CHAPTER XXITHE BLACK PYRE
“Good God!” Orbit exclaimed in horrified accents. “You don’t mean that the little fellow tumbled down the chute! That he was buried beneath the coal!—Goddard, my old friend, what can I say to you! Surely this is only a vague supposition, a last resort! It would be too dreadful, too pitiful!”
Goddard’s face worked but he was unable to reply and Orbit turned to the men who, with baskets and shovels, were filing around the rear of the house.
“I’ll add a thousand to Mr. Goddard’s! Work as you never did before!—Inspector, can such a fearful thing have occurred? It is incredible! How could the little chap have fallen down to the cellar without being seen? I suppose any outcry he might have made would have been drowned by the noise of the coal itself but—oh, it is too utterly horrible!”
His shocked, broken tones trailed away into silence and then from below there ascended through the open chute the ring of shovels and the clatter of coal falling rhythmically into the baskets. A tortured groan was forced from Goddard’s lips. Max crouched with his forepaws hanging over the edge of the aperture and his nose low between them, the hair rising in a ridge along his back and a soft, anxious whine pulsing from his throat.
Dennis turned away with a shiver, and saw that Gardner Sloane had joined his son on the fringe of the group. Snape and the maids of Mrs. Bellamy’s staff were gathered in a little knot just behind, with the Parsons’ chauffeur, Danny Sayre the page boy, and the aged butler of the Sloanes, while Benjamin Parsons himself had emerged upon the steps of his home and the lower windows of the Goddard house were thronged with the servants. From a window just above Orbit’s conservatory the staring face of little Fu Moy looked down in shrinking wonder.
The rhythmic, dreadful scrape and rumble from beneath their feet went on as though it would never end. Goddard swayed weakly but Trafford flung an arm about his shoulders. The inspector had replied to Orbit with noncommittal gravity and now they conversed together in an aside, while Dennis edged over to McCarty.
“Why ever didn’t you tell me?” he whispered. “No wonder you said ’twas fair sickening to think of, Mac! If the poor boy’s found down there ’twill be one crime that’s no crime at all! How did you know?”
“I don’t know!” McCarty responded candidly. “’Tis the only guess, though, that will cover the facts as they come to me, but Max needed none; I’m banking on the dog’s instinct, Denny.”
“Look at the back of him! It makes my own hair lift the hat from my head to see it!” Dennis shivered again. “Will they never have done with the shoveling? I could scream like a woman!”
Some of the Bellamy servants had indeed begun to sob hysterically but they quieted at a look from McCarty. Parsons was slowly crossing the street and his chauffeur stepped aside for him. Dennis saw that several oldermen from the detective bureau were circulating unobtrusively among the different groups and two of the officials who had come in the car with the inspector approached him now. He presented them to Orbit and the interrupted consultation was resumed now between the four.
Dennis surreptitiously took out his watch, an ancient affair of the turnip variety. The men had been at work for nearly forty minutes; he recalled the blowing of the one o’clock whistles when Martin came to relieve him at the east gate. In a little while, now, they would know the worst! If only the dog would stop whining!
He looked at Trafford and the young man met his glance with a stare of agonized inquiry but the man he was supporting reeled and he braced himself for a firmer hold. Then Benjamin Parsons stepped quietly to Goddard’s other side.
“Lean on me, my friend.” He spoke in the gentlest of accents. “I am old but strong, an elder brother here to lend a hand. We will wait, and pray.”
Goddard’s dull eyes filmed and he rested his hand in the arm offered, saying no word. A lump rose in Dennis’ throat.
“Mac, for the love of God, will they finish this? ’Tis more than mortal can bear! I’ve dug at a fallen wall with the bare hands of me and the best lads of my company buried under it, but ’twas not as bad as this! Orbit’s all in, and no wonder!”
Henry Orbit had turned and was gazing at the coal chute in horrified fascination, his highly-bred face quivering and eyes glowing with an awful intensity. As though drawn toward it against his will he advanced a step ortwo and the officials also moved forward. Then he seemed for the first time to behold McCarty.
“Had you the least suspicion of this when you came to me an hour or so ago?” he asked, his voice a mere toneless breath. “Why did you not tell me? I have three strong men in my house and I myself would have led them! Is this your doing?”
“The inspector brought them, Mr. Orbit.” McCarty replied. “I told you he was coming in a little while but he don’t always tell me what he’s got planned.”
“He should at least have notified me!” Orbit ran his hand through his dark, graying hair. “I could have started the work.—But this is sheer madness! The child cannot have met such a horrible death!”
“We’ll know soon enough.” McCarty’s tone held a note of sternness. “In a minute or two more—!”
As though his words were a signal, the clank and rattling patter from below ceased abruptly and a moment of electrified stillness ensued. Then it was broken by a rising murmur of hoarse voices which were in turn drowned by the sustained hail of coal being flung in every direction.
Orbit uttered a stifled exclamation and then stood immovable as a second groan forced its way from Goddard. One of the Bellamy maids shrieked aloud. Then the noise from the cellar ceased once more and the dog rose slowly lifting his nose into the air. A low, wailing cry broke from him. At that moment a grimy head and shoulders rose in the opening of the coal chute and a hoarse, shuddering voice addressed McCarty.
“We’ve—found it, sir!”
The various groups merged and swept toward the aperture then shrank back again in horror. A hubbubof subdued cries came from among them but Eustace Goddard did not hear. His head had fallen forward, his knees sagged and doubled and he slumped, insensible, between the two who supported him. Instantly two plainclothes men were beside them and the unconscious man was carried into his house.
It was significant that neither McCarty, the inspector, nor the two officials had moved to assist him. Now as Orbit, after his first horrified recoil from the brusque announcement, turned and hurried into the house they followed, with Dennis bringing up the rear.
Aware of his doubtful status in the eyes of the strange officials he remained discreetly in the background and when he caught up to the little group they were standing in the rear hall before the open door leading to the cellar steps, with Orbit at their head and Ching Lee, André and Jean by the pantry.
Orbit was staring down into the brazen, orange glow of the electric lights in the cellar, listening to the shuffle of feet and the murmur of rough voices lowered in pity. Then there came a slow tread and two of the shovelers appeared bearing between them something slender and pathetically small wrapped in a heavy dark cloth.
As they ascended the stairs the servants and even the officials drew back but Orbit stood his ground with no sound or movement. Only his eyes followed the men with their burden as they mounted, passing him so closely that he could have reached out and touched them. Then he turned and passed upstairs to his sitting-room, followed by his uninvited guests.
The murmur outside rose to a swelling chorus of cries and then was abruptly shut out by the closing of the door. Orbit turned with both hands raised to his headand a shuddering groan came from his shaking lips.
“This is horrible!” he gasped. “Gentlemen, I shall ask you for an explanation, but not at this moment—I am too inexpressibly shocked—”
“The explaining will have to be done now, Orbit!” McCarty, after a glance at his superior, stepped forward. “’Twill not come from us, either!”
“What do you mean?” Orbit demanded. “Surely you are not mad enough to insinuate that I knew that the child was lying there? It is monstrous! Do you think I would not have let you know?”
He turned to the inspector.
“Inspector, when did you learn what had become of the poor little fellow?”
“I didn’t; it was McCarty,” the inspector admitted frankly. “He told me this morning that he might have news for me by noon but until he telephoned ordering the squad of men with shovels I hadn’t an inkling.”
“Then you—?” Orbit turned again to McCarty.
“’Twas the dog first put it in my head by hovering all the time about that coal chute,” the latter responded. There was a new note in his voice as he went on. “It struck me too, as kind of funny you’d be having that coal put in an hour before your party, dirtying the place all up; even if it had been ordered you could have sent it away again for you’d not be lighting up your furnace for weeks yet. I found then that you never ordered it till half an hour before it got here and you’d ’phoned three times, at that, to hurry it up, yet you told me this morning that it had been arranged four days ago. About twenty minutes before you sent for it first you went down to the kitchen and got a glass of milk from André. Did you drink it yourself, Henry Orbit?”
“I did not!” Orbit’s eyes seemed burning into his face. “It was for Vite, the monkey!”
“But Vite was locked up at the top of the house to be out of the way of the party and Ching Lee had the only key; Fu Moy told me so.”
“Fu Moy is only a child and does not understand English well; Vite was not locked up until just before my guests arrived. What are you trying to insinuate?”
“Nothing. I’m telling you what I know. Fu Moy understands a lot more than you think, Orbit! What time did Horace Goddard come over to see you Tuesday afternoon? If that glass of milk was for the monkey, why didn’t you ring for it instead of going yourself to the kitchen; was it because you wanted nobody to know the lad was here? What did you put in that milk, Orbit, to make Horace unconscious or kill him, the way you poisoned Hughes? I know from André how you got all the servants out of the kitchen and pantries after, so you could get the lad’s body down to the cellar without being seen butwhydid you do it? What reason had you for bringing such a horrible death on the child who’d done you no harm? What reason did you have for murdering the valet who’d looked out for your comfort for more than twenty years? Why did you put poison gas made from the formula you bought from Hinton Sherard into the Bellamy baby’s toy balloon to kill both her and her nurse? How did you fix it to burst when it did and what chance had you to pump the gas into it? You’re far from crazy, Orbit! Why did you take the lives of these people you had no grudge against, no reason for wanting out of the way? Was it because of the blood that’s in you from generations back urging you on? Answer me that, Henry Orbit!”
“I shall answer nothing—to you.” Orbit’s dark eyes blazed but his voice was dangerously calm. “You admit that I am not insane; I cannot say as much for you in the face of these monstrous accusations!—Inspector, if you are in authority at this highly irregular proceeding, am I to understand that I am formally charged with this atrocious series of crimes? Am I to consider myself under arrest?”
Inspector Druet glanced uncertainly at McCarty and the latter nodded, a world of mingled demand and entreaty in the slight gesture. The inspector hesitated for a moment and then drew a deep breath.
“You are!” he replied. “I arrest you, Henry Orbit, for the murders of Alfred Hughes, Horace Goddard and Lucette Guerin!”
The two other officials after a startled glance between them advanced one on each side of Orbit, but he shrugged and took a step forward.
“That being the case, I shall not say another word. Now you may play on this ridiculous farce for the moment. In the meantime, may I ask your indulgence for a few minutes? I desire merely to seat myself at that desk over there and write a short note to the one person in the world most interested, besides myself, in this extraordinary situation. I shall seal and address the envelope and leave it upon the desk, for you to deliver at your discretion. Lock the drawers of the desk if you will; I can assure you, however, that I have no intention of taking any weapon from them to defend myself or attempt assault upon you!”
The contempt in his tone was galling and even the inspector winced beneath it, so compelling and dominant was the personality of the man before him. He nodded.
“Write your note, Mr. Orbit, only make it short. If the news of this gets out before we can take you downtown all the reserves in the city couldn’t protect you!”
Dennis turned in stupefied amazement to McCarty, but the latter was watching Orbit who had seated himself at the desk. He wrote, not hurriedly but without hesitation; a faintly amused smile curved his mobile lips, and when he had finished he sealed the envelope with a steady hand, wrote a name and a single line beneath it, propped it against the inkwell and rose.
“Now, gentlemen, I am at your disposal,” he said. “I am ready to accompany you—if you can find me!”
The last words were uttered in a tone of ringing challenge and his hand slipped beneath the edge of the desk. On the instant, before the five men grouped before him could move or draw a breath the room was filled with rolling billows of black, foul smoke which belched forth in clouds from around the wainscoting of the wall as from the mouth of a volcano, obliterating everything about them.
Startled, warning exclamations came from the two officials and a cry from the inspector:
“To the windows! Look out for poison gas!”
McCarty had groped grimly forward but Dennis was more thoroughly at home in the crisis than he had been at any time since the inception of the affair. He shouted directions and encouragement, darting about as unconcernedly and with as much certitude as though his eyes could penetrate the murky, opaque gloom which enveloped him.
The sound of their own rushing footsteps and the successive crash of furniture as the officials lunged against it drowned out all others until close at hand a doorslammed and a mocking chuckle of laughter seemed to drift back to them.
“He’s gone!” One of the officials gasped, as he found a window at last and flung it open.
“He won’t go far!” the inspector retorted grimly. “Find all the windows and doors and let’s get a draught through! I want that letter he wrote!”
In the rush of fresh air which came swirling in, the room rapidly cleared and they saw that it was indeed empty of any presence save their own but the white square of the envelope tilted against the inkwell was plainly discernible and the inspector seized upon it.
Choking, strangling, with smarting, streaming eyes, he peered closely at the inscription and then threw up his head.
“Great guns! It’s addressed to McCarty!”