CHAPTER XXIIITHE MIDNIGHT VISITOR
Theloud imperative ringing of the front door-bell reached Walter Ogden’s ears, and making a sign to Maru Takasaki commanding silence, he tip-toed softly across the library and listened behind the portières. It was some moments before Charles appeared, struggling into his coat.
“Sure, be aisy,” Ogden heard him mutter, as the bell pealed again. Reaching the front door the butler pulled it open with some force, but the sight of a tall well-dressed man standing in the vestibule checked his inclination to be impertinent.
“No, sor, Misther Ogden is not home,” the butler’s loud voice reached Ogden. “And Mrs. Ogden is sick in bed; no, nothin’ serious, sor, just enough to have Dr. McLane.”
“Can I see Miss Ethel Ogden?” and at the sound of the visitor’s voice Ogden started violently.
“No, sor, Miss Ogden has retired for the night,” answered Charles, and thinking to forestall further questions, he added: “And Professor Norcross isdinin’ at the Cosmos Club, and Misther Barclay ain’t returned since luncheon. Shall I tell them who called, sor?”
“Colonel Carter Calhoun,” was the reply. “I will call tomorrow. Good night.”
“Good night, sor,” Charles watched Calhoun go down the steps and enter a taxicab, then closed the door. “Sure, he’s an ilegant gintleman,” he said aloud, garrulousness having grown upon him. “I’ll remember him.”
“And so will I,” Ogden’s involuntary whisper reached no ears but his own.
Ogden found his solitary guest sitting where he had left him. Neither of the men spoke until Ogden had resumed his old seat.
“That was Carter Calhoun,” announced Ogden, but the name aroused no apparent interest in the expressionless face and manner of his companion. “He’s coming again.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“So,” Takasaki thought a minute, picked up a small writing pad and using his gold pencil, jotted down a number of figures, tore off the sheet and handed it to his companion. Ogden’s eyebrows went up as he read the numerals and the sign before them, then crushing the scrap of paper in his hand, tossedit into the open fire on the hearth. Shifting his position slightly, Takasaki contemplated Ogden at his leisure by aid of the movable standing lamp, the only electric light turned on in the room. The seconds had become minutes before Takasaki spoke.
“Tonight is fair,” he said. “Tomorrow may be stormy.”
Ogden stirred as if aroused from a hypnotic trance. “Probabilities indicate a fair night,” he muttered.
Takasaki looked about the comfortable room, then rose slowly to his feet. “I no keep you longer,” he said, shaking hands. “You so good to see me.”
“I’ll go with you to the door,” and Ogden also rose.
“It not necessary,” protested Takasaki politely. “You have much to do—I know way out.”
But paying no heed to his protest Ogden accompanied the Japanese attaché to the front door, and, had Charles been loitering in the next room or the floor above, he would not have guessed their presence. They moved like shadows across the hall.
Ogden closed the door upon Takasaki with care that it should not slam, then walking heavily over to the pantry he called to Charles.
“Comin’, sor, comin’,” came the answer, and the butler arrived in breathless haste.
“Have Mr. Barclay and Professor Norcross returned?”
“No, sor,” Charles came a step nearer. “Mr. Barclay telephoned an hour back, sor, to say he’d be in about midnight, sor; but not to wait up for him, because, sor, he still has the housekey Mrs. Ogden gave him the night of the charity ball.”
“Very well,” Ogden hesitated. “When Professor Norcross returns tell him that I have gone to my room.”
“Yes, sor.”
“Charles,” the butler stopped on his way downstairs. “Close the house now, and after Professor Norcross gets here, go to bed.”
“Very good, sor,” and Charles at once started on his rounds of locking doors and windows, while Ogden went straight to his wife’s bedroom. Ethel met him at the door, a finger on her lip.
“Cousin Jane has just fallen asleep,” she whispered, stepping into the hall and drawing to the door. “Dr. McLane says it was only a nervous breakdown, and that she will be all right tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” echoed Ogden. “Good. Go to bed, child; you look as if you need a night’s rest,” then he added as Ethel hesitated, “I’ll sit up with Cousin Jane and be on hand if she requires anything.”
“Be sure and call me if I can be of assistance,” Ethel took a step down the hall and then returned. “Have you heard anything from Julian?”
“Charles said he telephoned that he would be back about midnight,” answered Ogden impatiently. “Probably the police put him through the third degree, and found they hadn’t enough evidence to hold him.”
Ethel’s fervidly whispered “Thank God!” was too low to reach her cousin’s ears, and with a lighter heart than she had known in many hours, she went to her bedroom, but before starting to retire, she read again and yet again Julian Barclay’s hastily scrawled note brought to her by Charles before luncheon.
For his size Walter Ogden was remarkably light on his feet, and his restless pacing to and fro never disturbed the sleeper on the bed. Many minutes dragged themselves away before Ogden dropped wearily into his wife’s favorite chair. But a veritable demon of unrest drove him out of its comfortable depths before he had been there ten minutes, and he was passing the door when footsteps in the hall reached him and he recognized Norcross’ voice speaking to Charles. Before he could make up his mind to go out and speak to the professor he heard him close his bedroom door.
Crossing over to the hearth, on which burned a small fire lighted by Ethel to take the chill off the room, Ogden drew first one document out of his pocket and then another, tossing them in succession into the blaze. “I’ve got to do it,” he muttered between clenched teeth, and the firelight showed the dogged determination of his set, stern face. “Barclay, well, Barclay’s got to”—he closed his outspread hands slowly, forcefully, and turning about, again sat down, this time nearer the fire and where his gaze would not fall on his wife, still sleeping peacefully. Sleep, however, was far from Ogden’s eyes as he sat brooding over the fire. So great was his absorption that he never heard Julian Barclay, his footsteps lagging and weary, pass down the hall to his bedroom.
Once in his bedroom Barclay threw his coat and waistcoat on the nearest chair, kicked off his shoes, and flinging himself on the bed drew up the outer sheet and quilt, and was soon asleep, the heavy dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion.
No sound broke the stillness except Barclay’s even breathing, and the moonlight flooding his bedroom fell softly across the bed where he slept. A movement of the bedclothes caused a ripple in the moonlight, then a shadow appeared, a shadow which moved ever nearer Barclay’s head until a hand wasoutlined on the white pillow. The groping fingers, with touch as delicate as a woman’s, at last found the object they sought, but the soft sign of triumph which came from the side of the high four-post bedstead was premature.
Barclay felt the breaking of the cord which held Ethel’s miniature suspended around his neck, and throwing out his hands, his fingers closed on a human wrist which tore and writhed in his grip. Struggling to retain his hold and sit up at the same instant, Barclay was horrified to hear Ethel’s voice raised in a scream of terror.
“Help, Julian, for God’s sake, help!”
The hand was torn from his grasp as his fingers relaxed their hold, and Barclay, forgetting all else, rushed to Ethel’s aid. He stopped bewildered in the hall; there was no sign of Ethel, and half crazed at the thought of her in peril, he ran madly down the staircase, her voice, fainter now, guiding his footsteps. As he bounded down stairs he collided with a man racing upward, and the contact brought them both to the floor. Through the blinding stars produced by his head coming in violent contact with the sharp edge of the newel post, Barclay glimpsed Yoshida Ito just staggering to his feet, and made a futile grab at him. The agile Japanese avoided his hand and fled upward, two steps at a time. Barclaywas quick to follow, his fury lending wings to his feet, and one idea obsessing him—the Japanese had frightened, perhaps injured Ethel before he could get there to save her.
As he ran upward Barclay became dimly conscious that others were keeping step with him. Who they were he never stopped to see; a stinging pain in the back of his head and warm blood trickling down his back dazed his senses. Another pajama-clad figure appeared in one of the doorways as Barclay sped down the second floor hall, and stared aghast at him.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop,” Barclay panted. “Hurry, Norcross, he’s just ahead of you; there, jump for him.”
The Japanese, apparently confused by the chase, had lost his bearings and cut back on his tracks, and a second later he and Norcross went to the floor, locked in each other’s arms. Barclay, struggling to lend his aid to Norcross, bent over the fighting men, but which was which was more than his failing sight could distinguish. A strong hand pulled him back, and Mitchell, with the aid of Dr. McLane, dragged the men apart.
Barclay leaned weakly against the wall and stared at the writhing Japanese, at the panting professor, and last at Walter Ogden. His eyes were certainlydeceiving him. With difficulty he checked an hysterical laugh.
“Mitchell, you fool,” he gasped. “You’ve put the handcuffs on the wrong man.”
Carter Calhoun, standing in the background, advanced and laid his hand on Barclay’s swaying shoulder.
“The handcuffs are where they belong, Barclay—on the wrists of Richard Norcross, naturalist, murderer, and ventriloquist.”