More Clues
I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her close to me. “Honey,” I
said, “forgive your old Mary. We are all overstrung, overwrought. I
didn’t mean to speak so sharply.”
“There is nothing to forgive, dear,” she said. “But—I don’t
understand. What did I say, or do, that made you feel like being cross
to me?”
“Nothing,” I told her. “I’m all on edge—that’s all.”
“I know. Were you looking for something else, on the table? There was
nothing else in her bag.”
“I was wondering,” I said, “about that foreign looking letter she got
on the second of July. Did she burn it, with the other things?”
“Oddly, she didn’t. I found it in her desk; or, rather, beneath her
typewriter. Either she forgot about it; or knew that none of us could
read it.”
“It was written in a foreign language?”
“No. In code. Here it is.”
Code, indeed! When I took it from its envelope, this is what met my
eyes.
“Paexzazlytp! f-y nyx ogrgrsgo, rn fgao atf jan j-asn, ahzgo zkg c-.
ahhalo, vkgt nyx clplzgf rg lt zkg kypulzae, zkaz nyx palf, vlzk nyxo
lrlzazgf r-yta e-lpa prleg, ‘p-yoon, yef fgao, l- rafg——”
I have copied only the first lines on the first page. There were four
sleazy pages, all closely typewritten. Not a scratch of handwriting on
it. What I judged to be the signature, was, “Slrsl.”
“Do you know who wrote this?” I asked.
“I am sure, if I dare be sure of anything, that it was written by a
man named Lewis Bauermont.”
I counted the letters of “Lewis” on my fingers. Five. The number of
letters in the signature, “Slrsl.”
“If he signed his name Lewis,” I said, “then ‘S’ would be, ‘L,’ and
‘l’ would be ‘e’ and so on. Get a pencil, dear. Let’s see if we can
work it out.”
She came and looked over my shoulder at the jumbled letters.
“No,” she said, “you see, the letter ‘s’ comes twice in the last word,
and there are no duplicate letters in Lewis. I am sure it will be more
difficult than any substitution of letters. I don’t know anything
about codes; but I have a notion that the letters are mere symbols of
something else—numbers perhaps, that work out with a key quotation.”
“I’m going to have a try at my idea, anyway,” I insisted.
I went and sat at the desk. She sat beside me, and handed me a pencil.
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “the man who wrote this, signed some nickname.
Did he have one?”
“Men called him ‘Mexico,’ and ‘Mexie.’ Gaby never used either of those
names for him.”
“What name did she use?” I insisted, though I felt like a brute.
“None, except ‘Lewis,’ that I know of. She didn’t read the signature,
when she read the letter to me. At least I don’t remember——”
“She read it to you!” I exclaimed.
“I thought that she did. Now—I don’t know. I can’t be sure of
anything. She read to me what she said was a copy of the letter; that
is, the worked out code. She may have left out entire paragraphs. She
may have changed it, in any way, in order to keep her terrible secret
from me.”
“Yes, but what did she tell you the letter contained?”
Danny looked at her wrist-watch. “It is too long even to begin to
tell, now. And—I don’t want to tell it again; not to-day. I have told
John all about it, you see. Later, of course—— Or you may ask John to
tell you. It—it was an insult from beginning to end. An insult to her.
I can’t bear thinking of it, any more; not to-day.
“Mary,” her voice changed suddenly as did her manner, “do you know why
Uncle Sam asked me—almost commanded me to be in the living-room at
three o’clock to-day?”
“No, Danny, I don’t. But he told Mrs. Ricker and me to be there, too.
I guess he just wants to talk to all of us, together.”
“Oh—talk! What good is talk going to do? Talk, in a place like this,
now, where there is not one true, certain thing to get hold of,
anywhere; where not one of us can believe in another——”
She put a quick hand to her lips; her eyes widened; she turned, and
hastily pushing aside the heavy curtain, went through the clothes
closet into her own room.
I sat still, at the desk. The paper before me, and the sharp pencil in
my hand, tempted me to make a list, as they always do in books, of the
clues, to date. I wrote:
“Locked door.
“Key in my pocket.
“T. A. (I put only the initials of tobacco ashes.)
“Chad’s suicide.
“Chad’s note. What person was he trying to shield?
“What did Hubert Hand think that I had overheard in the cabin?
“Mrs. Ricker’s threat.
“‘Q’ cap for typewriter key.
“Contents of the beaded bag.
“1. Two cigs missing from full case.
“2. Empty match-box.
“3. Empty purse. Missing bill-fold. (Robbery?)
“4. Crumpled handkerchief. (Tears? Pleading?)
“5. Broken cig. holder.
“6. Hubert Hand’s note.
“The code letter.
“Gabrielle’s note to Danny.”
This, I submit as the world’s worst list of clues. It is the best
example I have ever seen of the saying that a person could not see the
forest for the trees. The forest was there, right enough. All I would
have needed to do, was to back off far enough away from the trees to
look at it.
My face burns, even yet, when I realize that, at half-past two o’clock
on the afternoon of the fifth of July, if I had been possessed of just
one lick of sense, I could, instead of writing that list of clues,
have written another one; a list that, step by step, just as sure as
straight ahead, would have led to the guilty person.
Why did I not take into consideration the fact that, for two months,
the Canneziano girls had been searching for something on the Desert
Moon; something which I was all but certain they had not found?
Why did I not give a thought to the fact that John, after a secret
conversation with Gaby—according to Mrs. Ricker—had been clean and
clear away off the place since early afternoon until evening?
Why did I not include in my list the fact that Gaby had given the gold
monkey to Martha?
Why, instead of trying to puzzle out the code letter, did I not read
between the lines of Gabrielle’s last note to Danny?
However, at the time, since it was of my own making, I was quite well
satisfied with my list. I took it to the table to check over the
items. Sam had put the key, with which I had opened the attic door,
alongside the other things there.
I picked it up, now, and looked at it for the first time. I had not
looked at it, I had merely used it, the night before. My heart jumped
up in my throat. It was not the key to the attic door. It was a rusty
old pass key that had hung on a nail in the broom closet, off the
kitchen, for more years than I could remember.
Whoever had put this key in my pocket, must have been well acquainted
with the Desert Moon kitchen, to have found that old key, under the
brooms, and mops, and dust-rags, and chamois skins, and the rest, that
hung around it and over it in the broom-closet.
What had become of the key to the attic door?