Unseen Hands/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
BARRY ODELL TAKES HOLD
THERE was time for no further talk, for the taxi drew up at that moment before the house. The doctor's sedan was just rolling away; and in answer to Titheredge's ring the housemaid, a plump young woman with cap askew, admitted them.
"Is Peters busy, Jane?" asked the attorney as he handed her his hat and stick.
"No, sir. We can't find Peters anywhere, though we've been looking this half hour. Miss Meade didn't send him on no errand, and we don't know what to think of it."
"He'll probably turn up shortly," Titheredge observed with a significant glance at the detective. "Has Mr. Lorne been taken upstairs yet?"
"No, sir. He refuses to go; and Miss Meade, she don't know what to do! There, he's calling now, sir!"
And indeed an irascible but reassuringly strong voice was reverberating through the hall from the direction of the library.
"Sam! Is that you? Did you get him? Sa-am!"
"Come this way, Sergeant." The attorney led the way to the library, where Richard Lorne still lay upon the couch. His clothing had been changed for a dressing-gown with one sleeve cut out, and the arm was neatly bandaged in a sling; and although he was pale, his mouth was set in determined lines beneath the stubby gray mustache.
Nan was seated beside him, and Gene stood over by the window nervously fingering the shade-cord; but the other members of the family were not present.
As Titheredge performed the introductions Nan rose, her eyes darkening.
"A detective?" she asked quietly, but her breast rose and fell with spasmodic rapidity. "Father, what does this mean?"
"It means, my dear," Titheredge answered suavely before Lorne could speak, "that your father and I have talked things over, and he has told me the possibly imaginary but nevertheless torturing strain you have all been under since your brother's death. He shared with you the feeling that perhaps there was something more than coincidence in the two sorrows which have come into your life so closely upon the heels of each other. You know how that portrait fell last night, almost killing Gene, and what a narrow escape your father himself had this morning when the top step of the stairs collapsed and precipitated him to the bottom.
"Of course, these may all be mere coincidences; but we want to be sure of it to allay all your fears, and so we have called in this young man to make the fullest investigation. He will question everyone, and—you listen to this, too. Gene—you must be absolutely frank with him. Remember, there must be no lying, no subterfuge."
"My God!" Gene came forward. "I knew I was right! I knew that picture was meant to fall upon me and crush me! And the others—my mother and Julian—"
"Steady there, Gene," the attorney warned. "We don't know but that all that has occurred so far has been sheer accident."
"Well, I'm glad you are going to find out!" Gene held out his hand frankly to the detective. "You can count on me, Mr. Odell."
"Thank you, Mr. Chalmers. I shall want to have a little conference with your father and Mr. Titheredge here, but I'll look you up later."
Gene took the hint and sauntered out of the library; and Nan prepared to follow him, but Odell stopped her.
"May I ask. Miss Chalmers, whether or not the broken stair has been mended yet?"
"No, Mr. Odell. Aunt Effie wanted to have it attended to, but she was afraid the hammering would disturb father. She hates to have anything upset around the house."
"Then if you will sit here with your father for a few minutes Mr. Titheredge and I will go and inspect it."
Gene was nowhere to be seen when the attorney and Odell reëntered the hall, and they mounted the stairs to the topmost step, covered with a crimson-velvet runner. The detective knelt on the step just below and felt over the smooth pile of the carpet's surface.
"You see," he said rapidly in a lowered tone to his companion, "the tread of the step neither collapsed in the middle, nor split, nor caved in at either end; it simply turned forward over the face as if on a pivot as soon as Mr. Lorne's weight was placed upon it, pitching him headlong down."
"The carpet appears to be loose, doesn't it?" Titheredge himself bent and gave it a tug; and the strip of crimson velvet came away in his hands from beneath the edge of the rug which covered the upper hall, while tiny tacks with flat brass heads flew in every direction.
"Thumbtacks," Odell vouchsafed. "When the person who executed this little maneuver replaced the carpet he didn't dare hammer, with you and Mr. Lorne in that room so near by; so he pressed the thumbtacks in as a temporary hold, and left a good margin of the extra carpet that had been turned under loose, too, so as to give extra room for the tread to turn over without pulling out the tacks."
He folded the runner back across his knees; and the attorney uttered a sharp exclamation, as instantly silenced. A good four inches of the riser or faceboard had been sawed away at the top where it had formerly supported the tread; and the tread itself was cut through from wainscoting and balustrade at either end.
"When Mr. Lorne put his weight upon the step it cracked across at the line where it is level with the hall-flooring, and its outer edge crashed down until it rested on the lowered top of the face," the detective explained. "It had much the same effect as if one stepped from the center to the uptilted end of a see-saw. Do you observe something else, Mr. Titheredge?"
"Can't say that I do," the other replied, regarding thoughtfully the scraps of sawdust which the turned-back carpet revealed. "Whoever the fellow was—"
He halted abruptly as Miss Meade appeared from her room down the hall and came quickly toward them. Light as her footfalls were, the keen ears of the detective caught them; and in an instant he had turned up the strip of carpet once more and thrust its end hastily beneath the edge of the rug.
"Oh, Mr. Titheredge, I am so glad you have returned." She spoke with evident anxiety as she approached. "I hope you will be able to persuade Richard to let us get him into bed and nurse him. Did they tell you that besides his arm two ribs are fractured? He refuses absolutely—"
She, too, paused at sight of the strange young man kneeling upon the stairs, and her eyes turned inquiringly toward the attorney.
"Miss Meade," Titheredge's tone was very grave. "Will you permit me to present Sergeant Odell of the police department?"
She bowed with old-fashioned courtesy as the young man rose, but her face quivered slightly.
"I—I do not understand!" she said. "A policeman in this house! But why, Mr. Titheredge, why?"
"Because there have been things going on in this house that both Richard and the children desire to have investigated." The attorney spoke very gently. "We did not consult you at first because we did not want to distress you, but no time could be lost this morning. When the portrait—"
"Mr. Titheredge means," Odell interrupted hastily, "that the deaths of Mrs. Lorne and her son, taken in conjunction with the fall of the picture last night when your nephew was only saved by a miracle, and the broken stair this morning, which almost cost Mr. Lorne his life, may not have been accidents after all; and I have been engaged to investigate the latter two occurrences."
"But this is terrible!" Miss Meade cried in a low tone as if at a sacrilege. "My poor sister's death and Julian's were by the will of God! The—the others have been troubled by foolish, nervous fears but my faith is strong. The fall of that picture was an unfortunate accident; and I blame myself for Eugene's danger, because he sat there at my suggestion to reply to some correspondence. As to the stairs giving way this morning, that must have been an accident too; the house is old, our home for generations back—"
Her voice died away as the detective in answer turned back the carpet once more and silently exposed the damage which had been deliberately wrought.
Miss Meade caught her breath sharply, and her thin, delicate hands came together in a convulsive clasp.
"Oh, what does it mean? Surely none of the boys would attempt to play a wicked practical joke at such a time as this!"
"This was not intended for a joke, Miss Meade." Odell's matter-of-fact tone seemed to make her shrink within herself. "It was done with the deliberate purpose of injury to some member of this household. The portrait fell last night because the heavy steel wires which helped to hold it in its place had been hacked apart. I am sorry to add to your distress, but the truth must be faced; someone is trying to murder you all!"
"Murder!" Her pale lips barely formed the word. "I—I cannot believe it! There must be some hideous mistake. Why, we haven't an enemy in the world!"
She swayed and would have fallen but that Titheredge sprang forward and caught her.
"You had better go back to your own room and rest, Miss Meade. I'll see that Dick is made comfortable, and you will need all your strength for what I am afraid lies before you," he said. "Sergeant Odell may want to see you later on to ask you for some information, but he will not disturb you if it is not absolutely necessary."
He led her down the hall to her own room, closed the door, and came back to the stair's head to find the detective carefully replacing the thumbtacks.
"That will do, I think," the latter observed. "Now, let us go down and have a look at that picture."
They descended again to the library. As they entered Nan rose, kissed her father on the forehead softly, and went from the room.
"You've been examining the stairs?" Richard Lorne asked, panting from the knife-thrusts of pain which darted through his hurt ribs at each breath.
"Yes, Dick. They were sawed through, just as we imagined," Titheredge replied. "If you won't be taken to bed just yet, lie still and don't try to talk; I'll keep you informed of everything that goes on. I suppose you know that Peters has disappeared?"
Lorne nodded.
"We'll make short work of him if he has had a hand in what has been going on," the attorney promised grimly. "I caught him in two direct lies this morning before I left the house, but I attributed them to the fact that the man was addled from fright. Let me see; you've had him three years, haven't you?"
"Four," came raspingly from the couch.
"Ah, yes, I remember. Ever have any reason to distrust him?"
"Never. What's that chap doing?"
Lorne had craned his neck as far as his painful position would allow, and Titheredge followed his gaze. Sergeant Odell, with a pair of powerful wire-clippers in his hands, was bending over the portrait as it lay face down over the desk.
"Just removing these severed strands of the cable, so that they may be examined under a glass, Mr. Lorne," the detective replied for himself. "There isn't the least doubt that they were deliberately cut; but I want to find out if I can what sort of instrument was used. One thing is certain; whoever did this trick and the one upstairs was of tremendous strength. The tread and face of that step were cut with long, slow sweeps of a heavy saw, not haggled with a small, light one; and the portrait here must have been pried loose from the wall with some powerful lever before the supporting wires could be cut, for no clipper such as this could have reached them. If you will take my advice, Mr. Lorne, you will permit us to assist you to bed now; the shock which you have received, together with your injuries, will make it impossible for me to question you now."
"To-morrow?" Lorne asked eagerly. "Want to get at the bottom—"
"Yes, I know," Odell nodded encouragingly. "You can leave everything in our hands. We'll get you upstairs now with as little pain to you as possible."
"Hadn't we better have young Mr. Chalmers's help?" asked Titheredge. "We will have to carry him around to the servants' staircase, you know, and we must not jar him any more than is necessary."
The detective assented and Titheredge rang the bell, but no one appeared.
"I'll go and look for him myself," the latter remarked, but Odell stopped him.
"I should prefer to do that, Mr. Titheredge. Will you instead go to the servants' quarters and see if any more of them have decamped?" He turned again to the couch. "Mr. Lorne, which is Mr. Chalmers's room?"
"The one on the left, third floor, rear," panted the sick man. "Julian's was the room just in front of it."
"Do they connect?" The attorney had already gone on his errand, and Odell paused in the doorway.
"Yes, by the bath and dressing-rooms between."
The detective glanced into the drawing- and dining-rooms and then mounted the main staircase, avoiding the broken top step. He was proceeding along the hall to the second flight leading to the third floor when from one of the rooms behind him a burst of laughter came; impish, sarcastic laughter utterly lacking in mirth.
It seemed such a strange, incongruous thing in the silence of that house that Odell paused; and then in a thin, high, whining voice came the words:
"The police? That would be like old Sam, wouldn't it? As well send a village fire-company to put out Vesuvius, We'll go, one after the other; you'll see!"
From whose lips could that voice have issued? Odell recalled the two members of the family whom he had not as yet encountered; the oldest daughter and the youngest son. The hunchback. It must be he. Odell waited.
There came a low murmur in an unmistakable feminine tone, and then the high querulous one again.
"My dear aunt, where is the disgrace to the family in having a policeman cross our sacred portals? They are quite as respectable as murderers, though scarcely as efficient. Now, if I were the next on the list of our domestic Dionysius and the sword were suspended over my head, I should reach up and snap the hair. I can afford to laugh."
"Not you! Rannie, my darling, never you!"
The sharp cry was almost a wail, but it held such a wealth of infinite love and devotion that the listening detective could hardly credit the fact that it was the quiet, self-contained, little Miss Meade who uttered it. That it was ungratefully received was evident from the indistinct but churlish grumble which followed; and then there was silence.
Odell continued on his way upstairs with a new fact to add to the family data with which the attorney had supplied him. The cripple was evidently his aunt's favorite; the spinster had taken to her heart the one maimed member of the family in preference to all the rest.
When he reached the third floor Odell was conscious of an acrid odor on the air, which seemed to come from the rear on the left, the room which Lome had told him was occupied by Gene. He bent and looked quickly through the keyhole, but the turned key obstructed his view. The smoky, acrid odor was stronger now. Gene had lost no time after encountering the detective in locking himself in his room and burning certain papers.
It was natural, perhaps, that the young man should have private letters which he would not care to have seen by the prying eyes of a stranger; yet coupling his discovery with Titheredge's statement of the previous association with the notorious Farley Drew, Odell decided to look into the matter without delay.
He rapped smartly on the door, to hear an astonished and perturbed "Hello?" from within, followed by:
"Be with you in a second."
Then came the subdued clatter of heavy glassware, a pause, the scratching of a match, and finally footsteps. Gene; puffing furiously at a pipe, opened the door.
"Oh, I say, I didn't know it was you, Sergeant. Come in; hope you don't mind my pipe. Anything I can do for you?" He was plainly flustered.
Odell took in the room in one swift, comprehensive glance: the bed had not yet been made, and the chifferobe was open, its trays and drawers in disorder, but the desk was closed. The top of the cut-glass tobacco-jar upon it was open, and the tobacco strewn all about it bore evidence of the haste with which the pipe had been filled. In the open grate was a little heap of gray, flaky ashes from which a thin spiral of smoke still wound its way; and the detective saw to his satisfaction that a few pieces of hastily torn paper were scattered unburned upon the hearth.
"I came to ask you if you would help Mr. Titheredge and myself carry your father to his room." His eyes came casually back to the young man's flushed face. "There is no hurry, however. I believe this room was occupied by your late brother? I should like to see just where his death took place. Can you show me, Mr. Chalmers?" He had indicated the front room by a gesture.
Gene hesitated.
"Both doors are locked and my father has the keys," he said at last; and there was an undercurrent of sullen defiance in his changed tone as though he anticipated the next question.
"Will you go and ask him for them, please?"
"But—but no one has entered that room since the funeral," Gene stammered. "I don't think father would like it, Sergeant; and nothing in there could have any possible bearing on your investigation."
"Mr. Chalmers, may I remind you that that is not for you to decide? Will you get those keys at once!" The last sentence was not a query but a command, and each word increased in emphatic dominance. Gene gave one fleeting, desperate glance toward his desk—in the lock of which the key still remained—and fled downstairs.
Unless the young man had temporarily lost his head and burned his papers without discrimination as they came to his hand, those already destroyed must have been the most important; and locking the door in his turn, Odell went quickly to the grate and pocketed every unburned scrap that remained.
Then he moved as swiftly to the desk and opened it. A disordered heap of letters met his eye; most of them evidently bills, from the tradesmen's names in the upper right hand comer. Odell had seized a handful at random and was about to shut the desk when he noticed that the small center drawer was not quite closed. Pulling it open hastily he discovered a small notebook and a few letters in an odd but unmistakably masculine hand.
He cleared the drawer at one sweep, closed the desk, and dropping his findings from it into the coat-pocket on his left side, he drew from the other two or three fragments of the paper which he had salvaged from the grate.
One of them bore in a temperamental, feminine hand only three letters of a word, but they were illuminating: "lov." Odell smiled as he replaced it in his pocket; but his expression changed when he glanced at the others. The writing upon them was all in a bold, dashing, masculine hand, and two of the scraps fitted together read: "whole family in hell before."
Odell frowned thoughtfully and drew from his left coat-pocket one of the letters which he had taken from the center drawer in the desk. It was in the same strongly accentuated writing, and read without preamble:
"Where do you think you get off, Gene? You are in too deep to back out now, as I meant you should be. Your mother's went through without a hitch and the next one will if you only keep your nerve. It's got to be done by the sixth or you know where the first one will send you. I mean business, my boy.
"Farley Drew."
Barry Odell folded the letter slowly and replaced it in its envelope. To-day was the fourteenth, and Julian Chalmers had come to his death just eight days before—on the sixth!