The Window at the White Cat Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  A FOUNTAIN PEN

  Harry Wardrop came back from the city at four o'clock, while Hunter wasin the midst of his investigation. I met him in the hall and told himwhat had happened, and with this new apprehension added to the shock ofthe night before, he looked as though his nerves were ready to snap.

  Wardrop was a man of perhaps twenty-seven, as tall as I, although not soheavy, with direct blue eyes and fair hair; altogether a manly andprepossessing sort of fellow. I was not surprised that Margery Fleminghad found him attractive--he had the blond hair and off-hand manner thatwomen seem to like. I am dark, myself.

  He seemed surprised to find Hunter there, and not particularly pleased,but he followed us to the upper floor and watched silently while Hunterwent over the two rooms. Beside the large chest of drawers in the mainattic Hunter found perhaps half a dozen drops of blood, and on the edgeof the open drawer there were traces of more. In the inner room twotrunks had been moved out nearly a foot, as he found by the faint dustthat had been under them. With the stain on the stair rail, that was allhe discovered, and it was little enough. Then he took out his note-bookand there among the trunks we had a little seance of our own, in whichHunter asked questions, and whoever could do so answered them.

  "Have you a pencil or pen, Mr. Knox?" he asked me, but I had none.Wardrop felt his pockets, with no better success.

  "I have lost my fountain pen somewhere around the house to-day," he saidirritably. "Here's a pencil--not much of one."

  Hunter began his interrogations.

  "How old was Miss Maitland--Miss Jane, I mean?"

  "Sixty-five," from Margery.

  "She had always seemed rational? Not eccentric, or childish?"

  "Not at all; the sanest woman I ever knew." This from Wardrop.

  "Has she ever, to your knowledge, received any threatening letters?"

  "Never in all her life," from both of them promptly.

  "You heard sounds, you say, Miss Fleming. At what time?"

  "About half-past one or perhaps a few minutes later. The clock strucktwo while I was still awake and nervous."

  "This person who was walking through the attics here--would you say itwas a heavy person? A man, I mean?"

  Margery stopped to think.

  "Yes," she said finally. "It was very stealthy, but I think it was aman's step."

  "You heard no sound of a struggle? No voices? No screams?"

  "None at all," she said positively. And I added my quota.

  "There could have been no such sounds," I said. "I sat in my room andsmoked until a quarter to two. I heard nothing until then, when I heardMr. Wardrop trying to get into the house. I went down to admit him,and--I found the front door open about an inch."

  Hunter wheeled on Wardrop.

  "A quarter to two?" he asked. "You were coming home from--the city?"

  "Yes, from the station."

  Hunter watched him closely.

  "The last train gets in here at twelve-thirty," he said slowly. "Does italways take you an hour and a quarter to walk the three squares to thehouse?"

  Wardrop flushed uneasily, and I could see Margery's eyes dilate withamazement. As for me, I could only stare.

  "I did not come directly home," he said, almost defiantly.

  Hunter's voice was as smooth as silk.

  "Then--will you be good enough to tell me where you did go?" he asked."I have reasons for wanting to know."

  "Damn your reasons--I beg your pardon, Margery. Look here, Mr. Hunter,do you think I would hurt a hair of that old lady's head? Do you think Icame here last night and killed her, or whatever it is that has happenedto her? And then went out and tried to get in again through the window?"

  "Not necessarily," Hunter said, unruffled. "It merely occurred to methat we have at least an hour of your time last night, while this thingwas going on, to account for. However, we can speak of that later. I ampractically certain of one thing, Miss Maitland is not dead, or was notdead when she was taken away from this house."

  "Taken away!" Margery repeated. "Then you think she was kidnapped?"

  "Well, it is possible. It's a puzzling affair all through. You arecertain there are no closets or unused rooms where, if there had been amurder, the body could be concealed."

  "I never heard of any," Margery said, but I saw Wardrop's face change onthe instant. He said nothing, however, but stood frowning at the floor,with his hands deep in his coat pockets.

  Margery was beginning to show the effect of the long day's strain; shebegan to cry a little, and with an air of proprietorship that Iresented, somehow, Wardrop went over to her.

  "You are going to lie down, Margery," he said, holding out his hand tohelp her up. "Mrs. Mellon will come over to Aunt Letitia, and you mustget some sleep."

  "Sleep!" she said with scorn, as he helped her to her feet. "Sleep, whenthings like this are occurring! Father first, and now dear old AuntJane! Harry, do you know where my father is?"

  He faced her, as if he had known the question must come and was preparedfor it.

  "I know that he is all right, Margery. He has been--out of town. If ithad not been for something unforeseen that--happened within the last fewhours, he would have been home to-day."

  She drew a long breath of relief.

  "And Aunt Jane?" she asked Hunter, from the head of the attic stairs,"you do not think she is dead?"

  "Not until we have found something more," he answered tactlessly. "It'slike where there's smoke there's fire; where there's murder there's abody."

  When they had both gone, Hunter sat down on a trunk and drew out a cigarthat looked like a bomb.

  "What do you think of it?" I asked, when he showed no disposition totalk.

  "I'll be damned if I know," he responded, looking around for some placeto expectorate and finding none.

  "The window," I suggested, and he went over to it. When he came back hehad a rather peculiar expression. He sat down and puffed for a moment.

  "In the first place," he began, "we can take it for granted that, unlessshe was crazy or sleep-walking, she didn't go out in her night-clothes,and there's nothing of hers missing. She wasn't taken in a carriage,providing she was taken at all. There's not a mark of wheels on thatdrive newer than a week, and besides, you say you heard nothing."

  "Nothing," I said positively.

  "Then, unless she went away in a balloon, where it wouldn't matter whatshe had on, she is still around the premises. It depends on how badlyshe was hurt."

  "Are you sure it was she who was hurt?" I asked. "That print of ahand--that is not Miss Jane's."

  In reply Hunter led the way down the stairs to the place where the stainon the stair rail stood out, ugly and distinct. He put his own heavyhand on the rail just below it.

  "Suppose," he said, "suppose you grip something very hard, what happensto your hand?"

  "It spreads," I acknowledged, seeing what he meant.

  "Now, look at that stain. Look at the short fingers--why, it's a child'shand beside mine. The breadth is from pressure. It might be figured outthis way. The fingers, you notice, point down the stairs. In some way,let us say, the burglar, for want of a better name, gets into the house.He used a ladder resting against that window by the chest of drawers."

  "Ladder!" I exclaimed.

  "Yes, there is a pruning ladder there. Now then--he comes down thesestairs, and he has a definite object. He knows of something valuable inthat cubby hole over the mantel in Miss Jane's room. How does he get in?The door into the upper hall is closed and bolted, but the door into thebath-room is open. From there another door leads into the bedroom, andit has no bolt--only a key. That kind of a lock is only a three-minutesdelay, or less. Now then, Miss Maitland was a light sleeper. When shewakened she was too alarmed to scream; she tried to get to the door andwas intercepted. Finally she got out the way the intruder got in, andran along the hall. Every door was locked. In a frenzy she ran up theattic stairs and was captured up there. Which bears out Miss Margery'sstory
of the footsteps back and forward."

  "Good heavens, what an awful thing!" I gasped. "And I was sittingsmoking just across the hall."

  "He brings her down the stairs again, probably half dragging her. Once,she catches hold of the stair rail, and holds desperately to it, leavingthe stain here."

  "But why did he bring her down?" I asked bewildered. "Why wouldn't hetake what he was after and get away?"

  Hunter smoked and meditated.

  "She probably had to get the key of the iron door," he suggested. "Itwas hidden, and time was valuable. If there was a scapegrace member ofthe family, for instance, who knew where the old lady kept money, andwho needed it badly; who knew all about the house, and who--"

  "Fleming!" I exclaimed, aghast.

  "Or even our young friend, Wardrop," Hunter said quietly. "He has anhour to account for. The trying to get in may have been a blind, and howdo you know that what he says was stolen out of his satchel was not whathe had just got from the iron box over the mantel in Miss Maitland'sroom?"

  I was dizzy with trying to follow Hunter's facile imagination. The thingwe were trying to do was to find the old lady, and, after all, here webrought up against the same _impasse_.

  "Then where is she now?" I asked. He meditated. He had sat down on thenarrow stairs, and was rubbing his chin with a thoughtful forefinger."One-thirty, Miss Margery says, when she heard the noise. One-forty-fivewhen you heard Wardrop at the shutters. I tell you, Knox, it is one oftwo things: either that woman is dead somewhere in this house, or sheran out of the hall door just before you went down-stairs, and in thatcase the Lord only knows where she is. If there is a room anywhere thatwe have not explored--"

  "I am inclined to think there is," I broke in, thinking of Wardrop'sface a few minutes before. And just then Wardrop himself joined us. Heclosed the door at the foot of the boxed-in staircase, and came quietlyup.

  "You spoke about an unused room or a secret closet, Mr. Hunter," hesaid, without any resentment in his tone. "We have nothing sosensational as that, but the old house is full of queer nooks andcrannies, and perhaps, in one of them, we might find--" he stopped andgulped. Whatever Hunter might think, whatever I might have against HarryWardrop, I determined then that he had had absolutely nothing to do withlittle Miss Maitland's strange disappearance.

  The first place we explored was a closed and walled-in wine-cellar, longunused, and to which access was gained by a small window in the stonefoundation of the house. The cobwebs over the window made it practicallyan impossible place, but we put Robert, the gardener, through it, inspite of his protests.

  "There's nothin' there, I tell you," he protested, with one leg over thecoping. "God only knows what's down there, after all these years. I'vebeen livin' here with the Miss Maitlands for twenty year, and I ain'tnever been put to goin' down into cellars on the end of a rope."

  He went, because we were three to his one, but he was up again in sixtyseconds, with the announcement that the place was as bare as the top ofhis head.

  We moved every trunk in the store-room, although it would have been amoral impossibility for any one to have done it the night before withoutrousing the entire family, and were thus able to get to and open a largecloset, which proved to contain neatly tied and labeled packages ofreligious weeklies, beginning in the sixties.

  The grounds had been gone over inch by inch, without affording any clue,and now the three of us faced one another. The day was almost gone, andwe were exactly where we started. Hunter had sent men through the townand the adjacent countryside, but no word had come from them. MissLetitia had at last succumbed to the suspense and had gone to bed, whereshe lay quietly enough, as is the way with the old, but so mild that shewas alarming.

  At five o'clock Hawes called me up from the office and almost tearfullyimplored me to come back and attend to my business. When I said it wasimpossible, I could hear him groan as he hung up the receiver. Hawes isof the opinion that by keeping fresh magazines in my waiting-room and bypersuading me to the extravagance of Turkish rugs, that he has built mypractice to its present flourishing state. When I left the telephone,Hunter was preparing to go back to town and Wardrop was walking up anddown the hall. Suddenly Wardrop stopped his uneasy promenade and hailedthe detective on his way to the door.

  "By George," he exclaimed, "I forgot to show you the closet under theattic stairs!"

  We hurried up and Wardrop showed us the panel in the hall, which slid toone side when he pushed a bolt under the carpet. The blackness of thecloset was horrible in its suggestion to me. I stepped back whileHunter struck a match and looked in.

  The closet was empty.

  "Better not go in," Wardrop said. "It hasn't been used for years andit's black with dust. I found it myself and showed it to Miss Jane. Idon't believe Miss Letitia knows it is here."

  "It hasn't been used for years!" reflected Hunter, looking around himcuriously. "I suppose it has been some time since you were in here, Mr.Wardrop?"

  "Several years," Wardrop replied carelessly. "I used to keep contrabandhere in my college days, cigarettes and that sort of thing. I haven'tbeen in it since then."

  Hunter took his foot off a small object that lay on the floor, andpicking it up, held it out to Wardrop, with a grim smile.

  "Here is the fountain pen you lost this morning, Mr. Wardrop," he saidquietly.