CHAPTER VIIIGATES OF MYSTERY
Theyargued hotly all the way back to the New Queen’s Mall, Dennis convinced that his prediction was already verified and McCarty combating the idea from force of habit as much as from any other urge, although he felt that the indications were too vague as yet, the clues too tenuous, to be woven into a fabric of proof.
“What’s it that this Otto had a few words with him?” he demanded as they reached the west gate on the Avenue. “Ching Lee went further than that with a knife! Because Truda is working now in a house where a child died of the lockjaw, and Calabar bean is one of the cures they try for it, you’ve got it all fixed that Otto laid hold of some of it there, or Truda gave it to him, and he must needs have gone over the way and sprinkled enough of it on Hughes’ dinner, unbeknownst to any one, to kill him! ’Tis well you took to fire-fighting, Denny, instead of following me on the Force!”
“Is it so!” Dennis retorted. “I’m still on my job, let me remind you, though maybe ’tis well you resigned when you did, if you can’t see further than the end of your own nose, that you couldn’t even smell with last night! Who else on the block has been within a mile of a case of lockjaw, and for what else would that powdered bean be left lying around? Swede or Chink, a man’s a man, though you might pick up a knife or a blackthorn, whicheverwas handiest, to go for a bully you saw abusing a kid it would be in hot rage; ’twould take something bigger than that to make you sit down, cool and calm, and figure out how to poison him! But a jealous husband might, and didn’t Otto threaten to ‘fix’ Hughes, by the words out of Snape’s mouth? That Truda don’t suspicion a thing, but then she’d not know it if a powder factory took fire next door! ’Tis a crime of nature that such a grand-looking woman should be so dumb!”
“We’ve another kind of a crime on our hands, I’d remind you,” McCarty observed. “Where on earth is that Bill Jennings?”
He rang once more and Dennis pointed through the grill-work of the fence.
“There he is, clear at the other end of the block, letting another guy out of the east gate. They’ve walled themselves in fine, the folks that live here, but they could not shut out age, nor sickness, nor murder! Good-afternoon, sir!”
Immaculate in frock coat and tall silk hat, the elder of the two Sloanes, whom they had encountered on the previous evening, had swung briskly down the Avenue to their side. He appeared, for the moment, oblivious to Dennis’ salutation, as he fumbled with his gold pince-nez and stared down the vista of the enclosed street.
“Confound it! What’s the fellow mean—?” Then he drew himself up and turned to the couple near. “Oh, you’re the men from Headquarters! Still on that affair of Orbit’s valet?—I’ve forgotten my key again; such a bore!”
“There, the watchman’s seen us; he’s coming on the run.” McCarty nudged his companion and then addedto Gardner Sloane: “We’ve been talking to the other servants on the block, but we haven’t been to your house yet since you said only your butler and the trained nurse would be likely to have known Hughes.”
“Unless I’m mistaken that was Lindholm the nurse going out the other gate just now!” Sloane fumed. “Wretched impudence, his leaving my father like this without permission. It always gives him a bad turn to be left alone. But what’s all this to do about the valet’s death? Nothing actually suspicious about it, was there? Silly rot, having an investigation of this sort in the Mall!”
Bill Jennings pounded heavily up and admitted them at this juncture, preventing the necessity of a reply from McCarty, who was carefully avoiding Dennis’ stare of dismayed inquiry.
“Yes, sir, that was Otto Lindholm,” the watchman answered Sloane’s irascible query. “He remarked to me that he was called away sudden for a few days.”
“I am not interested in his remarks! He shall be dismissed for this!” Sloane strode off angrily, without taking further notice of the two who had followed him, and Dennis plucked McCarty’s sleeve.
“We’ve lost him!” he exclaimed disconsolately. “That wife of his may not have been so dumb, after all, if she’s ’phoned and put him wise!”
“Let be!” McCarty cautioned: “Bill, did Lindholm say where he was going? He must have been called away mighty quick, for we had a kind of a date with him.”
“He didn’t say, but he looked more glum than usual; seemed in a hurry, too.” Bill turned and then waited as they did not advance.
“Well, it’s no matter, anyway. We were to pick up the inspector but I guess he’s gone on downtown. We’ll be beating it ourselves, Denny.”
Outside the gates once more, Dennis observed:
“Likely the woman’s gone, too, and it’s near six. I’ll have to be getting back to the fire-house to report, but you’ll let me know if you locate them? No matter when or how he contrived to dose Hughes with that poison it must have been Lindholm, for his skipping out proves it! To think of them two dumb-bells, the man and the woman, being at the bottom of it!”
McCarty shook his head.
“’Twas not a crime of brawn, Denny, but of brains, and I’m thinking the one clever enough to plan it would be too farseeing to run away before he’d real reason. I’ll drop ’round to-morrow morning if there’s any news.”
On the west side of the park they separated, Dennis to take up his duty and McCarty to return to the Cochrane house. As the former had predicted, Truda Lindholm had departed hurriedly half an hour before, after a telephone conversation during which she had learned of serious illness in her own family. The same trim maid who opened the door at their first visit was McCarty’s informant and she couldn’t say from whom the message had come, but she added that Mrs. Lindholm seemed more distressed at leaving her patient than anxious over her own trouble. She had been there nearly a month, since just after Mrs. Cochrane’s little boy died, and had come well recommended from the West End registry for nurses; they had all liked her.
At the registry office McCarty obtained an address in the Bronx, only to learn from the Swedish couple living there that Mr. and Mrs. Lindholm had boarded withthem up to a month before, but had left, giving the Sloane house as a forwarding address.
He ate a solitary dinner and then returned to his rooms, to meditate disgustedly over the negative result of the day’s efforts. Hughes’ murder challenged his every instinct and habit of mind. If Ching Lee knew nothing of it, what impulse had taken him that morning to the scene of the crime’s consummation? Were Lindholm and his wife both stupid enough to have taken alarm at the first hint of investigation, if they were innocent, and so deserted their responsible positions? Had Snape really told all he knew?
McCarty chewed savagely on his unlighted cigar, as he paced back and forth. How would the bright lads in the new scientific school of criminal psychology down at headquarters get after the mystery? With a concrete example before him, would those books he had vainly pored over give him a hint now? Dubiously he resurrected his newly-acquired collection from the depths of his closet and then paused at sight of the pale blue covered pamphlet protruding from the pocket of the coat hanging above. It was the book he had appropriated from Orbit’s library the night before, because it seemed to have something about psychology in it that a fellow could get through his head. Now he sat himself down doggedly to study it, with his own library scattered about him.
It was dawn before he went to bed at last, with the unaltered conviction that this new school was not for him and that if he were to succeed at all it must be by the wits God gave him, which, he had once told Dennis, were his only science.
Yet Sunday passed and Monday; Hughes was laid torest in the grave provided for him by his late employer, and still there was no inkling of his murderer’s identity. Ching Lee blandly declared he had been to Chinatown on the morning after the tragedy and offered to produce numerous relations to prove it. No slightest trace could be found of the Lindholms; and Snape kept sedulously to the Bellamy house, affording Dennis no opportunity to foster an acquaintance. The newspapers were already criticizing the police department, Inspector Druet smarted under the recriminations from higher up, and Dennis lugubriously predicted defeat.
“The truth of it will never come out, Mac, with them Lindholms disappearing and all,” he remarked on Tuesday afternoon, as they walked slowly down the Mall toward Orbit’s house. “Maybe if we could get a line on Hughes’ actions from the time he left here and the way he took down to where he died—?”
“I’ve taken a dozen different routes trying to get trace of somebody who might have noticed him when he first took sick to see did he give a hint to them of what he was wanting to say when the end came, but ’tis no matter of use,” McCarty interrupted gloomily. “You said the first night we set foot in here that ’twould be small mystery could last for long between these two gates and yet it’s within a space where you could swing a cat that the answer lies; that’s what gets my goat! I want to have another talk with Orbit. He’s late getting in his coal, ain’t he?”
The roar of coal sliding down a chute from a huge truck beside the door almost drowned his comment, but Dennis nodded.
“Look at them two guys working like blazes shoving it down the hole quicker, and Jean waiting with the hoseto clean the sidewalk after.” He pointed. “Orbit must be going to give some sort of a shindy, for isn’t that a red carpet and an awning piled up alongside the door? You’ll be out of luck if you’re wanting to interview him again this afternoon.”
“No. There he is up in the window of his own private sitting-room, so don’t be pointing, Denny! He’s doing something to the flowers.”
By daylight the front of the classic white marble house was a blaze of gorgeous color from the window boxes on each sill filled with blooms of vivid but perfectly blended hue, with graceful vines trailing in slender, artfully trained tendrils down over the gleaming walls.
In one of the windows on the second floor the tall figure of Henry Orbit appeared, the delicate touch of silver in his dark hair plainly visible as he bent forward, and when he caught sight of the two below he inclined his head in dignified but amicable greeting.
“We’ll go to him now?” Denny asked.
“After we stroll down to the other gate and back. Did it strike you that there’s no sign of Bill Jennings on the block?” At the insistence of the inspector they had been temporarily provided with a key to the Mall, rendering them independent of the offices of either day or night watchman, but until now they had invariably encountered one or the other of these guardians.
“Maybe he’s having a bit of a chat with a maid in one of the houses,” Dennis suggested helpfully. “There’s small blame to him, for it must be mortal tiresome—”
“It looks to me as if the gate was open.” McCarty insensibly quickened his steps. “Come on, I want to see.”
The gate was swinging slightly ajar, but the passingpedestrians on Madison Avenue gave it no heed and the delinquent watchman was nowhere in evidence.
“Let’s shut it.” Dennis turned to his companion. “Bill’s a good fellow and there’s no need of getting him into trouble with the lords of creation like that Sloane if he’s just stepped out for a bit. He’ll have his own key to let himself in and these gates are damn’ foolishness, anyway.”
“He’s breaking a rule if not a law, Denny, and we’ve no call to be condoning it for him.” McCarty’s years of discipline returned to him. “We’ll be minding our own business, and get back to Orbit’s now.”
“Bill can’t have gone far, knowing that coal-truck will have to be let out in a few minutes,” Dennis averred. “’Tis almost empty now and I’ll bet those guys got a tip from Orbit, to be working that fast! He’s moved to the other window now.”
Ching Lee admitted them, impassive as ever. Their call was evidently anticipated, for he conducted them at once up to the private study. Orbit turned from the window with an inquiring glance and they saw that he held in his hand an oddly-shaped, silver-mounted sprayer.
“Have you any news for me?” he asked quickly.
“Nothing definite yet. But don’t let us bother you, Mr. Orbit; I just wanted to ask you a question or two.”
“Glad to tell you anything, of course. I am just spraying the flowers to rid them of any particles of coal dust which may have floated up.” Orbit turned again to the window as he spoke. “It is a pity that such a hideous utilitarian necessity should mar their perfection, but the truck is going now.”
The rumble of the heavy vehicle arose from below as he spoke. Stepping to the other window, McCarty saw thatthe familiar figure of Bill Jennings was waiting once more by the eastern gate which he had thrown wide.
“You’re having a party later, Mr. Orbit?”
“A musicale. Giambattista is to appear and my guests will arrive in an hour. The unfortunate delay in putting in the coal—but what did you wish to ask me? I would have recalled the invitations if I could for I am in little mood for a function; the mystery surrounding the death of poor Hughes is more disturbing than anything I have known for years and I am waiting anxiously for it to be solved.”
He came forward again, replacing the sprayer in its case, and seated himself in the chair beside his writing table.
“Well, it was quite a bit of money Hughes left for a fellow that threw it around like he did and the inspector dropped a hint of it to the newspaper boys so if anybody thought they could fake a claim they’d show themselves. He wants to know if you’ve been approached?”
Dennis stared in amazement at this unexpected departure but Orbit shook his head.
“I have heard nothing from any claimant in this country or his own, but I have instructed my attorneys to cable to Cornwall, not only for Hughes’ heirs but to ascertain if any close relatives of his are in actual want. I feel that it is the least I can do after twenty years of efficient service.”
“You’ve not replaced him yet?”
Orbit shrugged.
“That would be well-nigh impossible to do. A new man is coming in a few days, highly recommended by a friend, but he will not be another Hughes.... What is it, Ching Lee?”
He had taken a cigarette from an ivory box on the table and he paused with it midway to his lips as the butler appeared in the doorway.
“The tutor, Mr. Trafford, sir. He desires to know if Master Horace is here.”
“‘Here?’” Orbit raised his eyebrows. “No. I haven’t seen the little chap since he passed this morning with Mr. Trafford. You might ask Fu Moy or Jean if they have seen him.”
“Very good, sir.”
Ching Lee inclined his head and departed, as silently as he had come. Orbit lighted his cigarette and leaned back.
“You’ve no definite clue yet, you say? None of Hughes’ associates, whoever they may have been, can suggest any reason for such a purposeless crime as this appears?”
“We’re looking for more of his associates, Mr. Orbit. The gentlemen who’ve visited you here—the most of them brought their own valets with them, didn’t they?”
“Naturally.” Orbit nodded and blew a smoke ring thoughtfully into the air.
“Hughes may have grown thick with some of them, though you’d not be likely to know of it. I’d like a list as near as you can remember of the gentlemen who have stayed here during the past year, say, so we can look up their servants.”
“I can tell you offhand of several of my guests but it will take more time than I can spare this afternoon to give you a complete list, and frankly, it is distasteful to me to have my friends annoyed.” Orbit’s tone was pleasant but firm. “The latest to visit me, whom I can recall, are Professor Harrowden, from the Smithsonian Institute,Sir Philip Devereux and Conan Fairclough of London, Sabatiano Maura, Yareslow Gazdik—”
“Mr. Orbit, would you write the last two?” McCarty interrupted earnestly. “Where might Professor Harrowden be found?”
“In South America just now, leading an expedition up the Amazon.” Orbit laid his cigarette in a tray of curiously hammered red gold and reached obligingly for a pen. “Fairclough’s off for Africa again, I believe, and Gazdik is playing a series of concerts at Biarritz.”
“Are the others at the ends of the earth, too?” The question was bland, but McCarty’s smile was a trifle grim.
“Oh, no!” Orbit smiled also in understanding, as he rose and offered the sheet of paper. “Sir Philip is on his way here from the West to visit me again for a few days and Maura’s portrait exhibition closes in Philadelphia before the end of the month when he, too, will return before sailing again for Madrid. I’ll send the complete list to headquarters for you, but I’m afraid you won’t find that their menservants learned much of Hughes’ affairs in the brief time they were here.”
McCarty thanked him and they took their departure, encountering Ching Lee in the hall below who showed them out in silence.
“’Tis beyond me what you got out of that interview,” Dennis declared. “Stalling, is what I’d have called it!”
“The two of us!” McCarty agreed with a chuckle. “Him as well as me. He’ll not be dragging his friends into this business if he can help it!... Who’s the lanky, worried-looking guy talking to Bill?”
Halfway down the block, a tall, thin, bespectacledyoung man was gesticulating nervously as he confronted the watchman whose vehement shakes of the head denoted protestation. While they watched, the young man turned abruptly and made for the Goddard house. Bill advanced slowly toward them.
“Have you fellows seen the Goddard boy?” he asked. “He’s the red-headed kid you saw me let in the first day you came. That was his private teacher who’s been looking for him for an hour but he didn’t go out either of the gates.”
“Maybe he did awhile back when that one was left open,” McCarty suggested dryly.
“Good Lord, did you know that!” Bill gasped. “If you let on it’ll cost me my job, and I only stepped ’round the corner for a smoke! The kid’s all right, but they treat him like a baby. Did you find out yet who killed Hughes?”
“We’re waiting for news every minute,” McCarty assured him gravely as they reached the western gate. “I shouldn’t wonder if it came to-night.”
“Now what in the world did you give him that bunk for?” demanded Dennis, when they had left the Mall safely behind them.
“I said ‘news,’ but not of what kind, Denny,” replied his companion with dignity. “You’re not on duty till morning?”
“No, I was thinking I’d drop in at Molly’s, now the kid has got over the measles.”
“Well, come to my rooms when you leave your sister’s,” McCarty invited. “I’ve accepted a bribe from one of my Homevale tenants, who’s law-breaking in his cellar, and if you’re not afraid of being poisoned like Hughes——?”
“I’ll be there!” Dennis promised with alacrity.
He was as good as his word but when he arrived no refreshment awaited him. Instead, McCarty turned from the telephone with a glint of latent excitement in his blue eyes and announced:
“The news has come, Denny. Horace Goddard has been kidnapped!”