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Title: The Bride of a Moment Author: Carolyn Wells * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 1601001h.html Language: English Date first posted: November 2016 Most recent update: November 2016 This eBook was produced by: Walter Moore Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg Australia Licence which may be viewed online.GO TO Project Gutenberg Australia HOME PAGE
Absorbedly interested, Ford pored over it, and the boy stared at him, both alarmed and fascinated at the strange procedure.
The door opened, and Guy Farrish came in. The boy, turning scared eyes, saw his master clench his hands and set his jaw as he saw the intruder, but Ford did not at once look up.
“A—hem,” said Farrish, with a quizzical smile.
Ford raised his head, and smiled at his host. “Ah, Mr. Farrish, have you come back?”
“I have. Is it asking too much to desire an explanation of this rather unusual scene?”
“Not at all. I wanted to see the bit of music that you said you had destroyed.”
“You doubted my word?”
“To be frank, yes, I did. But you certainly have no objection to my seeing this.”
Guy Farrish looked thoughtful and a little sad. “I have not, Mr. Ford. None at all. But I am quite willing to admit that I do not like the way you have chosen to get sight of it. I know you are a celebrated detective, and so have rights that ordinary citizens do not possess. But I did not know they included breaking into a man’s desk in his absence.”
“Perhaps I have overstepped my rights in my eagerness to see this especial bit of paper. But you were not here, and I was in rather a hurry and so—”
“How did you know it was there?”
“Miss Randall remembered seeing you put it in this drawer the day she brought it here to you. Then when you told us you had destroyed it, I thought, perhaps, you might be mistaken.”
“I was not mistaken,” said Farrish, gravely, after he had sent his boy out of the room and closed the door. “I saved the paper, but I did not want you nor any one else to see it.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not,” and the lawyer passed his hand wearily across his brow. “Because it definitely incriminates Stanford Bingham in that murder business.”
“Might it not be better, after all, Mr. Farrish, for us to face this incrimination out in the open?”
“I’m not sure but it would, Mr. Ford. If you think so, go ahead.”
“As you know, I am working for Mr. Bingham’s interests. I do not think he killed his bride, and yet, I cannot find evidence in any other direction. Perhaps if we hunt down this cipher clue, it may turn in his favour instead of against him.”
“Then do so, by all means. I am truly glad to cease trying to shield him from suspicion. I did substitute another paper for this, in the hope that the matter would be dropped. But since it isn’t, I admit my part in the matter, and now turn the whole affair over to you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Farrish, for your co-operation. And, also, for your good-natured acceptance of my intrusion here.”
“Oh, that doesn’t bother me. I knew as soon as I saw you, what you were after, and that you would disturb nothing else. And as I have no objection to your having the paper, I overlook your method of getting it, and set it down to the love of the detective nature for spectacular performance.”
“Yes, we are credited with dramatic inclinations. Now let us read this together. You found the key?”
“Yes, without any trouble. But have you?”
“Very well put, Mr. Farrish! I’m not surprised that so keen a man as yourself should suspect me of trying to learn the key from you by pretending to know it myself. Let us each write it down.” Without looking at each other, the two men wrote on bits of paper, and then exchanged the slips.
Both nodded sagaciously.
“To one familiar with ciphers it is an exceedingly easy one,” said Farrish. “Merely the two clefs; A being the ledger line below the bass and the alphabet running directly up the lines and spaces.”
“Bringing Z on the first ledger line above the treble clef,” added Ford.
“Yes. So simple an arrangement could scarcely fail to be seen at once by the expert. But it is admirably obscure to the general reader.”
“There is decided artistic ability in the arrangement of the time and measures,” went on Ford. “Now, to decipher it”
Ignoring the real letters of the notes on the staff, and counting the alphabet directly from A on the line below the bass, there was no trouble in reading:
“Last warning. If you marry Bingham I will surely kill you.”
“Yes, I see. By the way, a man’s music manuscript is as individual as his chirography, isn’t it?”
“Indeed, it is. We do lots of it in the choir work, and I know most of the fellows’ notes at a glance.”
“And none of them are like these ciphers?”
“Oh, no; they’re all more careless. Some of them are almost as illegible as stenography, to a layman.”
“When you made the dummy message to give back to Miss Randall, you copied these notes pretty accurately.”
“That was no trouble. Those painstaking, colourless signs are far easier to copy than a musician’s work. I doubt if any one could copy my notes so that I couldn’t detect the difference.”
“I doubt it, too. Well, I’ll jog along. I’m obliged to you for your frankness and courtesy. I’ll take this paper, and I think I’ll turn the whole cipher matter over to the police. I’m not in any way working against them, though not exactly with them, either. That man, Ferrall, is a bright fellow. He goes slowly, but surely.”
“Think so? Somers told me he had the habit of jumping at conclusions.”
“He has landed nowhere as yet, but you can’t tell; he may have something big up his sleeve.”
“If I can help you in any way, Mr. Ford, call on me.”
“When you’re in or out?” and Ford smiled broadly.
“In for choice. I’ve been pretty good-natured about your ‘burglary’ of my desk, but I don’t mind telling you, I don’t care for that sort of thing as a practice.”
“Neither do I, Mr. Farrish, and I promise you, on my honour, never to do it again.”
Ford went for a long walk, after leaving Farrish’s office. He wanted to straighten out his thoughts and tabulate his facts.
“But,” he said to himself, “my facts are so few and so definite, they don’t lead anywhere. They just state the case and stop. We have the shot, and no weapon. We have the crime and no suspect. We have clues but no deductions. That cipher business, now, is a picturesque clue,—with the Farrish complications almost a bizarre one, and yet where does it lead? Only back to the fact that the victim was warned, more than once, before she was killed.”
A long walk, and a long cogitation brought Ford back with a positive hunger for more of the immediate facts of the victim’s death. He visited the Coroner, the other doctors, the District Attorney, and the undertaker, and returned to Doctor Randall’s a little late for dinner.
As this was an unusual occurrence, he was forgiven by the two who waited for him.
He showed Eileen the cryptogram Farrish had given him, without, however, telling her how he had first obtained it.
“Yes,” she said, “this is the one I had first This is the very one that was in Ethel’s glove. I recognize the way the notes run, though I couldn’t remember them without the paper. What does it mean?”
Ford told her. The girl refused to believe that the use of Bingham’s name was a ruse of his own to direct suspicion away from himself.
But to Doctor Randall it seemed plausible!
“I don’t suspect Stanford,” he said, “not for a minute! I know Stanford isn’t guilty. But justice makes me say that I do think a man who could conceive and carry out the deep plot that was carried out by somebody, would be quite capable of tricky messages of just that sort. I mean, I don’t think it strange that Farrish, if he believes Bingham guilty, thought at once that the use of Bingham’s own name was a clever ruse.”
“I don’t know what to think,” said Ford, wearily, “but I don’t want to talk about it any more to-night. I’m going straight from the dinner table to my room, and I beg to be excused from coming down again this evening. But, to-morrow, I’d like to have a pow-wow with you, Jim, and discuss who’s who in Criminalistic Psychology.”
Undeterred by the fear of long words and incomprehensible phrases, Eileen insisted on being present at the conference next morning. The three shut themselves in the library, and told Charlotte to admit no one.
“Unless it’s Mr. Bingham,” the Professor added.
“He isn’t in town,” said Eileen; “he’s gone to New York for the day.”
“To begin with,” said Ford, frowning, as he stood cutting the end of his cigar, “somebody has been lying. Now, of course, we can’t expect criminals to tell incriminating truths, and it is up to the detective to find out who the liars are. Mr. Ferrall thinks that Mr. Bingham and young Swift are both guilty, or have guilty knowledge. Now, wait, Miss Randall,” as Eileen began to speak, “Ferrall is a sharp man, and he is undisturbed by personal prejudice or bias, which you and your father cannot say. I’ve lots of confidence, Jim, in your brain, and mind, but you’ve got to lay aside your certainty that Mr. Bingham is guiltless, and view this thing squarely for a time.”
“All right,” agreed the Professor, equably, “I’ll hear your points, as you present them, with a calm and impartial judgment. But my belief in Bingham is not because of my friendship for him, it is because I have yet to see anything to point toward his guilt”
“There isn’t anything!” broke in Eileen.
“This is to be a serious talk, Miss Randall,” said Ford, not unkindly, “and unless you are content to listen quietly, I would prefer that you go away.”
“I’ll be good,” promised Eileen, “please let me stay.”
“I’ve learned something new,” Ford went on, “that is, it’s new to me. I should have inquired about it before, but I had so many other matters to attend to. It seems that when the doctors probed for the bullet, they found that its course into the brain was not quite straight. That is, while there was no evidence as to whether the shot was fired by a right or a left hand, there was a slight trend downward as if it had been fired from a point a little higher than the wound itself.”
“You don’t say!” exclaimed Doctor Randall; “why was this not noticed or commented on before?” ‘
“Nobody seemed to consider it of any importance, as the down grade of the course was very slight, and the fact, though noted in the Coroner’s report, made no impression on anybody.”
“It seems to me of utmost importance,” said the Professor, thinking deeply.
“And to me,” said Ford. “Now, remember, Jim; keep your mind unbiassed, remember the remarks made about Bingham’s having raised his hand to adjust a veil pin, directly before the bride fell. Also of course, before she turned, but it has been shown that she may have turned after being shot. This would, if Bingham shot her then, cause the bullet to go a little downward, as his hand would be higher than her temple, where the shot entered.”
“Yes,” agreed Randall, “go on.”
“Also,” Ford continued, “if the shot had been fired by a woman, by any one, outside a window, that too would presuppose a higher point of aim, and the bullet would slant down a little.”
“Go on.”
“Also, and in spite of Warry Swift’s alibi for young Kennedy,—he might have been lying,—also if Kennedy had fired that shot from the choir, the course would have been downward.”
“From the choir! Oh, that’s not possible. He would have been seen. But if that woman at the window were Kennedy’s accomplice, if she is his wife, and if she acted under his commands, then you have a point there,—for to fire in at the window would cause a bullet to go rather downward.”
“It must have been that woman!” said Eileen. She spoke quietly, but with shining eyes as if greatly rejoiced. “It couldn’t have been Stan; even if he did fix Ethel’s veil pin, he wouldn’t have raised his arm so high. That pin was just behind her ear! And of course, it couldn’t have been Hal Kennedy, from the choir loft: everybody would have seen him! The choristers would, any way, and the audience, too. Of course it was that woman! Whether acting for Hal, or on her own account—she did it!”
“By the way,” said Ford, looking in his notebook, “it was Mr. Kennedy who told Ferrall of the bridegroom’s touching that veil pin just before the bride fell.”
“So it was!” cried Eileen. “Of course then it was at Hal’s orders, under his compulsion, that the woman fired. If she’s Hal’s wife, he could make her do it.”
“Why?” said Doctor Randall. “I mean, why did he make her do it?”
“Because he was in love with Ethel, and wouldn’t let her marry Stan. I know Hal Kennedy! He’s a very devil! And since this woman, this Caprice, as he called her, wouldn’t let him marry Ethel when he wanted to, he took his revenge this way!”
“Eileen,” said her father, “that’s a plot worthy of a melodrama, but it’s hardly possible in civilized society.”
“A murderer isn’t civilized society!”
“But he may move in it, and the plan you’ve laid out is too wildly improbable, my child. Now, I think, Alan—”
The telephone interrupted their talk.
Eileen picked it up from the table and answered the call.
“Some one is asking for you,” she said, handing it to Ford. “It’s a lady’s voice.”
Ford took it and informed the speaker of his identity.
“I want to be sure,” said the voice, a pleasant, feminine one. “Is this Mr. Alan Ford?”
“Yes”
“The detective?”
“Yes.”
“Then I want to tell you that I shot the bride in the church, and it is useless for you to pursue the case farther—or,—or, to make any arrests.”
“Indeed! And who is this speaking?”
“As if I should tell you that! I have safeguarded this—this conversation, you can never,—never trace me,—but I feel it my duty to—to prevent the prosecution of—of innocent persons.”
“Thank you. And answer one question, will you? Are you Caprice?”
The response to this was a wild shriek, in which dismay, fear, and horror were blended. A shriek so loud and piercing, that Eileen and Doctor Randall heard it clearly, though Ford still held the telephone. And then silence. The call had shut off, no questioning met any further reply, and with that loud scream ringing in their ears, the three looked at each other.
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