The Crevice Part 24

The door swung idly open on its hinges, and the single window gave forth a vacant stare. Within everything was in the wildest disorder.

The table which served as a counter, the racks of maps, the high stool, the printing apparatus, all were overturned. The trap door leading into the cellar was open, and Morrow flung himself wildly down the sanded steps. The forger's outfit had disappeared.

What had become of Jimmy Brunell? His purpose served, had Paddington betrayed him to the police, or had some warning reached him to flee before it was too late?

With mingled emotions of fear and dread, Morrow emerged from the little dismantled shop and made the best of his way to Meadow Lane.

The Brunell cottage appeared much as usual as he neared it, and for an instant hope surged up within him. Emily would be at the club, of course. If her father had been arrested, or had succeeded in getting away safely alone, she would not know of it until she came back in the evening. He would wait for her, intercept her, and tell her the whole truth.

Instead of entering his own lodgings, he crossed the road, and paused at the Brunells' gate. Something forlorn and desolate in the atmosphere of the little home seemed to clutch at his heart, and on a swift impulse he strode up the path, ascended the steps of the porch and peered in the window of the living-room. Everything in the usually orderly room was topsy-turvy, and everywhere there was evidence of hurried flight. From where he stood the desk--her desk--was plainly visible, its ransacked drawers pulled open, the floor before it strewn with torn and scattered papers. Its top was bare, amid the surrounding litter, and even his photograph which he had recently given her, and which usually stood there in the little frame she had made for it with her own hands, was gone.

A chill settled about his heart. Had Brunell been captured, and police detectives searched the house, his picture could hold no interest for them. Had the old forger fled alone, he would not have taken so insignificant an object from among all his household goods and chattels. Emily alone would have paused to save the photograph of the man she loved from the wreckage of her home; Emily, too, had gone!

Scarcely knowing what he was doing, and caring less, Morrow rushed across the street, and descended upon Mrs. Quinlan, his landlady, at her post in the kitchen.

"What's happened to the Brunells?" he demanded breathlessly.

"Land's sakes, but you scared me, Mr. Morrow!" Mrs. Quinlan turned from the stove with a hurried start, and wiped her plump, steaming face on her ap.r.o.n. "I should like to know what's happened myself. All I do know is that they've gone bag and baggage--or as much of it as they could carry with them--and never; a word to a soul except what Emily ran across to say to me."

"What was it?" he fairly shouted at her. But there were few interests in Mrs. Quinlan's humdrum existence, and seldom did she have an exciting incident to relate and an eager audience to hang upon her words. She sat down ponderously and prepared to make the most of the present occasion.

"I thought it was funny to see a man goin' into their yard at five o'clock this mornin', but my tooth was so bad I forgot all about him and it never come into my mind again until I seen them goin' away. I sleep in the room just over yours, you know, Mr. Morrow, an' my tooth ached so bad I couldn't sleep. It was five by my clock when I got up to come down here an' get some hot vinegar, an' I don't know what made me look out my winder, but I did. I seen a man come running down the lane, keepin' well in the shaders, an' looking back as if he was afraid he was bein' chased, for all the world like a thief. While I looked, he turned in the Brunells' yard an' instead of knocking on the door, he began throwin' pebbles up at the old man's bedroom winder.

Pretty soon it opened and Mr. Brunell looked out. Then he come down quick an' met the man at the front door. They talked a minute, an' the feller handed over somethin' that showed white in the light of the street lamp, like a piece of paper. Mr. Brunell shut the door an' the man ran off the way he had come. I come down an' got my hot vinegar an' when I got back to my room I seen there were lights in Mr.

Brunell's room an' Emily's, an' one in the livin'-room, too, but my tooth was jumpin' so I went straight to bed. About half an hour after you'd left for business I was shakin' a rug out of the front sittin'-room winder, when Emily come runnin' across the street.

"'Oh, Mrs. Quinlan!' she calls to me, an' I see she'd been cryin'.

'Mrs. Quinlan, we're goin' away!'

"'For good?' I asked.

"'Forever!' she says. 'Will you give a message to Mr. Morrow for me, please? Tell him I'm sorry I was mistaken. I'm sorry to have found him out!'

"She burst out cryin' again an' ran back as her father called her from the porch. He was bringin' out a pile of suit-cases and roll-ups, and pretty soon a taxicab drove up with a man inside. I couldn't see his face--only his coat-sleeve. They got in an' went off kitin' an' that's every last thing I know. What d'you s'pose she meant about findin' you out, Mr. Morrow?"

He turned away without reply, and went to his room, where he sat for long sunk in a stupor of misery. She had found out the truth, before he could tell her. She knew him for what he was, knew his despicable errand in ingratiating himself into her friendship and that of her father. She believed that the real love he had professed for her had been all a mere part of the game he was playing, and now she had gone away forever! He would never see her again!

"By G.o.d, no!" he cried aloud to himself, in the bitterness of his sorrow. "I will find her again, if I search the ends of the earth. She shall know the truth!"

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE OPEN

Guy Morrow's resolve to find Emily Brunell at all costs, stirred him from the apathy of despair into which he had fallen, and roused him to instant action. Leaving the house, he went to the nearest telephone pay station, where he could converse in comparative privacy, and called up Henry Blaine's office, only to discover that the master detective had departed upon some mission of his own, was not expected to return until the following morning, and had left no instructions for him.

This unantic.i.p.ated set-back left Morrow without definite resource. As a forlorn hope he telephoned to the Anita Lawton Club, only to learn that Miss Brunell had sent in her resignation as secretary early that morning, but told nothing of her future plans, except that she was leaving town for an indefinite period.

There was nothing more to be learned by another examination of the dismantled shop, and the young operative turned his steps reluctantly homeward. A sudden suspicion had formed itself in his mind that Blaine himself, and not the police, had been responsible for the raid on the forger's little establishment--that Blaine had done this without taking him into his confidence and was now purposely keeping out of his way.

When the early winter dusk came, Guy could endure it no longer, but left the house. Drawn irresistibly by his thoughts, he crossed the road again, and entering the Brunells' gate, he strolled around the deserted cottage, to the back. At the kitchen door a faint, piteous sound made him pause. It was an insistent, wailing cry from within, the disconsolate meowing of a frightened, lonely kitten.

Caliban had been left behind, forgotten! Emily's panic and haste must have been great indeed to cause her to forsake the pet she had so tenderly loved! Much as he detested the spiteful little creature, he could not leave it to starve, for her sake.

Morrow tried the kitchen door, but found it securely bolted from within. The catch on the pantry window was loose, however, and Morrow managed to pry it open with his jackknife. With a hasty glance about to see that he was not observed, he pushed up the window and clambered in, closing it cautiously after him. He stumbled through the semi-obscurity and gloom into the kitchen; instantly the piteous cry ceased and Caliban rose from the cold hearth and bounded gladly to him, purring and rubbing against his legs. Mechanically he stooped and stroked it; then, after carefully pulling down the shades, he lighted the lamp upon the littered table, and looked about him. Everything bore evidence, as had the living-room, of a hasty exodus. The fire was extinguished in the range, and it was filled to the brim with flakes of light ashes. Evidently Brunell or his daughter had paused long enough in their flight to burn armfuls of old papers--possibly incriminating ones.

On the table was the debris of a hasty meal. Morrow poured some milk from the pitcher into a saucer and placed it on the floor for the hungry kitten; then, taking the lamp, he started on a tour of inspection through the house. Everywhere the wildest confusion and disorder reigned.

Morrow turned aside from the door of Emily's room, but entered her father's. There, save for a few articles of old clothing strewn about, he found comparative order and neatness. The simple toilet articles were in their places, the narrow bed just as Jimmy Brunell had left it when he sprang up to admit his nocturnal visitor.

On the floor near the bureau on which the lamp stood, something white and crumpled met Morrow's eye; he stooped quickly and picked it up. It was a large single sheet of paper, and as the operative smoothed it out, he realized that it must be the message which had been hurriedly brought to Brunell in the early hour before the dawn. The paper had lain just where he had dropped it, crushed from his hand after reading the warning it contained.

Morrow turned up the wick of his own lamp and stared curiously at the missive. The sheet of paper was ruled at intervals, the lines and interstices filled with curious hieroglyphics, and at a first glance it appeared to the operative's puzzled eyes to be a mere portion of a page of music. Then he observed that old figures and letters, totally foreign to the notes of a printed score, were interspersed between the rest, and moreover only the treble clef had been used.

"Oh, Lord!" he groaned to himself. "It's another cryptogram, and I don't believe Blaine himself will be able to solve this one!"

He stared long and uncomprehendingly at it; then with a sigh of baffled interest he folded it carefully and placed it in his pocket.

As he did so, there came a sudden sharp report from outside, the tinkle of a broken window pane, and a bullet, whistling past his ear, embedded itself in the wall behind him!

Instinctively Morrow flung himself flat upon the floor, but no second shot was fired. Instead, he heard the m.u.f.fled receding of flying footsteps from the sidewalk, and an excited cry or two as neighboring windows were raised and curious heads were thrust out.

Hastily extinguishing the lamp, Morrow felt his way to the kitchen, where he pocketed Caliban with scant ceremony and departed swiftly the way he had come, through the pantry window. By scaling a back-yard wall or two he found an alley leading to the street; and making a detour of several blocks, he returned to his lodgings, to find Mrs.

Quinlan waiting in great excitement to relate her version of the revolver shot.

Morrow listened with what patience he could muster, and then handed Caliban over to her mercy.

"It's Miss Brunell's cat," he explained. "You'll take care of it for a day or two, at least, won't you? I expect to hear from her soon, and I'd like to be able to restore it to her."

"Well, I ain't what you would call crazy about cats," the landlady returned, somewhat dubiously, "but I couldn't let it die in this cold.

I'll keep it, of course, till you hear from Emily. Where did you find it?"

"Over in their yard," he responded, with prompt mendacity. "I was in the neighborhood and heard the shot fired, so I ran in to have a look around and see if anyone was hurt, and I came across this poor little chap yowling on the doorstep. I won't want any supper to-night, Mrs.

Quinlan. I'm going out again."

Within the hour, Morrow presented himself at Henry Blaine's office.

This time he did not wait to be told that the famous investigator was out, but writing something on a card, he sent it in to the confidential secretary.

In a moment he was admitted, to find Blaine seated imperturbably behind his desk, fingering the card his young operative had sent in to him.

"What is it, Guy?" he asked, not unkindly. "You say you have a communication of great importance."

"I think it is, sir," returned the other, stiffly. "At least I have the message which warned Brunell of your raid upon his shop. It's another cipher, a different one this time."

"Indeed? That's good work, Guy. But how did you know it was a warning to old Jimmy of the raid? Could you read it?"

Morrow shook his head.

"No, and I don't see how anyone else could! It must have been a warning of some sort, for it was what caused them both, old Jimmy and his daughter, to run away. Here it is."