that night during the panic, but in none was there more reason for it than here. Later I learned that it was the quiet tenacity of this confidential clerk that saved even as much of Parker’s estate as was saved for his widow—little enough it was, too. What he saved for the clients of the firm no one will ever know. Somehow or other I liked John Downey, the clerk, from the moment I was introduced to him. He seemed to me, at least, to be the typical confidential clerk who would carry a secret worth millions and keep it.
The officer in charge touched his hat to the inspector, and Downey hastened to put himself at our service. It was plain that the murder had completely mystified him, and that he was as anxious as we were to get at the bottom of it.
“Mr. Downey,” began Kennedy, “I understand you were present when this sad event took place.”
“Yes, sir, sitting right here at the directors’ table,” he replied, taking a chair, “like this.”
“Now can you recollect just how Mr. Parker acted when he was shot? Could you-er—could you take his place and show us just how it happened?”
“Yes, sir,” said Downey. “He was sitting here at the head of the table. Mr. Bruce, who is the ‘CO.’ of the firm, had been sitting here at his right; I was at the left. The inspector has a list of all the others present. That door to the right was open, and Mrs. Parker and some other ladies were in the room—”
“Mrs. Parker?” broke in Kennedy.
“Yes: Like a good many brokerage firms we have a ladies’ room. Many ladies are among our clients. We make a point of catering to them. At that time I recollect the door was open—all the doors were open. It was not a secret meeting. Mr. Bruce had just gone into the ladies’ department; I think to ask some of them to stand by the firm—he was an artist at smoothing over the fears of customers, particularly women. Just before he went in I had seen the ladies go in a group toward the far end of the room—to look down at the line of depositors on the street, which reached around the corner from one of the trust companies, I thought. I was making a note of an order to send into the outside office there on the left, and had just pushed this button here under the table to call a boy to carry it. Mr. Parker had just received a letter by special delivery, and seemed considerably puzzled over it. No, I don’t know what it was about. Of a sudden I saw him start in his chair, rise up unsteadily, clap his hand on the back of his head, stagger across the floor—like this—and fall here.”
“Then what happened?”
“Why, I rushed to pick him up. Everything was confusion. I recall someone behind me saying, ‘Here, boy, take all these papers off the table and carry them into my office before they get lost in the excitement.’ I think it was Bruce’s voice. The next moment I heard someone say, ‘Stand back, Mrs. Parker has fainted.’ But I didn’t pay much attention, for I was calling to someone not to get a doctor over the telephone, but to go down to the fifth floor where one has an office. I made Mr. Parker as comfortable as I could. There wasn’t much I could do. He seemed to want to say something to me, but he couldn’t talk. He was paralysed, at least his throat was. But I did manage to make out finally what sounded to me like, ‘Tell her I don’t believe the scandal, I don’t believe it.’ But before he could say whom to tell he had again become unconscious, and by the time the doctor arrived he was dead. I guess you know everything else as well as I do.”
“You didn’t hear the shot fired from any particular direction?” asked Kennedy.
“No, sir.”
“Well, where do you think it came from?”
“That’s what puzzles me, sir. The only thing I can figure out is that it was fired from the outside office—perhaps by some customer who had lost money and sought revenge. But no one out there heard it either, any more than they did in the directors’ room or the ladies’ department.”
“About that message,” asked Kennedy, ignoring what to me seemed to be the most important feature of the case, the mystery of the silent bullet. “Didn’t you see it after all was over?”
“No, sir; in fact I had forgotten about it till this moment when you asked me to reconstruct the circumstances exactly. No, sir, I don’t know a thing about it. I can’t say it impressed itself on my mind at the time, either.”
“What did Mrs. Parker do when she came to?”
“Oh, she cried as I have never seen a woman cry before. He was dead by that time, of course.”
“Bruce and I saw her down in the elevator to her car. In fact, the doctor, who had arrived; said that the sooner she was taken home the better she would be. She was quite hysterical.”
“Did she say anything that you remember?”
Downey hesitated.
“Out with it Downey,” said the inspector. “What did she say as she was going down in the elevator?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell us. I’ll arrest you if you don’t.”
“Nothing about the murder, on my honour,” protested Downey.
Kennedy leaned over suddenly and shot a remark at him, “Then it was about the note.”
Downey was surprised, but not quickly enough. Still he seemed to be considering something, and in a moment he said:
“I don’t know what it was about, but I feel it is my duty, after all, to tell you. I heard her say, ‘I wonder if he knew.’”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
“What happened after you came back?”
“We entered the ladies’ department. No one was there. A woman’s automobile-coat was thrown over a chair in a heap. Mr. Bruce picked it up. ‘It’s Mrs. Parker’s,’ he said. He wrapped it up hastily, and rang for a messenger.”
“Where did he send it?”
“To Mrs. Parker, I suppose. I didn’t hear the address.”
We next went over the whole suite of offices, conducted by Mr. Downey. I noted how carefully Kennedy looked into the directors’ room through the open door from the ladies’ department. He stood at such an angle that had he been the assassin he could scarcely have been seen except by those sitting immediately next Mr. Parker at the directors’ table. The street windows were directly in front of him, and back of him was the chair on which the motorcoat had been found.
In Parker’s own office we spent some time, as well as in Bruce’s. Kennedy made a search for the note, but finding nothing in either office, turned out the contents of Bruce’s scrap-basket. There didn’t seem to be anything in it to interest him, however, even after he had pieced several torn bits of scraps together with much difficulty, and he was about to turn the papers back again, when he noticed something sticking to the side of the basket. It looked like a mass of wet paper, and that was precisely what it was.
“That’s queer,” said Kennedy, picking it loose. Then he wrapped it up carefully and put it in his pocket. “Inspector, can you lend me one of your men for a couple of days?” he asked, as we were preparing to leave. “I shall want to send him out of town tonight, and shall probably need his services when he gets back.”
