CHAPTER IX
GUESSES AT THE RIDDLE
The walk uptown did me good. The rain had ceased, and the air feltclean and fresh as though it had been washed. I took deep breaths ofit, and the feeling of fatigue and depression which had weighed uponme gradually vanished. I was in no hurry--went out of my way alittle, indeed, to walk out into Madison Square and look back at thetowering mass of the Flatiron building, creamy and delicate as carvedivory under the rays of the moon--and it was long past midnight whenI finally turned in at the Marathon. Higgins, the janitor, was justclosing the outer doors, and he joined me in the elevator a momentlater.
"There's a gentleman waiting to see you, sir," he said, as the carstarted upward. "Mr. Godfrey, sir. He came in about ten minutes ago.He said you were expecting him, so I let him into your rooms."
"That was right," I said, and reflected again upon Godfrey'sexhaustless energy.
I found him lolling in an easy chair, and he looked up with a smileat my entrance. "Higgins said you hadn't come in yet," he explained,"so I thought I'd wait a few minutes on the off chance that youmightn't be too tired to talk. If you are, say so, and I'll be movingalong."
"I'm not too tired," I said, hanging up my coat. "I feel a good dealbetter than I did an hour ago."
"I saw that you were about all in."
"How do you keep it up, Godfrey?" I asked, sitting down opposite him."You don't seem tired at all."
"I _am_ tired, though," he said, "a little. But I've got a fool brainthat won't let my body go to sleep so long as there is work to bedone. Then, as soon as everything is finished, the brain lets go andthe body sleeps like a log. Now I knew I couldn't go to sleepproperly to-night until I had heard the very interesting theory youare going to confide to me. Besides, I have a thing or two to tellyou."
"Go ahead," I said.
"We had a cable from our Paris office just before I left. It seemsthat M. Theophile d'Aurelle plays the fiddle in the orchestra of theCafe de Paris. He played as usual to-night, so that it is manifestlyimpossible that he should also be lying in the New York morgue.Moreover, none of his friends, so far as he knows, is in America. Nodoubt he may be able to identify the photograph of the dead man, andwe've already started one on the way, but we can't hear from it forsix or eight days. But my guess was right--the fellow's name isn'td'Aurelle."
"You say you have a photograph?"
"Yes, I had some taken of the body this afternoon. Here's one ofthem. Keep it; you may have a use for it."
I took the card, and, as I gazed at the face depicted upon it, Irealised that the distorted countenance I had seen in the afternoonhad given me no idea of the man's appearance. Now the eyes wereclosed and the features composed and peaceful, but even death failedto give them any dignity. It was a weak and dissipated face, the faceof a hanger-on of cafes, as Parks had said--of a loiterer along theboulevards, of a man without ambition, and capable of any depth ofmeanness and deceit. At least, that is how I read it.
"He's evidently low-class," said Godfrey, watching me. "One of thoseparasites, without work and without income, so common in Paris.Shop-girls and ladies' maids have a weakness for them."
"I think you are right," I agreed; "but, at the same time, if he wasof that type, I don't see what business he could have had with PhilipVantine."
"Neither do I; but there are a lot of other things I don't see,either. We're all in the dark, Lester; have you thought of that?Absolutely in the dark."
"Yes, I have thought of it," I said, slowly.
"No doubt we can establish this fellow's identity in time--soonerthan we think, perhaps, for most of the morning papers will run hispicture, and if he is known here in New York at all, it will berecognised by some one. When we find out who he is, we can probablyguess at the nature of his business with Vantine. We can find out whothe woman was who called to see Vantine to-night--that is just a caseof grilling Rogers; then we can run her down and get her secret outof her. We can find why Rogers is trying to shield her. All that iscomparatively simple. But when we have done it all, when we have allthese facts in hand, I am afraid we shall find that they are utterlyunimportant."
"Unimportant?" I echoed. "But surely--"
"Unimportant because we don't want to know these things. What we wantto know is how Philip Vantine and this unknown Frenchman were killed.And that is just the one thing which, I am convinced, neither the mannor the woman nor Rogers nor anybody else we have come across in thiscase can tell us. There's a personality behind all this that wehaven't even suspected yet, and which, I am free to confess, I don'tknow how to get at. It puzzles me; it rather frightens me; it's likea threatening shadow which one can't get hold of."
There was a moment's silence; then, I decided, the time had come forme to speak.
"Godfrey," I said, "what I am about to tell you is told inconfidence, and must be held in confidence until I give youpermission to use it. Do you agree?"
"Go on," he said, his eyes on my face.
"Well, I believe I know how these two men were killed. Listen."
And I told him in detail the story of the Boule cabinet; I repeatedVantine's theory of its first ownership; I named the price which hewas ready to pay for it; I described the difference between anoriginal and a counterpart, and dwelt upon Vantine's assertion thatthis was an original of unique and unquestionable artistry. Longbefore I had finished, Godfrey was out of his chair and pacing up anddown the room, his face flushed, his eyes glowing.
"Beautiful!" he murmured from time to time. "Immense! What a case itwill make, Lester!" he cried, stopping before my chair and beamingdown upon me, as I finished the story. "Unique, too; that's thebeauty of it! As unique as this adorable Boule cabinet!"
"Then you see it, too?" I questioned, a little disappointed that mytheory should seem so evident.
"See it?" and he dropped into his chair again. "A man would be blindnot to see it. But all the same, Lester, I give you credit forputting the facts together. So many of us--Grady, for instance!--aren't able to do that, or to see which facts are essential andwhich are negligible. Now the fact that Vantine had accidentally comeinto possession of a Boule cabinet would probably seem negligible toGrady, whereas it is the one big essential fact in this whole case.And it was you who saw it."
"You saw it, too," I pointed out, "as soon as I mentioned it."
"Yes; but you mentioned it in a way which made its importancemanifest. I couldn't help seeing it. And I believe that we have botharrived at practically the same conclusions. Here they are," and hechecked them off on his fingers. "The cabinet contains a secretdrawer. This is inevitable, if it really belonged to Madame deMontespan. Any cabinet made for her would be certain to have a secretdrawer--she would require it, just as she would require lace on herunderwear or jewelled buttons on her gloves. That drawer, since itwas, perhaps, to contain such priceless documents as the love lettersof a king--even more so, if the love letters were from another man!--must be adequately guarded, and therefore a mechanism was devised tostab the person attempting to open it and to inject into the wound apoison so powerful as to cause instant death. Am I right so far?"
"Wonderfully right," I nodded. "I had not put it so clearly, even tomyself. Go ahead."
"We come to the conclusion, then," continued Godfrey, "that thebusiness of this unknown Frenchman with Vantine in some way concernedthis cabinet."
"Vantine himself thought so," I broke in. "He told me afterwards thatit was because he thought so he consented to see him."
"Good! That would seem to indicate that we are on the right track.The Frenchman's business, then, had something to do with thiscabinet, and with this secret drawer. Left to himself, he discoveredthe cabinet in the room adjoining the ante-room, attempted to openthe drawer, and was killed."
"Yes," I agreed; "and now how about Vantine?"
"Vantine's death isn't so simply explained. Presumably the unknownwoman also called on business relating to the cabinet. She, also,wanted to open the secret drawer, in order to secure its conte
nts--that seems fairly certain from her connection with the firstcaller."
"You still think it was her photograph he carried in his watch?"
"I am sure of it. But how did it happen that it was Vantine who waskilled? Did the woman, warned by the fate of the man, deliberatelyset Vantine to open the drawer in order that she might run no risk?Or was she also ignorant of the mechanism? Above all, did she succeedin getting away with the contents of the drawer?"
"What _was_ the contents of the drawer?" I demanded.
"Ah, if we only knew!"
"Perhaps the woman had nothing to do with it. Vantine himself told methat he was going to make a careful examination of the cabinet. Nodoubt that is exactly what he was doing when the woman's arrivalinterrupted him. He might have let her out of the house himself, andthen, returning to the cabinet, stumbled upon the secret drawer aftershe had gone."
"Yes; that is quite possible, too. At any rate, you agree with methat both men were killed in some such way as I have described?"
"Absolutely. I think there can be no doubt of it."
"There are objections--and rather weighty ones. The theory explainsthe two deaths, it explains the similarity of the wounds, it explainshow both should be on the right hand just above the knuckles, itexplains why both bodies were found in the same place since both menstarted to summon help. But, in the first place, if the Frenchman gotthe drawer open, who closed it?"
"Perhaps it closed itself when he let go of it."
"And closed again after Vantine opened it?"
"Yes."
"It would take a very clever mechanism to do that."
"But at least it's possible."
"Oh, yes; it's possible. And we must remember that the poisoners ofthose days were very ingenious. That was the heydey of La Voisin andthe Marquise de Brinvilliers, of Elixi, and heaven knows how manyother experts who had followed Catherine de Medici to France. Sothat's all quite possible. But there is one thing that isn'tpossible, and that is that a poison which, if it is administered aswe think it is, must be a liquid, could remain in that cabinet freshand ready for use for more than three hundred years. It would havedried up centuries ago. Nor would the mechanism stay in order solong. It must be both complicated and delicate. Therefore it wouldhave to be oiled and overhauled from time to time. If it is worked bya spring--and I don't see how else it can be worked--the spring wouldhave to be renewed and wound up."
"Well?" I asked, as he paused.
"Well, it is evident that the drawer contains something more recentthan the love letters of Louis Fourteenth. It must have been put inworking order quite recently. But by whom and for what purpose? Thatis the mystery we have to solve--and it is a mighty pretty one. Andhere's another objection," he added. "That Frenchman knew about thesecret drawer, because, according to our theory, he opened it and gotkilled. Why didn't he also know about the poison?"
That was an objection, truly, and the more I thought of it, the moreserious it seemed.
"It may be," said Godfrey, at last, "that d'Aurelle was going italone--that he had broken with the gang--"
"The gang?"
"Of course there is a gang. This thing has taken careful planning andconcerted effort. And the leader of the gang is a genius! I wonder ifyou understand how great a genius? Think: he knows the secret of thedrawer of Madame de Montespan's cabinet; but above all he knows thesecret of the poison--the poison of the Medici! Do you know what thatmeans, Lester?"
"What _does_ it mean?" I asked, for Godfrey was getting ahead of me.
"It means he is a great criminal--a really great criminal--one of theelect from whom crime has no secrets. Observe. He alone knows thesecret of the poison; one of his men breaks away from him, and paysfor his mutiny with his life. He is the brain; the others are merelythe instruments!"
"Then you don't believe it was by accident that cabinet was sent toVantine?"
"By accident? Not for an instant! It was part of a plot--and asplendid plot!"
"Can you explain that to me, too?" I queried, a little ironically,for I confess it seemed to me that Godfrey was permitting hisimagination to run away with him.
He smiled good-naturedly at my tone.
"Of course, this is all mere romancing," he admitted. "I am the firstto acknowledge that. I was merely following out our theory to whatseemed its logical conclusion. But perhaps we are on the wrong trackaltogether. Perhaps d'Aurelle, or whatever his name is, justblundered in, like a moth into a candle-flame. As for the plot--well,I can only guess at it. But suppose you and I had pulled off some bigrobbery--"
He stopped suddenly, and his face went white and then red.
"What is it, Godfrey?" I cried, for his look frightened me.
He lay back in his chair, his hands pressed over his eyes. I couldsee how they were trembling--how his whole body was trembling.
"Wait!" he said, hoarsely. "Wait!" Then he sat upright, his facetense with anxiety. "Lester!" he cried, his voice shrill with fear."The cabinet--it isn't guarded!"
"Yes, it is," I said. "At least I thought of that!"
And I told him of the precautions I had taken to keep it safe. Heheard me out with a sigh of relief.
"That's better," he said. "Parks wouldn't stand much show, I'mafraid, if worst came to worst; but I think the cabinet is safe--forto-night. And before another night, Lester, we will have a look forourselves."
"A look?"
"Yes; for the secret drawer!"
I stared at him fascinated, shrinking.
"And we shall find it!" he added.
"D'Aurelle and Vantine found it," I muttered thickly.
"Well?"
"And they're both dead!"
"It won't kill us. We will go about it armoured, Lester. Thatpoisoned fang may strike--"
"Don't!" I cried, and cowered back into my chair. "I--I can't do it,Godfrey. God knows, I'm no coward--but not that!"
"You shall watch me do it!" he said.
"That would be even worse!"
"But I'll be ready, Lester. There will be no danger. Come, man! Why,it's the chance of a lifetime--to rifle the secret drawer of Madamede Montespan! Yes!" he added, his eyes glowing, "and to matchourselves against the greatest criminal of modern times!"
His shrill laugh told how excited he was.
"And do you know what we shall find in that drawer, Lester? But no--it is only a guess--the wildest sort of a guess--but if it isright--if it is right!"
He sprang from his chair, biting his lips, his whole frame quivering.But he was calmer in a moment.
"Anyway, you will help me, Lester? You will come?"
There was a wizardry in his manner not to be resisted. Besides--torifle the secret drawer of Madame de Montespan! To match oneselfagainst the greatest criminal of modern times! What an adventure!
"Yes," I answered, with a quick intaking of the breath; "I'll come!"
He clapped me on the shoulder, his face beaming.
"I knew you would! To-morrow night, then--I'll call for you here atseven o'clock. We'll have dinner together--and then, hey for thegreat secret! Agreed?"
"Agreed!" I said.
He caught up coat and hat and started for the door.
"There are things to do," he said; "that armour to prepare--the planof campaign to consider, you know. Good-night, then, till--thisevening!"
The door closed behind him, and his footsteps died away down thehall. I looked at my watch--it was nearly two o'clock.
Dizzily I went to bed. But my sleep was broken by a fearful dream--adream of a serpent, with blazing eyes and dripping fangs, poised tostrike!