Читать книгу The Casual Murderer and other stories - Footner Hulbert - Страница 8

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Next morning the papers were full of the Orr case. Being so complete a mystery, it made a good-size sensation, but not so great as if the victim had been young and interesting. It was pathetic what a little difference to anybody the taking off of Schuyler Orr seemed to make. Yet he appeared to have been a blameless creature.

The police undertook their investigation, and we pursued ours, and they only touched at occasional points. From the testimony of the night elevator boy at the apartment it appeared that Orr had come straight home from the club, and had been taken up in the elevator a few minutes before eleven. The boy swore that neither before nor after that had he taken anybody up except residents of the house who were familiar to him. But it was pointed out that the murderer could easily have gone up the stairs. It was the custom in that house to turn out the hall lights on every alternate floor at 10.30. A simple matter after that hour for the man, by watching the movements of the elevator, to have crept upstairs undetected, and later come down again. The murderer had left no traces of his own personality in the Orr flat; not a fingerprint.

At the office we found an interesting but disappointing report from Crider. Crider is our very best man, and together with his younger brother whom he is training up, he had been detailed to keep our sinister friend under surveillance. By means of the telephone number we had quickly found out that the man with the Roman nose did indeed pass under the name of George Rawlings, and that he occupied an expensive apartment on Central Park South where he lived alone, but for an elderly woman servant.

Crider had picked him up at two o’clock on Monday afternoon. He had attended a sale at the American Art Galleries, where he purchased several rare pieces of Persian faience and Alexandrine glass. The sum of his purchases had amounted to many thousands of dollars. In the evening he took Miss Peggy Forrester, the star of April Days to dinner at a fashionable restaurant on Park Avenue, and afterwards sat through her show at the Casino. A very gay party including a number of people followed at the Palais Rouge. Towards three in the morning Rawlings left this party alone, and was driven home where he presumably went to bed. Young Crider watched the house throughout the night, but he did not come out again.

He did not appear until noon next day. He drove to Sherry’s where he met another beautiful young lady, name unknown to Crider, and lunched (or breakfasted) with her. Afterwards they visited together a number of the most prominent art dealers on Fifth Avenue, and Rawlings presumably made purchases, but Crider could not follow him inside the shops.

Meanwhile young Crider had called at the service door of the apartment upon the pretext of selling the servant some laces. His youth and good looks had evidently recommended him, for the woman had taken him in and they had quite a talk. She had been engaged six months before through an employment agency, and she knew nothing about her master’s affairs. It was clear she had no suspicion that he was otherwise from what he seemed. She described him as being liberal and not difficult to please. His principal interest was in collecting rare objects of art.

Upon young Crider’s expressing a curiosity about such things, she showed him through the apartment. He described it as a perfect museum. The only thing out of the way that he had observed was an expensive radio receiving set which had a bell on it something like a telephone. The woman said that one of Mr. Rawlings’ friends had a transmitting set, and was able to call him by means of this bell. She did not know how to use the apparatus herself. You listened with ear phones, so that she never heard what came over it. Young Crider reported that he had established himself on a good footing with the woman, and could make other visits if it should be required.

At four o’clock Rawlings had dropped his pretty friend at the Ritz, and had returned home. But only for a few minutes. His car waited in front of the door. This car by the way, a magnificent dark blue brougham with red wheels, could not have been the same he took to Ancaster, for it was of the most expensive American make. Crider was following it in a speedy roadster with a driver.

Rawlings set off again, and Crider followed him to the flying field at Arcola, Long Island. There Rawlings engaged a plane for an hour’s flight. All his movements were careless and unhurried. Crider followed him into the air in another ’plane. Other ’planes were rising and descending at the time. Crider had instructed his pilot to keep above the first ’plane. After apparently purposeless circling for half an hour Rawlings’ ’plane set off in a northerly direction with Crider following.

The first plane unexpectedly dived, and made a landing in a field alongside a deserted road in mid-Westchester County. There was a car waiting in the road; a black limousine. Rawlings entered it, and was driven away. Before Crider could even land, the car was out of sight, and it was useless for him to land. Instead, he returned to Arcola where he interviewed the pilot who had taken up Rawlings. The pilot looked upon Rawlings merely as a rich eccentric. Three times, he said, he had carried him to some designated field in the country where a car would be waiting for him. He gave handsome tips.

Rawlings returned home shortly before eight o’clock, and Crider picked him up again. He dined alone, rather hastily, at a famous chop-house on Broadway, and afterwards witnessed the final acts of La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera House. He occupied a parquet seat. After the opera he went home.

Reading this report made me feel very blue. Crider was the best man we had. I was appalled by the cool resourcefulness, the devilish effrontery of our adversary. Apparently he was able to fool us whenever he wished. There was something uncanny about him. Heavens! I had dreamed of him on Monday night, and awoke gasping and sweating.

For a while this morning we had Swanley on our hands. He looked like a ghost. We took care not to let him know that there was any connection between the Orr murder and his case. I could scarcely face his tragic blue eyes. I was well assured that Mme. Storey would never stop until she had learned what had become of Aline Elder, but I had little hope that she would ever find the girl alive.

Each morning Swanley implored Mme. Storey to give him some work to do in connection with the case. In the state he was in, he was incapable of doing any serious work; he would have given himself away to a year-old child; so we had to invent work for him; anything to make him feel that he was helping. To-day Mme. Storey sent him out to Paterson on the train, to sit in the public library and watch for an imaginary red-haired man wearing black-rimmed glasses.

He stooped in the door and said—poor fellow! trying to keep a stiff upper lip—“Have you made any real progress? Isn’t there anything you can tell me?”

Mme. Storey said frankly: “I am making progress, but I can’t tell you anything, because it may all turn out to be wrong. You are a man, and entitled to hear the truth; the situation is dangerous but everything that can be done, is being done.”

He went out with his head down.

Mme. Storey gave me one of my rare glimpses into her heart: “I wish I had that damned wretch on the rack, Bella,” she said low. “That’s the only way to deal with such a one; torture.”

I knew who she meant, of course.

As for me, I could have put my head down and bawled like a child. In our business we generally manage to harden our hearts; we have to: but this case had got us—both Mme. Storey and myself. That fine young fellow with his look of despair, and the gentle girl he had described to us. It was too much. We knew their enemy, yet we could not, so far, touch him!

It was a black half-hour. I was sitting in my own room feeling jaded and flat, when the door opened, and I beheld a charming figure. A girl with an open eager face; she was lovely.

“Is this Madame Storey’s office?” she asked.

“Yes,” said I, wondering greatly who she might be.

She blushed prettily. “Is ... is Mr. Edward Swanley here?” she asked.

I jumped up. I could feel my eyes popping. All the blood seemed to leave my heart; then it rushed back so fast I felt as if it would burst in my breast. “You ... you ... you ...” I stammered; “you are Aline Elder!”

“Why, yes,” she said, a little scared by my excitement.

I sprang at her like a crazy woman. She recoiled, but I snatched up her hand, and dragged her pell-mell towards Mme. Storey’s room. I banged open the door, Mme. Storey looked up in comical astonishment.

“Well, Bella ...!” she began.

I shouted her down. “Here she is! Here she is! And all safe and sound!” I involuntarily began to feel of the girl to make sure she was intact.

Mme. Storey was scarcely less moved than I was. Jumping up, she flung her arms around the dazed girl.

“Thank God!” she cried.

Then Mme. Storey and I burst out laughing weakly and foolishly, and we could not stop. The tears ran down my cheeks.

“She ... she thinks we’re crazy!” I stuttered.