THE SLEEPWALKER
“Mr. Sanborn,” said Dorothy, “when you’re tired of fathoming mysteries
for people, come out to New Canaan and help me order meals. That was the
most scrumptious lunch I’ve had in a month of Sundays.” She dropped a
lump of sugar in her demitasse and threw her host a bright smile across
the table.
“Thank you, my dear,” the detective smiled back. “I may take you up on
that one of these days. But speaking of mysteries reminds me that now
the waiter is gone, it’s high time we busied ourselves again with the
affairs of Janet Jordan. Now that I understand something of the young
lady’s background and her family, I want to hear all there is to tell
about her present position.” He pulled a briar pipe and tobacco pouch
out of his pocket and commenced to fill the one with the contents of the
other. “All ready, Howard. Start at the beginning and don’t skimp on
details—they may be and they generally are important.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll begin with a week ago today.” Howard pushed his
chair away from the table, thrust his hands into trouser pockets and
jumped into his story. “Janet had a date to meet me last Thursday at
two p. m. at the Strand. We intended to take in a movie—but she never
showed up.”
“Then you aren’t a business man—?” This from the detective.
“Oh, but I am—a mining engineer, Mr. Sanborn. With the Tuthill
Corporation. But I am free on Thursday afternoons, instead of Saturday.
It is more convenient for the office staff.”
“Hasn’t your concern large mining concessions in Peru?”
“It has, sir—silver mines. To make matters worse—but no—I’ll tell it
this way. I particularly wanted to meet Janet last Thursday, because I
had been told the day before by the head of our New York office that I
was to be transferred to Lima, Peru. The boat that I’m scheduled to sail
on, leaves this coming Saturday. I was fearfully pepped up about it. I’m
going down there as assistant manager of our Lima office, the job
carries a considerable increase in salary, and, if I make good, a fine
future with the firm. My plan was to get Janet to marry me, with or
without her father’s consent, and to take her to Lima with me. I
couldn’t bear to think of leaving her to the kind of existence she’d had
before I’d known her—and with no way of correspondence—Well, I waited
for over an hour in the lobby of the theatre but she didn’t come. At
last I went up to my apartment.”
“Why didn’t you phone her?” asked Dorothy, who was nothing if not
direct.
“Because Janet had asked me never to do that. She said if her father
knew she had a boy friend, he’d pack her off somewhere, and we’d never
be able to meet again.”
“Nice papa—I don’t think!” observed Bill Bolton.
“No comments now, please,” said Sanborn. “Go on, Howard. If you couldn’t
talk to Janet, how did you find out that she was a prisoner?”
Howard smiled. “But we _were_ able to talk to each other, Mr. Sanborn.
About the time we became engaged, I fixed that. My small flat is on the
ninth floor of the building, the Jordans’ on the seventh. My three rooms
have windows on an air shaft. The Jordans’ back bedroom and bath
overlook the same airshaft and are directly opposite my sitting room,
two flights below. The shaft is only twenty feet wide, so I bought one
of those headphone sets that are used in airplanes for conversation
between the cockpits of a plane while it is being flown. I lengthened
the wires of course, and got a long, collapsible pole. After dark, Janet
would come to her window, I’d pass her headphone set down to her, hooked
on to the end of the pole, and we would hold long conversations across
the court without anybody being the wiser. When we were through talking,
I’d pass the pole over to her and draw it back when she’d attached her
headset.”
“By Jingoes!” cried Bill. “I’ll say that’s clever!”
“It sure is, Howard!” Dorothy was quite as enthusiastic. “You certainly
deserve to get Janet after that.”
Howard shook his head. “We’ll have to do something really clever to get
her away from the bunch who are holding her prisoner. Well,—as I say,
when I got to my flat, I sat down by my sitting room window, and
pretended to read a book. In reality, of course, I was watching Janet’s
window. Presently she appeared. Even at that distance, I could see that
she had been crying. She held up a slate, for we never dared to use the
headphones in the day time, and slates are a good medium for short
messages. On it she had written, ‘_After dark._’ Well, that was one of
the longest afternoons I’d ever put in. About five-thirty, she came back
to her window and I passed over the headgear. When I heard her story, I
went half crazy, and I guess I’ve been pretty much that way ever since.
“You see, Mr. Sanborn, Janet has told me that occasionally she walks in
her sleep, especially when she isn’t feeling very well. The evening
before, that was a week ago Wednesday night, she had a headache and went
to bed early. When she awoke, she was terrified to find herself seated
on the floor of their living room, behind a large Chinese screen. There
seemed to be seven or eight men in the room, including her father. Of
course, she could not see them, but she could hear every word they said.
By the clock on the wall above her head, she saw that it was one in the
morning. She soon realized that this was a meeting of the heads of some
large society or organization and that these men had come there from all
parts of the world. There was an air of mystery about them and their
talk. No names were mentioned but they addressed each other by number.
Mr. Jordan was Number 5; Number 2, who spoke with a foreign accent, was
evidently conducting the meeting, in place of the absent Number 1, whom
they all seemed to hold in great awe. Janet realized that she must have
entered the room before the meeting started, while she was still asleep.
She saw that so long as the meeting lasted, there would be no way of
escape. Gradually she became terrified at her predicament, and—”
“Just a moment,” interrupted Ashton Sanborn. “Has Janet ever told you
anything of her father’s business?”
“She really knows nothing about it, Mr. Sanborn. I asked her myself some
time ago, and she said then, except that he seemed to travel a lot, she
hadn’t the slightest idea what he did for a living. Once when she asked
him outright what is was, Mr. Jordan flew into a rage. He said it was
his own affair, and that so long as it brought them in enough money to
live comfortably, he did not wish her to bring up the matter again. The
one thing she does know is that he doesn’t go regularly to an office.
Men frequently come to see him at the apartment, but their conversations
are invariably held behind locked doors.”
“I see. Go on now, with Janet and the meeting.”
“Well, sir, as I’ve said, she was behind that screen, listening to what
the men said—and in fact, she couldn’t help listening. Not that she
understood much of what they were saying. Number 2 made a long speech
and the gist of it was that now they were agreed upon the use of Formula
X, the demonstration (whatever that was) must be made in their
respective sectors at the same time on the same day. He also proposed
that Number 5 (Janet’s father) interview Number 1 and learn from him
when the demonstrations should be made. This motion was carried
unanimously. Then Number 3 asked the chairman if they could not in
future hold their meeting in some safer place than the Jordans’
apartment. ‘For all we know,’ he said, ‘someone may be secreted behind
that screen!’ Mr. Jordan laughed at this, and told Number 3 to close up
the screen if it made him nervous. So the first thing Janet knew, the
screen was dragged aside and she was staring into the face of a
Chinaman. Seated in a circle behind him were the others, her father
among them.”
“Gosh!” exclaimed Dorothy. “I’ll bet that scared the poor kid silly.”
“It did,” admitted Howard. “She was absolutely petrified. And then there
was the dickens to pay. All the men started talking at once. The
Chinaman pulled a revolver and pointed it straight at her, yelling that
she had heard their secrets and must be immediately executed!”
“‘She has heard nothing!’ her father told them. ‘She frequently walks in
her sleep. She was asleep when she wandered in here before the meeting,
and she is sleeping now—look!’ Then he lit a match and held the flame
before Janet’s eyes. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘she doesn’t even blink. Janet
has heard nothing, gentlemen.’”
“Of course Janet had taken her father’s hint, and followed it. She knew
that he was doing the only thing he could to save her life, so she kept
right on staring in front of her without moving, while the Chinaman held
the automatic within a foot of her head. But the strain she was under
nearly broke her nerve. She knew that the slightest sign on her part
that she was conscious would mean a bullet through her brain. A furious
argument followed. Most of the men—there were eight of them including
Mr. Jordan—wanted her put out of the way at once. But at last, her
father and Number 2, a big man with a long beard who seemed to be more
humane than the rest, prevailed upon them to let him lead her back to
her bed. Her father was forbidden to hold any intercourse with her
whatsoever. She was locked in her bedroom, afraid even to cry, for fear
she would be heard, and not knowing what moment the door would open and
they would drag her to her death.”
“Horrible!” Mr. Sanborn’s pipe had gone out but he didn’t seem to notice
it. “That experience was enough to unhinge a person’s mind. Janet may be
shy and retiring, but she evidently doesn’t lack grit. By the way, did
she say she recognized any of the men at the meeting?”
“No. She said that without exception she was sure she’d never seen any
of them before, although they were all on good terms with her father.
Each one seemed to be of a different nationality. One was a black man
who wore a turban—an East Indian, probably. Another, also pretty dark,
wore a red fez. The others were apparently Europeans, but as they all
spoke English together she had no way of guessing what they were. Number
2, the man with the long brown beard, she thought might be a
Scandinavian. She was sure, though, that her father was the only
American or Anglo-Saxon in the group.”
“Tell us what happened next morning,” proposed Dorothy. Her coffee, now
cold, remained untasted in the cup.
“I’m getting to that. At eight o’clock her door was unlocked and a
woman, a stranger to her, came into her bedroom with a breakfast tray.
She put the tray on a table and went into the bathroom and turned on the
water for Janet’s bath, then left the room and locked the door after
her. At nine this same woman came back, brought some books and magazines
to her, made up the bed and put the room straight. Whenever Janet spoke
to her, she shook her head and put her finger to her lips. But Janet
said that even now she doesn’t know whether the woman is actually dumb
or only acting under orders. She has brought and taken away her meals
ever since, but she has never been able to get her to speak.”
“But how did she find out about going to Dr. Winn’s house?” asked Bill
Bolton, who had shown an interest quite as keen as Dorothy’s or
Sanborn’s.
Howard Bright drank a glass of water. “I’m getting to that part now,” he
explained. “I’m not much of a story teller and I seem to be taking an
awful time to get through this one—but I’m doing my best just the
same.”
“Of course you are!” Dorothy motioned Bill to keep quiet. “You’re doing
noble, Howard! Pay no attention to that goof over there.”
“O.K., Dorothy.” Howard replaced his empty glass on the table. “At about
noon of the first day of Janet’s imprisonment in her room, the door was
unlocked and Mr. Lawson came in. She knew him as a friend of her
father’s who had dined with them two or three times. She had always
thought him quite a jolly sort of chap and knew that he was private
secretary to Dr. Winn, the celebrated chemist. Naturally, she felt
rather relieved to see him, and she opened up on him at once. She still
felt that her only hope for life and freedom was to pretend absolute
ignorance of the happenings of the night before. And she managed to keep
up that pretense before Lawson, though what he had to do with the affair
she hadn’t any idea, nor does she yet know where he comes into the
picture. Anyway, he wasn’t at the meeting. She let him know, though,
that she was very indignant and astonished to find herself kept a
prisoner, and demanded to see her father. Lawson, she told me, was most
affable and kind to her. He said that she of course did not realize that
she had been very ill during the night and that she was now under
doctor’s orders. He also told her that her father had been called away
on business, so he had come to her as an old friend of the family, to be
of any help that he could. Janet said that his sympathy almost
undermined her suspicion—she almost confided in him. But luckily, she
didn’t. He has been to see her every day since, and she is now convinced
that his part in this devilish scheme is to gain her confidence, and to
find out whether she actually did hear or see anything at the meeting.
Yesterday he told her that it had been decided she should visit him and
his wife at Dr. Winn’s house while her father is away, and that in order
to occupy her mind, she should act as secretary to Mrs. Lawson, who
assists Dr. Winn in his work.”
“Maybe they don’t really mean to harm her after all,” said Dorothy
hopefully.
“Janet is certain,” said Howard, “that they want her at the Doctor’s for
close observation. She took a secretarial course at school, so that part
of it is all right, but I believe with her that one slip, one sign that
she is deceiving them, will mean that she will simply vanish and never
be heard of again. She knows that Lawson lied about one thing: her
father is still living in their flat. She has heard his voice several
times.”
“But what I can’t understand,” said Dorothy, “is why, just as soon as
you knew all this, you didn’t go to the nearest police station and have
that flat raided!”
“Because, Janet won’t hear of it.” Howard’s tone was thoroughly
wretched. “I worked out some other plans to release her, but she refuses
to budge.”
“Is the girl crazy?” This from Bill.
“No—she’s as sane as any of us—maybe saner. She says that if the
police are called in or I help her to escape, that crew will believe her
father knew all the time that she was faking—as of course he does. And
she says she is sure they will have him killed out of hand, once they
discover that. To make matters worse, if possible, my firm thinks I’m
going to sail for Lima the day after tomorrow! If I turn them down, I’ll
lose my job here and ruin my future. I’ve been hoping against hope that
something would turn up so Janet could sail with me. I certainly shall
not sail without her. I was buying some clothes for the trip when I ran
into you this morning—” Howard’s voice trailed off hopelessly.
“Gee!” It was evident that Dorothy was not far from tears. “You poor
dears are in an awful fix! I do wish I could help you. Do
_something_—so that you two could get married and sail for Peru!”
“Perhaps you can.” Ashton Sanborn knocked the ashes from his pipe into
an ash tray.
“_How?_” shouted three voices simultaneously.