The Adventuress Page 2

  All the explosions had not been confined to the plants, however. There had been and still were going on explosions less sanguinary but quite as interesting in the Maddox family itself.

  There was a hundred million dollars as the apple of discord, and a most deadly feud had divided the heirs. Together they had made money so fast that one might think they would not feel even annoyance over a stray million here and there. But, as so often happens, jealousy had crept in. Sudden wealth seemed to have turned the heads of the whole family. Marshall Maddox was reported to have been making efforts to oust the others and make himself master of the big concern.

  ‘Maddox had had some trouble with his wife, hadn’t he?’ I asked, recalling scattered paragraphs lately in the papers.

  Hastings nodded. ‘They were separated. That, too, was part of the family disagreement. His sister Frances, took the part of his wife, Irene, I believe.’

  Hastings considered a moment, as though debating how far he should go in exposing the private affairs of his client, then caught the eye of Kennedy, and seemed to realise that as long as he had called Craig into the case he must be frank, at least with us.

  ‘At the Westport Harbour House,’ he added deliberately, ‘we know that there was a little Mexican dancer, Paquita. Perhaps you have heard of her on the stage and in the cabarets of New York. Marshall Maddox knew her in the city.’

  He paused. Evidently he had something more to say and was considering the best way to say it.

  Finally Hastings leaned over and whispered, ‘We know, too, that Shelby Maddox, his brother, had met Paquita at the Harbour House just before the family conference which brought them all together.’

  It was evident that, at least to Hastings, there was something in the affair that looked ugly to him as far as Shelby was concerned.

  ‘It’s not at all strange,’ he added, ‘that two men as unlike as Marshall and Shelby should disagree. Marshall was the dominating type, eager for power; Shelby easy-going, more interested in having a good time. In this affair of Paquita—whatever it amounted to—I’m not at all surprised at Shelby. He is younger than Marshall was—and inclined to be a sport. Still, there was a vein of susceptibility in Marshall, too. There must have been.’

  Hastings paused. Human frailties were out of his ken as a lawyer. Property he understood; passions, no. With him the law had been a jealous mistress and had brooked no rival.

  ‘It was on Shelby’s yacht, the Sybarite, was it not, that the tragedy occurred?’ ventured Kennedy.

  It was a leading question and Hastings knew it. He drew in a long, contemplative breath as he decided whether he should consent to be led.

  ‘Yes—and no,’ he answered finally. ‘They were there on the yacht, of course, to agree to disagree and to divide the family fortune. Shelby Maddox went to Westport on the yacht, and it was so hot at the Harbour House that they decided to hold the conference on the Sybarite. Marshall Maddox and I had motored out from town. The sister, Frances, and her husband, Johnson Walcott, live on the other side of the island. They motored over, also bringing with them Johnson Walcott’s sister, Winifred, who stayed at the Harbour House. Johnson Walcott himself went ashore from the yacht early in the evening, having to go to the city on business. That was all right, for there was Bruce, the lawyer who represented Frances Maddox—I mean Mrs Walcott, of course. You see, I’ve known the family so long that I often forget that she is married. Shelby had his lawyer, also, Mr Harvey. That was the party. As for the tragedy, I can’t say that we know positively that it took place on the yacht. No. We don’t know anything.’

  ‘Don’t know anything?’ hastened Kennedy. ‘How’s that? Wasn’t the conference amicable?’

  ‘Well,’ temporised Hastings, ‘I can’t say that it was especially. The division was made. Marshall won control of the company—or at least would have done so if the terms agreed on had been signed in the morning. He agreed to form a syndicate to buy the others out, and the price at which the stock was to be sold was fixed.’

  ‘But did they dispute about anything?’ persisted Kennedy, seeing how the lawyer had evaded his question.

  Hastings seemed rather to appreciate the insistence than to be annoyed by it. So far, I could see that the great corporation lawyer was taking Kennedy’s measure quite as much as Craig was doing the same by him.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘there was one thing that occasioned more dispute than anything else. Maddox Munitions have purchased a wonderful new war invention, the telautomaton—wireless control of submarines, torpedoes, ships, vehicles, aeroplanes, everything—the last word in the new science of telautomatics.

  An exclamation of surprise escaped Kennedy. Often he and I had discussed the subject and he had even done some work on it.

  ‘Of course,’ resumed Hastings, ‘we have had to acquire certain rights and the basic, pioneer patents are not ours. But the manner in which this telautomaton has been perfected over everything yet devised by inventors renders it the most valuable single piece of property we have. At last we have an efficient electric arm that we can stretch out through space to do our work and fight our battles. Our system will revolutionise industry as well as warfare.’

  It was not difficult to catch the enthusiasm which Hastings showed over the telautomaton. There was something fascinating about the very idea.

  Kennedy, however, shook his head gravely. ‘Too big a secret to be in the hands of a corporation,’ he objected. ‘In warfare it should only be possessed by the Government, and in industry it is—well, it is a public service in itself. So that went to Marshall Maddox also?’

  Hastings nodded.

  ‘There will be trouble over that,’ warned Kennedy. ‘Mark my words. It is too big a secret.’ For a moment he pondered, then changed the subject. ‘What happened after the conference?’

  ‘It was so late when we finished,’ continued Hastings, ‘and there were still some minor details to be cleared up in the morning. We all decided to stay on the yacht rather than go ashore to the Harbour House. The Sybarite is a large yacht, and we each had a cabin, so that we all turned in. There wasn’t much sociability in a crowd like that to keep them up later than was necessary.’

  ‘Yes,’ prompted Kennedy as Hastings paused. ‘Marshall Maddox seemed all right when he retired?’

  ‘Perfectly. I went into his cabin and we chatted a few moments before I went to mine, planning some steps we would take in the morning to clear things up, especially to release all claims on the telautomaton. I remember that Maddox seemed in very good spirits over the way things had been going, though very tired. To my mind, that removes the possibility of its having been suicide.’

  ‘Nothing is impossible until it is proved so,’ corrected Kennedy. ‘Go on. Tell me how it was discovered.’

  ‘I slept later than usual,’ replied Hastings, seeking to get everything in order. ‘The first thing I heard was Shelby’s Jap, Mito, rapping on all the doors to make sure that we were awake. We had agreed to that. Well, we gathered on the deck, all except Mr Maddox. We waited, no one thinking much about it except myself. I can’t say why it was, but I felt uneasy. Mr Maddox had always been so punctual and I had known him so long. It was not like him to be the last on an occasion like this.

  ‘Finally someone, I think it was Shelby, suggested that inasmuch as I was in a sense his representative, I might go and hurry him up. I was only too glad to go. I walked forward to the cabin he occupied and rapped on the door. No answer. I tried the handle. To my surprise it turned and I pushed the door open.’

  ‘Don’t stop,’ urged Kennedy eagerly. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Hastings. ‘There was nothing there. The bed had been slept in. But Mr Maddox was gone!’

  ‘How about his clothes?’

  ‘Just as he had left them.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘I shouted an alarm and they all came running to me. Shelby called the crew, Mito, the steward, everyone. We questioned them all. No one h
ad seen or heard anything out of the way.’

  ‘At least that’s what everybody said,’ observed Craig. ‘What then?’

  ‘No one knew what to do. Just about that time, however, we heard a horn on a small boat tooting shrilly, as though for help. It was an oysterman on his way to the oyster beds. His kicker had stopped and he was signalling, apparently for help. I don’t know why it was, but Mrs Walcott must have thought something was wrong. Even before one of the crew could find out what was the matter she picked up a marine glass lying on a wicker chair.

  ‘“It—it’s a body!” she cried, dropping the glasses to the deck.

  ‘That was enough for us. Like a flash it went through my mind that it could be no other than Mr Maddox.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘The most natural thing. We did not wait for the oysterman to come to us. We piled into one of Shelby’s tenders and went to him. Sure enough, the oysterman had found the body, floating in the bay.’

  There was a trace of a tear in Hastings’s eye, and his voice faltered a bit. I rather liked him better for it. Except for fear at the revolver-shot, I had almost begun to think him devoid of feeling.

  ‘So far as we could see,’ he resumed, as though ashamed to show weakness even over one whom he had known so long, ‘there was nothing to show whether he might not have got up, fallen overboard in some way, and have been drowned, or might have been the victim of foul play—except one thing.’

  ‘What was that?’ inquired Kennedy eagerly.

  ‘Maddox and I had taken out with us, in a brief-case which he carried, the plans of the telautomaton. The model is in the company’s safe here in New York. This morning when we went back to Maddox’s room I found that the brief-case was missing. The plans are gone! You were right. There has been trouble over them.’

  Kennedy eyed Hastings keenly. ‘You found nothing in the room that would give a hint?’

  ‘I didn’t look,’ returned Hastings. ‘I sealed the door and window—or port-hole—whatever you call it—had them locked and placed a wax seal bearing the impression of my ring, so that if it is broken, I will know by whom. Everything there is just as it was. I wanted it that way, for I had heard of you, and determined to come to town myself and get you.

  ‘The body?’

  ‘I had the oysterman take it to an undertaking establishment in the town so that we would have witnesses of everything that happened after its discovery.’

  ‘Did any of them suggest a theory?’ asked Kennedy after a moment’s thought. ‘Or say anything?’

  Hastings nodded negatively. ‘I think we were all too busy watching one another to talk,’ he ventured. ‘I was the only one who acted, and they let me go ahead. Perhaps none of them dared stop me.’

  ‘You don’t mean that there was a conspiracy?’ I put in.

  ‘Oh, no,’ smiled Hastings indulgently. ‘They could never have agreed long enough, even against Marshall Maddox, to conspire. No, indeed. I mean that if one had objected, he would immediately have laid himself open to suspicion from the rest. We all went ashore together. And now I must get back to Westport immediately. I’m not even going to take time to go down to the office. Kennedy, will you come?’

  ‘An unnecessary question,’ returned Craig, rising. ‘A mystery like this is the breath of my life. You could scarcely keep me away.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hastings. ‘You won’t regret it, financially or otherwise.’

  We went out into the hall, and Kennedy started to lock the laboratory door, when Hastings drew back.

  ‘You’ll pardon me?’ he explained. ‘The shot was fired at me out here. I naturally can’t forget it.

  With Kennedy on one side and myself on the other, all three of us on the alert, we hurried out and into a taxicab to go down to the station

  As we jolted along Kennedy plied the lawyer with a rapid fire of questions. Even he could furnish no clue as to who had fired the shot at him or why.

  CHAPTER II

  THE SECRET SERVICE

  HALF an hour later we were on our way by train to Westport with Hastings. As the train whisked us along Craig leaned back in his chair and surveyed the glimpses of water and countryside through the window. Now and then, as we got farther out from the city, through a break in the trees one could catch glimpses of the deep-blue salt water of bay and Sound, and the dazzling whiteness of sand.

  Now and then Kennedy would break in with a question to Hastings, showing that his mind was actively at work on the case, but by his manner I could see that he was eager to get on the spot before all that he considered important had been messed up by others.

  Hastings hurried us directly from the train to the little undertaking establishment to which the body of Marshall Maddox had been taken.

  A crowd of the curious had already gathered, and we pushed our way in through them.

  There lay the body. It had a peculiar, bloated appearance and the face was cyanosed and blue. Maddox had been a large man and well set up. In death he was still a striking figure. What was the secret behind those saturnine features?

  ‘Not a scratch or a bruise on him, except those made in handling the body,’ remarked the coroner, who was also a doctor, as he greeted Kennedy.

  Craig nodded, then began his own long and careful investigation. He was so busily engaged, and I knew that it was so important to keep him from being interrupted, that I placed myself between him and those who crowded into the little room back of the shop.

  But before I knew it a heavily veiled woman had brushed past me and stood before the body.

  ‘Irene Maddox!’ I heard Hastings whisper in Kennedy’s ear as Craig straightened up in surprise.

  As she stood there there could be no doubt that Irene Maddox had been very bitter toward her husband. The wound to her pride had been deep. But the tragedy had softened her. She stood tearless, however, before the body, and as well as I could do so through her veil I studied her face. What did his death mean to her, aside from the dower rights that came to her in his fortune? It was impossible to say.

  She stood there several minutes, then turned and walked deliberately out through the crowd, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I found myself wondering at the action. Yet why should she have shown more emotion? He had been nothing to her but a name—a hateful name—for years.

  My speculation was cut short by the peculiar action of a dark-skinned, Latin-American-looking man whose face I had not noticed in the crowd before the arrival of Mrs Maddox. As she left he followed her out.

  Curious, I turned and went out also. I reached the street door just in time to see Irene Maddox climb into a car with two other people.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked a boy standing by the door.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Walcott,’ he replied.

  Even in death the family feud persisted. The Walcotts had not even entered.

  ‘Did you know that the Walcotts brought Mrs Maddox here?’ I asked Hastings as I returned to Kennedy.

  ‘No, but I’m not surprised,’ he returned. ‘You remember I told you Frances took Irene’s part. Walcott must have returned from the city as soon as he heard of the tragedy.’

  ‘Who was that sallow-faced individual who followed her out?’ I asked. ‘Did you notice him?’

  ‘Yes, I saw him, but I don’t know who he can be,’ replied Hastings. ‘I don’t think I ever saw him before.’

  ‘That Latin-American?’ interposed Kennedy, who had completed his first investigation and made arrangements to co-operate with the coroner in carrying on the autopsy in his own laboratory. ‘I was wondering myself whether he could have any connection with Paquita. Where is she now?’

  ‘At the Harbour House, I suppose,’ answered Hastings—‘that is, if she is in town.

  Kennedy hurried out of the establishment ahead of us and we looked down the street in time to see our man headed in the direction the Walcott automobile had taken.

  He had too good a start of us, however, and before we could o
vertake him he had reached the Harbour House and entered. We had gained considerably on him, but not enough to find out where he went in the big hotel.

  The Harbour House was a most attractive, fashionable hostelry, a favourite run for motor parties out from the city. On the water-front stood a large, red-roofed, stucco building known as the Casino entirely given over to amusements. Its wide porch of red tiles, contrasting with the innumerable white tables on it, looked out over the sheltered mouth of Westport Bay and on into the Sound, where, faintly outlined on the horizon, one saw the Connecticut shore.

  Back of the Casino, and on a hill so that it looked directly over the roof of the lower building, was the hotel itself, commonly known as the Lodge, a new, up-to-date, shingle-sheathed building with every convenience that money and an expensive architect could provide. The place was ideal for summer sports—golf, tennis, motoring, bathing, boating, practically everything one could wish.

  As we walked through the Lodge we could almost feel in the air the excited gossip that the death of Maddox had created in the little summer colony at Westport.

  Vainly seeking our dark-skinned man, we crossed to the Casino. As we approached the porch Hastings took Kennedy’s arm.

  ‘There are Shelby Maddox and Winifred Walcott,’ he whispered.

  ‘I should like to meet them,’ said Kennedy, glancing at the couple whom Hastings had indicated at the far end of the porch.

  Following the lawyer, we approached them.

  Shelby Maddox was a tall young chap, rather good-looking, inclined to the athletic, and with that deferential, interested manner which women find almost irresistible.

  As we approached he was talking earnestly, oblivious to everything else. I could not blame him. Winifred was a slender, vivacious girl, whose grey-blue eyes caught and held yours even while you admired her well-rounded cheeks, innocent of make-up. Her high forehead denoted an intellect which the feminine masses of puffy light-brown hair made all the more charming. One felt her personality in every action. She was not afraid of sun and air. A pile of the more serious magazines near her indicated that she was quite as much alive to the great movements that are stirring the world today as she was to the outdoor life that glowed in her face. It was easy to see that Shelby Maddox was having a new experience.