CHAPTER XXVIII A TRAMP AND THE TOOTHACHE
The bitterness toward the dead president of the Traders’ Bank seemed to grow with time. Never popular, his memory was execrated by people who had lost nothing, but who were filled with disgust by constantly hearing new stories of the man’s grasping avarice. The Traders’ had been a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savings department it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who had thought to be self-supporting to the last found themselves confronting the poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away. All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors were trying to promise twenty per cent. on deposits.
But, like everything else those days, the bank failure was almost forgotten by Gertrude and myself. We did not mention Jack Bailey: I had found nothing to change my impression of his guilt, and Gertrude knew how I felt. As for the murder of the bank president’s son, I was of two minds. One day I thought Gertrude knew or at least suspected that Jack had done it; the next I feared that it had been Gertrude herself, that night alone on the circular staircase. And then the mother of Lucien Wallace would obtrude herself, and an almost equally good case might be made against her. There were times, of course, when I was disposed to throw all those suspicions aside, and fix definitely on the unknown, whoever that might be.
I had my greatest disappointment when it came to tracing Nina Carrington. The woman had gone without leaving a trace. Marked as she was, it should have been easy to follow her, but she was not to be found. A description to one of the detectives, on my arrival at home, had started the ball rolling. But by night she had not been found. I told Gertrude, then, about the telegram to Louise when she had been ill before; about my visit to Doctor Walker, and my suspicions that Mattie Bliss and Nina Carrington were the same. She thought, as I did, that there was little doubt of it.
I said nothing to her, however, of the detective’s suspicions about Alex. Little things that I had not noticed at the time now came back to me. I had an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps Alex was a spy, and that by taking him into the house I had played into the enemy’s hand. But at eight o’clock that night Alex himself appeared, and with him a strange and repulsive individual. They made a queer pair, for Alex was almost as disreputable as the tramp, and he had a badly swollen eye.
Gertrude had been sitting listlessly waiting for the evening message from Mr. Jamieson, but when the singular pair came in, as they did, without ceremony, she jumped up and stood staring. Winters, the detective who watched the house at night, followed them, and kept his eyes sharply on Alex’s prisoner. For that was the situation as it developed.
He was a tall lanky individual, ragged and dirty, and just now he looked both terrified and embarrassed. Alex was too much engrossed to be either, and to this day I don’t think I ever asked him why he went off without permission the day before.
“Miss Innes,” Alex began abruptly, “this man can tell us something very important about the disappearance of Mr. Innes. I found him trying to sell this watch.”
He took a watch from his pocket and put it on the table. It was Halsey’s watch. I had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday: I was dumb with apprehension.
“He says he had a pair of cuff-links also, but he sold them–”
“Fer a dollar’n half,” put in the disreputable individual hoarsely, with an eye on the detective.
“He is not–dead?” I implored. The tramp cleared his throat.
“No’m,” he said huskily. “He was used up pretty bad, but he weren’t dead. He was comin’ to hisself when I”–he stopped and looked at the detective. “I didn’t steal it, Mr. Winters,” he whined. “I found it in the road, honest to God, I did.”
Mr. Winters paid no attention to him. He was watching Alex.