“Poor fellow—straight through the heart.”
“Were there any powder marks?” queried Miss Cornelia.
“No—and the clothing was not burned. He was apparently shot from some
little distance—and I should say from above.”
The detective received this information without the change of a muscle
in his face. He turned to Beresford—resuming his attack on Dale from
another angle.
“Beresford, did Fleming tell you why he came here tonight?”
Beresford considered the question.
“No. He seemed in a great hurry, said Miss Ogden had telephoned him,
and asked me to drive him over.”
“Why did you come up to the house?”
“We-el,” said Beresford with seeming candor, “I thought it was putting
rather a premium on friendship to keep me sitting out in the rain all
night, so I came up the drive—and, by the way!” He snapped his fingers
irritatedly, as if recalling some significant incident that had slipped
his memory, and drew a battered object from his pocket. “I picked this
up, about a hundred feet from the house,” he explained. “A man’s watch.
It was partly crushed into the ground, and, as you see, it’s stopped
running.”
The detective took the object and examined it carefully. A man’s
open-face gold watch, crushed and battered in as if it had been
trampled upon by a heavy heel.
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Stopped running at ten-thirty.”
Beresford went on, with mounting excitement.
“I was using my pocket-flash to find my way and what first attracted my
attention was the ground—torn up, you know, all around it. Then I saw
the watch itself. Anybody here recognize it?”
The detective silently held up the watch so that all present could
examine it. He waited. But if anyone in the party recognized the
watch—no one moved forward to claim it.
“You didn’t hear any evidence of a struggle, did you?” went on
Beresford. “The ground looked as if a fight had taken place. Of course
it might have been a dozen other things.”
Miss Cornelia started.
“Just about ten-thirty Lizzie heard somebody cry out, in the grounds,”
she said.
The detective looked Beresford over till the latter grew a little
uncomfortable.
“I don’t suppose it has any bearing on the case,” admitted the latter
uneasily. “But it’s interesting.”
The detective seemed to agree. At least he slipped the watch in his
pocket.
“Do you always carry a flashlight, Mr. Beresford?” asked Miss Cornelia
a trifle suspiciously.
“Always at night, in the car.” His reply was prompt and certain.
“This is all you found?” queried the detective, a curious note in his
voice.
“Yes.” Beresford sat down, relieved. Miss Cornelia followed his
example. Another clue had led into a blind alley, leaving the mystery
of the night’s affairs as impenetrable as ever.
“Some day I hope to meet the real estate agent who promised me that I
would sleep here as I never slept before!” she murmured acridly. “He’s
right! I’ve slept with my clothes on every night since I came!”
As she ended, Billy darted in from the hall, his beady little black
eyes gleaming with excitement, a long, wicked-looking butcher knife in
his hand.
“Key, kitchen door, please!” he said, addressing his mistress.
“Key?” said Miss Cornelia, startled. “What for?”
For once Billy’s polite little grin was absent from his countenance.
“Somebody outside trying to get in,” he chattered. “I see knob turn,
so,” he illustrated with the butcher knife, “and so—three times.”
The detective’s hand went at once to his revolver.
“You’re sure of that, are you?” he said roughly to Billy.
“Sure, I sure!”
“Where’s that hysterical woman Lizzie?” queried Anderson. “She may get
a bullet in her if she’s not careful.”
“She see too. She shut in closet—say prayers, maybe,” said Billy,
without a smile.
The picture was a ludicrous one but not one of the little group
laughed.
“Doctor, have you a revolver?” Anderson seemed to be going over the
possible means of defense against this new peril.
“No.”
“How about you, Beresford?”
Beresford hesitated.
“Yes,” he admitted finally. “Always carry one at night in the country.”
The statement seemed reasonable enough but Miss Cornelia gave him a
sharp glance of mistrust, nevertheless.
The detective seemed to have more confidence in the young idler.
“Beresford, will you go with this Jap to the kitchen?” as Billy, grimly
clutching his butcher knife, retraced his steps toward the hall. “If
anyone’s working at the knob—shoot through the door. I’m going round to
take a look outside.”
Beresford started to obey. Then he paused.
“I advise you not to turn the doorknob yourself, then,” he said
flippantly.
The detective nodded. “Much obliged,” he said, with a grin. He ran
lightly into the alcove and tiptoed out of the terrace door, closing
the door behind him. Beresford and Billy departed to take up their
posts in the kitchen. “I’ll go with you, if you don’t mind—” and Jack
Bailey had followed them, leaving Miss Cornelia and Dale alone with the
Doctor. Miss Cornelia, glad of the opportunity to get the Doctor’s
theories on the mystery without Anderson’s interference, started to
question him at once.
“Doctor.”
“Yes.” The Doctor turned, politely.
“Have _you_ any theory about this occurrence to-night?” She watched him
eagerly as she asked the question.
He made a gesture of bafflement.
“None whatever—it’s beyond me,” he confessed.
“And yet you warned me to leave this house,” said Miss Cornelia
cannily. “You didn’t have any reason to believe that the situation was
even as serious as it has proved to be?”
“I did the perfectly obvious thing when I warned you,” said the Doctor
easily. “Those letters made a distinct threat.”
Miss Cornelia could not deny the truth in his words. And yet she felt
decidedly unsatisfied with the way things were progressing.
“You said Fleming had probably been shot from above?” she queried,
thinking hard.
The Doctor nodded. “Yes.”
“Have you a pocket-flash, Doctor?” she asked him suddenly.
“Why—yes—” The Doctor did not seem to perceive the significance of the
query. “A flashlight is more important to a country Doctor than—castor
oil,” he added, with a little smile.
Miss Cornelia decided upon an experiment. She turned to Dale.
“Dale, you said you saw a white light shining down from above?”
“Yes,” said Dale in a minor voice.
Miss Cornelia rose.
“May I borrow your flashlight, Doctor? Now that fool detective is out
of the way,” she continued some what acidly, “I want to do something.”
The Doctor gave her his flashlight with a stare of bewilderment. She
took it and moved into the alcove.
“Doctor, I shall ask you to stand at the foot of the small staircase,
facing up.”
“Now?” queried the Doctor with some reluctance.
“Now, please.”
The Doctor slowly followed her into the alcove and took up the position
she assigned him at the foot of the stairs.
“Now, Dale,” said Miss Cornelia briskly, “when I give the word, you put
out the lights here—and then tell me when I have reached the point on
the staircase from which the flashlight seemed to come. All ready?”
Two silent nods gave assent. Miss Cornelia left the room to seek the
second floor by the main staircase and then slowly return by the alcove
stairs, her flashlight poised, in her reconstruction of the events of
the crime. At the foot of the alcove stairs the Doctor waited uneasily
for her arrival. He glanced up the stairs—were those her footsteps now?
He peered more closely into the darkness.
An expression of surprise and apprehension came over his face.
He glanced swiftly at Dale—was she watching him? No—she sat in her
chair, musing. He turned back toward the stairs and made a frantic,
insistent gesture—“Go back, go back!” it said, plainer than words,
to—Something—in the darkness by the head of the stairs. Then his face
relaxed, he gave a noiseless sigh of relief.
Dale, rousing from her brown study, turned out the floor lamp by the
table and went over to the main light switch, awaiting Miss Cornelia’s
signal to plunge the room in darkness. The Doctor stole, another glance
at her—had his gestures been observed?—apparently not.
Unobserved by either, as both waited tensely for Miss Cornelia’s
signal, a Hand stole through the broken pane of the shattered French
window behind their backs and fumbled for the knob which unlocked the
window-door. It found the catch—unlocked it—the window-door swung open,
noiselessly—just enough to admit a crouching figure that cramped itself
uncomfortably behind the settee which Dale and the Doctor had placed to
barricade those very doors. When it had settled itself, unperceived, in
its lurking place—the Hand stole out again—closed the window-door,
relocked it.
Hand or claw? Hand of man or woman or paw of beast? In the name of
God—_whose hand?_
Miss Cornelia’s voice from the head of the stairs broke the silence.
“All right! Put out the lights!”
Dale pressed the switch. Heavy darkness. The sound of her own
breathing. A mutter from the Doctor. Then, abruptly, a white, piercing
shaft of light cut the darkness of the stairs—horribly reminiscent of
that other light-shaft that had signaled Fleming’s doom.
“Was it here?” Miss Cornelia’s voice came muffledly from the head of
the stairs.
Dale considered. “Come down a little,” she said. The white spot of
light wavered, settled on the Doctor’s face.
“I hope you haven’t a weapon,” the Doctor called up the stairs with an
unsuccessful attempt at jocularity.
Miss Cornelia descended another step.
“How’s this?”
“That’s about right,” said Dale uncertainly. Miss Cornelia was
satisfied.
“Lights, please.” She went up the stairs again to see if she could
puzzle out what course of escape the man who had shot Fleming had taken
after his crime—if it had been a man.
Dale switched on the living-room lights with a sense of relief. The
reconstruction of the crime had tried her sorely. She sat down to
recover her poise.
“Doctor! I’m so frightened!” she confessed.
The Doctor at once assumed his best manner of professional reassurance.
“Why, my dear child?” he asked lightly. “Because you happened to be in
the room when a crime was committed?”
“But he has a perfect case against me,” sighed Dale.
“That’s absurd!”
“No.”
“_You don’t ,mean?_” said the Doctor aghast.
Dale looked at him with horror in her face.
“I didn’t kill him!” she insisted anew. “But, you know the piece of
blue-print you found in his hand?”
“Yes,” from the Doctor tensely.
Dale’s nerves, too bitterly tested, gave way at last under the strain
of keeping her secret. She felt that she must confide in someone or
perish. The Doctor was kind and thoughtful—more than that, he was an
experienced man of the world—if he could not advise her, who could?
Besides, a Doctor was in many ways like a priest—both sworn to keep
inviolate the secrets of their respective confessionals.
“There was another piece of blue-print, a larger piece—” said Dale
slowly, “I tore it from him just before—”
The Doctor seemed greatly excited by her words. But he controlled
himself swiftly.
“Why did you do such a thing?”
“Oh, I’ll explain that later,” said Dale tiredly, only too glad to be
talking the matter out at last, to pay attention to the logic of her
sentences. “It’s not safe where it is,” she went on, as if the Doctor
already knew the whole story. “Billy may throw it out or burn it
without knowing—”
“Let me understand this,” said the Doctor. “The butler has the paper
now?”
“He doesn’t know he has it. It was in one of the rolls that went out on
the tray.”
The Doctor’s eyes gleamed. He gave Dale’s shoulder a sympathetic pat.
“Now don’t you worry about it—I’ll get it,” he said. Then, on the point
of going toward the dining-room, he turned.
“But—you oughtn’t to have it in your possession,” he said thoughtfully.
“Why not let it be burned?”
Dale was on the defensive at once.
“Oh, no! It’s important, it’s vital!” she said decidedly.
The Doctor seemed to consider ways and means of getting the paper.
“The tray is in the dining-room?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Dale.
He thought a moment, then left the room by the hall door. Dale sank
back in her chair and felt a sense of overpowering relief steal over
her whole body, as if new life had been poured into her veins. The
Doctor had been so helpful—why had she not confided in him before? He
would know what to do with the paper—she would have the benefit of his
counsel through the rest of this troubled time. For a moment she saw
herself and Jack, exonerated, their worries at an end, wandering hand
in hand over the green lawns of Cedarcrest in the cheerful sunlight of
morning.
Behind her, mockingly, the head of the Unknown concealed behind the
settee lifted cautiously until, if she had turned, she would have just
been able to perceive the top of its skull.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE BLACKENED BAG
As it chanced, she did not turn. The hall door opened—the head behind
the settee sank down again. Jack Bailey entered, carrying a couple of
logs of firewood.
Dale moved toward him as soon as he had shut the door.
“Oh, things have gone awfully wrong, haven’t they?” she said with a
little break in her voice.
He put his finger to his lips.
“Be careful!” he whispered. He glanced about the room cautiously.
“I don’t trust even the furniture in this house to-night!” he said. He
took Dale hungrily in his arms and kissed her once, swiftly, on the
lips. Then they parted—his voice changed to the formal voice of a
servant.
“Miss Van Gorder wishes the fire kept burning,” he announced, with a
whispered “_Play up!_” to Dale.
Dale caught his meaning at once.
“Put some logs on the fire, please,” she said loudly, for the benefit
of any listening ears. Then in an undertone to Bailey, “Jack—I’m nearly
distracted!”
Bailey threw his wood on the fire, which received it with appreciative
crackles and sputterings. Then again, for a moment, he clasped his
sweetheart closely to him.
“Dale, pull yourself together!” he whispered warningly. “We’ve got a
fight ahead of us!”
He released her and turned back toward the fire.
“These old-fashioned fireplaces eat up a lot of wood,” he said in
casual tones, pretending to arrange the logs with the poker so the fire
would draw more cleanly.
But Dale felt that she must settle one point between them before they
took up their game of pretense again.
“You know why I sent for Richard Fleming, don’t you?” she said, her
eyes fixed beseechingly on her lover. The rest of the world might
interpret her action as it pleased—she couldn’t bear to have Jack
misunderstand.
But there was no danger of that. His faith in her was too complete.
“Yes—of course—” he said, with a look of gratitude. Then his mind
reverted to the ever-present problem before them. “But who in God’s
name killed him?” he muttered, kneeling before the fire.
“You don’t think it was—Billy?” Dale saw Billy’s face before her for a
moment, calm, impassive. But he was an Oriental—an alien—his face might
be just as calm, just as impassive while his hands were still red with
blood. She shuddered at the thought.
Bailey considered the matter.
“More likely the man Lizzie saw going upstairs,” he said finally.
“But—I’ve been all over the upper floors.”
“And—nothing?” breathed Dale.
“Nothing.” Bailey’s voice had an accent of dour finality. “Dale, do you
think that—” he began.
Some instinct warned the girl that they were not to continue their
conversation uninterrupted. “Be careful!” she breathed, as footsteps
sounded in the hall. Bailey nodded and turned back to his pretense of
mending the fire. Dale moved away from him slowly.
The door opened and Miss Cornelia entered, her black knitting-bag in
her hand, on her face a demure little smile of triumph. She closed the
door carefully behind her and began to speak at once.
“Well, Mr. Alopecia—Urticaria—Rubeola—otherwise _Bailey!_” she said in
tones of the greatest satisfaction, addressing herself to Bailey’s
rigid back. Bailey jumped to his feet mechanically at her mention of
his name. He and Dale exchanged one swift and hopeless glance of utter
defeat.
“I wish,” proceeded Miss Cornelia, obviously enjoying the situation to
the full, “I wish you young people would remember that even if hair and
teeth have fallen out at sixty the mind still functions.”
She pulled out a cabinet photograph from the depths of her
knitting-bag.
“His photograph—sitting on your dresser!” she chided Dale. “Burn it and
be quick about it!”
Dale took the photograph but continued to stare at her aunt with
incredulous eyes.
“Then—you knew?” she stammered.
Miss Cornelia, the effective little tableau she had planned now
accomplished to her most humorous satisfaction, relapsed into a chair.
“My dear child,” said the indomitable lady, with a sharp glance at
Bailey’s bewildered face, “I have employed many gardeners in my time
and never before had one who manicured his fingernails, wore silk
socks, and regarded baldness as a plant instead of a calamity.”
An unwilling smile began to break on the faces of both Dale and her
lover. The former crossed to the fireplace and threw the damning
photograph of Bailey on the flames. She watched it shrivel—curl up—be
reduced to ash. She stirred the ashes with a poker till they were well
scattered.
Bailey, recovering from the shock of finding that Miss Cornelia’s sharp
eyes had pierced his disguise without his even suspecting it, now threw
himself on her mercy.
“Then you know why I’m here?” he stammered.
“I still have a certain amount of imagination! I may think you are a
fool for taking the risk, but I can see what that idiot of a detective
might not—that if you had looted the Union Bank you wouldn’t be trying
to discover if the money is in this house. You would at least
presumably know where it is.”
The knowledge that he had an ally in this brisk and indomitable
spinster lady cheered him greatly. But she did not wait for any comment
from him. She turned abruptly to Dale.
“Now I want to ask _you_ something,” she said more gravely. “Was there
a blue-print, and did you get it from Richard Fleming?”
It was Dale’s turn now to bow her head.
“Yes,” she confessed.
Bailey felt a thrill of horror run through him. She hadn’t told him
this!
“Dale!” he said uncomprehendingly, “don’t you see where this places
you? If you had it, why didn’t you give it to Anderson when he asked
for it?”
“Because,” said Miss Cornelia uncompromisingly, “she had sense enough
to see that Mr. Anderson considered that piece of paper the final link
in the evidence against _her!_”
“But she could have no _motive!_” stammered Bailey, distraught, still
failing to grasp the significance of Dale’s refusal.
“Couldn’t she?” queried Miss Cornelia pityingly. “The detective thinks
she could—to save you!”
Now the full light of revelation broke upon Bailey. He took a step
back.
“Good God!” he said.
Miss Cornelia would have liked to comment tartly upon the singular lack
of intelligence displayed by even the nicest young men in trying
circumstances. But there was no time. They might be interrupted at any
moment and before they were, there were things she must find out.
“Where is that paper, now?” she asked Dale sharply;
“Why—the Doctor is getting it for me.” Dale seemed puzzled by the
intensity of her aunt’s manner.
“_What?_” almost shouted Miss Cornelia. Dale explained.
“It was on the tray Billy took out,” she said, still wondering why so
simple an answer should disturb Miss Cornelia so greatly.
“Then I’m afraid everything’s over,” Miss Cornelia said despairingly,
and made her first gesture of defeat. She turned away. Dale followed
her, still unable to fathom her course of reasoning.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said rather plaintively, wondering
if again, as with Fleming, she had misplaced her confidence at a moment
critical for them all.
But Miss Cornelia seemed to have no great patience with her dejection.
“One of two things will happen now,” she said, with acrid, logic.
“Either the Doctor’s an honest man—in which case, as coroner, he will
hand that paper to the detective—” Dale gasped. “Or he is _not_ an
honest man,” went on Miss Cornelia, “and he will keep it for himself.
_I_ don’t think he’s an honest man.”
The frank expression of her distrust seemed to calm her a little. She
resumed her interrogation of Dale more gently.
“Now, let’s be clear about this. Had Richard Fleming ascertained that
there was a concealed room in this house?”
“He was starting up to it!” said Dale in the voice of a ghost,
remembering.
“Just what did you tell him?”
“That I believed there was a Hidden Room in the house—and that the
money from the Union Bank might be in it.”
Again, for the millionth time, indeed it seemed to her, she reviewed
the circumstances of the crime.
“Could anyone have overheard?” asked Miss Cornelia.
The question had rung in Dale’s ears ever since she had come to her
senses after the firing of the shot and seen Fleming’s body stark on
the floor of the alcove.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We were very cautious.”
“You don’t know where this room is?”
“No, I never saw the print. Upstairs somewhere, for he—”
“Upstairs! Then the thing to do, if we can get that paper from the
Doctor, is to locate the room at once.”
Jack Bailey did not recognize the direction where her thoughts were
tending. It seemed terrible to him that anyone should devote a thought
to the money while Dale was still in danger.
“What does the money matter now?” he broke in somewhat irritably.
“We’ve got to save _her!_” and his eyes went to Dale.
Miss Cornelia gave him an ineffable look of weary patience.
“The money matters a great deal,” she said, sensibly. “Someone was in
this house on the same errand as Richard Fleming. After all,” she went
on with a tinge of irony, “the course of reasoning that you followed,
Mr. Bailey, is not necessarily unique.”
She rose.
“Somebody else may have suspected that Courtleigh Fleming robbed his
own bank,” she said thoughtfully. Her eye fell on the Doctor’s
professional bag—she seemed to consider it as if it were a strange sort
of animal.
“Find the man who followed _your_ course of reasoning,” she ended, with
a stare at Bailey, “and you have found the murderer.”
“With that reasoning you might suspect _me!_” said the latter a trifle
touchily.
Miss Cornelia did not give an inch.
“I have,” she said. Dale shot a swift, sympathetic glance at her lover,
another less sympathetic and more indignant at her aunt. Miss Cornelia
smiled.
“However, I now suspect somebody else,” she said. They waited for her
to reveal the name of the suspect but she kept her own counsel. By now
she had entirely given up confidence if not in the probity at least in
the intelligence of all persons, male or female, under the age of
sixty-five.
She rang the bell for Billy. But Dale was still worrying over the
possible effects of the confidence she had given Doctor Wells.
“Then you think the Doctor may give this paper to Mr. Anderson?” she
asked.
“He may or he may not. It is entirely possible that he may elect to
search for this room himself! He may even already have gone upstairs!”
She moved quickly to the door and glanced across toward the
dining-room, but so far apparently all was safe. The Doctor was at the
table making a pretense of drinking a cup of coffee and Billy was in
close attendance. That the Doctor already had the paper she was
certain; it was the use he intended to make of it that was her concern.
She signaled to the Jap and he came out into the hall. Beresford, she
learned, was still in the kitchen with his revolver, waiting for
another attempt on the door and the detective was still outside in his
search. To Billy she gave her order in a low voice.
“If the Doctor attempts to go upstairs,” she said, “let me know at
once. Don’t seem to be watching. You can be in the pantry. But let me
know instantly.”
Once back in the living-room the vague outlines of a plan—a test—formed
slowly in Miss Cornelia’s mind, grew more definite.
“Dale, watch that door and warn me if anyone is coming!” she commanded,
indicating the door into the hall. Dale obeyed, marveling silently at
her aunt’s extraordinary force of character. Most of Miss Cornelia’s
contemporaries would have called for a quiet ambulance to take them to
a sanatorium some hours ere this—but Miss Cornelia was not merely,
comparatively speaking, as fresh as a daisy; her manner bore every
evidence of a firm intention to play Sherlock Holmes to the mysteries
that surrounded her, in spite of Doctors, detectives, dubious noises,
or even the Bat himself.
The last of the Van Gorder spinsters turned to Bailey now.
“Get some soot from that fireplace,” she ordered. “Be quick. Scrape it
off with a knife or a piece of paper. Anything.”
Bailey wondered and obeyed. As he was engaged in his grimy task, Miss
Cornelia got out a piece of writing paper from a drawer and placed it
on the center table, with a lead pencil beside it.
Bailey emerged from the fireplace with a handful of sooty flakes.
“Is this all right?”
“Yes. Now rub it on the handle of that bag.” She indicated the little
black bag in which Doctor Wells carried the usual paraphernalia of a
country Doctor.
A private suspicion grew in Bailey’s mind as to whether Miss Cornelia’s
fine but eccentric brain had not suffered too sorely under the shocks
of the night. But he did not dare disobey. He blackened the handle of
the Doctor’s bag with painstaking thoroughness and awaited further
instructions.
“Somebody’s coming!” Dale whispered, warning from her post by the door.
Bailey quickly went to the fireplace and resumed his pretended labors
with the fire. Miss Cornelia moved away from the Doctor’s bag and spoke
for the benefit of whoever might be coming.
“We all need sleep,” she began, as if ending a conversation with Dale,
“and I think—”
The door opened, admitting Billy.
“Doctor just go upstairs,” he said, and went out again leaving the door
open.
A flash passed across Miss Cornelia’s face. She stepped to the door.
She called.
“Doctor! Oh, Doctor!”
“Yes?” answered the Doctor’s voice from the main staircase. His steps
clattered down the stairs—he entered the room. Perhaps he read
something in Miss Cornelia’s manner that demanded an explanation of his
action. At any rate, he forestalled her, just as she was about to
question him.
“I was about to look around above,” he said. “I don’t like to leave if
there is the possibility of some assassin still hidden in the house.”
“That is very considerate of you. But we are well protected now. And
besides, why should this person remain in the house? The murder is
done, the police are here.”
“True,” he said. “I only thought—”
But a knocking at the terrace door interrupted him. While the attention
of the others was turned in that direction Dale, less cynical than her
aunt, made a small plea to him and realized before she had finished
with it that the Doctor too had his price.
“Doctor—_did you get it?_” she repeated, drawing the Doctor aside.
The Doctor gave her a look of apparent bewilderment.
“My dear child,” he said softly, “are you _sure_ that you put it
there?”
Dale felt as if she had received a blow in the face.
“Why, yes—I—” she began in tones of utter dismay. Then she stopped. The
Doctor’s seeming bewilderment was too pat—too plausible. Of course she
was sure—and, though possible, it seemed extremely unlikely that anyone
else could have discovered the hiding-place of the blue-print in the
few moments that had elapsed between the time when Billy took the tray
from the room and the time when the Doctor ostensibly went to find it.
A cold wave of distrust swept over her—she turned away from the Doctor
silently.
Meanwhile Anderson had entered, slamming the terrace-door behind him.
“I couldn’t find anybody!” he said in an irritated voice. “I think that
Jap’s crazy.”
The Doctor began to struggle into his topcoat, avoiding any look at
Dale.
“Well,” he said, “I believe I’ve fulfilled all the legal requirements—I
think I must be going.” He turned toward the door but the detective
halted him.
“Doctor,” he said, “did you ever hear Courtleigh Fleming mention a
Hidden Room in this house?”
If the Doctor started, the movement passed apparently unnoted by
Anderson. And his reply was coolly made.
“No—and I knew him rather well.”
“You don’t think then,” persisted the detective, “that such a room and
the money in it could be the motive for this crime?”
The Doctor’s voice grew a little curt.
“I don’t believe Courtleigh Fleming robbed his own bank, if that’s what
you mean,” he said with nicely calculated emphasis, real or feigned. He
crossed over to get his bag and spoke to Miss Cornelia.
“Well, Miss Van Gorder,” he said, picking up the bag by its blackened
handle, “I can’t wish you a comfortable night but I can wish you a
quiet one.”
Miss Cornelia watched him silently. As he turned to go, she spoke.
“We’re all of us a little upset, naturally,” she confessed. “Perhaps
you could write a prescription—a sleeping-powder or a bromide of some
sort.”
“Why, certainly,” agreed the Doctor at once. He turned back. Miss
Cornelia seemed pleased.
“I hoped you would,” she said with a little tremble in her voice such
as might easily occur in the voice of a nervous old lady. “Oh, yes,
here’s paper and a pencil,” as the Doctor fumbled in a pocket.
The Doctor took the sheet of paper she proffered and, using the side of
his bag as a pad, began to write out the prescription.
“I don’t generally advise these drugs,” he said, looking up for a
moment. “Still—”
He paused. “What time is it?”
Miss Cornelia glanced at the clock. “Half-past eleven.”
“Then I’d better bring you the powders myself,” decided the Doctor.
“The pharmacy closes at eleven. I shall have to make them up myself.”
“That seems a lot of trouble.”
“Nothing is any trouble if I can be helpful,” he assured her,
smilingly. And Miss Cornelia also smiled, took the piece of paper from
his hand, glanced at it once, as if out of idle curiosity about the
unfinished prescription, and then laid it down on the table with a
careless little gesture. Dale gave her aunt a glance of dumb entreaty.
Miss Cornelia read her wish for another moment alone with the Doctor.
“Dale will let you out, Doctor,” said she, giving the girl the key to
the front door.
The Doctor approved her watchfulness.
“That’s right,” he said smilingly. “Keep things locked up. Discretion
is the better part of valor!”
But Miss Cornelia failed to agree with him.
“I’ve been discreet for sixty-five years,” she said with a sniff, “and
sometimes I think it was a mistake!”
The Doctor laughed easily and followed Dale out of the room, with a nod
of farewell to the others in passing. The detective, seeking for some
object upon whom to vent the growing irritation which seemed to possess
him, made Bailey the scapegoat of his wrath.
“I guess we can do without you for the present!” he said, with an angry
frown at the latter. Bailey flushed, then remembered himself, and left
the room submissively, with the air of a well-trained servant accepting
an unmerited rebuke. The detective turned at once to Miss Cornelia.
“Now I want a few words with you!”
“Which means that you mean to do all the talking!” said Miss Cornelia
acidly. “Very well! But first I want to show you something. Will you
come here, please, Mr. Anderson?”
She started for the alcove.
“I’ve examined that staircase,” said the detective.
“Not with me!” insisted Miss Cornelia. “I have something to show you.”
He followed her unwillingly up the stairs, his whole manner seeming to
betray a complete lack of confidence in the theories of all amateur
sleuths in general and spinster detectives of sixty-five in particular.
Their footsteps died away up the alcove stairs. The living-room was
left vacant for an instant.
Vacant? Only in seeming. The moment that Miss Cornelia and the
detective had passed up the stairs, the crouching, mysterious Unknown,
behind the settee, began to move. The French window-door opened—a
stealthy figure passed through it silently to be swallowed up in the
darkness of the terrace.
And poor Lizzie, entering the room at that moment, saw a hand covered
with blood reach back and gropingly, horribly, through the broken pane,
refasten the lock.
She shrieked madly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HANDCUFFS
Dale had failed with the Doctor. When Lizzie’s screams once more had
called the startled household to the living-room, she knew she had
failed. She followed in mechanically, watched an irritated Anderson
send the Pride of Kerry to bed and threaten to lock her up, and
listened vaguely to the conversation between her aunt and the detective
that followed it, without more than casual interest.
Nevertheless, that conversation was to have vital results later on.
“Your point about that thumbprint on the stair rail is very
interesting,” Anderson said with a certain respect. “But just what does
it prove?”
“It points down,” said Miss Cornelia, still glowing with the memory of
the whistle of surprise the detective had given when she had shown him
the strange thumbprint on the rail of the alcove stairs.
“It does,” he admitted. “But what then?”
Miss Cornelia tried to put her case as clearly and tersely as possible.
“It shows that somebody stood there for some time, listening to my
niece and Richard Fleming in this room below,” she said.
“All right—I’ll grant that to save argument,” retorted the detective.
“But the moment that shot was fired the lights came on. If somebody on
that staircase shot him, and then came down and took the blue-print,
Miss Ogden would have seen him.”
He turned upon Dale.
“Did you?”
She hesitated. Why hadn’t she thought of such an explanation before?
But now—it would sound too flimsy!
“No, nobody came down,” she admitted candidly. The detective’s face
altered, grew menacing. Miss Cornelia once more had put herself between
him and Dale.
“Now, Mr. Anderson—” she warned.
The detective was obviously trying to keep his temper.
“I’m not hounding this girl!” he said doggedly. “I haven’t said yet
that she committed the murder—but she took that blue-print and I want
it!”
“You want it to connect her with the murder,” parried Miss Cornelia.
The detective threw up his hands.
“It’s rather reasonable to suppose that I might want to return the
funds to the Union Bank, isn’t it?” he queried in tones of heavy
sarcasm. “Provided they’re here,” he added doubtfully.
Miss Cornelia resolved upon comparative frankness.
“I see,” she said. “Well, I’ll tell you this much, Mr. Anderson, and
I’ll ask you to believe me as a lady. Granting that at one time my
niece knew something of that blue-print—at this moment we do not know
where it is or who has it.”
Her words had the unmistakable ring of truth. The very oath from the
detective that succeeded them showed his recognition of the fact.
“Damnation,” he muttered. “That’s true, is it?”
“That’s true,” said Miss Cornelia firmly. A silence of troubled
thoughts fell upon the three. Miss Cornelia took out her knitting.
“Did you ever try knitting when you wanted to think?” she queried
sweetly, after a pause in which the detective tramped from one side of
the room to the other, brows knotted, eyes bent on the floor.
“No,” grunted the detective. He took out a cigar—bit off the end with a
savage snap of teeth—lit it—resumed his pacing.
“You should, sometimes,” continued Miss Cornelia, watching his troubled
movements with a faint light of mockery in her eyes. “I find it very
helpful.”
“I don’t need knitting to think straight,” rasped Anderson indignantly.
Miss Cornelia’s eyes danced.
“I wonder!” she said with caustic affability. “You seem to have so much
evidence left over.”
The detective paused and glared at her helplessly.
“Did you ever hear of the man who took a clock apart—and when he put it
together again, he had enough left over to make another clock?” she
twitted.
The detective, ignoring the taunt, crossed quickly to Dale.
“What do you mean by saying that paper isn’t where you put it?” he
demanded in tones of extreme severity. Miss Cornelia replied for her
niece.
“She hasn’t said that.”
The detective made an impatient movement of his hand and walked away—as
if to get out of the reach of the indefatigable spinster’s tongue. But
Miss Cornelia had not finished with him yet, by any means.
“Do you believe in circumstantial evidence?” she asked him with seeming
ingenuousness.
“It’s my business,” said the detective stolidly. Miss Cornelia smiled.
“While you have been investigating,” she announced, “I, too, have not
been idle.”
The detective gave a barking laugh. She let it pass.
“To me,” she continued, “it is perfectly obvious that _one_
intelligence has been at work behind many of the things that have
occurred in this house.”
Now Anderson observed her with a new respect.
“Who?” he grunted tersely.
Her eyes flashed.
“I’ll ask you that! Some one person who, knowing Courtleigh Fleming
well, probably knows of the existence of a Hidden Room in this house
and who, finding us in occupation of the house, has tried to get rid of
me in two ways. First, by frightening me with anonymous threats—and,
second, by urging me to leave. Someone, who very possibly entered this
house tonight shortly before the murder and slipped up that staircase!”
The detective had listened to her outburst with unusual thoughtfulness.
A certain wonder—perhaps at her shrewdness, perhaps at an unexpected
confirmation of certain ideas of his own—grew upon his face. Now he
jerked out two words.
“The Doctor?”
Miss Cornelia knitted on as if every movement of her needles added one
more link to the strong chain of probabilities she was piecing
together.
“When Doctor Wells said he was leaving here earlier in the evening for
the Johnsons’ he did not go there,” she observed. “He was not expected
to go there. I found that out when I telephoned.”
“The Doctor!” repeated the detective, his eyes narrowing, his head
beginning to sway from side to side like the head of some great cat
just before a spring.
“As you know,” Miss Cornelia went on, “I had a supplementary bolt
placed on that terrace door today.” She nodded toward the door that
gave access into the alcove from the terrace. “Earlier this evening
Doctor Wells said that he had _bolted_ it, when he had left it
_open_—purposely, as I now realize, in order that he might return
later. You may also recall that Doctor Wells took a scrap of paper from
Richard Fleming’s hand and tried to conceal it—why did he do _that?_”
She paused for a second. Then she changed her tone a little.
“May I ask you to look at this?”
She displayed the piece of paper on which Doctor Wells had started to
write the prescription for her sleeping-powders—and now her strategy
with the doctor’s bag and the soot Jack Bailey had got from the
fireplace stood revealed. A sharp, black imprint of a man’s right
thumb—the Doctor’s—stood out on the paper below the broken line of
writing. The Doctor had not noticed the staining of his hand by the
blackened bag handle, or, noticing, had thought nothing of it—but the
blackened bag handle had been a trap, and he had left an indelible
piece of evidence behind him. It now remained to test the value of this
evidence.
Miss Cornelia handed the paper to Anderson silently. But her eyes were
bright with pardonable vanity at the success of her little piece of
strategy.
“A thumb-print,” muttered Anderson. “Whose is it?”
“Doctor Wells,” said Miss Cornelia with what might have been a little
crow of triumph in anyone not a Van Gorder.
Anderson looked thoughtful. Then he felt in his pocket for a magnifying
glass, failed to find it, muttered, and took the reading glass Miss
Cornelia offered him.
“Try this,” she said. “My whole case hangs on my conviction that that
print and the one out there on the stair rail are the same.”
He put down the paper and smiled at her ironically. “Your case!” he
said. “You don’t really believe you need a detective at all, do you?”
“I will only say that so far your views and mine have failed to
coincide. If I am right about that fingerprint, then you may be right
about my private opinion.”
And on that he went out, rather grimly, paper and reading glass in
hand, to make his comparison.
It was then that Beresford came in, a new and slightly rigid Beresford,
and crossed to her at once.
“Miss Van Gorder,” he said, all the flippancy gone from his voice, “may
I ask you to make an excuse and call your gardener here?”
Dale started uncontrollably at the ominous words, but Miss Cornelia
betrayed no emotion except in the increased rapidity of her knitting.
“The gardener? Certainly, if you’ll touch that bell,” she said
pleasantly.
Beresford stalked to the bell and rang it. The three waited—Dale in an
agony of suspense.
The detective re-entered the room by the alcove stairs, his mien
unfathomable by any of the anxious glances that sought him out at once.
“It’s no good, Miss Van Gorder,” he said quietly. “The prints are not
the same.”
“Not the same!” gasped Miss Cornelia, unwilling to believe her ears.
Anderson laid down the paper and the reading glass with a little
gesture of dismissal.
“If you think I’m mistaken, I’ll leave it to any unprejudiced person or
your own eyesight. Thumbprints never lie,” he said in a flat,
convincing voice. Miss Cornelia stared at him—disappointment written
large on her features. He allowed himself a little ironic smile.
“Did you ever try a good cigar when you wanted to think?” he queried
suavely, puffing upon his own.
But Miss Cornelia’s spirit was too broken by the collapse of her dearly
loved and adroitly managed scheme for her to take up the gauge of
battle he offered.
“I still believe it was the Doctor,” she said stubbornly. But her tones
were not the tones of utter conviction which she had used before.
“And yet,” said the detective, ruthlessly demolishing another link in
her broken chain of evidence, “the Doctor was in this room tonight,
according to your own statement, when the anonymous letter came through
the window.”
Miss Cornelia gazed at him blankly, for the first time in her life at a
loss for an appropriately sharp retort. It was true—the Doctor had been
here in the room beside her when the stone bearing the last anonymous
warning had crashed through the windowpane. And yet—
Billy’s entrance in answer to Beresford’s ring made her mind turn to
other matters for the moment. Why had Beresford’s manner changed so,
and what was he saying to Billy now?
“Tell the gardener Miss Van Gorder wants him and don’t say we’re all
here,” the young lawyer commanded the butler sharply. Billy nodded and
disappeared. Miss Cornelia’s back began to stiffen—she didn’t like
other people ordering her servants around like that.
The detective, apparently, had somewhat of the same feeling.
“I seem to have plenty of _help_ in this case!” he said with obvious
sarcasm, turning to Beresford.
The latter made no reply. Dale rose anxiously from her chair, her lips
quivering.
“Why have you sent for the gardener?” she inquired haltingly.
Beresford deigned to answer at last.
“I’ll tell you that in a moment,” he said with a grim tightening of his
lips.
There was a fateful pause, for an instant, while Dale roved nervously
from one side of the room to the other. Then Jack Bailey came into the
room—alone.
He seemed to sense danger in the air. His hands clenched at his sides,
but except for that tiny betrayal of emotion, he still kept his
servant’s pose.
“You sent for me?” he queried of Miss Cornelia submissively, ignoring
the glowering Beresford.
But Beresford would be ignored no longer. He came between them before
Miss Cornelia had time to answer.
“How long has this man been in your employ?” he asked brusquely, manner
tense.
Miss Cornelia made one final attempt at evasion. “Why should that
interest you?” she parried, answering his question with an icy question
of her own.
It was too late. Already Bailey had read the truth in Beresford’s eyes.
“I came this evening,” he admitted, still hoping against hope that his
cringing posture of the servitor might give Beresford pause for the
moment.
But the promptness of his answer only crystallized Beresford’s
suspicions.
“Exactly,” he said with terse finality. He turned to the detective.
“I’ve been trying to recall this man’s face ever since I came in
tonight—” he said with grim triumph. “Now, I know who he is.”
“Who is he?”
Bailey straightened up. He had lost his game with Chance—and the loss,
coming when it did, seemed bitterer than even he had thought it could
be, but before they took him away he would speak his mind.
“It’s all right, Beresford,” he said with a fatigue so deep that it
colored his voice like flakes of iron-rust. “I know you think you’re
doing your duty—but I wish to God you could have _restrained_ your
sense of duty for about three hours more!”
“To let you get away?” the young lawyer sneered, unconvinced.
“No,” said Bailey with quiet defiance. “To let me finish what I came
here to do.”
“Don’t you think you have done enough?” Beresford’s voice flicked him
with righteous scorn, no less telling because of its youthfulness. He
turned back to the detective soberly enough.
“This man has imposed upon the credulity of these women, I am quite
sure without their knowledge,” he said with a trace of his former
gallantry. “He is Bailey of the Union Bank, the missing cashier.”
The detective slowly put down his cigar on an ash tray.
“That’s the truth, is it?” he demanded.
Dale’s hand flew to her breast. If Jack would only deny it—even now!
But even as she thought this, she realized the uselessness of any such
denial.
Bailey realized it, too.
“It’s true, all right,” he admitted hopelessly. He closed his eyes for
a moment. Let them come with the handcuffs now and get it over—every
moment the scene dragged out was a moment of unnecessary torture for
Dale.
But Beresford had not finished with his indictment. “I accuse him not
only of the thing he is wanted for, but of the murder of Richard
Fleming!” he said fiercely, glaring at Bailey as if only a youthful
horror of making a scene before Dale and Miss Cornelia held him back
from striking the latter down where he stood.
Bailey’s eyes snapped open. He took a threatening step toward his
accuser. “You lie!” he said in a hoarse, violent voice.
Anderson crossed between them, just as conflict seemed inevitable.
“_You_ knew this?” he queried sharply in Dale’s direction.
Dale set her lips in a line. She did not answer.
He turned to Miss Cornelia.
“Did you?”
“Yes,” admitted the latter quietly, her knitting needles at last at
rest. “I knew he was Mr. Bailey if that is all you mean.”
The quietness of her answer seemed to infuriate the detective.
“Quite a pretty little conspiracy,” he said. “How in the name of God do
you expect me to do anything with the entire household united against
me? Tell me that.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Cornelia. “And if we are united against you, why
should I have sent for you? You might tell me that, too.”
He turned on Bailey savagely.
“What did you mean by that ‘three hours more’?” he demanded.
“I could have cleared myself in three hours,” said Bailey with calm
despair.
Beresford laughed mockingly—a laugh that seemed to sear into Bailey’s
consciousness like the touch of a hot iron. Again he turned frenziedly
upon the young lawyer—and Anderson was just preparing to hold them away
from each other, by force if necessary, when the doorbell rang.
For an instant the ringing of the bell held the various figures of the
little scene in the rigid postures of a waxworks tableau—Bailey, one
foot advanced toward Beresford, his hands balled up into
fists—Beresford already in an attitude of defense—the detective about
to step in between them—Miss Cornelia stiff in her chair—Dale over by
the fireplace, her hand at her heart. Then they relaxed, but not, at
least on the part of Bailey and Beresford, to resume their interrupted
conflict. Too many nerve-shaking things had already happened that night
for either of the young men not to drop their mutual squabble in the
face of a common danger.
“Probably the Doctor,” murmured Miss Cornelia uncertainly as the
doorbell rang again. “He was to come back with some sleeping-powders.”
Billy appeared for the key of the front door.
“If that’s Doctor Wells,” warned the detective, “admit him. If it’s
anybody else, call me.”
Billy grinned acquiescently and departed. The detective moved nearer to
Bailey.
“Have you got a gun on you?”
“No.” Bailey bowed his head.
“Well, I’ll just make sure of that.” The detective’s hands ran swiftly
and expertly over Bailey’s form, through his pockets, probing for
concealed weapons. Then, slowly drawing a pair of handcuffs from his
pocket, he prepared to put them on Bailey’s wrists.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE SIGN OF THE BAT
But Dale could bear it no longer. The sight of her lover, beaten,
submissive, his head bowed, waiting obediently like a common criminal
for the detective to lock his wrists in steel broke down her last
defenses. She rushed into the center of the room, between Bailey and
the detective, her eyes wild with terror, her words stumbling over each
other in her eagerness to get them out.
“Oh, no! I can’t stand it! I’ll tell you everything!” she cried
frenziedly. “He got to the foot of the stair-case—Richard Fleming, I
mean,” she was facing the detective now, “and he had the blue-print
you’ve been talking about. I had told him Jack Bailey was here as the
gardener and he said if I screamed he would tell that. I was desperate.
I threatened him with the revolver but he took it from me. Then when I
tore the blue-print from him—he was shot—from the stairs—”
“By Bailey!” interjected Beresford angrily.
“I didn’t even know he was in the house!” Bailey’s answer was as
instant as it was hot. Meanwhile, the Doctor had entered the room,
hardly noticed, in the middle of Dale’s confession, and now stood
watching the scene intently from a post by the door.
“What did you do with the blue-print?” The detective’s voice beat at
Dale like a whip.
“I put it first in the neck of my dress—” she faltered. “Then, when I
found you were watching me, I hid it somewhere else.”
Her eyes fell on the Doctor. She saw his hand steal out toward the knob
of the door. Was he going to run away on some pretext before she could
finish her story? She gave a sigh of relief when Billy, re-entering
with the key to the front door, blocked any such attempt at escape.
Mechanically she watched Billy cross to the table, lay the key upon it,
and return to the hall without so much as a glance at the tense,
suspicious circle of faces focused upon herself and her lover.
“I put it—somewhere else,” she repeated, her eyes going back to the
Doctor.
“Did you give it to Bailey?”
“No—I hid it—and then I told where it was—to the Doctor—” Dale swayed
on her feet. All turned surprisedly toward the Doctor. Miss Cornelia
rose from her chair.
The Doctor bore the battery of eyes unflinchingly. “That’s rather
inaccurate,” he said, with a tight little smile. “You told me where you
had placed it, but when I went to look for it, it was gone.”
“Are you quite sure of that?” queried Miss Cornelia acidly.
“Absolutely,” he said. He ignored the rest of the party, addressing
himself directly to Anderson.
“She said she had hidden it inside one of the rolls that were on the
tray on that table,” he continued in tones of easy explanation,
approaching the table as he did so, and tapping it with the box of
sleeping-powders he had brought for Miss Cornelia.
“She was in such distress that I finally went to look for it. It wasn’t
there.”
“Do you realize the significance of this paper?” Anderson boomed at
once.
“Nothing, beyond the fact that Miss Ogden was afraid it linked her with
the crime.” The Doctor’s voice was very clear and firm.