such attempts.
Burke shook his head. ‘It might have been, of course, but in that case don’t you think you, as Maddox’s lawyer, would have heard something of it? You have not—have you? You don’t know anything about her?’
Burke regarded the lawyer keenly, as though he might be concealing something. But Hastings merely shook his head.
‘Mr Maddox did not confide his weaknesses to me,’ Hastings remarked coldly.
‘If we are going back to the city,’ returned Burke, cheerfully changing the subject, to the evident surprise of Hastings, ‘I must find my operative, Riley, and let him know what to do while we are gone.’
‘Look,’ muttered Kennedy under his breath to us and nodding down the lobby.
Shelby Maddox had sought and found Winifred, and was chatting as animatedly as if there had been no Paquita in the world less than five minutes before.
As we watched, Hastings remarked: ‘It was only the day before the murder that Shelby first met Winifred Walcott. I believe he had never seen his brother-in-law’s sister before. She had been away in the West ever since Frances Maddox married Walcott. Winifred seems to have made a quick conquest.’
Remembering what had happened before, I took a quick look about to see whether anyone else was as interested as ourselves. Seeing no one, Kennedy and I strolled down the corridor quietly.
We had not gone far before we stopped simultaneously. Nestled in the protecting wings of a big wicker chair was Paquita, and as we watched her she never took her eyes from the couple ahead.
What did this constant espionage of Shelby mean? For one thing, we must place this little adventuress in the drama of the Maddox house of hate. We moved back a bit where we could see them all.
A light footfall beside us caused us to turn suddenly. It was Mito, padding along on some errand to his master. As he passed I saw that his beady eyes had noted that we were watching Shelby. There was no use to retreat now. We had been observed. Mito passed, bestowing a quick sidewise glance on Paquita as he did so. A moment later he approached Shelby deferentially and stood waiting a few feet away.
Shelby looked up and saw his valet, bowed an excuse to Winifred, and strode over to where Mito was standing. The conversation was brief. What it was about we had no means of determining, but of one thing we were certain. Mito had not neglected a hasty word to his master that he was watched. For, an instant later when Mito had been dismissed, Shelby returned to Winifred and they walked deliberately out of the hotel across a wide stretch of open lawn in the direction of the tennis-courts. To follow him was a confession that we were watching. Evidently, too, that had been Shelby’s purpose, for as he chatted he turned half-way, now and then, to see if they were observed. Again Mito padded by and I fancied I caught a subtle smile on his saturnine face. If we were watching, we were ourselves no less watched.
There was nothing to be gained in this blind game of hide-and-seek, and Kennedy was evidently not yet prepared to come out into the open. Paquita, too, seemed to relinquish the espionage for the moment, for she rose and walked slowly toward the Casino, where she was quickly joined by some of her more ardent admirers.
I glanced at Kennedy.
‘I think we had better go back to Burke and Hastings,’ he decided. ‘Burke is right. His men can do almost as much here as we could at present. Besides, if we go away the mice may play. They will think we have been caught napping. That telautomaton robbery is surely our next big point of attack. Here it is first of all the mystery of Marshall Maddox’s death, and I cannot do anything more until the coroner sends me, as he has promised, the materials from the autopsy. Even then I shall need to be in my laboratory if I am to discover anything.’
‘Your sallow-faced friend seemed quite interested in you,’ commented Burke as we rejoined him.
‘How’s that?’ inquired Kennedy.
‘From here I could see him, following every move you made,’ explained the Secret Service man.
Kennedy bit his lip. Not only had Mito seen us and conveyed a warning to Shelby, but the dark-skinned man of mystery had been watching us all. Evidently the situation was considerably mixed. Perhaps if we went away it would really clear itself up and we might place these people more accurately with reference to one another.
Burke looked at his watch hurriedly. ‘There’s a train that leaves in twenty minutes,’ he announced. ‘We can make the station in a car in fifteen.’
Kennedy and I followed him to the door, while Hastings trailed along reluctantly, not yet assured that it would be safe to leave Westport so soon.
At the door a man stepped up deferentially to Burke, with a glance of inquiry at us.
‘It’s all right, Riley,’ reassured Burke. ‘You can talk before them. One of my best operatives, Riley, gentlemen. I shall leave this end in your charge, Val.’
‘All right, sir,’ returned the Secret Service operative. ‘I was just going to say, about that dark fellow we saw gum-shoeing it about. We’re watching him. We picked him up on the beach during the bathing hour. Do you know who he is? He’s the private detective whom Mrs Maddox had watching her husband and that Paquita woman. I don’t know what he’s watching her yet for, sir, but,’ Riley lowered his voice for emphasis, ‘once one of the men saw him talking to Paquita. Between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to double-cross Mrs Maddox.’
Hastings opened his eyes in wonder at the news. As for me, I began to wonder if I had not been quite mistaken in my estimate of Irene Maddox. Was she the victim, the cat’s-paw of someone?
Riley was not finished, however. ‘Another thing before you leave, Mr Burke,’ he added. ‘The night watchman at the Harbour House tells me that he saw that Japanese servant of Shelby Maddox last night, or, rather, early this morning. He didn’t go down to the dock and the watchman thought that perhaps he had been left ashore by mistake and couldn’t get out on the Sybarite.
‘That’s impossible,’ cut in Hastings quickly. ‘He was on the yacht last night when we went to bed and he woke me up this morning.’
‘I know it,’ nodded Riley. ‘You see, I figure that he might have come off the yacht in a row-boat and landed down the shore on the beach. Then he might have got back. But what for?’
The question was unanswered, but not, we felt, unanswerable.
‘Very well, Riley,’ approved Burke. ‘Keep right after anything that turns up. And don’t let that Paquita out of sight of some of the men a minute. Goodbye. We’ve just time to catch the train.’
Hastings was still unreconciled to the idea of leaving town, in spite of the urgency of the developments in New York.
‘I think it’s all right,’ reassured Kennedy. ‘You see, if I stayed I’d have to call on an agency, anyhow. Besides, I got all I could and the only thing left would be to watch them. Perhaps if I go away they may do something they wouldn’t dare otherwise. In that case we have planted a fine trap. You can depend on it that Burke’s men will do more for us, now, than any private agency.’
Hastings agreed reluctantly, and as we hurried back to New York on the train Kennedy quizzed Burke as he had Hastings on the journey out.
There was not much that
