Part 3

They went out together before the lunch hour. Tab had a call to make at the office and afterwards he was meeting Carver for lunch. Carver, a lanky and slow-speaking man, was ordinarily no conversationalist. On some subjects he was impressively interesting, and as Tab provided the subject, two hours slipped away very quickly. Before they left the restaurant, Tab told him of the drunken stranger and his threats against Jesse Trasmere.

“I don’t worry about threats,” said Carver, “but a man with a grievance, and especially a Number One grievance, like this man has, is pretty certain to cause trouble. Do you know old Trasmere?”

“I’ve seen him twice. I was once sent to his house to make an inquiry about an action that the municipality started against him for building without the town architect’s permission. Rex Lander, who is a kindergarten architect, by-the-way, and rooms with me, is his nephew and I’ve heard a whole lot about him. He writes to Rex from time to time; letters full of good advice about saving money.”

“Lander is his heir?”

“Rex hopes so, fervently. But he says it is just as likely that Uncle Jesse will leave his money to a Home for the Incurably Wealthy. Talking of Trasmere, there goes his valet, and he seems in a hurry.”

A cab dashed past them, its solitary passenger was Walters, a pinched-faced man, bareheaded, and on his face a tense, haggard look that immediately arrested the attention of the two men.

“Who did you say that was?” asked Carver quickly.

“Walters--old Trasmere’s sergeant,” replied Tab, “looks pretty scared to me.”

“Walters?” The detective stood stock still, thinking. “I know that man’s face. I’ve got him! Walter Felling!”

“Walter who?”

“Felling--he was through my hands ten years ago and he has been convicted since. Walters, as you call him, is an incorrigible thief! Old Trasmere’s servant, eh? That’s his speciality. He takes service with rich people and one fine morning they wake up to find their loose jewelry and money and plate gone. Did you notice the number of the cab?”

Tab shook his head.

“The question is,” said the detective, “has he made a get-away in a hurry, or is he on an urgent errand for his boss? Anyway we ought to see Trasmere. Shall we take a cab or walk?”

“Walk,” said Tab promptly. “Only the detectives of fiction take cabs, Carver. The real people know that when they present their cab bills to the head office, a soulless clerk will question each item.”

“Tab, you certainly know more about the interior economy of thief-catching than an outsider ought to know,” responded the detective gloomily.

Between them and Trasmere’s house was the better part of a mile. Mayfield, the dwelling place of old Jesse, was the one ugly building in a road which was famous for the elegance of its houses. Built of hideously yellow brick, without any attempt at ornamentation, it stood squat and square in the middle of a cemented “garden.” Three microscopic circles of earth had been left at the urgent request of the builder, wherein Mr. Jesse might, if he so desired, win from the sickly earth such blooms and blossoms as might delight his eye. To this he reluctantly agreed, but only after there had been pointed out to him the fact that such an alteration to his plans would save a little money.

“It isn’t exactly the Palace of the Fairy Prince, is it?” said Tab, as he pushed open the cast iron gate.

“I’ve seen prettier houses,” admitted Carver, “I wonder--”

So far he got, when the front door was flung violently open and Rex Lander rushed out. His face was the colour of chalk, his big baby eyes were staring wildly. They fell upon the two men on the concrete walk and his mouth opened to speak, but no words came.

Tab ran to him.

“What is wrong?” he demanded and that something was badly wrong one glance at Babe Lander told him.

“My uncle,” he gasped. “Go look.”

Carver rushed into the house and through the open door of the dining-room. It was empty, but at the side of the fireplace was a narrower door.

“Where is he?” asked the detective.

Rex could only point to the narrow aperture.

There was a flight of stone stairs which terminated in a narrow passage, barred by yet another door, which was also open. The corridor was well-lighted by three globes set at intervals in the ceiling, and the acrid smell of exploded cordite filled the confined space of the passage, which was empty.

“There must be a room opening from here,” said Carver, “whose are these?”

He stooped and picked up an old pair of gloves that lay on the floor and pushed them into his pocket.

He looked round for Rex Lander. That young man was sitting on the top step of the stairs, his face in his hands.

“There’s no sense in questioning him,” said Carver in an undertone, “where is his uncle?”

Tab walked rapidly down the passage and came to a door on the left. It was a narrow door painted black, and deeply recessed in the thick wall. There was no handle and only a tiny keyhole. Four inches from its top was a steel plate pierced with small holes for the purpose of ventilation. He pushed the door, but it was locked. Then he peered through the ventilator.

He saw a vault which he guessed was about ten feet long by eight feet wide. Fixed to the rough walls were a number of steel shelves, loaded up with black iron boxes. A brilliant light came from a globe in the vaulted roof, and he saw plainly.

At the farther end of the room was a plain table, but it was not at this he was looking, but at the figure crouched against one of its legs. The face was turned in his direction.

It was the face of Jesse Trasmere and he was dead.

VI

Tab gave way to the detective and waited whilst Carver looked.

“There’s no sign of a weapon--but by the smell there has been some shooting,” he said. “What is that on the table?”

Tab peered through the ventilator.

“It looks like a key to me,” he said.

They tried the door, but it resisted their combined weight.

“The door is much too thick and the lock too strong for us to force,” said Carver at last. “I’ll telephone headquarters, Tab. See what you can get out of your friend.”

“I don’t think he’ll tell me much for some time. Come along, Babe,” said Tab kindly, taking the other’s arm. “Let us get out of this beastly atmosphere.”

Unresisting, Rex Lander allowed himself to be led back to the dining-room, where he dropped into a chair.

Carver had finished his telephoning and had returned long before Rex had recovered sufficiently to give a coherent narrative. His face was blanched, he could not control his quivering lips, and it was a considerable time before he could tell his patient hearers all that he knew.

“I came to the house this afternoon by appointment,” he said. “My uncle had written to me asking me to see him about an application which I had made to him for a loan. He had previously rejected my request, but as had often happened, he relented at the last moment, for he was not a bad man at heart. As I was pressing the bell, the door opened and I saw Walters--Walters is my uncle’s valet.”

The detective nodded.

“He looked terribly agitated, and he had a brown leather bag in his hand. ‘I am just going out, Mr. Lander,’ he said--”

“Did he seem surprised to see you?”

“He seemed alarmed,” said Rex. “It struck me when I saw him that my uncle must be ill and I asked him if anything was the matter. He said that my uncle was well but he had sent him on a very important errand. The conversation did not last more than a minute, for Walters ran down the steps and into the road before I could recover from my amazement.”

“He wore no hat?” asked Carver.

Rex shook his head.

“I stood in the hall for a moment, knowing that my uncle does not like people to come in upon him unless they are properly announced. You see, Mr. Carver, the situation was rather a delicate one for me. I had come here in the role of a supplicant, and naturally I did not wish to prejudice my chance of getting the fifty which my uncle had promised me. I went to uncle’s living-room but he was not there, but the door which I knew led to the strong-room was open and he could not be far away. I sat down and waited. I must have been there ten minutes and then I began to smell something burning, as I thought, but which was, in fact, the smell of gunpowder or whatever they use in cartridges, and I was so thoroughly alarmed that I went down the steps and after a little hesitation, knowing how my uncle hated being overlooked, I went on to the door of the vault. It was locked and I rapped on the ventilator but had no reply. Then I peeped through. It was horrible,” he shuddered. “As fast as I could I ran up the stairs into the street, intending to call a policeman and I saw you.”

“Whilst you were in the house you heard no sound to suggest that there was anybody else present? Where are the servants?”

“There is only the cook,” said Rex and Carver went in search of her.

But the kitchen was closed and deserted. It was apparently the cook’s day off.

“I’ll make a search of the house,” said Carver. “Come along, Tab, you are in this case now and you had better stay with it.”

The search did not take a very long time. There were two rooms used by Mr. Trasmere, the remainder were locked up and apparently unused. A passage-way led to Walters’ sleeping apartment, which had originally been designed as a guest room and was larger than servants’ quarters usually are. The room was meagrely furnished and there was evidence that Mr. Walters had not anticipated so hurried a flight. Some of his clothing hung on pegs behind the door, others were found in a wardrobe, whilst a cup filled with coffee stood on the table. Carver dipped his little finger into the liquid. It was still warm.

A cloth had been thrown hurriedly over some bulky object at one end of the table, and this the detective removed. He whistled. Clamped to the edge of the table was a small vice and scattered about were a number of files and other tools. Carver turned the screw of the vice and released the object in its grip. It was a small key of peculiar shape, and the man must have been working upon it recently, for steel filings covered the base of the tool.

“Then friend Walters was making a key,” said Carver. “Look at that plaster cast! That is an old dodge of his. I suppose he got an impression of the key on soap or wax and has been working at it ever since.” He looked at the thing in his palm curiously. “This may save us a great deal of trouble,” he said, “for unless I am mistaken, this is the key of the strong-room.”

A few minutes later the house was filled with detectives, police photographers and coroner’s officers. They came on a useless errand, for the door remained locked. Tab took advantage of their arrival to escort his friend home.

Before he went, Carver drew him aside.

“We shall have to keep in touch with Mr. Lander,” he said. “He may be able to throw a great deal of light upon this murder. In the meantime I have sent out all station calls to pull in Felling--who is Wellington Brown?”

“Wellington Brown? That is the man who has been threatening Trasmere--I told you about him at lunch.”

Carver pulled an old pair of gloves from his pocket.

“Mr. Wellington Brown was in that underground corridor,” he said quietly, “and was sufficiently indiscreet to leave his gloves behind--his name is written inside!”

“You will charge him with the murder?” asked Tab, and Carver nodded.

“I think so. Either he or Walters. At any rate, we shall hold them on suspicion, but I cannot be more definite until we’ve got inside that vault.”

Tab escorted his friend to the flat, and leaving him, hurried back to Mayfield, by which fanciful name Trasmere had called his grim house.

“We’ve found no weapon of any kind,” said the detective whom he found sitting in Trasmere’s dining-room with a plan of the house before him. “Maybe it is in the vault, in which event it looks like a case of suicide. I have been on the telephone with the boss of Mortimers, the builders. They say that there is only one key in existence for that vault--I was speaking to Mr. Mortimer himself and he knows. Trasmere made a special point about the lock and had twenty or thirty manufactured by different locksmiths. Nobody knows which one he used, and Mortimer says that the orders were so imperative that there should be no duplicate key, that it is unlikely--in fact, I think, impossible--that the murderer could have entered the vault except by the aid of Trasmere’s own key. However, we shall soon know; I have the best workman in town working at the unfinished key in Felling’s room and he says it is so far advanced that he is in no doubt he will be able to open the vault tonight.”

“Then it is useless in its present state?”

The other nodded.

“Quite useless, we have tried it and the locksmith, who is an expert, says that it wouldn’t fit into the keyhole as it was when we found it.”

“Then you suggest it is a case of suicide? That old man Trasmere went into the vault, locked himself in and then shot himself.”

Carver shook his head.

“If the revolver is found in the vault, yours would be a very sound theory, though why Trasmere should shoot himself is entirely beyond me.”

At a quarter to eleven that night three men stood before the door of the Trasmere vault, and the shirt-sleeved workman inserting the key, the lock snapped back. He was pushing the door open when Carver caught his arm.

“Just leave it as it is,” he said and the locksmith, obviously disappointed that he should be denied a full view of the tragedy which he had only half glimpsed went back to gather up his tools.

“Now,” said Carver, drawing a long breath and pulling a pair of white gloves from his pocket, he put them on.

Tab followed him into the chamber of death.

“I’ve telephoned for the doctor. He’ll be here in a few seconds,” said Carver, looking down at the silent figure leaning against the table legs. He pointed to the table. In the exact centre lay a key, but what brought the exclamation to the detective’s lips, was the fact that the one half was stained red. The fluid which had run from it had soaked into the porous surface of the table.

“Blood,” whispered the detective and gingerly lifted the flat steel.

There was no doubt about it. Though the handle was clean, the lower wards appeared as though they had been dipped in blood.

“This disposes of the suicide theory,” said Carver.

His first search was for the pistol which had obviously slain the man. There was no sign of any weapon. He passed his hand under the limp body and Tab shivered to see the head drop wearily to the shoulder.

“Nothing there--shot through the body too. Suicides seldom do it that way.”

His quick fingers searched the silent figure. There was nothing of any value.

Carver straightened himself and stood, fist on hip, surveying the dreadful sight.

“He was standing here when he was shot--he never knew what killed him. As a faked suicide it is inartistic--part from the absence of weapon, the old man was shot in the back.”

If there were any doubts on the subject they were set at rest when the doctor made his brief examination.

“He was shot at the range of about two yards,” he said. “No, Mr. Carver, it is impossible that he should have committed suicide, there is no burning whatever. Besides, the bullet has entered the back, just beneath the left shoulder and of course, death must have been instantaneous. It is impossible that the wound can have been self-inflicted.”

Again came the police photographers, and after they had gone, leaving the vault thick with the mist of exploded magnesium, the two men were left to their search. The first boxes were, for the main part, filled with money. There was very little gold, but a great deal of paper of various nationalities. In one box Carver found five million francs in thousand franc notes, another was packed with English five pound notes, another was full of hundred dollar bills fastened in packets of ten thousand. Only two of these boxes were locked and only one that they looked at that night contained anything in the nature of documents. For the most part they were old leases, receipts painted on thin paper in Chinese characters and which they only knew were receipts because somebody had written a translation on their backs. They were bracketed neatly in folders, on each of which was described in a fine flowing hand, the nature of its contents.

On one thick bundle fastened with rubber bands was an old label: “Trading correspondence, 1899.”

In his search Tab, who was looking through the box, found a folded manuscript which he brought out.

“Here is his will,” he said, and Carver took it from him. It was written in the crabbed boyish hand which Tab had come to know so well and it was very short. After the conventional preamble, it went on:

“I leave my property and effects whatsoever, to my nephew, Rex Percival Lander, the only son of my deceased sister, Mary Catherine Lander, nee Trasmere, and I appoint him sole executor of this my will.”

It was witnessed by Mildred Green, who described herself as a cook, and by Arthur Green, whose description of his profession was valet. Their addresses were Mayfield.

“I think those are the two servants the old man discharged for pilfering some six months ago. The will must have been executed a few weeks before they left.”

Tab’s first feeling was one of pleasure that at last his friend was a rich man. Poor Rex, little did he dream that he would come into his inheritance in so tragic a fashion.

Carver put the document back into the box and continued the examination of the door which Tab had interrupted.

“It isn’t a spring lock, you notice,” he said. “So, therefore, it couldn’t have been slammed by a murderer who first shot Trasmere and then made his escape. It has to be locked either from the inside or the outside. If there was any reasonable possibility of Trasmere having shot himself, the solution would have been simple. But he did not shoot himself. He was shot here, the door was locked upon him and the key returned to the table--how?” He took the key and tried one of the air-holes of the ventilator. The point of the key scarcely entered. “There must be some other entrance to the vault,” he said.

The sun was up before they finished their examination of the room. The walls were solid. There was neither window nor fireplace. The floor was even more substantial than the walls.

In a last hopeless endeavor to solve the mystery, Carver called in an expert to inspect the ventilator. It was made of steel, a quarter of an inch thick, and fastened into the door itself. There were no screws with which it could have been taken out and even if it had been removed, only the tiniest of mortals could have crept through.

“Still,” said Carver, “if we could suppose that the ventilator was removable, we might have taken a leaf from Edgar Allen Poe and thought seriously of a trained monkey being introduced.”

“There is the theory of the duplicate key--”

“Which I dismiss,” said Carver. “I am satisfied that no duplicate key was used. If a duplicate key had been procurable, Felling or Walters as you call him, would have found his way to it. He is the cleverest man in that business and he has lived on duplicate keys all his life. He must have known that it was impossible to gain admission by such a method or he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to make one. He is a specialist in that line of business, probably the finest locksmith of the underworld.”

“Then you suggest that this key was used?” Tab pointed to the table.

“I not only suggest it, but I would swear to it,” said Carver quietly. “Look!” He pulled the door open so that the light fell upon the outside keyhole. “Do you see the little blood-spots?” he asked. “That key has not only been used from the outside, where it has left unmistakable markings, but the same has happened on the inside of the door.”

He swung the door again and Tab saw the tell-tale stains.

“That door was unlocked from the inside after the old man was dead and locked again upon him.”

“But how did the key get back to the table?” asked the bewildered reporter.

Mr. Carver shook his head.

“A medical student was once asked by a professor whether Adam was ever a baby, and he replied: ‘God knows’--that is my answer to you!” he said. “We will leave the other boxes until tomorrow, Tab.”

Carver led the way out of the vault, locked the door with the duplicate key and put it in his pocket.

“My brain is dead,” said Tab.

And it was then that he saw the new pin.

VII

From where he stood the light caught it and sent up a thread of silvery reflection. He stooped mechanically and picked it up.

“What is that?” asked the detective curiously.

“It looks to me like a pin,” said Tab.

It was a very ordinary pin, silvery bright and about an inch and a half in length. In that sense it was of an unusual size, though it was the kind that is commonly used by bankers, who delight in fastening large documents together by this barbarous method. It was not straight; there was a slight bend in it, but otherwise it had not remarkable features. Tab looked at it stupidly.

“Give it to me,” said Carver. He took it in his white-gloved hand and walked to a position under one of the lights. “I don’t suppose it has any significance,” he said, “but I’ll keep it.” He put the pin carefully away in the match-box where he had put the key. “Now, Tab,” he said more briskly as they went out of the house together into the bright sunlight, two unshaven, weary-looking men, “you have the story of your life, but go easy on any clues we have found.”

“I didn’t know we had found any,” said Tab, “unless the pin is a clue.”

“Even that I should not mention,” said Carver gravely.

When he got back to his flat Tab found the lights of the sitting-room blazing and Rex Lander, fully dressed, asleep on the settee.

“I waited up till three,” yawned Rex. “Have they caught Walters or whoever it was?”

“Not when I left Carver, which was ten minutes ago,” replied Tab. “They suspect that man Brown. His gloves were found in the passage.”

“Brown, the man from China?--It was pretty awful, wasn’t it?” asked Babe in a hushed voice, as though the fearfulness of those moments through which he had passed were only now appealing to him in their sheer terror. “My God, what an awful thing! I’ve tried not to think about it all night, that horrible memory persisted so that it nearly drove me mad.”

“I have one bit of good news for you, Rex,” said the other as he began to prepare for bed. “We found your uncle’s will. That is unofficial.”

“You found the will, did you?” said the other listlessly. “I am afraid I am not interested in his will just now. Who gets the money, the Dogs’ Home, or the Cats’ Creche?”

“It goes to a stout young architect,” said Tab with a grin, “and I can see our little home breaking up. Maybe I’ll come and see you when you are rich, Babe, if you’ll know me.”

Rex’s impatient gesture silenced him.

“I’m not thinking about money--I’m thinking about other things,” he said.

Tab slept for four hours and woke to find that Rex had gone out.

When he came into the street the special editions of the Sunday newspapers were selling with stories of the murder.

The news editor had not arrived when Tab reached the office, but he turned in the rough narrative of the tragedy to guide the office in its general search for Walters and Brown.

He went on to Mayfield, but Carver was not there and the police sergeant in charge of the house was indisposed to admit him. Carver being a single man, lived in lodgings. Tab surprised him in the act of shaving.