CHAPTER XIX
WORD FROM SPOTTY
"Well," remarked Jack Young, as he critically observed the smoke from his cigar curling upward toward the ceiling in the colonel's hotel room, "we have our work cut out for us all right."
"I should say so!" agreed Mr. Kettridge, who sat before a little table, on top of which were strewed parts of a watch. Mr. Kettridge had a jeweler's magnifying glass stuck in one eye, and it gave him a most grotesque appearance as he glanced from the wheels, springs and levers, spread out in front of him, over to Colonel Ashley.
"There is only one thing to do, gentlemen," observed the detective, who had one finger keeping a certain place in a certain green book. "And that is—"
"Make an arrest at once!" exclaimed Young. "He may get away from us if we don't, drunk as he is."
"No, there's time enough for that," objected the colonel. "What I was going to say is that we must take one thing at a time. Otherwise we'll get into a tangle."
"I think we're in one now," said Young. "For the life of me I can't figure out who did the killing, and the only reason I said we ought to arrest Harry King is because there's some game on between him and Larch, and those diamonds King is trying to dispose of may be part of some of those Mrs. Darcy had, and about which she never said anything. If King took them, he may have killed the old lady and he ought to be locked up and take his chance with Darcy."
"If he did it—yes," admitted the colonel. "But I haven't said he did. I haven't said Larch did it. I just don't know. Certainly King and Larch have been pretty thick of late, and Larch's bailing Harry out showed there was more than mere friendliness in it. And, as you say, Jack, if King or Larch sold some loose diamonds, it looks as though there was something wrong. But we don't want to make a mistake."
"If we don't do something pretty soon they'll so fasten this crime on Jimmie Darcy that you'll never be able to get him out of the tangle," said Mr. Kettridge, as he poked a pair of pliers among the parts of the watch. "Carroll and Thong, now that they know about the electrical wires, think they have all the evidence they need, and the prosecutor agrees with them, I guess."
"Still, we may be able to combat that," observed the colonel. "Now let me understand you about this watch, Mr. Kettridge. You don't believe Darcy ever put that poison needle arrangement in it?"
"No, I don't. That mechanism was built into the watch after it was originally made, I'm sure. But even so it was done a number of years ago. I can tell that by the type of small screws used. They don't make that kind in this country. Darcy never could have got possession of any, to say nothing of some of the other parts used."
Following some days of strenuous work after Amy Mason had expressed her belief in her lover's innocence in spite of the finding of the electric wires, and had urged the detective to use every endeavor to clear Darcy, the colonel had summoned Mr. Kettridge to hold a sort of autopsy over the Indian watch which was still in possession of the old detective. With the suicide of the East Indian the case had been dropped by Donovan and the authorities, they taking it for granted that Singa Phut had killed Shere Ali and then ended his own life, by help from outside in getting poison. So if Donovan thought anything about the watch, he said nothing.
"Then you think Darcy is cleared of any connection with the poison watch?" asked the colonel.
"I think so—yes," answered the jeweler. "As a matter of fact, I don't believe Jimmie did any repair work on it at all. Singa Phut brought it in to have it fixed, it is true, but Jimmie was a great chap for promising work and then not having it ready on time. I've known him to do that more than once, and he lost Mrs. Darcy customers that way. He probably promised Singa Phut to have the watch ready for him, and then, either in working on his pet invention, the electric lathe, or because of his quarrel with his cousin, forgot about the East Indian's watch. He may, as he says, have gotten up early to redeem his promise to repair it."
"But he never did?" asked the colonel.
"It bears no evidence of it," and the jeweler focused his glass on the dismembered timepiece.
"Do you think he knew the deadly nature of the watch?" went on the detective.
"It is doubtful. This watch is of peculiar construction. As I have showed you, the poison needle could only be made to protrude when the watch reached a certain time, which time could be set in advance as an alarm clock is set. I think this is what happened, though I may be wrong.
"Singa Phut, for purposes of his own, had this poisoned watch in his possession. He, of course, knew just what it would do, and how to set it so that if a person, at a certain hour, took it into his or her hands, and exerted any pressure on the rim, the needle would shoot out and puncture the flesh. The poison on the point then caused death."
"And very speedy death," added the colonel. "Witness what happened to poor little Chet. The watch was wound up—I wound it myself as a matter of fact, though I did not dream that the time mechanism had anything to do with the poisoned needle. Then the dog, playing with it, as he would with a bone, bit on the rim, just at the time when the needle was set to operate. It shot out, punctured his lip, and Chet died."
"Did you know it was a poisoned watch?" asked Jack Young.
"I had guessed that after what happened, and that is why I warned Donovan to be careful. But, as I said, I thought it was like a sword cane or a spring dagger—that only pressure on a certain part was needed to force out the needle with its death-carrying smear of some subtle Indian poison. I never dreamed it was like an alarm clock."
"Well, it was," said Mr. Kettridge. "I can easily see all the parts, now that I have taken it apart, and the time-setting arrangement is very compact, simple and effective."
"You were careful not to scratch yourself on the needle?" asked the colonel quickly.
"Oh, yes indeed! I took that out first. But do you think, Colonel, in spite of what I have said about Jimmie not knowing how this watch operated, and, presumably, not having done any work on it—do you think he can have planned to kill Mrs. Darcy with it?"
"Hardly. And yet it is possible that Mrs. Darcy may have been killed by the watch."
"Killed by it?—how?" gasped Jack Young. "I thought she was stabbed, and her skull fractured."
"She had both those injuries, it is true. But what is to have prevented her from having been punctured by the watch just before she received those hurts?
"I mean in this way," went on the colonel. "We will assume that Singa Phut, finding some trifling thing the matter with his devilish watch, brought it to the Darcy shop, where he was fairly well known.
"Darcy promised to fix the timepiece but neglected or forgot to do it, leaving it on his table. Then, remembering it early in the morning—perhaps feeling guilty at having spent part of the night working on his electric lathe—he got up to do as he had promised, and—"
"Finds his cousin dead!" interrupted Mr. Kettridge.
"So he says!" added Jack Young significantly.
"Well, we won't go into that," observed the colonel. "I was going to make another point. Leaving Darcy out of it, and assuming that he had left the watch on his table intending to get up in the morning and fix it, what is to have prevented Mrs. Darcy from coming down to her store—say, before midnight, after Darcy left her.
"She saw the watch on the table, and, picking it up, may have wound it. This set in motion the death-dealing mechanism, and her hand may have been punctured with the poison."
"But, even then," put in Young, as he puffed out another cloud of smoke, "if the poison from the watch killed her, why would any one strike her on the head and stab her?"
"That may have occurred just after her hand was punctured by the needle of the watch," said the detective, "and before the poison had time to work. It is not instantaneous."
"But who would have struck or stabbed her after that?" asked Mr. Kettridge. "I mean, of course, leaving Jimmie out, for I don't believe he did it."
"Could not Singa Phut have done it?" asked Colonel Ashley quietly.
"Singa Phut!" cried both his auditors.
"Yes. Suppose, after he had left the watch to be repaired with young Darcy, the East Indian happened to think that he had not warned against winding it up, which a jeweler would be most apt to do after making repairs. Singa Phut had no reason for wishing harm to Darcy. He may have come to the store late at night intending to warn him to be careful."
"Well, assuming that, what next?" asked Jack Young.
"Well, Singa, coming say at eleven o'clock to the jewelry store, finds Mrs. Darcy there. She has picked up the watch—she must have done that, for it was in her hand. Singa sees it and fearful of what might happen he rushes in and tries to take it away from her. She, thinking him a thief, resists and he, fearful that he will be caught and arrested as a robber, struggles to get the watch and to make his escape.
"Now remember that he is of excitable nature, that he is a foreigner, fearful of our laws, and that he knows the deadly nature of the poison in the watch. Could not he have both struck Mrs. Darcy with the hunter statue and stabbed her in trying to get away from her? That would account for the killing."
"But there would have been an alarm—the struggle would have made a noise," objected Jack Young.
"Yes, but there are not many people passing the store around midnight. Every one in the place had gone to bed—the sleeping rooms are quite a distance from the shop. Then, too, very little noise may have been made. I remember in the Peal case two strong and vigorous men battled at midnight, one killing the other, in a store on a main street in a big city. But trolley cars and autos going past drowned all sounds of the fight. It may have been so in this case."
"Are you going to offer that to the jury to clear Darcy?" asked Mr.
Kettridge.
"I may have to," was the colonel's answer. "How does it sound to you, gentlemen?"
"Very plausible," admitted Jack Young. "But what about the electric wires on Darcy's table?"
"They are a problem, I admit. However, though Carroll thinks he can prove they were arranged deliberately to shock any one who, at the proper moment, might touch the showcase, yet I think we can prove that an accidental crossing of perfectly harmless wires to Darcy's lathe with the city's electric light circuit may have caused the two accidents. That is a point I have yet to consider. But we have settled something regarding the watch, anyhow. Now, Jack, I want to talk to you about Harry King."
"He needs to be talked about," was the response. "I don't say he had anything to do with the murder—especially not after what you have said about Singa Phut. But Harry King needs watching."
"I agree with you. You say he and Larch have been looking at a packet of diamonds?"
"Yes; diamonds wrapped in those little squares of white paper that jewelers use. Looks like they'd been robbing a gem store."
"You don't know of any diamonds missing from Mrs. Darcy's stock, do you?" asked the colonel of Mr. Kettridge. "Mr. Young and I talked of this before but didn't settle it."
"No. But then she may have had a private stock of which Darcy nor I knew nothing. It is a point worth looking into."
"I agree with you. So stick to Harry, Jack, my boy."
"He won't require much sticking to at present. He and Larch are both so well pickled that they'll easily keep until morning."
"Well, watch them after that. Maybe you'd better put up at the
Homestead."
"I will, though I guess it won't be the Homestead long."
"Why not?"
"Well, Larch is going to lose it, I hear. It's mortgaged up to the roof and he can't meet his payments. The old place has gone to the bow-wows since he started drinking, gambling, speculating and since his wife left him. All the decent crowd stopped coming."
"Yes, I suppose so," agreed the colonel. "Well, keep watch of Harry King. He may provide us with a clew that will make it possible to prove Darcy innocent more directly than by the inference of Singa Phut."
"And do you think Singa Phut killed his partner with the watch also,
Colonel?" asked Jack.
"No. I imagine they quarreled over the possession of the watch, and Shere Ali, perhaps forgetting the deadly nature of it, or knowing the time mechanism was set not to go off for some hours, grabbed it away from Singa. Then came a quarrel and the killing with the candlestick. However I don't want to speculate too far afield. We have certain matters settled at any rate."
"Yes, and I'll get back to the Homestead and watch King," observed Jack
Young with a laugh.
"And I must get back to the shop," said Mr. Kettridge. "I have some work to do. Shall I leave the watch apart this way, Colonel?"
"Yes, I may need it to show to the jury. Leave it as it is, but put it under glass, and the needle away carefully. We may have to kill a rat in court as we did in Singa Phut's cell."
"I think we are coming on," mused Colonel Ashley, when his two visitors had gone. "I am entitled to a bit of recreation," and, opening his book, he read:
"Thus you having found and fitted for the place and depth thereof, then go home and prepare your ground-bait, which is, next to the fruit of your labors, to be regarded."
"I wonder," mused the colonel, "If my ground bait is all prepared? Am
I right or wrong? If I could see the diamond cross that Grafton says
Larch sent back to his wife—if I knew where he got it—"
The telephone rang.
"Yes, what is it?"
"A telegram for you, Colonel."
"Send it up!"
Tearing open the envelope Colonel Ashley read:
"Spotty Morgan has confessed everything and agrees to extradition.
Shall we send him on?"
"Send him on? I should say so!" cried the colonel to himself, as he made a grab for the telephone to dictate a message telling the police of Sango, the Western city, to hold Spotty Morgan until he could come for him. "And so Spotty has confessed? Well, that let's me out, even if he did save my, life! But it was a close call!"