"Nevertheless, it was unlocked when I came down."
We were so engrossed that neither of us had heard steps on the stairs. The sound of a smothered exclamation from the doorway caused us both to turn suddenly. Standing there, in a loose gown of some sort, very much surprised and startled, was Margery Fleming. Wardrop pulled himself together at once. As for me, I knew what sort of figure I cut, my collar stained with blood, a lump on my forehead that felt as big as a door-knob, and no shoes.
"Whatisthe matter?" she asked uncertainly. "I heard such queer noises, and I thought some one had broken into the house."
"Mr. Wardrop was trying to break in," I explained, "and I heard him and came down. On the way I had a bloody encounter with an open door, in which I came out the loser."
I don't think she quite believed me. She looked from my swollen head to the open bag, and then to Wardrop's pale face. Then I think, woman-like, she remembered the two great braids that hung over her shoulders and the dressing-gown she wore, for she backed precipitately into the hall.
"I'm glad that's all it is," she called back cautiously, and we could hear her running up the stairs.
"You'd better go to bed," Wardrop said, picking up his hat. "I'm going down to the station. There's no train out of here between midnight and a flag train at four-thirtyA. M.It's not likely to be of any use, but I want to see who goes on that train."
"It is only half past two," I said, glancing at my watch. "We might look around outside first."
The necessity for action made him welcome any suggestion. Reticent as he was, his feverish excitement made me think that something vital hung on the recovery of the contents of that Russia leather bag. We found a lantern somewhere in the back of the house, and together we went over the grounds. It did not take long, and we found nothing.
As I look back on that night, the key to what had passed and to much that was coming was so simple, so direct—and yet we missed it entirely. Nor, when bigger things developed, and Hunter's trained senses were brought into play, did he do much better. It was some time before we learned the true inwardness of the events of that night.
At five o'clock in the morning Wardrop came back exhausted and nerveless. No one had taken the four-thirty; the contents of the bag were gone, probably beyond recall. I put my dented candlestick back on the mantel, and prepared for a little sleep, blessing the deafness of old age which had enabled the Maitland ladies to sleep through it all. I tried to forget the queer events of the night, but the throbbing of my head kept me awake, and through it all one question obtruded itself—who had unlocked the front door and left it open?
I was almost unrecognizable when I looked at myself in the mirror the next morning, preparatory to dressing for breakfast. My nose boasted a new arch, like the back of an angry cat, making my profile Roman and ferocious, and the lump on my forehead from the chair was swollen, glassy and purple. I turned my back to the mirror and dressed in wrathful irritation and my yesterday's linen.
Miss Fleming was in the breakfast-room when I got down, standing at a window, her back to me. I have carried with me, during all the months since that time, a mental picture of her as she stood there, in a pink morning frock of some sort. But only the other day, having mentioned this to her, she assured me that the frock was blue, that she didn't have a pink garment at the time this story opens and that if she did she positively didn't have it on. And having thus flouted my eye for color, she maintains that she didnothave her back to me, for she distinctly saw my newly-raised bridge as I came down the stairs. So I amend this. Miss Fleming in a blue frock was facing the door when I went into the breakfast-room. Of one thing I am certain. She came forward and held out her hand.
"Good morning," she said. "What a terrible face!"
"It isn't mine," I replied meekly. "My own face is beneath these excrescences. I tried to cover the bump on my forehead with French chalk, but it only accentuated the thing, like snow on a mountain top."
"'The purple peaks of Darien,'" she quoted, pouring me my coffee. "Do you know, I feel so much better since you have taken hold of things. Aunt Letitia thinks you are wonderful."
I thought ruefully of the failure of my first attempt to play the sleuth, and I disclaimed any right to Miss Letitia's high opinion of me. From my dogging the watchman to the police station, to Delia and her note, was a short mental step.
"Before any one comes down, Miss Fleming," I said, "I want to ask a question or two. What was the name of the maid who helped you search the house that night?"
"Annie."
"What other maids did you say there were?"
"Delia and Rose."
"Do you know anything about them? Where they came from, or where they went?"
She smiled a little.
"What does one know about new servants?" she responded. "They bring you references, but references are the price most women pay to get rid of their servants without a fuss. Rose was fat and old, but Delia was pretty. I thought she rather liked Carter."
Carter as well as Shields, the policeman. I put Miss Delia down as a flirt.
"And you have no idea where Carter went?"
"None."
Wardrop came in then, and we spoke of other things. The two elderly ladies it seemed had tea and toast in their rooms when they wakened, and the three of us breakfasted together. But conversation languished with Wardrop's appearance; he looked haggard and worn, avoided Miss Fleming's eyes, and after ordering eggs instead of his chop, looked at his watch and left without touching anything.
"I want to get the nine-thirty, Margie," he said, coming back with his hat in his hand. "I may not be out to dinner. Tell Miss Letitia, will you?" He turned to go, but on second thought came back to me and held out his hand.
"I may not see you again," he began.
"Not if I see you first," I interrupted. He glanced at my mutilated features and smiled.
"I have made you a Maitland," he said. "I didn't think that anything but a prodigal Nature could duplicate Miss Letitia's nose! I'm honestly sorry, Mr. Knox, and if you do not want Miss Jane at that bump with a cold silver knife and some butter, you'd better duck before she comes down. Good-by, Margie."
I think the girl was as much baffled as I was by the change in his manner when he spoke to her. His smile faded and he hardly met her eyes: I thought that his aloofness puzzled rather than hurt her. When the house door had closed behind him, she dropped her chin in her hand and looked across the table.
"You did not tell me the truth last night, Mr. Knox," she said. "I have never seen Harry look like that. Something has happened to him."
"He was robbed of his traveling-bag," I explained, on Fred's theory that half a truth is better than a poor lie. "It's a humiliating experience, I believe. A man will throw away thousands, or gamble them away, with more equanimity than he'll see some one making off with his hair brushes or his clean collars."
"His traveling-bag!" she repeated scornfully. "Mr. Knox, something has happened to my father, and you and Harry are hiding it from me."
"On my honor, it is nothing of the sort," I hastened to assure her. "I saw him for only a few minutes, just long enough for him to wreck my appearance."
"He did not speak of father?"
"No."
She got up and crossing to the wooden mantel, put her arms upon it and leaned her head against them. "I wanted to ask him," she said drearily, "but I am afraid to. Suppose he doesn't know and I should tell him! He would go to Mr. Schwartz at once, and Mr. Schwartz is treacherous. The papers would get it, too."
Her eyes filled with tears, and I felt as awkward as a man always does when a woman begins to cry. If he knows her well enough he can go over and pat her on the shoulder and assure her it is going to be all right. If he does not know her, and there are two maiden aunts likely to come in at any minute, he sits still, as I did, and waits until the storm clears.
Miss Margery was not long in emerging from her handkerchief.
"I didn't sleep much," she explained, dabbing at her eyes, "and I am nervous, anyhow. Mr. Knox, are you sure it was only Harry trying to get into the house last night?"
"Only Harry," I repeated. "If Mr. Wardrop's attempt to get into the house leaves me in this condition, what would a real burglar have done to me!"
She was too intent to be sympathetic over my disfigured face.
"There was some one moving about up-stairs not long before I came down," she said slowly.
"You heard me; I almost fell down the stairs."
"Did you brush past my door, and strike the knob?" she demanded.
"No, I was not near any door."
"Very well," triumphantly. "Some one did. Not only that, but they were in the store-room on the floor above. I could hear one person and perhaps two, going from one side of the room to the other and back again."
"You heard a goblin quadrille. First couple forward and back," I said facetiously.
"I heard real footsteps—unmistakable ones. The maids sleep back on the second floor, and—don't tell me it was rats. There are no rats in my Aunt Letitia's house."
I was more impressed than I cared to show. I found I had a half hour before train time, and as we were neither of us eating anything, I suggested that we explore the upper floor of the house. I did it, I explained, not because I expected to find anything, but because I was sure we would not.
We crept past the two closed doors behind which the ladies Maitland were presumably taking out their crimps and taking in their tea. Then up a narrow, obtrusively clean stairway to the upper floor.
It was an old-fashioned, sloping-roofed attic, with narrow windows and a bare floor. At one end a door opened into a large room, and in there were the family trunks of four generations of Maitlands. One on another they were all piled there—little hair trunks, squab-topped trunks, huge Saratogas—of the period when the two maiden ladies were in their late teens—and there were handsome, modern trunks, too. For Miss Fleming's satisfaction I made an examination of the room, but it showed nothing. There was little or no dust to have been disturbed; the windows were closed and locked.
In the main attic were two step-ladders, some curtains drying on frames and an old chest of drawers with glass knobs and the veneering broken in places. One of the drawers stood open, and inside could be seen a red and white patchwork quilt, and a grayish thing that looked like flannel and smelled to heaven of camphor. We gave up finally, and started down.
Part way down the attic stairs Margery stopped, her eyes fixed on the white-scrubbed rail. Following her gaze, I stopped, too, and I felt a sort of chill go over me. No spot or blemish, no dirty finger print marked the whiteness of that stair rail, except in one place. On it, clear and distinct, every line of the palm showing, was the reddish imprint of a hand!
Margery did not speak; she had turned very white, and closed her eyes, but she was not faint. When the first revulsion had passed, I reached over and touched the stain. It was quite dry, of course, but it was still reddish-brown; another hour or two would see it black. It was evidently fresh—Hunter said afterward it must have been about six hours old, and as things transpired, he was right. The stain showed a hand somewhat short and broad, with widened finger-tips; marked in ink, it would not have struck me so forcibly, perhaps, but there, its ugly red against the white wood, it seemed to me to be the imprint of a brutal, murderous hand.
Margery was essentially feminine.
"What did I tell you?" she asked. "Some one was in this house last night; I heard them distinctly. There must have been two, and they quarreled—" she shuddered.
We went on down-stairs into the quiet and peace of the dining-room again. I got some hot coffee for Margery, for she looked shaken, and found I had missed my train.
"I am beginning to think I am being pursued by a malicious spirit," she said, trying to smile. "I came away from home because people got into the house at night and left queer signs of their visits, and now, here at Bellwood, where nothingeverhappens, the moment I arrive things begin to occur. And—just as it was at home—the house was so well locked last night."
I did not tell her of the open hall door, just as I had kept from her the fact that only the contents of Harry Wardrop's bag had been taken. That it had all been the work of one person, and that that person, having in some way access to the house, had also stolen the pearls, was now my confident belief.
I looked at Bella—the maid—as she moved around the dining-room; her stolid face was not even intelligent; certainly not cunning. Heppie, the cook and only other servant, was partly blind and her horizon was the diameter of her largest kettle. No—it had not been a servant, this mysterious intruder who passed the Maitland silver on the sideboard without an attempt to take it, and who floundered around an attic at night, in search of nothing more valuable than patchwork quilts and winter flannels. It is strange to look back and think how quietly we sat there; that we could see nothing but burglary—or an attempt at it—in what we had found.
It must have been after nine o'clock when Bella came running into the room. Ordinarily a slow and clumsy creature, she almost flew. She had a tray in her hand, and the dishes were rattling and threatening overthrow at every step. She brought up against a chair, and a cup went flying. The breaking of a cup must have been a serious offense in Miss Letitia Maitland's house, but Bella took no notice whatever of it.
"Miss Jane," she gasped, "Miss Jane, she's—she's—"
"Hurt!" Margery exclaimed, rising and clutching at the table for support.
"No. Gone—she's gone! She's been run off with!"
"Nonsense!" I said, seeing Margery's horrified face. "Don't come in here with such a story. If Miss Jane is not in her room, she is somewhere else, that's all."
Bella stooped and gathered up the broken cup, her lips moving. Margery had recovered herself. She made Bella straighten and explain.
"Do you mean—she is not in her room?" she asked incredulously. "Isn't she somewhere around the house?"
"Go up and look at the room," the girl replied, and, with Margery leading, we ran up the stairs.
Miss Jane's room was empty. From somewhere near Miss Letitia could be heard lecturing Hepsibah about putting too much butter on the toast. Her high voice, pitched for Heppie's old ears, rasped me. Margery closed the door, and we surveyed the room together.
The bed had been occupied; its coverings had been thrown back, as if its occupant had risen hurriedly. The room itself was in a state of confusion; a rocker lay on its side, and Miss Jane's clothing, folded as she had taken it off, had slid off on to the floor. Her shoes stood neatly at the foot of the bed, and a bottle of toilet vinegar had been upset, pouring a stream over the marble top of the dresser and down on to the floor. Over the high wooden mantel the Maitland who had been governor of the state years ago hung at a waggish angle, and a clock had been pushed aside and stopped at half-past one.
Margery stared around her in bewilderment. Of course, it was not until later in the day that I saw all the details. My first impression was of confusion and disorder: the room seemed to have been the scene of a struggle. The overturned furniture, the clothes on the floor, the picture, coupled with the print of the hand on the staircase and Miss Jane's disappearance, all seemed to point to one thing.
And as if to prove it conclusively, Margery picked up Miss Jane's new lace cap from the floor. It was crumpled and spotted with blood.
"She has been killed," Margery said, in a choking voice. "Killed, and she had not an enemy in the world!"
"But where is she?" I asked stupidly.
Margery had more presence of mind than I had; I suppose it is because woman's courage is mental and man's physical, that in times of great strain women always make the better showing. While I was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the confusion around me, Margery was already on her knees, looking under the high, four-post bed. Finding nothing there she went to the closet. It was undisturbed. Pathetic rows of limp black dresses and on the shelves two black crepe bonnets were mute reminders of the little old lady. But there was nothing else in the room.
"Call Robert, the gardener," Margery said quickly, "and have him help you search the grounds and cellars. I will take Bella and go through the house. Above everything, keep it from Aunt Letitia as long as possible."
I locked the door into the disordered room, and with my head whirling, I went to look for Robert.
It takes a short time to search an acre of lawn and shrubbery. There was no trace of the missing woman anywhere outside the house, and from Bella, as she sat at the foot of the front stairs with her apron over her head, I learned in a monosyllable that nothing had been found in the house. Margery was with Miss Letitia, and from the excited conversation I knew she was telling her—not harrowing details, but that Miss Jane had disappeared during the night.
The old lady was inclined to scoff at first.
"Look in the fruit closet in the store-room," I heard her say. "She's let the spring lock shut on her twice; she was black in the face the last time we found her."
"I did look; she's not there," Margery screamed at her.
"Then she's out looking for stump water to take that wart off her neck. She said yesterday she was going for some."
"But her clothes are all here," Margery persisted. "We think some one must have got in the house."
"If all her clothes are there she's been sleep-walking," Miss Letitia said calmly. "We used to have to tie her by a cord around her ankle and fasten it to the bedpost. When she tried to get up the cord would pull and wake her."
I think after a time, however, some of Margery's uneasiness communicated itself to the older woman. She finished dressing, and fumed when we told her we had locked Miss Jane's door and mislaid the key. Finally, Margery got her settled in the back parlor with some peppermints and her knitting; she had a feeling, she said, that Jane had gone after the stump water and lost her way, and I told Margery to keep her in that state of mind as long as she could.
I sent for Hunter that morning and he came at three o'clock. I took him through the back entrance to avoid Miss Letitia. I think he had been skeptical until I threw open the door and showed him the upset chair, the old lady's clothing, and the bloodstained lace cap. His examination was quick and thorough. He took a crumpled sheet of note paper out of the waste-basket and looked at it, then he stuffed it in his pocket. He sniffed the toilet water, called Margery and asked her if any clothing was missing, and on receiving a negative answer asked if any shawls or wraps were gone from the halls or other rooms. Margery reported nothing missing.
Before he left the room, Hunter went back and moved the picture which had been disturbed over the mantel. What he saw made him get a chair and, standing on it, take the picture from its nail. Thus exposed, the wall showed an opening about a foot square, and perhaps eighteen inches deep. A metal door, opening in, was unfastened and ajar, and just inside was a copy of a recent sentimental novel and a bottle of some sort of complexion cream. In spite of myself, I smiled; it was so typical of the dear old lady, with the heart of a girl and a skin that was losing its roses. But there was something else in the receptacle, something that made Margery Fleming draw in her breath sharply, and made Hunter raise his eyebrows a little and glance at me. The something was a scrap of unruled white paper, and on it the figures eleven twenty-two!
Harry Wardrop came back from the city at four o'clock, while Hunter was in the midst of his investigation. I met him in the hall and told him what had happened, and with this new apprehension added to the shock of the night before, he looked as though his nerves were ready to snap.
Wardrop was a man of perhaps twenty-seven, as tall as I, although not so heavy, with direct blue eyes and fair hair; altogether a manly and prepossessing sort of fellow. I was not surprised that Margery Fleming had found him attractive—he had the blond hair and off-hand manner that women seem to like. I am dark, myself.
He seemed surprised to find Hunter there, and not particularly pleased, but he followed us to the upper floor and watched silently while Hunter went over the two rooms. Beside the large chest of drawers in the main attic Hunter found perhaps half a dozen drops of blood, and on the edge of the open drawer there were traces of more. In the inner room two trunks had been moved out nearly a foot, as he found by the faint dust that had been under them. With the stain on the stair rail, that was all he discovered, and it was little enough. Then he took out his note-book and there among the trunks we had a little seance of our own, in which Hunter asked questions, and whoever could do so answered them.
"Have you a pencil or pen, Mr. Knox?" he asked me, but I had none. Wardrop felt his pockets, with no better success.
"I have lost my fountain pen somewhere around the house to-day," he said irritably. "Here's a pencil—not much of one."
Hunter began his interrogations.
"How old was Miss Maitland—Miss Jane, I mean?"
"Sixty-five," from Margery.
"She had always seemed rational? Not eccentric, or childish?"
"Not at all; the sanest woman I ever knew." This from Wardrop.
"Has she ever, to your knowledge, received any threatening letters?"
"Never in all her life," from both of them promptly.
"You heard sounds, you say, Miss Fleming. At what time?"
"About half-past one or perhaps a few minutes later. The clock struck two while I was still awake and nervous."
"This person who was walking through the attics here—would you say it was a heavy person? A man, I mean?"
Margery stopped to think.
"Yes," she said finally. "It was very stealthy, but I think it was a man's step."
"You heard no sound of a struggle? No voices? No screams?"
"None at all," she said positively. And I added my quota.
"There could have been no such sounds," I said. "I sat in my room and smoked until a quarter to two. I heard nothing until then, when I heard Mr. Wardrop trying to get into the house. I went down to admit him, and—I found the front door open about an inch."
Hunter wheeled on Wardrop.
"A quarter to two?" he asked. "You were coming home from—the city?"
"Yes, from the station."
Hunter watched him closely.
"The last train gets in here at twelve-thirty," he said slowly. "Does it always take you an hour and a quarter to walk the three squares to the house?"
Wardrop flushed uneasily, and I could see Margery's eyes dilate with amazement. As for me, I could only stare.
"I did not come directly home," he said, almost defiantly.
Hunter's voice was as smooth as silk.
"Then—will you be good enough to tell me where you did go?" he asked. "I have reasons for wanting to know."
"Damn your reasons—I beg your pardon, Margery. Look here, Mr. Hunter, do you think I would hurt a hair of that old lady's head? Do you think I came here last night and killed her, or whatever it is that has happened to her? And then went out and tried to get in again through the window?"
"Not necessarily," Hunter said, unruffled. "It merely occurred to me that we have at least an hour of your time last night, while this thing was going on, to account for. However, we can speak of that later. I am practically certain of one thing, Miss Maitland is not dead, or was not dead when she was taken away from this house."
"Taken away!" Margery repeated. "Then you think she was kidnapped?"
"Well, it is possible. It's a puzzling affair all through. You are certain there are no closets or unused rooms where, if there had been a murder, the body could be concealed."
"I never heard of any," Margery said, but I saw Wardrop's face change on the instant. He said nothing, however, but stood frowning at the floor, with his hands deep in his coat pockets.
Margery was beginning to show the effect of the long day's strain; she began to cry a little, and with an air of proprietorship that I resented, somehow, Wardrop went over to her.
"You are going to lie down, Margery," he said, holding out his hand to help her up. "Mrs. Mellon will come over to Aunt Letitia, and you must get some sleep."
"Sleep!" she said with scorn, as he helped her to her feet. "Sleep, when things like this are occurring! Father first, and now dear old Aunt Jane! Harry, do you know where my father is?"
He faced her, as if he had known the question must come and was prepared for it.
"I know that he is all right, Margery. He has been—out of town. If it had not been for something unforeseen that—happened within the last few hours, he would have been home to-day."
She drew a long breath of relief.
"And Aunt Jane?" she asked Hunter, from the head of the attic stairs, "you do not think she is dead?"
"Not until we have found something more," he answered tactlessly. "It's like where there's smoke there's fire; where there's murder there's a body."
When they had both gone, Hunter sat down on a trunk and drew out a cigar that looked like a bomb.
"What do you think of it?" I asked, when he showed no disposition to talk.
"I'll be damned if I know," he responded, looking around for some place to expectorate and finding none.
"The window," I suggested, and he went over to it. When he came back he had a rather peculiar expression. He sat down and puffed for a moment.
"In the first place," he began, "we can take it for granted that, unless she was crazy or sleep-walking, she didn't go out in her night-clothes, and there's nothing of hers missing. She wasn't taken in a carriage, providing she was taken at all. There's not a mark of wheels on that drive newer than a week, and besides, you say you heard nothing."
"Nothing," I said positively.
"Then, unless she went away in a balloon, where it wouldn't matter what she had on, she is still around the premises. It depends on how badly she was hurt."
"Are you sure it was she who was hurt?" I asked. "That print of a hand—that is not Miss Jane's."
In reply Hunter led the way down the stairs to the place where the stain on the stair rail stood out, ugly and distinct. He put his own heavy hand on the rail just below it.
"Suppose," he said, "suppose you grip something very hard, what happens to your hand?"
"It spreads," I acknowledged, seeing what he meant.
"Now, look at that stain. Look at the short fingers—why, it's a child's hand beside mine. The breadth is from pressure. It might be figured out this way. The fingers, you notice, point down the stairs. In some way, let us say, the burglar, for want of a better name, gets into the house. He used a ladder resting against that window by the chest of drawers."
"Ladder!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, there is a pruning ladder there. Now then—he comes down these stairs, and he has a definite object. He knows of something valuable in that cubby hole over the mantel in Miss Jane's room. How does he get in? The door into the upper hall is closed and bolted, but the door into the bath-room is open. From there another door leads into the bedroom, and it has no bolt—only a key. That kind of a lock is only a three-minutes delay, or less. Now then, Miss Maitland was a light sleeper. When she wakened she was too alarmed to scream; she tried to get to the door and was intercepted. Finally she got out the way the intruder got in, and ran along the hall. Every door was locked. In a frenzy she ran up the attic stairs and was captured up there. Which bears out Miss Margery's story of the footsteps back and forward."
"Good heavens, what an awful thing!" I gasped. "And I was sitting smoking just across the hall."
"He brings her down the stairs again, probably half dragging her. Once, she catches hold of the stair rail, and holds desperately to it, leaving the stain here."
"But why did he bring her down?" I asked bewildered. "Why wouldn't he take what he was after and get away?"
Hunter smoked and meditated.
"She probably had to get the key of the iron door," he suggested. "It was hidden, and time was valuable. If there was a scapegrace member of the family, for instance, who knew where the old lady kept money, and who needed it badly; who knew all about the house, and who—"
"Fleming!" I exclaimed, aghast.
"Or even our young friend, Wardrop," Hunter said quietly. "He has an hour to account for. The trying to get in may have been a blind, and how do you know that what he says was stolen out of his satchel was not what he had just got from the iron box over the mantel in Miss Maitland's room?"
I was dizzy with trying to follow Hunter's facile imagination. The thing we were trying to do was to find the old lady, and, after all, here we brought up against the sameimpasse.
"Then where is she now?" I asked. He meditated. He had sat down on the narrow stairs, and was rubbing his chin with a thoughtful forefinger. "One-thirty, Miss Margery says, when she heard the noise. One-forty-five when you heard Wardrop at the shutters. I tell you, Knox, it is one of two things: either that woman is dead somewhere in this house, or she ran out of the hall door just before you went down-stairs, and in that case the Lord only knows where she is. If there is a room anywhere that we have not explored—"
"I am inclined to think there is," I broke in, thinking of Wardrop's face a few minutes before. And just then Wardrop himself joined us. He closed the door at the foot of the boxed-in staircase, and came quietly up.
"You spoke about an unused room or a secret closet, Mr. Hunter," he said, without any resentment in his tone. "We have nothing so sensational as that, but the old house is full of queer nooks and crannies, and perhaps, in one of them, we might find—" he stopped and gulped. Whatever Hunter might think, whatever I might have against Harry Wardrop, I determined then that he had had absolutely nothing to do with little Miss Maitland's strange disappearance.
The first place we explored was a closed and walled-in wine-cellar, long unused, and to which access was gained by a small window in the stone foundation of the house. The cobwebs over the window made it practically an impossible place, but we put Robert, the gardener, through it, in spite of his protests.
"There's nothin' there, I tell you," he protested, with one leg over the coping. "God only knows what's down there, after all these years. I've been livin' here with the Miss Maitlands for twenty year, and I ain't never been put to goin' down into cellars on the end of a rope."
He went, because we were three to his one, but he was up again in sixty seconds, with the announcement that the place was as bare as the top of his head.
We moved every trunk in the store-room, although it would have been a moral impossibility for any one to have done it the night before without rousing the entire family, and were thus able to get to and open a large closet, which proved to contain neatly tied and labeled packages of religious weeklies, beginning in the sixties.
The grounds had been gone over inch by inch, without affording any clue, and now the three of us faced one another. The day was almost gone, and we were exactly where we started. Hunter had sent men through the town and the adjacent countryside, but no word had come from them. Miss Letitia had at last succumbed to the suspense and had gone to bed, where she lay quietly enough, as is the way with the old, but so mild that she was alarming.
At five o'clock Hawes called me up from the office and almost tearfully implored me to come back and attend to my business. When I said it was impossible, I could hear him groan as he hung up the receiver. Hawes is of the opinion that by keeping fresh magazines in my waiting-room and by persuading me to the extravagance of Turkish rugs, that he has built my practice to its present flourishing state. When I left the telephone, Hunter was preparing to go back to town and Wardrop was walking up and down the hall. Suddenly Wardrop stopped his uneasy promenade and hailed the detective on his way to the door.
"By George," he exclaimed, "I forgot to show you the closet under the attic stairs!"
We hurried up and Wardrop showed us the panel in the hall, which slid to one side when he pushed a bolt under the carpet. The blackness of the closet was horrible in its suggestion to me. I stepped back while Hunter struck a match and looked in.
The closet was empty.
"Better not go in," Wardrop said. "It hasn't been used for years and it's black with dust. I found it myself and showed it to Miss Jane. I don't believe Miss Letitia knows it is here."
"It hasn't been used for years!" reflected Hunter, looking around him curiously. "I suppose it has been some time since you were in here, Mr. Wardrop?"
"Several years," Wardrop replied carelessly. "I used to keep contraband here in my college days, cigarettes and that sort of thing. I haven't been in it since then."
Hunter took his foot off a small object that lay on the floor, and picking it up, held it out to Wardrop, with a grim smile.
"Here is the fountain pen you lost this morning, Mr. Wardrop," he said quietly.
When Hunter had finally gone at six o'clock, summoned to town on urgent business, we were very nearly where we had been before he came. He could only give us theories, and after all, what we wanted was fact—and Miss Jane. Many things, however, that he had unearthed puzzled me.
Why had Wardrop lied about so small a matter as his fountain pen? The closet was empty: what object could he have had in saying he had not been in it for years? I found that my belief in his sincerity of the night before was going. If he had been lying then, I owed him something for a lump on my head that made it difficult for me to wear my hat.
It would have been easy enough for him to rob himself, and, if he had an eye for the theatrical, to work out just some such plot. It was even possible that he had hidden for a few hours in the secret closet the contents of the Russia leather bag. But, whatever Wardrop might or might not be, he gave me little chance to find out, for he left the house before Hunter did that afternoon, and it was later, and under strange circumstances, that I met him again.
Hunter had not told me what was on the paper he had picked out of the basket in Miss Jane's room, and I knew he was as much puzzled as I at the scrap in the little cupboard, with eleven twenty-two on it. It occurred to me that it might mean the twenty-second day of the eleventh month, perhaps something that had happened on some momentous, long-buried twenty-second of November. But this was May, and the finding of two slips bearing the same number was too unusual.
After Hunter left I went back to the closet under the upper stairs, and with some difficulty got the panel open again. The space inside, perhaps eight feet high at one end and four at the other, was empty. There was a row of hooks, as if at some time clothing had been hung there, and a flat shelf at one end, gray with dust.
I struck another match and examined the shelf. On its surface were numerous scratchings in the dust layer, but at one end, marked out as if drawn on a blackboard, was a rectangular outline, apparently that of a smallish box, and fresh.
My match burned my fingers and I dropped it to the floor, where it expired in a sickly blue flame. At the last, however, it died heroically—like an old man to whom his last hours bring back some of the glory of his prime, burning brightly for a second and then fading into darkness. The last flash showed me, on the floor of the closet and wedged between two boards, a small white globule. It did not need another match to tell me it was a pearl.
I dug it out carefully and took it to my room. In the daylight there I recognized it as an unstrung pearl of fair size and considerable value. There could hardly be a doubt that I had stumbled on one of the stolen gems; but a pearl was only a pearl to me, after all. I didn't feel any of the inspirations which fiction detectives experience when they happen on an important clue.
I lit a cigar and put the pearl on the table in front of me. But no explanation formed itself in the tobacco smoke. If Wardrop took the pearls, I kept repeating over and over, if Wardrop took the pearls, who took Miss Jane?
I tried to forget the pearls, and to fathom the connection between Miss Maitland's disappearance and the absence of her brother-in-law. The scrap of paper, eleven twenty-two, must connect them, but how? A family scandal? Dismissed on the instant. There could be nothing that would touch the virginal remoteness of that little old lady. Insanity? Well, Miss Jane might have had a sudden aberration and wandered away, but that would leave Fleming out, and the paper dragged him in. A common enemy?
I smoked and considered for some time over this. An especially malignant foe might rob, or even murder, but it was almost ludicrous to think of his carrying away by force Miss Jane's ninety pounds of austere flesh. The solution, had it not been for the blood-stains, might have been a peaceful one, leaving out the pearls, altogether, but later developments showed that the pearls refused to be omitted. To my mind, however, at that time, the issue seemed a double one. I believed that some one, perhaps Harry Wardrop, had stolen the pearls, hidden them in the secret closet, and disposed of them later. I made a note to try to follow up the missing pearls.
Then—I clung to the theory that Miss Maitland had been abducted and was being held for ransom. If I could have found traces of a vehicle of any sort near the house, I would almost have considered my contention proved. That any one could have entered the house, intimidated and even slightly injured the old lady, and taken her quietly out the front door, while I sat smoking in my room with the window open, and Wardrop trying the shutters at the side of the house, seemed impossible. Yet there were the stains, the confusion, the open front door to prove it.
But—and I stuck here—the abductor who would steal an old woman, and take her out into the May night without any covering—not even shoes—clad only in her night-clothes, would run an almost certain risk of losing his prize by pneumonia. For a second search had shown not an article of wearing apparel missing from the house. Even the cedar chests were undisturbed; not a blanket was gone.
Just before dinner I made a second round of the grounds, this time looking for traces of wheels. I found none near-by, and it occurred to me that the boldest highwayman would hardly drive up to the door for his booty. When I had extended my search to cover the unpaved lane that separated the back of the Maitland place from its nearest neighbor, I was more fortunate.
The morning delivery wagons had made fresh trails, and at first I despaired. I sauntered up the lane to the right, however, and about a hundred feet beyond the boundary hedge I found circular tracks, broad and deep, where an automobile had backed and turned. The lane was separated by high hedges of osage orange from the properties on either side, and each house in that neighborhood had a drive of its own, which entered from the main street, circled the house and went out as it came.
There was no reason, or, so far as I could see, no legitimate reason, why a car should have stopped there, yet it had stopped and for some time. Deeper tracks in the sand at the side of the lane showed that.
I felt that I had made some progress: I had found where the pearls had been hidden after the theft, and this put Bella out of the question. And I had found—or thought I had—the way in which Miss Jane had been taken away from Bellwood.
I came back past the long rear wing of the house which contained, I presumed, the kitchen and the other mysterious regions which only women and architects comprehend. A long porch ran the length of the wing, and as I passed I heard my name called.
"In here in the old laundry," Margery's voice repeated, and I retraced my steps and went up on the porch. At the very end of the wing, dismantled, piled at the sides with firewood and broken furniture, was an old laundry. Its tubs were rusty, its walls mildewed and streaked, and it exhaled the musty odor of empty houses. On the floor in the middle of the room, undeniably dirty and dishevelled, sat Margery Fleming.
"I thought you were never coming," she said petulantly. "I have been here alone for an hour."
"I'm sure I never guessed it," I apologized. "I should have been only too glad to come and sit with you."
She was fumbling with her hair, which threatened to come down any minute, and which hung, loosely knotted, over one small ear.
"I hate to look ridiculous," she said sharply, "and I detest being laughed at. I've been crying, and I haven't any handkerchief."
I proffered mine gravely, and she took it. She wiped the dusty streaks off her cheeks and pinned her hair in a funny knob on top of her head that would have made any other woman look like a caricature. But still she sat on the floor.
"Now," she said, when she had jabbed the last hair-pin into place and tucked my handkerchief into her belt, "if you have been sufficiently amused, perhaps you will help me out of here."
"Out of where?"
"Do you suppose I'm sitting here because I like it?"
"You have sprained your ankle," I said, with sudden alarm.
In reply she brushed aside her gown, and for the first time I saw what had occurred. She was sitting half over a trap-door in the floor, which had closed on her skirts and held her fast.
"The wretched thing!" she wailed. "And I have called until I am hoarse. I could shake Heppie! Then I tried to call you mentally. I fixed my mind on you and said over and over, 'Come, please come.' Didn't you feel anything at all?"
"Good old trap-door!" I said. "I know I was thinking about you, but I never suspected the reason. And then to have walked past here twenty minutes ago! Why didn't you call me then?" I was tugging at the door, but it was fast, with the skirts to hold it tight.
"I looked such a fright," she explained. "Can't you pry it up with something?"
I tried several things without success, while Margery explained her plight.
"I was sure Robert had not looked carefully in the old wine cellar," she said, "and then I remembered this trap-door opened into it. It was the only place we hadn't explored thoroughly. I put a ladder down and looked around. Ugh!"
"What did you find?" I asked, as my third broomstick lever snapped.
"Nothing—only I know now where Aunt Letitia's Edwin Booth went to. He was a cat," she explained, "and Aunt Letitia made the railroad pay for killing him."
I gave up finally and stood back.
"Couldn't you—er—get out of your garments, and—I could go out and close the door," I suggested delicately. "You see you are sitting on the trap-door, and—"
But Margery scouted the suggestion with the proper scorn, and demanded a pair of scissors. She cut herself loose with vicious snips, while I paraphrased the old nursery rhyme, "She cut her petticoats all around about." Then she gathered up her outraged garments and fled precipitately.
She was unusually dignified at dinner. Neither of us cared to eat, and the empty places—Wardrop's and Miss Letitia's—Miss Jane's had not been set—were like skeletons at the board.
It was Margery who, after our pretense of a meal, voiced the suspicion I think we both felt.
"It is a strange time for Harry to go away," she said quietly, from the library window.
"He probably has a reason."
"Why don't you say it?" she said suddenly, turning on me. "I know what you think. You believe he only pretended he was robbed!"
"I should be sorry to think anything of the kind," I began. But she did not allow me to finish.
"I saw what you thought," she burst out bitterly. "The detective almost laughed in his face. Oh, you needn't think I don't know: I saw him last night, and the woman too. He brought her right to the gate. You treat me like a child, all of you!"
In sheer amazement I was silent. So a new character had been introduced into the play—a woman, too!
"You were not the only person, Mr. Knox, who could not sleep last night," she went on. "Oh, I know a great many things. I know about the pearls, and what you think about them, and I know more than that, I—"
She stopped then. She had said more than she intended to, and all at once her bravado left her, and she looked like a frightened child. I went over to her and took one trembling hand.
"I wish you didn't know all those things," I said. "But since you do, won't you let me share the burden? The only reason I am still here is—on your account."
I had a sort of crazy desire to take her in my arms and comfort her, Wardrop or no Wardrop. But at that moment, luckily for me, perhaps, Miss Letitia's shrill old voice came from the stairway.
"Get out of my way, Heppie," she was saying tartly. "I'm not on my death-bed yet, not if I know it. Where's Knox?"
Whereupon I obediently went out and helped Miss Letitia into the room.
"I think I know where Jane is," she said, putting down her cane with a jerk. "I don't know why I didn't think about it before. She's gone to get her new teeth; she's been talkin' of it for a month. Not but what her old teeth would have done well enough."
"She would hardly go in the middle of the night," I returned. "She was a very timid woman, wasn't she?"
"She wasn't raised right," Miss Letitia said with a shake of her head. "She's the baby, and the youngest's always spoiled."
"Have you thought that this might be more than it appears to be?" I was feeling my way: she was a very old woman. "It—for instance, it might be abduction, kidnapping—for a ransom."
"Ransom!" Miss Letitia snapped. "Mr. Knox, my father made his money by working hard for it: I haven't wasted it—not that I know of. And if Jane Maitland was fool enough to be abducted, she'll stay a while before I pay anything for her. It looks to me as if this detective business was going to be expensive, anyhow."
My excuse for dwelling with such attention to detail on the preliminary story, the disappearance of Miss Jane Maitland and the peculiar circumstances surrounding it, will have to find its justification in the events that followed it. Miss Jane herself, and the solution of that mystery, solved the even more tragic one in which we were about to be involved. I saywe, because it was borne in on me at about that time, that the things that concerned Margery Fleming must concern me henceforth, whether I willed it so or otherwise. For the first time in my life a woman's step on the stair was like no other sound in the world.
At nine o'clock that night things remained about the same. The man Hunter had sent to investigate the neighborhood and the country just outside of the town, came to the house about eight, and reported "nothing discovered." Miss Letitia went to bed early, and Margery took her up-stairs.
Hunter called me by telephone from town.
"Can you take the nine-thirty up?" he asked. I looked at my watch.
"Yes, I think so. Is there anything new?"
"Not yet; there may be. Take a cab at the station and come to the corner of Mulberry Street and Park Lane. You'd better dismiss your cab there and wait for me."
I sent word up-stairs by Bella, who was sitting in the kitchen, her heavy face sodden with grief, and taking my hat and raincoat—it was raining a light spring drizzle—I hurried to the station. In twenty-four minutes I was in the city, and perhaps twelve minutes more saw me at the designated corner, with my cab driving away and the rain dropping off the rim of my hat and splashing on my shoulders.
I found a sort of refuge by standing under the wooden arch of a gate, and it occurred to me that, for all my years in the city, this particular neighborhood was altogether strange to me. Two blocks away, in any direction, I would have been in familiar territory again.
Back of me a warehouse lifted six or seven gloomy stories to the sky. The gate I stood in was evidently the entrance to its yard, and in fact, some uncomfortable movement of mine just then struck the latch, and almost precipitated me backward by its sudden opening. Beyond was a yard full of shadowy wheels and packing cases; the street lights did not penetrate there, and with an uneasy feeling that almost anything, in this none too savory neighborhood, might be waiting there, I struck a match and looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes after ten. Once a man turned the corner and came toward me, his head down, his long ulster flapping around his legs. Confident that it was Hunter, I stepped out and touched him on the arm. He wheeled instantly, and in the light which shone on his face, I saw my error.
"Excuse me," I mumbled, "I mistook my man."
He went on again without speaking, only pulling his soft hat down lower over his face. I looked after him until he turned the next corner, and I knew I had not been mistaken; it was Wardrop.
The next minute Hunter appeared, from the same direction, and we walked quickly together. I told him who the man just ahead had been, and he nodded without surprise. But before we turned the next corner he stopped.
"Did you ever hear of the White Cat?" he asked. "Little political club?"
"Never."
"I'm a member of it," he went on rapidly. "It's run by the city ring, or rather it runs itself. Be a good fellow while you're there, and keep your eyes open. It's a queer joint."
The corner we turned found us on a narrow, badly paved street. The broken windows of the warehouse still looked down on us, and across the street was an ice factory, with two deserted wagons standing along the curb. As well as I could see for the darkness, a lumber yard stretched beyond the warehouse, its piles of boards giving off in the rain the aromatic odor of fresh pine.
At a gate in the fence beyond the warehouse Hunter stopped. It was an ordinary wooden gate and it opened with a thumb latch. Beyond stretched a long, narrow, brick-paved alleyway, perhaps three feet wide, and lighted by the merest glimmer of a light ahead. Hunter went on regardless of puddles in the brick paving, and I stumbled after him. As we advanced, I could see that the light was a single electric bulb, hung over a second gate. While Hunter fumbled for a key in his pocket, I had time to see that this gate had a Yale lock, was provided, at the side, with an electric bell button, and had a letter slot cut in it.
Hunter opened the gate and preceded me through it. The gate swung to and clicked behind me. After the gloom of the passageway, the small brick-paved yard seemed brilliant with lights. Two wires were strung its length, dotted with many electric lamps. In a corner a striped tent stood out in grotesque relief; it seemed to be empty, and the weather was an easy explanation. From the two-story house beyond there came suddenly a burst of piano music and a none too steady masculine voice. Hunter turned to me, with his foot on the wooden steps.
"Above everything else," he warned, "keep your temper. Nobody gives a hang in here whether you're the mayor of the town, the champion pool-player of the first ward, or the roundsman on the beat."
The door at the top of the steps was also Yale-locked. We stepped at once into the kitchen, from which I imagined that the house faced on another street, and that for obvious reasons only its rear entrance was used. The kitchen was bright and clean; it was littered, however, with half-cut loaves of bread, glasses and empty bottles. Over the range a man in his shirt sleeves was giving his whole attention to a slice of ham, sizzling on a skillet, and at a table near-by a young fellow, with his hair cut in a barber's oval over the back of his neck, was spreading slices of bread and cheese with mustard.
"How are you, Mr. Mayor?" Hunter said, as he shed his raincoat. "This is Mr. Knox, the man who's engineering theStar-Eaglefight."
The man over the range wiped one greasy hand and held it out to me.
"The Cat is purring a welcome," he said, indicating the frying ham. "If my cooking turns out right I'll ask you to have some ham with me. I don't know why in thunder it gets black in the middle and won't cook around the edges."
I recognized the mayor. He was a big fellow, handsome in a heavy way, and "Tommy" to every one who knew him. It seemed I was about to see my city government at play.
Hunter was thoroughly at home. He took my coat and his own and hung them somewhere to dry. Then he went into a sort of pantry opening off the kitchen and came out with four bottles of beer.
"We take care of ourselves here," he explained, as the newly barbered youth washed some glasses. "If you want a sandwich, there is cooked ham in the refrigerator and cheese—if our friend at the sink has left any."
The boy looked up from his glasses. "It's rat-trap cheese, that stuff," he growled.
"The other ran out an hour ago and didn't come back," put in the mayor, grinning. "You can kill that with mustard, if it's too lively."
"Get some cigars, will you?" Hunter asked me. "They're on a shelf in the pantry. I have my hands full."
I went for the cigars, remembering to keep my eyes open. The pantry was a small room: it contained an ice-box, stocked with drinkables, ham, eggs and butter. On shelves above were cards, cigars and liquors, and there, too, I saw a box with an indorsement which showed the "honor system" of the Cat Club.
"Sign checks and drop here," it read, and I thought about the old adage of honor among thieves and politicians.
When I came out with the cigars Hunter was standing with a group of new arrivals; they included one of the city physicians, the director of public charities and a judge of a local court. The latter, McFeely, a little, thin Irishman, knew me and accosted me at once. The mayor was busy over the range, and was almost purple with heat and unwonted anxiety.
When the three new-comers went up-stairs, instead of going into the grill-room, I looked at Hunter.
"Is this where the political game is played?" I asked.
"Yes, if the political game is poker," he replied, and led the way into the room which adjoined the kitchen.
No one paid any attention to us. Bare tables, a wooden floor, and almost as many cuspidors as chairs, comprised the furniture of the long room. In one corner was a battered upright piano, and there were two fireplaces with old-fashioned mantels. Perhaps a dozen men were sitting around, talking loudly, with much scraping of chairs on the bare floor. At one table they were throwing poker dice, but the rest were drinking beer and talking in a desultory way. At the piano a man with a red mustache was mimicking the sextette fromLuciaand a roar of applause met us as we entered the room. Hunter led the way to a corner and put down his bottles.
"It's fairly quiet to-night," he said. "To-morrow's the big night—Saturday."
"What time do they close up?" I asked. In answer Hunter pointed to a sign over the door. It was a card, neatly printed, and it said, "The White Cat never sleeps."
"There are only two rules here," he explained. "That is one, and the other is, 'If you get too noisy, and the patrol wagon comes, make the driver take you home.'"
The crowd was good-humored; it paid little or no attention to us, and when some one at the piano began to thump a waltz, Hunter, under cover of the noise, leaned over to me.
"We traced Fleming here, through your corner-man and the cabby," he said carefully. "I haven't seen him, but it is a moral certainty he is skulking in one of the up-stairs rooms. His precious private secretary is here, too."
I glanced around the room, but no one was paying any attention to us.
"I don't know Fleming by sight," the detective went on, "and the pictures we have of him were taken a good while ago, when he wore a mustache. When he was in local politics, before he went to the legislature, he practically owned this place, paying for favors with membership tickets. A man could hide here for a year safely. The police never come here, and a man's business is his own."
"He is up-stairs now?"
"Yes. There are four rooms up there for cards, and a bath-room. It's an old dwelling house. Would Fleming know you?"
"No, but of course Wardrop would."
As if in answer to my objection, Wardrop appeared at that moment. He ran down the painted wooden stairs and hurried through the room without looking to right or left. The piano kept on, and the men at the tables were still engrossed with their glasses and one another. Wardrop was very pale; he bolted into a man at the door, and pushed him aside without ceremony.
"You might go up now," Hunter said, rising. "I will see where the young gentleman is making for. Just open the door of the different rooms up-stairs, look around for Fleming, and if any one notices you, ask if Al Hunter is there. That will let you out."
He left me then, and after waiting perhaps a minute, I went up-stairs alone. The second floor was the ordinary upper story of a small dwelling house. The doors were closed, but loud talking, smoke, and the rattle of chips floated out through open transoms. From below the noise of the piano came up the staircase, unmelodious but rhythmical, and from the street on which the house faced an automobile was starting its engine, with a series of shot-like explosions.
The noise was confusing, disconcerting. I opened two doors, to find only the usual poker table, with the winners sitting quietly, their cards bunched in the palms of their hands, and the losers, growing more voluble as the night went on, buying chips recklessly, drinking more than they should. The atmosphere was reeking with smoke.
The third door I opened was that of a dingy bath-room, with a zinc tub and a slovenly wash-stand. The next, however, was different. The light streamed out through the transom as in the other rooms, but there was no noise from within. With my hand on the door, I hesitated—then, with Hunter's injunction ringing in my ears, I opened it and looked in.
A breath of cool night air from an open window met me. There was no noise, no smoke, no sour odor of stale beer. A table had been drawn to the center of the small room, and was littered with papers, pen and ink. At one corner was a tray, containing the remnants of a meal; a pillow and a pair of blankets on a couch at one side showed the room had been serving as a bedchamber.
But none of these things caught my eye at first. At the table, leaning forward, his head on his arms, was a man. I coughed, and receiving no answer, stepped into the room.
"I beg your pardon," I said, "but I am looking, for—"
Then the truth burst on me, overwhelmed me. A thin stream was spreading over the papers on the table, moving slowly, sluggishly, as is the way with blood when the heart pump is stopped. I hurried over and raised the heavy, wobbling, gray head. It was Allan Fleming and he had been shot through the forehead.