The bitterness toward the dead president of the Traders' Bank seemed to
grow with time. Never popular, his memory was execrated by people who
had lost nothing, but who were filled with disgust by constantly
hearing new stories of the man's grasping avarice. The Traders' had
been a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savings
department it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who had
thought to be self-supporting to the last found themselves confronting
the poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away.
All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors were
trying to promise twenty per cent. on deposits.
But, like everything else those days, the bank failure was almost
forgotten by Gertrude and myself. We did not mention Jack Bailey: I
had found nothing to change my impression of his guilt, and Gertrude
knew how I felt. As for the murder of the bank president's son, I was
of two minds. One day I thought Gertrude knew or at least suspected
that Jack had done it; the next I feared that it had been Gertrude
herself, that night alone on the circular staircase. And then the
mother of Lucien Wallace would obtrude herself, and an almost equally
good case might be made against her. There were times, of course, when
I was disposed to throw all those suspicions aside, and fix definitely
on the unknown, whoever that might be.
I had my greatest disappointment when it came to tracing Nina
Carrington. The woman had gone without leaving a trace. Marked as she
was, it should have been easy to follow her, but she was not to be
found. A description to one of the detectives, on my arrival at home,
had started the ball rolling. But by night she had not been found. I
told Gertrude, then, about the telegram to Louise when she had been ill
before; about my visit to Doctor Walker, and my suspicions that Mattie
Bliss and Nina Carrington were the same. She thought, as I did, that
there was little doubt of it.
I said nothing to her, however, of the detective's suspicions about
Alex. Little things that I had not noticed at the time now came back
to me. I had an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps Alex was a spy, and
that by taking him into the house I had played into the enemy's hand.
But at eight o'clock that night Alex himself appeared, and with him a
strange and repulsive individual. They made a queer pair, for Alex was
almost as disreputable as the tramp, and he had a badly swollen eye.
Gertrude had been sitting listlessly waiting for the evening message
from Mr. Jamieson, but when the singular pair came in, as they did,
without ceremony, she jumped up and stood staring. Winters, the
detective who watched the house at night, followed them, and kept his
eyes sharply on Alex's prisoner. For that was the situation as it
developed.