“Who was it?” demanded McCarty.
“Eustace Goddard. The only thing that has kept him and his wife both going during these three days since the boy disappeared was their own private suspicion that he had been kidnapped for ransom and would be held safely until the exchange could be made, but now that hope has gone. The man they thought had taken Horace away was a former business associate of Goddard’s, down and out now. He applied to Goddard for financial help, it seems, at a time when it would have saved him, and when it was refused he threatened to make Goddard pay if he stripped him of the most precious thing he had. Goddard has been quietly looking for him since the trouble came and expecting him hourly to make a demand for a large sum; that was why he was willing to offer such a huge reward. Last evening, however, he ran him to earth and found out that the poor devil had been ill in a sanitarium for months and didn’t know anything about Horace. Mrs. Goddard is almost insane—Allonby is attending her—and Goddard himself is nearly as bad but I can only put him off with the same old promises and bunk!—Look over there now; that’s the boy’s police dog Max. He’s grieving himself to death, they tell me. Mac, if we don’t do something soon—!”
“We’ll be sitting tight and let the other fellow show his hand, the guy that’s been pulling all these murders and such.” They had passed down the block together toward the Parsons house and as he spoke McCarty glanced across the street to the court beside the Goddards’. The slim, smooth-coated police dog was pacing restlessly up and down with the slinking, mechanical movement of a beast in captivity, his swaying head hung low and tail drooping.
The inspector followed his companion’s gaze.
“Trafford says he tried to coax Max to go for a walk but the dog won’t go further than that from the house; they’re one-man creatures anyway, that breed, and the boy was his god.—If you can get anything that looks like straight dope out of the old gentleman ’phone me at the medical examiner’s office.”
He went on and McCarty ascended the steps of the Parsons residence and rang the bell. His summons was replied to after some little delay by a youth who carried himself smartly if awkwardly in his page’s uniform. The bright if somewhat weak face seemed abnormally pale, however, and his sharp eyes shifted in a scared fashion.
“Name’s McCarty,” the newcomer announced briefly. “Mr. Parsons expects me.”
“Yes, sir!” The youth’s tone was almost servile. “You can go right back to his study, sir. I’ll show you!”
He led the way to the room which McCarty had already visited surreptitiously two nights before, and knocked on the door.
“Come in.” The same dignified, elderly voice which had sounded over the telephone answered the rapping and a man rose slowly from behind the desk as they entered. He was tall and powerfully built, with a keen, intellectual face softened by warm, gray eyes and a well-molded mouth, sensitive yet firm. His finely shaped head was covered with a shock of snow-white hair as long as a mane and his old-fashioned high stock and severely cut black coat made him resemble a figure from the past. He looked to McCarty’s eyes as though he might have stepped out of one of the frames in his own portrait gallery, but there was no suggestion of a pose about him. Without sound or gesture he appeared to dominate the room and his caller felt almost abashed in his presence.