The Twenty-Six Clues/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
Dennis Scores
IMMEDIATELY after Margot had been dismissed old Henry, the Jams' butler made his appearance, and close upon his heels came the cook, her portly form clad in a weirdly striped wrapper, her ruddy countenance grim with exasperation at being haled from her bed at so unseemly an hour.
She paled, however, at sight of the Inspector's uniform and turned hurriedly to her employer.
"Oh, sir, whatever is the matter? Margot told me nothing when she woke me"
"There has been a burglary committed here." Inspector Druet announced before Oliver Jarvis could speak.
"Burglars! The saints preserve"
"Never mind that now!" The Inspector broke in sharply upon her exclamation. "What time did you leave the house to-day?"
"Right after lunch was cleared away, sir; along about half-past two. Mrs. Jarvis gave me the afternoon and even- ing off and I went to my sister's, in Brooklyn." The cook glanced about her with wildly startled eyes. "If you please, sir, where is Mrs. Jarvis?"
"She will not be home to-night." Inspector Druet added quickly: "When did you return to the house?"
"At half-past ten, sir. Henry got in just ahead of me; didn't you, Henry?"
She turned for confirmation to the butler who nodded his white head solemnly.
"Did you notice any signs of disturbance? Hear anything?" demanded her interrogator.
"No, sir!" The cook gasped and laid a fat hand upon her capacious bosom in the region of her heart. "Glory be! We might all have been murdered in our beds! There was a light in the front basement but I thought it was only Margot waiting up, maybe, for Mrs. Jarvis. There were low lights, too, in the halls, but they are always left lit and I didn't hear a sound or see anything at all as I went on up to my room. Was it much that was took, sir? Did the burglar getaway?"
The Inspector silenced her importunities and dismissed her, then turned to the butler who stood aside, his spare, dignified figure wrapped toga-wise in his bath-robe.
"Henry, what time did you come in?"
"A moment before cook, sir; I was closing the door when she came up behind me. I know nothing whatever of any burglar, sir, but I'm positive none was in the house when I entered, nor after, for I'm a light sleeper and I would have heard him. You'll excuse me, sir, but was the silver touched? It's been in my charge these forty years and never a piece missing"
The aged man's distress was very real and it was equally evident that he knew nothing which could throw light upon the mystery. Reassured as to the safety of the silver he too was allowed to depart and the Inspector glanced significantly at Oliver Jarvis.
"Your housemaid seems unwilling to put in an appearance," he observed. "I might suggest that you send for her again"
"I'll bring her if I have to drag her from her bed!" declared Jarvis with sudden violence as he started for the door. At that moment, however, there came a light tap upon it and without waiting for response it opened and a plump, buxom girl with a shawl draped over her kimono slipped into the room and stood half sullenly, half defiantly before them. Her red hair was caught back in a rumpled, untidy braid, and the lower part of her face was swathed in bandages above which her round eyes glared with resentment and fright.
"My aunt says there's been a burglary, but I know nothing of it," she began. "I'm near dead with the pain in my tooth"
"Your aunt is the cook?" interrupted the Inspector brusquely. "Why did you not come at once when you were summoned?"
The girl tossed her head mutinously.
"That Margot didn't say what I was wanted for, and how was I to know, at this time of night, that there was trouble? I've been in my bed since noon and not a sound have I heard in the house since my aunt went out after lunch, except when Margot came in and put hot cloths to my face, and then brought me the bite of supper I couldn't touch. There's nothing I can tell you, sir, and if you don't mind I'll be getting back to my room, for it's draughty "
"Just a minute." The Inspector eyed her sharply. "You did not leave your room at all during the afternoon?"
"No, sir; nor since, until now."
"Did you hear your aunt and the butler come in?"
"I did not, sir. I must have dozed off after Margot went away with the tray, but even if I'd been awake, I would have paid small heed to any noise that might have come to me, what with the pain and all." Etta mumbled through the bandages which held her jaw as in a vise, and her brown eyes roved from one to another of the little group. "I'm sure I'm sorry if—if anything was took, but I'm not to blame. I wasn't left in charge of the house and besides, the burglar might have been in the very next room to me and I'd not have noticed, I was that crazed with my toothache!"
"Very well, Etta. You may go now, but I shall want to see you to-morrow." Inspector Druet gathered up his papers and as the girl scuttled from the room without more ado, he turned to the others. "We'll take a last look over the house, now, and then get back to Mr. Norwood's."
A hasty but systematic search vouchsafed them no further clues and an examination of every door and accessible window by which the assassin might have gained entrance failed to reveal the slightest mark of applied force.
After a few parting whispered words of consolation to the bereaved man from Norwood they left the house and made their way back through the little door in the fence to the latter's home.
As they brought up the rear Dennis remarked to McCarty:
"You're thinking that girl Margot lied? She knew about the crime all along? Maybe she was waiting in the yard for the murderer himself"
"I'd not go so far as to say that," responded McCarty cautiously. "But 'twas a mighty convenient dream she had on the spur of the moment. With a gift like that, Denny, and a pack of cards she could be making her everlasting fortune!"
"You don't believe in it?" There was a trace of superstitious awe in Dennis' tone.
"Devil a bit!" his companion retorted stoutly. "If she didn't actually know, she suspected well enough what might have happened to her mistress when we found her here in the yard and if I was the Inspector I'd have the truth out of her. I've not figured out yet why she stood up to it that Mrs. Jarvis' rooms were not disturbed when she knew we must have seen with our own eyes the state that the dressing-room was in; she'd had plenty of time, too, to straighten it again if she'd wanted to keep from us the fact that it has been ransacked like that."
"I noticed one thing," Dennis observed. "The news of Mrs. Jams' death itself floored her, but the manner of it—that it was murder—didn't seem to surprise her, and she never even asked how or where it had been done."
"Still, I wouldn't say she was a party to it, nor that her grief over it wasn't real enough," demurred McCarty. "The manner of the other girl, Etta, is as much on my mind. A toothache she may have had, Denny, but 'twould take more than that to choke off a woman's natural curiosity about a burglary that had been committed under the same roof with her, if she was entirely ignorant of it. That young woman didn't want to hear a word of it; all she wanted was to get away out of sight without being asked any more questions herself. One thing is sure; there's no love lost between her and Margot."
When they re-entered the Norwood house the blind secretary met them at the library door, his sensitive face alive with eager questioning.
"It was a burglar, Victor." Norwood dropped wearily into a chair and replied to the mute appeal. "She was killed in her own dressing-room and why her murderer brought the body here I cannot imagine. It would seem the act of an insane person"
"Madame Jarvis was killed in her own dressing-room!" Marchal repeated slowly. "That is what you have learned, Monsieur. But how do you What proof is there "
"Her safe is forced open and empty and the room is a wreck; everywhere the signs are unmistakable of the terrific struggle which must have taken place" Norwood was beginning when Terhune advanced and interrupted him smoothly.
"Captain Marchal looks quite done up. If the Inspector does not require anything further of him to-night I would suggest that he be excused."
Inspector Druet nodded understandingly.
"Yes, Captain. You have helped us all you can, I am sure, and it is very late. We won't detain you any longer."
Marchal bowed.
"If Monsieur Norwood" he began.
"You had better go to bed now and get what rest you can after this terrible business," Calvin Norwood advised. "We will have hard days ahead of us, Victor. Gad! I never thought when I took up the investigation of crime as a mere hobby years ago that it would strike home to me like this! If it were my own niece who had been throttled by some fiend in human form I could scarcely be more deeply affected. But we'll get him, gentlemen! We'll get him! Good-night, Victor"
"Good-night, Monsieur Norwood. You will call me if I can be of any assistance?"
As the secretary bowed and retired the butler appeared in the doorway. He was a corpulent, middle-aged individual with a rotund face from which the florid color had departed in streaks and his earlier dignity had perceptibly fallen from him.
"H'excuse me, Mr. Norwood," he stammered. "But the 'ousemaid is still in 'ysterics, sir, and cook is packing; she says as 'ow she won't stay another hour h'under a roof where maybe a murderer is 'iding and 'er not being h'able to see or 'ear very good if 'e was to get after 'er, sir."
"I'd better see them, I suppose, and reassure them." Norwood rose.
"I'll go with you." The Inspector announced. "I have a few questions to put to them and then my preliminary report will be complete."
Left alone. Wade Terhune eyed his involuntary colleagues elatedly.
"A remarkable case in some aspects, eh, McCarty?"
"It is that, sir," the ex-Roundsman agreed, adding with unconscious wistfulness. "It's a rare bit of luck for you to have been on the ground when it was first discovered, being as you're in charge of the investigation now for Mr. Jarvis. I'd like well to have a hand in it myself."
"Perhaps we may be able to use you later on," the criminalist remarked consolingly. "I won't deny that you have a special knack for certain phases of the work which stood you in goo stead last year. This case in a way is as ele- mental as the Rowntree affair and the motive is self-evident; then, too, it is not complicated by a mistaken identification as was the other, and I think we shall before very long find our field of suspects narrowed down to—but what has become of our good friend Riordan?"
"Denny?" McCarty glanced about him in amazement, "He was right here beside me a minute since! He'd not have followed the Inspector"
At that moment Dennis' lean, lantern-jawed face appeared in the doorway, his gray eyes snapping with suppressed excitement.
"Whisht!" he admonished superfluously. "When they took the body out the Inspector forgot to lock the door to the museum. Come till I show you something!"
Nothing loath they followed him down the hall to the late scene of the tragedy. The room in the brilliant glare of light was in perfect order, the table upon which the body had rested bare and glistening in its coat of white enamel with the Mexican blanket folded neatly at its foot.
Dennis led them to the second window from the left, the sides of which now stood widely open into the room and with a dramatic flourish pointed outward and down.
"If you'll have a look at that ladder," he announced, you'll find something squeezed in behind the first rung where it rests against the ledge that'll interest the both of you."
"What" McCarty started forward but Terhune was before him. Leaning from the window where the two ends of the ladder protruded above the sill he reached down and drew forth a limp, crumpled, brown object which he smoothed into a semblance of shape.
"A glove!" McCarty marveled. "A man's glove—chauffeur's, by the smell of it!"
A strong odor of gasolene assailed their nostrils and the glove originally a soft brown was smeared with oil and grease in streaks of greenish black.
"Unless it is a cast-off the man who wore it was no ordinary chauffeur," Terhune remarked. "It is a trifle smaller than the average size, handsewn and of the very best quality. Imported, too; I thought so."
He showed the maker's trade-mark upon the clasp and then turning it inside out he examined it with care.
"Think of that now!" McCarty rubbed his chin reflectively and added. "I wonder how it came to stick on the ladder? There's quite a wind blowing, the night."
"The fellow, whoever he was, probably dropped it in reaching up to pry open the window catch and it fell upon the rung of the ladder against the ledge. Then in mounting his foot trod upon it and wedged it in between the ladder and the house wall." Terhune hastily reconstructed the incident in theory. Then he turned to Dennis. "Was that exactly as you found it? Why didn't you bring it to us?"
"I've no mind to get in Dutch with the police by disturbing evidence," the latter responded virtuously. "I put it back just as I found it and left the rest to you. Wouldn't you think the feller would've missed it?"
"And gone blundering around a dark yard hunting for it, with a skeleton to keep him company and that dead body in here to raise the alarm any minute? " McCarty demanded derisively. "It is your idea, Mr. Terhune, that he came up the ladder first and pried the window open, and then went down and got the body—which he'd likely hid behind some bush—and climbed back up again?" .
"How else?" Terhune shrugged.
"Well," remarked McCarty slowly, "I'm thinking it'd take more nerve then the average, or else he was a plain lunatic. There's the back windows of the houses on both streets staring at him, to say nothing of the fact that Mr. Norwood or that young Frenchman was apt to come in here any minute and catch him at his job. Why didn't he leave the poor thing there in her own dressing-room where he killed her, and beat it? Why should he have gone to all this trouble and risk, and then left the evidence back there behind him "
"We will learn that when we have found him and induced him to talk," Terhune assured the other coolly. "Even with your singularly moribund deductive faculty, my dear McCarty, one salient point in this case must have impressed itself upon you; the murderer was no stranger to either house or their occupants. I will go further; I think I may say even at this early stage of the investigation that he was on casual, if not intimate, terms with certain members of both households. He knew the habits, the hours, the plans of each family and gauged his time to a nicety. That Mrs. Jarvis returned unexpectedly to the house because of her headache instead of continuing her round of social calls and discovered him at his work is one hypothesis which may possibly be entertained"
"But you don't hold with it, sir?" McCarty interrupted shrewdly.
Terhune smiled.
"At any rate, he had undoubtedly ascertained the fact that Mr. Norwood would be absent this afternoon before carrying out his daring scheme as to the disposition of the body," he evaded. "I tell you, McCarty, I have a cordial admiration for an adversary of such caliber! It will be a positive pleasure to match my scientific qualifications against his native resourcefulness and I may add without boasting that I have no misgivings as to the result."
"No, sir," McCarty acquiesced respectfully. "Though I can't understand why the girl Margot insisted the dressing-room was in order when she'd deliberately left it as she must have found it, as if she had wanted us to catch her in a bare-faced lie, I've no doubt in the world but that you'll find out the truth and lay the murderer by the heels. I can't say I've any admiration for a strangler of women, no matter how clever, but 'twould give me as much pleasure as you to get him. I wonder, now, did he take it into consideration that the secretary was at home to maybe interrupt him in his little scheme, or did he count him out, being blind?"
Before the criminalist could reply a muffled but apparently agonized yell from the direction of the hearth made them turn. Dennis, bored with the analytical discussion of the situation and spurred on by his discovery of the glove, had extended his personal investigation to the chimney and all that was visible of him at the moment was his long legs dangling and kicking wildly in the aperture of the fireplace.
"Denny, what in"
The words died in McCarty's throat for there came another stifled howl accompaned by a hollow rattling sound, and Dennis fell with a crash which scattered the dead ashes in a little cloud as he rolled out upon the hearth, wrapped seemingly in the affectionate embrace of an angular, attenuated shape which gleamed horridly in the light.
"Take it off me!" wailed Dennis. "Holy mother! Take it away!"
Terhune uttered an exclamation but it went unheard as McCarty strode forward, jerked the gruesome object loose from his friend's prostrate form and dropped it with a clatter upon the table.
"What is it?" Dennis whispered fearfully as he sat up and wiped the sooty moisture from his forehead. "What tos it got me then, Mac?"
"I'm thinking it's the lady you were so anxious to see when first we came in here, the night," McCarty responded with unsmiling gravity. "What with the glove and now this, you're doing well for an amateur, I'll say that for you. 'Tis the missing skeleton, no less, that you brought down the chimney with you, Denny, my lad!"