The Bartlett Mystery

“That is very good of you, Tower,” murmured Meiklejohn brokenly. He looked in far worse plight than the man who had survived such a desperate adventure.

“Well, my dear chap, I was naturally anxious to see you, because – but perhaps you don’t know that those scoundrels meant to attack you, not me?”

Meiklejohn smiled wanly. “Oh, yes,” he said. “The police found that out by some means. I believe the authorities actually suspected me of being concerned in the affair.”

Tower laughed boisterously. “That’s the limit!” he roared. “Come with me to the club. We’ll soon spoil that yarn. What a fuss the papers made! I’m quite a celebrity.”

“I’ll follow you in half an hour. And, look here, Tower, this matter did really affect me. There was a woman in the case. I butted into an old feud merely as a friend. I think matters will now be settled amicably. Allow me to make good your loss in every way. If you can persuade the police that the whole thing was a hoax – ”

For the first time Tower looked non-plussed. He was enjoying the notoriety thrust on him so unexpectedly.

“Well, I can hardly do that,” he said. “But if I can get them to drop further inquiries I’ll do it, Meiklejohn, for your sake. Gee! Come to look at you, you must have had a bad time… Well, good-by, old top! See you later. Suppose we dine together? That will help dissipate this queer story as to you being mixed up in an attack on me. Now, I must be off and play ghost in the club smoking-room.”

Meiklejohn heard his fluttering man-servant let Tower out. He tottered to a chair, and Ralph Voles came in noiselessly.

“Well, what about it?” chuckled the reprobate. “We seem to have struck it lucky.”

“Go away!” snarled the Senator, goaded to a sudden rage by the other man’s cynical humor. “I can stand no more to-day.”

“Oh, take a pull at this!” And the decanter was pushed across the table. “Didn’t Dr. Johnson once say that claret is the liquor for boys, port for men, but he who aspires to be a hero should drink brandy? And you must be a hero to-night. Get onto the Bureau and use the soft pedal. Then beat it to the club. You and Tower ought to be well soused in an hour. He’s a good sport, all right. I’ll mail him that sixpence if it’s still in my pants.”

“Do nothing of the sort!” snapped Meiklejohn. “You’re – ”

“Ah, cut it out! Tower wants plenty to talk about. His crooked sixpence will fill many an eye, and the more he spiels the better it is for you. Gee, but you’re yellow for a two-hundred pounder! Now, listen! Make those cops drop all charges against Rachel. Then, in a week or less, I’ll come along and fix things about the girl. She’s the fly in the amber now. Mind she doesn’t get out, or the howl about Mr. Ronald Tower’s trip to Barnegat won’t amount to a row of beans against the trouble pretty Winifred can give you. Dios! It’s a pity. She’s a real beauty, and that’s more than any one can say for you, Brother William.”

“You go to – ”

“That’s better! You’re reviving. Well, good-by, Senator! Au revoir sans adieux!”

The big man swaggered out. Meiklejohn drank no spirits. He needed a clear brain that evening. After deep self-communing he rang up police headquarters and inquired for Mr. Clancy.

“Mr. Clancy is out,” he was told by some one with a strong, resonant voice. “Anything we can do, Senator?”

“About that poor woman, Rachel Craik – ”

“Oh, she’s all right! She gave us a farewell smile two hours ago.”

“You mean she is at liberty?”

“Certainly, Senator.”

“May I ask to whom I am speaking?”

“Steingall, Chief of the Bureau.”

“This wretched affair – it’s merely a family squabble between Miss Craik and a relative – might well end now, Mr. Steingall.”

“That is for Mr. Tower and Mr. Van Hofen to decide.”

“Yes, I quite understand. I have seen Mr. Tower, and he shares my opinion.”

“Just so, Senator. At any rate, the yacht mystery is almost cleared up.”

“I agree with you most heartily.”

For the first time in nearly twenty-four hours Senator Meiklejohn looked contented with life when he hung up the receiver. Therefore, it was well for his peace of mind that he could not hear Steingall’s silent comment as he, in turn, disconnected the phone.

“That old fox agreed with me too heartily,” he thought. “The yacht mystery is only just beginning – or I’m a Dutchman!”

CHAPTER VIII

THE DREAM FACE

That evening of her dismissal from Brown’s, and her meeting with Rex Carshaw, Winifred opened the door of the dun house in One Hundred and Twelfth Street the most downhearted girl in New York. Suddenly, mystery had gathered round her. Something threatened, she knew not what. When the door slammed behind her her heart sank – she was alone not only in the house, but in the world. This thought possessed her utterly when the excitement caused by Carshaw and Fowle, and their speedy arrest, had passed.

That her aunt, the humdrum Rachel Craik, should have any sort of connection with the murder of Ronald Tower, of which Winifred had chanced first to hear on Riverside Drive that morning, seemed the wildest nonsense. Then Winifred was overwhelmed afresh, and breathed to herself, “I must be dreaming!”

And yet – the house was empty! Her aunt was not there – her aunt was held as a criminal! It was not a dream, but only like one, a waking nightmare far more terrifying. Most of the rooms in the house had nothing but dust in them. Rachel Craik had preferred to live as solitary in teeming Manhattan as a castaway on a rock in the midst of the sea.

Winifred’s mind was accustomed now to the thought of that solitude shared by two. This night, when there were no longer two, but only one, the question arose strongly in her mind – why had there never been more than two? Certainly her aunt was not rich, and might well have let some of the rooms. Yet, even the suggestion of such a thing had made Rachel Craik angry. This, for the first time, struck Winifred as odd. Everything was puzzling, and all sorts of doubts peeped up in her, like ghosts questioning her with their eyes in the dark.

When the storm of tears had spent its force she had just enough interest in her usual self to lay the table and make ready a meal, but not enough interest to eat it. She sat by a window of her bedroom, her hat still on her head, looking down. The street lamps were lit. It grew darker and darker. Down there below feet passed and repassed in multitudes, like drops of the eternal cataract of life.

Winifred’s eyes rested often on the spot where Rex Carshaw had spoken to her and had knocked down Fowle, her tormentor. In hours of trouble, when the mind is stunned, it will often go off into musings on trivial things. So this young girl, sitting at the window of the dark and empty house, let her thoughts wander to her rescuer. He was well built, and poised like an athlete. He had a quick step, a quick way of talking, was used to command; his brow was square, and could threaten; he had the deepest blue eyes, and glossy brown hair; he was a tower of strength to protect a girl; and his wife, if he had one, must have a feeling of safety. Thoughts, or half-thoughts, like these passed through her mind. She had never before met any young man of Carshaw’s type.

It became ten o’clock. She was tired after the day’s work and trouble of mind. The blow of her dismissal, the fright of her interview with the police, the arrest of her aunt – all this sudden influx of mystery and care formed a burden from which there was no escape for exhausted nature but in sleep. Her eyes grew weary at last, and, getting up, she discarded her hat and some of her clothes; then threw herself on the bed, still half-dressed, and was soon asleep.

The hours of darkness rolled on. That tramp of feet in the street grew thin and scattered, as if the army of life had undergone a repulse. Then there was a rally, when the theaters and picture-houses poured out their crowds; but it was short, the powers of night were in the ascendant, and soon the last stragglers retreated under cover. Of all this Winifred heard nothing – she slept soundly.

But was it in a dream, that voice which she heard? Something somewhere seemed to whisper, “She must be taken out of New York – she is the image of her mother.”

It was a hushed, grim voice.

The room, the whole house, had been in darkness when she had thrown herself on the bed. But, somewhere, had she not been conscious of a light at some moment? Had she dreamed this, or had she seen it? She sat up in bed, staring and startled. The room was in darkness. In her ears were the words: “She is the image of her mother.”

She had heard them in some world, she did not know in which. She listened with the keen ears of fear. Not a wagon nor a taxi any longer moved in the street; no step passed; the house was silent.

But after a long ten minutes the darkness seemed to become pregnant with a sound, a steady murmur. It was as if it came from far away, as if a brook had spurted out of the granite of Manhattan, and was even more like a dream-sound than those words which still buzzed in Winifred’s ear. Somehow that murmur as of water in the night made Winifred think of a face, one which, as far as she could remember, she had never consciously seen – a man’s face, brown, hard, and menacing, which had looked once into her eyes in some state of semi-conscious being, and then had vanished. And now this question arose in her mind: was it not that face, hard and brown, which she had never seen, and yet once had seen – were not those the cruel lips which somewhere had whispered: “She is the image of her mother?”

Winifred, sitting up in bed, listened to the steady, dull murmuring a long time, till there came a moment when she said definitely: “It is in the house.”

For, as her ears grew accustomed to its tone, it seemed to lose some of its remoteness, to become more local and earthly. Presently this sound which the darkness was giving out became the voices of people talking in subdued undertones not far off. Nor was it long before the murmur was broken by a word sharply uttered and clearly heard by her – a gruff and unmistakable oath. She started with fright at this, it sounded so near. She was certain now that there were others in the house with her. She had gone to bed alone. Waking up in the dead of the small hours to find men or ghosts with her, her heart beat horribly.

But ghosts do not swear – at least such was Winifred’s ideal of the spirit world. And she was brave. Nerving herself for the ordeal, she found the courage to steal out of bed and make her way out of the room into a passage, and she had not stood there listening two minutes when she was able to be certain that the murmur was going on in a back room.

How earnest that talk was – how low in pitch! It could hardly be burglars there, for burglars do not enter a house in order to lay their heads together in long conferences. It could not be ghosts, for a light came out under the rim of the door.

After a time Winifred stole forward, tapped on a panel, and her heart jumped into her mouth as she lifted her voice, saying:

“Aunty, is it you?”

There was silence at this, as though they had been ghosts, indeed, and had taken to flight at the breath of the living.

“Speak! Who is it?” cried Winifred with a fearful shrillness now. A chair grated on the floor inside, hurried steps were heard, a key turned, the door opened a very little, and Winifred saw the gaunt face of Rachel Craik looking dourly at her, for she had frightened this masterful woman very thoroughly.

“Oh, aunt, it is you!” gasped Winifred with a flutter of relief.

“You are to go to bed, Winnie,” said Rachel.

“It is you! They have let you out, then?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what happened; let me come in – ”

“Go back to bed; there’s a good girl. I’ll tell you everything in the morning.”

“Oh, but I am glad! I was so lonely and frightened! Aunt, what was it all about?”

“About nothing; as far as I can discover,” said Rachel Craik – “a mere mare’s-nest found by a set of stupid police. Some man – a Mr. Ronald Tower – was supposed to have been murdered, and I was supposed to have some connection with it, though I had never seen the creature in my life. Now the man has turned up safe and sound, and the pack of noodles have at last thought fit to allow a respectable woman to come home to her bed.”

“Oh, how good! Thank heaven! But, you have some one in there with you?”

“In here – where?”

“Why, in the room, aunt.”

“I? No, no one.”

“I am sure I heard – ”

“Now, really, you must go to bed, Winifred! What are you doing awake at this hour of the morning, roaming about the house? You were asleep half an hour ago – ”

“Oh, then, it was your light I saw in my sleep! I thought I heard a man say: ‘She is the image – ’”

“Just think of troubling me with your dreams at this unearthly hour! I’m tired, child; go to bed.”

“Yes – but, aunt, this day’s work has cost me my situation. I am dismissed!”

“Well, a holiday will do you good.”

“Good gracious – you take it coolly!”

“Go to bed.”

A sudden din of tumbling weights and splintering wood broke out behind the half-open door. For, within the room a man had been sitting on a chair tilted back on its two hind legs. The chair was old and slender, the man huge; and one of the chair-legs had collapsed under the weight and landed the man on the floor.

“Oh, aunt! didn’t you say that no one – ” began Winifred.

The sentence was never finished. Rachel Craik, her features twisted in anger, pushed the young girl with a force which sent her staggering, and then immediately shut the door. Winifred was left outside in the darkness.

She returned to her bed, but not to sleep. It was certain that her aunt had lied to her – there was more in the air than Winifred’s quick wits could fathom. The fact of Rachel Craik’s release did not clear up the mystery of the fact that she had been arrested. Winifred lay, spurring her fancy to account for all that puzzled her; and underlying her thoughts was the man’s face and those strange words which she had heard somewhere on the borders of sleep.

She fancied she had seen the man somewhere before. At last she recalled the occasion, and almost laughed at the conceit. It was a picture of Sitting Bull, and that eminent warrior had long since gone to the happy hunting-grounds.

Meantime, the murmur of voices in the back room had recommenced and was going on. Then, towards morning, Winifred became aware that the murmur had stopped, and soon afterward she heard the click of the lock of the front door and a foot going down the front steps.

Rising quickly, she crept to the window and looked out. Going from the door down the utterly empty street she saw a man, a big swaggerer, with something of the over-seas and the adventurer in his air. It was Ralph “Voles,” the “brother” of Senator William Meiklejohn. But Winifred could not distinguish his features, or she might have recognized the man she had seen in her half-dreams, and who had said: “She must be taken out of New York – she is the image of her mother.”

Voles had hardly quitted the place before a street-car conductor, who had taken temporary lodgings the previous evening in a house opposite, hurried out into the coldness of the hour before dawn. He seemed pleased at the necessity of going to work thus early.

“Oh, boy!” he said softly. “I’m glad there’s somethin’ doin’ at last. I was getting that sleepy. I could hardly keep me eyes open!”

When Detective Clancy came to the Bureau a few hours later he found a memorandum to the effect that a Mr. Ralph V. Voles, of Chicago, stopping at a high-grade hotel in Fifth Avenue, had dined with Rachel Craik in a quiet restaurant, had parted from her, and met her again, evidently by appointment. The two had entered the house in One Hundred and Twelfth Street separately shortly before midnight, and Voles returned to his hotel at four o’clock in the morning.

Clancy shook his head waggishly.

“Who’d have thought it of you, Rachel?” he cackled. “And, now that I’ve seen you, what sort of weird specimen can Mr. Ralph V. Voles, of Chicago, be? I’ll look him up!”

CHAPTER IX

THE FLIGHT

Carshaw and Fowle enjoyed, let us say, a short but almost triumphal march to the nearest police-station. Their escort of loafers and small boys grew quickly in numbers and enthusiasm. It became known that the arrest was made in East One Hundred and Twelfth Street, and that street had suddenly become famous. The lively inhabitants of the East Side do not bother their heads about grammatical niceties, so the gulf between “the yacht murder” and “the yacht murderers” was easily bridged. The connection was clear. Two men in a boat, and two men in the grip of the law! It needed only Fowle’s ensanguined visage to complete the circle of reasoning. Consciousness of this ill-omened popularity infuriated Carshaw and alarmed Fowle. When they arrived at the precinct station-house each was inclined to wish he had never seen or heard of Winifred Bartlett!

Their treatment by the official in charge only added fuel to the flame. The patrolman explained that “these two were fighting about the girl who lives in that house in East One Hundred and Twelfth,” and this vague statement seemed all-sufficient. The sergeant entered their names and addresses. He went to the telephone and came back.

“Sit there!” he said authoritatively, and they sat there, Carshaw trying to take an interest in a “drunk” who was brought in, and Fowle alternately feeling the sore lump at the back of his head and the sorer cartilage of his nose. After waiting half an hour Carshaw protested, but the sergeant assured him that “a man from the Bureau” was en route and would appear presently. At last Clancy came in. That is why he was “out” when Senator Meiklejohn inquired for him.

“H’lo!” he cried when he set eyes on Fowle. “My foreman bookbinder! Your folio looks somewhat battered!”

“Glad it’s you, Mr. Clancy,” snuffled Fowle. “You can tell these cops – ”

“Suppose you tell me,” broke in the detective, with a glance at Carshaw.

“Yes, Fowle, speak up,” said Carshaw. “You’ve a ready tongue. Explain your fall from grace.”

“There’s nothing to it,” growled Fowle. “I know the girl, an’ asked her to come with me this evening. She’d been fired by the firm, an’ – ”

“Ah! Who fired her?” Clancy’s inquiry sounded most matter-of-fact.

“The boss, of course.”

“Why?”

“Well – this newspaper stuff. He didn’t like it.”

“He told you so?”

“Yes. That is – the department is a bit crowded. He – er – asked me – Well, we reckoned we could do without her.”

“I see. Go on.”

“So I just came up-town, meanin’ to talk things over, an’ find her a new job, but she took it all wrong.”

Clancy whirled around on Carshaw. Evidently he had heard enough from Fowle.

“And you?” he snapped.

“I know nothing of either party,” was the calm answer. “I couldn’t help overhearing this fellow insulting a lady, so put him where he belongs – in the gutter.”

“Mr. Clancy,” interrupted the sergeant, “you’re wanted on the phone.”

The detective was detained a good five minutes. When he returned he walked straight up to Fowle.

“Quit!” he said, with a scornful and sidelong jerk of the head. “You got what you wanted. Get out, and leave Miss Bartlett alone in the future.”

Fowle needed no second bidding.

“As for me?” inquired Carshaw, with arched eyebrows.

“May I drop you in Madison Avenue?” said Clancy. Once the police car was speeding down-town he grew chatty.

“Wish I had seen you trimming Fowle,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve a notion he had a finger in the pie of Winifred Bartlett’s dismissal.”

“It may be.”

Carshaw’s tone was indifferent. Just then he was aware only of a very definite resentment. His mother would be waiting for dinner, and alarmed, like all mothers who own motoring sons. The detective looked surprised, but made his point, for all that.

“I suppose you’ll be meeting that very charming young lady again one of these days,” he said.

“I? Why? Most unlikely.”

“Not so. Do you floor every man you see annoying a woman in the streets?”

“Well – er – ”

“Just so. Winifred interested you. She interests me. I mean to keep an eye on her, a friendly eye. If you and she come together again, let me know.”

“Really – ”

“No wonder you are ready with a punch. You won’t let a man speak. Listen, now. The patrolman held you and Fowle because he had orders to arrest, on any pretext or none, any one who seemed to have the remotest connection with the house in One Hundred and Twelfth Street, where Winifred Bartlett lives with her aunt. You’ve read of the Yacht Mystery and the lassoing of Ronald Tower?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Tower are my close friends.”

“Exactly. Now, Rachel Craik, Winifred’s aunt, was released from custody an hour ago. She would have been charged with complicity in the supposed murder of Tower. I say ‘supposed’ because there was no murder. Mr. Tower has returned home, safe and sound – ”

“By Jove, that’s good news! But what a strange business it is! My mother was with Helen Tower this morning, trying to console her.”

“Good! Now, perhaps, you’ll sit up and take notice. The truth is that the mystery of this outrage on Tower is not – cannot be – of recent origin. I’m sure it is bound up with some long-forgotten occurrence, possibly a crime, in which the secret of the birth and parentage of Winifred Bartlett is involved. That girl is no more the niece of her ‘aunt’ than I am her nephew.”

“But one is usually the niece of one’s aunt.”

“I think you need a cigarette,” said Clancy dryly. “Organisms accustomed to poisonous stimulants often wilt when deprived too suddenly of such harmful tonics.”

Carshaw edged around slightly and looked at this quaint detective.

“I apologize,” he said contritely. “But the crowd got my goat when it jeered at me as a murderer. And the long wait was annoying, too.”

Clancy, however, was not accustomed to having his confidences slighted. He was ruffled.

“Perhaps what I was going to say is hardly worth while,” he snapped. “It was this. If, by chance, your acquaintance with Winifred Bartlett goes beyond to-day’s meeting, and you learn anything of her life and history which sounds strange in your ears, you may be rendering her a far greater service than by flattening Fowle’s nose if you bring your knowledge straight to the Bureau.”

“I’ll not forget, Mr. Clancy. But let me explain. It will be a miracle if I meet Miss Bartlett again.”

“It’ll be a miracle if you don’t,” retorted the other.

So there was a passing whiff of misunderstanding between these two, and, like every other trivial phase of a strange record, it was destined to bulk large in the imminent hazards threatening one lone girl. Thus, Clancy ceased being communicative. He might have referred guardedly to Senator Meiklejohn. But he did not. Oddly enough, his temperament was singularly alike to Carshaw’s, and that is why sparks flew.

The heart, however, is deceitful, and Fate is stronger than an irritated young man whose conventional ideals have been besmirched by being marched through the streets in custody. The garage in which Carshaw’s automobile was housed temporarily was located near One Hundred and Twelfth Street. He went there on the following afternoon to see the machine stripped and find out the exact extent of the damage. Yet he passed Winifred’s house resolutely, without even looking at it. He returned that way at half past six, and there, on the corner, was posted Fowle – Fowle, with a swollen nose! There also was their special patrolman, with an eye for both!

The mere sight of Fowle prowling in unwholesome quest stirred up wrath in Carshaw’s mind; and the heart, always subtle and self-deceiving, whispered elatedly: “Here you have an excuse for renewing an acquaintance which you wished to make yourself believe you did not care to renew.”

He walked straight to the door of the brown-stone house and rang. Then he rapped. There was no answer. When he had rapped a second time he walked away, but he had not gone far when he was almost startled to find himself face to face with Winifred coming home from making some purchases, with a bag on her arm.

He lifted his hat. Winifred, with a vivid blush, hesitated and stopped. From the corner Fowle stared at the meeting, and made up his mind that it was really a rendezvous. The patrolman thought so, too, but he had new orders as to these two.