CHAPTER IXTHE AGENT OF THE FIRELESS STOVE
The time was two hours later. Rupert Winter was sitting on one of the stone benches of the colonnade about thepatio. The court was suffused with the golden glow presaging sunset. Warm afternoon shadows lay along the flags; wavering silhouettes of leafage or plant; blurred reflections from the bold bas-reliefs of Spanish warriors and Spanish priests sculptured between the spandrels of the arches. Winter’s dull eyes hardly noted them: the exotic luxuriance of foliage, the Spanish armor and Spanish cowls were all too common to a denizen of a Spanish colony in the tropics, to distract his thoughts from his own ugly problem. He had been having it out with himself, as he phrased it. And there had been moments during those two hours, when he had ground his teeth and clenched his fists because of the futile and furious pain in him.
When he recognized Janet Smith, by that sameilluminating flash he recognized that this woman who had been tricking him was the woman that he loved. He believed that he had said his last word to love, but love, after seeming to accept the curt dismissal, was lightly riding his heart again. “Fooled a second time,” he thought with inexpressible bitterness, recalling his unhappy married life and the pretty, weak creature who had caused him such humiliation. Yet with her there had been no real wrong-doing, only absolute lack of discretion and a childish craving for gaiety and adulation. Poor child! what a woeful ending for it all! The baby, the little boy who was their only living child, to die of a sudden access of an apparently trifling attack of croup, while the mother was dancing at a post ball! He was East, taking his examination for promotion. The frantic drive home in the chill of the dawn had given her a cold which her shock and grief left her no strength to resist—she was always a frail little creature, poor butterfly!—and she followed her baby inside of a month. Had she lived, her husband might have found it hard to forgive her, for already a sore heart was turning to the child for comfort; but she was dead, and he did not let his thoughts misuse her memory. Now—here was another,so different but just as false. Then, he brought himself up with a jerk; he would be fair; he would look at things as they were; many a man had been fooled by the dummy. He would not jump at conclusions because they were cruel, any more than he would because they were kind. There was such a thing, he knew well, as credulous suspicion; it did more harm than credulous trust. Meanwhile, he had his detail. He was to find Archie; therefore, he waited. They were in the house; it were only folly to give up their advantage under the stress of any of Mercer’s plausible lurings to the outside.
Moreover, by degrees, he became convinced that Mercer, certainly to some extent, was sincere in his profession of belief in Archie’s absence and safety. This, in spite of hearing several times that Archie was not returned. Mercer did all the speaking, but he allowed Birdsall to hold the receiver and take the message from Mrs. Winter.
The telephone was in an adjoining room, but by shifting his position a number of times the colonel was able to catch a murmur of the conversation. He heard Mercer’s voice distinctly. He had turned away and was following the detective out of the room. “I don’t understand it any morethan you do, Mr. Birdsall,” he said; “you won’t believe me, suh, but I am right worried.”
“Of course I believe you,” purred the detective so softly that the colonel knew he did not believe any more than Mercer suspected. “Of course I believe you; but I don’t know what to do. It ain’t on the map. I guess it’s up to you to throw a little light. I’ve called the boys off twice already and told ’em to wait an hour or a half-hour longer. I got to see the colonel.”
“I can trust my intuitions, or I can trust the circumstantial evidence,” thought the colonel. He jumped up and began to pace the court.
“Seems to be like a game of bridge before one can see the dummy,” he complained; and as so often happens in the crises of life, a trivial illustration struck a wavering mind with the force of an argument. His thoughts reverted whimsically to the card-table; how many times had he hesitated over the first lead between evenly balanced suits of four; and how often had he regretted or won, depending solely upon whether his card instinct had been denied or obeyed! It might be instinct, this much-discussed “card instinct,” or it might be a summing up of logical deductions so swift that the obscure steps were lost, and thereasoner was unconscious of his own logical processes. “Now,” groaned Rupert Winter, “I am up against it. Shelookslike a good woman; sheseemslike a good woman; but I have only my impressions and Aunt Rebecca’s against the apparent facts in the case. Well, Aunt Rebecca is a shrewd one!” He sat down and thought harder. Finally he rose, smiling. He had threshed out his problem; and his conclusion, inaudibly but very distinctly uttered to himself, was: “Me for my own impressions! If that girl is in with this gang, either what they are after isn’t so bad—or they have made her believe it isn’t bad.”
He looked idly about him at the arched doorway of the outer court. It was carved with a favorite mission design of eight-pointed flowers with vase-like fluting below. There was a tiny crack in one of the flowers, the tiniest crack in the world. He looked at it without seeing it, or seeing it with only the outer half of his senses, but—he could not have told how—into his effort to pierce his own tangle there crept a sudden interest, a sudden keenness of scrutiny of this minute, insignificant crack in the stone. He became aware that the crack was singularly regular, preserving the form of the flower and the fluting beneath.Kito, the Japanese, who was sitting at the far end of the court, conversing in amity with Haley, just here rose and came to this particular pillar. The Irishman sat alone, rimmed by the sunset gold, little spangles of motes drifting about him; for the merest second Winter’s glance lingered on him ere it went to the Jap, who passed him, courteously saluting.
After he had passed, the colonel looked again at the column and the crack—it was not there.
“Chito, chito!” muttered the colonel. Carelessly he approached the column and took the same posture as the Jap. Unobtrusively his fingers strayed over the stone. He scratched the surface; not stone, but cement. He tapped cautiously, keeping his hand well hidden by his body; no hollow sound rewarded him; but all at once his groping fingers touched a little round object under the bold point of an eight-pointed flower. He didn’t dare press on it; instead he resumed his cautious tapping. It seemed to him that the sound had changed. He glanced about him. Save for Haley he was alone in thepatio. He pressed on the round white knob, and what he had half expected happened: a segment of the column swung on inner hinges, disclosing the hollowcenter of the engaged columns on either side. He looked down. Nothing but darkness was visible, but while he stood, tensely holding his breath, his abnormally sensitive auricular nerve caught distinctly the staccato breath of that kind of sigh which is like a groan, and a voice said more wearily than angrily: “Oh, damn it all!”
Almost simultaneously, he heard the faint footfalls of the men within; he must replace his movable flower. The column was intact, and he was bending his frowning brows on the stylobate of another when Birdsall and Mercer entered together, Mercer, with a shrug of his shoulders at the detective’s dogged suspicion, preceding the latter.
“Well,” said the colonel, “did you get my aunt?”
“Yes, suh, I got your aunt herself,” responded Mercer, with his Virginian survival of the formal civility of an earlier generation. “Yes, suh; but I regret to say Archie is not there.”
“Where is he?” The soldier’s voice was curt.
“Honestly,” declared Mercer, “I wish I knew, suh, I certainlydo. But—” Mercer’s jaw fell; he turned sharply at the soft whir of an electricstanhope gently entering thepatiothrough the great arched gateway. It stopped abreast of the group, and its only occupant, a handsome young man, jumped nimbly out of the vehicle. He greeted them with a polite removal of his cap, a bow, and a flashing smile which made the circuit of the beholders. Birdsall and the colonel recognized the traveling enthusiast of the Fireless Stove.
The colonel took matters into his own hands.
“I think you’re the young gentleman who took my nephew away,” said he. “Will you kindly tell us where he is?”
“And don’t get giddy, young gentleman,” Birdsall chimed in, “because we know perfectly well that you arenotthe agent of the Peerless Fireless Stove.”
“I’ve got one here on trial, and I’ve come back to see if they like it,” explained the young man, in silken accents, but with a dancing gleam of the eyes.
“We are going to keep it,” said Mercer. “Kito,” calling the unseen Jap, “fetch that Fireless Stove this gentleman left us, and show it to this gentleman here.”
“Oh, cut it out!” Birdsall waved him off.“It’s only ten minutes before our fellows will come. You can put the police court wise with all that. Try it onthem; it don’t go with us.”
“Where is the boy?” said the colonel.
“Tell him, if you know,” said Mercer. “This gentleman,” he explained, “left a stove with us to test. He was here about it this morning, and we gave Archie tohimto take to the Palace Hotel.”
“And he is there now,” said the young man.
“Did you leave him there?” asked the colonel.
“Yes,didyou?” insisted Mercer.
The young man looked from Mercer to the other two men. There was no visible appeal to the Southerner, but Winter felt sure of two things: one, that the new-comer was Mercer’s confederate whom he was striving to shield by pretending to disavow; the other, that for some reason Mercer was as anxious for the answer as were they.
“Why-y,” hesitated the stove promoter, “you see, Mr.—ah, gentlemen, you see, I was told to take the boy to the Palace Hotel, and I set out to do it. We weren’t going at more than an eight-mile-an-hour clip, yet some foozler of a cop arrested us for speeding. It was perfectly ridiculous, and I tried to shake him, but it was no use.They carried us off to a police court and stuck me for ten dollars. Meanwhile my machine and my passenger were outside. When I got outside I couldn’t find them. I skirmished around, and finally did get the machine. I’d taken the precaution to fix it so it couldn’t be run before I left it—took the key out, you know—it must have been trundled off by hand somewhere!—but I couldn’t find the boy. Naturally, I was a bit worried; but after I had looked up the force and the neighborhood, it occurred to me to ’phone to the Palace. I did, and I was told he was there.”
“Who told you?” The question came simultaneously out of three throats.
“Why, Mrs. Winter—that’s what she called herself.”
“But not three minutes ago Mrs. Winter told me that he wasn’t there,” remarked Mercer coldly. “Whendid you telephone?”
“It was at least fifteen minutes ago,” the young man said dolefully. “I say, wouldn’t you better call them up again? There may be some explanation. I shouldn’t have come back without the kid if I hadn’t beensurehe was safe.”
“Was it Mrs. Melville or Mrs. Winter you got?” This came from the colonel. “Did she bychance have an English accent, or was it Southern?”
“Oh, no, not Southern,” protested the young man. “Yes, I should say it was English—or trying to be.”
“It would be exactly like Millicent,” thought the colonel wrathfully, “to try to fool the kidnappers, who had apparently lost Archie, by pretending he was at the hotel!”
He made no comment aloud, but he nodded assent to Mercer’s proposal to telephone; and then he walked up to the stove man.
“The game is up,” he said quietly. “We have a lot of men waiting outside. If we signal, they will come any minute; if we don’t signal, they will come in ten minutes. Give us a chance to be merciful to you. This is no kind of a scrape for your father’s son—or for Arnold’s.”
Shot without range though it was, Winter was sure that it went home under all the young fellow’s assumed bewilderment. He continued, looking kindly at him:
“You look now, I’ll wager, about as you used to look in the office when you called on the dean—by invitation—and were wondering just where the inquiry was going to light!”
The dimple showed in the young man’s cheek. “I admit,” he replied, “that I didn’t take advantage as I should of my university opportunities. Probably that is why I have to earn a strenuous livelihood boosting the Only Peerless Fireless Stove. By the way, haveyouever seen the Fireless in action? Just the thing for the army! Fills a long-felt want. I should be very pleased to demonstrate. We have a stove here.”
The colonel grinned responsively. “You do it very well,” said he. “Can’t you let me into the game?”
There was the slightest waver in the promoter’s glance, although he smiled brilliantly as he answered: “I’ll take it into consideration, but—will you excuse me? I want to speak to Mr. Mercer about the stove.”
The moment he had removed his affable young presence Birdsall approached his employer. It had been a difficult quarter of an hour with the detective. Vague instinct warned him not to touch the subject of Miss Smith; he felt in no way assured about anything else. The result had been that he had fidgeted in silence. But the accumulated flood could no longer be held.
“I’ve found out one thing,” exploded Birdsall,puffing in the haste of his utterance. “The boy is on the premises.”
“Think so?” was all the colonel’s answer.
“I’m sure of it. Say, I overheard Mercer talking down a speaking-tube.”
“What did he say?”
“Talked French, damn him! But say, what’sgorge?”
“Throat.”
“What’scupillo gorge?”
“Sure he wasn’t talking of a carriage, or did he sayje le couperai la gorge?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t swear to it. I don’tparlez françaisa little bit.”
“Did you hear any other noises? Where were they?”
Birdsall thought he had heard other noises, and that they were down cellar. “And anyhow, Colonel, I’m dead-to-rights sure those guys are giving us hot stuff to get us out of the house. I’m for getting our men in now and rushing the house. It’s me for the cellar.”
While the colonel was rolling Birdsall’s information around in his mind, he heard the echo of steps on the flagging which preceded Mercer and the other man.
There was that in the bearing and the look of them that made the watcher, used to the signs of decision on men’s faces, instantly sure that their whole course of plans and action was changed.
Mercer spoke first and in a low tone to the colonel.
“I have no right,” said he, “to ask so much trust from you, but will you trust me enough to step aside with this young man and me for a moment only—out of ear-shot? I give you my word of honor I mean no slightest harm to you. I want to be frank. I will go alone if you desire.”
The colonel eyed him intently for the briefest space. “I’ll trust you,” said he. Then: “I think you have the key to this queer mix-up. At your service. And let your friend come, too. He is an ingenuous sort, and he amuses me.”
Birdsall looked distinctly sullen over the request to wait, intimating quite frankly that his employer was walking into a trap. “I won’t stand here more than fifteen minutes,” he grumbled. “I’ve given those fellowspoco tientelong enough.” But the colonel insisted on twenty minutes, and reluctantly Birdsall acquiesced.
Mercer conducted the others to the library.When they were seated he began in his composed, melancholy fashion:
“I earnestly beg of you to listen to me, and to believe me, for your nephew’s sake. I am going to tell you the absolute truth. It is the only way now. When you came, we handed him over to this gentleman, exactly as we have said. I do not know why he should have been stopped. I do not know why he left the machine—”
“Might he not have beencarriedaway?” said Winter.
“He might; but I don’t know what motive—”
“What motive hadyou? You kidnapped him!”
“Not exactly. We had no intention of harming him. He came accidentally into the room between Mrs. Winter’s and Mr. Keatcham’s suites. Standing in that room, trying to stanch the bleeding of a sudden hemorrhage of the nose, he overheard me and my friend—”
“You?” asked the colonel laconically of the young Harvard man.
“I,” smilingly confessed the latter. “I am ready to own up. You are a decent fellow, and you are shrewd. You ought to be on our side, not fighting us. I tell you, you don’t want to have the boy turn up safe and sound any more than Ido. Mr. Mercer was talking to me, and the kid overheard. We heard him and went into the room—”
“How?”
“Knocked on the door and he opened it. And we jumped on him. It was life and death for us not to be blown on; so, as we didn’t wish to kill the kid, and as we didn’t know the youngster well enough to trust himthen—although we might, for he is game and the whitest chap!—but we didn’t know—why, we just told him he would have to stay with us a while until our rush was over. That was all we meant; and we let him ’phone you.”
“How about his great-aunt—the cruel anxiety—”
“Anxiety nothing!” began the other man, but a glance from Mercer cut him short.
The Southerner took the word in his slow, gentle voice. “I tried to reassure our aunt, Colonel Winter. I think I succeeded. She telephoned and I told her it was all right. As for Archie, after we talked with him, he was willing enough to go. He stole out with my friend inside of five minutes, while you all were searching your rooms. It washeinsisted on calling you up, lestyou should be worried. He said you were right afraid of kidnappers, and you would be sending the police after us. You can call Mrs. Winter up and find out if I am not telling you the exact facts.”
“Very well, Iwill,” said Winter. They met the sullen detective at the door. Cary Mercer, with his mirthless smile, led the way. Mercer rang up the hotel for Winter, himself. To the colonel’s vast relief Aunt Rebecca answered the call.
“Est-ce que c’est vous-même, mon neveu?” said she dryly.
“Mais oui, ma tante.Why are you speaking so formally in foreign tongues? Is Millicent on deck?”
“In her room,” came the answer, still in French. “Well, you have got us in a pretty mess. Where is my boy?”
“I only wish I knew! Tell me now, though, is Mercer’s story straight?”
“Absolutely. You may trust him.”
“What’s his real game, then? The one he was afraid Archie would expose?”
“Ask him.”
“Butyouare in it, aren’t you?”
“Enough to ask that you abandon the chase—immediately! Unless you wish to ruin me!”
“You’ll have to speak plainer. I’ve been kept in the dark as long as I can stand in this matter.”
But before he could finish the sentence. “Pas ici, pas maintenant—c’est trop de péril,” she cried, and she must have gone, for he could get no more from her. When he rang again, Randall responded:
“Mrs. Winter says, sir, will you please come up here as quick as you can. She’s gone out. She thought she caught sight of Mr. Archie on the street.”
To the colonel’s demand, “Where, how did she see him?” he obtained no answer, and on his vicious pealing of the bell there came, eventually, mellow Anglican accents which asked: “Yes? Whom do you wish to see?” It is an evidence of the undisciplined nature of the sex that the soldier made a face and—hung up the receiver.
He found himself—although this to a really open mind is no excuse—in a muddle of conflicting impulses. He was on edge to get into the street for the search after the boy; he was clutched in a vise by his conviction that the clue to Archie’s whereabouts lay in Mercer’s hands, andthat the Southerner meant no harm to the lad. And all the while he could feel Birdsall tugging at the leash.
“It’s on the cards,” he grumbled, with a wry face, “quite on the cards that he may bolt in spite of me, and do some foolish stunt of his own that will make a most awful muddle.”
Not nearly so composed as he looked, therefore, he turned to Mercer. However, his ammunition was ready, and to Mercer’s inquiry, was he satisfied? he replied calmly: “Well, not entirely. If Archie isn’t in the house,whois it whose throat you wish to cut? Who is hidden here?”
It could not have been an unexpected question or Mercer hardly had answered so readily: “You know who it is,” said he. “It is Mr. Keatcham.”