Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (18 page)

"The tray is in the dining-room?" he asked.

"Yes," said Dale.

He thought a moment, then left the room by the hall door. Dale sank
back in her chair and felt a sense of overpowering relief steal over
her whole body, as if new life had been poured into her veins. The
Doctor had been so helpful—why had she not confided in him before? He
would know what to do with the paper—she would have the benefit of his
counsel through the rest of this troubled time. For a moment she saw
herself and Jack, exonerated, their worries at an end, wandering hand
in hand over the green lawns of Cedarcrest in the cheerful sunlight of
morning.

Behind her, mockingly, the head of the Unknown concealed behind the
settee lifted cautiously until, if she had turned, she would have just
been able to perceive the top of its skull.

As it chanced, she did not turn. The hall door opened—the head behind
the settee sank down again. Jack Bailey entered, carrying a couple of
logs of firewood.

Dale moved toward him as soon as he had shut the door.

"Oh, things have gone awfully wrong, haven't they?" she said with a
little break in her voice.

He put his finger to his lips.

"Be careful!" he whispered. He glanced about the room cautiously.

"I don't trust even the furniture in this house to-night!" he said. He
took Dale hungrily in his arms and kissed her once, swiftly, on the
lips. Then they parted—his voice changed to the formal voice of a
servant.

"Miss Van Gorder wishes the fire kept burning," he announced, with a
whispered "Play up!" to Dale.

Dale caught his meaning at once.

"Put some logs on the fire, please," she said loudly, for the benefit
of any listening ears. Then in an undertone to Bailey, "Jack—I'm
nearly distracted!"

Bailey threw his wood on the fire, which received it with appreciative
crackles and sputterings. Then again, for a moment, he clasped his
sweetheart closely to him.

"Dale, pull yourself together!" he whispered warningly. "We've got a
fight ahead of us!"

He released her and turned back toward the fire.

"These old-fashioned fireplaces eat up a lot of wood," he said in
casual tones, pretending to arrange the logs with the poker so the fire
would draw more cleanly.

But Dale felt that she must settle one point between them before they
took up their game of pretense again.

"You know why I sent for Richard Fleming, don't you?" she said, her
eyes fixed beseechingly on her lover. The rest of the world might
interpret her action as it pleased—she couldn't bear to have Jack
misunderstand.

But there was no danger of that. His faith in her was too complete.

"Yes—of course—" he said, with a look of gratitude. Then his mind
reverted to the ever-present problem before them. "But who in God's
name killed him?" he muttered, kneeling before the fire.

"You don't think it was—Billy?" Dale saw Billy's face before her for
a moment, calm, impassive. But he was an Oriental—an alien—his face
might be just as calm, just as impassive while his hands were still red
with blood. She shuddered at the thought.

Bailey considered the matter.

"More likely the man Lizzie saw going upstairs," he said finally.
"But—I've been all over the upper floors."

"And—nothing?" breathed Dale.

"Nothing." Bailey's voice had an accent of dour finality. "Dale, do
you think that—" he began.

Some instinct warned the girl that they were not to continue their
conversation uninterrupted. "Be careful!" she breathed, as footsteps
sounded in the hall. Bailey nodded and turned back to his pretense of
mending the fire. Dale moved away from him slowly.

The door opened and Miss Cornelia entered, her black knitting-bag in
her hand, on her face a demure little smile of triumph. She closed the
door carefully behind her and began to speak at once.

"Well, Mr. Alopecia—Urticaria—Rubeola—otherwise BAILEY!" she said in
tones of the greatest satisfaction, addressing herself to Bailey's
rigid back. Bailey jumped to his feet mechanically at her mention of
his name. He and Dale exchanged one swift and hopeless glance of utter
defeat.

"I wish," proceeded Miss Cornelia, obviously enjoying the situation to
the full, "I wish you young people would remember that even if hair and
teeth have fallen out at sixty the mind still functions."

She pulled out a cabinet photograph from the depths of her knitting-bag.

"His photograph—sitting on your dresser!" she chided Dale. "Burn it
and be quick about it!"

Dale took the photograph but continued to stare at her aunt with
incredulous eyes.

"Then—you knew?" she stammered.

Miss Cornelia, the effective little tableau she had planned now
accomplished to her most humorous satisfaction, relapsed into a chair.

"My dear child," said the indomitable lady, with a sharp glance at
Bailey's bewildered face, "I have employed many gardeners in my time
and never before had one who manicured his fingernails, wore silk
socks, and regarded baldness as a plant instead of a calamity."

An unwilling smile began to break on the faces of both Dale and her
lover. The former crossed to the fireplace and threw the damning
photograph of Bailey on the flames. She watched it shrivel—curl
up—be reduced to ash. She stirred the ashes with a poker till they
were well scattered.

Bailey, recovering from the shock of finding that Miss Cornelia's sharp
eyes had pierced his disguise without his even suspecting it, now threw
himself on her mercy.

"Then you know why I'm here?" he stammered.

"I still have a certain amount of imagination! I may think you are a
fool for taking the risk, but I can see what that idiot of a detective
might not—that if you had looted the Union Bank you wouldn't be trying
to discover if the money is in this house. You would at least
presumably know where it is."

The knowledge that he had an ally in this brisk and indomitable
spinster lady cheered him greatly. But she did not wait for any
comment from him. She turned abruptly to Dale.

"Now I want to ask you something," she said more gravely. "Was there a
blue-print, and did you get it from Richard Fleming?"

It was Dale's turn now to bow her head.

"Yes," she confessed.

Bailey felt a thrill of horror run through him. She hadn't told him
this!

"Dale!" he said uncomprehendingly, "don't you see where this places
you? If you had it, why didn't you give it to Anderson when he asked
for it?"

"Because," said Miss Cornelia uncompromisingly, "she had sense enough
to see that Mr. Anderson considered that piece of paper the final link
in the evidence against her!"

"But she could have no motive!" stammered Bailey, distraught, still
failing to grasp the significance of Dale's refusal.

"Couldn't she?" queried Miss Cornelia pityingly. "The detective thinks
she could—to save you!"

Now the full light of revelation broke upon Bailey. He took a step
back.

"Good God!" he said.

Miss Cornelia would have liked to comment tartly upon the singular lack
of intelligence displayed by even the nicest young men in trying
circumstances. But there was no time. They might be interrupted at
any moment and before they were, there were things she must find out.

"Where is that paper, now?" she asked Dale sharply;

"Why—the Doctor is getting it for me." Dale seemed puzzled by the
intensity of her aunt's manner.

"What?" almost shouted Miss Cornelia. Dale explained.

"It was on the tray Billy took out," she said, still wondering why so
simple an answer should disturb Miss Cornelia so greatly.

"Then I'm afraid everything's over," Miss Cornelia said despairingly,
and made her first gesture of defeat. She turned away. Dale followed
her, still unable to fathom her course of reasoning.

"I didn't know what else to do," she said rather plaintively, wondering
if again, as with Fleming, she had misplaced her confidence at a moment
critical for them all.

But Miss Cornelia seemed to have no great patience with her dejection.

"One of two things will happen now," she said, with acrid, logic.
"Either the Doctor's an honest man—in which case, as coroner, he will
hand that paper to the detective—" Dale gasped. "Or he is not an
honest man," went on Miss Cornelia, "and he will keep it for himself.
I don't think he's an honest man."

The frank expression of her distrust seemed to calm her a little. She
resumed her interrogation of Dale more gently.

"Now, let's be clear about this. Had Richard Fleming ascertained that
there was a concealed room in this house?"

"He was starting up to it!" said Dale in the voice of a ghost,
remembering.

"Just what did you tell him?"

"That I believed there was a Hidden Room in the house—and that the
money from the Union Bank might be in it."

Again, for the millionth time, indeed it seemed to her, she reviewed
the circumstances of the crime.

"Could anyone have overheard?" asked Miss Cornelia.

The question had rung in Dale's ears ever since she had come to her
senses after the firing of the shot and seen Fleming's body stark on
the floor of the alcove.

"I don't know," she said. "We were very cautious."

"You don't know where this room is?"

"No, I never saw the print. Upstairs somewhere, for he—"

"Upstairs! Then the thing to do, if we can get that paper from the
Doctor, is to locate the room at once."

Jack Bailey did not recognize the direction where her thoughts were
tending. It seemed terrible to him that anyone should devote a thought
to the money while Dale was still in danger.

"What does the money matter now?" he broke in somewhat irritably.
"We've got to save her!" and his eyes went to Dale.

Miss Cornelia gave him an ineffable look of weary patience.

"The money matters a great deal," she said, sensibly. "Someone was in
this house on the same errand as Richard Fleming. After all," she went
on with a tinge of irony, "the course of reasoning that you followed,
Mr. Bailey, is not necessarily unique."

She rose.

"Somebody else may have suspected that Courtleigh Fleming robbed his
own bank," she said thoughtfully. Her eye fell on the Doctor's
professional bag—she seemed to consider it as if it were a strange
sort of animal.

"Find the man who followed your course of reasoning," she ended, with a
stare at Bailey, "and you have found the murderer."

"With that reasoning you might suspect me!" said the latter a trifle
touchily.

Miss Cornelia did not give an inch.

"I have," she said. Dale shot a swift, sympathetic glance at her
lover, another less sympathetic and more indignant at her aunt. Miss
Cornelia smiled.

"However, I now suspect somebody else," she said. They waited for her
to reveal the name of the suspect but she kept her own counsel. By now
she had entirely given up confidence if not in the probity at least in
the intelligence of all persons, male or female, under the age of
sixty-five.

She rang the bell for Billy. But Dale was still worrying over the
possible effects of the confidence she had given Doctor Wells.

"Then you think the Doctor may give this paper to Mr. Anderson?" she
asked.

"He may or he may not. It is entirely possible that he may elect to
search for this room himself! He may even already have gone upstairs!"

She moved quickly to the door and glanced across toward the
dining-room, but so far apparently all was safe. The Doctor was at the
table making a pretense of drinking a cup of coffee and Billy was in
close attendance. That the Doctor already had the paper she was
certain; it was the use he intended to make of it that was her concern.

She signaled to the Jap and he came out into the hall. Beresford, she
learned, was still in the kitchen with his revolver, waiting for
another attempt on the door and the detective was still outside in his
search. To Billy she gave her order in a low voice.

"If the Doctor attempts to go upstairs," she said, "let me know at
once. Don't seem to be watching. You can be in the pantry. But let
me know instantly."

Once back in the living-room the vague outlines of a plan—a
test—formed slowly in Miss Cornelia's mind, grew more definite.

"Dale, watch that door and warn me if anyone is coming!" she commanded,
indicating the door into the hall. Dale obeyed, marveling silently at
her aunt's extraordinary force of character. Most of Miss Cornelia's
contemporaries would have called for a quiet ambulance to take them to
a sanatorium some hours ere this—but Miss Cornelia was not merely,
comparatively speaking, as fresh as a daisy; her manner bore every
evidence of a firm intention to play Sherlock Holmes to the mysteries
that surrounded her, in spite of Doctors, detectives, dubious noises,
or even the Bat himself.

The last of the Van Gorder spinsters turned to Bailey now.

"Get some soot from that fireplace," she ordered. "Be quick. Scrape it
off with a knife or a piece of paper. Anything."

Bailey wondered and obeyed. As he was engaged in his grimy task, Miss
Cornelia got out a piece of writing paper from a drawer and placed it
on the center table, with a lead pencil beside it.

Bailey emerged from the fireplace with a handful of sooty flakes.

"Is this all right?"

"Yes. Now rub it on the handle of that bag." She indicated the little
black bag in which Doctor Wells carried the usual paraphernalia of a
country Doctor.

A private suspicion grew in Bailey's mind as to whether Miss Cornelia's
fine but eccentric brain had not suffered too sorely under the shocks
of the night. But he did not dare disobey. He blackened the handle of
the Doctor's bag with painstaking thoroughness and awaited further
instructions.