CHAPTER XXII
HIS LAST CASE
Slowly the bruised and cut lips moved. Faintly came from the maimed throat a hoarse whisper.
"I—did—it! I know this is the end. I'll confess everything!"
Before his death, which followed soon after he had been taken from the swirling waters, Langford Larch made a complete confession, telling how he had killed Mrs. Darcy.
Swiftly went the news to the jail, and later to the courthouse, whence, after a conference between the grave judge and a somewhat disappointed, though perhaps gladly so, prosecutor of the pleas, James Darcy walked forth a free man, honorably discharged from the custody of the court, the indictment against him for murder quashed.
Amy Mason was the first to greet her lover when he stepped away from the bench of the judge, before which he stood to hear himself cleared of the charge.
"Oh, Jimmie boy! I'm so glad!" and her eyes beamed.
"And so am I, Amy. If you knew what I have gone through—"
"As if I didn't know, Jimmie boy! The colonel told me some of it."'
"Did he? Isn't he a trump? Where is he now?"
"Oh, dad carried him off for some long-delayed fishing," answered Amy, as she and James Darcy left the courtroom before a throng, that could not be restrained from cheering, despite the cries of "Silence!" on the part of the constable.
"But how did he know that Larch killed her?" asked Darcy, as he and Amy rode away in her car, amid the cheers of the throng outside the county building.
"By the process of elimination, so he told dad. He never for an instant really believed you guilty, Jimmie boy, even after the discovery of the electric wires, though he let those two detectives think he did."
"And what about Singa Phut and Harry King?"
"Oh, they were only incidents, so Colonel Ashley says," went on the happy girl, as the automobile rolled along. "Even that funny Spotty was 'eliminated', as our dear old fisherman calls it, when he explained about the diamond cross. And as for Mr. Grafton, though he was mixed up in the jewel part of the mystery, he was only acting to help Miss Ratchford, as she wants to be called. Poor girl, she's had a hard time, too! I hope she finds as much happiness as—"
"As who?" asked Darcy, as Amy hesitated.
"As I have," came the gentle answer, as Amy gazed with shining eyes at the man beside her.
Langford Larch told everything in the brief time left him between his fatal leap and the passing of his soul to a higher judgment than that of the county courts. Some time before the events leading to the separation, a meeting between his wife and Grafton had been witnessed by one of Larch's hotel employees, who told of it, magnifying its importance. Larch's jealous disposition was inflamed, and there was a stormy scene between him and his wife. He knocked her down, and that was the end, as far as she was concerned. She told him she would leave him. She admitted that she still cared for Grafton, but denied any intimacy with him. Then came the legal separation.
Before this, however, Larch had missed his wife's diamond cross, and charged her with having disposed of it. During their final interview she told the truth, of how it had been stepped on, and that Grafton had taken it to be repaired. It was then that Larch saw his opportunity for getting possession of the valuable stones, for his debts were pressing, and, though it was suspected by few, he needed a large sum in cash.
One night, partly intoxicated, which was unusual for him, and perhaps on this occasion done in desperation, Larch called at the jewelry store. Mrs. Darcy happened to come downstairs as he arrived, and, knowing him well, admitted him, though the store had long been closed. In one hand she held the Indian watch, perhaps picked up idly from the repair table. In the other hand was the diamond cross.
This ornament Larch instantly demanded, but Mrs. Darcy refused to give it up, not only on account of his condition, but because she did not consider that he had any claim to it, knowing that it had been his wife's before their marriage.
Larch was insistent in his demands, and tried to take the diamond cross from Mrs. Darcy. She resisted him in the dimly-lighted and deserted store, and he caught up the paper-cutter dagger and threatened her.
She backed away from him, toward the open safe, intending, it would seem, to put the valuable ornament in there and lock it up, when Larch struck at her. As he did so, he knocked down the heavy statue of the hunter. It struck her on the head, inflicting what would have proved a mortal blow, even without the knife thrust.
As the statue fell Larch leaned forward to grasp it, he said, but he slipped and the knife in his hand entered her side, and she fell on it, driving it deeper in. Larch declared he never meant to kill, or even seriously hurt, Mrs. Darcy. But he did kill her.
Seeing her lying, as he then thought, only perhaps seriously wounded, Larch, taking the diamond cross, staggered around the jewelry shop, and then fled panic-stricken, went to the Homestead, and drank himself into a stupor.
Incidentally Larch's confession cleared up other matters, and shifted certain responsibilities from various persons. The Indian watch, though impregnated with poison, had nothing to do with the death of Mrs. Darcy, though she might have been slightly scratched by the hidden needle. And the money Harry King went out and got the night of the murder was given him, as he boasted at the time, by a woman. He refused to name her, but she was named later, when King's wife filed a petition for a divorce—not her first by the way.
"Well, Colonel," remarked Mr. Mason, as together they strolled toward a trout stream, several days after the clearing up of the diamond cross mystery, "I'm glad to know you had the same faith in young Darcy that I had."
"Oh, yes, there couldn't be any other way out. Jimmie boy, as your Amy calls him—bless her heart—was a bit careless, but that was all. Some of his wires that he rigged up for his electric lathe, secretly, did get tangled with the heavily-charged conductors of the lighting system, though he didn't know that. It may be they were responsible for the shocks given. I didn't go into that deeply. And Darcy didn't repair Singa Phut's watch when he said he would. It was in getting up early to do this and have the timepiece ready when promised, that he discovered his relative's dead body."
"Where did Harry King get that odd coin which made it look bad in his case for a while?" asked Mr. Mason.
"Larch gave it to him, unsuspectingly enough, it seems. When Larch went into Mrs. Darcy's store she had the tray of rare coins out of the safe. She may have been going to put them away with the Indian watch and the diamond cross, but she had no chance. And after Larch had killed her, seeing the money, he picked up a handful, as he needed some change. In a way the discovery of the odd coin helped in solving the mystery, for I kept my helper, Jack Young, at the Homestead after that, and it was hearing King and Larch talking about the diamond cross that gave me just the clew I wanted.
"Larch had taken out the valuable diamonds from the ornament, and had disposed of them, in spite of what he said to his wife just before his death, to get some much-needed money. He really did send her the crushed gold setting, promising, in the letter he dispatched to her by the boy I intercepted, to restore the diamonds to her if she would meet him.
"This she consented to do. As it happened, Aaron Grafton was calling on her at the time, trying to find some means of helping her, for there is the old-time love between them. And it was at her suggestion that he followed her when I was shadowing Larch. Evidently Grafton didn't, at that time, know it was only the crushed and diamondless cross that Larch had sent back. And after he died and confessed, we found a paper of imitation diamonds in his pocket that Larch had ready to use in deceiving his wife if she had agreed to sign the papers he wanted her to, so he could bolster up his failing business."
"Well, he's out of the way now, and I hear the hotel has been sold."
"Yes, Mr. Mason. And it will be, so I hear, once more the oldtime and respectable resort it once was. As for Miss Ratchford, she has gone to friends in California, and there, I understand, Mr. Grafton will shortly follow. They are to be married in about a year. Mr. Grafton is going to sell out his business. He told me he would not press the charge against Spotty for stealing the imitation diamond cross. So Spotty will soon be at liberty again."
"I'm glad of that. He's a sport—in his own way."
"Yes," agreed the colonel,
"One point puzzles me," went on Mr. Mason, "and that is, why Cynthia—I call her that for I've known her for years—why she didn't make Larch support her after the separation. She could have had a regular divorce and big alimony—that is if he could have paid."
"Maybe that's it—he couldn't. Anyhow, she seems not to have wanted to accept any of his money after he had spoiled her life. It was a foolish marriage, though at the time it may have seemed advantageous to her—or her mother. After the murder, or let us call it killing, for Larch with his last breath protested he never meant it—after that, which Cynthia seems to have guessed—she was even more strong in her determination not to take any of his money. She was prepared, too, in case Jimmie had been found guilty, to make a statement implicating her husband, though, under the law she could not be compelled to testify against him in a murder trial."
"Well, I'm glad it's all over, Colonel," said Mr. Mason, with a sigh of relief. "There are two happy ones, if ever there were any," and he motioned to Amy and Darcy, walking slowly across the meadow in the golden glow of the setting sun.
"Yes, I'm glad I had a hand in helping them."
The young people, turning, saw the two men, and Amy waved her hand.
Slowly she and her lover approached.
"What luck, Colonel?" she asked gaily.
"The very best! You didn't exaggerate when you spoke of your trout stream."
"I'm glad you like it. Jimmie and I were just talking about you."
"I wondered why my ears burned," and the old detective laughed.
"Colonel Ashley," put in Darcy, "there's just one thing I can't seem to clear up in all this business."
"What's that?"
"Well, what made all the clocks stop at different times? I thought I knew something of the jewelry business, but this puzzles me."
"Just because it's so simple," laughed the detective. "Larch stopped those of the clocks that didn't run down and stop themselves. He figured out, crazily enough in his fear and drunken frenzy, that if no clocks or watches were going no one would know exactly what time the killing took place. So, after Mrs. Darcy was dead, he hurried about the store, with no one in the wet and deserted street to watch him, and, stopping the timepieces, moved the hands of many of them to suit his fancy. But he forgot the ticking watch."
"It was simple," murmured Darcy. "No wonder I didn't think of it. Have you so simple a theory regarding the queer state I was in that night—I mean awakening and going to sleep again after feeling something brush my face?"
"Not unless Larch tried to chloroform you after he had killed Mrs. Darcy, and was afraid you might come down and discover what had happened," answered the detective. "That will remain a mystery, but its solution is not important."
"Not as long as you have cleared Jimmie boy!" laughed Amy, and yet there was a look of sadness on her face, for it had been an ordeal for all of them.
"Oh, well, he'd have been cleared anyhow, if the worst had come to the worst," said the colonel. "However, now that it's all over, I can give proper attention to my fishing."
"And I," murmured James Darcy, "can—"
But a soft hand over his lips prevented further utterance.
Lightly as a feather the colonel flicked a fly over the quiet pool where the waters swirled in a lazy eddy. There was a splash in the sun, a shrill song of the reel, and a fish leaped high in the air, trying to shake the barb from its mouth.
"No, you don't!" laughed the old detective. "I've hooked you this time!"
"As you hooked Langford Larch," murmured Jack Young, who sat on the bank in the shade, while the colonel fished and Shag was setting out lunch under the trees.
"This is my last case!" exclaimed the detective as he slipped his prize into the grass-lined creel. "Positively my last! I never would have gone on with this, even after I started, except for the pleading of Miss Mason. But I'm through! No more detective cases for me! I've retired!"
Jack looked at the trim and upright figure and keen, handsome face, neither of which showed the old colonel's age. Then the younger detective glanced at Shag, winked an eye, and murmured:
"Through until the next time; eh Shag?"
"Yo' done said it!" exclaimed the colored man with a grin. "Now, sah,
Colonel, lunch am served!"