A 52177 5





#2 6*





KAY CLEAVER
STRAHAN,
whose brilliant detective novel,
FOOTPRINTS, was a success with
critics and a best-seller with readers
everywhere, writes in THE MERI-
WETHER MYSTERY a novel of
detection so urbane, baffling, ex-
citing and filled with wise humor,
that it rivals even FOOTPRINTS
in its appeal.
You will like the people in the
little town of Satoria-by-the-Bay;
you will be appalled with them at
the first inexplicable murder—you
will live with them through the
hours of terror that followed the
second killing—while Lynn Mac-
Donald, the feminine detective
whose amazing skill made FOOT-
PRINTS memorable, draws her net
closer and closer around the mur-
derer whom even the most astute
reader will hardly identify before
the end of the book.





THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY


BOOKS BY
KAY CLEAVER STRAHAN
THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
OCTOBER HOUSE
OH HAPPY YOUTH
DEATH TRAPS
FOOTPRINTS
THE DESERT MOON MYSTERY


KAY CLEAVER STRAHAN
THE MERIWETHER
MYSTERY
Who stooped and kissed the dead man ...
why was there a knife found in the yard if
a pistol was thrown from a window . . . why
bother to smash a xylophone to bits . . .?
In quiet little Satoria-by-the-Bay, killing
was a novelty, but Lynn MacDonald, crime
investigator, found that even there the
pattern of murder was as terrifying and com-
plex as in a great city ... This is the new
mystery by the author of "Footprints" and
"October House."

GARDEN CITY, N. Y. PUBLISHED FOR
THE CRIME CLUB, INC.
BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN A COMPANY, INC


printed at the Country Life Press, garden city, n. y., u. s. a.
COPYRIGHT,
BY CAY CLEAVIR SIR AII AN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FIRST EDITION


2? e A t* o -r 7
THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
s





CHAPTER i
Scared? Scared! After the last policeman had finally
taken himself out of the house, though I was dimly
conscious of the fact that it was I, Cadwallader Van
Garter, sitting there looking out of the window into
the shivering fog-filled dawn, if someone had come up
insisting that I was little Red Riding Hood on the
verge of remarking "What big teeth you have, Grand-
ma," I am sure I should have assented, not wishing
to seem either eccentric or stubborn about it. Every-
thing that had been a part of the Cadwallader I had
known intimately for sixty-odd years was off elsewhere
—oozed out, maybe, in clammy sickening sweat—and
the object that remained in Helene Bailey's dining
room was a balloon-like, floating, dizzy affair inflated
to the bursting point with fear.
I might mention in passing that cowardice has never
been noted as an outstanding characteristic of the Van
Garter family. Going back from the present time to
the day old Hendrik stood on the walls of Alkmaar
and hurled his burning hoops, I haven't discovered a
Van Garter who needed anything other than some
reasonably solid object of which to be afraid—a Span-
ish cannon, an Indian tomahawk, a German machine
gun—in order to get his Dutch blood up and start


2
THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
him giving a mighty good imitation of bravery. I am
making no bid for a family record of heroes. More
than likely they have been merely hot-headed fighting
men; but striding through the years they have seemed
to face the music even when Death was calling the
tune.
Death had visited us there in the night, and though
I did not know it then, Death was coming again and
soon to visit us and to kill; but this was not what was
ailing me that morning. I wasn't afraid of death. No
man who is worth his salt and who has put through
more than three score years of moderately decent
living is afraid of death—or, for the matter of that,
of its dealers. At the moment, could I have been con-
fident that the murderer was coiled under the table, I
should have known peace. I wasn't even afraid that
my niece, Vicky, who had gone to her room an hour
since was going to be found murdered within the next
few minutes. Had I possessed better gumption I might
have been afraid of this, but I was not. No, my trouble
was that for the first time in my life I was afraid of
life, and the reason for my fear could not be faced.
I do not mean that it was lurking about and that I
was refusing to face it. I mean that some time during
the horrors of the preceding night it must have pre-
sented itself to me and that I had refused it so vio-
lently that it had vanished. It was gone; and along
with it as I have mentioned before had gone the
thinking, reasoning being of one Cadwallader Van
Garter, leaving a specimen most ridiculous on the face


4 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Cleveland with the Apache Indians out in Texas that
I forgot to return to the halls of classic learning. Dur-
ing the following four years I was—well, to abridge
and expurgate—doing other things which I found more
interesting and which I still think, perhaps, were more
profitable ultimately than Greek verbs to a young scal-
lawag such as I.
In 1891, when I'd got the building of the Canadian
Pacific Railway off my hands (I'd bossed the sweetest
gang of Chinese in the outfit) I held a straight flush
one night in a place where I shouldn't have been, and
I took my lawless profits and went home to visit the
folks. But I found Boston cramping and confining; so
I came out West again, bearing no paternal blessing,
leaving no maternal broken heart behind me. Mother
willingly would have been broken-hearted had she
thought of it; but she chanced to be busy in Europe
that winter trying her pretty best to get my sister
Harriet married to a prince, a duke, or an earl. Father
was never a hand for blessings, and he was afraid to
let down the bars for fear I'd see that he was tickled
to death at my continued resolution to make a success
on my own. I left him swearing soft, neat Unitarian
oaths that he would cut me off without a penny. In
the end he bequeathed me half his fortune (which I
didn't need and have never needed, thanks to a couple
of gold mines in the Yukon; I'd probably be a
smarter and better man today had he left it else-
where), and I shed hot tears that froze into a fringe
of icicles on my dirty, stubbly chin when I read the


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 5
lawyer's letter, and went and got fool drunk that
night in Dawson for the last time in my life.
Which mention of fools, in a roundabout way I'll
admit, may serve to return us to Helene Bailey's dining
room and the conversation begun between that young
sap Paul Keasy and myself.
Said he, "Malengrin?"
"You'll recall he went about with a net to catch
fools."
"You mean the police officers—detectives?" he
questioned.
"Necessarily." I had been thinking exclusively of
myself but I did not choose so to inform him.
"They didn't,"—he offered me a cigarette which I
refused—"seem to get hold, quite; did they?"
I filled my pipe and asked, "Was anything more
found out in the yard?"
"No. Nothing. No footprints—clues, nothing. But
that carving knife, now? The pistol—of course. You
know, the more I think of it the more extraordinary
that carving knife just there, outside the living room
windows . . . Absolutely extraordinary, if you know
what I mean?"
I lighted my pipe. Through its first cloud of smoke
I noticed that Paul Keasy was looking at me in a
peculiar manner. "There is an expression," thought I,
"for the sly, squint-eyed observation he is devising.
Ah," thought I, "the gentleman is 'eyeing me nar-
rowly,' " and I puffed again and greeted the semblance
at least of old Cadwallader, suddenly returned, and
r


6 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
agreed, "Yes. Mighty strange your finding that carv-
ing knife out in the yard," and attempted to eye Mr.
Keasy narrowly in return, and gave it up as a footless
activity.
Of every mother's son of us who had been about
Meriwether (in a town ridden with Lewis and Clark
streets, avenues, bridges, hills, and whatnots, Mrs.
Bailey's name for her boarding house seemed a faintly
agreeable if slightly saucy variation) last night, the
night of the murder, Paul Keasy had the most perfect
alibi.
He was radio announcer and operator in the small
radio station there in Satoria-by-the-Bay, and every
person in town or country who had tuned in on the
local ABC station had been hearing him throughout
the entire evening—introducing, thanking, extolling,
proclaiming Paul Keasy as the announcer all with the
attempted English accent and the upward lilt of last
syllables meant to signify modesty, naivete, something
or other charming, and failing specifically to do so.
The excellence of this alibi of his, from my point of
view, was annoyingly perplexing, because of all of us
who might be involved in the crime Paul Keasy con-
formed most closely to my accepted standards for the
villainous. My first impression of him was that in my
day we should have called him a "slicker" or a "bunco
steerer" and that he would have traveled with medicine
shows putting beans under walnut shells for the mysti-
fication and spoliation of the public. Later, as I knew
him slightly better, I decided that in thus typifying


8 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
the-Bay. But it occurred to me that this might look
none too well, this engaging an attorney before anyone
had so much as hinted that the innocence of me and
mine was less than that of lambs and angels. No, I
reflected, zeal and not premature timidity was the
spirit to manifest; zeal for the unearthing of the vil-
lain—zeal impersonal, altruistic, engendered solely by
outraged moral instincts and abstract desire for justice.
For ten minutes or more after Paul Keasy had gone
about his piffling ways I sat alone, considering. Then
I went into the hall, took up the telephone, and suc-
ceeded readily, since it was then about six o'clock in
the morning, in getting a call through to Lynn
MacDonald at her home in San Francisco.
After I had informed her who I was and where and
why and what about it, I told her that if she would
hop a plane—buy one if necessary—and get up here
to us in Meriwether, Satoria-by-the-Bay, Oregon,
without stopping for breakfast she could name her
own terms when she arrived here.
She smiled (I am getting slightly deaf, but I am
not so deaf as yet that I cannot hear a pretty woman
smile over the telephone) and said that she would
come at once. And I, inborn imbecile that I was, felt
enormously relieved and went all but prancing up the
stairs to impart the news of my cleverness to Vicky
and to receive becomingly her admiration.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
9
CHAPTER 2
My contention is that every man who is worth the
powder to blow him elsewhere has one comfortable
soft spot in his brain isolated as a refuge for his pet
insanity. When I meet a man I begin prospecting for
his soft spot, and if I can't find one from antiques to
Zionism, including babies, dogs, and diseases (his
own), morality (the other fellow's), duck-hunting, the
Spanish language, diet, golf, or goldfish,I give him up
right there as being no excellent soul. My own mania
at the time of the Meriwether murders had continued
along steadily with increasing intensity and no relapses
for twenty-two years, bearing the name of Victoria
Van Garter.
Vicky is my young brother Henry's little daughter.
When Mother was on her quest for princes, dukes, and
earls, Harriet spoiled it all by falling in love with the
son of a mere knight, Sir Bodley Crowinshank, and
marrying him. Well, you know how families are. The
Van Garters got chummy with the Crowinshanks, and
in time my brother Henry married the youngest Crow-
inshank girl, whose name was Muriel Violet Victoria,
and brought her home to live in Boston. Vicky was
born there. I was her godfather at the christening.
Henry was killed at Chateau-Thierry. Muriel, bless
her gentle ways, died of influenza less than a year after
Henry's death, and I became Vicky's guardian and the
trustee of her fortune.


IO THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
From that time to this Vicky had done her best to
take good care of me, to educate me, to set my feet
in seemly paths, to rear me as all right-minded obese
old bachelors should wish to be reared. True, her
discipline at times has been fairly rigid; but she is the
only woman who has ever meant it when she called me
"darling." I have never suggested going on a reducing
diet or regime but what she has pooh-poohed the idea
and assured me that I was perfect as I was. I have
never experimented with hair tonics but that, within
the first few days, Vicky's soft brown eyes have been
able to discern hair sprouting on my shining scalp as
thickly as spring corn in a fertile Iowa field.
Later I shall hope to find time to explain why Vicky,
at the time of the murders, was living not in any one
of our several homes on the Pacific Coast but in a
boarding house in the small town of Satoria-by-the-
Bay. Just now I know that my portly person has taken
too long to go up the stairs, after the telephone con-
versation with Lynn MacDonald, and down the hall
past the shuddering sight of the third door, closed
and padlocked, on the left of the passage to my niece's
room.
I knocked. Vicky flung the door open. She had taken
off the frock she had worn the evening before and
had donned some lounging pajamas, soft yellow silky
things that cunningly flattered her slender frailty. She
took hold of my coat lapels and pulled me into her
room. She closed the door behind us with a quick kick
of her small satin-clad foot. She said, "I thought you


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY II
were never coming! Where have you been? How
could you stay away so long? We have to talk things
over. We have to get things straight in our own minds.
We have to know exactly what we are going to say.
I have worked a horary chart. The person will be dis-
covered by means of a small round object. We have to
find it. We have to think—plan"
"No," I interrupted firmly, "we don't. I have en-
gaged someone, an expert, to take over that job of
thinking and worrying for us."
"Oh, yeah?" said Vicky. But her voice, accustomed
as it was to the formation of sweet graceful sentences,
could do nothing effective in the vulgate, so I remained
unwarned. I think I smiled as I answered, "Lynn
MacDonald. I got her just now over long-distance.
She is coming at once, by plane."
"Good grief!" said Vicky, and looked at me as
mothers look at the least favored of their offspring
when he comes into the house after licking the kid next
door in the vicinity of a mud puddle. The reproach,
the astonishment bordering repulsion I might have
endured had they been unaccompanied by the gentle
compassion afforded senility.
"That is all very well, young woman," said I. "But
this MacDonald person happens to be the keenest
crime analyst on the coast, and some think her the
best in the country."
"I know," said Vicky. "Dear heaven, what in the
world made you think of—well, just that one thing to


12 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
do?" She sighed, which is not her habit, and held out
her hand and, "Give me a quarter," she said.
"You act," I complained, "as if you had caught me
putting beans up my nose," and I passed her the coin.
"Heads or tails?" she inquired.
"Heads," said I.
She examined the bit of money on her wrist. "It's
heads," said she. "I'll hang."
"Hang what?" I asked, with vague thoughts of sus-
pended opinions, delayed decisions, abstractions of the
sort.
"By the neck," said she. "That is, unless you'll run
downstairs as fast as you can go and tell that woman
you've changed your mind and don't want her coming
here."
Oddly, when Vicky finished speaking I found my-
self aware of mental relief, as if far out on the edges
of my consciousness things were beginning to make
sense. It seemed to me that the reason for my horrible
fear was at least approaching in the fact that Vicky
was in danger of being accused of committing the
crime. So far I could go. So far I did go and no
farther, and it was not far enough. Fat old fool that
I was, I suppose I grinned. I had my antagonist, had
I not? Something to fight, something to get my false
teeth into and bite on?
"Of course," said Vicky, "if this is your idea of
humor But it isn't sweet of you. I shouldn't have
smiled if it had turned up tails and you were going to
hang. I'd have cried and cried like anything."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 13
"Vick," said I, "now see here, I've had enough of
this"
"So have I," she interrupted. "All right. I hate to
be mean, but I tell you if you don't stop that woman's
coming up here I'll confess. The police, I think, had
decided to be—baffled; that's the word, isn't it? They
knew that one of us was guilty. But they hate like fury
making mistakes with philanthropists who strew the
state with drinking fountains and parks and roads.
They'd dislike making mistakes with the philanthro-
pist's only niece. So they were going to be baffled.
Lynn MacDonald won't be. So I think I'll get dressed
and go right down to the jail, or wherever I should
go, and tell them that I did it, just to get it off my
mind. I'd much rather, if you don't care, than to sneak
and lie and be found out, anyway, in the end. I couldn't
go through another night like last night. I'd thought
that the worst was over. But now . . . Yes, it would be
a big relief just to confess."
"Victoria," said I, "let me get this straight.
You You "Naturally, decently, I could not
frame the question.
"Did it?" she finished for me. "Surely. Of course.
I thought that you—understood. Of course I did it.
Who else?"
"I'll go," I said, "and tell her not to come."
I went and fell down the stairs.
I use the word "fell" for clarity and convenience.
Actually, I did not fall down the stairs. "Bounced"
would be more accurately descriptive of my move-


14 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
ments, but for the fact that it seems to assume an
element of personal volition that was wholly lacking.
"Was bounced" comes nearer yet to the truth; though
particularly in tales of mystery one should hesitate
before what might appear an arrogation of the super-
natural. The entire performance was one of unbeliev-
able rapidity; but, to the best of my memory, what
happened was that on the second step from the top I
left the stairs, assumed a rectangular position, and
proceeded swiftly on my way by means of describing
a wide arc after each fourth or fifth step which I
touched fleetingly in passing. I recall no attempt on
my part to stay my progress. My mind was occupied
with more seriously important affairs. I was going
to the telephone; unconventionally, perhaps with an
appearance of capriciousness—but going I was, ap-
proaching my destination. When the steps gave out I
brought up, still maintaining the rectangular position,
on the hard floor of the lower hall, and I sat there
flat to greet Evadne Parnham who came hurrying,
though timidly, from the living room and looked at
me. I myself have looked at the more objectionably
amusing animals in the zoo with the same expression.
"Gee!" said she. "I thought it was an earthquake.
What did you do, fall or something?"
"Not at all," said I. "I am all right, thank you.
Don't let me detain you."
She advanced a cautious step or two. "It sounded
like an earthquake," she insisted, and began suddenly
to giggle and kept at it, searching for a handkerchief.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 15
"You look awfully funny," she explained, "and I'll
bet you looked funnier falling down stairs. There's
something awfully funny, I always think, about fat
men falling down stairs. I've a strong sense of 'umor.
You'll have to excuse me. I'm awfully nervous, too,
after last night. It's the way your legs stick out so
straight when your face looks so dignified. Why don't
you get up?"
I took hold of the newel post and pulled myself
to my feet. I was none too soon about it, for in the
next moment Sarah Parnham came into the hall from
the dining room.
CHAPTER 3
Despite the fact that Sarah Parnham was as thin as a
bone and had a parrot's nose I had always, though
disliking her personality, respected her as a worthy,
intelligent lady and an able educator of the young.
In turn, I thought that she gave me an honest dislike
and a genuine respect, either of which I should have
been unwilling to forfeit because of an absurdity of
attitude.
Justice, I felt, had always been freely exchanged be-
tween Sarah Parnham and me. She knew that my
mania was Vicky, of whom she disapproved relent-
lessly on every count and charm. I knew that her
mania was her stepmother, Evadne Parnham, in my


l6 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
opinion the most objectionable scrap of bleached-
blonde femininity that ever littered land or sea. But
we, Sarah Parnham and I, had simply scored these
manias of ours off, one against the other—pegleg and
patch-eye as it were—and had politely ignored them.
Sarah Parnham was considerably older than her
stepmother. She would have been well past her girl-
hood when Dr. Parnham, in his dotage, found this
very blonde, blue-eyed Evadne wench playing juvenile
parts in a third-rate road show and married her and
brought her home to run through his modest fortune
and, I firmly believe, irritate him to death within two
years.
During the twenty years since the doctor's death
Sarah Parnham had advanced steadily in her profes-
sion of teaching, had come on from her first position
in a rural school to an assistant principalship in a small
private progressive school in Satoria-by-the-Bay. She
had held this place for six years; but at the time of
the Meriwether tragedies she had resigned it—chiefly,
I had been told, because of Evadne Parnham's con-
stant, fretting discontent with the tiny town—and,
bravely ambitious, was seeking a better post either in
a small college or city school.
I suppose no attitude of Vicky's has ever been more
annoying to me than the one she took concerning these
two ladies. Despite the fact that Evadne spent her
days and her years dawdling in boarding-house rooms,
beautifying herself, gossiping, cheating herself at soli-
taire, playing—if you please!—a xylophone and play-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 17
ing it wretchedly, Vicky insisted that.Sarah had all the
best of the relationship. Evadne Parnham, Vicky said,
gave Sarah Parnham a reason for work and a reason
for life, whereas Sarah Parnham gave her stepmother
only support and petting and silly adoration. "Evadne
prods," said Vicky, "but Sarah smothers." And when
I reminded Vicky that for this support and adoration
Evadne returned fault-finding, disloyalty—her very
nickname for Sarah, "Sassy," was so inappropriate
that it was mockery and impudence—Vicky remarked
that it was a grand thing for a grimly homely woman
in her fifties to have a person who would call her
"Sassy." Vicky, of course, calls me "Candy" at times
because she says it is impossible to find an attractive
nickname for Cadwallader. Well, well, no matter.
Sarah Parnham had just come into the lower hall, I
believe.
Evadne Parnham promptly turned her back and
buried her face in her handkerchief and her shoulders
shook. "The lady," thought I, "is a humbug. Not wish-
ing to be caught giggling she is simulating tears."
But I held my peace despite the malevolent glances
which Sarah, who now had Evadne in her arms, was
directing at me across the quivering shoulders.
"'Snerves," Evadne finally answered Sarah's in-
sistent questions. "I'm just awfully upset. I can't bear
it—realize it. Whenever I think I get nervous. I just
cry and cry. I'm awfully upset."
"Now, now, honey," Sarah protested, "everything
is going to be all right. Mr. Van Garter has engaged


l8 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
that Lynn MacDonald to come straight up here to
Meriwether by airplane. I was thinking, dear, that
she'll be glad to have you help her. You'll like helping
a famous detective, won't you?"
(This question of Sarah Parnham's requires, per-
haps, a few words of explanation. Evadne Parnham
had once confided to Vicky and me that her one ambi-
tion was to become a detective. When Vicky answered,
"Why don't you?" Evadne shrugged it away with,
"Sassy wouldn't like it. Poor old Sassy isn't interested
in crime, nor anything thrilling. Not even men. Just
her old pupils and intelligence ratings. She'd hate to
have me work. I'm not very strong. I don't mind—
much. I have my music—it means a lot to me.")
Sarah Parnham repeated, "You'll like helping a
famous detective, won't you? I shouldn't be surprised
if you beat her at her own game and discovered the
criminal all by yourself."
"No, I won't." Evadne's thin voice came muffled
from Sarah's shoulder. "I'm too nervous. I don't want
to discover the criminal. I don't want anybody to. I
wish she weren't coming. I hope he gets away."
"Don't say such things," Sarah permitted herself a
slight sternness. "You don't mean them. It is a won-
derful thing to have her coming, and you are glad—
as we all are. Mr. Keasy heard you telephoning, Mr.
Van Garter. Helene is most grateful. We both say that
if such a terrible thing had to happen, how fortunate
it is for us that you should be here visiting. How soon
do you think Miss MacDonald will arrive?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 19
The telephone, which but a moment before had been
but an arm's length away from me, was now rapidly
receding; was, in fact, approximately as far away as
heaven. And yet, Joseph saw a ladder; Elijah went
up by a whirlwind; and Cadwallader maintained
breath in his body.
"I am glad, indeed, to hear that you approve of
her engagement on the case," said I. "Upon my word,
I had been fearing that I acted prematurely when I
telephoned for her without consulting with any of you.
You understand my point? This is, of course, a delicate
situation"
"It takes a more subtle perception than mine," re-
torted Sarah Parnham, "to perceive delicacy in cold-
blooded murder."
"I was not," said I, "referring to the murder—the
deed. I was thinking of the situation in which those
of us who were presumably in the house at the time
now find ourselves."
"Since I was not in the house at the time," said
Sarah Parnham, "I can have no opinion on that sub-
ject."
"And you, Mrs. Parnham?" I questioned.
She had regained her composure and had, for the
past minute or two, been fixing me with a conspirator's
gaze which I had feared was to terminate in a wink;
but she had not followed our conversation.
"And I—what?" said she.
"It doesn't matter," Sarah assured her. "I've made


20 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
coffee in the kitchen. Run get yourself a cup, dear. It
will help your nerves."
When she had left us I feared that perhaps Sarah
Parnharm, too, had failed to keep pace, so I attempted
a clumsy pointing. "Perhaps," I suggested, "when you
have had time to talk the matter over more carefully
with Mrs. Parnham you may feel better qualified to
express an opinion?"
"Possibly," said she, and looked straight at me for
a moment with her clear hazel eyes before she sent
them up the stairway. I watched them climbing step
by step up and up to the second floor hallway, and
down it past the shut and padlocked door straight
along and actually into Vicky's room.
The measure of distance to the telephone changed.
It was no longer as far away as heaven; it was as
close as the infernal regions—to touch it might be
danger, death, and damnation.
Said I, "Yes, you are right. It was Victoria who
persuaded me, frankly against my better judgment, to
telephone at once for Lynn MacDonald. But for my
niece's urging I should have gone more fully into the
plan with those who—er"
My pause was not appreciable, but Sarah Parnham
snatched it. "Those who are under suspicion?"
"Those who are concerned," said I.
"Not at all," said she. "I can assure you that if
you and Miss Van Garter wish to engage a criminolo-
gist, no one else in Meriwether could possibly object."
"That greatly relieves my mind," said I. "And I


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 21
am delighted at having Victoria's opinion so ably, so
sensibly confirmed."
"Fiddlesticks!" said she; a word which, though per-
haps preferable to its modern equivalent, "Boloney,"
should be strictly tabooed by ladies who are prudent
of their charms.
She quitted the hall and went into the dining room.
I stood leaning against the newel post for the artless
reason that I could think of nothing else to do. She
spoke my name, and I jumped the width of the rug.
"I am sorry I startled you," she said. "I came back
because I have something I wish to say to you. I lost
my temper just now. I'm sorry."
"Dear lady "I began, forgetting momentarily
that Vicky declares me microbic when I say "dear
lady."
Apparently Sarah Parnham agreed with Vicky.
"Don't 'dear lady' me," she snapped. "When you
aren't trying to be a gentleman of the old school you
are a real person, worth bothering with—almost.
What I started to say was that your insinuations about
my stepmother made me lose my temper and talk
foolishly. I know that neither you nor Miss Van
Garter committed the murder"
"If, after all, it was murder "I attempted, but
she shook that away with a toss of her head and went
on:
"I have no reason for knowing that neither of you
did it. Appearances are much against one or the other
of you. But, illogically, unreasonably—I do know that


22 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
you are both innocent. Now in return for this assurance
of mine will you give me your assurance that you know
Evadne had nothing to do with this terrible affair—
nothing in any way?"
"Miss Parnham," said I, "as a gentleman of the
old school I give you that assurance fully and freely.
But," I continued, "as a person almost worth both-
ering with, I am bound to say that I am as yet reserv-
ing all my opinions."
She bit at her lip and pressed her dark hair back
from her high, bulging forehead, revealing a lock of
gray which she usually tried, though ineffectually, to
keep hidden. "In other words," she said, at last, "you'd
be unwilling to state, right now, that you, yourself,
did not commit the murder?"
I fear I only gaped at her stupidly.
"I understand," she went on. "I am forced to. I
don't even blame you, though I may envy you. You
were here at home all evening. I was downtown at that
miserable moving picture show with Helene. You in-
tend to sacrifice truth, or Evadne, or anything or any-
one else, if necessary, to keep Miss Van Garter clear
of this affair. In extremity you plan now to step up
and shoulder the blame yourself. I know. I'd do the
same thing for Evadne if I could. I can't. So I seem
helpless, useless—as yet. But I have a mind, Mr. Van
Garter—it has been called exceptional—and I can
use it. If that is conceit, well and good. It is my one
vanity. We are in serious trouble here. You care only
for your 'Vicky.' I care only, I suppose, for Evadne—


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 23
though I should like to help Helene and Dot, if I
could. You and I both know, Mr. Van Garter, that
Evadne and Miss Van Garter are innocent. The
trouble is—will the others know this? The detective
who is coming? I am honestly glad that you sent for
her. But I am honestly fearful, too. It seems to me
that you and I might much better be allies in this than
antagonists."
"Much better," I agreed, and extended my hand to
her and marveled that her bony fingers could com-
municate such softening comfort. What was it the
lady had said? "In extremity you plan now to step in
and shoulder the blame yourself."
Observe, then, for an instant before we leave him,
Cadwallader the hero; Cadwallader with the great
imagination proper to mad men leaping for the gallows
as a dog leaps for a bone; Cadwallader gone sacri-
ficial; Cadwallader supreme!
CHAPTER 4
The discerning, penetrating reader—and no other
takes up a tale of this type—will have recognized long
ere this that the thing which was shaking me senseless
with fear early that August morning, the horror I
could not face was not the fact that Vicky or I would
be accused of the murder. No. It was the strong pos-


24 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
sibility, approaching certainty, that Vicky herself had
actually done the shooting.
If this same reader has not been skipping impa-
tiently—or resignedly—from peak to peak of my para-
graphs because of an understandable and wholly
pardonable desire to find the corpse in the story, he
will have noticed the restrained and objective manner
with which I treated my own emotions and mental
processes at the time when Vicky, with her terrible
confession, dragged my fear before me and compelled
me to face it fair and square. But if the reader, still
the same, has, as I hope, a touch of what in my day
was called sentiment but is now more generally re-
ferred to as "hokum" or "hooey," he may have cast
aside the story at this point and risen to wonder why
the devil I believed her.
My apology and explanation will necessitate, alas,
another short diversion. But the corpse and the clues
I assure you are waiting only a little way along now
in the narrative. They will be there—it is a promise
—untouched when we arrive.
To begin, then, where all good stories should begin
were all authors good authors, at the beginning, which,
in this case, is some sixteen months previous to our
horrible August night, in the moody month of April
when Vicky had just put through to its end another
unfortunate love affair.
Vicky, though she would deny it with violence, is a
hyper-romanticist. She expects, in this day and age, to
find a lad to whom the fact that she is an extraordi-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 25
narily wealthy girl accounts less than the dust in his
young life. Now Vicky is susceptible; and Vicky has
been loved, sincerely enough I think since she is wholly
lovable, by many men: some honest, some scamps;
some smart, some stupid; some gentlemen, some "mod-
erns"; some one thing, some another, but no one of
them all things. Sooner or later in each affair Vicky
discovers that the young man does not consider her
millions inconsequential; that he thinks the circum-
stance of her possessing them is at least faintly
fortunate. Then and there ends Vicky's latest love
adventure. As you perceive, Vicky will either wed a
man steeped in duplicity, sharp and sly, or change her
mind, or die an old maid. But this may not be a history
of Vicky's romances since the murder, you know, must
out.
This April affair of hers chanced to be one of her
more ardent experiences. (The boy was a handsome
young chauffeur of whom I highly approved.) A few
days after the engagement said Vicky to Nicky,
"Dearest, you aren't glad, you don't care in the least
that I happen to have such rotten vulgar wads of
money—do you—are you?"
"What difference," said Nicky to Vicky, "could
money make, when I love you like I do?"
"Ah-h-hl" sighed Vicky in rapture.
"Ah-h-hl" sighed Nicky, undoubtedly rapturous
also.
"I've a notion," said Vicky, "to give the whole pile
to charity—a foundation for research into something


26 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
or other, on our wedding day. Shall I do that, darling?
You'd love me to do that, shouldn't you?"
"Well, now, kid," Nicky temporizes, "I don't know
about all of it. You see, if I should get out of a job.
There's insurance, and ..."
I found her, by well-tried and often-used methods
of my own, which I shall not describe here as I may
need again to use them, three days later in Satoria-by-
the Bay. She was wearing a simple Lelong frock and
selling egg beaters and can openers in a five-and-ten-
cent store. She was also, she informed me, living her
own life—or making a life for herself, I can't remem-
ber which it was—far from the taint of her cursed
money. I suggested Toulon and the General's family
whom we had promised to visit. Vicky loved Toulon
and the General, and there was one of the General's
sons whom I hoped Vicky could love, some day, when
she grew older and wiser. She twirled an egg beater
and said we might go again to Toulon, if she could
save the passage money from her salary.
She stayed in the red-and-white five-and-ten-cent
store for two weeks and then she discovered a small
tea room and antique shoppe for sale and she bought
it, with the savings from her salary, I presume. The
temptation to linger in Vicky's shoppe (her modernity
insists that a spade be called a spade and sees nothing
incongruous in calling a combination restaurant and
junk store a "shoppe") is not strong, and there are
other trails to tread. Suffice it to say that she had, she
asserted, found happiness. She pictured herself as a


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 27
useful member of society. She lived on her earnings,
paying all her personal bills with the money taken in
at the shoppe, and making up the deficit in the books
each month from her own vulgar but convenient bank
account.
At just about the time when she was becoming thor-
oughly tired of the whole business a fellow boarder
of hers, an Oswald Fleep, fell in love with her and
succeeded in interesting her, not in himself (Oswald
seemed a fine little young man and I liked him, though
he looked like his name and had sparse red hair, pro-
fuse freckles, and pale eyes) but in his mania, which
was astrology. So Vicky bought books and a pencil
sharpener; learned to make neatly curved moons,
plump fours for Jupiter, arrows for Mars. She met my
doubts with the moon and the tides. She blamed my
questionings on the planets in my zodiac. She estab-
lished confidential relationships with the constellations
and visited round among the stars.
As an interest, with its attendant philosophy, I con-
sider astrology preferable to many of the ologies and
osophies that I have been invited to examine and
forced to discard during the past fifty years. Nor have
I anything at all against sun, moon, and stars, Aries,
Libra, or Gemini, except their distance from the earth.
Week-ending in the heavens, Vicky began to speak a
new language. If I said to her, "I feel very dull today,"
Vicky would say to me, "Darling, of course you do.
Transiting Saturn is opposing your third house Mer-
cury. He'll be out of orb on Tuesday," and consider


28 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
the subject ended. If I said to her, as indeed I did say,
"I don't like this Antony Charvan," she would respond
with a smile illimitably beautiful and sweet, "Poor
Tony. Capricorn rising and Mars in the nadir squar-
ing his sun with an afflicted moon, besides," and I never
knew the answer.
Should the discriminating reader here remark that
in my previously given passages I have presented Vicky
with but slight astrological terminology and none of
the philosophy I must explain that, at the time of the
first murder in Meriwether, Vicky's passion for as-
trology was cooling after the manner of all Vicky's
passions; and, too, during moments of extreme and
sudden stress Vicky—alas or hurray, as you like—was
prone to forget her philosophy, after the manner of
many philosophers.
Indeed, early on the Saturday afternoon before the
first murder, when I motored down from Portland to
spend a few days with the child, I noted in her manner
none of the gentle toleration which the study of as-
trology should, and perhaps sometimes does, engender.
This irritability of hers I attributed to the weather.
It was hot, with the steamy, cloying, sneaking heat
that sea-level locations occasionally attain. All along
our coast from Seattle to San Francisco I know of
nothing so disruptive of morale as a temperature above
ninety. Instance the fact that on our drive from the
city to Satoria-by-the-Bay my British chauffeur, Merkel
by name, stopped the car and without apology or ques-
tion removed his coat. I, while commending unre-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 29
servedly his common sense, was as dumbfounded as I
should have been had one of my colleagues at the
club risen in the library, put aside his Literary Digest,
and completely disrobed. "After this," thought I, "the
deluge?" And, since I thought interrogatively, echo
should have answered, as all good fictional echoes used
to answer (echoes, I understand, are now out of vogue
along with eau de Cologne), "Ah, deluge indeed!"
And any well-trained, dictionary-minded echo might
well have gone on doing the letter "D"—"Death, dis-
grace, damage, dire destruction"—and brought up to
a neat finish with "dunces and dunderheads."
For so we were—so, indubitably we were. Murder
was done. Murder continued being done while we dis-
credited all our senses and used none of them; dallied
with the incredible when all we needed to do was to
examine, briefly, the credible.
I am fully aware that one of the tricks of the mys-
tery monger's trade is to assert, early in the narrative,
that the solution of the problem should have been
mere child's play—pigs in the clover for the village
idiot. Someone—Chesterton, I believe, it sounds like
him—has asserted that the whole endeavor of a mys-
tery tale should be to make the reader feel stupid; as
stupid as Watson. My contention is that to create a
feeling of stupidity is impossible and undesirable.
Hence, I shall not declare that the Meriwether mys-
tery should have been solved at once and with ease.
It is true that the merest molecule of intelligence,
used by any one of us, should have directed our sus-


30 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
picions instantly toward the culprit. The establishment
of proof of the guilt was a gray horse of a different
color. Indeed, despite other opinions, I am bound to
insist that, but for the weather and its sticky heat,
certain proof could not have been obtained. Vicky,
however, contends as yet that the credit for the dis-
covery of the murderer should be given to the stars
and their cryptic message, "A small round object."
I have been informed, falsely I trust, that Miss
MacDonald when questioned as to the part the science
of astrology played in solving the Meriwether mys-
tery and establishing the criminal's guilt, replied,
simply, "Pooh."
Relayed to Vicky, the injustice of this retort pro-
voked a bitter disputativeness. "'Now then' "—a
wickedly successful mimicry of one of Miss Mac-
Donald's speech mannerisms—"did we or did we not
tell her to find a small round object? Did she find it?
She did. And with it her old proof. Pooh for proof!"
mocked Vicky, it would seem illogically, since proof
was necessary, "Pooh. I tell you, Candy, if that woman
were wearing red flannel undies—and she might, too—
and she itched, she'd take the undies off and search
them for San Francisco fleas before she'd be willing
to state positively why she wanted to scratch. That
woman and her proofs, and her 'Poohsl'"
"But my dear," said I, "I thought you liked Miss
MacDonald?"
"What if I did?" demanded Vicky. "As Grandma
Crowinshank used to say"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 31
I intervened. Long experience has made me deft
with thwarting the Lady Crowinshank's quotations.
CHAPTER 5
Odd how one postpones a murder. I got myself into
the heat of the August afternoon riding in my car
behind Merkel with his coat off, and there I again
digressed, reluctant even after all these months to go
on into the narration of the shocking event itself.
Rapidly, then, I arrived in Satoria-by-the-Bay and
at the hotel, where I was forced to put up when visit-
ing Vicky, since there was never an extra room avail-
able in Meriwether. I told Merkel to put the car in
the garage—further contact with its thick perspiring
plushes seemed intolerable—and, after outmaneuver-
ing the shower bath and dressing in fresh clothing, I
strolled slowly down the heat-shimmering streets to
Vicky's shoppe. The place was tepid and gloomy, and
her "Darling, so glad you came down" wilted from
lack of emphasis.
In the past half-hour, apparently, she had found the
word "sweat" in her vocabulary, and she appeared to
derive a sullen satisfaction from the use of it. She was
sweating—a palpable falsehood, she looked as cool as
a dainty fern deep in a forest. Her soul and her mind
were sweating; the very sun in the murky sky was
sweating. Dot Bailey, the dumpy daughter of Vicky's


32 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
charming landlady, Helene Bailey, had recently been
in the shoppe. Dot had been dressed in a red-and-
white rig, striped, said Vicky, like greasy bacon, and
had eaten two French pastries with her fat fingers.
I was scandalized, and I said, "This won't do. It
won't do at all. Now how about Banff or Norway?
Later, perhaps, Toulon?"
"Not with my sun squaring Uranus," said she.
I confessed. "I had forgotten Uranus," said I.
"Forgotten Uranus!" she deplored, aghast.
"I remembered the sun," I offered humbly, but she
ignored it, and, "It is my Aquarius moon, I suppose,"
she said, "that makes me feel things—sense things so
disturbingly."
"Things?" I questioned, and prompted, "Such as?"
"I don't know," she said, "but fear seems a part of
it and—well, hate."
"Ah," said I. "Who hates whom?"
"I don't know."
"Who, then, fears whom?"
"I wish," she said, wistfully, "that you'd stop who-
ing and whom-ing."
"Where," I complied, "is this hating and fearing
going on?"
"Meriwether. Though when Dot was in here just
now she brought a load and left it. I think she is in
love with Tony Charvan. She was talking dreadfully
about him—spitefully, cruelly. Wishing he'd die after
torture—that sort of thing."
"The modern mode of the amorous?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 33
"As modern as Genesis. Tony doesn't like her."
"The thing is absurd. He is old enough to be her
father."
"Well—maybe, if Dot is only seventeen, as they
say she is. She seems older than that to me. But, some-
way, no one could imagine Tony's being a father to
anything."
"When I was down last month you were liking him
a lot, I thought."
"A man doesn't have to be a father to be liked,
does he? Yes—I like Tony. He is sort of sweet, and
he's not money-minded—and he's not very happy, and
he had a miserable boyhood. All right, smile if you
must. I do feel sorry for him and perhaps I am getting
maudlin. I'm quite sure I am because lately all I do
is feel sorry for everyone up at Meriwether. I'm sick
of feeling sorry."
"Indeed I should think so," I sympathized. "Sor-
rowing for all the occupants of Meriwether is a tidy
job in itself."
"No. That's another trouble. Most of the boarders
have left—just for vacations—they've all kept their
rooms. The Claussen family, all five of them, and the
three Fredericks have gone on an excursion tour of
Alaska. Paul's mother and Miss Winslow and her
mother and the little boy have gone to the mountains
for a month, and Polly Kent is in the hospital for an
operation. Helene's closed the entire annex—she's
having it done over—and she has dismissed three of
the maids for the summer. It does seem Scotchy, but I


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 35
classed among life's larger vexations. Recognizing a
dislike for Mr. Charvan was like recognizing a dislike
for soap or prayer, and could lead only to self-
searching and self-condemnation.
My one excuse for carping lay in the fact that I
did not know and could not discover how he had ever
earned, or was now earning, his means of livelihood.
He had a strong, well-trained baritone voice. For
fifteen minutes each evening he sang over ABC, with
Paul Keasy as his accompanist at the piano, in connec-
tion with advertising for a local furniture store. To
the best of my knowledge, this fifteen-minute song
recital was his only vocation. Honorable enough,
without question, but not, one would think, remunera-
tive enough for him to live at Meriwether, dress well,
and though he did not own a car, give an impression
of being always well in funds. If he were, as he seemed
to be, independent of his earnings, why in the nation
should he trouble to sing at a jerkwater radio station?
As I watched Vicky talking to him I longed to hang
onto her heels as I used to when she was a little girl
and leaned to look out of high windows or into deep
holes. Fear? Yes, I feared the man on Vicky's account.
Why? Prejudice seemed to be the only answer.
Granted that the fellow was an adventurer and a
scamp. Vicky had met adventurers and scamps on four
continents and had emerged unscathed. Conscience sug-
gested that I was jealous. I knew it was a confounded
lie; but it was effective enough to shame me into silence
when Vicky returned from walking with him to the


36 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
doorway and presented a preposterous plan for the
evening.
We, she and I, were to meet Mr. Charvan at a
corner drugstore not far from Meriwether at fifteen
minutes past eight o'clock that evening. We were then
to take him across the town—in her car of course—
to the radio station, where we were to wait about
while he got his singing done, before motoring with
him over to the seacoast—a distance of twenty miles—
for a dip in the surf, icy cold at any season of the
year. On our way home we were to stop at a little
place which Vicky described as "sweet" and "little"
for a shore dinner.
"They'll have a small dead pineapple salad," said
I, "buried in warm white mayonnaise with a canned
cherry and cheese on its grave."
"Oh," said Vicky, "you are worrying about my
transiting Mars conjoining my sun today. That is in
the fourth house, darling—the home, you know. It
couldn't mean accidents on short journeys."
"No," said I. "Mars momentarily had left my mind.
I was wondering, only, why you and I should transport
this gentleman to his work and to his pleasures and
hang about corner drugstores and radio stations into
the bargain."
"It is that Saturn, Mercury parallel of yours still in
force, I think. You don't mean to be selfish, and you
aren't, really, but"
"I was wondering," said I, "what aspect you might


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 37
have coming in the future that would mean dignity,
my dear?"
"Well, but," said Vicky, "who ever said drugstores
weren't dignified? Look at the marvelous things drugs
have done for humanity—for the what-you-may-call-it
of civilization. Look at anaesthetics alone . . ." It is
her usual manner with argumentation. One, in time,
becomes accustomed to it.
I filled my pipe. "Perhaps," I suggested, "there are
a few errands Mr. Charvan might like to have us run
for him such as getting his laundry, returning some
library books, anything helpful of the sort before we
meet him at the drugstore?"
"If I'd known," said Vicky, gently, "that you
loathed drugstores I'd have said the Methodist church
steps. The place doesn't matter—just so that we don't
hurt people's feelings and make them jealous and—
you know."
"I am afraid that I don't, entirely."
"It is sort of what I was trying to tell you when
Tony came in. Oswald and Paul seem to be jealous—
they still think they like me too much, you know. And
Helene—I love Helene but I can't understand her.
She doesn't like Tony—not a bit. And she doesn't
want him for Dot, nor anything of that sort. But she
doesn't like it when Tony is nice to me. If we happen
to be alone together she always joins us, or sends
someone else in. It is past the coincidence stage—and
it is worse since we've all narrowed down so."
"Mr. Charvan is nearer her age than yours," I said.


38 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"And, after all, she is charming, and she is a
widow"
"But I just told you, dear, she doesn't like Tony. I
really wonder that she lets him stay on at Meriwether.
Usually she won't, when she doesn't like anyone. She
can be choosey. She is making piles of money, and she
has a waiting list already for the new annex when she
gets it built. Let me see, though—where was I?"
"You began with the avoidance of hurting other
people's feelings. Forgive me, but I am wondering
why you don't solve the problem simply by having
nothing to do with Mr. Charvan."
"But don't you see," said Vicky, sweetly patient,
"that is exactly what they are all trying to make me
do? There's no sense in it. Why should I? Tony's
sweet, and I feel sorry for him."
"You used to feel sorry for Paul Keasy," I re-
minded her. "And you had, as I remember, wealths
of pity for little Oswald Fleep."
"Yes, of course. And I still do. I still have. You
shouldn't blame me for feeling sorry for people who
aren't happy. As I say, it may be maudlin but I can't
help it, so you shouldn't blame me for it. I don't blame
you for things you can't help, Candy darling. Lately
it seems to me that you don't like me as much as you
used to."
What chance had I ? What chance has any man with
the adorable, infuriating Vickys of the world?
Promptly at fifteen minutes past eight o'clock that
evening I arrived with my niece in her car at the drug-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 39
store on the corner of Lewis Avenue and Twelfth
Street.
CHAPTER 6
"But," said Vicky, "I thought he'd be here," and
scanned the hot dusty streets with her big brown eyes,
made a trifle less soft because of her puckered brows.
"Does he often keep you waiting on corners?" I
asked, lightly.
"Once before he did," she admitted. "That was
two months ago. I haven't met him since. That was
why I thought he'd be here early this evening."
Five minutes later I suggested that we wait no
longer for the tardy gentleman. Vicky explained that
were we to leave now there would be no way for him
to get across the town in time to keep his radio ap-
pointment. It was not, she said, her custom to let peo-
ple down. She would wait. She would take him to
ABC. She would leave him there, and never speak to
him again.
Five minutes later still, when I noticed her face
going white, I changed my tactics. "He'll have some
satisfactory explanation," said I, and shook in my
shoes.
"That is impossible. Meriwether is a short walk
from here. It feeds his vanity to keep girls waiting
on him. He was to meet Dot at my place this after-


40 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
noon and go with her to select some drawing materials.
You saw when he came in—an hour later. No—he
keeps us waiting in order to humiliate us. He kissed me
last night. I thought he was sweet. He is a low beast,
and I wish I could kill him."
Only once before in her life had I seen Vicky angry.
I had seen her petulant, pouty, cross, but not overtaken
by this devastating fury that through generations has
been a curse of the Van Garter family. Twice I had
seen my brother Henry, her father, a victim of this
cruel fury. Once in my own lifetime I had experienced
it myself. The reason I did not kill the cur who had
invoked my rage was that another man found him
first—in Alaska it was, and a young woman was in-
volved. The reason Vicky did not get her man was
owing entirely to the grace of God.
We were riding along a country road in her car. A
man ahead of us, in a larger car, pursued a gray kitten
for half a mile, zigzagging from right to left in an
attempt to run it down. We were helpless. We could
not pass him or stop him. At last, when the kitten
made for a gate, he deliberately ran over the
frightened thing and crushed it and drove on.
A youngster, four or five years old, came running,
picked the mangled animal up in his arms, shut his
eyes, and wailed aloud. Vicky jumped out of the car.
I followed her. She took the bleeding thing away from
the lad, wiped his dirty little overalls with her scarf,
tossed it down, filled his pockets with all the money
she had in her bag, said, "Never mind, sweetheart,


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 41
I'll kill him for you," and was back in her car and
away before I had caught my breath.
I stayed by the gate with the boy. She drove along
like a demon, passed the man at the first widening
stretch of road, and whirled her car crosswise in front
of his. He might have crashed into her. She said that
she knew he would take the ditch, and he did so and
broke his leg. He threatened suit, but his attorney ad-
vised against it after consulting with our attorney.
The reasons for Henry's rages I shall not go into
here; though they too could be placed under the
generous headings of just anger and righteous in-
dignation. No Van Garter has ever boasted of the
family temper. All of us, I think, have felt that for
a man or a woman to give himself or herself over
wholly to any emotion for any cause was an undesir-
able proceeding. But one and all we have worried
along with it and kept out of jail and found some small
satisfaction in the fact that our angers have been
aroused because of wrong done to the other fellow. I
thought it well to remind the child, as we sat there in
the spiteful heat, of those footnotes, unselfish, modest,
in the family annals.
"Well, this is a fine time," she retorted, "to drag
out those moldy old stories, isn't it? And you don't
know at all what you are talking about. This wasn't a
date this evening—it was an issue."
Neither of us spoke again until half-past eight
o'clock when, "We'll go home," said Vicky, and
stamped on the starter.


42 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
As we drove up the long winding road that took
us to the top of the high hill where Meriwether, nearly
magnificent, stood in its wide, well-kept grounds, I
said, "There'll be a reason, dear. Wait and see. Pos-
sibly the heat has affected him and you'll find him ill—
or he may have met with an accident. There'll be a
reason, and a good one."
"Yes," she agreed, amazingly, "there has to be a
reason. If he isn't here at home ill, and isn't singing
over the radio—but he can't be singing down there
when he didn't meet us—I'll think we should worry
about him and look for him."
Had I been given to prayer extemporaneous I be-
lieve I should have indulged in fervent thanksgiving
right then. It is as well that I forwent my paeans. They
would have been premature.
As Vicky and I stepped into the front hallway I
looked up and saw Helene Bailey and Sarah Parnham
coming down the stairs. They called their greetings,
and I perforce must wait and take their hands and
inquire as to their welfare.
I liked Helene Bailey. She was a serene, pretty little
matron with a genius for hospitality and more than
her fair share of pluck, common sense, and good
humor. She had come to Satoria-by-the-Bay about ten
years ago, had bought Meriwether, remodeled it, and
turned it into a boarding house. In five more years, I
thought, she would own a flourishing hotel; another
five years, a string of hotels. Asked for the secret of
her success in a business so difficult she had once said


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 43
to me, "Good coffee; sharp knives. Take your dis-
counts and keep your mouth shut, and that's all there
is to it." Yes, I liked and admired her. I liked the
sturdy handshake she gave me that evening, and I
reluctantly released it for Sarah Parnham's damp,
silk-gloved grasp.
Vicky asked, as if she didn't care, "Is anyone at
home?"
"Not a soul," Helene answered. "Sarah has per-
suaded me that it will be cooler down at a movie.
Come go along with us, you two, won't you? We'll all
go in my car. Or we could drive over toward the beach.
Tony Charvan said at dinner that he'd seen you at
Vicky's place, Mr. Van Garter, and I supposed you'd
carried her right off to the seashore with you to get
cool."
"Thanks a lot, Helene," Vicky said, "but Uncle is
tired from his trip down and I think we'd better stay
here and rest and keep quiet." She turned and went
strolling, or pretending to stroll, toward the living
room and the radio that stood just on the other side
of the archway.
I opened the front door for the ladies. I bowed. I
think that I did not push them out of the hall onto
the porch, but I cannot be certain of this. I could hear
the radio's tubes buzzing. I could see Vicky turning
the dial. At the very instant that I closed the front
door Antony Charvan's voice boomed out:
"'Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er
where she stud! On the road to Mandalay . . .'"


44 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Vicky said, "It was deliberate. I'll kill him."
"'An' the dawn conies up like thunder . ."
"He made love to me last night. I thought I liked
it. I'll kill him."
"'With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek
agin my cheek . . .'"
"He had a theory. He told Dot. He said no woman
loved a man until he had humiliated her at least once
and she had accepted the humiliation. I will kill him.
Dead. You hear me? I will kill him dead before I sleep
tonight."
Before any of us slept that night we found him
dead in the third room to the left of the passage.
CHAPTER 7
Granted, if you will, that the person who first
promptly and freely confesses to a murder is never in
any case the guilty person. Granted, if you choose,
that the person who loudly threatens a killing shortly
before the victim is found murdered has never, under
any circumstances, been guilty of the crime, though
judges and juries have been known perversely to think
otherwise. Granted, since we are at the business, you
sorely tried and true readers of mystery tales, that
whoever may have committed the murder, from the
crooked-legged housemaid in the attic to Cadwallader
Van Garter himself who, for all you know, may be


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 45
writing this narrative from state's prison to clean his
conscience or to pay his lawyers, Victoria Van Garter
is above reproach. That is to say, because she has ad-
mitted her guilt, because she had motive, opportunity,
and a temper that during brief moments made murder
a possibility in her living programme, Vicky as a sus-
pect is ruled out. Well and good; and forget, if you
please, and if you can, that of all the group the only
one of us who objected to Lynn MacDonald's engage-
ment as crime analyst for the affair was Vicky; and
from this point forward let no misgiving mind or dis-
trustful eye turn in that sweet child's direction.
Whom, then, shall we suspect? Innocent all until
we are proved guilty, the elimination of Vicky leaves
no paucity of material for the sleuth. Conceivably, at
least, any disengaged person who was that night in
the town might have taken a whimsical notion to rid
the world of Antony Charvan; might have done so. I
have noticed, however, that the more satisfactory re-
sults in crime detection are seldom obtained by adopt-
ing, at the outset at least, a vision so extraneous. In
our own home, when we have found a gnawed bone
on the hearthrug, we have called our own dog rather
than the neighbor's dog for remonstrance.
Some theory of this sort seemed to be in the mind
of Lieutenant Wirt when he addressed us, huddled
about in the hall, on the night of the murder.
"Which of you folks," questioned he, "were here in
the house at the time this here thing transpired?" And
a glint came into his eye, and a grimness turned at his


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 47
lashes. In love with Vicky and her
money.
7. Oswald Fleep: A mild-seeming, quiet
little man, soon to be introduced. You
will like him at first, I think, as I did,
in spite of his freckles and pale, blink-
ing eyes. His mania, you remember,
astrology. His love, but hopeless,
Vicky. His occupation, owner of O.
Fleep's Men's Furnishing Store.
8. Merkel: My excellent British chauffeur,
successor to Nicky.
9. Orilla Winters: Crooked-legged house-
maid who slept in the attic. More of
Orilla later—but not, I trust, too much
more.
10. Antony Charvan: Victim, of course.
Ah, yes, but victims can be wily and, by
means of cords tied to pistols, spring
traps, and other do-dads, murder them-
selves in order to wreak vengeance on
their rivals. Can—but do they? Often?
As for the love element, you have heard
Vicky on the subject.
Here we are then, including Antony and omitting
Vicky and the cook, a Mrs. Le Vray, wickedly French,
you perceive, and hence an admirable suspect but for
the fact that she was not there. She had bullied Helene
into allowing her to have every other Saturday eve-


48 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERV
ning and Sunday morning off duty, during the summer
months. Her threat was immediate notice. Her excuse,
a small, recently purchased farm ten miles out from
the town, and a new grandchild. She had left Meri-
wether at seven o'clock on Saturday evening, had gone
to her farm and stayed there until Sunday late morn-
ing. If you like, though, you may keep an eye on pudgy
little Mrs. Le Vray with her gaudy gingham dresses
and her fallen arches. There is no doubt about it, what
the woman would do with chives and tarragon
amounted to black magic in salad savoriness.
Ten of us, then, or eleven if you insist, to watch
closely while I return and recount our comings and
goings on the night of the first murder. And, though I
shall strive for open honesty, I can report only my
own impressions; so it may be well to remember that
the hand is quicker than the eye and that David said in
his haste, "All men are liars."
CHAPTER 8
We have assumed that Vicky was falsifying when she
declared her intention of killing Antony Charvan be-
fore she slept that night. I did not believe her as she
spoke, not for one moment. I meant to keep that young
woman safely under my guard until her mean temper
had had time to cool.
Because Mr. Charvan's voice with each booming


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 49
word seemed to increase her fury, I tried to snap the
radio off; but she would not have it so. She listened
through the final dawn with its thunder and, when
telephone requests came in for an encore, she listened
to the thing straight through again and on while Paul
Keasy said, "Thanks, Tony, great stuff!" And, con-
tinuing, in order, one supposes, to seem all cozy-like,
homey, and human, "Folks, folks I What wouldn't I
give, besides my right arm, to have a voice like Tony's
here! By Jove, there goes the telephone again asking
for more. Answer it, will you, Tony? We are a little
short-handed up here tonight, folks. Thanks, old chap.
Sorry we can't have another song, but we have some-
thing else pretty fine waiting here for you, and Tony
I guess must have a date with his girl friend, the way
he is dolling up and trying to rush off. Look at him
blush I Sorry, old man. All right now, ladies and gentle-
men of the radio audience, stand by for the Barking
Boiler Company's Hour."
Mercifully then Vicky leaned forward and turned
off the radio. But she stayed in her chair close to the
archway between the hall and the huge living room,
and she fixed her eyes, dangerously wide and dark, on
the front door through which Mr. Charvan would,
doubtless, soon enter.
"Let me be a part of your plans, my dear," said I.
"How do they go? The moment Mr. Charvan comes
through the door you are going to leap at him and
tear him to shreds—am I getting it right?—after
which you and I will have only to dispose of the body."


50 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
She rose from her chair, went into the back part
of the house, and returned, quickly, with a large, mur-
derous-looking carving knife which I promptly took
away from her and, after opening the window and
unlatching the screen, tossed out into the yard.
"Smarty!" said Vicky, and further and much more
said Vicky—all better forgotten—before at last she
threw herself down on a davenport and burst into
tears and became about five years old again with a
smudgy face and sticky-mouth kisses. So I went and sat
close beside her and provided a shoulder and handker-
chiefs while she cried it out. Yes, cried it out, I thought
—all the mean temper and hate and passion that have
cursed the Van Garter name. Cried it out I was certain
when, during the final damp sniffles, she went into the
hall and returned with her handbag and found her
vanity case and set about thoroughly powdering her
nose. Since then I have been told that one of the best
things murderesses do is powder their noses; but then
so untried was I in crime that I thought the action
signified Mr. Charvan's reprieve and her own repent-
ance.
"It is hopeless," she finally decided. "I'll have to go
upstairs and wash my face and start over."
Midway of the room she whirled and spoke in a
scared whisper. "Good grief! Suppose he came in just
now while I was howling!"
"Impossible," said I. "We should have seen and
heard him."
We had been sitting on one of the two large daven-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
ports drawn up on each side of the fireplace. From this
position we could see neither the front door nor the
stairway. Mr. Charvan or anyone else or several
others could have come in quietly two or three times
while Vicky was crying without either of us being
aware of the circumstance.
A man I knew and did not admire said once, as he
crunched a clove from his pearl-gray vest pocket, that
there were but two sorts of ladies: those to whom
men lied, and those to whom men did not trouble to
lie. Poor fellow, he is not now, I hope, receiving his
just deserts or being forced, amid other tortures, to
emend his epigram: Two sorts of men—those who lie
to ladies and those who are blessed with brains at
birth.
"Rot!" said Vicky, and looked at her watch. "No,
it is only ten minutes past nine; so he hasn't come in,
unless he took a taxi, and I'm sure we'd have heard it
coming up the hill. If he comes while I'm upstairs be
lovely to him, darling. Don't let him suspect that you
are even slightly annoyed."
It was ten minutes past nine o'clock, then—time is
usually important—when Vicky went upstairs. How
long was she up there? Bless my soul, I don't know.
As long as it takes an exquisitely beautiful girl to re-
move traces of tears, trim up her face with unguents
and lotions, paints and powders, and change her frock.
Long enough, perhaps, to ascend to the attic and en-
gage Orilla the housemaid to shoot Mr. Charvan in-
stantly upon his arrival above stairs? Possibly, but I


52 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
think not. This theory, too, is damaged by the facts
that from first to last Orilla stoutly declared that she
was not in the vicinity of Meriwether from half-past
seven in the evening until some time close to midnight
and that, even as yet, no one has disproved her state-
ment.
At any rate, when Vicky came down again she was
wearing a primrose yellow frock and she was very
lovely as she quoted a rough and rowdy remark of
the Lady Crowinshank's and declared that food for
me was immediately imperative. For herself, the
thought of food was repellent. The idea of descending
from the now coolish heights of Meriwether to the
stagnate heart of the town could not be considered. I
must telephone for Merkel.
Sure of the fixity of her purpose, but slightly unsure
of her motive, I ended the argument by telephoning
to Merkel and telling him to bring chicken sandwiches
and ice cream and anything else that looked cold and
edible up to us as fast as he could.
While I was thus instructing Merkel, Vicky went
to drive her car around from the front of the house
into the garage at the rear. She left the front door
wide open and, as I passed it on my way upstairs to
her bathroom, I noticed that the outside air now
seemed a trifle cooler than the air in the house, so I
did not close the door nor did I think to latch the
screen door on the inside.
In the upper hall, just before I stepped into Vicky's
room, I fancied I heard a noise, rather as if someone


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 53
were pounding on the kitchen door below stairs. I
paused and listened; but as the sound was not repeated
I went along and thought no more about it.
When I came out into the hall again I was dis-
tressed at hearing the raucous voice of the radio
shrieking through the place. Whoever had turned it
on had no desire, apparently, for aught save noise,
since several programmes, mixed with static, were
sounding forth together at full tilt and volume.
I reached the thing with all possible haste. Why I
did not shut it off entirely and at once I do not know;
some notion of courtesy, perhaps, toward the invisible
person who had turned it on, for I saw that I was
alone in the room. At any rate, I contented myself with
twirling the dial and was rewarded with, ". . .
ABC. Paul Keasy is your announcer. At the stroke of
the gong it will be one second past ten o'clock by the
Tick-Tock Time Signals . . ."
I took out my watch and, as I waited for the gong,
I noticed that the front door had been closed; an in-
cident which, I must confess, registered in my mind
merely as a fact and caused me to feel neither ap-
prehension nor curiosity. The gong sounded. My time
was correct. I snapped off the radio.
Vicky came "Hey-heying" from the back of the
house, and at the same moment Evadne Parnham and
Dot Bailey came in through the front door.
To avoid confusion I must state here that the garage
was joined to the house by an enclosed passageway
that led directly into the kitchen. Since the garage


54 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
doors had patent locks, which locked automatically on
the inside when the doors were closed, the doors of the
passageway were never locked. From the front of the
house to the garage was a longish walk—more than
halfway around the enormous house. Naturally, then,
all the members of the household used the passage-
way when they went to take their cars out of the
garage, or after they had put them in it. Such quantity
of detail surpasses mere dullness, I know. But how
else could I explain why Vicky came from the back of
the house and what she had been doing there?
CHAPTER 9
As I VIEW it now, immediately on catching sight of
Vicky I should have asked whether she had turned on
the radio and closed the front door and, if not, who
had done so. I should have conferred with her as to
the knocking I had heard on the kitchen door. I should
have noted that she had taken longer than usual to
put her car in the garage, and I should have demanded
an explanation of the wasted time.
I asked none of these questions because none of
them chanced to occur to me. I returned Evadne Parn-
ham's effusive greeting and Dot's chilly nod (Dot's
pose, when she remembered it, was remoteness, pat-
terned, I believe, from Garbo and Dietrich but unsuc-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY $S
cessfully), and, conscious of no fault, sat my fat self
down to wait impatiently for Merkel.
Evadne Parnham, obligingly taking Dot's hat and
handbag with her, went upstairs. Dot swaggered across
the room and turned on the radio and a din of jazz
to fright a monster's ears, and I suggested to Vicky
that she and I retreat to the porch.
We had not much more than found chairs out there,
I had not finished filling my pipe, when Evadne Parn-
ham joined us. She complained of the heat. We
agreed. She asked if we knew where Sassy was. We
told her. She said that it was too hot to enjoy a show.
She and Dot had planned to go another—had gone
early in order to get two into the evening, but had
come home on account of the heat. She told us, at
labyrinthian length, the plot of the picture they had
seen, and gave way to regrets because, after all, it was
not much cooler here than in the picture show, and it
was much duller.
Vicky asked whether she and Dot had walked up
the hill in the heat. Evadne said they had not. They
had gone down with Oswald Fleep after dinner and
had come home in a taxicab. Dot's treat, she explained,
and just, because she, Evadne, had treated to milk-
shakes. "Gee!" she interrupted herself rather star-
tlingly here, "I shouldn't have told that. Don't tell
Helene. Dot's away over weight, you know, and
Helene is trying to make her diet. I think it's awfully
mean of her. Like I told Dot tonight, she's only young
once, and if her mother didn't object to her smoking


56 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
the poor kid wouldn't get so hungry. I told Dot I'd
just go ahead and smoke, if I were her. Like I said,
what's one more little secret, anyway? Considering
some of the things Dot gets away with, smoking
wouldn't rate at all. Dot tells me everything, I guess,
the poor kid. Gee, I get a real kick out of it some-
times. I don't know, but there's always been something
about me that just loves a secret. Maybe that's
naughty of me? But I'll bet you'll admit yourself, Mr.
Van Garter, that they are kind of fun, specially for a
person that has a real sense of 'umor like mine."
She paused, and a response seemed indicated, but I
had lost the place. Vicky answered for me, "Uncle
wouldn't know about secrets. He has never kept one
long enough to grow fond of it."
"That's what you think," said Evadne, and em-
phasized the "you" and laughed loudly, beginning on a
high note. Dark though it was, I could plainly see the
wrinkles lifting Vicky's small, fastidious nose.
Merkel's arrival just then was welcome. He stopped
the car at what seemed an unnecessarily long distance
from the house—well down the driveway, in fact. But
knowing that Merkel's every movement was well con-
sidered, I found reason for this one. He had, I
thought, heard Evadne Parnham's laughter and de-
cided that by sneaking quietly on foot to the back en-
trance he and the car might be unobserved, and the
shameful facts of an empty larder and a supper sent
late from town might remain unknown to the guests.
Perversely, while never ceasing to marvel at and


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY $7
delight in his excellent training, I enjoyed disrupting
it at times. So I called to him. "Hello, Merkel," said
I. "Bring it this way and save yourself steps."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," said he; and continued,
as he came to the porch, "Very sorry to be so late,
sir. I hope I haven't kept you waiting, sir." Merkel's
"h's" were as definite as my own, and as Paul Keasy's
voice came to us just then over the radio, I wondered
what price he would be willing to pay for my chauf-
feur's pronunciations and mellifluous inflections.
Vicky led the way into the kitchen. Merkel de-
posited his neatly packed baskets on the table—not
Merkel to fumble with loose parcels—and at my
bidding, and with further expressions of gratitude
because I had said that he need not wait, that I would
call him at the hotel later, he departed through the
kitchen doorway.
Evadne Parnham had followed us. Dot appeared,
suggesting that we had better leave the kitchen clean
because Mother had to get breakfast in the morning
and she'd be jittery if she found a messed-up place.
We assured her of our tidy intentions and invited her
and Evadne to sup with us.
Evadne said she would have only a glass of ginger
ale and a smoke, to soothe her nerves, found her ciga-
rette case was empty, and went upstairs to replenish
it.
Dot remarked, "She's good. She thinks she'd have
to help get things ready if she stayed down here," and
stood leaning against a cupboard practising remote-


58 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
ness while Vicky—who had returned from a quick dash
into the front hall—and I fussed with cartons and
glasses and ice cubes and carried laden trays to her
table, which she had set for four, in the dining room.
The effort, slight as it was, had made us overwarm
again; so Vicky turned out the lights in the dining
room and lighted some candles, explaining that they
would look cooler than the other lights and make a
party besides. And I, just before the three of us sat
down to the supper, wandered away into the living
room and turned off the radio and Paul Keasy's voice,
again announcing time signals: one minute past eleven
o'clock, said he, by the Tick-Tock Time Signals.
My reward was the malediction heaped upon all
radio silencers. "You don't," said Dot, when I re-
turned, "care at all for music, do you, Mr. Van
Garter?"
Vicky said, "He adores it. Do sit down, Uncle—
we won't wait for Evadne"
"No," said Evadne, as she came just then through
the pantry doorway, "of course not—nobody ever
waits for me." She was smoking, but her nerves were
unsoothed, one would think.
"I'm sorry," said Vicky. "We thought you'd like to
have us go on."
"That's all right about that," Evadne answered.
"But I'll tell you this, Dot Bailey, if your mother
doesn't make that Orilla be more careful with my
instrument"
"Forget it," Dot advised. "She has to dust it. You


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 59
rave if she doesn't. As it happens, since Sadie left I've
been dusting your room myself. What's the matter?
Did I move your xylophone two inches back, or one
inch forward"
"Oh, you did it, did you? Well, I'm going to speak
to Helene. Somebody's got to pay for repairs, and if
she takes my advice it will be you and out of vour
allowance."
"Mother has never made a habit of taking your
advice. The thing was all right this morning. What
did you do? Break it yourself, and decide to blame me
and make Mother pay for it?"
Vicky intervened with her lovely tact and glasses of
icy ginger ale. Evadne drank deeply but to no benefit
because, when she spoke again, anger was still hot in
her high childish voice. "All right for you, Dot Bailey.
I'll see that Helene makes you apologize for this.
Sassy and I will leave, if you don't"
"Go and see if we care. That is, if you'll pay your
back board bill before you leave."
"Would you care," the woman's voice slithered with
insult through mock sweetness, "honey dear, if I took
your tissue and carbon papers with me when I left?"
Dot jumped from her chair and slapped Evadne in
the face. "Take that for yourself," she said, and the
candelabrum swayed and went out and scattered the
candles, "and that for Tony Charvanl" She pushed
Vicky out of the way and ran into the hall and up the
stairs.
Evadne screamed something that ladies should not,


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 6l
'Tll go," Vicky offered. "You stay with Evadne."
I linked an arm in Vicky's, and we followed Mrs.
Bailey, who by this time was half the stairway ahead
of us.
"Is the girl dangerous—something of the sort—
in these moods?" I murmured to Vicky.
"Seems so, doesn't it? This is the sort of thing I've
been telling you about. Though this is much the worst.
I suppose I shall have to leave here."
That Helene Bailey herself was uncertain of her
daughter's temper was evinced by the fact that she
waited at the head of the stairs for us to join her
before she went to knock on Dot's door.
"It is Mother, Dot," she called. "Please let me
come in."
The door of Evadne Parnham's room opened and
Dot stepped into the hall. "I wish you'd come here,"
she said. She seemed calm and over her temper, so
Vicky and I began to retreat. "No," she insisted,
"don't go. You come in here, too. Just for a minute.
There is something I want to show you."
CHAPTER 10
Mrs. bailey had gone into the room. Vicky and I
compromised by stopping on the threshold. I fancied
that Vicky shuddered slightly. She should have done
so, for the room was a monstrosity. Mrs. Bailey's re-


62 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
productions of early American furnishings were
smothered in the baby-blue and pink-silk trashiness of
the Zaza and feminine-touch periods—all soiled and
disordered, all soaked with the scent of cheap perfume
and Chinese punk sticks struggling through stale ciga-
rette smoke. A dropleaf table by the window held the
xylophone with its series of graduated bars, and beside
it, on a rumple of silk that made me think of soiled
soap bubbles, sat a big doll with round blue eyes very
like Evadne's own eyes, and a pink Cupid's bow
mouth, very like Evadne's painted mouth.
"Look here," said Dot, and extended the hammers
that are used to play the instrument, "both the handles
have been snapped in two. And here"—she tipped up
the xylophone—"these bars are bent, some of them,
and scratched. Do you know what? Evadne Parnham
has done this herself, so that she could blame it on
Orilla or me. I suppose she wants a new one. Wait,
Mother," as Mrs. Bailey began a protest, "let me tell
you about it. She said just now downstairs that I had
broken the thing. Didn't she, Mr. Van Garter? Miss
Van Garter? See, Mother? Well, I supposed she had
broken it herself by accident. Nothing of the sort.
Look here, and here, and here."
Dot brought out a broken nail file, a small pair of
scissors with the tips snapped off, and a brass paper
knife bent to a half-circle. "These things were right
here, under the doll's skirts. You can see? She was
trying to bend the bars out of shape and she broke
every implement she could find, and then snapped


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 63
these wooden hammer handles and called it a day, and
came downstairs and started the fireworks, and"
"Dot," Mrs. Bailey finally managed to insert, "this
is too absurd. Why on earth should Evadne try to
damage her own xylophone?"
"I just told you: to make trouble for us and, if she
was in luck, get the price of a new one. You weren't
here, Mother. You don't know. She went upstairs to
get some cigarettes and stayed ages, while the rest of
us set out supper and did all the work. When she
finally came down she began right off accusing Orilla
of damaging this thing and talking about repair bills
and threatening to leave here. When I wouldn't let her
get away with that, she insulted me and I slapped her
—I suppose you've heard all about that—and I'm
glad of it. I'll slap her harder next time. I'm fed up
with that woman. Just simply fed and foundered."
Mrs. Bailey stood turning the small round ball of
the hammer's head in her fingers. "You make it very
hard for me, Dot," she said.
"Not I. The morons you take into this house. You
know as well as I do that Evadne Parnham isn't all
there. Where she should be is in an institution for the
feeble-minded, or the State Insane Asylum"
"That will do, daughter. You are going too far.
Sarah is one of the best friends that I've ever had in
my life, and she is your good friend, too. We know
that Evadne is childish and trying. But you and I have
agreed to put up with her, on Sarah's account."
"You've said it. 'Put up.' That's all I've done for as


64 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
long as I can remember. I've never had a home like
other girls—never been a detached girl myself. I am
the landlady's daughter, and I'm supposed to 'Yes,
ma'am' and 'No, sir,' and put up with every poo-pah
and squirrel that comes along with money in their
pockets to pay their board. Look at that Tony Char-
van. Do you suppose Patsy's mother or Marjorie's
would allow him in their homes? But here he is, in
mine, and I have to put up with him. But I won't. I'm
through. If he doesn't leave here, I will. He's not fit
to live around decent people, nor anywhere."
"Very well, Dot. I shall ask Mr. Charvan to leave,
of course. But I think you owe it to me to tell Mr.
Van Garter and Vicky, right now, that this is the first
hint you have ever given me that Mr. Charvan has not
treated you as respectfully as he should. I presume
that is what you mean? That he has been rude to
you?"
Dot hesitated. She, too, had picked up one of the
small round hammer heads and was twisting it in her
fingers. "Sorry," she said, finally, with a belying shrug.
"No—he hasn't been exactly rude, nor disrespectful, I
suppose. I shouldn't have said that about the other
girls' mothers. They wouldn't know any more than you
do that he is a cad. He hides it pretty well." She
tossed the ball to the table, where it rolled back from
the rumple of silk and over the edge and across the
floor and under the bed. And I regarded it enviously
for a moment before I turned to comply with Vicky's
suggestion that we should return to our supper.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 65
Below we found the table cleared, the dining room
tidied, and Sarah Parnham, her tight georgette cuffs
turned back a scant half-inch, washing the dishes.
Sarah Parnham was the sort of woman who had gone
through life in navy-blue georgettes with tight cuffs
washing other people's dishes, not as a martyr but as
a matter of course.
Vicky said, "Oh, Miss Parnham, that was my job.
I'm sorry. Please let me in there—I have short sleeves.
You'll get your cuffs all spattered."
"I trust," said Miss Parnham, "that I can wash a
few dishes without spattering anything. You may dry
them, if you like. Evadne wanted to, but I thought
that she should rest. She is fairly worn out"
Mrs. Bailey interrupted, brightly. "But the food,
Sarah? Where is the food? These good people wanted
to finish their suppers."
"It was ruined with candle grease, except a few
sandwiches. I put them in the ice chest. The ice cream
was sop. There is candle grease all over one of your
best lunch cloths, Helene. Will the laundry be able to
get it out, do you think? Don't dry those, Miss Van
Garter—they haven't been scalded. Take the glass-
ware first."
I advanced and offered to help Vicky and was told
to run along and stop bothering. Dot had salvaged the
sandwiches, so I helped myself to one and stood where
I was to eat it. Mrs. Bailey busied herself with the
things that ladies find to do whenever they step into
a kitchen: brushing nonexistent crumbs into cupped


66 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
hands; closing more securely drawers that are already
closed; turning upside-down things right side up, and
right-side-up things upside down. Read no disparage-
ment here. I long to go on, elucidating, philosophizing
concerning the instinctive soundness of ladies who tidy
kitchens. And I should do so, with a word of warning
about men who so much as know a tidy kitchen when
they see one, were I not trembling for my material.
Up to this point I have gone along cheerfully, secure
in my virtue of verity, faith pinned fast to the axiom
that truth is stranger than fiction. And now look at
me! Where have I landed? In the kitchen, forsooth,
perspiring and eating sandwiches when, in my role of
rich uncle, I should have written my will, long ere this,
and been found dead in the library. Whatever induced
me to think that a kitchen could take the place of a
library in a tale of crime? What maggot in my brain
allowed me to go on and on until I find myself in
the risible position of proffering an ice chest as a sub-
stitute for the cabinet containing the papers and the
jewels? The very wax to take the imprint of fingers
and keys is in the clothes hamper bound for the laun-
dry; and the laundry is owned by a Dane, and the
cook is French, and there are no crafty, enigmatical
Chinese at all. There are no Bolshevists. There is no
machine more infernal than the radio, since a machine
more infernal has never been put together. There was,
I fear, no poison in the ginger ale, no footprints in the
snow. (Caesar's ghost! No snow!) No twins, no dag-
gers, no disguises; nor, as yet—and time is passing—


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 67
has so much as a shot cracked through the house,
though one woman has shrilly screamed. I am dis-
traught, discouraged. Nothing on earth but the fact
that a murder actually was committed, and mys-
teriously, in Meriwether that night, and that later an-
other murder, by far more cruelly wicked than the
first, was done among us gives me courage to continue.
This frank facing of my own remissions makes the
necessary introduction of Oswald Fleep, at the mo-
ment, the more annoying because of all the men I have
encountered Oswald Fleep, I believe, was then heading
my list of the innocuous.
His tapping on the open passageway door might
have been made by a bunny tapping its tail, and the
"Good-evening" which preceded his entrance broke
like a bashful boy's.
He came into the kitchen, dropped his round straw
hat, scrambled to retrieve it, and said to Vicky apolo-
getically, "Warm evening. I went for a little drive to
Ocean Side after I closed the store."
"Was it cooler over there?" Vicky asked, as she
hung up the tea towel.
"No," said he. "Yes, of course. Somewhat."
Sarah Parnham, drying her puckered hands on the
towel by the sink, glanced up at the clock. "You made
good time. It is only a quarter to twelve now. Helene
and I thought of driving over there instead of going
to the pictures, but we decided that the highway would
be crowded with traffic. It was, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Oswald. "Well, no; not particularly. It


68
THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
was better than being packed in a picture house I
should think, on a night like this."
"We weren't packed," Sarah objected. "We sat in
lodge seats."
"You would," said Evadne. "I notice that Dot and
I couldn't afford lodge seats."
"We thought we couldn't," smiled Helene. "But
the instant we got inside we weakened and went back
and exchanged our seats for the lodges. Remember,
though, you girls went to two shows and we went only
to one."
"That's all we went to, and we didn't enjoy it,"
said Evadne. "Of course, if we could have afforded
lodges . . ."
Vicky's yellow flounces floated through the doorway,
and I followed gratefully. Oswald Fleep came with
me. "Has everything been all right with Vicky to-
day?" he asked, as we went through the hall. "I
mean," he explained, "she has some hard transits in
force just now. I am nothing but an amateur, of course.
I've studied only eight years now, you know. But, even
with my limited knowledge, it seemed pretty plain that
something—well, unpleasant was almost bound to
happen today."
"What about it, Vicky?" I questioned, as we joined
her in the living room. "Your astrologer here is afraid
something unpleasant may have happened to you dur-
ing the day."
The later evening had completely wiped the earlier
evening from my mind, so I wondered at the reproach-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 69
ful glance she gave me before she turned to smile at
Oswald.
"Mars is working," she said. "It has been just one
thing after another all day. Nothing serious, like the
last time Mars hit my sun. You remember, Uncle?
That hotel fire in Winnipeg. That is why I was so
frightened when the candles tipped over tonight. I've
been afraid of fire all week."
"But there is your Uranus direction," Oswald re-
minded her. "Uranus always brings the totally unex-
pected, you know."
"That reminds me," said Vicky. "I have a chart I
want you to see. The baby's father said I might ask
you about it. Uranus is the ruler, and I'm sort of
troubled about the mentality. Mercury is unaspected
—I'll run up and get it."
We both offered to fetch it for her, but she was sure
—as ladies are—that we couldn't find it, and went
tripping up to her room. I walked into the hall, in-
tending to telephone to Merkel; but as Sarah Parn-
ham, Mrs. Bailey, and Dot were following Vicky up
the stairs, I waited until their chattering should cease
before I took up the receiver. The chatter, far from
ceasing, soon became a to-do made up of soft-voiced
exclamations and the rattling of a door in the upper
hallway.
Vicky called down, then, explaining that Helene's
door seemed to be locked, and asking whether either
Oswald or I had a pass key.
"It is the most absurd thing," Mrs. Bailey apolo-


70 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
gized as, without pass keys but with advice, Oswald
and I joined her and Vicky and Sarah Parnham in
front of her door. "I can't understand it. I never lock
my door. No—it isn't stuck. It is locked, tight. I
hope," she spoke to Dot, who came just then with a
handful of keys, "that this isn't your idea of a joke
for a warm evening."
"Would it be my idea?" Dot questioned.
"Never mind," Helene answered, hastily, and began
trying the keys, one after another, in the lock. Oswald
Fleep tried them. Sarah Parnham and I tried them.
Vicky insisted that she should try and, as she met with
failure, "Let me see," she mused. "Now I had a pass
key in my hands somewhere not so long ago. Wasn't it
yours, Uncle? No? Oh, I remember. How dumb of
me! Evadne has a pass key"—and she was out in the
hall, "Hoo-hooing" at Evadne over the stair railing.
"But you did have one," we heard her call. "Don't
you remember? Decoration Day, when we went to see
that little house in Clark's Wood? You had it in your
bag."
"Of course," Sarah Parnham said, "it wouldn't take
a pass key to lock this door. Anyone could have locked
it with its own key—and hidden the thing."
"Anyone could," said Dot. "Few of us would."
Vicky returned. "Evadne says that wasn't her key.
She gave it back to the real estate man the next day."
"Says she," Dot remarked.
Helene Bailey attempted to cover this with, "We


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 71
won't bother any more. I'll sleep with Dot tonight and
get a locksmith up here in the morning."
Vicky said, "If you are afraid to sleep alone in the
annex, Helene, I could take an adjoining room."
"Thank you, dear. I shouldn't be in the least afraid,
but the rooms are all dismantled for the paper
hangers. Dot and I can manage"
"Manage is right in this heat," said Dot. "My bed
is a single one. That's why your door was locked in-
stead of mine. Of all the miserable spitework!"
"Evadne suggested that you call a policeman,"
Vicky contributed.
"Mercy, no," said Mrs. Bailey. "I wonder, though,
whether I can get a locksmith tomorrow—Sunday.
Well—we won't worry about that now."
She tried to speak lightly, but I could tell that she
was seriously disturbed, and all because she was too
kind to jump with the remainder of us into our conclu-
sions concerning the culprit. I rubbed my bald head
and produced an inspiration. I would telephone Mer-
kel. Certainly, I avowed, if asked to procure a pass
key at midnight in the Mohave Desert, Merkel would
arrive with an assortment of them.
So downstairs I went. As I picked up the quarter-
inch-thick directory I saw a key lying right there on
the telephone stand. This seemed the more remarkable
because, as I examined it, I felt sure that it was a
pass key. Whether or not it had been there when I
had stood beside the stand a few moments since, I did
not know. I thought not; and so leaped to another con-


72 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
elusion, which was that Evadne Parnham had relented
and had put the key there to be found when someone,
following her suggestion, should start to telephone
for the police. I afterwards wished that instead of in-
dulging in speculation I had gone sensibly on telephon-
ing to Merkel to bring the car for me. A proceeding
so efficient would have simplified matters to some slight
extent later on, but I did not so proceed. I gamboled up
the stairs, proclaiming aloud the details of my as-
tonishing discovery.
I was given admiration and gratitude, and I am
fond of both. The key fitted. The door was opened.
Helene Bailey pressed the light switch. "Yes, every-
thing is in order," she said. "Good-night, all, and
thank you again."
Vicky was going toward her own room. Oswald
Fleep and I had reached the head of the stairs, when
Helene Bailey's voice, low but clawing with urgency,
halted us. "Come here," she said. "Come—please!"
CHAPTER ii
Vicky spoke from behind me. "But what it is, Helene?
What is the trouble?"
"Tony Charvan has killed himself here in my room.
What shall I do?"
Dot, her arms tightly folded, was shivering as if
she had been caught out in a storm. Sarah Parnham


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 73
was standing by the window near the chaise-longue.
Her hands were pressed against her cheeks, distorting
her face. Vicky darted past me and stood beside Sarah
and glanced down. "Oh "she said, and prolonged
it softly.
I went to her. Detail gory and cadaveric is not
necessary here. The man had been shot—or, as we at
first believed, had shot himself—in the throat to the
left of the thyroid cartilage.
I led Vicky to a chair. Oswald Fleep knelt beside
the body, and was standing again shaking his head
slowly when Sarah Parnham asked, "Shouldn't we
send for the police?"
He nodded. "Shall I telephone, Mrs. Bailey?"
She appealed to me. "Must we—should we?"
"By all means," I said.
Vicky called to Oswald in the hall, "But a doctor
first. Surely, a doctor first."
"I'll tell them," he said. "But a doctor's no use
now," and went on down the stairs.
Evadne Parnham shrilled from the doorway.
"Who's sick? What's the matter?"
Dot answered without turning her head. "Tony
Charvan has killed himself here in Mother's room."
Evadne shrieked and tottered. Sarah reached her
and lifted her to the bed. Vicky ran behind the screen
in one corner of the room and came back splashing
water from the glass as she carried it to Evadne. Mrs.
Bailey spoke to me in a lowered voice:
"Mr. Van Garter, I wonder—will you help me?


76 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Someone has been in the house and cut the tele-
phone cord."
CHAPTER 12
Helene bailey shook her head and made fluttering
gestures with her hands. "No, no—that isn't possible."
Vicky took this up, speaking gently, painstakingly,
and apparently to herself. "No, that isn't possible.
Uncle and I have been here all evening. Uncle used
the telephone. No one has been in the house since
then. No one has ever been in the house who would
cut the telephone cord. No, it isn't possible."
"Well, but it is possible," Dot disputed, "because it
is cut, right in two and"—she began to whimper—"it
makes me afraid. All of a sudden I got scared. Oswald
went to get his car to go for the police, and I was all
alone down there. I thought I'd never get up the
stairs. I felt like someone was following me Yes!
There he comes now. Shut the door, somebody! Shut
the doorl"
Evadne's voice pierced Dot's with a high, shrill
shriek that dammed the blood in my hardening ar-
teries, but I managed to articulate, "Fleep coming back.
No danger at all."
Vicky sprang past me, banged the door shut, and
called, "Quick! Give me the key!"
The moment chanced to find me standing by the


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 77
desk, and just as Vicky demanded a key I saw one, lying
there on a book's torn page beneath the desk lamp.
It was most disconcerting, this habit the household
keys had formed of suddenly sprouting up under my
gaze. It distracted me immeasurably, delayed me, so
that Vicky had the door well locked with the pass key
that Helene Bailey had produced while I was still
plodding on my way across the room. I had time to
think, dully, that my find must be the missing door
key, that the door had, after all, been locked on the
inside and that we had been unjust to Evadne Parn-
harm, before Paul Keasy spoke from the hall.
"Oh, I say. Let me in, won't you?"
"No, no, no!" Evadne squealed. "Don't you do it.
He's not Paul. He's a ventriloquist, pretending. They
always are. They are just awful. They always do.
Leave the door locked. I'm fainting again ..."
I should like to say that Vicky paid no attention to
Evadne's nonsense, that she quietly and with her cus-
tomary dignity unlocked the door. I regret that truth
forces the fact that she sat limply in the chair into
which she had dropped, and argued softly, "That is
Paul. It must be Paul. Surely it is Paul."
"No, sir," Evadne insisted. "Paul never gets home
before one o'clock on Saturday night. It's only ten
minutes to one now. Ventriloquist . . . Save us, some-
body I Save us ..."
I unlocked the door and opened it. Paul Keasy stood
for a moment on the threshold, sending his eyes for a
timid, fearful excursion through the room. For some


78 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
reason no one spoke, and the only sounds were Eva-
dne's moans from the pillows, where she was hiding
her head. He stepped into the room. "Do you want the
door closed?" he asked, politely, and closed it.
Vicky said, "Oh, Paul—have you—heard?"
"Yes. I met Oswald. I don't understand, though.
I—don't get hold. I—I thought I might be having a
nightmare."
"No," said Vicky gravely, tremulously. "Over there
—by the window."
Paul went rapidly across the room and stood above
the body for a moment before he turned, with a long
shudder, and hid his eyes in the curve of his arm.
"Poor old chap!" he said, and his voice quavered,
"Good old Tonyl I "He stumbled to the chair by
the desk and buried his face in his handkerchief.
And so, at last, I am enabled to record tears shed
for Antony Charvan. I make no apology, pretend to
no shame for my own dry eyes. As for the others, his
house mates and possibly his friends, I can suggest only
that so soft an emotion as sorrow may well be crushed
for a time under a landslide of shock and terror and
dismay.
Paul's tears dampened Vicky's soft brown eyes as
she stole across to him and put a hand on his arm.
"Paul, don't. I am so sorry. We are all so sorry. There,
Paul—don't."
He covered her hand with one of his own, but he
did not lift his face from his handkerchief, and his
shoulders shook almost convulsively.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 79
Accuse me of cynicism if need be; but I knew con-
founded well that no young man in his senses would
gain speedy control of himself with Vicky standing by
to hold his hand and proffer comfort. So I went to him
and substituted my hand for hers. "Come, come," I
urged. "We are going downstairs now, all of us. Bet-
ter to get the ladies out of here. Better to be down
there, I think, when the police arrive."
He did not cover my hand with his. He shuddered
again and sighed, and stood biting his lips and blinking
the tears from his curling lashes. "I liked him," he
said. "I—loved him. He was my friend. My good
friend. If he'd let me know—told me, hinted to
me "Again he turned his head away and snatched
for his handkerchief. "But this By Jove, it's
knocked me clear out. I'm under. I—I can't, you know,
get hold of myself. It—it is too bally frightful."
Vicky said, "We'll go on, Uncle. You and Paul can
come when you are ready. Now, Evadne, dear . . ."
and by some magic that was Vicky's she managed to
get the others out of the room and into the hall.
"Sweet of her," Paul approved. "Oh, I say," he
went on. "I hate making a beastly baby of myself, you
know. But—suicide! It is preventable. Nothing I
wouldn't have done for old Tony—nothing, if I'd
known. He never hinted at trouble to me. He seemed
in high spirits this evening. ... And then to come home
and find this. Suicide!"
"There is a possibility," said I, "that it is not
suicide."


80 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
His jaw dropped; his eyes protruded over their
moist red rims. He caught hold of my arm, and for a
moment I thought the fellow was going to emulate
Evadne Parnham and swoon. "I don't get you," he
faltered, forgetful of old Oxford and its accent. "Jeze,
Van Garter—you don't mean? Fleep said, he told me
positively—suicide."
"We don't know. We can't tell. We are leaving
things untouched for the police. But the man is evi-
dently shot—there's a bullet somewhere about, Mrs.
Bailey said—and there is no revolver near the body
—nor elsewhere, that we can see."
He left me and went to look again at the body, and
stooped beside it. I warned him, "Better not touch
anything at all over there."
"Who is touching anything?" he demanded.
I was glad of the petulance. I'd had my fill of hys-
teria that evening, and to cope longer with it seemed
well beyond the confines of my patience.
"Of course," he said, as he stood straight again, "it
is wise to be cautious. But of all the cold-blooded"
Before I knew what he was up to, he had pulled the
counterpane from Mrs. Bailey's bed and had spread
it over the body. His next words proved, I thought,
that he was trying to make anger, bitterness, anything
at all take the place, at least momentarily, of his grief
—the effort showed in his strained face and tightened
shoulders. "I was taught," said he, "to show some re-
spect for those who have gone on. Old-fashioned, ap-
parently—but rather slightly decent."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 8l
"Very good teaching, too," I answered. "The ladies,
I believe, are waiting for us in the hall."
He came as far as the door, but there, again, he
balked. "It was suicide," he told me. "When they
move the body they will find the revolver under it."
"I hope so," I answered.
"You—hope sol Hope so?" He whirled away from
me, and nothing but my bald pate with its fringe of
white saved me, I am convinced, from being felled to
the floor, or, as Vicky would say, "smacked down."
"Just a moment," said I. "You did not get my mean-
ing."
"I think that I did. I trust not." It was a sneer, in-
sulting, tossed over his shoulder like a glove as he
went into the hall. But audacious old Cadwallader
trotted right along and followed after him.
CHAPTER 13
It has been perhaps not entirely my good fortune to
have for an acquaintance a woman whose vocation
used to be the writing of crime and mystery tales. It
was she to whom I went for advice when the idea of
publishing the story of the Meriwether murders first
occurred to me. Her interest was faint; her dubiety,
marked. Fearing, I presume, that I should set this lack
of enthusiasm down to professional jealousy she hast-


82 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
ened to explain. (She had a conscience, that woman,
though her feeling for humor was feeble.)
"The hardest part of that sort of writing," said
she, "is to be fair. By this I mean that you must be
as fair as you think you can be, without spilling the
beans all over the place, and then go right along and
be much more fair than that. Point to each of your
clues at least three times. Underline them. Explain
your solution carefully and then explain it more care-
fully again. Of course, since you have a true story,
genuine material, and real persons, it may be easier;
but don't keep any secrets—point, emphasize, and
insist."
Since then I have learned that she has given up
writing crime fiction. Her nurse explained it to me.
The woman, the nurse said, had on a Tuesday received
another letter about her novel, Footprints. It was the
seventy-third she had received asking who had com-
mitted the murder, and the thirty-second that had
inquired how the character she named as guilty could
have fired the shot from behind a locked bedroom door
far down the hall.
They resuscitated her, in time, and though weak
she seemed only a trifle feverish. But the following
day, Wednesday, my acquaintance received another
letter, concerning another of her productions, from a
girl named U. Teddy Goings. The letter concluded:
"/ can always guess any good mystery right away
by anyhow the third chapter. But I don't see how


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 83
anybody could guess this one when you had the girl
strangled dead on page 61 and again on page 85. No
spooks for mine next time, please. Ha! Ha! Better
luck next time and no cheating and whispering.
"Yours,
"U. Teddy Goings."
In the interests, then, of fair play and, incidentally,
of my own health and reason, I have decided here to
accept the unfortunate woman's advice and point,
emphasize, and underline. I shall have, I think, just
about time to do so while we are waiting in the living
room for the police to arrive.
I was trembling then, inwardly, for many reasons.
I tremble at this moment for the poor shreds of mys-
tery that may remain when I have completed my re-
capitulations, because it seems to me that even now the
thing is evident with the culprit standing directly in
the center of the stage played on by the white light
of the calcium.
I shall not, of course, review in detail. I have done
the detail, drudgingly. My object now is to remove
the detail, for your ease, leaving only the salient points
which may—or may not—be necessary for the solution
of the mystery.
Early in the narrative Vicky confesses point-blank
to the murder and demands that Miss MacDonald's
engagement be canceled. Soon after, Evadne Parnham
declares that she does not wish to find the murderer,
that she hopes he escapes. An alarming statement


84 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
which, perhaps, causes her stepdaughter to plead for
cooperation in the establishment of Evadne's complete
innocence.
Shortly after this a hint, previously given, that the
murderer will be discovered by means of a small round
object is repeated—and objects small and round are
afterwards brought to your attention. Use them or not,
as you like—but there they are, and do not forget the
hot weather.
Further along a suggestion is made that Dot Bailey
was in love with Tony Charvan and that her love was
not reciprocated. In this connection we find that he
had failed to keep an engagement with her during the
afternoon as, later, he failed to keep an engagement
with Vicky for the evening. And we might well ask
why he failed to keep these engagements, two within a
few hours; and what ailed the man in so far as engage-
ments with ladies were concerned?
That he was neither ill nor incapacitated we know
by the fact that he had been at home as usual for
dinner. Later, and here we have a definite time given
—the last few minutes between eight thirty and eight
forty-five that evening—we hear him singing strongly
over the radio. That Paul Keasy is right there with
him, at this time, we know because we hear Paul play-
ing the accompaniments on the piano and, later, talking
to Tony and carrying on the usual duties of a radio
announcer.
As Paul's voice dies away we unfortunately hear
Vicky threatening to kill Tony Charvan this very


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 85
night; and soon we point to her—regretfully we point
—sitting staring at the front door with a murderous
carving knife in her hands. For a moment, then, Cad-
wallader comes into his own, wrenches the knife from
his niece's small fingers and tosses it out into the yard.
Knives, as a rule, aren't introduced or tossed about
in the midst of crime for no reason whatsoever.
Next we find Vicky in tears—we had hoped of re-
pentance. She and I, during the tear-shedding, were
seated on a davenport that did not command a view
of the front door or of the stairway.
This distressing scene gives way to a more frivolous
one—Vicky powdering her nose and going upstairs to
wash her face and change her dress. Again a definite
time is given—ten minutes past nine o'clock. Since the
possibilities of what she might have done, besides what
she seemed to do, during this interval above stairs
have been mentioned, I need not go into them again
here, but can go straight along to the telephone and
instructions to Merkel concerning supper. The tele-
phoning is more important than the supper, because it
shows that after nine o'clock and at close to ten o'clock
the telephone cord had not been cut.
Directly after telephoning I go up to Vicky's bath-
room and, just before stepping into her room, I hear a
pounding or knocking sound on what I judge is the
kitchen door downstairs. Vicky has gone, you will re-
member, to put her car into the garge. A few more
paragraphs get me downstairs again and set the time


86 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
exactly at one second past ten o'clock, with Paul Keasy
announcing it over the radio.
I do not insist that you shall, but if you like you
may consider those ten, twelve, perhaps even fifteen
minutes when I was upstairs, and the front door was
open, and Vicky was outside putting her car up for the
night. I mentioned, fairly, that I did not latch the
screen door. Ah, well—Vicky said that I could not
keep a secret, so I shall confess that I was trying here
to skip that confounded screen door. As a matter of
honesty, it was unlatched until some time after Merkel
arrived with the food; so that anyone with a key to the
front door could have come in, up to that time at least,
exactly as Dot Bailey and Evadne Parnham came in.
Evadne went upstairs and took Dot's hat and hand-
bag with her—the hat and handbag have nothing to do
with anything—and came down and joined Vicky and
me on the porch, whither we had gone because Dot
had turned on the radio in the living room. I regret
that I cannot say how long we three were there on
the porch while Dot, and the radio, were in the house.
A shorter time, I think, than it seemed. (You will
recall that Evadne Parnham told us the entire plot of
the picture she and Dot had seen that evening.)
However, Merkel eventually came and stopped the
car at what I at first thought was an unnecessarily long
distance from the house. It occurs to me, here, that
perhaps Merkel, except for his delightful voice and
excellent training, has been inadequately described. He
was a solid, circular person with a spade-shaped chin


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 87
and the deeply set frowning eyes that seem always to
go with chins of the sort. On the homely side, in so
far as personal attractiveness was concerned, but as
conventional as a wedding and as respectable as a
funeral. He had no criminal record. (For that matter,
none of us had a criminal record; commendable and
unamazing, perhaps, since most of the persons one
meets are devoid of criminal records; but, neverthe-
less, a circumstance that makes Actionizing the affair
peculiarly difficult.) His references reeked of the
peerage.
Following Vicky, who led the way, and Merkel, who
carried the baskets, I went with Evadne Parnham into
the kitchen. Merkel put the baskets on the table and
quitted the kitchen by the back door. Had we paused
to listen we might have heard the car being turned
about and driven away, but Dot came in just then,
and none of us thought of pausing to listen.
Evadne Parnham again went upstairs, this time to
procure some cigarettes. Vicky vanished into the front
of the house for an instant, but returned at once and
we directed our activities toward getting supper on the
table. Dot watched us. At length, when we had the
table set with appointments and repast, Vicky turned
off the electric lights and lighted some candles. I
sneaked to silence the radio and heard, before I did so,
Paul Keasy's voice informing his audience that it was
one minute past eleven o'clock.
We have next Evadne coming down the back stair-
way and into the candle-lit room smoking her ciga-


88 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
rette; the complaint about the xylophone; the taunt, if
such it was and such it seemed to be, of tissue and car-
bon papers, and the regrettable sight and sound of a
lady having her face slapped.
The candles go out. Dot runs away. Evadne screams
and kicks my shins, evincing a nature capable of vio-
lence. Vicky tries to soothe her. The candles smoke
and smell in the semidarkness. Sarah Parnham and
Mrs. Bailey arrive, coming through from the kitchen,
and are concerned and disturbed at the state of affairs
confronting them.
As you have guessed, since the body was found up-
stairs the persons who were upstairs, or who might
have been upstairs, during the evening should be given
passing consideration. I am bound to admit that there
has been a redundance of ascensions and decensions
of back and front stairways, and that slight rifacimento
could easily turn this narrative into an architectural
argumentation for one-story dwellings. However, Dot
had gone upstairs, and Vicky, Mrs. Bailey, and I did
go up and find her, not in her own room, but in Evadne
Parnham's room.
You have noticed in this connection the damaged
xylophone, the broken nail file and scissors, the bent
paper knife. It is fortunate that there was a paper
knife, since any tale of crime is unspiced without one.
It is not fortunate that it was of soft brass, given away
at Christmas as an advertisement for an insurance
company, and that it was as harmless as a baby's
rattle and less entertaining.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 89
Up we were, and down again we needs must go into
the domestic details of dish-washing and kitchen-tidy-
ing while we wait the embarrassed entrance of Oswald
Fleep, who came through the passageway from the
garage. I have explained the passageway, and have
mentioned that it was used by all the car owners of
Meriwether. But conscience, backed by cowardice as I
think of my unfortunate acquaintance now deprived of
liberty, insists that more must be told.
At the risk then of ruining my story at this point
I am forced to admit that, while Merkel's stopping
the car at a distance from the house had nothing in
any way to do with the crime, there is a catch in con-
nection with that passageway from the garage to the
house. You caught it long ago? Bless my soul, I
thought as much. Protruding as it did, so obviously,
it could not well escape your notice. And if as I fear
the murderer, impaled, as it were, on this protrusion,
is dangling plainly and painfully before your eyes, I
can but go along asking for your pity henceforward,
dreading your blame.
Thus far I have eschewed questioning; but now with
the fat in the fire, I may as well adopt it. Did or did
not Oswald Fleep act in any way peculiarly when he
came into the kitchen? Did you notice the exact time
—fifteen minutes to twelve—again given? What was
the knocking I heard on the kitchen door? Who turned
on the radio while I was upstairs? Did the same hand
close the front door? Why had Vicky taken longer
than usual to put her car in the garage? Is there


90 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
adumbration sinister in the astrological conversation
that ensued before I went into the hall to use the tele-
phone? Had the telephone cord been cut, as I stood
there waiting on account of my slight deafness for
silence, should I have noticed it? Perhaps I might
be expected to answer this myself. All I can say is, con-
found it if I know.
Who locked Helene Bailey's bedroom door? Why?
Was the pass key I found on the telephone stand the
key that had been used to lock it? The door key was
found inside the room on the book's torn page, was it
not? Had Anthony Charvan locked himself in the
room with this key? Is there significance in the fact
that Dot went to procure other keys? That Vicky
mentioned Evadne's having a pass key some months
ago ? And, speaking of Evadne, did you notice that she
remained below stairs while the others of us were
above trying to open Mrs. Bailey's door? Evadne
Parnham had opportunity during this time alone down
there to cut the telephone cord. But did she do so?
And why?
Though it disturbs the sequence possibly I should
say here that Mrs. Bailey, of the three ladies who
went together into her room that evening, was the first
to see the body. She stepped on the bullet and tottered
and it rolled from under her foot. She went to dis-
cover what it was and saw the body and said, "But
dear me! What's that?"
Her first impression (she told me this the following
morning) was that a dummy had been put there as a


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 91
cruel continuation of the attempted jest of the locked
door. It was Dot, poor child, who stooped and touched
one of the hands and answered, "Mother! He's dead.
He has killed himself."
Why did we all assume at once that he was a
suicide? I do not know. Perhaps it was because our
middle-class minds could compass suicide, tragic and
confusing as it is, more readily than they could con-
ceive of murder. Was Evadne Parnham's mind, then,
since it was she who first questioned our theory of
suicide, the superior mind among us? So direct a ques-
tion deserves a direct answer. Evadne Parnham's mind
was not superior to any one of our minds, or to any
other mind that I can now recall encountering.
It may be regrettable, though, that Oswald Fleep,
before he went for police aid, had neither heard the
question, "How do you know it is suicide?" nor noticed
the empty space between the right hand and the win-
dow—the space where the weapon should have been,
and was not.
I paused here in my labors of writing this narra-
tive to telephone and inquire as to the condition of
my acquaintance's health. I was told that a complete
recovery was scarcely hoped for, and I set the tele-
phone aside quietly and took counsel with myself.
"What," thought I, "is one small mystery, more or
less, in a publishing world full of mysteries? I will
tell about the print on the wrist watch."
I did not see this imprint, then or ever. Until Lynn
MacDonald discovered it, it went unnoticed. Why,


92 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
then, I reasoned, should I present it to my readers?
I further reasoned, perhaps speciously, that since the
print was not a fingerprint, but, in the photograph
of it which I saw, a mere blotchy, meaningless thing,
my giving it here or elsewhere in the tale might bring
forth accusations of intent, deliberate, to confuse. This
second opinion of mine was strengthened when, upon
application to Satoria-by-the-Bay's police system for
permission to reproduce the photograph, I met with
illy-concealed derision. The photograph, I was in-
formed, had no reference value, had not been filed,
had been destroyed.
A description of it, a small circle minutely rayed—
like a child's half-hearted drawing of the sun, or like
a small bug with queer legs on a background of fine
parallel lines—will not, I fear, be helpful. Reluctantly,
diffidently, I here present my own attempted sketch
of the thing, drawn from memory.

Yes, that looks very much like the photograph.
Without vanity, I think that I may say that, because
of its clearness, it looks more like the thing it is in-
tended to represent than did the photograph which
was blurred. On it you may notice another small round
object, before we go along to Paul Keasy's coming
up the stairs, knocking on the door.
Evadne Parnham's accusation that he was a mur-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 93
derous ventriloquist has been refuted. Her statement
that he had come home earlier than was his wont has
not been protested, though later the fact shall be ex-
plained. Her loquacity, since she was supposedly
swooning on the bed, may be questioned. Here I am
forced into a statement which I am unable to confirm
with proof. A surmise, then, and not an affirmation
is that all the while her swoons were feigned and de-
ceived no one there present except poor, deluded
Sarah Parnham.
The door is opened. Paul hesitates, enters, and we
see unwillingly his grief (grief, of all the emotions,
should be allowed the dignity of privacy) and fat
old Cadwallader worms into the picture and denies Mr.
Keasy his comforter. We see grief merge, as sincere
grief often and piteously does merge, close to the
bitter borders of remorse. We regard his reverent
though impulsive gesture as he covers the body of his
friend with the counterpane. We get a thumbnail pic-
ture of his backgrounds, and they are commendable—
"I was taught to show respect for those who have
gone on." And soon, with relief, we watch his sorrow
being warmed, if not vanquished, by anger. His eulo-
gies waned, he waxed insulting, he went down the
stairs and I went with him, and there we waited, a
scared and sorry company, until Oswald Fleep re-
turned with one police officer and a stretcher.


94
THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
CHAPTER 14
I CaN find no term in modern usage to fit the case, but
in the nice 'nineties we should have called him a "but-
tinsky." The police ambulance, driven by the one of-
ficer, was waiting in the driveway. The officer, with
Oswald Fleep as an aid, was going about his business
of removing the chaise-longue to another part of the
room and spreading the stretcher on the floor in its
place, when corpulent Cadwallader—the only one of
the group who had not the good taste to stay below
stairs—piped up and suggested that the theory of
suicide was not as yet entirely substantiated.
The officer's reply took forcible form as an accusa-
tion of falsehood against mild little Oswald Fleep, and
I hastened to explain that, when Mr. Fleep had left
the house, we had all believed that the wound was self-
inflicted.
"Yeah? How come you changed your minds about
it?"
I mentioned bashfully and, I hope, fortuitously,
that there seemed to be no weapon about.
"Weepon?" he corrected, and repeated, and rubbed
the back of his head and looked around him with be-
wilderment in his sky-blue eyes, and outlined his
position.
"Of course," said he, "if this is just an ordinary
croak I could go right ahead and take him off you
folks's hands. But if it is mur-r-der" (the burring "r's"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 95
made the word jarringly sinister) "I'd have to get
some of the other boys up here. Doc Stiles—he's the
coroner—should of come with me, but he's gone on
a little fishing trip for a few days with his wife. He
made me a deputy, kind of—but I wouldn't want to
take the responsibility for a mur-r-der."
"Someone has suggested," said I, "that he may have
fallen on the revolver. Mr. Charvan, that is," I hastily
explained, in answer to the officer's blank, unhappy
gaze.
"Yeah, I know," he answered, and sat down on the
chaise-longue and rubbed and rubbed the back of his
head and produced, "Nobody has removed the wee-
pon, have they?"
I said emphatically that no one had done so.
He went deep down into the silence again and strug-
gled up with an idea. "I'll tell you what, we'll just have
a look around. You see, I kind of hate to roust the
boys out this time in the morning if it is just an or-
dinary croak. Make 'em sore. We'll look easy, with-
out disturbing anything, and if he's slung the weepon
somewheres or fell on it, why, I can go right ahead
with no more fuss."
"We'll not," he advised a few moments later as he
and I gently replaced the stiffening body on the floor,
"be mentioning about conducting this private search—
fruitless, as the saying goes—to the boys when they
come. Least said soonest mended. Where's the
phone?"
I suppose that the reason neither Oswald Fleep nor


96 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
I informed him concerning the uselessness of the tele-
phone was, again, that the enormity of the other events
had driven this seeming triviality from our minds. This
was a pity, because not until the officer encountered the
cut cord, which he appeared to regard as an April-
fool fantasy arranged by the household for his un-
doing, did he lose his temper and his favor for us.
Until then we had been, if not friends, at least fellows
in the affair.
His remarks at this point, like the Lady Crowin-
shank's, are better unrepeated. At his urgent bidding
Oswald Fleep, thoroughly if impiously instructed,
again departed, seeking aid and bearing messages.
The officer sat himself down on the stairs in the
hall. From his position he glared at us, through long
thick silences, to send us suddenly shivering from the
impact of an insinuation, swiftly hurled, "Took your
time about calling the police, didn't you?" or to set us
trembling before the interpretation of a proverb ora-
cular, "There's a mote in it, said the man when he
swallered the dish rag."
How long we endured this, or why we endured it at
all, can I say, or how long we might have endured it
shall I prophesy, had not Vicky come to our rescue.
She walked through the room and into the hall and
peered up through the banister rails at the lion in
his cage.
"I think," said she, disarmingly gentle, flatteringly
diffident, "that we should all be introduced. I am


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 97
Miss Van Garter, and this gentleman"—as usual I
was at hand—"is my uncle, Mr. Van Garter."
"Which Van Garter?" inquired the officer, with
some softening and much skepticism.
"I think," Vicky modestly allowed a margin of
doubt, "the Mr. Van Garter. That is, he is Mr. Cad-
wallader Van Garter, you know."
The officer stood, descended, and my hand all but
melted in his grasp and my own salutations were con-
sumed by his. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Van Garter.
I have to ask you to excuse me a thousand times. I
didn't catch the name when that guy introduced us
upstairs. Sure am pleased to meet you. Campbell is the
name, Sergeant Campbell. Pleasure's all mine."
I had, I'll confess, been a bit abashed at Campbell's
democratic disregard of my name when Oswald Fleep
had, as I thought successfully, conveyed it to his out-
spread ears in the upper hall. At a saner time I trust
I should have admired his indifference to the weight
of the nine letters; but at that time his unconcern had
hurt my feelings, chilled me, left me lonesome and
astray. Ah, but it was good to come home again; to
bask in the warmth of recognition, to curl my toes
before the little fires of little fame, to purr on the
hearthstone of petty publicities I
Ah, but it was better, if that be possible, to stand
beneath his sheltering wing and hear him roll right
royally—no more silly democracy now—the "r's" in
Cadwallader Van Garter's name as he pronounced it
to Lieutenant Wirt and the Messrs. Goldberger and


98 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Shautz, collected from various parts of the small slum-
bering town and conveyed to us, an hour after his
second departure, by Oswald Fleep.
CHAPTER 15
Preference I had, and preference was given to me.
Indeed, until the lieutenant's "Ahm" set me again
apart, leaving me neither fish nor fowl—though
tainted perhaps with the good red herring which I
might have had in my pocket—I was the one sheep
and Vicky the one lamb in the flock of poor, miserable
goats.
So, again, it came about that I assisted in the ex-
amination of Helene Bailey's room. The bullet was
recovered from the floor and adjudged by Inspector
Shautz to have been fired from a pistol of 38 caliber—
to have gone straight into the brain and through it,
making the exit wound at the top of the head. The
rigidity of the body caused the officers to decide, ten-
tatively, that death must have occurred at least five
hours ago. My watch, when this opinion was given,
stood at half-past three in the morning. However,
since they united in affirming their own and all others'
inexpertness in judging time from body rigidity, and
declared that this case was further complicated be-
cause of the heat of the evening, and differed as to
whether heat retarded or hastened action, I made little


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 99
of their opinions (I have since informed myself on
this matter: heat and cold hasten and retard, respec-
tively, the processes of rigor mortis), but went wan-
dering about the room in search of I know not what,
and found one clue of importance.
This was the page torn from the book that I have
mentioned seeing beneath the key on the desk. A poem
of some beauty was printed upon it. I sincerely regret
that copyright restrictions forbid my quoting the
stanzas here. It was one of Leonora Speyer's, entitled,
Protest in Passing. Done in the first person, supposedly
by someone either contemplating suicide or confident
of approaching death, it likened the body to a house
of which he, the writer, was weary; it spoke of "safe,
swift flight," and ended, "I go—but pause upon the
threshold's rust, To shake from off my feet my own
dead dust." Typed in blue letter, beneath this last
line, were the words: "Forgive me. There was no
other way "And, below, in pencil, written in
large bold letters, though by a hand that trembled,
was the signature, "Antony Charvan."
"Huh," said Mr. Goldberger. "Ugh," said Mr.
Shautz. "Ahm," said Lieutenant Wirt, when each had
perused the page. Sergeant Campbell, alone, expressed
himself more definitely: "Sure looks like suicide," said
he. "But funny thing for a man to kill himself because
he didn't like his rooming house. Couldn't he move?"
Mr. Goldberger paused here in his activity of turn-
ing and returning the key (the one I had found in the
room and given to him) in the lock to make sure that


IOO THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
it would work (it would) and explained to Sergeant
Campbell that the theory of suicide, despite the poem
and the signature, was untenable since no weapon
could be found in the room.
Sergeant Campbell retorted that the grounds as yet
had not been searched.
Mr. Goldberger admitted this; said that the search
would soon be under way. He pointed, however, to the
window with its latched screen and indulged in sar-
casm, Socratic, as he asked the sergeant if he thought
that the guy had shot himself and then thrown his
rod through that; or, perhaps, unlatched the screen,
thrown the rod, and closed and latched the screen
again?
Sergeant Campbell reverted to his original theory
of someone's coming into the room, after the suicide,
and removing the weepon.
Mr. Goldberger demanded both precedent and rea-
son for such an action. Sergeant Campbell—the Scots
are an imaginative people—said that there might be
reasons connected with insurance, or the honor of the
deceased, or the feelings of the bereaved.
"Yeah?" said Mr. Goldberger. "Well, that cuts no
ice."
"Why," Sergeant Campbell asked, "the hell don't
it?"
"Never mind, you guys," Lieutenant Wirt inter-
vened. "We got to get busy around here—got to be
doing something."
Mr. Shautz spoke. "What?" said Mr. Shautz.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 101
"Well," said Lieutenant Wirt, "something."
And so it was borne in upon me again, and forcibly,
that governmental bodies, municipal and national, and
including the arms of the law, are not large, strong
abstractions, are small units made up of human mole-
cules. If this particular unit functioned even more
weakly and inadequately than imagination willingly ac-
cepts, I think the reasons may readily be given. First,
the impromptu homicide squad was sadly hampered
and harassed by the absence of the coroner, gone
a-fishing. Second, Satoria-by-the-Bay, though not an
exceedingly moral village, was accustomed to take its
crime in crasser forms—speakeasy and waterfront
brawls—and for the nuances of crime so high-toned—
"swanky" is now, I think, in better form—the mental-
ities and muscles of these gentlemen were meagerly
equipped. Third, and at the risk of subverting mod-
esty, I am bound to admit that to a man the authorities
went down under the burden of etiquette that they
seemed to think the nine letters imposed. Whether it
was the person who had dined with President Roose-
velt (one and all they asked for intimate details of
these meals), the two-for-a-cent philanthropist, the
meddler in politics, or the millionaire that awed them
into respectiful desuetude, I have never known. They
stood back and waited for Cadwallader to lead on,
and Cadwallader had no place he wished to go or
wished to lead them.
My one definite request, that the body be removed
from the house, they were unable to grant because


102 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
the jack salmon were running and biting in the Necani-
cum River, and because Sergeant Campbell's con-
science would not allow his semiformal deputation
to compass so serious an affair.
In the face of their own social amenities I could
not well request, even after an hour or more had
elapsed, that they remove their own bodies from the
house, and they did not do so. They arrived before
three o'clock and stayed till past dawn. A minute re-
countal of the activities and conversations of these
hours would be impossibly tedious. Much—instance
the Roosevelt menus—was irrelevant. I shall try to
indicate as briefly as possible only assured accomplish-
ment and definite decisions.
Following Lieutenant Wirt's avowal that something
must be done it was proposed that a search be made
of the house. What, or whom, they hoped to find by
searching I do not know; nor, I think, did they know,
but searching indicated vigilance.
Leaving Mrs. Bailey's room, which had been thor-
oughly inspected during the hunt for the weapon, we
went down the hall to Antony Charvan's room and, as
we opened the door, the advisability of search seemed
justified.
The place was in odd disorder; a sort of partial dis-
order which, even to my untrained eye, suggested
that someone had begun an investigation there and
had, for some unknown reason, forsaken the job be-
fore it was finished.
The lid of the desk was closed, but the drawer


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY IO3
beneath it was open to the last inch, and its contents
had been transferred to the seat of the desk chair.
One of the drawers of the chiffonier was open and
empty, with its collar bag and balls of hosiery on the
bed close by. The twin drawer was also open, but its
gloves, scarfs, and handkerchiefs were merely tossed
about within it. A shoe box, which served for a foot-
stool when closed, had been overturned on the floor
and shoes and slippers, precisely mated, were beside
it. Paradoxically, and with apologies therefore, it was
the most orderly disorder that could well be conceived.
One felt certain that, but for interruption, the in-
truder would not have quitted the room until every-
thing had been put in place again.
Mr. Shautz advanced the opinion that whoever had
been hunting for something in the room had found
it without much effort and had ceased activities.
I assumed the role of Sherlock Holmes and argued.
"No," said I. "Interruption I am sure accounts for
our finding the room as it is. Some man, who thought
he had ample time at his disposal, came here to look
for something. Whether or not he found what he was
after we do not know. But I am certain that he was
forced to leave the room before he was ready to do
so.
I was agreed with, profusely, though Mr. Shautz
asked why I had said "man," and mentioned that for
some reason, damn if he knew why, the thing looked
like a woman's work to him.
I was charmed at acquiring a Watson. "Any


104 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
woman," I asserted, "with the bent for neatness that
this person apparently had, would replace the things
she disturbed as she went along. She would do so in-
stinctively. Those shoes and slippers—back they would
go into the box and down would come the lid with two
motions. But even the tidiest man would do as this
fellow had done: go right along until he found what
he was after and plan to restore order then and all at
one time."
Again they agreed with me; nor did they make such
zaneys of themselves by doing so. I still think that
this theory of mine was sound, though I was mistaken
somewhat in my original premise.
Aside from the disorder, the room afforded nothing
that the detectives thought worthy of regarding as a
clue. Fingerprints were discussed, and Mr. Goldberger
went about assiduously powdering many spots on the
furniture, though he fitted his black box of camera
down only occasionally for a photograph. I think that
he was repeatedly discouraged by Mr. Shautz's mono-
logue to the effect that his activities in this direction
were extravagant and worse than useless.
The desk, with its lid opened, proved merely that
if Mr. Charvan had personal letters or papers of any
sort he kept them elsewhere. Besides the Meriwether
stationery, sparingly furnished by Mrs. Bailey, there
were laundry lists, local bills—most of them unre-
ceipted—a small bunch of canceled checks from the
Satoria bank, a few advertising circulars, and nothing
else except the usual desk equipments. The contents


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 105
of the desk drawer, neatly placed on the chair, con-
sisted of catalogues from music houses, several motion
picture magazines, a pad of telegram blanks, an un-
opened deck of cards, a small dictionary, some folded
paper saved from packages, and a little ball of knotted
twine.
Analytically, something of worth might be done
from this desk material with the playing of sidelights
on the man's character and past environment; but,
since the detectives were right when they thought that
none of these things would aid in solving the mystery,
it may be as well to dally no longer with them but to
go along to Sarah Parnham's room, maidenly, austere,
achieving a sort of artistry, perhaps, by means of its
white straight-lined simplicity, but completely dull.
That it was not without some personality, however,
is attested by the fact that it put us all on our tiptoes,
thereby making us avowed intruders.
In Evadne Parnham's room we went down on our
heels again. As I have indicated, it was not a sanctum
in which a man would feel either a need of going softly
or a desire to remain. The broken nail file, the chipped
scissors, the bent paper knife were on the silk scarf
where Dot Bailey had tossed them after showing them
to us. They were examined, as were the broken ham-
mers—I found the ball under the bed—and, despite
the unanimous verdict that, though somebody had been
tinkering with the xylophone, there would seem to be
no connection here with the murder, Mr. Goldberger
sealed the articles in envelopes and dropped them into


106 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
his pocket. The doll, with her glassy blue stare, was
the recipient of no deep respect, though her tawdry
skirts were carefully smoothed again by Sergeant
Campbell's heavy hands before we went across the
hall to Dot Bailey's room.
It was a young room, and a used room, and there-
fore in spite of a few movements toward the more
rowdy of the modernistic gewgaws, it was refreshing
and attractive. There was a large table, littered with
drawing materials; and a drawing board stood on an
easel near the window. Dot had aspirations, not fully
developed as yet into ambitions, for an artistic career.
She had recently taken a third prize in an amateurs'
poster contest, and the original drawing—a big, bla-
tant thing of spires in front of a moon—was fastened
with small round thumbtacks to the door. To the
right of the door was a card table, in lieu of a desk,
and on it a portable typewriter stood open and ready
for use.
I should have mentioned before this that Mr. Gold-
berger had not gone with us into Dot's room. At the
door he had seemed to remember some task undone,
some spot, perhaps the doll's nose, left unpowdered,
and had departed from us without explanation. I have
never learned the object of this short secret quest of
his, so I cannot divulge it here.
He rejoined us while Mr. Shautz, who had inserted
a sheet of paper into the typewriter and had clicked
out with two fingers, "Forgive me. There was no
other way," was giving the results of his efforts to


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 107
us with a small show of triumph: "Same machine, all
right. Same ribbon. Same mugged Vs.'"
Mr. Goldberger advanced, demanding explana-
tions as he came; and, upon receiving explanations,
"What the hell!" said he. "That was one hot move,
that was. Look at them glass keys. Ideal for prints.
Ideal. And here you've went and smeared your prints
all over 'em. Cheese I I"
Cadwallader interposed, removing the olive branch
from between his teeth in order to speak, peering
anxiously at the small round glass keys. "But the
fingerprints would have been Mr. Charvan's, would
they not? He came in here and used this machine, it
seems."
"Sure," agreed Mr. Goldberger, politely. "Sure.
Maybe he did. Or maybe he didn't. If he wanted to
write a note, why would he come in here to set down
half a dozen words when he had to take a pencil to
sign 'em anyway?"
Sergeant Campbell rubbed the back of his head and
countered, "Yeah, but why would anybody else do
that, either?"
"Make it look like suicide. Forge the signature."
"And then," Mr. Shautz embroidered inquiry with
innocence, "take the rod away with 'em where it
couldn't be found high nor low?"
"Ain't it just barely possible," asked Mr. Gold-
berger, saddened but patient, "that the same party
who wrote the note didn't take the gun away, if it
was took? Anyhow, if he did write the note here him-


108 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
self, we'd of liked to had his prints to prove it,
wouldn't we?"
"What I think," confided Sergeant Campbell, "is
that the guy killed himself all right and that some-
body removed the weepon afterwards."
The Scots are an imaginative people, and a tenacious
people as well.
CHAPTER 16
Oswald fleep's room with its mounted charts and
their transiting planets thumbtacking their ways
around the zodiac, his celluloid aspectarians, his pa-
pers scribbled with symbols, his globes, and other
starry paraphernalia impressed Mr. Goldberger at
once as a suitable place for the brewing of crime. He
admitted, forthrightly, that all this here monkey busi-
ness looked like this now old voodoo and Hindu jinx
stuff to him and, had he followed his impulses, he
would, I think, have transported a large portion of the
room's contents along with Oswald himself to the police
station for intensive examination and inquiry. It was, I
am sure, only my repeated and insistent linking of
astrology with astronomy—I fear no "Road Closed"
sign from St. Peter for this—that defeated his reso-
lution. He quitted the room with lingering backward
glances that clearly bespoke his intentions of future
personal and more private investigations therein.
The remaining rooms, Vicky's and Paul Keasy's,


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 109
though they did yield a small amount of trivial booty
to Mr. Goldberger, gave nothing that was of subse-
quent importance. So, while the rough-looking Stillson
wrench found on one of Vicky's occasional tables (in
some way, romantic or revengeful, it must have had
to do with Nicky), and the broken dictaphone in Paul
Keasy's room (a bargain that he had picked up and
hoped to have repaired for use in order to criticize his
accents), offer almost irresistible temptations to the
chronicler they would later confront his craftsmanship
with the charge of false clues, and shall have to be
disregarded.
In the attic we found, chiefly, the happy Orilla—
soundly asleep, she said, until we had awakened her.
She had come into the house through the kitchen door-
way sometime before midnight, she guessed, though
this she deemed nobody's business, had gone up the
back stairs, and up the attic stairs, and hence to bed.
Work was her portion; sleep was her due; hot was
her tongue with regard to intrusions intolerable. Ex-
planations had no place there; she would traffic neither
with the giving nor the taking of them: so we, a group
of strongly silenced red-faced men, returned to the
second hall and wended our ways into Helene Bailey's
room.
It was here that Lieutenant Wirt put the matter of
our distress and seeming futility into a nutshell. "The
trouble is," affirmed Lieutenant Wirt, "we don't know
where we're at."
No one said him nay, and he continued, singling


IIO THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
out Mr. Goldberger, who was prowling around the
room, as the object of his address. "Lay off, Goldy,"
he urged, nervously. "What the hell's the good of
powdering prints when we ain't even sure it's a mur-
der yet or what?"
"Prints," Mr. Goldberger rebuked, "are in the
crime detection department," and another silence fell,
and was lifted at last by Mr. Shautz. "Funny about
the weapon," said Mr. Shautz.
Sergeant Campbell remarked, "It'ud be here if
somebody hadn't taken it away," and rubbed the back
of his head. •
"I was thinking," said Mr. Shautz, and yawned,
"that we'd better be getting out and searching the
grounds."
"Yeah? Sure," spake Mr. Goldberger. "Chase out
before it's light, and tromp around and get any prints
we might find all smeared up with ours. That'ud be
your idea all right. Nothing that's out there's going
to run off before sunrise, is it? We can't do nothing
anyway until Doc shows up."
Mr. Shautz intimated that there might be a possi-
bility of finding something other than either footprints
or fingerprints in the yard.
"Yeah? What?"—from Mr. Goldberger.
"The weepon," said Sergeant Campbell.
"Or the murderer, if there is one," said Mr. Gold-
berger, "setting with his knitting under a tree."
"What you guys can't seem to get into your heads,"
complained Sergeant Campbell, "is that piece of poetry


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY III
and forgive me there's no other way. If that ain't
suicide I'll eat my shirt, and don't you forget it."
"I ain't forgetting nothing," denied Mr. Shautz.
"And if that signature ain't forged I'll remember your
shirt, special, and eat it and mine, too, for breakfast."
"Just like I said," declared Lieutenant Wirt. "We
don't know where we're at." He sighed, took a pad-
lock and some brads from his pocket and handed
them to Sergeant Campbell. "Guess you might as well
put this on the door, anyway. Goldy's got the tools.
He'll help you."
"Should of been put on there long ago," avouched
Mr. Shautz.
"What's biting you?" inquired the lieutenant. "No-
body could of come in here while we was right here,
could they?"
"We was in the attic," said Mr. Shautz.
Mr. Goldberger returned from the hall, whither he
had gone with Sergeant Campbell, and absent-mind-
edly took one of Helene Bailey's cigarettes from the
brass box on the table by the chaise-longue.
"Nobody was in here while we was gone," said he,
and explained, after lighting the cigarette, "Powder
on the door knob." (It has just at this moment oc-
curred to me that this may have been his errand when
he left us at Dot Bailey's door.)
I shivered slightly and, I fear, started when Ser-
geant Campbell gave voice from the hall. "I don't
know," said he, "as Goldy'd ought to smoke in a lady's
boo-dwar." Are the Scotch a punctilious people?


112 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"Hell!" replied Mr. Goldberger. "She smokes 'em
herself, don't she?"
"As it happens," said I, with some notion of de-
fending the admirable little lady against the possible
disapproval of these men, "she doesn't. She keeps them
here, I suppose, to offer to her friends."
"Men friends, up here?" asked Mr. Goldberger,
and puffed forth a small round smoke ring.
"Certainly not," I retorted. "Surely you must know
that many modern ladies enjoy their after-dinner
cigarettes."
"Does she eat up here?" asked Mr. Goldberger,
between inhalations.
"That reminds me," said Lieutenant Wirt, though
I believe the transition was diplomatic rather than
associative, "I was going to ask you, Mr. Van Garter,
what you thought about putting a few questions to this
Mrs. Bailey and the other folks here in the house.
Nothing official, you understand. Just kind of in hopes
of helping us out—giving us a lead, something to work
on so's we'd get a better idea of where we was at. Doc
being gone and all makes it kind of hard on us. I
wouldn't want to butt in here and do anything but
what you thought was O. K. But it's kind of customary
to make a few inquiries around and all like that."
I said that while I should not wish to interfere
with any usual routine procedure, still it had occurred
to me that, possibly, until the fact of murder had been
established it might be unnecessary further to trouble
the ladies of the house.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 113
It was then, I think, that the first faint gleam of
animosity, suspicion, which later was to culminate in
the isolating, "Ahm," appeared for me in the lieuten-
ant's eye. Silence fell. Mr. Goldberger filched another
cigarette, and undertones were introduced when Mr.
Shautz came close to Lieutenant Wirt and murmured
something into one of his high-set ears.
The lieutenant nodded and spoke to me. "Like
Shautz, here, says—the least we can do is get alibis and
find out when victim was last seen alive and who seen
him."
"Alibis?" said I, shaken by the sound of the thing
straight into the arms of Folly. "Surely that is slightly
premature. The time of the murder, if it proves to be
a murder, has not as yet been fixed."
"I'll say it ain't," agreed the lieutenant, and stood,
adjusted the legs of his trousers, the lapels of his coat.
"Let's go," he further said.
We went. I chanced to be the last one through the
door. Lieutenant Wirt waited for me, and then stopped
and turned the key in the padlock. The sensation was
rathernke biting one's tongue. From beginning to
end I must admit I did not take the murders mildly.
CHAPTER 17
As WE came down the front stairway Helene Bailey
hurried from the living room to meet us in the hall.


114 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Dot followed her, and Evadne and Sarah Parnham
appeared, arm in arm, and stopped and stood in the
doorway. I looked about for Vicky, hoping that she
had gone sensibly to bed, knowing that she had done
no such thing.
Mrs. Bailey said, "Are you leaving, officers?" and
whether it was the born hostess or the timid lady who
spoke anxiously, regretfully, I could not decide.
Lieutenant Wirt reassured her. "Not yet," said
he. "No. Where's all your other roomers?"
"Miss Van Garter and the two men stepped out-
side for some fresh air."
"Stepped out, ugh?" said Mr. Shautz. "Didn't say
where they was going, did they?"
"Yes, they said they were going to walk in the yard.
You see, Mr. Keasy mended the telephone cord, and
there was nothing in particular for any of us to do
after that. The telephone can be used now, if you
care to. We thought you might need it."
Mr. Shautz smiled slightly, spoke through his nose,
and the combination developed, peculiarly, a sneer
direct which he gave to Mr. Goldberger. "There's
your yard. I told you we'd ought to get out there."
"'Sail right about my yard," said Mr. Goldberger,
who had been examining the telephone and who turned
from it now, depressed but defensive. "Go on out
there if you want'a. Nobody's keeping you. Have a
picnic out there—invite the neighbors. O. K. by me.
Man tries to get a little system, little sense into things
and some damn fool"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 115
Mr. Shautz interrupted, expressing a desire intense,
eager, to know the identity of the person whom Mr.
Goldberger was calling a damn fool, and the front
door opened to admit Vicky, Paul Keasy, and Oswald
Fleep.
Oswald was carrying a flashlight that he had for-
gotten to turn off. Paul Keasy was carrying a pistol.
Vicky, the fox, had a—or should I say "the"?—carv-
ing knife, which she handed at once to me.
"Look," she shuddered, "we found this horrible
thing out in the yard."
"And this, too," said Paul, and extended the pistol
toward me, but I backed away from it.
"Gimme them here," demanded Mr. Goldberger,
and seized the pistol with one hand and Oswald
Fleep's flashlight with the other.
Evadne and Sarah Parnham advanced from the
doorway, and we all went into a huddle around Mr.
Goldberger and waited for his words, which when
they came were stern and bitter.
"You've all been handling this, haven't you?" said
he.
"I think not," said Oswald. "Mr. Keasy found
it"
"Yeah? Well,"—Mr. Goldberger turned to Paul—
"you should of left it right where it was laying and
called me. You knew that, didn't you?"
"No. I did not."
"Well, you know it now, don't you?"
"Yes," Vicky answered. "We do, and we are sorry


Il6 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
that you hadn't told us sooner. But we can show you
the exact spot where we found it, and this." She took
the knife from me and put it into his hand, after
plucking the pistol from him with the alert helpful
air of a trained assistant. "We didn't find them to-
gether. And isn't it odd,"—she gave the pistol to me—
"or do you think so, that we should find two weapons
in the yard? A knife to stab"
"He wasn't stabbed," stated Mr. Goldberger, and
certainly it was not my fancy that flat bewilderment
was in his voice.
"No, he wasn't," said Vicky. "And that is why I
thought it so odd—finding a stabbing knife in the yard.
We found it not far from the east windows of the
living room, and"
"And the rod?" asked Mr. Goldberger and missed
it—missed it terribly. I could feel his fingers aching
for it; so I came quickly and gave it to him. I had been
holding it in the hot palms of my hands.
Oswald Fleep said: "We found it on the north side
of the house. It could have been tossed out of Mrs.
Bailey's window. And it is, Keasy and I both think, a
target pistol that belonged to Tony Charvan himself."
Mr. Shautz came closer. "What makes you think
so?" he asked.
"Tony had one—a .38 caliber, single-shot target
pistol. He had it made—said the .22's were too small,
and the .32's inaccurate. This one looks just like it."
"It might help," said I, "to find whether Mr.
Charvan's pistol is in his room."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 117
"He kept it in his footstool, a shoe box," Oswald
said. "At least that is where it was the other night
when he was showing it to Keasy and me. I thought he
shouldn't keep it there loaded. But he said he had
only the one cartridge left, and that he didn't know a
better place to keep it. Mrs. Bailey stepped on a bullet
in her room, and left it on the floor. If you find it,
you can tell—can't you?—whether or not it was fired
from this pistol?"
"How'd he happen to show it to you?" Mr.
Shautz asked.
"By chance. He was changing his shoes and we
were in there, and he picked it up out of the box. He
said that he used to go in for target-shooting, but had
given it up since he came here."
Evadne Parnham's thin voice slid, surprisingly, into
the conversation. "What I'd think," said she, "was
that the murderer knew there was only one bullet, so
he got the knife in case he missed his aim, or what-
ever you call it."
Mr. Shautz asked, "Does anybody recognize the
knife?" and Mrs. Bailey answered that it was one of
a set she had had for years.
Sergeant Campbell spoke from his seat on the
stairs. "The knife ain't got anything to do with this,"
said he. "Somebody just happened to have it out in
the yard and left it there. This is suicide, just like I
said all along, and some party went into the room
later and removed the weepon."
"But why?" asked Sarah Parnham, and took her


Il8 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
eyes away from Mr. Goldberger's hands, the pistol in
one, the knife in the other, and looked perplexedly at
the placid sergeant, and insisted, "That is, why should
any one remove a weapon afterwards?"
Sergeant Campbell was preparing to explain in de-
tail when Lieutenant Wirt, a new authority in his
manner, interposed: "Never mind that. Pretty quick
we'd better get outside and look things over. But, since
we're all here, I guess I'll ask you folks a few ques-
tions . . ."
Mr. Goldberger then apologized and stated that
he had left his camera upstairs and that if Lieutenant
Wirt would kindly give him the key to the room he
would like to go thither and recover it.
His, "Pardon me," had been turgid; his "kindly"
strongly sardonic, and it was these renditions, I think,
that forced the good Wirt into a confidence when Mr.
Goldberger had gone. "Goldy," said he, "is kind of
nuts on prints. I ain't saying anything, you understand.
'Sail right, of course. But, like you know, in a serious
case there is other things ought to be considered."
"Well, I should think as much," Evadne Parnham
declared. "I should think," she further chatted, "that
the first thing you'd want to consider would be who
killed poor Mr. Charvan and the—what is that word?
—you know what I mean, the—a—the motive."
"Yeah, you bet," boomed Mr. Shautz. "You hit the
nail on the head that time, lady."
"Sure," the lieutenant agreed, but worriedly.


120 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"No, I wasn't here right then, of course. I thought
you or somebody said it wasn't suicide."
"I never said so," remarked Mr. Shautz.
"It was suicide all right," said Sergeant Campbell.
"How do you know it wasn't?" insisted Mr.
Shautz.
"Wasn't what?" asked Sergeant Campbell.
"I was talking to the lady," explained Mr. Shautz.
"What made you call it a murder? How did you know
it wasn't suicide?"
"Everybody knows it, I guess," said the lady,
slightly petulant.
"Never mind about everybody. How do you
know?"
She put up her shoulders, dropped them. "Oh, just
because," said she.
The stub of pencil in Mr. Shautz's hand moved on
the page beneath it, as if he were transcribing in short-
hand the words, "Just because."
Lieutenant Wirt spoke: "This lady says she wasn't
here at the time of the shooting. Which of you folks
were here in the house at the time this here thing
transpired?"
As I have recounted, one and all we indicated that
none of us was in the house at the time. Followed, you
may remember, his question about our hearing, and
his isolating, "Ahm," at my confession of slight audi-
tory disability.
Vicky attempted rescue. "But," said she, "we don't


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 121
know the time that—that this happened. So how can
we know whether we were here or not?"
"You'd know, wouldn't you, if you heard a pistol
shot in the house?"
"Would it make a very loud noise?" Vicky asked.
"Loud enough to be heard all over this side of the
house, anyway—unless somebody was stone deef, I'd
think. Wouldn't you, Shautz?"
"Yeah," said Shautz, and yawned.
"Unless," said Sergeant Campbell, and I blessed
him for it, "it had a silencer on it. Sure, I know," he
warded off criticism, "the pistol they found didn't have
one. But silencers are slick on these target pistols—
good as on a rifle. Whoever took the pistol away could
of removed the silencer. Easy, if you take your time
and know how. You see," he began to explain to me,
"there's a tool thing, and all you got to do is have one,
and push the washer, and the silencing chambers . . ."
But I could not give him my attention. I was listen-
ing to Sarah Parnham, whose mind, kept well in trim
by the day-to-day requirements of her profession, was
still fresh enough and unjaded enough to expect logic
and demand consistency. "I don't," she was saying,
"seem able to follow this about the weapon's being
taken away afterwards. I didn't hear the first of it, I
suppose. But it doesn't seem reasonable to think that
anyone would find the body and say nothing, and
throw the pistol and a knife out into the yard. Besides,
the door was locked"
"Yeah," said Mr. Shautz, forestalling Sergeant


122 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Campbell's explanations, "we know. And unlocked
with a pass key. Mr. Van Garter told us all about
that. Pass key right here in the house—right on this
very table; wasn't it?"
I had begun to say that it was, when Evadne Parn-
ham interrupted. "Well," she asserted, "I don't know
about pass keys nor any of that. But I knew Tony
Charvan, and you didn't; and I don't care what any-
body says, I know he wouldn't kill himself. Not Tony
Charvan."
"Oh, I don't know," said Dot. "I think he might.
He was temperamental, erratic, untrustworthy"
"I say, Dot," Paul Keasy spoke sharply, "go easy
there now. That's all posh, you know. Better chap
never lived than Tony Charvan—they aren't made
any better."
"Good friend of yours?" asked Mr. Shautz.
"One of the best," Paul answered, and turned away.
"Ahm," said Lieutenant Wirt. "You wouldn't have
any idea, I suppose, about somebody who had it in for
him—wanted to kill him for some reason or other?"
"Absolutely not. I didn't think the poor old chap
had an enemy on earth."
Mr. Shautz's hand had moved on the paper. I
imagined him writing, "Not an enemy on earth," in
shorthand, before he questioned, "Was you present
when the body was found?" and yawned.
"No. I didn't leave the radio station until half
after twelve, as usual."
"Was you at the radio station all evening?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 123
"From eight until twelve-thirty. I've a double job
now—announcer and operator both. It keeps me
rather busy, you know."
"Pretty hot up there tonight, wasn't it?"
"Yes. Most awfully warm."
"Alone up there most of the time, too, I suppose?"
"Yes, most of the time. We get a good many
Eastern hook-ups on Saturday nights—excellent stuff
—so we fill in quite largely with recordings."
"Didn't get a chance to step out for a cold drink or
anything?"
Paul's face clouded for an instant and cleared as he
looked more intently at Mr. Shautz. "I know," he
said, "you were in at Cherry's the other night when
I was having a root beer. I remember seeing you
there. It is this way: sometimes one of the boys comes
in, during a hook-up, and I bolt it for some air and a
cold drink. But it was too warm in that hole tonight.
Jolly well none of them turned up to relieve me. No, I
was at the mike from eight until half after twelve.
Deuced hot. Fairly did me in, you know."
"Say, what's your nationality?" asked Lieutenant
Wirt.
"You're spoofing me," Paul protested, delightedly.
"I'm American-born, of course. But my grandparents
were English. I suppose that accounts for my being
taken quite often for a Britisher."
"I was thinking you were Eyetalian," said Mr.
Shautz, I must concede unaccountably. "What time
did you get home here?"


124 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
it
"I can't say exactly. I left the station at half after
twelve, caught a taxicab, and rode home instead of
walking as I usually do. The heat, you know—and
the hill. By the way, now that you mention it, the
driver said it was the third trip he had made up to
Meriwether this evening—last evening it would be
now. It seemed a bit odd to me; I don't know."
"Any the rest of you folks come home in a taxi
tonight?"
Dot said, "Mrs. Parnham and I did. It was too hot
to walk up the hill."
"It is probable," Paul offered, after Vicky, Sarah
Parnham, Mrs. Bailey, Oswald Fleep, and I had all
asserted that we had come up as usual in our cars,
"that Tony himself came home in a cab. He often
did."
"Good idea," Mr. Shautz approved. "We can check
with the driver. Just what time did this Charvan get
home?"
He waited fully a minute, while we glanced silently
about from one to another. "Approximately, I mean,
that is," he encouraged, and waited again.
"I expect," said Sergeant Campbell, playing patron
and rubbing the back of his head, "that none of them
were at home when he come in."
"It is a queer thing," said I. "My niece and I were
at home all evening, but we didn't see Mr. Charvan
come in. Of course we were variously engaged, and
in different parts of the house "I faltered,


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 125
slightly, before the lieutenant's stern eyes and, amaz-
ingly, I thought, Dot Bailey spoke.
"No," she said, "that isn't queer, Mr. Van Garter.
He probably came in while we were all in the kitchen,
fixing supper. That is, all of us except Mrs. Parnham.
She was upstairs for a long time alone—between ten
and eleven o'clock, that was. My mother and Miss
Parnham hadn't come in yet. They'd gone to a show.
Mr. Fleep hadn't come in, either. No one was in the
front part of the house, and the radio was going in
there. A dozen people could have come in and we
shouldn't have known it."
"Front door unlocked all this time?" asked Mr.
Shautz.
"No. It's never unlocked. Tony Charvan had a key.
I meant anyone who had a key could come in."
"What about the latch on the screen door?"
"If the door is closed, it isn't latched—unless by
mistake."
"You'd be willing to swear that it wasn't latched
between ten and eleven o'clock?"
"No, I wouldn't. But the door was closed, so I'm
sure it wasn't. It never is. If it were, we'd all con-
stantly be getting locked out. All of us who haven't
garage keys." She sighed, and finished crossly:
"Mother, can't we go into the living room and sit
down? Why do we all have to stand around out
here?"
Mrs. Bailey hastened with apologies, ushered us


126 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
into the living room, promised us something cool to
drink, and departed with Dot for the kitchen.
Paul Keasy said, "If it makes any difference, the
screen door was latched when I got home tonight. Mr.
Fleep was in the hall and opened it for me."
"I didn't realize that," Oswald answered Mr.
Shautz's quick, questioning glance. "We had just dis-
covered the—the death. I'd found the telephone cord
cut. I heard Mr. Keasy on the porch and opened the
door. I don't remember unlatching the screen. But I
perfectly well may have—I wouldn't know."
Mr. Shautz wrote, I could not guess what, in his
notebook; and Evadne Parnham fluttered her eye-
lashes and leaned forward to say: "If you'll excuse me,
I think that when Mr. Charvan came in he must have
brought somebody—the murderer, the secret enemy,
you know—in with him at the same time. And then
the enemy shot him and escaped."
"Why would he of had to bring him in with him?"
Mr. Shautz asked, and covered a yawn.
"The door was locked, they said—the front door,
I mean. Tony Charvan would have to unlock it,
wouldn't he? Unless the secret enemy had a key. I
know it is awfully mixed up. But that's what I think."
"Ahm," said Lieutenant Wirt. "You yourself was
at the show all evening with Mrs. Bailey, wasn't you?"
"Oh, no," she answered smilingly, and I winced,
for I knew what was coming. "That was my daughter
here, Miss Parnham, who was out with Mrs. Bailey."
It was rich fare for her vanity and one of her


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 12J
cruder diversions, this dragging forth of poor,
gnarled, faded old Sarah as her daughter.
Vicky said, "Mrs. Parnham is Miss Parnham's step-
mother"; and Sergeant Campbell departed from his
quiet musings to remark: "If it was suicide he wouldn't
of needed to bring anybody in with him. All we need
to bother our heads about is who removed the
weepon."
Sarah Parnham murmured, and though I could not
catch her words I heard plainly her impatience.
"No," the sergeant disputed, "that wouldn't be so
unreasonable, miss. F'rinstance, there's insurance,
and—"
Fortunately Mrs. Bailey and Dot came just then
with trays and glasses of cold ginger ale, and argu-
ment deferred to urbanity, and debate was suspended
while we wet our dry throats. But soon, too soon,
called perhaps by the clink of the glassware, Mr.
Goldberger was again among us. "Well, well, well,
well," said he. "What's going on in here?"
CHAPTER 19
His words, his manner, had been jaunty—almost
jovial—and I felt that one heart at least was high, one
spirit hopeful; so his consequent and almost immediate
depression was the more disturbing. He tossed off the
ginger ale, peered into the glass as if it held the dregs


128 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
of bitter medicine, set it smartly down atop a book on
the table, and spoke in sorrow, moodily: "If some bird
did throw the rod out of the window up there, I'll tell
the world he took damn good trouble not to leave any
prints on the windowsill or any place."
"I'll bet he didn't throw it out of the window," said
Evadne Parnham. "I'll bet he took it out of the house
in his pocket and threw it away when he was making
his escape."
Mr. Shautz said, "Who?" so loudly that we all
jumped. "You, lady," he indicated Evadne Parnham.
"Who do you think took the gun away with him in his
pocket?"
"Me?" she answered. "Gee, how on earth would I
know?"
"You said 'he.' Might of been a woman, mightn't
it?"
"Maybe," she answered, lightly. "Only I just can't
feature a woman killing Tony Charvan—actually kill-
ing, I mean."
"Knew him pretty well, did you?"
"Not so very. He'd only been here about six
months or so. But I didn't think he was so awfully
deep."
"Liked him pretty well, did you?"
Sarah Parnham interposed: "I beg your pardon, but
I see no reason for this intensive questioning of Mrs.
Parnham. We all liked Mr. Charvan well enough. He
gave us no cause for disliking him. You are taking
notes of what we say. Is that usual—and allowable?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 120.
"No, no," Mr. Shautz denied. "I'm not taking notes
—just making a few jottings here and there. As a
rule," he went on, reproachfully, "folks in a case of
this kind are only too glad to be any help they can."
Mr. Goldberger muttered something, not agreeable
I judged from his facial expression and, astoundingly
one might think, Evadne Parnham again obtruded her
opinions and advice. "I was just thinking, Captain,"
said she, "isn't it customary, you know what I mean,
to find out who was the last person to see the victim
alive?"
"I was getting to that," Lieutenant Wirt frowned
his authority. "Can't do everything at the same time,
lady. 'Nother little matter I wanted to take up here
first Oh, well, never mind. Now you've brought
it up I guess we'd as well get it over right now. Who
was the last one of you folks to see the victim alive?"
A hush came upon us. Questioning glances were ex-
changed, but no one spoke, and I could feel the lieu-
tenant's just annoyance deepening with the silence.
Oswald Fleep's low, hesitant voice from his chair in a
far corner of the room sounded sweet as music to my
ears.
"I Jast saw Tony Charvan shortly after seven
o'clock. He was in the front hall as I came out of the
dining room after dinner. I dined early—I always do
on Saturdays to get back and open the store again.
This evening Mrs. Parnham and Dot Bailey hurried
their dinners so that they could ride downtown with
me when I left. They came into the hall with me and


130 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
saw Mr. Charvan when I saw him. Now,"—he stood
and walked toward the doorway—"if you will excuse
me, I am going up to my room."
"Hold on. Hold on," urged Mr. Goldberger. "Your
name's Oswald Fleep, ain't it?" And, when Oswald as-
sented, "You're the—I mean a—um—what-you-may-
call-it—astrologer, aren't you?"
"By no means. I am a student of astrology—but the
merest novice."
"Well, never mind about that. You claim that the
last time you saw this Charvan was around seven
o'clock last night? And that then you went on and
drove downtown with these two women."
"I said so, yes. You can ask them, of course"
"O. K. so far. What time did you shut up your
store?"
"At ten o'clock."
"Came straight up home after that, didn't you?"
"No. I went for a drive to cool off."
"Go alone, did you?"
Oswald Fleep hesitated. At the risk of an accusation
of exaggerated statement I am bound to say that this
pause, brief as it was, seemed harrowing. I felt my
own face flush in painful sympathy with his. "Yes," he
finally said. "I—went alone."
"Where'd you go?"
"Toward Ocean Side. I didn't go right into the
town."
"Got kind of discouraged, I suppose, account of
finding so much oil on the roads over that way?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 131
At last Oswald lifted his eyes from an inspection of
the rug. "I don't understand. The roads are paved all
the way to Ocean Side, as I think you must know."
"Well, yeah, that's what I kind of thought. But
when I was out looking at the cars just now the one
that had your driver's license in it had oil all over
the tires."
"I drove back into the country for a few miles when
I came from the beach. It was still too hot to come
home."
"Pretty nice and cool up here on the hill, though—
you folks get a breeze if there is one. Don't happen
to know what time you finally did get in, do you?"
"Someone—Miss Parnham, I believe—said that it
was a quarter to twelve."
"Well, then, between ten o'clock and a quarter to
twelve you was just kind of riding around, here and
there, and all alone? Haven't been to your room since
you come in, have you?"
"No—as I think of it, I haven't been."
"Reason I asked was that somebody seems to have
wrote you a letter. I found it under the door. Whether
it was there earlier, when a few of us stepped in and
we never noticed it, or whether it's been put there
since, I've got to find out. Maybe you can help me.
Here it is. Maybe you can kind of explain a little about
it, seeing as there is no name signed to it."
Oswald took the paper and stood looking at it for
a moment as he might have looked at some curiously


132 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
offensive picture before he refolded it and returned it
to Mr. Goldberger's waiting hand. "I don't know any-
thing about this," he said.
"Couldn't," Mr. Goldberger coaxed, "kind of
guess about it, even?"
"Well, since you say you found it, probably your
guess would be better than mine. Mine is that it looks
like an attempt to frighten me or make me angry—
produce some reaction that you think might be useful
to you. It is sort of clumsy—seems to me. And I'm
sorry that, not knowing the requirements, I can't help.
I think I'll go up to my room now, though, and stay
there—just in case other communications of this sort
might be either delivered or found there. Good-
night."
As a speech it was well enough; courageous, pos-
sibly, rather than cocky. But Oswald's delivery, hesi-
tant, low, was barren of conviction. I knew that his
hands, stuck into his coat pockets, were trembling;
and I wished with all my heart that his "Good-night"
might have been given with straightforward eyes and
an unducked chin.
Many hours passed, many tears had been shed
before I was allowed to read the note that Mr. Gold-
berger had found under Oswald's door that morning;
but it seems to me that its place in the story is here.
The paper was the Meriwether stationery, to be
found in every desk in the house, and penciled on it,
in large capital letters, inexpertly formed, without


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 133
apostrophes and with a reversed "S," was this
message:
DONT WORRY II
MUMS THE WORD!!!!!
When I finally saw this missive I had been told who
wrote it. So it is impossible to say, had I seen it that
morning, whether I should have deemed it the work
of an illy educated person or the crafty aping of the
illy educated by someone sufficiently subtle to include
that array of exclamation points—those certain shib-
boleths for the unpractised pen.
CHAPTER 20
It would seem that the sight of Oswald treading his
solitary, unmolested way up the stairs would have
aroused in us who remained an envy and an attempt at
emulation. But various emotions, of differing degrees
—fear, curiosity, fatigue, caution—divided or shared,
were strong enough to keep us in our places.
Vicky's immediate question, "What was written on
that paper?" might seem to give curiosity to her.
Mr. Goldberger patted his plaided breast pocket
and smote her with a smile. "If I told you, you'd know
as much as I do," said he, and Vicky rudely turned up
her nose.


134 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Lieutenant Wirt, unsmiling, questioned, "Well,
where was we at?" with a desperate accent for the
verb.
Sarah Parnham, the school teacher, answered. "You
were taking the times when we last saw him. If you
would begin with Mr. Van Garter, there on that
davenport, and go on in order, asking each one in
turn, you could get through more quickly."
"Well, that was just exactly what I was going to
do, wasn't it?" Lieutenant Wirt shook his head with
quick impatience for unbeautiful feminine verbosity.
"All right, Mr. Van Garter?"
"I last saw him in my niece's shop, down on Main
Street. He left there shortly after six o'clock, I think.
Neither she nor I was here for dinner."
Vicky, beside me, raised her dark eyes and said, "I
didn't see him after that time, either."
"Next—Mr. Keasy."
"I saw him when he left the radio station at, I
should say, about eight-fifty this evening. He finished
singing at eight forty-five and stayed perhaps five
minutes before he left. I—" Paul faltered—"I—
didn't think then that—that I'd never see him alive
again."
"Too bad. Too bad. We'll come on over to this
other couch, now. You, lady?"
"Mr. Fleep told you about me," Evadne Parnham
answered. "The last time I saw him was when he was
in the hall, about seven o'clock, just before I went
downtown."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY I35
"And I," Sarah Parnham took it up without wait-
ing to be called, "saw him at about eight o'clock, when
he left the house to go to the radio station. I didn't
look at my watch, but he usually left around eight,
since it is half an hour's walk to the station from
here. Mrs. Bailey and I had stepped out on the front
porch for a moment. He spoke to us pleasantly—he
was always jolly and pleasant—and we watched him
as he went down the hill, until he turned at the small
grove of maples."
"Why," asked the wily Mr. Goldberger, "was you
watching him so particular?"
"We weren't. It is a psychological fact, you will
recall, that one naturally watches any moving object in
an otherwise motionless landscape."
"Yeah, that's right. I forgot for a minute. Sure it
is. Sure—you're right. My mistake. You, next, miss."
Dot said: "I saw him, as Mr. Fleep and Mrs. Parn-
ham have said, at seven o'clock, in the hall, before I
went downtown with them. That was the last time I
saw him."
"And I," offered Mrs. Bailey, "was with Miss
Parnham on the porch when he left the house at about
eight o'clock. I think it was a bit later than eight
o'clock. I had finished tidying the kitchen, after the
maid left. Too, Mr. Charvan was hurrying as if he
feared he might be late. Though this isn't important,
of course, since he went on to the radio station, and
sang there, and Mr. Keasy saw him leave there at


136 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
about ten minutes to nine. That seems to be the last
time he was seen alive by any of us here."
Mr. Shautz yawned and scratched on his paper, and
Mr. Goldberger spoke to Paul.
"Notice anything peculiar about actions of deceased
this evening?"
"Not a thing."
"Didn't seem troubled, depressed—nothing of the
kind?"
"He didn't—not at all. Except that he said he was
hungry. We usually have dinner together. Tonight he
took only a glass of ice tea. He said that it was too
warm to eat—that he was going to eat later."
"Eat later, ugh? Did he say where?"
"No, he didn't."
"Well, now, about this being worried and de-
pressed. Not eating his supper looks kind of like that.
Would you of noticed, if he had been—well, as they
say, in a suicidal mood?"
"Absolutely. We were friends—dear friends." Paul
rose and strode the length of the room to the
aquarium, near the French doors; but Mr. Gold-
berger's voice went with him. "Far as you could see he
acted just the same as ever tonight?"
Paul answered, without looking up from the dark
waters of the aquarium, "Yes."
"What I was getting at," Mr. Goldberger ex-
plained, "was this. I heard him singing tonight—and
he sung fine, though I'd sooner had a different song
for the third one. But anyways, when he got through


138 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
hand on Dot's knee, and I noticed the gentle pressure
of the fingers.
"I don't know what difference it makes, now,
whether I liked him of not," Dot answered. "But—
well, no, I didn't. He couldn't be trusted, and he was
conceited and told lies."
Paul interrupted, furiously: "You cut that out, Dot.
You wouldn't say it if Tony were here"
"I would, too," Dot declared. "I was just waiting
for him to come home this evening to tell him a lot
of things. I'm sorry he's dead, of course. But he did
tell lies, and I don't see why I should get sentimental
about him now."
Mr. Shautz's hand went rapidly back and forth
across the paper. Mrs. Bailey said, "Really, Lieu-
tenant, are these schoolgirl aversions of any impor-
tance? My daughter did not like Mr. Charvan because
he teased her unmercifully, for one thing. None of us,
I think, at seventeen liked to be teased, nor the per-
sons who teased us."
Mr. Goldberger's smile was as bland as custard. "I
was just wondering," he said, speaking to Dot, "why
you was waiting to bawl him out this evening in parti-
cular?"
I looked at Mrs. Bailey's hand on Dot's knee, and
saw its dimpled knuckles protrude and whiten as Dot
answered, "I don't know what you mean."
"You seen him at seven o'clock, you said. If you was
sore at him then, why didn't you bawl him out when


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 139
you had the chance? It kind of looks like something
must of happened between seven o'clock and mid-
night, say, to get you sore."
"For that matter," Dot replied, and tried to shrug
carelessly, "something did happen. I hadn't seen him
since seven. But I was told something that made me
rabid—perfectly rabid."
"You don't say? Well, what was you told, and who
told you?"
Dot said, "That is nobody's business but my own,
and I'll not answer. It didn't have a thing to do with—
with any of this," and tossed away her mother's re-
straining hand and stood. "It was a lie," she went on,
as she walked with her attempted swagger across the
room and stopped at the doorway, "and I'll not tell it
to you, or anyone, ever, and no one can make me. I'm
fed. I can't be bothered."
Mrs. Bailey, with a quick apology, followed Dot
into the hall and ran to catch her on the stairs, and I
was startled and not pleased to hear Lieutenant Wirt
voicing the thoughts that were in my own mind.
"That girl," said he, "sure is old for her age if she's
only seventeen. I got a girl, Iralene, who'll be eighteen
next month, and she's a kid compared to this girl
here."
Mr. Goldberger said, "Seventeen? That dame will
never see twenty-one again. Oh, well—these charming
widows, you know "and smiled at Evadne Parn-
ham.


140 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"I am sure you are mistaken," Sarah Parnham in-
terrupted. "Dot is mature for her age, but she has
had responsibilities to make her so. Besides, she eats
enough food instead of starving herself as many of
the flappers do. The extra weight makes her look
older, in these days of fashionable scrawniness. But
she is still in high school, with girls of her own age—
sixteen or seventeen."
"All the more reason," declared Lieutenant Wirt,
"for making her out younger than she is—if she's be-
hind in her studies."
Vicky said, "It doesn't matter, though, does it,
about Dot's age?" so sweetly that we were all sharing
a faintly amusing confidence, and stood. "I believe,"
she went on, "that I'll go to my room now, if you will
excuse me?"
"I was wondering"—Mr. Goldberger's direct ques-
tion detained her in the doorway—"if you knew what
happened between the deceased and this girl—so long
as you were here at home all evening?"
"Nothing happened, I am sure," Vicky answered.
"She didn't see him after seven o'clock. She said, you
remember, that it was something that someone had
told her." She looked at me, a look which my stupidity
failed to interpret, said good-night, and was gone.
Paul Keasy and I were still standing when Evadne
Parnham spoke. "Why don't you ask me?" she said.
"I know what it was that somebody told her."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY I4I
CHAPTER 21
Sarah parnham frowned and murmured. I could not
catch her words, but if, as I thought, they were meant
to discourage Evadne's disclosure, they failed. She
had begun her recital, and she went on with it, re-
solutely coy, oiling her egoism with the sound of her
own voice:
". . . and she pretends she's awfully artistic, and
can draw wonderful pictures and all like that. It's
really awful of her, I think, because what she does is
just trace things off. She uses carbons sometimes, and
sometimes tissue tracing papers. I don't know just how
she works it—of course I wouldn't know—and then
she shows it around and passes it off as her own work.
She got a prize for a poster, and Tony said it was just
traced off from three other pictures and put together
again some way. Tony caught her at it, or something.
He didn't care—he just liked to tease her about it.
Manlike, he thought it was just a good joke. He didn't
see anything awfully wrong in it—like I do—or I
guess he wouldn't have told me. He just happened to
tell me, anyway, and he told me not to tell.
"But tonight I got a little bit cross with her and
without thinking, really—it was kind of naughty of
me—I just sort of mentioned tracing paper to her.
Honestly, I was awfully sorry the minute I did it,
'cause I never want to make trouble and I try to be
nice and friendly with everybody all the time, when I


I42 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
can. But Where was I? Oh, yes, I hadn't hardly
got the words out of my mouth before she jumped at
me like a wildcat. Gee, it was terrible. She's lots
bigger than I am. I'm only five feet and three qua/ter
inches tall, and I weigh just a little over a hundred.
If Mr. Van Garter hadn't been there—well, "I just
don't know what might have happened. It is just
awful, having a temper like hers. It was all just ter-
rible, wasn't it, Mr. Van Garter?"
"Well, now, I shouldn't say quite 'terrible,'" said
I, trying to reduce her recital to insignificance with a
sort of sprightly facetiousness. "Two little pussies lost
their tempers, and found them in a flash. Except for a
few tears, no one was the worse for it—that I could
see."
Vicky could have managed this, I think. I am far
too fat to try for the frivolous. "You was present at
the time of this fight?" asked Lieutenant Wirt.
"You are mistaken," I objected. "It was not in any
sense a fight—scarcely a quarrel. Merely a small flare
up. And I can't see that it could have any connection
with the—the matter under discussion."
"Which matter?" asked Lieutenant Wirt.
"We were speaking of the murder—or suicide—
were we not?"
The lieutenant answered, "I guess so," without con-
viction, and Sarah Parnham stood and said, "If there
is nothing further I think we'll go upstairs now. Come,
Evadne."
"Not me," declared Evadne. "I'm not going up


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY I43
there tonight. I'm going to stay right here with all
these big, strong officer men to protect me." She flut-
tered her eyelashes and smiled at Mr. Goldberger and
thus, apparently, startled him into speech, unpremedi-
tated.
"Speaking of tracing "said he, and stopped
short.
"Well," urged Lieutenant Wirt, nervously, "what
about it? Spit it out."
But Mr. Goldberger still hesitated, and Sarah Parn-
ham took advantage of the pause. "I don't believe that
tracing accusation," said she. "I know Dot does her
drawings honestly. In design, artists often need some
such method of transfer. Mr. Charvan must have
found that he could tease Dot about it—and made
the most of it. I don't understand why he should have
told Mrs. Parnham about it; but it is possible that she
misunderstood and took in earnest what he meant for
a joke."
"I like that!" Evadne bristled. "I guess with my
sense of 'umor I'm not quite such a dumb-bell that I
don't know a joke when I hear one. Just let me tell
"Well, well," soothed Mr. Goldberger, "I guess
that makes no never-minds, anyway. Here's a point I'd
like to ask you folks about—nothing to do with the
tracing, of course; just a little matter of information."
He produced the poem, torn from the book, and as
he handed it to Sarah Parnham I remembered too


144 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
well the shaky outlines of Antony Charvan's signature
beneath the typed words.
I watched Sarah's eyes doing as my own eyes had
done, skipping through the printed words and fasten-
ing on the words beneath them. "Dear me. But
Goodness!" Her voice sprang from its first flattened,
hushed shock and approached a harsh vexation. "This
seems to prove suicide, doesn't it? Why haven't you
told us of this before? He left it, for a message?"
Paul Keasy strode across the room and all but
snatched the paper from Sarah Parnham's hands. He,
too, read only the typing at first, though in a moment
his eyes went up and read the poem slowly. "Oh, I
say! I—I can't get this. Not from Tony. I "He
turned his head away from us, and Evadne slipped
over and filched the page from his fingers and he did
not notice her.
Mrs. Bailey returned with an apology on her lips,
but Sarah Parnham brushed it aside. "They've found
a message, Helene, left by Town Charvan. Why
these"—one heard "idiots" plainly, though she pro-
nounced it "men"—"men didn't tell about it sooner I
don't know. It seems to leave no doubt that he killed
himself."
Mrs. Bailey had time for only an amazed murmur-
ing exclamation before Paul Keasy broke in: "He
didn't kill himself. He loved living. He wouldn't.
That poem Where is it? I want to read it again.
I know it doesn't express anything he believed or felt.
I know it doesn't."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY I45
"No," said Evadne Parnham, "I don't think it
does, either. I don't think Tony Charvan would kill
himself, either." Coming in her thin, tinkly voice into
Paul's heavy but sincere intensity, the words made the
most objectionable intrusion I have ever heard—light,
tinseled frippery toe-dancing into tragedy. "Besides
that," she went on, "if he killed himself how on earth
did the pistol get away out there in the yard? Walked,
I suppose?"
Mr. Goldberger intercepted Sergeant Campbell's
speech. "Now going back," said Mr. Goldberger, "to
this piece of poetry here. Gimme it, lady. Do any of
you folks happen to know what book it come out of,
or anything about it?"
Mrs. Bailey said, "May I see it, please?" as Sarah
Parnham answered with her school teacher's brief ex-
plicitness, "Yes. It is from a volume of poems entitled
Fiddler's Farewell, written by Leonora Speyer and
published several years ago by Knopf."
"Uhm. Out of your own book, eh?"
"No. I think the only copy in the house belongs to
Miss Van Garter. She lent it to me more than a year
ago. She may have lent it to Mr. Charvan."
"I have a copy," said Mrs. Bailey. "Miss Van
Garter gave it to me. I had borrowed hers, and when
I tried to return it she insisted that I needed the blue
note, there on my table, so she gave me hers and got
another for herself."
"Blue note?" inquired Mr. Goldberger, distrustful
and bewildered.


146 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"It has a beautiful deep blue binding. I meant the
color note—or tone—beside the copper on my table."
"Didn't happen to notice whether the page was torn
out of your book, did you, this evening?"
"No, I didn't. But the book is there, I suppose. We
can go and see. I did notice something else, though,
when I was in my room just now"
"Just now!" barked Lieutenant Wirt. "You was in
your room just nowl"
"Shouldn't I have gone in? I'm sorry. I didn't
know. I saw the padlock on the door, but since it was
unfastened I thought that you meant to lock it before
you left. I had to get some of my night things to take
into my daughter's room. I"
Lieutenant Wirt interrupted. "And it was you,
wasn't it," said he, addressing an aghast Mr. Gold-
berger, "who was bellyaching around about getting
things smeared up? What'd you think I put that pad-
lock on there for? Ornament, or something? You was
in such a hurry to sneak down the back way, I suppose,
and get into the garage where there was nothing to
smear—or find—that you couldn't be bothered lock-
ing doors after you. You'd oughta lose your job for
this."
"'Sail right about my job. I ain't in your depart-
ment."
"I'll tell the world you ain't. Nor"
"Aw, well, lay off, can't youl I'm going up now to
tend to things. But what was you going to say, lady,


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 147
before Wirt here butted in? Something you noticed,
you said, in your room?"
"Probably it isn't important. But my cigarette box
was open, and a good many of my cigarettes were
gone. There were ashes about on the floor. I thought
it might mean that Mr. Charvan and someone else
had been in my room for some time before"
She paused in amazement at the snort of laughter
that came from Mr. Shautz. I was glad to hear it.
For too long Mr. Shautz had been writing, flipping
back page after page of his book, frankly and with
the deftness of an expert transcribing our words as we
spoke them. But Mrs. Bailey flushed, with embarrass-
ment rather than anger I thought, as she tried to ex-
plain: "It was only a suggestion"
"Pardon me, lady," said Mr. Shautz. "I just
thought maybe Goldy here might have the low-down
on the cigarette situation. Well,"—he yawned and
rose—"it's getting light. What'a you say we go out
now, if Goldy's got no objections, thinking we'd ruin
his pretty footprints, and take a look around the
place? You might come with us," he spoke to Paul
Keasy, "and show us whereabouts you found the knife
and rod. O. K. by you, Wirt?"
It was O. K. by the lieutenant. Mr. Goldberger ran
upstairs and was down again before the other three
men had completed their farewells and promises of a
speedy return.
I, feeling that my one imperative requirement was
solitude, betook myself across the hall into the dining


I48 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
room and sat me down. And there and then, as I have
told, fear the more horrible because of its intangibility
caught and shook me and bereft me of my senses.
CHAPTER 22
I WaS there in the dining room when Paul Keasy came
upon me, you may remember, and it was from there
after being stimulated by his conversation and soothed
by my pipe that I went into the hall and telephoned to
Lynn MacDonald in San Francisco.
The results of this impulsive action of mine have
been told, have taken me up the stairs and rapidly
down again, and have brought along to another view
of Cadwallader clinging with one hand to the newel
post in the front hall, clasping with the other hand
Sarah Parnham's bony fingers: Cadwallader mellowed
with heroism, gone Sydney Cartonish, all but rehears-
ing, "It is a far, far better thing that I do . . ." et
cetera, et cetera.
Unflattering as is the picture, repugnant as is the
pose, I find myself reluctant to remove the fat, senti-
mental old codger from those moments into the con-
fusions, failures, frights, disasters that the coming
hours held in store for him.
My first shock occurred when I returned to Vicky's
room and found her self-composed, aloof, with a


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 149
queer new hardness substituted for the velvety soft-
ness in her big brown eyes.
"Too late, Vicky," I said. "They all heard me tele-
phoning. I daren't stop her now."
"I was afraid of that," she answered. "But don't
worry. We'll find a way out. I've been thinking." She
came and sat beside me and spoke softly, close to my
best ear. "We have those fifteen minutes—those
blessed, precious fifteen minutes and we can stretch
them longer if we need to. We must say, of course,
that you went with me to put the car up. That's only
natural—to unlock the garage, open the door, so on.
Then"
I attempted an interruption. I wished to mention the
knocking I had heard below stairs, the noise of the
radio, the closed front door, but her fingers flew to
my lips. "Sh-h-h," she warned. "I've looked carefully
and I'm sure there's no dictaphone in here, but we'd
better keep our voices down. And please,"—she curled
her hands into a tight fist in her lap and leaned closer
—"let me finish now. Anything might happen, and we
have to plan. We must agree exactly on what we are
going to say. Let me see Oh, yes. You went with
me, remember, out of the house and around to the
garage. I found I had left the garage key in my bag
in the house. We tried to get in through the kitchen
door to save us the long walk around the house again.
We couldn't get in that way, so we walked back to-
gether to the front door—all this takes time, you see
—found my keys, and Shall we go through the


150 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
passageway this time, since my car is in front of the
garage doors? No—we might need more time; we'll
walk around the house again. You unlocked the garage
doors. I drove the car in. We'll have to come back
through the passageway, of course. I stopped in the
kitchen for a glass of water. You went into the living
room and were just in there when Evadne Parnham
•and Dot came. You have that straight, Candy? Or
shall I go over it again?"
"I have it straight. But"
"No. I think I'd better go through it again more
carefully." She did so, repeating it from beginning to
end and almost word for word. "Now we'll assume,"
she continued, "and we'll force them to believe that
Tony came into the house during those fifteen minutes
and, as Evadne said, that he brought someone in with
him. Someone who shot him while we were outside.
And then he—the person who did the shooting—
either came right downstairs and went off while we
were still outside, or else he hid upstairs and watched
his chance to make a sneak for it. In either case he
threw the pistol into the yard as he went. We won't
have to account for his escape. Of course, throwing
the pistol out of the window was a serious mistake.
No matter. We don't have to explain any of that.
We know nothing about it, you see. We are as
ignorant and innocent as anyone in the house. The
knife in the yard—we haven't an idea about that.
We'll be dumb, dumb. We won't advance any theories.
"We should have said, of course, that we heard a


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 151
shot while we were outside. But since we've said that
we didn't, we must stick to it. Isn't it absurd that the
one thing we know is true may be the one thing"
She broke off, and began again. "No. We must not be
afraid. I've read that psychology plays an important
part in crime detection. We'll arrange our psychology
to suit, then. As soon as we get this all talked out, in
here and right now, we won't mention it again—not
even to each other. After this one talk we are going to
be innocent; in our own minds we are going to be in-
nocent. Remember, surely now. We didn't hear the
shot—and that's that. We'll state facts and let them
find reasons. There was that sweet Scotchy's idea of a
silencer. Oh," she finished, rather startlingly, "I am
so glad that I'm not wicked. I mean," she emended,
"not really wicked. Because if I were—but I'm not—
it would be so easy to—there's a word—'frame,' that's
it; so easy to frame almost anyone else. Evadne Parn-
ham, for example.
"Helene was in here a few moments ago, while you
were downstairs. She told me about finding the poem.
She is wonderful, isn't she? I love Helene. But what
I began to say was that I thought she—well, at least
sort of wondered about Evadne, though Helene
wouldn't even hint at such a thing. She set me to
thinking, though, and the first thing I knew I had
Evadne guilty—like this:
"She went upstairs right after Merkel brought the
supper, and she stayed a long time—twenty minutes at
least—and murder, we know, takes only a minute.
r


152 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
She went for cigarettes. We'll say that she found none
in her room, so she went into Helene's room to get
some. And, do you know, she was smoking one of
Helene's cigarettes when she came downstairs last
night, and besides that I noticed that her case was
filled with them. Helene said some were missing"
"The detective took them while we were talking in
her room this morning."
"It doesn't matter. Perhaps Evadne has changed to
Helene's brand. Let me see Yes, she went into
Helene's room. Tony was in there, and they had a
quarrel over something, and Evadne shot him. The
minute she'd done it she was scared silly, and threw
the pistol right out of the window. Next minute she
was sorry for that; so she tore the poem out of the
book, did some typing and tracing, and left it there,
hoping to fuddle the detectives. Perhaps she planned
to find the pistol in the yard, later, and put it back in
the room. Anyway, right after she'd fixed the poem
she went to her own room and did what she could, in
a hurry, to damage her xylophone. She needed to have
something to come downstairs all angry and upset
about. She knew how easy it is to pick a quarrel with
Dot. She wanted a quarrel as an emotional outlet—a
smoke screen. Telling this, I could almost believe it
was true. I find it—well, frightfully alarming, this
working out guilt for others. It is entirely too easy. I
shouldn't. I mustn't. I must use all my mental effort
to believe firmly in our innocence. But I did work out
a case for Dot, and for Oswald"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 153
"Don't, please," I urged.
"I know, darling." She leaned forward to twist
some of my frayed white locks into a curl, and smiled
for the first time in many minutes—a gentle, lovely,
and yet enigmatical smile. "I'm not going to be wicked,
and I'm not going to be a coward, either, if very worst
comes to very worst. No. I must not think that way.
I must remember what an advantage I have with my
old Dutchy name and your grand reputation and our
wads of money. And I mustn't waste time like this.
"It seems to me,"—she stopped smiling and
puckered her brow—"and I'm sure I'm right—that
we must keep it simple—very simple. Remember, we
don't know anything. We can't explain anything, nor
tell about anything except our own actions. We don't
know about the poetry. I'm afraid that was a fright-
ful boner, after all; though at first I didn't think so.
I thought it might help. It may. We don't know how
the door got locked and unlocked. We don't know
about the telephone cord. We are the dumbest, most
mystified ones in the group. And, whenever we pos-
sibly can, we'll tell the truth.
"No one has said anything, as yet, but Tony may
have told someone about our engagement for last
evening. So I shall have to tell the truth about that.
It will be safer. And telling about the engagement
won't mean telling about how furious I was. No
one knows about that. No one saw me angry Yes.
Wait. Helene and Sarah Parnham met us in the hall.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 155
know that reason, everything may depend upon it—
she didn't give the alarm. That reason may be—prob-
ably is—the small round object. She knows it is there.
She may have put it there. Then, just as I said before,
she damaged her xylophone for an emotional outlet—
a reason for a quarrel with Dot. She used it at once,
the minute she came into the room, and before she sat
down to the table."
"But," I interposed, not brilliantly, "the locked
door."
"I know that she had a pass key in May. She said
nothing then about it not belonging to her. She used it
last night, of course. If she found any door locked
she'd get in, if she could—just out of nosey curiosity.
She simply took her key and unlocked Helene's door
and lied about it afterwards. Remember, it was she
who first said that it wasn't suicide, and who kept in-
sisting that it wasn't suicide?"
"Yes," I was forced to agree. "I thought that was
her mental morbidity—the delight, the 'kick' as she
would say, of having a little murder in her home. But
mark my words, Vicky, if you are right about this—
though I think you aren't—the woman has kept quiet
thus far either because she has nothing to say or be-
cause she is biding her time to say it. You see what
this will amount to, in the light of her actions last
night and this morning? Simply that someone in the
house, and not necessarily either of us, will be ap-
proached with a financial proposition before long.
Blackmail—to put it bluntly."


156 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"But—would you?" Vicky asked. "You have always
said that nothing on earth would make you submit to
blackmail."
"My dear," said I, "one is apt to speak ex-
travagantly during times of benefic calm."
"Promise me that you won't try to fight it, no
matter what she may demand? Promise me that you
won't consult your lawyer? Promise me that you'll
pay, right off, whatever she asks? And that if she
keeps on asking, you'll keep on paying? Promise me,
Candy? Promise, darling?"
"Vicky," I questioned, "what have I ever done that
justifies your pleading with me, like this, for such a
promise? You must know that I'll pay every cent of
the Van Garter fortune, to the last penny, if needs
be. And after that I'll borrow, steal, and beg."
She put her arms around my neck, her head on my
shoulder. "You're such a peach!" said she. "Such a
perfect peach! I adore you, darling. I never knew
how much before. If you weren't so good, so grand
and good I—I could bear it better. But, Candy, I'll
spend all the rest of my life making it up to you. If
we get poor, I'll work and support us. I thought last
night, when you sat there and looked so warm and
wretched, that I'd done nothing ever but cause you
trouble and worry and now—this—this horror! And
I was so mean and smarty this morning—just a
while ago. I didn't like being, but I thought it was
the only way I could force you not to have that Mac-
Donald woman come up here. I felt so sure it was a


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 157
mistake. I know it is the way you play—like giving
away your queen in chess—but this is different. We
daren't be so bold. We must be cautious"
I patted her shoulder, rubbed my old cheek against
her soft, young hair. "Rest now," I urged, "and stop
thinking and worrying. If you are fond of me—and I
believe that you are—will you do something to please
me?"
She sat up straight and eyed me with misgiving.
"I'm afraid I won't," said the young woman who but
a moment before had been planning to devote her life
to my recompense, her labors to my support. "I don't
imagine so. What is it?"
It was that she should go to bed, take a mild seda-
tive if necessary, and get a few hours of relaxation
and sleep.
"Sleep? Now? Why, Cadwallader Van Garter, as
Grandma Crowinshank used to say"
A tapping, feeble as the peckings of a wounded bird,
sounded on the door, but it brought the bright hard-
ness back into Vicky's eyes. Needlessly, for our visitor
was only pale little Oswald, his own eyes pink-rimmed
from lack of sleep, his thin hands full of papers.
He said, in a voice that trembled with excitement,
"There is not a murderer in this house," and stumbled
over the edge of the rug, and added, "Please excuse


I58 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
CHAPTER 23
"But how odd of you, Oswald!" Vicky said. "I mean
—did you believe that there was a murderer among
us?"
He closed the door noiselessly and flushed and
dropped some of his papers. As he stooped to pick
them up I thought again what a gentle little man he
was, stumbling awkwardly but softly through life with
his eyes on the stars. "Well," he finally answered
Vicky's question, though he spoke to me, "what could
I think?"
"I thought," I replied, "that Mr. Charvan came
into the house last evening while Vicky and I were out
putting her car in the garage. That he brought some-
one in with him. That they quarreled. That Mr.
Charvan's companion shot him and escaped. It seems
the only sensible solution, and a fairly simple one as
well."
"Yes, sir," Oswald said, but with no excess of
credence. "It seems queer, though, that he should have
left the pass key on the telephone table after he'd
cut the cord to delay our getting information to the
police. The one seems to balance—cancel—the other.
If we assume that there was only one person in-
volved."
"As for that," said Vicky, "it is all strange. But
that doesn't give you reason for thinking that one of


l6o THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
conjunction with his Mars, and transiting Uranus was
opposing his progressed Sun."
"And is all this serious?" said I, merely to keep
him in his heavens.
"Yes, sir. In a chart of a lower type Well, no
matter about that. Vicky, of course, has her progressed
Sun squaring her Uranus in force right now, and the
mean transit of Mars hitting her Sun in the fourth
house, with the full Moon lunation only two degrees
away from her radical Mars. As for my own, I'm
still struggling with my Sun opposing Neptune direc-
tion, and the transiting Saturn has just reentered my
eighth. This is all perfectly clear. But for the others,
unless I accept the theory—which I will not when
such men as Hindel and Leo refute it—that trines and
sextiles can bring evil, even from unaspected planets
in the radical . . ."
To me he was talking Hottentot, so I allowed my
troubled thoughts to wander until Vicky spoke, ask-
ing whether the fact that he was to be killed had
shown in Tony Charvan's chart.
"There is no question of it showing," Oswald re-
minded his pupil, "but I haven't Tony's chart, nor
Mr. Van Garter's. I came to ask you for them. You
haven't found time to examine them yourself?"
"Uncle is Aquarius rising," Vicky answered, "so he
doesn't respond readily. His chart is too difficult for
me. I haven't looked at it for months—I got dis-
couraged. I believe I left it in Portland the last time
I was there. I'll see."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY l6l
While she was searching through her files I took up
the charts from the table and, though I heard Oswald
clearing his throat and making nervous fluttiering
movements, it was not until Vicky spoke from her
seat on the hassock near her shelves that I realized
the enormity of my faux pas.
"It is all right, Oswald," she said. "Uncle can't read
the charts. We aren't supposed," she enlightened me,
"to allow others to see the horoscopes without the
subject's permission. Here is Tony's—silly of me, I
had it filed under 'TV I've never progressed it. Here
is the ephemeris for this year. I can't find Uncle's."
I replaced the charts on the table. My entire
astrological knowledge at that time—and I've learned
but little since then—consisted of the information that
the moon's symbol was a crescent moon; the sun's a
circle with a dot in its center; Jupiter's a fat four, and
Mars's an arrow with a small round for its feather
end. Resting in my memory, but not disturbing it, was
a notion that the fourth segment of the circle signi-
fied the home—the eighth segment, death. So much I
knew of astrology; and, in consequence, since I have
been granted moments of intelligence throughout my
life, I had not attempted in this brief instant to delve
into the mysteries of the zodiac, but had read, absent-
mindedly, from the left-hand side of the pages, the
information printed in Oswald's neat hand, under the
heading on each page, "Horoscope Data Sheet."
And here again Cadwallader pauses for a stiff en-
counter with clogged conscience and triumphs, but at


162 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
what cost! Little I knew when I began this tale, little
any layman can know of the stony, straight, and nar-
row path, with its primrose beckoning highways, that
the recounters of mystery stories are forced to tread.
We love our mysteries, cherish them, and long to keep
them safe until the end. We like our little jests and
by-plays. We pine and toil for subtleties and subter-
fuges, for neat devices, masks, and dominoes. And to
what avail? The magician is allowed his velvet cloth,
his silken handkerchief; the spiritist his secret cabinet;
the mystic his dim light and music low. But we workers
with words are conceded only revelation. Have we a
secret? We must divulge it shoutingly, for whispers
are denied us. Do we deftly palm a coin or pull a
rabbit from a hat? We must do so right over again
with tempo ten times reduced. Not a thought may we
think, not a syllable read, without immediate descrip-
tion and disclosure. Possibly, were I dealing with
pliant fiction instead of brutal facts, I should be able
more often to insert some quaint conceit without a
conscience-driven confession for a sequel. But, as the
stupid remark and the clever belie, facts are facts. I
had read, before I replaced the charts on the table,
the following items of information:
HOROSCOPE DATA SHEET
Name—Paul Keasy.
Place—Portland, Oregon.
Lat.—46 N.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 163
Long. 123 W.
Month—Sept.
Day—18.
Year—1907.
Hour 7. Min. 50. A. M.
Standard Pacific Time.
True Local Time—7:38 A. M.
Calc. Sid. Time—7:23:38
Nearest Sid. Time—7:22:18
Greenwich Mean Time—3:50 P. M.
Adj. Calc. Date July 22, 1907.
On second thought, I believe that with Paul Keasy's
data given as a structural model it would be better to
present the remaining material with more economy
of space; omitting, also, the memoranda concerning
time at the foot of the page. Calc. Sid. Time, Nearest
Sid. Time, and even Adj. Calc. Date, meant and mean
nothing to me; so it is possible that they may mean
almost nothing to you. I assure you that they are of
no account in this day's business or its end.
More briefly, then, I also read that Dorris Bailey
was born in Akron, Ohio; latitude 41, north; longitude
82, west. The month was November, the date the
second, the year 1914, and the time 3 130 in the after-
noon, Central.
Sarah T. Parnham, it was stated, was born in Port-


164 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
land, Oregon; latitude 46, north; longitude 123 west;
in the month of January and on the fifth day, in the
year 1888, and at 11:30 o'clock, P. M. according to
Standard Pacific time.
Helene Bailey was born in Columbus, Ohio—and
the latitude and longitude really don't matter—on the
twenty-third day of September in the year 1893 at
two o'clock in the morning, Central time.
Evadne Queenie Parnham was born in San Fran-
cisco, California, where the latitude and longitude are
of but passing interest, in the month of June on its
tenth rare day and during its eighth hour of Pacific
time in the evening, and in the year 1891.
I will admit that though just then I did not know
the precise time of the morning, or the exact latitude
and longitude of Satoria-by-the-Bay, Oregon, I was
fully aware that the month was August, the day Sun-
day, the sixteenth, and the year 1931. And yet, when
I put those charts back on the table I did so without
the faintest realization that I had read anything of
interest or of remote worth.
In part, I think, my stupidity was caused by my
knowledge that Vicky in her bathrom was engaged in
destroying the stars in their courses around my—uni-
versally speaking—puny self. She emerged presently
and in time to hear Oswald's announcement.
"Thursday's new moon," said he, "killed Tony
Charvan. It lunated the criminal square just formed
by his progressed moon in fixed signs."
And that, in the vernacular, was O. K. by me.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 167
home. Publicity or not, after a few months you'll find
that your waiting list is as long as it ever was."
"No, no," she said, and rubbed her hands together
as if she were treating them with some stinging lotion.
"It is more serious than that. I'm thinking of Dot.
Her good times should be coming on now. If she is
under a cloud, no young gentlemen will want to carry
her to parties, or court her—you-all understand?"
"I do indeed," said I. That is to say, I understood
the far-sighted landlady and the slightly hysterical
fond mother. I did not understand the charming
widow, supposedly from the Middle West, who in this
moment of fear spoke as if she had been born and
reared in one of our Southern states. Once or twice
before I had heard a Southern expression slip from her
lips; but I had regarded it as an affectation, as I had
regarded Paul Keasy's aping of the English manner
of speech.
After I had left her, as I crossed the dining room
toward the hall, though the thoughts passed through
my mind that I had never heard a Middle Western
twang in Mrs. Bailey's pleasant voice, had never be-
fore heard her speak with unmistakable Southern pro-
nunciation and idiom, they did not linger in my mind
or trouble me, and I at once forgot them.
Nor does it matter, as I see it now. Had I known
then that Helene Bailey had a secret of her own con-
cerning her past life, most certainly I should not have
pryed into it. Had I known the secret itself—without


l68 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
the law, perhaps, but a smart, spunky wretch—I
should not have revealed it.
The results of my success with the newspapermen
appeared next day on the front page of the Satoria
Eagle and found second-page space in the Sunday eve-
ning editions of Portland's stately Morning Oregonian.
We got off very fortunately, I think, in so far as that
sort of thing is concerned. I had told the boys that to
the best of our present knowledge a Mr. Charvan,
who happened to be staying in the house at the time,
had in a fit of despondency, exaggerated by the heat,
shot himself the evening before. There was, perhaps,
a slight possibility that some prowler had got into the
house and shot him. At least—I smiled, sardonically I
hoped, while I raised my eyebrows—the village police
thought it their duty to investigate that aspect of the
affair. I did not say that a Mr. Charvan was of no
importance in our social scheme. I said and repeated
that, though Mr. Charvan was unknown in the state—
an itinerant worker, I understood—the circumstance
was most sad, most regrettable. To wit, with all my
might and main I made it clear that the dog had
bitten the man—a small, healthy dog and an incon-
sequential stranger.
When I had sped the newspaper men on their way I
stopped on the front porch for a moment. The heavy
fog had turned into one of Oregon's famous mists and,
though the coolness it brought was refreshing, I found
myself growing more and more depressed by the gray
gloom and the forlorn small splashings of the rain.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 169
My fear was gone; dispelled, I think, by my hours of
contact with human beings and my conviction that I
was better accoutered than were they. But I had no
taste for the combat. Vicky's threat of complete con-
fession appealed to me, just then, as a more desirable
procedure. I tried outlining the thing in my mind.
"My niece," I should say, "was out of doors putting
her car into the garage. I went upstairs. Mr. Charvan
was in his room. He had come in, I presume, while my
niece and I were sitting where we could see neither
the front door nor the stairway, and while she was
weeping because of insults he had offered her that
afternoon. As I passed through the upper hall I noticed
that the door to his room was standing wide open, and
I stopped and spoke to him, demanding an explanation
of the affront he had given my niece.
"He replied by seizing the pistol—it was on the
floor beside the overturned footstool—and threaten-
ing me with it. For an instant I thought that this was
mere bravado. In the next moment I saw that it was
deadly earnest, and I fled.
"He followed me. He gained on me. In desperation
I dashed into Mrs. Bailey's room. Before I could
fasten the door he was upon me. He seemed to be
violently insane. I caught his arm so that he could not
direct the weapon toward me, but I could not loosen
his clutch. We struggled back and forth. His eyes were
the eyes of a maniac. His threats and curses were
satanic. Back and forth we went—back and forth.
Seeing me, gentlemen, and considering my age and


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 171
"Why did I not do so? I have no answer. I must
have had numerous opportunities during the following
hours, all hazy in my mind, to complete the arrange-
ments I had begun. Had I gone for a stroll in the
yard no would have questioned. But I did not go into
the yard. No. I went instead into the kitchen, found a
carving knife, cut the telephone cord, and threw the
knife out into the yard. This action, I think, speaks for
my sanity on Saturday evening. There was no reason
for cutting that telephone cord. There was no reason
for my telephoning early on Sunday morning for the
most efficient crime analyst on the coast to come by air-
plane to Meriwether.
"Gentlemen, I tell you that not from the time this
Charvan threatened me murderously with that pistol
until an hour ago have I been able to come from that
first haze of horror into a clearer sight. Not, in fact,
until I heard the possibilities of innocent persons being
involved in this crime did my mind begin to clear.
When it did so I came directly to you. In effect Antony
Charvan killed himself, and the struggle that ensued
before the discharge of the pistol was carried on in
self-defense. I am an aged man. I have nothing more
to say."
"You accomplished all this in the short space of
fifteen minutes?"
I quoted Vicky, "'Murder takes only a minute,'"
and the front door opened and I turned to look into
her dark, troubled eyes and know that fight I must,
r


172 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
whether I liked it or liked it not at all, and that fate
alone could choose the weapons.
At the telephone, whither Vicky had summoned me,
I learned that Lynn MacDonald's plane had been
forced down near Grants Pass. Neither she nor the
pilot was hurt, but it would be several hours before
the plane could be put in condition to take off again.
If possible, she wanted the autopsy delayed until she
could be present.
In retrospect it seems incredible that, as I replaced
the telephone on its rack, I should have experienced
even slight relief at this postponement of her arrival.
In spite of the fact that I have always thought that
nothing was more futile than attempted reconstruction
of events with conditionals, I still feel that if Miss
MacDonald had arrived on scheduled time one life
would have been saved.
CHAPTER 25
I telephoned at once to police headquarters. Dr.
Stiles himself, who, as he explained, merely happened
to be there, spoke with me; and, though he did not say
that he doubted my story in its totality, beginning
with Lynn MacDonald's engagement and ending with
the disabled plane, he conveyed this idea to me defi-
nitely, and met my request for a delayed autopsy as I


174 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
us—Dot wearing an odd, defiant attitude; Mrs.
Bailey, pathetically apologetic, offering the quick,
forced smiles of the distraught hostess responsible for
her guests' well-being.
Evadne Parnham, on one of the davenports, yawned
and sighed and dozed and wakened with starts and
moans to sigh and yawn and doze again.
Vicky, holding The Message of the Stars in her
hands, was having, I could tell, some trouble in making
her attitude sit right—it was requiring constant adjust-
ments to keep innocence from sliding over into indif-
ference; to prevent dumbness from going askew and
becoming insensibility.
Paul Keasy roamed about the room and through the
house; but he was never long or far away from our
wretched company, and when he spoke at all it was
either to praise Tony Charvan or to fret, childishly,
because we were unable to inform the Charvan family
of their bereavement.
Evadne Parnham asked through a yawn whether
for Pete's sake it was our fault that we didn't know
where his family lived, and Sarah Parnham, sitting by
the east windows and writing in a notebook, looked
up at last and tried to soften the callousness of
Evadne's speech.
"Surely," said she, "before long now—as soon as
they have examined the papers Mr. Charvan had in
his pocket—they will be able to give you the informa-
tion you need."
"But that is exactly what I've been talking about,


178 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
under Oswald's door before I really settled down for
the evening."
"Mrs. Bailey," Paul asked, "do you think Dot
should talk that way this morning? There are a few of
us, you know, who can't seem to take this as an amus-
ing incident."
"That isn't fair, Paul. Dot is grieved and sorry.
She isn't herself, this morning, and she is trying"
"Never mind, Mother," Dot scouted the apology.
"I'll fight my own battles, please. You're wrong about
my thinking this is amusing, Paul. I don't. But I'll take
time to cry when the police have decided that it wasn't
one of us who killed Tony. Maybe you'd be interested
in knowing that the only motive they've got hold of,
as yet, is that you and Oswald and Tony were all in
love with Miss Van Garter, and that I was in love with
Tony. Narrows it down neatly, doesn't it? As soon as
they've done some more of their marvy deducting and
found out whether Miss Van Garter, or Evadne, or
Sarah, or Mother was in love with Tony, they may
have some more to add to their list. They are bound
to put the love interest into this affair, at any cost.
Love, connected with Miss Van Garter's money, they'd
like if possible. That lets us women out a bit. And, if
you'll forgive my mentioning it, it lets you in deeper
than Oswald, because it seems that you are living away
beyond your means and are in debt, while Oswald is
mildly prosperous. But Oswald's alibi is shot full of
holes, and yours—as yet—is intact."
Paul moistened his lips. "As—yet?" he managed.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 179
"As yet," Dot emphasized. "Right now I think they
are out whizzing taxis back and forth between here
and the radio station to see whether you'd have had
time to scram home, do the shooting, with all the
trimmings that I did—remember?—in those twenty
minutes, and get back to the mike during a long hook-
up when you didn't need to say anything for half an
hour. Or, as they said, you could have had an accom-
plice. I've forgotten whether he—the accomplice I
mean—was to stay in the station while you were gone,
or come here and do the shooting. They are making
one large point of your finding the pistol in the yard
and carrying it into the house so that your prints
would be on it—innocently. It seems, too, that it had
been deliberately smeared in the wet grass—we'd been
sprinkling all day, you know—and they suspect you of
the smearing."
"Dot! Listen to Mother. Where were you when all
this talk was going on? Did they talk before you?"
"Yes, but they didn't know it. When they got here
this morning they went straight to your room, you
know. I was doing the other rooms, but I did sort of
hang around in the hall. I scrammed downstairs when
I heard them coming out of your room, but the coroner
called to me, so I waited on the stairs. He came down
and asked me questions until I was dizzy. Chiefly he
wanted to know what I was up to in the house while
the others were out on the porch"
"But how did he know that you were in the house
then? Who told him that—and why, I wonder?"
r


180 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"Don't get your feathers up, Mumsie. Your little
daughter broke that news herself. He was my best boy
friend when he began talking; so I, all hot and
bothered, opened my heart to him. He said that he'd
been told that I had mentioned Evadne's being up-
stairs for a long time, and he eased along gently from
that, and what he didn't know I told him. Some way,"
she added, forgetting her flippant pose for a moment
and so becoming youthfully appealing, "really and
truly I hadn't got hold of the idea that they actually
thought some one of us was—was, well—guilty, you
know."
"I know, dear," Helene Bailey comforted. "And I
think they don't really believe such a thing—they
can't. But they have to question, make certain—or I
suppose they think that they have to. But, Dot, I am
sorry that you did this eavesdropping."
"No. I'm not sorry, Mother. I think we should
know"
"What I don't get," Evadne Parnham interrupted,
"is how you could hear much of anything through a
keyhole. They do in shows—but I don't believe people
really can. I've never tried it, of course, myself."
"Neither have I," said Dot. "When the coroner got
through quizzing me I sort of flopped on the steps for
a minute. I suppose I was—well, sort of frightened or
something. Anyway, I sat there and I heard the
coroner talking to Mr. Van Garter, and then Mr. Van
Garter came downstairs, and I heard the coroner going
down the hall. The other men were down there, and I


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY l8l
heard him say that they'd go into Tony's room for
another thorough investigation. I was pretty sure
they'd go back into Mother's room again to talk
things over, and I thought how much I'd like to hear
what they said to one another. So I sneaked up again,
and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the
padlock was loose on the door. I just walked in and
hid behind the screen, scrooched down. When the men
came back in I was scared stiff, and I hardly dared
breathe, but I heard every word. They are horrible—
those men. Once or twice it nearly killed me not to
step right out and tell them what I thought of them.
Once I got so utterly furious that I moved a little,
and"
"Child! Child!" Mrs. Bailey patted her hands on
Dot's shoulders. "Suppose they had found you hiding
in there! It was a foolish dangerous thing to do. You
must have known better."
"Just like her," commented Evadne. "She's always
up to something. But go on, Dot, tell us what it was
that made you so mad. Was it about you, or about
somebody else?"
I saw the fib in Dot's eyes along with the gleam of
malice as she answered, "No, it was about you. They
said they were almost certain Tony had killed himself
because of his pash for you. It was usual, they said, for
handsome middle-aged men to kill themselves because
of beautiful blonde actresses; and you are the only real
blonde in the house—to say nothing of your playing
little Eva in your youth."


l82 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Evadne leaned forward, tense and eager and smil-
ing. "Honest, Dottie? Honest, now? Are you telling
the truth or just trying to kid me along?"
"Neither," Dot answered. "I was lying, because I
didn't care to tell the truth. I'd no idea you'd be flat-
tered"
Paul Keasy, hat in hand, spoke from the doorway
in a strained hoarse voice. "I'm going to the police
station," he said. "I am going to find out whether
those men actually think that I killed one of the best
friends I've ever had on earth."
CHAPTER 26
"And give Dot away, and repeat what she has told us
in confidence?" Helene Bailey asked, and though her
words trembled her eyes were steady and her chin was
up.
"I'm sorry," Paul answered. "But you must admit,
Mrs. Bailey, that I have a right to defend myself."
"My boy," said I, "the time to defend yourself is
after you have been accused. You saw the combined
intellects of those men in action last night. You heard
Miss Bailey say just now, and not in jest, that they
suspected her of the crime. She is a schoolgirl—almost
a child. The idea that you could leave your duties at
the radio station, come home in some conveyance, kill
your friend, and return to the station all in the space


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 183
of half an hour or less time will never be considered
seriously."
"I wasn't out of the broadcasting room all evening.
I wasn't away from the mike fifteen minutes. Not
fifteen minutes, I tell you I"
"You weren't. And if need arises you can un-
doubtedly prove that you weren't. My best advice to
you now is to wait until you are asked to prove it."
"Yes, but Dot said they were suspecting me. All
that about my finding the pistol"
Vicky spoke softly, soothingly: "Don't worry,
Paulibus. It was I who found the thing, as you know.
I'll tell them. If any smearing in the grass was done,
I did it before you came along and picked it up. I
should have contradicted Oswald last night, I suppose
—but I thought it didn't matter, if I thought at all.
Come, now, sit here by me and stop pacing about and
being silly. Why don't you write a letter to your
mother, or do some sensible thing of the sort, as Miss
Parnham is doing?"
"I am not writing letters," Sarah Parnham said. "I
have been trying to make an outline that might be of
help to Lynn MacDonald when she comes. I am sure
the officers will have nothing but a hodgepodge to
present to her, and I thought I could at least get things
in some sort of order. Evadne suggested it. Come,
lazy-bones," she smiled dimly across to Evadne, "you
were to help, you know. I surely do need help. I'm
afraid I'm doing nothing here but 'busy work.'"
"Hand it here," Evadne answered, and stretched a


184 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
languid hand toward Sarah, at least twenty feet away.
Sarah rose obediently; but I carried the notebook to
Evadne, who, forgetting to thank me, said through an-
other yawn, "Well, if you've got things straight,
Sassy, she'll know, anyway, that it wasn't suicide."
To my own astonishment I began to speak, bel-
ligerently. "Mrs. Parnham, I wonder why you are so
much opposed to the theory of suicide."
"I'm not 'opposed,'" she pouted, and chose to be
aggrieved. "But when I just know a thing isn't true, I
won't say I think it is. And I pretty nearly always
know the truth, too—just kind of a hunch or some-
thing without being told. Don't I, Sassy? It is in my
nature or something, and I've always been that way.
Why, I remember once when I was a little girl . . ."
We sat there, heartsick, frightened, sad, each with
his or her own dark burden of trouble, while Evadne's
childish voice went chirruping through one vapid anec-
dote after another. The rain splashed on the windows,
trickled down the blurred glass like slow tears, dripped
a monotonous steady flow from the eaves. The small
fire in the grate smoked and shifted and fell into ashes
with no glowing coals.
Evadne had dropped the notebook on the davenport
beside her, and as the long, distressing minutes
dragged on, Vicky's eyes and mine met again and again
in stealthy journeys to and away from it. And I knew
that our fears were fusing—fears engendered by our
knowledge of Sarah's keen, methodical mental abili-
ties; so, finally, when I saw Vicky's tranquil fingers


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 185
fiddling nervously, and when Evadne paused to light a
cigarette, I brought the subject around to the notes
and mentioned, idly, that I'd be interested in seeing
what she had done.
"And I'd be glad to have you look at them," Sarah
said, and came with Vicky to sit beside me as I reached
for the book. "But you mustn't laugh."
"Laugh?" questioned Vicky, and one felt that soon
she meant to search for that peculiar word in her
dictionary.
"I meant at the muddle I've produced," Sarah ex-
plained. "Revision will help, of course—though per-
haps you'll think they aren't worth troubling to
revise. In Mary Roberts Rinehart's stories the daunt-
less old maids always make such splendid lists—but I
seem to be not that type of old maid. I have tried my
best," she added, as she flipped through the pages and
found the place, "to think honestly and without pre-
judice. I thought I could do much better than I have
done, or I should never have attempted it at all."
As I read what she had written I had no inclination
toward laughter; but something within me did smile,
slyly, now and then at the memory of Vicky's and my
fears, and at Sarah's timidities—her incessant question
marks, her faltering phrases—and at the thought of
"dauntless" used in any connection with herself and
her present efforts.
She interrupted our reading with constant apologies,
which Vicky and I, perforce, met politely; but since
none of the conversation at that time was of particular


l86 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
account, I shall present the notes without the accom-
paniment of our chatter:
"Antony Charvan either committed suicide or was
killed on Saturday night, August 15, 1931.
"Place: Apparently in Mrs. Bailey's room. Might
it be possible that he was killed elsewhere and carried
into the room later?
"Time: He sang at the radio station from 8:30
until 8:45. He left the station at about 8:50. The
body was discovered between 12:30 and 1:00 A. M.
I have been informed that the hands were cold at this
time. How long does it take body heat to leave the
body? Did he come home? Alive? If so, at what time?
Unanswerable, because no one saw him come in. Had
he come directly in a cab he would have reached Meri-
wether in fifteen minutes, or at about 9:05. Did he
come alone? A taxicab driver says that he drove his
cab three times to Meriwether that night. 1.—Dot and
Evadne came home in a cab. 2.—Paul Keasy came
home in a cab. 3.—Unaccounted for.
"Keys: The door of Mrs. Bailey's room was locked.
The key to the door was found out of the lock and on
a desk in the room. Did Mr. Charvan lock himself in
the room and remove the key? Why should he remove
the key from the keyhole? Did someone else remove
the key in order to lock and unlock the door at will
with the pass key? Why should a pass key be used if
the key to the door was available? Why should the
pass key be left on the telephone stand in the hall?


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 187
If—and this seems the most sensible theory—Antony
Charvan locked himself in the room and unthinkably
removed the key from the door, how is one to account
for the pass key?
"The telephone: The cord was found cut in two
when, shortly after one o'clock, Oswald Fleep tried
to telephone for the police. Mr. Van Garter had used
the telephone shortly before ten o'clock. Who cut the
cord? Could there be an object other than the obvious
one of wishing to delay the police call? If delay was
the object, then why was the pass key left where it
could be found? In particular, why was the pass key
left beside the telephone?
"The poem: [Here she gave a copy of the two
stanzas with the note and signature beneath them.
Here, also, she began to use a more conventional, if
lax, outline form.]
"1. Was this torn from the book and typed and
signed by Antony Charvan? If so, suicide seems
to be the one answer to the problem.
"A. If suicide, how, why, and by whom was
the pistol removed from the body and
thrown into the yard?
"2. Was this torn from the book and typed and
forged by the murderer in order to make the
death seem to be suicidal?
"A. If so, why was the pistol thrown into the
yard?
"1. Was it thrown from the window?


l88 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"2. Was it thrown at some other time.
Pistol was not found near paths or
driveway.
"Note—The pistol and the poem together
would have made suicide the only theory.
The absence of both note and pistol would
have pointed directly to murder. The
presence of the note and the absence of the
pistol now have to be balanced, one against
the other.
"Note—Since we have been informed that
the pistol belonged to Antony Charvan,
the suicide theory, with the removal of the
pistol afterwards for reasons as yet un-
known, seems the more tenable. Could the
removal of the pistol be an attempt to in-
volve some innocent person in crime? If so,
why was the note not destroyed? Haste?
Carelessness? Stupidity?
"The carving knife: A large carving knife was found
near the east windows of the living room.
"1. Was it used to cut the telephone cord?
"2. Did it have some closer connection with the
tragedy?
"rfntony Charvan's room: His room was found in
topsy-turvy disorder.
"1. Had someone been searching for something in
this room?
"A. Mr. Charvan himself? To find the pistol?
To find something else?


190 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"Oswald Fleep's room: A note that said, 'Don't
worry. Mum is the word,' was found under his
door. I have not seen the note, but am quoting from
information given to me by Mr. Fleep himself,
"i. Was the note put under the door by the detec-
tive who claimed he found it there, in order to
force Mr. Fleep to talk if he had anything to
say?
"A. This seems probable, since the note was
not found until the detective went on a
secret trip through the house.
"2. Was the note put under the door by someone
who wished to throw suspicion upon Mr.
Fleep?
"A. To direct suspicion away from himself?
"B. To shield someone else?
"3. Does this note suggest that more than one per-
son was involved in the affair?
"Other rooms in the house: As yet I have heard of no
other clues being found in any of the rooms.
"Motives: Someone has said that crime is caused by
temptation (motive) acting on temperament, plus
opportunity.
"Helene Bailey.
"1. Motive. Unknown. It would have to be very
strong to counterbalance her fear of unfavor-
able publicity for Meriwether, and of Dot's
being put under a cloud.
"2. Opportunity. None. She left the house shortly
after 8:30 and went to a moving picture show


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 191
with Sarah Parnham. They stayed until the end
of the picture, stopped at a drugstore for re-
freshments, and did not arrive home until after
11 :oo.—Note: I should have said, while dis-
cussing time, that considering the state of the
body when found, it is certain that death must
have occurred before 11: 00 o'clock—probably
as early as 9 : 30 or 10: 00 o'clock.
"3. Temperament. Lovable, timid. Impossible to
conceive of crime in connection with Helene
Bailey.
"Dot Bailey.
"1. Motive. She disliked Antony Charvan, but dis-
like is not a sufficient motive for murder.
"2. Opportunity. She may have had opportunity.
"3. Temperament. Hot-tempered at times but not
brave. Her youth must be considered. I have
known her for six years and I know that she is
incapable of a criminal act.
"Oswald Fleep.
"1. Motive. In love with Miss Van Garter. Hence
—jealousy.
"2. Opportunity. Alibi is at present unsound.
"3. Temperament. Decidedly weak, but he is a
good Christian boy and it is impossible that he
would murder under any provocation.
"Paul Keasy.
"1. Motive. Also in love with Miss Van Garter.
Living beyond his means and in debt. Jealousy
and greed?


192 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"2. Opportunity. Absolutely no opportunity. He
was at the radio station announcing all evening,
and could bring hundreds of people to vouch
for this fact.
"3. Temperament. Doubtful. I should think too
weak.
"Evadne Parnham.
"1. Motive. None.
"2. Opportunity. She may have had opportunity.
"3. Temperament. Sweet, loving, childish, but very
weak. Of all the group, the one most incapable
of violence of any sort.
"Sarah Parnham.
"1. Motive. Unknown, but one could doubtless be
discovered. A general dislike of all men might
be considered.
"2. Opportunity. None. She was with Mrs. Bailey
all evening.
"3. Temperament. Inclined to be cold and hard but
not cowardly. If sufficiently provoked, might be
capable of taking the life of a fellow creature.
Can kill snakes, set mouse traps, and wring the
necks of chickens—if necessary—without a
qualm.
"Victoria Van Garter.
"1. Motive. None.
"2. Opportunity. Ample. At home alone with her
uncle all evening.
"3. Temperament. Pleasant but weak. Is afraid of
spiders and cows.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 193
"Mr. Van Garter.
"1. Motive. None.
"2. Opportunity. Ample.
"3. Temperament. Sentimental, mild, and ingratiat-
ing. But perhaps, like Sarah Parnham, capable
of violence if sufficiently provoked. Should
judge not cowardly."
No man, I think, reads of himself that he is mild
and ingratiating and revives with alacrity of tongue or
spirit. I said nothing, though we had come to the end
of her writing, and Vicky said only, "Well "and
with much doubt.
Sarah Parnham sighed. "Yes," she said, "I knew
half an hour ago that I hadn't had enough experience
in this sort of thing to do any good with it. It is largely
a matter of practice, I am sure. Your advice, then,
would be to destroy it and not show it to the woman
detective at all?"
"No, indeed," said Vicky. "I shouldn't destroy it—
or you'll be in my position of 'destroying valuable
papers,' you know. But really, Miss Parnham, I can't
quite understand why you wrote all those last pages—
motives and so on—about us here in Meriwether.
Uncle and I are convinced that it was some outsider—
some enemy of Tony's—who either came in with him
last night, or came earlier or later, and did the shoot-
ing while Uncle and I were outside with the car. That
is, of course, unless Tony did kill himself"
Paul Keasy, who had been pacing to and fro,


194 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
stopped as he overheard Vicky's words and glared at
us. "Tony didn't kill himself," he said. "I knew Tony.
But you are right about someone on the outside doing
the shooting. If there were any way on earth that we
could reach his family, or his old friends"
"Do you mean," questioned Oswald, who had come
quietly into the room while Paul had been talking,
"that you don't know where Tony's relatives are—nor
how to get in touch with them?"
Paul whirled to face him. "That's exactly what I
mean, by George I What's the matter with you, Fleep?
You act as if you'd never heard of any of this be-
fore."
"I hadn't," Oswald answered mildly, though he
flushed. "I supposed the police had found the ad-
dresses this morning. I should think, though, that if
you'd advertise in the newspaper of the town where he
was born you'd find someone who could put you in
touch with the family."
"Finel" Paul sneered. "If we happened to know the
name of the town or the state that it's in."
"He was born in Louisiana," Oswald said, "in a
town named Bayou Woods. Or—at least, let me see—
was it Bayou Grove? It's on his chart. Do you remem-
ber, Vicky?"
"His chart, of course!" Vicky exclaimed. "Dear
me, how could I have forgotten it! No, I don't remem-
ber the place, but I'll run right up and bring the chart
down.—No, Paul. I was going anyway."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 195
When she had gone Oswald went to join Sarah
Parnham, who was feeding the goldfish in the
aquarium, and I turned and paced with Paul. As we
passed the doorway I looked across into the dining
room and saw Dot and Orilla there setting the tables.
Mrs. Bailey, I supposed, was in the kitchen, and
Evadne had followed Vicky upstairs to prettify, doubt-
less, for luncheon.
Paul had but one string to his harp, and my harp
was stringless, so I soon forsook his company and put
myself down near the fireplace to stare into the ashes
at the charred and blackened stubs of wood and listen
to the shivering of the wind and the dribbling of the
rain; until, presently, Oswald came and spoke to me
in a lowered voice, and with trouble in his pale, tired
face.
"Doesn't it seem to you that Vicky's gone rather
long on her errand? Would she resent it if I went up?
Or could you?"
I am ashamed to confess that I thought his
anxiety an impertinence; but, most fortunately, before
I had found an answer that I considered suitably
ironical Vicky spoke from the doorway.
"I can't find it," she said. "I left it out of the files
and on the desk in my room. It isn't there, nor any-
where in the room. I've hunted and hunted. Someone
must have taken it."
I allowed myself one long look at her, and I knew
then, as well as I knew later when I had it from her


I96 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
own lips, that she was telling the truth—that she had
neither destroyed the chart nor hidden it away.
Paul Keasy protested, "Oh, now, but by Jove I No
one has been in the house but the lot of us. You must
have overlooked it, Vicky. I mean to say, why should
any one of us . . ."
He trailed his question off, unfinished, but Sarah
Parnham answered. "We wouldn't, of course. We all
feel responsible for getting word to Mr. Charvan's
family. But you are mistaken when you say no one
has been in the house. Those unspeakable men were
here and all over the place."
"Well," Paul conceded, "yes. But then why should
they carry off an astrological chart. Crib it, you know?
It would be no good to them."
Sarah replied, "Perhaps for the data, for the same
reason that we want it," and we all agreed with her.
"Only," Vicky said to me, a few moments later,
when we had found privacy on the rain-wet porch,
"Oswald returned the chart to me after the officers
had all left the house, and I put it there on my desk.
Did you take it, Candy?"
"I did not," said I.
She shook her head slowly. "But—I don't under-
stand. As Grandma Crowinshank used to say"
Dot Bailey opened the door and told us that
luncheon was served.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 197
CHAPTER 27
AFTER luncheon, another sorry meal, Vicky to my
astonishment informed me that she was getting out
her car to take Paul Keasy to the radio station, where
he was on duty from half-past two until half-past six
on Sunday afternoons. Her plans included my com-
pany, and dropping me at the hotel, on our return trip,
in order that I might shave and get into fresh linens.
At the end of the driveway two motorcycle police-
men loitered, apparently objectiveless, until, at our
first turning, we noticed that one of them was follow-
ing us. When we stopped at the radio station the
policeman also stopped; and when we started again he
left Paul to his own devices and followed us down
the steep hills and southward to the door of the
hotel.
Vicky waited in the lobby for me. He sat on his
motorcycle at the curb and, so Vicky insisted, not for
one split second of my half-hour's absence did he re-
move his eyes from her face. She quoted her grandma
and tried to speak lightly, but I could hear the twang
of taut nerves strung close to hysteria, and I sug-
gested a drive to the ocean, and she accepted the idea
eagerly and we started west with the policeman
chugging behind us in the rain.
She spoke again, and worriedly, of the stolen chart,
and I told her of Helene Bailey's Southern accent and
idiom when distress had thrown her off her guard. "I


I98 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
believe," I went on, "that it is possible that she and
Mr. Charvan knew each other in the South, since
Oswald Fleep says that Mr. Charvan was born in
Louisiana."
"Yes," she agreed, "I think it's possible. Tony left
the South when he was a child, but he went home
several times after that, he told me. He was there, I
think he said, from 1914 when the war started until
we went into the war. His Southern tongue often came
through, though he prided himself that it didn't. But
supposing Helene and Tony had known each other
before, why should she try to keep us from informing
his family?"
"She may have some reason, but it can't be any con-
cern of ours. Shall we talk of something else?"
"Dare we? Or should we go into it all just once
more, to be certain that we have everything straight?"
"We have told our story, and it is a simple one. For
the present, at least, it seems to me that our wisest
plan would be to follow your suggestion of this morn-
ing and establish innocence in our own minds."
And so, ridiculously if you like, my niece and I drove
those twenty dull, rain-washed miles to the seashore,
capping quotations.
We stopped for tea at a little house whose ex-
quisitely weathered walls were all but hidden in its
tall, gaudy dahlia gardens. (As yet, neither Vicky nor
I can conquer a dislike for dahlias.) The police-
man, a surly youngster, declined Vicky's invitation to
take tea with us, and sat outside in the wet with the


200 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
that led to the kitchen—incredibly quiet in its evening
gloom. Vicky stopped in the front hall to dispose of
her wraps. I walked to the radio near the archway
between the living room and the hall—pettily, I was
annoyed because Vicky had disparaged my excellent
timepiece. I knew that the signals were announced
from the station, close to the hour, and I—for the
first, last, and only time in my life—turned on the in-
strument, twirled the dial, and was rewarded in a
moment, with, . . Paul Keasy is your announcer.
Stand by for the Tick-Tock Time Signals."
Vicky walked past me into the living room.
"At the stroke of the gong it will be one second
past five o'clock"
I got across the room to where she stood, swaying,
her eyes twisted shut, her hands at her temples; silent
now since those low sounds of concentrated horror had
ceased issuing from her throat. Obeying her shudder-
ing backward gesture I turned and looked down at
the davenport behind her.
A blare of ribald music burst from the radio. Vicky
moved swiftly, snapped the thing to silence, and
slowly, gracefully, one hand slipping down the side
of the cabinet, she curved to the floor.
I ran to the kitchen for water. I shouted as I ran.
In the kitchen I turned the faucet with such force
that I could not fill the glass, and I spattered myself
thoroughly and returned, shouting for help, through
the house. I dashed water into Vicky's face. I dragged
her into the hall and opened the front door and


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 201
squatted beside her and fanned her with the telephone
book and blubbered and pleaded with her loudly and
inanely.
Her lashes were flickering, the tip of her tongue was
trying to moisten her bluish lips when Oswald Fleep
spoke, chattering across my shoulder.
"She has fainted. Bring more water," I commanded,
and mentally cursed the red-headed youth when I saw
him go leaping up the stairs in his flapping felt slippers
instead of rushing to the kitchen. He was back in a
flash with what looked like a perfume bottle in his
hand.
"Brandy," he explained. "Medicinal purposes," and
removed the round glass stopper and poured the liquor
between Vicky's parted lips dashingly, as he would
have emptied it into a sink. Before I could smash the
thing out of his hands she choked, sputtered, and, as
I raised her in my arms, spat revulsively. "Don't!" she
said.
She had spoken. Warm relaxing tears were be-
ginning to seep through her dark lashes. So when in
the next moment I heard voices, glanced through the
screen, and saw what to my dazed fancy seemed to be
a throng of persons swarming up the steps, I merely
dismissed the idea as of no consequence. But Oswald,
seeing what I saw and believing in it, exclaimed,
"Good Lord!"—panic over Vicky's plight combined
unpleasantly with the childish whine in his voice.
"Here are the police again, and with a woman! This
is getting to be too much."


202 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Despite my protests Vicky struggled to her feet.
Lieutenant Wirt opened the screen door and came in
and stood sniffing. I realized that the place reeked of
the brandy that had been spilled, all of it, down the
front of Vicky's frock.
The lady came in next. She was a tall, youthful-
looking person with a wide white forehead, clear gray
eyes, and sprigs of red hair intentionally perked out
from the edges of her small hat. "I am Lynn Mac-
Donald, Mr. Van Garter, Miss Van Garter," said she.
This was not, I suppose, remarkable. She had seen our
pictures here and there in our coast papers and could
not readily forget Vicky's beauty or my bulk.
"Swacked?" inquired Mr. Goldberger, impersonally
curious, as he looked at Vicky.
"Miss Van Garter," said I, "is just recovering from
a dangerous fainting spell. She found Helene Bailey's
body there in the living room when we came in just
now. Mrs. Bailey has been stabbed to death. The
knife is still in her throat."
CHAPTER 28
I HAD no impression of Miss MacDonald's hurrying,
but before anyone else in the hall had spoken or moved
she was standing by the davenport, and she had turned
on the lights as she went into the room.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 203
I put Vicky into a chair and started to go with the
others, Oswald Fleep, Dr. Stiles, Lieutenant Wirt,
and the Messrs. Goldberger and Shautz into the living
room.
"Please," Miss MacDonald said, "don't come in
here now. Any of you."
Mr. Goldberger took two long steps forward. "You
can't shut out the law," said he.
"No, indeed. But I think the D. A. would be willing
for me to have ten minutes alone in here—he seems
dissatisfied with the other case. Will you please close
the sliding doors in the hall?"
Mr. Goldberger took two steps backward. Lieu-
tenant Wirt closed the sliding doors. When they'were
safely shut he informed me, confidentially, "She's
cracked. Ready for the squirrels. She thinks Charvan
was poisoned. Showed her the pistol and the bullet—
no doubt about it being fired from the weapon. Showed
her the exit and entrance wounds. No good. All she'd
think about was contents of the stomach. Sore as a
boiled owl to start with because we hadn't delayed the
autopsy. She phoned direct, after calling you, but Doc
didn't feel like he could put it off very well. She's been
down there for two solid hours getting all our
pointers. But if she got any of her own I'll tell the
world she kept them to herself. Not that we'd want
them when she thinks a straight evident case of shoot-
ing is a poison case. Contents of the stomach! First
thing she wanted to know about, and can't think of
anything else. Contents of the stomach!"


204 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
I looked at Vicky. Green shadows were deepening
about her tight lips. Together Oswald and I got her
up the stairs and into the hall. It was dim and as still
as death, and all the doors were closed. When we came
to Vicky's room Oswald touched my arm and in-
dicated that he wished to speak alone with me. I
stepped back and Vicky went into her room.
"You know," he said, "the ladies lay down for naps
about two hours ago. They took sedatives, but it seems
to me that considering all the noise downstairs some
of them should have wakened. Do you think we should
say something to the police, and investigate the rest of
the house?"
"Heaven forbid!" I ejaculated. "Dot hasn't been
told as yet. We can't have those fellows thundering
and powwowing around."
"Well—I'll leave it to you, Mr. Van Garter. But
on the square, I don't like this quiet up here."
I thought for a moment. Then I rapped on Vicky's
door, and when she came I told her that Oswald was
going to stay with her while I went downstairs to see
Miss MacDonald. To my surprise she assented, and
added, "It is sweet of you, Oswald, to stay with me.
I'm afraid to stay alone."
In the lower hall I shouldered my way pompously
through the group of men and knocked on the closed
sliding doors and opened them. Lynn MacDonald
was standing near the fireplace. She frowned at me, but
she held her tongue.
As briefly as I could I explained my intrusion with


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 205
my fears concerning the quiet hall and the closed doors
upstairs.
"Yes," she answered. "I'll go with you now. We
won't say anything to the men, as yet. They'll come in
here. They can't do any harm here, I'm certain. She
was stabbed in her sleep. Death was instantaneous.
There are no prints on the knife."
"Is there a possibility of suicide?"
"None. She was stabbed."
In the hall she said to the men, "I've found nothing
to help us in the room. I hope you'll be more successful
than I was." And, to me, in an undertone as we walked
up the stairs, "Is there an astrologer living here?"
"Mr. Fleep, the gentleman in slippers whom you
met in the hall when you came in, has been studying
astrology for years, but he is not a professional. Also,
my niece has become interested in it and has attempted
to do some work with it, under his tutelage."
Contrary to all detective tradition she answered the
question I had thought myself too foxy to ask. "There
are some astrological charts partially burned in the
fireplace in the living room. I think, however, that they
will have no significance—it was much too carelessly
done."
At the head of the stairway I paused to speak of
Dot and to suggest that the terrible news should be
conveyed to her gently.
"Shall we begin with her room, then?" Miss Mac-
Donald questioned. "And if we find her unharmed, we
might send her to your niece's room—say that Miss


206 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Van Garter wishes to see her. Shall we ask Miss Van
Garter if she'd be willing to tell Miss Bailey? Would
it be too hard for her? She looked ill herself."
And she did look ill, and she was crying again, when
she answered our knock, and she did not care for our
planning. "No, no," she said. "I'll go with you to Dot's
room. We can't send the poor darling about to receive
news of that sort. But why waken her now? Couldn't
we let her sleep as long as she will?"
I explained that we were slightly disturbed because
of the ladies' sleeping so soundly, and Vicky answered
with a gasp of understanding, spoke to Oswald, and
came with us to knock gently on Dot's door.
We received no answer. Miss MacDonald stooped,
looked into the keyhole, took a gadget thing from her
handbag, inserted it in the lock, turned the key, and
opened the door.
Dot was on her bed asleep, breathing regularly.
Her too plump body was covered with a quilt. She
looked, I thought, woefully young and helpless.
Miss MacDonald tiptoed to the bed and returned to
us. "She has taken a strong sedative, but her sleep is
natural. Will you stay with her, Miss Van Garter? My
advice would be to waken her, but you do as you think
best."
"Could Oswald come and sit here, too, for a little
while?" Vicky whispered. "I can't bear to wake her,
but I am afraid to stay alone."
He was standing just outside the door. I asked him


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 207
to stay with Vicky, and Miss MacDonald and I went
on to Evadne Parnham's room.
She came to the door only half awake and wearing
red-and-white percale pajamas, which allowed me to
indulge my cowardice and wander off for a few steps
ere her tumult began. It came, as I had known it
would, shrilly and, perhaps, to one not wholly stony
of heart, piteously. Nor had it subsided when Miss
MacDonald, her brow unbecomingly furrowed in a
frown, rejoined me with an exclamation half apolo-
getic. "She'll be better alone, I think. Does she call
her stepdaughter 'Sassy'? We might go next to her
room."
"Right here," said I, and knocked on Sarah Parn-
ham's door. For some reason, which I could not ex-
plain, my fears for the past few minutes had concen-
trated on Sarah Parnham. Never, I think, have I
heard a more welcome sound than her cross, sleepy
voice as she answered, "Yes? What is it?"
I tapped again, to bring her to the door, and as we
waited I warned Miss MacDonald, "Miss Parnham
and Mrs. Bailey," I whispered, "were dear friends,
close friends of long standing. I fear this is going to be
very hard for her."
Miss MacDonald tutted her tongue and shook her
head in sympathy and murmured, flutteringly, as the
key turned in the lock, "You tell her, please, Mr. Van
Garter."
"The lady," thought I, "is after all—a lady," and


208 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Sarah Parnham opened the door. We stepped into her
room and I told her as gently as I could, but it was
brutal at best and she backed away from us, horror
widening in her eyes. Her hands went to her cheeks,
and her elbows quivered together in a shudder.
"No, no," she pleaded. "Not Helenel No. No. She
was so good—to all of us, to everyone. I—I can't get
along without Helene. Oh But what is happening
to us here? It can't be true—any of it . . ."
She was wearing a wrinkled, shabby old frock, and
I noticed that the once neat cuffs around her scrawny
hands had been mended, and there was a patch on one
elbow, and I found her pitiable beyond endurance and
longed to proffer comfort, and stood dumb.
Miss MacDonald said, "Your stepmother is
frightened and crying. Listen—you can hear her.
Could you go to her? I fear she shouldn't be alone.
That is, if you feel equal to it"
She was speaking to space. Sarah had sped past us
and was gone.
"You are very wise," said I, humbly.
"Thank you," said she. "I wish I were. Now then:
What time does the radio announcer leave the station
on Sunday?"
"At half-past six," I answered, as I looked at my
watch. "He should be here within an hour." And then,
with garrulous impulse, I told her about hearing his
voice giving time signals for five o'clock at the precise
instant that Vicky had found Helene Bailey stabbed to
death there in the living room.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 200.
"Yes?" said she; which should not have emboldened
me toward further conversation, but I had a question
that I wished to ask, and I asked it.
"One of the men," said I, "told me that you thought
Mr. Charvan had met his death through poisoning. Is
this true?"
"No. Of course it is not true. He was shot with the
pistol that was brought into the hall last night—early
this morning, I should say."
"There was something said," I persisted, "about
your interest in the stomach contents."
"Yes. Had he dined last evening an analysis would
have given us a chance to estimate, closely, the time
that death occurred. Since he did not dine, and since
no two of the men agree as to the hour, I am finding
it difficult to set the time at all. Now then: Are the
servants' rooms on this floor?"
With some embarrassment I explained the servant
situation just then existing in Meriwether.
"These women!" said she, and I traced a note of
envy. "I don't see how they do it. Two servants for
the summer in a place of this size. Thrift—backed by
sheer efficiency and energy."
"And there," I told her, "you have described Mrs.
Bailey, if you will add charm and humor."
"Yes?" said she.
On the attic stairway we met Oswald Fleep. "I
thought some coffee would be good for the girls," he
explained, "so I went up to call Orilla. I'm afraid
she's cleared out. Odd—for a Capricorn rising to be a


2IO THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
quitter. Still, it is possible that she was mistaken about
her birth hour. No use going up," he added, when
Miss MacDonald did not turn around. "There is no
one up there."
"I'll just have a look at her room, anyway," Miss
MacDonald answered so carelessly that I trekked
right along behind her.
I was glad for Mrs. Bailey's sake that the attic
room was large and cheery and not the dreary hole
that I was sure Miss MacDonald had expected to find.
However, she did not stop for admiration. She pushed
back the closet curtains, revealing the row of un-
garmented hangers, gave a quick glance at the gay
cretonne-covered dressing table, said, "Yes, she has
left. They usually do. No wonder," and led the way
down the attic stairs.
Oswald Fleep was waiting in the hall. In the dim
light I could not see his blushes, but I could feel them
on my own face as he stammered, "I—I beg your par-
don, but I think you should know that in this case some
small round object is going to be your most important
clue. I am a student of astrology, you know. A chart
has been made out for the murderer, and it gives the
small round object as the most important clue. Miss
Van Garter worked it. She has just told me about it.
We are only amateurs, of course"
"Yes, yes," I interrupted. "But what about Dot?
Has she wakened?"
"Yes. She's doing fairly well—poor kid. She's a
brave girl—but it's pretty bad. I got out when Miss


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 211
Parnham came—she and Vicky are with her now. But,
you know, she is worrying about something she thinks
she should tell—but is afraid to or—something of the
sort. She said she was going to tell Miss MacDonald,
and then she changed her mind and said she'd tell Mr.
Van Garter. I think some coffee would be good for her
—hot and strong, you know. Maybe I can make it fit
to drink. I'll try." He went padding away in his
slippers.
"I believe," said Miss MacDonald, "that I'll call a
cab and go directly to the radio station before the an-
nouncer leaves there, and talk to Miss Bailey when I
get back. How long will it take me to go there in a
cab?"
"Fifteen minutes, I believe," I told her. "But I have
a car and a chauffeur down at the hotel doing nothing.
May I put them at your disposal, during your stay
here?"
"Yes, and thank you. Will you telephone to him at
once, and ask him to hurry?"
Dr. Stiles met us at the foot of the stairway. "Any
objections to our moving the body now?" he asked, un-
pleasantly.
"Have you taken photographs?"
"We aren't a city here. We aren't equipped for that
sort of fancy stuff. Besides, it is totally unnecessary."
"I see. No, I have no objections."
"How long, in your opinion, since death occurred?"
"When I examined the body it had been between
forty and fifty minutes."


212 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"No. Much longer than that," said Dr. Stiles.
She turned to me. "Will you telephone now,
please?"
"Much longer," I heard him insisting as I dialed my
number.
"Yes, sir. Thank you sir," said Merkel. "Much
longer," said Dr. Stiles. Miss MacDonald said noth-
ing.
"The lady," thought I, "is a strong, silent man; but
it will be the death of her yet," and looked up, in an-
swer to Vicky's soft voice. She was leaning over the
banister, midway of the staircase.
"Uncle," she called, "as soon as you are disengaged
may I speak to you, please, in my room?"
CHAPTER 29
Her door was scarcely closed behind us when she said,
"Tell me this instant. I can't bear not knowing. Who
killed Tony Charvan?"
My jaw dropped. No man can speak with his jaw
dropped. Odd sounds, only, ensue from an attempt to
do so.
She said, "I know now that you didn't do it. I've
felt it all along. But now I know," and twisted her
face and her fingers.
"Great dead Cassar's ghost!" said I.
"Do you by any chance think that I shot Tony?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 213
"You have told me so, repeatedly."
"And Helene? Do you think that I stabbed
Helene?"
"Vick, what are you talking about? What is this
chattering?"
"I'm not chattering. You're chattering. I thought
you must have killed Tony. I knew it was all my fault
and because of me; but I thought—while I was out
putting the car in the garage. There just wasn't anyone
else, nor any other time. I thought that you had spoken
to him, and that he'd said some insulting things about
me, and after that, I thought—the Van Garter tem-
per. I didn't blame you. I mean, I understood"
"I do not"
"—about that," she went resolutely on, though now
her voice, too, was twisting. "But I don't—I can't
understand why you misled me, worried me so dread-
fully—frightened me so when I was trying only to
help you and shield you."
"This is"
"If you didn't do it, why didn't you tell me so,
straight off, when I flipped that coin this morning. Of
course I meant to lose no matter how the coin fell, be-
cause I knew that it was all my fault. I was more to
blame than you were, so I meant to take the blame,
but"
"And you thought that I would allow, was allow-
ing
"No; but I was forcing you to. And I thought that
the only way to keep that smart woman from coming


214 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
up here was to let you know exactly what I was going
to do. I thought"
"Victoria, I must insist upon a word. You thought
that I was not only a murderer but also a low cur that
would go into hiding behind your skirts. Well and
good. I accept your estimate. But I do not accept your
reasoning. Why did you think that I, cowardly, dog-
guilty, should telephone at once for the ablest crime
investigator on the coast? Why"
"Well, I really thought," said Vicky, "that you had
gone just utterly ga-ga, darling. And that calling her
was another of your peculiar plans—like writing the
note and throwing the pistol away and cutting the tele-
phone cord. Where are you going, Candy? Wait.
Where are you going?"
I had started for an island I knew, off the coast of
New Guinea, via San Francisco, and traveling alone. I
brought up in a chair by Vicky's window, allowing her
to forgive me while she sat on my knee and cried. The
rain continued. Her clock swung its dainty pendulum
back and forth and ticked to drive men mad. She got
hiccups. My leg went to sleep. I know of no better
measure for my desperation than the statement that
when Evadne Parnham knocked on the door and came
in without our bidding, I was glad to see her.
She was dressed for the street in a bright blue cos-
tume that dragged at her eyes, and pushed back on her
brassy curls was a schoolgirl's beret, far less white
than her heavily powdered nose. Her handbag, unfor-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 217
you know I'm not, but I just kept thinking, 'My God!'
all the time. Over and over I thought, 'My GodP It
was an awfully terrible experience for me to have to
go through—a girl of my type, I mean. Gee, you just
simply can't begin to imagine"
"Yes, yes," I interrupted. "I can well imagine.
Where my imagination fails me, Mrs. Parnham, is at
the reason you did not immediately inform the others
of us, here in the house, of the tragedy."
"Well," she answered, "of course I see how you
mean, in a way. But he was dead—and nobody could
do any good if they did know. And—well, you know, I
think awfully quick. I've always been that way—think-
ing awfully quick, I mean. So when I saw the pistol
there by his hand, I thought awfully quick. I took my
handkerchief—I'd read about fingerprints and every-
thing in my reading—and I picked the thing up—it
was heavy and dangerous and all, I've never been used
to firearms, and I just trembled awfully—and threw it
out into the yard; and then I latched the screen again."
"Why?" asked Vicky.
"Well, it had been latched before I opened it,
and"
"Why did you throw the pistol out into the yard?"
"Oh, that? Well, because, just like the policeman
said, on account of his honor and family and all. And
I thought it might be a help with the insurance, too."
"No," said Vicky. "Those weren't your reasons."
"Partly they were," Evadne answered, with a pout.
"And then, partly, I thought that if it was a murder


2l8 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
there'd be detectives and all. I thought—I've always
wanted to be a detective, you know—it would, maybe,
kind of give me a chance to make a name for myself. I
saw it like an opportunity. And I thought I could help
poor Sassy that way. I mean, maybe get a job or some-
thing and help out."
"No," said Vicky, "those weren't your reasons."
(Vicky gives her Aquarius moon full credit for this
performance; though once, in an unguarded and un-
astrological moment, she added that she knew her
Evadne.)
"Partly they were," Evadne repeated and, I am
glad to report, at last she blushed. "Partly though—
since you keep asking and asking, well, Vicky Van
Garter, you—you just have everything. I don't care.
You just do."
"You wanted people to think that I had killed Tony,
was that it?" questioned Vicky, softly, sweetly, as
summer breezes.
"Why I How perfectly terrible of youl I—well, I
must say I never thought anybody would try to make
me out such a person as that. It was just like I said.
You have everything. And I just thought—well, I just
thought there wasn't any sense in letting you have that,
too. Maybe I shouldn't say it to your face—but you
are awfully conceited, anyway, you know. Honestly, I
just thought nobody could live with you if you had
that, too."
"Had what?" said Vicky. "Too?"
"You know. A handsome, interesting soldier of for-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 219
tune committing suicide because of love for you—
hopeless love for you. Pictures in the paper and inter-
views and everything."
"I see," said Vicky.
"I don't," said I.
"Never mind," said Vicky. "Did Tony leave a note
saying that he killed himself because of me? Did you
substitute the poem?"
"No, but everybody knew he was crazy about you.
Of course it was you. I didn't know he'd left any note.
I didn't look around nor anything. I was awfully up-
set, and after I threw the pistol out of the window I
just grabbed some cigarettes to calm my nerves—I
was all quivering and everything by then—and went
right out and locked the door. Funny, just as I locked
the door I kinda began to wish I hadn't done it or
something. You know how people change their minds
sometimes?"
"Yes," Vicky agreed. "So then in your room you
got sort of afraid, didn't you? And you thought you
might betray your nervousness if you came right down-
stairs? And yet you knew that you must come down;
so you tried to damage your xylophone in order to
have something to be disturbed and nervous about—
to quarrel over with Dot? Didn't you?"
"How did you know? Yes—kind of. I looked
awful, and I thought everybody might notice it. I was
standing beside my instrument, and all of a sudden it
kind of came to me. I really have a wonderful im-
agination, you know. Everybody says so. And I could


222 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
the fireplace, and went off talking about how things
like that discredited the science and all.
"Then, later, when Helene fixed the sleeping
tablets for us she offered him one, and he wouldn't
take it. He was hardly polite about refusing. But, you
know, maybe he was a little good-hearted, or else
afraid of himself or something. Because when Helene
said she couldn't go to her room to sleep—I suppose
she felt funny there because of Tony—and that she'd
just lie there on the davenport, why, he tried to per-
suade her not to, like his better self was kind of fight-
ing with his baser, and"
"Mrs. Parnham," Vicky interrupted, "you've known
Oswald for several years. Do you seriously believe
that he would kill Helene, whom he loved, because she
had given him the wrong birth date?"
"Gee! Did you think he was in love with her? Well,
I've kinda wondered a little about that myself. You
know there's a poem that says about men killing the
things they love. Dr. Parnham used to recite it kind of
to himself—though he said that it ought to be women
instead of men. But Doctor was"
"No," Vicky insisted. "I didn't mean that Oswald
loved her—as you seem to mean. I meant that he
loved her as we all did, and"
"Well, I thought that was funny, coming from you.
Just the same he's known for ages that his love for
you was hopeless, and I don't care—men just get sick
of hopeless love if it lasts too long. I'm sure he doesn't
love Orilla. He just felt sorry for her, but"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 223
"Orilla?" said I, and was proud that I had said so
much, at last, and so little.
"She was crazy about him, you know. He was out
with her last night. That's why he acted so funny when
he came in—he didn't want Vicky to know—or maybe
it was Helene he didn't want to know. Anyway, it
seems she met him when he closed the store and asked
him to take her for a little ride—said she was so hot
and tired and all. He didn't want to be seen with her,
I guess, so he didn't go on the highway at all. Just
around on the hill roads and over to Mrs. Le Way's
place for a minute to leave a shirt he'd got for the
baby's birthday present. Mrs. Le Vray told the detec-
tives about it. Just imagine—the detectives even went
out to see her. I'll say they're pretty good. So while
you were gone this afternoon the real handsome
detective came back and asked Oswald about it, and
Oswald just owned up. He had to. They had it on
him. And Orilla came downstairs—they made her—
and she said that after you men left her room last
night she wrote the note and sneaked down and put it
under Oswald's door. I don't think there was much
between them, because she calls him 'Mr. Fleep.' I
suppose she thought he'd be worried or something.
Gee, it was quite thrilling for a while right after you
left, with all the confessions and all. Too bad you
didn't wait about an hour to start. Right soon after
that, though, things got awfully dull again, and Helene
mixed the tablets in warm milk for us, and we all went
to take naps. All but Oswald."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 225
"I would of asked him a lot more, but Dot butted in
—she would, she's an awfully jealous-hearted person—
just when he'd managed to get a minute alone with me
in the hall, and I didn't have a chance. I wanted to
ask him about the knife in the yard. Do you know, I
just can't see any sense to that knife in the yard." She
paused to cogitate, and cocked her head this way and
that way, and her glance carried over to the clock.
"Gee, it's getting latel I've got to go," she ex-
claimed, and jumped to her feet. "You'll drive me to
the depot, won't you, Vicky? I'd do as much for you
any time."
"My dear," said Vicky—and though I supposed she
thought that this blandishment was necessary I de-
spised her for it—"you can't go running off now. If
you do, everyone will think you were connected with
the murder. The guilty person always runs away, you
know."
"I should worry. I'm not guilty. I just told you that
he killed himself, didn't I? That's why I told you. So
you could explain and people wouldn't blame me nor
come after me nor anything. I've got to think a little
something about my health; and I'm just getting too
nervous and upset around here, that's all. I need a little
trip. I'm going to stay away until things blow over."
"Only," said Vicky, "I've a notion that things aren't
going to blow over. You see, even if Tony did kill him-
self, Helene did not kill herself."
"How do you know she didn't, for sure?"


226 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"The detective said that it could not have been
suicide."
Evadne walked to the mirror, readjusted her beret,
preened her curls. "Have you been talking to the de-
tectives?" she asked, and leaned closer to the mirror
to apply her lipstick.
"Not to the handsome one," Vicky answered, shock-
ingly.
"He's kind of cute, don't you think? Well,"—she
turned toward us and smiled brightly—"I'm all ready.
Let's go."
"I am sorry, Mrs. Parnham," said I, "but it will be
impossible for you to leave here now. I am forced to
insist that you stay at least long enough to tell Miss
MacDonald what you have just told us about Mr.
Charvan's suicide."
It came. I had known since the beginning of the in-
terview that it would come. She put her hands on her
hips, narrowed her eyes, thrust her head forward. "So
that's it, is it? All right. I guess I have just a little
something to say about whether I go or not. If you
don't lend me some money, and if Vicky doesn't take
me to the train—you'll wish you had. That's all."
"And your meaning?" I questioned.
"You know what I mean, all right. I want to go—
that's all. And if you don't help me I'll say that Vicky
shot Tony Charvan. I'll say I heard the pistol go off,
and ran right upstairs and saw her throw it out of the
window. Everybody thinks she did it, anyway, so they'll
believe me. I always like to be nice and friendly with


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 227
everybody, but I'll have a nervous breakdown if I
don't get away from here. I'm not very strong. I want
two hundred dollars, and I want to get to the depot in
time to catch that seven-thirty train. That's all I want,
and I don't think it is so very much to ask, either. But,
believe me, if people don't want to act friendly, I can
give just as good as I get."
"I regret your indisposition," said I, "and I trust
that it may not be serious. But I am not going to lend
you any money, and Vicky is not going to take you to
the train."
"All right. You'll be sorry, just the same"
Vicky sprang to answer the knocking on the door.
Miss MacDonald and Dot came into the room.
CHAPTER 32
"Miss macdonald," I began at once, "I wish to give
this woman into custody. She has threatened to accuse
my niece of Tony Charvan's murder. She has de-
manded money and our aid in her escape as the price
of her silence.' She had told us a long and interesting
story to prove that Mr. Charvan's death was suicidal.
You may draw your own conclusions."
"Do you insist that I call an officer to arrest Mrs.
Parnham now, at once?"
"No. I do not. I want her to tell you what she has
told us. But I think it essential that she shall not be


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 229
Van Garter with the pistol you did rather think, didn't
you, Mrs. Parnham, that Mr. Charvan had killed
himself?"
"No, of course I didn't. I just told Mr. Van Garter
that—well, I guess, to spare him, or something."
"Will you tell me what you told him?"
"I just made it up. There's no sense in telling it
over."
I said, "I'll tell you," and did so as rapidly as pos-
sible, but with full emphasis on the motive for the
pistol's removal—that Vicky was not to have a suicide
to her credit.
"Believe that if you want to," said Evadne, when I
had completed my recital.
"It does seem incredible, doesn't it?" Miss Mac-
Donald agreed with her, pleasantly. "I was wondering,
though; aside from throwing the pistol out of the win-
dow, you made no other changes in the room, did
you?"
"I told you once who threw the pistol out of the
window."
"Yes, I know. But you were there with her, so I
wondered whether you touched the body—made a
change in the posture, smoothed the hair, looked at
the wrist watch for the time?"
Evadne gave that quick shiver which, in my child-
hood, we used to explain by saying that a goose had
walked over our graves, but she remained silent.
"You see," Miss MacDonald went on, "I had rea-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 231
"You do honestly think, then," Evadne gasped,
"that there is danger for the rest of us?"
"We have to fear it enough to take precautions,
certainly, when two murders have been done."
"Yes, but what Mr. Van Garter told you I told him
was the truth. I mean—I remember, now, and it really
was the truth."
Miss MacDonald nodded, "I know," she said.
"Well, if you know, what do you say two murders
for, then?"
"I say two murders," Miss MacDonald answered,
and I was impressed with her patience, "because, as
yet, I believe that Mr. Charvan was murdered."
Evadne turned the door knob. "Do you think I
murdered him?" she asked.
"Of course not," smiled Miss MacDonald. "Run
along now."
"Well, I just wondered," Evadne explained before
she left us, banging the door behind her.
"Subnormal intelligence, don't you think?" Miss
MacDonald mused, rather than questioned.
"We hadn't thought of it in that way," Vicky an-
swered. "We thought her childish, of course, and sly
—but normal, I suppose."
Miss MacDonald nodded her understanding. "Often
people live for years with an insane person and know
that he is odd, doesn't act sanely, and yet they never
suspect that he is actually insane. Mrs. Parnham's
case, I think, is one of arrested development. On that
account, Mr. Van Garter, perhaps you won't care to


234 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
the tip-tapping of Oswald Fleep's soft fingers on her
door.
CHAPTER 33
"The porch is full of men," he announced. "Reporters
from the city, I think—cameras and all. I don't know
what to do. I couldn't possibly give them an interview.
I haven't let them in. Will you see them, Mr. Van
Garter?"
I sat still. Dot raised her tear-soaked face from
Vicky's shoulder and said, "It doesn't matter, now,"
and turned away and went on crying.
"I'll see them, if you like," Miss MacDonald vol-
unteered, and was off as I began my profuse expres-
sions of gratitude.
Oswald sat down in the chair beside me and gave
me, much as he had given the brandy to Vicky, "The
back door was unlocked with the catch off on the in-
side."
I nodded, and tried not thinking at all about Paul
Keasy's confession.
"The police believe it is someone from the outside
who gets in," he attempted further stimulation, but I
was bound to reject it.
"How could someone from the outside unlock the
back door from the inside? It's a patent lock, you
know."
We spoke in low tones, well under the comforting


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 235
voice of Vicky and the little weeping sounds that Dot
was making. Thoughtful always of my deafness, he
leaned closer to me as he answered, "It was sometimes
left unlocked by mistake. When there were errands to
the back yard the catch was often set so that whoever
stepped outside wouldn't be locked out. Mrs. Bailey
brought in the afternoon milk from the back porch.
She might have set the catch and forgotten to reset it."
"Possibly," said I. "Have they made any other dis-
coveries downstairs?"
"Nothing much. It seems to be one of those clueless
affairs. The police think that a man came in through
the kitchen door, went to the cutlery drawer, took out
that white-handled knife—it seems certainly to be one
of a set of three knives belonging here—closed the
drawer again, crept through the house to the living
room, stabbed Mrs. Bailey while she was sound asleep,
and left through the back door. Gloves again, they
think, because there are no prints on the varnished
woodwork in the kitchen, nor on the handle of the
knife. He kept well to the wet cement walks, for they
can't find any prints of any kind in the yard. Death
they think was instantaneous, and occurred not long
before you found her. They connect the two murders,
of course. They think that Tony and Mrs. Bailey
must have had a secret in common, and the same
enemy"
Old Sherlock stirred within me, "Closed the
drawer?" I said, and Oswald stared at me with com-
passion in his miopic eyes.


236 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"If," I attempted recovery, "Mrs. Bailey and Tony
Charvan had a secret, involving a common enemy,
Mrs. Bailey would have known it. The other ladies in
the house today locked their doors when they lay down
for their naps. Do you think that Mrs. Bailey would
have left the back door carelessly unlocked and then
gone to sleep in the living room, after taking a seda-
tive, if she had thought she had the least reason for
fear?"
"The police think that the criminal may have
thought, mistakenly, that Mrs. Bailey knew his iden-
tity."
"No," I argued. "Had there been any possibility of
her knowing who the criminal was she would have
recognized the possibility of his fear—and she would
have been afraid. To my mind, her lying down as she
did this afternoon to sleep in the big, open room does
away with the common enemy, the secret—the whole
kit and caboodle of it."
"You aren't meaning, are you," he questioned, "that
you think the two crimes are unrelated?"
"No. I am saying that Mrs. Bailey was neither a
stupid nor a foolhardy woman, and that any secret
involvement with Tony Charvan, however slight,
would have given her reason for fear. She was fearless
when she lay down in that room for her nap. The con-
clusions are plain and positive."
Oswald considered this for a minute and, appar-
ently, gave it up. "At any rate," said he, "in both cases
the weapons for the crimes were not brought here—


238 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
ception that he has been pressing upon me? If he does
not know, what is the cause of this embarrassment
deeply onerous to us both?"
"Yes," he finally answered, "I—I've had a talk with
Paul. He—well, he has certain theories of his own.
He—well, he sort of dramatizes things, himself espe-
cially, I think. And—well, he happened to see Vicky
very much excited at one time, angry, that is, and—
he is—well, terribly disturbed just now. He thinks that
we men should get together on this, and if worse
comes to worst, one of us, should—well, step in,
and"
"Just a moment, please," said I. "It is difficult for
me to catch all your words when you speak in whispers;
but I am under the impression that you are trying to
tell me that Mr. Keasy believes that Vicky killed Tony
Charvan, and, later, her dear friend Helene Bailey.
Unfortunately for Mr. Keasy's theory, a motorcycle
policeman had us under his eyes from the moment we
left this house today until we returned to it at five
o'clock."
"Yes, sir. I know. That's what I told Paul. I heard
the cop telling the officers."
"And Mr. Keasy remained convinced—or should I
say unconvinced?"
"He thought," Oswald replied, burning even more
ruddily as to brow and cheek, "that—well, you know,
Vicky herself says that murder takes only a minute.
You two were alone here again."
"Oh, I see. After we came in? Is that the idea?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 239
"Paul can't really believe, I'm sure, that Vicky—
well, that Vicky would. But Paul is—sort of woman-
ish in some ways. Hysterical—and all that. On the
square, since he talked with Miss MacDonald he
seems to have gone clear out of his head."
I waited for my heart to begin beating again. When
it had stirred, feebly, I remarked, "And so he suggests
that you confess to the crimes in order to save Vicky?"
"No, sir. Not exactly. That is hardly fair to him.
He'd willingly do it himself—confess, I mean. In fact,
he was trying to find some way he could. He thinks
he'd like doing it—if he could. But, you see, he was at
the radio station all last evening, and all afternoon
today, and people all over the country could testify to
hearing him. My alibi—well, it is pretty loose, you
know."
"Most fortunate for Mr. Keasy," said I. "Though
unfortunate, from his point of view, for Vicky. I take
it that you find yourself unwilling to shoulder the
blame in order to save her?"
"I don't know," he answered, "how I might feel
about it if my chart were different. As it is, I can tell
that it wouldn't be any use for me to try. There's no
imprisonment, nothing of the sort in my chart. So I
know I couldn't get away with a confession if I try to
make one."
"Most fortunate for you," I said. "Up to this mo-
ment I had no notion of the diverse uses to which
astrology could be put. I think I shall have to go into
the science more seriously during my term in prison—


240 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
if I have time, that is, before I am hanged. I take it
that you and Mr. Keasy agreed on the final conclusion?
That mine was to be the better part, as it were?"
"Paul rather thought so. I didn't."
"No? Does my chart, too, indicate the uselessness
of sacrifice?"
"I haven't seen your chart. But Vicky's hard aspects,
even to her transits, are in common signs. They mean
that her troubles are brought on her—that they aren't
things that she does, or brings on herself."
"Bravo astrology! It is, then, your little crescent
moons, your small round suns, your fours and your
arrows that make you certain that Vicky did not mur-
der, in cold blood, two of her friends?"
"Yes, sir," he answered, his delicate soul incapable
of assimilating my hardy irony. "If she were guilty
it would show in her chart. And then, though perhaps
I shouldn't say it, I seriously suspect someone else."
"From the chart?" I asked.
"No, sir. I think I have the data for the chart in-
correctly given."
"Now," said I, "you have interested me enormously.
I think I should, in turn, endeavor to interest you. In
confidence, which I am sure you will respect, I will
inform you that Mr. Keasy has—perhaps to save
Vicky, perhaps for some other reason—already con-
fessed to the murders."
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I know that you are
mistaken."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 245
she was always afraid. She didn't tell me, because she
didn't want me to be worried and afraid, too.
"Everything was always for me. She loved me such
a lot and I—I blamed her for keeping a boarding
house and—everything. She changed our names, of
course. Finally she got to Seattle. She thought we'd
get off in a ship to China in a couple of days. But that
night she saw a man looking at her, and she thought
he was a detective, so she hired an automobile and
ran away. I just keep thinking of Eliza crossing the
ice. Mother and I saw the film together. Eliza, with
the bloodhounds right at her heels, almost. So then
we stopped here. Mother said it was all foggy that
night, and seemed so out of the world, and safe, and
she thought the sea air would be good for my thyroid
trouble.
"She'd used up a lot of her money by that time; but
she took most of what was left and bought Meri-
wether. She'd lost touch with her own family. She
loved them, too—but she was afraid letters might be
traced or—or something. She wouldn't take any risks
at all. Just to keep me! All this trouble, and running
away, and hiding and working just to keep me! I
never dreamed Mother cared about me like that. And
I wasn't even good to her, and"
"But you were going to tell us," Miss MacDonald
intervened gently, "why your mother gave money to
this Mr. Charvan."
"I am telling you. Mother said that one day last
February when she went to market she came out of the


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 247
"You are positive of that?" Miss MacDonald asked.
"Positive that your mother told this story to no one
but yourself?"'
"Yes. Mother told me so herself. But, anyway, after
he was killed she was terribly frightened because she
thought that if the detectives were clever and found
any of it out—why, then they'd say she was the only
one who had a motive for killing him—having him
killed, that is. She couldn't have done it, because she
was at the show all evening; but she was afraid they'd
say she'd got someone to do it for her—paid them and
all, as people do sometimes.
"But even that didn't frighten her as much, she said,
as the fear that if it all came out in the papers my
father might be able to trace us. Or if one of Tony's
family came out here they might know her and send
word to my father. He couldn't take me now; but he
could put her in prison for stealing me. Mother said
he'd do worse things than that, though she didn't know
what they would be. She said her mind couldn't con-
ceive of the wickedness and cruelty he was capable of.
But you see what I think, don't you? I think that Tony
did write to my father, and that my father came here
and killed Tony last night—because Tony hadn't told
him sooner, or stood up for Mother, or something.
And then, because he hated Mother and wanted to
break my heart, too—or maybe because he thought
Mother might suspect him of Tony's murder—he
came back here today and—and killed Mother. She
said he used to threaten to kill us both and even de-


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 249
had been thrown upon the mystery it was not reflected
in her troubled face.
Vicky asked, "Dot, dear, should you know your
father if you were to see him now?"
"No. I was only four years old when Mother began
running away with me. I keep thinking of Eliza cross-
ing the ice. . . . No, I have no idea of his looks
except that Mother said that he thought he was hand-
some."
"Could you," Oswald leaned forward eagerly, "give
me his birthplace and dates?"
Dot shook her head. "Only that Mother said we
were all born in Mississippi."
"You are sure it wasn't Louisiana?" Vicky ques-
tioned.
"Mother said we were all born in Mississippi."
Oswald spoke to Vicky: "Mississippi and Louisiana
could have the same latitude and almost the same lon-
gitude," and Miss MacDonald looked at him as if
she feared he had gone mad.
"Yes," Vicky agreed. "And Mars in the Nadir with
that mean, afflicted moon."
Miss MacDonald caught up with them, "Astrol-
ogy?" she asked.
"You don't believe in it, I suppose?" Vicky was
almost truculent.
"I don't know anything about it. I try neither to be-
lieve nor disbelieve in anything that I know nothing
about. Was your question concerning Louisiana as a
birthplace an astrological question only?"


25O THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"Mr. Charvan was born in Louisiana," Vicky ex-
plained, "and we are positive that his data is correct,
because of the last lunation. I found myself wondering
if it could be possible that Tony Charvan himself
could have been Dot's father."
"No!" Dot protested. "Nol Mother would have
told me. That isn't possible. I know it isn't."
We waited for Miss MacDonald to say something.
She said nothing; so, presently, Vicky spoke again,
advancing another theory:
"Miss MacDonald, Uncle and I had an engage-
ment to meet Mr. Charvan last evening at fifteen
minutes past eight at the drugstore on the corner of
Twelfth Street and Lewis Avenue. We waited there
until half-past eight, and he didn't come. I am sure
that he wished to keep that engagement. What Dot
has just told us about his interest in my money makes
me more certain of this than I was before. He had
nothing to gain by making me angry. So I think that
if you can find why he didn't meet us there, but went
instead to the radio station to sing as usual, you'll have
an important clue in connection with the murder."
Miss MacDonald said, "Thank you," politely, as
if Vicky had given her a glass of water when she was
not in the least thirsty, and began again: "Now then:
When you left the drugstore at half-past eight, you
came directly home, didn't you?"
"Yes," Vicky answered, and added for good meas-
ure—the child seemed possessed suddenly of an alien
and overgenerous verbosity: "We came home, and we


252 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"Four blocks from the one they attended. Three
blocks from the other one."
"After they parked the car in front of your store,
did you notice it again during the evening?"
"Yes, when I locked the store at ten I saw it there.
It was directly in front of my own. Though," he added,
helpfully, "someone who had the key might have taken
the car and used it after ten o'clock and before the
ladies came back for it."
"That's silly," pronounced Vicky. "If some person
were coming up to Meriwether to commit a crime, why
should he wait about to use Helene's car?"
"I suppose there might be reasons," replied Miss
MacDonald. "Though, as you say, it seems silly. When
you met the ladies in the front hall did either of them
seem disturbed, nervous, frightened? As if, for in-
stance, she were afraid to go through the passageway
at the back of the house into the garage to get out
the car?"
"Afraid?" I questioned, incredulously.
"A man seen prowling about the grounds, a mys-
terious letter or telephone call—many things of the
sort might frighten a timid woman."
"No, no," said I. "Neither of the ladies was in the
least disturbed. As for fear—I am sure that is out of
the question."
"I was wondering," said she, "why you opened the
front door, when you knew the custom was to go
through the kitchen into the garage?"
"My dear Miss MacDonald," said I, "I presume


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 253
that even a crime analyst, young and infallible, will
concede to age moments of thoughtlessness, forget-
fulness?"
She did not care for this. She did not pretend that
she cared for it. "My point was," said she, "that I
thought you might have been disturbed—that you
might have been in a hurry to get the ladies out of the
house."
CHAPTER 35
Vicky flared forth. "Miss MacDonald," said she, "I
hope you will forgive me for saying that all this beat-
ing about the bush is stupid and tiresome. There isn't
one of us in this house who isn't more eager for the
truth than you could possibly be. If you'd ask us,
straight, what you wished to know we'd answer
straight and save—time at least. Uncle was disturbed.
I was furious because Tony had failed to keep his
engagement with us, and Uncle all but pushed Helene
and Miss Parnham out of the house because he saw
that I was going to turn on the radio and he didn't
want them to see me in one of my tempers—if Tony
should be singing, as he was. And I had the temper,
just as Uncle had feared. I ran into the kitchen and
got that carving knife. Uncle took it right away from
me and threw it out of the window. So there is his sole
connection with the murder. One might say he saved


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 255
any more than I do how you would act under any set
of circumstances. But I believe that if someone you
cared very much for had committed a murder you
would protect him or her, if you could. Wouldn't
you?"
"Yes, I would," said Vicky. "Because if anyone I
cared a lot about had done such a thing there'd be
reasons. I mean"
"Exactly," said Miss MacDonald. "There are
usually reasons. Now then, if you will tell me about
last evening and last night, as you offered to, I shall
be glad to listen."
In spite of her stipulations for questions Miss Mac-
Donald allowed Vicky to talk uninterruptedly for some
time. Her recital had nothing in it that has not been
previously told and in part reviewed. But since her
description of what happened during the fifteen min-
utes or so while she was putting her car in the garage
has been given only as a possibility, a subterfuge, per-
haps it should be explained more carefully here.
She had driven her car to the garage doors and had
there discovered that she had left the garage key in
her handbag in the living room. Thinking that I was
downstairs, she had gone to the kitchen door and
knocked on it—pounded, in fact, because of my deaf-
ness—in order to save herself the trip around the
house again to the front door. When I did not answer
her knocking, she was forced to walk around the house
and come in through the open front door. She said
that the place seemed very large and empty, and the


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 257
make a sneak for it when he came in, and I locked the
screen door so that he couldn't. All the windows have
latched screens; all the doors were locked, and he
didn't have a garage key. So he must have come in
during the one time or the other."
"You didn't tell the men last night about your
latching the screen, did you?"
"I didn't. Should you have told those men, if they
hadn't asked you, and you had been in my place?"
"No," said Miss MacDonald, and did not speak
again until Vicky had completed the story of that
wretched night.
"And that is all and everything I know about it,"
said Vicky.
Said Miss MacDonald, "Now then: You said you
thought that Mrs. Parnham probably—or did you say
possibly?—had committed both murders."
"I said probably."
"Will you give me your reasons for this opinion?"
"Yes, I will. She is dishonest and sly and cruel. She
had opportunity. She has admitted that she was in the
room, that the pass key was hers, and that she dam-
aged her xylophone to provide an emotional outlet
when she came downstairs. I hadn't realized arrested
development, but I have often thought that her ego-
tism amounted almost to insanity. She is utterly selfish
—but that is egotism again, isn't it? She is stupid.
Stupid enough to throw the pistol out of the window
and then fix the poem to look like a suicide note. The
signature was forged, wasn't it?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 259
afternoon. I know that she was trying to force us to
help her run away."
"Yes," said Miss MacDonald, and I went to an-
swer the knocking on the door and opened it to Paul
Keasy.
He came into the room wearing an expression on
his face that led me to think he had been in the kitchen
quaffing deeply of the vinegar. And yet there was about
his bearing a smugness, a self-satisfaction, that caused
me to think further and decide that the last draught
had been downed as a toast to himself ere the glass
was shattered. "Surely here," thought I, "is no self-
confessed criminal, no villain with the gallows for his
goal. The lady," thought I, "has lied to me—as ladies
do." So, feeling my oats because of my own acumen,
though I gave her pity for her perfidy, benignity for
her clumsiness, I resolved to show her up at once, as
gentlemen do not.
"Upon my soul," said I. "I didn't look for you here,
Mr. Keasy."
His assumption that I was imbecilic rather than in-
tentionally insulting showed, it may be, the gentler
side of his nature. "Today is Sunday," he reminded
me; and, to the others, "Miss Parnham asked me to
tell you that she has some supper on the tables, at last,
if you will come down. She'll send a tray up for you,
Dot, if you'd rather have it up here."
"I meant," said I, indomitably boorish, "that since
Miss MacDonald told me, not long ago, that you had
confessed to the murders"


266 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
and bigger men than I have found moody madness in
monotony.
She paid no attention to my remark, nor deigned
to look either at the weather or at me. She stared into
the dark waters and, after a moment, "I am stumped,"
said she to the goldfish.
I answered in their stead, "You are tired. You need
sleep. You were up and about the place all last night.
Take a nap, and you'll wake feeling less depressed."
"No, I don't need sleep. I need time, and"—she
smiled ruefully—"brains."
"You have both," I assured her, safe in her past
assertion that she could not detect a liar. Time, it is
true, I thought she had. I was mistaken. Brains, I
thought she had not. My impression was that con-
sistently since her arrival she had done nothing but
fuddle around and, except for her trips out in the car,
gossip at futile lengths with the members of the house-
hold. I was mistaken.
"You came only yesterday afternoon," I continued,
conscientiously mendacious, for the lady was dis-
tressed, "and you couldn't expect to accomplish a great
deal in so short a time."
"Well," she said, speaking from the far end of the
room and apparently bearing in mind my deafness, "I
have accomplished something. I know who the mur-
derer is."
"You do?" I attempted to make my stage whisper
serve as a warning, and I thought that I had sue-


268 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
"That is," she at last found manners to emend, "shall
we talk of that later, please?"
"Later, later!" Dot spoke with a trace of her old
petulance, though it was softened now with weariness.
"Everything is just 'later' around here. Miss Mac-
Donald, I have to make plans for Mother's funeral.
I have to. I don't care about anything else—not about
anything else. And all anyone will tell me is, later.'"
"I know," Miss MacDonald answered, "and I'm
sorry. I'm going to the D.A.'s office now. I think I can
certainly persuade him to allow you to make definite
plans. I'll do my best."
Oswald Fleep came slipping quietly into the room.
"I was wondering," said he, and blushed, "if you'd
thought of this, Miss MacDonald. I suppose you must
have; but I hadn't. I've been thinking that the criminal
had to come in either by the front or back door. The
French doors all along the porches can't be consid-
ered, for they are latched from the inside when they
are closed, and there are no outside locks to tamper
with. The basement door has a patent lock, no outside
entrance, and bars on the windows. But—there is the
garage. Anyone who had a key to the garage, or who
had managed to get an imprint of the key and have
one made, could have come in through the passageway
at almost any time during the evening, except the few
minutes around eleven o'clock when the folks were
in the kitchen."
"Yes," said Miss MacDonald, "I had thought of


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 269
that," and left us thinking of it, if we cared to do so,
and went her way up the stairs.
CHAPTER 37
It is possible that Miss MacDonald during the fol-
lowing twenty-four hours did not notice the fat old
person—the comedy relief in the caste—following her
about like a lovelorn swain (the simile is inept; I was
coldly furious with the lady), motioning, gesturing,
raising his eyebrows, jerking his head, maneuvering
with the subtlety and secrecy of a blimp in the open
heavens for a tete-a-tete; but my opinion was then, and
is still, that she deliberately avoided me.
Vicky noticed (Vicky does) and confided to me
gently that the others were noticing and putting vari-
ous critical interpretations upon my actions. Oswald's
feelings were hurt—he thought I was jeering at him.
Evadne Parnham scented flirtation. Sarah, kindly,
feared incipient palsy—a grandparent of a pupil . . .
"But I told them "said Vicky, and paused in her
guilt.
"That these were merely manifestations of my
funny little ways for tragic occasions?" said I.
"But I had to tell them something. So I told them
that I thought it was some sort of signal code you and
Miss MacDonald had arranged. It was a mistake.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 271
J
I reminded her, "I heard the district attorney's
message to you," and all but shook my finger.
She was silent for a moment. "A murder without
a motive," said she, then, and smiled the small rueful
smile which I thought she used in place of a sigh.
"Some of these detective-story writers should get hold
of the thing. I wonder what they'd do with it."
"Nothing could be done with it," I pronounced,
pompously. "No man ever kills a fellow man without
reason."
"My opinion precisely," said she. "But in this case
there is no motive."
"I see," said I, taking a leaf from her book. "Then
you know the identity of the murderer merely by
means of your woman's intuition?"
"Need we call it that? Couldn't it be termed ac-
cumulated experience, accuracy of analysis—some-
thing else? I never cared for 'woman's intuition.'"
"But see here," I said. "You can't know who the
murderer is if you don't know the reason for his mur-
dering."
"Reason?" She seemed to be turning the word
around in her mind.
"The lady," thought I, "is an idiot," and I spoke
gently. "There is no difference," I instructed, "in so
far as I can see, between reason and motive. Mrs.
Bailey had a strong motive for killing Tony Charvan
—blackmail and fear of discovery by her husband.
Had she killed him, the reasons for her doing so
would have been because she wished to stop the black-


2J2 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
mailing and to be rid of the fear of her husband. That
is correctly stated, is it not?"
She answered from the window, whence she had
wended her deliberate way. "I'm sorry," she said, "I
didn't hear you. I'm afraid I wasn't listening—I was
thinking of something else."
"Not at all," said I. "I was merely suggesting that
it might be well to start at the other end—to find
some person who had a strong motive, such as Mrs.
Bailey's might have been, for example, and find the
proof of his guilt."
"Yes," said she. "That is what the D. A. is doing."
"Is it an axiom that district attorneys are always
wrong?"
I knew that she was Scotch-Irish. I should have
been wary. "No," said she. "They are usually shrewd
men or they wouldn't be district attorneys. How
should you like this? Miss Van Garter came home in
a fury on Saturday evening. Admittedly she was ready
to kill the man. She went so far as to get a weapon—
that you threw away. She was jealous of Mrs. Bailey.
She had seen the little whispered confidences; had
seen and heard as much as Dot Bailey had seen and
heard—or more. You thought, when she went upstairs
alone to change her dress, that she was over her
anger. She has said that she was not over it more than
two hours later. She knew that he had a target pistol
and where he kept it. You had taken the knife away
from her, so she went to his room and got the pistol.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 273
Returning through the upper hall, she saw him in Mrs.
Bailey's room. The fact of his being there further in-
flamed her anger. She was madly in love with him.
She went into the room and shot him. You came
running up the stairs. She owned a volume of the
poetry. She knew the contents. Together you made
your plans—put the pistol near his hand, so on. It
was necessary to destroy her letters to him, so you
thought it wiser to destroy all his papers. Fragments
of papers were found in her bathroom. Later, Mrs.
Parnham went into the room, as she has told us, and
threw the pistol out of the window. But for this, your
plans would have carried through. You sent for me
because you reasoned that a guilty person would not
engage a crime analyst for the case. Too, if I were in
your employment, there was a possibility of bribery."
"Most conclusive," said I, and paused to keep my
temper forcibly. "Except for the slight circumstance
that Victoria was not in the least in love with the
fellow."
"Could you prove that she was not in love with
him?"
I cleared my throat to steady my voice. It needed to
be steady. "Is this the district attorney's outline of the
case?"
"No. He knows nothing of the anger, the knife, any
of what Miss Van Garter told me. I haven't told him,
and I shan't. I've enough trouble keeping innocent
people out of this without adding another to his list.
r


276 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
memorize the thrilling and beautiful thing in her
sleep.
"The lady," thought I, "has lost her wits." And
my conception gave way to apprehension when, on the
instant, she came darting across the room, her face
illumined, and clutched Vicky by the shoulders and
remarked, "You darling! You darling!" and went
rushing away.
"Now what," said Vicky to me, as if I had known
for a long time and had refused point-blank to tell,
"did that crazy thing mean by all that?"
At some pains I produced a shaking movement of
my head.
"Well, as Grandma Crowinshank used to say"
"She meant," I interposed, "that you were a dar-
ling for reasons of sacrificing your own feelings,
stifling your natural fears"
"She meant," said Vicky, "nothing of the sort and
you know it. She acted as if I had said something im-
portant. Now what did I say? That Oswald had
heard of a Danish cook—a wonder. There! She had
forgotten all about the cook—the other cook, I mean.
Mrs. Le Vray. She thinks that Mrs. Le Vray had
something to do with it. Yes—anyone could easily
describe Mrs. Le Vray as a small round object. She
isn't a Dane; but there may be a Dane connected with
it—one whom the other detectives are suspecting.
Could the Dane be a small round object? There are
ever so many Danes here in Satoria—but are Danes
ever little and fat?"


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 277
"Little and fat?" I questioned, and repeated,
"Little and fat . . . Little and"
"Dear me!" protested Vicky. "Don't you go off
intoning, too."
"But—but "I stuttered and, much against my
will, "Little and fat," said I.
"Oh," said Vicky and looked at me critically. "No,"
she rendered her decision. "You're plump, but you
aren't little and you can't cook. No—not even a detec-
tive could think of describing you as a small round
object."
"Thank you, my dear," said I, and filled my pipe
with shaking fingers and spilled tobacco on the floor.
CHAPTER 38
At DINNER time I got myself into the dining room
with the others, and I sat me down; but I could not
stay there, so I found an inane excuse—indigestion, I
believe—and went outside to the front porch and the
fog. I desired fog. I needed fog. The clarity of my
mind was insupportable.
Vicky followed me and said, "Darling, here's a
charcoal tablet. Shall I call a doctor?" and I sent her
away from me, almost roughly, for fear I should go
off chanting again, "Little and fat. Little and fat."
You have seen it, of course? Dot Bailey, with her
inherited taint of cruelty and lust for revenge. Dot


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 279
occur to her readily, since she was accustomed to
tracing—a bit of tissue, a canceled check, and the
thing was done. The note written, the pistol placed
near the hand, she had only to lock the door and to
come downstairs again. Why lock the door? To delay
discovery. She had cut the telephone cord, later, for
the same reason. The key? One key was found in the
room But stay, Dot could have taken the room
key back into the room with her, after the door
had been unlocked with Evadne Parnham's pass key,
and put it on the torn page where I found it.
But could she, I questioned myself, have come
downstairs and gone through the remainder of the
evening quietly, carelessly, stolidly? Stolidity was her
accustomed pose, though she thought of it as aloof-
ness. Had she kept this pose? For a time, yes; because
it was vital that she do so. The scene at the sup-
per table, with its fury and violence, came to my mind.
And this brought yet another motive: Tony Charvan
alone knew the secret of her prize-winning. This, cer-
tainly, was not in itself a motive for murder; but it
added another kindling to the fire of her wrath.
Temperament? Her own mother had waited for
outsiders to accompany her when she went that night
to face Dot in one of her tempers. It was Dot who
had slipped into the room to eavesdrop when the
coroner and the detectives had been talking. Easily
provoked to violent anger, sulky, jealous, sly.
How had Helene Bailey known of Dot's guilt?
When had she discovered it? I was forced to decide


280 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
that her discovery had been made after Vicky and I
had quitted the house on Sunday afternoon. Helene
Bailey, during all the trouble, had been frightened,
grieved, deeply worried; but she had not been a
mother who knew that her daughter was guilty of
murder.
Had Dot, in her terror, confessed to her mother?
I knew that she had not. Because, had she confessed,
she would have her mother's assurance that she
would stand beside her, fight with her through the
last syllable of the trial. No: Helene Bailey in some
horrific moment had discovered Dot's guilt, had
needed time to think, had made no sign. But Dot had
known and, frantic, crazed with fear . . .
"Mr. Van Garter, forgive me for intruding, but I
must talk to you alone."
I turned and faced Sarah Parnham and blessed her,
parrot's nose and all, for curbing my imagination just
there. She was wearing a dull print frock, a drear
mixture of pale purples and wan browns, and even the
neat cuffs around her bony wrists looked limp and
sallow.
"I believe," she said, "from your inability to stay
in the dining room this evening that, at last, we are
allies; are we not?"
I quibbled, "I don't understand," and avoided her
searching eyes.
"You needed food. I am sorry that I put Dot at
your table. She had asked to be near Miss Van
Garter."


282 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
that this is no time for sealed letters, secret promises
—further mystery."
"I do," she said earnestly. "Indeed I do, Mr. Van
Garter. But—if no arrest is made, if—what we fear
does not come about, these papers are necessary, im-
portant. I have promised not to destroy them. I am
afraid to keep them with me. You are a man—a rich
man with influence and experience. I am a country
school teacher. I may have no right to thrust this re-
sponsibility on you; but, in a sense, it is as much your
responsibility as it is mine. I am not asking you to
keep it for a lifetime. In a few months if—if nothing
happens, I will take it from you again and do as I
have promised to do with it. Your niece loved Helene
—as we all did. For Helene's sake, won't you help me
with this? Never before in my life have I asked help
from any man—or woman either, for that matter.
But now I am shaken and afraid. It is my love for
Evadne, I think, that has turned me into a coward.
She needs me so. But, Mr. Van Garter, at the risk of
perfidy to Helene I will tell you that this envelope is
what she was searching for, and what she found in
Tony Charvan's room. He is dead. Helene is dead."
"And," I questioned, "do you think it right or fair
to risk another life because of it, and in order to save
a murderer—no matter who that murderer may be?"
"No," said she. "I'll keep the envelope. But, in
case of my own death, I want you to read the con-
tents. You'll understand then, and you'll find that I'm
neither a fool nor a criminal."


284 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
dared. These detectives are watching every move we
make. If one of us were to rent a box in the vaults
they'd have it opened and rifled within an hour. If
nothing happens and the investigation is dropped, as
rightly or wrongly I pray now it may be, I'll take the
envelope again and relieve you of the responsibility.
I'll want to, then. Helene was my dearest friend."
Cadwallader descended two pegs and added respect
to his pity for the lady who stood there looking into
the fog that had shut in close about us, veiling the
view, and the front door opened and Vicky and Dot
came out on the porch.
Vicky asked, "Why do you stay out here in this
miserable cold fog?" and shivered; and, "I hate the
fog, and I'm afraid," Dot said.
"But I am afraid," she insisted, in answer to
Vicky's comforting reassurance and remonstrance.
"There is, too, something to be afraid of. I'm afraid
of my father. I think he is here in town, and that he'll
come back to the house. Perhaps there is something
more than Mother told me. Something—different.
Something that he was hunting for in Tony's room
that night. I'll be afraid until they find him. They will
find him, won't they, Mr. Van Garter? But I don't
want vengeance. I don't know why—but I just don't.
I'd rather know for certain that he'd gone away off—
to China, or somewhere, and would never come back.
I want to be safe—that's all. I want to rest and get a
clean place in my mind where I can begin to think
about Mother."


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 285
Vicky said, "You are safe now, dear. Come, let's
go in again," and put an arm around Dot's ample
waist and drew her gently into the house.
Sarah Parnham followed them. I stayed on alone,
my thoughts a pandemonium through which one clear
conclusion spouted persistently like a stream of water
on a burning mass: I had been wickedly, shamefully,
mistaken concerning the guilt of Dot Bailey.
I heard the noises of the cars straining up and up
the steep hill; and presently their lights permeated the
fog, slipped low on the roadway, crept through the
trees, spread the shadows, solidified, sucked back their
beams, and dimmed, shudderingly.
Car doors banged. Men's burly voices came to me,
and Merkel's excellently subdued intonations, with a
crisp few syllables in answer from Lynn MacDonald.
Halfway down the steps I met her. She said, "I'm
sorry. I don't like this. I hate it, but I can't help it.
They wouldn't give me time. I had no choice. I am
sorry."
CHAPTER 39
In the living room a small fire was smoldering in the
grate, and the members of the household, with the ex-
ception of Paul Keasy, who had gone to the radio
station, were grouped closely around it.
Dot was lying on a davenport, mercifully ignorant


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 287
van and Helene Bailey," along with Oswald's con-
fidence, given through chattering teeth close to my
ear, "What I thought—feared." And then came
Vicky's furious, "Stop that right nowl You leave her
alone, you—you person! Leave her alone a minute—
please I She can tell her mother good-by."
I opened my eyes. Evadne was clinging piteously to
Sarah Parnham and making sounds in her throat,
which I hope that in time I may forget, and which I
cannot describe save as a tortured fusion of abject
cowardice and demoniacal rage. The officer, not
roughly but with determination, was trying to draw
the frantic creature away from Sarah's clinging arms.
Lynn MacDonald said, "Take her along, officer.
Yes, take her along. Miss Parnham, if you have any
influence I advise you to tell Mrs. Parnham to confess
at once when they begin on her down there at the
jail. It will make things easier for her."
"She can't confess," said Sarah Parnham. "She is
innocent."
"There is no question of her innocence," Lynn Mac-
Donald answered. "We have all the evidence. She
hasn't a chance. Not a chance. But a confession would
save her. You aren't familiar with police methods?
She should confess. Officer, take her along. There is
no sense in prolonging this. Carry her, if you need to.
Don't hurt her, if you can help it."
Sarah Parnham said, "I killed Tony Charvan and
Helene Bailey," and walked toward the officer, turn-
ing back her neat cuffs. "I killed them both. Take those


288 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
things off her and put them on me." She extended her
hands; a smudged purple bruise was on one of her
bony wrists.
I hurried toward her. I must convey to her as
rapidly as possible the hopelessness of her sacrifice,
the uselessness of her words.
"My dear Miss Parnham "I began, and
stopped, as the officer snapped handcuffs on her
wrists.
In a story—perhaps. In the moving pictures—un-
doubtedly and often. In reality—incredible and im-
possible. I looked at Evadne. Another officer was re-
moving the handcuffs. He put them into his pocket.
She stood there, panting, gasping convulsively, rubbing
her wrists and examining them, and rubbing them
again. She did not glance toward Sarah. I did; and
saw that she was walking, an officer on each side of
her, toward the door.
I turned to Lynn MacDonald. "Allow this to go no
further, if you please. Miss Parnham told me that if
her stepmother were accused she intended to take the
^ blame, if she could. You said that you have evidence
against Evadne Parnham. What has become of it, in a
minute, pray? If you think for one instant that a con-
fession of this sort See here," I broke off, and
Vicky says that I bellowed, "Stop! Stop them, I say.
They are taking her right on outside. We can't have
this. This isn't law, isn't sense"
"I am sorry," Lynn MacDonald said, "but it is jus-
tice."


29O THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
drop—they left the door unlocked for a trap—and
they have suspected her ever since. No. At first, until
she was killed, they suspected Mrs. Bailey. This scene
was unnecessary. But they wouldn't give me time.
They pretended to fear another murder—or suicide.
I knew that I could prevent another murder, but they
wouldn't trust me. I've been so heckled and brow-
beaten and frightened. And I was so unsure that this
would work, tonight."
"See here," I insisted. "Do you know positively,
with no margin of doubt, that Sarah Parnham is
guilty?"
"Yes, I know positively. I have known almost from
the first. But the confession"
"Never mind the confession. She would dive into
boiling oil to save Evadne Parnham. Have you found
the motive?"
"That was so troublesome," she began, "because,
in a sense, she had no motive for killing Antony
Charvan"
"As I thought," said I. "You have made an un-
forgivable mistake. I engaged you to come here. I feel
personally responsible. From now on, from this in-
stant"
"Please," she protested, "allow me to finish. She
killed Tony Charvan by accident."
"Rats!" said I, and enormously disturbed I added,
"Rats! Ratsl"
"I'm not needed here any longer," said she. "I


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 291
think I'll go now. I'll spend the night at the hotel, and
take the train south after the inquest tomorrow."
"And your bill?" I asked, with low cunning.
"I'll mail it. If I made it out within a month I might
charge extra for those 'rats.'"
"This," I reminded her, "is no time for jesting. To
you it is an incident. To me it is tragedy, incarnate. I
don't know what you know, but I am going to know
before you leave this porch. I will not sleep tonight,
or any night, until I am convinced that an innocent and
a brave lady is not down there in that jail. I have en-
gaged your services. I have not quibbled as to terms.
I do not consider your duties here fulfilled. I insist
that you answer my questions. How did you discover
that Sarah Parnham committed the murders?"
(How could I again have forgotten that she was
Scotch-Irish!)
"That was comparatively easy," said she. "I knew
as soon as I came here that she was the only woman
in the house who would own and wear patched silk
gloves. Good-night, Mr. Van Garter."
"The lady," thought I, "is fire-eyed and furious.
There are but two methods for mollifying, hastily, a
furious lady. One, and by far the better if it may be
used, it to mention her beauty, her allure, take into
account your own unworthiness and declare that you
adore her madly. The second course alone is left to
me.
Said I, "Miss MacDonald, I am old and tired and
heartsick. I am sincerely sorry for what I have just


292 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
said. I—I fear that I am losing my mind. I need your
help." And, thought I, "Drat and double drat the
wench, she's not going to get the best of old Cad-
wallader on this excursion."
"I am sorry, too, Mr. Van Garter," said she. "I
think we are both overwrought. Scenes like this one
tonight never have become mere incidents in my life.
It was terrible, and—again, I'm sorry. I'll do every-
thing I can to set your mind at rest."
CHAPTER 40
"And that," said Miss MacDonald, not many min-
utes later, "is all, I think."
"Yes," I agreed. "But I am wondering," I went on,
"why you questioned so particularly about Miss Parn-
ham's and Mrs. Bailey's going downtown in her car
on Saturday evening: Whether we saw them leave;
whether Oswald Fleep saw the car later in front of
his place—so on. You see, I spent all last night with
those cars, and I arrived nowhere. Nor do I now see
any connection."
"I don't remember exactly what my questions were,"
she answered. "But when your niece said that you
opened the front door for the women I thought it odd
that they should take the long walk around the house
when the evening was so very warm, if the car was


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 293
in the garage and they could go through the cool
passageway." (And there is the catch in the passage-
way to the garage, which I mentioned, and which my
readers have noted long since.) "So I wished to make
certain that they used the car, and that it was not in
front of the house."
"May I ask what difference it made?"
"Not much, perhaps. And yet it demonstrated the
fact that the women were not unperturbed, as you de-
clared, and that they were in a hurry to get out of the
house. Also, probably, that they wished you to see
them leaving the house. Had they gone through the
kitchen there would have been a possibility that they
did not leave at once, but went upstairs again by the
back stairway. They hurried on, and established their
first alibi by waving at Mr. Fleep when they parked
the car in front of his store and four blocks away
from the theater—an unnecessary distance in this
small town, and a longish walk on a warm evening.
They exchanged their first tickets for lodge seats, so
calling attention to the fact that they were in the
theater and establishing another alibi. I'll admit that
I asked Mr. Fleep about the car later in the evening
in order to make you think that I was interested in the
car rather than in the women. Also, the questions
about their leaving the house brought out the fact that
you were so disturbed yourself that you would not
have noticed their nervousness. You said that they
weren't; but they must have been frightened and ner-


294 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
vous, though their plans were excellent and, but for
Mrs. Parnham's part in the affair, suicide, I imagine,
would never have been doubted. I"
Vicky came out on the porch, closed the door quietly
behind her, and spoke softly and painstakingly as if
she were telling a bedtime story to a sleepy child.
"Sarah has killed herself. She is dead. Poison. She
took it on the way down to jail. They have just tele-
phoned. When Evadne heard, she said, 'Poor old
Sassy. But there is one thing to be thankful for. She
has life insurance.' So I am sure you will understand
why I am intruding out here, and why I can't go back
in there where she is. I dislike bothering you, but I
think I am ill. Please, Candy, stop pulling at me. I
can't go back in the house. Evadne didn't notice
Sarah's wrists, or she couldn't have said I told
you that, though, didn't I? It is better not repeated.
Sarah's wrists were so thin. Thin as icicles. She turned
back her cuffs. Evadne—I mean, I told Dot that we
would take care of her for always. That was right,
wasn't it, Candy? I didn't like saying as long as she
lived, because everyone is dying. Tony, and Helene,
and Sarah. Did you notice Sarah's poor old wrists?
There was a bruise on one of them. She turned her
cuffs back How silly of me to talk so much. I
think that I am ill"
We got her to bed. I telephoned for a doctor and
two nurses. The doctor was overly calm and matter-
of-fact. The nurses, I thought, would bear watching.
So it was dawn again, and I had wakened in my chair


296 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
that she will not be dependent on charity. If you
are unwilling to do this, destroy the enclosed letter
without reading it.
"Yours truly,
"S. T. Parnham."
I turned the letter over and over and looked for
reason, and searched for sanity, and remained un-
manned, aghast, at the woman's foolhardy absurdity.
Before she had been accused she had given this thing
to me, had put her life in my fallible hands, trusting
to a brittle promise to protect it. "The lady," thought
I, "is legion. But confound it, I had a better opinion
of her than that!" And, wondering what "reasonable
comfort" might be, and deciding to leave the figures
to Vicky, I tore open the second envelope and found
another abrupt beginning.
"/ am fifty-five years old."
I paused here, seeking the importance of the state-
ment, and failed to find it. Certainly it was no bolt
from the blue. I had never speculated concerning her
exact age, but had I done so I should have been cer-
tain that she was somewhere in the middle fifties. Do
I hear a question? Does it say, why, then, in all con-
science had I not noticed on the astrological chart that
she had given her birth year as 1888? Granting me a
dullness of discernment that made it impossible for
me to tell a lady's age within twelve years of the cor-
rect time, I had Evadne's date given as 1891 and I
knew, without reflection, that she was more than three


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 297
years younger than her stepdaughter. I knew that
Sarah Parnham had no vanity other than a small in-
tellectual conceit. Why did I not know that some
motive must be behind this lie direct about her age?
Further seeking, why did I not find this motive in a
world full of wage-earning women whose bitter enemy
is age and loss of position therefrom? Resolved, it
comes to fear. Fear, for as long as the world has
rolled in misery, one of the strongest motives for mur-
der. Returning to the letter, I began again:
"/ am fifty-five years old. I am a competent
teacher. Nevertheless, because my hair is turning
white, I was forced last year to resign my position,
to take effect this year. I tried to find another posi-
tion. I could not do so. Evadne and I faced abject
poverty or charity. I wanted Helene's boarding
house. I knew, if she were out of the way, I could
persuade Dot to allow me to take it over and
manage it at a decent, living wage. I could increase
the business as Helene had neither brains nor cour-
age to do. I could save and invest wisely. There was
a possibility that in time I could own at least a share
of the place. It meant security, and I could find no
other way of obtaining it.
"I planned Helene's murder intelligently. There
was not a flaw in my plan. Its perfection lay in
simplicity. I was going to shoot Helene and call the
police. My story to them:
"'At ten minutes past eight o'clock I left my


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 299
had not understood the neat disarray of that room.
She had thought it must be explained by the search for
the private papers, or for the pistol.)
"/ had planned to drop the pistol into the aqua-
rium near the French windows through which I said
the robber escaped. It would not have been found
for a long time. When it was found the sand and
water would account for the absence of fingerprints.
"On Saturday evening I knew that Helene and I
would be alone in the house. At five minutes past
eight I saw Mr. Charvan leave the house and I sup-
posed, naturally enough, that he would hurry right
along to keep his radio appointment. He must have
stopped on the porch, found that he was short of
funds, and returned to get money from Helene. No
one could have foreseen that he would return after
he had left the house at a time which would make
him then late for his appointment. Helene was in
the kitchen. I went upstairs, obtained the pistol, dis-
arranged the room, and went on to Helene's room
and hid behind the screen, as I had planned.
"I heard someone come into the room. I stepped
from behind the screen—/ needed distance for my
story to the police—with the pistol in my hand. So
certain was I that the person who had come into the
room was Helene that I experienced a strange
optical illusion. I saw Helene distinctly for a mo-
ment; and then slowly she merged into Tony


300 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
Charvan. From that instant I lost my senses—the
shock, the surprise of the thing—and I did not re-
gain them for several hours.
"Tony Charvan sprang at me—/ had the pistol
pointed at him—and he tried to take it away from
me. We struggled a moment. He hurt my wrist
cruelly. I hated the contact—my one idea was to
make him loose his hold of me. I was terrified when
the thing discharged in my hands. I had not known
that I had pressed the trigger. At that instant, just
as he dropped dead, Helene screamed from the
doorway. I was standing there by the window hold-
ing the pistol in my hands. It was a single-shot
target pistol. It could not be used again.
"When I had first thought of killing Helene I
had planned to make it look like suicide. In many
ways that plan would have been wisest; but I
abandoned it on Dot's account. Now, as Helene
came toward me, the idea of suicide seemed the one
shred of sense that clung in my mind. I told her
that I had gone to his room, got his pistol, and
come down the hall to go to my own room to kill
myself. I had met him in the hall and had turned
into her room; but he had seen the pistol in my
hand; had followed me, had tried to take it away
from me. For a moment she was more horrified at
my intended suicide than she was at Tony Charvan's
death. Then she, too, seized the idea of suicide and
declared that we must make his death appear to be
suicidal. I understand her motive for this now. At


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 301
the time I was too dazed to question the reason for
her quick decision.
"The remainder of it is all a bungle; all a series
of stupid mistakes; all Helene's fault. Had I been
away from her babbling and fear, had I not been
forced to play a part before her, I could still have
carried the thing through. She took command; and,
for some inexplicable reason, I felt that I must per-
mit her to do so. Her one desire was to avoid
scandal or publicity. I think, now, that she had so
often wished him dead, had so often contemplated
killing him, that she felt as if she had killed him. At
any rate, the poem was her idea. She sent me to do
the typing. I told her to use a handkerchief to
handle the pistol and to put it in his fingers, which
were still pliable. Had she done this, poor little
Evadne could not have got into mischief. But in-
stead of obeying me, she merely put the pistol close
to his hand and busied herself with going through
his pockets and destroying evidence that might lead
to the discovery of her identity and Dot's. That, I
see now, was the reason she got me out of the room
to do the typing. She was unwilling that even I
should know her secret. When I came out of Dot's
room, I met Helene in the hall. She told me an in-
coherent story about a love affair of his—a senti-
mentality concerning some good woman's name that
must be protected {herself, I supposed), and in-
duced me to go with her into his room to procure
his personal papers. There were only a few, and


302 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
when she took them all, with a weak excuse that we
had no time for selection, and destroyed them in
the hall lavatory, I asked no questions.
"The locked door was also her idea. She put the
key in her handbag, to place it later on the poem—
as she did—after we got into the room that night.
It was done to make it look as if he had locked him-
self in the room. We both hoped that no pass key
could be found, and that the discovery of the body
might be delayed until the next day, when a lock-
smith could be procured.
"Just as we finished destroying his letters we
heard Miss Van Garter's car coming up the drive-
way. Helene dashed back into her room, put the
poem on the desk, and got her hat on. I ran into my
room for my hat and bag. If only I had gone, in-
stead, to her room to make sure that the pistol had
been placed in his hands!
"If only—everything! It seems incredible now
that I was party to all this accumulated idiocy. We
should have telephoned at once for the police and
said, simply, that Tony Charvan had killed him-
self. I did suggest this to Helene, but she overruled
me, frenziedly. Tony Charvan had told her of the
phonograph record, and she thought that Paul
Keasy would play it and say nothing in order to
hide his own duplicity. Her one desire, amounting
to madness, was to get away from the room, away
from the house; and, I do not know why, I felt
weak and helpless in her hands.


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 303
"/ killed her chiefly, I suppose, because Tony
Charvan's death had in no way changed my own
financial condition. Too, she told me on Sunday that
if an innocent person were accused—she meant, I
presume, either Dot or herself—she would tell the
truth. It was too late for truth. I had no safety
while she lived. When I saw the knife and the pistol
in the detective's hands on that Sunday morning, I
resolved that if I should again attempt murder I
would use a knife—quiet and no chance for a mis-
take. I used a knife. I wore gloves. I unlocked the
back door to make it look as if someone had come
in that way.
"My life and Evadne's were infinitely more im-
portant than was Helene Bailey's. I do not feel
wicked or particularly repentant. Life is a struggle.
Though I failed, I at least fought bravely, strongly,
to the end. I may have been mistaken. I have not
been weak.
"Please be to good to Evadne. She is pitiful.
Her I. Q. is under 50.
"S. T. Parnham."
CHAPTER 42
Vicky refolded the letter and put it on the edge of
her breakfast tray and studied the bright spot on the
ceiling, caught up there by the late morning sun from


306 THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY
portant, would she, if we hadn't told her about the
small round object?"
"Oddly enough," said I, discreetly, "it was you, my
dear, who also gave her the motives for Sarah Parn-
ham's crimes."
"Oddly enough," said Vicky, "I did nothing of the
sort."
"In your speech about the cook. Before that time
she had been convinced of Sarah Parnham's guilt, and
she thought that she had the motive for Mrs. Bailey's
murder—concealment of the first crime. Miss Mac-
Donald had found that Miss Parnham had been forced
to resign her position, and that she was worried about
her future and her finances. But Miss MacDonald could
not see how Tony Charvan's death would benefit
Sarah Parnham in any way. Tuesday evening you said
that Miss Parnham was going to give up teaching in
order to manage Meriwether for Dot, and that Meri-
wether was a good business. You went on to say that
a cook had been found, by accident. Miss MacDonald
said that the word 'accident' was the key she had
needed—it unlocked the shut chamber in her mind,
and gave her the picture.
"Sarah Parnham had gone to Mrs. Bailey's room to
kill her—the motive, an excellent position for herself
as manager of Meriwether. The scene that Miss Mac-
Donald envisaged as taking place in Mrs. Bailey's
room that night was much the same as the one that
Sarah Parnham gave in her letter. Except that
Miss MacDonald thought that Sarah Parnham had


THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY 309
"Almost from the first, she said, she believed that
these two women had arranged the thing to look as if
it were suicide. They were alone here in the house at
the time. Again—the time because he did not keep his
engagements. They came downstairs together, met us,
urged that we go to the theater with them, left the
house in haste. When they returned, Miss Parnham
insisted that Mrs. Bailey should not go upstairs alone;
and, in spite of the implications it gave as to Dot's
temper, Mrs. Bailey waited for us at the head of the
stairs so that she should not even go down the hall
alone. Her first thought, though, when she ran im-
mediately upstairs was that Dot should not be up
there by herself. Since Evadne Parnham and Dot had
intended to go to a second picture that evening, Mrs.
Bailey and Sarah Parnham had confidently planned
on being the first to arrive at home. We can imagine
their shock and dismay when they found that the other
ladies had been here for more than an hour."
"Yes," said Vicky, and sighed, and went on. "Do
you remember that evening, when Sarah washed the
dishes, she didn't unfasten her cuffs and roll them
back? You know—she was keeping that bruise
covered."
"I know," I agreed. "And that Sunday afternoon,
when Miss MacDonald and I went to her room, sup-
posedly waking her from sleep, she was wearing a
frock with long sleeves instead of any of the garments
that ladies usually assume for a nap. Miss MacDonald
said, too, that Sarah Parnham's acting that afternoon