In and Out

In the Box

Now, for a little, let us watch the movements of the intelligent servant, Wilkins.

Getting the trunk to the street was no trouble at all. The girl weighed, perhaps, one hundred and twenty pounds, and the trunk itself another fifteen or twenty, and handling that amount of weight was a mere joke to Wilkins. Therefore, he stood in the side street beside the Lasande, having carefully deposited his burden, and looked about for a taxi—and presently one of these bandit vehicles rolled up to the curb and the hard-faced little man behind the wheel barked:

"Taxicab?"

"Yes," said Wilkins. "I wish——"

"Stick the box up front!" snapped the driver. "I kin give you a hand."

"I'm taking the box in back with me," said Wilkins.

"Nothing doing!" said the driver. "What d'ye think that paint's made of—steel?"

It was entirely possible that Mary was stifling by this time. Wilkins used his wits as he fumbled in his pockets and asked:

"Your cab, old chap?"

"Company's!"

"Put this five-dollar bill into your pocket and give me a hand setting the box in the back," said Wilkins. "It's packed with delicate stuff, and the master instructed me particular to keep a hand on it."

So, while the hard-faced one smiled brightly and, the bill in his pocket, reflected that a murder must have been committed but that it was none of his business in any case, Anthony's wardrobe trunk was stood erect and the taxicab rolled off swiftly, headed for the palatial home of Theodore Dalton.

A block or two and, in the most uninterested way, Wilkins managed to open the lid for an inch or more, and in the space appeared a little pink nose and, presently, as the nose withdrew, a brilliant blue eye.

"Can you open it a little more?" asked Mary.

Wilkins opened it a little more.

"I trust you're quite comfortable, miss?" he asked politely.

"Lovely!" said Mary. "Did any one—seem to notice when we left?"

"Not a soul, miss."

Mary, cramped though she might be, sighed vast relief.

"Tell Mr. Fry, when you get back, that I'll send for the things I left behind," she said softly.

"Yes, miss."

"And Wilkins, when you get to the house," said Mary, "be absolutely sure that you take me to Felice's room!"

"I understand," purred Wilkins, just above the rumble of traffic.

Here Mary's whole face almost appeared.

"I want you to be very sure about that indeed!" she urged. "Never mind what the other servants say or where they want you to leave the trunk. You insist that it is for Felice, and has to be delivered to her personally; and if you have a chance to give her some sort of sign to accompany you to the room, do it. I think she'll understand."

"Yes, miss," Wilkins agreed.

"And above and beyond all things, keep your face perfectly expressionless when you meet Bates, Wilkins. Bates is our butler, you know, and he's the most inquisitive creature in the world. Is this trunk marked?"

"Only with Mr. Fry's initials, miss—'A. F.'"

Mary frowned up at him through the crack.

"That'll have to be explained too," she sighed. "Well—let's see. Do you think of anything plausible, Wilkins?"

The perfect treasure glanced at the driver, who was quite intent on his own affairs and apparently not listening—and Wilkins smiled quite complacently.

"If I might make so bold as to suggest it, miss," he said, "why not say that the trunk comes from—well, the cousin of this Felice, perhaps? Has she a female cousin?"

"Nobody knows it if she hasn't."

"Then it might be said that this comes from her cousin—er—Aimee Fourier. That sounds rather well for a name?"

"Great, Wilkins!" said Mary.

"And it might further be said that this cousin, a person perhaps in the trade of making gowns and the like, since I believe that such use these trunks quite a bit—it might be said that the cousin, having no further use for this trunk, is sending it to your maid, miss."

Sheer admiration shone in Mary's visible eye.

"Wilkins, you're a jewel!" said its owner. "Where are we now?"

"On West End Avenue, miss, within a block or two of your home."

Mary disappeared.

"Shut the trunk, Wilkins," her voice said softly, "We're safe!"

She, who had suffered so many shocks since last night, seemed assured that at last all was well; and as a matter of fact Wilkins felt much the same about the whole affair. He gazed placidly at the sign on the corner and, closing the trunk, leaned forward to the driver.

"The big limestone place over there, I think it is," said he. "Go to the side gate, old chap."

Seconds only, and they rolled to a standstill at the curb. Anthony's priceless personal servant lifted out his burden and set it on the sidewalk with no effort at all.

"Wait a bit and take me back," he smiled at the driver, as he started for the handsome black iron gate in the cream-colored brick wall that shut the Dalton back yard from the passing throng. There was a little electric push beside it, and Wilkins, having laid a finger on it, waited serenely.

Offhand, it seemed to him, he had saved the day for Anthony Fry. A smaller, weaker man must have passed up the job of carrying out the trunk single-handed. Yes, he had saved the day and, also offhand, the saving should be worth about twenty dollars when he returned to Anthony and reported. Or possibly, considering the really horrible features of the case as Wilkins understood them, even fifty dollars.

That was not too much. In fact, the more he thought of it, the more Wilkins felt that his return would be marked by the sight of a crisp yellow note from Anthony's prim, well-stocked wallet. Thirty-two of this should go into the black-and-white pin-checked suit he had been considering enviously in a Broadway window for nearly a month; ten more should go into Wilkins's savings-bank account, which was quite a tidy affair; and he thought that the other eight might as well be sent to his nephew, who was working his way through a veterinary college in Indiana.

And here the houseman opened the door and looked at Wilkins; and Wilkins picking up his trunk, stepped through and into the back yard, and then, the door of the basement laundry being open, into the laundry itself.

Only the under-laundress was present, which caused him to stiffen as he said coldly:

"For Felice!"

"The—the poor young lady's maid!" said the laundress, with a sudden snivel.

"I'll take it to her room," Wilkins said. "Where will that be, and where will I find the young woman herself?"

The under-laundress dried her eyes on one corner of her apron.

"I dunno about Felice," she said uncertainly. "Mebbe Mr. Bates—oh, here comes Mr. Bates now."

Round, red, highly perturbed, the Dalton butler bustled into the laundry and looked Wilkins up and down.

"Trunk for the master?" he asked crisply.

"For Felice, the young lady's maid, as I understand," Wilkins said quietly. "Where shall I find her? It's for herself."

His calm and superior smile warned Bates not to question an affair that could not possibly concern him—yet the warning missed Bates somehow. He looked sharply at Wilkins and laughed.

"You'll not find her here!" said he.

"I mean Felice, the maid of——"

"I know the one you mean," Bates said briefly. "She's not here and she'll not be here again! She's been dismissed!"

"What?" said Wilkins.

Bates looked him over sternly, as if to suggest that if he happened to be a friend of Felice he had passed beneath contempt.

"She's went!" Bates said sourly. "This here house is no place for young Frenchies that wanders the streets at night, believe me. She sneaked in—I dunno what hour this early morning, and she was able to give no account at all of where she'd been. There wasn't no further questions asked; she went, bag and baggage!"

One of those mental clouds which had been troubling Anthony since last night came now to engulf the complacent Wilkins. He looked at Bates, as if refusing to believe a word of it. He looked at the trunk and his expression was a study.

"Well, as to where this young person has gone," Wilkins said. "You see, this trunk being, as it were, her personal property, I've been asked to see that she gets it herself and——"

"Where she's gone is no concern of ours. We don't know and we don't want to know!" said Mr. Bates. "The hussy went without a character and that's all we can tell you about her. And this here house is too full of trouble for me to be bothering with you about her trunk," concluded Mr. Bates. "Anything belonging to her gets out!"

"Out!" Wilkins muttered.

"Out!" said Mr. Bates, and pointed at the door.

Let us not forget what Anthony altogether forgot, to wit: the sinister warning of Hobart Hitchin in regard to shipping boxes, trunks or other containers that might well have held a dismembered body.

For one of Hitchin's strange temperament and habits of thought, his own apartment could not have been situated more happily, if an affair of this kind were to involve Anthony Fry.

Room for room, the home of the prosperous crime-student was directly below that of Anthony; they used the same dumbwaiter, and they were served by the same service elevator, so that if Hitchin had so elected he could even have inspected the meals that went to Anthony's table. Still more, they were in the old wing of the Lasande, where the rooms are larger, but where the floors—laid long before the days of sound-proof concrete filling—permit the unduly inquisitive to hear much of what goes on above and below.

According to his own reasoning, Hitchin had struck upon the investigation of his whole lifetime. Surely as he wore spectacles, murder had been done in the flat of the impeccable Anthony Fry.

What the motive could possibly be, Hobart Hitchin could only guess, as he had already guessed; but it was a fact that he had been suspicious ever since Anthony's appearance last night with the slim boy of the heavy storm coat and the down-pulled cap. These, failing to harmonize with anything that went in and out of the Lasande ordinarily, had twanged every responsive string in Hitchin's consciousness, and not by any manner of means had the strings ceased twanging after his unusual interview with Anthony.

Hence, having returned to his own flat, he waited tense and expectant. With straining ears he heard the coming of Beatrice Boller and the subsequent excitement, and to him her peculiar cries signified another friend of David Prentiss's who had come suddenly upon the grisly thing that had once been the young boy.

And now those processes of deductive reasoning which are used so successfully in fiction and so infrequently in real life, informed Hobart Hitchin that the crime's next step was almost at hand. Accustomed to murder or otherwise, an intelligent man like Anthony Fry would risk no more of these disturbances; whatever his original plans, he would seek very shortly to get the body out of the Lasande—hardly in grips, Hitchin fancied, probably not in a packing case, rather in that reliable actor in so many sensational murders, a trunk.

Here, on the floor above him, some one moved and bumped what was unquestionably a hollow, empty trunk!

As the veteran fireman responds to the gong, so did the brain of Hobart Hitchin respond to that bump! Fifteen seconds and he had visualized the whole of the next step; the trunk to the freight elevator, thence to the street, thence to the waiting motor express wagon, thence—

Again, after a time, came the bump, indicating that the trunk was in the living-room now—and then, absolutely true to the hypothesis, Anthony's door opened and the bumps went to the hall, while the freight elevator came up the shaft!

The brief-case containing the trousers of David Prentiss had not left Hobart Hitchin's cold hand. It did not leave now as, snatching a hat, he sped down the back stairs of the Lasande—a proceeding likely to save five seconds at least when one considered the slow response of the elevators—cut through the second floor and came down to the side entrance, just beyond the office and the desk.

There was a taxicab as usual at the curb just here. Without leaving the vestibule, Hobart Hitchin signaled it to wait for him; and then, ever so charily, he thrust forward his eagle eyes and directed their merciless beam through the side panel of the glass. Hobart Hitchin all but lost his self-control and laughed excitedly, for there, just down the block, Anthony's personal servant was lugging a wardrobe trunk to the curb.

Ah! And he planned to use the safer taxicab, apparently, rather than the truck; and it seemed to Hobart Hitchin that the driver knew his full errand and demanded his share in advance, because Wilkins handed him money. After that, without effort, because David Prentiss had been light and slender in life, Wilkins took his ghastly burden into the back of the cab and drove away.

But Hobart Hitchin, the relentless, was just twenty yards behind, and his driver, spurred by a ten-dollar bill, bent forward and watched every turn of the wheels as he followed. Thus they left the region of the Lasande—and since we all have our personal dreams, it was right enough for Hobart Hitchin to sit back and indulge his own.

As a millionaire now and then makes himself part and parcel of the local fire-department, following faithfully to every blaze, answering every alarm, so Hobart Hitchin, with a patrimony that rendered real work absurd, dreamed of the day when he should be recognized as the most eminent private expert in crime these great United States have ever held.

Mistily, he had been able time and time again to visualize himself, spectacles and all, surrounded by perturbed policemen who had come to the end of their rope in crime detection, who listened respectfully while he expounded the elements of the particular case in hand. But the mists were almost gone now; this brilliant morning, for the very first time, Hobart Hitchin had picked off a live one.

Yes, and it grew more and more live every second, for instead of heading downtown, and trying—as Hobart Hitchin had fully expected—to ship the trunk by express to some out-of-town point, Wilkins had made his way to West End Avenue!

This in itself was very curious; it did not even suggest that Wilkins was headed out of town with the remains; and it did not even hint at the astounding thing which followed, several blocks farther uptown! As the taxi stopped at Theodore Dalton's side gate, Hitchin all but fell from his cab as he craned forward!

By some lucky accident, he knew that house, and knew, in a general way, of its owner. This was the liniment king—and Anthony Fry was the owner of Fry's Imperial Liniment; there was a link as of solid steel, made of liniment only, yet utterly unbreakable!

What did it mean? What could it mean?

Hitchin leaned back for an instant and closed his eyes, giving his mighty brain the freest rein of its existence, urging it with every fiber in him to hit upon the correct theory.

And then, eyes opening, it almost seemed that he had hit upon it! These two, Dalton and Fry, were doubtless associated in business, whatever the supposed rivalry. Was it not thinkable that the devilish messes of one or the other had ruined the health of the Prentiss boy? Was it not possible that Anthony, luring him to his home, had been trying to buy him off from a threatened suit—get a quit-claim or something of that kind? For that matter, could it be anything else? The boy had refused and—big business had wiped out another individual!

He might well enough be wrong, but if wrong he were, why was Wilkins taking the trunk straight into the premises of Theodore Dalton? He had done that now, and now the gate had closed upon him, and Hobart Hitchin, suddenly determined on the most spectacular act of his life, tapped his driver on the shoulder.

"Go around to the front of this house—yes, the corner one!" he said, and there was a little shake in his voice.

His path was clear enough. Anthony Fry would not seek to escape as yet; they never did at this stage when they fancied the crime itself safely out of the way. Anthony would be there when wanted—and single-handed, Hobart Hitchin meant to take into custody the two most sensational murderers of their generation!

It was a tremendous thing. By the time he had stepped up to the spacious door of Theodore Dalton's home, the tremendousness of it had so overcome Hobart Hitchin that he could not have reasoned out the two times two multiplication table! He was for the time a man bereft of what most of us consider senses, so that he walked straight past Bates and said:

"Mr. Dalton!"

"You're bringing word, sir?" Bates cried.

"I wish to see Mr. Dalton. He is at home," said Hitchin.

Bates considered for a moment and then nodded; it was no morning for quibbling.

"In here, sir!" he said, pattering off quickly to Dalton's study.

He pattered out again as quickly, and Hobart Hitchin, having taken a chair, rose from it at once and took to walking, brief-case still clutched in his hand and an exalted smile on his lips. So Theodore Dalton found him when he entered, fifteen seconds later—a mighty man, deep of chest, savage of eye, square of chin, with great hairy hands and a shaggy gray head. Not more than a single second did Dalton look at Hitchin before he barked:

"Well? Well? You are bringing word of her?"

"Her?" smiled Hobart Hitchin, with unearthly calm.

"My daughter!" Theodore Dalton thundered. "What——"

"I know nothing about your daughter, Dalton," Hitchin said, with his icy smile. "Will you be seated?"

"No!" said the master of the house. "What the devil do you want here, if it isn't about my daughter?"

"I want just five minutes conversation with you, on a matter which concerns you most vitally."

Theodore Dalton closed his hairy fists.

"Look here, sir," he said, with a calm of his own which was decidedly impressive. "If you're jackass enough to come in here on the morning when my daughter—my daughter—has disappeared—if you're clown enough to try to sell me anything——"

"I'm not trying to sell you anything; I'm trying to tell you something!" Hitchin said, and there was something so very peculiar about his smile that even Theodore Dalton postponed the forcible eviction for a few minutes.

"Tell me what?"

"Dalton," said Hobart Hitchin, "the game is up!"

"What?" rasped Mr. Dalton.

"The boy, David Prentiss—or what remains of the boy, David Prentiss—has just been brought into your house. And I know!"

Theodore Dalton said nothing; for a moment he could say nothing. Hitchin's teeth showed in a triumphant smile.

"Murder will out!" said he. "Murder——"

"Murder!" Theodore Dalton snarled. "What the——"

"David Prentiss, who was murdered last night, has been brought here!" the palpable lunatic pursued. "Don't shout! Don't try to strike me! Look!"

Already he had opened the brief-case; now, with a dramatic whisk, he spread the trousers on the table.

And if he looked for an effect upon Dalton, the effect was there even in excess of any expectation! Theodore Dalton, after one quick downward glance, cried out queerly, thickly, far down in his throat! His eyes seemed to start from his head; his hands, going out together, snatched up the trousers and held them nearer to the window. With a jerk, Theodore Dalton turned one of the rear pockets inside out and looked swiftly at the little linen name-plate sewed therein by the tailor who had made them.

The trousers dropped from his fingers and Theodore Dalton collapsed!

Gray, gasping, unable to speak at first, he crumpled into the chair beside the table and stared up numbly at Hobart Hitchin, who smiled just as he had always meant to smile in the event of such a moment coming before his death.

"You—you!" Dalton choked. "You say—the wearer of those trousers has been murdered?"

"As you know," said Hobart Hitchin. "The boy——"

"A boy about twenty-two, smooth shaven—a nice kid—a boy with a shock of brown hair and—and——" Theodore Dalton cried, in a queer, broken little voice, as he gripped the table. "No! No! Not that boy!"

"That boy!" said Hitchin. "David Prentiss!"

Dalton's whole soul seemed to burst!

"It was no David Prentiss!" he cried. "My—my daughter's gone and now my only son has been murdered!"

Concerning Three Groups

For the first time, Wilkins looked at Mr. Bates and thought swiftly. Having thought for half a minute, he had accomplished a complete circle and was exactly where he had started. It was plain that the maid Felice was somewhere else; equally plain was it that, for the purpose of the moment, the maid Felice could satisfactorily be in but one place—and that right here!

Had she merely been out for a little time he could have taken the trunk to her room and, opening the lid a bit, could have fled with his task accomplished; she was, however, out permanently—so that the very best Wilkins had accomplished at the end of a full minute was:

"Out? Quite so. But where has the young person gone, if you please?"

Mr. Bates scowled angrily.

"We don't know, I've told you!" he said sharply. "When one of the help's dismissed under circumstances like that, we don't trouble to ask where she's going and we don't keep her address."

"But she might be having mail to forward——" Wilkins essayed hopefully.

"Any mail that comes for her'll be handed to the carrier again," Bates snapped. "And now will you get her box out of here, you? I can't have it about, and I've no time this morning to argue with you. The master's daughter's disappeared and we're all on edge."

"And not a soul in the world knowing where she's gone, poor lamb!" sniveled the under-laundress, laying a hand on the trunk that held Mary. "And her that home-loving she never——"

"Hush!" said Mr. Bates.

The woman subsided into her apron.

"Whatever's taken her, she's trying to get home! She's trying——" she sobbed.

"Well, whatever's taken her, get that trunk out of here!" the Dalton butler snapped.

Was there anything else to do? Wilkins, having thought until his head ached, could not see it. If the girl had a friend among the help, it might be left with the friend; but the only woman of the household present had taken pains to look properly scandalized at each mention of Felice. Or if Mary hadn't cautioned him particularly against this Bates, he would have risked taking Bates aside and communicating the astounding truth.

But since things were as they were, and not as they might have been; since Bates was actually glaring at him now, and would, in another minute, be banging the trunk back to the street himself, there was really nothing left for Wilkins but to grip the wide handle and start slowly for the door again.

It was bad! Oh, it was very bad, with Mary in there and very likely stifling to death, but Wilkins shuffled slowly back to the taxicab with his burden, slowly and carefully put it aboard once more.

"What's wrong?" asked the driver.

"The party it was for had left!" said Wilkins.

"Where to?"

Wilkins pondered heavily.

"Back again where we came from," he sighed. "But you might go rather slow, I think. Like enough I'll change my mind and decide to take it somewhere else. I can't say at the moment."

Clambering after himself, he looked about while the man hopped out and cranked his motor. Failure had leaped out and blasted the flower of success, just as every petal had opened wide! Utter failure was the portion of Wilkins—and the policeman on the far corner was watching him in the most disconcerting way.

Squinting over there in the sunshine, the blue-coat's instinct was telling him that there was something wrong about the trunk. He moved to the other side of the lamp-post and stared on; and Just here his sergeant appeared from the side street and the officer addressed him, even pointing with his club at the taxi!

Faithful Wilkins's heart stopped! When an officer approaches and asks one to open a trunk or bag, one opens it or goes up. Having opened this one, it was almost a certainty that one would go up also—and with that one would go Mary Dalton, and in the evening papers one of the most startling stories of the year would be featured.

We all of us have a peculiar way of seeing our own side of any given case before examining the others; so it was with Wilkins. Wilkins saw himself dismissed from what was really a very excellent, very well-paid, very easy job; he saw Anthony cursing himself and his stupidity and ordering him out of his sight forever!

"Can't you start?" he shot at his driver.

"Well, I'm just sitting down," that person stated acidly.

"Well, get her a-going and then turn around; don't go over there, but go back up this block! And start!" said Wilkins.

The cab started and turned, and he did not look behind. He had not need for that; he could feel the official eyes boring through the back of the cab and into himself; he could hear running feet; once he was quite sure he heard the pounding of a club on the curb, which meant that every officer in hearing would flock into sight. Wilkins, becoming stony of countenance after a struggle, shut his teeth and sat back, quite forgetting that Mary might welcome a breath or two of the outer air.

It was possible, after a little, if the police did not appear and stop the machine, that he would order the cab into the country and there release Mary, hat or no hat—but somehow Wilkins doubted whether he would make that decision.

What he craved more than anything else just now was security behind brick and stone walls—like the Lasande's.

Be it said that Hobart Hitchin had regained enough of his normal senses to feel distinctly startled. His vision cleared considerably as he looked at Theodore Dalton, crouching behind his table. He felt, in spite of himself, that Dalton's grief was perfectly genuine, but the utter mystery of the thing swept over him, too, and he leaned forward and asked:

"What did you say, sir? Your son?"

"These—these!" Dalton said, clutching the trousers. "My son Dick's—his fishing suit."

"And your son, where is he supposed to be?"

"In the north woods, somewhere, although I haven't heard from him for a week," Dalton choked; and then, being a powerful character, he threw off the hideous numbness and straightened up. "What did you say? What were you trying to tell me? Where did you get—these?"

"From the dumbwaiter where——"

"What dumbwaiter?"

"In the Hotel Lasande."

"When?"

"Very early this morning."

"How did you come to——"

"I saw a young man when he went into the house last night; I live there, you know. I had reason to think that something happened to him overnight, and this morning I managed to snatch this suit from the dumbwaiter as it passed my door. Further——"

"What was he doing there?"

"He came home last night with a gentleman you know," said Hobart Hitchin. "One Anthony Fry!"

"The liniment Fry?" cried Theodore Dalton.

His gray face turned white and then purple. He rose and ran one hand through his shaggy gray mop.

"The liniment Fry," Hitchin said.

"My boy—my Dicky went home with that man?"

"A boy was introduced to me as David Prentiss."

Dalton's hands clutched his forehead for a moment and the grinding of his teeth was audible.

"You were saying—what were you saying about a trunk?"

"I said that the remains of the boy had been brought here by Fry's personal servant, sir. I saw them taken into the side gate not ten minutes ago and——"

"Come!" said Theodore Dalton.

He reached out and, gripping Hitchin's arm, decided that gentleman's course for him. As Theodore Dalton strode to the back of the house and to the back stairs, as he went straight down and into and through the kitchen, Hobart Hitchin merely went along, partly in stumbles, partly in little jumps; and so they came to the laundry and, nerving himself until the veins stood out on his temples, Dalton faced his butler and spoke thickly:

"The—the trunk!"

"Beg pardon, sir?" said Bates humbly.

"The trunk which was brought here! Where is it?"

"Oh, that trunk, sir. It was took away again, Mr. Dalton. The person that brought it said it was for Felice, the maid we dismissed this morning, sir."

"For Felice?" Dalton echoed.

"Quite so, sir."

"Why was it sent to Felice?"

"I couldn't say, sir," said Bates, stepping to the gate and opening it. "There it goes, sir, on the cab. Shall I send after it?"

Dalton leaned heavily against Hobart Hitchin.

"Goes—where?"

"Well, I'm not sure as it was his voice, sir, but I think, standing out here, I heard him tell the man to go back where they came from."

Followed quite a tableau.

Bates stared respectfully at his master. Hobart Hitchin, who had not as yet had time to form a complete new set of theories, merely stood and frowned. But although Theodore Dalton did not move, he did not seem still.

His face, in fact, mirrored the whole gamut of human emotions of the darker sort; overwhelming sorrow was there at first, and then, succeeding slowly, amazement and unbelief, and after them trembling anger. Black fire shot from his deepset eyes, as they switched to Hitchin; his lips became a ghastly white line; his mighty chest rose and fell; and now he had taken Hobart Hitchin's arm again and led him back to a dusky corridor.

"You!" said Dalton. "I don't know who you are and why you came here; but this I ask you, and if you don't answer truthfully, God help you! Does that trunk, to your belief, contain the body of the boy you call Prentiss?"

"To my almost certain knowledge!"

"And he was murdered in the apartment of Anthony Fry?"

"He was, sir, and——"

"Come!" said Theodore Dalton, once more, and they returned to the study in a series of stumbles and little jumps.

Once in the dark, handsome room Theodore Dalton walked straight to the cabinet in the corner and, with a key, opened the topmost drawer. He extracted therefrom a heavy automatic pistol and slipped out its magazine. He opened a box of cartridges and filled the little box; and when it had clicked into the handle of the automatic, and the pistol itself was in his pocket.

"There was a cab leaving the door when you came," he said quietly. "Did you dismiss it?"

"I—I believe so," said Hobart Hitchin, who as an actual fact liked neither the sight of the weapon nor the sight of Dalton just now.

"Bates!" Dalton spoke into the little interior telephone. "My car!"

"If you're going somewhere——" escaped Hobart Hitchin.

"I am going to see Anthony Fry. You are going with me. You are going to accuse him, in my presence, of the crime," said Theodore Dalton, with the same ominous calm. "And when you have accused him, I shall do the rest! Sit down!"

Anthony Fry, because there was more relief in him than flesh and blood, leaned back in his pet chair and gazed at the ceiling, long, steadily, happily. He would have liked to smoke, yet he declined to make the effort which would break the delicious lassitude that possessed him. He would have liked to sing, too, and clap Johnson Boller on the back and assure him that all was well in the best possible world—but for a little it was enough to sneer smilingly at Boller's bent head.

He, poor fool, fancied that all was over because his infernal wife had threshed around a bit and gone off clutching poor little Mary's hat—a funny thing in itself. Instead of getting up and cheering at his prospective freedom from the matrimonial yoke, Johnson was groaning there and clawing into his hair; and now, by the way, he was raising his head and turning toward his old friend.

"Anthony!" Johnson Boller said faintly.

"What is it?"

"You wouldn't pull a thing like that on me?"

"I certainly shall, if you ever try to tell the truth about Miss Dalton."

"But what did she ever do for me, to let her confounded reputation wreck my life? All she ever did was to make a female ass of herself by wearing pants and going to a prize fight and then listening to you. Why should a thing like that bust up my home?"

Anthony shrugged his shoulders.

"It may not," said he.

"It has!" Johnson Boller said feverishly. "And listen, Anthony! You and I have to stand together, old man. The girl's out of the way, so that clears your skirts for a while, but what about Hitchin? What if he calls in the police this afternoon?"

Anthony laughed; with Mary out of the way he was another man.

"We'll let that take care of itself. For that matter, why not go down and tell Hitchin the truth and show him what a fool he's making of himself? He's a gentleman, I suppose; if we swear him to secrecy he's not likely to talk."

"And if we call him off, then we'll find Bee and tell her the truth, too?" Johnson Boller asked eagerly. "She's a lady, Anthony. If we swear her to secrecy, she'll never talk—and maybe we could explain it to the girl and have her verify what we say, hey?"

Anthony actually yawned and stretched as he arose.

"We'll settle Hitchin first," he smiled. "Come along!"

He lounged out of the flat and to the stairs, Boller hugging close to his side. He yawned again as he pressed the buzzer of the Hitchin apartment, and he even smiled condescendingly at the inscrutable Japanese who answered.

"Mr. Hitchin," said Anthony. "Say that Mr. Fry and Mr. Boller wish to see him, if you please."

The Japanese shook his head.

"He no home!"

"Out?" said Anthony in some astonishment.

"Yes, sir, li'l while ago," the Oriental said. "He go very quick."

"And he will be back—when?"

"Mr. Hitchin no say, sir!" the Japanese sighed.

Therefore they turned back to the stairs; and as they came to the foot of the flight Johnson Boller gripped his friend's arm suddenly and looked whitely at him.

"It's all over!" he said.

"What?"

"The trunk! The trunk she went out in! Didn't he say something about not sending out anything?"

"That has no connection with his going out!" Anthony snapped, although some of his insouciance fled.

"Hasn't it, though? Well, it has every connection! He's chased Wilkins and, long before this, he's called a cop and had him taken in! The whole thing's over, Anthony. That trunk's in a police station now and they've opened it—and your Dalton man's daughter is behind the bars as a suspicious character before this."

Anthony Fry's scowl turned black.

"Can't you see me peaceful, without trying to smash it by babbling a lot of rot like that?" he demanded angrily. "Wilkins must have the girl inside her home by this time and——"

"Why should you be peaceful and happy when my home's wrecked?" Johnson Boller asked hotly.

"We will not discuss it out here," said his host, leading the way upstairs again.

Dismally he trailed through the door he had left so cheerfully a moment ago. Johnson Boller trailed after him even more dismally, albeit with some grim satisfaction at his altered mien.

"We can sit down here and wait now," he stated. "We don't have to do anything more than that, Anthony. We can figure it all out. Either he has had the trunk and Wilkins taken in, or he's just determined that our guilt is cinched. If the former, all creation knows by this time that Dalton's daughter was up to something—queer. If there's a general alarm out for her, they'll recognize her when she comes out of that trunk. On the other hand, if Hitchin has let the trunk go, he's having warrants sworn out by this time and they're dusting off the seats in the nearest patrol-wagon. Either Dalton gets you and probably me, too, or the police get us. That's all that can happen and——"

"Stop!" Anthony barked. "I don't care a rap what happens, so long as the girl is not laid open to suspicion, and I don't believe Hitchin or anybody else is going to contrive that, once Wilkins started to deliver the trunk. That is my sole concern now—to shield her!"

Having delivered with commendable sentiment, Anthony demonstrated his entire calm by rising with a nervous jerk, by listening, and finally by striding to the door of his apartment, which he opened.

Thereafter he stepped back suddenly, for with one searing glance at him a woman had passed.

She was in the living-room even now, and smiling horribly at Johnson Boller. She was, in a word, Johnson Boller's wife, and her black eyes snapped more ominously than before.

"Don't touch me!" she was saying, as Johnson Boller approached with hands outstretched. "I've come back, but only to tell you!"

"To tell me that you've changed your mind, little pigeon?" Johnson Boller cried brokenly. "You're going to let Pudgy-wudgy——"

"Faugh!" said the lady, and from her radiated the Spanish grandmother and all the strain implied—blood lust, vengeance! "No, I've come to tell you that I mean to make that woman's name a scandal and a byword from end of town to the other. Not some woman's name, but the woman's name!"

"But——"

"How can I do it?" laughed the different Mrs. Boller. "I've found out who she is!"

Thick and Fast

However faint the appeal it made to Johnson Boller, Anthony's statement had been the literal truth—his sole concern just now was the shielding of Mary Dalton.

More and more, these last calmer minutes, the ghastly aspect of the case as viewed from the woman's side had appealed to him. It is entirely possible that a little real mental suffering had rendered Anthony Fry less selfish and more considerate of the rest of the human race—Johnson Boller always excepted—than he had been for many years.

Whatever the cause, the weight of his own guilt was bearing down harder and harder, and he was prepared to go to extreme lengths if necessary in the way of keeping Mary's adventure an eternal secret.

But like many another plan and resolve of this bedeviled night and morning, the latest had been blasted to flinders!

Beatrice Boller, standing there with Mary's hat still clutched tight and partly broken, was not smiling the smile of a woman who fancied herself on the right track. She smiled the smile of one who knew exactly where she stood. Her lips curled now as she examined the worm that had been her husband, and she perched on the edge of the center-table.

"Unfortunate, isn't it, that you didn't pick some poor drab from the streets?" she asked, significantly and triumphantly. "Unfortunate for you and unfortunate for her!"

"Well, this—well, this——" Johnson Boller tried.

"Don't talk to me, please. I want to talk to you—oh, not for my sake or for your sake, to be sure. I don't know how much real man may be left in either of you; not very much, I imagine. But if you do want to save two innocent women from a good deal of embarrassment, you shall have the chance."

She laughed again as she watched the effect of the cryptic statement. She sat down, then, and having opened her hand-bag and drawn therefrom a little slip of paper, she resumed her inspection of the silent pair.

"You don't understand at all, do you? Well, you shall! Your lady friend made one mistake, gentlemen. Any young woman off on that sort of adventure should be cautious enough to destroy marks of identification. This hat, as it happens, came from Mme. Altier, just uptown."

"The little blonde?" escaped from Johnson Boller.

"The little blonde," sneered his wife. "The little blonde is quite a friend of mine; I lent her the money that started her in business up this way, in fact, and I've been buying hats there for five years. Therefore, I went and interviewed the little blonde, and her memory and her methods of bookkeeping are alike commendable. She might not have told another woman, but she was very glad to tell me."

Beatrice gazed at the slip briefly.

"Mrs. Henry Wales!" she said very suddenly indeed, and sent her eyes straight through both of them at once.

Innocent for once, Anthony and Johnson Boller merely frowned at Beatrice, and after a little she shrugged her shoulders.

"Not Mrs. Henry Wales, evidently," she mused. "Very well; I was right about her. I've met her, I think, and she seemed a little bit too nice for that sort of thing. Er—Laura Cathcart!"

Once more the word was hurled straight into them. Once more Anthony and his old friend stared innocently—but they did a little more this time. They turned and stared at one another, and all the air between them vibrated with a wordless message!

Beatrice had made one grave tactical error in not reading the right name first; Anthony and his friend understood now and were quite prepared for anything—and it seemed almost as if Beatrice sensed the message, for she frowned a little as she said:

"Mary Dalton!"

Blankly, innocently as babes unborn, and still not too innocently withal, Anthony and Johnson Boller stared back, and the latter even had assurance enough to say:

"What's the idea, Bee? Is it a roll-call?"

"It is the names of the three women in New York who have bought that particular style of hat from Sarah," said Mrs. Boller. "She made up just three, as is her custom, and when they were sold she made no more. So that in spite of your extreme wonder at hearing the names, and although I had rather hoped to guess which one it might be, one of that trio was in this flat last night. Which one?"

Johnson Boller shook his head vigorously.

"None of 'em!" he said flatly.

"What do you say?" Beatrice asked Anthony.

"Madam, I decline to say anything whatever!" Anthony said stiffly.

"Really?" smiled Beatrice, and gazed at them pensively for a little while. "I do not know intimately any of these ladies. They have, doubtless, a husband and fathers and, I hope, a few big brothers, too, to take care of them properly. And since they have, I may as well tell you just what I mean to do. I'm going to Mrs. Wales first."

It produced no visible shock.

"I'm going to accuse her, in so many words, of passing last night in this apartment, and I'll say you confessed!" pursued Beatrice. "Perhaps she can clear herself by showing me the duplicate of this hat; perhaps she cannot. In any event, it seems probable that her husband and the rest of her male relatives will make a point of coming here and beating you two to a jelly."

It did seem rather likely, and Johnson Boller glanced at his old friend and received no aid at all.

"Unless she confesses, Miss Cathcart receives the next call," said Johnson's wife. "The procedure will be the same; the results to you, I sincerely hope, will be the same. After that, if necessary, I shall go to the Dalton woman's home and repeat the performance, and doubtless her father and her brothers will——"

"Say! Do you want to have us killed?" Johnson Boller gasped.

"Yes!" hissed the Spanish strain in Beatrice. "Well?"

Anthony shook his head quietly.

"None of the ladies you have mentioned——" he began.

"One of them was here, and I'll soon know which one!" Beatrice corrected quickly. "Do you wish to save the other two?"

Anthony said nothing.

"Nope!" Johnson Boller said doggedly.

Beatrice rose slowly and looked them over.

"Do you know," said she, all withering contempt, "I had been fool enough to fancy that there was man enough in one or the other of you to spare the innocent women a very distressing quarter of an hour. Even if that failed, I had fancied that one or the other would have sufficient intelligence to avoid a thrashing if possible. I was wrong! There isn't a spark of manhood or an ounce of brain matter in either of you—and to think that I married you!"

She had risen. She was getting ready to go upon her fell mission; and the calm contempt slid away from Anthony and cold terror crawled up his spinal column. Just when he had fondly imagined that all was well, Beatrice had come and proved that all was anything else in the world!

Just when he had fancied that Mary was safe at home and, with her doubtless capable maid, was devising a convincing tale to account for her absence, Beatrice must needs appear and show that, tale or no tale, Mary was to be accused.

And there wasn't a flaw in her program, by the way. She held the hat as a man might cling to a straw in mid-ocean; and the lady who could show a similar hat would clear herself and then start her male relatives after Anthony; and the lady who could not show a similar hat—was Mary!

Obviously the fine resolve he had made was to avail little enough, but Anthony could think of no way of staying the lady. Physical force leaped up as a possibility in his tortured mind and leaped out again as quickly.

One suggestion of that sort of thing and instinct told him that Beatrice, in her present unlovely mood, would scream until the rafters echoed, if they happened to have rafters in the Hotel Lasande. Moral suasion, honeyed talk were still farther from the possibilities. No, Beatrice would have to go!

She was ready now. Habit superseding circumstances, Beatrice had stepped to the mirror and tucked up a few stray locks of hair. The little hat was under her arm, and the arm had shut down tight on it.

"You two curs!" Beatrice said, by way of farewell, and turned away from them with a sweep.

It was no apartment in which to do what one expected to do. Beatrice, one step taken, stopped short. Out at the door some one was hammering in a way oddly familiar. Anthony, rising again, hurried to answer the summons—and the door was hardly open when young Robert Vining hurtled in and gripped him by both arms.

"It's no use, Anthony!" he gasped. "There's not a trace of her yet!"

"No?"

"She's gone! She's gone!" cried Robert, breaking into his familiar refrain. "I've just had the house on the wire, and there's no news of her at all as yet. I've had police headquarters on the wire, and they haven't heard or seen a thing. Miriam—that's one of her chums—has just finished going over Bellevue, and there's no sign of Mary down there!"

By now they were in the living-room, and Beatrice, somewhat startled at the sign of a being in agony equal to her own stood aside.

"She's gone!" said Robert Vining. "And I've been around to Helène's—that's another of her chums, Anthony—and she's going to telephone all the girls. That takes that off my hands and leaves me free to go over all the hospitals that haven't been covered yet. That's what brings me here, old man. You'll have to come with me."

"Very well!" Anthony said swiftly. "We'll start now."

"Because I haven't got the nerve to do it alone!" Robert cried. "I—somebody has to go to the Morgue, too! And suppose we should go down there—I was there just once and I had the horrors for a month—suppose we should go down there and find her, Anthony, all——"

"Hush!" said Anthony. "Don't go into the possibilities; there's a lady present, Bob."

Vining almost came to earth for a moment.

"What?"

"To be sure. Mrs. Boller—Mr. Robert Vining."

He spoke directly at her, so that Robert, out of his emotional fog, gained an idea of her location, and turned dizzily toward her. There was upon his countenance a strained, heart-broken, half-apologetic smile as he faced Beatrice Boller. He bowed, too, perfunctorily.

Then Robert raised his stricken eyes.

And as he raised them, a great shock ran through Robert, and after it he stiffened. His eyes popped, as if he could not quite believe what he saw, and his body swayed forward. Robert, with a hoarse, incoherent scream, ran straight at Beatrice Boller and snatched away the hat from under her arm.

"That's Mary's! That's Mary's!" he cried hysterically. "That's Mary's hat, because I was with her the day she bought it, and I'd know it among ten thousand hats! Yes, and it's torn and broken—it's all smashed on this side!"

Greenish white, jaw sagging, Robert looked from one to the other of them.

"You—you're afraid to tell me!" said he. "She—there was an accident! I can see that by the hat. There was an accident and she was hurt and—where is she now? Where is she now? Good God! Is she—dead?"

"She isn't dead," Anthony said queerly, because he had been looking at Beatrice and feeling his flesh crawl as he looked.

"Then where is Mary? Why don't you tell me about it?" Robert stormed on. "What's the matter? Is she badly hurt? Doesn't she want me? Hasn't she tried to send for me?" And whirling upon Beatrice, the unfortunate young man threw out his hands and cried: "You tell me, if they will not! What has happened to her? Where did you get the hat?"

Normally, Beatrice Boller was the very last mortal in the world to inflict pain upon a fellow-being; but the normal Beatrice was far away just now.

As Anthony noted with failing heart, it was a big moment for the outraged creature before Robert Vining, for she was about to make another of the accursed sex to suffer. It did not seem humanly possible that she could communicate her personal view of Mary to Robert; but certainly Beatrice was accomplishing a very dramatic pause, and in it her lips drew back and showed her beautiful teeth.

"The young lady is a friend of yours, too?" she asked very sweetly.

"Friend!" cried Robert cried. "She's the girl I'm going to marry! Where is she, madam? Can't you tell me what has happened?"

Beatrice's laugh was blood-curdling.

"Mrs. Boller!" Anthony cried. "I protest——"

"Do you really?" Beatrice smiled and turned directly to Robert. "So you're going to marry her?"

"What? Yes."

"Or perhaps you're not!" Mrs. Boller mused, "You think her a very worthy young woman?"

Robert looked blankly at her.

"But she is not," Beatrice said softly. "And you look like a decent sort, and however much it may hurt for a little, you shall have the truth. You asked me where I found this hat. Well, it was in the bedroom at the end of that corridor—Mr. Boller's room!"

She waited vainly for a little, because Robert simply did not comprehend. He frowned at Beatrice and then shook his head.

"What—what do you say?"

"It had been there all night, Mr. Vining," Beatrice purred on. "So had she!"

"Mary—my Mary? Mary Dalton?" Robert gasped.

"Mary Dalton!"

"But that—that's all damned—pardon me!—nonsense! That——"

He turned on Anthony; and then, quickly as he had turned, he gasped and stared with burning eyes.

View him as one chose, there was nothing about Anthony to indicate that it was nonsense. He was biting his lips; his eyes were upon the floor; had he rehearsed the thing for months he could not possibly have looked more guilty.

"Why—why——" choked Robert Vining.

Beatrice laid a slender hand on his arm.

"Come with me," she said quickly. "Come and see her bag and her little toilet case and several other of her things. Perhaps you'll recognize them, too, and they'll convince you that she really settled down here for a visit. Come!"

As a man in a dreadful dream, Robert Vining followed her blindly into the corridor and out of sight. Johnson Boller smiled a demon smile and thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets.

"Here's where he gets his!" he stated. Anthony could no more than speak.

"That—that woman!" he contrived. "What an absolutely merciless thing——"

"Huh? Bee?" the remarkable Boller said sharply. "She's all right; she's acting according to her own lights, isn't she? Why the devil shouldn't Vining suffer, too? D'ye think I'm the only man in the world that has to suffer?"

"I think you're in luck if she divorces you!" Anthony stated feelingly. "A woman capable of that is capable of anything!"

Johnson Boller stayed the angry words upon his lips and smiled grimly. More, after a moment he thrust out his hand.

"I guess it doesn't matter much what you think now, Anthony," said he. "Good-by!"

"What?"

"Good-by, old man! You're going to leave this world in about three minutes, you know—just as soon as he's convinced and able to act again, Anthony. So long I'll be sorry to think of you as missing—sometimes, I suppose, but not when I think what you've put over on me."

Anthony laughed viciously.

"Don't use up all your sympathy," he said. "You may need a little for yourself, Johnson. The things are in what's supposed to be your room, you know."

"What?" gasped Johnson Boller. "That's true! That——"

Out at the entrance, a key was scraping in the latch; and when it had scraped for the second time Anthony smiled forlornly.

"Wilkins," he said. "Back to report that the girl's safe at home—whatever good that may do now. Is that you, Wilkins?"

"That's—that's me, sir!" Wilkins puffed.

And the door closed and in the foyer bump—bump—bump indicated that Wilkins was carrying something, a trunk one might almost have thought from the sound. Rather red, gleaming perspiration that had not all come from exertion, Wilkins appeared, moved into the room, gazed feelingly at his master, was about to speak and then caught the sound of voices from David's room.

"The—the parties couldn't attend to the trunk to-day!" said Wilkins.

"She—isn't in there?" Anthony whispered.

"I have no reason to think otherwise, sir," said the faithful one.

"You didn't leave her?"

"There was no one to leave her with, sir, and I was ordered out with the trunk," Wilkins said, smiling wanly. "There wasn't nowhere to come but here, sir, with the police after me."

From down the corridor issued—

"Yes! I'm—Heaven help me—I'm convinced!"

"I'll be taking her into your room, sir," Wilkins said hastily. "She must be needing a breath of air by this time, poor young lady!"

Another nightmare figure, he lumbered across the living-room and into Anthony's chamber; and regardless of possible consequences Anthony followed and snatched open the trunk.

Mary had not expired. Her face was decidedly red and her eyes rather bewildered, but she struggled out with Anthony's assistance, breathed deeply several times, glanced at her hair in the mirror and then, being a thoroughly good sport, Mary even managed a small, wretched laugh.

"Back again!" she said simply. "They'd discharged Felice."

"Was there—nobody else?" Anthony asked.

"Dorothy, our little parlor maid, would have done, I suppose, but Wilkins didn't know about her," said the girl, facing him. "It's pretty awful, isn't it?"

Even now she had not lost her nerve! The chivalrous something in Anthony welled up more strongly than ever; the precise, rather old-maidish quality of his expression vanished altogether—and for the very first time Mary almost liked him.

"It's very awful, indeed," he said quickly. "More awful than you imagine, but—we'll try to believe that all is not lost even now. One way or another, I'll get you out of it, Miss Mary, if I have to lie my soul into perdition. I don't know how at the moment, but the way will indicate itself; I decline to believe anything else! You'll have to stay here and keep your ears wide open and take your cue from whatever I'm saying. I hope——"

"Psst!" said Johnson Boller.

Anthony left the room with a motion that was more twitch than anything else, and he left it none too soon. The shock, or the first of it, was over; Robert Vining was coming back to them, not like a nice young man, but rather like a Kansas cyclone! Three thuds in the corridor, and he appeared before them.

Robert's countenance was gray-white; his white lips, parted a little, seemed to be stretched over his teeth; his eyes blazed blue fire! And behind Robert—and be it confessed that there was a certain indefinite atmosphere of fright about her—Beatrice smiled.

"So you—you—you beastly scoundrel!" Robert began, his hands working as he looked straight at Johnson Boller and ignored the very existence of Anthony Fry. "I don't know whether a thing like you can pray, but if you can, pray quick!"

"Me?" Johnson Boller gulped.

Robert laughed dreadfully.

"Don't waste your time gaping!" he said, thickly. "Pray if you want to, because you're going to die! D'ye hear? I'm going to choke out your nasty life as I'd choke the life out of a mad dog."

"Not my life!" Johnson Boller protested, with pale lips, as he pointed at Anthony. "He——"

"Whatever he may have had to do with luring her here I can settle with him afterward!" Robert cried. "My concern is with you; and if you want to say anything, hurry about it. I can't hold myself more than another second or two!"

By way of proving it, he stalked down upon Johnson Boller—not rapidly, but with a deadly slowness and deliberation which suggested the tiger coming down upon its prey. His flaring eyes had fascinated the victim, too, for Johnson Boller could not move a muscle. Once he tried to smile a farewell at Beatrice; his eyes would not remain away from Robert even long enough for that. Once he tried to look at Anthony, but it was quite useless.

And from that ominous region of the doorway came Wilkins's warm tones:

"Well, that's all right, gentlemen, but he's busy now."

"He's not too busy to see me," said an entirely strange voice, and heavy steps passed by Wilkins.

Into the large room which had already seen so much suffering, the distinctly scared person of Hobart Hitchin was propelled by a large, hairy hand. The owner of the hand glanced at him for an instant; and then for five terrific seconds stared at Anthony Fry, who after the first violent start had turned immobile as Johnson Boller himself.

"Mr.—what's your name?—Hitchin!" Dalton barked.

Hobart Hitchin straightened up with an effort.

"Fry," said he, "we—er—that is, I accuse you of the—ah—murder of Theodore Dalton's only son, Richard, alias David Prentiss!"