shouted an alarm and they all came running to me. Shelby called the crew, Mito, the steward, everyone. We questioned them all. No one had seen or heard anything out of the way.’
‘At least that’s what everybody said,’ observed Craig. ‘What then?’
‘No one knew what to do. Just about that time, however, we heard a horn on a small boat tooting shrilly, as though for help. It was an oysterman on his way to the oyster beds. His kicker had stopped and he was signalling, apparently for help. I don’t know why it was, but Mrs Walcott must have thought something was wrong. Even before one of the crew could find out what was the matter she picked up a marine glass lying on a wicker chair.
‘“It—it’s a body!” she cried, dropping the glasses to the deck.
‘That was enough for us. Like a flash it went through my mind that it could be no other than Mr Maddox.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘The most natural thing. We did not wait for the oysterman to come to us. We piled into one of Shelby’s tenders and went to him. Sure enough, the oysterman had found the body, floating in the bay.’
There was a trace of a tear in Hastings’s eye, and his voice faltered a bit. I rather liked him better for it. Except for fear at the revolver-shot, I had almost begun to think him devoid of feeling.
‘So far as we could see,’ he resumed, as though ashamed to show weakness even over one whom he had known so long, ‘there was nothing to show whether he might not have got up, fallen overboard in some way, and have been drowned, or might have been the victim of foul play—except one thing.’
‘What was that?’ inquired Kennedy eagerly.
‘Maddox and I had taken out with us, in a brief-case which he carried, the plans of the telautomaton. The model is in the company’s safe here in New York. This morning when we went back to Maddox’s room I found that the brief-case was missing. The plans are gone! You were right. There has been trouble over them.’
Kennedy eyed Hastings keenly. ‘You found nothing in the room that would give a hint?’
‘I didn’t look,’ returned Hastings. ‘I sealed the door and window—or port-hole—whatever you call it—had them locked and placed a wax seal bearing the impression of my ring, so that if it is broken, I will know by whom. Everything there is just as it was. I wanted it that way, for I had heard of you, and determined to come to town myself and get you.
‘The body?’
‘I had the oysterman take it to an undertaking establishment in the town so that we would have witnesses of everything that happened after its discovery.’
‘Did any of them suggest a theory?’ asked Kennedy after a moment’s thought. ‘Or say anything?’
Hastings nodded negatively. ‘I think we were all too busy watching one another to talk,’ he ventured. ‘I was the only one who acted, and they let me go ahead. Perhaps none of them dared stop me.’
‘You don’t mean that there was a conspiracy?’ I put in.
‘Oh, no,’ smiled Hastings indulgently. ‘They could never have agreed long enough, even against Marshall Maddox, to conspire. No, indeed. I mean that if one had objected, he would immediately have laid himself open to suspicion from the rest. We all went ashore together. And now I must get back to Westport immediately. I’m not even going to take time to go down to the office. Kennedy, will you come?’
‘An unnecessary question,’ returned Craig, rising. ‘A mystery like this is the breath of my life. You could scarcely keep me away.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hastings. ‘You won’t regret it, financially or otherwise.’
We went out into the hall, and Kennedy started to lock the laboratory door, when Hastings drew back.
‘You’ll pardon me?’ he explained. ‘The shot was fired at me out here. I naturally can’t forget it.
With Kennedy on one side and myself on the other, all three of us on the alert, we hurried out and into a taxicab to go down to the station
As we jolted along Kennedy plied the lawyer with a rapid fire of questions. Even he could furnish no clue as to who had fired the shot at him or why.
HALF an hour later we were on our way by train to Westport with Hastings. As the train whisked us along Craig leaned back in his chair and surveyed the glimpses of water and countryside through the window. Now and then, as we got farther out from the city, through a break in the trees one could catch glimpses of the deep-blue salt water of bay and Sound, and the dazzling whiteness of sand.
Now and then Kennedy would break in with a question to Hastings, showing that his mind was actively at work on the case, but by his manner I could see that he was eager to get on the spot before all that he considered important had been messed up by others.
Hastings hurried us directly from the train to the little undertaking establishment to which the body of Marshall Maddox had been taken.
A crowd of the curious had already gathered, and we pushed our way in through them.
There lay the body. It had a peculiar, bloated appearance and the face was cyanosed and blue. Maddox had been a large man and well set up. In death he was still a striking figure. What was the secret behind those saturnine features?
‘Not a scratch or a bruise on him, except those made in handling the body,’ remarked the coroner, who was also a doctor, as he greeted Kennedy.
Craig nodded, then began his own long and careful investigation. He was so busily engaged, and I knew that it was so important to keep him from being interrupted, that I placed myself between him and those who crowded into the little room back of the shop.
But before I knew it a heavily veiled woman had brushed past me and stood before the body.
‘Irene Maddox!’ I heard Hastings whisper in Kennedy’s ear as Craig straightened up in surprise.
As she stood there there could be no doubt that Irene Maddox had been very bitter toward her husband. The wound to her pride had been deep. But the tragedy had softened her. She stood tearless, however, before the body, and as well as I could do so through her veil I studied her face. What did his death mean to her, aside from the dower rights that came to her in his fortune? It was impossible to say.
She stood there several minutes, then turned and walked deliberately out through the crowd, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I found myself wondering at the action. Yet why should she have shown more emotion? He had been nothing to her but a name—a hateful name—for years.
My speculation was cut short by the peculiar action of a dark-skinned, Latin-American-looking man whose face I had not noticed in the crowd before the arrival of Mrs Maddox. As she left he followed her out.
Curious,
