The Mark of Cain

CHAPTER XXIII

IN KITO’S CARE

The case of “The People vs. Kane Landon” was before the court and jury. Few, if any, of the listening audience realized the great amount of time, thought and skill that had been expended in preparation or had any idea of the care with which the district attorney had framed his opening speech.

Whiting well knew the responsibility resting on the jury’s first impression of the case, and also their judgment of himself. He knew too, his jurors’ records, and he was alert and alive to all the effects of his short but comprehensive statement.

Judge Hoyt was warily on the defensive, and though Whiting had built up his case most carefully, Hoyt hoped to prove that the evidence was not crucial.

First came the details of the crime. Mysterious rather than revolting were the circumstances related of Rowland Trowbridge’s death.

Proceedings went on slowly, for the two lawyers were masters of their profession, and each foresaw and was prepared to evade the traps of the other.

Moreover the situation was difficult because of the lack of material. There were no star witnesses. The clues led only to conjecture and theory, and while facts were conceded, the inferences to be drawn from them were bitterly contested.

The two men eyed each other thoughtfully. Whiting, big and burly, with a stubborn jaw and belligerent air; Hoyt, tall and aristocratic, with the dominating manner of one accustomed to dictate terms.

When Whiting emphatically urged Landon’s motive, Hoyt assented, but added that since that alleged motive was merely to receive at once his legacy, any other beneficiary under the will must be admitted to have had the same.

Regarding the district attorney’s insistence on Landon’s opportunity, Hoyt agreed that the prisoner was in the woods at the time, but any one else might also have been there. And, moreover, the fact that the prisoner had voluntarily told of his presence there, was not a sign of a guilty conscience.

The quarrel between Landon and his uncle, Hoyt dismissed with the comment that that was the story of a boy who was an acknowledged prevaricator, and could not be taken into consideration.

“The evidence is vague, general and inconclusive,” he said; “It is not enough to condemn the prisoner, and indeed it in no instance connects the accused with crime. I myself knew Mr. Trowbridge well, and I knew he often used figurative language. It was entirely like him to say, ‘Cain killed me!’ meaning a reference to an unknown murderer. But it was utterly unlike him to say to the Swede, a perfect stranger, ‘Kane killed me,’ meaning his nephew. Why should he speak of Mr. Landon by his first name to a stranger? He never did any such thing! The similar sound of the two names is a mere coincidence, and must be regarded as such by all fair-minded people.”

Aside from the argument, Judge Hoyt was pinning his faith to his marvelously wide knowledge of the law governing every aspect of the matter in hand. He well knew that a prosecutor with a really clear case, may lose it because he has neglected to look up some points of law which may unexpectedly arise, and the defence was hoping for something of this sort.

Again, it is a fact, that juries are more likely to acquit in a murder trial than in case of other crimes. Unless the prisoner at the bar is of the depraved criminal class, a jury is inclined to give him every possible benefit of doubt.

And, knowing this, and knowing many other “tricks of his trade,” Judge Hoyt took advantage of every condition and every circumstance; and as the trial proceeded from day to day, the probabilities of the outcome vibrated from one side to the other largely in proportion to the oratorical eloquence of the two counsels.

Fleming Stone attended the trial only occasionally. He had his own agent there, reporting it for him, and he himself was busy untangling clues whose existence others were unaware of or had ignored.

On one particular afternoon, Stone had told Fibsy to meet him at his office at two o’clock, and the boy did not appear.

This was a most unusual thing, for Fibsy, working with Stone, had proved absolutely reliable in the matter of obeying orders.

After waiting fifteen minutes, Stone telephoned to the boy’s home.

“Why,” responded “Aunt Becky,” “Fibs went out an hour ago. Somebody telephoned for him, – I don’t know who, – and he flew right off. No, it must have been important, for he went off without his dessert.”

Like a flash, it came to Stone that there was something wrong.

But what it was, even his cleverness failed to fathom. He telephoned the Trowbridge house, Judge Hoyt’s office, the courtroom, and any place he could think of where there was a chance of finding Fibsy, but all without success. Then, setting detectives in search of the missing boy, Stone went on with his own work of drawing in his widespread net.

And Fibsy?

The telephone message had said that he was to come at once to the corner of Broadway and Thirty-second Street, where Mr. Stone would meet him in a taxicab.

Fibsy grabbed his cap and sped to the appointed place. There he found a waiting cab, whose driver nodded, and said, “Hop in.”

Fibsy hopped in, and found inside a Japanese boy apparently about his own age.

“All light,” the Japanese observed, with a stolid countenance. “Mr. Stoan, he tell me bling you. All light.”

Fibsy, though a little surprised, accepted it all, for Fleming Stone frequently sent for him in unexpected ways, and sent him on unexpected and strange errands.

The cab went quickly uptown, and turning into a cross street in the upper West Seventies, stopped before a rather fine-looking house.

“Get out,” said the Jap, briefly, and Fibsy obeyed. The house was not Mr. Stone’s, of that Fibsy was sure, but he was accustomed to obey orders, even through an emissary, and nothing had ever gone wrong by so doing.

The Japanese produced a latch-key, dismissed the cab, and the two went into the house.

“Mr. Stoan, he upstairs,” the taciturn guide vouchsafed, leading the way.

Fibsy followed, up two flights, and was ushered into a large room, in the location known as “the middle room”; that is, it was between the front and back chambers, and had no outside window, save on a small airshaft.

A little curious, but in no way alarmed, he entered, and the Jap followed him, and turned on an electric switch. By this illumination, Fibsy discovered that he was in a bedroom, a fairly well-appointed and tidily kept chamber, apparently in the abode of the well-to-do.

By this time, and perhaps more because of the expression on his companion’s face, than the situation itself, Fibsy felt a slight thrill of doubt.

“Where am I?” he said, pleasantly. “Where’s Mr. Stone?”

“No Mr. Stoan here,” and the Japanese grinned. “You fall in tlap. Hee, hee! You fall eas’ly! Well, Mr. Flibsy, you here to stay.”

“To stay! Trap! Whaddye mean, you yellow sneak? Lemme out this minute, or I’ll show you who’s who wit’ the wallop! I’ll fuss up that map o’ yourn till your own grandmother wouldn’t know it!”

“Aexcuse me, Mr. Flibsy, you don’ say nawthin’ ’bout my ancestors! They sacred to Jap’nese. You be p’lite or I thing I quarrel with you.”

“Oh, you thing you will, do you? Now, stop this nonsense, and – ”

“Aexcuse me. This not non-senze. Behole! You here, – here you stay. I bed you stay!” and the Japanese with low, mocking bow, went out at the door and began to draw it to after him.

“Here, you, come back here!” and Fibsy’s quick perceptions took in the fact that he had been trapped by some one, and that he was about to be locked in. “Come back, what’s-your-name?”

“My name Kito, an’ I ask you be rev’ren ’bout my august ancestors.”

“Bother your ancestors! I mean – bless ’em!” for Kito’s eyes narrowed at the first word. “Now, you come back a minute, and put me wise to this song and dance. What house is this?”

“My master’s.”

“And you’re his valet? cook? head stuff? what?”

“His ver’ humble servant,” and Kito bowed low. “An’ at his orders, I mus’ log you in. Goo’ by.”

“No, you don’t!” Fibsy sprang at the Japanese and fully expected to land his clenched fist at its destination, when instead, he gave a shriek of pain, as Kito deftly caught the descending arm and with a peculiarly dextrous twist, almost, – it seemed to Fibsy, – broke it.

“I had a hunch I was pretty good,” the injured one said, ruefully, “but I hand it to you! Show me how, will you, It’s that thing they call juicy jitsoo, ain’t it?”

“Jiu jitsu, yaes. Now you know who goin’ be who? eh? What you thing?”

“I think you’re a wonder, an’ you gotter crack me wise to that some time, but not now. Now I’m mainly int’rested in gettin’ outa here.”

“Yaes?” And the Japanese looked mildly amused.

This made Fibsy serious. “Say,” he said, without bluster, for Kito was gazing at him steadily, “tell a feller a few things, can’t you? Who is you master?”

“I thing I not say it good. This United States names too much for me. So I carry card, this-away.” Kito drew from his pocket a worn card and held it out for inspection.

“Mr. James Brent Auchincloss,” it read.

“Huh,” said Fibsy, “don’t wonder it’s too much for you, son. But looky here, you’ve got in wrong, somehow. I don’t know Mr. Autchincloss, myself. Lemme go, there’s a pal, – an’ I’ll call it square.”

“Aexcuse; my orders to log you in,” and this time, Kito slid out of the door, and the next instant Fibsy heard the key grate in the lock.

First he gave a long whistle, then he blinked his eyes several times, and then he set to work, systematically, to investigate his prison.

A few quick glances showed him he was in a woman’s room, and one recently occupied. There were hairpins on the dresser and a pair of curling tongs beside them. The furniture was of black walnut, old-fashioned but of good workmanship. The bed was neatly made up, and the closet, into which Fibsy looked, was empty, save for a pair of woman’s shoes and an old skirt or two.

There was one other door, and pulling it open, the boy found it led to a bathroom, plain and clean, not at all luxuriously appointed.

He put his head out of the bathroom window. There was a sheer drop of three stories to the ground. This was on the same airshaft as the bedroom window gave on. The windows on the other side of the shaft were in the next house, and were all with closely drawn shades.

“Gee!” thought Fibsy, “I must set me bean to woikin’ – ”

In critical moments, Fibsy, even in thought, reverted to his street slang, though he was honestly trying to break himself of the habit.

“I’m in a swell house,” he assured himself, “an’ this is the woik-goil’s room. Folks all gone to the country, an’ neighbors all gone, too. Oh, I’m on. Dis ain’t no mistake, I’m kidnapped, – that’s what’s come my way! Now, who does it?”

But though he had the whole afternoon to put uninterrupted thought on that question, it remained unanswered. He cudgeled his brain to remember any one by the name of Auchincloss, without success. He pondered deeply over the possible reasons any one could have for incarcerating him in this way, but could think of none. He returned at last to his theory of mistaken identity, and concluded that he had been mistaken for some one else.

Though with a subconsciousness of its futility, he banged on the door, and he hung out of the window and yelled, and he stamped and pounded and banged in every way he could think of, without getting the least response of any sort.

The awful thought struck him that he was to be left here to starve to death, and this so awed him that he sat perfectly still for two minutes, and then began to make a racket with redoubled vigor.

At last, worn out by mental and physical exertion, he threw himself on the bed and dropped into fitful slumber.

He was roused by the opening door, and beheld the Japanese enter with a tray of food.

“Nixy on the starvation stunt, then,” he cried, joyously. “Why, I say Kito, if you don’t come across with ’most as good eats as me Aunt Becky, an’ that’s goin’ some!”

Kito stood, with folded arms, watching his prisoner’s appetite assert itself. Then he said, “You make ’nother piece racket like those, an’ I break your honorable arm.”

“You will!” And for a moment, Fibsy sprang to action. Then remembering the skill of his foe, he fell into dejection again.

“Aw, now Kite,” he began, in a conciliatory tone, “let’s chew this over, – me’n you. There’s some mistake, you know.”

“Aexcuse, no mis-take. You here to stay. You can’t get aout. You holler an’ bang-bang, I break your arm. You jump out window, you break your leg. So.”

“Then I’m to stay here and be mousy-quiet?”

“Yes, so as a mice.”

“Yes, I will! Say, Kite, be a sport. I’ll make it up to you, if you’ll just lead me to a telephone, an’ let me fix up this here mistake. I don’t know any Auchincloss – ”

“No mis-take. My honorable master never make mis-take.”

“Oh, don’t he? Well, tell me this. How long do I live here – on the house?”

“In the house?” corrected Kito gravely. “I not know. Two, t’ree, fo’ weeks’ mebbe more.”

“Mebbe nothing!” roared the irate Fibsy. “Stay here all that time! Why, you yellow-gilled crab – ”

Fibsy paused, for the Japanese merely lifted his hand and flexed his long yellow fingers in a suggestive way, that was decidedly unpleasant.

“There, there, I didn’t mean anything. Oh, well, if you wanta be fussy!”

Fibsy saw at once the utter uselessness of trying to threaten, cajole or reason with the Oriental. Though he looked no older than the boy, he was a man, and one skilled in his country’s athletic and wrestling methods.

Without further words, Kito waited for Fibsy to finish his supper, and then took away the tray, locking his prisoner in the room.

This went on for three whole days. Fibsy was comfortably housed, all his physical wants provided for, and Kito even brought him a pile of old magazines to read, but no further information was given him as to the reason for his imprisonment.

By the fourth day the nervous strain had begun to tell on the captive boy. No amount of thinking could reveal the reason of his plight, and no theory account for it. Hours at a time he tried to escape or tried to plan some means that might lead to freedom, but there was no chance for ingenious attempt, or possibility of conquering or eluding Kito.

It was this very day that Fleming Stone came to the house, but Fibsy did not know it, nor did Stone have the slightest idea that the boy he sought so diligently was there.

Kito answered Stone’s ring at the door, and when that gentleman pushed his way a little brusquely through the reception room to the library, the Japanese followed, politely, but with a wary eye and a tense arm.

“Good!” Stone exclaimed, looking over the appointments of the large library table. “Your master has no pencil sharpener. Now, my man, I am an agent for these,” and Stone took from his bag a small contrivance for sharpening lead pencils. “And our new method of selling these goods, is to leave one with a prospective customer, feeling sure that a trial of it will mean a quick sale. Has your master ever used a thing, like this?”

Kito had not followed all Stone’s speech, his English being somewhat limited, but by the actions of the “agent” the Japanese understood.

“No good,” he said, scornfully, “my master no want it.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Has he one?”

“No.”

“Did he ever have one?”

“Yaes.”

“Not like this.”

“Yes, just all same like that one.”

And then Stone, with his almost hypnotic power of suggestion, so hinted and insinuated and urged, that finally Kito, after a short search in a closet, triumphantly showed a pencil-sharpener exactly like the one Stone had offered.

Looking chagrined and disappointed, Stone returned his to his bag.

“Why did your master stop using it?” he asked, noting the pencil on the desk tray, undoubtedly sharpened with a knife.

“Two, four weeks, mebbe more.”

“But when?” and Stone picked up a calendar. “When?”

Slowly tracing back through his memory, Kito suddenly smiled.

“Then!” he exclaimed pointing to a date. “I know, be-cause, the same day almost, my birt’day. An’ I hoped my master give him to me for plesent. But no.”

“That’s too bad,” agreed Stone. “Well, if your master doesn’t care for his, of course he won’t buy mine. Good-day.”

Picking up his bag, he went away, and Kito closed the door behind him.

The date the Japanese had pointed to, was the day after the murder of Rowland Trowbridge!

CHAPTER XXIV

ESCAPE

Fibsy was at his wits’ end. And the wits’ end of Terence McGuire was at some distance from their beginning. But he had scrutinized every step of the way, and now he disconsolately admitted to himself that he had really reached the end.

He had been shut up in the strange house nearly a week. He was most comfortably lodged and fed, he had much reading matter supplied for his perusal, though none of it was newspapers, and Kito offered to play parchesi with him by way of entertainment. The Japanese was polite, even kindly, but he was inflexible in the matter of obeying his orders. And his scrupulous fidelity precluded any possibility of Fibsy’s getting away, or even getting out of the rooms allotted to his use.

But when the boy rose one morning after a refreshing night’s sleep and had a satisfying breakfast, and was at last locked in his room for the morning, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and clinched his impotent young fists in rage and despair.

“I gotta make me bean woik better,” he groaned to himself, the tenseness of the situation causing him to revert to his use of street slang. “I gotter get outen here, an’ most likely it’s too late now. I’m a nice detective, I am, can’t get out the fust time I’m in a hole! Gee! I’m gonta get out!”

Followed a long session of hard thinking, and then a gleam of light came to him. But he needs must wait till Kito brought up his dinner.

And at noon or thereabouts, Kito came with the usual well-appointed tray of good food.

Fibsy looked it over nonchalantly. “All right, Kite,” he said, “but say, I gotta toothache. I wish you’d gimme a toothpick, – not quill, – the wooden kind.”

Sympathetic and solicitous, the Japanese produced from his own pocket a little box of his native toothpicks, of which Fibsy accepted a couple, and pocketed them. And then, came the strategical moment. His purpose must be effected while the Jap was still in the room. And it was. Sidling to the half-open door, Fibsy called Kite’s attention to a dish on the tray, and then thrust a toothpick quickly in beside the bolt of the lock, and broke it off short.

In order to keep his jailer’s attention distracted, Fibsy then waxed loquacious, and dilated on the glories of a wonderful movie show.

Kito listened attentively, and though he said no word about going to see it, he inquired carefully where it was, and Fibsy’s hopes began to rise.

“But if ever you go, Kite,” he said, “you wanter see the very beginnin’, ’relse you lose all the fun.”

At last, Fibsy finished his dinner and the Jap took up the tray. Breathlessly, but unnoticeably, Fibsy watched him, and as he went out of the door, and turned the key in the lock, he didn’t notice that the bolt didn’t shoot home as usual, but the door was really left unlocked.

Fibsy’s heart beat like a trip-hammer as he heard the catlike footsteps go down stairs.

Unable to wait, he tried the door, and found it was open. He slipped out into the hall. Down two flights, he could hear the Japanese, going about his business. Warily, Fibsy crept down one stair-case. Then he stepped into the front room on that floor. It was evidently the room of a grand lady. Silver trinkets were here and there, but Fibsy’s quick eyes noted that the bureau was dismantled, and there were no appearances of actual occupancy.

“Mrs. Autchincloss is away fer the summer,” he said, sapiently. “Lessee furder.”

It was a risk, but Kito rarely came upstairs so soon after dinner, so the boy went through to the back room on the second floor.

“Bachelor,” he said, nodding his head at the appointments on the chiffonier. “Stayin’ in town. Kinder Miss Nancy, – here’s a little sewin’ kit some dame made fer him. An’ the way his brushes an’ things is fixed, shows he ain’t got no wife. So this ain’t Mr. Autchincloss. Well, lemmesee. Writin’ table next. Not much doin’. Fixin’s all fer show. Spose he writes down in the liberry. Wisht I could git down there. Here’s a lot of his friends.”

Fibsy had spied a pack of snapshots and small photographs, and hastily ran them over. They were all unknown faces to him, except one which chanced to be the postcard of Judge Hoyt taken in Philadelphia station.

“Hello! The guy wot lives here is a frien’ o’ Judge Hoyt. No, not a friend, but a nennermy. Cos, I dope it out, that friend guy’s locked me up here fer fear I’ll help Judge Hoyt’s case. Oh, no, I dunno, as it’s that. I dunno what it is. I wisht I could get word to Mr. Stone. If I only dared use that telephone. But Kite would fly up here quicker’n scat! Well, I’ll swipe this card, cos it looks interestin’.”

Then Fibsy, still with a wary eye on the hall door, searched the room and its dressing-room and closets, and was rewarded by some further discoveries, one of which was a dirk cane. This article was among a number of other canes and umbrellas in the far end of a deep closet.

“Now, o’ course,” he mused, “maybe tain’t the right cane, an’ maybe ’tis. But if it is, then this here’s the moiderer’s house, an’ he locked me in cos he’s scared o’ me. Well, it’s all too many fer me. Hello, wot’s this?” He opened a small door in the side of the deep closet. There seemed to be an elevator shaft, with no car. As a matter of fact, it was a laundry chute, but Fibsy was unacquainted with conveniences of that sort, and didn’t know its purpose. But he saw at once that the shaft led to the basement, and that it went upward, to a similar opening in the room above. And the room above was his room!

Softly he crept back upstairs, and re-entered his room. He dislodged the fragment of toothpick, and closed the door. If Kito discovered it was unlocked, he couldn’t help that now. He went straight to his own closet, and sure enough there was the same sort of a slide door, and it gave onto the same chute, hung over it. At last a possible way of exit. Precarious, for he had not yet decided on a safe way of descending a bare shaft, but his mind was at work now, and something must come of it.

And his mind produced this plan. He knew where Kito was now. Always at that time in the afternoon, the Japanese was in his own room in the rear part of the first floor of the house. Previous desultory chat had brought out this fact. And Fibsy’s plan was to make a soft bed at the foot of the shaft and jump down. Dangerous, almost positively disastrous, but the only chance.