I jumped up and seized the fire tongs. The cat’s wail 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 Bokhara 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 Bokhara 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 mistily 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 whisky into the library across the hall.
Then—he broke into a desk, using a paper knife for a jimmy.”
“Good Lord, Hotchkiss,” I exclaimed; “why, it may have been
Sullivan himself! Confound your theories—he’s getting farther away
every minute.”
“It was Sullivan,” Hotchkiss 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 that railing.”
“Softly, softly, my friend,” Hotchkiss 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 up-stairs,
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 Hotchkiss as the low comedian should have had a revolver that missed fire.
As a fact, we had nothing of the sort. Hotchkiss 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.”
Hotchkiss, 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
boudoir. 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. Hotchkiss 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 rap at the door with the fire tongs, and stood expectant.
Certainly he was right; some one moved within.
“Hello! Hello there!” Hotchkiss bawled. “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 pst against the wall of the tower staircase. We ducked
unanimously, dropped back out of range, and Hotchkiss retaliated with a
spirited 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 Hotchkiss had no end of
fighting spirit, and as for me, my blood was up.
“Break the lock,” I suggested, and Hotchkiss, standing at the side,
out of range, retaliated for every bullet by a smashing blow with the tongs.
The shots ceased 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 Hotchkiss 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 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 into another,
becoming sane at intervals, and suffering relapse again every time I saw
Hotchkiss’ disgruntled countenance. 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
up-stairs put a pair of number eight boots to dry in the library last night? Do
you think she poured the whisky out of that decanter?”
“They have been known to do it,” I put in, but his eye 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-sit-by-the-fire. I
grant you that. Then who was it?”
Hotchkiss 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 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. Wie geht es bei ihnen?”
No reply.
“Bon jour, mademoiselle,” 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
travelers, lost in your mountains, and we crave a 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
highwayman, she was greatly relieved. She was inclined to fight shy of
Hotchkiss, however, for some reason. She gave us a 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 Bokhara rug, I
engaged Jennie 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 was 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, Jennie; I am all that I should be. You’ll have to
believe that. And I’m 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 Pittsburg,” 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
Pittsburg, Pullman included, if you will tell me some things I want to
know.”
She agreed eagerly. Outside the window Hotchkiss 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 Pittsburg. 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 Alison 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.
Jennie 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—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,
Jennie’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, Jennie,” 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 on 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 Pittsburg.”
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 the 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!”
