At One-Thirty by Isabel Ostrander (best book series to read .txt) 📖

WHEN Gaunt reached his rooms, he found Inspector Hanrahan impatiently pacing the floor of his library.

“Thought you would never come, Mr. Gaunt,” he said. “I have been waiting for you nearly an hour. Have you come upon anything?”

“Running down a lot of false clues; clearing out the underbrush, that’s about all.” Gaunt could not quite keep the bitterness he felt from manifesting itself in his voice.

“Ah-ha! Well, I’ve come on something we’ve never even thought of looking into. We’ve taken the case up from the time of the murder, or at least the evening before. But how about the day before, Mr. Gaunt? Did it occur to you to find out how Garret Appleton spent the last day of his life?”

The detective concealed his chagrin with an effort. Could this be the line of investigation that he had overlooked, not because of his blindness, but because of a crass stupidity of reasoning which was plainly unaccountable.

“Can’t say that it did, Inspector. I have been too busy following up the clues we already had.”

“Well!” The Inspector settled back in a chair with immense satisfaction. “When Fd ran that Louis Lantelme business to earth, and found there was nothing in it, there didn’t seem a single thing left to go on; so I thought Fd cast backward a little. In the first place—I got this from Louis— for the last twp or three months Mr. Appleton has had something on his mind—something besides his family troubles, and all that, I mean. He kfept it pretty much to himself; but his man knew it—trust a valet, or a lady’s maid, to know as much about the people they work for as they know about themselves.

‘^As far as Louis could make out, it started with an article his master read in the newspaper about three months ago. He seemed very much excited, and did some mysterious telephoning; but the valet didn’t hear the numbers, and didn’t know what it was about. After Mr. Appleton had gone out, the valet looked carefully through that page of the paper which had upset his master; but he couldn’t find anything in it which, to his mind, would seem to have any bearing on Mr. Appleton’s affairs.

“He would have forgotten all about it, only from that minute his master seemed a changed man; to him, at least. More irritable than ever, and anxious—not as if he was afraid, but as if he was worried about to death. Once in the last moiith while Louis was in his employ, Mr. Appleton had gone away alone—just over night. He’s always taken Louis with him before, and that was what impressed it upon the valet’s mind as being unusual. Moreover, when he returned, he seemed more depressed and worried than ever.”

Inspector Hanrahan paused as if for commendation; but the detective merely asked quietly:

“Anything else?”

“Not from Louis Lantelme. You know he was discharged about a month ago. But when I went at the butler with this line of questioning, I got a few more facts. I told you I thought that fellow had something up his sleeve. It seems that, about three weeks ago, Mr. Appleton received a letter with a special-delivery stamp, quite late one evening.

“There was a dinner on at the house and lots of guests there; but he excused himself and went out in his car. He didn’t return until nearly six in the morning, and Dakers, whom he had told to wait up for him—and I guess from the way the fellow talked he was well paid for it—says the car was splashed from end to end with mud, as if it had had a long run, through heavy roads—although it hadn’t rained in New York that night.”

“Not so much in that,” the detective remarked.

“The morning before his death, Mr. Appleton received another special-delivery letter. This time, Mr. Appleton went out in his car, immediately, as before; but he returned about five o’clock in the afternoon, and, from then until dinner time, Dakers was pretty busy bringing him drinks. He did not seem anxious or worried then, but madder than the deuce.

“We couldn’t get a thing out of Mr. Appleton’s chauffeur, at first. He and Mr. Yates each had their own, you know, and Mr. Garret’s is a stolid German, and I suspect was paid to keep his mouth shut. But, after we had been at him for awhile, he said he had driven Mr. Appleton, on the day before his death, to a road-house away up on the Boston Post Road, where he’s had his own lunch, and waited for three hours for his employer. Then he brought him straight home.

“I got the name of the road-house from him. It’s The Rocky Point Inn, and I’m going up there for dinner tonight, and find out what Garret Appleton did during those three hours and whom he met, and then I am going to trace them, if I can.

“As to the time before, when they went on that all-night trip, they went over to Jersey, by way of Staten Island and Perth Amboy Ferry, to a farmhouse half-way between Metuchen and New Brunswick. I have got two men out there now, with the chauffeur to show them the house, and see what we get out of that.”

“What do you think, yourself. Inspector? Got a theory?”

“I think they’re the most confoundedly mysterious bunch I ever came in contact with. Mr. Garret Appleton was in some secret mix-up of his own, as sure as you are alive—nothing criminal, or anything of that sort, I think; but something he didn’t take his family into his affairs about. They were a swift couple, those two brothers, from all I have been able to gather. They’ve kept the family in hot water and themselves just out of scare-heads in the newspapers since their college days; but I think I’m on the trail