PETER CLANCY
Mr. Peter Clancy, early of the Metropolitan Police, late of the United
States Secret Service, and currently the active head of a small but
brilliant private detective agency, sat at his desk, yawning.
Except for a few bootlegging cases, the last few weeks had been
singularly uneventful, and on this bright spring morning the equally
bright red head of the young detective was full of visions of leafy
woods and murmuring brooks, where trout rose audaciously and leaped, a
flash of rainbow and silver, in the glancing sunlight.
"If nothing comes across to-day," he ruminated, dreamily, "I'll turn
over this righteous old burg to O'Malley's tender care, beat it out to
Jersey, and have a hack at the trout with Harry Carlisle, darned if I
won't."
The pleasant thoughts engendered by this determination were rudely
interrupted by the sharp ringing of the telephone at his elbow.
"Another lot of hooch unearthed," he muttered to himself disgustedly,
as he took the receiver off the hook and held it to his ear.
"Hello," he cried, with an unnecessary accent on the first syllable.
"Who wants me, Maggie? Oh, all right. I don't know him, but put him
on." An instant's pause, then--"Hello, yes. Peter Clancy speaking.
Yes?" a rising inflection on the last word.
Suddenly the expression of annoyance left his face. He listened
intently. His eyes narrowed to slits of flashing blue, his relaxed body
tautened in every fibre. Once or twice he shot a question into the
transmitter, but the entire conversation over the wire could have been
measured by seconds.
At the end--"Ninety-nine Waverly Place? I'm there!" he said, and
flinging the receiver upon its hook, he dashed into the street, picked
up a passing taxi, and made good his word.
The street door of Ninety-nine Waverly Place was ajar. Clancy,
flinging it wide as he reached the threshold, was greeted by a fluent
ejaculation in profane and picturesque brogue, winding up with--
"It's the divil and all that's in it at all, at all! Bangin' me in the
stomach with the whole side of a house!"
"Hello, Sullivan! What're you doing here?" cried Clancy, catching the
arm of the uniformed policeman with a gesture which was, in itself, a
hasty apology. "Anything to do with----" A motion of his head indicated
the upper part of the house.
The officer nodded, and through his suddenly assumed air of
preternatural sagacity there appeared a deep perplexity.
"Are you on it, yourself?" he asked, though he anticipated the
affirmative answer. "Mr. Morris called you up, I suppose," he
continued. "Said he was going to get the best man in New York, and I
guess he has, at that," with a complimentary grin. "Ye can't down the
Irish, eh, Mr. Clancy? Well, and what d'ye make of it?"
"Don't know many of the facts yet," Clancy replied, hastily. "Am just
going after 'em. But what are you doing down here? Why aren't----"
"He requested me very polite to lave him alone wid it," answered the
policeman, with so conscious an air of virtue that Clancy could almost
see the denomination of the large bill which he felt sure was in
Sullivan's pocket. "It was nothin' agin my duty to lave him," Sullivan
explained, elaborately, "since I know Mr. Morris be sight, him not
knowin' me and offerin' his card, which I had no need of at all, me
havin' been usher at the Opera, before I got too big for them little
uniforms they do be havin', and knowin' the Morris box like it was me
own ward. And I had to see the Captain when he come, didn't I, and give
him a hint of it before he wint upstairs?"
"Sure. You're all right, Sullivan," said Clancy, slapping the broad
blue shoulder. "Be a good scout, and give me a hint before I go up. But
be quick about it, will you? I don't want to keep Mr. Morris waiting.
Where did he find you?"
"Just down the block a piece. I was goin' on me way, when I heard
someone runnin' like hell behind me. 'Officer,' says he, 'come wid me,
quick!' and he grabs me by the arm and no more he says, wid me racin'
beside him puffin' to kape up, till we come to this door. Open it was,
and up the stairs we go together like the divil was chasin' us. When we
got to the top, 'Look,' says he, pointin' down, and no more words at
all, at all, which might have been he was lackin' his breath, same as
me. And I looked, and I couldn't see nothin' but somethin' white and
thin, like smoke, a'most, that was stickin' out from under the door.
You've heard about that?"
Clancy assented with a quick nod.
"Yes. He told me. So that's how he got you? That's what I wanted to
know. Find out the rest upstairs. Thanks. See you later," and Clancy
went up the stairs, two steps at a time.
Though his ascent was rapid, his foot fell quietly on the thick carpet.
Quiet, too, was his hand on the knob of the door. He had often found
that a sudden, unexpected entrance was effective in more ways than one.
This time, however, the effect failed utterly, for the door was locked.
Clancy, frowning slightly, raised and let fall the small brass knocker.
He heard someone moving inside the apartment, and almost immediately a
voice near the door asked:
"Who's there?"
At Clancy's reply, the door opened wide.
"Mr. Clancy!" ejaculated Donald Morris, accepting Peter's card with a
glance of verification. "I didn't think you could possibly get here
so soon. It was good of you----" He did not finish the sentence, but
quickly motioned the detective inside and closed the door.
The narrow hall into which Clancy stepped was rather dark, the only
light coming in from an open door at his right. Through this door
Morris immediately led the way, into a large living room, Clancy
following close at his heels.
As Morris stepped into the light, Clancy's quick eyes took in at a
glance his strong features and haggard aspect. This was a man not
easily alarmed, Clancy thought. It would take a good deal to upset his
balance, and, in search of enlightenment, his glance travelled swiftly
all about the room.
"Everything here just as you found it?" he asked, quickly.
Morris nodded. "All but this," he said, in a heavy voice, motioning
toward a table which stood near one of the windows.
Clancy swiftly advanced and looked down intently at that which lay upon
it. He touched it with his finger.
"You found this scarf across the door-sill," he said, meditatively. And
leaning closer he went on, "Stained.... Yes.... Blood?... Looks like
it. Could hardly be anything else.... Not much of it.... And you found
no----"
"There's no one, dead or alive, in the apartment," Morris interrupted,
hastily. He felt that he could not bear to hear the word which he saw
forming itself on the detective's lips. "The officer went all through
the place with me. It's empty, quite empty, though the janitor thought
both Miss Blake and her sister were here. And," with a motion of his
hand, "the place was as you see it."
Again Clancy looked carefully around the room. It was unusually large
and spacious, occupying the entire front of the old house. Simple, good
old furniture, well placed, gave it an air of comfort and elegance,
though there was not an unnecessary thing in the room. The three large
windows facing the south were covered by thin ecru curtains held in
place by a small rod at top and bottom, letting in the light but
obscuring the view of the ugly, tall buildings across the way.
Standing there, in that viewless room, Clancy had a swift sense of the
isolation of so many thousands of lives in this dynamic and vital city.
What could not happen in a secluded, quiet back-water like this? What
lives and deaths, with the teeming city surrounding them on every side?
The thought crossed his mind in a flash and was gone. He was not
concerned now with profitless generalities. He had been summoned here
to find out what had happened, and exactly what had happened, in this
present case.
There was not a great deal to go upon in this room; nothing especially
out of the ordinary save the stained scarf upon the table, and the
fact that the several drawers of a desk on the far side of the room
had apparently been ransacked, some of them being still open, their
contents partly scattered on the floor. A small table at the end of
a long couch which stood at right angles to the fireplace had been
overturned, and on the floor beside it lay a shattered vase of blue
hawthorne.
Apparently nothing else was out of place, and it was, perhaps, not
unusual in this spring weather that there should be a quantity of ashes
in the old-fashioned open grate. But ashes of any kind, perhaps from
early association with the stories of the great Sherlock Holmes, always
interested Peter Clancy.
He knelt to investigate and found that the ashes appeared to be those
of burnt paper only. He stirred them carefully, but could not find a
vestige of charred wood nor a single bit of paper which had escaped the
action of the fire.
Morris followed him silently about the room, asking no questions. He
had the air of one dazed by a crushing blow.
Satisfied, for the moment, by a more or less casual inspection, Clancy
returned to what was to him the most significant object in the room.
"This scarf," said he, looking at it closely. "I think you told me you
found it outside in the hall?"
"Partly outside and partly in," Morris made answer at once. "It was
caught fast by the door, but some of the--of the blood on it was
outside."
"H--m--m, yes," said Clancy, slowly. "And it belongs to someone who
lives here, you think?"
"It was Miss Mary Blake's," answered Morris, decidedly.
"You're sure?"
"Perfectly."
"How do you know?"
"I recognized it at once," answered Morris with conviction. "She wore
it when--when I brought her home after the closing of the play."
"Saturday--that was Saturday night, and this is Monday," Peter Clancy
ruminated. "And that was the last you saw of her?"
"The last I saw of her, yes. I spoke to her on the wire Sunday morning,
rather early, about ten o'clock. And I--I received a letter from her
this morning. That was why I came. I was alarmed, and----"
"You were alarmed, then, before you came here. It was not only finding
the scarf----"
"No. Her letter was so--so strange and unaccountable." Morris hesitated
and, to help him out, Peter said:
"But you did expect to find Miss Blake here when you came this morning?"
"I," Morris spoke slowly--"I can't say that I expected to find her. I
only thought there might be a chance. But I certainly did expect to
find her sister, Anne."
"Oh, there's a sister," said Clancy. "Well, perhaps she'll turn up.
Maybe she's just gone away for the week-end, or you know it's quite on
the cards that she may have gone out this morning, even, and not come
back yet. She might have been looking for something in that desk in
a hurry and left it upset. And as to the scarf, and the blood stain
on it (I admit, you see, that it probably is blood) it might well be
accounted for by some simple accident----"
Morris shook his head, the troubled frown remaining fixed upon his
forehead.
"No, no," he exclaimed. "It's impossible to dispose of the conditions
here so easily. I'm sure you'll agree with me when you see the rest of
the apartment. Something has happened here--something sinister. I'm
sure of it. I'm at a loss to understand it all," he pressed his hand
against his forehead as if the throbbing of his brain made his head
ache, "but perhaps you can make a guess. Come and see."