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Show . . 1 CHAPTKB V THE 8TOBY TH t'S I Ml Returning ' from a viilt with Dyke MrKinnon, hit ...! Tudd McKinnon, Georgian Wyeth, n .hi tier small daughter, Ilarby, stopped out to vtiit Mn. Peabody, friend of Dyke's. Mn, 1'eabody explained that she had inherited her horns from Adeline Tillsit, and that the rumor had brn tarted that her huaband, Gilbert, wa responsible for her murder. Todd anc (ieorgine deelded to get married t onc and stop over with Mri. 1'eabody, to gift Todd time to help tolve the mystery connected con-nected with Mini Tillsit. CHAPTER V Todd and G e o r g i n e went through the door that stood open j to the mild spring air, and were I forced to feel their way carefully ' through the tempered gloom, ; around the immense old pieces of furniture. Georgine thought, I don't hear Barby, I hope to heaven everything's all right; she was so willing to stay with Mrs. Feabody. From the back yard a little voice raised In tuneless song reassured her; she went toward the kitchen and stopped short at the sound of another voice, harsh, nasal and almost al-most breathless. They had left the owner of that voice on her own front porch, just five minutes ago. "Didn't get much out o' me," '.t said. "But I want you to know, If them two come round here askin' you any innocent soundin' questions, ques-tions, then you can be certain somethin's up." "But I" Nella Peabody was saying as Georgine began to retreat. re-treat. "Soldiers or no soldiers, what call they got to dig up what don't concern them nor Mary Helen, neither? Now, you watch out for 'em, Nell; they're pleasant-spoken enough, I'll say that for 'em, but how's a body to tell what's behind It?" Mrs. Peabody broke into despairing de-spairing laughter, and raised her voice. "I keep trying to tell you, Susie; they're staying here with me. And they didn't ask me any questions. I told them!" There was an instant of shocked silence. Then Susan Labare said gruffly, "Nell Lace, have you lost your mind?" "Not in the least. Come in here, Susie, I think I heard them at the side door. Yes, you will!" She ap- 1 4 A. 1 I 1. . f Vl I .11 "I heard his car start up, out front. Hadn't heard it when he druv up, but then he could 'a' coasted the last little bit, an' shut off the engine gentle." "Didn't he say anything when you spoke to him on the stairs?" "Yeah," Susie replied grudgingly. grudging-ly. "Said Miss Adeline was asleep. Well, I knovvod better than that, didn't I? Said he hadn't tried to wake her, hadn't been in the room at all. I thought 'twas funny, but I wasn't figurin' very clear just then, an' I laid down again. And that was all, until I went upstairs about ha' past four, like I told you." "AncL-found, then or a li'le bit later, that she was in a coma." Todd looked beyond her, far away into a distance of things imagined. "You did all the housekeeping, of course, Mrs. Labare." "Sure. All of it, an' waited on Miss Adeline. Maybe I see what you're gettin' at," said Susan defiantly. defi-antly. "You think I must 'a' slep' don't you? Well, I tell you, if I did it wasn't more'n a minute. I hadn't no way of tellin', but I'd take my Bible oath on it." McKinnon nodded thoughtfully. "But if you had by chance, gone off into one of those sudden deep sleeps that come to people when they're very tired " "I'm strong as a horse." " on hot summer days," he went on imperturbably, "it is just possible that there could have been another visitor besides Gilbert; one who both came and went by the enclosed service stairs, and whom you never heard at all except ex-cept for the moment when Miss Adeline's door opened. Gilbert may have told the truth about not going into the room. Possibly he was here only a few minutes, since you need not have heard him cominer." would 'a', only Gilbert buried the cover in the backyard behind the studio. Did it like a ninny, too, in broad daylight, an' Horace seen him out the p'scription room window." win-dow." "Horace took it upon himself to go over and dig up what Gilbert had buried, on his own property?" Nella inquired with ominous mildness. mild-ness. "Well, be that as it may Mr. McKinnon, Mrs. Wyeth, do you see anything in all that to condemn a man? Why, it could be twice as bad, and it would still seem inconclusive incon-clusive to me." It was after five when Todd appeared, ap-peared, strolling bareheaded around the corner of the house. He sat down beside Georgine in a rickety little summer house at the rear corner of the big lot, and looked about him appreciatively. "Picket fence, all along the back property line," he remarked. "Would that be California, do you suppose, or did they bring that idea from New England, too?" Georgine didn't know. Rested and warmed by his presence, as always, she only smiled at him and looked idly at the orchards which stretched in unbroken line on the far side of the fence. There was an unpaved lane, just wide enough for one car, beyond the pickets; and then the lines and lines of trees, some of them beginning to flower whitely. Todd said, with seeming irrelevance, "You could walk down that lane, almost all the way to town, without being seen. The other houses have solid board fences . . . Tillsit, Peabody: good old Eastern names, those. They brought some other reminders of home with them, too. Did you notice no-tice that balcony that runs clear round the third floor?" He looked up at it, and at the crazy latticework lattice-work that ririnned from it like a peuttu at me uaun ux use wan, pushing the gaunt figure before her. Mrs. Labare gave Todd and Georgine a look, oddly compounded compound-ed of suspicion, reluctance and a sort of ghoulish interest; as if, Georgine thought, we were suspected sus-pected murderers ourselves. "This is the first time that Susan has ever admitted there was anything any-thing to conceal! It was good of you to warn me, Susie," Nella added add-ed with a mischievous glint of laughter. "But haven't I been telling tell-ing you for two years that it would be kinder to tell the truth?" "Well, "twouldn't," said Susan harshly. Todd said, "What you told me this afternoon wasn't so bad, Mrs. Labare. That was accurate, wasn't It?" His voice was infinitely easy and soothing. Georgine sent him a mental apology. She had thought him a bit obvious with Susie. Now she saw that his tactics had been deliberate, and had produced the desired result. "Far's it went," the old woman said. She glanced around at Mrs. Peabody. "Look here, Nell Lace, if there was anything more to tell" "Which of course there is," Nella put in. "And you've gone too far now not to tell it!" "Well, if there was, you wouldn't want I should come out with it in "He didn't tell the truth," Mrs. Labare said sullenly. She looked at Mrs. Peabody again, with what seemed sincere compunction. "You made me say it, Nell." Nella's head was still superbly poised. "Mr. McKinnon is quite right," she said. "I can't see anything any-thing suspicious about Gilbert's having been here that afternoon. He told me he meant to come, only I never did know how often, nor what time." is ied Miss Adeline off so young?" "No, just how did he act?" Nella sat composed and charming against the window, the sunlight striking through the bay to illumine illu-mine the curves and hollows of her face. "Ants in his pants, that's how," replied Susie succinctly. "Jumpy, kinda dazed, cloth-headed. An' doitl' all sorts of queer things. How 'bout your diary?" "My diary?" This time Nella looked really startled. "Yeah. That line-a-day book you used to keep, the one 't you said you lost. Askin' all over town for it, you was, sayin' you must 'a' left it somewhere. Didn't you never know Gilbert had it?" "Gilbert." Her voice came slowly, slow-ly, as if a small but teasing problem prob-lem had at last been solved. "But what could he have wanted with it, what ever got into him there wasn't anything in my diary; just the little things that happened every day, notes on my dressmaking dressmak-ing orders, things like that; dull." A little laugh escaped her. "I did put down all the meetings he and I had, but that wouldn't - there wasn't anything what did he do with it? How did anyone know he had it?" "Tried to burn it," said Mrs. Labare, La-bare, more gently than usual. "You never knowed? Maybe nobody hem torn from a bedraggled lace dress. "Yes, I noticed it," she replied. "Is that New England?" "Modification of what they used to call a Widow's Walk." He continued to gaze out over the garden, his eyes slightly narrowed. nar-rowed. "I paid a few more calls after Susie left; went to see the editor of the li'le newspaper, and introduced myself at the police station, and called on the rector of that church down on Elm Street. He asked if he mightn't meet you, too, before the wedding." "Of course. That really begins to sound like business." "Begins to sound ! Woman, what do you call a license and a ring?" "Corroborative detail," said Georgine. "I still can't quite believe be-lieve it. But what did you find out, Todd?" "Not much; not so very much; and yet it all begins to shape up. Odd how freely people talk, there's no doubt of what they think even when it's not put into direct words. Gilbert Peabody cleared his slate when he enlisted and went overseas; over-seas; that's the consensus. And there's no argument about Miss Adeline. If she was murdered, it was for gain, in money or property. She was not a tyrant, she brought no pressure to bear on her family to do what she wanted. Just a fine old lady, a li'le crotchety; that's what they all say. If anybody wanted his own way, it would be her brother, Judge Tillsit." "Todd, it really looks to me as if you'd be stymied." "Oh, no." His smooth sandy head moved deliberately from side to side. "I'm challenged, Georgine. To begin with, there's no proof that a murder ever took place. There was no exhumation of the body, and worst of all, no one questioned ques-tioned at the time. Anything in the nature of a trail must have gone stone cold more than two years ago." "I hope to goodness you're not trying to warm it up." "We-eL" said Todd, chuckling silently, "not so it gets red hot. I must say, though, I miss the tips I used to get from reporters, and now and then the police. I knew I owed 'em a lot, but it takes a case like this to show me how much!" "On the other hand, the principals prin-cipals seem to be opening their hearts to you. Ah, that old Mc-Kinnen Mc-Kinnen charm," said Georgine maliciously. "I'll let you handle the men," said Todd with imperturbable countenance. "As for the women, they needn't be telling the truth, you know. Nobody need be." Georgine got up to collect her child ; he rose with her, but got out the mputh-organ again, as if he meant to stay a while in communion commun-ion with it. "There was one thing Susie said, at the last," he remarked, re-marked, "that meant nothing to me, nor seemingly to Mrs. Peabody; Pea-body; but Susie brought it out reluctantly, and looked as if she bad expected it to be a clinching argument. I asked her If she'd heard what Miss Adeline said to the first visitor. She said yes. she d'd. TO BX CONTINUED) front of them?" She thrust out a big hand toward Todd and Georgine. Georg-ine. Mrs. Peabody's chin went up, proudly defiant. "Why does everyone every-one think it's Gilbert? You're the one who was in the house, you ought to know!" "Only know what I saw, an' heard, an' what everybody saw afterward. He was here in the house. Mean to say you wasn't sure of that?" "When was he here, Mrs. Labare?' La-bare?' Todd said calmly. "Besides the morning visit, I mean. Would you take us through that whole day?" "Well all right. He come in about ha' past eleven, walked right upstairs the way he always done, an' Mis' Tillsit she looks at him an' says, 'You get it?' and Gilbert nods. Then she sends me out of the room. He was only there about fifteen fif-teen minutes that time." " Did anyone else come to see her that morning?" Todd asked. "Nobody come in that whole eternal day, until after I'd went to take my nap downstairs, like I always al-ways done, about two. I laid on that sofa." She jerked her head toward a monstrous object in faded fad-ed olive-green plush. "I hadn't been down here more 'n a few minutes min-utes when I heard somebody above us; they must 'a' gone up the side steps because they hadn't gone up the front or I'd 'a' seen 'em." Susie gave one of her sharp nods, and clamped her jaw shut for a moment mo-ment on this incontrovertible logic. "They were walkin' soft, so's not to disturb anybody. I heard Miss Adeline's door open, an' she sort of laughed, an' said somethin'." Todd rose and strolled over to the green sofa; from this vantage point he peered through the half-open half-open door, and then nodded. "What happened then?" he said |