THE CLOSED HOUSE
“A fine mess you made of that!” McCarty remarked disgustedly when the
door of Mrs. Goddard’s dressing-room had closed behind them, shutting
in her husband and the maid. “Just when we were on the point of getting
at the truth, too!”
“Truth, is it?” Dennis retorted. “I suppose you mean you’d have been
finding out what the crazy guy expected to find in the boy’s pockets!”
“No, I know that already!” McCarty emitted a grim chuckle. “’Twill
keep, though, for we’ve got quick work ahead of us now and the
inspector must have been waiting this long while.”
“You can shoot yourself down in that birdcage if you’ve a mind to, but
my own legs will carry me!” Dennis eyed the elevator door, cunningly
concealed in the high oak paneling of the hall, with a hostile glare.
Then he added sarcastically: “I’ve no doubt but that, by the new book
learning you’ve got lately, you know who the guy was, too, and where
he came from and how he got out, through solid walls and barred gates!
Education is a grand thing, but where is Horace? Answer me that!”
“If we’re not able to answer that soon, Denny, I’m thinking it would be
best left unanswered forever, for the sake of that woman back there.”
McCarty spoke with deep earnestness. “There’s a feeling in me that
we’ve something working against us more than human, something worse
than lightning or the plague, even! If we could only see our way clear
to the black heart of it!”
They went down the stairs together, to find the inspector and Martin
awaiting them with Trafford, who appeared crushed from the gruelling
half hour through which he had passed.
McCarty addressed him first, with a mere nod to his superior.
“Trafford, why didn’t you tell me about the man who grabbed the lad in
the alley not two weeks ago?”
“Mr. Goddard forbade me,” the wretched young man stammered, then drew
himself up with a vain assumption of dignity. “Since it has nothing to
do with the case—”
“We’re the best judges of that!” McCarty waved him away peremptorily.
“Tell Mr. Goddard we’ll see him later.... Now, inspector, before we
talk, if you’ll follow a suggestion of mine just once more, there’s a
train Martin will be after catching and he’ll have to hustle to do it.”
The inspector eyed him keenly for a moment and then nodded.
“Go to it,” he said briefly. “Get the instructions, Martin.”
McCarty drew the young operative aside and after a brief interchange of
words the latter took his departure. Then the inspector motioned the
other two into the library and closed the door.
“Now I want an explanation of this!” he announced, in a tone which
took McCarty swiftly back to the old days. “Why didn’t you report to
me at once when you learned what had happened? What have you two been
doing since? I made you deputies, but by the Lord I didn’t appoint you
chiefs!”
McCarty told him in detail of their activities during the night and
added frankly:
“I didn’t report, inspector, because I wanted a few hours’ the start
of you, and that’s the truth. So far, I’ve only done what I think you
would have, yourself, but I’m working from an angle of my own that
you’d not have taken. I’ve sent Martin just now to Ellenville, to find
out if this Blaisdell has heard anything of the lad, but that’s only
routine; the real job is here in the Mall, even if Horace turns up dead
or alive somewhere else.”
“What’s this angle of yours on the case?” the inspector demanded
curtly. “What did Goddard forbid that tutor mentioning and why?”
McCarty described the interview with Mrs. Goddard and the inspector
listened attentively, asking when he had finished:
“What do you propose to do? Put the screws on Goddard to find out why
he kept that back? He can’t be a party to the kidnapping of his own
son!”
“No, but he thinks he knows who the fellow was, and that he’ll hear
from him or them back of him soon with a view to ransom; he’s ready to
offer fifty or a hundred thousand reward, whenever you give the word.
Until he does hear from him, though, he can’t be sure what happened
to the lad and that’s why he’s anxious. His wife don’t know anything
about this private opinion of his, of course, and naturally she’s
half-crazed,” McCarty summed up as though his process of deduction was
equally clear to his two companions. “We’ll leave him worry awhile, for
’tis my opinion he’s mistaken entirely. I want a look now inside that
empty house next to the Parsons’ across the street and there’s no time
to wait for red tape to get permission.”
“The Quentin house, that’s been closed all these years?” The inspector
looked fixedly at him and Dennis gaped. “You think the fellow might
have hidden there after letting the little boy go? Come on, we’ll take
a chance.”
A huge dark blue limousine of impressive aspect was just drawing up
before Number Seven as they emerged from the Goddard house and crossed
the street. At sight of the distinguished, gray-bearded man who
alighted and went up the steps the inspector halted with an exclamation.
“Do you know who that is, Mac? The ambassador to whom the mayor gave
the keys of the city only yesterday down at City Hall! If he comes
himself to call on the Parsons family they’re of more importance even
than I thought!”
“And ’tis small wonder they don’t bother to associate with the rest on
the block, millionaires or no,” McCarty commented, eyeing the equipage
with vast respect as they passed. “You said the old gentleman was—?”
He paused suddenly and Dennis’ eyes followed his to the great entrance
doors which were closing slowly behind the aristocratic back of the
ambassador. There was just a glimpse of a thin, sallow-faced manservant
in black, who appeared to sweep the trio with a curiously penetrating
gaze and then the scene was shut out.
McCarty seemed to have lost interest in the question he was about to
ask and they went on in silence to the narrow, paved court between the
Parsons residence and the vast, rambling pile of brownstone next door.
“Let’s go up here and see if the rear is open for the length of the
block, the way it is on the other side of the street,” McCarty
suggested. “There’s Parsons’ side door, the one Horace said the man
disappeared into; it’s pretty deep, you see, deep enough for him to
have just stepped into the embrasure and been hid in the shadows of
late afternoon without actually going through the door itself, though I
don’t say he didn’t, at that!”
“’Tis likely a nut that’d go around grabbing children and searching
their pockets would be let into the Parsons’!” Dennis exclaimed in fine
scorn. “Unless the boy made the whole thing up for a sensation, the way
some kids do, how’d the man get in and out of the block? The house on
this side looks to be boarded up, as tight as a drum.”
They reached the rear and found the open court which extended along
behind the houses, to be even wider than that on the south side of
the street, the back wall higher and devoid of a single vine. The
silent Quentin house presented as blank an aspect as from the front,
its sealed windows and barred doors staring like blind eyes in the
sunlight. The inspector shook his head.
“No one has entered here in months; years maybe,” he remarked. “The
padlocks are so rusted on those board doors that they would have to be
broken and the boards themselves are weatherbeaten and rotting. I’m
surprised they’d let the place get into such a condition, even though
it is in litigation.... What are you doing, Riordan?”
The house, being the corner one, was built around in an ell on the
Madison Avenue side and in the right angle formed by its two walls a
leader descended from the roof. Dennis was examining and testing it
speculatively. At the inspector’s question he turned.
“Do you mind, sir, ’twas a wide shiny mark burnished on a pipe running
across the top of an air-shaft that showed Mac and me how a murderer
had swung himself down on a rope and in at a window, in the first
case ever he butted in on after he left the Force?” he asked. “This
rain-pipe looks to be too frail to bear the weight of a cat, but ’tis
not a cat rubbed the rust off here, and here, so it shines like new
tin! I put on a clean shirt yesterday, more’s the pity, but hold my
coat and hat, Mac.”
“Mind or you’ll break your neck!” McCarty warned, forgetful of his
friend’s calling, as he complied. Dennis scorned to reply but swarmed
up the straining, creaking leader to the second floor, swinging out to
land lightly and sure-footedly on the broad sill of a window two feet
away. The leader, released suddenly from his weight, tore loose from
its fastening and canted crazily against the angle of the wall, shaking
and clattering, and McCarty exclaimed:
“You’ll not be coming down the way you went up!”
“True for you!” Dennis sang out with a note of rising excitement. “I’ll
be coming down the way the last guy did who lit here, and that’s by the
inside! Wait you there for me.”
He had been examining the sill upon which he stood and the boards which
covered the window, pressing experimentally upon the latter. Suddenly
one of them gave way, forced inward with an accompanying crash of glass.
“Now you’ve done it!” McCarty observed superfluously. “Look out there
is not more than us waiting for you inside!”
“I’ve my flashlight, thanks be, and my two fists,” Dennis responded.
“That board wasn’t tight; the nails had just been stuck back in the
holes. Here goes another!”
With the rending of wood the second followed the first and with a
third which he wrenched loose Dennis smashed in the fragments of glass
which still clung to the sash, then wriggled lithely through the
aperture and disappeared. McCarty drew a long breath and turned to his
former superior.
“I’d like to be following him,” he said wistfully. “If so be some guy
is hiding in there—the same one that grabbed the lad—he’ll be desperate
enough to kill, and Denny’s too slow-thinking and slow-moving to take
care of himself! I’m heftier than him and ’tis long since I did any
shinnying, but maybe that pipe would hold me after all!”
“A man with four medals from the fire department for meritorious
conduct and conspicuous bravery doesn’t need a nursemaid, Mac!” the
inspector responded with a laugh. “Personally, I don’t believe any
one’s been in there for months before him but—what’s that?”
“That” was a sudden subdued commotion within, a long-sustained clatter
followed by a reverberating thud and then a silence ominous in its
intensity.
“I knew it!” McCarty dropped the hat and coat and made for the wooden
barrier that sealed the main back door. “I’m going in if I break the
whole damn’ place down! Denny! Denny! I’m coming!”
His reassuring roar was lost in the mighty smash of his fist on the
rotting boards but after the first blow the inspector reached him and
dragged him back.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” the latter demanded. “You’ll
have the whole block aroused to find us breaking and entering!
Riordan’s all right!—There, I hear somebody moving about inside.
Listen!”
McCarty waited, panting and tense, and faintly there came to his ears
the sound as of stumbling footsteps within and a scratching noise from
a window at the left of the door which, being protected by an iron
grill-work, had been left unboarded. A heavy green shade hung close
against the inner side of the dirty windowpane, furrowed by many past
rainstorms, and the stout bars seemed at a glance to be firmly imbedded
in the broad stone sill but McCarty strode to them and began trying
them one by one, while behind him the inspector drew his revolver and
stood expectant.
“Look here, sir!” McCarty whispered. “’Tis fine burglar protection
they’ve got in these houses! See how this bar slides up into its groove
in the top of the casement, till you can pull it out below and down
over the sill entirely? I’ll bet the next will work the same.—It does!
If we’d taken the trouble to find this out at first—! Glory be, here’s
Denny himself!”
The green shade had flown up and the face of Dennis appeared in a
sickly yellow aura cast by his flashlight, but he promptly extinguished
it and set to work on the catch of the window. As McCarty removed the
fourth bar the sash opened upward and the two, who had meanwhile been
exchanging grimaces pregnant with meaning gazed silently at each other
for a full minute. Then McCarty found his voice.
“Where is he!” he demanded. “What did you do with him? We heard the row
out here—!”
“There wasn’t any ‘him,’” Dennis interrupted sheepishly. “It was me, by
myself. I came on the stairs unexpected-like and took the whole flight
of them without even breaking my flashlight!—But come in, the both of
you, and see what I found!”
McCarty scrambled over the sill and Inspector Druet, despite his
added years, followed with the effortless ease of a boy. They found
themselves in a large room bare of furniture but in the dust which lay
like a heavy carpet upon the floor a meandering trail of footsteps,
many times traversed, ran from the window by which they had entered to
a connecting door opening into a laundry. Dusty finger-marks, with here
and there the imprint of a whole hand, were plainly outlined on the
white woodwork of the inner sill and below it greasy pieces of wrapping
paper were scattered. In a corner two pitchers and several small tin
cans were heaped.
“Some one has been camping out here, that’s evident,” the inspector
remarked. “Getting his food handed in to him through that window, too!”
“And it wasn’t any ordinary bought stuff, the kind that comes ready
fixed in stores.” McCarty was poking about in the papers. “Here’s the
carcass of a whole chicken, pieces of fancy rolls and pastry and other
stuff, but it’s all stale; it’s been here for four or five days, at
least.”
“And there’s traces of coffee in those pitchers and cans, to say
nothing of the wine bottles on that shelf!” Dennis pointed impatiently.
“He’s been living on the fat of the land from one of the houses in this
row and the nearer the likelier, even if it does happen to be occupied
by the Parsons! Come upstairs till I show you more.”
The larger adjoining room had evidently been the laundry, for rows of
enameled tubs and washing machines were ranged against the wall and
dryers stood about, but all were covered with a thick blanket of dust.
Dennis led the way through a series of kitchens and pantries, far more
elaborate than those they had encountered in Orbit’s house, to the back
stairs and up to the second floor rear, into the room with the broken
window. All the way they had followed that zigzag trail of overlapping
footsteps and here the floor was crossed and recrossed by a network
of them. This apartment had evidently been one of the master bedrooms,
for a well-appointed, marble-lined bath opened from it and heavy,
old-fashioned furniture of richly carved mahogany was ranged with stiff
precision about the room. A half-burned candle, shielded from the
window by an old cardboard box-cover, stood on a side table together
with a handful of matches and some cigarette stubs. McCarty pointed to
it.
“He couldn’t live without a light but he hid it from the window and
he didn’t dare carry it when he went down to get his food; that’s why
those footprints ramble so, he was feeling his way in the dark. That
bed looks as if it had been slept in, with all those old draperies
piled on it, and what’s in that big pitcher on the bureau?”
“Water,” Dennis replied. “There’s still a little left, though you can
see from the marks on the inside where it has dried down.”
“Evaporated?” The inspector nodded. “That would show, too, that whoever
the fellow was he hadn’t used any of it for a few days at least.—Hello,
what’s this?”
He had turned to the bathroom and after a moment he emerged from it
holding a bright, new razor, a piece of soap and a very dirty Turkish
towel.
“The water has been turned off in the pipes of course, but there is an
empty bucket in there in which some must have been brought to him, and
he seems to have had some regard to his personal appearance, at least.
The Goddard boy said the man who had tackled him was rough-looking and
unshaved, didn’t he?”
“When he tackled him, yes,” McCarty replied. “He had chance enough to
clean up after, as soon as whoever was helping him to hide here brought
him the things.”
“He did more than that!” Dennis declared. There was an unwonted flush
on his leathery cheeks and his gray eyes were alight with excitement.
“Why do you suppose he was hiding here, anyway? Why does anybody hide?
If ’tis not to do something unlawful, couldn’t he have broken the law
already and be hiding from it?”
“Denny!” McCarty breathed. “What are you getting at? You’ve found out
something! Who is the man?”
“Who’s wanted now, Inspector?” Dennis asked. “Somebody that’s gentleman
enough to keep shaved and clean in spite of everything, who’d
appreciate good food and wine and the best in life, and yet was a
convicted criminal for all that!”
“‘Convicted—!’” McCarty started forward. “An ex-crook, do you mean? How
did you guess—?”
“‘Ex-crook,’ nothing!” retorted his confrère. “I’m not up in the
latest of prison styles but if this ain’t a penitentiary get-up I’m an
Orangeman!”
He flung open a closet door behind him, dived in and dragged forth in
triumph a tell-tale suit of stained and ragged gray.
“Sing Sing!” exclaimed Inspector Druet. “Good Lord, Riordan, you’ve
made a find!—Do you remember, Mac, that three men escaped last month?
One was killed making his getaway and another caught and transferred
to Dannemora, but the third of those that crashed out then is still at
large and there’s a big reward out! Heaven knows how he managed to get
into the Mall and why he should have come here, of all places, but I’ll
stake my life that the man who has been hiding in this house is George
Radley!”