Sheila herself opened the door for me.
"You're Mr. Crosby, I suppose," she said, with that elusive reminiscence of a brogue that may not be put into words. "Sure, I'm obliged to you. An awful weight I must have been."
"You were no feather," I grinned. "Where is Miss Tabor?"
"She's in the library, sir, with a young gentleman. There's a letter here for you, sir." She pointed to a mail-strewn table near the door. Sure enough there was one—from Bob Ainslie, I judged, by the scrawled address.
A young gentleman in the library—who on earth could he be, and what did the fellow want?
"I've been three days finding you, you see," he was saying, "but I guess there's no doubt I've gotyou right. Now, I don't want to make any trouble—"
The rest of the sentence was too low to hear. I had been ripping absently at the letter, and now I glanced down at it. Then I stared with startled eyes and turned over the envelop to re-read the address. It was a dirty envelop, of the same shape as my own which still lay upon the table, and addressed not to me, but to Mr. Tabor. I carefully replaced the single sheet and as carefully stowed the whole in an inner pocket. It seemed a matter for Mr. Tabor's eyes alone.
Lady's voice came clearly through the curtained door. I thought it sounded a little strained.
"Mr. Maclean, I don't see why you should come to me at all about this matter. If we have a dark green automobile, so have ten thousand people. And your story of millionaire kidnappers on an errand of violence is hardly the kind of thing—if this is a joke, it seems to me in very poor taste."
"It won't quite do, Miss Tabor," the man answered. "'Tisn't a joke, and maybe the best thing you can do is to be frank with me."
"What am I to be frank about? You see, Mr. Maclean, the last man that came in to talk franklywanted to sell us silver polish. Excuse me, but you have really nothing to sell, have you?"
He laughed, humorously embarrassed. "Why, no. At least, I don't want to sell you anythin'. Don't you sometimes call yourself Lady?"
"Mr. Maclean!"
"I only mean," he hurried on, "that I found your telegram on the floor. 'Coming for you in the car,' you said. Honestly, don't you think we're wastin' time?"
Lady gave a little cry, and with two strides I was at the door and had jerked aside the curtain. "If this fellow is annoying you—" I began.
The two were standing before me, Lady leaning back against the table as if at bay. The man was taller than I, and thin with vibrant energy. He turned half about at my voice.
"Jumping June-bugs!" he cried airily. "It's Crosby!"
"No other, Mac," I laughed. "What in the world are you ragging Miss Tabor about?"
Maclean blushed. "See here, Laurie," he stammered, "I'm a newspaper man, you see? What's more, I'm thought by some to be a good one. I've got the goods on this story, and you people oughtto come across. It won't hurt you any. Were you the cheese that lugged the murdered scrubess down three flights of stairs?"
Lady looked at me imploringly. But the cat was so far out of the bag by now that I had to use my judgment. "I was," I answered. "What are you going to make out of it?"
"Now you're talkin'. Tell me the story."
"Not for publication," said I, with a glance at Lady, "because there's no story to publish. In the first place, you're barking up the right tree, but it's a mighty little one. In the second place, I've fallen so low as to be an assistant professor with a dignified reputation. Neither Miss Tabor nor I is going to be head-lined to make a journalistic holiday; and if we were, you wouldn't write it."
Maclean gnawed a bony knuckle, and pondered. "Darn you," he said. "Beg your pardon, Miss Tabor—I s'pose I can't, after that. But you'll admit I had the goods. I don't see how I can go back with nothing. They send me out on these things because I generally make good, you see?"
"Your imagination always was your greatest charm. Get to work, and use it. Miss Tabor, this human gimlet is 'Stride' Maclean. Let me give hima decent introduction: he probably slighted the matter. This gentleman, for he was a gentleman before he became a star reporter, had the honor to belong to my class, and he sings a beautiful tenor. Naturally he was popular; he may even have friends yet. We'll tell him all about it, and then perhaps we'll drown him. One crime more or less matters little to people of our dye."
Maclean scowled at me and laughed.
"Well, it all amounts to this. First, nobody has been murdered—as yet!" and I frowned at him. "Secondly, nobody has been kidnapped; lastly, it isn't a story, unless you are on the comic supplement. This Mrs. Carucci used to be Miss Tabor's nurse, and when Antonio beats her up too frequent, she comes up here for a vacation. Well, we were late going for her because the car broke down; so when we got there, he had just smitten her over the brow and retired to a well-earned slumber. Then the neighbors got inquisitive, and we ran away to escape precisely that immediate fame you were planning to give us. That's all. I will only add that branderine revived this wash-lady and we can prove it."
"Oh, fudge," said Maclean, "I can't write anythingout of that at all. We had it before, all but you people. I hate to go back without a story, too."
The front door clicked, and I heard Mr Tabor's voice in the hall.
"Wait a minute," I said, with a sudden inspiration, "perhaps I can dig up another story for you. But I'll have to see Mr. Tabor first."
I found Mr. Tabor in his study, glooming over a paper. "What is it?" he asked, half rising. "Is anything the matter?"
"I don't know," I said. "I opened a letter of yours by mistake, and it looked as if I had better bring it to you myself."
He took the dirty envelop gingerly, and drew out the inclosure. Across the top was a badly drawn human hand smudged in with lead-pencil. Below this ran an almost illegible scrawl.
"If yu dont giv her back she wil be taken."
"What on earth does that mean?" I asked.
Mr. Tabor knit his white brows. "It begins to look as though Carucci had been let out of jail for want of proof against him. Evidently he is going into the black hand business. I suppose a demand for money will come next."
"But who is 'her'—his wife?"
"Of course," he answered quickly. "Who else could it possibly be?" Then, more thoughtfully, "I don't like the fellow around, but I hardly see how to get rid of him. We can't appear in court against him; and money would only make him want more."
"Mr. Tabor," I said, "there's a man named Maclean in the other room, who went to college with me. He is a reporter—"
"Awhat?"
"A reporter. He found Miss Tabor's telegram—we were careless not to have looked for it—and that gave him enough to work on until he found us. However, you needn't have any uneasiness about him. He has promised me not to use the story."
"Good, Crosby, very good. Well, what about him?"
"I only thought, sir, that if he would help me, we might be able to find Carucci, and scare the life out of him so that he will keep away. He can't be certain that he hasn't killed his wife, and we can threaten him with that. If he's out of jail, you certainly don't want him about. And Maclean would help, I think, for the story in it. I'm sure that we could trust him not to bring us in."
"Very well. Suppose that you try your hand at it.Only you mustn't go to making inquiries that will mix us up in the matter."
"I'll be careful, sir," I answered.
When I spread the note out before Mac he sniffed and wrinkled his nose.
"Well?" I said.
"Nothin'. There ain't any black hand. It's all dope. Just a signature that any dago uses, like 'unknown friend.'"
"You ought to know," said I, "but here we are with this man hanging around. Take it or leave it. I should think there might be a story in it merely from his side, now that you can really connect him with the assault. Anyhow, I'm going after him."
"All right," Mac said, "I'm with you. Good afternoon, Miss Tabor."
"Good-by," she called after us; and I thought that she watched us from the window.
We pursued a trolley car and settled down panting on the rear seat. Maclean lay back in a meditative silence, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, his shoulders hunched forward and his hat on the back of his head, staring before him where his feet loomed up in the distance. At the inn he suddenly straightened himself and slid off the car.
"I thought we were going up to town?" I said as I followed.
He glowered hollowly at me above a cavernous grin. "We are. But not in those flannels or that nice new college rah-rah shirt. We'd have the whole place wonderin' what you wanted, and the mothers showin' their little ones how a real gentleman ought to look."
"But you're respectable enough," I protested, laughing. "Are we both going to be disguised?"
"Disguise nothin'. You just want to cut out the comedy-chorus-man, you see? Put on a jersey, or anyhow a collar that don't meet in the middle, an' old shoes. Me, I look low-life anyway."
I rebelled when he rolled my gray suit into a ball and jumped on it, in the interest of realism. But at last we got started. On the car, Mac unfolded his plan of campaign.
"This guinea didn't put the cops on, because he wanted to get you himself, you see? He's out for the money—the mazume. So he beats it up here and drops Tabor a love-letter.But, he's just out of the jug, you see? An' he knows the force'll watch out for him. So he'll mix up with a lot of other dagoes, an' maybe get a job daytimes, so's to have an excusefor bein' here. Well, he don't love work, but he does love booze; an' he gets through at fivep. m. with an awful thirst. So we'll hunt for him first where they sell the demon rum."
He dived into the police station, leaving me standing outside, and presently emerged with the lust of the hunter in his eye.
"I've located every cheap red-eye emporium in our beautiful little city. Now you spot all the fruit stores an' shoeblacks an' guinea grocers we pass, an' we'll take them later."
"You'll have to be careful how you inquire after him," I said.
"I ain't. I'm lookin' for his cousin, Giuseppe, that looks like him. Blue, an' hairy, an' tattoo-marks on his hands, you said. Come on."
We went through two or three saloons, where Maclean loitered what seemed to me an unconscionable time, weaving into an elaborate discussion of things in general, some curiosity as to the whereabouts of an Italian debtor whose name and personal affairs varied surprisingly without in the least altering his description. I knew that Mac had an inventive genius, but I was astonished at its fertility of detail.
"I didn't expect anythin' in those joints," he confided, as we pushed through a swinging door. "They're a peg too good for him. I just wanted to hear myself talk, an' get up my speed. Now, this place looks better. You take seltzer after this, or a cigar. Their snake-medicine'd poison you. Me, I'm immune."
It was low-ceiled and smoky, and full of large cuspidors and small tables. The bottles were fewer, and glittered with gilt ornamentation, like the bottles in a barber shop. A veil of dingy mosquito netting protected the mirrors. The bartender was blue-shaven and deliberate, with a neat trick of sliding bottles and glasses, without upsetting them, several feet along the dark, dull surface of the bar.
"Giovanni Scalpiccio been in to-night?" Mac asked casually, after ten minutes of excise problems and the pure food law.
"If he has, he ain't left his visiting-card," returned the bartender. "What do you think I am—delegate from the organ-grinders' union? I don't keep tab on every I-talian dago that comes into the place. What kind of a lookin' feller is he?"
"I don't know. They all look alike to me. Oh, a monkey-faced guy, all tattooed—works up the linehere a little. His wife owes me on a sewin'-machine. Told me he was down here."
"Seems to me I seen that feller," the bartender reflected. "Talks all chokey, don't he? Yes, he was in to-night, about half an hour ago. Made an argument becuz I wouldn't hang him up—if that's him."
I waited, shuffling with impatience, while Maclean bought cigars and slowly changed the subject. Then I burst out of doors so hurriedly that I collided with two harmless-looking individuals who were coming in.
"What shall we do now?" I demanded.
"Take a cigarette instead o' that Simsbury cabbage, an' cool off. If it's our guinea, he's huntin' free drinks all up the street. We'll run into him the next two or three places, somewhere."
In the next we drew a blank, but in the one after that we learned that our man had just left; and to my disgust, were forced to listen to a circumstantial account of his pleas and expedients in quest of liquor on credit. I was more certain than ever that it was Carucci himself, and hurried Mac on to the next saloon. To my surprise, he led the way to a tablein the farthest corner and sat down with his back to the door.
"You look here, Laurie," he muttered, leaning across the table as the bartender went back for our order. "There's more doing in this than we're wise to. Did you see those two ginks that we ran into in the door back there?"
"No," said I, "what about them?"
"Well, that's what little Mac wants to know, the first thing he does. They're after the same dago, or else they're after us, you see? Every joint we've been in, those two float along after a couple of minutes, all cagey, not seein' anybody. An' they look like guineas themselves. There they come now."
He spoke without turning his head, and I looked past him at the two men entering the room. They were small, sallow, and respectable, one of them decidedly fat; and they looked to me like small Italian tradesmen in their Sunday or traveling clothes. They stood at the bar, talking between themselves with rapid speech and gesture, and paying not the smallest attention to us. They did not even glance around the room, so absorbed were they in their own conversation.
"You're crazy," said I, "they don't even know we're here."
"All right. Maybe you think I've covered police stuff five years without knowin' when I'm being gum-shoed. I've seen that fat bologna before, somewhere, too. I ain't after a martyr's crown. Now, I tell you what you do. You pike out an' go back to that first place where we got the scent, an' wait around till I come. If they follow you there, you duck for the busy street, an' go home. If they don't I'll be along myself pretty quick. I want to know who they're after, you see?"
"What do you think they are?"
"I don't think yet: I'm goin' to know. Now you beat it—an' for Heaven's sake, jolly the barkeep for all you know how, an' try not to look as if you were wanted for arson."
I obeyed, wondering if Maclean's instinct for sensation had got the better of him. The two men took no notice whatever as I passed them, but went on with their talk. I heard enough to gather that they were discussing the price of butter. Yet, despite my skepticism, I walked up the street with something the sensation of having just passed a small boy with an ominous snowball. The othersaloon was fairly crowded, and it was some minutes before I found myself drinking a very evil beer.
"Say," said the bartender, sliding my change down to me, "you're the guy that asked about the guinea, ain't yer?"
"Why, my friend was," I said carelessly. "Has he been back? He owes him for a—"
"That'll do all right to tell." He leaned across the bar, dropping his voice, "The reason I asked yer's because there's two other fellers after him, too. Guesstheysold him a grand piano, likely."
He moved along to attend to other customers, leaving me staring excitedly about the room. A moment later, he came back again, swabbing the bespattered bar with a towel. As he passed me without a look, he turned his thumb over and motioned, as if the gesture were part of his work, toward the corner by the door. There sat the two little men at a table, still absorbed in discussion.
My throat became suddenly dry. I had started out hunting with the hounds to find myself running with the hare; and the notion of being shadowed by unknown Italians was more melodramatic than agreeable. With a confused memory of all the detective stories I had ever read seething in my mindI lounged toward the door, gained the street, and started off on a run. I turned the first corner, ran half way down the block, then walked quietly back. The two men were nowhere to be seen. As I stood on the corner, one of them, the thinner one, came slowly out of the saloon, pausing to light a cigarette, and strolled casually away from me up the street. It seemed impossible that he had any interest in me, but I would be sure. I followed carefully after him for half a dozen blocks. He neither looked around nor altered his pace in the least; and where we crossed the car tracks, I stood and watched him go steadily on out of sight. Then I jumped on a passing car, congratulating myself on having carried out my instructions, even though they had been rather unnecessary. And on the outskirts of the town, I stepped off to wait for my own car. Just as it turned the corner, some one touched me on the arm.
"Pardon; have you a match?"
I swallowed my heart down again with a gulp. The fat Italian scratched the match on his shoe, and breathed a soft cloud of smoke.
"Thank you, sare. Now tell me," he took meconfidentially by the elbow, "w'at is it you want with Antonio Carucci?"
My car was passing. "I never heard of him," said I as blankly as I could. "You've got the wrong man."
"Excuse me, sare. No mistake at all." He smiled deprecatingly.
The car was almost beyond reach. "All right," I said. "Come in here, and if you can show any right to ask, I'll tell you." Then, as we turned together toward the hotel behind us, I flung him on his face with a sudden wrench, and sprinted after the car. As I clung gasping on the back platform, I heard a shout, and saw him following at a waddling run, waving his arm angrily. The car stopped; and for a sickening instant, I thought that my last device had been in vain. But at that moment a couple of men ran from the sidewalk behind my pursuer and caught him by the coat. The three stood in the middle of the street, wrangling and gesticulating; and the conductor, with a disgusted jerk of the bell, started the car again.
Later in the evening, Maclean called me up on the telephone.
"Say, you made a pretty good getaway for an amateur. Did you see us stop your fat friend?"
"What? Was that you?"
"Sure was it; me and the other one. Now listen. Hello! Can you hear? Those two parties are plain-clothes men after the other party. That's what they let him out for, to watch him, you see? I'm with 'em now. You people better just lie as low as you can, and do nothin' at all, if you want to keep out of it. And if I get wise to anythin' I'll call you up. Good-by."
And his receiver went up with a cluck.
"I wonder how we shall come out of it all," said Lady.
She was sitting at the big dining-table before a treasury of bowls and vases, with a many-colored heap of cut flowers reflected from the polished wood and the drops and splashes of spilled water. In the open window, Sheila's canary was whistling merrily down a deep shaft of sunlight; and from the garden outside came the purr of a lawn-mower and the cool freshness of new-cut grass. Across the still dimness of the house behind us, the further windows gave upon squares of blinding green. Mr. Tabor and the doctor had gone to the city upon some business of our common defense. The house hung sleepily at the heart of the hot forenoon, very quiet and open; overhead, Sheila was shuffling about, with a crooning of soft Irish minors.
"It seems to be just a case of waiting," said I,"but the newspaper excitement is blowing over already, and we can trust Maclean to keep us clear. As for the detectives, if they arrest Carucci again so much the better, provided we don't appear in it. He'd be no more likely to talk then, than before."
"I wonder if we can trust Mr. Maclean."
"I'm rather sure of Mac," I said.
"It isn't that exactly; I'm not doubting your friend; but even so, he knows—knows absolutely that we were involved in that New York disturbance the other night. Think of all we did to keep you from even suspecting something far less exciting. And he's a reporter after all, and in no way one of us. Of course he's honorable, but—he's working up the Carucci side of it. I'm afraid of what he may bring out, perfectly removed from us in itself, but that might suggest— Oh, you see what I mean."
"I wish I could hear from him," I said. "I want to know what's happening. But honestly, I think I took the safe way with him, whatever happens. It's much better to have him know what he mustn't say than to have him guessing all sorts of things with no reason for not airing them."
"Yes; but I wish nobody knew anything. We took a terrible risk."
"I did, you mean. If I spoke beyond my authority, the fault is certainly mine. Still, I'm not sure that I'm sorry, and I won't plead that I meant well."
She searched carefully through the heap of flowers. "No, you're one of us now—in a way. What you did was ours, not your own— Oh, I'm sure it's all right anyway, and you acted wisely. Only I'm nervous about it, I suppose." She leaned back wearily. "I do get so tired of all this unnaturalness. Why can't God let us live like other people?"
It was the first time I had ever heard her complain; the first open confession of the weary weight that had lain so long upon her eyes; and it shook me so that for a little I did not trust myself to speak, for fear I should not speak quietly enough. She sat silent, the light gone out of her as I had seen it go on that first day, her hand twisting listlessly at her chain.
"I only wish I could be more use," I said at last.
She turned half toward me: "Sometimes I wish you could know," she said and her eyes of a sudden glimmered and grew wet.
That was more than I could bear. "Lady," I cried, "why can't I know? What difference does it make? Oh, I'm not questioning you; I don't wantto satisfy my mere mind with your mystery. I don't care what the explanation is; I'm not after answers to questions. But it can't matter to us, whatever it is. Nothing can. When I thought you were married, that didn't change anything really. It meant that I must go away, that I must never come back to you perhaps—but even that was a little thing. And nothing else in the world could be as bad as that even."
"Don't. Please don't make it any worse—oh, stop telling me—listen!" She caught herself suddenly, holding up her hand. The canary poured out a long trill that sounded like tiny laughter.
"Sheila," I said. "She's been walking about up there all the morning. You've got so that this nightmare doesn't give you an hour's peace. I don't care what it is. You know that. You know that I couldn't be troubled by anything behind you or about you. I never shall want to know. But I want the whole right to stand in front of you and fight it, to take you away from this place and make you forget and be alive. And you know that no reason—"
I do not know what stopped me. The canary was silent, and the clock ticked twice across the hush. Then from the floor above a horrible scream cutthrough me like a frozen knife; then another, mixed with a heavy clatter of feet.
We both sprang for the stairs, Lady a little before me. As I tried to pass her at the foot, she caught me by the arm and clung desperately to me, her breath coming hard and fast.
"No, you mustn't. Don't come, do you hear? Wait until I call you." The dry tension in her voice was not a thing to disregard blindly. I waited with my foot on the lowest step, my heart staggering in my ears, while she sped above out of sight. The screams had broken into a choking wail of utter terror. A door slammed. Sheila's strong voice rang out angrily, then sank under a broken clamor of stumbling steps. A man leaped roughly down the first few stairs, stopped and turned as I bent forward just enough to get a half glimpse of coarse clothes and clumsy feet, and sprang back again, trampling across the upper hall. I hesitated an instant, then followed him three steps at a stride. Whatever happened, I would not leave the three women alone with him.
In the hall I paused, for it was empty. From the front room which I took to be Mrs. Tabor's came voices, Lady's full and sweet, her mother's frightenedand childish, and the resonant whisper of Mrs. Carucci.
"He was here, I tell you, Lady." Mrs. Tabor's treble rose above the murmur, and as suddenly ceased. I looked about me, uncertain. I had only been above stairs once before, and then at night. My room then had been at the rear of the house, with the whole length of hall between it and Mrs. Tabor's; and the stair-head where I now stood was an even midway between the two. I felt vaguely ill at ease. I knew that I should look for the intruder, and look for him upon the instant; but something held me back—perhaps a feeling that I had little right to blunder about upon this floor, to stumble perhaps into Lady's own room, an intruder upon her intimate privacy. This, however, was no time for doubtful sentiment. Minutes were passing, and the man must be found. I was sure that he was still in the house. Very carefully I tiptoed down the hall toward the room that I had occupied. Fate might grant that he was hidden there, and so I should have to search only where I had already seen. But before I reached my door, I paused before another. It was slightly ajar; and half instinctively I pushed it open.
In the doorway I stood looking about me. This was Lady's room, after all. A deep bed stood in the corner against the outer wall to my left; and close by, a little table with a book face-down upon it. A dress of some filmy blue stuff lay across the foot of the bed, and from beneath peeped a pair of little slippers. My face burned at my intrusion, but I held my ground. The sunlight fell heavily through the two closed windows, across the wide rug, and almost to my feet. In the outer right-hand corner was a small desk. A low table, piled with dainty feminine miscellany, stood in the center of the room. A riding-crop lay carelessly across it; and I remembered absently that the Tabors had no horses. I stepped within, and cautiously closed the door behind me. Then I knew. There was some one in the room. It was unmistakable, this feeling of a presence. I listened closely, but there was not a sound. The skin crawled at my temples, and I could feel the stir of hair upon my scalp, the strange primal bristling that has stirred man conscious of the unseen, since the beginning of time. For a heartbeat, I stood there with much of the clutching terror of a child, a child willing enough to face a fight, but hesitating before the sudden mystery of a place thathe must pass. Then I got hold of myself, and crossed over to the bed. I knew that he was not under it; but I looked to see. Behind me something tinkled sweetly, and I sprang to my feet with every muscle tense. Across the room and above the little desk, hung a circle of bronze with tiny bronze pendants shaped like birds and fish and leaves swinging from it on silken threads—such a thing as the Japanese hang above the bed of a child to ward off evil and to chime with every breath of air. I glanced uneasily at closed door and windows as I started across the room. Upon the big central table before me lay a thin film of dust, invisible save for the contrast of a streak across its edge where something had brushed along. Tiptoeing around it, I glanced down at the little desk and the half-written sheet upon it. "Lady, dearest," it began; and I gripped my hands at my sides. This was not Lady's room, but— One of the long outer curtains of the window shivered—shivered humanly with a trembling behind it; and I reached out my hand to grip through the fold the solid shoulder of a man.
In a sudden warm rush of relief, I struck at him savagely through the curtain, shouting as I struck. Then I gripped the curtain about, throwing all myweight against him and crushing him back against the side of the embrasure. He grunted, and an arm tore itself free from the folds above my bent head. Then there was a splash of light and a curious sharp smell that seemed to come from inside my own brain. And then nothing.
I knew that I had not lain there long, when I opened my eyes. Lady was kneeling on the floor beside me, very white and piteously lovely. As my mind grew clearer, the color seemed to come back into her face.
"Mr. Crosby," she said, "I asked you not to come up-stairs at all. I want to be able to trust you. What has happened?"
"Happened?" I repeated dizzily. "Why, I had to come up. I chased the man up here, and then I saw this door open and came in, and felt as if there was some one in here—and there was some one, there behind that curtain. I tackled him, and he hit me." I raised my head sharply: "Listen—the fellow is here yet."
Lady pointed to the window behind me. "I think not," she said.
"But I tell you he's still in the room."
She smiled a little. "You are dizzy yet. Comehere and look, and you will see what I mean." The window was flung wide, and beneath at the foot of the wall a syringa bush lay broken.
"It looks as if you were right," I said, as she carefully closed the window. "I think I'll scout around a little outside; he may not have gone clear away." I noticed that she locked the door behind us.
My ideas were rather indefinite as I examined the syringa bush after the most approved fashion, and discovered no more than that somebody had broken it by dropping from above, and had gone away. So I started vaguely across the lawn toward the road. At the gate, I ran into the men who followed us on our man-hunt.
"He did not come this way," said the fat one, catching me by the arm.
"How do you know?" I asked.
The thin Italian smiled. "Then you are after Antonio Carucci?"
I had been almost trapped. "Carucci?" said I. "No, I was looking for Doctor Reid. Some one wants him on the 'phone."
"Why did you search the side of the house, then?"
"Look here," said I, "I haven't the slightest idea what you people are getting at, and I doubt if you have, either. But if you've seen Doctor Reid—a stocky man with a jerky walk—I wish you'd say so. They won't hold that line for ever."
"We might take a look about the place for him," the fat one smiled, "while you go back to the telephone."
"I won't trouble you," I retorted. "If you have any errand inside, go straight to the door. Mr. Tabor doesn't like his lawns trampled. Good morning."
I stood at the gate while they moved unwillingly away, and then went back to the house.
The next few days passed by without event; and the absence of excitement was a welcome enough relief, even to me. Adventures in themselves are all very well, but I prefer mine uncomplicated with nervous anxiety; and although my enlistment in the family garrison had relieved me in some measure from that torment of personal worry which had hounded me before, yet the trouble had only taken another form, the more heavy for being less selfish. I was inside the mystery now, in action if not in knowledge. What the root of the matter might be, I knew no better than before; but somehow, I had been quite sincere in saying that I did not really care. It was as if the nerve of curiosity had been blunted in me through overstrain. And I knew now that come what might, Lady had begun to care for me, and that left little in the world which for myself I could fear. Only for her I fearedeverything; and the necessity of her remaining here at the mercy of dangers which I could neither dispel nor understand was too heavy a burden for my frivolous enjoyment of adventure. I could not say so, nor try again to persuade her away from the fight. As her way was, she had dropped my interrupted protest into nothingness, as though it had never been; and my only comfort was the hope that, knowing how wholly my blindfold loyalty to them all was for her sake, might be a secret help to her.
Beyond taking care that one of us three men should be always in the house, we did nothing, so far as I knew, except to await events passively. Doctor Reid, of course, went daily to his office, where he remained often until late in the afternoon; and Mr. Tabor, though I understood that he was retired from active business, made two or three all-day trips to the city. What they might be doing to safeguard us from Carucci or in affairs more intimate to the situation, I could not guess. At any rate, my own periods of guardianship were generally lonely; for Mrs. Tabor was still too shaken by our recent alarm to be much out of her room, and Lady made occasion of shopping to accompany her father. Perhaps I was touchy; but it seemed thatshe avoided the strain of being long alone with me, skating on thin ice above emotion.
Mrs. Tabor had gone to lie down after luncheon, and I was trying to forget in a book the prospect of a long uninteresting afternoon within doors, when the telephone in the den across the hall began to ring. I hurried across, with an irritable impulse to shout, "Yes, I'm coming," and picked it up.
"Hello!" drawled the little voice. "Who is this?"
I gave the number, with a mental reservation concerning some unknown person's telephone manners.
"Yes, I know; but who's there? Who is this speaking?"
"This is Mr. Tabor's house," said I sharply. "Do you want some one in particular, or will you leave a message?" It may have been partly the voice which annoyed me: a thick, soft voice unnaturally sweet in its inflection, a voice like the caress of a fat hand. I thought there was a trace of foreign accent, but that might be imagination.
"Oh—might I speak with Mrs. Tabor, please?"
"Hold the line a moment," said I; and as I turned, there was Mrs. Tabor herself in the doorway.
"Is it for me?" she asked. "You know, I'm sureit's the very same person I was going to call. Telephone calls cross that way all the time, just like letters."
I left her, and went back to my book. A few minutes later Sheila came in.
"Mrs. Tabor"—she began. Then with an astonished look about the room, "Why, where is she?"
"She was in Mr. Tabor's study, telephoning, a moment ago," I said. "Is anything the matter?"
"She never came up-stairs again at all. Will she be out around the garden anywhere, I wonder? Would you mind looking, sir, while I'll be seeing if she's in the house?"
I searched not only the garden, but the entire grounds; and I did it with hurried thoroughness and a growing anxiety. Sheila's alarm when I returned put an edge upon my own.
"Ah, the Saints preserve us, what'll we do now, with Mr. Tabor away in the city an' that black villain of mine runnin' around the country after us? If it's him has anything to do with her—"
"Nonsense!" I said uneasily. "She's probably only gone over to one of the neighbors. You'd better telephone Doctor Reid, while I go and see."
But Sheila refused absolutely to use the telephone."I never did like them things," she said, "a little ugly voice in your ear out of nowhere, like a ghost. Ah, I know they're all right, but I wouldn't touch it."
So I called up Reid myself. He plunged in and took immediate command of the situation with his usual busy efficiency; but I could see that he was alarmed.
"Probably just gone to one of the neighbors. Certainly. No occasion for any uneasiness. None at all. I'll just call up the people she might be with, and be sure. Glad you told me. Quite right. Glad you told me."
"You don't think there's any chance that Carucci—?"
"Not the least. No chance at all. Still, you might scout around the neighborhood a bit, and see if you see anything of him. And tell Sheila to go to Stamford and go through all the stores. Might have gone shopping. I'll come right up and stay at the house myself."
"How about Mr. Tabor?" I asked.
"All right. No need to alarm him. Not a bit. I'll call him up later, if necessary. But, of course, we'll find her at once. Hurry up and get started.Always best to act at once. Sure to be all right. Don't wait for me."
It occurred to me as I started out that Doctor Reid did not have a very high opinion of my ability. He was one of those cocksure men who confine their sureness mostly to their own mental processes. Well, we should see; and if I found myself right, I promised Carucci a beating that would dampen his black hand imaginings for some time to come.
My first move on leaving the house was to call up New York from the telephone booth at the inn. I was lucky enough to find Maclean at the office of his paper.
"Say, Mac," I asked him, "what did you make of that dago story?"
"Nothin'," Mac sniffed. "Nothin' at all. The gum-shoes think he croaked his old woman, an' they're waitin' for him to give himself or somebody else away, you see? Then they'll grab him. Course, I could have told 'em she was alive; but then that might have brought you people in, an' besides, those fellows wouldn't come across for me. Reciprocity's my cry, an' always has been."
"Well, do you know where I can find our friend? I want to talk to him?"
"Sure. I found him myself, but he wouldn't scare for a darn. Said Tabor had his wife all right, and not one of you dared touch him. You'll find Mr. Giuseppe workin' on the railroad, all the live-long day—that new trolley embankment we passed on the line. They have a guinea camp back in the woods a piece. Say, Laurie, course your friends are all right, an' it's none o' my business; but they smell fishy to me a mile off. If I was you, I'd duck out right now. There's some nigger in this wood-pile that we don't know anythin' about, you see?"
"Thanks, Mac," I said. "I know better than that, though. There's no trouble."
"Well, I'm only tellin' you what I think. That guinea put up a long howl to me about the old man that I wouldn't use and didn't more'n half believe; but I want to see you about it when you come in town, all the same. Say, you ain't sore, are you?"
"All right, old man," said I; and I hung up the receiver.
Maclean's warning came too patently from his point of view on the sinister surface of the situation to give me the slightest additional uneasiness; but it made me all the more determined to talk with Carucci and at least learn whatever he thought, heknew, even though he should prove innocent of Mrs. Tabor's disappearance. I took the trolley to the nearest switch, and walked the couple of hundred yards between it and the new embankment. Construction was in full blast, and about seventy-five Italians swarmed over the work under the direction of lordly Irish foremen. I sauntered about the place with as much idle curiosity as I could assume, stopping to watch little groups, going from place to place, even making a second round; but no Carucci was to be seen. One or two of the men glanced at me with what I imagined was a certain sullen suspicion; but that may have been purely imaginary. From the embankment I cast about for the construction camp. The nearest wooded spot that I could see was half a mile or so across country, and I made toward this, skirting a little swamp or so, and climbing an occasional fence. As I went along, I made more and more sure that I was right; for a trodden path developed, and fence-rails were broken or left carelessly out of place.
With the ugly huddle of tin-roofed huts in sight, I came upon Carucci; or perhaps I should say that he came upon me. He came running to meet me down the pathway, with a sort of rolling, dancinggait that would have been very funny had I not known him.
"Whata you want?" he shouted. "Go-a da 'way!"
"That is what I am asking you," I said in Italian. "You know well enough that your wife can come to you whenever she pleases. What do you want of Mr. Tabor?"
He had stopped a little way from me, pulling off his jacket, and throwing it over his left arm. Now he showed his teeth in a mechanical grin.
"Come-a here," he grunted, "I show you."
He must have been drunk to imagine that I had not seen the knife. I took half a dozen quick steps, my hands opening and shutting, and as soon as I was within reach, I dived. I had him by the knees with a shock that reminded me that I was growing older; and as he sprawled on his back, I sprang away from him, and with a kick that must have nearly broken his fingers, sent the knife spinning away behind him. He was upon his feet in a second, and I looked for him at my throat. Instead, he threw his jacket full in my face, and leaped after it. I could feel his teeth gripping at the muscles of my upper arm. It was fighting of a new kind for me,and I kneed him joyfully in the stomach, tearing with my free arm at the jacket which blinded me. For a moment he fell away, and I hurled the coat from me, and struck him in the mouth; then again, my shoulder behind it; and he went down with a grunt. I flung myself promptly on top of him, clutching him by the throat. Then an arm was thrown about my neck from behind, while a strong hand ripped at my hair.
"Ye murtherin' baste, ye black scun, lave him alone, ye limb av hell, come out av it!"
I shook myself roughly free, and whirled about to face the unexpected.
"Why, Sheila!" I cried, "how in the world did you get here?"
"Oi had me rasons, an' 'twas hoigh toime." She was very angry, and her brogue was faint no longer. "'Tis a swate blayguard ye are, an' bad cess to ye, sthrikin' a bit av a lad half the soize av yersilf."
I glanced at the burly Carucci, and laughed. The murder had died out of his eyes, and he scrambled to his feet, looking sheepish.
"This seems to be rather a family meeting," I said, and pointed behind him to the shanties. "Perhaps we had better be going."
Carucci turned to see the fat central office man trotting down the path, for all the world as if he were taking a little cross-country scamper to reduce his weight. He came on with such an inevitable matter-of-factness that it all seemed suddenly funny, like the conclusion of a farce; and when I looked around to see the other Italian coming up from behind, it was quite what I expected. The fat one in front of us stooped a second in the long grass, and picked up the knife that I had kicked away. He turned it over thoughtfully, and dropped it into his pocket.
"Antonio Carucci," he said calmly, "I arrest you for this assault with intent to kill, and for the murder of Sheila Carucci, your wife. And I arrest you, Laurence Crosby, as accessory after the fact."
"What!" I cried.
"Anything that either of you say," put in the thin Italian, "will be used against you."