Concerning Three Groups
For the first time, Wilkins looked at Mr. Bates and thought swiftly.
Having thought for half a minute, he had accomplished a complete circle
and was exactly where he had started. It was plain that the maid Felice
was somewhere else; equally plain was it that, for the purpose of the
moment, the maid Felice could satisfactorily be in but one place--and
that right here!
Had she merely been out for a little time he could have taken the trunk
to her room and, opening the lid a bit, could have fled with his task
accomplished; she was, however, out permanently--so that the very best
Wilkins had accomplished at the end of a full minute was:
"Out? Quite so. But where has the young person gone, if you please?"
Mr. Bates scowled angrily.
"We don't know, I've told you!" he said sharply. "When one of the help's
dismissed under circumstances like that, we don't trouble to ask where
she's going and we don't keep her address."
"But she might be having mail to forward----" Wilkins essayed hopefully.
"Any mail that comes for her'll be handed to the carrier again," Bates
snapped. "And now will you get her box out of here, you? I can't have it
about, and I've no time this morning to argue with you. The master's
daughter's disappeared and we're all on edge."
"And not a soul in the world knowing where she's gone, poor lamb!"
sniveled the under-laundress, laying a hand on the trunk that held Mary.
"And her that home-loving she never----"
"Hush!" said Mr. Bates.
The woman subsided into her apron.
"Whatever's taken her, she's trying to get home! She's trying----" she
sobbed.
"Well, whatever's taken her, get that trunk out of here!" the Dalton
butler snapped.
Was there anything else to do? Wilkins, having thought until his head
ached, could not see it. If the girl had a friend among the help, it
might be left with the friend; but the only woman of the household
present had taken pains to look properly scandalized at each mention of
Felice. Or if Mary hadn't cautioned him particularly against this Bates,
he would have risked taking Bates aside and communicating the astounding
truth.
But since things were as they were, and not as they might have been;
since Bates was actually glaring at him now, and would, in another
minute, be banging the trunk back to the street himself, there was
really nothing left for Wilkins but to grip the wide handle and start
slowly for the door again.
It was bad! Oh, it was very bad, with Mary in there and very likely
stifling to death, but Wilkins shuffled slowly back to the taxicab with
his burden, slowly and carefully put it aboard once more.
"What's wrong?" asked the driver.
"The party it was for had left!" said Wilkins.
"Where to?"
Wilkins pondered heavily.
"Back again where we came from," he sighed. "But you might go rather
slow, I think. Like enough I'll change my mind and decide to take it
somewhere else. I can't say at the moment."
Clambering after himself, he looked about while the man hopped out and
cranked his motor. Failure had leaped out and blasted the flower of
success, just as every petal had opened wide! Utter failure was the
portion of Wilkins--and the policeman on the far corner was watching him
in the most disconcerting way.
Squinting over there in the sunshine, the blue-coat's instinct was
telling him that there was something wrong about the trunk. He moved to
the other side of the lamp-post and stared on; and Just here his
sergeant appeared from the side street and the officer addressed him,
even pointing with his club at the taxi!
Faithful Wilkins's heart stopped! When an officer approaches and asks
one to open a trunk or bag, one opens it or goes up. Having opened this
one, it was almost a certainty that one would go up also--and with that
one would go Mary Dalton, and in the evening papers one of the most
startling stories of the year would be featured.
We all of us have a peculiar way of seeing our own side of any given
case before examining the others; so it was with Wilkins. Wilkins saw
himself dismissed from what was really a very excellent, very well-paid,
very easy job; he saw Anthony cursing himself and his stupidity and
ordering him out of his sight forever!
"Can't you start?" he shot at his driver.
"Well, I'm just sitting down," that person stated acidly.
"Well, get her a-going and then turn around; don't go over there, but go
back up this block! And start!" said Wilkins.
The cab started and turned, and he did not look behind. He had not need
for that; he could feel the official eyes boring through the back of the
cab and into himself; he could hear running feet; once he was quite sure
he heard the pounding of a club on the curb, which meant that every
officer in hearing would flock into sight. Wilkins, becoming stony of
countenance after a struggle, shut his teeth and sat back, quite
forgetting that Mary might welcome a breath or two of the outer air.
It was possible, after a little, if the police did not appear and stop
the machine, that he would order the cab into the country and there
release Mary, hat or no hat--but somehow Wilkins doubted whether he
would make that decision.
What he craved more than anything else just now was security behind
brick and stone walls--like the Lasande's.
* * * * *
Be it said that Hobart Hitchin had regained enough of his normal senses
to feel distinctly startled. His vision cleared considerably as he
looked at Theodore Dalton, crouching behind his table. He felt, in spite
of himself, that Dalton's grief was perfectly genuine, but the utter
mystery of the thing swept over him, too, and he leaned forward and
asked:
"What did you say, sir? Your son?"
"These--these!" Dalton said, clutching the trousers. "My son Dick's--his
fishing suit."
"And your son, where is he supposed to be?"
"In the north woods, somewhere, although I haven't heard from him for a
week," Dalton choked; and then, being a powerful character, he threw off
the hideous numbness and straightened up. "What did you say? What were
you trying to tell me? Where did you get--these?"
"From the dumbwaiter where----"
"What dumbwaiter?"
"In the Hotel Lasande."
"When?"
"Very early this morning."
"How did you come to----"
"I saw a young man when he went into the house last night; I live there,
you know. I had reason to think that something happened to him
overnight, and this morning I managed to snatch this suit from the
dumbwaiter as it passed my door. Further----"
"What was he doing there?"
"He came home last night with a gentleman you know," said Hobart
Hitchin. "One Anthony Fry!"
"The liniment Fry?" cried Theodore Dalton.
His gray face turned white and then purple. He rose and ran one hand
through his shaggy gray mop.
"The liniment Fry," Hitchin said.
"My boy--my Dicky went home with that man?"
"A boy was introduced to me as David Prentiss."
Dalton's hands clutched his forehead for a moment and the grinding of
his teeth was audible.
"You were saying--what were you saying about a trunk?"
"I said that the remains of the boy had been brought here by Fry's
personal servant, sir. I saw them taken into the side gate not ten
minutes ago and----"
"Come!" said Theodore Dalton.
He reached out and, gripping Hitchin's arm, decided that gentleman's
course for him. As Theodore Dalton strode to the back of the house and
to the back stairs, as he went straight down and into and through the
kitchen, Hobart Hitchin merely went along, partly in stumbles, partly in
little jumps; and so they came to the laundry and, nerving himself until
the veins stood out on his temples, Dalton faced his butler and spoke
thickly:
"The--the trunk!"
"Beg pardon, sir?" said Bates humbly.
"The trunk which was brought here! Where is it?"
"Oh, that trunk, sir. It was took away again, Mr. Dalton. The person
that brought it said it was for Felice, the maid we dismissed this
morning, sir."
"_For Felice?_" Dalton echoed.
"Quite so, sir."
"Why was it sent to Felice?"
"I couldn't say, sir," said Bates, stepping to the gate and opening it.
"There it goes, sir, on the cab. Shall I send after it?"
Dalton leaned heavily against Hobart Hitchin.
"Goes--where?"
"Well, I'm not sure as it was his voice, sir, but I think, standing out
here, I heard him tell the man to go back where they came from."
Followed quite a tableau.
Bates stared respectfully at his master. Hobart Hitchin, who had not as
yet had time to form a complete new set of theories, merely stood and
frowned. But although Theodore Dalton did not move, he did not seem
still.
His face, in fact, mirrored the whole gamut of human emotions of the
darker sort; overwhelming sorrow was there at first, and then,
succeeding slowly, amazement and unbelief, and after them trembling
anger. Black fire shot from his deepset eyes, as they switched to
Hitchin; his lips became a ghastly white line; his mighty chest rose and
fell; and now he had taken Hobart Hitchin's arm again and led him back
to a dusky corridor.
"You!" said Dalton. "I don't know who you are and why you came here; but
this I ask you, and if you don't answer truthfully, God help you! Does
that trunk, to your belief, contain the body of the boy you call
Prentiss?"
"To my almost certain knowledge!"
"And he was murdered in the apartment of _Anthony Fry_?"
"He was, sir, and----"
"Come!" said Theodore Dalton, once more, and they returned to the study
in a series of stumbles and little jumps.
Once in the dark, handsome room Theodore Dalton walked straight to the
cabinet in the corner and, with a key, opened the topmost drawer. He
extracted therefrom a heavy automatic pistol and slipped out its
magazine. He opened a box of cartridges and filled the little box; and
when it had clicked into the handle of the automatic, and the pistol
itself was in his pocket.
"There was a cab leaving the door when you came," he said quietly. "Did
you dismiss it?"
"I--I believe so," said Hobart Hitchin, who as an actual fact liked
neither the sight of the weapon nor the sight of Dalton just now.
"Bates!" Dalton spoke into the little interior telephone. "My car!"
"If you're going somewhere----" escaped Hobart Hitchin.
"I am going to see Anthony Fry. You are going with me. You are going to
accuse him, in my presence, of the crime," said Theodore Dalton, with
the same ominous calm. "And when you have accused him, I shall do the
rest! Sit down!"
* * * * *
Anthony Fry, because there was more relief in him than flesh and blood,
leaned back in his pet chair and gazed at the ceiling, long, steadily,
happily. He would have liked to smoke, yet he declined to make the
effort which would break the delicious lassitude that possessed him. He
would have liked to sing, too, and clap Johnson Boller on the back and
assure him that all was well in the best possible world--but for a
little it was enough to sneer smilingly at Boller's bent head.
He, poor fool, fancied that all was over because his infernal wife had
threshed around a bit and gone off clutching poor little Mary's hat--a
funny thing in itself. Instead of getting up and cheering at his
prospective freedom from the matrimonial yoke, Johnson was groaning
there and clawing into his hair; and now, by the way, he was raising his
head and turning toward his old friend.
"Anthony!" Johnson Boller said faintly.
"What is it?"
"You wouldn't pull a thing like that on me?"
"I certainly shall, if you ever try to tell the truth about Miss
Dalton."
"But what did she ever do for me, to let her confounded reputation wreck
my life? All she ever did was to make a female ass of herself by wearing
pants and going to a prize fight and then listening to you. Why should a
thing like that bust up my home?"
Anthony shrugged his shoulders.
"It may not," said he.
"It has!" Johnson Boller said feverishly. "And listen, Anthony! You and
I have to stand together, old man. The girl's out of the way, so that
clears your skirts for a while, but what about Hitchin? What if he calls
in the police this afternoon?"
Anthony laughed; with Mary out of the way he was another man.
"We'll let that take care of itself. For that matter, why not go down
and tell Hitchin the truth and show him what a fool he's making of
himself? He's a gentleman, I suppose; if we swear him to secrecy he's
not likely to talk."
"And if we call him off, then we'll find Bee and tell her the truth,
too?" Johnson Boller asked eagerly. "She's a lady, Anthony. If we swear
her to secrecy, she'll never talk--and maybe we could explain it to the
girl and have her verify what we say, hey?"
Anthony actually yawned and stretched as he arose.
"We'll settle Hitchin first," he smiled. "Come along!"
He lounged out of the flat and to the stairs, Boller hugging close to
his side. He yawned again as he pressed the buzzer of the Hitchin
apartment, and he even smiled condescendingly at the inscrutable
Japanese who answered.
"Mr. Hitchin," said Anthony. "Say that Mr. Fry and Mr. Boller wish to
see him, if you please."
The Japanese shook his head.
"He no home!"
"Out?" said Anthony in some astonishment.
"Yes, sir, li'l while ago," the Oriental said. "He go very quick."
"And he will be back--when?"
"Mr. Hitchin no say, sir!" the Japanese sighed.
Therefore they turned back to the stairs; and as they came to the foot
of the flight Johnson Boller gripped his friend's arm suddenly and
looked whitely at him.
"It's all over!" he said.
"What?"
"The trunk! The trunk she went out in! Didn't he say something about not
sending out anything?"
"That has no connection with his going out!" Anthony snapped, although
some of his insouciance fled.
"Hasn't it, though? Well, it has every connection! He's chased Wilkins
and, long before this, he's called a cop and had him taken in! The whole
thing's over, Anthony. That trunk's in a police station now and they've
opened it--and your Dalton man's daughter is behind the bars as a
suspicious character before this."
Anthony Fry's scowl turned black.
"Can't you see me peaceful, without trying to smash it by babbling a lot
of rot like that?" he demanded angrily. "Wilkins must have the girl
inside her home by this time and----"
"Why should you be peaceful and happy when my home's wrecked?" Johnson
Boller asked hotly.
"We will not discuss it out here," said his host, leading the way
upstairs again.
Dismally he trailed through the door he had left so cheerfully a moment
ago. Johnson Boller trailed after him even more dismally, albeit with
some grim satisfaction at his altered mien.
"We can sit down here and wait now," he stated. "We don't have to do
anything more than that, Anthony. We can figure it all out. Either he
has had the trunk and Wilkins taken in, or he's just determined that our
guilt is cinched. If the former, all creation knows by this time that
Dalton's daughter was up to something--queer. If there's a general alarm
out for her, they'll recognize her when she comes out of that trunk. On
the other hand, if Hitchin has let the trunk go, he's having warrants
sworn out by this time and they're dusting off the seats in the nearest
patrol-wagon. Either Dalton gets you and probably me, too, or the police
get us. That's all that can happen and----"
"Stop!" Anthony barked. "I don't care a rap what happens, so long as the
girl is not laid open to suspicion, and I don't believe Hitchin or
anybody else is going to contrive that, once Wilkins started to deliver
the trunk. That is my sole concern now--to shield her!"
Having delivered with commendable sentiment, Anthony demonstrated his
entire calm by rising with a nervous jerk, by listening, and finally by
striding to the door of his apartment, which he opened.
Thereafter he stepped back suddenly, for with one searing glance at him
a woman had passed.
She was in the living-room even now, and smiling horribly at Johnson
Boller. She was, in a word, Johnson Boller's wife, and her black eyes
snapped more ominously than before.
"Don't touch me!" she was saying, as Johnson Boller approached with
hands outstretched. "I've come back, but only to tell you!"
"To tell me that you've changed your mind, little pigeon?" Johnson
Boller cried brokenly. "You're going to let Pudgy-wudgy----"
"Faugh!" said the lady, and from her radiated the Spanish grandmother
and all the strain implied--blood lust, vengeance! "No, I've come to
tell you that I mean to make that woman's name a scandal and a byword
from end of town to the other. Not _some_ woman's name, but _the_
woman's name!"
"But----"
"How can I do it?" laughed the different Mrs. Boller. "I've found out
who she is!"