NUMBER FOUR
At the corner the two self-appointed investigators found a taxi and
Dennis, for once taking the lead, insisted upon engaging it. McCarty
had protested loudly against this excursion, but the recounting of the
strange event at the waterfront had aroused all the sternly-repressed
longing to be back in the game once more, and although he was bitterly
resentful of the new order of things at headquarters since his day the
fascination of the mystery itself had gripped him with irresistible
force. Not for worlds would he have admitted it to his companion,
however, and as they rattled eastward through the Park he grumbled:
“You must have taken leave of your senses entirely, Denny, and I’m
no better, letting you drag me out again on a night like this to
gawk through barred gates at a row of rich men’s houses! I’ve one
satisfaction, though; ’twas you and not me, as you’ll kindly remember,
that hired this robber taxi!”
Dennis grinned to himself in the darkness.
“You’re welcome to the ride, Mac!” Then his tone lowered seriously.
“I’ve been thinking this thing over, and I must have been wrong on that
blackmail notion; that the fellow was on the way to pay any, I mean, if
he had only a matter of seventy dollars on him. I’m surprised at you,
though, and even at Terry and Mike Taggart, that not one of the three
of you thought to go back across and get the hat; it could not have
sailed far, in spite of the hill there and the gutters running over.
’Tis not like you—”
“Damn the hat!” McCarty interrupted irascibly. “’Tis the man himself
I’m thinking of; now if the cold, muddy rain-water in the gutter had
anything to do with it—?”
He mumbled and lapsed into silence and after a discreet interval his
companion observed in an aggrieved tone:
“Through more than muddy rain-water have I followed you on many a case
you’ve dragged me into, but if the grand education you’ve been getting
lately from those books has made you talk in riddles, you can keep the
answers to yourself for all of me! By the same token, if that fellow
was not running away from anybody or hurrying to meet them but was just
chasing along like that through the storm, staggering and stopping and
leaping forward again, he must have been out of his head entirely, and
the asylum would have got him if the morgue hadn’t!”
“True for you, Denny; that’s what was in my mind just now,” McCarty
replied with a contrite return to his habitual geniality. “Not about
his being a lunatic, maybe, but delirious from sickness or suffering.
When he fell, with his head hanging over the gutter and the cold water
rushing over his face I was thinking it brought back his consciousness
for that minute there at the end. You could see by the look in his eyes
and the way he fought for breath that there was something he was trying
his best to tell, something that filled him with more horror than the
fear of death itself!”
“’Tis a lot to see in a man’s eye,” Dennis remarked in unusual
skepticism. “Maybe he’d no notion of dying; he seems to have been a
pretty healthy looking fellow, from what you tell me. If those books
are getting you to read meanings in people’s faces that are not there
you’d best be sticking to the newspapers!”
“’Tis small meaning anybody could read in yours, my lad!” the indignant
student retorted. “Here we are and the gates are shut, just as I told
you. What’s the next move? You started this, Denny, and it’s up to you!”
But it proved to be up to neither of them, for, as McCarty descended
from the taxi before the great gates of wrought iron which spanned the
side street, a tall figure emerged from the shadows and a well-known
voice exclaimed in accents of satisfaction not untinged with amusement:
“There you are, Mac! I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Inspector!” McCarty gasped, gaping at his former superior. “How in the
world did you know—?”
Inspector Druet laughed.
“How did I know you’d be on the scent with the trail fresh and the
wind your way? Good evening, Riordan; it’s like old times to find you
following Mac’s lead again.”
“’Tis Denny that’s leading this night,” averred McCarty, with a
chuckle, as Dennis turned to pay the taxi driver. “In spite of the rain
and all, he was possessed to come and have a look around here when I
told him about the drunk that fell dead across the street from the
station-house down by the waterfront!”
“The ‘drunk,’ eh?” Inspector Druet tapped a leather case which he
carried. “I have the man’s hat here which you found in the gutter, and
I needn’t ask if you saw the initials inside, though you said nothing
to the boys at the house. When I found out you’d been on the scene,
and got a line from them on the way you’d collected all the dope on
the case and then quietly faded away with a pathetic reference to
rheumatism, I knew you would be on the job. Then your phone didn’t
answer a little while ago and I was morally certain you had read that
identification tag correctly and were on your way here, so I waited. It
looks as though this was going to be bigger than it appeared at first.”
They had drawn under the comparative shelter of an overhanging cornice,
and Dennis, who had turned to gaze reproachfully at McCarty when the
hat was mentioned, asked with lively interest:
“Do you mean, Inspector, that the fellow didn’t just drop dead by
accident? What was the initials? Who was he?”
“The initials are ‘B. P.’” The inspector spoke with added
impressiveness. “I have a list of all the householders on this block;
there are only a few, for you can see by the street-lamps that each
place is several times the size of an ordinary city lot. The owner of
Number Seven is Benjamin Parsons, and if this is his hat—?”
“But the tag on the key-ring said Number Four,” Dennis observed
doubtfully as the inspector paused. “Somebody named ‘B. P.’ might live
there too, sir.”
“Number Four is occupied by a bachelor alone, a Mr. Henry Orbit.” The
inspector shook his head. “I don’t know how the keys of his house came
to be in Parsons’ pocket, but that’s a detail. Here’s the private
watchman now; come on.”
He moved out toward the gateway in the middle of the street but McCarty
laid a detaining hand on his arm.
“Just one minute, Inspector. Well I know I’ve nothing to do with this
case, if there is a case in it at all, but ’tis easier to change hats
than houses, and if you stop by first at Number Four, and—and let me
do the talking to whoever opens the door—?”
He hesitated and Inspector Druet flashed him a keen glance.
“What is it, Mac?” he demanded quickly. “Have you seen more than I have
in this?”
“I’ve seen the corpse, sir,” McCarty returned evasively.
Along the enclosed street the solitary figure of the private watchman
was advancing with quickened step. When he reached the gate the
inspector spoke to him in a low but authoritative tone. The watchman
uttered a startled exclamation and a brief colloquy ensued during which
McCarty and Dennis gazed up the wide vista of the street beyond the
high iron bars. In the glow of the lanterns which lighted the Mall
the smooth pavement glistened like a sheet of glass under the dancing
raindrops and the houses on either side, built of gleaming marble
or the darker brownstone of an older period, looked like miniature
palaces, with their vaguely outlined turrets and towers and overhanging
balconies. Straight ahead loomed another gate, behind it the inky mass
of foliage of the great park across the Avenue, untouched as yet by the
season’s first frost.
“’Tis like a picture-book scene, even in the night!” Dennis remarked,
and then he shook his head. “But it’s too restricted, entirely. For all
its grandeur, the folks living in there will be having no more chance
of keeping their private affairs one from the other than if ’twas a row
of workman’s cottages out in the factory suburbs! ’Tis small mystery
could last for long inside these gates!”
“I’d rather be outside them and free, than cooped up in there for all
the millions these families have,” acquiesced McCarty. “The watchman’s
opening up, though, and the inspector is beckoning. Will he be letting
me have my way, I wonder?”
The great gates swung inward and the three passed in, the inspector
leading and turning to the south sidewalk which was bordered by the
houses bearing even numbers.
“Of course I know the servants belonging to every household on the
block,” the gray-haired watchman was saying in a slightly lofty tone.
“Mr. Orbit has none with the initials you mention, Inspector, and
no house guests at present or I should have been notified. It’s my
business, and the day man’s, to know everybody who comes and goes
through the gates.”
“You see, Mac?” Dennis nudged his companion. “’Tis worse than a jail!”
But McCarty paid no heed. He was eyeing the house fronts as they
passed with a gaze of critical absorption, giving quick glances at the
occasional lighted windows of those across the way, but the latter
were all discreetly curtained, and the first two houses on the south
side were utterly dark. The third—Number Six—was a rococo affair of
some pinkish stone, bristling with tiny pointed turrets and unexpected
balconies. Here a brilliant light shone from the upper floors, but
the next house—Number Four—although small in contrast to the mansions
across the street, gave an impression of size in its stately lines of
snowy marble, broken only by the windows with dark, graceful vines
trailing from the boxes on each sill.
It appeared to be attached to the farther house by a conservatory of
some sort, but there was no time to explore further, for the watchman
had halted and Inspector Druet mounted the steps and rang the bell.
McCarty followed with Dennis at his heels. As they paused, waiting, the
soft but deeply resonant tones of an organ came to their ears from
behind the windows to their right, from which emanated a subdued glow
of light.
From the far end of the street behind them a faint gong sounded and
with an exclamation of annoyance the watchman hurried off to open the
gate on the park side for the entrance of a motor car. He had scarcely
passed beyond earshot when the inspector whispered to McCarty:
“What’s the idea, Mac? Did you hear what the watchman said? ‘B. P.’
didn’t belong here, in spite of the tag on the key-ring.”
“No more he did, sir,” McCarty agreed, but there was no disappointment
in his tone. “I just want a word with the one that opens the door.”
There was no sound of footsteps from within but as McCarty finished
speaking the door opened. Silhouetted against the soft light was the
figure of a man, before whom, for the moment, even McCarty’s ready
tongue was silenced. Dennis choked. They were confronted by a man who,
though taller than the average of his race, was unmistakably Mongolian
and clad in the flowing robes of his native land. He bowed slightly
but in a dignified fashion, and then, as the visitors still remained
silent, he asked:
“What is it you desire, please?”
His voice was high and singsong but it bore no trace of an accent.
“We don’t want to disturb Mr. Orbit, if there’s been a mistake made,
but a man who says he’s a servant here has met with a bit of an
accident,” McCarty explained. “He’s kind of stout with a round, red
face and a little bald spot on his head. Forty-five or nearer fifty
years old, he might be. Can you tell us his name?”
He had edged closer to the side of the wide entrance door, so that, in
continuing to face him, the Chinaman had been compelled to turn until
the low light played across his countenance but it remained gravely
inscrutable as he listened. And although there was a perceptible pause,
when he did reply, the words followed each other without hesitation.
“It is Hughes, the valet. You desire to talk with Mr. Orbit? He is
engaged but I will see if he can receive you. This way, sirs.”
He closed the door after them and led the way into the house. As he
walked the long queue which depended from his head almost to his knees
swayed with each step.
“A Chink!” Dennis whispered. “What is he, the laundress here?”
Once again his remark went unheeded for McCarty was staring about him.
He had seen many wealthy homes in the past, but never had he entered an
apartment of such unostentatious magnificence as this hall of Mr. Henry
Orbit’s house. He could not know that he walked among almost priceless
treasures, that the dim panels on the walls were Catalan tapestries of
the fifteenth century, that the frescoed ceiling had known the brush of
Raphael himself, and that upon the great carved chair, secretly removed
from the Duomo long ago, had once rested the exhausted but dauntless
frame of Savonarola. The ex-roundsman could only feel with some sixth
sense, that he was in the presence of beauty and he trod as lightly as
his clumping boots would permit on the ancient, deep-piled rug beneath
his feet.
The Chinese butler conducted them to a spacious room at the left of the
hall, bowed them to chairs and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
From the room opposite the swelling notes of the organ rose, filling
their ears with a thunder of harmony which made the impressionable
Dennis catch his breath and instinctively bow his head.
“Come out of it, Denny! We’re not in church!” McCarty admonished, and
then turned to the inspector. “You see, sir, that fellow who died down
there by the wharves was wearing his own cheap shoes but the expensive
hand-me-down clothes of another man not his own build, and who would
that have been but his employer? He’d shaved too often and very close
like a man who was constantly in service, a butler or a valet, and if
he borrowed, without leave, cigars too good for the likes of his taste
he might have borrowed a hat, without leave as well. It struck me the
keys was his own, though, along with the little metal tag and that’s
why I thought maybe we’d save time by stopping here first.”
“You were right, again!” Inspector Druet exclaimed heartily. “I was in
such a hurry that I took too much for granted. We’ll see what Mr. Orbit
can tell us about this man of his.”
But Mr. Orbit did not immediately appear, and as the last notes of the
organ throbbed into silence, Dennis found his voice.
“Valet or no, what was any one from a grand house like this doing down
in that tough precinct by the waterfront, and in all the storm? Answer
me that! What did he die of, did the ambulance doctor know?”
The inspector shook his head.
“It wasn’t up to him to say; he just pronounced the man dead and
now it’s the medical examiner’s job, but we’ll know in the morning,
after the autopsy.... What have you found over there, Mac, anything
interesting?”
The room into which the Chinese had ushered them was a library,
modern and luxurious yet monastic in tone, with tall-backed, cathedral
chairs, refectory tables and benches and dried rushes covering the
inlaid marble floor. A single huge log smoldered upon the hearth and
books lined the wall space from floor to ceiling between the narrow,
stained-glass windows. The light came from torches held in sconces and
braziers suspended from massive chains.
McCarty had strolled over to a low row of open shelves where he stood
with his back to his two companions. He seemed not to have heard the
inspector’s query.
“It’s literature he’s took up now,” Dennis explained gloomily, “all
along of that new school the commissioner’s opening at headquarters.
This psycho-whatzis has gone to the head of him, and I misdoubt Mac’ll
ever be the same man again!”
McCarty’s expression denoted symptoms of apoplexy at this slanderous
betrayal, but before he turned he surreptitiously slipped into his
inner breast pocket a pamphlet bound in pale blue paper which had
fallen almost into his hands when he removed a larger, leather-covered
volume. He replaced the latter and turned with dignity to approach the
hearth once more.
“You’ll need to lose no sleep over me, Denny, and there’s more than me
would not be hurting themselves by improving their minds!” he announced
cuttingly. “The inspector’s here on a case of—of sudden death, not to
listen to your opinion of my private affairs!”
There was an amused but affectionate softening of the inspector’s keen
eyes as they glanced at his erstwhile subordinate. He opened his lips
to speak when a pleasantly modulated voice from the doorway behind them
fell upon their ears.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” it said. “I am Mr. Orbit.”
The three visitors turned to find a tall, slenderly erect man in dinner
clothes regarding them with gravely inquiring eyes. He must have
been well over fifty, but the lines in his strikingly distinguished
face were those of strength, not age, his dark hair was only lightly
powdered with gray at the temples and he bore himself with the air of a
man at the apex of his prime.
As he advanced into the room the inspector stepped forward to meet him.
“Sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Orbit, but we will only detain you
for a few minutes. I am Inspector Druet from Police Headquarters and
these are two of my assistants. We want a little information about a
certain man who carries a tag with this house address on his key-ring.”
Henry Orbit nodded slowly and the concern deepened upon his face as he
waved them back to their chairs and seated himself in a highbacked one
facing them.
“I know of no one who carries such a tag except my valet, Hughes. Is he
in any trouble? Ching Lee tells me that, from your description, the man
about whom you are inquiring is undoubtedly Hughes.”
“You don’t seem surprised,” the inspector observed bluntly. “Has this
valet of yours been in trouble before?”
A shadow of regret more than annoyance crossed the face of their host
and he shook his head.
“He has gotten into more than one scrape, although nothing, to my
knowledge, of course, that would engage the attention of the police.
I am afraid he is rather a scoundrel, but he has been with me for
twenty-two years and I cannot believe him utterly reprehensible. Has
he suggested to you that I would help him now?”
“The man I’m asking about is beyond any one’s help,” responded the
official. “He is dead.”
“Dead!” the other repeated in a low, shocked tone, after a moment’s
pause. “It seems incredible! Only a few hours ago I gave him permission
to go out! What happened? Did some accident occur?”
“That’s what we want to find out,” Inspector Druet announced grimly.
“There are several suspicious circumstances connected with his death.
Do you know of any enemies he may have had?”
Orbit frowned slightly and his glance traveled in startled amazement to
the faces of McCarty and Dennis and back again to his interrogator.
“‘Enemies?’” he repeated. “Surely there was no violence? I know nothing
of Hughes’ personal affairs but I should not have fancied he had an
active enemy in the world!”