THE NOSE OF DENNIS RIORDAN
There was a second pause and then the inspector asked: “Did he give you
any excuse for wanting an evening out to-night?”
“No, none. It was not unusual and I thought nothing of it.” Orbit’s
hands clenched slightly. “I cannot believe that poor Hughes is really
gone! Perhaps Ching Lee made a mistake, perhaps some one else had come
into possession of Hughes’ key-ring. Will you describe him to me,
please, and tell me the suspicious circumstances you mentioned?”
“You describe the fellow, Mac; you examined him and his clothes more
closely than I did.” There was a double significance in the inspector’s
tone and he added: “Special Deputy McCarty happened to be there when
this man died.”
Orbit nodded and fixed his eyes expectantly on McCarty as the latter
briefly complied with the inspector’s request, without, however,
mentioning the letters in the hat. When he had finished, Orbit
exclaimed:
“It is he, beyond a doubt! The raincoat and brown sack suit were my
own, given to him when I tired of them myself, and he must have copied
my cat’s-eye pin and links, although I never saw them. How did he die?”
“Well, sir, he was hurrying along in the rain and all of a sudden he
dropped.” McCarty chose his words carefully. “When me and a friend of
mine got to him he was breathing his last and the end came as I lifted
his head to my knee.... How did he happen to be wearing a hat with the
letters ‘B. P.’ in it, Mr. Orbit? Who is B. P.?”
Orbit frowned again thoughtfully.
“I cannot at the moment recall any one with those initials but
naturally I have no knowledge of his friends or associates,” he replied
at last. “Surely that is immaterial, however. What was suspicious about
the poor fellow’s death? He was an irreproachable servant but when
his time was his own his habits were irregular and I should not have
been surprised to learn that his heart had failed or he had suffered a
stroke.”
“Had he been drinking the last time you saw him; this evening, I think
you said?” McCarty asked.
“Certainly not! I have never seen him under the influence of alcohol or
he would not have remained an hour in my service. He was fully aware of
this, and although I am convinced that he occasionally drank to excess
he was careful never to let me see him in such a condition. Had he been
drinking when you went to his assistance?”
McCarty ignored the question.
“You don’t ask where that was, I notice. Have you any notion where he
could have been going to-night?”
“Not the slightest,” Orbit shrugged. “I have told you that I am quite
ignorant of his private affairs and have had no interest in them.”
“Still, he’d been your personal servant for a matter of twenty-odd
years,” McCarty insisted. “Wouldn’t you want to know what he was up to
if you learned he’d left your house to go down along the waterfront, in
one of the toughest districts in the city?”
Orbit stared in genuine amazement.
“‘The waterfront?’” he repeated. “I cannot imagine what he could have
been doing in such a district as you describe! Even in his dissipations
Hughes was never attracted by anything sordid, to my knowledge, but
aped even the vices of men of a higher station than he.”
“I was coming to that,” McCarty remarked. “You spoke awhile back of
trouble he’d got into more than once; what sort of trouble?”
“Gambling debts and indiscreet affairs with women; upper servants like
himself or the wives of upper servants. When monetary settlements were
in order he came to me for an advance on his salary and that is how I
learned of his difficulties.” Orbit paused and then added reflectively:
“He has been in none of late, however; at least, none which required
assistance from me.”
“About what hour to-night was the last time you saw him alive?”
“At a little before seven, when he laid out these clothes for me.”
Orbit motioned to his attire. “Some guests were dining with me—three
gentlemen, all near neighbors—and I was preoccupied but Hughes’
appearance and manner must have been quite as usual or I would have
noted a change. My guests are still here.”
He paused significantly and McCarty replied directly to the hint.
“We’re sorry to keep you from them but we’ve got to know what your man
was doing down in that neighborhood. You don’t know his own friends
maybe, but you might know which of the servants employed by your
neighbors he’s been most friendly with, and if you don’t maybe your
neighbors themselves would know.”
“Really, is it as important as that?” There was still no trace of
annoyance in Orbit’s voice or manner but merely a dignified protest.
“You can understand that any notoriety in connection with the death of
my unfortunate valet would be highly distasteful to me, and to have my
friends subjected to it would be doubly so. My guests this evening are
Mr. Gardner Sloane and his son, Mr. Brinsley Sloane, Second, who live
across the street at Number Five, and Mr. Eustace Goddard, from Number
Two, the corner house next door to me here. I have no idea whether or
not Hughes was even acquainted with any of the servants in either the
Sloane or Goddard households, but I will inquire.”
He rose and left the room, and the inspector turned to McCarty.
“Is all this necessary, Mac? I know I said this looked big but that
was when I thought the man dead down there near the river was the
millionaire Parsons. If it’s just a dissipated valet we can let it
slide, at least unless the autopsy discloses foul play of some sort.”
“When you asked me if I’d seen more in this than you, inspector, I told
you I’d seen the corpse,” McCarty reminded him quietly. “Now you’re
asking me if it’s necessary to find out even before the autopsy who
this fellow Hughes was friendly with and I’ll say it won’t do any harm,
because I saw him before he was a corpse! Heart disease he may have
died of, or apoplexy, but it may be a good thing for us to know what
brought it on him so sudden to-night, even if he was just a valet!”
There was no mistaking the earnestness in his tones and the inspector
started to speak, but once more he was forestalled by the opening
of the door, and Orbit ushered in three men. The first was slightly
younger than his host, stout and bald except for a fringe of sandy
hair. His mouth beneath the small, reddish mustache had a humorous
quirk at the corners which appeared to be habitual, his blue eyes
twinkled and he regarded the police official and his two deputies with
a frank and not unfriendly curiosity.
The second man was approximately the same age but his smooth-shaven
face was strikingly handsome and his youthfully cut dinner coat was
worn with a jauntiness which proclaimed the middle-aged gallant.
The last of Mr. Orbit’s guests to enter was a tall, thin man of about
thirty, whose inordinately serious expression was enhanced by the
shell-rimmed glasses which bestrode the bridge of his nose. His chin
was cleft, like that of the man who had immediately preceded him and
there was an unmistakable family resemblance between them. Even before
the introduction McCarty placed him as Brinsley Sloane, Second, the
older man as his father, Gardner Sloane, and the first to enter,
therefore, as the next-door neighbor, Eustace Goddard.
It was Goddard who spoke first.
“Too bad about poor Hughes, inspector. Very hard on Mr. Orbit, I must
say. I’ve seen Hughes about the house here for years, of course, but I
don’t think I’ve exchanged half a dozen words with him in my life and
I’m quite sure none of the servants in my household know anything more
about him than I do.”
“Why, Mr. Goddard?” asked the inspector.
“Well, for one thing, they’re all elderly and staid—been with my
family for years. Mr. Orbit happened to mention the fact just now that
Hughes was given to dissipation occasionally. He wouldn’t have found
anything in common with our staff, but you are welcome to question them
to-morrow as much as you please.”
“Thank you.” The inspector turned to the elder of the two remaining
guests. “Mr. Sloane, have you happened to notice any acquaintanceship
between Mr. Orbit’s valet and your servants?”
There was a slight touch of sarcasm in his voice and the flush which
mounted to Goddard’s scant red hair showed that the shot had gone home.
Gardner Sloane responded with a hearty assumption of cordiality:
“Can’t say that I have, inspector. We are a household of men, for my
son and I are alone with my father, who is very old and an invalid.
His male nurse, a Swede who speaks little English, and John Platt the
butler who is nearly seventy, are the only servants in our employ with
whom there is any likelihood that Hughes might have come in contact.
However, I have observed him on several occasions in the company of a
butler in service in another house on this block and although I find it
very distasteful to direct even the most casual of official inquiries
to an establishment presided over by an unprotected lady—”
“Father!” the young man interrupted in precise, shocked tones. “I am
astonished—!”
“You usually are, Brin,” interrupted the elder in his turn. “It is my
duty to tell these officers what I have seen. The only servant here
in the Mall I have ever noticed in Hughes’ company is Snape, Mrs.
Bellamy’s butler; if any of them knows anything about the fellow’s
private affairs, it should be he.”
“Which is Mrs. Bellamy’s house?” the inspector inquired.
“Number Six, next door to this on the east,” the younger Sloane replied
hastily. “I am sure, however, that my father must be mistaken, and if
you annoy Mrs. Bellamy at such an hour as this merely for below-stairs
gossip, you will distress her greatly. Indeed, why should any of us be
interrogated? The man Hughes dropped dead in the street, I understand;
it means nothing to any one except Mr. Orbit, who has lost an efficient
servant!”
Again the inspector sent a hurried glance at McCarty, who ignored the
indignant young man and turned to the master of the house.
“Mr. Orbit, have you any notion what relations Hughes had?”
“None, in this country. He was the son of a blacksmith in Cornwall who
went to London when a lad and took service as a bootboy. From this he
rose to the position of valet and when he came to me he was, as Mr.
Sloane has observed, a most efficient one.”
“Then,” McCarty spoke musingly, as though to himself, “there’ll be no
one to notify about the funeral arrangements.”
“I shall assume all responsibility, of course,” Orbit announced. “I
will arrange with an undertaking establishment to send for the body at
once. It has been removed to the morgue?”
McCarty nodded.
“To-morrow’ll do, sir; there’ll have to be some formalities, permits
and such. The inspector will let you know.”
McCarty and his companions had remained standing since the re-entrance
of Orbit with his guests and now he signaled with lifted eyebrows
to his former superior and nodded almost imperceptibly toward the
door. Inspector Druet nodded in response and turned to the four men
collectively.
“We won’t trouble you any further, and if we can obtain the information
we want elsewhere it will not be necessary to question the servants of
any one living here in the Mall. Goodnight.”
The Chinese butler was waiting to show them out but McCarty lingered
for a moment after the others had preceded him.
“You’re the butler here?”
The other bowed in silent affirmation and McCarty went on:
“How many other servants are employed here and what are their names?”
“André the chef, Jean the houseman and little Fu Moy the coffee boy.
That is all except Hughes.” The reply came without a pause in the
falsetto singsong monotone.
“Hughes is dead,” McCarty said abruptly.
Again the Chinese bowed and when he raised his head his expression had
not changed an iota.
After vainly waiting for some remark in response, McCarty asked:
“You were all in to-night? Did any one leave this house since afternoon
except Hughes?”
“No one.”
There was a suggestion of finality in the oddly chanting tones now and
the discomfited questioner shrugged and rejoined the inspector and
Dennis who were waiting on the sidewalk before the many-turreted house
next door. All the lights had been extinguished except one on the top
floor which gleamed down upon them like a single wakeful eye.
“What were you getting out of that Chink?” Dennis demanded as they
started toward the eastern gate where the watchman waited.
“Not a living thing that I wanted except a list of the other servants
of the household and word that none of them but Hughes had left the
doors this night,” McCarty responded disgustedly. “What he got out of
me was my goat! I sprung it on him quick that Hughes had croaked and he
never turned a hair nor uttered a word but just waited politely for me
to go along about my business!”
“It is conceivable that Orbit told him when he went to bring his
guests,” the inspector observed dryly.
“Did he strike you as being the sort that would stop then to talk to
one of the servants? He didn’t me,” McCarty averred. “He may tell this
Ching Lee, as he called him, after his three neighbors go, but it’ll
be only so that he can break the news to the others before the morning
papers come out. Twenty-two years this Hughes has been with him and
Orbit knew no more about his affairs than the day he hired him! ’Tis
unnatural that never once in all that time did they talk together as
man to man and yet I don’t think Orbit lied, at that. Look at the way
he treated us! He was polite and friendly enough and never once could
you have laid your finger on a word or a look from him that was haughty
or arrogant like the most of them act over here when the police get
snooping around, and yet didn’t you kind of feel as though you were
talking to a Royal Duke at the least? It’s the grand manner of him,
that he don’t even know he’s got.”
“A fine gentleman, Mr. Orbit,” Dennis agreed. “We’ve found out nothing,
though, about what Hughes was doing down in Mike Taggart’s precinct nor
why he ran like that till he dropped, and likely we’ll not find it here
between these two gates.”
“There’s something more than that on your mind, Mac!” the inspector
declared shrewdly. “You’d never have insisted on questioning Orbit’s
friends if you hadn’t some idea of what caused Hughes’ seizure, and
that it led back here! What did you see before he died that you’re
keeping to yourself?”
“Tell you to-morrow, inspector, if you’ll drop in when you’ve nothing
better to do, or ’phone Denny and me the word to come downtown to you,”
replied McCarty hurriedly in a lowered tone for they had almost reached
the gate and the watchman was advancing to meet them. “Denny’s off duty
and I’m taking him home with me the night, though I misdoubt he’ll keep
me up till dawn with his wild theories as to what desperate crime took
Hughes down to the waterfront! Thanks be, the rain has stopped and
he’ll not be wanting to ride home in state!”
But it was McCarty himself who hailed a prowling taxi when they had
taken leave of the inspector and discreetly rounded a corner, and he
had no time on the homeward way to glance at the meter, being engaged
in mollifying his outraged companion.
“Will you never learn, you simpleton, when I’m talking about you for
the benefit of somebody else?” he demanded in exasperation, when Dennis
with bitter resentment had spurned his hospitality. “’Twas to put off
the inspector I dropped that hint about being wishful for my sleep or
he would have trailed along with us to find out what I’d got up my
sleeve, and well you know ’tis nothing but the expression on a dying
man’s face and the way he tried to speak but couldn’t! He’ll have the
laugh on the both of us to-morrow if the medical examiner says ’twas
‘natural causes,’ and he’ll forget all about this night’s doings, but
I won’t; I’m going to find out why Hughes ran the breath from his body
and what it was he tried so hard to say.”
“Some day,” Dennis began darkly, but with a tell-tale softening in his
tones, “some day you’ll broadcast through me once too often and this
radio station will shut down on you! The inspector was right, though;
I can see that now. Whatever made Hughes throw that fit, you think it
happened back in that society fire line or you’d not have listened to
the fat, bald little man, nor yet the old he-gossip and his son. I
misdoubt but some night we’ll be putting a scaling ladder against that
iron fence and chloroforming the watchman, so you can put that butler
next door through the third degree!”
Back in McCarty’s rooms once more Dennis dried his rain-soaked boots
comfortably before the little coal fire in the grate and watched with
a quizzical light in his eyes while his host stowed his newly acquired
library carefully away in a closet and then proceeded to clear out the
accumulated litter of several days’ bachelor housekeeping, but he said
no word until the task was accomplished. Then he observed:
“When you’re working on a case, Mac, you use your head, and the eyes
and ears of you, but to-night another of your senses was asleep at the
switch. Not that it had anything to do with Hughes, of course, but no
more did anything else we learned except his name! You overlooked one
little bet.”
“Oh, I did, did I!” McCarty retorted, stung but wary. “And what sense
of mine was it that was not working?”
“Smell.” The reply was succinct. “Unless you’re holding out on me, your
nose was not on the job.”
McCarty stared.
“What was there to smell?” he demanded. “Since when is your nose keener
than mine?”
“’Tis keen for one thing it’s been trained to for many a year, and
that’s fire. Mac, there’s been a fire in Orbit’s house, and not more
than a few hours before we got there!”
“A fire, is it!” McCarty snorted. “There’d likely been one in the
kitchen, since dinner was cooked there, and you saw the log burning on
the hearth in the library—!”
“Stoves and hearths don’t burn wool and silk and carpets and varnished
wood, my lad!” Dennis laid his pipe on the mantel and rose. “It could
only have been a small bit of a fire, for the smoke of it had cleared
away entirely, but the smell hadn’t; there was enough of that hanging
in the air for me to get the whiff, anyway, even though nobody else
could. I’ve not the gift to explain it right, but there’s a different
smell to everything that’s inflammable, if you’ve the nose for it, and
it was house furnishings had been burned this night!”