CHAPTER V
IN THE CELLAR
On the morning following, Frank Weston started out on a longer hike than he had as yet undertaken. Ever since Teller had quartered himself at the old Jarvis place, he had been free to wander about and enjoy himself digging clams, or fishing for cunners, swimming in the bracing Atlantic, or simply taking a brisk walk. Annie no longer felt nervous, if his absences were not prolonged. She felt a little natural apprehension lest he meet up with the desperado in some lonesome spot; but so far he had committed all his outrages in the blackness of night.
On his tramps, Weston always carried his automatic; and when down on the beach, he had practiced with it, shooting at bits of driftwood. Teller also had a gun which he carried loose in the side pocket of his coat. There was no part of the twenty-four hours when Annie was not, as she and Weston both felt, adequately protected.
On this bright morning, Frank purposed to pay a visit to the looted cottage. This was several miles down the shore; and owing to the fact that the shore line was not straight, but wound in and out and was broken by many little estuaries, it took him some three hours to arrive.
There wasn’t much to see; a caretaker had been installed, the place had been cleaned up, and a list of the things stolen proved to be not very serious. Nothing of much value save the radio outfit and some good rugs and pictures had been left in the cottage over the winter. The caretaker welcomed him, the time dragging somewhat in this remote place; and he went over the house, but found little to interest him. So, after giving the man a handful of cigars, and thanking him, he started back for home, this time taking to the highway in order to save time and arrive for dinner.
He had proceeded less than half a mile when a swiftly driven touring car passed him. Directly after, it slowed down, and the man who was not driving turned and waved a hand at him.
Sheriff Thomas sat in the tonneau; Frank noticed that his face was grim and unshaven. He opened the door, beckoned. “Can I give you a lift? You’re a long way from home!”
“Took a notion to run down and look over the Barnard cottage,” Weston explained. “I like to get all the exercise I can these fine days.”
Thomas nodded gloomily. “I have some serious news which you probably haven’t heard,” he said as the driver started on again.
“Another assault?”
“Murder, this time. Just found the body early this morning. It was taken over to Allsworth about an hour ago.”
Weston paled. “Who was it? The victim, I mean?”
Thomas nervously rolled the unlighted cigar between his lips. “Man named Teller. Sanford Teller, a Wallis operative.”
Weston’s mouth opened soundlessly. It was a full moment before he could collect himself enough to speak. When he did so, his voice sounded harsh and dry like a gear that needed oiling. “H-how did you know who it was? Did you find identifying papers on him?”
Thomas turned in his seat, and looked at his passenger in surprise. “Why, no. As a matter of fact, his pockets had been turned inside out. There was nothing identifying on him; I knew who it was because Teller was sent up here to help run down the wild man! Matter of fact, outside of the district attorney and his assistant and myself, nobody knew he was up here at all. I hadn’t even told my deputy. He was working along his own lines.”
“And you say this—Teller was killed this morning?”
“I did not say so. I said his body was found this morning. The medical examiner stated that he had been dead not less than twenty-four hours.”
A darkness seemed to have closed in about Weston. In it his mind groped uncertainly. Not yet could he reason clearly; the nameless terror that stole upon him was still undefined, without logic. When he spoke again, his voice was hardly more than a whisper so that the sheriff had to lean toward him to catch what he said.
“Sanford Teller—the Wallis operative—he has been staying in my house four days; and—”
The unlighted cigar dropped from Thomas’ lips. “What’s that?” he cried sharply. “What are you saying?”
Weston roused himself with an effort, as a drugged man forces himself back to the realities of life. “He said that nobody was to know he had been called in, only the district attorney who sent for him. I was above all not to mention his presence to you. And he had papers, a card and a shield—but this other, the man you knew as Teller, have you really any clue as to who killed—”
Sheriff Thomas took from a pocket a small card bearing the photograph of a man in three sections, a full front, and two profiles. Below were a few lines of coarse print which danced before Weston’s groggy eyes. But the face that he gazed upon was that of the man who had been his guest for the past few days, the man who was even now in the same house with Annie, miles away—
He covered his face with his trembling hands, and called upon God to have mercy upon him, to permit him to arrive in time!
“Can’t your man drive faster?” he gasped. “My wife—alone there with—”
The sheriff interrupted him harshly. “With the man whose rogue’s gallery photograph I just showed you? And you took him in, and hid him, and never told me—”
“But I just said that he explained that it was imperative that his presence remain a secret! That you—the local police—”
“That we were a lot of hick cops, I suppose,” put in Thomas. “That we would fall down on the case, and if we knew he was here would crab his game! Was that it? I thought so! Well, Weston, let me tell you something. While you have been sheltering a dangerous maniac, the hick cops went quietly ahead, got fingerprints, sent them on to Boston, and just got this man’s full record. A lifer from the Bedford Asylum for the criminally insane; escaped a month ago; lived only a few miles away from Fast Harbor as a lad, but not under the name he has used since. True, we haven’t got him yet; but he can’t elude us much longer. No wonder he fooled us, with you sheltering him every night!”
“Days,” murmured the stricken Weston. “He never went out till after dark. And he told us what progress he was making. Only this morning showed us a necklace of gold beads—”
“Which he himself stole from the Bronson woman! Just as he stole Teller’s credentials after murdering him and concealing his body in the swamp where only by the barest chance it would ever have been found!”
“Don’t rub it in, now!” begged Weston. “Just hurry! If only God will let me find Annie alive—”
The harsh lines faded a little from Thomas’ face. He shook the other’s arm with rough kindliness. “Pull yourself together, man! He’s far too cunning to touch her. Why, you’re the best bet he has! Safe and snug at your place, he can sneak out nights and rob and assault and murder to his heart’s content. And we are already driving twice as fast as it’s safe to do.”
After a moment he added: “I must say, though, that you haven’t shown that sound judgment I gave you credit for! I’m a countryman, and there’s a lot about crooks that I don’t know. But after all, I’m sheriff of this county, and in full charge. Wallis wouldn’t dream of sending an operative up here without having him report to me. The fact that he didn’t report either to me or to headquarters yesterday, worried me; and my men have been looking for Teller as much as they have for Schmidt. That’s what your man calls himself when he is among friends.”
Weston had no heart for a reply. What a cursed fool he had been! To swallow the story of a lunatic, and to aid and abet him at the very time he was carrying on his reign of terror! That story about finding the gold beads in Jason Hodge’s house; why, anybody with the slightest ability to estimate character would know that Jason was the salt of the earth! While Teller—Schmidt—he was too smooth, too plausible. At that, he seemed more the type who went in for phony stock promotions than for red-handed murder! Probably these spells came on him from time to time; perhaps between his outbreaks he was perfectly normal; didn’t even recall them! But Frank was in a state of frenzy meantime; for, suppose one of the attacks of homicidal mania would seize him this ver
y day? Alone there, with Annie!
An exclamation from the sheriff caused him to open anguished eyes, to look up. Thomas was pointing far up the road, where a slim woman’s figure could be made out, running stumblingly toward them, waving her hands.
“There she is! That’s Annie now!” shouted Weston, and would have leaped from the fast-moving car had the sheriff not clamped an iron hand about his biceps.
“Think you can outrun us? Get a grip on yourself! We’ll be up with her in thirty seconds!”
The brakes were applied, and with a screech and a smell of hot rubber, they came to a stop beside the panting woman. She was bareheaded, breathless; but despite the look of terror in her eyes, she was unhurt.
“Where is he? Did he get away?” demanded Thomas, the instinct of the man-hunter uppermost.
“N-no! He’s locked up—” Annie had time for nothing more before Frank leaped to the roadside and crushed her in his arms, sobbing like a child.
Almost indignantly she pushed him away. “Frank! Behave yourself! This isn’t a petting party, and I’m all right! Let me answer Mr. Thomas!”
It was the big sheriff who pried her loose, lifted her into the tonneau, and almost before Weston had seated himself again, the car jumped forward.
“Now, Mrs. Weston! I begin to have hopes that you have more of a headpiece than your husband. You say Schmidt is locked up? In your house?”
She turned a troubled face to him. “Schmidt?” she repeated. “Is that his name? Well, it doesn’t matter. I just knew that he wasn’t a detective, and so I locked him up.”
“Yes, but how? He’s gone by this time, that’s a safe bet. But we’re right on his trail now, and I swear we’ll have the twisters on him before another day.”
Mrs. Weston smoothed her rumpled hair, “I don’t know just what it was that made me suspicious of him! I guess it was the cat, at first. Cats are psychic; everybody knows that! They sense things that we don’t. And Romeo never could endure him! Wouldn’t set foot—paw I mean—into the house while he was there, I had always to put its saucer of milk outside—”
The sheriff interrupted. “Never mind the cat, Mrs. Weston. We’ll see that it gets a medal, later on. Please proceed!”
“Well, he wasn’t one bit like what a real detective ought to be! Oh, I never met one, of course, but I’ve read heaps of detective and mystery stories in magazines! And this Sanford Teller, as he called himself, didn’t have one single trait like them! He didn’t wear a thick, glossy black mustache, or chew a big black cigar, nor stamp around in thick-soled, square-toed boots, nor anything. And no detective would talk so freely about his clues as this man did. Of course, I didn’t really suspect him at first; if I had, I should have told Frank. It was only that these things were sort of mulling in my mind. And this morning, with Frank going for such a long walk, I got to thinking of everything while I was washing the dishes; and suddenly, I saw that everything he had told us would fit the bandit just as well as it did him! Yes, even better. That gold chain; the bandit would have it, and he might show it and pretend that he found it in Mr. Hodge’s writing desk, just to throw us off the track. Besides, I had been in the Hodge house, and they haven’t got any old writing desk! And so it was with everything else that he called a clue; if he was the bandit, he’d have all these things on him; and as for the papers and things that seemed to prove he was a detective, why he might easily have forged them!”
Annie paused to draw breath. The car swerved to the right, and onto the road which, a mile ahead, passed the old Jarvis place. Thomas glanced at Weston. “Looks to me,” he said, “as if the little woman was the thinking partner in your concern!”
Weston had the grace to blush, but made no answer save to squeeze his wife’s hand.
“Well, it was just when I was beginning to work myself up into a real panic, that I heard a little noise behind me; and turning, there stood Teller—or whatever his name is—in the doorway! I thought he was sound asleep in the parlor, but there he stood, in his shirt sleeves, and with the queerest, the most awful look in his eyes as he stared at me! Oh! If I could have moved, I’d have run out of the house; but it seemed as if my legs had petrified, I just stood there and stared back. And then—I don’t know how ever I managed it—I smiled at him, as naturally as I could, and said: ‘Oh, Mr. Teller! My hands are all soapsuds; and would you mind just going down cellar and bringing up that ham that hangs from an iron hook? I want to parboil it for dinner!’
“Well, for a full minute—and it seemed years and years—he just stood there, staring at me; but little by little that strange light in his eyes died out, and he spoke as politely as could be. You know, Frank, he always was the politest thing? So unlike you, that it was suspicious in itself! And then he turned and went down the cellar stairs, and the minute I heard his feet on the cement floor, I rushed across the room and slammed the door and bolted it! And then I ran into his room, and took his pistol from his coat pocket, and ran and ran as fast as I could, down the road straight toward Jed Hooper’s!”
She was wearing a short kitchen apron; and from its wide pocket she removed a squatty .45 gun and handed it to the sheriff.
“Mrs. Weston,” he said solemnly, “my hat is off to you! If ever you need a job, you can be my deputy for life. But we certainly won’t find that bird in any common ordinary cellar, when we get there!”
“Oh, but you will, Mr. Thomas! Ours isn’t an ordinary cellar at all, is it, Frank? It hasn’t any windows, only little slits a cat would have to squeeze to get through; and it is all stone and cement, and that kitchen door is just one tremendous oak plank, with a staple that some village blacksmith must have made before the Mexican War! He never could get out without tools or dynamite; and there were neither in the cellar. But I do hope he hasn’t broken my lovely jars of pickles and peach plums and quince jelly and things. You know, Mr. Thomas, he is so destructive, that is, if he is the man you are hunting for?”
“He’s the man all right,” Thomas said, “And if he’s still in that cellar, I’ll see that the county replaces any pickles and jellies he’s wrecked! Far as that goes, the neighbors will swamp you with homemade goodies soon as they hear he’s a prisoner.”
Their house was already in sight; it looked peaceful in the full flood of noonday sunshine, and to add to the homey appearance, Romeo sat on the doorstep, washing his face.
As the car stopped, and the four piled out almost simultaneously, Annie spoke again. “I don’t hear him, and when I left he was yelling like a madman, and hammering on the door!”
Led by the sheriff, they entered the house. Not a sound greeted them save the ticking of the clock, and the friendly song of the teakettle. Peering cautiously around the door jamb, Thomas noted that the stout oak door leading down to the cellar still held. It was not even sprung. He crossed the floor; the iron staple was fast. He turned to speak to Frank, who was at his heels.
“Well, the door held! And unless he’s dug himself out, he’s still down there.”
He leaned his head close against the sturdy plank, and called: “It’s all up, Schmidt! Save yourself trouble by giving up quietly. You haven’t a chance!”
There was no reply from below.
Again, louder still, Thomas called, placing his lips to the crack by the stout hinges. “I’m opening the door, Schmidt! And you’re covered by three guns. The first false move, and we’ll drill ye like a sieve!”
Still no answer.
The sheriff turned his head again. There was a little pallor beneath his tan, but his voice was steady, “Take your wife out of the room, Weston! Don’t want any stray bullets to get her. And you might as well go, too. Your duty don’t call you to horn into this; mine does.”
Half reluctantly, but dragged by his wife, Weston stepped back over the line of possible fire, and into the living room. The sheriff’s man crossed the kitchen and took his place by his side. Both held heavy service revolvers cocked in their right hands.
“Give me your pocket torch, Jim,”
Thomas said. “You throw the door wide open, and then cover it from the side.”
The man nodded. There was a harsh scrape as the rusty iron staple gave, and suddenly the door stood wide flung. Down the dark stairs flamed the beam from the sheriff’s flashlight.
After a moment, he spoke without turning his head.
“Nobody in sight. Well, I’m not exactly looking forward to this, but it’s all a part of a sheriff’s job!”
His heavy boot was planted on the topmost step. And, swinging his pocket torch in narrow arcs, illuminating every corner of the dark cellar as he advanced, his revolver held at the cock, he slowly; descended to the cement vault in which presumably, a maniac lurked ready to sell his life for the best price he could exact.
There came to those who waited above, their breaths held almost to suffocation, the pulses singing in their arteries, an astonished cry from Joe Thomas. “By thunder! Jim, come down here!”
Not only the deputy, but Frank Weston and his wife piled forward, something in the sheriff’s voice telling them that there was nothing more to fear.
Nor was there. In the center of the little, snug, dry cellar, a great shelf of preserves and jellies swung gently to and fro. At one side of the cellar, something else swayed slightly, turning ever so little from side to side. Something suspended from the iron hook to which, a half hour ago, a smoked ham had been made fast.
It was their genial guest of the past four days, who, finding himself a helpless prisoner, had removed his leather belt, and hanged himself!
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DIAMOND NECKLACE, by G. F. Forrest
As I pushed open the door, I was greeted by the strains of a ravishing melody. Warlock Bones was playing dreamily on the accordion, and his keen, clear-cut face was almost hidden from view by the dense smoke-wreaths, which curled upwards from an exceedingly filthy briar-wood pipe. As soon as he saw me, he drew a final choking sob from the instrument, and rose to his feet with a smile of welcome.
The Mystery Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Mystery Stories Page 32