The Black Eagle Mystery

It wasn't till nearly two in the morning that Salinger was wakened by a feeble knocking. He jumped up, and before he could reach the door heard a heavy fall in the passage. There, prostrate by the sill, lay Ford, unconscious, his head laid open by a deep wound.

Salinger dragged him back to his room, then roused the landlady, who sent for a doctor. He told Babbitts that the place gave no evidence of a struggle, the droplight was burning, a chair drawn close to it, and a book lying face down on the table as if Ford had been reading when the stranger interrupted him. On the floor near a desk standing between the two windows, a trickle of blood showed where Ford had fallen, suggesting that the attack had been made from behind as he stood over the desk. The doctor pronounced the injury serious. The blow had been delivered on the back of the head, and Ford's condition was critical.

When the police turned up they could find nothing to give them a clue to the assailant – no finger prints, no foot marks, no weapon or implement. Ford had been stricken down by one violent blow, falling on him suddenly and evidently unexpectedly. He was taken to the hospital, unconscious, no one knowing whether he would die before they could get a statement out of him.

The cause of the assault was at first puzzling. Robbery seemed improbable, as a man in Ford's position was not likely to have much money and as his gold watch and chain were found in full view on the table. But when the first excitement quieted down one of the women in the house came forward with the story that a few days before Ford had told her he had recently been left a legacy by an uncle up-state, and in proof of his newly acquired wealth had shown her two fifty-dollar bills. This put a different face on the matter. If Ford had carried such sums on him, it was probable the fact had become known and burglary been the motive of the attack.

The police looked over the papers in his wallet and desk but found nothing that threw any light on the mystery. Babbitts was present at this search and found three letters – tossed aside by the city detectives as having no bearing on the subject – that he knew must be seen by Whitney & Whitney. He and the precinct captain had hobnobbed together over many cases, and a few sentences in the hall resulted in the transfer of the papers to Babbitts' breast pocket with a promise to return them the next day.

I'll give you these letters later on – when we pored over them in the old man's private office.

In the hospital Ford came back to consciousness long enough to make an ante-mortem statement. It was short and explicit, satisfying the authorities, who didn't know that the victim himself was a criminal with matters in his own life to hide. Here it is, copied from the evening paper:

I don't know who the man was. I never saw him before. He had some story that he knew me and asked for money. I tried to stand him off, but when he got threatening, not wanting him to make a row in the house, I went to the desk where I had a few loose bills in a drawer. It was while I was standing there with my back to him, that he struck me. I don't know what he did it with – something he had under his coat. When I came to myself later I got to Salinger's door. That's all I know. A week ago I'd had some money on me – part of a small legacy – but I'd banked it a few days before. He must have heard of it some way and was after it.

That settled the question as far as the police and the general public went. That the watch and chain were not touched nor the few dollars in the desk drawer was pointed to as positive proof that Ford's assailant was no common sneak thief or second-story man. He was not wasting his time on small change or articles difficult to dispose of. For a few days the police hunted for him, but not a trace of him was to be found. "An old hand," they had it, "dropped back into the darkness of the underworld."

There was not a detective or reporter in New York who connected that half-seen figure, stealing by night into a cheap lodging house, with the financier whose disappearance had been the nine days' wonder of the season.

On Wednesday evening Babbitts brought the letters to the Whitney office (we were all there but Molly), and we sat round the table passing the papers from hand to hand.

One was on a sheet of Harland's business stationery and was in Harland's writing, which both George and the chief knew. It was dated January second, and ran as follows:

Dear Ford,

Excellent. If possible, I'll try to see you tomorrow. I'll be going down to lunch about one. Yours,

H. H.

As a document in the case it had no especial value, beyond confirming the fact that Ford was – as he had told Molly – on friendly terms with the lawyer.

The others were of vital significance. They were on small oblongs of white paper, the finely nicked upper edge indicating they had been attached to a writing tablet. Both were in ink, and in the same hand, rapid and scratchy, the words trailing off in unfinished scrawls. Neither had any address, but both bore dates: one December 27 and the other January 10.

Here is the first:

December 27.

Dear Girl,

Thanks for your note. Things begin to look more encouraging. That I must stand back and let you do so much – win our way by your cleverness and persuasion – is a trial to my patience. But my time will come later.

J. W. B.

The signature was a hurried scratch. Babbitts said the police had glanced at the letter, set it down as the copy of a note Ford had written to some girl, and thrown it aside. Those half-formed initials might have been anything to the casual, uninterested eye.

The second, dated January 10, was a little longer:

Dearest,

I hoped to see you today but couldn't make it. So our end seems to be in sight – at last approaching after our planning and waiting. What a sensation we're going to make! But it won't touch us. We're strong enough to dare anything when our happiness is the stake.

J. W. B.

We agreed with O'Mally when he sized these letters up as copies in Ford's hand – he had samples of it – of notes written by Barker to Carol Whitehall. The reason for Ford's taking them was not hard to guess with our knowledge of the gunman's character.

"It shows him up as a pretty tough specimen," said the detective, astride on a chair with a big black cigar in the corner of his mouth. "He wasn't going to lose a trick. While he was working for Barker he was gathering all the evidence against his employer that his position in the Whitehall office gave him access to."

"Laying his plans for blackmail," said George.

"That's it. He had his eagle eye trained on the future. When Barker and his girl were feeling safe in some secluded corner, these letters – documentary testimony to the plot – could be used as levers to extort more money."

"Do you suppose Barker was on to it and decided to get him out of the way before he had a chance to use them?" said Babbitts.

"No – I don't see it that way. There was no indication in the room of a search. I guess Barker acted on the principle that the fewer people share a secret the easier it is to keep."

"Looks to me," said George, "as if Ford had made some move that scared the old man. Coming back that way into a house full of people! Considering the circumstances he took a mighty big risk."

"Not as big a one as having Ford at large," answered O'Mally. "You've got to remember that not one of the three knows the murder has been discovered. They think they're as safe as bugs in a rug. With Ford out of it the only menace to Barker's safety is removed. I look at this as a last perfecting touch, the coping stone on the edifice."

The chief, who had been silently pacing back and forth across the end of the room, came slouching to the table and picked up the longer of the two letters. Holding it to the light he read it over murmuringly, then dropped it and said:

"Curious that a man who had conceived such a plot would allude to it in writing."

I spoke up. What seemed to me the first rational words of the meeting gave me my cue.

"What makes you so sure the thing alluded to in those letters is the murder?"

I was standing back between the window and the table. They all squared round in their chairs to stare at me, O'Mally bending his head to level a scornful glance below the shade of the electric standard.

"What else could they allude to?" he said.

"I don't know. Nobody, not a person here, knows all that existed between Barker and Miss Whitehall. There's no reason to take for granted that the plan, scheme, whatever you like to call it those letters indicate, was the killing of Harland."

O'Mally gave an exasperated grunt and cast an eye of derisive question at the chief. It enraged me and my hands gripped together.

"Oh, Lord, Jack, you're nutty," said George. "We know Barker and Miss Whitehall were in love, and we know Barker committed the murder, and we know she helped. That was enough to occupy their minds without going off on side mysteries."

Nature has cursed me with a violent temper. During the last two years – since the dark days of the Hesketh tragedy – I've thought it was conquered – a leashed beast of which I was the master. Now suddenly it rose, pulling at its chain. I felt the old forgotten stir of it, the rush of boiling blood that in the end made me blind. I had sense enough left to know I'd got to keep it down and I did it. But if there'd been no need for restraint, for dissimulation, it would have burst out as it has in the past, burst against O'Mally with a fist in the middle of his cock-sure, sneering face. I heard my voice, husky, but steady, as I said,

"That's all very well, but how about what the chief has just said? Why should Barker write when he could say what he wanted? Why did he, so cautious in every other way, do a thing a green boy would have known the danger of? You're building up your whole case on the vaguest surmises."

O'Mally took his cigar out of his mouth, his eyes narrowed and full of an ugly fire.

"I suppose the initial fact that a murder's been committed is surmise?"

"No," I came nearer the table, the blood singing in my ears, "it's your evidence against the woman, that you're twisting and coloring to match your preconceived theories. There's not an attempt been made to reconcile her previous record with the villainous act of which you accuse her. There's a gulf there you can't bridge. Why don't you go down into the foundations of the thing instead of putting your attention on surface indications? Why don't you go into the psychology of it, build on that, not the material facts that a child could see?"

I don't believe one of them guessed the state I was in – took my vehemence as an enthusiasm for impartial justice. But a few minutes more of it and the old fury would have broken loose. I saw O'Mally's face, red through a red mist, saw he was mad, mad straight through, enraged at the aspersions on his ability. He got up, ready to answer, and Lord knows what would have happened – a rough and tumble round the room probably – if the door hadn't opened and a clerk put in his head with the announcement:

"A gentleman on the phone wants Mr. O'Mally."

The words transformed the detective; his anger vanished as if it never had been. Quick as a wink he made for the door, flinging back over his shoulder:

"I told them at the office if anything turned up I'd be here. There's something doing."

A hush fell on the rest of us, the tense quiet of expectancy. The fire in me died like a flame when a bellows is dropped. News – any news – might bring help for her, exonerate her, wipe away the stain of the suspicions that no one but we six would ever know.

The door opened and O'Mally entered. His face was illuminated, shining with an irrepressible triumph, his movements quick and instinctively stealthy. Pushing the door to behind him he said as softly as if the walls had ears:

"They've got Barker in Philadelphia."

CHAPTER XII

JACK TELLS THE STORY

Inside an hour O'Mally, Babbitts and I were on our way to Philadelphia. All friction was forgotten, a bigger issue had extinguished the sparks that had come near bursting into flame. A mutual desire united us, the finding of Barker.

The train, an express, seemed to crawl like a tortoise, but the way I felt I guess the flight of an aëroplane would have been slow. I had hideous fears that he might give us the slip, but O'Mally was confident. One of his men had got a lead on Barker through a vendor of newspapers, from whom the capitalist twice in the last week had purchased the big New York dailies. It had taken several days to locate his place of hiding – a quiet boarding house far removed from the center of the city – which was now under surveillance. As we swung through the night, shut close in a smoke-filled compartment, we speculated as to whether he would try and throw a bluff or see the game was up and tell the truth.

At the station O'Mally's man met us and the four of us piled into a taxi, and started on a run across town. It was moonlight, and going down those quiet streets, lined with big houses and then with little houses – still, dwindling vistas sleeping in the silver radiance – seemed to me the longest drive I'd ever taken in my life. As we sped the detective gave us further particulars. By his instructions the newsstand man, who left the morning papers at the boarding house, had got into communication with the servant, a colored girl. From her he had learnt that Barker – he passed under the name of Joseph Sammis – had been away for twenty-four hours and had come back that morning so ill that a doctor had been called in. The doctor had said the man's heart was weak, and that his condition looked like the result of strain or shock. Questioned further the girl had said he was "A pleasant, civil-spoken old gentleman, giving no trouble to anybody." He went out very little, sitting in his room most of the time reading the papers. He received no mail there, but that he did get letters she had found out, as she had seen one on his table addressed to the General Delivery.

The house was on a street, quiet and deserted at this early hour, one of a row all built alike. As we climbed out of the taxi the moon was bright, the shadows lying like black velvet across the lonely roadway. On the opposite side, loitering slow, was a man, who, raising a hand to his hat, passed on into the darkness along the area railings. Though it was only a little after nine, many of the houses showed the blankness of unlit windows, but in the place where we had stopped a fan-light over the door glowed in a yellow semicircle.

As the taxi moved off we three – O'Mally's detective slipped away into the shadow like a ghost – walked up a little path to the front door where I pulled an old-fashioned bell handle. I could hear the sound go jingling through the hall, loud and cracked, and then steps, languid and dragging, come from somewhere in the rear. I was to act as spokesman, my cue being to ask for Mr. Sammis on a matter of urgent business.

The door was opened by the colored girl, who looked at us stupidly and then said she'd call Miss Graves, the landlady, as she didn't think anyone could see Mr. Sammis.

Standing back from the door she let us into a hall with a hatrack on one side and a flight of stairs going up at the back. The light was dim, coming from a globe held aloft by a figure that crowned the newel post. The paper on the walls, some dark striped pattern, seemed to absorb what little radiance there was and the whole place smelled musty and was as quiet as a church.

The colored girl had disappeared down a long passage and presently a door opened back there and a woman came out, tall and thin, in a skimpy black dress. She approached us as we stood in a group by the hatrack, leaning forward near-sightedly and blinking at us through silver-rimmed spectacles.

"My maid says you want to see Mr. Sammis," she said, in an unamiable voice.

"Yes," I answered. "We've come from New York and it's imperative we see him this evening."

"But you can't," she snapped. "He's sick. The doctor says he mustn't be disturbed."

Talking it over afterward we all confessed that we were seized by the same idea – that this lanky old spinster might be in the game and Barker's illness was a fake. Feeling as I did I was ready to leap forward, grab her, and lock her in her own parlor while the others chased up the stairs. I could sense the slight, uneasy stir of the two men beside me, and I tried to inject a determination into my voice, that while it was civil was also informing:

"I'm sorry, but it's absolutely necessary that we transact our business with him now."

"Can't you give me a message?" she demurred, squinting her eyes up behind the glasses. "I'll see that it's delivered in the morning."

"No, Madam. This is important and can't wait. We won't be long, we only have to consult with him for a few minutes."

She gave a shrug as much as to say, "Well, this is your affair!" and, drawing back, pointed to the stairs.

"He's up there, fourth floor front, second door to your left."

To each of us the suspicion that she was in with Barker had grown with every minute. The idea once lodged in our minds, possessed them, and we went up those stairs, slow at first, and then, as we got out of earshot, faster and faster. It was a run on the second flight and a gallop on the third. On this landing there was no gas lit, but a window at the end of the passage let in a square of moonlight that lay bright on the floor and showed us the hall's dim length and the outlines of closed doors.

It was the second of these, on the left-hand side, and creeping toward it we stood for a moment getting our wind. The place was very cold, as if a window was open, and there was not a sound. Standing by the door O'Mally knocked softly. There was no answer.

In that half-lit passage, chilled with the icy breath of the winter night and held in a strange stillness, I was seized by a grisly sense of impending horror. If I'd been a small boy my teeth would have begun to chatter. At thirty years of age that doesn't happen, but I doubt whether anyone whose body was supplied with an ordinarily active nervous system would not have felt something sinister in that cold, dark place, in the silence behind that close-shut door.

O'Mally knocked again and again; there was no answer.

"Try it," I whispered and the detective turned the handle.

"Locked," he breathed back, then – "Stand away there. I'm going to break it. There's something wrong here."

He turned sideways, bracing his shoulder against the door. There was a cracking sound, and the lock, embedded in old soft wood, gave way, the door swinging in with O'Mally hanging to the handle.

The room was unlit but for the silver moonlight that came from the window, uncurtained and open. At that sight the same thought seized the three of us – the man was gone – and O'Mally, fumbling in his pocket for matches, broke into furious profanity.

I had a box and as I dug round for it, took a look about, and saw the shapes of a chair with garments hanging over it, an open desk, and, against the opposite wall, the bed. It was only a pale oblong, and looked irregular, as if the clothes were heaped on it as the man had thrown them back. I could have joined O'Mally in his swearing. Gone – when our fingers were closing on him! Then I found the matches and the gas burst out over our heads.

My eyes were on the bed and O'Mally's must have been, for simultaneously I gave an exclamation and he leaped forward. There, asleep, under the covers lay a man. Quick as a flash of lightning the detective was beside him, bending to look close at the face, then he drew back with a sound – a cry of amazement, disbelief – and pulling off the bed clothes laid his hand on the sleeper's chest.

"God in Heaven!" he gasped, turning to us. "He's dead!"

Babbitts and I made a rush for the bed, I to the head, where I leaned low to make sure, staring into the gray, pale face with its prominent nose and sunken eyes. Then it was my turn to cry out, to stagger back, looking from one man to the other, aghast at what I'd seen:

"It's not Barker at all."

For a moment we stared at one another, jaws fallen, eyes stony. Not a word came from one of us, the silence broken by the hissing rush of the gas turned up full cock in a sputtering ribbon of flame. I came to myself first, turned from them back to the dead face, its marble calm in strange contrast to the stunned consternation of the living faces.

"It's not he," I repeated. "I've often seen him. It's not the man."

"Well – well – " stammered O'Mally, coming out of his stupor. "Who on earth is it?"

"How do I know – Sammis, I suppose. It's like him – the nose, the eyes and the eyebrows, and the mustache. But," I looked at them, gazing like two stupefied animals at the head on the pillow, "it's not Johnston Barker."

O'Mally, with a groan of baffled desperation, fell into a chair, his hands hanging over the arms, his feet limp on the floor before him. Babbitts stood paralyzed, leaning on the foot of the bed. It was an extraordinary situation – three live men, hot on the chase of a fourth and in the moment of victory faced by the most inscrutable and solemn thing that life holds – a dead man. We couldn't get over it, couldn't seem to think or act, grouped round the bed with the whistling rush of the gas loud on the silence.

Then suddenly, another and more distant sound broke up our stupefaction. Someone was coming up the stairs. It jerked us back to life, and I made a run for the door, O'Mally's whisper hissing after me:

"If it's that woman, keep her away for a while. I want to go over the room."

It was Miss Graves, ascending slowly with the help of the balustrade. I caught her on the landing and told her what we'd found. She was not greatly surprised – the doctor had warned her. I explained the broken door by telling her we had been alarmed by the silence and had forced our way in. That, too, she took quietly, and turned away, gliding shadowlike down the stairs to send out the servant for the doctor.

When I reëntered the room its aspect was changed. A sheet covered the dead man and O'Mally and Babbitts, with all the burners in the chandelier blazing, had started looking over the room. The detective was already at work on the papers in the desk, Babbitts going through the clothes over the chair and the few others that hung in the cupboard.

"Hustle and get busy," said O'Mally, as he heard me come in. "If this isn't Johnston Barker, it's the man we've been trailing and I'm pretty sure it's the one that attacked Ford."

There was a table by the bedside with a reading lamp and some books on it. Moving these I came upon two newspaper clippings, relating to the suicide of Harland. In both Anthony Ford was mentioned. The reporters had evidently spoken to him that night on the street, gleaning any fragments of information they could. One alluded to the fact that he was employed in the offices below Harland's, the Azalea Woods Estates. These words were heavily underlined in pencil.

"Looks like it from this," I said, showing the clipping to O'Mally.

He glanced at it and grunted, going back to his inspection of a sheaf of papers he had found in one of the desk pigeonholes.

Meantime Babbitts had found in the coat that hung over the chair a wallet containing a hundred dollars, a tailor's bill for a suit and coat, receipted and bearing a New York address, and Tony Ford's house and street number written in pencil on a neatly folded sheet of note paper. Besides these there was one letter, dated January 13, typed and bearing no signature. Its contents was as follows:

Enclosed please find one hundred dollars in two bills of fifty. Will send same amount on same date next month if work should be still delayed. Will communicate further later.

The envelope, also addressed in typewriting, was directed to Joseph Sammis, General Delivery, Philadelphia, and bore a New York postmark.

We were working too quickly for much comment, but Babbitts held out the paper with Ford's address on it toward O'Mally.

"This bears it out, too," he said.

O'Mally looked at it, and snapped the elastic back on the documents he'd been going over.

"From what I've seen here," he said, "Sammis was the man Ford was with in the real-estate business. These are all contracts, bills and some correspondence, the records of a small venture that went to smash," he pushed the roll back in its pigeonhole – "not another thing."