The Million-Dollar Suitcase

He agreed at once, silently, but thankfully I thought.

Barbara, listening, proposed half timidly to go with us, staying the night at the Thornhill place, being brought back before work time Monday, and was accepted simply. So it came that when we had a blow-out as the crown of a dozen other petty disasters which had delayed our progress toward Santa Ysobel, and found our spare tire flat, Barbara jumped down beside Worth where he stood dragging out the pump, and stopped him, suggesting that we save time by running the last few miles on the rim and getting fixed up at Capehart's garage. He climbed in without a word, and drove on toward where Santa Ysobel lies at the head of its broad valley, surrounded by the apricot, peach and prune orchards that are its wealth.

We came into the fringes of the town in the obscurity of approaching night; a thick tulle fog had blown down on the north wind. The little foot-hill city was all drowned in it; tree-tops, roofs, the gable ends of houses, the illuminated dial of the town clock on the city hall, sticking up from the blur like things seen in a dream. As we headed for a garage with the name Capehart on it, we heard, soft, muffled, seven strokes from the tower.

"Getting in late," Worth said absently. "Bill still keeps the old place?"

"Yes. Just the same," Barbara said. "He married our Sarah, you know – was that before you went away? Of course not," and added for my enlightenment, "Sarah Gibbs was father's housekeeper for years. She brought me up."

We drove into the big, dimly lighted building; there came to us from its corner office what might have been described as a wide man, not especially imposing in breadth, but with a sort of loose-jointed effectiveness to his movements, and a pair of roving, yellowish-hazel eyes in his broad, good-humored face, mighty observing I'd say, in spite of the lazy roll of his glance.

"Been stepping on tacks, Mister?" he hailed, having looked at the tires before he took stock of the human freight.

"Hello, Bill," Worth was singing out. "Give me another machine – or get our spare filled and on – whichever's quickest. I want to make it to the house as soon as I can."

"Lord, boy!" The wide man began wiping a big paw before offering it. "I'm glad to see you."

They shook hands. Worth repeated his request, but the garage man was already unbuckling the spare, going to the work with a brisk efficiency that contradicted his appearance.

Barbara sitting quietly beside me, we heard them talking at the back of the machine, as the jack quickly lifted us and Worth went to it with Capehart to unbolt the rim; a low-toned steady stream from the wide man, punctuated now and then by a word from Worth.

"Yeh," Capehart grunted, prying off the tire. "Heard it m'self 'bout noon – or a little after. Yeh, Ward's Undertaking Parlors."

"Undertaking parlors!" Worth echoed. Capehart, hammering on the spare, agreed.

"Nobody in town that knowed what to do about it; so the coroner took a-holt, I guess, and kinda fixed it to suit hisself. Did you phone ahead to see how things was out to the house?"

"Tried to," Worth said. "The operator couldn't raise it."

"Course not." Capehart was coupling on the air. "Your chink's off every Sunday – has the whole day – and the Devil only could guess where a Chinaman'd go when he ain't working. Eddie Hughes ought to be on the job out there – but would he?"

"Father still kept Eddie?"

"Yeh." The click of the jack and the car was lowering. "Eddie's lasted longer than I looked to see him. Due to be fired any time this past year. Been chasing over 'crost the tracks. Got him a girl there, one of these cannery girls. Well, she's sort of married, I guess, but that don't stop Eddie. 'F I see him, I'll tell him you want him."

They came to the front of the machine; Worth thrust his hand in his pocket. Capehart checked him with,

"Let it go on the bill." Then, as Worth swung into his seat, Barbara bent forward from behind my shoulder, the careless yellowish eyes that saw everything got a fair view of her, and with a sort of subdued crow, "Look who's here!" Capehart took hold of the upright to lean his square form in and say earnestly, "While you're in Santa Ysobel, don't forget that we got a spare room at our house."

"Next time," Barbara raised her voice to top the hum of the engine. "I'm only here for over night, now, and I'm going down to Mrs. Thornhill's."

We were out in the street once more, leaving the cannery district on our right, tucked away to itself across the railroad tracks, running on Main Street to City Hall Square, where we struck into Broad, followed it out past the churches and to that length of it that held the fine homes in their beautiful grounds, getting close at last to where town melts again into orchards. The road between its rows of fernlike pepper trees was a wet gleam before us, all black and silver; the arc lights made big misty blurs without much illumination as we came to the Thornhill place. Worth got down and, though she told him he needn't bother, took her in to the gate. For a minute I waited, getting the bulk of the big frame house back among the trees, with a single light twinkling from an upper story window; then Worth flung into the car and we speeded on, skirting a long frontage of lawns, beautifully kept, pearly with the fog, set off with artfully grouped shrubbery and winding walks. There was no barrier but a low stone coping; the drive to the Gilbert place went in on the side farthest from the Thornhill's. We ran in under a carriage porch. The house was black.

"See if I can raise anybody," said Worth as he jumped to the ground. "Let you in, and then I'll run the roadster around to the garage."

But the house was so tightly locked up that he had finally to break in through a pantry window. I was out in front when he made it, and saw the lights begin to flash up, the porch lamp flooding me with a sudden glare before he threw the door open.

"Cold as a vault in here."

He twisted his broad shoulders in a shudder, and I looked about me. It was a big entrance hall, with a wide stairway. There on the hat tree hung a man's light overcoat, a gray fedora hat; a stick leaned below. When the master of the house went out of it this time, he hadn't needed these. Abruptly Worth turned and led the way into what I knew was the living room, with a big open fireplace in it.

"Make yourself as comfortable as you can, Jerry. I'll get a blaze here in two shakes. I suppose you're hungry as a wolf – I am. This is a hell of a place I've brought you into."

"Forget it," I returned. "I can look after myself. I'm used to rustling. Let me make that fire."

"All right." He gave up his place on the hearth to me, straightened himself and stood a minute, saying, "I'll raid the kitchen. Chung's sure to have plenty of food cooked. He may not be back here before midnight."

"Midnight?" I echoed. "Is that usual?"

"Used to be. Chung's been with father a long time. Good chink. Always given his whole Sunday, and if he was on hand to get Monday's breakfast – no questions."

"Left last night, you think?"

Worth shot me a glance of understanding.

"Sometimes he would – after cleaning up from dinner. But he wouldn't have heard the shot, if that's what you're driving at."

He left me, going out through the hall. My fire burned. I thawed out the kinks the long, chill ride had put in me. Then Worth hailed; I went out and found him with a coffee-pot boiling on the gas range, a loaf and a cold roast set out. He had sand, that boy; in this wretched home-coming, his manner was neither stricken nor defiant. He seemed only a little graver than usual as he waited on me, hunting up stuff in places he knew of to put some variety into our supper.

Where I sat I faced a back window, and my eye was caught by the appearance of a strange light, quite a little distance from the house, apparently in another building, but showing as a vague glow on the fog.

"What's down there?" I asked. Worth answered without taking the trouble to lean forward and look,

"The garage – and the study."

"Huh? The study's separate from the house?" I had been thinking of the suicide as a thing of this dwelling, an affair in some room within its walls. Of course Chung would not hear the shot. "Who's down there?"

"Eddie Hughes has a room off the garage."

"He's in it now."

"How do you know?" he asked quickly.

"There's a light – or there was. It's gone now."

"That wouldn't have been Eddie," Worth said. "His room's on the other side, toward the back street. What you saw was the light from these windows shining on the fog. Makes queer effects sometimes."

I knew that wasn't it, but I didn't argue with him, only remarked,

"I'd like to have a look at that place, Worth, if you don't mind."

CHAPTER X

A SHADOW IN THE FOG

Again I saw that glow from the Gilbert garage, hanging on the fog; a luminosity of the fog; saw it disappear as the mist deepened and shrouded it. But Worth was answering me, and somehow his words seemed forced;

"Sit tight a minute, Jerry. Have another cup of coffee while I telephone, then I'll put the roadster in and open up down there. I'll call you – or you can see my lights."

He left me. I heard him at the instrument in the hall get his number, talk to some one in a low voice, and then go out the front door; next thing was the sound of the motor, the glare of its lamps as it rounded into the driveway and started down back, illuminating everything. In the general glare thrown on the fog, the fainter light was invisible, but across a plot of kitchen garden I saw where it had been; a square, squat building of concrete, flat roofed, vining plants in boxes drooping over its cornice; the typical garage of such an establishment, but nearly double the usual size. The light had come from there, but how? In the short time that the lamps of the machine were showing it up to me, there seemed no windows on this side; only the double doors for the car's entrance – closed now – and a single door which was crossed by two heavy, barricading planks nailed in the form of a great X.

Worth ran the machine close up against the doors, jumped down, and I could see his tall form, blurred by the mist, moving about to slide them open. The lamps of the roadster made little showing now as he rolled it in. Then these were switched off and everything down there was dark as a pocket. For a time I sat and waited for him to light up and call me, then started down. The fog was making the kind of dimness that has a curious, illusory character. I suppose I had gone half the distance of the garden walk, when, thrown up startlingly on the obscurity, I saw a square of white, and across that shining screen, moved the silhouette of a human head. The whole thing danced before my eyes for a bare second, then blackness.

With Cummings' queer hints in my mind, I started running across the garden toward it. About the first thing I did was step into a cold frame, plunging my foot through the glass, all but going to my knees in it; and when I got up, swearing, I was turned around, ran into bushes, tripped over obstructions, and traveled, I think, in a circle.

Then I began to go more cautiously. No use getting excited. That was only Worth I had seen. And still I was unwilling to call, ask him to show a light. I groped along until my outstretched fingers came across the corner of a building, rough, stonelike – the concrete garage and study. I felt along, seeing a bit now, and was soon passing my hands over the barricading planks of that door.

I might have lit a match, but I preferred to find out what I could by feeling around, and that cautiously. I discovered that the door had been broken in, the top panels shattered to kindling wood, the force of the assault having burst a hinge, so that the whole thing sagged drunkenly behind the heavy planks that propped it, while a strong bolt, quite useless, was still clamped into a socket which had been torn, screws and all, from the inside casing.

Sliding my hands over the broken top panel I found that it had been covered on its inner side by a piece of canvas; the screen on which that shadow had been thrown – from within the room. There was no light there now; there was no sound of motion within. The drip of the fog from the eaves was the only break in the stillness.

"Worth?" I shouted, at last, and he answered me instantly, hallooing from behind me, and to one side of the house. I could hear him running and when he spoke it was close to my shoulder.

"Where are you, Jerry?"

"Where are you," I countered. "Or rather, where have you been?"

"Getting a bar to pry off these boards."

"A bar?" I echoed stupidly.

"A crowbar from the shed. These planks will have to come off to let us in."

"The devil you say!" I was exasperated. "There's some one in here now – or was a minute back. Show me the other way in."

I heard the ring of the steel bar as its end hit the hard graveled path.

"Some one in there? Jerry, you're seeing things."

"Sure I am," I agreed drily. "But you get me to that other door quick!"

"The only other door is locked. I tried it from the garage. You're dreaming."

For reply, I ran up to the door and thrust my fist through the canvas, ripping it away from its clumsy tacking.

"Who's in there?" I cried. "Answer me!"

Dead silence; then a click as Worth snapped on a flood of light from his pocket torch, saying tolerantly, tiredly,

"I told you there was no one. There couldn't be."

"I tell you, Worth, there was. I saw the shadow on the square of that canvas. Give me the torch."

I pushed the flashlight through the opening and played the light cone about the room in a quick survey; then brought the circle of white glow to rest upon one of the side walls; and my hand went down and back to grip fingers about the butt of my revolver. There was, as Worth had said, but one other door to this room; but more, there was apparently no other exit; no windows, no breaks in the walls. My circle of light was on this second door; and the very heart of that circle was a heavy steel bolt on the door, the bar of which was firmly shot into the socket on the frame. The only exit from that room, other than the door through which I now leaned with pistol raised, was locked – bolted from the inside!

Worth was crowding his big frame into the opening beside me.

"Keep back," I growled. "Some one's inside," and I sent the light shaft into corners to drive out the shadows, to cut in under the desk and chairs. Worth's reply was a laugh, and his arm went by me to reach inside the door. Then, as his fingers found the button, a light sprang out from a lamp upon the center desk.

"You're letting your nerves play the deuce with you, Jerry," he said lightly. "Make way for my crowbar and we'll get in out of the wet."

I made no answer, but for a long moment more I searched that room with my eyes; but it was the kind you see all over at a glance. Big, square, plain, it hadn't a window in it; the walls, lined with book shelves, floor to ceiling; a fireplace; a library table with drawers; a few chairs. No chance for a hideout. I glanced at the ceiling and confirmed the evidence of my eyes. There was a skylight, and through it had come that curious glow that first attracted my attention to the place.

Then I gave Worth room to wield his tools on the barred door, while I ran quickly back to the house, into the kitchen, and plumped down in the chair where I had sat before. The light showed on the fog, brightened and dimmed as the mist drifted past. There was no possibility of a mistake: some one had been in the study, had turned on the table lamp, had projected his shadow against the patched panel of the door, and had somehow left the room, one door bolted, the only other exit barred and nailed.

I went back and rejoined Worth who was standing where a brownish stain on the rug marked a spot a little nearer the corner of the table than it was to the outer door. A curious place for a suicide to fall. Behind the table was the library chair in which Thomas Gilbert worked when at his desk; beside it a small cabinet with a humidor on its top and the open door below revealing several decanters and bottles, whisky and wine glasses, a tray; between the desk and the fireplace were two other chairs, large and comfortable; but in front of the table – between it and the door – was barren floor.

It is a fact that most men who shoot themselves do so while sitting; some lying in a bed; few standing. The psychology of this I must leave to others, but experience has taught me to question the suicide of one who has seemingly placed the muzzle of a revolver against him while on his feet. Thomas Gilbert had stood; had chosen to take his life as he was walking from door to desk, or from desk to door.

"Worth," I said. "There was somebody in here just now."

"Couldn't have been, Jerry," he answered absently; then added, his eyes on that stain, "I never could calculate what my father would do. But when I talked to him last night, right here in this room, he didn't seem to me a man ready to take his own life."

"You quarreled?"

"We always quarreled, whenever we met."

"But this quarrel was more bitter than usual?"

"The last quarrel would seem the bitterest, wouldn't it, Jerry?" he asked. Then, after a moment, "Poor Jim Edwards!"

I caught my tongue to hold back the question. Worth went on,

"When I phoned him just now, he hadn't heard a word about it. Seemed terribly upset."

"Hadn't heard?" I echoed. "How was that?"

"You know we saw him at Tait's last night. He took the Pacheco Pass road from San Francisco; drove straight to his ranch without hitting Santa Ysobel."

I wanted another look at that man Edwards. I was to have it. Worth went on absently,

"He'll be along presently to stay here while I'm away Monday. Told me it would be the first time he'd put foot in the house for four years. As boys up in Sonoma county, he and father always disagreed, but sometime these last years there was a big split over something. They were barely on speaking terms – and good old Jim took my news harder than as though I'd been telling him the death of a near friend."

"Works like that with us humans," I nodded. "Let some one die that you've disagreed with, and you remember every row you ever had with them; remember it and regret it – which is foolish."

"Which is foolish," Worth repeated, and seemed for the first time able to get away from the spot at which he had stopped.

He went over to the empty, fireless hearth and stood there, his back to the room, elbows on the mantel propping his head, face bent, oblivious to anything that I might do. It oughtn't to be hard to find the way this place could be entered and left by a man solid enough to cast a shadow, with quick fingers to snap the light on and off. But when I made a painstaking examination of a corner grate with a flue too small for anything but a chimney swallow to go up and down, a ceiling solidly beamed and paneled, the glass that formed the skylight set in firmly as part of the roof, when I'd turned up rugs and inspected an unbroken floor, even tried the corners of book cases to see if they masked a false entrance, I owned myself, for the moment, beaten there.

"Give me your torch – or go with me, Worth," I said. "I'd like to take a scoot around outside."

He didn't speak, only indicated the flashlight by a motion, where it lay on the shelf beside his hand. I took it, unbolted the door, and stepped into the garage.

Everything all right here. My roadster; a much handsomer small machine beyond it; a bench, portable forge and drill made a repair shop of one corner, and as my light flashed over these, I checked and stared. Why had Worth gone to the shed hunting a crowbar to open the door? Here were tools that would have served as well. I put from me the hateful thought, and damned Cummings and his suspicions. The shadow didn't have to be Worth. Certainly he had not first lit that lamp, for I had seen it from the kitchen with him beside me. Some one other than Worth had been in there when Worth put up the roadster. I'd find the man it really was. But even as I crossed to Eddie Hughes's door, something at the back of my head was saying to me that Worth could have been in that room – that there was time for it to be, if he had taken the crowbar from the garage and not from the shed as he said he did.

At this I took myself in hand. The lie would have been so clumsy a one that there was no way but to accept this statement for the truth; and some one else had made that shadow on the canvas.

I tried the chauffeur's door and found it locked; called, shook it, and had set my shoulder against it to burst it in, when the rolling door on the street side moved a little, and a voice said,

"H-y-ah! What you doin' there?"

I turned and flashed my light on the six-inch crack of the sliding door. It gave me a strip of man, a long drab face at top, solid, meaty looking, yet somehow slightly cadaverous, a half shut eye, a crooked mouth – if I'd met that mug in San Francisco, I'd have labeled it "tough," and located it South of Market Street.

Slowly, it seemed rather reluctantly, Eddie Hughes worked the six-inch crack wider by working himself through it.

"What the hell do you want in my room for?" he demanded. The form of the words was truculent, but the words themselves slid in a sort of spiritless fashion from the corner of that crooked mouth of his, and he added in the next breath, "I'll open up for you, when I've lit the blinks."

There was a central lamp that made the whole place as bright as day. Eddie fumbled a key out of his pocket, threw the door of his room open, and stepped back to let me pass him.

"Capehart tells me Worth's here," he said as we went in.

"When?" I gave him a sharp look. He seemed not to notice it.

"Just now. I came straight from there."

He came straight from there? Did he supply an alibi so neatly because of that shadowy head on the door panel? For a long minute we each took measure of the other, but Eddie's nerves were less reliable than mine; he spoke first.

"Well?" he grunted, scarcely above his breath. And when I continued to stare silently at him, he writhed a shoulder with, "What's doing? What d'yuh want of me?"

Still silently, I pulled out with my thumb through the armhole of my vest the police badge pinned to the suspender. His ill-colored face went a shade nearer the yellow white of tallow.

"What for?" he asked huskily. "You haven't got nothin' on me. It was suicide – cor'ner's jury says so. Lord! It has to be, him layin' there, all hunched up on the floor, his gun so tight in his mitt that they had to pry the fingers off it!"

"So you found the body?"

He nodded and gulped.

"I told all I knowed at the inquest," he said doggedly.

"Tell it again," I commanded.

Standing there, working his hands together as though he held some small, accustomed tool that he was turning, shifting from foot to foot, with long breaks in his speech, the chauffeur finally put me into possession of what he knew – or what he wished me to know. He had been out all night. That was usual with him Saturdays. Where? Over around the canneries. Had friends that lived there. He got into this place about dawn, and went straight to bed.

"Hold on, Hughes," I stopped him there. "You never went to bed – that night, or any other night – until you'd had a jolt from the bottle inside."

He gave me a surly, half frightened glance, then said quickly,

"Not a chance. Bolts on the doors, locks everywhere; all tight as a jail. Take it from me, he wasn't the kind you want to have a run-in with – any time. Always just as cool as ice himself; try to make you believe he could tell what you were up to, clear across town. Hold it over you as if he was God almighty that stuck folks together and set 'em walkin' around and thinkin' things."

He broke off and looked over his shoulder in the direction of the study. The walls were thick – concrete; the door heavy. No sound of Worth's moving in there could be heard in this room. Apparently it was the old terror of his employer, or the new terror of the employer's death, that spoke when he said,

"I got up this morning late with a throat like the back of a chimney. Lord! I never wanted a drink so bad in my life – had to have one. The chink leaves my breakfast for me Sundays; but I knew I couldn't eat till I'd had one. So I – so I – "