The Whisper on the Stair/Chapter 31
Back in their rooms, Val and Eddie sat down to talk it over. The lightness had, momentarily, dropped from him as one drops a cape from his shoulders, and he was conscious, again, of defeat. He had had the book in his hands—and had lost it again. He felt sure that the secret was in the Bible; not that the money meant anything to him, but the achievement of his purpose meant a great deal.
Suddenly, he was irritated with the whole business; with the Hotel Chamberlin, the Pomeroy property, himself, the money, Eddie. He gave voice to his irritation audibly.
“For heaven’s sake, Eddie—don’t you know enough to take off your hat in the house?” he asked harshly. “That lid—why do men wear derbies, anyway?” He looked at the offending hat irritably.
“Yes, sir,” replied Eddie. “There are lots of reasons for wearing derbies, sir,” he said. “Of course, begging your pardon and meaning no disrespect, the primary reason is to cover the bean, if I may say so. That being the case, you would naturally remark that it could be done without so much waste space. But⸺”
“Are you trying to kid me, Eddie?” demanded Val. “Because, if you are⸺”
“Oh, sir!” exclaimed Eddie. “How can you think such a thing—as though I would be so disrespectful! What I meant to say when you interrupted me, was that sometimes even the wasted space in a derby hat could be utilized to advantage.”
He took off the hat, and took a small, thick, black bound book out of it.
It was the Bible they had gone after.
Open-mouthed, astonished, Val stared; for a little while he was almost speechless. Finally he found voice, the while he contemplated Eddie, who sat there, holding the Bible in his hand and gazing at it admiringly.
“For the lova Mike, Eddie!” he gasped. “How did you ever manage to do that—I never saw you pulling it.”
“Neither did they, sir,” said Eddie, respectfully. “It’s a sorta heavy Bible, sir,” he added reflectively. “Now, in a silk hat, there would’a been more room⸺”
“You’d have taken away the suitcase in the silk hat, I guess,” said Val, his good temper restored marvelously. “I must admit that you’ve certainly earned your salary to-night,” he said. “Any man who can actually find a real use for a derby hat has my respect. Let’s have that Good Book, and we’ll see what we can see.” He took the book from his man’s outstretched hand.
“Better pull the blinds down, I guess, sir,” said Eddie, and he did so. “Never can tell what that there handless prodigy will be up to.”
On page two hundred Val found the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh chapters of Deuteronomy, in part. He read carefully for awhile, but could see nothing that was of significance.
“Moses seems to have a great deal to say here,” commented Val, “but he doesn’t seem to say anything about Peter Pomeroy. Can it be he didn’t know the old gent?”
He returned to his reading of the text. He had an idea that perhaps mad old Peter Pomeroy had used a part of the text to indicate the hiding place of his money—but how had he used it? That was the point at which Val had to confess himself stumped.
That, he reflected, was one of the places he considered himself stumped. There were others. In the rush of events this night, he had had no time to think about his strange liberation in the old house on the Pomeroy grounds. Who was it who had cut him loose from his bonds? What ghostly fingers were those that had wielded the knife?
Even now, in the light of his own room, with Eddie sitting opposite him, he shivered involuntarily when he thought of it. Like the figure of a dream it was—the shadow that had been his benefactor there. And yet, who was it? The question recurred again and again. Flesh and blood it was, of course—it was a sure enough knife that had done the cutting; he had felt the concrete, fleshly touch of the liberator.
There was someone prowling around the old estate that none of them knew of, he inclined. Someone who, knew his way about, too; with the lightness, softness of a cat, with the ability to blend with the eccentric, ghostly shadows that filled the old place. Someone who did not like Teck, it would appear, else why should he go to the trouble to cut loose his enemy?
That there was someone there who would in the end have to be reckoned with, Val was sure. He did not think that the Unknown had made its last appearance in this matter. He felt that there would be a time when he would be face to face with the Mystery again—and when the Mystery—he called him that mentally—would speak to him. Was he the strange apparition who had appeared to him out of a stroke of lightning—who had been revealed to him in an instant, and blotted out in the same instant? Who or what was this thing?
Val could feel again the touch of those invisible fingers as he was released, the creepy feeling that there was more about him than he could see with his eyes or hear with his ears.
With a puzzled sigh he went back to his perusal of the Bible. He read carefully, slowly, noting every word and every letter, and having finished with the two pages—two hundred and two hundred and one—between which the large bill had lain, he started once more, deliberately.
He had attained halfway down the page when he leaned forward with excitement, his eyes bright with the discovery. He saw what he had not seen before—marks—pencil marks, so slight, so slender and light, that it required strong eyes to behold them. He read the passage:
And thou shalt write upon them all the words of this law, when thou art passed over, that thou mayest go in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, a land that floweth with milk and honey; as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee.
In this passage the slight mark appeared under the words: Go and unto. It was plainly the beginning of a message! He glanced further. Now that he knew they were there, he could see more underscorings on the page. It was a message from the dead.
“Got it, Eddie!” he exclaimed. “Get a pencil and paper, and take it down as I give it to you.”
Eddie took out a notebook and wrote down what he was told, sitting there in silence, not disturbing his employer by so much as an unnecessary movement.
“Put down ‘Go unto,’ Eddie,” said Val.
Therefore it shall be when ye be gone over Jordan, that ye shall set up these stones, which I command you this day, in Mount Ebal, and thou shalt plaister them with plaister.
Mount was underscored—the only word in the passage underscored. Through the succeeding passages Val spelled out the word—Monroe; the letters of this were spelled out in sequence from different words in the text.
“Mount Monroe,” dictated Val. “Got that—Go unto Mount Monroe?”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddie. The rest of the message was short, spelled out through the chapter in the same way, letter by letter.
It read, in full:
“Go unto Mount Monroe, to the secret cave known only to Jessica, my daughter. To her, my sole relative and heir, is left all that is there contained.
Peter J. Pomeroy.
Val leaned back in blissful contemplation of this. So there really was treasure. Doubloons, pieces of eight, Spanish gold! It was more or less like a novel of adventure, he told himself. He had never been in this on account of the money. As a matter of fact, he had doubted gravely that there really was any money hidden, buried, or wherever it was that people put money away, if they did not put it in banks.
And now it had come true, miraculously, like a fairy story; like a tale that is told. It gave a sharp zest to life, this thing. To go hunting for buried treasure, and to find that, somewhere, there is treasure really buried! His blood had not so raced through his veins since the first time he had raptly read through the pages of Stevenson’s epic of buried treasure and villainy and bloodcurdling adventure.
“So there really is something in it, Eddie,” he exclaimed.
“It seems so, sir,” answered Eddie. “Where is this here Mount Monroe, anyway?”
“I guess Miss Pomeroy’ll know. Secret caves on mountains! It was almost too good to be true. And he had uncovered it himself—that would weigh with Jessica, he considered. Perhaps . . .
He allowed himself to sink away into a reverie about the girl with hidden lights in the coils of her hair. There was that dream he had had about a wedding. . . . Now, it was not impossible for such a dredm to come true. Men have married women before . . . he considered. . . . Not such women as Jessica, of course, but it was possible that to them the women had seemed just as wonderful. That was absurd, of course . . . as if any woman could be as wonderful as Jessica; yet men were foolish, and they had their dreams.
“To-morrow morning, Eddie,” he said, “we start out early—at daybreak. We’ll get Miss Pomeroy to go with us—the note says she knows where the cave is—and we’ll have the loot before old boy Iggy is out of bed. Then back to New York—maybe.”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddie. “After breakfast, sir,” he supplied.
Val laughed. “This is no time to think of food, Eddie. Haven’t you any soul for romance?”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddie. “This here romance thing is more romantic on a full stomach, though.”
“Well, go to bed, Eddie. I’m going to turn in.”
Eddie went into his room and prepared for the night. Val made his preparations quickly, threw open the window full, and turned out his light. There was a table near the window, and on it he threw the Bible which he had abstracted from Teck’s room.
“Good night, Eddie,” he called.
“Good night, sir,” came a sleepy voice.
The room was bathed in darkness and in sleep; the slumberous shadows were deep except near the window, where a wan moon somewhat lightened the gloom with a thin, cold, silvery light.
From far off, across the bay, came the bell of a vessel, to be answered by other bells, mellowed by their passage over the water. Here and there on the water the great searchlight of Fortress Monroe played unceasingly, vigilantly, and somewhere below, far on the road, an automobile chugged noisily on its way.
Outside Val’s window two shadows halted—a large bulk, on whose handless stumps the moon played, shrouding them in a ghastly light, and another, smaller, who held in his hand a flashlight.
“There it is—on the table,” whispered a hoarse voice, when Teck had got accustomed to the darkness. The table stood by the window, bathed in the light of the moon, and was easily discernible.
The smaller man reached in and seized the book. Outside, on the balcony, he played his flashlight on the cover.
“That’s it,” hissed the voice of Teck.
They were gone.
It was almost like a nightmare. Val sat up in bed and called to Eddie.
“Asleep, Eddie?” he asked.
“What is it, sir?” came back a sleepy voice.
“The Bible—it’s stolen again,” said Val.
There was a scuffle—Eddie leaping out of bed. “It would be, sir,” he said, coming into the room. “Shall I go and get it? That book has traveled more⸺”
“No, don’t bother, Eddie. Let them have it,” replied Val. “I’m too tired to bother about it.”
“I know, sir,” remonstrated Eddie, awake now. “But the dope about the money—they might uncover that⸺”
“I think not, Eddie,” yawned Val sleepily. He reached under his pillow.
“You see,” he said, “I rather expected a visit some time to-night. He won’t be suspicious if he has the Bible—and I don’t mind.” He handed Eddie a sheet of paper he had produced from under his pillow. It was the page of the Bible containing the data indicated by Peter Pomeroy, neatly cut out.
“Good night, sir,” said Eddie.