The Parting Glass (5 page)

Owing to a small request Mrs. Meade had made
of him the evening before, Sheriff Royal had had since then to
prepare an explanation for this moment, and had rehearsed at least
a dozen on the walk from his office to the hotel with his
prisoner—whom Miss Asher had not expected to see—but all of them
had unkindly deserted him. He tried to ignore the expression
directed toward him by that lady, and nearly kicked over one of the
potted plants.

The voice came before he had found a chair
for himself. “Really, Sheriff, I do
not
see that this is in
any way helpful.”

Royal landed himself in one of the mahogany
chairs, which gave forth something between a creak and a crack. He
opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again as though he had
thought better of it, and looked over at Mrs. Meade. Miss Asher
followed the glance with indignation.

Mrs. Meade stirred slightly in her chair. “It
was I who asked Sheriff Royal to bring Clyde here,” she said. “I
thought it would be better this way.”

Miss Asher brought voice, posture and look to
bear upon Mrs. Meade in a way that usually made people retreat in
meek apology. “Mrs. Meade, I do not know that this is any business
of yours.”

“Perhaps it isn’t,” Mrs. Meade agreed mildly.
“And yet I cannot help occasionally interfering in things that are
not my business when I see an opportunity for someone to do good by
interfering. For instance, when—as now—I think I may be able to
prevent a great mistake.”

Dorene lifted her eyes from the carpet for a
brief instant, a strange fleeting look that might have been hope
and apprehension combined. “What—mistake?” said Miss Asher coldly,
as if humoring a lunatic.

“The mistake of letting this outrageous
accusation against Clyde Renfrew go on any longer,” said Mrs.
Meade. She turned to Andrew Royal. “You will simply have to drop
those charges, Andrew. For there was no assault, there was no
insult, and strangely enough there was not even a case of
drunkenness…It was all a very clever scheme designed to extort
money, and it was splendidly acted out—up to a point.”

“What are you talking about?” said Clyde,
breaking silence for the first time. He leaned forward a
little.

By some miracle Miss Asher did not speak, and
Mrs. Meade did. “It all fit together very well—almost too well. I
had very nearly given up on making any sense of it besides the
explanation given. But there was one small incident I could not
account for in any way—the three taps I had heard a short time
before the disturbance. Now, while it could not be proved, I
personally felt sure the sound had come from Dorene Leighton’s
room. But
why?
If Clyde’s story was true, he was not
responsible; so it must have been Dorene. But here again—why? It
was certainly no summons for help; it was a light measured tapping,
more like a signal. But a signal for whom? The most likely person
would have been Dorene’s aunt, Miss Asher, who had the room on the
left of hers. But
Miss Asher was out that afternoon
, and
Dorene knew it. So the taps had to have been on the opposite wall—a
signal to her accomplice, Mr. Hollister.”

“Accom—”

“Let me tell you what
really
happened,” said Mrs. Meade, interrupting Miss Asher with such ease
that Andrew Royal could not help exulting over it even at such a
moment. “Clyde came up to Dorene’s room quite unsuspectingly on
receipt of her note. The subject on which she wanted his advice was
quite plausible, and the conversation initially went just as he
recalls it. She offered him a glass of sherry, which he accepted.
He may even have had a second glass. What he did not know was that
the sherry in the decanter had been
drugged
. I believe there
are certain drugs, you know, used by surgeons as anesthetics, which
produce unconsciousness and whose aftereffects actually resemble
those of intoxication. Mr. Hollister might very well have a certain
knowledge of that. Gradually the drug began to take effect—and
Clyde cannot remember what happened after that point! This was part
of the plan. Dorene had only to get him to sit down so he would not
stumble or fall and make some kind of a noise too soon—and then
wait. She waited until about an hour had elapsed, possibly
continuing to speak aloud from time to time so anyone passing the
door would think a conversation was still going on. When the hour
was up, or when Clyde showed signs of beginning to recover
consciousness, she rose and tapped on the wall to summon Mr.
Hollister, who had also been waiting. He came out and slipped into
her room without anyone seeing or hearing him, and together they
set the scene. The rest of the sherry in the decanter had to be
disposed of, to give the impression that Clyde had drunk it—Mr.
Hollister probably transferred it to an empty flask he carried for
the purpose in his overcoat pocket. It was a small circumstance no
one noticed, by the way, that he was wearing a heavy overcoat
although it was a warm day!

“Following that, all he had to do was bang
open the door, jerk Clyde to his feet and begin shaking him, and
giving a very convincing performance of having just caught a
drunken man insulting a young lady! Everyone who came running to
see and hear accepted it at once—between the evidence of the
decanter and Clyde’s appearance, no one even questioned for a
moment whether he was actually intoxicated. Unable to remember what
had happened while he was under the influence of the drug, he even
believed it himself.

“Of course, all this was only a guess,” said
Mrs. Meade modestly, “but I had an idea where evidence might be
found. In order to pour the sherry from the decanter into the flask
quickly and without spilling it, Mr. Hollister might have used a
funnel, which he would also have carried in his overcoat pocket.
With this in mind, I managed to blunder into his room yesterday—”
Mrs. Meade permitted herself a smile at the recollection “—and
examined his overcoat myself. And I found what I had expected—that
the lining of one pocket smelled faintly of sherry.”

There was a few seconds’ silence. Then Miss
Asher pulled herself up and went into action.

“This is all utterly ridiculous,” she
declared. “Preposterous. Do you really mean to assert, Mrs. Meade,
that even if my niece were capable of inventing such a scheme to
extort money and involving herself with that
odious
man
Hollister, that she would be able to carry it out without my
knowledge and without even—”

“I don’t mean to assert that at all,” said
Mrs. Meade quite pleasantly. “You were a party to it yourself, Miss
Asher.”

A sudden sound came from Andrew Royal. It
would not be an exaggeration to say that one of his wildest dreams
had just come true.

“
I!
I declare, I have never been
so—”

“I did briefly consider the theory that it
could have been Dorene’s own scheme—that she had wanted money to
escape an overbearing guardian. But I dismissed that thought almost
at once. She could have simply asked Clyde for a loan, if she
trusted him; and it seemed unlikely that she would apply to Mr.
Hollister for help. But once I considered you, Miss Asher, as a
possible accomplice, the whole thing became beautifully clear at
once. It was a necessary part of the plan for Dorene to have a
punctilious relative to insist on reparation being made—if a
shamed, shrinking girl were to so promptly insist herself on
damages being paid, it might look strange.

“It was a complete scheme from the very
foundation, each person playing their part well. Mr. Hollister in
his character as a salesman had the opportunity to mix with all
sorts of people and find out about the character of any young man
Miss Asher and her niece came into contact with, so they might
choose a suitable victim for extortion. Clyde suited their purpose
admirably—he was well-off financially; he was not accustomed to
strong drink, and somewhat shy of women, which would make him easy
to manipulate. Not even a good character would be able to overcome
the appearances they crafted against him, with him unable…and
perhaps unwilling…to defend himself.”

Clyde turned his head, slowly, to look at
Dorene. Her head was still down. Mrs. Meade looked at her too, and
for a long moment there was silence. They were waiting. The silence
seemed to build up against her, and she seemed to be resisting it
without word or movement, but at last she could hold out no longer.
Her face twisted with grief, a tremor ran all through her and she
burst into tears. Deep sobs shook her as she leaned against the arm
of the chair, covering her face with her hands. Clyde was still
staring at her, as if he was still trying to understand.

“It’s true,” Dorene choked through her tears,
“it’s true, all of it. Mr. Hollister is my uncle—he and my aunt—his
sister—it’s the way they make our living—tricking people out of
their money. They have all different ways. I’ve been with them
since I was a little girl—I had nobody else, nowhere to go…and I
was scared of being alone. They used to threaten to put me in an
orphanage if I didn’t keep quiet about what they did.” She broke
off for a second, another sob catching at her voice. “My uncle came
up with this—this new scheme. He said I was old enough to help now
and it was time I earned my keep. I didn’t want to do it; I pleaded
with him—but they threatened me, and—and I’ve always been a
coward.”

She drew out a handkerchief and futilely
tried to blot the streaming tears from her face, with trembling
hands. “I still tried to do something to spoil it—it was part of
the plan that I wasn’t supposed to want the money, but I really did
try to tell the sheriff not to do anything—I tried, but my
aunt—”

Her words died away in confusion and she
subsided into muffled weeping, her head turned away against the
back of the chair. Still no one else spoke; Clyde seemed in a daze,
watching her.

Then Andrew Royal moved in his chair and
found his voice. “I’ll drop the charges, all right,” he said. He
got up. “And I’ll bring a few more to replace ’em. Trying to
squeeze money out of somebody on false pretenses is against the law
too, you know, Miss Asher ma’am, and there’ll be some answering
done for that!”

Clyde came to life suddenly.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, rising and
swinging to face the sheriff. “You’re not going to charge anybody
with anything, you hear? Because if you make out a case with one
word in it involving Miss Leighton, I’ll contradict
everything.”

He turned to Miss Asher, who had not made a
sound or movement for the past several minutes, but was sitting
rigidly, as if she feared moving even a muscle would bring about
some calamity. “And you, you’d best clear out of here right now and
not even think about coming back. This is one racket you’re through
with, anyway.” He took one stride to the door and opened it. “Get
out.”

Miss Asher got out. She rose, very stiffly,
and walked straight and mechanically through the door without
looking right or left. Clyde shut it behind her with only a
fraction less force than a bang.

Mrs. Meade rose to her feet.

“Where’re
you
going?” barked Andrew
Royal.

“Out,” said Mrs. Meade. “You may as well come
too, Andrew—I think our usefulness here is at an end.”

As they passed through the doorway Mrs. Meade
looked back. Dorene was still weeping, her wet crumpled
handkerchief pressed to her face. As Mrs. Meade looked, Clyde got
down on his knees beside the chair, looking rather helpless, but
also as though he very much wanted to say something. He moved his
hand, and hesitantly touched Dorene’s arm. Then the door
closed.

Andrew Royal was still fuming. He did not
speak until they had got nearly to the end of the hallway, and then
he blew out a puff of breath in a snort that seemed to dissipate
some of his pent-up irritation. “Well, there’s another one gone and
made a prize fool of himself,” he said.

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Meade, “but dear me,
Andrew, that poor little creature needs someone to take care of
her—and Clyde is just the one to do it.”

“All this’ll make a nice thing for him to
cast up to her if he’s ever got a mind to,” said Royal.

“I don’t think he will. With some people, you
know, compassion is always stronger than any sense of injury. I
think Clyde will always see Dorene as the trapped, frightened girl
who needed rescuing from her own worse troubles. He’s finally found
someone who
needs
the love and protection he can give
her.”

“H’m,” said Royal, grudgingly.

“She was wrong, of course, very wrong—but she
has suffered a great deal for it already, I think. Think of what it
must have been like for her, sitting up there in that room for an
hour, watching and waiting for Clyde to recover consciousness,
knowing all that time that it was through
her
that he was to
be made a victim of their scheme—especially with the way she felt
about him.”

“What way she felt about him?” demanded
Royal.

“Why, she was in love with him, of course.
Anyone could see that.”

“They could, eh?” said Andrew Royal.

They came into the hotel lobby, where the
clerk was standing behind the desk looking toward the front door
with a mildly surprised expression, pen in hand. “Is Miss Asher
in?” Mrs. Meade inquired of him.

“Why, no, ma’am,” said the clerk. “She just
checked out and left, in rather a hurry—and Mr. Hollister, the
commercial traveling man, he went with her. She said she’d send for
her luggage!”

* * *

“Incredible,” declared Miss Powers warmly,
“quite incredible!”

“I never did like the woman,” said Miss
Brewster robustly. “Thought a good deal too much of herself. The
airs she put on! Well, all the people she snubbed in Sour Springs
can at least take comfort that it was all an act.”