Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels Part 12

But the princ.i.p.al sensation of the day arose out of the evidence offered by Masterman Throgton, general manager of the _Planet_. Kivas Kelly, he testified, had dined with him at his club on the fateful evening. He had afterwards driven him to his home.

"When you went into the house with the deceased," asked the district attorney, "how long did you remain there with him?"

"That," said Throgton quietly, "I must refuse to answer."

"Would it incriminate you?" asked the coroner, leaning forward.

"It might," said Throgton.

"Then you're perfectly right not to answer it," said the coroner.

"Don't ask him that any more. Ask something else."

"Then did you," questioned the attorney, turning to Throgton again, "play a game of billiards with the deceased?"

"Stop, stop," said the coroner, "that question I can't allow. It's too direct, too brutal; there's something about that question, something mean, dirty. Ask another."

"Very good," said the attorney. "Then tell me, Mr. Throgton, if you ever saw this blue envelope before?" He held up in his hand a long blue envelope.

"Never in my life," said Throgton.

"Of course he didn't," said the coroner. "Let's have a look at it. What is it?"

"This envelope, your Honour, was found sticking out of the waistcoat pocket of the deceased."

"You don't say," said the coroner. "And what's in it?"

Amid breathless silence, the attorney drew forth a sheet of blue paper, bearing a stamp, and read:

"This is the last will and testament of me, Kivas Kelly of New York. I leave everything of which I die possessed to my nephew, Peter Kelly."

The entire room gasped. No one spoke. The coroner looked all around.

"Has anybody here seen Kelly?" he asked.

There was no answer.

The coroner repeated the question.

No one moved.

"Mr. Coroner," said the attorney, "it is my opinion that if Peter Kelly is found the mystery is fathomed."

Ten minutes later the jury returned a verdict of murder against a person or persons unknown, adding that they would bet a dollar that Kelly did it.

The coroner ordered the butler to be released, and directed the issue of a warrant for the arrest of Peter Kelly.

CHAPTER VI

SHOW ME THE MAN WHO WORE THOSE BOOTS

The remains of the unhappy club man were buried on the following day as reverently as those of a club man can be. None followed him to the grave except a few morbid curiosity-seekers, who rode on top of the hea.r.s.e.

The great city turned again to its usual avocations. The unfathomable mystery was dismissed from the public mind.

Meantime Transome Kent was on the trail. Sleepless, almost foodless, and absolutely drinkless, he was everywhere. He was looking for Peter Kelly.

Wherever crowds were gathered, the Investigator was there, searching for Kelly. In the great concourse of the Grand Central Station, Kent moved to and fro, peering into everybody's face. An official touched him on the shoulder. "Stop peering into the people's faces," he said. "I am unravelling a mystery," Kent answered. "I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, "I didn't know."

Kent was here, and everywhere, moving ceaselessly, pro and con, watching for Kelly. For hours he stood beside the soda-water fountains examining every drinker as he drank. For three days he sat on the steps of Masterman Throgton's home, disguised as a plumber waiting for a wrench.

But still no trace of Peter Kelly. Young Kelly, it appeared, had lived with his uncle until a little less than three years ago. Then suddenly he had disappeared. He had vanished, as a brilliant writer for the New York Press framed it, as if the earth had swallowed him up.

Transome Kent, however, was not a man to be baffled by initial defeat.

A week later, the Investigator called in at the office of Inspector Edwards.

"Inspector," he said, "I must have some more clues. Take me again to the Kelly residence. I must re-a.n.a.lyse my first diaeresis."

Together the two friends went to the house. "It is inevitable," said Kent, as they entered again the fateful billiard-room, "that we have overlooked something."

"We always do," said Edwards gloomily.

"Now tell me," said Kent, as they stood beside the billiard table, "what is your own theory, the police theory, of this murder? Give me your first theory first, and then go on with the others."

"Our first theory, Mr. Kent, was that the murder was committed by a sailor with a wooden leg, newly landed from Java."

"Quite so, quite proper," nodded Kent.

"We knew that he was a sailor," the Inspector went on, dropping again into his sing-song monotone, "by the extraordinary agility needed to climb up the thirty feet of bare brick wall to the window--a landsman could not have climbed more than twenty; the fact that he was from the East Indies we knew from the peculiar knot about his victim's neck. We knew that he had a wooden leg----"

The Inspector paused and looked troubled.

"We knew it." He paused again. "I'm afraid I can't remember that one."

"Tut, tut," said Kent gently, "you knew it, Edwards, because when he leaned against the billiard table the impress of his hand on the mahogany was deeper on one side than the other. The man was obviously top heavy. But you abandoned this first theory."

"Certainly, Mr. Kent, we always do. Our second theory was----"

But Kent had ceased to listen. He had suddenly stooped down and picked up something off the floor.

"Ha ha!" he exclaimed. "What do you make of this?" He held up a square fragment of black cloth.

"We never saw it," said Edwards.

"Cloth," muttered Kent, "the missing piece of Kivas Kelly's dinner jacket." He whipped out a magnifying gla.s.s. "Look," he said, "it's been stamped upon--by a man wearing hob-nailed boots--made in Ireland--a man of five feet nine and a half inches high----"