“We want you!”
“The maid has spilled!” was Lanagan’s ejaculation as we stepped up to the trio. Leslie could not forbear a pleased lighting of the eyes as he glanced at Lanagan.
“What have you got, Chief?” asked Lanagan easily.
“The maid, Marie, broke down and admitted that she let this man Martin into the house and into the girl’s room at the girl’s orders at 8.30 o’clock. Possibly ten minutes later, she says, she heard the shot. When she could summon courage to go to her mistress’s room she found her lying on the floor dead, the revolver in her hand. What have you to say, Martin?”
“Nothing, sir,” said Martin levelly. “I have nothing at all to say, sir.”
He was a man of about thirty. Lanagan’s subsequent investigations disclosed that he had been with the Hemingways for many years, formerly working as a stable boy. When automobiles came into vogue, he had taken a place as chauffeur. He was a probation court boy when the Hemingways took him into their employ and “made a man of him,” as he used to express it.
“Nothing?” snapped Leslie. “Well, we’ll see. I guess we’ll take him in, Brady, and give him the dark cell.”
Leslie swung on his heel, and Brady, giving the chauffeur only time enough to run his machine to the garage, took him to the city prison and locked him up. But first I had noticed Lanagan pick up Martin’s cap from the seat of the machine while the brief conference was going on and deftly extract something from it. The “something” proved later to be one or two of Martin’s red hairs.
Other newspaper men emerging from the house had been informed by Leslie of the arrest. It was 11.30 o’clock by that time, and, with the arrest of Martin as their sensation, the morning paper men of one accord shoaled back to their offices. Leslie turned whatever ends might come up over to Wilson, with instructions to keep an eye on the maid, Marie, and went back to headquarters satisfied that if Martin was not the murderer he at least could clear up the mystery. Lanagan started back with the rest, but dropped off the car unobserved and returned to the house. He was not yet satisfied that all that the inmates knew there had been told.
“You go in and write the story,” he had told me. “That chauffeur isn’t the type who is rendezvousing with the daughter of the house; and she isn’t the type to engage in an alliance with a chauffeur. There is a nigger in this woodpile some place—and a red-headed nigger at that. Go off with your story if you don’t hear from me by press time, but keep my red hairs out of your story unless you hear from me further.”