 CHAPTER XXIII. A NIGHT AT THE LORALS. I slept most of the way to Crescent, to the disgust of the little detective. Finally he struck up in acquaintance with a kindly-faced old priest on his way home to his convent school, and with a roll of dance music and surreptitious bundles that look like boxes of candy. From scraps of conversation I gleaned that there had been mysterious occurrences at the convent, ending in the theft of what the Reverend Father called vaguely a quantity of under-muslims. I dropped asleep at that point, and when I roused a few moments later the conversation had progressed. Hodgkis had a diagram on an envelope. With this window bolted, and that one inaccessible, and if, as you say, the ear-garments, were in the tub here at X, then, as you hold the key to the other door, I think you said the convent dog did not raise any disturbance? Pardon a personal question, but do you ever walk in your sleep? The priest looked bewildered. I'll tell you what to do, Hodgkis said cheerfully, leaning forward. Look around a little yourself before you call the police. Some namulism is a queer thing. It's a question whether we are most ourselves sleeping or waking. Ever think of that? Live a saintly life all day, prayers and matins and all that, and the subconscious mind hikes you out of bed at night to steal under-muslims. Subliminal theft, so to speak. Better examine the roof. I dozed again. When I wakened Hodgkis sat alone, and the priest, from a corner, staring at him dazed over his brevery. It was raining when we reached Crescent, a wind-driven rain that had forced the agent at the newsstand to close himself in, and that beat back from the rails in parallel lines of white spray. As he went up the main street, Hodgkis was cheerfully oblivious of the weather, of the threatening dusk, of our generally draggled condition. My draggled condition, I should say, for he improved every moment, his eyes brighter, his ruddy face reddier, his collar newer and glossier. Sometime, when it does not encircle the little man's neck, I shall test that collar with a match. I was growing steadily more depressed. I loathed my errand and its necessity. I had always held that a man who played the spy on a woman was beneath contempt. Then, I admit I was afraid of what I might learn. For a time, however, this promised to be a negligible quantity. The streets of the straggling little mountain town had been clean-washed of humanity by the downpour. Windows and doors were inhospitably shut, and from around an occasional drawn shade came narrow strips of light that merely emphasized our gloom. When Hodgkis's umbrella turned inside out, I stopped. I don't know where you are going, I snarled, and I don't care, but I'm going to get undercover inside of ten seconds. I'm not amphibious. I ducked into the next shelter, which happened to be the yawning entrance to a livery stable and shook myself dog-fashion. Hodgkis wiped his collar with his handkerchief. It emerged gleaming and unwilted. This will do as well as any place, he said, raising his voice above the rattle of the rain. Got to make a beginning. I sat down on the usual chair without a back just inside the door and stared out at the darkening street. The whole affair had an air of unreality. Now that I was there, I doubted the necessity or the value of the journey. I was wet and uncomfortable. Around me, with Crescent as a center, stretched an irregular circumference of mountain, with possibly a ten-mile radius, and in it I was to find the residence of a woman whose first name I did not know, and a man who, so far, had been a purely shemirical person. Hodgkis had penetrated the steaming interior of the cave, and now his voice, punctuated by the occasional thud of horses' hooves, came to me. Something light will do, he was saying, a runabout perhaps. He came forward rubbing his hands, followed by a thin man in overalls. Mr. Peck says, he began, this is Mr. Peck of Peck and Peck, says that the place we are looking for is about seven miles from the town. It's clearing, isn't it? It is not, I return savagely, and we don't want a runabout, Mr. Peck. What we require is a hermitically sealed diving suit. I suppose there isn't a machine to be had. Mr. Peck gazed at me in silence. Machine to him meant other things than motors. Automobile, I supplemented, his face cleared. None but private affairs. I can give you a good buggy with a rubber apron. Mike, is the doctor's horse in? I am still uncertain as to whether the raw-boned roan we took out that night over the mountains was the doctor's horse or not. If it was, the doctor may be a good doctor, but he doesn't know anything about a horse, and furthermore, I hope he didn't need the beast that miserable evening. While they harnessed the horse, Hodgkes told me what he had learned. Six courtesses in the town of vicinity, he said. Sort of family name around here. One of them is telegraph operator at the station. Person we are looking for is—was—a wealthy widow with her brother, named Sullivan, both supposed to have been killed on the flyer. Her brother, I repeated stupidly. You see, Hodgkes went on. Three people in one party took the train here that night. Miss West, Mrs. Curtis, and Sullivan. The two women had the drawing-room. Sullivan had lower seven. What we want to find out is just who those people were, where they came from, if Bronson knew them, and how Miss West became entangled with them. She may have married Sullivan for one thing. I fell into gloom after that. The roan was led unwillingly into the weather. Hodgkes and I in eclipsed behind the blanket. The liverymen stood in the door and called directions to us. You can't miss it, he finished. Got the name over the gate anyhow. The laurels. The servants are still there. Least ways we didn't bring them down. He even took a step into the rain as Hodgkes picked up the lines. If you're going to settle the estate, he bawled, don't forget us, Peck and Peck, a half-bushel of name and a bushel of service. Hodgkes could not drive. Born a clerk, he guided the roan as much as he would drive a bad pen. The roan sputtered through puddles and splashed ink—mud, that is—until I was in a frenzy of irritation. What are we going to say when we get there? I asked, after I had finally taken the reins in my one useful hand. Get out there at midnight and tell the servants we have come to ask a few questions about the family. It's an idiotic trip anyway. I wish I had stayed at home. The roan fell just then, and we had to crawl out and help him up. By the time we had partly unharnessed him our matches were gone, and the small bicycle lamp on the buggy was wavering only too certainly. We were covered with mud, panting with exertion, and even Hodgkes showed a disposition to be surly. The rain, which had lessened for a time, came on again, the lightning flashes doing more than anything else to reveal our isolated position. Another mile saw us, if possible, more despondent. The water in our clothes had had time to penetrate. The roan had sprained his shoulder and drew us along in a series of convulsive jerks, and then, through the reins-buttered window of the blanket, I saw a light. It was a small light, rather yellow, and it lasted perhaps thirty seconds. Hodgkes missed it and was inclined to doubt me. But in a couple of minutes the roan hobbled to the side of the road and stopped, and I made out a break in the pines and an arched gate. It was a small gate, too narrow for the buggy. I pulled the horse into as much shelter as possible under the trees and we got out. Hodgkes tied the beast and we left him there, head down against the driving rain, drooping and dejected. Then we went toward the house. It was a long walk, the path bent and twisted, and now and then we lost it. We were climbing as we went. Oddly there were no lights ahead, although it was only ten o'clock, not later. Hodgkes kept a little ahead of me, knocking into trees now and then, but finding the path in half the time I should have taken. Once, as I felt my way around a tree in the blackness, I put my hand unexpectedly on his shoulder and felt a shutter go down my back. What do you expect me to do? he protested when I remonstrated. Hang out a red lantern? What was that? Listen. We both stood peering into the gloom. The sharp patter of the rain on leaves had ceased, and from just ahead there came back to us the stealthy padding of feet on wet soil. My hand closed on Hodgkes's shoulder and we listened together, warily. The steps were close by, unmistakable. The next flash of lightning showed nothing moving. The house was in full view now, dark and uninviting, standing huge above a terrace, with an Italian garden at the side. Then the blackness again. Somebody's teeth were chattering. I accused Hodgkes, but he denied it. Although I'm not very comfortable, I'll admit, he confessed. There was something breathing right at my elbow here a moment ago. Nonsense! I took his elbow and steered him in what I made out to be the direction of the steps of the Italian garden. I saw a deer just ahead by the light flash. That's what you heard. By Jove, I hear wheels. We paused to listen, and Hodgkes put his hand on something close to us. Here's your deer, he said. Bronze. As we neared the house the sense of surveillance we had had in the park gradually left us. Stumbling over flower beds, running afoul of a sundial, groping our way savagely along hedges and thorny banks, we reached the steps and finally climbed the terrace. It was then that Hodgkes fell over one of the two stone urns which, with tall boxwood trees in them, mounted guard at either side of the door. He didn't make any attempt to get up. He sat in a puddle on the brick floor of the terrace and clutched his leg and swore softly in government English. The occasional relief of the lightning was gone. I could not see an outline of the house before me. We had no matches, and an instance investigation showed that the windows were boarded and the house closed. Hodgkes, still recumbent, was ascertaining the damage, tenderly peeling down his stocking. Upon my soul, he said finally, I don't know whether this moisture is blood or rain. I think I've broken a bone. Blood is thicker than water, I suggested. Is it sticky? See if you can move your toes. There was a pause. Hodgkes moved his toes. By that time I had found a knocker and was making the night hideous. But there was no response save the wind that blew sodden leaves derisively in our faces. Once Hodgkes declared he heard a window sash lifted, but renewed violence with the knocker produced no effect. There's only one thing to do, I said finally. I'll go back and try to bring the buggy up for you. You can't walk, can you? Hodgkes sat back in his puddle and said he didn't think he could stir, but for me to go back to town and leave him, that he didn't have any family dependent on him, and that if he was going to have pneumonia he had probably got it already. I left him there and started back to get the horse. If possible, it was worse than before. There was no lightning, and only by a miracle did I find the little gate again. I drew a long breath of relief, followed by another, equally long, of dismay. For I had found the hitching-strap and there was nothing at the end of it. In a lull of the wind I seemed to hear, far off, the eager thud of stable-bound feet. So for the second time I climbed the slope to the laurels, and on the way I thought of many things to say. I struck the house at a new angle, for I found a veranda, destitute of chairs and furnishings, but dry and evidently roughed. It was better than the terrace, and so, by groping along the wall, I tried to make my way to Hodgkis. That was how I found the open window. I had passed perhaps six, all closed, and to have my hand grope for the next one, and to find instead the soft drapery of an inner curtain, was startling, to say the least. I found Hodgkis, at last, around an angle of the stone wall, and told him that the horse was gone. He was disconcerted, but not abased, maintaining that it was a new kind of knot that couldn't slip, and that the horse must have chewed the halter through. He was less enthusiastic than I had expected about the window. It looks uncommonly like a trap, he said. I tell you there was someone in the park below when we were coming up. Man has a sixth sense that scientists ignore, a sense of the nearness of things, and all the time you have been gone, someone has been watching me. Couldn't see you, I maintained. I can't see you now, and your sense of contiguity didn't tell you about that flower-croc. In the end, of course, he consented to go with me. He was very lain, and I helped him around to the open window. He was full of moral courage, the little man, and it was only the physical in him that quailed. And as we groped along, he insisted on going through the window first. If it is a trap, he whispered, I have two arms to your one, and besides, as I said before, life holds much for you. As for me, the government would merely lose an indifferent employee. When he found I was going first, he was rather hurt, but I did not wait for his protests. I swung my feet over the sill and dropped. I made a clutch at the window frame with my good hand when I found no floor under my feet, but it was too late. I dropped probably ten feet and landed with a crash that seemed to split my eardrums. I was thoroughly shaken, but in some miraculous way the bandaged arm had escaped injury. For heaven's sake, Hodgkis was calling from above, have you broken your back? No, I returned as steadily as I could, merely driven it up through my skull. This is a staircase, I'm coming up to open another window. It was eerie work, but I accomplished it finally, discovering, not without mishap, a room filled with more tables than I had ever dreamed of, tables that seemed to waylay and strike at me. When I had got a window open, Hodgkis crawled through, and we were at last under shelter. Our first thought was for light. The same laborious investigation that had landed us where we were revealed the house was lighted by electricity, and that the plant was not in operation. By accident I stumbled across a tabaret with smoky materials and found half a dozen matches. The first one showed us the magnitude of the room we stood in, and revealed also a brass candlestick by the open fireplace, a candlestick almost four feet high, supporting a candle of similar colossal proportions. It was Hodgkis who discovered that it had been recently lighted. He held the match to it and peered at it over his glasses. "'Within ten minutes,' he announced impressively, this candle has been burning. Look at the wax, and the wick, both soft.' "'Perhaps it's the damp weather,' I ventured, moving a little nearer to the circle of light. A gust of wind came in just then, and the flame turned over on its side and threatened demise. There was something almost ridiculous in the haste with which we put down the window and nursed the flicker to life. The peculiarly ghostlike appearance of the room added to the uncanniness of the situation. The furniture was swabbed in white covers for the winter, even the pictures wash routs, and in a niche between two windows a bust on a pedestal, similarly wrapped, one arm extended under its winding sheet, made a most lifelike ghost, if any ghost can be lifelike. In the light of the candle we surveyed each other, and we were objects for mirth. Hodgkis was taking off his sodden shoes and preparing to make himself comfortable while I hung my muddy raincoat over the ghost in the corner. Thus habited we presented a rakish but distinctly more comfortable appearance. When these people built, Hodgkis said, surveying the huge dimensions of the room, they must have bought a mountain and built all over it. What a room! It seemed to be a living room, although Hodgkis remarked that it was much more like a dead one. It was probably fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. It was very high, too, with a domed ceiling, and a gallery ran around the entire room, about fifteen feet above the floor. The candlelight did not penetrate beyond the dim outlines of the gallery rail, but I fancied the wall there hung with smaller pictures. Hodgkis had discovered a fire laid in the enormous fireplace, and in a few minutes we were steaming before a cheerful blaze. Within the radius of its light and heat we were comfortable again, but the brightness merely emphasized the gloom of the ghostly corners. We talked in subdued tones, and I smoked a box of Russian cigarettes which I found in a table drawer. We had decided to stay all night, there being nothing else to do. I suggested a game of double-dummy bridge, but did not urge it when my companion asked me if it resembled Yooker. Gradually, as the ecclesiastical candle paled in the firelight, we grew jousy. I drew a divan into the cheerful area, and stretched myself out for sleep. Hodgkis, who said the pain in his leg made him wakeful, sat wide-eyed by the fire, smoking a pipe. I have no idea how much time had passed when something threw itself violently on my chest. I roused with a start and leaped to my feet, and a large angora cat fell with a thump to the floor. The fire was still bright, and there was an odor of scorched leather through the room from Hodgkis's shoes. The little detective was sound asleep, his dead pipe in his fingers. The cat sat back on its haunches and wailed. The curtain at the door into the hallway, the light slowly out into the room, and fell again. The cat looked toward it, and opened its mouth for another howl. I thrust at it with my foot, but it refused to move. Hodgkis stirred uneasily, and his pipe clattered to the floor. The cat was standing at my feet, staring behind me. Apparently it was following with its eyes, an object unseen to me that moved behind me. The tip of its tail waved threateningly, but when I wheeled I saw nothing. I took the candle and made a circuit of the room. Behind the curtain that had moved the door was securely closed. The windows were shot and locked, and everywhere the silence was absolute. The cat followed me majestically. I stooped and stroked its head, but it persisted in its uncanny watching of the corners of the room. When I went back to my divan, after putting a fresh log on the fire, I was reassured. I took the precaution, and smothered myself for doing it, to put the fire tongs within reach of my hand. But the cat would not let me sleep. After a time I decided that it wanted water, and I started out in search of some, carrying the candle without the stand. I wandered through several rooms, all closed and dismantled, before I found a small laboratory opening off a billiard room. The cat lapped steadily, and I filled a glass to take back with me. The candle flickered in a sickly fashion that threatened to leave me there, lost in the wanderings of the many hallways, and from somewhere there came an occasional violent puff of wind. The cat stuck by my feet, with the hair on its back raised menacingly. I don't like cats. There's something psychic about them. Hodges was still asleep when I got back to the big room. I moved his boots back from the fire, and trimmed the candle. Then, with sleep gone from me, I lay back on my divan and reflected on many things, on my idiocy and coming, on Allison West, and the fact that only a week before she had been a guest in this very house, on Ritchie and the constraint that had come between us. From that I drifted back to Allison, and to the barrier my comparative poverty would be. The emptiness, the stillness were oppressive. Once I heard footsteps coming, cynical steps that neither hurried nor dragged, and seemed to mount endless staircases without coming any closer. I realized finally that I had not quite turned off the tap, and that the lavatory, which I had circled to reach, must be quite close. The cat lay by the fire, its nose on its folded paws, content in the warmth and companionship. I watched it idly. Now and then the green wood hissed in the fire, but the cat never batted an eye. After an unchuttered window the lightning flashed. Suddenly the cat looked up. It lifted its head and stared directly at the gallery above. Then it blinked and stared again. I was amused. Not until it had got up on its feet, eyes still riveted on the balcony, tail waving at the tip, the hair on its back, a bristling brush, did I glance casually over my head. From among the shadows a face gazed down at me, a face that seemed a fitting tenant of the ghostly room below. I saw it as plainly as I might see my own face in a mirror. When I stared at it with horrified eyes, the apparition faded. The rail was there. The Bacara rug still swung from it. But the gallery was empty. The cat threw back its head and wailed. End of Chapter 23 I jumped up and seized the fire tongs. The cat's whale had roused Hotchkiss, who was wide awake at once. He took in my offensive attitude, the tongs, the direction of my gaze, and needed nothing more. As he picked up the candle and darted out into the hall, I followed him. He made directly for the staircase, and part way up he turned off to the right through a small door. We were on the gallery itself. Below us the fire gleamed cheerfully. The cat was not in sight. There was no sign of my ghostly visitant. But as we stood there, the Bacara rug, without warning, slid over the railing and fell to the floor below. Man or woman, Hotchkiss inquired in his most professional tone. Neither. That is, I don't know. I didn't notice anything but the eyes, I muttered. They were looking a hole in me. If you'd seen that cat you would realize my state of mind. That was a traditional graveyard yowl. I don't think you saw anything at all, he lied cheerfully. You dozed off, and the rest is the natural result of a meal on a buffet car. Nevertheless, he examined the Bacara carefully when we went down, and when I finally went to sleep, he was reading the only book in sight. Elwell on Bridge. The first rays of daylight were coming mystically into the room when he roused me. He had his finger on his lips, and he whispered sibilantly while I tried to draw on my distorted boots. I think we have him, he said triumphantly. I've been looking around some, and I can tell you this much. Just before we came in through the window last night, another man came. Only he did not drop, as you did. He swung over to the stair railing and then down. The rail is scratched. He was long enough ahead of us to go into the dining room and get a decanter out of the sideboard. He poured out the liquor into a glass, left the decanter there, and took the whiskey into the library across the hall. Then he broke into a desk, using a paper knife or a jimmy. Good Lord Hodgkess, I exclaimed. Why, it may have been Sullivan himself. Confound your theories. He's getting farther away every minute. It was Sullivan, Hodgkess returned, imperturbably, and he has not gone. His boots are by the library fire. He probably had a dozen pairs where he could get them, I scoffed. And while you and I sat and slept, the very man we want to get our hands on, leered at us over the railing. Softly, softly, my friend, Hodgkess said, as I stamped into my other shoe. I did not say he was gone. Don't jump at conclusions. It is fatal to reasoning. As a matter of fact, he didn't relish a night on the mountains any more than we did. After he had unintentionally frightened you almost into paralysis, what would my gentleman naturally do? Go out in the storm again? Not if I know the Alice sit by the fire type. He went upstairs, well up near the roof, locked himself in, and went to bed. And he is there now? He is there now. We had no weapons. I am aware that the traditional hero is always armed, and that Hodgkess, as the low comedian, should have had a revolver that missed fire. As a fact, we had nothing of the sort. Hodgkess carried the fire tongs, but my sense of humor was too strong for me. I declined the poker. All we want is a little peaceable conversation with him, I demurred. We can't brain him first and converse with him afterward. And anyhow, while I can't put my finger on the place, I think your theory is weak. If he wouldn't run a hundred miles through fire and water to get away from us, then he is not the man we want. Hodgkess, however, was certain. He had found the room and listened outside the door to the sleeper's heavy breathing. And so we climbed past luxurious suites, revealed in the deepening daylight, past long vistas of hall and bourgeois, and we were both badly winded when we got there. It was a tower room, reached by narrow stairs and well above the roof level. Hodgkess was glowing. It is partly good luck, but not all, he panted in a whisper. If we had persisted in the search last night he would have taken alarm and fled. Now we have him. Are you ready? He gave a mighty wrap at the door with the fire tongs and stood expectant. Certainly he was right. Someone moved within. Hello. Hello there, Hodgkess Bald. You might as well come out. We won't hurt you if you'll come peaceably. Tell him we represent the law, I prompted. That's the customary thing, you know. But at that moment a bullet came squarely through the door and flattened itself with a sharp against the wall of the tower staircase. We ducked unanimously, dropped back out of range, and Hodgkess retaliated with a spirit of bang at the door with the tongs. This brought another bullet. It was a ridiculous situation. Under the circumstances, no doubt, we should have retired, at least until we had armed ourselves. But Hodgkess had no end of fighting spirit, and as for me, my blood was up. Break the lock, I suggested, and Hodgkess, standing at the side, out of range, retaliated for every bullet by a smashing blow with the tongs. The shot seized after a half dozen and the door was giving, slowly. One of us on each side of the door we were ready for almost any kind of desperate resistance. As it swung open, Hodgkess poised the tongs. I stood, bent forward, my arm drawn back for a blow. Nothing happened. There was not a sound. Finally, at the risk of losing an eye which I justly value, I peered around and into the room. There was no desperado there, only a fresh-faced, trembling-lipped servant, sitting on the edge of her bed, with a quilt around her shoulders and the empty revolver at her feet. We were victorious, but no conquered army ever beat such a retreat as ours down the tower's stairs and into the refuge of the living-room. There, with the door closed, sprawled on the divan, I went from one spasm of mirth to another, becoming sane at intervals and suffering relapse again every time I saw Hodgkess's disgruntled continents. He was pacing the room, the tongs still in his hand, his mouth pursed with irritation. Finally he stopped in front of me and compelled my attention. When you have finished cackling, he said with dignity, I wish to justify my position. Do you think the—er—young woman upstairs put a pair of number eight boots to dry in the library last night? Do you think she poured the whiskey out of that to canter? They have been known to do it, I put in, but his eyes silenced me. Moreover, if she had been the person who peered at you over the gallery railing last night, don't you suppose with her—er, belligerent disposition—she could have filled you as full of lead as a window-weight? I do, I assented. It wasn't Alice's sip by the fire, I grant you that. Then who was it? Hodgkess felt certain that it had been Sullivan, but I was not so sure. Why would he have crawled like a thief into his own house? If he had crossed the park, as seemed probable, when we did, he had not made any attempt to use the knocker. I gave it up finally and made an effort to conciliate the young woman in the tower. We had heard no sound since our spectacular entrance into her room. I was distinctly uncomfortable as, alone this time, I climbed to the tower's staircase. Reasoning from before she would probably throw a chair at me, I stopped at the foot of the staircase and called. Hello up there, I said, in as debonair a manner as I could summon. Good morning. Viguetes by Einen? No reply. Bonjour ma mauselle, I tried again. This time there was a movement of some sort from above, but nothing fell on me. I—we want to apologize for rousing you so—er, unexpectedly this morning, I went on. The fact is, we wanted to talk to you, and you—you were hard to waken. We are travellers lost in your mountains, and we crave breakfast and an audience. She came to the door then. I could feel that she was investigating the top of my head from above. Is Mr. Sullivan with you? she asked. It was the first word from her, and she was not sure of her voice. No, we are alone. If you will come down and look at us, you will find us two perfectly harmless people, whose horse, curses on him, departed without leave last night and left us at your gate. She relaxed somewhat then, and came down a step or two. I was afraid I had killed somebody, she said. The housekeeper left yesterday, and the other maids went with her. When she saw that I was comparatively young and lacked the earmarks of the highwaymen, she was greatly relieved. She was inclined to fight shy of Hotchkiss, however, for some reason. She gave us breakfast of a sort, for there was little in the house, and afterward we telephoned to the town for a vehicle. While Hotchkiss examined scratches and replaced the Bokara rug, I engaged Jenny in conversation. Can you tell me, I asked, who is managing the estate since Mrs. Curtis was killed? No one, she returned shortly. Has any member of the family been here since the accident? No, sir, there were only the two, and some think Mr. Sullivan was killed as well as his sister. You don't? No, with conviction. Why? She wheeled on me with quick suspicion. Are you a detective, she demanded? No. You told him to say you represented the law. I am a lawyer. Some of them misrepresent the law, but I— she broke in impatiently. A sheriff's officer? No. Look here, Jenny. I am all that I should be. You'll have to believe that. And I am in a bad position through no fault of my own. I want you to answer some questions. If you will help me, I will do what I can for you. Do you live near here? Her chin quivered. It was the first sign of weakness she had shown. My home is in Pittsburgh, she said, and I haven't enough money to get there. They hadn't paid any wages for two months. They didn't pay anybody. Very well, I returned. I'll send you back to Pittsburgh, Pullman included, if you will tell me some things I want to know. She agreed eagerly. Outside the window Hodgkes was bending over, examining footprints in the drive. Now, I began. There has been a Miss West staying here? Yes. Mr. Sullivan was attentive to her? Yes. She was the granddaughter of a wealthy man in Pittsburgh. My aunt has been in his family for twenty years. Mrs. Curtis wanted her brother to marry Miss West. Do you think he did marry her? I could not keep the excitement out of my voice. No. There were reasons, she stopped abruptly. Do you know anything of the family? Are they—were they New Yorkers? They came from somewhere in the South. I have heard Mrs. Curtis say her mother was a Cuban. I don't know much about them, but Mr. Sullivan had a wicked temper, though he didn't look it. Folks say big, light-haired people are easy going, but I don't believe it, sir. How long was Miss West here? Two weeks. I hesitated about further questioning. Critical as my position was, I could not pry deeper into Alice and West's affairs. If she had got into the hands of adventurers, as Sullivan and his sister appeared to have been, she was safely away from them again. But something of the situation in the car Ontario was forming itself in my mind. The incident at the farmhouse lacked only motive to be complete. Was Sullivan, after all, a rascal or a criminal? Was the murderer Sullivan or Mrs. Conway, the lady or the tiger again? Jenny was speaking. I hope Miss West was not hurt, she asked. We liked her, all of us. She was not like Mrs. Curtis. I wanted to say that she was not like anybody in the world, instead. She escaped with some bruises, I said. She glanced at my arm. You were on the train? Yes. She waited for more questions, but none coming. She went to the door. Then she closed it softly and came back. Mrs. Curtis is dead. You are sure of it, she asked. She was killed instantly, I believe. The body was not recovered. But I have reasons for believing that Mr. Sullivan is living. I knew it, she said. I think he was here the night before last. That is why I went to the tower room. I believe he would kill me if he could. As nearly as her round and comely face could express it, Jenny's expression was tragic at that moment. I made a quick resolution and acted on it at once. You are not entirely frank with me, Jenny, I protested, and I am going to tell you more than I have. We are talking at cross purposes. I was on the wrecked train, in the same car with Mrs. Curtis, Miss West and Mr. Sullivan. During the night there was a crime committed in that car and Mr. Sullivan disappeared. But he left behind him a chain of circumstantial evidence that involved me completely so that I may, at any time, be arrested. Apparently she did not comprehend for a moment. Then, as if the meaning of my words had just dawned upon her, she looked up and gasped. You mean, Mr. Sullivan committed the crime himself? I think he did. What was it? It was murder, I said deliberately. Her hands clenched involuntarily and she shrank back. A woman, she could scarcely form her words. No, a man, a Mr. Simon Harrington of Pittsburgh. Her effort to retain her self-control was pitiful. Then she broke down and cried, her head on the back of a tall chair. It was my fault, she said wretchedly. My fault! I should not have sent them word. After a few minutes she grew quiet. She seemed to hesitate over something and finally determined to say it. You will understand better, sir, when I say that I was raised in the Harrington family. Mr. Harrington was Mr. Sullivan's wife's father. End of Chapter 24 Chapter 25 of The Man in Lower Ten This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mary Ann. The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Reinhardt. Chapter 25 At the Station So it had been the tiger, not the lady. Well, I had held to that theory all through. Jenny suddenly became a valuable person. If necessary she could prove the connection between Sullivan and the murdered man and show a motive for the crime. I was triumphant when Hodgkes came in. When the girl had produced a photograph of Mrs. Sullivan and I had recognized the bronze-haired girl of the train, we were both well satisfied, which goes to prove the ephemeral nature of most human contentments. Jenny either had nothing more to say or feared she had said too much. She was evidently uneasy before Hodgkes. I told her that Mrs. Sullivan was recovering in a Baltimore hospital, but she already knew it, from some source, and merely nodded. She made a few preparations for leaving while Hodgkes and I compared notes, and then, with the cat in her arms, she climbed into the trap from the town. I sat with her, and on the way down she told me a little, not much. If you see Mrs. Sullivan, she advised, and she is conscious, she probably thinks that both her husband and her father were killed in the wreck. She will be in a bad way, sir. You mean to say that she still cares about her husband? The cat crawled over on to my knee and rubbed its head against my hand, invitingly. Jenny stared at the undulating line of the mountain crests, a colossal surf against a blue ocean of sky. Yes, she cares, she said softly. Women are made like that. They say they are cats, but Peter there in your lap wouldn't come back and lick your hand if you kicked him. If— If you have to tell her the truth, be as gentle as you can, sir. She has been good to me. That's why I have played the spy here all summer. It's a thankless thing, spying on people. It is that, I agreed soberly. Hodgkes and I arrived in Washington late that evening, and, rather than arouse the household, I went to the club. I was at the office early the next morning and admitted myself. McKnight rarely appeared before half after ten, and our modest office forced some time after nine. I looked over my previous day's mail and waited, with such patience as I possessed, for McKnight. In the interval I called up Mrs. Clopton and announced that I would dine at home that night. What my household subsists on during my numerous absences I have never discovered—tea, probably, and crackers. Diligent search when I have made a midnight arrival never reveals anything more substantial. Possibly I imagine it, but the announcement that I am about to make a journey always seems to create a general atmosphere of depression throughout the house, as though Euphemia and Eliza, and Thomas the Stableman, were already subsisting in imagination on Mrs. Clopton's meager fare. So I called her up and announced my arrival. There was something unusual in her tone, as though her throat was tense with indignation. Always shrill, the elderly boys wrast my ear painfully through the receiver. I have changed the butcher, Mr. Lawrence, she announced portentiously. The last roast was a pound short and his mutton chops. Any self-respecting sheep would refuse to acknowledge them. As I said before, I can always tell from the voice in which Mrs. Clopton conveys the most indifferent matters if something of real significance has occurred. Also, through long habit, I have learned how quickest to bring her to the point. You are pessimistic this morning, I returned. What's the matter, Mrs. Clopton? You haven't used that tone since Euphemia baked a pie for the icemen. What is it now? Somebody poisoned the dog? As she cleared her throat. The house has been broken into, Mr. Lawrence, she said. I have lived in the best families and never have I stood by and seen what I saw yesterday. Every bureau drawer opened in my—my most sacred belongings, she choked. Did you notify the police? I asked sharply. Police, she sniffed. Police. It was the police that did it. Two detectives with a search warrant. I—I wouldn't dare tell you over the telephone what one of them said when he found the whiskey and rock candy for my cough. Did they take anything, I demanded, every nerve on edge. They took the cough medicine, she returned indignantly, and they said— Confound the cough medicine, I was frantic. Did they take anything else? Were they in my dressing room? Yes. I threatened to sue them and I told them what you would do when you came back, but they wouldn't listen. They took away that black seal-skin bag you brought home from Pittsburgh with you. I knew then that my hours of freedom were numbered. To have found Sullivan and then, in support of my case against him, to have produced the bag minus the bit of chain, had been my intention. But the police had the bag and, beyond knowing something of Sullivan's history, I was practically no nearer his discovery than before. Hodgkes hoped he had his man in the house off Washington Circle, but, on the very night we had seen him, Jenny claimed that Sullivan had tried to enter the laurels. Then— Suppose we found Sullivan and proved the satchel and its contents his. Since the police had the bit of chain it might mean involving Allison in the story. I sat down and buried my face in my hands. There was no escape. I figured it out despondingly. Against me was the evidence of the survivors of the Ontario that I had been accused of the murder at the time. There had been bloodstains on my pillow and a hidden dagger. Into the bargain, in my possession had been found a travelling bag containing the dead man's pocket-book. In my favour was McKnight's theory against Mrs. Conway. She had a motive for wishing to secure the notes. She believed I was in Lower Ten, and she had collapsed at the discovery of the crime in the morning. Against both of these theories I accused a purely shamerical person named Sullivan, who was not seen by any of the survivors, save one, Allison, whom I could not bring into the case. I could find a motive for his murdering his father-in-law, whom he hated, but again I would have to drag in the girl. And not one of the theories explained the telegram and the broken necklace. Outside the office-force was arriving. They were comfortably ignorant of my presence, and over the transom floated scraps of dialogue and the stenographers gurgling laugh. McKnight had a relative, who was reading law with him, in the intervals between calling up the young women of his acquaintance. He came in singing, and the office-boy joined in with the uncertainty of voice of fifteen. I smiled grimly. I was too busy with my own troubles to find any joy in opening the door and startling them into silence. I even heard, without resentment, blobs of the uncertain voice inquire when Blake would be back. I hoped McKnight would arrive before the arrest occurred. There were many things to arrange. But when at last, impatient of his delay, I telephoned, I found that he had been gone for more than an hour. Clearly he was not coming directly to the office, and with such resignation as I could muster, I paced the floor and waited. I felt more alone than I have ever felt in my life. Born in orphan, as Richie said, I had made my own way, carved out myself such success as had been mine. I had built up my house of life on the props of law and order, and now some unknown hand had withdrawn the supports, and I stood among ruins. I suppose it is the maternal in a woman that makes a man turn to her when everything else fails. The eternal boy in him goes to have his wounded pride bandaged, his tattered self-respect prepared. If he loves the woman, he wants her to kiss the hurt. The longing to see Allison, always with me, was stronger than I was that morning. It might be that I would not see her again. I had nothing to say to her save one thing, and that, under the cloud that hung over me, I did not dare to say. But I wanted to see her, to touch her hand, as only a lonely man can crave it. I wanted the comfort of her, the peace that lay in her presence. And so, with every step outside the door threat, I telephoned to her. She was gone. The disappointment was great, for my need was great. In a fury of revolt against the scheme of things, I heard that she had started home to Richmond, but that she might still be caught at the station. To see her had by that time become an obsession, I picked up my hat, threw open the door, and, oblivious of the shock to the office force of my presence, followed so immediately by my exit, I dashed out to the elevator. As I went down in one cage I caught a glimpse of Johnson, and two other men going up in the next. I hardly gave them a thought. There was no handsome in sight, and I jumped on a passing car. Let come what might, arrest, prison, disgrace, I was going to see Allison. I saw her. I flung into the station, saw that it was empty, empty for she was not there. Then I hurried back to the gates. She was there, a familiar figure in blue, the very gown in which I always thought of her, the one she had worn when, heaven help me, I had kissed her at the Carter Farm. And she was not alone. Bending over her, talking earnestly with all his boyish heart in his face, was richly. They did not see me, and I was glad of it. After all, it had been McKnight's game first. I turned on my heel and made my way blindly out of the station. Before I lost them, I turned once and looked toward them, standing apart from the crowd, absorbed in each other. They were the only two people on earth that I cared about, and I left them there, together. Then I went back miserably to the office, and awaited arrest. CHAPTER XXVI On to Richmond Strangely enough, I was not disturbed that day. McKnight did not appear at all. I sat at my desk and transacted routine business all afternoon, working with feverish energy. Like a man on the verge of a critical illness or hazardous journey, I cleared up my correspondence, paid bills until I had writer's grant from signing checks, read over my will, and paid up my life insurance, made to the benefit of an elderly sister of my mother's. I no longer dreaded arrest. After that morning in the station, I felt that anything would be a relief from the tension. I went home with perfect openness, courting the warrant that I knew was waiting, but I was not molested. The delay puzzled me. The early part of the evening was uneventful. I read until late, with occasional lapses when my book lay at my elbow, and I smoked, and thought. Mrs. Clopton closed the house with ostentatious caution about eleven, and hung around waiting to enlarge on the outrageousness of the police search. I did not encourage her. One would think, she concluded pompously, one foot in the hall, that you were something you oughtened to be, Mr. Lawrence. They acted as though you had committed a crime. I'm not sure that I didn't, Mrs. Clopton, I said wearily. Somebody did, and the general verdict seems to point my way. She stared at me in speechless indignation. Then she flounced out. She came back once to say that the paper predicted cooler weather, and that she had put a blanket on my bed, but, to her disappointment, I refused to reopen the subject. At half past eleven, McKnight and Hodgkes came in. Richie has a bad habit of stopping his car in front of the house and honking until someone comes out. He has a coat of signals with the horn, which I never remember. Too long and a short blast mean, I believe, send out a box of cigarettes, and six short blasts, which sound like a police call mean, can you lend me some money? Tonight I knew something was up, for he got out and rang the doorbell like a Christian. They came into the library, and Hodgkes wiped his collar until it gleamed. McKnight was aggressively cheerful. Not pinched yet, he exclaimed. What do you think of that for luck? You always were fortunate devil, Lawrence. Yes, I assented with some bitterness. I hardly know how to contain myself for joy sometimes. I suppose you know, to Hodgkes, that the police were here while we were at Crescent, and that they found the bag that I brought from the wreck. Things are coming to a head, he said thoughtfully, unless a little plan that I have in mind, he hesitated. I hope so. I am pretty nearly desperate, I said doggedly. I've got a mental toothache, and the sooner it's pulled, the better. Tutt, hut! said McKnight. Think of the disgrace to the firm if its senior member goes up for life for— He twisted his handkerchief into a noose, and went through an elaborate pantomime. Although jail isn't so bad anyhow, he finished. There are fellows that get the habit and keep going back and going back. He looked at his watch, and I fancied his cheerfulness was strained. Hodgkes was nervously fumbling my book. Did you ever read the preloined letter, Mr. Blakely, he inquired? Probably years ago, I said. Poe, isn't it? He was choked at my indifference. It is a masterpiece, he said with enthusiasm. I reread it to-day. And what happened? Then I inspected the rooms in the house off Washington Circle. I—I made some discoveries, Mr. Blakely. For one thing, our man there is left-handed. He looked around for our approval. There was a small cushion on the dresser, and the scarf-pins in it had then stuck in with the left hand. Somebody may have twisted the cushion, I objected, but he looked hurt, and I desisted. There is only one discrepancy, he admitted, but it troubles me. According to Mrs. Carter at the farmhouse, our man wore gaudy pajamas, while I found here only the most severely plain night shirts. Any buttons off, McKnight inquired, looking again at his watch. The buttons were there, the amateur detective answered gravely, but the buttonhole next to the top one was torn through. It winked at me furtively. I am convinced of one thing, Hodgkin's went on clearing his throat. The papers are not in that room. Either he carries them with him, or he has sold them. A sound on the street may both my visitors listen sharply. Whatever it was passed on, however. I was growing curious, and the restraint was telling on McKnight. He has no talent for secrecy. In the interval we discussed the strange occurrence at Crescent, which lost nothing by Hodgkin's dry narration. And so, he concluded, the woman in the Baltimore hospital is the wife of Harry Sullivan, and the daughter of the man he murdered. No wonder he collapsed when he heard of the wreck. Joy, probably, McKnight put in. Is that clock right, Lawrence? Never mind, it doesn't matter. By the way, Mrs. Conway dropped in the office yesterday, while you were away. What? I sprang from my chair. Sure thing, she said she had heard great things of us and wanted us to handle her case against the railroad. I would like to know what she is driving at, I reflected. Is she trying to reach me through you? Richie's flippancy is often a cloak for deeper feeling. He dropped it now. Yes, he said. She's after the notes, of course. And I'll tell you, I felt like a poltron. Whatever that may be, when I turned her down. She stood by the door with her white face, and told me contemptuously that I could save you from a murder-charge and wouldn't do it. She made me feel like a cur. I was just as guilty as if I could have obliged her. She hinted that there were reasons, and she laid my attitude to beastly motives. Nonsense, I said, as easily as I could. Hodgkis had gone to the window. She was excited. There are no reasons, whatever she means. Richie put his hand on my shoulder. We've been together too long to let any reasons or unreasons come between us, old man, he said, not very steadily. Hodgkis, who had been silent, here came forward in his most impressive manner. He put his hands under his coattails and coughed. Mr. Blakely, he began. By Mr. McKnight's advice we have arranged a little interview here tonight. If all has gone as I planned, Mr. Harry Pickney Sullivan is by this time under arrest. Within a very few minutes he will be here. I wanted to talk to him before he was locked up, Richie explained. He's clever enough to be worth knowing, and, besides, I'm not so cocksure of his guilt as our friend, the patch on the seat of government. No murderer worthy of the name needs six different motives for the same crime, beginning with robbery and ending with an unpleasant father-in-law. We were all silent for a while. McKnight stationed himself at a window, and Hodgkis paced the floor expectantly. It's a great day for modern detective methods, he churrupt. While the police have been guarding houses and standing with their mouths open, waiting for clues to fall in and choke them, we have pieced together, bit by bit, a fabric. The doorbell rang, followed immediately by sounds of footsteps in the hall. McKnight threw the door open, and Hodgkis, raised on his toes, flung out his arms in a gesture of superb eloquence. Behold, your man, he declaimed. Through the open doorway came a tall, blonde fellow, clad in light gray, wearing tan shoes, and followed closely by an officer. I brought him here as you suggested, Mr. McKnight, said the constable. The McKnight was doubled over the library table, in silent convulsions of mirth, and I was almost as bad. Little Hodgkis stood up, his important attitude finally changing to one of chagrin, while the blonde man ceased to look angry and became sheepish. It was Stuart, our confidential clerk for the last half-dozen years. McKnight sat up and wiped his eyes. Stuart, he said sternly, there are two very serious things we have learned about you. First, you jab your scarf pins into your cushion with your left hand, which is most reprehensible. Second, you wear night-shirts, instead of pajamas. Worse than that, perhaps, we find that one of them has a buttonhole torn out at the neck. Stuart was bewildered. He looked from McKnight to me, and then at the crest fall in Hodgkis. I haven't any idea what it's all about, he said. I was arrested as I reached my boarding-house to-night, after the theatre, and brought directly here. I told the officer it was a mistake. Poor Hodgkis tried bravely to justify the fiasco. You cannot deny, he contended, that Mr. Andrew Bronson followed you to your room last Monday evening. It looked at us and flushed. No, I don't deny it, he said. But there was nothing criminal about it, on my part, at least. Mr. Bronson has been trying to induce me to secure the forged notes for him, but I did not even know where they were. And you were not on the wrecked Washington Flyer, persisted Hodgkis, but McKnight interfered. There is no use trying to put the other man's identity on Stuart, Mr. Hodgkis, he protested. He has been our confidential clerk for six years, and has not been away from the office a day for a year. I am afraid that the beautiful fabric we have pieced out of all these scraps is going to be a crazy quilt. His tone was facetious, but I could detect the undercurrent of real disappointment. I paid the constable for his trouble, and he departed. Stuart, still indignant, left to go back to Washington Circle. He shook hands with McKnight and myself, magnanimously, but he hurled a look of utter hatred at Hodgkis, sunk crestfallen in his chair. As far as I can see, said McKnight dryly, we're exactly as far along as the day we met at the Carter Place. We're not a step nearer to finding our man. We have one thing that may be of value, I suggested. He is the husband of a bronze-haired woman at Van Kirk's Hospital, and it is just possible we may trace him through her. I hope we are not going to lose your valuable cooperation, Mr. Hodgkis, I asked. He roused at that, to feeble interest. I—oh, of course not. If you still care to have me, I—I was wondering about—the man who just went out, Stuart, you say—I—told his landlady tonight that he wouldn't need the room again. I hope she hasn't rented it to somebody else. We cheered him as best we could, and I suggested that we go to Baltimore the next day and try to find the real Sullivan through his wife. He left some time after midnight, him Richie and I were alone. He drew a chair near the lamp and lighted a cigarette, and for a time we were silent. I was in the shadow, and I sat back and watched him. It was not surprising, I thought, that she cared for him. Women have always loved him, perhaps because he always loved them. There was no disloyalty in the thought. It was the lad's nature to give and crave affection, only—I was different. I had never really cared about a girl before, and my life had been singularly loveless. I had fought a lonely battle, always. Once before, in college, we had both laid ourselves in our callow devotions at the feet of the same girl. Her name was Dorothy. I had forgotten the rest, but I remembered the sequel. In a spirit of chaotic youth I had relinquished my claim in favor of Richie and had gone cheerfully on my way, elevated by my heroic sacrifice to a somber, white-hot martyrdom. As is often the case, McKnight's first word showed our parallel lines of thought. I say, lolly, he asked. Do you remember Dorothy Brown? B-R-O-W-N-E? That was it. Dorothy Brown, I repeated. Oh, why yes, I recall her now. Why? Nothing, he said. I was thinking about her, that's all. You remember you were crazy about her, and dropped back because she preferred me? I got out, I said with dignity, because you declared that you would shoot yourself if she didn't go with you to something or other. Oh, why yes, I recall now, he mimicked. He tossed his cigarette in the general direction of the hearth and got up. We were both a little conscious, and he stood with his back to me, fingering a Japanese vase on the mantel. I was thinking, he began, turning the vase around, that, if you feel pretty well again, and ready to take hold, that I should like to go away for a week or so. Things are fairly well cleaned up at the office. Do you mean you are going to Richmond, I asked, after scarcely perceptible pause? He turned and faced me, with his hands thrust in his pockets. No, that's off, lolly. The Cyberts are going for a week's cruise along the coast. The hot weather has played hob with me, and the cruise means seven days breeze and bridge. I lighted a cigarette and offered him the box, but he refused. He was looking haggard and suddenly tired. I could not think of anything to say, and neither could he, evidently. The matter between us lay too deep for speech. How's Candida? he asked. Martin says a month and she will be all right, I returned in the same tone. He picked up his hat, but he had something more to say. He blurted it out, finally, halfway to the door. The Cyberts are not going for a couple of days, he said, and if you want a day or so off to go down to Richmond yourself. Perhaps I shall, I returned as indifferently as I could. Not going yet, are you? Yes, it's late. He drew in his breath as if he had something more to say, but the impulse passed. Well, good night, he said from the doorway. Good night, old man. The next moment the outer door slammed and I heard the engine of the cannonball throbbing in the street. Then the quiet settled down around me again, and there in the lamp-light I dreamed dreams. I was going to see her. Suddenly the idea of being shut away, even temporarily, from so great and wonderful a world became intolerable. The possibility of arrest before I could get to Richmond was hideous, the night without end. I made my escape the next morning through the stable back of the house and then, by devious dark and winding ways to the office. There, after a conference with Blobs, whose features fairly jerked with excitement, I double-locked the door of my private office and finished off some imperative work. By ten o'clock I was free, and for the twentieth time I consulted my train schedule. At five minutes after ten, with McKnight not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double-wrap we had agreed upon. And on being admitted he slipped in and quietly closed the door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous and stealthy expression. There, here, he said, two of them, and that crazy steward wasn't on and said you were somewhere in the building. A door slammed outside followed by steps on the uncarpeted outer office. This way, said Blobs in a husky undertone, and, darting into the lavatory, threw open a door that I had always supposed locked, thence into a back hall piled high with boxes and passed the presses of a book bindery to the freight elevator. Greatly to Blobs' disappointment there was no pursuit. I was exhilarated but out of breath when we emerged into an alleyway, and the sharp daylight shone on Blobs' excited face. Great sport, isn't it? I panted, dropping a dollar into his palm, inked to correspond with his face. Regular walk away in the hundred-yard dash. Give me two dollars more and I'll drop him down the elevator shaft, he suggested ferociously. I left him there with his bloodthirsty schemes and started for the station. I had a tendency to look behind me now and then, but I reached the station unnoticed. The afternoon was hot, the train rolled slowly along, stopping to pant at sweltering stations, from whose roofs the heat rose in waves. But I noticed these things objectively, not subjectively, for at the end of the journey was a girl with blue eyes and dark brown hair, hair that could, had I not seen it, hang loose in bewitching tangles or be twisted into little coils of delight. I reached my hotel, and I had not known how much I had hoped from seeing her until I learned that she was out of town. I hung up the receiver, almost dizzy with disappointment, and it was fully five minutes before I thought of calling up again and asking if she was within telephone reach. It seemed she was down on the bay, staying with the Samuel Forbes's. Sammy Forbes. It was a name to conjure with just then. In the old days at college I had rather flouted him, but now I was ready to take him to my heart. I remembered that he had always meant well, anyhow, and that he was explosively generous. I called him up. By the fumes of gasoline, he said, when I told him who I was, Blakely, the fount of wisdom against women. Blakely, the great unkissed, welcome to our city. Whereupon he proceeded to urge me to come down to the shack, and to say that I was an agreeable surprise, because four times in two hours use had called up to ask if Alice and West was stopping with him and to suggest that they had a vacant day or two. Oh, Miss West, I shouted politely. There was a buzzing on the line. Is she there? Sam had no suspicions. Was not I in his mind always the great unkissed? Which sounds like the great unwashed and is even more of a reproach. He asked me down promptly, as I had hoped, and thrust aside my objections. Nonsense, he said, bring yourself. The lady that keeps my boarding-house is calling to me to insist. You remember Dorothy, don't you? Dorothy Brown? She says, unless you have lost your figure, you can wear my clothes all right. All you need here is a bathing suit for daytime and a dinner coat for evening. It sounds cool, I temporized. If you are sure I won't put you out. Very well, Sam. Since you and your wife are good enough, I have a couple of days free. Give my love to Dorothy until I can do it myself. Sam met me himself and drove me out to the shack, which proved to be a substantial house overlooking the water. On the way, he confided to me that lots of married men thought they were contented when they were merely resigned, but that it was the only life and that Sam, Jr., could swim like a duck. Incidentally, he said that Allison was his wife's cousin. Their respective grandmothers having, at proper intervals, married the same man, and that Allison would lose her good looks if she was not careful. I say she's worried, and I stick to it, he said, as he threw the lines to a groom and prepared to get out. You know her, and she's the kind of girl you think you can read like a book. But you can't. Don't fool yourself. Take a good look at her at dinner, Blake. You won't lose your head like the other fellows, and then tell me what's wrong with her. We're mighty fond of Ali. He went ponderously up the steps, for Sam had put on weight since I knew him. At the door he turned around. Do you happen to know the McClure's at Seal Harbor? he asked irreverently. But Mrs. Sam came into the hall just then, both hands out to greet me, and whatever Forbes had meant to say, he did not pick up the subject again. We are having tea in here, Dorothy said gaily, indicating the door behind her, tea by courtesy, because I think tea is the only beverage that is intrepresented. And then we must dress, for this is hop night at the club. Which is, as great a misnomer as the tea, Sam put in, ponderously struggling out of his linen driving-coat. It's bridge-night, and the only hops are in the beer. He was still gurgling over this as he took me upstairs. He showed me my room himself, and then began the fruitless search for evening raiment that kept me home that night from the club. For I couldn't wear Sam's clothes. That was clear, after a perspiring seance of a half hour. I won't do it, Sam, I said, when I had draped his dressing-coat on me, Toga fashion. Who am I to have clothing to spare, like this, when many a poor chap hasn't even a cellar door to cover him? I won't do it. I'm selfish, but not that selfish. Lord, he said, wiping his face, how you've kept your figure, I can't wear a belt any more, got to have suspenders. He reflected over his grievance for some time, sitting on the side of the bed. You could go as you are, he said, finally. We do it all the time. Only tonight happens to be the annual something or other end. He trailed off into silence, trying to buckle my belt around him. A good six inches, he sighed. I never get into a handsome cab any more, but I don't expect to see the horse fly up in the air. Well, Allie isn't going either. She turned down Granger this afternoon, the Annapolis fellow you met on the stairs, rich-embreasted chap, and she always gets a headache on those occasions. He got up heavily and went to the door. Granger is leaving, he said. I may be able to get his dinner coat for you. How well do you know her? he asked, with his hand on the knob. If you mean Dolly. Allison. Fairly well, I said cautiously. Not as well as I would like to. I dined with her last week in Washington, and I knew her before that. Forbes touched a bell instead of going out and told the servant to answer to see if Mr. Granger's suitcase had gone, if not to bring it across the hall. Then he came back to his former position on the bed. You see, we feel responsible for Allie, near relation and all that. He began pompously. And we can't talk to the people here at the house. All the men are in love with her, and all the women are jealous. Then there's a lot of money, too, or will be. Confound the money, I muttered. That is, nothing. Razor slipped. I can tell you, he went on, because you don't lose your head over every pretty face. Although Allie is more than that, of course. But about a month ago she went away to Seal Harbor to visit Janet McClure. Know her? No. She came home to Richmond yesterday, and then came down here. Allie, I mean. And yesterday afternoon Dolly had a letter from Janet, something about a second man, and saying she was disappointed not to have Allison there, that she had promised them a two weeks visit. What do you make of that? And that isn't the worst. Allie herself wasn't in the room, but there were eight other women, and because Dolly had put Belladonna in her eyes the night before to see how she would look, and as a result couldn't see anything nearer than across the room, someone read the letter aloud to her, and the whole story is out. One of the cats told Granger, and the boy proposed to Allie today, to show her he didn't care a tinker's dam where she had been. Good boy, I said with enthusiasm. I liked the Granger fellow, since he was out of the running. But Sam was looking at me with suspicion. Blake, he said, if I didn't know you for what you are, I'd say you were interested there yourself. Being so near her, under the same roof, with even the tie of adubious secret between us, was making me heady. I pushed Forbes toward the door. I interested, I retorted, holding him by the shoulders. There isn't a word in your vocabulary to fit my condition. I am an island in a sunlit sea of emotion, Sam. A. An empty place surrounded by longing. A. An empty place surrounded by longing, he retorted. You want your dinner, that's what's the matter with you. I shut the door on him then. He seemed suddenly sorted. Dinner, I thought. Although, as a matter of fact, I made a very fair meal when Granger's suitcase not having gone, in his coat and some other man's trousers, I was finally fit for the amenities. Alison did not come down to dinner, so it was clear she would not go over to the clubhouse dance. I pled my injured arm and a fictitious, vaguely located sprain from the rack as an excuse for remaining at home. Sam regaled the table with accounts of my distrust of women, my one love affair with Dorothy, to which I responded, as was expected, that only my failure there had kept me single all these years, and that if Sam should be mysteriously missing during the bathing hour tomorrow, and so on. And when the endless meal was over, and yards of white veils had been tied over pounds of hair, or is it, too, bought by the yard, and some eight ensembles with their abject compliments had been packed into three automobiles in a trap, I drew a long breath and faced about. I had just then only one subject in life, to find Alison, to assure her of my absolute faith and confidence in her, and to offer my help in my poor self, if she would let me, in her service. She was not easy to find. I searched the lower floor, the verandas and the grounds, circumspectly. Then I ran into a little English girl who turned out to be her maid, and who also was searching. She was concerned because her mistress had had no dinner, and because the tray of food she carried would soon be cold. I took the tray from her, on the glimpse of something white on the shore, and that was how I met the girl again. She was sitting on an overturned boat, her chin in her hands, staring out to sea. The soft tide of the bay lapped almost at her feet, and the draperies of her white gown melted hazily into the sands. She looked like a wreath, a despondent phantom of the sea, although the adjective is redundant. Nobody ever thinks of a cheerful phantom. Strangely enough, considering her evident sadness, she was whistling softly to herself. Over and over, some dreary little minor air that sounded like a bohemian dirge. She glanced up quickly when I made a misstep and my dishes jingled. All considered, the tray was out of the picture, the sea, the misty starlight, the girl with her beauty, even the sad little whistle that stopped now and then to go bravely on again, as though it fought against the odds of a trembling lip. And then I came, accompanied by a tray of little silver dishes that jingled at an unmistakable odor of broiled chicken. Oh, she said quickly, and then, oh, I thought you were Jenkins. Timmy, oh, Daneos, what's the rest of it? I asked, tendering my offering. You didn't have any dinner, you know. I sat down beside her. See, I'll be the table. What was the old fairytale? Little goat bleat, little table appear. I'm perfectly willing to be the goat, too. She was laughing rather tremulously. We never do meet like other people, do we? She asked. We really ought to shake hands and say, how are you? I don't want to meet like other people. And I suppose you always think of me as wearing the other fellow's clothes, I return meekly. I'm doing it again. I don't seem to be able to help it. These are grangers that I have on now. She threw back her head and laughed again, joyously this time. Oh, it's so ridiculous, she said. And you have never seen me when I was not eating. It's too prosaic. Which reminds me that the chicken is getting cold, and the ice warm, I suggested. At the time I thought there could be no place better than the farmhouse kitchen. But this is it. I ordered all this for something I want to say to you. The sea, the sand, the stars. How illiterative you are, she said, trying to be flippant. You are not to say anything until I've had my supper. Look how the things are spilled around. But she ate nothing, after all. And pretty soon I put the tray down in the sand. I said little, there was no hurry. We were together and time meant nothing against that age-long wash of the sea. The air blew her hair in small damp curls against her face. And little by little, the tide retreated, leaving our boat and oasis in a waste of gray sand. If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year, do you suppose, the walrus said, that they could get it clear? She threw at me once when she must have known I was going to speak. I held her hand, and as long as I merely held it, she would let it lie warm in mine. But when I raised it to my lips and kissed the soft, open palm, she drew it away without displeasure. Not that, please, she protested, and fell to whistling softly again, her chin and her hands. I can't sing, she said, to break an awkward pause. And so, when I'm fidgety, or have something on my mind, I whistle. I hope you don't dislike it. I love it, I asserted warmly. I did. When she pursed her lips like that, I was mad to kiss them. I saw you at the station, she said suddenly. You. You were in a hurry to go. I did not say anything, and after a pause she drew a long breath. Men are queer, aren't they? she said, and fell to whistling again. After a while she sat up as if she had made a resolution. I'm going to confess something, she announced suddenly. You said, you know, that you had ordered all this for something you wanted to say to me. But the fact is, I fixed it all. I came here, I mean, because I knew you would come, and I had something to tell you. It was such a miserable thing I needed the accessories to help me out. I don't want to hear anything that distresses you to tell, I assured her. I didn't come here to force your confidence, Alison. I came because I couldn't help it. She did not object to my use of her name. Have you found that your papers, she asked, looking directly at me for almost the first time? Not yet. We hope to. The police have not interfered with you. They haven't had any opportunity, I equivocated. You needn't distress yourself about that anyhow. But I do. I wonder why you still believe in me. Nobody else does. I wonder, I repeated, why I do. If you produce Harry Sullivan, she was saying partly to herself, and if you could connect him with Mr. Bronson and get a full account of why he was on the train and all that, it would help, wouldn't it? I acknowledged that it would. Now that the whole truth was almost in my possession, I was stricken with the old cowardice. I did not want to know what she might tell me. The yellow line on the horizon, where the moon was coming up, was a broken bit of gold and chain. My heel in the sand was again pressed on a woman's yielding fingers. I pulled myself together with a jerk. In order that what you tell me may help me, if it will, I said constrainedly, it would be necessary, perhaps, that you tell it to the police, since they have found the end of the necklace. The end of the necklace, she repeated slowly. What about the end of the necklace? I stared at her. Don't you remember, I leaned forward. The end of the cameo necklace, the part that was broken off and was found in the black seal skin bag, stained with, with blood. Blood, she said, Dolly. You mean that you found the broken end, and when you had my gold pocketbook and you saw the necklace in it, then you, you must have thought, I didn't think anything, I hasten to assure her. I tell you, Allison, I never thought of anything but that you were unhappy and that I had no right to help you. God knows, I thought you didn't want me to help you. She held out her hand to me and I took it between both of mine. No word of love had passed between us, but I felt that she knew and understood. It was one of the moments that come seldom in a lifetime, and then, only in great crises, a moment of perfect understanding and trust. Then she drew her hand away and sat, erected, determined, her fingers laced in her lap. As she talked, the moon came up slowly and threw its bright pathway across the water. Back of us, in the trees beyond the sea wall, a sleepy bird chirped drowsily, and a wave, larger and bolder than its brothers, sped up the sand, varying the moon's silver to our very feet, I bent toward the girl. I'm going to ask you just one question. Anything you like? Her voice was almost dreary. Was it because of anything you are going to tell me that you refused Richie? She drew her breath in sharply. No, she said without looking at me. No, that was not the reason. End of Chapter 27. CHAPTER 28. ALISON'S STORY She told her story evenly, with her eyes on the water. Only, now and then, when I, too, sat looking seaward, I thought she glanced at me furtively. And once, in the middle of it, she stopped all together. You don't realize it, probably, she protested. But you look like a... a war god. Your face is horrible. I will turn my back if it will help any, I said stormily. But if you expect me to look anything but murderous, why, you don't know what I'm going through with. That's all. The story of her meeting with the Curtis woman was brief enough. They had met in Rome first, where Allison and her mother had taken a villa for a year. Mrs. Curtis had hovered on the ragged edges of society there, pleading the poverty of the South since the war as a reason for not going out more. There was talk of a brother, but Allison had not seen him. And after a scandal which implicated Mrs. Curtis and a young attaché of the Austrian Embassy, Allison had been forbidden to see the woman. The women had never liked her, anyhow, she said. She did unconventional things, and they are very conventional there. And they said she did not always pay her, her gambling debts. I didn't like them. I thought they didn't like her because she was poor and popular. Then we came home, and I almost forgot her. But last spring, when mother was not well, she had taken grandfather to the Riviera, and it always uses her up. We went to Virginia Hot Springs, and we met them there, the brother, too, this time. His name was Sullivan, Harry Pickney Sullivan. I know, go on. Mother had a nurse, and I was alone a great deal, and they were very kind to me. I, I saw a lot of them. The brother rather attracted me, partly, partly because he did not make love to me. He even seemed to avoid me, and I was most piqued. I had been spoiled, I suppose. Most of the other men I had had. I know that, too, I said bitterly, and moved away from her trifle. I was brutal, but the whole story was a long torture. I think she knew what I was suffering, for she showed no resentment. It was early, and there were few people around, none that I cared about. And mother and the nurse played cribbage eternally, until I felt as though the little pegs were driven into my brain. And when Mrs. Curtis arranged drives and picnics, I slipped away and went. I suppose you won't believe me, but I had never done that kind of thing before, and I, well, I have paid up, I think. What sort of looking chap was Sullivan? I demanded. I had got up and was pacing back and forward on the sand. I remember kicking savagely at a bit of water-soaked board that lay in my way. Very handsome, as large as you are, but fair, and even more erect. I drew my shoulders up sharply. I am straight enough, but I was fairly sagging with jealous rage. When mother began to get around, somebody told her that I had been going about with Mrs. Curtis and her brother, and we had a dreadful time. I was dragged home like a bad child. Did anybody ever do that to you? Nobody ever cared. I was born an orphan, I said, with a cheerless attempt at levity. Go on. If Mrs. Curtis knew, she never said anything. She wrote me charming letters, and in the summer, when they went to Crescent, she asked me to visit her there. I was too proud to let her know that I could not go where I wished, and so I sent Polly, my maid, to her aunts in the country, pretended to go to Seal Harbor and, really, went to Crescent. You see, I warned you it would be an unpleasant story. I went over and stood in front of her. All the accumulated jealousy of the last few weeks had been fired by what she told me. If Sullivan had come across the sands just then, I think I would have strangled him with my hands out of pure hate. Did you marry him? I demanded. My voice sounded hoarse and strange in my ears. That's all I want to know. Did you marry him? No. I drew a long breath. You cared about him? She hesitated. No, she said finally. I did not care about him. I sat down on the edge of the boat and mopped my hot face. I was heartily ashamed of myself and mingled with my abasement was a great relief. If she had not married him and had not cared for him, nothing else was of any importance. I was sorry, of course, the moment the train had started, but I had wired I was coming and I could not go back. And then when I got there, the place was charming. There were no neighbors, but we fished and rowed and motored and it was moonlight, like this. I put my hand over both of hers, clasped in her lap. I know, I acknowledged repentently. And people do queer things when it is moonlight. The moon has got me tonight, Alison. If I am a bore, remember that, won't you? Her fingers lay quiet under mine. And so she went on with a little sigh. I began to think perhaps I cared. But all the time I felt that there was something not quite right. Now and then Mrs. Curtis would say or do something that gave me a queer start, as if she had dropped a mask for a moment. And there was trouble with the servants. They were almost insolent. I couldn't understand. I don't know when it dawned on me that the old Baron Cavalcante had been right when he said they were not my kind of people. But I wanted to get away. I wanted it desperately. Of course they were not your kind, I cried. The man was married. The girl Jenny, a housemaid, was a spy in Mrs. Sullivan's employ. If he had pretended to marry you, I would have killed him. Not only that, but the man he murdered, Harrington, was his wife's father. And I'll see him hang by the neck yet, if it takes every energy and every penny I possess. I could have told her so much more gently. Have broken the shock for her. I have never been proud of that evening on the sand. I was alternately a bore and a ruffian. Like a hurt youngster who passes the blow that has hurt him on to his playmate, that both may ball together. And now Allison sat, white and cold, without speech. Married, she said finally, in a small voice. Why? I don't think it is possible. Is it? I I was on my way to Baltimore to marry him myself when the rep came. But you said you didn't care for him, I protested, my heavy masculine mind unable to jump the gaps in her story. And then, without the slightest warning, I realized that she was crying. She shook off my hand and fumbled for her handkerchief, and failing to find it, she accepted the one I thrust into her wet fingers. Then, little by little, she told me from the handkerchief, a sordid story of a motor-trip in the mountains without Mrs. Curtis. Of a lost road, and a broken car, and a rainy night when they, she and Sullivan, tramped eternally and did not get home. And if Mrs. Curtis, when they got home at dawn, suddenly grown conventional and deeply shocked. Of her own proud, half-disdainful consent to make possible the heck need compromising situation by marrying the rascal. And then, of his disappearance from the train, it was so terrible to her such a heaven-sent relief to me, in spite of my rage against Sullivan, that I laughed out loud. At which she looked at me over the handkerchief. I know it's funny, she said, with a catch in her breath. When I think that I nearly married a murderer, and didn't, I cry for sheer joy. Then she buried her face and cried again. Please don't, I protested unsteadily. I won't be responsible if you keep on crying like that. I may forget that I have a capital charge hanging over my head, and that I may be arrested at any moment. That brought her out of the handkerchief at once. I meant to be so helpful, she said, and I thought of nothing but myself. There were some things I meant to tell you, if Jenny was, what you say, that I understand why she came to me just before I left. She had been packing my things and she must have seen what condition I was in, for she came over to me when I was getting my wraps on to leave and said, Don't do it, Miss West. I beg you won't do it. You'll be sorry ever after. And just then Mrs. Curtis came in and Jenny slipped out. That was all. No. As we went through the station the telegraph operator gave her—Mr. Sullivan—a message. He read it on the platform and it excited him terribly. He took his sister aside and they talked together. He was white with either fear or anger. I don't know which. Then, when we boarded the train, a woman in black with beautiful hair, who was standing on the car platform, touched him on the arm and then drew back. He looked at her and glanced away again, but she reeled as if he had struck her. Then what? The situation was growing clearer. Mrs. Curtis and I had the drawing-room. I had a dreadful night, just sleeping a little now and then. I dreaded to see the dawn come. It was to be my wedding day. When we found that Harry had disappeared in the night, Mrs. Curtis was in a frenzy. Then I saw his cigarette case in your hand. I had given it to him. You wore his clothes. The murder was discovered and you were accused of it. What could I do? And then, afterward, when I saw him asleep at the farmhouse I—I was panic-stricken. I locked him in and ran. I don't know why he did it, but he had killed a man. Someone was calling Allison through a megaphone from the veranda. It sounded like Sam. Allee, he called. Allee. I'm going to have some anchovies on toast. Allee. Neither of us heard. I wonder, I reflected, if you would be willing to repeat a part of that story, and just from the telegram on, to a couple of detectives, say on Monday, if you would tell that and how the end of your necklace got into the seal-skin bag. My necklace, she repeated, but it isn't mine. I picked it up in the car. Allee. Sam again. I see you down there and I'm making a julep. Allison turned and called through her hands. Coming in a moment, Sam, she said, and rose. It must be very late. Sam is home. We would better go back to the house. Don't, I begged her. Anchovies and juleps and Sam will go on forever, and I have you such a little time. I suppose I'm only one of a dozen or so, but you are the only girl in the world. You know I love you, don't you, dear? Sam was whistling, an irritating bird-call, over and over. She pursed her red lips and answered him in kind. It was more than I could endure. Sam or no Sam, I said firmly. I am going to kiss you. But Sam's voice came strident through the megaphone. Be good, you two, he bellowed. I've got the binoculars. And so, under fire, we walked sedately back to the house. My pulses were throbbing. The little swish of her dress, beside me on the grass, was pain and ecstasy. I had but to put out my hand to touch her, and I dared not. Sam, armed with megaphone and field glasses, bent over the rail and watched us with gleeful malignity. Home early, aren't you? Alison called when we reached the steps. Let a club when my partner had doubled no trumps, and she fainted. Damn the heart convention, he said cheerfully. The others are not here yet. Three hours later I went to bed. I had not seen Alison alone again. The noise was at its height now, and I glanced down into the garden still bright in the moonlight. Leaning against a tree and staring interestedly into the billiard room was Johnson. End of Chapter 28 Chapter 29 of The Man in Lower Ten This lip-revox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mary Ann. The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts-Reinhardt. Chapter 29 in the dining room That was Saturday night, two weeks after the rack. The previous five days had been full of swift-following events. The woman in the house next door, the picture in the theatre of a man about to leap from the doomed train. The dinner at the Dallas's, and Richie'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 Crescent trip stood out in my memory for its serial comic horrors and its one real thrill. Then, the discovery by the police of the seal-skin bag in the bit of chain. Hodgkiss producing triumphantly stewart for Sullivan and his subsequent discumperture. 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 with 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 wafed it in salt air and a faint aroma of good tobacco. I was thoroughly tired. But I slept restlessly, dreaming of two detectives with Pittsburgh warrants being held up by Hodgkiss 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 wrap 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 Richie, 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 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. Trained to Richmond at 6.30 a.m., I said. What time is it now? Four. Listen, Lolly, 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 8 o'clock. If you can't shake Johnson, bring him, bless him. To this day I believe the Sam Forbes's 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 stolen 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 of the latest improvements and 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 Allison, asking her if she would carry out the contract she had made. The detective saw me home and left me there. Mrs. Clopton 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. Clopton, 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 gone the next business. Nonsense, I observed. You're tired, that's all, Mrs. Clopton, 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 would 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 Hodgkis 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 Calvary sabre. Draw up a chair and help yourself to pie, he said, pointing to the arsenal. This is for the benefit of our friend Hodgkis here, who says he is a small man and fond of life. Hodgkis, 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. Hodgkis was like a small boy whose one ambition was to have people grow ashen and tremble at the mention of his name, McKnight jived. 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 Hodgkis. The plan was simplicity itself. According to Hodgkis, Sullivan was to meet Bronson at Mrs. Conway's apartment at 8.30 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 Hodgkis 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 Richie 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 getaway, and Hodgkis gave a final look at the revolver. I had no weapon. Somehow it all seemed melodramatic to the verge of farce. In the doorway Hodgkis was a half dozen feet ahead. Richie fell back beside me. He dropped his affection of gaiety, and I thought he looked tired. Same old Sam, I suppose, he asked. Same, only more of him. I suppose Allison was there. How is she? He inquired, irrelevantly. Very well. I did not see her this morning. Hodgkis 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 Hodgkis is right, and there is a row, you crawl under the table. The doos 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 soundproof. 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 Hodgkis 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 Hodgkis's agreed at nine o'clock, and with the discovery that our man might have come and gone, ours us 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-coloured bite 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-coloured 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? Did 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 as 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 bulk-dose pantry and a refrigerator room I was completely lost in the darkness. Until then the situation had been merely uncomfortable. Suddenly it became grizzly. For 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, where the 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 handshake 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 on, 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 was 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, will 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 whore 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 wanescotting, 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 then, after eons 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, grabbed him first, and then herself. Hodgkis got up and took off his hat. They are dead, he announced solemnly, and took his notebook out of his hat-band. McKnight and I did the only thing we could think of, drove Hodgkis and the dog out of the room enclosed 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 Hodgkis in charge and went downstairs. It was McKnight who first saw Johnson leaning against the 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 a while, in a few weeks or months, Mr. Blakely, he said, when you get tired of monkeying around with the bloodstain and the fingerprint specialist upstairs, you come to me. I've had that fellow you want under surveillance for ten days. End of Chapter 29