“We can reach him at the museum, then.” Vance rang up the Bliss number and asked Brush to call Scarlett to the phone. After several minutes he pushed the instrument from him.
“Scarlett isn’t at the museum either,” he said. “He came, so Brush says, at about eight, and must have departed unobserved. He’s probably on his way back to his quarters. We’ll wait a while and phone him there again.”
“Is it necessary to have Scarlett here?” Markham asked impatiently.
“Not precisely necess’ry,” Vance returned evasively; “but most desirable. You remember he admitted quite frankly he could tell me a great deal about the murderer—”
He broke off abruptly, and with tense deliberation selected and lighted another cigarette. His lids drooped, and he stared fixedly at the floor.
“Sergeant,” he said in a repressed tone, “I believe you said Mr. Scarlett had an appointment with some one at nine and had informed his landlady he would return at that hour.”
“That’s what the dame told me over the phone.”
“Please see if he has reached home yet.”
Without a word Heath again lifted the receiver and called Scarlett’s number. A minute later he turned to Vance.
“He hasn’t shown up.”
“Deuced queer,” Vance muttered. “I don’t at all like this, Markham.…”
His mind drifted off in speculation, and it seemed to me that his face paled slightly.
“I’m becoming frightened,” he went on in a hushed voice. “We should have heard about that letter by now.… I’m afraid there’s trouble ahead.”
He gave Markham a look of grave and urgent concern.
“We can’t afford to delay any longer. It may even be too late as it is. We’ve got to act at once.” He moved toward the door. “Come on, Markham. And you, Sergeant. We’re overdue at the museum. If we hurry we may be in time.”
Both Markham and Heath had risen as Vance spoke. There was a strange insistence in his tone, and a foreboding of terrible things in his eyes. He disappeared swiftly into the house; and the rest of us, urged by the suppressed excitement of his manner, followed in silence. His car was outside, and a few moments later we were swinging dangerously round the corner of Thirty-eighth Street and Park Avenue, headed for the Bliss Museum.
CHAPTER 20
THE GRANITE SARCOPHAGUS
(Saturday, July 14, 10:10 P.M.)
We arrived at the museum in less than ten minutes. Vance ran up the stone steps, Markham and Heath and I at his heels. Not only was there a light burning in the vestibule, but through the frosted glass panels of the front door we could see a bright light in the hall. Vance pressed the bell vigorously, but it was some time before Brush answered our summons.
“Napping?” Vance asked. He was in a tense, sensitive mood.
“No, sir.” Brush shrank from him. “I was in the kitchen—”
“Tell Doctor Bliss we’re here, and want to see him at once.”
“Yes, sir.” The butler went down the hall and knocked on the study door. There was no answer, and he knocked again. After a moment he turned the knob and looked in the room. Then he came back to us.
“The doctor is not in his study. Perhaps he has gone to his bedroom.… I’ll see.”
He moved toward the stairs and was about to ascend when a calm, even voice halted him.
“Bliss effendi is not up-stairs.” Hani came slowly down to the front hall. “It is possible he is in the museum.”
“Well, well!” Vance regarded the man reflectively. “Amazin’ how you always turn up.… So you think he may be potterin’ among his treasures—eh, what?” He pushed open the great steel door of the museum. “If the doctor is in here, he’s whiling away his time in the dark.” Stepping to the stair-landing inside the museum door, he switched on the lights and looked about the great room. “You’re apparently in error, Hani, regarding the doctor’s whereabouts. To all appearances the museum is empty.”
The Egyptian was unruffled.
“Perhaps Doctor Bliss has gone out for a breath of air.”
There was a troubled frown on Vance’s face.
“That’s possible,” he murmured. “However, I wish you’d make sure he is not up-stairs.”
“I would have seen him had he come up-stairs after dinner,” the Egyptian replied softly. “But I will follow your instructions nevertheless.” And he went to search for Bliss.
Vance stepped up to Brush and asked in a low voice:
“At what time did Mr. Scarlett leave here tonight?”
“I don’t know, sir.” The man was mystified by Vance’s manner. “I really don’t know. He came at about eight—I let him in. He may have gone out with Doctor Bliss. They often take a walk together at night.”
“Did Mr. Scarlett go into the museum when he arrived at eight?”
“No, sir. He asked for Doctor Bliss.…”
“Ah! And did he see the doctor?”
“Yes, sir.… That is,”—Brush corrected himself—“I suppose he did. I told him Doctor Bliss was in the study, and he at once went down the hall. I returned to the kitchen.”
“Did you notice anything unusual in Mr. Scarlett’s manner?”
The butler thought a moment.
“Well, sir, since you mention it, I might say that Mr. Scarlett was rather stiff and distant, like there was something on his mind—if you know what I mean.”
“And the last you saw of him was when he was approaching the study door?”
“Yes, sir.”
Vance nodded a dismissal.
“Remain in the drawing-room for the time being,” he said.
As Brush disappeared through the folding door Hani came slowly down the stairs.
“It is as I said,” he responded indifferently. “Doctor Bliss is not up-stairs.”
Vance scrutinized him sternly.
“Do you know that Mr. Scarlett called here tonight?”
“Yes, I know.” A curious light came into the man’s eyes. “I was in the drawing-room when Brush admitted him.”
“He came to see Doctor Bliss,” said Vance.
“Yes. I heard him ask Brush—”
“Did Mr. Scarlett see the doctor?”
The Egyptian did not answer at once. He met Vance’s gaze steadily as if trying to read the other’s thoughts. At length, reaching a decision, he said:
“They were together—to my knowledge—for at least half an hour. When Mr. Scarlett entered the study he left the door open by the merest crack, and I was able to hear them talking together. But I could not distinguish anything that was said. Their voices were subdued.”
“How long did you listen?”
“For half an hour. Then I went up-stairs.”
“You have not seen either Doctor Bliss or Mr. Scarlett since?”
“No, effendi.”
“Where was Mr. Salveter during the conference in the study?” Vance was striving hard to control his anxiety.
“Was he here in the house?” Hani asked evasively. “He told me at dinner that he was going to Boston.”
“Yes, yes—on the nine-thirty train. He needn’t have left the house until nine.—Where was he between eight and nine?”
Hani shrugged his shoulders.
“I did not see him. He went out before Mr. Scarlett arrived. He was certainly not here after eight—”
“You’re lying.” Vance’s tone was icy.
“Wahyât en-nabi—”
“Don’t try to impress me—I’m not in the humor.” Vance’s eyes were like steel. “What do you think happened here tonight?”
“I think perhaps Sakhmet returned.”
A pallor seemed to overspread Vance’s face: it may, however, have been only the reflection of the hall light.
“Go to your room and wait there,” he said curtly.
Hani bowed.
“You do not need my help now, effendi. You understand many things.” And the Egyptian walked away with much dignity.
Vance st
ood tensely until he had disappeared. Then, with a motion to us, he hurried down the hall to the study. Throwing open the door he switched on the lights.
There was anxiety and haste in all his movements, and the electric atmosphere of his demeanor was transmitted to the rest of us. We realized that something tragic and terrible was leading him on.
He went to the two windows and leaned out. By the pale reflected light he could see the asphalt tiles on the ground below. He looked under the desk, and measured with his eyes the four-inch clearance beneath the divan. Then he went to the door leading into the museum.
“I hardly thought we’d find anything in the study; but there was a chance.…”
He was now swinging down the spiral stairs.
“It will be here in the museum,” he called to us. “Come along, Sergeant. There’s work to do. A fiend has been loose tonight.…”
He walked past the state chair and the shelves of shawabtis, and stood beside the long glass table case, his hands deep in his coat pockets, his eyes moving rapidly about the room. Markham and Heath and I waited at the foot of the stairs.
“What’s this all about?” Markham asked huskily. “What has taken place? And what, incidentally, are you looking for?”
“I don’t know what has taken place.” Something in Vance’s tone sent a chill through me. “And I’m looking for something damnable. If it isn’t here.…”
He did not finish the sentence. Going swiftly to the great replica of Kha-ef-Rê he walked round it. Then he went to the statue of Ramses II and inspected its base. After that he moved to Teti-shiret and tapped the pedestal with his knuckles.
“They’re all solid,” he muttered. “We must try the mummy cases.” He recrossed the museum. “Start at that end, Sergeant. The covers should come off easily. If you have any difficulty, tear them off.” He himself went to the anthropoid case beside Kha-ef-Rê and, inserting his hand beneath the upstanding lid, lifted it off and laid it on the floor.
Heath, apparently animated by an urgent desire for physical action, had already begun his search at the other end of the line. He was by no means gentle about it. He tore the lids off viciously, throwing them to the floor with unnecessary clatter.
Vance, absorbed in his own task, paid scant attention except to glance up as each lid was separated from the case. Markham, however, had begun to grow uneasy. He watched the Sergeant disapprovingly for several minutes, his face clouding over. Then he stepped forward.
“I can’t let this go on, Vance,” he remarked. “These are valuable treasures, and we have no right—”
Vance stood up and looked straight at Markham.
“And if there is a dead man in one of them?” he asked with a cold precision that caused Markham to stiffen.
“A dead man?”
“Placed here tonight—between eight and nine.”
Vance’s words had an ominous and impressive quality, and Markham said no more. He stood by, his features strained and set, watching the feverish inspection of the remaining mummy cases.
But no grisly discovery was made. Heath removed the lid of the last case in obvious disappointment.
“I guess something’s gone wrong with your ideas, Mr. Vance,” he commented without animus: indeed, there was a kindly note in his voice.
Vance, distraught and with a far-away look in his eyes, now stood by the glass case. His distress was so apparent that Markham went to him and touched him on the arm.
“Perhaps if we could re-calculate this affair along other lines—” he began; but Vance interrupted.
“No; it can’t be re-calculated. It’s too logical. There’s been a tragedy here tonight—and we were too late to intercept it.”
“We should have taken precautions.” Markham’s tone was bitter.
“Precautions! Every possible precaution was taken. A new element was introduced into the situation tonight—an element that couldn’t possibly have been foreseen. Tonight’s tragedy was not part of the plot.…” Vance turned and walked away. “I must think this thing out. I must trace the murderer’s reasoning.…” He made an entire circuit of the museum without taking his eyes from the floor.
Heath was puffing moodily on his cigar. He had not moved from in front of the mummy cases, and was pretending to be interested in the crudely colored hieroglyphs. Ever since the “Canary” murder case, when Tony Skeel had failed to keep his appointment in the District Attorney’s office, he had, for all his protests, believed in Vance’s prognostications; and now he was deeply troubled at the other’s failure. I was watching him, a bit dazed myself, when I saw a frown of puzzled curiosity wrinkle his forehead. Taking his cigar from his mouth he bent over one of the fallen mummy cases and lifted out a slender metal object.
“That’s a hell of a place to keep an automobile jack,” he observed. (His interest in the jack was obviously the result of an unconscious attempt to distract his thoughts from the tense situation.)
He threw the jack back into the case and sat down on the base of Kha-ef-Rê’s statue. Neither Vance nor Markham had apparently paid the slightest attention to his irrelevant discovery.
Vance continued pacing round the museum. For the first time since our arrival at the house he took out a cigarette and lighted it.
“Every line of reasoning leads here, Markham.” He spoke in a low, hopeless tone. “There was no necessity for the evidence to have been taken away. In the first place, it would have been too hazardous; and, in the second place, we were not supposed to have suspected anything for a day or two.…”
His voice faltered and his body went suddenly taut. He wheeled toward Heath.
“An automobile jack!” A dynamic change had come over him. “Oh, my aunt! I wonder… I wonder.…”
He hurried toward the black sarcophagus beneath the front windows, and scrutinized it anxiously.
“Too high,” he murmured. “Three feet from the floor! It couldn’t have been done.… But it had to be done—somehow.…” He looked about him. “That taboret!” He pointed to a small solid oak stand, about twenty inches high, against the wall near the Asiatic wooden statue. “It was not there last night; it was beside the desk-table by the obelisk—Scarlett was using it.” As he spoke he went to the taboret and picked it up. “And the top is scratched—there’s an indentation.…” He placed the stand against the head of the sarcophagus. “Quick, Sergeant! Bring me that jack.”
Heath obeyed with swiftness; and Vance placed the jack on the taboret, fitting its base over the scars in the wood. The lifting-head came within an inch of the under-side of the sarcophagus’s lid where it extended a few inches over the end elevation between the two projecting lion-legged supports at the corners.
We had gathered about Vance in tense silence, not knowing what to expect but feeling that we were on the threshold of some appalling revelation.
Vance inserted the elevating lever, which Heath handed him, into the socket, and moved it carefully up and down. The jack worked perfectly. At each downward thrust of the lever there was a metallic click as the detent slipped into the groove of the rack. Inch by inch the end of the ponderous granite lid—which must have weighed over half a ton144—rose.
Heath suddenly stepped back in alarm.
“Ain’t you afraid, Mr. Vance, that the lid’ll slide off the other end of the coffin?”
“No, Sergeant,” Vance assured him. “The friction alone of so heavy a mass would hold it at a much greater angle than this jack could tilt it.”
The head of the cover was now eight inches in the clear, and Vance was using both hands on the lever. He had to work with great care lest the jack slip from the smooth under-surface of the granite. Nine inches…ten inches…eleven…twelve.… The rack had almost reached its limit of elevation. With one final thrust downward, Vance released the lever and tested the solidity of the extended jack.
“It’s safe, I think.…”
Heath had already taken out his pocket-light and flashed it into the dark recesses of the sarcophagus.
/>
“Mother o’ God!” he gasped.
I was standing just behind him, leaning over his broad shoulders; and simultaneously with the flare of his light I saw the horrifying thing that had made him call out. In the end of the sarcophagus was a dark, huddled human body, the back hunched upward and the legs hideously cramped, as if some one had hastily shoved it through the aperture, head first.
Markham stood bending forward like a person paralyzed in the midst of an action.
Vance’s quiet but insistent voice broke the tension of our horror.
“Hold your light steady, Sergeant. And you, Markham, lend me a hand. But be careful. Don’t touch the jack.…”
With great caution they reached into the sarcophagus and turned the body until the head was toward the widest point of the opening. A chill ran up my spine as I watched them for I knew that the slightest jar, or the merest touch on the jack, would bring the massive granite lid down upon them. Heath, too, realized this—I could see the glistening beads of sweat on his forehead as he watched the dangerous operation with fearful eyes.
Slowly the body emerged through the small opening, and when the feet had passed over the edge of the sarcophagus and clattered to the floor, the flashlight went out, and Heath sprawled back on his haunches with a convulsive gasp.
“Hell! I musta stumbled, Mr. Vance,” he muttered. (I liked the Sergeant even more after that episode.)
Markham stood looking down at the inert body in stupefaction.
“Scarlett!” he exclaimed in a voice of complete incredulity.
Vance merely nodded, and bent over the prostrate figure. Scarlett’s face was cyanosed, due to insufficient oxygenation of the blood; his eyes were set in a fixed bulging stare; and there was a crust formation of blood at his nostrils. Vance put his ear on the man’s chest and took his wrist in one hand to feel the pulse. Then he drew out his gold cigarette-case and held it before Scarlett’s lips. After a glance at the case he turned excitedly to heath.
The Philo Vance Megapack Page 134