A NEW EXPERIENCE FOR MR. GRYCE.
Mr. Gryce felt himself at a greater disadvantage in his attempt to solve
the mystery of this affair than in any other which he had entered upon
in years. First, the victim had been a solitary man, with no household
save his man-of-all-work, the mute. Secondly, he had lived in a portion
of the city where no neighbors were possible; and he had even lacked, as
it now seemed, any very active friends. Though some hours had elapsed
since his death had been noised abroad, no one had appeared at the door
with inquiries or information. This seemed odd, considering that he had
been for some months a marked figure in this quarter of the town. But,
then, everything about this man was odd, nor would it have been in
keeping with his surroundings and peculiar manner of living for him to
have had the ordinary associations of men of his class.
This absence of the usual means of eliciting knowledge from the
surrounding people, added to, rather than detracted from, the interest
which Mr. Gryce was bound to feel in the case, and it was with a feeling
of relief that a little before midnight he saw the army of reporters,
medical men, officials, and such others as had followed in the coroner's
wake, file out of the front door and leave him again, for a few hours at
least, master of the situation.
For there were yet two points which he desired to settle before he took
his own much-needed rest. The first occupied his immediate attention.
Passing before a chair in the hall on which a small boy sat dozing, he
roused him with the remark:
"Come, Jake, it's time to look lively. I want you to go with me to the
exact place where that lady ran across you to-day."
The boy, half dead with sleep, looked around him for his hat.
"I'd like to see my mother first," he pleaded. "She must be done up
about me. I never stayed away so long before."
"Your mother knows where you are. I sent a message to her hours ago. She
gave a very good report of you, Jake; says you're an obedient lad and
that you never have told her a falsehood."
"She's a good mother," the boy warmly declared. "I'd be as bad--as bad
as my father was, if I did not treat her well." Here his hand fell on
his cap, which he put on his head.
"I'm ready," said he.
Mr. Gryce at once led the way into the street.
The hour was late, and only certain portions of the city showed any real
activity. Into one of these thoroughfares they presently came, and
before the darkened window of one of the lesser shops paused, while Jake
pointed out the two stuffed frogs engaged with miniature swords in
mortal combat at which he had been looking when the lady came up and
spoke to him.
Mr. Gryce eyed the boy rather than the frogs, though probably the former
would have sworn that his attention had never left that miniature
conflict.
"Was she a pretty lady?" he asked.
The boy scratched his head in some perplexity.
"She made me a good deal afraid of her," he said. "She had very splendid
clothes; oh, gorgeous!" he cried, as if on this question there could be
no doubt.
"And she was young, and carried a bunch of flowers, and seemed troubled?
What! not young, and carried no flowers--and wasn't even anxious and
trembling?"
The boy, who had been shaking his head, looked nonplussed.
"I think as she was what you might call troubled. But she wasn't crying,
and when she spoke to me, she put more feeling into her grip than into
her voice. She just dragged me to the drug-store, sir. If she hadn't
given me money first, I should have wriggled away in spite of her. But I
likes money, sir; I don't get too much of it."
Mr. Gryce by this time was moving on. "Not young," he repeated to
himself. "Some old flame, then, of Mr. Adams; they're apt to be
dangerous, very dangerous, more dangerous than the young ones."
In front of the drug-store he paused. "Show me where she stood while you
went in."
The boy pointed out the identical spot. He seemed as eager as the
detective.
"And was she standing there when you came out?"
"Oh, no, sir; she went away while I was inside."
"Did you see her go? Can you tell me whether she went up street or
down?"
"I had one eye on her, sir; I was afraid she was coming into the shop
after me, and my arm was too sore for me to want her to clinch hold on
it again. So when she started to go, I took a step nearer, and saw her
move toward the curbstone and hold up her hand. But it wasn't a car she
was after, for none came by for several minutes."
The fold between Mr. Gryce's eyes perceptibly smoothed out.
"Then it was some cabman or hack-driver she hailed. Were there any empty
coaches about that you saw?"
The boy had not noticed. He had reached the limit of his observations,
and no amount of further questioning could elicit anything more from
him. This Mr. Gryce soon saw, and giving him into the charge of one of
his assistants who was on duty at this place, he proceeded back to the
ill-omened house where the tragedy itself had occurred.
"Any one waiting for me?" he inquired of Styles, who came to the door.
"Yes, sir; a young man; name, Hines. Says he's an electrician."
"That's the man I want. Where is he?"
"In the parlor, sir."
"Good! I'll see him. But don't let any one else in. Anybody upstairs?"
"No, sir, all gone. Shall I go up or stay here?"
"You'd better go up. I'll look after the door."
Styles nodded, and went toward the stairs, up which he presently
disappeared. Mr. Gryce proceeded to the parlor.
A dapper young man with an intelligent eye rose to meet him. "You sent
for me," said he.
The detective nodded, asked a few questions, and seeming satisfied with
the replies he received, led the way into Mr. Adams's study, from which
the body had been removed to an upper room. As they entered, a mild
light greeted them from a candle which, by Mr. Gryce's orders, had been
placed on a small side table near the door. But once in, Mr. Gryce
approached the larger table in the centre of the room, and placing his
hand on one of the buttons before him, asked his companion to be kind
enough to blow out the candle. This he did, leaving the room for a
moment in total darkness. Then with a sudden burst of illumination, a
marvellous glow of a deep violet color shot over the whole room, and the
two men turned and faced each other both with inquiry in their looks, so
unexpected was this theatrical effect to the one, and so inexplicable
its cause and purpose to the other.
"That is but one slide," remarked Mr. Gryce. "Now I will press another
button, and the color changes to--pink, as you see. This one produces
green, this one white, and this a bilious yellow, which is not becoming
to either of us, I am sure. Now will you examine the connection, and see
if there is anything peculiar about it?"
Mr. Hines at once set to work. But beyond the fact that the whole
contrivance was the work of an amateur hand, he found nothing strange
about it, except the fact that it worked so well.
Mr. Gryce showed disappointment.
"He made it, then, himself?" he asked.
"Undoubtedly, or some one else equally unacquainted with the latest
method of wiring."
"Will you look at these books over here and see if sufficient knowledge
can be got from them to enable an amateur to rig up such an arrangement
as this?"
Mr. Hines glanced at the shelf which Mr. Gryce had pointed out, and
without taking out the books, answered briefly:
"A man with a deft hand and a scientific turn of mind might, by the aid
of these, do all you see here and more. The aptitude is all."
"Then I'm afraid Mr. Adams had the aptitude," was the dry response.
There was disappointment in the tone. Why, his next words served to
show. "A man with a turn for mechanical contrivances often wastes much
time and money on useless toys only fit for children to play with. Look
at that bird cage now. Perched at a height totally beyond the reach of
any one without a ladder, it must owe its very evident usefulness (for
you see it holds a rather lively occupant) to some contrivance by which
it can be raised and lowered at will. Where is that contrivance? Can you
find it?"
The expert thought he could. And, sure enough, after some ineffectual
searching, he came upon another button well hid amid the tapestry on the
wall, which, when pressed, caused something to be disengaged which
gradually lowered the cage within reach of Mr. Gryce's hand.
"We will not send this poor bird aloft again," said he, detaching the
cage and holding it for a moment in his hand. "An English starling is
none too common in this country. Hark! he is going to speak."
But the sharp-eyed bird, warned perhaps by the emphatic gesture of the
detective that silence would be more in order at this moment than his
usual appeal to "remember Evelyn," whisked about in his cage for an
instant, and then subsided into a doze, which may have been real, and
may have been assumed under the fascinating eye of the old gentleman who
held him. Mr. Gryce placed the cage on the floor, and idly, or because
the play pleased him, old and staid as he was, pressed another button on
the table--a button he had hitherto neglected touching--and glanced
around to see what color the light would now assume.
But the yellow glare remained. The investigation which the apparatus had
gone through had probably disarranged the wires. With a shrug he was
moving off, when he suddenly made a hurried gesture, directing the
attention of the expert to a fact for which neither of them was
prepared. The opening which led into the antechamber, and which was the
sole means of communication with the rest of the house, was slowly
closing. From a yard's breadth it became a foot; from a foot it became
an inch; from an inch----
"Well, that is certainly the contrivance of a lazy man," laughed the
expert. "Seated in his chair here, he can close his door at will. No
shouting after a deaf servant, no awkward stumbling over rugs to shut it
himself. I don't know but I approve of this contrivance, only----" here
he caught a rather serious expression on Mr. Gryce's face--"the slide
seems to be of a somewhat curious construction. It is not made of wood,
as any sensible door ought to be, but of----"
"Steel," finished Mr. Gryce in an odd tone. "This is the strangest thing
yet. It begins to look as if Mr. Adams was daft on electrical
contrivances."
"And as if we were prisoners here," supplemented the other. "I do not
see any means for drawing this slide back."
"Oh, there's another button for that, of course," Mr. Gryce carelessly
remarked.
But they failed to find one.
"If you don't object," observed Mr. Gryce, after five minutes of useless
search, "I will turn a more cheerful light upon the scene. Yellow does
not seem to fit the occasion."
"Give us rose, for unless you have some one on the other side of this
steel plate, we seem likely to remain here till morning."
"There is a man upstairs whom we may perhaps make hear, but what does
this contrivance portend? It has a serious look to me, when you consider
that every window in these two rooms has been built up almost under the
roof."
"Yes; a very strange look. But before engaging in its consideration I
should like a breath of fresh air. I cannot do anything while in
confinement. My brain won't work."
Meanwhile Mr. Gryce was engaged in examining the huge plate of steel
which served as a barrier to their egress. He found that it had been
made--certainly at great expense--to fit the curve of the walls through
which it passed. This was a discovery of some consequence, causing Mr.
Gryce to grow still more thoughtful and to eye the smooth steel plate
under his hand with an air of marked distrust.
"Mr. Adams carried his taste for the mechanical to great extremes," he
remarked to the slightly uneasy man beside him. "This slide is very
carefully fitted, and, if I am not mistaken, it will stand some
battering before we are released."
"I wish that his interest in electricity had led him to attach such a
simple thing as a bell."
"True, we have come across no bell."
"It would have smacked too much of the ordinary to please him."
"Besides, his only servant was deaf."
"Try the effect of a blow, a quick blow with this silver-mounted
alpenstock. Some one should hear and come to our assistance."
"I will try my whistle first; it will be better understood."
But though Mr. Gryce both whistled and struck many a resounding knock
upon the barrier before them, it was an hour before he could draw the
attention of Styles, and five hours before an opening could be effected
in the wall large enough to admit of their escape, so firmly was this
barrier of steel fixed across the sole outlet from this remarkable room.