That was Saturday night, two weeks after the wreck. The previous five days had
been full of swift-following events—the woman in the house next door, the
picture in the theater of a man about to leap from the doomed train, the dinner
at the Dallases’, and Richey’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 Cresson trip stood out in my memory for its
serio-comic horrors and its one real thrill. Then—the discovery by the
police of the seal-skin bag and the bit of chain; Hotchkiss producing
triumphantly Stuart for Sullivan and his subsequent discomfiture; 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 and 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 wafted in salt air and a faint
aroma of good tobacco. I was thoroughly tired, but I slept restlessly, dreaming
of two detectives with Pittsburg warrants being held up by Hotchkiss 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 rap 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 Richey, 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
if 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.
“Train to Richmond at six-thirty A.M.,” I said.
“What time is it now?”
“Four. Listen, Lollie. 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 eight o’clock. If you
can’t shake Johnson, bring him, bless him.”
To this day I believe the Sam Forbeses 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 stole 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 on the latest improvements in
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 to Alison,
asking her if she would carry out the contract she had made. The detective saw
me home, and left me there. Mrs. Klopton 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. Klopton?” 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 and gone the next’ business.”
“Nonsense,” I observed. “You’re tired, that’s
all, Mrs. Klopton. 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’d 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 Hotchkiss
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 cavalry
saber.
“Draw up a chair and help yourself to pie,” he said, pointing to
the arsenal. “This is for the benefit of our friend Hotchkiss here, who
says he is a small man and fond of life.”
Hotchkiss, 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.”
“Hotchkiss is like the small boy whose one ambition was to have people
grow ashen and tremble at the mention of his name,” McKnight jibed. 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 Hotchkiss.
The plan was simplicity itself. According to Hotchkiss, Sullivan was to meet
Bronson at Mrs. Conway’s apartment, at eight-thirty 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 Hotchkiss 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
Richey 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 get-away, and Hotchkiss gave a final look at
the revolver. I had no weapon. Somehow it all seemed melodramatic to the verge
of farce. In the doorway Hotchkiss was a half dozen feet ahead; Richey fell
back beside me. He dropped his affectation of gayety, and I thought he looked
tired. “Same old Sam, I suppose?” he asked.
“Same, only more of him.”
“I suppose Alison was there? How is she?” he inquired irrelevantly.
“Very well. I did not see her this morning.”
Hotchkiss 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 Hotchkiss is
right, and there is a row, you crawl under a table.”
“The deuce 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 sound proof. 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 Hotchkiss 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 Hotchkiss’ agreed at nine o clock, and,
with the discovery that our man might have come and gone, our zest 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-colored light 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-colored 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? Didn’t 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 if 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 butler’s pantry and a
refrigerator room I was completely lost in the darkness. Until then the
situation had been merely uncomfortable; suddenly it became grisly. From
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; with a 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 hand shake 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, 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 is 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. “We’ll 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 horror 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 wainscoting, 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 when, after æons 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. Stabbed him
first and then herself.”
Hotchkiss got up and took off his hat. “They are dead,” he
announced solemnly, and took his note-book out of his hatband.
McKnight and I did the only thing we could think of—drove Hotchkiss and
the dog out of the room, and closed 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 Hotchkiss in charge and went down-stairs. It was McKnight who first saw
Johnson, leaning against a 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 while, in a few weeks or months, Mr. Blakeley,” he said,
“when you get tired of monkeying around with the blood-stain and
finger-print specialist up-stairs, you come to me. I’ve had that fellow
you want under surveillance for ten days!”
