Chapter 5

THE HIDDEN SAFE

I left the four reporters to Stodger's tender mercies--his instructions did not include any such extreme measures as Maillot had suggested--confident that he was the proper person to relieve me of this unwelcome intrusion. It has always been hard for me to talk to these sharp-eyed, alert young chaps of the press, without saying something I had no business to say. Even if I did n't say it, some one of them would be sure to make a pretty shrewd guess, sometimes causing me no end of trouble. Stodger knew nothing of my intentions; therefore he could let nothing slip that might in any way affect my future movements.

Maillot's note despatched, I directed my attention to ascertaining just what Alexander Burke meant by his reference to the ruby.

His explanation in itself was simple enough. He had heard of the ruby, of course--who had n't?--and during his wanderings through the house the previous night, while he waited for Maillot to finish his business with Mr. Page, he had paused now and then in the vicinity of the library door. Twice he had heard the gem mentioned by those within.

Maillot accepted this statement with an offensive incredulity which was plainly deliberate.

"The house was very quiet," Burke made haste to add.

"Perhaps," Maillot spoke with sneering emphasis, his look frankly hostile, "perhaps you could have heard us; I 'm ignorant of the degree of acuteness to which your hearing has been developed; _but_"--turning to me--"I want to say, Swift, that during the whole time Mr. Page and I were engaged in this room, our voices were not once raised so that a person beyond the closed door could have heard us intelligibly. I think, Burke, I see the imprint of a keyhole on your ear."

"Temper your language, Maillot," said the other, with a touch of asperity. Instantly Maillot was upon his feet.

"Shut up!" he thundered. "Don't you talk to me, you scamp!"

"Here, don't quarrel," I interposed pacifically, pressing the angry, glaring lawyer back into his chair with a persuasive hand upon his shoulder. I then said to him:

"You might appropriately relate what your business last night with Mr. Page was."

"I will"--bluntly--"to you."

The proposal being a reasonable one, I agreed to defer the matter.

"However," continued I, "while you two are together there are some points upon which I want enlightenment. Reserve your personalities for another time. Is it positive that there was no one else in the house besides yourselves and Mr. Page?"

Neither spoke, each waiting, as it seemed, for the other to reply. My glance travelled between the two, and finally settled upon the secretary, whose long, nervous fingers were beating a silent tattoo upon the table.

"How about it, Mr. Burke?" I pressed him. "Your familiarity with the house entitles you to answer."

"I can take oath there was not," he now said. Stodger had already assured me that when he arrived every door and window was fast on the inside. So I next asked:

"When you went to notify the police, did you depart by way of the front door?"

"I did," he replied in a subdued voice. And Maillot immediately added:

"It was fast, Swift--bolt and spring-latch, both. I remember because the fact made me think there might be somebody else in the house. As soon as Burke left I went over the whole place, methodically and painstakingly, and I can now swear, if anybody was secreted in here anywhere, why, he 's here yet. I inspected every door and window, upstairs and down; all were fast."

The unbroken, spotless mantle of snow outside limited the possibility of ingress or egress without leaving betraying footprints, to either the front or the rear door, where the paths had been kept clear.

Dismissing this nonplussing phase, I turned to the subject of the gem once more.

"Regarding the ruby, Mr. Burke," said I, "do you know where Mr. Page kept it?"

Maillot fixed a scowling look--not at all relieved by his discolored eye--upon the secretary, while that young man thoughtfully shook his head.

"No," Burke said at length; "not certainly. I never heard Mr. Page mention it; but I have an idea that it is in a small concealed safe in his bedroom, because there is where he keeps those things which no eye but his own ever sees."

Was it possible that Felix Page had any hidden treasures of sentiment? If so, here, in all truth, was a surprising side-light thrown into an unsuspected recess of his character. I was to have a hint presently of what was tucked away there.

But Burke had something more to say. "Perhaps,"--slowly--"you would like to see that safe, Mr. Swift. I know where it is located, and can save you a needless search. It will have to be opened later on, I imagine."

"All right," I said, with much interest. "Lead the way."

Burke rose, with a queer glance at Maillot, and--turned toward the curtained alcove.

If he had any intention of moving in that direction, however, he quickly changed his mind; for Maillot and I followed him through the doorway, down the length of the roomy panelled hall, to another door on the same side of the house as the one we had just quitted. I could hear a murmur of voices across the hall, where Stodger was entertaining the reporters.

"The safe," said Burke, as we entered a large, handsome, but very disordered sleeping-chamber, "is what decided Mr. Page on selecting this room in preference to one on the second floor. It was placed here, I suppose, at the time the house was built; it is very artfully hidden."

The bed betrayed the fact that it had not been slept in recently, and the room that it was unused to a cleansing supervision. Some soiled clothing lay in a heap in one corner; a pair of trousers were collapsed over the back of a chair; the dresser-top held a lot of linen and cravats, both clean and soiled; half-closed drawers overflowed with garments that had been thrust in any way, and an over-turned ink bottle on a handsome mahogany stand had never been righted. Even a careless housewife would have been driven insane by such deliberate untidiness.

Our guide picked up a half-burned candle, lighted it, and then opened a closet door. Next instant he started back with a queer cry.

Maillot and I crowded forward and saw--nothing, at first, to explain Burke's conduct. But in a moment I comprehended.

A section of the closet floor was up, and now stood on edge leaning against a wall; beneath it was a shallow, cemented hollow, with four wooden steps leading down to the bottom, where, obviously, one might stand to get conveniently at the small safe thus disclosed.

It was also manifest that somebody had been doing that very thing. For the safe door stood open, as well as the inner door; and a flash of the candle, a single brief glimpse, assured me that--whatever it might have held--it was now as empty as on the day it left the maker's hands.

But, stay--there _was_ something, though not in the safe. I took the candle from Burke, and went down the steps. On the cement floor, in the shadow of the open safe door, was a visiting-card, yellowed by age. I thought it blank at first; but on turning it over I saw some writing, faint and faded but legible, which had been penned by a feminine hand:

"I pray that you be showered with all the blessings of the season. With love from

"CLARA."

And in the lower left-hand corner, a date was written--an old, old date: "Xmas, 1857."

Next I satisfied myself that the doors had not been forced, and that every compartment was indeed empty. Then I looked back over my shoulder, to be puzzled by the baffling, indecipherable stare of Burke's tawny eyes. Was he looking at me, at the reaved safe, or at the pathetic little reminder, which I was holding in my hand, of that long-ago Christmas present? Though I could not be certain, I somehow felt that his interest was, at the moment, intense, and that I had been mistaken in thinking him a young man.

As I slipped the time-worn card into a pocket, Maillot's voice broke in harshly upon my meditations.

"So--we have a thief to deal with, as well as an assassin," he observed, his glance roving casually over the secretary. "Burke, how would you, now, account for the safe being open?"

And for the first time I detected a sign of emotion in the yellow eyes: they darted a look toward Maillot, and away again; but it flickered with a spark of malice--gleamed for an instant with a light of malevolent contempt--which made me feel that the fellow had all along been keeping something in reserve, something which must inevitably come to light presently, to Maillot's utter discomfiture and undoing. It suggested that Burke was patiently biding his time until some sudden turn of events should permit him to triumph over the other. Clearly, there was no goodwill lost between these two men.

At once the eyes were again the same blank windows whose scrutiny was so indeterminate. Burke let down the trap-door in the closet floor, and I paused a while to admire how cunningly it had been designed. Although knowing it to be there, I could discern no trace of the aperture. We then reëntered the bedroom.

I observed a door in the wall nearest the front of the house, and, seized with a sudden fancy to ascertain upon what it opened, went and laid my hand upon the handle. Burke's steady progress toward the hall door seemed to be aimed at diverting my purpose; realizing that he had failed, he turned and called aloud, staying my hand while it was in the very act of turning the knob.

"That's only the conservatory," his voice rang out; "it's empty--save for dust and cobwebs, there 's nothing in it."

"Nevertheless I have a fancy to explore it," returned I; and I opened the door.

A narrow passage was disclosed, across which was another door. Both swung open noiselessly, a circumstance which struck me, in view of the fact that the conservatory was empty and unused, as being rather odd; and as I closed the second door behind me, I turned round as if to make sure the latch had caught.

The hinges had been freshly oiled.

A bay of glass, semi-opaque with dirt, occupied the space of the outer wall, and the glare from the dazzling snow outside brought out the whole interior with a sort of brutal vividness. A number of water-stained shelves; a few shallow boxes disintegrating and distributing their contents of earth over the floor; one or two crisp, brown, desiccated plant-stalks: such was the interior of this apartment set aside and dedicated to flowers and bright growing things.

And it had been used infrequently as a passageway, too. In the dust on the floor were footprints; some of them old, where later dust had settled, without quite obliterating them; some fresh, as if made but an hour ago.

As I came up to the next door I observed that its hinges had also been freshly lubricated, and was not surprised when it opened without a sound. When I stepped through it, I was in the curtained alcove off the library. Truly, there had been some secret, surreptitious flittings in this old mansion.

At that moment, in my abstraction, I was humming a little tune. I heard Stodger jovially speeding the departing reporters; and after the outside door closed behind the last of them, I shouted for him to enter the library. Our eyes met, and I indicated the secretary by the faintest of signs.

"Mr. Burke," said I, quietly, "will you please wait with Mr. Stodger while I have a few words with Mr. Maillot?"

The blank, pale face was turned briefly toward me--or Maillot--then the man bowed without a word, and followed Stodger. He paused an instant at the door, and looked across his shoulder at Maillot; enigma that he was, I nevertheless again caught a triumphant gleam in the tawny eyes. Then he passed on.

The fire on the wide hearth had been replenished during our round of the rooms; it was now blazing cheerily and doing its best to drive out the chill and the damp from the library; and it was a relief to get back to the easy leather chairs once more. I rested my forearms upon the back of one; but the instant the door closed on Stodger and Burke, young Maillot sank with a groan into a chair by the table.

"The devil! I'm glad you got rid of that fellow," he muttered. "He wears on one like the very deuce."

Now, during the last hour I had been sensible of a growing change in this young man; of a gradually increasing nervousness and apprehension,--as if I had all the time been pointing out little details, which he had previously overlooked and which were forming together, link by link, into a chain that would connect him with the tragedy. Up to the present he had concealed his thoughts only with an effort; but now his expression was become frankly worried and anxious; and as I stood silently regarding him, his agitation measurably increased. At last--

"For God's sake, Swift, don't look at me in that way!" came in a sudden outburst from his tightened lips. "I know--I can see--now that I 've had time to think it over--that the facts are damning. If I close my lips and refuse to make any statement at all, it will be equivalent to a confession. On the other hand--"

I waited, silent, motionless, without removing my eyes from his face. Some moments elapsed before he went on, during which he was patently exerting an effort at self-control.

"Swift," he at last continued, more calmly, "I 'm well aware what your conclusions must be; the responsibility for that old man's death lies between--between that secretary fellow and me; any fool can see that. It's downright devilish to be one of two such alternatives; but if I tell you what brought me here last night--Swift, I just simply can't contemplate doing it!"

Again he paused.

"Take time, Maillot," I admonished, "but choose wisely."

He lifted his head with a little jerk.

"Give me a moment to think. I must decide, and decide irrevocably, whether to become as dumb as a graven image, or else take you into my confidence."

At this unfortuitous instant there came a loud rap upon the door, which immediately opened to disclose the rotund form of Stodger, and behind him two slight figures in furs and veils, bearing into this desolate and gloomy old mansion a delicious flavor of young, dainty, pretty femininity.

"Miss Belle Fluette and Miss Genevieve Cooper--to see Mr. Maillot," announced Stodger, with all the absurd importance of a conscientious flunkey.

One, a tall girl in brown furs and with truly wonderful hazel eyes, came rapidly, gracefully, into the room, her companion following more sedately, and then stopped suddenly, as if petrified. She stood a moment--this haughty, handsome maid--a lovely picture of bewildered astonishment.

"Royal Maillot!" she cried, "whatever in the world has happened to your eye?"