The Bartlett Mystery

“Have you gone crazy with the heat?” inquired Carshaw.

“I hold you for fighting in the public street, an’ that’s all there is to it,” was the firm reply. “You can come quietly or be ’cuffed, just as you like. Clear off, the rest of you.”

An awe-stricken mob backed hastily. Fowle was too dazed even to protest, and Carshaw sensed some hidden but definite motive behind the policeman’s strange alternation of moods. He looked again at the brown-stone house, but night was closing in so rapidly that he could not distinguish a face at any of the windows.

“Let us get there quickly – I’ll be late for dinner,” he said, and the three returned by the way Carshaw had come.

Thus it was that Rex Carshaw, eligible young society bachelor, was drawn into the ever-widening vortex of “The Yacht Mystery.” He did not recognize it yet, but was destined soon to feel the force of its swirling currents.

Gazing from a window of the otherwise deserted house Winifred saw both her assailant and her protector marched off by the policeman. It was patent, even to her benumbed wits, that they had been arrested. The tailing-in of the mob behind the trio told her as much.

She was too stunned to do other than sink into a chair. For a while she feared she was going to faint. With lack-lustre eyes she peered into a gulf of loneliness and despair. Then outraged nature came to her aid, and she burst into a storm of tears.

CHAPTER VI

BROTHER RALPH

Clancy forced Senator Meiklejohn’s hand early in the fray. He was at the Senator’s flat within an hour of the time Ronald Tower was dragged into the Hudson, but a smooth-spoken English man-servant assured the detective that his master was out, and not expected home until two or three in the morning.

This arrangement obviously referred to the Van Hofen festivity, so Clancy contented himself with asking the valet to give the Senator a card on which he scribbled a telephone number and the words, “Please ring up when you get this.”

Now, he knew, and Senator Meiklejohn knew, the theater at which Mrs. Tower was enjoying herself. He did not imagine for an instant that the Senator was discharging the mournful duty of announcing to his friend’s wife the lamentable fate which had overtaken her husband. Merely as a perfunctory duty he went to the theater and sought the manager.

“You know Mrs. Ronald Tower?” he said.

“Sure I do,” said the official. “She’s inside now. Came here with Bobby Forrest.”

“Anybody called for her recently?”

“I think not, but I’ll soon find out.”

No. Mrs. Tower’s appreciation of Belasco’s genius had not been disturbed that evening.

“Anything wrong?” inquired the manager.

Clancy’s answer was ready.

“If Senator Meiklejohn comes here within half an hour, see that the lady is told at once,” he said. “If he doesn’t show up in that time, send for Mr. Forrest, tell him that Mr. Tower has met with an accident, and leave him to look after the lady.”

“Wow! Is it serious? Why wait?”

“The slight delay won’t matter, and the Senator can handle the situation better than Forrest.”

Clancy gave some telephonic instruction to the man on night duty at headquarters. He even dictated a paragraph for the press. Then he went straight to bed, for the hardiest detectives must sleep, and he had a full day’s work before him when next the sun rose over New York.

He summed up Meiklejohn’s action correctly. The Senator did not communicate with Mulberry Street during the night, so Clancy was an early visitor at his apartment.

“The Senator is ill and can see no one,” said the valet.

“No matter how ill he may be, he must see me,” retorted Clancy.

“But he musn’t be disturbed. I have my orders.”

“Take a fresh set. He’s going to be disturbed right now, by you or me. Choose quick!”

The law prevailed. A few minutes later Senator Meiklejohn entered the library sitting-room, where the little detective awaited him. He looked wretchedly ill, but his sufferings were mental, not physical. Examined critically now, in the cold light of day, he was a very different man from the spruce, dandified politician and financier who figured so prominently among Van Hofen’s guests the previous evening. Yet Clancy saw at a glance that the Senator was armed at all points. Diplomacy would be useless. The situation demanded a bludgeon. He began the attack at once.

“Why didn’t you ring up Mulberry Street last night, Senator?” he said.

“I was too upset. My nerves were all in.”

“You told the patrolman at Eighty-sixth Street that you were hurrying away to break the news to Mrs. Tower, yet you did not go near her?”

Meiklejohn affected to consult Clancy’s card to ascertain the detective’s name.

“Perhaps I had better get in touch with the Bureau now,” he said, and a flush of anger darkened his haggard face.

“No need. The Bureau is right here. Let us get down to brass tacks, Senator. A woman named Rachel met you outside the Four Hundred Club at eight o’clock as you were coming out. You had just spoken to Mrs. Tower, when this woman told you that you must meet two men who would await you at the Eighty-sixth landing-stage at nine. You were to bring five hundred dollars. At nine o’clock these same men killed Mr. Tower, and you yourself admitted to me that they mistook him for you. Now, will you be good enough to fill in the blanks? Who is Rachel? Where does she live? Who were the two men? Why should you give them five hundred dollars, apparently as blackmail?”

Clancy was exceedingly disappointed by the result of this thunderbolt. Any ordinary man would have shrivelled under its crushing impact. If the police knew so much that might reasonably be regarded as secret, of what avail was further concealment? Yet Senator Meiklejohn bore up wonderfully. He showed surprise, as well he might, but was by no means pulverized.

“All this is rather marvelous,” he said slowly, after a long pause. He had avoided Clancy’s gaze after the first few words, and sank into an armchair with an air of weariness that was not assumed.

“Simple enough,” commented the detective readily. Above all else he wanted Meiklejohn to talk. “I was on duty outside the club, and heard almost every word that passed between you and Rachel.”

“Well, well.”

The Senator arose and pressed an electric bell.

“If you don’t mind,” he explained suavely, “I’ll order some coffee and rolls. Will you join me?”

This was the parry of a skilled duelist to divert an attack and gain breathing-time. Clancy rather admired such adroitness.

“Sorry, I can’t on principle,” he countered.

“How – on principle?”

“You see, Senator, I may have to arrest you, and I never eat with any man with whom I may clash professionally.”

“You take risks, Mr. Clancy.”

“I love ’em. I’d cut my job to-day if it wasn’t for the occasional excitement.”

The valet appeared.

“Coffee and rolls for two, Phillips,” said Meiklejohn. He turned to Clancy. “Perhaps you would prefer toast and an egg?”

“I have breakfasted already, Senator,” smiled the detective, “but I may dally with the coffee.”

When the door was closed on Phillips, his master glanced at a clock on the mantelpiece. The hour was eight-fifteen. Some days elapsed before Clancy interpreted that incident correctly.

“You rose early,” said the Senator.

“Yes, but worms are coy this morning.”

“Meaning that you still await answers to your questions. I’ll deal with you fully and frankly, but I’m curious to know on what conceivable ground you could arrest me for the murder of my friend Ronald Tower.”

“As an accessory before the act.”

“But, consider. You have brains, Mr. Clancy. I am glad the Bureau sent such a man. How can a bit of unthinking generosity on my part be construed as participation in a crime?”

“If you explain matters, Senator, the absurdity of the notion may become clear.”

“Ah, that’s better. Let me assure you that my coffee will not affect your fine sensibilities. Miss Rachel Craik is a lady I have known nearly all my life. I have assisted her, within my means. She resides in East One Hundred and Twelfth Street, and the man about whom she was so concerned last night is her brother. He committed some technical offense years ago, and has always been a ne’er-do-well. To please his sister, and for no other reason, I undertook to provide him with five hundred dollars, and thus enable him to start life anew. I have never met the man. I would not recognize him if I saw him. I believe he is a desperate character; his maniacal behavior last night seems to leave no room for doubt in that respect. Don’t you see, Mr. Clancy, that it was I, and not poor Tower, whom he meant attacking? But for idle chance, it is my corpse, not Tower’s, that would now be floating in the Hudson. You heard what Tower said. I did not. I assume, however, that some allusion was made to the money – which, by the way, is still in my pocketbook – and Tower scoffed at the notion that he had come there to hand over five hundred dollars. There you have the whole story, in so far as I can tell it.”

“For the present, Senator.”

“How?”

“It should yield many more chapters. Is that all you’re going to say? For instance, did you call on Rachel Craik after leaving Eighty-sixth Street?”

Meiklejohn’s jaws closed like a steel trap. He almost lost his temper.

“No,” he said, seemingly conquering the desire to blaze into anger at this gadfly of a detective.

“Sure?”

“I said ‘no.’ That is not ‘yes.’ I was so overcome by Tower’s miserable fate that I dismissed my car and walked home. I could not face any one, least of all Helen – Mrs. Tower.”

“Or the Bureau?”

“Mr. Clancy, you annoy me.”

Clancy stood up.

“I must duck your coffee, Senator,” he said cheerfully. “Is Miss Craik on the phone?”

“No. She is poor, and lives alone – or, to be correct, with a niece, I believe.”

“Well, think matters over. I’ll see you again soon. Then you may be able to tell me some more.”

“I have told you everything.”

“Perhaps I may do the telling.”

“Now, as to this poor woman, Miss Craik. You will not adopt harsh measures, I trust?”

“We are never harsh, Senator. If she speaks the truth, and all the truth, she need not fear.”

In the hall Clancy met the valet, carrying a laden tray.

“Do you make good coffee, Phillips?” he inquired.

“I try to,” smiled the other.

“Ah, that’s modest – that’s the way real genius speaks. Sorry I can’t sample your brew to-day. So few Englishmen know the first thing about coffee.”

“Nice, friendly little chap,” was Phillips’s opinion of the detective. Senator Meiklejohn’s description of the same person was widely different. When Clancy went out, he, too, rose and stretched his stiff limbs.

“I got rid of that little rat more easily than I expected,” he mused – that is to say, the Senator’s thoughts may be estimated in some such phrase. But he was grievously mistaken in his belief. Clancy was no rat, but a most stubborn terrier when there were rats around.

While Meiklejohn was drinking his coffee the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Tower. She was heartbroken, or professed to be, since no more selfish woman existed in New York.

“Are you coming to see me?” she wailed.

“Yes, yes, later in the day. At present I dare not. I am too unhinged. Oh, Helen, what a tragedy! Have you any news?”

“News! My God! What news can I hope for except that Ronald’s poor, maimed body has been found?”

“Helen, this is terrible. Bear up!”

“I’m doing my best. I can hardly believe that this thing has really happened. Help me in one small way, Senator. Telephone Mr. Jacob and explain why our luncheon is postponed.”

“Yes, I’ll do that.”

Meiklejohn smiled grimly as he hung up the receiver. In the midst of her tribulations Helen Tower had not forgotten Jacob and the little business of the Costa Rica Cotton Concession! The luncheon was only “postponed.”

An inquiry came from a newspaper, whereupon he gave a curt order that no more calls were to be made that day, as the apartment would be empty. He dressed, and devoted himself forthwith to the task of overhauling papers. He had a fire kindled in the library.

Hour after hour he worked, until the grate was littered with the ashes of destroyed documents. Sending for newspapers, he read of Rachel Craik’s arrest. At last, when the light waned, he looked at his watch. Should he not face his fellow-members at the Four Hundred Club? Would it not betray weakness to shirk the ordeal of inquiry, of friendly scrutiny and half-spoken wonder that he, the irreproachable, should be mixed up in such a weird tragedy. Once he sought support from a decanter of brandy.

“Confound it!” he muttered, “why am I so shaky. I didn’t murder Tower. My whole life may be ruined by one false step!”

He was still pondering irresolutely a visit to the club when Phillips came. The valet seemed flurried.

“There’s a gentleman outside, sir, who insists on seeing you,” he said nervously. “He’s a very violent gentleman, sir. He said if I didn’t announce him he – ”

“What name?” interrupted Meiklejohn.

“Name of Voles, sir.”

“Voles?”

“Yes, sir, but he says you’ll recognize him better by the initials R. V. V.”

Men of Meiklejohn’s physique – big, fleshy, with the stamp of success on them – are rare subjects for nervous attacks. They seem to defy events which will shock the color out of ordinary men’s cheeks, yet Meiklejohn felt that if he dared encounter the eyes of his discreet servant he would do something outrageous – shriek, or jump, or tear his hair. He bent over some papers on the table.

“Send Mr. Voles in,” he murmured. “If any other person calls, say I’m engaged.”

The man who was ushered into the room was of a stature and demeanor which might well have cowed the valet. Tall, strongly built, altogether fitter and more muscular than the stalwart Senator, he carried with him an impression of truculence, of a savage forcefulness, not often clothed in the staid garments of city life. Were his skin bronze, were he decked in the barbaric trappings of a Pawnee chief, his appearance would be more in accord with the chill and repellant significance of his personality. His square, hard features might have been chiseled out of granite. A pair of singularly dark eyes blazed beneath heavy and prominent eyebrows. A high forehead, a massive chin, and a well-shaped nose lent a certain intellectuality to the face, but this attribute was negatived by the coarse lines of a brutal mouth.

From any point of view the visitor must invite attention, while compelling dislike – even fear. In a smaller frame, such qualities might escape recognition, but this man’s giant physique accentuated the evil aspect of eyes and mouth. Hardly waiting till the door was closed, he laughed sarcastically.

“You are well fixed here, brother o’ mine,” he said.

The man whom he addressed as “brother” leaned with his hands on the table that separated them. His face was quite ghastly. All his self-control seemed to have deserted him.

“You?” he gasped. “To come here! Are you mad?”

“Need you ask? It will not be the first time you have called me a lunatic, nor will it be the last, I reckon.”

“But the risk, the infernal risk! The police know of you. Rachel is arrested. A detective was here a few hours ago. They are probably watching outside.”

“Bosh!” was the uncompromising answer. “I’m sick of being hunted. Just for a change I turn hunter. Where’s the mazuma you promised Rachel?”

Meiklejohn, using a hand like one in a palsy, produced a pocketbook and took from it a bundle of notes.

“Here!” he quavered. “Now, for Heaven’s sake – ”

“Just the same old William,” cried the stranger, seating himself unceremoniously. “Always ready to do a steal, but terrified lest the law should grab him. No, I’m not going. It will be good nerve tonic for you to sit down and talk while you strain your ears to hear the tramp of half a dozen cops in the hall. What a poor fish you are!” he continued, voice and manner revealing a candid contempt, as Meiklejohn did indeed start at the slamming of a door somewhere in the building. “Do you think I’d risk my neck if I were likely to be pinched? Gad! I know my way around too well for that.”

“But you don’t understand,” whispered the other in mortal terror. “By some means the detective bureau may know of your existence. Rachel promised to be close-lipped, but – ”

“Oh, take a bracer out of that decanter. At the present moment I am registered in a big Fifth Avenue hotel, a swell joint which they wouldn’t suspect in twenty years.”

“How can that be? Rachel said you were in desperate need.”

“So I was until I went through that idiot’s pockets. He had two hundred dollars in bills and chicken-feed. I knew I’d get another wad from you to-night.”

“Why did you want to murder me, Ralph?”

“Murder! Oh, shucks! I didn’t want to kill anybody. But I don’t trust you, William. I’m always expecting you to double-cross me. Last night it was a lasso. To-night it is this.” And he suddenly whipped out a revolver.

CHAPTER VII

STILL MERE MYSTERY

Meiklejohn pushed his chair back so quickly that it caught the fender and brought down some fire-irons with a crash.

“More nerves!” croaked his grim-visaged relative, but the revolver disappeared.

“Tell me,” said the tortured Meiklejohn; “why have you returned to New York? Above all, why did you straightway commit a crime that cannot fail to stir the whole country?”

“That’s better. You are showing some sort of brotherly interest. I came back because I was sick of mining camps and boundless sierras. I had a hankering after the old life – the theaters, dinners, race-meetings, wine and women. As to ‘the crime,’ I thought that fool was you. He called for the cops.”

“For the police! Why?”

“Because my line of talk was a trifle too rough, I suppose.”

“Did he know you were there to meet me?”

“Can’t say. The whole thing was over like a flash. I am quick on the trigger.”

“But if you had killed me what other goose would lay golden eggs?”

“You forget that the goose was unwilling to lay any more eggs. I only meant scaring you. To haul you neck and crop into the river was a good scheme. You see, we haven’t met for some years.”

“Then why – why murder Ronald Tower?”

“There you go again. Murder! How you chew on the word. I never touched the man, only to haul him into the boat and go through his pockets. I guess he had a weak heart, due to over-eating, and the cold water upset him.”

“But you left him in the river?”

“Wrong every time. I chucked him into a barge and covered him tenderly with a tarpaulin.”

Meiklejohn sprang upright. “Good God,” he cried, “he may be alive!”

“Sit down, William, sit down,” was the cool response. “If he’s alive, he’ll turn up. In any case, he’ll be found sooner or later. Shout the glad news now and you go straight to the Tombs.”

This was obviously so true that the Senator collapsed into his chair again, and in so doing disturbed the fire-irons a second time.

The incident amused the unbidden guest. “I see you won’t be happy till I leave you,” he laughed, “so let’s go on with the knitting. That girl – she is becoming a woman – what is to be done with her?”

“Rachel takes every care – ”

“Rachel is excellent in her way. But she is growing old. She may die. The girl is the living image of her mother. It’s a queer world, and a small one at times. For instance, who would have expected your double to walk onto the terrace at the landing-stage at nine o’clock precisely last night? Well, some one may recognize the likeness. Inquiries might be instituted. That would be very awkward for you.”

“Far more awkward for you.”

“Not a bit of it. I’ve lived with my neck in the loop for eighteen years. I’m getting used to it. But you, William, with your Senatorship and high record in Wall Street – really the downfall would be terrible!”

“What can we do with her? Murder her, as you – ”

“The devil take you and your parrotlike repetition of one word!” roared brother Ralph, bringing his clenched fist down on the table with a bang. “I never laid violent hands on a woman yet, whatever I may have done to men. Who has reaped the reward of my misdeeds, I’d like to know – I, an outcast and a wanderer, or you, living here like Lord Tomnoddy? None of your preaching to me, you smug Pharisee! We’re six of one and half a dozen of the other.”

When this self-proclaimed adventurer was really aroused he dropped the rough argot of the plains. His diction showed even some measure of culture.

Meiklejohn walked unsteadily to the door. He opened it. There was no one in the passage without.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a strangely subdued voice. “What do you want? What do you suggest?”

“This,” came the instant reply. “It was a piece of folly on Rachel’s part to educate the girl the way she did. You stopped the process too late. In a year or two Miss Winifred will begin to think and ask questions, if she hasn’t done so already. She must leave the East – better quit America altogether.”

“Very well. When this affair of Tower’s blows over I’ll arrange it.”

The other man seemed to be somewhat mollified. He lighted a cigarette. “That rope play was sure a mad trick,” he conceded sullenly, “but I thought you were putting the cops on my trail.”

A bell rang and the Senator started. Many callers, mostly reporters, had been turned away by Phillips already that day, but brother Ralph’s untimely visit had made the position peculiarly dangerous. Moreover, the valet’s protests had proved unavailing this time. The two heard his approaching footsteps.

Meiklejohn’s care-worn face turned almost green with fright, and even his hardier companion yielded to a sense of peril. He leaped up, moving catlike on his toes.

“Where does that door lead to?” he hissed, pointing.

“A bedroom. But I’ve given orders – ”

“You dough-faced dub, don’t you see you create suspicion by refusing to meet people? And, listen! If this is a cop, bluff hard! I’ll shoot up the whole Bureau before they get me!”

He vanished, moving with a silence and celerity that were almost uncanny in so huge a man. Phillips knocked and thrust his head in. He looked scared yet profoundly relieved.

“Mr. Tower to see you, sir,” he said breathlessly.

“What?” shrieked the Senator in a shrill falsetto.

“Yes, sir. It’s Mr. Tower himself, sir.”

“H’lo, Bill!” came a familiar voice. “Here I am! No spook yet, thank goodness!”

Meiklejohn literally staggered to the door and nearly fell into Ronald Tower’s arms. Of the two men, the Senator seemed nearer death at that moment. He blubbered something incoherent, and had to be assisted to a chair. Even Tower was astonished at the evident depth of his friend’s emotion.

“Cheer up, old sport!” he cried affectionately. “I had no notion you felt so badly about my untimely end, as the newspapers call it. I tried to get you on the phone, but you were closed down, the exchange said, so Helen packed me off here when she was able to sit up and take nourishment. Gad! Even my wife seems to have missed me!”

Many minutes elapsed before Senator Meiklejohn’s benumbed brain could assimilate the facts of a truly extraordinary story. Tower, after being whisked so unceremoniously into the Hudson, remembered nothing further until he opened his eyes in numb semi-consciousness in the cubbyhole of a tug plodding through the long Atlantic rollers off the New Jersey coast.

When able to talk he learned that the captain of the tug Cygnet, having received orders to tow three loaded barges from a Weehawken pier to Barnegat City, picked up his “job” at nine-thirty the previous night, and dropped down the river with the tide. In the early morning he was amazed by the sight of a man crawling from under the heavy tarpaulin that sheeted one of the barges – a man so dazed and weak that he nearly fell into the sea.

“Cap’ Rickards slowed up and took me aboard,” explained Tower volubly. “Then he filled me with rock and rye and packed me in blankets. Gee, how they smelt, but how grateful they were! What between prime old whiskey inside and greasy wool outside I dodged a probable attack of pneumonia. When the Cygnet tied up at Barnegat at noon to-day I was fit as a fiddle. Cap’ Rickards rigged me out in his shore-going suit and lent me twenty dollars, as that pair of blackguards in the launch had robbed me of every cent. They even took a crooked sixpence I found in London twenty years ago, darn ’em! I phoned Helen, of course, but didn’t realize what a hubbub my sad fate had created until I read a newspaper in the train. When I reached home poor Helen was so out of gear that she hadn’t told a soul of my escape. I do believe she hardly accepted my own assurance that I was still on the map. However, when I got her calmed down a bit, she remembered you and the rest of the excitement, so I phoned the detective bureau and the club, and came straight here.”