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

by Catherine Louisa Pirkis

  “Yet I hate to give it up without an effort. Those words, now. There were some other words you have not repeated to me.”

  “They came before that injunction, ‘Remember Evelyn!’ They bespoke a resolve. ‘Neither she nor you will ever see me again.’”

  “Ah! but these few words are very significant, Mr. Gryce. Could he have dealt that blow himself? May he have been a suicide after all?”

  “Madam, you have the right to inquire; but from Bartow’s pantomime, you must have perceived it is not a self-inflicted blow he mimics, but a maddened thrust from an outraged hand. Let us keep to our first conclusions; only—to be fair to every possibility—the condition of Mr. Adams’s affairs and the absence of all family papers and such documents as may usually be found in a wealthy man’s desk prove that he had made some preparation for possible death. It may have come sooner than he expected and in another way, but it was a thought he had indulged in, and—madam, I have a confession to make also. I have not been quite fair to my most valued colleague. The study—that most remarkable of rooms—contains a secret which has not been imparted to you; a very peculiar one, madam, which was revealed to me in a rather startling manner. This room can be, or rather could be, cut off entirely from the rest of the house; made a death-trap of, or rather a tomb, in which this incomprehensible man may have intended to die. Look at this plate of steel. It is worked by a mechanism which forces it across this open doorway. I was behind that plate of steel the other night, and these holes had to be made to let me out.”

  “Ha! You detectives have your experiences! I should not have enjoyed spending that especial evening with you. But what an old-world tragedy we are unearthing here! I declare”—and the good lady actually rubbed her eyes—“I feel as if transported back to mediæval days. Who says we are living in New York within sound of the cable car and the singing of the telegraph wire?”

  “Some men are perfectly capable of bringing the mediæval into Wall Street. I think Mr. Adams was one of those men. Romanticism tinged all his acts, even the death he died. Nor did it cease with his death. It followed him to the tomb. Witness the cross we found lying on his bosom.”

  “That was the act of another’s hand, the result of another’s superstition. That shows the presence of a priest or a woman at the moment he died.”

  “Yet,” proceeded Mr. Gryce, with a somewhat wondering air, “he must have had a grain of hard sense in his make-up. All his contrivances worked. He was a mechanical genius, as well as a lover of mystery.”

  “An odd combination. Strange that we do not feel his spirit infecting the very air of this study. I could almost wish it did. We might then be led to grasp the key to this mystery.”

  “That,” remarked Mr. Gryce, “can be done in only one way. You have already pointed it out. We must trace the young couple who were present at his death struggle. If they cannot be found the case is hopeless.”

  “And so,” said she, “we come around to the point from which we started—proof positive that we are lost in the woods.” And Miss Butterworth rose. She felt that for the time being she, at least, had come to the end of her resources.

  Mr. Gryce did not seek to detain her. Indeed, he appeared to be anxious to leave the place himself. They, however, stopped long enough to cast one final look around them. As they did so Miss Butterworth’s finger slowly rose.

  “See!” said she, “you can hardly perceive from this side of the wall the opening made by the removal of that picture on the stair landing. Wouldn’t you say that it was in the midst of those folds of dark-colored tapestry up there?”

  “Yes, I had already located that spot as the one. With the picture hung up on the other side, it would be quite invisible.”

  “One needs to keep one’s eyes moving in a case like this. That picture must have been drawn aside several times while we were in this room. Yet we failed to notice it.”

  “That was from not looking high enough. High and low, Mr. Gryce! What goes on at the level of the eye is apparent to every one.”

  The smile with which he acknowledged this parting shot and prepared to escort her to the door had less of irony than sadness in it. Was he beginning to realize that years tell even on the most sagacious, and that neither high places nor low would have escaped his attention a dozen years before?

  CHAPTER X

  BRIDE ROSES

  “A blonde, you say, sir?”

  “Yes, Sweetwater; not of the usual type, but one of those frail, ethereal creatures whom we find it so hard to associate with crime. He, on the contrary, according to Miss Butterworth’s description (and her descriptions may be relied upon), is one of those gentlemanly athletes whose towering heads and powerful figures attract universal attention. Seen together, you would be apt to know them. But what reason have we for thinking they will be found together?”

  “How were they dressed?”

  “Like people of fashion and respectability. He wore a brown-checked suit apparently fresh from the tailor; she, a dove-colored dress with white trimmings. The parasol shows the color of her hat and plumes. Both were young, and (still according to Miss Butterworth) of sensitive temperament and unused to crime; for she was in a fainting condition when carried from the house, and he, with every inducement to self-restraint, showed himself the victim of such powerful emotion that he would have been immediately surrounded and questioned if he had not set his burden down in the vestibule and at once plunged with the girl into the passing crowd. Do you think you can find them, Sweetwater?”

  “Have you no clews to their identity beyond this parasol?”

  “None, Sweetwater, if you except these few faded rose leaves picked up from the floor of Mr. Adams’s study.”

  “Then you have given me a problem, Mr. Gryce,” remarked the young detective dubiously, as he eyed the parasol held out to him and let the rose-leaves drop carelessly through his fingers. “Somehow I do not feel the same assurances of success that I did before. Perhaps I more fully realize the difficulties of any such quest, now that I see how much rests upon chance in these matters. If Miss Butterworth had not been a precise woman, I should have failed in my former attempt, as I am likely to fail in this one. But I will make another effort to locate the owner of this parasol, if only to learn my business by failure. And now, sir, where do you think I am going first? To a florist’s, with these faded rose-leaves. Just because every other young fellow on the force would make a start from the parasol, I am going to try and effect one from these rose-leaves. I may be an egotist, but I cannot help that. I can do nothing with the parasol.”

  “And what do you hope to do with the rose-leaves? How can a florist help you in finding this young woman by means of them?”

  “He may be able to say from what kind of a rose they fell, and once I know that, I may succeed in discovering the particular store from which the bouquet was sold to this more or less conspicuous couple.”

  “You may. I am not the man to throw cold water on any one’s schemes. Every man has his own methods, and till they are proved valueless I say nothing.”

  Young Sweetwater, who was now all nerve, enthusiasm, and hope, bowed. He was satisfied to be allowed to work in his own way.

  “I may be back in an hour, and you may not see me for a week,” he remarked on leaving.

  “Luck to your search!” was the short reply. This ended the interview. In a few minutes more Sweetwater was off.

  The hour passed; he did not come back; the day, and still no Sweetwater. Another day went by, enlivened only by an interchange of notes between Mr. Gryce and Miss Butterworth. Hers was read by the old detective with a smile. Perhaps because it was so terse; perhaps because it was so characteristic.

  Dear Mr. Gryce:

  I do not presume to dictate or even to offer a suggestion to the New York police, but have you inquired of the postman in a certain district
whether he can recall the postmark on any of the letters he delivered to Mr. Adams?

  A. B.

  His, on the contrary, was perused with a frown by his exacting colleague in Gramercy Park. The reason is obvious.

  Dear Miss Butterworth:

  Suggestions are always in order, and even dictation can be endured from you. The postman delivers too many letters on that block to concern himself with postmarks. Sorry to close another thoroughfare.

  E. G.

  Meanwhile, the anxiety of both was great; that of Mr. Gryce excessive. He was consequently much relieved when, on the third morning, he found Sweetwater awaiting him at the office, with a satisfied smile lighting up his plain features. He had reserved his story for his special patron, and as soon as they were closeted together he turned with beaming eyes toward the old detective, crying:

  “News, sir; good news! I have found them; I have found them both, and by such a happy stroke! It was a blind trail, but when the florist said that those petals might have fallen from a bride rose—well, sir, I know that any woman can carry bride roses, but when I remembered that the clothes of her companion looked as though they had just come from the tailor’s, and that she wore gray and white—why, it gave me an idea, and I began my search after this unknown pair at the Bureau of Vital Statistics.”

  “Brilliant!” ejaculated the old detective. “That is, if the thing worked.”

  “And it did, sir; it did. I may have been born under a lucky star, probably was, but once started on this line of search, I went straight to the end. Shall I tell you how? Hunting through the list of such persons as had been married within the city limits during the last two weeks, I came upon the name of one Eva Poindexter. Eva! that was a name well-known in the house on —— Street. I decided to follow up this Eva.”

  “A wise conclusion! And how did you set about it?”

  “Why, I went directly to the clergyman who had performed the ceremony. He was a kind and affable dominie, sir, and I had no trouble in talking to him.”

  “And you described the bride?”

  “No, I led the conversation so that he described her.”

  “Good; and what kind of a woman did he make her out to be? Delicate? Pale?”

  “Sir, he had not read the service for so lovely a bride in years. Very slight, almost fragile, but beautiful, and with a delicate bloom which showed her to be in better health than one would judge from her dainty figure. It was a private wedding, sir, celebrated in a hotel parlor; but her father was with her—”

  “Her father?” Mr. Gryce’s theory received its first shock. Then the old man who had laughed on leaving Mr. Adams’s house was not the father to whom those few lines in Mr. Adams’s handwriting were addressed. Or this young woman was not the person referred to in those lines.

  “Is there anything wrong about that?” inquired Sweetwater.

  Mr. Gryce became impassive again.

  “No; I had not expected his attendance at the wedding; that is all.”

  “Sorry, sir, but there is no doubt about his having been there. The bridegroom—”

  “Yes, tell me about the bridegroom.”

  “Was the very man you described to me as leaving Mr. Adams’s house with her. Tall, finely developed, with a grand air and gentlemanly manners. Even his clothes correspond with what you told me to expect: a checked suit, brown in color, and of the latest cut. Oh, he is the man!”

  Mr. Gryce, with a suddenly developed interest in the lid of his inkstand, recalled the lines which Mr. Adams had written immediately before his death, and found himself wholly at sea. How reconcile facts so diametrically opposed? What allusion could there be in these lines to the new-made bride of another man? They read, rather, as if she were his own bride, as witness:

  I return your daughter to you. She is here. Neither she nor you will ever see me again. Remember Evelyn!

  Amos’s Son.

  There must be something wrong. Sweetwater must have been led astray by a series of extraordinary coincidences. Dropping the lid of the inkstand in a way to make the young man smile, he looked up.

  “I’m afraid it’s been a fool chase, Sweetwater. The facts you relate in regard to this couple, the fact of their having been married at all, tally so little with what we have been led to expect from certain other evidences which have come in—”

  “Pardon me, sir, but will you hear me out? At the Imperial, where they were married, I learned that the father and daughter had registered as coming from a small place in Pennsylvania; but I could learn nothing in regard to the bridegroom. He had not appeared on the scene till the time for the ceremony, and after the marriage was seen to take his bride away in one carriage while the old gentleman departed in another. The latter concerned me little; it was the young couple I had been detailed to find. Employing the usual means of search, I tracked them to the Waldorf, where I learned what makes it certain that I have been following the right couple. On the afternoon of the very day of Mr. Adams’s death, this young husband and wife left the hotel on foot and did not come back. Their clothes, which had all been left behind, were taken away two days later by an elderly gentleman who said he was her father and whose appearance coincides with that of the person registering as such at the Imperial. All of which looks favorable to my theory, does it not, especially when you remember that the bridegroom’s name—”

  “You have not told it.”

  “Is Adams, Thomas Adams. Same family as the murdered man, you see. At least, he has the same name.”

  Mr. Gryce surveyed the young man with admiration, but was not yet disposed to yield him entire credence.

  “Humph! I do not wonder you thought it worth your while to follow up the pair, if one of them is named Adams and the other Eva. But, Sweetwater, the longer you serve on the force the more you will learn that coincidences as strange and unexpected as these do occur at times, and must be taken into account in the elucidation of a difficult problem. Much as I may regret to throw cold water on your hopes, there are reasons for believing that the young man and woman whom we are seeking are not the ones you have busied yourself about for the last two days. Certain facts which have come to light would seem to show that if she had a husband at all, his name would not be Thomas Adams, but Felix, and as the facts I have to bring forward are most direct and unimpeachable, I fear you will have to start again, and on a new tack.”

  But Sweetwater remained unshaken, and eyed his superior with a vague smile playing about his lips.

  “You have not asked me, sir, where I have spent all the time which has elapsed since I saw you last. The investigations I have mentioned did not absorb more than a day.”

  “Very true. Where have you been, Sweetwater?”

  “To Montgomery, sir, to that small town in Pennsylvania from which Mr. Poindexter and his daughter registered.”

  “Ah, I see! And what did you learn there? Something directly to the point?”

  “I learned this, that John Poindexter, father of Eva, had for a friend in early life one Amos Cadwalader.”

  “Amos!” repeated Mr. Gryce, with an odd look.

  “Yes, and that this Amos had a son, Felix.”

  “Ah!”

  “You see, sir, we must be on the right track; coincidences cannot extend through half a dozen names.”

  “You are right. It is I who have made a mistake in drawing my conclusions too readily. Let us hear about this Amos. You gathered something of his history, no doubt.”

  “All that was possible, sir. It is closely woven in with that of Poindexter, and presents one feature which may occasion you no surprise, but which, I own, came near nonplussing me. Though the father of Felix, his name was not Adams. I say was not, for he has been dead six months. It was Cadwalader. And Felix went by the name of Cadwalader, too, in the early days of which I have to tell, he
and a sister whose name—”

  “Well?”

  “Was Evelyn.”

  “Sweetwater, you are an admirable fellow. So the mystery is ours.”

  “The history, not the mystery; that still holds. Shall I relate what I know of those two families?”

  “At once: I am as anxious as if I were again twenty-three and had been in your shoes instead of my own for the last three days.”

  “Very well, sir. John Poindexter and Amos Cadwalader were, in their early life, bosom friends. They had come from Scotland together and settled in Montgomery in the thirties. Both married there, but John Poindexter was a prosperous man from the first, while Cadwalader had little ability to support a family, and was on the verge of bankruptcy when the war of the rebellion broke out and he enlisted as a soldier. Poindexter remained at home, caring for his own family and for the two children of Cadwalader, whom he took into his own house. I say his own family, but he had no family, save a wife, up to the spring of ’80. Then a daughter was born to him, the Eva who has just married Thomas Adams. Cadwalader, who was fitted for army life, rose to be a captain; but he was unfortunately taken prisoner at one of the late battles and confined in Libby Prison, where he suffered the tortures of the damned till he was released, in 1865, by a forced exchange of prisoners. Broken, old, and crushed, he returned home, and no one living in the town at that time will ever forget the day he alighted from the cars and took his way up the main street. For not having been fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough, perhaps, to receive any communication from home, he advanced with a cheerful haste, not knowing that his only daughter then lay dead in his friend’s house, and that it was for her funeral that the people were collecting in the green square at the end of the street. He was so pale, broken, and decrepit that few knew him. But there was one old neighbor who recognized him and was kind enough to lead him into a quiet place, and there tell him that he had arrived just too late to see his darling daughter alive. The shock, instead of prostrating the old soldier, seemed to nerve him afresh and put new vigor into his limbs. He proceeded, almost on a run, to Poindexter’s house, and arrived just as the funeral cortège was issuing from the door. And now happened a strange thing. The young girl had been laid on an open bier, and was being carried by six sturdy lads to her last resting place. As the father’s eye fell on her young body under its black pall, a cry of mortal anguish escaped him, and he sank on his knees right in the line of the procession.