“Sure,” he replied to her request, “I’ll tell you my name. It’s Pike. Richard Pike. And now, miss, you’re bound for home?”
“Yes, as soon as I can get there. Please leave me at the platform, I can get a taxi myself.”
“Desert you at the last post? No indeed, ma’am. Don’t be afraid,—I’m not going to carry you off!” He laughed good-naturedly, and again Elsie’s fears were drowned in a sense of his honest intention to treat her with courtesy.
So they walked to the taxicab, and after she got into one he followed.
So amazed was she at this, that she made a protest.
“Oh, it’s right on my way,” he said, “so why pay two fares?”
The ride was not long, but when the cab stopped, it was not at Elsie’s home.
It was at a house, a fine-looking brownstone house, that had the appearance of being closed for the summer. The windows were boarded up, the front door likewise, and all was silent and still.
“Where’s this?” Elsie asked, refusing to get out.
“Hush!” and Pike put his finger to his lip. “The taxi driver is a bad one! Get out, miss, quick!”
Scared at his serious tone, and secret manner, Elsie got out, through sheer force of the other’s will, and in a moment the fare was paid and the cab had disappeared down the street.
“Now, miss,” and the hitherto kind voice had a hard note in it, “you’ll stop in here for a minute on your way home. Don’t refuse, now, it wouldn’t be healthy!”
The cold little ring of an automatic pressed against Elsie’s temple, and with a glance at Pike’s face, she knew in an instant she was trapped again!
Almost without volition, for this new terror seemed to deprive her of her senses, Elsie stumbled along, through the gate the man opened, and which led to the area entrance.
Through the basement door, they entered the house, and in the doorway, Elsie was met by a woman, a decent, middle-aged body, who took the fainting girl to her breast.
“There now,” she said, in the kindest tones, “there now, miss, brace up. It’s faint you are, dearie. Sit there, now, and let me fix you up.”
She bustled about and gave Elsie a glass of warm milk, then taking off her shoes and her wraps, she laid her down on a wide couch in the front one of the basement rooms.
“Sakes alive! what’s she got on a uniform for?”
“I don’t know,” Pike returned, but he winked at the woman to make her refrain from further queries.
Elsie was exhausted, but not to the point of going to sleep.
After a second glass of milk and some bread and fruit, she was quite herself again, and, buoyed up by excitement and anger was ready for combat.
“What does it all mean?” she asked the woman, thinking it wiser not to show her indignation at first.
“Don’t ask me, miss,Idon’t know,” the woman returned.
“That’s right, miss,” Pike broke in; “my wife don’t know anything about it all,—and neither do I. We’re paid tools,—that’s all we are. Now, there’s the matter in a nutshell. We’re paid to look after you good and proper. We’ll do it, too, and if you let us, we’ll be kind and gentle with you. But if you force us to it, we may have to use stronger means. I’d be sorry to lay a hand on you, miss, and I hope to goodness you won’t make it necessary,—but I’ll say straight out, you’ve got to obey our orders.”
“I’ve no objection, so long as you’re merely taking care of me, as you say,” Elsie returned, coolly. She felt a conviction that her best plan with these people was to placate them all in all possible ways.
It could do no good to combat them, and might do great harm.
“Who pays you?” she asked, so casually, she hoped for an answer.
“We’re forbidden to tell,” Pike said, simply. “And, you must see, miss, questions will not get you anywhere, for we’re paid to keep our mouths shut, so it stands to reason we’re going to do it.”
“Of course,” Elsie agreed. “But suppose I pay you better, far better than your present paymaster?”
The woman looked up quickly, her small black eyes shining with cupidity, but Pike said in a voice that rang with truth:
“I wouldn’tdare, miss. I wouldn’t dare evenlistento you!”
“Oh,” she said, “you’re afraid ofhim—” and she whispered,—“the master mind!”
“You said it!” Pike exclaimed. “Nobody dares stand up againsthim!”
And at that moment a shout rang through the house. The two Pikes turned white and fairly trembled with terror, but Elsie cried out,
“That’s the voice of Kimball Webb!”
There was consternation in the Powell household when Miss Loring arrived without Elsie.
“Where is she?” cried Gerty.
“Here, isn’t she?” returned the bewildered nurse.
“No, of course not! Why did you think so?”
And then Nurse Loring told how she had received a message from Elsie saying she had been obliged to return to New York suddenly, that she had gone with some friends, and for Miss Loring to follow as soon as she could pack off.
“Did she write you a note?” asked Mrs. Powell.
“No; the word was brought by a man.”
“What sort of a man?”
“A decent appearing person, who said he was the chauffeur of Miss Powell’s friends with whom she had gone.”
“What did he look like?”
“Ordinary looking, like a servant, but respectful and well-mannered, and he had a great many gold filled teeth. Do you know him?”
“No; and I think there’s something wrong. Elsie never would have done such a thing. She hasn’t any friends down there with their car,—that I know of. Has she, mother?”
“No,” Mrs. Powell agreed. “There is something wrong.” She clasped her hands nervously. “Do send for Mr. Coe, Gerty.”
Coley Coe came on the jump, and listened to the tale with a grave face.
“I should say there was!” he exclaimed, “somethingverywrong! That girl has been kidnapped and the villains mean to keep her till after her birthday! I’ve been fearing some such performance, but I thought she was safe with the nurse.”
Miss Loring spoke quickly: “Oh, I was so careful of her! I never let her out of my sight for a moment, but if I had known there was any danger of this sort, I should have been doubly careful! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“My own suspicions were not definite enough,” said Coe. “Nobody blames you, Miss Loring, you could not help it. In the crowd, the trick was easily turned. Now, Mrs. Powell, don’t cry so; you need fear no harm for your daughter, no bodily harm, I mean. She will likely be treated with greatest consideration and kindness,—but—”
“But I don’t understand,” Gerty looked doubtful,—“why should any one want to kidnap Elsie?”
“It’s a moil, Mrs. Seaman,” Coe said, shaking his long thatch out of his eyes. “I’m not yet discouraged, but I’m getting to see that we’re up against not only a very clever villain but an utterly unscrupulous one.”
“Aren’t all villains that?”
“Not entirely. Some draw the line at certain crimes. But this master-fiend, for that’s what he is—”
“Do you know him?” Gerty asked eagerly.
“No, I don’t! I know so much about him,—I’ve so many sidelights on him, so much evidence against him, and yet I lack the one connecting link that would give me his identity. I have my suspicions—but, oh, there were some things I wanted to ask Miss Powell!”
“Perhaps I can tell you, she talked over everything with me.”
“No; I only wanted her to tell me over again the little things she picked up that first morning at the Webbs. You know the white marks on the floor? Well, they’re explained. Miss Webb was in the room that evening, but it was before her brother came in, and she, foolishly enough! tried to conceal the fact, lest she be suspected of having Kimball Webb in hiding!”
“She was suspected.”
“Yes, but she isn’t now. At least, not by me. That speech, ‘if it should be!’ referred to spooks; and I had her trailed, you know, and though she was reported as going on mysterious secret errands, they were,—what do you suppose?”
“Oh, what?”
“Trips to a Beauty Doctor!”
“Poor Henrietta! It’s pathetic, but I can’t help laughing. And Mrs. Webb, she went on secret errands, too, didn’t she?”
“Yes; and hers were toséanceswith people that she didn’t want to acknowledge as her friends! Common people,—as mediums usually are, and some cronies that Mrs. Webb only cultivated in the pursuit of her psychic researches! No, there’s no reason to suspect that the mother or sister know where Webb is. Nor, do I see any chance of finding his hiding place before the thirtieth. After that, I’m very sure he will be freed.”
“But now Elsie’s gone, too!”
“Yes, and I’ve no doubt, taken away by the same people.”
A few questions asked of the nurse gave Coe no information concerning the man with the gold teeth.
“Oho!” he cried; “it is the same gang, then! Wemustget them! Do describe him further, Miss Loring!”
But her detailed description was only such as called up a picture of an average looking man, large, strong, with dark hair and eyes, healthy colour, and with no striking characteristic but the unusual number of gold filled teeth in the front part of his lower jaw.
“Enough to identify him,” said Coe, “but not enough to find him! We could scour the dentists’ records, but we’d have to visit thousands, and then, maybe, fail because the work was done in another city! If we only had one more line on him.”
“Maybe he’s the Sherman’s man,” mused Gerty.
“What! What’s that?” said Coe, quickly.
“Why, Elsie picked up a paper in Kim’s room, and it was one of those little toothpick wrappers, tissue, you know, and it was stamped ‘Sherman’s.’”
“Yes, the big restaurant.”
“Yes; now Kimball Webb never went to Sherman’s in his life! I know he didn’t, and Elsie says she knows he didn’t. He isn’t that sort of a man.”
“Why, Sherman’s is all right.”
“Yes, for the class of people that like it. But Kim is fastidious and Elsie says she knows of his prejudice against Sherman’s. Of course she’s been out with him so much she knows his tastes.”
“And this paper was in Webb’s room! When?”
“Elsie found it the day after or a few days after his disappearance. She threw it away—”
“That doesn’t matter, the fact of its being there is the important thing! You see, the man who got in the room may have dropped it—”
“How could any man get in the room! You’re crazy!”
“’Deed I’m not! Some mandidget in that room, and carry off Kimball Webb while Webb was unconscious! Now, you put that away in your mind, and keep it there, for it’s true!”
“How did he get in?”
“Mrs. Seaman, if any one ever asks me that question again, I’m going to run away! I don’t knowhowhe got in,—but, hedidget in,—and, if this interests you, I’m going to find out how he got in! But even more than that, I want to find the man! That’s the objective point. To find how he got in, would be fearfully interesting and would gratify my overweening curiosity,—I think overweening is the word for it! Anyhow, it’s the biggest order of curiosity I’ve ever experienced in my career! But, overweeninger yet, is my desire to get the man! It’s an obsession with me,—a craze! My fingers itch for him,—and I feel he’s so near—and yet so far! But this little old toothpick paper may be a clue! You know what flimsy little bits they are, how they cling in a pocket and are easily flirted out with a handkerchief or such matter!”
“Wouldn’t it be a good deal of a coincidence if your man, a frequenter of Sherman’s, left the paper,—as one might a visiting card?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Mrs. Seaman!” Coe smiled good-naturedly. “And the coincidence wouldn’t be so extraordinarily strange! They say, a man can’t enter and leave a room, without making half a dozen at least ineffaceable marks of his presence there. Now, the only reason I doubted the entrance of my man, as you call him, was the fact that I hadn’t been able to find any trace,—not even the slightest, of his visit there. That made me think Webb might have been lured out,—stop! don’t you dare ask me how he got out. We know he did get out,—and as I told you I’m going to find out how. Well, this little paper changes the whole map of my cogitations. Now, do you know of anybody who does go to Sherman’s?”
“I do not. My friends don’t care for the place.”
“Probably not; but I’ll bet it’s the great little old rendezvous of Friend Gold-teeth, and his boss.”
“Oh, he isn’t the principal, then?”
“Surely not! The man higher up is a big-brained chap, and working for big stakes! Sherman’s! Ho, ho! Pardon my unholy glee, but I’m ’way up over this thing! And now I’ll skip. Look for me when you see me!”
Coe went away and went straight to Wallace Courtney’s.
He began by saying frankly, “Do you want to help me to find Kimball Webb, or don’t you?”
“I do,” returned Courtney, “I’m not a heathen! I’m working on my hay while the sun shines, but I’d do anything in my power to find Webb even if it meant the failure of my masterpiece. You know, I think he had a spell of divine afflatus and went away to finish his own play by himself.”
“Leaving a bride, practically at the altar!”
“Oh, I think Elsie’s in the secret. She knows where he is! I shouldn’t wonder if they were married before he went,—that would make her fortune all right.”
“Well, what do you think of this? Elsie’s kidnapped too, now!”
“That carries out my theory. She’s gone to him.”
“Oh, you’re impossible! Well, tell me this, and I’ll scat. Do you know anybody who frequents Sherman’s? Or who goes there occasionally?”
“I should hope not! Why?”
“Oh, don’t be so supercilious. Sherman’s is decent if it is popular.”
“I know it. I’ve been there. It’s just a big, gay dance hall. No, I don’t number any of its regular patrons among my friends. Kimball Webb was not one, if that’s what you want to know.”
“That isn’t what I want to know. Don’t any of your crowd go there at times,—anybody who was at Webb’s dinner?”
“Why, Coe, I’d tell you if I could. I suppose every chap at that dinner has been inside of Sherman’s, but I doubt if many of them have been more than once or twice as a mere matter of curiosity. If that’s all you’re asking me, clear out, I’m busy.”
Coe was about to clear out, when Lulie Lloyd stopped him.
“I know somebody who goes to Sherman’s a lot,” she said; “he sometimes takes me there.”
“Thank you, Miss Lloyd,” Coe said, politely, “but I mean some one of Mr. Webb’s friends.”
“So do I,” said the girl, her colour rising and her expression a little defiant.
“Oh,” and Coley Coe began to see things, as in a glass darkly. “Some one who was at Mr. Webb’s dinner?”
“Yes,” she spoke almost sullenly.
“May I ask his name?”
“I’ll tell you, but I don’t want Mr. Courtney to hear.”
“I don’t want to,” the busy playwright returned, and Lulie Lloyd leaned over and whispered a name into the ear of Coleman Coe.
He nodded his head, as one who was not overwhelmingly surprised, and continued in a low tone, “And do you know a man with ever so many gold filled teeth in his lower jaw?”
“Do I?” she cried. “Why, he’s that man’s valet!”
“And a friend of yours?”
“He was! He isn’t now!”
“Ah,—he went back on you?”
“He did all of that,—and then some!”
And then Lulie Lloyd looked frightened, looked as if she regretted deeply what she had involuntarily blurted out, and she returned to her typewriter and began madly pounding the keys.
But Coe had learned enough.
He left quickly, and hopping on a street car, he arrived at the house where lived the man whose name Lulie had whispered to him. The man whose valet had the auriferous teeth.
The man he asked for was out, and though not an easy matter, Coe succeeded by dint of threats and bribes to gain admission to the room where, he said, he would await his host’s return.
Left alone Coleman Coe proceeded to ransack the desk, which stood, carelessly open.
He ran rapidly through a sheaf of letters and bills, now and then shaking his feathery forelock wildly, in mad bursts of satisfaction.
The bills, paid and unpaid, were illuminating. The letters even more so, and Coe grew more and more beaming of face as he proceeded.
He kept a wary eye on the door, and at last finding an old letter that specially interested him, he read it three times, though this was the quickly mastered gist of it:
“I think Simeon Breese will be asafeman for you.”
The address of the said Simeon followed, and this short bit of information seemed to afford Coley the deepest pleasure.
The underscoring of the word safe, particularly entertained him, and he laughed as at a great joke.
“I knew it!” he cried, though silently. “I knew it!”
Then, replacing such papers as he had visibly disarranged, Coe sauntered forth and left the house.
“Tell him I couldn’t wait any longer,” he said, casually to the door man and went his way.
His way took him to the establishment of Simeon Breese, Safe Maker.
“You make safes?” was Coe’s totally unnecessary query.
“Yes, sir,” admitted Breese, “what can I do for you?”
“I don’t exactly want a safe,” Coe said, with what was meant to be an ingratiating wink. “I,—that is,” he looked embarrassed, “I want a sort of a—well, a very confidential matter.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
There was no invitation to proceed, but Coe went on: “I want a secret entrance built—”
“Whatever made you come to me on such an errand, then? My business is building safes,—not building means to rob them.”
“Nonsense, that’s not the idea. I merely want a private passage from one room to another in my house,—”
“You’re way off, sir. You’ve come to the wrong place, entirely. Good morning, sir.”
“But,—stay,—wait a minute. I’m recommended here by—” And Coe whispered in the ear of Breese the same name Lulie Lloyd had whispered to him.
Breese looked utterly blank.
“Don’t know your friend, sir; never heard of him. Good morning!”
This last dismissal was accompanied by a glance that meant a very definite invitation to leave, and as there seemed small use in staying Coe left. But he was disappointed. He had hoped to get a line on the secret entrance which he knew gave into Kimball Webb’s room.
One forlorn hope came into his breast. He would try to get hold of the valet, the gold-toothed valet, who had played fast and loose with Lulie Lloyd. This showed him to be a man of not unimpeachable morals, and he might be useful.
He went boldly back to the house he had so recently left, and inquired if his friend had yet returned.
“No, sir,” the imperturbable doorman informed him.
“Then is his man in,—his valet?”
“Bass? That he ain’t. He’s left.”
“He has? How long ago?”
“Oh, a matter of a couple of months or more now.”
Ah! Not a great discrepancy between that and the date of Kimball Webb’s disappearance!
“Funny looking man, Bass,” Coe said, casually.
“All right, I should say.”
“Queer teeth, at least.”
“Yes,” the other admitted. “I shouldn’t care to carry round such an El Dorado, but Bass is rather proud of it.”
“Well, we’re all more or less proud of something. You don’t know where Bass hangs out now?”
“I don’t.”
Coe sighed and turned away.
He had so little to work on. That ridiculous toothpick paper,—Webb might easily have dropped that himself. Many a man would go to Sherman’s without the knowledge of his sweetheart, and think it no crime.
And the safe builder seemed to dwindle to even greater insignificance. For if he hadn’t built the secret entrance whichhadto be in existence, who had, and how was Coe to find him.
There was only one answer to it all. Coleman Coe was up against the necessity,—the actual bare necessity of finding that entrance for himself. No matter whether hecoulddo it, or not, it had to be done, and he had to do it.
As he had previously argued, the finding of the secret didn’t prove the perpetrator of it, nor did it produce Kimball Webb,—but these things might result from the discovery of how he was taken away, and anyway, there was no other way to find out.
The master mind of the villain who took him was so clever, so diabolically canny, there was nothing to work on or to work with.
And, now, Elsie was gone,—there was added necessity for hasty action and result.
The motive, Coe had long ago decided, was the fortune. Just how that affected the case he wasn’t sure, but he felt an unshakable conviction that had it not been for the freak will left by Miss Elizabeth Powell there would have been no disappearance of either the bridegroom or the bride.
This naturally turned his mind to Joe Allison. But he had long ago ceased to suspect Joe. He had, at first, but now he knew the chap, and it was impossible to connect him with such a crime as abduction to gain a fortune. Allison was money-mad, that Coe admitted,—but, well, he wouldn’t put it on Joe till he had to.
He decided he’d go to the room of Kimball Webb and once again make those hopeless rounds of walls, ceiling and floor; doors and windows; chimney and bathroom window, which were all the points to be examined.
He asked Miss Webb a few preliminary questions. How long had they lived in the house, and such things as that.
This led nowhere. How could it possibly help to know they had lived there six years; to know where they had lived in Boston; to know when Kimball first met Elsie Powell; to learn why the Webbs didn’t fully approve of the match; all these things were as chaff which didn’t even show which way the wind blew.
And Miss Webb’s attitude had greatly changed since the last time he talked with her.
She had now begun to despair of ever seeing her brother again.
With a womanly injustice she was inclined to blame Elsie for the whole trouble, but when Coe told her that Elsie, too, was mysteriously missing, she saw the thing as he did, that a gang or at least a pair of able and ingenious villains were at work.
Coe was tempted to tell her of the valet, Bass, and his master, but concluded to wait a little longer.
He asked for a talk with the two men servants, who had broken into Kimball’s room that morning, and this being willingly granted, he asked them again of any point or hint they might remember that hadn’t yet been brought.
“No, sir,” said Hollis thoughtfully, “I’ve had all sorts of notions, but they’ve all been wrong, and sometimes I’m ready to agree with Mrs. Webb herself that it’s the spirits as done it.”
“Rubbish!” Coe observed, and Hollis really agreed, though he had no wiser suggestion to make.
“How long have you been here?” Coe asked, idly.
“Two years, sir.”
“And have you seen or heard anything mysterious?”
“No; not myself, sir. But I’ve heard the other servants’ stories.”
“So have I,” groaned Coe, wearily. “I’ve heard the tales of moans and groans that grew weirder each time,—the tales did, I mean. But I’ve heard nothing definite. Have you, Oscar?”
“No, sir,” said the chauffeur, a taciturn chap. “Nor I’ve never seen anything myself, nor heard anything. But, Mr. Coe, everybody laughs at this, so I haven’t harped on it. You know I did smell bananas as I opened that door, that morning, and I’d swear to that on a stack of Bibles!”
“Bananas!”
“Yes, sir. And Mr. Kimball Webb didn’t care for bananas. I mean he wouldn’t think of having them in his bedroom to eat! He never did things like that. Now, doesn’t that smell mean something?”
“It’s queer, but I can’t see any indicative evidence in it.”
“No, sir, I s’pose not. But I’d like to know what made it. Maybe ghosts eat bananas.”
And so again Coe went over the room.
“Lord!” he cried, “I’m sick and tired of looking for a mousehole when the mousehole isn’t here! Not a baby mouse could get in or out of this box,—let alone a swashbuckler villain, carrying a drugged unconscious man on his back!”
For that was the way Coe visualized it,—he felt sure the abductor had entered by his confounded secret entrance, had drugged or chloroformed the sleeping Webb, and had returned the way he came, carrying his prey.
For how else could it have been done? And anyway details didn’t matter. Even if Webb had been cajoled,—say by a tale of Elsie in immediate danger,—or her sudden illness,—even so, the secret entrance must have afforded the way in.
And so the secret entrance had to be found, and Coe vowed he wouldn’t leave the room until he left through that entrance itself!
Patiently he went over the walls again,—the floor, the ceiling, noting unmarred decorations that precluded an opening of any sort.
But this he soon finished and set himself to work with his brain, thinking up some other type of entrance than any he had yet thought of.
“Suppose the whole side wall swings out,” he thought. “Suppose this wall between his house and the next—swings like a door,—no, that’s too wide,—suppose it swings on a pivot,—a central pivot,—oh, shucks, it couldn’t! Well, suppose the whole hall door came out in one piece,—frame and all. Suppose the frame is hinged on like a door,—then the bolted door wouldn’t matter.”
But this ingenious plan likewise failed to work, because the door wasn’t built that way. It was just an ordinary, regular made and regular hung door.
The windows, too, failed to prove themselves freak windows of any sort but insisted on remaining the regulation, prosaic windows of commerce.
The chimney was the only outlet left.
Coe had peered up this so many times; poked up it with so many rods and poles; invented and discarded so many clever schemes of how it might work; that he felt no hope of further light from this source.
He glared at the great fireplace with an air of righteous indignation. Why,—oh, why couldn’t it obligingly turn out to be some sort of a mechanism that would solve his puzzle.
He scrutinized every inch of it.
All he got for his trouble was the conviction that certain parts of it had been recently touched up with gilding,—where the gilt iron filigree work decorated the edges of the wide opening. Moreover, the newer gilding was of a slightly different shade and lustre from the old.
Of course, all this meant, that in their housekeeping zeal the Webbs or their servants had touched up some points of the oak leaf design that needed such renovation.
They were here and there among the leaves and acorns that surrounded the opening of the fireplace.
Grasping at any straw Coe went downstairs and made inquiry, learning that there had been no such gilding done.
Coe went back and sat looking at the oak leaves.
It seemed more conspicuous now,—indeed, he wondered how he could have missed seeing it sooner.
Then he realized it was not really conspicuous,—it had doubtless been done last housecleaning time.
But it was too bright for that theory. No, sir, that gilt had been applied to those scratched or marred leaves lately, and it had been done carefully and well. Done by somebody who knew how,—not a professional decorator, necessarily, but some one who knew about that sort of thing.
Why, he used to do it himself, when he lived at home,—and he remembered even yet the way the gold paint got all over his fingers and the way it smelled of—
Great Scott! of bananas!
It did! Every metal paint he had ever used,—gilt, bronze, copper,—all smelled of bananas,—acetate of amyl,—or something like that!
Had Oscar’s reference to a banana odour proved valuable after all?
And what could it mean? Why, the answer flashed across his eager brain,—it meant that the entrance,—the secret entrance, was somehow connected with that fireplace,—that the kidnapper had scratched the gilt leaves so badly when making his exit, that he had, to escape detection, to retouch the marred places!
To work uninterruptedly Coe went and closed the room door and locked it.
Then he sat down on the floor in front of the fireplace, and pondered.
Not the chimney. No. He had long ago discarded that as a course of exit. But the fireplace, somehow.
He peered and scrutinized; he fingered and pinched; he reasoned and cogitated; and at last his patient effort was rewarded by seeing the tiniest bit of rust or rubbed enamel that looked as if itmightmean a hidden spring.
And it did! Careful manipulation, gentle urging, without forcing made the fireplace give up its secret at last, and the whole grate with its back piece, all, swung round on a pivot into the house next door, and the fireplace that belonged in there swung into Coleman Coe’s astonished ken!
The back of the fireplace, was a mere gate,—hung on a pivot, instead of on side hinges, and it swung as easily as if recently oiled, which it doubtless had been.
Half dazed, Coe went through the opening,—a wide enough one, as the grates were exceedingly shallow, though very broad.
He found himself in a pleasant bedroom, almost a duplicate of Webb’s own, as to size, shape and arrangement.
The secret entrance was found at last!
Eagerly Coe examined every part of it. The grates in the two rooms were alike,—the Webb one much cleaner and brighter than the other.
Coe’s mind flew back to the story of the servant or somebody who smelled a newly kindled fire without reason therefor.
It was, of course, because some hand had turned the revolving grates around when there was or had been a fire in one side and not in the other.
“Slick!” mused Coe, admiringly. “Very slick!”
And then, he remembered the Poltergeist! What easier than to enter noiselessly, pull the bedclothes off the drowsy sleeper, and with a toss of the sheets over the victim’s face, escape again before discovery could be made?
And this was the way Kimball Webb had been abducted. The kidnapper had come through the opening, had chloroformed Webb, and had carried him back with him. The grate opening was wide enough for that. Or, would be if the victim were, say, dragged through after the abductor.
Oh, it was possible—possible? Why, it was what had been done! The mystery of the disappearance was explained as to means.
And the ghost that had been meant to frighten Coley Coe and had only roused his hilarity.
That too, had been prepared and exhibited by the same clever Artful Dodger responsible for all the rest.
Yes, the discovery explained everything. And, the rogue, having so marred the gilt acorns, that attention must necessarily be drawn to them, had crept back and touched them up with gold paint,—that smelled of bananas! Thus overreaching his own cleverness!
Good old Oscar! To remember to mention the banana odour!
Hesitatingly, Coe went through to the other house.
He looked about the room. Unused, evidently. Dust on furniture, windows closed. Dry atmosphere and blinds drawn.
He switched on a light. That had not been cut off.
Then he remembered the people were away and the house was closed. Well, one of them could have returned from his summer resort to carry out his fell purpose, and return again. Who were the people?
Oh, yes, the Marsden St. Johns. Coe didn’t know one iota about them, but he proposed to find out.
He tried to learn the character of its inhabitant from the room itself.
But it seemed to him the abode of a lady. There were no clothes in the wardrobe, but a stray hairpin or two, and a scantily furnished workbasket were indicative of a departed feminine incumbent.
Still, this didn’t make it probable that a lady had carried Webb off. Her room, in her absence, might well be used by another.
Coe returned to Webb’s room, closed the fireplace carefully, unlocked the door and went down stairs.
He went to Miss Webb and asked about the people next door.
“A delightful family,” she said, “but very quiet. They are away much of the time. They leave very early for their summer place, and close the house the first of April. Then they return about October. But before the holidays they go South, and after the holidays to California or somewhere else, so that, as a matter of fact, they’re almost never at home,—if you can even call it their home.”
“Who occupies the front room on the third floor?”
“I think Miss Marsden, the old spinster aunt.”
Coe nodded. He felt sure the kidnapper was not the one who belonged in the room with the turning fireplace. Of course, she knew nothing about it. Really, it was mysterious enough still!
He told Miss Webb of his discovery. Naturally, she wanted to go up at once and see it.
Calling Mrs. Webb in they all three went up and Coe showed his treasure trove.
“Well, of all things!” exclaimed Mrs. Webb; “why, it’s big enough to crawl through!”
“To go through without crawling,” returned Coe, as, squatting, he fairly shuffled through on his feet.
“And you think that’s the way Kim went out?” asked Henrietta, as Coe returned.
“I know it’s the way,—but I think he was taken out unconscious.”
“Of course he was!” cried Mrs. Webb. “He never would go through into a strange house of his own accord.”
“Well, where is he?” asked Henrietta, as if, Coe, having done so much must now produce the missing man.
“I don’t know. But, Miss Webb, are you sure the Marsden St. Johns had nothing to do with the kidnapping?”
“Of course they didn’t! They were away, and aside from that the thing is preposterous! Why, we scarcely know them, and moreover, they’re the quietest, most reserved people. That’s why we like them.
“Steal Kimball! They’d be more likely to protect him! But I tell you they were not at home then.”
“Let me go through,” and Miss Webb looked at the open way.
“Certainly, the people are not home,—come along,” Coe agreed.
“Why, Henrietta,” cried her mother, “I don’t think you ought to.”
But curiosity triumphed, and soon all three stood in the room in the next door house.
“What awful housekeeping!” Mrs. Webb cried, and her daughter’s expression of distaste spoke volumes.
Coley Coe stood smiling to himself, at the way the aristocratic ladies descended to the vulgar depths of prying. They peered into cupboards and bureau drawers until he was positively shocked.
But it brought about a strange result.
“Why, here’s the diamond pendant!” exclaimed Henrietta.
And sure enough, in a small drawer in the dresser was the very jewel case Mrs. Webb had last seen in her son’s hands the night before his mysterious disappearance.
“Impossible!” Coe cried. But it was, beyond all shadow of a doubt. The four magnificent stones, hung one below another, of perfectly graduated sizes, sparkled and scintillated as Henrietta let it dangle from her finger.
“I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Webb, utterly bewildered.
“Who could!” exclaimed Coe. “I’m all at sea. Tell me more about those St. Johns. What sort of people can they be?”
“Oh, they aren’t thieves,—they can’t be!” Miss Webb stared, wide-eyed, at the gems. “And yet, how else explain all this? Tell me, Mr. Coe, why did they take Kimball away?”
“It looks to me as if whoever took him, did it to get the diamonds, at least partly for that.”
“But the St. Johns are wealthy; they could buy these stones and never miss the money.”
“Well, let’s look further. Suppose somebody utilized this empty house of the St. Johns to—”
“Oh, they don’t own the house,” Mrs. Webb interrupted, “they rent it.”
“Millionaires, and rent a house!”