CHAPTER XTHE MAN IN THE SHADOWS
Thecold, early light of a clouded morning found McCarty and Dennis seated over pancakes and coffee in an all-night restaurant on Sixth Avenue not far from Fiftieth Street. The intervening hours since they left the New Queen’s Mall had been fruitlessly spent in a weary round of the ferries and railroad terminals in search of news of a small, solitary traveler and now they had just come from an interview with the superintendent of the palatial studio apartment building in which the artist Blaisdell resided, whose exact address a nearby druggist had been fortuitously able to supply.
“I always thought those painter guys lived in garrets with never a square meal nor a second shirt,” Dennis spoke in a slightly dazed tone. “I mind that day watchman Bill said young Horace told him Blaisdell was one of the greatest in the country, but he must have some regular business to be able to live in a place like that! There’s one thing sure; no matter how much of a fancy he’d took to the kid he could afford to get into no trouble by taking him on a tour without his father and mother being willing, and if the boy showed up he’d bring him back. Where is it again that he’s gone sketching?”
“Up in the She-wan-gunk Mountains,” McCarty pronounced the name with painstaking care. “Ellenville is his headquarters, the superintendent said, if you remember;the Detweiler House. Granting there was a train, and the lad had more money with him than that four-eyed tutor suspected, he could have got there by early evening, but no word of any kind had come when I ’phoned the Goddard house an hour ago.”
“I know,” Dennis drained his cup and held it out to the sleepy waiter to be refilled. “’Tis too bad you did not tell Trafford about finding the watch.”
“And send him into hysterics? He’s as bad as a woman now!” McCarty shrugged. “The doctor give orders Mrs. Goddard wasn’t to be woke up till eight but we’ll chance it by seven. How do you feel, Denny?”
Dennis eyed the questioner with swift suspicion.
“There’s nothing the matter with me that I know of!”
“’Tis a pity!” McCarty commented callously. “I was thinking if you called up the lieutenant at the engine house and told him how sick you were he’d maybe let you off duty the day. There’s a ’phone over on the cigar counter.”
“And what’s ailing me?” Dennis’ eyes sparkled but his tone was flat for his inventive faculties were at low ebb in the early morning.
“From what I’ve learned lately, Denny, about mental defectives—!”
But Dennis had risen and stalking to the counter he took up the ’phone. Presently McCarty heard his voice raised in a harrowing description of pain but it was abruptly cut short, and, after listening for a moment with a dazed look on his face, he silently replaced the receiver and returned to his chair.
“Well?” demanded McCarty expectantly.
“Mike’s out of the hospital and he’ll take my nine-to-six shift.”
“But just what did the lieutenant say to you?”
“He told me,” Dennis replied very slowly and distinctly, “to get the hell off the ’phone, for I’d be no good at a false alarm while my crook-chasing side-kick McCarty was on the job again. I gathered from a few more remarks before he hung up on me that your friend Jimmie Ballard of the ‘Bulletin’ has been nosing around the engine house, to get dope from me about what you’re pulling off, and by that same token running the lieutenant ragged; ’tis what I get for associating with you.”
It was McCarty’s turn to eye his companion suspiciously but Dennis’ stolid countenance was quite devoid of humor and he retorted:
“Is that so? Well, we’d better be associating ourselves with the Goddards again now or there’ll be no news for Jimmie or the inspector either, which is worse. Come on.”
“Unless the boy is found as Hughes was,” Dennis suggested optimistically. “It would let the Lindholms out, but who except a lunatic would be poisoning children and servants, promiscuous-like?”
McCarty’s reply was a stare and a grunt which the other construed as derisive and he lapsed into aggrieved silence as they made their way once more to the gates, behind which so much mystery and menace brooded.
Trafford opened the door almost before the bell had ceased to echo through the house and his haggard face was mute evidence that the suspense had not been lifted.
“Have you—?” He could not voice the rest of the question but McCarty replied briskly:
“We’ve several possibilities, Trafford, and we’re following every last one of ’em up. No news is good news just now. Is Mrs. Goddard awake yet, do you know?”
“Her maid told me when I inquired a few minutes ago that she was stirring. I’ll go and see.” The young tutor turned dispiritedly away. “You’ll find Mr. Goddard in the smoking-room at the rear on the Avenue side.”
In dimensions and ponderous style of furnishing the smoking-room resembled a club lounge rather than a private apartment and it was a full minute before they descried Eustace Goddard’s rotund figure relaxed in the depths of a huge leather armchair. He was apparently asleep but on their approach he opened widely staring eyes upon them and sprang up with an inarticulate cry.
“We’ve not located your son yet, Mr. Goddard,” McCarty spoke quickly before the father could frame words. “We know what every minute means to you and ’tis for that we’re going to bring the inspector and some of his other men into it. I can promise you there’ll be no publicity through us.”
“By God, McCarty, they can blazon it in every paper in the land if it will bring our boy back to us!” Goddard cried brokenly. “The horror of this night has made everything else unimportant! You mean you—you’ve failed?”
“Not exactly, sir, but there are only the two of us now and ’twill save time if others take up some of the clues we’ve got,” McCarty explained.
“There’s the telephone,” Goddard waved a shaking hand toward a stand half concealed behind a lacquered screen. “Get the whole department if you need it. I’ll offer any reward you suggest—fifty thousand? A hundred?”
“We’ll settle that when the inspector comes.” McCarty moved to the screen and took up the receiver, and Dennis cleared his throat.
“How many doors are there to this house?”
“Four!” Goddard replied in a surprised tone. “The one at the front, two at the rear—kitchen and tradesmen’s entrances—and a smaller door at the side opening on the court that runs between this house and Orbit’s. But why do you ask? What are the clues you’ve found?”
Dennis coughed discreetly, and from behind the screen came McCarty’s voice.
“Is it yourself, Inspector?... Yes, me, McCarty.... No, at Goddard’s and you’re needed.... Wait a bit! Can you lay hands on both Martin and Yost?... Can’t talk now, sir. Get me?... All right, bring Martin along but send Yost over to—to Bill, 0565.... That’s it.... Maybe and maybe not.... Sure, I’ve been in touch with Bill and he knows the party I’m looking for. Tell Yost to wait and ’phone here if anything turns up.... Of course not, Inspector, till you take it in hand! ’Bye.”
The last had been straight blarney, but Dennis shivered as the receiver clicked on its hook. Well he knew that telephone number and the grim little house far over toward the river where, for a brief interval, the bluff, kindly Bill harbored the city’s unknown dead! Had the sickly little Goddard heir gone the way of Hughes after all?
“Why did you ask about the doors?” The conversation had evidently held only its obvious meaning for the man before them. “Horace must have been induced in some way to leave the house, for no one could have entered with Trafford and all the servants about!”
“He did leave, and by the side door,” McCarty held out the shattered little wristwatch. “Does this belong to the lad?”
“Good God, yes! He wore it yesterday!” Goddardseized it and then sank into his chair. “It’s—smashed! He must have been handled brutally, perhaps even—!”
“That don’t follow, sir!” McCarty interrupted. “The strap slips out of the buckle easy, for I tried it, and the lad might have dropped it without noticing. Anybody going to one of the back doors could have come along and trod on it after, for ’twas in the alley right in front of the door that I found it. And now—”
“Mrs. Goddard is awake and ready to see you now,” Trafford’s voice sounded from the threshold and Goddard started up once more.
“She knows there is no news?” he asked, and at the tutor’s nod added: “Come then, but don’t tax her beyond her strength and don’t mind any—any wild statements which she may make. My poor wife is almost out of her mind!”
“Of course; we understand,” McCarty darted a quick glance at Dennis and then turned to the tutor. “Trafford, Inspector Druet and another man are on their way up from headquarters and you’ll be helping matters if you tell the both of them what’s happened and all about them you ’phoned to for trace of the lad.”
In silence they followed Goddard to the tiny jewel-box of an elevator, whose velvet and gold and glittering crystal mirrors made Dennis gasp. He gasped again when their guide pressed a button and they shot abruptly upward and his weatherbeaten face turned a delicate green as they stopped with a smooth but sickening swoop at the second floor. He was the first out with the opening of the door, but there was no time for the aside which trembled on his lips, for Goddard led the way down the wide hall to the doorway in which the figure of an elderly maid was silhouetted against the dim light of the room within.
“Eustace!” A woman’s trembling voice sounded from behind her. “It can’t be that nothing is known, nothing! Did you tell them about that—”
“Everything is being done, Clara.” Goddard motioned the maid aside and McCarty and Dennis followed him into the dressing-room. They received only a confused impression of mahogany and old-rose and tall mirrors, of a faint, aromatic perfume and the sound of deep-drawn, convulsive breathing. The next moment their eyes were caught and held by the long figure outstretched upon a chaise-longue, imposing even in the dishevelled abandonment of grief. Mrs. Goddard was a woman well over forty, but her distraught face still bore traces of the beauty which must normally have been hers. There was no touch of gray in the masses of luxuriant dark hair which the maid had arranged with evident haste, but that night had etched lines about the fine eyes and the firm though sensitive mouth that would never be erased.
As her husband went on speaking, her glance swept past him to the two who waited at his elbow.
“Everything that is humanly possible is being done, my dear!” Goddard repeated more emphatically. “These are the police officers I called in, and they want to ask you a few questions. Do you think you can collect yourself enough to stick to facts and not foolish, morbid fancies?”
“I am quite collected, Eustace!” There was a note almost of defiance in Mrs. Goddard’s tones and she sat up among her pillows with an unconscious dignity, in spite of the emotion which she held in check with such obvious effort. “Ask me anything you please! I—I only want my baby safe once more!”
“Of course, ma’am,” McCarty responded soothingly. “You went out and left the lad on the couch in the libraryand when you came back to get ready for the musicale next door you thought he was with his teacher. Now, what was the first you knew of his disappearance?”
“When I returned from the musicale. It was late, after six, and my husband met me in the hall with the news. He and Mr. Trafford had been telephoning everywhere! They thought Horace might have gone to some of our friends, but he had never done such a thing as to leave the Mall without our knowledge and I knew that something terrible had happened. I could feel it—here!” Her slender, very white hands flew to her breast. “I cannot blame Mr. Trafford for not starting the search for Horace in the early afternoon; he supposed he had slipped away to the studio of an artist who has taken a great fancy to our little boy, but Mr. Blaisdell is not in town.”
The forced composure still held her and only her fluttering hands and quick-drawn breath gave evidence of her supreme agitation.
“You don’t think the lad has gone to join him, do you?” McCarty asked.
“Run away, you mean?” Mrs. Goddard shook her head slowly. “Oh, no! Horace would never dream of such a thing! Mr. Blaisdell wanted to take him but we would not hear of it and Horace had no idea of disobeying our wishes. He has never been away from us before—before yesterday!”
“Then you think he has been kidnapped?”
At the question Goddard, who had moved around to the other side of the couch, took a step forward, the sagging muscles of his round face tightening as his jaw tensed but his wife did not take her eyes from those of McCarty.
“He isn’t here!” her trembling voice broke. “He wouldn’t run away! The earth didn’t open and—and an avalanche descend upon him! It must have been that man!”
“What man!” McCarty and Dennis spoke in chorus, and then Goddard placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“Now, Clara!” he admonished. “You promised—!”
“To give us facts, Mr. Goddard!” interrupted McCarty sternly. “If Mrs. Goddard can tell us whatever it was you were holding back last night so much the better! You ’phoned to me that the lad had been kidnapped but you couldn’t give me any reason for thinking so except that he was gone, and you didn’t breathe a word about any ‘man’!—Will you tell us, ma’am?”
“There’s nothing to tell!” Goddard insisted obstinately. “My wife is nervous, imaginative, and so is Horace. He was badly frightened by a strange man here in the Mall a short time ago and his mother was quite frantic about it. It was some days before she would allow him to go out alone again, but personally I think he exaggerated—”
“Our boy would not tell a falsehood!” Mrs. Goddard interrupted. “It was just at dusk one afternoon about a fortnight ago, or perhaps less, when Horace had returned alone from Mr. Blaisdell’s studio. He entered the Mall by the east gate as usual, but stopped to play with a little white Persian kitten, the pet of Mrs. Bellamy’s baby. Mrs. Bellamy lives just two doors away, next to Mr. Orbit’s. The watchman had passed him and gone on toward the west gate when all at once the kitten darted across the street and Horace followed, afraid that it might become lost. It ran into the open court between the Parsons house and the closed one next door belonging to the Quentin estate and Horace was stooping to coax it tohim when he was seized from behind by a strange man and searched!”
“Searched?” echoed McCarty.
“Yes. The man pressed Horace back against him with one hand over his mouth and felt in all his pockets with the other, but he took nothing and never uttered a word! My little son was too startled to struggle at first, and all at once the man released him—and disappeared!”
“Did the boy have any money with him?” Dennis could contain himself no longer.
“Three or four dollars, I believe, but the man left it untouched.” Mrs. Goddard’s eyes shifted to those of the questioner. “It was quite dark there in that narrow space between the two houses, but Horace saw the face which bent down over his distinctly and he said the man was an utter stranger whom he had never seen in the Mall before; rough, unshaven and desperate looking!”
“Which way did he go?” McCarty took up the interrogation once more. “Was it down the alley to the street or up in the open court behind the houses?”
“How could the child tell?” Goddard interjected before his wife could speak. “It was almost dark and he was terror-stricken!”
“Horace told us that the man ran toward the rear and disappeared in the shadows of a doorway at—at the left,” Mrs. Goddard replied, as though her husband had not spoken.
“At the left, facing the rear of the houses on the north side of the way?” McCarty was thinking rapidly aloud. “That’ll be Parsons’ house then!—Why didn’t you want us to know this, Mr. Goddard?”
“Because it can have no possible bearing on the disappearance of our son yesterday!” Goddard retorted hotly.“He ran home immediately and told us, and I instituted a thorough search without delay, but the watchman could find no trace of the fellow and insisted he had admitted no one that day through either gate who resembled Horace’s description. The Parsons’ servants had seen nothing of him and he has not reappeared since, although a strict watch was kept. It is madness to suppose that Horace left this house of his own accord to meet the fellow, when he stood in mortal terror of him—!”
“Not unless he met him accidental-like and got waylaid a second time!” Dennis broke in irrepressibly. “There’s no telling what he was after if ’twas not money, but if he was crazy and the boy put up a bit of a struggle—!”
“A-a-ah!” Mrs. Goddard’s taut nerves gave way and she broke into a low, wailing cry. “That is my fear! No sane person would harm him; but all night long in horrible dreams I have seen him—! My baby! He is hidden somewhere, helpless, suffering, and I cannot reach him! I shall go mad!”