THE SOCIETY SUICIDE
A QUIET-FACED man was seated in an office on the ninth floor of the Badger Building. The door of his private room was open. Beyond was a stenographer at a desk.
The glass-paneled door at the outer entrance bore the number 909, in reverse figures. Beneath it, also in reverse, was the inscription:
RUTLEDGE MANN Investments
The man at the desk was somewhat rotund in both face and body. Like most persons of his proportions, he was inclined to be leisurely.
He picked up a letter from the desk, handled it thoughtfully; then arose and closed the door of the private office. He returned to his desk, cut the envelope with a letter cutter, and took out a folded sheet of paper.
The paper bore a coded message which Rutledge Mann perused without difficulty. Even as he finished reading, the ink on the letter began to disappear. Mann tore up the blank sheet and deposited it in the wastebasket.
He picked up the telephone and called the office of the New York Classic. Connected with the editorial department, Mann asked for Clyde Burke. He spoke a few cryptic sentences into the telephone, then hung up.
Some twenty minutes later, there came a rap at Mann’s door. The stenographer opened it.
“Mr. Burke is here,” she said to the investment broker.
A young chap of medium height entered the room. He was plainly dressed, but presented a neat appearance. His eyes were keen as he closed the door behind him.
“The Andrews case?” he questioned, in a low voice.
“Yes,” responded Mann. “What do you make of it?”
“Plain as the nose on your face. George Andrews got hit in the stock market. Discharged his servants and took a little apartment. Broke. Things became worse. He hung himself.”
Mann fingered a clipping on his desk. It told the story.
George Andrews, young society man, had committed suicide by hanging himself from the hook of a skylight in his studio apartment. With his neck in a dangling loop, he had kicked away the chair on which he had been standing.
His body had been discovered by a maid who had entered in the morning.
Friends of Andrews had stated that the young man had been depressed because of money matters. This was all covered in the early editions of the evening newspapers.
“Too bad,” observed Mann. “I was talking this morning with a chap who knew Andrews well. He said that he had seen Andrews yesterday afternoon.”
“What did he say about him?” Burke asked.
“Well, Andrews was certainly hard up. But he was somewhat cheerful at that. He told my informant that he was expecting a visit from Jerry Middleton.”
“The polo player?”
“Yes,” Mann went on. “Middleton is a great traveler. Andrews evidently expected him back in New York last night. Middleton has money. Perhaps Andrews thought Middleton would lend him some.”
“But—”
“Either Middleton refused, or did not arrive as expected,” the man at the desk ignored the interruption. “I incline to the latter opinion.”
“Why?”
“Because I called up Middleton’s town house, and they told me that he was still away, and not expected to return. They said that they didn’t know where he was.”
“Well,” commented Burke, “it looks plain enough. Andrews needed dough. That’s why he killed himself. But, of course” — he hesitated thoughtfully — “there may be some other reason in back of it. A man isn’t too quick to take his own life.”
“What about this case, Clyde?” asked Mann, changing the subject.
HE drew a clipping from the desk drawer. Burke looked at it. The account was a few days old. It told of a small motor boat found adrift in Long Island Sound. The owner, a sportsman named Dale Wharton, was missing. It was assumed that he had fallen overboard and drowned.
“There may be a mystery here,” observed Burke. “They’re expecting the body to turn up any time, now. When they find it, there may be a clew.
“Wharton started out at night, alone, for a run over to Connecticut. Left Long Island; that’s all they know about him.”
Mann nodded.
“A peculiar case,” he said, “and there’s another one that the newspapers know nothing about. A young man, rather prominent socially, has been missing for approximately two months.”
“Who is he?” Clyde Burke’s question came in a tone of surprise. Very few such items failed to reach the news office of the New York Classic, the tabloid newspaper with which Burke was connected.
“A man named Robert Buchanan,” declared Mann. “His relatives have been disturbed about his absence. He was engaged to marry Margaret Glendenning, who lives with her uncle, a retired manufacturer. No one seems to know where Buchanan has gone.”
“How did you find out about it?” Burke asked.
“I hear many things at the Cobalt Club,” declared Mann, with a note of pride. “It’s my business — as you know — to keep posted on matters unusual. I learned of Buchanan’s disappearance about ten days ago.”
“And then—”
“I sent the information to— to the proper person” — there was a hidden significance in Mann’s words — “and of course I made notes on the Wharton case also.
“I must admit, however, that I would have seen nothing in the suicide of George Andrews. But to-day, I received instructions.”
Burke nodded. He knew what Rutledge Mann meant by “instructions.” For both Clyde Burke and the investment broker were the secret agents of that man of mystery — The Shadow.
Rutledge Mann, working from the security of a comfortable office, and spending his evenings at the exclusive Cobalt Club, served as a contact man for The Shadow.
Clyde Burke, ostensibly a newspaper reporter with the Classic, in an ideal position to conduct outside investigations, was an active agent of The Shadow.
“I had been expecting instructions,” declared Mann quietly, “but until today, all was silence. I read of the Andrews suicide in the newspapers, and I actually passed by it. Then came the word. That is why I called you at the Classic office. You are to get information on Andrews immediately.”
“At his apartment?”
“No. That is either unimportant, or has been taken care of. Your investigation must be made at the morgue. You are to view the body of George Andrews.”
“That’s easy enough,” said Burke. “I can go down there right away.”
“Good!” said Rutledge Mann. He stared at the wall and spoke as though repeating words which he had read. “Look for anything unusual when you see the body. If you find it, report in full. If you see nothing, report to that effect. Learn all you can.”
Mann became silent. Burke knew that the discussion had ended. He arose and left the office.
Mann remained at the desk, studying the newspaper clipping. He put it away in a desk drawer, called the stenographer, and dictated some letters to his investment clients.
AN hour later, Mann was once more alone in his inner office, when the stenographer appeared to say that Mr. Burke had returned. The reporter was soon cloistered with Mann.
There was a tone of repressed excitement in Burke’s voice as he related the details of his investigation in the Andrews case.
“I went to the morgue,” he said. “I ran into Steve Brill, covering the story for the Classic. Brill took me in to see the body.
“It was an ugly sight, but that didn’t concern me. I was interested in the rope mark about the neck. It left a big welt — almost like a scar. You could see the twists of the rope.
“I’ve seen marks like that before, so I knew what to expect. I had a chance to look at it closely. And that’s when I saw something else!”
The reporter leaned forward, and his right forefinger traced a line on the palm of his left hand.
“Right with the rope mark,” he said, “was another line — so thin you could hardly see it. Just a faint, narrow trace, almost like a thread. It may have been red once; but it’s white now.
“It followed the rope mark so closely that it was lost at times. It looked to me exactly as though the rope had been set to cover that very line!”
Mann was listening with implacid countenance to Burke’s words. It was not Mann’s business to theorize too frequently. He was a collector of facts. Nevertheless, he could see the obvious connection toward which Burke was working. Mann made no comment.
“When I saw that,” continued Burke, “I did some more looking. That’s when I spotted something else. I looked at the dead man’s face. On his forehead, I saw a mark like this.” The reporter made a tracing with his finger. “A round spot, no bigger than a dime!”
“A scar?”
“It looked more like a burn,” Burke went on. “It was whiter than the surrounding flesh, and I never would have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking mighty close.
“Brill wasn’t watching me at the time. I heard him speak to some one, and I looked to see Detective Sergeant Cleghorn. He was handling the case. I listened while he spoke to Brill.
“It’s just another suicide, in Cleghorn’s opinion. He’s moving the body out of the morgue. He says that Andrews hung himself, and that all strangled people look a lot alike.
“He’s right on that — but he’s missed his guess about how George Andrews was strangled!”
Rutledge Mann nodded. “Have you made your report?” he questioned.
“No,” replied Burke. “I thought you might intend to include this with your own—”
“Yours will be sufficient,” interposed Mann, pushing pen and paper to the reporter.
Deftly, Clyde Burke began to write a message of coded characters. He wrote swiftly, and in five minutes his task was done. He folded the paper and inserted it in an envelope which Mann provided.
“I’m going downtown,” he said, as he sealed the envelope.
Mann nodded.
Clyde Burke left the office. He reached the street and took the subway to Twenty-third Street. There he entered a dilapidated building, ascended the stairs, and dropped the envelope in the mail chute of a deserted office.
The door of the office bore a name upon its cobwebbed glass panel. The title was:
B. JONAS
Clyde had never been inside that office. He had never known it to be unlocked. He knew only that a message dropped there was sure to reach The Shadow.
Clyde Burke was meditative as he rode uptown in the subway. He was thinking of the report he had just dispatched; and that report took his mind back to a very definite scene — the body of George Andrews lying in the morgue.
As Clyde half closed his eyes, he could picture two sights — that rope mark, with the thin white line running through it, and the round white spot in the center of the dead man’s forehead. The meaning of those discoveries was now plain to Clyde Burke.
He knew, with all positiveness, that George Andrews had not committed suicide! Andrews had choked to death — that was true — but not because of the rope that had been found around his neck.
He had been strangled with a slender cord, that had left its narrow indelible trace. And the murderer, whoever he might be, had implanted his mark upon the dead man’s forehead as a ghastly symbol of his evil deed!
Very shortly, another would know the truth about the death of George Andrews. Clyde wondered what this amazing information would mean to his mysterious chief — The Shadow!