The nameless man

by Natalie Sumner Lincoln

Ethel took a magnifying glass out of her drawer and examined the miniature. It was an exquisite piece of workmanship, and the likeness extraordinary. Her wonder grew. She had known Julian Barclay a little over two weeks; it hardly seemed possible that the miniature could have been painted and framed in that time. She studied the gold case with interest, but it bore no name or initials, and turning it this way and that, she attempted to open it. Finally convinced that it was tightly soldered in place, she laid the miniature down and toyed with her pencil in deep thought.

If, as she imagined, Julian Barclay had left the miniature in the jar that it might not be broken in his window climbing, why had he not stopped on his return and looked for it in the jar? Instead, he had gone immediately upstairs. Could it be that he had seen her and Professor Norcross and dared not loiter in the hall?

The idea brought a lump to Ethel’s throat. If so, it was but one more evidence of his guilt. That he was guilty there would be no doubt—his own words to Ito at their clandestine meeting proved a secret understanding and bribery. Ito, a fugitive from justice, would not have risked exposure by entering the Ogden residence unless the matter had been one of desperate importance. Probably her appearance downstairs had frightened him away, and Julian Barclay, not having seen the cause of his flight, had gone in pursuit to tell the Japanese—what?—that “he had no more money to spare.” The inference was all too plain.

With slow, unwilling fingers, Ethel summed up the evidence against Julian Barclay on the paper pad before her. He was a passenger on the train with Dwight Tilghman; he was the last person known to have seen Dwight Tilghman alive; he had lied when stating that he had been sight-seeing about Atlanta at the time the crime was committed. A hand wearing a jade ring, the duplicate of one he had since given her, had been seen by her mother through a Pullman car window holding a paper, which by its size and shape might easily have contained a powdered poison, at an angle which suggested the act of pouring something into a cup; and if that was not enough, only a few short hours before, she, Ethel, and Professor Norcross had seen him meet Yoshida Ito, the supposed murderer, clandestinely, and his words: “No more money to spare,” implied that he had furnished the Japanese with sums in the past. Hush money!

Ethel, through a blur of tears, stared before her, then in a sudden revulsion of feeling, she tore the paper on which she had been writing into tiny bits. Where she had given her love she had given her loyalty. Evidence might be against Julian Barclay, but a motive for the crime was missing.

Dashing the tears from her eyes, she again examined the miniature by aid of the magnifying glass. Suddenly her conversation with Barclay at the Japanese Embassy reception flashed into her mind; had that inspired him to have her miniature painted? She knew of no one else who would have gone to the expense, except possibly James Patterson, and she felt confident that he would not have done it without first speaking to her. No, Julian Barclay must have had the painting executed, the act itself fitted in with his romantic, quixotic courtship of her. There only remained the question of time—could the miniature have been painted in the short time she had known him?

Carrying the miniature over to the light Ethel almost stared her painted prototype out of countenance; then wrinkled her forehead in a puzzled frown. She had discovered another startling fact—every detail of the gown she was wearing in the miniature was unfamiliar; she had never owned or worn one like it!

A loud knock at the door awoke her from her bewilderment.

“Luncheon is served, Miss Ethel,” announced Charles, opening the door in response to her call.

“I’ll be right down; tell Mrs. Ogden not to wait for me,” and as she spoke, Ethel replaced the chamois about the miniature and laid it in her desk drawer, alongside Julian Barclay’s jade ring. Pausing only long enough to arrange her curly hair and pinch some color in her cheeks she hastened down to the dining room.