Eastward, from over the Sierra Madre, titans trooped to the fight. It was as though they had sprung suddenly across the ages from their fabulous dream, and just as they menaced the world, abruptly they vanished. Before them an immense arc had been flung. Within the rainbow, throughout its entire semi-circumference, a vapour floated, thick, glistening and mauve.
Presently, as if a curtain had risen, that passed, banished by the sudden sun. From the west the centaurs had fled, and now, throughout the heavens, stretched archipelagoes, deliciously pink, that seemed like lands of love.
Coerced by the splendour of the spectacle, Welden had gone out on the lawn. The fair beauty of the sky detained him. It seemed inaugural of larger life.
III
The Clue
To the vulgar any indecency is amusing, the greater the shamelessness of it the more thorough the mirth; and, on the morrow, there was thrown into this tenebrous drama, a quick note hilarious and obscene, one that, with the usual attentuations, went reverberating through the press. For the case, already famous, entered at once into that high spectacular class which invites people, previously unacquainted, to discuss and surmise.
In the trains, on the boats, in smoking compartments, wherever men are penned together, individuals who had never seen each other before, and who, ordinarily, would not much wish to again, found in it a subject of common concern.
Perhaps nothing excites the imagination quite so thoroughly as mystery does, and here was one graduated to every taste, a story equally absorbing to high and low, and not locally merely, for, as it was immediately recognised, the Weldens were people of position, both at home and abroad.
According to statements telegraphed to the California press, from New York, Welden’s family had been identified with that city since its incorporation, and even before, at a time when it was Nieuw Orange, and not yet New York. While, as for the murdered woman, born a Kandy, and affiliated with quite Manhattan’s best, she had married Welden after divorcing her first husband, a foreigner, the Duc de Malakoff.
To these outlines, details were added. Prior to the marriage, Welden, who was a man of inherited wealth, had been engaged to Miss Barhyte, a New York girl of the ultra-fashionable set. But, coincidentally with the divorce, the engagement had been broken, and Welden and Malakoff had gone out together, though, after the French fashion, without appreciable damage.
But why had they gone out? Why had the engagement been broken, and why the divorce?
Here were pleasurable mysteries superposing themselves on the denser darkness of the crime, and suggesting to the detectives of the breakfast table that it was assassins of the duke who had done it; if not, then emissaries of the girl.
For by the time the foregoing and very incorrect details, together with bogus presentments of all concerned, had been journalistically set forth, by that time, the lame ostler had been released.
Amid great hilarity and to the satisfaction of everybody—save of one policeman only—he had demonstrated that if at the hour, two a.m., at which time it had been shown the crime was committed, he were illegally occupied, the illegality had been effected at Santa Barbara with the privity, connivance and in the society of that policeman’s wife. The woman, immediately summoned, had at first hotly denied, but prodded with questions at once circumstantial and deplorably intimate, finally yielded, and admitted the fact.
Thereupon, no one else being under suspicion, and no further evidence having been adduced, verdict was rendered that the deceased had come to her death at the hands of some person or persons unknown.
Then, for the bono publicanism of it—which, being interpreted, meant little more than the coin of affluent Easterners, who, already scarce, might become scarcer—it was felt that town and county ought to make the apprehension of the person or persons definitely worth while. But before the matter could be put into an inviting shape, provided, that is, there was any real intention of so putting it, Welden offered a reward of $25,000 for such information as would lead to their arrest and conviction; $5,000 additional for the recovery of the rings.
The gross amount, a small fortune to some, a large one to many, fevered a number of people and, among them, Wicks particularly.
In those days, Wicks was an unhappy man. Only a fortnight had intervened between the renting of White Peacocks and the morning on which Welden had intimated his intention of buying the property. Then this thing had occurred, and from his hand, from his lips even, the cup had been torn. The cup, or more exactly its contents, the compensation, would have sufficed until January, when the Eastern influx of affluence was usually due. But this was April. January was many moons away, and things looked very bleak in the mortgaged bungalow, on the porch of which, endlessly he went over them all. It was, though, a distressed and weary Wicks who did it, and weary and distressed was the woman whom he forced to hear and rehear the tale.
Then, into the bleakness of things, there tumbled the announcement of the rewards. They inflamed Wicks, who, though he lacked the gift of divination, was at least alert and indefatigable, or at least, so claimed to be, and these were attributes which, chance facilitating, might aid him to secure the portentous sum. In his favour moreover was his superior quality of agent of the estate. Strangers might hover about there, detectives, whether amateur or professional, might prowl there as well, and against these the guilty would be on their guard, whereas his presence would be taken as a matter of course. In the mere exercise of his functions he was free to roam at will.
These considerations, natural in themselves,
