news struck Wyatt almost a knockout blow when, dropping around to police headquarters early next morning for what he might pick up on the blotter, his good friend Lieutenant Corrigan told him of the events on Beacon Hill.
Rather indifferently Wyatt had learned of a bootlegger being shot on Bulfinch Street, and of a negro fight in a house on Hammond Street, Roxbury. Even though the Hammond Street combat had possessed some rather unusual features, Wyatt had considered it beneath his notice. A chauffeur and a West Indian mulatto, it seems, had quarreled. The chauffeur had razored the mulatto so terribly that he was dying in the Massachusetts General Hospital; but the mulatto had put a bullet through the chauffeur's aorta, so that that worthy had bled to death even before the Dudley Street Station police had arrived.
The officers had found the house deserted, save for the dead man and the dying. It was a vulgar, commonplace affair. Its only odd touch had been the finding of a skull, blood-stained and grinning, in a corner behind a stove. Odd, yes—but, after all, only one more of the incomprehensible events of Boston's Little Africa. It had left Wyatt unmoved.
But the news from 42 A Beacon Street had struck him between the eyes and left him pale and gasping.
“What's the matter with you now?” Corrigan demanded with blank amaze. “Just because a queer old bird like that gets his? Of course, we're followin' up the skull. There was one stole from old Lockwood's lib'ary last night—maybe the same one, eh? We ain't identified the chauffeur yet, and the West Indies nigger's never come to enough so he can talk; but still we might hang somethin' on that skull, an'—sure, now, what's wrong? You're as white as paper, an'—”
Wyatt delayed to hear no more, but turned and fled.
Pemberton Square lies a scant third of a mile from the Lockwood mansion. Rarely had a taxi made better time for an equal distance in that section of Boston than did the one that Wyatt hailed as he ran out into the square.
As Wyatt scrambled out of the taxi, at his destination, and paid the chauffeur—stopping for no change—he saw indications that the murder was already known to at least some few. A little group had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the massive granite steps; and among them, at first glance, his heart sank at recognizing two or three of his confreres in the newspaper game.
Though the story had not yet “broken,” it being now too late for any of the morning sheets, he knew that before long special editions would flare with it. Terror possessed him—terror at thought of how this ghastly thing might crash on Disney Forrester. If the whole truth came out, abysmal depths of shame and misery would open before her feet. He had a sick mental vision of flaming headlines—“Imposture! Fraud!”—wrecking her life as well as her mother's.
For a moment he stood irresolute, looking up at the house of the purple-paned windows, whereat the others, too, were staring, as if through brick walls and close-drawn shades to fathom the grim tragedy within.
“Hello, Roddy, old boy!” he heard a voice. Turning, he saw Pete Lindley, of the Globe. “This is hot dog, isn't it? Looks like a big story was breaking here. You old buzzard, I see you're right on the carrion, every time!”
“What—what d'you know about this?” Wyatt demanded, trying for self-control, though his lips trembled. “What d'you know?”
“Nothing that I'll tell you!”
“He's a generous guy, Pete is!” laughed Rundlett, of the Herald; “and you might as well try to break into Gibraltar with a can opener as to get in here, but—”
Wyatt swung away from them and mounted the granite steps. His head felt queer and empty, his legs detached. With a shaking finger he pressed the electric button of the bell. He noted that it was slightly chipped, and wondered what had chipped it. Some one was calling out to him, but the bell engrossed his attention. Then, all at once, he found himself confronted by a policeman, who stood in the open doorway.
Wyatt started to walk in, but the representative of the law barred his entrance.
“What d' you want?”
“I'm a friend of the family.”
“They're all friends o' the family. Beat it, now!”
Disregarding the order, Wyatt caught the officer by his sleeve, and with a white intensity whispered:
“For God's sake, man, is Miss Forrester here? She—I—I'm going to marry her! I've got to know where she is!”
“Oh, that's it, eh?” exclaimed the officer, his Celtic heart softened by the vivid truth that outstood. “No, she ain't here, an'—but, well, come on in with ye!”