The House Opposite Part 13

"Why, nowadays girls wear their hair loose; it bulges away from their faces; but hers lay tight to her head in a flat, black ma.s.s," I explained.

I then harped on the probability of the return of Miss May's prodigal brother, and suggested the possibility that the dark-haired woman might be his wife.

"Well, well, Doctor! This is all very interesting. The story of the brother, especially. You see, I had already discovered that a man had spent many hours in her apartment----"

"How did you find that out?" I interrupted.

"Oh, quite easily," rejoined the detective; "as soon as all the excitement was over yesterday, I made McGorry open the Derwent's apartments for me. You may imagine what a fuss he made about it. Well anyhow he got me----"

"But why did you want to get in?" I inquired; "did you suspect her?"

"No," he replied, "I did not. But in my profession you take no chances.

Impressions, intuitions, are often of great value, only you must be careful always to verify them. I was almost sure that the young lady was innocent, but it was my business to prove her so. Now, it is certain that the person, or persons, who smuggled the corpse into the room where it was found, must, at one time or another, have had the key of that apartment in their possession, and there are only three people whom we know of as yet who were in a position to have had it. These three are: Miss Derwent, the French butler, and, of course, McGorry. So far I have not been able to connect the latter two, even in the most indirect way, with the catastrophe. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the young lady. One person, at least, has identified the body as that of her visitor, and your behaviour," he added, with a smile, "led me to believe that you suspected her of something. Not of the crime, I felt sure of that, but of _what_, then? I determined to find out, and now that I have done so, let me tell you that I am still convinced of her innocence."

I jumped up and shook him by the hand. "So am I, so am I," I exclaimed.

"But this is a very queer case," he continued, "and I shall need all the a.s.sistance you can give me, if----"

"You shall have it," I broke in, enthusiastically; "anything I can do.

But tell me, first, how you found out about Miss Derwent's brother?"

"Not so fast, young man! At present, we know nothing about a brother. I only said that I had discovered in the apartment traces of the recent and prolonged presence of a man, and I may add of a man of some means."

"How did you find that out? Especially about his means?" I inquired, with a smile.

"Quite easily. In the parlor, which was the first room I entered, I noticed that every piece of furniture had been lately moved from its place. Now, this was too heavy a job for a girl to have undertaken single-handed. Who helped her, I wondered? Her visitor of Tuesday evening might have been the person, but for various reasons I was inclined to doubt it. I thought it more likely to have been the woman whose existence your behaviour had led me to infer. I next examined the dining-room. A few crumbs showed that it had been used, but I could find no traces of her mysterious companion. The library had not even been entered. On the floor above, the front bedroom alone showed signs of recent occupation. Two crumpled sheets were still on the bed, and in the drawers were several articles of woman's apparel. Returning to the lower floor by the back stairs, I found myself in the kitchen. Here, in the most unexpected place, I discovered an important clue." Mr. Merritt paused, and looked at me with a gleam of triumph in his eye.

"Yes, yes, and what was that?" I inquired, breathlessly.

"Only the odor, the very faintest ghost of an odor, I may say, of cigar-smoke."

"In the kitchen?" I exclaimed, incredulously.

"In the kitchen," repeated the detective. "I at once drew up the blinds, and looked out. The window opened directly on the fire escape, with nothing opposite but the roofs of some low houses. Pulling out my magnifying gla.s.s, I crawled out. I soon satisfied myself that the stairs leading up and down had not been recently used; on the other hand, I was equally sure that someone had very lately been out on the small landing.

So I sat down there and looked about me. I could see nothing. At last, by peering through the bars of the iron flooring, I thought I could discern a small brown object, caught in between the slats of the landing below. I climbed down there mighty quick, I can tell you, and in a moment held the b.u.t.t end of a cigar in my hand. It was, as I had suspected, from the delicate odor it had left behind, one which had cost about fifty cents. I now extended my search downward, and examined every window-sill, every crevice, till I reached the bas.e.m.e.nt, and, as a result of my hunt, I collected five cigar stumps, all of the same brand. From the number, I concluded that whoever had been in the apartment had been there a considerable time. From his only smoking in the kitchen or on the fire-escape, I gathered that he was anxious to leave no traces of his presence; and lastly, from the quality of his cigars, I judged him to be a man of means. So you see I had discovered, even without your a.s.sistance, that, although Miss Derwent may have told us the truth, she certainly had not told us all of it."

I nodded gloomily.

"What you tell me of this dark-haired woman is still more puzzling," the detective continued. "She has covered up her tracks so well that not only did I find no trace of her, but no one, not even yourself, saw her either enter or leave the building. And I should never have dreamed of her existence if I had not noticed your surprise when Miss Derwent lifted her veil. Now, the first thing to be done is to try and find this strange couple, and we will begin by tracing the man whom you saw leaving the Rosemere with a market-basket. It will be easy enough to find out if he is nothing but a local tradesman, and if he is _not_, then in all probability he is the man we want. The detective who is watching Miss Derwent----"

"A detective watching Miss Derwent!" I exclaimed.

"Why, yes. What did you expect? I sent one down with her to the country yesterday."

Perhaps I ought to have been prepared for it, but the idea of a common fellow d.o.g.g.i.ng May Derwent's footsteps, was quite a shock to me, so I inquired, with considerable ill-humor: "And what does he report?"

"Nothing much. The young lady returned to her mother, as she said she would, and since then has kept to her room, but has refused to see a doctor."

"Have you discovered yet who the dead man really is?" I asked, after a slight pause.

"No," answered the detective, with a troubled look, "and I can't make it out. Jim and Joe each persists in his own identification. I expected Jim to weaken, he seemed so much less positive at first, but whether he has talked himself into the belief that the corpse is that of the young lady's visitor, or whether it really does resemble him so much as to give the boy grounds for thinking so, I can't make out."

"I see, however, that _you_ believe the murdered man to be Mrs. Atkins's friend, of whose history and whereabouts she was so strangely ignorant."

"Well, I don't know," the detective replied. "We have found out that an Allan Brown did engage a berth on the midnight train to Boston."

"Really? Why, I was sure that Allan Brown was a creation of the little lady's imagination. By the way, it is a strange coincidence that two mysterious Allans are connected with this case."

"Yes, I have thought of that," the detective murmured; "and Allan is no common name, either. But it is a still stranger circ.u.mstance that neither of Allan Brown nor of the murdered man (I am now taking for granted that they are not identical) can we discover the slightest trace beyond the solitary fact that an upper berth on the Boston train was bought on Tuesday afternoon, by a person giving the former's name, and whose description applies, of course, equally to both. Mrs. Atkins volunteers the information that Brown was a stranger in the city, and so far I have no reason to doubt it. Now, a man who can afford to wear a dress suit, and who is a friend of a woman like Mrs. Atkins, presumably had fairly decent quarters while he was in town. And yet inquiries have been made at every hotel and boarding-house, from the cheapest to the most expensive, and not one of them knows anything of an Allan Brown, nor do they recognize his description as applying to any of their late guests. The deceased, of course, may have had rooms somewhere, or a flat, or even a house, in which case it will take longer to trace him; although even so, it is remarkable that after such wide publicity has been given to his description, no one has come forward and reported him as missing. The morgue has been crowded with idle sightseers, but n.o.body as yet claims to have seen the victim before."

"That is queer," I a.s.sented, "especially as the dead man was in all probability a person of some prominence. He certainly must have been rich. The pearl studs he wore were very fine."

"Oh, those were imitation pearls," said the detective, "and I am inclined to think that, far from being wealthy, he was, at the time of his death, extremely badly off, although other indications point to his having seen better days."

"Really!" I exclaimed.

"Yes; didn't you notice that his clothes, although evidently expensive, were all decidedly shabby? That his silk socks were almost worn out; that his pumps were down at the heel?"

"Yes, I did notice something of the kind."

"But those large imitation pearls blinded you to everything else, I see," Mr. Merritt remarked, with a smile.

"I suppose so," I acknowledged; "they and the sleeve-links with the crest."

"Ah, those are really interesting, and for the first time in my life I find myself wishing that we were more careful in this country about the use of such things. Unfortunately, we are so promiscuous and casual in adopting any coat-of-arms that happens to strike our fancy that the links become almost valueless as a clue. Still, I have sent one of them to an authority in heraldry, and shall be much interested to hear what he has to say about it. By the way, did anything else strike you as peculiar about the corpse?"

"No," I answered, after a moment's reflection.

"It did not seem to you odd that no hat was found with the body?"

"Dear me! I never noticed that. How singular! What could have become of it?"

"Ah, if we only knew that we should be in a fair way to solving this mystery. For I have found out that, whereas the description of Miss Derwent's visitor and Mrs. Atkins's friend tally on all other points, they differ radically on this one. The former wore a panama, whereas the latter wore an ordinary straw hat. Now, one of those hats must be somewhere in the Rosemere, and yet I can't find it."

"Mr. Merritt," I inquired, "have you any theory as to the motive of this murder?"

"Not as yet," he replied. "It may have been jealousy, revenge, or a desire to be rid of a dangerous enemy, and if you had not given it as your opinion that the man met his death while wholly or semi-unconscious, I should have added self-defence to my list of possibilities. The only thing I am pretty sure of is--that the motive was not robbery."

"Look here, Mr. Merritt, I can't help wondering that, whereas you have treated Miss Derwent with the utmost suspicion, have made a thorough search of her apartment, and have even sent a sleuth to watch her, yet you have shown such indifference to Mrs. Atkins's movements. Surely suspicion points quite as strongly to her as to the young lady?"

"No, it doesn't," replied the detective. "The key! You forget the key cannot so far be connected with her. But, may I ask, who told you that I had neglected to make inquiries about the lady?"

"n.o.body; I only inferred," I stammered.

"You were wrong," continued Mr. Merritt. "I have made every possible inquiry about Mrs. Atkins. I have even sent a man to Chicago to find out further particulars, although I have already collected a good deal of interesting information about the little lady's past life."

"Really? And was there anything peculiar about it?"

"No; I can't exactly say there was. Mrs. Atkins is the only daughter of a wealthy saloon-keeper, John Day by name, and is twenty-six years old.