The Girl at Central Page 4

  IV

  When I come to the next day I can't make my story plain if I only tellwhat I saw and heard. I didn't even pick up the most important messagein the tragedy. It came at half-past nine that night through the CoronaExchange and was sent from a pay station so there was no record of it,only Jack Reddy's word--but I'm going too fast; that belongs later.

  What I've got to do is to piece things together as I got them from thegossip in the village, from the inquest, and from the New York papers.All I ask of you is to remember that I'm up against a stunt that's newto me and that I'm trying to get it over as clear as I can.

  The best way is for me to put down first Sylvia's movements on thattragic Sunday.

  About five in the afternoon Sylvia and Mrs. Fowler had tea in thelibrary. When that was over--about half-past--Sylvia went away, sayingshe was going to her room to write letters, and her mother retired tohers for the nap she always took before dinner. What happened betweenthen and the time when Mrs. Fowler sent the message to the Doctor Iheard from Anne Hennessey. It was this way:

  They had dinner late at Mapleshade--half-past seven--and when Sylviadidn't come down Mrs. Fowler sent up Harper to call her. He came backsaying she wasn't in her room, and Mrs. Fowler, getting uneasy, went upherself, sending Harper to find Virginie Dupont. It wasn't long beforethey discovered that neither Sylvia nor Virginie were in the house.

  When she realized this Mrs. Fowler was terribly upset. Sylvia's room wasin confusion, the bureau drawers pulled out, the closet doors open. Annenot being there, Harper, who was scared at Mrs. Fowler's excitement,called Nora Magee, the chambermaid. She was a smart girl and saw prettyquickly that Sylvia had evidently left. The toilet things were gone fromthe dresser; the jewelry case was open and empty, only for a few oldpieces of no great value. It was part of Nora's job to do up the roomand she knew where Sylvia's Hudson seal coat hung in one of the closets.A glance showed her that was gone, also a gold-fitted bag that theDoctor had given his stepdaughter on her birthday.

  All the servants knew of the quarreling and its cause and while Mrs.Fowler was moaning and hunting about helplessly, Nora went to the deskand opened it. There, lying careless as if it had been thrown in in ahurry, was Jack Reddy's letter. She gave a glance at it and handed it toMrs. Fowler. With the letter in her hand Mrs. Fowler ran downstairs andtelephoned to the Doctor.

  The poor lady was in a terrible way and when Anne got back she had tosit with her, trying to quiet her till the Doctor came back. That wasn'ttill nearly two in the morning, when he reached home, dead beat, sayinghe'd come round the turnpike from the Riven Rock Road and seen no signof either Sylvia or Jack Reddy.

  No one at Mapleshade saw Sylvia leave the house, no one in Longwood sawher pass through the village, yet, two and a half hours from the timeshe had made the date with Mr. Reddy, she was seen again, over a hundredmiles from her home, in the last place anyone would have expected tofind her.

  Way up on the turnpike, two miles from Cresset's Crossing, there's asort of roadhouse where the farm hands spend their evenings andautomobilists 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--alaborer on Cresset's Farm--killed there in a drunken row. It's calledthe Wayside Arbor, which doesn't fit, sounding innocent and rural,though in the back there is a trellis with grapes growing over it andtables set out under it in warm weather.

  At this season it's a dreary looking spot, an old frame cottage a fewyards back from the road, with a broken-down piazza and a door paintedgreen leading into the bar. Along the top of the piazza goes the sign"Wayside Arbor," with advertisements for some kind of beer at each endof it, and in the window there's more advertisements for whisky andcrackers and soft drinks. Nailed to one of the piazza posts is a publictelephone sign standing out very prominent.

  At the time of the Hesketh mystery I'd only seen it once, one day in thesummer when I was out in a hired car with Mrs. Galway and two gentlemenfriends from New York. We'd been to Bloomington by train and weremotoring back and stopped to get some beer. But we ladies, not likingthe looks of the place, wouldn't go in and had our beer brought out tous by the proprietor, Jake Hines, a tough-looking customer in a shirtwithout a collar and one of his suspenders broken.

  It's very lonesome round there. The nearest house is Cresset's, a halfmile away across the fields. Back of it and all round is Cresset's land,some of it planted in crops and then strips of woods, making the countryin summer look lovely with the dark and the light green.

  Sunday evening there were only two people in the Wayside Arbor bar,Hines and his servant, Tecla Rabine, a Bohemian woman. Mrs. Hines wasupstairs in the room above in bed with a cold. There was a fire burningin the stove, as a good many of Hines's customers were the dagoes thatwork at Cresset's and the other farms and they liked the place warm.Hines was reading the paper and Tecla Rabine was cleaning up the barbefore she went upstairs, she having a toothache and wanting to get offto bed.

  At the inquest Hines swore that he heard no sound of a car or ofwheels--which, he said, he would have noticed, as that generally meantbusiness--when there was a step on the piazza, the door opened and alady came in. He didn't know who she was but saw right off she wasn'tthe kind that you'd expect to see in his place. She had on a long darkfur coat, a close-fitting plush hat with a Shetland veil pushed up roundthe brim, and looked pale, and, he thought, scared. It was SylviaHesketh, but he didn't know that till afterward.

  She asked him right off if she could use his telephone and he pointed tothe booth in the corner. She went in and closed the door and Hinesstepped to the window and looked out to see if there was a car or acarriage that he hadn't heard, the mud making the road soft. But therewas nothing there. Before he was through looking he heard the booth dooropen and turning back saw her come out. He said she wasn't five minutessending her message.

  That telephone message was the most mysterious one in the case. It wastransmitted through the Corona Exchange to Firehill and there was no onein the world who heard it but Jack Reddy. I'm going to put it down here,copied from the newspaper reports of the inquest:

  Oh, Jack, is that you? It's Sylvia. Thank Heavens you're there. I'm in trouble, I want you. I've done something dreadful. I'll tell you when I see you. I'll explain everything and you won't be angry. Come and get me--start now, this minute. Come up the Firehill Road to the Turnpike and I'll be there waiting, where the roads meet. Don't ask any questions now. When you hear you'll understand. And don't let anyone know--the servants or anyone. You've got to keep it quiet, it's vitally important, for my sake. Come, come quick.

  That was all. Before he could ask her a question she'd disconnected.And, naturally, he made no effort to find out where the call had comefrom, being in such a hurry to get to her--Sylvia who was in trouble andwanted him to come.

  When she came out of the booth she carried a small purse in her hand andHines then noticed that she had only one glove on--the left--and thather right hand was scratched in several places. Thinking she looked coldhe asked her if she would have something to drink and she said no, thenpushed back her cuff and looked at a bracelet watch set in diamonds andsapphires that she wore on her wrist.

  "Twenty minutes to ten," she said. "I'll wait here for a little while ifyou don't mind."

  She went over to the stove, pulled up a chair and sat down, spreadingher hands out to the heat, and when they were warm, opening her coatcollar, and turning it back from her neck. Both Hines and Tecla Rabinenoticed that her feet were muddy and that there were twigs and deadleaves caught in the edge of her skirt. As she didn't seem inclined tosay anything, Hines, who admitted that he was ready to burst withcuriosity, began to question her, trying to find out where she'd comefrom and what she was waiting for.

  "You come a long way, I guess," he said.

  She just nodded.

  "From Bloomington maybe?" he asked.

  "No, the other direction--toward Longwood."

  "Car broken d
own?" he said next, and she answered sort of indifferent,

  "Yes, it's down the road."

  "Maybe I might go and lend a hand," he suggested and she answered quickto that:

  "No, it's not necessary. They can fix it themselves," then she added,after a minute, "I've telephoned for someone to come for me and if thecar's really broken we can tow it back."

  That seemed so straight and natural that Hines began to get lesscurious, still he wanted to know who she was and tried to find out.

  "You come a long ride if you come from Longwood," he said.

  But he didn't get any satisfaction, for she answered:

  "Is it a long way there?"

  "About a hundred and eighteen miles by the turnpike--a good bit shorterby the Firehill Road, but that's pretty bad after these rains.

  "Most of the roads _are_ bad, I suppose," she said, as if she wasn'tthinking of her words.

  They were silent for a bit, then he tried again:

  "What's broke in your auto?"

  And she answered that sharp as if he annoyed her and she was setting himback in his place:

  "My good man, I haven't the least idea. That's the chauffeur's business,not mine."

  He asked her some more questions but he couldn't get anything out ofher. He said she treated him sort of haughty as if she wanted him tostop. So after a while he said no more, but sat by the bar pretending toread his paper. Tecla Rabine came and went, tidying up for the night andnone of them said a word.

  A little before ten she got up and buttoned her coat, saying she wasgoing. Hines was surprised and asked her if she wouldn't wait there forthe auto, and she said no, she'd walk up the road and meet it.

  He asked her which way it was coming and she said: "By the FirehillRoad. How far is that from here?"

  He told her about a quarter of a mile and she answered that she'd justabout time to get there and catch it as it came into the turnpike.

  Hines urged her to stay but she said no, she was cramped with sittingand needed a little walk; it was early yet and there was nothing to beafraid of. She bid him good night very cordial and pleasant and wentout.

  He stood in the doorway watching her as far as he could see, then toldTecla, whose toothache was bad, to go to bed. After she'd gone he lockedup, went upstairs to his wife and told her about the strange lady. Hiswife said he'd done wrong to let her go, it wasn't right for a personlike that to be alone on such a solitary road, especially with some ofthe farm hands, queer foreigners, no better than animals.

  She worked upon his feelings till she got him nervous and he was goingto get a lantern and start out when he heard the sound of an auto hornin the distance. He stepped to the window and watched and presently sawa big car with one lamp dark coming at a great clip down from theFirehill Road direction. The moon had come out a short while before, sothat if he'd looked he could have seen the people in the car, butsupposing it was the one the lady was waiting for, he turned from thewindow, and, thinking no more about it, went to bed.

  Before he was off to sleep he heard another auto horn and the whirr of acar passing. He couldn't say how long after this was, as he was halfasleep.

  How long he'd slept he didn't know--it really was between four and fivein the morning--when he was roused by a great battering at the door anda sound of voices. He jumped up just as he was, ran to the window andopened it. There in the road he could see plain--the clouds were gone,the moon sailing clear and high--a motor and some people all talkingvery excited, and one voice, a woman's, saying over and over, "Oh, howhorrible--how horrible!"

  He took them for a party of merry-makers, half drunk and wanting more,and called down fierce and savage:

  "What in thunder are you doing there?"

  One of them, a man standing on the steps of the piazza, looked up at himand said:

  "There's a murdered woman up the road here, that's all."

  As he ran to the place with the men--there were two of them--they toldhim how they were on a motor trip with their wives and that night weregoing from Bloomington to Huntley. The moon being so fine they weregoing slow, otherwise they never would have found the body, which waslying by the roadside. A pile of brushwood had been thrown over it, butone hand had fallen out beyond the branches and one of the women hadseen it, white in the moonlight.

  They had unfastened an auto lamp and it was standing on the groundbeside her. Hines lifted it and looked at her. She lay partly on herside, her coat loosely drawn round her. The right arm was flung out asif when the body stiffened it might have slipped down from a positionacross 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 toit, a thin line of blood running down to where the pearl necklacerested, untouched, round her throat.

  It was Sylvia Hesketh, her skull fractured by a blow that had crackedher head like an egg shell.