Unseen Hands Part 1

UNSEEN HANDS

CHAPTER I

TERROR

IT was a week since Julian Chalmers's tragic young death and the fourth day after the funeral, and yet the odor of dying flowers and the chill gloom which only so mournful a function can radiate seemed still to cling about the spacious room. It bore an air of unfamiliarity, too, which was due in part to the fact that the massive old furniture had not been replaced with the exactitude which its long-established position warranted.

The little faded woman who appeared noiselessly on the threshold and peered within much as a mouse might have done seemed at once to sense the general atmosphere and perceive its source. She entered, and as a light footfall sounded upon the stairs she laid her slender arms about a huge old arm chair and strove with all her frail strength to move it toward the table.

"Oh, Aunt Effie, what are you doing?" The words were more an awestruck exclamation than a question, and a young girl halted in the doorway as had the older woman at first. She was small and lithe; a dark, gypsy-like ​creature who would have been pretty in other circumstances. Now her big soft eyes were deeply encircled, and her clear dark skin chalkily pallid.

"Peters and Gerda have been sadly careless in rearranging the room, dear. I suppose I must not scold them at—at such a time, but I should have seen to it myself." The little lady's voice was low and as colorless as her personality. "You know your stepfather always likes this chair nearer the light."

"Well, do let Peters attend to it later and come into the dining-room!" It was not impatience but entreaty which sounded in the seemingly impulsive cry. "It's—it's simply horrible in here! Haven't father and the boys come down yet? Rannie's always late!"

"You have no patience with his infirmity, Nan, child," her aunt responded in gentle reproof as she followed the girl into the brilliantly lighted dining-room, where at one end a round table had been laid for six. "Remember he cannot run up and down the stairs as quickly as you."

"Oh, I did not mean to be unkind!" Nan Chalmers spoke in quick remorse, and her eyes darkened as she added in a half whisper, "We should none of us be unkind to each other, should we? We can not tell which will be the next to be taken!"

"It is the Lord's will." Miss Effie's soft, resigned voice was lost in the clear, flippant tones of a young man and the deep rumble of that of an older one as Richard Lorne and his eldest living step-son entered the room together.

"Remember, Eugene, not to speak of this to your aunt—" Lorne broke off abruptly as he caught sight of Miss Effie standing beside the cold hearth.

​"Oh, Aunt Effie knows as well as we do that things always run in three's," Eugene responded nonchalantly enough as he moved toward the table; but his light eyes wavered and a slight flush mounted to his sleek golden hair and receded, leaving him more pale than before. He turned to the younger sister, who was so unlike him in type, and asked with a flippancy which the quivering of his rather weak chin belied: "Why so tragic. Nan? It'll be me, not you; and the infernal jinx that is over this house will have to work quick, for next month I'll be twenty-five—"

"Silence!" His stepfather's round reddened face puffed out in anger, and his close-clipped gray mustache fairly bristled. "If you have no heart, at least preserve a semblance of decency and do not jest about—about matters which have bowed all our heads in grief!"

His tone grew husky toward the last, and his slightly prominent blue eyes filled as he turned away.

Nan laid a cool little hand over his.

"Don't mind Gene, father. He's only trying to cover up his own feelings; I know him!" She spoke with infinite tenderness; and it was evident that between the girl and her stepfather a very real affection existed. "Come, shall we wait for the other two?"

"I'm here!" A thin, high, whining voice with an indescribably sarcastic undernote in it replied to the question; and a distorted, humpbacked figure came forward. Randall, the youngest of the Chalmers children, was a boy of about eighteen, and dark like Nan, who was two years his senior; but there the resemblance ceased. Her witching charm seemed in him to be changed to a malevolent humor, and his thin lips were twisted, by past pain perhaps, into ​a perpetually sardonic leer. In his correct, somber mourning clothes, cleverly built to conceal as much as possible of his infirmity, he nevertheless made one think irresistibly of a jester in motley as he slid sinuously into his seat at the table and made an impish grace at his sister's face.

Richard Lorne turned to the impassive butler.

"Dinner, Peters. We shall not wait for Miss Chalmers."

Soup was almost finished before the beauty of the family appeared. Christine was twenty-two and resembled Eugene in her coloring save that her blondness was of a colder, more brilliant type, and there was no hint of weakness in her exquisite, perfectly chiseled features. She carried herself with the assured air of one conscious of her beauty; and her elaborate crêpe gown made the more simple mourning of her sister and aunt appear dowdy by comparison.

"I've been frightfully busy," she announced as she seated herself. "It's a bore to try to separate the sheep from the goats; but one simply must know whom merely to send cards to, and who must be replied to personally. Why do people send condolences, anyway?"

"Usually to be on the safe side in case they might have been remembered in the will." The cripple looked up with a shrewd twinkle in his sunken eyes.

"I hope, my dear, that you have not touched the pile of correspondence on the desk in the library." Miss Effie Meade glanced at her butterfly niece in nervous deprecation. "I have it all nicely arranged for Gene; he says that he will attend to it this evening."

Christine tossed her head.

​"I meant my own personal mail, Aunt Effie. I assure you, it's quite enough for me to take on my shoulders."

Gene opened his lips as if to retort, but evidently thought better of it and with a shrug devoted himself to his fish. The dinner progressed in silence to its close; but when Peters at a nod from Richard Lorne had placed the coffee upon the table and departed little Miss Effie glanced about and said timidly:

"We—we mustn't go on like this, you know. The—the loss of our dear ones—". She put her handkerchief for a moment to her brimming eyes. "To have my poor sister and her dear son taken from us so suddenly and with so short a space of time between is heartrending, but it is the Lord's will and we must not complain. If we go on as we have been, we shall have Peters talking to the other servants about us. We are acting as if—as if—"

"As if we were afraid!" Randall, the cripple, thrust himself forward suddenly in his chair. "Must we be hypocrites eternally? We grieve, of course, each in our own way, and that concerns only our own souls if we have any, but there is something else back in the minds of all of us and that is fear! Even you, even Dad! Why, look around the table! Aren't we each asking ourselves: 'Will I be the next? Will I be the next?' Do we believe it was the Lord's will?"

"This is madness!" Richard Lorne put down his coffee-cup, which he had held suspended in a shaking hand while he listened as if hypnotized to his step-son's harangue. "Let us hear no more of this, this wild raving! I believe you are losing your mind! You know that the deaths of both your mother and brother were due to perfectly natural ​causes: accidents. If you do not still that mad tongue of yours I will have you put away!"

He strode from the room, and Randall laughed shrilly.

"You see? Can't bear to have his innermost thoughts brought to the light of day!"

But the others were not listening. Instead they were glancing about as he had bade them; and each read in the eyes of the others the nameless thing which had been locked in their own breasts for an interminable week.

In all eyes save those of their mother's sister, Miss Effie; they shone through her tears with an almost fanatical light. After a moment of silence she rose and put her arm tenderly about the cripple's shoulders.

"Come, Rannie, you are all overwrought, and the fever mustn't rise again. You know what pain it always brings. Lie on the couch in my room and let me read to you for a while."

The boy flung her off impatiently.

"Let me alone, Aunt Effie! I'm not a child, I tell you! I'm wise; wiser than all of you!"

Nevertheless, he suffered her to lead him from the room and preceded her when, on the threshold, she turned.

"You'll find the light just right, I think, over the desk, Gene," she said. "Don't work too late, dear. There are so many letters, and I can find time to help you in the morning."

As the door closed Christine began to sob hysterically.

"I'm going to get out of this dreadful house to-morrow!" she cried. "I've felt ever since p-poor Julian was found as if s-something were hanging over my h-head! I'm ​going to Dorothy Landis's and stay; I'd go to-night if I c-could!"

"Sure, run away," Gene sneered coldly. "If it is your turn next you'd probably slip on a banana-peel or get in a taxi accident before you reached the Landis place! Stick around like a sport, but watch your step and see what our jinx has in store for you!"

"Don't say such dreadful things. Gene dear; you're almost as bad as Rannie." Nan raised her white, serious face and looked straight into his. "You know you don't believe in evil spirits any more than I do. There is no use in denying that I've felt just as Cissie has all this last week; but it may be that we are all just nervous and apt to imagine things. Why, even poor father showed it to-night when Rannie burst out like that! If we could all be as stolid and calm as—as Peters, for instance."

Gene laughed.

"The impeccable Peters is carrying a newly acquired rabbit's foot! Fact. It fell out of his pocket when he stooped to pick up Dad's cane this morning. Nobody saw it but me, and I thought best not to make any inquiries just then. I've no doubt that Marcelle has one of those little Rintintin figures concealed somewhere about her person at this moment; and Jane and Gerda must be sporting whatever their particular fetishes are, too. I'm not trying to be funny!" he added. "I'm just showing you which way the wind is blowing."

"They are stupid, ignorant things," Nan commented. "But I've heard that fear is contagious; and although I don't believe in a jinx, I do believe that our thoughts can work on the people around us for good or bad. Now, sup​pose that one of us got this fear—which would be ridiculous if it were not so horrible!—and communicated it to the rest?"

"Nothing doing," Gene replied. "If a whole lot of people think the same thing it's bound to be true; not come true because they believe it, but be true from the first. You wait and see what happens next!"

Christine moaned, and regardless of her coiffure burrowed her head still deeper into her folded arms upon the table.

"If we'd try to think sanely for a minute, we'd realize how impossible any connection between mother's death and Julian's could be." Nan spoke decidedly, but her voice trembled and lowered as she mentioned those who had gone. "Dear mother ran a needle in her hand and blood-poison followed; that might happen to anyone, there is nothing strange about it."

"No, but there was something strange about the infection that set in and spread in spite of what the best specialists in the country could do; you heard them say that, themselves!" Gene retorted. "And I suppose it wasn't queer that when Jule's razor slipped while he was shaving it should just nick the jugular vein? Well, I'm going in and start upon those beastly letters. Thank the Lord, Aunt Effie got them sorted for me!"

"I'm going to pack!" Cissie jumped up as he departed. "Of course you won't go while Tad lives right next door and can run in and out any hour of the day, but I—"

"But you!" Nan interrupted hotly. "You want to go because the sorrowful atmosphere of this house won't be conducive to the comfort and pleasure of Farley Drew! ​Because he knows that he isn't welcomed here by any one but you and Gene! He'll probably be welcomed as your guest by the Landises; they don't know him as I do!"

"You're only a child." Cissie smoothed her crêpe draperies complacently. "What could you know of a man of the world like Farley?"

"I know that he has led Gene into all the trouble he was ever in, and poor Julian, too! That's enough for me!" Nan poured herself a cup of the cold coffee. "How you can be so stupid, Cissie!—"

But Cissie had trailed from the room, and her younger sister was left to her own thoughts.

In the smoking-room back of the library Richard Lorne was closeted with Samuel Titheredge of Titheredge, Gore & Wells, attorneys and counselors-at-law.

Samuel was as long and lean and lantern-jawed as Lorne was short and stout and round-faced; and the two had been friends since their university days thirty years before. It was with the freedom, then, of absolute camaraderie that the lawyer advised his client.

"Dick, don't be an ass! Go to the authorities with what, I should like to know? Sad as the affair is, I can't see that there is anything strange about it. It isn't at all unusual for two members of one family to die of different causes within a month of each other. Buck up, and if there is anything left in your private cellar take a swig of it before you go to bed. Why, man, there isn't even a coincidence in the affair! If you take such a cock-and-bull story to Headquarters, do you know what will happen? You'll get a lot of derisive notoriety that you're not looking for; and ​afterward when somebody proposes coming to you with a nice tidy investment, somebody else will tap his forehead significantly and suggest another broker!"

"But I say that there is a coincidence, Sam," Lorne retorted doggedly. "I may be an ass; but I've lived with this thing in my mind ever since the poor boy was discovered lying there dead in the bathroom, and I've had time to think it over. The deaths were both on the face of them the result of accidents; but they might have been deliberately designed to appear as accidents. Do you get me? That needle which pierced my poor wife's hand might have been doctored beforehand; and anyone knowing the state of Julian's mind might have made a sudden noise behind him at a critical moment when the razor was near the artery. It would have taken a devilish clever mind—"

"Or an insane one." The attorney uncrossed his long legs and added casually: "Your theory presupposes, then, that it was an inside job?"

For a long moment the two men stared at each other; and then Samuel with a shrug settled back in his chair once more.

You see, Dick, you're going nutty about this thing. Just get the poor lad's estate in order and I'll have the necessary papers ready for you to sign. Then go away somewhere; try to amuse yourself and forget."

"You have the papers ready to-morrow morning, then, I have a complete statement and accounting for every penny that his mother left him already prepared; I was going to turn it over to him, in any event." Lorne paused and added: "I suppose if another coincidence of the same kind occurs in this family within a short time and doesn't involve ​me as the central figure, I shall be able to convince you that there is something in my hallucination, after all."

"I should be sorry to hear of such an occurrence," the attorney responded slowly. "But if it should happen I—yes, I'm inclined to think that I might be able to take it a bit more seriously than I can at present. If you had a single clue, a single shred of evidence to support your crazy idea—"

He paused as Lorne held up a warning hand. Steps were approaching over the bare library-floor, and the inevitable knock upon the connecting door was followed by a cough of deprecation.

"Come in, Gene," Lorne called resignedly.

"It's about one of these con—one of these letters of condolence, sir." Gene hastened to correct himself, and with a far greater respect than he exhibited toward his step-father in private. He meant to appear always at his best before the attorney who held the family fortunes, if not in his grasp, at least under his supervision. "It's from a woman—er—the stationery is not quite like that used by any of our acquaintances, and I can't make out the signature—'Mabelle' something."

"Let me see it!" Lorne demanded with an almost unprecedented irascibility in his tones. Gene passed over the table a flamboyant lavender envelope, and did not betray by a flutter of his downcast yellow eyelashes that he had observed not only his stepfather's sudden agitation but the attorney's start of surprise.

"Ill reply to this one; I see it is addressed to me—" Lorne was beginning when a terrific crash in the library made him start from his chair.

​"Why, It's the portrait! The portrait of grandfather that hangs directly over the desk where I've been at work! It must weigh tons!" Gene had wheeled about, and his squeal of terror died in his throat as he turned again to face the other two, his own countenance convulsed with horror at the thought he could not utter.

For a moment they stood spellbound and then leaped past him and through the open door. The life-sized portrait with its massive gilt frame had crashed down over the desk and the space where Gene had been sitting but a minute before, splintering the heavy chair to matchwood.

"If Gene had not come to us with that letter just when he did—" Samuel paused.

"The third coincidence would be complete," Lorne finished for him. "He would have been crushed to atoms. Beginning to believe in my crazy idea a little bit, Sam? Beginning to see that there is some damnable reason for it all?"

"I'm willing now to admit the coincidence, Dick," the attorney said cautiously. "But the legal mind is not adapted to ghost-hunting; and I'd like to address your attention to the strands of wire cable which held the picture to the wall. They have been hacked almost through!"

CHAPTER II

THE UNSEEN HAND

RICHARD LORNE bent forward, his stout knees shaking beneath him, and examined the cable-ends where they protruded from just under the edge of the frame. The tips of the sundered steel strands glittered as if burnished, and some had been turned inward from the force of the blows which had parted them.

He glanced up at the inscrutable face of his companion.

"What devil's work has been going on in this house!" He spoke in an awestruck whisper.

For answer the attorney merely touched his finger suggestively to his closed lips with a scarcely perceptible shake of his head as Gene hastened toward them.

"Dad!" The young man's face was working convulsively. "That didn't just happen! It couldn't! Why, it doesn't seem as though it fell at all, but as though something pulled it down over the place where I'd been working only a minute before. Look at the wall!"

The two older men raised their eyes and saw a number of small, deep, round holes spaced at regular intervals which roughly outlined the size and shape of the portrait, and then glancing down at the upturned back of the fallen picture beheld a row of stout iron stakes equally spaced driven outward from the under part of the frame.

​"That's a mere detail," Samuel commented "Evidently the person who hung the portrait did not put any too much faith in the strength of the stakes driven into the wall; and wisely, seeing what has occurred, he supplemented them by the steel cable which has just parted, as you see. You had a narrow escape, then, Eugene; but it was sheer accident—?"

He was interrupted by a patter of little silken mules upon the stairs, and in another moment Cissie and Nan rushed into the room and paused, rooted to the spot at sight of the fallen picture. Both were clad in kimonos, and with the golden curls and straight, fine, black hair flowing about their shoulders and mingling as they clung instinctively to each other, they looked like little children. It was Nan who first drew away from her sister's tense embrace. She could see only her father and the attorney, for Gene stood behind them, and as she advanced the childish look left her face.

"Where is my brother?" Her tone rang with tragic grief through the room. "Is he there, beneath that—?"

"Nan!" All the good in the boy's weak face shone forth as he sprang forward and caught her in his arms. "I'm safe! I missed it by a fraction of a minute!"

"How did it happen?" Cissie's voice rose shrilly, but before anybody could reply a faint cry came from the doorway behind her.

"Grene! You are hurt! Something has happened!"

Looking more mouselike than ever with her gray hair lying in soft folds about her face and her slender figure encased in a drab dressing-gown, Miss Meade glided into the room.

​"No, I'm not hurt, Aunt Effie. I had just gone to ask Dad about one of the letters when the portrait fell," Gene explained as she stood swaying, her thin, delicate hand gripping his arm until the fingers almost disappeared in the folds of his coatsleeve. "Mr. Titheredge says it was a sheer accident, but after what Rannie said at dinner to-night; after we know how we've all felt since Jule—" He broke off and added: "Ouch! Aunt Effie, you hurt!"

She removed her hand from his arm and repeated mechanically in a dazed fashion:

"You had gone to ask your stepfather about one of the letters?"

"Yes. These condolence things, you know. But I'm sure it couldn't have been an accident! Why should that one picture in all this house have fallen just at the moment when I left the desk? I'd been sitting there for more than an hour."

"What a merciful blessing that you escaped!" Miss Effie spoke in a low tone, then added quickly with a sharper note: "But I—it was I who asked you to reply to the letters, and suggested that you use the library desk here! I even arranged the light for you! Had you been killed it would have been my fault!"

"Come, Miss Meade, that's all nonsense!" Samuel Titheredge stepped forward. "No one can foresee accidents; and that portrait has hung there more than twenty years without falling. In any event it is all right; Gene wasn't hurt, and you and the girls had better go back to bed and try to forget all about it."

As if conscious for the first time of their appearance she ​glanced down shrinkingly at her own attire and then turned to where Nan and Cissie stood.

"Mr. Titheredge is right; let us go back to our rooms. I—I should never have forgiven myself if anything had happened to Gene!"

When she and the girls had taken their departure the attorney turned to the white-faced young man.

"You, too, Gene. No use trying to clear up this mess to-night, and your Dad and I have some business matters still to talk over. You've had a bad shock and you must try to get a sound night's rest."

"Do you suppose I could sleep?" Gene turned on him hotly. "You and Dad may be blind, but I tell you I know there is something horribly wrong! We are dying one by one, and I was scheduled to be the third! There was no coincidence about any of it. Someone is trying deliberately to do us all to death, someone who knows what we are doing from hour to hour!" His voice had risen to a shrill scream. "How can you shut your eyes?"

Titheredge compressed his lips and nudged Lorne, who glanced at him and then spoke with sudden sternness:

"Eugene, you are hysterical! You are behaving like a child! This matter of the fall of the portrait will be thoroughly investigated to-morrow, but meanwhile you must try to pull yourself together. Things will look different to you in the morning. Go on up to bed like a good chap, and let Mr. Titheredge and me finish our conference."

Gene went shakily from the room and they heard him ascending the steep, old-fashioned staircase. Waiting until his footsteps had ceased with the thud of a closing door, Lorne turned to his companion.

​"Nevertheless, Sam, the boy is dead right! There is something horribly sinister back of the whole thing, and it is an insult to even his intelligence to try to convince him of the fallacy of mere coincidence. I'm not going to wait until morning and perhaps find some other member of the family dead in bed! At the risk of the derisive notoriety you were talking about a little while ago I'm going to have the authorities in here now!"

"I agree with you that it looks very much as if some human agency has been at work. We can at least be certain of it in this last case, with the evidence of the cut cable; but it is after midnight, and I don't believe another attempt will be made to-night." The attorney's calm, sane voice fell upon the other's ears like a dash of cold water. "Besides, if you call up now you'll have a mob of heavy-footed, matter-of-fact plainclothesmen in here who wouldn't be able to comprehend your almost superstitious apprehension and who would obliterate any clue which may remain. There is just one lad in the Homicide Bureau at Headquarters who could Understand your point of view and carry out the investigation with the necessary tact and discretion if we are to avoid undue notoriety, and that is Barry Odell. I'll stay here to-night with you and keep guard if you think it necessary, turn and turn about; and in the morning we'll go down to Headquarters. I'll have a word with the Commissioner, and we'll bring young Odell back with us."

Agitated as he was, Lorne saw the wisdom of the attorney's advice and accepted it. After a further examination of the fallen portrait they turned out the lights and went upstairs. Samuel elected to share his friend's room; ​but sleep did not come and they were still discussing the extraordinary chain of tragic events when Lorne stopped in the middle of a sentence and held up a warning hand.

"Did you hear that?" he whispered after a moment.

"What? Don't let your nerves run away with you, old man.

"Nerves nothing! Don't speak aloud! I'm sure I heard a step out in the hall."

"Well, I didn't, and I've keener ears than you," retorted Titheredge.

Lorne padded softly to the door and listened for a space of several minutes, then turned away with a sigh of relief.

"I guess I must have been mistaken. I'll go to pieces myself, like Gene, if I'm not careful. God! I wish this night would end, and we could get hold of that young fellow you spoke of! Perhaps it would be better, though, to go to some private detective agency and avoid the police."

"And have your home overrun with operatives, every member of your household shadowed and their affairs investigated; and nothing to show for it but a bill as long as a Japanese letter?" Titheredge demanded contemptuously. "Use your head, Dick! I wouldn't recommend this young—"

He paused, silenced by a swift gesture from his companion.

"Listen! Do you hear it—that grating, gnawing sound?" It was a cool September night and the windows were open, but the sweat was pouring down Lorne's chubby countenance. He padded to the door as before, then beckoned insistently, "Come over here! Don't you dare pretend—"

​With an expression of boredom the attorney rose and tiptoed across the room. He placed his ear to the keyhole for a minute and then straightened with a shrug.

"Of course I hear it. Mice or even rats in the walls; you can't drive them out of an old house like this. That's probably what you heard before." He resumed his seat. "You can hear all sorts of noises at night if you only listen for them."

"I suppose so," Lorne muttered somewhat doubtfully as he went back to his chair. "I could have sworn, though, that it sounded louder than any rat."

"As I was saying when you interrupted"—Titheredge ignored the last remark—^"I would not have recommended Barry Odell to you if I didn't know all about him and his capabilities. He's young still, about twenty-eight or thirty; but I've watched his work on a couple of murder cases, and I tell you he will go far."

Lorne stirred uneasily in his chair.

"Murder! That's rather a strong word, isn't it? We don't actually know yet that those wires were severed; and we don't want the affair treated as an ordinary murder, or series of them. It's the devilish ingenuity of the whole thing that staggers me, Sam." He drummed on the arms of his chair. "If they hadn't come so rapidly, one after the other within the month, any sane person would have sworn they were each the result of pure accident! How could my poor wife have been poisoned before my very eyes? And Julian; what terrible influence could have made him slash his throat in just that vital spot? It would have been unbelievable except for the damning evidence of those cut wires!"

​"I thought you just said that we did not know they were actually cut," the attorney put in quietly.

"D—n it, I don't know what to think!" exploded the harassed little man. "When we discuss it the whole thing seems wildly impossible; and yet I feel it, the entire family does! Can you ask a police detective to go on that?"

"You can ask Barry Odell to start at the ends of those severed picture-wires and be certain that he will finish the job, no matter where the trail leads him—now, what's the matter? Got a listening-spell on again?"

For Richard Lorne's rotund form had tensed, and his ear was turned to the door. After a moment he relaxed with a grunt.

"Thought I heard footsteps again." He rose. "Let's go to bed and try to get a wink of sleep. If I keep on hearing things I'll be a wreck to-morrow; and I want to have all my wits about me, if I ever had in my life!"

Morning dawned with a hint of autumnal frost in the air, and Lorne shook his peacefully slumbering companion.

"It's seven o'clock, Sam. I just rang and told Peters to have breakfast on the table in ten minutes, and to order a taxi. For heaven's sake, let's get on downtown and interview your man!"

"Eh?" Titheredge stretched his long, lanky frame. "With you in a minute, Dick."

His host was dressed first and nervously consulted the clock on the bed-stand.

"Eight minutes past," he announced. "I'll go on down ahead, old man, and see if breakfast is ready."

He closed the door after him, and the attorney heard his footsteps die away down the hall. Then all at once there ​came a hideous, sickening crash, and the sound of a heavy body hurtling down the stairs.

Collarless, Samuel Titheredge tore open the door and rushed to the head of the stairs. Other doors were opening, and voices in which Gene's nervous tones mingled with higher feminine ones in a chorus of startled cries; but the attorney was oblivious to them. His gaze traveled from the top step of the stairs, which had collapsed like cardboard, to the bottom, where a huddled figure lay.

Leaping down, he raised the head of his friend and called sharply:

"Peters!"

"Sir?" The white, frightened face of the butler peered from the dining-room door.

"Bring some water, quickly! Mr. Lorne has fallen down the stairs."

The ice in the glass tinkled violently as Peters obeyed, and the attorney watched his face closely as he bent over his unconscious master.

"Is—is he hurt bad, sir?" The butler clutched the newel post as he straightened his shaking knees.

"I don't know yet. How is it that you did not hear the sound of his fall and come to his assistance?" He fairly shot the question at Peters, and the latter responded haltingly:

"I didn't hear anything, sir; I was in the back pantry." A slight flush came into his pale cheeks. "I didn't know anything was wrong until you called me."

"Well, go and telephone for the doctor at once." Titheredge passed over the palpable lie. "Then come back here and help me lift him to the couch in the library."

​The family, in various stages of disarray, had appeared at the top of the staircase and were demanding in frightened accents what had happened, but Titheredge had ears for none of them as they rushed down and crowded about. Lorne was breathing stertorously, and under the shock of icy water dashed into his face he opened his eyes at last.

"I say, what—" The sentence ended in a groan as he strove to sit up and fell back again. "My arm!"

Titheredge noticed then that his left arm was crumpled and twisted under him, and when they lifted him and bore him to the couch it swung limp and useless at his side.

He opened his eyes once more as the attorney bent over him and the others gathered about.

"The stairs," he whispered faintly. "The top one collapsed as I pressed my weight on it. You remember the noise I heard last night?"

Titheredge nodded briefly, then turned to the others.

"Move back, please, all of you, and give him air." As they obeyed he asked: "Feel better now, Dick?"

"Yes. My side hurts a little when I breathe, and that arm's broken, I think; but I'm lucky not to have been killed." In a whisper once more he added: "I'm all right. Don't wait here a minute longer. Go and get your Barry Odell."

CHAPTER III

WHO KNEW?

“WHERE'S that taxi?" Titheredge demanded of Peters in the hall. The latter stood near the vestibule talking with two workmen, who, in overalls and with their tool-kits slung over their arms, turned lowering faces toward him.

"Taxi, sir?" Peters started in surprise and then opening the door he peered out. "Just drawing up at the curb, sir. Now then, you two, move one side there and let the gentleman pass."

"Who are these men?" Titheredge paused.

Peters hesitated for a moment and seemed to turn a shade more pale.

"They say they were sent for to do a bit of carpentering, sir, but I tell them there must have been some mistake; they've got the wrong address I imagine, sir,"

"Nothin' doin'!" The burlier of the two men stepped forward determinedly. "Someone telephoned to the boss yesterday to send a couple of us up here at half-past seven sharp this morning to hang a big picture; said it would have to be spiked to the wall. We're paid for our time."

The attorney turned and looked searchingly at the cowering butler before addressing the truculent workman.

"There's no mistake; but the work can't be done now. ​What's it worth to you to go away and come back just after the noon hour to do the job?"

The two consulted together and sulkily named their price. As the attorney paid them, he asked:

"Who is your boss? Where is his shop?"

"Bill Kenny, sir." The generous tip which Titheredge had added to the sum demanded had evidently had a mollifying effect. "His place is over on Eighth Avenue, near Fiftieth. Thank you, sir. We'll be back right after noon."

They touched their caps and started down the hall toward the servants' staircase which led to the tradesman's entrance, and the attorney turned to speak to Peters; but that wily individual had disappeared, and after a moment Titheredge opened the door and started thoughtfully down the steps. He had caught the butler in two deliberate lies within the space of an hour, but he gave the matter little thought. All the way downtown to Police Headquarters his mind was busied with one problem. Who had telephoned from that house to the shop on the previous day? Who had known that the picture was going to fall?

The Police Commissioner had not yet reached his office, but a brief interview with his secretary put one of the smaller examination rooms at his disposal, where the attorney was joined shortly by a brisk, smiling young man whose clean-cut features and almost boyishness of manner gave no hint of the police department. His forehead was broad, with just the hint of a scar above one eyebrow; and the merry blue eyes themselves as well as the high cheekbones beneath betokened his ancestry as much as his name proclaimed it.

​"Good morning, Mr. Titheredge. Did you want to see me?"

"I do, Sergeant; you are the only man who can help me out. Moreover, I know that the case I've got for you—if it is a case at all—will be one after your own heart."

They shook hands; and as the attorney seated himself Sergeant Barry Odell asked with a canny twinkle in his eye:

"A matter for the Homicide Bureau and you're not sure whether it is a case or not? No trace of the body, then?"

"The bodies were there all right," Titheredge responded grimly. "But there was no thought of foul play until last night. You see, I have a client in whose family two deaths have occurred within the past month, but they were thought to have been the result of accident; separate accidents of a widely different nature. Now we have reason to believe that they were brought about in some mysterious manner by an unknown person who seems determined to kill off the entire family. These people have been friends of mine for years as well as clients, and as far as I know they haven't an enemy in the world. We haven't a sign of proof and no clue except some pieces of clipped wire. Could I go to any other man in the department but you with such a story and not be a laughing-stock?"

Odell smiled, but his face grew serious as he replied:

"I don't know, sir, but I've been wondering myself why we hadn't seen Mr. Lorne down here before this."

"You!" Titheredge's imperturbability deserted him, and he stared. "What on earth do you know about it?"

"Only what I've read in the papers, but when I saw about that young fellow cutting his throat by accident and just in the place where it would do the most good—or ​harm—and that he was a son of the lady who'd died not a month before from a needle-thrust in her hand I thought there was something mighty queer about it all." Odell shrugged. "However, nothing came to the Bureau about it, and it's not up to us to go out looking for trouble. Tell me about it from the beginning, Mr, Titheredge."

"There's little to tell about the two cases if you remember the newspaper accounts, and I would rather have you get the details from the members of the family themselves; but I'll tell you a little about them before we start." The attorney settled forward in his chair. "Mrs. Lorne was the widow of Halsey Chalmers, the rich broker, when she married Richard Lorne five years ago. She had five children all practically grown up except the youngest boy, a hunchback. Her spinster sister. Miss Effie Meade, two or three years her senior, had always lived with her since her first marriage, and that composed the family up to a month ago. Then Mrs. Lorne died; and last week her oldest son Julian was taken off, as you know.

"I don't mind telling you, Sergeant, that I had some quick work then to keep a suspicion of suicide out of the press; for Julian had been pretty wild and had caused his stepfather and me a lot of trouble about money matters—squaring up for scrapes he had got into, and that sort of thing. His own father, Halsey Chalmers, had left an independent fortune to each of the children; but he had tied it up until the boys became twenty-five and the girls twenty-three. I was one of the executors of his estate and co-guardian with their mother. When she married Richard Lorne we put the inheritances into his hands for reinvestment, and he has almost doubled them. I know because we ​always had an accounting every few months. When Julian became twenty-five, three years ago, he was glad enough to leave the principal in his stepfather's hands, for the interest was enough to content him; but lately he had gone far beyond it and—er—requested that the principal be turned over to him. This request was made just after his mother's death."

"Usual reason?" asked Odell.

Titheredge nodded.

"A woman. Naturally, neither his stepfather nor I wished to see his fortune dissipated, and we reasoned with him. We even went to the length of hinting that we would take legal steps to keep the control of the money out of his hands. Sheer bluff, of course, for he was perfectly normal mentally, with no settled vices, and we shouldn't have had a leg to stand on. But he took it seriously and threatened in an outburst of temper to kill himself rather than be kept in leading-strings. There was nothing to it, of course; but you know when the papers get hold of a thing—"

He paused, and the detective asked:

"Did any of the family suggest that it might have been suicide?"

"No. None of them knew of that absurd threat except Lorne, and the idea has never entered his mind. He and I have been busy settling Julian's estate; the terms of his own father's will decree that it be divided equally between the living children, since he died unmarried.

"That is how I happened to be there last night, when I learned from Lorne that not only he but all four of the children have felt a sort of superstitious fear ever since Julian's death that there was something more than coin​cidence in the two tragedies, or accidents, or whatever you choose to call them.

"No one had mentioned it; but I gather that the cripple, Randall, made some sort of outburst about it at the dinner-table last evening, and that sort of brought the matter to a head in Lorne's mind. Anyway, when I arrived a little later for a conference with him he told me of his suspicion that those so-called accidents might have been devilishly planned.

"He couldn't suggest anyone who might be guilty, nor a motive, and I laughed at him; but while we were talking something occurred that seems to put solid fact behind his wild theory."

He told of the fall of the picture and Gene's escape, and the young sergeant listened with the keenest attention.

"You are sure about those wires being hacked apart?" he inquired when the attorney had finished. "The portrait has been hanging there for years, you say? Couldn't they have worn through?"

"Impossible. The strands hadn't parted from age; their tips were bright where they had been severed. I want you to come up and have a look at them for yourself; but first let me tell you of a further affair this morning, which to my mind leaves no doubt that someone, either inside the house or with a confederate there, is trying deliberately to exterminate the whole family! That sounds ridiculous, I know, in these days and right here in the heart of the city; but I have seen what I believe to be the evidence of it with my own eyes."

He proceeded to describe the events of the night and ​early morning; and the detective's merry twinkle vanished in a vacant, narrow-lidded stare of concentration.

'You did not hear the footsteps?"

"No. I was so stubbornly confident that no further attempt would be made on any of the family for a few days at least that I thought poor Lorne was the victim of his own nervous apprehension." Titheredge's usually dry tones were filled with contrition. "I only wish then that we had gone out and investigated, but I was afraid that we would awaken the rest of the family and there would be another scene.

"I did hear the gnawing, grating sound very distinctly, and I was perfectly sincere when I told Lorne that I thought it must be caused by rats or mice in the walls. Lorne said that he could have sworn it sounded louder than any rat, but I paid no attention. Now, looking back, I realize that it might well have been a saw cutting through the solid oak of the top step of the stairs."

"You haven't had a chance to examine it yet yourself, Mr. Titheredge?"

"No, but it won't be touched until we get back there—". The attorney halted as a sudden memory gripped him. "By George, I'm not so sure of that, after all! We had better hurry."

Sergeant Odell rose. As they made their way from the building he gave more than one keen side-long glance at his companion.

It was not until they were speeding uptown in the taxi, however, that Titheredge mentioned the thought which had come to him.

"Sergeant, as I was leaving the house this morning to ​run down here I came upon two workmen arguing with the butler in the hall. They said that someone had telephoned to the shop yesterday to have them come and rehang a large picture. Yesterday, mind you, and the portrait only fell last night! If you can find out who telephoned from the house—"

"Did they say that the call had come from the house itself, Mr. Titheredge?" the detective interposed quietly.

"Well, no; now that I think of it they didn't say from where it was sent, but I inferred—"

"I think we'll go to the shop first." Again the detective interrupted him. "That is, if you know what shop sent them out?"

"Yes. It is Kenny's, on Eighth Avenue." The attorney gave the address to the chauffeur. "If a similar order has been given concerning the broken stair and carried out before we get there, we'll just rip it apart again."

"Mr. Titheredge." The detective had evidently been following a train of thought of his own. "You said that Mr. Lorne wanted to 'phone to Headquarters last night but you dissuaded him?"

"Yes, Even before the portrait fell he said that he felt like going to the authorities. He had nothing but his vague, superstitious fears to back up his story, which then seemed fantastic to me beyond belief. But after that attempt on Gene's life I had all I could do to compel him to wait until I could get in touch with you."

"And where did this discussion take place?"

"Right there in the library in front of the fallen picture."

"With the door open, so that anyone who chose to listen could hear all that was said?"

​"Why, yes." The attorney looked somewhat taken aback. "What are you driving at, Sergeant?"

"The necessity for the stairs being rendered almost fatally dangerous in the night. It was a risk, you know, with you two talking in that room right at hand."

"But I don't see"—Titheredge stammered. "I thought it was done to cause the death of the first member of the family who attempted to descend, regardless of which one it might be."

Odell shook his head, and his tone was very grave.

"Had anyone been listening in the hall outside the library last night and heard your decision to take your story to the police this morning, they would naturally suppose that you would rise earlier than the rest of the family, and that you and Mr. Lorne would descend the stairs together; wouldn't they?"

"Good heavens!" the attorney exclaimed. "That never occurred to me. It was a mad, desperate attempt, then, to kill us in order to prevent our notifying you!"

"Not necessarily to kill you, but to injure you and delay our receipt of your message at least until the portrait had been rehung and the only bit of real evidence which you seem to possess—the cut wires—removed." Odell laughed. "Of course, I may be dead wrong, and it isn't my usual method to form conclusions before I've even gone over the ground, and then expatiate on them; but that's the way it looks to me now. Is this your shop?"

The taxi had stopped before a store the signboard of which read: "William Kenny, Carpentering, Plastering and Interior Decorating." It appeared to be a small place of an inferior sort.

​"Odd that anyone interested in the rehanging of that portrait should not have called on some picture dealer for the service," Odell remarked to the attorney as they left the cab and crossed the sidewalk. "It doesn't seem as though a place of this kind could supply men fitted for the job."

"Not if the one who telephoned was ignorant of such things," Titheredge responded.

Again the detective favored him with a swift side glance, but vouchsafed no further comment.

William Kenny proved to be a tall, gaunt man who gesticulated loose-jointedly as he talked; and he appeared quite willing to talk at any length.

"About that picter-hangin' business." He rubbed one outstanding ear reflectively. "I did think it was funny when my men come back awhile ago an' told me as how the butler over there had tried to tell them there was a mistake; there wasn't, because I got the call myself over the 'phone yesterday."

"At what time?" asked Odell.

"Oh, 'long about three, some'eres. I didn't take partic'ler notice." Kenny rested one long arm upon the counter and regarded his inquisitors shrewdly. "Say, nothin' wrong about that business, was they?"

"Not a thing in the world, except that conflicting orders were given, and we cannot understand it," Odell replied in hasty reassurance. "Just what was the order that was placed with you?"

"To have two men sent over to the Meade house on Madison Avenue at seven-thirty sharp this morning to hang a heavy picture; they was to bring along iron staples and the strongest grade of steel wire. Now, we don't handle ​much of that kind of work, but I wasn't goin' to lose a chance at that swell trade, so I said 'all right; an' that's all there is to it."

"So you'd never done any work for them before?"

"Nope. Dunno how they come to call me in the first place, but I ain't kickin' at that."

"Was the voice that talked to you over the telephone a man's or a woman's?" Odell inquired casually with a glance toward the door as if preparing to depart.

"Couldn't tell; it might have been either." Kenny straightened himself. "It was gruff-like, and rasping, but not real deep. Say," he added with a touch of anxiety, "that order ain't canceled, is it? The boys was to go back just after the noon hour and do the job."

"Oh, no. Send them along and it will be all right." The detective turned toward the door; and Titheredge, who had taken no part in the questioning, followed, marveling that the other had left the most important point untouched upon.

With his hand on the doorknob, however, Odell turned once more.

"Oh, by the way, that call came directly from the Meade house, didn't it?"

"Dunno!" Kenny looked his surprise. "It was a city call, all right, you could tell that from the way the voice come over the wire, but it might have been from anywhere's around town."

"Well, it sure is funny about those conflicting orders." The detective shook his head in a puzzled manner. "Too bad you can't fix the time the call came in to you any closer, Mr. Kenny."

"Hold on! Maybe I can." The head of the establish​ment paused in what was evidently for him a vast mental effort. "It was about three—no, it was after; it was just twenty-five minutes past! I remember because I'd sent Dooley over to kalsomine some ceilings on Forty-fourth Street, an' he'd ought to've been back here by two-thirty at most. I'm payin' the boys by the time; an' he must have loafed on his job, for he never got back until twenty-five past three. I'd just started in to bawl him out when the 'phone rang."

"Well, thank you, Mr. Kenny. We've told the other people who claim to have been sent for that there was nothing doing; you had the job. Good morning."

In the taxi once more cutting across town Barry Odell remarked:

"The residence of Mr. Lorne and his stepchildren is known as the Meade house, then. It must have belonged to his wife's people."

"Yes, for generations. She and this spinster sister who has survived her each owned a half interest in it. When she married Halsey Chalmers he built a house for her up on Fifth Avenue; but after his death she sold it, and she and her family, including Miss Meade of course, came back to live in the old home. Richard Lorne could never persuade her to leave it." Titheredge paused and added: "It isn't one of these ornate, miniature palaces they are building nowadays, you know; just a solid, substantial old brownstone mansion, and rather a landmark in its way."

"You spoke of this Eugene who had the narrow escape last night, and of the youngest son who was a hunchback, and the girls," Odell observed. "The daughters are both grown up?"

​"Christine, who was named after her mother, is twenty-two, and Nan is just twenty."

"Any love affairs?"

The attorney hesitated.

"I believe there is a sort of bread-and-butter flirtation going on between Nan and a good-looking boy whose people have the house on the avenue next door. The Meade house is on the corner. Tad Traymore—his father is old Thaddeus Traymore of the Palladium Trust Company—is just out of the university and starting to read law, so there isn't much chance of the affair assuming the status of an engagement now."

"And the other daughter?"

A full minute passed before Titheredge replied.

"That is another source of worry to Lorne. She has recently become quite infatuated with a man much older than herself named Drew. His antecedents are irreproachable and he is still received in the best society, but his past—well, it hasn't been one that would render him suitable as a husband for a girl like Christine."

"Not Farley Drew who was named in the Gael divorce case?" The detective's tone had sharpened slightly.

Titheredge nodded.

"That's the chap. His people left him fairly well off; but he squandered all he had long ago, and it is Christine's money that he is after, of course, although she is a beautiful girl. Drew is not the sort of man to be attracted by unsophistication."

"I'll tell the world that!" Odell commented with emphasis. "He may be received by the best society, but he'll be received by us, too, down at Headquarters if he doesn't watch ​his step. We haven't got anything on him yet, you understand, Mr. Titheredge, but he's been under suspicion in more than one shady transaction. Always travels around with men much younger than himself, doesn't he?"

The attorney's lips set in a stiff line.

"Mere boys with wealth, gilded youth, who want to see life, and he shows them a certain side of it while their money lasts."

The detective whistled softly.

"I thought as much," he said. "So that's how he gained an introduction into Mr. Lorne's household?"

"Yes. I'm giving you a lot of inside information, Sergeant, which perhaps in justice to my clients I should not disclose; but in a case like this where I cannot tell what may be of use to you I think it best to put you in possession of whatever facts I know concerning every member of the family."

"It is just saving time and trouble for me, Mr. Titheredge, for I would find out for myself anyway," Odell assured him. "Which of the boys was it who brought Drew to the house; Julian or Eugene?"

There was another pause longer than before and then the attorney replied slowly:

"It was Eugene."

CHAPTER IV

BARRY ODELL TAKES HOLD

THERE was time for no further talk, for the taxi drew up at that moment before the house. The doctor's sedan was just rolling away; and in answer to Titheredge's ring the housemaid, a plump young woman with cap askew, admitted them.

"Is Peters busy, Jane?" asked the attorney as he handed her his hat and stick.

"No, sir. We can't find Peters anywhere, though we've been looking this half hour. Miss Meade didn't send him on no errand, and we don't know what to think of it."

"He'll probably turn up shortly," Titheredge observed with a significant glance at the detective. "Has Mr. Lorne been taken upstairs yet?"

"No, sir. He refuses to go; and Miss Meade, she don't know what to do! There, he's calling now, sir!"

And indeed an irascible but reassuringly strong voice was reverberating through the hall from the direction of the library.

"Sam! Is that you? Did you get him? Sa-am!"

"Come this way, Sergeant." The attorney led the way to the library, where Richard Lorne still lay upon the couch. His clothing had been changed for a dressing-gown with one sleeve cut out, and the arm was neatly bandaged in a ​sling; and although he was pale, his mouth was set in determined lines beneath the stubby gray mustache.

Nan was seated beside him, and Gene stood over by the window nervously fingering the shade-cord; but the other members of the family were not present.

As Titheredge performed the introductions Nan rose, her eyes darkening.

"A detective?" she asked quietly, but her breast rose and fell with spasmodic rapidity. "Father, what does this mean?"

"It means, my dear," Titheredge answered suavely before Lorne could speak, "that your father and I have talked things over, and he has told me the possibly imaginary but nevertheless torturing strain you have all been under since your brother's death. He shared with you the feeling that perhaps there was something more than coincidence in the two sorrows which have come into your life so closely upon the heels of each other. You know how that portrait fell last night, almost killing Gene, and what a narrow escape your father himself had this morning when the top step of the stairs collapsed and precipitated him to the bottom.

"Of course, these may all be mere coincidences; but we want to be sure of it to allay all your fears, and so we have called in this young man to make the fullest investigation. He will question everyone, and—you listen to this, too. Gene—you must be absolutely frank with him. Remember, there must be no lying, no subterfuge."

"My God!" Gene came forward. "I knew I was right! I knew that picture was meant to fall upon me and crush me! And the others—my mother and Julian—"

"Steady there, Gene," the attorney warned. "We don't ​know but that all that has occurred so far has been sheer accident."

"Well, I'm glad you are going to find out!" Gene held out his hand frankly to the detective. "You can count on me, Mr. Odell."

"Thank you, Mr. Chalmers. I shall want to have a little conference with your father and Mr. Titheredge here, but I'll look you up later."

Gene took the hint and sauntered out of the library; and Nan prepared to follow him, but Odell stopped her.

"May I ask. Miss Chalmers, whether or not the broken stair has been mended yet?"

"No, Mr. Odell. Aunt Effie wanted to have it attended to, but she was afraid the hammering would disturb father. She hates to have anything upset around the house."

"Then if you will sit here with your father for a few minutes Mr. Titheredge and I will go and inspect it."

Gene was nowhere to be seen when the attorney and Odell reëntered the hall, and they mounted the stairs to the topmost step, covered with a crimson-velvet runner. The detective knelt on the step just below and felt over the smooth pile of the carpet's surface.

"You see," he said rapidly in a lowered tone to his companion, "the tread of the step neither collapsed in the middle, nor split, nor caved in at either end; it simply turned forward over the face as if on a pivot as soon as Mr. Lorne's weight was placed upon it, pitching him headlong down."

"The carpet appears to be loose, doesn't it?" Titheredge himself bent and gave it a tug; and the strip of crimson velvet came away in his hands from beneath the edge of ​the rug which covered the upper hall, while tiny tacks with flat brass heads flew in every direction.

"Thumbtacks," Odell vouchsafed. "When the person who executed this little maneuver replaced the carpet he didn't dare hammer, with you and Mr. Lorne in that room so near by; so he pressed the thumbtacks in as a temporary hold, and left a good margin of the extra carpet that had been turned under loose, too, so as to give extra room for the tread to turn over without pulling out the tacks."

He folded the runner back across his knees; and the attorney uttered a sharp exclamation, as instantly silenced. A good four inches of the riser or faceboard had been sawed away at the top where it had formerly supported the tread; and the tread itself was cut through from wainscoting and balustrade at either end.

"When Mr. Lorne put his weight upon the step it cracked across at the line where it is level with the hall-flooring, and its outer edge crashed down until it rested on the lowered top of the face," the detective explained. "It had much the same effect as if one stepped from the center to the uptilted end of a see-saw. Do you observe something else, Mr. Titheredge?"

"Can't say that I do," the other replied, regarding thoughtfully the scraps of sawdust which the turned-back carpet revealed. "Whoever the fellow was—"

He halted abruptly as Miss Meade appeared from her room down the hall and came quickly toward them. Light as her footfalls were, the keen ears of the detective caught them; and in an instant he had turned up the strip of carpet once more and thrust its end hastily beneath the edge of the rug.

​"Oh, Mr. Titheredge, I am so glad you have returned." She spoke with evident anxiety as she approached. "I hope you will be able to persuade Richard to let us get him into bed and nurse him. Did they tell you that besides his arm two ribs are fractured? He refuses absolutely—"

She, too, paused at sight of the strange young man kneeling upon the stairs, and her eyes turned inquiringly toward the attorney.

"Miss Meade," Titheredge's tone was very grave. "Will you permit me to present Sergeant Odell of the police department?"

She bowed with old-fashioned courtesy as the young man rose, but her face quivered slightly.

"I—I do not understand!" she said. "A policeman in this house! But why, Mr. Titheredge, why?"

"Because there have been things going on in this house that both Richard and the children desire to have investigated." The attorney spoke very gently. "We did not consult you at first because we did not want to distress you, but no time could be lost this morning. When the portrait—"

"Mr. Titheredge means," Odell interrupted hastily, "that the deaths of Mrs. Lorne and her son, taken in conjunction with the fall of the picture last night when your nephew was only saved by a miracle, and the broken stair this morning, which almost cost Mr. Lorne his life, may not have been accidents after all; and I have been engaged to investigate the latter two occurrences."

"But this is terrible!" Miss Meade cried in a low tone as if at a sacrilege. "My poor sister's death and Julian's were by the will of God! The—the others have been ​troubled by foolish, nervous fears but my faith is strong. The fall of that picture was an unfortunate accident; and I blame myself for Eugene's danger, because he sat there at my suggestion to reply to some correspondence. As to the stairs giving way this morning, that must have been an accident too; the house is old, our home for generations back—"

Her voice died away as the detective in answer turned back the carpet once more and silently exposed the damage which had been deliberately wrought.

Miss Meade caught her breath sharply, and her thin, delicate hands came together in a convulsive clasp.

"Oh, what does it mean? Surely none of the boys would attempt to play a wicked practical joke at such a time as this!"

"This was not intended for a joke, Miss Meade." Odell's matter-of-fact tone seemed to make her shrink within herself. "It was done with the deliberate purpose of injury to some member of this household. The portrait fell last night because the heavy steel wires which helped to hold it in its place had been hacked apart. I am sorry to add to your distress, but the truth must be faced; someone is trying to murder you all!"

"Murder!" Her pale lips barely formed the word. "I—I cannot believe it! There must be some hideous mistake. Why, we haven't an enemy in the world!"

She swayed and would have fallen but that Titheredge sprang forward and caught her.

"You had better go back to your own room and rest, Miss Meade. I'll see that Dick is made comfortable, and you will need all your strength for what I am afraid lies ​before you," he said. "Sergeant Odell may want to see you later on to ask you for some information, but he will not disturb you if it is not absolutely necessary."

He led her down the hall to her own room, closed the door, and came back to the stair's head to find the detective carefully replacing the thumbtacks.

"That will do, I think," the latter observed. "Now, let us go down and have a look at that picture."

They descended again to the library. As they entered Nan rose, kissed her father on the forehead softly, and went from the room.

"You've been examining the stairs?" Richard Lorne asked, panting from the knife-thrusts of pain which darted through his hurt ribs at each breath.

"Yes, Dick. They were sawed through, just as we imagined," Titheredge replied. "If you won't be taken to bed just yet, lie still and don't try to talk; I'll keep you informed of everything that goes on. I suppose you know that Peters has disappeared?"

Lorne nodded.

"We'll make short work of him if he has had a hand in what has been going on," the attorney promised grimly. "I caught him in two direct lies this morning before I left the house, but I attributed them to the fact that the man was addled from fright. Let me see; you've had him three years, haven't you?"

"Four," came raspingly from the couch.

"Ah, yes, I remember. Ever have any reason to distrust him?"

"Never. What's that chap doing?"

Lorne had craned his neck as far as his painful position ​would allow, and Titheredge followed his gaze. Sergeant Odell, with a pair of powerful wire-clippers in his hands, was bending over the portrait as it lay face down over the desk.

"Just removing these severed strands of the cable, so that they may be examined under a glass, Mr. Lorne," the detective replied for himself. "There isn't the least doubt that they were deliberately cut; but I want to find out if I can what sort of instrument was used. One thing is certain; whoever did this trick and the one upstairs was of tremendous strength. The tread and face of that step were cut with long, slow sweeps of a heavy saw, not haggled with a small, light one; and the portrait here must have been pried loose from the wall with some powerful lever before the supporting wires could be cut, for no clipper such as this could have reached them. If you will take my advice, Mr. Lorne, you will permit us to assist you to bed now; the shock which you have received, together with your injuries, will make it impossible for me to question you now."

"To-morrow?" Lorne asked eagerly. "Want to get at the bottom—"

"Yes, I know," Odell nodded encouragingly. "You can leave everything in our hands. We'll get you upstairs now with as little pain to you as possible."

"Hadn't we better have young Mr. Chalmers's help?" asked Titheredge. "We will have to carry him around to the servants' staircase, you know, and we must not jar him any more than is necessary."

The detective assented and Titheredge rang the bell, but no one appeared.

​"I'll go and look for him myself," the latter remarked, but Odell stopped him.

"I should prefer to do that, Mr. Titheredge. Will you instead go to the servants' quarters and see if any more of them have decamped?" He turned again to the couch. "Mr. Lorne, which is Mr. Chalmers's room?"

"The one on the left, third floor, rear," panted the sick man. "Julian's was the room just in front of it."

"Do they connect?" The attorney had already gone on his errand, and Odell paused in the doorway.

"Yes, by the bath and dressing-rooms between."

The detective glanced into the drawing- and dining-rooms and then mounted the main staircase, avoiding the broken top step. He was proceeding along the hall to the second flight leading to the third floor when from one of the rooms behind him a burst of laughter came; impish, sarcastic laughter utterly lacking in mirth.

It seemed such a strange, incongruous thing in the silence of that house that Odell paused; and then in a thin, high, whining voice came the words:

"The police? That would be like old Sam, wouldn't it? As well send a village fire-company to put out Vesuvius, We'll go, one after the other; you'll see!"

From whose lips could that voice have issued? Odell recalled the two members of the family whom he had not as yet encountered; the oldest daughter and the youngest son. The hunchback. It must be he. Odell waited.

There came a low murmur in an unmistakable feminine tone, and then the high querulous one again.

"My dear aunt, where is the disgrace to the family in ​having a policeman cross our sacred portals? They are quite as respectable as murderers, though scarcely as efficient. Now, if I were the next on the list of our domestic Dionysius and the sword were suspended over my head, I should reach up and snap the hair. I can afford to laugh."

"Not you! Rannie, my darling, never you!"

The sharp cry was almost a wail, but it held such a wealth of infinite love and devotion that the listening detective could hardly credit the fact that it was the quiet, self-contained, little Miss Meade who uttered it. That it was ungratefully received was evident from the indistinct but churlish grumble which followed; and then there was silence.

Odell continued on his way upstairs with a new fact to add to the family data with which the attorney had supplied him. The cripple was evidently his aunt's favorite; the spinster had taken to her heart the one maimed member of the family in preference to all the rest.

When he reached the third floor Odell was conscious of an acrid odor on the air, which seemed to come from the rear on the left, the room which Lome had told him was occupied by Gene. He bent and looked quickly through the keyhole, but the turned key obstructed his view. The smoky, acrid odor was stronger now. Gene had lost no time after encountering the detective in locking himself in his room and burning certain papers.

It was natural, perhaps, that the young man should have private letters which he would not care to have seen by the prying eyes of a stranger; yet coupling his discovery with Titheredge's statement of the previous association with the ​notorious Farley Drew, Odell decided to look into the matter without delay.

He rapped smartly on the door, to hear an astonished and perturbed "Hello?" from within, followed by:

"Be with you in a second."

Then came the subdued clatter of heavy glassware, a pause, the scratching of a match, and finally footsteps. Gene; puffing furiously at a pipe, opened the door.

"Oh, I say, I didn't know it was you, Sergeant. Come in; hope you don't mind my pipe. Anything I can do for you?" He was plainly flustered.

Odell took in the room in one swift, comprehensive glance: the bed had not yet been made, and the chifferobe was open, its trays and drawers in disorder, but the desk was closed. The top of the cut-glass tobacco-jar upon it was open, and the tobacco strewn all about it bore evidence of the haste with which the pipe had been filled. In the open grate was a little heap of gray, flaky ashes from which a thin spiral of smoke still wound its way; and the detective saw to his satisfaction that a few pieces of hastily torn paper were scattered unburned upon the hearth.

"I came to ask you if you would help Mr. Titheredge and myself carry your father to his room." His eyes came casually back to the young man's flushed face. "There is no hurry, however. I believe this room was occupied by your late brother? I should like to see just where his death took place. Can you show me, Mr. Chalmers?" He had indicated the front room by a gesture.

Gene hesitated.

"Both doors are locked and my father has the keys," he said at last; and there was an undercurrent of sullen ​defiance in his changed tone as though he anticipated the next question.

"Will you go and ask him for them, please?"

"But—but no one has entered that room since the funeral," Gene stammered. "I don't think father would like it, Sergeant; and nothing in there could have any possible bearing on your investigation."

"Mr. Chalmers, may I remind you that that is not for you to decide? Will you get those keys at once!" The last sentence was not a query but a command, and each word increased in emphatic dominance. Gene gave one fleeting, desperate glance toward his desk—in the lock of which the key still remained—and fled downstairs.

Unless the young man had temporarily lost his head and burned his papers without discrimination as they came to his hand, those already destroyed must have been the most important; and locking the door in his turn, Odell went quickly to the grate and pocketed every unburned scrap that remained.

Then he moved as swiftly to the desk and opened it. A disordered heap of letters met his eye; most of them evidently bills, from the tradesmen's names in the upper right hand comer. Odell had seized a handful at random and was about to shut the desk when he noticed that the small center drawer was not quite closed. Pulling it open hastily he discovered a small notebook and a few letters in an odd but unmistakably masculine hand.

He cleared the drawer at one sweep, closed the desk, and dropping his findings from it into the coat-pocket on his left side, he drew from the other two or three fragments of the paper which he had salvaged from the grate.

​One of them bore in a temperamental, feminine hand only three letters of a word, but they were illuminating: "lov." Odell smiled as he replaced it in his pocket; but his expression changed when he glanced at the others. The writing upon them was all in a bold, dashing, masculine hand, and two of the scraps fitted together read: "whole family in hell before."

Odell frowned thoughtfully and drew from his left coat-pocket one of the letters which he had taken from the center drawer in the desk. It was in the same strongly accentuated writing, and read without preamble:

"Where do you think you get off, Gene? You are in too deep to back out now, as I meant you should be. Your mother's went through without a hitch and the next one will if you only keep your nerve. It's got to be done by the sixth or you know where the first one will send you. I mean business, my boy.

"Farley Drew."

Barry Odell folded the letter slowly and replaced it in its envelope. To-day was the fourteenth, and Julian Chalmers had come to his death just eight days before—on the sixth!

CHAPTER V

"I WISH IT HAD BEEN YOU

"ODELL put the letter back into his pocket and striding across the room unlocked the door and flung it wide. He was only just in time; for he could hear hurried footsteps bounding up the stairs, and in another moment Gene's head appeared above the landing.

Its owner peered suspiciously first toward his desk and then at the grate; but nothing seemed amiss, and the police sergeant was standing before him with his hand outstretched authoritatively.

Silently Gene surrendered the keys.

"Thanks." The detective made no move toward the other room. "Mr. Chalmers, how long have you known Farley Drew?"

The question came so abruptly that Gene shot the inquirer a startled glance, which then strayed once more uncontrollably to the desk, while a deep flush came again into his cheeks.

"What has Mr. Drew to do with the matter you have under investigation?"

"That does not reply to my question, Mr. Chalmers." From taking part in many far more strenuous examinations Odell well knew the value of the repetition of a name.

Gene flung himself into a chair; and for a moment there ​was silence while he puffed at his pipe. At length he looked up and met the detective's gaze.

"See here, Sergeant, I told you downstairs that you could count on me, and I want this d—n mystery cleared up as much as the rest do; more, since my own life was attempted last night! But I don't like to discuss my private affairs, and I won't have my friends dragged in. Unless you have been prying into my letters while I was out of the room, I suppose our attorney must have been unearthing the family skeletons and black sheep and all that sort of thing for your benefit. However, I've no reason for concealing my friendship for Mr. Drew. I met him about four years ago."

"Where?"

Gene had recovered his nonchalance and waved lazily toward a chair.

"I foresee that this interview is apt to be a protracted one." He knocked the ashes from his pipe into the hearth. "I met him at a private gambling club over Morey's, which I understand your enterprising organization has since closed up."

"With or through whom did you meet him, Mr. Chalmers?"

"I was with several friends of mine whose names I cannot recall at the moment and was presented to Mr. Drew by an acquaintance named Stone."

"Philip Stone the embezzler?" Odell's smooth, calm, level tones remained the same; but Gene stirred in his chair.

"I did not know he had attained such prominence as to be known as 'the' anything," he protested with a shrug. ​"I believe he did get in some sort of trouble later with a trust company or bank or something, but as I told you he was a mere acquaintance; I had been introduced to him in a restaurant only a night or two before."

"You were then about twenty, I think, Mr. Chalmers?"

"I was. I must ask you again what all this has to do with your investigation." Gene's eyes began to glow sullenly. "May I suggest that you are wasting valuable time?"

"Mr. Chalmers, that is my affair. To return to your friend Farley Drew; when did you first bring him to your home and introduce him to your sisters?"

A touch of sternness had crept into the detective's tone; and the glow in the eyes of the young man changed to a furtive glint.

"I say, you leave my sisters out of this!" He half rose from his chair. "I'll tell you anything you want to know about myself, but I won't discuss them with you."

"That does not answer my question, Mr. Chalmers; and I doubt if your solicitude is as much for your sisters as for yourself." Odell eyed the squirming young man narrowly. "I represent the law, and there will be a lot more of our men here presently. It won't get you anywhere to try to oppose me."

"I have no reason for opposing you, Sergeant," Gene responded hastily. "It sort of gets my goat, though, to be hammered at like this when, by Jove, I'm the injured party. I introduced Farley Drew to my people about a year ago."

"And did you present him to your brother at the same time?"

"To Julian? Yes." He tried to reply with the old ​sangfroid; but his chin trembled, and he put up his hand to mask it.

"Your brother then became one of his associates?"

"One of his friends," Gene remarked stiffly.

"Did that in any way affect your friendship with Drew, Mr. Chalmers?"

"Of course not; why should it? Julian and I traveled as a rule in different crowds, but we had many mutual friends, and—and Mr. Drew was one of them."

"And did you and your brother get on well together, Mr. Chalmers? You will have to pardon this question, but others will answer it if you refuse." Odell paused and repeated: "How did you and your brother get on together?"

"About as well as any brothers do, I fancy." Gene's gaze wandered to the littered top of his dressing-table, but as if conscious of the detective's eyes upon him he quickly averted it. "We had a healthy old row now and then, but—but we always patched it up. I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind. Sergeant. It's only a week, you know—"

Odell rose.

"Of course. We will go down now and move your father to his room."

"But"—Gene rose also and stared in surprise at the detective—"I thought you wanted to go through Julian's room."

"That will keep." Odell smiled slightly. "Come."

Gene hesitated; but the other so obviously waited for him that he had no choice, and together they descended to the library.

When the injured man had been ensconced in bed and ​made as comfortable as possible Titheredge announced that he must go to his office. Gene had taken the first opportunity to retire once more to his room; and the detective went down alone to the hall, where he came upon Miss Meade in the drawing-room doorway.

"You are feeling better?" he asked courteously. "I am sorry that my presence here startled you so this morning."

"I am glad that you are here," she replied. "I have been waiting until you had finished with my brother-in-law, for I want to talk to you; that is, if you can spare the time just now."

She added the last few words in a deprecating manner, which he realized must be an habitual one with her, as if all her life she had been kept in the background, set aside. She seemed not a looker-on but a mere shadow of those of stronger personality about her.

"I have been anxious for this opportunity myself, Miss Meade," he assured her. "I want to know a great many things which only you can tell me, if you feel strong enough. It will be painful to you, I am afraid, for I must touch on your double sorrow of the last month, but my only motive is to discover the truth."

"Come in and be seated, please." She led the way into the drawing-room and motioned toward a chair. "Tell me first of all, Sergeant Odell, is it true that attempts were actually made upon the lives of my nephew and my brother-in-law? I—I saw where the stairs had been deliberately cut through, of course, and yet I cannot seem to realize it. It is the total absence of motive which makes it all seem like some frightful dream."

"Nevertheless it is stern reality, Miss Meade."

​Her face quivered, and she bowed her head for a moment.

"You spoke of touching upon my grief. Does that mean that you think my sister and her oldest son—that they could have been killed? Their deaths were so plainly the result of what worldly people call accident that I believed our trial was the Lord's will, and was endeavoring to resign myself to it, although no one will ever know what my sister was to me. Is there a possibility that their deaths were the result of some evil human design?"

"That is what I must determine." Odell drew his chair closer. "When did Mrs. Lorne run the needle into her finger?"

"A little over five weeks ago, some time during the first part of August."

"Did it occur here in this house? Was anyone present at the time?"

"Yes, I was." Miss Meade shuddered. "If I had only known what it was to bring about! But she thought nothing of it at the time and wouldn't even trouble to use the witch hazel which I brought from my bathroom. Christine was always a—a rather dominant person and disliked advice."

Her voice trailed off vaguely, and Odell gently urged her on.

Will you tell me about it, please, every detail you remember?"

"I will try, Sergeant Odell; but you must forgive me if I give you rather a—a rambling account. I am not accustomed to telling things; I usually listen."

While she paused it came to Odell that her last sentence epitomized what her years must have brought her. He was ​not given to sentimentalizing over old maids, but he found himself all at once tremendously interested in this middle-aged spinster, colorless and negative as she was.

"In the first place you must understand that we were utterly unlike, my sister and I. Perhaps that was why we were so devoted to each other. I cannot describe her, but she was beautiful, brilliant, self-assertive; while I have always been as you see me now." Her voice trembled at first but steadied as she went on. "She loved youth and could not endure the thought of coming age. That is why we have all stayed in town this summer; she was taking a special beauty treatment which required some weeks for its completion. I was the only one who knew this. We told the rest of the family that it was ill-health and she must remain in the city for electrical treatments. You can see how close we were to each other, Sergeant Odell. There is a little dressing-room off her bedroom—I will show it to you presently—which she had furnished as a sort of boudoir; and we sat there for hours together, I mending and she embroidering. Christine was always fond of bright colors."

Miss Meade's voice died away in retrospection, but she recovered herself and continued:

"Her embroidery-basket was never taken out of that room, and on the morning when—when it happened we had been chatting and working for about an hour when suddenly she uttered a sharp exclamation and dropped the embroidery-frame in her lap. I supposed she had merely become impatient, and I did not even look up until she spoke. 'Oh, I've stuck my finger!' I can almost hear her say it now! As I told you, I got the witch hazel for her; but ​she wouldn't use it, and the incident passed. The next day her finger was painful and inflamed; but she would not hear of a doctor until three days later, when her whole hand and arm commenced to swell.

"There—there isn't very much more to tell," Her voice faltered and then went on: "The day after the doctor was called in he sent for a specialist; then another, and a third, but it was no use; she was dead in ten days."

"Who attended her, Miss Meade?" Odell spoke quickly.

"Our family physician, Doctor Adams, who came to Richard this morning. He called in Doctor Kelland and Doctor Day and finally Doctor McCutchen. Then there were the two nurses, of course, Miss Risby and Miss Brown; but I scarcely left her bedside for an hour until the end."

"Miss Meade, who has access to the boudoir?"

"Why, all the household. Richard and the children were in and out constantly, and Jane every day to dust. And of course Gerda."

"Who is Gerda?"

"The lady's maid. She served both my sister and Cissie, the younger Christine."

"And not Miss Nan nor you?"

Miss Meade looked down.

"I always dress so simply that I have no need of a maid, and Nan is too independent to be annoyed with one. Would you—would you care to interview Gerda later?"

"I would, Miss Meade; but I want to know now what you can tell me of the second death, that of your nephew."

"It was—horrible!" She closed her eyes for a moment. "Richard can tell you more about that than I can when he ​is better, for he and Gene were the first to see him after Peters came rushing down. I—I only caught one glimpse before they took me away; and the girls weren't allowed to go in at all."

"How did it occur?" the detective asked patiently. "Please try to tell me all you know of it. Was your nephew in good health and spirits—aside from his natural grief for his mother, I mean?"

For the first time Miss Meade hesitated.

"Well, no," she admitted at length. "He adored my sister, of course; and he felt her death deeply. He had been in a nervous, excitable condition for months; and the shock of losing her increased his nervousness. He started violently at the sound of an unexpected voice or the abrupt closing of a door; and he had been losing weight rapidly. I—I think he had had some trouble over money matters with his stepfather, but Mr. Lorne must tell you about that; I really try to keep out of family affairs as much as possible.

"Last Wednesday—a week ago yesterday—he did not come down for breakfast, nor ring for any to be brought up to him. Cissie had hers in bed, I remember; and Randall—my youngest nephew, who is an invalid—was not well enough to come down; but Mr. Lorne, Nan, and myself were in the dining-room. I was pouring the coffee when Gene appeared; and his stepfather asked him if Julian were up. He said that he didn't think so, he had not heard him moving about. Mr. Lorne was annoyed, because Julian had an appointment to go downtown with him that morning, and finally he sent Peters up to call him."

Miss Meade paused; and Odell, who had watched her closely throughout her narration, marveled. Her thin ​hands were clasped tightly in her lap; but her voice was steady and quietly modulated, and her high-bred face as expressionless as a mask. What unknown reservoirs of strength and self-control lay behind that meek exterior! And this was the woman whom he had thought a spineless, colorless personality!

"We continued our meal as Peters went upstairs, when after quite an interval—it must have been five minutes at least—we heard a most dreadful cry, which brought us all to our feet. It was Peters and he came scrambling and stumbling downstairs screaming out with every breath in that frightful hoarse way. When he reached the dining-room door here he clung to it as if to keep from falling, and his face was the color of gray blotting-paper. 'For God's sake, go up, sir!' he said to Mr. Lorne. 'For God's sake, go up!'

"That was all they could get out of him, and Richard rushed upstairs with Gene after him. Nan ran over to Peters and commenced to shake him, but he would only groan; and I passed them and hurried upstairs myself. When I reached Julian's room Gene was lying face downward across the bed rolling from side to side and crying terribly, and Richard was standing in the doorway leading to the bathroom staring down at something which lay at his feet.

"I went to him, and there lay our poor Julian! I simply cannot tell you, Sergeant Odell! It seemed as if a wave of blood had engulfed him and then ebbed. It was a—a shambles! I covered my face with my hands and tottered back; and then Richard came to himself and led me away. And they tell me it was such a tiny wound in his throat, ​just a fractional slip of the razor. The least unexpected noise might have been the innocent cause. Oh, he should not have attempted to shave himself while he was so nervous!"

Her hands fluttered for a moment and then gripped the arms of her chair; and the detective saw her face twitch once and settle again into its masklike fixity.

"What noise could there have been?" Odell asked. "Was anyone else on the third floor at that time?"

"No. Nan has the front room directly opposite, but she is the earliest riser of us all; the other two are guest-chambers and were unoccupied. There are always noises about an old house like this, though. Poor Julian might have heard the banging of an outside shutter from the rear, or one of the doors might have closed; there was quite a high wind that morning as I recall it, and all the windows were open. There can be no other way to account for it, Sergeant Odell. No one could have gotten into the house; and who—who would have wanted his life?"

"Who wanted to take his brother's last night, Miss Meade, or his stepfather's this morning?" Odell suggested quietly.

"That is what is torturing me," she exclaimed. "The sheer purposelessness of such an act. The boys have been a—a little wild, I am afraid; but they have done no harm, and no one could bear such terrible enmity against either of them. And Richard, Mr. Lorne, who could want to harm him? That is why it all seems like some hideous nightmare; that, and the sheer impossibility of anyone breaking into the house or—or knowing that someone of the family was going to sit beneath the portrait."

​She broke off as a light but determined step came along the hall from the direction of the servants' staircase. Odell, too, glanced curiously out through the open drawing-room door just as a tiny, fairy-like figure with masses of golden hair beneath a small black hat walked quickly past and toward the entrance door.

"Cissie!" Miss Meade rose and slipped out into the hall. "Cissie, where are you going?"

"Away! Anywhere!" A girlish treble as clear and cold as a mountain brook fell upon the detective's ears. "I told you all last night that I was going, and then we really didn't know anything, we only felt it. If you think I'm going to stay in this house a minute longer—"

"But, but my dear—"

"Oh, you needn't worry, Aunt Effie. I sha'n't go to any of our friends and tell them of the terrible things that are going on in the sacred Meade house. I wouldn't disgrace any of them by being on their hands when the notoriety starts; and I'm not going to stay here to be murdered either. I don't know about poor mamma and Jule, but I do know about father and what so nearly happened to Gene, and I don't intend to be the next one. You've had your way in spite of everything, but I won't live another day in the same house with a—"

To the listening detective it seemed that the clear voice was snuffed out like a flame; and then there came, low but startlingly distinct, in Miss Meade's usually colorless tones:

"Silence, Christine! I wish to heaven that it had been you!"

CHAPTER VI

BLOODY HANDS

BARRY ODELL crept to the drawing-room door and peered cautiously out into the hall. The pretty girl was struggling to free herself from her aunt, whose hand was clapped across her mouth and who held her in a firm clasp. Cissie's young virility, though, was more than a match for the frail, middle-aged woman, and Miss Meade all at once relaxed and stepped back.

"The young man whom Mr. Titheredge brought from police headquarters this morning is in the drawing-room now," she announced; and as Odell hastily drew back he caught the veiled warning in her tone. "I am sure that he will not permit you to go until he has had an opportunity to talk with you; and certainly you shall not leave this house without telling either your stepfather or me where you are going."

"Why, Aunt Effie!" The utter stupefaction in the girl's tones betrayed clearly the fact that her aunt's new-found assertiveness was unprecedented. "I shall go and come as I please! As for the police, what have I to do with them? I am amazed that you should attempt to dictate to me when even mother—"

"Oh, my dear, my dear," the spinster broke in, "it is ​simply because your mother is no longer with us and your stepfather lying injured upstairs that I must try to make you listen. You shall not go!"

Odell heard a little scuffle, and the handle of the great front door turned violently with a dull clang of bronze. Then Miss Meade's voice rose desperately.

"Sergeant Odell!"

He strode out into the hall to find the pretty girl, now flushed and with her cold blue eyes snapping fire, standing half in and half outside the door, with her aunt's restraining hand upon her arm.

"This is the young man from Headquarters of whom I told you, Cissie. My oldest niece, Miss Chalmers."

Odell bowed, and then glanced sharply at the traveling-bag in the girl's hands.

"You were going away, Miss Chalmers?" he asked in well-simulated surprise. "I am very sorry, but that will not be permitted. No one must leave this house on any pretext whatever until they are authorized to do so."

Cissie's lip curled.

"Are you aware that the butler has already gone?" she asked in her turn. "Surely if the servants—"

"The butler if he does not return here of his own volition will be caught in the dragnet and brought in before nightfall," Odell interrupted her sternly. "He will be taken to Headquarters, questioned for hours, and finally locked up on suspicion if on no graver charge. You will be suitably protected here in your own home, Miss Chalmers, and here you must remain."

She tossed her head.

"By whose authority?"

​"Mine." He spoke quietly; but there was that in his tone which had caused more than one defiant malefactor to "come across" without further demur, and Cissie dropped her eyes. "Allow me, please."

He took her bag from her unresisting hand, placed it on a carved chest which stood against the wall and turned to Miss Meade.

"Your telephone is in the library, is it not? I should like to use it for a moment. Are there any extensions?"

"Only one, and that is in my sister's room," Miss Meade replied. "If you turn it off and shut the library-door you will have absolute privacy."

"Thank you. Can you tell me Peters's home address?"

"He has no one except a married sister who lives over in New Dorp, Staten Island. I will get the address for you."

As she hurried away he turned once more to the girl.

"Miss Chalmers, I shall want a little talk with you in about an hour."

She bowed stiffly and turning upon her heel walked down the hall toward the back staircase, while he entered the library. Each interview with a different member of this strangely ill-assorted family made him feel that he was being carried deeper and deeper into a current of cross purposes, and the enigma of the angry young woman's interrupted speech recurred to him again and again in the minutes that followed.

How would she have completed that sentence if a warning hand had not been laid across her lips? What or who could it be with whom she would not live in the same ​house another day? What had she meant in saying the aunt had had her way in spite of everything? Miss Meade did not look like the sort of person who could maintain her own way in the face of even the mildest opposition. And what had Miss Meade herself meant when she said, "I wish to heaven it had been you"?

It was unthinkable that she could have been referring to the recent deaths; no matter how sorely tried she was by her niece's willfulness such a thought would never have come to her. What, then, could have been the portent of that expressed wish?

He had turned the telephone-switch cutting off the extension and called Headquarters when Miss Meade glided into the room, laid a slip of paper on the stand beside him and went out again, closing the door behind her. Odell conferred with his captain and issued his preliminary orders, and then picking up the slip he glanced at the address and sent out a general alarm for the missing Peters.

This accomplished he emerged from the library to find Miss Meade waiting in the hall.

"How many servants do you employ?" he asked as he approached her.

"Four. Peters, Jane the housemaid, Gerda of whom I have already told you, and Marcelle the cook. Then there are the furnace man and the laundress, but they are not inmates of the house and know nothing of our affairs except the ordinary gossip below stairs," she replied. "Would you like to see any of them, Sergeant Odell?"

"Each of them in turn; but first will you show me Mrs. Lorne's boudoir?"

​"Yes. We can reach it from the hall without disturbing Mr. Lorne. The boudoir connects their apartments, and my sister's room has been closed since her death."

She led the way up the servants' staircase to the pretty room, rendered cheerful and summery by white wicker furniture and gay chintz draperies. It seemed impossible that tragedy should ever have entered here, yet the detective's eye focussed at once upon a garishly-beaded Indian basket upon the under shelf of the table. From it overflowed a tangle of vari-colored silken threads; and in its center a square of tan linen, held in an oval embroidery-frame, showed a glowing poppy half finished from which a scarlet thread like a thin stream of blood meandered over the side of the basket.

Odell took up the square of embroidery.

"The needle is not here," he commented. "The doctor took it for analysis, no doubt."

"Yes. I think he feared that the poisoning which resulted from its prick might have been due to some of those new dyes in the silk, for he took some of that also; but he told us later that he had discovered nothing that could in any way account for the fatal result." Miss Meade touched the back of a low chair. "Here is where my sister sat when it happened, Sergeant Odell; and I was seated across the table, using the Martha Washington sewing-stand there. What are you looking for?"

"The packet from which the embroidery needle was taken," he responded.

She delved into the brilliant disorder of the basket and brought forth a black paper packet which she handed to him. He opened it, glanced at the needles, and put it into ​his pocket. Then taking up a pair of scissors which was attached by a bright-hued ribbon to the handle of the basket he clipped off a length of the scarlet strand which dangled from the embroidery frame.

"That's all, I think." He still spoke in a lowered tone, mindful of the injured man in the next room. "I am going up now to look over the apartments of the young man who died last week. I have the keys—"

To his astonishment Miss Meade announced:

"I will accompany you. It has all been placed in order, of course; and I believe Mr. Titheredge and my brother-in-law have removed all the letters and personal effects, but I can explain to you the position of the body as I saw it."

"I do not like to subject you to the ordeal—", the detective began, but she silenced him.

"I am strong enough, and it is my duty to render you all the aid I can in consequence of Mr. Lorne's incapacity."

She preceded him up the stairs and led him along the hall to the door of the front room; but as he took out the key to insert it in the lock, the door at the back flew open and Gene appeared, rage and fear struggling for supremacy on his weak countenance.

"I've been waiting for you," he declared hotly. "I'll thank you to return the letters and notebook you stole from my desk."

"They will be returned to you in good time, Mr. Chalmers," the detective replied smoothly. "Unless, of course, they are required as evidence."

Evidence of what!" shouted the enraged young man. I suppose you'll accuse me next of killing my own brother ​and trying to commit suicide by pulling down that portrait on my own head last night!"

"Mr. Chalmers, when I knocked upon your door an hour ago I interrupted you at your task of burning some letters and papers in your grate."

"What of it?" Gene demanded. "A fellow's got some rights, I guess, to keep his own private affairs from being pored over by you d—d—"

"Gene!" Miss Meade interrupted, and then turning to the detective she added: "I—I think I will leave you. Gene can show you Julian's room; and you will, I am sure, want to talk to him alone."

She hurried silently down the stairs and when she had disappeared the two young men faced each other.

"Mr, Chalmers, when you started to burn those papers in your grate this morning was it perfectly clean?"

The unexpected, seemingly irrelevant question caught the other temporarily off guard.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

"Come and I will show you." Odell walked straight past Gene and into his room, and the latter, his resentment momentarily submerged in surprise, followed.

The detective knelt down by the hearth.

"Will you bring me an envelope?" he requested. Then, as Gene complied: "I want you to look closely at the ashes, Mr. Chalmers. What do you see?"

As he spoke he scooped some into the envelope, sealed it and placed it in his pocket.

"Why, just ashes!" Gene's tone betokened amazement, but his frightened face went a shade more pale.

​"See any difference in the color?" Odell persisted. "Don't you know that everything that is inflammable and of a different texture or substance leaves a different ash behind? Those pale, gray, satiny flakes are from the paper which you burned; these coarser, slightly darker ones are from something else. What did you burn here this morning or last night, Mr. Chalmers?"

"Nothing! I swear it!" Gene cried huskily. "For God's sake, Sergeant, tell me what you are driving at! When I started to burn the letters it seems to me that I did notice some other ashes there in the grate, but I paid no attention to them."

"You detected no odor as of smoke In your room?"

"None. I haven't been long out of it to-day anyway; I was awakened by Dad's fall and stayed with him only until you arrived. If anything had been burned here I surely would have smelt the smoke when I came up to destroy the letters."

"Mr. Chalmers, when was the last time you had a fire in this grate?" Odell looked up in time to catch the younger man's swift change of expression.

"I—I can't remember," Gene stammered. "Sometime in the early spring, I imagine."

"I do not mean a coal fire, but papers, trash, anything; when was the last time before this morning that something was burned here?"

"I couldn't tell you, Sergeant. It's a habit of mine to burn old letters and such things there instead of having the maid take them downstairs. She always cleans it out whenever she finds any ashes there."

​He caught himself up suddenly as he realized the slip he had made, and a look of dogged despair came over his face, but he added hastily:

"What are those darker ashes from? What had been burned in the grate before my letters?"

"That will be determined on analysis." The detective seemed not to have noted Gene's damaging statement, and the young man breathed freer again. "You say it is a habit of yours to burn things here; surely you can recall approximately the last time you made use of the grate. Was it a few days ago, a week, a month?"

"It was a week ago." The reply came sullenly in a lowered tone.

"What did you burn then?"

"Merely some old letters and snapshots. I—I was cleaning out a trunk; I meant to go camping next week."

The explanation was offered glibly, yet Gene could not meet Odell's eyes; and he flushed as if conscious that his falsehood had been recognized for what it was although the detective gave no outward sign. Instead he rose, brushed off his knees and remarked in a brisk, changed tone:

"If your memory should improve let me know. I am going now to your brother's room. Will you come and show me where the body was when you discovered it?"

"I didn't discover it," Gene denied sulkily. Nevertheless, he turned to the door. "Peters did that, when my stepfather sent him up here to call Julian. When he gave the alarm Dad was the first to reach the room; I tried to pass him but he blocked the stairway. Julian's room was empty and Dad called once, then went to the bathroom door and collapsed against it at—at what he saw. I followed and ​looked over his shoulder—and then, I don't know; I went to pieces, I guess."

As he talked they had passed along the hall to the front room and Odell unlocked the door. The windows were open, but the old-fashioned Venetian blinds were drawn close to keep out any possible rain, and in the gloom the furniture loomed indistinctly.

Gradually, however, as his eyes grew accustomed to the semi-darkness Odell made out the outlines of a bed, a dresser, a desk, a table, an old chest of drawers, and, in the wall at right angles to the hall, the casing of another door.

He went to the nearest window, folded one of the blinds halfway back, and then turned inquiringly to Gene, who had visibly hung back.

"Is that the bathroom?" He motioned toward the door in the opposite wall, and at the younger man's nod he strode over to it. After a moment Gene followed.

"Julian had on a thin bathrobe over his pajamas and he had not taken his bath, although the tub was drawn," he volunteered. "I seemed to take the whole thing in at one glance, every detail, as though it had been photographed on my mind; I wish to heaven I could forget it! His shaving-mug stood just here on the edge of the wash-basin, with the brush and stick of soap beside it; and he was lying on his back on the floor with the razor under one of his hands. He looked as if he had just sunk down, except for the wound in his throat and the blood everywhere. There were bloody handprints, too, along the outer rim of the tub nearest him, as if he had tried to save himself from falling— Oh, I can't—"

​"You are sure of that?" Odell, who had been following with his eyes the location of each object as Gene described the scene, now turned and looked at him sharply. "You are sure there were the prints of hands in blood upon the rim of the tub?"

"Positive of it," Gene returned. "I told you I could not forget a single detail. I don't see why he didn't call for help or something when he found he could not stop the bleeding. I never heard a thing and I was almost in the next room."

"Why do you say 'almost'?" The detective had grasped the point, but it was as if subconsciously. The vital fact which had been revealed to him inadvertently enough by his companion filled all his thoughts.

"Because the dressing-room is beyond that door, and I've got some gymnasium stuff stacked against it."

"Why wasn't the door left open?"

Gene hesitated.

"It used to be and we shared this bath together," he admitted finally. "But lately Julian wanted this to himself, so I used the bathroom across the hall."

"Did you examine the marks on the tub that morning, Mr. Chalmers?"

"No." Gene shuddered. "I don't know what I did after I saw him lying there and realized what must have happened; I guess I went crazy for a little while. The first I knew I was lying across Julian's bed, and Dad was shaking me and telling me to go downstairs. I didn't see Julian again, not even in the casket; I couldn't."

The detective turned from the doorway and began open​ing the drawers of the dresser, but they as well as the desk and closet had been stripped bare.

"Dad and old Titheredge carted off everything but the clothes," explained Gene. "Aunt Effie packed those away in the attic, I think. I know she didn't give them away."

He laughed shortly in a rueful manner and Odell demanded:

"Why? How do you know?"

"Because she never gave a thing away in her life. She hoards everything she can lay her hands on."

Odell allowed the comment to pass without remark, but he stored it away for further reference. If true, it threw an interesting side-light on the character of the mouse-like spinster downstairs. She did not look like a miser, and her apparent attitude toward the rest of the family was that of a typical poor relation; yet she must possess money. She owned at least a half interest in the house in which she lived like a veritable shadow.

After a further cursory examination of the room he motioned Gene to precede him to the hall, and locking the door he placed the key in his pocket.

"Where does Farley Drew live?" he asked.

In the Bellemonde Annex," Gene responded unguardedly, then added: "For God's sake, don't go to him with anything of this, Sergeant. He—he hates anything like notoriety, and he can make a lot of trouble."

"For whom?" Odell demanded as the other paused.

"Oh, well, I don't want to lose his friendship," Gene mumbled. "It isn't fair to drag other people into a rotten scandal like this; and they're bound to resent it. Besides, ​he knows nothing whatever about it; I haven't even seen him since Julian's funeral."

He wandered back into his own room as the detective started downstairs.

Barry Odell was not thinking of Farley Drew at that moment, however, nor was the discovery in the bathroom upon his mind. His cogitations concerned a certain envelope in his pocket, containing two kinds of ashes; those left from burned paper and from burned wood. For the wood-ashes were the residue from incinerated sawdust and still contained uncharred flecks of it—the sawdust which was missing after that nocturnal carpentering-job on the top step of the stairs.

CHAPTER VII

"WATCH THEIR EYES"

AS Barry Odell reached the second floor he found himself confronting a woman he had not seen before; a servant evidently from her trim livery. She had just come from one of the side rooms, closing the door quietly behind her; but the detective caught the sound of sobbing and high-pitched feminine tones within, and he concluded it to be occupied by the chagrined Cissie.

The woman who stood regarding him with frank interest and curiosity was about thirty, thin to the point of angularity; and her sharp-chinned, sallow face baffled him with a sense of half recognition. He recalled what Miss Meade had told him of the lady's maid and spoke.

"You are Gerda?"

"Yes, sir," the woman replied quietly, without surprise; and there was an expectant look in her gray-green eyes.

"Come downstairs, please; I want to talk to you."

She followed him without a word to the drawing-room, where she stood before him, ignoring the chair toward which he had made a tentative gesture.

"How long have you been employed here?"

"Six months, sir. That is all."

"You were the personal maid of Mrs. Lorne and Miss Chalmers?"

​"Yes, sir. And of the other ladies also when they required my services." She enunciated clearly but carefully, as if speaking in a language which was not her native one; and there was a slight staccato accent which she seemingly could not eliminate.

"You are French?"

She shook her head.

"Swiss, sir. I come from Zurich."

"Do you recall the day when Mrs. Lorne pricked her finger with her embroidery needle?"

"Perfectly, sir, but from the day after. I knew nothing of it until one morning when Madame awoke with her hand all inflamed and remembered herself about the accident with the embroidery needle on the previous day."

"She did not call the doctor immediately?"

"No, sir; not for three days, although Mees Meade implored her to do so. Mees Meade and I, we poulticed the hand and bandaged it; but it grew worse, until finally Madame consented to send for the doctor. After the nurses came I was not allowed in the room until just at the last, and then Madame was delirious."

Gerda had kept her curious light eyes steadily fixed on the detective's face, and although she replied readily, almost mechanically, to his questioning, the impression of hushed anticipation lingered.

"You know who I am, of course?"

Gerda bowed.

"The officer detective from Police Headquarters, is it not so? Otherwise I should not be talking of Madame."

"You understand that you must be perfectly frank with me?"

​Once more she inclined her head.

"I desire only to aid in discovering the truth."

Odell eyed her with growing interest, and the consciousness of having seen her somewhere at some past time increased. Her diction was superior to that usually encountered in one in her position, and her bearing although perfectly respectful suggested a certain dignity equally incompatible.

"When did you first learn of the discovery of Mr. Chalmers's body last week?"

"When Mr. Lorne called me to attend Mees Meade after he had led her down from the room of poor Mr. Chalmers. But I knew there was trouble, terrible trouble before that, sir, when Mr. Lorne sent the butler, Peters, up to call the young gentleman."

"Where were you at the time?"

"In the room of Mees Cissie. She had just had her coffee and was preparing to get up. We heard Peters pass the door and then come stumbling down, crying out in a choked, frightened way. Mees Cissie wanted me to go and find out what had happened, but I could not, sir. The strength left me, and I sank down into a chair. We heard Mr. Lorne go up and Mr. Gene, but Mees Meade walks so softly that we did not know when she passed the door. I was still there in that chair when Mr. Lorne called to me."

"You remained in attendance on the ladies all the morning?" Odell's questions were becoming as mechanical as the replies. He could not force the woman's personality into a secondary place, and the sense of incongruity still prevailed.

"With Mees Meade until she had recovered her com​posure, sir. Afterward with Mees Cissie, who was hysterical. It was lunch-time before I descended to the servants' dining-room in the basement."

"Gerda, when was it that you first heard talk among the servants that there was something queer about these two deaths so close together?"

"Something queer, sir?" she repeated. "Do you mean that it might be a curse or fate or some strange mystery?"

Odell nodded.

"They were all discussing it when I entered the dining-room for lunch, sir; Peters and Marcelle, the cook, and Jane. They said it was not natural." She broke off with a shrug. "You must know the usual gossip of the—of our kind, sir. And it's not to be wondered at. Two deaths in a month in the same house and both from accident; it is enough to make anyone afraid to stay here."

She had retrieved her mistake but added another to it by too obviously straining for effect.

"You yourself did not take any stock in their superstitious fears, did you?" He deliberately adopted a more familiar tone, and she as instinctively withdrew from it.

"I felt uneasy, nervous, but I am not superstitious, sir."

"Then what made you feel uneasy?"

Again that little foreign shrug.

"I don't know, sir. Perhaps the gloom that hung over the house, the sorrow."

"Did you hear anything last night? Any sudden noise?"

"Yes, sir. I went to bed quite early, but I was still awake when I heard a faint crash far below. We sleep on the top floor, you know. This morning Peters told us of ​the picture that fell down. But that was after the accident to Mr. Lorne."

"At what time did Peters leave the house?"

1 don't know, sir, but it must have been before nine. He slipped away while the doctor was here attending to Mr. Lorne, and none of us saw him go. He didn't say a word to anybody, but just walked out; his things are all here in his room, Jane says. He was the most frightened of us all this week and kept saying that we would be murdered in our beds, but I don't think he meant it; he didn't exactly know what he was afraid of."

She was forcing the volubility, Odell could see; and gradually the look of anticipation was fading from her eyes. Could it be that he had actually seen her somewhere before; that she had recognized him and waited for the recognition to be mutual?He determined to throw out a feeler.

"Gerda, where did you work before coming here?"

"Nowhere. That is, I had been ill for a very long time." She hesitated, but the eager look had come back into her eyes. "Before that I had been maid for a lady here in town for some years."

"Who was she?"

The answer came slowly with a curious, studied evenness of tone.

"A Madame Gael."

"Not Mrs. Quincy Gael who was divorced?"

"Yes, sir. But the divorce came later, after I had been taken ill and gone away."

"Did you ever see or hear of a Mr. Farley Drew in her home?"

I read of him afterwards, sir, of course; but while I ​was there, oh, no. I did not know there was such a gentleman." She paused and then added with a curious veiled significance in her tone: "I have worked in various other places, sir, and I have not always been a lady's maid. Once, long before my illness, when I was strong and my nerves were steady, I was an attendant in a private sanitarium."

Odell studied her for a moment. Confound the woman! What was she trying to get at, anyway? He had never been in a sanitarium in his life, either professionally or as a patient. True, he had been in a hospital once, when he had been knifed in pinching Luigi Lombardo the Dago killer, but—

"What kind of a sanitarium?" he demanded.

The eagerness flashed out in her eyes then and she bent toward him and spoke rapidly in a low, meaning tone.

"For the insane, sir. Have you ever seen any crazy people? If you have you never can mistake them, no matter how clever and cunning they are. There is a look in their eyes that gives them away to those who know."

"I've never run up against a case of insanity." Odell's preconceived ideas were in chaos. Clearly the woman did not for a moment think that she recognized him, but she spoke with a purpose. Could it be that she was trying to give him a tip? Her eagerness, her hushed voice, and the light in her eyes showed that she was not talking idly. "Why are you telling me this, Gerda?"

The woman stepped back, and a spot of color came into her sallow cheeks.

"It—it might come in handy in your profession some time, sir. There are more crazy people loose in society ​and out of it than you would believe. No one realizes it; because the most dangerous kind are those who know them- selves that they are mad, and they hide it from other folks with the cunning that a sane mind wouldn't be capable of." She halted and drew a deep breath as if the subject were finished; but as he maintained a noncommittal silence and permitted his expression to register nothing more than a casual interest, she suddenly advanced once more until she stood close to his chair.

"Watch people's eyes, sir, when you are on a case. Watch their eyes. It isn't that they'll be wild and shifty necessarily, but if you'll study them long enough there'll be a time when even for just a second they'll let go like a curtain that's been held together and you'll get a peep at the diseased brain back of them. They may be crafty enough to outwit you a hundred times, and cunning enough to guard their actions and their speech so that you would be called crazy yourself if you were to accuse them of anything; but they can't always control their eyes! Remember that, sir, and it will maybe help you a little sometime."

She turned as if to go but he caught her wrist.

"Wait a minute, Gerda. You've got some particular reason for telling me this. Do you mean that you know something? That someone in this house is insane?"

"Hush! Oh, hush!" She drew back and he released her. "I meant nothing. I thought only to do you a kindness, to tell you something that I had learned which might at some future time be useful to you. Forgive me, sir, if I have been impertinent and let me go. I think Mees Meade is calling me."

"You think nothing of the kind," he retorted. "You're ​trying to tell me something, and you are afraid to come through with it. I could take you down to Headquarters and make you speak; but I won't, because you've volunteered this to me and I will keep quiet about it. I think you ought to finish what you've started, though. Tell me what's on your mind."

"Nothing," she repeated, still in hushed but vehement tones. "There is nothing on my mind, sir. I should not have spoken. You will let me depart now?"

Odell saw that there was nothing more to be gained from her at the time, either by bullying or cajolery, and he nodded reluctantly.

"All right, Gerda. If you have anything else you want to say to me any time just let me know, and I promise you I'll keep it to myself. Thank you for giving me the tip for future cases."

He had struck the right note, for at the door she turned and came slowly back.

"Remember, then, one thing that I have said to you, sir. Sometimes they are able to hide it so cleverly that you would be thought crazy yourself if you accused them without proof."

This time she left the room without looking back, and for a space he sat mentally going over their interview word for word. Her last admonition had made her attitude clear to him; she suspected someone but without actual knowledge, without proof. She also was convinced of that person's insanity, but whether that conviction came from mere intuition or expert knowledge of such cases remained to be seen. She might have lied about having been an attendant in a sanitarium; she looked quite capable of lying ​her soul away if it suited her purpose, yet unless she were a consummate actress she had been absolutely sincere m her warning. Her own gray-green eyes were strange, inscrutable except when alive with eagerness; they reminded him of those of some gaunt, famished cat. What a good, consistent hater she would be!

He aroused himself at last from his speculations and rang the bell. After an interval Jane, the buxom housemaid, appeared.

"Jane, there will be two men here presently to hang that picture in the library. Let me know when they come."

"Ye—yes, sir." Jane bobbed her head and prepared to retire from his presence with obvious haste.

"Here, wait a minute. I want to talk to you."

Her rosy cheeks blanched.

"Yes, sir." There was a distinct quaver in her tones.

"How long have you been employed here?"

"Three y-years, sir, and never a better mistress than the poor lady that's gone could a girl have!" This was easy ground and she breathed more freely.

"Who was the lady's maid before Gerda came?"

"Margaret McGrath, though she called herself Marguerite. She was a nice girl, sir, friendly and didn't give herself no airs. She left to get married to—"

"So she was nicer than Gerda, eh?" Odell regarded her quizzically, and she tossed her head.

"That stuck-up thing? You'd think she was a lady herself the way she goes along with her head in the air, and the cold politeness of her, as if the rest of us was nothing but dirt beneath her feet!" Jane's color had returned, and now it deepened with resentment. "It ain't such a grand ​job to be a lady's maid; I've known some housekeepers that was more free and pleasant to get along with, and I don't care if you go and tell her I said so. Didn't even want to room with me when she came, but got Mrs. Lorne to give her a room to herself. She won't be here long, though, now the poor mistress is gone."

"Why?" asked Odell.

"Because she's no good as a personal maid. I heard Miss Cissie say so herself. Anybody can mend lace and keep things picked up; but she's such a blockhead she can't even take messages over the 'phone for Miss Cissie, and she has to attend to it for herself. Miss Cissie complained about it to her mother only a few days before the poor lady hurt herself with that needle, but Mrs. Lorne liked her and wouldn't hear of sending her away. I guess things'll be different now."

It was evident that the affronted Jane would be quite willing to continue the subject indefinitely, but the detective had learned what he wanted to know and promptly took advantage of the opening which offered.

"What was the needle like which caused Mrs. Lorne's illness? Did you see it?"

"Indeed I did, sir." Jane visibly swelled with importance. "Wasn't it me went and got it when the doctor asked to see it? Miss Meade came out of the sickroom and told me to go get it, and I did; but I wrapped my hand up good in a towel before 1 touched it, sir, as you may believe. There it was, sticking into the work she'd dropped as innocent as if it wasn't the cause of what was going to be the poor lady's death. It had become unthreaded from the red silk, but it was right in place for the next stitch. ​I gave it to Doctor Adams myself, and then he sent me back for some of the embroidery silk and I got that too."

"Jane, when Mr. Chalmers died last week, who told you of it?"

"Peters, sir. It was too early for me to do the rooms upstairs and I'd cleaned all the parlor floor and was down in the kitchen when he came as white as a sheet and told us. I was like to faint, sir, and I haven't got the black fear off me yet! I'd be giving notice but for Miss Meade; she's so kind of helpless that I couldn't bear to leave her in the lurch, but I'm more scared than ever now."

"Why?"

Well, that picture falling always means death, sure; and the way accidents have been happening in the family looks like there was a curse on it, sir. There's a dog that comes and howls under the windows every night and fair gives me the creeps."

"That's all nonsense, Jane. Did you hear anything last night; not only when the picture fell but afterward, late in the night?"

"I did not, sir, thanks be!" She crossed herself devoutly; then her round, vacuous blue eyes opened wide upon the detective. "I heard nothing from the time I laid my head on the pillow at nine o'clock until the alarm clock went off. I was dusting the parlor here when Mr. Lorne came tumbling down the stairs."

"Why didn't you go out to help him?"

"Because I was too scared to move," Jane responded frankly. "After they'd got him in the library I crept out and down to the kitchen."

"You were scared, eh? Just because Mr. Lorne fell ​downstairs?" Odell's tone was scornful and Jane bridled beneath it.

"After the deaths and all, it's no wonder I was. I thought he was dead too, and it put me in a panic If it's all nonsense, sir, as you say, why is it that the police are here?"

He laughed at the impudent thrust.

"To put a stop to the silly notions you've all got. Jane, that morning when young Mr. Chalmers died, who cleaned up his room and the bathroom after the undertaker had gone?"

Jane's color ebbed in her cheeks.

"I did, sir; me and the cook together, for I wouldn't have gone into that room alone for all the money in the world." She shuddered. "We didn't wait for the undertaker either; as soon as the doctor came and the med—medical examiner, I think you call it—and made out papers as to how the poor young gentleman had died, the body was carried into one of the guest-rooms across the hall, and me and the cook started in on the bathroom. It was fairly ghastly, sir. There was blood everywhere—"

She was evidently going on with a gruesome relish, but the detective interrupted her.

"Did you notice any on the tub?"

"Yes, sir. The marks of poor Mr. Julian's hands covered with it, where he'd tried to keep himself up."

"Both hands, Jane? Are you sure of it?"

"Yes, sir, both hands. I remember because I called the cook's attention to them. Some of them was blurred, but there was one place where his two hands had grabbed the edge of the tub side by side. Cook can tell you, sir. There was the mark of both hands, plain."

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEEDLE

"IDON'T need the cook to corroborate you, Jane." The detective rose. "But I want to have a little talk with her nevertheless. Will you show me to the kitchen?"

Jane hesitated.

"She'll be starting lunch soon, sir, and I'd not like to be the one to bother her. She's goodhearted but fiery, being French."

"Never mind about that. I want to see her."

With obvious trepidation Jane led the way downstairs to a spacious kitchen where a very fat woman stood at the table beating eggs. She glanced up, lifting a triple row of chins and glared at the intruders; and Jane turned incontinently and fled.

"Good morning, Marcelle." He recalled opportunely that Miss Meade had mentioned her name to him.

"Bon jour, Monsieur," she responded with native politeness, but her small eyes were stony. "Will Monsieur have the goodness to tell me what he desires in my kitchen?"

"Something more important than that very excellent omelette which you are making." He smiled genially. "I'm from Police Headquarters."

"So I have heard, Monsieur, but the children must eat just the same. I do not know where this house would go ​to if it were not for me. No one keeping regular hours, no one eating." She turned to him and held out both hands. "I ask you, Monsieur, how one can take the sorrow when it comes, how one can bear the fear of he knows not what, if he have not the full stomach? Me, I am afraid, I tr-remble, I think I shall be the next that this so evil fiend which possesses this house shall take; but when I have eaten I say: 'If it comes, it comes. C'est tout. If it does not come, I give myself the great fear for nothing.'"

"There's philosophy in that," Odell conceded. "But I can't sit down and let it come to you all again, you know. I am here to find out if I can who this fiend of yours is, and I must have help. As you say, if it were not for you this house would be indeed upside down; and so I came to you. Tell me, Marcelle, what do you think of it all?"

"Me? I think much better of it since this morning. Monsieur." His crass flattery had had its effect, and Marcelle, the omelette forgotten, faced him with a good-natured smile and her fat arms akimbo. "Before, when Monsieur Julian was taken so soon after his mother, I say to myself: 'It is not good. It is not the will of the good God as Mademoiselle Meade try to tell me, nor is it accident which take two from the same family in so quick time. It is evil, and I do not know whether that evil be human or of the infernal spirits.' Now that I know it is human I am not so afraid. I wait only to catch him at his work!"

She made an eloquent gesture and was turning again to the table when Odell asked a hurried question.

"This is the tradesmen's door, is it not? The only back door?"

​"Yes, Monsieur."

"You can see anyone who goes out?"

"No one comes or goes that way that I do not know it, Monsieur."

"Did you see Peters when he left this morning?"

"No, Monsieur. That poltroon! Never did I like his eyes."

Odell started. Could that be what Gerda had meant? But why should she warn him when Peters had already disappeared?

"That he should run when women stay!" Marcelle continued in fine scorn. "He knew better than to go this way, for I should have stopped him. It must be that he used the front entrance. Bête!"

"Jane tells me that you helped her clean the rooms of young Mr. Chalmers after he died. Did you notice any marks upon the tub?"

"But yes, Monsieur. The marks of both the poor child's hands. It was terrible, that sight! It is not well to think of. Me, I am most sorry for poor Monsieur Gene."

"For Monsieur Gene," repeated the detective in astonishment. "Were he and his brother so inseparable, then?"

"It is not that, Monsieur; but the very night before Monsieur Julian died they have so wicked a quarrel! Me, I am a light sleeper and my room is just at the head of the stairs above them. On Tuesday evening I make a soufflé for dessert—and figure to yourself, it is a failure, it falls!" She paused dramatically. "I am disconsolate; for only an artist can make a soufflé, and I think that I am losing my skill. I have the headache and I am sick in my ​heart! I go to bed and at last I sleep, but I wake very late and I hear loud voices.

"I listen, for my door is open because of the heat. It is Monsieur Julian and Monsieur Gene and they are both so angry! I rise to close my door, but I hear one word that make me stand still like a statue. It is 'thief' and it is Monsieur Julian who says it. Then there is the sound of a blow; and me, I go out in the hall and look over the banisters. Monsieur Julian's door is also open, and there is the sound of scuffling and the messieurs breathing hoarsely and cursing.

"At last there came a jar and squeak of the bed-springs, as if one had thrown the other across the bed; and in a moment Monsieur Julian appear at the door of his room dragging Monsieur Gene by the collar.

"He throw him out into the hall and close the door; and me, I go back into my room without waiting to see Monsieur Gene pick himself up. But every time I look at his so sad face now I think he grieves him because his brother died without the reconciliation."

"You do not recall any more of the conversation than just the one word 'thief', do you, Marcelle?"

"No, Monsieur; and that was only the talk of bad little boys calling the names to each other that they did not mean. But this will not help you in your search nor put my omelette in the pan."

She turned with an air of finality to the table, and the detective went slowly upstairs. So Julian and Gene had quarreled on the last night of the former's life, and Gene had been afraid or unwilling to admit it to him that morning.

​Jane met him at the head of the stairs.

"The men are here now to put up the picture, sir."

"Very well, I'll see them." He went to the library, where he found two workmen standing in dubious silence before the portrait which they had raised from the desk. At his approach they turned and the huskier of the two remarked:

"We can't handle this. We ain't used to this sort of work, boss."

"I thought not." Odell smiled. "Are you the same men who were here this morning?"

"We are." The spokesman advanced truculently. "If you think it is any joke comin' twice and we paid by our time—"

"How long would it have taken you to hang that portrait, supposing you had done that sort of work before?" Odell interrupted.

"The good part of an hour," the other responded sulkily.

"Well, I'll pay you for that hour and you can loaf away the rest of it after the next two minutes if you'll give me your expert opinion on something you do know about."

The two men looked at each other and then the smaller one remarked:

"Sounds fair enough; but I knew there was somethin' phoney about this whole business after what happened this morning. What do you say, Bill?"

"All right." The other hitched his overall-strap over one shoulder. "We'll give it a try, sir."

Odell paid them and then drew from his pocket the short lengths of steel wire which he had cut from the back of the portrait-frame that morning.

"This end I clipped myself," he explained. "Can you ​tell me how the other end was cut? By what sort of a tool?"

Each of the men took a piece of the wire and examined it doubtfully. After a moment the smaller one looked up with a grin.

"I give it up, boss," he said. "It wasn't a clipper or the ends would be pinched together more; these are all frayed out. Looks as if it had been chewed. What do you say, Bill?"

Bill proved all at once to be a person of tact as well as discernment.

"It was either one of two things; an electric circular saw or an electric file. If I've tumbled to the game right, mister, I figure there wouldn't have been room to work the circular saw." He winked expansively toward the portrait "I guess you'll find that the party used an electric file, a small one but high-powered, and kept her hummin'."

"How long would it take to cut through one of these wires with the file you mention?" Odell asked.

"Five or six minutes."

"Does it make much noise?" the detective persisted.

"Only a low buzzin' and dronin'."

"Hard to operate?"

"No. A child could work it if it was taught how, but it takes strength to hold her in position once she gets to goin' so fast you can't see her. I wouldn't like to try it in any awk'ard position,"—again he glanced at the portrait—"and I'm the strongest man at Kenny's."

"That's all I wanted to know." Odell put the pieces of wire back into his pocket. "You can go now. You've got forty-five minutes to yourselves."

​"Yes, thank'ee, sir."

After they had taken their departure the detective stood for a minute or two in thought and then turned to ring the bell, but he found himself confronted once more by Miss Meade.

"Sergeant Odell, who were those men?"

"They were sent for to rehang the portrait, I believe, but they were mere carpenters and unable to handle the job," he replied. How long she had been standing there he could not imagine, and he began to feel a certain irritation against her. She was very gentle and appealing and all that, but why couldn't she walk so that one could hear her coming?

"Peters must have sent for them before he left, I suppose, but he should have consulted me." She was gazing at the face of the portrait and her voice was introspective. "That was my father, you know. He—but I am forgetting. I came to ask you if I might send you a tray of lunch in here?"

"Thanks, no." He glanced at his watch. "Miss Meade, will you give me the address of the beauty-parlor where Mrs. Lorne was having treatments at the time of her death?"

"It is not exactly a beauty-parlor; it is called Monsieur Florian's, and is at 681 Fifth Avenue. He considers himself a specialist, I believe; but I saw no difference in my sister. To me she had not changed since her first marriage."

"A specialist, you say? Will you tell me too, Miss Meade, what Doctor Adams's office hours are?"

"From nine to ten, one to two, and five to seven," she replied. "But he will look in sometime this afternoon to see ​how Mr. Lorne is getting along; and you may consult him then if you wish to do so."

"I do not know when I can get back, Miss Meade. I have an appointment now which I must keep. When I return I want to have an interview with Miss Chalmers and also with her brother, her youngest brother."

"I am afraid that will be impossible. He is a semi-invalid, and this is one of his bad days—"

Her expostulation was interrupted by a voice from the doorway.

"If you please, Miss Meade, there are four men here, and they say they want to speak to Sergeant Odell." It was Jane, and at her heels four plainclothesmen entered and stopped just within the doorway.

"Hello, Smith, Kelly, Porter; I asked the chief to be sure to send you. Hello, Taylor." Odell greeted them in turn and then remarked to the shrinking figure beside him, "They're my assistants from headquarters, Miss Meade. I'm sorry to inflict them upon you, but we've got to guard against a repetition of the outrages of last night and this morning. Please give them full liberty to go where they like about the house, and tell everyone that they are acting under my orders and must not be interfered with."

"Certainly, Sergeant Odell." Miss Meade moved to the door. "Let me know if there is anything I can do to aid them."

Odell issued instructions to his men, glanced at a telephone book for a moment, and then left the house. If he walked rapidly enough he could catch Doctor Adams at his office before he started upon his afternoon round of visits. He felt that he needed air and exercise after the morning ​with its problems crowding fast upon each other's heels. He had acquired a bewildering amount of data, most of which must in the end prove to be irrelevant; but he had made progress in one direction at least, and there remained just one more point to be cleared up before he handed in his report of the morning's progress to his chief.

Doctor Adams's office, the address of which he had learned in that last hasty glimpse at the telephone book, was a most imposing one; but the reception room was practically empty owing to the lateness of the hour, and soon Odell was ushered into the private consulting-office.

The doctor proved to be a small, genial man of about sixty, with a shock of snow-white hair and keen twinkling dark eyes beneath bushy white brows.

"From Police Headquarters?" he repeated when his visitor had disclosed his identity.

"Yes, Doctor. We have been asked to inquire into the death of Mrs. Richard Lorne."

"Dear me!" The doctor shook his head. "The medical examiner was quite satisfied with my report and that of the specialists. This will be a sad blow to the family. I cannot think who—"

"It was the family themselves who asked for an investigation," Odell remarked. "I believe that the cause of Mrs. Lorne's death was not fully determined."

"Most certainly it was!" the little doctor replied indignantly. "She died from blood-poisoning. We were all agreed upon that."

"Yet you were unable to check it," Odell reminded him quietly. "Were you all agreed also upon the nature of the poison involved?"

​"What do you mean, sir?"

The specialists admit that the case baffled them from the start; that they advised every known method of cure, but the infection kept spreading; and that they virtually gave up the case at last," Odell explained mendaciously.

"Well, if McCutchen admitted that there is no harm in my telling you that it was unique in my experience. There was every evidence of blood-poison, and yet it failed to respond in the least degree to the treatment usual in such cases," Doctor Adams admitted. "The blood itself, of which we took many samples for analysis, did not reveal the slightest trace of any poison; and the patient, although suffering great pain, remained conscious almost until the last"

"I believe you took some of the embroidery silk with which Mrs. Lorne had been working at the time she pricked her finger; did you not?"

"Yes, Sergeant. I thought that perhaps some of the dye had entered the puncture, but upon analysis it proved to be harmless."

The detective leaned forward in his chair.

"You took the needle also, I believe?"

The physician nodded.

"It was as clean as though it had been sterilized. The infection must have come from something else. If people would only realize the necessity of sterilization of even the smallest abrasion or puncture the death-rate would be lowered to an astonishing degree."

"Perhaps there was something wrong with Mrs. Lorne's blood," Odell ventured "Could that have been a contributory cause. Doctor?*

"No," the other replied emphatically. "Her blood was ​almost one-hundred per cent pure. Mrs. Lorne was in perfect health until the day she ran the needle into her finger. I have been her family physician for many years. I brought all her children into the world, and I knew her constitution thoroughly. Moreover, the analysis of her blood would have shown any impurity."

"You were, aware that up to the time of her illness she was taking a course of beauty treatment of some sort?"

The doctor snorted.

"Beauty butchery, you mean!" he retorted. "Quack surgery! Face-lifting, they call it; cut the skin around the temples and raise it to remove wrinkles and make the skin tight. I did all I could to prevent her making a fool of herself; but if you had known Mrs. Lorne, Sergeant, you would know that you might as well have talked to the winds as try to dissuade her from anything she had set her mind upon. She had the effrontery to tell her husband that I had ordered her to stay in town and undergo a course of electrical treatments; and I—I was weak enough to back her up. But I watched the progress of the skin-lifting process carefully, and I can certify that it had nothing to do with her death. The treatment was completed and the slight incisions fully healed several days before the needle episode."

"Have you that needle now, Doctor?" The query was made in a quiet, almost casual tone, but it seemed an age to the detective before the little doctor responded:

"I have. I don't know why I preserved it; but it marked a case which was, as I have said, unique in my experience. Would you like to see it, Sergeant?"

"If you will be so kind."

The physician walked over to a glass case which stood ​against the wall and removed from it a small box, which he laid upon the table and opened. Odell drew his chair up to the table and took from his pocket the small black paper packet and a piece of scarlet embroidery silk.

Then, while Doctor Adams watched him with growing amazement, he picked up the needle from the box, opened the packet and compared the others with it, afterward laying the packet aside. Next he took up the piece of embroidery silk and endeavored to thread the needle. His maneuvers would have been comic had it not been for the tenseness of his expression as for the following ten minutes he struggled with his unaccustomed task. At last he looked up at the other.

"Doctor Adams, while I was awaiting my turn to consult you I studied the nurse who acts as attendant in your waiting-room. I saw that she had keen eyes and a steady hand. May I ask that you summon her for a moment?"

"Certainly, Sergeant." The physician pressed a button on his desk. "I must confess that I am tremendously interested, but I cannot imagine what point you are trying to satisfy yourself upon."

"I will tell you presently," Odell responded as the trim young woman entered.

"Miss Wardell, this gentleman would like you to do something for him."

She shifted her tranquil gaze from the doctor to his visitor, and Odell held out to her the needle and silk.

"Will you thread this for me, please?"

Wondering, Miss Wardell took them from him; but after one or two fruitless attempts to comply she raised her eyes again to his.

​"It is impossible," she said quietly. "The silk is far too coarse for this needle. Wait." She had spied the packet upon the table, and opening it she selected another needle and threaded it triumphantly. "See. This is the proper needle for this silk; it is at least three sizes larger than the one you gave me first."

"Thank you." The detective's face gave no sign of the excitement which was surging within him. "You have decided a very nice little point for me."

When Miss Wardell had departed the physician bent over the table and demanded: "What does this all mean?"

"It means, Doctor, that I have obtained the last proof I required to convince me that my theory was based on fact. This needle which was given to you was not the one with which Mrs. Lorne pricked her finger; it had been substituted for the original, placed in the embroidery work on which the unfortunate lady had been engaged; and only the haste with which the substitution was made and the carelessness shown in selecting a needle at random from this packet without regard to its size has revealed the truth. Mrs. Lorne was murdered!"

CHAPTER IX

DOCTOR MC CUTCHEN'S THEORY

ON leaving the physician's office, Odell made his way to the establishment of the beauty expert He found Monsieur Florian to be an excitable, dapper little Frenchman with a piping voice and the manners of a dancing-master.

The detective introduced himself as a friend of the Lorne family; and Monsieur Florian was profuse in his regret at the untimely death of his client, and only too willing to demonstrate each phase of his treatment in order to prove that it could not have left Mrs. Lorne in a condition which would be conducive to blood-poisoning from the needle-prick.

Odell departed satisfied that nothing further was to be learned there, and after a hasty, belated luncheon he visited the offices of each of the specialists who had been called into consultation by Doctor Adams. Doctor Kelland was out on a case and Doctor Day gave the detective practically the same account of Mrs. Lorne's fatal illness as had Doctor Adams; it was only when he reached the great McCutchen that a ray of enlightenment came to him and he found an unexpected ally.

That internationally famous specialist on blood-diseases was a big enough man to admit the possibility of a mistake ​in the diagnosis of the case, even before Odell disclosed the fact of the substituted needle; and when that was demonstrated to him he sprang from his chair and paced the floor, striking his clenched fist into the cupped palm of his other hand.

"Good God, what fools we were! What arrant fools! That goes to show you, Sergeant, how even those of us who think we stand at the top of our profession take too much for granted. There was no suggestion of foul play, the outward indications were identical with those of septicemia of the ordinary kind; and we looked no farther than our noses, even though we were battling for a life."

"Were you the first specialist called in consultation with Doctor Adams, sir?" asked Odell.

"No, the last; Kelland was called first, then Day. It was only when it was realized that the patient was sinking that I was sent for; and it was too late then for me to do anything for her, even if I had discovered the truth. Her heart would not have withstood the effect of any drastic treatment. I looked over the record of the case thoroughly and found practically nothing to suggest, for they had tried everything known to medical science." He was still pacing the floor; but now he turned and faced the detective squarely. "I should have known then that there was something vitally wrong, but appearances deceived me. I own that I had some misgivings at first, but Kelland and Day were so positive and the patient so far gone that I permitted my judgment to be swayed, although I was not satisfied in my own mind; I could not understand why the patient had not responded to the treatment."

He recommenced his restless promenade, and Odell was ​silent for a moment or two. At last he remarked thoughtfully:

"It is a pity that there was no autopsy. I suppose it is too late now, Doctor McCutchen?"

"No. The autopsy must take place now, although I doubt that it will disclose anything of value toward revealing the truth. There are some poisons, you know, which can be introduced in just such a manner as by the prick of a needle that leave absolutely no trace in the system, and their effect is quick and sure; but they are rare and beyond the reach of a layman." He paused beside the desk. "I presume it would be unprofessional for me to ask if the family have any reason to suspect that Mrs. Lorne's death was not the result of sheer accident other than the fact that the needle was substituted?"

"I will tell you this, Doctor, under the seal of professional secrecy. You have heard of the tragic accident which befell Mrs. Lorne's eldest son only last week when while shaving he severed the jugular vein and died before help could reach him? I have good reason, amounting almost to proof, that his was not the hand which held the razor," Odell replied very gravely. "In addition to that, two attempts have been made since upon the lives of two other members of the family; and there is not the slightest clue to the identity of the murderer. These later attempts had they been successful would both have passed as accidents also, but for the fact that the guilty person had grown bolder and left unmistakable traces of his handiwork behind."

"Great heavens, this is frightful!" The specialist sank into his chair. "I read of young Mr. Chalmers's death, of course, but looked upon it unquestioningly as an accident. ​I had noted his highly nervous condition at the time when I was called in consultation on his mother's case, and the newspaper account of the manner of his death appeared plausible enough. It is a horrible thing to believe, because taken in connection with the probable poisoning of his mother it points to the work—"

He hesitated and the detective finished the sentence for him.

"Of someone on the inside, some member of the household? Exactly, Doctor."

"But there is no clue, you say, to the identity of that someone? Has not Mr. Lorne any suspicion, any theory to advance?"

"Mr. Lorne was one of the intended victims himself and is too ill now to give me any information; but from the few words I did exchange with him I believe him to be as much in the dark as I am. They haven't an enemy in the world that I have been able to discover, Doctor; and the attorney who has been their family lawyer for many years has supplied me with the most minute details of their history." Odell paused. "If the crimes are not the work of someone in the house, there is at least a member of the household who has a guilty knowledge of them, for there must have been an accomplice inside to admit him. But I am taking up your valuable time, Doctor?"

"You are not, Sergeant," the specialist replied with emphasis. "A frightful mistake has been made by myself and my colleagues, and I want to do all that I can to retrieve it. Unfortunately, I was called in too late to save Mrs. Lorne in any event, as I told you; but I feel equally culpable with the others. Did you tell Doctor Day what ​you have told me about the substitution of the needle?"

"No, Doctor. Merely that the family physician had admitted that the case stumped him from the beginning. The medical examiner will notify them both as well as Doctor Kelland and yourself of the time which will be settled upon for the exhumation of the body and the autopsy." The detective rose as if on the point of departure. "In the meantime, while the necessary formalities are being arranged, I wonder if you could give me something to work on?"

"I should be only too happy to, Sergeant. This is going to be rather a blow to my colleagues and myself when the truth reaches the public. But I'm not thinking of that now; all I want is to see justice done; and to be honest I feel a certain amount of professional curiosity. I'm anxious to know what poison was used and how we were all so cleverly hoodwinked." Doctor McCutchen's keen eyes narrowed behind their tortoise-rimmed glasses. "I'll be glad to have you call upon me for any help that I may be able to give you."

A discreet knock sounded upon the door, and at the specialist's impatient bark of admission a white-clad attendant put her head inside.

"Doctor, will you see—"

"Nobody this afternoon. Not at home until six!" He interrupted her shortly, and as the head withdrew he turned to the detective. "What information can I give you, Sergeant?"

"You spoke just now of certain poisons which might have been used and which would leave no traces in the system, Doctor. Will you tell me about them and where they might ​be obtained by someone not a member of the medical profession?"

"There are comparatively few—" The specialist broke off abruptly. "I tell you, there's something wrong with that poisoned-needle theory. I have made about as profound a study of toxicology as anyone in the country, and I do not know of any poison so introduced and leaving no trace which would produce that effect of a slowly progressing septicemia. There are some which would cause instant death and others which would merely paralyze. I naturally do not care to give an opinion before the autopsy, especially in view of the mistake which you have convinced me that my colleagues and I have made; but I don't mind advancing a theory for your consideration.

"What if that needle had not been poisoned in the sense you mean? What if it had merely been dipped in the serum from some other case of blood-poisoning? That is the one serious danger which surgeons have to face, you know, and which has brought about meticulous care in sterilization. The result would have been exactly what was seen in Mrs. Lorne's case at first."

"Yes; but she did not respond to any of the forms of treatment which were tried." Odell saw his carefully built-up theory falling to pieces. "You are positive, Doctor, that there is no poison?"

The specialist waved the question aside impatiently.

"I said 'at first,' Sergeant. Let us suppose, then, that Mrs. Lorne is really suffering from infection: let us suppose also that the would-be murderer or his confederate is right at hand, a trusted member of the household. As I ​remember, Doctor Adams was not called in until the third day and by that time the infection had spread well up into the lower arm. One of his first steps would be to make an incision near the original puncture for drainage. What if after this was accomplished and the first treatment had been finished but before the patient had begun to respond to it, the dressing had been removed and the incision reinfected? What if this were repeated until death ensued? Mrs. Lorne would have died from septicemia, true; but she would have been murdered as surely as if she had been stabbed through the heart."

"By George, I believe you have hit it, Doctor," Odell exclaimed. Then a shade of doubt crossed his face, to be as quickly suppressed, and he added hastily, "I'm going to act upon that theory at once. Thank you for giving me so much of your time."

"You will keep me informed of your progress?" the specialist asked as they shook hands.

"Surely; and you will hear from the medical examiner about the autopsy. Thank you again, sir, and good afternoon."

In the street once more, Odell turned his footsteps in the direction of the Meade house. The specialist's theory was ingenious; but had it been a wholly disinterested one? If it could be proven it would, of course, exculpate himself and his colleagues from all censure in the matter of their diagnosis; but there seemed on the face of it to be insuperable difficulties in the path of such an hypothesis. One or the other of the two nurses must have been constantly on guard, and Miss Meade had scarcely left her sister's bedside. Not even she would have been permitted to change ​the dressings; that could only have been done by Doctor Adams himself or the nurses—

The nurses! He made a mental note to learn all that he could about them at the earliest possible moment; but meanwhile the afternoon was advancing and much remained to be done before he reported to the captain of his bureau that night. Much that had occurred in the house of mystery that day had been inexplicable to him, and there were so many loose threads to be gathered together that he felt as if he were attempting to solve four problems at once. A score of questions were teeming in his brain, and not the least insistent of them was the significance of Gerda's hint about insanity.

When he reached the house Jane, who admitted him, informed him that the doctor had come and gone. He started toward the drawing-room but hearing the low murmur of voices paused.

"Who is here?" he asked.

"Oh, just Mr. Tad—Mr. Traymore, sir. The young gentleman who comes to see Miss Nan from next door," Jane simpered meaningly. "I'll call Miss Meade."

"No. Tell Miss Chalmers, the elder Miss Chalmers, that I would like to see her in the library at once, please."

"She's layin' down," Jane observed somewhat doubtfully. "She had hysterics all the morning and she told Gerda that she wasn't to be disturbed now by anybody."

"Take my message nevertheless." There was a sharp note of authority in his tone, and Jane scurried away.

The temperamental Miss Chalmers was not to be so easily bullied, however, and it was a good twenty minutes before she trailed languidly into the library with an air of ​injured innocence. Her lower lip was thrust out sullenly and there was a gathering storm in her eyes, but the detective gave no heed.

"Sit down, please. Miss Chalmers," he began in a brisk, business-like way. "You informed your family last night at the dinner-table, I believe, that you were going to leave the house to-day. Why?"

"That is my own affair." She ignored the chair to which he had motioned and stood very straight before him. "I do not choose to discuss it."

"But I do. You will be good enough to reply to my questions or I shall be compelled to resort to stronger measures than this informal interview." He paused and then added: "The attitude which you are taking in this matter might be construed to signify that you did not wish the person who has made these attempts on the lives of your stepfather and your brother to be apprehended."

Cissie drew a deep, convulsive breath, and her little fists clenched.

"What do you mean?" she demanded through set teeth. "How dare you say such hateful things to me? I have nothing to tell you that would be of any help in your investigation; and I resent your attitude, your impertinence!"

Her voice was shaking now and the storm broke into tears of hurt pride.

"I am very sorry," Odell's tones were coolly ironical, "but my dear young lady, you will find the attitude of my superiors far more than impertinent if you compel me to take you before them."

She sniffed in disdain and dried her tears.

"You would not dare!" she scoffed. "If you tried to ​charge me with knowing anything about the dreadful things that have been going on here—"

"I should bring no charge. You would merely be compelled to tell the truth. Your personal antagonism will not be permitted to interfere with the performance of my duty. Miss Chalmers, why did you announce your intention of leaving your home?"

"I didn't," she denied. "I said I would go and visit a girl friend for a few days; the atmosphere of this house had gotten on my nerves."

She spoke in a more subdued tone, but still sullenly.

"Then why did you tell your aunt this morning that you would not go near any of your friends and drag them into the notoriety of this case? Which was the falsehood, Miss Chalmers?"

"Neither. I—I changed my mind this morning, that is all."

"Where had you finally decided to go?"

Cissie hesitated and at length stammered:

"To—to a hotel. I would go anywhere to get away from this house. We are none of us safe here."

"Miss Chalmers, what precipitated your decision last night? Was it the outburst which your younger brother made at the table, the outburst in which he voiced the vague fears you had all entertained for the past week?"

"I suppose so," she shuddered. "It sounded so awful put into words. Of course, we are all dreadfully sorry for Rannie—you have heard that he is crippled?—and we try to be patient with his moods; but you haven't seen him, you don't know him, Sergeant Odell. He is so bitter, and his tongue is so ruthless, that you just can't have any real ​affection for him. I know it must sound disloyal to speak so of one's own brother; but he doesn't care for anyone. His only pleasure is to torment and wound others. Last night father threatened again to have him put away in a sanitarium; and I wish he would. Aunt Effie is the only one who has opposed that."

"Miss Meade is very much attached to him?"

"Well, I suppose she ought to be." Cissie shrugged. "It is her fault that he is a cripple."

"Miss Meade's fault?" Odell asked casually.

"Yes." There was a little vindictive gleam in her round blue eyes. "She dropped him when he was a baby, and he became hunchbacked. She has simply idolized him ever since—remorse, I imagine—and spoiled him dreadfully. None of the rest of us have ever counted with her; and she'd go through fire and water for him."

"Why did your stepfather suggest placing him in a sanitarium? Is his mind affected?" Odell's tone was still casual, and his eyes appeared to be fastened upon the paperweight which he was balancing between his fingers, but in reality he was watching each changing expression of the girl's face.

"No; I would scarcely say that." She smiled scornfully. "He is quite the most brilliant member of the family, but his cleverness is all warped, somehow. Father meant a sanitarium for cripples out in the country; for Rannie is really an invalid, you know. He spends most of his time in bed, with Aunt Effie nursing him and submitting to his abuse. After last night's scene when he mocked us all I—I felt as if my nerves just wouldn't stand any more."

"You were saying much the same thing to your aunt in ​the hall this morning, and when she stopped you she said she wished it had been you. What did she mean by that remark, Miss Chalmers?"

"That it had been me whom she dropped instead of Rannie, I imagine," Cissie flashed resentfully. "Aunt Effie is always like that when you say one word against Rannie."

"You say he is an invalid. Is he weak physically?"

"His spine troubles him a great deal at times, and he cannot walk very far; but he has tremendous strength in his hands and arms. He used to pinch us black and blue when he was in a temper as a child." Cissie halted suddenly, and when she spoke again there was a rising note of apprehension in her tones. "Why are you asking me all these questions about him. Sergeant Odell? Surely you don't suspect him of—of—"

"Do you, Miss Chalmers?" He shot the question at her; and she tossed her head indignantly, but not before he had seen her quail.

"Certainly not! How dare you insinuate such a thing! My brother a—murderer? You must be mad!" Her voice rose shrilly and then broke, and she sank into her chair and covered her face with both hands. "Oh, I don't know what to think! Some one of us must know! I am afraid—afraid!"

CHAPTER X

IN THE PARROT'S CAGE

FOR some minutes after he had brought his interview with Miss Chalmers to a close Barry Odell tramped back and forth across the library-floor deep in thought. It was patent that the young woman had lied when she mentioned a hotel as her proposed destination that morning; yet there had been truth and a ring of desperation in her tone when she defied her aunt and declared that she had no intention of going near any of their friends. If Samuel Titheredge's tale of her infatuation for Farley Drew were based on fact it might have been her intention to go to him; but the detective knew that her reception had she done so would have meant a sad awakening for her.

Farley Drew might have been quite willing to marry a young girl of assured social position and comparative wealth even in these days of colossal fortunes; but to elope with her when the shadow of murder hung over her home, and notoriety of the most sinister sort loomed close, would have been an entirely different matter. Drew himself was traveling too close to the line just then, as the detective knew, to invite any publicity and place himself even indirectly in the path of the investigation.

He had not yet had an opportunity to examine the letters which he had appropriated from Gene's desk, but he had ​detailed one of his men to keep a sharp look-out on that young gentleman's activities; trail him if he left the house, intercept any letter he might attempt to send, and record a possible telephone message. Perhaps he had already tried to communicate with Drew.

A discreet knock upon the library door interrupted his meditations, and he opened it to find Taylor, another of the men to whom he had assigned a special duty, confronting him.

"Jane told me you had got back, Sergeant, and I thought I had better report to you now if you've got time to hear me.

"Shut the door and fire away, Taylor." Odell seated himself once more. "You searched the servants' rooms first, as I directed?"

"Yes, sir. That butler must have changed from his livery into a plain suit; and Jane says that his derby hat, light overcoat, and a cane with a dog's head on it are missing. Everything is wide open in his room, none of the bureau drawers nor the trunk locked; and he left in such a hurry that he forgot his bank-book, although there is no check-book around."

"Have you the bank-book?"

"Here it is." Taylor handed him a thin tan book and a handful of letters, together with a page or two of papers upon which names and figures were arranged in a sort of chart.

Odell ran his eye down the columns in the bank-book first.

"Humph! He had over two thousand last spring, and his account has fluctuated since like a miniature ​stock-market gone crazy," the detective commented. "He has drawn out two or three hundred at a clip and sometimes put back double the amount on the following day; but he's drawn out more than he has deposited in the long run. According to this, he has less than seven hundred left now."

Taylor grinned.

"Give a look at those papers and you will find the explanation for that, sir. The old bird played the races. The letters are all innocent enough. They are from that sister of his on Staten Island; and there isn't another thing in his room except clothes and a sporting magazine or two."

Odell glanced over a letter, noted that the rest were all in the same writing, and handed them back together with the bank-book and racing-charts.

"Put them back where you found them, Taylor; there's a chance that he will turn up yet of his own accord. Now tell me what you found in the other rooms."

"Nothing in Jane's room or the cook's that would interest you; and there was no grate or fireplace in any of the servants' rooms. Jane has a lot of cheap showy clothes and a stack of letters from a bunch of fellows, but they are all innocent enough. Marcelle has just a few letters written in a foreign language—French, I think—some books the same, and a rosary. She has mighty few clothes; but her room is the cleanest of the lot, and her bank-book shows four thousand dollars, all small deposits at a time and none drawn out. She's a thrifty soul, that Marcelle! I don't quite get this Gerda, though; the lady's maid."

"Why?"

"Well, her trunk and bag are cheap and unmarked but ​new, as though she had just bought them before she came here, Sergeant; and there isn't a letter or scrap of paper in her room. I've been makin' up to Jane to get the dope, like I always do on a case of this kind; and she tells me that Gerda hasn't written a letter nor received one in all the six months she has been here. Now, I ask you, is that usual with servants?" Taylor leaned over the table the better to carry his point. "I've gone through the rooms of many of 'em but this is the first one I ever saw that didn't have a personal thing in it except just clothes and toilet articles all unmarked. The store tabs have even been taken out of the dresses and coats and hats. There's another thing strange about 'em, too; they're all dark and plain but they're fine quality, finer than any ordinary servant would appreciate or pay for; and the toilet articles are real ivory, or I'll eat my hat!"

"Sure you haven't been listening too much to Jane?" Odell looked quizzically at his subordinate. "She's got it in for Gerda and tried to make a mystery of her to me; but I've already interviewed the woman, and although she is a superior sort for a lady's maid her story is straight enough; she gave me a complete account of where she worked before and how she happened to get this place. Lay off her, Taylor; you'll draw a blank there."

It was no part of Odell's plan to have his henchmen get a line on the case and begin to speculate on their own account concerning it; they were there merely to carry out his orders and he would brook no self-appointed assistants as a matter of authority.

"Oh, all right," Taylor responded shortly. "Have it your own way, Sergeant; but if you ask me—"

​"I didn't!" Odell interrupted sharply. "Where did you search next?"

"The young lady, the youngest one, was sitting with her father, so I had a chance to give her room the once over; but there was nothin' doin' there either. She has a coal-grate, but it was clean and polished." Taylor sat back somewhat sulkily in his chair, but he was careful to reply promptly. "Her desk was full of the things a young society girl usually keeps—invitations and theater programs and dance-cards and all that flummery. There were some letters of condolence, too, on the death of her mother and brother, and a bundle tied with a blue ribbon; lot of sentimental kid stuff and all of them signed 'Tad.'"

"I know all about that." Odell cast a glance toward the door. "Anything else?"

"High-brow books and a golf-bag, riding-breeches, and a Red-Cross uniform that's seen a lot of wear." Taylor's good-natured grin reasserted itself. "She must be a regular girl if she is a swell, that Miss Nan. There wasn't a thing locked in her room, either."

"Her room is on the third floor opposite Mr. Chalmers's, isn't it? Did you see Porter?"

"I didn't see him but I heard him." Taylor's grin expanded into a chuckle. "Mr. Gene must have seen him on guard and invited him in, for from what I heard outside the door they were playin' 'rum' together and Porter had about mortgaged his next three months' pay to the young gentleman!"

Odell did not smile. He felt that he had taken Gene's measure to the weak, snobbish soul of him; and if he had ​stooped to fraternize with a plainclothesman there was some ulterior motive behind it. Porter was not easily taken in, but Odell resolved to caution him nevertheless.

"I went down to the second floor, but I couldn't disturb Mr. Lorne of course; and the old lady, Miss Meade, was in her room. Just then Miss Chalmers—Miss Cissie, as Jane calls her—came out like a whirlwind, slammed her door, and went off down the back stairs clicking her heels at every step as if she were mad clear through; and I took a peep into her room!" Taylor threw up both hands. "Lace and ribbons, perfume and powder, and all in a hopeless jumble. It'd take a day to go through it properly; but I steered straight for the only thing I could find locked up, a little drawer in her vanity dresser. The only things I found in it, after I got it open were these notes, a box of cigarettes, a bottle of medicine, and a little round jar of rouge. Looks like the young lady was tryin' to learn to be a sport on the quiet. There was a grate in her room, too; but it was as clean as the one in her sister's. The notes are all in the same handwriting, you see, and all as proper as you please; but this one taken in connection with the bottle of medicine I found in the drawer looks kind of"—Taylor recalled his late rebuke and shrugged. "Oh, well, judge for yourself, sir."

He placed the notes before Odell upon the table and pointed out one of them as he spoke. A glance sufficed to show the detective that they were, as Taylor had said, in the same writing; and that writing was the unmistakable hand of Farley Drew, whose letters to Gene were now reposing in Odell's pocket. He picked up the note indicated and read:

​

"Dear Princess Goldilocks:

"I send with this the magic potion to drive away that sleeplessness of which you told me. It is quite harmless, really, but don't take more at a time than I told you. I dare not say what I wish your dreams may be, but I am sure they will be pleasant ones. May I hope to see you to-morrow at the Landis'?

"Ever faithfully,

"Farley."

Odell folded the note and put it into his pocket with the others.

"What was that bottle of medicine you found in the drawer, Taylor?" he asked.

"It was labeled 'extract of camomilla,' but I've seen and smelled and tasted chloral before. A fine little habit to start a young girl on! I didn't bring it down to you, but if you want it I'll slip in the first chance I get—"

"No, don't disturb it as long as you're sure of its contents; but get in when the opportunity offers and put back these notes in the drawer. Is that all?"

Taylor hesitated, and his expression changed.

"Well, no, Sergeant. When I came out of that room just a few minutes ago I heard the most unearthly screechin' and chatterin' goin' on behind a closed door across the hall; and then somebody said quite distinctly over and over as if they were bragging about it: 'Nobody knows how strong I am. Nobody knows how strong I am.' It was a queer voice, and I stopped to listen. After it kept that up for a while it changed and began to whimper like a kid fretting. 'Hot,' it repeated again and again. 'Hot. It burns.'

​"I knocked, meaning to ask a fool question as an excuse just to see who was talking, and the same voice called 'come in'; so I opened the door. There, right facin' me was a big parrot's cage with the blame bird in it hangin' upside down first from one foot and then from the other, and twistin' its neck around so as to stare at me. It was a man's room all right, with a bunch of neckties hangin' on a rack by the dresser and a collar-box and military brushes in plain sight. I didn't notice any fireplace or grate. The head of the bed was hidden by the open door, but the foot of it looked smooth; and I never thought anyone was there.

"I started to walk over to the parrot's cage when a high whining voice behind me made me turn in a hurry; and there all curled up in a knot on the bed, as high up on the pillows as he could get, was a hunchback, grinnin' at me with a mean twisted kind of a smile.

"I don't mind tellin' you, Sergeant, that it gave me a turn; for though Jane had said somethin' about young Mr. Chalmers bein' crippled I didn't expect anythin' like that. He's got a face—but wait till you see him. I backed up to the door, apologizin' as well as I could; but he pulled himself up in bed and asked if I was Sergeant Odell. I said 'no,' that I was just one of your men. I could see then that he was only a kid, about seventeen or eighteen, but he looks as old as the world.

"He asked in a kind of a mockin' way if we'd made up our minds yet who the practical joker was that had dropped the picture on his brother and thrown his stepfather downstairs; and when I said 'no' again, he laughed in a shrill cackle like an old woman, and the parrot imitated him. I got out of that room as soon as I could, and I met Jane at ​the foot of the servants' staircase. She told me you were here, and I thought I'd report, as I've finished the job you gave me, all but Miss Meade's room and Mr. Lorne's and Mr. Gene's."

"How about Kelly and Smith?"

Taylor grinned once more.

"Kelly's down in the cellar diggin' in the coal for those tools you told him to find; he's looked everywhere else. Smith's down in the kitchen tryin' out his correspondence-school French on the cook. Gerda wouldn't give him a look!"

"Well, go and cultivate Jane, and see if you can get any dope out of her along the lines I told you this morning. Work on her fears and discount her imagination, and you'll soon have every detail of the past week from her point of view. I'm going now to have a little talk with Randall Chalmers."

As he went slowly up the back stairs Odell mentally listed the data which Taylor's search of the rooms had revealed. The most significant point seemed to be Gerda's strange aloofness not only from the other members of the household but from the world in general, and her efforts to efface all record of the past and render it as difficult as possible for her identity to be traced back farther than the day she had entered the house, as evidenced by her care in removing even the tabs from her clothing.

Yet she had willingly enough volunteered information that morning as to where she had worked previously, and it was improbable that the late Mrs. Lorne would have taken into her service, particularly in such an intimate position ​as that of lady's maid, a woman of whose past record and references she had not satisfied herself.

Leaving the problem for future meditation, Odell walked softly along the hall and paused before Randall Chalmers's door. From behind it there came to him the raucous voice of the parrot raised once more in the same whimpering plaint which Taylor had heard: "Hot. It burns."

He knocked upon the door.

"Come in," a whining voice called irascibly; and the detective entered.

The bed was empty but upon the couch was curled a hunchbacked figure clad in a grotesquely patterned bathrobe. Odell was conscious of a pair of flashing black eyes staring at him from behind a disordered shock of long dark hair, and of thin lips drawn into an indescribable leer. Yet the detective's tones were curiously gentle when he spoke.

"Sorry to intrude upon you, Mr. Chalmers; but I know you'll help me if you can, and when I tire you just tell me to go away. I'm Odell."

He had struck the right note, and his primary object was achieved; for the boy pulled himself up on his pillows with an air of suddenly awakened interest and pushed the hair back from his eyes.

"And what makes you think I can help you?" he demanded bruskly but with the habitual whine temporarily banished from his tones.

"Well, for one thing, you certainly hit the nail on the head last night at dinner, you know." Odell's smile robbed the words of any offensive significance. "Your family were laboring under what we might call a hunch, I suppose; but ​you were the first to realize that it was a feeling of fear and suspense held in common among you all and to give voice to it. I fancy you are rather given to studying the people around you, digging under the surface, for your own amusement perhaps; and that's why I've come to you."

"Amusement? Good Lord, do you think it's amusing to find out that your family are a pack of hypocritical—". The boy broke off suddenly, his thin, sallow, claw-like hands clenched. "I've had nothing else to do but study them, hang it. I know them all backward, like a fellow who's marooned on some desert island with a few books by indifferent authors."

Odell nodded understandingly.

"I know. That's just why I've come to you. I haven't had time to read these books, you see; and I must know their contents quickly or another of them may be permanently closed."

He had continued the boy's metaphor, and the latter lay for some moments staring fixedly at him with no change of expression. Then gradually the sneering smile vanished as if a hand had passed across his lips.

"Another of them?" he repeated. "Gene got off scot-free, and Dad with only his arm and a rib or two out of commission. You must mean—"

"That your fears were well founded? I am afraid so." Odell's tone was studiously callous. "That's the trouble with people when they start murder on a large scale; success makes them too confident, too impatient. These tragic accidents which have occurred under this roof might have passed unsuspected for what they seemed on the surface to be; but they came too close together. The coincidence ​impressed itself upon all your minds; and when you brought matters to a head last night you precipitated the later events."

"Mother and Julian," the boy breathed but without audible emotion; his tone suggested rather a grim confirmation. "So you got it, did you, Sergeant? I've known it all along; and when the rest talked about fate and coincidence I could have laughed at their smug blindness!"

"How did you know?" the detective asked coolly.

"How do you know someone is staring at you in a crowd when your back is turned?" He twisted uneasily upon the couch. "What makes you conscious of another's presence sometimes when they've entered without a sound? I knew it, that's all. Even before Julian's death I was waiting; I have felt as though there was someone else in the house, another personality hiding behind a familiar one—but all this must sound like rot to you."

"By no means." Odell seated himself where he could see every changing expression on that dark, saturnine, strangely old face. "We know, you and I, that there is someone in this household who if not the prime mover in this series of events is at least an accomplice. You can't shut your eyes to that fact."

"I don't want to, Sergeant," the boy retorted grimly. You say that when I brought matters to a head last night I precipitated the attacks upon Gene and Dad. That presupposes the idea that someone at the dinner-table is guilty. It is rather a rotten thing for a fellow to face, but at any cost this damnable business has got to stop! After all, it is only what has been in the back of my head for more than a week. The devil of it is that I can't see any motive, nor, ​well as I think I know the family and small as my regard is for most of them, could I believe any one of them capable of conceiving and carrying out such a scheme.

"Gene is too weak and cowardly for one—you see I am perfectly frank with you. The girls are out of it, I'm sure; Nan's only a serious-minded kid, and Cissie is a selfish, calculating little beast, but there is nothing of the potential murderess in her make-up. Aunt Effie is afraid of her own shadow, and she wouldn't hurt a mouse; while as for Dad—well, he worshiped mother, and her death nearly killed him; so if all these accidents were the work of one person that lets him out. Moreover, he wouldn't have deliberately thrown himself downstairs to avert a suspicion which didn't even exist; nor did he have an opportunity last night, as far as I can learn, to tamper with that top step. Old Sam Titheredge stayed overnight and shared his room."

There was something—a touch of cynicism, the shadow of a sneer—in the boy's tone which made Odell scan his face more closely, but he merely asked:

"And the servants?"

"Peters is a pompous old fool, and I think he has only beaten it because he is scared stiff; Marcelle is stupid and shrewd at the same time, like so many of the peasant class in France, but she's loyal and crazy about all of us. Jane is a blockhead; and Gerda—well, what do you think of Gerda yourself, Sergeant?"

A suggestion of that significant cunning smile played once more about his bloodless lips as he put the question; and the detective replied noncommittally:

"She appears to be a very superior sort of maid."

The boy chuckled dryly.

​"Cagey, aren't you? Not that I blame you; I suppose I'm under suspicion myself along with the rest. And the opinions I've expressed to you of my family aren't exactly dutiful; are they? The fact is that I have no more use for any of them than they have for me, and plain speaking is one of the few indulgences left to me. Aunt Effie is the only one who hasn't treated me ever since I can remember as though I were some sort of blight on the family. Not that I'm looking for sympathy." The black eyes flashed. "I'm not trying to make out a brief for myself, Sergeant; but I wouldn't take the trouble to put any of them out of the way."

Despite the callous words Odell felt a certain sympathy for the pitiful, repulsive creature lying there; for beneath the bitter contempt he read the underlying resentment of the boy's lonely, proud spirit. Warped though his mentality might be by constant brooding over his infirmity, there had been a ring of sincerity im his tone, and the detective responded quickly:

"I do not think that you would. But about Gerda; your mother was quite satisfied with her services, was she not? Liked her, in fact?"

"I suppose so or she would not have kept her along. What's the idea, Sergeant? Think her a bit above her place? She may be; but if she has any ulterior motive in being here, you can take it from me it is not for the purpose of exterminating us."

Could he have spoken from knowledge? Was there a mystery within a mystery in this strange household? In the presence of this weirdly precocious lad the detective experienced again that same sense of bafflement which had ​attacked him more than once since he took hold of the case, as if a door had suddenly been shut in his face.

Rannie had turned his head away and closed his eyes as if to indicate that as far as he was concerned the interview was over, and Odell rose.

"Well, I won't bother you any more now; and I'll see that my men do not. I understand that one of them blundered in a while ago."

"No. Old Socks here, short for Socrates, you know, invited him in. Didn't you, old boy?"

He nodded toward the parrot's cage, and the bird still hanging upside down ruffled its feathers and remarked dolorously:

"It burns."

"What is he talking about?" Odell walked over to the cage and poked a tentative finger between the bars.

"Look out, he'll give you a nasty nip," Rannie warned. "He doesn't like strangers—well, what do you know about that?"

The parrot had hooded his eyes in speculative fashion, shifted his feet, and finally sidled over and presented his head to be scratched. For a full minute Odell stood there with his back to the couch, his eyes traveling swiftly over the cage and its inmate. Then he turned and nodding casually to Rannie started for the door.

"Wise old bird," he commented.

"You'll drop in and let me know how you get on?" the boy asked almost eagerly.

Odell promised, and closing the door softly behind him he went downstairs. The last two minutes in the invalid's room had served to dash to chaos all his previous ​calculations, vague though they had been; and the fog of mystery which encompassed him seemed to have deepened to a solid, impenetrable wall.

It was the parrot which had furnished him with the last and most conflicting clue. Neither the bird's whimpering plaint nor its suspended position in the cage was without reason. On the detective's first approach to the bird he had observed that its upturned feet were both badly blistered. The rods upon which it habitually stood had not been replaced in their supports, but lay on a table close by; and the sliding tray which formed the bottom of the cage was charred black.

His first thought was that the boy in sheer love of cruelty might have been torturing his pet, but a closer inspection had revealed amidst the gravel with which the tray had been lightly sprinkled a few blackened slivers of wood.

Gene Chalmers had told the truth. The sawdust had not been burned in his grate but in the tray from the parrot's cage, and the ashes later placed where they were found.

CHAPTER XI

THE VOICE

CAPTAIN LEWIS looked up with a grin as Odell entered the bureau at Police Headquarters that evening and sank into a chair beside the big desk.

"I thought there must be something doing when you 'phoned down for eight of the boys to-day," he commented. "What's going on at the Meade house?"

"Murder," responded Odell succinctly. "Systematic murder on a bigger scale than this city has known for years, and an inside job. Someone is trying to wipe out the whole family. Captain; and I have struck a million clues and no motive. In all the five years I have been on your staff I've never seen anything to equal this case."

The captain gave a low whistle.

"Murder, eh? Sure of it, Odell?"

"Does a man cut his own throat by accident, severing the jugular vein; drop his razor, grope around with bloody hands to save himself, and then before he dies hunt for that razor so that he shall be found with it in his hand?" demanded the detective. "You know how young Julian Chalmers was supposed to have died last week. I have proof that someone took his razor from him, cut his throat with it, and then slipped it back into his hand as he lay dead; but they didn't take into consideration the fact that ​the marks of both his hands in blood were upon the side of the bathtub."

"You can prove that?"

"Two reliable witnesses. Moreover, I'm convinced that his mother, Mrs. Richard Lorne, was also murdered not a month before."

"Mrs. Lorne died of blood-poisoning."

"Yes. By poison with which she was deliberately if indirectly infected."

Odell gave his chief a detailed description of the case as he had learned it from the physicians, and demonstrated once more his discovery of the substitution of the needle; and the captain's skeptical manner changed.

"Good work, Odell!" he exclaimed. "Your proof is more conclusive in the instance of young Chalmers's death than in his mother's; but it is circumstantial enough in that alone to warrant a thorough investigation. I'll see the Chief Medical examiner to-night and arrange for an autopsy at once. We'll have to keep a soft pedal on the press, though, and go slow on this 'inside job' stuff until we have the dope. The Meades are an influential old family and Lorne has big money interests back of him. Did you get an interview with, each of them?"

"All except the youngest daughter and Lorne himself; but I saw them both for a moment. Any news of that butler, Peters?"

"Not yet, but I'm having his sister's house watched. What was that you handed me over the 'phone this morning about two attempts having been made upon the lives of two members of the family within the last twenty-four hours?"

​The detective told his story from the inquiries which he and Titheredge had made at the carpenter's shop concerning the mysterious telephone message to the conclusion of his interview with Randall Chalmers and the discovery in the parrot's cage; and after he had finished the captain sat for a while in silence.

"Well, let's say that you have established proof of the murder of Julian Chalmers and the attempted murder of his brother and of Richard Lorne," he remarked at last. "You have also strong circumstantial evidence of the murder of Mrs. Lorne; and it all points to an inside job. I think for the time being we can drop Miss Meade and the two young ladies out of it; that leaves Lorne himself, the two Chalmers boys, and the four servants. What do you make of that cripple?"

"He has abnormally long arms, and hands like talons; and his attitude toward his family shows that he is lacking in moral sense to a certain degree, provided this utter callousness of his isn't a pose. I admit he has me guessing," Odell replied frankly. "He's only a kid, yet he talks like an old man; and his brain is keen if it is warped. Now, these two attempted crimes, like the two already accomplished, show remarkable ingenuity coupled with a carelessness in execution in each case that would seem to mark them as the conception of a mind that was erratic, to say the least; and the hacked picture-wires and sawed step of the stairs would both have required strength of no mean order. The hint that maid Gerda tried to give me, too, about insanity sticks in my mind. Who could she have meant but that boy?

"There is the sawdust, also. When I first examined the ​stairs I saw that it had all been carefully removed except a few flecks, and I started on a still hunt to find out what had been done with it. I discovered the ashes as you know in Gene Chalmers's fireplace, but I wasn't satisfied. Wood-ashes smudge, but paper ashes form just a fluff; and the grate was too clean. That's why I set Taylor the task of examining the fireplaces in the other rooms; but he found no trace.

"It's evident that whoever wanted to get rid of them had to do it in a hurry, and for some reason couldn't or didn't dare use a grate. There is none in the hunchback's room; but there was that metal tray in the bottom of the parrot's cage, which could be and undoubtedly was used to burn the sawdust on.

"The proceeding was so hurried, however, that the sawdust was not entirely burned. The tray wasn't cleaned, and it was returned to the cage so hot that it blistered the parrot's feet. Then the ashes of the sawdust were dumped in Gene's grate."

"Exactly. To throw suspicion upon him," the captain commented. "So that's the case against the hunchback as far as it goes?"

"I'm not so sure," Odell demurred thoughtfully. "You've heard of what these criminologist sharks on the other side call the elementary and secondary mind, haven't you, Captain?"

His superior grunted.

"You know what I think of all that bunk," he said noncommittally.

"Well, those are only terms used to classify the different degrees of cleverness on the part of the criminal, anyway." ​Odell's diplomacy came to his aid. "If someone else had burned that sawdust and put the ashes in Gene's grate to throw suspicion on him it wouldn't have taken much mental effort; would it? But if Gene himself had burned it in the tray from the bottom of the cage in Randall's room, purposely put back the tray uncleaned to leave the evidence, and then emptied the ashes into his own grate to make it look as if his brother were guilty and trying to incriminate him, that would show scheming of a rather higher order; wouldn't it?"

"What are you trying to put over, Odell?" demanded the captain. "Got anything on this Gene that you haven't told me about? From what I gather he is a kind of a weak-kneed but harmless young pup; and he certainly wouldn't have cut the wires of that portrait almost through and then sat under it and waited for it to fall on him."

"Weakness directed by a stronger and more evil personality may very easily develop into viciousness, all the more dangerous because in a moment of action it would be backed by the desperation of panic," the detective remarked. "I'm not trying to preach, Captain; you know yourself that the strong-minded crooks are the easiest to handle in the long run. We haven't any proof that Gene Chalmers ever sat for an instant under that portrait at the desk last night. The ladies and Randall had retired, and the only persons near were Lorne and his attorney in the next room with a heavy door closed between.

"What was to prevent that young man from cutting the wires of the portrait with the electric file—I have it on the authority of an expert that such an instrument makes only a low buzzing sound, and it is quite possible that it would ​not be heard through the massive walls of that old-fashioned house—waiting until he saw that it was about to come down and then going in on some flimsy excuse about one of the letters to his stepfather and the attorney in order to establish the fact of his narrow escape?

"I admit that I do not believe him capable of conceiving such a plan; but if the details were drilled into him by someone else and the incentive strong enough, I am convinced that he could carry it out. Do you remember my telling you about some letters that I took from his desk after I had interrupted him in his task of burning them? I have them here and they will recall someone to you whom we have been trying to get for a long time."

Captain Lewis took the letters, glanced over them, frowned at the signature, and at last brought his mighty fist down resoundingly on the desk.

"Farley Drew! So he had his hooks into that lad too, did he?"

"Not only Gene, but the other brother also, I understand; the one who is dead. There is a certain note here in particular that I want you to read."

Odell selected the one which he had first hurriedly scanned in Gene's room that morning and laid it before his chief.

"‘Where do you think you get off—in too deep—meant you should be—mother's went off without a hitch—got to be done by the sixth—mean business—Farley Drew.'" The captain skimmed it hastily aloud and glanced up at his subordinate. "It is coercion, of course, perhaps blackmail, but what has it to do—"

"Gene's mother was already dead when that note was ​written, as you can tell if you look at the postmark, and that reference to the sixth may mean anything; it just happens, however, that that was the date on which Julian Chalmers was killed."

"Great Jehoshaphat!" Captain Lewis almost leaped from his chair. "The Assistant D. A. has tried to get him in more than one vice clean-up but we never thought we could hang a thing like this on him! I'll have him down here to-night and sweat him out. Anything in the rest of these notes of a threatening nature?"

"No. They are merely to make or break appointments," Odell smiled. "Don't be too sure of landing your bird here to-night, Captain."

His superior, who had just pressed a button on his desk, turned to him with a muttered exclamation very like an oath.

You don't mean that he's beaten it?" he demanded. Did that Gene get away from your man and warn him?"

On the contrary, Gene has made no move to communicate with him in any way since I started the investigation. That is why I am quite certain that he managed in some manner to reach him either last night or early this morning and caution him that Lorne and the attorney had decided to call us in," Odell explained. "He lives at the Bellemonde Annex up near the park, but I don't believe you will find him at home this evening."

Nevertheless the captain issued a curt order to the plainclothesman who appeared in obedience to the summons, and then turned once more to Odell.

"Couldn't you get anything out of the boy himself; this Gene?"

​"No; and the weakest of all the weak spots in this skeleton of a theory of mine is that I cannot believe him capable of having had any part in the death of his mother. I told you of the quarrel between himself and his brother on the last night of Julian's life, which the cook overheard; and it is just possible that they may have had a struggle with that razor in the early morning; but I don't think he would have had nerve enough to go immediately afterward to join the others at the breakfast-table and wait for discovery to come." The detective shook his head. "As a case, it is full of holes any way you look at it; and yet there is that coincidence of the date, the sixth.

"There is another thing, too. Conspicuous upon Gene's dressing-table is a silver photograph-frame, empty. And when in the course of my questioning I asked him if he and his brother got on well together he flushed, and his eyes flew to that frame; but he looked away again quickly when he was conscious that I had noticed the glance. Titheredge told me that part of the trouble between Julian and his stepfather over money matters was caused by his infatuation for a woman; and Marcelle when she listened to the brothers' quarrel that night heard Gene call Julian a thief.

"Now, there are other precious things that can be stolen besides those which have money value; love, for instance. If a young man keeps an ornate photograph frame upon his dressing-table it usually contains the picture of the object of his present regard; but when that frame is empty it might be that he had destroyed the picture in a moment of jealous rage but kept the frame there as a reminder of his injury. Gene is the sullen sort who would hug misery, real or fancied, to his bosom and nurse revenge. If he had been ​crazy about some girl and his brother had taken her from him, it would have been a strong enough motive to at least cause a resumption of the quarrel in the early morning."

"You're trying to convince yourself, Odell," the captain accused him.

"I am trying to find among the tangible clues which I have gathered and from the score of curious, possibly significant things which I observed in that strange household to-day, a single thread that will lead to the truth."

"What curious things?" asked the captain.

"Why is that woman Gerda occupying so menial a position when she is obviously far above it? What did she mean by that veiled hint about insanity? What does the hunchback Rannie know about her? These questions may all be beside the point at issue; yet I feel that in some way they are connected with it, although there is no place for them in the theory that Gene knows anything about the events of the past twenty-four hours, to say nothing of being implicated in his brother's death." Odell rose and began to pace the floor of the office as if the mental struggle within him required some physical expression. "Why did Peters run away? Who telephoned the carpenter to send someone to hang the portrait before it had fallen? Who does Cissie Chalmers fear? Is it Rannie; and if so has she any reason for that fear other than her very evident dislike of him?"

"It looks like a queer tangle, all right," his superior admitted. "You've done a good bit for one day, Odell. After the autopsy on Mrs. Lorne—"

"That can only prove what we know already or else leave us where we are now. Even if there is a negative result, which is almost a foregone conclusion, it cannot disprove ​the fact that she was poisoned; for Doctor McCutchen himself said there was no trace of poison discoverable in her blood-cultures, yet he is as convinced as I am of the truth." Odell turned suddenly and faced his superior. "The thing that gets me is that the guilty person is there beneath that roof, talked with me to-day, was within reach of my hand; and yet I was helpless to accuse. It is maddening! I've practically proved the fact of two murders and two attempted ones; I have the sawdust ashes, the pieces of filed wire, and the substituted needle for direct tangible clues; and I'm up against a stone wall. No motive, no slightest inkling as to the identity of the murderer, and yet among the ten people who make up that household the solution lies."

"One of the ten has skipped out, remember," Captain Lewis remarked. "When we lay our hands on Peters—"

A knock upon the door interrupted him, and at his impatient growl a subordinate entered. When the chief saw who the newcomer was he half rose from his chair.

"You've got him?"

"Yes, sir," the man chuckled. "Caught him just as he was trying to sneak into his sister's house. He's outside; shall I bring him in?"

At the captain's emphatic nod he withdrew, and the former turned to Odell.

"Peters!" he exclaimed with immense satisfaction. "Perhaps you'll get something more to work on now. If he isn't willing to come across with what he knows watch me make him."

But it was a wilted and wholly abject Peters who stumbled over the threshold and collapsed into the chair opposite the chief. He panted like a frightened rabbit, and ​his flabby jowls had lost their ruddiness and turned a pasty grayish hue.

"You're Peters, butler up at the Meade house?"

"George Peters; yes, sir." His tones quavered.

"Peters, what did you run away for this morning?"

There was a pause, and the butler passed a trembling hand across his face.

"I don't know, sir. I—I've just been wandering around all day. I—that house—I couldn't stand it any longer."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the two deaths in the family, sir; and then the falling picture, and the men that were sent for to hang it again before any human being could know it was going to fall! I'd have stood by the family through thick and thin; but there are some things no mortal can face." His hands were clenching and unclenching on his plump knees. "When—when a person cannot sit down without having something fall on him, or step on the stairs without being flung to the bottom, to say nothing of what—what had gone before, it's rank suicide to stay in such a house."

Captain Lewis turned to Odell with a gesture of relinquishment, and the latter, took up the interrogation.

"When did you first get the impression that there was something uncanny going on, Peters?"

The butler hesitated.

"Well, sir, when I found poor Mr. Julian's body—"

"No," the detective interrupted bruskly. The moment of hesitation had been too significant. "I mean before that. What was it that first made you think there was something happening which you couldn't understand?"

"How did you know, sir?" Peters's jaw dropped. "I ​thought nobody heard it but me. You mean the voice—the voice the night Mrs. Lorne died?"

The captain's chair creaked as he shifted his weight suddenly, but Odell merely nodded.

"Well, you see, sir, it was this way. We all knew by then that the mistress couldn't live; for Jane had heard one of the doctors, the last called in it was, tell Mr. Lorne so, and we were all upset, as you might know; for she was a—a rare lovely lady, sir, and a kind, good mistress. My room is on the fourth floor front, just over Mr. Julian's; and there was nothing above me but the trunk and store-rooms. I stayed up till midnight to see if I would be wanted, and then Miss Meade told me to go to bed; but I couldn't sleep though Marcelle and Jane and Gerda had long since quieted down.

"Of course, Miss Nan and Mr. Julian and Mr. Gene didn't go to bed all night; so there wasn't any sound except the church clock near striking the hours, and now and then a snore from Marcelle across the hall. It was after four o'clock, almost five, I guess, when a thin little thread of light came in under my door and traveled across the floor, and then went out again. I couldn't believe my eyes, for there hadn't been the sound of a footfall outside and I couldn't see what anybody would be doing with a light up there in our quarters at that hour; but I jumped out of bed and opened my door a crack very softly so as to make no noise.

I couldn't see anything, not a ray of the light which had shone under my door; but I heard a voice that seemed to come from somewhere in the air, and there—there wasn't anything human about it!"

​The butler paused, and drawing a handkerchief from his pocket he wiped his pallid face, down which the sweat had started. He was staring wide-eyed into space, and his breath rasped in his throat.

"What did it say?" Odell asked.

Peters shuddered.

"I feel as if it was calling down a curse on me to repeat it, sir; but I'll never forget it to the longest day I live. It said: 'The first one gone! So shall they all go, one by one!' That was all; but it started me shaking like a leaf, and I didn't need anyone to tell me that poor Mrs. Lorne had passed away. I shut my door somehow and got to the side of my bed and sat down, straining my ears to listen for the sound of a footstep; but none came nor did that light show under my door again. I must have sat there for a good twenty minutes, for finally the clock in the church outside struck five; and in the morning they told me that Mrs. Lorne had died at twenty-five minutes to five."

"What did that voice sound like?" Odell spoke quickly, for the butler seemed to be upon the verge of collapse.

"It was low and more like a whisper, but clear and full of a horrid sort of joy as if the Thing, whatever it was, was gloating over what had happened. I—I haven't been the same since; for I keep hearing it in my ears all the time." Peters suddenly buried his face in his hands and sobbed aloud. "God help me, I hear it now."

CHAPTER XII

THE ROOM WITH THE BROKEN WINDOW

REALIZING that nothing further could be gotten from the nerve-racked man that night the chief at a nod from Odell ordered that Peters be taken away.

"What do you make of it? Hysteria or just plain lies?" he asked when the door had closed behind the limp, shambling form.

"Neither," Odell replied slowly. "I should not be surprised to learn that he was telling the straight truth."

"Truth!" Captain Lewis exploded. "Are you going to tell me next that you believe in ghosts, Barry Odell?"

"I believe in the one Peters heard, and I'm going to make it my business to find it," the detective responded gravely. "I think it will help mightily in the solution of the whole problem to learn just what it was doing in the upper regions of the house at the moment when the family, or the rest of the family, were plunged in their first numbing shock and grief."

"Well, it sounds fishy to me," the chief asserted. "If it were the murderer why should he go wandering around the house with a light talking to himself? Peters's story is thin, too; the atmosphere of the house didn't seem to get on his nerves to the extent of making him sneak away from it until he knew we were going to start an investigation. I'll let ​him sleep over it to-night, but in the morning I'll put him through the jumps. Well, Miller?"

After a light tap the door had opened, and the plainclothes detective who had been sent to bring in Farley Drew stood upon the threshold with failure written on his countenance.

"He's not there, sir. When I asked at the desk for Mr. Drew the clerk 'phoned up to his rooms and someone answered that he was out of town. Then I showed my shield and they sent me up with a bellboy. Of course, the clerk may have telephoned a warning while we were in the elevator; but I don't think he did for when we rang the valet opened the door promptly, and he looked a good deal surprised but not alarmed. He said that Mr. Drew went away early this morning to some house party in the country, but he couldn't say where as he'd had no instructions about forwarding mail. Mr. Drew seldom left an address when he was only to be away for a few days. The valet, Sims his name is, had packed dress clothes, a Norfolk hunting-suit, and tennis-flannels in the bags which our bird took away with him; and he understood that Drew would not be back for a week."

"Is that all you got?" the chief asked disgustedly.

"Not quite, sir. By luck I found the chauffeur outside at the taxi-stand who had driven him to the station; the Grand Central it was. He knew Drew and had often driven him before; and he said that he was in a devil of a hurry to catch his train this morning. It looked straight enough to me."

"All right; that'll do." As the door closed once more the ​chief turned to Odell. "It seems as though you had the right dope; Drew must have had word from that Chalmers lad and beaten it, and that adds more color to your theory. If he isn't mixed up in this thing he would have stuck around and played the friend of the family and braved it out."

Odell rose.

"I've got to get a line on him and I won't call it a day until I have," he announced. "It's only ten o'clock; I'll go back to the Meade house and have it out with Gene."

He had started for the door when the telephone on the captain's desk whirred and instinctively he waited.

"Yes.—Who?—Oh, it's you, is it. Porter? . . . The sergeant? Yes, he's here."

Odell sprang forward and seized the receiver.

"Hello, Porter. Where are you 'phoning from?"

"Is that you, Sergeant?" Porter fairly yelped with excitement. "I'm talking from the booth in Volkert's drug store over on Third Avenue; you know the place, we had him up a couple of months ago for selling 'snow.'"

"What are you doing there?" demanded the exasperated Odell. "I left you to watch Gene Chalmers. The last I heard of you, you were playing cards with him."

"Yes, and he rooked me," Porter retorted. "I'm trailing him now. He's just across the street in a tailor's shop next the corner; it was all closed and dark but he let himself in with a key. There is only one entrance unless he goes out some back way, and I don't believe he will, for he thinks he lost me at the house. He's a slick guy for fair."

"Keep your eye on that shop till I get there," ordered ​Odell. "If he comes out shadow him but 'phone back here to Headquarters the first chance you get so that I can follow you. Get me?"

"Sure, Sergeant."

There came the almost simultaneous click of two receivers, and Odell turned to his chief.

"Can I have Miller? I've a hunch we'll need him; Gene Chalmers thinks he has given Porter the slip, and he is over on Third Avenue in some joint that has a shop in front for a blind. I rather think there will be developments."

With the readily accorded permission he and Miller taxied swiftly uptown, dismissing the car a block from their destination. Most of the shops were closed; but the avenue was still brightly lighted, and as they approached the drug store they could distinguish Porter's short, stocky figure leaning nonchalantly against the lamp-post at the curb.

As they neared him he turned and greeted them boisterously in the tough language of the quarter for the benefit of any chance passer-by, then drew them around the corner.

"Look back over your shoulder," he said in low, hurried tones. "See that shop between the delicatessen and the tobacconist's? That's the joint. Gene Chalmers hasn't come out yet and no one else has gone in; but it must be some sort of a meeting-place."

"What is that narrow open space around the corner on the side street, back of the tobacconist's?" Odell queried. "Looks like a sort of alley to me. Miller, go and see if it runs back of the tailor's shop and if there is a door opening on it. Look for any lights in the rear and be careful if there is anyone hanging about."

As Miller nodded to them carelessly and sauntered across ​the avenue Porter observed with grudging admiration in his tones:

"I thought that Gene was just a willie-boy but I had the wrong dope; he's about as slick as they come. I thought at first that he was too blamed affable when he invited me into his room, but he seemed so anxious to tell me all about how that picture nearly fell on him the night before and ready to offer a hundred different suggestions that he threw me off the track; and boy! how he can play cards! Not that I took my hand off my number for a minute until just at the last," he added hastily. "But you yourself might have been taken in by the way he worked that, Sergeant."

"Possibly," Odell assented dryly. "I tried to get word to you before I left the house to warn you against that very thing; but you didn't come down to report and I let you alone to handle the case your own way. How did he manage to give you the slip?"

"It was after dinner and he wanted a drink; said that his stepfather had some private stock locked away in the cellar, but he had a duplicate key which the old man had given him. I had my suspicions as to how he had come by that key; but it was none of my business so I went down cellar with him. There were stone steps and a flat door bolted on the inside leading up into the back yard, and a small room partitioned off where he said the liquor was stored.

"He turned on the electric light by a switch in the wall near the staircase, took a key from his pocket, and opened the door of the store-room. I strolled after him to take a peep inside when he called to me to look on one of the banging shelves that were full of preserve-jars and find a ​glass." Porter hesitated. "I suppose I was a fool, but I never suspected he had a chance in the world to make a break for it then; so I turned to do as he asked, when the lights went out like a flash, and I heard the door of the store-room slam. I groped my way to it but it was fastened by a spring lock and by the time I found the switch in the wall and turned on the lights again Shaw blew his whistle outside.

"There must have been a second light-switch in the store-room and a second door leading up into the yard; and the kid had evidently planned his getaway ahead, for he's wearing a cloth cap, which I guess he had been carrying folded up in an inside pocket since before I came on the job. I ran out of the house, found Blake on guard at the corner, and he told me young Chalmers had come out of the tradesmen's entrance on the side street and started due east, with Shaw trailing him.

"I borrowed Blake's hat and hot-footed it after them, picking them up at Third Avenue in time to relieve Shaw just as Gene was boarding a surface car. By sheer luck a drunk happened to be getting out of a taxi in front of Bud Westley's old poolroom, and I grabbed it and trailed the car. The kid couldn't have had a suspicion that he was being shadowed; for he got out at this corner and made straight for that shop over there without even looking around."

"You were an ass to be taken in like that, Porter, but perhaps it is just as well," Odell commented. "Our young friend must have been pretty desperate to risk such a move when he knew that the house was guarded inside and out. ​I wonder why Miller hasn't come back? It doesn't look good to me."

"Look!" Porter exclaimed, touching his superior's arm. "That man. He has walked twice past the mouth of that alley; there he goes in! Think we had better trail along?"

"No. Give Miller a chance. If he gets in any trouble he'll blow his whistle."

For a few minutes longer they waited in silence, and at length Miller appeared from the shadows of the alleyway and hastened across the avenue toward them.

"Did you see that man?" he asked. "I had a narrow squeak, I can tell you. That was Sims, Farley Drew's valet!"

"What have you been doing all this time?" Odell demanded. "Does that alley extend through the block?"

"No. It ends in a blank wall midway, back of that butcher shop, I should say," Miller responded. "There are doors opening on it from all the shops as far as it reaches, and windows, too; but the back room of the tailor's is the only one lighted up. The door was locked and the window fastened and covered with a shade; but the glass in the lower sash of that window is broken by what looks like a bullet-hole, and the shade is ripped. I ought to have come back and reported at once, I suppose; but I put my eye to that hole and I thought you would want to know what was going on in there. A young, smoothed-faced, blond-haired man was sitting at a table—I guessed that was your bird—and facing him was an older man, nearly forty, I judge, who looked like a dissipated swell.

"He talked so low that I couldn't hear what he said but ​he seemed to be laying down the law to the kid, who was getting madder by the minute; and when he broke in he raised his voice so that I could hear every word. 'You can't bluff me with any more of that bunk, Drew,' he said. 'I know you can send me up, but you won't; because you'll go too, and you know it! You can bet your boots I kept your letters, they were the only protection I had! I was a sucker and you bled me white, but don't forget I've got a come-back.' The other one growled something I couldn't hear, and then the kid broke in again. 'Not a chance! I don't know whether I got away with it to-night or not, but it's the last; and if you don't want to have to answer some embarrassing questions you'll clear out until this thing is over. I tell you Titheredge wised up that chap from Headquarters as to how you stand in our family circle and I don't think the statement was a flattering one.'

"I heard footsteps coming down the side street then, and ducked behind a pile of pickle-tubs that the delicatessen next door had stacked up in the alley; it was lucky I did, for a man passed twice on the sidewalk looking in and then turned and came straight toward me. I thought he had seen me, but he went right up to the back door of the tailor's shop and knocked twice quickly and after a minute once more. The door opened and he went in, and I beat it back here to you."

"All right. Go over and watch the front door of the shop and if anyone comes out stop them and blow your whistle; McCarren's on his beat and he'll be along here somewhere." Odell turned to Porter. "Come on. We'll have a look at what is doing in that back room."

They crossed the avenue, entered the alley and crept to ​a position beneath the lighted window, where the detective straightened and peered through the ragged hole in the shade.

Only two men were visible in the room, the older one whom Miller had described and a stranger. The latter was gesticulating excitedly, and fragments of his speech reached Odell's ears.

"I told him a week, sir. . . . Yes, he seemed to, but you can't tell about those bulls. . . . But where to, sir? There's still the difficulty about passports. . . . Oh, Honolulu. Yes, I can get the baggage out providing they are not watching the place."

The older man leaned forward and spoke rapidly in an indistinguishable tone; and Odell saw the other glance quickly toward the front of the shop and then back at the speaker with a look of horror on his face.

"Good God, no!" he cried; and the deference was gone from his tone. "I've helped in the other thing, and I'll admit that you've paid me well for it; but I wouldn't be a party to that for all the money in the world! . . . I don't care if it is, I'd rather do a stretch than go to the chair!"

Before the older man could speak the door leading into the shop opened, and Gene appeared.

"We're caught!" he cried wildly. "Either Sims or I must have been followed, Farley! There's a man walking up and down in front of the shop."

"Shut that door, you d—n fool!" Farley Drew finished up with a ferocious oath; but the other, whom Gene had called Sims, shouldered the young man aside and sprang through the door into the shop, while Drew himself strode over to the window.

​Odell and Porter had barely time to conceal themselves behind the pickle-tubs which Miller had mentioned when the shade was pulled up, the window opened, and the sleek head of Farley Drew appeared cautiously reconnoitering.

"Nobody here." The head withdrew and the window slammed. Odell reached his point of vantage once more in time to see Sims reënter, closing the connecting door carefully behind him.

"It's the bull who came to your rooms an hour or so ago looking for you." The valet's tone was high and quavering, and his face expressed abject fright. "He couldn't have followed me here, for I made sure that no one was behind me when I ducked into the alley. I tell you they're on to us and the game is up!"

"Are we doing any harm? Is there anything incriminating about this room or our presence here?" demanded Drew, his tones carrying distinctly at last to the listeners outside. "The alley is clear and we have only to walk out that way and leave that flatfoot to cool his heels on the pavement till morning. Go back to my rooms and stay there until you hear from me, Sims; and stick to the same story you told to-night if you are interrogated again. As for you, Gene—"

His voice sank once more to a scarcely audible murmur, and Odell whispered hurriedly to Porter:

"Shadow Gene. Don't leave him out of your sight for a minute. I'll take Drew on; Sims is going back to the Bellemonde Annex."

"How about Miller?" asked Porter.

"No chance to warn him now unless your man or ​mine crosses Third Avenue. Get behind the tubs quick! They're coming out!"

From their hiding-place they saw Sims emerge cautiously from the door, peer up and down the alley, and dart off to the side street. A long five minutes passed and then Gene appeared, closing the door behind him. He looked neither to right nor left, but hugging the wall of the houses he crept slowly to the street, hesitated a moment, and then headed west.

"Go on. Porter," Odell ordered. "If he goes back to the house 'phone Headquarters at once."

Without a word the operative glided away into the shadows, reappeared at the lighted mouth of the alley, and vanished again in the wake of his subject.

Five more minutes passed, then ten, and still there came no sign of the departure of the third man from the lighted room. Odell began to feel a vague sense of uneasiness. What if Drew had gone out the front way, overcome or blackjacked Miller, and made his escape? No direct mention had been made by any of the three of the investigation going on at the Meade house nor of the sequence of strange events which had taken place there; but Gene Chalmers had had plenty of time to discuss that with Drew before the arrival of Sims. How completely the latter was in his master's confidence Odell could not be sure. If Drew had indeed a guilty knowledge of the sinister problem it was evident that his servant was ignorant of it. The latter's cry that he would rather "do a stretch than go to the chair" had been too spontaneous and too frankly panic-stricken to brand him as capable of potential murder.

The ten minutes doubled in length, and just as Odell ​emerged from behind the heap of tubs determined to risk another peep through the window, the door opened and Farley Drew stood smiling on the threshold.

"I've been waiting for you, Sergeant Odell. That is why I got rid of the others. Come in and we will have a little talk."

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.