CHAPTER XIII
In the Box
Now, for a little, let us watch the movements of the intelligentservant, Wilkins.
Getting the trunk to the street was no trouble at all. The girl weighed,perhaps, one hundred and twenty pounds, and the trunk itself anotherfifteen or twenty, and handling that amount of weight was a mere joke toWilkins. Therefore, he stood in the side street beside the Lasande,having carefully deposited his burden, and looked about for a taxi--andpresently one of these bandit vehicles rolled up to the curb and thehard-faced little man behind the wheel barked:
"Taxicab?"
"Yes," said Wilkins. "I wish----"
"Stick the box up front!" snapped the driver. "I kin give you a hand."
"I'm taking the box in back with me," said Wilkins.
"Nothing doing!" said the driver. "What d'ye think that paint's madeof--steel?"
It was entirely possible that Mary was stifling by this time. Wilkinsused his wits as he fumbled in his pockets and asked:
"Your cab, old chap?"
"Company's!"
"Put this five-dollar bill into your pocket and give me a hand settingthe box in the back," said Wilkins. "It's packed with delicate stuff,and the master instructed me particular to keep a hand on it."
So, while the hard-faced one smiled brightly and, the bill in hispocket, reflected that a murder must have been committed but that it wasnone of his business in any case, Anthony's wardrobe trunk was stooderect and the taxicab rolled off swiftly, headed for the palatial homeof Theodore Dalton.
A block or two and, in the most uninterested way, Wilkins managed toopen the lid for an inch or more, and in the space appeared a littlepink nose and, presently, as the nose withdrew, a brilliant blue eye.
"Can you open it a little more?" asked Mary.
Wilkins opened it a little more.
"I trust you're quite comfortable, miss?" he asked politely.
"Lovely!" said Mary. "Did any one--seem to notice when we left?"
"Not a soul, miss."
Mary, cramped though she might be, sighed vast relief.
"Tell Mr. Fry, when you get back, that I'll send for the things I leftbehind," she said softly.
"Yes, miss."
"And Wilkins, when you get to the house," said Mary, "be absolutely surethat you take me to Felice's room!"
"I understand," purred Wilkins, just above the rumble of traffic.
Here Mary's whole face almost appeared.
"I want you to be very sure about that indeed!" she urged. "Never mindwhat the other servants say or where they want you to leave the trunk.You insist that it is for Felice, and has to be delivered to herpersonally; and if you have a chance to give her some sort of sign toaccompany you to the room, do it. I think she'll understand."
"Yes, miss," Wilkins agreed.
"And above and beyond all things, keep your face perfectlyexpressionless when you meet Bates, Wilkins. Bates is our butler, youknow, and he's the most inquisitive creature in the world. Is this trunkmarked?"
"Only with Mr. Fry's initials, miss--'A. F.'"
Mary frowned up at him through the crack.
"That'll have to be explained too," she sighed. "Well--let's see. Do youthink of anything plausible, Wilkins?"
The perfect treasure glanced at the driver, who was quite intent on hisown affairs and apparently not listening--and Wilkins smiled quitecomplacently.
"If I might make so bold as to suggest it, miss," he said, "why not saythat the trunk comes from--well, the cousin of this Felice, perhaps? Hasshe a female cousin?"
"Nobody knows it if she hasn't."
"Then it might be said that this comes from her cousin--er--AimeeFourier. That sounds rather well for a name?"
"Great, Wilkins!" said Mary.
"And it might further be said that this cousin, a person perhaps in thetrade of making gowns and the like, since I believe that such use thesetrunks quite a bit--it might be said that the cousin, having no furtheruse for this trunk, is sending it to your maid, miss."
Sheer admiration shone in Mary's visible eye.
"Wilkins, you're a jewel!" said its owner. "Where are we now?"
"On West End Avenue, miss, within a block or two of your home."
Mary disappeared.
"Shut the trunk, Wilkins," her voice said softly, "We're safe!"
She, who had suffered so many shocks since last night, seemed assuredthat at last all was well; and as a matter of fact Wilkins felt much thesame about the whole affair. He gazed placidly at the sign on the cornerand, closing the trunk, leaned forward to the driver.
"The big limestone place over there, I think it is," said he. "Go to theside gate, old chap."
Seconds only, and they rolled to a standstill at the curb. Anthony'spriceless personal servant lifted out his burden and set it on thesidewalk with no effort at all.
"Wait a bit and take me back," he smiled at the driver, as he startedfor the handsome black iron gate in the cream-colored brick wall thatshut the Dalton back yard from the passing throng. There was a littleelectric push beside it, and Wilkins, having laid a finger on it, waitedserenely.
Offhand, it seemed to him, he had saved the day for Anthony Fry. Asmaller, weaker man must have passed up the job of carrying out thetrunk single-handed. Yes, he had saved the day and, also offhand, thesaving should be worth about twenty dollars when he returned to Anthonyand reported. Or possibly, considering the really horrible features ofthe case as Wilkins understood them, even fifty dollars.
That was not too much. In fact, the more he thought of it, the moreWilkins felt that his return would be marked by the sight of a crispyellow note from Anthony's prim, well-stocked wallet. Thirty-two of thisshould go into the black-and-white pin-checked suit he had beenconsidering enviously in a Broadway window for nearly a month; ten moreshould go into Wilkins's savings-bank account, which was quite a tidyaffair; and he thought that the other eight might as well be sent to hisnephew, who was working his way through a veterinary college in Indiana.
And here the houseman opened the door and looked at Wilkins; and Wilkinspicking up his trunk, stepped through and into the back yard, and then,the door of the basement laundry being open, into the laundry itself.
Only the under-laundress was present, which caused him to stiffen as hesaid coldly:
"For Felice!"
"The--the poor young lady's maid!" said the laundress, with a suddensnivel.
"I'll take it to her room," Wilkins said. "Where will that be, and wherewill I find the young woman herself?"
The under-laundress dried her eyes on one corner of her apron.
"I dunno about Felice," she said uncertainly. "Mebbe Mr. Bates--oh, herecomes Mr. Bates now."
Round, red, highly perturbed, the Dalton butler bustled into the laundryand looked Wilkins up and down.
"Trunk for the master?" he asked crisply.
"For Felice, the young lady's maid, as I understand," Wilkins saidquietly. "Where shall I find her? It's for herself."
His calm and superior smile warned Bates not to question an affair thatcould not possibly concern him--yet the warning missed Bates somehow. Helooked sharply at Wilkins and laughed.
"You'll not find her here!" said he.
"I mean Felice, the maid of----"
"I know the one you mean," Bates said briefly. "She's not here andshe'll not be here again! She's been dismissed!"
"What?" said Wilkins.
Bates looked him over sternly, as if to suggest that if he happened tobe a friend of Felice he had passed beneath contempt.
"She's _went_!" Bates said sourly. "This here house is no place foryoung Frenchies that wanders the streets at night, believe me. Shesneaked in--I dunno what hour this early morning, and she was able togive no account at all of where she'd been. There wasn't no furtherquestions asked; she went, bag and baggage!"
One of those mental clouds which had been troubling Anthony since lastnight came now to engulf the complacent Wilkins. He looked at Bates, asif
refusing to believe a word of it. He looked at the trunk and hisexpression was a study.
"Well, as to where this young person has gone," Wilkins said. "You see,this trunk being, as it were, her personal property, I've been asked tosee that she gets it herself and----"
"Where she's gone is no concern of ours. We don't know and we don't wantto know!" said Mr. Bates. "The hussy went without a character and that'sall we can tell you about her. And this here house is too full oftrouble for me to be bothering with you about her trunk," concluded Mr.Bates. "Anything belonging to her gets out!"
"Out!" Wilkins muttered.
"Out!" said Mr. Bates, and pointed at the door.
* * * * *
Let us not forget what Anthony altogether forgot, to wit: the sinisterwarning of Hobart Hitchin in regard to shipping boxes, trunks or othercontainers that might well have held a dismembered body.
For one of Hitchin's strange temperament and habits of thought, his ownapartment could not have been situated more happily, if an affair ofthis kind were to involve Anthony Fry.
Room for room, the home of the prosperous crime-student was directlybelow that of Anthony; they used the same dumbwaiter, and they wereserved by the same service elevator, so that if Hitchin had so electedhe could even have inspected the meals that went to Anthony's table.Still more, they were in the old wing of the Lasande, where the roomsare larger, but where the floors--laid long before the days ofsound-proof concrete filling--permit the unduly inquisitive to hear muchof what goes on above and below.
According to his own reasoning, Hitchin had struck upon theinvestigation of his whole lifetime. Surely as he wore spectacles,murder had been done in the flat of the impeccable Anthony Fry.
What the motive could possibly be, Hobart Hitchin could only guess, ashe had already guessed; but it was a fact that he had been suspiciousever since Anthony's appearance last night with the slim boy of theheavy storm coat and the down-pulled cap. These, failing to harmonizewith anything that went in and out of the Lasande ordinarily, hadtwanged every responsive string in Hitchin's consciousness, and not byany manner of means had the strings ceased twanging after his unusualinterview with Anthony.
Hence, having returned to his own flat, he waited tense and expectant.With straining ears he heard the coming of Beatrice Boller and thesubsequent excitement, and to him her peculiar cries signified anotherfriend of David Prentiss's who had come suddenly upon the grisly thingthat had once been the young boy.
And now those processes of deductive reasoning which are used sosuccessfully in fiction and so infrequently in real life, informedHobart Hitchin that the crime's next step was almost at hand. Accustomedto murder or otherwise, an intelligent man like Anthony Fry would riskno more of these disturbances; whatever his original plans, he wouldseek very shortly to get the body out of the Lasande--hardly in grips,Hitchin fancied, probably not in a packing case, rather in that reliableactor in so many sensational murders, a trunk.
Here, on the floor above him, some one moved and bumped what wasunquestionably a hollow, empty trunk!
As the veteran fireman responds to the gong, so did the brain of HobartHitchin respond to that bump! Fifteen seconds and he had visualized thewhole of the next step; the trunk to the freight elevator, thence to thestreet, thence to the waiting motor express wagon, thence--
Again, after a time, came the bump, indicating that the trunk was in theliving-room now--and then, absolutely true to the hypothesis, Anthony'sdoor opened and the bumps went to the hall, while the freight elevatorcame up the shaft!
The brief-case containing the trousers of David Prentiss had not leftHobart Hitchin's cold hand. It did not leave now as, snatching a hat, hesped down the back stairs of the Lasande--a proceeding likely to savefive seconds at least when one considered the slow response of theelevators--cut through the second floor and came down to the sideentrance, just beyond the office and the desk.
There was a taxicab as usual at the curb just here. Without leaving thevestibule, Hobart Hitchin signaled it to wait for him; and then, ever socharily, he thrust forward his eagle eyes and directed their mercilessbeam through the side panel of the glass. Hobart Hitchin all but losthis self-control and laughed excitedly, for there, just down the block,Anthony's personal servant was lugging a wardrobe trunk to the curb.
Ah! And he planned to use the safer taxicab, apparently, rather than thetruck; and it seemed to Hobart Hitchin that the driver knew his fullerrand and demanded his share in advance, because Wilkins handed himmoney. After that, without effort, because David Prentiss had been lightand slender in life, Wilkins took his ghastly burden into the back ofthe cab and drove away.
But Hobart Hitchin, the relentless, was just twenty yards behind, andhis driver, spurred by a ten-dollar bill, bent forward and watched everyturn of the wheels as he followed. Thus they left the region of theLasande--and since we all have our personal dreams, it was right enoughfor Hobart Hitchin to sit back and indulge his own.
As a millionaire now and then makes himself part and parcel of the localfire-department, following faithfully to every blaze, answering everyalarm, so Hobart Hitchin, with a patrimony that rendered real workabsurd, dreamed of the day when he should be recognized as the mosteminent private expert in crime these great United States have everheld.
Mistily, he had been able time and time again to visualize himself,spectacles and all, surrounded by perturbed policemen who had come tothe end of their rope in crime detection, who listened respectfullywhile he expounded the elements of the particular case in hand. But themists were almost gone now; this brilliant morning, for the very firsttime, Hobart Hitchin had picked off a live one.
Yes, and it grew more and more live every second, for instead of headingdowntown, and trying--as Hobart Hitchin had fully expected--to ship thetrunk by express to some out-of-town point, Wilkins had made his way toWest End Avenue!
This in itself was very curious; it did not even suggest that Wilkinswas headed out of town with the remains; and it did not even hint at theastounding thing which followed, several blocks farther uptown! As thetaxi stopped at Theodore Dalton's side gate, Hitchin all but fell fromhis cab as he craned forward!
By some lucky accident, he knew that house, and knew, in a general way,of its owner. This was the liniment king--and Anthony Fry was the ownerof Fry's Imperial Liniment; there was a link as of solid steel, made ofliniment only, yet utterly unbreakable!
What did it mean? What _could_ it mean?
Hitchin leaned back for an instant and closed his eyes, giving hismighty brain the freest rein of its existence, urging it with everyfiber in him to hit upon the correct theory.
And then, eyes opening, it almost seemed that he had hit upon it! Thesetwo, Dalton and Fry, were doubtless associated in business, whatever thesupposed rivalry. Was it not thinkable that the devilish messes of oneor the other had ruined the health of the Prentiss boy? Was it notpossible that Anthony, luring him to his home, had been trying to buyhim off from a threatened suit--get a quit-claim or something of thatkind? For that matter, could it be anything else? The boy had refusedand--big business had wiped out another individual!
He might well enough be wrong, but if wrong he were, why was Wilkinstaking the trunk straight into the premises of Theodore Dalton? He haddone that now, and now the gate had closed upon him, and Hobart Hitchin,suddenly determined on the most spectacular act of his life, tapped hisdriver on the shoulder.
"Go around to the front of this house--yes, the corner one!" he said,and there was a little shake in his voice.
His path was clear enough. Anthony Fry would not seek to escape as yet;they never did at this stage when they fancied the crime itself safelyout of the way. Anthony would be there when wanted--and single-handed,Hobart Hitchin meant to take into custody the two most sensationalmurderers of their generation!
It was a tremendous thing. By the time he had stepped up to the spaciousdoor of Theodore Dalton's home, the tremendousness of it had so overcomeHobart H
itchin that he could not have reasoned out the two times twomultiplication table! He was for the time a man bereft of what most ofus consider senses, so that he walked straight past Bates and said:
"Mr. Dalton!"
"You're bringing word, sir?" Bates cried.
"I wish to see Mr. Dalton. He is at home," said Hitchin.
Bates considered for a moment and then nodded; it was no morning forquibbling.
"In here, sir!" he said, pattering off quickly to Dalton's study.
He pattered out again as quickly, and Hobart Hitchin, having taken achair, rose from it at once and took to walking, brief-case stillclutched in his hand and an exalted smile on his lips. So TheodoreDalton found him when he entered, fifteen seconds later--a mighty man,deep of chest, savage of eye, square of chin, with great hairy hands anda shaggy gray head. Not more than a single second did Dalton look atHitchin before he barked:
"Well? Well? You are bringing word of her?"
"Her?" smiled Hobart Hitchin, with unearthly calm.
"My daughter!" Theodore Dalton thundered. "What----"
"I know nothing about your daughter, Dalton," Hitchin said, with his icysmile. "Will you be seated?"
"No!" said the master of the house. "What the devil do you want here, ifit isn't about my daughter?"
"I want just five minutes conversation with you, on a matter whichconcerns you most vitally."
Theodore Dalton closed his hairy fists.
"Look here, sir," he said, with a calm of his own which was decidedlyimpressive. "If you're jackass enough to come in here on the morningwhen my daughter--_my daughter_--has disappeared--if you're clown enoughto try to sell me anything----"
"I'm not trying to sell you anything; I'm trying to tell you something!"Hitchin said, and there was something so very peculiar about his smilethat even Theodore Dalton postponed the forcible eviction for a fewminutes.
"Tell me what?"
"Dalton," said Hobart Hitchin, "the game is up!"
"_What?_" rasped Mr. Dalton.
"The boy, David Prentiss--or what remains of the boy, DavidPrentiss--has just been brought into your house. _And I know!_"
Theodore Dalton said nothing; for a moment he could say nothing.Hitchin's teeth showed in a triumphant smile.
"Murder will out!" said he. "Murder----"
"_Murder!_" Theodore Dalton snarled. "What the----"
"David Prentiss, who was murdered last night, has been brought here!"the palpable lunatic pursued. "Don't shout! Don't try to strike me!_Look!_"
Already he had opened the brief-case; now, with a dramatic whisk, hespread the trousers on the table.
And if he looked for an effect upon Dalton, the effect was there even inexcess of any expectation! Theodore Dalton, after one quick downwardglance, cried out queerly, thickly, far down in his throat! His eyesseemed to start from his head; his hands, going out together, snatchedup the trousers and held them nearer to the window. With a jerk,Theodore Dalton turned one of the rear pockets inside out and lookedswiftly at the little linen name-plate sewed therein by the tailor whohad made them.
The trousers dropped from his fingers and Theodore Dalton collapsed!
Gray, gasping, unable to speak at first, he crumpled into the chairbeside the table and stared up numbly at Hobart Hitchin, who smiled justas he had always meant to smile in the event of such a moment comingbefore his death.
"You--you!" Dalton choked. "You say--the wearer of those trousers hasbeen _murdered_?"
"As you know," said Hobart Hitchin. "The boy----"
"A boy about twenty-two, smooth shaven--a nice kid--a boy with a shockof brown hair and--and----" Theodore Dalton cried, in a queer, brokenlittle voice, as he gripped the table. "No! No! Not that boy!"
"That boy!" said Hitchin. "David Prentiss!"
Dalton's whole soul seemed to burst!
"It was no David Prentiss!" he cried. "My--my daughter's gone and now myonly son has been murdered!"
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