Chapter 9

TRACKS IN THE SNOW

I knew that Royal Maillot appreciated his position as well as I did myself; and I felt perfectly secure in granting him his liberty. In truth, I had a certain policy in doing so. He might possibly have slain his uncle; if so, however, the act had not been premeditated, but the result of a sudden uncontrollable outburst of passion, and he was not the sort of fellow who would run away from the consequences, however severe they might be. The effects of my friendliness and my willingness to take him at his word were plainly demonstrated by a gratitude which was the more convincing and trustworthy by reason of its not being outspoken. If he was keeping anything back, I was adopting the surest means of forcing his confidence.

And I meant, too, before I was through in this house of death, to send Alexander Burke about his business. My plans concerning that gentleman, however, included an espionage that would record every detail of his conduct for some days to come. During the time I was with Maillot in the library, a number of Mr. Page's business associates had gathered at the house for the purpose of performing such offices as they could. Among these was Mr. Ulysses White--of White, Stonebreaker & White--Mr. Page's attorney. This gentleman informed me that he was quite certain the millionaire had never made any testamentary disposition of his property, in which event Maillot would inherit the whole estate. This was a contingency which the young man had already mentioned, and for a few minutes its reiteration made me grave.

After spending some unprofitable time with the assembled gentlemen--all men of affairs who were impatient to be off--I sought out Stodger, finding him engaged in conversation with the coroner's deputy, a talented and ambitious young physician of the name of Wentworth De Breen. Later on Dr. De Breen and I became warm personal friends, and I shall have much to say of him before concluding these "Reminiscences." [1]

He and I went together to the landing to inspect the body, for there were one or two matters concerning which I was desirous of his opinion. Dr. De Breen was a blunt, abrupt young fellow, not given much to conversation upon topics outside his profession, and even then his remarks were invariably terse and much to the point.

He was very near-sighted, and while he persisted in wearing nose-glasses, it seemed impossible for him to obtain a pair that would remain on his nose for more than a minute at a time. They were saved from destruction by a black silk cord; and there was something in the way with which he would adjust them and fix his attention upon a person or thing, which made you feel that whatever escaped his scrutiny must be surpassingly minute. And such, indeed, was the fact.

He examined the crushed skull, silently and methodically, touching it here and there with fingers as light and refined as any woman's. Not a word did he utter until of a sudden he bent a scowling look of comprehension upon the iron candlestick. The only cranial wound or contusion was on the right temple.

"Who did this, Swift?" he asked.

"That's the problem, Doctor," was my reply. "There are two chaps, though, who are in a devil of a ticklish position. Since you 're here now, it will probably be you who will conduct the inquest, and I 'm a little curious to see how the evidence strikes you."

He nodded, and after deftly recovering his glasses, emptied the pockets. They yielded up nothing of the slightest consequence to either of us, and in a moment Dr. De Breen hesitated and frowned over the body's left hand.

He presently took it in his own hand, and scrutinized it intently, I watching him interestedly, for he had stumbled upon one of the very points concerning which I wanted his opinion. Next he turned quickly to the right hand. Both members were bruised and discolored in spots, and bore a number of abrasions.

Dr. De Breen now darted one of his quick, penetrating looks at me.

"Carrying something," he said concisely. "They couldn't break his grip--rapped him over the head."

"So that 's what you make of those scratches and bruises, is it?"--for I wanted to be convinced.

"Sure. . . . What was it?"

"I think I know," was my reply: "an oblong, leather box, about four inches by three or three and a half."

"Humph!"--as he filled in the blanks of a removal permit--"not much to kill a man for."

"Ever hear of the Paternoster ruby?" said I, casually.

Dr. De Breen turned to me with uplifted brows, and his glasses at once shot to the end of their tether. He blinked a moment.

"The devil!" he then muttered. "You don't say!"

From which I gathered that he had heard of it, and also that he had already drawn his own inference as to the contents of the leather box.

"I 'll wait till after the inquest, Swift," he informed me at parting, with a very direct and authoritative manner; "but if this case turns up any promising features, I 'm in; get that?"

I grinned cheerfully. "Very well, Doc."

And the last I saw of him, as he went away, he was still feeling aimlessly for the silken cord, the while his mind was intent upon something else. A queer, congenial chap was Wentworth De Breen, and as keen and fine-strung, despite his absent-mindedness, as is said to be the bridge leading across to Mahomet's paradise. He had a whim for dabbling in such puzzles as my calling now and then brought me face to face with; and before I got through with Mr. Page and his ruby, this hobby of the doctor's was to supply me with an invaluable bit of evidence.

I carried the removal permit to Mr. Ulysses White, and then betook myself to a more thorough examination of the tragedy's surroundings.

First of all, I went again to the untidy bedroom and the closet above the concealed safe.

A careful and methodical search brought very little to light which I thought might subsequently be of use to me. I examined the safe carefully with an idea of discovering a secret compartment; but there was none. The position of the safe itself, evidently, had been considered sufficiently private by the builders.

I paused for a moment beside an old-fashioned walnut table which stood close by the bed's head. Its top had been covered at some remote period with artificial leather, which was held around the edges by a strip or braid of similar material, the whole made secure by ornamental brass-headed tacks placed at intervals of two or three inches.

In the dust on the imitation leather cover was an oblong imprint which, the instant I perceived it, I was seized with a caprice to measure. Its dimensions proved to be just four by three and one-half inches.

Now, this mark in the dust was so manifestly fresh, and its size and shape so suggestive, that before I was well aware of the mental operation, my mind had already accounted for its presence there.

After Mr. Page had obtained the ruby from the safe last night, he had, for some reason, paused by this table before returning to Maillot in the library, and had laid the box thereon. Why? He had retained the candle, which he was at the time carrying, for there was no indication in the dust that he had temporarily relieved himself of that object. Had he turned aside to get something from the bed?--or maybe from the table?

The first mentioned, though unmade since it had last been slept in, was not disarranged in the way one would be obliged to disturb it in getting at the usual places of concealment, and it was hardly likely that Mr. Page would have taken the pains to obliterate any such indications.

As for the table, it had no drawer.

Pondering the matter, perhaps more than it warranted, I turned to the dresser. The only detail here worth a passing notice was a small pasteboard box containing a number of .38 calibre cartridges. Originally there had been fifty in the box. I counted them. Six were missing; just the number required to charge the cylinder of most revolvers of the same calibre. However, there was no revolver; nor did my entire examination of the apartment avail to bring one to light.

At last,--just as I was turning to leave the room,--I received a shock which, for the time being, fairly paralyzed me.

As I have already recorded, the room in which I now was occupied that portion of the ground floor immediately behind the conservatory, and in the wing containing the library--that is, the eastern wing, as the house fronted south. Two large windows, small-paned and opening on hinges, afforded light and ventilation. It was through one of these that my surprise came.

On entering the room I had drawn aside one of the blinds, and had done so without more than the most casual glance outward, because I had already thoroughly inspected the premises contiguous to the house.

But now, as I lifted my hand to draw the blind over the window again, I happened to look at the snow beneath the window. In a flash I froze, my outstretched hand remaining suspended in mid-air.

When Burke, Maillot, and I had been in this room an hour or so earlier, the snow was then like an unsullied tablet upon which no character had been written; but since that time--during the very minutes I had been busy in this room, perhaps--it had received a record. Somebody with unusually small feet--small enough to be a woman's--had walked around from the front of the house to the window. After looking in--possibly at me intent upon my investigation--the mysterious prowler had departed again, but not as he had come. The retreating footsteps extended away at a right angle from the house, and at a short distance disappeared among some shrubbery.

A moment's reflection made me feel sure that only my presence in the room had forestalled a rather perilous undertaking. Why should anybody want to look in, simply, and why adopt such a compromising means of entering, if the temptation had not been extraordinarily powerful?

My hesitation was but momentary. I flung open the window, leaped out and commenced running along the trail of the daring, unknown visitor. The visit had been so recent that I was spurred by a faint hope of overtaking the fellow.

I had not proceeded far before I heard a shout from the house. I glanced back without slacking, and saw Stodger staring at me in amazement from an up-stairs window. Motioning to him to remain where he was, I continued to follow the footprints.

As soon as the bushes screened me from the house, I arrived at a point where the trail presented a new aspect: the distance between the impresses measurably widened, signifying that my unknown caller had broken into a run the instant the shrubbery concealed him from the house. I quickened my pace.

The chase led me to a low stone wall marking the boundary of the premises, across some vacant lots, to the intersection of two streets, where the presence of a trolley line discouraged further pursuit.

On one of the corners, however, stood a grocery of the suburban variety; and when I arrived hatless and without an overcoat, the grocer came out, and eyed me curiously.

"Did you see anybody just ahead of me come this way?" I panted.

"Yep," returned the grocer. "Fellow came running across those lots not five minutes ago. Three other fellows waiting for him on the corner here."

"Three others!" I exclaimed. I had n't the least idea what it all meant.

"Yep," said the grocer. "When he came there were four. The whole bunch caught a down car. They was Chinymen."

I could do no more than vent my bewilderment in ejaculations.

"Chinamen!" I cried.

"Or Japs," remarked the grocer. "Come to think of it, they must 've been Japs; they did n't have no pigtails."

Well, there was nothing else for me to do but turn round and go back the way I had come. The grocer could tell me no more, and I was completely stumped. Why four Chinese--or Japs--should be interested in my movements in the Page house I could not in the least imagine.

But one thing was certain. I had skirted the border of some secret, desperate enterprise. It challenged directly all my powers and capabilities. I was irritated, nettled, not at my inability to fathom the mystery at once, but at a species of mental numbness which prevented me from even conjecturing a plausible theory to account for the strange episode.

I strode along in a deep, moody revery, unconsciously scanning each in turn of the absurdly small footprints. I vaulted the low wall into the Page premises, and before I had fairly recovered my balance, I pounced upon a folded sheet of paper which lay in the snow on one side of the trail.

I unfolded it. The sheet bore a roughly sketched floor plan of some house's interior. There was a wide hall, a square stair-well, and three or four rooms. One of the rooms--the smallest--had been designated by a cross.

All at once I uttered a little cry. This was a second-floor plan of the very house I had been exploring. Although I had not been up-stairs yet, I had seen enough of the relative positions of the different rooms to recognize the one indicated by the cross.

It was the bath room.

[1] Dr. De Breen figures conspicuously in the remarkable case of Estes Lamar, chronicled in the third volume of Inspector Swift's "Reminiscences."