Annihilation

“Good morning, gentlemen.” Henry Orbit appeared in the doorway and came forward. “Has your inspector news for me about the removal of Hughes’ body? I have made all the arrangements.”

There was a weary note in his voice and the pallor of fatigue had spread over his strongly marked features, but it only added to the distinction of his appearance and his eyes seemed if anything more brilliantly alight than on the previous evening. A plum-colored house-robe swathed the tall, erect figure, but he was immaculately groomed and it was only when he had almost reached the visitors that they saw he carried under one arm a tiny, wistful-eyed monkey.

Dennis gave a start but McCarty replied quietly:

“The inspector gave us no message about the body, sir, but no doubt you’ll hear from him any time now. We’d like to fix the exact time Hughes left the house. The last you saw of him was a little before seven, I think you said. Was that before or after the fire in your room?”

“Some little time before. I have Vite, here, to thank for that.” A faint smile curved Orbit’s mobile lips and he stroked the little creature in his arm with a reassuring gesture as it whimpered at the mention of its name. “An alcohol cigar-lighter was left burning on my desk and in his haste to follow me downstairs Vite knocked it over, setting fire to an upholstered chair, but Fu Moy, the coffee boy who admitted you just now, discovered it before any further damage was done and summoned Ching Lee. Fu Moy was as pleasantly excited about it as any small American boy would have been, but he should not have annoyed you with his chatter. I suppose it was he who told you?”

“No, sir. I knew it last night,” Dennis remarked. “I smelled it.”

“To be sure! I could not myself detect it downstairs but when I retired the odor drove me to one of the guest rooms and although I am an experienced traveler I do not sleep well in unaccustomed surroundings; that is why you find me still en déshabillé at this hour.” He glanced down at the house-robe and then added with a touch of sadness in his voice. “To be truthful, I could not get poor Hughes out of my thoughts. After all, twenty-two years is a long time.”

“It is that, Mr. Orbit. When he laid out your clothes and asked for the evening off, did he leave you at once?”

“Yes. I told him to go and have his dinner; the servants always dine early when I am entertaining, for their meals are prepared separately. That is how the cigar lighter happened to be left burning. I can’t tell you what time he went out but perhaps André or Jean would know, or Ching Lee. André is the cook; shall I have him sent to you here?”

“If it’s all the same to you we’ll go to the kitchen and talk to him.” McCarty glanced at the mass of exotic blooms, vividly ablaze where the sun poured in upon them through the glass wall. “You’ve some wonderful flowers, Mr. Orbit.”

“The orchids are rather rare; some of them have never been known to thrive above the equator before and the cacti and palms usually do not grow north of Central America. I’m quite proud of them. But come. I will show you the way to the pantries and kitchen.”

McCarty gasped thankfully in the comparatively chill atmosphere of the hall after the almost overpowering heat of the conservatory and the two followed along a narrowed hall toward the rear. Half-open double doors at the left past the library revealed a great formal dining-room and back of the conservatory, on the other side of the wall against which the organ had been installed, there appeared to be a combined picture gallery and card room, for the walls were lined with paintings whose massive frames all but touched and green-clothed tables of various sizes stood about on the brightly waxed surface of the marquetry floor.

“Ring the bell in the pantry for Fu Moy and he will bring you to me if there are any questions you would like to ask after you have seen André or Jean.” Orbit had paused before a door at the end of the hall. “Ching Lee is out at present but I shall be glad to give you any assistance in my power. Since the inspector attached so much importance to it I find that I am curious myself to know what errand could have taken Hughes to the quarter of town in which he died.—Beyond the butler’s pantry you will find the kitchen pantries, the refrigerating room and then the kitchen.”

“All right, then,” McCarty responded. “The chances are that we won’t bother you again before we go.”

He pushed open the door as Orbit turned, and Dennis followed him into the spacious white-tiled room shining with glass and porcelain. A door further along in the same wall as that by which they had entered evidently opened into the dining-room but McCarty led the way to another facing them and they passed down a short corridor and into a spacious kitchen.

A fat man immaculate in starched white apron and cap, with a round, ruddy face and bristling black mustache turned on them belligerently from a long pastry table.

“What is this, that you come to my kitchen? Sacré Nom! If M’sieur Obeet know this—!”

“Don’t let that worry you, André! Mr. Orbit just showed us the way through the pantry,” McCarty interrupted. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Hughes.”

“Mon Dieu! Les gendarmes!” André raised his floury hands in dismay.

“What’s that you’re calling us?” demanded Dennis advancing truculently and the fat chef retreated behind the table in haste.

“‘Gendarmes’ it is French for Messieurs of the Police!” he stammered, his conciliatory tone comically at variance with the fierce expression lent to him by the bristling mustache. “I know nothing of Hughes, nothing! He goes out last night upon his own affairs and in the morning Ching Lee comes to me and tells me that he is dead, he falls in the street with a—a seekness of the heart. Is it not so? Alors, why do the police interest themselves?”

“Ching Lee told you that, did he?” McCarty seated himself and Dennis took a chair by the door. “Did you ever hear Hughes complain of a weak heart?”

“But no! It—it was something else, then, which have killed Hughes?” André asked quickly, then checked himself with a shrug. “What is it that you would have me tell you?”

“How long have you worked for Mr. Orbit?”

“It will be seex years next month. I am chef for a friend of M’sieu in Paris and when he is kill’ in the war M’sieu send for me. When the war it is finish’ M’sieu permits that my cousin Jean who was a poilu come also to be houseman. Jean and me, we do not concern ourselves with the affairs of Hughes, we know of him nothing!”

“Who comes here to see him, besides Snape, the butler from next door?” McCarty asked.

“No one.” André wiped his hands and came slowly around the table. “It is not often that we see Snape, for he arrive’ in the evening late, and when the dinner is finish’ Jean and me, we have our own affairs together.”

“What time did you and the rest have dinner last night?” McCarty dropped the futile line of questioning. “It was before you served Mr. Orbit and his company, wasn’t it?”

“But yes. At seex hours and a half.” The reply came promptly, in obvious relief.

“Did Hughes eat with you?”

“Of a certainty!” André looked his surprise. “Fu Moy arrange’ the tables in our dining-room there—one for himself and Ching Lee, who prefers that they eat alone together, and the other for us three, but Hughes he is late, he attend upon M’sieu. Ching Lee and Fu Moy have almost finish’ and Jean and me, we think we will wait no longer when at last Hughes he comes.”

“Did he tell you he was going out?”

“Not until after dinner. Ching Lee have gone to make complete the table for M’sieu and his guests and Fu Moy to robe himself in the little jaquette of embroidered satin that later he may serve coffee and liqueurs. Then Hughes says that he will go for a walk. Jean warns him that it will make rain—how you say? A storm, it is coming, but Hughes does not care, it is for his health that he walks. Jean and me, we think that is droll for there is nothing the matter with the health of Hughes, only that he drinks too much and often he is out very late.” Again André checked himself and then went on hurriedly. “It is the last month, perhaps two, that he is not look so well, but he is not seek, nevaire. He goes, and—”

“What time was this?” McCarty interrupted.

“At a little past seven hours, perhaps half, but me, I am engage’ with the dinner of M’sieu, and Jean he cleans our dishes; we pay not much attention. Hughes says ‘good night’ and goes out the side door here into the allee which leads to the tradesmen’s entrance. That is the end of Hughes.”

With a gesture of dismissal he turned to the range and tested the heat regulator of the oven, but McCarty remained seated.

“The fire broke out in Mr. Orbit’s room after Hughes left, then?”

“Yes. You have heard of that?” André turned again with uplifted brows. “It was nothing, we do not even know of it until it is all over. Little Fu Moy, he see the smoke and the single tongue of flame and he cry for Ching Lee who puts it out. M’sieu, he is downstairs awaiting his guests and it is said that the singe—the monkey—Vite have upset the cigar lighter, but me, I think it is Fu Moy who makes play with the matches! He is a bad child, that little Fu Moy!”

“You say that Hughes has not looked so well lately,” McCarty ignored the subject of the coffee boy’s delinquencies. “Did he seem worried, like, or as if anything was on his mind that might have hurt his health, weakened his heart, maybe?”

André shrugged once more.

“He is if anything in the greater spirits and Jean and me, we think that he have win at the cards. He looks—how do you say?—dissipate’, and tired because he creeps in with the dawn.”

“Does Mr. Orbit know of this?” McCarty feigned surprise. “It’s a wonder he’d have kept him.”

“If he suspects he says nothing, because no matter how late Hughes arrive at home he is always up promptly in the morning and he drinks only when M’sieu shall not know. He is the perfect valet and M’sieu asks no more.”

“Well, we won’t either, just now.” Dennis had taken no part in the inquiry but now as McCarty spoke he signaled him an agonized glance and the latter nodded.

“André, when did that fire break out?” Dennis drew a deep breath.

“Last night? It must have been but a moment or two after the departure of Hughes for it is still less than eight hours when it is finish, before the three gentlemen arrive.”

“Before you knew of it, then,—say, a few minutes after Hughes left; did you hear anything?” Dennis pursued carefully. “A kind of a bang! it would be, like a firecracker going off, if you know what that is.”

“The red fire toys of Fu Moy which explode when he lights them? I know!” André responded grimly. Then a reflective look came over his round countenance. “It appears that I did hear a single, quick noise, like the violent closing of a door somewhere above which make the house to tremble! Me, I am occupied with the chateaubriand, that it cook not too fast, and I think not of it again. But what—”

“Nothing. That’s all I wanted to know.” Dennis turned to his companion. “Let’s be moving, Mac.”

He started along the corridor but McCarty stopped him at the foot of a narrow, winding staircase.

“We’ll go up here, Denny, for a minute. I want a look around.”

“No more than I do, myself!” Dennis returned promptly. “It’s beginning to come to me that Hughes was not over popular around here. I wonder what this Jean thought of him?”

What Jean thought was speedily ascertained for they came upon him in the upper hall, energetically waxing the floor; a slim, dark, youngish man with a deep scar across his smooth-shaven face and a nervous, jerky manner as though every muscle and nerve were strung on wires.

“It was unfortunate that Hughes should have died so suddenly but what would you? A man so gross, who ate like a great pig and drank like a sot and took no care of himself,” Jean replied to his own observation with a shrug and applied his energies anew to his task.

“Where were you last evening, Jean, while Fu Moy was setting the tables in the servants’ dining-room?” McCarty asked, as though in an afterthought.

“In the kitchen assisting André. It is not my work but André is occupied with the dinner of Monsieur Orbit. I arrange first the trays for Fu Moy and he take them to the table and then call his uncle, Ching Lee. André and me, we await Hughes—”

“So Ching Lee and Fu Moy ate alone in the dining-room for awhile before Hughes came down, and you and him and André went in to have your own dinners?”

“Yes, m’sieu.” Jean had risen from his knees and now he regarded his questioner expectantly but for a moment McCarty seemed lost in thought. Then he roused himself.

“What did you have?”

“A soup of vegetables, ragout of lamb, a salad and cheese and coffee,” Jean responded. “There was rice also for Ching Lee and Fu Moy, and pastry from Monsieur Orbit’s déjeuner, which I placed for Hughes but he desired it not.”

“Did he eat as much as usual?” McCarty asked quickly.

“Like a glutton at first but he is finished very soon, he is satisfied and the remainder of his dinner goes almost untouched. Then he goes out for a walk, so he tells to André and me, in spite of the storm which is coming.” Jean’s face twisted in a grimace of knowing incredulity. “It takes him not five minutes to change and then he is gone.”

“Did you help André dish up the dinner for Mr. Orbit and his friends?”

“I assist him, but it is soon over, for when the guests are only gentlemen the menu is very simple though always of the best. At half past eight dinner is served and in an hour it is finished and we are making all clean in the kitchen. Some French papers have arrived for us in the mail but yesterday and we take them to André’s room to read; at eleven we go to bed.”

The man spoke glibly enough, but why without being asked had he volunteered a detailed account of how he had spent the evening? Did he consider it necessary to establish an alibi, and if so, what reason had he? There was a frank, open look to him, McCarty thought, and anyway there would be no sense in disputing with him now; even if he was lying André would back up that statement of his.

“Do all of you sleep on the same floor?”

Jean nodded.

“At the top of the house. Shall I show you—?”

“No, I’ll be taking a look around later, maybe. What else is on this floor besides Mr. Orbit’s room?”

“Monsieur’s suite,” Jean corrected. “He has a private sitting-room also, in addition to the bedroom and dressing-room. The rest of this floor and all of the one above are arranged in suites for guests.”

“Does Mr. Orbit have much company staying here in the house?” McCarty’s gaze had wandered to the many doors on either side of the broad corridor.

“Not many. Only one or two at a time have I seen since I came, and all gentlemen. Never are ladies guests of the house although often they dine here or arrive for the affairs of society which Monsieur gives.—But I must arrange the table now for déjeuner, because Ching Lee is out.”

He gathered up his brushes and started for the back stairs but McCarty stopped him.

“Where did Ching Lee go? Did Orbit send him on an errand?”

“I do not think so.” Jean hesitated. “When Monsieur sends him—which is but seldom, for nearly always I go,—he tucks up his queue and arrays himself in American attire, but to-day, as when he goes about his own affairs, he wore the ordinary dress of his country; not the magnificent embroidered robes of silk but the plain, dark dress one sees upon les Chinois everywhere. It is now two hours since he has gone.”

He turned once more to the stairs and this time McCarty made no effort to detain him. He waited until the houseman’s footsteps had died away in the hall below and a door had closed. Then he turned to where Dennis had been standing just behind him.

“Get that, Denny? I’m thinking—!” He paused, for he was talking to the empty air. Dennis had disappeared.

With a shrug McCarty mounted to the next floor but no one was visible and each of the several doors which he opened gave upon bedrooms furnished in different periods of the Italian and French monarchical régimes. He only knew that they seemed very handsome, if the rugs and draperies did look a bit faded and draggled to his eyes and the gilt tarnished, but about all there hung the aloof, cheerless air of apartments seldom tenanted.

The floor above was evidently cut up into many smaller rooms, for there were more doors closer together. Several of them were locked and the first which opened readily was that of a large room at the back, furnished merely with two chests of drawers and two matting covered cots heaped with cushions. Matting was laid upon the floor, a niche in the wall was hung with rich silk upon which a gorgeous dragon was emblazoned and lanterns were suspended from the ceiling. McCarty sniffed the faintly aromatic odor as of sandalwood which greeted him and knew that this must be the room Ching Lee shared with Fu Moy.

Closing the door he retraced his steps and tried another just at the head of the stairs. It opened into a room slightly smaller than the first but comfortably furnished in old oak with a bright rug on the floor and simple curtains at the two broad windows. Military brushes and other masculine toilet accessories were scattered on the dresser and a rack which hung beside it glowed with the rich, subdued colors of a score or more neckties and scarves. Across the foot of the bed lay a lounging robe of heavily quilted brocade but somewhat worn and frayed.

Was this where one of the Frenchmen slept or—? McCarty strode to the closet and flung the door wide. Suits of plain black alternated with others of conservative shades and material but far more expensive; a glance showed that they were much too large for the slender houseman, yet not sufficiently capacious to accommodate the chef’s rotund girth.

If this, then, were Hughes’ room could he have left any clue behind him which would point to his unknown enemy? A hasty examination of the closet revealed an empty whiskey bottle among the boots on the floor, but the pockets of the various garments contained merely small bills and newspaper clippings of racing results.

In the top drawer of the dresser McCarty came upon a stack of letters in different handwriting but all unmistakably feminine and sentimental in tone, couched in more or less illiterate terms. He took possession of them for reading at his leisure. The lower drawers contained only clothing and there were no other receptacles in the room which might have held papers but his experienced eye noted a slight unevenness in the surface of the rug near the head of the bed and turning it back he found a bank-book and a check-book fastened together with a rubber band.

These he pocketed also and then descended to the first bedroom floor where Dennis had deserted him, to discover that individual hovering uncertainly about the stairs’ head.

“Where the devil did you take yourself off to?” he demanded. “If the inspector let you in on this with me ’twas not to gum up my game, Denny Riordan! Moreover, whenever you go off on your own hook—!”

“Let be, Mac! The inspector’s here, talking to Orbit now in his private sitting-room, they all but caught me snooping around in there!” Dennis interrupted. “He’s sprung it on him that Hughes was poisoned!”

“Come on downstairs and tell me what you heard.” McCarty led the way without further waste of words and Dennis followed him to the entrance hall below where they stationed themselves in the embrasure of a window beside the door.

“Whilst you were asking Jean about the layout of the rooms upstairs I thought I’d have a look at the ones Orbit keeps for himself,” Dennis explained in a slightly defiant tone. “He sleeps in a bed with a roof to it, all hung with curtains like a hearse. The chair that was burned is gone but there’s a scorched place in the rug and the smell is hanging on the air yet. I took just a peep in the bathroom, which is fitted up like a gymnasium and almost as big, and then I went on into the sitting-room. ’Tis grand, Mac, with books and pictures and flowers everywhere, to say nothing of the window boxes just ablaze with flowers for all it’s near frost. There’s a piano, too, with big sheets of paper covered with hen-tracks on the rack as if somebody’d been writing music by hand, and I was just looking at it when I heard the inspector’s voice and him and Orbit coming along the hall. I ducked back into the bedroom and then I stopped for I caught the last word the inspector was saying; it was ‘murder!’”

It was an unprecedentedly long speech for the taciturn Dennis and as he paused for breath McCarty rubbed his chin reflectively.

“How did Orbit take it?”

“For a full minute you could have cut the stillness with a knife and then he says low and shocked, like: ‘My God, how frightful! You’re sure there’s no possibility of a mistake about it, inspector? But your man who witnessed it said nothing last night about foul play! I understand that poor Hughes simply dropped in the street when no one was near.’ Then the inspector up and told him it was poison, giving it that long name ‘physos’-something, and Orbit says could it be possible, that he’d heard of it, of course, being a bit of a bot—botanist, but ’twas rare, and how could anybody have got hold of it to give to Hughes, and why?” Dennis paused again and then added conscientiously: “Maybe them wasn’t just the words, Mac, but he was struck all of a heap. I was afraid they’d be coming in and catching me so I beat it out to the head of the stairs where you found me.—Wisht! They’re coming down now!”

“I’ll be waiting for a word with the inspector,” McCarty announced hurriedly. “I’ve a job for you, Denny if you’ll not be shooting your mouth off!”

A door above had opened but it was evident that Orbit and his companion had paused, for no sound of footsteps ensued and Dennis asked eagerly:

“What is it, Mac? Well you know I’m not given to talk—!”

“Then listen! Run down to the old waterfront precinct and see is Mike Taggart or Terry around; tell them I stopped by the fire house this morning on the way out to my Homevale estates and mentioned the fellow that dropped dead down there last night, and you thought from my description maybe you knew him. You’re disgusted that I took so little interest and it’s your opinion I’m not the man I was—”

“And who says so?” demanded Dennis with loyal indignation.

“You do, you blockhead!” McCarty retorted. “Let them knock me and get all the dope you can about last night, and then bring up old times when I walked my beat there and you used to come around for a word with me and the rest of the boys. Say the neighborhood looks about the same to you but you kind of recall seeing more Chinks hanging out in the doorways, and wasn’t there a laundry or a chop suey joint on the block?”

“’Tis you should know there wasn’t!” Dennis’ tone was bewildered but a light suddenly dawned in his gray eyes and he added in a sepulchral whisper: “Mac! You don’t mean—! You’re thinking—!”

“I’m wishful to know if there was a strange Chinaman in that street this morning; one that was curious, maybe, about what happened last night. If there was, his queue might have been tucked up or swinging free, but I’ve a hunch he’d look like Ching Lee!”