The Lion's Mouse Part 20

"Why was he sitting there in the dark," she puzzled, "like a spider in his web, waiting to pounce?" She could not put away the impression that there was something more terrible even than Beverley had expected. No one came or went. After all, she had been there only four or five minutes, though the time seemed long. It might easily be half an hour, Clo reminded herself, before she could hope to be called into consultation, or invited to hand over the precious bag. She looked wistfully toward the nearest end of the corridor. There, in front of a window, was a big brown trunk. She would go and sit on that trunk to rest. It was well within sight of Peterson's door. Her eyes would never leave that door! With renewed life she could spring up as she saw it opened by Angel.

"Yes, I've got to the limit!" the girl said. She was so spent that her feet seemed to have weights attached to them as she dragged herself toward the trunk. Reaching it, she dropped, rather than sat, upon the rounded top. No sooner had she touched the lid, however, than she bounded up as if she had received an electric shock. It seemed that something inside the trunk had given a leap, and that the great box had quivered under her. At the same instant the door of number 658 was thrown open. Beverley came out.

XX

MURDER

There was something not natural in Beverley's air and manner. Normally she had a proud, erect carriage. Now she came stumbling out of Number 658, and with drooping head, and shoulders bent, crept into the hall, leaving the door half open behind her; but she stopped abruptly and turned back. Clo, forgetting her own weakness, and forgetting the brown trunk, hurried to join her friend. But Beverley seemed to be unconscious of the girl's presence. She stood as far as possible from the door, closed it without noise, and was walking away again when Clo's arm slid round her waist.

"Darling, what has he said, what has he done to you?" the girl implored.

Beverley seized Clo by the wrist, and pulled her toward the lift.

"Hurry!" she whispered. "We must get away as soon as we can, for Roger's sake!"

"But what about the papers, and the pearls?" Clo persisted. "Had Peterson taken them? Did he give them to you?"

"I don't know whether he had them or not. Nothing matters now, except to get home," was the astounding answer. Clo could hardly believe that she had heard aright. Ten--five minutes ago, nothing in the world mattered, except the papers and the pearls. Now they had lost all their importance!

"You don't want them any more?" she gasped.

"Want them?" Beverley echoed. "Yes, more than ever, I want them. But it's too late. Don't ask me why. Only--come!"

Clo could not argue with Angel, or oppose her, in such a mood as this.

She wished that she had taken her own way, and gone herself to "have it out" with Peterson. She felt that nothing he could have said or done would have forced her to give up without at least knowing whether or not the booty were in his possession. As she kept pace with Beverley she was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her courage to one last, desperate coup. She would make it in spite of Angel!

They came to the elevator, but before Clo could put out her hand to touch the electric b.u.t.ton, Beverley drew her farther on, to the staircase. They went down swiftly and in silence. The entrance hall of the hotel smelt of tobacco. They descended into it behind the elevator.

A group of men surrounded the desk where they had inquired for Peterson, and the two girls in motor coats and veiled toques pa.s.sed without catching sight of the clerk who had sent them to 658. Three or four men of the commercial traveller type glanced at the gray and brown figures; but the elevator had at that moment released a golden-haired, black-eyed young woman in a pink evening dress. She became at once an object of interest, and the plainly-cloaked pair vanished unnoticed.

The taxi, which had been ordered to wait, was at a distance. They hurried to it. It was Clo who opened the door of the cab, and almost pushed Angel in!

"Shall I tell him to go to the corner where he picked us up?" she asked.

Beverley nodded, and sank back against the shabby leather cushions. This was Clo's moment. She had led up to it, and decided what to do. First she placed the bag of jewels in Beverley's lap. Next she spoke to the chauffeur, giving clear directions. Then she slammed the door shut, and stepped back upon the sidewalk, motioning to the man to start.

"Angel will be so surprised, she won't know what to do for a minute,"

the girl thought. "By the time she pulls herself together she'll realize it's too late to stop me."

As fast as she dared, Clo retraced her steps to the hotel. She hated to leave Beverley alone, but between two evils it seemed that she had chosen the less. When the taxi stopped Beverley would get out; and then she would have a few blocks to walk before reaching home. As for the bag, she could hardly forget it in the cab. The thing was too heavy to fall from her lap without being noticed. She would have the jewels safe, while Clo tried to bargain with ferret-face on promises of reward.

By the time she had argued away her worst tremors, Clo had again entered the Hotel Westmorland. She had decided to say that her friend had forgotten something if a question were asked; but the desk was still surrounded with its group of talkative men, and she walked to the stairs at the back of the hall as if she were a guest of the hotel. Thence she toiled to the top.

It was only when she approached the door of Number 658, and saw once more the brown trunk at the end of the hall, that Clo remembered the odd side-issue of her adventure. She hesitated between the need for haste and the wish to solve the mystery that troubled her. But it would take only a minute to run to the trunk, to sit on it again, and see what happened! Meanwhile, any one who went in, or came out from, Number 658, must do so under her eyes.

Curiosity conquered. Clo tip-toed to the trunk, sat heavily down on the rounded top, as she had done before, and nothing happened. There was no sign of movement within; and Clo wondered if, after all, the thing that had jumped under the lid had been created by her own jumping nerves.

Suddenly the impulse came upon her to try and open it. She seized the corner of the rounded lid, but it remained immovable. She picked at the metal hasp which covered the cheap lock. It did not yield, but her fingers--or she fancied it--touched moisture. The girl shrank back and looked at her hand. Thumb and forefinger were smeared with blood.

The girl felt sick, and might have fainted comfortably. "Pooh!" she scolded herself. "You've cut your finger. Serve you right for not minding your own business. Go to it now, and no nonsense, if you please!"

Goading herself to courage she marched to the door of 658 and knocked.

No answer came, and the girl's heart sank. It seemed too bad to be true that Peterson should have escaped during the few minutes spent in putting Angel into a taxi. Besides, she had scarcely gone beyond eye-shot of the hotel entrance.

"Perhaps he's asleep," thought Clo. She turned the handle, and to her surprise the door yielded. She had expected to find it locked. As before, the room was unlit save by golden reflections from the street below. The girl opened the door wide, and deliberately looked in.

Strange; there sat the man in his easy chair in front of the window, with his mean profile outlined against the light, just as he had sat when Beverley had answered the summons to "Come in!" One would say, to look at him, that he had not moved an inch.

Clo's theory had gone wrong. She had urged her conviction upon Angel that he was the thief; that, if he were the thief, he would "make his get-away" in haste. Yet here he sat, in the dark, asleep.

She stepped across the threshold, felt along the wall for an electric switch, found it, and flooded the room with light. Still the figure in the chair did not stir.

Clo glanced round the squalid room. Peterson had begun to pack. A suitcase lay open on the narrow bed. The wrinkled gray-white counterpane was half covered with scattered clothing.

"If he's fast enough asleep, I can go through everything," she thought, "including his pockets!"

The girl walked in, and closed the door resolutely but softly, her eyes always upon the figure in the chair. She mustn't begin to search the place without making sure that Peterson was not playing "possum." It would be awful, when her back was turned, to have him pounce upon her like a monkey. She tip-toed across the room, and stopped in front of the easy-chair, within a yard of the stretched-out feet, where she could take a good look at the sleeper. His head was bent down over his breast, and the girl had to stoop a little to peer into the face. But a glance sent her reeling back against a chest of drawers. The top of the man's head had been crushed in by some blunt instrument. His forehead and the side of his face turned toward the window were covered with blood. His shirt and coat were soaked with it, in a long red stripe, and a dark pool had formed in a vague heart-shape on the patterned carpet.

Clo had never before seen a dead man, yet she did not doubt that this man was dead. He could have been dead for a short time only. The blood on the livid face glistened wet in the electric light. It had hardly ceased to drip from the wound in his head.

For a time Clo stood still, as if frozen. But slowly the power to think came back. To her own horror and disgust she found herself wondering if Beverley Sands had killed Peterson. It would have been a tremendous blow for a woman to strike, but Beverley was desperate, and she was strong.

She had boasted of her strength of arm only the other day, to Sister Lake, who had tested and admired the splendid firmness of her young muscles. Besides, the man had been caught unawares, and had been struck from behind; the position of the wound showed that. On a small table by the chair lay the weapon. It was a long pistol, Clo did not know of what kind or make, but it looked old-fashioned; and there was no question as to the way in which it had been used. Someone had taken it by the muzzle and struck with the b.u.t.t end, which was coated with blood and hairs.

Perhaps the pistol had not been loaded, or perhaps the murderer--(no, "avenger" was the better word, with that fear knocking at her heart!) had not dared fire because of the noise.

Clo's mind began to work more quickly. She pieced details together. The person who had killed Peterson could not have picked up the pistol from that table without being seen by him, therefore it had been lying there before the murder. Most likely it had lain on the bed, among the strewn things which ferret-face had begun to pack. In that case any one entering the room might have spied and s.n.a.t.c.hed it, unsuspected by the man in the chair.

"If my poor, tortured Angel didn't do this, I can bear anything!" Clo told herself. "It wouldn't so much matter for me. I'd have killed him for her sake--I believe. But for her it would be horrible!"

The girl remembered the blood on her fingers, which she had found after touching the lock of the brown trunk, and this remembrance gave her hope. The murderer must have pa.s.sed that way, whereas Beverley had not been near the trunk. "Thank goodness for one good bit of evidence in case it's ever needed!" Clo thought. "Who knows but the murderer was hiding in the trunk, and jumped in his fright when I plumped down on it?

Well, if he did, he must either be smothered by now, since the trunk's been locked since then, or else he's escaped. Oh, Angel, how could I dream for a minute it might have been you? And yet if this wretch was dead then, who called 'Come in?'"

A wild impulse to run away seized the girl. She started toward the door, but stopped half way. No, she would not fail Angel. The man was dead. He could do her no harm. If Beverley's pearls, or if Beverley's papers, were in this room, no matter where, even if she had to touch that blood-stained coat to search the pockets, she would not go without them.

The dark blind ought to be pulled down, because from some high window she might be seen and identified afterward, if trouble came of this night's work. To reach the blind she had to step over the feet which sprawled beyond the chair; and stretching up her arm to touch the broken cord, she was conscious that her dress brushed the dead man's knees.

Next she went to the bed, and began turning over Peterson's miserable belongings. She prayed that, by a miracle, she might come across the sealed envelope. As for the pearls, if the murderer were of the Peterson type, to steal them would have been his first thought. But--it would need a stout-hearted criminal to go through the pockets of his victim, and if the motive were other than theft, it might be that the pearls and papers were still on the body. If Clo failed to find them elsewhere she would have to ransack those pockets. The thought was too horrible to dwell upon. Frantically she tossed over the contents of the suitcase, lifting and shaking every garment scattered on the bed. She peered under the pillows; she pulled out the drawers of wash-stand and dressing-table; but there was nothing to be found there, not even a letter, not a torn morsel of paper which could serve Beverley's cause.

Clo's spirit groaned a prayer for strength when at last--sick and shaking, her palms damp--she had to set about the pillage of the dead man's pockets. Some she needed merely to touch with her finger ends, to make sure that they were empty. Others had to be searched to their depths: and the girl felt convinced that she would die if in the horrid business she plunged a hand into some unseen sop of blood.

From a waistcoat pocket she pulled out a small leather cigarette case, still warm from the wearer's breast--another proof, if she had let herself think of it, that he had not long been dead. In the leather case, behind a store of tightly packed cigarettes, was a card--the cheapest sort of visiting card, on which, scrawled in pencil, was the name Lorenz Czerny. On the back of this card, in a different handwriting, but also in pencil, a memorandum had been scribbled. A glance showed Clo that it consisted of names, abbreviated addresses, and the hours of appointments, or perhaps of trains. She did not stop to examine the card thoroughly, but slipped it into her pocket for future reference, and went on with her task.

The sealed envelope she sought was too large not to protrude over the top of any pocket of a man's indoor coat; but Clo reflected that the envelope might have been destroyed, and the contents distributed, or folded into smaller compa.s.s. With this idea she spared herself nothing in her quest; but the sole reward she had (save for the cigarette case) was the finding of a paragraph cut from a newspaper, a roll of blood-stained greenbacks, which she hastily replaced, and a torn silk handkerchief. The newspaper cutting told of Roger Sands' magnificent house in Newport, whither he and his "beautiful young bride" would shortly move. This also Clo annexed, in order that no connection should seem to exist between Beverley Sands and the man Peterson when the police got to work. The handkerchief she took from the coat pocket into which it had been untidily stuffed, in order to search underneath. But the nervous jerk she gave pulled out something else also--something small, which fell to the floor with a tinkle as of a tiny stone striking wood, when it touched a chair leg, and rolled under the chest of drawers. Clo had not time to see what the thing was. There was only a flashing glimpse of a pebble-like object as it disappeared. But her heart leaped at the thought of what it might be. Thrusting the ragged handkerchief into a pocket already examined, she had just stooped to peer under the clumsy piece of furniture when a telephone bell began to ring.

The girl sprang to her feet, quivering and alert. It seemed that the bell had rung almost in her ear. Someone was calling for Peterson!

XXI