FARLEY DREW'S GAME

FOR a moment after Miss Risby's veiled but unmistakably significant statement Odell stared at her while this new and amazing possibility swept over his consciousness. Was the girl lying, deliberately attempting to throw suspicion on Lorne, even as he had an hour before practically accused her?

The detective was forced to admit to himself that she did not appear to be the type of woman who would commit herself in any way without due cause and after careful consideration; yet she had said more than the situation demanded. She might easily have taken refuge in the excuse that she thought Mr. Lorne's presence, or that of any other member of the family except Miss Meade, excited her patient; she need not have volunteered that observation about the bandage.

"You are absolutely sure in your own mind that the bandage was tampered with?" he asked.

The girl shrugged.

"Doctor Adams would tell you that the patient might very well have loosened it in changing her position in bed; but I had applied it myself, and I knew that it had been removed and replaced."

"Did you examine it, Miss Risby? Was there anything ​upon it or in the infected spot itself which suggested that some foreign matter might have been introduced?"

"No; I could not say that," she replied conscientiously. "The irritation and consequent suppuration had materially increased, and the patient's temperature had risen; but I found no trace of poison, if that is what you mean."

"Will you tell me all the circumstances, please? Was anyone else near Mrs. Lorne on that occasion?"

"No. Miss Meade was sleeping on the day bed in the boudoir adjoining, but she never stirred until I awakened her at midnight. She was utterly worn out and had gone to rest immediately after dinner on the evening in question, which was five days before Mrs. Lorne's death.

"I was alone with my patient when about nine o'clock Mr. Lorne knocked upon the door and I admitted him. After a few minutes I left him quietly talking to his wife; and requesting him not to remain more than twenty minutes, I went to my own room, where I wrote a letter. In exactly the time I had stipulated I returned and found that he had gone, and my patient was in the condition which I have described.

"I looked in the boudoir and saw that Miss Meade was still sleeping, and when I awakened her later I learned she had heard no one in her sister's room. I asked Mrs. Lorne herself if anyone had touched the bandage, but she denied it and seemed resentful. She was not a particularly easy patient to handle, being high-strung and self-indulgent to a degree; and it was essential that she should not be permitted to excite herself, so I dared not question her further."

The quiet, unemotional voice had continued without emphasis or hesitation until the end; and now the girl sat ​composedly awaiting the next question. Could she have anticipated this scene and carefully rehearsed it? Her poise seemed all at once too perfect not to have been studied.

"Miss Risby, there must have been something else to arouse your suspicions. You would not, in the ordinary performance of your duty, prevent a man from having a private interview with his dying wife merely because on an earlier visit of his the bandage about her arm had become loosened and her fever increased."

The shot told, as he could note by the sudden tightening of the girl's lips; but she shook her head.

"You forget that the irritation of the infected area had also increased and to an alarming extent. It—it looked to me, Sergeant Odell, like a deliberate reinfection. I cannot even under the present circumstances discuss the private affairs of a family whose household I enter in a professional capacity, and I do not pretend to hazard any motive for such a possible act on Mr. Lorne's part; my only duty was toward my patient and I fulfilled it to the best of my ability."

"Yet you did learn something of the private affairs of that family." Odell seized upon the opening she had unwittingly given to him. "You do know or suspect a possible motive on Mr. Lorne's part for such a crime. Miss Risby, there are certain occasions when professional ethics must be put aside. The truth will not bring Mrs. Lorne back to life, but it may save others from dying as she did."

"Others?" The girl was startled from her serene composure at last. "What do you mean, Sergeant Odell? Surely there have been no further cases!"

"You encountered all the members of the family during your stay, did you not?"

​She nodded wordlessly.

"You have heard of the subsequent death of Mrs. Lorne's oldest son, Julian Chalmers?"

"No!" she cried. "I have been on a contagious case in quarantine for the last fortnight. That splendid, robust young man! I—I can scarcely believe it! How—how did he die?"

"He was murdered in an even more ruthless fashion than was his mother. We have absolute proof of that and the manner of it; and two later unsuccessful attempts have been made upon other members of the family." Odell paused. "You see now, Miss Risby, that no ethical question must seal your lips. In the case of Mrs. Lorne, I may tell you that Doctor Adams as well as the specialists are convinced that death was not the direct result of the prick of that needle; and they are coöperating with me in every way. I must ask you to be equally frank."

"Oh, I don't know what to do!" The girl's hands twisted together in her lap. "Nursing isn't only a business with me; it is almost a sacred calling, and I have always striven to uphold its tenets scrupulously. There can be nothing more despicable than a woman who enters a home in the intimate, confidential capacity of a nurse and tattles of the personal, private matters which inevitably come under her observation; and yet if it is a question of preventing crime, I realize that I have no choice. Only if Mr. Lorne is innocent I am doing a terrible thing in this betrayal of my trust!"

"If Mr. Lorne is innocent the truth cannot hurt him," the detective urged. "Circumstantial evidence alone cannot ​avail in a case of this sort, and where no possible motive appears—"

"But that is just it," Miss Risby interrupted him. "I am afraid that what I have to tell you will seem to establish a motive, yet I must speak. On the day before the episode of which I have just told you Miss Brown had a sore throat, and I assumed her duties as well as my own; Mrs. Lorne was not then so critically ill, you know. In the afternoon she was resting easily, and I thought it safe to take a nap if I remained within call. I went to the day bed in the boudoir and fell asleep almost at once, but was awakened by the sound of my patient's voice raised in shrill anger.

"I started up to go to her, my first thought being to curb her excitement, but when I heard Mr. Lorne's voice I hesitated. I did not mean to listen, but after the first few words I decided that it would save them from embarrassment if I did not appear; for their argument was about finances and of a most private nature.

"Mr. Lorne was urging his wife to sign some sort of paper which would enable him to sell a certain piece of property in which I gathered she had equal rights; and she vehemently refused. I cannot repeat the exact words; but it was evident that he was in financial straits, and he complained bitterly of his position in practically living on the money she had inherited from her first husband—of whom he spoke in a decidedly uncomplimentary manner—while there remained property of his own which would carry him safely over some crisis in the stock market and turn the tide, if his wife would only sign the document.

"She declared that the property in question was bound to increase in value, and if he had been a fool and got him​self into a hole he must take the consequences; that she had always hated his gambling in Wall Street, and had warned him that he would fail sooner or later; and it might as well come now while her private fortune was sufficient for all their future needs. He swore that he would not live on her money; and she asked him sneeringly what he was going to do about it. She resented the slurs cast upon her first husband; and Mr. Lorne was furious at her ridicule of his lack of judgment in playing the market

"A violent quarrel ensued in which he cursed himself for marrying a selfish, self-willed woman who had been spoiled all her life, and vowed that he would find some way to regain independent control of his own property. He asserted in no uncertain terms that she wanted him to fail, in order to place him under further obligations and make him a slave to her slightest whim, and that he—he would see her dead first."

The girl's voice had sunk lower and lower until the final words came in a mere whisper, and she shuddered as if shrinking from their very utterance.

"Did Mrs. Lorne still refuse?*' Odell asked.

"Yes; and he left in a towering rage, while she merely laughed at him in a tantalizing way. Aside from the question, which was none of my affair, I must confess that I felt a certain amount of sympathy for Mr. Lorne at the moment. Mrs. Lorne was a very beautiful woman, but her disposition was not an easy one with which to get along; and I had already experienced her almost maniacal outbursts of temper over the merest trivialities.

"However, when I returned to the sick-room after dinner that evening I found him again with her, and they seemed ​to have established amicable and even affectionate relations once more; so I thought no further about the scene of the afternoon until on the following night, when immediately after his customary visit with her I found her condition so changed."

"And this is all you have to tell me?" Odell rose. "You can recall nothing else which might have a possible bearing on Mrs. Lorne's death?"

"Nothing," Miss Risby responded as she gave him her hand. "Please do not attach too much significance to what I have told you, Sergeant. I have witnessed many domestic quarrels, and it has been my experience that people say a great deal in the heat of anger which it would be ridiculous to attach any importance to. I have told you only because I thought it my duty; but I beg that you will not accept my statement as conclusive proof."

Leaving her, Odell returned as quickly as possible to the Meade house. With every turn he seemed to be unearthing fresh and conflicting circumstantial evidence, and he felt that before proceeding any further he must gather up some of the loose threads which entangled this most perplexing of all the cases he had known.

When Peters admitted him he proceeded directly to the third floor and found Porter seated on a chair in the hall outside Gene's door yawning over a newspaper, which he cast aside with a quickly suppressed grin at sight of his superior.

"I'm glad you got back, Sergeant," he observed with an innocent air which told the detective plainly that the tale of his abduction had filtered through from Headquarters dur​ing his absence. "Nothing stirring in there; been sulking ever since the night before last."

"Has he communicated with anyone outside the house or received any messages?"

"No. He sends his trays away almost untouched after each meal; and when Miss Meade came to the door he refused to let her in. Moreover, from that little room there I can hear him walking the floor most of the night. He hasn't taken the least notice of me; don't seem to care whether I'm on the job or not. It looks as if he was waiting for something to drop on him."

"Well, he won't have to wait any longer."

Odell knocked upon the door, and after a perceptible pause slow, reluctant footsteps sounded within, and Gene appeared on the threshold. His face was pale and drawn, and the circles beneath his sunken eyes told of sleepless hours; but to the detective's keen gaze there seemed to be a new look of strength and resolution about his weak mouth.

For a moment he stood eyeing Odell steadily but quite without animosity. Then he asked quietly:

"Do you want me?" There was a significance beyond the mere words in his tone, and the detective shook his head smilingly as he replied:

"I want only to have a little talk with you, Mr. Chalmers, if I may."

"Come in. Sergeant." Gene held the door wide, and Odell walked past him to a chair by the table. "I'll tell you anything you want to know now."

"You have not heard from your friend Farley Drew since ​you left him the night before last in the room behind that tailor's shop on Third Avenue?"

"No." Gene closed the door and came slowly forward. "You were there? You heard?"

"I was in the alley," Odell admitted. "Your friend should see to it that the window is not broken or the shade torn, if he wishes to hold a strictly private conversation."

Gene drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders.

"I'm glad you did hear, Sergeant; that simplifies matters. And please don't call that scoundrel a friend of mine; he is the worst enemy a man could have. I wish I had told you everything before, but I was afraid of him. Now I know that nothing he can do to me will be any worse than the torture I have gone through for the last two days; and at least I shall be rid of him forever! Do you remember that note you found in my desk and took away; I mean the one in which he ordered me to do something before the sixth of the month?"

"Yes. He mentioned it to me after you and Sims had taken your departure that night. We had a most interesting conversation in the room with the broken window." The detective paused and then added slowly: "You had—er—signed your mother's name to a check, and Farley Drew had cashed it; hadn't he? Was the second one drawn on her also?"

"So Drew told you?" The young man was white to the lips.

"No; I guessed. I had heard you accuse him of bleeding you; I recalled the wording of the note, and I put two and two together."

"Well, it's true! I'm not going to deny it, and I'll face ​my stepfather and the family or—or anyone else you like." There was a sort of quiet desperation in his tones, with no trace of bravado. "Ever since I can remember I have been able to copy people's handwriting without any practice, and so nearly perfect that they could not themselves tell it from their own. I used to do it for fun at school when I was a kid. It was a gift from the devil, I guess; but I never thought of turning it to account in any dishonest way until Drew found out about my freakish ability in that line and put the idea into my head.

"Don't misunderstand me, Sergeant; I'm not trying to hide behind his skirts. I forged my mother's name to that check, and I am willing to take the consequences. Drew had me in a hole; racing, and gambling, and chits signed at restaurants for supper parties, and all the rest of it. He had a stack of I. O. U. paper of mine about a foot high. My stepfather had paid up my debts twice; and he refused to do so again, and I knew he meant it.

"Of course I shall be of age in another month and master of my inheritance from my own father; but Drew wouldn't wait. The notes were long overdue; and he was pressing me, and threatening until I was almost crazy."

Only another month? Odell's thoughts were far afield. Mrs. Lorne had refused to sign away her rights to certain property, and she had died; Julian had demanded an accounting of his estate, and he also had perished. Gene would be of age in four short weeks; and it was obvious that he, too, would want control of his inheritance—and that portrait had all but crushed out his life when it fell! All this capital had been intrusted to Richard Lorne's keeping. … With an effort the detective forced himself to con​centrate on the matter in hand. "Why couldn't Drew wait one month more?"

"I didn't know then. He always seemed prosperous, though I fancied he was sailing pretty close to the wind himself. I hadn't the faintest idea of his real motive. I owed him all told about twelve thousand dollars; but he said he would return all my notes and call it square if I would get ten thousand for him then, and he told me how it could be done."

"When was this, Mr. Chalmers?"

"About six weeks ago. I needn't tell you what a rotter I felt, forging my mother's name; but I knew she would save me from exposure if the worst came to the worst, even though she had agreed with my stepfather not to let me have another cent; and I could pay her back as soon as I came into my own money. Of course I didn't dream then what was coming; and she died without ever knowing what I had done.

"I made the check out to myself, endorsed it, and gave it to Farley Drew; and he returned all my notes. But when Dad and old Titheredge were settling up her estate after her death, the check didn't come back from the bank with those my mother herself had drawn. I didn't know what to make of it, and was in a blue funk for fear the people at the bank had discovered the forgery and were investigating it quietly. I went to Farley Drew, and then for the first time learned the sort of man he was, and how I had put myself in his power.

"Sergeant, he was in no such need of ready money as I had imagined; he had not cashed that check, nor had he ever intended to do so. He was going to hold it over my ​head, and when I came into my own money bleed me of every cent! I didn't grasp all that at first; it came to me gradually later. He said he had not cashed the check himself, but had given it to someone else; and that it had gone through the bank all right, and there must have been some mistake about its not having been returned with the others. I would have believed him; but just then he sprung his real game on me.

"He had paid my debts for me, accepted my notes, and held them when they were long overdue without making any trouble for me, and now in common decency I must help him out; that was the way he put it, but I was on in a minute and saw the trap I had walked into.

"He was in immediate need of five thousand more, must have it by the sixth of the month, and I must get it for him as I had the ten thousand. My mother was gone; but Dad would honor her check if I made it out carefully enough to pass muster. I could endorse it over, not to Drew, but to a friend of his who runs a private card-club, and who would stand in with us to the extent of presenting it to Titheredge for payment, and would then turn the money over to Drew for a liberal commission. This man was not to know that the check was a forgery, of course. He was to be told that I owed the money to Drew and that my mother had agreed to lend me the required sum until I came of age; that I did not want my family to know I had borrowed any more money from Drew; so he was to say that it was a gambling debt which I owed to him, and to threaten exposure if it were not paid.

"This was the brilliant plan which Farley Drew had concocted for his first levy of blackmail upon me, Sergeant; ​but it didn't work. I was a coward and a rotter to steal from my own mother when she was alive, even though I could return it so soon; but with her dead and her body scarcely cold in the grave!—I couldn't! I defied him, and he saw he had gone too far; but he has been stalling along ever since.

"That last meeting was the end. I told him that I knew his game and he could go as far as he liked; he would never get another penny out of me by fair means or foul; and if he intended to use that check to expose me I would anticipate him. I swore I would go to Dad and old Titheredge and tell them the truth, and they could do what they wanted to with me; at least I would be out of his clutches. I suppose he means to sell them that check for about five times its face value; but I don't care if they refuse! I don't care if the whole world knows; for it couldn't condemn me half as bitterly as I condemn myself!" Gene's voice broke suddenly, and he buried his face in his hands. "Oh, if my mother only understands and forgives!"