The Twenty-Six Clues/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
The Cake Marked "Noel"
IT was after three o'clock in the morning when ex-Roundsman McCarty reached the modest rooms over Girard's antique shop where he kept bachelor hall. The varied excitements of the night, the thrill of being once more, if unofficially, back in the old man-hunting game had driven sleep far from his thoughts and it was dawn before his eyes closed.
Nevertheless, he awoke early with undiminished enthusiasm to the drizzling rain of a dull November day, and over his coffee in the little nearby restaurant which he frequented he scanned the newspapers eagerly. At the hour of going to press no information could have been obtainable of the crime save that contained in McCarty's own telephone message to Inspector Druet and the latter's summons of the Chief Medical Examiner and report to the Homicide Bureau.
He was not surprised, therefore, at the meager paragraph, substantially the same in each paper, announcing the sudden death "under suspicious circumstances" of Mrs. Oliver Jarvis, the brilliant young society leader and social worker at the home of the family friend, Mr. Calvin Norwood.
That Oliver Jarvis himself was present when the tragic event occurred was assumed, and the article in every instance concluded with a statement that the authorities had the affair under investigation.
One enterprising journal printed a photograph of the dead woman, evidently resurrected from the files of the time of her marriage, for the costume was obviously out of date, but McCarty studied it with deep interest. There had been small trace of beauty in the swollen, blackened countenance which had stared up at him in the crime museum on the previous night, but the pictured face before him was very lovely in its girlish, ingenuous appeal. The soft, dark eyes, small straight nose and smiling, finely chiseled lips were set in a perfect oval crowned by a mass of cloud-like black hair and regarding it, McCarty's own blue eyes lost their twinkle and grew stern.
"I'd like to get my two hands on that strangler, once!" he muttered to himself as he drained his coffee cup and rose.
In the door of the restaurant he hesitated and then turned a reluctant back upon the corner around which Engine Company 023 was stationed, and raising his umbrella started for his rooms again. Dennis was on day duty and after a scant few hours' sleep would be in no mood to discuss the event of the previous night; moreover, on the way home he had proved distinctly "touchy" in regard to his exploit with the defunct Duchess of Piatra and his friend wisely concluded not to approach him on the subject of the crime until he could bring fresh news.
But how would he himself acquire it? Not at first hand, as in the old days. McCarty's spirits fell and he mentally anathematized the day his saloon-keeping uncle's money had descended to him and the first flush of prosperity had led him to resign from the force. He had been too long in uniform to gain lasting ease in the habiliments of a mere citizen, too long under orders to find profit or pleasure in the aimless days stretched out interminably before him, too long a man of action to appreciate the life of elegant leisure which had ensued, or derive from it aught but an utter boredom that corroded his honest soul.
Inspector Druet, the celebrated Terhune and Calvin Norwood; there were enough detectives, amateur and professional, on the Jarvis case now, in all conscience, without a blundering old departmental has-been butting in where he wasn't wanted, and yet
McCarty sighed lugubriously as he turned his own corner And then all at once his eyes brightened, his chin came up with the old lift and he stepped forward briskly, for there upon the doorstep beneath a dripping umbrella and registering outraged dignity in every bulbous curve of his portly form, stood the Norwood butler.
"Good-morning to you!" McCarty beamed upon him. "Were you looking for me?"
The butler turned and bowed stiffly.
"Good-morning, sir. Mr. Norwood sent me to say that h'if you 'ave an hour to spare 'e would be glad to see you. Being as you might say a confidential matter, 'e did not wish to h'employ a common messenger."
The last was evidently added in personal justification and he sniffed audibly as his supercilious glance swept the shabby neighborhood.
McCarty shifted his own umbrella.
"I'll go right back with you now, my man," he announced shortly. "Did Mr. Norwood give you any other word for me?"
"No, sir," the butler responded with awakened servility to his change of tone. "'E seems quite done in h'over the 'orrible affair of larst night, and no wonder, sir! Did the police h'inspector find out who did it, h'if I may ask?"
McCarty turned and eyed him blandly.
"If he did, he's keeping it to himself," he replied. "You didn't happen to see anything of a stranger about when you came home yesterday afternoon, did you?"
"Me, sir?" The butler's tone was as scandalized as though the question bore an imputation of complicity in the crime. "Certainly not, sir! The young French gentleman was in the library and the maids in the kitchen. It was after six and I was a bit late so I went directly about my duties arranging the table for dinner. There was no sign of anything unusual about, sir."
During their brief, clattering subway journey the subject was dropped but as they emerged and started along a rain-swept cross street to the Norwood residence, McCarty asked in apparent irrelevancy.
"By the way, when was the last time you saw Mrs. Jarvis alive?"
"On Tuesday afternoon, late, sir," the other responded readily. "The poor lady was h'always running h'in and h'out of the 'ouse most informally when Miss Joan was at 'ome and she and Mr. Jarvis were like own children to Mr. Norwood, h'if I may say so. Mrs. Jarvis 'ad come to tell 'im something h'about Professor Parlowe, but Mr. Norwood was busy in the drawing-room with an odd sort of person who 'ad called and could not be disturbed, so I ushered 'er h'into the library, to Captain Marchal."
There was a note of lofty distaste in the butler's tone as he mentioned his employer's visitor and McCarty observed indifferently:
"I guess Mr. Norwood has all kinds of people calling on him, if so he can get anything from them to add to that museum collection of his."
"Yes, sir," the butler agreed resignedly. "When I first h'entered 'is service I didn't know what to make of it, sir. Rough-looking characters, and some as you might call outright jailbirds calling and being received like gentry and took h'into the drawing-room, but I soon got used to it, h'although that museum h'always gave me a turn. And now look what's come of it all, sir! But the woman that called the other day, though h'ordinary, wasn't h'exactly criminal in h'appearance; she was middle-aged and blousy, with untidy hair and shabby black clothes, and h'English, but not a Londoner, like me. Mr. Norwood talked with 'er for more than an hour, and Mrs. Jarvis didn't wait. That was the last I saw of the poor young lady alive."
"How did you know she had come to tell Mr. Norwood something about Professor Parlowe? He is the toxicologist, isn't he, that Mr. Norwood went to call on yesterday afternoon?"
The butler nodded.
"I don't know what you might call 'im, sir, but 'e's the one Mr. Norwood went to see, and Mrs. Jarvis brought 'im the word. I was just h'about to knock and ask h'if she would 'aye tea when the library door opened and Captain Marchal showed her out.
"'Please tell Uncle Cal I couldn't wait, won't you?' she says to the young French gentleman. 'And in case I forget to mention it to-morrow night, Captain Marchal, do remind him of Professor Parlowe's experiment on Friday. I know he wouldn't miss it for worlds, so I hurried straight here to tell him of it myself.' That is 'ow I know, sir. It's terrible to think of the poor young lady being dead now, to say nothing of 'er 'aving been murdered in cold blood! I 'ope for h'all our sakes as 'ow the police h'inspector finds out the truth."
McCarty echoed his sentiments, but in an absent-minded tone. An idea had come to him born of the butler's idle gossip which his first impulse was to cast from him as the wildest improbability, and yet preposterous as it seemed in the light of certain of the previous night's discoveries, other hitherto insignificant details recurred to his mind which appeared to give it weight almost against his will.
He pondered in silence until they reached their destination; when that presented itself which for the time being drove all former speculation and conjecture from his thoughts.
"Ah, it's you, Mr. McCarty!" Calvin Norwood greeted him in unmistakable relief. "You came straight back with Billings? Good! There has been a curious development in the case and I knew you would be interested. Oliver came to me privately and I persuaded him to let me send for you, assuring him that you were discretion itself. He has telephoned to Mr. Terhune and I am afraid it will be our duty to take Inspector Druet also into our confidence when he comes, but I was anxious for your opinion."
McCarty's eyes sparkled.
"'A curious development!'" he repeated. "And what might it be, Mr. Norwood?"
"Come into the library and Oliver will show you himself."
They found Oliver Jarvis alone in the somber room staring down at the table before him on which stood two cardboard boxes, open. There was a curious tenseness in his drooped figure and the face he turned to them at their coming had aged ten years overnight. It was pallid and deeply lined, his blue eyes dull and sunken and the last traces of youth seemed to have vanished utterly from him.
"Good-morning, McCarty," he bowed. "It was good of you to come. I thought I could keep this thing quiet, but in view of the circumstances Mr. Norwood has shown me that it would be inexpedient. I only want to keep it from the press, if I can; not on my own account, although there will be notoriety enough, God knows, but because of her."
"I know, sir," McCarty responded quietly. "The boys will get nothing from me, you can bank on that. What is it that's come up?"
With a gesture Jarvis indicated the table and McCarty advanced and looked into the larger of the two boxes. There, banked in wads of soft, white oiled paper, he beheld a huge, circular, frosted cake, its top elaborately iced in the highest perfection of the confectioner's art.
"A birthday cake!" he exclaimed.
"Not birthday, Christmas," Jarvis corrected him, gravely. "That word 'Noel' traced in pink icing in the center means 'Christmas' in French, you know."
"Does it, now!" McCarty still stared. "It's a trifle early for the compliments of the season, but what has it to do with the case?"
"I found it on the top shelf of the closet in my wife's dressing-room this morning," Jarvis replied slowly. "If you will look at it closely you will see that it is slightly dusty and the decorations are crumbling in places; it was evidently not made this year and I do not know how long it has been in my wife's possession, nor for what purpose she preserved it. I have never seen nor heard of it before."
"It looks like a tombstone!" McCarty shivered. "For all it's a fancy-looking affair and must have cost a lot of money, I thought it was only wedding cakes that people preserved a bit of, for a keepsake."
"Exactly," Calvin Norwood remarked drily. "That is what puzzles us both."
"And 'twas in Mrs. Jarvis' dressing-room you found it?" McCarty pursued.
Jarvis nodded.
"I suppose I had no right to enter her apartments after Inspector Druet had locked them up and taken away the keys, but I didn't stop to think of that," he admitted. "I walked the floor all last night, racking my brains for a solution of this frightful thing, and when morning came I could not endure it any longer. I felt that I must get into that dressing-room again myself and search for some clue to the vile wretch who had murdered her! Then I recalled that I had a duplicate set of keys to my wife's apartments in my desk, and used them.
"The dressing-room was just as we had left it, of course, all in the wildest disorder and confusion and although I searched with the utmost care I found nothing, until I came to examine the closet which opened from it. The lower portion was filled with wearing apparel but on the top shelf far back in one corner behind bundles of disused clothing and that sort of thing I discovered these two boxes.
"The cake astonished me for I could not imagine where it had come from, nor why my wife had not told me of it, but when I opened the second box I felt as if the very ground had given way beneath my feet! I boasted last night to all of you that my wife's life was an open book and that she possessed no secrets from me, but now—my God! I don't know what to think!"
The second box was smaller than the first and comparatively flat. It contained what appeared to be square sheets cut from ordinary wrapping paper and covered with raised characters of a yellowish, brittle consistency like dried dough.
"What in the world" McCarty picked up the topmost sheet to examine it more closely when Norwood's voice, fairly cracking with excitement, sounded over his shoulder.
"Don't you see what it is? An anonymous letter, the simplest and yet most ingenious that could possibly be contrived! The words are formed by letters of the alphabet made of Italian paste, which have been glued to the paper. They are sold practically everywhere for use in soups. The wonder of it is that it has never occurred to anyone before to make use of such a method, for the ingredients are easily obtainable, and at the same time it absolutely baffles any attempt to trace it. This is unique in the annals of crime!"
"It is that!" McCarty agreed soberly. "'Tis a trick that's never been tried before and an uncommon clever one. But what's he got to say for himself?—'All is known. Pay or I tell. First warning.'—Look here, sir! You've no idea what this means?"
He had turned to Oliver Jarvis and the younger man burst out passionately:
"What can it mean, except that my wife was being blackmailed? Good God! Evelyn blackmailed! Yesterday I would have knocked any man down who dared suggest such a foul thing, and now I am trying to make myself believe, to accept" He broke off and turned away with clenched hands, only to whirl swiftly about upon them. "Understand this, though! My wife has been guilty of no wrong! Whatever it was for which she was being persecuted, whatever revelations may come of which we are ignorant now, I would stake my life upon it that my wife is an innocent victim! You knew her, Uncle Cal; you know that no secret could have weighed upon her conscience, she could have done nothing deliberately which would have placed her in a position where it would have been necessary for her to buy the silence of blackmailers!"
There was an agony of entreaty in his tones as though despite his loyal defense of the woman he loved, a doubt had arisen within him which he felt helpless to combat alone, and Calvin Norwood responded heartily:
"We know that, dear boy! Evelyn was the soul of honor and truth. No one who had ever come within range of her sweet, gentle influence could doubt that for a moment. Whatever difficulty she found herself in was not of her making, we may be sure of that. Oh, why did she not come to us frankly, when this trouble started? If she felt some natural hesitation in approaching you, her husband, why did she not confide in me?"
"There's nothing in this that names Mrs. Jarvis herself," observed McCarty reflectively.
"But that is only the first." Norwood pointed to the box. "There are two more. Read them."
McCarty took up the second crackling sheet and read:
"'Does lady forget date of next Sat. night? 5000 under rose bush yard then or all told.'—Humph! he got down to business then, all right!" he commented. "There's a rose bush in your back-yard, Mr. Jarvis?"
"Yes. An old-fashioned moss rose. We brought the slip from Scotland, and planted it together" his voice faltered.
"I've no wish to pry into your private affairs, sir," remarked McCarty after a pause. "But you said last night that Mrs. Jarvis never kept a large amount of money in the house. Five thousand dollars is quite a sum. Would she be able to lay her hands on that much at any time without consulting you about it?"
Jarvis pondered for a moment and a startled expression came over his face.
"Why, yes," he stammered at length. "That is, during the past year. I—I transferred some of her holdings to her, negotiable bonds and securities that formed a part of her inheritance from her guardian, Mr. Chartrand."
"Why did you do that?" McCarty noted his hesitation. "Did she ask it of you?"
"Yes, but I—I thought nothing of it at the time," replied Jarvis, adding hastily, "but read the last, McCarty. It is evident that my poor wife rebelled in some way at the exorbitant demand."
"'Lady can and will,'" McCarty read slowly. "'1,000 under bush 26 each month small price safety. will tell all first time money not there. Final warning.' It's blackmail, all right, and it looks as though Mrs. Jarvis must have fell for it, sir, unless the feller got cold feet You had no threatening letters yourself, I suppose, nor offers to sell you any information?"
"Certainly not! I tell you I had no possible intimation of such a thing until I came upon those boxes this morning." The earnestness in Jarvis' tone was unmistakable. "My first impulse was to destroy their contents utterly, to put them forever from my mind, but the next instant I realized that could never be. I should know no peace, night or day, until I had sifted the matter to the bottom and learned the truth."
"Did you speak of them to any of the servants? That girl, Margot, for instance?"
"No, I telephoned Mr. Terhune but, of course, I had to speak guardedly and I don't think he gathered how urgently I required his presence. I did not wait for him anyway, but came over at once to consult Mr. Norwood. I'm sure the cake must have had something to do with it, too; this cake marked 'Noel'"
"Good-morning, gentlemen." Terhune's even tones sounded from the doorway and they turned as he entered with Inspector Druet close behind him. "Ah, McCarty, you here? Still interested in last night's little affair, I see."
The observation was none too good-natured, and the ex-Roundsman flushed.
"I'm here because Mr. Norwood asked me, sir. Good-morning, Inspector." He turned pointedly to his old superior. "Mr. Jarvis has come on something that'll surprise you here. It's a little matter of blackmail"
"What?" The Inspector and Terhune both advanced and the latter's keen eye seized upon the evidence before them. Taking up one of the papers, he glanced swiftly over it.
"Communications of macaroni paste!" he exclaimed. "Mr. Jarvis, what does this mean?"
Jarvis explained and the newcomers listened in silence while he told them of his discovery and showed them the crumbling Christmas cake and the three missives.
When the account was finished Inspector Druet turned again to the door with an air of finality.
"If there is anyone who knows about this affair beside the blackmailer himself, it is the maid, Margot," he announced. "I wasn't satisfied with her explanations last night, but now I am going to get the truth from her if I have to put her through the third degree. Wait here, please, all of you."
With his departure Terhune turned reprovingly to his client.
"If you had put me in possession of these facts immediately upon their discovery, Mr. Jarvis," he began, "I should have been able to handle the situation far more advantageously than now, when it is practically taken out of my hands. The obvious course will be to look into your wife's finances at the earliest possible moment, but there are other steps"
Norwood drew McCarty aside.
"What do you make of it?" he asked anxiously. "I cannot believe that such a shadow rested upon her, and yet"
"Wait till we hear what the girl's got to say for herself," McCarty advised, adding somewhat irrelevantly, "What's become of your secretary, sir, the young Frenchman?"
"He is somewhere about; in the museum, I fancy," Norwood reponded, with a trace of obvious discomfiture. "I don't understand Victor. He is moody, of course, and this horrible affair has been a severe shock to him, but ever since last night he has haunted the museum, I heard a noise, and came down at dawn to find him there, and twice after that I had to fairly drag him away. It is sheer morbidity, of course, but it isn't good for him in his present condition and if he doesn't keep away from there I'll confiscate his key."
Comment from McCarty was halted by the reopening of the door and Inspector Druet grimly ushered the girl, Margot, into the room. She was pale but composed and if misgiving had assailed her at the unexpected summons she gave no evidence of it as she advanced quietly.
Then all at once her glance fell upon the table and what lay there and she paused with a little choking cry.
"Ah, you have found them! I prayed that you would not, that I might keep my word to Madame, but now"
"Now you will tell us what you know." Inspector Druet announced sternly.
The girl made a little gesture of surrender.
"Yes, Monsieur. It cannot matter now to poor Madame, and it may be, if she knows, that she would wish me to speak. I will tell all."