“Gentlemen,” he said, his face ghastly,
“it is of no use for me to attempt a denial.
The dagger and necklace belonged to my sister, Alice
Curtis!”
AND ONLY ONE ARM
Hotchkiss was the first to break the tension.
“Mr. Sullivan,” he asked suddenly, “was
your sister left-handed?”
“Yes.”
Hotchkiss put away his note-book and looked around
with an air of triumphant vindication. It gave
us a chance to smile and look relieved. After
all, Mrs. Curtis was dead. It was the happiest
solution of the unhappy affair. McKnight brought
Sullivan some whisky, and he braced up a little.
“I learned through the papers that my wife was
in a Baltimore hospital, and yesterday I ventured
there to see her. I felt if she would help me
to keep straight, that now, with her father and my
sister both dead, we might be happy together.
“I understand now what puzzled me then.
It seemed that my sister went into the next car and
tried to make my wife promise not to interfere.
But Ida—Mrs. Sullivan—was firm,
of course. She said her father had papers, certificates
and so on, that would stop the marriage at once.
“She said, also, that her father was in our
car, and that there would be the mischief to pay in
the morning. It was probably when my sister
tried to get the papers that he awakened, and she had
to do—what she did.”
It was over. Save for a technicality or two,
I was a free man. Alison rose quietly and prepared
to go; the men stood to let her pass, save Sullivan
who sat crouched in his chair, his face buried in
his hands. Hotchkiss, who had been tapping the
desk with his pencil, looked up abruptly and pointed
the pencil at me.
“If all this is true, and I believe it is,—then
who was in the house next door, Blakeley, the night
you and Mr. Johnson searched? You remember, you
said it was a woman’s hand at the trap door.”
I glanced hastily at Johnson, whose face was impassive.
He had his hand on the knob of the door and he opened
it before he spoke.
“There were a number of scratches on Mrs. Conway’s
right hand,” he observed to the room in general.
“Her wrist was bandaged and badly bruised.”
He went out then, but he turned as he closed the door
and threw at me a glance of half-amused, half-contemptuous
tolerance.
McKnight saw Alison, with Mrs. Dallas, to their carriage,
and came back again. The gathering in the office
was breaking up. Sullivan, looking worn and
old, was standing by the window, staring at the broken
necklace in his hand. When he saw me watching
him, he put it on the desk and picked up his hat.
“If I can not do anything more—”
he hesitated.
“I think you have done about enough,”
I replied grimly, and he went out.
I believe that Richey and Hotchkiss led me somewhere
to dinner, and that, for fear I would be lonely without
him, they sent for Johnson. And I recall a spirited
discussion in which Hotchkiss told the detective that
he could manage certain cases, but that he lacked
induction. Richey and I were mainly silent.
My thoughts would slip ahead to that hour, later
in the evening, when I should see Alison again.
