THE WOMAN IN THE CASE
My mind remained appalled before the contemplation of the devilish ingenuity of this man, who could plan the murder with such diabolical cunning. No wonder we were finding it a difficult matter to secure proof against him! Who was he? Was he someone I knew or a stranger who had hitherto remained unsuspected by us? Did McKelvie have any idea of the man's identity, or was he also groping in the dark? Persistently I discarded the thought of Dick, even though the ring was his, and Jones' description of the criminal fitted the boy, for I could not believe that he could have become such a fiend, unless indeed he had suddenly lost all sense of proportion and balance.
It was at this point in my meditations that Jones arose and declared that he must be going, but McKelvie refused to listen to him. He liked Jones, even though the two were so often on opposite sides of the case they were investigating.
"Stay for dinner," McKelvie urged. "I owe you that much anyhow. Also, I may need you. And now I wish you fellows would cease worrying about the criminal's identity and put your faculties to work on a more pressing subject. Where do you suppose he has hidden Cora Manning?"
Where, indeed, with the whole of New York to choose from.
We were enjoying our after-dinner cigars when McKelvie suddenly gave a shout. "Eureka!" he cried. "I've got it. She's at Riverside Drive. What an idiot I was not to think of it before."
"How do you make that out?" asked Jones.
"Lee thought he heard a step on the walk and assumed that it was the girl leaving the grounds. He hurried to the gate, but when he looked around there was no one in sight. If she had really left the place he would have been in time to see her as she walked down the block. There would be no place for her to disappear to unless she jumped in the river, which would hardly be likely."
"She may have hidden in the grounds and have waited for Lee to go away first," I objected.
"She did not know he was there and would have no reason then for hiding. No, no, she's at the Darwin house. It was the easiest place to hide her in, safe and secure, and it would not involve his having to take anyone into his confidence. The house, doubtless, has more than one secret room. We'll go out there now, and in an hour we'll have her free."
"Do you want a taxi?" asked Jones.
"No, we'll use the subway this time," replied McKelvie.
We walked to Union Square and took the Broadway Subway to Dyckman Street, walking from there to Riverside Drive. As we entered the Darwin grounds I paused to admire the brilliancy of the stars, and noticed how the reflection of the lights from the river craft twinkled in the waters of the Hudson as if in friendly rivalry.
But my companions did not wait to look at the scenery, and I had to hurry to catch up with them.
"We'll go in the back entrance again," said McKelvie. "I want to question Mason."
After a slight delay the old man admitted us and McKelvie asked him if he ever took occasion to go into the main wing of the house.
"Yes, sir. I have been in twice, sir, to open the windows and air the place against Mrs. Darwin's coming home," he replied.
"And while you were there did you hear any sounds, a person walking, for instance?" continued McKelvie.
Mason looked at him in great surprise. "Oh, no, sir. There is no one in the house now, sir."
"Is there an attic to the house?"
"Yes, sir; but I'm sure there's no one there. I went in yesterday morning to put away Mr. Darwin's things, sir."
"Have you any provisions in the house?" was the next question.
"Yes, sir, for myself."
"Prepare some broth for me, please. I'll send for it when I want it."
"Yes, sir."
"What's the idea? Do you think she's starving, too?" asked Jones, as we crossed the passageway and entered the main hall.
"Does he strike you as the kind that would be gentle with his prisoners? We'll ransack the whole house from attic to cellar, despite Mason's assertions."
We ascended the broad staircase to the second floor. McKelvie then apportioned the back rooms to Jones, the front ones to me, and reserved for himself the whole third floor, which was mostly the attic. My part comprised the sleeping apartments of Ruth as well as Darwin's suite.
I entered Ruth's rooms first, but did not remain in them long, since every article spoke to me of the girl I loved and who was at this moment enduring the hardness of a narrow cot in a barred and grated cell instead of enjoying the comforts to which she had been always accustomed, and all this because she had been accused of a crime that she was utterly incapable of committing.
Darwin's suite of dressing-room, bedroom, and bath were also unproductive of any clues to Cora Manning's whereabouts, although once I thought I detected a faint odor of rose jacqueminot and wondered idly whether Darwin, too, had caught the epidemic.
Out in the hall I encountered Jones.
"Nothing doing," he said. "Besides, she wouldn't be lying around loose, or that old butler would have come across her, unless he was lying. For my own part, I think this is a wild goose chase."
Before I could reply McKelvie descended from the attic. "Would you mind talking in a lower key," he remarked in a whisper. "I could hear you distinctly upstairs, Jones, and if the criminal should come here, we would frighten him off for good."
"You don't mean to tell me he'd have the nerve to come here!" exclaimed Jones.
"He's come here more than once, as Mr. Davies and I can prove," he returned, drawing us into a room and closing the door. "Don't you suppose he comes here to see the girl? It's my opinion he is trying to break her into going away with him, though I can't see what is to stop him from drugging her and carrying her away."
He walked to the window and looked out into the night. "She's not in the attic. There's no secret room up there; yet I'm positive she's in the house. He wouldn't come back for anything less important, though I did think once that he had a hiding-place in the room behind the safe. You remember that I was looking for it the night we found Dick's ring," he continued, more to himself than to us. Then he turned away from the window, his eyes shining, "Lord, I'm growing dull! Do you recall, Mr. Davies, that we heard steps on the stone staircase and that when I opened the door and turned my flash on the stairs they were empty and the door below locked?"
I nodded, and he went on quickly, "It never occurred to me before, but he must have vanished into a second secret room off those stairs. Come on, I'll bet that's where he's got her hidden."
At the door, however, he paused to issue final instructions. "Go softly and obey me implicitly. Also don't talk, and have your gun handy, Jones, in case of need."
We tiptoed down the stairs and crossed the hall to the study door, which McKelvie opened slowly and silently. The room was dark. With the aid of his flash we walked down the length of the room to the safe, our footfalls deadened by the thickness of the carpet. Then McKelvie manipulated the dial and opened the safe. It was Jones' first initiation into the mysteries of the entrance, and I pulled him down to a stooping position as we passed through to the secret room. Then we crossed to the door at the head of the stairs and McKelvie listened intently before he inserted his key in the lock. Then he turned to us.
"Stay here," he whispered. "When I locate the room I'll call to you. If anyone comes in that lower door, don't hesitate to shoot, Jones."
Jones and I obeyed and stood together in the darkness, watching the disk of light from McKelvie's flash dart here and there along the walls as McKelvie descended the stairs. Then the ray of light rested upon the wall into which the staircase had been built and which extended about three feet beyond the lowest step, that is, extended the length of the distance between the bottom of the staircase and the outer door, which, being but two feet in width, had plenty of margin with which to swing inwards. On this three feet of wall space the light danced up and down as McKelvie hunted for indications of a second secret room. Then we heard him calling to us softly.
We descended the stairs cautiously, and when we neared the bottom McKelvie pressed a depression which he pointed out to us. We saw a section of the wall disappear from view and the ray of light rested on the interior of a dark room. McKelvie stepped through first and called:
"Miss Manning, are you there?" he asked.
There was no answer, and telling us not to advance further, he disappeared into the darkness. We strained forward to look, and I distinctly smelled a musty, damp odor, as though the room or cell, or whatever it was, had been used as a vault, or maybe a tomb.
Then McKelvie came out again and swung the panel into place. He shivered slightly. "It's empty, but there are indications of a trap door in the ceiling. What is the room directly above this end of the study?"
"Darwin's dressing-room," I replied.
"Any windows on this side?"
"No."
"Just as I thought. There is a room above that vault. We'll try the second floor. I trust we are not too late," he added as we returned to the study. There we waited while McKelvie relocked the entrance, and when he was ready to lead the way upstairs again, Jones spoke in a troubled whisper.
"What's the idea of building a house with holes in the wall? It's a regular rat-trap," he said.
"I have a book at home that I'll have to lend you, Jones. The man who built this house was a nut on old-fashioned ideas. He copied an ancestral home, secret rooms and all. Not that he meant to use them, of course, but because it suited him to put them in. The one I just examined was used in ancient times, I think, to receive the bodies of those who fell through the trap door from the room above. A convenient way of getting rid of your enemy, that is all."
"This criminal of yours seems very familiar with this house," said Jones.
"Yes, he had been here many times before the murder, and he took pains to learn all he could about the place," returned McKelvie.
"I thought he only learned of the entrance on the night of the murder," I objected.
"Well, what of it. He is clever enough to have deduced what I did. He probably stumbled across the lower room in opening the outer door and then it was mere child's play to discover the room above."
Yes, that part was easy enough, but it was another matter to find the hidden spring that worked the panel. We turned on the light in the room, and divided the wall into three parts, each of us fingering a third carefully and painstakingly from top to bottom. It was Jones finally who stumbled on the spring. He had pressed the center of one of the mahogany flowers that formed the carved border of the dash-board and silently the panel slid back.
Never shall I forget the sight revealed to my eyes as the light from the dressing-room dispelled slightly the gloom of that interior.
In the center of the narrow room kneeled a young girl, with her dark hair streaming about her shoulders and her pale face raised to heaven as she pressed the barrel of an automatic to her heart. In that attitude of utter renunciation, she was very beautiful, so beautiful that she took away our breath and held us motionless.
That at least was her effect upon Jones and myself, but McKelvie was less susceptible, or perhaps his quick eyes noted a motion that we did not observe. At any rate, he sprang forward and knocked up the pistol. There was a sharp report, and the girl fell forward into his arms in a dead faint.
He carried her into Darwin's bedroom and laid her on the bed. While he worked over her, I descended to the kitchen where Mason was watching the broth McKelvie had ordered him to make.
When I returned she was sitting up, and as she sipped the broth I looked at her again and felt my pulses stirring as I looked into her face. I'm not much of a hand at describing beauty in a woman, and perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay her is to say that though she had suffered and her lustrous black eyes were dull and her face wan and pale, she was beautiful still, and her voice held all the haunting quality of the South in its depths as she told us her story, a story so unusual that it was almost unbelievable.