Читать книгу Lonesome Town - James French Dorrance - Страница 9

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“Sixty-fourth and Central Park East. Otherwise Fifth Avenue, boss.” The driver of the pink-and-gray made the announcement through the open window behind the wheel seat as he drew up at the park-side curb. “Where away, now?”

“Nowhere away. We’ve arrived. How much says the clock?”

“Dollar twenty—to you.” The overcharge was committed with the usual stress of favoring the fare.

Why-Not Pape reached across with two green singles. “Keep the bonus, friend robber. Likely you need it more than I. If you’ve any scruples, though, you can overcome ’em by telling me what building that is, the dingy one with the turrets, back among the park trees.”

“Arsenal they calls it. Police station.”

Succinct as his service, the licensed highwayman of city streets stepped on the gas and was off to other petty pilfering. Police stations and overcharges probably did not seem suitable to him on the same block.

“The Arsenal, eh?” Pape queried himself. “Ain’t the Arsenal where Pudge O’Shay threatened to take me to tea the afternoon Dot polkaed up those sacred rocks to the block-house?”

He crossed the oily asphalt, smeared with the spoor of countless motor vehicles; turned south a few steps; half way between Sixty-fourth and Sixty-third streets located the eight-hundred-odd number in which he was interested. A brownstone house, not particularly distinguishable from its neighbors it was, entered by a flight of steps above an old-fashioned or “American” basement. Noting that the ground floor was dark and the second and third illumined, he turned back across the Avenue and stopped in the shadow of the wall that bounds Central Park.

Between jerking into his hat and coat in full face of the astonishment of his own opera-box party and accomplishing the trip up in the fewest possible minutes which could cover the roundabout traffic route prescribed during “theater hours” he had not found time to think out just what he was going to do when he arrived at his destination. Now that he was on the scene of his next impertinence, he appreciated that its success demanded a careful plan. His self-selected lady’s dismissal of him had been so definite that he needed some tenable excuse for having followed her home. Stansbury caution warned him that an offer of assistance would, without doubt, be ignominiously spurned. But Pape initiative was in the saddle.

He had about decided on the most direct course—to rush up the steps, ring the bell, ask for her, tell her that he had come to give her the note and trust to subsequent events—when the front door of the house he was watching flew open. A hatless man bounded down to the sidewalk; straight as though following a surveyed line, headed for the entrance of the Arsenal.

Pape stepped back and waited until the heavy on-comer was about to enter the park, then sprang out and blocked the way.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

From surprise or alarm the man backed a step or two. “To—to the police station,” he answered nervously.

“Why didn’t you telephone? that would have been quicker. You seem in a hell of a hurry.”

“The wires are cut, sir.”

“Who are you anyway?” Pape’s demand was uttered with a note of authority.

“I am Jasper—the Sturgis’ butler. Mrs. Sturgis has sent me to bring a detective.”

With a short laugh Pape approved the born butler’s habit of subordination. “You’re in luck, Jasper. I’m the very man you’re looking for. Lead me to the case.”

His location—he well might have been coming from the Central Park station house—favored him. The Arsenal could be seen a few yards within the wall. Although he had no shield to show, nor named himself a sergeant of the Force, the butler seemed satisfied with the assertion and his own misconclusions. Dutifully, he led the way back to the house which he had quitted in such a hurry.

“This rushing about gets me in the wind, sir,” complained Jasper en route. “I fear I am growing a bit weighty. And what a comfort is the telephone. Things like that, sir, you never miss until they’re gone. Ah, sir, excitement like this is bad for the heart.”

Opening the door with a latch key, he conducted his find across the reception hall, up a broad flight of stairs and into a formally furnished drawing-room. From between wide doors, half opened into a room beyond, appeared a woman of medium height, whose looks made unnecessary any introduction as Irene’s mother. If her mauve crape dress revealed rather too distinctly her plump outlines, it softened the middle-aged beauty of her face and toned with the magnificent grayish pearls she wore.

“Is this the detective, Jasper?” she asked, but did not await an answer. “I’ll ring when I want you again.”

She turned to the stranger as the butler passed out of the room. “Thank you for answering our call for help so promptly Mr. ——”

“Pape, madam.”

“Won’t you take off your coat and be seated, Mr. Pape? This is in some respects an unusual robbery, and your investigation probably will take some time.”

He followed her suggestion with alacrity, using a nearby Davenport to rack his hat and overcoat. It would be an advantage, he considered, to be in possession of as many facts as possible, before Jane appeared to expose him. Facts might help him in some way to induce her to go on playing the game as she had in the Metropolitan box.

“Best begin at the very beginning, Mrs. Sturgis.”

He seated himself in a chair opposite that into which the matron had sunk, and leaned toward her with frowning concentration. Too late he remembered that the Arsenal detectives, if any were there assigned, did not sit around at all hours in evening clothes. But if she noticed at all his attire, it was with approval, judging by the confidential smile she bent upon him.

“This is a manless house, except for the servants,” she began in the modulated voice of those “to the manner” born. “I have the misfortune to be a widow. This evening my daughter and my niece went to the opera with old friends of the family. I have no liking for operas of the ‘Zaza’ type so remained at home. But I promised the young ladies to stay up, as they wished to bring their friends back with them to supper.”

Stopped by a thought, she indicated an ebony cigarette outfit that topped a tabaret near his chair. “Men think so much better when they smoke,” she suggested. “If you prefer cigars, Mr. Pape, I’ll have some brought in.”

“Please don’t trouble. My chest’s full of ’em.”

With a forced smile, she watched the “detective” produce one of his own regardlessly purchased cigars, light it and puff with manifest pleasure from its fragrance.

“This afternoon,” she proceeded, “Miss Lauderdale, my niece, returned from a visit to an old woman who had been her governess years ago when her father was—well, before he lost his money. She brought back a jeweled snuffbox of antique design which had belonged to her great-grandfather. In some way not yet explained to me it had came into possession of this upper servant. Although its intrinsic value is not great—the rubies set in its cover are small, not worth more than a thousand dollars, I should say—Miss Lauderdale seems to set great store by it. She asked me to lock it up in a secret safe built in my library wall until she should want it again.”

From his very light experience with operatives of the force—really none at all except with those of the printed page—Pape considered that he should begin asking questions if he was to sustain the part. He matched his finger-tips in pairs—in most “sleuth” stories they did that; cleared his throat—also inevitable; observed somewhat stupendously:

“I see. You opened the secret wall safe and within it installed the heirloom snuffbox. At what hour, Mrs. Sturgis, was this?”

“About five o’clock.”

“And you found the safe cracked, might I ask—its contents gone?”

“Not at all. You anticipate me. What jewelry I keep in the safe was all there. Some of it, at my daughter’s coaxing, I had withdrawn for her to wear to the opera. She is entirely too much of a child to be allowed such adornment, but you know our young ladies these days, Mr. Pape.”

He nodded, but none too assuredly in view of his fathomless ignorance of “our young ladies these days.”

“And after taking out this jewelry for Miss Sturgis, you are sure that you locked the safe—shut it securely and turned the dial?” he asked, quite as the professional he was trying to emulate would have pursued the case. “Sometimes you women folks——”

“I am not the careless sort. I locked the safe.”

From the matron’s composed manner, he well could believe her.

“It was about nine o’clock,” she continued, “when, having changed to the gown I meant to wear to supper, I wanted these black pearls.” She indicated the two pendants in her ears, a ring and the vari-sized strand about her neck. “With purple or lavender, you see, they make the second mourning effect which I shall always wear for my dear husband. Again I came downstairs to the safe. Imagine my astonishment and fright when I found it open—the door full an inch ajar.”

“But you’re wearing the pearls, madam?”

“That is the strangest part of it!” Moved at last by her nervousness, Mrs. Sturgis arose, crossed to a window that overlooked Central Park, clutched the curtains and drew them apart. For a second or two she stood looking out, then returned to her chair. “Mr. Pope, not a single piece of my jewelry was missing. The cash drawer had not been disturbed, though it happened to contain a considerable sum of money. A sheaf of Liberty Bonds in plain sight lay untouched. Absolutely nothing was gone except Miss Lauderdale’s heirloom snuffbox. Of course that’s no great financial loss, but she is much upset by the loss and I can’t help feeling my responsibility. Tell me, what do you make of it?”

His chin cupped in one hand, Pape tried to look that shade of study denominated as “brown.” Next he puffed viciously at the plump middle section that was left of his cigar—women, he had noticed, always harkened with more respect to a man who puffed viciously at a cigar.

“Strange—passing strange,” he muttered. From a pocket of his figured white waistcoat he drew his watch and looked enquiringly into its face. “You say it was about nine o’clock when you discovered this theft? It was after ten when you sent the butler after—after me. Just to keep the tally straight, madam, may I ask what you were doing in the interim?”

Mrs. Sturgis’ brows—black as her daughter’s, but unplucked—lifted slightly, as if she were surprised by the question. However, after a momentary pause she answered, “At first I was uncertain just what to do. Finally I decided to summon Miss Lauderdale from the opera house. She, as the only loser, was the person most concerned. She returned just now and insisted that the police be called in. She was even more upset than I when we discovered that our telephone was out of commission. She sent Jasper at once to——”

Pape managed an interruptive glower of disapproval that would have done credit to the most efficient “bull” of the Central Office.

“You’ve wasted valuable time,” he declared. “In robberies, it is advisable to get the authorities on the scene of the crime at the earliest possible moment.”

“But in this instance the circumstances were so peculiar and I——”

“I know. I know, madam. Circumstances always are more or less peculiar.” Pape had deemed a touch of official discourtesy not out of place. “What I want to know next is—that is to say, the person I’d like next to interview is this niece of yours who has been deprived of her snuffbox.”