Eliminating, therefore, the outsider, the murder was necessarily the work of some of those within. From the latter the adulterous ostler was already excluded. The others, the half-breed, the negro, the Japanese, together with the laundress, a scullion and a housemaid, recruited from Los Angeles, were all quartered in a separate building. The fact had been brought out at the inquest, where it had been also shown that during the Weldens’ tenancy, none of them, except the housemaid, the scullion and the cook, had ever entered the house; and into the main part of it, as distinct from the kitchen and its offices, the cook and the scullion had not once, except on the morning when the murder was discovered, been known or permitted to come.
The housemaid had necessarily the run of it, but by day only, and while information concerning the rings might have been conveyed by her to other parties, she would not have been aware that they were unprotected at night, unless she had been so informed by Perkins, or by Harris, who as Perkins’ husband, probably knew as much as she did.
On the other hand, information of this character would hardly be supplied by upper servants, who lived apart from the others, particularly as one might say, on an acquaintance so brief. You never can tell, however, yet accepting the facts as they appeared, the matter narrowed down to those who slept in the house, that is to say, to Harris and Perkins.
For clearly Welden was out of it, if for no other reason than because, had he wished to be rid of the lady, a brief sojourn in neighbourly Nevada would suffice to set him legally free. Or, if divorce seemed circuitous, a slight shove from the bluff, a tarantula put nesting in her bed, and, without inconvenience, the thing was done. But anything of the kind was beyond peradventure, in addition to being absurd. Men of the world do not kill an obnoxious wife. They find it simpler to detest her. Moreover, such men as do murder their wives, do not first steal the lady’s jewels and then offer a reward for their own apprehension, another for the recovery of the gems. They do not, that is, unless they are lunatics, and anyone saner than Welden it were difficult to meet.
These deductions Wicks did not reach unaided or even as they are here set forth. On the contrary, they were prompted in part by the press, partly by the wife of his bosom. As a consequence, they were superficial and, therefore, unsound. But they satisfied, so fully even that he kept an alert eye on Harris, an indefatigable one on Perkins.
In spite of which he saw nothing suspicious. At the time being he was not, however, as close to them as he could have wished, and that defect he artfully remedied. After the funeral, Welden, leaving for address the Plaza, New York, boarded a train and was taken away. But these two remained in situations luringly procured at wages—California wages!—such as they had never known, never heard of or even dreamed.
Then for a while mention of the murder, dropped by the press, faded from Miramar. But not from Santa Barbara. There the Alert and Indefatigable, after rehearsing it endlessly to his weary wife, happened suddenly on a clue.
Part II
The Daughters
I
Sally’s Duke
To go back a little.
Sally Malakoff was twenty. She was rich, good looking, and a duchess, yet she described herself as a miserable woman and the world believed her. But though the world believed it did not sympathise. It was felt that she had not acted as she should have. For that there were excuses.
A little while before she had married a brute. Though a New York girl, she was at the time very ignorant. In the way we live now that is exceptional. Married women discuss matters before the young person with a clarity which leaves her nothing to guess about. Through some miracle, Sally had been left in the dark. A contributory cause may have heen her mentality which was shallow, but, as she was naturally sly, the miracle was none the less marvellous. Otherwise, in appearance and manner that is, she was a typically sweet young thing. She talked nicely about nothing. Her features were dainty and delicate. Her hair was dark and she had mauve eyes, which, oblique and half closed, gave her an aspect faintly Chinese. Born a Kandy, and known generally as Sugar Candy, she quite lived up to the name.
Heat sugar and abruptly it boils. Sally did boil, not long, and not effervescently, but with a sort of contained rage. Marriage she had seen somewhere defined as an association for the pursuit of things human and divine, and it was with angry amazement that she discovered what, in her case, was the derisive falsity of the definition.
During the honeymoon, or more exactly during Malakoff’s, for the girl was but an indignant participator in it, the man approached her after the fashion of a pasha who has acquired a slave. The girl loathed him for it, and it was that loathing perhaps which directly precipitated this drama. On the other hand, if, as it has been affirmed, one’s destiny is preordered, it may be that even otherwise the result
