The Deep Lake Mystery

This was straightforward talk, and Ames, though his face wore an aggrieved expression, spoke concisely and to the point. But after all, his manner was truculent, he didn’t ask Moore’s help so much as he demanded it, almost commandeered it. I was not surprised to see Kee stick to his first decision.

“I appreciate all you say, Mr. Ames,” Kee said, “but I repeat I am not willing to take a case until I look into it. Do not delay further, but let us go at once to the scene of the tragedy.”

Ames glowered, but without another word he led the way from the room and turned toward the staircase.

The broad steps, carpeted with red velvet, branched half way up, and turning to the right, Ames conducted us to Sampson Tracy’s rooms. They were in a wing that had been flung out at the back of the house, probably as a later addition to the structure. Entrance was through a private hall, and then into a foyer or ante-room, from which led several doors.

“This is the bedroom,” said the Inspector, taking a key from his pocket as he paused before one of the doors.

“I thought you had to break in,” Moore said, looking at the unmarred door.

“Not exactly,” Farrell told him. “The door was locked and the key inside, in the lock. But they got the garage mechanician up here, and he managed to dislodge the key and then get the door unlocked with his tools.”

He opened the door, and we filed in, the Inspector first, then Moore and I, then Ames and Detective March.

Farrell closed and locked the door behind us, and it was then that I saw the strange, the grotesque spectacle of Sampson Tracy’s deathbed.

The first thing that caught my attention and from which I found it well nigh impossible to detach my vision was the red-feather duster.

A full plume of bright red feathers seemed to crown the head on the pillow.

The handle of the duster had been thrust down behind and under the head, and only the red plume showed, of such fine, light feathers that a few fronds waved at a step across the room or a movement near the bed.

Then I looked at the rest of the strange picture.

Sampson Tracy was a large and heavy man. His head was large, and his face was of the conformation sometimes called pear-shaped. He had heavy jaws, pendulous jowls and a large mouth. Clean shaven as to face, his hair was thick and rather long. His eyebrows were bushy, and his half opened eyes of a glassy and yet dull blue.

His hair was iron-gray, and round his brow were wreathed some blossoms of blue larkspur. Across his chest, diagonally, was a garland of the same flowers. The blossoms were not tied or twined, they had merely been laid in a row in order to form a vinelike garland.

The right hand, bent to rest on his breast, held a crucifix, and in the left hand was, of all things, a small orange.

His head lay on one large pillow, and on the other pillow was a folded handkerchief and also two small sweet crackers. And encircling the head and shoulders, framing all these strange details, a long and wide scarf, of soft and filmy scarlet chiffon, a beautiful scarf, from a woman’s point of view, but a peculiar adjunct to a man’s taking-off.

I stared at all this, quite forgetting to look at Moore to see how he was taking it.

When I did glance up at him, hearing his voice, I saw he had evidently completed his scrutiny of the bed and had turned to Harper Ames.

“Why do you think Mr. Tracy was murdered?” Kee asked of the glum-faced one.

“What other theory is possible?” Ames returned. “A suicide would not place all that flumadiddle about himself. A natural death wouldn’t have such decorations, either. So, he was killed, either by some one with a most distorted sense of humour, or there is a meaning in each seeming bit of foolishness.”

“What did he die of, exactly?”

“That we don’t know yet, the doctor will be here any minute, and the coroner, too.”

Even as he spoke, Doctor Rogers arrived. He was the family physician, and as Farrell opened the door to his knock, he went straight to the bed.

“What’s all this rubbish?” he exclaimed, reaching for the scarf.

“Don’t touch it, If you can help it, Doctor,” March implored him. “It may be evidence – ”

“Evidence of what?”

“Crime – murder – or is it a natural death?”

Doctor Rogers was making his examination with as little disturbance as might be of the flowers and scarf.

But the feather duster he pulled from its place and flung across the room. The orange followed it, and the crackers.

“Pick them up if you want them for clues,” he said; “you know where they were found, and I won’t have my friend photographed with all those monkey tricks about him!”

March picked up the things, with a due regard for possible finger prints, and stored them away in a drawer of the chiffonier.

Finally, Doctor Rogers straightened up from his examining, and rose to his feet.

“Apoplexy,” he said. “What’s all this talk about murder? Sampson Tracy is dead of apoplexy, as I have often told him he would be, if he kept on with his plan of eating and drinking too much and taking little or no exercise. He had an apoplectic stroke last night which proved fatal. He died, as nearly as I can judge, about two o’clock. As to these foolish trinkets, they were brought in here later and placed round him after he was dead. You can see that though he seemed to hold the cross and the orange in his hands, they weren’t tightly held, the fingers were bent round them after death. It must have been the deed of some child or of some servant who is mentally lacking. Is there a girl of twelve or fourteen on the place? But I’ve no time to tarry now. I’m on my way to the train. I’m going for my vacation on a trip through Canada and down the Pacific coast. I’d throw it over, of course, if I could be of any use. But I can’t, and my wife is waiting for me. I’ve given my statement as to Tracy’s death, and I know I’m right. Here comes Coroner Hart now. I say, Hart, the Inspector and Mr. Ames here will tell you my findings, and I know you’ll corroborate me. It’s all a terrible pity, but I knew he was digging his grave with his teeth. No amount of advice did a bit of good. As to the flowers and rags, look for a twelve-year-old girl… There are the ones who kick up such bobberies. Maybe the housekeeper has a grandchild, or maybe there is a kiddy in the chauffeur’s or gardener’s cottage. Good-bye, I must run. Sorry, but to lose this local train means to upset our reservations all along the trip.”

The Doctor hurried away, yet so positive had been his diagnosis, and so logical his disinclination to linger when he could be of no possible use, that we all forgave him in our minds.

The Coroner gave a start at the masses of flowers, somewhat disarranged by Doctor Rogers’s manipulations, and drew nearer to the body.

Farrell told him how things had been before Doctor Rogers removed the feather duster and threw out the orange and crackers.

“He ought to have let them alone!” Hart declared, angrily.

“It doesn’t really matter,” put in March, “I know exactly how they were lying, and anyway, Rogers says it’s a natural death.”

“Natural? With all that gimcrack show!”

“He says that’s the work of a mischievous child, for preference, a little girl of twelve or fourteen.”

“He’s thinking of Poltergeist – he’s got that sort of thing on the brain. Let me take a look at the body.”

So Doctor Hart sat on the side of the bed and made his examination of the dead millionaire.

“There is every symptom of apoplexy,” he said, at last, “and no symptom of anything else. Yet, I feel a little uncertainty. We’ll have to see what the autopsy says.”

“When can you have that?” Ames asked him.

“Very soon. This afternoon, probably. But it is important now to make inquiries as to conditions last night. You were here, Mr. Ames?”

“Yes, – that is, I am staying here, visiting, you know, – but last evening I was out to dinner, with our neighbour, Mr. Moore here.”

“What time did you get home?”

“Not late; about eleven, I think.”

“Had Mr. Tracy gone to bed then?”

“No, he was waiting up for me. We went into the smoking room and had a smoke and a chat.”

“What time did you retire?”

“We went upstairs about midnight, I should say. I said good night to him on this floor and then went on upstairs to my own room.”

“He seemed in his usual health and spirits?”

“So far as I noticed, yes.”

“You heard nothing unusual in the night?”

“Nothing at all.”

“What was the subject of your conversation last evening?”

“Nothing of serious moment. He asked me who were at the Moore party and I told him. He was lightly interested, but cared only to hear about Mrs. Dallas, who is his fiancée and who was at the party.”

“And Mr. Tracy was not there?”

“No. He had been invited, but – well, he had had a little tiff with the lady, and in a moment of anger had declined the invitation. He was sorry afterward and wished he had accepted it. I begged him to go in my place, I would have willingly stayed home, but he wouldn’t hear of such a thing. Then I wanted to telephone Mrs. Moore, the hostess, and ask her to make room for him, too, but he wouldn’t allow that, either. So I went to the dinner, and Mrs. Dallas went, but Mr. Tracy stayed at home.”

“Alone?”

“I think so, except for his two secretaries. When I came home, he was in a pleasant enough mood, and I concluded he had thought it all over and straightened it out in his mind one way or another. I didn’t refer to the matter at all, but he asked me many questions about Mrs. Dallas, such as how she looked, what mood she was in and whether she said anything about him. Just such questions as a man would naturally ask about his absent sweetheart.”

“All this properly belongs to the inquest,” Coroner Hart said. “But I want to get any side-lights I can while the matter is fresh in your mind. Do you know this room well, Mr. Ames?”

“Not at all. I’ve only been in here once or twice in my life.”

“Then you can’t tell me if anything is missing?”

“No, I think not,” Ames looked around. “No, I don’t know anything about the appointments here. Or do you mean valuables?”

“Anything at all. I think we can’t blink the fact that somebody came in here after the man was dead, and arranged all those weird decorations. Now maybe that somebody took away something as well.”

“That I don’t know,” Ames reiterated. “I know nothing of Tracy’s belongings.”

The man had been pleasant enough at first, but now he was resuming his irritable manner, and I wondered if he would get really angry.

Keeley Moore was saying almost nothing. But I knew he was losing no points of what was happening, and I rather expected him to break out soon. He did.

“Perhaps, Doctor Hart,” he said, quietly, “it might be a good idea to get Mr. Tracy’s manservant or housekeeper up here, and find out a little more about the appointments of this room. For instance, whether the orange and crackers were already here, or whether the mysterious visitor brought them.”

“I was just about to do that, Mr. Moore,” the Coroner said, with such haste that I had my doubts of his veracity.

But he rang a bell in the wall, and we waited for a response.

The butler himself answered it, a rather grandiose personage in the throes of excitement and grief at the terrible happenings to his master.

“Well, Griscom,” Ames said, with his habitual frown, “these gentlemen want to ask you some questions. Answer them as fully as you can.”

“Was it Mr. Tracy’s habit to have a bit of fruit or a cracker in his room at night?” the Coroner inquired.

“Yes, sir,” said the butler, and the sound of his own voice seemed to steady him. “He always had an orange or a few grapes and a cracker or two on the table by his bed, sir.”

“And do you think this orange and these crackers are the ones put out for him last night?”

“I’m sure of it, sir. I put them out myself.”

“Then where is the plate? Surely you had them on a plate.”

“Of course, sir. They were on a small gilt-edged plate. I don’t see it about.”

“No, I don’t either. Had Mr. Tracy a valet?”

“No, sir, he didn’t like a man fussing about. I attended him, sir, and a footman helped me out now and then; and Mrs. Fenn, she’s cook and housekeeper, sir, she looked after his clothes, saving what I did myself.”

“Have you any reason to think your master would take his own life?”

“Oh, Lord, no, sir. Begging your pardon, but he was very fond of life, was Mr. Tracy. I thought he died of a fit, sir.”

“Probably he did. A fit or stroke of apoplexy. I begin to think, Inspector, we have no murder mystery on our hands after all.”

“No,” said Farrell, shaking his head, “apparently not.”

“Apparently yes,” said Keeley Moore, quietly. He had been looking at the dead man, and though he had not moved, but had stood for a long time, with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the still figure on the bed, I knew, somehow, that he had made a discovery.

“Stand over here, please, Inspector,” he said, in his calm, matter-of-fact way.

Farrell went and stood beside him, and Moore pointed to a very small circular object that shone like silver, though nearly hidden by the thick and rather long hair of Sampson Tracy.

It was the head of a nail that had been driven into the man’s skull.

CHAPTER IV

THE NAIL

“My God!” Farrell exclaimed, stepping closer and pushing aside the gray hair, thus clearly revealing the awful truth.

A flat-headed nail, the head rather more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, had been driven into the skull with such force that it showed merely as a metal disk. Having been hidden by the dead man’s hair, it had remained unnoticed until Moore’s quick eyes espied it.

Farrell picked at it a little, but it was far too firmly fastened to be moved by his fingers.

“What shall we do?” the Inspector asked, helplessly. “Shall we try to get Doctor Rogers back?”

“No,” returned the Coroner, “he’s just starting on a long trip. Let him go. He could do nothing and it would be a pity to spoil his journey. His diagnosis of apoplexy was most natural in the circumstances, for the symptoms are the same. I, too, thought death was the result of an apoplectic stroke. But now we know it is black murder, the case comes directly within my jurisdiction, and there’s no occasion to recall Doctor Rogers.”

“You’re right,” Ames assented, “but who could have done this fearful thing? I can hardly believe a human being capable of such a horror! Mr. Moore, you simply must take up this case. It ought to be a problem after your own heart.”

Every word the man uttered made me dislike him more. To refer to this terrible tragedy as a problem after Moore’s own heart seemed to me to indicate a mind callous and almost ghoulish in its type.

I knew Kee well enough to feel sure that he would investigate the murder, but not at the behest of Harper Ames.

He only acknowledged Ames’s speech by a noncommittal nod and turned to Detective March.

“We have our work cut out for us,” he said, very gravely. “I have never seen a stranger case. The murderer must have been a man of brute passions and brute strength. That nail is almost imbedded in the bone, and, I fancy, needed more than one blow of the hammer that drove it in. But first, as to the doors and windows. You tell me they were locked this morning?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Griscom, the butler, as Moore looked at him.

He was a smallish man, bald and with what are sometimes called pop-eyes. He stared in a frightened manner, but he controlled his voice as he went on to tell his story.

“Yes, sir, I brought the master’s tea at nine o’clock, as always. The door was locked – ”

“Is it usually locked in the morning?” Moore interrupted.

“Sometimes, not always. When it is locked, I knock and Mr. Tracy would get up and open the door. If unlocked, I walked right in.”

“And this morning it was locked, and the key in the lock on the inside?”

“Yes, sir. So I knocked, but when there was no answer, I got scared – ”

“Why were you scared?”

“Because Doctor Rogers had often told me that Mr. Tracy was in danger of an apoplectic stroke, and that I must do anything I could to make him eat less and take more exercise. I’ve been with the master a long time, sir, and I had the privilege of a bit of talk with him now and then. So I did try to persuade him to obey the doctor’s orders, and he would laugh and promise to do so. But he forgot it as soon as he saw some dish he was fond of, and he’d eat his fill of it.”

“Go on, Griscom,” Moore said, “what happened next?”

“I went to Mr. Everett – ”

“Yes, he went to Everett,” broke in the aggrieved voice of Harper Ames. “Why did he do that, instead of coming to me, I’d like to know!”

“Go on,” Moore instructed the butler.

“I went to Mr. Everett, sir, he was up and dressed, and he said, at once, to get Louis – that’s the chauffeur – and tell him to bring some tools, I did that, and Louis first pushed the key out of the lock, and then poked around with a wire until he got the door open. Then we came in – ”

“Who came in?”

“Mr. Everett and Mr. Ames and me, sir. And Mrs. Fenn – she’s the housekeeper – she saw Louis running upstairs, so she came, too.”

“And you saw – ?”

“Mr. Tracy, just as he was when you first saw him, sir. Just as he is now, except for the things Doctor Rogers chucked out.”

“Is that door, the one that was locked, the entrance to the whole suite?”

“Yes, sir, that door is the only one connecting these rooms with the house.”

“I see. Now what about the windows?”

“They haven’t been touched, sir.”

Kee Moore turned his attention to the windows. There were many of them. The suite of Sampson Tracy’s was a rectangular wing, built out from the main house, and having windows on three sides. But all of these windows overlooked the deep, black waters of the Sunless Sea. It had been the whim of the man to have his quarters thus, to be surrounded on all sides by the water of the lake that he loved, and he usually had all the windows wide open, doubtless enjoying the lake breezes that played through the rooms, and listening to the birds, whose notes broke the stillness of the night.

“What is below these rooms?” Moore asked.

“The big ballroom, sir. Nothing else.”

After scrutinizing every window in the bedroom, dressing room, bathroom and sitting room, Moore said, slowly: “These windows seem to me to be inaccessible from below.”

It was characteristic of the man that he didn’t say they were inaccessible but merely that they seemed so to him.

As they certainly did to the rest of us. We all looked out, and in every instance, the sheer drop to the lake was about fifteen or more feet. The outer walls of marble presented no foothold for even the most daring of climbers. They were smooth, plain, and absolutely unscalable.

“It is certain no one entered by the windows,” Moore said, at last, having looked out of every one. “I suppose the house is always carefully secured at night?”

“Yes, sir,” Griscom assured him. “Mr. Tracy was very particular about that. He and all the household had latchkeys, and the front door – indeed, all the doors and windows were carefully seen to.”

“Who has latchkeys?”

“Mr. Everett, Mr. Dean, myself and the housekeeper. Then there are others which are given to guests. Mr. Ames had one – ”

“With so many latchkeys about, one may have been abstracted by some evil-minded person.”

“Not likely, sir. We keep strict watch on them.”

“Well, that would only give entrance to the house. How could anyone get into and out of Mr. Tracy’s room, leaving the door locked on the inside?”

I knew Moore purposely voiced this problem himself, to head off those who would ask it of him. He had often said to me, “if you don’t want a question asked of you, ask it yourself of somebody else.” And so, as he flung this at them each felt derelict in not being able to reply.

But Ames’s querulous voice volleyed the question back.

“That’s why I want you to do up this business, Moore,” he said. “That’s what makes it such a pretty problem – ”

Moore could stand this no longer.

“For an intimate friend of a martyred man, I should think you would see the matter in a more personal light than a pretty problem!”

“Oh, I do. I’m sad and sorry enough, but I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve. And first of all, I’m keen to avenge my friend. And I know that what’s to be done must be done quickly. So, get busy, I beg.”

The more Ames said, the less I liked him, and I knew Kee felt the same way about it. But the man was right as to haste being advisable. The circumstances were so peculiar, the conditions so fantastic, that search for the criminal must be made quickly, or a man of such diabolical cleverness would put himself beyond our reach.

The Inspector, the police detective and Keeley Moore consulted a few moments and then Inspector Farrell said:

“The case is altered. Now that we know it is wilful murder, and not a stroke of illness, we must act accordingly. Coroner Hart will conduct an immediate inquiry, preliminary to his formal inquest. No one may leave the house; you, Griscom, will tell the servants this, and I shall call in more help from the police station to guard the place. We will go downstairs, and the Coroner will choose a suitable room, and begin his investigation.”

Farrell was an efficient director, though in no way a detective. He locked the door that commanded the whole apartment after he had herded us all out.

We filed downstairs, and I could hear women’s voices in a small reception room as we passed it.

The Coroner chose a room which was fitted up as a sort of writing room. It was of moderate size and contained several desks or writing tables, evidently a writing room for guests. There was a bookcase of books and a table of periodicals and newspapers.

Clearly, the house had every provision for comfort and pleasure. Save for the sinister atmosphere now pervading it, I felt I should have liked to visit there.

The Coroner settled himself at a table, and instructed Griscom to send in the house servants one at a time. He also told the butler to serve breakfast as usual, and advised Harper Ames to go to the dining room, as he would be called on later for testimony.

Hart’s manner now was crisp and business-like. The realization of the awful facts of the case had spurred him to definite and immediate action.

Mrs. Fenn, the cook-housekeeper, threw no new light on the situation. She corroborated Griscom’s story of the locked door and the subsequent opening of it by Louis, but she could add no new information.

“You were fond of Mr. Tracy?” asked Moore, kindly, for the poor woman was vainly trying to control her grief.

“Oh, yes, sir. He was a good master and a truly great man.”

“You’ve never known, among the guests of the house, any one who was his enemy?”

“No, sir. But I almost never see the guests. I’m housekeeper, to be sure, but the maids do all the housework. I superintend the cooking.”

“And you’ve heard no gossip about any one who had an enmity or a grudge toward Mr. Tracy?”

“Ah, who could have? He was a gentle, peaceable man, was Mr. Tracy. Who could wish him harm?”

“Yet somebody did,” the Coroner put in, and then he dismissed Mrs. Fenn, feeling she could be of no use.

The other house servants were similarly ignorant of any guest or neighbour who was unfriendly to Mr. Tracy, and then Hart called for the chauffeur.

Louis, a Frenchman, was different in manner and disinclined to talk. In fact, he refused to do so unless all members of the household were sent from the room.

So the Coroner ordered everybody out except Farrell and Detective March, Moore and myself.

Then Louis waxed confidential and declared that Mr. Ames and Mr. Tracy were deadly enemies.

I thought the man was exaggerating, and that he had some grudge of his own against Ames. But Hart listened avidly to the chauffeur’s arraignment, and I was forced to the conclusion that Louis knew a lot.

Yet it was all hints and innuendoes. He stated that the two men were continually quarrelling. Asked what about, he replied “Money matters.”

“What sort of money matters?” Hart asked him.

“Stocks and bonds and mortgages. I think Mr. Ames owed Mr. Tracy a great deal of money and he couldn’t or wouldn’t pay it, and so they wrangled over it.”