Chapter XX Fleming Stone
What happened just after that, Dorothy Duncan never quite knew. She knew that some dreadful officers took Ernest Chapin away, and she knew that they called it being arrested, but that it meant going to jail.
But with her returning senses came a realization of it all, and a mad, wild determination to conquer circumstances, to refute evidence, and to save Chapin yet. How this was to be accomplished, she had no idea, but never yet had Dorothy Duncan failed in an undertaking! To be sure, she had never undertaken such a task as this, but, on the other hand, she had never before felt the same power of strength and capability of endeavor. From a merry butterfly of a girl, she had suddenly bloomed into a single-hearted, loving woman, and she would save her lover from his impending fate if a woman’s will or a woman’s wiles could do it!
Alone, in her own room, she came to these decisions, and went at once in search of definite advice.
On the terrace she found Mr. Gale and Mr. Crosby.
“I want you to help me,” she said simply, “both of you. In the first place, Ernest never killed Justin. I know he didn’t, but I can’t prove it to that horrid coroner man. Nor to that detective, either! He had a spite against Ernest from the very beginning.”
“But, Miss Duncan,” began Gale, “you must admit—”
“I admit nothing! I know what you’re going to say—’circumstantial evidence,’ and all that tomfoolery! I don’t care for your opinion, Mr. Gale—pardon me if I am rude, but I mean exactly what I say! I’m not asking your opinion as to who killed Justin, for you don’t know, and a mere opinion is worth nothing. What I ask you is this: can you direct me to the very best detective in the country? I don’t mean what they call a central-office man; I mean a detective who can detect mysteries.”
“Dorothy,” said Crosby, looking at her closely, “don’t talk like that; you are excited, child. You can do nothing in this matter. It is not work for a young girl.”
“I’m a woman,” said Dorothy, “and I demand consideration of what I have to say. You said yourself, Campbell, that you didn’t believe Ernest committed the crime; now what are you going to do to find out who did do it, and save an innocent man?”
“There’s Stone, of course,” said Gale thoughtfully. “He’s the only one, Dorothy, that I know of who can do miracles in detective work.”
“Stone!” exclaimed Crosby. “Fleming Stone? For heaven’s sake, don’t get him!”
“Why not?” said Gale.
“In the first place, he never takes any but the most important cases; again he’s outrageously expensive; and, any way, his services are so difficult to procure as to be practically impossible.”
Dorothy looked at the speaker gravely. “Campbell, this is an important case. I’m sorry Mr. Stone’s expensive, but I should think, as Justin’s heir, you would be glad to spend your money toward the rightful avenging of his death! As to your third objection, that Mr. Stone’s services are hard to obtain, I myself will engage to secure him for our case.”
Gale looked in amazed admiration at this new Dorothy who had so suddenly come into being. Her beauty seemed intensified by the woman’s soul that looked out of her eyes.
“By Jove! you’re right!” exclaimed Gale. “Though I hate to believe it of Chapin, somehow I can’t see any loophole for the man. And, Miss Duncan, if you want to appeal to the very highest possible talent in the detective line, go to Fleming Stone, and I’ll warrant you’ll persuade him to do your bidding. Shall I telephone him for you, and make an appointment at his place in New York? You never could see him any other way.”
“Oh, do, please, Mr. Gale! I will keep any appointment he may make. Mother will go with me at any time to see him.”
Gale went away on this errand, and Crosby turned suddenly to Dorothy, saying impulsively, “Don’t let him do that, Dorothy! Run after him, and ask him not to telephone!”
“Why?” and Dorothy turned her large, sad eyes full on Crosby. “If you don’t want to spend so much money, I will manage that part of it myself. Mother has some, and I have a little of my own.”
“Don’t talk like that, dearest! You know all that I have is yours, if you will accept it! Dorothy, will you promise to marry me if I will free Ernest Chapin from all suspicion of this crime?”
“Can you do that?”
“If I take the case, I can do it. I’d be a poor lawyer otherwise. But never mind that; will you promise to be mine if I succeed in setting Chapin free?”
Dorothy looked at him curiously. “If you can set him free, you must know something that you haven’t yet told.”
“Lawyers know lots of things they don’t tell,” said Crosby, almost flippantly; “but you haven’t promised yet.”
“Campbell,” and Dorothy’s piquant face was very sweet and serious as she spoke, “you may as well understand, once for all, that when Ernest Chapin is free, I shall marry him, and nobody else.”
“Then I wash my hands of the whole affair,” said Crosby angrily; “and a good time you and your precious Fleming Stone will have, trying to clear your lover! After you have failed, you may be glad to reconsider my offer.”
“I may,” said Dorothy, very gravely. “If Fleming Stone should fail, and if I were positive that you could free Ernest, I would consent to marry you—if you would not otherwise help him. But, Campbell Crosby, I would never marry you for any reason except to save Ernest Chapin’s life!”
Dorothy turned and left him to such cold comfort as he might get from her parting speech. Going into the house, she met Gale, who said Mr. Stone was exceedingly sorry, but he was so busy it would be impossible for him to take up the case.
“Impossible!” cried Dorothy, in despair. “Oh, Mr. Gale, couldn’t you persuade him?”
“No, I tried my best, but he wouldn’t even consider it.”
“Then that settles it,” and Dorothy went on her way upstairs.
It was late evening now, but with firm step and determined air Dorothy went straight to a small telephone booth on the second floor. Finding the number in the book, she called up Fleming Stone.
The great detective answered her kindly, when she made known her errand, but repeated his assertions of inability to take up the matter.
And now Dorothy Duncan called upon her uttermost powers of cajolery to help her persuade this man against his own will.
“Mr. Stone,” she said in her most pleading voice, “won’t you try to put yourself in my place for a moment? The man I love is in prison, under suspicion of a crime of which he is utterly innocent. Only you can save him for me. I am a naughty little girl, I have been called a coquette and a flirt all my life. Now has come my one love, the real love of my life. Must it be a tragedy? Won’t you help me to save that man, to realize that love, and thereby make a woman, a true, loving woman, out of a foolish, frivolous madcap girl?”
“Miss Duncan, if I could arrange to do this thing, I would; but you must understand that other cases have prior claim on my time and attention. It wouldn’t be just or right to neglect them.”
“Mr. Stone,” and Dorothy’s voice was very sober, “did you never in all your life do a thing that was not just and right?”
“Why,—I think not willingly or premeditatedly.”
“Then won’t you, just this once? Oh, think what it means to me! Mr. Stone, did you ever love anybody?”
Fleming Stone hesitated a moment before he answered, slowly, “Yes.”
And in that instant’s hesitation Dorothy knew that her cause was won!
“Very, very much?” she said softly.
Again the hesitant “Yes.”
“Then,” and Dorothy showed no triumph in her voice, only pleading, “then, for her sake, won’t you, oh, Mr. Stone, won’t you help another woman?”
“I will,” said Fleming Stone. “You have my promise, Miss Duncan, to do all I can for you. Can you come here to see me to-morrow morning? It will help to have an interview before I go to your place.”
“Yes, I will be there. At what time?”
“Shall we say ten?”
“Very well; at ten o’clock. I will be prompt And—I thank you, Mr. Stone,—in her name.”
Dorothy’s tone was sweet and tender, and as Fleming Stone hung up his receiver, he fell into a reverie which lasted a long time, and whose visions were of a long time ago. Dorothy’s instinct had led her to use the only argument that would have prevailed with Fleming Stone, and when he aroused himself from his waking dream, he found he would have to work nearly all night to complete some work that must be done if he were to accept this new commission.
Leaving the telephone table, Dorothy felt a strong desire to see no one, but to go straight to her room for the night. But she knew she must make arrangements for the trip to New York, so she went downstairs.
She told no one what persuasions she had used, but she told of her success in making an appointment with the famous detective.
“I’m mighty glad you’ve fixed it up,” said Gale. “Miss Duane and I have discussed the matter, and, though I frankly confess that things look very black for Chapin, we have felt that he should have the benefit of even a desire for doubt. And I assure you if Fleming Stone cannot find the criminal, no one can.”
Dorothy remembered Campbell Crosby’s offer to free Chapin himself, and concluded he meant to do it by legal chicanery; or else he merely made the rash promise in the hope of persuading her to marry him.
In one of the swift motor-cars belonging to the garage of White Birches, Dorothy and her mother started the next morning to see Mr. Stone. Leila had begged to go, too, saying that she would not ask to be present at the interview, but she wanted to see, at least, the reception-room of the great detective. Of course, Leila’s going implied Gale’s going also. So the four started off.
As in Gale’s opinion it augured better success, Dorothy went into Mr. Stone’s presence alone, leaving the others in the reception-room.
Dorothy felt no embarrassment or shyness as she went into the inner office, though office the room could scarcely be called. It was more like a great library, but with a cosy, pleasant air as of a room loved and lived in.
Fleming Stone regarded the girl with a grave interest. He made no reference to their conversation of the night before, and, taking the cue, Dorothy did not.
“Miss Duncan,” said Stone, kindly, “what can I do for you?”
A week earlier Dorothy would have brought into play her whole bewitching paraphernalia of smiles, blushes, dimples, and long, drooping eyelashes. Now those wiles seemed to her trivial in the face of her great tragedy, and, dropping into the seat Mr. Stone placed for her, she looked straight in his face and said slowly, “You can do this for me, Mr. Stone. The man I hope to marry has been arrested for a murder he did not commit. But everybody believes he did it. Even the lawyers say there is no loophole for him.”
“And you want me to find a loophole?” said Fleming Stone, smiling kindly at her as she paused.
“Oh, Mr. Stone, how good you are!” she cried, referring to his kindly tone and reassuring smile. “No, I don’t want you to find a loophole. I want you to find the man who did kill Mr. Arnold.”
“And this man under arrest, your friend, is judged guilty, I suppose, because of circumstantial evidence so strong that it convinces everybody.”
“Yes; but I know he didn’t do it.”
“And you have only that knowledge, as you term it, born of your affection for him, with which to refute this overwhelming tide of evidence?”
If Dorothy had faltered then, had hesitated, or had suddenly realized that her case was weak, she might not have roused Fleming Stone’s interest. But she said simply, “Yes, Mr. Stone, that is all; but it is enough, for my knowledge is true, and the evidence is false—or not false, perhaps, but misleading.”
“Give me a slight outline of the circumstances,” said Fleming Stone, and, with a sigh of resignation, he pushed away the papers he had been working on and settled himself to listen.
Straightforwardly Dorothy told the story. She omitted no important detail, she did not gloss over the points that told against Chapin or herself, and she made no effort to cajole Fleming Stone’s sympathy by any exhibition of sentiment or pathos.
He listened attentively, thought a few moments after she had finished, and then said:
“As part of our problem, then, we have first a house-party in a house that it is impossible to leave or enter during the night. We have a man who is in love with Mr. Arnold’s fiancée. We have this man see Mr. Arnold at night, when they engage in angry altercation. We find Mr. Arnold dead the next morning. We know of no one else who could have had any motive or opportunity for the crime, and yet we are asked to prove that this man in question did not do it.”
Dorothy’s heart fell like lead. The way in which Mr. Stone set forth this sequence of arguments seemed to point so indubitably to Chapin—or, at least, seemed to prove that Mr. Stone thought they did—that Dorothy lost all hope of his assistance. But she said bravely, though in a faint voice, “Yes, that’s what we have to prove.”
“Plucky little piece,” was Fleming Stone’s inward comment, but aloud he said, “Then, Miss Duncan, if that’s what we have to prove, the sooner we set about it the better.”
“Can you prove it, Mr. Stone?” and hope, suddenly roused by his words, sent the color flying to Dorothy’s cheeks, the light to her eyes, and a tremulous smile to the corners of her mouth.
Being merely human, after all, Fleming Stone caught his breath at this sudden vision of animated beauty, but he answered her query by saying, “You think Mr. Chapin innocent, Miss Duncan?”
“I know him to be innocent, Mr. Stone.”
“Then, you will not be so greatly surprised when I say I agree with you.”