The apartment house reached, Attorney Garder got out of the car and turned a patient face toward his patient chauffeur. These two men understood each other well.
“Wait,” the attorney ordered. “How long, I do not know. I am calling on a — er — a lady client. She says that it is a matter of life and death, so I am of the opinion that I’ll be at least ten or fifteen minutes.”
The chauffeur, an old and valued employee, grinned, and Attorney Garder did not rebuke him for it. He turned his back, went up the steps, entered the apartment house, and stepped briskly up to the desk.
“I presume that Mrs. Lennek is in?” he asked the clerk. “She telephoned me.”
“I believe that she is, Mr. Garder,” the clerk replied. “Mr. and Mrs. Crend went up a few minutes ago.”
Attorney Garder refused the elevator and walked slowly up the wide marble stairs. So Mr. and Mrs. Howard Crend were calling, were they? Possibly that explained things, the attorney thought. Mrs. Lennek and her sister always were quarreling. There were times, Attorney Garder told himself, when he was ready to take an oath never to handle another big estate. Members of the families always were quarreling, and he detested such things.
He came to the top of the stair and started along the hall. Mr. and Mrs. Howard Crend came suddenly around the nearest turn. They rushed toward him, excitement in their manner, horror in their faces. Garder stopped and watched their approach in surprise.
“Mr. Garder!” Mrs. Crend cried. “Oh, Mr. Garder!”
“What is it?” Attorney Garder demanded, feeling a premonition that all was not right.
“My sister! She — she is dead!”
“Dead!” Garder gasped.
“Killed herself!” said Crend.
“Great heavens!” Attorney Garder exclaimed. “Why — what — It can’t be possible!”
“She telephoned us — such a peculiar message — and we hurried right over here,” Mrs. Crend said. “And we found her—”
“Try to be calm, Laura,” her husband advised.
“She telephoned me, too,” Garder said. “Killed herself? You saw her?”
“She — she was dead when we arrived,” Mrs. Crend explained. “The hall door was unlocked and open for about half a foot or so. She did not answer us when we rang, and so we hurried inside. Oh, Mr. Garder! My poor sister!”
Attorney Milton Garder was an experienced and methodical man. He dealt with cold facts. After the first shock, violent death was nothing horrible to him. And now he glanced at these two, noticed the state they were in, and took charge of things.
“Quiet!” he commanded. “Come!”
His first instinct was to guard his client’s interests, though his client had ceased to exist, to make certain about the facts of the affair and prevent a scandal if possible. He hurried along the hall, and the Crends followed, but stopped at the hall door. Attorney Garder went inside the apartment.
He passed through the lavishly-furnished living room and hurried to the door of the boudoir. It stood open. Attorney Garder looked inside and gasped.
Mrs. Lennek’s body was stretched across a divan. She was dressed in a becoming afternoon gown. Attorney Garder could see her face from where he stood in the doorway; it showed that she had died in agony.
On the floor beside the divan was a tumbler. Attorney Garder knelt and picked it up, examined it, sniffed at it, and then put it back exactly where it had been. The tumbler, he saw, had contained milk. It also had contained poison.
He stood up and glanced quickly around the room. Mrs. Lennek’s desk, which stood in a corner against the wall, was in disorder. Everything else seemed to be as usual.
Attorney Garder hurried back to the hall door and beckoned the Crends inside.
“This is an emergency where we must control our grief for a time,” he said, “in order to bring our minds to bear on the problem and serve the best interests of all. The coroner and the police will have to be notified, of course. Sit down, please, and I’ll telephone down to the office.”
The Crends sat down. Mrs. Crend began weeping softly. Her husband sat beside her, staring straight ahead, his face white and lines of horror in it. Attorney Garder was compelled to return to the boudoir of tragedy to use the telephone on the desk there. He was careful to touch nothing else.
Garder notified the clerk in the office below and then telephoned the coroner and police headquarters. And then he went back to the living room and sat down before the Crends.
“This is indeed terrible,” he said. “I cannot understand it at all. I saw Mrs. Lennek yesterday morning on business — she called at my office downtown — and at that time she was looking into the future, making certain plans about some of her property. She certainly did not act like a person about to commit suicide.”
“Something terrible must have happened,” Mrs. Crend replied. “Her telephone message to me was very peculiar. She — she said that she had called up just to say good-by, and that was all. I— I was rather afraid that she was going to elope with a certain man. I wanted to prevent that, so we hurried right over. I didn’t suppose, when she said good-by—”
“Calm yourself, Laura,” her husband begged.
“Let us all be calm,” said Attorney Garder. “We’ll get at the bottom of it when the coroner and police arrive.”
“The scandal!” Mrs. Crend said. “Is there no way—”
“My dear lady, I am handling the Lennek estate,” Attorney Garder said. “I knew the late Mr. Lennek well and admired him greatly. You maybe sure that I’ll do everything possible for the best. But in a case like this there are certain formalities that must be observed. Let us hope that nothing — er — highly unusual is uncovered. Let us keep quiet and wait until the officials arrive.”
The superintendent of the apartment house arrived at that moment. He seemed glad to find a man like Attorney Garder in charge of matters. He knew that Garder was a man of broad experience, and that there would be as little fuss as possible. A first-class apartment house or hotel does not like to advertise its tragedies.
The superintendent hurried down the stairs again, to lay in wait for the coroner and police and get them into the apartment Without attracting too much attention. They arrived within a few minutes, Attorney Garder’s telephone messages having had that effect.
Attorney Garder knew the assistant coroner who answered the call. He had a reputation as a physician, also. He entered the boudoir and began his work, while Garder returned to the living room and continued an intermittent conversation with the Crends.
Then the representative of the police arrived. He was Detective Sam Frake, a member of the homicide squad known for his excellent work in unraveling mysteries. He, too, knew Attorney Garder. He asked a few questions, glanced at the Crends, and then went into the boudoir after the coroner’s assistant.
“This is terrible — terrible!” Mrs. Crend was moaning. “If there is anything that can be done—”
“Nothing for the moment, my dear lady,” said Attorney Garder. “We must wait until this preliminary investigation is at an end. If the coroner decides that it is a case of suicide, they may look around for the motive, of course. And what the motive can be is more than I can think.”
“It must be something of which we know nothing,” Crend replied. “I saw her a couple of days ago, and she did not seem despondent at all then.”
“And she certainly was not despondent when I saw her yesterday,” Attorney Garder declared. ”She made another engagement with me, for day after to-morrow. She had decided to sell some of her property while the market was high.”