by Jerry eBooks
Rapidly, he told a story of finding the Buick missing, of scouring the dripping countryside on his motorcycle to overtake the thief, of returning to find Aleck prowling in the garage. His story sounded glib and not very convincing. Yet Carrie smiled dimly and apparently accepted his explanation.
Footsteps became suddenly audible from the back staircase of the house. Kate Baylor entered the room, her dark eyes sleepy and puzzled. She stared at Marjorie and at her brother, Ned.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked dully. “I—I thought I heard the crash of glass and a scream down here! I was almost asleep when I heard it. Has—has anything happened?”
“Nothing much,” Carrie said dryly. “Merely a second attempt to murder me. Somebody fired a bullet from an air gun through that window over there. The slug missed my head by about two inches.”
She turned toward Ned Baylor. Her voice was almost indifferent.
“You didn’t see anything of a prowler outside with a rifle, did you?”
“No,” he denied hastily. “I went straight to the garage when I saw a light inside.”
“Where did you leave your motorcycle?” Aleck interrupted. He shot the question swiftly.
“Huh? I left it parked under the trees. I leaned it against one of the birches. Why?”
ALECK didn’t reply. He was staring at the round bullet hole in the living room window. Ugly cracks radiated from it like the jagged spokes of a wheel. There was a hole in the wallpaper opposite, where the silent bullet from outside the house had narrowly missed Carrie’s head.
“When did all that happen?” Aleck asked.
“Less than two minutes after you left the house,” Carrie said.
“Did you rush outside after the killer?”
Carrie shook her head. Aleck knew she was waiting patiently to hear his report, but he didn’t quite know how to get rid of the three people who sat staring curiously at him, waiting to hear what he had discovered.
Carrie ended his dilemma by making a sudden and queer request to Ned’s blond wife.
“Will you please get me two pair of heavy woolen gloves? I shall need them to solve this case. If you can’t find gloves, heavy mittens will do.”
Marjorie looked puzzled at the odd request. It was not a particularly cold night. In fact, the fire from the open hearth of the chimney made the living room uncomfortably warm. However, Marjorie made no comment. She left the room to find the gloves.
Carrie Cashin turned instantly to Ned.
“I want you and your sister to examine the locks on every window upstairs. Find out if they’re all bolted tight. I’ll explain why as soon as you return. Hurry back as quickly as you can.”
Ned looked puzzled and wary. The dark-eyed Kate gave Carrie a long, suspicious scrutiny. But neither of them disobeyed the order. The moment they departed, Carrie’s ear bent toward Aleck’s lips.
“All right. Talk fast—and don’t skip a thing. Keep your voice low. What did you find out?”
Aleck’s disclosure of the presence of a mysterious figure on the roof didn’t seem to surprise Carrie. Her eyes merely narrowed slightly when he told about the air gun hidden in old Peter’s sleeping shack. She was more interested in the odor of the perfume that Aleck had detected on the lining of the hidden slicker. But her eyes sparkled with triumph when he told of the kerosene odor in the rear seat of the Buick.
“That’s what I wanted to know!”
Carrie was calmly ready when the three members of the Baylor family returned. She took the heavy gloves from Marjorie with a polite murmur of thanks. She nodded at Kate’s report that every window in the house was properly locked on the inside. Ned confirmed his sister’s statement.
“Excellent,” Carrie murmured. “It may please you to know that I have solved this case.”
CHAPTER IV.
CRIME’S END.
CARRIE had expected shocked surprise, and she got it. All three of them gaped at her. Even Aleck, who was used to Carrie’s bold methods of crime-busting’, looked incredulous.
“Your father didn’t vanish voluntarily,” Carrie told Kate Baylor. “He was kidnaped! I still don’t understand why? But I have a pretty good idea of how—and where! Unless I’m completely wrong, your father is still inside this house. I propose to find him!”
Quick exclamations greeted this confident announcement. Carrie silenced them with a curt gesture. Her face was grave.
“Two attempts at murder have been made tonight. I expect a third and final attempt. Everyone in this room is exposed to that peril. Therefore, I want you to do exactly as I say in order to protect your lives. Please come upstairs with me, all of you.”
They followed her up the back stairs to the second floor. Carrie led the way to Kate Baylor’s bedroom, the one through whose window Aleck had seen the missing man’s dark-eyed daughter staring at him through opera glasses, Carrie directed:
“Ned, I want you to lock yourself in this room with Kate. Bolt the door on the inside and be ready for trouble from a sly criminal. Aleck, give Ned his gun.”
“What about my wife?” Ned protested.
“I’ll need Marjorie downstairs to help me bait a trap outside the house,” Carrie explained. “I promise you that she’ll be in no danger from the kidnaper.”
There was a brief argument, that ended with Ned obeying with ill grace. He took the gun Aleck handed him. He closed himself and Kate in the bedroom and shot the bolt on the inside.
“Don’t leave that room until I give you the signal,” Carrie shouted through the closed door. “Keep away from the window—and shoot if anyone tries to enter!”
She turned to Ned’s blond wife. “And now, Marjorie, we’ll examine your room before we leave the house to set the trap.”
SHE opened Marjorie’s door. The minute they were inside, her whole manner changed. Her voice dropped to a cautious and barely audible whisper.
“Your room is almost directly opposite Kate’s. Stay here in the dark and watch through the keyhole! If Kate sneaks out of her room—or Kate and her brother together—rap three times on that radiator pipe with your knuckles. I’ll hear the sound downstairs—and this case will be finished!”
Marjorie looked frightened. “Surely you don’t suspect that Kate or my husband——”
“Unless you follow my orders, I shall drop the case. Only with your help can I solve it. Do you agree?” Carrie knew how to overawe people with less agile minds. Marjorie nodded her head tremulously. Aleck and Carrie returned to the head of the stairs, leaving the frightened blonde on guard at the keyhole across the corridor. The two detectives descended noisily. Carrie pretended to talk all the way downstairs to an imaginary Marjorie.
The minute she reached the living room, she drew on a pair of the heavy gloves Marjorie had brought and gave the other pair to Aleck. She led him toward the hot blaze of the chimney fireplace. That blaze had puzzled her all evening. It was entirely too warm a night for a fire of that size. Aleck’s story of the man on the roof had confirmed her suspicion. The fire had been built to discourage investigation of the chimney.
Carrie didn’t attempt to quench the fire with a pail of water. To do so would be to reveal her shrewd purpose to the crooks she was after. She laid three or four stout logs across the fire.
While Aleck beat out the sparks that flew against her silken legs, Carrie stood precariously on her log bridge. She sent the glow of her electric torch up the chimney.
There was nothing visible on the right side but sooty bricks. On the left side, however, hidden from view by the fireplace arch, was a metal rung. It was painted black to camouflage its existence. There was another rung above it—and another one
Flames were already licking between the fresh logs, scorching Carrie’s shoes. Her gloved hands reached upward. Her muffled whisper ordered Aleck to follow. Their eyes burning and filled with tears from the heat, choking, they started upward.
CARRIE didn’t climb all the way to the roof. She halted a little below the square mouth of the c
himney, through which rain drizzled downward from the open air. Her light threw a tiny oval of brilliance on the steep walls that inclosed her.
Suddenly, she saw a white mark. It was an X scrawled in chalk. Carrie judged that it pointed toward a chamber midway between the attic and the roof. It was obviously an air space to provide insulation to the house. The fact that the local police had not discovered this air space above the attic was easily explained. The attic trapdoor had been nailed tight on the lower side. The police had taken things for granted. But to Carrie, the nailing of that trapdoor had been a significant clue.
Her voice brought Aleck higher on the rungs of the chimney ladder. He began to work in complete darkness to find a concealed mechanism that operated the chalk-marked brick.
Carrie’s open hand rested an inch or so below the chimney top. In her palm was a flat mirror from her vanity case. Tilting it slightly, she was able to view the thick bough of the oak tree that slanted across the peaked roof.
Presently, she saw a reflection in the mirror that stiffened her into alert attention. The wet leaves of the oak were spreading apart. A face peered downward! A sinister face with gray tousled hair and a stubbled chin. Peter—the house servant who had been discharged shortly before Clarence Baylor had disappeared.
An instant later, a knotted rope dangled from the oak. Peter began to descend.
Carrie retreated swiftly down the metal rungs of the chimney ladder.
Below her, Aleck uttered a low exclamation.
Carrie felt a fierce surge of relief as she realized the cause of Aleck’s excitement. He had found the secret of the chimney! A square section of brick had pivoted, disclosing utter blackness beyond.
Aleck’s palm had already assured him that there was a solid floor beyond the opening. He squeezed inward. With a lithe twist, Carrie followed. She shut the panel noiselessly behind them. A second later, she was on her feet, gun in hand. Aleck waited tensely in the darkness, for Carrie’s whisper warned him what to expect.
They heard the grunt of a man crawling through the panel opening. He rose to his feet. A match flared in his uplifted hand.
Peter’s eyes glared like a trapped animal as he saw the two detectives. The match fell to the floor and went out. But he had no chance to shoot. Aleck’s gun barrel struck against his skull. He hit the floor with a thump.
Carrie’s torch glowed briefly. It showed Peter, crumpled and unconscious. It showed other things that made Carrie leap to an electric-light switch on the slanting wall of the hidden chamber.
THE room appeared to be a queer combination of an office, a library and a laboratory. Books lined the shelves of a big bookcase. There was a desk under a metal-shielded lamp attached to a thick wire from the peak of the roof. A bed stood near by in an angle beneath the sloping eaves.
The body lay face-downward on the bed.
Aleck sprang forward and rolled the figure over on its back. It was Clarence Baylor! He was tied and gagged. His body looked emaciated and starved, in spite of the supply of canned goods and groceries piled on a table near by. Someone had viciously tortured him. There were burns extending upward along his bared arms from wrist to elbow.
But he was not dead. His eyelids fluttered feebly in the glare of an electric light.
Aleck started to release the captive. But Carrie checked him. Under her curt order, he swung back to the crook he had slugged. With Carrie’s help, he moved Peter. They rolled him under the bed. The hanging sheet at the side hid the unconscious kidnaper.
Aleck didn’t realize Carrie’s grim purpose until he saw her swift camouflage. She rolled up the blanket into a tight cylinder and shoved it lengthwise beneath the sheet. Then she punched the pillow into a tight ball and placed it partly under the sheet in a rough approximation of a sleeping man’s head.
She snapped out the light. With Aleck like a noiseless shadow at her side, she opened the chimney panel cautiously and peered down the black flue.
For a moment, nothing was visible but the distant red blaze of the grate. Then two arms appeared. They were the smooth slim arms of a woman. They were holding a pail of water. The fire hissed as the water sloshed over it.
The woman sprang inside the chimney. It was impossible to tell from above who she was. She began to climb swiftly. Once more, Carrie Cashin gently shut the panel.
The delay was nerve-racking. Not a sound came from the closed chimney. The climbing woman was as silent as a cat. They didn’t realize that she had opened the panel until they heard her panting breath and the faint thump of her knees on the board floor.
The woman rose lithely to her feet. She didn’t attempt to turn on the light. The floor creaked slightly in the darkness as she glided straight toward the bed where Peter was accustomed to sleep while he guarded the trussed prisoner.
The pale gleam of a knife lifted in the air. The woman drove it downward so savagely that she grunted when it stabbed the bundle in the bed. Her whisper of pitiless laughter made the hair prickle on Aleck’s scalp.
He had removed his shoes. He took a step forward in his stocking feet. Across the blackness of the chamber, he knew Carrie was doing the same.
The goal of the murderess was how the helpless body of Clarence Baylor. Her breath hissed as she again lifted the knife.
ALECK had no hesitation in driving his fist blindly against her jaw. The blow was a glancing one. The woman screamed and tumbled backward. She twisted on the floor with the lithe ferocity of a jungle cat.
In an instant, she was on her knees. Her knife slashed through the darkness at Aleck’s legs. He felt the cloth rip and leaped backward.
Then Carrie sprang from the rear. Her steady fingers closed without mercy on the throat of the murderess.
The two fell in a thrashing huddle. Teeth bit into Carrie’s arm. She lost her hold and the knife point drove toward her breast. Aleck caught at the plunging arm. This time he twisted until the blade tinkled on the floor. The sharp click of handcuffs put an end to the nightmare battle against the most dangerous woman Carrie had ever encountered.
In the darkness, Aleck’s voice was stony with horror.
“She tried to stab her own father! I suspected that damned black-haired she-devil from the very first.”
“Not black-haired,” Carrie said in a tired whisper. “If you turn on the light, I think you’ll discover she’s a blonde. Not Kate Baylor—but Marjorie! A ruthless blonde who went to the almost incredible length of marrying Baylor’s innocent son in order to worm her way into the family to steal what she was after.”
Aleck sprang to the light switch. Carrie’s prediction was correct. It was Ned Baylor’s treacherous wife. Her lovely face was contorted with fury as she stood helplessly fettered in steel handcuffs.
Carrie leaned over Clarence Baylor’s desk. She turned on the queerly shielded lamp that hung over it. It gave forth a leprous glow, half-greenish, half-purplish. Carrie knew it was a mercury lamp, the type used to detect secret writing, before she examined the books piled on the shelves of Clarence Baylor’s bookcase. The volumes were all treatises on cryptography.
“YOU’RE a foreign spy, aren’t you?” Carrie told Marjorie tonelessly. “Which continent do you serve—Europe or Asia?”
The woman spat, an oath. Aleck sprang to where Clarence Baylor lay and untied his bonds. When the gag fell from his mouth, he tried feebly to talk and couldn’t.
“You’re a government cipher expert?” Carrie asked him.
He nodded eagerly. Then he uttered a hoarse cry. Marjorie had raised her steel-cuffed hands to her mouth. Aleck tried to grab the gold pendant which the woman was crunching between her white teeth. The dangling pendant wasn’t gold at all, but enameled glass. Milky liquid spurted on the woman’s tongue. She swallowed convulsively.
Suddenly, she toppled; her head hit the floor with a thump. For a moment, she writhed, her silk-clad legs twisting horribly. She cried something in a foreign language which Carrie recognized, but Aleck didn’t.
She was dead almost bef
ore the words left her lips.
“You saw her grab for the locket,”
Aleck said dully to Carrie. “Why did you let her kill herself?”
“Because death is the best solution for her—and for the decent young man she married,” Carrie said harshly. “Ned Baylor is innocent. So is his sister Kate. The only criminals were this woman—and her partner, whom she just tried to murder in order to shut his mouth. We’ll prove it when we force Peter to confess. He’s the one who actually kidnaped Clarence Baylor.”
IT was some time before Baylor could talk clearly.
He was an ace decoding expert employed confidentially by the United States government. Captured diplomatic documents were sent to him from Washington. He had built the secret room above the attic to avoid suspicion of his real profession. He never went near Washington. Not even his own son or daughter had any knowledge of the real nature of his dangerous and patriotic work.
Baylor had suspected that Peter was a foreign spy, and had fired him. Peter had bided his time and had found a chance to enter the house from the roof. He slugged Baylor in the living room and carried him up the chimney to the secret laboratory above the attic. The crooks didn’t know that Baylor had actually destroyed the code message they were seeking. Baylor, knowing the peril that threatened him, had burned the paper after completely memorizing it.
Peter and Marjorie used starvation and torture on him to force him to produce the damning document. They didn’t know it existed only in Baylor’s trained memory. It was the complete air and naval plan of a nation overseas, which was almost ready to start a swift, undeclared war on the United States!
Carrie Cashin had forced a blow-off by her swift methods of detection. By pretending to suspect Kate and Ned, Carrie had encouraged the cunning Marjorie to try a double murder in order to hide her own guilt. Having descended quickly through the chimney, Marjorie would have tricked Ned and Kate into leaving their locked bedroom; then she would have signaled Carrie on the radiator pipe to arrest them. The soaked embers in the fireplace would have led to the discovery of the two bodies in the secret air chamber above the attic. Planted evidence would frame two innocent people.