The Crevice Part 25

He pa.s.sed the cryptogram over to his chief, who studied it for a while with a meditative frown, then laid it aside and listened in a non-committal silence to his story. When the incidents of the day had been narrated, Blaine said:

"That was a close call, Guy, that shot from the darkness. It must have come from the opposite side of the street, of course, from before your own lodgings. The bullet glanced upward in its course, didn't it?"

"No, sir. That's the funny part of it! The spot where it is embedded in the wall is very little higher than the hole in the window pane."

"And Mrs. Quinlan's, where you board, is directly opposite?"

"Yes. It's the only house on the other side of the street for fifty feet or more on either side."

"Then you'd better look out for trouble, Guy. That shot came from your own house, probably from the window of your own room, if it is the second floor front, as you say. There's a traitor in camp. Any new lodgers to-day that you know of?"

"No, sir," Morrow replied, startled at the theory evolved by his chief. "But how do you account for the fact that I distinctly heard some one running away immediately after the shot was fired?"

"It was probably a look-out, or a decoy to draw investigation away from the house had a prompt pursuit ensued. Be careful when you go back, Guy, and don't take any unnecessary chances."

"I'm not going back, sir," the younger man returned, with quiet determination. "I'm sorry, but I'm through. I wanted to resign before, to protect the woman I love from just this trouble which has come upon her, but you overruled me, and I listened and played the game fairly.

Now I've lost her, and nothing else matters under the sun except that I must find her again and tell her the truth, and I mean to find her!

Nothing shall stand in my way!"

"And your duty?" asked Blaine quietly.

"My duty is to her first, last, and all the time! I know I have no right, sir, to ask that I should be taken into your confidence in regard to any plans you make in conducting an investigation, but I think in view of the exceptional conditions of this case that I might have been told in advance of the raid you intended, so that I might have spared Emily much of the trouble which has come upon her, or at least have told her the truth, and squared myself with her, and known where she was going. I've got to find her, sir! I cannot rest until I do!"

"And you shall find her, Guy. I promise you on my word that if you are patient all will be well. It is not my custom to explain my motives to my subordinates, but as you say, this case is exceptional, and you have been faithful to your trust under peculiarly trying circ.u.mstances. I raided Jimmy's little shop last night and carried off his forgery outfit because I had received special information of a confidential nature that Paddington intended to make the same move and lay it to the work of the police, not only to scare poor old Jimmy out of town, but to obtain possession of the outfit himself and destroy the evidence, in case the old forger was caught and lost his spirit and confessed, implicating him. I did not know the raid would be discovered and the warning take effect so soon. I had arranged to have the Brunells watched and tailed later in the day, but they escaped my espionage.

"I shall at once set the wheels in motion to discover the number of the taxicab in which they went away, and I will leave no stone unturned to find their ultimate destination and see that no harm comes to either of them; you may depend upon that. I don't mind going a little further with this subject with you now than I have before, and I'll tell you confidentially that I believe whatever part Jimmy played in this conspiracy, in forging the letter, note, and signatures, was a compulsory one; and in the end we shall be able to clear him. You know that I am a man of my word, Guy. I want you to go on with this case under my instructions and leave the search for the Brunells absolutely in my hands. Will you do this, on my a.s.surance that I will find them?"

"If I can have your word, sir, that at the earliest possible moment I may go to her, to Emily, and tell her the truth," Morrow replied, earnestly. "You don't know what it means to me, to have her feel that I have been such a dog as not to mean a word of all that I said to her, to have her believe that it was all part of a plan to trap her into betraying her father. It drives me almost mad when I think of it!

This inaction, the suspense of it, is intolerable."

"Then go home and find out who fired at you from the window of your own house. Watch the Brunell cottage, too--there will be developments there, if I'm not mistaken. To-morrow I may want you to go out on another branch of this investigation--the search for Ramon Hamilton."

"Very good, sir, I'll try," Morrow promised with obvious reluctance.

"I know how busy you are and how much every day counts in this matter just now; but for G.o.d's sake, do what you can to find the Brunells for me!"

Blaine repeated his a.s.surances, and Morrow returned to the Bronx with considerably lightened spirits. The sight of the little cottage across the way, dark and deserted, brought a pang to his heart, but it also served to remind him of the duty which lay before him. He must find out whose hand had fired that shot at him from the house which had given him shelter.

Mrs. Quinlan had not yet retired. He found her reading a newspaper in the kitchen, with Caliban curled up in drowsy content beside the stove.

"Cold out, ain't it?" she observed. "I went round to the store, an' I like to've froze before I got back. They said they'd send the things, but they didn't."

"I'll go get them for you," offered Morrow. "Was it the grocery to which you went?"

"No, the drug store. I--I've got a new lodger upstairs at the back--an old gentleman who's kind of sickly and rheumatic, and he asked me to get some things for him. Thank you just the same, Mr. Morrow, but there ain't no hurry for them." Mrs. Quinlan's wide, ingenuous face flushed, and for a moment she seemed curiously embarra.s.sed. Could she have guessed that the revolver shot which had created so much excitement that afternoon had been fired from beneath her roof?

"A new lodger!" repeated Morrow. "Came to-day, didn't he?"

"No, yesterday," she responded quickly--too quickly, the operative fancied. The ruddy flush had deepened on her cheek, and she added, as if unable to restrain the question rising irresistibly to her lips: "What made you think he came to-day?"

"I thought this afternoon that I heard furniture being moved about in the room directly over mine," he returned, with studied indifference.

"Oh, you did!" Mrs. Quinlan affirmed. "That's my room, you know. I was exchanging my bureau for the old gentleman's."

"Let me see; that makes four lodgers now, doesn't it?" Morrow remarked thoughtfully, as he toasted his back near the stove. "Peterson, the shoe clerk; Acker, the photographer; me--and now this old gentleman.

What's his name, by the way?"

"Mr.--Brown." Again there was that obvious hesitation, followed by a hasty rush of words as if to cover it. "Yes, my house is full now, and I think I'm mighty lucky, considering the time of year. Just think, it's most Christmas! The winter's just flyin' along!"

The next morning, from his bed Morrow heard the clinking of china on a tray as Mrs. Quinlan laboriously carried breakfast upstairs to her new boarder. Guy rose quickly and dressed, and when he heard her descending again he flung open his door and met her face to face, quite as if by accident. She started violently at the sudden encounter and nearly dropped the tray.

"Land sakes, how you scared me, Mr. Morrow!" she exclaimed. "You're up earlier than usual. I'll have your breakfast ready in the dining-room in ten minutes."

She hurried on quickly, but not before the operative's keen eyes had noted in one lightning glance the contents of the tray. Upon it was a teapot, as well as one for coffee, and service for two. Peterson and Acker had both long since gone to their usual day's work. Mrs. Quinlan had lied, then, after all. She had two new lodgers instead of the single rheumatic old gentleman she had pictured; two, and one of them had entered his own room, and from the window fired that shot across the street at him, as he bent over the lamp in the Brunell cottage. He had one problematic advantage--it was possible that he had not been recognized as the intruder in the deserted house. He must contrive by hook or crook to obtain a glimpse of the mysterious newcomers, and learn the cause of their interest in the Brunells and their affairs.

They were in all probability emissaries of Paddington's--possibly one of them was Charley Pennold himself.

At that same moment Henry Blaine sat in his office, receiving the report of Ross, one of his minor operatives.

"I tried the tobacconist's shop yesterday morning, sir, but there wasn't any message there for Paddington, and although I waited around a couple of hours he didn't show up," Ross was saying. "This morning, however, I tried the same stunt, and it worked. I wasn't any too quick about it, either, for Paddington was just after me. I strolled in, asked for a package of Cairos and gave the man the office, as you told me. He handed it over like a lamb, and I walked out with it, straight to that little cafe across the way. I had four of the boys waiting there, and my entrance was a signal to them to beat it over and buy enough tobacco to keep the shopkeeper busy while I made a getaway from the dairy-lunch place. I only went three doors down, to a barber's, and while I was waiting my turn there I watched the street from behind a newspaper.

"In about ten minutes Paddington came along, walking as if he was in quite a hurry. He went into the tobacconist's, but he came out quicker than he had entered, and his face was a study--purple with rage one minute, and white with fear the next. I don't believe he knows yet who's tailing him, sir, but he looks as if he realized we had him coming and going. He went straight over to the little restaurant, with murder in his eye, but he only stayed a minute or two. I tailed him home to his rooms, and he stamped along at first as if he was so mad he didn't care whether he was followed or not. When he got near his own street, though, he got cautious again, and I had all I could do to keep him from catching me on his trail--he's a sharp one, when he wants to be, and he's on his mettle now."

"I know the breed. He'll turn and fight like any other rat if he's cornered, but meanwhile he'll try at any cost to get away from us,"

Blaine responded. "You have him well covered, Ross?"

"Thorpe is waiting in a high-powered car a few doors away, Vanner in a taxi, and Daly is on the job until I get back. He won't take a step to-day without being tailed," the operative answered, confidently.

"Here's the cigarette box, sir. I opened it as soon as I got in the restaurant, to see if it was the real goods and not a plant, as you instructed. It's the straight tip, all right. There were no cigarettes inside, only this single sheet of paper covered with little marks--looks like music, only it isn't. I don't know much about sight-reading, but some of those figures couldn't be played on any instrument!"

Henry Blaine opened the little box and drew from it the bit of folded paper, which he spread out upon the desk before him. A glance was sufficient to show him that it was another cryptic message, similar to that which Guy Morrow had found in the Brunells' deserted cottage, and which he had vainly studied until far into the night.

"Very good, Ross. Get back on the job, now, and report any developments as soon as you have an opportunity."

When the operative had gone, Blaine drew forth the cryptogram received the previous evening and compared the two. They were identical in character, although from the formation of the letters and figures, the message each conveyed was a different one. The first had baffled him, and he scrutinized the second with freshly awakened interest:

[Ill.u.s.tration: An image of a coded message is shown here in the text.]

The three lines fascinated him by their tantalizing problem, and he could not take his eyes from them. The musical notes could be easily read in place of letters, of course, with the sign of the treble clef as a basic guide, but the other figures still puzzled him.

All at once, a word upon the lowest line which explained itself caught his eye; then another and another, until the method of deciphering the whole message burst upon his mind. One swift gesture, a few eagerly scrawled calculations, and the truth was plain to him.

Calling his secretary, he hastily dictated a letter.

"I want a copy of that sent at once, by special delivery, to every physician and surgeon in town, no matter how obscure. See to it that not one is overlooked. Even those on the staffs of the different hospitals must be notified, although they are the least likely to be called upon. Above all, don't forget the old retired one, those of shady professional reputation and the fledglings just out of medical colleges. It's a large order, Marsh, but it's bound to bring some result in the next forty-eight hours."

With the closing of the door behind his secretary, Henry Blaine rose and paced thoughtfully back and forth the length of his s.p.a.cious office. The problem before him was the most salient in its importance of any which had confronted him during his investigation of the Lawton mystery--probably the weightiest of his entire career. Should he, dared he, throw caution to the winds and step out into the open, in his true colors at last?

It was as if he held within his hands the kernel of the mystery, yet surrounded still by an invulnerable shield of cunning and duplicity with which the master criminals had so carefully safe-guarded their conspiracy. He held it within his hands, and yet he could not break the sh.e.l.l of the mystery and expose the kernel of truth to justice.

There seemed to be no interstice, no crevice into which he might insert the keen probe of his marvelous deductive power. And yet his experience told him that there must be some rift, some hiatus in the scheme. If only he could discover that rift, could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the facts which he had circ.u.mstantially established, he would not hesitate to lay his hands upon the culprits, high in power and influence throughout the country as they were, and bring them before any court of so-called justice, however it might be undermined by bribery and corruption.

He had accomplished much, working as a mole works, in the dark. Could he not accomplish more by declaring himself; could he not by one bold stroke lay bare the heart of the mystery?