CHAPTER III
Peter Clancy
Mr. Peter Clancy, early of the Metropolitan Police, late of the United States Secret Service, and currently the active head of a small but brilliant private detective agency, sat at his desk, yawning.
Except for a few bootlegging cases, the last few weeks had been singularly uneventful, and on this bright spring morning the equally bright red head of the young detective was full of visions of leafy woods and murmuring brooks, where trout rose audaciously and leaped, a flash of rainbow and silver, in the glancing sunlight.
"If nothing comes across to-day," he ruminated, dreamily, "I'll turn over this righteous old burg to O'Malley's tender care, beat it out to Jersey, and have a hack at the trout with Harry Carlisle, darned if I won't."
The pleasant thoughts engendered by this determination were rudely interrupted by the sharp ringing of the telephone at his elbow.
"Another lot of hooch unearthed," he muttered to himself disgustedly, as he took the receiver off the hook and held it to his ear.
"Hello," he cried, with an unnecessary accent on the first syllable. "Who wants me, Maggie? Oh, all right. I don't know him, but put him on." An instant's pause, then—"Hello, yes. Peter Clancy speaking. Yes?" a rising inflection on the last word.
Suddenly the expression of annoyance left his face. He listened intently. His eyes narrowed to slits of flashing blue, his relaxed body tautened in every fibre. Once or twice he shot a question into the transmitter, but the entire conversation over the wire could have been measured by seconds.
At the end—"Ninety-nine Waverly Place? I'm there!" he said, and flinging the receiver upon its hook, he dashed into the street, picked up a passing taxi, and made good his word.
The street door of Ninety-nine Waverly Place was ajar. Clancy, flinging it wide as he reached the threshold, was greeted by a fluent ejaculation in profane and picturesque brogue, winding up with—
"It's the divil and all that's in it at all, at all! Bangin' me in the stomach with the whole side of a house!"
"Hello, Sullivan! What're you doing here?" cried Clancy, catching the arm of the uniformed policeman with a gesture which was, in itself, a hasty apology. "Anything to do with——" A motion of his head indicated the upper part of the house.
The officer nodded, and through his suddenly assumed air of preternatural sagacity there appeared a deep perplexity.
"Are you on it, yourself?" he asked, though he anticipated the affirmative answer. "Mr. Morris called you up, I suppose," he continued. "Said he was going to get the best man in New York, and I guess he has, at that," with a complimentary grin. "Ye can't down the Irish, eh, Mr. Clancy? Well, and what d'ye make of it?"
"Don't know many of the facts yet," Clancy replied, hastily. "Am just going after 'em. But what are you doing down here? Why aren't——"
"He requested me very polite to lave him alone wid it," answered the policeman, with so conscious an air of virtue that Clancy could almost see the denomination of the large bill which he felt sure was in Sullivan's pocket. "It was nothin' agin my duty to lave him," Sullivan explained, elaborately, "since I know Mr. Morris be sight, him not knowin' me and offerin' his card, which I had no need of at all, me havin' been usher at the Opera, before I got too big for them little uniforms they do be havin', and knowin' the Morris box like it was me own ward. And I had to see the Captain when he come, didn't I, and give him a hint of it before he wint upstairs?"
"Sure. You're all right, Sullivan," said Clancy, slapping the broad blue shoulder. "Be a good scout, and give me a hint before I go up. But be quick about it, will you? I don't want to keep Mr. Morris waiting. Where did he find you?"
"Just down the block a piece. I was goin' on me way, when I heard someone runnin' like hell behind me. 'Officer,' says he, 'come wid me, quick!' and he grabs me by the arm and no more he says, wid me racin' beside him puffin' to kape up, till we come to this door. Open it was, and up the stairs we go together like the divil was chasin' us. When we got to the top, 'Look,' says he, pointin' down, and no more words at all, at all, which might have been he was lackin' his breath, same as me. And I looked, and I couldn't see nothin' but somethin' white and thin, like smoke, a'most, that was stickin' out from under the door. You've heard about that?"
Clancy assented with a quick nod.
"Yes. He told me. So that's how he got you? That's what I wanted to know. Find out the rest upstairs. Thanks. See you later," and Clancy went up the stairs, two steps at a time.
Though his ascent was rapid, his foot fell quietly on the thick carpet. Quiet, too, was his hand on the knob of the door. He had often found that a sudden, unexpected entrance was effective in more ways than one. This time, however, the effect failed utterly, for the door was locked.
Clancy, frowning slightly, raised and let fall the small brass knocker.
He heard someone moving inside the apartment, and almost immediately a voice near the door asked:
"Who's there?"
At Clancy's reply, the door opened wide.
"Mr. Clancy!" ejaculated Donald Morris, accepting Peter's card with a glance of verification. "I didn't think you could possibly get here so soon. It was good of you——" He did not finish the sentence, but quickly motioned the detective inside and closed the door.
The narrow hall into which Clancy stepped was rather dark, the only light coming in from an open door at his right. Through this door Morris immediately led the way, into a large living room, Clancy following close at his heels.
As Morris stepped into the light, Clancy's quick eyes took in at a glance his strong features and haggard aspect. This was a man not easily alarmed, Clancy thought. It would take a good deal to upset his balance, and, in search of enlightenment, his glance travelled swiftly all about the room.
"Everything here just as you found it?" he asked, quickly.
Morris nodded. "All but this," he said, in a heavy voice, motioning toward a table which stood near one of the windows.
Clancy swiftly advanced and looked down intently at that which lay upon it. He touched it with his finger.
"You found this scarf across the door-sill," he said, meditatively. And leaning closer he went on, "Stained.... Yes.... Blood?... Looks like it. Could hardly be anything else.... Not much of it.... And you found no——"
"There's no one, dead or alive, in the apartment," Morris interrupted, hastily. He felt that he could not bear to hear the word which he saw forming itself on the detective's lips. "The officer went all through the place with me. It's empty, quite empty, though the janitor thought both Miss Blake and her sister were here. And," with a motion of his hand, "the place was as you see it."
Again Clancy looked carefully around the room. It was unusually large and spacious, occupying the entire front of the old house. Simple, good old furniture, well placed, gave it an air of comfort and elegance, though there was not an unnecessary thing in the room. The three large windows facing the south were covered by thin ecru curtains held in place by a small rod at top and bottom, letting in the light but obscuring the view of the ugly, tall buildings across the way.
Standing there, in that viewless room, Clancy had a swift sense of the isolation of so many thousands of lives in this dynamic and vital city. What could not happen in a secluded, quiet back-water like this? What lives and deaths, with the teeming city surrounding them on every side?
The thought crossed his mind in a flash and was gone. He was not concerned now with profitless generalities. He had been summoned here to find out what had happened, and exactly what had happened, in this present case.
There was not a great deal to go upon in this room; nothing especially out of the ordinary save the stained scarf upon the table, and the fact that the several drawers of a desk on the far side of the room had apparently been ransacked, some of them being still open, their contents partly scattered on the floor. A small table at the end of a long couch which stood at right angles to the fireplace had been overturned, and on the floor beside it lay a shattered vase of blue hawthorne.
Apparently nothing else was out of place, and it was, perhaps, not unusual in this spring weather that there should be a quantity of ashes in the old-fashioned open grate. But ashes of any kind, perhaps from early association with the stories of the great Sherlock Holmes, always interested Peter Clancy.
He knelt to investigate and found that the ashes appeared to be those of burnt paper only. He stirred them carefully, but could not find a vestige of charred wood nor a single bit of paper which had escaped the action of the fire.
Morris followed him silently about the room, asking no questions. He had the air of one dazed by a crushing blow.
Satisfied, for the moment, by a more or less casual inspection, Clancy returned to what was to him the most significant object in the room.
"This scarf," said he, looking at it closely. "I think you told me you found it outside in the hall?"
"Partly outside and partly in," Morris made answer at once. "It was caught fast by the door, but some of the—of the blood on it was outside."
"H—m—m, yes," said Clancy, slowly. "And it belongs to someone who lives here, you think?"
"It was Miss Mary Blake's," answered Morris, decidedly.
"You're sure?"
"Perfectly."
"How do you know?"
"I recognized it at once," answered Morris with conviction. "She wore it when—when I brought her home after the closing of the play."
"Saturday—that was Saturday night, and this is Monday," Peter Clancy ruminated. "And that was the last you saw of her?"
"The last I saw of her, yes. I spoke to her on the wire Sunday morning, rather early, about ten o'clock. And I—I received a letter from her this morning. That was why I came. I was alarmed, and——"
"You were alarmed, then, before you came here. It was not only finding the scarf——"
"No. Her letter was so—so strange and unaccountable." Morris hesitated and, to help him out, Peter said:
"But you did expect to find Miss Blake here when you came this morning?"
"I," Morris spoke slowly—"I can't say that I expected to find her. I only thought there might be a chance. But I certainly did expect to find her sister, Anne."
"Oh, there's a sister," said Clancy. "Well, perhaps she'll turn up. Maybe she's just gone away for the week-end, or you know it's quite on the cards that she may have gone out this morning, even, and not come back yet. She might have been looking for something in that desk in a hurry and left it upset. And as to the scarf, and the blood stain on it (I admit, you see, that it probably is blood) it might well be accounted for by some simple accident——"
Morris shook his head, the troubled frown remaining fixed upon his forehead.
"No, no," he exclaimed. "It's impossible to dispose of the conditions here so easily. I'm sure you'll agree with me when you see the rest of the apartment. Something has happened here—something sinister. I'm sure of it. I'm at a loss to understand it all," he pressed his hand against his forehead as if the throbbing of his brain made his head ache, "but perhaps you can make a guess. Come and see."