She wore a small turban made entirely of red feathers,—soft breast feathers of some tropical bird, I suppose. The hat set jauntily on her sleek black hair, and the motions of her head were so quick and birdlike, that she gave me a fleeting remembrance of the human birds I saw in the play of Chantecler.
“Of course he did,” assented Wise, very gravely; “and now we must go on. Granting, for the moment, that Case Rivers,—as we call him,—drew this little sketch, he must have been in this office the day of Amos Gately’s murder. For I’ve been told that the blotter on this desk was changed every day, and any marks or blots now on it were therefore made on that day. If he did it, then,—or, rather, when he did it, he was telephoning to somebody——”
“Well,” put in Zizi, “perhaps he was just sitting here, talking to Mr. Gately. Maybe, he might draw those things when he just sits idly as well as when he telephones.”
“Yes; you’re right. Well, at any rate, he must have been sitting here, opposite Mr. Gately, on that very day. And I opine he was telephoning, but that makes no difference. Now, if he was here, in this office, on that day,—what was he here for, and who is he?”
“He is the murderer,” said Zizi, but she spoke as if she were a machine. The words seemed to come from her lips without her own volition; her voice was wooden, mechanical, and her eyes had a far-away, vacant gaze. “I don’t know who he is, but he is the man who shot Mr. Gately.”
“Oh, come, now, Ziz,” Wise shook her gently, “wake up! Don’t jump at conclusions. He may be the most innocent man in New York. He may have been in here calling on Gately early in the day, and his errand may have been of the most casual sort. He may have had cause to telephone, and as he sat waiting for his call, he sketched the snowflake pattern, which is his habit when waiting. But that he was here that day is a positive fact,—to my mind. Now, it’s for us to find out what he was here for, and who he is. I don’t favor going to him and asking him pointblank. That peculiar phase of amnesia from which he is suffering is a precarious matter to deal with. A sudden shock might bring back his memory,—or, it might——”
“Addle his brain!” completed Zizi. “All right, oh, Most Wise Guy! But when you do find out the truth, it will be that Case Rivers in his right mind and in his own proper person killed Mr. Gately.”
“Hush up, Ziz! If you have such a fearful hunch keep it to yourself. I’m not going to believe that, unless I have to! It has always been my conviction that Rivers is,—or was, a worthwhile man. I feel sure he was of importance in some line,—some big line. Moreover, I believe his yarn about falling through the earth.”
“You do!” I cried, in amazement. “You stand for that! You believe he fell into the globe at Canada,—or some Northern country, and fell out again in New York City?”
“Not quite that,” and Wise smiled. “But I believe he had some mighty strange experience, of which his tale is a pretty fair description, if not entirely the literal truth.”
“Such as?”
“Why, suppose he fell down a mine shaft in Canada. Suppose that knocked out his memory. Then suppose he was rescued and sent to New York for treatment, say, at some private hospital or sanitarium. Then suppose he escaped, and, still loony, threw himself into the East River—oh, I don’t know—only, there are lots of ways that he could have that notion about his fall through the earth, and have something real to base it on.”
“Gammon and spinach!” I remarked, my patience exhausted; “the man had a blow or a fall or something that jarred his memory, but his ‘falling through the earth’ idea is a hallucination, pure and simple. However, that doesn’t matter. Now we must follow this new trail, and see if we can get a line on his personality. He can’t tell us what he was here for,—if he doesn’t remember that he was here.”
“Perhaps he does remember,” Wise spoke musingly.
“Nixy!” and Zizi’s saucy head nodded positively; “Mr. Rivers is sincere now, whatever he was before. He doesn’t remember shooting Mr. Gately——”
“Stop that, Zizi!” Wise spoke more sharply than I had ever heard him. “I forbid you to assume that Rivers is the murderer,—you are absurd!”
“But I’ve got a hunch—” Zizi’s black eyes stared fixedly at Wise, “and——”
“Keep your hunch to yourself! I told you that before! Now, hush up.”
Not at all abashed, Zizi made a most wicked little moue at him, but she said no more just then.
“We have a new direction in which to look, though,” Wise went on, “and we must get about it. You remember, we found a hatpin here that led us to Sadie, ‘The Link,’ as straight as a signboard could have done.”
“Yes,” scoffed Zizi, “with the help of Norah and her powder-paper, and Jenny and her tattle-tongue!”
“All right,” Wise was unperturbed; “we got her all the same. Now, perhaps the Man Who Fell Through the Earth also left some indicative clews. Let’s look round.”
“He couldn’t leave anything more indicative than the drawing on the blotter,” persisted Zizi. “He drew on Mr. Brice’s blotter today and he drew on this blotter of Mr. Gately’s the day Mr. Gately was killed. That much is certain.”
“So it is, Zizi,” agreed Wise; “but nothing further is certain as yet. But we may find something more.”
As he talked the detective rummaged in the desk drawers. He pulled out the packet of papers that had interested him before.
“I’d like to read these,” he said; “you see, they’re dated in chronological order, and they must mean something.”
“It’s where they come from,” said Zizi, with an air of wisdom; “you see, Waldorf means a certain message in their code book, and St. Regis means another; Biltmore paper means another, and so on.”
“Right you are, as usual,” Wise said, so approvingly that Zizi smiled all over her queer little countenance.
“Part of ‘The Link’s’ spy business,” she went on, and I cried out in denial.
“Oh, come off, Mr. Brice,” she said, “you may as well admit, first as last, that you know Mr. Gately was mixed up in this spy racket. I don’t know yet just how deeply or how knowingly——”
“You mean,” I caught at the straw, “that he was a go-between, but didn’t know it?”
“I thought that at first,” said Wise, “I hoped it was so. That, of course, would argue that he was infatuated with Sadie and she wound him round her finger and used him to further her schemes, while he himself was innocent. But the theory, though a pretty one, won’t work. Gately wasn’t quite gullible enough for that, and, too, he is more deeply concerned in it all than we know.”
“Yes,” I agreed; “these letters,—I mean, these blank sheets,—were sent to him by mail. One came the day after he died.”
“I know it. And, as Zizi says, they mean something definite in accordance with a prepared code. For instance, a sheet of Hotel Gotham paper, dated December tenth, might mean that a certain transport, indicated in the code book by that hotel, was to sail on that date.”
“That’s a simple, child’s-play explanation,” said Zizi,—“but it may be the right one.”
“Certainly,” Wise assented, “there may be other explanations and more complicated ones. But it doesn’t matter now. The receipt of these letters,—blank letters,—was of secret value to Gately, and proves him to have been pretty deeply mixed up in it all.”
“But what about Mr. Rivers?” spoke up Zizi; “where does he come in?”
“It looks black,” Wise declared. “He was here that day secretly. That is, he didn’t come in at Jenny’s door. She doesn’t recognize him, I asked her. Therefore, he came in by one of these other doors, or up in the secret elevator. In either case, he didn’t want his visit known. So he is a wrongdoer, with Gately, and—probably, with Rodman. They’re all tarred with the same brush. The trail of the spy serpent is over them all.”
“No!” cried Zizi, and her face was stormy, “my nice Mr. Rivers isn’t any spy! He hasn’t anything to do with that spy matter!”
“Why!” I exclaimed; “you said he was the murderer!”
“Well, I’d rather be a murderer than a spy!” Her eyes snapped and her whole thin little body quivered with indignation. “A murder is a decent crime compared to spy work! Oh, my nice Mr. Rivers!”
She broke down and cried convulsively.
“Let her alone,” said Wise, not unkindly, after a brief glance at the shaking little figure. “She’s always better for a crying spell. It clears her atmosphere. Now, Brice, let’s get busy. As Zizi says, you must admit that there’s no doubt that Amos Gately was pretty deeply into the game. Even if he was unduly friendly with Sadie Kent, it was indubitably through and because of their dealings together in the stolen telegram business. The way I see it is that Sadie sold her intercepted messages to the highest bidder. This was George Rodman, but above him was Amos Gately. Oh, don’t look so incredulous. It isn’t the first time a bank president has gone wrong on the side. Gately never was unfaithful to his office, he never misappropriated funds or anything of that sort, but for some reason or other, whether money gain, or hope of other reward, he did betray his country.”
I couldn’t deny it,—or, rather, I could deny it, but only because of my still unshattered faith in Amos Gately. I could bring no proof of my denial.
“But,” I said, musingly, “we haven’t yet proved Gately mixed up in——”
“What!” cried Wise; “isn’t this enough proof? These blank letters, for that’s what they are,—the proved visit here of Sadie, ‘The Link,’ and the fact that Gately was shot,—by someone,—with no known reason,—all that goes to show that the murderer had some secret motive, some unknown cause for getting Gately out of the way.”
“I see it, as you put it,” I said, “but I will not believe Amos Gately a spy,—or conniving at spy business until I have to. I shall continue to believe he was a tool—an innocent tool—of the Rodman and Sadie Kent combination.”
“All right, Brice, keep your faith as long as you can, but, I tell you, you’ll soon have to admit that I’m right. Gately, as we all know, was a peculiar man. He had few friends, he had little or no social life, and he did have secret callers and a secret mode of entrance and exit from his offices. All this shows something to hide,—it is unexplainable for a man who has nothing to conceal.”
“All right, Wise,” I said, finally, “I suppose you are right. But still we must continue our search for the murderer. We don’t seem to progress much in that matter.”
“Not yet, but soon,” Wise said, optimistically; “the ax is laid at the root of the tree,—we are on the right track——”
“Meaning Case Rivers?” I cried, in alarm.
“Meaning Case Rivers,—perhaps,” he returned. “I’m not as sure as Zizi is that the evidence points to him as the murderer, but we must conclude that he was in this room the day of the murder,—and what else could he have been here for?”
“What else?” I stormed. “Dozens of things! Hundreds of things! Why, man alive, every person who set foot in this room on that day didn’t necessarily kill Amos Gately!”
“Every person who set foot in this room on that day is his potential murderer,” Wise returned, calmly. “Every person must be suspected,—or, at least, investigated.”
“Well,” I said, after realizing that he spoke truly, “you investigate the question of Rivers’ visit here that day. I don’t want to do that. But I’m going down to Headquarters now, and perhaps I’ll dig up something of importance.”
And I did. A visit to the Chief told me the interesting tale of the further discoveries of Sadie Kent’s industries. It seems the Federal agents had found a complete and powerful wireless station in a cottage at Southeast Beach, a fairly popular summer resort. The cottage was seemingly untenanted, but some unexplained wires which ran along the rafters of an adjoining house led to the discovery of the auxiliary wireless station.
Experts had broken into the locked house and had found a cleverly concealed keyboard of a wireless apparatus. Further search had disclosed the whole thing, and, moreover, had brought out the fact, that the adjoining cottage was occupied by two apparently innocent old people, who were really in the employ of Sadie Kent.
“The Link” was a person of importance, and though she passed for a mere telegraph operator, she was one of the most important links in the German spy system in the United States.
In the room where the wireless apparatus was found there were also quantities of letter paper from the various hotels of New York City.
These sheets, abstracted from the writing-rooms of the hotels, were the code system used in forwarding the stolen intelligence.
It all hung together, and the bunch of those hotel papers found in Gately’s desk, and especially the fact that one reached his address the day after his demise proved, beyond all doubt, his implication in the despicable business.
Now, I thought, to what extent or in what way was Case Rivers concerned? Surely the man had been in Gately’s office on that fatal day. I had no idea that he had killed the banker,—that was only Zizi’s foolishness,—but he had certainly been there.
It came to me suddenly that if Rivers could be taken again to the Gately offices, the rooms, the associations, might possibly bring back his lost memory, and let him reinstate himself in his real personality. To be sure, this might prove him the murderer, but if so, it would be only the course of justice; and, on the other hand, if it explained his innocent or casual call on Gately that, too, was what the man deserved.
And so I went at once to see Rivers. I found him in his rooms, the ones he had taken while he was to assist Wise in his work, and he greeted me cordially.
“The plot thickens,” he said as I told him of Sadie’s wireless station. “I knew that girl was a sly one. She’s one of the most important people in the big spy web. She’s one of their spyders, who spin a pretty web and attract gullible flies. Amos Gately fell for her charms,—you know, Brice, she is a siren,—and somehow she lured him into the web she so deftly spun. To my mind, Gately was a good, upright citizen, who fell for a woman’s wiles. I’m not sure about this, it may be he was mixed up in spy work before Sadie came on the scene,—but I’m certain she was accessory before, during, or after the fact.”
“Accessory to his murder?” I asked.
“Not necessarily; but strongly accessory to his wrongdoing in the matter of treason. I think she, for a time, worked Gately through Rodman, but, latterly, she grew bolder or found she could do more by personal visits and she came and went by the secret elevator, pretty much as she chose.”
“I hate to have Miss Raynor know this,” I said with a covert glance at Rivers, to see how he took the remark.
“So do I,” he said, as frankly as a boy; “I may as well tell you, Brice, that I love that girl. She is, to me, the very crown of womanhood. I have worshiped her from the first moment I saw her. But, understand, I have no hopes,—no aspirations. I shall never offer my hand and heart to any woman while I have no name to offer. And I shall never have a name. If I haven’t yet discovered my own identity I never can. No, I’m no pessimist, and I know that some time some sudden shock might restore my memory all in a minute, yet I can’t bank on such a possibility. I’ve talked this over with Rankin,—he’s the doctor who’s following up my case,—time and again. He says that a sudden and very forcible shock is needed to restore my memory, and that it may come and—it may not. He says it can’t be forced or brought about knowingly,—it will have to be a coincidence,—a happening that will jar the inert cells of my brain—or, something like that,—I don’t remember the scientific terms.”
Rivers passed his hand wearily across his forehead.
I was in a quandary. I had gone to see the man with full purpose of luring him to Gately’s office and confronting him with the sketched snowflake on the blotting-pad. Now, since he had confided to me his love for Olive Raynor, I shrank from doing anything that might prove him to be Amos Gately’s murderer. For I was fond of Miss Raynor, in a deeply respectful and unpresumptuous fashion. And I had noticed several things of late that made me feel pretty sure that her friendship for Rivers was true and deep, if indeed it were not something more than friendship. This, to be sure, would argue but a fickle loyalty to the memory of Amory Manning, but as Norah and I agreed, when talking it over, Miss Raynor had never shown any desperate grief at Manning’s disappearance,—at least, not more than the loss of a casual friend might arouse.
But I knew where my duty lay. And so I said, “Rivers, I wish you’d go round to Mr. Gately’s office with me. Don’t you think that if you were there,—and you never have been,—you might chance upon some clew that has escaped the notice of Wise or Hudson or myself?”
“Righto!” he said; “I’ve thought myself I’d like to go there. Not, as you politely suggest, to find overlooked clews, but just as a matter of general interest. I’m out, you know, to find the murderer, and also to trace the vanished Amory Manning.”
“He’s afraid,” and Norah wagged her head sagaciously, while her gray eyes had an apprehensive expression.
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of the truth. You see, Mr. Brice, our friend Rivers is nobody’s fool. He’s onto most points regarding this case, and now, he’s getting onto himself. That astute little scrap of humanity, Zizi, knows he is. Of course, living with Miss Raynor, as she does, she has opportunities every day to see Mr. Rivers, for he’s eternally hanging around the Raynor house. Oh, I don’t mean he’s an idler; not by a long shot. On the contrary, his middle name is efficiency! He puts over a lot of work in a day.”
“What sort of work and how do you know so much about him?”
We were in my office, waiting for Rivers, who had promised to come to see me, and to look into the Gately rooms. It was now nearly half an hour after the time he had set for his call, and as it was not his habit to be tardy, I was surprised. I had begun to look upon Rivers as a man of importance, not only in the matters with which we were associated, but he showed so much general ability and force of character that I wondered who or what he would turn out to be. For I felt sure he would find himself, and even if he never discovered who he had been he would make a new name and a well worthwhile individuality for himself yet.
Norah, too, admired him, and seemed to know as much of his capabilities, or more, than I did myself.
“I don’t know just what sort of work, but I think it’s connected with the mysteries we’re up against ourselves. And I know about him, because Zizi told me. She sees everything he does,—when she’s with him, I mean. Not a gesture or motion escapes her notice. And she’s watching his attitude toward Miss Raynor. She says,—Zizi does,—that Mr. Rivers is over head and ears in love with Olive, but he won’t tell her so because he is, as he puts it, a self-named man! Zizi heard him call himself that when talking to Miss Raynor, and then he just looked away, and resolutely changed the subject. But she thinks,—Zizi does,—that he’s working night and day to find out who he is, and she’s sure he’ll find out. And also, he’s working to find Mr. Gately’s murderer, and he’s hunting for Amory Manning. No wonder the man’s busy!”
“Well, why is he afraid to come here?”
“I’m not sure that he is; but you know Zizi has a hunch that he’s the murderer, and I think maybe he is. That snowflake sketch proves he was there that day and as his presence isn’t accounted for, why may he not have been the slayer? And, why may he not have an inkling or a suspicion of it, and dread to verify his fears?”
“But, good gracious, Norah, even granting he was in Gately’s office that day, he needn’t have done the shooting. There are about one million other errands he could have been there on. Perhaps he was a commercial traveler, selling laces, and drew the design for a sample.”
“Sometimes, Mr. Brice, you talk like a Tom-noddy! Drummer, indeed! I can tell you whatever calling Case Rivers followed, it was far different from that of a selling agent! I’ll bet he was a lawyer, at least!”
“At least!” I mocked her; “understand, pray, I consider my profession somewhat above the least of the professions!”
“Yes, for you dignify it to a high standing,” and the gray eyes flashed me the smile of appreciation that I was looking for. I may as well admit that I was growing very fond of those two gray eyes and their owner, and I had a pretty strong conviction that after the present case was all settled I should turn my attention to the winning of the exclusive right to the tender glances those eyes could give.
But just now, I had to exclude all distracting thoughts, and forcing my mind back to the present situation, I again marveled at the non-appearance of Case Rivers.
“Perhaps he’s fallen through the earth again,” Norah suggested; “by the way, Mr. Brice, what do you think about that fall? Mr. Rivers is no doubt under some strange hallucination, but all the same, may there not be some foundation on which he based his dream?”
“Maybe! There must be! That mind of his is too sure-fire to hang on so desperately to a mere dream. He had some experience of a strange nature, and it included something that he looks upon as falling through the earth.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve a vague idea of a motor accident. Say, a motor car ran into a stone wall, and he was hurled high in the air, and landed in the East River——”
“But I don’t see how that implies falling through the earth.”
“Well, say he slid down a high bank to reach the river——”
“There’s no high bank near the morgue, and he was fished out in that locality.”
“But he needn’t have fallen in there! In fact, he couldn’t have,—he must have floated or drifted a considerable distance to have had his clothing torn from him—and to have reached the state of exhaustion and freezing that so nearly culminated in death.”
“Yes, but even yet, you haven’t suggested anything like falling through the earth.”
“All right, Miss Smarty, what’s your idea? I see you’re dying to spring something.”
“Only what I’ve thought from the beginning. I believe he was in some cold country, Canada, or somewhere, and fell down through a mine shaft, or into a deep old well, or perhaps merely an excavation for a new, large building. But, anyway, whatever it was, his last impression was of falling down into the ground. Then when he struck he was knocked unconscious. Then, he was taken to a hospital, or somewhere, and as the fall had utterly blotted out his memory, he was kept in confinement. Then, somehow he broke loose and came to New York,—or, maybe, he was brought to New York for treatment by the doctors and he got away and either threw himself into the river or fell in accidentally, and when he was rescued he still remembered the fall but nothing else concerning his disaster.”
“Good enough, Norah, as a theory. But seems to me, in that case, he would have been sought and found by the people who had him in charge.”
“Ah, that’s the point of it all! They don’t want to find him! They know just where he is, and all about him, but they won’t tell, for it suits their base purposes to have him lost!”
“Well, you have cooked up a scheme! And he killed Amos Gately?”
“Maybe, but if so, he did it unknowingly. Perhaps these people who are looking after him, secretly hypnotized him to do it——”
“Oh, Norah! come off! desist! let up! Next thing you know you’ll be having him in the movies! For you never thought up all that stuff without getting hints for it from some slapstick melodrama!”
“Oh, well, people who are absolutely without imagination can’t expect to see into a mystery! But, you won’t see any Mr. Rivers this morning,—I can assure you of that!”
She turned to her typewriter, and I took up my telephone.
I could not get Rivers at his home address, and I next called up Miss Raynor.
She replied, in agitated tones, that Rivers had been to see her for a few minutes, and that he had left half an hour before. She begged me to come around at once.
Of course, I went.
I found her in a strange state of mind. She seemed like one who had made a discovery, and was fearful of inadvertently disclosing it.
But when I urged her to be frank, she insisted she had nothing to conceal.
“I don’t know anything, Mr. Brice, truly I don’t,” she repeated. “I mean, anything new or anything that I haven’t told you. Mr. Rivers was here this morning for a very short call. He said that while his memory had not returned, he had a queer mental impression of being on a search for a paper when he fell through the earth.”
“Did he go down into the earth to seek the paper?” I asked, thinking it best to treat the matter lightly.
“No,” she returned, in all seriousness, “but he believes he was commissioned to hunt out a valuable paper, of some sort, and while on the quest he fell through the earth, by accident. It was the shock of that that impaired his memory.”
“Sufficient cause!” I couldn’t help saying.
Olive bristled: “Oh, I know you don’t believe his story,—almost nobody does,—but I do.”
“So do I!” and Zizi was in the room. One could never say of that girl that she entered or came in,—she just—was there,—in that silent, mysterious way of hers. And then with equally invisible motions she was sitting opposite me, at Olive’s side, on a low ottoman.
“I know Mr. Rivers very well,” Zizi announced, as if she were his official sponsor, “and what he says is true, no matter how unbelievable it may sound. He says he fell through the earth, and so he did fall through the earth, and that’s all there is about that!”
“Good for you, Zizi!” I cried. “You’re a loyal little champion! And just how did he accomplish the feat?”
“It will be explained in due season,” and Zizi’s big black eyes took on a sibylline expression as she gazed straight at me. “If you were told, on good authority, that a man had crossed the ocean in an aeroplane, you’d believe it, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes; but that doesn’t seem to me a parallel case,” I demurred.
“Neither is Case Rivers a parallel case,” Zizi giggled, “but he’s the real thing in the way of Earth Fallers. And when you know all, you’ll know everything!”
The child was exasperating in her foolish retorts and yet so convincing was the determined shake of her little black head that I was almost tempted to believe in her statements.
“You’re a baby sphinx, Zizi,” and Olive looked at her affectionately, “but honestly, Mr. Brice, she keeps my spirits up, and she is so positive herself of what she says that she almost convinces me. As for Mrs. Vail, she swallows everything Zizi says for law and gospel!”
“And just what is it you say, now, Zizi?” I asked.
“Nothin’ much, kind sir. Only that Case Rivers is a gentleman and a scholar, that his memory is on the home stretch and humming along, and that if he’s after a paper,—he’ll get it!”
“And, incidentally he’s Amos Gately’s——”
A scream of agony from Zizi interrupted my speech, and jumping to her feet she danced round the room, her forefinger thrust between her red lips, and her little, eerie face contorted as with pain.
“Oh, what is it, Zizi?” cried Olive, running to the frantic girl.
Mrs. Vail, hearing the turmoil, came running in, and she and Olive held Zizi between them, begging to know how she was hurt.
Catching an opportunity, Zizi looked at me, over Mrs. Vail’s shoulder, and the message shot from her eyes was fully as understandable as if she had spoken. It said, “Do not mention any hint of Case Rivers’ possible connection with the Gately murder, and do not mention the snowflake drawn on the blotter in Mr. Gately’s office.”
Yes, quite a lengthy and comprehensive speech to be made without words, but the speaking black eyes said it as clearly as lips could have done.
I nodded my obedience, and then Zizi giggled and with her inimitable impudence, she turned to Olive, and said: “I’m like the White Queen, in ‘Alice,’ I haven’t pricked my finger yet, but I probably shall, some day.”
“What were you screaming about, then?” asked Mrs. Vail, inclined to be angry, while Olive looked amused and mystified.
“Emergency,” and Zizi grinned at her. “First aid to the injured,—or, rather, prevention, which is worth a pound of first aid!”
“You’re crazy!” said Mrs. Vail, a little annoyed at being fooled so. “I thought you were nearly killed!”
“When you knew a lady once who was nearly killed did she yell like that?” asked Zizi, with an innocent smile.
“Yes!” exclaimed Mrs. Vail; “but how did you know I once saw a lady nearly killed?”
“Mind-reading!” replied Zizi, and then Pennington Wise arrived, and we all shamelessly ignored Mrs. Vail and her yarns to listen to his report.
“There’s a lot doing,” he said, “and,” he added, gently, “I’m sorry to bring you unpleasant news, Miss Raynor, but you’ll have to know sooner or later——”
“I do know,” said Olive, bravely; “you’re going to tell me my guardian was—was not a good man.”
“That is so; it is useless to try to soften the truth. Amos Gately was the receiver of important Government secrets, learned by Sadie Kent, the telegrapher. She carried them to Rodman, who in turn transmitted them to Gately, who, it seems, had a way of getting the information to the enemy. Of course, the secret wireless station, recently discovered, was used, as well as other means of communication. I won’t go into details, Miss Raynor, but Amos Gately was the ‘man higher up,’ who thought himself safe from discovery because of his unimpeachable reputation for integrity, and also because of the infinite precautions he had taken. Indeed, if he had not fallen a victim to the personal charms of ‘The Link,’ his share in the wrong might never have been learned.”
Olive listened to all this, white-faced and still,—her lips a tense, drawn line of scarlet,—her expression a stony calm.
Zizi, watching her closely, and with loving care, slipped her little brown paw into Olive’s hand, and noted with satisfaction the faint answering smile.
“Perhaps,” Olive said, after a thoughtful pause, “it is as well, then, that Uncle Amos did not—did not live to be—disgraced.”
“It is,” said Wise, gravely; “he would have faced a Federal prison had it all been discovered while he lived. That will be Rodman’s fate,—if he is not held for the crime of murder. But I think he will not be. For his alibi clears him and it was to escape the graver charge that he has told so much of the spy business.”
“And so,” I said, “we are as far as ever from the discovery of the murderer?”
“You never can tell,” Wise returned; “it may be we are on the very eve of solving the mystery. Rivers is on the warpath——”
“I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Wise,” Olive broke in, “that Mr. Rivers was here this morning, and he seems to have a slight glimmer of returning memory.”
“He has? Good! Then it will all come back to him. I’ve been looking up this aphasia-amnesia business, and quite often when the patient begins to recover his memory, it all comes back to him with a bang! Where is Rivers?”
“He went away—I don’t know where——” Olive’s lips quivered, and so plainly did she show her feelings that we all saw at once she feared that Rivers had fled, because of his returning memory.
“It’s all right,” declared Zizi, stanchly; “Mr. Rivers is white clear through! He’ll come back, soon, and he’ll bring the paper he’s after.”
“What paper?” demanded Wise.
“The poipers! the poipers!” scoffed Zizi; “did you ever know a case, oh, Wise Guy, that didn’t revolve round and hinge on a poiper? Well, the dockyments in the case is what he’s a-soichin’ for! See?”
When Zizi acted the gamine she was irresistibly funny and we all laughed, which was what she wanted to lighten the strain of the situation.
Rivers was a mystery, indeed. Every one of us, I think, felt that he might be connected with the Gately affair. All of us, that is, but Olive,—and who could tell what she thought?
But Pennington Wise had a question to ask, and he put it straightforwardly.
“That day you were lured to Sadie ‘The Link’s’ house, Miss Raynor,” he began, “you said, or rather, you agreed when Rodman said you were his fiancée. Will you tell us why?”
Olive flushed, but more with anger than embarrassment.
“The man threatened me,” she said, “he first tried to make love to me, and when I repulsed him, he told me that unless I would promise to marry him he would tell something that would be a living reproach to the memory of my dead guardian. I declared he could say nothing against Amos Gately. Then he whispered that Mr. Gately was a spy! I couldn’t believe it, and—yet, I had seen just a few things,—had heard just a few words, that filled my heart with a fear that Mr. Rodman was speaking the truth. So I thought I’d better say what he asked me to, though I knew I’d kill myself rather than ever marry him. But I wasn’t greatly afraid, except that I knew I was in his power. Oh, I don’t like to think about that day!”
Olive broke down and hid her face in her hands, while Zizi’s thin little arms crept round her and held her close.
“Only one more query, Miss Raynor,” and Wise spoke very gently; “are you,—were you engaged to Amory Manning?”
Olive lifted her face, and spoke composedly: “No, Mr. Wise, I was never engaged to him. We were good friends, and I think he had a high regard for me, but no words of affection ever passed between us. I admire and respect Mr. Manning as a friend, but that is all.” And then a lovely blush suffused Olive’s face, followed quickly by a look of pain,—and we knew she was thinking of Rivers, and his possible defection. Never have I seen a woman’s face so easy to read as Olive Raynor’s. Perhaps because of her pure, transparent character, for in my enforced intimacy with her, as I managed her estate, I had learned that she was an exceptional nature, high-minded, fine, and conscientious in all things.
“I cannot think,” Olive went on, “that Mr. Manning will ever be found. I think he has been killed.”
“Why?” asked Wise, briefly.
“You know, he was a Secret Service man. Many times he has had the narrowest escape with his life, and—I’m not sure of this,—but I think now, he was on the track of the nest of spies with which my—with which Mr. Gately was mixed up. A few slight incidents, otherwise unexplainable, make this clear to me now, though I never suspected it before. My uncle disliked Mr. Manning, and it may have been because he knew he was in the Government’s employ. And though I know Mr. Gately would never have moved a finger to put Amory Manning out of the way, yet George Rodman may have done so. Oh, it’s all so mysterious, so complicated,—but of this I’m sure, Case Rivers is in no way connected with the whole matter. He is a man from some distant city, he is unacquainted in New York, and he——” here Olive broke down utterly and fell into a hysterical burst of weeping.
Zizi rose and gently urged Olive to go with her from the room.
A silence fell as the two girls disappeared. It was broken by Mrs. Vail, who remarked, dolefully, “I do hope that nice Mr. Rivers will come back, for dear Olive is so in love with him.”
“What!” cried Pennington Wise, “Miss Raynor in love with Rivers! That will never do! Why, we’ve no idea who he is. He may be a fortune-hunter of the lowest type!”
“Oh, no, no!” denied Mrs. Vail, “he is a most courteous gentleman.”
“That doesn’t count,” stormed Wise; “although, perhaps, I spoke too strongly just now when I called him names!”
“Especially as he has no name!” I put in; “in fact, he calls himself a self-named man!”
Wise smiled: “He is a witty chap,” he conceded, “and I like him immensely. But it’s up to us, Brice, to safeguard Miss Raynor’s interests, and a possible suitor for the hand of an heiress ought, at least, to know his own ancestors! And then, again, unless he recovers his memory and can deny it, there’s a fair chance that he had some hand in the Gately murder. We can’t get away from that snowflake pattern drawn on the blotter. Rivers was there, in that room, he sat at Gately’s desk, opposite Gately himself,—I mean, of course, this is the way I reconstruct the matter,—and if he didn’t shoot Gately then and there, at least, we have no proof that he didn’t.”
“I think he did,” I admitted, for Wise’s statement of the matter was convincing,—and beside, Norah thought so, too.
“Well, you think again!” came in a wild little voice, and there was Zizi at my elbow fairly shaking her little clenched fist in my face. “Mr. Badman Brice, you’ve got a lot of follow-up thinks a-coming to you, and you’d better begin ’em right now!”
She looked like a little fury as she danced around my chair and exploded the vials of her wrath. “That Mr. Rivers is a perfectly good man,—I know! He and Miss Olive are in love,—but they don’t hardly know it themselves,—bless ’em! And Mr. Rivers he won’t tell her, anyway, ’cause he’s a nobleman,—one of Nature’s maybe,—and again, maybe he’s a real one from Canada, or wherever he hails from. But, anyway, he no more killed anybody than I did!”
“All right, Ziz,—bully for you! As a loyal friend you’re there with the goods!” Wise smiled at her. “But after all, you’ve got only your loyalty to bank on. You don’t know all this.”
“I’ve got a hunch,” said Zizi, pounding one little fist into the other palm, “and when it comes to certainty,—Death and Taxes have nothing on my hunches!”
“Hello, people! What’s the matter, Zizi? I’ll be on your side! Bank on me, little one, to the last ditch. And, by jumping Jupiter, Brice, I believe the last ditch is coming my way! No, I haven’t got a strangle-hold on that eloping memory of mine yet, but I ’ave ’opes. I’ve had a glimmer of a gleam of a ray of light on my dark, mysterious past, and I beflew myself straight to good little old Doctor Rankin, who’s my Trouble Man every time. And he says that it’s the beginning of the end. That any day, almost any hour now, I may burst forth a full-memoried and properly christened citizen.”
“Good for you, old chap,” and thrilled at the elation in his tones, I held out my hand. “Go in and win!”
“Oh, won’t it be fine when you remember?” cried Mrs. Vail, wringing her hands in excitement; “why, I knew a man once——”
“Yes,” Rivers encouraged her, in his kindly way, “what happened to the lucky chap?”
“Why, he was affected something as you are,—or, as you were——” but Wise couldn’t stand for what seemed likely to be a long story.