The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde

19

Mason swung his car into Killman Boulevard. Della Street kept track of the numbers. “This is the nine hundred block... the ten hundred block... the eleven hundred block... that must be it, the light stucco house over there on the left.”

Mason shot the car in to the curb, switched off lights and the ignition. The night was cold and clear, and the stars blazing down in steady splendor seemed to be drawing the earth closer to them.

Mason walked up the steps with Della Street, rang the bell.

Steps sounded behind the closed door. Mason, listening intently, heard the altering tempo of those steps, a heavy step and then a light one, a heavy then a light, a heavy then a light.

Della Street’s fingers touched his hand. “Gosh, Chief,” she whispered, “it’s someone who limps.”

The door opened.

A somewhat heavy-set woman with graying hair, keen determined eyes from which radiated a network of fine lines that gave to her face a somewhat benevolent expression, smiled at them.

“Mrs. Ruffin?” Mason asked.

“No,” she said, “I’m sorry. Mrs. Ruffin is out.”

Mason let his face show disappointment. “That’s too bad,” he said. “I wanted to see her about a matter of business — about some property she’s going to inherit.”

“Property?” the woman asked, fairly pricking up her ears.

Mason nodded. “A relative who... well, perhaps I’d better wait until Mrs. Ruffin...”

“I’m Mrs. Ruffin’s sister, Mrs. J. C. Kennard. Perhaps if she’s going to inherit property, I’m going to inherit some, too.”

“Oh, are you Mrs. Kennard?” Mason asked, taking a notebook from his pocket and turning the pages. “Why I had you listed as living on Lobland Avenue.”

“Come in, come in,” the woman beamed at them. “I am visiting my sister for a few days. She hasn’t been well, and — well, you know, nothing that confines her to the house, but just nervousness, and I thought I’d run over and do the housekeeping for a while.”

“I see,” Mason said, permitting Mrs. Kennard to escort Della Street and him into the comfortable although somewhat cheaply furnished living room.

“Do sit down,” Mrs. Kennard urged, “and tell me about it. I wonder if it was Uncle Douglas. We always thought he might have some property.”

Mason smiled. “Well, simply in order to follow the routine procedure in such matters, Mrs. Kennard, let me ask you some questions before I answer any — not that I have the slightest doubt as to your identity, but then you know there’s a certain procedure we have to follow in these things.”

Mrs. Kennard folded her hands on her lap, beamed at him. “Go right ahead, young man, go right ahead.”

Mason said, “You’re a widow, Mrs. Kennard?”

“That’s right. Mr. Kennard died in nineteen hundred and thirty-four.”

“You’ve never remarried?”

“No.”

“And your sister?”

“Mrs. Ruffin is divorced.”

Mason frowned. “That’s bad.”

“Why?”

“Because so many times divorce decrees are obscurely drawn. Property settlements aren’t carefully worked out, you know, opportunities for lawyers to come in and claim that the property hadn’t been all divided.”

“But wouldn’t any property that she received by an inheritance be her separate property, and something her husband couldn’t touch in any event?”

“That’s right as a general proposition,” Mason said, “but we have an instinctive dread of running into divorce cases, although it isn’t so bad when the property is coming to the wife, and it’s the husband who’s divorced. When it’s the other way around, there are quite frequently a lot of complications. You haven’t any children, Mrs. Kennard?”

“No.”

“And your sister?”

“She has a boy.”

“Over twenty-one, or under?”

“Oh, he’s over. My sister’s older than I am, and her boy’s... well, let me see, Ralph must be past thirty now. He’s married and has one child.”

“Your sister has some occupation?”

“Well, not right at present. She did work in a candy company up until two months ago.”

“And you?”

She smiled. “I’m a working woman.”

“May I ask what occupation?”

“Well, for the last few months I’ve been keeping a nursery. You know, so many people are working now, and don’t have any place to leave their children, and it’s almost impossible to get competent domestic help. Well, I’ve built up rather a good business.”

“That’s recent?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Very interesting,” Mason said. “How did you get your clientele, Mrs. Kennard?”

She laughed and said, “I just put a want ad in the paper, and you’d be surprised how many women brought their children to me. Of course, they made an investigation first, then came and talked with me. But I didn’t have any trouble at all getting business.”

“That’s quite interesting, indeed. And among the clients was there one named Mildred Danville who was murdered a few nights ago?”

Mrs. Kennard had been smiling, the genial, affable smile of one who wishes to make a very good impression, and is anxious to co-operate in giving information. When that question hit her with the impact of a blow, she tried to hold her face so that it wouldn’t change expression. But the result was a ghastly travesty.

“And,” Mason went on, “she left with you a child whose name was Robert Bartsler, and because she didn’t give you exactly the most convincing story, you became rather concerned and looked in the telephone directory to find if you could locate someone by the name of Bartsler. You found a Mr. Jason Bartsler, and you rang his telephone. Now suppose you tell us what happened after that, Mrs. Kennard.”

Mrs. Kennard blinked her eyes, her tongue moistened her lips, but she said nothing.

Mason’s smile was affable. “Really, Mrs. Kennard, I think it will be much better if you tell the truth, and put your cards right on the table. After all, you know, a murder has been committed, and your connection with it puts you in a very, very serious position.”

Mrs. Kennard said, “You’re crazy!”

“Suppose,” Mason went on, “you tell us where the child is, Mrs. Kennard.”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you deny that a child named Robert Bartsler was left with you?”

“I don’t know the names of all of my children.”

“When you left and closed up your day nursery very suddenly, you said that you had been exposed to smallpox.”

“I think I have been exposed to smallpox.”

“Yet you told us that you came here to take care of your sister.”

“Well, I did. I could do both, couldn’t I?”

“Did you take any child with you when you left the nursery?”

“No, of course not.”

“So you have no child here at all?”

“Certainly not!”

Mason glanced at Della Street, then let his eyes rove around the room. He noticed a huge dictionary on the top of a small table. He glanced at the dictionary, then at Della, then at the dictionary, then back at Della.

She followed the direction of his eyes, frowned, then suddenly smiled and nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Mason turned back to Mrs. Kennard. “Did you discuss anything with Mr. Jason Bartsler other than the possible sale of a mine?”

“No, of course not.”

“How did you happen to go to him?”

“A friend told me about him.”

“Who is the friend?”

“A man who had done some work for me and who knew something about mines.”

“A man you have known for some time?”

“Yes.”

Della Street moved unobtrusively over to the table by the dictionary.

“Oh, what a splendid dictionary,” she said.

Mrs. Kennard turned to look at her with eyes that were still dazed and punch groggy.

Della Street started to pick up the dictionary. “Is this the seventh edition?” she asked.

She picked up the dictionary, held it some eighteen inches above the table, then suddenly let it slip from her fingers.

“I’ve dropped it!” she exclaimed, and screamed.

The thud of the heavy book on the floor, and Della Street’s scream mingled into a sudden volume of noise, following which the silence seemed suddenly tense as everyone waited for some other sound to follow.

“Oh,” Della Street said, “I’m so sorry,” and then remained silent.

The thin, reedy wail of a child in an adjoining bedroom merged into a lusty yell.

Mason said, “Come on, Della,” and started in the direction of the noise.

Mrs. Kennard got up out of her chair, started walking toward the front door.

Mason and Della Street groped their way through a strange house, moving through dark rooms, groping for light switches, guided by the child’s crying.

They found the boy in a back bedroom lying in a crib.

Mason switched on lights.

Della Street said, “Oh, you poor thing!” and moved over to the crib. She leaned over and picked the child up.

Instantly the child stopped crying.

Della Street smiled at him, wiped the tears from his eyes. “Hello, honey,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Robert Bartsler and I’m ‘most three and I won’t never, never see my daddy anymore,” the boy said all in one sing-song as though reciting something he had carefully learned by rote. Then he began to cry again.

“What,” Della asked, “do I do with him?”

“Start dressing him,” Mason said. “Bundle him up in clothes and get him ready to move.”

Mason rushed back to the front of the house. “Mrs. Kennard,” he called. “Oh, Mrs. Kennard!”

There was no answer.

“Mrs. Kennard,” Mason shouted, raising his voice.

He moved through the front room, felt a draft of cold air.

“Mrs. Kennard,” he shouted again, and went out into the front corridor.

The front door was standing wide open. Mason’s car which he had left parked at the curb was gone.