Unseen Hands/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
THE ROOM WITH THE BROKEN WINDOW
REALIZING that nothing further could be gotten from the nerve-racked man that night the chief at a nod from Odell ordered that Peters be taken away.
"What do you make of it? Hysteria or just plain lies?" he asked when the door had closed behind the limp, shambling form.
"Neither," Odell replied slowly. "I should not be surprised to learn that he was telling the straight truth."
"Truth!" Captain Lewis exploded. "Are you going to tell me next that you believe in ghosts, Barry Odell?"
"I believe in the one Peters heard, and I'm going to make it my business to find it," the detective responded gravely. "I think it will help mightily in the solution of the whole problem to learn just what it was doing in the upper regions of the house at the moment when the family, or the rest of the family, were plunged in their first numbing shock and grief."
"Well, it sounds fishy to me," the chief asserted. "If it were the murderer why should he go wandering around the house with a light talking to himself? Peters's story is thin, too; the atmosphere of the house didn't seem to get on his nerves to the extent of making him sneak away from it until he knew we were going to start an investigation. I'll let him sleep over it to-night, but in the morning I'll put him through the jumps. Well, Miller?"
After a light tap the door had opened, and the plainclothes detective who had been sent to bring in Farley Drew stood upon the threshold with failure written on his countenance.
"He's not there, sir. When I asked at the desk for Mr. Drew the clerk 'phoned up to his rooms and someone answered that he was out of town. Then I showed my shield and they sent me up with a bellboy. Of course, the clerk may have telephoned a warning while we were in the elevator; but I don't think he did for when we rang the valet opened the door promptly, and he looked a good deal surprised but not alarmed. He said that Mr. Drew went away early this morning to some house party in the country, but he couldn't say where as he'd had no instructions about forwarding mail. Mr. Drew seldom left an address when he was only to be away for a few days. The valet, Sims his name is, had packed dress clothes, a Norfolk hunting-suit, and tennis-flannels in the bags which our bird took away with him; and he understood that Drew would not be back for a week."
"Is that all you got?" the chief asked disgustedly.
"Not quite, sir. By luck I found the chauffeur outside at the taxi-stand who had driven him to the station; the Grand Central it was. He knew Drew and had often driven him before; and he said that he was in a devil of a hurry to catch his train this morning. It looked straight enough to me."
"All right; that'll do." As the door closed once more the chief turned to Odell. "It seems as though you had the right dope; Drew must have had word from that Chalmers lad and beaten it, and that adds more color to your theory. If he isn't mixed up in this thing he would have stuck around and played the friend of the family and braved it out."
Odell rose.
"I've got to get a line on him and I won't call it a day until I have," he announced. "It's only ten o'clock; I'll go back to the Meade house and have it out with Gene."
He had started for the door when the telephone on the captain's desk whirred and instinctively he waited.
"Yes.—Who?—Oh, it's you, is it. Porter? . . . The sergeant? Yes, he's here."
Odell sprang forward and seized the receiver.
"Hello, Porter. Where are you 'phoning from?"
"Is that you, Sergeant?" Porter fairly yelped with excitement. "I'm talking from the booth in Volkert's drug store over on Third Avenue; you know the place, we had him up a couple of months ago for selling 'snow.'"
"What are you doing there?" demanded the exasperated Odell. "I left you to watch Gene Chalmers. The last I heard of you, you were playing cards with him."
"Yes, and he rooked me," Porter retorted. "I'm trailing him now. He's just across the street in a tailor's shop next the corner; it was all closed and dark but he let himself in with a key. There is only one entrance unless he goes out some back way, and I don't believe he will, for he thinks he lost me at the house. He's a slick guy for fair."
"Keep your eye on that shop till I get there," ordered Odell. "If he comes out shadow him but 'phone back here to Headquarters the first chance you get so that I can follow you. Get me?"
"Sure, Sergeant."
There came the almost simultaneous click of two receivers, and Odell turned to his chief.
"Can I have Miller? I've a hunch we'll need him; Gene Chalmers thinks he has given Porter the slip, and he is over on Third Avenue in some joint that has a shop in front for a blind. I rather think there will be developments."
With the readily accorded permission he and Miller taxied swiftly uptown, dismissing the car a block from their destination. Most of the shops were closed; but the avenue was still brightly lighted, and as they approached the drug store they could distinguish Porter's short, stocky figure leaning nonchalantly against the lamp-post at the curb.
As they neared him he turned and greeted them boisterously in the tough language of the quarter for the benefit of any chance passer-by, then drew them around the corner.
"Look back over your shoulder," he said in low, hurried tones. "See that shop between the delicatessen and the tobacconist's? That's the joint. Gene Chalmers hasn't come out yet and no one else has gone in; but it must be some sort of a meeting-place."
"What is that narrow open space around the corner on the side street, back of the tobacconist's?" Odell queried. "Looks like a sort of alley to me. Miller, go and see if it runs back of the tailor's shop and if there is a door opening on it. Look for any lights in the rear and be careful if there is anyone hanging about."
As Miller nodded to them carelessly and sauntered across the avenue Porter observed with grudging admiration in his tones:
"I thought that Gene was just a willie-boy but I had the wrong dope; he's about as slick as they come. I thought at first that he was too blamed affable when he invited me into his room, but he seemed so anxious to tell me all about how that picture nearly fell on him the night before and ready to offer a hundred different suggestions that he threw me off the track; and boy! how he can play cards! Not that I took my hand off my number for a minute until just at the last," he added hastily. "But you yourself might have been taken in by the way he worked that, Sergeant."
"Possibly," Odell assented dryly. "I tried to get word to you before I left the house to warn you against that very thing; but you didn't come down to report and I let you alone to handle the case your own way. How did he manage to give you the slip?"
"It was after dinner and he wanted a drink; said that his stepfather had some private stock locked away in the cellar, but he had a duplicate key which the old man had given him. I had my suspicions as to how he had come by that key; but it was none of my business so I went down cellar with him. There were stone steps and a flat door bolted on the inside leading up into the back yard, and a small room partitioned off where he said the liquor was stored.
"He turned on the electric light by a switch in the wall near the staircase, took a key from his pocket, and opened the door of the store-room. I strolled after him to take a peep inside when he called to me to look on one of the banging shelves that were full of preserve-jars and find a glass." Porter hesitated. "I suppose I was a fool, but I never suspected he had a chance in the world to make a break for it then; so I turned to do as he asked, when the lights went out like a flash, and I heard the door of the store-room slam. I groped my way to it but it was fastened by a spring lock and by the time I found the switch in the wall and turned on the lights again Shaw blew his whistle outside.
"There must have been a second light-switch in the store-room and a second door leading up into the yard; and the kid had evidently planned his getaway ahead, for he's wearing a cloth cap, which I guess he had been carrying folded up in an inside pocket since before I came on the job. I ran out of the house, found Blake on guard at the corner, and he told me young Chalmers had come out of the tradesmen's entrance on the side street and started due east, with Shaw trailing him.
"I borrowed Blake's hat and hot-footed it after them, picking them up at Third Avenue in time to relieve Shaw just as Gene was boarding a surface car. By sheer luck a drunk happened to be getting out of a taxi in front of Bud Westley's old poolroom, and I grabbed it and trailed the car. The kid couldn't have had a suspicion that he was being shadowed; for he got out at this corner and made straight for that shop over there without even looking around."
"You were an ass to be taken in like that, Porter, but perhaps it is just as well," Odell commented. "Our young friend must have been pretty desperate to risk such a move when he knew that the house was guarded inside and out. I wonder why Miller hasn't come back? It doesn't look good to me."
"Look!" Porter exclaimed, touching his superior's arm. "That man. He has walked twice past the mouth of that alley; there he goes in! Think we had better trail along?"
"No. Give Miller a chance. If he gets in any trouble he'll blow his whistle."
For a few minutes longer they waited in silence, and at length Miller appeared from the shadows of the alleyway and hastened across the avenue toward them.
"Did you see that man?" he asked. "I had a narrow squeak, I can tell you. That was Sims, Farley Drew's valet!"
"What have you been doing all this time?" Odell demanded. "Does that alley extend through the block?"
"No. It ends in a blank wall midway, back of that butcher shop, I should say," Miller responded. "There are doors opening on it from all the shops as far as it reaches, and windows, too; but the back room of the tailor's is the only one lighted up. The door was locked and the window fastened and covered with a shade; but the glass in the lower sash of that window is broken by what looks like a bullet-hole, and the shade is ripped. I ought to have come back and reported at once, I suppose; but I put my eye to that hole and I thought you would want to know what was going on in there. A young, smoothed-faced, blond-haired man was sitting at a table—I guessed that was your bird—and facing him was an older man, nearly forty, I judge, who looked like a dissipated swell.
"He talked so low that I couldn't hear what he said but he seemed to be laying down the law to the kid, who was getting madder by the minute; and when he broke in he raised his voice so that I could hear every word. 'You can't bluff me with any more of that bunk, Drew,' he said. 'I know you can send me up, but you won't; because you'll go too, and you know it! You can bet your boots I kept your letters, they were the only protection I had! I was a sucker and you bled me white, but don't forget I've got a come-back.' The other one growled something I couldn't hear, and then the kid broke in again. 'Not a chance! I don't know whether I got away with it to-night or not, but it's the last; and if you don't want to have to answer some embarrassing questions you'll clear out until this thing is over. I tell you Titheredge wised up that chap from Headquarters as to how you stand in our family circle and I don't think the statement was a flattering one.'
"I heard footsteps coming down the side street then, and ducked behind a pile of pickle-tubs that the delicatessen next door had stacked up in the alley; it was lucky I did, for a man passed twice on the sidewalk looking in and then turned and came straight toward me. I thought he had seen me, but he went right up to the back door of the tailor's shop and knocked twice quickly and after a minute once more. The door opened and he went in, and I beat it back here to you."
"All right. Go over and watch the front door of the shop and if anyone comes out stop them and blow your whistle; McCarren's on his beat and he'll be along here somewhere." Odell turned to Porter. "Come on. We'll have a look at what is doing in that back room."
They crossed the avenue, entered the alley and crept to a position beneath the lighted window, where the detective straightened and peered through the ragged hole in the shade.
Only two men were visible in the room, the older one whom Miller had described and a stranger. The latter was gesticulating excitedly, and fragments of his speech reached Odell's ears.
"I told him a week, sir. . . . Yes, he seemed to, but you can't tell about those bulls. . . . But where to, sir? There's still the difficulty about passports. . . . Oh, Honolulu. Yes, I can get the baggage out providing they are not watching the place."
The older man leaned forward and spoke rapidly in an indistinguishable tone; and Odell saw the other glance quickly toward the front of the shop and then back at the speaker with a look of horror on his face.
"Good God, no!" he cried; and the deference was gone from his tone. "I've helped in the other thing, and I'll admit that you've paid me well for it; but I wouldn't be a party to that for all the money in the world! . . . I don't care if it is, I'd rather do a stretch than go to the chair!"
Before the older man could speak the door leading into the shop opened, and Gene appeared.
"We're caught!" he cried wildly. "Either Sims or I must have been followed, Farley! There's a man walking up and down in front of the shop."
"Shut that door, you d—n fool!" Farley Drew finished up with a ferocious oath; but the other, whom Gene had called Sims, shouldered the young man aside and sprang through the door into the shop, while Drew himself strode over to the window.
Odell and Porter had barely time to conceal themselves behind the pickle-tubs which Miller had mentioned when the shade was pulled up, the window opened, and the sleek head of Farley Drew appeared cautiously reconnoitering.
"Nobody here." The head withdrew and the window slammed. Odell reached his point of vantage once more in time to see Sims reënter, closing the connecting door carefully behind him.
"It's the bull who came to your rooms an hour or so ago looking for you." The valet's tone was high and quavering, and his face expressed abject fright. "He couldn't have followed me here, for I made sure that no one was behind me when I ducked into the alley. I tell you they're on to us and the game is up!"
"Are we doing any harm? Is there anything incriminating about this room or our presence here?" demanded Drew, his tones carrying distinctly at last to the listeners outside. "The alley is clear and we have only to walk out that way and leave that flatfoot to cool his heels on the pavement till morning. Go back to my rooms and stay there until you hear from me, Sims; and stick to the same story you told to-night if you are interrogated again. As for you, Gene—"
His voice sank once more to a scarcely audible murmur, and Odell whispered hurriedly to Porter:
"Shadow Gene. Don't leave him out of your sight for a minute. I'll take Drew on; Sims is going back to the Bellemonde Annex."
"How about Miller?" asked Porter.
"No chance to warn him now unless your man or mine crosses Third Avenue. Get behind the tubs quick! They're coming out!"
From their hiding-place they saw Sims emerge cautiously from the door, peer up and down the alley, and dart off to the side street. A long five minutes passed and then Gene appeared, closing the door behind him. He looked neither to right nor left, but hugging the wall of the houses he crept slowly to the street, hesitated a moment, and then headed west.
"Go on. Porter," Odell ordered. "If he goes back to the house 'phone Headquarters at once."
Without a word the operative glided away into the shadows, reappeared at the lighted mouth of the alley, and vanished again in the wake of his subject.
Five more minutes passed, then ten, and still there came no sign of the departure of the third man from the lighted room. Odell began to feel a vague sense of uneasiness. What if Drew had gone out the front way, overcome or blackjacked Miller, and made his escape? No direct mention had been made by any of the three of the investigation going on at the Meade house nor of the sequence of strange events which had taken place there; but Gene Chalmers had had plenty of time to discuss that with Drew before the arrival of Sims. How completely the latter was in his master's confidence Odell could not be sure. If Drew had indeed a guilty knowledge of the sinister problem it was evident that his servant was ignorant of it. The latter's cry that he would rather "do a stretch than go to the chair" had been too spontaneous and too frankly panic-stricken to brand him as capable of potential murder.
The ten minutes doubled in length, and just as Odell emerged from behind the heap of tubs determined to risk another peep through the window, the door opened and Farley Drew stood smiling on the threshold.
"I've been waiting for you, Sergeant Odell. That is why I got rid of the others. Come in and we will have a little talk."