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  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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  MURDER AT BAYSIDE

  By

  RAYMOND ROBINS

  Murder at Bayside was originally published in 1933 by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

  DEDICATION 5

  ONE 7

  TWO 16

  THREE 22

  FOUR 30

  FIVE 39

  SIX 48

  SEVEN 52

  EIGHT 59

  NINE 65

  TEN 75

  ELEVEN 83

  TWELVE 91

  THIRTEEN 94

  FOURTEEN 103

  FIFTEEN 110

  SIXTEEN 119

  SEVENTEEN 124

  EIGHTEEN 130

  NINETEEN 137

  TWENTY 147

  TWENTY-ONE 153

  TWENTY-TWO 164

  TWENTY-THREE 171

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 179

  DEDICATION

  To the girl

  who really wrote this book

  • • •

  All characters in this book are fictitious

  ONE

  Fate is inexorable and unexpected. The ancients admitted this truth when they fabled the Three Spinners at work in Olympian aloofness neither heeding nor caring about the human destinies so strangely interwoven in the warp and woof of their looms. But we moderns do not like to think we cannot control the pattern of our lives; we would rather talk glibly about willpower, we even sonorously proclaim ourselves “Captains of our Souls” and we love to prognosticate proudly what we should have done, were we so unfortunate as to be in the other fellow’s place when misfortune overwhelmed him. All the while we are saying smugly to ourselves, “Such a thing could never happen to me for I have ordained my life far differently.”

  Perhaps we pick up our morning newspapers and read the screaming headlines shouting of some bloody crime and then we shudder slightly to think of such conditions existing in our advanced civilization, wondering a bit in the privacy of our own minds what manner of persons are these whose names are writ large in public print for the world to read.

  My friend, they are even as you and I. A year ago, had I been gifted—or should I say cursed—with the foreknowledge of the events through which I was subsequently to live, had I said to myself, “Robert Williams, you are about to be involved in a murder case wherein you will not only know the murderer, but will eat with him, sleep under the same roof with him, and eventually assist in tracking him down,” I should have laughed at my own prophecy, albeit a trifle uneasily, lest my overworked brain had produced these strange fantasies.

  Yet all this was true and it came about in such a commonplace, everyday way that, had I foreseen what was going to happen, at no time could I have drawn back and saved myself from the experiences in store for me. At the time of which I write, I was thirty-eight years old, the junior partner in the law firm of Vaile and Williams. The law, as I knew it and practiced it, was a dear and exacting mistress, charting the business seas for great corporations, steadying the hands of testators, and administering their estates when they were gone; not at all that flaming jade who goes along the sinister bypaths of the underworld, trailing her bedraggled skirts through criminal courts and flaunting her actions in the public press. Not for worlds would I decry those who give their lives and brilliant talents to the practice of criminal law; they are sincere men and great men, abler far than I shall ever be. I am merely trying to emphasize that their field is very different from mine and I was as ignorant of their practice and clients as I was of the police and their methods. In fact, I am of the old school which learned its law in an office, apprentice fashion, and since my mentor, even in the early days of my association with him, specialized in the one branch of the law, my contacts have been all one-sided, and, I fear, a trifle biased.

  Nevertheless, I was content to pursue my profession along peaceful paths and I daily gave thanks for all that my friend and patron, John Patrick Vaile, had made possible. John Patrick—he insisted upon the use of his two given names according to the custom of the deep South whose true son he was—was remote kin of mine, as we Southerners remember and respect the obligations of family ramifications. He had built up our important practice, trained me to follow in his footsteps and then, oddly enough, he had developed, more as a hobby than anything else, a belated interest in the field of criminology, not only as regarded the law, but in respect to the actual detection of criminals. He had first manifested an interest when a reform ticket had swept into office, as Police Commissioner, an old and valued friend of his.

  Now John Patrick’s uncanny insight into human nature enabled him to ferret out obscure motives; add to that ability an outstanding knowledge of and interest in what might be termed the tools of murder and one can easily see how an inexperienced police head might come to consult his wiser friend on practically all of his cases. But Baltimore is strangely lacking in recondite crimes, and after assisting his friend in the two or three important cases of the reform administration, John Patrick, like a small boy fascinated by his new toy, sought other fields to conquer. He had visited the police bureaus of every good-sized city and was familiar with their working routine. At the beginning of my story he was in London, ostensibly tracing the descent of certain fine points in the laws of equity—personally I was positive he was spending more time at Scotland Yard than among the musty archives of the Middle Temple.

  Of course, all work he had done along these lines had been accomplished without any public fanfare for we had a clientele which would scarcely appreciate the thought that its lawyers were engaged in police work. Nor were we as a firm; I never had the least interest in my chief’s hobby, considering it, indeed, the sort of thing which a psychiatrist would explain in the terms of inhibition and escape reaction.

  So picture me, on the morning of the tenth of November, at work in our Baltimore office, my mind busy with moot questions of corporation law, enjoying my work and finding it not in the least dull. I was anticipating no adventure, I was smugly complacent regarding the pattern into which I honestly believed my life was irrevocably cast. Then the telephone on my desk rang and one of the girls announced that Mr. Charles Evans was calling.

  I had barely time to hang up my receiver when my door opened and a blond young giant strode easily in.

  “Hello, Williams,” my visitor said, his cold gray eyes vouchsafing me but one glance. “Save your high-priced advice, I’m not on business this time.”

  “I don’t recall your ever listening to my advice, Charles,” I returned with some spirit, “And anyhow, I no longer have the right to offer it.”

  The young man disposed his graceful, well-knit body in my easy chair and rolled himself a cigarette. “I know,” he said with a cynical smile on his face, “It must pain your legal mind to think how carefully you nursed along the inheritance Edwin and I received from our parents, until that day of grace when I became twenty-one. We had some grand old squabbles, didn’t we? Well,
what is an Evans unless he is quarreling about something? I wonder if you have any idea how little is left of the precious fiduciary?”

  I kept silent under his provocation for I knew how true was his reference to the irritableness characteristic of his family. After all, our trusteeship had lapsed four years ago.

  “Anyhow,” he continued as he watched me under lowered lids and saw I was not to be baited, “Uncle Cyrus asked me to stop by and see if you would like to go down to Bayside for some duck-shooting tomorrow.”

  “I should be delighted,” I returned promptly, much pleased at the invitation.

  “All right; but you’ll have to arrange about getting yourself out there tonight. The cruiser leaves for the blind at daybreak, so Uncle Cyrus said to be sure you understood you must get in this evening.”

  I thought rapidly. My car as usual was laid up for repairs. “What time are you going back?” I asked although I did not relish the trip in his company.

  He shook his head with his usual smile of secret amusement. “Sorry, but I am returning with some friends and I don’t think they have room for another passenger. However, Edwin drove me up. You might call some of his haunts and see if you can get in touch with him.”

  “Where would I be apt to find him?” I inquired. “Haven’t the foggiest. Perhaps a train would be your best bet on getting down.” He got up to go, that same smile on his face. As if it were an afterthought, he added, “Don’t try the bank. You know Edwin has severed his connection with them.”

  Then he left me staring after him and wondering why he felt called upon to rake up this half-secret scandal. I knew Edwin was with the bank no longer, and I shared the knowledge with scandalized Baltimore. The story ran that when Edwin, having rapidly run through his inheritance, turned to his uncle for financial aid, the latter had wangled him a job in one of our most prominent banks. Edwin had remained there for nearly ten months; them he resigned amid a storm of gossip which went far to undermine confidence in the bank. The real facts of the case never came out—at least I never heard them, and when a lawyer is in ignorance of the exact circumstances of such an episode, you may be very sure the whole affair has been well hushed up. For Charles to refer to this abortive banking career of his brother’s was a most unfraternal act—and wholly typical of Charles. A fellow club member, when he first heard rumors of Edwin’s disgrace, remarked, “Well it shows the difference between Edwin and his brother. If Charles had wanted to loot the bank, he would never have stooped to fraud. He would have shot the night watchman and walked off with the money.”

  Exaggerated as that estimate of the Evans’ brothers might be, it, to a certain extent approximated my own feelings about them. Charles was an outlaw, both by nature and by preference, priding himself on his defiance of convention. He had been born out of his time for he was kin to the breed which flourished on our western plains seventy years ago before the law came to tame the frontier, before time softened the recollections of the grim happenings of an earlier day. Courage he had, and an intelligence of a hard reckless sort, but he could brook no criticism and was openly contemptuous of restraint.

  As for the older brother, I found him more subtle and smoother in many ways than Charles. He was reticent to an extreme, where Charles was scornfully open. Edwin presented a hard, smooth surface to the world, leaving no corners to be grasped, to be explored, and offering no opportunities for friendship. Sometimes I pitied him, for I thought him at war with his environment and apt to lash out venomously against his better nature. Both brothers lived at Bayside with Cyrus and his son, subsisting, as I was well aware, on their uncle’s charity. And that, to express it mildly, was an uncertain and a hectic existence.

  I smiled to myself a bit ruefully when I thought what daily existence at Bayside must be like. Cyrus Evans was a valued client of ours and although I honestly liked the old man, I could not deny that the appellation, “the old pirate,” so freely bestowed by those who had business contact with him, was richly deserved. Cyrus had made his millions in the swashbuckling days of the turbulent nineties and, though now technically retired, he still kept an inquiring finger on the business of the South. In spite of advancing age—he was now in the late seventies—he was not only in fine physical condition but was possessed of a ruthlessly analytical mind, functioning still with the cold clear audacity of his earlier years. To use the argot of the day, he not only could lick his weight in wild cats, but there was nothing he would enjoy more.

  Too often the son of such a man is but a pale replica of the father, lacking the vital qualities which give the sire his dash and ability. But Thomas Evans was the proverbial exception to the rule; he was a chip off the old block with a vengeance. With a start, I recalled Tom was an adopted son, for more than thirty years ago Cyrus had paused in his money-getting long enough to realize that a fortune is so much dross, without a son to inherit. Too canny to make the mistake of other self-made men and marry in middle life, he had, with his customary high-handedness, adopted a boy and raised him as his own. Few people now remembered the adoption or would credit the truth when “it was recalled to them, so much did Tom resemble Cyrus. The young man had gone into the practice of criminal law and exhibited in pursuit of his profession exactly those daring qualities of mind and spirit which had enabled his father to gain his fortune in the business world. But while audacity, recklessness and callousness may be excellent assets in the realms of finance, there were those among us lawyers who felt these qualities led to practices not entirely countenanced by a strict interpretation of legal ethics.

  I granted Tom admiration on the score of his brilliant mind and thorough knowledge of the law, but I could never like him after I heard him mocking his underworld clientele, boasting how he could teach them tricks in their own trade, were it not for the fact that he made more money by remaining honest. I am too old-fashioned to be able to overlook remarks of that caliber, nor can I consider them in the light of a jest. Still, I endeavored to soften my condemnation of Tom by reflecting how his character and ideas must have been shaped by association with Cyrus. There was not one of the Evans family who could be held in check by the conventional bonds of ethics or morality—Tom was no better, no worse, than the rest of us.

  I brought my reverie to an abrupt end. After all, my problem was how to get down to Bayside, and it was very likely that Tom might be able to furnish me the transportation. I reached for my ‘phone and instructed the girl in the outer office to get me his number. Unfortunately, my luck was definitely out. I talked to Tom’s secretary and she informed me that her employer was not expected in town today, although he might call the office later. Then it was that I received the suggestion which led to my second step in this quagmire of crime and caused me to do the thing which was to have such a strange result. I ask you merely to notice how simply it all came about.

  “Miss Ellesworth,” I said into the receiver, “I have not been down to Bayside this year, and so have not had cause to look up the trains. Could you tell me anything about them?”

  “Certainly,” replied the brisk voice. “There are just two which make the stop near Bayside. One arrives at three-thirty in the afternoon, and the other gets in at ten at night.”

  “Oh,” I said aghast, for I recalled the vagaries of the ten o’clock local from a sad experience last year.

  “If I have to get up to go duck-shooting before daylight, I most certainly don’t want to take the evening train. I need more than four hours’ sleep to face a day in the blind with any equanimity.”

  Miss Ellesworth laughed perfunctorily. “Why don’t you take the afternoon local then?” she asked. “Mr. Thomas goes down by it, when he hasn’t his car. I believe that the later train is mixed freight and passenger and very unreliable.”

  “I know it is,” said I, as I thanked her and hung up the receiver, determined to give myself an afternoon’s holiday. And thus simply did I start toward the adventure whose grim nature was not as yet remotely foreshadowed.

  The local tr
ain, smelling slightly of stale cigars and unbrushed plush, crawled out of the station shed into a gray drizzle of rain. Little rivulets made grimy patterns in the soot on the window panes, chasing each other into erratic designs as the train swayed on its way, but I was not downcast by the weather. The old saying, “a fine day for ducks,” has real meaning in Maryland, for no matter how disagreeable the day, according to human taste, there is nothing like a fine sprinkle of rain to bring the ducks out in full force.

  When I got out at my station, I was a trifle dismayed at the sight of the only conveyance the inclement weather had left free to serve as station taxi. It was a ramshackle old “flivver,” whose negro driver wore an air of habitual disconsolance; indeed, I had much difficulty in persuading him to undertake the five-mile journey to the Evans’ estate. But once his car started, my chauffeur threw off his lethargy and proceeded at a perilous speed until I was inordinately glad to see the stone pillars inscribed “Bayside” come into view. The whole estate, save where it bordered on the water, was fenced in by barbed wire hidden by a high hedge, and the only means of ingress was at the lodge gate where we stopped to await the arrival of the old negro, pensioner on Cyrus’ bounty, whose duty it was to open the massive iron gate and announce the visitors by ‘phoning the main house. Once inside the barrier, we rode more than a mile on a graveled road, winding around well-kept lawns and pleasant gardens. My taxi finally drove up alongside the small ornamented doorway which broke the straight façade on this side. According to the architect’s blue prints, this was the back of the house, the traditional colonial columns and portico being on the opposite façade overlooking the water. As I got out of my taxi at the back door, then, the woods encroached to within a hundred feet of the end of the dwelling, and just around the corner was set a side door which led into the kitchen and so on up the rear staircase, which was destined to play a large part in the scenes to come. Its original purpose was to provide for the convenience of the servants, whose quarters were hidden in the pine woods some distance from the house and completely out of sight.