Fifty Candles by Earl Biggers

Author:Earl Biggers [Biggers, Earl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Serapis Classics
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER VI

While Detective Barnes was upstairs, fifteen or twenty minutes passed, duly recorded by the busy clock in the hall. Gloomy with foreboding, I sat staring at a Chinese print on the wall. It was a cheery little thing, representing an execution. I wondered about the most vitally interested party, who appeared to have completely lost his head. Was he guilty? Or had he, an innocent man, been caught up in a net of circumstantial evidence while the real culprit went free? It was for me a most interesting question.

The bald little detective was coming down the stairs. His face was very serious; he held one hand behind his back. Mary Will was staring at him, fascinated, and to my surprise he walked straight up to her.

“If you don’t mind, Miss Tellfair,” he said, “we will go back to your story for a moment.”

“Yes,” breathed Mary Will. All color vas gone from her face.

“Your room upstairs—it’s the blue room to the left, on the second floor?”

“It is.”

“When you went up to get the smelling-salts for Mrs. Drew, you took the time to go first to your own room, didn’t you?”

“I—I did.”

“You wanted to hide something?”

“Yes.”

“Something you had picked up from the side of the dead man in the dining room?”

Mary Will nodded; her face was the color of that tablecloth old Drew had seized in his last moment of life.

“You don’t seem to be up on this sort of thing, my girl,” Barnes went on. “Under your mattress was a pretty obvious place.”

He brought his hand round from behind his back, and when I saw what the hand held, I had difficulty repressing the cry that rose to my lips. For the detective held a small Chinese knife, with a handle of grape jade, carved in the shape of some heathen god. It was unique, that knife. There could hardly be another like it in the world. I had bought it from a merchant far in the interior of China, and on the boat coming over I had shown it to several people, Mary Will included.

“It was the worst thing I could have done.” Mary Will was sobbing now. “But I was so excited—I had no time to think.”

Out of the murk of tule-fog and hatred and murder, one dazzling thing flashed clear—and nothing else mattered. I was a happy man.

“You did that for me!” I cried. “Mary Will—you’re wonderful!”

“Then this is your knife?” Barnes broke in, holding it before me.

“No question about it,” said I.

“How do you account for the fact that it was found beside the dead man?”

I turned in time to catch the look that passed between Parker and Carlotta Drew, and hot anger filled my heart.

“It was stolen, of course,” I said.

“Of course,” smiled the detective.

“I had not missed it yet,” I went on, “but it must have been taken from my luggage, in the stateroom, sometime today.

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