The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  “My mother, who has hip trouble and cannot go up or downstairs without help; my ward, Iris Pierce, who had gone to her room to take a nap and was so sound asleep upon her bed that when they went for her twenty minutes later she was aroused with difficulty; my old colored nurse, Ulame, whom you must have seen pass through here a moment ago; and the cook, who was in the back part of the house. The gardener, who was the only other person anywhere about the place, had been busy in the conservatory, but about a quarter to three went to sweep a light snowfall from the walks. Fifteen minutes later my mother in her bedroom in the north wing heard the door bell; but no one went to the door.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Besides my mother, who was helpless, and Iris who was in her room, only the cook and Ulame, as I have just said, were in the house, and each of them, expecting the other to answer, waited for a second ring. It is certain that neither went to the door.”

  “Then the bell did not ring again?”

  “No; it rang only once. Yet almost immediately after the ringing the woman was inside the house; for my mother heard her voice distinctly and—”

  “A moment, please!” Trant stopped him. “In case the person was not admitted at the front door, which I assume was locked, was there any other possibility?”

  “One other. The door was locked; but, the day before, the catch of one of the French windows opening upon the porch had been bent so that it fastened insecurely. The woman could easily have entered that way.”

  “But the fact of the catch would not be evident from outside—it would be known only to some one familiar with the premises?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now the voice your mother heard—it was a strange voice?”

  “Yes; a very shrill, excited voice of a child or a woman—she could not be sure which—but entirely strange to her.”

  “Shrill and excited, as if arguing with some one else?”

  “No; that was one remarkable part of it; she seemed rather talking to herself. Besides there was no other voice.”

  “But in spite of its excited character, your mother could be sure it was the voice of a stranger?” Trant pressed with greater precision.

  “Yes. My mother has been confined to her room so much that her ability to tell a person’s identity by the sound of the voice or footsteps has been immensely developed. There could be no better evidence than hers that this was a strange voice and that it was in the south wing. She thought at first that it was the voice of a frightened child. Two or three loud screams were uttered by the same voice, and were repeated at intervals during all that followed. There was noise of thumping or pounding, which I believe to have been occasioned in opening the study door. Then, after a brief interval, came the noise of breaking glass, and, at the end of another short interval, a smell of burning.”

  “The screams continued?”

  “At intervals, as I have said. My mother, when the screams first reached her, hobbled to the electric bell which communicates from her room to the servants’ quarters and rang it excitedly. But it was several minutes before her ringing brought the cook up the back stairs.”

  “But the screams were still going on?”

  “Yes. Then they were joined in the upper hall by Ulame.”

  “They still heard screams?”

  “Yes; the three women crouched at the head of the stairs listening to them. Then Ulame ran to the rear window and called the gardener, who had almost finished sweeping the rear walks; and the cook, crossing the hall to the second floor of the south wing, aroused Iris, whom, as I said, she found so soundly asleep that she was awakened with difficulty. My mother and I have rooms in the north wing, Iris and Ulame in the south. Iris had heard nothing of the disturbance, and was amazed at their account of it. They were joined by the gardener, and the four who were able descended to the first floor together. The cook ran immediately to the front door, which, she found, remained closed and locked with its spring lock. The others went straight on into the south wing, where she at once followed them. They found the museum filled with an acrid haze of smoke, and the door of the study closed. They could still hear through the closed door the footsteps and movements of the woman in the study.”

  “But no more screams?” asked Trant.

  “No, only footsteps, which were plainly audible to all four. You can imagine, Trant, that with three excited women and the gardener, who is not a courageous man, several moments were wasted in listening to these sounds and in discussion. Then the gardener pushed open the door. The glass front of the cabinet in which my papers were kept had been broken, and a charred mass, still smoking, in the center of the composition floor of the study was all that we could find of the papers which represented my father’s and my own life work, Mr. Trant. The woman whose footsteps only the instant before had been heard in the study by Iris and the gardener besides the others, had completely disappeared, in spite of the fact that there was no possible place for a woman, or even a child, to conceal herself in the study, or to leave it except by the door which the others entered!”

  “And they found no other marks or indications of the person’s presence except those you have mentioned?”

  “No, Mr. Trant, they found—at that time—absolutely none,” Pierce replied, slowly. “But when I returned that night and myself was able to go over the room carefully with Iris, I found—this, Mr. Trant,” he thrust a hand into his pocket, and extended it with a solitary little egg-shaped stone gleaming upon his palm—“this, Mr. Trant,” he repeated, staring at the little, blazing crystal egg as though fascinated, “the mere sight of which cast such an extraordinary ‘spell’ upon my ward, Iris, that, after these two days, trying to puzzle it out sanely myself, I was unable to bear the strain of it a moment longer, and wrote you as I did last night, in the hope that you—if anyone—might be able to advise me.”

  “So this is the little green stone!” Trant took it carefully from his client’s palm and examined it. “The little green stone of which the negress was speaking to Miss Iris when you came in! You remember the door was open!”

  “Yes; that is the little green stone!” Pierce cried. “The chalchihuitl stone; the green turquoise of Mexico. The first sight of it struck Iris dumb and dull-eyed before me and started this strange, this baffling, inexplicable apathy toward me! Tell me, how can this be?”

  “You would hardly have called even me in, I presume,” Trant questioned quietly, “if you thought it possible that this stone,” he handed it back, “told her who was in the room and that it was a woman who could come between you and your ward?”

  “Scarcely, Mr. Trant!” Pierce flushed. “You can dismiss that absolutely. I told you a moment ago, when trying to think who could have come to ruin my work, that I have no enemy—least of all a woman enemy. Nor have I a single woman intimate, even a friend, whom Iris could possibly think of in that way.”

  “Will you take me, then, to the rooms where these things happened?” Trant rose abruptly.

  “This is the way the woman must have come,” Pierce indicated as he pointed Trant into the hall and let him see the arrangement of the house before he led him on.

  The young psychologist, from his exterior view of the place, had already gained some idea of the interior arrangement; but as he followed Pierce from the library down the main hall, he was impressed anew by the individuality of the rambling structure. The main body of the house, he saw, had evidently been built some forty or fifty years ago, before Lake Forest had become the most fashionable and wealthy suburb to the north of Chicago; but the wings had been added later, one apparently to keep pace with the coming of the more pretentious country homes about it, the other more particularly to provide place for exhibiting the owner’s immense collection of Central American curiosities.

  So the wide entrance hall, running half-way through the house, divided at the center into the hallways of the two wings. At the entranc
e to the north wing, the main stairs sprang upward in the graceful sweep of southern Colonial architecture; while, opposite, the hall of the south wing was blocked part way down by a heavy wall with but one flat-topped opening.

  “A fire wall, Mr. Trant, and automatic closing fire doors,” Pierce explained, as they passed through them. “This portion of the south wing, which we call the museum wing, is a late addition, absolutely fireproof.”

  “It was from the top of the main stairs, if I have understood you correctly,” Trant glanced back as he passed through the doorway, “that the women heard the screams. But this stair,” he pointed to a narrow flight of steps which wound upward from a little anteroom beyond the flat-topped opening, “this is certainly not what you called the back stairs. Where does this lead?”

  “To the second floor of the museum wing, Mr. Trant.”

  “Ah! Where Miss Pierce, and,” he paused reflectively, “the colored nurse have their bedrooms.”

  “Exactly.”

  They crossed the anteroom and entered the museum. A ceiling higher in the museum than in any other part of the house gave space for high, leaded, clear-glass windows. Under them, ranged on pedestals or fastened to the wall were original carvings or plaster casts of the grotesque gods of the Maya mythology; death’s-heads symbolic of their cruel religion, and cabinets of stone and wooden implements and earthen vessels, though by far the greater number of the specimens were reproductions of hieroglyphic inscriptions, each separate glyph forming a whimsical square cartouche. But the quick glance of the psychologist passed all these almost without noting, and centered itself upon an object in the middle of the room. On a low pedestal stood one of the familiar Central American stones of sacrifice, with grooved channels to carry away the blood, and rounded top designed to bend backward the body of the human victim while the priest, with one quick cut, slew him; and before it, staring at this stone, as though no continuance of familiarity could make her unaffected by it, stood the slender, graceful, dark-haired, dark-skinned girl of whom the psychologist had caught just a glimpse through the door of the morning room when he entered.

  “My ward, Miss Pierce, Mr. Trant,” Pierce introduced them as she turned. “Mr. Trant is here to make an investigation into the loss of my papers, Iris.”

  “Oh!” said the girl, without interest, “then I’ll not interrupt you. I was only looking for Ulame. Mr. Trant,” she smiled brightly at the psychologist, “don’t you think this room is beautiful in the morning sunlight?”

  “Come, Trant,” Pierce passed his hand across his forehead, as he gazed at the girl’s passionless face, “the study is at the other end of the museum.” But the psychologist, with his gray eyes narrowing with interest, his red hair rumpled by an energetic gesture, stood an instant observing her; and she flushed deeply.

  “I know why it is you look at me in that way, Mr. Trant,” she said, simply. “I know, of course, that a woman has burned Richard’s papers, for I saw the ashes; besides I myself looked for the papers afterwards and could not find them. You are thinking that I believe there is something between Richard and the woman who took this revenge because we were going to be married; but it is not so—I know Richard has never cared for any other woman than myself. There is something I do not understand. Why, loving Richard as I did, did I not care at all about the papers? Why, since I saw that little green stone, am I indifferent whether he loves me in that way or not? Why do I feel now that I cannot marry him? Has the stone bewitched me—the stone, the stone, Mr. Trant! It seems crazy to think such a thing, though I know no other reason; and if I said so, no one—least of all you, Mr. Trant, a man of science—would believe me!”

  “On the contrary, Miss Pierce, you will find that I will be the first, not the last, to recognize that the stone could exercise upon you precisely the influence you have described!”

  “What is that? What is that?” Pierce exclaimed in surprise.

  “I would rather see the study, if you please, Dr. Pierce,” Trant bowed kindly to the girl as he turned to his client, “before being more explicit.”

  “Very well,” Pierce pushed open the door and entered, clearly more puzzled by Trant’s reply than before. The study was long and narrow, running across the whole end of the south wing; and, like the museum, had plain burlap-covered walls without curve or recess of any sort; and like the museum, also, it was lighted by high, leaded windows above the cases and shelves. The single door was the one through which they had entered; and the furniture consisted only of a desk and table, two chairs, and—along the walls—cabinets and cases of drawers and pigeonholes whose fronts carried labels denoting their contents. To furnish protection from dust, the cabinets all were provided with sliding glass doors, locking with a key. The floor of the study was of the same fireproof composition as that of the museum, and a black smudge near its center still showed where the papers had been burned. The room had neither fireplace nor closet.

  “There is surely no hiding place for anyone here, and we must put that out of the question,” the young psychologist commented when his eye had taken in these details.

  Then he stepped directly to the cabinet against the end wall, whose broken glass showed that it was the one in which the papers had been kept, and laid his hand upon the sliding door. It slipped backward and forward in its grooves easily.

  “The door is unlocked,” he said, with slight surprise. “It certainly was not unlocked at the time the glass was broken to get at the papers?”

  “No,” Pierce answered, “for before leaving for Chicago that Wednesday, I carefully locked all the cabinets and put the key in the drawer of my desk where it is always kept. But that is not the least surprising part of this affair, Mr. Trant. For when Iris and the servants entered the room, the cabinet had been unlocked and the key lay on the floor in front of it. I can account for it only by the supposition that the woman, having first broken the glass in order to get at the papers, afterwards happened upon the key and unlocked the cabinet in order to avoid repeatedly reaching through the jagged edges of the glass.”

  “And did she also break off this brass knob which was used in sliding the door back and forth, or had that been done previously?” inquired the psychologist.

  “It was done at the same time, in attempting to open the door before the glass was broken, I suppose.”

  Trant picked up the brass knob, which had been laid on the top of the cabinet, and examined it attentively. It had been secured by a thin bolt through the frame of the door, and in coming loose, the threads of the bolt, which still remained perfectly straight, had been stripped off, letting the nut fall inside the cabinet.

  “This is most peculiar,” he commented—“and interesting.” Suddenly his eyes flashed comprehension. “Dr. Pierce, I am afraid your explanation does not account for the condition of the cabinet.” He swung about, minutely inspecting the room anew, and with a sharp and comprehensive glance measuring the height of the windows.

  “You were certainly correct in saying that no child or woman could escape from this room in any other way than by the door, Dr. Pierce,” he exclaimed. “But could not a man—a man more tall and lithe and active than either you or I—make his escape through one of those windows and drop to the walk below without harm?”

  “A man, Trant? Yes; of course, that is possible,” Pierce agreed, impatiently. “But why consider the possibility of a man’s escape, when there was no question among those who heard the cries that they came from a woman or a child!”

  “The screams came from a woman,” Trant replied. “But not necessarily the footsteps that were heard from the other side of the door. No, Dr. Pierce; the condition of this room indicates without any question or doubt that not one, but two persons were present here when these events occurred—one so familiar with these premises as to know where the key to the cabinets was to be found in your desk; the other so unfamiliar with them as not even to know that the doors of the cabi
nets were sliding, not swinging doors, since it was in attempting to pull the door outward like a swinging door that the knob was broken off, as is shown by the condition of the bolt which would otherwise have been bent. And the person whose footsteps were heard was a man, for only a man could have escaped through the window, as that person unquestionably must have done.”

  “But I do not see how you help things by adding a man’s presence here to the other,” Pierce protested. “It simply complicates matters, since it furnishes us no solution as to how the woman escaped!”

  But the psychologist, without heeding him, dropped into a chair beside the table, rested his chin upon his hands, and his eyes grew filmy with the concentration of thought.

  “She may have been helped through the window by the man,” he said, finally, “but it is not probable. We have no proof that the woman was in the study when the footsteps were heard, for the screams had stopped; and we have unquestionable proof that this tight-fitting door was opened after the papers had been fired, if, as you told me, when Miss Pierce and the others reached the museum they found it filled with smoke. Now, Dr. Pierce,” he looked up sharply, “when you first spoke to me of the loss of these papers, you said they had been ‘burned or vanished.’ Why did you say vanished? Had you any reason for supposing they had not been burned?”

  “No real reason,” Pierce answered after a moment’s hesitation. “The papers, which I had divided by subjects into tentative chapters, were put together with wire clips, each chapter separately, and I found no wire clips among the ashes. But it was likely the papers would not burn readily without taking the clips off. After taking off the clips, she—they,” he corrected himself—“may very well have carried them away. It is too improbable to believe that they brought with them other papers, with the plan of burning them and giving the appearance of having destroyed the real ones.”

  “That would certainly be too improbable a supposition,” Trant agreed, and again became deeply thoughtful. “A remarkable, a startlingly interesting case!” he raised his eyes to his client’s, but hardly as though speaking to him. “It presents a problem with which modern scientific psychology—and that alone—could possibly be competent to deal.