CHAPTER V
It was on the following afternoon that Sir John Elphinspoon presented the Wazoo Annexation Bill to a crowded and breathless House.
Those who know the House of Commons know that it has its moods. At times it is grave, earnest, thoughtful. At other times it is swept with emotion which comes at it in waves. Or at times, again, it just seems to sit there as if it were stuffed.
But all agreed that they had never seen the House so hushed as when Sir John Elphinspoon presented his Bill for the Annexation of Wazuchistan. And when at the close of a splendid peroration he turned to pay a graceful compliment to the man who had saved the nation, and thundered forth to the delighted ears of his listeners—
Arma virumque cano Wazoo qui primus ab oris,
and then, with the words "England, England," still on his lips, fell over backwards and was carried out on a stretcher, the House broke into wild and unrestrained applause.
CHAPTER VI
The next day Sir Perriton Powers—for the King had knighted him after breakfast—stood again in the conservatory of the house in Carlton Terrace.
"I have come for my reward," he said. "Do I get it?"
"You do," said Angela.
Sir Perriton clasped her in his arms.
"On my way home," he said, "I was attacked by a lion. I tried to beat it–"
"Hush, dearest," she whispered, "let me take you to father."
IV
WHO DO YOU THINK DID IT? OR, THE MIXED-UP MURDER MYSTERY
(Done after the very latest fashion in this sort of thing)
NOTE.—Any reader who guesses correctly who did it is entitled (in all fairness) to a beautiful gold watch and chain.
CHAPTER I
HE DINED WITH ME LAST NIGHT
The afternoon edition of the Metropolitan Planet was going to press. Five thousand copies a minute were reeling off its giant cylinders. A square acre of paper was passing through its presses every hour. In the huge Planet building, which dominated Broadway, employés, compositors, reporters, advertisers, surged to and fro. Placed in a single line (only, of course, they wouldn't be likely to consent to it) they would have reached across Manhattan Island. Placed in two lines, they would probably have reached twice as far. Arranged in a procession they would have taken an hour in passing a saloon: easily that.
In the whole vast building all was uproar. Telephones, megaphones and gramophones were ringing throughout the building. Elevators flew up and down, stopping nowhere.
Only in one place was quiet—namely, in the room where sat the big man on whose capacious intellect the whole organization depended.
Masterman Throgton, the general manager of the Planet, was a man in middle life. There was something in his massive frame which suggested massiveness, and a certain quality in the poise of his great head which indicated a balanced intellect. His face was impenetrable and his expression imponderable.
The big chief was sitting in his swivel chair with ink all round him. Through this man's great brain passed all the threads and filaments that held the news of a continent. Snap one, and the whole continent would stop.
At the moment when our story opens (there was no sense in opening it sooner), a written message had just been handed in.
The Chief read it. He seemed to grasp its contents in a flash.
"Good God!" he exclaimed. It was the strongest expression that this solid, self-contained, semi-detached man ever allowed himself. Anything stronger would have seemed too near to profanity. "Good God!" he repeated, "Kivas Kelly murdered! In his own home! Why, he dined with me last night! I drove him home!"
For a brief moment the big man remained plunged in thought. But with Throgton the moment of musing was short. His instinct was to act.
"You may go," he said to the messenger. Then he seized the telephone that stood beside him (this man could telephone almost without stopping thinking) and spoke into it in quiet, measured tones, without wasting a word.
"Hullo, operator! Put me through to two, two, two, two, two. Is that two, two, two, two, two? Hullo, two, two, two, two, two; I want Transome Kent. Kent speaking? Kent, this is Throgton speaking. Kent, a murder has been committed at the Kelly residence, Riverside Drive. I want you to go and cover it. Get it all. Don't spare expense. The Planet is behind you. Have you got car-fare? Right."
In another moment the big chief had turned round in his swivel chair (at least forty degrees) and was reading telegraphic despatches from Jerusalem. That was the way he did things.
CHAPTER II
I MUST SAVE HER LIFE
Within a few minutes Transome Kent had leapt into a car (a surface car) and was speeding north towards Riverside Drive with the full power of the car. As he passed uptown a newsboy was already calling, "Club Man Murdered! Another Club Man Murdered!" Carelessly throwing a cent to the boy, Kent purchased a paper and read the brief notice of the tragedy.
Kivas Kelly, a well-known club man and bon vivant, had been found dead in his residence on Riverside Drive, with every indication—or, at least, with a whole lot of indications—of murder. The unhappy club man had been found, fully dressed in his evening clothes, lying on his back on the floor of the billiard-room, with his feet stuck up on the edge of the table. A narrow black scarf, presumably his evening tie, was twisted tightly about his neck by means of a billiard cue inserted in it. There was a quiet smile upon his face. He had apparently died from strangulation. A couple of bullet-holes passed through his body, one on each side, but they went out again. His suspenders were burst at the back. His hands were folded across his chest. One of them still held a white billiard ball. There was no sign of a struggle or of any disturbance in the room. A square piece of cloth was missing from the victim's dinner jacket.
In its editorial columns the same paper discussed the more general aspects of the murder. This, it said, was the third club man murdered in the last fortnight. While not taking an alarmist view, the paper felt that the killing of club men had got to stop. There was a limit, a reasonable limit, to everything. Why should a club man be killed? It might be asked, why should a club man live? But this was hardly to the point. They do live. After all, to be fair, what does a club man ask of society? Not much. Merely wine, women and singing. Why not let him have them? Is it fair to kill him? Does the gain to literature outweigh the social wrong? The writer estimated that at the rate of killing now going on the club men would be all destroyed in another generation. Something should be done to conserve them.
Transome Kent was not a detective. He was a reporter. After sweeping everything at Harvard in front of him, and then behind him, he had joined the staff of the Planet two months before. His rise had been phenomenal. In his first week of work he had unravelled a mystery, in his second he had unearthed a packing scandal which had poisoned the food of the entire nation for ten years, and in his third he had pitilessly exposed some of the best and most respectable people in the metropolis. Kent's work on the Planet consisted now almost exclusively of unravelling and unearthing, and it was natural that the manager should turn to him.
The mansion was a handsome sandstone residence, standing in its own grounds. On Kent's arrival he found that the police had already drawn a cordon around it with cords. Groups of morbid curiosity-seekers hung about it in twos and threes, some of them in fours and fives. Policemen were leaning against the fence in all directions. They wore that baffled look so common to the detective force of the metropolis. "It seems to me," remarked one of them to the man beside him, "that there is an inexorable chain of logic about this that I am unable to follow." "So do I," said the other.
The Chief Inspector of the Detective Department, a large, heavy-looking man, was standing beside a gate-post. He nodded gloomily to Transome Kent.
"Are you baffled, Edwards?" asked Kent.
"Baffled again, Mr. Kent," said the Inspector, with a sob in his voice. "I thought I could have solved this one, but I can't."
He passed a handkerchief across his eyes.
"Have a cigar, Chief," said Kent, "and let me hear what the trouble is."
The Inspector brightened. Like all policemen, he was simply crazy over cigars. "All right, Mr. Kent," he said, "wait till I chase away the morbid curiosity-seekers."
He threw a stick at them.
"Now, then," continued Kent, "what about tracks, footmarks? Had you thought of them?"
"Yes, first thing. The whole lawn is covered with them, all stamped down. Look at these, for instance. These are the tracks of a man with a wooden leg"—Kent nodded—"in all probability a sailor, newly landed from Java, carrying a Singapore walking-stick, and with a tin-whistle tied round his belt."
"Yes, I see that," said Kent thoughtfully. "The weight of the whistle weighs him down a little on the right side."
"Do you think, Mr. Kent, a sailor from Java with a wooden leg would commit a murder like this?" asked the Inspector eagerly. "Would he do it?"
"He would," said the Investigator. "They generally do—as soon as they land."
The Inspector nodded. "And look at these marks here, Mr. Kent. You recognize them, surely—those are the footsteps of a bar-keeper out of employment, waiting for the eighteenth amendment to pass away. See how deeply they sink in–"
"Yes," said Kent, "he'd commit murder."
"There are lots more," continued the Inspector, "but they're no good. The morbid curiosity-seekers were walking all over this place while we were drawing the cordon round it."
"Stop a bit," said Kent, pausing to think a moment. "What about thumb-prints?"
"Thumb-prints," said the Inspector. "Don't mention them. The house is full of them."
"Any thumb-prints of Italians with that peculiar incurvature of the ball of the thumb that denotes a Sicilian brigand?"
"There were three of those," said Inspector Edwards gloomily. "No, Mr. Kent, the thumb stuff is no good."
Kent thought again.
"Inspector," he said, "what about mysterious women? Have you seen any around?"
"Four went by this morning," said the Inspector, "one at eleven-thirty, one at twelve-thirty, and two together at one-thirty. At least," he added sadly, "I think they were mysterious. All women look mysterious to me."
"I must try in another direction," said Kent. "Let me reconstruct the whole thing. I must weave a chain of analysis. Kivas Kelly was a bachelor, was he not?"
"He was. He lived alone here."
"Very good, I suppose he had in his employ a butler who had been with him for twenty years–"
Edwards nodded.
"I suppose you've arrested him?"
"At once," said the Inspector. "We always arrest the butler, Mr. Kent. They expect it. In fact, this man, Williams, gave himself up at once."
"And let me see," continued the Investigator. "I presume there was a housekeeper who lived on the top floor, and who had been stone deaf for ten years?"
"Precisely."
"She had heard nothing during the murder?"
"Not a thing. But this may have been on account of her deafness."
"True, true," murmured Kent. "And I suppose there was a coachman, a thoroughly reliable man, who lived with his wife at the back of the house–"
"But who had taken his wife over to see a relation on the night of the murder, and who did not return until an advanced hour. Mr. Kent, we've been all over that. There's nothing in it."
"Were there any other persons belonging to the establishment?"
"There was Mr. Kelly's stenographer, Alice Delary, but she only came in the mornings."
"Have you seen her?" asked Kent eagerly. "What is she like?"
"I have seen her," said the Inspector. "She's a looloo."
"Ha," said Kent, "a looloo!" The two men looked into one another's eyes.
"Yes," repeated Edwards thoughtfully, "a peach."
A sudden swift flash of intuition, an inspiration, leapt into the young reporter's brain.
This girl, this peach, at all hazards he must save her life.
CHAPTER III
I MUST BUY A BOOK ON BILLIARDS
Kent turned to the Inspector. "Take me into the house," he said. Edwards led the way. The interior of the handsome mansion seemed undisturbed. "I see no sign of a struggle here," said Kent.
"No," answered the Inspector gloomily. "We can find no sign of a struggle anywhere. But, then, we never do."
He opened for the moment the door of the stately drawing-room. "No sign of a struggle there," he said. The closed blinds, the draped furniture, the covered piano, the muffled chandelier, showed absolutely no sign of a struggle.
"Come upstairs to the billiard-room," said Edwards. "The body has been removed for the inquest, but nothing else is disturbed."
They went upstairs. On the second floor was the billiard-room, with a great English table in the centre of it. But Kent had at once dashed across to the window, an exclamation on his lips. "Ha! ha!" he said, "what have we here?"
The Inspector shook his head quietly. "The window," he said in a monotonous, almost sing-song tone, "has apparently been opened from the outside, the sash being lifted with some kind of a sharp instrument. The dust on the sill outside has been disturbed as if by a man of extraordinary agility lying on his stomach–Don't bother about that, Mr. Kent. It's always there."
"True," said Kent. Then he cast his eyes upward, and again an involuntary exclamation broke from him. "Did you see that trap-door?" he asked.
"We did," said Edwards. "The dust around the rim has been disturbed. The trap opens into the hollow of the roof. A man of extraordinary dexterity might open the trap with a billiard cue, throw up a fine manila rope, climb up the rope and lie there on his stomach.
"No use," continued the Inspector. "For the matter of that, look at this huge old-fashioned fireplace. A man of extraordinary precocity could climb up the chimney. Or this dumb-waiter on a pulley, for serving drinks, leading down into the maids' quarters. A man of extreme indelicacy might ride up and down in it."
"Stop a minute," said Kent. "What is the meaning of that hat?"
A light gossamer hat, gay with flowers, hung on a peg at the side of the room.
"We thought of that," said Edwards, "and we have left it there. Whoever comes for that hat has had a hand in the mystery. We think–"
But Transome Kent was no longer listening. He had seized the edge of the billiard table.
"Look, look!" he cried eagerly. "The clue to the mystery! The positions of the billiard balls! The white ball in the very centre of the table, and the red just standing on the verge of the end pocket! What does it mean, Edwards, what does it mean?"
He had grasped Edwards by the arm and was peering into his face.
"I don't know," said the Inspector. "I don't play billiards."
"Neither do I," said Kent, "but I can find out. Quick! The nearest book-store. I must buy a book on billiards."
With a wave of the arm, Kent vanished.
The Inspector stood for a moment in thought.
"Gone!" he murmured to himself (it was his habit to murmur all really important speeches aloud to himself). "Now, why did Throgton telephone to me to put a watch on Kent? Ten dollars a day to shadow him! Why?"
CHAPTER IV
THAT IS NOT BILLIARD CHALK
Meantime at the Planet office Masterman Throgton was putting on his coat to go home.
"Excuse me, sir," said an employé, "there's a lot of green billiard chalk on your sleeve."
Throgton turned and looked the man full in the eye.
"That is not billiard chalk," he said, "it is face powder."
Saying which this big, imperturbable, self-contained man stepped into the elevator and went to the ground floor in one drop
CHAPTER V.
HAS ANYBODY HERE SEEN KELLY?
The inquest upon the body of Kivas Kelly was held upon the following day. Far from offering any solution of what had now become an unfathomable mystery, it only made it deeper still. The medical testimony, though given by the most distinguished consulting expert of the city, was entirely inconclusive. The body, the expert testified, showed evident marks of violence. There was a distinct lesion of the œsophagus and a decided excoriation of the fibula. The mesodenum was gibbous. There was a certain quantity of flab in the binomium and the proscenium was wide open.
One striking fact, however, was decided from the testimony of the expert, namely, that the stomach of the deceased was found to contain half a pint of arsenic. On this point the questioning of the district attorney was close and technical. Was it unusual, he asked, to find arsenic in the stomach? In the stomach of a club man, no. Was not half a pint a large quantity? He would not say that. Was it a small quantity? He should not care to say that it was. Would half a pint of arsenic cause death? Of a club man, no, not necessarily. That was all.
The other testimony submitted to the inquest jury brought out various facts of a substantive character, but calculated rather to complicate than to unravel the mystery. The butler swore that on the very day of the murder he had served his master a half-pint of arsenic at lunch. But he claimed that this was quite a usual happening with his master. On cross-examination it appeared that he meant apollinaris. He was certain, however, that it was half a pint. The butler, it was shown, had been in Kivas Kelly's employ for twenty years.
The coachman, an Irishman, was closely questioned. He had been in Mr. Kelly's employ for three years—ever since his arrival from the old country. Was it true that he had had, on the day of the murder, a violent quarrel with his master? It was. Had he threatened to kill him? No. He had threatened to knock his block off, but not to kill him.
The coroner looked at his notes. "Call Alice Delary," he commanded. There was a deep sensation in the court as Miss Delary quietly stepped forward to her place in the witness-box.
Tall, graceful and willowy, Alice Delary was in her first burst of womanhood. Those who looked at the beautiful girl realized that if her first burst was like this, what would the second, or the third be like?
The girl was trembling, and evidently distressed, but she gave her evidence in a clear, sweet, low voice. She had been in Mr. Kelly's employ three years. She was his stenographer. But she came only in the mornings and always left at lunch-time. The question immediately asked by the jury—"Where did she generally have lunch?"—was disallowed by the coroner. Asked by a member of the jury what system of shorthand she used, she answered, "Pitman's." Asked by another juryman whether she ever cared to go to moving pictures, she said that she went occasionally. This created a favourable impression. "Miss Delary," said the district attorney, "I want to ask if it is your hat that was found hanging in the billiard-room after the crime?"
"Don't you dare ask that girl that," interrupted the magistrate. "Miss Delary, you may step down."
But the principal sensation of the day arose out of the evidence offered by Masterman Throgton, general manager of the Planet. Kivas Kelly, he testified, had dined with him at his club on the fateful evening. He had afterwards driven him to his home.
"When you went into the house with the deceased," asked the district attorney, "how long did you remain there with him?"
"That," said Throgton quietly, "I must refuse to answer."
"Would it incriminate you?" asked the coroner, leaning forward.
"It might," said Throgton.
"Then you're perfectly right not to answer it," said the coroner. "Don't ask him that any more. Ask something else."
"Then did you," questioned the attorney, turning to Throgton again, "play a game of billiards with the deceased?"
"Stop, stop," said the coroner, "that question I can't allow. It's too direct, too brutal; there's something about that question, something mean, dirty. Ask another."
"Very good," said the attorney. "Then tell me, Mr. Throgton, if you ever saw this blue envelope before?" He held up in his hand a long blue envelope.
"Never in my life," said Throgton.
"Of course he didn't," said the coroner. "Let's have a look at it. What is it?"
"This envelope, your Honour, was found sticking out of the waistcoat pocket of the deceased."
"You don't say," said the coroner. "And what's in it?"
Amid breathless silence, the attorney drew forth a sheet of blue paper, bearing a stamp, and read:
"This is the last will and testament of me, Kivas Kelly of New York. I leave everything of which I die possessed to my nephew, Peter Kelly."
The entire room gasped. No one spoke. The coroner looked all around. "Has anybody here seen Kelly?" he asked.
There was no answer.
The coroner repeated the question.
No one moved.
"Mr. Coroner," said the attorney, "it is my opinion that if Peter Kelly is found the mystery is fathomed."
Ten minutes later the jury returned a verdict of murder against a person or persons unknown, adding that they would bet a dollar that Kelly did it.
The coroner ordered the butler to be released, and directed the issue of a warrant for the arrest of Peter Kelly.