I stopped my taxi at the corner (not to advertise myself with unnecessary noise) and limped the short distance which Perry Callender-Graham and his brother Ned must have travelled on the secret errands that led them to their death. The Alhambra was neither as picturesque nor as imposing as its name suggested. It was just a substantial brick building, six or seven storeys in height, with facings of light-coloured stone, and large, cheerful windows. Luckily for my lame leg, the entrance was but a step above the street level.
As I arrived the door was opened by a chocolate-brown negro in chocolate-brown livery. He helped a smart nurse to pa.s.s out with a baby in a white and gold chariot, and while he was thus engaged I hobbled into the hall. A hasty glance at a name board on the wall opposite gave me the list of occupants and the floor on which each tenant lived. Evidently there were two flats to each storey. T.
Paulling had an apartment on the third, so also had G. Emmett. I had to risk something, and so when the brown hall-porter turned to me (which he did with embarra.s.sing swiftness) I risked inquiring for Mr.
Emmett. I believed, I added, that he was expecting me.
"That"s all right, sir. He"s in," was the welcome reply, with a compa.s.sionate grin at the crutches which guaranteed the harmlessness of an unknown visitor. "I"ll take you in the elevator."
Up we shot to the third floor, where I feared that my conductor might insist on guiding me to the door of Mr. Emmett. Fortunately, however, someone rang for the lift and the porter shot down again, directing me to the right.
The instant he was out of sight I turned to the left, and, with the police key in my hand, I stood before the door of T. Paulling.
My blood leaped through my veins, and the hand that tried the key in the lock shook with the rush of it. I heard its pounding in my ears, and through the murmurous sound the question whispered, "What if the key won"t fit? Down goes the whole theory. You"ll have to confess yourself a fool to Roger Odell."
As I blundered at the lock in haste and fear that someone might pa.s.s, or that this might be one of T. Paulling"s rare days at the flat, I was aghast at my late self-confidence. Face to face with the test, it seemed impossible that my-boast to Odell and Carr could succeed. I felt callow and stupid, altogether incompetent. The key seemed too large and the wrong shape, which meant that the mystery of the brothers" death was closed to me, like the door. A voice not far off made my nerves jump, and--the key slipped into the lock! From somewhere above or below came the sound of voices, but I could not be seen from the lift. Almost before I knew what I was doing or what had happened, I was on the other side of the door, in a dark and stuffy vestibule.
The sound of voices was suddenly stilled. It was as if with a single step I had won my way into another world. I drew a long breath of relief after the strain, for the silence and darkness said that the tenant was not at home, and I might hope to have the flat to myself.
I groped for an electric switch, touched it, and flooded the vestibule with light. It was small, with nothing to distinguish it from any other vestibule of any other well-furnished flat. Beyond led a narrow corridor which, when lit, showed me several doors. I opened the nearest, switched on another light, and found myself on the threshold of a moderate-sized sitting-room or study, with bookshelves ranged along one of the walls. The window was so heavily curtained that I had no fear of the sudden illumination being noticed from the street. The air was heavy and smelled of moth powder. The mahogany table in the centre of the room and the desk under the window were coated with thin films of dust, but everything was stiffly in order: no books lying about, no woman"s work, no trace of cigarette ash, dropped glove, nor pile of newspapers with a tell-tale date.
I walked over to the desk and, pulling out the swivel chair, sat down.
In the silver inkstand the ink had dried. In a pen-rack were two pens, one stub, the other an old-fashioned quill, both almost new, but faintly stained with ink. Neither, it struck me, could have been used more than once or twice. There were several small drawers; all were empty. No paper nor envelopes, no sealing-wax nor seal, not so much as an end of twine. But the blotting-pad--the only movable thing on the desk beside the inkstand and pen-rack--was more repaying. It also appeared to be nearly new. Just inside the soft green leather cover lay two sheets of plain, unmonogrammed grey-blue paper with two envelopes to match. I annexed one of the latter and made a mental note that, in the police dossier of the Callender-Graham case the empty envelope found in the pocket of the younger brother was said to be blue-grey in colour and of thick texture. No record had been kept concerning the colour of the envelope in Perry"s pocket, as little importance had been attributed to it, until the coincidence of the second envelope was remarked later.
The blotting-pad was as new-looking as the pens. The two uppermost sheets were of unspotted white, but the middle pages had both been used, and traces were visible of two short notes having been pressed against the paper while the ink was still very wet. Apparently these doc.u.ments had had neither heading nor signature, and consisted of a few lines only. On another page a longer letter began "Dearest," and had been signed with an initial. There was no mirror in the room in which to reverse these writings, and, carefully separating the used sheets from their unsoiled fellows, I folded and slipped them into an inner pocket. There was nothing else in the room which could help me, with the exception, perhaps, of the books; and most of these were in sets, bound in a uniform way. These had a book-plate and the monogram "M.L.," no doubt meaning Maurice Lowenstein. Of new novels or other publications there were none: an additional proof (if it had been needed after the clue of the dried ink and almost unused blotter) that the new tenants were seldom in the place.
Having deduced this fact, I then went through the remaining six rooms of the flat without any discoveries, and finally reached, in its due order, the problem I had left for the last. This was the examination of the lock which the dead brothers" latchkeys had fitted. The work had to be done with the door open, and therefore I waited until the hour when most people lunch. It would look like burglarious business, what I had to do, and it was important not to be interrupted or arrested.
The hands of my watch were at one o"clock as mine were on the latch which, if I were right, could with a single click solve the Callender-Graham mystery. If I were wrong, not only were four out of my twenty-four hours wasted, but my theory fell to the ground and broke into pieces past mending.
I opened the door of the flat and made sure that, for the moment, no one was in the hall. Then, bending down with my back to possible pa.s.sers-by, I whipped out a magnifying gla.s.s and pocket electric torch which I had bought on my way to the agent"s.
During the next five minutes I had good cause to thank Heaven for the mechanical bent that had turned my mind to motors and aeroplanes.
The same evening, at a little after six, a "commuter"s" train landed me at the station of a small Long Island town almost too far away from New York to be labelled suburban. Big automobiles and small runabouts were there to meet the tired business men who travelled many miles for the sake of salt breezes and the latest thing in Elizabethan houses. I was more tired than any business man; also, I had encountered as many setbacks as successes, but n.o.body and nothing came to welcome me. I was able, however, to get a place in an old-fashioned horse-drawn vehicle whose mission was to pick up chance arrivals. There were several of us, and as my rate of locomotion was slow, by the time I had hobbled off the platform the one seat left was beside the driver. I was not sorry, as the other men appeared to be strangers in Sandy Plain, and having said I would go to the hotel (for the sake of saying something), I asked my companion if he knew anybody named Paulling.
"There"s two families of that name hereabouts," he replied.
"My Paullings," I hazarded, "are retiring people, don"t make friends, and are away a good deal."
"Ah, they"d be the Paullings of Bayview Farm!" returned the driver.
"There"s no others answer that description around here that I ever heard of, and I"ve lived at Sandy Plain since before the commuters discovered it."
"Yes, I mean the Paullings of Bayview Farm," I caught him up.
"The farm"s about a mile and a half past Roselawn Hotel," my seat mate went on. "I can take you there after I drop the other folks."
I thanked him and said he might come back for me if he cared to after I had dined, and inquired casually if the Paullings were staying at their farm just then.
The driver shook his head. He didn"t know. Few persons did know much about the Paullings, who weren"t old residents, but had rented Bayview Farm two or three years ago. Maybe the hotel folks might be able to tell me whether I was likely to find them.
They could not do so, I soon learned. Mr. Paulling was said to be an invalid, though he never called in the local doctor. He was often at home alone for weeks together, except for a man-servant, a foreigner as reserved as himself, whom he had brought with him to Sandy Plain.
There was another servant sometimes--a woman--also a foreigner; but when the Paullings were both away a Mrs. Vandeermans, a country dressmaker who lived in a cottage near by, looked after the house, going in occasionally to see that all was well.
I asked as many questions as I dared, but learned little; and as soon as dusk had begun to fall I started off in the nondescript vehicle which had returned for me. The driver spent most of the twenty minutes it took him to reach the farm in explaining that it wasn"t really a farm except in name. Nothing was left of it but the house and two or three acres of orchard; all the rest had been sold off in lots by the owner before he let it to the Paullings. What "city folks" admired in it was beyond the knowledge of my companion, but when we arrived at the gate and saw the far-off house gleaming white behind a thick screen of ancient apple trees, I realised the attractions of the place, especially for such tenants as I believed the Paullings to be. The farm-house, with its wide clapboarding, its neat green shutters, and its almost cla.s.sic "colonial" porch hung with roses, had the air of being on terms of long familiar friendship with the old-fashioned garden and the great trees which almost hid it from its neighbours and the road. Its front windows, closed and shuttered now, would look out when open over sloping lawns and flowerbeds to distant blue glints of the sea; and altogether Bayview Farm seemed an ideal retreat for persons who could be sufficient to themselves and each other.
Those shuttered windows, however, hinted at disappointment for me. Not a light showed, behind one of them, and when I had rung the bell of the front door, and pounded vainly at the back, I had to make up my mind that the Paullings were either away or determined to be thought so.
"Mrs. Vandeermans "ll know all about "em," my conductor comforted me.
"She lives next door, a quarter of a mile farther on."
We drove the quarter mile, only to be struck by another blow. The one person at home in Mrs. Vandeermans" cottage was that widowed woman"s mother, very old, very deaf, half blind, knowing little about anything, and nothing at all about the tenants of Bayview Farm.
"My darter"s gone to my son"s in Buffalo," she quavered when I had screamed at her. "He"s sick, but she"ll be back to-morrow to look after me. She knows them Paullings. You come again to-morrow afternoon if you want to talk to her."
"You seem sure disappointed," remarked my companion, as he drove me and my crutches back to Roselawn Hotel.
"I am," I admitted; but the words were as inadequate as most words are.
I was bowled over, knocked out, or so I told myself in my first depression. Nothing was of any use to me after to-morrow morning at nine o"clock.
On my way back to New York in a slow train I gloomily thought over the situation. Certain startling yet not unexpected discoveries made early in the day had elated me too soon. I had collected evidence, but only circ.u.mstantial evidence. I had no absolute proof to give Roger Odell, and nothing less would suffice. I had counted on getting hold of proof at Sandy Plain, from which place on Long Island (I had learned from the agent) cheques came regularly each quarter to pay the rent of the flat in the Alhambra--cheques sometimes signed T. Paulling, sometimes M.
Paulling. One had arrived only a few days before with the former signature, so I had reason to hope that T. Paulling might be unearthed at Sandy Plain.
I could, I told myself, write to Roger Odell and ask for a delay, but that would kill such feeble faith in me as I had forcibly implanted in him. He would think me a fraud, and believe that I had been trying to gain time in order to spring some trick upon him. Besides, the Paullings might come to New York, if they were not already there, and discover that some person unknown was on their track and had been tearing sheets out of their blotting-book. No, I must keep my appointment with Roger Odell or face the prospect of complete failure.
But how to convince him of what I was myself convinced, with the disjointed bits of evidence in my possession? Just as my train came to a stop with a slight jolt in the Pennsylvania station, I saw as in an electric flash a way of doing it. Perhaps it was the jolt that gave the flash.
I could not wait to get back to my hotel. I inquired of a porter where I could get a messenger boy. He showed me. I begged two sheets of paper and two envelopes. They were pushed under my hand. I scratched off six lines to Roger Odell: "Don"t think when you get this I"m going to ask you to put off our interview. On the contrary, I ask you to advance it. Please be in Julius Felborn"s private office at a quarter to nine instead of nine. This is vitally important. If he has a large safe in his office, get the key or combination so that you can open it.
Small safe no use.--Yours hopefully, J.H."
I finished this scrawl and sent it away by messenger to the club where Odell had said I might "phone, if necessary, up to one o"clock that night. It was only just eleven.
The second letter was longer and more troublesome to compose. It was to Grace Callender, and I trusted for its effect to the kindness she professed for me. Her aunt also had been friendly and had shown interest in the prospects of Carr Price"s play. Neither, however, dreamed that success depended in any way upon Roger Odell.
"DEAR MISS GRACE," I wrote,--"You will think the request I"m going to make of you and Miss Callender a very strange one, but you promised that if you could help me you would do so. Well, extraordinary as it may seem, _you can make my fortune if you_ will both come to the Felborn Theatre at the unearthly hour of nine to-morrow morning, and ask to be shown into Mr. Felborn"s private office. I shall be there, waiting and hoping to see you two ladies arrive promptly, as more than I can tell depends upon that. You happened to mention in my presence something about dining out to-night and returning rather late, so I feel there is a chance of your getting this and sending me a line by the messenger to the Belmont. He will wait for you, and I will wait for him.--Yours sincerely, JOHN HASLE."
An hour later the answer came to my hotel. "Of course we"ll both be there on the stroke of nine. Depend upon us," Grace Callender replied.
"Thank Heaven!" I mumbled. Yet I was heavy with a sense of guilt. If it had been only for punishment, or only for my own advancement, I could not have done what I planned to do. No man could. But Grace Callender"s happiness was at stake.
Roger Odell was five minutes before his time in Felborn"s office next day, yet he found me on the spot. I saw by his face that his well-seasoned nerves were keyed not far from breaking-point. But he kept his role of the superior, indifferent man of the world. He hoped I didn"t see the strain he was under, and I hoped that I hid my feelings from him. Each probably succeeded as well as the other.
"Well, what have you got to tell me?" he asked, when we were alone together in Julius Felborn"s decorative private office.
"I"ve nothing to tell you," I said. "Nevertheless, I believe you will hear something if you"ve done as I suggested. Have you got the key or the combination of that big safe in the wall behind the desk?"
"I have the combination for to-day. Felborn was at the club last night when your letter came, and I asked him for it. There aren"t many favours he wouldn"t grant me. But what has Julius Felborn"s safe to do with the case?"
"Please open it. We haven"t much time to spare." I looked at my watch. In a quarter of an hour the Misses Callender ought to be announced. If they failed me after all--but I would not think of that "if."