The Parting Glass: A Mrs. Meade Mystery

By Elisabeth Grace Foley

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Copyright © 2013 Elisabeth Grace Foley

Table of Contents

The Parting Glass

More Mrs. Meade

About the Author

The Parting Glass

And all I’ve done for want of wit

To memory now I can’t recall…

“The Parting Glass” (traditional)

It was afternoon, and the upper floor of the Colonial Hotel was still. Mrs. Meade sat in a rocking-chair in the square of sunlight that fell through her bedroom window, reading and rocking gently back and forth.

Mrs. Meade’s migration to the Colonial was temporary, and had occurred on short notice. Two weeks before, her landlady, Mrs. Henney, had received word that her sister in Boulder was ill and required her presence. Mrs. Henney had no time to find someone who could run her little boarding-house satisfactorily in her absence, so she had decided to close it up, her ladies and gentleman consenting to be thrown on the hospitality of other establishments or friends for a week or two. Several of them had seen Mrs. Henney off at the station, even more flustered and near-hysterical than usual, laden with shawls, bonnet, carpetbag, parcels, umbrella—everything, in fact, but a pair of snowshoes—and finally, in a burst of tearful magnanimity as the train was about to pull out, offering to refund their rent for the days they would be in exile.

Mrs. Meade had therefore taken up residence at the Colonial Hotel, where she found much to interest her. Being a woman who all her life had found enjoyment in observing and interacting with people, she made the most of her opportunities for such in the company of the summer boarders and travelers who gathered around the dinner-tables at the Colonial. She had made several new friends, her room was neat, clean and convenient, and altogether her stay was less an exile than a pleasant interlude.

As Mrs. Meade turned over a page in her book, the silence was broken by three light muffled taps, as though at another door in the upstairs hallway. Mrs. Meade lifted her head and listened for a moment, but there was no further sound, so she dismissed it from her mind and returned her attention to her reading. The only sound to be heard in the room was the faint hum of insects from outdoors, and the blundering of one persistent fly around the top of the window.

Then suddenly there was an outburst of noises from beyond the closed door—somewhere just across the hall the bang of a door against a wall, a woman’s shriek, and a man’s loud angry voice mixed with a series of confused bumps and thuds. Mrs. Meade dropped her book and rose quickly. The whole floor of the hotel had come alive in a moment, with the sounds of doors opening and people’s footsteps and questioning voices in the corridors.

There was already a knot of people in the hallway when Mrs. Meade opened her door, but she was still able to catch a distinct glimpse of what had caused the disturbance. The door of the room immediately opposite hers was open, and in the middle of the room a short, stocky, black-moustached man in an overcoat had hold of the collar of a much taller young man, who appeared somewhat dazed and confused, and was shaking and cuffing him vigorously. Behind them on the edge of the bed, shrinking back against the headboard as if she had been pushed or had stumbled and fallen there, was a fair-haired young girl.

“You young scoundrel!” exclaimed the stocky man, with another indignant jerk. “You drunken young cuss, I’ll learn you to insult a lady! Get along, there! Move!”

He alternately pushed and dragged the young man through the door into the hall, where he was immediately assisted by the hands of several other people who had no idea what they were helping with, but were no less eager to help than if they had. The two of them were borne away down the hall in a crowd. In the commotion Mrs. Meade slipped from her doorway and crossed into the other room, where the girl leaning back limply at the head of the bed seemed to have been almost forgotten.

“Are you all right, my dear?” she asked, bending to lay a hand on her shoulder.

The girl looked up at her, and though her fair face seemed blank and uncomprehending, Mrs. Meade thought she saw a brief look of sharp distress in her dull-blue eyes, as if they felt and expressed something independent of the rest of her.

“Yes,” she said after a few seconds. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” said Mrs. Meade gently.

The girl, her eyes now fixed on the quilt, shook her head. “No, thank you…I’d just rather—be left alone.”

She put her hand up over her mouth, but Mrs. Meade observed that it did not shake. Adept at discerning when another’s presence was beneficial and when it was not necessary, she decided that in this case the girl probably would be better off left alone. So she exited the room with the same unobtrusive efficiency with which she had entered, and closed the door behind her.

She was not too reluctant to go, either, for her curiosity was tending in another direction. She had recognized the young man who had been one of the other principal performers in the chaotic scene just enacted, and she was very much interested in finding out just what had happened.

By the time she got downstairs, she found that the energetic black-haired man, along with a few other public-spirited volunteers, had already hustled the young man out of the hotel and off to the sheriff’s office. The lobby and sitting-room were filled with buzzing little groups of people discussing the incident. Mrs. Meade listened here and listened there, inconspicuously, without taking part in the conversations. She was present when one of the men returned a quarter of an hour later and reported what had happened at the sheriff’s. Then she went back upstairs to her own room, absently picked up the book she had let fall to the floor and placed it on the night-table, and sat down in her rocking-chair to think.

* * *

She knew Clyde Renfrew quite well; his parents, both dead now, had been her friends. Clyde was a sober, steady young cattleman who lived some distance out of Sour Springs, coming into town occasionally to buy supplies or to arrange for the sale and shipment of his livestock. His serious, somewhat methodical manner of speaking and acting belied the fact that he had both brains and business sense—he had never been cheated. He was a bachelor still at twenty-five, known to be painfully shy of women. Local wits said it would probably take him a year or two to get up the nerve to speak to a woman, let alone propose marriage to her, and the eligible young ladies were all snapped up by more enterprising suitors before he could get fairly started. At any rate, he treated all women with scrupulous deference, did not speak to them if he could help it, and turned brick-red if cornered by one or trapped into conversation with a particularly lively specimen.

There had been no notable departure from this behavior observed since his introduction to Dorene Leighton, but then again, Dorene was not of the type of girl whom Clyde usually found occasion to avoid.

Dorene had come to Colorado with her aunt for her health, or for her aunt’s health; nobody quite knew which. The aunt, Miss Asher, dominated any conversation where both were present, and nobody had the chance to learn much about Dorene at all. A small, timid-looking girl of about twenty, she wore pale colors that made her appear to be continually on the point of fading away altogether, and her fair hair was cut in a bang across her forehead like a much younger girl’s. When one had the chance to hear her speak, her low voice had a pleasing musical quality, but this chance did not come often.

Dorene had come into contact with Clyde Renfrew through mutual friends, a family in Sour Springs whose acquaintance she and her aunt had made early in their stay. They had been in each other’s company at a few picnics and dinners, and Clyde had called at the Coopers’ once or twice when Dorene happened to be spending the day with them. By all accounts he had behaved towards her with the same studious politeness that he showed all women, but they had seemed to appreciate each other’s company in a reserved way.

On this particular afternoon, Clyde had called at the Colonial Hotel at about a quarter to two, and asked the clerk for the number of Miss Leighton’s room. He had gone upstairs, and nothing more was seen or heard of him for the better part of an hour.

Around ten minutes to three, the man who had the room next to Dorene Leighton’s—a traveling patent-medicine salesman named Hollister—had heard muffled voices through the wall, and then a woman’s cry of alarm or distress. He had immediately rushed out of his room, burst open the door of the next one and found Dorene Leighton struggling in Clyde Renfrew’s embrace as he forcibly attempted to kiss her. Hollister had “broken it up,” to use his own expression, by which time other witnesses had arrived. Clyde was evidently drunk; there was liquor on his breath, he was unsteady on his feet and could not speak clearly. Hollister, as well as one or two others who had been in the doorway, said there had been an empty glass decanter on the bureau in the room, which the hotel chambermaid insisted was mostly full earlier in the day when she did the rooms.

They dragged Clyde down to the sheriff’s office, where by a combination of bullying and black coffee he was got into a condition for questioning. But even so they did not glean anything of significance. Clyde said that Miss Leighton had asked him to call on her at the hotel; he confusedly admitted to having had a drink, but claimed he could remember nothing of what had happened afterward. Sheriff Royal had locked him up on a charge of assault and one of being drunk and disorderly, had pacified the red-hot Hollister and shooed everybody out of his office, and there the case stood.

Mrs. Meade rocked slowly back and forth in her chair. She was profoundly puzzled. There were the facts, and they seemed undeniable, but the story shocked her to a great degree. Clyde? Clyde Renfrew, of all people, drunkenly insulting a woman? She would have thought him the very last person likely to do such a thing. So, apparently, would most of the other people she had overheard discussing the matter in the lobby. Surprise, puzzlement, incredulity had been the prevailing sentiments among them. More than once she had heard a near-echo of her own thought: “But Clyde? I’d never have expected—”

What could possibly have happened to him?

Mrs. Meade shook her head. She could not rid herself of the idea that there must be an explanation somewhere—that there had been some kind of misconception or mistake.

* * *

At half-past three, Miss Asher entered the hotel and sailed majestically up the stairs to her niece’s room, her lips pinched firmly together in a manner that signified disapproval, having been informed by someone in the street as to what had occurred. Miss Asher was a tall, substantial woman, with gray hair dressed in innumerable little tight curls, a fountain of rather bluish-colored lace spilling over the bosom of her lavender silk dress and a masterpiece of a large feathered hat to top it all, and the combined effect when she turned a corner at top speed was a swish that made anyone in her path fall back feeling as if an ocean wave had gone over them. She turned the corner into her niece’s room with just such a swish, the expression on her face boding no good, and the door closed firmly behind her.

Mrs. Meade, who had learned from the afternoon’s occurrences that one must leave one’s door ajar if one is to remain apprised of events, had arranged herself in her rocking-chair, decorously faced at an angle away from the door, but one which still allowed her to see and hear quite well through the three inches’ opening at which she had set it. She had a glimpse of lavender silk and foreboding expression, and after Miss Asher had shut her niece’s door was able to listen to the tenor, if not the words, of the conversation that took place behind it. Miss Asher was an orator among women, whose voice rung with feeling and italics. For a space of about ten minutes Mrs. Meade listened to her voice rising and falling, with occasionally what sounded like a faint protest from Dorene, and then after Miss Asher had wound down, a few minutes of unhappy silence. At some point during this interval Miss Asher evidently rang for the chambermaid, who presently climbed the stairs and knocked at the door. Miss Asher appeared briefly and presented her with a severely folded little note, with the instructions, “See that this is delivered to the sheriff at once.”

Consequently, in a little while Sheriff Andrew Royal came climbing up the stairs and stopped at the door—looking, in the brief glimpse Mrs. Meade had of him, as if he did not relish his errand any too well—and knocked. He was admitted, and a second conference took place behind the closed door. Miss Asher’s voice was more modulated in the presence of a third party, but she possessed the faculty of talking smoothly over anyone who attempted to remonstrate, so Mrs. Meade guessed that she had it very much her own way. Dorene seemed to try and interrupt anxiously once or twice, but was not allowed to succeed, and Sheriff Royal did not seem to be allowed to even finish a sentence.

In about ten minutes he came out, bidding a rather grim good-afternoon, and once the door was safely closed behind him he gave a snort that was not meant for anyone else’s ears and stomped off down the stairs. Mrs. Meade arose from her chair, and went out into the hall and followed him down.

As she reached the turn at the landing a door opened on the floor above, and Miss Asher’s voice came clearly down to her: “Do not be an idiot, Dorene. If we did not seek reparation there would be Things Said, and I shall never have Things Said about any niece in my charge.” Whereupon the door closed uncompromisingly.

Mrs. Meade came quickly down the lower flight of stairs just as the broad-shouldered, ungainly figure of the gray-haired sheriff was leaving the foot of them.

“Andrew,” she said.

Sheriff Royal turned abruptly to look up. “Oh, it’s you,” he said as she came down and joined him; a greeting which sounded rather ungracious, but which did not seem to bother Mrs. Meade in the least.

“Andrew, could I speak to you for a moment?” she asked.

Royal glanced around and motioned with the battered hat in his hand toward the hotel’s small best parlor off the lobby, which was empty. They went toward it together. The harassed expression on the sheriff’s face as he stalked beside her, coupled with a somewhat hunted look in his eye, made Mrs. Meade feel sure he was only waiting till he had reached suitable surroundings to explode. As soon as she had closed the parlor door, he did so.

“Women!” he snorted. “If there’s anything worse than having a woman after you, it’s getting between two of them.”

“Then perhaps I should not make matters worse by making a third,” said Mrs. Meade, with a slight twitch about her mouth that belied the matter-of-fact tone of the suggestion.

Royal waved it away with his hat. “Oh, you don’t count. That is, I mean—” He strove to extricate himself from this linguistic tangle, and compromised with, “Well, you’re a different breed from that Asher woman, thank goodness.”

“I should not repeat this in public, but I consider that a very nice compliment,” Mrs. Meade told him kindly, and the sheriff harrumphed and waved that away too. “What has Miss Asher done?”

“It’s not so much what she’s done,” said Royal. “It’s the way she goes about it. She talks like she’s the only person who knows how to do things properly and if you don’t do just what she says you’re not even worth bowing to on the street.” He stopped for breath, and added, “She wants to sue young Renfrew for damages.”

“She does—or her niece does?”

“She does all the talking for her niece,” said Andrew Royal grimly. “The girl would rather try and forget about the whole thing, to my mind, but Aunt Asher is boss. To hear her talk you’d think she’d like to go after him herself with a horsewhip. But at least she’s agreed to settle it out of court—easier on everybody’s feelings.”

“Will Clyde settle, do you think?” said Mrs. Meade.

“He’s got no choice,” said Royal, looking at her as though a little surprised by the question.

“I simply can’t understand it,” said Mrs. Meade. “Clyde was such a nice upstanding boy. I knew his mother very well, and she was always so proud of him—I can’t think what can have happened.”

“Hmmm…well,” said Royal. “How much do you know about it?”

“As much as anyone else in Sour Springs does just now,” said Mrs. Meade, and the sheriff grunted in dry appreciation. “Perhaps a little more, since I was nearby when it happened. My room is just across the hall from Dorene Leighton’s, in fact.”

“You seem to have a knack for being just across the hall when things happen,” said Sheriff Royal, eyeing her. “But this isn’t like that Bradford affair, where it all happened at night and all we had to go on were things we found. Plenty of people around to see and hear this time.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Meade, “but—what about Clyde? Did he tell you anything—try to explain, or to defend himself at all?”

Royal shook his head. “Nope. Took us a few minutes to get him sobered up enough to talk—funny thing, I’ve never heard of him being drunk before, but there’s no doubt about it, he was soused. Then when they told him what he’d done he pretty near turned green—I thought he was going to slide right off his chair. But all he’d say was that he couldn’t remember anything.”

“That was your first mistake, then,” said Mrs. Meade, “letting them tell him what had happened instead of waiting to hear him speak first. He was in no condition then to know what was true and what wasn’t.”

Andrew Royal stared at her for a moment, as if a new idea was just filtering into his brain. “You don’t mean to tell me you don’t believe it?”

“I did not tell you anything of the kind,” said Mrs. Meade firmly. “I merely think you have forfeited your only chance of getting a clear account of the incident—of Clyde’s version of it, at least.”

“How many versions d’you think there are?” growled Royal (a not entirely serious question).

“Four, at least,” was Mrs. Meade’s entirely unexpected answer; and then after a second she added, “perhaps five.”

Royal did not attempt to reply for a minute. “Oh,” he said at last, just a little sarcastically, scratching the back of his head with the hand that still held his hat. “Five.”

He cleared his throat ferociously, a habit of his when he was at a loss and did not want anyone else to know it. “Guess I’d better get back to the office,” he said. “Anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Meade?”

“No,” said Mrs. Meade a trifle absently, having become rather thoughtful in the brief interval; “no, not just at present.”

Royal stared for a second, and then he clapped his hat on crooked and made his escape.

* * *

“It is shocking,” said Miss Powers warmly, “quite shocking.”

Miss Powers, small and sheeplike, had a soft, mellow voice with a little vibration in it that lent the impression of heartfelt feeling to everything she said. She also had not an original idea in her head, but she possessed the gift of absorbing the opinions of the company about her and repeating them warmly as if they were her own. People often liked her very much for the first day or two that they knew her, until it began to be borne in upon them that Miss Powers was merely a glorified echo.

Miss Asher, however, found Miss Powers’ earnest concurrence very gratifying. She agreed grimly in her turn. “And it all might easily have been averted,” she said. “It was never my wish that Dorene should be introduced to that young man. From the very first I considered him a most undesirable acquaintance.”

“I’m sure you were right,” said Miss Powers feelingly. “And yet he always acted rather like a gentleman, I suppose.”

“Gen’lman my foot,” said Mr. Hollister, who was consuming a hearty meal a little further down the table, leaning forward over his plate with his napkin tucked into his collar. “A right-down young scoundrel what don’t deserve to be called any better, ’s what he is. But I told ’im. I give ’im a piece of my mind.”

A doubly large mouthful of food stopped up any further remarks from the commercial gentleman, whose experiences had certainly not impaired his appetite. Miss Asher looked down the table at him with a faint air of distaste. She inclined her head slightly as though forced to agree with him, but against her will. It appeared that being under obligation to Mr. Hollister, a person of whom she had no opinion, was the part she liked least of the whole affair.

“I had spoken to Dorene more than once about him, but to no avail,” she observed, returning to her dinner and the mutually agreeable society of Miss Powers. “I cannot tell you how this has distressed and grieved me. I have always endeavored to do my Duty by her, but really sometimes Dorene is a Sad Trial to me.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that,” observed Miss Brewster, a straight, thin woman who spoke in jerks like throwing darts.

“One would never guess it by your fortitude, Miss Asher,” said Miss Powers, sympathetically misinterpreting.

Miss Asher allowed herself a grenadierly simper. She took another spoonful of soup, and then sighed. “The trouble with Dorene is not so much rebelliousness, as a Lack of Understanding. I often tell her things again and again, but she simply does not seem to comprehend them. And This is the result.”

Miss Asher and Miss Powers both shook their heads regretfully. Miss Brewster merely said “Hm!”

“What a respectable assemblage of ghouls we are!” murmured Mrs. Clairborn to Mrs. Meade, under cover of the discussion. Mrs. Clairborn was a well-to-do summer traveler, an elegant, humorous woman whom Mrs. Meade found excellent company. “Don’t ever tell me that genteel old ladies dislike scandal. They’re all enjoying it to the hilt—even Miss Asher. One would think she would have a little more feeling for her niece, and not just her own position.”

“Poor Dorene!” said her daughter Phyllis, a warm-hearted, brown-eyed girl of twenty, from the other corner of the table, where she sat at Mrs. Meade’s left. “I think she liked him, you know. She didn’t say anything—she doesn’t say anything about anything, really—but I saw her looking at him once or twice, and she looked quite miserable.”

“Miserable?” queried Mrs. Meade, to whom the adjective was unexpected.

“Oh, yes. Dorene always looks haunted when she’s trying to make up her mind about something, even if it’s only which kind of sandwich to take at luncheon.”

Mrs. Clairborn raised her fine arched eyebrows and shook her head, her small jet earrings swinging. “Well, according to Miss Asher’s august judgment, she made a wrong selection this once.”

“So it would seem,” said Mrs. Meade.

“Yes,” agreed Phyllis. “It’s too bad. Isn’t it a shame that people always turn out to be different than you think them?”

Mrs. Meade looked for a second at the girl’s honest, sympathetic young face. “Yes,” she said, “I should think that is one of the greatest shames there is in the world.”

* * *

The morning air was cool and fresh. Above the town, the mountains stood crisp against the clear sky, their snow-streaked crests looking almost near enough to touch. Sheriff Royal strode along the boardwalk, upon which the early morning sun was pouring brightly down through gaps in the trees, his much-worn boots thumping on the wide weathered planks. Occasionally he met a lady walking in the opposite direction and gave her a short nod of greeting, but without paying any particular attention to her. Therefore Mrs. Meade saw him well before he saw her, even though she had been walking along rather deep in thought herself. She considered for a moment, and then quickened her steps slightly to join him.

Royal had stopped to look into the window of the harness shop when Mrs. Meade came up to him. “Good morning, Andrew,” she said.

“Oh—good morning,” he said, looking round, and pushed his hat back a little by way of courtesy.

“I was out doing a few errands,” said Mrs. Meade briskly, glancing down at the reticule on her arm, “but I’m rather glad I met you. I have been doing a good deal of thinking since last night, and…I have a slightly unusual favor to ask of you, I think.”

Sheriff Royal looked slightly alarmed, but signified his willingness to listen to her request.

“Would you let me come and talk to Clyde for a few minutes? I don’t know if it will do him any good, or even do me any good, but I feel somehow that I must understand this affair better, even if—even if it’s only a sad truth after all,” she concluded with a little sigh.

“You’ve been thinking again!” accused Andrew Royal, rather unnecessarily. “You still won’t believe he did it, will you. How can’t you?”

Mrs. Meade shook her head. “No, Andrew, I can’t say for certain I don’t believe it. I honestly don’t know what to think. It just seems so wrong, somehow.”

“Instinct!” growled Royal. “You can’t judge everything on instinct, Mrs. Meade. No matter how wrong it looks, the fact—”

“The fact is, there may be more than one possible explanation for a set of facts, and the most obvious one that everyone seizes upon needn’t be it.”

Royal was shaking his head back and forth. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but there’s one fact you can’t get round—an eyewitness.”

“Ah, but can’t you?” said Mrs. Meade. “You remember I said yesterday that there were five different versions of the story—versions told by five different people. Clyde Renfrew, Dorene Leighton, Mr. Hollister, myself, and—Miss Asher, perhaps. Each can tell you what they saw, and heard, and were told, and each version will be a little different.”

“But they all saw and heard the same stuff,” said Royal.

Mrs. Meade shook her head. “But each may have thought they were seeing something different.”

“Hey?”

“Mr. Hollister,” said Mrs. Meade, “from what I have seen of him at the dinner table these past few weeks, is a brash, boisterous, headlong sort of person, the sort who is very likely to jump to conclusions. Suppose it this way for just a moment: Mr. Hollister is in his room. He hears voices in the next room—agitated or disputing voices, perhaps. He knows the next room belongs to a young lady, but one of the voices is a man’s voice—and he immediately jumps to the conclusion that the man is an unwelcome intruder. He rushes out into the hall and bursts unceremoniously into the room to catch a glimpse of Clyde standing close to Dorene—perhaps with his arms around her—and Dorene, a timid girl under any circumstances, could easily have been startled into screaming by Mr. Hollister’s plunge into the room, especially if it was already a fraught moment. Mr. Hollister could have interrupted any number of things, from the reconciliation of a quarrel, to an awkward declaration of love, or even a proposal of marriage—”

Andrew Royal gave a short bark of a laugh. “Clyde? Proposing marriage?” He recollected himself and became gruffly serious again. “Go on.”

“Any of those things,” resumed Mrs. Meade, “but Mr. Hollister leaped to the conclusion that it was an insult he witnessed. Later on, Dorene could have simply been too embarrassed and ashamed to contradict him with the truth.”

“Hmmm…well,” said Andrew Royal. He looked somewhat embarrassed himself. He cleared his throat vigorously. “It’s another way to look at it, but—hem!—don’t you think it’s—not exactly—”

Mrs. Meade also cleared her throat, but delicately. “You mean that the theory of a willing embrace is—hardly more creditable to either of them, under the circumstances?”

Andrew Royal’s face turned a shade redder, and his expression admitted his answer in the affirmative.

“I would have always expected it of Clyde to be scrupulous,” said Mrs. Meade; “I’d hardly have thought he would choose such an improper time and place for a declaration, if not for the fact that—”

“The fact that he’d had a couple,” Royal filled in, blunt in his turn. “And that is a fact.”

“And that’s one of the things I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Meade with another sigh.

“Well…look at it your way, maybe it does make sense. Maybe he had a couple of drinks because he was trying to get up the nerve to say something to her.”

“It needn’t follow, though, that a careful, reasoning sort of man like Clyde would choose one of the most important moments in his life to do something so contrary to his usual character. Oh, Andrew, this endless speculation isn’t doing us a bit of good. We’ll never get anywhere if we don’t do something.”

Sheriff Royal looked somewhat taken aback by this declaration. He had, it was true, a respect for Mrs. Meade’s insight that she had well earned, but he had not yet accustomed himself to the unexpectedness of her thought processes.

He started to open his mouth in what was clearly going to be an expression of outrage or a protest, but Mrs. Meade read his mind, and raised a reassuring hand to forestall him. “Now, that’s not what I mean, Andrew. You won’t have to do anything strenuous, and it doesn’t involve Miss Asher. What I meant to say is, we’ll never know anything unless we have some help from Clyde. May I see him?”

“Don’t see anything wrong with it,” said Royal, knitting his bushy brows to think it over. “You could walk down with me to the jail now, if you don’t mind that. I can’t take him out to see you, not without having Aunt Asher ambush me, that is. All right with you?”

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Meade.

Sheriff Royal made way for her to pass him on the boardwalk, and then fell into step beside her as they walked back down the street.

* * *

Mrs. Meade sat in a chair in the sheriff’s office, her gloved hands folded over her reticule in her lap, and observed Clyde Renfrew with grave attention. He was a big young man, with light hair and a face that was usually serious but still expressed natural good-nature. Now, though, his entire attitude spoke dejection; his shoulders slumped dispiritedly and he could hardly lift his eyes from the floor.

He had looked somewhat surprised to see Mrs. Meade when Sheriff Royal brought him out from the back of the jail into the office, but did not seem able to bring himself to speak even to ask her why she was there. So Mrs. Meade, who was very good at reading unspoken questions, broke the silence by answering his very simply: “I did not want you to think all your friends had deserted you.”

Clyde looked up for a second, and then down at the floor again. “Well,” he said in a lifeless voice, “I wouldn’t blame them if they did.”

“Now, that does not seem a very promising attitude to take,” said Mrs. Meade.

Clyde said nothing.

A feeling of pity overmastered whatever else Mrs. Meade might have been thinking, and she impulsively leaned forward and laid her hand on his arm. “Clyde, I am not so ready to dismiss you as you think. I’ve known you a good many years, and I knew your father and mother. I’ve never thought you would be the kind of young man to insult a woman, even if you were—were not quite yourself.”

“Up until yesterday, I’d have thought so too,” said Clyde.

“Can you not remember anything of what happened? of how it came about? Anything at all?”

Clyde opened his mouth slowly, his brow knitting as if with thought. He looked across at her, and for the first time Mrs. Meade thought she caught a look of hesitancy in his eyes. He shut his mouth again, undecided.

But in the few seconds of silence Andrew Royal had suddenly tumbled to the point. “There was something you remember!” he said explosively, sitting up with a violent creak from his wooden swivel chair.

Mrs. Meade gave him a quick, inconspicuous shake of the head. It was too soon to press the point.

“Why don’t you begin at the beginning, and tell me just what you can remember happening,” she said to Clyde. “You said that Miss Leighton sent for you—is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Clyde. He was still a little uncomfortable, but he seemed to relax somewhat as he spoke, his words gradually coming more freely. “She sent me a note. It said she wanted to ask my advice about a business matter—she asked me to come to the hotel because she knew her aunt was going to be out that afternoon, and it was something she couldn’t talk about with her aunt there.

“I went to the hotel—I had to ask for her room number at the desk, because she hadn’t put it in the note—I went upstairs and knocked at her door, and she let me in.” A vague, troubled look came up in his eyes like a fog, as if he were back in that moment, seeing Dorene as she opened the door. He swallowed and went on. “She told me what she’d wanted to see me about. She said she had some money her grandfather’d left her, three or four years ago, but she’d given her aunt the control over it when she came of age, so as not to have the bother of dealing with it herself. But she felt differently now, because she couldn’t touch it—her aunt wouldn’t let her have the least bit to spend unless it was on something she approved of. Dor—Miss Leighton wanted to ask me what was the best way to get control of it herself again, without having too much of a fight with her aunt. I think—she kind of wanted a way to do it without telling her aunt at all.”

He came to a halt for a moment, frowning, and rubbed his temple as if it hurt. Mrs. Meade noted the action.

“What did you do while you talked? Did you sit down?”

“She did, after a few minutes. In a chair. I might have—no, I think I walked up and down a little while I talked—maybe leaned against the wall by the bureau.”

“And then?”

“There was a decanter full of sherry on the bureau, and some glasses. At some point while we were talking she stood up and asked me if I’d like a drink before I went, and poured a glass for me, and I took it.”

“Did you have more than one glass?” said Mrs. Meade.

“Yes,” said Andrew Royal before Clyde could answer.

Clyde turned toward him with the first appearance of interest he had shown so far. “I did?”

“She says you did. Admitted it, anyway. Didn’t seem to want to, but Aunt Asher bullied her into it.”

“I suppose I must have, then,” said Clyde wearily, relapsing into indifference.

Mrs. Meade leaned forward a little. “Do you remember pouring a drink for yourself at any time?”

“No-o-o…” Clyde sounded doubtful.

“And then what happened? How did your conversation end?”

“We were still talking about the money. I don’t remember it ending—I just—” Clyde was floundering now, grasping vaguely for the memory. He shook his head. “There was a picture on the wall, wavering back and forth, like it was floating…I think I felt kind of sick. The next thing I remember is hearing somebody shouting at me, from a long ways off it seemed, and then Hollister was shaking me. I can’t remember.”

“The curious thing is,” said Mrs. Meade, “you were upstairs for more than an hour, between the time you stopped at the desk and the time Mr. Hollister burst in. How can you account for all that time? How long did you discuss the question of Dorene’s money?”

“I don’t know,” said Clyde, shaking his head again. “It couldn’t have been that long, but I haven’t got the least idea.”

“If you say it wasn’t that long, then you have got some idea,” said Royal shortly. “How long did it take you to finish that first drink?”

“I don’t know.”

Royal got up impatiently. “You mean to tell me you had no idea of the time at all? You didn’t look at your watch once? Or a clock?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Meade, “one should always be aware of the time, for one never knows when one may be called upon to produce an alibi.”

Sheriff Royal coughed suddenly, but Clyde looked piteously rebuked.

“Leaving that aside for the moment,” said Mrs. Meade, “I am, admittedly, not an expert in such matters, but—I suppose two glasses of sherry could have had such an effect upon you?”

“The decanter was practically empty afterwards,” said Clyde, sinking back into his former state of despondence. “Hollister saw it; other people saw it. And about the only thing I am sure of is that it was mostly full when I went into the room. I must have just drunk more without remembering it.”

“But you don’t drink, ordinarily, do you?”

“Well, not as we know the meaning of the word,” said Clyde. “I mean, if I’m trying to close a deal with a man and he’s pushing to buy me a drink, I’ll have one with him, but not more—do you see? And I’ve been known to have a glass of sherry if it’s served at a dinner I’m invited to…not that I’m invited to dinners that often,” he added with a gloom that seemed separate from the subject at hand.

“Then that was the reason you accepted the glass of sherry Dorene Leighton offered you—just politeness?”

A rather funny smile replaced the strained expression on Clyde’s face, a smile that seemed both shy and tender. “Well—I don’t know,” he said awkwardly. “It was more the way she looked. She seemed like a—like a little girl playing at being hostess, and anxious to get it all right—the way she had the glasses set out so carefully, and tried to pronounce all her words just right when she asked me. I—I kind of felt I’d hurt her feelings if I said no.”

“That is also why you accepted a second glass, perhaps?” suggested Mrs. Meade.

Clyde shook his head again and reverted to his old refrain. “I don’t know.”

“So, if you are not accustomed to much strong drink,” said Mrs. Meade, “do you suppose the second glass might have affected you, so that you unthinkingly drank more—for instance, if you were nervous, perhaps?”

“I—don’t know what you mean,” said Clyde, his eyes shifting away from hers.

Mrs. Meade deftly skirted the issue again. “Do you know Mr. Hollister?”

“No. I don’t know him, but I’ve seen him around—he’s been out working the town. I saw him in the saloon the other day, buying drinks all around and trying to fast-talk everybody into buying his toothache oil, or whatever it is.”

“You met Dorene Leighton at a dinner at the Coopers’, didn’t you?” said Mrs. Meade inconsequently, as though refreshing her memory on a minor point.

“No, a picnic,” said Clyde. “But I did see her at a dinner once.”

The way he said it made it sound as if every time he had seen Dorene was marked off as a significant occasion in his memory, a precious stone on a chain of plain days.

“There is one other thing,” said Mrs. Meade. “My room is just across the hall from Dorene’s. Yesterday afternoon, a few moments before Mr. Hollister began shouting, I head three taps in succession, as if someone had rapped lightly on a door or a wall. Do you know anything about that?”

Clyde shrugged, with an air of bewilderment. “I’ve told you, I wasn’t in any shape to tell whether I tapped on anything or not.”

“If you were as intoxicated as we have all been led to believe,” said Mrs. Meade decisively, “you would not have tapped on anything. You would have banged it, or at least thumped it.”

Here they were interrupted by a recurrence of the sheriff’s cough, which took a moment or two to bring under control this time. Clyde and Mrs. Meade looked at him, and he waved for them to go on, his face red and eyes watering with the effort.

Mrs. Meade decided it was time to abandon all form of pretense or subtlety. “Clyde,” she said, “I wish you would give me your honest opinion—your opinion, mind, not your deductions—as to what took place yesterday afternoon. I know there is something you have been hesitating to say. If I were you I should say it, even if it is not something calculated to do you any good.”

Clyde fidgeted for a moment, and then leaned forward in his chair to look entreatingly across at her as he spoke. “It isn’t something I can get hold of,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s just something I thought up myself—like something you dreamed, and then when you wake up you’re not sure if it really happened or not. I just have this feeling that—whatever I did—if I ever did try to kiss her, or if I said something—tried to tell her—whatever it was, I just have a feeling that she didn’t object, do you understand?”

Andrew Royal fell back a step, staring at him in mixed astonishment and indignation. “Then why the devil didn’t you ever say so?”

“Do you think I would?” demanded Clyde, returning the look.

Andrew Royal swung abruptly away and took a turn up and down the room, rubbing the back of his neck. Mrs. Meade could tell he was attempting to control his feelings, and correctly attributed this forbearance to the fact of her presence.

He turned just as abruptly and came back. “Now, listen,” he said. “I can see what you’re trying to do. But you stand to lose your character here, besides a decent amount of money, and you’re going to let it go without saying even that to defend yourself?”

“Yes,” said Clyde. “I am.”

His face was set in a way that told Mrs. Meade he could be as stubbornly settled as a rock when he chose, and the badgering of a dozen Andrew Royals would not move him.

“I think I understand,” she said. Clyde looked at her, and his glance fell somewhat confusedly from the gentle penetration in her own blue-gray eyes. “You were beginning to fall for her, weren’t you.”

He admitted it, in a very low husky tone. “I thought—that she liked me a little,” he said, “and that—but it’s no use now. I can never say anything to her; she’d only think worse of me.”

“I would not be so sure of that,” said Mrs. Meade. “Because there is just one thing that is certain—Dorene knows the truth about what happened yesterday afternoon.”

* * *

“Well,” Royal admitted, after he had locked Clyde in the cell again and come back to see Mrs. Meade to the door, “I won’t deny it, looks like you’re right again. It’s pretty clear to me—he’s keeping his mouth shut to protect the girl’s good name, and ruining his own while he’s at it.”

“Wouldn’t any gentleman do the same?” said Mrs. Meade.

“Well…yes,” said Royal, in a kind of indistinct growl. “But what burns me is that he has to. With anybody else he could have just apologized for losing his head and it’d have been forgot well enough—but not with Aunt Asher, oh, no!”

“But it still doesn’t quite fit,” said Mrs. Meade, shaking her head in impulsive dissatisfaction. “There’s one thing I still can’t account for. What about the three taps?”

“Three tap—oh, blast the three taps!” said Royal. “Who knows what they were. Probably was in some other room and didn’t have anything to do with it at all.”

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Meade, “but when I was sitting there in my rocking-chair yesterday afternoon, and heard them—without the least idea that anything was about to go wrong—my impression was that they came from across the hall. And yet that would mean something else entirely, wouldn’t it?”

“What’s eating you now?” said Royal inelegantly, putting his head on one side and squinting at her from under a bushy eyebrow. “Earlier you said you thought there was more to the story than folks figured. You’ve got what you wanted now; you’ve heard the rest. And you’re not satisfied?”

“We’ve heard more of the story, yes,” Mrs. Meade corrected him, “but I believe we still have not heard the whole story. It can’t be complete if there is something left out. And the three taps—”

“The three taps,” said Royal under his breath. “Well, what about them?”

“Just this,” said Mrs. Meade. “When two people are in a room together, what occasion would one of them have to rap on the door? Isn’t that usually what happens just before someone is admitted to a room? Couldn’t it mean that, for at least a part of that hour which is unaccounted for, either Clyde or Dorene was not in the room at all?”

Andrew Royal gave a groan rather like a long-suffering cow. “Mrs. Meade, have you got to make everything so complicated?”

Mrs. Meade started slightly, as if at something she was thinking. “Of course,” she said half to herself. “That was it. I knew there was something odd.”

“What was?”

“Did you notice—Clyde said that Dorene offered him a drink before he went? And yet it couldn’t have been very far into the hour at all. Did he leave—? But no, that doesn’t fit—” She was speaking to herself again, in fragments of half-formed thought, her forehead knit with perplexity.

“Sounds more like she wished he would leave,” said the sheriff.

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Meade, “you are not so very far wrong.”

She was thinking back—to a dinner-table conversation, an expression in Dorene Leighton’s eyes, a murmur overheard through a door set ajar. She nodded her head slowly.

And then she quoted, unexpectedly, “‘And all the harm I’ve ever done, alas, it was to none but me…’”

“What?” said Andrew Royal, even more surprised than before.

“Nothing,” said Mrs. Meade. “Nothing, only it seemed rather apt…for both of them, perhaps.” She paused, and then spoke slowly. “Has it ever occurred to you, Andrew, that this entire incident may have been an elaborate production that someone has put on to cover up something very simple?”

“If that’s what happened,” said Royal, who had run out of objections, “then they’ve done a doggoned good job of it.”

* * *

Miss Asher, a workbasket containing her embroidery in her hand, opened the door to her room. She paused on the threshold. Dorene was sitting by the window at the other side of the room, looking out of it. She did not move nor turn her head at her aunt’s entrance, as if she had not even heard. She seemed a quiet, colorless shadow herself, sitting there in the late-afternoon shade.

Miss Asher closed the door. “There you are,” she said. “I was looking for you.”

Dorene looked down, and stretched out her folded hands on her lap, listlessly. “I was in my room,” she said in a voice to match. “I heard Mrs. Meade come upstairs, a little while ago, and I thought that she might come over to see me. So I came in here.” She looked out the window again. “I—didn’t want to see her just then.”

“That’s just as well,” said Miss Asher grimly. She crossed to the bureau and put down her workbasket.

Dorene said, with a little difficulty, “She’s—been very kind to me.”

Miss Asher shot a sharp sideways glance at her. Dorene was still staring drearily out of the window. There was another moment of silence. Then as if the girl’s silence itself had irritated her, Miss Asher turned to face her niece with impatience, but no abating of her own dignity. “You must stop this foolishness, Dorene. You will forget about it all soon enough.”

“Will I?” It was spoken very low.

Miss Asher pressed her lips firmly together to restrain her irritation, and then after a moment she spoke again. “Sheriff Royal is coming here again tomorrow morning to settle about the money,” she said. “You and I will see him together. And you will not make an exhibition of yourself as you did yesterday.” Another pause. “You know that you have no other choice, Dorene.”

Dorene did not answer. Miss Asher gave her another look of disapproval, and then turned back to the bureau and opened a drawer.

* * *

When Mr. Hollister, his clinking sample case in his hand, climbed the stairs that afternoon and pushed open the door to his room, he halted for a second in understandable surprise at the spectacle within—that of a genteel-looking middle-aged lady standing near a chair with her hand just stretched out to touch the heavy gray overcoat draped over the back of it, an almost comical expression of alarm and dismay on her face.

“Oh dear me,” exclaimed the lady, regarding the newcomer with a flustered and apologetic manner. “I am terribly sorry—you must pardon me, Mr. Hollister; I believe I must have entered the wrong room. I came up to see Miss Leighton, you see, but I must have gone past her door and opened the wrong one. I had thought she was out, until I saw your coat on the chair here just now, and realized my mistake.” She advanced to meet him, with her hands clasped in a rather helpless manner and an abashed half-smile. “You will forgive me, I hope, Mr. Hollister?”

“Why, certainly, ma’am,” said Hollister, taking off his hat from the top and making a little bow, in one glib motion on which he rather prided himself. “Nothing like an honest mistake, is what I always say.”

“I really can’t think how I came to make it! I suppose I must have misread the number on the door—I’m afraid my eyes are not what they once were.”

Hollister scented a professional opportunity. “Do you get pain in ’em regularly, ma’am?”

“Well, not regularly,” said Mrs. Meade, adapting herself to the situation, “but sometimes—”

That was all the encouragement Hollister needed. “Then let me introduce to you,” he said, putting his sample case down on the bureau and beginning to energetically undo the buckles, “the remarkable qualities of Pollard’s Proven Remedial Tonic. It might be just the thing you need. You’ll go a long way before you find anything as helpful as Pollard’s Proven, ma’am. Its remarkable remedial qualities have caused comment from coast to coast.”

“Have they really?” said Mrs. Meade, looking appropriately intrigued.

“Oh, yes; yes indeed.” He had been extracting a number of small identical black medicine bottles from the case, and set them up in a row along the edge of the bureau with the labels outward as if to create the impression of a shelf in a druggist’s window. “Pollard’s Proven is your resort for just about anything that may be wrong with you, ma’am. It relieves headache, earache, toothache, back-ache, throat-ache, congestion, inflammation, and cold-in-the-head.”

“Dear me, it must be powerful,” said Mrs. Meade.

“It is that, ma’am. Powerful’s an excellent choice of words, ma’am.” Mr. Hollister spoke so feelingly, it was evident he had never had such an understanding and appreciative potential customer. “It may be just the thing what’ll help you with your eyesight.”

Mrs. Meade did not inquire which of Pollard’s Proven Remedial Qualities would be able to do that, which undoubtedly raised her another point in the commercial gentleman’s favor. Mr. Hollister had arranged himself smilingly beside his merchandise with his hand resting on the bureau, looking like he was posing for a photograph which would be handed down to posterity, so perhaps making any intelligent remark without betraying her state of mind was beyond her just then.

She retreated into her prior apologetic manner. “I feel I ought to buy a bottle, just to make up for the trouble I’ve given you, Mr. Hollister!”

“Oh, it’s no—I mean, don’t let that be your reason, ma’am,” said Hollister, catching himself on the brink of repudiating a sale. “Let Pollard’s Proven speak for itself.”

So on that grand note the transaction was formalized, and following a small exchange of currency, accompanied by many exchanged courtesies, Mrs. Meade departed in possession of a bottle of Pollard’s Proven Remedial Tonic, and an additional piece of information of which Mr. Hollister was entirely unaware.

* * *

The blinds in the hotel parlor were mostly closed, so that the mid-morning sunlight they admitted in thin strips was not enough to dispel the shadows behind the stiff mahogany-and-horsehair furniture, but it illuminated the fine particles of dust floating in the air that are to be found in all closed-up rooms. The dim lighting, the rather stark-looking potted plants standing up in the corners and the dust together gave the parlor somewhat of a funereal air. The impression was completed by the presence of Miss Asher, who was sitting bolt upright on the sofa when Mrs. Meade entered the room. Dorene Leighton sat in a chair near her aunt. She wore pale gray, and the shadows beneath her eyes were nearly the same color. Her eyes rested numbly on the floor; she seemed to have dwindled even smaller, as if all the spirit and life had gone out of her already small form. Mrs. Meade looked at her for a moment, and then turned toward Miss Asher, who had not moved except to turn a sharp disapproving eye in the direction of the intruder.

“Good morning,” said Mrs. Meade in a low pleasant voice that did not disturb the hush of the parlor. “Is Sheriff Royal here yet? I had hoped to speak to him.”

“No, he is not,” said Miss Asher, in a tone which said that the icebergs at the North Pole had no intention of melting anytime soon either.

Mrs. Meade did not reply. With a gentle, polite smile that held the faintest breath of cool breeze itself, she sat down opposite the two ladies to wait.

Fortunately the wait was not long. In a moment or two there came a little noise outside, and the door opened. Andrew Royal escorted Clyde Renfrew into the room, giving him a little shove and regarding him with a grim expression and mutter that were probably for Miss Asher’s benefit. Clyde’s dejection of the previous day had been replaced by a kind of determined resignation, whether assumed for the encounter or not. He ventured a glance at Dorene as he sat down. Dorene was very white, her eyes fixed on the carpet straight in front of her.

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.”

“It may have been all an act, to be sure,” said Mrs. Clairborn, smiling, “but I have a feeling Miss Asher enjoyed it.”

Phyllis Clairborn leaned over and whispered to Mrs. Meade under cover of the animated conversation going on around them. “However did you know?” she said. “None of us would ever have spotted Miss Asher as a confidence trickster, not in a million years!”

“Well, you and your mother helped, as a matter of fact,” said Mrs. Meade, unable to entirely conceal a little half-embarrassed smile at the flattery. “Your mother remarked upon the fact that there was something a little unnatural in the way Miss Asher conducted the whole affair. Sheriff Royal commented on it, too, without realizing its significance. Rather than trying to hush up a scandal, she practically made a show out of her indignation, and made sure everyone knew about it. People do enjoy talking about scandal, I’m afraid, but only when it doesn’t concern them or someone they love—or have responsibility for. In a genuine situation Miss Asher ought to have said very little, and only obtained Miss Powers’ sympathy with a few plaintive sighs and looks.” Phyllis choked back a giggle, the description of the two ladies’ interaction was so perfectly accurate. “But instead she and Mr. Hollister both played their parts so as to attract plenty of attention—why, he nearly turned the hotel upside-down with his performance! There was even the detail of the room number being omitted from Dorene’s note to Clyde—so he had to inquire at the desk and draw attention to his presence there. I think,” said Mrs. Meade meditatively, “it was that feeling of unreality which first gave me the notion that there was something wrong somewhere. It was in the back of my mind all the time. Later when I was thinking very hard trying to make sense of the taps on the wall, all the pieces fell into place.”

“And how did I help?” queried Phyllis.

“Well, you called my attention to another small but curious thing—that Dorene had seemed unhappy in love, even though there was every indication that the feeling between her and Clyde was mutual. She knew and dreaded, you see, what was going to happen to him.”

“If it had only been a play, some of it would have been awfully funny,” said Phyllis. “The way Miss Asher and Mr. Hollister went on, him swaggering around being as loud and uncivilized as he could, and Miss Asher putting her nose in the air when she went past and pretending to detest him! But I don’t suppose Dorene thought it was very funny,” she added, with the quick change to perceptiveness that was so characteristic of her.

“No,” agreed Mrs. Meade, “there are many things that look quite different depending on which side of them you look from. The important thing, I think, is being able to look back on things in such a way that they don’t hurt you too badly.”

“Do you think Dorene will be able to?” said Phyllis, with an intent, quizzical glance.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Meade, “I think she will.”

###

More Mrs. Meade

The Silver Shawl: A Mrs. Meade Mystery

In a small town in turn-of-the-century Colorado, a young woman has disappeared from the boarding-house where she lives. Her distraught fiancé is certain that she must have been kidnapped. But the case takes a new turn when a city detective appears on the scene, looking for a woman who matches the description of the missing girl. Was Charity really kidnapped, or did she have a reason to flee? Mrs. Meade, a gentle but shrewd widow lady who lives across the hall in the boarding-house, feels that there is something wrong with the story of Charity’s disappearance…but can she unravel the mystery before it is too late? The first entry in the Mrs. Meade Mysteries series, approximately 15,700 words long.

Find it at Smashwords: www.smashwords.com/books/view/241238

More books by this author:

The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories

"Descriptions of both people and settings are superbly done and dialogue is believable. I can honestly say there isn’t a weak story to be found here...I believe that all western fans will find something to enjoy in this collection." - Western Fiction Review

“Wonderfully told short stories that will hold your attention until the last word…Foley injects a breath of fresh air into the Western genre.” - Matthew Pizzolato, The Western Online

Find it at Smashwords: www.smashwords.com/books/view/93379

War Memorial: A Short Story

“This was an excellent read, heartfelt, emotional, and real…If you like historical fiction, pick up War Memorial. It is beautifully written and worth your time.” - Short Fiction Spotlight

Find it at Smashwords: www.smashwords.com/books/view/220961

About the Author

Elisabeth Grace Foley grew up an avid reader and has always been fascinated with history, so when she turned to writing, historical fiction was naturally her first choice. Her first published story, “Disturbing the Peace,” was an honorable mention in the first annual Rope and Wire Western short story competition, and is now collected with six others that are appearing for the first time in her debut short story collection, The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories. A homeschool graduate, she chose not to attend college in order to pursue self-education and her writing career. She also enjoys music, crocheting and spending time outdoors. She lives at home with her family and a large stack of writer’s notebooks.

Elisabeth’s Blog: www.thesecondsentence.blogspot.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ElisabethGFoley

Table of Contents

The Parting Glass

More Mrs. Meade

About the Author