The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK ™: 20 Modern and Classic Tales of Female Detectives

by Catherine Louisa Pirkis

  “That is but one slide,” remarked Mr. Gryce. “Now I will press another button, and the color changes to—pink, as you see. This one produces green, this one white, and this a bilious yellow, which is not becoming to either of us, I am sure. Now will you examine the connection, and see if there is anything peculiar about it?”

  Mr. Hines at once set to work. But beyond the fact that the whole contrivance was the work of an amateur hand, he found nothing strange about it, except the fact that it worked so well.

  Mr. Gryce showed disappointment.

  “He made it, then, himself?” he asked.

  “Undoubtedly, or someone else equally unacquainted with the latest method of wiring.”

  “Will you look at these books over here and see if sufficient knowledge can be got from them to enable an amateur to rig up such an arrangement as this?”

  Mr. Hines glanced at the shelf which Mr. Gryce had pointed out, and without taking out the books, answered briefly:

  “A man with a deft hand and a scientific turn of mind might, by the aid of these, do all you see here and more. The aptitude is all.”

  “Then I’m afraid Mr. Adams had the aptitude,” was the dry response. There was disappointment in the tone. Why, his next words served to show. “A man with a turn for mechanical contrivances often wastes much time and money on useless toys only fit for children to play with. Look at that bird cage now. Perched at a height totally beyond the reach of any one without a ladder, it must owe its very evident usefulness (for you see it holds a rather lively occupant) to some contrivance by which it can be raised and lowered at will. Where is that contrivance? Can you find it?”

  The expert thought he could. And, sure enough, after some ineffectual searching, he came upon another button well hid amid the tapestry on the wall, which, when pressed, caused something to be disengaged which gradually lowered the cage within reach of Mr. Gryce’s hand.

  “We will not send this poor bird aloft again,” said he, detaching the cage and holding it for a moment in his hand. “An English starling is none too common in this country. Hark! he is going to speak.”

  But the sharp-eyed bird, warned perhaps by the emphatic gesture of the detective that silence would be more in order at this moment than his usual appeal to “remember Evelyn,” whisked about in his cage for an instant, and then subsided into a doze, which may have been real, and may have been assumed under the fascinating eye of the old gentleman who held him. Mr. Gryce placed the cage on the floor, and idly, or because the play pleased him, old and staid as he was, pressed another button on the table—a button he had hitherto neglected touching—and glanced around to see what color the light would now assume.

  But the yellow glare remained. The investigation which the apparatus had gone through had probably disarranged the wires. With a shrug he was moving off, when he suddenly made a hurried gesture, directing the attention of the expert to a fact for which neither of them was prepared. The opening which led into the antechamber, and which was the sole means of communication with the rest of the house, was slowly closing. From a yard’s breadth it became a foot; from a foot it became an inch; from an inch—

  “Well, that is certainly the contrivance of a lazy man,” laughed the expert. “Seated in his chair here, he can close his door at will. No shouting after a deaf servant, no awkward stumbling over rugs to shut it himself. I don’t know but I approve of this contrivance, only—” here he caught a rather serious expression on Mr. Gryce’s face—“the slide seems to be of a somewhat curious construction. It is not made of wood, as any sensible door ought to be, but of—”

  “Steel,” finished Mr. Gryce in an odd tone. “This is the strangest thing yet. It begins to look as if Mr. Adams was daft on electrical contrivances.”

  “And as if we were prisoners here,” supplemented the other. “I do not see any means for drawing this slide back.”

  “Oh, there’s another button for that, of course,” Mr. Gryce carelessly remarked.

  But they failed to find one.

  “If you don’t object,” observed Mr. Gryce, after five minutes of useless search, “I will turn a more cheerful light upon the scene. Yellow does not seem to fit the occasion.”

  “Give us rose, for unless you have someone on the other side of this steel plate, we seem likely to remain here till morning.”

  “There is a man upstairs whom we may perhaps make hear, but what does this contrivance portend? It has a serious look to me, when you consider that every window in these two rooms has been built up almost under the roof.”

  “Yes; a very strange look. But before engaging in its consideration I should like a breath of fresh air. I cannot do anything while in confinement. My brain won’t work.”

  Meanwhile Mr. Gryce was engaged in examining the huge plate of steel which served as a barrier to their egress. He found that it had been made—certainly at great expense—to fit the curve of the walls through which it passed. This was a discovery of some consequence, causing Mr. Gryce to grow still more thoughtful and to eye the smooth steel plate under his hand with an air of marked distrust.

  “Mr. Adams carried his taste for the mechanical to great extremes,” he remarked to the slightly uneasy man beside him. “This slide is very carefully fitted, and, if I am not mistaken, it will stand some battering before we are released.”

  “I wish that his interest in electricity had led him to attach such a simple thing as a bell.”

  “True, we have come across no bell.”

  “It would have smacked too much of the ordinary to please him.”

  “Besides, his only servant was deaf.”

  “Try the effect of a blow, a quick blow with this silver-mounted alpenstock. Some one should hear and come to our assistance.”

  “I will try my whistle first; it will be better understood.”

  But though Mr. Gryce both whistled and struck many a resounding knock upon the barrier before them, it was an hour before he could draw the attention of Styles, and five hours before an opening could be effected in the wall large enough to admit of their escape, so firmly was this barrier of steel fixed across the sole outlet from this remarkable room.

  CHAPTER V

  FIVE SMALL SPANGLES

  Such an experience could not fail to emphasize Mr. Gryce’s interest in the case and heighten the determination he had formed to probe its secrets and explain all its extraordinary features. Arrived at Headquarters, where his presence was doubtless awaited with some anxiety by those who knew nothing of the cause of his long detention, his first act was to inquire if Bartow, the butler, had come to his senses during the night.

  The answer was disappointing. Not only was there no change in his condition, but the expert in lunacy who had been called in to pass upon his case had expressed an opinion unfavorable to his immediate recovery.

  Mr. Gryce looked sober, and, summoning the officer who had managed Bartow’s arrest, he asked how the mute had acted when he found himself detained.

  The answer was curt, but very much to the point.

  “Surprised, sir. Shook his head and made some queer gestures, then went through his pantomime. It’s quite a spectacle, sir. Poor fool, he keeps holding his hand back, so.”

  Mr. Gryce noted the gesture; it was the same which Bartow had made when he first realized that he had spectators. Its meaning was not wholly apparent. He had made it with his right hand (there was no evidence that the mute was left-handed), and he continued to make it as if with this movement he expected to call attention to some fact that would relieve him from custody.

  “Does he mope? Is his expression one of fear or anger?”

  “It varies, sir. One minute he looks like a man on the point of falling asleep; the next he starts up in fury, shaking his head and pounding the walls. It’s not a comfortable sight, sir. He will have to be wa
tched night and day.”

  “Let him be, and note every change in him. His testimony may not be valid, but there is suggestion in every movement he makes. Tomorrow I will visit him myself.”

  The officer went out, and Mr. Gryce sat for a few moments communing with himself, during which he took out a little package from his pocket, and emptying out on his desk the five little spangles it contained, regarded them intently. He had always been fond of looking at some small and seemingly insignificant object while thinking. It served to concentrate his thoughts, no doubt. At all events, some such result appeared to follow the contemplation of these five sequins, for after shaking his head doubtfully over them for a time, he made a sudden move, and sweeping them into the envelope from which he had taken them, he gave a glance at his watch and passed quickly into the outer office, where he paused before a line of waiting men. Beckoning to one who had followed his movements with an interest which had not escaped the eye of this old reader of human nature, he led the way back to his own room.

  “You want a hand in this matter?” he said interrogatively, as the door closed behind them and they found themselves alone.

  “Oh, sir—” began the young man in a glow which made his more than plain features interesting to contemplate, “I do not presume—”

  “Enough!” interposed the other. “You have been here now for six months, and have had no opportunity as yet for showing any special adaptability. Now I propose to test your powers with something really difficult. Are you up to it, Sweetwater? Do you know the city well enough to attempt to find a needle in this very big haystack?”

  “I should at least like to try,” was the eager response. “If I succeed it will be a bigger feather in my cap than if I had always lived in New York. I have been spoiling for some such opportunity. See if I don’t make the effort judiciously, if only out of gratitude.”

  “Well, we shall see,” remarked the old detective. “If it’s difficulty you long to encounter, you will be likely to have all you want of it. Indeed, it is the impossible I ask. A woman is to be found of whom we know nothing save that she wore when last seen a dress heavily bespangled with black, and that she carried in her visit to Mr. Adams, at the time of or before the murder, a parasol, of which I can procure you a glimpse before you start out. She came from, I don’t know where, and she went—but that is what you are to find out. You are not the only man who is to be put on the job, which, as you see, is next door to a hopeless one, unless the woman comes forward and proclaims herself. Indeed, I should despair utterly of your success if it were not for one small fact which I will now proceed to give you as my special and confidential agent in this matter. When this woman was about to disappear from the one eye that was watching her, she approached the curbstone in front of Hudson’s fruit store on 14th Street and lifted up her right hand, so. It is not much of a clew, but it is all I have at my disposal, except these five spangles dropped from her dress, and my conviction that she is not to be found among the questionable women of the town, but among those who seldom or never come under the eye of the police. Yet don’t let this conviction hamper you. Convictions as a rule are bad things, and act as a hindrance rather than an inspiration.”

  Sweetwater, to whom the song of the sirens would have sounded less sweet, listened with delight and responded with a frank smile and a gay:

  “I’ll do my best, sir, but don’t show me the parasol, only describe it. I wouldn’t like the fellows to chaff me if I fail; I’d rather go quietly to work and raise no foolish expectations.”

  “Well, then, it is one of those dainty, nonsensical things made of gray chiffon, with pearl handle and bows of pink ribbon. I don’t believe it was ever used before, and from the value women usually place on such fol-de-rols, could only have been left behind under the stress of extraordinary emotion or fear. The name of the owner was not on it.”

  “Nor that of the maker?”

  Mr. Gryce had expected this question, and was glad not to be disappointed.

  “No, that would have helped us too much.”

  “And the hour at which this lady was seen on the curbstone at Hudson’s?”

  “Half-past four; the moment at which the telephone message arrived.”

  “Very good, sir. It is the hardest task I have ever undertaken, but that’s not against it. When shall I see you again?”

  “When you have something to impart. Ah, wait a minute. I have my suspicion that this woman’s first name is Evelyn. But, mind, it is only a suspicion.”

  “All right, sir,” and with an air of some confidence, the young man disappeared.

  Mr. Gryce did not look as if he shared young Sweetwater’s cheerfulness. The mist surrounding this affair was as yet impenetrable to him. But then he was not twenty-three, with only triumphant memories behind him.

  His next hope lay in the information likely to accrue from the published accounts of this crime, now spread broadcast over the country. A man of Mr. Adams’s wealth and culture must necessarily have possessed many acquaintances, whom the surprising news of his sudden death would naturally bring to light, especially as no secret was made of his means and many valuable effects. But as if this affair, destined to be one of the last to engage the powers of this sagacious old man, refused on this very account to yield any immediate results to his investigation, the whole day passed by without the appearance of any claimant for Mr. Adams’s fortune or the arrival on the scene of any friend capable of lifting the veil which shrouded the life of this strange being. To be sure, his banker and his lawyer came forward during the day, but they had little to reveal beyond the fact that his pecuniary affairs were in good shape and that, so far as they knew, he was without family or kin.

  Even his landlord could add little to the general knowledge. He had first heard of Mr. Adams through a Philadelphia lawyer, since dead, who had assured him of his client’s respectability and undoubted ability to pay his rent. When they came together and Mr. Adams was introduced to him, he had been struck, first, by the ascetic appearance of his prospective tenant, and, secondly, by his reserved manners and quiet intelligence. But admirable as he had found him, he had never succeeded in making his acquaintance. The rent had been uniformly paid with great exactitude on the very day it was due, but his own visits had never been encouraged or his advances met by anything but the cold politeness of a polished and totally indifferent man. Indeed, he had always looked upon his tenant as a bookworm, absorbed in study and such scientific experiments as could be carried on with no other assistance than that of his deaf and dumb servant.

  Asked if he knew anything about this servant, he answered that his acquaintance with him was limited to the two occasions on which he had been ushered by him into his master’s presence; that he knew nothing of his character and general disposition, and could not say whether his attitude toward his master had been one of allegiance or antagonism.

  And so the way was blocked in this direction.

  Taken into the room where Mr. Adams had died, he surveyed in amazement the huge steel plate which still blocked the doorway, and the high windows through which only a few straggling sunbeams could find their way.

  Pointing to the windows, he remarked:

  “These were filled in at Mr. Adams’s request. Originally they extended down to the wainscoting.”

  He was shown where lath and plaster had been introduced and also how the plate had been prepared and arranged as a barrier. But he could give no explanation of it or divine the purpose for which it had been placed there at so great an expense.

  The lamp was another curiosity, and its varying lights the cause of increased astonishment. Indeed he had known nothing of these arrangements, having been received in the parlor when he visited the house, where there was nothing to attract his attention or emphasize the well-known oddities of his tenant.

  He was not shown the starling. That loqu
acious bird had been removed to police headquarters for the special delectation of Mr. Gryce.

  Other inquiries failed also. No clew to the owner of the insignia found on the wall could be gained at the pension office or at any of the G. A. R. posts inside the city. Nor was the name of the artist who had painted the portrait which adorned so large a portion of the wall a recognized one in New York City. Otherwise a clew might have been obtained through him to Mr. Adams’s antecedents. All the drawers and receptacles in Mr. Adams’s study had been searched, but no will had been found nor any business documents. It was as if this strange man had sought to suppress his identity, or, rather, as if he had outgrown all interest in his kind or in anything beyond the walls within which he had immured himself.

  Late in the afternoon reports began to come in from the various tradesmen with whom Mr. Adams had done business. They all had something to say as to the peculiarity of his habits and the freaks of his mute servant. They were both described as hermits, differing from the rest of their kind only in that they denied themselves no reasonable luxury and seemed to have adopted a shut-in life from a pure love of seclusion. The master was never seen at the stores. It was the servant who made the purchases, and this by means of gestures which were often strangely significant. Indeed, he seemed to have great power of expressing himself by looks and actions, and rarely caused a mistake or made one. He would not endure cheating, and always bought the best.

  Of his sanity up to the day of his master’s death there was no question; but more than one man with whom he had had dealings was ready to testify that there had been a change in his manner for the past few weeks—a sort of subdued excitement, quite unlike his former methodical bearing. He had shown an inclination to testiness, and was less easily pleased than formerly. To one clerk he had shown a nasty spirit under very slight provocation, and was only endured in the store on account of his master, who was too good a customer for them to offend. Mr. Kelly, a grocer, went so far as to say he acted like a man with a grievance who burned to vent his spite on someone, but held himself in forcible restraint.