"Yes."
"There was with you a young man named David Prentiss?"
"Of course."
"Then here is the reason for my questions!" cried Hobart Hitchin, and his whole personality seemed aflame. "Anthony Fry, _where is David Prentiss_?"
CHAPTER X
The Web
Just the manner of the man startled Anthony and caused him to hitch back in his chair and stare for an instant. Johnson Boller was not so affected.
"Say, what"s the matter with you, Hitchin?" he asked. "Are you a plain nut?"
Hitchin snapped his fingers at him angrily and continued his stare at Anthony Fry.
"Well?" he said tensely.
"Well, upon my soul, Hitchin!" Anthony stammered. "I believe Boller"s right!"
"Oh, no, you don"t," Hobart Hitchin said quietly. "You know a great deal better and Boller knows a great deal better, but he has a good deal more self-control than you have. Fry, where is David Prentiss?"
"Gone home, of course!" Anthony snapped.
"When did he go?"
"What? Last night!"
"And can you give me an idea of the hour?"
"Oh--half-past twelve, perhaps."
"At half-past twelve last night, David Prentiss left this apartment. He went down in the elevator?"
"I suppose so."
"And--just be patient, Fry." Hitchin smiled disarmingly. "Did the young man wear from this apartment the clothes he wore into this apartment?"
It was perfectly apparent to Anthony that the wretched fool had taken what he fancied to be a scent of some sort; it was equally clear that, in his present state of mind, Anthony would answer perhaps three more questions and then, losing himself completely, would smash the flower-vase over Hobart Hitchin"s shining bald head solely as salve for his nerves!
Doubtless the long coat and the down-pulled cap had started him off--they were sufficiently mysterious-looking to impress a less sensitive imagination than Hitchin"s. Whatever troubled the crime specialist, David Prentiss would have to be lied out of here in detail, lied home and lied to bed.
"Hitchin," said Anthony, "Heaven alone knows what concern of yours it can be, but the Prentiss boy--the son of an old friend of mine who has seen better days--came back here with me last night for some things, cast-offs, I had promised his unfortunate father. We met him on the street on the way home."
"Just around the corner," supplied Johnson Boller, who was growing steadily more anxious to speak his mind to Anthony about the Mrs. Boller matter.
"And having come upstairs with us and having selected the things he thought his father would like best," Anthony went on, "they were wrapped in a bundle or ordinary brown paper, tied up with ordinary, non-mysterious, crime-proof string and carried out by David, who, I have no doubt at all, reached home within half an hour, gave the clothes to his father, said his prayers and went to bed without further ado. If there is anything else you"d like to know, ask!"
Hobart Hitchin had not blinked. Now he smiled strangely and shrugged his shoulders.
"At least," said he, "you have perfected the story, haven"t you?"
"I----"
"And now," Mr. Hitchin broke in incisively, "let us consider the facts!
We will take them, one by one, and I beg that you will listen. Item one: I sat in the lobby downstairs until seventeen minutes of one o"clock this morning, Fry. No David Prentiss pa.s.sed me, going out. n.o.body left this hotel with a bundle or a bag!"
"You didn"t see him," Anthony said.
"Because he was not there! Listen, please, and do not interrupt, Fry. I like you, or I should not be here. I wish to help you, if such a thing is possible, or I should have gone at once to the police," said the remarkable Mr. Hitchin. "You, like many a man before you, forget perfectly plain details. In this case, you have forgotten that my apartment is directly beneath yours--that the elevators here have latticed gates, so that one can see from any floor whoever may be pa.s.sing in one of the cars--that sound travels perfectly in this building when the street is quiet, as at night. So to get to item two.
About two o"clock this morning there was the sound of a heavy fall in this very room!"
Johnson Boller was grasping the trend more rapidly than was Anthony, and he was growing less comfortable.
"I fell!" he said.
"Did you really?" asked the demon detective. "Yet--you"re in that room, I take it? Yet you got out of bed immediately after and walked in here; I heard your step. Don"t flush, Boller! It takes practice to carry out a thing of this kind and whatever the motive may have been, you gentlemen are not old hands. And so to item three: it must have been about four when a policeman came to this door. _Why?_"
"There was supposed to be a burglar here. It was a false alarm," Anthony said, less collectedly.
Hitchin lighted the pipe he had filled and smiled.
"That is the tale they tell in the office," he said. "I confess that that detail puzzles me and as yet I haven"t had time to get inside information from my good friend our police captain. However, we can well call this detail immaterial and pa.s.s to item four."
He gazed into the blue cloud of smoke and smiled again.
"The woman in the case!" he said in a deep, ba.s.s voice.
"There was no woman!" Anthony exploded. "And----"
"The Frenchwoman, Fry!" Hitchin corrected.
"Well, she----"
"Don"t explain her," said Hobart Hitchin. "Let us see just what happened when she was about. She came after daylight. She pa.s.sed through the office downstairs so suddenly that n.o.body was able to stop her, and she knew where to come. She was in the elevator naming her floor to the man--who supposed her to have been pa.s.sed by the office--perhaps two seconds after she entered the house itself. She came directly to this apartment, Fry, and almost immediately she burst into hysterical weeping!"
His eyes were boring again and Hobart Hitchin also pointed the stem of his pipe accusingly at Anthony.
"Fry," he said, "what did that girl _see_, evidently at the end of the corridor, which produced that outburst of grief?"
"Nothing," Anthony said thickly.
"There was nothing to cause her acute grief?"