The Whisper on the Stair/Chapter 28
At the hotel Val and Eddie called on the resident doctor and had Eddie’s wound washed out and bandaged up properly. It was a nasty cut which had cleaned itself out thoroughly by the simple expedient of bleeding freely, and was no longer dangerous, though the doctor said that he thought it might leave a slight scar. Eddie said that he felt as good as new, and none the worse for his experience, though he looked rather desperate with his immense cross-shaped plaster covering his right eye and a large part of his forehead.
Once in their rooms, the men sat down to discuss the situation and to think out some solution, if possible.
Val lighted his pipe, sat down in a large easy chair, and gave himself up to reflection for a few minutes. Eddie sat in silence, too, smoking a vile smelling cigarette of pure Virginia tobacco.
“Well, what do you say, Eddie?” asked Val at length.
Eddie was still silent. It was almost as if he had not heard. He leaned comfortably back in his chair, and smoked luxuriously, relaxing every limb.
“Come, snap out of it, Eddie. This⸺”
“This here, now, Ignatz Teck⸺” began Eddie calmly.
“Ignace, Eddie,” corrected Val. “Be precise.”
“Well, Ignace, then, though I don’t see as it’s any different. This here Teck bird must be removed, mustn’t he?”
“Look’s like it, Eddie. I had thought of handing him over to the police, but there are reasons why it might be inadvisable. In the first place, I don’t want to drag Miss Pomeroy into it—and though she is absolutely innocent, of course, yet that won’t prevent the papers smearing her name all over the story. In the second place, I am not certain that the police would be able to get anything on him. The only thing that, might connect him with the murder of old Mat Masterson is⸺”
“The books,” supplemented Eddie.
“Exactly. And what’s to prevent him from getting rid of them at the first alarm⸺”
“Let’s help him get rid of them,” decided Eddie.
Val looked his inquiry. “You mean⸺”
“Sure thing. He must have them with him—seeing that they probably contain the dope about where this here money’s stuck away; why—I bet they’re in his room right now.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” assented Val, nodding his head. “But I don’t think he’s been able to locate the money himself, yet—in fact, I’m sure he hasn’t. The thing to do is to beat him to it.” Eddie nodded.
“Have you any idea at all⸺”
“Not the slightest, Eddie. Suppose you were an old man, and you put some instructions in a book about where to find your fortune—what would you do?”
Eddie was quiet for a space. “I guess I’d mark the place, some way,” he said at length, “so’s I wouldn’t forget.”
Both lapsed into a brief silence again, and it was Val who broke it this time. “By Christmas, Eddie, I think you’ve hit it! Ah, the perspicacity of the working classes! You think⸺”
“Well, I think a ten thousand dollar bill is a pretty decent sort of marker, boss,” said Eddie, evenly. “If I was doing the marking, I think⸺”
“Elementary, Watson, elementary!” quoted Val, now thoroughly alive to the idea. “I remember exactly where that bill was—it was in the Bible, page two hundred. Deuteronomy. Maybe there’s a passage that refers to it in this Bible—I know the exact chapter, because I read over a little of it at the time. Let’s have it, Eddie.”
Eddie handed him the copy of the Bible that lay on the little table beside the bed—“The Property of the Gideons”—there are hundreds of thousands of them scattered over this land, in almost every hotel room in the country, a familiar, black-backed Bible with the red-edged pages. Val read the section carefully, but could find nothing that looked like a clew to what he wanted. He read it over carefully again, and then shook his head as he put it down.
“Nix,” he said. “Nothing doing.”
“I didn’t think you’d find anything there,” said Eddie. “You’d have to look at the Bible he used. Might be⸺”
“Probably you’re right, Eddie, if there’s anything in this theory. A Bible’s a pretty big book, and a man might make annotations in it that could easily be overlooked unless you knew just where to hunt for them. Then the only thing to do is to⸺”
“To lift the books out of Teck’s room⸺”
“Again!” laughed Val. “Say, we could take a moving picture of those books, they’ve been doing so much traveling. But I think you have the right angle, Eddie, at that. The best time to get those books would be right⸺”
“Right now,” put in Eddie. “I don’t think his nibs is back yet—that old girl said they were still in the house there. I don’t think he’ll be in any great hurry to leave, until he has to. It don’t seem reasonable that he’d carry those books around with him, so I imagine they’re still in his room.”
“His room’s right on this floor,” said Val.
Eddie stepped to the French windows and threw them open, letting a flood of pure, sweet air into the room. The rain had ceased, and the stars had come out miraculously, studding the heavens above Chesapeake Bay with their glory.
The window opened on a long balcony, or sun-parlor, which ran the length of that side of the house.
“Right at the other end of this balcony,” said Eddie, “is where this here handless wonder lives. If the window isn’t open, I think I know where a cold chisel’ll do the most good. We’ll slip in, cop the books⸺”
“If he isn’t home,” interposed Val.
“And if he’s home, so much the worse for him, that’s all I gotta say,” remarked Eddie. “Nobody can give me a wallop like this and get away with it as easy as that. Maybe there won’t be nothing left for the police⸺”
“Now, Eddie. None of that stuff around. We’ll be thrown out of the hotel, and it’s the only decent one this side of Norfolk,” laughed Val. “And anyway, that won’t get us anywhere. Of course, if he starts any roughhouse, why, we can slip it to him, but I don’t think he’ll pull that stuff here. Get the chisel.”
Eddie unbuttoned his coat; a large chisel stood in his inside pocket, ready for duty. “I kinda thought that at the old house,” he remarked, “we might need it, so I brung it along.”
“You think of everything, Eddie,” said Val. “Let’s go.”