The Snowflake
I looked at the design with interest, but without at first grasping its
true significance.
Pennington Wise looked at it aghast. "Where did it come from?" he
exclaimed.
"It's always been there," said Zizi. "I mean, I saw it there one day when
I was in this room with Mr. Hudson, I--I----"
"Didn't know you'd ever been here, Ziz," and Wise smiled at the earnest
little face.
"Yep, I was; and I happened to move the telephone, and under it was that
drawing. I didn't think anything about it, as evidence, but I looked at
it 'cause it was so pretty. And I put the telephone back over it again."
"But I searched this room," and Wise looked mystified.
"You probably didn't lift the telephone, then," Zizi returned, shaking
her elfin head, while a deep sorrow showed in her black eyes.
"I don't believe I did," Wise mused, thinking back. "I did pick up most
of the desk fittings to examine them but I suppose I didn't take hold of
the telephone at all."
"'Course not!" Zizi was always ready to defend Wise's actions. "How could
you know there was a picture under it? But, oh, Penny, what does it
mean?"
"Wait,--let's get at it carefully. On the face of it, it would seem as if
Case Rivers must have drawn this figure of a snow crystal. Everybody has
some peculiar habit, and especially, lots of people have a habit of
drawing some particular thing when waiting at a telephone.
"I've asked half a dozen men of late, and every one says he scribbles
words or draws some crude combination of lines. But each one says he
always does the same thing, whatever it may be. Now, I imagine, very few
men draw snow crystals,--and fewer still, draw them with this degree of
perfection. Again, granting they did, would any other individual draw
this identical design, with this accuracy of drawing, that Case Rivers
drew on the desk-blotter at your house, Brice?"
"I should say it would be impossible that anyone else could have done
it," I replied, honestly, though I began to see where our investigation
was leading us.
"It _is_ impossible," declared Wise. "Two men might draw snow crystals,
but they would not both choose this particular one."
"It's exactly the same," Zizi murmured, "for I brought Mr. Brice's with
me: here it is."
Calmly the girl took from her little hand-bag a piece torn from my
desk-blotter. It held the drawing done by Rivers while he was waiting for
his telephone call and it was the precise duplicate of the figure drawn
on the blotter of Amos Gately's mahogany desk.
"The same pencil--or, rather, the same hand drew those two," Wise said,
positively, and I could not contradict this.
Snow crystals are said by scientists to show hundreds of different
shapes, and almost any illustrated dictionary or text-book of natural
science shows several specimens. This one we were looking at was of
simple but beautiful design and I felt sure Rivers had copied it from
some picture as one can rarely keep a real snowflake long enough to copy
its form.
Anyway it was stretching the law of coincidence a little too far to
believe that two men would idly draw the same form on a desk-blotter
while telephoning.
Of course, this sketch on Amos Gately's desk need not have been made
while the artist's other hand held the telephone receiver, but its
juxtaposition to the instrument indicated that it was.
"Of course, Mr. Rivers drew this," Zizi declared, her little head bobbing
as she turned her black eyes from one of us to the other.
She wore a small turban made entirely of red feathers,--soft breast
feathers of some tropical bird, I suppose. The hat set jauntily on her
sleek black hair, and the motions of her head were so quick and birdlike,
that she gave me a fleeting remembrance of the human birds I saw in the
play of _Chantecler_.
"Of course he did," assented Wise, very gravely; "and now we must go on.
Granting, for the moment, that Case Rivers,--as we call him,--drew this
little sketch, he must have been in this office the day of Amos Gately's
murder. For I've been told that the blotter on this desk was changed
every day, and any marks or blots now on it were therefore made on that
day. If he did it, then,--or, rather, when he did it, he was telephoning
to somebody----"
"Well," put in Zizi, "perhaps he was just sitting here, talking to Mr.
Gately. Maybe, he might draw those things when he just sits idly as well
as when he telephones."
"Yes; you're right. Well, at any rate, he must have been sitting here,
opposite Mr. Gately, on that very day. And I opine he was telephoning,
but that makes no difference. Now, if he was here, in this office, on
that day,--what was he here for, and who is he?"
"He is the murderer," said Zizi, but she spoke as if she were a machine.
The words seemed to come from her lips without her own volition; her
voice was wooden, mechanical, and her eyes had a far-away, vacant gaze.
"I don't know who he is, but he is the man who shot Mr. Gately."
"Oh, come, now, Ziz," Wise shook her gently, "wake up! Don't jump at
conclusions. He may be the most innocent man in New York. He may have
been in here calling on Gately early in the day, and his errand may have
been of the most casual sort. He may have had cause to telephone, and as
he sat waiting for his call, he sketched the snowflake pattern, which is
his habit when waiting. But that he was here that day is a positive
fact,--to my mind. Now, it's for us to find out what he was here for, and
who he is. I don't favor going to him and asking him pointblank. That
peculiar phase of amnesia from which he is suffering is a precarious
matter to deal with. A sudden shock might bring back his memory,--or, it
might----"
"Addle his brain!" completed Zizi. "All right, oh, Most Wise Guy! But
when you do find out the truth, it will be that Case Rivers in his right
mind and in his own proper person killed Mr. Gately."
"Hush up, Ziz! If you have such a fearful hunch keep it to yourself. I'm
not going to believe that, unless I have to! It has always been my
conviction that Rivers is,--or was, a worthwhile man. I feel sure he was
of importance in some line,--some big line. Moreover, I believe his yarn
about falling through the earth."
"You do!" I cried, in amazement. "You stand for that! You believe he fell
into the globe at Canada,--or some Northern country, and fell out again
in New York City?"
"Not quite that," and Wise smiled. "But I believe he had some mighty
strange experience, of which his tale is a pretty fair description, if
not entirely the literal truth."
"Such as?"
"Why, suppose he fell down a mine shaft in Canada. Suppose that knocked
out his memory. Then suppose he was rescued and sent to New York for
treatment, say, at some private hospital or sanitarium. Then suppose he
escaped, and, still loony, threw himself into the East River--oh, I don't
know--only, there are lots of ways that he could have that notion about
his fall through the earth, and have something real to base it on."
"Gammon and spinach!" I remarked, my patience exhausted; "the man had a
blow or a fall or something that jarred his memory, but his 'falling
through the earth' idea is a hallucination, pure and simple. However,
that doesn't matter. Now we must follow this new trail, and see if we can
get a line on his personality. He can't tell us what he was here for,--if
he doesn't remember that he was here."
"Perhaps he does remember," Wise spoke musingly.
"Nixy!" and Zizi's saucy head nodded positively; "Mr. Rivers is sincere
now, whatever he was before. He doesn't remember shooting Mr. Gately----"
"Stop that, Zizi!" Wise spoke more sharply than I had ever heard him. "I
forbid you to assume that Rivers is the murderer,--you are absurd!"
"But I've got a hunch--" Zizi's black eyes stared fixedly at Wise,
"and----"
"Keep your hunch to yourself! I told you that before! Now, hush up."
Not at all abashed, Zizi made a most wicked little _moue_ at him, but she
said no more just then.
"We have a new direction in which to look, though," Wise went on, "and we
must get about it. You remember, we found a hatpin here that led us to
Sadie, 'The Link,' as straight as a signboard could have done."
"Yes," scoffed Zizi, "with the help of Norah and her powder-paper, and
Jenny and her tattle-tongue!"
"All right," Wise was unperturbed; "we got her all the same. Now, perhaps
the Man Who Fell Through the Earth also left some indicative clews. Let's
look round."
"He couldn't leave anything more indicative than the drawing on the
blotter," persisted Zizi. "He drew on Mr. Brice's blotter today and he
drew on this blotter of Mr. Gately's the day Mr. Gately was killed. That
much is certain."
"So it is, Zizi," agreed Wise; "but nothing further is certain as yet.
But we may find something more."
As he talked the detective rummaged in the desk drawers. He pulled out
the packet of papers that had interested him before.
"I'd like to read these," he said; "you see, they're dated in
chronological order, and they must mean something."
"It's where they come from," said Zizi, with an air of wisdom; "you see,
Waldorf means a certain message in their code book, and St. Regis means
another; Biltmore paper means another, and so on."
"Right you are, as usual," Wise said, so approvingly that Zizi smiled all
over her queer little countenance.
"Part of 'The Link's' spy business," she went on, and I cried out in
denial.
"Oh, come off, Mr. Brice," she said, "you may as well admit, first as
last, that you know Mr. Gately was mixed up in this spy racket. I don't
know yet just how deeply or how knowingly----"
"You mean," I caught at the straw, "that he was a go-between, but didn't
know it?"
"I thought that at first," said Wise, "I hoped it was so. That, of
course, would argue that he was infatuated with Sadie and she wound him
round her finger and used him to further her schemes, while he himself
was innocent. But the theory, though a pretty one, won't work. Gately
wasn't quite gullible enough for that, and, too, he is more deeply
concerned in it all than we know."
"Yes," I agreed; "these letters,--I mean, these blank sheets,--were sent
to him by mail. One came the day after he died."
"I know it. And, as Zizi says, they mean something definite in accordance
with a prepared code. For instance, a sheet of Hotel Gotham paper, dated
December tenth, might mean that a certain transport, indicated in the
code book by that hotel, was to sail on that date."
"That's a simple, child's-play explanation," said Zizi,--"but it may be
the right one."
"Certainly," Wise assented, "there may be other explanations and more
complicated ones. But it doesn't matter now. The receipt of these
letters,--blank letters,--was of secret value to Gately, and proves him
to have been pretty deeply mixed up in it all."
"But what about Mr. Rivers?" spoke up Zizi; "where does he come in?"
"It looks black," Wise declared. "He was here that day secretly. That is,
he didn't come in at Jenny's door. She doesn't recognize him, I asked
her. Therefore, he came in by one of these other doors, or up in the
secret elevator. In either case, he didn't want his visit known. So he is
a wrongdoer, with Gately, and--probably, with Rodman. They're all tarred
with the same brush. The trail of the spy serpent is over them all."
"No!" cried Zizi, and her face was stormy, "my nice Mr. Rivers isn't any
spy! He hasn't anything to do with that spy matter!"
"Why!" I exclaimed; "you said he was the murderer!"
"Well, I'd rather be a murderer than a spy!" Her eyes snapped and her
whole thin little body quivered with indignation. "A murder is a decent
crime compared to spy work! Oh, my nice Mr. Rivers!"
She broke down and cried convulsively.
"Let her alone," said Wise, not unkindly, after a brief glance at the
shaking little figure. "She's always better for a crying spell. It clears
her atmosphere. Now, Brice, let's get busy. As Zizi says, you must admit
that there's no doubt that Amos Gately was pretty deeply into the game.
Even if he was unduly friendly with Sadie Kent, it was indubitably
through and because of their dealings together in the stolen telegram
business. The way I see it is that Sadie sold her intercepted messages to
the highest bidder. This was George Rodman, but above him was Amos
Gately. Oh, don't look so incredulous. It isn't the first time a bank
president has gone wrong on the side. Gately never was unfaithful to his
office, he never misappropriated funds or anything of that sort, but for
some reason or other, whether money gain, or hope of other reward, he did
betray his country."
I couldn't deny it,--or, rather, I could deny it, but only because of my
still unshattered faith in Amos Gately. I could bring no proof of my
denial.
"But," I said, musingly, "we haven't yet proved Gately mixed up in----"
"What!" cried Wise; "isn't this enough proof? These blank letters, for
that's what they are,--the proved visit here of Sadie, 'The Link,' and
the fact that Gately was shot,--by someone,--with no known reason,--all
that goes to show that the murderer had some secret motive, some unknown
cause for getting Gately out of the way."
"I see it, as you put it," I said, "but I will not believe Amos Gately a
spy,--or conniving at spy business until I have to. I shall continue to
believe he was a tool--an innocent tool--of the Rodman and Sadie Kent
combination."
"All right, Brice, keep your faith as long as you can, but, I tell you,
you'll soon have to admit that I'm right. Gately, as we all know, was a
peculiar man. He had few friends, he had little or no social life, and he
did have secret callers and a secret mode of entrance and exit from his
offices. All this shows something to hide,--it is unexplainable for a man
who has nothing to conceal."
"All right, Wise," I said, finally, "I suppose you _are_ right. But still
we must continue our search for the murderer. We don't seem to progress
much in that matter."
"Not yet, but soon," Wise said, optimistically; "the ax is laid at the
root of the tree,--we are on the right track----"
"Meaning Case Rivers?" I cried, in alarm.
"Meaning Case Rivers,--perhaps," he returned. "I'm not as sure as Zizi is
that the evidence points to him as the murderer, but we must conclude
that he was in this room the day of the murder,--and what else could he
have been here for?"
"What else?" I stormed. "Dozens of things! Hundreds of things! Why, man
alive, every person who set foot in this room on that day didn't
necessarily kill Amos Gately!"
"Every person who set foot in this room on that day is his potential
murderer," Wise returned, calmly. "Every person must be suspected,--or,
at least, investigated."
"Well," I said, after realizing that he spoke truly, "you investigate the
question of Rivers' visit here that day. I don't want to do that. But I'm
going down to Headquarters now, and perhaps I'll dig up something of
importance."
And I did. A visit to the Chief told me the interesting tale of the
further discoveries of Sadie Kent's industries. It seems the Federal
agents had found a complete and powerful wireless station in a cottage at
Southeast Beach, a fairly popular summer resort. The cottage was
seemingly untenanted, but some unexplained wires which ran along the
rafters of an adjoining house led to the discovery of the auxiliary
wireless station.
Experts had broken into the locked house and had found a cleverly
concealed keyboard of a wireless apparatus. Further search had disclosed
the whole thing, and, moreover, had brought out the fact, that the
adjoining cottage was occupied by two apparently innocent old people, who
were really in the employ of Sadie Kent.
"The Link" was a person of importance, and though she passed for a mere
telegraph operator, she was one of the most important links in the German
spy system in the United States.
In the room where the wireless apparatus was found there were also
quantities of letter paper from the various hotels of New York City.
These sheets, abstracted from the writing-rooms of the hotels, were the
code system used in forwarding the stolen intelligence.
It all hung together, and the bunch of those hotel papers found in
Gately's desk, and especially the fact that one reached his address the
day after his demise proved, beyond all doubt, his implication in the
despicable business.
Now, I thought, to what extent or in what way was Case Rivers concerned?
Surely the man had been in Gately's office on that fatal day. I had no
idea that he had killed the banker,--that was only Zizi's
foolishness,--but he had certainly been there.
It came to me suddenly that if Rivers could be taken again to the Gately
offices, the rooms, the associations, might possibly bring back his lost
memory, and let him reinstate himself in his real personality. To be
sure, this might prove him the murderer, but if so, it would be only the
course of justice; and, on the other hand, if it explained his innocent
or casual call on Gately that, too, was what the man deserved.
And so I went at once to see Rivers. I found him in his rooms, the ones
he had taken while he was to assist Wise in his work, and he greeted me
cordially.
"The plot thickens," he said as I told him of Sadie's wireless station.
"I knew that girl was a sly one. She's one of the most important people
in the big spy web. She's one of their spyders, who spin a pretty web and
attract gullible flies. Amos Gately fell for her charms,--you know,
Brice, she is a siren,--and somehow she lured him into the web she so
deftly spun. To my mind, Gately was a good, upright citizen, who fell for
a woman's wiles. I'm not sure about this, it may be he was mixed up in
spy work before Sadie came on the scene,--but I'm certain she was
accessory before, during, or after the fact."
"Accessory to his murder?" I asked.
"Not necessarily; but strongly accessory to his wrongdoing in the matter
of treason. I think she, for a time, worked Gately through Rodman, but,
latterly, she grew bolder or found she could do more by personal visits
and she came and went by the secret elevator, pretty much as she chose."
"I hate to have Miss Raynor know this," I said with a covert glance at
Rivers, to see how he took the remark.
"So do I," he said, as frankly as a boy; "I may as well tell you, Brice,
that I love that girl. She is, to me, the very crown of womanhood. I have
worshiped her from the first moment I saw her. But, understand, I have no
hopes,--no aspirations. I shall never offer my hand and heart to any
woman while I have no name to offer. And I shall never have a name. If I
haven't yet discovered my own identity I never can. No, I'm no pessimist,
and I know that some time some sudden shock might restore my memory all
in a minute, yet I can't bank on such a possibility. I've talked this
over with Rankin,--he's the doctor who's following up my case,--time and
again. He says that a sudden and very forcible shock is needed to restore
my memory, and that it may come and--it may not. He says it can't be
forced or brought about knowingly,--it will have to be a coincidence,--a
happening that will jar the inert cells of my brain--or, something like
that,--I don't remember the scientific terms."
Rivers passed his hand wearily across his forehead.
I was in a quandary. I had gone to see the man with full purpose of
luring him to Gately's office and confronting him with the sketched
snowflake on the blotting-pad. Now, since he had confided to me his love
for Olive Raynor, I shrank from doing anything that might prove him to be
Amos Gately's murderer. For I was fond of Miss Raynor, in a deeply
respectful and unpresumptuous fashion. And I had noticed several things
of late that made me feel pretty sure that her friendship for Rivers was
true and deep, if indeed it were not something more than friendship.
This, to be sure, would argue but a fickle loyalty to the memory of Amory
Manning, but as Norah and I agreed, when talking it over, Miss Raynor had
never shown any desperate grief at Manning's disappearance,--at least,
not more than the loss of a casual friend might arouse.
But I knew where my duty lay. And so I said, "Rivers, I wish you'd go
round to Mr. Gately's office with me. Don't you think that if you were
there,--and you never have been,--you might chance upon some clew that
has escaped the notice of Wise or Hudson or myself?"
"Righto!" he said; "I've thought myself I'd like to go there. Not, as you
politely suggest, to find overlooked clews, but just as a matter of
general interest. I'm out, you know, to find the murderer, and also to
trace the vanished Amory Manning."