The Black Eagle Mystery

CHAPTER XIII

JACK TELLS THE STORY

To say that the expectant Whitney office got a jolt is putting it mildly. On the threshold of success, to meet such a setback enraged George and made even the chief grouchy. The new developments added new complications that upset their carefully elaborated theories. There had to be a readjustment. Whoever Sammis was and whatever his motive could have been it was undoubtedly he who had attacked Tony Ford.

It was inexplicable and mysterious. The chief had an idea that there was a connection between Sammis and Barker, that the man now dead might have been "planted" in Philadelphia to divert the search from the live man, who had stolen to safety after a rise to the surface in Toronto. George scouted it; an accidental likeness had fooled them and made them waste valuable time. The devil was on the side of Barker, taking care of his own.

It did look that way. Investigation of the few clues we had led to nothing. The tailor, whose bill was found in Sammis's pocket, remembered selling a suit and overcoat to a man called Sammis on January tenth. He was a quiet, polite old party who looked poor and shabby but bought good clothes and paid spot cash for them. The typewritten letter indicated that Sammis had been sent to Philadelphia and well paid for some work that had not yet started. It was upon this letter the chief based his contention that Sammis's appearance in the case was not a coincidence – he was another of Barker's henchmen, and it was part of Barker's luck that at the crucial moment he should have died.

But it was all speculation, nothing certain except that we had lost our man again. Philadelphia had dropped out as a point of interest and the case swung back to New York, where it now centered round the bed of Tony Ford.

We were in constant communication with the hospital and on Thursday received word that Ford would recover. That lifted us up from the smash of Wednesday night. When he was able to speak we would hear something – everything if he could be scared into a full confession. The hospital authorities refused to let anyone see him till he was perfectly fit, a matter of several days yet. That suited us, as we wanted no speech with him till he was strong enough to stand the shock of our knowledge. Caught thus, with his back against the wall, we expected him to make a clean breast of it.

The enforced waiting was – to me anyway – distracting. With the hope I'd had of Barker gone, I was now looking to Ford. He must, he couldexonerate her, there wasn't the slightest doubt of it. But to have to wait for it, to be cool and calm, to get through the next few days – I felt like a man caught in the rafters of a burning building, trying to be patient while they hacked him out.

After the news from the hospital the temperature of the office fell to an enforced normal. O'Mally went back to his burrow and Babbitts to his paper with his big story still in the air. That night in my place, I measured off the sitting room from eight till twelve – five strides from the bookcase to the window, seven from the fire to the folding doors.

If I could only induce her to speak, if she herself would only clear up the points that were against her, there was still a chance of getting her out of it before Ford opened up. That she had something to hide, some mystery in connection with her movements that night, some secret understanding with Barker, even I had to admit. But whatever it was it would be better to reveal it than to go on into the fierce white light that would break over the Harland case within a week.

In that midnight pacing I tried to think of some way I could force her to tell – to tell me, but the clocks chimed on and the fire died on the hearth and I got nowhere. She knew me so slightly, might think I was set on by the office, the very fact that I was what I was might seal her lips closer. Instead of breaking down her reticence I might increase it, strengthen that wall of secretiveness behind which she seemed to be taking refuge like a hunted creature.

When I went to the office on Friday morning the chief asked me to go to Buffalo that night, to look up some witnesses in the Lytton case. It would take me all Saturday and I could get back by Sunday night or at the latest Monday morning. A phone message sent to the hospital before I came in had drawn the information that Tony Ford would not be able to see the Philadelphia detectives – O'Mally and Babbitts posed in that rôle – till Monday. That settled it – better to be at work out of town than hanging about cursing the slowness of the hours.

But the questions of the night before haunted me. Why, anyway, couldn't I go to see her? Wasn't it up to me, whether I succeeded or not, to make the effort to break through her silence – the silence that was liable to do her such deadly damage? I had to see her. I couldn't keep away from her. At lunch time I called her up and asked her if I could come. She said yes and named four that afternoon. On the stroke I was in the vestibule, pushing the button below her name, and with my heart thumping against my ribs like a steel hammer.

She opened the door and as I followed her up the little hall told me the servant had been sent away and her mother was out. As on that former visit she seated herself at the desk, motioning me to a chair opposite. The blinds were raised, the room flooded with the last warm light of the afternoon. By its brightness I saw that she was even paler and more worn than she had been that other time – obviously a woman harassed and preyed upon by some inner trouble.

On the way up I had gone over ways of approach, but sitting there in the quiet pretty room, so plainly the abode of gentlewomen, I couldn't work round to the subject. She didn't give me any help, seeming to assume that I had dropped in to pay a call. That made it more difficult. When a woman treats you as if you're a gentleman, actuated by motives of common politeness, it's pretty hard to break through her guard and pry into her secrets.

She began to talk quickly and, it seemed to me, nervously, telling me how the owner of their old farm on the Azalea Woods Estates had offered them a cottage there, to which they would move next week. It was small but comfortable, originally occupied by a laborer's family who had gone away. The people were very kind, would take no rent, and she and her mother could live for almost nothing till she found work. I sympathized with the idea, she'd get away from the wear and tear of the city, have time to rest and recuperate after her recent worry. She dropped her eyes to a paper on the desk and said:

"Yes, I'm tired. Everything was so sudden and unexpected. I once thought I was strong enough to stand anything – but all this – "

She stopped and picking up a pencil began making little drawings on the paper, designs of squares and circles.

"It's worn you out," I said, looking at her weary and colorless face. Like the thrust of a sword a pang shot through me – love of a man, hidden and disgraced, had blighted that once blooming beauty.

She nodded without looking up:

"It's not the business only, there have been other – other – anxieties."

That was more of an opening than anything I'd ever heard her say. I could feel the smothering beat of my heart as I answered, as quietly as I could:

"Can't you tell them to me? Perhaps I can help you."

One of those sudden waves of color I'd seen before passed across her face. As if to hide it she dropped her head lower over the paper, touching up the marks she was making. Her voice came soft and controlled:

"That's very kind of you, Mr. Reddy – But I know you're kind – I knew it when I first met you a year ago in the country. No, I can't tell you."

I leaned nearer to her. If I had a chance to make her speak it was now or never.

"Miss Whitehall," I said, trying to inject a simple, casual friendliness into my voice. "You're almost alone in the world, you've no one – no man, I mean – to look after you or your interests. You don't know how much help I might be able to give you."

"In what way?" she asked, with her eyes still on the paper.

For a moment I was nonplused. I couldn't tell her what I knew – I couldn't go back on my office. I was tied hand and foot; all I could do with honesty was to try to force the truth from her. Like a fool I stammered out:

"In advice – in – in – a larger knowledge of the world than you can have."

She gave a slight, bitter smile, and tilting her head backward looked critically at her drawings:

"My knowledge of the world is larger than you think – maybe larger than yours. There's only one thing you can do for me, but there is one."

I leaned nearer, my voice gone a little hoarse:

"What is it?"

She turned her head and looked into my eyes. Her expression chilled me, cold, challenging, defiant:

"Tell me if the Whitney Office has found Johnston Barker yet?"

For a second our eyes held, and in that second I saw the defiance die out of hers and only question, a desperate question, take its place.

"No," I heard myself say, "they have not found him."

"Thank you," she murmured, and went back to her play with the pencil.

I drew myself to the edge of my chair and laid a hand on the corner of the desk:

"You've asked me a question and I've answered it. Now let me ask one. Why are you so interested in the movements of Johnston Barker?"

She stiffened, I could see her body grow rigid under its thin silk covering. The hand holding the pencil began to tremble:

"Wouldn't anyone be interested in such a sensational event? Isn't it natural? Perhaps knowing Mr. Barker personally – as I told you in Mr. Whitney's office – I'm more curious than the rest of the world, that's all."

The trembling of her hand made it impossible for her to continue drawing. She threw down the pencil and locked her fingers together, outstretched on the paper, a breath, deep taken and sudden, lifting her breast. It was pitiful, her lonely fight. I was going to say something – anything, to make her think I didn't see, when she spoke again:

"Do any of you – you men who are hunting him – ever think that he may not be able to come back?"

"Able?" I exclaimed excitedly, for now again I thought something was coming. "What do you mean by able?"

I had said – or looked – too much. With a smothered sound she jumped to her feet and before I could rise or stay her with a gesture, brushed past me and moved to the window. There, for a moment, she stood looking out, her splendid shape, crowned with its mass of black hair, in silhouette against the thin white curtains.

"Look here, Miss Whitehall," I said with grim resolution, "I've got to say something to you that you may not like, may think is butting in, but I can't help it."

"What?" came on a caught breath.

"If you know anything about Barker – his whereabouts, his inability to come back – why don't you tell it? It will help us and help you."

She wheeled round like a flash, all vehement denial.

"I – I? I didn't mean that I knew. I was only wondering, guessing. It's just as I told Mr. Whitney that day. And you seem to think I'm not open, am hiding something. Why should I do that? What motive could I have to keep secret anything I might know that would bring Mr. Barker to justice?"

As she spoke she moved toward me, bringing up in front of me, her eyes almost fiercely demanding. Mine fell before them. It was no use. With my memory of those letters, of her mysterious plot with Barker clear in my mind, I could go no farther.

I muttered some sentences of apology, was sorry if I'd offended her, hadn't meant to imply anything, was carried away by my zeal to find the absconder. She seemed mollified and moved to her seat by the desk. Then suddenly, as if a spring that had upheld her had snapped, she dropped into the chair, limp and pallid.

"I'm tired, I'm not myself," she faltered. "I don't seem to know what I'm saying. All this – all these dreadful things – have torn me to pieces – " Her voice broke and she averted her face but not before I'd seen that her eyes were shining with tears. That sight brought a passionate exclamation out of me. I went toward her, my arms ready to go out and enfold her. But she waved me back with an imploring gesture:

"Oh go – I beg of you, go – I want peace – I want to be alone. Please go – Please don't torment me any more. I can't bear it."

She dropped her face into her hands, shrinking back from me, and I turned and left her. My steps as I went down the hall were the only sounds in the place, but the silence seemed to thrill with unloosed emotions, to hum and sing with the vibrations that came from my nerves and my heart and my soul.

The big moments in your life ought to come in beautiful places, at least that's what I've always thought. But they don't – anyway with me. For as I went down that dingy staircase, full of queer smells, dark and squalid, the greatest moment I'd ever known came to me – I loved her!

I'd loved her always – I knew it now. Out in the country those few first times, but then more as a vision, something that wove through my thoughts, aloof and unapproachable, like an inspiration and a dream. And that day in Whitney's office as a woman. And every day since, deeper and stronger, seeing her beset, realizing her danger, longing with every fiber to help her. It was the cause of that burst of the old fury, of the instinct that kept me close and secretive, of this day's fruitless attempt to make her speak. All the work, the growing dread, the rush of events, had held me from seeing, crowded out recognition of the wonderful thing. I stood in the half-lit, musty little hall in a trance-like ecstasy, outside myself, holding only that one thought – I loved her – I loved her – I loved her!

Presently I was in the street, walking without any consciousness of the way, toward the Park. The ecstasy was gone, the present was back again – the present blacker and more terrible after those radiant moments. I don't know how to describe that coming back to the hideous reality. Everything was mixed up in me – passion, pity, hope, jealousy. There was a space when that was the fiercest, gripped me like a physical pang, and then passed into a hate for Barker, the man she loved who had left her to face it alone. I think I must have spoken aloud – I saw people looking at me, and if my inner state was in any way indicated on my outer envelope I wonder I wasn't run in as a lunatic.

In a quiet bypath in the Park I got a better hold on myself and tried to do some clear thinking. The first thing I had to do was to rule Barker out. Even if my fight was to give her to him I must fight; that I couldn't do till we heard from Ford. Until then it was wisdom to say nothing, to keep my pose of a disinterested adherent of the theory of her innocence. If Ford's story exculpated her she was out of the case forever. If it didn't I couldn't decide what I'd do till I heard where it placed her.

It was a momentary deadlock with nothing for it but to wait. That I was prepared to do – go to Buffalo, get through my job there and come back. But I'd come back with my sword loose in its scabbard to do battle for my lady.

CHAPTER XIV

MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

You can imagine after that disappointment in Philadelphia – it seems an unfeeling way to speak of the death of an old gentleman – how we all turned our eyes and kept them fixed on Tony Ford.

Friday night Babbitts told me the hospital had reported he couldn't be seen till Monday. The others were in a fever, he said, O'Mally smoking big black cigars by the gross and Jack Reddy gone off to Buffalo, and Mr. George that scared Ford would slip off some way he'd have liked to put a cordon of the National Guard round the hospital.

Then came Saturday – and Gee! up everything burst different to what anybody had expected.

It started with Mr. George. Being so nervous he couldn't rest he called up the hospital in the morning and got word that there'd been a mistake in the message of the day before and that Mr. Ford was well enough to see the Philadelphia detectives that afternoon. Before midday Babbitts and O'Mally were gathered in, and while I was waiting on pins and needles in Ninety-fifth Street and Jack Reddy was off unsuspecting in Buffalo, the two of them were planted by Tony Ford's bedside, hearing the story that lifted the Harland case one peg higher in its surprise and grewsomeness.

O'Mally and Babbitts had their plans all laid beforehand. They were two plain-clothes men from Philadelphia, who had just come on a new lead – the finding of Sammis. When they'd opened that up before him, they were going to pass on to the murder – take him by surprise. If Ford made the confession they hoped to shake out of him, the warrant for his arrest would be issued and the Harland case come before the public in its true light.

Babbitts had never seen Ford and when he described him to me it didn't sound like the same man. He was lying propped up with pillows, his head swathed in bandages, and his face pale and haggard. Under the covers his long legs stretched most to the end of the cot, and his big, powerful hands were lying limp on the counterpane. He was in a private room, in an inside wing of the hospital, very quiet and retired.

When the attendant left and they introduced themselves he looked sort of scowling from one to the other. Both noticed the same thing – a kind of uneasiness, as if his apprehensions were aroused, and for all his broken head he was on the job, not weak and indifferent, but wary and alert.

This wasn't what they wanted so they started in telling him the news they thought would please him and put him at his ease. A clue had been picked up in Philadelphia that looked like the mystery of his attack was solved.

"In fact," says O'Mally, "a man's been run to earth there that we're pretty sure is the one."

Both men were watching him and both saw a change come over him that caught their eyes and held them. Instead of being relieved he was scared.

"Have you got the man?" he said.

O'Mally nodded:

"That's what we have."

"Who is he?"

"Party called Sammis. Answers to the description – "

Before he could go further Ford raised himself on his elbow, looking downright terrified.

"Joseph Sammis?" he said, his eyes set staring on O'Mally.

"That's it. We tracked him up and found him. But I don't want to raise any false hopes. We were too late. When we got there he was dead."

It had an extraordinary effect upon Ford. He gave a gasp, and raised himself up into a sitting posture, his mouth open, his eyes glued on O'Mally. For a minute not one of them said a word – Ford evidently too paralyzed at what he'd heard, and the others too surprised at the way Ford was acting which was exactly different to what they'd expected. It was he who spoke first, his voice gone down to a husky murmur:

"Dead?"

O'Mally answered:

"Heart disease, angina pectoris. The doctor down there said some strain or effort had finished him. That, as we see it, was the attack he made on you."

Then Ford did the most surprising thing of all. Raising his hands he clapped both over his face, and with a big, heaving sob from the bottom of his chest, fell back on the pillows and began to cry.

Babbitts said you couldn't have believed it if you hadn't seen it – he and O'Mally looking stumped at each other and between them that great ox of a man, lying in the bed crying like a baby. Then Himself, being fearful that maybe they'd done the man harm, rose up to go after a nurse, but O'Mally caught him by the coat, whispering, "Keep still, you goat," then turned and said very pleasant to Ford:

"Knocked you out, old man. That's natural, nerves still weak. Keep it up till you feel better. Don't mind us – we're used to it."

So there they sat, Babbitts still uneasy, but O'Mally, calm and patient, tilting back in his chair looking dreamy out of the window. He said afterward that he knew that hysterical fit for what it was – relief, and that was why he wouldn't let Babbitts call a nurse.

Presently the sobs began to ease off and Ford, groping under the pillow for a handkerchief, said, all choked up:

"How did you come to connect him with me?"

"By papers found in his desk – records of a real-estate business you and he'd been in some years ago at Syracuse."

"That's the man," said Ford, between his hiccuppy catches of breath, "and he's dead?"

"Dead as Julius Cæsar." O'Mally leaned forward, his voice dropping, "Youknew he was the chap that attacked you?"

Ford, his head drooped, his shoulders hunched up like an old woman's, nodded:

"Yes, I lied when I said he was a stranger to me."

"Why did you do that?" asked Babbitts.

It was just what you might know he'd ask. One of the cutest things about Himself is that he never can understand why anyone, no matter what the provocation, has to lie.

Ford didn't answer and O'Mally, giving his chair a hitch nearer to the bed, said kind and persuasive:

"Say, Ford, you'd better tell us all you know. We got the papers, and most of the information. The man's dead. Clean it up and we'll let it drop."

Without raising his head Ford said, low and sort of sullen:

"All right – if you agree to that. I was in business with him and I – I – didn't play fair – lit out with some of the money." He turned a lowering look on Babbitts. "That's the answer to your question," then back to O'Mally, "I didn't run across him or hear of him in all this time and supposed the whole thing was buried and forgotten till he came into my room Tuesday night. He was blazing mad, said he'd been waiting for a chance to even up, and had at last found me. To keep him quiet I said I'd give him some money. I had some."

"Yes, yes," said O'Mally, nodding cheerfully, "the legacy your uncle left you."

Ford shot a look at him, sharp and quick:

"Oh, you know about that?"

"Naturally. Inquiries have been made in all directions. Go on."

"I hadn't much cash there – a few dollars, but I thought I'd hand him that and agree to pay him more later. He said he didn't want money,that wouldn't square our accounts, and as I went to the desk he came up behind me and struck me. That's all I know."

"Did he say how he'd located you?"

"Yes. He'd been looking for me ever since I'd skipped but couldn't find me. Then he saw my name in the papers after the Harland suicide. Some fool reporter spoke to me in the street that night and I told him who I was and where I worked. A short while after Sammis phoned up to the Black Eagle Building, heard from Miss Whitehall I'd left and got from her my house address."