My entire experience with Mary convinced me that she regarded the police with fear, if not with horror.
Yet who else?
With all his faults Wallie had apparently steered clear of the type of underworld woman who might naturally think of the police.
In the end I called the club again and got the steward.
“This young woman who telephoned, Mr. Ellis—did she give any name?”
“No.
She called from a pay station.
I thought she was crying, as a matter of fact, but she hung up before I could find out anything.”
“Why do you say she was young?”
“Well, her voice was young, if you know what I mean.”
I was sure then that it was Mary, and the fact that she had been crying convinced me that something was terribly wrong.
I left the telephone and went into the library and there I had as bad an attack of palpitation of the heart as I have ever had in my life.
Joseph found me there and hurried for some bicarbonate, and when I felt a little better I told him the story.
It upset him greatly.
The hand holding the glass shook until the spoon clattered, and he had to steady himself by a chair.
“The police, madam?
Then this young person thinks he has met with real trouble?”
“She was crying, Joseph.”
In the end I called up Dick Carter, and that evening he and Joseph went to Wallie’s room at the club.
They examined everything there, but without result, and the story they brought back was ominous, to say the least.
On that previous Wednesday night Wallie had eaten no dinner.
Instead he had gone into the writing room and there had written for a long time, until eight or after.
The boy on duty there “thought he was writing a book.”
When he finished he had asked for a long manila envelope, put into it what he had written, taken his hat and a light overcoat from the man in the hall and gone out.
He stood on the outside steps for a moment, and then he came back.
He seemed nervous and irritable, and he went into the telephone booth and talked to some one for a considerable time.
Then he started out again, and so far as was known he had never come back.
Dick and Joseph examined his room carefully.
Joseph, who occasionally went there to go over his clothing and to put things in order for him, said that he found nothing missing.
“But you must remember, madam,” he said, “that Mr. Walter has been under a great strain lately, and it is not unusual for him to start out on an evening ride in his car and then to keep on.
I have known him to do that a number of times.”
“For six days, Joseph?
And when he was to testify at a murder trial the next day?
That’s ridiculous.”
“That is probably the reason, madam.”
“Nonsense, Joseph!
Nobody believes that Mr. Walter had anything to do with it.”
From the club they went to the garage.
The night man remembered clearly his coming there, and that he must have meant to return, for he had ordered the car washed that night.
“I’ll be in about eleven,” he had said.
“I want it properly washed, too.
The last time it looked worse than before you started.”
He had seemed to be in a bad humor.
It was about a quarter after eight when he reached there, and he ordered the car filled with gas and oil.
He said he was going into the country, and he stood by watching while this was done.
He seemed to “be in a hurry to be off.”
But after he was in the car something happened of which the mere telling made my hands cold and sent despair into my very soul.
To quote the man at the garage:
“He had an overcoat—it’s still here—and at the last moment he threw it out to me.
It was a warm night.