Gregory Hall seemed to turn to stone as he listened to my words. He became white, then ashen gray. His hands clinched his chair-arms, and his eyes grew glassy and fixed.
I pushed home my advantage. “And therefore, traced by these undeniable evidences, I know that you are the slayer of Joseph Crawford. You killed your friend, your benefactor, your employer, in order that he might not disinherit the girl whose fortune you wish to acquire by marrying her!”
Though I had spoken in low tones, my own intense emotion made my words emphatic, and as I finished I was perhaps the more excited of the two.
For Hall’s composure had returned; his face resumed its natural color; his eyes their normal expression—that of cold indifference.
“Mr. Burroughs,” he said quietly, “you must be insane.”
“That is no answer to my accusations,” I stormed. “I tell you of the most conclusive evidence against yourself, and instead of any attempt to refute it you mildly remark, ‘you are insane.’ It is you who are insane, Mr. Hall, if you think you can escape arrest and trial for the murder of Joseph Crawford.”
“Oh, I think I can,” was his only answer, with that maddening little smile of his.
“Then where were you on Tuesday night?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where were you on Tuesday night?”
“That I refuse to tell—as I have refused before, and shall always refuse.”
“Because you were here, and because you have too much wisdom to try to prove a false alibi.”
He looked at me half admiringly. “You are right in that,” he said. “It is extremely foolish for anyone to fake an alibi, and I certainly never should try to do so.”
“That’s how I know you were here,” I replied triumphantly.
“You do, do you? Well, Mr. Burroughs, I don’t pretend to misunderstand you—for Miss Lloyd has told me all about Mrs. Cunningham and her bag that she left in the train. But I will say this: if you think I came out on that midnight train, go and ask the conductor. He knows me, and as I often do come out on that train, he may remember that I was not on it that night. And while you’re about it, and since you consider that late newspaper a clue, also ask him who was on the train that might have come here afterward.”
If this was bluffing, it was a very clever bluff, and magnificently carried out. Probably his hope was that the conductor could not say definitely as to Hall’s presence on the late train, and any other names he might mention would only complicate matters.
But before I left I made one more attempt to get at this man’s secret.
“Mr. Hall,” I began, “I am not unfriendly. In fact, for Miss Lloyd’s sake as well as your own, I should like to remove every shadow of suspicion that hovers near either or both of you.”
“I know that,” he said quickly. “Don’t think I can’t see through your ‘friendliness’ to Miss Lloyd! But be careful there, Mr. Burroughs. A man does not allow too many ‘friendly’ glances toward the girl he is engaged to.”
So he had discovered my secret! Well, perhaps it was a good thing. Now I could fight for Florence more openly if necessary.
“You are right, Mr. Hall,” I went on. “I hold Miss Lloyd in very high esteem, and I assure you, as man to man, that so long as you and she are betrothed, neither of you will have cause to look on me as other than a detective earnest in his work in your behalf.”
“Thank you,” said Hall, a little taken aback by my frankness.
I went away soon after that, and without quizzing him any further, for, though I still suspected him, I realized that he would never say anything to incriminate himself.
The theory that the criminal was someone who came in on that midnight train was plausible indeed; but what a scope it offered!
Why, a total stranger to Sedgwick might have come and gone, entirely unobserved, in the crowd.
It was with little hope, therefore, that I arranged for an interview with the conductor of the train.
He lived in Hunterton, a few stations from West Sedgwick, and, after ascertaining by telephone that he could see me the next day, I went to his house.
“Well, no,” he replied, after thinking over my query a bit; “I don’t think Mr. Hall came out from New York that night. I’m ’most sure he didn’t, because he usually gives me his newspaper as he steps off the train, and I didn’t get any ‘extra’ that night.”
Of course this wasn’t positive proof that Hall wasn’t there, so I asked him to tell me all the West Sedgwick people that he did remember as being on his train that night.
He mentioned a dozen or more, but they were nearly all names unknown to me.
“Do you remember the Cunninghams being on the train?” I asked.
“Those Marathon Park people? Oh, yes. They were a gay party—coming back from a theatre supper, I suppose. And that reminds me: Philip Crawford sat right behind the Cunninghams. I forgot him before. Well, I guess that’s all the West Sedgwick people I can remember.”
I went away not much the wiser, but with a growing thought that buzzed in my brain.
It was absurd, of course. But he had said Philip Crawford had sat right behind Mrs. Cunningham. How, then, could he help seeing the gold bag she left behind, when she got out at the station just before West Sedgwick? Indeed, who else could have seen it but the man in the seat directly behind? Even if someone else had picked it up and carried it from the car, Mr. Crawford must have seen it.
Moreover, why hadn’t he said he was on that train? Why conceal such a simple matter? Again, who had profited by
