"The liniment Fry?" cried Theodore Dalton.
His gray face turned white and then purple. He rose and ran one hand through his s.h.a.ggy gray mop.
"The liniment Fry," Hitchin said.
"My boy--my d.i.c.ky went home with that man?"
"A boy was introduced to me as David Prentiss."
Dalton"s hands clutched his forehead for a moment and the grinding of his teeth was audible.
"You were saying--what were you saying about a trunk?"
"I said that the remains of the boy had been brought here by Fry"s personal servant, sir. I saw them taken into the side gate not ten minutes ago and----"
"Come!" said Theodore Dalton.
He reached out and, gripping Hitchin"s arm, decided that gentleman"s course for him. As Theodore Dalton strode to the back of the house and to the back stairs, as he went straight down and into and through the kitchen, Hobart Hitchin merely went along, partly in stumbles, partly in little jumps; and so they came to the laundry and, nerving himself until the veins stood out on his temples, Dalton faced his butler and spoke thickly:
"The--the trunk!"
"Beg pardon, sir?" said Bates humbly.
"The trunk which was brought here! Where is it?"
"Oh, that trunk, sir. It was took away again, Mr. Dalton. The person that brought it said it was for Felice, the maid we dismissed this morning, sir."
"_For Felice?_" Dalton echoed.
"Quite so, sir."
"Why was it sent to Felice?"
"I couldn"t say, sir," said Bates, stepping to the gate and opening it.
"There it goes, sir, on the cab. Shall I send after it?"
Dalton leaned heavily against Hobart Hitchin.
"Goes--where?"
"Well, I"m not sure as it was his voice, sir, but I think, standing out here, I heard him tell the man to go back where they came from."
Followed quite a tableau.
Bates stared respectfully at his master. Hobart Hitchin, who had not as yet had time to form a complete new set of theories, merely stood and frowned. But although Theodore Dalton did not move, he did not seem still.
His face, in fact, mirrored the whole gamut of human emotions of the darker sort; overwhelming sorrow was there at first, and then, succeeding slowly, amazement and unbelief, and after them trembling anger. Black fire shot from his deepset eyes, as they switched to Hitchin; his lips became a ghastly white line; his mighty chest rose and fell; and now he had taken Hobart Hitchin"s arm again and led him back to a dusky corridor.
"You!" said Dalton. "I don"t know who you are and why you came here; but this I ask you, and if you don"t answer truthfully, G.o.d help you! Does that trunk, to your belief, contain the body of the boy you call Prentiss?"
"To my almost certain knowledge!"
"And he was murdered in the apartment of _Anthony Fry_?"
"He was, sir, and----"
"Come!" said Theodore Dalton, once more, and they returned to the study in a series of stumbles and little jumps.
Once in the dark, handsome room Theodore Dalton walked straight to the cabinet in the corner and, with a key, opened the topmost drawer. He extracted therefrom a heavy automatic pistol and slipped out its magazine. He opened a box of cartridges and filled the little box; and when it had clicked into the handle of the automatic, and the pistol itself was in his pocket.
"There was a cab leaving the door when you came," he said quietly. "Did you dismiss it?"
"I--I believe so," said Hobart Hitchin, who as an actual fact liked neither the sight of the weapon nor the sight of Dalton just now.
"Bates!" Dalton spoke into the little interior telephone. "My car!"
"If you"re going somewhere----" escaped Hobart Hitchin.
"I am going to see Anthony Fry. You are going with me. You are going to accuse him, in my presence, of the crime," said Theodore Dalton, with the same ominous calm. "And when you have accused him, I shall do the rest! Sit down!"
Anthony Fry, because there was more relief in him than flesh and blood, leaned back in his pet chair and gazed at the ceiling, long, steadily, happily. He would have liked to smoke, yet he declined to make the effort which would break the delicious la.s.situde that possessed him. He would have liked to sing, too, and clap Johnson Boller on the back and a.s.sure him that all was well in the best possible world--but for a little it was enough to sneer smilingly at Boller"s bent head.
He, poor fool, fancied that all was over because his infernal wife had threshed around a bit and gone off clutching poor little Mary"s hat--a funny thing in itself. Instead of getting up and cheering at his prospective freedom from the matrimonial yoke, Johnson was groaning there and clawing into his hair; and now, by the way, he was raising his head and turning toward his old friend.
"Anthony!" Johnson Boller said faintly.
"What is it?"
"You wouldn"t pull a thing like that on me?"
"I certainly shall, if you ever try to tell the truth about Miss Dalton."
"But what did she ever do for me, to let her confounded reputation wreck my life? All she ever did was to make a female a.s.s of herself by wearing pants and going to a prize fight and then listening to you. Why should a thing like that bust up my home?"
Anthony shrugged his shoulders.
"It may not," said he.
"It has!" Johnson Boller said feverishly. "And listen, Anthony! You and I have to stand together, old man. The girl"s out of the way, so that clears your skirts for a while, but what about Hitchin? What if he calls in the police this afternoon?"
Anthony laughed; with Mary out of the way he was another man.
"We"ll let that take care of itself. For that matter, why not go down and tell Hitchin the truth and show him what a fool he"s making of himself? He"s a gentleman, I suppose; if we swear him to secrecy he"s not likely to talk."
"And if we call him off, then we"ll find Bee and tell her the truth, too?" Johnson Boller asked eagerly. "She"s a lady, Anthony. If we swear her to secrecy, she"ll never talk--and maybe we could explain it to the girl and have her verify what we say, hey?"
Anthony actually yawned and stretched as he arose.