CHAPTER SEVEN
CROSS-QUESTIONS AND CROOKED ANSWERS
ALL unconscious of the slur just cast upon her forty years of single-minded devotion to the Van Gorder family, Lizzie chose that particular moment to open the door and make a little bob at her mistress and the detective.
"The gentleman's room is ready," she said meekly. In her mind she was already beseeching her patron saint that she would not have to show the gentleman to his room. Her ideas of detectives were entirely drawn from sensational magazines and her private opinion was that Anderson might have anything in his pocket from a set of terrifying false whiskers to a bomb!
Miss Cornelia, obedient to the detective's instructions, promptly told the whitest of fibs for Lizzie's benefit.
"The maid will show you to your room now and you can make yourself comfortable for the night." There—that would mislead Lizzie, without being quite a lie.
"My toilet is made for an occasion like this when I've got my gun loaded," answered Anderson carelessly. The allusion to the gun made Lizzie start nervously, unhappily for her, for it drew his attention to her and he now transfixed her with a stare.
"This is the maid you referred to?" he inquired. Miss Cornelia assented. He drew nearer to the unhappy Lizzie.
"What's your name?" he asked, turning to her.
"E-Elizabeth Allen," stammered Lizzie, feeling like a small and distrustful sparrow in the toils of an officious python.
Anderson seemed to run through a mental Rogues Gallery of other criminals named Elizabeth Allen that he had known.
"How old are you?" he proceeded.
Lizzie looked at her mistress despairingly. "Have I got to answer that?" she wailed. Miss Cornelia nodded inexorably.
Lizzie braced herself. "Thirty-two," she said, with an arch toss of her head.
The detective looked surprised and slightly amused.
"She's fifty if she's a day," said Miss Cornelia treacherously in spite of a look from Lizzie that would have melted a stone.
The trace of a smile appeared and vanished on the detective's face.
"Now, Lizzie," he said sternly, "do you ever walk in your sleep?"
"I do not," said Lizzie indignantly.
"Don't care for the country, I suppose?"
"I do not!"
"Or detectives?" Anderson deigned to be facetious.
"I do not!" There could be no doubt as to the sincerity of Lizzie's answer.
"All right, Lizzie. Be calm. I can stand it," said the detective with treacherous suavity. But he favored her with a long and careful scrutiny before he moved to the table and picked up the note that had been thrown through the window. Quietly he extended it beneath Lizzie's nose.
"Ever see this before?" he said crisply, watching her face.
Lizzie read the note with bulging eyes, her face horror-stricken. When she had finished, she made a gesture of wild disclaimer that nearly removed a portion of Anderson's left ear.
"Mercy on us!" she moaned, mentally invoking not only her patron saint but all the rosary of heaven to protect herself and her mistress.
But the detective still kept his eye on her.
"Didn't write it yourself, did you?" he queried curtly.
"I did not!" said Lizzie angrily. "I did not!"
"And—you're sure you don't walk in your sleep?"
The bare idea strained Lizzie's nerves to the breaking point.
"When I get into bed in this house I wouldn't put my feet out for a million dollars!" she said with heartfelt candor. Even Anderson was compelled to grin at this.
"Then I won't ask you to," he said, relaxing considerably; "That's more money than I'm worth, Lizzie."
"Well, I'll say it is!" quoth Lizzie, now thoroughly aroused, and flounced out of the room in high dudgeon, her pompadour bristling, before he had time to interrogate her further.
He replaced the note on the table and turned back to Miss Cornelia. If he had found any clue to the mystery in Lizzie's demeanor, she could not read it in his manner.
"Now, what about the butler?" he said.
"Nothing about him—except that he was Courtleigh Fleming's servant."
Anderson paused. "Do you consider that significant?"
A shadow appeared behind him deep in the alcove—a vague, listening figure—Dale, on tiptoe, conspiratorial, taking pains not to draw the attention of the others to her presence. But both Miss Cornelia and Anderson were too engrossed in their conversation to notice her.
Miss Cornelia hesitated.
"Isn't it possible that there is a connection between the colossal theft at the Union Bank and these disturbances?" she said.
Anderson seemed to think over the question.
"What do you mean?" he asked as Dale slowly moved into the room from the alcove, silently closing the alcove doors behind her, and still unobserved.
"Suppose," said Miss Cornelia slowly, "that Courtleigh Fleming took that money from his own bank and concealed it in this house?" The eavesdropper grew rigid.
"That's the theory you gave headquarters, isn't it?" said Anderson. "But I'll tell you how headquarters figures it out. In the first place, the cashier is missing. In the second place, if Courtleigh Fleming did it and got as far as Colorado, he had it with him when he died, and the facts apparently don't bear that out. In the third place, suppose he had hidden the money in or around this house. Why did he rent it to you?"
"But he didn't," said Miss Cornelia obstinately, "I leased this house from his nephew, his heir."
The detective smiled tolerantly.
"Well, I wouldn't struggle like that for a theory," he said, the professional note coming back to his voice. "The cashier's missing—that's the answer."
Miss Cornelia resented his off-hand demolition of the mental card-castle she had erected with such pride.
"I have read a great deal on the detection of crime," she said hotly, "and"
"Well, we all have our little hobbies," he said tolerantly. "A good many people rather fancy themselves as detectives and run around looking for clues under the impression that a clue is a big and vital factor that sticks up like—well, like a sore thumb. The fact is that the criminal takes care of the big and important factors. It's only the little ones he may overlook. To go back to your friend the Bat, it's because of his skill in little things that he's still at large."
"Then you don't think there's a chance that the money from the Union Bank is in this house?" persisted Miss Cornelia.
"I think it very unlikely."
Miss Cornelia put her knitting away and rose. She still clung tenaciously to her own theories—but her belief in them had been badly shaken.
"If you'll come with me, I'll show you to your room," she said a little stiffly. The detective stepped back to let her pass.
"Sorry to spoil your little theory," he said, and followed her to the door. If either had noticed the unobtrusive listener to their conversation, neither made a sign.
The moment the door had closed on them Dale sprang into action. She seemed a different girl from the one who had left the room so inconspicuously such a short time before—there were two bright spots of color in her cheeks and she was obviously laboring under great excitement. She went quickly to the alcove doors—they opened softly—disclosing the young man who had said that he was Brooks the new gardener—and yet not the same young man—for his assumed air of servitude had dropped from him like a cloak, revealing him as a young fellow at least of the same general social class as Dale's if not a fellow-inhabitant of the select circle where Van Gorders revolved about Van Gorders, and a man's great-grandfather was more important than the man himself.
Dale cautioned him with a warning finger as he advanced into the room.
"Sh! Sh!" she whispered. "Be careful! That man's a detective!"
Brooks gave a hunted glance at the door into the hall.
"Then they've traced me here," he said in a dejected voice.
"I don't think so."
He made a gesture of helplessness.
"I couldn't get back to my rooms," he said in a whisper. "If they've searched them," he paused, "as they're sure to—they'll find your letters to me." He paused again.
"Your aunt doesn't suspect anything?"
"No, I told her I'd engaged a gardener—and that's all there was about it."
He came nearer to her. "Dale!" he murmured in a tense voice. "You know I didn't take that money!" he said with boyish simplicity.
All the loyalty of first-love was in her answer.
"Of course! I believe in you absolutely!" she said. He caught her in his arms and kissed her—gratefully—passionately. Then the galling memory of the predicament in which he stood—the hunt already on his trail—came back to him. He released her gently, still holding one of her hands.
"But—the police here!" he stammered, turning away. "What does that mean?"
Dale swiftly informed him of the situation.
"Aunt Cornelia says people have been trying to break into this house for days—at night."
Brooks ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of bewilderment. Then he seemed to catch at a hope.
"What sort of people?" he queried sharply.
Dale was puzzled. "She doesn't know."
The excitement in her lover's manner came to a head. "That proves exactly what I've contended right along," he said, thudding one fist softly in the palm of the other. "Through some underneath channel old Fleming has been selling those securities for months, turning them into cash. And somebody knows about it, and knows that that money is hidden here. Don't you see? Your Aunt Cornelia has crabbed the game by coming here."
"Why didn't you tell the police that? Now they think, because you ran away"
"Ran away! The only chance I had was a few hours to myself to try to prove what actually happened."
"Why don't you tell the detective what you think?" said Dale at her wits' end. "That Courtleigh Fleming took the money and that it is still here?"
Her lover's face grew somber.
"He'd take me into custody at once—and I'd have no chance to search."
He was searching now—his eyes roved about the living-room—walls—ceiling—hopefully—desperately—looking for a clue—the tiniest clue to support his theory.
"Why are you so sure it is here?" queried Dale.
Brooks explained. "You must remember—Fleming was no ordinary defaulter—and he had no intention of being exiled to a foreign country. He wanted to come back here and take his place in the community while I was in the pen."
"But even then"
He interrupted her. "Listen, dear" He crossed to the billiard-room door, closed it firmly, returned.
"The architect that built this house was an old friend of mine," he said in hushed accents. "We were together in France and you know the way fellows get to talking when they're far away and cut off" He paused, seeing the cruel gleam of a star shell—two figures huddled in a trench, whiling away the terrible hours of waiting by muttered talk.
"Just an hour or two before—a shell got this friend of mine," he resumed, "he told me he had built a hidden room in this house."
"Where?" gasped Dale.
Brooks shook his head. "I don't know. We never got to finish that conversation. But I remember what he said. He said, 'You watch old Fleming. If I get mine over here it won't break his heart. He didn't want any living being to know about that room.'"
Now Dale was as excited as he.
"Then you think the money is in this hidden room?"
"I do," said Brooks decidedly. "I don't think Fleming took it away with him. He was too shrewd for that. No, he meant to come back all right, the minute he got the word the bank had been looted. And he'd fixed things so I'd be railroaded to prison—you wouldn't understand, but it was pretty neat. And then the fool nephew rents this house the minute he's dead, and whoever knows about the money——"
"Jack! Why isn't it the nephew who is trying to break in?"
"He wouldn't have to break in. He could make an excuse and come in any time."
He clenched his hands despairingly.
"If I could only get hold of a blue-print of this place!" he muttered.
Dale's face fell. It was sickening to be so close to the secret—and yet not find it. "Oh, Jack, I'm so confused and worried!" she confessed, with a little sob.
Brooks put his hands on her shoulders in an effort to cheer her spirits.
"Now listen, dear," he said firmly, "this isn't as hard as it sounds. I've got a clear night to work in—and as true as I'm standing here, that money's in this house. Listen, honey—it's like this." He pantomimed the old nursery rhyme of The House that Jack Built, "Here's the house that Courtleigh Fleming built—here, somewhere, is the Hidden Room in the house that Courtleigh Fleming built—and here—somewhere—pray Heaven—is the money—in the Hidden Room—in the house that Courtleigh Fleming built. When you're low in your mind, just say that over!"
She managed a faint smile. "I've forgotten it already," she said, drooping.
He still strove for an off-hand gayety that he did not feel.
"Why, look here!" and she followed the play of his hands obediently, like a tired child, "it's a sort of game, dearest. 'Money, money—who's got the money?' You know!" For the dozenth time he stared at the unrevealing walls of the room. "For that matter," he added, "the Hidden Room may be behind these very walls."
He looked about for a tool—a poker—anything that would sound the walls and test them for hollow spaces. Ah! he had it—that driver in the bag of golf-clubs over in the corner. He got the driver and stood wondering where he had best begin. That blank wall above the fireplace looked as promising as any. He tapped it gently with the golf-club—afraid to make too much noise and yet anxious to test the wall as thoroughly as possible. A dull, heavy reverberation answered his stroke—nothing hollow there apparently.
As he tried another spot, again thunder beat the long roll on its iron drum outside, in the night. The lights blinked—wavered—recovered.
"The lights are going out again," said Dale dully, her excitement sunk into a stupefied calm.
"Let them go! The less light the better for me. The only thing to do is to go over this house room by room." He pointed to the billiard-room door. "What's in there?"
"The billiard-room." She was thinking hard. "Jack! Perhaps Courtleigh Fleming's nephew would know where the blue-prints are!"
He looked dubious. "It's a chance, but not a very good one," he said. "Well——" He led the way into the billiard room and began to rap at random upon its walls while Dale listened intently for any echo that might betray the presence of a hidden chamber or sliding panel.
Thus it happened that Lizzie received the first real thrill of what was to prove to her—and to others—a sensational and hideous night. For, coming into the living-room to lay a cloth for Mr. Anderson's night suppers not only did the lights blink threateningly and the thunder roll, but a series of spirit raps was certainly to be heard coming from the region of the billiard room.
"Oh, my God!" she wailed, and the next instant the lights went out, leaving her in inky darkness. With a loud shriek she bolted out of the room.
Thunder—lightning—dashing of rain on the streaming glass of the windows—the storm hallooing its hounds. Dale huddled close to her lover as they groped their way back to the living-room, cautiously, doing their best to keep from stumbling against some heavy piece of furniture whose fall would arouse the house.
"There's a candle on the table, Jack, if I can find the table." Her outstretched hands touched a familiar object. "Here it is." She fumbled for a moment. "Have you any matches?"
"Yes." He struck one—another—lit the candle—set it down on the table. In the weak glow of the little taper, whose tiny flame illuminated but a portion of the living-room, his face looked tense and strained.
"It's pretty nearly hopeless," he said, "if all the walls are paneled like that."
As if in mockery of his words and his quest, a muffled knocking that seemed to come from the ceiling of the very room he stood in answered his despair.
"What's that?" gasped Dale.
They listened. The knocking was repeated—knock—knock—knock—knock.
"Someone else is looking for the Hidden Room!" muttered Brooks, gazing up at the ceiling intently, as if he could tear from it the secret of this new mystery by sheer strength of will.