Chapter I

The House of the Missing

by Sinclair Gluck

published by A. L. Burt Company, New York

by arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company

Copyright, 1922, by

The Inter-continental Publishing Corporation of New York

Contents

I I Acquire a Friend

II “The Shadow of the Web”

III “That’s All We Know”

IV Roving Commissions

V Our First Clew

VI The Girl in Gray

VII The Famous Tea

VIII Amateur Burglary

IX The First Skirmish

X Mrs. Fawcette is Indiscreet

XI Black Friday

XII Disaster!

XIII Our Second Burglary

XIV What We Found

XV The Darkest Hour

XVI The Final Attempt

XVII Walk into My Parlor

XVIII When in Rome——

XIX Fast in the Web

XX The Room of the Voices

XXI Beating Back

XXII Through the Outposts

XXIII Within the Web

XXIV The Web Is Torn

XXV The Emperor

XXVI The Final Surprise

to

My Sister

whose help and encouragement

brought it to a happy ending

this book is affectionately

dedicated

Chapter I

I Acquire a Friend

High on the roof of the apartment house, in the darkness, the

insatiable, ceaseless murmur of the city came hushed and muted to my

ears. I leaned against the parapet, staring out over the glow of

clashing lights below and letting the breeze touch my face with its

gentle fingers. It had a soothing influence of which I was badly in

need that night. For I had come to the end of two months of ceaseless

search—and consistent, unvarying failure.

I had not dared to lose faith that somewhere down there, in that

brimming human river, still existed the sweetest little sister a

fellow ever had. It was possible even that one of the little dots now

passing in the street far below knew where she was and what her fate

had been. But I, who would have given the aching heart out of my body

to find her, could not tell. I could only remember her sweetness; her

little wide-eyed glances; her happy, bubbling laughter and her

adorable innocence.

Perhaps fate had been envious of our happiness together, for it had

played us the cruellest of tricks, wresting my little sister away to

God knew what horrors and leaving me with a ceaseless, gnawing grief.

My imagination is none too vivid, perhaps, at ordinary times, but

during those two months I had had to school it rigidly. A mind that is

balked of a great desire, turns on itself like a scorpion. But it did

not help my search to picture scenes in which she might be the victim,

scenes going on even at that moment and just around the corner

perhaps. And madness lay that way, as I had long since had cause to

realize.

Looking back, there on the roof, it seemed a weary waste of years

since that morning, only two months before, when she came laughing,

dancing into my studio to ask her favor. A Mrs. Furneau, whom I knew

slightly, had offered to drive her into New York that day, to a

luncheon party at the house of some friends and a _matinée_

afterwards. Margaret was just seventeen, with an innocent, slender,

childlike beauty that set me nearly crazy in my efforts to transfer it

to canvas. She had come home for the summer holidays, and as usual her

dainty wishes were my law. This party was to be a “Special treat,

please!” So I had let her go.

I gazed down at the darkened city, and for the thousand-and-first time

went wearily over the events of that terrible time, seeking for the

faintest clew.

The first intimation that I had had of impending tragedy had come from

Mrs. Furneau, the woman who had taken Margaret into New York. I had

been working hard on a portrait and had hardly missed the child. But

about seven o’clock, an hour after she should have been home, the

telephone rang and a gasping voice came to me over the long-distance

wire: “Is Margaret with you? Did she come home?”

Mrs. Furneau sounded nearly distracted, but I had managed to drag the

details out of her at length. They had gone to the luncheon and then

to the _matinée_ in a party, she told me. A little after five, they

had left the others and started for home in Mrs. Furneau’s car. Then,

at 34th Street, Margaret had begged for ten minutes in which to do

some shopping in one of the big stores near by. Mrs. Furneau had

agreed to wait for her, and had pulled up in front of the store while

Margaret got out and ran inside. And that was all!

Mrs. Furneau had waited for nearly half an hour, and then, as she

could see that the store was closing for the night, had gone inside to

look for her. Not finding her, she had returned to the car. But

Margaret had not come out, according to Mrs. Furneau’s chauffeur. So

she went back again and searched the nearly empty store thoroughly

this time. But she could learn nothing—could find no one who had even

seen the child. Margaret had certainly entered the store, for the

older woman said she had watched her graceful figure until it passed

through the revolving doors. But after that she had vanished!

Thinking that Margaret might have met and talked with friends or gone

to another store in search of what she wanted, Mrs. Furneau had waited

in the car for nearly an hour more. By that time all the stores were

closed. And besides, Margaret was a considerate child and would never

have stayed away so long of her own volition without telling her

hostess. Mrs. Furneau became really frightened then and telephoned to

me.

Half an hour later I met her in New York. She repeated the details of

Margaret’s disappearance and we talked over possibilities, but there

was no clew to work on, as to what could have become of my little

sister. We called up all the friends she had in New York that I knew

about, but could learn nothing. And there was very little that I could

do that night. The store workers were scattered to the four winds by

that time.

So I had given all the details of the disappearance to the police, and

after sending Mrs. Furneau home—she was frightened and tired out—I

went to a hotel myself, so that I could be close at hand if the police

wanted me.

As long as I live the recollection of that night will be vivid in my

memory. Hour after hour I paced the floor, stopping every ten minutes

or so to ring up my house, only to learn from the frightened servants

that there was no news. Margaret had not returned. And at last the

gray dawn crept into the room and found me still fully dressed and

still pacing back and forth.

The store opened at nine, and at that hour Mrs. Furneau, who had come

into town again to help, joined me. We went through the store together

and questioned the workers—door-men, floor-walkers, salesgirls—every

one. But we could learn nothing. There was simply no trace of any

kind.

And another hasty telephone call told me that there was no news of my

little sister at home.

That night and morning had been the beginning of two months of fear

that haunted me like the terrible figments of a nightmare. At first,

the number of investigations that suggested themselves, among the

people in the store and among Margaret’s friends, had kept my mind

occupied and kept hope alive that nothing serious had happened to the

child. Then there had been the hospitals to search and city officials

to interview, to say nothing of social workers and charitable

organizations. Mrs. Furneau spent days with me, helping in the search.

But as time passed and we could learn nothing, despair settled on me

like a choking cloud, and with it an unreasonable sense of resentment

towards Mrs. Furneau for her part in it all. I did my best to conceal

it; but her intuition must have told her that there was something

wrong, and after a week or so she gave up the search and I continued

my efforts alone.

But the days grew into weeks and the combined efforts of the police,

the best detective agencies in the country, and every other agency

that money and determination could press into the service, failed to

find a shadow of a trace, until at length other crimes and an epidemic

of disappearances among young Society girls distracted their attention

and I continued the search alone.

Hope dies hard; and there was always the chance that the child might

make her way home again, or that I might hear of her or from her in

some roundabout way; for at least her body had not been found. But

after two months of utterly unsuccessful search, almost continuous by

day and night, I was pretty desperate now, standing up there on the

roof of the building in New York in which I had taken an apartment.

Everything else had been dropped and I had moved to New York. I had

been in queer places and seen queer sights during those eight weeks. I

had pierced the outer, commonplace integument of a great city—the

shifting scene of blank, reserved humanity that meets the casual

eye—and had been caught up and swept nearly off my feet once or twice

in the seething welter of passion and crime that swells and ebbs

beneath the city’s impassive exterior.

But of the slip of a girl I sought and now almost dreaded to find I

could learn—nothing.

Stretching away below me as I watched, the city crouched purring, like

some great animal motionless and watchful. I hated it actively for

what it had done to me, longing to tear out its secret by violence, if

need be. But after a while sanity slowly returned and the momentary

madness faded. I can only say in excuse that the gnawing anxiety of

those two months must have somewhat undermined a pretty normal point

of view.

But with returning sanity came a slow resolve. Up to now I had been

seeking blindly, with no plan—no definite aim, no thought of the

future. From now on I vowed that my life should be given up to the

search; that nothing should interfere with it; that only death or

success should put an end to it. The resolve brought me a curious

sense of peace. That much I could do—even though it were all I could

do. But that much should be done.

With the thought I turned away from the parapet to go to my rooms

below and try to lay out some sort of a campaign for the future. As I

turned a touch fell upon my arm and I found Larry standing beside me.

In the dim light from the open doorway that led to the roof I could

detect the half-veiled pity in his eyes.

I had acquired Larry a couple of weeks before, or rather had had him

more or less thrust upon me, and had not regretted it.

Early in the search I bought a small light car and scoured the city

night after night in it, in the hope of catching a glimpse of

Margaret. One night I had been driving slowly along the Bowery. It was

very late and the long, wide, cobbled street under the L structure was

deserted. But as I came to a corner, Larry darted out of a side

street, yanked open the rear door of the car and dropped into the

obscurity of the tonneau behind me, with “For God’s sake, d-r-r-rive

on, sor. It’s half a dozen of them gangsters is after me!”

The sheer impudence of it took my breath away for a moment, and with

the sudden natural impulse of a sporting chance for the hunted thing,

I stood on the accelerator and whisked around a corner and out of

sight before it came home to me that I was probably defeating the ends

of justice. Then, too, there had been a quality of warmth and a hint

of laughter in the rich brogue of the speaker that appealed to me and

seemed to lift him out of the common run of malefactors.

Once committed, however, I turned a lot more corners and put a good

bit of the city between us and his pursuers before I pulled into the

curb and turned to have it out with my “fare.”

He forestalled me. He jumped to his feet at once. “Do but wait now,

sor, and lave me have a look at ye!” said he.

Surprise and wrathful amazement kept me silent for a moment while he

stared into my face. Then just as I was preparing to give him an

extensive and unvarnished account of what I thought of him and his

impudence, he slapped his thigh, and leaning forward took my hand and

touched the top of his head with it, in a queer old-fashioned gesture.

“Faith, sor, I knew ut! You’re the man for me and I’m your man from

this day forth. See now, tell me what it is you want in the world and

I’ll get it ye. Ye have the look of a seeker, sor. Tell me what it is

ye seek and I’ll find it. There now!”

I could not answer for a moment. The beggar was so impudent and so

amazingly penetrating. Then I recovered my tongue and proceeded to

give him a dressing down that I’m proud of even now, when I think of

it. He listened without a word and with only an occasional wriggle of

the body to show that some comment of mine upon his personal

appearance had gone home. I wound up with the observation that I now

proposed to take him and hand him over to the nearest policeman with a

full account of our meeting.

“That’s it, sor!” he broke in, as I finished, “you’re the master for a

lawless lad like me. I knew it from the fir-r-rst. An’ ye’ll not be

for givin’ me up to thim cops at the latter end, afther the way ye’d

made such a rescue an’ all. Faith, ’twas a small matther av a colleen

av wan av thim gangsters, sor!”

He paused and looked at me with something of anxiety in his eyes. “See

now, give me up to thim thin if ye must, sor. Thim bhoys is nothin’

an’ I’ll soon be quit of the pack of thim again. But ye’ll not be the

sort that’s met with every day. An’—an’ I’d like fine to serve ye,

sor!”

To tell the truth, I was puzzled. The man had been clever enough not

to threaten me in return with the disclosure of my part in his escape,

supposing I were to give him up. If he had, I should have handed him

over at once. And at his first appearance there had been something of

exultation mixed with his fear, so that I doubted in him any great

depth of depravity for its own sake. Moreover, his first words about

seeker and search had been a wild stab in the dark from an arrant

braggart, but—they had struck home. God knows, I needed help in my

search, and what right had I to refuse it, in however wild a guise it

presented itself? The fellow was young, with the slimness of youth,

but he was big-boned and powerful-looking and his eyes were bright

with intelligence. He might prove a useful ally enough if he were

sincere. For the moment I could only temporize.

“What do you mean by ‘serve me’? Do you think I want a chauffeur or

what?” I demanded.

His answering look was full of reproach. At least his face was frank

and open for any man to read, the emotions chasing each other across

it like ripples of wind on a mountain lake. There was something

attractive, too, about the youth and vitality and daring of his

make-up.

“Faith, that’s not yerself, sor. Did I not tell ye there was the look

of the seeker about ye? There’s lines of pain an’ fear an’ anxious

nights and days in yer face, sor, an’ that’s God’s truth, beggin’ yer

pardon, sor. I saw that at once. An’ I’d like foine to hilp ye to yer

desire, the way we would be worrkin’ together on it. _If_ there’s a

bit of excitement about it, so much the better, sor. Have ye a ‘man’

already?”

“You know who I am, then,” I told him sharply; “that is evident.”

“I do not, sor,” he answered, triumph in his voice. “But I’m right

then, sor?”

“Yes, you’re right,” I answered wearily. “Well—you’d better come home

with me now and we’ll talk over what’s to be done with you.” I started

the car again and so drove home with him.

I put the car away and then took him up to my study, set him down and

fell to cross-examining him on his past life, with a view to getting a

better line on the man himself from his way of answering. Some mix-up

over a colleen had sent him out of Ireland as a boy and he had drifted

to New York, that Mecca of the Irish. He told me frankly that his

father had argued and occasionally beaten into him the conviction that

the world owed him a living and a good one. In New York he had tried

common labor, odd jobs and work as a shipping clerk, but had found no

good living at any of them. So he had drifted into bad company and a

manner of life that promised an easy existence, plenty of pickings,

and above all, the excitement that his soul craved. The pickings had

not been all he had hoped, it seemed. But there had certainly been

plenty of excitement.

“So,” I told him calmly, “I’m to take you on here and install you, so

that you can clean the place out in my absence, without even the

trouble of breaking in!”

The hurt, resentful look on his face was enough to convince me. But he

turned away and started for the door, his cap in his hand. “Faith,

sor,” he answered quietly, “I took ye for a man of more—sinse, beggin’

yer pardon, sor. I’ll just be goin’, unless ye’d like to give me up

still?”

“Come back here and turn out your pockets.”

He came slowly back to the table, a glint in his eye and rebellion

latent in every line of him. I took a quick step forward. “On the

table,” I told him quietly.

It was a sorry collection. Bits of string, a heavy clasp knife, a

half-eaten sandwich, a letter or two from the old country made up the

total with a few small coins.

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“All right, put them back. I’m glad we’ve nothing to return to the

rightful owners. Now come with me and I’ll show you your room. The

first thing you’d better do is to take a bath.”

“By God, sor,” he said, and stopped, the blood flooding his face.

“Ye’ll—ye’ll not regret it!” he added quietly, a moment later.

So I took him into my service, ostensibly as a valet, a nuisance which

I did not want in the least, but actually for the aid his knowledge of

the under-world might prove in my search. But before a week had passed

I had learned to like the man for himself, for his cheery optimism,

his courage and his faithfulness, also somewhat for his incurable

laziness and bragging, though it would never have done to let him know

it; and I spent most of our time together outlining the most

unflattering views on his ancestry and personal habits.

We had already pulled out of some pretty tight corners together, but

through it all he had stood by me, plucky, optimistic, for ever

bragging and for ever ready for anything. To tell the truth he had

pulled me back to a sane frame of mind more than once with his

nonsense. But whether he knew this and did it on purpose or not I

could not tell.

Up on the roof now, he stood beside me for a moment before he spoke.

“Well?” I demanded, sharply.

“There’s a gintleman to see ye, sor. Says his name is Bertrand Moore,

or some such thruck as that. He gave me no cyard. I did tell him, sor,

that ye would not be wishful to be disturbed. But he was all for

seein’ ye, whether or no. Sure he folleyed me up here a ways, till I

turned back to him. Shall I sind him about his business?”

With this he lapsed into silence, waiting calmly for directions. He

was quite ready, as I knew, either to throw the visitor out bodily or

to make him at home, whichever he was told. Aside from myself, matters

of ethics did not trouble Larry in the slightest, and it was this

quality in him that had brought back to me the power to laugh.

“What does he want? Do you know?” I asked.

“That I don’t, sor. There’s a lackadaisical air about him, an’ yet

I’ve a notion he’s used to havin’ his way, sor. He wud not tell me

more than just that he wanted to be seein’ ye, an’ see ye he wud!”

The name conveyed nothing to me, and it was not until I entered my

small drawing-room and my visitor rose to his feet that I placed him.

I had seen him once or twice hanging round the police station when my

search had taken me there, and had also met him once at the house of

some friends. I had put him down as a bit of a lounge lizard, his

dress and manner of speech giving me that impression rather than his

face. So, after shaking hands, I waited with some interest and secret

amusement to learn what he wanted with me.

“How do you do, Mr. Clayton?” he began in his mincing voice. Then he

glanced at Larry, who was hovering about in the background. “May I

have—er—five minutes of your time—alone?”

“I suppose so,” I answered, smiling. “You can go, Larry. Sit down

Mr.—Moore, isn’t it?”