FIBSY EXPLORES
Rosemary and Bryce Collins looked at the detective in blank amazement.
Fibsy sat listening, open-minded and receptive. He knew that if Fleming
Stone said the missing man’s name was not Henry Johnson, it wasn’t. But
he had no data on which to hazard a guess as to what the right name might
be, so he waited.
Homer Vincent, however, showed a decided interest in Stone’s statements.
“Do you know,” he said, “I am not surprised to learn that the man used
an assumed name. I suspected it from his little start of surprise when I
called him Johnson, now and then. Just as a man would, if he were using
the wrong name, and forgot it occasionally. But I don’t understand why
you say those are not his initials on the umbrella. Of course, it might
be somebody else’s umbrella—”
“No, Mr. Vincent,” Stone said, “it is his umbrella all right. But the
initials on it are J. H. and not H. J.”
“Now how in the world do you know that?” Collins exclaimed. “How can you
tell?”
“Because the H is a trifle larger. Monograms are invariably made with the
initial of the surname larger than the initial of the Christian name, and
the H in this case, though nearly the same size as the J, is, in fact, a
little larger and more prominent. See for yourself.”
Stone left the room a moment and returned with the umbrella, which he had
borrowed from the police and left in the coat room of Greatlarch.
They all scrutinized the engraved letters and were forced to the
conclusion that Stone was right.
“This complicates matters,” Vincent said, thoughtfully. “He told me his
name was Johnson and that he lived at the Walford, in New York. Perhaps
that was also a fictitious address. And you think his errand about the
synthetic rubies was also faked, Mr. Stone? Then he came purposely to
murder my sister—”
Homer Vincent was staggered by the thoughts that rushed to his mind
consequent upon these new disclosures of Stone’s.
“But Mr. Stone says that man didn’t kill Antan!” put in Rosemary. “Do
you know who did, Mr. Stone?”
“Not positively,” said Stone. “I shall have to go down to New York and
see what I can do—”
“Perhaps he had an accomplice,” suggested Vincent. “I hadn’t thought of
that before.”
“No, I hadn’t, either,” Stone said. “Perhaps he had. At any rate, I will
go down to New York tomorrow, and I will ask you all to say nothing to
any one of my findings. I speak confidentially to you here, because Mr.
Collins is my employer, and Mr. Vincent and Miss Rosemary are the ones
chiefly interested in avenging the murder.”
“Aside from the identity of the murderer, Mr. Stone, how do you explain
the locked door?”
“That’s hard to explain, Mr. Vincent. The doctors state the murder was
committed not more than an hour or so before the body was discovered.
That makes it about seven o’clock or after. But I have talked with the
little maid, Francine, and she vows no one was in or near Miss Vincent’s
room after six, that morning. She says her room is next to that her
mistress occupied and that she was awake from six o’clock on. She
declares no intruder could have made his way in without her hearing him.”
“Then,” Vincent spoke seriously, “then do you still discard my suggestion
of possible supernatural forces, Mr. Stone?”
“I most certainly do, Mr. Vincent. Had the lady been killed by shock or
fright, there might be a reason to consider an apparition or a phantom
visitant, but not even a spook from Spooky Hollow could stab its victim
to the heart with a real dagger.”
“Of course not,” and Homer Vincent sighed and shook his head.
“Go on, then,” he continued. “Now that you have a definite proposition to
work on and a hope of discovering the criminal, I renew my offer of funds
for the enterprise. Go to New York, Mr. Stone, use every endeavor to find
out the real name of the man who called himself Johnson, and send all
your bills to me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vincent,” Bryce Collins said, gratefully. “You take a
load off my shoulders! I’m willing enough to stand all the expense, but I
haven’t your resources, and mine are running low.”
“That’s all right, Bryce,—the thing must be pushed through. And since Mr.
Stone seems sanguine, I can only hope his quest will succeed.”
And then, with a murmured word of excuse, Vincent left the room.
“He’s often like that,” Rosemary said, looking affectionately after him.
“He gets weary and sad at this continual discussion of Antan’s murder.
Now, he’ll go and play the organ.”
Which is just what Vincent did. Soon, they could hear muted strains of
soft music rolling through the house.
“Yes, he’s sad,” Rosemary reiterated, as she listened a moment to the
chords. “Not worried or revengeful, so much as deeply sorrowful. I can
always tell by what he plays.”
Fibsy, always interested in an unfamiliar phase of human behavior, went
softly out into the marble vestibule that led to the organ room.
Stepping up into the balcony that overlooked the great church-like room,
the boy listened to the music Homer Vincent produced.
Without musical education Fibsy had a natural appreciation of harmony,
and as he raptly listened he felt almost as if he could read what was in
the mind of the player. At least, he sensed the tragedy that filled the
soul of the man at the keyboard, and realized in part, at any rate, what
he suffered.
Fleming Stone, alone with the two young lovers, was so gentle, so
sympathetic, that before they knew it they were pouring out to him all
the details of the other tragedy of Rosemary’s birth.
“It must be looked into,” Stone said, with decision. “I’m sure, Miss
Vincent, you would rather know the worst, than to live in ignorance of
the truth.”
“Yes,” but the girl hesitated. “I’m not sure. Suppose my mother was—”
“Don’t look at it like that. Your own refinement and good taste point
to an ancestry of the right sort of people. Don’t let yourself think
otherwise.”
But this speech was not entirely sincere. Stone, always sympathetic in
sorrow, merely said what he could to comfort the girl at the moment.
After the murder business was settled, he proposed to take up the matter
of Rosemary’s parentage. But he could not attend to both at once and he
hated to have her grieve unnecessarily.
“And your uncle is right, to a degree,” he said, after she and Collins
had told the details of Vincent’s restrictions. “I don’t know him as well
as you do, but I can see he is a high-minded gentleman with a right
appreciation of his family responsibilities. Also, I see how dependent he
is for happiness on the creature comforts of life. A door left open or
slammed shut, a delayed answer to his summons, an intrusion on his hours
of privacy,—any such things would, I am sure, annoy him to distraction,
when another type of man wouldn’t even notice them.”
“That’s just exactly Uncle Homer!” Rosemary cried. “You read him
perfectly!”
“And I can read you too, my dear,” Stone smiled at her. “You love life
and young society and parties and attentions from the young men. You’d
love to entertain lavishly in this beautiful home,—to fill these great
rooms with gay and merry guests, to have all sorts of wonderful clothes
and jewels,—come, now, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, indeed!” and Rosemary flushed with pleasure at his mere suggestion
of such delights. “But I know I oughtn’t to think of such things and I
ought to be deeply grateful to Uncle Homer because he lets me stay here.”
“That is true, Rosemary.” Stone spoke very gravely. “It might well have
been his way to ask you to live elsewhere. And since he offers you a
home here with stipulations, you should obey him, however unpleasant to
you his restrictions are.”
“I know it,” but the girl’s lip quivered a little and her golden-brown
eyes filled with tears at thought of her stained name as well as her
uncongenial life.
“You’re sure your uncle has no further knowledge of your mother than he
has told you?” Stone inquired. “He’s not the sort of man to conceal some
fact that he thinks might make you even more sad than you are now?”
“No, I don’t think so,—do you, Bryce?”
“No, sir, I don’t. Mr. Vincent has been frank and outspoken in all of our
discussions of the subject. I feel grateful to him, as Rosemary does,
but I think he might allow her a little more freedom. However, as soon
as I can persuade her to consent, I mean to marry her, and take her far
away from all people who know her at all. We shall start a new life for
ourselves—”
“No, we will not!” Rosemary said, decidedly. “I shall never marry
anybody. An illegitimate child has no right to marry.”
“Tell me again,” Stone said to her, “of your homecoming that night. You
saw no sign of a guest in the house?”
“No, but that is not strange. I didn’t look in the general coat room, of
course, and he had left none of his belongings anywhere else.”
“You went around first, and peeped in at your uncle’s window. Why did you
do that?”
“Partly to see if he was likely to hear me come in—it was late—and partly
because I saw from the driveway a very bright light in that room. An
unusually bright light, so that I thought the room was afire.”
“What caused it?”
“Oh, only that uncle’s open fire chanced to be blazing brightly. Then I
saw him, and saw he was so engrossed in his papers and letters that I
could take the chance of slipping in unobserved, and I did.”
“And you saw him putting away something glittering?”
“Yes, that was the key of the wine cellar. I suppose that he had Mellish
get out some special wine for his visitor.”
“Well, my child, I will do all I can for you later on, but now the case
of your aunt will demand all my attention. I want a little talk with your
uncle before I go, but perhaps we’d better not call him from the organ.
I also want to talk with the maid who assisted your butler in serving at
the table the night Mr. Johnson was here. Will you call her, please, and
leave us together?”
The waitress, Katie, was summoned; and, a trifle shy, she came in and
stood before the detective.
“Sit down, Katie,” he said, kindly. “Now, I’m not going to ask you
anything of great importance, just try to remember anything Mr. Johnson
may have said at the table that night. Anything at all. I don’t suppose
you pay much attention to the talk of the guests as you wait on them, but
you may recollect something he said—try now.”
“I don’t remember a thing,” the girl declared, and she was so positive,
Stone wondered at first if some one had forbidden her to speak.
But he discarded that idea when Katie, under the influence of his
encouraging smiles, began to recollect a stray word or two.
“He said the house was pretty—” she vouchsafed at last, with a timid air.
“Yes,” Stone egged her on. “And did he say anything about his own
home—where he lived?”
“Oh, yes,—he said he came from New York,—but I don’t think he lived
there, because he said, ‘what fine hotels there are in New York.’”
“To be sure. And maybe he mentioned the one he was staying at—”
“Yes, he did that! He said he left his trunk at the Vandermore, and that
was why he didn’t have any evening clothes to wear here. He said he
didn’t expect to stay here overnight—but he was glad he did because he
liked the house so much.”
“Just crazy over the house, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, he was, sir. And he said, if he ever had a voice in the matter he’d
cut out a lot of trees,—he thought there were too many.”
“H’m, did he expect to buy the house?”
“Oh, no, sir, he was just joking,—you could tell that.”
“Of course. Anything else?”
“No, sir, but one time I heard him mention Miss Rosemary’s name.”
“As if he knew her?”
“No, sir, more as if he wanted Mr. Vincent or Miss Vincent to tell him
something about her. More as if he had heard of her—”
“I see. Most natural, I’m sure. Well, Katie, you gathered he had never
been here before?”
“Oh, no sir, I’m sure he hadn’t.”
“Well, run along,—Katie. If you think of anything more you heard the
gentleman say, you can let me know. Tell Mellish to bring you to me, in
such a case.”
“Yes, sir,—thank you, sir.”
With a shy little curtsey, Katie went away, and Stone went in search of
the master of the house.
The organ music had stopped so Stone was not surprised to find Vincent in
his Tower room.
The detective was really as much impressed and interested as the
mysterious Johnson in the architecture and decoration of the house, but
he felt he had no time to waste in idle enjoyment of its beauties.
“Wonderful place,” he said to his host, as he entered, after a knock at
the closed door. “You found many secret hiding-places or sliding panels,
perhaps?”
“Several,” Vincent told him. “Not so very secret, though. See, the one in
this room opens by merely pressing this knob. And the knob is not hard to
discern if any one looks closely for it.”
“That’s true,” and Stone watched as Vincent turned the little knob and
the panel slid smoothly and noiselessly back.
It exposed a recess with two or three shelves,—merely a concealed
cupboard, large enough to contain half a dozen good-sized boxes which
evidently held papers of value.
“This is my safe-deposit vault, Mr. Stone,” Vincent said, smiling. “I
have no other. I’m a man of simple habits, and all my papers or documents
of any importance are in here. They are of no value to any one but
myself—I mean they are of no money value. My stocks and bonds are at my
banker’s. But here I keep my will, my deeds to this house, and my private
correspondence.”
“And the papers regarding Miss Rosemary’s parentage,” Stone said. “May I
see those?”
“Certainly,” and Vincent gave him the large bundles of his brother’s
letters.
“It is a distressing subject,” Vincent said. “I have always known that
Rosemary was Carl’s adopted daughter, but I did not know, until young
Collins learned it in France, that she is also his illegitimate child. I
feel that I have my share of sorrow, Mr. Stone.”
“You surely have, Mr. Vincent, and I realize the shock it was to you to
learn this truth about your brother, just after the awful tragedy of your
sister’s death.”
“Yes. And that is one reason why I cannot consent to have guests and
laughter and gayety about my home. Rosemary is not without sensibilities,
not without appreciation of the depth of my sorrow, but she is young and
she is of an exceptionally volatile, light-hearted disposition. And,
though, of course, she does not wish entertainment and frivolities now,
yet she does want the companionship of her young friends, and I confess
their very presence wears on my nerves so that I have to beg her to
refrain from asking them here. You may not understand it, Mr. Stone, but
I am a peculiar man, and the life of a hermit best suits my tastes and
inclinations.”
“I do understand, Mr. Vincent, and I see clearly that you could not live
with any degree of peace and contentment with young visitors about.”
“And if Rosemary were my own niece,—I mean a legitimate Vincent, the case
would be different. But as things are, I feel that I am not overstepping
my rights to insist on conducting my household as I wish.”
“You certainly are not. I feel deeply sorry for you and your niece both.
I could wish you had never learned the truth of her parentage.”
“I heartily wish that, too, but in a way it brings her nearer to me to
know that she was Carl’s daughter, even though born out of wedlock.”
“It is a hard case, any way you look at it,” and then Stone went back to
his quarters at the inn.
Late that afternoon, Fibsy told of his investigation of the jungle known
as Spooky Hollow.
“Gee! it’s some place!” he exclaimed. “I’m glad I put on my old clothes,
for I got well muddied up!”
“What did you find?”
“Mud, muck, and morass,” returned the boy, succinctly.
“Do you know what morass means?” Stone asked, smiling.
“You bet I do. I lived near one at home, when I was a kid. It’s a sort of
swamp that’s mighty hard to walk on, and if it’s morassy enough it sucks
you down in, and you’re a goner! That’s what a morass is.”
“Did you see any reason to think Mr. Johnson might have been sucked in?”
Stone spoke seriously.
“No, F. S., no reason to think so. Of course, he mighta done so,—but I
can’t see it. Why, even if he went strolling about the grounds and got
stuck in the swamp, even got sucked in and sank down outa sight,—why,
of course that would have been in the evening like,—and if he had done
that, he couldn’t have killed the lady. It’s unpossible he could have
done any strolling about after he killed her,—’long about seven o’clock
in the morning. After that murder he had all he could do to hasten off to
hide himself. And, anyway, I don’t know’s the morass is as bad as that. I
tested it,—I took off my coat—it was my old one,—and I wrapped up a big
stone in it. Then I flung it out into the softest-looking spot.”
“What happened?”
“It went down,—it was sucked in. But that was, after all, only a small
bundle compared to a whole man. And, too, if he had found himself
sinking, in a place like that, he’d a set up a yell, wouldn’t he? And
somebody’d heard him, wouldn’t they? No, I can’t connect up friend
Johnson’s disappearance with that quagmirey place. I don’t say a man
couldn’t sink there, but I say there’s no theory of the crime that would
take him out there after the lady was dead.”
“That’s perfectly true. And even if he strolled round the grounds late
that night, it must have been before midnight, or the watchman would have
seen him. And, too, I can imagine his strolling in the gardens, but late
at night a man doesn’t venture into such a messy place as you make out
Spooky Hollow to be. See any spooks there?”
“Not a sign of one. It isn’t such a bad place, you know. Except for a
few mucky holes, it’s fairly good going, and the tangle of vines and low
evergreens is wild and weird in the extreme.”
Stone suppressed a smile at the boy’s diction, for he knew he was trying
to improve his English, and if occasionally he erred on the side of
stilted speech, it was wiser not to notice it.
“You heard the Wild Harp?”
“No, sir, I didn’t, though I listened out for it. Also, I looked good for
wires,—for I’ve been thinking it might be some rigged-up contraption.
But nary sign of wires or æolian harp strings or anything but trees and
shrubs and scrubs and general rank undergrowth.”
“Well, McGuire, how do you size up the whole thing?”
Fibsy was flattered,—doubly so, at being called by his surname, and by
having his opinion seriously asked.
He considered before speaking and then said:
“It’s no use, F. Stone,—I can’t size it up at all. It’s too many for me.
I’ve sometimes had glimmerings of wit about deducing things, but this
time, I’m up a stump for fair. But of one thing I am sure. That there
wild and wicked harp must play, for so many people have heard it. From
His Nibs and Miss Rosy Posy, down to the lowest and littlest of the
servant-girls, most of them have heard it at one time or another.
“Except old Mellish. He vows he never has, and there’s a twinkle in his
eye whenever he speaks of it. So, leave that Harp to me. I’m going to
find out about it,—and, oh, gee! what a dunderhead I am! Why I’ve got it
now! I see through the Wild Harp! Well, I _am_ a dumb-bell, that’s what I
am!”
“Suppose you stop your careful estimation of yourself and tell me your
astounding discovery.”
“Not just yet,—oh, give me a chance to make sure. But I’ll tell you this,
F. Stone, that harp is played by human fingers, and those same fingers
are on the mitt of that dough-faced butler! That’s who’s responsible for
them wailings and goings-on of that phantom harp! Phantom, indeed! If
Mellish is a phantom!”
“So you think he manipulates the Harp. What for, may I ask?”
“Well,” Fibsy was very serious, “I should say as he rigged it up at first
to tease his wife. She’s a scary sort of thing, and terribly afraid of
ghosts. And having Spooky Hollow ready-made for him as you may say, I
take it he just fixed up the harp arrangement for fun.”
“And after Miss Vincent’s death, you think he kept on with his joke?”
“I can’t see any other way out. Some people have a perverted sense of
humor, sir, and he may have thought it added to the dramatic side of
things to have the harp wailing and moaning out there.”
“Just how did he work it?”
“That’s what I’m going to figger out. I can do it, I know.”
“Well, go to it, Fibs. Now, I’m leaving for New York tonight, and I want
you to stand by till I return. Don’t do anything definite, but keep your
eyes and ears open and learn anything you can.”
“Yes, sir, and I’ll get next to the Harp player, and mark my word, it’ll
turn out to be Mellish.”
“Very well, look into it, if you like. But I can’t feel that the
Harp-playing, whether Mellish’s work or not, has any real bearing on
the case. Here’s an address that will always reach me,—I may have to go
further than New York. Go over to Greatlarch now and then, to keep in
touch with what they are all doing. Otherwise, just hold the fort till I
get back.”
“Yes, Mr. Stone, but for the land’s sake, do write me or wire me if you
get on to anything. For I’m burning alive with curiosity.”
“So am I, Fibsy,” said Stone.