CHAPTER XXI

SIGNED, "VICTOR MARCHAL"

Calvin Norwood was seated in solitude before the hearth in his library on Saturday night, trying to shut his ears to the occasional murmur of voices from the drawing-room where Joan and her lover were making plans for the future. He was trying hard not to listen too for another familiar sound; the light, halting step of the blind secretary.

No light save the glow of the fire lifted the shadows of the room and in a far corner the silent, shrouded typewriter loomed, a tangible reminder of the brave spirit which had sought to carry on through the darkness and fallen only when reason failed.

So deep was Norwood in his mournful reverie that he was oblivious to the ringing of the front door-bell and glanced up only when Billings appeared on the threshold.

"Mr. McCarty, sir."

"My dear fellow!" Norwood sprang up and extended his hand. "Where have you been for the past week and more? I've tried twice to see you."

"Have you, sir?" McCarty shook hands and dropped a trifle wearily into the chair his host indicated. "I've been out of town--only got back a couple of hours ago--and I've not had a decent night's sleep but one since I left. I thought I'd look in on you and hear the news."

"There is none." Norwood seated himself once more and sighed gloomily. "Since poor Victor's death I seem to be losing my grip on things. I cannot help a feeling of hopelessness about the investigation of Mrs. Jarvis' murder, and it is my belief that it will never be solved."

He spoke with a shade too much eagerness, and McCarty asked:

"Has Inspector Druet been around, sir?"

"Yes. I've stood by and watched the department make blunder after blunder for twenty years, but your Inspector has surpassed any of the others for sheer idiocy in this case; first by trying to place the guilt on Oliver, and now by nosing about after that Hoyos wallet of which I told you. I suspect you must have mentioned it to him, but his efforts to connect it with the murder are preposterous."

"Yes, sir," agreed McCarty equably. "Have you found it yet?"

Norwood stirred impatiently in his chair.

"No. I haven't looked!" he snapped. "It's there somewhere, of course. I tell you, these tragedies following one upon another have made me shudder at the very mention of crime! I shall never interest myself in such work again and I feel like making a bonfire of my whole collection in the yard!"

McCarty, remembering Joan's description of her uncle's frenzied, night-long search of the museum after discovering the disappearance of the wallet, smiled to himself at the tirade.

"What is Mr. Terhune doing, I wonder?" he queried.

"Terhune! Don't speak to me of him!" snorted the other indignantly. "He has rested his case completely on poor Victor's suicide, smirching the name of a dead man to hide his own incompetence, and more than all, he has managed to half convince Oliver of the truth of his damnable theory! Once let a man believe that another was secretly in love with his wife and he will be ready to believe anything else of him! Victor felt only a chivalrous and grateful admiration for Evelyn, that I know. In spite of Terhune's sensational successes in the past, it is my opinion that the man is a bluff, pure and simple. The case has baffled him, just as it will everybody in the end, and he has taken the easy way out by thrusting the blame upon a man who is no longer here to defend himself. If Victor were only alive I would never cease my efforts to learn the truth, for that is the only way his name can be cleared. But I am an old man and I recognize the inevitability of defeat, as Inspector Druet will in time. Mark my words, McCarty, the mystery of Evelyn Jarvis' murder will never be solved."

"Perhaps not, sir. There's many another that hasn't been, like the Hoyos case." He rose. "Well, I'll be getting on back to my rooms. It's strange not to see Captain Marchal here, and his typewriter still there in the corner and all!"

"Yes!" Norwood groaned. "I find myself constantly listening for his step, and the click of the machine. I'm going to get rid of it at once; I cannot bear to have it about!"

McCarty hesitated.

"I wonder would you lend it to me, sir, for a few days?" he suggested at length. "I've a lot of letters to send out and I'm not handy with a pen. I'll take good care of it and bring it back safe."

"Of course you may take it. Keep it, if you will; I never want to see it again!"

"No, thank you, sir. It's just the loan of it I want, and if it's all the same to you I'll get a taxi and take it right along with me now."

"By all means." Norwood, too, had risen and now he pressed the bell. "Billings will send for one for you. I don't know what condition the typewriter is in after its fall. However, if you will telephone on Monday to the office of the company who manufactured it they will send a man up to fix it for you."

"That'll be all right. I'll manage," McCarty assured him. "Good-night, Mr. Norwood, and thanks for the loan of it."

Travel-worn as he was, the next day found McCarty once more upon a train speeding southward, but this departure was of a comparatively brief duration. He emerged again from the Pennsylvania station at nightfall and this time he was not alone. A tall woman of majestic figure accompanied him, clad in a black, fur-trimmed cloak and smartly quilled hat and the two appeared to be on excellent terms with each other.

McCarty escorted her to an address far uptown, then returned to his rooms and uncovered the typewriter which stood upon the place of honor on his desk. Next, he inserted a sheet of paper and tested the keys to his satisfaction.

Thereupon he opened a lower drawer in his desk and after some fumbling produced a package which he regarded with an expression of mingled disparagement and respect. Unwrapped, it disclosed a small but powerful microscope.

Through the long hours of the night, while the coals died upon the hearth and the penetrating chill of a wintry dawn crept in at the windows McCarty sat tirelessly at his task. With the aid of the magnifying glass he studied a single sheet of paper before him upon which appeared to the casual eye merely the signature of Victor Marchal. The fruit of his examination was a series of strange and seemingly incomprehensible hieroglyphics which he painstakingly noted down. Then turning to the machine he touched a key here and there, erasing and altering the result in conformity with his notes. The typed sheet spun out from the roller at last and as he read the message which he had evolved an expression of grim joy stole over his face.

Despite his sleepless night he was up betimes and nine o'clock found him once more at Headquarters.

"Mac, you old rascal, where have you been?" the Inspector greeted him with obvious relief and pleasure. "I don't mind telling you that I'm stumped; the Jarvis case is one too many for me!"

"Is it, now?" McCarty asked solicitously. "How did your man make out in New Orleans?"

"He drew a blank!" The Inspector smote his desk in exasperation. "One of the best boys we have in the department, too. He interviewed everyone who was in a position to know anything about Evelyn Beaudet or her family; the Mother Superior of the convent where she was educated, the attorneys who settled her guardian's estate, old business associates of her father, friends of her mother and several people who came in touch with the girl herself socially before her marriage. There isn't the slightest evidence of any secret connected with her, and yet we know she was paying blackmail!"

"And the female operative you've had working among her acquaintances here?" McCarty probed. "Did she find out anything?"

"Nothing whatever. I've even given your theory a try-out but old Norwood claims that the wallet is only mislaid and I can't find any trace of the woman who sold it to him. She represented herself as a stewardess on the Hoyos yacht and I'm having the original one looked up, but she seems to have dropped completely out of sight."

"I saw Mr. Norwood on Saturday night," volunteered McCarty. "He don't seem much interested in the proceedings since Captain Marchal is gone. I don't suppose, sir, that there've been any new developments in that case? It's settled the poor lad killed himself?"

"Of course he did; there has never been a doubt of that from the first," declared the Inspector. "One shot might have been fired from the pistol long ago, or it may not have been fully loaded."

"Then you didn't find where the other bullet went?" McCarty queried.

"No, and it was a waste of time looking. Before you appeared on the