IN THE DINING-ROOM
That was Saturday night, two weeks after the wreck. The previous five
days had been full of swift-following events—the woman in the house
next door, the picture in the theater of a man about to leap from the
doomed train, the dinner at the Dallases’, and Richey’s discovery that
Alison was the girl in the case. In quick succession had come our visit
to the Carter place, the finding of the rest of the telegram, my seeing
Alison there, and the strange interview with Mrs. Conway. The Cresson
trip stood out in my memory for its serio-comic horrors and its one
real thrill. Then—the discovery by the police of the seal-skin bag and
the bit of chain; Hotchkiss producing triumphantly Stuart for Sullivan
and his subsequent discomfiture; McKnight at the station with Alison,
and later the confession that he was out of the running.
And yet, when I thought it all over, the entire week and its events
were two sides of a triangle that was narrowing rapidly to an apex, a
point. And the said apex was at that moment in the drive below my
window, resting his long legs by sitting on a carriage block, and
smoking a pipe that made the night hideous. The sense of the ridiculous
is very close to the sense of tragedy. I opened my screen and whistled,
and Johnson looked up and grinned. We said nothing. I held up a handful
of cigars, he extended his hat, and when I finally went to sleep, it
was to a soothing breeze that wafted in salt air and a faint aroma of
good tobacco. I was thoroughly tired, but I slept restlessly, dreaming
of two detectives with Pittsburg warrants being held up by Hotchkiss at
the point of a splint, while Alison fastened their hands with a chain
that was broken and much too short. I was roused about dawn by a light
rap at the door, and, opening it, I found Forbes, in a pair of trousers
and a pajama coat. He was as pleasant as most fleshy people are when
they have to get up at night, and he said the telephone had been
ringing for an hour, and he didn’t know why somebody else in the
blankety-blank house couldn’t have heard it. _He_ wouldn’t get to sleep
until noon.
As he was palpably asleep on his feet, I left him grumbling and went to
the telephone. It proved to be Richey, who had found me by the simple
expedient of tracing Alison, and he was jubilant.
“You’ll have to come back,” he said. “Got a railroad schedule there?”
“I don’t sleep with one in my pocket,” I retorted, “but if you’ll hold
the line I’ll call out the window to Johnson. He’s probably got one.”
“Johnson!” I could hear the laugh with which McKnight comprehended the
situation. He was still chuckling when I came back.
“Train to Richmond at six-thirty A.M.,” I said. “What time is it now?”
“Four. Listen, Lollie. We’ve got him. Do you hear? Through the woman at
Baltimore. Then the other woman, the lady of the restaurant”—he was
obviously avoiding names—“she is playing our cards for us. No—I don’t
know why, and I don’t care. But you be at the Incubator to-night at
eight o’clock. If you can’t shake Johnson, bring him, bless him.”
To this day I believe the Sam Forbeses have not recovered from the
surprise of my unexpected arrival, my one appearance at dinner in
Granger’s clothes, and the note on my dresser which informed them the
next morning that I had folded my tents like the Arabs and silently
stole away. For at half after five Johnson and I, the former as
uninquisitive as ever, were on our way through the dust to the station,
three miles away, and by four that afternoon we were in Washington. The
journey had been uneventful. Johnson relaxed under the influence of my
tobacco, and spoke at some length on the latest improvements in
gallows, dilating on the absurdity of cutting out the former free
passes to see the affair in operation. I remember, too, that he
mentioned the curious anomaly that permits a man about to be hanged to
eat a hearty meal. I did not enjoy my dinner that night.
Before we got into Washington I had made an arrangement with Johnson to
surrender myself at two the following afternoon. Also, I had wired to
Alison, asking her if she would carry out the contract she had made.
The detective saw me home, and left me there. Mrs. Klopton received me
with dignified reserve. The very tone in which she asked me when I
would dine told me that something was wrong.
“Now—what is it, Mrs. Klopton?” I demanded finally, when she had
informed me, in a patient and long-suffering tone, that she felt worn
out and thought she needed a rest.
“When I lived with Mr. Justice Springer,” she began acidly, her
mending-basket in her hands, “it was an orderly, well-conducted
household. You can ask any of the neighbors. Meals were cooked and,
what’s more, they were _eaten;_ there was none of this ‘here one day
and gone the next’ business.”
“Nonsense,” I observed. “You’re tired, that’s all, Mrs. Klopton. And I
wish you would go out; I want to bathe.”
“That’s _not_ all,” she said with dignity, from the doorway. “Women
coming and going here, women whose shoes I am not fit—I mean, women who
are not fit to touch my shoes—coming here as insolent as you please,
and asking for you.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What did you tell them—her, whichever it
was?”
“Told her you were sick in a hospital and wouldn’t be out for a year!”
she said triumphantly. “And when she said she thought she’d come in and
wait for you, I slammed the door on her.”
“What time was she here?”
“Late last night. And she had a light-haired man across the street. If
she thought I didn’t see him, she don’t know me.” Then she closed the
door and left me to my bath and my reflections.
At five minutes before eight I was at the Incubator, where I found
Hotchkiss and McKnight. They were bending over a table, on which lay
McKnight’s total armament—a pair of pistols, an elephant gun and an old
cavalry saber.
“Draw up a chair and help yourself to pie,” he said, pointing to the
arsenal. “This is for the benefit of our friend Hotchkiss here, who
says he is a small man and fond of life.”
Hotchkiss, who had been trying to get the wrong end of a cartridge into
the barrel of one of the revolvers, straightened himself and mopped his
face.
“We have desperate people to handle,” he said pompously, “and we may
need desperate means.”
“Hotchkiss is like the small boy whose one ambition was to have people
grow ashen and tremble at the mention of his name,” McKnight jibed. But
they were serious enough, both of them, under it all, and when they had
told me what they planned, I was serious, too.
“You’re compounding a felony,” I remonstrated, when they had explained.
“I’m not eager to be locked away, but, by Jove, to offer her the stolen
notes in exchange for Sullivan!”
“We haven’t got either of them, you know,” McKnight remonstrated, “and
we won’t have, if we don’t start. Come along, Fido,” to Hotchkiss.
The plan was simplicity itself. According to Hotchkiss, Sullivan was to
meet Bronson at Mrs. Conway’s apartment, at eight-thirty that night,
with the notes. He was to be paid there and the papers destroyed. “But
just before that interesting finale,” McKnight ended, “we will walk in,
take the notes, grab Sullivan, and give the police a jolt that will put
them out of the count.”
I suppose not one of us, slewing around corners in the machine that
night, had the faintest doubt that we were on the right track, or that
Fate, scurvy enough before, was playing into our hands at last. Little
Hotchkiss was in a state of fever; he alternately twitched and examined
the revolver, and a fear that the two movements might be synchronous
kept me uneasy. He produced and dilated on the scrap of pillow slip
from the wreck, and showed me the stiletto, with its point in cotton
batting for safekeeping. And in the intervals he implored Richey not to
make such fine calculations at the corners.
We were all grave enough and very quiet, however, when we reached the
large building where Mrs. Conway had her apartment. McKnight left the
power on, in case we might want to make a quick get-away, and Hotchkiss
gave a final look at the revolver. I had no weapon. Somehow it all
seemed melodramatic to the verge of farce. In the doorway Hotchkiss was
a half dozen feet ahead; Richey fell back beside me. He dropped his
affectation of gayety, and I thought he looked tired. “Same old Sam, I
suppose?” he asked.
“Same, only more of him.”
“I suppose Alison was there? How is she?” he inquired irrelevantly.
“Very well. I did not see her this morning.”
Hotchkiss was waiting near the elevator. McKnight put his hand on my
arm. “Now, look here, old man,” he said, “I’ve got two arms and a
revolver, and you’ve got one arm and a splint. If Hotchkiss is right,
and there is a row, you crawl under a table.”
“The deuce I will!” I declared scornfully.
We crowded out of the elevator at the fourth floor, and found ourselves
in a rather theatrical hallway of draperies and armor. It was very
quiet; we stood uncertainly after the car had gone, and looked at the
two or three doors in sight. They were heavy, covered with metal, and
sound proof. From somewhere above came the metallic accuracy of a
player-piano, and through the open window we could hear—or feel—the
throb of the Cannonball’s engine.
“Well, Sherlock,” McKnight said, “what’s the next move in the game? Is
it our jump, or theirs? You brought us here.”
None of us knew just what to do next. No sound of conversation
penetrated the heavy doors. We waited uneasily for some minutes, and
Hotchkiss looked at his watch. Then he put it to his ear.
“Good gracious!” he exclaimed, his head cocked on one side, “I believe
it has stopped. I’m afraid we are late.”
We _were_ late. My watch and Hotchkiss’ agreed at nine o clock, and,
with the discovery that our man might have come and gone, our zest in
the adventure began to flag. McKnight motioned us away from the door
and rang the bell. There was no response, no sound within. He rang it
twice, the last time long and vigorously, without result. Then he
turned and looked at us.
“I don’t half like this,” he said. “That woman is in; you heard me ask
the elevator boy. For two cents I’d—”
I had seen it when he did. The door was ajar about an inch, and a
narrow wedge of rose-colored light showed beyond. I pushed the door a
little and listened. Then, with both men at my heels, I stepped into
the private corridor of the apartment and looked around. It was a
square reception hall, with rugs on the floor, a tall mahogany rack for
hats, and a couple of chairs. A lantern of rose-colored glass and a
desk light over a writing-table across made the room bright and
cheerful. It was empty.
None of us was comfortable. The place was full of feminine trifles that
made us feel the weakness of our position. Some such instinct made
McKnight suggest division.
“We look like an invading army,” he said. “If she’s here alone, we will
startle her into a spasm. One of us could take a look around and—”
“What was that? Didn’t you hear something?”
The sound, whatever it had been, was not repeated. We went awkwardly
out into the hall, very uncomfortable, all of us, and flipped a coin.
The choice fell to me, which was right enough, for the affair was mine,
primarily.
“Wait just inside the door,” I directed, “and if Sullivan comes, or
anybody that answers his description, grab him without ceremony and ask
him questions afterwards.”
The apartment, save in the hallway, was unlighted. By one of those
freaks of arrangement possible only in the modern flat, I found the
kitchen first, and was struck a smart and unexpected blow by a swinging
door. I carried a handful of matches, and by the time I had passed
through a butler’s pantry and a refrigerator room I was completely lost
in the darkness. Until then the situation had been merely
uncomfortable; suddenly it became grisly. From somewhere near came a
long-sustained groan, followed almost instantly by the crash of
something—glass or china—on the floor.
I struck a fresh match, and found myself in a narrow rear hallway.
Behind me was the door by which I must have come; with a keen desire to
get back to the place I had started from, I opened the door and
attempted to cross the room. I thought I had kept my sense of
direction, but I crashed without warning into what, from the resulting
jangle, was the dining-table, probably laid for dinner. I cursed my
stupidity in getting into such a situation, and I cursed my nerves for
making my hand shake when I tried to strike a match. The groan had not
been repeated.
I braced myself against the table and struck the match sharply against
the sole of my shoe. It flickered faintly and went out. And then,
without the slightest warning, another dish went off the table. It fell
with a thousand splinterings; the very air seemed broken into crashing
waves of sound. I stood still, braced against the table, holding the
red end of the dying match, and listened. I had not long to wait; the
groan came again, and I recognized it, the cry of a dog in straits. I
breathed again.
“Come, old fellow,” I said. “Come on, old man. Let’s have a look at
you.”
I could hear the thud of his tail on the floor, but he did not move. He
only whimpered. There is something companionable in the presence of a
dog, and I fancied this dog in trouble. Slowly I began to work my way
around the table toward him.
“Good boy,” I said, as he whimpered. “We’ll find the light, which ought
to be somewhere or other around here, and then—”
I stumbled over something, and I drew back my foot almost instantly.
“Did I step on you, old man?” I exclaimed, and bent to pat him. I
remember straightening suddenly and hearing the dog pad softly toward
me around the table. I recall even that I had put the matches down and
could not find them. Then, with a bursting horror of the room and its
contents, of the gibbering dark around me, I turned and made for the
door by which I had entered.
I could not find it. I felt along the endless wainscoting, past miles
of wall. The dog was beside me, I think, but he was part and parcel
now, to my excited mind, with the Thing under the table. And when,
after æons of search, I found a knob and stumbled into the reception
hall, I was as nearly in a panic as any man could be.
I was myself again in a second, and by the light from the hall I led
the way back to the tragedy I had stumbled on. Bronson still sat at the
table, his elbows propped on it, his cigarette still lighted, burning a
hole in the cloth. Partly under the table lay Mrs. Conway face down.
The dog stood over her and wagged his tail.
McKnight pointed silently to a large copper ashtray, filled with ashes
and charred bits of paper.
“The notes, probably,” he said ruefully. “He got them after all, and
burned them before her. It was more than she could stand. Stabbed him
first and then herself.”
Hotchkiss got up and took off his hat. “They are dead,” he announced
solemnly, and took his note-book out of his hatband.
McKnight and I did the only thing we could think of—drove Hotchkiss and
the dog out of the room, and closed and locked the door. “It’s a matter
for the police,” McKnight asserted. “I suppose you’ve got an officer
tied to you somewhere, Lawrence? You usually have.”
We left Hotchkiss in charge and went down-stairs. It was McKnight who
first saw Johnson, leaning against a park railing across the street,
and called him over. We told him in a few words what we had found, and
he grinned at me cheerfully.
“After while, in a few weeks or months, Mr. Blakeley,” he said, “when
you get tired of monkeying around with the blood-stain and finger-print
specialist up-stairs, you come to me. I’ve had that fellow you want
under surveillance for ten days!”