In the Box
Now, for a little, let us watch the movements of the intelligent
servant, Wilkins.
Getting the trunk to the street was no trouble at all. The girl weighed,
perhaps, one hundred and twenty pounds, and the trunk itself another
fifteen or twenty, and handling that amount of weight was a mere joke to
Wilkins. Therefore, he stood in the side street beside the Lasande,
having carefully deposited his burden, and looked about for a taxi--and
presently one of these bandit vehicles rolled up to the curb and the
hard-faced little man behind the wheel barked:
"Taxicab?"
"Yes," said Wilkins. "I wish----"
"Stick the box up front!" snapped the driver. "I kin give you a hand."
"I'm taking the box in back with me," said Wilkins.
"Nothing doing!" said the driver. "What d'ye think that paint's made
of--steel?"
It was entirely possible that Mary was stifling by this time. Wilkins
used his wits as he fumbled in his pockets and asked:
"Your cab, old chap?"
"Company's!"
"Put this five-dollar bill into your pocket and give me a hand setting
the box in the back," said Wilkins. "It's packed with delicate stuff,
and the master instructed me particular to keep a hand on it."
So, while the hard-faced one smiled brightly and, the bill in his
pocket, reflected that a murder must have been committed but that it was
none of his business in any case, Anthony's wardrobe trunk was stood
erect and the taxicab rolled off swiftly, headed for the palatial home
of Theodore Dalton.
A block or two and, in the most uninterested way, Wilkins managed to
open the lid for an inch or more, and in the space appeared a little
pink nose and, presently, as the nose withdrew, a brilliant blue eye.
"Can you open it a little more?" asked Mary.
Wilkins opened it a little more.
"I trust you're quite comfortable, miss?" he asked politely.
"Lovely!" said Mary. "Did any one--seem to notice when we left?"
"Not a soul, miss."
Mary, cramped though she might be, sighed vast relief.
"Tell Mr. Fry, when you get back, that I'll send for the things I left
behind," she said softly.
"Yes, miss."
"And Wilkins, when you get to the house," said Mary, "be absolutely sure
that you take me to Felice's room!"
"I understand," purred Wilkins, just above the rumble of traffic.
Here Mary's whole face almost appeared.
"I want you to be very sure about that indeed!" she urged. "Never mind
what the other servants say or where they want you to leave the trunk.
You insist that it is for Felice, and has to be delivered to her
personally; and if you have a chance to give her some sort of sign to
accompany you to the room, do it. I think she'll understand."
"Yes, miss," Wilkins agreed.
"And above and beyond all things, keep your face perfectly
expressionless when you meet Bates, Wilkins. Bates is our butler, you
know, and he's the most inquisitive creature in the world. Is this trunk
marked?"
"Only with Mr. Fry's initials, miss--'A. F.'"
Mary frowned up at him through the crack.
"That'll have to be explained too," she sighed. "Well--let's see. Do you
think of anything plausible, Wilkins?"
The perfect treasure glanced at the driver, who was quite intent on his
own affairs and apparently not listening--and Wilkins smiled quite
complacently.
"If I might make so bold as to suggest it, miss," he said, "why not say
that the trunk comes from--well, the cousin of this Felice, perhaps? Has
she a female cousin?"
"Nobody knows it if she hasn't."
"Then it might be said that this comes from her cousin--er--Aimee
Fourier. That sounds rather well for a name?"
"Great, Wilkins!" said Mary.
"And it might further be said that this cousin, a person perhaps in the
trade of making gowns and the like, since I believe that such use these
trunks quite a bit--it might be said that the cousin, having no further
use for this trunk, is sending it to your maid, miss."
Sheer admiration shone in Mary's visible eye.
"Wilkins, you're a jewel!" said its owner. "Where are we now?"
"On West End Avenue, miss, within a block or two of your home."
Mary disappeared.
"Shut the trunk, Wilkins," her voice said softly, "We're safe!"
She, who had suffered so many shocks since last night, seemed assured
that at last all was well; and as a matter of fact Wilkins felt much the
same about the whole affair. He gazed placidly at the sign on the corner
and, closing the trunk, leaned forward to the driver.
"The big limestone place over there, I think it is," said he. "Go to the
side gate, old chap."
Seconds only, and they rolled to a standstill at the curb. Anthony's
priceless personal servant lifted out his burden and set it on the
sidewalk with no effort at all.
"Wait a bit and take me back," he smiled at the driver, as he started
for the handsome black iron gate in the cream-colored brick wall that
shut the Dalton back yard from the passing throng. There was a little
electric push beside it, and Wilkins, having laid a finger on it, waited
serenely.
Offhand, it seemed to him, he had saved the day for Anthony Fry. A
smaller, weaker man must have passed up the job of carrying out the
trunk single-handed. Yes, he had saved the day and, also offhand, the
saving should be worth about twenty dollars when he returned to Anthony
and reported. Or possibly, considering the really horrible features of
the case as Wilkins understood them, even fifty dollars.
That was not too much. In fact, the more he thought of it, the more
Wilkins felt that his return would be marked by the sight of a crisp
yellow note from Anthony's prim, well-stocked wallet. Thirty-two of this
should go into the black-and-white pin-checked suit he had been
considering enviously in a Broadway window for nearly a month; ten more
should go into Wilkins's savings-bank account, which was quite a tidy
affair; and he thought that the other eight might as well be sent to his
nephew, who was working his way through a veterinary college in Indiana.
And here the houseman opened the door and looked at Wilkins; and Wilkins
picking up his trunk, stepped through and into the back yard, and then,
the door of the basement laundry being open, into the laundry itself.
Only the under-laundress was present, which caused him to stiffen as he
said coldly:
"For Felice!"
"The--the poor young lady's maid!" said the laundress, with a sudden
snivel.
"I'll take it to her room," Wilkins said. "Where will that be, and where
will I find the young woman herself?"
The under-laundress dried her eyes on one corner of her apron.
"I dunno about Felice," she said uncertainly. "Mebbe Mr. Bates--oh, here
comes Mr. Bates now."
Round, red, highly perturbed, the Dalton butler bustled into the laundry
and looked Wilkins up and down.
"Trunk for the master?" he asked crisply.
"For Felice, the young lady's maid, as I understand," Wilkins said
quietly. "Where shall I find her? It's for herself."
His calm and superior smile warned Bates not to question an affair that
could not possibly concern him--yet the warning missed Bates somehow. He
looked sharply at Wilkins and laughed.
"You'll not find her here!" said he.
"I mean Felice, the maid of----"
"I know the one you mean," Bates said briefly. "She's not here and
she'll not be here again! She's been dismissed!"
"What?" said Wilkins.
Bates looked him over sternly, as if to suggest that if he happened to
be a friend of Felice he had passed beneath contempt.
"She's _went_!" Bates said sourly. "This here house is no place for
young Frenchies that wanders the streets at night, believe me. She
sneaked in--I dunno what hour this early morning, and she was able to
give no account at all of where she'd been. There wasn't no further
questions asked; she went, bag and baggage!"
One of those mental clouds which had been troubling Anthony since last
night came now to engulf the complacent Wilkins. He looked at Bates, as
if refusing to believe a word of it. He looked at the trunk and his
expression was a study.
"Well, as to where this young person has gone," Wilkins said. "You see,
this trunk being, as it were, her personal property, I've been asked to
see that she gets it herself and----"
"Where she's gone is no concern of ours. We don't know and we don't want
to know!" said Mr. Bates. "The hussy went without a character and that's
all we can tell you about her. And this here house is too full of
trouble for me to be bothering with you about her trunk," concluded Mr.
Bates. "Anything belonging to her gets out!"
"Out!" Wilkins muttered.
"Out!" said Mr. Bates, and pointed at the door.
* * * * *
Let us not forget what Anthony altogether forgot, to wit: the sinister
warning of Hobart Hitchin in regard to shipping boxes, trunks or other
containers that might well have held a dismembered body.
For one of Hitchin's strange temperament and habits of thought, his own
apartment could not have been situated more happily, if an affair of
this kind were to involve Anthony Fry.
Room for room, the home of the prosperous crime-student was directly
below that of Anthony; they used the same dumbwaiter, and they were
served by the same service elevator, so that if Hitchin had so elected
he could even have inspected the meals that went to Anthony's table.
Still more, they were in the old wing of the Lasande, where the rooms
are larger, but where the floors--laid long before the days of
sound-proof concrete filling--permit the unduly inquisitive to hear much
of what goes on above and below.
According to his own reasoning, Hitchin had struck upon the
investigation of his whole lifetime. Surely as he wore spectacles,
murder had been done in the flat of the impeccable Anthony Fry.
What the motive could possibly be, Hobart Hitchin could only guess, as
he had already guessed; but it was a fact that he had been suspicious
ever since Anthony's appearance last night with the slim boy of the
heavy storm coat and the down-pulled cap. These, failing to harmonize
with anything that went in and out of the Lasande ordinarily, had
twanged every responsive string in Hitchin's consciousness, and not by
any manner of means had the strings ceased twanging after his unusual
interview with Anthony.
Hence, having returned to his own flat, he waited tense and expectant.
With straining ears he heard the coming of Beatrice Boller and the
subsequent excitement, and to him her peculiar cries signified another
friend of David Prentiss's who had come suddenly upon the grisly thing
that had once been the young boy.
And now those processes of deductive reasoning which are used so
successfully in fiction and so infrequently in real life, informed
Hobart Hitchin that the crime's next step was almost at hand. Accustomed
to murder or otherwise, an intelligent man like Anthony Fry would risk
no more of these disturbances; whatever his original plans, he would
seek very shortly to get the body out of the Lasande--hardly in grips,
Hitchin fancied, probably not in a packing case, rather in that reliable
actor in so many sensational murders, a trunk.
Here, on the floor above him, some one moved and bumped what was
unquestionably a hollow, empty trunk!
As the veteran fireman responds to the gong, so did the brain of Hobart
Hitchin respond to that bump! Fifteen seconds and he had visualized the
whole of the next step; the trunk to the freight elevator, thence to the
street, thence to the waiting motor express wagon, thence--
Again, after a time, came the bump, indicating that the trunk was in the
living-room now--and then, absolutely true to the hypothesis, Anthony's
door opened and the bumps went to the hall, while the freight elevator
came up the shaft!
The brief-case containing the trousers of David Prentiss had not left
Hobart Hitchin's cold hand. It did not leave now as, snatching a hat, he
sped down the back stairs of the Lasande--a proceeding likely to save
five seconds at least when one considered the slow response of the
elevators--cut through the second floor and came down to the side
entrance, just beyond the office and the desk.
There was a taxicab as usual at the curb just here. Without leaving the
vestibule, Hobart Hitchin signaled it to wait for him; and then, ever so
charily, he thrust forward his eagle eyes and directed their merciless
beam through the side panel of the glass. Hobart Hitchin all but lost
his self-control and laughed excitedly, for there, just down the block,
Anthony's personal servant was lugging a wardrobe trunk to the curb.
Ah! And he planned to use the safer taxicab, apparently, rather than the
truck; and it seemed to Hobart Hitchin that the driver knew his full
errand and demanded his share in advance, because Wilkins handed him
money. After that, without effort, because David Prentiss had been light
and slender in life, Wilkins took his ghastly burden into the back of
the cab and drove away.
But Hobart Hitchin, the relentless, was just twenty yards behind, and
his driver, spurred by a ten-dollar bill, bent forward and watched every
turn of the wheels as he followed. Thus they left the region of the
Lasande--and since we all have our personal dreams, it was right enough
for Hobart Hitchin to sit back and indulge his own.
As a millionaire now and then makes himself part and parcel of the local
fire-department, following faithfully to every blaze, answering every
alarm, so Hobart Hitchin, with a patrimony that rendered real work
absurd, dreamed of the day when he should be recognized as the most
eminent private expert in crime these great United States have ever
held.
Mistily, he had been able time and time again to visualize himself,
spectacles and all, surrounded by perturbed policemen who had come to
the end of their rope in crime detection, who listened respectfully
while he expounded the elements of the particular case in hand. But the
mists were almost gone now; this brilliant morning, for the very first
time, Hobart Hitchin had picked off a live one.
Yes, and it grew more and more live every second, for instead of heading
downtown, and trying--as Hobart Hitchin had fully expected--to ship the
trunk by express to some out-of-town point, Wilkins had made his way to
West End Avenue!
This in itself was very curious; it did not even suggest that Wilkins
was headed out of town with the remains; and it did not even hint at the
astounding thing which followed, several blocks farther uptown! As the
taxi stopped at Theodore Dalton's side gate, Hitchin all but fell from
his cab as he craned forward!
By some lucky accident, he knew that house, and knew, in a general way,
of its owner. This was the liniment king--and Anthony Fry was the owner
of Fry's Imperial Liniment; there was a link as of solid steel, made of
liniment only, yet utterly unbreakable!
What did it mean? What _could_ it mean?
Hitchin leaned back for an instant and closed his eyes, giving his
mighty brain the freest rein of its existence, urging it with every
fiber in him to hit upon the correct theory.
And then, eyes opening, it almost seemed that he had hit upon it! These
two, Dalton and Fry, were doubtless associated in business, whatever the
supposed rivalry. Was it not thinkable that the devilish messes of one
or the other had ruined the health of the Prentiss boy? Was it not
possible that Anthony, luring him to his home, had been trying to buy
him off from a threatened suit--get a quit-claim or something of that
kind? For that matter, could it be anything else? The boy had refused
and--big business had wiped out another individual!
He might well enough be wrong, but if wrong he were, why was Wilkins
taking the trunk straight into the premises of Theodore Dalton? He had
done that now, and now the gate had closed upon him, and Hobart Hitchin,
suddenly determined on the most spectacular act of his life, tapped his
driver on the shoulder.
"Go around to the front of this house--yes, the corner one!" he said,
and there was a little shake in his voice.
His path was clear enough. Anthony Fry would not seek to escape as yet;
they never did at this stage when they fancied the crime itself safely
out of the way. Anthony would be there when wanted--and single-handed,
Hobart Hitchin meant to take into custody the two most sensational
murderers of their generation!
It was a tremendous thing. By the time he had stepped up to the spacious
door of Theodore Dalton's home, the tremendousness of it had so overcome
Hobart Hitchin that he could not have reasoned out the two times two
multiplication table! He was for the time a man bereft of what most of
us consider senses, so that he walked straight past Bates and said:
"Mr. Dalton!"
"You're bringing word, sir?" Bates cried.
"I wish to see Mr. Dalton. He is at home," said Hitchin.
Bates considered for a moment and then nodded; it was no morning for
quibbling.
"In here, sir!" he said, pattering off quickly to Dalton's study.
He pattered out again as quickly, and Hobart Hitchin, having taken a
chair, rose from it at once and took to walking, brief-case still
clutched in his hand and an exalted smile on his lips. So Theodore
Dalton found him when he entered, fifteen seconds later--a mighty man,
deep of chest, savage of eye, square of chin, with great hairy hands and
a shaggy gray head. Not more than a single second did Dalton look at
Hitchin before he barked:
"Well? Well? You are bringing word of her?"
"Her?" smiled Hobart Hitchin, with unearthly calm.
"My daughter!" Theodore Dalton thundered. "What----"
"I know nothing about your daughter, Dalton," Hitchin said, with his icy
smile. "Will you be seated?"
"No!" said the master of the house. "What the devil do you want here, if
it isn't about my daughter?"
"I want just five minutes conversation with you, on a matter which
concerns you most vitally."
Theodore Dalton closed his hairy fists.
"Look here, sir," he said, with a calm of his own which was decidedly
impressive. "If you're jackass enough to come in here on the morning
when my daughter--_my daughter_--has disappeared--if you're clown enough
to try to sell me anything----"
"I'm not trying to sell you anything; I'm trying to tell you something!"
Hitchin said, and there was something so very peculiar about his smile
that even Theodore Dalton postponed the forcible eviction for a few
minutes.
"Tell me what?"
"Dalton," said Hobart Hitchin, "the game is up!"
"_What?_" rasped Mr. Dalton.
"The boy, David Prentiss--or what remains of the boy, David
Prentiss--has just been brought into your house. _And I know!_"
Theodore Dalton said nothing; for a moment he could say nothing.
Hitchin's teeth showed in a triumphant smile.
"Murder will out!" said he. "Murder----"
"_Murder!_" Theodore Dalton snarled. "What the----"
"David Prentiss, who was murdered last night, has been brought here!"
the palpable lunatic pursued. "Don't shout! Don't try to strike me!
_Look!_"
Already he had opened the brief-case; now, with a dramatic whisk, he
spread the trousers on the table.
And if he looked for an effect upon Dalton, the effect was there even in
excess of any expectation! Theodore Dalton, after one quick downward
glance, cried out queerly, thickly, far down in his throat! His eyes
seemed to start from his head; his hands, going out together, snatched
up the trousers and held them nearer to the window. With a jerk,
Theodore Dalton turned one of the rear pockets inside out and looked
swiftly at the little linen name-plate sewed therein by the tailor who
had made them.
The trousers dropped from his fingers and Theodore Dalton collapsed!
Gray, gasping, unable to speak at first, he crumpled into the chair
beside the table and stared up numbly at Hobart Hitchin, who smiled just
as he had always meant to smile in the event of such a moment coming
before his death.
"You--you!" Dalton choked. "You say--the wearer of those trousers has
been _murdered_?"
"As you know," said Hobart Hitchin. "The boy----"
"A boy about twenty-two, smooth shaven--a nice kid--a boy with a shock
of brown hair and--and----" Theodore Dalton cried, in a queer, broken
little voice, as he gripped the table. "No! No! Not that boy!"
"That boy!" said Hitchin. "David Prentiss!"
Dalton's whole soul seemed to burst!
"It was no David Prentiss!" he cried. "My--my daughter's gone and now my
only son has been murdered!"