A SAFE MAN
There was consternation in the Powell household when Miss Loring arrived
without Elsie.
"Where is she?" cried Gerty.
"Here, isn't she?" returned the bewildered nurse.
"No, of course not! Why did you think so?"
And then Nurse Loring told how she had received a message from Elsie
saying she had been obliged to return to New York suddenly, that she had
gone with some friends, and for Miss Loring to follow as soon as she
could pack off.
"Did she write you a note?" asked Mrs. Powell.
"No; the word was brought by a man."
"What sort of a man?"
"A decent appearing person, who said he was the chauffeur of Miss
Powell's friends with whom she had gone."
"What did he look like?"
"Ordinary looking, like a servant, but respectful and well-mannered, and
he had a great many gold filled teeth. Do you know him?"
"No; and I think there's something wrong. Elsie never would have done
such a thing. She hasn't any friends down there with their car,--that I
know of. Has she, mother?"
"No," Mrs. Powell agreed. "There is something wrong." She clasped her
hands nervously. "Do send for Mr. Coe, Gerty."
Coley Coe came on the jump, and listened to the tale with a grave face.
"I should say there was!" he exclaimed, "something _very_ wrong! That
girl has been kidnapped and the villains mean to keep her till after her
birthday! I've been fearing some such performance, but I thought she was
safe with the nurse."
Miss Loring spoke quickly: "Oh, I was so careful of her! I never let her
out of my sight for a moment, but if I had known there was any danger of
this sort, I should have been doubly careful! Why didn't you tell me?"
"My own suspicions were not definite enough," said Coe. "Nobody blames
you, Miss Loring, you could not help it. In the crowd, the trick was
easily turned. Now, Mrs. Powell, don't cry so; you need fear no harm for
your daughter, no bodily harm, I mean. She will likely be treated with
greatest consideration and kindness,--but--"
"But I don't understand," Gerty looked doubtful,--"why should any one
want to kidnap Elsie?"
"It's a moil, Mrs. Seaman," Coe said, shaking his long thatch out of his
eyes. "I'm not yet discouraged, but I'm getting to see that we're up
against not only a very clever villain but an utterly unscrupulous one."
"Aren't all villains that?"
"Not entirely. Some draw the line at certain crimes. But this
master-fiend, for that's what he is--"
"Do you know him?" Gerty asked eagerly.
"No, I don't! I know so much about him,--I've so many sidelights on him,
so much evidence against him, and yet I lack the one connecting link
that would give me his identity. I have my suspicions--but, oh, there
were some things I wanted to ask Miss Powell!"
"Perhaps I can tell you, she talked over everything with me."
"No; I only wanted her to tell me over again the little things she
picked up that first morning at the Webbs. You know the white marks on
the floor? Well, they're explained. Miss Webb was in the room that
evening, but it was before her brother came in, and she, foolishly
enough! tried to conceal the fact, lest she be suspected of having
Kimball Webb in hiding!"
"She was suspected."
"Yes, but she isn't now. At least, not by me. That speech, 'if it should
be!' referred to spooks; and I had her trailed, you know, and though she
was reported as going on mysterious secret errands, they were,--what do
you suppose?"
"Oh, what?"
"Trips to a Beauty Doctor!"
"Poor Henrietta! It's pathetic, but I can't help laughing. And Mrs.
Webb, she went on secret errands, too, didn't she?"
"Yes; and hers were to _séances_ with people that she didn't want to
acknowledge as her friends! Common people,--as mediums usually are, and
some cronies that Mrs. Webb only cultivated in the pursuit of her
psychic researches! No, there's no reason to suspect that the mother or
sister know where Webb is. Nor, do I see any chance of finding his
hiding place before the thirtieth. After that, I'm very sure he will be
freed."
"But now Elsie's gone, too!"
"Yes, and I've no doubt, taken away by the same people."
A few questions asked of the nurse gave Coe no information concerning
the man with the gold teeth.
"Oho!" he cried; "it is the same gang, then! We _must_ get them! Do
describe him further, Miss Loring!"
But her detailed description was only such as called up a picture of an
average looking man, large, strong, with dark hair and eyes, healthy
colour, and with no striking characteristic but the unusual number of
gold filled teeth in the front part of his lower jaw.
"Enough to identify him," said Coe, "but not enough to find him! We
could scour the dentists' records, but we'd have to visit thousands, and
then, maybe, fail because the work was done in another city! If we only
had one more line on him."
"Maybe he's the Sherman's man," mused Gerty.
"What! What's that?" said Coe, quickly.
"Why, Elsie picked up a paper in Kim's room, and it was one of those
little toothpick wrappers, tissue, you know, and it was stamped
'Sherman's.'"
"Yes, the big restaurant."
"Yes; now Kimball Webb never went to Sherman's in his life! I know he
didn't, and Elsie says she knows he didn't. He isn't that sort of a
man."
"Why, Sherman's is all right."
"Yes, for the class of people that like it. But Kim is fastidious and
Elsie says she knows of his prejudice against Sherman's. Of course she's
been out with him so much she knows his tastes."
"And this paper was in Webb's room! When?"
"Elsie found it the day after or a few days after his disappearance. She
threw it away--"
"That doesn't matter, the fact of its being there is the important
thing! You see, the man who got in the room may have dropped it--"
"How could any man get in the room! You're crazy!"
"'Deed I'm not! Some man _did_ get in that room, and carry off Kimball
Webb while Webb was unconscious! Now, you put that away in your mind,
and keep it there, for it's true!"
"How did he get in?"
"Mrs. Seaman, if any one ever asks me that question again, I'm going to
run away! I don't know _how_ he got in,--but, he _did_ get in,--and, if
this interests you, I'm going to find out how he got in! But even more
than that, I want to find the man! That's the objective point. To find
how he got in, would be fearfully interesting and would gratify my
overweening curiosity,--I think overweening is the word for it! Anyhow,
it's the biggest order of curiosity I've ever experienced in my career!
But, overweeninger yet, is my desire to get the man! It's an obsession
with me,--a craze! My fingers itch for him,--and I feel he's so
near--and yet so far! But this little old toothpick paper may be a clue!
You know what flimsy little bits they are, how they cling in a pocket
and are easily flirted out with a handkerchief or such matter!"
"Wouldn't it be a good deal of a coincidence if your man, a frequenter
of Sherman's, left the paper,--as one might a visiting card?"
"Don't be sarcastic, Mrs. Seaman!" Coe smiled good-naturedly. "And the
coincidence wouldn't be so extraordinarily strange! They say, a man
can't enter and leave a room, without making half a dozen at least
ineffaceable marks of his presence there. Now, the only reason I doubted
the entrance of my man, as you call him, was the fact that I hadn't been
able to find any trace,--not even the slightest, of his visit there.
That made me think Webb might have been lured out,--stop! don't you dare
ask me how he got out. We know he did get out,--and as I told you I'm
going to find out how. Well, this little paper changes the whole map of
my cogitations. Now, do you know of anybody who does go to Sherman's?"
"I do not. My friends don't care for the place."
"Probably not; but I'll bet it's the great little old rendezvous of
Friend Gold-teeth, and his boss."
"Oh, he isn't the principal, then?"
"Surely not! The man higher up is a big-brained chap, and working for
big stakes! Sherman's! Ho, ho! Pardon my unholy glee, but I'm 'way up
over this thing! And now I'll skip. Look for me when you see me!"
Coe went away and went straight to Wallace Courtney's.
He began by saying frankly, "Do you want to help me to find Kimball
Webb, or don't you?"
"I do," returned Courtney, "I'm not a heathen! I'm working on my hay
while the sun shines, but I'd do anything in my power to find Webb even
if it meant the failure of my masterpiece. You know, I think he had a
spell of divine afflatus and went away to finish his own play by
himself."
"Leaving a bride, practically at the altar!"
"Oh, I think Elsie's in the secret. She knows where he is! I shouldn't
wonder if they were married before he went,--that would make her fortune
all right."
"Well, what do you think of this? Elsie's kidnapped too, now!"
"That carries out my theory. She's gone to him."
"Oh, you're impossible! Well, tell me this, and I'll scat. Do you know
anybody who frequents Sherman's? Or who goes there occasionally?"
"I should hope not! Why?"
"Oh, don't be so supercilious. Sherman's is decent if it is popular."
"I know it. I've been there. It's just a big, gay dance hall. No, I
don't number any of its regular patrons among my friends. Kimball Webb
was not one, if that's what you want to know."
"That isn't what I want to know. Don't any of your crowd go there at
times,--anybody who was at Webb's dinner?"
"Why, Coe, I'd tell you if I could. I suppose every chap at that dinner
has been inside of Sherman's, but I doubt if many of them have been more
than once or twice as a mere matter of curiosity. If that's all you're
asking me, clear out, I'm busy."
Coe was about to clear out, when Lulie Lloyd stopped him.
"I know somebody who goes to Sherman's a lot," she said; "he sometimes
takes me there."
"Thank you, Miss Lloyd," Coe said, politely, "but I mean some one of Mr.
Webb's friends."
"So do I," said the girl, her colour rising and her expression a little
defiant.
"Oh," and Coley Coe began to see things, as in a glass darkly. "Some one
who was at Mr. Webb's dinner?"
"Yes," she spoke almost sullenly.
"May I ask his name?"
"I'll tell you, but I don't want Mr. Courtney to hear."
"I don't want to," the busy playwright returned, and Lulie Lloyd leaned
over and whispered a name into the ear of Coleman Coe.
He nodded his head, as one who was not overwhelmingly surprised, and
continued in a low tone, "And do you know a man with ever so many gold
filled teeth in his lower jaw?"
"Do I?" she cried. "Why, he's that man's valet!"
"And a friend of yours?"
"He was! He isn't now!"
"Ah,--he went back on you?"
"He did all of that,--and then some!"
And then Lulie Lloyd looked frightened, looked as if she regretted
deeply what she had involuntarily blurted out, and she returned to her
typewriter and began madly pounding the keys.
But Coe had learned enough.
He left quickly, and hopping on a street car, he arrived at the house
where lived the man whose name Lulie had whispered to him. The man whose
valet had the auriferous teeth.
The man he asked for was out, and though not an easy matter, Coe
succeeded by dint of threats and bribes to gain admission to the room
where, he said, he would await his host's return.
Left alone Coleman Coe proceeded to ransack the desk, which stood,
carelessly open.
He ran rapidly through a sheaf of letters and bills, now and then
shaking his feathery forelock wildly, in mad bursts of satisfaction.
The bills, paid and unpaid, were illuminating. The letters even more so,
and Coe grew more and more beaming of face as he proceeded.
He kept a wary eye on the door, and at last finding an old letter that
specially interested him, he read it three times, though this was the
quickly mastered gist of it:
"I think Simeon Breese will be a _safe_ man for you."
The address of the said Simeon followed, and this short bit of
information seemed to afford Coley the deepest pleasure.
The underscoring of the word safe, particularly entertained him, and he
laughed as at a great joke.
"I knew it!" he cried, though silently. "I knew it!"
Then, replacing such papers as he had visibly disarranged, Coe sauntered
forth and left the house.
"Tell him I couldn't wait any longer," he said, casually to the door man
and went his way.
His way took him to the establishment of Simeon Breese, Safe Maker.
"You make safes?" was Coe's totally unnecessary query.
"Yes, sir," admitted Breese, "what can I do for you?"
"I don't exactly want a safe," Coe said, with what was meant to be an
ingratiating wink. "I,--that is," he looked embarrassed, "I want a sort
of a--well, a very confidential matter."
"I don't understand, sir."
There was no invitation to proceed, but Coe went on: "I want a secret
entrance built--"
"Whatever made you come to me on such an errand, then? My business is
building safes,--not building means to rob them."
"Nonsense, that's not the idea. I merely want a private passage from one
room to another in my house,--"
"You're way off, sir. You've come to the wrong place, entirely. Good
morning, sir."
"But,--stay,--wait a minute. I'm recommended here by--" And Coe
whispered in the ear of Breese the same name Lulie Lloyd had whispered
to him.
Breese looked utterly blank.
"Don't know your friend, sir; never heard of him. Good morning!"
This last dismissal was accompanied by a glance that meant a very
definite invitation to leave, and as there seemed small use in staying
Coe left. But he was disappointed. He had hoped to get a line on the
secret entrance which he knew gave into Kimball Webb's room.
One forlorn hope came into his breast. He would try to get hold of the
valet, the gold-toothed valet, who had played fast and loose with Lulie
Lloyd. This showed him to be a man of not unimpeachable morals, and he
might be useful.
He went boldly back to the house he had so recently left, and inquired
if his friend had yet returned.
"No, sir," the imperturbable doorman informed him.
"Then is his man in,--his valet?"
"Bass? That he ain't. He's left."
"He has? How long ago?"
"Oh, a matter of a couple of months or more now."
Ah! Not a great discrepancy between that and the date of Kimball Webb's
disappearance!
"Funny looking man, Bass," Coe said, casually.
"All right, I should say."
"Queer teeth, at least."
"Yes," the other admitted. "I shouldn't care to carry round such an El
Dorado, but Bass is rather proud of it."
"Well, we're all more or less proud of something. You don't know where
Bass hangs out now?"
"I don't."
Coe sighed and turned away.
He had so little to work on. That ridiculous toothpick paper,--Webb
might easily have dropped that himself. Many a man would go to Sherman's
without the knowledge of his sweetheart, and think it no crime.
And the safe builder seemed to dwindle to even greater insignificance.
For if he hadn't built the secret entrance which _had_ to be in
existence, who had, and how was Coe to find him.
There was only one answer to it all. Coleman Coe was up against the
necessity,--the actual bare necessity of finding that entrance for
himself. No matter whether he _could_ do it, or not, it had to be done,
and he had to do it.
As he had previously argued, the finding of the secret didn't prove the
perpetrator of it, nor did it produce Kimball Webb,--but these things
might result from the discovery of how he was taken away, and anyway,
there was no other way to find out.
The master mind of the villain who took him was so clever, so
diabolically canny, there was nothing to work on or to work with.
And, now, Elsie was gone,--there was added necessity for hasty action
and result.
The motive, Coe had long ago decided, was the fortune. Just how that
affected the case he wasn't sure, but he felt an unshakable conviction
that had it not been for the freak will left by Miss Elizabeth Powell
there would have been no disappearance of either the bridegroom or the
bride.
This naturally turned his mind to Joe Allison. But he had long ago
ceased to suspect Joe. He had, at first, but now he knew the chap, and
it was impossible to connect him with such a crime as abduction to gain
a fortune. Allison was money-mad, that Coe admitted,--but, well, he
wouldn't put it on Joe till he had to.
He decided he'd go to the room of Kimball Webb and once again make those
hopeless rounds of walls, ceiling and floor; doors and windows; chimney
and bathroom window, which were all the points to be examined.
He asked Miss Webb a few preliminary questions. How long had they lived
in the house, and such things as that.
This led nowhere. How could it possibly help to know they had lived
there six years; to know where they had lived in Boston; to know when
Kimball first met Elsie Powell; to learn why the Webbs didn't fully
approve of the match; all these things were as chaff which didn't even
show which way the wind blew.
And Miss Webb's attitude had greatly changed since the last time he
talked with her.
She had now begun to despair of ever seeing her brother again.
With a womanly injustice she was inclined to blame Elsie for the whole
trouble, but when Coe told her that Elsie, too, was mysteriously
missing, she saw the thing as he did, that a gang or at least a pair of
able and ingenious villains were at work.
Coe was tempted to tell her of the valet, Bass, and his master, but
concluded to wait a little longer.
He asked for a talk with the two men servants, who had broken into
Kimball's room that morning, and this being willingly granted, he asked
them again of any point or hint they might remember that hadn't yet been
brought.
"No, sir," said Hollis thoughtfully, "I've had all sorts of notions, but
they've all been wrong, and sometimes I'm ready to agree with Mrs. Webb
herself that it's the spirits as done it."
"Rubbish!" Coe observed, and Hollis really agreed, though he had no
wiser suggestion to make.
"How long have you been here?" Coe asked, idly.
"Two years, sir."
"And have you seen or heard anything mysterious?"
"No; not myself, sir. But I've heard the other servants' stories."
"So have I," groaned Coe, wearily. "I've heard the tales of moans and
groans that grew weirder each time,--the tales did, I mean. But I've
heard nothing definite. Have you, Oscar?"
"No, sir," said the chauffeur, a taciturn chap. "Nor I've never seen
anything myself, nor heard anything. But, Mr. Coe, everybody laughs at
this, so I haven't harped on it. You know I did smell bananas as I
opened that door, that morning, and I'd swear to that on a stack of
Bibles!"
"Bananas!"
"Yes, sir. And Mr. Kimball Webb didn't care for bananas. I mean he
wouldn't think of having them in his bedroom to eat! He never did things
like that. Now, doesn't that smell mean something?"
"It's queer, but I can't see any indicative evidence in it."
"No, sir, I s'pose not. But I'd like to know what made it. Maybe ghosts
eat bananas."