Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (19 page)

"Somebody's coming!" Dale whispered, warning from her post by the door.

Bailey quickly went to the fireplace and resumed his pretended labors
with the fire. Miss Cornelia moved away from the Doctor's bag and
spoke for the benefit of whoever might be coming.

"We all need sleep," she began, as if ending a conversation with Dale,
"and I think—"

The door opened, admitting Billy.

"Doctor just go upstairs," he said, and went out again leaving the door
open.

A flash passed across Miss Cornelia's face. She stepped to the door.
She called.

"Doctor! Oh, Doctor!"

"Yes?" answered the Doctor's voice from the main staircase. His steps
clattered down the stairs—he entered the room. Perhaps he read
something in Miss Cornelia's manner that demanded an explanation of his
action. At any rate, he forestalled her, just as she was about to
question him.

"I was about to look around above," he said. "I don't like to leave if
there is the possibility of some assassin still hidden in the house."

"That is very considerate of you. But we are well protected now. And
besides, why should this person remain in the house? The murder is
done, the police are here."

"True," he said. "I only thought—"

But a knocking at the terrace door interrupted him. While the
attention of the others was turned in that direction Dale, less cynical
than her aunt, made a small plea to him and realized before she had
finished with it that the Doctor too had his price.

"Doctor—did you get it?" she repeated, drawing the Doctor aside.

The Doctor gave her a look of apparent bewilderment.

"My dear child," he said softly, "are you sure that you put it there?"

Dale felt as if she had received a blow in the face.

"Why, yes—I—" she began in tones of utter dismay. Then she stopped.
The Doctor's seeming bewilderment was too pat—too plausible. Of
course she was sure—and, though possible, it seemed extremely unlikely
that anyone else could have discovered the hiding-place of the
blue-print in the few moments that had elapsed between the time when
Billy took the tray from the room and the time when the Doctor
ostensibly went to find it. A cold wave of distrust swept over
her—she turned away from the Doctor silently.

Meanwhile Anderson had entered, slamming the terrace-door behind him.

"I couldn't find anybody!" he said in an irritated voice. "I think
that Jap's crazy."

The Doctor began to struggle into his topcoat, avoiding any look at
Dale.

"Well," he said, "I believe I've fulfilled all the legal
requirements—I think I must be going." He turned toward the door but
the detective halted him.

"Doctor," he said, "did you ever hear Courtleigh Fleming mention a
Hidden Room in this house?"

If the Doctor started, the movement passed apparently unnoted by
Anderson. And his reply was coolly made.

"No—and I knew him rather well."

"You don't think then," persisted the detective, "that such a room and
the money in it could be the motive for this crime?"

The Doctor's voice grew a little curt.

"I don't believe Courtleigh Fleming robbed his own bank, if that's what
you mean," he said with nicely calculated emphasis, real or feigned.
He crossed over to get his bag and spoke to Miss Cornelia.

"Well, Miss Van Gorder," he said, picking up the bag by its blackened
handle, "I can't wish you a comfortable night but I can wish you a
quiet one."

Miss Cornelia watched him silently. As he turned to go, she spoke.

"We're all of us a little upset, naturally," she confessed. "Perhaps
you could write a prescription—a sleeping-powder or a bromide of some
sort."

"Why, certainly," agreed the Doctor at once. He turned back. Miss
Cornelia seemed pleased.

"I hoped you would," she said with a little tremble in her voice such
as might easily occur in the voice of a nervous old lady. "Oh, yes,
here's paper and a pencil," as the Doctor fumbled in a pocket.

The Doctor took the sheet of paper she proffered and, using the side of
his bag as a pad, began to write out the prescription.

"I don't generally advise these drugs," he said, looking up for a
moment. "Still—"

He paused. "What time is it?"

Miss Cornelia glanced at the clock. "Half-past eleven."

"Then I'd better bring you the powders myself," decided the Doctor.
"The pharmacy closes at eleven. I shall have to make them up myself."

"That seems a lot of trouble."

"Nothing is any trouble if I can be helpful," he assured her,
smilingly. And Miss Cornelia also smiled, took the piece of paper from
his hand, glanced at it once, as if out of idle curiosity about the
unfinished prescription, and then laid it down on the table with a
careless little gesture. Dale gave her aunt a glance of dumb entreaty.
Miss Cornelia read her wish for another moment alone with the Doctor.

"Dale will let you out, Doctor," said she, giving the girl the key to
the front door.

The Doctor approved her watchfulness.

"That's right," he said smilingly. "Keep things locked up. Discretion
is the better part of valor!"

But Miss Cornelia failed to agree with him.

"I've been discreet for sixty-five years," she said with a sniff, "and
sometimes I think it was a mistake!"

The Doctor laughed easily and followed Dale out of the room, with a nod
of farewell to the others in passing. The detective, seeking for some
object upon whom to vent the growing irritation which seemed to possess
him, made Bailey the scapegoat of his wrath.

"I guess we can do without you for the present!" he said, with an angry
frown at the latter. Bailey flushed, then remembered himself, and left
the room submissively, with the air of a well-trained servant accepting
an unmerited rebuke. The detective turned at once to Miss Cornelia.

"Now I want a few words with you!"

"Which means that you mean to do all the talking!" said Miss Cornelia
acidly. "Very well! But first I want to show you something. Will you
come here, please, Mr. Anderson?"

She started for the alcove.

"I've examined that staircase," said the detective.

"Not with me!" insisted Miss Cornelia. "I have something to show you."

He followed her unwillingly up the stairs, his whole manner seeming to
betray a complete lack of confidence in the theories of all amateur
sleuths in general and spinster detectives of sixty-five in particular.
Their footsteps died away up the alcove stairs. The living-room was
left vacant for an instant.

Vacant? Only in seeming. The moment that Miss Cornelia and the
detective had passed up the stairs, the crouching, mysterious Unknown,
behind the settee, began to move. The French window-door opened—a
stealthy figure passed through it silently to be swallowed up in the
darkness of the terrace.

And poor Lizzie, entering the room at that moment, saw a hand covered
with blood reach back and gropingly, horribly, through the broken pane,
refasten the lock.

She shrieked madly.

Dale had failed with the Doctor. When Lizzie's screams once more had
called the startled household to the living-room, she knew she had
failed. She followed in mechanically, watched an irritated Anderson
send the Pride of Kerry to bed and threaten to lock her up, and
listened vaguely to the conversation between her aunt and the detective
that followed it, without more than casual interest.

Nevertheless, that conversation was to have vital results later on.

"Your point about that thumbprint on the stair rail is very
interesting," Anderson said with a certain respect. "But just what
does it prove?"

"It points down," said Miss Cornelia, still glowing with the memory of
the whistle of surprise the detective had given when she had shown him
the strange thumbprint on the rail of the alcove stairs.

"It does," he admitted. "But what then?"

Miss Cornelia tried to put her case as clearly and tersely as possible.

"It shows that somebody stood there for some time, listening to my
niece and Richard Fleming in this room below," she said.

"All right—I'll grant that to save argument," retorted the detective.
"But the moment that shot was fired the lights came on. If somebody on
that staircase shot him, and then came down and took the blue-print,
Miss Ogden would have seen him."

He turned upon Dale.

"Did you?"

She hesitated. Why hadn't she thought of such an explanation before?
But now—it would sound too flimsy!

"No, nobody came down," she admitted candidly. The detective's face
altered, grew menacing. Miss Cornelia once more had put herself
between him and Dale.

"Now, Mr. Anderson—" she warned.

The detective was obviously trying to keep his temper.

"I'm not hounding this girl!" he said doggedly. "I haven't said yet
that she committed the murder—but she took that blue-print and I want
it!"

"You want it to connect her with the murder," parried Miss Cornelia.

The detective threw up his hands.

"It's rather reasonable to suppose that I might want to return the
funds to the Union Bank, isn't it?" he queried in tones of heavy
sarcasm. "Provided they're here," he added doubtfully.

Miss Cornelia resolved upon comparative frankness.

"I see," she said. "Well, I'll tell you this much, Mr. Anderson, and
I'll ask you to believe me as a lady. Granting that at one time my
niece knew something of that blue-print—at this moment we do not know
where it is or who has it."

Her words had the unmistakable ring of truth. The very oath from the
detective that succeeded them showed his recognition of the fact.

"Damnation," he muttered. "That's true, is it?"

"That's true," said Miss Cornelia firmly. A silence of troubled
thoughts fell upon the three. Miss Cornelia took out her knitting.

"Did you ever try knitting when you wanted to think?" she queried
sweetly, after a pause in which the detective tramped from one side of
the room to the other, brows knotted, eyes bent on the floor.

"No," grunted the detective. He took out a cigar—bit off the end with
a savage snap of teeth—lit it—resumed his pacing.

"You should, sometimes," continued Miss Cornelia, watching his troubled
movements with a faint light of mockery in her eyes. "I find it very
helpful."

"I don't need knitting to think straight," rasped Anderson indignantly.
Miss Cornelia's eyes danced.

"I wonder!" she said with caustic affability. "You seem to have so
much evidence left over."

The detective paused and glared at her helplessly.

"Did you ever hear of the man who took a clock apart—and when he put
it together again, he had enough left over to make another clock?" she
twitted.

The detective, ignoring the taunt, crossed quickly to Dale.

"What do you mean by saying that paper isn't where you put it?" he
demanded in tones of extreme severity. Miss Cornelia replied for her
niece.

"She hasn't said that."

The detective made an impatient movement of his hand and walked
away—as if to get out of the reach of the indefatigable spinster's
tongue. But Miss Cornelia had not finished with him yet, by any means.

"Do you believe in circumstantial evidence?" she asked him with seeming
ingenuousness.

"It's my business," said the detective stolidly. Miss Cornelia smiled.

"While you have been investigating," she announced, "I, too, have not
been idle."

The detective gave a barking laugh. She let it pass. "To me," she
continued, "it is perfectly obvious that one intelligence has been at
work behind many of the things that have occurred in this house."

Now Anderson observed her with a new respect.

"Who?" he grunted tersely.

Her eyes flashed.

"I'll ask you that! Some one person who, knowing Courtleigh Fleming
well, probably knows of the existence of a Hidden Room in this house
and who, finding us in occupation of the house, has tried to get rid of
me in two ways. First, by frightening me with anonymous threats—and,
second, by urging me to leave. Someone, who very possibly entered this
house tonight shortly before the murder and slipped up that staircase!"

The detective had listened to her outburst with unusual thoughtfulness.
A certain wonder—perhaps at her shrewdness, perhaps at an unexpected
confirmation of certain ideas of his own—grew upon his face. Now he
jerked out two words.

"The Doctor?"

Miss Cornelia knitted on as if every movement of her needles added one
more link to the strong chain of probabilities she was piecing together.

"When Doctor Wells said he was leaving here earlier in the evening for
the Johnsons' he did not go there," she observed. "He was not expected
to go there. I found that out when I telephoned."

"The Doctor!" repeated the detective, his eyes narrowing, his head
beginning to sway from side to side like the head of some great cat
just before a spring.

"As you know," Miss Cornelia went on, "I had a supplementary bolt
placed on that terrace door today." She nodded toward the door that
gave access into the alcove from the terrace. "Earlier this evening
Doctor Wells said that he had bolted it, when he had left it
open—purposely, as I now realize, in order that he might return later.
You may also recall that Doctor Wells took a scrap of paper from
Richard Fleming's hand and tried to conceal it—why did he do that?"

She paused for a second. Then she changed her tone a little.

"May I ask you to look at this?"

She displayed the piece of paper on which Doctor Wells had started to
write the prescription for her sleeping-powders—and now her strategy
with the doctor's bag and the soot Jack Bailey had got from the
fireplace stood revealed. A sharp, black imprint of a man's right
thumb—the Doctor's—stood out on the paper below the broken line of
writing. The Doctor had not noticed the staining of his hand by the
blackened bag handle, or, noticing, had thought nothing of it—but the
blackened bag handle had been a trap, and he had left an indelible
piece of evidence behind him. It now remained to test the value of
this evidence.