The Professor's Mystery Part 17

The next few days pa.s.sed by without event; and the absence of excitement was a welcome enough relief, even to me. Adventures in themselves are all very well, but I prefer mine uncomplicated with nervous anxiety; and although my enlistment in the family garrison had relieved me in some measure from that torment of personal worry which had hounded me before, yet the trouble had only taken another form, the more heavy for being less selfish. I was inside the mystery now, in action if not in knowledge. What the root of the matter might be, I knew no better than before; but somehow, I had been quite sincere in saying that I did not really care. It was as if the nerve of curiosity had been blunted in me through overstrain. And I knew now that come what might, Lady had begun to care for me, and that left little in the world which for myself I could fear. Only for her I feared everything; and the necessity of her remaining here at the mercy of dangers which I could neither dispel nor understand was too heavy a burden for my frivolous enjoyment of adventure. I could not say so, nor try again to persuade her away from the fight. As her way was, she had dropped my interrupted protest into nothingness, as though it had never been; and my only comfort was the hope that, knowing how wholly my blindfold loyalty to them all was for her sake, might be a secret help to her.

Beyond taking care that one of us three men should be always in the house, we did nothing, so far as I knew, except to await events pa.s.sively. Doctor Reid, of course, went daily to his office, where he remained often until late in the afternoon; and Mr. Tabor, though I understood that he was retired from active business, made two or three all-day trips to the city. What they might be doing to safeguard us from Carucci or in affairs more intimate to the situation, I could not guess.

At any rate, my own periods of guardianship were generally lonely; for Mrs. Tabor was still too shaken by our recent alarm to be much out of her room, and Lady made occasion of shopping to accompany her father.

Perhaps I was touchy; but it seemed that she avoided the strain of being long alone with me, skating on thin ice above emotion.

Mrs. Tabor had gone to lie down after luncheon, and I was trying to forget in a book the prospect of a long uninteresting afternoon within doors, when the telephone in the den across the hall began to ring. I hurried across, with an irritable impulse to shout, "Yes, I'm coming,"

and picked it up.

"h.e.l.lo!" drawled the little voice. "Who is this?"

I gave the number, with a mental reservation concerning some unknown person's telephone manners.

"Yes, I know; but who's there? Who is this speaking?"

"This is Mr. Tabor's house," said I sharply. "Do you want some one in particular, or will you leave a message?" It may have been partly the voice which annoyed me: a thick, soft voice unnaturally sweet in its inflection, a voice like the caress of a fat hand. I thought there was a trace of foreign accent, but that might be imagination.

"Oh--might I speak with Mrs. Tabor, please?"

"Hold the line a moment," said I; and as I turned, there was Mrs. Tabor herself in the doorway.

"Is it for me?" she asked. "You know, I'm sure it's the very same person I was going to call. Telephone calls cross that way all the time, just like letters."

I left her, and went back to my book. A few minutes later Sheila came in.

"Mrs. Tabor"--she began. Then with an astonished look about the room, "Why, where is she?"

"She was in Mr. Tabor's study, telephoning, a moment ago," I said. "Is anything the matter?"

"She never came up-stairs again at all. Will she be out around the garden anywhere, I wonder? Would you mind looking, sir, while I'll be seeing if she's in the house?"

I searched not only the garden, but the entire grounds; and I did it with hurried thoroughness and a growing anxiety. Sheila's alarm when I returned put an edge upon my own.

"Ah, the Saints preserve us, what'll we do now, with Mr. Tabor away in the city an' that black villain of mine runnin' around the country after us? If it's him has anything to do with her--"

"Nonsense!" I said uneasily. "She's probably only gone over to one of the neighbors. You'd better telephone Doctor Reid, while I go and see."

But Sheila refused absolutely to use the telephone. "I never did like them things," she said, "a little ugly voice in your ear out of nowhere, like a ghost. Ah, I know they're all right, but I wouldn't touch it."

So I called up Reid myself. He plunged in and took immediate command of the situation with his usual busy efficiency; but I could see that he was alarmed.

"Probably just gone to one of the neighbors. Certainly. No occasion for any uneasiness. None at all. I'll just call up the people she might be with, and be sure. Glad you told me. Quite right. Glad you told me."

"You don't think there's any chance that Carucci--?"

"Not the least. No chance at all. Still, you might scout around the neighborhood a bit, and see if you see anything of him. And tell Sheila to go to Stamford and go through all the stores. Might have gone shopping. I'll come right up and stay at the house myself."

"How about Mr. Tabor?" I asked.

"All right. No need to alarm him. Not a bit. I'll call him up later, if necessary. But, of course, we'll find her at once. Hurry up and get started. Always best to act at once. Sure to be all right. Don't wait for me."

It occurred to me as I started out that Doctor Reid did not have a very high opinion of my ability. He was one of those c.o.c.ksure men who confine their sureness mostly to their own mental processes. Well, we should see; and if I found myself right, I promised Carucci a beating that would dampen his black hand imaginings for some time to come.

My first move on leaving the house was to call up New York from the telephone booth at the inn. I was lucky enough to find Maclean at the office of his paper.

"Say, Mac," I asked him, "what did you make of that dago story?"

"Nothin'," Mac sniffed. "Nothin' at all. The gum-shoes think he croaked his old woman, an' they're waitin' for him to give himself or somebody else away, you see? Then they'll grab him. Course, I could have told 'em she was alive; but then that might have brought you people in, an'

besides, those fellows wouldn't come across for me. Reciprocity's my cry, an' always has been."

"Well, do you know where I can find our friend? I want to talk to him?"

"Sure. I found him myself, but he wouldn't scare for a darn. Said Tabor had his wife all right, and not one of you dared touch him. You'll find Mr. Giuseppe workin' on the railroad, all the live-long day--that new trolley embankment we pa.s.sed on the line. They have a guinea camp back in the woods a piece. Say, Laurie, course your friends are all right, an' it's none o' my business; but they smell fishy to me a mile off. If I was you, I'd duck out right now. There's some n.i.g.g.e.r in this wood-pile that we don't know anythin' about, you see?"

"Thanks, Mac," I said. "I know better than that, though. There's no trouble."

"Well, I'm only tellin' you what I think. That guinea put up a long howl to me about the old man that I wouldn't use and didn't more'n half believe; but I want to see you about it when you come in town, all the same. Say, you ain't sore, are you?"

"All right, old man," said I; and I hung up the receiver.

Maclean's warning came too patently from his point of view on the sinister surface of the situation to give me the slightest additional uneasiness; but it made me all the more determined to talk with Carucci and at least learn whatever he thought, he knew, even though he should prove innocent of Mrs. Tabor's disappearance. I took the trolley to the nearest switch, and walked the couple of hundred yards between it and the new embankment. Construction was in full blast, and about seventy-five Italians swarmed over the work under the direction of lordly Irish foremen. I sauntered about the place with as much idle curiosity as I could a.s.sume, stopping to watch little groups, going from place to place, even making a second round; but no Carucci was to be seen. One or two of the men glanced at me with what I imagined was a certain sullen suspicion; but that may have been purely imaginary. From the embankment I cast about for the construction camp. The nearest wooded spot that I could see was half a mile or so across country, and I made toward this, skirting a little swamp or so, and climbing an occasional fence. As I went along, I made more and more sure that I was right; for a trodden path developed, and fence-rails were broken or left carelessly out of place.

With the ugly huddle of tin-roofed huts in sight, I came upon Carucci; or perhaps I should say that he came upon me. He came running to meet me down the pathway, with a sort of rolling, dancing gait that would have been very funny had I not known him.

"Whata you want?" he shouted. "Go-a da 'way!"

"That is what I am asking you," I said in Italian. "You know well enough that your wife can come to you whenever she pleases. What do you want of Mr. Tabor?"

He had stopped a little way from me, pulling off his jacket, and throwing it over his left arm. Now he showed his teeth in a mechanical grin.

"Come-a here," he grunted, "I show you."

He must have been drunk to imagine that I had not seen the knife. I took half a dozen quick steps, my hands opening and shutting, and as soon as I was within reach, I dived. I had him by the knees with a shock that reminded me that I was growing older; and as he sprawled on his back, I sprang away from him, and with a kick that must have nearly broken his fingers, sent the knife spinning away behind him. He was upon his feet in a second, and I looked for him at my throat. Instead, he threw his jacket full in my face, and leaped after it. I could feel his teeth gripping at the muscles of my upper arm. It was fighting of a new kind for me, and I kneed him joyfully in the stomach, tearing with my free arm at the jacket which blinded me. For a moment he fell away, and I hurled the coat from me, and struck him in the mouth; then again, my shoulder behind it; and he went down with a grunt. I flung myself promptly on top of him, clutching him by the throat. Then an arm was thrown about my neck from behind, while a strong hand ripped at my hair.

"Ye murtherin' baste, ye black scun, lave him alone, ye limb av h.e.l.l, come out av it!"

I shook myself roughly free, and whirled about to face the unexpected.

"Why, Sheila!" I cried, "how in the world did you get here?"

"Oi had me rasons, an' 'twas hoigh toime." She was very angry, and her brogue was faint no longer. "'Tis a swate blayguard ye are, an' bad cess to ye, sthrikin' a bit av a lad half the soize av yersilf."

I glanced at the burly Carucci, and laughed. The murder had died out of his eyes, and he scrambled to his feet, looking sheepish.

"This seems to be rather a family meeting," I said, and pointed behind him to the shanties. "Perhaps we had better be going."

Carucci turned to see the fat central office man trotting down the path, for all the world as if he were taking a little cross-country scamper to reduce his weight. He came on with such an inevitable matter-of-factness that it all seemed suddenly funny, like the conclusion of a farce; and when I looked around to see the other Italian coming up from behind, it was quite what I expected. The fat one in front of us stooped a second in the long gra.s.s, and picked up the knife that I had kicked away. He turned it over thoughtfully, and dropped it into his pocket.

"Antonio Carucci," he said calmly, "I arrest you for this a.s.sault with intent to kill, and for the murder of Sheila Carucci, your wife. And I arrest you, Laurence Crosby, as accessory after the fact."