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Title: The twenty-six clues
Author: Isabel Ostrander
Release date: December 8, 2025 [eBook #77423]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1919
Credits: Tim Miller, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWENTY-SIX CLUES ***
THE TWENTY-SIX CLUES
BY ISABEL OSTRANDER
AUTHOR OF
THE CLUE IN THE AIR, SUSPENSE, ETC.
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
* * * * *
_Other Detective Stories_
BY ISABEL OSTRANDER
"AT 1:30"
"THE HERITAGE OF CAIN"
"THE CREVICE"
(In collaboration with detective William J. Burns)
"THE CLUE IN THE AIR"
CONTENTS
I. IN THE CRIME MUSEUM
II. TWO STRANDS OF BLACK HAIR
III. MARGOT
IV. THE OTHER HOUSE
V. DENNIS SCORES
VI. THE CAKE MARKED "NOEL"
VII. THE THREE WARNINGS
VIII. THE RETURN OF JOAN NORWOOD
IX. THE SECOND GLOVE
X. IN THE DARK
XI. THE WRITING ON THE WALL
XII. "BACK FROM THE DEAD"
XIII. THE BLACK WALLET
XIV. THE TWENTY-SIXTH OF MAY
XV. A LONE HAND
XVI. "IT WAS NOT MY DOING"
XVII. ONE WORD
XVIII. GREEKS MEET
XIX. THE SECOND SHOT
XX. FROM OUT THE PAST
XXI. SIGNED, "VICTOR MARCHAL"
XXII. MCCARTY'S SÉANCE
XXIII. THE BETRAYING VOICE
XXIV. THE TWENTY-SIX CLUES
THE TWENTY-SIX CLUES
CHAPTER I
IN THE CRIME MUSEUM
"The one thing you psychometric enthusiasts overlook in claiming
perfection for your method of solving crime is the human equation.
Your machines for recording the emotions of the suspect cannot lie, it
is true, but neither can they tell the truth. Granted that they are
perfect in themselves, they are operated by the most faulty machine
created since the beginning of time--the human being. You, Mr. Terhune,
are unquestionably the greatest living master of scientific criminal
investigation, but do the purely mechanical implements of your trade
invariably probe to the very soul of the crime?"
Five men of oddly assorted types were seated about a round table drawn
up closely before the fireplace at one end of the spacious dining-room
with coffee and liqueurs before them. The speaker, evidently the
host, was small and elderly, with bushy gray hair and a pointed
Vandyke beard which waggled excitedly when he talked yet lent an air
of distinction to his dapper evening garb. His eyes beamed in eager,
ingenuous interest through their heavy tortoise-rimmed glasses, but the
lean, ascetic individual across the table whom he had addressed smiled
austerely and lifted supercilious brows as he replied:
"My dear Mr. Norwood, we do not rely only on what you designate
the mechanical implements of our trade; we are fully aware of and
prepared to cope with such subjective phenomena as hysteria, defective
mentality, falsehood, suggestion and self-deception. That is where
the human equation proves of value. The mechanical implement is
supplemented by the trained, analytical mind."
Mr. Calvin Norwood nodded.
"But that brings us again to the faulty human machine," he remarked
slyly. "Is the investigator himself proof against at least two forms of
the subjective phenomena you mention: suggestion and self-deception? A
preconceived theory----"
"We do not deal in theories," Wade Terhune interrupted with a trace of
asperity. "We work on a basis of proof, not opinion; proof obtained by
tapping all the resources of modern science. Toxicology, bacteriology,
chemistry, mineralogy, physics, chirography, microscopy, all aid us in
the solution of crime. The expert criminalist must be a profound and
almost universal student before he can hope to succeed."
"And what is your method, Mr. McCarty?" The host turned to a stocky,
broad-shouldered man at his left. "You achieved success in more than
one intricate case while you were connected with the police force of
the city to say nothing of your work last year in the Rowntree-Collins
affair. The investigation of crime has been my hobby for more than
twenty years and I follow the records of the department faithfully.
What is your modus operandi?"
"My what, sir?" inquired ex-Roundsman Timothy McCarty carefully. "You
might not think it, but I would have lit on the truth a good deal
earlier in that Rowntree case if I'd known what the Coroner was getting
at when he sprung that 'corpus delicti' thing on us at the inquest."
Calvin Norwood took the hint.
"I mean, what is your procedure in starting an investigation?" he
hastened to explain. "How do you go about it?"
McCarty stroked the immaculate chin beneath his stubby, sandy mustache
reflectively.
"I don't know, sir," he responded in all sincerity. "I've no science
like Mr. Terhune, only the wits I was born with. I just take the facts
that's as plain as the nose on your face and fit them together. You
see, Mr. Norwood, I had my training in the old days when it meant
promotion if you got the guilty party, or a quick transfer to some
backwoods precinct if you didn't. When anything stumped me I'd talk it
over with my old friend here, Denny Riordan, and many a pointer I've
got from him, though it's little he knew it himself, half the time!"
The long-limbed, lantern-jawed gentleman beside him stirred resentfully
and his host smiled.
"I know of Mr. Riordan's co-operation with you," he said. "When I read
the narrative which gave the inside facts of the Rowntree case I was
anxious to meet you and talk it over with you; that is why I persuaded
Mr. Terhune to bring you both here to dine with me to-night. Mr.
Riordan, how do you analyze a case?"
"I don't!" protested Dennis Riordan hurriedly. "I'm a city fireman, not
a detective, Mr. Norwood. However, being Mac's pal I'm let in for most
that he's got on his mind. Before his uncle died and left him a landed
proprietor so that he quit the force, there wasn't much came up in the
department that we didn't discuss and scrap over and settle to suit
ourselves. When he was on a case I'd just trail along with him to see
what would happen."
"Interesting, Victor, eh!" Norwood turned to the fifth man, who had
made no move to join in the conversation.
He was slim and dark, with a delicate, sensitive face which bore the
scars of a skillfully healed wound. Obviously in his twenties, he held
himself with an erect military air, the bit of ribbon in the lapel
of his dinner jacket and cross with two palms below it which he was
destined never to behold attesting to the gallantry that had cost him
his sight.
He bowed slightly and smiled as his soft, blind, brown eyes turned
instinctively in the direction from which he had been addressed.
"Most interesting, Monsieur Norwood," he responded. "A d'Artagnan of
the gendarmerie, is it not so? I have much desire to learn more of
the little machines of Monsieur Terhune, however. To me it is quite
incomprehensible, this recording of the emotions automatically; it
would appear a miracle."
Terhune unbent and his quick smile lost all trace of patronage.
"It will be a privilege, my dear Captain Marchal, to give you a
practical demonstration," he announced. "I will arrange to have you
present at the next scientific experiment upon which I may be engaged,
that you may note the effectiveness of my method. I can promise you
that you will be astounded at the reactions displayed. But our host has
made a collection of souvenirs which interests me profoundly. Are we to
be favored this evening by a sort of private view, Mr. Norwood?"
"I should scarcely call them 'souvenirs'!" retorted his host with a
shade of injured dignity. "In my crime museum I have assembled relics
which have formed important data on many strange cases, solved and
unsolved, as well as objects that have played significant parts in
moments when history was made. I have been a mere dabbler, a dilettante
in criminal investigation, but occasionally a real find has come my way
which at the time when inquiry was rife would have been of inestimable
value to the authorities but which they themselves failed to unearth.
For instance, within the last few days a worn black wallet has come
into my possession which contains the only tangible clue to a mystery
which aroused and baffled the city ten years ago. I tell you this in
confidence, gentlemen, for I mean to work upon its evidence myself
before turning it over to the police; they have resented my suggestions
in the past and refused my offers of co-operation on more than one
occasion. I feel perfectly justified in withholding this from them for
the present in view of the length of time that has elapsed since their
investigation of the case was dropped."
"What mystery was that, sir?" asked McCarty, his embarrassment at the
unaccustomed grandeur of his surroundings wholly forgotten in his
interest. "I don't call to mind any case that wasn't finished about
that time, and I was on the force then."
"The Hoyos case, Mr. McCarty."
"Think of that, now!" Dennis, too, broke through the bonds of
self-consciousness which had held his abashed tongue in leash. "You
remember it, Mac! That Dago who was lost off his yacht in the Hudson?
'Twas when you were laid up after Nick the Wop knifed you! You said
yourself it was no suicide at the time, though the Chief let it go at
that."
"I recall it," McCarty responded. "And so you've fresh evidence, sir?
I'd like nothing better than a peep at your museum."
"Come then," Calvin Norwood rose. "I'll show you some interesting
things."
"If you will excuse me." The young Frenchman spoke hesitatingly in a
lowered tone. "I--there are some letters which I can finish typing,
Monsieur Norwood, and you will perhaps not require my presence----"
"Oh, let the letters go, Victor." The older man interrupted with
kindly solicitude. "You have not been like yourself this evening, and
we can't have you moping off all alone too much, my boy. Besides, I
may need you to check me up on some of my data. You can have no idea,
gentlemen, what a valuable assistant Captain Marchal has already proved
himself. My museum is as sacred to me as a gallery of Old Masters would
be to an art connoisseur, and my young friend here has developed a
positive flair for the work."
Victor Marchal flushed darkly at the praise.
"I find it most interesting, this study of crime in the abstract," he
repeated. "It was to me a pleasure to catalogue the contents of this
unique museum."
Nevertheless, he hung back with evident reluctance when the others
prepared to follow their host and McCarty watching his sensitive
face noted the shade of repugnance which passed across it and did
not marvel. To a young man fresh from the carnage of war and all but
prostrated beneath the shock of the irreparable blow which it had
dealt to him, a more cheerful atmosphere could well be imagined than
the morbid horrors of a crime museum, but after his first momentary
hesitation he resigned himself in suave compliance to his patron's
suggestion.
The Norwood residence was an imposing if somewhat old-fashioned
structure of brownstone situated near the Park in the most aristocratic
section of the city, its center hall flanked by drawing-room and
music-room on one side, library and dining-room on the other while at
the rear a square, flat-roofed single-storied wing had been added which
occupied almost half of the ample back-yard space, with a narrow strip
of garden on either side.
It was toward this wing that the elated host marshaled his guests,
chattering volubly the while with the naïve delight of an enthusiast
sure of a congenial audience.
"You will see, gentlemen, the actual operating table upon which the
mad surgeon Valparese committed so many murders before his mania was
discovered. Upon it, beneath the blanket which covered Madero's body
immediately after his assassination, lies the skeleton of the once
beautiful Duchess of Piatra, the instigator and herself the victim of
the famous Bucharest poisonings a generation ago."
Dennis Riordan clutched the arm of his friend McCarty with a muttered
exclamation, but the latter shook him off in scorn and pressed forward
lest a word of Norwood's discourse be lost to his avid ears.
"I have relics to show you of less celebrated but quite as interesting
crimes." The sprightly, little, elderly gentleman continued with
ghoulish relish. "For instance, the pocketknife which after five years
convicted that Yonkers factory superintendent, Arnold, of the murder
of his employer; also the knotted rope which proved that Ogilvy, the
eccentric Scotch millionaire, was hanged and did not commit suicide,
and the bottle of supposed headache cure--but you shall see for
yourselves!"
They had reached the end of the corridor and Norwood with a flourish
threw open the door leading to the wing and pressing an electric-light
switch stepped aside that the others might precede him. They beheld
a square, spacious, high-ceilinged room with a huge fireplace in the
center of the left wall, tall windows at the farther end and long
shelves and rows of cases filled with an incongruous and bewildering
miscellany of objects familiar and bizarre.
In the center of the room directly beneath the great dome of light
stood a long table upon which was suggestively outlined a figure
beneath the gayly colored, sinisterly stained Mexican blanket, and
on all sides ordinary firearms were mingled with strange knives and
weapons, bits of fabric, fragments of furniture, medieval parchments,
modern documents and hermetically sealed glass jars containing
relics of a more gruesome nature which combined to form the oddest
conglomeration that had ever met their marveling gaze.
With an exclamation of keen, professional interest Wade Terhune
advanced and McCarty followed gazing about him in awed wonderment.
Dennis Riordan hung doggedly at his heels and the secretary, Marchal,
brought up the rear with Norwood's guiding hand upon his arm.
"Ah! This, I take it, is your collection of footprint molds, of which
you told me the other day." Terhune had paused at the first flat,
glass-topped case. "Your theory regarding them was inconclusive but
highly ingenious, I remember. I congratulate you, Mr. Norwood; you have
indeed a most complete aggregation of specimens----"
"That is only the beginning." His gratified host drew him to a second
case and McCarty turned aside to a shelf upon which a certain glass jar
had caught his eye.
Discovering that it contained a neatly severed human ear he was
hurriedly replacing it, when a smothered exclamation from Dennis
Riordan summoned him.
The lanky fireman, awkward enough in his civilian clothes, had been
drawn as by a magnet to the bright-hued blanket covering the skeleton
upon the table and as his friend approached he muttered darkly:
"Mac, would you believe it? 'Twas this very rag they covered Madero
with, after the murdering devils had riddled him with bullets! By the
powers, I'm not a believer in ghosts but this is not the room I'd
choose to spend a night in by myself! I don't wonder that blind young
Frenchman would rather juggle his typewriter than take a chance of
running up against one of these relics unbeknownst!"
"Whist, he'll hear you!" McCarty cautioned. "He's standing over by
the fireplace. Come on and look at something more cheerful; there's a
pickled ear over yonder----"
"I want none of it!" Dennis announced with a shudder. "I've heard of
grown men running like mad after butterflies and spending their last
nickel for canceled stamps and such, but it's a strange and unholy
taste that would lead to a collection of this sort! Still, I would like
one peep at the bones of the Duchess Who's-this, under the blanket.
From the bulk of it, Madero himself might be lying beneath it."
"I've no doubt Mr. Norwood will show it to you, after. Come on, now,
and listen to him!" McCarty urged. "What's that he's taking out of the
case?"
"--Singular indeed!" Wade Terhune's comment carried distinctly to their
ears in grudging admiration. "Poisoned court-plaster! I confess I never
should have thought of so simple a method of introducing deadly toxin
directly into the blood."
"It found an innocent victim." Calvin Norwood closed the glass lid.
"You may recall the inexplicable death of the little Thorndike heiress,
after a slight fall which merely grazed her knee? The matter was hushed
up for family reasons and this bit of plaster came into my possession
in a confidential manner, but I have a very definite idea as to the
murderer's identity and for whom he really intended its use. However, I
want to show you the Hoyos wallet, of which I spoke before we came in
here. It contains some letters which throw an entirely new light----Ah,
Mr. Riordan! You are interested in the Madero blanket?"
He had turned to cross the room and encountered Dennis, who still
lingered as if fascinated at the head of the long table.
"In what's under it, sir," Dennis responded. "The bones of this Duchess
you told us about. Did she have any hair left now, I wonder?"
He spoke with elaborate carelessness, but McCarty, who had turned also
from his place at Norwood's elbow, eyed him sharply and then took a
quick step toward him.
"Hair?" repeated the amateur criminologist with an indulgent smile.
"In life the Duchess of Piatra had very beautiful red hair and a few
strands of it cling still to the skull. Would you care to see it?"
"_Red_ hair, you say, sir? And it couldn't change after?" There was
a note of suppressed excitement in Dennis' voice now which drew even
Wade Terhune's attention, and the young Frenchman, too, awoke from his
reverie and approached. Dennis' rugged face had paled slightly and his
gray eyes glinted. "Mr. Norwood, I would like nothing better than to
see what is here!"
Still smiling, their host advanced to the side of the table.
"The Duchess of Piatra," he began in his most didactic manner, "was
accredited the most beautiful woman in the Balkans twenty years ago.
During the last of the petty wars before the great world-struggle her
tomb was rifled and I managed, after much diplomatic bartering, to
obtain the skeleton. The nature of the poison which killed her has
never been discovered, but it had a curious effect upon the bones, as
you may see----"
Norwood lifted a corner of the blanket and with one jerk swept it to
the floor. The next instant he had leaped back, his face gray and
eyes fairly protruding from their sockets while a sound like a sharp,
convulsive gasp emanated from the tense group about him.
Stretched upon the table lay no skeleton but the rounded life-like form
of a young woman in all the opulent curves of budding maturity. One arm
was crumpled beneath her, the other lay carelessly across the breast of
her dark silk gown and her masses of disheveled, jet-black hair rippled
over the edge of the table. It would seem almost that she slept until
her face was seen and then the distorted swollen features, the staring
eyes and blackened, protruding tongue revealed the hideous truth no
less surely than the blue scarf which had been knotted so ruthlessly
about her slender throat as to seem almost embedded in the flesh.
"My God! What is this!" Norwood croaked at last.
Terhune stood as if petrified, but Dennis rocked upon his heels.
"Holy Mother!" he ejaculated. "Is it the Duchess herself come to life a
corpse again, or is it----?"
"It's murder!" McCarty announced in an awestruck tone, as he touched
the face of the dead woman. "The woman's been strangled within the
hour! Who is she?"
"Murder?" Victor Marchal elbowed him aside and groping wildly for the
table, bent above it. He had scarcely touched it, however, when he
straightened and cowered back.
"That perfume!" His cry rang through the room. "That scent of the Rose
d'Amour! It is she! Madame Jarvis!"
"Evelyn? God, can it be?" Calvin Norwood gasped in a raucous whisper as
his shuddering gaze swept the still form before him. "It--it is! Who
can have done this fearful thing!"
"Murder, is it?" Dennis' voice expressed a certain revived confidence
now that he was assured the materialization before them, tragic as it
was, had not been induced by some dread supernatural agency. He turned
to McCarty in swift challenge: "Now, you Irish son-of-a-gun, solve
that!"
CHAPTER II
TWO STRANDS OF BLACK HAIR
"But is it true that she is really dead?" The blind secretary's
emotional voice rose in an almost hysterical appeal and his fingers
hovered tremblingly over the body. "What is it that has killed
her? A-ah! This scarf which is drawn about her throat! Unloose it,
Messieurs, I beg of you! It may be that life still lingers; that there
is yet time!"
"'Tis useless, sir," McCarty interrupted him. "She's already cold, and
the body must not be disturbed until the police come."
At the mention of the authorities who were sometimes his allies, more
frequently his adversaries but always his competitors, Wade Terhune
bestirred himself to action and took swift command of affairs. Fixing
his erstwhile host with the cold eye of an inquisitor he asked in a
curt, peremptory tone.
"Who is Evelyn Jarvis?"
"She is my niece Joan's intimate friend," Norwood responded
mechanically as he moistened his dry lips. The jaunty air of
self-possession had fallen from him and he appeared all at once
shrunken and aged. "Oliver Jarvis' wife and our near neighbor. God! How
can we tell him!"
"You positively identify the body, then, Mr. Norwood?" Terhune went on
steadily.
"It cannot be! I feel as if I must have gone mad!" The other passed a
shaking hand across his brow. "I can scarcely believe the evidence
of my own eyes and yet--her eyes, her hair, that emerald upon her
finger--oh! It is Evelyn! Poor child! Poor child!"
"You say they are neighbors of yours?" Terhune began and turned swiftly
at a movement behind him. "Where are you going, McCarty?"
"To telephone Police Headquarters." The ex-Rounds-man responded with a
firmness which matched the criminalist's dominant tones. "There's been
murder done and the body's here, Mr. Terhune. It's up to them first of
all."
Terhune bit his lip and a slight color flushed his lean face, but he
capitulated with an ironic smile.
"Assuredly, my dear McCarty. Summon them by all means! I merely wished
to make a preliminary investigation before their well-meant efforts
obliterated any possible clues." As the other disappeared in the
corridor, he turned once more to Calvin Norwood. "Where do the Olivers
live?"
"On the next street south directly on a line with this house; their
back-yard and ours are separated only by a fence in which we have had
a door cut through, for the girls--Evelyn and my Joan--have been like
sisters. Why should anyone have taken her life, and how--how did she
get here?"
Terhune did not reply immediately. He had bent over the table in his
turn and was examining the body with deft, sure touches. Dennis Riordan
stepped aside deferentially, and Victor Marchal had retreated to the
cold hearth once more and stood with his elbow upon the mantel and his
face averted.
"We must send for Oliver, of course." Norwood's dazed, trembling voice
rambled on. "I can't tell the boy, I can't! It will kill him! He
worshiped her----"
"Dead at least four or five hours." Terhune audibly made note of the
result of his conclusions as he glanced at his wrist watch. "A quarter
of ten; the murder was committed, then, approximately between five and
six. There was a violent struggle; her hands are bruised and one sleeve
of her gown is torn as you can see, but that is merely superficial. The
knot in which the scarf is tied is the significant point. When did you
last see Mrs. Jarvis alive?"
"The day before yesterday, on Wednesday evening. They gave an informal
farewell dinner; she and Oliver are sailing for France next week--were
to have sailed, I mean----" He paused and with an obvious effort pulled
himself together, adding: "Mr. Terhune, I appreciate your interest in
this terrible affair from a purely professional standpoint but really I
cannot discuss it further until Oliver has been summoned."
"He's coming." McCarty's voice announced from the doorway as he
re-entered. "After I talked to Inspector Druet, I looked up the Jarvis'
number in the 'phone book and called their house. Some man, the butler,
I've no doubt, told me nobody was at home but Mr. Jarvis might be at
his club, the Gotham. I got to him there."
"What did you tell him?" quavered Norwood.
The secretary, too, had come forward once more.
"Just that you must see him here immediately, sir. 'Twas no concern
of mine, but the Inspector will be asking for him, anyway. And, Mr.
Norwood, sir, I think if you'd just say a word to the servants--the
butler heard me at the telephone talking to Headquarters and I'm afraid
we'll have them about our ears----"
"I--I must speak to them, of course!" Norwood turned to the door. "This
is horrible! What am I to say to Oliver!"
He hurried from the room and Victor Marchal started to follow, then
paused and stooping, fumbled for the Mexican blanket.
"You will permit, Messieurs?" he asked quietly. "Until the police
officials arrive, at least, it is but respect to the dead."
Reverentially he spread the blanket over the pitiful, still form upon
the table, then turning with outstretched, groping hands he made his
way from the room.
Terhune had taken himself to the farther end of the museum where the
four long French windows, set so closely as to give the effect of a
wall of glass, looked out upon the back-yard and McCarty and Dennis
stood gazing round-eyed at each other.
"I knew it!" the latter ejaculated at last in a lowered tone. "From the
first minute I set foot in this room I knew there was something wrong
with it more than the heathenish collection would account for. No more
could I keep my eyes off that table----"
"Whatever put it into your head to ask that question of Mr. Norwood
about the hair, Denny?" McCarty demanded.
"Well, I saw a skeleton in a real museum once, and it was not what you
might call corpulent," Dennis averred. "Likewise, it was as bald as the
palm of your hand. Now, that blanket looked too bulky to be covering
just a rack of bones and when I walked around the head of the table
I saw a long, black lock of hair hanging down nearly to the floor. I
didn't know what to think, Mac, except that there was something going
on here beyond a healthy mortal mind to figure out. What do you make of
it?"
McCarty walked to the end of the table and glanced down. From beneath
the gaudy blanket there rippled a single strand of silky ebony hair.
"Well, McCarty, what is your opinion?" Terhune had approached and
unconsciously echoed Dennis' inquiry. "Have you formed one yet?"
There was about him an air of conscious superiority which betokened a
discovery and the other eyed him warily.
"I have not, Mr. Terhune," he responded. "I've nothing yet to go
upon. This is the first time in my experience that a murder has been
committed and the body brought and laid out where it would be the most
handy to come to the notice of Mr. Norwood, as if the murderer was
mocking him and daring him to find out the truth. Of all places in the
world you'd expect to come on a fresh-killed corpse, it would not be in
a museum of old crime relics!"
"Mr. Norwood is merely an eccentric amateur." Terhune shrugged.
"The remarkable phase of the affair is that it should have occurred
to-night, of all occasions, when I was present; and you, too, McCarty,
for your work on the force in the old days and in association with me
last year on the Rowntree case is not forgotten. If someone, knowing
that we were to gather here to-night, had actually planned this ghastly
surprise for us it could not have been more successfully consummated."
"It could not," McCarty agreed. "However, 'twas not to give us
something to do that the poor lady was murdered! What do you think of
it yourself, sir?"
The subdued but insistent peal of the front door-bell checked Terhune's
reply and all three listened anxiously.
"What is it?" they heard a deep and pleasantly modulated masculine
voice inquire. "What has happened, Uncle Cal? I came as quickly as a
taxi would bring me."
Their elderly host's quavering tones responded in an indistinguishable
murmur and there came a sharp exclamation from the other.
"Evelyn! An accident? What do you mean? Where is she?"
Calvin Norwood's voice rose in a broken cry.
"Oliver, oh, my boy! I can't tell you! She's there--there in my museum!
May God help us all!"
Hasty steps strode down the corridor and a tall, young man appeared
in the doorway. He was in his early thirties, well-built and of a
clean-cut Anglo-Saxon type but his smoothly shaven face was very white
and his blue eyes swept widely about the room ignoring or unconscious
in his alarmed state of the presence of the three strangers.
"Where is my wife?" he repeated hoarsely. "She is not here! What has
happened to her?"
Wade Terhune stepped forward.
"Mr. Jarvis, we have terrible news for you. Your wife has been killed."
He spoke slowly and quietly and for a moment the younger man eyed
him as though the purport of the words had not penetrated his
consciousness. Then he staggered back.
"Killed!" It was a mere husky whisper. "Evelyn--killed!"
His eyes roved dazedly once more about the room and back to Terhune's
face and leaping forward he seized him by the arm.
"You can't mean what you are saying!" he cried. "Speak, man! My
wife----!"
"It is true, Mr. Jarvis. She is dead."
"But how? Where?" The other's voice broke in sheer agony of
half-incredulous grief. "Take me to her!"
"You don't understand, Mr. Jarvis. Your wife's body was discovered
here a few moments before you were summoned. You must try to command
yourself, for I have something yet more shocking to tell you."
Terhune's own voice was gravely sympathetic but his sharp eyes followed
every expression of the stricken face before him. "Mrs. Jarvis' body
was brought here and placed where it was found in this room. She had
been killed, I told you; I should have said 'murdered'!"
"Murdered! You are mad! Who would murder Evelyn? Where is this body
which you have found?"
No one answered him but unconsciously all eyes turned to the swathed
form upon the table and he followed their gaze. With a gasp he sprung
forward and tore off the enshrouding blanket and a cry rang through the
room so poignant with horror and heart-breaking despair that the others
instinctively averted their faces.
"My boy!" Calvin Norwood had entered and swiftly approached him. "Try
to be brave and control yourself for her sake! We must find the vile
wretch who----"
His voice ended in a choking gurgle for the grief-crazed young husband
had turned and seized him by the throat.
"You've done this!" he roared. "You've killed her!"
Terhune moved swiftly, but McCarty and Dennis were before him and with
a dexterous lunge forced Jarvis to relinquish his frenzied grasp.
"There now!" McCarty admonished soothingly. "'Tis a terrible business,
Mr. Jarvis, but Mr. Norwood is not responsible. He knows no more of it
than we do. We all came in here with him and found the body just as you
see it now. We've no notion how it came here nor who killed her!"
A shudder shook the tense form which they held and it relaxed suddenly.
"Uncle Cal, I didn't mean--I didn't know what I was doing!" The young
man murmured brokenly and turning once more to the table he fell upon
his knees with his arms thrown out across the body of his wife and
burst into harsh racking sobs.
At that moment the door-bell rang a second time and Inspector Druet's
curt, incisive tones reached their ears in quick questioning. The
butler's frightened stammer replied to him and then firm steps sounded
in the corridor and the police official entered the room followed by
two sturdy figures who took up their positions on either side of the
doorway.
The Inspector nodded to Terhune and McCarty and his keen, alert eyes
took in the situation at a glance.
"Mr. Norwood?" He turned to the bowed, elderly figure. "I'm from
Headquarters. I'd like to have you tell me what you know of this crime,
but first who is that?"
He pointed to the grief-stricken man by the table and Norwood responded:
"Her husband. Mr. McCarty sent for him as soon as he had telephoned
to you. Inspector, this is a frightful affair! The young woman was an
intimate friend of my household and a near neighbor, but I have not
seen her for two days. I don't know how she was murdered nor the body
conveyed here. I only know that we came in a half-hour ago and found
her as you see, only the blanket had been drawn up, completely covering
her. We were in here for some minutes before we discovered the body----"
The Inspector stopped him with a gesture, for Oliver Jarvis had dragged
himself to his feet and lurched toward them.
"The police?" he asked thickly. "Find me the man who killed my wife and
you can have all I possess! Find him for me and let me deal with him!
Evelyn! Evelyn!"
He swayed and collapsed utterly, slumping forward as McCarty caught him
in his strong arms.
"He'll do no good here for awhile," the latter remarked. "He's fainted,
I think. Shall we get him to another room, Inspector, till he comes to
and quiets down a bit? He's near crazed, and no wonder!"
"Yes, Mac. Take him away, but come back yourself--no, Martin and Yost
can take him."
The two figures by the door advanced at the Inspector's nod, and
Norwood roused himself.
"The library would be best; the front room on your left as you entered
the house. Victor Marchal, my secretary, is there and will attend to
him."
As the unconscious form was borne away by the two stalwart detectives,
the Inspector examined the body swiftly and then returned once more to
his interrogation.
"When did you enter this room last, Mr. Norwood?"
"This afternoon; I think it was about three o'clock." The older man had
regained a trifle of his composure with the removal of the bereaved
husband, but his eyes flutteringly avoided the figure upon the table.
"Everything was in perfect order then."
"The operating table was bare?"
"No, it is always covered with the Madero blanket beneath which I had
placed the skeleton of the Duchess of Piatra!" Norwood paused with a
start of returning memory which anticipated the Inspector's next query.
"Where is that skeleton now?"
"I--I don't know! The murderer must have hidden it somewhere or
removed it altogether when he put the body there in its place. I
hadn't remembered it until this moment." Norwood glanced about him
as if expecting the gruesome object to meet his eye, but it was
not in evidence and the room contained no closed receptacle large
enough to conceal it. "You've heard of my collection of crime relics,
Inspector,----"
The other interrupted him with a trace of impatience.
"Of course. But this afternoon, did you raise the blanket and look
beneath it?"
"No. It is sometimes undisturbed for weeks together. I only took it
from the table to-night to show my guests--Mr. Terhune, Mr. McCarty,
and Mr. Riordan--the skeleton. This afternoon I entered for just a
moment to obtain some notes for my secretary to transcribe, and went
out immediately thereafter, to visit my friend, Professor Parlowe, the
eminent toxicologist. I found him in the midst of a highly interesting
experiment in his laboratory and returned home barely in time to change
for dinner."
"You were alone when you came in here for the notes this afternoon?"
"No. Victor--Captain Marchal--my secretary, was with me."
"He left the room with you?" persisted the official.
"Yes, but he returned later and replaced the notes." Norwood was
evidently disturbed afresh at the trend of the questioning. "He has
free access to the museum at all times, Inspector; most of his work for
me is in the care and tabulating of my collection, you know. He carries
one key and I the other."
"You keep your museum locked, then?"
"Of course. It is only on comparatively rare occasions that I throw it
open to visitors." Norwood spoke with dignity. "My collection is not on
display for the morbidly curious."
"The door was locked when you brought your guests here this evening?"
The Inspector was not to be swerved from his point and Dennis stirred
and glanced meaningly at McCarty.
"Why, no, I--I don't believe that it was." Norwood's eyes traveled
from one to another of them in troubled bewilderment. "I was so
deeply engrossed in talking of the various objects of interest which
I intended to show my friends that I scarcely noted. Did you observe
whether I used my key or not?"
He appealed to Terhune, but while the latter was considering his reply
Dennis broke in irrepressibly.
"You did not, sir. You switched on the light and just turned the handle
of the door."
"Dear me! This is most unusual." Norwood was plainly taken aback. "I
must ask Victor if he forgot to lock the door."
"I will ask him myself, later," the Inspector announced drily. "Who
else was in the house this afternoon during your absence?"
"Only the cook and housemaid, and they were below stairs. My niece is
out of town on a visit and her personal maid is with her," explained
Norwood. "We have reduced our household staff considerably as a matter
of war economy and we keep no other servants except the butler. I gave
him an afternoon off to-day to go to see his brother, who is ill in the
hospital."
"H'm! I should like to have a little talk, then, with your secretary."
Inspector Druet turned to the door. "He may have seen----"
"He can see nothing." Norwood interrupted. "He is a young French
officer, recently blinded in battle, whom I brought back with me from
France three months ago. He knows no more of this terrible event than
I, and I beg that you will be as considerate with him as possible.
His nerves were completely shattered by the ordeal through which
he has passed and he is only beginning to regain his grip on life.
Evelyn--Mrs. Jarvis--had taken a very kindly interest in him and the
shock of her death, her murder, has utterly depressed and unnerved him.
He was on the verge of absolute prostration when I left him in the
library."
"I will let him off as lightly as I can, Mr. Norwood," the Inspector
promised with a note of deepened respect in his tones. "However, if the
murder was not committed here someone in this house must know how the
woman's body was conveyed to this room----"
"If you will pardon my intrusion, Inspector," Terhune's tones were
ironically apologetic. "I may be able to save you some valuable time.
Mrs. Jarvis was not killed on the premises, nor was her body carried
through the house. Someone, presumably her murderer, brought it in
through that window there, the second from the left as you face it.
I do not as a rule express an opinion on mere theory but I am led to
believe that the murder occurred in her own home."
"Is that so, Mr. Terhune?" The Inspector paused deferentially. "On what
do you base that opinion?"
"I have already ascertained from Mr. Norwood that the Jarvis residence
is directly on a line with this, facing the next street south and the
two back-yards are separated only by a wall through which a door has
been cut." Terhune's tenuous fingers sought the pocket of his vest.
"Just before your arrival I examined the four windows in the rear of
the room carefully. All were closed as you see them now, but the second
from the left was unbolted and I opened it experimentally. Caught in a
loose sliver of wood on the inner side of the frame, a little over four
feet from the floor, where the two perpendicular sides of the window
open like double doors I found--this."
He stretched out his hand and Dennis and McCarty glanced once more
significantly at each other. From between the thumb and forefinger
dangled a long, curling strand of glossy, jet-black hair.
CHAPTER III
MARGOT
For a moment they stared and then Calvin Norwood gasped:
"But it seems incredible! That window is ten feet or more from the
ground and there is only an open space beneath this end of the
extension, for the kitchen although built out also does not reach the
length of the museum. There is no way in which a person could climb up
here, to say nothing of one burdened with the weight of a dead body."
"If you will glance out of the window you will see how easily that
difficulty was overcome," interrupted Terhune.
"A short ladder has been placed against the house, its upper end
resting upon the ledge of the window."
"The ladder!" Norwood exclaimed. "I never thought of that! It is used
for pruning the vines which run over the yard fence and is usually
lying around somewhere at hand, but it did not occur to me that anyone
would ever employ it as a means of gaining ingress here!"
A rapid but fairly comprehensive search of the museum disclosed no
further clues nor traces of the assailant's presence and Inspector
Druet went to the telephone to summon the Chief Medical Examiner and
notify the Homicide Bureau.
McCarty, with Dennis in tow, trailed him wistfully into the hall.
"I'll be taking myself off now, Inspector," he remarked. "You've the
case in hand, to say nothing of an expert like Mr. Terhune right on the
job to help you and Mr. Norwood himself."
"Between you and me, Mac," the Inspector interrupted confidentially,
"old Norwood is a plain nut. He has been the pest of the department for
the last twenty years, dabbling and interfering in every case that has
come up, offering advice and getting under foot generally. You know how
we've always been bothered with amateur Sherlock Holmeses, but he is
the worst crank of the lot and the fact that he has never yet gotten
the slightest result in an investigation doesn't discourage him a
little bit. As for Mr. Terhune, he is a great man in his line, but he
is not officially on this case, you know, he only stumbled on it, just
as you did, and Riordan. Why don't you stay and see the preliminary
examination through at least? It looks to me as if it were going to be
one of the biggest things we've tackled in years and I'd like to have
you on the job in an unofficial capacity."
"I wouldn't ask anything better!" McCarty beamed. "I telephoned to
you over the head of the Lieutenant of the precinct because I thought
likely the District Attorney would put you on the case anyway, sir, and
you would want to be in on the ground floor. It's the devil and all how
I came to fall into this, now that I'm off the force, but I'd hate to
quit it cold; I've never seen the beat of it in all my experience."
The Inspector concluded his telephonic communications and then, locking
the museum door with the owner's key which he had procured from him,
led the way to the library, whither the host and Wade Terhune had
preceded them. They found Victor Marchal in his accustomed attitude
before the fireplace, his sightless eyes fixed as if introspectively
upon the empty hearth. He was pale but composed and there was no trace
of the prostration of which Norwood had spoken.
The latter was seated on the couch with his arm about the bowed
shoulders of Oliver Jarvis, and Terhune stood before them.
"I can't understand it!" The young husband's tone was monotonous and
dulled with despair. "It's like a hideous, insane nightmare! I feel
that every moment Evelyn may come and wake me from it and then I see
her poor face with that frightful knotted thing about her throat----"
He broke off, shuddering, and Norwood patted him in fatherly fashion.
"We must try not to think of that now," he admonished. "We have stern
work ahead of us, Oliver----"
"Do you think I'm forgetting?" Jarvis sprang to his feet. "Do you
think I mean to waste my time in weak repining now, Uncle Cal, when
my poor darling has been done to death and the creature who could do
so monstrous a thing still breathes God's air? All that I want, all
that is left to me, is to find him and make him suffer! Mr. Terhune,
they say that you are the greatest criminal investigator in the world
to-day; that you have never lost a case----"
"I do not claim to be infallible, Mr. Jarvis," interrupted the
detective, modestly.
"Nevertheless, your work is celebrated; you have an international
reputation and surely you can find the murderer of my poor wife! Use
every effort, Mr. Terhune. Spare no expense! I am accounted rich as men
compute such things in these days and I would cheerfully, eagerly, give
everything I possess to avenge her! That is all that matters to me
now; I have nothing else to live for and I shall not rest until it is
accomplished!"
"You mean that you wish to engage me to investigate the case for you,
Mr. Jarvis?" Terhune's eyes glinted with enthusiasm.
"I do. I place myself unreservedly in your hands." The younger man
turned to the official. "Please don't misunderstand, Inspector. I have
no lack of confidence in your ability or that of the authorities, but I
want to leave no possible stone unturned to find the assassin."
"We are always glad to work with Mr. Terhune." Inspector Druet bowed
slightly. "In fact, we have ourselves called upon him on more than one
occasion to give us the aid of his specialized knowledge. Have you an
idea of any possible motive for the crime, Mr. Jarvis?"
"None! It seems like the act of a madman! Evelyn had no enemies, no
secrets; her life was like an open book and everyone who came in
contact with her loved her." He broke off with a groan. "No one could
have had a sane motive for taking her life!"
"How long have you been married?"
"Five years. My wife was an orphan of French descent, resident in New
Orleans with her guardian. I met her the winter before our marriage,
when I went down for the Mardi Gras." Jarvis was evidently bracing
himself to meet the ordeal of questioning and the Inspector's tone was
considerately gentle.
"What was Mrs. Jarvis's maiden name?"
"Evelyn Beaudet. She was an only child and has no living relatives."
"This guardian of whom you speak; who is he?"
"Pierre Chartrand; he died about two years ago. He was a banker and
life-long friend of her father; an eccentric old gentleman but he
worshiped Evelyn and made her his sole heiress."
"You brought Mrs. Jarvis to New York immediately after your marriage?"
"Yes. Then we went to Europe but returned when the war broke out."
He hesitated and added: "My wife had never been north until we were
married and as we have not since visited New Orleans, her old friends
have dropped completely away. Her life entered practically a new phase
with our marriage and I know how and where every hour of it has been
spent. Her friends and associates are mine and it is inconceivable that
among them there could be one who desired her death, much less a friend
who could have encompassed it in such wise! I tell you this hideous
thing has come like a bolt from a clear sky!"
"When did you last see your wife alive, Mr. Jarvis?"
"At luncheon to-day--God! Could it have been only to-day? It seems
years!--We were both busied with preparations for our departure, for
we had planned to sail for France next week to engage in relief and
reconstruction work and there were many final details to be arranged."
"You lunched at home? Who was present beside Mrs. Jarvis and yourself?"
"No one. Our household consists only of the servants."
"How many are there?"
"Four, besides the chauffeur; the butler, cook, housemaid, and my
wife's personal maid. All the others have been discharged pending our
departure."
"What do you know of them, Mr. Jarvis? Would you consider them
trustworthy?" pursued the Inspector.
"Oh, absolutely. The butler, old Henry, was employed by my parents
before I was born, and the cook, also, was in my mother's service; the
housemaid is her niece and Margot, my wife's maid, is particularly
devoted to her. She was a Belgian refugee whom we brought back from
Europe with us at the outbreak of the war. They are all unquestionably
loyal, Inspector; I could take my oath on that."
"You left the house after luncheon, Mr. Jarvis?"
"Yes, immediately. I had an appointment at my attorney's office and
a later one at the French consulate. I was delayed there until after
seven o'clock."
"You did not dine at home?"
"No, I went directly to the club. Evelyn--" he paused and a startled
expression swept his drawn face. "Why, Evelyn was to have dined alone
at the house of old Mrs. Lyle Fremont. I wonder----?"
"We will look into that presently." Inspector Druet waived the implied
suggestion. "What were your wife's plans for the afternoon?"
"She intended to shop and pay a farewell call or two; nothing of any
vital importance, however; Mrs. Fremont, with whom she was to have
dined, is an invalid and practically a recluse, but she and my mother
were girls together and my wife was one of the few people she would
still receive; she adored her. Inspector, when--how long do you think
my wife----?"
He could not continue, but Inspector Druet nodded comprehendingly.
"We must wait for the arrival of the Chief Medical Examiner before we
can positively determine that, Mr. Jarvis," he responded. "However, I
think we may safely conclude that death took place in the afternoon,
some little time before the dinner-hour. When you took leave of your
wife to-day did her manner seem quite as usual? You observed no
depression nor apprehension?"
"On the contrary," replied Jarvis in a surprised tone. "She was never
frivolous nor lightminded and she had entered with very serious intent
into our plans for aid in France, but to-day there was a gentle gayety
about her, a sense of joyous anticipation in our projected journey and
the work which lay before us----"
His voice ended in a dry, convulsive sob and once more he buried his
face in his hands.
"I will ask you only one more question, Mr. Jarvis." Inspector Druet's
voice lowered. "What was your wife's costume at lunch? The same as when
you viewed the body just now in the museum?"
A violent shudder swept again over the bowed figure.
"I don't know--I saw only her face, as I shall see it before me until
I die!" he exclaimed brokenly. "When I left her this afternoon she
was dressed for her shopping expedition in a green tailored suit; I
remember that distinctly, for she spoke of discarding it before we
sailed next week."
Dennis, who, with McCarty, had remained in the background, thrust out a
bony elbow and nudged his friend significantly. The body lying in the
museum had been clad in a plain gown of dark plum-colored silk with a
low rolling collar and cuffs of soft white and the scarf so cruelly
knotted about the slender throat was of navy blue.
McCarty shrugged impatiently at the unnecessary reminder and his eyes
eagerly followed the Inspector, who had turned to the young Frenchman.
"Captain Marchal, you accompanied Mr. Norwood to the museum this
afternoon, did you not?"
"Yes, Monsieur." The secretary advanced with one guiding hand resting
lightly upon the mantel. "There were some notes which Monsieur Norwood
desired transcribed----"
"You left the museum with Mr. Norwood?"
"Yes, Monsieur."
"Did you or he lock the door behind you?"
"Monsieur Norwood did, but I unlocked it later with the key which
he had presented to me, when I went to replace the notes after
transcribing them."
"Do you know what time that was, Captain Marchal?"
"Just after four. The clock upon the mantel here struck the hour as I
was gathering together the notes to return them."
"The museum was empty then? Did you detect anything which would suggest
the presence of an intruder?" Inspector Druet spoke carefully and the
young man smiled a faint acknowledgment.
"Nothing, Monsieur. Since I do not see, my other senses are gradually
becoming--how shall I say?--acute, and I am sure that I should have
known of a living presence, but yet----"
He paused, and after a moment the Inspector suggested:
"'Yet'--what, Captain Marchal?"
"I--I did not know--nothing warned me, when we re-entered the museum an
hour ago, of the presence of the dead." His voice had sunk to a mere
whisper and he added hurriedly. "In spite of that I believe there was
no one there this afternoon when I entered."
"Did you relock the door on leaving?"
"Yes, Monsieur; of that I can assure you. See! here is my key, which
never leaves me." He produced a small, flat key of the Yale patent and
held it out. "I returned here to the library and typed until Monsieur
Norwood came home."
"What time was that?"
"I do not know to the moment, but it was after six."
"So that you were practically alone in the house from the time of his
departure until the dinner-hour?"
"Except for the cook and the housemaid, Monsieur, and they were below.
The butler was out, but just before Monsieur Norwood returned I heard
him moving about in the dining-room, arranging the table for dinner.
Until then no slightest sound in the house had reached my ears." The
young man spoke with deep earnestness. "The bell of the front door,
even that of the telephone, was silent all the afternoon."
"Captain Marchal, when was the last time you--er, encountered Mrs.
Jarvis alive?"
"Late on Tuesday afternoon. Madame Jarvis had called to see Monsieur
Norwood, but he was engaged."
"You entered into conversation with her?"
The young man hesitated.
"Madame very graciously invited me to dine at her home the following
evening, with Monsieur Norwood."
"You declined?" The question was terse.
"I am still awkward and gauche, Monsieur, in groping my way about in
strange surroundings." He replied with simple dignity. "I have not
gained what you call self-confidence. Monsieur and Madame Jarvis have
been most kind, but I should have felt de trop."
The arrival of the Chief Medical Examiner interrupted the proceedings
and Inspector Druet accompanied him to the museum, where Martin and
Yost mounted guard behind the locked door.
With the departure of the official the tense atmosphere relaxed
somewhat and a stir of movement swept the little group.
Norwood had started forward to follow the Inspector, but the latter
closed the door behind him with a hint which brooked no opposition.
Jarvis, too, sprang to his feet.
"I must go to her!" he cried brokenly. "I cannot endure the thought
that strange, alien hands should desecrate her now! Uncle Cal, we must
see about getting her home!"
"Not yet, Mr. Jarvis," Terhune interposed smoothly. "The formalities
must be complied with, you know, and the matter is out of our hands."
"Oliver, our personal feelings must not interfere with the course of
justice," supplemented Norwood. "After all, our one aim now is to get
at the truth."
Captain Marchal had made his way to a window seat and dropped wearily
upon it with his face in shadow.
Dennis glanced toward him and asked in a cautious undertone:
"Do you think he told the truth, Mac; about no one coming here this
afternoon?"
"And why not?" McCarty demanded. "If Mrs. Jarvis' body was brought up
the ladder and in through that museum window, and the murderer left
the same way even with that rattling, clattering skeleton in his arms,
Captain Marchal would not have heard a sound of it in here and there
would have been no need for the murderer to come into this part of the
house at all."
"Then why was the museum door unlocked?" retorted Dennis
argumentatively. "If this young feller can be believed he didn't leave
it so at four o'clock this afternoon, then somebody must have opened it
between then and the time we went in there to-night. The lad wasn't any
too anxious to go with us, either, if you remember."
"It's a good thing you're not the jury sitting on him," averred McCarty
in disgust. "You'd be handing in the verdict before court opened! Wait
till we find out what's gone on in that house beyond the back fence!"
Terhune meanwhile was plying his client with questions in his turn,
but he had succeeded in eliciting no detail from the private life of
the Jarvises which would throw the slightest glimmer of light upon the
tragedy when the muffled trend of heavy footsteps in steady, measured
unison echoed down the hall, the front door closed resoundingly and
Inspector Druet reappeared.
"Now we'll get down to business," he remarked briskly. "I want to make
an examination of your house next, Mr. Jarvis, and your presence is
necessary. If you will lead the way through the rear yards----?"
He paused and Oliver Jarvis who had risen at his entrance demanded
hoarsely:
"What of my wife? Your Chief Medical Examiner--he's taken the place of
the Coroner, hasn't he? Did he discover when----?"
"Mrs. Jarvis' death occurred approximately six hours ago." The
inspector glanced at the clock on the mantel which indicated the
quarter hour past eleven. "That would make it between five and six
o'clock, sir."
"While I cooled my heels at the French consulate!" groaned Jarvis
bitterly. "I--I may take her home now? That is all there is left which
I can do for her."
The Inspector shook his head.
"The body has been removed," he announced as gently as he could. "There
must be an autopsy, but in this case, when the cause of death is so
patent it will amount to only a few simple tests as a matter of record.
The body will be conveyed to your home to-morrow morning. But now, Mr.
Jarvis, we are losing valuable time."
"I am ready." The younger man remarked quietly as with an unconscious
movement he squared his shoulders.
Calvin Norwood was at his side and the secretary had started up from
his seat by the window, but Inspector Druet's voice halted him.
"You need not come, Captain Marchal, nor will it be necessary for you,
Mr. Norwood----"
"Nevertheless, I propose to accompany my friend," declared Norwood.
"His wife's body was discovered in my house and I have every right
to know how it got here. I intend to investigate this terrible
matter thoroughly for myself, Inspector, with no hindrance from the
authorities!"
Inspector Druet shrugged and turned to the others.
"You'll come, of course, Mr. Terhune, and you, Mac. Riordan, too, if
he likes. I'll leave Martin and Yost here." He glanced significantly
at the blind secretary's impassive face. "Mr. Norwood, how was it
customary for those using that door cut in the fence to gain entrance
to your house? Surely not through the museum window?"
"By no means." The host, still indignant, responded frigidly. "The back
stairway leads to a private hall unconnected with the kitchen quarters
which ends in a door opening directly into the yard."
He led the way down the stairs and through the narrow passageway to the
door at the farther end. As he flung it open the keen autumnal night
wind smote them and a few dry leaves swirled in and eddied at their
feet, but the square of blackness which met their gaze was relieved
only by patches of subdued light from the rows of curtained windows at
the rear of the houses on the next street.
While they hesitated Norwood stepped back and pressed a switch in the
wall and instantly the yard was revealed in a flood of blinding light
in which the stark outlines of a stunted tree or two stood out in bold
relief against the vine-clad walls. A brick walk divided the patch of
sward in the center and at its end a small white door broke the expanse
of the rear wall and creaked as it swung idly upon its hinges.
"Is that door usually left unfastened?" asked Terhune suddenly.
"N--no," stammered Norwood.
"Who has the keys to fit it?"
"Only my niece and--and Mrs. Jarvis."
They had started down the path a few paces when Terhune paused and
glanced back at the slender ladder silhouetted against the house. The
open space between the floor of the museum extension and the ground
formed a sort of porch in the shadow of which the windows of the rear
basement could be seen.
"That is the kitchen, isn't it?" Inspector Druet asked. "Your cook must
have been there between five and six preparing dinner, Mr. Norwood. It
is odd that she did not see the murderer place the ladder at the window
directly above and climb up with his burden; it could not have been
quite dark at that hour."
"The cook is elderly and has very weak eyes," responded Norwood. "She
pulls down the shades and lights up at the first approach of dusk."
"I'll question her to-morrow." The Inspector turned toward the little
door in the fence, and as the rest followed Dennis caught McCarty's arm
in a mighty grip.
"Holy saints!" he gasped. "There's something there!"
"Where!" McCarty demanded.
"In the yard beyond!" Dennis was staring straight ahead of him and
his tone was sepulchral. "When the door swung open just now I saw it;
something white and flitting!"
Terhune sprang to the passageway they had just left and turned the
switch, plunging the yard in darkness once more.
"Now come on!" Inspector Druet led the way, but Oliver Jarvis dashed
forward and reached the little door in advance of the others.
"Ah, Madame, it is you?" They heard a little cry in a clear feminine
voice. "I have been so alarmed----"
They crowded through the doorway and beheld Jarvis confronted by a girl
whose frilled apron and cap gleamed whitely in the darkness.
Inspector Druet whipped out an electric torch and flashed it full
into her face and she drew back with a faint scream which died in her
throat. Her trembling hands shaded her eyes and as the light flared
about she beheld the drawn, grief-distorted face of her employer and
the little knot of grim, determined men behind him.
"What is it!" she whispered, swaying. "Madame--she!"
"What are you doing here, Margot?" demanded Jarvis.
"Madame!" Her voice rose in a shriek, unheeding. "It has come!"
Lurching forward, her body crumpled and she fell prone at their feet.
CHAPTER IV
THE OTHER HOUSE
The rear basement door of the Jarvis house stood wide and a low light
glowed forth as McCarty and Dennis lifted the limp slender form of the
unconscious girl between them and under the direction of her employer,
bore it into the house and along the narrow hall to the servants'
dining-room, where they deposited it upon a lounge.
Jarvis himself poured water from a pitcher which stood upon the
sideboard and dashed it into the girl's face.
"Give her air!" Dennis admonished. "She's only fainted!--There! She's
coming to!"
The flaxen head with its drenched wisp of a cap all awry had stirred
upon the cushion and her frightened blue eyes opened suddenly, and
rested full upon her employer. Bewilderment gave place to swift
apprehension and as swiftly a look of belated caution veiled them as
she struggled to sit upright.
"What is it, Monsieur Norwood?" she asked in a faint, trembling voice.
"What has happened? Ah, I remember! Monsieur came upon me so suddenly
in the garden----Has Madame returned?"
The sharp note of anxiety and fear betrayed itself in her tones and
Jarvis countered sternly.
"When did Madame go out, Margot?"
"I do not know." The girl had risen and catching at a chair for
support, shrank slowly away from him. "This afternoon when Madame
returned from shopping, she said that she had a slight headache and
would rest for an hour; that I was not to disturb her until she
rang. But it grew late and I remembered Madame's dinner engagement;
I ventured at last to go to her room but she was not there. She had
gone!--Monsieur, why do you look at me like that! Has--has something
happened to Madame?"
"What did you expect would happen to her, my girl?" Inspector Druet
stepped forward and his peremptory tones cut the tense air like a whip
lash.
The girl wheeled and as she noted his uniform her pale face grayed and
her fluttering hands crept to her throat.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "Where is Madame? Oh, in mercy, tell me,
Messieurs! Where is Madame Jarvis?"
"Don't you know?" The Inspector's keen eyes seemed to bore through her
wavering ones. "What did you mean just now in the yard when you said:
'It has come'?"
"Did I say that, Monsieur?" Margot's own eyes shifted and fell. "I did
not know; I was startled, I--ah, tell me! What has happened to Madame?"
"I can't stand this!" Oliver Jarvis muttered hoarsely. "Margot, your
mistress is--is----"
"Dead." The Inspector finished for him as he hesitated.
"Ah, Mon Dieu, not that! Not that! Say that it is not so, Monsieur,
that it is a lie! Madame is not dead!"
She sprang forward and seized her employer's arm in a frenzied grasp
but reading irrevocable confirmation in his tragic eyes, she burst into
wild weeping.
For a space no coherent word could be coaxed or bullied from her as she
sank upon the couch once more and buried her face in her hands, her
slim body rocking with the storm of sobs which swept over her. When the
violence of her emotion had abated somewhat Inspector Druet laid a not
unkindly hand upon her shoulder.
"Now then, my girl, you must brace up and answer me. Your name is
Margot, isn't it?"
At his touch she stiffened and after a moment raised a dull,
tear-stained face from which all expression seemed to have fled as she
nodded dumbly.
"At what time, Margot, did Mrs Jarvis return from shopping this
afternoon?"
The girl moistened her dry lips.
"At four o'clock, Monsieur."
"She complained of feeling ill. Did she lie down immediately?"
"I do not know, Monsieur. I got Madame into a negligee and went upon my
errand."
"What errand? You did not mention it a minute ago." The Inspector eyed
her sharply.
"Madame sent me to a shop downtown to change some garments she had
purchased and which did not fit," Margot explained. "She told me not to
disturb her on my return, but to wait until she rang."
"When did you get back?"
"At half-past five, Monsieur. Madame's dinner engagement was for seven."
"How long did you wait before going to her room?"
"For an hour, Monsieur; until half-past six. I knocked several times
but there was no reply and at last I entered. Madame was not there."
No shade of defiance colored the well-trained deference of her tone,
yet her reluctance was manifest and Inspector Druet asked quickly:
"Was the room in order? Did anything indicate that Mrs. Jarvis' rest
had been disturbed or that she had left in haste?"
"No, Monsieur. The negligee was lying across the chaise-longue and the
slippers on the floor beside it, but the cushions were quite smooth and
the bed itself was untouched----"
She paused with a slight catch in her breath and Inspector Druet
pressed home his advantage.
"So Mrs. Jarvis had not lain down to rest, after all. When she
mentioned her headache, did she appear to be really ill, Margot?"
"But no. Madame's eyes were very bright, and her color--oh, Monsieur,
how was it that she died?"
"You will learn all that later." The Inspector evaded another possible
outbreak of hysteria. "Where were the other servants during the
afternoon? Were they all in the house?"
"No, Monsieur, only the housemaid and she was in her room nursing a
toothache. Since there was to be no dinner at home, Madame had given
both the cook and Henry a holiday."
"Have they returned yet?"
"Yes, Monsieur. They both came in before eleven o'clock and went to
their rooms."
"How is it that you did not go to bed? Do you always wait up for Mrs.
Jarvis?"
"Not always." The girl hesitated once more. "But to-night I--I was
uneasy about Madame. Her departure without ringing for me to dress
her----"
"Margot," the Inspector interrupted with a trace of sternness in his
tones. "What were you doing out in the yard at this hour when we came
upon you?"
"The house stifled me; I wanted the fresh air." Her eyes wavered and
fell. "Madame had intended to return very early and when she did not
come I--I became nervous, alarmed----"
"Why? You had some other reason for your fears than the mere fact that
your mistress had gone out without summoning you." The Inspector thrust
his face close to that of the shrinking girl. "Margot, I want the
truth. Did you surmise what had taken place in this house during your
absence this afternoon? When you cried out to us 'It has come!' you
knew that your mistress was dead----"
"Ah, no! No, Monsieur!" Her voice rose in a protesting wail. "Madame
was not even ill, a headache, only! When I saw Monsieur Jarvis' face
there in the garden I knew that something unfortunate--an accident,
perhaps--must have happened to Madame! That it had come true!"
"What had come true?" demanded Oliver Jarvis hoarsely.
"My dream," Margot responded. "Last night I dreamed that Madame was
suffering, in danger! I ventured to tell of it this morning, but
although she only laughed at me I could not put it from my thoughts
for at my home in Louvain before the Germans came I had warning in my
dreams of what was to be, Monsieur. Oh, was it an accident that befell
Madame?"
Dennis' eyes were goggling in superstitious awe as he glanced at
McCarty, but the latter was gazing intently at the girl with an
expression of bland incredulity not unmixed with admiration.
"That will do for now." The Inspector turned to Oliver Jarvis. "I won't
rout out the other servants; there will be time enough for them in the
morning. They sleep on the top floor, I suppose?"
Jarvis nodded.
"I should like to see the lower portion of the house now and
particularly Mrs. Jarvis' apartments," continued the Inspector.
"Margot, we shall not need you anymore to-night but don't attempt to
leave the house; I want to have a further talk with you to-morrow."
The girl bowed and started for the door, then turned in swift
supplication to her employer.
"Monsieur!" she cried brokenly. "You know how I have loved Madame! Now
you tell me that she is dead but I may not know the cause. Madame was
alive and well but a few short hours ago! Ah, Monsieur, in pity tell me
how Madame came to her death!"
Jarvis essayed to reply, but no words came, and mutely he motioned
toward the official.
The latter considered for a moment and then announced slowly:
"She was murdered, Margot."
"Murdered!" The echo was a mere whisper and the girl's eyes dark with
horror traveled from face to face of the group before her as if seeking
a denial of the dread truth. "I cannot believe--It must have been some
frightful mistake! What madman has done this?"
"That is what we are here to find out," the Inspector responded
gruffly. "You may go."
Margot still hesitated, then timidly she approached her employer.
"I--I will pray for the soul of Madame," she whispered and turning
stumbled blindly from the room.
The lower floors of the Jarvis house were laid out much after the
same plan as the Norwood residence and although evidently erected
at approximately the same period it had later been remodeled and
decorated. The music-room had been elongated into a small ball-room,
the staircase widened and a tiny conservatory added at the back.
Nowhere was there sign of confusion or disorder and the grim little
party made its way upstairs.
At the threshold of the dead woman's private apartments, Oliver Jarvis
drew back with a moan of uncontrollable anguish.
"Don't, dear boy! Don't go in now!" urged Norwood gently. "You've
endured all that you can for to-night----"
"No, Uncle Cal." The young man braced himself in dogged determination.
"I must see this through. I must learn the truth!"
They entered the sitting-room exquisite in its soft, rose-shaded
lights, eloquent in the studied simplicity of the groupings of rare
old furniture and priceless rugs and draperies of the loving care and
unostentatiously applied wealth which had been expended to provide
a fitting shrine for the bride of five years before. The bedroom
into which they passed after a brief scrutiny was tragic in its
little intimate hints of a vibrant, living presence: the gold toilet
articles upon the dresser, the book open and face down on the table,
a crumpled lace handkerchief, a faint perfume--the 'Rose d'Amour' of
which the blind secretary had spoken--that still lingered in the air,
the night-dress and tiny slippers which lay expectantly beside the
turned-back covers of the bed.
Jarvis, whose fortitude despite his efforts was visibly breaking during
their progression through the apartments, now broke down utterly with
the grief of overwhelming realization and he sank upon his knees beside
the bed.
"Leave me!" he choked, in response to Norwood's compassionate approach.
"I want to be alone! You can see for yourselves that there is nothing
here, gentlemen! I shall have myself in hand again by to-morrow, but
now I feel that I have reached the end of my endurance. I must be alone
to face this thing which has come upon me or I shall go mad!"
It would seem that he spoke truly. There had been no slightest
indication of violence or disturbance anywhere in the serene charm
of the well-ordered apartments and after a final glance about and
whispered word of consolation from Norwood, they turned to the door of
the dressing-room beyond.
"By the twenty-four feet of the twelve apostles!" The exclamation burst
like a mighty oath from McCarty's lips as for a moment the others
halted transfixed upon the threshold and the kneeling figure by the bed
started up in renewed consternation.
"What is it?" he demanded hoarsely, but no one replied to him.
The little dressing-room was in chaos. Dainty, spindle-legged chairs
were flung about, drawers were open and their silken contents billowed
out upon the floor, the wardrobe ransacked and from a shattered glass
vase beside an overturned table a cluster of wilting roses lay in a
sodden mass. The door of a small wall safe swung back upon its hinges
and the aperture loomed empty and bare.
"I think we need search no further for the scene of the actual crime,
Inspector." Terhune's voice was filled with quiet satisfaction. "It was
here, without a doubt, that Mrs. Jarvis fought for her life."
Inspector Druet nodded and his lips tightened as he glanced about
the wreck of the pretty room and turned to where Oliver Jarvis stood
staring with dazed, horrified eyes.
"Robbery," he announced. "Your wife must have heard someone moving
about in here as she prepared to rest and entering been attacked and
finally strangled to prevent her giving an alarm. A mighty bold,
desperate attempt, in daylight, too! It looks as if it must have been
an inside job."
"It couldn't have been!" Jarvis stammered. "You heard what Margot said;
none of the servants were at home but the housemaid and she was ill, at
the top of the house. Besides, nothing was taken----"
"The safe is empty," Inspector Druet remarked quickly. "Were not Mrs.
Jarvis' jewels there? How can you be sure that nothing of value is
missing?"
"Because there was nothing of value here; of sufficient value, at
least, to warrant such an attempt," responded the other. "It may be
that a few small brooches, a plain platinum wrist watch and articles
of that sort were taken but they would scarcely have tempted a thief
to commit such a hideous crime for their possession. All my wife's
jewels--her diamonds and pearls and pigeon-blood rubies--are locked
away in our safe deposit vault. I took them downtown and placed them
there myself only yesterday, to remain until our return from abroad
and all our servants knew it, so that even if they were not beyond all
question, there would have been no incentive for robbery. The gold
toilet articles were untouched upon the dresser; you must have seen
that as we came through. I--I cannot understand!"
"And poor Evelyn was still wearing her emerald ring," supplemented
Norwood. "I noticed it there in the museum. Why did not the murderer
tear it from her finger if he were after mere gain? It must be almost
priceless."
Jarvis shuddered.
"You forget, Uncle Cal, that it could not have been disposed of." He
turned to the rest in explanation. "The emerald is an heirloom in
my family and was my betrothal gift to my wife, the only jewel she
resolved to take with her to France. It is square and of wonderful
color but our coat of arms is cut so deeply into it as to render it
practically valueless if it were shaved down and in its present state
it could be too easily traced for anyone to dare dispose of it. It may
be that a thief broke in, knowing of the other jewels but ignorant of
their removal and my poor wife came upon him. It seems incredible,
however, that such an attempt would have been made before dark, at any
rate, in a house presumably full of servants."
Terhune who had been quietly but minutely inspecting the chaos of the
room now turned to his client.
"Mr. Jarvis, was there anything aside from the jewels here that to your
knowledge would have been of peculiar personal value to anyone? I mean
something the possession of which would be vital to them? This room has
been subjected to a hasty but almost frenzied search, presumably after
the safe was opened, and it is scarcely conceivable that the thief
would ransack wardrobes and dresser drawers for jewels which he had
failed to find there."
Oliver Jarvis eyed him in blank amazement.
"What could there have been?" he asked. "My wife never kept negotiable
securities or large sums of money in the house, and if by peculiar
personal value you mean any object of a secret or compromising nature,
Mr. Terhune, I can only assure you again that her own life was an open
book and her associates above question or reproach. Her sympathies
were warm but she was far too high-minded to have lent herself to any
confidence of a scandalous or disgraceful sort. This hideous thing
must have been the work of a common thief, a burglar, and yet I cannot
understand how he managed to time his coming so adroitly, nor how he
gained entrance."
The dressing-room possessed two doors beside the one by which they had
entered, one of which led to the bathroom beyond, and the other to
the hall. The last named was locked and bolted from the inside, the
bathroom furnished no evidence of a possible intruder and nowhere was
there a clue except the marks upon the door of the safe which had been
jimmied open in a professional manner.
After a cursory examination of the closets and wardrobes Inspector
Druet glanced with a shrug at the dainty Dresden clock which ticked
with gay insouciance upon the mantel and announced:
"Late as it is, I've got to arouse the servants, Mr. Jarvis, and
question them. Will you give orders that they are to come to me at once
downstairs, say, in your dining-room?"
"You wish to see Margot again, also?" Oliver Jarvis halted in the
doorway, still with that stunned look upon his face.
"Margot, by all means," the Inspector retorted. "And, if you please,
say nothing of the condition in which we found this room."
When the stricken master of the house had departed upon his errand,
Inspector Druet turned to where McCarty and Dennis communed together.
"Mac, I'll want you with me; Riordan, can I press you into service?"
"That you can, sir!" Dennis stepped forward briskly.
"Run back through the yards to Mr. Norwood's house and tell Yost I need
him here. Martin can stay where he is but I want Yost on guard at the
front of this house and you take the back till after I've searched it
from top to bottom."
Carefully locking all entrances to the dead woman's apartments,
Inspector Druet pocketed the keys and followed by Norwood, Terhune and
McCarty he proceeded to the dining-room downstairs, where Jarvis joined
them.
Margot, still fully dressed, was the first of the servants to appear.
Her face bore traces of recent violent emotion but it was now composed
and over her stolid Flemish features a certain wary impassivity had
settled.
"You had not retired, Margot?" The Inspector glanced sharply at her
attire.
"Could sleep come to me on this night, Monsieur?" she retorted but
quietly. "I have been walking the floor of my room, trying to make
myself comprehend that it is true, this terrible thing which you have
told me."
The Inspector spread his notes out upon the table before him.
"Margot, you say that you went upon your errand this afternoon shortly
after four o'clock and returned at half-past five; that you waited
for an hour, until half-past six, before going to your mistress'
apartments. Where were you during that hour?"
"In my room, Monsieur, and in that of Etta, the housemaid, applying hot
cloths to her face. She was in great pain."
"You then went to your mistress' rooms and found she had gone," the
Inspector pursued. "Did you look through her entire apartment, the
dressing-room and bath, as well as the other rooms?"
"Yes, Monsieur." The girl glanced hastily up at him and then dropped
her eyes.
"And everything was in perfect order, then, in all the apartment? No
room showed the slightest sign of disturbance?"
"None, Monsieur. All was as usual, in perfect order," she repeated
quietly.
McCarty drew a deep breath and glanced at Terhune, but the latter was
listening with an imperturbable expression. Inspector Druet leaned
forward in his chair and his voice took on an added note of sternness.
"This occurred at half-past six?"
"Yes, Monsieur."
"What did you do then?"
"I went down to the kitchen and prepared some broth for Etta, and took
it to her room," Margot replied without hesitation. "She could not eat
and begged of me to go away and let her alone; the pain had made her
acariâtre--how do you say? Of an ill humor. I returned to the kitchen
for my own dinner and then went once more to Madame's apartments,
where I arranged her bed for the night, laid out her gown and slippers
and took some lingerie which required mending down to the servants'
dining-room in the basement."
"At what time was this?"
"I do not know to the moment, Monsieur. It must have been between seven
and eight o'clock."
"Did you enter the dressing-room?"
"But yes, Monsieur." Again she darted a glance at him. "For Madame's
night-robe and slippers and also the lingerie and work-basket."
"All was in order then?"
"Of course, Monsieur." Her replies came more quickly with a rising
inflection as of apprehension.
"Margot, at what hour did you return again to Mrs. Jarvis' apartments?"
The Inspector demanded impressively.
Margot shrugged.
"I have not entered them again, Monsieur, since that hour. There was
no need; I had made all ready for Madame's coming. The lingerie and
work-basket are still in the basement dining-room; all the evening I
remained there trying to sew but I was so uneasy about Madame that I
could not finish my task. Then it grew late, I became alarmed, I went
out into the garden for a breath of air and you found me, Monsieur.
That is as I have told you."
Inspector Druet rose slowly.
"You are prepared to swear that you were in Mrs. Jarvis' dressing-room
between seven and eight o'clock and left it at that hour undisturbed
and in proper order?"
Margot drew herself up to her slim height and regarded him steadily.
"Yes, Monsieur. I do not know what it is that Monsieur's questions
mean, but I swear that Madame's apartments were quite as usual when
last I entered them, before eight o'clock this night."
CHAPTER V
DENNIS SCORES
Immediately after Margot had been dismissed, old Henry, the Jarvis'
butler, made his appearance, and close upon his heels came the
cook, her portly form clad in a weirdly striped wrapper, her ruddy
countenance grim with exasperation at being haled from her bed at so
unseemly an hour.
She paled, however, at sight of the Inspector's uniform and turned
hurriedly to her employer.
"Oh, sir, whatever is the matter? Margot told me nothing when she woke
me----"
"There has been a burglary committed here," Inspector Druet announced
before Oliver Jarvis could speak.
"Burglars! The saints preserve----"
"Never mind that now!" The Inspector broke in sharply upon her
exclamation. "What time did you leave the house to-day?"
"Right after lunch was cleared away, sir; along about half-past two.
Mrs. Jarvis gave me the afternoon and evening off and I went to my
sister's, in Brooklyn." The cook glanced about her with wildly startled
eyes. "If you please, sir, where is Mrs. Jarvis?"
"She will not be home to-night." Inspector Druet added quickly: "When
did you return to the house?"
"At half-past ten, sir. Henry got in just ahead of me; didn't you,
Henry?"
She turned for confirmation to the butler who nodded his white head
solemnly.
"Did you notice any signs of disturbance? Hear anything?" demanded her
interrogator.
"No, sir!" The cook gasped and laid a fat hand upon her capacious bosom
in the region of her heart. "Glory be! We might all have been murdered
in our beds! There was a light in the front basement but I thought it
was only Margot waiting up, maybe, for Mrs. Jarvis. There were low
lights, too, in the halls, but they are always left lit and I didn't
hear a sound or see anything at all as I went on up to my room. Was it
much that was took, sir? Did the burglar get away?"
The Inspector silenced her importunities and dismissed her, then turned
to the butler who stood aside, his spare, dignified figure wrapped
toga-wise in his bath-robe.
"Henry, what time did you come in?"
"A moment before cook, sir; I was closing the door when she came
up behind me. I know nothing whatever of any burglar, sir, but I'm
positive none was in the house when I entered, nor after, for I'm a
light sleeper and I would have heard him. You'll excuse me, sir, but
was the silver touched? It's been in my charge these forty years and
never a piece missing----"
The aged man's distress was very real and it was equally evident that
he knew nothing which could throw light upon the mystery. Reassured
as to the safety of the silver he too was allowed to depart and the
Inspector glanced significantly at Oliver Jarvis.
"Your housemaid seems unwilling to put in an appearance," he observed.
"I might suggest that you send for her again----"
"I'll bring her if I have to drag her from her bed!" declared Jarvis
with sudden violence as he started for the door. At that moment,
however, there came a light tap upon it and without waiting for
response it opened and a plump, buxom girl with a shawl draped over her
kimono slipped into the room and stood half sullenly, half defiantly
before them. Her red hair was caught back in a rumpled, untidy braid,
and the lower part of her face was swathed in bandages above which her
round eyes glared with resentment and fright.
"My aunt says there's been a burglary, but I know nothing of it," she
began. "I'm near dead with the pain in my tooth----"
"Your aunt is the cook?" interrupted the Inspector brusquely. "Why did
you not come at once when you were summoned?"
The girl tossed her head mutinously.
"That Margot didn't say what I was wanted for, and how was I to know,
at this time of night, that there was trouble? I've been in my bed
since noon and not a sound have I heard in the house since my aunt went
out after lunch, except when Margot came in and put hot cloths to my
face, and then brought me the bite of supper I couldn't touch. There's
nothing I can tell you, sir, and if you don't mind I'll be getting back
to my room, for it's draughty----"
"Just a minute." The Inspector eyed her sharply.
"You did not leave your room at all during the afternoon?"
"No, sir; nor since, until now."
"Did you hear your aunt and the butler come in?"
"I did not, sir. I must have dozed off after Margot went away with the
tray, but even if I'd been awake, I would have paid small heed to any
noise that might have come to me, what with the pain and all." Etta
mumbled through the bandages which held her jaw as in a vise, and her
brown eyes roved from one to another of the little group. "I'm sure I'm
sorry if--if anything was took, but I'm not to blame. I wasn't left in
charge of the house and besides, the burglar might have been in the
very next room to me and I'd not have noticed, I was that crazed with
my toothache!"
"Very well, Etta. You may go now, but I shall want to see you
to-morrow." Inspector Druet gathered up his papers and as the girl
scuttled from the room without more ado, he turned to the others.
"We'll take a last look over the house, now, and then get back to Mr.
Norwood's."
A hasty but systematic search vouchsafed them no further clues and an
examination of every door and accessible window by which the assassin
might have gained entrance failed to reveal the slightest mark of
applied force.
After a few parting whispered words of consolation to the bereaved man
from Norwood they left the house and made their way back through the
little door in the fence to the latter's home.
As they brought up the rear Dennis remarked to McCarty:
"You're thinking that girl Margot lied? She knew about the crime all
along? Maybe she was waiting in the yard for the murderer himself----"
"I'd not go so far as to say that," responded McCarty cautiously. "But
'twas a mighty convenient dream she had on the spur of the moment. With
a gift like that, Denny, and a pack of cards she could be making her
everlasting fortune!"
"You don't believe in it?" There was a trace of superstitious awe in
Dennis' tone.
"Devil a bit!" his companion retorted stoutly. "If she didn't actually
know, she suspected well enough what might have happened to her
mistress when we found her here in the yard and if I was the Inspector
I'd have the truth out of her. I've not figured out yet why she stood
up to it that Mrs. Jarvis' rooms were not disturbed when she knew we
must have seen with our own eyes the state that the dressing-room was
in; she'd had plenty of time, too, to straighten it again if she'd
wanted to keep from us the fact that it has been ransacked like that."
"I noticed one thing," Dennis observed. "The news of Mrs. Jarvis' death
itself floored her, but the manner of it--that it was murder--didn't
seem to surprise her, and she never even asked how or where it had been
done."
"Still, I wouldn't say she was a party to it, nor that her grief over
it wasn't real enough," demurred McCarty. "The manner of the other
girl, Etta, is as much on my mind. A toothache she may have had,
Denny, but 'twould take more than that to choke off a woman's natural
curiosity about a burglary that had been committed under the same roof
with her, if she was entirely ignorant of it. That young woman didn't
want to hear a word of it; all she wanted was to get away out of sight
without being asked any more questions herself. One thing is sure;
there's no love lost between her and Margot."
When they re-entered the Norwood house the blind secretary met them at
the library door, his sensitive face alive with eager questioning.
"It was a burglar, Victor." Norwood dropped wearily into a chair and
replied to the mute appeal. "She was killed in her own dressing-room
and why her murderer brought the body here I cannot imagine. It would
seem the act of an insane person----"
"Madame Jarvis was killed in her own dressing-room!" Marchal repeated
slowly. "That is what you have learned, Monsieur. But how do
you----What proof is there----"
"Her safe is forced open and empty and the room is a wreck; everywhere
the signs are unmistakable of the terrific struggle which must have
taken place----" Norwood was beginning when Terhune advanced and
interrupted him smoothly.
"Captain Marchal looks quite done up. If the Inspector does not
require anything further of him to-night I would suggest that he be
excused."
Inspector Druet nodded understandingly.
"Yes, Captain. You have helped us all you can, I am sure, and it is
very late. We won't detain you any longer."
Marchal bowed.
"If Monsieur Norwood----" he began.
"You had better go to bed now and get what rest you can after this
terrible business," Calvin Norwood advised. "We will have hard
days ahead of us, Victor. Gad! I never thought when I took up the
investigation of crime as a mere hobby years ago that it would strike
home to me like this! If it were my own niece who had been throttled by
some fiend in human form I could scarcely be more deeply affected. But
we'll get him, gentlemen! We'll get him! Good-night, Victor----"
"Good-night, Monsieur Norwood. You will call me if I can be of any
assistance?"
As the secretary bowed and retired the butler appeared in the doorway.
He was a corpulent, middle-aged individual with a rotund face from
which the florid color had departed in streaks and his earlier dignity
had perceptibly fallen from him.
"H'excuse me, Mr. Norwood," he stammered. "But the 'ousemaid is still
in 'ysterics, sir, and cook is packing; she says as 'ow she won't stay
another hour h'under a roof where maybe a murderer is 'iding and 'er
not being h'able to see or 'ear very good if 'e was to get after 'er,
sir."
"I'd better see them, I suppose, and reassure them." Norwood rose.
"I'll go with you," the Inspector announced. "I have a few questions to
put to them and then my preliminary report will be complete."
Left alone, Wade Terhune eyed his involuntary colleagues elatedly.
"A remarkable case in some aspects, eh, McCarty?"
"It is that, sir," the ex-Roundsman agreed, adding with unconscious
wistfulness. "It's a rare bit of luck for you to have been on the
ground when it was first discovered, being as you're in charge of the
investigation now for Mr. Jarvis. I'd like well to have a hand in it
myself."
"Perhaps we may be able to use you later on," the criminalist remarked
consolingly. "I won't deny that you have a special knack for certain
phases of the work which stood you in good stead last year. This
case in a way is as elemental as the Rowntree affair and the motive
is self-evident; then, too, it is not complicated by a mistaken
identification as was the other, and I think we shall before very long
find our field of suspects narrowed down to--but what has become of our
good friend Riordan?"
"Denny?" McCarty glanced about him in amazement, "He was right here
beside me a minute since! He'd not have followed the Inspector----"
At that moment Dennis' lean, lantern-jawed face appeared in the
doorway, his gray eyes snapping with suppressed excitement.
"Whisht!" he admonished superfluously. "When they took the body out the
Inspector forgot to lock the door to the museum. Come till I show you
something!"
Nothing loath they followed him down the hall to the late scene of the
tragedy. The room in the brilliant glare of light was in perfect order,
the table upon which the body had rested bare and glistening in its
coat of white enamel with the Mexican blanket folded neatly at its foot.
Dennis led them to the second window from the left, the sides of which
now stood widely open into the room and with a dramatic flourish
pointed outward and down.
"If you'll have a look at that ladder," he announced, "you'll find
something squeezed in behind the first rung where it rests against the
ledge that'll interest the both of you."
"What----" McCarty started forward but Terhune was before him. Leaning
from the window where the two ends of the ladder protruded above the
sill he reached down and drew forth a limp, crumpled, brown object
which he smoothed into a semblance of shape.
"A glove!" McCarty marveled. "A man's glove--chauffeur's, by the smell
of it!"
A strong odor of gasolene assailed their nostrils and the glove,
originally a soft brown, was smeared with oil and grease in streaks of
greenish black.
"Unless it is a cast-off the man who wore it was no ordinary
chauffeur," Terhune remarked. "It is a trifle smaller than the average
size, handsewn and of the very best quality. Imported, too; I thought
so."
He showed the maker's trade-mark upon the clasp and then turning it
inside out he examined it with care.
"Think of that now!" McCarty rubbed his chin reflectively and added,
"I wonder how it came to stick on the ladder? There's quite a wind
blowing, the night."
"The fellow, whoever he was, probably dropped it in reaching up to pry
open the window catch and it fell upon the rung of the ladder against
the ledge. Then in mounting his foot trod upon it and wedged it in
between the ladder and the house wall." Terhune hastily reconstructed
the incident in theory. Then he turned to Dennis. "Was that exactly as
you found it? Why didn't you bring it to us?"
"I've no mind to get in Dutch with the police by disturbing evidence,"
the latter responded virtuously. "I put it back just as I found it and
left the rest to you. Wouldn't you think the feller would've missed
it?"
"And gone blundering around a dark yard hunting for it, with a skeleton
to keep him company and that dead body in here to raise the alarm any
minute?" McCarty demanded derisively. "It is your idea, Mr. Terhune,
that he came up the ladder first and pried the window open, and then
went down and got the body--which he'd likely hid behind some bush--and
climbed back up again?"
"How else?" Terhune shrugged.
"Well," remarked McCarty slowly, "I'm thinking it'd take more nerve
than the average, or else he was a plain lunatic. There's the back
windows of the houses on both streets staring at him, to say nothing of
the fact that Mr. Norwood or that young Frenchman was apt to come in
here any minute and catch him at his job. Why didn't he leave the poor
thing there in her own dressing-room where he killed her, and beat it?
Why should he have gone to all this trouble and risk, and then left the
evidence back there behind him----"
"We will learn that when we have found him and induced him to talk,"
Terhune assured the other coolly. "Even with your singularly moribund
deductive faculty, my dear McCarty, one salient point in this case must
have impressed itself upon you; the murderer was no stranger to either
house or their occupants. I will go further; I think I may say even at
this early stage of the investigation that he was on casual, if not
intimate, terms with certain members of both households. He knew the
habits, the hours, the plans of each family and gauged his time to a
nicety. That Mrs. Jarvis returned unexpectedly to the house because
of her headache instead of continuing her round of social calls and
discovered him at his work is one hypothesis which may possibly be
entertained----"
"But you don't hold with it, sir?" McCarty interrupted shrewdly.
Terhune smiled.
"At any rate, he had undoubtedly ascertained the fact that Mr. Norwood
would be absent this afternoon before carrying out his daring scheme
as to the disposition of the body," he evaded. "I tell you, McCarty, I
have a cordial admiration for an adversary of such caliber! It will be
a positive pleasure to match my scientific qualifications against his
native resourcefulness and I may add without boasting that I have no
misgivings as to the result."
"No, sir," McCarty acquiesced respectfully. "Though I can't understand
why the girl Margot insisted the dressing-room was in order when she'd
deliberately left it as she must have found it, as if she had wanted us
to catch her in a bare-faced lie. I've no doubt in the world but that
you'll find out the truth and lay the murderer by the heels. I can't
say I've any admiration for a strangler of women, no matter how clever,
but 'twould give me as much pleasure as you to get him. I wonder, now,
did he take it into consideration that the secretary was at home to
maybe interrupt him in his little scheme, or did he count him out,
being blind?"
Before the criminalist could reply a muffled but apparently agonized
yell from the direction of the hearth made them turn. Dennis, bored
with the analytical discussion of the situation and spurred on by his
discovery of the glove, had extended his personal investigation to the
chimney and all that was visible of him at the moment was his long legs
dangling and kicking wildly in the aperture of the fireplace.
"Denny, what in----"
The words died in McCarty's throat for there came another stifled howl
accompained by a hollow rattling sound, and Dennis fell with a crash
which scattered the dead ashes in a little cloud as he rolled out
upon the hearth, wrapped seemingly in the affectionate embrace of an
angular, attenuated shape which gleamed horridly in the light.
"Take it off me!" wailed Dennis. "Holy mother! Take it away!"
Terhune uttered an exclamation but it went unheard as McCarty strode
forward, jerked the gruesome object loose from his friend's prostrate
form and dropped it with a clatter upon the table.
"What is it?" Dennis whispered fearfully as he sat up and wiped the
sooty moisture from his forehead. "What was it got me then, Mac?"
"I'm thinking it's the lady you were so anxious to see when first we
came in here, the night," McCarty responded with unsmiling gravity.
"What with the glove and now this, you're doing well for an amateur,
I'll say that for you. 'Tis the missing skeleton, no less, that you
brought down the chimney with you, Denny, my lad!"
CHAPTER VI
THE CAKE MARKED "NOEL"
It was after three o'clock in the morning when ex-Roundsman McCarty
reached the modest rooms over Girard's antique shop where he kept
bachelor hall. The varied excitements of the night, the thrill of being
once more, if unofficially, back in the old man-hunting game had driven
sleep far from his thoughts and it was dawn before his eyes closed.
Nevertheless, he awoke early with undiminished enthusiasm to the
drizzling rain of a dull November day, and over his coffee in the
little nearby restaurant which he frequented he scanned the newspapers
eagerly. At the hour of going to press no information could have been
obtainable of the crime save that contained in McCarty's own telephone
message to Inspector Druet and the latter's summons of the Chief
Medical Examiner and report to the Homicide Bureau.
He was not surprised, therefore, at the meager paragraph, substantially
the same in each paper, announcing the sudden death "under suspicious
circumstances" of Mrs. Oliver Jarvis, the brilliant young society
leader and social worker at the home of the family friend, Mr. Calvin
Norwood.
That Oliver Jarvis himself was present when the tragic event occurred
was assumed, and the article in every instance concluded with a
statement that the authorities had the affair under investigation.
One enterprising journal printed a photograph of the dead woman,
evidently resurrected from the files of the time of her marriage, for
the costume was obviously out of date, but McCarty studied it with
deep interest. There had been small trace of beauty in the swollen,
blackened countenance which had stared up at him in the crime museum on
the previous night, but the pictured face before him was very lovely in
its girlish, ingenuous appeal. The soft, dark eyes, small straight nose
and smiling, finely chiseled lips were set in a perfect oval crowned by
a mass of cloud-like black hair and regarding it, McCarty's own blue
eyes lost their twinkle and grew stern.
"I'd like to get my two hands on that strangler, once!" he muttered to
himself as he drained his coffee cup and rose.
In the door of the restaurant he hesitated and then turned a reluctant
back upon the corner around which Engine Company 023 was stationed, and
raising his umbrella started for his rooms again. Dennis was on day
duty and after a scant few hours' sleep would be in no mood to discuss
the event of the previous night; moreover, on the way home he had
proved distinctly "touchy" in regard to his exploit with the defunct
Duchess of Piatra and his friend wisely concluded not to approach him
on the subject of the crime until he could bring fresh news.
But how would he himself acquire it? Not at first hand, as in the old
days. McCarty's spirits fell and he mentally anathematized the day
his saloon-keeping uncle's money had descended to him and the first
flush of prosperity had led him to resign from the force. He had been
too long in uniform to gain lasting ease in the habiliments of a mere
citizen, too long under orders to find profit or pleasure in the
aimless days stretched out interminably before him, too long a man of
action to appreciate the life of elegant leisure which had ensued, or
derive from it aught but an utter boredom that corroded his honest soul.
Inspector Druet, the celebrated Terhune and Calvin Norwood; there were
enough detectives, amateur and professional, on the Jarvis case now, in
all conscience, without a blundering old departmental has-been butting
in where he wasn't wanted, and yet----
McCarty sighed lugubriously as he turned his own corner and then all
at once his eyes brightened, his chin came up with the old lift and he
stepped forward briskly, for there upon the doorstep beneath a dripping
umbrella and registering outraged dignity in every bulbous curve of his
portly form, stood the Norwood butler.
"Good-morning to you!" McCarty beamed upon him. "Were you looking for
me?"
The butler turned and bowed stiffly.
"Good-morning, sir. Mr. Norwood sent me to say that h'if you 'ave an
hour to spare 'e would be glad to see you. Being as you might say a
confidential matter, 'e did not wish to h'employ a common messenger."
The last was evidently added in personal justification and he sniffed
audibly as his supercilious glance swept the shabby neighborhood.
McCarty shifted his own umbrella.
"I'll go right back with you now, my man," he announced shortly. "Did
Mr. Norwood give you any other word for me?"
"No, sir," the butler responded with awakened servility to his change
of tone. "'E seems quite done in h'over the 'orrible affair of larst
night, and no wonder, sir! Did the police h'inspector find out who did
it, h'if I may ask?"
McCarty turned and eyed him blandly.
"If he did, he's keeping it to himself," he replied. "You didn't happen
to see anything of a stranger about when you came home yesterday
afternoon, did you?"
"Me, sir?" The butler's tone was as scandalized as though the question
bore an imputation of complicity in the crime. "Certainly not, sir!
The young French gentleman was in the library and the maids in the
kitchen. It was after six and I was a bit late so I went directly about
my duties arranging the table for dinner. There was no sign of anything
unusual about, sir."
During their brief, clattering subway journey the subject was dropped
but as they emerged and started along a rain-swept cross street to the
Norwood residence, McCarty asked in apparent irrelevancy.
"By the way, when was the last time you saw Mrs. Jarvis alive?"
"On Tuesday afternoon, late, sir," the other responded readily. "The
poor lady was h'always running h'in and h'out of the 'ouse most
informally when Miss Joan was at 'ome and she and Mr. Jarvis were like
own children to Mr. Norwood, h'if I may say so. Mrs. Jarvis 'ad come
to tell 'im something h'about Professor Parlowe, but Mr. Norwood was
busy in the drawing-room with an odd sort of person who 'ad called and
could not be disturbed, so I ushered 'er h'into the library, to Captain
Marchal."
There was a note of lofty distaste in the butler's tone as he mentioned
his employer's visitor and McCarty observed indifferently:
"I guess Mr. Norwood has all kinds of people calling on him, if so he
can get anything from them to add to that museum collection of his."
"Yes, sir," the butler agreed resignedly. "When I first h'entered
'is service I didn't know what to make of it, sir. Rough-looking
characters, and some as you might call outright jailbirds calling and
being received like gentry and took h'into the drawing-room, but I soon
got used to it, h'although that museum h'always gave me a turn. And now
look what's come of it all, sir! But the woman that called the other
day, though h'ordinary, wasn't h'exactly criminal in h'appearance; she
was middle-aged and blousy, with untidy hair and shabby black clothes,
and h'English, but not a Londoner, like me. Mr. Norwood talked with 'er
for more than an hour, and Mrs. Jarvis didn't wait. That was the last I
saw of the poor young lady alive."
"How did you know she had come to tell Mr. Norwood something about
Professor Parlowe? He is the toxicologist, isn't he, that Mr. Norwood
went to call on yesterday afternoon?"
The butler nodded.
"I don't know what you might call 'im, sir, but 'e's the one Mr.
Norwood went to see, and Mrs. Jarvis brought 'im the word. I was just
h'about to knock and ask h'if she would 'ave tea when the library door
opened and Captain Marchal showed her out.
"'Please tell Uncle Cal I couldn't wait, won't you?' she says to the
young French gentleman. 'And in case I forget to mention it to-morrow
night, Captain Marchal, do remind him of Professor Parlowe's experiment
on Friday. I know he wouldn't miss it for worlds, so I hurried straight
here to tell him of it myself.' That is 'ow I know, sir. It's terrible
to think of the poor young lady being dead now, to say nothing of 'er
'aving been murdered in cold blood! I 'ope for h'all our sakes as 'ow
the police h'inspector finds out the truth."
McCarty echoed his sentiments, but in an absent-minded tone. An idea
had come to him born of the butler's idle gossip which his first
impulse was to cast from him as the wildest improbability, and yet
preposterous as it seemed in the light of certain of the previous
night's discoveries, other hitherto insignificant details recurred to
his mind which appeared to give it weight almost against his will.
He pondered in silence until they reached their destination, when that
presented itself which for the time being drove all former speculation
and conjecture from his thoughts.
"Ah, it's you, Mr. McCarty!" Calvin Norwood greeted him in unmistakable
relief. "You came straight back with Billings? Good! There has been a
curious development in the case and I knew you would be interested.
Oliver came to me privately and I persuaded him to let me send for you,
assuring him that you were discretion itself. He has telephoned to Mr.
Terhune and I am afraid it will be our duty to take Inspector Druet
also into our confidence when he comes, but I was anxious for your
opinion."
McCarty's eyes sparkled.
"'A curious development!'" he repeated. "And what might it be, Mr.
Norwood?"
"Come into the library and Oliver will show you himself."
They found Oliver Jarvis alone in the somber room staring down at the
table before him on which stood two cardboard boxes, open. There was a
curious tenseness in his drooped figure and the face he turned to them
at their coming had aged ten years overnight. It was pallid and deeply
lined, his blue eyes dull and sunken and the last traces of youth
seemed to have vanished utterly from him.
"Good-morning, McCarty," he bowed. "It was good of you to come. I
thought I could keep this thing quiet, but in view of the circumstances
Mr. Norwood has shown me that it would be inexpedient. I only want to
keep it from the press, if I can; not on my own account, although there
will be notoriety enough, God knows, but because of her."
"I know, sir," McCarty responded quietly. "The boys will get nothing
from me, you can bank on that. What is it that's come up?"
With a gesture Jarvis indicated the table and McCarty advanced and
looked into the larger of the two boxes. There, banked in wads of soft,
white oiled paper, he beheld a huge, circular, frosted cake, its top
elaborately iced in the highest perfection of the confectioner's art.
"A birthday cake!" he exclaimed.
"Not birthday, Christmas," Jarvis corrected him, gravely. "That word
'Noel' traced in pink icing in the center means 'Christmas' in French,
you know."
"Does it, now!" McCarty still stared. "It's a trifle early for the
compliments of the season, but what has it to do with the case?"
"I found it on the top shelf of the closet in my wife's dressing-room
this morning," Jarvis replied slowly. "If you will look at it closely
you will see that it is slightly dusty and the decorations are
crumbling in places; it was evidently not made this year and I do not
know how long it has been in my wife's possession, nor for what purpose
she preserved it. I have never seen nor heard of it before."
"It looks like a tombstone!" McCarty shivered. "For all it's a
fancy-looking affair and must have cost a lot of money, I thought it
was only wedding cakes that people preserved a bit of, for a keepsake."
"Exactly," Calvin Norwood remarked drily. "That is what puzzles us
both."
"And 'twas in Mrs. Jarvis' dressing-room you found it?" McCarty pursued.
Jarvis nodded.
"I suppose I had no right to enter her apartments after Inspector Druet
had locked them up and taken away the keys, but I didn't stop to think
of that," he admitted. "I walked the floor all last night, racking my
brains for a solution of this frightful thing, and when morning came
I could not endure it any longer. I felt that I must get into that
dressing-room again myself and search for some clue to the vile wretch
who had murdered her! Then I recalled that I had a duplicate set of
keys to my wife's apartments in my desk, and used them.
"The dressing-room was just as we had left it, of course, all in the
wildest disorder and confusion and although I searched with the utmost
care I found nothing, until I came to examine the closet which opened
from it. The lower portion was filled with wearing apparel but on the
top shelf far back in one corner behind bundles of disused clothing and
that sort of thing I discovered these two boxes.
"The cake astonished me for I could not imagine where it had come from,
nor why my wife had not told me of it, but when I opened the second box
I felt as if the very ground had given way beneath my feet! I boasted
last night to all of you that my wife's life was an open book and that
she possessed no secrets from me, but now--my God! I don't know what to
think!"
The second box was smaller than the first and comparatively flat. It
contained what appeared to be square sheets cut from ordinary wrapping
paper and covered with raised characters of a yellowish, brittle
consistency like dried dough.
"What in the world----" McCarty picked up the topmost sheet to examine
it more closely when Norwood's voice, fairly cracking with excitement,
sounded over his shoulder.
"Don't you see what it is? An anonymous letter, the simplest and yet
most ingenious that could possibly be contrived! The words are formed
by letters of the alphabet made of Italian paste, which have been glued
to the paper. They are sold practically everywhere for use in soups.
The wonder of it is that it has never occurred to anyone before to make
use of such a method, for the ingredients are easily obtainable, and at
the same time it absolutely baffles any attempt to trace it. This is
unique in the annals of crime!"
"It is that!" McCarty agreed soberly. "'Tis a trick that's never been
tried before and an uncommon clever one. But what's he got to say for
himself?--'All is known. Pay or I tell. First warning.'--Look here,
sir! You've no idea what this means?"
He had turned to Oliver Jarvis and the younger man burst out
passionately:
"What can it mean, except that my wife was being blackmailed? Good God!
Evelyn blackmailed! Yesterday I would have knocked any man down who
dared suggest such a foul thing, and now I am trying to make myself
believe, to accept----" He broke off and turned away with clenched
hands, only to whirl swiftly about upon them. "Understand this, though!
My wife has been guilty of no wrong! Whatever it was for which she
was being persecuted, whatever revelations may come of which we are
ignorant now, I would stake my life upon it that my wife is an innocent
victim! You knew her, Uncle Cal; you know that no secret could have
weighed upon her conscience, she could have done nothing deliberately
which would have placed her in a position where it would have been
necessary for her to buy the silence of blackmailers!"
There was an agony of entreaty in his tones as though despite his loyal
defense of the woman he loved, a doubt had arisen within him which he
felt helpless to combat alone, and Calvin Norwood responded heartily:
"We know that, dear boy! Evelyn was the soul of honor and truth. No one
who had ever come within range of her sweet, gentle influence could
doubt that for a moment. Whatever difficulty she found herself in was
not of her making, we may be sure of that. Oh, why did she not come
to us frankly, when this trouble started? If she felt some natural
hesitation in approaching you, her husband, why did she not confide in
me?"
"There's nothing in this that names Mrs. Jarvis herself," observed
McCarty reflectively.
"But that is only the first." Norwood pointed to the box. "There are
two more. Read them."
McCarty took up the second crackling sheet and read:
"'Does lady forget date of next Sat. night? 5000 under rose bush yard
then or all told.'--Humph! he got down to business then, all right!" he
commented. "There's a rose bush in your back-yard, Mr. Jarvis?"
"Yes. An old-fashioned moss rose. We brought the slip from Scotland,
and planted it together----" his voice faltered.
"I've no wish to pry into your private affairs, sir," remarked McCarty
after a pause. "But you said last night that Mrs. Jarvis never kept
a large amount of money in the house. Five thousand dollars is quite
a sum. Would she be able to lay her hands on that much at any time
without consulting you about it?"
Jarvis pondered for a moment and a startled expression came over his
face.
"Why, yes," he stammered at length. "That is, during the past year.
I--I transferred some of her holdings to her, negotiable bonds and
securities that formed a part of her inheritance from her guardian, Mr.
Chartrand."
"Why did you do that?" McCarty noted his hesitation. "Did she ask it of
you?"
"Yes, but I--I thought nothing of it at the time," replied Jarvis,
adding hastily, "but read the last, McCarty. It is evident that my poor
wife rebelled in some way at the exorbitant demand."
"'Lady can and will,'" McCarty read slowly. "'1,000 under bush 26 each
month small price safety. Will tell all first time money not there.
Final warning.' It's blackmail, all right, and it looks as though Mrs.
Jarvis must have fell for it, sir, unless the feller got cold feet. You
had no threatening letters yourself, I suppose, nor offers to sell you
any information?"
"Certainly not! I tell you I had no possible intimation of such a thing
until I came upon those boxes this morning." The earnestness in Jarvis'
tone was unmistakable. "My first impulse was to destroy their contents
utterly, to put them forever from my mind, but the next instant I
realized that could never be. I should know no peace, night or day,
until I had sifted the matter to the bottom and learned the truth."
"Did you speak of them to any of the servants? That girl, Margot, for
instance?"
"No, I telephoned Mr. Terhune but, of course, I had to speak guardedly
and I don't think he gathered how urgently I required his presence.
I did not wait for him anyway, but came over at once to consult Mr.
Norwood. I'm sure the cake must have had something to do with it, too;
this cake marked 'Noel'----"
"Good-morning, gentlemen." Terhune's even tones sounded from the
doorway and they turned as he entered with Inspector Druet close behind
him. "Ah, McCarty, you here? Still interested in last night's little
affair, I see."
The observation was none too good-natured, and the ex-Roundsman flushed.
"I'm here because Mr. Norwood asked me, sir. Good-morning, Inspector."
He turned pointedly to his old superior. "Mr. Jarvis has come
on something that'll surprise you here. It's a little matter of
blackmail----"
"What?" The Inspector and Terhune both advanced and the latter's keen
eye seized upon the evidence before them. Taking up one of the papers,
he glanced swiftly over it.
"Communications of macaroni paste!" he exclaimed. "Mr. Jarvis, what
does this mean?"
Jarvis explained and the newcomers listened in silence while he told
them of his discovery and showed them the crumbling Christmas cake and
the three missives.
When the account was finished Inspector Druet turned again to the door
with an air of finality.
"If there is anyone who knows about this affair beside the blackmailer
himself, it is the maid, Margot," he announced. "I wasn't satisfied
with her explanations last night, but now I am going to get the truth
from her if I have to put her through the third-degree. Wait here,
please, all of you."
With his departure Terhune turned reprovingly to his client.
"If you had put me in possession of these facts immediately upon their
discovery, Mr. Jarvis," he began, "I should have been able to handle
the situation far more advantageously than now, when it is practically
taken out of my hands. The obvious course will be to look into your
wife's finances at the earliest possible moment, but there are other
steps----"
Norwood drew McCarty aside.
"What do you make of it?" he asked anxiously. "I cannot believe that
such a shadow rested upon her, and yet----"
"Wait till we hear what the girl's got to say for herself," McCarty
advised, adding somewhat irrelevantly, "What's become of your
secretary, sir, the young Frenchman?"
"He is somewhere about; in the museum, I fancy," Norwood responded,
with a trace of obvious discomfiture. "I don't understand Victor. He
is moody, of course, and this horrible affair has been a severe shock
to him, but ever since last night he has haunted the museum. I heard a
noise, and came down at dawn to find him there, and twice after that I
had to fairly drag him away. It is sheer morbidity, of course, but it
isn't good for him in his present condition and if he doesn't keep away
from there I'll confiscate his key."
Comment from McCarty was halted by the reopening of the door and
Inspector Druet grimly ushered the girl, Margot, into the room. She was
pale but composed and if misgiving had assailed her at the unexpected
summons she gave no evidence of it as she advanced quietly.
Then all at once her glance fell upon the table and what lay there and
she paused with a little choking cry.
"Ah, you have found them! I prayed that you would not, that I might
keep my word to Madame, but now----"
"Now you will tell us what you know." Inspector Druet announced sternly.
The girl made a little gesture of surrender.
"Yes, Monsieur. It cannot matter now to poor Madame, and it may be, if
she knows, that she would wish me to speak. I will tell all."
CHAPTER VII
THE THREE WARNINGS
"I have known for nearly a year that Madame was in trouble," Margot
began. "Deep trouble, which grew greater as time passed, but I never
dreamed that danger threatened her or I should have told Monsieur, I
swear it! No one can ever know how heavenly kind Madame has been to me,
how much I loved her. Madame was second only to the good God himself!
After the Germans came and my home was destroyed, my parents killed
before my eyes and I fled with others to England, Madame found me and
was, oh! so good! She brought me to this great country with her, and
I--I would have given my life for her, Messieurs! When she bade me be
silent and speak to no one of the trouble which had come to her, I
vowed that not a word would ever pass my lips. It is the thought that I
might perhaps have saved her had I disobeyed which is tearing my heart!"
She paused with her hands clasped convulsively at her breast while the
slow, heavy tears gathered in her eyes. Oliver Jarvis was staring at
her as if transfixed but Inspector Druet moved impatiently, and she
forced herself to continue.
"It was just two days before Christmas last year, when the box came.
Not that one--" she pointed to the receptacle containing the huge
cake, "but another covered with white glazed paper with gilt edges and
corners, such as confectioners use, only there was no name upon it
nor card within. It arrived late in the afternoon, I remember, when
Madame, worn out with the last of her Christmas shopping, was having
tea alone in her own sitting-room. Henri called me and placed the box
on my hands and I took it to Madame. Many gifts had arrived during the
day and believing it to be just another like the rest, Madame opened it.
"The cake was very beautiful then, Messieurs, snowy and fresh and
imposing; it appeared fit for a fête, a banquet, and I exclaimed over
it until some--how do you say!--some intuition born of Madame's lack of
response made me glance at her face. Mon Dieu! I shall never forget her
nor the horror in her eyes as she sat there in her low chair staring
at the innocent cake upon the table before her as though it were some
monster! For a long time she did not speak and then when her voice came
it was so changed that I scarcely recognized it as hers.
"'Where did this come from, Margot?' she asked of me. 'There may be
some mistake. Go to Henri and find out how it came here.'
"But Henri could only tell me that a messenger--a young boy, not in
uniform--had brought it and had said quite distinctly that it was for
Meeses Oliver Jarvis. Henri had signed no receipt and the boy had gone
instantly away without waiting.
"When I returned to Madame's sitting-room to tell her I found that she
had torn the box all apart in her search for some name, some message,
but none was there. For a long time she did not speak and I waited, not
knowing what to do for it seemed that Madame was almost in a trance. At
last she roused herself and said:
"'Margot, find another box and we will put the cake away. It is just
a--a joke which someone has played on me, but Monsieur must know
nothing about it. Do you understand? Do not mention it to Henri again
or to any of the other servants. Not a word of this must reach
Monsieur's ears.'"
As the girl paused Jarvis wrenched his eyes from her face as though
with a visible effort and turning, walked abruptly to the window where
he stood with his back to the others, staring out unseeingly at the
driving downpour of rain.
Margot gazed after him with a sort of dumb appeal, as if mutely
imploring pardon for the pain she was inflicting upon him, but he was
oblivious to her glance and sighing, she resumed:
"I took this box which you see here--and which had come but that
morning with a purchase of Madame's--placed the cake in it and put it
away as she directed, in a corner of the highest shelf in the closet
in her dressing-room. Madame did not speak of it again, but from that
moment a change came upon her. I, watching her, could see it as no one
else could. Through all the holiday entertainments she was feverishly
gay, but it was as if the heart had gone out of her, and often when I
came with her coffee in the morning, I knew that she had not slept. I
did not comprehend why the mere gift of the cake should have so changed
Madame, but as time went on it grew more marked. Only in the presence
of Monsieur was Madame like her old self, but when she was alone with
me one could see the effort it cost her.
"She never disturbed the cake but many times I have seen her eyes
straying to that closet and it seemed always that she listened and
waited. Once, about two months after its arrival I ventured to ask
Madame if I should not throw the cake away, pretending to come upon it
in the closet as though I had only then remembered it, but she ordered
me quite sharply not to touch it nor refer to it again and I obeyed.
"Another month passed and Madame was at last recovering her spirits and
forgetting, I think, the shock of whatever that strange gift had meant,
when just after Easter it came; the first of those letters mystérieux!
It was not in an envelope but had been slipped between two squares of
cardboard and wrapped in plain brown paper, with no name or address
upon it. One night at ten o'clock as I sat mending and waiting for
Madame to return from a dinner, Etta, the housemaid, brought it to me.
She had been out for the evening and said that when she reached the
basement vestibule she found a man waiting there in the darkness. He
told her he had rung the bell but no one responded; that he had been
sent to deliver the packet to Meeses Jarvis, and he placed it in her
hands. Etta brought it to me and I did not tell her that the man had
lied, but he had not rung the bell.
"I felt a sad misgiving but I dared not keep the packet from Madame and
when she returned I gave it to her. She grew very white, but said no
word as she tore the paper, lifted a square of cardboard and glanced
beneath it. The next instant she fell in a crumpled heap to the floor.
She had fainted.
"I called no one, though I was very frightened, for I knew Madame would
not want anyone to be told. I did not pry, Messieurs, but as I worked
over her I could not avoid seeing the paper which lay beside her on the
floor, nor reading those words of macaroni paste letters. When Madame
opened her eyes at last and looked into mine she saw that I knew.
"She told me then that she was in trouble, that there was something
which she could not explain to me, but Monsieur must never, never know.
If any more messages came, I must bring them straight to her, and I
must give her my promise that I would not allow one word of it to pass
my lips to any living person. I took a solemn oath, Messieurs, and I
would not have broken it had not my poor Madame come so terribly to her
death."
"When did the second message come, and how, Margot?" Jarvis' strained
voice sounded from the window as he turned and came slowly forward once
more.
"Monsieur, you gave it to Madame yourself," the girl responded quietly.
"I!"
"But yes, Monsieur. You and Madame had been motoring together one
afternoon about a month later. It was just after Madame had been so
ill, if you remember. The doctor said it was a breakdown of the nerves,
but me, I knew it was anxiety which was eating her strength away----"
"Go on!" he ordered, hoarsely, as she hesitated.
"Madame preceded you into the house, Monsieur, and you followed to her
room while I was removing her cloak, and handed her the packet. She
turned pale, so pale that I feared she would faint again and the marks
were on my arm for days where she clung to me to steady herself, to
keep from collapsing in your presence----"
"Good heavens! I do recall it!" Jarvis exclaimed. "I stopped to give
some directions to the chauffeur and my wife went on into the house.
When I turned to the steps, a boy standing there touched his cap and
handed a small flat package to me, saying that the lady had dropped it.
I gave him some loose change and he scampered off."
Margot nodded.
"That is just what you told Madame; I remember, because it was
necessary for me to repeat it to her later. She was too stunned, at the
moment, to comprehend. When you left the room, Monsieur, she opened and
read the message and then locked it away in her desk. I saw only that
it was made of macaroni paste, like the first, but not what words the
letters formed.
"I feared Madame would be ill again but in the morning she was stronger
and in the days that followed she seemed more cheerful and almost
gay. Two weeks passed, and then one morning Madame came here to see
Mademoiselle Joan, through the little door in the wall. When she
returned I saw the old hunted look in her eyes and in her hand she held
a packet like the others. It had been tossed over the wall at her feet
as she came back through the garden."
"'Over the wall!'" repeated Jarvis. "Then the people next door----"
"They had gone away for the summer, Monsieur," Margot interrupted
quietly. "The house was closed and boarded up. You and Madame were
planning then to go to Maine----"
"I remember. That was early in June. But my wife changed her mind
suddenly and refused to leave the city; she insisted on remaining here
all during the hot weather in spite of my remonstrance, doing war
work----" Jarvis paused with a groan and his eyes fell again upon the
letters on the table. "I understand, now! That wretched money had to be
under the rose bush on the twenty-sixth of every month; she dared not
go away! Oh, my poor girl, if she had only told me the truth! I would
have forgiven anything! Had there been murder itself on her hands, she
was my wife and I would have defended her against all the world!"
"I know nothing of any money, Monsieur, save that demand for it in the
first letter," Margot said. "I do not know whether Madame paid any or
not; she took me no further into her confidence. But no more letters
came that I heard of after that third one and in the early autumn, as
you know, Monsieur, Madame began talking of going to France. I thought
Madame had destroyed the letters until one day, a short time ago, I
came upon a second box, sealed, beside the one which contained the cake
upon the shelf. I did not dare speak of it to Madame; indeed I did not
want to! She was so happy at the prospect of leaving America that I had
no desire to recall her trouble which I believed was safely past. And
then, only last Wednesday night, it descended upon her again."
"'Last Wednesday!'" Calvin Norwood repeated, aghast.
"But that was the night of your little dinner, Oliver! The evening was
a great success and I have never seen Evelyn in better spirits! What
could have happened then?"
"Was it another letter?" demanded Jarvis. "Did anyone try to see her,
any intruder?"
"I do not know, Monsieur. I saw no letter, no one. I only know that
when it was all over and the guests departed, I went to Madame's room
to arrange her for the night and found her huddled upon the hearth
before the little grate fire in her sitting-room in a worse state of
collapse than I had ever seen her. She did not hear me when I spoke
to her, did not seem to know me when I touched her, and the face she
lifted to mine was like the face of one already dead; all but her
eyes! They were bright and gleaming with a--a terrible light in them!
Mon Dieu! But I was frightened! It was your knock upon her door that
aroused her, Monsieur. She replied to you quietly enough----"
"I remember!" Jarvis murmured brokenly. "She told me that she had
a headache and had just taken a sleeping powder and I bade her
'good-night' without disturbing her. If I had only known!"
Margot shook her head sadly.
"Madame had taken no powder. I got her to bed at last, but I dared not
leave her. She never knew that I rested all night on the couch in her
sitting-room and many times I rose and went in to her. She was lying
staring straight up at the ceiling and that terrible look never left
her face until just at dawn, when sleep came to her at last. I sat
beside her then, watching, and once she started up with a wild cry but
my hand upon her arm quieted her, and she slept again."
"Did she say anything when she started up like that?" asked Inspector
Druet suddenly. "Was it just a cry or could you distinguish any words?"
"I think, but I cannot be sure, Monsieur, that she cried out something
about 'letters.' It returned later to my mind and I wondered if she
could have meant those three strange messages which had caused her so
much suffering and which I had hoped were forgotten. In the morning I
crept away to my room, fearful to have Madame find me there when she
wakened, lest she think I had been spying upon her. She slept late but
when she rang for her coffee the gentle, sane look had returned to her
eyes, only behind it lay the deep trouble which she could not hide from
me. And it never left her! She tried to deceive me; even yesterday when
she pleaded a headache, she was so bright, so feverishly animated that
I felt it was not true. That is why, when she did not ring for me and I
found her gone I was almost mad with anxiety! I feared in my heart that
harm had come to her because of this secret trouble, this blackmailer,
and as the hours lengthened and she did not return I was beside myself!
The house stifled me and I went into the garden where Monsieur came
upon me. The instant I saw his face I knew that the trouble which had
been hanging over Madame for so long had come at last!"
"Margot, you are keeping something back!" Inspector Druet advanced
sternly. "Why haven't you told us the whole truth?"
"But I have, Monsieur, I swear----"
"Don't lie, girl! Your mistress was killed in her own dressing-room,
strangled to death after a struggle which practically wrecked the room!
And her death occurred before six o'clock last night; we have the
Medical Examiner's word for that."
"There is some mistake, Monsieur." Margot eyed him calmly. "When I went
to Madame's rooms at half-past six she had gone, but all was in order.
The dressing-room was undisturbed."
"Do you realize, my girl, that in persisting in such a story you
are drawing suspicion upon yourself? The room was ransacked, your
mistress killed and her body removed from the house, and you are still
attempting to claim that the room was in order immediately thereafter,
when we ourselves found it later bearing unmistakable signs of the
struggle that had taken place!"
"I claim it only because it is the truth, Monsieur," Margot reiterated.
"Why should I lie about a thing which must certainly have been
discovered? Had I not many hours before you came in which to put the
room in order if I desired to conceal the fact that a--a struggle, such
as you say, had taken place there? I swear that all was as usual when
I entered at half-past six and again an hour later when I laid out
Madame's garments for the night, and took the lingerie and work down
to the basement dining-room to mend. If, when you came, you found the
room ransacked I know nothing of it. I did not leave the basement again
until I went into the garden."
The girl spoke with respectful repression but her voice quivered, an
angry light darted from her eyes and in each pallid cheek a small,
scarlet spot burned.
Inspector Druet shrugged and motioned toward the door.
"Very well, my girl, if that's the line you mean to take, we are
wasting time here. I want you to come with me."
"I am under arrest, Monsieur?" She drew herself up proudly.
"Not yet," the Inspector retorted significantly. "You're coming back
to the other house and see for yourself how useless it is for you to
persist in your lies. You've told us half the truth; you'd better come
across with the rest or it will be the worse for you."
Margot bowed her head.
"I will be ready, Monsieur." Then all at once she looked full and
steadily into his eyes. "But I have not lied! I have told the
truth--all, all the truth. I swear it on Madame's memory!"
CHAPTER VIII
THE RETURN OF JOAN NORWOOD
At Inspector Druet's suggestion Oliver Jarvis accompanied him and the
maid back to his own house. Terhune, murmuring something about the
interests of his client, prepared to follow and Norwood turned to
McCarty.
"Don't you want to come, also? I am going whether the Inspector desires
my presence or not. I am Oliver's closest friend and I do not propose
to be barred from this investigation by any jealousy on the part of
the police. I'll show them yet that my life-long study of crime is of
more value than their haphazard, bull-dozing methods! How about it, Mr.
McCarty?"
"Thanks, sir, but I'll not be going over there again. 'Tis different
with me, and being as I've left the force I don't want to get in Dutch
with the Inspector by butting in. If you don't mind, I'll wait here for
you. There are one or two little points sticking in my mind and I'd
like to look over the ground again."
"The museum? Go as far as you like," responded his host affably.
"Victor will unlock the door for you if he's not there already. But
don't leave till I return; I want to talk this all over with you."
Left alone, McCarty approached the table where the blind secretary's
typewriter stood and selecting a page or two at random from the
scattered notes examined them. The subject-matter was unintelligibly
scientific to him but the typing itself was as precise and clean-cut
as though the young man's sight were unimpaired. A book printed in the
Braille system for the blind lay open beside the machine; it was in
some foreign language, presumably French; but the spacing of the lines
denoted poetry, and McCarty whistled softly to himself as he replaced
it.
Leaving the library he made his way down the hall, treading as lightly
as his solid weight permitted. The museum door stood ajar and through
the narrow aperture he could see a man's form bent over a case in the
far corner between the fireplace and the window. Tiptoeing, McCarty
had reached the threshold before the figure turned revealing the thin,
keenly sensitive countenance of Captain Marchal.
"Who is it?" he asked in a high strained voice.
"'Tis me, Captain; Timothy McCarty, that had dinner here last night
with Mr. Norwood and yourself."
The Frenchman bowed gravely.
"You will forgive my surprise, Monsieur McCarty. I did not hear you
enter." His tone was unfailingly courteous but there was a shade of
hauteur in his bearing as though he resented the intrusion upon his
solitude.
"I've been having a little talk with Mr. Norwood and the rest of them
in the library but they've all gone over to Mr. Jarvis' house now,
and Mr. Norwood told me I could look about a bit in here," McCarty
explained.
"Here?" The secretary raised his eyebrows. "You will find nothing more
here, Monsieur, to be of use in solving this most terrible affair. Were
you not with the others last night? Do you not know that the crime was
committed in Madame Jarvis' own home?"
He spoke with an eagerness which made McCarty's eyes narrow
speculatively but the latter replied in bland nonchalance.
"Still, 'twas here we found the body and I thought I'd have a look at
that window by daylight, but if I'm disturbing you, Captain----?"
"Not at all, Monsieur." The secretary closed the case with a snap.
"I was but rearranging some fingerprint records. If I can be of any
assistance to you----"
"Fingerprints!" McCarty interrupted. "I didn't know Mr. Norwood
collected them, too!"
"He has here everything pertaining to the identification of criminals
and the investigation of crime." Captain Marchal pointed toward a
distant corner. "You see those astronomical instruments and charts upon
that stand? With them Monsieur Norwood can calculate what autumn day
corresponded in luminosity at dusk with a certain day in spring and in
this way he can study if necessary the scene of a crime in autumn in
order to discover if this or that could be seen at a certain day in
spring."
"Can he, now?" McCarty rubbed his chin. "Have they not enough evidence
on the earth to help them find a crook, without dragging in the
heavens, too? Many's the time I've looked through a telescope at a
nickel a throw on the Island, but devil a thing could I see, though
once 'twas because I had my hat hung on the end of it. Mr. Norwood will
be beating Terhune yet at his own game. Howsomever, 'tis fingerprints
I'm asking after, Captain Marchal. Is it only criminals he's kept a
record of?"
The secretary shook his head with a trace of impatience.
"No; at one time I believe Monsieur Norwood had a _toquade_, a hobby of
collecting those of his friends also, but he is now more interested in
handwriting specimens. Perhaps, Monsieur, you would desire to have me
show to you----?"
He turned suggestively toward another case, but McCarty held his
ground:
"No, Captain; it's the fingerprints I'd like to see. Has he a record of
Mrs. Jarvis', by any chance?"
"It is possible, Monsieur; I do not know." The secretary shrugged.
"Of the many impressions which Monsieur Norwood took he has retained
comparatively few for his collection and I have not yet started to
catalogue them."
He opened the spring lock of the fingerprint case with a small key
which he carried and stepped aside.
"Voilà, Monsieur. You will perhaps desire to look them over for
yourself. I have no data concerning them so I cannot be of assistance,
but if there is anything else in which I can aid your search you will
find me in the library."
He bowed and departed, but McCarty spent little time over the case in
which he had evinced such interest. He fingered a few of the slides
and molds tentatively, then closed the case and tiptoeing to the door,
examined the lock with minute care. Upon its surface about the keyhole
a few very fine angular scratches caught his eye and he nodded to
himself in satisfaction. The seemingly untenable thought which had
presented itself to him during his talk with the butler on the way to
the house was strengthening in probability with each point gained,
yet he would have hesitated to lay it before anyone else for serious
consideration, so preposterous would it have appeared.
A glance from the window showed him that the ladder still remained
propped against the ledge as it had been left the night before, and
leaving the museum he descended the back stairs to the passageway
leading to the yard.
Viewed through the slanting curtain of rain the ladder seemed even more
frail and insecure than it had previously as it trembled and creaked in
each gust of wind. Umbrella-less, McCarty turned up his coat collar and
advancing, shook the light support speculatively. Then, heedless of
the downpour he paused and gazed about him.
A few small branches detached by the storm lay beneath the sprinkling
group of stunted trees, but otherwise the yard was immaculate.
Beneath the porch formed by the jutting museum extension a burlap sack
and an orderly row of small wooden boxes met his eye, flanked by a
small heap of loose bricks, and behind, in the kitchen window a tall,
gaunt, female form could be discerned peering curiously at him from
between the curtains but McCarty gave small heed to it. The concrete
floor of the porch was sunk a foot or two below the level of the yard
and clambering down he examined the burlap sack. It was almost empty
but a few potatoes still weighed its end and McCarty dumped them
unceremoniously into a box and began refilling the sack with bricks
from the pile beside him.
When it was half full, he twisted the top, slung it over his shoulder
with a mighty heave and scrambling up to the path once more started for
the ladder.
The curtains at the kitchen window parted and the woman watched with
bulging eyes as he clumsily essayed the first round of the ladder.
It creaked ominously and its slender rungs, slippery from the rain,
afforded but precarious hold for his square-toed, generous-soled boots,
but he plodded upward doggedly.
The ladder trembled and swayed, its lower end held fast in the soft,
glutinous mud but its top grated alarmingly as the center sagged
beneath the unprecedented weight placed upon it. Perspiration mingled
with the raindrops on McCarty's brow and he tested the rung above
apprehensively with each upward step.
The sill of the museum window was within reach when the bending
supports of the ladder emitted a warning crack and McCarty with a quick
swing of his shoulder dropped the bag of bricks with a squelching thud
and crash into the mud below. The sudden release from weight made the
light ladder rebound so swiftly that the climber was almost jarred from
his place, but he held on tenaciously. It had been a close call, but
he had pushed his experiment to the limit of safety and for a moment
he clung there gazing down with immense satisfaction at the bricks
tumbling in all directions from the burst bag.
He had proved his theory, even though he had all but broken his neck in
the effort and his purpose was achieved.
Gingerly he felt his backward way down once more and as his feet
found the solid ground at last he heard the voice of his host, Calvin
Norwood, from just behind him:
"Well, McCarty, upon my soul!"
"Yes, sir." McCarty turned hastily. "I near broke your ladder."
There was more satisfaction than regret in his tones and Norwood
peering at him from beneath his umbrella remarked drily:
"So I observe. Why on earth were you carrying a load of bricks up to
the museum?"
"'Twas just a bit of an experiment, sir," McCarty explained. "A fine
mess I've made of your yard with the bricks, too! I'd no notion the bag
would burst so easy!"
"Well, never mind. Come into the house and let us have a talk." At
arm's length Norwood held the umbrella over his dripping guest and
drew him into the passageway. "You will be the better for a drop of
something, too, man; you're soaked to the skin!"
McCarty was nothing loath and in a few minutes he was seated with his
host before the cracking library fire, a steaming glass at his elbow
and a fragrant cigar poised at an argumentative angle between his lips.
"'What do I think of the Inspector?'" he repeated in response to a
query just voiced by the other. "He's the best man on the force to-day,
sir. There's not much gets by him, though to them that don't understand
his way of getting results he might seem a trifle bull-headed. I worked
under him on many a case and it's seldom he falls down."
"'Bull-headed'!" Norwood repeated in his turn. "I should say he was!
It has never before been my privilege to watch the inner workings of
the police force from the inception of a case, but I must admit I
am disappointed. These sledgehammer methods of Inspector Druet are
certainly not getting him anywhere now; for all his bullying, Margot is
sticking steadfastly to her statement that Mrs. Jarvis' dressing-room
was undisturbed at eight o'clock last night and her manner is so
convincing that if I had not seen the state it was in later with my own
eyes, I declare I would be inclined to believe her."
"They've found nothing else, sir, in the dead lady's rooms?" asked
McCarty after a meditative pause.
"Nothing. I don't know what use the Inspector has made of the glove
you gave him last night--the one your friend found on the top of
the ladder--but I don't believe it will prove of any value in the
investigation."
"No, sir?" McCarty's tone was a question and as the other did not reply
he went on: "'Tis an expensive one, of foreign make, and it might be
easy traced to the shop that sold it."
"But think of the number of men who walk into a shop, buy a pair or two
of gloves and take them away with them," Norwood objected. "There would
be no possible way of tracing them unless they were regular customers,
and then that glove, although originally good, was so worn and soiled
that it may have been kicking around some garage for weeks and changed
hands many times. For some reason, Inspector Druet had turned his
attention when I left from Margot to the housemaid, Etta, but bullying
won't have any effect on that girl."
"Etta?" McCarty bent forward suddenly, both hands outspread upon his
knees. "The one that had her face tied up, that was sick all yesterday?"
Norwood nodded.
"There's no sign of her toothache this morning, but when the servants
over there were told the truth--they had to be, of course, when the
body was brought home--she collapsed. Everyone who came in contact
with Mrs. Jarvis loved her, you know, and though this girl had given
her a good deal of trouble, she seems after all to have worshiped her
mistress, like the rest."
"What kind of trouble?" McCarty asked quickly.
"Well, she was insubordinate, and hot-tempered and sullen by turns.
I've heard Mrs. Jarvis speak of her difficulties with her to my niece,
Joan. I don't think she would have kept the girl in her service but for
the fact of her relationship to the cook. She had to let Dick go."
"Who is Dick?"
"Etta's brother. Oliver employed him for a time as second man, but
he was utterly no good; lazy, impudent, drank up everything he could
lay his hand on and drove old Henry nearly crazy. Oliver told me he
was surprised and touched this morning at the grief Etta displayed,
but it evidently hasn't modified her temper. Inspector Druet tried to
cross-examine her about yesterday, making her repeat what she told
us all last night and she flared up at him like a spitfire and then
refused point blank to answer another question." Norwood chuckled.
"He'll have his hands full with her."
"Mrs. Jarvis knew your friend Professor Parlowe, didn't she?" McCarty
remarked somewhat irrelevantly.
"Yes. It was she who brought me his invitation to join him in his
experiment yesterday," the other responded. "I was engaged when she
dropped in on Tuesday afternoon to tell me of it, but she spoke of
it particularly on Wednesday evening after her dinner party. She was
always so interested, poor dear child, in whatever interested her
friends. That was one of her greatest charms."
McCarty removed his cigar and knocked the ash off carefully on the
hearth.
"Mr. Norwood, who was present at that dinner?"
"Let me see. It was just a small, informal affair, you know. Beside
Oliver, his wife and myself there were the Blakes, the Gardners, Mrs.
Hilton and the Fowlers, all intimate members of their circle."
"Who are they; those people?" persisted McCarty. "What are they like?"
"The Blakes are a bridal couple; he's off to the front in a fortnight."
Norwood explained indulgently. "The Gardners are elderly; they were
friends of Oliver's family. Mrs. Hilton is a young widow, and the
Fowlers are the powder-works people. All quite above suspicion in this
affair, McCarty, I assure you."
"What did they talk about, during the dinner?" McCarty accepted the
final observation with a nod. "You remember, sir, 'twas just after
you'd all gone that Mrs. Jarvis herself went to pieces, if that girl
Margot is telling the truth. If she'd no warning from outside and
nobody else got to her, there must have been something said that
brought her trouble back to her again; something to do with that matter
of blackmail."
"That is quite impossible!" Norwood declared. "The conversation was of
the most general character, as I remember it, and it could not have
had the most remote bearing on whatever this secret trouble is which
was preying on the poor young woman's mind. She seemed as cheerful and
happy----"
He broke off and McCarty, watching him, saw a shadow cross the older
man's face.
"Was she so?" he asked. "Didn't her manner change at all during the
evening, Mr. Norwood? Was she just as gay at the end as she was when
the dinner started?"
"No; I can't say that she was," the other admitted. "It did occur to
me that she grew very quiet all of a sudden; not sad nor troubled but
just silent and abstracted. It was during dinner, but I cannot remember
what the subject under discussion was at the moment. It could only have
been some pleasant triviality. Whatever caused Mrs. Jarvis' change of
mood was merely passing, for she quite recovered her spirits before the
evening was over."
"Before I played the fool with that ladder awhile ago, I was talking to
Captain Marchal in the museum." McCarty lowered his voice and glanced
cautiously about him but the secretary had not been in evidence since
their return to the house. "He tells me that you once made quite a
collection of your friends' fingerprints. Did you ever by any chance,
sir, take an impression of Mrs. Jarvis'?"
"Why, yes." Norwood glanced up in surprise. "I didn't keep the slide,
of course, but the enlarged photograph of it is there with the rest.
What do you want it for?"
"Oh, I just thought I'd like to see it," McCarty responded diffidently.
"Didn't Victor show it to you?" Norwood arose. "Come, then, and I
will. I collected scores but kept just twenty-five aside from those of
interest from a criminological standpoint. I remember distinctly the
occasion on which I obtained Mrs. Jarvis' fingerprints; she didn't
want me to take them for some inexplicable reason, and her husband
teased her unmercifully about it."
As he spoke, he had led the way down the hall to the museum and McCarty
asked:
"When was this, Mr. Norwood?"
"Oh, about four years ago; just after their return from abroad. Here
are the photographs. As you see, each one is plainly marked on the
back----"
He shuffled through the handful of prints which he took from the case
McCarty had previously examined and the latter waited expectantly, but
his host shook his head.
"This is very odd. Mrs. Jarvis' prints are missing, and they are the
only ones that have been mislaid. I told you I had twenty-five such
records; there are only twenty-four here, and hers are not among them."
He eyed his companion in bewilderment. "I--I don't know what to make of
it!"
"Maybe 'tis in some other part of the case, mixed up with those
slides," suggested McCarty. There was a curious tenseness in his manner.
"No; it is not here, anywhere. Really this is most extraordinary! I
was showing it, together with the others to Professor Parlowe only the
other day. I must ask Victor at once----"
"Uncle Cal! I've come home!"
At the sound of the fresh, clear, young voice incongruously joyous in
that room where tragedy and death had stalked but a few short hours
before, both men turned to the doorway.
On the threshold there appeared a pretty, fair-haired girl, her
blue eyes dancing with mischievous delight, her hands extended for
the welcome she knew would greet her. Just behind her stood a tall,
broad-shouldered masculine figure, with hair as light as hers and a
small blonde mustache lifted in a half smile.
"Joan!" Norwood's voice was hushed but filled with emotion as he
advanced to the girl. "My dear, what brought you home? You--you cannot
have received my letter so soon!"
"I haven't had a line from you in days, but I wanted to surprise you!"
She faltered and with a little gesture drew her companion forward.
"Uncle Cal, I've something to tell you, and, oh! I want you to be happy
about it, because I am!"
"Then you don't know? You haven't heard?" Norwood stammered, ignoring
in his troubled preoccupation the significance of her words. "My poor
child----"
"I haven't heard anything!" The gay, heedlessly joyous tones
interrupted him. "But just wait till you hear my news! Uncle Cal, this
is Eric Vivaseur, and though you've never met him before I know you
are going to be very good to him because I--I have promised to be his
wife!"
CHAPTER IX
THE SECOND GLOVE
"'Twas a fine time to be springing a fiancé on the old man!" commented
Dennis Riordan, as the glowing embers from his pipe sizzled on the
still wet pavement. "This is his unlucky week for fair; a murdered body
found in his museum, and a man with a name like a dime novel tacked on
to the family. How did he take it?"
"Dazed, like," McCarty responded. "He shook hands, but his mind was not
on it, and whilst I was trying to make a getaway without being noticed,
the young lady came out of her happy trance and saw there was something
wrong. 'What is it, Uncle Cal?' she asked in a kind of a frightened
whisper.
"'Come into the library, both of you,' Norwood said. 'McCarty----'
"'I'm going, sir,' I told him. 'I'll look in on you later.' And I beat
it, the young man staring after me in a vacant sort of a way and well
he might! From the reception he got he must have thought he was in a
bughouse family."
It was late afternoon and a pale, watery sun had struggled through the
clouds. McCarty had been unable longer to resist the lure of friendly
confab and he and Dennis stood just within the door of Engine House
023 while he took a last regretful pull at his cigar stump and then
flung it into the gutter. As they turned to climb the stairs to Dennis'
quarters above, the latter exclaimed:
"By the powers! Is it tramping across country you've been, on a day
like this? Your boots are an inch thick with mud!"
"Are they so?" inquired McCarty with dignity. "I must have got it in
the Norwood yard this noon when I was fooling around with the ladder."
"The ladder? And what were you doing with it?"
"Carrying a load of loose brick up to the museum window," responded the
other, adding in immense satisfaction, "I figured my own weight and I
added the bricks by guess, in what our friend Terhune would have called
a scientific experiment, and the ladder all but broke under it, just as
I thought it would."
Dennis nodded comprehendingly.
"If you'd asked me, I could have told you without your risking your
neck and your new suit that that ladder never bore the weight of two
people at once, and one of them dead, last night," he observed. "In
spite of Terhune's theory and the lock of black hair caught on the
window frame, Mrs. Jarvis' body was never brought in that way."
"I'm not so sure," McCarty retorted enigmatically. "But there's a lot
of things in this case that contradict each other flat, and it's what
them that's most concerned haven't done and said, more than what we've
got out of them, that makes it such a puzzle. Do you mind the way I
used to work backward, now and again when I was on the force? That's
the way I'd tackle this case, now, if I had the handling of it."
"It looks to me as if they'd said altogether too much," Dennis
demurred. "A pack of lies, I'd call most of it. Why is this girl Margot
sticking to it that the dressing-room was in order at eight o'clock
when at twelve we found it looking as if the German army had been
through it?"
"For a simple reason that hasn't struck the Inspector nor yet Terhune;
she may be telling the God's truth," returned McCarty dryly. "There's
a lot can happen between eight and twelve."
"For the love of Pete!" Dennis' eyes bulged. "Do you mean that the poor
lady wasn't killed at all when we thought? That maybe it all happened
whilst we were sitting there in the dining-room at Mr. Norwood's,
talking so grand and scientific about crime, and that poor thing being
laid out under the very roof----"
"Hold yourself, Denny," interrupted his companion. "I didn't say that.
'Twas the state of the dressing-room I was remarking on. Mrs. Jarvis,
dead or alive, might have been gone from it and it still be in order at
eight o'clock. The attempt at robbery, or the upsetting of the room to
make it look like robbery, could have taken place any time between then
and half-past ten, when the cook and the butler came home."
"You think somebody put up a game? That there was no robbery at all?"
Dennis' tone was awestruck.
"I don't know what to think about it," McCarty replied frankly. "There
were the two girls, one upstairs in bed, the other sewing in the
basement; that is, if you can believe them. It's not likely that one or
the other would hear nothing, though 'tis a solidly built old house,
with the walls a foot thick. Of the two of them, the one upstairs stood
the best chance of hearing what went on, being nearest, but whatever
they know, they're keeping quiet."
"Mac, what were you getting at when you said that Mrs. Jarvis might
have been gone from that room dead or alive? You don't mean she walked
out of it? That she wasn't killed there, but maybe over in the other
house, after all?"
"Corpses don't dress themselves," retorted McCarty. "If you remember,
Denny, when we found the body in the museum, it was dressed in a dark
purple silk, and the scarf that had choked the breath out of her was
blue. Margot told us about getting Mrs. Jarvis undressed and into that
wrapper thing before she left her in the afternoon and we all saw it
there in the bedroom later. Is it likely that Mrs. Jarvis laying down
with a sick headache and hearing a burglar fumbling around in the next
room would have waited to dress herself again before investigating,
or would the burglar after he'd killed her have gone to the trouble?
There's another thing, too. What was Margot doing in the back-yard late
at night when we surprised her?"
"Getting the air, she said," observed Dennis. "She was worrying about
Mrs. Jarvis----"
"Then why wasn't she waiting for her by the front door, if she expected
her to come home that way from the dinner party?" demanded the other.
"Why was she skulking in the yard unless she knew or suspected that her
mistress had gone over to the other house?"
"Then she's in on the whole deal, the blackmail and all?" Dennis cried.
"What has it all to do with Norwood and his house?"
"That's what we've got to find out. It's my opinion that when the girl
discovered her mistress gone, she looked to see what clothes were
missing so as to tell what she had worn. Well she knew Mrs. Jarvis
would not go out to dinner in that plain little dress and as she was
nowhere in the house, Margot must have figured that the only place she
could have gone with no coat or hat was through the little door in the
fence to the Norwoods."
"But why?" Dennis shook his head dubiously. "Why should she lie to the
maid and sneak over there like a thief when she'd been used to running
in and out at all hours with never a question?"
McCarty shrugged.
"Ask me another," he invited. "Why did she get rid of all her own
servants for the afternoon except the one that was sick, and even
invent an errand for Margot? Why was she so anxious that Mr. Norwood
should go to his friend Professor Parlowe at that particular time? I'd
not be surprised to hear it was she suggested to him to let his own
butler off to see his brother, that's in the hospital."
Dennis rose from the side of his cot upon which he had perched himself
and his voice shook with suppressed excitement.
"The secretary; that Frenchman! She didn't try to get him out of the
way!" he exclaimed. "Mac, do you think they had a date over there at
Norwood's? He couldn't have killed her! It would have taken more nerve
than he's got, blind as he is, for him to have walked in that room
with us after, and stood around waiting for us to discover the body!
Though at that, if you remember, he didn't want to go with us, only
old Norwood insisted and told him to his face that he'd not been like
himself all evening! Do you suppose----"
"I don't suppose anything," McCarty observed. "I'm trying to get at the
facts. If she did go over to the Norwood house for any private reason
the secretary may have had nothing to do with it and him being blind
may never even have known she was there."
"Then she went to meet someone else, that's a cinch," Dennis grasped
at another straw. "I thought last night that nobody but a crazy loon
would murder a woman and then cart her body from one house to the next
for no earthly reason before making his own getaway. But look here,
Mac; if she was murdered in the Norwood house, who was it got in her
dressing-room later? Maybe she was killed for something the murderer
thought she would have on her and not finding it, he took a desp'rate
chance and went over and burgled her house!"
"And what would he be after?" McCarty asked in withering scorn. "That
stale Christmas cake or the macaroni-paste letters? Would the fellow be
thinking that she carried them around with her, that he decoyed her to
the Norwood house and murdered her for them?"
"Maybe 'twas for something else, entirely; something that he did find,
after, in her dressing-room," suggested Dennis, brightly. "What does
the Inspector and Mr. Terhune say about it?"
"I've had no speech with either of them, barring a little note that I
found at my rooms this afternoon, asking me to call at Mr. Terhune's
to-night." McCarty paused, and added carelessly, "I'll have to send my
regrets, I'm thinking; I've got another date, with a lady."
For a full minute Dennis stared at his friend, then shook his head
lugubriously.
"Well, they say there's none like the old ones," he observed
cryptically. "I'm surprised at you, though, Mac. To begin sparking and
holding hands at your time of life----"
"I'm holding no hands!" interrupted McCarty in haste. "'Tis only the
movies I'm taking her to; by the grace of God it's too late in the
year, or I'd be let in for a trip to Coney."
Native delicacy struggled with curiosity for a moment and then Dennis
asked:
"And who is your lady friend, if it's not too private a matter?"
McCarty grinned.
"It's Miss Etta Barney."
Dennis greeted the announcement blankly but in the pause that ensued a
light broke over him.
"Etta!" he exclaimed. "The Jarvis' housemaid! Well I knew you'd
something up your sleeve, but a fine couple you'll be, and her with her
face out like a balloon----"
"Barring its natural shape, her face is all right," announced McCarty.
"'Twas so covered with bandages last night that you couldn't tell
whether it was swollen or not but to-day you'd never believe there'd
been a thing the matter with her. 'Tis the quickest toothache cure that
ever I see."
"You're thinking maybe she faked it?" Dennis chuckled. "What would you
with your blarney be finding out that the Inspector couldn't?"
"There's more ways than one of killing a pig!" retorted McCarty
inelegantly. "He tried bullying her and got nothing but a flare-up of
temper for his pains. Of course, she may know nothing but I thought it
was worth a chance, so after I left Mr. Norwood's this morning I walked
around the block to the Jarvis house and rang the basement bell. Etta
answered the door and she was suspicious and fighting mad at first but
I kidded her along; told her what a brute the Inspector was and not to
mind him, that I had no connection with the force and that I'd liked
her spirit, and the way she stood up to him and--aw, well, the upshot
of it is, she's going to the movies with me to-night."
"And a dance she'll lead you, my bold Don John!" predicted his
companion. "If she knows anything, it'll take more than a Saturday
night movie to get it out of her!"
"I'll find out, if it means keeping steady company!" McCarty declared.
"After I'd made the date with her I went and got some lunch and
then strolled back to the Norwood house. The Inspector had left for
headquarters but young Mr. Jarvis was on hand and Terhune, too. Miss
Joan had taken to her bed, sick with the shock of hearing of her
friend's death, but the fiancé, Vivaseur, was still there and 'twas
wonderful the way they'd all cottoned to him, even Terhune; he'd made
a regular hit with him; seemed to know all about his past cases and
Terhune was purring like a pet cat."
"What sort of a fellow is this Vivaseur?" asked Dennis.
"He's British, but you'd not hold it against him in spite of his blonde
little dab of a mustache; a fine figure of a man, though older than
I thought when first I saw him; with a florid kind of a color to him
and not as slim as a youngster. He's got the manners of a gentleman,
however, and a way with women as you could see with half an eye."
"Why is he here philandering, instead of doing his bit?" Dennis
demanded coldly.
"He's done it; got a scar right across his forehead from shrapnel and
some kind of a hurt inside that put him out of the fighting game for
good," he says. McCarty paused and added: "I've not got the number yet
of that secretary, Captain Marchal. Of course, the murder was a shock
to him in his condition but he's not taking it naturally. He acts like
he was waiting every minute for something to drop. He jumped when I
came on him in the museum this morning and whenever Mr. Vivaseur spoke
to him later on in the library he edged off. If there's anything on his
mind----"
"Hey, Denny!" The voice of Mike, fellow member of the engine company,
sounded from below. "Is Mac up there with you?"
"He is that!" Dennis responded.
"Well, tell him to come down. He's wanted by the police!"
A chuckle accompanied the sally, but McCarty wasted no time in
descending, with Dennis at his heels. In the doorway, chatting with the
lieutenant, stood Inspector Druet.
"I thought I should find you here, Mac," the latter remarked. "How
are you, Riordan? Have you two been busy solving last night's little
affair?"
He spoke in bantering good humor, but McCarty noted the lines of worry
and fatigue in his former superior's face and advanced quickly to him.
"I was wishful to have a talk with you, sir. Would you like to step
around to my rooms?"
The Inspector nodded and turned to Dennis.
"I've just arranged with the lieutenant here to let you off for
to-morrow evening," he announced. "Mr. Terhune has planned a little
experiment at his rooms and he wants you to be present with the rest."
"I'll be no party to it, sir!" Dennis declared in some alarm. "I'm
a fireman, not a dummy for him to try out his scientific stunts on.
What's on my mind is my own business and has nothing to do with what
happened last night; I'll not have him dragging it out of me with his
little recording machines!"
"Don't mind him, sir. He'll come, right enough," McCarty assured the
Inspector as they left the firehouse. "He's as wild as the rest of us
to get at the truth of the case. Not that I'm wanting to butt in, but
it's got me going worse than the Rowntree affair last year."
"Has it?" Inspector Druet darted a keen, sidewise glance at him. "What
do you think of it, Mac, anyway?"
"That there's more than one holding out on you, sir," replied McCarty
frankly. "Though who it was got in the Jarvis house, nor how the poor
creature's body came to be on the operating table in Mr. Norwood's
museum instead of the skeleton is more than I can figure out."
"You don't subscribe to Mr. Terhune's theory, then?"
"Well, there's difficulties in the way of it, sir." McCarty remembered
his mud-bespattered legs and gave his overcoat a surreptitious tweak
in the back. "You've the glove that Denny found on the ladder?"
"Yes." The Inspector paused abruptly and then added, "It was you who
notified Oliver Jarvis over the telephone of his wife's death, wasn't
it?"
"It was. That is, I didn't say what had happened. When I got him at his
club I just told him Mr. Norwood wanted to see him right away."
"How did he take it?" asked the other, as they halted on the doorstep
while McCarty produced his keys. "Was he alarmed?"
"No, but surprised, like, as anybody might have been," the ex-Roundsman
threw open the door. "There, sir! First flight up and mind the gas
bracket in the wall; I've scraped my own head on it many's the time."
Inspector Druet obeyed instructions and presently they were seated in
McCarty's shabby, comfortable front room with an open box of cigars
between them and live coals sputtering cheerily in the grate.
"How long had Jarvis been at the house when I got there?" the Inspector
reverted to his subject once more.
"Only a few minutes, sir. Mr. Norwood himself met him at the door and
he said he'd come as quick as a taxi could bring him and asked what was
the matter. His voice sounded concerned, like, but not alarmed; not as
if he was afraid of some trouble come to himself. Mr. Norwood told him
an accident had happened to his wife and then broke down and sent him
on into the museum. 'Twas Mr. Terhune told him finally."
"Did it appear to affect him very profoundly?"
"'Affect him'?" McCarty repeated, regarding the other in puzzled
surprise. "You saw him yourself a minute after, sir. He went stark
crazy when he looked at her face and turned on Mr. Norwood. We had to
pry him loose! He accused the poor old gentleman of having killed her,
but the next minute he came to his senses and apologized, and then he
broke down himself and fell on his knees by the table; that was when
you came in."
There was an unspoken question in McCarty's attitude as though he could
not grasp the significance of the Inspector's trend, but the latter did
not leave him for long in doubt.
"Mac," he said, "is Oliver Jarvis one of those whom you think is
holding out on me?"
"Mr. Jarvis? No, sir! Wasn't it himself that found the Christmas cake
and those letters made of macaroni paste? He could have destroyed them
and no one the wiser except Margot, and she would never have breathed
a word of them if she hadn't seen it was all up. Instead of hiding or
getting rid of them, he's as anxious as anyone to find out the meaning
of it all. No, I'd hardly think Mr. Jarvis was keeping anything back."
Inspector Druet smiled, then his face grew thoughtful and almost stern.
"If neither of the two maids admitted to the Jarvis house the person
who ransacked the dressing-room he must have got in himself, and he
didn't force an entrance, because there are no marks; he let himself in
with a key. Who would be likely to have a key to that house?"
McCarty drew a deep breath.
"You don't mean that 'twas Jarvis himself----" he began.
"I know I can trust you, Mac. I don't want this mentioned to anyone
until I have completed my investigation along this line. If you
remember, when Jarvis described his movements of yesterday, he said
that he had an appointment with his attorneys immediately after lunch,
and had gone from there to the French consulate, where he was detained
until past seven. As a matter of fact he did not reach his attorney's
office until three, left at four-thirty and did not show up at the
French consulate until after six. So much for his alibi."
"But why should he----" McCarty floundered helplessly. "There's no
sense to it, sir! His own wife----"
"Nevertheless, he makes no attempt to account for that hour and a
half." The Inspector shrugged, and then leaned forward. "I'll tell you
something else, Mac. You asked me just now about the glove that Riordan
found on the ladder outside the museum window. Here it is; and here's
the mate to it!"
Before McCarty's amazed eyes he drew from his pocket a pair of
oil-stained brown gloves and threw them on the table. Then he added:
"I found the second one this afternoon, among Oliver Jarvis' motoring
togs, in his own room!"
CHAPTER X
IN THE DARK
Ex-roundsman McCarty had just completed his sartorial equipment the
following evening and stepped back to view with immense satisfaction
the mirrored effect of a new and--as he fondly believed--conservative
necktie, when the entrance bell rasped a raucous summons.
Pressing the button which released the lock downstairs he lost himself
again in admiration of the vividly striped knot beneath his chin until
a lugubrious shadow darkened the doorway, when he turned to behold
Dennis Riordan, also in state attire but with apprehensive gloom riding
upon his countenance.
"All ready for the shindy?" McCarty nodded his greeting. "Come in,
Denny; don't be standing there looking like an undertaker's assistant.
'Tis no wake we're invited to!"
"I'm far from a well man," announced the visitor. "I've had a kind of
a sinking feeling all day and it's in my bed I should be this minute
instead of letting Terhune make a monkey of me!"
"In your bed? In a funk-hole, you mean?" retorted McCarty, severely.
"I'm surprised at you, that's always the first up a ladder with the
hose and the last to jump when a wall begins to go, to be scared of Mr.
Terhune and his little machines. Of course, if your conscience is not
clear----"
He paused expectantly and Dennis rose to the bait.
"'Tis as clear as your own the night, but much good that'll do if his
unholy contraptions work crooked. Do you mind the time he all but
accused you because in one of the stunts he pulled you got excited and
your pulse or something registered a hundred and eighty in the shade?
I'm in no condition to have any tricks pulled on me, and although I'm
not a religious man and well you know it, Mac, I misdoubt that this is
tempting Providence on a Sunday evening."
"After the quiet little games you've sat in of a Sunday, I guess you'll
not be getting further odds on your chances in the next world by what
you'll be doing to-night," McCarty commented with withering sarcasm.
"Come on, now. I want a word with Mr. Terhune before the show starts."
It still lacked twenty minutes of the hour appointed when they reached
the apartments of Wade Terhune. A tall, lanky, studious-looking young
man admitted them and his pale, nearsighted eyes blinked behind their
huge-rimmed glasses as he beheld McCarty.
"How are you, Bassett?" The latter extended his hand cordially.
"'Tis like old times to be in on another of Mr. Terhune's scientific
try-outs. We're a trifle early, I'm thinking----"
"That's all right, Mr. McCarty," the assistant responded. "Mr. Terhune
thought you might come before the rest and he told me to send you right
into the consulting-room."
Dragging the reluctant Dennis in his wake, McCarty proceeded down the
hall and rapped smartly upon a door at its farther end.
"Come in. Ah, it is you, McCarty!" Terhune glanced up from a coil of
silk-covered wire which he was manipulating in the center of the great,
bare room. "Good-evening, Riordan. Don't mind that! You haven't hurt
it."
"That" was a screen which the unfortunate Dennis in his effort to
render himself as inconspicuous as possible, had knocked over. Behind
it was revealed a long table on which stood a row of glass retorts not
unlike huge thermometers. Each contained a thin tube of ruby-colored
liquid and the outside glass was spaced off in degrees. A series of
separate wires led from the table to the floor and disappeared beneath
a rug. Upon the wall above the table a huge square frame jutted out,
enclosing what appeared to be a chart of some sort upon which long
perpendicular lines had been marked, the spaces between headed with
numbers, ranging from one to seven. Separate wires ran from the bottom
of the frame to the base of each retort.
With a muttered ejaculation Dennis drew hastily away from the
mysterious mechanism he had so unexpectedly exposed and Terhune turned
to McCarty with a slight smile.
"You spoke of one of my scientific experiments last year as a 'séance,'
my dear McCarty. The test we are going to use to-night will be somewhat
like one." He gestured to the circle of chairs which surrounded him.
"I have had very little time in which to prepare my apparatus, but I
do not expect a conclusive result to-night, just a mere indication to
prove that my hypothetical reconstruction of the affair has a basis of
fact. I'm sorry that you could not come last night, for I wanted an
opportunity to talk over a certain phase of the case with you prior to
this experiment, but, after all, I fancy that you and I are not working
from different angles in this case."
"I'm not working on it at all, sir; I'm an innocent bystander," McCarty
asserted blandly, ignoring Dennis' eye. "Of course, I'm interested in
it being as I was on hand, when the body was found, but I've no more
idea who murdered the poor lady than a blind man."
"Blind men sometimes know more than we credit them with." Terhune's
smile had deepened in significance. "If you could be guilty of
intentional ambiguity, my dear McCarty, one would conclude that you had
indeed formed an opinion not far removed from my own. But why is our
friend Riordan seemingly practicing the goose step?"
Dennis halted in some confusion.
"It's them wires," he explained. "I've no mind, Mr. Terhune, sir, to be
electrocuted before my time, and I don't know what I may be stepping
on."
His tone was distinctly aggrieved and their host hastened to reassure
him.
"The wires are quite harmless. Come over here and I will explain the
nature of our little experiment to-night. You see these seven chairs
arranged in a circle? When the others come I will ask you all to seat
yourselves and take hold of this wire with your right hands on the
bulbs. You will then be blindfolded and listen to a brief résumé of
the case. That is all that is required of you; just to listen, and not
relax your hold upon the bulb. It is quite simple, you see."
"Blindfold?" Dennis betrayed symptoms of renewed apprehension. "Mr.
Terhune, if it's all the same to you, I'd just as lief look on. I never
was much of a hand at parlor games, and if anything's sprung on me
sudden I'm liable to break up the circle."
"Nonsense! You are not under examination, my good fellow, but I
want you to take the test along with the rest. Mr. Vivaseur has no
connection with the case, either, but he is going to put himself in my
hands, in order to witness a practical demonstration of my methods."
"Vivaseur? The young lady's fiancé?" Dennis momentarily forgot his
perturbation. "And will she be here, too, sir?"
"No. This is strictly a stag affair. It is a test primarily of mental
suggestion and the blindfolding is merely as an aid to concentration."
The door-bell pealed authoritatively and as his host and McCarty turned
to greet the arrival of Inspector Druet, Dennis gazed wonderingly about
him. The wire, unwound, formed a huge ring in which at a distance of
about a yard apart were set seven bulbs covered with a gray, felt-like
substance. Dennis pressed one gingerly and it gave beneath his fingers
like a half-deflated rubber ball.
Dropping it hastily, he glanced about the room. It was lighted solely
by a large center dome in the ceiling, heavy curtains covered the
windows and alcove, and the fireplace was bare. On either side of the
hearth stood a square cabinet resembling a talking machine, but save
for these, the rug, a tall Colonial clock, the seven chairs arranged in
a circle and the screen in the corner, the huge room was empty.
His inspection finished, Dennis' hand strayed longingly to the pocket
wherein his pipe reposed, but that solace was denied his crawling
nerves, and selecting a chair as far removed as possible from the
screen and the devilish mechanism it concealed, he seated himself with
the air of a martyr, just as the door-bell rang once more.
Calvin Norwood, Oliver Jarvis, Captain Marchal and a large, fair-headed
man whom Dennis assumed to be the Englishman, Vivaseur, were ushered in
solemnly by Bassett, who closed the door and retired behind the screen,
and after subdued greetings, Wade Terhune took the floor.
"As I have just explained to our friends here, this experiment is
merely a little test in mental suggestion and I shall be grateful if
you will all assist me by concentrating as profoundly as possible upon
what you will hear," he began. "I will ask you to sit motionless, and
not to make the slightest sound until the test is completed, but to
listen very closely and attentively. Captain Marchal, will you sit
here, please? I remember that at the dinner on Friday night which had
so tragic an aftermath I promised to arrange to have you present at the
next scientific experiment upon which I might be engaged, but I confess
I little imagined under what circumstances I should keep my word."
His tone was sympathetic, with just the right blend of cordiality
and courteous deference, yet McCarty glanced sharply at him. The
allusion to a blind man returned to his mind and as its significance
dawned upon him his eyes sought the face of the secretary. He found
it resolutely composed, but haggard and weary with an almost waxen
pallor. Unutterable sadness, the numbed reaction of shock and a settled
melancholy he read there, but no sign of the disquiet of a secret
knowledge as yet unrevealed, at which the criminalist had hinted.
As requested, the young Frenchman had seated himself at Dennis' left
and beside him Terhune placed Oliver Jarvis. Then Calvin Norwood,
Vivaseur, Inspector Druet and McCarty, the latter at Dennis' right,
completed the circle of seven. When they had seated themselves,
Terhune, standing well outside the circle, reached over Norwood's
shoulder and picked up the wire.
"Mr. Norwood, will you kindly hold this bulb lightly in your right
hand, with the fingers closed over the top, the palm encircling it and
the thumb underneath? That is it. The bulb, I may add, is perfectly
harmless, an ordinary rubber sphere filled to a certain degree with
gas and covered with an absorbent substance. Now will each of you
please take up the bulb nearest you on the wire and hold it in the same
manner, with the right hand only? Remember that under no condition must
any of the bulbs be dropped until the test is at an end. I am going to
ask you also to submit to being blindfold to ensure your undistracted
concentration."
Bassett produced the folded white cloths and Terhune made the rounds
of the circle carefully adjusting each bandage. He started tactfully
with Oliver Jarvis, at Captain Marchal's left and finished with Dennis,
at his right. The Frenchman divined his action and smiled faintly in
acknowledgment.
"I am already blindfold, is it not so?" he remarked quietly, adding
something which McCarty failed to hear, for Dennis' muttered
declaration intervened:
"Never again unless I'm caught napping and subpœnaed!" he asserted in a
sepulchral undertone to his friend. "The wire's across my knees and I
can feel it sending a cold thrill to the marrow of me! Mac, if anything
should happen, the Firemen's Benevolent Association----"
"Shut up, you loon!" McCarty growled. "Whist, now, and listen. You're
worse than a woman!"
Dennis received the scathing rebuke in injured silence and Terhune's
quiet, level tones sounded once more from somewhere behind them.
"Try, please, to concentrate, to fix your minds only on what you will
hear, and to visualize the scene I am about to describe to you. All
ready, Bassett? Lights out!"
Utter blackness succeeded the gray film before McCarty's eyes and in
the tense silence which ensured the chair at his left creaked audibly.
"We are now in a room with which you are all familiar." Terhune's voice
had sunk to a droning monotone. "It is large with a very high ceiling,
a fireplace at the side, and four windows at its farther end, reaching
to the floor. Cabinets and glass cases line the walls and above them
are shelves containing various bottles and jars, while still higher,
against the walls themselves, are hung assortments of odd weapons,
knives, clubs and firearms. In the center of the room is a long table
covered with a red and yellow blanket which is stained in dark patches
of brown."
As he paused Dennis drew a stertorous breath which ended in a gulp as
McCarty's elbow dug viciously into his ribs. The rest sat as though
spell-bound.
"It is twilight and the corners of the room are in shadow." The
monotonous voice went on. "Dusk is creeping in at the windows and the
wind is rising."
Was it the imagination which Terhune had so often accused him of
lacking, or did a faint moaning as of wind in the chimney actually come
to McCarty's tingling ears?
"The door opens. See! A man enters. His face is in shadow but he paces
softly, impatiently up and down. He halts. He is listening, waiting.
Now he resumes his pacing. The dusk deepens----"
This time there could be no mistaking his senses, and McCarty felt
the hair rise upon his tingling scalp. He had _heard_ a key click in
a lock, felt a light current of air as a door opened and the sound of
footsteps on bare, polished floor came plainly to his ears, halting
and then continuing again. Moreover, a faint odor of tobacco assailed
his nostrils; tobacco of a peculiar blend which seemed strange and yet
vaguely reminiscent.
The little group sat tense and motionless, and in the utter stillness
the echo of measured footsteps seemed to beat upon McCarty's brain.
That odd, halting, hesitant yet curiously rhythmic triad; where had he
heard it before? It ceased as he pondered and the low, steady voice
droned on:
"He stops once more and listens. He hears light footsteps on the stairs
of the passageway, the rustle of a gown. A woman stands in the door, he
advances to her----"
"A-ah!" A harsh, shuddering cry, like that of a tortured animal broke
in upon the monotone. It rose from somewhere within the circle,
quivered on the air and died away, but McCarty could not have told
from which side it had come. He was straining every sense to grasp the
intangible, elusive sensation which had stolen upon him even before
that cry had cleaved the air.
Above Terhune's voice there had sounded the patter of light footfalls,
the soft, sibilant rustle of silk, and now another odor, pungent and
cloyingly sweet, obliterated the tantalizing scent of tobacco. It was
a rare and exotic perfume, and as it mounted, heady as new wine to his
brain, McCarty seemed to stand once more beside that still form upon
the table and again the blind secretary's horror-stricken cry rang in
his ears: "The scent of the Rose d'Amour! It is Madame Jarvis!"
"They meet. We cannot hear what they say, for their voices are low,
but his tones are impassioned, hers quiet and restrained. See! He is
urging, pleading with her; she refuses to listen, refuses to take him
seriously, to fall in with his mood----"
A woman's voice, high, and sweet, and clear as a rippling brook
echoed in soft laughter through the room and then the words came with
startling distinctness:
"Really, I don't know what in the world to say----"
"Her laughter maddens him!" Terhune's voice broke in upon that other
eerie one, and his droning note had changed. Into its monotone there
crept a breathless quality as of suspense, and it rose in a crescendo
of swift, dramatic fervor. "He tries to take her in his arms, but she
repulses him, at first gently, then imperiously. He becomes enraged,
she defies him! See! He is advancing upon her with menace in every
line of his crouched figure! She tries to elude him, to escape, but he
seizes her! They struggle, she is fighting for her life!"
He paused abruptly upon the final word, and before the ringing echo of
his voice had died upon the air a succession of other sounds, pregnant
with suggestion, took its place.
McCarty could have sworn that close beside him in the darkness two
bodies were locked in a death-struggle. He heard the man's stertorous,
grunting breath, the woman's sobbing gasps, the scraping shuffle of
feet upon the floor, a muttered oath, a smothered cry and the sharp
sibilant sound of tearing silk. Then a shriek rang out hideous in its
import, rising in an agony of mortal fear and dying in a horrible
choking gurgle which ebbed into silence.
McCarty had forgotten his immediate surroundings, forgotten that tense
circle of which he formed a part; he was back in Norwood's museum in
the very presence of wanton crime and death and the voice of Terhune,
monotonously level and unemotional once more, failed to break the
illusion.
"The woman's body is huddled motionless upon the floor by the table now
and the man is standing over her. He realizes what he has done, his
passion is dead within him and he is scheming to gain time before the
inevitable discovery of his deed; time in which to divert suspicion
from himself. His clenched hand falls upon the table and as he feels
the woolly texture of the blanket, and the hard bony structure beneath
an inspiration comes to him. He jerks the blanket from the table,
seizes the skeleton and carrying it to the fireplace thrusts it up the
chimney."
As he spoke the sound of footsteps came again, a harsh rattle as of dry
and brittle bones, and the soft rustle of silk once more. Then a dozen
hasty steps, a metallic click and the creak of a casement, accompanied
by a sudden blast of chill air.
"He has lifted the woman's body to the table and covered it with the
blanket. Now he has gone to the end of the room and opened one of the
windows. But see! A long strand of black hair is wound about the button
on his coatsleeve; it catches on a broken sliver of wood on the window
frame as he leans out and clings there as he closes the window without
fastening it and turns----"
The footsteps with their curiously hurried yet hesitating gait passed
so close that McCarty felt that he could have reached out and touched
the man, but a strange numbness held him in leash.
With straining ears he followed the subdued, diminishing tread until it
died away and in another moment a dull, grating thud ensued.
"The man has descended to the yard, raised the ladder and placed it
against the window ledge. Now he re-enters the house, mounts the
stairs, closes the museum door and departs. Do you hear him? He is
walking down the hall toward the front of the house. His footsteps
die away in the distance; he has gone! But here in this room that
motionless figure lies beneath the blanket while the shadows creep
nearer and nearer, the gloom deepens and night comes."
"Evelyn!" A deep-throated cry, hoarse with anguish, pulsed upon the air
and ceased in a moaning gasp as Terhune called out in brisk, normal
tones:
"Lights, Bassett! Gentlemen, the experiment is over!"
CHAPTER XI
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
For a full minute McCarty blinked dazedly in the sudden glare of light.
His thoughts in their abrupt transition from the realm of mental
suggestion to manifest reality failed at first to co-ordinate and he
sat as one emerging from a trance.
Then gradually he became aware of moving figures and subdued voices
about him. Wade Terhune was standing over Oliver Jarvis holding a
glass to his client's lips while Norwood hovered solicitously about,
visibly shaken by the ordeal through which he had passed but in obvious
indignation.
"Sorry to have knocked you out like this, Mr. Jarvis." Terhune's smooth
tones rose above the general stir. "I tried to prepare you----"
"It was brutal!" Norwood interrupted. "If this is your science, Mr.
Terhune, this wretched clap-trap to reconstruct a scene of horror,
as false as it was cheaply melodramatic, and force a bereaved man
to undergo such wholly unnecessary torture, the old third-degree
methods of the police are infinitely preferable! Try to put the whole
abominable thing from your mind, Oliver! We know that what we have
listened to here to-night is sheer rot; Evelyn was killed in her own
apartments, poor child, and all this elaborate farce cannot twist the
facts to prove a baseless theory!"
Jarvis shook his head and rose, steadying himself with a hand on the
older man's arm.
"No, Uncle Cal. I have the utmost confidence in Mr. Terhune and he
must pursue the investigation in his own way. I knew in advance what
was going to take place to-night and I gave him permission to use that
phonographic record of Evelyn's voice. I thought I had steeled myself
to endure the sound of it, but I must have overestimated my strength
and the realism of the whole thing swept me off my feet. Do you think,
Mr. Terhune, that your test has been productive of the result you
anticipated?"
"I cannot tell until I have examined the records," Terhune responded,
unruffled by Norwood's tirade. "I will confer with you early in the
morning, before the funeral. You must try to rest to-night and steady
your nerves, for the utmost we may already have accomplished can at
best be only circumstantial and the most difficult task still lies
before us."
A new voice at McCarty's right caught his attention and he turned to
find the Englishman, Vivaseur, in animated conversation with Inspector
Druet.
"By Jove, it was immense!" His face was flushed and his gray eyes
sparkled with enthusiasm. "No wonder this chap is celebrated at home
as well as in the States for his amazing work! The crime was a hideous
affair, of course, and I'm cut up about it on Miss Norwood's account
and all that, but as I didn't know the lady I could approach this thing
from a more impersonal, analytical point of view than the others. The
illusion was perfect! I don't mind telling you, Inspector, that it
quite gripped me. Gad, what an actor the fellow would have made!"
"Mr. Terhune's methods are unique and he has obtained some creditable
results from them," Inspector Druet responded somewhat dryly. "We don't
always agree with him in theory, but he has given the department some
valuable pointers in more than one case."
Vivaseur stared, then laughed.
"Quite so. I'd forgotten that Mr. Terhune was a free lance. Naturally
your methods differ. It's been ripping, though, to be in one of his
tests; haven't the least idea what he was getting at, but I wouldn't
have missed it for worlds!"
Terhune had left his client and McCarty's eyes followed him as he
started toward the screen when Captain Marchal suddenly barred his way.
"May I be permitted to congratulate you, Monsieur?" His tone was quiet,
with no suspicion of a sneer, and yet there was a quality almost of
challenge in it which brought the other up standing. "As a grim little
playlet of the Grand Guignol, produced in darkness, it would have been
admirable; as an exposition of the case upon which you have bent your
distinguished efforts it is of a surprisingly novel point of view. Mes
compliments!"
"I am glad you were interested, Captain!" Terhune smiled steadily. "To
make use of your comparison, the drama is not yet finished; it still
lacks a climax, but that will come."
"When it does, let us hope that it will not prove an anticlimax,"
Marchal shrugged slightly. "Is it that we are no longer required here,
Monsieur? We may depart?"
"Yes. The experiment is finished."
Captain Marchal's heels clicked with military precision as he bowed
and turned to Calvin Norwood while Terhune advanced toward the screen.
McCarty rose to follow when a voice close at his side made him pause.
"Please let go of the bulb, Mr. Riordan," Bassett was urging patiently.
"It is all over. Mr. Terhune has finished with the experiment and I
want to take up the apparatus now. Mr. Riordan!"
But Dennis was oblivious. He sat rigid, with his eyes squeezed tightly
shut and an expression on his face of one who had been set apart from
the things of this world. One hand gripped the arm of his chair and the
other clung tenaciously to the rubber sphere on the wire.
"Denny, for the love of God, come out of it!" McCarty shook him
vigorously. "Is it hypnotized you are? Open your eyes, you big chump,
and leave go of the bulb!"
"Eh?" Dennis drew a deep breath and relaxed limply, blinking with the
air of a suddenly awakened somnambulist. "Did he get away? Where's the
corpse?"
"Laid out these two days and well you know it, if you'll get your wits
about you!" retorted McCarty, jerking the bulb from his friend's grasp.
"A fine exhibition you're making of yourself!"
"But I heard it, the murder and all!" Dennis affirmed in an awestruck
whisper. "Mac, where the devil was I? What's come to me!"
"You've been listening to Mr. Terhune's little spiel, with phonographic
accompaniments and a little cologne and cigarette smoke thrown in for
good measure," responded the other. "'Twas all a trick, man, but it got
me, too, for a minute. We'd better be getting on our way now; the rest
are all leaving."
Terhune, emerging from behind the screen, caught the reluctant note in
his former colleague's tones and came forward.
"Wouldn't you and Riordan like to wait and learn the result of the
experiment? Bassett and I are going to check up the records now and we
will find out if our man has betrayed himself."
"Thanks, sir, we'd like nothing better than to stay for the finish."
McCarty accepted promptly before Dennis could speak. "'Twas a
remarkable stunt you pulled off the night, Mr. Terhune. If it's not
asking too much, would you tell us later how you worked some of it?
The fight, and all?"
"Go and see for yourselves while I get rid of these people." Terhune
waved toward the alcove. "The properties are all there, behind the
curtains, and I'll explain their use to you later."
"Come on!" McCarty seized Dennis' arm and pulled him to his feet as
their host turned to his departing guests.
Reluctantly Dennis permitted himself to be led to the alcove, but when
the curtains parted he recoiled.
"There's another of them!" he gasped. "Let me get out of this! What
with spooks and murders I've been through plenty this night to turn me
gray, and if I'd known that thing was here the saints themselves could
not have got a blindfold on me!"
He pointed with a trembling finger at a skeleton which lolled
lackadaisically in a chair grinning up at him, but McCarty dragged him
past, and over to a table against the farther wall.
"Do you see this cigarette end and the ashes in the tray? That's
where the smell of tobacco came from. And look!" He picked up a tiny
crystal atomizer and pressed the bulb gently, releasing a fine spray of
perfume. "That's the scent Mrs. Jarvis herself used, God rest her soul!
Don't you remember it? It was clinging to her yet when we found the
body."
Dennis sniffed experimentally.
"One perfumery smell is like another to me except the stuff the barber
douses me with when I'm not looking," he remarked conservatively.
"What's the bolt of silk for, and that sand-paper paddle?"
"To make the sound like the rustling of her dress and the tearing of it
in the struggle," hazarded McCarty. "I don't know, though, about the
opening of the window, nor the ladder----"
"I used this heavy bookcase door to simulate the opening of the
casement." Terhune's voice sounded from just behind them. "This board
scraped along the mantel shelf produced the effect of the ladder
grating against the window ledge. It is quite simple, you see."
"But the skeleton, sir?" Dennis ventured.
"I borrowed that from an artist friend of mine, to get the real sound
of rattling bones, at the moment when I described the substitution of
the body for the skeleton," explained Terhune. "Bassett imitated the
footsteps; he is light on his feet and I rehearsed him carefully this
afternoon."
"And the struggle, sir? I could have sworn I heard a man grunting
and muttering and breathing hard, and a woman's voice raised in that
fierce, choking cry at the end," McCarty declared.
"You did. It was a talking-machine record made especially for me
yesterday by two professionals at the studio of the company from
which I purchased my machines in here." He led the way back into the
consulting-room and motioned toward the cabinets on each side of the
hearth. "The first woman's voice that you heard--the little laugh, and
the sentence: 'Really, I don't know what to say'--was the living voice
of Mrs. Jarvis."
Dennis crossed himself surreptitiously and even McCarty started in awed
astonishment.
"You mean, sir, it was a record she talked into herself?" he asked.
"Yes. I learned from Miss Joan Norwood that one evening a few months
ago she and her uncle, Oliver Jarvis, his wife, and several of their
friends amused themselves by talking into a reproducing phonograph.
She had preserved the records and I persuaded her to lend me the disk
upon which Mrs. Jarvis' voice was recorded. The opening sentence of her
speech was all I could use, but it was startlingly apropos."
"It was all of that, sir," Dennis averred solemnly. "'Twas like black
magic, the whole of it! But for what did we hold on to them little
rubber balls strung on the wire?"
"I'll demonstrate that to you now. Ready, Bassett?"
"Yes, sir."
The assistant, followed by Inspector Druet, appeared from behind the
screen.
"First of all, you must know that I timed my theoretical reconstruction
of the murder scene very carefully." The criminalist began. "You
perhaps did not observe that a double set of wires extended from the
ring upon which the bulbs were strung. One set ran under the rug to the
screen and the other led to the clock. It is a physiological fact that
nervousness superinduced by fear or a kindred emotion betrays itself by
dryness of the mouth, stricture of the throat, irregular action of the
heart and moisture and contraction of the hands. It is to the latter
that I have confined myself exclusively during this test. Of course,
the result cannot be infallibly accurate, for allowances must be made
for the physical condition of each individual which only a physician
could diagnose, but we will obtain at least a significant indication in
each case."
He walked over to the tall, Colonial clock which stood against the
wall and opened the narrow doors of its base. The interior was
brightly illuminated by electric lights in seven long slender tubes
of varicolored glass set against the sides and back. A series of
slender-pointed steel indicators, like the hands of a clock, reached
from each tube to a dial beside it on which numbers from one to twenty
were arranged in a circle.
"You will observe that the glass tubes are tinted the seven chromatic
colors of the prism, with violet as the base, graduating through the
different hues to red at the top, and the extent of the illumination
varies in each tube," Terhune continued. "The bulbs which each of
you held in your right hand were covered with a highly absorbent
composition and these tubes register the degree of moisture exuding
from your palms at given intervals. The actual test was arranged to
take just twenty minutes to complete, from half-past eight to ten
minutes before nine, and I had rehearsed it, timing each sentence and
pause for the suggested action until I knew to the minute when each
phase of the scene I reconstructed was reached. The indicators reaching
out from the side of each tube to the dial beside it records the exact
moment when the degree of exuded moisture, superinduced by mental
suggestion, increased.
"For instance, take bulb number one, which was that held by my client,
Mr. Jarvis. He is naturally in a feverish, weakened condition and
super-sensitive to suggestion. The degree of moisture in the palm of
his hand increased steadily through the violet, indigo and blue stages
to the fourth--the green--where it remained until the tenth minute of
the test; the minute when the voice of his dead wife sounded from the
talking machine. Then the record leaped two degrees, through yellow to
orange, and there remained. At no time did it reach the maximum--or
red--degree at the top of the tube.
"Number two--Mr. Calvin Norwood--shows but a normal degree of moisture
until the third quarter of the test, the struggle, when it increased
slowly two degrees, but became no more intense. Number three--Why, this
is indeed curious!" He pointed to the third tube, which was illuminated
to the very top. "The moisture excretions here are abnormally profuse
from the start and quickly reached the maximum, but since the increase
was steady and not in spurts it indicates general nervousness rather
than the effect of emotional reaction. Bassett, who held the third
bulb?"
"Mr. Vivaseur, sir."
"Ah, I thought so." A gratified smile touched Terhune's thin lips.
"From his appearance I should have believed him to be in better
physical condition than this indicates, but his interest in the test
was so keen that he betrayed it from the start, despite his phlegmatic
exterior. Number four--that was yours, Inspector--remained absolutely
normal throughout, and McCarty--number five--only registered one degree
above normal. Our friend Riordan, here, is evidently in better shape
physically than Mr. Vivaseur, but his record only falls one degree
short of the Englishman's. Your hand perspired with abnormal profusion
from the start, Riordan."
"And why wouldn't it, sir? I'm reeking from every pore of me." Dennis
announced with dignity. "'Tis a cold-blooded fish that could sit quiet
and blindfold in a room where there's murder being done, and not sweat
like a glass of--of ice-water on a hot day!"
He glanced witheringly at McCarty, but the latter was watching Terhune.
The latter with furrowed brow was examining the last tube and when he
spoke his usually level tones were charged with suppressed excitement.
"The man who held the seventh bulb was normal at the start, but almost
immediately his record jumped two degrees. That was even before I
described the arrival of the woman. Then it shot up three degrees--to
the yellow space--until the tenth minute of the test, when the voice
came from the talking machine. From that moment on it gradually
subsided to normal!" He paused and added slowly: "I confess I had not
foreseen this. Captain Marchal must either have assumed quick control
of himself or----"
"Marchal?" The Inspector laughed shortly. "Oh, he's out of it, Mr.
Terhune! Your reconstruction of the murder must have been all Greek to
him."
Terhune shrugged.
"Let us see what the other record reveals." He suggested, leading the
way to the screen. "These glass retorts register the contraction of the
fingers on the bulb and the degree and period of pressure which are in
turn recorded numerically upon the chart."
The spaces between the perpendicular lines on the large framed
chart upon the wall were covered now with irregular rows of figures
illuminated from behind and the thin thread of ruby-colored liquid in
each retort had risen to varying heights.
"I will not go into a maze of technical detail now as to the process
by which the pressure upon the bulbs is transmitted and registered.
It is too complicated and if you are unfamiliar with the pulsometer
invented by Professor Wekerle of Buda Pesth, and in use by the criminal
investigators throughout the continent to record the pulse beats
of suspects under examination, an explanation would be well-nigh
unintelligible to you," Terhune vouchsafed. "I will merely read you the
result recorded here.
"Mr. Jarvis held the bulb lightly at first, but his hand contracted
convulsively at the suggested entrance of his wife and again at
the sound of her voice. During the struggle he gripped the bulb
tenaciously, but from the moment of the final death-cry his hand
became limp. That is perfectly natural and quite as I anticipated.
Mr. Norwood's fingers worked nervously about the bulb, alternately
energizing and relaxing until the struggle, when he, too, squeezed the
bulb in a sustained pressure, which gradually diminished.
"Number three--Ah! as I expected! Despite Mr. Vivaseur's profuse
exudations, denoting his absorbed interest, he held the bulb lightly,
as I had instructed, without the slightest tremor or contraction until
the end. However, you, Inspector, were not as unimpressed as you would
have us believe!" He turned with a smile of triumph to the official.
"The voice, the struggle, the death-cry and even the sixteenth minute
of the test, when the suggestion was conveyed of the strand of hair
being caught on the window casing, each made you start and tighten your
grip upon the bulb!"
"Possibly." The Inspector admitted dryly. "Apart from its theoretical
value the little scene you staged for us was realistic enough to make
one forget momentarily that it was a mere ingenious illusion."
"And you, McCarty!" Terhune pointed to the fifth record upon the wall.
"You, at least, comprehend the motive underlying my experiment, I see.
When the cigarette was lighted----"
"Yes, sir," McCarty interrupted quietly. "I thought I recognized the
kind of a sweetish smell of that brand and the gait of those steps
coming and going reminded me, too, of some I'd heard just lately. I
knew then who you had picked out as the murderer and 'tis small wonder
if I squeezed that bulb like a sponge!"
"You registered surprise at the voice on the machine, and sustained
excitement during the struggle." Terhune pursued. "After that, however,
you relaxed your hold upon the bulb. The end of the test did not
impress you as the first had done. Still stubborn, eh, McCarty? Still
unwilling to accept any fact based on other than most obvious evidence?"
"Well, Mr. Terhune, I don't know, of course, what there is back of all
this," McCarty responded cautiously. "You see, I'm not on the case,
sir, and I've no way of learning how you doped it out."
"I don't see anything particularly significant in all this," Inspector
Druet remarked with a touch of impatience. "What is the answer, Mr.
Terhune?"
"We are coming to that," Terhune replied. "The sixth record is fairly
obvious. From the beginning of the test to its completion the bulb was
compressed in a grip which never relaxed an iota."
"That was Denny," observed McCarty. "He'd be holding on to it now only
we pried him loose!"
"The seventh and last record, however, gives us something vastly
different." Terhune's tones had quickened. "Evidently our friend
Captain Marchal also recognized the odor of that particular brand of
cigarette, for instinctively his fingers tightened about the bulb.
The pressure increased at the suggested entrance of the woman and
held until the talking-machine record was turned on. Then it relaxed
utterly and after that there were several quick, hard pressures; not
nervous or spasmodic but more as though he clenched his hand in anger.
The choking death-cry, the incident of the strand of hair catching on
the window casing, the placing of the ladder against the ledge and the
final retreating footsteps each caused him to grip the bulb tightly
in quite unconscious muscular contraction, but the pressure reached
its highest degree when I spoke of that strand of hair. Gentlemen, I
told you before this little experiment was attempted that I expected
nothing conclusive from it, but merely an indication as to whether my
theory was tenable or not. I think we have here all the confirmation
necessary to warrant a request which I am about to make. I have
indisputable evidence that Captain Marchal was madly in love with Mrs.
Jarvis. I propose to prove to you that she was totally unaware of this
unfortunate attachment, having taken merely a kindly, pitying interest
in the young, blind officer which he had mistaken for a reciprocal
infatuation; that he became desperate as the time approached for her
departure for France; that on some pretext he lured her to the museum
when he knew their interview would be undisturbed and there declared
his passion. When she repulsed him and he realized the hopelessness of
his suit he killed her. Until such time as I am able to produce proof
of this, Inspector, may I ask that you place Captain Marchal under
strict surveillance?"
"Every occupant of both houses has been shadowed from the hour the
crime was discovered," Inspector Druet responded. "At this stage of the
investigation I am not prepared to refute your theory, Mr. Terhune, but
ingenious as your reconstruction of the murder was, I am afraid you
will find that it won't work. For one thing, there's that little matter
of blackmail which doesn't fit in with your theory. Captain Marchal
only came to this country three months ago----"
Terhune smiled in infinite superiority.
"My dear Inspector, Captain Marchal had nothing whatever to do with
that. It is a coincidence, of course, but Mrs. Jarvis' death was in
no way connected with it. Whatever her secret, the blackmailer would
not have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. You will remember
that in those fantastic communications composed of macaroni paste she
was never threatened with death, but only with exposure; it was to the
blackmailer's obvious interest to keep her alive and he is probably
highly chagrined at the tragic turn of affairs. It is unfortunate
that we seem to be invariably working at cross purposes, but as in the
past I think you will find my theory to be the true solution of the
affair. Scientific testimony is incontrovertible and in spite of his
self-control the man has laid bare his innermost thoughts to us here in
these records.
"He recognized the odor of his particular brand of cigarettes--a brand
practically unknown in this country--and knew that his secret had been
discovered. He betrayed his emotions in the ensuing scene but with the
sound of his victim's voice on the machine he pulled himself together
and realizing the vital need of caution in this test which he now saw
was directed solely at him, he deliberately relaxed. However, he could
not help that instinctive clenching of his hand at the points which
told most against him. There cannot be the slightest doubt of it,
Inspector. Captain Marchal is the murderer of Mrs. Jarvis."
CHAPTER XII
"BACK FROM THE DEAD"
"I've had enough and to spare of the workings of science!" Dennis
announced as he and his companion trudged homeward through the crisp
night air. "It's small use the Inspector has for it either, if you
believe in signs."
"Well, the Inspector has one theory of the case and Terhune has
another, and I have mine," McCarty responded noncommittally. "No two
of them are alike and all of them may be away off the truth, but
the Inspector is right in one thing, to my way of thinking; even if
the murder was not a direct outcome of the blackmailing the two are
connected, and I'd not be surprised if the same hand that pasted those
macaroni letters tightened the scarf about the poor woman's throat.
Terhune figured it out as I did that she came to the Norwood house and
to the museum of her own free will, but right there our ideas of what
actually happened don't tally, in spite of the fact that I don't know
what she went there for, if 'twas not to see Captain Marchal."
"And what is the Inspector's notion?" asked Dennis. "Who does he think
did the murder?"
McCarty shook his head.
"If he suspects anyone in particular, 'tis not the Frenchman," he
replied evasively. "'Twas just to talk the case over with me in a
general way that he came to the engine house for me yesterday."
"And what about your trip to the movies last night?" Dennis demanded
in swift after-thought. "I've not seen hide nor hair of you all day.
Did that Etta come across with any dope?"
"Not yet, but, Denny, 'twas a real hunch I had! She knows something,
all right, but she's too scared to breathe it. She's the gabby kind,
and a murder like that happening in the family she worked for would, in
the ordinary course of things, give her a topic to talk about to the
end of her days; she would be so full of it now that you'd not be able
to get a word in edgeways about anything else, if she took you for a
friend and had nothing to hide. As it was, she was ready enough with
her conversation on any other subject, but every time I went back to
the murder she shut up like a clam. I don't want to be rushing her too
much and get her suspicious, but I'm going to keep on the job till I
find out what's on her mind."
"Look out you don't let yourself in for breach of promise while you're
doing it," Dennis cautioned forebodingly. "To my mind, there's only
one way that either the Inspector or Mr. Terhune will make headway and
that's by finding out what it was Mrs. Jarvis was being blackmailed for
and who sent her the cake and those crazy letters."
"There's that," McCarty conceded. "But 'twould be a long step toward
the truth if we knew why she went to the Norwood house at all, that
afternoon."
The ex-Roundsman had invested the inheritance from his uncle in an
installment-plan colony known as Homevale and thither business called
him the next morning. His pride and satisfaction at becoming a landed
proprietor had long since been dampened by the insatiable demands of
his tenants and as he boarded the train for his estate he was in a mood
of dull resentment against his deceased relative. Had it not been for
the money he would still be on the force; a captain by now, perhaps, or
high in the detective bureau. He might have had an official hand in
the Jarvis case, instead of being as now, a mere looker-on; tantalized
by its possibilities, engrossed in the problem and yet destined to
stand aside.
His negotiations with the luckless householder who had summoned him
were brief and of an all but violent nature, and he returned fuming to
his apartments. There, thrust under the door, he found a torn and not
over-clean scrap of paper which swiftly altered his mood.
"Mr. McCarty please call at once on Mr. Norwood. Most important.
Billings."
For a moment he stared at the roughly penciled message, glanced at the
telephone, hesitated, then clapped on his hat and made for the street
once more.
He found Calvin Norwood pacing the floor of his drawing-room with
wrathful indignation in every line of his small, immaculate figure.
"Well, McCarty, this is a pretty state of things!" he exclaimed as
they shook hands. "I sent for you because you seem to be the only one
concerned with this mysterious affair who has an open mind and a grain
of common sense left. The police have ridiculed me and derided my
efforts to assist them in the past, but now they have surpassed even
their former record of stupidity and insolence! Do you know that I am
actually under surveillance? I, and every member of my household, even
to my niece and her fiancé? It is monstrous, insufferable!"
"Is that so, sir?" McCarty observed innocently. "I'd not be concerned
about it, Mr. Norwood. The department follows a regular routine in
every case and it's no sign that you're under suspicion of the murder;
it's just because the body was found here in your home. Belike they'll
shadow everyone connected with Mrs. Jarvis till they've found out who
killed her."
"But it is a direct imputation of suspicion!" the little elderly man
fumed. "Evelyn Jarvis was like a daughter to me, my niece loved her as
a sister, and as to Mr. Vivaseur, he never even laid eyes on her! He
is generous enough to appear merely amused at the espionage to which
he has been subjected in entering and leaving this house, but it is a
hideously embarrassing position for both my niece and myself. He is a
member of one of the oldest noble houses in England; in fact, there
are only three lives between him and a dukedom, and although I am not
a snob, I was delighted that my little girl and the inheritance which
will be hers are to be allied to such a distinguished family. It is
infamous that in addition to her grief for her friend she should be
subjected to such indignity; it is enough that the very threshold of
her romance should be clouded by tragedy! And now, to add to my general
distress of mind, Victor is down!"
"Down?" McCarty repeated.
"He is desperately ill; some sort of fever, I think. I was afraid of
it from the first, I thought that the shock of the murder would be
too much for him in his weakened condition. It is a great pity, for
he was rallying so bravely from the horrors he has been through and
the crushing blow of his own affliction." Norwood glanced nervously
about him and then bent forward confidentially. "When we returned last
night from Mr. Terhune's ghastly experiment I saw that it had affected
him, but good heavens! we were all wrought up about it. It was the
most harrowing exhibition of chicanery imaginable! However, I was so
concerned about Oliver that I gave little thought to Victor and he
retired to his room almost at once.
"This morning when he did not appear at breakfast, I sent up to inquire
about him and Billings reported that he paid no attention to the knock
upon his door, but seemed to be talking to someone in the room with
him. I went up immediately myself and found the poor lad tossing upon
his bed, muttering deliriously and in a high fever. I gave him an
opiate to quiet him and he is sleeping now, but I do not know what his
condition will be when he wakes."
"You didn't send for a doctor, sir?"
Norwood hesitated.
"No," he replied at length. "It will be necessary, of course, if he
grows worse, but I think I can bring him around all right. A doctor
would insist upon installing a nurse at once, and just now I want no
intruders in the house. Besides, in his delirium, poor Victor's mind
is naturally dwelling on the crime and he utters rambling sentences
which might sound strange to an outsider's ears; I should not care to
have even the servants hear him, for they are an excitable, hysterical
lot. That is really why I sent for you, McCarty. We are all due at
the funeral this afternoon, of course, and I thought that perhaps you
wouldn't mind sitting with him until I can return and relieve you."
McCarty's pulse gave a sudden leap, but he responded quietly:
"I'll be glad to, sir. I'm sorry for the poor young man."
"And you'll keep whatever you may hear to yourself?" Norwood continued
in nervous haste. "He seems to be living over again in his feverish
brain that hideous farce we were forced to listen to last night, and
Inspector Druet or Mr. Terhune in their frantic endeavors to fasten
the crime on the first unfortunate person to give them a shadow of an
excuse would seize upon his senseless, incoherent words as evidence
upon which to base an odious suspicion. You know as well as I do,
McCarty, that the boy is utterly innocent, but after last night's
travesty of an experiment and my discovery that the Inspector has
deemed it necessary to place us all under surveillance I would believe
them capable of anything!"
"They'll get nothing from me," McCarty promised. "You know, sir, I've
no connection with the investigation, but I'm mighty interested in the
case, all the same. What do you think about it yourself, Mr. Norwood?"
"I don't know. I scarcely dare to let my mind dwell on it." He passed
a shaking hand across his eyes. "When I remember Evelyn as we have
always known her; tender, sweet, gentle, open-hearted and open-minded
as a child, and then remember those sinister letters and that anonymous
Christmas gift--that cake which she preserved so carefully and so
secretly--I shrink from facing the possibilities of the truth. How
little we know, after all, of the innermost depths of those about us!
Understand, McCarty, I am not taking it for granted that her secret
was necessarily of a heinous or disgraceful sort, but the very fact
that she did not take her husband into her confidence when the first
threatening letter reached her, that she submitted tamely to the
blackmail imposed upon her, is evidence enough that a secret existed
which she was compelled to guard at all costs. A week ago I would have
scorned such a suggestion; even now I cannot realize it, I cannot
reconcile it with my conception of the girl's character. It's like a
nightmare!"
"It is certain, then, that Mrs. Jarvis did pay the money demanded from
her?" asked McCarty. "Have they found out yet how much was gotten out
of her?"
"No, but the letters speak for themselves. The tone of the last one
shows that she must have communicated with the blackmailer in some
way, protesting against the sum required and stating her inability to
comply; she probably put a note to that effect with whatever money she
placed under the rose bush on that night last May. Do you remember how
that last letter in macaroni paste was worded?"
"I have a copy of all three of them here," McCarty produced his wallet.
"The last one begins: 'Lady can and will. 1000 under bush 26 each month
small price safety.' The one before that, the second one, asks: 'Does
lady forget date of next Saturday night?' That must have meant the
twenty-sixth of the month. It must have been on that date years gone
that whatever it was happened about which Mrs. Jarvis had to pay for
silence."
Norwood shuddered.
"Poor child! Why did she not let the truth be known and brave the
consequences? I am as sure as I am of my own Joan that Evelyn had
been guilty of nothing her husband could not fully and freely have
forgiven. She must have gone through untold suffering and suspense last
year! I wonder that I did not notice the change in her which her maid
described, but I was engrossed in my own affairs. It was just before my
departure for France."
"Was it a criminal case that took you over, sir?"
"The greatest in history." Norwood smiled slightly. "I went to inspect
the devastation in certain areas in France for a relief committee
of which I am a director. I sailed in June and returned in August,
bringing Victor with me to act as my secretary. He is the last of a
very old family, aristocratic but impoverished, and I became greatly
interested in him."
"It was in September that Mrs. Jarvis first began talking of going to
France, wasn't it?" asked McCarty.
"Yes. Oliver is barred from active service because of a concussion of
the brain which he suffered in a football game at the university some
years ago, but I think my description of what I had seen in France
influenced them both in their decision to take up reconstruction work
there. Poor Evelyn was so happy in anticipation of it, so filled with
plans--" he broke off and added after a pause: "That was why she took
so deep and sympathetic an interest in Victor and it is only natural
that her terrible death should have been such a shock to him. Last
night's ghastly business was the final straw laid upon his overwrought
nerves."
"I'll go up to him now, Mr. Norwood; shall I?" suggested McCarty. "He
might wake up and need something or start raving again."
"It would be best, perhaps, if you don't mind," Norwood assented with
obvious relief. "Your lunch will be brought up to you on a tray and
I'll show you what medicine to give him if the delirium continues; that
is all that can be done for him, to try to keep him absolutely quiet
until the fever has run its course. I'm afraid it will be a long vigil
for you, McCarty, but I'm grateful to you for undertaking it."
He led the way up one flight of stairs to a small but cheerful room on
the second floor.
"I put Victor in here, next to my own dressing-room because it is
nearest the head of the stairs," he explained. "I wanted to save him as
much groping about as possible. Come in. See, he is still asleep."
In the semi-gloom of the drawn curtains the figure on the bed lay
motionless save for the spasmodic rise and fall of the coverlet across
his breast. As McCarty bent over him a broken sigh fluttered from the
parted lips and they twitched but no words came.
Norwood whispered instructions about the medicine and withdrew and the
volunteer nurse settled down to his vigil.
The face of the unconscious man, relaxed and shorn of the mask of stern
repression and control which it habitually wore, was haggard and tragic
in its revelation of suffering. All the agony, mental and physical,
of his affliction and the inferno through which he had passed was
written there, and for the first time McCarty realized the weight of
the burden which the proud, self-contained young man had borne in mute
resignation, and must continue to bear while he lived. He felt a sense
of shame as though he were intruding upon a privacy that was almost
sacred, but even as he averted his eyes the sick man stirred upon his
pillow and a hoarse mutter issued from his lips.
"That voice! If I could be sure! But no, it is impossible----"
He lapsed into a rapid staccato murmur of French unintelligible to
McCarty, but the latter had heard enough to turn his thoughts into a
new channel.
The "voice" must mean, of course, the phonographic record made by the
woman now dead but what doubt was it that thrust its way uppermost in
Marchal's mind, even in the throes of his delirium? What question was
it that haunted him?
The murmuring gradually died away and for a space there was silence
save for the irregular breathing of the sick man. Then one of the thin
hands clenched and fell across his breast as though he would have
struck himself a blow but that his strength failed.
"If I had waited! Dieu, if only I had waited one little minute longer!
But how could I know?" His tones had risen in a sort of wail and then
as swiftly changed.
"The dead!" It was a mere toneless whisper. "Back from the dead!"
McCarty's superstitious mind recoiled, but the whisper ceased and the
steadying, rhythmic breath told that the sufferer had sunk once more
into profound slumber. Had he been living over again the horror of the
previous night's experiment, or had his disordered brain conjured up a
vision of the woman whom in life his sightless eyes had never beheld?
The speculations of the watcher were interrupted by a low knock upon
the door.
"H'Ive put your lunch h'on a table in Mr. Norwood's dressing-room,
sir," Billings announced. "'Ow is the Captain, h'if I may arsk?"
"He's coming along all right, Billings." McCarty tip-toed ponderously
from the room and closed the door behind him. "Rest is all he needs
now, and plenty of it."
"He was right bad this morning, sir. Gave me a turn, it did and no
mistake, to 'ear 'im talking to 'imself when h'I came to call 'im. H'I
would 'ave taken my h'oath there was two of them in 'ere, sir!"
The butler's manner was full of portentous gravity, and McCarty drew
him into the dressing-room.
"What was he saying?" he demanded.
"Well, sir, h'I've said nothing to Mr. Norwood, but the poor young
gentleman was ravin' first in that foreign lingo and then in h'English
and he kept sayin' h'over and h'over: 'Blind! Who would believe? I
cannot speak!' And then, sir, 'e cried h'out in quite a terrible voice
that turned my blood cold in my veins: 'It is you who killed her!'
'Ow I got downstairs, sir, is more than I know for my legs give under
me----"
"Is that all?" McCarty turned to the table with affected indifference.
"He didn't know what he was saying, of course. That's only the murder
on his mind, like it is on all of us. He's got a touch of fever, and
dreaming all kinds of things about it, but he'll wake up himself again
and none the worse."
McCarty ate a hasty luncheon and returned to the sick-room with the
butler's words ringing in his ears. Was the accusation which had issued
from the lips of the unconscious man mere idle raving, or had he indeed
some secret knowledge of the crime which he dared not divulge for lack
of proof?
Victor Marchal still lay as he had left him, but after an interval his
sleep became troubled once more. Strange visions peopled his wandering
mind, past horrors returned and for a nerve-racking hour McCarty
listened with bated breath while the other, now in English and now in
French, made graphic by his tone and expression, led his men once more
into the battle which had cost him his sight and lived again the hours
of his Gethsemane in No Man's Land.
Then the cause of his delirium changed. A softer expression stole over
his worn features, a faint smile of ineffable pathos hovered about his
lips and he murmured so softly that the words were scarcely audible:
"Mais je t'aime! It cannot harm thee for thou wilt never know. In thy
divine pity and kindliness thou art as blind as I to the worship in
my heart which I may not speak! Only to myself may I whisper thy dear
name. Evelyn! Evelyn!"
McCarty stiffened in his chair. Terhune had been right! There was no
mistaking the note of hopeless love in those faint tremulous tones,
but the words themselves belied the criminalist's theory. Here was no
eager, jealous, destroying passion, but a humble adoration. Abashed,
the watcher drew back as again the feeling of honest shame possessed
him for the part which he was playing and in that moment the smile
faded from Victor Marchal's lips and a spasm of grief contorted his
face.
"Dead! But I shall not speak! That one service I may render, that the
secret shall never be known. Only when I am sure of that other, then it
shall be between us!"
CHAPTER XIII
THE BLACK WALLET
When Calvin Norwood returned he found McCarty still seated by the bed
and Victor Marchal sleeping deeply.
"The fever is broken, I think, sir. His forehead is cool and damp,"
announced McCarty in a cautious whisper. "I managed to get a dose of
that medicine down him about an hour ago like you told me, and he's
been lying there like a child ever since."
"Good! He will rest quietly now for an hour or two at least." Norwood
turned again to the door. "Come downstairs and we can talk."
With a relieved glance at the unconscious man, McCarty followed his
host from the room and down to the library. That silent hour which
had ensued since the astounding revelations had reached his ears had
brought a swift inspiration and a plan which he meant to put into
immediate execution. He was no diplomatist, however, and while he cast
about in his mind for a way to broach his subject, Norwood interrupted
his train of thought.
"How was he, McCarty, before you gave him the medicine? Pretty bad,
eh?" He spoke perfunctorily, but his eyes gleamed with unconcealed
anxiety behind their huge-rimmed glasses.
"Yes, sir. He wandered some, like anybody does in a fever," McCarty
admitted. "He wasn't what you'd call violent, though. I've seen them
when they'd want to throw themselves out of bed entirely."
"Did he talk much? What did he say?" His eagerness betrayed itself now
in his tone and McCarty responded with deliberation.
"Well, the half of it was French, Mr. Norwood, and that let me out. For
the rest, one minute, he'd be thinking he was back fighting in the war
again, and the next he'd be puzzling his poor sick brains about the
murder, but 'twas all in a jumble, like, and you could hardly make head
or tail of it. Do you think he'll be all right now the fever's broke?"
"Unless he's in for a complete nervous breakdown." Norwood moved
somewhat impatiently in his chair. "But tell me what he said about the
murder. Did he allude to last night?"
"Not in so many words. I don't remember rightly just what he said, sir,
it was all so mixed up, but he seemed to be wondering who could have
done the murder and once he said something about how kind she'd been to
him, mentioning no names," McCarty lied blandly. "I'm thinking the war
is on his mind as much as the murder, if you ask me."
"Hah!" Norwood emitted a snort of evident satisfaction and relief. "I'm
glad the poor fellow has turned the corner, anyway. Now, if Mr. Terhune
and Inspector Druet will leave him alone and not excite him with their
fool tests and questions, he may pull himself together in a few days. I
appreciate your remaining with him to-day, McCarty. I knew you were too
sensible to take any stock in the ravings of a sick man, but I wouldn't
say as much for those who are conducting the case. We were shadowed
even at the funeral and I don't mind telling you that I'm getting
confoundedly tired of it!"
"So it's all over, sir; the funeral?" McCarty asked. "How is Mr. Jarvis
taking it?"
"He bore up splendidly, considering the frightful strain he is under.
The crowd was terrific; there was a mob of morbid sight-seers extending
for a solid block or more, and the police had difficulty in forcing a
way through for the funeral cortège. Poor Evelyn; poor child! Well, it
is over and now we must bend all our energies to finding the wretch who
brought this terrible thing upon us. I've dabbled in crime mysteries
for years, as you know, but somehow I cannot take hold of this, I
cannot grasp it. The blow struck home too closely for me to get the
right perspective on it, if you know what I mean. Joan says it is a
judgment upon us--having poor Evelyn's body found here--for maintaining
that collection of crime relics. She always hated it and could never be
induced to enter the museum."
"It's a wonderful collection you've made, though, Mr. Norwood." McCarty
seized artfully upon his opportunity. "There's none other like it in
the country, and you're the envy of the whole department."
Norwood's slight dapper figure straightened and he stroked his pointed
beard complacently.
"It contains a bit of evidence of almost every known form of crime," he
remarked. "I started it many years ago, with a small bottle of poison
tablets which, labeled 'saccharin,' had lain upon a certain lady's
boudoir table in full view for days while the authorities searched far
and wide for her rival's murderer. I have added other relics to it as
time went on and opportunity offered until I flatter myself that it is
a fairly complete collection."
"It is that!" McCarty agreed heartily. "But you've not found much to
add to it lately, sir, have you?"
"Indeed, yes. It has been greatly augmented within the last year or
so," replied the other. "The rope with which old Ogilvy was hung by his
own valet, who afterward cut him down and gave the alarm of suicide;
the germs of typhoid by means of which the notorious Doctor Venner
disposed of his invalid wife's rich relations, the furrier's knife
which figured in the Rankin case, and many more came to me through
various channels. When we were so tragically interrupted the other
evening I was on the point of showing them to you."
"Couldn't you----" McCarty hesitated. "Would you feel like showing a
few of them to me now, sir, and telling me their history? I suppose
after what's happened you'll want to fight shy of the museum for a
while, but I've a tremendous interest in it. Many's the time in days
gone that I heard of your collection but never did I think I'd see it
with my own two eyes."
"I promised Joan that the museum would be kept locked until her
marriage next month." Norwood hesitated. "She vowed that unless I gave
her my word she would not remain under my roof; she feels a nervous
horror of the whole thing, you see. However, she won't be home for an
hour or so yet--I persuaded her to allow Vivaseur to take her for a
short run out into the country in his car after the funeral for she
has been cooped up for days, crying her eyes out and I don't want her
ill on my hands, too. I'll be glad to show you a thing or two which
will interest you, McCarty, and I assure you that in spite of what has
occurred I feel no qualms about entering the museum where the result of
my life work is stored. Come along."
As they passed down the hall McCarty asked suddenly:
"Did you come across that missing fingerprint photograph yet, sir; the
one of Mrs. Jarvis' impressions?"
"No. It slipped my mind completely and I forgot to ask Victor about
it," his host admitted. "However, as I told you, it can only be
mislaid."
He produced his key and opened the door and together they stepped into
the room. The pale wintry rays of the westering sun slanted obliquely
in at the tall windows, gleaming mistily on the glass tops of the cases
already veiled with a film of dust and a stale, musty odor prevailed,
as of an apartment long untenanted.
"Phew! The room was aired thoroughly on Saturday, but it is stuffy in
here already," Norwood advanced and opened one of the windows wide,
then turned and took from its hook upon the wall a length of knotted
rope. "This is the Ogilvy noose. The valet had cleverly fabricated a
lot of circumstantial evidence to convey verisimilitude to the suicide
theory, but he made one fatal error; the peculiar formation of the knot
proved conclusively that the aged millionaire could not have adjusted
it himself. Moreover it has a certain odd twist, as you can see, which
was found to be the species of knot used in staking down balloons
prior to an ascension, and investigation disclosed the fact that early
in life the valet had been an exhibitor at county fairs; a parachute
jumper. A nice bit of detail, wasn't it?"
"It was that!" McCarty examined the rope with an air of absorbed
professional interest and handed it back. "How long have you had it
here, sir?"
"Since the conclusion of the trial, eighteen months ago," Norwood
responded. "Here are some of Doctor Venner's typhoid germs which
were found secreted in his bathroom after the fourth mysteriously
coincidental death from that disease in his household in as many
months. He had placed the germs in the water cooler and his insistence
upon having that article installed directed the first suspicion against
him. A friend in the District Attorney's office who knows of my hobby
procured the specimen for me last summer. This is the furrier's knife
of which I told you. I do not believe that an implement with a keener
blade than this exists. It was sewn into the ermine collar of an
evening coat designed for Mrs. Judson Grey in such a manner that the
point would penetrate the fur and pierce the neck near the jugular vein
when the garment was fastened. A sudden death in the family sent Mrs.
Grey into mourning, however, and she gave the coat, unworn, to her
niece. The unfortunate girl died in a taxi on her way to the theatre,
as you may remember, and the ensuing investigation placed the blame on
the establishment which had made the coat, but it is very generally
surmised who the real culprit is."
"It's a wicked-looking knife, and no mistake," commented McCarty. "Did
you add it to your collection lately, Mr. Norwood?"
"About two months ago. This five-dollar gold piece is one of those made
by the Delmore counterfeiting gang. It came into my possession purely
by chance."
"When was this, sir?"
"In October." Norwood looked his surprise at the persistency of the
question. "Why are you so interested in the dates, McCarty?"
"Because I know you've no time to be showing me all your collection
now, Mr. Norwood, and the relics you've got just lately are what I'd
rather know about than those of cases long past and gone. There was one
thing you mentioned last Friday night whilst we were all having dinner
with you." McCarty paused and then added: "You were going to show it to
us, you said, sir, but instead we came on the murder. I don't recall
what it was exactly but 'twas something you told us held the only clue
to a mystery that had set New York by the ears a good while ago. You'd
only got it within a few days----"
"Of course! The Hoyos wallet!" Norwood's face lighted eagerly and he
turned to a tall cabinet against the side wall between the fireplace
and the corner where stood the case of fingerprints. "It has not
entered my mind since the discovery of poor Evelyn's body. You
remember the affair, don't you? It was a nine days' wonder a decade
ago. Hoyos was a foreigner of somewhat obscure antecedents but supposed
wealth who was breaking into society of a sort by means of Wall Street.
There were rumors of wild parties on his yacht and one night he
disappeared from on board; weeks later his body was found in the river,
fearfully mutilated, and the case was never cleared up. But where can
the wallet be? I was sure that I put it here."
While he talked Norwood's slim, nervous fingers had been running over
the assortment of documents and note books with which the narrow
shelves were filled and now he stood back gazing in perplexity about
him.
"Perhaps Captain Marchal has moved it?" suggested McCarty.
"No. He didn't know where I had placed it and he never touches this
cabinet, for its contents are of no use to him in cataloguing the
collection. He cannot see to read the notes and other papers, you know,
and these blank books are filled with my own private memoranda of the
different cases in which I have specialized. No one ever touches them
but myself. I cannot understand it!"
"Maybe you put it somewhere else yourself, sir, by mistake." McCarty
had approached and stood looking over the other's shoulder. "What did
the wallet look like?"
"It was the usual-sized bill folder, of very fine grained black seal
worn brown at the edges, and contained two letters----" Norwood broke
off. "What can have happened to it? I know I did not touch it after I
put it away here last Tuesday afternoon; I never mislay anything and I
had no occasion to open this cabinet again until Friday, just before
I went to Professor Parlowe's. Then I came to get out some data on
a recent poisoning case that I wanted to discuss with him, and the
wallet was here. I distinctly remember seeing it, for an idea came to
me to take it along and show it to the Professor; I decided not to do
so, because he is only interested in poisoning cases--he is an eminent
toxicologist, you know--and when he is engrossed in an experiment he
resents bitterly the introduction of any other topic. I closed the door
of the cabinet but did not lock it; in fact the key is still here in
the lock as you can see for yourself, McCarty. Someone must have taken
it out during the excitement following the discovery of the murder!
But who would have any interest in it? The case has been shelved and
forgotten, even by the authorities."
"If you are sure it has been taken, sir, whoever did it must have known
where to look," observed McCarty. "Did you show the wallet to anyone
after you got it or tell them where you had put it?"
"No, but anyone familiar with the museum and my method of arranging
its contents knows that I keep all documents and papers here." Norwood
ran his fingers through his hair. "But what am I saying? What possible
object could anyone I know have in taking it? Of course, it being a
wallet, someone who had access here may have thought that it contained
money and may have appropriated it. It could have been seen through the
glass door and the key was there in the lock."
"Who could have got in here?" McCarty asked. His eyes had narrowed
swiftly and there was a note of suppressed eagerness in his tone which
the other was too engrossed in his fresh problem to be cognizant of.
"Didn't you say Captain Marchal was with you in here that afternoon
just before you left to call on your friend the professor? Didn't
Captain Marchal come back after you'd gone to put away some notes he'd
been copying?"
"Not copying. Victor cannot see to read notes, you must remember,"
Norwood replied testily. "I said he had transcribed them. During the
last month, while he was familiarizing himself with the use of the
typewriter I went ahead with my own preparation of a monograph on the
various objects in my collection and talked my subject-matter into
a dictagraph for Victor to transcribe in his leisure moments. The
dictagraph is in the library beside his typewriter and the cylindrical
records for it are kept in the drawer of that cabinet over there. He
took a record or two to work on while I was away that afternoon and the
papers he put back were those upon which he had typed what the machine
had dictated to him. When I spoke of anyone who might have access here
I was thinking of strangers; those detectives from Headquarters or the
Homicide Bureau or the men who came with the Chief Medical Examiner to
take the body away."
"You'll not be finding any of them monkeying with petty larceny!"
remonstrated McCarty loyally. "Who knew that you had the wallet,
anyway, Mr. Norwood? Who did you tell?"
"No one. That is, only a few of my most intimate circle," the other
amended. "I wasn't sure of obtaining it until it was actually in my
hands. The woman had been dickering with me for her price, but I was
afraid until the last moment that she would back out of her bargain."
"What woman?"
"The one in whose possession the wallet had been all these years; a
former stewardess, I believe, on Hoyos' yacht."
"And you got the wallet from her last Tuesday?" A swift memory of what
the butler had told him darted across McCarty's mind. "Did she bring
it to you late in the afternoon? Was it her you were talking to in the
parlor and could not be disturbed when Mrs. Jarvis called to tell you
about the experiment the professor was going to make on Friday?"
"Yes. How did you know?" Norwood paused and then added impatiently:
"That has nothing to do with the disappearance of the wallet, however.
I shall make a thorough search for it to-morrow, and question Victor as
soon as he recovers, but I am convinced that it has been taken!"
"You said that you told a few people about it, sir? Who were they?"
McCarty persisted, his breath quickening a trifle in spite of his
effort to appear calmly indifferent. "Did you write to anybody about
it?"
"Only my niece, Joan, and that was a week before the wallet actually
came into my possession; when the woman first approached me with
her offer to sell it, in fact. Victor knew about it, of course, and
Billings may have heard us discussing it at the table. But this is
absurd! He has a superstitious horror of the museum and couldn't
be induced to come in here on a wager. Besides, the wallet and its
contents would be of no use to him." Norwood hesitated. "I cannot
think----"
"Did you speak of the wallet to the Jarvises?" McCarty interrupted
suddenly.
"I may have done so. Yes, I believe that I did." Norwood's tone was
constrained.
"Before the woman brought it to you or after, sir?"
"Afterwards. That is, I--I think it was. I cannot remember exactly."
There was a furtive reluctance in his reply which did not escape
McCarty's ear, and he asked quickly:
"Wasn't it at that dinner party you told them of it? The dinner they
gave in their own home on Wednesday evening?"
"It may have been. Yes, I am under the impression that it was."
Norwood's perturbation was manifest and he added nervously. "However,
that is beside the point. You are probably right, McCarty. A thing like
that doesn't disappear by itself and no one would have the slightest
reason for removing it. I must have mislaid it in the excitement
following the murder----"
"Mr. Norwood." McCarty faced him and gazed steadily into his shifting
eyes. "When you told the Jarvises about getting this wallet and the
letters or whatever was in it did the rest of the people who were there
at the dinner hear it too?"
"Naturally, since I told of it at the table," Norwood responded in
unguarded haste. "Nobody was particularly interested, however, beyond
mere idle curiosity about an old, forgotten case. I don't remember
discussing it with anyone else, and if I did it doesn't matter,
McCarty. Now that I think it over I can see that I must have mislaid it
myself. I will doubtless find it to-morrow."
He closed the cabinet door and turned with an air of finality as if to
lead the way from the museum, but McCarty lingered.
"What was in those letters, sir, that were in the wallet? You said
yourself that they were the only real clue to the mystery of how the
man came to his death. Who wrote them?"
"I don't know!" Norwood wheeled about irascibly. "The woman who sold
them to me claimed that they were written by someone who had good
reason to want Hoyos out of the way, but naturally she would not
disclose their contents until I had paid for them. I was obliged to
take them blindly at her valuation and trust to luck that I had not
been swindled."
"But you read them after, sir!" McCarty exclaimed. "You must know what
was in them! You couldn't have put them away with never a look after
being so anxious to get them and paying out good money----"
"I was called away," Norwood demurred hurriedly. "I--I did glance
over them the next day, but the ink had faded and the writing was
almost illegible. It would have been necessary to study them under a
magnifying glass, and I hadn't time then. That was Wednesday, you see,
and on the following day something or other occurred which put them
out of my mind. I did not think of them again until the wallet caught
my eye when I went to get the memorandum to take with me to Professor
Parlowe's. For all I know they may have been a mere fraud and the woman
an impostor. People know my weakness and have tried to swindle me
before this. I--I haven't the least idea what the letters contained or
who is supposed to have written them."
He raised his eyes defiantly to meet McCarty's steady gaze and read
there the futility of his attempt at evasion. He had lied and the other
knew it. A dull, mottled red crept into his cheeks, but with a shrug
he turned once more and led the way to the door and this time McCarty
followed in silence.
CHAPTER XIV
THE TWENTY-SIXTH OF MAY
Inspector Druet was seated at his desk at Headquarters, scowling over
a voluminous sheaf of reports when ex-Roundsman McCarty put in an
appearance at the close of the day. To an observant eye, the latter's
extreme affability of manner would have savored of blandishment, but
the official was too engrossed in his own perplexities to heed.
"I thought I'd just drop around and see how things were coming,"
McCarty announced, appropriating a chair by the desk and producing two
opulently banded cigars from his pocket. "Try one of these, sir. You'll
not find it bad."
"Since when are you smoking perfectos, Mac?" inquired the Inspector
with a shrewd smile at his former subordinate.
"Since I've been hobnobbing with society." McCarty regarded the glowing
tip of his own cigar somewhat dubiously. "They've a cool, sweet pull to
them but they've not the body that I'm used to. However, I've no doubt
Mr. Norwood's a judge and if Billings can educate himself up to them, I
can."
"Norwood!" the Inspector snorted. "His meddling is one of the worst
nuisances we have got to contend with in this case! Has he been
regaling you with one of his pet theories?"
"No, sir, though you'd hardly blame a man that's had the body of one
of his best friends dumped down on his doorstep, as you might say,
for wanting to take a hand in finding out who's responsible for it,"
McCarty paused and added slyly: "especially if he and his relations are
being trailed whenever they poke their noses out of doors."
"We've drawn a blank there so far, I'll admit." Inspector Druet thrust
the sheaf of reports which he had been fingering into a pigeonhole.
"Not that I expect to learn anything incriminating from that quarter,
but I'm taking no chances on overlooking a possible clue. Jarvis is
the man I'm after, Mac; I have no direct evidence as yet, but I am
having his record looked up and to-day I requested from him a detailed
accounting of his wife's estate. If I'm not mistaken, he won't find
that an easy thing to produce."
"You mean that he's taken her money?" McCarty asked.
"I can't call it that, since she gave him power of attorney; turned
the whole thing over to him, in fact, although last spring she did get
about twenty thousand back on the plea of war charities, he says. But
I have discovered that during the past two years he had lost heavily
in stocks; been on the wrong side of the market almost continually and
his broker's books show that he has made desperate efforts to recoup
lately. This proposed trip to France was in my estimation only a stall
to keep his wife in ignorance of the true state of their finances
as long as possible. He didn't dare refuse to turn over the twenty
thousand to her, of course, for fear of arousing her suspicions, but
that money which she has been paying out to blackmailers, comparatively
small as the amount was, considering her original fortune, might have
been a life-saver for him."
"And what do you think of the blackmail part of the business?"
"One of the boys started for New Orleans on Saturday night, and I
have two female operatives working now among Mrs. Jarvis' friends
and associates," the Inspector responded significantly. "Whatever
the affair was which she went to such lengths to keep under cover, I
am satisfied that it had nothing to do with the murder. I'm with our
friend Terhune there, but the rest of his theory is all rubbish. I mean
to have a talk to-morrow with Miss Norwood; she may know something as
she was the dead woman's closest friend."
"She's got money, hasn't she?" asked McCarty irrelevantly. "The old
man--her uncle--said something to-day about her inheritance."
"Yes. We got a line on both families. Calvin Norwood's brother married
the daughter of old Wexley, the steel rail magnate, and Miss Norwood is
quite an heiress. But what took you there to-day, Mac?" Inspector Druet
bent a quizzical eye upon his visitor. "Have you got anything up your
sleeve? I knew you couldn't keep out of the case if your life depended
on it! You wouldn't bother with Norwood, though, if you didn't think
there was some clue to be found in that house which we had overlooked."
McCarty smiled broadly.
"Not in this case, sir, but in some that are long past," he replied
with a show of candor. "You know it was to show us through his museum
that Mr. Norwood got Mr. Terhune to bring Denny and me there to dinner
the other night and almost the first thing we came on was that body
under the blanket and it was all off. I wanted to see what he has in
his collection, though, and hear the story of it and this afternoon
I got him to give me what you might call a private view. Some of the
stuff he's got there is mighty interesting; I'd like to get the dope on
one or two of those old cases, even if they are dead ones. That Hoyos
matter, for instance. I don't suppose, now, you could let me have a
peep at the records? It's ten years past, and well I know you've enough
and to spare on your hands with this murder and all but I was on the
force then, you mind, sir, and it kind of brings it all back to me."
The Inspector's gaze narrowed in suspicion, but McCarty met it with an
air of such childlike wistfulness that he laughed good-naturedly and
pressed a button in his desk.
"Sure you can see them; I'll have Yost look up the files. You are not
fooling me for a minute, though, Mac! It isn't the Hoyos case, or any
other old crime which Norwood may have docketed in his museum that is
interesting you. I've had both of those households watched, you know,
and I got a report on where Etta Barney, the Jarvis' housemaid, spent
Saturday evening. I had an idea myself that she might have known who
broke into Mrs. Jarvis' dressing-room, but I couldn't make her come
across. Did you manage to wheedle anything from her?"
"No, sir," responded McCarty frankly. "If she did hear a noise and
suspect who it was she would hardly be telling me when she knew I
was in with you. Is Margot still sticking to her story that the
dressing-room was all in order at eight o'clock that night?"
The entrance of Yost in response to Inspector Druet's summons prevented
an immediate reply from the latter, but after his instructions were
given and the door had closed he swung about in his chair.
"I can't make that girl out. There is every indication to make me
believe she is on the level and yet the facts as we know them show
that her statement must be a lie. Mrs. Jarvis was murdered before six
o'clock and her body spirited across to the other house; that is the
plain truth of the matter, in spite of Terhune's elaborate theory.
Margot could have only one reason for trying to fix the time when the
dressing-room was ransacked at a later hour, and that is loyalty to
the husband of the dead woman. If she knew or suspected that it was
he who returned to the house during her absence upon her errand and
guessed what took place then she may be trying to make us believe that
the dressing-room had not been entered until evening because she knew
that her employer's alibi after eight o'clock that night could not be
assailed. I don't know whether self-interest or a desire to shield the
memory of the woman who had been good to her prompted that loyalty, but
she can't be shaken in her story at this stage of the game. I tell you,
Mac, we've the hardest proposition ahead of us that the department has
ever tackled, but if I can once get the goods on Oliver Jarvis I can
force him to come through."
McCarty shook his head.
"In spite of that glove, and the fact that he can't or won't account
for the time between his visit to his lawyer and to the consulate, sir,
I can't see your case against him," he remarked. "What if he did lose
his wife's money? If she cared for him she'd stick just the same, and
anyway, he'd have no need to go to the length of killing her when she
found it out. Why should he have sneaked into his wife's dressing-room
in the afternoon like that? He could have gone in any time at night
while she was asleep and none the wiser, if there was anything there he
wanted. How did she come to be dressed as the body was when we found
it, if the maid had left her in a wrapper and slippers?"
"Oh, I know the difficulties I'm up against, but I'm going to prove my
case, for all that!" the Inspector retorted. "Of course, I'll have to
wait until I get a full, detailed report on their joint finances, but
I have a suspicion that Jarvis has gone through more money than his
speculations on the stock market will explain and although I haven't
found out where it went yet, there could be more than one reason why it
would be vital to his happiness that his wife should not discover the
use to which it had been put."
"He was in love with her," observed McCarty. "I'd bet anything I had
on that. There was no other woman in the case and that's the only thing
the wife would perhaps have not forgiven, sir."
"As a wife, but there are other kinds of disgrace, that she might have
repudiated him for." The Inspector paused. "I won't go into that until
I have something definite to work on, but Jarvis' mother was a von
Rohne, of the family of Berlin bankers, and if you take a look at some
of the records of the Department of Justice, Mac, you'll find that the
German taint in the blood of more than one supposedly solid American
family is working for treason. Understand, I have no proof, but if it
develops that Jarvis was actually giving financial aid here to some
underground work of his mother's people, he might well be afraid of his
wife's knowledge. Remember, he was unaware of any secret in her own
life; he thought her above reproach in every way and knew her to be
intensely patriotic. That is only one supposition of mine, but other
motives would cover that point.
"As to his going to his wife's dressing-room at that hour instead of
at night, it may be possible that he could not wait. He may not have
placed her jewels in the safe deposit vault a few days earlier as he
claimed, but have taken them then to realize money on, and she came
upon him in the act. He may have had desperate need of that money
before night. I know this sounds as if I were trying to build up the
wildest sort of evidence to support my theory, but every slight clue
in our possession points to him and we cannot afford to overlook any
possibility."
McCarty's manner showed that he was still unconvinced.
"Why did she get up and put on that plain, dark dress and how did the
blue silk veil or scarf or whatever it was happen to be so handy to
strangle her with?" he asked. "If you ask me, sir, it looks suspicious;
her giving the servants the afternoon off and getting her own maid out
of the way on an errand and making that excuse about the headache and
all."
The Inspector nodded.
"I think you are right there, Mac," he agreed. "If it was her husband
she found ransacking her dressing-room, the surprise must have been
mutual. You remember Margot's story of her mistress' sudden collapse
on Wednesday night after her dinner guests had gone? I think that
in some way we haven't discovered yet imperative word reached her
from the blackmailers, hinting at some drastic steps to be taken
before she sailed for France and perhaps making an appointment for
Friday afternoon which she did not dare to ignore. She arranged that
no one should know of her errand and was preparing for it when the
interruption came."
"And what's your own idea, sir, as to how the murderer got her body
to the museum and why he went to all that trouble for nothing?"
McCarty demanded bluntly. "Wouldn't he know that when the state of the
dressing-room was seen 'twould be supposed the murder was committed
there? If 'twas Mr. Jarvis himself, what did he take his old automobile
gloves along with him for, much less drape one over the ladder to
advertise the fact that he'd been there?"
"Well, this is what happened, as I figure it out now." The Inspector
relighted his cigar and settled forward in his chair. "When he had
killed her, his first thought was naturally to save himself and divert
suspicion from the actual scene of the crime. It isn't easy to hide a
human body, but he thought of old Norwood's museum, which sometimes
wasn't entered for days at a time. It was too dark for anyone in the
rear of the adjoining and opposite houses to see the outlines of a
person passing through the yards and he chanced it. He carried the
body to the Norwood yard, hid it under a bush, entered the museum
by means of the ladder, opened the door and coming down the stairs
and out through the passageway, carried the body back up that way to
the museum. That glove is a nice bit of detail, but I think I know
the answer to it. Jarvis knew what a shark Norwood is on fingerprint
evidence and he took the gloves along to prevent leaving any traces
when he forced the catch of the window. Something--perhaps hearing the
blind secretary moving about--must have frightened him away before he
could remove the ladder and retrieve the glove which he'd dropped."
McCarty brought his hand down on the arm of his chair with a resounding
thwack.
"You've hit it, sir!" he exclaimed. "It's been in my mind from the
first that the one who climbed the ladder to the museum brought the
glove to keep from leaving finger marks behind, but in their hurry I
thought they only snatched up one glove instead of the pair, and then
got excited and dropped it. If 'twas Jarvis, as you say, why did he
take a chance on Mr. Norwood, perhaps, coming in and catching him in
the museum with the body?"
"He probably knew that Norwood had gone to Professor Parlowe's, just
as he might have learned from his wife during lunch that all their own
servants would be out for the afternoon." The Inspector's mollified
tone betrayed his gratification at McCarty's belated approval. "I don't
think, however, that he knew of Norwood's little dinner party that
night or that he meant to exhibit his museum to two such celebrated
sleuths as you and Terhune, to say nothing of Riordan; I think Jarvis
banked on the hope that the body would not be discovered until the
following day, and that after he had established an alibi against
any possible future questioning he could get home and put that
dressing-room in order before Margot or any of the other servants
entered it. That would leave him with a clear slate. I don't deny that
he is in very apparent grief now, but remorse would account for it,
whether he was in love with his wife or not. He killed her all right,
Mac; there's no doubt in my mind as to that."
"Here is the old Hoyos report, sir." Yost appeared in the doorway. "I
brought the minutes of the inquest, too, and a copy of the statements
made by the crew on the yacht."
"Give them to Mac," the Inspector laughed. "Everything is so tame now,
that he has to go back ten years in the history of the department
to dig up a little excitement. The cases we've got on hand are too
trifling for his consideration since he's become a man of means and his
own boss!"
Yost grinned and McCarty chuckled in perfect good nature at the thrust.
"I'm a has-been," he announced. "And like the most of them I'm harking
back to the days of my usefulness. Not that I was in on the Hoyos case,
but I'd like to know more about it than I remember."
"What kind of a souvenir of the affair has old Norwood got hold of?"
the Inspector asked. "If it was of any importance he should have turned
it in at the inquest. We never took him seriously, but he may put
something over on us some day, for all that."
"He has nothing, sir," McCarty responded, truthfully enough. "He was
just talking about it and got me curious to read up the details."
"Well, stay here and amuse yourself with it as long as you like." The
Inspector rose. "I've got to get up to the District Attorney's office.
I wish you would hang around old Norwood all you can, and if you get
any real dope on the Jarvis case let me know."
McCarty promised and as the Inspector departed, settled himself to a
perusal of the closely typed sheets which Yost had placed upon the desk
before him.
The first which came to his hand was a personal description of the dead
yachtsman.
"Leonidas Hoyos, aged approximately thirty, nationality unknown but
believed to be of Greek-Hungarian extraction," he read: "Medium height,
smooth shaven, black hair, fair complexion, gray eyes, full red lips,
straight nose, rounded, slightly receding chin. Flashy clothes,
expensive jewelry. No scars or other identifying marks."
There was at first glance nothing to arrest his attention in that, yet
McCarty read it carefully several times over before laying it aside.
The next document was a report of the official investigation into
Hoyos' antecedents. Nothing could be learned of him prior to the summer
of 1906 when he had presented himself at a prominent brokerage house in
Wall Street as a prospective client, with credentials and letters from
equally noted concerns on the Bourse and London Exchange. He maintained
luxurious bachelor apartments on Madison Avenue, kept two cars and
a retinue of servants and during the following winter succeeded in
gaining admittance to membership in one or two of the clubs noted more
for their sporting tendencies than their exclusiveness. He plunged
heavily in Wall Street, netted huge profits and early in the spring
of 1907 purchased from the Carmichael estate a steam yacht which he
re-christened _The 'Muette.'_
Then followed records, attested to by the captain, stewards, stewardess
and members of the crew of several coastwise trips in which men about
town and women known to the festive bright-light district had figured
conspicuously and champagne and gambling for high stakes had been the
order of the day. In May _The Muette_ had anchored in the Hudson a few
miles north of the city and its owner had given only occasional dinner
parties on board.
The report ended abruptly with a list of Hoyos' financial holdings;
stocks, bonds, securities and deposits in various banks. McCarty
glanced over them casually, noted the total and then took up the
minutes of the Coroner's inquest. It was a voluminous record and he
turned first to the verdict; accidental death. That, he remembered, had
ended the case officially as far as the public was concerned, but he
had not forgotten the storm it aroused in the press, nor rumors in the
department that the investigation was not to be immediately shelved.
He skipped the verbatim testimony of the witnesses and had settled back
in his chair to read the final summary when the opening sentence made
him start forward in astonishment with round eyes and quickened breath.
On the twenty-sixth of the month, in the late afternoon, Hoyos had come
aboard, ordered dinner for two and sent the dingey back to the wharf to
meet his guest. At eight o'clock a woman arrived, heavily veiled, and
was ushered to the saloon where Hoyos awaited her. The steward withdrew
and no one witnessed their meeting nor could anyone subsequently
furnish a description of the woman, for Hoyos took extraordinary
precautions against having her seen from the moment of her arrival. He
countermanded the order for an elaborate dinner which he had given,
directed that a single course with several bottles of champagne be
placed in the dining-saloon, and then dismissed the stewards for the
night.
Sounds were heard later of a bitter quarrel, with the woman weeping and
Hoyos fairly shouting in rage. The noises ceased, however, and quiet
ensued until close on to midnight when two pistol shots were heard,
followed by two heavy splashes in the water.
Investigation showed that the saloon was empty, the man and woman had
both disappeared and an open window with blood upon the sill and Hoyos'
own pistol lying on the floor nearby were the only indications of what
had occurred. The authorities were notified and an investigation was
instituted but there was no trace of either Hoyos or the woman until
about three weeks later, on the fourteenth of June when a police boat
patrolling the lower bay picked up a man's body which was identified
by means of the clothing and initialed jewelry as that of Leonidas
Hoyos. The body itself was greatly mutilated, presumably by contact
with passing river craft, and an autopsy was unable to determine the
presence of a bullet wound but the conditions of the lungs did not
indicate death by drowning. The woman's body was not recovered.
For long after he had finished, McCarty sat staring at the papers
clutched in his hand, while two sentences formed of macaroni paste
letters danced before his mental vision. "Does lady forget date of next
Saturday night?" and "1000 under bush 26 each month small price safety."
The twenty-sixth of each month! And it was on the twenty-sixth of May,
ten years before, that the mysterious tragedy of _The 'Muette'_ had
occurred. The wife of Oliver Jarvis had been a mere child then, in far
away New Orleans. What connection had there been between her and the
unhappy woman who had been Hoyos' guest, or Hoyos himself? Was it only
a strange and unlooked-for coincidence, or had he indeed stumbled upon
a real clue? Was he alone upon the right path which should lead through
the maze of evasions and contradictions to the truth?
CHAPTER XV
A LONE HAND
"There's little any man can tell about a woman whether he's married to
her or not," observed Dennis sententiously. "'Tis well for us, Mac,
that we've always steered clear of them. Look at Mrs. Jarvis, now, with
all her good works and the sweet ways of her that everyone who knew her
talks about; who'd think she could have been mixed up with the murder
of a dirty roystering Dago ten years gone? For she was mixed up in
it, I'd bet the half of my insurance policy that you've struck it! No
matter if she was only a girl then and never North in her life, 'twas
to keep that business on the yacht secret, no less, that she was paying
out hush money."
It was Tuesday morning and by special condescension on the part of the
Lieutenant, McCarty and Dennis were seated in his private office at the
engine house where the ex-Roundsman had been regaling his friend with a
résumé of the previous day's discoveries.
Dennis' enthusiastic acceptance of McCarty's theory brought an
expansive glow to the latter's heart, but he merely nodded in
affirmation.
"It fits in with what little evidence we have, leaving out the
ransacking of the dressing-room," he responded. "You mind the sudden
collapse that came to her on Wednesday night after her dinner party,
and Mr. Norwood's remark that she'd been gay at first and then kind of
quiet for a while? 'Twas no message from the blackmailers that reached
her, Denny, but Mr. Norwood's own words, when he told her of the Hoyos
wallet and the letters that were in it, that struck her all of a heap
in the midst of her pleasant little party, and she was quiet because
she was thinking, and thinking hard. She made up her mind then to get
that wallet, and 'twas that she was after when she went to her death in
the Norwood museum!"
"By the powers! Then 'twas not to meet anybody at all----"
"No. The meeting was an accident, like, to both of them, whoever the
other party was."
"A mortal accident to her, poor thing." Dennis hesitated. "If 'twas
not the blind young secretary who met her and killed her--and what you
heard him say yesterday in his sickness goes to show that he didn't do
it--who was it? What was the other one doing in the museum and how did
he get in?"
"You're not asking much, are you?" McCarty demanded witheringly. "I've
the answer to your last question, though it slipped my mind to tell you
before. On Saturday morning before I experimented with the ladder, I
gave a look to the lock on the museum door. There were some little fine
scratches around the keyhole; I'd seen the like when I was on the force
in more than one housebreaking case and I was on in a minute. There's
only one thing that makes scratches like that, and only one thing in a
burglar's kit of tools that'll open a Yale lock; a 'spider.' Whoever
it was got into the museum, broke in, in spite of Marchal there in the
library, and he knew just how to go about it. I think from Marchal's
ravings that he heard something of what went on, and why he didn't butt
in and stop the murder is a mystery to me, but there's more than that
to be cleared up."
"There is that!" Dennis agreed. "Why would anybody break into that
museum? There's nothing there that anybody but a nut like Mr. Norwood
would want for a keepsake! And why didn't he just beat it when Mrs.
Jarvis found him there, instead of killing her?"
"You'll remember there was something there that Mrs. Jarvis wanted bad
enough to break in for," McCarty reminded him. "It may have been for
the same thing that the man came."
"The wallet!" Dennis wriggled to the edge of his chair. "Mac, maybe it
was for the letters that was in it she was being blackmailed! The woman
that sold them to Mr. Norwood may have double-crossed the blackmailer
and he went to get them back and fought Mrs. Jarvis for them----"
"Hold on, Denny! He wouldn't have killed her," McCarty interrupted.
"Terhune was right on that. You mind he said the fellow wouldn't kill
the goose that laid the golden eggs? If we could find out what was
in those letters, we'd be a long way toward learning the truth. Mr.
Norwood knows, all right, but he'll not say another word; when he saw
the way my questions were leading, he got a suspicion of the truth
for himself and shut up like a clam. Whatever old scandal there is
connected with the death of his friend's wife, he'll not be the one to
give it away."
"Then how will you find out?" asked Dennis. "You've gone further than
Terhune and the Inspector put together but you're a good ways yet
from clapping your hands on the murderer. Now if you could get that
Frenchman to explain what he overheard----"
"Not a chance. He was in love with her, and from his last remarks
before I gave him the medicine, he's out for a private revenge. I've
got to begin at the other end and locate the woman who sold Mr. Norwood
the letters. Before he suspected anything, he told me she claimed to
have been a stewardess on the Hoyos yacht at the time of the murder
ten years ago. The records of the Coroner's inquest make mention of
only one woman employed on board, a stewardess named Kate Stricker, and
if it's the same I've a good personal description of her from Billings,
who let her in when she brought the letters to the Norwood house last
Tuesday afternoon."
"But what good'll that do you?" Dennis objected. "'Tis a week ago
to-day, and she's probably beat it somewhere with the money Mr. Norwood
paid her."
"I'm going to try it, anyway." McCarty rose. "I'll have a word with the
Inspector first and maybe put a flea in his ear, for the fellow that's
on his way to New Orleans could find out more if he knew what he was
looking for. Many a person in this world is paying blackmail to protect
another, or their memory, and Mrs. Jarvis, God rest her soul, may be as
innocent as a babe of any connection herself with what she was trying
to keep quiet, and yet the disgrace of it coming out might reflect on
her in some way. The Inspector can only tell me I'm an old fool for my
pains; he's likely to at that, for he's all swelled up over his own
notion of the murder, but if he does----"
"What'll you do?" asked Dennis with a sly grin as the other paused.
"You're not Officer 804 now, my bucko; you're a gentleman, with a
landed estate on your hands----"
"I'll go it alone, and ask odds of nobody!" McCarty retorted grimly.
"On the force or off it, I'm going to see the case through! Why was I
there on the spot when the dead woman's body was found if it hadn't
been meant for me to take a hand in finding out who killed her?"
To this fatalistic query Dennis had no reply and McCarty sallied forth
to Headquarters.
He found Inspector Druet in a jubilant frame of mind.
"Well, Mac, I guess we'll land our fish, all right!" the latter
exclaimed. "You wouldn't listen yesterday, but I knew I hadn't made
any mistake! Oliver Jarvis is the man!"
"Is that so, sir?" McCarty remarked, unmoved. "You've found out what
he's been doing with his wife's money, then?"
"Better than that! We've got a witness who saw him leaving his own
house at six o'clock on Friday afternoon, and located the taxi
chauffeur who picked him up five minutes later just around the corner
and drove him to the French consulate at top speed. What do you say to
that?"
"'Twas good, snappy work, sir, but it don't prove anything." McCarty's
chin was a trifle out-thrust. "He may have been in the house and yet
not seen his wife or gone near her dressing-room----"
"Mac, what's the matter with you?" the Inspector demanded, disgustedly.
"You're getting to be as stubborn as a mule! You can't get around
facts, man, and every fact we've got hold of points to Oliver Jarvis."
"Except that according to your one witness, the dressing-room was in
order until eight o'clock or after," McCarty remarked.
"Margot's story was a lie!"
"Was it so, sir?" McCarty's tone was quiet, but his blue eyes snapped.
"Have you considered it for a minute as maybe true, in spite of the
fact that it would upset your theory? Suppose Mrs. Jarvis was not
carried out of that house, but walked out, after getting rid of her own
servants so that nobody should know where she'd gone; suppose she took
one of husband's gloves with her, meaning to take the pair, so that her
finger marks would not show in what she was going to do? Suppose she
went through the yards, put up the ladder and climbed it, forced the
museum window----"
"You're crazy, Mac!" the Inspector stared. "Why should Mrs. Jarvis
have gone secretly to a place where she was always welcome? What could
she have been after?"
"I'm thinking it was a black wallet with a couple of letters inside,"
McCarty responded simply.
"Look here! What are you getting at?" The Inspector struck his desk
smartly with his open hand. "It's a fool notion, but you'd better come
across with what is on your mind. I suppose you mean that she was
murdered in the museum, after all?"
McCarty nodded solemnly.
"Well, she wasn't," the other asserted flatly. "You'll be as bad as
Terhune next, trying to say that Marchal killed her! What is this
rubbish about a black wallet?"
"'Tis not rubbish about her being blackmailed, is it, sir? Nor yet that
she seemed to be happy lately, as if a load were off her mind, only to
collapse on Wednesday after the dinner party; after learning from Mr.
Norwood that he'd just bought a wallet that held the only clue to a
certain crime that's never been cleared up. Unless I've got the wrong
bull by the horns, that wallet had something to do with why she'd been
blackmailed, and she made up her mind to get it if she had to steal
it. That's all, Inspector. I don't pretend to say who killed her, nor
why, but whoever it was, he picked the lock of the museum door with a
spider; the marks are there for you to see."
Inspector Druet snorted in good-natured contempt.
"There were letters in this wallet? What was the crime they were
supposed to furnish a clue to?"
"The Hoyos matter, sir. You asked me yesterday what souvenir of it Mr.
Norwood has and I told you none. It's gospel truth, too, for the wallet
has disappeared. He swears it was there in the museum at three o'clock
on Friday afternoon, before he left for the professor's house."
"The Hoyos case! Ten years back, and Mrs. Jarvis only came to New
York five years ago!" laughed the Inspector. "You'll have to think up
a better one than that, Mac! Old Norwood probably mislaid the wallet
himself, if it ever existed. When did he miss it?"
McCarty hesitated.
"Only yesterday, sir," he admitted. "But none except your own men
and the medical examiners were in that room till it was locked up
on Saturday night. 'Twas taken away by the fellow that killed Mrs.
Jarvis----"
"No, Mac. You're away off," the Inspector interrupted, shaking his
head. "You had good common sense when you were on the force, but you're
letting your imagination run away with you. Whatever Mrs. Jarvis was
blackmailed for, it had nothing to do with any crime nor with her
death."
"Well, sir, I've nothing to do with the case; I'm only giving you a tip
and you can take it or leave it, as you see fit." McCarty spoke with
dignity. "If your operative that's gone to New Orleans would work along
the lines I've told you, and try to find out what connection there was
between this man Hoyos and Mrs. Jarvis or her family you might learn
something that would bring you around to my way of thinking."
"I'm afraid not, Mac. There isn't a shadow of evidence to support such
a theory and a million reasons why it would be impossible on the face
of it. I thought you had something up your sleeve yesterday, when you
came nosing around about that old Hoyos record; but I didn't think
you would fall for any such wild idea as this. Old Norwood must have
hypnotized you with his fool collection, but if you want to monkey with
the case at all, come down to earth! Facts are what we're after, not
crazy theories, and we're working for practical results."
"Well, sir, I'll be getting on." McCarty rose, his face expressionless.
"I've had my say and I'll take up no more of your valuable time, only
I'll ask you to remember that I gave you the word. If you want me
you'll know where to find me."
He clapped on his hat and strode out, unmindful of the look of amused
affection which his former superior cast after him. He was more hurt
than he would admit even to himself. It was not so much the fact that
his theory had been rejected but the manner of it that stung him like
a whip-lash. The tolerant indulgence of the Inspector's attitude he
recognized from long association as that which the official habitually
adopted toward harmless cranks and the army of amateur sleuths who
besieged Headquarters with weird suggestions and theories during the
investigation of every case to which wide publicity had been given.
The long friendship and camaraderie which had existed between them was
forgotten in that bitter moment and McCarty's honest heart swelled with
wrathful indignation. So the Inspector thought him an old has-been,
past his usefulness, who had to be humored because of his past record,
like a horse turned out to grass! He'd show him! Into the purely
professional aspect of the investigation there had entered a new and
personal element; his vindication, his reinstatement in the eyes of
his former superior and his own self-respect depended alike upon the
result of his efforts now. The Jarvis case had assumed all at once the
proportions of a challenge and McCarty's spirit rose doggedly to meet
it. As he had assured Dennis, he would ask odds of nobody, least of all
the Inspector; he would go it alone and prove his case or forever more
mind his own business and eschew the affairs of the department.
The rest of the morning was spent in a fruitless round of the agencies
which specialized in supplying stewardesses for yachts and passenger
liners. The name of Kate Stricker was not upon their books, nor
known save in one instance, when the manager recalled her as having
unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a position two years before. She had
besieged the office for weeks during that period and seemed a capable
woman with first-class references, but war conditions had cut down the
maritime passenger service and even yachting had declined.
A judicious display of liberality on McCarty's part caused the canceled
register to be laid before him and he ascertained Kate Stricker's
address at that time to have been in West One Hundred and Thirty-sixth
Street.
His ire at the Inspector's attitude had given place to a philosophical
mood, but his determination was undaunted and after a brief respite
for lunch, he hied himself to the address given at the agency, not
forgetting the admonition to "ring Meggs' bell."
The house proved to be one in a row of cheap apartments and Mrs. Meggs,
a trim but worn little wisp of a woman, ushered him into a brightly
scoured kitchen and readily met his query.
"Kate? Oh, yes, sir. She doesn't stop with me now; hasn't for more than
a year, but we're great friends and she drops in often to see me. She
was here only last week. What was it you wanted of her, sir?"
"If she's not working now, there's a berth open on a big private yacht
that I'd like to engage her for," McCarty lied glibly. "The agency
where she registered two years ago sent me here and I'll be thankful to
you if you'll tell me where I can find her."
Mrs. Meggs shook her head.
"Kate's not looking for anything to do right now," she remarked. "She's
come into a bit of money and she's resting for awhile. Times have been
hard with her lately, especially since the war started, and for a long
while she was out of a position. That was when she lodged here with me.
She couldn't get anything to do at sea and finally she took a position
as assistant to the matron of the orphan asylum over on the heights.
She lost it, though, three or four months ago and I never laid eyes on
her until she came last week and paid me every cent she'd owed me. I
don't believe she would go to sea again now, sir."
"Still, this is such a fine easy berth that she might consider it,"
McCarty urged discreetly. "The manager of the agency said she was just
the one for the job and you'd like to put it her way, I'm sure. She can
do no more than refuse it."
"That's true," the woman agreed. "She told me she was staying with
a friend, a Mrs. Williamson over on Park Avenue near a Hundred and
Seventeenth Street, but that she was going away somewhere for a rest
at the seaside. Kate has a rare craze for the ocean, sir, which is
natural, since she's spent most of her life on it. That's why I think
perhaps she might ship with you in spite of the money that's come
to her, but I can't tell you rightly where to find her, for I don't
remember the house number she gave me. She said she'd write, anyway,
when she got settled somewhere."
McCarty thanked his informant and took his departure, threading a
devious way across the city to Park Avenue. There a prolonged scrutiny
of the mail boxes in various vestibules in the neighborhood of One
Hundred and Seventeenth Street at length vouchsafed the name he sought,
and he pressed the bell.
The entrance door clicked promptly in response, and he mounted the
stairs to find a buxom young woman facing him in the dim hallway, with
a baby in her arms and a toddler clinging shyly to her skirt.
"Miss Stricker's gone away," the young woman simpered in reply to his
question. "Are you a friend of hers?"
"Yes, ma'am," McCarty responded promptly. "I've lost track of her
lately, since she quit the orphan asylum and I thought I'd look her up.
My name's Carter; I make no doubt you've heard her speak of me."
Mrs. Williamson shook her head.
"No, I can't say as I have, but Kate was always sly about her gentlemen
friends. If you want to write to her, she's at the Oceanside Cottage,
at Atlantic City. I suppose you know she's had money left her?"
"I did not, but I'm glad to hear it," retorted McCarty, avoiding the
shrewd glance of the woman's small, mercenary eyes. "Thanks for the
address, ma'am, and if you write to her, I'll be grateful if you'll say
that John Carter was asking after her."
He bowed and turning, strode down the stairs and out into the wintry
day once more, his steps buoyant with elation. He had scarcely dared
hope for such definite news at the outset of his quest, but the old
luck still held as an augury of ultimate success, and he resolved to
put it to the test without loss of time.
He hastened home to look up trains and pack a bag, but as he paused on
the steps outside the street door fishing for his keys, a voice hailed
him from the threshold of the antique shop.
"Oh, I say, there you are, McCarty! We've had a jolly good wait for
you!"
Wheeling about, he beheld the Englishman, Eric Vivaseur.
"You were wanting to see me, sir?" he asked in astonishment.
"Right-o. Miss Norwood is here. She would like a word with you."
At that moment the face of Joan Norwood, pale now and clouded with
troubled agitation, appeared over his shoulder and she cried:
"Oh, Mr. McCarty! I'm so glad you've come! I--I want your help!"
CHAPTER XVI
"IT WAS NOT MY DOING"
McCarty ushered his unexpected guests up the stairs to his sitting-room
and hid his amazement beneath a bustling effort to make them
comfortable.
"By Jove, you do yourself well here, don't you?" Vivaseur glanced
about him at the array of books and cigar boxes, the huge desk, the
phonograph in the corner, the shabby, capacious leather chairs drawn
up before the grate in which a bed of coals glowed redly, and the soft
gray tones of the single picture which hung above. "That is a very good
print you have there, McCarty, but I should have fancied your taste ran
to a more sporting trend."
There was a shade of patronage in his voice and McCarty replied with
dignity:
"'Tis a picture of his mother by a guy called Whistler and I bought it
because it minded me of my own, God rest her soul. I am not a sporting
man, Mr. Vivaseur. Since I resigned from the force I've done nothing
more exciting than a bit of fishing now and then." He turned to the
young girl. "What did you want of me, miss? I'll be glad to do anything
I can."
"I don't know quite how to begin." Joan Norwood sat twisting the gold
chain of her purse nervously between her fingers. "Uncle Cal has talked
so much of you that I thought you would be the one to come to----"
"Perhaps I can tell you what is on Miss Norwood's mind," Vivaseur
interrupted quickly. The momentary patronage was gone from his tones
and he spoke with tactful deference. "We came to you because of your
influence with the authorities and because Miss Norwood feels, as I do,
that if anyone succeeds in solving the mystery of her friend's tragic
death, it will be you, my dear fellow!"
"I'm not on the case, sir," McCarty responded quietly. "I've no longer
any connection with the force, as you know, and it's little the
influence I have there."
"But we know your record!" Vivaseur's smile was winning in its frank,
boyish admiration. "Mr. Norwood has told us of your ripping work on a
case only last year, and Miss Norwood felt that if you would interest
yourself in this affair you would stand a greater show of success than
that scientific johnny. He's been about messing things up generally
to-day and the old gentleman is in a fearful heat about it."
"Inspector Druet has charge of the investigation," McCarty remarked in
a slightly mollified voice.
"Yes. Quite so." Vivaseur shrugged. "I don't want to cast any
aspersions on your late profession, McCarty, but after all it is the
individual and not the system that counts, don't you think? Your very
conscientious Inspector is raising the deuce with all of us, and one of
Miss Norwood's motives in coming to you was to enlist your influence to
have this espionage to which we are being subjected modified a trifle.
I have no personal objection, though, by Jove! I wish they'd be a bit
more subtle in their methods. All the chaps at the club are spoofing me
about the johnny who is trailing me. However, it is a serious annoyance
to Miss Norwood and her uncle and we fancied if you put in a word----"
McCarty shook his head.
"That's the ordinary routine work of the department, sir, in a case
like this. I couldn't interfere, but likely the Inspector will put a
stop to it himself soon, for he told me only yesterday that he expected
nothing from it."
Miss Norwood leaned forward in her chair.
"That isn't the real reason why I persuaded Mr. Vivaseur to bring me
here to-day, Mr. McCarty," she said earnestly. "Of course, this being
followed about is annoying and makes Uncle Cal very difficult to live
with, but I wouldn't mind anything if I could only feel that some
progress was being made in the investigation, if only we could know who
really killed poor Evelyn Jarvis. Oliver has the utmost faith in Mr.
Terhune, but his suspicion of Captain Marchal is unjust and utterly
without foundation. It is almost cowardly to attack a person in the
Captain's position, suffering as he is under such a terrible affliction
and absolutely innocent! I had hoped that the authorities would make
some headway, but they seem even more willfully blind than Mr. Terhune.
Inspector Druet is actually trying to build up a case against Oliver
Jarvis himself! They are both dreadfully wrong and the thought that
precious time is passing, and that the fiend who killed my friend
may escape scot free is driving me almost frantic! I loved Evelyn as
if she were my own sister and I shall not rest until her murderer is
discovered and brought to justice!"
"He will be," McCarty announced with a certain grimness. "Of course,
Mr. Terhune is a very celebrated man, but his methods are not those of
the department and naturally I've more faith in the old system. The
Inspector may be on the wrong track, but he'll never give up until he
learns the truth, I'll say that for him."
"And then it may be too late!" Miss Norwood wrung her hands. "Mr.
McCarty, I know you have retired, that you're a private citizen now,
but that leaves you all the more free to conduct an investigation of
your own, if you only will do so. I've come to ask you to undertake it
for me. I can never be happy again while this horrible thought hangs
over me, and I know how clever you are; I know that if anyone can find
Evelyn's murderer, you can! There will be no difficulty about money,
I--I have a great deal, and I would cheerfully give half I possess to
learn the truth."
"It's not money that would tempt me to get in the game again, Miss
Norwood," McCarty responded gravely. "I've had an interest in the case
from the start and I'm of the same opinion as yourself; that both Mr.
Terhune and the Inspector are barking up the wrong trees. However, I
would not take up the case as a professional matter, though I thank you
kindly for the offer. I'm a has-been, and I'll not be setting up shop
in competition with Mr. Terhune and the department, but it just happens
that I've a private reason for wanting to see this thing through.
There's a matter of personal satisfaction in it and I may as well tell
you that I've already decided to investigate it on my own account,
miss, and I'll no more quit than Inspector Druet himself until I've
come at the truth, if it's within the power of mortal man."
"Good!" Vivaseur exclaimed, his face alight with enthusiasm as he
extended his hand. "You're a chap after my own heart, McCarty! This
will be a load off Miss Norwood's mind, and if I can do anything to
help, you may count on me. I'm an awful duffer, I'm afraid, at this
sort of thing, for it's a bit out of my line; crime, and all that, but
I'll be glad to give you a hand if you'll call on me."
"You are really going to do it?" Miss Norwood breathed. "I can't tell
you how thankful I am, Mr. McCarty, and relieved, too, that you don't
suspect either Captain Marchal or Mr. Jarvis, for now I can speak
freely. There is so much going on at home that I don't understand,
something queer in the attitude of nearly everybody, and I don't
know what to think. Perhaps if I tell you, you will be able to make
something of it. There are other points, too; little things I remember
about Evelyn, chance remarks that puzzled me at the time and come back
to me now with redoubled significance."
"I wish you would tell me, Miss Norwood." McCarty hitched his chair
closer. "'Twill be a great help, and if you and Mr. Vivaseur will both
keep your eyes open and let me know what happens you may go a long way
toward discovering the truth. Now, what is it that's going on at your
home? What's bothering you in the manner of everybody?"
"Well, to begin with, there's Uncle Cal," she replied. "He was
dreadfully excited last night, but I supposed it was the reaction
from the funeral and his indignation at being followed about. He ate
scarcely any dinner, and after Mr. Vivaseur had gone I heard him
talking to himself in the library. I went in to him, but he sent me off
to bed as though I were a little girl again. Hours after I wakened and
felt uneasy, I don't know why. It must have been terribly late, nearly
morning. I saw a light downstairs and crept down, and what do you
think I found Uncle Cal doing? Upsetting his whole museum! Everything
was topsy-turvy and he was in the midst of it, ransacking drawers and
turning the contents of the cases out upon the floor in a hopeless
jumble. He was so absorbed that he never heard me, and I tip-toed back
to my room without disturbing him.
"This morning the museum door was locked and Uncle Cal looked quite
worn out; dazed, too, as though he had had a shock of some sort. He
was full of enthusiasm before the investigation, and could talk of
nothing else, but now he refuses to discuss it and seems to shrink if
it is mentioned in his presence. I can't help feeling that he knows or
suspects something, but he acts almost afraid to speak."
McCarty nodded slowly.
"I've a notion that I know what's troubling him," he commented. "But go
on, miss. There was something else----"
"Captain Marchal," she paused. "You know how ill he was yesterday; he
seems to be quite himself again to-day, but terribly weak and shaken,
and his manner is so constrained and queer that even Mr. Vivaseur
noticed it and he has never had even five minutes' conversation with
him."
"Rather!" the Englishman ejaculated. "Of course, I admire him
tremendously and all that for what he has done, and I'm no end sorry
for him in his affliction, but my word! he is an uncomfortable sort
of chap to have about! He has his ears cocked, if you know what I
mean, as if he were listening to something no one else can hear, and
those sightless eyes of his seem to follow one about in the most
extraordinary way. Gives one a deucedly odd sensation, don't you know."
"I believe you, sir!" McCarty responded with emphasis. "Did he know
'twas me sat with him yesterday, I wonder?"
"Yes. Uncle Cal told him and he seemed to be rather annoyed about it,
and anxious to know if he had given you any trouble," Joan Norwood
responded. "Then Mr. Terhune came and insisted upon seeing him this
morning. They had an interview in the drawing-room and I think Mr.
Terhune must have virtually accused him, for I saw Uncle Cal listening
in the hall and all at once he burst in upon them and there was a
fearful row, he defending Captain Marchal and abusing Mr. Terhune in
the most violent manner and finally ordering him out of the house.
After he had gone Uncle Cal persuaded the Captain to go to bed and
rest, and he did look frightfully ill when I passed him on the stairs,
but he pulled himself together and came down again at lunch time,
although he ate nothing. I can feel his queer, strained attitude, just
as Mr. Vivaseur can, and although his manners are perfect, as always,
it makes me uncomfortable, ill at ease. He was never like this before.
Then, right after lunch, the worst thing happened of all."
"And what was that?" McCarty asked eagerly.
"Oliver Jarvis came and said that he expected to be arrested for the
murder himself! That Inspector Druet had been questioning him in such a
way he could not help but realize he was suspected, preposterous as it
appeared, and he wanted Uncle Cal to arrange his affairs for him in the
event of his being taken into custody. We all thought he was crazy at
first, that his grief had affected his mind, but he told us enough to
convince us the Inspector was actually laboring under the delusion that
he had killed poor Evelyn. You see, they have discovered a discrepancy
in his story of where and how he spent Friday afternoon. He had told
them that he went directly from his attorneys to the French consulate,
when, as a matter of fact, there was an interval of an hour and a half
just at the time when the murder is supposed to have taken place, which
he said nothing about."
"Why doesn't he tell the truth now?" McCarty spoke with studied
carelessness.
"Because it would make the case look even blacker against him, in the
Inspector's eyes." Miss Norwood hesitated and then went on quickly:
"You see, they've discovered that he went back to his house that
afternoon; someone saw him leave and take a taxi to the consulate. If
he admitted now that he had quarreled with his wife----"
"Quarreled with her?" McCarty ejaculated.
"Yes. That is what has made his grief so difficult to bear, poor boy,
and he simply couldn't speak of it to anyone before. It was just a tiny
quarrel, but the thought that they parted in coolness after five years
of ideal happiness is driving him almost mad! It was about money, too.
Oliver has lost a huge amount in the last year or two on the stock
market, and some of it was his wife's. She knew, of course, and never
blamed him, but she was almost fanatical about this reconstruction work
in France, and wanted to throw nearly all of her remaining capital into
it. Oliver did not think it wise, under the circumstances, and they had
a final argument about it on Friday after lunch. Oliver says he kissed
her good-by, but it was a cold sort of kiss and she did not respond. It
worried him all during his interview with his attorneys and afterward
he went up and walked in the park and fought it out with himself.
"He told us that his first impulse was to give way to her wishes, but
his recent experiences in Wall Street had shaken his confidence in
himself and his ability to make money, and common sense dictated that
his wife's fortune must be conserved; that she must be protected and
provided for, even against her quixotic desires. He longed to make
up with her, though, and started home, but in the very vestibule of
the house he stopped himself, afraid lest in his softened mood if she
pleaded with him he would give in to her against his better judgment.
If the person who saw him apparently coming out of his house had been
watching a minute or two earlier, they would have seen him arrive,
pause in the vestibule and then turn and go down the steps and away.
That is the truth, Mr. McCarty, but you can realize what little hope he
would have of convincing Inspector Druet of it."
A sound note remotely resembling a chuckle issued from McCarty's lips,
but the next moment his gravity had returned.
"Not now, maybe, but I don't think there's danger of his arrest;
not right away, at least. The Inspector is cautious by nature, and
he'll not risk charging Mr. Jarvis with the murder till he's got more
evidence than that to go upon. I don't know but I'd tell the truth, at
that, if I was Mr. Jarvis. It'll give the Inspector something to think
about and if it could be proved to him that Mrs. Jarvis knew of her
husband's speculations and the loss of her money the theory he's been
working on would be knocked into a cocked hat."
"Oh, do you think so?" Miss Norwood cried. "I'll tell him! Mr. Terhune
advised him to admit nothing, but privately I think that is just
because he is sure of his own case and wants to make his triumph all
the more effective by permitting the police to blunder, no matter what
mental anguish it causes his client."
This time McCarty's chuckle was unrestrained.
"A grand-stand play! 'Tis like him!" he affirmed. "However, miss, if
you can persuade Mr. Jarvis to go straight to Inspector Druet with
his story, just as you've told it to me, 'twill be better for him in
the end. Tell him to be sure and explain how he lost the money and
Mrs. Jarvis not blaming him, and to say that it's by McCarty's advice
he's making a clean breast of it. I've small influence, as I told you,
but the Inspector knows me and he'll at least take the trouble to
investigate before he goes any further."
"I can persuade Oliver, I am sure." Miss Norwood's voice was buoyant
with relief, but her expression changed swiftly as she added: "Now
I want to tell you about Evelyn herself, Mr. McCarty. My uncle told
me about the cake marked 'Noel' and the macaroni-paste letters which
were found hidden in her room, but I suspected even before the cake
could have been sent to her that there was some old trouble in her
life that clouded her happiness, and last spring I was almost certain,
from something she let fall in an unguarded moment, that she was being
hounded by someone but I did not think of blackmail. Remember that I
was closer to her than anyone in the world except her husband; possibly
even more in her confidence in some ways, for she did not feel the need
of so much self-repression with me.
"I cannot recall the moment when I first began to suspect that Evelyn
had some secret trouble, but I found her sad and depressed often in
the past few years without any apparent cause, and one subject seemed
forever back of her mind, predominant over everything else; how alone
each one of us stood in this world no matter how much love we were
surrounded with, and the martyrdom of being unable to reveal oneself
fully. I thought at first that it was just a morbid mood, but it
recurred so persistently that at length I begged her to tell me what
was troubling her. She broke down and cried terribly, but it seemed to
relieve her and she put me off with vague excuses.
"That was some time before the holidays last year, but immediately
after Christmas I noticed the change in her. She was afraid, Mr.
McCarty; I did not know of what, but she lived in a constant state of
nervous apprehension which increased as time went on until she became
actually ill. That was in May, I think. I was sitting with her one day
when she fell into a little doze and then started up in terror. 'Go
away!' she cried, flinging her hands out as if to ward off something.
'It was not my doing! Must the shadow of it follow me always, always!'
"I spoke to her and she quieted at once and murmured something about a
bad dream but she could not deceive me. The hunted look in her eyes
was too real and it was the same look, only intensified, that I had
seen for months past."
Eric Vivaseur stirred in his chair.
"Don't you think, my dear girl, that you may be exaggerating a trifle?"
he suggested. "Isn't it because of what has come to light now, don't
you know, that you attach too much significance to it? That whole
affair of the cake and those letters is a bit thick, really! I should
fancy it was some sort of bally practical joke, if you know what I
mean. A blackmailing johnny in real life wouldn't go about it in such a
silly fashion, now would he? It simply isn't done, you know."
He appealed to McCarty, but the latter shook his head.
"There's stranger things than that pulled off, sir," he remarked. "I'm
afraid there's no doubt of it that Mrs. Jarvis was being blackmailed,
and 'twas far from being a joke!"
"But on what score?" the other demanded. "I say, have you any idea,
McCarty, of what possible secret could be in the lady's life? From what
I have heard of her, she seems to have been quite all right. Have you
discovered the slightest shadow on her past?"
McCarty regarded the Englishman meditatively for a moment and then
replied with an assumption of candor.
"No, Mr. Vivaseur. I've no notion of what it could be but I'm going to
do my best to find out."
"I am sure you will." Miss Norwood rose and held out her hand. "I feel
so relieved at having had this talk with you, Mr. McCarty, and to hear
that you mean to carry on the investigation. I know that you will
succeed, you will learn the truth; and we shall welcome it whatever it
brings."
"I'll try hard enough," McCarty assured her. "You'll let me know, miss,
if anything else happens?"
She promised and they departed, McCarty following his guests to the
head of the stairs.
"I say, here's a letter for you." Vivaseur called back from below.
"I'll toss it up to you--Ah! Sorry it fell short! Good-afternoon."
When the door had closed behind them McCarty picked up his letter and
returned to the sitting-room, where he dropped into a chair and sat for
long buried in deep cogitation. Miss Norwood's story had not wholly
surprised him, but with its termination a thought had come which,
wildly improbable as his earlier inspirations had been, yet held him
fascinated by its sheer audacity.
Dusk had fallen when he at last remembered the letter in his hands, and
stirring up the dying coals upon the hearth, he tore open the envelope.
"Deer Mr. McCarty," he read. "Are you busy to-night? I will be at the
basment door at half past 8. I am in troubel. Yours truly, Etta."
CHAPTER XVII
ONE WORD
It was a very pale and agitated Etta who awaited McCarty's coming at
the hour designated that night. Her buxom figure drooped and her face
in the flaring light of the street lamp looked swollen and distorted as
from much weeping.
"Good-evening, my dear," McCarty saluted her with marked gallantry. "I
got your note and it's proud I am that you sent for me in your trouble,
whatever it is. Would you come for a little walk, maybe?"
He had noted that she wore her hat and cloak and at his words she
nodded and slipping out of the area door, closed it noiselessly behind
her.
"Yes. We can't talk here, and the house gives me the creeps, anyway.
It was good of you to come, Mr. McCarty, but I dunno as I did right to
send for you. He'd half kill me if he knew I was giving him away, even
though you've nothing to do with the police now. Still we've got to
know what to do or I'll go crazy with the worry of it!"
"If it's a police matter I can put you right on it in no time. There's
no trick of the trade I'm not on to," McCarty replied promptly. "Is it
a friend of yours that's in trouble?"
"It's my brother, Dick." The words came low and half unwillingly
from her lips and McCarty with difficulty repressed a whistle of
astonishment.
Her brother! Norwood's description of the young man returned to his
mind: "lazy, impudent, drank up everything he could lay his hand on----"
"I've heard of him," he said slowly. "Mr. Jarvis employed him as second
man at one time, didn't he?"
"Yes, and you've heard no good of him, I'll be bound!" Etta retorted
fiercely. "Dick never had a fair show! He's not really bad; not any
worse than a lot of other young men, but he's had hard luck and he
can't keep a steady job and it gets him crazy to think of the soft
snap the rich have of it, while he and the likes of us have to slave
and take their abuse just for enough to eat and something to put on
our backs! Dick tried to go straight, but something always seemed to
go wrong. When he worked for the Jarvises old Henry, the butler, was
jealous of him and forever complaining to the master. Of course, Dick
wasn't going to stand having all the old man's work put off on his
shoulders and take his jawing too, besides! Then Henry told Mr. Jarvis
that Dick was drinking up his whisky, which was a lie, but Mr. Jarvis
wouldn't listen and discharged him."
"And now he's in trouble?" McCarty suggested to stem the flow of
reminiscence.
"Yes, through no fault of his own. He got in with a gang over on the
East Side; not gunmen, but tough, young fellows that--that put notions
in his head and showed him easy ways of getting money." She hesitated.
"I've begged him on my knees to cut loose from them, but what was the
use? There was no one to give him a job or a good word. I went to Mrs.
Jarvis to see if she could get her husband to give him another trial,
but she wouldn't do anything for me; that Margot had her wrapped around
her little finger and she had no more use for me than she had for my
brother, though my aunt was cook in the Jarvis family before Mr. Oliver
ever knew she was alive!"
The vindictive resentment in the girl's tone was a revelation, but
McCarty commented soothingly:
"'Twas hard lines on the young fellow. But what's happened to him?"
"The other night a watchman at some foundry was beaten up and a lot
of brass work, fixtures and such, was stolen." Etta dropped her voice
and glanced half-fearfully over her shoulder as she spoke. "The police
traced them to a place downtown, a fence who made a business of buying
up such stuff and asking no questions. He talked quick enough to the
police, though, and said it was the gang Dick belongs to that turned
the trick. I dunno whether it was or not, but Dick wasn't in on it,
that I can swear! However, the watchman woke up in the hospital and
identified two of the crowd as them that had set on him, describing
another that sounded enough like Dick to be his brother. The fellows
wouldn't squeal and tell who'd been with them and so the police went
scouting around and last night they--they found Dick and arrested him!"
"Well," observed McCarty after a pause. "My advice to him would be to
get a good lawyer that stands in, maybe, with the Prosecutor, and a
couple of witnesses that don't come too high. You can get them to swear
to anything for from five up."
"You wouldn't be doing much, would you, and Dick with no money nor
nothing!" Etta jeered sarcastically. "Besides, he had nothing to do
with it. He wasn't with them that night and didn't even know what was
coming off!"
McCarty glanced shrewdly at her.
"Then why don't he tell the police where he was?"
"He--he can't. That's the trouble, and I dunno what to do. I know where
he was, all right, but if I was to tell, it would get him in worse
trouble, and me, too."
At her words a sudden light flashed across McCarty's brain and he
demanded:
"When was it that the foundry was broke into? Last Friday night?"
The girl made no reply, but he could feel her tremble violently as she
withdrew her arm from his.
"You might just as well tell me, my dear, for I can find out from
Headquarters, and remember, I'm your friend. I told you'd I'd stand by
you. 'Twas last Friday night, wasn't it?"
"Y-yes!" Etta began to sob wildly. "I'll not tell you any more, so
don't ask it of me! I never meant to let out that much, but you dragged
it from me!"
"You don't have to tell me," McCarty retorted. "'Twas your brother who
ransacked Mrs. Jarvis' dressing-room and you that let him in to do it,
wasn't it? You'd put up a job between you----"
"We had not!" The girl turned upon him with flashing eyes. "Dick was
sick! Cigarettes and drink and the tough life here in the city was
getting him and he wanted a chance to go West and start all over again,
but where was the money coming from? He's all I've got, and I didn't
mean to see him die here or maybe go up for turning some cheap trick
like pinching a few bits of brass! He'd as much right to a fresh start
as anyone and if the Jarvises had been the open-handed kind he would
have gone to them. They'd never missed the few dollars, and 'twould
have been only decent, him being the cook's nephew, and all. But we
knew he didn't stand a chance of getting a cent from them, and here
they were going off to Europe this week and turning me out with a
reference, maybe, but nothing to show for the year and more I've slaved
for them! Margot was going with them, Margot was the pet, but I was no
more than the dirt under their feet! My aunt was to get a pension, but
they've turned her against Dick, too, and she'd have nothing to do
with him.
"Dick and me, we talked it all over and I was near wild, for his health
had been breaking fast lately. A few of the trumpery pins and things
that Mrs. Jarvis used to leave around so careless on her dresser would
have paid his way to the coast and set him up in the billiard parlor
he's been wanting to run, but I wouldn't hear of it first off when he
spoke. I told him to come back the next night and we'd think up some
other way, but in the meantime that sneaking Margot went to Mrs. Jarvis
with some tale about me breaking a homely old vase in the drawing-room
and I got scolded right in front of her. That settled it for me, and I
thought that if I could get her in trouble it would only be paying her
back!"
"I see," McCarty nodded. "You thought if anything was missed she'd be
accused of taking it. You didn't know your brother was going to pull
the dressing-room to pieces, nor yet did you figure on the murder----"
"Oh-h!" Etta gave a little scream and clutched convulsively at his
arm. "Mr. McCarty, as God is my judge we had nothing to do with that!
I never liked Mrs. Jarvis for the way she put Margot before me, but
I'd not have harmed a hair of her head, nor Dick either! He's that
tender-hearted he wouldn't hurt a cat, for all his rough ways, and Mrs.
Jarvis was gone before ever I let him into the house. I can swear to
that for I stayed by him every minute he was there, keeping watch that
Margot didn't hear anything and come snooping around. Except for her
down in the front basement the house was empty."
"And what time was it when you let your brother in?" McCarty asked.
"You'd better tell me the whole thing, Etta, till I see if I can't fix
a way out of it for you. Aiding and abetting a burglary is a serious
matter, but I've influence at Headquarters yet and you don't want to
keep silent and have your brother sent up for something he didn't do.
That toothache business was a bluff, wasn't it?"
"Partly, but I was sick, anyway, with the thought of what I'd agreed
to. I must have been crazy, looking back on it, but I'd been getting
more and more sore about Margot and the way I was going to be turned
off. I knew there'd be no one home Friday night but the two of us, and
when she brought up my supper I told her I was going to sleep so as to
get rid of her. Dick came at nine, and I was waiting for him up at the
front door. I let him in quiet and then all at once a different feeling
came over me and I begged him to give it up and go away; I saw 'twas
wrong, what we had planned.
"But Dick had been drinking to nerve himself up and he wouldn't quit
like that. He was bound to go through with it, and upstairs he went
with me after him. I took him through Mrs. Jarvis' rooms to the
dressing-room and then I went back to the door leading into the hall
to watch and listen for Margot. Mrs. Jarvis wasn't there, anywhere.
Whatever had happened to her, she'd been gone long before."
"And Margot didn't hear the racket when your brother began upsetting
things?"
"No. My heart was in my mouth, but 'tis an old house and the floors
are thick. When I heard the bang of a chair going over I ran back and
stopped him. He was mad with rage at not finding anything except the
gold stuff on the dresser, and he didn't dare take that, not knowing
how to get rid of it without letting the gang in on it. 'Twas all I
could do to calm him down and make him go quietly, but I got him out at
last, and I never was so thankful for anything in my life! I was glad
even that he'd got nothing, and we'd no theft on our souls! I hadn't
the nerve to go back into that room and straighten it up for fear
Margot would catch me at it and see the safe open, that I didn't know
how to close. I didn't care, either, for with Dick gone and me supposed
to be sick upstairs they'd never put the blame of it on me, and they
could think what they liked."
"Do you know what time it was when your brother left the house?"
"I flew straight back to my room and the clock pointed to half-past
nine." Etta responded, adding anxiously: "Oh, Mr. McCarty, whatever
shall we do?"
"There's only one thing for you to do, and that is to go to Inspector
Druet yourself and tell him the truth." McCarty smiled oddly to himself
in the darkness. "Tell him I sent you and he'll do what he can to get
you both off."
"Him!" the girl exclaimed scornfully. "After the way he roared at me
the other day? I think I see myself! He'd be the first to clap me in
jail and goodness knows but he'd charge us both with the murder!"
"You've got him wrong," McCarty urged earnestly. "He was only trying to
get at the truth, that you were holding out on him, and if you'd told
him then, your brother would not be facing the charge he is now. He'll
go up, as sure as you're alive, if you don't speak, and you needn't
fear being accused of the murder, for Mrs. Jarvis had been dead three
hours and more when you let your brother into the house. He didn't
break in, nor did he take anything, so there's no question of robbery,
after all, and even if the Inspector should be a bit hard on him I know
one that'll put in a good word, and that's Mr. Jarvis himself."
"Why should he?" Etta demanded. "He was mean enough to him before. If I
do tell, Mr. McCarty, and they don't let my brother go----"
"They will. Tell the Inspector I said for you to go straight to him and
that he would fix it to get you both out of the scrape."
Etta wavered, but McCarty called all his powers of persuasion into
play, and when he left her at the basement door of the Jarvis house a
half hour later he had wrung from her a reluctant promise to go with
her confession to Inspector Druet on the following day.
"Twice I've scored on him!" he chuckled to himself as he turned up his
collar once more and started across town. "And neither time did I have
to lift my little finger! The news came to me; first young Jarvis'
alibi and now the matter of the dressing-room. The Inspector has the
department behind him and Terhune has his science, but I've my luck,
praise God, and it's going strong!"
An hour later, as engine 023 honked its way wearily into the firehouse
after a futile dash to a false alarm, Dennis swung himself down from
his appointed place to find McCarty confronting him, suitcase in hand
and the fight of purpose in his eyes.
"You're off on a trip, the night?" Dennis regarded him wistfully.
"My eyes have been bothering me again from smoke and only to-day the
Lieutenant said he could fix it for me to lay off for a week and rest
up. If you'd given me the word, Mac, I could have been with you."
"'Tis hardly worth while," McCarty rejoined. "I'm off to Atlantic
City on the midnight train and if I get what I'm after I'll be back
to-morrow night or the next day. Save up your eyes, Denny, till next
week for I'm thinking we've a longer trip ahead of us then. I just
stopped in to tell you that I'm on my way to see Kate Stricker."
"The woman that sold the wallet to Norwood!" Dennis stared. "You've
located her then? Good for you!"
McCarty nodded.
"And shot the Inspector's grand little theory full of holes," he
supplemented complacently. "Wait till you hear what happened since I
left you this morning!"
He recounted the events of the day and Dennis listened in absorbed
interest, thrilling in sympathetic indignation at Inspector Druet's
attitude and jubilant over the thought of that official's coming
surprise.
"You've put it over on him, though 'twas none of your doing!" he
declared when the story was finished. "You had the right hunch about
Etta, too. I hope it's still working now that those little matters are
cleared up and you're out for the real dope!"
"None of my doing," McCarty repeated musingly. "That's what Mrs. Jarvis
said."
"What's that?" Dennis asked, startled.
"It's what she said when Miss Norwood was sitting by her that time last
spring that I just told you about, when she started up from her bed.
'It was none of my doing,' and 'why must the shadow of it follow me?'
If I can get the truth from that woman to-morrow----"
"Taking into consideration the amount of brains he's provided with,
I don't wonder that English fellow would have believed that whole
blackmailing stunt to be some sort of a practical joke," Dennis
interrupted, intent upon his own train of thought. "That cake, now.
Margot said that when it came the bare sight of it all but made Mrs.
Jarvis faint. Yet what was there in the gift of it that should have
warned her of what was coming? 'Twas the same as other big fancy cakes,
wasn't it, except for that foreign word on it, that you say means
'Christmas'?--What's got you, Mac?"
For it was McCarty's turn to stare, with dropped jaw and eyes into
which a sudden light had gleamed.
"By all the saints, you've struck it!" he ejaculated. "You've hit the
nail on the head, Denny! 'Twas not the cake at all but the one word
on it that told Mrs. Jarvis the past wasn't buried as deep as she'd
thought! Noel! It means Christmas, all right, but what else would it
stand for, to her?"
"Ask me another!" invited Dennis. "If the blackmailing blackguard
wanted to remind her of something by the one word, why did he go to all
the trouble of fixing up the cake? Why didn't he write it to her, or
maybe spell it out in those macaroni letters?"
"'Twas the art of him, Denny! The damned cleverness of him! To anyone
else 'twould look just like a fine Christmas cake, the way it did to
all of us until this minute, but to her it meant that someone had raked
up what she was trying to forget. 'Twas the only way he could get
that word to her without anyone else being the wiser. Terhune had him
right; 'tis no ordinary strangling thug we're up against but a shrewd,
crafty devil that planned every move ahead and knew just how to play on
her fears. She must have been as helpless in his hands as a bird in a
snare, poor thing!"
"He did not plan the last move far ahead, that's a safe bet," Dennis
remarked. "If 'twas him found her there in the museum he acted quick
enough then on the spur of the moment, without giving her time to
scream once!"
"And 'tis because of that we'll get him, Denny," predicted McCarty.
"There was never a clever crook yet that didn't over-reach himself
sooner or later, and this is the one time he didn't look ahead; that
is, if 'twas him. That's one thing I can't get through my head yet; why
the blackmailer should have spoiled his own game by killing the source
of the income. There's just one answer that would fit it, but you'd
think me stark crazy if I was to spring it now."
"I'm not Inspector Druet," Dennis reminded him reproachfully. "I took
your word for it last year, didn't I, when I let you dump me in the
middle of an Illinois wheat field, looking for a girl that had lain in
another one's grave for two weeks? If you're going to hold out on me
now----"
"'Twas only a notion, and 'twill keep till I get hold of that
ex-stewardess and learn what was in those letters," McCarty demurred.
"They must have been written to Leonidas Hoyos himself if that old
wallet was his. But there's one thing sure, Denny; the cake was a
reminder of that case that had meant trouble for her or hers, no less.
'Twas the Hoyos murder that she was paying to keep dark and the secret
of it cost her her own life!"
CHAPTER XVIII
GREEKS MEET
The middle-aged individual with sandy mustache and twinkling blue eyes,
who registered the following morning as Timothy Mack at the Oceanside
Cottage in Atlantic City, had little of the look about him of the
tired business man seeking rest. His jovial converse with the austere
landlady and the gusto with which he lighted the most expensive cigar
from the showcase upon the counter led her to conclude, as she later
confided with some misgivings to the clerk, that he was "out for a
time."
Her announcement that she maintained no bar and the house was locked
up promptly at twelve was received with smiling good-nature, and after
a brief survey of the diminutive, cell-like room to which he had been
assigned the newcomer settled himself in the lobby to finish his smoke
and await developments.
Oceanside Cottage was one of the army of small boarding houses which,
crowded shoulder to shoulder, flanked the less pretentious avenues
leading from the beach. Its slightly weatherbeaten exterior would have
been the better for a fresh coat of paint, but the lobby was brave in
its expanse of bright red carpet and glistening oak furnishings.
The latest arrival experienced a panicky feeling that he had invaded
a manless Eden as he surveyed the groups of females of indeterminate
age and uncompromisingly prim demeanor who passed before him. The
description Billings had given of Calvin Norwood's visitor dwindled
to meager and wholly unsatisfactory proportions as a means of
identification. "Middle-aged, blousy, untidy gray hair, shabby black
clothes, English but not a Londoner"; there was not an item of it which
could not have been changed by suddenly acquired affluence except the
age, the betraying accent and the hair, and the latter, as McCarty
somewhat cynically reminded himself was by no means a safe bet.
Two of the guests, a lady with a transformation which obviously failed
of its mission and a mournful spinster with a perpetual sniff, had
seated themselves in close proximity and were evidently continuing a
conversation started elsewhere, for the melancholy one remarked:
"Heavings knows, it ain't necessary to go around telling all your
business, but I always say: if a person is so close-mouthed they won't
let a word fall, there's a reason for it. There ain't an inquisitive
bone in my body, but I talked to her for an hour last night and got
nothing out of her beyond that she was English and had traveled a lot.
I tried her on teaching and typewriting and every respectable thing
I could think of, but my hints just rolled off her like water off a
duck's back. Did you notice her hands?"
The transformation nodded emphatically.
"Housekeeper, I put her down," its wearer vouchsafed. "Housekeeper for
some childish old man who'd died and left her money. She's got bold
eyes and a wheedling manner for all her stand-offishness, and that's
just the kind to get around an old fool. My poor husband----"
"Hush! There she comes." The other sniffed. "I saw that hat in a
boardwalk store the other day for eighteen dollars. Sinful, I call it,
for a woman her age----"
McCarty's teeth clamped upon his cigar and his eyes turned to the
stairs. A tall, amply proportioned woman was descending, clad in a
black, fur-trimmed cloak which revealed the lines of her trim, full
figure and accentuated her height. Her face was not uncomely, of
overblown slightly florid type, and the snap in her large, black eyes
belied the streaks of gray in the dark hair beneath the smartly quilled
hat.
She moved to the desk with a certain air of brisk assurance, deposited
her key, and went out the door while McCarty threw away his cigar and
after a few casual inquiries of the clerk as to points of interest,
discreetly followed.
The woman was half-way down the block ahead of him in the direction of
the beach, walking with a full, swinging stride which held a suggestion
of a sailor's easy, rolling gait, but when she reached the boardwalk
she paused uncertainly and finally started north toward the Inlet.
Past the hotels and piers she made her way, past shops and booths and
shooting galleries to where scattered cottages and an unbroken expanse
of beach and surf lined the boardwalk. The sky grew sullen and overcast
and a stiff north-easter, precursor of a coming storm, beat in her face
but she breasted it erectly with unbent head as though she gloried
in the turbulence of the unrestrained elements. Pedestrians were few
and only an occasional rolling chair shared their solitude, while the
screaming gulls wheeled closer inshore and a stray dog nosing in a heap
of wreckage upon the sands lifted his head and howled dismally.
The woman turned at last and McCarty with a grunt of relief dropped
down upon a bench until she should have passed him. He was frankly
winded and mentally anathematized the insidiously increasing flesh
which years of ease and inactivity had girt about his sturdy form. He
studiously averted his gaze as the woman approached and only when her
tall figure was all but merged in the driving mist beyond did he rise
and again set forth upon the trail.
He hoped devoutly that she was returning to the warmth and conventional
cheer of the boarding house, but when the first of the piers was
reached she halted, her eyes fixed upon the tumbling waves beneath and
after a moment passed through the entrance gates and out upon the long
jetty.
An exhibition building, closed now for the season, stood at the
furthermost end of the pier facing the infinite waste of the ocean, and
behind this structure the woman vanished. McCarty lighted a fresh cigar
and clinging tenaciously to the rail in the lee of a stucco pillar,
waited for a decent interval, but she did not reappear, and finally he
strolled around the corner of the building. His quarry was seated on
a bench close to the rail, gazing seaward with an unwinking stare and
seemingly oblivious of his presence.
He hesitated, coughed deferentially, then seating himself on the end
of the bench farthest from her, pulled a newspaper from his pocket and
proceeded to study her over its top.
All at once she turned and fixed him with a disconcertingly level stare.
"It won't do you a bit of good to follow me," she announced calmly.
"I've no use for fresh old flirts that ought to know better."
McCarty gasped.
"I'm sorry, ma'am." Injured dignity sounded in every syllable. "I'm a
stranger and wanted to come out on this pier, but I didn't know it was
allowed till I saw you going through the gate. If my cigar annoys you,
I'll go away."
He made as if to rise but his scandalized look was inimitable and the
woman laughed frankly.
"Oh, I don't mind a whiff of tobacco! I thought you were one of those
smart blighters that give me the hump down here, fancying every woman
will fall for a smirk and a line of jolly. Stay where you are, if you
like. It's a little bit of all right out here, isn't it?"
"It's grand, ma'am. Barring a day now and then at Coney I'm not what
you might call familiar with the sea." McCarty's shocked expression
had given place to a beaming smile of disarming friendliness. "This
pier, now, might be the deck of a ship."
"Without the rolling and pitching." The woman squinted knowingly at the
horizon. "We're in for a touch of heavy weather, I should say. You'll
see something then, sir, that's well worth your trip."
"You're fond of the sea, ma'am. I'm city bred myself and sociable,
like. There's a sort of lonesomeness about all this water to me."
McCarty waved a comprehensive arm.
"I hate cities!" The woman shuddered and her eyes fell upon the
newspaper which McCarty had purposely held so that the flaring
head-lines might come within her range of vision. "You may be more
lonely in them than at sea, and they're filled with dirt and poverty
and dreadful happenings."
"There's bound to be both the good and the bad cropping out where a
lot of people are crowded together," McCarty observed sententiously.
"But if there's a criminal instinct in anybody it's as liable to make
him act on sea as on land. You've heard no doubt, ma'am, of dreadful
happenings on board all kinds of ships, from yachts to liners?"
"I--I suppose so." Her voice was lowered and her florid cheek had paled
as she turned and stared once more steadily before her. "I don't hold
with horrors myself."
"No more do I," McCarty conceded. "That is, not as a rule, but I've
been reading about this murder that took place in New York a few days
ago. You've seen the account of it, ma'am?"
"You mean the--the woman that was found strangled to death in some sort
of museum?" she asked. "I haven't looked at to-day's paper. Did they
find out who did it?"
"Not yet, ma'am. Would you be having a look at this?" He offered his
newspaper, but just as she reached for it his fingers relaxed ever
so slightly, and the wind tore it from his loosened grasp and bore it
over the rail. "Too bad! We'll get another, though, on the boardwalk.
There's rare news to-day; they've found out that the poor lady was not
murdered in her own home and the body carried across yards and put in
the museum, as was said all along. She went there herself, unbeknownst
to anyone, and 'twas there she was killed."
"In that place?" The woman shuddered again. "It was some sort of
collection of crime relics belonging to a rich, batty old man, wasn't
it? I got that far with it the other day before I chucked it. I don't
mind a bit of spicy reading now and then, but Lor'! that made my flesh
creep, and no mistake! What would a lady like her be doing in that
chamber of horrors?"
"They do be saying she went there for something the old man had bought
just lately to add to his collection," McCarty replied innocently.
"Something to do with a crime she had knowledge of long ago."
"What!" The woman clutched at the back of the bench to steady herself
as she turned and faced him once more, and he saw a dawning horror in
her hard eyes. "Did to-day's paper say that?"
"It did," McCarty lied. "'Tis hinted she was afraid of the truth coming
out and her name being connected with it."
"Did it mention what the object was that the lady was after?" His
companion demanded in a tone which trembled despite her self-repression.
"Let me see!" McCarty rubbed his chin reflectively. "Yes. 'Twas a
wallet; a man's black wallet with a couple of letters inside."
The woman drew in her breath with a sharp little hiss and there was a
pause before she laughed shakily.
"Quite like a 'penny dreadful,' isn't it? Lady Genevieve stealing the
papers! I wonder what it was all about?"
"The old man told the police, it seems, that the letters had to do with
the murder of some foreign gentleman with an outlandish name on board
of a yacht in the Hudson some years back. 'Twas that I had in mind when
I spoke just now of crimes at sea."
"Did he say--the old man--how the letters came into his hands?" There
was an odd, choking quality in the woman's tones.
"I think so, but I only just glanced over the account of it." McCarty
appeared to ruminate. "I remember it said something about a woman
having sold them to him; a woman who used to be employed on the yacht.
I suppose the police will be hotfoot after her now."
"But why?" cried his companion. "They don't accuse her of the murder,
do they? If she was working on the yacht the time the other affair
happened she must have told all she knew at the inquest--I mean to say,
if there was one."
"Not quite. She didn't say anything about the letters, and that's
suppression of evidence; a serious matter in a case like that." McCarty
watched the woman narrowly. "Then, too, she sold the letters, which
lays her open to a charge of conversion of property and I don't know
what else besides."
"You talk like a blooming solicitor!" the other jeered in an attempt at
lightness.
"I've had to do with the law in my time," responded McCarty. "It stands
to reason the woman must know something about this last crime, anyway,
when another one was murdered for the letters she'd carried so long."
"I say, how do the bobbies know that the lady went there for the
letters? Were they found on the body? Why hasn't there been a word
about them in the papers before now?"
"They've not been found. In fact, they've only just been missed. 'Twas
known they were safe in the museum an hour before the murder and no
one's been in since that would have touched them, so it's easy to dope
out that whoever broke in and killed her, did it to get possession of
the wallet and took it away with him."
The woman laughed scornfully.
"It's easy to dope out anything if you have enough imagination and
nerve!" she remarked. "If that is all they have to go upon, they've a
bloody lot of cheek, I say, to go smirching a lady's name by trying to
connect it with a forgotten scandal just because the old duffer can't
find his precious relic! They must be hard put to it for a scapegoat!"
Her voice had grown raucous and there was an ugly, sullen light in her
eyes which hardened her expression immeasurably. McCarty took a long
shot.
"But remember the letters themselves," he said slyly. "Though they're
gone, their contents is known. They'd tell the whole story, and show
the lady's connection with the case----"
"How would they?" the woman shrilled. "There's no one alive cares
tuppence for the letters! They both died that night----"
"Papers? New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Pittsburg
morning papers!"
A small, piping voice sounded close beside them and with a muttered
imprecation McCarty turned. A diminutive newsboy, shivering and
clutching his few remaining papers tightly beneath one arm, stood
hopefully regarding them.
"Yes. Give me a morning paper, boy!" The woman exclaimed. "Any one will
do, if it is the last edition. Here you are, and never mind the change!"
McCarty opened his lips to speak but it was too late. The boy was
scurrying off with his unexpected largesse and the woman sat scanning
her paper with an eagerness which gave place to blank astonishment
merged in mounting wrath.
McCarty waited in silence until she crushed the paper in her hands and
turned once more to him.
"Who are you?" She spoke quietly but her voice shook.
"My name is Timothy McCarty----"
"I thought so! I thought you were one of that crew sent to hound me!"
She twisted the paper convulsively and flung it over the rail. "I ought
to have known, in spite of your smooth-spoken way, when you began
talking about--about happenings on yachts! There is not a word in the
news concerning a--a black wallet, and I don't know what you mean----"
"You're Kate Stricker, aren't you?" McCarty demanded, with a sudden
note of sternness in his voice.
"Oh! yes. I'm Kate, all right, as you could see by the register where
I'm stopping. I didn't come down here to hide!" she declared in scorn.
"I was stewardess on _The Muette_ when Mr. Hoyos--when the accident
happened, and I gave my testimony full and free at the inquest. If I'd
been wanted, the police could have laid a finger on me any time in the
past ten years. I don't know anything about any wallet, or letters, and
I never laid eyes on the old duffer that owns the museum, or the lady
who was murdered there!"
"Slow with that!" McCarty cautioned. "Remember the butler laid eyes on
you when you went to the Norwood house to sell the letters, and he can
back up Mr. Norwood's testimony."
"Pooh!" The woman snapped her fingers. "From what I read this past
week, the old governor's so wild to be of importance in the case that
he'd swear to anything, and show me a butler who can't be bought over!
When it comes to that, I can prove where I was every minute of last
week and my witnesses are as good as his! There was no other woman
employed on _The Muette_ in those days but me, and though I'd small
liking for the master I wouldn't touch his dirty letters! If any were
palmed off on that balmy old duffer it was a sell, and the woman
claiming to be me, if there was one, was a blooming impostor! I've read
about you, too, if you're the ex-Roundsman who was there when the body
was found. You can go back to them who sent you down here, Mr. McCarty,
and tell them that Kate Stricker is ready to face them, and any charge
that suits their fancy!"
McCarty waited patiently until the tirade had ceased and then he asked
quietly:
"How about the money you've come into lately? Where did it come from?"
"That's my affair!" she flared, then hastily as if realizing the
weakness of defiance, she added: "I--I saved it."
"From your salary at the orphan asylum?"
"Let them prove it wasn't." She rose. "I'm not on the stand yet, and
I'll answer no more of your questions! When the time comes I'll be
ready, no fear!"
McCarty got slowly to his feet and remarked as if in after-thought:
"So you had no liking for the man Hoyos."
"I had not," the woman responded. "He's dead, but he was a beast if
ever there was one. He got his just deserts, I say, and the only pity
of it was that the poor young thing died with him! I know nothing about
this other murder, or the wallet or any letters, and if you have no
warrant for me, I'll thank you to let me pass!"
McCarty shrugged and stepped back, but as she moved he made a final
effort.
"You're mistaken in thinking anyone sent me. I'm not connected with the
force any more and if you'll tell me the truth and what was in those
letters, I can promise you the police won't bother you about selling
them. If not, I'll have to go to Headquarters."
The woman smiled in triumph.
"So that's it! You don't know, eh, and you've come here on your own to
pump me! I'm sorry, Mr. McCarty, but as I never heard of the letters
until now, I can't tell you what's in them. Go to Headquarters and tell
them what you please. I've said my last word."
CHAPTER XIX
THE SECOND SHOT
McCarty paid a call upon the chief of police, met his amazed landlady's
resentful reminder that she took no transients with the payment of a
full week's board, and caught the early afternoon train for New York.
During his brief return to Oceanside Cottage he had caught no further
glimpse of Kate Stricker, but concluded that she was planning a getaway
no less precipitous than his own.
The local police would take care of that contingency, however, and as
McCarty settled himself in the train a glow of satisfaction pervaded
him, despite his defeat of the morning.
Albeit fruitless otherwise, his interview with the ex-stewardess on the
pier had in one illuminating flash revealed to him a possible means of
breaking down the bars of her reticence. If, at their next meeting, he
were in a position to convince her of a certain fact, in addition to a
guaranty of her personal immunity, he felt assured that she could be
prevailed upon to tell all that she knew.
He had already satisfied himself upon one point. Whatever the letters
contained which she had guarded for so long and parted with only
through dire necessity, she had had no share in the blackmailing
scheme. Her astonishment at learning of the murdered woman's effort to
obtain possession of the wallet and her disbelief that it was the cause
of the tragedy were too real to be feigned. Granting that premise, the
letters themselves could not have been the instrument held over Mrs.
Jarvis' head, in fear of which she had submitted to the extortionate
demands made upon her. Some other form of exposure must have threatened
in connection with her secret; some other evidence must still exist to
provide a link between her and the event of ten years before.
The hours passed swiftly and his journey came to an end as he still
pondered over the fresh aspect of the problem. The storm which
threatened at Atlantic City had preceded him here, and he emerged from
the station in a blinding swirl of snow, to engage a taxi and sit with
grim, resentful eyes upon its swiftly mounting meter until his own door
was reached.
There, huddled under the shelter of the cornice, he found a sodden,
blue-nosed messenger boy.
"Is your name McCarty?" the latter mumbled stupidly.
"It is. You've something there for me? Come upstairs, lad, and warm
yourself while I see is there an answer wanted."
The boy stumbled after him up the stairs and McCarty built up a roaring
fire in the grate before he took from the numbed fingers the envelope
which they held out to him.
The superscription was a mere hasty scrawl in an unknown but obviously
feminine hand, and he broke the seal. Then, for a long minute he stood
staring, while the words danced before his eyes and his stout heart
missed a beat.
"Dear Mr. McCarty," he read again, scarcely crediting the evidence of
his vision, "Captain Marchal is dead. Please come at once as soon as
you receive this. Joan Norwood."
Dead! McCarty checked the flow of wildly futile suppositions which
thronged his brain and summarily bundled the messenger out into the
storm once more. The street was almost deserted, but finding the taxi
in which he had come fortuitously halted near the corner saloon,
McCarty haled forth its chauffeur and shamelessly bribed the latter to
break all speed records to the Norwood house.
A trembling and awestruck Billings admitted him, who when he turned
toward the library where he had heretofore been received, waved him
back.
"Not there, sir! That's where he was found! The drawing-room, please,
sir."
The butler's usually ruddy face was a pasty gray and there were dark,
sinister spots upon his vest.
"What's that? Blood?" asked McCarty sharply.
Billings shuddered.
"Yes, sir. I helped lift him and I've had no time to change."
"Was it murder?"
"Don't ask me, sir! The pistol was by him--here's Mr. Norwood, now."
"McCarty, my dear fellow!" The elderly little man's voice shook and the
hand he extended quivered also, as if with a palsy. "You have heard? I
tried to get you twice on the wire, but no one answered. Poor Victor!
Poor persecuted, overwrought lad!"
"What happened? I heard only that Captain Marchal was dead."
"He has killed himself! That sharp attack of fever must have weakened
his defenses, sapped his last remaining ounce of strength with which to
fight the acute melancholia that threatened ever since his sight was
destroyed and which the man Terhune's unfounded suspicions have brought
to a crisis. But come! You shall see for yourself."
He led the way to the library and McCarty followed, but on the
threshold both paused. The room was brilliantly lighted and in the
unaccustomed glare each significant detail leaped into prominence and
photographed itself instantaneously upon McCarty's mind. That the
habitually ordered ensemble of the room had been violently disarranged
was evident at a first glance. The huge center table had been slewed
around so that it cut off the corner where stood the secretary's desk,
and the electrolier and book racks which had adorned it were thrown
about the floor. A heavy leather chair, overturned, completed the
barrier and the hearth rug was crumpled and awry. Upon the couch before
it a quiet figure lay, with a white cloth covering the face, and after
a minute Calvin Norwood advanced toward it and lifted the cloth.
"You see?" he murmured.
McCarty nodded without speaking, for despite the long apprenticeship
on the force which had hardened him to similar scenes, he felt an
unaccustomed lump rising in his throat. The pallid face with the
tortured strain and need of self-repression gone was singularly boyish
and serene, the vacant eyes softly closed and a faint elusive smile
like the ghost of a happy thought hovered about the immobile lips. Upon
the breast over the heart a small crimson stain appeared, flecked with
grains of powder.
"My poor boy! If only we had not left him alone!" Norwood replaced the
cloth with tender hands and McCarty saw the slow tears of age standing
heavily in his faded eyes. "If only we had realized his condition and
guarded him from himself!"
A little group of men who had been in earnest consultation in the
embrasure of the farthest window turned, and with an exclamation one of
their number stepped forward.
"Mac! I sent Yost for you not five minutes ago! What do you think of
this affair?"
It was plain that Inspector Druet meant to ignore their interview of
the previous day and McCarty promptly followed his example.
"Don't know, sir, till I hear the facts." He laid significant stress
upon the final word. "I'm not holding by theories any more. Marchal's
dead, but what's been going on here?"
"I haven't got a detailed statement yet, but as far as I can learn
everyone was out of the house this afternoon. They came home and found
him lying dead on the floor over there in the corner behind the table,
with his own French army pistol in his hand, and the room upset as you
see it now. I'm waiting for the Chief Medical Examiner, but there's no
doubt that he killed himself. The powder marks about the wound alone
show that, for death had been almost instantaneous, and no one could
have got within ten feet of him the way he had pulled the furniture
around."
"Had he?" McCarty asked.
"Don't you see it, man?" retorted the Inspector impatiently. "He was
alone in the house and I made sure right off the bat that no one could
have broken in."
"Poor Victor's mind became suddenly unhinged and he ran amuck. That is
the only possible explanation," Norwood intervened. "He has brooded
constantly over the murder and this morning I noticed the change in
him; a state of nervous excitability--which gave me great concern.
Oh, why was I not warned then? I did beg him to rest, but he seemed
utterly unable to compose himself, and wandered about the house in an
almost distraught manner most of the morning. He seemed to be more like
himself after lunch and I left him here at his typewriter when I went
out."
"Where is the typewriter now?" McCarty demanded. "It's gone from his
desk."
"Here on the floor." Inspector Druet moved one end of the center table
and made room for McCarty to squeeze through the aperture. "He must
have sent it crashing off the desk, but it landed right side up as you
see, although the ribbon is broken."
"How could he have done that?" speculated McCarty. "'Twould take the
sweep of a pile-driver to knock that heavy machine over."
"Oh, he probably staggered against the desk in his frenzy and tilted it
so that the typewriter slid off; then the desk righted itself again.
You see how all the papers he had been working on are scattered around."
McCarty eyed the litter and nodded slowly.
"And just where was the body found?"
"Here." The Inspector measured off a space upon the rug. "From what I
have been able to gather, he was lying with his feet toward the table
and his head almost touching the wall paneling. The body should not
have been moved until my arrival, but it was placed upon the couch, by
Miss Norwood's orders, I believe, even before I was notified."
There was stern reproof in the Inspector's tones and McCarty turned to
Calvin Norwood.
"Who discovered the body?"
"My niece and her fiancé," the latter responded. "Poor Joan was
inexpressibly shocked and I found her on the verge of collapse when I
returned. Here is the pistol with which Victor killed himself. It was
lying within reach of his fingers. He kept it in that drawer of his
desk which you see open now. It was his own, you know; he brought it
from France with him."
McCarty took the weapon which Norwood had picked up from the corner
of the table and handed to him. It was a service pistol, of a caliber
little larger than those with which he was familiar, and after
examining it he looked up to meet the Inspector's quizzical gaze bent
upon him.
"How many shots were fired from it?" he asked.
Inspector Druet smiled.
"I wondered if you'd get it," he said. "Two shots were fired, but only
one entered the body; the other--the first--must have gone wild. It
is possible that he shot at some imaginary enemy and then turned the
weapon on himself."
The arrival of the Chief Medical Examiner put an end for a time to
further investigation in that quarter. Calvin Norwood stayed to hear
his verdict, but McCarty stepped out into the hall.
Billings was nowhere to be seen, but a low, anxious feminine voice
called his name softly from the drawing-room, and he entered to find
Miss Norwood pacing back and forth, twisting a wisp of a handkerchief
nervously between her fingers while Vivaseur, his face grave with
sympathy, sat before the hearth poking the fire in an aimless,
meditative fashion.
"You received my note, Mr. McCarty?"
"Yes, ma'am," he responded. "That's what brought me here. I'd been out
of town but I found your messenger waiting for me when I got back. 'Tis
a very sad business, Miss Norwood."
"It is terrible!" she cried. "Poor, poor Captain Marchal!"
"They do be saying that 'twas you and Mr. Vivaseur that found him?"
McCarty suggested.
"Yes." She wrung her hands convulsively. "Oh, I shall never forget
it! Mr. Vivaseur and I came in about half-past five. We had to ring
and ring, for I haven't any latch-key; I lost mine while I was away
visiting during this last month and when I returned I was too horrified
and grieved at Mrs. Jarvis' awful death to think of anything else, so
I forgot to have another made. Finally Billings came and admitted
us, but he had only just returned to the house himself and hadn't
had time to switch on the lights or build up the fires. Eric--Mr.
Vivaseur--waited here in the drawing-room while I ran upstairs to
remove my out-door things, and Billings brought him a brandy and soda.
"We sat here and chatted for a few minutes and then all at once I
remembered Captain Marchal and sent Billings to see if he were lying
down, for I feared that he might be ill again. Billings said that he
was not in his room, and I crossed the hall to the library in search of
him. It was still dark in there, but I pressed the electric switch in
the wall and the first thing I saw when the lights sprang up was the
big table pushed out of place and the chair overturned.
"I must have cried out, I think, for Mr. Vivaseur came, and Billings,
and then--then we saw him lying there!"
She paused and covered her face with her hands and Vivaseur rose,
coming forward solicitously.
"Don't, dear! You can't help the poor chap now, you know, and you will
really make yourself ill. I suppose they have told you how we found
the body?" He turned to McCarty. "His fingers were almost touching the
pistol as if it had just fallen from his hand. I saw at a glance that
it was all over, of course, but Miss Norwood could not believe it and
begged us to do something for him. Billings and I got him up on the
couch between us, which it appears we should not have done, for your
Inspector johnny was in a hat about it when he came. I fancy it is
another of your official regulations, but it seemed rather too awful
to leave the poor chap lying there like that. Miss Norwood wanted to
summon a physician but I managed to convince her that it would be
useless; then her next thought was for you, and we despatched the
messenger."
"Who called up Headquarters?" asked McCarty.
"Billings. Excellent man, that. Keeps his head about him." Vivaseur
shrugged. "I don't mind admitting that the thing knocked me a bit, at
first. I've seen a lot of the chaps go west in the first two years of
the fighting, but this was a different matter. However, Billings took
charge, and then Mr. Norwood himself returned."
"Was the cook out, too, this afternoon, and the housemaid?" McCarty
rubbed his chin. "How was it, miss, that Captain Marchal came to be
left all alone in the house?"
"Cook has gone, bag and baggage; she left this morning," Miss Norwood
explained. "It just happens that my own personal maid is away on a
visit to her mother in the country. The housemaid prepared lunch and
after she and Billings had cleared it away, I permitted her to go out
for the afternoon, supposing that Billings would be here, but my uncle
had already sent him on an errand. I went out myself, first to an
intelligence office to secure another cook and then to visit old Mrs.
Lyle Fremont, who is ill and had sent for me. Mr. Vivaseur called at
her house and brought me home."
"'Mrs. Lyle Fremont,'" McCarty repeated. "Wasn't it with her that Mrs.
Jarvis was to have dined the night she was killed?"
Joan Norwood nodded.
"Yes. She won't have a telephone, you know, and she never knew why Mrs.
Jarvis failed to keep her engagement until she read of the murder in
the papers next day."
"Mr. Norwood himself was out all the afternoon?" McCarty chose his
words with evident care.
"He was downtown with Oliver Jarvis, at his attorney's, helping him to
arrange his affairs and make out a statement of his operations with
his wife's money for Inspector Druet," Miss Norwood replied. "He went
home with Oliver afterward and stayed until six o'clock."
"And did he come back by way of the little door in the fence?"
"No!" she shuddered. "That door is bolted and barred forever!"
"Oh, I say!" Vivaseur expostulated. "You don't mean to insinuate, my
dear fellow----"
"I'm insinuating nothing, sir," McCarty said hastily. "I'm just wanting
to know where everybody was. Mr. Norwood says that Captain Marchal
acted queer this morning. Did you notice it, miss?"
"He was more nervous and excited, and that strained, listening attitude
of his, of which we told you yesterday, seemed more accentuated, but
somehow I did not dream that it meant anything more serious than
perhaps a return of the fever. If only we had realized his mental
condition we could have taken steps to prevent this terrible thing! I,
for one, shall never forgive myself!"
Vivaseur laid a hand upon her arm and gently forced her into a chair as
she broke down and sobbed hysterically, and at that moment Inspector
Druet appeared in the doorway.
"The Medical Examiner has gone," he announced. "It is a clear case of
suicide and there is nothing more for us to do about it."
McCarty advanced to him and asked in a lowered tone:
"Has the body been removed yet?"
"No, they're waiting for the undertaker now."
"Then, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to go back in there and
look around a bit," McCarty remarked. "I wonder what he'd started to
work on this afternoon when the fit took him?"
"Go as far as you like!" The Inspector stepped aside to allow him to
pass, and then followed him to the library door. "Say, Mac, that girl,
Etta Barney, came down to see me this morning, and later on Oliver
Jarvis showed up. Their stories are straight enough, too, as far as
I've have been able to discover, and they both said that you sent them.
It looks as though my theory of the murder was away off and I've got to
start all over again."
It was as near an apology as Inspector Druet had ever been called upon
to make, and McCarty flushed darkly.
"Oh, well, sir, it's like many another case, that seems a puzzle you'd
never get the answer to, and then all of a sudden you'll light on one
little clue that'll make the whole thing as plain as day."
"I can't quite see that idea of yours yet, Mac, though there may be
something in it, at that. Terhune will be in fine feather now."
"Will he so?" McCarty paused, and the Inspector pointed significantly
to the still figure upon the couch.
"Of course. This suicide will be an admission of guilt in his
estimation and his theory will be vindicated. Well, I'm going to get a
statement from these people as to where they all were this afternoon,
to file in my record, and then I'll call it a day. So long, Mac."
"Good-night, sir." He turned as if to go to the dismantled desk in the
corner, but as soon as the Inspector's footsteps had died away down the
hall, he walked swiftly to the couch and bent over the body. He did
not remove the cloth from the face, but devoted his attention to the
blood-stained and powder-flecked clothing about the wound and when he
straightened after a prolonged scrutiny, it was with a low whistle of
surprise.
For several minutes he stood lost in profound meditation, then
slowly and cautiously he began a circuit of the room. A glint of
steel half-buried in the deep pile of the rug under the center table
caught his eye and stooping, he picked up a huge pair of long-bladed,
bronze-handled library shears. He examined them minutely and then with
a guilty glance toward the door he wrapped his handkerchief about the
points and thrust the shears hastily into his hip pocket.
To any possible observer his behavior during the next ten minutes would
have been highly mystifying. He dropped lumberingly down upon his knees
and searched every inch of the rug about the spot where the shears had
fallen, then raised himself until his eyes were on a level with the
table top and scanned its polished surface aslant beneath the light.
What he discerned there evidently gratified him, for he grunted with
satisfaction as he pulled an envelope from his pocket and holding its
gaping orifice beneath the table edge, carefully ran his finger over
the surface. Creasing the envelope together at the top, he returned it
to his pocket and rising, continued his search.
"You here still, Mac?" Inspector Druet paused in the doorway some
twenty minutes later, to find McCarty beside the opened drawer of the
desk, staring with knitted brows at the paper which he held in his hand.
"Yes, sir. Will you have a look at this?"
The object of his scrutiny was apparently a sheet of blank typewriter
paper with a signature scrawled half-way down the page and the
Inspector regarded it with raised eyebrows. The signature, in a
straggling, uncertain hand, was that of Victor Marchal.
"What do you make of it, sir?"
"Nothing." The Inspector yawned. "He was probably practicing how to
write his name over again since he became blind and threw the paper
back into the drawer. There's nothing to that, Mac."
"All right. But if you don't mind, I'll be taking it along, just to
amuse myself with."
McCarty folded the paper and put it in the pocket where the envelope
reposed, while the Inspector stared.
"Look here, Mac, what's the idea? You're holding out something!"
"Not facts, sir, only theories," McCarty grinned. "If it's facts you
are looking for, there's two shots gone from the pistol and only one
entered the body. Find out where the second one went to, and you'll be
a busy man, the day!"
To Dennis Riordan where he sat yawning over an evening paper from which
the baseball news had been patriotically but lamentably absent, there
came a brisk and buoyant McCarty, with the light of purpose in his
eyes. Dennis knew that look of old, and he flung aside the paper.
"So you're back!" he exclaimed. "And what is it now?"
"How are your eyes?" McCarty demanded without preamble.
"My eyes? What the----" he paused discreetly. "What's eating you, Mac?
My eyes are all right."
"They're not!" announced McCarty flatly. "The smoke has got to them
again and they're feeling mighty bad this minute. And to-morrow morning
they'll be that sore that you'll be getting a matter of a week or ten
days off to have them treated."
"I get you!" The sore eyes gleamed with swift comprehension. "Where are
we off to?"
"New Orleans," responded McCarty, "to-morrow night on the eight o'clock
train."
CHAPTER XX
FROM OUT THE PAST
On a bright, balmy afternoon in late November the Planters' Bank of
New Orleans was about to close its doors for the day when two men,
obviously strangers, entered and approached the paying teller's window.
One was tall and lantern jawed and moved with the lithe ease which told
of perfect muscular training; the other heavy set but not bulky, with
a stubby, reddish mustache on the long upper lip and keen smiling blue
eyes.
"You've a director at this bank named Justin Messager. I'd like to
know where I can find him, please," announced the heavier of the two
strangers.
The languid teller stared.
"Mr. Messager never comes to the bank and rarely to a meeting," he
replied coldly. "Is there anything we can do for you?"
"No, it's him I've got to see. Where did you say he lived?"
"I didn't say!" the teller snapped. "Mr. Messager is very feeble and
does not permit himself to be annoyed. What is the nature of your
business with him?"
"That's his look-out!" The blue eyes narrowed and glinted gray. "We've
been sent from New York to see him and if you want to make a secret of
his whereabouts, I suppose there's a directory or two in this town!
Come along, Denny!"
"Oh, from New York?" The teller's manner underwent a change. "Mr.
Messager lives out on St. Charles Avenue; I'll write the address for
you. The first vice-president is here, if you would care to see him
instead."
The stranger declined, and receiving the proffered slip of paper, he
departed, followed by his companion.
"Look here, Mac, you've not told me a word of what we're after!" the
latter complained. "Who is this Justin Messager, and what for are
we trailing a feeble old man that'll likely have us thrown out for
intruding on him?"
"He was a crony of Pierre Chartrand, and Chartrand was the guardian of
Evelyn Beaudet as was, Oliver Jarvis' wife," McCarty responded. "Is it
beginning to get through your thick head? Chartrand was the only one
belonging to her and he's dead, but his most intimate friend is our
next best bet."
"Thick I may be," Dennis conceded in some resentment, "but not being a
mind-reader, it's not clear to me why a pal of the old man would know a
secret that was kept from the girl's own husband. Have it your own way,
but when we pick ourselves up after being chucked out, it'll be me that
heads the next expedition, and that to a place where you can get one of
the fizzes that put this burg on the map. My throat is like a dry-dock
after that train."
"If we do get the gate," McCarty promised, "I'll stand treat."
The business section of the city once passed, St. Charles Avenue
revealed itself as a thoroughfare of stately homes, and before one of
the most imposing of these they alighted and then paused, scanning the
house with speculative eyes.
"Look at the shades all down," Dennis commented. "'Twould be just your
luck, Mac, if he'd died on you! From what that Willie-boy at the bank
said----"
"Come on!" McCarty interrupted firmly. "Now remember we're sent here by
Mr. Jarvis, and don't act as if you'd come to lift the silver!"
The aged negro butler who replied to their ring bobbed his woolly
white head obsequiously as he took the note which McCarty produced,
but seemed dubious as to his master's reception of them. However, he
ushered them into a huge, dim drawing-room, where massively carved
furniture was arranged stiffly against the wall and the pendants of
the antiquated crystal chandelier tinkled to the vibration of the
ex-Roundsman's heavy tread.
Dennis seated himself gingerly in the nearest chair and looked about
him with professional interest.
"'Twould make a grand fire-trap!" he remarked. "With the floors all
oily and that gallery around the hall out there to act as a flue, if
you'd give it two seconds' start and a lick of wind, 'twould go up like
tinder."
"Is it a fire we're here for, or information?" demanded McCarty
sarcastically. "Whist, now, somebody's coming."
Slow, shuffling steps sounded upon the stairs, accompanied by the
stumping of a heavy cane, and a thin, querulous voice exclaimed:
"Easy, Robert, easy! Ouch!--No, don't drag! There!"
The steps drew nearer and a gaunt, bowed old figure, crowned by a shock
of snowy hair, appeared in the doorway leaning upon the old butler's
arm.
He peered with curiously bright, searching eyes at his visitors as they
rose, but did not speak until the servant had deposited him carefully
in a chair and withdrawn.
"Mr. McCarty?" He looked from one to the other of them, and the
ex-Roundsman bowed. "In this note which you have brought to me from Mr.
Oliver Jarvis, of New York, he requests me to give you any information
at my disposal. I presume he means concerning his wife, of whose
tragic death we have all heard here, but I am at a loss to understand
why he should have sent you to me."
"Well, sir, he thought you, being Mr. Chartrand's friend, would likely
know more than anyone else about Mrs. Jarvis," McCarty explained. "This
is my assistant, Mr. Riordan. You've heard, of course, that Mrs. Jarvis
was murdered; strangled to death in a private museum belonging to an
old friend of her husband?"
Mr. Messager nodded.
"A frightful affair! She was a lovely child, a charming young girl; I
watched her grow to womanhood under my old friend's care." He checked
himself suddenly, and added: "Have they found the assassin?"
"Not yet, sir, but the police are working on it and Mr. Jarvis has
hired a celebrated private detective, the greatest in the country,
to investigate the crime for him. We're here on a different matter
entirely." McCarty paused. "Could you tell me, sir, what you know of
Mrs. Jarvis' family?"
"She had none," Mr. Messager responded, his bright old eyes fixed
shrewdly on the questioner's face. "Her parents both died before she
was six and in her father's will Pierre Chartrand was named her sole
guardian and the executor of the estate. But why have you come to me?
What sort of information does Mr. Jarvis seek; and why? He knew all
that I can tell you of the Beaudet family at the time of the marriage."
"Well, sir, in going over his wife's old letters and private papers, he
came upon something which made him anxious for further information,"
McCarty remarked truthfully enough. "Had neither of her parents any
relatives living at all?"
"None. Like herself, her mother was an orphan from childhood, and her
father, Felix Beaudet, lost his parents in a railroad disaster a few
months after his marriage, just before Evelyn was born." The querulous
voice reiterated. "But Mr. Jarvis knew this!"
"Mr. Chartrand was a bachelor, wasn't he?" McCarty persisted. "Can you
tell me who the young lady's friends were as she grew up?"
The old gentleman crossed his hands on the top of his gold-headed cane
and straightened himself in his chair.
"She was a very quiet, studious girl and cared little for society.
After she left the Convent of the Blessed Name, where she was educated,
she wished to join the order, but Mr. Chartrand opposed that, and she
submitted to his wishes, although she took very little part in the
social life about her, shutting herself up with her books and flowers
and music. When my niece Loretta was married to Peyton Sawtelle, she
would not even attend the wedding, although they had been inseparable
at the convent."
"She's been married to Mr. Jarvis for five years," McCarty observed.
"How long before that did she leave the convent?"
"Let me see. Bless me! It is ten years now; no, eleven next spring. She
had always been a frail, delicate child and broke down from over study.
I remember that she was ill for a long time." He moved impatiently in
his chair. "But what is there in all this that can interest Mr. Jarvis
now? What was the nature of the letter or document which he found?"
"That's not for me to say, sir," McCarty replied respectfully but
firmly. "You'll hear all about it from Mr. Jarvis as soon as he can
pull himself together, I've no doubt. I was just sent here to find out
what I could of Mrs. Jarvis prior to her marriage. Did she stay shut
away like that from everybody all the four or five years before she met
Mr. Jarvis?"
The old man hesitated, still regarding his visitor fixedly. At last he
spoke, but slowly, as if choosing each word with care.
"She was not shut away. She merely preferred her quiet home and
devoted herself to her guardian. After a year or two she began going
about more, and frequently visited my niece at her home on Lake
Pontchartrain. Indeed, it was at South Point that she met Mr. Jarvis.
But as I told you, I have absolutely no information such as it appears
he desires. Except for the unusual and most unfortunate circumstances
I should not have discussed the lady at all with you. I know nothing
concerning her with which her husband is not already fully acquainted;
her life was simple in the extreme, and if he will let me know
personally the nature of this document which he has found I will be
glad to satisfy him upon it."
"I'll tell him, Mr. Messager." McCarty rose and signaled to the
absorbed Dennis with a glance. "Thank you for seeing me, sir. I'm sorry
to have bothered you, but Mr. Jarvis could think of no one else who
had known his wife so long and so well. You'll hear from him soon, no
doubt. Good-day, sir."
"Phew!" whistled Dennis when the house door had closed behind them with
a dignified thud. "The drinks are on you, all right, for even though we
didn't get thrown out by the scruff of the neck, we was told to make
ourselves scarce if ever looks could do it!"
McCarty's lips moved, but no words came and he walked as if in a
trance, staring straight ahead of him with eyes that were round with
wonder.
"All right! Keep mum if you want to!" Dennis remarked sourly. "It's
little you got from the old one that'd make conversation. Whatever that
murdered dago was to her or her family you'll get no word of it from
the likes of him."
"He told us more than a word, if you'd been listening for it." McCarty
found his voice at last. "According to young Jarvis, his wife was
twenty-seven. That would make her sixteen or seventeen when she left
the convent. Did you get when that was, Denny? Eleven years ago next
spring!"
"And what then?" asked Dennis vacantly.
"Oh, nothing! Nothing at all except that 'twas eleven years ago come
spring that our friend Hoyos got his, that's all!"
"Mac! And she was sick for a long time afterwards! Over study, the
old fellow called it!" Dennis' mind had started to work. "She wanted
to take the veil and then when her guardian wouldn't let her do that,
she shut herself away from everyone! Sixteen or seventeen is no babe
in arms; I wonder if that Hoyos was ever in New Orleans? He seems to
have had a taking way with women, but the back of my hand to him for a
thorough-going blackguard dead or alive!"
"Don't go getting yourself worked up about it till we know where we're
at," McCarty counseled. "We've nothing yet to bank on, remember. If
Messager knew anything he'd not tell it, and we've got to have the
straight dope on this."
"Where'll you get it?" Dennis demanded. "Chartrand's dead and if there
was anything that he didn't tell young Jarvis when he married her, he'd
not have breathed it now."
"Who is it, do you think, Denny, that young girls tell their secrets
to?"
"How should I know? I've steered clear of them, young or old!" Dennis
asserted warmly. "But I do remember home in the old days whenever Molly
had a girl friend staying with her they'd be forever whispering and
buzzing----"
"You've said it! Old Messager said his niece was Evelyn Beaudet's
best friend, if you recollect; I'm thinking we'll pay a little call
to-morrow on Mrs. Peyton Sawtelle, of South Point."
Accordingly, the following afternoon after a brief journey, by rail,
they reached their destination, and discreet inquiries on McCarty's
part elicited the fact that the Sawtelles lived some three miles out
on the road which bordered the lake. Further inquiries accompanied
by a display of Northern prodigality placed at his disposal a small,
battered car with a ragged negro driver and as they alternately plunged
and crawled along the palm-fringed road Dennis observed:
"And this is November! Will you look at them lawns, as green as the
sod in the Old Country? She'd have wanted to come back to it all fast
enough in the long, cold winters up North unless there had been some
memory she was trying to put behind her."
McCarty nudged him savagely and there was silence thereafter until
they turned in between two tall gate-posts and up a broad driveway to
a venerable Colonial house whose massive white pillars gleamed like
shafts of marble among the trees.
A dusky-hued housemaid admitted them with some suspicion and ushered
them into a dainty, chintz-hung sitting-room, where presently there
came to them a tall, slender, young woman with gold-bronze hair and
soft, brown eyes which gazed at them in gentle inquiry.
"I am Mrs. Sawtelle. You wish to see me?"
"Yes, ma'am. My name's McCarty and this is Dennis Riordan. We've come
from New York to have a little talk with you if you'll be so good."
"New York!" she faltered, and her eyes darkened with apprehension. "Oh,
I--I remember reading about you in the dispatches! You were both there
when----"
"When the body of Mrs. Jarvis was discovered?" McCarty supplemented
quietly as she hesitated. "We were, ma'am, and it's because of that
we're here now."
"Have they found out who did it?" Her voice was a mere whisper, and she
clasped her hands convulsively.
"No, ma'am. That is, they've pretty well decided who the guilty party
is, but they've not laid hands on him yet." McCarty ignored Dennis'
stare and went on earnestly. "Since Mrs. Jarvis' death some papers have
come to light among her things which show there was something in her
life before ever she'd met and married her husband that she never told,
something that she'd have gone to any lengths to keep secret."
Mrs. Sawtelle dropped limply into a chair.
"This--this is not possible!" she stammered. "I knew her well and I
cannot believe it! But how did you hear of me? Why have you come?"
"To learn the truth, ma'am. You and she were girls together at the
Convent of the Blessed Name. You know why she left so suddenly, and
why she was sick for so long and then shut herself up like a nun and
wouldn't even go to your wedding, though you were closer to her than a
sister----"
"Oh, stop! Stop!" She put her hands over her ears as though to shut out
the sound of his voice. "I do not know what you are talking about! We
were friends, yes, but it was just a girlhood companionship. She left
the convent because of illness and was a semi-invalid for a long time.
That is why she did not appear at my wedding and why----"
She had spoken eagerly, quickly, but beneath McCarty's calm,
incredulous gaze she wavered and her voice died away in her throat.
"No, ma'am." His tone was deprecatingly respectful, but there was a
note of finality in it. "You'll excuse me, but we know better than
that. We know you were in her confidence and only you can tell us what
happened that spring of nineteen-seven, and who the man was----"
"You are mistaken!" She spoke with studied hauteur but her lips were
trembling. "I have no knowledge of any secret in Mrs. Jarvis' girlhood
such as you intimate. Who sent you to me?"
"Mr. Jarvis himself. The papers that he found mentioned your name,"
McCarty fabricated boldly. "He asked us to come to you quietly, rather
than do anything that would bring you into notoriety, ma'am."
"What are these papers?"
"Well," McCarty hesitated and then plunged, "there's a bit of an old
diary----"
"A diary!" Mrs. Sawtelle clutched the arms of her chair. "I thought it
was destroyed!"
McCarty concealed a start of triumph.
"Only partly, ma'am. There's enough of it left to tell Mr. Jarvis that
his wife had lived a lie with him these five years; that she'd hid from
him something he'd a right to know. Mrs. Sawtelle, who was the other
man and what was he to her?"
She rose to her feet slowly and the brown eyes flashed.
"If I knew, do you think that I would betray her confidence?" she said.
"If there were any secret which she did not tell her husband do you
think I would speak now? She is dead and whatever she may have had
locked in her heart must die with her."
"Not if it helps her murderer to go free." McCarty's tone was suddenly
stern.
"Her--murderer!" Mrs. Sawtelle gasped. "You don't mean--it cannot be!
She told me he was dead!"
An irrepressible gurgle emanated from Dennis' throat, but McCarty
remained seemingly unmoved.
"Dead he may be, but there's another knew her story. Another who has
blackmailed her out of thousands in the past year and who finally
killed her----"
"Oh, God!" the young woman breathed. "What shall I do?"
"Tell us the truth, ma'am, and help us to find him," McCarty urged.
"You can do your friend no good now by keeping still and if she could
know she would want you to speak. 'Twill be on your soul if her
murderer escapes and as for her husband, half the truth is worse for
him than the whole of it."
Mrs. Sawtelle paced slowly to the window, where she stood for
long gazing out over the rolling lawns to the blue waters of Lake
Pontchartrain, while McCarty and Dennis waited in silence. At length
she turned and her face, though pale, was composed and resolute.
"You are right. If she came to her death because of the secret which
she has guarded, then I must break my promise to her. Mr. Jarvis was
not her first husband. She ran away, eloped over the convent wall with
a fascinating stranger, after a month of as tempestuous and romantic a
wooing as ever a girl had. This was in the autumn of nineteen-six when
she was only sixteen.
"The convent is situated on the bank of the Mississippi about fifty
miles above New Orleans, and a month before, a beautiful yacht had
dropped anchor within sight of our school windows. Sometimes a small
boat came ashore and we caught glimpses of a tall, handsome, dark man
in white flannels. We made up all sorts of silly, sentimental stories
about him and the yacht, which seemed to us like a floating fairyland.
"One afternoon in recreation hour I happened to be in a far corner of
the garden when I heard someone laughing softly above me and looked up.
Evelyn was sitting on the top of the wall and I heard a man's voice on
the other side. That night in bed she told me it was the stranger from
the yacht; that he was a Frenchman named Leon Hoguet and that he had
the most wonderful eyes she had ever seen.
"It was the beginning and before I knew it she was slipping out every
night to meet him, but she never crossed the wall until the night she
went away with him for good. I could have stopped it by going to the
Mother Superior, but it did not enter my head to betray her, although I
blamed myself a million times in the years that followed. I was a year
older than she but the romance of it thrilled me and we had both been
kept like children, ignorant of the world.
"I shall never forget the night when she whispered to me that he had
asked her to marry him. I was frightened and begged her not to run away
but she would not listen, and the next night I stole out with her to
the wall, kissed her and handed up her little bundle of clothing and
heard her drop from the top down into his arms. The next morning the
yacht was gone from the river.
"Of course there was a frightful time when she was missed, but I would
not admit that I knew anything and her guardian and the Mother Superior
both hushed it up for fear of scandal. I heard nothing from her for
three long months. Then there came a pitiful little note. She was at
home with her guardian in New Orleans; home and heart-broken.
"When I went home for the Easter holidays she was gone again and her
guardian told me only that she was visiting up the river. He never
knew that I had been in her confidence but he had aged ten years in a
few months. When the summer vacation came Evelyn had returned but she
was desperately ill and for a long time her life was despaired of. She
grew slowly better, however, and one day she told me the whole dreadful
story.
"Leonidas Hoguet had taken her up the river to an obscure landing where
they were married by an itinerant preacher, and at first she had been
wildly happy but it only lasted for a very few weeks. He tired of her
soon and used to leave her alone on the yacht for days together while
he drank and dissipated in river towns. At last he deserted her in a
hotel in Memphis and she made her way home.
"Her guardian forgave her and kept her secret, but he searched the
country for Leonidas Hoguet. He never found him and when spring came,
poor Evelyn forgot her pride and everything else, and ran away a second
time, to go to him. How she found him I never knew, for she would tell
me little about that time. She could never bring herself to speak of it
except to say that he was dead. She had managed to reach him and had
been with him when he died.
"I think you know the rest; how she shut herself away from everyone for
more than three years. She could not bear to come to my wedding and I
quite understood but later I persuaded her to put the past behind her
and take up her life again. I had her with me a great deal and it was
here that she met Oliver Jarvis, who knew my husband at college.
"He fell in love with her at first sight and I was so happy when I saw
that she, too, had begun to care. She wanted to tell him the truth,
but her guardian forbade it and she married him without speaking. He
took her away and I have never seen her since. At first her letters
came regularly, each one telling of her great happiness, but after
a time they gradually ceased and with the death of her guardian I
realized that she wanted to put me and all her life down here out of
her thoughts, like a chapter that is closed."
Mrs. Sawtelle drew a deep sigh and brushed her hand across her eyes.
"There, Mr. McCarty, I have told you everything! If Leonidas Hoguet
is dead--and Evelyn would never have married Oliver unless it were
true--who could have known her secret? Who could have killed her, and
why?"
"I can't tell you that now, ma'am." McCarty's face was very grave but
his eyes gleamed with a steely light. "There's a lot of work to be done
on the case still and we're dealing with no ordinary criminal. We've
got to go slow and take him unawares, but if he's alive a week from
to-day I'm thinking he'll be under lock and key and no power on earth
can save him from the chair!"
As he and Dennis took their departure, McCarty halted with his foot
upon the running board of the ramshackle vehicle.
"Wait here a minute, Denny. I've just thought of something."
He turned and bounded up the porch steps to where Mrs. Sawtelle stood
in the doorway, and there ensued a brief, hurried interchange of words.
To Dennis it appeared that McCarty was eagerly questioning, the lady
replying in evident surprise but affirmatively for her interrogator
nodded emphatically and a broad smile lifted his stubby, sandy mustache
as he bade her a second farewell.
He was still smiling as they jerked forward and lunged out upon the
driveway to the gates.
"What was it hit you at the last minute?" Dennis demanded curiously.
"You were a bold lad with your brag that the murderer would be under
lock and key in a week!"
The smile vocalized in a chortle, and McCarty responded:
"'Twas no empty brag! The thing that hit me at the last minute is the
last proof I needed to put him there; the last little link between that
blackmailing devil and the death house! We've got him now, Denny; got
him at last!"
CHAPTER XXI
SIGNED, "VICTOR MARCHAL"
Calvin Norwood was seated in solitude before the hearth in his library
on Saturday night, trying to shut his ears to the occasional murmur
of voices from the drawing-room where Joan and her lover were making
plans for the future. He was trying hard not to listen too for another
familiar sound; the light, halting step of the blind secretary.
No light save the glow of the fire lifted the shadows of the room and
in a far corner the silent, shrouded typewriter loomed, a tangible
reminder of the brave spirit which had sought to carry on through the
darkness and fallen only when reason failed.
So deep was Norwood in his mournful reverie that he was oblivious to
the ringing of the front door-bell and glanced up only when Billings
appeared on the threshold.
"Mr. McCarty, sir."
"My dear fellow!" Norwood sprang up and extended his hand. "Where have
you been for the past week and more? I've tried twice to see you."
"Have you, sir?" McCarty shook hands and dropped a trifle wearily into
the chair his host indicated. "I've been out of town--only got back a
couple of hours ago--and I've not had a decent night's sleep but one
since I left. I thought I'd look in on you and hear the news."
"There is none." Norwood seated himself once more and sighed gloomily.
"Since poor Victor's death I seem to be losing my grip on things. I
cannot help a feeling of hopelessness about the investigation of Mrs.
Jarvis' murder, and it is my belief that it will never be solved."
He spoke with a shade too much eagerness, and McCarty asked:
"Has Inspector Druet been around, sir?"
"Yes. I've stood by and watched the department make blunder after
blunder for twenty years, but your Inspector has surpassed any of the
others for sheer idiocy in this case; first by trying to place the
guilt on Oliver, and now by nosing about after that Hoyos wallet of
which I told you. I suspect you must have mentioned it to him, but his
efforts to connect it with the murder are preposterous."
"Yes, sir," agreed McCarty equably. "Have you found it yet?"
Norwood stirred impatiently in his chair.
"No. I haven't looked!" he snapped. "It's there somewhere, of course.
I tell you, these tragedies following one upon another have made me
shudder at the very mention of crime! I shall never interest myself in
such work again and I feel like making a bonfire of my whole collection
in the yard!"
McCarty, remembering Joan's description of her uncle's frenzied,
night-long search of the museum after discovering the disappearance of
the wallet, smiled to himself at the tirade.
"What is Mr. Terhune doing, I wonder?" he queried.
"Terhune! Don't speak to me of him!" snorted the other indignantly. "He
has rested his case completely on poor Victor's suicide, smirching the
name of a dead man to hide his own incompetence, and more than all,
he has managed to half convince Oliver of the truth of his damnable
theory! Once let a man believe that another was secretly in love with
his wife and he will be ready to believe anything else of him! Victor
felt only a chivalrous and grateful admiration for Evelyn, that I
know. In spite of Terhune's sensational successes in the past, it is
my opinion that the man is a bluff, pure and simple. The case has
baffled him, just as it will everybody in the end, and he has taken
the easy way out by thrusting the blame upon a man who is no longer
here to defend himself. If Victor were only alive I would never cease
my efforts to learn the truth, for that is the only way his name can
be cleared. But I am an old man and I recognize the inevitability of
defeat, as Inspector Druet will in time. Mark my words, McCarty, the
mystery of Evelyn Jarvis' murder will never be solved."
"Perhaps not, sir. There's many another that hasn't been, like the
Hoyos case." He rose. "Well, I'll be getting on back to my rooms. It's
strange not to see Captain Marchal here, and his typewriter still there
in the corner and all!"
"Yes!" Norwood groaned. "I find myself constantly listening for his
step, and the click of the machine. I'm going to get rid of it at once;
I cannot bear to have it about!"
McCarty hesitated.
"I wonder would you lend it to me, sir, for a few days?" he suggested
at length. "I've a lot of letters to send out and I'm not handy with a
pen. I'll take good care of it and bring it back safe."
"Of course you may take it. Keep it, if you will; I never want to see
it again!"
"No, thank you, sir. It's just the loan of it I want, and if it's all
the same to you I'll get a taxi and take it right along with me now."
"By all means." Norwood, too, had risen and now he pressed the bell.
"Billings will send for one for you. I don't know what condition the
typewriter is in after its fall. However, if you will telephone on
Monday to the office of the company who manufactured it they will send
a man up to fix it for you."
"That'll be all right. I'll manage," McCarty assured him. "Good-night,
Mr. Norwood, and thanks for the loan of it."
Travel-worn as he was, the next day found McCarty once more upon a
train speeding southward, but this departure was of a comparatively
brief duration. He emerged again from the Pennsylvania station at
nightfall and this time he was not alone. A tall woman of majestic
figure accompanied him, clad in a black, fur-trimmed cloak and smartly
quilled hat and the two appeared to be on excellent terms with each
other.
McCarty escorted her to an address far uptown, then returned to his
rooms and uncovered the typewriter which stood upon the place of honor
on his desk. Next, he inserted a sheet of paper and tested the keys to
his satisfaction.
Thereupon he opened a lower drawer in his desk and after some fumbling
produced a package which he regarded with an expression of mingled
disparagement and respect. Unwrapped, it disclosed a small but powerful
microscope.
Through the long hours of the night, while the coals died upon the
hearth and the penetrating chill of a wintry dawn crept in at the
windows McCarty sat tirelessly at his task. With the aid of the
magnifying glass he studied a single sheet of paper before him upon
which appeared to the casual eye merely the signature of Victor
Marchal. The fruit of his examination was a series of strange and
seemingly incomprehensible hieroglyphics which he painstakingly noted
down. Then turning to the machine he touched a key here and there,
erasing and altering the result in conformity with his notes. The typed
sheet spun out from the roller at last and as he read the message which
he had evolved an expression of grim joy stole over his face.
Despite his sleepless night he was up betimes and nine o'clock found
him once more at Headquarters.
"Mac, you old rascal, where have you been?" the Inspector greeted him
with obvious relief and pleasure. "I don't mind telling you that I'm
stumped; the Jarvis case is one too many for me!"
"Is it, now?" McCarty asked solicitously. "How did your man make out in
New Orleans?"
"He drew a blank!" The Inspector smote his desk in exasperation.
"One of the best boys we have in the department, too. He interviewed
everyone who was in a position to know anything about Evelyn Beaudet
or her family; the Mother Superior of the convent where she was
educated, the attorneys who settled her guardian's estate, old business
associates of her father, friends of her mother and several people who
came in touch with the girl herself socially before her marriage. There
isn't the slightest evidence of any secret connected with her, and yet
we know she was paying blackmail!"
"And the female operative you've had working among her acquaintances
here?" McCarty probed. "Did she find out anything?"
"Nothing whatever. I've even given your theory a try-out but old
Norwood claims that the wallet is only mislaid and I can't find any
trace of the woman who sold it to him. She represented herself as a
stewardess on the Hoyos yacht and I'm having the original one looked
up, but she seems to have dropped completely out of sight."
"I saw Mr. Norwood on Saturday night," volunteered McCarty. "He don't
seem much interested in the proceedings since Captain Marchal is gone.
I don't suppose, sir, that there've been any new developments in that
case? It's settled the poor lad killed himself?"
"Of course he did; there has never been a doubt of that from the
first," declared the Inspector. "One shot might have been fired from
the pistol long ago, or it may not have been fully loaded."
"Then you didn't find where the other bullet went?" McCarty queried.
"No, and it was a waste of time looking. Before you appeared on the
scene I had picked up the ejected shell where it lay right at the feet
of the body but no other shell was found; that in itself would prove
that only one shot was fired there. He killed himself, all right, and
Terhune's a happy man that he solved the murder to suit himself, but I
won't accept his solution until every other possibility fails."
"You're thinking, then, there's a chance he may be right?"
"Damn it, man, I don't know what to think!" the Inspector cried. "It
is more than two weeks since the woman was done to death and I'm no
nearer the truth than when I started. You know what the department is,
Mac. There are plenty waiting for my head to fall, and I'm not getting
any younger! I can't afford to lay down on this. The papers are putting
up a howl as it is over the delay in nailing someone for the crime;
they're not particular who, but they need the copy. Besides that, the
Jarvises are too prominent and the case itself had too many sensational
details for the public to lose interest in it and let other things
crowd it out of mind until some explanation is made. The Commissioner
gave me a pretty broad hint the other day that it was time to show
results and you know what that means. If I don't make good on this I'm
a dead one!"
"You'll make good on it, sir!" McCarty burst out, the last trace of his
resentment gone before the look of despair on his former superior's
face. "I was going to spring it on you to get even with you for giving
me the laugh the other day, but after all it's up to the department to
pull it off."
"Mac!" The Inspector jumped to his feet, his worn face brightening with
an almost incredulous hope. "What do you mean? You haven't found the
man!"
"I'm thinking he'll call at my rooms this night," McCarty replied, his
face sobering. "I dropped in to ask you, would you come, sir, and bring
Martin and Yost with you. Unless I ball the whole thing up there'll be
work for them to do later on, but I'd like them there ahead of any of
the others."
"What others?" demanded the Inspector. "Mac, for God's sake if you've
got actual proof of the murder's identity and know where he is, tell me
now and don't take fool chances!"
"Excuse me, sir!" McCarty's jaw set in a manner the other recognized.
"I'm not on the force, if you mind, but only a private party that's
butted into the case and I'll tell what I've done in my own way or not
at all. I've been in the gallery at more than one of Terhune's little
shows and now I'm going to give a séance of my own. Besides you and him
I'll have Norwood and young Jarvis; Mr. Vivaseur can come too, if he
likes, since he's taken an interest in the case and 'twill do no harm
if Denny sits in a corner. There'll be a lady present, too, to keep
Martin and Yost company in the back room until they're wanted. 'Tis too
bad that Captain Marchal can't come back for the one evening, but he's
done the next best thing; he's left us a signed statement of the truth."
"A signed statement!" the Inspector repeated. "Where did you get it?"
"You let me have it yourself, sir," McCarty grinned. "But I'll tell you
no more now."
"Look here!" exclaimed the Inspector. "Except for the woman, whoever
she is, and Martin and Yost, you've only named the people who were
present at Terhune's experiment two weeks ago. You can't mean that one
of them murdered Mrs. Jarvis?"
"It is likely?" McCarty snorted. "I want them all there, though, when
the blackguard that did it shows himself. You'll come, sir?"
"Mac, I don't know whether to believe you or not, but you've got me
where you want me," the Inspector laughed somewhat uncertainly. "If you
won't speak now, you won't, and I'll have to trust you. I'll be there
with Martin and Yost."
"At eight then, sir, and see that they're heeled." McCarty picked up
his hat. "I don't expect any rough stuff, but you never can tell.
Good-by, sir."
Leaving Headquarters he telephoned to Wade Terhune tendering an
invitation to his séance that evening, and thoroughly enjoyed the
amused and skeptical tone of the great man's acceptance and promise
to bring his client. Next he journeyed across town to the private
detective agency of one James B. Shane, whom he familiarly addressed
as "Jim" and with whom he was in close consultation for more than an
hour. One o'clock found him consuming pie and coffee at a nearby lunch
counter, after which repast he presented himself at the Norwood house.
"Uncle Cal has gone with Oliver out to Mrs. Jarvis' grave." Joan
explained as she greeted McCarty in the drawing-room. "We were both so
sorry not to have seen you on Saturday night; weren't we, Eric?"
She appealed to the Englishman who exclaimed as he shook hands.
"Rather! We couldn't imagine what had become of you last week, but we
hoped you were working on the investigation. I say, were you?"
"A part of the time," McCarty responded. "I've not given up hope
yet, but I can't see my way to going on with it much further alone. I
thought that maybe if we all got together and talked it over--Terhune
and Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Norwood and the Inspector--and pieced out what
each of us knew or thought we knew, we might get something fresh
to start on. The rest have agreed to come to my rooms to-night at
half-past eight and I called to see if Mr. Norwood would mind being
there, too."
"Of course Uncle Cal will come." Joan's face had fallen. "But haven't
you any news for me, Mr. McCarty? Oh, I did so hope that you would be
able to discover the truth!"
McCarty flushed deeply.
"I tried, miss," he said simply.
"I say, mayn't I come, too?" Vivaseur asked impulsively. "I know I'm
a rank outsider but I've been doing a lot of thinking on the subject
and I've an idea or two which may be worth something. If I'm not
intruding----"
"Sure! Come if you like," McCarty said cordially. "You and Miss Norwood
gave me some good tips before and I'm thinking the Inspector is open
now to suggestions from any quarter."
"I suppose I mustn't invite myself?" Joan pouted. "I think you might
have held your conference here, Mr. McCarty, and permitted me to be
present!"
"I'm afraid that the Inspector----" McCarty began somewhat doubtfully
and Vivaseur came to the rescue.
"Not at a council of war, Joan dear; it isn't done," he said lightly.
"I'll come back with your uncle to-night if it is not too late and tell
you all about it. That will be best."
"Then that's settled." McCarty rose. "At half-past eight, Mr. Vivaseur."
Yet another call remained to be paid before he could return to his
rooms and prepare for what the evening would bring forth. He betook
himself to the firehouse where Dennis had returned to his duty and the
mask which he had worn all day slipped from him.
"It's done, Denny!" he cried gleefully. "It's all over but the
shouting!"
"Is it the murderer you mean!" Dennis spoke in an awestruck whisper.
"You've got him, Mac?"
"You mind Jim Shane, that was roundsman in my precinct when I was on
my first beat?" McCarty ignored the question. "Well, he's running a
private-detective bureau now and on the Thursday before we started for
New Orleans I put him to work on a little job for me that has turned
the trick!"
"Before we went to New Orleans!" exclaimed Dennis. "You knew then who
the fellow was that murdered Mrs. Jarvis?"
"I knew the truth of it when I stood beside that poor, blind
Frenchman's body, God rest him, but I couldn't have proved it, and if
I had spoken I'd have been put away for a lunatic," McCarty responded
gravely. "Instead of being like most cases, where you hold a million
loose threads and don't know where they lead to, I had the answer but
not the way to connect it up. Are you on day or night duty now?"
"Day," Dennis responded eagerly. "My nights are my own and if there's
anything doing this evening I'll be on the job. But who is he, Mac?
You've held out on me long enough----"
"You'll know to-night." McCarty regarded him quizzically. "Are you
wishful to take part in another little scientific experiment?"
Dennis quailed, then squared his shoulders doggedly.
"I'm not, and well you know it, but if it's going to be the finish, you
can count me in. What is it you are going to do now, Mac? Hand Terhune
all the credit, like you did in that other case last year?"
"Not this time," McCarty smiled. "I'm holding this séance myself in my
own rooms at half-past eight, and there'll be no dinky little machines
to take records of every breath you draw."
"'Séance'!" Dennis shivered. "Isn't that what they call it when some
medium throws a fit and brings back the spirits of the dead?"
"It is, and that's what I'm going to do." McCarty paused, and then
added: "Not throw a fit, I don't mean, but it's a spirit I'm going to
bring back from the dead all right; a spirit as evil and black as the
devil himself, Denny, with more than one murder on the vile soul of
him! 'Twas you yourself first put me on his track, though little you
knew it, and to-night we'll resurrect him."
Dennis crossed himself fervently.
"I always said you'd get whoever you were after, if you had to go to
the next world to find him, but I never thought to see you do it," he
said. "Spooks or no, I'll be there, Mac, with bells on!"
CHAPTER XXII
MCCARTY'S SÉANCE
The bachelor quarters over the antique shop presented a strange and
unwonted aspect that evening. The sooty hearth had been scrubbed until
it shone, cigar boxes, stray matches, newspapers and the usual litter
to be found in the wake of the undomesticated male had miraculously
disappeared and an unnatural and self-conscious state of cleanliness
and order prevailed.
McCarty, too, seemed abnormally solemn as he greeted Inspector Druet
and ushered his two assistants into the small inner bedroom.
"You'll wait here, boys," he announced. "No smoking, mind, for there'll
be a lady present and besides I don't want the rest of them that's
coming to know you're here till I give the word, but when I do, look
sharp!"
"You've got everything arranged?" the Inspector asked in a hurried
undertone.
McCarty nodded.
"There'll be no hitch. I'm only asking one thing of you, sir; don't
interrupt me no matter what I say, and for the love of God, don't
contradict me! I'll be using your name pretty free, but you'll see
in the end that 'twas right and proper I should if you've only the
patience to wait for it."
"I'll give you your head, Mac," promised the Inspector. "I wish you
would put me wise as to what is coming off, but I'll have to take your
word for it that you know what you're about. Are you sure the man we're
after will show up?"
A knock upon the door prevented McCarty's immediate reply and he
ushered in a tall woman dressed in black, whose features were all but
concealed by a heavy veil.
"Good-evening, ma'am." There was an exaggeration of deference in
McCarty's manner as he motioned toward the inner room. "I'll ask you
to sit in here, please, with these two gentlemen. You've got it all
straight about your part of it?"
He added the last in a lowered tone, and the woman nodded and throwing
back her veil revealed a face unknown to the Inspector; a face wherein
bold, black eyes snapped resolutely and grim lines about the compressed
lips left no doubt as to the stern import of her errand.
Martin and Yost rose respectfully as she entered the inner room, but
she ignored their presence and seated herself just beyond the range of
vision from the doorway.
"Who is she, Mac?" the Inspector urged. "You'll tell me that much, at
least!"
"Whist, now!" McCarty cautioned. "There's someone else coming up the
stairs."
The door leading to the hall opened slowly and Dennis Riordan craned
his neck through the aperture.
"Is it all right?" he demanded in a sepulchral whisper.
"Sure! Come in, Denny." McCarty bustled forward. "Sit you down over
there by the window and mind you don't let a peep out of you, no matter
what happens."
"But where is she?" Dennis gazed about him in bewilderment. "I could
have sworn I saw a woman coming in here; a woman with a long, black
veil!"
"You'll be seeing more than that before the night's over!" retorted
McCarty impatiently.
The arrival of Vivaseur and Calvin Norwood, the former frankly curious,
the latter laboring under an agitation which he strove in vain to
conceal, precluded further talk, and Dennis subsided. The newcomers
were scarcely seated when Wade Terhune accompanied by his client Oliver
Jarvis appeared upon the scene.
McCarty had arranged the chairs so that they formed a rough semi-circle
facing the bedroom door and now he stepped before it and cleared his
throat.
"You all know that I've no longer any regular connection with the
police department," he began, "but now and again when Inspector Druet
needs me I go back as a special officer on his staff. I've been working
on this investigation with him and he wants me to tell you what
progress we've made. That's right, isn't it, sir?"
He appealed to the Inspector and the latter nodded speechlessly in
confirmation.
"To do that I'll have to go back a good bit and I'll ask you to bear
with me, for it's all a part of the story. A matter of eleven years
ago, in nineteen-six in a convent away down south on the Mississippi
River, there was a young girl of sixteen or thereabouts who fell
in love with a man she flirted with over the wall. He was a dark,
handsome fellow calling himself Leon Hoguet and he'd come ashore from
a grand yacht anchored just off the bank. One night the girl ran away
and married him, but he turned out to be a roystering blackguard and
deserted her in less than three months."
Oliver Jarvis uttered a sharp exclamation beneath his breath and the
others stared, spell-bound, but McCarty continued as though unconscious
of the impression his opening words had created.
"The girl went back heart-broken to her guardian in New Orleans and
he took her in and hid the scandal of it. He tried unsuccessfully to
find the scoundrel but the girl must have known where to reach him,
for between then and spring she wrote him at least two letters. The
first was just a poor, pitiful cry to him to come back to the little
wife he had deserted, but she must have learned something of his true
character in the meantime for the second letter threatened that if he
had deceived her she would follow him to the ends of the earth, and she
kept her word.
"Leon Hoguet had sold his yacht to a wealthy planter and skipped, but
up in New York that spring a man named Leonidas Hoyos bought another
one and went in for some gay times."
It was the Inspector's turn to start, but McCarty paid him no heed.
"Now, this Hoyos had appeared first in New York the summer before from
nobody knew where, and making a killing in Wall Street he cut quite a
swath. During the month that Hoguet was courting the little convent
girl Hoyos was absent from the city and for the next three months he
showed up only on flying trips but after that he came back for good.
"I don't know how the girl down south found out that Hoyos and Hoguet
were the same, but I suspect it was through a discharged valet he'd
beaten up; the stewardess on the second yacht, _The Muette_, heard
him swear to get even. Anyhow, one night in May--the twenty-sixth, it
was--when _The Muette_ was lying off in the Hudson the girl came on
board. Hoyos was evidently expecting to see someone else entirely for
when he came into the saloon where he'd directed his guest was to be
shown and found out who it was he took good care that none of the crew
or the help should get a sight of her face.
"They had high words but no one could hear what was said then. They
stayed shut up in the saloon and they never touched the food that had
been laid out for them, but from the empty bottles scattered around
Hoyos must have tanked up on enough champagne to float the whole boat.
Later, going on toward midnight, the quarrel broke out again louder
than before, the girl crying fit to kill herself and the man shouting
and swearing like the brute he was.
"The stewardess on board had her own reasons for hating Hoyos and when
she heard the girl's sobs she felt sorry for her, and crept up and
listened at the door.
"The girl was pleading first to be taken back, and the stewardess said
'twould have moved the heart of a stone, but he just sneered at her and
cursed and finally she demanded her rights as his wife. Then he up and
told her where she got off, the blackhearted devil! He'd married other
women before her, two or three of them under as many different names,
and she had no more legal claim on him than a stranger.
"The girl screamed once and then was quiet and the stewardess thought
she must have fainted. After a time she heard Hoyos advising the girl
in a cold, sneering way to go back where she came from and not stir up
a scandal that would only bring disgrace on herself. All of a sudden he
stopped in the middle of a sentence, there was a scuffle and the crack
of a revolver.
"The stewardess near fainted, herself, outside the door but the next
thing she heard a kind of a choking cry from Hoyos and two heavy
splashes in the water."
He paused as Oliver Jarvis with a groan buried his face in his hands.
Norwood clutched the arms of his chair and even Vivaseur's ruddy face
had paled slightly, while a frown of discomfiture had gathered on Wade
Terhune's brow.
"If you remember the Hoyos case you all know what happened; how weeks
later a mutilated body was fished out of the river and identified as
Hoyos' through his clothes and the jewelry with his initials on it.
The girl was supposed to have been drowned for no trace was found of
her and no one knew who she was.
"Because she hated Hoyos so and sympathized with the girl, the
stewardess never told what she'd overheard and right after the shooting
she remembered a wallet with a couple of letters in it that was in a
desk in his cabin. She'd taken a peep at them and was afraid they might
help in the girl's conviction if she was caught, so before the police
boat came she took the wallet and hid it among her things.
"The girl wasn't drowned, however; she got safe ashore and although
the Inspector hasn't been able to prove it yet, he's got an idea how
it happened, for it is on the records in Hoboken that about that time
a barge captain was arrested trying to dispose of a ruby ring worth
thousands. He swore that it had been given to his wife by an old woman,
richly dressed, that they pulled out of the river on the night of June
first and that in return they provided her with dry clothes and money
for a railway journey. The police couldn't prove him a liar for he and
his wife and the crew had the description of the old lady down so pat
they never suspected 'twas the girl from _The Muette_ that was being
shielded, nor that the date of the rescue had been changed.
"She got back to New Orleans and after a terrible, long sickness she
shut herself up in her guardian's house like a hermit for a matter of
two or three years. But she was young and the horror of it wore off and
after a while she began to care for somebody else, a rich New Yorker
that was down there on a visit. To be fair to her, she wanted to tell
him the truth but her guardian forbade it--she'd sworn to him that
Hoguet was dead but told him no more--and she married the Northerner
without saying a word of the past.
"You all know who I'm talking about, but I'll have to use names now to
keep from balling up the story, though I don't like to. Last Christmas
Mrs. Jarvis received a gift of a big cake with 'Noel' on it in sugar;
she didn't know who sent it but she nearly passed away, for she knew
that someone from out of the past had spotted her and her secret would
never be safe again. Three months afterwards she received an unsigned
note made by spelling out words in macaroni letters pasted on paper,
saying: 'All is known. Pay or I tell. First warning.'
"She got twenty thousand of her own money from her husband and waited,
and around the beginning of the last week in May she got another note
that told her to put five thousand dollars under the rose bush in the
yard on the night of the twenty-sixth, calling attention to the date.
It was the anniversary of that night on _The Muette_. I guess she must
have done it, for two weeks later she got the third and last of the
macaroni warnings. It ordered her to put a thousand dollars under the
bush on the twenty-sixth of each month or everything would be told.
"I don't know--I mean the Inspector hasn't found out yet--how it came
about, but the blackmailing must have stopped along in October for only
nine thousand is gone out of the twenty, and Mrs. Jarvis planning to go
abroad looks as though she thought herself out of danger."
McCarty paused again, but not a sound broke the tense stillness of the
listening group, and after a moment he went on in a change of tone:
"I've got to go back now to the stewardess. She had kept the wallet
with those letters in it all these years; in fact, it had been in a
storage warehouse in a trunk with a lot of other old stuff belonging
to her, and she'd almost forgotten that she had them until about a
month ago. Then she came across them just when she was out of a job and
in desperate straits for money. She had heard of Mr. Norwood and his
museum, and that he paid big prices for relics of crime, and the idea
came to her to sell him the letters. She didn't think that after so
many years had passed the identity of the young girl could be proved
from them, and she'd not be hurting anybody.
"Mr. Norwood bought them from her three days before the murder and
told all about them at the dinner at Mr. Jarvis' house on Wednesday
night. Mrs. Jarvis was near crazy, for she knew that at any time Mr.
Norwood might discover by accident that they were in her handwriting
and it would be all up with her. She made up her mind that she'd have
to get those letters and on the Friday afternoon she got rid of all
her servants, put on the little dark dress with the veil around her
head, and started out through the yards for the museum. She would have
a clear field, for she had persuaded Mr. Norwood to visit his friend
the professor and he'd told her the butler would be out. I guess she
didn't figure much on Captain Marchal disturbing her, on account of
his blindness, and the cook and housemaid wouldn't see her, with the
kitchen shades drawn and the lights turned on.
"There was no way Mrs. Jarvis could get into the museum except by
climbing the ladder and forcing one of the windows, and she remembered
that Mr. Norwood was a shark--begging his pardon!--on finger prints,
so she decided to take a pair of her husband's old motor gloves with
her and put them on. In her hurry, however, she only grabbed up one and
that she dropped on the ladder. She knew where Mr. Norwood had likely
put the wallet, in the tall cabinet where he kept most of his papers
and documents relating to crime.
"She got in the museum, all right, and it's my belief that she had
the wallet in her hands when she heard someone at the door, and turned
to come face to face with the man she thought had died by her hand ten
years before; Leonidas Hoyos himself, in the flesh!"
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BETRAYING VOICE
"Great God!" Oliver Jarvis sprang to his feet. "Where is he? Have you
got him? Take me to him, I say----"
"Easy now, Mr. Jarvis! There's more you've got to hear first," McCarty
remonstrated. "We haven't got him yet but we will soon, don't fear!
You'll only have to have a little more patience."
"Really, McCarty, your self-confidence is intended to be highly
reassuring, no doubt," drawled Terhune, "but I fear that my client will
have to exercise more than a little patience before your laudatory
ambition is achieved, and we will have to hear a few more tangible
facts before we can share your enthusiasm."
"You'll hear them!" McCarty promised grimly. "When I sat in the dark
in your consulting-room, Mr. Terhune, with a tennis ball on a wire
squeezed in my hand and your little Fourth of July illumination inside
the clock registering the sweat of me 'twas a fine little flight of
fancy I listened to, if you remember with never a complaint. I've no
phonographs here to play for you nor borrowed skeletons to rattle, nor
yet an assistant to prance up and down and work the back-stage effects,
but I'll give you plain, straight-forward facts enough before I'm
through, so sit tight, sir! You've had your little show but this is the
Inspector's and mine. I'm going to prove that 'twas Hoyos himself that
faced Mrs. Jarvis there."
"Can--can this be true?" Calvin Norwood's shaking lips could scarcely
frame the words. "But how did he get in the museum?"
"I'm coming to that," responded McCarty. "We haven't found out yet how
he got out of the river years ago nor where the body came from that was
dressed in his clothes and with his jewelry and all, but the Inspector
can prove that Hoyos found it mighty convenient to disappear just then
and start all over again; not only on account of the girl but because
his luck had gone against him in Wall Street and he'd forged some big
checks to cover his losses. We're still working on his record during
the past ten years but we know that he's traveled under different names
and been in a lot of shady transactions. It's a safe bet that he didn't
know the little convent girl he'd tricked into marriage was an heiress
or he would have stuck to her till he'd got her fortune away from her.
He must have been a surprised man when somehow, a year ago, he found
out that she had become the wealthy and prominent Mrs. Oliver Jarvis.
"He sent her the cake in order to get the word 'Noel' to her notice in
such a fashion that no one except her would guess what it meant and to
pave the way for the blackmail later."
Wade Terhune laughed sneeringly.
"He evidently did not count upon your phenomenal guessing powers, my
dear McCarty! To the merely scientific and I may add uninspired mind it
would seem a far cry from Leonidas Hoyos to a frosted Christmas cake,
but I have no doubt that you can supply the connection?"
McCarty's face reddened at the taunting tone, but he replied quietly.
"Perhaps I can, sir. You've heard, I dare say, of nicknames, and the
like. You'd hardly think, perhaps, that a man like Hoyos would be
called pet names----"
"What utter rot!" Terhune's coolness was deserting him. "It is only a
certain type of man whose personality invites nicknames and your Hoyos
is not of that breed. Are you trying to show that the man was called
'Noel'?"
"Not trying to, Mr. Terhune; I _am_ showing it." McCarty drew himself
up. "Now, if you'd been saddled with a name like 'Leonidas' it stands
to reason that your friends wouldn't be twisting their tongues over it
except on special occasions. They'd be cutting it short and calling you
'Leon,' most likely. Supposing the girl that loved you found out by
accident that those four letters turned backwards spelt 'Noel,' which
means Christmas, and decided for a reason to call you that, 'twould not
be such a far cry, after all."
"Preposterous!" Terhune exclaimed. "That is the most ridiculous,
far-fetched thing you've tried to insult our intelligence with
to-night. You surely cannot expect us to accept it!"
"'Far-fetched' is right." McCarty smiled. "For it's from New Orleans
I fetched it, sir, from the lady who was Evelyn Beaudet's best friend
when they were girls together at the convent."
"Loretta Sawtelle!" exclaimed Oliver Jarvis.
"The same, sir. She'd helped the elopement along and 'twas she told me
how the pet name of 'Noel' came about. When the girl he married found
that his name spelled a word meaning 'Christmas' she called him that
because Christmas was also her birthday; and a fine birthday present
she got in him, but no matter!
"You see, when he sent her the cake last year, the whole point was
that she must still think he was dead and that she had killed him and
somebody else who knew was threatening to squeal on her for murder. It
worked, too, only along about October he must have found bigger game
and decided to let up on blackmailing her; maybe he put a message in
macaroni paste under the bush telling her so, but that's only another
guess, Mr. Terhune. Anyway, if he learned that she was planning to go
abroad he must have been just as well pleased to get her out of the
way, for the new scheme he had in mind would have brought him in touch
with her world.
"Those macaroni-paste letters were masterpieces, at that, for they took
in the whole alphabet from 'a' to 'z'. He was thorough, that Hoyos,
I'll say that for him! Thorough, but in one thing just an hour too
late! However, I'm coming to that.
"He quit blackmailing her, and then he, too, heard about those letters
being still in existence and that Mr. Norwood had bought them for his
collection. He wanted to get them as badly as Mrs. Jarvis did, for they
would be absolute proof to hold over her head in case he ever needed in
the future to use his power over her. He managed to get possession of
a key to the Norwood house but the door to the museum itself he opened
with a spider.
"What happened when the two of them met there we don't have to guess
entirely, for unknown to either of them at the time there was a
witness, a third party who listened in on the scene long enough to
hear about the secret Mrs. Jarvis had kept all those years. He crept
away kind of stunned with the news, his only thought being to keep her
from ever suspecting that he knew. Then that night her murdered body
was discovered and he was nearly out of his head with self-reproach,
thinking how he might have prevented her death if only he hadn't gone
away and left them there in the museum together. He had one clue to the
man; the sound of his voice which was forever ringing in his ears, and
all that next week he kept thinking he heard it again and blaming his
brain for the tricks it was playing on him."
McCarty paused as his glance traveled along the semi-circle of tense,
set faces. Only the sound of a sharply drawn breath broke the stillness
until he spoke again with deep solemnity.
"Captain Marchal did not kill himself. He was murdered, shot down in
cold blood by the same hand that had strangled Mrs. Jarvis."
With his last word the tension which had held the others in leash
snapped like a tautly strung wire and instantly the room was in
confusion. Calvin Norwood, Oliver Jarvis and Wade Terhune had all three
sprung to their feet and the former cried excitedly:
"I knew it! I knew Victor was neither insane nor a coward! He'd
made too gallant a record in the war, too brave a fight afterward
to go under and take his own life just because a whippersnapper of
a detective tried to fasten the responsibility for the crime on him
rather than admit his own failure to find the real murderer!"
He turned and glared with savage exultation upon Wade Terhune, who
ignored him in cold disdain and advanced sneeringly to McCarty.
"I've listened very patiently to your ingenious though highly fanciful
tale, my dear McCarty, but this is a little too much! Marchal was a
suicide; the powder marks about the wound alone showed that, for the
position of the furniture in the room precluded the possibility of
anyone having approached him closely enough to have fired the shot."
McCarty smiled grimly.
"That's just what the murderer figured on making everyone believe, Mr.
Terhune, and he took you in as well as the rest. 'Twas a clever stunt
he pulled, but he didn't do it quite in time."
The shaft went home and the criminalist turned angrily upon Inspector
Druet, who sat apart, his face a study.
"Inspector, is McCarty speaking by your authority? Do you, too, hold to
this ridiculous assertion?"
For a moment the Inspector's eyes searched his self-constituted
spokesman's face and what he read there evidently satisfied him, for he
replied with a ring of finality in his tones:
"I do. Mac knows what he's about, Mr. Terhune; just give him the floor,
please."
The others subsided and McCarty explained:
"You see, the poor young lad betrayed himself; he showed his suspicions
too plainly before he was convinced enough to act on them and
Hoyos--we'll call him that still, though now I could put another name
to him--got to him there in the library when he was all alone. There
was a struggle and Marchal managed to get the drawer of the desk open
and pull out his pistol to defend himself with but Hoyos wrested it
out of his hand. Marchal must have broke away from his grasp then and
ran from him, for when Hoyos shot him _the first time_ 'twas from a
distance of several feet. He fell and then the bright idea came to
Hoyos.
"He knew that everyone else in the house was out and he'd have all the
time in the world to do what he wanted to. He extracted the second
cartridge shell from the pistol and picking up this pair of shears from
the table, he cut off the top of the shell with the blades of it and
took out the bullet. Then he clamped the two pieces of the cartridge
together again, using the heavy bronze handles of the shears like a
pair of pincers, and putting it back in the pistol he went up close to
where Marchal was lying and fired a second shot--a blank one--directly
into the wound, scattering the powder all over it.
"He put the empty shell of one cartridge at the feet of the corpse,
dropped the pistol by his hand, pocketed the other shell and the
second bullet, and pulled the furniture around like a barricade to make
people think exactly what they did; then he went away greatly pleased
with himself and the job, I've no doubt, but he'd forgot just three
things. There's not much blood comes from a direct heart wound and he
was too long about fixing up that blank cartridge; the sprinkling of
powder from the second shot stayed on top of the bloodstains, almost
dry, as the Inspector and I found later. We found something else,
too; the marks of lead on the blades of the shears where he'd cut the
cartridge and the grains of powder he'd let fall on the polished top of
the library table."
Amid a silence as profound as before the recent interruption, McCarty
handed the shears to the dazed Inspector and produced the envelope from
which he shook out upon his palm the particles of powder and held them
for all to see.
"He thought he'd rid himself of the last danger of discovery and
all was plain sailing ahead of him," McCarty continued, carefully
dusting the powder back into the envelope and tendering it also to the
Inspector, "but he'd come on Marchal just an hour too late.
"There's the powder and the shears to prove it, and here I've something
else that caps it all!
"They say that people who lose their eyesight get sharper in other
ways, that they can sense things quicker than them that can see.
Certain it is that Marchal not only suspected the owner of the voice
that was so like the one he had heard in the museum, but he got it
that the fellow was afraid he knew, somehow, and a warning came to him
that he'd be done to death the same as Mrs. Jarvis was. Anyhow, that
Wednesday afternoon he made up his mind to write out a statement of
what he'd heard and suspected in case anything happened to him and when
he found himself all alone in the house I think a kind of a hunch came
to him, what they call a premonition. He was in deadly fear for his
own life from that minute, not that he was afraid of death but that it
would come on him before he had a chance to denounce the murderer of
Mrs. Jarvis.
"He'd followed some of them to the door, maybe, and then made a rush
for his typewriter and in blundering around, knocked it off the table.
The crash of it was the last straw to his frazzled nerves and a kind
of a panic seized him, a frenzied determination to get that statement
written as if every minute was going to be his last. He couldn't lift
the typewriter because of an injury to his arm and shoulder which he
got in the war, but he grabbed a sheet of paper and squatted down on
the floor and wrote out his message. Then he found a pen, signed it,
and put it in the desk where 'twould be the first thing seen when the
drawer was opened. He never knew that the ribbon on the typewriter was
broken by the fall and that no writing appeared on the papers at all
but just his signature.
"There was something else in that drawer too; a photograph of Mrs.
Jarvis' fingerprint records, that she'd let Mr. Norwood take long ago,
and that Marchal had got out of the museum and hid the morning after
the murder, to shield her if she'd left any marks and anyone suspected
what had brought her there.
"I've said there was nothing on that sheet of paper except his
signature, and that's all that did show to the naked eye. Now I've
turned up my nose at microscopes and such as playthings for the amateur
and little I thought I'd ever come to one, myself, the sight that God
gave me being plenty for my needs in the past, thanks be! But when the
Inspector and I gave that paper the once-over we found little dents
in it, and put it under a magnifying glass. Then we saw that it had
been put through the typewriter and knowing the ink ribbon of it had
been broken when it crashed to the floor we put two and two together.
The dents on the paper had been made by the keys striking directly on
it instead of against the ribbon that wasn't there. I borrowed the
typewriter from Mr. Norwood and we tested it, with and without the
ribbon, till we'd doped out the message. Here it is, and I'm going to
read you the notes we made from it."
The stillness was broken now by a wordless stir which ran around the
semi-circle as McCarty took from his pocket the folded blank sheet and
another covered with laboriously scrawled writing. The first he passed
to Inspector Druet, while from the second he read:
"I know who killed Madame Jarvis. He knows that I know and he will kill
me also. I heard them there in the museum and the voice of her murderer
is the voice of him who calls himself Eric Vivaseur!"
"It's a lie!" Vivaseur's voice rose to a snarling scream as he leaped
from his chair, his once stolid, good-natured face distorted to a mask
of demoniac fury. "That poor, crazed fool never wrote those words!
You've made it up between you, damn you, to get up a case! It's a lie!
A lie!"
He checked himself suddenly as though a hand had been laid across his
writhing lips, and with eyes starting from their sockets he crumpled
back into his chair.
A tall, dark woman robed in black had appeared in the door leading to
the inner room. Her face was as white as chalk but her tones were firm
and steady as she spoke:
"I'm Kate Stricker. I was stewardess on _The Muette_ and I sold the
letters to Mr. Norwood." Slowly, inexorably she raised her arm and
pointed to the cowering, cringing figure before her. "Leon Hoyos' hair
was black then and he was younger by ten years, but that is the man!"
CHAPTER XXIV
THE TWENTY-SIX CLUES
It was a soft, still night in early June and Dennis and McCarty sat
side by side with their chairs tilted comfortably back against the wall
of the firehouse, smoking in silence.
Their conversation had been desultory and flagging for their thoughts
were busied with a subject neither of them broached. The distant whine
of a hand-organ, the honk of motor cars, voices of children and the
grating syncopation of a phonograph from an open window across the way
alike fell on deaf ears.
At length Dennis took the plunge.
"I see by the papers that Hoyos went to the chair this morning."
McCarty nodded solemnly.
"He got his, and if ever a man deserved the trip through the little
green door, he did."
"There's a hint that he made a confession at the last," Dennis observed.
"I would not put it past him." McCarty spoke with all the policeman's
contempt for a squealer. "The coward that would strangle a woman and
shoot a blind man would be apt to spill his soul when the end came."
"True for you." Dennis sucked at his pipe. "You told me once--it was
the night when you showed him up--that 'twas me first put you on the
track of him. How did I?"
A slow grin widened McCarty's lips.
"When I first told you about Miss Joan bringing him home you said he
had a name like a dime novel. It did seem too high-sounding to be the
real thing. You gave me another tip, too, later on. When I described
how I doped it out that Mrs. Jarvis was not killed in her own home
but went across to the Jarvis house alive and well, you said that she
sneaked over 'like a thief.' And that's just what she had done, Denny,
for she went to steal that wallet with the letters."
"What became of it anyway?" Dennis asked.
"'Twas found in Vivaseur's rooms at the hotel; Hoyos', I mean."
"Well, there's one thing!" Dennis knocked the ashes from his pipe and
ground out the live embers with a capacious boot. "Your séance beat
anything Terhune ever got up, with all his little machines! Man, 'twas
grand when that Stricker woman stood up in the doorway and called Hoyos
out of his name! But I don't see how you ever got her to come across
with the admission that she'd sold the letters."
"She knew 'twould come out anyway and it was satisfaction to the soul
of her to denounce him. When I had that first talk with her on the pier
at Atlantic City I knew if I could once convince her that he was alive
and she could help punish him for a crime she would talk, quick enough.
She's a good, strong hater, that Kate!"
"Who's this coming?" Dennis squinted down the street, where from the
corner a tall figure was approaching with a firm, familiar tread.
"'Tis the Inspector, no less!" McCarty rose eagerly. "Good-evening to
you, sir! What brings you walking our beat?"
"I was passing by and stopped in at your rooms." Inspector Druet
smiled. "When you weren't there I knew where I would find you!
'Evening, Riordan. Don't disturb yourself."
"There's another chair just inside the door." Dennis swung it out with
a long arm. "There! We was just talking about the Hoyos case, sir,
seeing as he was electrocuted this morning. Was it true that he made a
confession before they turned on the juice?"
"Yes. We have it down at Headquarters now. He told a good bit about
his life but a lot of it is colored to put him in as good a light as
possible. There are parts that ring true, however. His father was a
baker in Vienna, his mother a seamstress from Greece."
"That accounts for the cake, the macaroni paste and the Greek name
Leonidas," McCarty nodded. "He flew high from the bakeshop, didn't he?"
"Yes. He was the manager of a gambling casino at a resort on the French
coast before he came to this country. He doesn't say much about those
early years here or where he got the money to start his Wall Street
speculations which enabled him to buy that yacht he had down on the
Mississippi. He tells, though, how he found and palmed off that body
as his after the affair of _The Muette_; seems quite proud of it as
a smart trick. The girl shot him through the shoulder, you know, not
seriously and he easily swam ashore. Alongside the railroad which runs
by the river he came on the body of a trackwalker who had evidently
just been hit by a train. He walked on--it was near the dawn--when he
came to a little shanty with overalls and underwear flapping on a line
in the yard. That gave him an idea and he took what he needed, then
went back and stripping the body of the trackwalker, dressed it in his
own things even to the jewelry and dumped it into the river. He tied a
stone to the dead man's clothes--I guess he'd been pretty badly mussed
up by the train--and dropped them in after him. Then he dressed himself
in what he had taken from the line and started off barefoot with what
money he'd thought it prudent to keep out of the roll the dead man was
floating down stream with.
"He is silent about what happened to him during the next ten years
and how he discovered the girl again in Mrs. Jarvis, while about the
blackmailing he merely says that we doped it out right. He claims
that he really loved Miss Norwood and meant to marry her honestly as
his first and legal wife was dead, but that is merely a play to the
gallery. How did you find out so much about his actions after he became
Vivaseur, Mac?"
"Through Jim Shane, that used to be on the force, too. He's running a
private-detective agency now and I put him on the job before ever we
started for New Orleans. It was clever of Hoyos to fix up that grand
English name and accent and family tree for himself and sport around on
the money he blackmailed Mrs. Jarvis out of with that swell Long Island
bunch where Miss Norwood was visiting." McCarty paused and his face
clouded. "That was almost the dirtiest part of the whole job I had to
do; to kill that girl's faith and bring misery to her."
"It's not half the misery she'd have had if she'd married him," Dennis
remarked.
"I know. She told me after that he had wanted her to elope with him.
That was because he didn't dare face Mrs. Jarvis, you see, until he'd
got the girl for himself. She says that he suddenly changed his mind
the very day she brought him back and introduced him to her uncle; and
good reason, too. He'd gone back to town over night and murdered the
woman who might have stood in his way so he'd nothing to fear except
a too curious search of his record, and old Norwood was not the man
for that." McCarty paused to light a fresh cigar from the stump of the
old one, and continued: "When Norwood wrote his niece about buying the
Hoyos letters she told Vivaseur, of course, and he determined to get
them. He stole her latch-key from her so that he could get in the house
and he must have been watching it closely that Friday afternoon to have
seen Norwood go out and figured that the coast was clear. I'll bet
he was a surprised man the day to walk into the museum and find Mrs.
Jarvis waiting for him!"
The Inspector nodded.
"He only killed her when he was convinced that she would spoil his game
with Miss Norwood," he said. "If it hadn't been for you, Mac, he would
have gotten off scot free, for I was on the wrong track entirely. I was
a stubborn fool not to listen to you in the first place, and I don't
mind admitting it before Riordan here. I never felt so low-down in my
life as when I had to sit there in your rooms with Terhune and that
crowd and hear you give me the credit for what you had pulled off all
alone while I laughed at you! You had your revenge that night and you
saved my official head. I've not forgotten it."
"Well, sir, you had your notion of the case and I had mine," McCarty
said simply. "I was just as stubborn as you, and 'twas just by accident
that my notion happened to be the lucky one. It's only strange, with
all the clues we had, that we didn't hit on the truth sooner."
"There were a lot of minor indications, of course," the Inspector
admitted. "But there were just seven real clues. Did that ever strike
you?
"Seven?" McCarty looked up. "You mean that cake marked 'Noel,' the
three warnings in macaroni paste, the two poor bits of notes in the
wallet and the statement of Captain Marchal? Sure, there were more
clues than that, sir; there were twenty-six."
"Twenty-six clues!" the Inspector echoed. "What are you getting at,
Mac? I never heard of the others."
McCarty laughed.
"Indeed, and you did! They were the first things ever you learned
in your life and the clues you mention are all part of them!" Then
as Inspector Druet still looked his mystification McCarty explained
naively: "All seven of the clues were made up of them, sir--the letters
of the whole damned alphabet!"
THE END
* * * * *
If you have enjoyed reading this book we suggest that you read "The
Clue in the Air" by the same author. In it you will again meet
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