The Washington Square Enigma Read online

  The old gatekeeper in the tower scrutinized them with puzzled face, evidently concluding, however, that they were merely a couple of Sheridan Road pedestrians who had made this short cut to the elevated road. At the ticket window of the L station, Morningstar paid the two fares, and they ascended the steps to the platform just in time to board a loop express.

  Forty minutes later, after a roaring, rattling ride, during which Morningstar had sat hunched in his seat saying nothing, lost in a brown study of dejection, the picture of profound gloom, the North Avenue station was called, and it was Harling who had to rise and motion to the other that they were ready to descend to the street. A taxi brought them eastward to the Drive, then southward to Burton Place, and finally to the brownstone residence which they had left so enthusiastically almost two hours before.

  Santi opened the door for them even before they rang, and Harling led the way into the library. His own countenance was a study, and the girl sitting there quickly flashed her eyes to Morningstar’s drawn face. Evidently she suspected some grave news, for her own face became grave at once.

  “Did — did you fail?” she asked, hurriedly, watching with bewilderment the detective who had slumped down into one of the large leather rockers. “Was it gone — before you got there?”

  Morningstar nodded wearily: “We flunked our mission, Miss Vanderhuyden. Harling will tell you the facts. I can’t.”

  Harling, seeing that on him devolved the disagreeable duty of informing the girl that her heirloom had again gone back into the hands of someone — apparently the man who had once held it illegally — began the narration of the motorboat trip and the hold-up in the graveyard. Then he told of the quick flight of the masked man and their return by elevated road.

  At the end of his story, Trudel clenched her small hands, and her face fell. For a minute she made no comment; asked no questions; then, seeing Morningstar in such a dejected attitude, she endeavored to cheer him up.

  “It was not your fault, gentlemen,” she said, smiling a little forcedly. “You were not to blame at all. He might have shot either one of you if you had tried to overcome him.” She paused. “The stone is gone for good, so why cry over spilled milk? Perhaps it is best that it is so. Think of all the misery and trouble it has brought. I shall begin this minute and consider that it is no longer a part in my life. So — just forget it — all of you. That’s all I ask.”

  “That’s mighty generous of you, Miss Vanderhuyden,” said Morningstar; “but nevertheless, it’s all my fault. I should have watched every move back of us on that lake. I should have made Harling stand on guard. I should have done the thing legally, with police protection. I should — ”

  “Say no more!” commanded the girl, firmly. “The stone is forgotten and I consider the matter now at an end. Let’s all be cheerful.”

  Harling’s face lighted up in a smile, “Then, Miss Vanderhuyden,” he said, “if you have erased the stone from your memory you will have to reëstablish it there. Morningstar laughed at me, scorned everything I said when I told him that I might be able to undo all the damage that was done tonight; he has hardly treated me civilly on the way back. So look carefully now, as Chandu, the Magician, says on the stage.”

  He dipped his hand into his coat pocket, and a second later laid on the table a glittering, scintillating crystal from which, under the brilliant rays of the ornamental lamp, great beams of purple fire seemed to curl and emanate: “Your ruby, Miss Vanderhuyden. Allow me!”

  CHAPTER XXX

  VISITORS NUMBER ONE AND TWO

  MORNINGSTAR, sitting back in his chair with his eyes half closed, opened them wide and sprang to his feet: “Great Scott, Harling! How — how — why — ” He stopped in utter amazement.

  As for the girl, she picked the stone up unbelievingly and passed it back and forth in the rays of the lamp. To all three people there, it seemed like a living ball of fire.

  “Oh, how could both of you fool me this way?” she cried joyfully. “That was a cruel practical joke to play on me.”

  “Practical joke nothing!” snorted the red-haired man. He came over and elatedly thumped Harling on the back with a punch that knocked the wind out of him. “See here, you silent devil from Frisco, how did you ever pull that trick? Explain, and darn quick!”

  So while Trudel gazed up at the two in utter bewilderment, Harling smiled and entered on his explanation.

  “Very simple,” he responded. “Miss Vanderhuyden, do you remember that when you were showing me the imitation ruby this afternoon, Morningstar was ushered into the library by your servant?”

  Trudel nodded slowly.

  “Well,” Harling went on, “I was so flabbergasted when your detective, Mr. Phelps Morningstar, proved to be my acquaintance, Red Saunders, of Washington Square, that I dropped that imitation stone in my coat pocket and just stood there staring at him for half a minute. Then followed explanations by all of us, and I never thought of the stone again till tonight. When our friend the hold-up man told me to insert my left hand in my left coat pocket and withdraw what I had just placed there I started to do it, but — lo and behold! — I found two of them. Then and there I recalled the imitation stone, and at the same time I remembered Morningstar’s statement to me a minute before as to how dead the real one looked in the moonlight. And — ”

  “But how,” Trudel broke in wonderingly, “could you tell by the sense of feel which was the real one and which the imitation one?”

  “Very simple,” said Harling, smiling. “The one we had just taken from the earth was still as cold as ice — cold as the November earth in a graveyard! But the one in my pocket was warm from being near my body. Simple as A B C. That’s all.”

  “Well, it all seems unbelievable,” Trudel exclaimed. “Shakespeare was right when he said ‘All’s well that ends well.’”

  “And our tall friend in the white silk handkerchief,” chuckled Morningstar gleefully; “man alive, but he’ll have a fit when he discovers the truth of the matter. I’ll bet he’s already buried that piece of purple glass, and is gloating over the clever turn of the tables. Harling, I apologize. You’re the man who saved the day — or rather, the night. It seems that — ”

  His words were broken off by a long ring at the doorbell. Both men and the girl glanced quickly toward the clock. Its hands pointed to twenty minutes to eleven.

  “Your people are beginning to arrive, Mr. Morningstar,” Trudel remarked, looking at him. “It — ”

  Santi appeared in the doorway of the library and bowed: “Meestair Eenspector Chapley and Meestair Horace Devontree weesh see Meestair Morningstar.”

  “Good! Show them in, Santi,” ordered Morningstar. He turned to the other two: “It’s Chapley of the Federal Service, and Mr. Horace Devontree, probably the best and most well-known expert in the world on counterfeits of all kinds. They — ”

  Two men stepped in the door of the library. The man in advance was evidently Inspector Chapley, for Harling noted the clean-cut, smooth face, the widely set, steel-gray eyes, and the youthful, alert carriage of the figure. But at the man at Chapley’s elbow, Harling gave a gasp of surprise and rose straight up in his chair.

  Chapley’s companion was a short, elderly man. The silver-gray hair on his head was rather thin at the top. He was appreciably stooped and his face was more or less creased and wizened. He was dressed in a black suit of old-fashioned cut, and he carried a black leather case in one hand.

  It was the man to whom Harling had given out the envelope in the office at San Francisco — the individual for whom he had searched over Chicago during thirty long, discouraging, hopeless days!

  CHAPTER XXXI

  A BUBBLE EXPLODES

  ONLY for a second did Harling remain standing where he was in front of his chair. Then he crossed the floor quickly and stood in front of the stooped, gray-haired man. “You — in God’s name!” he ejaculated. “I’ve — I’ve found you at last. I came two thousand miles to find you, searched over the whole of Chicago,
and at last I gave up when I found today that Samuel P. Bond, the only man whom I could learn your identity from, was dead.”

  The little man stared at Harling uncomprehendingly. So, too, did Inspector Chapley, the girl, and Morningstar.

  “My dear sir,” queried Devontree, not unkindly, “haven’t you made some mistake? I’m afraid I don’t know you.” He looked toward the rest. “Will some one be kind enough to untangle this puzzle by an introduction?”

  “Introduction,” commented Harling, bitterly. “Look closely at me, Mr. Devontree. You’ll remember me, I’ll warrant. I never forgot your face.”

  Devontree stared long and fixedly at Harling. He rubbed his own forehead dazedly with his hand, and laid down his black leather case on the library table.

  “What is your name?” he asked. “It seems to me that I recall a face like yours, but I can’t place it in my memory.”

  Harling never moved from his position. “Were you ever in San Francisco?” he asked, pointedly.

  Devontree nodded: “Why yes, I was out in Frisco last summer giving some testimony in a Federal case.”

  “Good!” said Harling. “Then do you remember coming into a real estate and loan office one day in the downtown district and asking a clerk there whether he had a good, stout envelope of business size that wouldn’t fall to pieces before it reached Chicago?”

  “Yes, I recall it clearly.” Devontree looked closer at the other. “And by George, young man, you are that clerk! Now I do remember you.” He paused. “But why — why are you looking for me? And how in the name of all that’s sensible were you expecting to locate me through this man Bond, who was killed on Washington Square?”

  “Sit down,” replied Harling, pleasantly. Inspector Chapley and Morningstar dropped into the nearest chairs without a word. Devontree, too, took a seat, and Harling had the center of the floor. Quickly he related the matter about the two-thousand-dollar promissory note which had inadvertently left his desk in the supposedly empty envelope; how he had tried ineffectually to find the man he had given it to in San Francisco, and how he had later come in desperation to Chicago to establish his innocence of stealing it.

  “So there you are, Mr. Devontree,” he finished. “I canvassed Chicago from end to end, trying to find the man, S. P. Bond, senior, whose address you wrote on that envelope; I interviewed every Bond in Chicago proper. I spent my last cent. Today I was broke and hungry in Washington Square just on account of that fruitless search. And then, to cap it all, S. P. Bond, senior, turned out to be an Evanston man — turned out to be murdered — and all information from his source was cut off.”

  When Harling finished, Devontree looked long and intently at him. Finally he put both hands on the younger man’s shoulders and said:

  “My dear young man, do you mean to tell me that in that envelope was a promissory note which you were accused of stealing? That is surely surprising news. But I’m afraid I’ll have to give you some surprising news myself — news that will knock you quite silly.”

  “Good Lord!” broke in Harling quickly. “The

  — the note isn’t gone or destroyed, is it? Surely you can tell me where and how I can recover it.”

  For answer, Devontree merely unlaced the straps on his black leather portfolio, withdrawing from it a powerful magnifying glass, several pairs of delicate calipers, a bunch of bills strapped together by a rubber band, and last but not least, the large envelope which Harling recognized as the same one he had given out in San Francisco. Eagerly he thrust out his hand toward it, but the other raised a warning finger.

  “Just a minute,” he cautioned quietly. He turned over the envelope which was lying face down, and pointed to the inscription. “This is the clue which led you to search Chicago from end to end, is it?”

  The penned, hand-printed words on the face of the envelope, which, oddly enough, bore neither stamp, postmark, street nor city, read simply: S. P. BOND (SR).

  Harling nodded emphatically.

  “Very well,” remarked Devontree. “But it happens that I never knew or spoke to Samuel P. Bond, senior, of Evanston in my life. He was an utter stranger to me. And I must add that I never even heard of him till recently.”

  “A stranger?” Harling’s voice showed his unbelief. “How could he be when you wrote out his name in front of my eyes?”

  Devontree slit the envelope open with one of the legs of the calipers, and withdrew a folded piece of heavy paper covered with colored scrolls and intricate designs, as well as a neatly typed and signed promissory note. The latter he scrutinized for a second and then handed to Harling.

  “This other document,” Devontree explained quietly, holding up the scroll-covered piece of heavy paper, “happens to be something that was given to me in Southern California by a friendly railroad official to add to my big collection in my special field. While in Frisco, I took pains to seal it up, so as to preserve it from dirt and rubbing, and have never had occasion to refer to it since. I may be a little loose in the way I annotate and classify and file such specimens — but considering that I know who all the well-known but illicit engravers are, my method is intelligible enough for me! So — when I tell you what this is — you’ll quite soon see what my simple classification on that envelope stands for. This is a Southern Pacific Bond — S. P. Bond — see? — and beyond doubt from the engraving tool of no less a person than a certain indefatigable ‘S.R.’ — or, if you don’t know the personnel of those rare artists who provide me my field of work — the full name of the gentleman is Silvestro Ruggieri!”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  “COALS OF FIRE”

  THE delayed introductions which had been at first sidetracked by the unexpected meeting between Harling and the man he had hunted across two thousand miles of space were over when the second long ring at the doorbell came. Trudel, Devontree and Harling were chatting together by the lamp and Morningstar and Inspector Chapley were talking in low tones in a corner of the room.

  When Santi appeared in the doorway and announced, “P’fessor Hooze Yairgeen,” a slender, delicate man entered the library and stood looking curiously from one occupant to another. His rounded shoulders indicated the student; his eyes were covered by great, horn spectacles which gave an owlish appearance to his lean but not unyouthful face.

  Morningstar rose immediately from the side of Inspector Chapley and stepped over to the newcomer. “Step in, Professor. Morningstar — Phelps Morningstar of ‘27 — is my name. But I see you remember me. I’m the man that’s guilty of bringing you here at this late hour.” He turned to the others. “This is Professor Hughes Yergin of the University of Chicago.” And he proceeded to introduce the latest arrival to each of the other members of the party in turn.

  Even before he had finished, however, the great bell in the outer hall rang twice, the rings almost within ten seconds of each other. Again Santi appeared in the library doorway and showed his white teeth in a broad, saffron grin. “Miss Vanderhuyden,” he announced, “two gentlemens wheech come sep’rate. Meestair Vandervoort — also Meestair Doctaire Zhon Hemeengway.”

  Vandervoort came in first, and both Morningstar and Harling scrutinized him curiously as he entered and stood for a second in the room. Vandervoort’s countenance took on a pained, surprised, and bewildered look when he caught sight of the people assembled, but he collected himself quickly, and again the enigmatic smile returned to his face as he stood aside courteously and blandly to make room for the newcomer who pressed close on his heels.

  The latter proved to be an elderly man with a short, pointed, brown beard and an indisputably professional bearing. Through the gold-rimmed, silk-corded eyeglasses on his nose, his keen eyes gazed around the room with undoubted interest.

  Again Morningstar made himself the host and briefly introduced the newcomers. To Dr. Hemingway he assigned a comfortable seat near the bookcase; Vandervoort, however, did not wait to be assigned a seat, but slipped over to an antique chair in the corner, where in the semi-gloom his white fac
e looked over the assemblage with something not unlike a sneer on his features.

  With the arrival of the last two who had been bid to his strange gathering, Morningstar stepped over to the library door and closed it tightly. Then he withdrew his own chair from the table and placed it in front of him. The silence was tense. Each of the persons in the room gazed at him as if wondering whether the peculiar mission on which he had been summoned was to be divulged at last.

  “All of you gentlemen — and one lady,” began Morningstar, slowly, “are now acquainted with each other — at least by name.” He paused. “I have called you all here tonight — with the exception of Mr. Horace Devontree, who was brought by Inspector Chapley — in the matter of the murder of Samuel P. Bond on Washington Square.”

  A pause of expectancy seemed to roll over the small audience, and several of the men leaned forward slightly in their chairs.

  “Are there any of you who have not read in tonight’s papers or heard on his radio about that peculiar murder?” asked Morningstar, suddenly. He looked about the room. No one replied. “Very well. That saves some preliminary explanations on my part.”

  He paused a moment, thinking, and then went on: “Among the possessions of old Diederich Vanderhuyden, the former owner of this residence, the grandfather of Miss Vanderhuyden, here, and of Mr. Vandervoort, over there, was a purple ruby, worth in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars. Some of you have heard of that ruby through reading in the papers about its connection with the man whose body was found in the Washington Square house. Much of what I shall say will concern that ruby. Much of what will develop here tonight may prove, perhaps, to be unconnected with that ruby. But with this stone as a focal point, I shall endeavor to outline the various threads of a strange and peculiar mesh which has crossed and intercrossed in Chicago today.”

  With this, Morningstar launched forth into the history of the Vanderhuyden ruby, including his business acquaintanceship with Trudel Vanderhuyden and their unsuccessful efforts to discover its whereabouts. After this, he went back and outlined Harling’s story from his first discovery of the twelve-star nickel to his final escape as a passer of counterfeit money, including the incident in which Harling and himself had bearded Rafferty in his room.