Diane of the Green Van

by Leona Dalrymple

  CHAPTER XXVI

  AN ACCOUNTING

  The key clicked in the lock. Kronberg, huddled in a corner, stirredand cunningly hid the flimsy coverings of chintz he had unearthed froman ancient trunk. For three days he had not spoken, three days ofbitter, biting cold, three days of creaking, lonely quiet, of mournfulwind and shifting lights above the glass overhead, of infernalvisitations from one he had grown to fear more than death itself. Withheavy chills racking his numb body, with flashes of fever and clampingpains in his head, his endurance was now nearing an end.

  Bearing a tray of food, Carl entered and closed the door.

  "I'm still waiting, Kronberg," he reminded coolly, "for the answers tothose questions."

  For answer Kronberg merely pushed aside the tray of food with ashudder. There was a dreadful nausea to-day in the pit of his stomach.

  "So?" said Carl. "Well," he regretted, "there are always the fingerstretchers. They're crude, Kronberg, and homemade, but in time they'lldo the work."

  Kronberg's face grew colorless as death itself as his mind leaped tothe torture of the day before. A clamp for every finger tip, a metalbar between--the hell-conceived device invented by his jailer forcedthe fingers wide apart and held them there as in vise until a stiffnessbound the aching cords, then a pain which crept snakelike to theelbow--and the shoulder. Then when the tortured nerves fell wildly totelegraphing spasmodic jerkings of distress from head to toe, theshrugging devil with the flute would talk vividly of roaring wood firesand the comforts awaiting the penitent below. Yesterday Kronberg hadfainted. To-day--

  Carl presently took the singular metal contrivance from his pocket,deftly clamped the fingers of his victim and sat down to wait,rummaging for his flute.

  The tension snapped.

  Choking, Kronberg fell forward at his jailer's feet, his eyes imploring.

  "Mercy," he whispered. "I--I can not bear it."

  "Then you will answer what I ask?"

  "Yes."

  Carl unsnapped the infernal finger-stretcher and dropped it in hispocket.

  "Come," said he not unkindly and led his weak and staggering prisonerto a room in the west wing where a log fire was blazing brightly in thefireplace.

  With a moan Kronberg broke desperately away from his grasp and flunghimself violently upon his knees by the fire, stretching his arms outpitifully to the blaze and chattering and moaning like a thingdemented. Carl walked away to the window.

  Presently the man by the fire crept humbly to a chair, a brokencreature in the clutch of fever, eyes and skin unnaturally bright.

  "Here," said Carl, pouring him some brandy from a decanter on thetable. "Sit quietly for a while and close your eyes. Are you betternow?" he asked a little later.

  "Yes," said Kronberg faintly.

  "What is your real name?"

  "Themar."

  "When you took service with my aunt in the spring, you were looking fora certain paper?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you find it during your ten days in the town-house?"

  "No."

  "How did you discover its whereabouts?"

  "One night I watched you replace it in a secret drawer in your room.Before I could obtain it, the house was closed for the summer and I wasdismissed. I had succeeded, however, in getting an impression of thedesk lock."

  "You went back later?"

  "Yes. It was a summer day--very hot. The front door was ajar. Iopened it wider. Your aunt sat upon the floor of the hall crying--"

  "Yes?"

  "I spoke of passing and seeing the door ajar. She recognized me as oneof the servants and begged me to call a taxi. I assisted her to thetaxi and went back, having only pretended to lock the door."

  "And having disposed of her," supplied Carl, "you flew up the stairs,applied the key made from the impression--and stole the paper?"

  "Yes."

  "Beautiful!" said Carl softly. "How cleverly you tricked me!"

  Themar shrugged.

  "It was very simple."

  Carl smiled.

  "Where is the paper now?" he inquired.

  Themar's face darkened.

  "When later I looked in the pocket of my coat," he admitted, "the paperhad disappeared utterly. Nor have I found it since. It is a verygreat mystery--"

  "Ah!" said Carl. "So," he mused, "as long as the paper was in mypossession, my life was safe, for you must watch me to find it.Therefore I was not poisoned or stabbed or shot at during your originalten days of service. Later, even though you could not lay your ownhands upon the paper, things began to happen. Knowing what I did, Ihad lived too long as it was."

  "Yes."

  "Suppose you begin at the beginning--and tell me just what you know."

  It was a halting, nervous tale poorly told. Carl, with his fastidiousrespect for a careful array of facts, found it trying. By a word hereor a sentence there, he twisted the mass of imperfect information intoconformity and pieced it out with knowledge of his own.

  "So," said he coldly, "you thought to stab me the night of the stormand stabbed Poynter. Fool! Why," he added curtly, "did you later spyupon my cousin's camp when Tregar had expressly forbidden it?"

  It was an unexpected question. Themar flushed uncomfortably. Carl hada way of reading between the lines that was exceedingly disconcerting.His information, he said at length after an interval of markedhesitancy, had been too meager. He had listened at the door once whenthe Baron had spoken of Miss Westfall to his secretary. A housemaidhad frightened him away and he had bolted upstairs--to attend tosomething else while they were both safely occupied. Rather than workblindly as he needs must if he knew no more, he had sought to add tohis information by spying on her camp.

  It was unconvincing.

  "So," said Carl keenly, "Baron Tregar does not trust you!"

  Themar's lip curled.

  "The Baron knew of your ten days in my cousin's house?"

  Again the marked hesitancy--the flush.

  "Yes," said Themar.

  "You're lying," said Carl curtly. "If you wish to go back--"

  Themar moistened his dry lips and shuddered.

  "No," he whispered, "he did not know."

  "Why?"

  Themar fell to trembling. This at least he must keep locked from thegrim, ironic man by the window.

  "You're playing double with Tregar and with me," said Carl hotly. "Ithought so. Very well!" Smiling infernally, he drew from his pocketthe finger-stretchers.

  "Excellency!" panted Themar.

  "Why did you serve in my cousin's house without the knowledge of theBaron?"

  "If--if the secret was harmful to Houdania," blurted Themardesperately, spurred to confession by the clank of the metal in Carl'shand, "I--I could sell the paper to Galituria!"

  The nature of the admission was totally unexpected. Carl whistledsoftly.

  "Ah!" said he, raising expressive eyebrows.

  "My mother," said Themar sullenly, "was of Galituria. There is hatredthere for Houdania--a century's feud--"

  "And you in the employ of the rival province hunting this to earth!What a mess--what a mess!"

  Followed a battery of merciless questions punctuated by the diabolicclank of metal.

  Themar had been deputed solely to report to Baron Tregar--

  "And murder me!" supplemented Carl curtly.

  "Yes," said Themar. "Under oath I was to obey Ronador's commandswithout question. But he did not even trust me with the cipher messageof instruction. That was mailed to the Baron's Washington addresswritten in an ink that only turned dark with the heat of a fire. I toowas sent to Washington. Ronador knew nothing of the Baron's trip toConnecticut."

  By spying before he had sailed, Themar added, at a question from Carl,he had learned of the cipher.

  "You read the paper of course when you stole it from my desk?"

  "There was a noise," said Themar dully, his face bitter; "I ran for thestreet. Later the paper was gone."

  "Wha
t were Tregar's intentions about the paper?"

  Themar chewed nervously at his lips.

  "His Excellency spoke to me of a paper. He said that I must discoverits whereabouts, if possible, but that none but he must steal it.Anything written which you would seem to have hidden would be ofinterest to him. He bound me by a terrible oath not to touch or readit."

  "And you?"

  "After a time I swore that I had seen you burn it--"

  "Clumsy! Still if he believed it, it left me, in the event of MissWestfall's complete ignorance of all this hubbub, the sole remainingobstacle."

  But Themar had not heard. He was shaking again in the clutch of aheavy chill. Presently, his sentences having trailed off once or twiceinto peculiar incoherency, he fell to talking wildly of a hut in theSherrill woods in which he had lived for days in the early autumn, of acuff in a box buried in the ground beneath the planking. For weeks, hesaid, he had vainly tried to solve its cipher, stealing away from thefarm by night to pore over it by the light of a candle. It wasfearfully intricate--

  "But you--you that know all," he gasped painfully, "you will get it andread and tell me--"

  Moaning he fell back in his chair.

  Carl rang for Mrs. Carmody. It was young Mary, however, who answered,her round blue eyes lingering in mystification upon the fire Carl hadbuilt in the deserted wing.

  "Mary," said Carl carelessly, "you'd better phone for a doctor and anurse. Kronberg has returned and I fear he's in for a spell ofpneumonia."

  Later in the Sherrill hut, Carl ripped a board from the floor and foundin the dirt beneath, a box containing a soiled cuff covered with anintricate cipher.

  "Odd!" said he with a curious smile as he dropped the cuff into hispocket; "it's very odd about that paper."