ON THE ROOF
When I returned with a key and the information that the way to the roof
ran through the janitor's tool-room at the far end of the hall, I found
my young people already out there. Worth was trying the tool-room door.
"Got the key?" he called. "It's locked."
"Yes." I took my time fitting and turning it. "How did you know this was
the room?"
"I didn't," briefly. "Bobs walked out here, and I followed her. She said
we'd want into this one."
She'd guessed right again! I wheeled on her, ejaculating,
"For the love of Mike! Tell a mere man how you deduced this stairway.
Feminine intuition, I suppose."
I hadn't meant to be offensive with that last, but her firm little chin
was in the air as she countered,
"Is it a stairway? It might be a ladder, you know."
It was a ladder, an iron ladder, as I found when I ushered them in. My
eyes snapped inquiry at her.
"Very simple," she said. Worth was pushing aside pails and boxes to make
a better way for her to the ladder's foot. "There wouldn't be a roof
scuttle in the rented rooms, so I knew when you called in to tell us
there was none in the halls."
"I didn't. I said nothing of the sort." Where was the girl's fine memory
that she couldn't recollect a man's words for the little time I'd been
gone! "All I said was, 'Just a minute and I'll be back.'"
"Yes, that's all you said to Worth." She glanced at the boy serenely as
he waited for her at the ladder's foot. "He's not a trained observer; he
doesn't deduce even from what he does observe." There were twinkling
lights in her black eyes. "But what your hurried trip to the office said
to me was that you'd gone for the key of the room that led to the
roof scuttle."
Well, that was reasonable--simple enough, too; but,
"This room? How did you find it?"
She stepped to the open door and placed the tip of a gloved finger on
the nickeled naught that marked the panels.
"The significant zero again, Mr. Boyne," she laughed. "Here it means the
room is not a tenanted one, and is therefore the way to the roof. Shall
we go there?"
"Well, young lady," I said as I led her along the trail Worth had
cleared, "it must be almost as bad to see everything that way--in minute
detail--as to be blind."
"Carry on!" Worth called from the top of the ladder, reaching down to
aid the girl. She laughed back at me as she started the short climb.
"Not at all bad! You others seem to me only half awake to what is about
you--only half living," and she placed her hand in the strong one held
down to her. As Worth passed her through the scuttle to the roof, I saw
her glance carelessly at the hooks and staples, the clumsy but adequate
arrangement for locking the hatch, and, following her, gave them more
careful attention, wondering what she had seen--plenty that I did not,
no doubt. They had no tale to tell my eyes.
Once outside, she stopped a minute with Worth to adjust herself to the
sharp wind which swept across from the north. Here was a rectangular
space surrounded by walls which ran around its four sides to form the
coping, unbroken in any spot; a gravel-and-tar roof, almost flat, with
the scuttle and a few small, dust covered skylights its only openings,
four chimney-tops its sole projections. It was bare of any hiding-place,
almost as clear as a tennis court.
We made a solemn tour of inspection; I wasn't greatly interested--how
could I be, knowing that between this roof and my fugitive there had
been locked windows, and a locked door under reliable human eyes? Still,
the lifelong training of the detective kept me estimating the
possibilities of a getaway from the roof--if Clayte could have reached
it. Worth crossed to where the St. Dunstan fire escape came up from the
ground to end below us at a top floor window. I joined him, explaining
as we looked down,
"Couldn't have made it that way; not by daylight. In open view all
around."
"Think he stayed up here till dark?" Worth suggested, quite as though
the possibility of Clayte's coming here at all was settled.
"My men were all over this building--roof to cellar--within the hour.
They'd not have overlooked a crack big enough for him to hide in. Put
yourself in Clayte's place. Time was the most valuable thing in the
world with him right then. If ever he got up to this roof, he'd not
waste a minute longer on it than he had to."
"Let's see what's beyond, then," and Worth led the way to the farther
end.
The girl didn't come with us. Having been once around the roof coping,
looking, it seemed to me, as much at the view as anything else, she now
seemed content to settle herself on a little square of planking, a
disused scuttle top or something of the sort, in against one of the
chimneys where she was sheltered from the wind. Rather to my surprise, I
saw her thoughtfully pulling off her gloves, removing her turban, all
the time with a curiously disinterested air. I was reminded of what
Worth had said the night before about the way her father trained her.
Probably she regarded the facts I'd furnished her, or that she'd picked
up for herself, much as she used to the problems in concentration her
father spread in the high chair tray of her infancy. I turned and left
her with them, for Worth was calling me to announce a fact I already
knew, that the adjoining building had a roof some fifteen feet below
where we stood, and that the man, admitting good gymnastic ability,
might have reached it.
"Sure," I said. "But come on. We're wasting time here."
We turned to go, and then stopped, both of us checked instantly by what
we saw. The girl was sitting in a strange pose, her feet drawn in to
cross beneath her body, slender hands at the length of the arms meeting
with interlaced finger-tips before her, the thumbs just touching;
shoulders back, chin up, eyes--big enough at any time, now dilated to
look twice their size--velvet circles in a white face. Like a Buddha;
I'd seen her sit so, years before, an undersized girl doing stunts for
her father in a public hall; and even then she'd been in a way
impressive. But now, in the fullness of young beauty, her fine head
relieved against the empty blue of the sky, the free winds whipping
loose flying ends of her dark hair, she held the eye like a miracle.
Sitting here so immovably, she looked to me as though life had slid away
from her for the moment, the mechanical action of lungs and heart
temporarily suspended, so that mind might work unhindered in that
beautiful shell. No, I was wrong. She was breathing; her bosom rose and
fell in slow but deep, placid inhalations and exhalations. And the pale
face might be from the slower heart-beat, or only because the surface
blood had receded to give more of strength to the brain.
The position of head of a Bankers' Security Agency carries with it a
certain amount of dignity--a dignity which, since Richardson's death, I
have maintained better than I have handled other requirements of the
business he left with me. I stood now feeling like a fool. I'd grown
gray in the work, and here in my prosperous middle life, a boy's whim
and a girl's pretty face had put me in the position of consulting a
clairvoyant. Worse, for this was a wild-cat affair, without even the
professional standing of establishments to which I knew some of the weak
brothers in my line sometimes sneaked for ghostly counsel. If it should
leak out, I was done for.
I suppose I sort of groaned, for I felt Worth put a restraining hand on
my arm, and heard his soft,
"Psst!"
The two of us stood, how long I can't say, something besides the beauty
of the young creature, even the dignity of her in this outré situation
getting hold of me, so that I was almost reverent when at last the
rigidity of her image-like figure began to relax, the pretty feet in
their silk stockings and smart pumps appeared where they belonged, side
by side on the edge of the planking, and she looked at us with eyes that
slowly gathered their normal expression, and a smile of rare human
sweetness.
"It _is_ horrid to see--and I loathe doing it!" She shook her curly dark
head like a punished child, and stayed a minute longer, eyes downcast,
groping after gloves and hat. "I thought maybe I'd get the answer before
you saw me--sitting up like a trained seal!"
"Like a mighty pretty little heathen idol, Bobs," Worth amended.
"Well, it's the only way I can really concentrate--effectively. But this
is the first time I've done it since--since father died."
"And never again for me, if that's the way you feel about it." Worth
crossed quickly and stood beside her, looking down. She reached a hand
to him; her eyes thanked him; but as he helped her to her feet I was
struck by a something poised and confident that she seemed to have
brought with her out of that strange state in which she had just been.
"Doesn't either of you want to hear the answer?" she asked. Then,
without waiting for reply, she started for the scuttle and the ladder,
bare headed, carrying her hat. We found her once more adjusting turban
and veil before the mirror of Clayte's dresser. She faced around, and
announced, smiling steadily across at me,
"Your man Clayte left this room while Mrs. Griggsby was kneeling almost
on its threshold--left it by that window over there. He got to the roof
by means of a rope and grappling hook. He tied the suitcase to the lower
end of the rope, swung it out of the window, went up hand over hand, and
pulled the suitcase up after him. That's the answer I got."
It was? Well, it was a beaut! Only Worth Gilbert, standing there giving
the proceeding respectability by careful attention and a grave face,
brought me down to asking with mild jocularity,
"He did? He did all that? Well, please ma'am, who locked the window
after him?"
"He locked the window after himself."
"Oh, say!" I began in exasperation--hadn't I just shown the impractical
little creature that those locks couldn't be manipulated from outside?
"Wait. Examine carefully the wooden part of the upper sash, at the
lock--again," she urged, but without making any movement to help.
"You'll find what we overlooked before; the way he locked the sash from
the outside."
I turned to the window and looked where she had said; nothing. I ran my
fingers over the painted surface of the wood, outside, opposite the
latch, and a queer, chilly feeling went down my spine. I jerked out my
knife, opened it and scraped at a tiny inequality.
"There is--is something--" I was beginning, when Worth crowded in at my
side and pushed his broad shoulders out the window to get a better view
of my operations, then commanded,
"Let me have that knife." He took it from my fingers, dug with its
blade, and suddenly from the inside I saw a tiny hole appear in the
frame of the sash beside the lock hasp. "Here we are!" He brought his
upper half back into the room and held up a wooden plug, painted--dipped
in paint--the exact color of the sash. It had concealed a hole; pierced
the wood from out to in.
"And she saw that in her trance," I murmured, gaping in amazement at the
plug.
I heard her catch her breath, and Worth scowled at me,
"Trance? What do you mean, Boyne? She doesn't go into a trance."
"That--that--whatever she does," I corrected rather helplessly.
"Never mind, Mr. Boyne," said the girl. "It isn't clairvoyance or
anything like that, however it looks."
"But I wouldn't have believed any human eyes could have found that
thing. I discovered it only by sense of touch--and that after you told
me to hunt for it. You saw it when I was showing you the latch, did
you?"
"Oh, I didn't see it." She shook her head. "I found it when I was
sitting up there on the roof."
"Guessed at it?"
"I never guess." Indignantly. "When I'd cleared my mind of everything
else--had concentrated on just the facts that bore on what I wanted to
know--how that man with the suitcase got out of the room and left it
locked behind him--I deduced the hole in the sash by elimination."
"By elimination?" I echoed. "Show me."
"Simple as two and two," she assented. "Out of the door? No; Mrs.
Griggsby; so out of the window. Down? No; you told why; he would be
seen; so, up. Ladder? No; too big for one man to handle or to hide; so a
rope."
"But the hole in the sash?"
"You showed me the only way to close that lock from the outside. There
was no hole in the glass, so there must be in the sash. It was not
visible--you had been all over it, and a man of your profession isn't a
totally untrained observer--so the hole was plugged. I hadn't seen the
plug, so it was concealed by paint--"
I was trying to work a toothpick through the plughole. She offered me a
wire hairpin, straightened out, and with it I pushed the hasp into place
from outside, saw the lever snap in to hold it fast. I had worked the
catch as Clayte had worked it--from outside.
"How did you know it was _this_ window?" I asked, forced to agree that
she had guessed right as to the sash lock. "There are two more here,
either of which--"
"No, please, Mr. Boyne. Look at the angle of the roof that cuts from
view any one climbing from this window--not from the others."
We were all leaning in the window now, sticking our heads out, looking
down, looking up.
"I can't yet see how you get the rope and hook," I said. "Still seems to
me that an outside man posted on the roof to help in the getaway is more
likely."
"Maybe. I can't deal with things that are merely likely. It has to be a
fact--or nothing--for my use. I know that there wasn't any second man
because of the nicks Clayte's grappling hook has left in the cornice up
there."
"Nicks!" I said, and stood like a bound boy at a husking, without a word
to say for myself. Of course, in this impasse of the locked windows, my
men and I had had some excuse for our superficial examination of the
roof. Yet that she should have seen what we had passed over--seen it out
of the corner of her eye, and be laughing at me--was rather a dose to
swallow. She'd got her hair and her hat and veil to her liking, and she
prompted us,
"So now you want to get right down stairs--don't you--and go up through
that other building to its roof?"
I stared. She had my plan almost before I had made it.
At the St. Dunstan desk where I returned the keys, little Miss Wallace
had a question of her own to put to the clerk.
"How long ago was this building reroofed?" she asked with one of her
dark, softly glowing smiles.
"Reroofed?" repeated the puzzled clerk, much more civil to her than he
had been to me. "I don't know that it ever was. Certainly not in my
time, and I've been here all of four years."
"Not in four years? You're sure?"
"Sure of that, yes, miss. But I can find exactly." The fellow behind the
desk was rising with an eagerness to be of service to her, when she cut
him short with,
"Thank you. Four years would be exact enough for my purpose." And she
followed a puzzled detective and, if I may guess, an equally wondering
Worth Gilbert out into the street.