CHAPTER XII
JACK TELLS THE STORY
Inside an hour O'Mally, Babbitts and I were on our way to Philadelphia.All friction was forgotten, a bigger issue had extinguished the sparksthat had come near bursting into flame. A mutual desire united us, thefinding of Barker.
The train, an express, seemed to crawl like a tortoise, but the way Ifelt I guess the flight of an aeroplane would have been slow. I hadhideous fears that he might give us the slip, but O'Mally was confident.One of his men had got a lead on Barker through a vendor of newspapers,from whom the capitalist twice in the last week had purchased the bigNew York dailies. It had taken several days to locate his place ofhiding--a quiet boarding house far removed from the center of thecity--which was now under surveillance. As we swung through the night,shut close in a smoke-filled compartment, we speculated as to whether hewould try and throw a bluff or see the game was up and tell the truth.
At the station O'Mally's man met us and the four of us piled into ataxi, and started on a run across town. It was moonlight, and going downthose quiet streets, lined with big houses and then with littlehouses--still, dwindling vistas sleeping in the silver radiance--seemedto me the longest drive I'd ever taken in my life. As we sped thedetective gave us further particulars. By his instructions the newsstandman, who left the morning papers at the boarding house, had got intocommunication with the servant, a colored girl. From her he had learntthat Barker--he passed under the name of Joseph Sammis--had been awayfor twenty-four hours and had come back that morning so ill that adoctor had been called in. The doctor had said the man's heart was weak,and that his condition looked like the result of strain or shock.Questioned further the girl had said he was "A pleasant, civil-spokenold gentleman, giving no trouble to anybody." He went out very little,sitting in his room most of the time reading the papers. He received nomail there, but that he did get letters she had found out, as she hadseen one on his table addressed to the General Delivery.
The house was on a street, quiet and deserted at this early hour, one ofa row all built alike. As we climbed out of the taxi the moon wasbright, the shadows lying like black velvet across the lonely roadway.On the opposite side, loitering slow, was a man, who, raising a hand tohis hat, passed on into the darkness along the area railings. Though itwas only a little after nine, many of the houses showed the blankness ofunlit windows, but in the place where we had stopped a fan-light overthe door glowed in a yellow semicircle.
As the taxi moved off we three--O'Mally's detective slipped away intothe shadow like a ghost--walked up a little path to the front door whereI pulled an old-fashioned bell handle. I could hear the sound gojingling through the hall, loud and cracked, and then steps, languid anddragging, come from somewhere in the rear. I was to act as spokesman, mycue being to ask for Mr. Sammis on a matter of urgent business.
The door was opened by the colored girl, who looked at us stupidly andthen said she'd call Miss Graves, the landlady, as she didn't thinkanyone could see Mr. Sammis.
Standing back from the door she let us into a hall with a hatrack on oneside and a flight of stairs going up at the back. The light was dim,coming from a globe held aloft by a figure that crowned the newel post.The paper on the walls, some dark striped pattern, seemed to absorb whatlittle radiance there was and the whole place smelled musty and was asquiet as a church.
The colored girl had disappeared down a long passage and presently adoor opened back there and a woman came out, tall and thin, in a skimpyblack dress. She approached us as we stood in a group by the hatrack,leaning forward near-sightedly and blinking at us through silver-rimmedspectacles.
"My maid says you want to see Mr. Sammis," she said, in an unamiablevoice.
"Yes," I answered. "We've come from New York and it's imperative we seehim this evening."
"But you can't," she snapped. "He's sick. The doctor says he mustn't bedisturbed."
Talking it over afterward we all confessed that we were seized by thesame idea--that this lanky old spinster might be in the game andBarker's illness was a fake. Feeling as I did I was ready to leapforward, grab her, and lock her in her own parlor while the otherschased up the stairs. I could sense the slight, uneasy stir of the twomen beside me, and I tried to inject a determination into my voice, thatwhile it was civil was also informing:
"I'm sorry, but it's absolutely necessary that we transact our businesswith him now."
"Can't you give me a message?" she demurred, squinting her eyes upbehind the glasses. "I'll see that it's delivered in the morning."
"No, Madam. This is important and can't wait. We won't be long, we onlyhave to consult with him for a few minutes."
She gave a shrug as much as to say, "Well, this is your affair!" and,drawing back, pointed to the stairs.
"He's up there, fourth floor front, second door to your left."
To each of us the suspicion that she was in with Barker had grown withevery minute. The idea once lodged in our minds, possessed them, and wewent up those stairs, slow at first, and then, as we got out of earshot,faster and faster. It was a run on the second flight and a gallop on thethird. On this landing there was no gas lit, but a window at the end ofthe passage let in a square of moonlight that lay bright on the floorand showed us the hall's dim length and the outlines of closed doors.
It was the second of these, on the left-hand side, and creeping towardit we stood for a moment getting our wind. The place was very cold, asif a window was open, and there was not a sound. Standing by the doorO'Mally knocked softly. There was no answer.
In that half-lit passage, chilled with the icy breath of the winternight and held in a strange stillness, I was seized by a grisly sense ofimpending horror. If I'd been a small boy my teeth would have begun tochatter. At thirty years of age that doesn't happen, but I doubt whetheranyone whose body was supplied with an ordinarily active nervous systemwould not have felt something sinister in that cold, dark place, in thesilence behind that close-shut door.
O'Mally knocked again and again; there was no answer.
"Try it," I whispered and the detective turned the handle.
"Locked," he breathed back, then--"Stand away there. I'm going to breakit. There's something wrong here."
He turned sideways, bracing his shoulder against the door. There was acracking sound, and the lock, embedded in old soft wood, gave way, thedoor swinging in with O'Mally hanging to the handle.
The room was unlit but for the silver moonlight that came from thewindow, uncurtained and open. At that sight the same thought seized thethree of us--the man was gone--and O'Mally, fumbling in his pocket formatches, broke into furious profanity.
I had a box and as I dug round for it, took a look about, and saw theshapes of a chair with garments hanging over it, an open desk, and,against the opposite wall, the bed. It was only a pale oblong, andlooked irregular, as if the clothes were heaped on it as the man hadthrown them back. I could have joined O'Mally in his swearing.Gone--when our fingers were closing on him! Then I found the matches andthe gas burst out over our heads.
My eyes were on the bed and O'Mally's must have been, for simultaneouslyI gave an exclamation and he leaped forward. There, asleep, under thecovers lay a man. Quick as a flash of lightning the detective was besidehim, bending to look close at the face, then he drew back with asound--a cry of amazement, disbelief--and pulling off the bed clotheslaid his hand on the sleeper's chest.
"God in Heaven!" he gasped, turning to us. "He's dead!"
Babbitts and I made a rush for the bed, I to the head, where I leanedlow to make sure, staring into the gray, pale face with its prominentnose and sunken eyes. Then it was my turn to cry out, to stagger back,looking from one man to the other, aghast at what I'd seen:
"It's not Barker at all."
For a moment we stared at one another, jaws fallen, eyes stony. Not aword came from one of us, the silence broken by the hissing rush of thegas turned up full cock in a sputtering ribbon of flame. I came tomyself first, turned from them back to the dead
face, its marble calm instrange contrast to the stunned consternation of the living faces.
"It's not he," I repeated. "I've often seen him. It's _not_ the man."
"Well--well----" stammered O'Mally, coming out of his stupor. "Who onearth is it?"
"How do I know--Sammis, I suppose. It's like him--the nose, the eyes andthe eyebrows, and the mustache. But," I looked at them, gazing like twostupefied animals at the head on the pillow, "it's _not_ JohnstonBarker."
O'Mally, with a groan of baffled desperation, fell into a chair, hishands hanging over the arms, his feet limp on the floor before him.Babbitts stood paralyzed, leaning on the foot of the bed. It was anextraordinary situation--three live men, hot on the chase of a fourthand in the moment of victory faced by the most inscrutable and solemnthing that life holds--a dead man. We couldn't get over it, couldn'tseem to think or act, grouped round the bed with the whistling rush ofthe gas loud on the silence.
Then suddenly, another and more distant sound broke up our stupefaction.Someone was coming up the stairs. It jerked us back to life, and I madea run for the door, O'Mally's whisper hissing after me:
"If it's that woman, keep her away for a while. I want to go over theroom."
It was Miss Graves, ascending slowly with the help of the balustrade. Icaught her on the landing and told her what we'd found. She was notgreatly surprised--the doctor had warned her. I explained the brokendoor by telling her we had been alarmed by the silence and had forcedour way in. That, too, she took quietly, and turned away, glidingshadowlike down the stairs to send out the servant for the doctor.
When I reentered the room its aspect was changed. A sheet covered thedead man and O'Mally and Babbitts, with all the burners in thechandelier blazing, had started looking over the room. The detective wasalready at work on the papers in the desk, Babbitts going through theclothes over the chair and the few others that hung in the cupboard.
"Hustle and get busy," said O'Mally, as he heard me come in. "If thisisn't Johnston Barker, it's the man we've been trailing and I'm prettysure it's the one that attacked Ford."
There was a table by the bedside with a reading lamp and some books onit. Moving these I came upon two newspaper clippings, relating to thesuicide of Harland. In both Anthony Ford was mentioned. The reportershad evidently spoken to him that night on the street, gleaning anyfragments of information they could. One alluded to the fact that he wasemployed in the offices below Harland's, the Azalea Woods Estates. Thesewords were heavily underlined in pencil.
"Looks like it from this," I said, showing the clipping to O'Mally.
He glanced at it and grunted, going back to his inspection of a sheaf ofpapers he had found in one of the desk pigeonholes.
Meantime Babbitts had found in the coat that hung over the chair awallet containing a hundred dollars, a tailor's bill for a suit andcoat, receipted and bearing a New York address, and Tony Ford's houseand street number written in pencil on a neatly folded sheet of notepaper. Besides these there was one letter, dated January 13, typed andbearing no signature. Its contents was as follows:
Enclosed please find one hundred dollars in two bills of fifty. Will send same amount on same date next month if work should be still delayed. Will communicate further later.
The envelope, also addressed in typewriting, was directed to JosephSammis, General Delivery, Philadelphia, and bore a New York postmark.
We were working too quickly for much comment, but Babbitts held out thepaper with Ford's address on it toward O'Mally.
"This bears it out, too," he said.
O'Mally looked at it, and snapped the elastic back on the documents he'dbeen going over.
"From what I've seen here," he said, "Sammis was the man Ford was within the real-estate business. These are all contracts, bills and somecorrespondence, the records of a small venture that went to smash," hepushed the roll back in its pigeonhole--"not another thing."
"There's not another thing in the room," I answered, "except two novelsand a stack of New York papers on the floor there by the bureau. Hist!quiet!"
There were feet coming up the stairs. In a twinkling everything was asit had been, Babbitts and O'Mally withdrew to the window and I went outto see who was coming. It was Miss Graves and the doctor.
I explained the situation and found the doctor brusquely business-likeand matter-of-fact. It was what might have been expected. When he hadbeen called in that morning he had found Mr. Sammis a very sick man,suffering from angina pectoris and a general condition of debility andexhaustion. He had asked him if he had been subjected to any recentexertion or strain but been told no other than a trip the day before toWashington. Miss Graves said it was undoubtedly this trip that had donethe damage. He had been well when he started on Tuesday morning, but onreturning twenty-four hours later had been so weak and enfeebled thatone of the other lodgers had had to assist him to his room. Anexamination proved that he had been dead some hours. Who his relationswere or where he came from Miss Graves had no idea and would turn thematter over to the authorities.
It was close on midnight when we left, and there being no vehicle insight we walked up the street. The moon was as bright as day, and,swinging along between those two lines of black houses, with here andthere a light shining yellow in an upper window, we were silent, eachoccupied by his own thoughts.
I could guess those of the other two--Babbitts' chagrin at once againlosing his big story, O'Mally's sullen indignation at having followed aclue that led to such a blind alley. But their disappointment andbitterness were nothing to mine. All my hopes gone again, and this lastpuzzle helping in no way, in no way as I then counted help.