Read Ebook: The unseen ear by Lincoln Natalie Sumner

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Ebook has 1576 lines and 56139 words, and 32 pages

"These shears were lying near the body," he announced.

"And under a rug," Richards broke his long silence. "I distinctly recall seeing you pick them up, Ferguson, and remember the position they were in when you found them."

"They were not under a rug," retorted Ferguson. "The edge of the rug was turned back and covered them. Don't touch the steel, sir,"--as Richards stepped to his side and studied the shears--"I've had impressions made for possible finger marks. You haven't answered my question, doctor; was it suicide?"

"Possibly."

"But not probably?" quickly.

"Have a care, Ferguson." Richards spoke with sternness. "Don't impute a meaning to Dr. McLane's words; let him put his own construction on them." Abruptly he turned to the surgeon. "Could the wound have been accidentally inflicted?"

McLane stared at him. "I don't quite catch your meaning?"

"Could Austin have tripped or stumbled and fallen on the shears?"

"He could have tripped or stumbled, certainly; but if he had fallen on the shears both blades would have penetrated his chest--" McLane pointed to them. "Only one blade is bloodstained."

"Quite sure they are bloodstains and not rust?" As he put the question, Richards again scrutinized the shears.

Ferguson smiled skeptically. "The stains have already been subjected to chemical tests," he said. "It is human blood. Another thing, Major, if Austin Hale fell on these shears and, improbable as it may seem, was stabbed by only one blade, that blade would have remained in the wound, would it not, doctor?"

"Yes."

"Then we can dismiss the theory of accidental death," argued Ferguson, "and there remain homicide or suicide. Come, doctor, could Austin have pulled out the shears' blade after stabbing himself?"

McLane shook his head dubiously. "Death resulted almost instantaneously," he answered.

Richards, who had thrust his hands into his trousers' pockets, clenched them until the nails dug into the flesh, while Detective Ferguson, with a covert smile, rolled up the shears once again in the piece of oilskin and replaced them in his pocket.

"Suicide is then out of the question," he commented gravely. "It leaves us face to face with homicide. What motive inspired Austin Hale's murder, gentlemen?"

"And he was murdered," Ferguson's lips parted in a dangerous smile, as he swung on John Hale. "Come, sir, have you no facts to disclose, no aid to offer in tracking down your son's murder?"

John Hale regarded him for a moment in grim silence.

"I give you a free hand to follow every clew," he affirmed, "and offer a reward of five thousand dollars for the apprehension and conviction of his murderer."

Detective Ferguson buttoned his coat and picked up his hat which he had brought with him into the drawing-room; then he turned to McLane.

"Can I see your patient, Mr. Robert Hale?" he asked.

"Not now." McLane addressed Mrs. Hale. "I have given your husband a sedative," he said. "Keep all excitement from him when he awakens; I will call later."

"But see here, doctor," objected Ferguson, "I must interview Mr. Hale," and in his earnestness he laid a persuasive hand on the surgeon's coat sleeve.

"So you can, shortly," answered McLane. "Come with me, Ferguson, I'll take you to the coroner's," and there was that about McLane which deterred the detective from pressing the point. With a bow to the others McLane hurried away, Ferguson in his wake. Mrs. Hale gazed in dead silence at her three companions, then found relief in tears.

"Hush, Agatha," exclaimed her brother-in-law, as her sobs grew in volume. "Calm yourself."

John Hale's strong voice carried some comfort, and she looked up a few minutes later as the gong over the front door rang loudly. Through her tear-dimmed eyes she had a fleeting glimpse of a familiar, slender figure hurrying past the porti?res and through the central hall to the circular staircase. Mrs. Hale's tears burst out afresh.

"You don't know what you are talking about!" John Hale spoke with rough vehemence. "Polly and Austin were not engaged," and turning on his heel he stamped his way out of the drawing-room.

Mrs. Hale gazed in bewilderment at Richards and Latimer; the former answered her unspoken question.

"Weren't you aware of the situation?" he asked, and there was mockery in his tone. "John Hale and Austin, his stepson, were both madly in love with Polly--your husband's secretary."

LOST: A MEMORANDUM

ANNA, the waitress, took one more comprehensive look around the prettily furnished boudoir to make sure that she had not overlooked the sugar bowl; it was certainly nowhere in sight. Anna paused on her way to the door leading to Judith's bedroom, turned back and, picking up the breakfast tray, departed to her domain below stairs.

Judith, totally unaware that she had disturbed her mother's excellent waitress by walking off in a moment of absent-mindedness with the sugar bowl, saw reflected in her long cheval glass the closing of the boudoir door, and crossing her bedroom, made certain, by a peep inside, that Anna had gone. With a quick turn of her wrist she shut the door and locked it. The suite which she and her husband occupied consisted of three rooms, the boudoir, their bedroom, and beyond that a large dressing room and bath. There was but one entrance to the suite--by way of the boudoir, which rendered their quarters absolutely private.

Judith perched herself on one of the twin beds, and, feeling underneath her pillow, pulled out a gold locket from which dangled the broken link of a gold chain. There was nothing extraordinary in the appearance of the locket, nothing to distinguish it from many other such ornaments, yet it held Judith's gaze with the power of a snake-charmer. Twice she looked away from it, twice dropped it under the folds of the tossed back bedclothes, only to pick it up each time and tip it this way and that in the pink palm of her hand. Three times she crooked her fingers over the spring, but the pressure needed to open the locket was not forthcoming.

The next moment Judith was seated before her dressing table and unbraiding her hair. It fell in a shower about her shoulders, the winter sunshine picking out the hidden strains of gold in its rich chestnut. A deep, deep sigh escaped Judith as she stared at her reflection in the mirror. It was a very lovely face that confronted her, not one to call forth a sigh from the observer. The delicately arched eyebrows, the tender, sensitive mouth, the brilliancy of the deep blue eyes--but enhanced by the shadows underneath them,--the long lashes, and the small shapely head all combined to win for Judith the title of "belle" when introduced three years before to Washington society.

Judith's popularity had been a matter of unbounded gratification to her mother, whose ambition for a titled son-in-law was thereby encouraged and dinned into her husband's ears, to his intense disgust, but in spite of his gruff reception of her suggestions, Robert Hale had seen to it that only the most eligible bachelors were invited to their home. Judith had signally failed to encourage any one of her many attentive cavaliers, and when taken to task by her mother, had responded that no man should be handicapped by a deaf wife and that she did not intend to marry; a statement which, in its quiet determination, had staggered her mother.

Judith had thrown herself heart and soul into war work, and though not accepted for service overseas on account of her deafness, she had won, through her efficiency and knowledge of languages, a position in the Department of State carrying great responsibilities, and she had retired from it, after the Armistice, with the commendation of the Department's highest officials.

The hard work, the long hours, and the close confinement indoors to one accustomed, as Judith had been, to a life in the open, had resulted in a nervous collapse, and Doctor McLane, their family physician, had advised a complete change of environment. The medical dictum had come on the heels of a letter from the United States Consul at Tokio and his wife, asking Judith to make them a long promised visit, and within forty-eight hours all details of her trip across the continent with friends returning to their home in San Francisco after two years' war work in Washington, had been arranged, and a cable was sent to Mr. and Mrs. Noyes in Tokio, notifying them to expect Judith on the next steamer.

And in Tokio, two weeks after her arrival, Judith had met Joseph Richards, major of the --th Regiment, invalided home from arduous service in Siberia with the A. E. F., and bearing on his broad breast ribbons denoting Russian, Japanese, and British decorations awarded for valor.

Richards had received a warm welcome in the Noyes' home, and his hostess, a born matchmaker, was quick to observe his infatuation for Judith, and did everything within her power to aid his courtship.

Judith strove to steel her heart to his ardent pleading, but all to no purpose--youth called to youth in a language familiar to every age, and in the romantic background of the Land of the Chrysanthemum they pledged their troth. A week later they were married in the American Consulate by a United States Navy chaplain, and Mr. and Mrs. Noyes, looking backward over their own well-ordered wedded life, wished them Godspeed on their road to happiness.

Happy days had followed, happier than any Judith had known, for in spite of her brave attempt to ignore her deafness and to show only a contented front to the world, that very deafness had built a barrier of reserve which even Judith's parents had never penetrated. But Richards, whose deep love was a guide to a sympathetic understanding of her shy and sensitive nature, gained a devotion almost akin to worship as the days sped on, and then came the summons home.

With a faint shiver Judith straightened herself in her chair, put down her hair brush and took up the slender wire attached to the earpiece of the "globia-phone," and slipped it over her head. It took but a second to adjust the earpiece, and with deft fingers she dressed her hair low on her neck and covering her ears. The style was not only extremely becoming, but completely hid the little instrument held so snugly against her ear. It took but a moment to complete her dressing, and slipping the small battery of the "globia-phone" inside her belt, she adjusted the lace jabot so that its soft folds concealed but did not obscure the sound-gathering part of the earphone, and with one final look in the glass to make sure that her becoming costume fitted perfectly, she turned away just as a loud knock sounded on the boudoir door. Judith laid her hand involuntarily on the back of her chair, then, squaring her shoulders, she walked across the room and unlocked the door and faced her father's secretary.

"Polly!" The ejaculation was low-spoken and Judith cast one searching look about the boudoir before pulling the girl inside her bedroom and closing the door. "Have you just come?"

"Yes, I came right up here." Polly Davis, conscious that her knees were treacherously weak, sank into the nearest chair, and Judith, in the uncompromising glare of the morning sunlight, saw in the girl's upturned face the haggard lines which care had brought overnight. Judith dropped on her knees beside Polly and threw her arm protectingly about her. They had been classmates at a fashionable private school until the death of Polly's father had brought retrenchment and, later, painful economies in its wake, so that she was obliged to forsake her lessons for a clerkship.

The change from affluence to poverty had produced no alteration in the affection the two girls bore each other, an affection on Judith's part tempered with responsibility, as Polly, her junior by a few months, came frequently to her for advice--which she seldom if ever followed. Polly's contact with the world had borne fruit in an embittered outlook on life which in some degree alienated her from her former friends, and she had turned to Judith with the heart-hunger of a nature thrown upon itself for woman's companionship. Polly's dainty blond beauty and bright vivacity had gained her lasting popularity with men, but with her own sex she was generally classed as "catty."

Judith was the first to speak. "Polly--what can I say?" she stammered. "How comfort you?"

For answer the yellow head was dropped on Judith's shoulder and dry, tearless sobs racked her slender body.

"Remember!" Polly sat up as if stabbed. "Oh, if I could only forget!" A violent shudder shook her. Regaining her composure by degrees, she finally straightened up. "There, the storm is over," and she dashed her hand across her eyes. "Never allude to this again--promise me." She spoke with vehemence, and Judith laid a quieting hand on hers.

"I give you my word never to speak of the subject," she pledged.

"Not even to your husband?"

"No, not even to Joe." Her answer, although prompt, held a note of reluctance.

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