The Web
Just the manner of the man startled Anthony and caused him to hitch back
in his chair and stare for an instant. Johnson Boller was not so
affected.
"Say, what's the matter with you, Hitchin?" he asked. "Are you a plain
nut?"
Hitchin snapped his fingers at him angrily and continued his stare at
Anthony Fry.
"Well?" he said tensely.
"Well, upon my soul, Hitchin!" Anthony stammered. "I believe Boller's
right!"
"Oh, no, you don't," Hobart Hitchin said quietly. "You know a great deal
better and Boller knows a great deal better, but he has a good deal more
self-control than you have. Fry, where is David Prentiss?"
"Gone home, of course!" Anthony snapped.
"When did he go?"
"What? Last night!"
"And can you give me an idea of the hour?"
"Oh--half-past twelve, perhaps."
"At half-past twelve last night, David Prentiss left this apartment. He
went down in the elevator?"
"I suppose so."
"And--just be patient, Fry." Hitchin smiled disarmingly. "Did the young
man wear from this apartment the clothes he wore into this apartment?"
It was perfectly apparent to Anthony that the wretched fool had taken
what he fancied to be a scent of some sort; it was equally clear that,
in his present state of mind, Anthony would answer perhaps three more
questions and then, losing himself completely, would smash the
flower-vase over Hobart Hitchin's shining bald head solely as salve for
his nerves!
Doubtless the long coat and the down-pulled cap had started him
off--they were sufficiently mysterious-looking to impress a less
sensitive imagination than Hitchin's. Whatever troubled the crime
specialist, David Prentiss would have to be lied out of here in detail,
lied home and lied to bed.
"Hitchin," said Anthony, "Heaven alone knows what concern of yours it
can be, but the Prentiss boy--the son of an old friend of mine who has
seen better days--came back here with me last night for some things,
cast-offs, I had promised his unfortunate father. We met him on the
street on the way home."
"Just around the corner," supplied Johnson Boller, who was growing
steadily more anxious to speak his mind to Anthony about the Mrs. Boller
matter.
"And having come upstairs with us and having selected the things he
thought his father would like best," Anthony went on, "they were wrapped
in a bundle of ordinary brown paper, tied up with ordinary,
non-mysterious, crime-proof string and carried out by David, who, I have
no doubt at all, reached home within half an hour, gave the clothes to
his father, said his prayers and went to bed without further ado. If
there is anything else you'd like to know, ask!"
Hobart Hitchin had not blinked. Now he smiled strangely and shrugged his
shoulders.
"At least," said he, "you have perfected the story, haven't you?"
"I----"
"And now," Mr. Hitchin broke in incisively, "let us consider the facts!
We will take them, one by one, and I beg that you will listen. Item one:
I sat in the lobby downstairs until seventeen minutes of one o'clock
this morning, Fry. No David Prentiss passed me, going out. Nobody left
this hotel with a bundle or a bag!"
"You didn't see him," Anthony said.
"Because he was not there! Listen, please, and do not interrupt, Fry. I
like you, or I should not be here. I wish to help you, if such a thing
is possible, or I should have gone at once to the police," said the
remarkable Mr. Hitchin. "You, like many a man before you, forget
perfectly plain details. In this case, you have forgotten that my
apartment is directly beneath yours--that the elevators here have
latticed gates, so that one can see from any floor whoever may be
passing in one of the cars--that sound travels perfectly in this
building when the street is quiet, as at night. So to get to item two.
About two o'clock this morning there was the sound of a heavy fall in
this very room!"
Johnson Boller was grasping the trend more rapidly than was Anthony, and
he was growing less comfortable.
"I fell!" he said.
"Did you really?" asked the demon detective. "Yet--you're in that room,
I take it? Yet you got out of bed immediately after and walked in here;
I heard your step. Don't flush, Boller! It takes practice to carry out a
thing of this kind and whatever the motive may have been, you gentlemen
are not old hands. And so to item three: it must have been about four
when a policeman came to this door. _Why?_"
"There was supposed to be a burglar here. It was a false alarm," Anthony
said, less collectedly.
Hitchin lighted the pipe he had filled and smiled.
"That is the tale they tell in the office," he said. "I confess that
that detail puzzles me and as yet I haven't had time to get inside
information from my good friend our police captain. However, we can well
call this detail immaterial and pass to item four."
He gazed into the blue cloud of smoke and smiled again.
"The woman in the case!" he said in a deep, bass voice.
"There was no woman!" Anthony exploded. "And----"
"The Frenchwoman, Fry!" Hitchin corrected.
"Well, she----"
"Don't explain her," said Hobart Hitchin. "Let us see just what happened
when she was about. She came after daylight. She passed through the
office downstairs so suddenly that nobody was able to stop her, and she
knew where to come. She was in the elevator naming her floor to the
man--who supposed her to have been passed by the office--perhaps two
seconds after she entered the house itself. She came directly to this
apartment, Fry, and almost immediately she burst into hysterical
weeping!"
His eyes were boring again and Hobart Hitchin also pointed the stem of
his pipe accusingly at Anthony.
"Fry," he said, "what did that girl _see_, evidently at the end of the
corridor, which produced that outburst of grief?"
"Nothing," Anthony said thickly.
"There was nothing to cause her acute grief?"
"No, and----"
"Wait! She wept all the way down in the elevator; I saw her myself! She
wept so violently when she reached the street that an officer approached
her--and she fled from him and disappeared."
It was high time to say something and to say it well. Dignity had always
served Anthony, and while it was an effort he eyed Hobart Hitchin
coldly.
"Hitchin," said he, "it would be quite possible, believe me, to soothe
your feverish mind by telling you the perfectly simple errand on which
that girl came, but I'm damned if I'll do it! Some things are too
ridiculous, and you're one of them. If there are any further questions
you wish to ask about my personal affairs, will you please leave them
unasked? And if there are other things over which you wish to rave,
don't let me detain you here."
He fastened his best majestic gaze on Hobart Hitchin, yet Hitchin only
laughed his low, sinister laugh.
"You're a curious customer, Fry," he said, leaning back comfortably. "I
had hoped before this that your nerve would have broken and--however,
listen to this little theory of mine. The boy knew something, I can't
say what, about _you_, something which had to be suppressed at any cost.
You brought him here, I can't say on what pretext, but the boy fancied
that all was well. Perhaps you promised him money; I'm inclined to
believe that, for the girl came, evidently by appointment, ready to
travel. Doesn't take much deduction to guess that they were going to be
married with the money you gave him, does it? She came and she saw what
happened, and then----"
"Well, what had happened?" Anthony almost shouted.
"That's what I'm waiting for you to tell me, so that I can give you a
helping hand," said the crime student. "And while I'm waiting, and while
you're still plainly convinced that I know nothing at all, let me ask
you one question again: did the Prentiss boy leave here with the clothes
he wore when he entered?"
"Yes!" Anthony said wearily.
With a sudden startling slap, the fat brief-case was placed upon the
table and its straps undone. And there was another slap and Hobart
Hitchin cried:
"Then explain these, Fry! Explain _these_!"
There can be no denying that Anthony's mouth opened and that his eyes
grew rounder. Before him, spread upon the table, lay David's trousers!
"Well, those--those----" he stammered. "Where did you get them?"
"From the dumbwaiter, where you placed them so very quietly, so very
cautiously, so very early this morning!" said Hobart Hitchin, with his
devilish laugh. "You even went so far as to run the thing down, so that
it would be emptied at once, didn't you? But you _didn't_ happen to look
down! You didn't see me take the whole suit from the dumbwaiter as it
passed my door."
He leaned back triumphantly and puffed his pipe and for a little there
was a thick tangible silence in Anthony's living-room.
More than once, like most of us, Johnson Boller had wondered just what
he would do if accused of a murder of which he was entirely innocent. In
a fond and confident way he had pictured himself sneering at the captain
of police, impressing him despite himself as Johnson Boller not only
established his alibi in a few crisp sentences, but also directed the
stupid detective force toward the true criminal.
At present, however, he discovered that he was downright scared. Unless
one of them rose up and told about Mary and then called her in to verify
the truth, it seemed that Hobart Hitchin, idiot though he might be, had
established something of a case. And instead of sneering, Johnson Boller
grew redder and redder, until Hitchin said:
"Ah, you know all about it, eh? I had wondered!"
"Well, cut out your wondering!" Johnson Boller said roughly.
"Because----"
"I wouldn't talk now, if I were you," said Hitchin, kindly enough. "I'm
devoting myself to Fry. Well, Fry?"
As yet Anthony had not found the proper line of speech.
"The boy, a stranger, comes here at midnight," Hitchin purred
relentlessly. "There is a heavy fall at two. There is weeping before
seven, the weeping of a strange woman. There are the boy's clothes--the
rest of them are downstairs. So, once more--_where is David Prentiss_?"
He waited, and Anthony Fry drew a long breath. All his life he had been
painfully addicted to the truth; it was part of his cherished and
spotless reputation. All his life he had shunned fiction, and was
therefore ignorant of plot technique. So he did fairly well in smiling
sourly and saying, calmly enough:
"So far as I know, David is about starting for his work, Hitchin. The
thing had slipped my mind altogether, but I remember now that the boy
took a suit--a blue suit--for himself and changed into it while here.
That outfit was decidedly shabby. After that he left, and as to the
French girl, you may theorize and be hanged, for she happens to be none
of your infernal business, and she has no connection with David."
"None, eh?"
"None whatever!"
Mr. Hitchin grinned without humor and examined the trousers in silence,
thinking, and later humming to himself. He smoothed them out and then
folded them carefully, finally replacing them in his brief case. After
that he looked at Anthony.
"If I were you, Fry, I should tell the truth, and let me help you. You
know, and I know, that the boy never left this apartment. Well?"
"Well?" snapped Anthony.
"And you know and I know that what remains of him is still here,
and----"
"Are you accusing me of murder?" Anthony demanded savagely.
"I have been doing that for some time."
"Hitchin, you're the most utter ass that ever breathed! You----"
"Doubtless, but at the same time murder is murder, and murder will out,
Fry!" the extraordinary crime student said steadily, as he arose, "Now
hear me quietly. I shall do nothing--you understand, _nothing_--until
afternoon, unless circumstances render action imperative. You know where
we stand; I know where we stand. I want to help you, to come to the
unfortunate end quietly if nothing else. I shall be in my apartment all
morning. Think it over. Talk it over with Boller. Then, when you have
decided that you need help, come and see me." He took up his case and
faced Anthony squarely. "At least I can see that you obtain a privilege
or two in the local prison," he concluded. "Good-by."
"Good Lord!" breathed Anthony Fry.
"And in going," said Hobart Hitchin, "let me leave just one caution
behind me, Fry. Have nothing shipped from this apartment until we have
talked again!"
Then Mr. Hitchin, courageously turning his back upon the pair, moved out
of the flat, leaving Johnson Boller and his oldest friend in a state of
partial paralysis. Anthony recovered in perhaps three seconds.
"That--that infernal idiot!" said Anthony. "Why, the lunatic asylums
have saner people in strait-jackets!"
"Maybe they have," Johnson Boller said hoarsely, "but all the same, many
a good man has sat in the electric chair on the strength of
circumstantial evidence not nearly so good as he made out!"
"Well, are you afraid of sitting there?" Anthony snapped.
Johnson Boller mopped his brow.
"Maybe not," he said. "But with the things he's pieced together he can
go to the police and have 'em around here in ten minutes! That
son-of-a-gun can have you and me locked up without bail, and--_that'd_
be nice, huh?"
"He can do nothing of the sort!"
"He can unless you show him a David Prentiss!" Mr. Boller urged. "He can
unless we have the girl out and tell him the truth and have her
corroborate it! Are you going to do that?"
Anthony Fry hugged his head for an instant; it was really aching now.
"No!" he said.
"It's better than being jugged, Anthony," suggested Johnson Boller. "You
know, I've got some reputation as well as you, and--say, what did you
mean by introducing her as my wife?"
"Was there anything else to do?"
"Why not as your sister?"
"Because Hitchin knows perfectly well that I haven't a sister, of
course. Don't fume and thresh around like that, Johnson; it bothers me."
"But if my wife ever hears of it----"
"She never will," said Anthony, without great concern, "unless you have
Hitchin for dinner some night and ask him to tell about it."
"And Wilkins--he heard it, too!"
"Well, I shall instruct Wilkins not to mention it, later on," Anthony
sighed. "Now quiet down, will you, and let us think how----"
"Have you decided how to get me out of here?" Mary asked brightly,
entering without a sound.
Anthony stayed the bitter words that were in his very throat.
"We have been accused of murdering David Prentiss!" he said.
"Really?"
"Very really indeed!"
"Isn't that funny?" Mary laughed. "Isn't it perfectly ridiculous?"
"It's a scream!" said Johnson Boller. "About the time we both get
pinched it may be up to you to----"
"Tell the truth?" Mary said quickly.
"Just that!"
"I'll never do it!" the girl cried passionately. "No! Not even to save
both of you! I'm not here through any fault of my own, and--and--why, a
man who could suggest such a thing----"
"He's not suggesting it; he's just excited," Anthony said miserably,
"Now, suppose we try, just once more, to sit down sanely and devise the
way of getting you safely home, Miss Mary?"
"And soon!" said the girl, somewhat feverishly. "If I could have gotten
home while it was dark Felice could have smuggled me in and--and lied
about it, if necessary. But it isn't night any longer; it's nine o'clock
or past nine, and----"
She said no more. Lips parted, and eyes, all in an instant, thoroughly
horrified, she stood and listened; and from the door of Anthony's
apartment a thumping sounded once more and a voice said:
"Hurry up! Open that door!"
"Robert again!" Mary gasped.
"Is that possible?" Anthony gasped, bouncing to his feet.
It was not only possible. It was the solid fact, for Wilkins, muttering
as he fumbled at the latch, was mentioning Mr. Vining's name and bidding
him be patient for an instant--and Mary, with a little scream, had made
another of her projectile disappearances down the corridor--and into the
room came Robert Vining!
He was far from being the same collected young man. His whole person
seemed to have been towsled by some overwhelming excitement. His eyes
belonged in the head of a madman, and his hands waved irresponsibly as
he rushed at Anthony Fry and clutched his coat and panted:
"Fry! You'll have to help me!"
"Help you--how?"
"You know more people than I--you know people everywhere, Anthony!
You'll have to help me by calling them up and having them call up their
friends, you know. That--that may do some good. I--I don't know! I don't
know what I'm talking about, Anthony! I feel as if I'd gone crazy!"
"You act very much that way," Anthony said quietly. "What's wrong?"
Robert Vining gaped at him and then laughed quite insanely.
"Wrong!" he shouted. "Wrong! _Mary's disappeared!_"
"Mary----"
"You don't know Mary--no, of course not!" young Mr. Vining rushed on.
"She--she's the girl I'm going to marry, Anthony! Yes, I'm engaged,
although it hasn't been announced yet. I've been engaged for a week now,
and we--great Heaven! I can't think. I--why, Anthony, I was talking to
her even at dinner last night and there was never a hint that she even
meant to go out of the house. In fact, when we parted, she seemed rather
bored at the idea of staying home and--why, not a soul knows even when
she left the house! She's gone, Fry! She's just _gone_!"
A coarse nature ever, Johnson Boller winked at Anthony and turned his
back!
"Mary! Why, my little Mary out alone at night----" young Robert choked.
"She's just twenty, Anthony--a delicate, beautiful girl like that
disappearing from the most beautiful, the happiest home in all New York!
Why, from the day she was born, Dalton never spared her a penny to----"
"Eh? What Dalton?" Anthony asked suddenly.
"What? Theodore Dalton, of course. He's her father--Dalton, the
patent-medicine man, Anthony. You must have met him? You know Theodore
Dalton?"
Curiously, fortunately enough, sheer nervous tension jerked him away
from Anthony Fry just then and set him to pacing the floor, a man
distracted, a man unseeing, a man who recked of nothing on earth beyond
his terrible and immediate grief.
And this was very well indeed, for Anthony was making himself
conspicuous!
Anthony took three backward steps and looked at the unconscious Robert
much as if the young man had branded himself a leper. He looked at
Johnson Boller, too, although his eyes were blank--and then, one hand on
his head, Anthony staggered straight out of the room and into the
corridor; and, having gone that far, he turned and staggered down to the
window at the end of the window-seat, where he collapsed much as if the
bones had been whisked from his long, slender legs!
Here Johnson Boller, following, found him five seconds later. Mr.
Boller, who was beginning to feel downright peculiar himself with Vining
threshing about the living-room and babbling incoherent agony, shook his
old friend with no gentle hand as he demanded:
"Say, you! What is it now? What in blazes got you that time, Anthony?
Are you going to have a fit?"
"Johnson!" Anthony said feebly, clutching coldly at Mr. Boller's plump
hand. "Oh, Johnson!"
"_What?_"
"Her father! She's the daughter of Theodore Dalton, Johnson! She's the
daughter of the man they call the liniment king!"
"Yes?" said Johnson Boller.
The icy hand closed tighter about his own, rousing something almost akin
to sympathy in Johnson Boller's bosom and causing him to lay a soothing
hand on Anthony's shoulder--for so do men cling to a raft in mid-ocean.
"Johnson," Anthony Fry said piteously. "I've kidnaped the daughter of
the only man in the world who can ruin me, and he'll do it!"