THE TWENTY-SIX CLUES
BY ISABEL OSTRANDER
AUTHOR OF
THE CLUE IN THE AIR, SUSPENSE, ETC.
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
* * * * *
_Other Detective Stories_
BY ISABEL OSTRANDER
"AT 1:30"
"THE HERITAGE OF CAIN"
"THE CREVICE"
(In collaboration with detective William J. Burns)
"THE CLUE IN THE AIR"
CONTENTS
I. IN THE CRIME MUSEUM
II. TWO STRANDS OF BLACK HAIR
III. MARGOT
IV. THE OTHER HOUSE
V. DENNIS SCORES
VI. THE CAKE MARKED "NOEL"
VII. THE THREE WARNINGS
VIII. THE RETURN OF JOAN NORWOOD
IX. THE SECOND GLOVE
X. IN THE DARK
XI. THE WRITING ON THE WALL
XII. "BACK FROM THE DEAD"
XIII. THE BLACK WALLET
XIV. THE TWENTY-SIXTH OF MAY
XV. A LONE HAND
XVI. "IT WAS NOT MY DOING"
XVII. ONE WORD
XVIII. GREEKS MEET
XIX. THE SECOND SHOT
XX. FROM OUT THE PAST
XXI. SIGNED, "VICTOR MARCHAL"
XXII. MCCARTY'S SÉANCE
XXIII. THE BETRAYING VOICE
XXIV. THE TWENTY-SIX CLUES
THE TWENTY-SIX CLUES
CHAPTER I
IN THE CRIME MUSEUM
"The one thing you psychometric enthusiasts overlook in claiming
perfection for your method of solving crime is the human equation.
Your machines for recording the emotions of the suspect cannot lie, it
is true, but neither can they tell the truth. Granted that they are
perfect in themselves, they are operated by the most faulty machine
created since the beginning of time--the human being. You, Mr. Terhune,
are unquestionably the greatest living master of scientific criminal
investigation, but do the purely mechanical implements of your trade
invariably probe to the very soul of the crime?"
Five men of oddly assorted types were seated about a round table drawn
up closely before the fireplace at one end of the spacious dining-room
with coffee and liqueurs before them. The speaker, evidently the
host, was small and elderly, with bushy gray hair and a pointed
Vandyke beard which waggled excitedly when he talked yet lent an air
of distinction to his dapper evening garb. His eyes beamed in eager,
ingenuous interest through their heavy tortoise-rimmed glasses, but the
lean, ascetic individual across the table whom he had addressed smiled
austerely and lifted supercilious brows as he replied:
"My dear Mr. Norwood, we do not rely only on what you designate
the mechanical implements of our trade; we are fully aware of and
prepared to cope with such subjective phenomena as hysteria, defective
mentality, falsehood, suggestion and self-deception. That is where
the human equation proves of value. The mechanical implement is
supplemented by the trained, analytical mind."
Mr. Calvin Norwood nodded.
"But that brings us again to the faulty human machine," he remarked
slyly. "Is the investigator himself proof against at least two forms of
the subjective phenomena you mention: suggestion and self-deception? A
preconceived theory----"
"We do not deal in theories," Wade Terhune interrupted with a trace of
asperity. "We work on a basis of proof, not opinion; proof obtained by
tapping all the resources of modern science. Toxicology, bacteriology,
chemistry, mineralogy, physics, chirography, microscopy, all aid us in
the solution of crime. The expert criminalist must be a profound and
almost universal student before he can hope to succeed."
"And what is your method, Mr. McCarty?" The host turned to a stocky,
broad-shouldered man at his left. "You achieved success in more than
one intricate case while you were connected with the police force of
the city to say nothing of your work last year in the Rowntree-Collins
affair. The investigation of crime has been my hobby for more than
twenty years and I follow the records of the department faithfully.
What is your modus operandi?"
"My what, sir?" inquired ex-Roundsman Timothy McCarty carefully. "You
might not think it, but I would have lit on the truth a good deal
earlier in that Rowntree case if I'd known what the Coroner was getting
at when he sprung that 'corpus delicti' thing on us at the inquest."
Calvin Norwood took the hint.
"I mean, what is your procedure in starting an investigation?" he
hastened to explain. "How do you go about it?"
McCarty stroked the immaculate chin beneath his stubby, sandy mustache
reflectively.
"I don't know, sir," he responded in all sincerity. "I've no science
like Mr. Terhune, only the wits I was born with. I just take the facts
that's as plain as the nose on your face and fit them together. You
see, Mr. Norwood, I had my training in the old days when it meant
promotion if you got the guilty party, or a quick transfer to some
backwoods precinct if you didn't. When anything stumped me I'd talk it
over with my old friend here, Denny Riordan, and many a pointer I've
got from him, though it's little he knew it himself, half the time!"
The long-limbed, lantern-jawed gentleman beside him stirred resentfully
and his host smiled.
"I know of Mr. Riordan's co-operation with you," he said. "When I read
the narrative which gave the inside facts of the Rowntree case I was
anxious to meet you and talk it over with you; that is why I persuaded
Mr. Terhune to bring you both here to dine with me to-night. Mr.
Riordan, how do you analyze a case?"
"I don't!" protested Dennis Riordan hurriedly. "I'm a city fireman, not
a detective, Mr. Norwood. However, being Mac's pal I'm let in for most
that he's got on his mind. Before his uncle died and left him a landed
proprietor so that he quit the force, there wasn't much came up in the
department that we didn't discuss and scrap over and settle to suit
ourselves. When he was on a case I'd just trail along with him to see
what would happen."
"Interesting, Victor, eh!" Norwood turned to the fifth man, who had
made no move to join in the conversation.
He was slim and dark, with a delicate, sensitive face which bore the
scars of a skillfully healed wound. Obviously in his twenties, he held
himself with an erect military air, the bit of ribbon in the lapel
of his dinner jacket and cross with two palms below it which he was
destined never to behold attesting to the gallantry that had cost him
his sight.
He bowed slightly and smiled as his soft, blind, brown eyes turned
instinctively in the direction from which he had been addressed.
"Most interesting, Monsieur Norwood," he responded. "A d'Artagnan of
the gendarmerie, is it not so? I have much desire to learn more of
the little machines of Monsieur Terhune, however. To me it is quite
incomprehensible, this recording of the emotions automatically; it
would appear a miracle."
Terhune unbent and his quick smile lost all trace of patronage.
"It will be a privilege, my dear Captain Marchal, to give you a
practical demonstration," he announced. "I will arrange to have you
present at the next scientific experiment upon which I may be engaged,
that you may note the effectiveness of my method. I can promise you
that you will be astounded at the reactions displayed. But our host has
made a collection of souvenirs which interests me profoundly. Are we to
be favored this evening by a sort of private view, Mr. Norwood?"
"I should scarcely call them 'souvenirs'!" retorted his host with a
shade of injured dignity. "In my crime museum I have assembled relics
which have formed important data on many strange cases, solved and
unsolved, as well as objects that have played significant parts in
moments when history was made. I have been a mere dabbler, a dilettante
in criminal investigation, but occasionally a real find has come my way
which at the time when inquiry was rife would have been of inestimable
value to the authorities but which they themselves failed to unearth.
For instance, within the last few days a worn black wallet has come
into my possession which contains the only tangible clue to a mystery
which aroused and baffled the city ten years ago. I tell you this in
confidence, gentlemen, for I mean to work upon its evidence myself
before turning it over to the police; they have resented my suggestions
in the past and refused my offers of co-operation on more than one
occasion. I feel perfectly justified in withholding this from them for
the present in view of the length of time that has elapsed since their
investigation of the case was dropped."
"What mystery was that, sir?" asked McCarty, his embarrassment at the
unaccustomed grandeur of his surroundings wholly forgotten in his
interest. "I don't call to mind any case that wasn't finished about
that time, and I was on the force then."
"The Hoyos case, Mr. McCarty."
"Think of that, now!" Dennis, too, broke through the bonds of
self-consciousness which had held his abashed tongue in leash. "You
remember it, Mac! That Dago who was lost off his yacht in the Hudson?
'Twas when you were laid up after Nick the Wop knifed you! You said
yourself it was no suicide at the time, though the Chief let it go at
that."
"I recall it," McCarty responded. "And so you've fresh evidence, sir?
I'd like nothing better than a peep at your museum."
"Come then," Calvin Norwood rose. "I'll show you some interesting
things."
"If you will excuse me." The young Frenchman spoke hesitatingly in a
lowered tone. "I--there are some letters which I can finish typing,
Monsieur Norwood, and you will perhaps not require my presence----"
"Oh, let the letters go, Victor." The older man interrupted with
kindly solicitude. "You have not been like yourself this evening, and
we can't have you moping off all alone too much, my boy. Besides, I
may need you to check me up on some of my data. You can have no idea,
gentlemen, what a valuable assistant Captain Marchal has already proved
himself. My museum is as sacred to me as a gallery of Old Masters would
be to an art connoisseur, and my young friend here has developed a
positive flair for the work."
Victor Marchal flushed darkly at the praise.
"I find it most interesting, this study of crime in the abstract," he
repeated. "It was to me a pleasure to catalogue the contents of this
unique museum."
Nevertheless, he hung back with evident reluctance when the others
prepared to follow their host and McCarty watching his sensitive
face noted the shade of repugnance which passed across it and did
not marvel. To a young man fresh from the carnage of war and all but
prostrated beneath the shock of the irreparable blow which it had
dealt to him, a more cheerful atmosphere could well be imagined than
the morbid horrors of a crime museum, but after his first momentary
hesitation he resigned himself in suave compliance to his patron's
suggestion.
The Norwood residence was an imposing if somewhat old-fashioned
structure of brownstone situated near the Park in the most aristocratic
section of the city, its center hall flanked by drawing-room and
music-room on one side, library and dining-room on the other while at
the rear a square, flat-roofed single-storied wing had been added which
occupied almost half of the ample back-yard space, with a narrow strip
of garden on either side.
It was toward this wing that the elated host marshaled his guests,
chattering volubly the while with the naïve delight of an enthusiast
sure of a congenial audience.
"You will see, gentlemen, the actual operating table upon which the
mad surgeon Valparese committed so many murders before his mania was
discovered. Upon it, beneath the blanket which covered Madero's body
immediately after his assassination, lies the skeleton of the once
beautiful Duchess of Piatra, the instigator and herself the victim of
the famous Bucharest poisonings a generation ago."
Dennis Riordan clutched the arm of his friend McCarty with a muttered
exclamation, but the latter shook him off in scorn and pressed forward
lest a word of Norwood's discourse be lost to his avid ears.
"I have relics to show you of less celebrated but quite as interesting
crimes." The sprightly, little, elderly gentleman continued with
ghoulish relish. "For instance, the pocketknife which after five years
convicted that Yonkers factory superintendent, Arnold, of the murder
of his employer; also the knotted rope which proved that Ogilvy, the
eccentric Scotch millionaire, was hanged and did not commit suicide,
and the bottle of supposed headache cure--but you shall see for
yourselves!"
They had reached the end of the corridor and Norwood with a flourish
threw open the door leading to the wing and pressing an electric-light
switch stepped aside that the others might precede him. They beheld
a square, spacious, high-ceilinged room with a huge fireplace in the
center of the left wall, tall windows at the farther end and long
shelves and rows of cases filled with an incongruous and bewildering
miscellany of objects familiar and bizarre.
In the center of the room directly beneath the great dome of light
stood a long table upon which was suggestively outlined a figure
beneath the gayly colored, sinisterly stained Mexican blanket, and
on all sides ordinary firearms were mingled with strange knives and
weapons, bits of fabric, fragments of furniture, medieval parchments,
modern documents and hermetically sealed glass jars containing
relics of a more gruesome nature which combined to form the oddest
conglomeration that had ever met their marveling gaze.
With an exclamation of keen, professional interest Wade Terhune
advanced and McCarty followed gazing about him in awed wonderment.
Dennis Riordan hung doggedly at his heels and the secretary, Marchal,
brought up the rear with Norwood's guiding hand upon his arm.
"Ah! This, I take it, is your collection of footprint molds, of which
you told me the other day." Terhune had paused at the first flat,
glass-topped case. "Your theory regarding them was inconclusive but
highly ingenious, I remember. I congratulate you, Mr. Norwood; you have
indeed a most complete aggregation of specimens----"
"That is only the beginning." His gratified host drew him to a second
case and McCarty turned aside to a shelf upon which a certain glass jar
had caught his eye.
Discovering that it contained a neatly severed human ear he was
hurriedly replacing it, when a smothered exclamation from Dennis
Riordan summoned him.
The lanky fireman, awkward enough in his civilian clothes, had been
drawn as by a magnet to the bright-hued blanket covering the skeleton
upon the table and as his friend approached he muttered darkly:
"Mac, would you believe it? 'Twas this very rag they covered Madero
with, after the murdering devils had riddled him with bullets! By the
powers, I'm not a believer in ghosts but this is not the room I'd
choose to spend a night in by myself! I don't wonder that blind young
Frenchman would rather juggle his typewriter than take a chance of
running up against one of these relics unbeknownst!"
"Whist, he'll hear you!" McCarty cautioned. "He's standing over by
the fireplace. Come on and look at something more cheerful; there's a
pickled ear over yonder----"
"I want none of it!" Dennis announced with a shudder. "I've heard of
grown men running like mad after butterflies and spending their last
nickel for canceled stamps and such, but it's a strange and unholy
taste that would lead to a collection of this sort! Still, I would like
one peep at the bones of the Duchess Who's-this, under the blanket.
From the bulk of it, Madero himself might be lying beneath it."
"I've no doubt Mr. Norwood will show it to you, after. Come on, now,
and listen to him!" McCarty urged. "What's that he's taking out of the
case?"
"--Singular indeed!" Wade Terhune's comment carried distinctly to their
ears in grudging admiration. "Poisoned court-plaster! I confess I never
should have thought of so simple a method of introducing deadly toxin
directly into the blood."
"It found an innocent victim." Calvin Norwood closed the glass lid.
"You may recall the inexplicable death of the little Thorndike heiress,
after a slight fall which merely grazed her knee? The matter was hushed
up for family reasons and this bit of plaster came into my possession
in a confidential manner, but I have a very definite idea as to the
murderer's identity and for whom he really intended its use. However, I
want to show you the Hoyos wallet, of which I spoke before we came in
here. It contains some letters which throw an entirely new light----Ah,
Mr. Riordan! You are interested in the Madero blanket?"
He had turned to cross the room and encountered Dennis, who still
lingered as if fascinated at the head of the long table.
"In what's under it, sir," Dennis responded. "The bones of this Duchess
you told us about. Did she have any hair left now, I wonder?"
He spoke with elaborate carelessness, but McCarty, who had turned also
from his place at Norwood's elbow, eyed him sharply and then took a
quick step toward him.
"Hair?" repeated the amateur criminologist with an indulgent smile.
"In life the Duchess of Piatra had very beautiful red hair and a few
strands of it cling still to the skull. Would you care to see it?"
"_Red_ hair, you say, sir? And it couldn't change after?" There was
a note of suppressed excitement in Dennis' voice now which drew even
Wade Terhune's attention, and the young Frenchman, too, awoke from his
reverie and approached. Dennis' rugged face had paled slightly and his
gray eyes glinted. "Mr. Norwood, I would like nothing better than to
see what is here!"
Still smiling, their host advanced to the side of the table.
"The Duchess of Piatra," he began in his most didactic manner, "was
accredited the most beautiful woman in the Balkans twenty years ago.
During the last of the petty wars before the great world-struggle her
tomb was rifled and I managed, after much diplomatic bartering, to
obtain the skeleton. The nature of the poison which killed her has
never been discovered, but it had a curious effect upon the bones, as
you may see----"
Norwood lifted a corner of the blanket and with one jerk swept it to
the floor. The next instant he had leaped back, his face gray and
eyes fairly protruding from their sockets while a sound like a sharp,
convulsive gasp emanated from the tense group about him.
Stretched upon the table lay no skeleton but the rounded life-like form
of a young woman in all the opulent curves of budding maturity. One arm
was crumpled beneath her, the other lay carelessly across the breast of
her dark silk gown and her masses of disheveled, jet-black hair rippled
over the edge of the table. It would seem almost that she slept until
her face was seen and then the distorted swollen features, the staring
eyes and blackened, protruding tongue revealed the hideous truth no
less surely than the blue scarf which had been knotted so ruthlessly
about her slender throat as to seem almost embedded in the flesh.
"My God! What is this!" Norwood croaked at last.
Terhune stood as if petrified, but Dennis rocked upon his heels.
"Holy Mother!" he ejaculated. "Is it the Duchess herself come to life a
corpse again, or is it----?"
"It's murder!" McCarty announced in an awestruck tone, as he touched
the face of the dead woman. "The woman's been strangled within the
hour! Who is she?"
"Murder?" Victor Marchal elbowed him aside and groping wildly for the
table, bent above it. He had scarcely touched it, however, when he
straightened and cowered back.
"That perfume!" His cry rang through the room. "That scent of the Rose
d'Amour! It is she! Madame Jarvis!"
"Evelyn? God, can it be?" Calvin Norwood gasped in a raucous whisper as
his shuddering gaze swept the still form before him. "It--it is! Who
can have done this fearful thing!"
"Murder, is it?" Dennis' voice expressed a certain revived confidence
now that he was assured the materialization before them, tragic as it
was, had not been induced by some dread supernatural agency. He turned
to McCarty in swift challenge: "Now, you Irish son-of-a-gun, solve
that!"