The Washington Square Enigma Read online

  Together the three men left the house. The taxicab was still waiting in front, with a group of awe-stricken children now standing about it. Harling entered first, then Rafferty, followed by Morningstar; and, with a few instructions, the driver was off at a swift pace. Up near the heart of the city, however, Morningstar stopped the machine, and, from the open window, signalled another taxicab. Into this he transferred himself and Rafferty.

  “Now as for you, Harling,” he said to the other, “go straight back to the Vanderhuyden residence and tell Miss Trudel all that has developed in the matter of the ruby. I’m going on to the Federal Bureau with Rafferty; then I’m going to make a little inspection of something that I haven’t yet had an opportunity to make. I’ll be with you — let’s see!” He glanced at his watch. “It’s now seven-ten. I’ll be with you about eight o’clock, and then we’ll slip out to Calvary and regain this stone. For Miss Vanderhuyden’s sake, I want to play for the situation of possession being nine points of the law. And you can be the one to tell her the good news.” He gave Harling’s chauffeur some directions and a bill, waving back the change. Then his own cab pulled off along the nearest brilliantly lighted street.

  Harling’s cab moved over to Michigan Avenue and was shortly on Lake Shore Drive itself. Within ten minutes he had dismissed it and was walking up the steps of the Vanderhuyden mansion where he rang the bell. Santi opened the door and ushered him in without any hesitation, although he appeared surprised to see that only one man of the two who had left had returned.

  Trudel was talking on the library phone when Harling entered the room, and, as he stepped in, she replaced the instrument in its cradle. She turned around and, seeing him, her puzzled, even worried countenance took on a look of relief.

  “You have come just in time, Mr. Harling,” she informed him. “There is something impending, I’m afraid. Courtenay Vandervoort has just called me up and wants to talk with me privately here. I could do nothing but tell him to come to the house. From the way he speaks I have a feeling that he is going to make a pretense of sending Santi out of the house on some errand, so that what he says may be unheard. And, if he does this, then I want you to be hiding near this library, so that you can be a witness to all he says or does.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  AN OLD MATTER OPENED UP

  HARLING first removed his borrowed raincoat and hat. Then he told the girl about Rafferty’s statement, made under a combination of threats, persuasion and bribery. As he proceeded and she began to realize that the Vanderhuyden ruby was at last regained, at least, its location discovered, her face was radiant in its surprise and satisfaction. After he had finished the brief recital, she rang the bell on the table, and the little brown man appeared.

  “Santi,” she said, “Mr. Courtenay Vandervoort is coming here in a few minutes to talk with me. Under no condition are you to mention that this gentleman is in the house. You understand?” Santi nodded. “Also, if Mr. Vandervoort requests you to leave the house for him on an errand, you will please do so. That’s all.”

  She turned to Harling. “And now, Mr. Harling, for our arrangements.” She pointed to a small archway leading to an alcove off the library; the alcove itself was dark and curtained off by a pair of rich, velvet portières. “I want you to stand in there where you can hear everything this man may say to me. At first you had better stay close to the wall of the library, so that if he should thrust in his head for a second, he won’t be able to see you.” She arose, and, taking the raincoat and hat, carried them from the room and deposited them down the hall some distance. Then she returned and she and Harling talked together in low tones for a few minutes.

  As he talked with her he began to feel a growing sense of unhappiness — despondency because he had been born in a station in life inferior to hers in the matter of wealth; he felt he could never hope to become acquainted on equal terms with a girl such as this young heiress he had met for the second time in his life. As for Trudel, she chatted with him as though he were one of her own set, of her own degree of wealth; whereas he actually sat before her without a nickel in the world.

  Presently the doorbell gave a long ring. At once she rose to her feet. She placed her finger on her lips and pointed silently toward the alcove. Harling nodded understandingly, and slipped into it. In the darkness he could see the girl standing where she was under the lamp, a shade paler, and he could hear the great front door slowly open and voices filtering in from the outer hall. A few seconds later, a man entered the room. His age could not have been more than twenty-nine. His black hair was sleekly parted in the middle; his eyes were cold, blinking — fish eyes. He was slim and immaculately clad, although the suit beneath the fashionable fall overcoat was of a doubtful check, so far as conservatism went, and his hands were covered with pigskin gloves. As he stepped in the doorway a moment, contemplating the slender, yellow-haired girl who stood, pensive, at the library table, Harling could see that one finger of the newcomer’s right-hand glove was empty.

  “Ah, Trudel,” Vandervoort remarked in peculiar, smooth tones, “so you’re waiting for me, eh? Well, that’s splendid. I want to have a short but serious talk with you, dear girl. May I sit down?”

  She nodded weakly: “Yes — certainly, Courtenay. I could not think what you wanted to see me about. Indeed I thought that you and I were hardly likely to meet again after — after — ”

  “After you changed your mind so brutally and so illogically about having the Vandervoort and Vanderhuyden branches of the family united,” he put in coolly. He advanced and dropped into a seat. She sank into her own chair. “I think — ” He stopped speaking and reached out his hand, tapping the bell on the table. A few seconds later, Santi appeared in the doorway. Vandervoort beckoned the little fellow over, at the same time taking a letter from his overcoat pocket. “Santi, I want you to go on a special, quick errand for me. Want you to take this air-mail letter down to the Lincoln Park Sub-station, and mail it in their air-mail letter box. Yes, the red, white and blue box. It is important that the letter go out at once.” The servant nodded, and, with the letter in his hand, withdrew silently; a second later, Harling could hear the slam of the big front door. The girl’s intuition in the matter, he reflected, had been uncannily accurate.

  With the slam of the door, Vandervoort arose and peered out in the hall. Evidently assured that it was empty, he returned and stepped over to the alcove where Harling was secreted; there he thrust in his head. Harling, having anticipated the move far in advance, had flattened himself back against the library wall in the darkness, but, as the man’s head was momentarily thrust in, he scarcely dared breathe.

  Vandervoort seemed satisfied that what he had to say would be unheard, for he returned to the table and sat down, first closing the library door. Harling withdrew from his position far enough so that he could again peer out through the slit at the two figures under the rays of the ornamental lamp.

  “The reason, Trudel,” Vandervoort began smoothly, “that I have sent Santi on an errand, and taken such pains to see that no one is around, is for your sake, wholly. What I have to speak of would be highly detrimental to your interests if any human being knew it.”

  He regarded her for a moment contemplatively, and then went on, a little more emphatically:

  “Trudel, there was once a day when you and I were to become one — under one name. That day seems to be gone, according to you — even though it was Grandfather’s wish that the Vandervoort branch of the family and the Vanderhuyden branch unite. But it’s gone solely on account of you — and your changing your mind. The change dates from the time you returned from your trip through the West and California. You admit the truth of this, do you not, dear?”

  It seemed to Harling that she shuddered a bit, as though the conversation were exceedingly distasteful to her. Then she spoke:

  “Courtenay, I had hoped that all this was never to be brought up again. It is unpleasant to me — much so. As for Grandfather’s wishes, perhaps he would not ha
ve been so eager to see that marriage brought about had he known how you were to run through, in a very few years, everything that he left you — even this jewel, which, it afterward developed, was to come to me instead of you. But whether or not he would have wished it — and Grandfather was too sensible a man to wish a marriage unsatisfactory to either one of us — I was only a girl when I promised you, a girl who thought that the only duty in the world was to accede to the wishes of the old man who had been so kind to her. There was to come a time when I should see more of the world. And on that Western trip, the change in me came about. It doesn’t matter much where it came about, or why. But I awoke to the realization that to marry Courtenay Vandervoort, even though he were not related to me by blood, would be by far the biggest error of my life. Now — ”

  “All this is poppycock!” broke in the other with evident traces of annoyance and anger in his tones. “You met someone in the West who made an impression on you — and that was the end of my chances with you. You admit it?”

  She neither shook her head nor nodded: “I admit nothing, Courtenay. What is it you come here for? It isn’t necessary for us to drag out the old, old argument. Surely you wouldn’t have me, knowing that I didn’t care for you, would you? And something has since happened in my life — that — that would make such a thing impossible, absolutely impossible.”

  Harling, concealed in the alcove, knew full well what that one thing was. The knowledge of the hand with part of the forefinger gone, imprinted in the dust of the table on Washington Square, was something that would never fade from the girl’s mind.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE HEAD OF A GREEN JADE DRAGON

  VANDERVOORT fidgeted in his chair a bit, then suddenly forged ahead in what he had to say. “All of this, perhaps, is necessary to bring me to the point,” he said impatiently. “And here it is: Trudel, my friend Samuel P. Bond of Evanston was found murdered in one of his vacant houses today, at two o’clock or some ten or fifteen minutes after.” He studied her a moment. “From the fact that your face hasn’t changed, I see that you have read the papers — that the startling news has already come to you. Very well. The police found a tiny green crumb or two of jade, with the slightest trace of what must have been silver filigree; also the shaft of an ornamental hat pin piercing the dead man’s brain. The head — the ornamental head of the pin — had been broken off.

  “Now the mere fact of the green jade crumbs, or the tiny green jade cone, which was carried off by a certain brown-suited man whom the police are looking for, can never constitute much of a clue to the identity of the person who jabbed that hat pin through Bond’s eye into his brain. Luckily for the owner of the pin, however, some brown-suited tramp wandered into the place and snapped off the green jade carving for some unexplainable reason. But there are hundreds of green jade ornamental pins for hats this year, and many of them, likewise, are covered with silver filigree work.”

  The girl looked at him steadily: “Courtenay, why beat about the bush? You gave me a green jade hat pin to match my green beret, for my birthday a month ago. You know that I chose a hand-carved dragon made by the one jewelry shop in Chicago which makes those things — a dragon with a tiny gold collar bearing my name. This is what you are driving at. Then you mean to ask me — to suggest, perhaps — that it was my hat pin which was used for a weapon; that — ” She stopped.

  “I am suggesting nothing,” he cut in, coolly. “I was relating something when you interrupted me. I made no accusation or suggestion about you or your ornamental hat pin. You will please recall that, Trudel.” He paused: “Very well. It happens that the police can never discover from the steel pin, the crumblike fragments, and the tiny, green cone, that this formed part of a dragon — ” He raised a hand: “No, don’t interrupt. I happen to know definitely that it was the green jade dragon

  — the one you selected for your birthday present — that was thrust into Bond’s eye and killed him. And here is how I happen to know it:

  “If you read the papers, you will recall that I notified the Chicago Avenue Police Station when I found Bond was not at his residence on time to keep a vital appointment he had with me. It was because one of the younger police reporters there is my friend. It’s DeLysle Harrington — son of old Harrington, the perfumery king. And DeLysle, as it happens, owes me a thousand dollars on I O U notes, which I won from him at poker in the club — before ‘Pahpah’ put him on the street and told him to hustle for himself. Enough for that. DeLysle can never pay me that sum out of his earnings — and he knows it. And if I present these I O U’s to Pahpah — DeLysle will be further than ever from a reconciliation.

  “DeLysle, though, is no fool, like the police. When the second contingent of police got into that house, DeLysle with them, they found nothing that might indicate fully what sort of hat pin had been used — except that all hat pins now are purely ornamental — have ornamental heads of some sort — because women’s hats are made now to hug the head instead of roosting on the summit of a topknot. All right for that. As for DeLysle, he nosed around there while they were getting the body out to the Police Department morgue, and he discovered a peculiar thing. Wedged down tight in the crack of the closet floor of that room is the head of a green jade dragon with a tiny gold collar, but it’s not visible from above. The head will not come out with the fingers. It seems also to have been accidentally covered up with a splinter of wood jammed down into the crack. Does my story interest you, Trudel?”

  “Please go on,” she said softly.

  He smiled with satisfaction. “DeLysle said nothing,” the other continued, “but covered up this dragon head with the same splinter of wood, and left the place with the patrol wagon. As soon as he wrote up the preliminary details, and phoned them in to his paper, he got after the jewelry stores. He learned that Peacock and Co. have been turning out various specimens of hand-carved green jade. Then he went to a telephone and called me up. Wanted to know from me whether Bond was acquainted with any woman who had a green jade hat pin with a dragon or lizard on the top. At once, Trudel, I recognized that that ornamental hat pin was yours; and, dear girl, I have moved heaven and earth that this information might be kept secret.

  “I summoned DeLysle to me at once. I told him that under no condition was he to reveal to the police what he had discovered so far. I warned him that I had peculiar reasons; that at the least word he gave out I might present those I O U’s to old man Harrington. I told him that I knew such a woman: that it might be to the interest of the whole family that any connection of hers with the matter be kept secret. I asked him for time at least to see this woman — to talk with her. And I told him that at the close of my interview I would give him permission either to go ahead and reveal the contents of the crack to the police, or to keep silent.

  “Now Trudel, I ask no questions of you, or your connection with the case. I make no accusations. The thing, to me, is as though it never happened. I always loved you, dear. But I am a person of emotions: a person who can take a terrible revenge if he is opposed in his wishes. So I have only this to say to you, Trudel: In my pocket is the license that we once got together in the City Hall — centuries and centuries ago; the one we never used because of your girlish fickleness. Bishop Thornbridge, of the Episcopal Church of Chicago, lives next door. If you will say the word, I will call him in. Within ten minutes we shall have traveled that wonderful footpath that once before we were to travel, with Santi and one of the servants downstairs for witnesses. What is your answer to my proposal?”

  “A proposal,” she said fearfully, “or a veiled threat, Courtenay? Indeed,” she added wearily, “it seems to me only an adroit threat.” After a moment of silence, she continued: “But about this — this police reporter and the knowledge he has uncovered. What of him?”

  “The moment that Bishop Thornbridge leaves this house, I will call up DeLysle. He’s waiting impatiently at his phone now to hear from me. He will lose a good story when I tell him that his information must never be g
iven out. But he will gain the torn fragments of a thousand dollars in I O U’s, which to him are worth a hundred stories. Have I made the situation clear, Trudel?”

  “And if I — I — should say no?” she asked weakly. “What then, Courtenay?”

  “Then,” he announced firmly and coolly, “I reach over to this phone on the table. I raise the receiver and I call DeLysle. I tell him to go ahead and spring this news to the police, and to get after Peacock and Co.’s order books at once. The house on Washington Square has police posted front and rear. No one — not even DeLysle himself — can get into that house or out. The Chicago Avenue Station will send a man — two men — perhaps three — to look into DeLysle’s story. By midnight they will have ascertained that no one but Miss Trudel Vanderhuyden, a girl who had every reason in the world to hate Bond because he had purchased a ruby which belonged to her — because he had got rid of it before her legal papers went into effect, was the owner of the ornamental hat pin which killed Bond.” Harling could see the man smile in triumph. “So, Trudel, which is it? You see it’s up to you, after all, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER XXI

  FEMININE TEARS

  THE girl remained silent several minutes, and Harling could see her white face staring at the immobile countenance across from her, with horror, revulsion, fear writ large in her big, blue eyes. He gripped his hands till the nails dug deeply into the palms as he thought of the malevolent net Vandervoort had spread in order to induce her to yield to his wishes. And Harling wondered too, what decision she could possibly make in the circumstances. There seemed, indeed, to be no outlet. Finally, after what seemed an interminable time, her lips opened and she spoke evenly, calmly, in the man’s direction: