Stan’s voice was dry, harsh: “Those papers,” he said, “concern Selma!”
The blood rushed furiously into Horace Elmore’s cheeks. He gave the younger man a burning stare. There was anger in his eyes, and fear,
He swallowed twice before he could speak at all. He cried then, “Baxter, I warn you! Leave my daughter’s name out of this!”
Stan sighed. He faced an unpleasant job. And he pitied Horace Elmore at this moment.
“I’m not a fool,” he muttered. “Tonight at Randt’s you pledged me to secrecy. You said you didn’t want to stir up an old scandal. Why? Whom were you afraid of hurting, Judge?”
The big man recoiled from that question. Shrank, as if from a physical blow.
Stan went on remorselessly: “Why couldn’t you tell the police? Randt was dead. Julia had been dead for many years. Frank Kendall lived, but you hated him. Whom were you afraid of wounding? Judge, wasn’t it some other living person — a person very near and dear to you?”
A sudden perspiration dampened the other’s Hushed face. With a trembling hand, Horace Elmore loosened his collar. But his breathing remained as hard as before. He said heavily:
“No living person, Baxter! You see, I loved Julia. I loved her as much as Randt did, and just as hopelessly. And I didn’t want to have her name in a murder case. Not even twenty years after her death.”
A twisted smile touched Stan’s lips. “I guessed that you loved her, Judge. And I knew you lied when you hinted Lois Callum might be Julia’s daughter. I knew that after I talked to Selma.”
“You told Selma?”
Stan said, “She told me that you paid no more attention to Lois than to her other chums. It stood to reason you would have had a very special interest in Julia’s daughter.”
“But I didn’t know it!” Elmore cried. “I found out only the other day that Callum had papers—”
“Forgeries!” Stan said. “I’ve seen them. And you knew very well Callum’s documents were forged.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” Stan insisted. “The genuine papers were in your hands. But in a minute they’ll he in mine. Because I’m taking them away from you!”
He advanced a long step and his hand shot out to grasp the other’s lapel.
And then the strength seemed to ebb out of Horace Elmore. The man’s whole body sagged. He cried in a strange, broken voice:
“All right! Selma isn’t my child! Her real name is Leslie Kendall!”
Chapter XV
Eyes in the Dark
The only sound was Judge Elmore’s sobbing breath. The color had deserted his face, leaving the skin an ashen gray in which the eyes burned like coals. He slowly sank down onto the watchman’s bench.
Stan shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that I had to hammer the truth out of you.”
Several moments ticked away. Elmore looked up. “Well, you’ve got the truth. Julia begged me to take care of the baby if anything happened to her. I made arrangements with an orphanage — one of my father’s pet charities. The baby was left there a few weeks, and then my wife and I took her away. My wife knew the whole story. We told our friends that we wished to raise the girl as her own — the fact that she had only foster parents was not to be mentioned to her, ever.”
“Did Randt know?”
“No!”
Stan said, “What were your plans?”
The judge hunched his shoulders helplessly. “There were no definite plans. I expected to reveal the thing some day, after Selma grew up. She had a claim to a good deal of money — Julia’s money, not Kendall’s by rights. But tonight changed all that.”
Elmore fell into a moody silence.
“Well?” Stan prompted.
“She doesn’t need Julia’s money. Selma is well enough off as my daughter — and John Harne’s wife.”
Stan frowned. “But, Judge, you knew that before.”
Horace Elmore’s large head drooped. “Yes. But I didn’t know Kendall was a cold-blooded killer. There’s the vital thing. Selma must never be branded as the child of a murderer!” He raised a clouded, brooding gaze to Stan’s face. “Baxter, you agree with me, don’t you?”
“Wait a moment,” the young lawyer said. “What makes you so sure Kendall is a murderer?”
The judge got up from the little bench. He began a nervous pacing across the grimy floor. Bits of coal crunched under his feet.
“But there’s no doubt about it,” he declared. “I know the whole story. Callum asked Randt for money to start a suit against Kendall. When Frank Kendall got wind of it, he killed them both. He believed that Lois was Julia’s daughter, and he went gunning for the two men who knew the secret.”
Stan shrugged. “Judge, you’re lawyer enough to know that’s only a theory.”
“But there are facts to prove it,” the older man asserted. “I might as well tell you. Randt planned a meeting in his home tonight. He invited Harne and me — told me Frank Kendall would be there. Kendall had been kicking up a fuss with the government — some unfair competition charge. Ranch intended to confront him, accusing him of killing Joe Callum. There’s no doubt in my mind that Kendall knew what to expect, and therefore he shot Randt.”
“It isn’t proof,” Stan said. “It’s only more theory.”
“That isn’t all,” Elmore gulped. “Baxter, I arrived at Randt’s home tonight before the police did! As I drove up the hill, a man came running out of the driveway with a gun in his hand. He ran over the top of the hill and leaped into a sedan parked in the shadows there. Instead of turning into Randt’s driveway. I followed that sedan. It went straight to Frank Kendall’s home.”
“But you didn’t tell the police that?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
The judge threw back his head, straightened. “Because they would have held me as a material witness. I didn’t know how much they would make Kendall confess, if they arrested him. Sooner or later, I thought, they would get at most of the truth.” He was pacing now and he paused in front of the furnace and said. “I wanted to keep Selma’s name out of it. I wanted time to do this!”
He whirled, with astonishing speed for a man of his bulk and years. His plump right hand clawed, raked open the furnace door. The other hand darted inside his coat.
The furnace flames threw dancing red shadows across Horace Elmore’s face, distorted with a look of wild triumph.
Stan Baxter blurted, “Hold that!” and hurled himself forward. A thunderous crash-h boomed and echoed. There was a metallic ping, and the electric bulb exploded into bits. Darkness washed across the basement, turned to a ruddy pink in front of the furnace where Stan grappled with the judge. A reek of pungent gunsmoke penetrated the air.
The two men weaved momentarily in a tangle of interlocked limbs. Stan grunted, flung Horace Elmore into the blackness beyond the furnace. The gun roared again as they rolled on the concrete. Stan could hear the bullet glance from the furnace.
Stan gritted an oath and succeeded in pinning his weight across the other’s body. He could hear the big man’s breath whistling through clenched teeth. Elmore flung himself into another convulsive struggle.
Stan pinned a hand to Elmore’s threshing arm, forced that down. He had a leg across the other arm. He looked up. A cry choked in his throat.
Across the boiler room two tiny, gleaming eyes shone in the dark. They were very bright, curiously wedge-shaped. They wavered, seemed to swim together...
Stan shivered. An icy tingle engulfed his tensed muscles. Those eves weren’t human! They were—