CHAPTER VIII
MOLLY TELLS THE STORY
For the next few days my moling was stopped--Troop was down with grippeand a substitute in his place. There was nothing to do but sit in mylittle hole by the elevators, passing the time with a novel and the traycloth I was embroidering. At night, when Himself and I'd meet up, I'dhear from him how O'Mally was getting on in _his_ tunnel. Babbitts keptin close touch with him, for he had the promise of being along when theymade the inspection of the offices.
It took some days to arrange for that and while O'Mally was laying hiswires for a midnight search, his men were tracking back over Tony Ford'strail. It didn't take them long and there was nothing much brought tolight when you considered the kind of a man Tony Ford must be.
For the last three years he'd held clerkships in New York and Albany andonce, for six months in Detroit. From some he'd resigned, from othersbeen fired, not for anything bad, but because he was slack and lazy,though bright enough. The only thing they turned up that was shady wasover two years before in Syracuse, when he'd been in a small real estatebusiness with a partner and was said to have absconded with some of thefunds. Nobody knew much of this and the man he'd been in with couldn'tbe found. The detectives said it was so vague they didn't put muchreliance in it, thought maybe it might be spite work.
Anyway, it wasn't the record of a desperado, and they'd have been sortof baffled to fit his past actions with his present, if it hadn't beenfor one thing that, according to their experience, was very significant.In the last two months he'd spent a lot more money than his salary. AsMiss Whitehall's managing clerk he had been paid sixty-five dollars aweek, and he had been living at the rate of a man who has hundreds. Itwasn't in his place--that was simple enough--a back room in a lodginghouse--but he'd been a spender in the white lights of Broadway. Atexpensive restaurants and lobster palaces he'd become a familiar figure,the gambling houses knew him, and he'd ridden round in motors like acapitalist.
"By the swath he's been cutting," said Babbitts, "you'd suppose he hadan income in five figures."
"O Soapy," I said horrified. "They don't think he was _paid_ for it?"
Himself looked solemn at me and nodded:
"That's exactly what they _do_ think, Morningdew. He was paid andevidently paid high. Whoever the 'Other Man' was he could afford to beextravagant in his accomplice. Their idea is that Ford was engaged forhis superior strength, and demanded a big retainer in advance."
"What a terrible man," I murmured and thought of him standing in thedoorway smiling at me like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "He's aregular gunman."
"Worse than a gunman, for he's educated," said Babbitts. "Gee, wasn't ita lucky thing Iola got out of that place!"
The morning after that conversation I bid Babbitts good-bye as if he wasgoing to the South Pole, for that was the night they'd selected toexamine the two offices. Three of them were in it, O'Mally, Babbitts,and one of O'Mally's men, a chap called Stevens. Himself would turn upfor breakfast if he could, but if there was anything pressing at thepaper or more developed than they expected, I wasn't to look for himtill the evening of the next day.
I went down to my work and had a dull time for Troop was still sick andthere was nothing to do but now and then jack in for a call and sew onmy tray cloth. No Babbitts that night and no Babbitts for breakfast, andme piling down town for another eight hours in that dreary room withTroop not yet back and not a soul to speak to.
If, when I came home that evening, I'd found Babbitts still away Ibelieve I'd have forgotten I was a lady sleuth and started a generalalarm for him. But thank goodness, I didn't need to. For there he was onthe Davenport with his muddy boots on the best plush cushion, soundasleep.
I didn't intend to wake him, but creeping round to our room, looking athim as I crept, I ran into the Victrola with a crash, and up he sat,wide awake, thanking me sarcastic for having roused him in such adelicate, tactful manner.
In a minute I was sitting on the edge of the Davenport--you'll know howI felt when I tell you I forgot his feet on the cushion--squeezed upagainst him and staring into his face:
"Quick--go ahead! Did you find anything?"
"We did, Morningdew."
"Did you get any nearer who the other man is?"
"We got next. The chief was right. It's Johnston Barker!"
"_Barker!_ But, Soapy----"
He raised a finger and pointed in my face:
"Don't begin with any buts till you know. Now if you'll be quiet andlisten like a nice little girl, you'll see."
This is what he told me as I sat pressed up against him, every now andthen giving myself a hitch to keep from sliding off, too eager listeningto rise up and get a chair.
They gained access to both offices without any trouble, O'Mally flashinghis badge at the nightman, whom he'd already seen and fixed with a storythat he was after important papers for the Copper Pool men. They triedthe Harland offices first, a cursory inspection showing nothing. Itwasn't till O'Mally himself got busy in the rear room that they began tomove forward. A mark on the window sill was what started him. It was acircular scrape about as big round as a butter plate and was made, hesaid, by the heel of a man's boot.
Then he turned his attention to the window casing, the ledge and theoutside frame. He used a small pocket searchlight, also matches,dropping them as they burned down and examining every inch of thesurface. The first thing he lit upon was the cleat to which the awningrope is fastened in summer. It is always screwed securely down to thewoodwork, and has to be strong and firm to hold the awnings in heavywinds, especially at that height. The cleat outside the window wasloosened, and between its base and the wood were a few torn threads ofrope that had caught in the head of the upper screw. These threads,carefully untangled and preserved, were from a new rope, clean andyellow, not the gray wind and weather-worn shreds that would have beenleft from the summer. Below the cleat were scratches, some long anddeep, some wide, zigzag scrapes. By the color of these he said they hadbeen recently made.
From there they descended to the Whitehall suite. Here O'Mally wastedlittle time on the front rooms but went direct to the rear office andbegan on the window. Babbitts and Stevens were ordered to search thefloors and walls, which was easy as the furniture was gone and the placewas bare except for the radiator and the washstand. I may as well puthere that their investigations produced nothing.
But O'Mally's did. He went to work just as he had on the floor above.This cleat was secure, but on the sill were more scratches, several longdeep ones, and on the stone ledge that same round, circular mark. Butwhat he found there that was the vital thing was a button. It was lodgedin a corner made by one of the small wooden rims that go up the windowcasing parallel with the window. Anyone could have overlooked it, hardlyvisible in this little angle where it might have been sent by thecleaner's duster as she flicked about the sill and the ledge. It was ametal button of the kind used on men's clothes to fasten their bracesto, and it bore round it in raised letters the name of a fashionabletailor.
By the time they had done all this it was coming on for morning. Theyslipped out of the building and went to an all-night restaurant near-byto wait for daylight when O'Mally had decided to make an inspection ofthe roof of the church. He and Babbitts would do this, while Stevens, assoon as the day was far enough advanced, was commissioned to go to thetailor whose name was on the button, and find out when and for whom hehad made any suits having that button upon them.
Meantime the day had broken into morning. With a caution to Babbitts tostay where he was O'Mally sauntered off to see about fixing things forgetting on the roof of the church. Babbitts was left wondering whetherthey were going to be plumbers or tin workers or members of thecongregation admiring the sacred edifice. But when O'Mally came backhe'd got a new one on Soapy, for he'd depicted them to the sexton as anarchitect and builder from the West who were so struck by the dome theywanted to get up on the roof and study its proportions.
Fortunately it was a black, heav
y day, the kind when the lights shineout in dark offices and people come to the windows and yank up theshades. If anyone did notice them they'd have looked like a couple ofmen searching for a leak, especially as they were busy in one spot--thespace below the two windows marked by the burnt ends of the matchesO'Mally had dropped.
And here, with the scattered matches all around it, caught in a ledgejust above the gutter, they made the greatest find of all--a scarf pin.It was a star sapphire set in a twist of gold and platinum. An hourafter they had it in their possession it was identified by George andMr. Whitney as one they had seen on Johnston Barker the morning ofJanuary fifteenth.
From the tailor came further testimony. He identified the button as madefrom a new mould, the first consignment of which he had received late inDecember. So far he had only used it on two suits, one for a mining manfrom Nevada and the other for Johnston Barker--a dark brown cheviot witha reddish line. This had been the suit Barker had on when he visited theWhitney office that morning.
When he came to the end of all this I was balanced on the edge of thesofa, with my feet braced on the floor to keep from sliding off and myeyes glued on my loving spouse.
"Do you mean he came _down_ from one window to the other, Soapy?"
Babbitts nodded:
"Lowering himself by a rope fastened to the upper cleat which his weightloosened."
"But--my goodness!" I was aghast at the idea. "A man of Barker's agedangling down along the wall that you could see for miles!"
"You couldn't have seen him twenty feet off. The wall's dark and it wasa black dark night. If you'd been watching with a glass you couldn'thave made out anything at that height and at that hour."
"But the danger of it?"
"He was on a desperate job and had to take chances. Besides it's not asrisky as it sounds. The distance he had to drop was short. The ceilingsare low in those office buildings and the awning supports have to beunusually strong because of the summer storms. And then the man himselfwas small and light and is known to have kept himself in the pink ofcondition. With a strong rope thrown over the cleat he could easily haveswung himself to the story below, stood on the stone ledge which hisfeet scratched, and pushed up the window which Ford had probably leftslightly raised."
"The whole thing was a plot?"
"A consummate plot--not a murder committed on the spur of the moment buta murder carefully planned. Whitney thinks Barker had scented Harland'ssuspicions long before they broke out in the quarrel, in fact that hehad provoked it to give color to the suicide theory. When Barker went upthat afternoon the rope was under his coat. When Ford left the AzaleaWoods Estates early he knew every move he was to make from that timetill he boarded the elevator. There were only two weak spots in it, theopen window on the seventeenth floor and the length of time that Harlandwas supposed to have been in the corridor--the two points upon whichWhitney based his suspicions."
I was silent a minute, turning it over in my mind, then I said slowly:
"When Barker was coming down that way--it would have taken some timewouldn't it?--Harland must have been in the front office."
"Yes. O'Mally's puzzled over that point--What kept him there?"
"Looks like he might have had a date with someone," I said pondering.
"Ford, of course, but nobody can imagine what he wanted to see Fordabout. Oh, there's a lot of broken links in the chain yet."
I looked on the floor, frowning and thoughtful:
"It's awful strange. I'd like to know what made him come downthere--what was put up to him to lure him that way to his death."
The Black Eagle Mystery Page 8