“It was,” and Zizi nodded her sleek little black head. She had removed her hat and placed it on a nearby chair, and as she nestled into her furs which formed a dark background, her small white face looked more eerie than ever. “Ninety per cent. of all anonymous letters are written by women, and ninety per cent. of these are signed ‘A Friend.’ Though usually that is a misstatement.”
“May I see the letter?” asked Wise.
“Sure; I’ll get it.”
It was Zizi who spoke! And rising, she went swiftly across the room, to a desk, and from a pigeonhole took an opened letter, which she carried to Wise, and then dropped back into her seat again.
Mrs. Vail gave a surprised gasp, and Olive looked her amazement.
“How did you know where to find that?” she exclaimed, her great brown eyes wide with wonder.
“Dead easy,” said Zizi, nonchalantly; “you’ve scarcely taken your eyes off that spot, Miss Raynor, since the letter was mentioned!”
“But even though I looked at the desk, how could you pick out the very letter, at once?”
“Oh, I looked at the desk, too. And I saw your morning’s mail, pretty well sorted out. There’s a pile of bills, a pile of what are unmistakably social notes, and, up above in a pigeonhole, all by itself, was this letter. You glanced at it a dozen times or more, so I couldn’t help knowing.”
Olive laughed. One couldn’t help liking the strange girl whose expression was so earnest, even while her black eyes were dancing.
Meanwhile, Penny Wise examined the missive.
“I’ll read it aloud?” and he glanced at Olive, who acquiesced by a nod.
“Miss Raynor:
“Quit looking for slayer of A.G. or you’ll be railroaded in yourself. This is straight goods. Call off all Tecs, or beware consequences. Will not warn twice!
“A Friend.”
“A woman,” Pennington Wise said in a musing voice, after he read it.
“A business woman,” added Zizi from her corner.
“A stenographer maybe,” Wise went on, and Olive cried:
“Do you mean Jenny?”
“Oh, no; this is written by a woman with more brains than Jenny ever dreamed of. A very clever woman in fact.”
“Who?” breathed Olive, her eager face flushing in her interest and anxious to know more.
“I don’t know that, Miss Raynor, but——”
“Oh, Mr. Wise,” broke in Mrs. Vail; “you are so wonderful! Won’t you explain how you do it, as you go along?”
She spoke as if he were a conjurer.
“Anything to oblige,” Wise assented. “Well, here’s how it looks to me. The writer of this letter is a business woman, not only because she uses this large, single sheet of bond paper, but because she knows how to use it. She is a stenographer,—by that I do not necessarily mean that is her business,—she may have a knowledge of stenography, and be in some much more important line of work. But she is an accomplished typist and a rapid one. This, I know, of course, from the neat and uniform typing. She is clever, because she has used this non-committal paper, which is in no way especial or individual. She is a business woman, again, because she uses such expressions as ‘quit,’ railroaded,’ ‘Tecs,’ ‘straight goods,’——”
“Which she might do by way of being misleading——” murmured Zizi.
“Too many of ’em, and too casually used, Ziz. A society girl trying to pose as a business woman never would have rolled those words in so easily. I should have said a newspaper woman but for a certain peculiarity of style which indicates,—what, Zizi?”
“You’ve got it; a telegraph operator.”
“Exactly. Do you know any telegrapher, Miss Raynor?”
“No, indeed!” and Olive looked astounded at the suggestion that she should number such among her acquaintances. “Are you sure?”
“Looks mighty like it. The short sentences and the elimination of personal pronouns seem to me to denote a telegraph girl’s diction. And she is very clever! She has sent the carbon copy of the letter and not the outside typing.”
“Why?” I asked.
“To make it less traceable. You know, typewriting is very nearly as individual as pen-writing. The differentiations of the machine as well as of the user’s technique, are almost invariably so pronounced as to make the writing recognizable. Now these peculiarities, while often clear on the first paper, are blurred more or less on the carbon copy. So ‘A Friend,’ thinking to be very canny, has sent the carbon. This is a new trick, though I’ve seen it done several times of late. But it isn’t so misleading as it is thought to be. For all the individual peculiarities of the typewriter,—I mean, the machine, are almost as visible on this as on the other. I’ve noticed them in this case, easily. And moreover, this would-be clever writer has overreached herself! For a carbon copy smudges so easily that it is almost impossible to touch it, even to fold the sheet, without leaving a telltale thumb or finger print! And this correspondent has most obligingly done so!”
“Really!” breathed Zizi, with a note of satisfaction in her low voice.
“And the peculiarities,—what are they?” asked Olive.
“The one that jumps out and hits me first is the elevateds. Look,—and you have to look closely, Miss Raynor,—in every instance the lettersis a tiny speck higher than the other letters.”
“Why, so it is,” and Olive examined the letter with deep interest; “but how can you find a machine with an elevateds?”
“It isn’t a sign-board, it’s a proof. When we think we have the right machine, theswill prove it,—not lead us to it.”
“Let me see,” begged Mrs. Vail, reaching for the paper. “A friend of mine is a stenographer; maybe she——”
“Excuse me,” and Penny Wise folded the letter most carefully. “We can’t get any more finger prints on this paper, or we shall render it useless. Now, Miss Raynor, I’m going. I’ll take the letter, and I’ve little doubt it will be a great help to me in my work. I will report to you from time to time, but it may be a few days before I learn anything of importance. Zizi?”
“Yes; I’ll stay here,” and the girl sat quietly in her chair.
“That means she’ll take up her abode with you for the present, Miss Raynor,” and Wise smiled at Olive.
“Live here?”
“Yes, please. It is necessary, or she wouldn’t do it.”
“Oh, let her stay!” cried Mrs. Vail; “she’s so interesting—and queer!”
The object of her comment gave her an engaging smile, but said nothing, and beckoning me to go with him, Wise rose to take leave.
But I wanted to have a little further talk with Olive on several matters and I told Wise I’d join him a little later.
“Be goody-girl, Zizi,” he adjured as he went off, and she nodded her head, but with a saucy grimace at the detective.
“My room?” she said, inquiringly, with a pretty, shy glance at Olive. “I’m no trouble,—not a bit. Any little old room, you know.”
“You shall have it in a few moments,” and Olive went away to see the housemaids about it.
Mrs. Vail snatched at a chance to talk uninterruptedly to the strange girl.
“What is your work?” she inquired; “do you help Mr. Wise? Isn’t he wonderful! How you must admire him. I knew a detective once,—or, at least, a man who was going to be a detective, but—— Oh,dotell me what your part of the work is!”
“I sit by,” returned Zizi, with a dear little grin that took off all edge of curtness.
“Sit by! Is that some technical term? I don’t quite understand.”
“I don’t always understand myself,” and the girl shook her head slowly; “but I just remain silent until Mr. Wise wants me to speak,—to tell him something, you know. Then I tell him.”
“But how doyouknow it?” I put in, fascinated by this strange child, for she looked little more than a child.
“Ooh!” Zizi shuddered, and drew her small self together, her black eyes round and uncanny-looking; “ooh! I donno how I know! I guess the bogie man tells me!”
Mrs. Vail shuddered too, and gave a little shriek.
“You’re a witch,” she cried; “own up, now, aren’t you a witch?”
“Yes, lady, lady! Iama witch,—a poor little witch girl!” and Zizi laughed outright at her own little joke.
If her smile had been charming, her laugh was more so. It was not only of a silvery trill, but it was infectious, and Mrs. Vail and I laughed in sympathy.
“What are you all laughing at?” said Olive, reappearing.
“At me,” and Zizi spoke humbly now; “I made ’em laugh. Sorry!”
“Come along with me, you funny child,” and Olive led her away, leaving me to be the victim of Mrs. Vail’s incessant stream of chatter.
The good lady volubly discussed the detective and his assistant and detailed many accounts of people she had known. Her acquaintance was seemingly a wide one!
At last Olive returned, smiling.
“I never saw anything like her!” she exclaimed; “I gave her a pretty little room, not far from mine. I don’t know, I’m sure, why she’s staying here, but I like to have her. Well, in about two minutes she had the furniture all changed about. Not the heavy pieces, of course, but she moved a small table and all the chairs, and finally unscrewed an electric light bulb from one place and put it on another, and then, after looking all about, she said, ‘Just one thing more!’ and if she didn’t spring up on to a table with one jump and take down quite a large picture! ‘There,’ she said, and she set it out in the hall; ‘I can’t bear that thing! Now this is a lovely room, and I thank you, Miss Raynor. The pink one we passed is yours, isn’t it?’
“‘Yes; how did you know?’ I asked her. And she said, ‘I saw a photograph of Mr. Manning on your bureau.’ Little rascal! I can’t help liking her!”
So absorbed was I in the new interests that had come into my life, so anxious to be of assistance to Olive Raynor, and so curious to watch the procedure of Pennington Wise, that I confess I forgot all about the poor chap I had seen at Bellevue Hospital,—the man who “fell through the earth”! And I’m not sure I should ever have thought of him again, save as a fleeting memory, if I hadn’t received a letter from him.
My dear Brice [he wrote]: I’ve no right to pilfer your time, but if you have a few minutes to squander, I wish you’d give them to me. I’m about to be discharged from the hospital, with a clean bill of health,—but with no hint or clew as to my cherished identity. The doctors—drat ’em!—say that some day my memory will spring, full-armed, back at me, but meanwhile, I must just sit tight and wait. Not being of a patient disposition, I’m going to get busy at acquiring a new identity, then, if the old one ever does spring a come-back, I’ll have two,—and can lead a double life! No, I’m not flippant, I’m philosophical. Well, if your offer didn’t have a string tied to it come in to see me,—please.Sincerely yours,Case Rivers.P.S.—The doctors look upon me as a very important and interesting case,—hence my name.
My dear Brice [he wrote]: I’ve no right to pilfer your time, but if you have a few minutes to squander, I wish you’d give them to me. I’m about to be discharged from the hospital, with a clean bill of health,—but with no hint or clew as to my cherished identity. The doctors—drat ’em!—say that some day my memory will spring, full-armed, back at me, but meanwhile, I must just sit tight and wait. Not being of a patient disposition, I’m going to get busy at acquiring a new identity, then, if the old one ever does spring a come-back, I’ll have two,—and can lead a double life! No, I’m not flippant, I’m philosophical. Well, if your offer didn’t have a string tied to it come in to see me,—please.
Sincerely yours,Case Rivers.
P.S.—The doctors look upon me as a very important and interesting case,—hence my name.
I smiled at the note, and as I had taken a liking to the man from the start, I went at once to see him.
“No,” I assured him, after receiving his cordial welcome, “my offer had no string attached. I’m more than ready to help in any way I can, to find a niche for you in this old town and fit you into it. It doesn’t matter where you hail from, or how you got here; New York is an all-comers’ race, and the devil take the hindmost.”
“He won’t get me, then,” and Rivers nodded his head determinedly; “I may not be in the van, just at first, but give me half a chance, and I’ll make good!”
This was not bumptiousness or braggadocio, I could see, but an earnest determination. The man was sincere and he had a certain doggedness of purpose, which was evident in his looks and manner as well as in his words.
Rivers was up and dressed now, and I saw he was a good-looking chap. His light-brown hair was carefully parted and brushed; his smooth-shaven face was thin and pale, but showed strong lines of character. He had been fitted with glasses,—apince-nez, held by a tiny gold chain over one ear,—and this corrected the vacant look in his eyes. His clothes were inexpensive and quite unmistakably ready-made.
He was apologetic. “I’d rather have better duds,” he said, “but as I had to borrow money to clothe myself at all, I didn’t want to splurge. One doctor here is a brick! He’s going to follow up my ‘case,’ and so I accepted his loan. It’s a fearful predicament to be a live, grown-up man, without a cent to your name!”
“Let me be your banker,” I offered, in all sincerity; “I——”
“No; I don’t want coin so much as I want a way to earn some. Now, if you’ll put me in the way of getting work,—anything that pays pretty well,—I’ll be obliged, sir, and I’ll be on my way.”
His smile was of that frank, chummy sort that makes for sympathy and I agreed to help him in any way I could think of.
“What can you do?” I asked, preliminarily.
“Dunno. Have to investigate myself, and learn what are my latent talents. Doubtless their name is legion. But I’ve nailed one of them. I can draw! Witness these masterpieces!”
He held up some sheets of scribble paper on which I saw several careful and well-done mechanical drawings.
“You were a draughtsman!” I exclaimed, “in that lost life of yours.”
“I don’t know. I may have been. Anyway, these things are all right.”
“What are they?”
“Not much of anything. They’re sort of designs for wall-paper or oilcloth. See? Merely suggestions, you know, but this one, repeated, would make a ripping study for a two-toned paper.”
“You’re right,” I exclaimed, in admiration of the pattern. “You must have been a designer of such things.”
“No matter what Iwas,—the thing is what can I be now, to take my place in the economic world. These are, do you see, adaptations from snow crystals.”
“So they are! It takes me back to my school days.”
“Perhaps I’m harking back to those, too. I remember the pictures of snow crystals in ‘Steele’s Fourteen Weeks in Natural Science.’ Did you study that?”
“I did!” I replied, grinning; “in high school! But, is your memory returning?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it! I have recollection of all I learned in an educational way, but I can’t see any individual picture ofme, personally,—oh, never mind! How can I get a position as master designer in some great factory?”
“That’s a big order,” I laughed. “But you can begin in a small way and rise to a proud eminence——”
“No, thanky! I’m not as young as I once was,—my favorite doctor puts me down at thirty,—plus or minus,—but I feel about sixty.”
“Really, Rivers, do you feel like an old man?”
“Not physically,—that’s the queer part. But I feel as if my life was all behind me——”
“Oh, that’s because of your temporary mental——”
“I know it. And I’m going to conquer it,—or get around it some way. Now, if you’ll introduce me,—and, yes, act as my guarantee, my reference,—I know it’s asking a lot, but if you’ll do that, I’ll make good, I promise you!”
“I believe you will, and I’m only too glad to do it. I’ll take you, whenever you say, around to a firm I know of, that I believe will be jolly glad to get you. You see, so many men of your gifts have gone to war——”
“Yes, I know, and I’d like to enlist myself, but Doc says I can’t, being a—a defective.”
“I wish you were a detective instead,” I said, partly to turn the current of his thoughts from his condition and partly because my mind was so full of my own interests that he was a secondary consideration.
“I’d like to be. I’ve been reading a bunch of detective stories since I’ve been here in hospital, and I don’t see as that deduction business is such a great stunt. Sherlock Holmes is all right, but most of his imitators are stuff and nonsense.”
And then, unable to hold it back any longer, I told him all about the Gately case and about Pennington Wise.
He was deeply interested, and his eyes sparkled when I related Wise’s deductions from the hatpin.
“Has he proved it yet?” he asked; “have you checked him up?”
“No, but there hasn’t been time. He’s only just started his work. He has another task; to find Amory Manning.”
“Who’s he?”
“A man who has disappeared, and there is fear of foul play.”
“Is he suspected of killing Gately?”
“Oh, no, not that; but he was suspected of hiding to shield Miss Raynor——”
“Pshaw! a girl wouldn’t commit a murder like that.”
“I don’t think this girl did, anyway. And, in fact, they—the police I mean—have a new suspect. There’s a man named Rodman, who is being looked up.”
“Oh, it’s all a great game! I wish I could get out into the world and take part in such things!”
“You will, old man. Once you’re fairly started, the world will be——”
“My cellar-door! You bet it will! I’m going to slide right down it.”
“What about your falling through it? Do you remember any more details of that somewhat—er—unusual performance?”
“Yes, I do! And you can laugh all you like. That’s no hallucination, it’s a clear, true memory,—the only memory I have.”
“Just what do you remember?”
“That journey through the earth——”
“You been reading Jules Verne lately?”
“Never read it. But that long journey down, down,—miles and miles,—I can never forget it! I’ve had a globe to look at, and I suppose I must have started thousands of miles from here——”
“Oh, now, come off——”
“Well, it’s no use. I can’t make anybody believe it, but it’s the truth!”
“Write it up for the movies. The Man Who Fell Through the Earth would be a stunning title!”
“Now you’re guying me again. Guess I’ll shut up on that subject. But I’ll stick you for one more helping-hand act. Where can I get a room to live in for a short time?”
“Why a short time?”
“Because I must take a dinky little cheap place at first, then soon, I’ll be on my feet, financially speaking, and I can move to decenter quarters. You see, I’m going to ask you after all to trust me with a few shekels, right now, and I’ll return the loan, with interest, at no far distant date.”
His calm assumption of success in a business way impressed me favorably. Undoubtedly, he had been one accustomed to making and spending money in his previous life, and he took it as a matter of course. But his common sense, which had by no means deserted him, made him aware that he could get no satisfactory position without some sort of credentials.
As he talked he was idly, it seemed, unconsciously, drawing on the paper pad that lay on the table at his elbow—delicate penciled marks that resolved themselves into six-sided figures, whose radii blossomed out into beautiful tendrils or spikes until they formed a perfect, harmonious whole; each section alike, just as in a snow crystal.
They were so exquisitely done that I marveled at his peculiar gift.
“You ought to design lace,” I observed; “those designs are too fine for papers or carpets.”
“Perhaps so,” he returned, seriously gazing at his drawings. “Anyway, I’ll design something,—and it’ll be something worthwhile!”
“Maybe you were an engraver,” I hazarded, “before you——”
“Before I fell through the earth? Maybe I was. Well, then, suppose tomorrow I so far encroach on your good offices as to go with you to see the firm you mentioned. Or, if you’ll give me a letter of introduction——”
“Do you know your way around New York?”
“I’m not sure. I have a feeling I was in New York once,—a long time ago, but I can’t say for certain.”
“I’ll go with you then. I’ll call for you tomorrow, and escort you to the office I have in mind, and also, look up a home and fireside that appeals to you.”
“The sort that appeals to me is out of the question at present,” he said, firmly determined to put himself under no greater obligation to me than need be. “I’ll choose a room like the old gentleman in the Bible had with a bed and a table and a stool and a candlestick.”
“You remember your literature all right.”
“I do, mostly; though I’ll confess I read of that ascetic individual since I’ve been here. The hospital is long on Bibles and detective stories, and short onbelles-lettres. Well, so long, old man!”
I went away, pondering. It was a strange case, this of Case Rivers. I smiled at the name he had chosen.
He was positively a well-educated and well-read man. His speech gave me a slight impression of an Englishman, and I wondered if he might be Canadian. Of course, I didn’t believe an atom of his yarn about coming from Canada to our fair cityviathe interior of the globe,—but he may have had a lapse of memory that included his railroad journey, and dreamed that he came in some fantastic way.
And then, as is usual, when leaving one scene for another, my thoughts flew ahead to my next errand, which was a visit to Police Headquarters.
Here Chief Martin gave me a lot of new information. It seemed they had unearthed damaging evidence in the case of George Rodman, and he was, without a doubt, a malefactor,—but in what particular branch of evil the Chief omitted to state. Nor could any rather broad hints produce any result. At last I said:
“Why don’t you arrest Rodman, then?”
“Not enough definite evidence. I’m just about sure that he killed Gately, and I think I know why, but I can’t prove it,—yet. Your statement that his head shadowed on that glass door was the same head you saw the day of the murder, is our strongest point——”
“Oh, I didn’t say that!” I cried, aghast; “I do say it looked like the same head, but I wouldn’t swear that it was!”
“Well, I think it was, and though we can’t connect up the pistol with Rodman——”
“Did you get the pistol from the Boston man?”
“Yes; Scanlon brought home that bacon. But careful grilling failed to get any more information from Lusk, the man who found the pistol. He tells a straight tale of his visit to the Puritan Building, and his business there, all corroborated by the people he called on. He found that pistol, just as he says he did. And, of course, I knew he told the truth in his letter. If he were involved, or had any guilty knowledge of the crime, he surely wouldn’t write to tell us of it! So now we have the pistol, and we know it was picked up in the tenth floor hall near Rodman’s door,—but that proves nothing, since we can’t claim it is Rodman’s weapon. It may be, of course, but there’s nothing to show it.”
“What does Rodman say for himself?”
“Denies everything. Says he had the merest nodding acquaintance with Gately,—this we know is a lie!—says he knew there was an elevator door in his room, but he had never used it, nor even opened it. Said he hung a big war map over it because it was a good place for a map. We’ve no living witness to give a shred of evidence against Rodman, except your statement about his shadow,—and that is uncertain at best.”
“Yes, it is. I do say it looked like Rodman’s head,—that is, I mean, Rodman’s head looked like the one I saw that day. But other heads might look as much like it.”
“That’s the trouble. George Rodman is a slick chap, and what he does that he doesn’t want known, doesn’t get known! But I’m onto him! And I’ll bet I’ll get him yet. He’s so comfoundedly cool that all I say to him rolls off like water off a duck’s back. He knows I’ve got no proof, and he’s banking on that to get through.”
“What about Jenny? Can’t she tell you anything?”
“She knows nothing about Rodman. And that very point proves that if he visited Gately often, as I think he did, he came and went by that private elevator which connected their two offices, as well as made a street exit for either or both of them.”
“Did old man Boyd ever see Rodman leave the Matteawan by way of that elevator?”
“He says he never did, but sometimes I think Rodman has fixed him.”
“And Jenny, too, maybe.”
“Maybe. And here’s another thing. There’s somebody called ‘The Link,’ who figures largely in the whole affair, but figures secretly. I won’t say how I found this little joker, but if I can dig up who ‘The Link’ is, I’ve made a great stride toward success.”
Naturally, I said nothing about Pennington Wise to the Chief of Police, but I made a mental note of “The Link” to report to the detective.
“Reward’s offered,” we were suddenly informed, as Foxy Jim Hudson burst into the room.
“For what?” asked the Chief, a little absent-mindedly.
“For information leading to the whereabouts of Amory Manning.”
Martin wheeled round in his chair to look at his subordinate. “Who offered it? How much?”
“That’s the queer part, Chief. Not the amount,—that’s five thousand dollars, but it’s a person or persons unknown who will put up the kale. It’s done through the firm of Kellogg and Kellogg,—about the whitest bunch of lawyers in town. I mean whoever offers that reward is somebody worthwhile. No shyster business. I’m for it,—the money, I mean. Do you know, Chief, the disappearance of that Manning chap is in some way connected with the Gately murder? I’ve got a hunch on that. And here’s how I dope it out. Manning saw Rodman,—well, perhaps he didn’t see him shoot, but he saw something that incriminated Rodman, and so he,—Rodman, had to get Manning out of the way. And did! You see, Friend Rodman is not only a deep-dyed scoundrel,—but the dye was ‘made in Germany’!”
“Well, I’m glad the reward is offered,” commented the Chief. “Now some rank outsider’ll pipe up and speak his little piece.”
“Meaning anybody in particular?” I asked.
With that peculiarly irritating trick of his, Chief Martin not only made no reply but gave no evidence of having heard my question. He went on:
“That makes two rewards. The Puritan Trust Company has offered five thousand for the apprehension of Gately’s murderer. This other five thousand adds to the excitement and ought to produce a good result.”
“I’m out for both,” announced Hudson. “Can’t say I expect to get ’em, but I’ll make a fierce stab at it. Rodman has an awful big income, and no visible means of support. That fact ought to help.”
“How?” I asked.
“Oh, it proves to my mind that he was mixed up in lucrative business that he didn’t—well—advertise. ‘The Link’ was mixed in, too. That is,—I suppose,—‘The Link’ was a sort of go-between, who enabled Rodman to transact his nefarious deals secretly.”
“Well, Foxy, you know a lot,” and the Chief laughed good-humoredly.
I felt that I now knew a lot, too, and as I went away I determined to see Penny Wise at once, and report all I had learned. I dropped in first at my own office, and found Norah in a brown study, her hands behind her head and a half-written letter in her typewriter.
She gazed at me absently, and then, noting my air of excitement, she became alert and exclaimed, “What’s happened? What do you know new?”
“Heaps,” I vouchsafed, and then I told her, briefly, of Rodman’s probable guilt and also of the offered rewards.
“Jenny’s your trump card,” she said after a thoughtful silence. “That girl knows a good deal that she hasn’t told. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s in Rodman’s employ.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, she’s too glib. She admits so many things that she has seen or heard and then when you ask her about others, she is a blank wall. Now, she does know about them, but she won’t tell. Why? Because she’s paid not to.”
“Then how can we get around her?”
“Pay her more.” And Norah returned to her typing. But she looked up again to say: “Mrs. Russell called here about an hour ago.”
“She did! What for?”
“I don’t know. She wanted to see you. She was a bit forlorn, so I talked to her a little.”
“I’m glad you did. Poor lady, she feels her brother’s absence terribly.”
“Yes; we discussed it. She thinks he has been killed.”
“Has she any reason to think that?”
“No, except that she dreamed it.”
“A most natural dream for a nervous, worried woman.”
“Of course. I wonder if she knows there’s a reward offered for Mr. Manning?”
“Maybe she offered it,—through the Kellogg people.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Pray, how do you know, oh, modern Cassandra?”
“I don’t know your old friend Cassandra, but I do know Mrs. Russell isn’t offering any five thousand dollars. She can’t afford it.”
“Why, she’s a rich woman.”
“She passes for one, and, of course, she isn’t suffering for food or clothes. But she is economizing. She was wearing her last year’s hat and muff, and she maids herself.”
“Perhaps she wore her old clothes because she was merely out to call on my unworthy self.”
“No. She was on her way to a reception. They’re her best clothes now. And a tiny rip in one glove and a missing snap-fastener on her bodice proves she keeps no personal lady’s maid, as people in her position usually do. So, I’m sure she isn’t offering big reward money, though she loves her brother.”
“You’re a born detectivess, Norah. You’ll beat Penny Wise at his own game, if he doesn’t watch out!”
“Maybe,” said Norah, and she laid her fingertips gracefully back on her typewriter keys.
It was the next afternoon that Penny Wise came into my office. It was his first visit there, and I gave him a hearty welcome. Norah looked so eagerly expectant that I introduced him to her, for I couldn’t bear to disappoint the girl by ignoring her.
Wise was delightfully cordial toward her, and indeed Norah’s winsome personality always made people friendly.
I had tried to get in touch with the detective the day before but he was out on various errands, and I missed him here and there, nor could we get together until he found this leisure.
I told him all I had learned from the police, but part of it was already known to him. He was greatly interested in the news which he had not heard before, that there was somebody implicated, who was called “The Link.”
“That’s the one we want!” he cried; “I suspected some such person.”
“Man or woman?” asked Norah, briefly, and Wise glanced at her.
“Which do you think?”
“Woman,” she replied, and Penny Wise nodded his head. “Yes, I’ve no doubt ‘The Link’ is a woman, and a mighty important factor in the case.”
“But I don’t understand,” I put in. “What does she link?”
“Whom,—not what,” said Wise, and he looked very serious. “Of course, you must realize, Brice, there’s a great big motive behind this Gately murder, and there’s also a big reason for Amory Manning’s disappearance. The two are connected,—there’s no doubt of that,—but that doesn’t argue Manning the murderer, of course. No, this Link is a woman of parts,—a woman who is of highest value to the principals in this crime, and who must be found, and that at once!”
“Did she have to do with Mr. Gately?” asked Norah, her gray eyes burning with interest.
“I—don’t—know.” Wise’s hesitating answer was by no means because of disinclination to admit his ignorance, but because he was thinking deeply himself. “Look here, Brice, can’t we go over Gately’s rooms now? I don’t want to ask permission of the police, but if the Trust Company people would let us in——”
“Of course,” I responded, and I went at once to the vice-president for the desired permission.
“It’s all right,” I announced, returning with the keys, “come ahead.”
We went into the beautiful rooms of the late bank president.
Pennington Wise was impressed with their rich and harmonious effects, and his quick eyes darted here and there, taking in details. With marvelous swiftness he went through the three rooms of the suite nodding his head as he noted the special points of which he had been told. In the third room,—the Blue Room,—he glanced about, raised the map from the wall, and dropped it back in place, opened the door to the hall, and closed it again, and then turned back to the middle room, the office of Amos Gately, and apparently, to the detective’s mind, the principal place of interest.
He sat down in the fine big swivel-chair, whose velvet cushioning deprived it of all look of an ordinary desk-chair, and mused deeply as his eyes fairly devoured the desk fittings. Nothing had been disturbed, that I noticed, except that the telephone had been set up in its right position, and also the chair which I had found overturned was righted.
Wise fingered only a few things. He picked up the penholder, a thick magnificent affair made of gold.
“Probably a gift from his clerks,” said I, smiling at the ornate and ostentatious looking thing. “All the other gimcracks are in better taste.”
Pennington Wise opened the desk drawers. There was little to see, for all financial papers had been taken away by Mr. Gately’s executors.
“Here’s a queer bunch,” Wise observed, as he picked up a packet of papers held together by a rubber band. He sorted them out on the desk.
They were sheets of paper of various styles, each bearing the address or escutcheon of some big city hotel. Many of the principal hostelries of New York were represented among them. Each sheet bore a date stamped on it with an ordinary rubber dating-stamp.
“Important, if true,” commented Wise.
“If what’s true?” asked Norah, bluntly.
“My deductions,” he returned. “These letters, if we can call them letters, doubtless were sent to Mr. Gately at separate times and in separate envelopes.”
“They were,” I informed him. “One came the morning after his death.”
“It did! Which one?”
“It isn’t here. All the new mail went to his lawyer.”
“We must get hold of it!”
“But,—do tell me what’s the import of a blank sheet of paper?”
“These aren’t blank,” and he pointed to the stamped dates. “They are very far from blank!”
“Only a date,—on a plain sheet of paper,—what does that mean?”
“Perhaps nothing—perhaps everything.”
It wasn’t like Penny Wise to be cryptic, and I gathered that the papers were really of value as evidence. “Has the writing been erased?” I hazarded.
“Probably not. No. I don’t think so.” He scrutinized more closely.
“No,” he concluded, “nothing like that. The message is all told on the surface, and he who runs may read.”
“Read, ‘The Waldorf-Astoria, December 7.’” I scoffed. “And is the reader greatly enlightened?”
“Not yet, but soon,” Wise murmured, as he kept up his investigation. “Ha!” he went on, “as the actor hath it,—what have we here!”
He was now scrutinizing the ends of two burnt cigarettes, left on the ash-tray of the smoking-set.
“The lady has left her initials! How kind of her!”
“Why, Hudson studied those and couldn’t make out any letters,” I exclaimed.
“Blind Hudson! These very dainty and expensive cigarettes belonged to a fair one, whose name began with K and S,—or S and K. Be careful how you touch it, but surely you can see that the tops of the letters though scorched, show definitely enough to know they must be K and S.”
“They are!” cried Norah; “I can see it now.”
“Couldn’t that S be an O?” I caviled.
“Nope,” and Wise shook his head. “The two, though both nearly burnt away, show for sure that the letters are K and S. Here’s a find! Does Miss Raynor smoke?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I’ve never seen her do so,—and she doesn’t seem that type. And then,—the initials——”
“Oh, well, she might have had some of her friends’ cigarettes with her. I was only thinking it must have been a pretty intimate caller who would sit here and smoke with Mr. Gately—here are his own cigar stubs you see and of course, Miss Raynor came into my mind. Eliminating her we have, maybe, the lady of the hatpin.”
“And the powder-paper!” cried Norah.
“Yes, they all seem to point to a very friendly caller, who smoked, who took off her hat, and who powdered her nose, all in this room, and all on the day Mr. Gately was killed. For, of course, the whole place was cleaned and put in order every day.”
“And there was the carriage check,” I mused; “perhaps she left that.”
“Carriage check?” asked Wise.
“Yes, a card like a piece of Swiss cheese,—you know those perforated carriage-call checks?”
“I do. Where is it?”
“Hudson took it. But he won’t get anything out of it, and you might.”
“Perhaps. I must see it, anyway. Also, I want to see Jenny,—the young stenographer who was——”
“Shall I get her here?” offered Norah.
“Yes,” Wise began, but I cut him short.