III
A smartly uniformed negro maid with a silver tray of coffee, rolls and marmalade, passed them in the hall as they mounted the stairs to their apartments. Towneley prided himself on his hospitality, and one item of its perfection was the presentation of petit déjeuner at his guests’ rooms promptly at seven o’clock each morning.
The girl was a West Indian, proud of her British citizenship and despising the superstitions of the southern negroes with haughty disdain. “Good morning, sir; good morning, madame,” she greeted formally as she tripped down the corridor with her salver held high and paused before a bedroom door, raising one hand to knock.
The Professor and Rosalie saw her lift her knuckles, then press against the panels with her open hand, swing the door back and enter the room. Both had noticed the door was slightly ajar when the maid approached it, and the Professor was speculating idly whether the occupant of the room had been abroad and what the cause of his early rising was, when the crash of falling silver and china, followed immediately by a rasping, terrified scream, tore through the early morning quiet. Next instant the maid dashed wildly from the room, her eyes staring and glassy with terror, her mouth squared tragically as she emitted another shrill cry.
“Sir—Madame!” she panted, approaching Forrester and Rosalie with faltering, fear-hampered steps and fairly clawing at them in her acute terror. “Mr. Richie—he’s lying on his bath room floor, and the place is flooded with blood!”
“What?” shouted the Professor. “Richie—dead?”
“Ye—yes, sir, I think so, sir; I didn’t stop to see, but—oh, my God, it’s terrible!”
Clothed in a suit of blood-soaked linen pajamas, an old-fashioned straight-bladed razor in his open right hand, Waterford Richie lay in an oddly contorted posture on the tiled floor beneath the long mirror.
Forrester viewed the ghastly scene in sickened horror a moment, then shook himself like a dog emerging from the water, leaned far forward across the doorsill and gently turned the young man’s head so that he obtained a clear view of the ghastly, gaping wound in the throat. “By Jupiter!” he murmured softly, allowing the head to roll into its original position again and straightening abruptly. “My dear,” he turned solemnly to his ward, “I think we have another pseudo-suicide to puzzle over.”
“How so, my lord?” the girl asked, averting her face from the gruesome sight before her.
“Because, while everything seems to point to suicide in this case, just as it did in the other, that wound runs from the point of Richie’s right jaw downward across his throat, nearly to his larynx, and the razor is in his right hand.”
“But—” the girl began wonderingly.
“Try it yourself,” her guardian ordered. “Run your right forefinger across your throat, as though it were a knife!”
“See?” he demanded, as the girl complied. She nodded understandingly. Obeying his order, she had held her finger horizontally, as though it were a knife blade, and drawn it across her smooth, white neck, as if with suicidal intent. The digit, following its natural course, had described a slightly oblique line, running from a spot immediately beneath the point of her left jaw to a spot slightly to the right of the center of her throat.
“My lord is all-knowing. He was suckled at the fox’s breast and fed on the broth of the owl. His wisdom never faileth.”
“Never mind the efflorescent compliments. It doesn’t take a mental giant to figure out the natural course of a man’s right hand, my dear; besides, I’d be a Class Z moron if I couldn’t read such a sign after years of studying the phenomena of wounds. Remember, dear, an anthropologist’s chief work lies among the temples and tombs of forgotten peoples, and we’ve got to make reports on what we find which will bear the strictest inspection. I remember distinctly a lovely little wrangle I once had with a curator at the Cairo Museum concerning the manner in which a certain mummified Egyptian gentleman came to his end. He insisted a wound in the breast was due to the embalmer’s tools, and I claimed it was a spear-thrust. I silenced the fellow by taking a spear from his own collection and fitting it into the wound.
“Now,” he turned abruptly from the bath room and stalked toward the hall, “the first thing for us to do is to notify Towneley. After that we’ll be governed by circum—what the deuce?”
Beside a chair on which the dead man’s clothing lay he paused, his eyes intently narrowed. “By Jove, who would have suspected it?” he murmured.
“What is it, lord ?” the girl asked.
“That,” he replied, pointing to a glittering metal plate showing on the under side of Richie’s half-folded waistcoat.
Rosalie leaned closer to inspect the find. It was a shield of gold-plated metal decorated with the device of an American eagle, and on the scroll above and beneath the imposing bird was the legend: Department of Justice—Bureau of Investigation.
“H’m,” muttered Professor Forrester thoughtfully. “H’m-m. So that’s it, eh?”
As they tiptoed from the death-room, he remarked dryly; “My dear, as they say in England, ‘There’s dirty work at the crossroads.’ Nobody knew it, but Waterford Richie, Baltimore society man and supposed gentleman of independent means, was a member of the United States Secret Service. That may or may not explain why he was murdered and his murder camouflaged to simulate suicide, but—” he drew a deep breath, and his long, narrow face set suddenly in grim lines—“I’m inclined to think it does.”
III
It was a dismayed, half hysterical company which gathered at the dining table that morning. Knowledge of the three tragedies sat with them like skeletons at a feast, dampening every spirit and taking the edge from the keenest appetites. Added to the gruesome proximity of sudden death was the realization that for the day, at least, they were marooned at Towneley Towers, for, though the snow flurry had ceased, the wind had risen steadily, making it impossible for the house power boat to venture out on the Potomac, and since the Towers was situated up the creek a considerable distance, the only method of communication with the outside world was by private ferry to Piny Point or St. George’s Island, where the Baltimore and Washington boats might be had every second day during the winter. The inevitable result of this forced companionship was that the guests, gathered for mutual amusement, suddenly discovered how terrifyingly uncongenial they were, and turned from each other with aversion amounting almost to loathing. Sporadic attempts at bridge, dancing and outdoor sports fell through almost as soon as begun, and by the time luncheon was announced scarcely any two of the party were on speaking terms.
Professor Forrester spent an hour in his room, going over the details of the case, adding together the scraps of information he had gleaned, attempting to fit them together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but finding himself no wiser at the end of his cogitations than when he began.
Rosalie and he had tacitly agreed to keep their discovery that the supposed suicides were really nothing of the sort to themselves, for the girl, with the practicality which was her heritage from a youth educated in the devious ways of crime, had summed the situation up concisely when she remarked: “We know not whom to trust or to suspect. We did not dream Richie sahib was of the Secret Service, and if one among us was secretly enlisted in the cause of the law, how can we be certain that there are not others here who have some evil connections to hide?”
“Very aptly put, my dear,” her guardian agreed. “If there is another member of the Service in the company, he’ll find out what he can without our help. If there is someone with criminal connections in the crowd, we’ll do well to keep our knowledge to ourselves, and thus avoid putting him on his guard.”
At the Professor’s suggestion, Rosalie circulated among the guests, carefully refraining from giving any cause for offense and deliberately refusing to be drawn into a wrangle, but always noting the actions and remarks of those with whom she came in contact. There was a remote possibility that someone in the gathering would let slip his mask for a moment and thus proclai
m himself identified with one of the three mysterious crimes.
“Umpf, I’ll never get anywhere sitting here and fretting myself into a funk,” the Professor told himself as he knocked the ashes from his aged-blackened briar pipe and slipped into his overcoat and galoshes. “A little walk in the air may freshen my thinking apparatus.
“Two things stand out thus far,” he murmured as he crossed the back garden of the Towers. “First, the door of the smoke house was open when Rosalie and I came here this morning; second, the door of Richie’s room was unfastened when the maid rapped. Now, does that mean the murderers obtained entrance through those doors, or that they got in some other way and left the doors ajar to mislead us? H’m, I rather think not. They’d hardly have taken so much pains to make the murders seem suicide if they’d wanted to make us think it an outside job. On the other hand—” his voice trailed off into thoughtful silence as he neared the smoke house door and paused a moment, looking carefully about to make sure no one observed him.
“H’m,” he murmured musingly as he pushed the door open, “wonder why they didn’t lock up after taking poor Phillips away?” A moment’s inspection furnished him the answer. The door’s lock had been broken.
“U’m!” He swung the door to behind him and struck a match. “That’s queer. How could anyone force that lock without waking Phillips, or warning him, if he weren’t asleep? I wish we’d noticed whether that lock was broken when we were here this morning. Too bad; couldn’t think of everything at once, though.”
Striking a second match, he held it high above his head and gazed about him. On all sides of the single room were the heavy, iron-bound cases holding Towneley’s prized reserve of liquors and vintages. The floor was of brick, so was the vaulted ceiling, and no means of ingress was apparent save the narrow door through which he had just come and the small, barred window set high in the rear wall.
“Here’s where poor Thomas fell,” he told himself, bending down to scan the telltale spot of brownish-red on the brick pavement, “and here’s the hook from which Phillips was hanged. Phillips must have spread his blankets here, and—ha? What the deuce is this?” Leaning forward suddenly he snatched a small oblong of cardboard from the pavement close to the spot where the murdered youth had been suspended from the hook.
His find was slightly larger than the ordinary playing card, backed with an ornamental scroll design and bearing the device of a comely youth, hanged head-downward from a grape-arbor, on its obverse side. The rope encircled the hanged man’s left ankle, permitting his right foot and hands to hang free. Above the picture was the Roman figure XII.
“H’m,” murmured the Professor, eyeing the square of pasteboard curiously. “H’m-m. Where did this come from? I’m sure it wasn’t here this morning. Who the dickens could have dropped it? It’s not a gambler’s card. No-o—” thoughtfully—“it’s—by Jupiter, what’s that?”
Skilled in detecting significant sounds while burrowing in the earth in search of buried Egyptians, or the long-forgotten civilizations of Ur and Susa, Professor Forrester had caught the faint, persistent echo of some strange noise, apparently rising from the ground to the west of the little room in which he stood.
Carefully, creeping forward like a cat stalking a sparrow, he moved on hands and knees in the direction from which the sound came, stopped, listening intently a moment, then sprawled full length on the brick pavement, putting his ear to the cold clay blocks.
Clang—pause—clang—pause—clang, the sound repeated itself with rhythmical insistence.
“Now, what the dickens is it?” the Professor asked himself petulantly after several moments’ listening. “I’ve heard that noise before, somewhere, but where?” He rose, dusting his trousers methodically, and turned toward the door.
“Who’s there?” challenged a gruff, unfamiliar voice as the portal was suddenly blocked by a bulky form, an the gray winter light glinted evilly on the barrel of leveled revolver.
“Er—” began the Professor, but the intruder lowere his weapon with an apologetic laugh.
“I begs your parding, Professor Forrester, sir,” said the familiar, half-whining tones of Procter, the butler. “Master sent me out ’ere to get ’im some whiskey, sir, and, not hexpecting to find you here, as you might say you gave me quite a start, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir.”
“Not at all,” the Professor assured him as he edged through the door. Almost unconsciously, he noted that the butler eyed him suspiciously, and kept his pistol raised and ready until the corner of the building separated them.
“Quaint character, Procter,” the Professor mused, “I wonder how long he’d been watching me before he announced himself. Now, let’s see, where next?”
Idly, he turned toward the creek above the spot where the Towers’ private landing lay. The stream provided an ideal feeding ground for ducks, with its reed-bordered shores and channel choked with water-weeds which would permit the passage of only the smallest craft.
As the Professor approached the creek he was startled by the sudden wheeling flight of a flock of canvasbacks, and a moment later the hum of a high-powered motor struck his ear. Next instant a long, sharp-prowed speed boat shot past him like the shadow of a flying cloud, rounded a little headland and disappeared as abruptly as though submerged in the quiet water of the creek.
“Umpf!” Forrester muttered. “That’s not Towneley’s boat, and there’s no house up the stream for ten miles or more. Where the deuce were those chaps going, and who are they?” He leaned against a convenient tree, listening intently for the hum of the boat’s engine.
“Now, that’s odd,” he reflected after a moment. “They were going like old Harry, it’s true, but they shouldn’t be out of sound so soon. I wonder—”
Creeping forward stealthily, he reached the margin of the stream, leaned out as far as possible with the aid of a low-growing sapling, and looked up the creek in the wake of the vanished boat. No sign or token of it was to be seen. A moment’s scramble brought him to the top of the miniature bluff behind which the craft had disappeared. The creek widened out to a sort of basin behind the small peninsula, and beyond that narrowed abruptly to a width of scarcely more than six feet, and even that tiny channel was choked to suffocation with matted reeds and water-hyacinth. A canoe would have had difficulty in negotiating the passage. Any craft driven by a propeller would have been utterly disabled within its own length by the water weeds.
“By George,” the Professor whispered, “I’ve seen some queer doings, but never anything to beat this. One moment a speed boat dashes past, the next it dematerializes. I wasn’t seeing things, either, for those ducks didn’t leave their meal just for exercise. There’s—something—darn—queer—here.”
Undoubtedly, there was. Its queerness was accentuated a moment later when from the solid ground beneath his feet the Professor suddenly heard the subdued strains of the csardas, a favorite folk-song of the Horolane, or Turkish gypsies. Trained anthropologist that he was, Forrester recognized the tune instantly, and with recognition of the music came enlightenment in another quarter. The card in the smoke house!
Turning on his heel, he hastened to the house, bending his head against the rising storm wind and breathing fast with exertion and excitement.
“My dear,” he demanded, drawing Rosalie into a corner as soon as he could extricate her from a languishing bridge game, “do you recognize this?” He displayed the scrap of pasteboard retrieved from the smoke house half an hour earlier.
The girl studied the card with wide, thoughtful eyes a moment, then nodded her golden head slowly in affirmation. “Yes, Uncle Harvey,” she replied. “It is the twelfth card of the tarot of the homeless ones—the gypsy fortune-teller’s pack. They call it ‘the Hanged Man,’ and regard it as the emblem of atonement or revenge satisfied. Where did you find it? It is not well that such things be spread about.”
“Never mind now where I got it,” he responded, narrowing his eyes intently. He was thinking, and thi
nking fast. Things were beginning to take shape in his mind. A vaguely remembered, but unclassified noise coming apparently from the ground beneath the smoke house floor where two men had been killed, a fast motor boat seen one moment, vanished the next, gypsy music emanating from beneath the earth—Turkish gypsies. Ah, that was it! The recollection of whispers heard in Stamboul during the reign of “Abdul the Damned,” stories of men strangled with the bowstring and flung into the Bosphorus at night. The bowstring! The Turkish executioner’s strangling cord—the purple line about young Phillips’ dead throat! Ha, he was beginning to get somewhere, now.
“By Jupiter, I’ll do it!” he declared suddenly, leaping to his feet and striding across the hall, then half turning and beckoning Rosalie to follow. “Stand here, dear, if you please, and see that I’m not interrupted while I ’phone,” he ordered. “Tell me the moment any one comes within twice hearing distance of us. I must talk to Baltimore right away.”
IV
“Excuse me, sir, you’re wanted on the wire,” Procter bowed respectfully behind the Professor’s chair as the gentlemen lingered over cigars and liqueurs after dinner that evening.
“Pardon me,” Forrester murmured, rising and making for the hall telephone. “Probably the school wanting to know when I can come back to mark some examinations, or something equally silly.” He strolled toward the ’phone with exaggerated nonchalance, but once he had rounded the corner of the wall, his indifference dropped from him like a cloak, and he fairly sprinted to the instrument.
“Forrester talking,” he almost whispered through the transmitter. “Yes. Ah, is that so? I’d suspected as much. Yes, I found out Richie’s connection by accident after he died, but I didn’t suspect Phillips until—Very well; I’ll await developments. Goodbye.” He hung the receiver back on its hook and sauntered into the drawing room where the ladies talked in muted whispers.
“Rosalie, may I speak with you a moment?” he asked from the doorway, and, as his ward obeyed his summons and joined him, he breathed: “Make your excuses as soon as you decently can, and go upstairs. Sneak into the room where we found young Richie this morning, and bring me every scrap of paper you can find there. I’ll be waiting in my room as soon as I can get away.”
The Horror Megapack Page 31