Find the Clock Read online

  McFee already had a screw driver out of his pocket. With the tool held between his teeth, and the electric torch laid carefully in position on one of the lower shelves, he nodded first toward Darrell, then toward the lower casket. Darrell caught the significance at once, and together they lifted the heavy casket down to the marble floor of the vault. McFee worked rapidly, putting the screws in a little pile on the floor itself. It was cold and damp. Darrell began to wonder uneasily if he had made some horrible mistake — if he had forced his friend to do an illegal act to no avail. At last the lid of the coffin was unscrewed. Reverently, McFee lifted it off. He turned the beam of light full length upon the body within.

  Even as he did so, Darrell unrolled the photograph he had obtained at the Call and held it in the same beam. The two men gazed, each together, first at the body within, pillowed on its white satin couch, then at the photograph. The body lying with its hands loosely crossed on its breast, a faded white lily still clasped in the fingers of one of them, was that of a very slimly built young man, pale in death, eyes closed, but with brown hair brushed into a pompadour, forehead high, neck a bit long, signs of wrinkles about the corner of the eyes which the undertaker’s art had failed to obliterate, and pale lips which even in death bore a strange, mocking half smile. The body was the exact counterpart of the photograph which Darrell held in his hand. The same arresting, characteristic face was present — only now asleep in death; the same features which suggested their owner’s inconsistent personality in life were now composed in the slumber that knows no waking.

  “‘Tis the same man, beyond all doubt,” commented McFee in a low voice.

  “The same all right,” added Darrell ruefully. The two men continued to stare. Outside a night bird broke the silence, a breeze stirred among the solemn trees.

  “But they’re almost too much the same,” commented McFee again, gazing from the photograph to the body. And without further ado, he leaned over and with a prodding forefinger felt gingerly the white cheek of the corpse. Then he scratched viciously. A fine scraping of wax came away. He rapped with his fingers — and Darrell heard the unmistakable sound which proclaimed that force had collided with hard matter. But even before he, too, had bent down McFee had turned the body over. A long aperture in the back of the head showed that that organ was but a clever wax shell, and that the body itself was but a plaster and papier-mâché substratum for the deception. The two hands, likewise, as McFee demonstrated by lifting one out, were but solid wax hands that fitted well inside the cuffs of the coat sleeves, themselves adroitly formed with papier-mâché arms.

  The Irishman looked grimly at Darrell.

  “A plaster-an’-paper corpse, me boy, concealed by a wax head and a pair of hands. But such a shell as that head, Darrell! Such a shell!” He shook his head in admiration. “‘Tis a wonder of the wax-worker’s art. If ye know anything of such work, ‘tis worth several hundred dollars, a thing like that. ‘Twas done by an expert, Darrell, an expert — nothing less. ‘Twould deceive the devil himself.” He nodded his head as though in confirmation of the younger man’s rash project. “Your lead is right, me boy. Ye’ve uncovered the devil’s work to-night. Come — don’t stare so. Let’s put the lid back on and get out of here. Spring your story, whatever it is. And remember Pat McFee knows nothing.”

  As in a daze Darrell saw the other roughly rearrange the spurious body as they had found it, reinsert the wax hands in the sockets of the coat sleeves, and screw back the coffin lid dexterously. As in a daze, he helped the older man raise the casket, heavy with the plaster contained in the form within, and slide it back in its place on the hardwood shelf. And as in a daze he felt himself gently pushed out into the cool, fresh night air, and heard McFee shove the great stone door behind them, inserting the badly cut and twisted padlock through the eyelets.

  But as he stood off some distance, haunted by the little drama that had just transpired, watching the apprehensive McFee flashing his light about the base of the vault door so as not to overlook any clue that would prove his own connection with that night’s work, Darrell fell into a sadness so profound that something seemed to claw at his breast. He found himself thinking deeply and dejectedly of a girl with dark eyes — a girl whose eyes were in sooth pools of liquid velvet — a girl who called herself Rita Thorne but whose right name, through the slips of her Negro maid and by her own guarded references to her early life, was Iris Shaftsbury.

  For that day, when passing through the Loop on his way back to Independence Boulevard from his first visit to McFee’s he had made quiet inquiries at three of the largest life insurance companies on LaSalle Street. At the Providential and at the Great Eastern he had elicited nothing. But at the big Metronational Life he had learned that John Cooper Jarndyce had been insured in that company for the sum of fifty thousand dollars on February 5th the previous year at a premium of one thousand and twelve dollars; and that the second premium on this huge policy had been paid March 3rd, this year, barely two days before the month’s grace on the insurance would have expired, and four days before John Cooper Jarndyce’s supposed death. And, moreover, not only had the premium been paid directly with a United States postal order sent by Iris Shaftsbury of Arcadyville, Louisiana, but the fifty thousand dollars in insurance had been taken out, not in favor of the estate of John Cooper Jarndyce, but in favor of Iris Shaftsbury herself.

  Darrell had thought that morning that he had stumbled upon a beautiful girl-woman. Now he realized with a heavy heart that he had stumbled instead upon a feminine devil, an important tool in a huge life-insurance swindle. He shook his head sadly. Sometimes a reporter’s life was a miserable thing.

  CHAPTER XI

  Questions Without Answers

  THE walk back through the cemetery to the main gate was completed by the two men in silence. Only once did McFee speak, and then he asked a question. “‘Tis a life-insurance swindle ye’ve uncovered, is it not, me boy?”

  Darrell moistened his lips.

  “Yes,” was all he replied. And this was the full extent of the conversation between the two men.

  Across the street from McFee’s cottage they parted, McFee’s last injunction, delivered in a low voice almost inaudible to its hearer, was his usual cautious one. “Now, me boy, remimber — although ye have the goods on some gang of rascals — remimber not a thing do I know. If ye take the blame for openin’ that vault yerself, ye’ll not be held guilty of any crime by any jury or judge, considerin’ what ye uncovered. Or if ye tip off the authorities anonymously, ‘twill be as well. But I myself have been home and in bed this night. Ye’ll not let your tongue slip an’ bring me in, boy?” The Irishman’s voice was anxious.

  Darrell took the other’s hand. “Have no fears, McFee. Your name will never be mentioned. Only this suggestion I have. Put a new padlock on the vault to-morrow, but hold back your report to the legal firm for a day or two that the vault has been tampered with. It may not be for several days yet that this case of mine is complete, and until I phone you that the big story is about to break, do nothing, say nothing.”

  And with McFee’s acquiescence in his plans, a very depressed reporter boarded a car and wended his long way back to the Call office. It grieved him to the bottom of his being, for some unaccountable reason, to know that this black-eyed, black-haired girl in the Bradbury was a tool, if not a ringleader, in a great insurance swindle such as he had uncovered. But there was nothing other than this to consider now. Her hiding under an assumed name, the very fact that she herself had paid the big premium on this great insurance policy, the startling evidence of the fraud unearthed that night in the Jarndyce mausoleum — all showed indisputably that she, John Cooper Jarndyce, the pseudo-dead man, and others were involved. When would she make the attempt to collect the amount represented by the policy in the Metronational Life? How much of that fifty thousand dollars was the undertaker, who furthered the scheme, to receive?

  These were questions to which answers could be hazarded. But there were ot
hers which remained bafflingly enigmatic. What strange circumstances had so complicated the plans of the living John Cooper Jarndyce, hiding as he was, that he had risked everything to send out a message to his co-conspirator written on a handkerchief sent to a laundry? What part in the swindle was the Blonde Beast, master of swindlers, playing? Was the mysterious Mr. Catherwood, to checkmate whom efforts of some strange sort were being made, one of the gang, or could it be possible, as suggested by the phrase “you have letter from London,” that Scotland Yard had for reasons of its own entered a man in the game?

  Darrell smiled grimly. If Napoleon Foy had been able to read English sufficiently to have delivered the message himself to the girl in the Bradbury, the scheme would probably never have been revealed. But John Cooper Jarndyce had made a misplay. His message had found a Chinese to whom such writing as it contained was unintelligible, and from that Oriental it had been relayed around in a neat circle to the worst destination in the world for it — the hands of a reporter on a big metropolitan daily. Fortunate it was for the story in it, Darrell reflected, that he had not divulged to the girl in the Bradbury that morning that he knew of the supposed death of one John Cooper Jarndyce. Had he done so, the swindlers would have taken alarm and scattered. As it was, he was being looked upon now as just a numskull who held not enough of the tail of the animal even to be able to judge what the animal was! What a story, what a story! What a newspaper sensation it would make when the morning arrived on which every detail would stand revealed for the delectation of the sensation-loving public. What a story indeed — for Marvin Feldock!

  And at his remembrance of that highly irritating personality, Darrell’s wrath flamed fiercely up again. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the publication of that story meant the imprisonment of a girl who had strangely moved some spring in Darrell’s sentimental self, which caused thoughts of rebellion to surge through him. If he, Darrell, was forced by his profession to ride roughshod over the enchanting things of life, such as the girl with the velvet eyes, he would rebel. He would demand that his stories appear under his own name — or resign. He would kick over the traces, and with the biggest story of the day take his own property to another paper.

  And with these turbulent thoughts surging through his brain, he at last entered the city room of the Call. Through the open door of Crosby’s office he could see the latter just hanging up the receiver of his phone, his desk littered from end to end with papers. A number of reporters were pounding away at lightning speed on typewriters. From across the hall filtered the clicking sounds of a whole battery of linotype machines. One more issue of the Call was completing its birth. Crosby gazed weariedly out into the city room. He caught sight of Darrell. He motioned to him.

  “Just back, Darrell?” he said as the younger man entered the office. He asked no questions about how Darrell’s private story was working out. “You’re just in time to sail out again. Inspector Notman rang me on a story as you came in the room. Something odd has just broken and I haven’t a man in the place that’s free. I could have sent Feldock, for it’s right in his own line; but he’s out on that Heinemann girl interview and I don’t think I dare wait. So hop to it, and use a taxicab only for we’re getting close on to the dead line. You can reach the story and get something written up on it in time, I’m sure.”

  Darrell was all attention. Stories seldom broke at this hour of the night. “I’m all ready,” he said. “What is it?”

  Crosby consulted a few jotted pencil notations on the pad attached to his telephone. “A Chinese laundryman was shot to death in his shop just about three quarters of an hour ago. Name is Foy — Napoleon Foy.”

  “Napoleon Foy — Chinese laundryman — shot to death!” ejaculated Darrell. He struggled to keep his composure. “Napoleon Foy — ”

  “Yep,” said Crosby. “Napoleon Foy. Odd name, eh? He was only a chink laundryman, but there’s an odd feature to the case. A girl killed him. So hop to it, Darrell, and see if there’s anything in it for us.”

  CHAPTER XII

  Call Mr. Sherlock Holmes

  WITHOUT a further word Darrell turned on his heel and walked dazedly out into the busy city room. The sudden entrance into his reportorial duties of one of the elements in his own private story was a smashing surprise to him, and it had been with the greatest of difficulty that he had restrained himself from allowing Crosby to notice his own excitement. Napoleon Foy, the man who had received the strange message addressed to the spurious Rita Thorne, killed! There was no doubt in Darrell’s mind as he hurried down the steps of the Call and out on to dark Market Street that the case into which he had been flung was becoming more complicated than he had ever dreamed. Never now would he interview Napoleon Foy upon the details of last Saturday night when the Chinese had taken in the bundle containing the strange message. Fortunate it was indeed that Chi Tsung Liang, the big man of Chinatown, prior to his departure for Philadelphia, had had time to cross-question Foy fully. This gave data which might now have a tremendous bearing on the case of Foy’s own death. But Darrell reserved any more speculations until he should reach the scene and Inspector Notman’s men.

  A taxicab brought him to the laundry in fifteen minutes. The Chinaman’s place of business with its plate glass windows painted heavily over for some eight feet above the sidewalk, was on Halsted Street, perhaps fifty feet south of the busy six-cornered junction of Lincoln, Fullerton and Halsted Streets, where trucks bearing late newspapers banged across the tangle of street-car tracks, newsboys shouted their papers as busily as at the downtown intersections, and pedestrains, street-car transfers in hands, dodging automobiles, skirted madly back and forth to board the cars that could take them in any one of the many directions that one could travel from this point. The laundry itself was removed from this turbulent focus of activity, however, for across it was only the dark tree-studded grounds and ivy-clad buildings of the great quiet McCormack Theological Institute, resembling some castle out of Ivanhoe or fro mmedieval England. Darrell needed only to show the blue-coated obstacle in the doorway his reporter’s badge, and he was quickly passed inside. Once over the portals he was instantly recognized by a huge Irishman whose black bristles showed blue beneath his cleanly shaven skin, evidently in charge of affairs. With the latter were two more plain-clothes men and a second blue-coat, who stood over to one side. He of the blue-tinged jaw spoke in Darrell’s direction.

  “Ah there, Darrell. I see you’re right on the job. When I left headquarters Notman was trying to get Crosby on the wire.”

  Darrell nodded. “What’s the dope on it, Corrigan?” he asked briefly.

  “Step in back of the counter, Darrell,” Corrigan said. “Then come on into the back room. There’s a little of interest in each place.” He flung open the wooden gate, and Darrell passed through it.

  Here a ghastly sight was in evidence. Just back of the counter lay the body of the Chinaman. It was half crumpled up; a powder-blackened hole marked the middle of his forehead, and from the hole ran a crooked stream of coagulated crimson over the yellow features. Not a foot from the loosely flung right hand, on the very lowest shelf of the bundle rack, lay a revolver, its position suggesting somehow that the Chinaman had started to reach down for it just as danger of some sort had flashed across his mental horizon. But if this hypothesis were true, he had failed to reach it, according to Corrigan’s statement at this junction.

  “Didn’t have a chance to get hold of his own gun,” he was saying, “when he saw one flashed on him. Down he went like a struck steer in the stockyards. Looked the gun over when we came and put it back where we found it. Every cylinder filled with a loaded cartridge.”

  What took Darrell’s eye — an eye which was essentially a collector’s eye — in that truly drab and prosaic interior, were two objects, and two objects alone. One was a beautiful hand-carved wooden cabinet, some of the deep indentations showing still the fleck of white, unaged wood, its wide doors swung open, its quaint lock rudely splintered, the rusty iron p
oker used to commit this piece of vandalism still lying on the floor in front of the cabinet where it had been hastily dropped. The other object was a wicker cage which, suspended by a brass chain from a screw-hook in the ceiling, hung but three feet from the open doors of the cabinet. Inside its wicker bars was a resplendently colored tropical cockatoo, which gave a vicious and raucous squawk as Corrigan moved to within a few feet radius of it. But the Irishman watched it with a cautious eye and adroitly avoided coming any closer.

  “Looks like there ought to be a story back of this,” declared Darrell with innocence radiating from his voice. He gazed about him once more, then looked toward Corrigan. “And now, Frank, what’s the dope on it? I didn’t get any of the facts when I pulled out from the Call.”

  “Well,” said Corrigan, plunging his hands into his pockets and surveying the hand-carved cabinet with a speculative eye, “the druggist on the up corner reported it by phone. Gregson’s his name. Girl with good-looking brown eyes and black hair came in there just a few minutes before eleven o’clock to-night and asked if he knew where Foy’s laundry was. He had a clerk still on duty, and so, seeing he had a two-pound package of sunflower seed put up for Foy who’d ordered it for the cockatoo that afternoon, he chucked the seed under one arm and conducted the girl down here. She carried a hand bag — sort of lady’s purse — and this must have been where she had her gun. Well, he brought the girl inside, and letting her stand outside the counter, pushed his way on in through the swinging gate and into the back room where he laid the sunflower seed down and told Foy there was a customer waiting in the outside shop. Foy had just finished changing the paper in the bird’s cage for the night, and the red-green-and-yellow-feathered devil, Gregson says, was cooing like a turtledove to his master. Gregson didn’t wait any longer, but came on out as Foy was clamping on the bottom of the cage, and nodding good evening to the girl, went on out to the street again.