Geraldine Bonner

“ We were talking of Jack Reddy, who we'd seen that evening in the village, the first time since the inquest.
"You know," said Babbitts, "it's queer but I keep thinking of that yarn of Jasper's, that evening in the Gilt Edge."
I drew away like he'd stuck a pin into me.
"Why do you think about that?" I asked loud and sharp.
"Why," he said, slow as if he was considering, "I suppose because it was so plausible. And I've been wondering if many other people have thought of it."
"I guess they have," I answered kind of fierce; "there's fools enough in the world, God knows, to think of anything. ”

“ We walked up and down Maple Lane for an hour, and it may amuse you to know that what that simple guy wanted was to tell me to listen to every voice on my wires.
I looked at him calm and pitiful. Me, that had been listening till, if your ears grow with exercise, mine ought to have been long enough to tie in a true lover's knot on top of my head!
There's a wonderful innocence about men in some ways. It makes you feel sorry for them, like they were helpless children.
Then he capped the climax by telling me about Mrs. Cresset that morning—hadn't thought I'd heard a word. ”

“ It seemed like every village up and down the line had emptied itself into Longwood. Farmers and laborers and loafers swarmed along the streets, the rich came in motors, tearing to Mapleshade, and the police were everywhere, as if they'd sprung out of the ground.
By afternoon the reporters came pouring in from town. The Inn was full up with them and they were buzzing round my exchange like flies. Some of them tried to get hold of me and that night had the nerve to come knocking at Mrs. Galway's side door, demanding the telephone girl. ”

“ I seemed to see it: the road bathed in moonlight, the murderer huddled down in the black shadow, and Reddy in the car looking now this way and now that, expecting her to come. How terribly still it must have been, not a sound except the rustling of the withered leaves. I could imagine the light from the racer's lamps, shooting out in two long yellow rays, showing every rut and ridge, so that that grim watching face had to draw down lower still in the darkness of the underbrush. ”

“ It wasn't far beyond that Babbitts pointed out the place. There was an edge of shriveled grass and on this she had been found with the branches piled over her. He drew with his cane where she had lain between the trees and the road.
"You can see just how the murderer worked," he said. "He attacked Miss Hesketh here, burst out of the darkness on her and killed her with one blow—you remember there was no sign either about her or the surroundings of a struggle—and almost immediately heard the Doctor's auto horn. We can place that by the scream the Bohemian woman heard." ”

“ Babbitts said the two men were greatly impressed by the way he acted when he told this. The perspiration broke out on his face and he crossed himself, bowing his head and shuddering. "It was God's voice," he whispered. "It said: 'Stop, Tito; hold your hand. No man can rob the dead.'"
So he closed the coat, folded the arms across the chest and covered all with branches he found in a pile near by. As he moved about the bear watched him, not stirring, as if it knew it was guilty and was waiting to see what he would do to it. ”

“ Babbitts stared at me through the dark.
"At Hines'?"
"Yes, on the supper table. And it's new, I'd only just bought it. Oh, I can't lose it."
"You needn't. We've time, but you'll have to hit up the pace. Come on quick—that's not just the place I'd select to leave a purse in."
He turned to go but I stood still. I hated going back there and it was lovely walking slowly along through the sharp chill air and the peaceful night.
"You go," I said, coaxing. "I'll saunter on and you can catch me up."
"Don't you mind being alone? Aren't you afraid?" ”

“ It wasn't what she said, either; more the way she looked and the soft, sweet manner she had, as if she thought more of the chap she was talking to than anybody else in the world. She'd be that way to one in my exchange and the next day I'd see her just the same with another in the drugstore.
It made me uneasy. Even if the man you love doesn't love you, you don't want to see him fooled. But I said nothing—I'm the close sort—and it wasn't till I came to be friends with Anne Hennessey that I heard the inside facts about the family at Mapleshade. ”

“ Galway'd have advertised hers if she'd had the wealth or a decent shaped back to advertise it on, which she hadn't, being round-shouldered.
There was none of the haughty ways of her parents about Miss Sylvia. When she'd come into the exchange to send a call (a thing that puzzled me first but I soon caught on) she'd always stop and have a pleasant word with me. On bright afternoons I'd see her pass on horseback, straight as an arrow, with a man's hat on her golden hair. She'd always have a smile for everyone, touching her hat brim real sporty with the end of her whip. ”

“ I found Minnie Trail, the night operator, as white as a ghost, saying she felt as if one of her sick headaches was coming on and if it did would I stay on over time? I knew those headaches—they ran along sometimes till eight or nine. I told her to go right home to bed and I'd hold the fort till she was able to relieve me. We often did turns like that, one for the other. It's one of the advantages of being in a small country office—no one picks on you for acting human.
About ten I had a call from Anne Hennessey. "Have you got anything on for this evening, Molly?" ”

“ Only for that, Cokesbury would probably have been landed in jail weeks before, the State saved money and two innocent men saved shame and suffering.
"That's the way it is with the Devil's own," I said. "I guess he takes care of them for a while; jollies them along the downward path."
"It looks like that was the case," said Mrs. Cresset, her kind, rosy face very solemn. "But the power of evil gets broke in the end. 'Murder will out'—that's true if anything is. Think of that man feeling so safe and every hour the cords tightening round him." ”

“ Jack Reddy's shoes fitted the large prints and Sylvia Hesketh's the small ones!
It came on Longwood with an awful shock. The faces of the people were all dull and dazed looking, as if they were knocked half silly by a blow. They couldn't believe it—and yet there it was! The papers printed terrible headlines—"The Earth gives up a Murderer's Secret"—and "Jack Frost versus Jack Reddy." There were imaginary accounts of how Mr. Reddy could have done it, and Jasper, in his paper, had a long article worked out like the story he'd told us that night in the Gilt Edge, but with all the holes filled up. ”

“ Way up on the turnpike, two miles from Cresset's Crossing, there's a sort of roadhouse where the farm hands spend their evenings and automobilists stop for drinks and gasoline. It's got a shady reputation, being frequented by a rough class of people and once there was a dago—a laborer on Cresset's Farm—killed there in a drunken row. It's called the Wayside Arbor, which doesn't fit, sounding innocent and rural, though in the back there is a trellis with grapes growing over it and tables set out under it in warm weather. ”

“ She began by saying the Doctor and Miss Sylvia didn't get on well.
"That's just like a novel," I answered, "the heroine's stepfather's always her natural enemy."
"He's not that in this case," said Anne—she speaks English fine, like the teachers in the High—"I'm sure he means well by her, but they can't get on at all, they're always quarreling."
"There's many a gilded home hides a tragedy. What do they fight about?"
"Things she does he disapproves of. She's very spoiled and self-willed. No one's ever controlled her and she resents it from him." ”

“ I felt kind of shriveled up inside—the way you feel when someone you love is sick. I couldn't bear to think that Jack Reddy was giving his heart to a girl who'd meet another man out in the woods and listen to him so coy and yet so interested. ”

“ As I understand it, in a murder two things are necessary—a crime and a corpse; and in a murderer one, a motive. Now we have all three—the motive especially strong. If Miss Hesketh married, her stepfather lost his home and the money he had been living on, so he tried to stop her from marrying. Saturday night he heard that his efforts had failed. I fancy that on Sunday morning when he went for that auto drive he stopped at some village—not as yet located—and communicated with Virginie Dupont, who was in his pay. ”

“ Even when she was in her motor, speeding down Main Street, she'd give you a hail as jolly as if she was your college chum.
Sometimes she'd be alone but generally there was a man along. There were a lot of them hanging round her, which was natural, seeing she had everything to draw them like a candle drawing moths. They'd come and go from town and now and then stay over Sunday at the Longwood Inn—it's a swell little place done up in the Colonial style—and you'd see them riding and walking with her, very devoted. ”

“ After the first flirtation at Bar Harbor, he came down to Cokesbury Lodge nearly every Sunday and used to meet her in the woods and on the side roads, and make dates with her for theaters and concerts in town. He kept it quiet for he knew without being told that the Doctor wouldn't stand for it. His hope was that, willful and unstable as he knew her to be, he'd eventually win her by his persistence and devotion. ”

“ Miss Hesketh's been murdered."
There was a dead silence. The click of the receiver falling into its hook was the only sound. The three other men—the Doctor as white as death, too—stood staring at Reddy. And then, seeing those three faces, he burst out like he was crazy:
"No—she's not—she can't be! I was there; I went the moment I got her message. I was on the turnpike where she said she'd be. I was up and down there most of the night. And—and——" he stopped suddenly and put his hands over his face, groaning, "Oh, my God, Sylvia—why didn't you tell me?" ”

“ Cokesbury's not a rich man, though he has a good business, and if he died his children would have had to live on what their mother left them, which wasn't much. If it was known that he was aviating the policy would have been invalidated, so he indulged his secret passion at night. The isolated position of the house made it easy to escape detection and his machine was equipped with a very silent muffler. No one had a glimmering of it, not even Sylvia. ”

“ He lived at Firehill—forty miles from Longwood—with two old servants, David Gilsey and his wife, who'd been with his mother and just doted on him. But everybody liked him. There wasn't but one criticism I ever heard passed on him and that was that he had a violent temper. Casey, his chauffeur, told a story in the village of how one day, when they were passing a farm, they saw an Italian laborer prod a horse with a pitchfork. Before he knew, Mr. Reddy was out of the car and over the fence and mashing the life out of that dago. ”

“ By that time he had probably finished and stolen away."
"I don't think so," said Babbitts. "He couldn't have done it without some noise and Reddy, who was listening and watching for Sylvia, was positive there wasn't a sound. That human devil was back among the bushes when Reddy's car came round the turn. And he must have stayed there—afraid to move—watching Reddy, first as he waited, then as he slowly ran back and forth. God, what a situation—one man looking for the woman he loved, her murderer hidden a few yards from him, and between them both her dead body!" ”

“ When it began to darken up for evening I told Mrs. Galway I was expecting a gentleman caller and asked for the loan of the parlor. She's a great one for love affairs and it always discouraged her that I had no regular company. Now she thought I'd got a steady at last and wanted to lend me her cameo pin, and decked up the parlor as if the minister was coming to call, with the hand-painted leather cushion and the punch-work tablecloth.
Long before Babbitts was due I was sitting by the stove, burning bright and clear, with the drop light throwing a glow over the center table. ”

“ They had unfastened an auto lamp and it was standing on the ground beside her. Hines lifted it and looked at her. She lay partly on her side, her coat loosely drawn round her. The right arm was flung out as if when the body stiffened it might have slipped down from a position across the chest. As he held the lantern close he saw below the hat, pulled down on her head, with the torn rags of veil still clinging to it, a thin line of blood running down to where the pearl necklace rested, untouched, round her throat. ”

“ As if I was in a dream I could hear Anne:
"I call it an unjust will—only two hundred thousand dollars to his wife and five millions to his daughter. But if Sylvia dies first, all the money goes back to Mrs. Fowler."
The train pulled out, snorting like a big animal. Jim disappeared, then presently I saw him open the depot door and come slouching across the street. I knew he was headed for the Exchange, thinking Minnie Trail was there, he being a widower with a crush on Minnie. ”

“ The driver of the motor had stopped his car at the edge of this, got out and walked through it to the bungalow. Clear as if they had been cast in plaster his footprints went from where the ruts ended to the edge of the wharf. There, just at the corner of the planks, three small, pointed footprints met them—a woman's. Either the man had carried the woman or she had picked her way along the grass by the roadside, and joining him on the planks had made a step or two into the soft earth. On the wharf the prints were lost in a broken caking of mud. ”

“ Longwood's in New Jersey, a real picturesque village of a thousand inhabitants. It's a little over an hour from New York by the main line and here and there round it are country places, mostly fine ones owned by rich people. There are some farms too, and along the railway and the turnpike are other villages. My exchange is the central office for a good radius of country, taking in Azalea, twenty-five miles above us on the main line, and running its wires out in a big circle to the scattered houses and the crossroad settlements. ”

“ Neither man nor woman had killed Sylvia Hesketh. The murderer was the dancing bear.
The man they found on the ground beside me that night was its owner, Tito Malti, the dago I had seen nearly three months before making the bear dance at Longwood, and the man Babbitts and I had seen that afternoon on the hill. Hines and Farmer Cresset carried him—he was unable to walk at first—to the Wayside Arbor and in the bar there he told them his story. ”

“ In summer they're like green walls all draped over with the vines and in winter they turn into a rustling gray hedge, woven so close it's hard to see through. About ten minutes' walk from the gate of Mapleshade there's a pine that was struck by lightning and stands up black and bare.
When the house was finished the Doctor, who was a bachelor, married Mrs. Hesketh, a widow lady accounted rich, and he and she came there as bride and groom with her daughter, Sylvia Hesketh. ”

“ Cokesbury's friends do when they want a word with him over the phone?"
"They tell the butler who they are and what they want, ma'am. That's the orders in this house. Good-bye."
When Babbitts and I were sitting at a table in a little dago joint near Broadway, I couldn't help but tell him what I'd been doing.
He looked at me with his eyes as big as half-dollars and then began to laugh.
"Well, what do you make of that? Spending your holiday and your nickels rounding up a lot of men that rounded themselves up weeks ago."
"I want to get that voice." ”

“ It wasn't till the Mapleshade servants began to talk too much that we heard the Fowlers, especially the Doctor, didn't like it.
I hadn't known her long before I began to notice something that interested me. A telephone girl sees so many people and hears such a lot of confidential things on the wire, that she gets to know more than most about what I suppose you'd call human nature. It's a study that's always attracted me and in Miss Sylvia's case there was a double attraction—I was curious about her for myself and I was curious about her because of Jack Reddy. ”

“ That was all—no name, no date, no handwriting. I don't know what made me think right off of Mr. Whitney, unless it was because there was no one else who knew of what I'd done and could have afforded to send that much. The only other person it could have been was Jack Reddy, and somehow or other, after he'd asked me to be his friend, I felt certain he wouldn't send me money, no matter what I'd done for him. Friends don't pay each other.
I guess there wasn't a more elated person in Longwood that morning than yours truly. ”