Cresson trip stood out in my memory for its seriocomic horrors and its one real thrill. Then—the discovery by the police of the sealskin bag and the bit of chain; Hotchkiss producing triumphantly Stuart for Sullivan and his subsequent discomfiture; McKnight at the station with Alison, and later the confession that he was out of the running.
And yet, when I thought it all over, the entire week and its events were two sides of a triangle that was narrowing rapidly to an apex, a point. And the said apex was at that moment in the drive below my window, resting his long legs by sitting on a carriage block, and smoking a pipe that made the night hideous. The sense of the ridiculous is very close to the sense of tragedy. I opened my screen and whistled, and Johnson looked up and grinned. We said nothing. I held up a handful of cigars, he extended his hat, and when I finally went to sleep, it was to a soothing breeze that wafted in salt air and a faint aroma of good tobacco. I was thoroughly tired, but I slept restlessly, dreaming of two detectives with Pittsburg warrants being held up by Hotchkiss at the point of a splint, while Alison fastened their hands with a chain that was broken and much too short. I was roused about dawn by a light rap at the door, and, opening it, I found Forbes, in a pair of trousers and a pajama coat. He was as pleasant as most fleshy people are when they have to get up at night, and he said the telephone had been ringing for an hour, and he didn’t know why somebody else in the blankety-blank house couldn’t have heard it. He wouldn’t get to sleep until noon.
As he was palpably asleep on his feet, I left him grumbling and went to the telephone. It proved to be Richey, who had found me by the simple expedient of tracing Alison, and he was jubilant.
“You’ll have to come back,” he said. “Got a railroad schedule there?”
“I don’t sleep with one in my pocket,” I retorted, “but if you’ll hold the line I’ll call out the window to Johnson. He’s probably got one.”
“Johnson!” I could hear the laugh with which McKnight comprehended the situation. He was still chuckling when I came back.
“Train to Richmond at six-thirty a.m.,” I said. “What time is it now?”
“Four. Listen, Lollie. We’ve got him. Do you hear? Through the woman at Baltimore. Then the other woman, the lady of the restaurant”—he was obviously avoiding names—“she is playing our cards for us. No—I don’t know why, and I don’t care. But you be at the Incubator tonight at eight o’clock. If you can’t shake Johnson, bring him, bless him.”
To this day I believe the Sam Forbeses have not recovered from the surprise of my unexpected arrival, my one appearance at dinner in Granger’s clothes, and the note on my dresser which informed them the next morning that I had folded my tents like the Arabs and silently stole away. For at half after five Johnson and I, the former as uninquisitive as ever, were on our way through the dust to the station, three miles away, and by four that afternoon we were in Washington. The journey had been uneventful. Johnson relaxed under the influence of my tobacco, and spoke at some length on the latest improvements in gallows, dilating on the absurdity of cutting out the former free passes to see the affair in operation. I remember, too, that he mentioned the curious anomaly that permits a man about to be hanged to eat a hearty meal. I did not enjoy my dinner that night.
Before we got into Washington I had made an arrangement with Johnson to surrender myself at two the following afternoon. Also, I had wired to Alison, asking her if she would carry out the contract she had made. The detective saw me home, and left me there. Mrs. Klopton received me with dignified reserve. The very tone in which she asked me when I would dine told me that something was wrong.
“Now—what is it, Mrs. Klopton?” I demanded finally, when she had informed me, in a patient and long-suffering tone, that she felt worn out and thought she needed a rest.
“When I lived with Mr. Justice Springer,” she began acidly, her mending-basket in her hands, “it was an orderly, well-conducted household. You can ask any of the neighbors. Meals were cooked and, what’s more, they were eaten; there was none of this ‘here one day and gone the next’ business.”
“Nonsense,” I observed. “You’re tired, that’s all, Mrs. Klopton. And I wish you would go out; I want to bathe.”
“That’s not all,” she said with dignity, from the doorway. “Women coming and going here, women whose shoes I am not fit—I mean, women who are not fit to touch my shoes—coming here as insolent as you please, and asking for you.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What did you tell them—her, whichever it was?”
“Told her you were sick in a hospital and wouldn’t be out for a
