“I have brought the necklace,” she began, holding out a white-wrapped box, “as you asked me to.”
I passed it, unopened, to the detectives. “The necklace from which was broken the fragment you found in the sealskin bag,” I explained. “Miss West found it on the floor of the car, near lower ten.”
“When did you find it?” asked the lean detective, bending forward.
“In the morning, not long before the wreck.”
“Did you ever see it before?”
“I am not certain,” she replied. “I have seen one very much like it.” Her tone was troubled. She glanced at me as if for help, but I was powerless.
“Where?” The detective was watching her closely. At that moment there came an interruption. The door opened without ceremony, and Johnson ushered in a tall, blond man, a stranger to all of us: I glanced at Alison; she was pale, but composed and scornful. She met the newcomer’s eyes full, and, caught unawares, he took a hasty backward step.
“Sit down, Mr. Sullivan,” McKnight beamed cordially. “Have a cigar? I beg your pardon, Alison, do you mind this smoke?”
“Not at all,” she said composedly. Sullivan had had a second to sound his bearings.
“No—no, thanks,” he mumbled. “If you will be good enough to explain—”
“But that’s what you’re to do,” McKnight said cheerfully, pulling up a chair. “You’ve got the most attentive audience you could ask. These two gentlemen are detectives from Pittsburg, and we are all curious to know the finer details of what happened on the car Ontario two weeks ago, the night your father-in-law was murdered.” Sullivan gripped the arms of his chair. “We are not prejudiced, either. The gentlemen from Pittsburg are betting on Mr. Blakeley, over there. Mr. Hotchkiss, the gentleman by the radiator, is ready to place ten to one odds on you. And some of us have still other theories.”
“Gentlemen,” Sullivan said slowly, “I give you my word of honor that I did not kill Simon Harrington, and that I do not know who did.”
“Fiddlededee!” cried Hotchkiss, bustling forward. “Why, I can tell you—” But McKnight pushed him firmly into a chair and held him there.
“I am ready to plead guilty to the larceny,” Sullivan went on. “I took Mr. Blakeley’s clothes, I admit. If I can reimburse him in any way for the inconvenience—”
The stout detective was listening with his mouth open. “Do you mean to say,” he demanded, “that you got into Mr. Blakeley’s berth, as he contends, took his clothes and forged notes, and left the train before the wreck?”
“Yes.”
“The notes, then?”
“I gave them to Bronson yesterday. Much good they did him!” bitterly. We were all silent for a moment. The two detectives were adjusting themselves with difficulty to a new point of view; Sullivan was looking dejectedly at the floor, his hands hanging loose between his knees. I was watching Alison; from where I stood, behind her, I could almost touch the soft hair behind her ear.
“I have no intention of pressing any charge against you,” I said with forced civility, for my hands were itching to get at him, “if you will give us a clear account of what happened on the Ontario that night.”
Sullivan raised his handsome, haggard head and looked around at me. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he asked. “Weren’t you an uninvited guest at the Laurels a few days—or nights—ago? The cat, you remember, and the rug that slipped?”
“I remember,” I said shortly. He glanced from me to Alison and quickly away.
“The truth can’t hurt me,” he said, “but it’s devilish unpleasant. Alison, you know all this. You would better go out.”
His use of her name crazed me. I stepped in front of her and stood over him. “You will not bring Miss West into the conversation,” I threatened, “and she will stay if she wishes.”
“Oh, very well,” he said with assumed indifference. Hotchkiss just then escaped from Richey’s grasp and crossed the room.
“Did you ever wear glasses?” he asked eagerly.
“Never.” Sullivan glanced with some contempt at mine.
“I’d better begin by going back a little,” he went on sullenly. “I suppose you know I was married to Ida Harrington about five years ago. She was a good girl, and I thought a lot of her. But her father opposed the marriage—he’d never liked me, and he refused to make any sort of settlement.
“I had thought, of course, that there would be money, and it was a bad day when I found out I’d made a mistake. My sister was wild with disappointment. We were pretty hard up, my sister and I.”
I was watching Alison. Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, and she was staring out of the window at the cheerless roof below. She had set her lips a little, but that was all.
“You understand, of course, that I’m not defending myself,” went on the sullen voice. “The day came when old Harrington put us both out of the house at the point of a revolver, and I threatened—I suppose you know that, too—I threatened to kill him.
“My sister and I had hard times after that. We lived on the continent for a while. I was at Monte Carlo and she was in Italy. She met a young lady there, the granddaughter of a steel manufacturer and an heiress, and she sent for me. When I got to Rome the girl was gone. Last winter I was all in—social secretary to an Englishman, a wholesale grocer with a new title, but we had a row, and I came home. I went out to the Heaton boys’ ranch in Wyoming, and met Bronson there. He lent me money, and I’ve been doing his dirty work ever since.”
Sullivan got up then and walked slowly forward and back as he talked, his eyes on the faded pattern of the office rug.
“If you want to live in hell,” he said savagely, “put yourself in another man’s
