Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (25 page)

The Unknown stared at him for an instant with blank, vacuous eyes. Then
his head dropped back upon his breast again.

"Look up, you—" muttered the detective, jerking his head again. "This
losing your memory stuff doesn't go down with me!" His eyes bored into
the Unknown's.

"It doesn't—go down—very well—with me—either," said the Unknown
weakly, making no movement of protest against Anderson's rough handling.

"Did you ever see me before?" demanded the latter. Beresford held the
candle closer so that he might watch the Unknown's face for any
involuntary movement of betrayal.

But the Unknown made no such movement. He gazed at Anderson,
apparently with the greatest bewilderment, then his eyes cleared, he
seemed to be about to remember who the detective was.

"You're—the—Doctor—I—saw—downstairs—aren't you?" he said
innocently. The detective set his jaw. He started off on a new tack.

"Does this belong to you?" he said suddenly, plucking from his pocket
the battered gold watch that Beresford had found and waving it before
the Unknown's blank face.

The Unknown stared at it a moment, as a child might stare at a new toy,
with no gleam of recognition. Then—

"Maybe," he admitted. "I—don't—know." His voice trailed off. He
fell back against Bailey's arm.

Miss Cornelia gave a little shiver. The third degree in reality was
less pleasant to watch than it had been to read about in the pages of
her favorite detective stories.

"He's evidently been attacked," she said, turning to Anderson. "He
claims to have recovered consciousness in the garage, where he was tied
hand and foot!"

"He does, eh?" said the detective heavily. He glared at the Unknown.
"If you'll give me five minutes alone with him, I'll get the truth out
of him!" he promised.

A look of swift alarm swept over the Unknown's face at the words,
unperceived by any except Miss Cornelia. The others started obediently
to yield to the detective's behest and leave him alone with his
prisoner. Miss Cornelia was the first to move toward the door. On her
way, she turned.

"Do you believe that money is irrevocably gone?" she asked of Anderson.

The detective smiled.

"There's no such word as 'irrevocable' in my vocabulary," he answered.
"But I believe it's out of the house, if that's what you mean."

Miss Cornelia still hesitated, on the verge of departure.

"Suppose I tell you that there are certain facts that you have
overlooked?" she said slowly.

"Still on the trail!" muttered the detective sardonically. He did not
even glance at her. He seemed only anxious that the other members of
the group would get out of his way for once and leave him a clear field
for his work.

"I was right about the Doctor, wasn't I?" she insisted.

"Just fifty per cent right," said Anderson crushingly. "And the Doctor
didn't turn that trick alone. Now—" he went on with weary patience,
"if you'll all go out and close that door—"

Miss Cornelia, defeated, took a candle from Bailey and stepped into the
corridor. Her figure stiffened. She gave an audible gasp of dismayed
surprise.

"Quick!" she cried, turning back to the others and gesturing toward the
corridor. "A man just went through that skylight and out onto the
roof!"

"Out on the roof!"

"Come on, Beresford!"

"Hustle—you men! He may be armed!"

"Righto—coming!"

And following Miss Cornelia's lead, Jack Bailey, Anderson, Beresford,
and Billy dashed out into the corridor, leaving Dale and the frightened
Lizzie alone with the Unknown.

"And I'd run if my legs would!" Lizzie despaired.

"Hush!" said Dale, her ears strained for sounds of conflict. Lizzie,
creeping closer to her for comfort, stumbled over one of the Unknown's
feet and promptly set up a new wail.

"How do we know this fellow right here isn't the Bat?" she asked in a
blood-chilling whisper, nearly stabbing the unfortunate Unknown in the
eye with her thumb as she pointed at him. The Unknown was either too
dazed or too crafty to make any answer. His silence confirmed Lizzie's
worst suspicions. She fairly hugged the floor and began to pray in a
whisper.

Miss Cornelia re-entered cautiously with her candle, closing the door
gently behind her as she came.

"What did you see?" gasped Dale.

Miss Cornelia smiled broadly.

"I didn't see anything," she admitted with the greatest calm. "I had
to get that dratted detective out of the room before I assassinated
him."

"Nobody went through the skylight?" said Dale incredulously.

"They have now," answered Miss Cornelia with obvious satisfaction. "The
whole outfit of them."

She stole a glance at the veiled eyes of the Unknown. He was lying
limply back in his chair, as if the excitement had been too much for
him—and yet she could have sworn she had seen him leap to his feet,
like a man in full possession of his faculties, when she had given her
false cry of alarm.

"Then why did you—" began Dale dazedly, unable to fathom her aunt's
reasons for her trick.

"Because," interrupted Miss Cornelia decidedly, "that money's in this
room. If the man who took it out of the safe got away with it, why did
he come back and hide there?"

Her forefinger jabbed at the hidden chamber wherein the masked intruder
had terrified Dale with threats of instant death.

"He got it out of the safe—and that's as far as he did get with it,"
she persisted inexorably. "There's a HAT behind that safe, a man's
felt hat!"

So this was the discovery she had hinted of to Anderson before he
rebuffed her proffer of assistance!

"Oh, I wish he'd take his hat and go home!" groaned Lizzie inattentive
to all but her own fears.

Miss Cornelia did not even bother to rebuke her. She crossed behind
the wicker clothes hamper and picked up something from the floor.

"A half-burned candle," she mused. "Another thing the detective
overlooked."

She stepped back to the center of the room, looking knowingly from the
candle to the Hidden Room and back again.

"Oh, my God—another one!" shrieked Lizzie as the dark shape of a man
appeared suddenly outside the window, as if materialized from the air.

Miss Cornelia snatched up her revolver from the top of the hamper.

"Don't shoot—it's Jack!" came a warning cry from Dale as she
recognized the figure of her lover.

Miss Cornelia laid her revolver down on the hamper again. The vacant
eyes of the Unknown caught the movement.

Bailey swung in through the window, panting a little from his exertions.

"The man Lizzie saw drop from the skylight undoubtedly got to the roof
from this window," he said. "It's quite easy."

"But not with one hand," said Miss Cornelia, with her gaze now directed
at the row of tall closets around the walls of the room. "When that
detective comes back I may have a surprise party for him," she
muttered, with a gleam of hope in her eye.

Dale explained the situation to Jack.

"Aunt Cornelia thinks the money's still here."

Miss Cornelia snorted.

"I know it's here." She started to open the closets, one after the
other, beginning at the left. Bailey saw what she was doing and began
to help her.

Not so Lizzie. She sat on the floor in a heap, her eyes riveted on the
Unknown, who in his turn was gazing at Miss Cornelia's revolver on the
hamper with the intent stare of a baby or an idiot fascinated by a
glittering piece of glass.

Dale noticed the curious tableau.

"Lizzie—what are you looking at?" she said with a nervous shake in her
voice.

"What's he looking at?" asked Lizzie sepulchrally, pointing at the
Unknown. Her pointed forefinger drew his eyes away from the revolver;
he sank back into his former apathy, listless, drooping.

Miss Cornelia rattled the knob of a high closet by the other wall.

"This one is locked—and the key's gone," she announced. A new flicker
of interest grew in the eyes of the Unknown. Lizzie glanced away from
him, terrified.

"If there's anything locked up in that closet," she whimpered, "you'd
better let it stay! There's enough running loose in this house as it
is!"

Unfortunately for her, her whimper drew Miss Cornelia's attention upon
her.

"Lizzie, did you ever take that key?" the latter queried sternly.

"No'm," said Lizzie, too scared to dissimulate if she had wished. She
wagged her head violently a dozen times, like a china figure on a
mantelpiece.

Miss Cornelia pondered.

"It may be locked from the inside; I'll soon find out." She took a
wire hairpin from her hair and pushed it through the keyhole. But there
was no key on the other side; the hairpin went through without
obstruction. Repeated efforts to jerk the door open failed. And
finally Miss Cornelia bethought herself of a key from the other closet
doors.

Dale and Lizzie on one side—Bailey on the other—collected the keys of
the other closets from their locks while Miss Cornelia stared at the
one whose doors were closed as if she would force its secret from it
with her eyes. The Unknown had been so quiet during the last few
minutes, that, unconsciously, the others had ceased to pay much
attention to him, except the casual attention one devotes to a piece of
furniture. Even Lizzie's eyes were now fixed on the locked closet.
And the Unknown himself was the first to notice this.

At once his expression altered to one of cunning—cautiously, with
infinite patience, he began to inch his chair over toward the wicker
clothes hamper. The noise of the others, moving about the room,
drowned out what little he made in moving his chair.

At last he was within reach of the revolver. His hand shot out in one
swift sinuous thrust—clutched the weapon—withdrew. He then concealed
the revolver among his tattered garments as best he could and,
cautiously as before, inched his chair back again to its original
position. When the others noticed him again, the mask of lifelessness
was back on his face and one could have sworn he had not changed his
position by the breadth of an inch.

"There—that unlocked it!" cried Miss Cornelia triumphantly at last, as
the key to one of the other closet doors slid smoothly into the lock
and she heard the click that meant victory.

She was about to throw open the closet door. But Bailey motioned her
back.

"I'd keep back a little," he cautioned. "You don't know what may be
inside."

"Mercy sakes, who wants to know?" shivered Lizzie. Dale and Miss
Cornelia, too, stepped aside involuntarily as Bailey took the candle
and prepared, with a good deal of caution, to open the closet door.

The door swung open at last. He could look in. He did so—and stared
appalled at what he saw, while goose flesh crawled on his spine and the
hairs of his head stood up.

After a moment he closed the door of the closet and turned back,
white-faced, to the others.

"What is it?" said Dale aghast. "What did you see?"

Bailey found himself unable to answer for a moment. Then he pulled
himself together. He turned to Miss Van Gorder.

"Miss Cornelia, I think we have found the ghost the Jap butler saw," he
said slowly. "How are your nerves?"

Miss Cornelia extended a hand that did not tremble.

"Give me the candle."

He did so. She went to the closet and opened the door.

Whatever faults Miss Cornelia may have had, lack of courage was not one
of them—or the ability to withstand a stunning mental shock. Had it
been otherwise she might well have crumpled to the floor, as if struck
down by an invisible hammer, the moment the closet door swung open
before her.

Huddled on the floor of the closet was the body of a man. So crudely
had he been crammed into this hiding-place that he lay twisted and
bent. And as if to add to the horror of the moment one arm, released
from its confinement, now slipped and slid out into the floor of the
room.

Miss Cornelia's voice sounded strange to her own ears when finally she
spoke.

"But who is it?"

"It is—or was—Courtleigh Fleming," said Bailey dully.

"But how can it be? Mr. Fleming died two weeks ago. I—"

"He died in this house sometime tonight. The body is still warm."

"But who killed him? The Bat?"

"Isn't it likely that the Doctor did it? The man who has been his
accomplice all along? Who probably bought a cadaver out West and
buried it with honors here not long ago?"

He spoke without bitterness. Whatever resentment he might have felt
died in that awful presence.

"He got into the house early tonight," he said, "probably with the
Doctor's connivance. That wrist watch there is probably the luminous
eye Lizzie thought she saw."

But Miss Cornelia's face was still thoughtful, and he went on:

"Isn't it clear, Miss Van Gorder?" he queried, with a smile. "The
Doctor and old Mr. Fleming formed a conspiracy—both needed money—lots
of it. Fleming was to rob the bank and hide the money here. Wells's
part was to issue a false death certificate in the West, and bury a
substitute body, secured God knows how. It was easy; it kept the name
of the president of the Union Bank free from suspicion—and it put the
blame on me."

He paused, thinking it out.

"Only they slipped up in one place. Dick Fleming leased the house to
you and they couldn't get it back."

"Then you are sure," said Miss Cornelia quickly, "that tonight
Courtleigh Fleming broke in, with the Doctor's assistance—and that he
killed Dick, his own nephew, from the staircase?"

"Aren't you?" asked Bailey surprised. The more he thought of it the
less clearly could he visualize it any other way.

Miss Cornelia shook her head decidedly.