witnesses – the janitor, the elevator boy, Harland's stenographer who'd had hysterics, and Jerome, his head clerk, who'd identified the body and had revealed an odd fact not noticed at the time. The front hall window of the eighteenth story – the window Harland was supposed to have jumped from – had been closed when Jerome ran into the hall.
"Jerome's positive he opened it," said Babbitts. "He said he remembered jerking it up and leaning out to look at the crowd on the street."
"How do they account for that?" I asked. "Harland couldn't have stood on the sill and shut it behind him."
Jaspar explained:
"No – It wasn't that window. He went to the floor below, the seventeenth. The janitor, going up there an hour afterward, found the hall window on the seventeenth floor wide open."
"That's an odd thing," I said – "going down one story."
"You can't apply the ordinary rules of behavior to men in Harland's state," said Jones. "They're way off the normal. I remember one of my first details was the suicide of a woman, who killed herself by swallowing a key when she had a gun handy. They get wild and act wild."
Yerrington, who was famous for injecting a sinister note into the most commonplace happenings, spoke up:
"The window's easily explained. What is queer is the length of time that elapsed between his leaving the office and his fall to the street. That Franks girl, when she wasn't whooping like a siren in a fog, said it was 6.05 when he went out. At twenty-five to seven the body fell – half an hour later." He looked at me with a dark glance. "What did he do during that time?"
"I'll tell you in two words," said Jaspar. "Stop and think for a moment. What was that man's mental state? He's ruined – he's played a big game and lost. But life's been sweet to him – up till now it's given him everything he asked for. There's a struggle between the knowledge that death is the best way out and the desire to live."
"To express it in language more suited to our simple intellects," said Jones, "he's taken half an hour to make up his mind."
"Precisely."
"Where did he spend that half hour?" said Yerrington, in a deep, meaningful voice.
"Hi, you Yerrington," cried Babbitts, "this isn't a case for posing as Burns on the Trail. What's the matter with him spending it in the seventeenth floor hall?"
Molly, who was sitting at the head of the table in a mess of cups and steaming pots, colored the picture.
"Pacing up and down, trying to get up his nerve. Oh, I can see him perfectly!"
"Strange," said Yerrington, looking somberly at the droplight, "that no one saw him pacing there."
"A great deal stranger if they had," cut in Jones, "considering there was no one there to see. It was after six – the offices were empty."
They had the laugh on Yerrington who muttered balefully, dipping into his glass.
"It fits in with the character of Harland," I said, "the stuff in the papers, all you hear about him. He was an intellect first – cool, resolute, hard as a stone. That kind of man doesn't act on impulse. As Mrs. Babbitts says, he probably paced up and down the empty corridor with his vision ranging over the situation, arguing it out with himself and deciding death was the best way. Then up with the window and out."
"Do you suppose Mr. Barker had any idea he was going to do it when he left?" Molly asked.
Babbitts laughed.
"Ask us an easier one, Molly."
Jaspar answered her, looking musingly at the smoke of his cigarette.
"I guess Barker wasn't bothering much about anybody just then. His own get-away was occupying his thoughts."
"You're confident he's lit out?" said Jones.
"What else? Why, if he wasn't lying low in that back room, didn't he come out when he heard Miss Franks' screams? Why hasn't he showed up since? Where is he? That idea they've got in his office that he may have had aphasia or been kidnapped is all tommyrot. They've got to say something and they say that. The time was ripe for his disappearance and things worked out right for him to make it then and there. If he didn't slip out while Miss Franks and Jerome were at the hall window, he did it after they'd gone down. It was nearly an hour before the police went up. He could have taken his time, quietly descended the side stairs and picked up his auto which was waiting in some place he'd designated."
"That's the dope," said Babbitts. "And it won't be many more 'sleeps,' as the Indians say, before that car is run to earth. You can't hide a man and a French limousine for long."
He was right. Johnston Barker's car was located the next day and the public knew that the head of the Copper Pool had disappeared by design and intention. His clerks and friends who had desperately suggested loss of memory, kidnapping, accident, were silenced. Their protesting voices died before evidence that was conclusive. Judge for yourself.
On the morning of January the eighteenth, Heney, the chauffeur, turned up in the Newark court, telling a story that bore the stamp of truth. At five o'clock on the day of the suicide he had received a phone message in the garage from Barker. This message instructed him to take the limousine that evening at 8.15 to the corner of Twenty-second Street and Ninth Avenue. There he was to wait for his employer, but not in any ordinary way. The directions were explicit and, in the light of subsequent events, illuminating. He was not to stop but to move about the locality, watching for Barker. When he saw him he was to run along the curb, slowing down sufficiently for the older man to enter the car.
From there he was to proceed to the Jersey Ferry, cross and continue on to Elizabeth. The objective point in Elizabeth was the railway depot, but instead of going straight to it, the car was to stop at the foot of the embankment on the Pennsylvania side, where Barker would alight. Further instructions were that Heney was to mention the matter to no one, and if asked on the following day of Barker's whereabouts, deny all knowledge of it. Pay for his discretion was promised.
Heney said he was astonished, as he had been in Barker's employment two years and never piloted the magnate on any such mysterious enterprise. But he did what he was told, sure of his money and trusting in his boss. At the corner of the two streets he saw no one, looped the block, and on his return made out a figure moving toward him that slowed up as he came in sight. He ran closer and by the light of a lamp recognized Barker; and skirted the curb as he'd been ordered. With a nod and glance at him, Barker opened the car door and entered.
The run to Elizabeth was made without incident. Heney stopped the car at the Pennsylvania side of the culvert, above which the station lights shone. Barker alighted and with a short "Good night" mounted the steps to the depot.
On the way home, going at high speed, Heney, rounding a corner, ran into a wagon and found himself face to face with a pair of angry farmers. They haled him before a magistrate to whom he gave a false name, representing himself as a chauffeur joy-riding in a borrowed car. He told this lie hoping to be able to hush the matter up the next day.
When he read of his boss' disappearance in the papers he was uneasy, knowing discovery could not be long postponed. The number of the car – overlooked in the rush of bigger matters – was made public in the evening papers of the seventeenth. Then he knew the game was up, admitted his deception and the identity of his employer.
Inquiries at the Elizabeth depot confirmed his story. The Jersey Central and Pennsylvania tracks run side by side through the station. At nine-thirty
