Chapter 10

THE SECOND STORY

The reader will have observed, very likely, that up to the present I have made no mention of a close examination of the second story, nor, moreover, of having ascended the stairs above the balcony-like landing with its grewsome burden.

Such was indeed the case; and while my failure in this regard might argue neglect, or at least a strange lack of system, I can only point out that the entire sequence of events, from the moment of my arrival at the house, had been most unusual.

It is rare that so many divagations become inevitable. I was obliged to acquaint myself with the circumstances as they forced themselves upon me, and not as if I had been free to ferret them out in accordance with any customary course of procedure. All along I had been impatient to get up-stairs; but first one thing and then another had arisen, demanding immediate attention. We shall soon learn, however, how my search in the second story was rewarded. While the results may appear not very significant, they were nevertheless of vast importance in pointing a way to the riddle's answer.

For, mind, although I was reasonably sure that the ruby represented the motive for the murder, I had been given a number of reasons for believing that this motive involved a plot infinitely farther-reaching than the determination of some common thief or housebreaker to secure the gem. If I wanted to fix responsibility for Mr. Page's cruel death, I would be obliged to lay bare the controlling cause in all its ramifications. Whether Maillot or Burke was the guilty man, it was at this stage of vital consequence that the State's Attorney be given light upon every factor in the tragedy; and as this was my business, it is not surprising that I was animated with an ambition to make a thorough job of the matter.

And furthermore, I was satisfied that the Paternoster ruby had not yet been removed from the house, wherever the murderer might be--a belief which I was very shortly to have strengthened by certain seemingly unimportant incidents. The trail in the snow was one of these confirmatory incidents, although I had no occasion yet to so regard it.

While it was my first duty, therefore, to discover the murderer, I saw no reason why I should not at the same time find the well-nigh priceless gem, inasmuch as I hoped that the latter would point definitely to the former.

The ruby had disappeared between eleven o'clock last night and the time of Stodger's arrival--shortly before three in the morning. One of the two men who had passed the night in the house might have secreted it. Their presence offered the most plausible explanation.

Was Maillot the one? His fantastic story was certainly a strain upon one's credulity, I must confess; yet, I had sat face to face with him, and I am not without skill--nor was I at the time--in penetrating a man's outward aspect and discerning the sincerity of his purpose. In justice to him, I can not emphasize too strongly how convincing had been every utterance of his, the which I have been at some pains to record. And then, I could not attribute the freshly oiled hinges nor the rifled safe to Maillot. Consequently the next step was to turn to Burke: when I did so I was met only by a mental image of his inscrutable tawny eyes; the baffling, impassive visage which showed no mark of age.

Well, Maillot did not have the ruby. And now, if a search of Burke's person and belongings resulted as the former search had, why, I must look to some hiding-place near at hand.

And this was a task after my own heart. I cast ahead in pleased anticipation to some delightful hours after nightfall in this dreary old mansion, when I would be alone and at liberty to pursue my quest with the least likelihood of being disturbed.

If the ruby were really here, I meant to remain pretty close to it until it came to light, or else have a dependable substitute take my place when it should become necessary for me to go abroad. It was this determination which led to the scar that will disfigure my face as long as I live.

The erstwhile secretary submitted without demur to an examination of his clothing, and without any change of expression that I could perceive. The pale eyes followed my movements with a blank, incurious stare (though Stodger maintains that they did not cease for an instant regarding him), and I was glad enough to see the fellow depart, after I had privately passed word to Stodger not to lose Burke until another man could relieve him.

The flight of stairs above the landing gave upon a hall which--excepting in the front, where there was a large diamond-paned window--entirely surrounded the stair-well, and was continued by a lateral passage connecting the gables or wings.

One leaning over the balustrade at the top looked down upon the ascending stairs, the balcony midway up, and a good portion of the spacious hall below. The lateral hall gave access to all the rooms on the second floor.

An examination of the appended plan, although drawn from memory and by fingers to which such a task is strange, will give a better idea of the _locus criminis_ than any amount of verbal description alone can accomplish. So the reader, if he will consult the chart from time to time as the narrative proceeds, will escape much confusion in his attempts to follow the movements of the different actors.

Arriving at the head of the stairs, I first gave my attention to the _étagère_. This piece of furniture was simply a pedestal of shelves, without sides, front, or back, so that to tilt it in any direction far out of the perpendicular would mean to spill its burden of old newspapers and periodicals.

Maybe it would have been convenient in a music-room, but situated where it was it was certainly in the way of anybody using the stairs. If a person unfamiliar with the house should ascend the stairs in the dark, the instant he turned at the top he must almost inevitably collide with it--a circumstance which I was to have brought home to me a few nights later, with consequences which missed being fatal by only the slenderest of margins. But after all, I concluded, if a stranger missed it only by a miracle it might have served a double purpose here; no one slept in the second story, ordinarily, and it would make a good burglar alarm, as well as a repository for the iron candlestick and the sea-shell match receptacle.

From the point where it now leaned against the balusters back to the lateral corridor or hall, there were many little details to arrest and stimulate my curiosity. The carpet between these two points plainly showed signs of a recent struggle, and at the western vortex of the angle formed by the balustrade surrounding the stair-well, innumerable drops of congealed paraffin were scattered widely over the floor.

And the railing itself also held a record. Stout as were the uprights sustaining it, it had received the impact of a body sufficiently heavy to throw it askew. At this point on the railing there was a deep triangular dent, destined to assume a high place in solving the problem of Felix Page's murder.

When I stood directly in front of the bath room door, I could look down over the balustrade to the landing--the body had been removed to a more suitable place--and I could also see the front door and most of the first-floor hall.

A dozen or so feet west of the stair-well two doors opened upon the lateral passage. They were directly opposite each other; the front room having been the one occupied by Maillot the previous night, while the other was Burke's.

Now as I allowed my glance to rove along the dim-lighted hall in the direction of the two bed-chambers, it was at once arrested by some small--and at the distance, indistinguishable--object lying in the centre of the floor a few feet beyond the two doors. I went and picked it up.

It was the shabby leather jewel-case.

But now it bore many indications of extremely rough usage. It was not only open, but empty; the lid was bent, twisted out of shape, and hanging precariously by one damaged hinge. The leather was freshly torn and scratched, while the inner lining of faded blue satin had been slit in a number of places. I contrived after some manipulation to get the box into a semblance of its former shape, and then slipped it into a pocket of my coat.

Neither Maillot's room nor Burke's revealed anything of much consequence. In the former I noted the open wardrobe door, and, owing to its position relative to the bed, was obliged to admit the likelihood of Maillot's accident. In the other room, in a small leather satchel, were the papers by which Burke accounted for his presence. They were of no interest to me. I turned them over to Mr. White, who, with the other gentlemen, was just departing.

With a feeling of lively anticipation, I entered the bath room. I had not forgotten that this room alone had been designated by a distinguishing mark on the chart which I had found while following the mysterious footprints. But I discovered nothing to justify my hopes. The place was monotonously like other bath rooms in which I had been. I gave it an exceptionally thorough overhauling, then went carefully over it once more--even resorting to my magnifying-glass from time to time--but all to no purpose; the room was discouragingly wanting in anything that might be regarded as a clew.

In the end I fell to musing over a bar of common laundry soap on the stationary wash-stand. It was impossible not to contrast this humble detergent--for it was of a bigness and coarse yellowness to suggest the largest possible quantity for the smallest possible price--with the dead man's wealth, and to wonder a little at such petty economies as were signified by it, by the paraffin candles, the absence of servants, and by some other details of the _ménage_ which perhaps I have already mentioned.

I recalled, with a smile, that Burke had smelled of laundry soap, and that on the wash-stand in Maillot's room there had been no soap at all. Well, there are some queer ways of utilizing wealth; but I contend that, of all of them, to deny oneself the commonest comforts of existence is the queerest and the hardest to understand. A philosophy of living is involved utterly incomprehensible to me.

Passing through the bath room, I emerged upon the landing of the rear stairs. Across the landing was another small room, which contained, besides a dust-mantled sewing-machine, nothing but some broken and worn-out furniture.

I followed the stairway to the bottom, and about half-way down found a bit of flattened paraffin about the size of my thumb nail.

After re-ascending these stairs I stood once more looking idly down over the balustrade, going over in my mind the parts of the puzzle which had been set for me to bring together into an intelligible and perfectly rounded whole, and wondering what I would succeed in making of it all. For a while I was aware of a strange lack of confidence in myself, of a feeling of uncertainty. Had I been negligent in not arresting both Maillot and Burke? It seemed the simplest and most direct method of proceeding; it would be no difficult matter to fasten the crime on one or the other, or both of them; why should I go behind the few plain details which lay so invitingly before me?

Perhaps the intrusion of a pair of blue eyes into the midst of my cogitations had much to do with my irresolution. Somehow I was extremely desirous of winning their approval. The possibility that I might win more did not enter my thoughts, because, I reflected rather dismally, the owner of the blue eyes moved in a sphere in which I had neither part nor parcel.

Still, my determination to solve the mystery of Felix Page's death was inextricably interwoven with another determination to win one final friendly, commendatory look--perhaps a word or two, or even a warm hand-clasp--from Miss Genevieve Cooper.

How was I to do that? By fastening an odious crime upon her cousin's lover? I shrank from such an alternative. Heaven grant that so far I had not reasoned falsely.

It may seem a poor business thus to mix sentiment with one's humdrum daily affairs; but--well, and so it is. After mature reflection, I can think of but one extenuating plea: I was only twenty-six at the time.

Up to the present it had been difficult to ascribe to each circumstance its own proper value; but now they were beginning to shape themselves into some semblance of order, and for the first time a fairly complete concept of the tragedy's enactment irresistibly presented itself to me.

The antecedent circumstances leading up to the crime, however, were largely conjectural, although they were pretty strongly suggested by the details of the struggle itself. I was thus enabled to supply the missing portions with more or less plausibility. Here, then, is the way I reconstructed the night's occurrences in this house--the fatal sequence of events which began when Felix Page bade Maillot good-night, culminated in the older man's death, and ended with the flight of the murderer. You will perceive that the four "Chinese" had no place in it; I could find none for them.

After Mr. Page and Maillot separated, for some reason the former had not retired. I took it as being more than likely that he had returned to the library, where presently he fell into a doze before the dying fire. But, no, first of all he went to the safe to dispose of the box containing the ruby; after that he returned to the library. While he nodded over the fire the thief stole to the safe, opened it _with the combination_, and took not only the ruby, but everything else the strong-box contained.

But cautious as the thief is, some disturbing noise penetrates to the sleeper's consciousness; in fancy we may see the old man--fox, pirate of the pit, as he had been called--starting broad awake, fearless, every faculty alert and strained to catch the betraying sounds.

In a moment he bestirs himself to ascertain what is afoot in his house at so unseemly an hour. Noiselessly he enters the hall from the library, in time to behold the marauder--by the latter's own candle flame, I was positive--ascending the front stairs.

And here the tragic episode departs from all precedent; at this stage it assumes its baffling aspects. If the thief had not been a member of the household--even but a temporary member--why should he have gone up the stairs instead of leaving the house by the nearest way? And again, why should Mr. Page have followed the thief so stealthily if he had not recognized him?

But the master of the house steals on up the stairs behind the other. At about the time he arrives at the head of the stairs the thief vanishes: else why did Mr. Page pause to light the candle in the iron candlestick which stood upon the _étagère_?

Fatal move, that! In some manner the _étagère_ is knocked forward against the balustrade; the thief is alarmed, although some door must have closed behind him. And now the old gentleman is facing no longer a thief merely, but a man with murder in his heart.

Which door had it been: Maillot's, or Burke's, or yet some other door?

Once more we are given a strong indication that Felix Page knew the man, for he and the assassin _in limine_ do not immediately close in combat. Not yet. Some words certainly pass. The taper in the heavy iron candlestick must burn long enough to account not only for the drops of paraffin scattered about over the floor, but those that ran like congealing tears down the side.

I could fancy the outraged and mystified old gentleman demanding an explanation, and before long exploding with wrath, the thief standing hopelessly convicted--caught "with the goods."

Suddenly the struggle is precipitated by the infuriated householder endeavoring to recover his property. We may safely assume that it was by no gentle means that he sought to do this, and at once the battle wages to and fro between the head of the stairs and the lateral passage, quite up to the bath room door. The thief is striving to retain the leather box, the other to wrest it from him.

It is pretty certain, too, that the old gentleman hastily put down the iron candlestick before he grasped the box--on the floor, somewhere near the western angle of the balustrade--and in the end, as the combat in one of its uncertain revolutions sweeps past it, the thief frees himself with a desperate effort, snatches it from the floor, and becomes an assassin _in actu_.

The dull impact of the blow, as the scene is blinded by sudden darkness; the crash of the body against the railing; the dominant jar when the body strikes upon the landing below--and the dark deed is accomplished.

What next follows?

Panic on the part of the murderer, we may be sure, as he stands one second in a stupor of horror at what he has done; then he must have flown--whither?

It is at this juncture that Alexander Burke steps into the hall, and beholds nothing in the light of his own candle. It is at this point that Royal Maillot springs from his bed, collides with the open wardrobe door, and straightway forgets the tumult in his own physical suffering, until Burke raps upon his door. And it is at this point that, unless there was some third person in the house, either one or the other of these two young men has deliberately lied. In turning them both loose I trusted to convict the guilty man by his own conduct. It will develop how far my course was justified.

The mute but vivid testimony would seem to lead, step by step and with irresistible logic, straight to the private secretary--had it not been for two circumstances which placed him once for all beyond the possibility of having been the person who struck the blow.

First, he would have been but as a babe in Felix Page's powerful grasp; there would have been no struggle at all.

Second, the fellow was an arrant coward, and he would never have offered the least resistance unless convinced that he was in imminent peril of his life--which was improbable.

The rear stairway was associated with the thought of Burke's cowardice, for he had chosen that way to accompany Stodger: whose shoe-sole had left the flattened fragment of paraffin there?

For some time I had been alone in the house--save, of course, for the still, sheeted form. The place was as silent as any tomb. Then of a sudden a sound smote upon my ear that brought me in a flash to attention.

There is a certain fascination about a door slowly opening in a house which you suppose to be empty. Until you have found out the cause you ascribe it to anything from ghosts to Bengal tigers, and even then may be sure of a surprise. The invisible agency may turn out to be only the wind or a wandering cat. But it makes no difference what starts the door to swinging open; the bald fact of its doing so when by all known laws it should remain firmly shut, is _per se_ potent enough, or hypnotic enough,--or whatever influence it is that it exerts,--to root you at once to the spot until the Unseen declares itself. In truth, an opening door is pregnant with such infinite possibilities.

It was with some such sort of suspended animation that I stared down over the balustrade and waited, my look glued upon the front door. It swung inward with a slowness inexpressibly aggravating. And then I recoiled with a little cry.

Miss Genevieve Cooper was standing in the lower hall, pale and trembling, and darting quick nervous glances in every direction.