The Case of the Missing Corpse

by Joan Sanger

  “I’m going to add another clause!” he looked up to announce. “You don’t have to sign it if you don’t want, but if I’m going to roll up my sleeves and get to work on this case, I want a safety break against that sweet impulsive nature you showed a while ago.” He nodded toward the telephone, but I wasn’t to be insulted. Just then, with every square inch of me, I was feeling the pull of the lurid enigmatic adventure on which we were embarking. Meanwhile, Alcott, unruffled as always, scribbled away at his postscript.

  It is further agreed that in pursuance of the above stated ends, neither party to this contract shall at any time give or cause to be given newspaper publicity of any sort, kind or description without the express consent of the other.

  In high jubilee, I signed the covenant feeling a surge of confidence that had been unknown to me for weeks. In some metaphysical way it derived from the quiet set determination of Alcott. Good old Alcott! Yes, I still feel that way about you in spite of all that has transpired since that momentous night.

  When everything was duly sealed, signed and delivered, I turned back in genuine earnest to my note book.

  “There are a few things here we’ve got to find out, Pete.” I mused aloud, making rapid fire notes on the last page of the little memo book while I talked.

  “1. What is the mystery of that Wyndham will?

  “2. Of what is Miss Wyndham so apprehensive?

  “3. Why did lawyer Stone try to conceal the fact that his nephew was present at the time of Wyndham’s murder, disappearance or what you will?

  “4. Why does a fellow like Charles Stone elect to be a missionary?

  “5. What was the actual reason for Charles’ visit to the Sevilla Biltmore on the night of February 13th?

  “6. What has this Red Ford done with the power of attorney entrusted to him by Wyndham?

  “7. What is the explanation of that mangled cigarette which Stone found on the floor?”

  As stated before, I talked aloud as I wrote. Now, as I finished my last question, Alcott yawned sleepily.

  “You’ll be a smart little boy if you find out the answers to all those questions!”

  “Hell, I’ve got to!”

  “Then don’t forget that missing gold medallion.”

  In another minute Alcott was gently snoring.

  Chapter IX THE CHECK-UP

  BEFORE nine o’clock of the following morning, I was down on Wall Street at the offices of Manning & Wilson, brokers. In my pocket was a letter of personal introduction to Mr. Thomas Manning, which upon sudden inspiration I had procured from a friend. If I had my own private misgivings on the probability of finding Manning in at this hour, they were promptly dissipated. Mr. Manning proved to be one of those quietly electric individuals, who despite greying air and rugged countenance, manages to toss off a market letter before breakfast, transactions in some fifty thousand shares before lunch, and at least four cocktails before dinner. In short order I found myself shaking hands with him and pouring into his ears the story of my mission.

  “You put me in a very awkward position,” he said with quiet directness as I concluded. “You have been correctly informed as to Mr. Wyndham’s account with us, also as to the unlimited power of attorney which he entrusted to his friend, Mr. Ford. However, transactions of this kind are in their very nature confidential. A broker cannot reveal....”

  “I understand all that, sir!” I burst out impetuously. “But this is not an ordinary case. It’s a red-hot emergency! Every item of information relating to Stephen P. Wyndham’s affairs is urgently needed if we are to avoid coming to a dead end in this investigation! If you have Wyndham’s interests genuinely at heart....” How I managed it I’ll never know. I got a few moments alone with him. I unloosed a veritable Niagara of eloquence. I argued, I persuaded, I cajoled, with what I thought was little success. Then, suddenly, Mr. Manning broke into a smile.

  “Young man, I may as well thank the Lord I’m not a woman and have done with it!”

  He rang for his secretary.

  Fifteen minutes later, from a corner cigar store, I phoned Alcott at his desk.

  “Get this! It’s hot stuff. On July twentieth last, Hugh Ford drew twenty-five thousand dollars from Wyndham’s account. No explanations offered. He repeated the same performance in September. Again no explanation. How does that sound?”

  “Not exactly bashful,” I heard Pete’s voice. Then silence for a moment at the other end of the wire. “Did Manning offer any comment on Ford?”

  “Yeah! Said he was a charming fellow.”

  “H’m! He ought to be!”

  We were both too keyed up to talk any longer. On my side I was experiencing a sudden overwhelming impulse to see my young acquaintance of last night once again.

  “Why,” I asked myself, “when Parson Stone was tarring up the boys in on that little party in Havana, did he so conspicuously neglect to blacken Ford along with the rest?” Against Ford there wasn’t a word that I could recall. It struck me as queer, but then everything in connection with the case disagreed so completely with all traditional receipts for investigation, clue or inquiry that I paid scant heed to that. However, as it still lacked two hours to my appointment at the office, I gave rein to my curiosity.

  I located Charles Stone’s apartment in a very dingy walk-up on East 93rd Street. As the door of the third floor rear was opened, I caught signs of great disorder. An empty trunk stood near the door, a welter of things about it. Whether its presence represented Stone’s recent arrival or a hurriedly planned departure, I didn’t have time to decide. A dour looking matron of middle years was glancing at me questioningly. Something in the mould of her face and her carriage made me gamble on my salutation.

  “Mrs. Stone, I think?”

  “Yes! What do you wish?” She spoke in a dull, sullen tone.

  “Could I see your son, if he is at home?”

  At this moment Charles himself, stepped quietly into the foyer. He was wearing some sort of oriental lounge robe. It made him look curiously foreign. As he recognized me, an expression of annoyance crossed his face, but immediately his broad smile replaced it.

  “Ah! So you want to see me again?” he said in that soft purring tone.

  He led me into a small private study, where I stopped short in sheer amazement. Walls hung in soft old mandarin silks, a low settee, two carved teakwood chairs, a lacquered screen, a single blue Ming jar where the light that came through the carved wooden fretwork fell in broken patterns upon it. That was all. But in crossing that threshold I felt as though I’d crossed the China Sea.

  I looked at young Stone in mild bewilderment. “I see you carry China with you.”

  “Yes, in more senses than one!” The remark slipped out before he was aware of it and for the moment he looked strangely ill at ease.

  “I’m afraid I’ve interrupted you!”

  I nodded apologetically toward the open packing case which I noticed in the corner. An array of books and papers were strewn about it on the floor.

  Instead of answering, Charles merely shrugged with frigid reserve.

  I began deliberately. “On thinking over our conversation of last night, there were a few loose ends that bothered me. Can you tell me anything about this fellow Red—I mean—Hugh Ford?”

  Stone looked at me superciliously. Then he broke suddenly into that incredibly broad smile of his. “Mr. Ellis, I don’t know you from Adam, but I’ll give you a piece of gratuitous advice. What you’re doing is no use. You’re only holding an intellectual inquest over a dead and hopeless situation. Whatever could have been done about Steve Wyndham should have been undertaken nearly a year ago. The fault is mine that it wasn’t. At this stage....” he shrugged, “I’ve a conviction you’re only wasting your time and my own.”

  “Nevertheless,” I persisted, “I’d like to know anything you can tell me of Hugh Ford.”

  Stone wasn’t to be thawed. “Why don’t you ask some of the others?” He glanced toward his packing cases.

&n
bsp; “After all, I knew Red only slightly. As for his friendship with Wyndham, that dated back to his senior year at Yale, I think.”

  “Ford’s not from New York, I gather?”

  “No. I think he’s from the middle west. I’m not sure. He’s not the sort that talks much about the ’ole folks at home.’”

  “Not so well off, you’d say!”

  “Not from what I’ve heard. It’s always been a puzzle to me how Red himself made out.”

  “I’ve understood he writes rather saleable stuff for political magazines.”

  Stone shrugged. “Oh, he’s clever enough that way.” He said this so sarcastically that I knew, in an instant, that it was only oversight that had saved Ford from the general mud-slinging, the night before. “What he makes from writing wouldn’t yield pin money in the crowd he hangs out with.”

  I smiled. “Well, some fellows have the luck you know. Anyhow, money troubles are over for him now, or ought to be! He married the rich George Devereaux’s daughter last month.”

  “So my uncle informed me. That was the girl whom I told you Red was going with at the time of Steve’s tragedy.” Again Stone’s glance strayed restlessly toward his packing cases. “Is there anything further you wish to know?”

  “Oh, plenty! But I’ll wait for another time!”

  “As you wish!” Stone saw me to the door. His manner was unbending and reserved throughout.

  As I walked down the ill-lit stairway I asked myself a dozen times, why my mention of the small gold medallion on the night before had so perceptibly altered the boy’s manner. Then as I neared the second landing all speculation suddenly ceased for coming up the stairway toward me, in the half light of the hallway, I recognized the ample proportions and ferret-like eyes of Miss Wyndham’s unique butler, Cooper.

  “Good morning!”

  “Good morning, sir!” He blinked at me in surprise. As the man came closer, I caught sight of a letter which he was carrying in his hand. The sight of that letter was my undoing. I hatched a quick plan.

  A few moments later when Cooper was righting himself from his regrettable but (alas!) quite unavoidable fall and trudging off to rescue from the first landing a letter that he quite naturally assumed to be his own, I hastily opened and read the missive which Miss Wyndham had evidently penned to Charles Stone in the greatest of haste.

  Come to me at once upon receipt of this. One terrible thought has been obsessing me since yesterday. Your uncle tells me that you too have been questioned. For God’s sake come quickly.

  Isabella Wyndham.

  Re-sealing the letter as best I could, I tossed it over the banister to Cooper. “Say, I think our letters have gotten mixed!”

  The man looked up sharply in my direction, handed me my letter in passing and said not another word.

  It took me what seemed an interminable time to get to the office. As a matter of actual fact, I arrived there twenty minutes before the appointed time. I routed Pete Alcott out of what has so reverentially come to be called “conference.” He looked absurdly tired out for a man whom I had left snoring the night before but he didn’t act so. In the hubbub of the City Room I told him of my strange encounter with Cooper. When I finished, he gravely shook his head at me.

  “Ellis, at heart you’re really a law-abiding citizen, despite your profession. Now, with me, I get a positive itching in my feet at the mere thought of that interview!”

  “What could I have done....?” I began, but Pete only raised his eyebrows and when at length he spoke, it was not to answer my question.

  “By the way, I’ve had a few lines of inquiry out on Stone and strangely enough, the boy’s story seems to check. That is, everything ties up except the erroneous impression he chose to give of having been invited to the Sevilla Biltmore by Wyndham and Ford. It seems on February fourteenth of last year, a Charles Elihu Stone actually sailed from Havana on the ‘S.S. Carribean.’ That would be the day following that fatal little party, just as he told us. Of course, this might well have been a dummy sailing but I’ve a hunch that it wasn’t.

  “Also, ten days ago one Charles Elihu Stone entered the Port of San Francisco on the ‘Empress of the East,’ having been away from his native shores nearly ten months. That lends corroboration to the boy’s statement that he had been home only a few days prior to talking to you. An interview with your acquaintance in the Department of Philosophy elicits the information that the youth is an extraordinary combination of brilliance, ego and perhaps a dash of present day decadence. Professor Porter thinks I’m a distant relative, interested in the boy’s education. He spoke freely, despite his evident affection for the youth. But with it all....” I didn’t hear the finish. The rattle of typewriters about drowned Alcott’s voice. I moved closer.

  Alcott looked pensively across the City Room as he proceeded at his point. “Stone simmers down to a few all-important questions. One, you’ve already written down in that damned memo book of yours, Ellis. One, we shan’t even mention for some time. But the other, you’ll be scribbling down in there so soon, that I’ll save you the trouble right now!”

  I handed over my trusty little black book. Under my last question. I saw Alcott write boldly. “What took Stone to the Orient and kept him there ten months at this particular stage of his career?”

  Alcott smiled as he closed the book. “When we find that out, believe me, we’ll have gone a long way toward learning why Parson Stone forced his presence on that peculiar little poker party at the Sevilla Biltmore.”

  It was then that I asked the question that had been pounding in my brain since the previous afternoon. “Alcott,” I said very quietly. “do you think it’s possible that for reasons unknown. Charles Stone himself is mixed in this Wyndham mess?”

  Alcott shook his head in perplexity and his face looked graver than I ever remembered it. “At this point, all we know for certain is that someone in that room that night was, and I’d add, fiendishly so. What we’ve still got to find out is, WHO!”

  I longed to pursue the subject, but just then I saw Billy Farrel swinging across the City Room.

  Billy Farrel was a good little scout. He had come down to the Globe straight from the academic shelter of the School of Journalism, and a more hard-working, conscientious, painstaking youngster never wore down his shoe leather and pocketed his twenty-five per week. Certainly, in all my recent difficulties there had been ample opportunity to judge his mettle. However, as he joined us, I knew by the way he was screwing up his round freckled face that everything was not going to his entire satisfaction.

  “Say, where’d you rake up that bunch of names you handed out last evening,” he flung at Alcott by way of salutation.

  “Why?” Alcott asked soothingly.

  “Nothing, except I’ve had a devil of a time getting results!” A prodigious yawn escaped him. “That gets charged to loss of sleep,” Farrel said With a grin. “And this next....” he reached over and picked up the phone. “This gets charged to a cautious Dutch ancestor.” He laughed nervously. Then to the girl at the switchboard we heard him announce, “Say, if anyone shows up around the paper asking for William Farrel, Jr., tell them I just dropped dead of old age, or that I’ve gone to the Isle of Wight for my health. That goes for everyone! Get me, Madge?”

  “Say, what’s up?”

  Instead of answering, Farrel mopped his forehead and thrust a filing card toward us. There, neatly printed, I recognized the list of the men in the poker crowd at the Sevilla Biltmore. Barton Dunlap, Jose Sanchez, Sanfred Lamar, Calvin Watts, Phillip Brady, George Meenan. Alongside some were a series of orderly notations. A few of the names were scratched.

  Billy shook his head over those. “If you were real sports you’d have bought me a round trip ticket to Havana. Half of your list happens to be down there.”

  “Or in Kingdom Come or Hollywood,” Alcott interpolated quietly.

  “How d’you know that?” Farrel asked in surprise.

  “Oh, I did a little research myself last n
ight.”

  Quite by accident a few feet from where we were seated, a chair went over and at the sound, Billy jumped up as though it had been a shot.

  “What’s eating you, Farrel?” Pete asked, looking at him sharply.

  He shook his head. “I’ve put my foot in it, I’m afraid. Which reminds me, if by any chance you should happen to see a broad-shouldered fellow with silver rimmed glasses and a malacca cane approaching slowly on horseback, give me a high sign and let me run! And now....”

  Alcott spoke in all good humor. “Let’s get back to that list!”

  Farrel bobbed his head. “Sure. About this Phillip Brady. Well, he gave me the least trouble of all. You told me he was a movie director and with a start like that I called every studio in town for a line on him. At the Fine Art, they told me Phillip Brady’s under contract with them on the West coast where, at present, he’s directing a super-picture called, ‘The Female of the Species.’ They also told me he was a Californian by birth, that he’s roamed the four corners of the world, that he’s hunted big game in Africa and that all mail addressed to the New York office would be promptly forwarded to him. I think the blooming idiots thought I was a movie fan. Anyhow, I banged up in disgust.”

  Farrel’s stubby finger progressed to the next name.

  “Now for this George Meenan. There’s something phoney there all right! I don’t know whether you are wise to it or not but that guy was found dead in his apartment exactly three days ago.”

  “What?” both Alcott and I let out simultaneously.

  “Yeah. I ran into a swell story but I’m not sure where to start on it.”

  “Don’t be so damned particular—just get going!”

  “It turns out this Meenan guy was some sort of big political shot, though this is the first I’d ever heard of him. One of these back-stage powers, y’know.”