You—you use that little brass button to open it with.”
Heath jumped up, and pressed the button she had indicated. A tiny, shallow drawer shot out; and in it lay a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight revolver with an inlaid pearl handle. He picked it up, broke the carriage, and looked at the head of the cylinder.
“Full,” he announced laconically.
An expression of tremendous relief spread over the woman’s features, and she sighed audibly.
Markham had risen and was looking at the revolver over Heath’s shoulder.
“You’d better take charge of it, Sergeant,” he said; “though I don’t see exactly how it fits in with the case.”
He resumed his seat, and glancing at the notation Vance had given him, turned again to the housekeeper.
“One more question, Mrs. Platz. You said Mr. Benson came home early and spent his time before dinner in this room. Did he have any callers during that time?”
I was watching the woman closely, and it seemed to me that she quickly compressed her lips. At any rate, she sat up a little straighter in her chair before answering.
“There wasn’t no one, as far as I know.”
“But surely you would have known if the bell rang,” insisted Markham. “You would have answered the door, wouldn’t you?”
“There wasn’t no one,” she repeated, with a trace of sullenness.
“And last night: did the door-bell ring at all after you had retired?”
“No, sir.”
“You would have heard it, even if you’d been asleep?”
“Yes, sir. There’s a bell just outside my door, the same as in the kitchen. It rings in both places. Mr. Benson had it fixed that way.”
Markham thanked her and dismissed her. When she had gone, he looked at Vance questioningly.
“What idea did you have in your mind when you handed me those questions?”
“I might have been a bit presumptuous, y’ know,” said Vance; “but when the lady was extolling the deceased’s popularity, I rather felt she was over-doing it a bit. There was an unconscious implication of antithesis in her eulogy, which suggested to me that she herself was not ardently enamored of the gentleman.”
“And what put the notion of fire-arms into your mind?”
“That query,” explained Vance, “was a corollary of your own questions about barred windows and Benson’s fear of burglars. If he was in a funk about house-breakers or enemies, he’d be likely to have weapons at hand—eh, what?”
“Well, anyway, Mr. Vance,” put in Heath, “your curiosity unearthed a nice little revolver that’s probably never been used.”
“By the bye, Sergeant,” returned Vance, ignoring the other’s good-humored sarcasm, “just what do you make of that nice little revolver?”
“Well, now,” Heath replied, with ponderous facetiousness, “I deduct that Mr. Benson kept a pearl-handled Smith and Wesson in a secret drawer of his center-table.”
“You don’t say—really!” exclaimed Vance in mock admiration. “Pos’tively illuminatin’!”
Markham broke up this raillery.
“Why did you want to know about visitors, Vance? There obviously hadn’t been anyone here.”
“Oh, just a whim of mine. I was assailed by an impulsive yearning to hear what La Platz would say.”
Heath was studying Vance curiously. His first impressions of the man were being dispelled, and he had begun to suspect that beneath the other’s casual and debonair exterior there was something of a more solid nature than he had at first imagined. He was not altogether satisfied with Vance’s explanations to Markham, and seemed to be endeavoring to penetrate to his real reasons for supplementing the District Attorney’s interrogation of the housekeeper. Heath was astute, and he had the worldly man’s ability to read people; but Vance, being different from the men with whom he usually came in contact, was an enigma to him.
At length he relinquished his scrutiny, and drew up his chair to the table with a spirited air.
“And now, Mr. Markham,” he said crisply, “we’d better outline our activities so as not to duplicate our efforts. The sooner I get my men started, the better.”
Markham assented readily.
“The investigation is entirely up to you, Sergeant. I’m here to help wherever I’m needed.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir,” Heath returned. “But it looks to me as though there’d be enough work for all parties. . . . Suppose I get to work on running down the owner of the hand-bag, and send some men out scouting among Benson’s night-life cronies,—I can pick up some names from the housekeeper, and they’ll be a good starting point. And I’ll get after that Cadillac, too. . . . Then we ought to look into his lady friends—I guess he had enough of ’em.”
“I may get something out of the Major along that line,” supplied Markham. “He’ll tell me anything I want to know. And I can also look into Benson’s business associates through the same channel.”
“I was going to suggest that you could do that better than I could,” Heath rejoined. “We ought to run into something pretty quick that’ll give us a line to go on. And I’ve got an idea that when we locate the lady he took to dinner last night and brought back here, we’ll know a lot more than we do now.”
“Or a lot less,” murmured Vance.
Heath looked up quickly, and grunted with an air of massive petulance.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Vance,” he said, “—since I understand you want to learn something about these affairs: when anything goes seriously wrong in this world, it’s pretty safe to look for a woman in the case.”
“Ah, yes,” smiled Vance. “Cherchez la femme—an aged notion. Even the Romans labored under the superstition,—they expressed it with Dux femina facti.”
“However they expressed it,” retorted Heath, “they had the right idea. And don’t let ’em tell you different.”
Again Markham diplomatically intervened.
“That point will be settled very soon, I hope. . . . And now, Sergeant, if you’ve nothing else to suggest, I’ll be getting along. I told Major Benson I’d see him at lunch time; and I may have some news for you by to-night.”
“Right,” assented Heath. “I’m going to stick around here a while and see if there’s anything I overlooked. I’ll arrange for a guard outside and also for a man inside to keep an eye on the Platz woman. Then I’ll see the reporters and let them in on the disappearing Cadillac and Mr. Vance’s mysterious revolver in the secret drawer. I guess that ought to hold ’em. If I find out anything, I’ll ’phone you.”
When
