The Washington Square Enigma

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  CHAPTER IX

  WHAT TRUDEL SAID

  SO GREAT was Harling’s surprise that he made no reply. Whereupon the girl spoke again, her questions rippling over each other: “How — how did you ever find me, Mr. Harling? I did not know that you even knew my name. And when did you get into Chicago? And what became of you that day when — when you carried me back to shore after that terrible struggle out in the bay?

  “Oh, how hard I tried to find you,” she went on, “to thank you for what you did. The life guard told me that he had heard you spoken of as Mr. Harling — Ford Harling — but I couldn’t find anyone by such a name in the San Francisco directory. And when I left the West to return home, I fully concluded that I was never to have the opportunity of thanking you in person.” She paused, surveying him smilingly. “Yet here you are, standing real and material in front of my eyes.”

  Harling heard her through before he answered her. Then he motioned her to a seat near by and when she had dropped into it, he sank into one himself.

  “Well, the fact of the matter is,” he began slowly, “that my name wasn’t in the Frisco directory because my landlady had given the last directory information just before I came to room with her. And as for why I didn’t look you up after — after the little episode — well, I didn’t want you to feel under any obligations. For, you see, after all I did only what anyone should have done who pretends to know how to swim. So I trust that explains everything to you, does it not?”

  Miss Vanderhuyden smiled sweetly at him, but even as she did so, Harling could detect a little, worried look on her face. “But how did you find me?” she asked curiously. “And what are you doing in Chicago, Mr. Harling?”

  He looked at her for a long time before he spoke. More and more he found it difficult to fathom just what sinister connection might exist between the golden-haired, doll-like girl with the aristocratic name, and the ugly scene back on Washington Square. But speak, he must. So he forged ahead bravely with his task.

  “Well, the truth of the matter is,” he replied reluctantly, “that when I rang your bell I never dreamed I was going to find myself face to face with the little girl who fought the waves with me that day in Frisco Bay.” At his statement her face showed profound puzzlement. “I came here on a different matter, Miss Vanderhuyden. I am in trouble. And that trouble, strange to say, is something connected with yourself. I’ve come to you to get you to help me — if you care to return that old favor which you seem to hold of some value.”

  “In trouble,” she repeated wonderingly. “In trouble? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.” Her eyes roved oddly down his wearing apparel, resting a bare second on the frayed ends of his trousers. Politely she withdrew them at once, but he flushed painfully under that momentary look. “But if you are in trouble, I surely will do everything in the world — anything in my power — to repay you what I owe you. Yet I don’t understand what you mean when you say you came here not knowing whom you were going to speak with.”

  “When I rang your bell,” he said, “I did not even know your name — Miss Trudel Vanderhuyden. In fact it was the servant who opened the door who gave me that unwittingly.” He paused. Then he asked abruptly: “Of course you have not read the papers — the extra edition which came out around four o’clock?”

  A sudden flash of white came over her features. He noted it. She leaned forward a trifle, tense. “No, I have not. I — I did not know there were any extra editions — at four o’clock. But I do not understand.”

  “Then you shall, Miss Vanderhuyden,” Harling said. “But I want you to understand that all I say is between the two of us only — that it will always be between the two of us; of that be assured.” He glanced about the room uneasily. “Is there anyone who might overhear me?”

  The girl shook her head: “No, no one. I am what you might call the mistress of the house.” She rose and stepping over to the door of the library, closed it softly. Then she returned to her chair and looked oddly at him, waiting, but saying nothing.

  Harling drew his chair closer to her and told her about the whole peculiar tangle that had come into his existence beginning with the life-saving episode in San Francisco Bay and ending with his flight from the restaurant just as he was on the verge of being arrested for passing a cleverly made but bogus five-dollar bill.

  Miss Vanderhuyden heard him through with rapt attention, her red lips slightly open, the tips of her even, white teeth barely showing, her hand lightly pressed to her breast.

  Finally he finished, adding: “So now, Miss Vanderhuyden, you can see what an unfortunate predicament I’m in — without money, without friends, and wanted by the police to explain a matter about which I know nothing, but about which, it appears, that I know something just because I was unlucky enough to have been trying to find this very man who has been killed. Indeed it was only through this Samuel Bond that I could ever have learned the final disposition of that envelope which the little, wizened old fellow addressed in my presence in the Frisco real estate office. That’s plain, I guess.”

  He paused: “So what can I do? I don’t want any explanations from you, Miss Vanderhuyden, regarding that green jade dragon which was clasped in your hand as you drove along Dearborn Avenue today in your machine. I don’t want you to tell me anything. All I want — all I ask — is that you give me refuge in some way until matters quiet down and I can slip away from Chicago. And after that?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, why worry until I come to it.”

  Apparently seeing that he had finished, Miss Vanderhuyden leaned forward and asked a question: “Mr. Harling, you say that the newspapers stated that the police were called in to investigate by one Courtenay Vandervoort, an intimate friend of the dead man’s?”

  Harling nodded.

  “Then,” Miss Vanderhuyden said grimly, “as to an explanation, one is surely — most surely — due you of all persons.” She sighed. “Yes, I left that house fifteen minutes before the police came down upon it, and I dare say I must have hurried down the front steps just about the time you were stepping in through the rear window. And when I left, I carried with me the head of that five-inch, ornamental hat pin which was plunged into Mr. Bond’s brain through his eye. But I also brought away with me knowledge which only I in the whole world possess, yet knowledge that I cannot give to the police.”

  CHAPTER X

  THE VANDERHUYDEN RUBY

  AT THE girl’s statement Harling leaned forward still further in his seat. “What is that knowledge?” he asked, eagerly.

  “That the name of the man who killed Bond is Courtenay Vandervoort, my own cousin,” she replied, “the same person who notified the police that Bond was missing.

  “Yes,” she continued before Harling could speak; “I left that house just fifteen minutes before the police entered it; and if I hadn’t gone there — ” She stopped abruptly.

  “You went there to regain that ornamental hat pin?” ventured Harling, interested. “But why — ” He stopped. “It’s all pretty bewildering to me. The paper said the police believe Bond went there himself to bargain with someone who held a — a — the Vanderhuyden ruby. The only ray of light I’ve seen so far in the darkness is that the name of that ruby is the same name as your own, Miss Vanderhuyden.”

  She nodded: “Yes, that ruby seems to be the cause of the whole unfortunate thing. Of course, being from San Francisco, you know nothing about that ruby; I dare say you’ve never even heard of it?”

  He shook his head.

  “It doesn’t take much to tell you about it, nor how it came to be in the hands of, not Miss Trudel Vanderhuyden, the rightful owner, but a total stranger, Samuel P. Bond of Evanston. The Vanderhuyden ruby, Mr. Harling, belonged originally to Grandfather Diederich Vanderhuyden who owned this estate and reared Court and myself. It was brought originally from the Kyat-Pyen Mine, northeast of Mandalay, Burma, in India, by an old Dutch adventurer far back in the Vanderhuyden side of the family. Mr. Harling, if you don’t know anything about ru
bies, you will be interested in learning that a ruby of ordinary red color, when it reaches five carats in weight, becomes ten times more valuable than a diamond of equal weight. And, in the case of the Vanderhuyden ruby — full of purple fire — ten carats in weight — why, experts say it is worth no less than one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “But why did Samuel P. Bond have it, then, if it belonged to the Vanderhuyden family?”

  “For this reason,” the girl went on; “when Grandfather died, two years ago, he left his estate about equally divided, half to Court and half to me. My half included this residence here; Court’s half included, as the will read, ‘all the personal jewelry belonging to Diederich Vanderhuyden.’ And, on account of that one little clause in the will, the purple ruby — the ruby that Grandfather had always told me was to stay in my branch of the family — went over into Court’s hands.

  “I dare say I don’t need to suggest what became of Court’s legacy from Grandfather. Bit by bit it slipped away from him. Jewel after jewel he had sold or pawned. That” — she blushed deeply — ”was one of the reasons why — why I could not keep a certain promise to him to be his wife.” She stopped, then hurried on: “And when the news came to me that the Vanderhuyden ruby itself was going to be purchased by Samuel P. Bond, senior, Court’s friend in Evanston, I immediately secured a lawyer and served a legal notice on Bond that he was buying it as a forewarned purchaser.”

  Harling’s brows contracted in a puzzled frown: “I don’t quite understand. Why was it necessary for you legally to warn this man Bond?”

  “I will explain,” Trudel replied. “First, however, as to my cousinship with Court. There is no actual blood relationship, because Court was formally adopted into the Vandervoort branch of the family. There was no bar to our marriage.” She paused. “And, as to serving notice on Bond — you see after Grandfather died, a Chicago lawyer came to me and told me he himself had drawn up a codicil to Grandfather’s will which stated explicitly that the Vanderhuyden ruby was not to go to Court with the other jewelry and personal property, but was to remain with me. This will, it appears, had been legally witnessed, yet it had not been in Grandfather’s safety box when it was opened. I had all the proofs of its existence but I did not have the one vital thing of all, the will itself.

  “I always continued in hope that the will would turn up sometime, and that I could regain that stone before Court sold it to some innocent purchaser. At any rate, when information came to me that Samuel P. Bond, senior, Court’s friend in Evanston, was going to purchase it, I served notice on him legally that a will — at least a codicil to the original will — was known to be in existence somewhere; that if he purchased the stone, he did so at his own risk, since the law would compel him to give it up if that will were ever found.”

  “But he purchased it on a gamble anyway?” asked Harling. “And — and this will finally turned up?”

  “Yes. Bond paid Court twenty-five thousand dollars for the Vanderhuyden ruby, which was worth four times that amount, purely on the chance that the codicil would never turn up. And Court, I understand, took the money eagerly, for it was hardly likely that he could find another purchaser who would gamble on the contingency. Now, as to the paper itself: Indeed, it did turn up finally. It was inside one of the horns of that deer head over there.” She pointed to the wall where a great deer head hung, with protruding antlers. “The horns are hollow: each one unscrews. An interior decorator who was fixing up the house discovered the fact, and a whole mass of private papers at the same time.”

  “And did you take immediate steps to reclaim this jewel from the man Bond?” asked Harling. “He had no business in buying it when he was forewarned of the legal complication which existed. To my mind he deserved to lose it.”

  “Of course he did,” she admitted. “The moment that the will turned up, my lawyer took immediate measures to have it put into the probate court; also he took out papers enjoining Bond from selling the stone or otherwise disposing of it in any way. This was two weeks ago.” She rose quickly from her chair and stepped over to a little escritoire, where she fumbled in a small drawer and took out a clipping. She brought it over to Harling, and put it into his hands, at the same time snapping on an electric lamp. “But two nights after the injunction was served, something unusual happened. Read for yourself. This was clipped from an Evanston paper.”

  Harling eagerly turned his attention to the clipping. Its printed words ran:

  CLEVER CROOK BLOWS SAFE IN WEALTHY EVANSTONIAN’S HOME

  SAMUEL P. BOND, SENIOR, LOSES THE FAMOUS VANDERHUYDEN RUBY WHICH HE ONLY RECENTLY PURCHASED

  Mr. Samuel P. Bond, senior, of this city, was the victim of safe crackers who entered his North Shore residence last night and opened his safe with a charge of nitroglycerin. The men got away safely.

  Mr. Bond had been holding a house party at his residence, among the guests of which were numerous celebrities, including a famous movie star, and Mazzoli, the opera tenor and widely known radio star. While the gentlemen were smoking in the library after dinner, Mr. Bond passed around the famous Vanderhuyden purple ruby which he had purchased only recently from his friend, Mr. Courtenay Vandervoort, one of the heirs of old Diederich Vanderhuyden, of Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. In the presence of all the gentlemen in the library he locked the stone in the safe; but during the night, the cracksmen entered and got away with the stone that had formed such an interesting exhibit at the house party. Both Evanston and Chicago police have searched the outlying grounds for clues, but beyond the fact that the actual job itself was the work of a skilled safe blower, they are at a loss as to the identity of the perpetrator. Footprints show that the man or men escaped in the direction of Calvary Cemetery, lying just between Chicago and Evanston; but this is the extent of the present information.

  Harling held the clipping in his hand a moment, as if studying its contents.

  CHAPTER XI

  A THEORY

  WHEN Harling looked up, the girl went on speaking:

  “At first I didn’t dream but that this safe-blowing incident was a bona-fide criminal incident, much as I mourned the fact that the order I was to get from the courts of the law, compelling Bond to give up the stone, would not now be worth the paper it was written on. But something — some information — came to me which caused me to be certain that the whole thing was nothing more or less than a plot to get rid of the ruby without violating the court orders enjoining its disposal.”

  “And what was that?”

  “You saw Santi — Santiago Alcayaga — my servant — as you came in?” Harling nodded. “Well, Santiago came to me, a total stranger, the day after the robbery was committed at Bond’s home in Evanston. He told me, in his broken English, that he had been discharged by Bond for listening at the keyhole of the latter’s library door. But the main thing about his information — the thing which caused me to give Santi a permanent position in the house here — was that, only that afternoon, just before the house party, Bond had had a long talk in his library with a tall, dark, ugly-looking man, in which the words ‘safe,’ ‘Trudel Vanderhuyden,’ and ‘ruby’ were mentioned. And Santi, discharged from Bond’s employ, had come to me and told me just what he knew. The upshot of it was that I went to my lawyer, got the name of a clever private investigator of this city, and put the whole matter into the hands of this man. And Mr. Phelps Morningstar, my investigator, shadowed Bond for a number of days, discovering a mighty peculiar thing, and one which showed that Bond was playing something underneath the board.”

  “I can guess that your investigator determined that Bond was going regularly to one of those deserted houses on Washington Square,” put in Harling. “Am I right?”

  She nodded. “Yes. At promptly fifteen minutes to three every afternoon, Bond walked up the steps of No. 63 Delaware Place, opened the door with a key, and went inside. And about an hour later he emerged and went on up to the city or back to his Evanston home.”

  Harling whistled softly: “Th
e thing is more than clear. From some peculiar connections, he had made an arrangement with some crook to crack that safe into which the ruby had been deposited before a good many pair of eyes, to steal the stone and to return it for some valuable consideration. Indeed, the thing was not of a nature to be easily disposed of by any ordinary crook.” He paused, staring at the crackling grate fire. “He had already provided his accomplice with a key to the place, and if he himself went into this deserted house every day at about fifteen minutes to three, it’s a rather safe guess that he and the crook had arranged to meet there about three o’clock, on whatever day following the robbery the crook himself could reach there with safety.” Harling thought for a moment. “But now, Miss Vanderhuyden, the ornamental hat pin — the murder? I should feel inclined to think that this crook was the one who killed Bond, rather than your cousin, Courtenay Vandervoort. But perhaps I don’t know all the circumstances.”

  She shook her head: “Then let me explain about the ornamental hat pin. Mr. Morningstar and I held several consultations after he had ascertained Bond’s suspicious movements. We decided that if this crook were to meet Bond in the deserted house at Number 63, and pass back the ruby, two things were absolutely necessary: First, that someone should overhear fully any transaction which might take place in the room where the old table and chair stood; second, that whoever left the house should be shadowed to his destination, so that he might be arrested later. Mr. Morningstar wanted to make arrangements for bringing in a second man in the case, but I would not hear of it. So the upshot of it all was that I myself offered to go every day to that deserted house about an hour ahead of Bond, take up a position in that dark clothes closet off the front room, and overhear anything that might be said. And Mr. Morningstar was to be in readiness to follow any new face that should sooner or later come out.”