CHAPTER IINUMBER FOUR
Atthe corner the two self-appointed investigators found a taxi and Dennis, for once taking the lead, insisted upon engaging it. McCarty had protested loudly against this excursion, but the recounting of the strange event at the waterfront had aroused all the sternly-repressed longing to be back in the game once more, and although he was bitterly resentful of the new order of things at headquarters since his day the fascination of the mystery itself had gripped him with irresistible force. Not for worlds would he have admitted it to his companion, however, and as they rattled eastward through the Park he grumbled:
“You must have taken leave of your senses entirely, Denny, and I’m no better, letting you drag me out again on a night like this to gawk through barred gates at a row of rich men’s houses! I’ve one satisfaction, though; ’twas you and not me, as you’ll kindly remember, that hired this robber taxi!”
Dennis grinned to himself in the darkness.
“You’re welcome to the ride, Mac!” Then his tone lowered seriously. “I’ve been thinking this thing over, and I must have been wrong on that blackmail notion; that the fellow was on the way to pay any, I mean, if he had only a matter of seventy dollars on him. I’m surprised at you, though, and even at Terry and Mike Taggart,that not one of the three of you thought to go back across and get the hat; it could not have sailed far, in spite of the hill there and the gutters running over. ’Tis not like you—”
“Damn the hat!” McCarty interrupted irascibly. “’Tis the man himself I’m thinking of; now if the cold, muddy rain-water in the gutter had anything to do with it—?”
He mumbled and lapsed into silence and after a discreet interval his companion observed in an aggrieved tone:
“Through more than muddy rain-water have I followed you on many a case you’ve dragged me into, but if the grand education you’ve been getting lately from those books has made you talk in riddles, you can keep the answers to yourself for all of me! By the same token, if that fellow was not running away from anybody or hurrying to meet them but was just chasing along like that through the storm, staggering and stopping and leaping forward again, he must have been out of his head entirely, and the asylum would have got him if the morgue hadn’t!”
“True for you, Denny; that’s what was in my mind just now,” McCarty replied with a contrite return to his habitual geniality. “Not about his being a lunatic, maybe, but delirious from sickness or suffering. When he fell, with his head hanging over the gutter and the cold water rushing over his face I was thinking it brought back his consciousness for that minute there at the end. You could see by the look in his eyes and the way he fought for breath that there was something he was trying his best to tell, something that filled him with more horror than the fear of death itself!”
“’Tis a lot to see in a man’s eye,” Dennis remarked in unusual skepticism. “Maybe he’d no notion of dying;he seems to have been a pretty healthy looking fellow, from what you tell me. If those books are getting you to read meanings in people’s faces that are not there you’d best be sticking to the newspapers!”
“’Tis small meaning anybody could read in yours, my lad!” the indignant student retorted. “Here we are and the gates are shut, just as I told you. What’s the next move? You started this, Denny, and it’s up to you!”
But it proved to be up to neither of them, for, as McCarty descended from the taxi before the great gates of wrought iron which spanned the side street, a tall figure emerged from the shadows and a well-known voice exclaimed in accents of satisfaction not untinged with amusement:
“There you are, Mac! I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Inspector!” McCarty gasped, gaping at his former superior. “How in the world did you know—?”
Inspector Druet laughed.
“How did I know you’d be on the scent with the trail fresh and the wind your way? Good evening, Riordan; it’s like old times to find you following Mac’s lead again.”
“’Tis Denny that’s leading this night,” averred McCarty, with a chuckle, as Dennis turned to pay the taxi driver. “In spite of the rain and all, he was possessed to come and have a look around here when I told him about the drunk that fell dead across the street from the station-house down by the waterfront!”
“The ‘drunk,’ eh?” Inspector Druet tapped a leather case which he carried. “I have the man’s hat here which you found in the gutter, and I needn’t ask if you saw the initials inside, though you said nothing to the boys at the house. When I found out you’d been on the scene, and got a line from them on the way you’d collected allthe dope on the case and then quietly faded away with a pathetic reference to rheumatism, I knew you would be on the job. Then your phone didn’t answer a little while ago and I was morally certain you had read that identification tag correctly and were on your way here, so I waited. It looks as though this was going to be bigger than it appeared at first.”
They had drawn under the comparative shelter of an overhanging cornice, and Dennis, who had turned to gaze reproachfully at McCarty when the hat was mentioned, asked with lively interest:
“Do you mean, Inspector, that the fellow didn’t just drop dead by accident? What was the initials? Who was he?”
“The initials are ‘B. P.’” The inspector spoke with added impressiveness. “I have a list of all the householders on this block; there are only a few, for you can see by the street-lamps that each place is several times the size of an ordinary city lot. The owner of Number Seven is Benjamin Parsons, and if this is his hat—?”
“But the tag on the key-ring said Number Four,” Dennis observed doubtfully as the inspector paused. “Somebody named ‘B. P.’ might live there too, sir.”
“Number Four is occupied by a bachelor alone, a Mr. Henry Orbit.” The inspector shook his head. “I don’t know how the keys of his house came to be in Parsons’ pocket, but that’s a detail. Here’s the private watchman now; come on.”
He moved out toward the gateway in the middle of the street but McCarty laid a detaining hand on his arm.
“Just one minute, Inspector. Well I know I’ve nothing to do with this case, if there is a case in it at all, but ’tis easier to change hats than houses, and if you stopby first at Number Four, and—and let me do the talking to whoever opens the door—?”
He hesitated and Inspector Druet flashed him a keen glance.
“What is it, Mac?” he demanded quickly. “Have you seen more than I have in this?”
“I’ve seen the corpse, sir,” McCarty returned evasively.
Along the enclosed street the solitary figure of the private watchman was advancing with quickened step. When he reached the gate the inspector spoke to him in a low but authoritative tone. The watchman uttered a startled exclamation and a brief colloquy ensued during which McCarty and Dennis gazed up the wide vista of the street beyond the high iron bars. In the glow of the lanterns which lighted the Mall the smooth pavement glistened like a sheet of glass under the dancing raindrops and the houses on either side, built of gleaming marble or the darker brownstone of an older period, looked like miniature palaces, with their vaguely outlined turrets and towers and overhanging balconies. Straight ahead loomed another gate, behind it the inky mass of foliage of the great park across the Avenue, untouched as yet by the season’s first frost.
“’Tis like a picture-book scene, even in the night!” Dennis remarked, and then he shook his head. “But it’s too restricted, entirely. For all its grandeur, the folks living in there will be having no more chance of keeping their private affairs one from the other than if ’twas a row of workman’s cottages out in the factory suburbs! ’Tis small mystery could last for long inside these gates!”
“I’d rather be outside them and free, than cooped up in there for all the millions these families have,” acquiesced McCarty. “The watchman’s opening up, though, and theinspector is beckoning. Will he be letting me have my way, I wonder?”
The great gates swung inward and the three passed in, the inspector leading and turning to the south sidewalk which was bordered by the houses bearing even numbers.
“Of course I know the servants belonging to every household on the block,” the gray-haired watchman was saying in a slightly lofty tone. “Mr. Orbit has none with the initials you mention, Inspector, and no house guests at present or I should have been notified. It’s my business, and the day man’s, to know everybody who comes and goes through the gates.”
“You see, Mac?” Dennis nudged his companion. “’Tis worse than a jail!”
But McCarty paid no heed. He was eyeing the house fronts as they passed with a gaze of critical absorption, giving quick glances at the occasional lighted windows of those across the way, but the latter were all discreetly curtained, and the first two houses on the south side were utterly dark. The third—Number Six—was a rococo affair of some pinkish stone, bristling with tiny pointed turrets and unexpected balconies. Here a brilliant light shone from the upper floors, but the next house—Number Four—although small in contrast to the mansions across the street, gave an impression of size in its stately lines of snowy marble, broken only by the windows with dark, graceful vines trailing from the boxes on each sill.
It appeared to be attached to the farther house by a conservatory of some sort, but there was no time to explore further, for the watchman had halted and Inspector Druet mounted the steps and rang the bell. McCarty followed with Dennis at his heels. As they paused, waiting, the soft but deeply resonant tones of an organ came to theirears from behind the windows to their right, from which emanated a subdued glow of light.
From the far end of the street behind them a faint gong sounded and with an exclamation of annoyance the watchman hurried off to open the gate on the park side for the entrance of a motor car. He had scarcely passed beyond earshot when the inspector whispered to McCarty:
“What’s the idea, Mac? Did you hear what the watchman said? ‘B. P.’ didn’t belong here, in spite of the tag on the key-ring.”
“No more he did, sir,” McCarty agreed, but there was no disappointment in his tone. “I just want a word with the one that opens the door.”
There was no sound of footsteps from within but as McCarty finished speaking the door opened. Silhouetted against the soft light was the figure of a man, before whom, for the moment, even McCarty’s ready tongue was silenced. Dennis choked. They were confronted by a man who, though taller than the average of his race, was unmistakably Mongolian and clad in the flowing robes of his native land. He bowed slightly but in a dignified fashion, and then, as the visitors still remained silent, he asked:
“What is it you desire, please?”
His voice was high and singsong but it bore no trace of an accent.
“We don’t want to disturb Mr. Orbit, if there’s been a mistake made, but a man who says he’s a servant here has met with a bit of an accident,” McCarty explained. “He’s kind of stout with a round, red face and a little bald spot on his head. Forty-five or nearer fifty years old, he might be. Can you tell us his name?”
He had edged closer to the side of the wide entrancedoor, so that, in continuing to face him, the Chinaman had been compelled to turn until the low light played across his countenance but it remained gravely inscrutable as he listened. And although there was a perceptible pause, when he did reply, the words followed each other without hesitation.
“It is Hughes, the valet. You desire to talk with Mr. Orbit? He is engaged but I will see if he can receive you. This way, sirs.”
He closed the door after them and led the way into the house. As he walked the long queue which depended from his head almost to his knees swayed with each step.
“A Chink!” Dennis whispered. “What is he, the laundress here?”
Once again his remark went unheeded for McCarty was staring about him. He had seen many wealthy homes in the past, but never had he entered an apartment of such unostentatious magnificence as this hall of Mr. Henry Orbit’s house. He could not know that he walked among almost priceless treasures, that the dim panels on the walls were Catalan tapestries of the fifteenth century, that the frescoed ceiling had known the brush of Raphael himself, and that upon the great carved chair, secretly removed from the Duomo long ago, had once rested the exhausted but dauntless frame of Savonarola. The ex-roundsman could only feel with some sixth sense, that he was in the presence of beauty and he trod as lightly as his clumping boots would permit on the ancient, deep-piled rug beneath his feet.
The Chinese butler conducted them to a spacious room at the left of the hall, bowed them to chairs and withdrew, closing the door behind him. From the room opposite the swelling notes of the organ rose, filling their ears witha thunder of harmony which made the impressionable Dennis catch his breath and instinctively bow his head.
“Come out of it, Denny! We’re not in church!” McCarty admonished, and then turned to the inspector. “You see, sir, that fellow who died down there by the wharves was wearing his own cheap shoes but the expensive hand-me-down clothes of another man not his own build, and who would that have been but his employer? He’d shaved too often and very close like a man who was constantly in service, a butler or a valet, and if he borrowed, without leave, cigars too good for the likes of his taste he might have borrowed a hat, without leave as well. It struck me the keys was his own, though, along with the little metal tag and that’s why I thought maybe we’d save time by stopping here first.”
“You were right, again!” Inspector Druet exclaimed heartily. “I was in such a hurry that I took too much for granted. We’ll see what Mr. Orbit can tell us about this man of his.”
But Mr. Orbit did not immediately appear, and as the last notes of the organ throbbed into silence, Dennis found his voice.
“Valet or no, what was any one from a grand house like this doing down in that tough precinct by the waterfront, and in all the storm? Answer me that! What did he die of, did the ambulance doctor know?”
The inspector shook his head.
“It wasn’t up to him to say; he just pronounced the man dead and now it’s the medical examiner’s job, but we’ll know in the morning, after the autopsy.... What have you found over there, Mac, anything interesting?”
The room into which the Chinese had ushered them wasa library, modern and luxurious yet monastic in tone, with tall-backed, cathedral chairs, refectory tables and benches and dried rushes covering the inlaid marble floor. A single huge log smoldered upon the hearth and books lined the wall space from floor to ceiling between the narrow, stained-glass windows. The light came from torches held in sconces and braziers suspended from massive chains.
McCarty had strolled over to a low row of open shelves where he stood with his back to his two companions. He seemed not to have heard the inspector’s query.
“It’s literature he’s took up now,” Dennis explained gloomily, “all along of that new school the commissioner’s opening at headquarters. This psycho-whatzis has gone to the head of him, and I misdoubt Mac’ll ever be the same man again!”
McCarty’s expression denoted symptoms of apoplexy at this slanderous betrayal, but before he turned he surreptitiously slipped into his inner breast pocket a pamphlet bound in pale blue paper which had fallen almost into his hands when he removed a larger, leather-covered volume. He replaced the latter and turned with dignity to approach the hearth once more.
“You’ll need to lose no sleep over me, Denny, and there’s more than me would not be hurting themselves by improving their minds!” he announced cuttingly. “The inspector’s here on a case of—of sudden death, not to listen to your opinion of my private affairs!”
There was an amused but affectionate softening of the inspector’s keen eyes as they glanced at his erstwhile subordinate. He opened his lips to speak when a pleasantly modulated voice from the doorway behind them fell upon their ears.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” it said. “I am Mr. Orbit.”
The three visitors turned to find a tall, slenderly erect man in dinner clothes regarding them with gravely inquiring eyes. He must have been well over fifty, but the lines in his strikingly distinguished face were those of strength, not age, his dark hair was only lightly powdered with gray at the temples and he bore himself with the air of a man at the apex of his prime.
As he advanced into the room the inspector stepped forward to meet him.
“Sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Orbit, but we will only detain you for a few minutes. I am Inspector Druet from Police Headquarters and these are two of my assistants. We want a little information about a certain man who carries a tag with this house address on his key-ring.”
Henry Orbit nodded slowly and the concern deepened upon his face as he waved them back to their chairs and seated himself in a highbacked one facing them.
“I know of no one who carries such a tag except my valet, Hughes. Is he in any trouble? Ching Lee tells me that, from your description, the man about whom you are inquiring is undoubtedly Hughes.”
“You don’t seem surprised,” the inspector observed bluntly. “Has this valet of yours been in trouble before?”
A shadow of regret more than annoyance crossed the face of their host and he shook his head.
“He has gotten into more than one scrape, although nothing, to my knowledge, of course, that would engage the attention of the police. I am afraid he is rather a scoundrel, but he has been with me for twenty-two yearsand I cannot believe him utterly reprehensible. Has he suggested to you that I would help him now?”
“The man I’m asking about is beyond any one’s help,” responded the official. “He is dead.”
“Dead!” the other repeated in a low, shocked tone, after a moment’s pause. “It seems incredible! Only a few hours ago I gave him permission to go out! What happened? Did some accident occur?”
“That’s what we want to find out,” Inspector Druet announced grimly. “There are several suspicious circumstances connected with his death. Do you know of any enemies he may have had?”
Orbit frowned slightly and his glance traveled in startled amazement to the faces of McCarty and Dennis and back again to his interrogator.
“‘Enemies?’” he repeated. “Surely there was no violence? I know nothing of Hughes’ personal affairs but I should not have fancied he had an active enemy in the world!”