CHAPTER II
THE OX-BLOOD VASE
It was a week later, and well after two, in the dullest ebb of earth'sdeadest hour, when Benson lifted the portiere and stepped into my room.
I put down the book at which my brain had been scratching like a dogscratching at a closed door. It was a volume of Gautier's _nouvelles_.I had just reached that mildly assuaging point in _Une Nuit deCleopatre_ where the mysterious arrow, whistling through the palacewindow of a queen bored almost to extinction, buries itself quiveringin the cedar wainscoting above her couch.
But the incident, this time, seemed to have lost its appeal. The wholething sounded very empty and old, very foolish and far-away. Thethrill of drama, I cogitated, is apt to leak out of a situation when itcomes to one over a circuit of two thousand moldering years. So Ilooked up at my servant a little listlessly and yet a little puzzled bywhat was plainly a studied calmness of appearance.
"Benson, why aren't you in bed?"
"If you will pardon me, sir," began the intruder, "I've a gentlemanhere."
He was so extraordinarily cool about it that I rose like a fish at theflash of something unusual.
"At this time of night?" I inquired.
"Yes, sir."
"But what _kind_ of gentleman, Benson?"
Benson hesitated; it was the sort of hesitation that is able totranslate silence into an apology.
"I think, sir, it's a burglar."
"A what?" I demanded, incredulously.
"The fact is, sir, I 'appened to hear him at the lock. When he forcedthe door, sir, not being able to work the lock, I was waiting for him."
The dropped aspirate was an unfailing sign of mental disturbance inBenson. I closed my book and tossed it aside. It was only drama ofthe second dimension, as old and musty as a mummy. And here,apparently, was adventure of the first water, something of my own worldand time.
"This sounds rather interesting, Benson. Be so good as to show thegentleman up."
I sat down, with a second look at the dragging hands of the littleFrench clock on my mantel. But Benson still seemed a trifle ill atease.
"I--I took the liberty of tying him up a bit, sir," explained thatastute old dissembler, "being compelled, as it were, to use a bit offorce."
"Of course. Then untie him as much as necessary, and fetch him here.And you might bring up a bottle of _Lafitte_ and a bite to eat. Fortwo, if you please."
"Yes, sir," he answered. But still he hesitated.
"The revolver, sir, is in the cabinet-drawer on your left."
There were times when old Benson could almost make me laugh; times whenthe transparencies of his obliquities converted them into somethingalmost respectable.
"We won't need the revolver, Benson. What I most need I fancy isamusement, distraction, excitement, anything--anything to get methrough this endless hell of a night."
I could feel my voice rise on the closing words, like the uprear of aterrified racehorse. It was not a good sign. I got up and paced therug, like a castaway pacing some barren and empty island. But here, Itold myself, was a timely footprint. I waited, as breathless as aCrusoe awaiting his Friday.
I waited so long that I was beginning to dread some mishap. Then theportiere parted for the second time, and Benson led the burglar intothe room.
I experienced, as I looked at him, a distinct sense of disappointment.He was not at all what I expected. He wore no black mask, and wasneither burly nor ferocious. The thing that first impressed me was hisslenderness--an almost feline sort of slenderness. The fact I nextremarked was that he was very badly frightened, so frightened, in fact,that his face was the tint of a rather soiled white glove. It couldnever have been a ruddy face. But its present startling pallor, Iassumed, must have been largely due to Benson's treatment, although Iwas still puzzled by the look of abject terror which gave the captive'seyes their animal-like glitter. He stood before me for all the worldas though a hospital interne had been practising abstruse bandagingfeats on his body, so neatly and yet so firmly had the redoubtableBenson hobbled him and swathed his arms in a half-dozen of my bestIrish linen table-napkins. Over these, again, had been wound andbuckled a trunk-strap. Benson had not skimped his job. His burglarwas wrapped as securely as a butcher wraps a boned rib-roast.
My hope for any diverting talk along the more picturesque avenues oflife was depressingly short-lived. The man remained both sullen andsilent. His sulky speechlessness was plainly that of a low order ofmind menaced by vague uncertainties and mystified by new surroundings.Blood still dripped slowly down the back of his soiled collar, whereBenson's neat whelp had abraded the scalp.
Yet his eyes, all the time, were alert enough. They seemed to take ona wisdom that was uncanny, the inarticulate wisdom of a reptile,bewildering me, for all their terror, with some inner sense of vicioussecurity. To fire questions at him was as futile as throwing pebblesat an alligator. He had determined, apparently, not to open his lips;though his glance, all this time, was never an idle or empty one. Igave up, with a touch of anger.
"Frisk him," I told the waiting Benson. As that underworld phrase wasnew to those respectable Anglian ears, I had to translate it. "See ifhe's carrying a gun. Search his pockets--every one of them."
This Benson did, with an affective mingling of muffled caution and openrepugnance. He felt from pocket to pocket, as gingerly as small boysfeel into ferret holes, and with one eye always on the colorless andsphinx-like face beside him.
The result of that search was quite encouraging. From one pocket camean ugly, short-barreled Colt. From another came two skeleton keys anda few inches of copper wire bent into a coil. From still another camea small electric flashlight. Under our burglar's coat, with one endresting in his left-hand waistcoat pocket, was a twenty-inch steel"jimmy." It was a very attractive tool, not unlike a long andextremely slender stove lifter, with a tip-tilted end. I found itsuggestive of tremendous leverage-power, tempting one to test itsstrength. It proved as inviting to the hand as a golfer'swell-balanced "driver."
From the right-hand waistcoat pocket Benson produced a lady's goldwatch, two finger rings, a gold barrette, and a foot or two ofold-fashioned locket chain, of solid gold. There was nothing to showwho the owner of this jewelry might be.
"I suppose you just bought this at Tiffany's?" I inquired. But theneedle of antiphrasis had no effect on his indurated hide. Hispassivity was beginning to get on my nerves. He might have been a waxfigure in the Eden Musee, were it not for those reptiliously alert andever exasperating eyes. I stood up and confronted him.
"I want to know where this stuff came from."
The white-faced burglar still looked at me out of those sullen andrebellious blinkers of his. But not a word passed his lips.
"Then we'll investigate a little farther," I said, eying his somewhatprotuberant breast-bone. "Go on with the search, Benson, and geteverything." For it was plain that our visitor, before honoring usthat night, had called at other homes.
I watched Benson with increased interest as his fastidiously exploringhand went down inside the burglar's opened waistcoat. I saw him feelthere, and as he did so I caught a change of expression on ourprisoner's face. He looked worried and harassed by this time; heseemed to have lost his tranquil and snake-like assurance. His small,lean head with the pathetically eager eyes took on a rat-like look. Iknew then the end toward which my mind had been groping. The man wasnot snake-like. He was rat-like. He was a cornered rat. Rat seemedwritten all over him.
But at that moment my eyes went back to Benson, for I had seen his handbringing away a small vase partly wrapped in a pocket-handkerchief.This handkerchief was extremely dirty.
I took the vase from his hand, drawing away the rag that screened it.Only by an effort, as I did so, was I able to conceal my surprise. Forone glance at that slender little column of _sang-de-boeuf_ porcelaintold me what it was. There was no possibility of mistake. One glimpseof it was enough. It was from the Gubtill
collection. For once beforemy fingers had caressed the same glaze and the same tender contours.Once before, and under vastly different circumstances, I had weighedthat delicate tube of porcelain in my contemplative hands.
I sat back and looked at it more carefully. I examined the crackledgroundwork, with its brilliant mottled tones, and its pale ruby shadesthat deepened into crimson. I peered down at the foot of enameledwhite with its slowly deepening tinge of pale green. Then I looked upat the delicate lip, the lip that had once been injured and artfullybanded with a ring of gold. It was a vase of the K'angshi Period, arare and beautiful specimen among the Lang Yao monochromes. Andhistory said that thirty years before it had been purchased from thesixth Prince of Pekin, and had always been known as "The Flame."
Both Anthony Gubtill and I had bid for that vase. Our contest for ithad been a spirited one, and had even been made the subject of aparagraph or two in the morning papers. But an inexplicably recklessmood had overtaken that parsimonious old collector, and he had won,though the day after the Graves sale I had been a member of thatdecorously appreciative dinner party which had witnessed itsinstallation between a rather valuable peach-bloom amphora ofharicot-red groundwork, with rose spots accentuated by the usual cloudsof apple-green, and a taller and, to my mind, much more valuableashes-of-roses cylindrical Lang Yao with a carved ivory base. We hadlooked on the occasion as somewhat of an event, for such thingsnaturally are not picked up every day. So the mere sight of the vasetook me back to the Gubtill home, to that rich and spacious house onlower Fifth Avenue where I had spent not a few happy evenings. Andthat in turn took my thoughts back to a certain Volpi sale and an oldItalian table-cover of blue velvet. From the table-cover they flashedon to Mary Lockwood and the remembered loveliness of her face as westood side by side staring down at the gold galloon along the bordersof that old vestment. Then I drew memory up short, with a wince, as Isuddenly realized that the wanderer had been penetrating into strictlyforbidden paths.
I put the vase down on my table and turned away from it, not caring tobetray my interest in it, nor to give to the rat-like eyes stillwatching me any inkling of my true feelings. Yet the thought of suchbeauty being in the hands of a brute like that sickened me. I wasangered by the very idea that such grace and delicacy should beoutraged by the foul rags and the even fouler touch of a low-browedsneakthief. I resented the outrage, just as any normal mind wouldresent a jungle ape's abduction of a delicate child.
I turned and looked the criminal up and down. I noticed, for the firsttime, that his face was beaded with sweat.
"Might I inquire just what you intend doing with this?" I asked, gazingback, against my will, at the fragile little treasure known as TheFlame.
The man moved uneasily, and for the first time. For the first time,too, he spoke.
"Give it to its owner," he said.
"And who is its owner?"
He looked from me to the vase, and then back again.
"It belongs to a pal o' mine over t' Fifth Avenue," he had theeffrontery to assert.
"And where did you get it?"
"Out o' hock!"
I couldn't restrain a touch of impatience as my glance fell on the alltoo eloquent implements of burglary.
"And you expect me to swallow that?" I demanded.
"I don't give a dam' what you swallow. I know the trut' when I'msayin' it!"
"And you're telling me the truth?" I found it hard to keep my angerwithin bounds.
"Sure," was his curt answer.
"That's a cowardly lie!" I cried out again. "You're a coward and aliar, like all your sneaking kind, that skulk about dark corners, andcrawl under beds, and arm yourself to the teeth, and stand ready tomurder innocent women, to strike them down in the dark, rather than befound out! It's cowardice, the lowest and meanest kind of cowardice!"
The sweat stood out on his face in glistening drops.
"What's eatin' you, anyway?" he demanded. "What 'ave I done?"
I pushed the cluster of women's jewelry closer to him.
"You've done some of the meanest and dirtiest work a man can stoop to.You've skulked and crawled and slunk through the dark to rob women andchildren!"
"Who's given _you_ a license to call me a coward?"
"Do you dare to intimate there's anything but low and arrant cowardicein work like this?"
"Just try it," he said with a grin that made his face hideous.
"Why should I try it?" I demanded. "Do you suppose because I don'tcarry a jimmy and gun that I can't face honest danger when I need to?"
I glanced round at my den walls, studded with trophies as they were,from the bull moose over the fireplace to the leopard pelt under myheels. The other man followed my glance, but with a lip-curl ofcontempt. He had jumped to the conclusion, of course, that thoserelics of encounter in the open stood as a sort of object-lesson ofbravery which belonged to me in person.
"Bah," he said, apparently glad to crowd me off into some less personalside-issue, "_that's_ all play-actin'. Get up against what I have, andyou'd tone down your squeal. Then you'd walk into the real thing."
"The real thing, black-jacking chambermaids and running like a peltedcur at the sight of a brass button!"
I could see his sudden wince, and that it took an effort for him tospeak.
"You'd find it took nerve, all right, all right," he retorted. "Andthe kind o' nerve that ain't a cuff-shooter's long suit."
My movement of contempt brought him a step or two nearer. But it wasBenson who spoke first.
"Hadn't we better have the police, sir?" he suggested. The burglar,with his eyes on my face, stepped still closer, as though to shoulderany such suggestion as Benson's out of the issue.
"You just go out in the middle of the night," he went on, with derisivevolubility. "Go out at night and look at a house. Stand off, and lookat it good and plenty. Then ask yourself who's inside, and what'sdoin' behind them brick walls, and who's awake, and where a shot'sgoin' to come from, and what chances of a getaway you'll have, and thesize of the bit you'll get if you're pinched. Just stand there andtell yourself you've got to get inside that house, and make your hauland get away with the goods, that you've got to do it or go with emptyguts. Try it, and see if it takes nerve."
I must have touched his professional pride. I had trifled with thatethical totem-pole that is known as honor among thieves.
"All right," I said, suddenly turning on him as the inspiration came tome. "We'll try it, and we'll try it together. For I'm going to makeyou take this stuff back, and take it back to-night."
I could see his face cloud. Then a sudden change came over it. Hisrat-like eyes actually began to twinkle.
"I think we ought to have the police, sir," reiterated Benson,remembering, doubtless, his encounter below-stairs. "He's an uncommontricky one, sir."
I saw, on more sober second thought, that it would be giving my friendtoo much rope, too many chances for treachery. And he would not beover-nice in his methods, I knew, now that I had him cornered. Asecond idea occurred to me, a rather intoxicating one. I suddenly feltlike a Crusader saving from pollution a sacred relic. I could catchthe whimper of some unkenneled sense of drama in the affair.
"Benson," I said, "I'm going to leave this worthy gentleman here withyou. And while you look after him, I'm going to return thispeach-bloom vase to its owner."
"He ain't in town to-night," broke in my troubled burglar.
"And to demonstrate to his somewhat cynical cast of mind that there'snothing extraordinary in his particular line of activity, I propose toreturn it in the same manner that it was taken."
Benson looked troubled.
"I beg pardon, sir, but mightn't it get us all into a bit of trouble?Couldn't we leave it until morning, sir, and talk it over quiet-likewith your friend Mr. McCooey, or with Lieutenant Belton, sir, or thegentleman from the Pinkerton office?"
"And have a cuff-shooter running for help over such a triviality?Never, Benson, never! You wi
ll make yourself comfortable here withthis gallant gentleman of the black-jack, and keep this handsome Coltof his quite close about you while you're doing it. For I'm going totake this piece of porcelain back where it belongs, even though I haveto face a dozen lap-dogs and frighten every housemaid of Twelfth Streetinto hysterics."
Nobody, I have more than once contended, is altogether sane aftermidnight. This belief came back to me as I stood before thatgloomy-fronted Fifth Avenue house, in that ebb-tide hour of the nightwhen even Broadway is empty, wondering what lay behind the brownstonemask, asking myself what dangers lurked about that inner gloom,speculating as to what sleepers stirred and what eyes, even as I stoodthere, might be alert and watching.
As Benson had suggested, I might have waited decorously until daylight,or I might have quietly ascended the wide stone steps and continued toring the electric push-bell until a sleepy servant answered it. Butthat, after all, seemed absurdly tame and commonplace. It was withoutthe slightest tang of drama, and I was as waywardly impatient to trythat enticing tip-tilted instrument of steel on an opposing door as aboy with a new knife is to whittle on the nursery woodwork.
There was a tingle of novelty even in standing before a grimlysubstantial and altogether forbidding-looking house, and beingconscious of the fact that you had decided on its secret invasion. Icould no longer deny that it took a certain crude form of nerve. I wasconvinced of this, indeed, as I saw the approaching figure of apatrolman on his rounds. It caused me, as I felt the jimmy like astaybone against my ribs, and the flashlight like a torpedo-head in mypocket, to swing promptly about into Twelfth Street and walk towardSixth Avenue. I experienced a distinct glow of satisfaction as thepatrolling footsteps passed northward up the quietness of the avenue.
But the house itself seemed as impregnable as a fortress. Itdisheartened me a little to find that not even a basement grill hadbeen disturbed. For the second time I turned and sauntered slowlytoward Sixth Avenue. As I swung eastward again I found that the lasthouse on the side-street, the house abutting the Fifth Avenue mansionwhich was the object of my attack, was vacant. Of that there could beno doubt. Its doors and windows were sealed with neatly paintedshutters.
This, it occurred to me, might mark a possible line of approach. Buthere again I faced what seemed an impregnable position. I was backingaway a little, studying that boarded and coffin-like front, when myheel grated against the iron covering of a coal-chute. This coal-chutestood midway between the curb and the area railing. I looked down atit for a moment or two. Then something prompted me to test its edgewith the toe of my shoe. Then, making quite sure that the street wasempty, I stooped down and clutched at the edge of the iron disk. Itwas quite heavy. But one tug at it showed me that its lock-chain hadbeen forced apart.
It took but a moment to lift the metal shield to one side of thechute-head. It took but another moment to lower myself into the chuteitself. I could see that it was a somewhat ignominious beginning. ButI felt buoyantly sure that I was on the right track. It took an effortto work the iron disk back over the opening. It also required manystrange contortions of the body to worm my way down into that narrowand dirty tunnel.
My rather peremptory advent into the coal-bin resulted in a startlingamount of noise, noise enough to wake the soundest of sleepers. So Icrouched there for several seconds, inhaling dust, and listening andwondering whether or not the walls above me harbored a caretaker. ThenI took out the pocket searchlight, and, with the pressure of a finger,directed my ray of illumination against a wooden partition bisected bya painted wooden door.
A distinct sense of disappointment swept through me as I stooped downto examine this door and found that it had already been forced open. Iknew, however, that I was following in the footsteps of my moreexperienced predecessor. Then came a storeroom, and then alaundry-room, with another jimmied door at the head of the stairwayleading to the first floor.
Here I stood waiting and listening for some time. But still againnothing but darkness and silence and that musty aroma peculiar tounoccupied houses surrounded me. I felt more at home by this time, andwas more leisurely in my survey of the passage upward. I was, ofcourse, confronted by nothing more disturbing than ghost-like furniturecovered with ticking and crystal-hung chandeliers encased incheesecloth. I began to admire my friend the burglar's astuteness inchoosing so circuitous and yet so protected a path. There was almostgenius in it. His advance, I felt sure, was toward the roof. As I hadexpected, I found the scuttle open. The lock, I could see, had beenquite cleverly picked. And, so far, there had not been a mishap.
Once out on the housetop, however, I foresaw that I would have to bemore careful. As I clambered up to the higher coping-tiles that markedthe line of the next roof, I knew that I had actually broken into theenemy's lines. Yet the way still seemed clear enough. For, as I cameto the roof-scuttle of the second house I found that it, too, remainedunlocked. My predecessor had made things almost disappointingly easyfor me. Yet, in another way, he had left things doubly dangerous. Ihad to bear the brunt of any mis-step he may have made. I was beingcalled to face the responsibility of both his intrusion and my own.
So it was with infinite precaution that I lifted the scuttle and leanedover that little well of darkness, inhaling the warmer air that seepedup in my face. With it came an odor quite different to that of thehouse I had just left. There was something expository in it, somethingmore vital and electric, eloquent of a place inhabited, of human beingsand their lairs and trails, of movement and life and vaguely definedmenaces. It was, I fancied, a good deal like that man-smell whichcomes down-wind to a stalked and wary elk.
I stepped down on the iron ladder that led into the uncertain darkness,covering the trap after me. I began to feel, as I groped my waydownward, that the whole thing was becoming more than a game. I wasdisturbed by the thought of how deep I had ventured into anuncertainty. I began to be oppressed by the thought of how complicatedmy path was proving. I felt intimidated by the undeterminedintricacies that still awaited me. A new anxiety was taking possessionof me, a sort of low fever of fear, an increasing impatience to replacemy precious porcelain, end my mission, and make my escape to the open.
It began to dawn on me, as I groped lower and lower down through thedarkness, that a burglar's calling was not all beer and skittles. Ibegan to feel a little ashamed of my heroics of an hour before.
Then I drew up, suddenly, for a sound had crept to my ears. The tinglethat ran through my body was not wholly one of fright. Yet, as I stoodthere in the darkness with one hand against the wall, I caught therhythm of a slow and muffled snoring. There was something oddlyreassuring in that reiterated vibration, even though it served toemphasize the dangers that surrounded me. It was not unlike the soundof a bell-buoy floating up to a fog-wrapped liner's bridge.
I was no longer a prey to any feeling of hesitancy. I was already toodeep in the woods to think of turning back. My one passion now was tocomplete the circuit, to emerge on the other side.
I began to wonder, as I felt for the stair banister and groped mycautious way down the treads, just how the burglar himself had effectedthat final exit from the house. And the sooner I got away from thesleeping quarters, I felt, the safer I would be. Every bedroom was ashoal of dangers, and not all of them, I very well knew, would beequipped with the same generous whistling-buoy as that I had just leftbehind me. There was, too, something satisfying in the knowledge thatI was at least getting nearer and nearer the ground-floor. This wasdue, not so much to the fact that I was approaching a part of the housewith which I was more or less familiar, but more to the fact that mydescent marked an approach to some possible pathway of escape. Forthat idea was now uppermost in my mind, and no aviator with a balkymotor ever ached to get back to earth more eagerly than I.
The utter darkness and silence of the lower halls were beginning to geton my nerves. I was glad to feel the newel-post, which assured me thatI had reached the last step in my descent. I was rel
ieved to be ableto turn carefully and silently about to the left, to grope toward adoor which I knew stood before me in the gloom, and then cautiously toturn the knob and step inside.
I knew at once, even before I took the flashlight from my pocket, thatI was in the library. And the room that opened off this, I remembered,half cabinet-lined study and half informal exhibition-room, was thechamber wherein Anthony Gubtill treasured his curios. It would takebut a minute or two, I knew, to replace his priceless little porcelain.And another minute or two, I felt, ought to see me safely out and on myway home.
I stood with my back to the door, determined that no untimely blundershould mar the end of my adventure. My first precaution was to thrustout my flashlight and make sure of my path. I let the incandescent rayfinger interrogatively about the massively furnished room, resting fora moment on marble and metal and glass-fronted book-shelf. Iremembered, with almost a smile of satisfaction, the little _Clytie_above the fireplace, and the _Hebe_ in bronze that stood beside theheavy reading-lamp. This lamp, Gubtill had once told me, had come fromMunich; and I remembered his chuckle over the fact that it had come ina "sleeper" trunk and had evaded duty.
Then I let the wavering light travel toward the end of the glimmeringand dark-wooded reading-table. I stood there, picking out rememberedobject after object, remarking them with singular detachment of mind asmy light continued to circle the end of the room.
Then I quietly made my way to the open door in the rear, and bisectingthat second room with my spear of light, satisfied myself that thespace between the peach-bloom amphora and the ashes-of-roses Yang Laowith the ivory base was indeed empty.
I stood listening to the exotic tick of a brazen-dialed Roumanianclock. I lingered there, letting my bald light-shaft root like ahog's-snout along that shelf so crowded with delicate tones andcontours. I sighed a little enviously as I turned toward the other endof the room.
Then, of a sudden, I stopped breathing. Automatically I let my thumblift from the current-spring of my storage-lamp and the light at oncewent out. I stood there with every nerve of my body on edge. Icrouched forward, tingling and peering into the darkness before me.For I had suddenly discovered that I was not alone in the room.
There, facing me, picked out as distinctly as a baby spot-light picksout an actor's face, I had seen the owner of the house himself, not tenpaces from me. He was sitting in a high-backed armchair of greenleather. He must have been watching me from the first, every momentand every movement. He had made no effort to interrupt or interceptme. He had been too sure of his position.
I waited for what seemed an interminable length of time. But not asound, beyond the querulous tick of the clock, came to my ears. Noteven a movement took place in the darkness.
The undefined menace of this silence was too much for me. The wholething grew into something strangely like a nightmare. I moved away,involuntarily, wondering what I should say, and after what fashion Ishould begin my foolish explanation. I crouched low and backed offobliquely, as though some value lay in the intervention of space, andas though something venomous were confronting me. I fell slowly back,pawing frenziedly about me for some sustaining tangibility to which tocling. As I did so my body came in contact with some article offurniture--just what I could not tell. But I shied away from it in apanic, as a colt shies at a fallen newspaper.
My sudden movement threw over a second piece of furniture. It musthave been some sort of collapsible screen, for it fell to the floorwith an echoing crash. I waited, holding my breath, withhorripilations of fear nettling every limb of my body, knowing only toowell that this must indeed mark the end.
But there was no movement, no word spoken, no slightest sound. Istared through the darkness, still half expectant. I tried to tellmyself that it may have been mere hallucination, that expectantattention had projected into my line of vision a purely imaginaryfig-lire. I still waited, with my heart pounding. Then the tensionbecame more than I could endure. I actually crept forward a step ortwo, still peering blindly through the darkness, still listening andwaiting.
Then I caught my breath with sudden new suspicion, with a quick fearthat crashed, bullet-like, through the film of consciousness. It wasfollowed by a sickening sense of shock, amounting almost to physicalnausea.
I once more raised the flashlight. This time my hand shook perceptiblyas I turned the electric ray directly in front of me. I let the minutecircle of illumination arrow through the darkness, direct to the whiteface that seemed to be awaiting it. Then I let it come to a rest.
I remember falling back a step or two. I may have called out, but ofthat I am not sure. Yet of one thing I was only too certain. Therebefore me sat Anthony Gubtill. _He was quite dead_.
My first feeling was not altogether one of terror. It was accompaniedby a surge of indignation at the injustice, at the brutality, of itall. I was able to make note of the quilted dressing-gown that coveredthe relaxed body. I was collected enough to assume that he hadoverheard the intruder; had come to investigate, and had been struckdown and cunningly thrust into a chair. This inference was followed bya flash of exultation as I remembered that his murderer was known, thatthe crime could easily be proved against him, that even at the presentmoment he was safe in Benson's custody.
I moved toward the dead man, fortified by the knowledge of a vast newobligation. It was only after I had examined the face for a secondtime and seen how death had been caused by a cruelly heavy blow, dealtby some blunt instrument, that the enormity of my own intrusion intothat house of horror came home to me. I felt a sudden need for light,for sobering and rationalizing light. Even the ticking from thebrazen-faced clock had become something phantasmal and unnerving.
I groped feverishly and blindly about in search of an electricswitch-button. Then, of a sudden, I stopped again, my movementarrested by a sound.
I knew, as I stood and listened, that it was only the purr of anautomobile, faint and muffled from the street outside. But it suddenlybrought home to me the awkwardness of my position. To be found in thathouse, or even to be seen leaving it, was no longer a desirable thing.My foolhardy caprice, before an actuality so overawing, dwindled intosomething worse than absurdity. And thought came back at a bound tothe porcelain in my pocket. I recalled the old-time rivalry betweenthe dead man and myself for The Flame. I recalled the details of myadvent between those walls where I stood. And my blood went cold. Itwas not a matter of awkwardness; it was a matter of peril. For who, Iagain asked myself, would believe a story so absurd, or accept anexcuse so extravagant?
The clock ticked on accusingly. The sound of the automobile stopped.I had just noted this with relief when the thud of a quietly closeddoor fell on my startled ears. Then came the murmur of voices. Therewas no longer any doubt about the matter. A motor had come to thedoor, and from it certain persons had entered the house.
I crept to the library and listened. Then I tiptoed back and closedthe door of the inner room. I felt more secure with even a half-inchpanel between me and what that inner room held.
Then I listened. I began to hear the padded tread of feet. Then camethe sound of another opened door, and then the snap of a light-switch.There was nothing secret about the new invasion. I knew, as I shrankback behind one of the high-backed library chairs, that the front ofthe house was already illuminated.
Then came the sound of a calling voice, apparently from the head of thestairs. It was a cautious and carefully modulated voice; I took it forthat of a young man of about twenty.
"Is that you, Caddy?"
Then came a silence.
"I say, is that you, Orrie?" was demanded in a somewhat somnolentstage-whisper. There was something strangely reassuring in thatcommonplace boyish voice. Anthony Gubtill, I knew, had no immediatefamily. I vaguely recalled, however, some talk of a Canadian nephewand niece who had at times visited him.
"Sh--s--sh!" said a woman's voice from the lower hall, "Don't wakeUncle Anthony."
It m
ust have been a young woman. Her voice sounded pensive, like thatof a girl who might be coming home tired from a dance at Sherry's.Yet, knowing what I did, its girlish weariness took on a pathosindescribably poignant.
"It's an awful hour, isn't it?" asked a second man's voice from thelower hall. There were sounds that seemed to imply that wraps werebeing removed.
"Almost four," came the answer from above. "Had a good time, Caddy?"
I heard a stifled yawn.
"Rather," answered the girl's voice.
"I say, Orrie, bring up those Egyptian gaspers for a puff or two, willyou?" requested the youth from above, still in a stage-whisper. "And,Caddy, be sure the latch is on."
"On what?" demanded Orrie.
"The door, you idiot!" was the sleepily good-natured retort.
Then I suddenly ducked low behind my chair-back, for the young mancalled Orrie had flung open the library door. He came into the roomgropingly, without switching on the electrics. I could see his trimyoung shoulders, and the white blur of his shirt-front. Behind him,framed in the doorway, stood a young girl of about twenty, a blonde inpale blue, with bare arms and bare shoulders. Her skin looked verysoft and baby-like in the strong sidelight. I could not represssomething that was almost a shudder at the thought of this carelessgaiety and youth so close to the grim tragedy behind me, so unconsciousof the awakening that might come to them at almost any moment.
"_Do_ hurry!" said the tired girl, as the young man fumbled about thetable-end. I realized, as I peeped out at her, that my first dutywould be to keep those round young eyes from what might confront themin that inner room.
"I've got 'em!" answered the man. He stood a moment without moving.Then he turned and walked out of the room, quietly closing the doorbehind him.
I emitted a gasp of relief and stood up once more. Nothing alive ordead, I determined, would now keep me in that house. Yet for all thatnew-born ecstasy of impatience, I was still compelled to wait, for Icould hear the occasional sound of feet and a whisper or two frombehind the closed door. Then all sound died away; the gloom andsilence again engulfed me.
I took the Yang Lao porcelain from my pocket, unwrapped it, and creptback to the inner room. I groped along the wall in the darkness,circling wide about the green-leather chair in the center. I put thevase back on its cabinet, without so much as flashing my light. Then Icircled back along the wall, felt for the library door, and gropedcautiously across the perilous breadth of the furniture-crowdedchamber. It took me several seconds to find the door that opened intothe hallway. Once through it and across the hall, I knew, only aspring-latch stood between me and the street. So I turned the knobquickly and swung back the door.
But I did not pass through it. For, instead of darkness, I foundmyself confronted by a blaze of light. In that blaze of light stoodthree waiting and expectant figures. What most disturbed me was thefact that the man called Orrie held in his hand a revolver that seemedthe size of a toy-cannon. This was leveled directly at my blinkingeyes. The other youth, in cerise pajamas with orange colored frogs anda dressing-gown tied at the waist with a silk girdle, stood just behindhim, holding an extremely wicked-looking Savage of the magazine make.Behind this youth again, close by the newel-post, stood the girl inblue, all the sleepiness gone out of her face.
The sight of that wide-eyed and eager trio irritated me beyond words.There was no longer any thrill in the thing. I had gone through toomuch; I could not react to this newer emergency. I kept wondering ifthe idiot with the Colt realized just how delicate a pressure wouldoperate the trigger on which I could see his finger shaking. But thatshake, it was plain, was more from excitement than fear.
"We've got him!" cried the youth in the cerise pajamas. I might havebeen a somewhat obstinate black bass wheedled into his landing-net,from the way he spoke.
"Don't move!" commanded the older of the two, wrinkling his brow into afrown of youthful determination. "Don't you dare move one inch, orI'll put a hole through you."
I had no intention of moving.
"Watch his hands," prompted the younger man. "He ought to put 'em up."
"Yes, Orrie, he ought to put them up," echoed the girl by thenewel-post. She reminded me, with her delicate whites and pinks andblues, of the cabinet of porcelain at which I had so recently stared.
"Back up through the door," cried Orrie. "Come on--back up!"
I wearily obeyed this somewhat equine order. Then he commanded me tohold my hands above my head. I did so without hesitation; I had nowish to argue while that Colt was staring me in the eyes.
They followed me, Indian file, into the room. It was the girl whoclosed the door as Orrie switched on the lights. She stood with herback to it, studying my face. I could see that I rather interestedthem all. But in that interest I detected no touch of eitherfriendliness or respect. The only one I seemed to mystify was the girlat the door.
"Have you anything to say?" demanded Orrie, squaring his shoulders.
"Yes, I have a great deal to say," I told him. "But I prefer saying itto you alone."
I could see his movement of disdain.
"Will you listen to that!" commented the youth in the cerise pajamas.
"And if you will be so good as to stop poking that pistol in my face,"I continued with some heat, "and then send these children out of theroom, I shall say what I have to, and do it very briefly!"
"Children!" came in an indignant gasp from the girl at the door.
"We'll stick by you, old man," assured the youthful hero in cerise,with his heels well apart.
"And just why should I closet myself with a burglar?" inquired theastute Orrie, staring at me with the utmost insolence. Yet I could seethat at least the precision of my articulation was puzzling him a bit.
"That's asinine," I retorted. "I'm not a burglar, and you ought toknow it."
To my astonishment, a little tripartite ripple of laughter greeted thisstatement.
"Then what are you?" asked the incredulous Orrie.
I knew there was no further use beating about the bush.
"Yes, who are you?" demanded the other youth.
He still held the magazine-revolver balanced in his right hand. Thetruth had to come out.
"I'm Witter Kerfoot," I told them, as steadily as I could. "Kerfoot,of Gramercy Park West."
"What number?"
I gave him the number. I could see the trio exchange glances; theywere plainly glances of amusement. My young friends, I could see, wereenjoying a home melodrama, a melodrama in which I was obviously themost foolish of villains. I began to feel a good deal like aphonograph grinding out a comic record.
"And with that face!" ejaculated the man called Orrie.
The quiet contempt of his glance caused me to shift about, so I couldcatch a glimpse of myself in the Venetian mirror between thebook-shelves. That glimpse was indeed a startling one. I had quiteforgotten the transit through the coal-hole. I could not even rememberhow or when I broke my hat-crown. I had remained as unconscious of thescratch across my cheek as I was of the garret cobwebs that festoonedmy clothing. I saw as I peeped into the mirror only a sickly-hued andgrimy-looking footpad with dirty hands and a broken hat. It was nowonder they laughed. My environment for the last hour had not been onethat tended toward consciousness of attire. I was about to remove mydisgracefully disfiguring headgear when the younger man swung about onme with the Savage thrust point-blank in my face.
"Don't try any of that!" he gasped. "You keep up those hands."
The whole situation was so beside the mark, was so divorced from thesterner problem confronting both them and myself, that it dispiritedand angered me.
"We've had about enough of this tommy-rot!" I protested.
"Yes, we'll cut out the tommy-rot, and get him tied," proclaimed theman with the Colt.
"Then search him first," prompted the young man. "Here, Caddy, takeOrrie's Colt while he goes through him," he commanded, in thechest-tones of a newly-acquired savagery
, "and if he tries to move,wing him!"
The girl, wide-eyed and reluctant, took the heavy revolver. Then Orrieadvanced on me, though in an altogether wary and tight-lipped manner.To continue my protests, I saw, would be only to waste my breath.There was nothing to do but submit to the farce.
I said nothing as he produced the telltale flashlight. I also remainedsilent as he triumphantly unearthed the jimmy and the damnatoryskeleton keys. I could see the interchange of exultant glances asthese were tossed out on the polished table-top.
"Get the straps from the golf bags!" suggested the youth with theSavage. I could not help remembering how this scene was parallelinganother of the same nature and the same night, when Benson and I hadbeen the masters of the situation.
The man called Orrie seemed a little nonplussed at the fact that he hadfound no valuables in my outer pockets, but he did not give up. Hegrimly ignored my protests as he explored still deeper and dug out mymonogramed wallet, and then a gold cigarette-case, on which my name wasduly inscribed. He turned them over in his hand a couple of times andexamined them carefully. Then a great light seemed to come to him. Hesuccumbed, as even his elders have done, to a sudden sense of drama.
I saw him dart to the outer room and catch up a telephone directory.He riffled through the pages with quick and impatient fingers. Then hestrode back, and looked me up and down.
"I know what this man's done," he cried, his eyes alight withconviction.
"What?" demanded the younger man.
"He's visited more than this house to-night. He's gone through WitterKerfoot's, as well. He's taken these things from there. And now _it'sup to us to take him back with them_!"
I could see the sheer theatricality of the situation clutch at his twolisteners. I could see them surrender to it, although the girl stillseemed to hesitate.
"Hadn't I better call Uncle Anthony?" she suggested.
At one breath her words brought me back to both the tragedy that lay soclose at hand, and the perilous complexity of my own position.
"No, that's foolish!" cut in Orrie. "The car's still outside. Caddy,I think you'll have to come along. You can sit with Jansen on thedriving-seat."
The hero of the maneuver turned back to me. I was thinking mostly ofthe soft-eyed girl with the baby-white skin, and how I could get hersafely away.
"Will you come quietly?" my captor demanded of me.
"Yes," I answered, without looking up, "I'll come quietly."
It was the girl's voice, a little shrill with excitement, that nextbroke the silence.
"Orrie, he's not a burglar!" she cried out, in her treble-notedconviction.
"Then what is he?"
"He's a gentleman."
"What makes you think so?" demanded the indifferent Orrie as hemotioned me, with a curt movement of his Colt-barrel, toward the halldoor.
"I know by his nails!" was her inconsequential yet quite definite reply.
Orrie laughed.
"Then you'd give tea and macaroons to every burglarious barber out ofSing Sing," he scoffed. "And our real answer's waiting for us inGramercy Square."
It seemed to take but a minute or two in the car to swing us fromTwelfth Street up to Twentieth, and then eastward into the stillness ofthe square. My captors had insisted that I should not talk. "Not aword!" commanded Orrie, and I could feel his insolent gun-barrelagainst my ribs as he gave the command for the second time. They weredrunk, I could see, with the intoxication of their exploit. They werepreoccupied with inhaling their subtle sense of drama. With thedictatorial self-sufficiency of true inebriety they had enjoined mefrom every effort at explanation. The bubble, they felt, was far toopretty a one to be pricked.
They alighted, one in front of me and one behind me, still carryingtheir foolish and murderous-looking firearms. The girl remained in herseat. Then the three of us grimly ascended my steps.
"It's needless to ring the bell," I wearily explained. "My pass-keywill admit you."
"But I insist on ringing," said Orrie as I fitted the key to the lock.
"I shall be compelled, in that case, to call the officer who iswatching us from the corner," was my quiet response.
"Call and be hanged, then!" was the younger man's ultimatum.
One word over their shoulders brought my old friend McCooey, thepatrolman, across the corner and up the steps. I swung open the dooras he joined us. Then I turned on the hall lamps and faced my twocaptors.
"Officer, I want you to look at me very carefully, and then assurethese gentlemen I am Witter Kerfoot, the owner and occupant of thishouse."
"Sure he's Kerfoot," said the unperturbed McCooey. "But what's thethrouble this time?"
"Something more serious than these gentlemen dream of. But if thethree of us will go quietly upstairs, you'll find my man Benson there.You'll also find another man, tied up with half a dozen--"
McCooey, from the doorway, cut me short.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't be stayin' to see your joke out."
"But you've got to."
"Fact is, sir," he explained, in a lowered voice, "Creegan, avHeadquarthers, has a Sing-Sing lifer bottled up in this block, and I'mholdin' wan end av the p'lice lines--a jail-breaker, sir, and a trickywan, called Pip Foreman, the Rat!"
"The Rat?" I echoed.
"The same, sir. But I must be off."
"Don't go," I said, closing the door. "_Your man's up-stairs, waitingfor you_!"
"Waitin' for me?" he demanded. "What man?"
"The man they call the Rat," I tried to explain to him. "And I'll begreatly obliged to you, McCooey, if you'll make as short work of thissituation as you can, for the truth of the matter is, I feel rathertired, and fancy there's five or six hours of good honest sleepawaiting me!"