GATES OF MYSTERY
They argued hotly all the way back to the New Queen’s Mall, Dennis
convinced that his prediction was already verified and McCarty
combating the idea from force of habit as much as from any other urge,
although he felt that the indications were too vague as yet, the clues
too tenuous, to be woven into a fabric of proof.
“What’s it that this Otto had a few words with him?” he demanded as
they reached the west gate on the Avenue. “Ching Lee went further than
that with a knife! Because Truda is working now in a house where a
child died of the lockjaw, and Calabar bean is one of the cures they
try for it, you’ve got it all fixed that Otto laid hold of some of it
there, or Truda gave it to him, and he must needs have gone over the
way and sprinkled enough of it on Hughes’ dinner, unbeknownst to any
one, to kill him! ’Tis well you took to fire-fighting, Denny, instead
of following me on the Force!”
“Is it so!” Dennis retorted. “I’m still on my job, let me remind you,
though maybe ’tis well you resigned when you did, if you can’t see
further than the end of your own nose, that you couldn’t even smell
with last night! Who else on the block has been within a mile of a case
of lockjaw, and for what else would that powdered bean be left lying
around? Swede or Chink, a man’s a man, though you might pick up a knife
or a blackthorn, whichever was handiest, to go for a bully you saw
abusing a kid it would be in hot rage; ’twould take something bigger
than that to make you sit down, cool and calm, and figure out how to
poison him! But a jealous husband might, and didn’t Otto threaten to
‘fix’ Hughes, by the words out of Snape’s mouth? That Truda don’t
suspicion a thing, but then she’d not know it if a powder factory took
fire next door! ’Tis a crime of nature that such a grand-looking woman
should be so dumb!”
“We’ve another kind of a crime on our hands, I’d remind you,” McCarty
observed. “Where on earth is that Bill Jennings?”
He rang once more and Dennis pointed through the grill-work of the
fence.
“There he is, clear at the other end of the block, letting another guy
out of the east gate. They’ve walled themselves in fine, the folks that
live here, but they could not shut out age, nor sickness, nor murder!
Good-afternoon, sir!”
Immaculate in frock coat and tall silk hat, the elder of the two
Sloanes, whom they had encountered on the previous evening, had swung
briskly down the Avenue to their side. He appeared, for the moment,
oblivious to Dennis’ salutation, as he fumbled with his gold pince-nez
and stared down the vista of the enclosed street.
“Confound it! What’s the fellow mean—?” Then he drew himself up and
turned to the couple near. “Oh, you’re the men from Headquarters! Still
on that affair of Orbit’s valet?—I’ve forgotten my key again; such a
bore!”
“There, the watchman’s seen us; he’s coming on the run.” McCarty nudged
his companion and then added to Gardner Sloane: “We’ve been talking to
the other servants on the block, but we haven’t been to your house yet
since you said only your butler and the trained nurse would be likely
to have known Hughes.”
“Unless I’m mistaken that was Lindholm the nurse going out the other
gate just now!” Sloane fumed. “Wretched impudence, his leaving my
father like this without permission. It always gives him a bad turn
to be left alone. But what’s all this to do about the valet’s death?
Nothing actually suspicious about it, was there? Silly rot, having an
investigation of this sort in the Mall!”
Bill Jennings pounded heavily up and admitted them at this juncture,
preventing the necessity of a reply from McCarty, who was carefully
avoiding Dennis’ stare of dismayed inquiry.
“Yes, sir, that was Otto Lindholm,” the watchman answered Sloane’s
irascible query. “He remarked to me that he was called away sudden for
a few days.”
“I am not interested in his remarks! He shall be dismissed for this!”
Sloane strode off angrily, without taking further notice of the two who
had followed him, and Dennis plucked McCarty’s sleeve.
“We’ve lost him!” he exclaimed disconsolately. “That wife of his may
not have been so dumb, after all, if she’s ’phoned and put him wise!”
“Let be!” McCarty cautioned: “Bill, did Lindholm say where he was
going? He must have been called away mighty quick, for we had a kind of
a date with him.”
“He didn’t say, but he looked more glum than usual; seemed in a hurry,
too.” Bill turned and then waited as they did not advance.
“Well, it’s no matter, anyway. We were to pick up the inspector but I
guess he’s gone on downtown. We’ll be beating it ourselves, Denny.”
Outside the gates once more, Dennis observed:
“Likely the woman’s gone, too, and it’s near six. I’ll have to be
getting back to the fire-house to report, but you’ll let me know if you
locate them? No matter when or how he contrived to dose Hughes with
that poison it must have been Lindholm, for his skipping out proves it!
To think of them two dumb-bells, the man and the woman, being at the
bottom of it!”
McCarty shook his head.
“’Twas not a crime of brawn, Denny, but of brains, and I’m thinking the
one clever enough to plan it would be too farseeing to run away before
he’d real reason. I’ll drop ’round to-morrow morning if there’s any
news.”
On the west side of the park they separated, Dennis to take up his
duty and McCarty to return to the Cochrane house. As the former had
predicted, Truda Lindholm had departed hurriedly half an hour before,
after a telephone conversation during which she had learned of serious
illness in her own family. The same trim maid who opened the door at
their first visit was McCarty’s informant and she couldn’t say from
whom the message had come, but she added that Mrs. Lindholm seemed more
distressed at leaving her patient than anxious over her own trouble.
She had been there nearly a month, since just after Mrs. Cochrane’s
little boy died, and had come well recommended from the West End
registry for nurses; they had all liked her.
At the registry office McCarty obtained an address in the Bronx,
only to learn from the Swedish couple living there that Mr. and Mrs.
Lindholm had boarded with them up to a month before, but had left,
giving the Sloane house as a forwarding address.
He ate a solitary dinner and then returned to his rooms, to meditate
disgustedly over the negative result of the day’s efforts. Hughes’
murder challenged his every instinct and habit of mind. If Ching Lee
knew nothing of it, what impulse had taken him that morning to the
scene of the crime’s consummation? Were Lindholm and his wife both
stupid enough to have taken alarm at the first hint of investigation,
if they were innocent, and so deserted their responsible positions? Had
Snape really told all he knew?
McCarty chewed savagely on his unlighted cigar, as he paced back and
forth. How would the bright lads in the new scientific school of
criminal psychology down at headquarters get after the mystery? With
a concrete example before him, would those books he had vainly pored
over give him a hint now? Dubiously he resurrected his newly-acquired
collection from the depths of his closet and then paused at sight of
the pale blue covered pamphlet protruding from the pocket of the coat
hanging above. It was the book he had appropriated from Orbit’s library
the night before, because it seemed to have something about psychology
in it that a fellow could get through his head. Now he sat himself down
doggedly to study it, with his own library scattered about him.
It was dawn before he went to bed at last, with the unaltered
conviction that this new school was not for him and that if he were to
succeed at all it must be by the wits God gave him, which, he had once
told Dennis, were his only science.
Yet Sunday passed and Monday; Hughes was laid to rest in the grave
provided for him by his late employer, and still there was no inkling
of his murderer’s identity. Ching Lee blandly declared he had been
to Chinatown on the morning after the tragedy and offered to produce
numerous relations to prove it. No slightest trace could be found
of the Lindholms; and Snape kept sedulously to the Bellamy house,
affording Dennis no opportunity to foster an acquaintance. The
newspapers were already criticizing the police department, Inspector
Druet smarted under the recriminations from higher up, and Dennis
lugubriously predicted defeat.
“The truth of it will never come out, Mac, with them Lindholms
disappearing and all,” he remarked on Tuesday afternoon, as they walked
slowly down the Mall toward Orbit’s house. “Maybe if we could get a
line on Hughes’ actions from the time he left here and the way he took
down to where he died—?”
“I’ve taken a dozen different routes trying to get trace of somebody
who might have noticed him when he first took sick to see did he give
a hint to them of what he was wanting to say when the end came, but
’tis no matter of use,” McCarty interrupted gloomily. “You said the
first night we set foot in here that ’twould be small mystery could
last for long between these two gates and yet it’s within a space where
you could swing a cat that the answer lies; that’s what gets my goat!
I want to have another talk with Orbit. He’s late getting in his coal,
ain’t he?”
The roar of coal sliding down a chute from a huge truck beside the door
almost drowned his comment, but Dennis nodded.
“Look at them two guys working like blazes shoving it down the hole
quicker, and Jean waiting with the hose to clean the sidewalk after.”
He pointed. “Orbit must be going to give some sort of a shindy, for
isn’t that a red carpet and an awning piled up alongside the door?
You’ll be out of luck if you’re wanting to interview him again this
afternoon.”
“No. There he is up in the window of his own private sitting-room, so
don’t be pointing, Denny! He’s doing something to the flowers.”
By daylight the front of the classic white marble house was a blaze of
gorgeous color from the window boxes on each sill filled with blooms
of vivid but perfectly blended hue, with graceful vines trailing in
slender, artfully trained tendrils down over the gleaming walls.
In one of the windows on the second floor the tall figure of Henry
Orbit appeared, the delicate touch of silver in his dark hair plainly
visible as he bent forward, and when he caught sight of the two below
he inclined his head in dignified but amicable greeting.
“We’ll go to him now?” Denny asked.
“After we stroll down to the other gate and back. Did it strike you
that there’s no sign of Bill Jennings on the block?” At the insistence
of the inspector they had been temporarily provided with a key to the
Mall, rendering them independent of the offices of either day or night
watchman, but until now they had invariably encountered one or the
other of these guardians.
“Maybe he’s having a bit of a chat with a maid in one of the houses,”
Dennis suggested helpfully. “There’s small blame to him, for it must be
mortal tiresome—”
“It looks to me as if the gate was open.” McCarty insensibly quickened
his steps. “Come on, I want to see.”
The gate was swinging slightly ajar, but the passing pedestrians on
Madison Avenue gave it no heed and the delinquent watchman was nowhere
in evidence.
“Let’s shut it.” Dennis turned to his companion. “Bill’s a good
fellow and there’s no need of getting him into trouble with the lords
of creation like that Sloane if he’s just stepped out for a bit.
He’ll have his own key to let himself in and these gates are damn’
foolishness, anyway.”
“He’s breaking a rule if not a law, Denny, and we’ve no call to be
condoning it for him.” McCarty’s years of discipline returned to him.
“We’ll be minding our own business, and get back to Orbit’s now.”
“Bill can’t have gone far, knowing that coal-truck will have to be let
out in a few minutes,” Dennis averred. “’Tis almost empty now and I’ll
bet those guys got a tip from Orbit, to be working that fast! He’s
moved to the other window now.”
Ching Lee admitted them, impassive as ever. Their call was evidently
anticipated, for he conducted them at once up to the private study.
Orbit turned from the window with an inquiring glance and they saw that
he held in his hand an oddly-shaped, silver-mounted sprayer.
“Have you any news for me?” he asked quickly.
“Nothing definite yet. But don’t let us bother you, Mr. Orbit; I just
wanted to ask you a question or two.”
“Glad to tell you anything, of course. I am just spraying the flowers
to rid them of any particles of coal dust which may have floated up.”
Orbit turned again to the window as he spoke. “It is a pity that such
a hideous utilitarian necessity should mar their perfection, but the
truck is going now.”
The rumble of the heavy vehicle arose from below as he spoke. Stepping
to the other window, McCarty saw that the familiar figure of Bill
Jennings was waiting once more by the eastern gate which he had thrown
wide.
“You’re having a party later, Mr. Orbit?”
“A musicale. Giambattista is to appear and my guests will arrive in an
hour. The unfortunate delay in putting in the coal—but what did you
wish to ask me? I would have recalled the invitations if I could for I
am in little mood for a function; the mystery surrounding the death of
poor Hughes is more disturbing than anything I have known for years and
I am waiting anxiously for it to be solved.”
He came forward again, replacing the sprayer in its case, and seated
himself in the chair beside his writing table.
“Well, it was quite a bit of money Hughes left for a fellow that threw
it around like he did and the inspector dropped a hint of it to the
newspaper boys so if anybody thought they could fake a claim they’d
show themselves. He wants to know if you’ve been approached?”
Dennis stared in amazement at this unexpected departure but Orbit shook
his head.
“I have heard nothing from any claimant in this country or his own,
but I have instructed my attorneys to cable to Cornwall, not only for
Hughes’ heirs but to ascertain if any close relatives of his are in
actual want. I feel that it is the least I can do after twenty years of
efficient service.”
“You’ve not replaced him yet?”
Orbit shrugged.
“That would be well-nigh impossible to do. A new man is coming in a
few days, highly recommended by a friend, but he will not be another
Hughes.... What is it, Ching Lee?”
He had taken a cigarette from an ivory box on the table and he paused
with it midway to his lips as the butler appeared in the doorway.
“The tutor, Mr. Trafford, sir. He desires to know if Master Horace is
here.”
“‘Here?’” Orbit raised his eyebrows. “No. I haven’t seen the little
chap since he passed this morning with Mr. Trafford. You might ask Fu
Moy or Jean if they have seen him.”
“Very good, sir.”
Ching Lee inclined his head and departed, as silently as he had come.
Orbit lighted his cigarette and leaned back.
“You’ve no definite clue yet, you say? None of Hughes’ associates,
whoever they may have been, can suggest any reason for such a
purposeless crime as this appears?”
“We’re looking for more of his associates, Mr. Orbit. The gentlemen
who’ve visited you here—the most of them brought their own valets with
them, didn’t they?”
“Naturally.” Orbit nodded and blew a smoke ring thoughtfully into the
air.
“Hughes may have grown thick with some of them, though you’d not be
likely to know of it. I’d like a list as near as you can remember of
the gentlemen who have stayed here during the past year, say, so we can
look up their servants.”
“I can tell you offhand of several of my guests but it will take more
time than I can spare this afternoon to give you a complete list, and
frankly, it is distasteful to me to have my friends annoyed.” Orbit’s
tone was pleasant but firm. “The latest to visit me, whom I can recall,
are Professor Harrowden, from the Smithsonian Institute, Sir Philip
Devereux and Conan Fairclough of London, Sabatiano Maura, Yareslow
Gazdik—”
“Mr. Orbit, would you write the last two?” McCarty interrupted
earnestly. “Where might Professor Harrowden be found?”
“In South America just now, leading an expedition up the Amazon.” Orbit
laid his cigarette in a tray of curiously hammered red gold and reached
obligingly for a pen. “Fairclough’s off for Africa again, I believe,
and Gazdik is playing a series of concerts at Biarritz.”
“Are the others at the ends of the earth, too?” The question was bland,
but McCarty’s smile was a trifle grim.
“Oh, no!” Orbit smiled also in understanding, as he rose and offered
the sheet of paper. “Sir Philip is on his way here from the West
to visit me again for a few days and Maura’s portrait exhibition
closes in Philadelphia before the end of the month when he, too, will
return before sailing again for Madrid. I’ll send the complete list
to headquarters for you, but I’m afraid you won’t find that their
menservants learned much of Hughes’ affairs in the brief time they were
here.”
McCarty thanked him and they took their departure, encountering Ching
Lee in the hall below who showed them out in silence.
“’Tis beyond me what you got out of that interview,” Dennis declared.
“Stalling, is what I’d have called it!”
“The two of us!” McCarty agreed with a chuckle. “Him as well as me.
He’ll not be dragging his friends into this business if he can help
it!... Who’s the lanky, worried-looking guy talking to Bill?”
Halfway down the block, a tall, thin, bespectacled young man was
gesticulating nervously as he confronted the watchman whose vehement
shakes of the head denoted protestation. While they watched, the young
man turned abruptly and made for the Goddard house. Bill advanced
slowly toward them.
“Have you fellows seen the Goddard boy?” he asked. “He’s the red-headed
kid you saw me let in the first day you came. That was his private
teacher who’s been looking for him for an hour but he didn’t go out
either of the gates.”
“Maybe he did awhile back when that one was left open,” McCarty
suggested dryly.
“Good Lord, did you know that!” Bill gasped. “If you let on it’ll cost
me my job, and I only stepped ’round the corner for a smoke! The kid’s
all right, but they treat him like a baby. Did you find out yet who
killed Hughes?”
“We’re waiting for news every minute,” McCarty assured him gravely as
they reached the western gate. “I shouldn’t wonder if it came to-night.”
“Now what in the world did you give him that bunk for?” demanded
Dennis, when they had left the Mall safely behind them.
“I said ‘news,’ but not of what kind, Denny,” replied his companion
with dignity. “You’re not on duty till morning?”
“No, I was thinking I’d drop in at Molly’s, now the kid has got over
the measles.”
“Well, come to my rooms when you leave your sister’s,” McCarty
invited. “I’ve accepted a bribe from one of my Homevale tenants, who’s
law-breaking in his cellar, and if you’re not afraid of being poisoned
like Hughes——?”
“I’ll be there!” Dennis promised with alacrity.
He was as good as his word but when he arrived no refreshment awaited
him. Instead, McCarty turned from the telephone with a glint of latent
excitement in his blue eyes and announced:
“The news has come, Denny. Horace Goddard has been kidnapped!”