CHAPTER XX.
Treasure Trove.
"You see the murder of Breckinridge was an unexpected complication in the plans of the gang," McCormick explained, when the girl's first intense horror at the knowledge of the slayer's identity had been partially overcome. "They had never before gone so far as to take life. Breckinridge had the reputation of being pretty swift and he's been mixed up in more than one scandal. He must have been meat for the Atterbury gang until he revolted, but he made a big mistake then. Instead of going to the police and braving a public inquiry, or coming to me, he chose to play a lone hand against the blackmailers, and lost. He traced the ringleaders to the Atterbury house and attempted to confront them single-handed. How he managed to elude the watchdog isn't known, but he got in through a dining-room window which Welch had left unfastened. It was only after the murder that the crook who played butler was so careful to lock up the house at night.
"Breckinridge had unfortunately taken a bracer or two before he started on his foolhardy expedition and when he found himself face to face with Wolvert he let his feelings get the better of him and in his resentment blustered out how much he knew against the gang. If he had only realized it he was confirming his own death-warrant, for he had found out too much to go free. Wolvert didn't wait to consult the head of the gang, Mrs. Atterbury, but seized a knife from the sideboard and a fight for life began. It must have been a silent one and quickly over, for no one heard it except Welch who slept on the ground floor at the back. He arrived on the scene in time to see Wolvert plunge the knife in Breckinridge's breast.
"Afterward, in desperation, they consulted as to the best method of disposing of the body and Wolvert suggested taking it up the road and leaving it. Welch tied up the dog and then went off to a junk dealer and fence whom he knew, and hired a horse and cart which he brought back to the gate.
"Wolvert, meanwhile, had gone to tell Mrs. Atterbury the truth and it must have been at that time you discovered the body, Miss Westcote.
"When Welch returned, the two men between them carried the body wrapped in an old rug down to the gate, where they loaded it on the wagon and drove to the secluded spot on Vanderduycken Road."
"The body must have been discovered very soon," the girl murmured with a little shiver. "I heard the extras announcing the murder in the early afternoon."
"It was found at dawn. The junk dealer's wagon had been seen and it was traced down finally and spots found which the chemists proved were human blood. The man wouldn't confess who had used his wagon, though he was put through the third degree. He claimed that if it was out at all he had known nothing of it and easily proved his own alibi.
"The case was at a standstill when one of Breckinridge's friends, to whom he had hinted that he was being besieged for hush-money came to me. With what I already knew of the Atterbury gang I put two and two together, but the police were not far from the truth. If we hadn't forestalled them it would only have been a matter of hours before they knocked at the gates on the North Drive and in the cellar of the house they would have found convincing proof; pieces of a rug, blood-stained and charred, where an unsuccessful attempt had been made to destroy it in the furnace. Shreds from the same rug were found twisted about the buttons of the dead man's coat, and clotted in his wound.
"But let us have done with that, Miss Westcote," the detective added hastily as he saw her pale lips quiver. "There are still a few points to be cleared up in my mind. How did you get all that information about the outside members of the gang?"
"From one queer abbreviated note and two cipher letters," the girl responded. "The note was the first and I remember it word for word. It read: 'Five thousand sheep no go. Bulls instead. Pink wash fed. Clearing den. Tail comet yellow.' I couldn't understand it then, but later when I had solved the cipher letters I realized the general drift of it. It evidently meant that five thousand dollars could not be gotten out of somebody although I don't comprehend the significance of the word 'sheep.'"
"Slang among them for shearing the sheep, or blackmail," McCormick explained. "What did you make out of the rest of it?"
"That the police were after them, and detectives had communicated with the federal authorities at Washington," she went on. "The writer was clearing for Denver and he advised Mrs. Atterbury to 'tail' or trace the movements of 'The Comet,' that she was 'yellow' or crooked."
"Well done!" The detective thumped the desk in his enthusiasm. "There's a place here for you if ever you want to take it, Miss Westcote! That letter was written by 'Red' Rathbone."
"What does he look like?" the girl asked suddenly.
"Tall and shambling, bright red hair," McCormick replied with an inquiring look. "No eyebrows or lashes; they were burned off in a prison fire the last time he was sent up. Got a curious way of carrying his head on one side——"
"Then I know him, too!" she exclaimed. "His soubriquet 'Red' reminded me. He must have been the manservant who opened Mrs. Atterbury's door to me on my first visit! I wonder I did not think of him when I read the cipher letters."
"What were they?"
"I have them here." She produced two papers from her handbag and placed them before him. "The first is a copy of a letter which Mrs. Atterbury dictated to me."
"'My dear Shirley,'" read McCormick. "'Your letter received. Send me ten of the thousand circulars quoting sheep prices for March. Home market good this week for forty or fifty and even more points rise if my brokers handled the situation properly.' H—m! I don't quite get it."
"You will if you read every third word, eliminating the two between." The girl rose and bent over the desk. "You see? It really means: 'Received ten thousand sheep. March good for fifty more if handled properly.'
"I was convinced that this could only be read aright by choosing certain combinations of words, and I tried all that I could think of, backward and forward, until I came upon the key."
"Good Lord! So somebody named March fell for a ten thousand dollar jolt and was willing to disgorge fifty thousand more under pressure, eh? Let's see what the rest of it says." He picked out the words slowly with a thick forefinger: "'Laramie game up. Comet sold us out to pink. Bud killed her; safe on way Japan. Red held in Denver, alibi straight. Meet Professor Chicago Saturday, he has instructions. New substitute success, blockhead but conscientious. No danger discovery so use this code in letting us know result Westcote affair. End.' So she calls you a blockhead, does she? Whoever 'Shirley' may be, he didn't meet the professor after all, for I got to him first."
"Yes. 'Shirley' replied to her in the same code. This is his original letter. Mrs. Atterbury dropped it in the hallway and I took possession of it. Stripped of the superfluous words, it reads:—'Professor caught Chicago. Held on old Hamilton verdict but McCormick getting evidence new trouble. Marked letters seized. Hear Westcote sanitarium for good. Nothing doing, refuses communicate. Trust nobody, but lie low. Business dead. End.'"
"They felt the net closing!" McCormick brought his great fist down upon the desk. "One by one we were gathering them in: Red in Denver, the 'Professor' in Chicago, Mortimer Dana here—"
"Oh, then it was you?" cried the girl. "Mrs. Dana came rushing to the house one day crying out that her husband was caught, but they quieted her and sent her away as quickly as they could, to avert suspicion from themselves, I suppose. She fled the city, but I don't know where she went—"
"To Bermuda," the detective interrupted grimly. "She's coming back, though, under escort. She fought the extradition like a wild-cat, but I think she will be in a communicative mood when she reaches here, and if she tells us a few things I want to know, I'll see that she gets off comparatively easy. She wasn't in it as deep as the rest."
"There is one person I would help if I only could." The girl hesitated. "I don't know what she has done, or how closely she is allied to the gang, but she did as much as she dared for me. I mean poor little Miss Pope. She is in trouble enough about her brother as it is, and she is so timid and long-suffering!"
"Don't you worry on her account, Miss Westcote." McCormick smiled beneath his short-clipped mustache. "If I can get you off scot free I ought to be able to handle her case. She went to Mrs. Atterbury, innocently enough, as a visiting seamstress and they roped her in, just as they thought they were doing with you, to collect money from their victims. When she found out the truth she was in too deep herself to go to the police, but she was too broken-spirited to be of any further use to them. They didn't let her out of sight, though, you may depend on that. She's free from them at last."
"Suppose—suppose they try to drag me in after all, if any of them makes a confession." The girl's pallid face whitened still more, but the detective laid a reassuring hand on her arm.
"If the police find Betty Shaw, the girl with the scar, they'll find her in British Columbia, with a husband and an alibi, won't they? If the Atterbury gang try to bring Ruth Westcote into the case, there's no shred of evidence left to connect her with it or prove that she or any of her people ever had dealings with them. That birthmark was your salvation, for not one of those from whom you accepted the blackmail would dare swear under oath that you were the same girl. Wolvert's wife has already confessed but made no mention of you."
"Wolvert's wife!" The girl repeated aghast, yet a light was breaking over her and it scarcely needed his reply to confirm it.
"Yes. The woman you knew as Madame Cimmino. She served her time in the West, for pulling off an insurance swindle some years back. She is known, and wanted, pretty much all over Europe. Wolvert is the black sheep of a good family, half-English, half-Spanish; Welch is a former heavy-weight pug, gone to the bad, but Mrs. Atterbury herself is the real wonder of the lot. She is the widow of old Jonas Atterbury, one of the shrewdest financiers that ever bucked the market. She went through the money he left her and then, as luxury was as necessary to her as the air she breathed, she went after it in the one way that her brilliant, unscrupulous mind suggested. We'll never know how she fell in with the gang or became their leader, for she's not the sort to confess, if she was put on the rack, but it's a safe bet that she planned every successful coup they've made in the last five years, and she was foxy enough to realize what an asset her social reputation was in averting suspicion. Her aristocratic neighbors on the North Drive must have had a sensation when they read the papers after the raid!"
"And Professor Stolz?" the girl asked.
"A thorough-going scoundrel, of brilliant attainments but with a crooked twist in his brain. He was expelled from the faculty of the University of Leipzig for trying to sponsor fake antiquarian discoveries and raise money for research work that was never attempted. Doctor Bayard is another scientist gone wrong, and the rest are all more or less well known for their criminal operations. You certainly showed your pluck, Miss Westcote, when you tackled single-handed the most dangerous bunch of crooks on record! It was enough of a miracle that you escaped with your life, but to have succeeded in what you set out to do, and annihilated their organization besides is an achievement almost beyond belief! I take off my hat to you!" The Chief beamed upon her. "I thought I knew something about the detective game, but you can give me cards and spades and then beat me to it! Don't forget my offer; if ever you want to go into the business, there's a partnership here for you."
"Thank you," Ruth Westcote responded demurely. "I have already agreed to become a partner in a different concern and I think it is going to be a success!"
Her eyes, soft and glowing with a new, tender light turned to those of Herbert Ross, and he smiled back at her.
"It ought to be," he said, "for it is founded on the greatest thing in the world!"
"Young man!" Madame Dumois fixed her goldpince-nezmore firmly on her high arched nose and glared at the guileless individual who stood before her. "It is a good three weeks since I sent for you, to find out if you had made any headway with my case, and your McCormick person informed me you were out of town. What have you got to say for yourself?"
"Quite a good deal, if you will listen, Madame Dumois." Herbert Ross smiled ingratiatingly. "I only learned of your message yesterday, when I returned. Very important business called me away; I wonder if you can guess what it was?"
"The missing young woman?" she demanded eagerly.
Ross nodded and the smile broadened into a boyish laugh.
"Yes! The young woman you employed me to find!"
"And you have found her?" She eyed him warily, puzzled by his manner.
Ross's face changed and he drew down his lips lugubriously at the corners, but the twinkle remained.
"She is a most elusive person!" he sighed.
"I don't need you to tell me that!" the old lady retorted bitterly. "And I cannot see any cause for levity! I would not have believed your Mr. McCormick capable of finding a lost canary, but I admit I expected more of you!"
"You have heard no news of the young woman for whom you are searching?" he asked.
A faint spot of color appeared in her faded cheeks and her keen, gray eyes snapped.
"Nothing that I consider authentic. Why do you ask that, Mr. Ross?"
"Because I was under the impression that her natural guardian had communicated with you." He spoke in bland surprise.
"'Her natural guardian!'" she repeated indignantly. "Her natural guardian is a natural born fool, as I've often told him to his face! But it appears to me that you have learned more about this affair than I meant you to. Just what do you know?"
"That you returned from Europe to find your only brother in a sanitarium, his home closed and his daughter missing. You interviewed him, but he would give you no satisfaction, and knowing something of the independent character of the young lady——"
"Independent!" Madame Dumois drew a deep breath. "She defied me when she was three years old! The only member of the family who dared to stand up to me!"
"Knowing that she possessed the courage of her convictions," Ross continued, "you made up your mind to find out for yourself where she was and what she was doing."
"What she was up to!" The old lady corrected him grimly. "Never since she was born have I known what she was going to do next!"
"I have seen your brother, Mr. Westcote, and I am happy to be able to tell you that his health is much improved."
"I gathered that from his letter—" A flash of her old humor crossed her face. "He called me a meddlesome busybody, and that is more spirit than he has shown in years! I don't know how you have found out all this, but I cannot say that I am sorry. I did not care to put myself or my family affairs at the mercy of a detective agency, that was the reason why I would not tell you my motive in seeking her, yet I trust and like you, Mr. Ross."
"Thank you," he responded gravely.
"Now, if you will only find this perverse, incorrigible, young woman for me—"
"What if I have?" his eyes danced. "I did not say that I had failed, Madame Dumois."
"You have—you have found her?" The old lady gasped, and her sharp eyes blurred. "She hasn't gotten into any trouble, Mr. Ross? Where is she?"
"At home." He caught the two trembling wrinkled hands in his. "At our home, breaking in the new cook I believe. I have come to take you to her."
Madame Dumois looked long into his happy face and the color slowly came back to her own. A dry smile hovered about her lips, and then broke into a chuckle.
"Well! I do not usually indulge in slang, but that is one on the lawyers! I won't have to change my will again! When I quarreled with my brother and made up my mind that Ruth had disgraced the family by this unaccountable disappearance, I added a codicil in your favor. You were the best type of young American I had encountered in many a long day, and as the choice lay between you and a cat asylum, I decided on you. Now it is all in the family, and I am proud of you both. She is the most provoking, self-willed, irrepressible young woman in the world, and the dearest! Take me to her!"