CHAPTER XIVTHE BLUE BALLOON
Orbittold of the afternoon’s tragic experience again in detail for the inspector’s benefit and McCarty and Dennis listened carefully, but it differed in no way from his first description. At its conclusion the medical examiner’s assistant was announced. The inspector descended with Orbit but McCarty and his colleague discreetly effaced themselves.
“We’re leaving just when it’s getting good!” Dennis sighed with morbid relish as they went down the steps and out into the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. “I’d like to have had a good look by ourselves around that conservatory! That doctor may be all right for the fashionable, expensive ailments of the crowd around this neighborhood, but I’ve been fighting fires too long not to know what asphyxiation means and ’twas not that killed the poor young thing in that great vault of a room with the windows open wide behind her!—How the devil do you suppose she did come to die, Mac?”
“I’m past guessing!” McCarty confessed. “’Tis the worst case since ever I went on the Force, and we’re up against the cleverest murdering wretch that’s been loosed on the world! You’ll mind I told you once that brains and not brawn was back of it all? Brains it is, with the genius of them twisted and gone wrong, and a knowledge of poisons and such that means the learning of a lifetime!We’ll slip around to the back of the house and wait till the medical lad from headquarters has gone. I’m thinking there’s more besides us would like a minute or two in that conservatory!”
“Why?” Dennis looked startled. “Is something hid there, do you mean? How could it be, with the servants around all the time and Orbit right there in the room? ’Tis the first murder ever I heard of that could be pulled off with a man playing the organ not twenty feet away and a little child running about in the midst of it and neither of them the wiser! There’s the baby now!”
They had reached the rear court and in the tradesmen’s entrance of the Bellamy house next door a buxom housemaid appeared with little Maude in her arms. She stood eyeing them in undisguised curiosity and interest and McCarty lifted his hat, approaching her with a bland smile.
“Maudie’s after having a new nurse, I see!” he began ingratiatingly. “’Tis a pity Lucette took sick back there in Mr. Orbit’s—”
“How is she?” the woman interrupted. “What happened to her? I know who you are; you’re from the police trying to find out who killed the valet from in there.”
McCarty acknowledged the recognition with a bow as graceful as his girth permitted.
“You’ve got us right. We just happened to be on hand to-day when Lucette got sick; she’d brought the baby in to hear Mr. Orbit play and he told Jean to bring her back home while the doctor was coming. I guess that French girl’s pretty bad but they didn’t tell us what was the matter with her.”
“Lucette!” The child had caught a familiar name.“Maudie wants Lucette!—Wants to hear mans play adain!”
She struggled to free herself and the woman stooped and set her on her feet but kept a careful grip on the fluffy skirts.
“She’s a handful!” Her tone was exasperated. “It was all I could do to get her quiet and now she’s started hollering again! Lucette’s got a wonderful knack with her, and patience too, and Maudie’s took a great fancy to her, considering the little while she’s been here. She’s a nice girl and I can’t think what’s ailing her, for she was all right when she started out with the baby for a walk this afternoon.”
“Want to walknow!” Maudie announced making an abortive dive forward. “Want to go to Lucette.”
“Hello, there!” McCarty held out a stubby forefinger and Maudie looked up at him for a moment, then shyly clasped her chubby hand about it. “What happened to your pretty balloon?”
“‘Balloon?’” Her other hand went to her mouth and she sucked her thumb reflectively.
“Sure,” McCarty urged encouragingly while Dennis stared at him in surprise. “The grand blue balloon you had. What’s become of it? Did you break it?”
“She had no balloon—,” the woman began, but Maudie was of another mind.
“Didhave!” she contradicted flatly. “Lucette buyed it.”
“Off of a wop—I mean, a man—with a big basket full of them down by the gate?” McCarty asked. “A big basket with a lot of balloons, red and blue and purple ones?”
Maudie nodded.
“Big bastik!” she affirmed. “Lucette buyed balloon an’ I tooked it into the man’s house where he made the music.”
She was evidently trying hard to remember and McCarty waited but the effort proving vain he prompted:
“You broke the balloon while the man was making the music, didn’t you?—When you got down off Lucette’s lap to play around, didn’t you break the pretty balloon?”
“Didn’t bwoke it!” Maudie shook her curls decidedly. “Dave it to Lucette.”
“Whilst the man was making the music?” McCarty persisted.
“No. Lucette tooked it when we went into the man’s house, where the garden is an’ the fing that makes the music.—Want my balloon!”
The corners of the rosebud mouth drooped pitifully and a premonitory moisture dimmed her eyes.
“What did Lucette do with it, do you know?”
The question was beyond Maudie, however, and she could only reiterate:
“Want Lucette! Want my balloon!”
“Did Lucette have many friends here in this country, do you think?” McCarty gave it up at last and addressed the housemaid, who fortunately did not note that he voiced his query in the past tense.
“No, she hasn’t. She’s got plenty of followers, if that’s what you mean, but she’s real sensible for such a young thing and don’t bother with them. She would not have gone in Mr. Orbit’s house if that Hughes had been alive, though; she hated the sight of him and small blame to her!”
McCarty chuckled.
“He was a gay lad, from all accounts! But I guess there are others that Lucette hates too, eh? She’s kind of afraid of somebody, isn’t she?”
“Not that I know of!” The woman tossed her head as she caught up the protesting Maudie once more. “I’ve no call to be talking about her to a stranger, anyway! Get along with your nonsense!”
McCarty laughed again good-naturedly.
“A bit of gossip does no harm! But we’ve work to do, Denny and me. Good-by, Maudie!”
“By-by!” that young person responded graciously, and the two departed for the Orbit house.
“What for were you asking the kid about the balloon?” Dennis asked, when they were out of earshot of the woman who still stood in the door watching them. “I saw none anywhere near the girl’s body! How did you know she’d bought one for the child?”
“What would that wop have been hanging around the gate for, if he’d not sold one already in here and hoped to get rid of more?” McCarty countered. “Who else would be wanting balloons when there’s no other kid on the block since the Burminster girl’s not back from the country and Horace Goddard’s gone?”
“‘Gone,’ it is!” Dennis’ voice lowered fearfully. “I feel it in my bones, Mac, that the boy will never turn up alive!—There goes the car with the medical examiner’s assistant. They’ll be sending now for the body and then ’twill be all over the neighborhood!—Who in the devil is back of it all?”
“Who’ll be the next one marked for death or disappearance?” retorted McCarty. “’Tis that has me worried now, for the hell-hound is working faster and faster as if the killing fever was getting the best of him. By thatsame token, that’s my one hope; that ’twill get the best of his shrewdness and cunning, and he’ll give himself away! That’s the question now, Denny; who’ll be the next?”
They reëntered the Orbit house, by way of the tradesmen’s entrance, to find that André the cook had returned and was visibly wrought up over the fate of his countrywoman. His hands trembled as he shelled chestnuts for a glacé and dire threats issued in a choked monotone from beneath the fiercely bristling mustache.
“That Hughes should have been taken, perhaps it was the hand of fate or le bon Dieu, for he was of use to no one in the world except m’sieu, and a perfect valet is easily found, especially among the French, but that the little Horace should be made to disappear and now Lucette the beautiful one is kill’—it shall be for the revenge!”
“You’re right, it shall!” McCarty returned grimly. “André, do you know the Parsons’ cook across the street?”
“It is a she!” André looked up with a shrug of unutterable contempt. “A woman big like a brigadier with three moles upon her cheek! How should she know the art of the cuisine?—But what would you? They are of the old bourgeoisie, these Parsons. I am not acquaint’ with the Amazon of the three moles!”
“Did ever you notice the eyes of her?” McCarty asked suddenly. “Do they be looking two ways at once?”
“But yes!” André stared. “It is as though she would see behind of her. Has she, then, tell to you something of value to your search?”
“She’d have to see more than just behind her to do that, André!”
They left him still muttering and passed through the pantries and down the hall toward the front, but McCartydrew Dennis hastily back as the doorbell sounded vociferously.
“That’ll be the ambulance to take the body to the morgue for the autopsy,” he whispered. “The medical examiner’s assistant must have ’phoned for it before he left, that it’s here so quick. We’ll just be laying low till it’s gone.”
“And we’ve no chance for another look at the corpse!” Dennis mourned.
“What for? ’Twould help us none and ’tis not from what’s already happened we’ll find out the truth, but from what’s maybe coming! It’s as well to have the poor thing’s body out of the way.”
In silence, then, they listened to the heavy tramp of feet, but when the front door had closed once more McCarty beckoned to his companion and started for the conservatory. Its door stood wide, the windows had been flung open again and a slight breeze which had sprung up stirred and rustled the leaves of the palms, but nowhere did there remain any sign of the tragedy so recently enacted.
Walking over to the organ McCarty scrutinized it critically and then seating himself on the stool before it with his back to the instrument and hands outspread on his knees, he regarded the marble bench on which Lucette had met her death while Dennis shifted from foot to foot watching him. All at once, with a grunt, he doubled forward and appeared to be peering at the space beneath the bench.
“Nothing’s under there.” Dennis’ eyes had followed the direction of his gaze. “The floor’s bare and clean as the palm of your hand. What more is there here for us to see?”
“Not a thing, now,” McCarty replied. Nevertheless he crossed to the windows and examined the sills before leading the way from the room.
In the hall they met Orbit. There were deep lines graven on his face by the shock and strain of the afternoon’s horror and he was holding himself in such deep repression that only his eyes betrayed his emotion, glowing darkly like live coals in an ashen pallor.
“It is—all over?” he asked in a hushed tone. “Jean tells me the body has been removed and the conservatory thrown open again. I would gladly close it forever, I feel that I can never touch the organ, but I suppose that is morbid. Whatever mysterious, horrible thing came to destroy that girl we can be thankful that the baby escaped! Your inspector is quite beyond his depth, I am afraid, but have you and Riordan no clue?”
“Did the medical examiner’s assistant say it was poison gas did it, the same as the doctor?” McCarty evaded the question.
“He didn’t express an opinion while I was there, but your inspector went away with him, perhaps for some data that may reveal the actual cause of poor Lucette’s death. With all respect to Doctor Allonby I cannot convince myself that the girl was gassed; the sheer impossibility of it under the circumstances can’t be overcome in my mind!—But don’t let me keep you, unless, of course, there are some questions you wish to ask me?”
“Not now,” McCarty shook his head. “We’ll be back later, likely. You’ve my own ’phone number in case anything turns up?”
Orbit nodded and himself showed them out the front door. Bill Jennings met them as they approached theeast gate and launched into excited queries concerning the murder but McCarty cut him short.
“You know as much about it as we do, ourselves,” he asserted. “The girl died sudden, sitting in the conservatory with the child playing around her feet and not even the doctor’s sure what took her.—Bill, do you mind that balloon peddler you chased away from the gate when we were coming in? Did you ever see him hanging about before?”
“Many a time,” returned the watchman promptly. “Balloons are a new line with him; it used to be peanuts and before that little plaster images. Tony, his name is,—he knows this boy coming now, that delivers the evening papers for the whole Mall. Is there anything wrong about him? He ain’t ever been inside the gates while I was on!”
“Lord, no!” McCarty replied hastily. “I thought he looked kind of like a dago I used to know myself.... Don’t let any reporters in, Bill, until we get back.”
He hurried through the gate, dragging Dennis after him, and around the corner, where he came to a halt.
“I want a word with that paper-boy,” he explained. “Happen he’ll give us a line on this Tony; we’ll collar him as he goes back.”
“Balloons again!” Dennis exclaimed in disgust. “Well I know you’ll not talk till your own good time but ’tis in your mind that a balloon had something to do with that girl’s death! I’d better be getting back to the engine house, laying up some good sleep against to-morrow, for it’s small use I’ll be while you keep me in the dark!”
“I’m in the dark myself, Denny,” McCarty confessed in contrition. “’Tis only a wild guess on my part, but I’ve a busted toy balloon in my pocket that I picked upfrom the floor of that conservatory right foreninst Lucette’s feet after the doctor had gone. I don’t know has it anything to do with the case but ’twas the gas that balloons are sometimes filled with that put me in mind of it. I broke the stick off it and threw it under the bench and when we went back just now it was gone.”
Dennis’ jaw dropped.
“But how in the world could gas, poisoned or no, be put into it—?” he began. “I never heard tell of the like—!”
“Wisht! The lad’s coming now!” McCarty cautioned, then stepped forward. “Hey, just a minute, sonny! Where’ll I find your friend Tony, him that sells toy balloons? I saw him around here this afternoon and I want to get a dozen or so off him for an entertainment. Bill Jennings, the watchman there at the Mall, said you could tell me.”
The boy, an olive-skinned lad with soft, dark eyes and a shy, ingratiating smile, pushed his cap farther back on his curly black hair.
“Tony Primavera?” he nodded. “He ought ter be t’roo bus’ness fer de day now but youse can find him over where he lives wid Joe de ice-man, in a basement on Thoid Avenyer near Eightieth. He’ll have his stock dere wid him, too!”
Thanking their informant they started east to the avenue indicated, and up along that teeming thoroughfare to Eightieth Street where they readily found the steep basement stairs with the sign outside that orders for coal and ice would be taken below.
With Dennis close behind McCarty descended to the dark half-cellar, lighted dimly by a single flaring gas-jet. Besides the table and broken backed chairs, two cotscovered with soiled blankets and a stove on which a pot bubbled and gave forth a strong aroma of garlic denoted that the apartment served for living as well as business purposes, but their eyes were caught primarily by the huge basket in the corner bristling with toy balloons so that it seemed a miracle it was not lifted from the floor by its aerial freight.
“Are they the same he had with him this afternoon?” asked Dennis.
“If they are he’s not sold many,” responded McCarty. “Where’s he gone, I wonder? ’Tis a grand sight we’ll be, trailing them through the streets across town, but I’m going to find out what’s inside of every last one of them this night!”
Dennis betrayed acute symptoms of alarm.
“What if we find what we’re looking for and the two of us keel over?” he demanded. “If you’ll listen to me for once, Mac, we’ll take them up to the Park in the fine fresh air and bu’st them with rocks—thrown! I’m not saying we’ve done such a hell of a lot so far in this investigation but we’d do less laid out cold and stiff!”
“Well do the spell-binders—of the losing party—tell us the town is going to the devil when we depend on the likes of you, that’s afraid of a child’s toy, to protect us if we drop a cigarette or coax the stove along with a bit of kerosene!” retorted McCarty, adding with naïve inconsistency: “That wop ain’t carting poison gas around with him in ten-cent balloons, but I’m going to be sure, anyhow.”
A clatter on the steps interrupted the debate and the swarthy vendor of the afternoon appeared with a round, porous loaf and a pale, bulbous cheese unwrapped beneath his arm.
“Joe’s out.” He jerked his thumb toward the table. “Write da ord’ on da slate an’ bime-by he bring it.”
“’Tis not coal nor ice we want, Tony, but some of your balloons, a lot of them,” McCarty replied. “You know the kid that delivers the papers over at the New Queen’s Mall? He told us where to find you, for they’re giving a child’s party where we work and we’ve got to have the balloons right away.”
“How many?” Tony deposited the bread and cheese on the table with a thump and proceeded eagerly to business. “Fine-a balloon, only fifteen-a cent—!”
“A dime was what you were asking this afternoon and a dime you’ll get now!” McCarty announced with decision. “How many have you there?”
The Italian shrugged philosophically and counted on his grimy fingers.
“Twenta-two.” He looked up with a grimace. “Bad-a biz to-day!”
“We’ll take the lot,” declared his customer. “Tie the stems of them together in two bunches if you can. Here’s your money.”
The bargain was soon concluded and they sallied forth with their burden, but it excited so much comment, chiefly of a humorous nature, that McCarty himself was glad to subside in the depths of a taxi encountered on a side-street.
“Don’t sit all over me!” he warned his companion irritably as they started anew. “You’ll be bu’sting the damn things before we get home! Is it grinning the chauffeur is, the blockhead?”
“’Tis two lunatics he thinks he’s driving!” Dennis averred gloomily. “He’d grin with the other side of his mouth if he knew he was carrying a load of sudden death,maybe!—I’ll thank you to move over yourself, Timothy McCarty, and not be poking them gas-bags in my face!”
Thereafter conversation languished until they drew up before the door of McCarty’s rooms. Monsieur Girard, the dealer in antiques, came to the door of his shop and raised his withered hands heaven-ward at this latest demonstration of his neighbor’s eccentricity, but McCarty vouchsafed him only a curt nod and then followed Dennis, who was gingerly ascending the stairs, guarding his cargo with almost maternal solicitude.
In the living-room he deposited it in the middle of the floor and opened the windows wide before turning on the light. The balloons rose slowly ceilingward in a variegated cluster and he made a wild dive to secure them.
“Tie your bunch to the arm of the chair,” McCarty directed. “We’ll start with mine. Hold them till I get out my pen-knife and jab it into one.”
Dennis shut his eyes tightly and holding his breath extended his long arm until the joints cracked but a sharp pop like the shot of a miniature revolver made him gasp, forgetting his caution. He opened his eyes to behold one of the balloons hanging, a mere deflated wisp, at the end of its stick.
“Nothing but plain air,” McCarty commented. “’Tis not gassed you are, is it, Denny?”
“Not yet,” replied Dennis with a palpable reservation. “You’ve twenty-one left, though!”
“We’ll make short work of them!” McCarty jabbed a second balloon with his knife and the ensuing report was productive of a like harmless result.
Thereafter the air was for a space filled with a rapid succession of small detonations. When it was over andnot a balloon was left intact Dennis’ apprehension gave place to disgust.
“’Tis in our second childhood we are!” he declared. “Whatever put it into your head that the toy balloon had anything to do with the girl’s death——!”
But McCarty was not listening. He had drawn from his pocket the shrivelled shred of rubber on its fragment of stick and was smoothing it out thoughtfully between his fingers. All at once he straightened.
“Denny, that first balloon we stuck the knife into was red, wasn’t it?”
“Sure it was!” Denny looked his surprise.
“And the second was blue and the third green?”
“I disremember,—but what of it?”
“Look at them! Stretch them out and see if they’ve changed color since!” McCarty’s tones shook with excitement and Dennis caught the infection. He drew the limp rubber out and scrutinized each torn balloon in turn, then shook his head.
“There’s nothing different about them that I can see! What are you getting at?”
“Just this! When I picked this up it was blue, as blue as that second one we broke, and look at it now!” The rubber wisp he held out was a greenish-gray mottled with brown spots which were already disintegrating. “Denny, the others didn’t change color because ’twas just air they were filled with but this is different; it’s rotting before our eyes! ’Twas this child’s toy held the poison gas that killed Lucette!”