CHAPTER XIITHE BREATH OF DEATH
“Whois he?” asked Dennis, wide-eyed. “Who is this George Radley?”
“You remember, don’t you, Mac?” The inspector turned to the ex-roundsman. “Radley was a young chemist—”
“A chemist!” caroled McCarty and Dennis in unison. Then their mouths shut like traps and they stared at each other.
“What’s got into you two?” Inspector Druet demanded. “This Radley was accused, together with an accomplice, of sending poison to a mutual enemy, concealed in candy. An innocent member of the man’s household ate it and died, but the actual evidence against the accused was so weak that they could only be convicted of manslaughter after two disagreements and then the accomplice only got two or three years and Radley ten. He’ll have several more to serve yet, however, even allowing for good behavior and then, too, a guard was seriously injured in trying to prevent that crush-out, so he’s wanted bad. He could never have got as far as the city in those clothes!”
“He had others outside of ’em, either stole or slipped to him.” Dennis returned to the closet and produced a pair of dilapidated shoes, gray trousers and a long mackinaw, together with a soft Panama hat. “Only theshoes are ragged, you see; the rest is in pretty good condition and there’s an umbrella in a corner of the closet. He could have got past the watchman easy on a rainy night, especially if he said he was coming to see a maid, maybe, in one of the houses.—Still, that don’t account for his grabbing the Goddard kid, if ’twas him, and going through his pockets!”
“His clothes may be a find but we’ve not got himself yet. What if he’s hid under this roof now?” McCarty exclaimed. “He’d have no call to harm the Goddard lad unless Horace found out he was here and was going to give him away, but harm or no, if so he’s had no chance to escape—!”
“You’re right, Mac!” The inspector dropped the clothes he had been examining and started for the door. “We’ll smoke him out!”
But a painstaking search of the great house from attic to cellar failed to reveal any further trace of the refugee and they departed at last through the open window in the basement to round the corner into the court and come face to face with Bill Jennings.
“Mr. Parsons’ butler next door sent me,” the watchman explained. “He said somebody’d heard a noise in there and I’d better see about it. Nothing wrong I hope, inspector?”
Open curiosity rang in his tones but the official replied bruskly:
“Nothing. We’ll go over the other empty houses on the block later. It’s all right.”
“What’s this we’ve been hearing about a strange man who scared the Goddard lad in this very court not two weeks ago?” McCarty asked as they approached the sidewalk once more.
Bill Jennings looked uncomfortable.
“There was no strange man got between these gates while I was on!” he averred defensively. “It must have been some butler or houseman that works on the block, trying to play a joke on the little feller. It was a week ago Saturday that he raised the rumpus about it but there wasn’t any sign of the rough-looking kind of guy he described when Mr. Trafford and I looked, and we went over every foot of the courts.... There’s Mr. Orbit motioning.”
It was to the inspector and his deputies, however, that Orbit beckoned and when they had crossed to him he asked with grave concern:
“Is it true that Horace Goddard cannot be found? One of the maids from next door told Jean, and said that you had been notified, but I couldn’t believe it! Trafford came to my house yesterday afternoon, though, inquiring for him—but I forgot, McCarty and Riordan were present. Is it possible that the little boy hasn’t been seen since?”
“Not so far as we’ve been able to discover,” the inspector responded. “It’s a pretty bad business. If he was a normal, healthy, mischievous kid we’d be apt to think he ran away, but from all accounts he was sickly and timid, not the kind to strike out for himself.”
“Horace is very nervous and highly strung, with remarkable artistic possibilities,” Orbit observed thoughtfully. “I’m immensely interested in him and my friend Blaisdell is of the opinion that he’ll become a great painter some day if his people don’t kill his aspirations by lack of sympathy; like a sensitive plant he needs encouragement, nurturing.—But what can have happened to him? If he isn’t with friends or relatives the childmust have met with an accident! Has an alarm been sent out?”
“We’re trying every way to locate him. He used to run in and out of your house a lot, didn’t he? Did you ever hear him speak of any one he might have gone to now?” the inspector asked. “We know, of course, how disappointed he was when his father and mother wouldn’t let him go on a sketching tour with this Mr. Blaisdell you mention, but he seems to have got over it. Do you know if he had any boy friends his own age?”
Orbit shook his head.
“None. He is a solitary little chap, self-contained and retiring, and I don’t think he cares very much for the society of other boys. He would not have gone away and remained like this without a word if he was able to communicate with his family. It seems inexplicable! Goddard must be dreadfully cut up about it, to say nothing of the boy’s mother, and I feel badly myself! I should hate to think of any accident happening to him! I’m going in to see Goddard and ask if there is anything I can do.—Meanwhile, you’ve no news for me about Hughes’ strange death, have you? It is odd that two such mysterious, unrelated incidents should have occurred in less than a week, even though Hughes must have taken the poison either accidentally or through someone’s murderous intent, after he left the Mall that night. Haven’t you come upon the slightest indication?”
“We’re working on several promising ones.” The time-worn formula was repeated a trifle wearily. “Let you know when there’s anything to give out, Mr. Orbit.... Come on, Mac; it’s nearly noon.”
Orbit turned toward the Goddard house but the others had scarcely gone a half dozen steps in the opposite directionwhen again they were halted. This time it was by the pretty little French nurse and she drew the Bellamy baby closer, gazing at McCarty with wide, affrighted eyes as she voiced her question.
“Pardon, monsieur, but is it of a truth, that which I have heard? Must it be that the littlegarçonof that house there is lost?”
“That’s about the size of it, ma’am,” McCarty removed his reblocked derby with a flourish. “I don’t suppose you saw him playing around anywheres yesterday afternoon?”
“But no!” She caught her breath with a slight gasp. “All the night he has been depart, alors! It is terrible, that! He is sogentil, so good, the little Horace! He would not run away—is it that he have been stole’? Me, I have fear for the little Maude—”
She hugged her small charge tighter and the baby stared at them solemnly.
“There ain’t much danger of that!” McCarty laughed reassuringly. “I guess the lad will turn up all right. When did you see him last?”
“Yesterday morning, when he have passed with M’sieu Trafford. Oh, if he has been keednap’ we do not go beyond these gates!”
She nodded and led the child away slowly while Dennis remarked:
“Pretty and a lady, but did ever you hear the like of such lingo? No wonder them French have a fit when they talk; ’tis from trying to understand each other.”
McCarty darted a quick glance at the harassed frown on the inspector’s face, and then replied to his companion:
“She had it straight, though. Horace has ‘been depart’ all right, and if we don’t get him back soon there’llbe a bigger howl than ever from the chief!—Isn’t that what you’re thinking, sir?”
The inspector nodded gloomily.
“I’m going to the agents in charge of these houses and get the keys.” He indicated the two closed residences east of Mrs. Bellamy’s. “Try to get a line meanwhile on who slipped food to the man hiding over there and what became of him and meet me here in an hour.”
“It’s not much he’s wanting,” Dennis remarked, as the inspector left them abruptly and strode toward the gate. “Still, if we could trace what cellar them wine bottles came from that was stacked up on the shelf in that empty house—look! The ambassador’s limousine is going away.”
The impressive dark blue car was indeed moving slowly away from the curb in front of the Parsons house and the great front door closing. They caught another fleeting glimpse of the sallow-faced manservant and then McCarty exclaimed:
“Come on! I want a few words with the butler over there anyway, and maybe the old gentleman himself, and don’t be putting in your oar, Denny, and rocking the boat; I know what I’m after.”
Dennis followed in injured silence and they mounted the steps of the stately house and rang the bell. A lengthy pause ensued. McCarty was about to ring again when the door opened suddenly and the manservant whom they had seen a moment before stood confronting them.
He paid no heed to Dennis but his dull, sunken eyes fastened themselves on McCarty and as he stared his sallow cheeks seemed to whiten.
“Hello, Porter. You remember me, I see,” the lattersaid briskly. “Me and my friend here want to have a little talk with you.”
“My name is not Porter; it’s Roberts,” the man replied stiffly with an evident effort. “You’ve made a mistake.”
“Not me, my lad!” McCarty spoke with easy assurance. “Inspector Druet got you too, the other day, but he didn’t bother you then because we didn’t know as much as we do now.”
“By God, you’ll never frame me again!” The man shrank back and a harsh, grating note came into his low tones. “You haven’t got anything on me—!”
“Haven’t, hey? How about the neighbor you’ve had next door for the past week or so?” McCarty inquired while Dennis held his breath. “Look here, Porter, I suppose you have been pretty well hounded and I don’t want to be hard on you but I’m going to get the truth!”
“‘Neighbor!’” The pseudo-Roberts moistened his dry lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—!”
“Maybe Mr. Parsons does, then; we’ll see him.” McCarty made as though to push his way past the cowering figure and the man threw out his hands.
“For God’s sake don’t, just when he’s giving me the only square chance I’ve had!” It was more an agonized whisper than speech. “I’m Porter all right but he knows that! He knows I got railroaded and you bulls wouldn’t let me go straight afterwards; that’s why he took me in. I don’t know what you’re trying to hang on me now but you’re not going to drag him into it! What do you want of me?”
McCarty glanced down the long hall which seemed almost bare in its lofty austerity, in spite of the richness of the carved paneling and quaint old furniture.
“Take us some place where we can talk without anybody butting in,” McCarty suggested. “It’s for your own sake, man! If you’ll come clean—?”
“I’ve heard that before!” Porter shrugged, with a shadow of a dreary smile. “Come along back to my pantry if you want to, but why don’t you take me right downtown now and be done with it? If you’re out to frame me, cut all the bluff!”
“Did I ever?” demanded McCarty. “Did I ever try to send you or any other guy up unless I had the straight goods on them?”
“I guess not, Mac. I haven’t got anything against you but I’ve had a rough deal; what’s come now is just the luck of the game, I suppose.” He closed the pantry door carefully behind them and motioning to chairs he leaned back against the table, gripping its edge with his thin hands. “What do you want to know? I’ll come clean all right—about myself.”
McCarty noted the almost imperceptible pause and asked quickly:
“How long have you been out this time?”
“A year and a half. My lungs went back on me and I would have been a goner if I hadn’t got pardoned, but what good did it do me? Every time I got a job clerking in a drug store one of the Narcotic Squad came along with my record and I was kicked out. My record—God! And I wasn’t guilty! I never knew my boss was crooked and in with the dope ring, making me the scapegoat!” His voice had roughened again with a sort of savage earnestness. “I was about at the end of my rope but the—the man who’d had me pardoned was keeping his eye on me all the time and saw how hard I’d tried and—and so Mr. Parsons took me on here to giveme a breathing spell. Anything else—about me—you want to know?”
“Yes.” McCarty replied on a sudden inspiration. “You were tried with Radley, weren’t you, and convicted of sending that poisoned candy—?”
He paused and Porter shrugged again.
“What’s the comedy for? You got that from headquarters, and nobody’s making a secret of it. It was that old charge, the record of that first case that convicted me again and it helped convict Radley, too, for we were both of us innocent—but what’s the use of telling that to you now?”
“There’ll be a lot of use in telling us, for your own sake, what you had to do with the crush-out last month.”
“Nothing. I haven’t been outside these gates since I came in June.”
“Then you didn’t know anything about it till Radley showed up here a couple of weeks ago?”
“I don’t know anything about it now, except what I read in the papers.” Porter faced him squarely. “What do you mean about Radley showing up?”
“You didn’t hide him in that empty house next door and smuggle food and drinks, and a razor and clothes in to him, did you?” McCarty paused for a moment again, but Porter maintained a dogged silence and he went on: “Does Benjamin Parsons know of it? ’Twill be news to him to hear that after him taking you in and all, you’ve been making him accessory after a crush-out—!”
“He’s accessory to nothing!” Porter interrupted. “I know the law, for I have bitter reason to! He’s a fine old man and believes in giving everybody a fair chance, especially if they’ve been framed, but he’d do nothingagainst the law even if he thinks it’s in the wrong. You’ve no proof that Radley was here or that any one helped him to hide but I’m glad he made his getaway, glad! I hope to God he’s never caught to go back to that hell!”
“Even though you go, now?” McCarty demanded. “You’ve one chance to keep clear of it, Porter, and you’ll not be giving Radley away, either. We’re wise already that ’twas you helped him to hide and then make his getaway, but ’tis not Radley we’re after now except as the alarm has gone out to the whole Force. We’re on another lay entirely but we just want to find out when he beat it away from the Mall and how he got out. I never gave my word yet that I broke it, and I’m giving it now that ’twill not be from me nor Riordan either a hint will get out about your part in all this.”
“You mean you’re not here to frame me nor kid me into snitching on Radley?” A faint tremor of hope ran through his tones as he gazed searchingly into the honest, square-jawed face before him. “You’ve got a name for fair play, Mac, and you’re on to enough already to put me away again if you want to, so what I tell you can’t matter.—It won’t hurt George Radley either, as it happens.”
Dennis started violently and McCarty asked:
“Why can’t it? You don’t mean he’s croaked?”
“I mean I don’t know any more than you do when he beat it or how he passed the gates, and that’s the God’s truth!” Porter responded slowly, his gaunt, sallow face twitching. “I read about his escape in the papers as I told you and when the days passed and he wasn’t caughtI was happy thinking he had got clean away but I never dreamed of him turning up here! Late one afternoon, though,—never mind how long ago—I opened the side door to find him all but leaning against it, weak from hunger and thirst and fairly desperate. He’d got past the watchman during a rainstorm a night or two before to try to reach me, his old pal, and he’d been hiding in that empty house next door, without food or water, not daring to come openly and ask for me. When I didn’t show myself he made up his mind to beat it, but he found he couldn’t get out as easy as he’d got in, and he was near crazy!”
“That’ll be a week ago last Saturday.” McCarty nodded. “When you came on him he was just after grabbing a kid that lives on the block here and searching his pockets to see could he find if the lad had a key to the gates—!”
“Glory be!” Dennis ejaculated beneath his breath.
“Yes. He was half off his head, but he didn’t hurt the boy any, only scared him. I made him go back next door and lay low till the search was over, and after night-fall I took him some bread and meat and a bottle of rare old port from the cellar. It was stealing, and poor return for all the old gentleman has done for me, but George needed it bad, and I figured I owed most to him. He needed clothes too, but mine fitted him, and I didn’t have to steal money for him either, because the old gentleman pays me good and I’d been nowhere to spend it. The trouble was how to get him through the gates, for after the scare he’d given the boy both watchmen were leery of strangers and if he was held up and questioned I knew he’d go to pieces from the long strainhe’d been under, and it would be all up with him.” Porter reached for a silver jug of icewater which stood on the table beside him and drank deeply, then replaced it with a sigh of relief. “No one has keys except the families themselves and I’d no chance to borrow Miss Parsons’, of course, nor her niece, Miss Hester’s. The old gentleman carries his on a ring and sleeps with it under his pillow and though I tried twice to get it he woke up both times; I had a job of it to explain what I was doing in his room and I didn’t dare risk it again. George was getting wild with the waiting and worry, and took to prowling out at night in spite of all I could say; I was getting pretty desperate myself when all at once he’d gone, and that’s all I know.”
He straightened his narrow shoulders as though a load were lifted from them and McCarty rose.
“When did you see him last?”
“Sunday night late when I went to take him some food. I handed it in through the window and we talked for a minute, but I didn’t dare stay longer. George was almost ready to give himself up, for his nerve was gone and it was all I could do to persuade him to wait. We’d arranged that I was to go to him every other night—I couldn’t risk it oftener—so I didn’t miss him Monday. Last evening I got some rolls, a cold pheasant and a half-bottle of burgundy and waited under the window as long as I dared, but he didn’t come and finally I took down the loose iron bars and let myself in. There wasn’t the least sign of a light from his candle and he didn’t answer when I took a chance and called, so I left the food and came away, but I was awake all night worrying and towards morning I went back and got the stuff, which hadn’t been touched. I was afraidthe cook would miss the pheasant and it might be found and traced; I never thought about the wine bottles!”
“So he might have got away any time from Sunday night on?”
“That’s right. I’m giving it to you straight, Mac, and I knew when I saw you an hour ago that you’d be after me sooner or later, especially when Miss Parsons—the old gentleman’s sister, Miss Priscilla—heard a noise next door and told me to notify the watchman! I was afraid it was all up with us last week when Inspector Druet came, but it was about that valet from across the street who was poisoned and the inspector didn’t even let on he recognized me.”
“Do you know the kid that Radley tried to get a key off of?” McCarty ignored the observation.
“Only by sight. Red-haired, isn’t he, and lives next door to where that valet worked? I see him now and then going by on the other side of the street.”
“Have you seen him since he got that scare?”
“Oh, yes.” Porter smiled faintly in surprise. “Only a day or so ago. George didn’t mean to scare him even,—he wouldn’t harm a fly!—but the thought of those gates shutting him in as though he was back up the river almost drove him mad!”
“You’ve been here since June, you say, Porter? Did you know that valet who died?”
“No. I think I’ve seen him with the butler from the next house, but I don’t want to know any of them. I was glad enough to stay here and do a servant’s work myself till I could get my nerve back to go out and hunt up my own kind of a position again where the bulls wouldn’t keep moving me on.” He smiled again, but bitterly. “I guess there isn’t a chance of that now withyou on! I’m not sorry, though; I’d do it again for George! He was innocent, the same as me, and look what was done to him!”
“If I find you’ve come clean I’ll keep my word, Porter,” McCarty reiterated as he moved toward the door with Dennis in tow. “You may not know it but I’m not on the Force any longer, nor connected with headquarters except to mix in now and then for old times’ sake, and the inspector didn’t recognize you the other day; he kind of knew your face but he couldn’t place you. Riordan and me will just forget you laid eyes on Radley unless it comes to a showdown, and then we’ll do what we can for you.”
Cutting short the ex-convict’s broken thanks they took their departure, to find Inspector Druet pacing impatiently back and forth before the two closed houses opposite and Dennis’ comments on the interview just ended were necessarily curtailed.
“Did you get any dope from Parsons?” the inspector asked.
“We didn’t even see him,” McCarty parried. “I was getting a line on the servants; do you recall saying you’d seen one or two of them before? Have you thought where?”
“Lord, no! I’ve had enough else on my mind! I had an idea one of the housemaids and the page-boy who runs errands looked familiar, but there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about them.”
Dennis coughed and McCarty remarked hastily:
“I guess none of them knows what’s become of the man who has been hiding next door, nor anything about the Goddard lad and that’s all that matters right now, isn’t it, sir? Did you get the keys to these houses?”
“Yes, and explained again to that fool of a watchman, Jennings. I had time to look around pretty thoroughly outside them while I waited for you and I couldn’t find a window or door that had been tampered with. Let’s see what’s inside.”
One o’clock had come and gone and another hour passed before they emerged from the second of the two houses after a fruitless search. Dust and mold were all they had encountered in the huge, echoing, partially dismantled rooms and the footprints they themselves left behind them were the only recent signs of human presence.
Dennis blinked and drew in the fresh air deeply when they stood once more in the sunlight.
“’Tis like coming out of a tomb!” he averred. “What’s it to be now, inspector?”
“I’m going to Goddard and make him talk!” that official responded with a certain grimness which was eloquent. “Until he comes across with his suspicions as to who kidnapped the boy our hands are tied and every hour counts. You two had better get a bite to eat and meet me at his house later.”
Nothing loth, they accepted the hint. It was mid-afternoon before they approached the east gate of the Mall again, to find Jennings energetically engaged in driving away a swarthy vendor of toy balloons, whose basket freighted with globes of bright, crude color bobbing on slender sticks, resembled an uprooted garden patch of strange, grotesque blooms.
“They’re a pest, those peddlers!” he declared as he admitted them. “They’re not so bad, though, as the reporters that have been trying to get in since you left! Say, did you know Horace Goddard is lost—?”
“Sure we know it!” McCarty interrupted. “Didn’t Trafford tell you so himself yesterday afternoon?—Hurry, Denny!”
Leaving the watchman staring speechlessly, they quickened their pace toward the Goddard house and were passing the entrance door of Orbit’s when it was flung open and Ching Lee appeared.
For once the Chinaman’s wooden impassivity had deserted him. His slant-eyes were rolling wildly, his yellow face distorted and his queue streaked out behind him like a tail as he plunged down the steps and seized McCarty with an iron grip of long-nailed, tapering fingers.
“The nurse-baby!” he babbled, his singsong voice high and shrill. “The Flench maid of next-door baby! Come quick!”
“Lucette, do you mean? The Bellamy child’s nurse?” McCarty halted. “Stop chattering like a monkey and tell me where is she, and what’s the matter?”
“Lucette!” Ching Lee nodded vigorously and pointed in at the open windows of the conservatory. “She is the next! She has breathed the breath of death!”