“I’ll try to, captain,” he said and took from his coat pocket the bottle of sedative he had found in the medicine closet. “This is the medicine which was used to kill Stuyvesant. A harmless sedative, unless the dose is too large—”
“Oh, is it?” Mrs. Loos cried. “Is it, indeed? I guess you don’t remember very well, young man! That’s the bottle I gave Mr. Stuyvesant his dose from, yes. And I’ll tell you what’s in it. Plain water! Just common, pure water!”
The housekeeper looked at them in grim triumph.
“I told you that myself, in this very house this afternoon, young man,” Mrs. Loos declared.
Henry said to De Kane: “There is a registered pharmacist just around the corner. Ask one of the boys to have the contents of this bottle identified, captain. It won’t take long, I think.”
When a man had gone on that errand Henry spoke to Mrs. Loos. “You did tell me about the water this afternoon, Mrs. Loos. You told me that Mr. Stuyvesant’s doctor forbade his using the sedative because of his weak heart. You said that you were fooling him by substituting water for the drops.”
“Well, I’m glad you have the decency to remember!”
“And you kept just pure water in that bottle?” Henry prompted.
“Yes,” Mrs. Loos snapped. “I poured the medicine down the sink three weeks ago, and put in water out of the faucet. It was water I gave him to-day — a good, stiff dose of it. It fooled him like it always did and he went to sleep.”
They waited in silence for the return of the messenger. He was soon back, bringing the pharmacist in person.
“The contents of this bottle,” said the pharmacist, gravely returning it, “is used commonly for sleeping drops or sedative.”
“Safe to take?” De Kane asked.
“If the patient takes the prescribed dose — and his heart is normal.”
“An overdose — say, for a man with a very bad heart?”
“If it was much of an overdose,” the pharmacist answered gravely, “it would kill a man like a bullet, supposing he had a bad heart.”
Mrs. Loos sprang from her chair at the words. The scream she gave was so wild and despairing it brought them all from their chairs. Then the housekeeper crumpled up in a faint.
“Shame on you, to accuse her!” Gertie cried at Henry, her face red, her lean, stringy neck stretched forward angrily. Gertie’s short-sighted blue eyes glittered.
“Mrs. Loos is an innocent woman. I say it, who have worked beside her all these years and know her heart.”
“Then maybe it was you gave the old man an overdose of his dope?” De Kane suggested brutally.
“It was not,” Gertie snapped. “I don’t say I never had such an idea in my head, mind you. But I never did it.”
“Very well,” said Henry. “But you can tell us one thing. After we left Mr. Stuyvesant’s room this afternoon, and before Mrs. Loos gave him medicine, you three got together in the basement hall and talked about something. What was it you talked about?”
“About you,” Gertie answered promptly.
“Mrs. Loos said it was plain you had found out about the cats. And since you had stopped up all the ways of getting them into the house and had got wise to us, we would have to stop that business.”
“Correct,” Doran volunteered. “Just what we agreed.”
Mrs. Loos nodded weakly.
“What I am getting at,” Henry said to De Kane, “is that these three conspirators saw they were beaten in their hope to earn Topping’s bribe. Now, what I expect to prove is that one of them, cheated of that expectation and more desperate for money than the others, went on to murder. I want you to listen to Milly Canby, captain.”
Milly began: “ ’Enry — Mr. Rood — telephoned me this afternoon. His orders were to visit drug stores about this neighborhood and try to trace the purchase of catnip. He wanted the names or descriptions of any persons buying catnip during the last few weeks. Altogether I visited twenty-six stores. Five of them had sold catnip during that time, and I got a couple of descriptions.
“In the last store I visited, the druggist took me back of the store partition to talk confidentially. While we were talking a man came in. The druggist peeped out of the little hole in the ground glass.
“He said to me: ‘That’s the man! He bought some catnip three weeks ago!’
“I peeped through the spy hole and saw the customer. The druggist went out to wait on him. When he came behind the partition, I asked if the man wanted more catnip.
“ ‘No,’ the druggist said, ‘it’s a prescription this time. He’s after a sedative. It’s dangerous stuff, and I have to be careful.’
“The druggist showed me that prescription. I saw the doctor’s name. I saw the druggist fill it and sell the bottle to the man—”
“Identify the man,” Henry prompted.
Milly turned and pointed at Alf Doran.
De Kane and his two patrolmen tensed their muscles and prepared for an outburst of denial or defiance. They all expected a scene. And they were cheated.
Doran raised his head and stared.
“Absolutely correct,” he said calmly. “I had that prescription filled this afternoon. It was the prescription Mr. Stuyvesant’s doctor made out for him. Mrs. Loos sent me to get it filled. She said the bottle was empty and Stuyvesant couldn’t sleep without the drops. She gave me the money to pay for it. I brought the bottle back and gave it to her. Then I went up to my own room, like I told you before.”
Again Mrs. Loos sprang to her feet, her accusing finger stabbing at the furnace man. She gasped haltingly: “Then — it was — you! You murdered him.”
“I deny that,” Doran said composedly.
Chapter IX
Scar-Faced Tom
De Kane turned on Doran, his manner threatening. “You,” he growled. “Be mighty careful now. You deny this woman’s charge?”
“Certainly.”
“But you admit you lied. You concealed that errand to the drug store!”
“Correct. If you ask me why, I’ll tell you why. I thought that old girl was up to something. That’s God’s truth—”
“You mean to say you suspected this murder and concealed your knowledge?” Henry gasped.
“Correct,” Doran nodded, calm and defiant. “Why? Well, two reasons. I was kind of sorry for Mrs. Loos, knowing how she banked on getting rich if we swung the sale of the house. Second, I could have used some money myself — and if Stuyvesant was dead I stood to get a couple thousand by his will.”
There was something about this revelation of cold-blooded complicity that had De Kane convinced. It left that choleric captain sputtering, but satisfied.
Henry Rood looked badly shaken.
But Henry persisted: “Then just for the sake of the record, I ask you again, your story is correct about finding Mr. Stuyvesant dead?”
“Absolutely,” Doran agreed. “I came out of my room at half past five. I heard a cat yowl. I went into his room looking for the cat and there he lay on the bed, dead. The black cat was flattened out across him and snarling into his face—”
“The black cat with the scarred head?” Henry asked.
“The black cat with the scarred head, yes, sir. I got a good look at it when it made a bolt for the window and knocked the screen loose.”
“Very good,” said Henry quietly. “Will you all come downstairs with me?”
“What now?” De Kane growled suspiciously.
“Something to show you,” Henry promised. “All of you.”
They made a queer little procession toward the basement, the patrolmen bringing up the rear to keep an eye on the suspects.