The Black Eagle Mystery Part 23

We were working too quickly for much comment, but Babbitts held out the paper with Ford's address on it toward O'Mally.

"This bears it out, too," he said.

O'Mally looked at it, and snapped the elastic back on the doc.u.ments he'd been going over.

"From what I've seen here," he said, "Sammis was the man Ford was with in the real-estate business. These are all contracts, bills and some correspondence, the records of a small venture that went to smash," he pushed the roll back in its pigeonhole-"not another thing."

"There's not another thing in the room," I answered, "except two novels and a stack of New York papers on the floor there by the bureau. Hist!

quiet!"

There were feet coming up the stairs. In a twinkling everything was as it had been, Babbitts and O'Mally withdrew to the window and I went out to see who was coming. It was Miss Graves and the doctor.

I explained the situation and found the doctor brusquely business-like and matter-of-fact. It was what might have been expected. When he had been called in that morning he had found Mr. Sammis a very sick man, suffering from angina pectoris and a general condition of debility and exhaustion. He had asked him if he had been subjected to any recent exertion or strain but been told no other than a trip the day before to Washington. Miss Graves said it was undoubtedly this trip that had done the damage. He had been well when he started on Tuesday morning, but on returning twenty-four hours later had been so weak and enfeebled that one of the other lodgers had had to a.s.sist him to his room. An examination proved that he had been dead some hours. Who his relations were or where he came from Miss Graves had no idea and would turn the matter over to the authorities.

It was close on midnight when we left, and there being no vehicle in sight we walked up the street. The moon was as bright as day, and, swinging along between those two lines of black houses, with here and there a light shining yellow in an upper window, we were silent, each occupied by his own thoughts.

I could guess those of the other two-Babbitts' chagrin at once again losing his big story, O'Mally's sullen indignation at having followed a clue that led to such a blind alley. But their disappointment and bitterness were nothing to mine. All my hopes gone again, and this last puzzle helping in no way, in no way as I then counted help.

CHAPTER XIII

JACK TELLS THE STORY

To say that the expectant Whitney office got a jolt is putting it mildly. On the threshold of success, to meet such a setback enraged George and made even the chief grouchy. The new developments added new complications that upset their carefully elaborated theories. There had to be a readjustment. Whoever Sammis was and whatever his motive could have been it was undoubtedly he who had attacked Tony Ford.

It was inexplicable and mysterious. The chief had an idea that there was a connection between Sammis and Barker, that the man now dead might have been "planted" in Philadelphia to divert the search from the live man, who had stolen to safety after a rise to the surface in Toronto. George scouted it; an accidental likeness had fooled them and made them waste valuable time. The devil was on the side of Barker, taking care of his own.

It did look that way. Investigation of the few clues we had led to nothing. The tailor, whose bill was found in Sammis's pocket, remembered selling a suit and overcoat to a man called Sammis on January tenth. He was a quiet, polite old party who looked poor and shabby but bought good clothes and paid spot cash for them. The typewritten letter indicated that Sammis had been sent to Philadelphia and well paid for some work that had not yet started. It was upon this letter the chief based his contention that Sammis's appearance in the case was not a coincidence-he was another of Barker's henchmen, and it was part of Barker's luck that at the crucial moment he should have died.

But it was all speculation, nothing certain except that we had lost our man again. Philadelphia had dropped out as a point of interest and the case swung back to New York, where it now centered round the bed of Tony Ford.

We were in constant communication with the hospital and on Thursday received word that Ford would recover. That lifted us up from the smash of Wednesday night. When he was able to speak we would hear something-everything if he could be scared into a full confession. The hospital authorities refused to let anyone see him till he was perfectly fit, a matter of several days yet. That suited us, as we wanted no speech with him till he was strong enough to stand the shock of our knowledge. Caught thus, with his back against the wall, we expected him to make a clean breast of it.

The enforced waiting was-to me anyway-distracting. With the hope I'd had of Barker gone, I was now looking to Ford. He _must_, he _could_ exonerate her, there wasn't the slightest doubt of it. But to have to wait for it, to be cool and calm, to get through the next few days-I felt like a man caught in the rafters of a burning building, trying to be patient while they hacked him out.

After the news from the hospital the temperature of the office fell to an enforced normal. O'Mally went back to his burrow and Babbitts to his paper with his big story still in the air. That night in my place, I measured off the sitting room from eight till twelve-five strides from the bookcase to the window, seven from the fire to the folding doors.

If _I_ could only induce her to speak, if she herself would only clear up the points that were against her, there was still a chance of getting her out of it before Ford opened up. That she had something to hide, some mystery in connection with her movements that night, some secret understanding with Barker, even I had to admit. But whatever it was it would be better to reveal it than to go on into the fierce white light that would break over the Harland case within a week.

In that midnight pacing I tried to think of some way I could force her to tell-to tell _me_, but the clocks chimed on and the fire died on the hearth and I got nowhere. She knew me so slightly, might think I was set on by the office, the very fact that I was what I was might seal her lips closer. Instead of breaking down her reticence I might increase it, strengthen that wall of secretiveness behind which she seemed to be taking refuge like a hunted creature.

When I went to the office on Friday morning the chief asked me to go to Buffalo that night, to look up some witnesses in the Lytton case. It would take me all Sat.u.r.day and I could get back by Sunday night or at the latest Monday morning. A phone message sent to the hospital before I came in had drawn the information that Tony Ford would not be able to see the Philadelphia detectives-O'Mally and Babbitts posed in that role-till Monday. That settled it-better to be at work out of town than hanging about cursing the slowness of the hours.

But the questions of the night before haunted me. Why, anyway, couldn't I go to see her? Wasn't it up to me, whether I succeeded or not, to make the effort to break through her silence-the silence that was liable to do her such deadly damage? I _had_ to see her. I couldn't keep away from her. At lunch time I called her up and asked her if I could come. She said yes and named four that afternoon. On the stroke I was in the vestibule, pushing the b.u.t.ton below her name, and with my heart thumping against my ribs like a steel hammer.

She opened the door and as I followed her up the little hall told me the servant had been sent away and her mother was out. As on that former visit she seated herself at the desk, motioning me to a chair opposite.

The blinds were raised, the room flooded with the last warm light of the afternoon. By its brightness I saw that she was even paler and more worn than she had been that other time-obviously a woman hara.s.sed and preyed upon by some inner trouble.

On the way up I had gone over ways of approach, but sitting there in the quiet pretty room, so plainly the abode of gentlewomen, I couldn't work round to the subject. She didn't give me any help, seeming to a.s.sume that I had dropped in to pay a call. That made it more difficult. When a woman treats you as if you're a gentleman, actuated by motives of common politeness, it's pretty hard to break through her guard and pry into her secrets.

She began to talk quickly and, it seemed to me, nervously, telling me how the owner of their old farm on the Azalea Woods Estates had offered them a cottage there, to which they would move next week. It was small but comfortable, originally occupied by a laborer's family who had gone away. The people were very kind, would take no rent, and she and her mother could live for almost nothing till she found work. I sympathized with the idea, she'd get away from the wear and tear of the city, have time to rest and recuperate after her recent worry. She dropped her eyes to a paper on the desk and said:

"Yes, I'm tired. Everything was so sudden and unexpected. I once thought I was strong enough to stand anything-but all this-"

She stopped and picking up a pencil began making little drawings on the paper, designs of squares and circles.

"It's worn you out," I said, looking at her weary and colorless face.

Like the thrust of a sword a pang shot through me-love of a man, hidden and disgraced, had blighted that once blooming beauty.

She nodded without looking up:

"It's not the business only, there have been other-other-anxieties."

That was more of an opening than anything I'd ever heard her say. I could feel the smothering beat of my heart as I answered, as quietly as I could:

"Can't you tell them to me? Perhaps I can help you."

One of those sudden waves of color I'd seen before pa.s.sed across her face. As if to hide it she dropped her head lower over the paper, touching up the marks she was making. Her voice came soft and controlled:

"That's very kind of you, Mr. Reddy-But I know you're kind-I knew it when I first met you a year ago in the country. No, I can't tell you."

I leaned nearer to her. If I had a chance to make her speak it was now or never.

"Miss Whitehall," I said, trying to inject a simple, casual friendliness into my voice. "You're almost alone in the world, you've no one-no man, I mean-to look after you or your interests. You don't know how much help I might be able to give you."

"In what way?" she asked, with her eyes still on the paper.

For a moment I was nonplused. I couldn't tell her what I knew-I couldn't go back on my office. I was tied hand and foot; all I could do with honesty was to try to force the truth from her. Like a fool I stammered out:

"In advice-in-in-a larger knowledge of the world than you can have."

She gave a slight, bitter smile, and tilting her head backward looked critically at her drawings:

"My knowledge of the world is larger than you think-maybe larger than yours. There's only one thing you can do for me, but there is one."

I leaned nearer, my voice gone a little hoa.r.s.e:

"What is it?"

She turned her head and looked into my eyes. Her expression chilled me, cold, challenging, defiant:

"Tell me if the Whitney Office has found Johnston Barker yet?"

For a second our eyes held, and in that second I saw the defiance die out of hers and only question, a desperate question, take its place.