ANNIHILATION

ANNIHILATION
BY
ISABEL OSTRANDER

NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1924

Copyright, 1924, by
Robert M. McBride & Co.

Printed in the
United States of America

Published, 1924

CONTENTS

ANNIHILATION

CHAPTER I
IN THE RAIN

A seven-fifty derby, new only that afternoon and destined already to be reblocked! Ex-roundsman Timothy McCarty, whose complete transition to civilian attire was still so recent as to be a source of satisfaction to himself and of despair to his tailor and haberdasher, shrugged his broad shoulders and trudged sturdily along in the teeming downpour. A walk he had come out for, to clear his head of all that psycho-junk he’d been reading, and a walk he would have, but he could think of a place the devil could take this rain to, where it would be better appreciated!

Rain dripped down upon a sodden wisp of tobacco which hung dejectedly from beneath his mustache, and muddy streams spurted up almost to his knees with every step. It was a mean district, a neighborhood of broken, narrow sidewalks, dilapidated tenements and squalid wooden shacks, which became more squalid as McCarty neared the river, although here great warehouses loomed against the lesser darkness of the night sky. It was barely nine o’clock but there was scarcely a light in the streets, except where irregularly spaced street lamps emitted a blurred glimmer which emphasized rather than dispelled the murky gloom, yet McCarty strode on with the unconcern of one treading a once-familiar precinct.

He was not the only pedestrian abroad in the late September storm. Under the glow of a lamp he presently descried a dark figure proceeding also in the direction of the waterfront, and insensibly he quickened his own steps. Some peculiarity in the latter’s gait had aroused that suspicion, more than mere curiosity, that had served him so well in the old days on the Force.

The man was lurching along at an unsteady pace, now breaking into a shambling trot for a few steps, now pulling up short, only to dive forward once more, reeling through the driving sheets of rain. McCarty followed closely. He had almost overtaken the man when a tall, bluecoated figure stepped suddenly from the shelter of a doorway and barred his progress.

“None of that, my lad! For what are you following that feller there—? Glory be, it’s Mac!”

“True for you, Terry!” McCarty responded, as their hands met in a mighty grip. “A fine, conscientious bull you are, I’ll say that for you, pinching the old has-been that got you on the Force, just because he’s taking a bit of a stroll on a grand night like this!”

Officer Terrence Keenan grinned sheepishly in the darkness.

“It’s a grand night, all right; for ducks!” he amended. “You’re no has-been, Mac, from what the boys tell me of the different cases you’ve taken a hand in on the quiet since you resigned from the Department, but you needn’t give me the laugh for looking you over just now! You know this neighborhood as well as me, and when I see a guy trailing a prosperous looking drunk towards the riverfront and the wharves it’s up to me—”

“‘Drunk,’ is it?” McCarty demanded in fine scorn. Then he checked himself and added with a sweeping gesture toward the greenish glow from twin lights across the street: “I was minded to take a stroll through my own old beat and drop in at the house over there for a word or two with you and the Lieutenant at the desk, when I saw the guy ahead—but where is he? He couldn’t have got in one of the warehouses at this time of the evening and there’s nothing else between here and the corner—?”

“Aw, let him go!” Officer Keenan interrupted good-naturedly. “Honest, Mac, I ain’t got the heart to run them in these days, when the stuff is so hard to get, and all—!”

But McCarty was not listening. Forgotten alike were the bedraggled derby and the affluent private life of which it had so lately been sign and symbol; he was back on his old beat with something doing, and he grabbed his brother officer by the arm.

“What’s that there beyond the lamp-post, half in and half out of the gutter? It’s him, Terry, he’s down!—Come on!”

Terry needed no second bidding now. Together they ran, splashing through puddles and over the loose, tilting fragments of pavement to where the man lay. He had pitched forward, his face hanging over the curb’s edge, down into the swirling gutter. The back of his head showed a bald spot gleaming in the misty rays from the lamp.

“There’s some heft to him!” Terry grunted. “Now I’ll have to run him in for safe-keeping. What’s that he’s jabbering, Mac?”

Between them they had turned the prostrate man, who was breathing stertorously and muttering to himself in broken gasps. The young policeman’s flashlight revealed a heavy, smooth-shaven face, distorted and pasty gray beneath the rivulets of muddy water that coursed down it, with small, close-set eyes darting about in a wild, distended gaze.

McCarty bent lower in an effort to distinguish the hoarse accents. His companion commented disgustedly:

“He’s worse than I thought he was! Look at the rolling eyes of him! It’ll be Bellevue, I’m thinking—”

“Hush!” McCarty commanded, as he lifted the man’s head higher on his knee. His breathing had become a series of heaving gasps now. Suddenly, with a rumbling snort, they ceased altogether, the flabby jaw sagging as the lids drooped.

“Not Bellevue, Terry; the morgue, more likely.” McCarty spoke solemnly. “He’s gone.”

“Croaked!” Terry started up. “It sure looks like it! I’ll run across to the house and tip off the lieut. and put in the ambulance call. You’ll wait here?”

Without pausing for a reply he turned and splashed heavily across the street to the station house. McCarty looked down at the figure still propped against his knee. In the feeble light of the street lamp it appeared to be muffled to the neck in a loose, dark ulster of some thin material. The body was portly though not actually stout; the upturned face, washed clean of the mud from the gutter, was a grayish blur, its hideous distortion of feature relaxed, leaving it a mere flaccid mass. Some involuntary movement of the supporting knee caused the head to slump forward on the dead man’s breast and once more that small, round bald spot gleamed whitely from the scant, dark hair surrounding it.

“Mike Taggart—he’s lieutenant now, as you may know,—says it’ll be all right to bring the body over there without waiting out on such a night for the ambulance.” Terry had waded back through the reeking mire. “He’d be glad of a word with you, too, Mac, so will you give me a hand with the old boy here? It’s only a step.”

With a slight shrug and a smile that was lost upon his companion McCarty assumed his share of their limp burden. Together they bore it across the street to the station house. He blinked in the sudden glare of light, as the sodden figure was deposited on the floor, and then turned to greet the homely, spruce young giant who had come forward from behind the desk.

“So it’s Lieutenant Taggart now, that was a rookie when I left the Force!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I’d thought to drop in on you one of these days but not as part of the escort for our friend here!”

He motioned over his shoulder toward the body and the lieutenant shook hands with obvious respect before advancing to examine it.

“Glad to see you, McCarty, though you do come in strange company!” He smiled and then turned to Officer Keenan who had knelt and was running his hands over the inanimate form in a practiced manner. “Humph! Looks like a pretty prosperous sort of a bird to be hanging around the waterfront on a night like this, don’t he? What do you find on him, Terry? I don’t believe I ever saw that face in this precinct before.”

As the policeman turned over to his superior the contents of the dead man’s pockets, McCarty stood gazing thoughtfully down upon him. He was apparently in the late forties and in life the beefy, extremely close-shaven face might have been florid; the nose was short but highly arched and the lids which had opened now revealed the small, pale eyes set in a dull stare. His raincoat, of excellent texture, had been opened to admit of Terry’s search, and disclosed a dark brown sack suit and tie of the same grade of conservative excellence as the outer garment, but the low brown shoes that covered the large, rather flat feet were as incongruously inferior as they were blatantly new. The man’s hands were outstretched limply, palms upward, with the thick though well-kept fingers curling slightly, and McCarty’s keen eyes narrowed a little as they rested on them. Then he turned.

“Lieutenant, I think I saw his hat go sailing off down the gutter as we carried him across. Shall I get it while you and my friend Terry, here, go over his effects?”

“Wish you would, McCarty.” The lieutenant glanced up absently from the desk where he and Keenan were sorting out a collection of small articles. “You must take a flash at these when you come back.”

McCarty nodded and departed upon his self-elected errand, appropriating the flashlight which the policeman had laid on a chair. He proceeded to the opposite side of the street and measuring off with his eye the distance from the lamp-post to where the fallen man’s head had rested over the curb, he followed the racing gutter for several yards down past the further warehouse to where the turbid flow was separated by a pile of refuse. There, impaled on a barrel stave, he found the sodden, shapeless brown mass that had once been a soft felt hat, and retrieving it, he carefully examined the inner side of the crown with the aid of the flashlight. The gilt lettering denoting the maker on the sweatband was so soaked as to be illegible but two initials showed plainly in the tiny, gleaming ray:—‘B. P.’

With his trophy McCarty returned to the station house to find Keenan and his superior with their heads together over a key-ring.

“There’s the hat, or what’s left of it.” He deposited the drenched article beside the body on the floor as he spoke. “Terry, here, was watching the guy pass him and he says he was hooched up for fair, so likely there’ll be nothing further come of this after his folks haul him away from the morgue, but if I’m wanted to swear that ’twas bootleg lightning and not the regular kind hit him, Inspector Druet or any of the old crowd at headquarters will know where to find me. I’ll be getting on home, for I’m soaked to the skin—”

“Take a look at these first, McCarty,” the lieutenant invited. “Hooch or no hooch, I’m going to find out what this bird was doing in my precinct! If that jewelry’s phoney it don’t go with the rest of his outfit and if it’s real, what was he doing down this way with it on? Don’t make any crack about his relying on us to protect him, for you walked your beat here yourself in the old days and the district hasn’t changed much! What do you make of it?”

McCarty turned over the articles presented for his inspection with a carelessly critical air.

“Handkerchief, kid gloves, Wareham gold-filled watch, pigskin cigar case with two broken cigars in it, sixty—seventy dollars and eighty cents in change,” McCarty enumerated rapidly. “Nothing here marked and no letters nor papers, eh? That scarf pin and those cuff buttons, fakes or not, are what they call cat’s-eyes, I’m thinking. Is that all except the key-ring?”

“It is, but if this bird purposely intended to leave everything off that would give him away to whoever he was going to meet, he slipped up! Look at here!” Lieutenant Taggart spoke with an air of triumph as he separated the keys of all shapes and sizes on the ring to disclose a small, thin, much-worn disk of some dull metal, one side of which bore the single numeral ‘4,’ and the reverse three letters in old English script:—‘N. Q. M.’

McCarty’s stubby mustache moved slightly as his lips tightened, but he shook his head.

“What is it?” he asked. “I’d say it looked like one of those identification tags in case he lost his keys, but if ‘N. Q. M.’ are his initials, what is the ‘4’?”

The young lieutenant regarded him almost pityingly.

“It was not meant for an identification tag exactly, McCarty; at least, not for any stranger that might happen to pick up these keys, but it’ll tell me more than just who this bird is and where he lived before I’m through!”

“I hope so, lad!” But McCarty still shook his head. “Happen, though, when the body is claimed you’ll find he was Neil Quinn Malone, walking delegate for Stevedores’ Union Number Four, and down here late for a date because of meeting up with some bootlegger’s first cousins!”

“There’s the ambulance!” Terry spoke suddenly as a bell clanged up the street. His honest face had reddened and his tone was a mixture of forbearance and chagrin.

“Well, I’ll take the air, boys,—and the rain!” McCarty sternly repressed the twinkle in his eyes. “I’m chilled to the marrow of me, which does no good to the touch of rheumatism I’ve had lately, and I need no young sawbones in a white coat to tell me that guy is dead, even though there’s never a mark on him! Good luck to the two of you!”

He made his way out into the storm, bending his head before the pelting downpour and chuckling as he turned the coat collar up about his throat. The good lads back there would think that a few years of soft living had done for old Mac, and he was through!

Yet he was not chuckling when he turned into a dingy little lunchroom a few blocks away and in the look which he bent upon his coffee cup there was more of uneasy indecision than its steaming but doubtful contents warranted. He was through, though not in the way Terry and Taggart might be thinking. Never again would he intrude on a case that belonged to the department he had quitted! The methods had changed too much since his day when a plainclothes bull went out and got his man or was hauled up on the carpet to explain why not; it was bad enough when Headquarters began to be cluttered up with all that scientific crime detecting junk from the foreign police centers, but now they were opening up a school to teach this black art called “criminal psycho-analysis” to a bunch of fine lads in the detective bureau who needed nothing but the quick minds and strong arms that the Lord had given them already! It was his own secret and shamefaced perusal of such books on this subject as he had been able to gather, that had driven him forth with a case of mental blind staggers earlier that very evening. Well, let them psycho-analyze that man who carried the queer tag on his key-ring! And yet—!

It was a rare case! McCarty’s eyes glistened and his nostrils fairly quivered with the old eagerness as he considered its possibilities. His coffee finished, he took the nearest subway that led to the rooms over the antique shop where he maintained a solitary bachelor establishment.

He had expected to find it empty as usual but to his surprise he noted that a low light glowed from behind the shades of his two front windows and on opening the entrance door with his latchkey he was greeted by a particularly malodorous stench of tobacco wafted down the narrow stairway. There wasn’t another pipe in the world that smelt quite like that one, and as he bounded upward he called:

“Denny! If I hadn’t thought you were on duty at the engine house—!”

No reply came to him, however. He rounded the stairs’ head and then paused in amazement on the threshold of his shabby, comfortable living-room. Dennis Riordan, engine driver from the nearest fire house and his particular crony since they had landed from the Old Country, was totally oblivious to his presence. He sprawled in the low Morris chair with a book in his hands, and his long legs writhed while his lantern-jawed face was contorted in the agony of mental concentration.

“Denny! Snap out of it!” his unheeded host commanded. “What in the name of all that’s—!”

Denny “snapped.” He dropped the book and sat up with a jerk, his eyes blinking.

“So you’re back,” he remarked dazedly. “’Tis small wonder I’ve seen little of you these days since you’ve taken to literature! Newspapers have been your limit up till now but here I use the latchkey you gave me, thinking to get in out of the rain whilst I’m waiting for you, and I find these books. Man, they’re fair wonderful!—But what do they mean?”

“I don’t know yet and I misdoubt the guys who wrote them do!” McCarty’s tone was almost savage as he deposited his dripping hat tenderly on the corner of the mantel and peeled off the sodden topcoat. “Which one had you there?”

“‘The Diagnostics of Penology.’” Denny picked up the volume once more and read the title laboriously. “I thought a ‘diagnostic’ was an unbeliever and you’d taken to religion in your declining years, but ’tis all about the different kinds of criminals. I never knew there was but one—a crook!”

“No more did I.” McCarty lighted a cigar reflectively. “There must be something in it, though, for that’s the stuff the commissioner is going to get through the heads of the boys at headquarters in this new school of his.”

“Is it, now!” Dennis’ tone held a touch of awe. “Do you mean that all they’ll have to do when a crime’s committed will be to sit down and figure out whether the lad who pulled it off was a lunatic, maybe, or ’twas born in him, or a matter of habit or the only time he’d try it, or else that he’d been brought up to it? And what would the crook be doing meanwhile? He’d still have to be caught.”

“It would all help, even though we don’t get the hang of it, or the commissioner would not be trying it on the boys,” declared McCarty loyally. “Some of them that have not yet been promoted to headquarters would not be hurt by anything that would teach them to use their heads now and then, I’m thinking!”

There was that in his voice which made his companion straighten in his chair, the mild gray eyes sparkling with eager interest.

“Who’s been blundering now?” he demanded. “I ought to have known you would not be trailing around in the storm till near ten o’clock for the sake of your health! What is it, Mac? For the love of God, are you on another case?”

“I am not!” responded McCarty with dignity. “I’m a real estate owner, as well you know, with no connection with the police department any more, and if an exhausted man in mortal terror or agony drops dead in his tracks and they ship him to the morgue as an acute alcoholic it’s nothing to me!”

Dennis emptied the contents of his pipe into the tray and rose.

“Where do we start from?” he asked excitedly. “Thanks be, I’ve the next twenty-four hours off duty! Do we have a talk with his folks first or what?”

“First and last, we mind our own business this time!” McCarty waved toward the chair. “Sit down again and light up, Denny, and I’ll give you the dope on it, though there’s little enough according to Terry Keenan and Mike Taggart—”

“Terry Keenan and Mike—!” Dennis obeyed tensely. “That’ll be down in the old precinct, then, along the waterfront! Who was the guy and what was he running from when he dropped?”

McCarty gave an account of the evening’s occurrence, concisely yet omitting no significant detail. When he had finished, his visitor sat silent for a moment, turning the story over in his none too quick mind. Then he remarked:

“I don’t get it at all, Mac. A prosperous, middle-aged, respectable looking fellow by what you say, with never a scrap of paper on him to show who he was, only that bit of a metal tag! He must have been running from somebody! Did you look behind you?”

“I did not, and neither did he.” McCarty paused. “Mind you that, Denny! I didn’t say he was trying to get away from anybody. The way he was running and stopping and then reeling along once more showed that if he was not half-crazed with pain, ’twas only will power kept him going as far as he got. When Terry and I turned him over, the gray look of his face came from more than his slowing heart. It was horror that stared out of his eyes! He was conscious, too, though the end came in less than a minute, and muttering with his last breath.”

“Do you think he might have been going some place down among the wharves at that hour, and running till his heart burst to get there on time?” Dennis’ pipe had gone out in his excitement and he laid it on the tray with a tremulous hand. “Was it blackmail? Did he think whoever was waiting would kill him if he didn’t show up? Mac, what manner of man was he? Fine quality clothes and cheap shoes, elegant jewelry and a gold-filled watch that could be bought on the installment plan! The cigar case was real pigskin, you tell me, but—what kind of cigars was in it?”

“Denny, you’ve rung the bell again, even though you don’t know it!” McCarty gazed for a moment in affectionate but unflattering surprise at his old friend. “The cigars were Coronas, and there’s no better nor more costly made! For all the clothes were of grand quality, they didn’t fit him; they’d been carefully altered but they’d been made in the beginning for a taller and thinner man—and they’d had good wear. Only the cheap shoes were new, and though the links and pin were as rich-looking as any swell would sport they were fakes, even if I wouldn’t give Taggart the satisfaction of telling him so! He’d too close a shave, remember, and his hands showed no signs of hard work; don’t you make anything at all out of it?”

“He could wear the clothes, though not the shoes, of another man—smoke his cigars, copy his jewelry, keep his own hands soft—? No, there’s no sense to it, whatever!” Dennis shook his head slowly. “You’ve something up your sleeve, but what makes you figure so much on the close shave of him? Why was that number ‘four’ on the other side of the tag with his initials on the key-ring? Did you look to see if the same letters was in his hat?”

“It had dropped down into the gutter when he fell.” McCarty had refrained for the time being from mentioning his errand after the missing headgear. “Did I say that ‘N. Q. M.’ were the dead man’s initials? I fitted a made-up name to them in joke when Taggart was so sure about it, but it might be an address as well. You’ve known this town as long and as well as me, Denny; did you ever hear of the New Queen’s Mall?”

“That I do,” said Denny. “You mean that one block running through from the Park to the next avenue, with gates shutting it in at both ends, as though the families living in the houses on the two sides of the street was too good to mix with the rest of the world? It’s right in the heart of the millionaires’ part of town, with the swellest society all around, and ’twas named after some grand place in London, wasn’t it?”

McCarty nodded.

“The Queen’s Mall. The Burminsters came from there and they owned most of the property on both sides of this block here. The great corner mansion on the north side nearest the Park is where they live, and they moved heaven and earth to close in the street with gates, the families in the other houses liking the idea fine. The newspapers put up a holler about the street being a public thoroughfare and the whole business being contrary to democracy, but that little bunch of millionaires had their way. That was long before ever you and me came to this country, Denny, but the inspector told me about it, and it’s brought up even now when there’s occasion for it at some election time or other—”

“Number Four, New Queen’s Mall!” Dennis interrupted witheringly as he emptied and pocketed his cold pipe and rose with a glance at the clock. “’Tis twenty minutes to eleven, and you sit there giving me a history of New York! What are we waiting for?”

CHAPTER II
NUMBER FOUR

At the corner the two self-appointed investigators found a taxi and Dennis, for once taking the lead, insisted upon engaging it. McCarty had protested loudly against this excursion, but the recounting of the strange event at the waterfront had aroused all the sternly-repressed longing to be back in the game once more, and although he was bitterly resentful of the new order of things at headquarters since his day the fascination of the mystery itself had gripped him with irresistible force. Not for worlds would he have admitted it to his companion, however, and as they rattled eastward through the Park he grumbled:

“You must have taken leave of your senses entirely, Denny, and I’m no better, letting you drag me out again on a night like this to gawk through barred gates at a row of rich men’s houses! I’ve one satisfaction, though; ’twas you and not me, as you’ll kindly remember, that hired this robber taxi!”

Dennis grinned to himself in the darkness.

“You’re welcome to the ride, Mac!” Then his tone lowered seriously. “I’ve been thinking this thing over, and I must have been wrong on that blackmail notion; that the fellow was on the way to pay any, I mean, if he had only a matter of seventy dollars on him. I’m surprised at you, though, and even at Terry and Mike Taggart, that not one of the three of you thought to go back across and get the hat; it could not have sailed far, in spite of the hill there and the gutters running over. ’Tis not like you—”

“Damn the hat!” McCarty interrupted irascibly. “’Tis the man himself I’m thinking of; now if the cold, muddy rain-water in the gutter had anything to do with it—?”

He mumbled and lapsed into silence and after a discreet interval his companion observed in an aggrieved tone:

“Through more than muddy rain-water have I followed you on many a case you’ve dragged me into, but if the grand education you’ve been getting lately from those books has made you talk in riddles, you can keep the answers to yourself for all of me! By the same token, if that fellow was not running away from anybody or hurrying to meet them but was just chasing along like that through the storm, staggering and stopping and leaping forward again, he must have been out of his head entirely, and the asylum would have got him if the morgue hadn’t!”

“True for you, Denny; that’s what was in my mind just now,” McCarty replied with a contrite return to his habitual geniality. “Not about his being a lunatic, maybe, but delirious from sickness or suffering. When he fell, with his head hanging over the gutter and the cold water rushing over his face I was thinking it brought back his consciousness for that minute there at the end. You could see by the look in his eyes and the way he fought for breath that there was something he was trying his best to tell, something that filled him with more horror than the fear of death itself!”

“’Tis a lot to see in a man’s eye,” Dennis remarked in unusual skepticism. “Maybe he’d no notion of dying; he seems to have been a pretty healthy looking fellow, from what you tell me. If those books are getting you to read meanings in people’s faces that are not there you’d best be sticking to the newspapers!”

“’Tis small meaning anybody could read in yours, my lad!” the indignant student retorted. “Here we are and the gates are shut, just as I told you. What’s the next move? You started this, Denny, and it’s up to you!”

But it proved to be up to neither of them, for, as McCarty descended from the taxi before the great gates of wrought iron which spanned the side street, a tall figure emerged from the shadows and a well-known voice exclaimed in accents of satisfaction not untinged with amusement:

“There you are, Mac! I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Inspector!” McCarty gasped, gaping at his former superior. “How in the world did you know—?”

Inspector Druet laughed.

“How did I know you’d be on the scent with the trail fresh and the wind your way? Good evening, Riordan; it’s like old times to find you following Mac’s lead again.”

“’Tis Denny that’s leading this night,” averred McCarty, with a chuckle, as Dennis turned to pay the taxi driver. “In spite of the rain and all, he was possessed to come and have a look around here when I told him about the drunk that fell dead across the street from the station-house down by the waterfront!”

“The ‘drunk,’ eh?” Inspector Druet tapped a leather case which he carried. “I have the man’s hat here which you found in the gutter, and I needn’t ask if you saw the initials inside, though you said nothing to the boys at the house. When I found out you’d been on the scene, and got a line from them on the way you’d collected all the dope on the case and then quietly faded away with a pathetic reference to rheumatism, I knew you would be on the job. Then your phone didn’t answer a little while ago and I was morally certain you had read that identification tag correctly and were on your way here, so I waited. It looks as though this was going to be bigger than it appeared at first.”

They had drawn under the comparative shelter of an overhanging cornice, and Dennis, who had turned to gaze reproachfully at McCarty when the hat was mentioned, asked with lively interest:

“Do you mean, Inspector, that the fellow didn’t just drop dead by accident? What was the initials? Who was he?”

“The initials are ‘B. P.’” The inspector spoke with added impressiveness. “I have a list of all the householders on this block; there are only a few, for you can see by the street-lamps that each place is several times the size of an ordinary city lot. The owner of Number Seven is Benjamin Parsons, and if this is his hat—?”

“But the tag on the key-ring said Number Four,” Dennis observed doubtfully as the inspector paused. “Somebody named ‘B. P.’ might live there too, sir.”

“Number Four is occupied by a bachelor alone, a Mr. Henry Orbit.” The inspector shook his head. “I don’t know how the keys of his house came to be in Parsons’ pocket, but that’s a detail. Here’s the private watchman now; come on.”

He moved out toward the gateway in the middle of the street but McCarty laid a detaining hand on his arm.

“Just one minute, Inspector. Well I know I’ve nothing to do with this case, if there is a case in it at all, but ’tis easier to change hats than houses, and if you stop by first at Number Four, and—and let me do the talking to whoever opens the door—?”

He hesitated and Inspector Druet flashed him a keen glance.

“What is it, Mac?” he demanded quickly. “Have you seen more than I have in this?”

“I’ve seen the corpse, sir,” McCarty returned evasively.

Along the enclosed street the solitary figure of the private watchman was advancing with quickened step. When he reached the gate the inspector spoke to him in a low but authoritative tone. The watchman uttered a startled exclamation and a brief colloquy ensued during which McCarty and Dennis gazed up the wide vista of the street beyond the high iron bars. In the glow of the lanterns which lighted the Mall the smooth pavement glistened like a sheet of glass under the dancing raindrops and the houses on either side, built of gleaming marble or the darker brownstone of an older period, looked like miniature palaces, with their vaguely outlined turrets and towers and overhanging balconies. Straight ahead loomed another gate, behind it the inky mass of foliage of the great park across the Avenue, untouched as yet by the season’s first frost.

“’Tis like a picture-book scene, even in the night!” Dennis remarked, and then he shook his head. “But it’s too restricted, entirely. For all its grandeur, the folks living in there will be having no more chance of keeping their private affairs one from the other than if ’twas a row of workman’s cottages out in the factory suburbs! ’Tis small mystery could last for long inside these gates!”

“I’d rather be outside them and free, than cooped up in there for all the millions these families have,” acquiesced McCarty. “The watchman’s opening up, though, and the inspector is beckoning. Will he be letting me have my way, I wonder?”

The great gates swung inward and the three passed in, the inspector leading and turning to the south sidewalk which was bordered by the houses bearing even numbers.

“Of course I know the servants belonging to every household on the block,” the gray-haired watchman was saying in a slightly lofty tone. “Mr. Orbit has none with the initials you mention, Inspector, and no house guests at present or I should have been notified. It’s my business, and the day man’s, to know everybody who comes and goes through the gates.”

“You see, Mac?” Dennis nudged his companion. “’Tis worse than a jail!”

But McCarty paid no heed. He was eyeing the house fronts as they passed with a gaze of critical absorption, giving quick glances at the occasional lighted windows of those across the way, but the latter were all discreetly curtained, and the first two houses on the south side were utterly dark. The third—Number Six—was a rococo affair of some pinkish stone, bristling with tiny pointed turrets and unexpected balconies. Here a brilliant light shone from the upper floors, but the next house—Number Four—although small in contrast to the mansions across the street, gave an impression of size in its stately lines of snowy marble, broken only by the windows with dark, graceful vines trailing from the boxes on each sill.

It appeared to be attached to the farther house by a conservatory of some sort, but there was no time to explore further, for the watchman had halted and Inspector Druet mounted the steps and rang the bell. McCarty followed with Dennis at his heels. As they paused, waiting, the soft but deeply resonant tones of an organ came to their ears from behind the windows to their right, from which emanated a subdued glow of light.

From the far end of the street behind them a faint gong sounded and with an exclamation of annoyance the watchman hurried off to open the gate on the park side for the entrance of a motor car. He had scarcely passed beyond earshot when the inspector whispered to McCarty:

“What’s the idea, Mac? Did you hear what the watchman said? ‘B. P.’ didn’t belong here, in spite of the tag on the key-ring.”

“No more he did, sir,” McCarty agreed, but there was no disappointment in his tone. “I just want a word with the one that opens the door.”

There was no sound of footsteps from within but as McCarty finished speaking the door opened. Silhouetted against the soft light was the figure of a man, before whom, for the moment, even McCarty’s ready tongue was silenced. Dennis choked. They were confronted by a man who, though taller than the average of his race, was unmistakably Mongolian and clad in the flowing robes of his native land. He bowed slightly but in a dignified fashion, and then, as the visitors still remained silent, he asked:

“What is it you desire, please?”

His voice was high and singsong but it bore no trace of an accent.

“We don’t want to disturb Mr. Orbit, if there’s been a mistake made, but a man who says he’s a servant here has met with a bit of an accident,” McCarty explained. “He’s kind of stout with a round, red face and a little bald spot on his head. Forty-five or nearer fifty years old, he might be. Can you tell us his name?”

He had edged closer to the side of the wide entrance door, so that, in continuing to face him, the Chinaman had been compelled to turn until the low light played across his countenance but it remained gravely inscrutable as he listened. And although there was a perceptible pause, when he did reply, the words followed each other without hesitation.

“It is Hughes, the valet. You desire to talk with Mr. Orbit? He is engaged but I will see if he can receive you. This way, sirs.”

He closed the door after them and led the way into the house. As he walked the long queue which depended from his head almost to his knees swayed with each step.

“A Chink!” Dennis whispered. “What is he, the laundress here?”

Once again his remark went unheeded for McCarty was staring about him. He had seen many wealthy homes in the past, but never had he entered an apartment of such unostentatious magnificence as this hall of Mr. Henry Orbit’s house. He could not know that he walked among almost priceless treasures, that the dim panels on the walls were Catalan tapestries of the fifteenth century, that the frescoed ceiling had known the brush of Raphael himself, and that upon the great carved chair, secretly removed from the Duomo long ago, had once rested the exhausted but dauntless frame of Savonarola. The ex-roundsman could only feel with some sixth sense, that he was in the presence of beauty and he trod as lightly as his clumping boots would permit on the ancient, deep-piled rug beneath his feet.

The Chinese butler conducted them to a spacious room at the left of the hall, bowed them to chairs and withdrew, closing the door behind him. From the room opposite the swelling notes of the organ rose, filling their ears with a thunder of harmony which made the impressionable Dennis catch his breath and instinctively bow his head.

“Come out of it, Denny! We’re not in church!” McCarty admonished, and then turned to the inspector. “You see, sir, that fellow who died down there by the wharves was wearing his own cheap shoes but the expensive hand-me-down clothes of another man not his own build, and who would that have been but his employer? He’d shaved too often and very close like a man who was constantly in service, a butler or a valet, and if he borrowed, without leave, cigars too good for the likes of his taste he might have borrowed a hat, without leave as well. It struck me the keys was his own, though, along with the little metal tag and that’s why I thought maybe we’d save time by stopping here first.”

“You were right, again!” Inspector Druet exclaimed heartily. “I was in such a hurry that I took too much for granted. We’ll see what Mr. Orbit can tell us about this man of his.”

But Mr. Orbit did not immediately appear, and as the last notes of the organ throbbed into silence, Dennis found his voice.

“Valet or no, what was any one from a grand house like this doing down in that tough precinct by the waterfront, and in all the storm? Answer me that! What did he die of, did the ambulance doctor know?”

The inspector shook his head.

“It wasn’t up to him to say; he just pronounced the man dead and now it’s the medical examiner’s job, but we’ll know in the morning, after the autopsy.... What have you found over there, Mac, anything interesting?”

The room into which the Chinese had ushered them was a library, modern and luxurious yet monastic in tone, with tall-backed, cathedral chairs, refectory tables and benches and dried rushes covering the inlaid marble floor. A single huge log smoldered upon the hearth and books lined the wall space from floor to ceiling between the narrow, stained-glass windows. The light came from torches held in sconces and braziers suspended from massive chains.

McCarty had strolled over to a low row of open shelves where he stood with his back to his two companions. He seemed not to have heard the inspector’s query.

“It’s literature he’s took up now,” Dennis explained gloomily, “all along of that new school the commissioner’s opening at headquarters. This psycho-whatzis has gone to the head of him, and I misdoubt Mac’ll ever be the same man again!”

McCarty’s expression denoted symptoms of apoplexy at this slanderous betrayal, but before he turned he surreptitiously slipped into his inner breast pocket a pamphlet bound in pale blue paper which had fallen almost into his hands when he removed a larger, leather-covered volume. He replaced the latter and turned with dignity to approach the hearth once more.

“You’ll need to lose no sleep over me, Denny, and there’s more than me would not be hurting themselves by improving their minds!” he announced cuttingly. “The inspector’s here on a case of—of sudden death, not to listen to your opinion of my private affairs!”

There was an amused but affectionate softening of the inspector’s keen eyes as they glanced at his erstwhile subordinate. He opened his lips to speak when a pleasantly modulated voice from the doorway behind them fell upon their ears.

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” it said. “I am Mr. Orbit.”

The three visitors turned to find a tall, slenderly erect man in dinner clothes regarding them with gravely inquiring eyes. He must have been well over fifty, but the lines in his strikingly distinguished face were those of strength, not age, his dark hair was only lightly powdered with gray at the temples and he bore himself with the air of a man at the apex of his prime.

As he advanced into the room the inspector stepped forward to meet him.

“Sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Orbit, but we will only detain you for a few minutes. I am Inspector Druet from Police Headquarters and these are two of my assistants. We want a little information about a certain man who carries a tag with this house address on his key-ring.”

Henry Orbit nodded slowly and the concern deepened upon his face as he waved them back to their chairs and seated himself in a highbacked one facing them.

“I know of no one who carries such a tag except my valet, Hughes. Is he in any trouble? Ching Lee tells me that, from your description, the man about whom you are inquiring is undoubtedly Hughes.”

“You don’t seem surprised,” the inspector observed bluntly. “Has this valet of yours been in trouble before?”

A shadow of regret more than annoyance crossed the face of their host and he shook his head.

“He has gotten into more than one scrape, although nothing, to my knowledge, of course, that would engage the attention of the police. I am afraid he is rather a scoundrel, but he has been with me for twenty-two years and I cannot believe him utterly reprehensible. Has he suggested to you that I would help him now?”

“The man I’m asking about is beyond any one’s help,” responded the official. “He is dead.”

“Dead!” the other repeated in a low, shocked tone, after a moment’s pause. “It seems incredible! Only a few hours ago I gave him permission to go out! What happened? Did some accident occur?”

“That’s what we want to find out,” Inspector Druet announced grimly. “There are several suspicious circumstances connected with his death. Do you know of any enemies he may have had?”

Orbit frowned slightly and his glance traveled in startled amazement to the faces of McCarty and Dennis and back again to his interrogator.

“‘Enemies?’” he repeated. “Surely there was no violence? I know nothing of Hughes’ personal affairs but I should not have fancied he had an active enemy in the world!”

CHAPTER III
THE NOSE OF DENNIS RIORDAN

There was a second pause and then the inspector asked: “Did he give you any excuse for wanting an evening out to-night?”

“No, none. It was not unusual and I thought nothing of it.” Orbit’s hands clenched slightly. “I cannot believe that poor Hughes is really gone! Perhaps Ching Lee made a mistake, perhaps some one else had come into possession of Hughes’ key-ring. Will you describe him to me, please, and tell me the suspicious circumstances you mentioned?”

“You describe the fellow, Mac; you examined him and his clothes more closely than I did.” There was a double significance in the inspector’s tone and he added: “Special Deputy McCarty happened to be there when this man died.”

Orbit nodded and fixed his eyes expectantly on McCarty as the latter briefly complied with the inspector’s request, without, however, mentioning the letters in the hat. When he had finished, Orbit exclaimed:

“It is he, beyond a doubt! The raincoat and brown sack suit were my own, given to him when I tired of them myself, and he must have copied my cat’s-eye pin and links, although I never saw them. How did he die?”

“Well, sir, he was hurrying along in the rain and all of a sudden he dropped.” McCarty chose his words carefully. “When me and a friend of mine got to him he was breathing his last and the end came as I lifted his head to my knee.... How did he happen to be wearing a hat with the letters ‘B. P.’ in it, Mr. Orbit? Who is B. P.?”

Orbit frowned again thoughtfully.

“I cannot at the moment recall any one with those initials but naturally I have no knowledge of his friends or associates,” he replied at last. “Surely that is immaterial, however. What was suspicious about the poor fellow’s death? He was an irreproachable servant but when his time was his own his habits were irregular and I should not have been surprised to learn that his heart had failed or he had suffered a stroke.”

“Had he been drinking the last time you saw him; this evening, I think you said?” McCarty asked.

“Certainly not! I have never seen him under the influence of alcohol or he would not have remained an hour in my service. He was fully aware of this, and although I am convinced that he occasionally drank to excess he was careful never to let me see him in such a condition. Had he been drinking when you went to his assistance?”

McCarty ignored the question.

“You don’t ask where that was, I notice. Have you any notion where he could have been going to-night?”

“Not the slightest,” Orbit shrugged. “I have told you that I am quite ignorant of his private affairs and have had no interest in them.”

“Still, he’d been your personal servant for a matter of twenty-odd years,” McCarty insisted. “Wouldn’t you want to know what he was up to if you learned he’d left your house to go down along the waterfront, in one of the toughest districts in the city?”

Orbit stared in genuine amazement.

“‘The waterfront?’” he repeated. “I cannot imagine what he could have been doing in such a district as you describe! Even in his dissipations Hughes was never attracted by anything sordid, to my knowledge, but aped even the vices of men of a higher station than he.”

“I was coming to that,” McCarty remarked. “You spoke awhile back of trouble he’d got into more than once; what sort of trouble?”

“Gambling debts and indiscreet affairs with women; upper servants like himself or the wives of upper servants. When monetary settlements were in order he came to me for an advance on his salary and that is how I learned of his difficulties.” Orbit paused and then added reflectively: “He has been in none of late, however; at least, none which required assistance from me.”

“About what hour to-night was the last time you saw him alive?”

“At a little before seven, when he laid out these clothes for me.” Orbit motioned to his attire. “Some guests were dining with me—three gentlemen, all near neighbors—and I was preoccupied but Hughes’ appearance and manner must have been quite as usual or I would have noted a change. My guests are still here.”

He paused significantly and McCarty replied directly to the hint.

“We’re sorry to keep you from them but we’ve got to know what your man was doing down in that neighborhood. You don’t know his own friends maybe, but you might know which of the servants employed by your neighbors he’s been most friendly with, and if you don’t maybe your neighbors themselves would know.”

“Really, is it as important as that?” There was still no trace of annoyance in Orbit’s voice or manner but merely a dignified protest. “You can understand that any notoriety in connection with the death of my unfortunate valet would be highly distasteful to me, and to have my friends subjected to it would be doubly so. My guests this evening are Mr. Gardner Sloane and his son, Mr. Brinsley Sloane, Second, who live across the street at Number Five, and Mr. Eustace Goddard, from Number Two, the corner house next door to me here. I have no idea whether or not Hughes was even acquainted with any of the servants in either the Sloane or Goddard households, but I will inquire.”

He rose and left the room, and the inspector turned to McCarty.

“Is all this necessary, Mac? I know I said this looked big but that was when I thought the man dead down there near the river was the millionaire Parsons. If it’s just a dissipated valet we can let it slide, at least unless the autopsy discloses foul play of some sort.”

“When you asked me if I’d seen more in this than you, inspector, I told you I’d seen the corpse,” McCarty reminded him quietly. “Now you’re asking me if it’s necessary to find out even before the autopsy who this fellow Hughes was friendly with and I’ll say it won’t do any harm, because I saw him before he was a corpse! Heart disease he may have died of, or apoplexy, but it may be a good thing for us to know what brought it on him so sudden to-night, even if he was just a valet!”

There was no mistaking the earnestness in his tones and the inspector started to speak, but once more he was forestalled by the opening of the door, and Orbit ushered in three men. The first was slightly younger than his host, stout and bald except for a fringe of sandy hair. His mouth beneath the small, reddish mustache had a humorous quirk at the corners which appeared to be habitual, his blue eyes twinkled and he regarded the police official and his two deputies with a frank and not unfriendly curiosity.

The second man was approximately the same age but his smooth-shaven face was strikingly handsome and his youthfully cut dinner coat was worn with a jauntiness which proclaimed the middle-aged gallant.

The last of Mr. Orbit’s guests to enter was a tall, thin man of about thirty, whose inordinately serious expression was enhanced by the shell-rimmed glasses which bestrode the bridge of his nose. His chin was cleft, like that of the man who had immediately preceded him and there was an unmistakable family resemblance between them. Even before the introduction McCarty placed him as Brinsley Sloane, Second, the older man as his father, Gardner Sloane, and the first to enter, therefore, as the next-door neighbor, Eustace Goddard.

It was Goddard who spoke first.

“Too bad about poor Hughes, inspector. Very hard on Mr. Orbit, I must say. I’ve seen Hughes about the house here for years, of course, but I don’t think I’ve exchanged half a dozen words with him in my life and I’m quite sure none of the servants in my household know anything more about him than I do.”

“Why, Mr. Goddard?” asked the inspector.

“Well, for one thing, they’re all elderly and staid—been with my family for years. Mr. Orbit happened to mention the fact just now that Hughes was given to dissipation occasionally. He wouldn’t have found anything in common with our staff, but you are welcome to question them to-morrow as much as you please.”

“Thank you.” The inspector turned to the elder of the two remaining guests. “Mr. Sloane, have you happened to notice any acquaintanceship between Mr. Orbit’s valet and your servants?”

There was a slight touch of sarcasm in his voice and the flush which mounted to Goddard’s scant red hair showed that the shot had gone home. Gardner Sloane responded with a hearty assumption of cordiality:

“Can’t say that I have, inspector. We are a household of men, for my son and I are alone with my father, who is very old and an invalid. His male nurse, a Swede who speaks little English, and John Platt the butler who is nearly seventy, are the only servants in our employ with whom there is any likelihood that Hughes might have come in contact. However, I have observed him on several occasions in the company of a butler in service in another house on this block and although I find it very distasteful to direct even the most casual of official inquiries to an establishment presided over by an unprotected lady—”

“Father!” the young man interrupted in precise, shocked tones. “I am astonished—!”

“You usually are, Brin,” interrupted the elder in his turn. “It is my duty to tell these officers what I have seen. The only servant here in the Mall I have ever noticed in Hughes’ company is Snape, Mrs. Bellamy’s butler; if any of them knows anything about the fellow’s private affairs, it should be he.”

“Which is Mrs. Bellamy’s house?” the inspector inquired.

“Number Six, next door to this on the east,” the younger Sloane replied hastily. “I am sure, however, that my father must be mistaken, and if you annoy Mrs. Bellamy at such an hour as this merely for below-stairs gossip, you will distress her greatly. Indeed, why should any of us be interrogated? The man Hughes dropped dead in the street, I understand; it means nothing to any one except Mr. Orbit, who has lost an efficient servant!”

Again the inspector sent a hurried glance at McCarty, who ignored the indignant young man and turned to the master of the house.

“Mr. Orbit, have you any notion what relations Hughes had?”

“None, in this country. He was the son of a blacksmith in Cornwall who went to London when a lad and took service as a bootboy. From this he rose to the position of valet and when he came to me he was, as Mr. Sloane has observed, a most efficient one.”

“Then,” McCarty spoke musingly, as though to himself, “there’ll be no one to notify about the funeral arrangements.”

“I shall assume all responsibility, of course,” Orbit announced. “I will arrange with an undertaking establishment to send for the body at once. It has been removed to the morgue?”

McCarty nodded.

“To-morrow’ll do, sir; there’ll have to be some formalities, permits and such. The inspector will let you know.”

McCarty and his companions had remained standing since the re-entrance of Orbit with his guests and now he signaled with lifted eyebrows to his former superior and nodded almost imperceptibly toward the door. Inspector Druet nodded in response and turned to the four men collectively.

“We won’t trouble you any further, and if we can obtain the information we want elsewhere it will not be necessary to question the servants of any one living here in the Mall. Goodnight.”

The Chinese butler was waiting to show them out but McCarty lingered for a moment after the others had preceded him.

“You’re the butler here?”

The other bowed in silent affirmation and McCarty went on:

“How many other servants are employed here and what are their names?”

“André the chef, Jean the houseman and little Fu Moy the coffee boy. That is all except Hughes.” The reply came without a pause in the falsetto singsong monotone.

“Hughes is dead,” McCarty said abruptly.

Again the Chinese bowed and when he raised his head his expression had not changed an iota.

After vainly waiting for some remark in response, McCarty asked:

“You were all in to-night? Did any one leave this house since afternoon except Hughes?”

“No one.”

There was a suggestion of finality in the oddly chanting tones now and the discomfited questioner shrugged and rejoined the inspector and Dennis who were waiting on the sidewalk before the many-turreted house next door. All the lights had been extinguished except one on the top floor which gleamed down upon them like a single wakeful eye.

“What were you getting out of that Chink?” Dennis demanded as they started toward the eastern gate where the watchman waited.

“Not a living thing that I wanted except a list of the other servants of the household and word that none of them but Hughes had left the doors this night,” McCarty responded disgustedly. “What he got out of me was my goat! I sprung it on him quick that Hughes had croaked and he never turned a hair nor uttered a word but just waited politely for me to go along about my business!”

“It is conceivable that Orbit told him when he went to bring his guests,” the inspector observed dryly.

“Did he strike you as being the sort that would stop then to talk to one of the servants? He didn’t me,” McCarty averred. “He may tell this Ching Lee, as he called him, after his three neighbors go, but it’ll be only so that he can break the news to the others before the morning papers come out. Twenty-two years this Hughes has been with him and Orbit knew no more about his affairs than the day he hired him! ’Tis unnatural that never once in all that time did they talk together as man to man and yet I don’t think Orbit lied, at that. Look at the way he treated us! He was polite and friendly enough and never once could you have laid your finger on a word or a look from him that was haughty or arrogant like the most of them act over here when the police get snooping around, and yet didn’t you kind of feel as though you were talking to a Royal Duke at the least? It’s the grand manner of him, that he don’t even know he’s got.”

“A fine gentleman, Mr. Orbit,” Dennis agreed. “We’ve found out nothing, though, about what Hughes was doing down in Mike Taggart’s precinct nor why he ran like that till he dropped, and likely we’ll not find it here between these two gates.”

“There’s something more than that on your mind, Mac!” the inspector declared shrewdly. “You’d never have insisted on questioning Orbit’s friends if you hadn’t some idea of what caused Hughes’ seizure, and that it led back here! What did you see before he died that you’re keeping to yourself?”

“Tell you to-morrow, inspector, if you’ll drop in when you’ve nothing better to do, or ’phone Denny and me the word to come downtown to you,” replied McCarty hurriedly in a lowered tone for they had almost reached the gate and the watchman was advancing to meet them. “Denny’s off duty and I’m taking him home with me the night, though I misdoubt he’ll keep me up till dawn with his wild theories as to what desperate crime took Hughes down to the waterfront! Thanks be, the rain has stopped and he’ll not be wanting to ride home in state!”

But it was McCarty himself who hailed a prowling taxi when they had taken leave of the inspector and discreetly rounded a corner, and he had no time on the homeward way to glance at the meter, being engaged in mollifying his outraged companion.

“Will you never learn, you simpleton, when I’m talking about you for the benefit of somebody else?” he demanded in exasperation, when Dennis with bitter resentment had spurned his hospitality. “’Twas to put off the inspector I dropped that hint about being wishful for my sleep or he would have trailed along with us to find out what I’d got up my sleeve, and well you know ’tis nothing but the expression on a dying man’s face and the way he tried to speak but couldn’t! He’ll have the laugh on the both of us to-morrow if the medical examiner says ’twas ‘natural causes,’ and he’ll forget all about this night’s doings, but I won’t; I’m going to find out why Hughes ran the breath from his body and what it was he tried so hard to say.”

“Some day,” Dennis began darkly, but with a tell-tale softening in his tones, “some day you’ll broadcast through me once too often and this radio station will shut down on you! The inspector was right, though; I can see that now. Whatever made Hughes throw that fit, you think it happened back in that society fire line or you’d not have listened to the fat, bald little man, nor yet the old he-gossip and his son. I misdoubt but some night we’ll be putting a scaling ladder against that iron fence and chloroforming the watchman, so you can put that butler next door through the third degree!”

Back in McCarty’s rooms once more Dennis dried his rain-soaked boots comfortably before the little coal fire in the grate and watched with a quizzical light in his eyes while his host stowed his newly acquired library carefully away in a closet and then proceeded to clear out the accumulated litter of several days’ bachelor housekeeping, but he said no word until the task was accomplished. Then he observed:

“When you’re working on a case, Mac, you use your head, and the eyes and ears of you, but to-night another of your senses was asleep at the switch. Not that it had anything to do with Hughes, of course, but no more did anything else we learned except his name! You overlooked one little bet.”

“Oh, I did, did I!” McCarty retorted, stung but wary. “And what sense of mine was it that was not working?”

“Smell.” The reply was succinct. “Unless you’re holding out on me, your nose was not on the job.”

McCarty stared.

“What was there to smell?” he demanded. “Since when is your nose keener than mine?”

“’Tis keen for one thing it’s been trained to for many a year, and that’s fire. Mac, there’s been a fire in Orbit’s house, and not more than a few hours before we got there!”

“A fire, is it!” McCarty snorted. “There’d likely been one in the kitchen, since dinner was cooked there, and you saw the log burning on the hearth in the library—!”

“Stoves and hearths don’t burn wool and silk and carpets and varnished wood, my lad!” Dennis laid his pipe on the mantel and rose. “It could only have been a small bit of a fire, for the smoke of it had cleared away entirely, but the smell hadn’t; there was enough of that hanging in the air for me to get the whiff, anyway, even though nobody else could. I’ve not the gift to explain it right, but there’s a different smell to everything that’s inflammable, if you’ve the nose for it, and it was house furnishings had been burned this night!”

CHAPTER IV
THE INSPECTOR BRINGS NEWS

The twain slept late the next morning, and they had only just returned from the little restaurant around the corner, where McCarty habitually took his meals, when the bell jangled on its loose wire from below.

“Don’t disturb yourself, Mac,” Dennis admonished with a grin, as his host threw down his newspaper. “I’ll let the inspector in.”

“And why are you so sure—!”

“’Twas not in my honor you cleaned house last night, but because you knew the inspector would be here, and you did it then for you were sure he’d come so early there’d be no time this morning.” Dennis emitted one of his rare chuckles as he pressed the button which released the lock on the entrance door. “Since I’ve been associating so much with detectives, active and retired, I’m getting to work their way, myself!”

“It’s too clever you’re growing, by half!” McCarty grumbled, but there was a twinkle in his eye as he strode past the other and opening the door, leaned over the banisters. In a passable imitation of the inspector’s own amusedly satisfied tones of the night before he called down: “There you are, sir! We’ve been waiting for you.”

“The devil you have!” Inspector Druet laughed as he bounded up the stairs with a lightness which belied his gray hair. “Getting back at me for last night, eh? If you hadn’t held out on me we’d have been on the job still in the New Queen’s Mall!—’Morning, Riordan! I suppose you’re crowing over me, too!”

“There’ll not be a peep out of me, let alone a crow, till I know what’s doing, inspector, for Mac’s told me nothing except the look he saw on Hughes’ face,” Dennis replied, as he drew forward the shabby easy-chair and placed an ash-tray within reach. His homely, long face was set in lines of deep seriousness once more and the inspector’s, too, had sobered.

McCarty closed the door and taking a box of cigars from the mantel he held it out to the visitor.

“The autopsy’ll be over, I’m thinking.” He spoke carelessly enough but his breath labored with suppressed excitement. “What kind of poison was it, inspector?”

The inspector nodded slowly.

“I thought you had guessed! It was physostigmine, the medical examiner called it; powdered Calabar bean. It’s colorless, has no taste, and a single grain would be fatal in three hours or a little longer, but Hughes had taken a trifle more than a grain.”

“Holy saints!” gasped Dennis. “So ’twas murder, after all!”

An expression of honest gratification had stolen over McCarty’s face but he shook his head.

“Many kinds of beans I have heard of, including the Mexican ones that jump like a frog, but never the sort that bring death,” he said. “If one grain of it would kill in three or four hours, a little more would kill in two or maybe three, I suppose. It was around nine o’clock when Hughes fell there across from the station-house, so he must have taken that powdered bean before he left the Orbit house or right after, though we’ve not yet fixed the time he did leave. I wonder what would be the symptoms of that poison?”

“I asked the medical examiner,” the inspector responded. “Pain in the abdomen, nausea, then spasmodic respiration, numbness, and a complete paralysis of respiration, which of course would mean death. It doesn’t explain his staggering along so that Terry thought he was drunk—”

He paused and McCarty lighted his own cigar and drew contemplatively upon it before he spoke.

“Maybe it would. The pain had passed and the nausea, but it had left him weak and the paralysis was creeping over the lungs of him so that he was fighting like mad for breath, reeling and stopping and lurching forward again. He was choking and gasping when Terry and me first turned him over and he died with a heave and a snort as if a ton weight had landed on the chest of him. It was agony that I saw in his face and the horror of knowing he’d been poisoned; he knew who did it, too, or I miss my guess, for ’twas that he was trying to tell when the end came!”

“What else did you see?” The inspector’s tone held an unwonted note of asperity. “I want to know everything that happened, Mac, from the first minute you laid eyes on the fellow! If you had told me last night before the watchman opened the gates we might have saved precious time!”

“I’d nothing to tell but the look on Hughes’ face and him trying so hard to speak, and that I thought maybe he’d been running like that because he was delirious from pain and not in liquor. There was no mark on him when we carried him into the station-house, at least none that showed, and it come to me it must be poison. But with nothing more to go on than just my own private suspicions, I didn’t want to air them unless the autopsy proved there was grounds for them. I’ll be reminding you, inspector, that I’ve resigned from the Force long since and the new methods—”

“New methods be damned!” exploded the inspector. “You’ve said that about every case we’ve worked out together since you did resign, but you’ve come back long enough each time to find out the truth when no one else could. I told Orbit last night that you were a special deputy of mine, and by the Lord you are from now on, till we’ve found out who killed Hughes.”

“Yes, sir,” McCarty said meekly, avoiding Dennis’ eye, but the latter had an immediate difficulty of his own on his mind.

“If Hughes took that poison, or ’twas give to him, either before or just after he left the house, ’twill be on that block between those two locked gates that Mac will be looking first for clues, and they’re guarded night and day; you heard what that watchman said,” he remarked wistfully. “You’ll be getting a pass for Mac, likely, but unless a fire starts inside big enough for a general alarm there’ll be no chance of me following him, inspector, and ’twill be the first case ever he tackled since he left the Force that I didn’t get in on with him from start to finish, every minute I was off duty.”

“Don’t worry, Riordan,” Inspector Druet smiled. “I’ve never been able to figure out which of you two has the luck, but your teamwork can’t be beaten and I’ll see that you get a pass along with Mac. I’ve had a diagram of the New Queen’s Mall prepared and brought this copy with me for you two so you may know without loss of time who owns each house and which ones are occupied.”

He produced a folded paper on which the street had been roughly mapped out, with spaces, in which names and numbers had been written, blocked off from it on either side. The two bent their heads over it eagerly.

“You see there, Denny?” McCarty pointed with his forefinger. “Looking from the Avenue, the opposite gate to that we went into last night, the corner house, Number Two, on the south side belongs to the Goddards. That’ll be the stout, bald fellow with the little red mustache and the twinkle in his eye, you mind him? Next to it, but separated by that bulge that looks like a conservatory, is Number Four, Orbit’s house; then comes Mrs. Bellamy’s, Number Six, where that butler Snape works and after that, Eight and Ten, but they’re marked ‘closed.’”

“The Falkinghams, Number Eight, have lived abroad for more than twenty years and the sole heiress to Number Ten is Georgianna Davenant, a little girl of twelve away at school,” the inspector interposed. “That finishes the Mall on the south side, but starting at the western end again, a great house taking up the entire space opposite both Goddard’s and Orbit’s and bearing two numbers, ‘one’ and ‘three’ is occupied by the Burminster family, who originally owned most of the block and were the moving spirits in having it enclosed with gates. Number Five is the Sloanes’; you met two of the three generations last night—”

“That’ll be the handsome, middle-aged flirt and the son who cut him out with Mrs. Bellamy,” McCarty observed.

“How in the world—?” Dennis’ lantern jaw hung relaxed and the inspector glanced up quickly.

“’Twas as plain as the nose on your face!” McCarty exclaimed impatiently. “Let’s go on: Number Seven, next to the Sloanes’, is the Parsons’. That’s where this Benjamin Parsons lives, who you thought owned the hat Hughes was wearing, isn’t it, sir?”

“Yes. That hat is still a factor in the case, don’t forget that!” The inspector bent again over the diagram and indicated the final space. “This house, the end of the Mall on the north, belongs to the Quentin family, and two branches of it are fighting over the property; it’s been unoccupied and in litigation for some years. I’m going to call at Mrs. Bellamy’s now and interview her butler; want to come along?”

Dennis rose precipitately and stretched a long arm to the mantel for his hat, but McCarty said with quick decision:

“We’ll go through the gates with you, sir, so that you can square us with the day watchman, but I think we’d best prowl around for awhile and not interfere with you. We might drop in at the Orbit house later to see if any of the other servants can talk a bit more than Ching Lee.”

“If you do, be sure not to mention the autopsy, nor the fact that it is even suspected Hughes’ death wasn’t a natural one,” warned the inspector as they passed out to the stairs. “I’ll probably meet you there later.”

They entered the Mall by way of the western gate this time and the private watchman on duty now proved to be younger and less obviously impressed by the dignity of his office than the one encountered the night before. He had evidently been apprised of their possible coming and readily assented to the inspector’s demand that his two deputies be admitted in future without question. When the official himself had proceeded to the Bellamy house McCarty turned with an affable smile to the watchman and tendered a cigar.

“Have a smoke?”

“Thanks, but I’ll have to keep it till later.” He was a tall, muscular young giant with a good-natured, not too intelligent countenance and he grinned in an embarrassed fashion at the overture. Then the grin faded and he added in low tones: “They haven’t brought Alfred Hughes’ body back yet; I’ve been watching for it all morning.”

“It isn’t going to be brought here; didn’t you know?” McCarty’s own tones were invitingly confidential. “Mr. Orbit told Denny and me last night that he was arranging to have it taken to some undertaking establishment and buried from there. Didn’t he, Denny?”

Not yet sure of his ground, Dennis contributed merely a nod of affirmation to the conversation and after a disgusted look at him McCarty asked:

“What’s your name?”

“Bill—I mean ‘William’ Jennings.” The watchman replied promptly.

“Well, Bill, you’ve got a pretty soft job here, haven’t you? If you’re going to patrol your beat to the other gate Denny and me will stroll along with you. That’s all you have to do, isn’t it, except to give the eye to the pretty nurse-girls of all the kids on the block?”

Bill Jennings reddened sheepishly.

“The better the neighborhood the less kids there are in it, did you ever notice that?” he countered. “In all six of the families living on this block there are only three children: the Goddards’ boy, Horace, who is fourteen; Daphne Burminster, two years younger—she belongs in that great corner house over there but they haven’t come back yet from the country—and little Maudie Bellamy. Horace is kind of sickly and has a private teacher—they call him a ‘tutor’—and Miss Daphne has a maid and a governess, both of them old and sour. The Bellamy baby has the only nurse on the block and she’s foreign—French, I guess.”

“Some of those French girls are beauties.” McCarty spoke with the air of a connoisseur and Dennis coughed. The former added hastily: “Is this one a looker?”

“Pretty as a picture and as nice as she’s pretty!” There was immense respect as well as admiration in Bill’s voice. “I guess she ain’t been over long, for she’s awful young and shy but she knows how to take care of herself, as Alfred Hughes found out.”

He checked himself suddenly but McCarty chuckled with careless amusement.

“He was a great hand with the women, they tell me!” he commented.

“Not her kind! Lucette—even her name’s pretty, ain’t it?—Lucette is polite to everybody but Alfred Hughes didn’t understand that and thought he’d made a hit, I guess. One night real late about a month ago—Dave Hollis, the night watchman told me about it—Lucette ran out to the drugstore for some medicine for little Maudie, who’d been took sick awful sudden, and when she came back Alfred Hughes met her right in front of her own house. He must have tried to put his arm around her or something for she gave a little cry and Dave, who’d waited to fasten the gate again after letting her in, came hurrying up just as Alfred Hughes said something in a low kind of a voice and she slapped his face! Then she ran into the house sobbing to herself and Dave says he gave Alfred Hughes hell—the big stiff!” Bill checked himself again and added in renewed embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but I guess nobody on the block had much use for him, except Mrs. Bellamy’s butler, Snape; the two of them have been thick as thieves for years.”

“Is that so?” McCarty turned deliberately to his self-effacing colleague. “Didn’t somebody say as much to you, Denny?”

“That Hughes and this Snape were friendly? Sure!” Emboldened by having found his voice Dennis added guilelessly: “’Twas that Chink butler at Orbit’s told me, I’m thinking. Nice, sociable fellow, if he does wear a pigtail; didn’t you find him so, Mac?”

“I found he’d more brains than most of the galoots who come over here and land in the fire department!” McCarty retorted with withering emphasis, then turned to the watchman again. “What sort of a guy is this Snape—the same kind as Hughes?”

“Underneath, maybe, but you’d never think it to look at him. He’s younger by ten years at least than Hughes, slim and dark and minds his own business. If it wasn’t for the gates you’d never know when he went in or out.”

McCarty darted a quick, sidelong glance at his informant.

“Keeps funny hours, does he?”

“Late ones.” Bill grinned again. “I guess Mrs. Bellamy doesn’t know it, but being the only man in her house he has it all his own way. He ain’t any too anxious to have his doings known, though, for Dave says he’s tried more than once to slip in with the milk! I ain’t spoke ten words to him and I’ve held down this job over a year. Here comes Horace Goddard now!”

The trio had strolled past the closed houses which flanked that of Mrs. Bellamy and were nearing the eastern gate. As Bill hurried forward, McCarty glanced through the high iron bars of the fence and saw a slender, undersized boy, with very red hair and a pale, delicate face, who approached with a droop of his narrow shoulders and a dragging step. At sight of Bill Jennings opening the gate, however, he quickened his pace, a smile lifting the corners of the sensitive mouth.