MR. BUD'S DARK HALLWAY
A month passed, and it was not cleared up. Larcher became hopeless of
ever having sight or word of Murray Davenport again. For himself, he
missed the man; for the man, assuming a tragic fate behind the mystery,
he had pity; but his sorrow was keenest for Miss Kenby. No description,
nothing but experience, can inform the reader what was her torment of
mind: to be so impatient of suspense as to cry out as she had done, and
yet perforce to wait hour after hour, day after day, week after week,
in the same unrelieved anxiety,--this prolonged torture is not to be told
in words. She schooled herself against further outcries, but the evidence
of her suffering was no less in her settled look of baffled expectancy,
her fits of mute abstraction, the start of her eyes at any sound of bell
or knock. She clutched back hope as it was slipping away, and would not
surrender uncertainty for its less harrowing follower, despair. She had
resumed, as the probability of immediate news decreased, her former way
of existence, living with her father at the house in lower Fifth Avenue,
where Miss Hill saw her every day except when she went to see Miss Hill,
who denied herself the Horse Show, the football games, and the opera for
the sake of her friend. Larcher called on the Kenbys twice or thrice a
week, sometimes with Edna, sometimes alone.
There was one possibility which Larcher never mentioned to Miss Kenby
in discussing the case. He feared it might fit too well her own secret
thought. That was the possibility of suicide. What could be more
consistent with Davenport's outspoken distaste for life, as he found it,
or with his listless endurance of it, than a voluntary departure from it?
He had never talked suicide, but this, in his state of mind, was rather
an argument in favor of his having acted it. No threatened men live
longer, as a class, than those who have themselves as threateners. It was
true, Larcher had seen in Davenport's copy of Keats, this passage marked:
“... for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death.”
But an unhappy man might endorse that saying without a thought of
possible self-destruction. So, for Davenport's very silence on that way
of escape from his tasteless life, Larcher thought he might have taken
it.
He confided this thought to no less a person than Bagley, some weeks
after the return of that capitalist from Chicago. Two or three times,
meeting by chance, they had briefly discussed the disappearance, each
being more than willing to obtain whatever light the other might be able
to throw on the case. Finally Bagley, to whom Larcher had given his
address, had sent for him to call at the former's rooms on a certain
evening. These rooms proved to be a luxurious set of bachelor apartments
in one of the new tall buildings just off Broadway. Hard wood, stamped
leather, costly rugs, carved furniture, the richest upholstery, the art
of the old world and the inventiveness of the new, had made this a
handsome abode at any time, and a particularly inviting one on a cold
December night. Larcher, therefore, was not sorry he had responded to
the summons. He found Bagley sharing cigars and brandy with another man,
a squat, burly, middle-aged stranger, with a dyed mustache and the dress
and general appearance of a retired hotel-porter, cheap restaurant
proprietor, theatre doorkeeper, or some such useful but not interesting
member of society. This person, for a time, fulfilled the promise of
his looks, of being uninteresting. On being introduced to Larcher as Mr.
Lafferty, he uttered a quick “Howdy,” with a jerk of the head, and
lapsed into a mute regard of tobacco smoke and brandy bottle, which he
maintained while Bagley and Larcher went more fully into the Davenport
case than they had before gone together. Larcher felt that he was being
sounded, but he saw no reason to withhold anything except what related
to Miss Kenby. It was now that he mentioned possible suicide.
“Suicide? Not much,” said Bagley. “A man _would_ be a chump to turn on
the gas with all that money about him. No, sir; it wasn't suicide. We
know that much.”
“You _know_ it?” exclaimed Larcher.
“Yes, we know it. A man don't make the preparations he did, when he's
got suicide on his mind. I guess we might as well put Mr. Larcher on,
Lafferty, do you think?”
“Jess' you say,” replied Mr. Lafferty, briefly.
“You see,” continued Bagley to Larcher, “I sent for you, so's I could
pump you in front of Lafferty here. I'm satisfied you've told all you
know, and though that's absolutely nothing at all--ain't that so,
Lafferty?”
“Yep,--nothin' 'tall.”
“Though it's nothing at all, a fair exchange is no robbery, and I'm
willing for you to know as much as I do. The knowledge won't do you any
good--it hasn't done me any good--but it'll give you an insight into your
friend Davenport. Then you and his other friends, if he's got any, won't
roast me because I claim that he flew the coop and not that somebody did
him for the money. See?”
“Not exactly.”
“All right; then we'll open your eyes. I guess you don't happen to know
who Mr. Lafferty here is, do you?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, he's a central office detective.” (Mr. Lafferty bore Larcher's
look of increased interest with becoming modesty.) “He's been on this
case ever since I came back from Chicago, and by a piece of dumb luck,
he got next to Davenport's trail for part of the day he was last seen.
He'll tell you how far he traced him. It's up to you now, Lafferty.
Speak out.”
Mr. Lafferty, pretending to take as a good joke the attribution of his
discoveries to “dumb luck,” promptly discoursed in a somewhat thick but
rapid voice.
“On the Wednesday morning he was las' seen, he left the house about nine
o'clock, with a package wrapt in brown paper. I lose sight of'm f'r a
couple 'f hours, but I pick'm up again a little before twelve. He's still
got the same package. He goes into a certain department store, and buys
a suit o' clothes in the clothin' department; shirts, socks, an'
underclothes in the gents' furnishin' department; a pair o' shoes in the
shoe department, an' s'mother things in other departments. These he has
all done up in wrappin'-paper, pays fur 'em, and leaves 'em to be called
fur later. He then goes an' has his lunch.”
“Where does he have his lunch?” asked Bagley.
“Never mind where he has his lunch,” said Mr. Lafferty, annoyed. “That's
got no bearin' on the case. After he has his lunch, he goes to a certain
big grocer's and provision dealer's, an' buys a lot o' canned meats and
various provisions,--I can give you a complete list if you want it.”
This last offer, accompanied by a movement of a hand to an inner pocket,
was addressed to Bagley, who declined with the words, “That's all right.
I've seen it before.”
“He has these things all done up in heavy paper, so's to make a dozen'r
so big packages. Then he pays fur 'em, an' leaves 'em to be called fur.
It's late in the afternoon by this time, and comin' on dark. Understand,
he's still got the 'riginal brown paper package with him. The next thing
he does is, he hires a cab, and has himself druv around to the department
store he was at before. He gets the things he bought there, an' puts 'em
on the cab, an' has himself druv on to the grocer's an' provision
dealer's, an' gets the packages he bought there, an' has them put _in_
the cab. The cab's so full o' his parcels now, he's only got just room
fur himself on the back seat. An' then he has the hackman drive to a
place away down-town.”
Mr. Lafferty paused for a moment to wet his throat with brandy and
water. Larcher, who had admired the professional mysteriousness shown
in withholding the names of the stores for the mere sake of reserving
something to secrecy, was now wondering how the detective knew that the
man he had traced was Murray Davenport. He gave voice to his wonder.
“By the description, of course,” replied Mr. Lafferty, with disgust at
Larcher's inferiority of intelligence. “D'yuh s'pose I'd foller a man's
trail as fur as that, if everything didn't tally--face, eyes, nose,
height, build, clo'es, hat, brown paper parcel, everything?”
“Then it's simply marvellous,” said Larcher, with genuine astonishment,
“how you managed to get on his track, and to follow it from place to
place.”
“Oh, it's my business to know how to do them things,” replied Mr.
Lafferty, deprecatingly.
“Your business!” said Bagley. “Dumb luck, I tell you. Can't you see how
it was?” He had turned to Larcher. “The cabman read of Davenport's
disappearance, and putting together the day, and the description in the
papers, and the queer load of parcels, goes and tells the police.
Lafferty is put on the case, pumps the cabman dry, then goes to the
stores where the cab stopped to collect the goods, and finds out the
rest. Only, when he comes to tell the story, he tells the facts not in
their order as he found them out, but in their order as they occurred.”
“You know all about it, Mr. Bagley,” said Lafferty, taking refuge in
jocular irony. “You'd ought 'a' worked up the case yourself.”
“You left Davenport being driven down-town,” Larcher reminded the
detective.
“Yes, an' that about lets me out. The cabman druv 'im to somewhere on
South Street, by the wharves. It was dark by that time, and the driver
didn't notice the exact spot--he just druv along the street till the man
told him to stop, that was his orders,--an' then the man got out, took
out his parcels, an' carried them across the sidewalk into a dark
hallway. Then he paid the cabman, an' the cabman druv off. The last the
cabman seen of 'im, he was goin' into the hallway where his goods were,
an' that's the last any one seen of 'im in New York, as fur as known.
Prob'ly you've got enough imagination to give a guess what became of him
after that.”
“No, I haven't,” said Larcher.
“Jes' think it over. You can put two and two together, can't you? A new
outfit o' clo'es, first of all. Then a stock o' provisions. To make it
easier, I'll tell yuh this much: they was the kind o' provisions people
take on yachts, an' he even admitted to the salesman they was for that
purpose. And then South Street--the wharves; does that mean ships? Does
the whole business mean a voyage? But a man don't have to stock up extry
food if he's goin' by any regular steamer line, does he? What fur, then?
And what kind o' ships lays off South Street? Sailin' ships; them that
goes to South America, an' Asia, and the South Seas, and God knows where
all. Now do you think you can guess?”
“But why would he put his things in a hallway?” queried Larcher.
“To wait fur the boat that was to take 'em out to the vessel late at
night. Why did he wait fur dark to be druv down there? You bet, he was
makin' his flittin' as silent as possible. He'd prob'ly squared it with
a skipper to take 'im aboard on the dead quiet. That's why there ain't
much use our knowin' what vessels sailed about that time. I _do_ know,
but much good we'll get out o' that. What port he gets off at, who'll
ever tell? It'll be sure to be in a country where we ain't got no
extradition treaty. And when this particular captain shows up again at
this port, innocent enough _he'll_ be; _he_ never took no passenger
aboard in the night, an' put 'im off somewheres below the 'quator. I
guess Mr. Bagley can about consider his twenty thousand to the bad,
unless his young friend takes a notion to return to his native land
before he's got it all spent.”
“And that's your belief?” said Larcher to Bagley, “--that he went to some
other country with the money?”
“Absconded,” replied the ready-money man. “Yes; there's nothing else to
believe. At first I thought you might have some notion where he was;
that's what made me send for you. But I see he left you out of his
confidence. So I thought you might as well know his real character.
Lafferty's going to give the result of his investigation to the newspaper
men, anyhow. The only satisfaction I can get is to show the fellow up.”
When Larcher left the presence of Bagley, he carried away no definite
conclusion except that Bagley was an even more detestable animal than he
had before supposed. If the man whom Lafferty had traced was really
Davenport, then indeed the theory of suicide was shaken. There remained
the possibility of murder or flight. The purchases indeed seemed to
indicate flight, especially when viewed in association with South Street.
South Street? Why, that was Mr. Bud's street. And a hallway? Mr. Bud's
room was approached through a hallway. Mr. Bud had left town the day
before that Wednesday; but if Davenport had made frequent visits there
for sketching, was it not certain that he had had access to the room in
Mr. Bud's absence? Larcher had knocked at that room two days after the
Wednesday, and had got no answer, but this was no evidence that Davenport
might not have made some use of the room in the meanwhile. If he had made
use of it, he might have left some trace, some possible clew to his
subsequent movements. Larcher, thinking thus on his way from Bagley's
apartment-house, resolved to pay another visit to Mr. Bud's quarters
before saying anything about Bagley's theory to any one.
He was busy the next day until the afternoon was well advanced. As soon
as he got free, he took himself to South Street; ascended the dark stairs
from the hallway, and knocked loudly at Mr. Bud's door. There was no more
answer than there had been six weeks before; nothing to do but repair to
the saloon below. The same bartender was on duty.
“Is Mr. Bud in town, do you know?” inquired Larcher, having observed the
usual preliminaries to interrogation.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“When was he here last?”
“Not for a long time. 'Most two months, I guess.”
“But I was here five or six weeks ago, and he'd been gone only three days
then.”
“Then you know more about it than I do; so don't ast me.”
“He hasn't been here since I was?”
“He hasn't.”
“And my friend who was here with me the first time--has he been here
since?”
“Not while I've been.”
“When is Mr. Bud likely to be here again?”
“Give it up. I ain't his private secretary.”
Just as Larcher was turning away, the street door opened, and in walked a
man with a large hand-bag, who proved to be none other than Mr. Bud
himself.
“I was just looking for you,” cried Larcher.
“That so?” replied Mr. Bud, cheerily, grasping Larcher's hand. “I just
got into town. It's blame cold out.” He set his hand-bag on the bar,
saying to the bartender, “Keep my gripsack back there awhile, Mick, will
yuh? I got to git somethin' into me 'fore I go up-stairs. Gimme a plate
o' soup on that table, an' the whisky bottle. Will you join me, sir? Two
plates o' soup, an' two glasses with the whisky bottle. Set down, set
down, sir. Make yourself at home.”
Larcher obeyed, and as soon as the old man's overcoat was off, and the
old man ready for conversation, plunged into his subject.
“Do you know what's become of my friend Davenport?” he asked, in a low
tone.
“No. Hope he's well and all right. What makes you ask like that?”
“Haven't you read of his disappearance?”
“Disappearance? The devil! Not a word! I been too busy to read the
papers. When was it?”
“Several weeks ago.” Larcher recited the main facts, and finished thus:
“So if there isn't a mistake, he was last seen going into your hallway.
Did he have a key to your room?”
“Yes, so's he could draw pictures while I was away. My hallway? Let's
go and see.”
In some excitement, without waiting for partiallars, the farmer rose
and led the way out. It was already quite dark.
“Oh, I don't expect to find him in your room,” said Larcher, at his
heels. “But he may have left some trace there.”
Mr. Bud turned into the hallway, of which the door was never locked till
late at night. The hallway was not lighted, save as far as the rays of a
street-lamp went across the threshold. Plunging into the darkness with
haste, closely followed by Larcher, the old man suddenly brushed against
some one coming from the stairs.
“Excuse _me_” said Mr. Bud. “I didn't see anybody. It's all-fired dark in
here.”
“It _is_ dark,” replied the stranger, and passed out to the street.
Larcher, at the words of the other two, had stepped back into a corner
to make way. Mr. Bud turned to look at the stranger; and the stranger,
just outside the doorway, turned to look at Mr. Bud. Then both went their
different directions, Mr. Bud's direction being up the stairs.
“Must be a new lodger,” said Mr. Bud. “He was comin' from these stairs
when I run agin 'im. I never seen 'im before.”
“You can't truly say you saw him even then,” replied Larcher, guiding
himself by the stair wall.
“Oh, he turned around outside, an' I got the street-light on him. A
good-lookin' young chap, to be roomin' on these premises.”
“I didn't see his face,” replied Larcher, stumbling.
“Look out fur yur feet. Here we are at the top.”
Mr. Bud groped to his door, and fumblingly unlocked it. Once inside his
room, he struck a match, and lighted one of the two gas-burners.
“Everything same as ever,” said Mr. Bud, looking around from the centre
of the room. “Books, table, chairs, stove, bed made up same's I left
it--”
“Hello, what's this?” exclaimed Larcher, having backed against a hollow
metallic object on the floor and knocked his head against a ropey,
rubbery something in the air.
“That's a gas-heater--Mr. Davenport made me a present of it. It's
convenienter than the old stove. He wanted to pay me fur the gas it
burned when he was here sketchin', but I wouldn't stand fur that.”
The ropey, rubbery something was the tube connecting the heater with the
gas-fixture.
“I move we light 'er up, and make the place comfortable; then we can talk
this matter over,” continued Mr. Bud. “Shet the door, an' siddown.”
Seated in the waves of warmth from the gas-stove, the two went into the
details of the case.
Larcher not withholding the theory of Mr. Lafferty, and even touching
briefly on Davenport's misunderstanding as to Florence Kenby.
“Well,” said Mr. Bud, thoughtfully, “if he reely went into a hallway in
these parts, it would prob'ly be the hallway he was acquainted with. But
he wouldn't stay in the hallway. He'd prob'ly come to this room. An' he'd
no doubt bring his parcels here. But one thing's certain: if he did that,
he took 'em all away again. He might 'a' left somethin' in the closet, or
under the bed, or somewheres.”
A search was made of the places named, as well as of drawers and
wash-stand, but Mr. Bud found no additions to his property. He even
looked in the coal-box,--and stooped and fished something out, which he
held up to the light. “Hello, I don't reco'nize this!”
Larcher uttered an exclamation. “He _has_ been here! That's the note-book
cover the money was in. He had it the night before he was last seen. I
could swear to it.”
“It's all dirty with coal-dust,” cautioned Mr. Bud, as Larcher seized it
for closer examination.
“It proves he's been here, at least. We've got him traced further than
the detective, anyhow.”
“But not so very fur, at that. What if he was here? Mind, I ain't
a-sayin' one thing ur another,--but if he _was_ contemplatin' a voyage,
an' had fixed to be took aboard late at night, what better place to wait
fur the ship's boat than just this here?”
“But the money must have been handled here--taken out of this cover, and
the cover thrown away. Suppose somebody _had_ seen him display that money
during the day; _had_ shadowed him here, followed him to this room, taken
him by surprise?”
“No signs of a struggle, fur as I c'n see.”
“But a single blow with a black-jack, from behind, would do the
business.”
“An' what about the--remains?”
“The river is just across the street. This would occur at night,
remember.”
Mr. Bud shook his head. “An' the load o' parcels--what 'ud become o'
them?”
“The criminal might convey them away, too, at his leisure during the
night. They would be worth something.”
Evidently to test the resourcefulness of the young man's imagination, Mr.
Bud continued, “But why should the criminal go to the trouble o' removin'
the body from here?”
“To delay its discovery, or create an impression of suicide if it were
found,” ventured Larcher, rather lamely. “The criminal would naturally
suppose that a chambermaid visited the room every day.”
“The criminal 'ud risk less by leavin' the body right here; an' it don't
stand to reason that, after makin' such a haul o' money, he'd take any
chances f'r the sake o' the parcels. No; your the'ry's got as much agin'
it, as the detective's has fur it. It's built on nothin' but random
guesswork. As fur me, I'd rather the young man did get away with the
money,--you say the other fellow'd done him out o' that much, anyhow.
I'd rather that than somebody else got away with him.”
“So would I--in the circumstances,” confessed Larcher.
Mr. Bud proposed that they should go down to the saloon and “tackle the
soup.” Larcher could offer no reason for remaining where they were. As
they rose to go, the young man looked at his fingers, soiled from the
coal-dust on the covers.
“There's a bath-room on this floor; we c'n wash our hands there,” said
Mr. Bud, and, after closing up his own apartment, led the way, by the
light of matches, to a small cubicle at the rear of the passage, wherein
were an ancient wood-encased bathtub, two reluctant water-taps, and other
products of a primitive age of plumbing. From this place, discarding the
aid of light, Mr. Bud and his visitor felt their way down-stairs.
“Yes,” spoke Mr. Bud, as they descended in the darkness, “one 'ud almost
imagine it was true about his bein' pursued with bad luck. To think of
the young lady turnin' out staunch after all, an' his disappearin' just
in time to miss the news! That beats me!”
“And how do you suppose the young lady feels about it?” said Larcher. “It
breaks my heart to have nothing to report, when I see her. She's really
an angel of a girl.”
They emerged to the street, and Mr. Bud's mind recurred to the stranger
he had run against in the hallway. When they had reseated themselves in
the saloon, and the soup had been brought, the old man said to the
bartender:
“I see there's a new roomer, Mick?”
“Where?” asked Mick.
“In the house here. Somewheres up-stairs.”
“If there is, he's a new one on me,” said Mick, decidedly.
“What? _Ain't_ there a new roomer come in since I was here last?”
“No, sir, there ain't there.”
“Well, that's funny,” said Mr. Bud, looking to Larcher for comment. But
Larcher had no thought just then for any subject but Davenport, and to
that he kept the farmer's attention during the rest of their talk. When
the talk was finished, simultaneously with the soup, it had been agreed
that Mr. Bud should “nose around” thereabouts for any confirmation of
Lafferty's theory, or any trace of Davenport, and should send for Larcher
if any such turned up.
“I'll be in town a week ur two,” said the old man, at parting. “I
been kep' so long up-country this time, 'count o' the turkey
trade--Thanksgivin' and Chris'mas, y'know. I do considerable in poultry.”
But some days passed, and Larcher heard nothing from Mr. Bud. A few of
the newspapers published Detective Lafferty's unearthings, before Larcher
had time to prepare Miss Kenby for them. She hailed them with gladness as
pointing to a likelihood that Davenport was alive; but she ignored all
implications of probable guilt on his part. That the amount of Bagley's
loss through Davenport was no more than Bagley's rightful debt to
Davenport, Larcher had already taken it on himself delicately to inform
her. She had not seemed to think that fact, or any fact, necessary to her
lover's justification.