How Many Cards?/Chapter 11

EAVING the Creveling house, McCarty for the second time that day boarded a south-going 'bus, having ascertained from Rollins that Mr. Nicholas Cutter lived on lower Fifth Avenue near Washington Square, and as he rode downtown he wondered somewhat grimly if further mystery were to greet him at his destination. Never had he known a case with so many conflicting elements, so many threads which led apparently nowhere, such an inextricable tangle of tantalizing suggestions and false clews. Somewhere among them, he knew, lay the solution to the enigma, "but it still eluded him. Would Cutter turn out to be as much of a puzzle as the rest of them had been?

The number given him proved to be that of an old-fashioned, square mansion of brick and brownstone situated upon a corner and running back to an unusual depth upon the side street, with a high wall bordering the strip of yard which separated its extension from the house at the rear. McCarty strolled past and examined the extension with curious eyes. It resembled a conservatory, but the walls and dome were formed of thick, opaque, rubbled glass, behind which he fancied he could distinguish a network of strong, protecting wires; surely, if there were plants in there they were of extraordinary value to require such guard, and must be of some species which needed no sunlight.

The shades had been raised at all the windows of the house but they were masked by heavy lace curtains behind which some darker material hung in close folds and no sign of life appeared about the establishment.

McCarty mounted the broad steps which led to the massive front door and sounded with a vigorous hand the bronze knocker which faced him between the wide panels. Its echo crashed upon his ears like the clang of a jail gate and promptly the door swung open, revealing an elderly figure in conventional black whose faded eyes blinked rapidly in the rays of the setting sun as though unaccustomed to its light.

"Mr. Nicholas Cutter. Does he live here?" McCarty asked.

"Yes, sir." The doorway was wide but the shrunken, stoop-shouldered figure seemed consciously to fill it as McCarty made a move to step inside.

"I'd like to see him."

"I will see, sir, if he is disengaged." The servant's tone was gentle with old-fashioned courtesy rather than obsequiousness, but he still blocked the doorway. "What name, sir?"

"Timothy McCarty, though 'twill mean nothing to him. Just tell him that I'm here on a most important private matter."

"Come in, sir." The man threw the door wider and turning led the way with tottering but surprisingly quick footsteps to a second door at the side of the dim hallway. "I do not know that he will be able to see you, but I will take your message."

"Thanks," McCarty said dryly. He was accustomed to encountering effrontery, insolence and servility from the domestic staff in the homes of the rich but the formal dignity of this ancient retainer was new to his experience.

When the latter had disappeared the ex-roundsman glanced wonderingly about him. The entrance hall had been so dark that coming in from the glare of the street he had been able to make out only vaguely the outlines of enormous, oddly shaped chairs and settles and chests, the great fireplace and curving staircase with a heavily carved balustrade, but somber as it was he had gained an impression of space and grouping, of unostentatious elegance beside which the costly luxuriousness of the Creveling house seemed tawdry and blatant in comparison.

As a boy in the old country he had once been invited together with other village children to a memorable "treat" at the castle which dominated the country and had strayed unbidden into the great hall; the one through which he had just passed would have filled barely a corner of it and yet something in its atmosphere recalled that glimpse of the splendor of long-past feudal days as nothing else in America had ever done and a sensation of awed admiration stole over him.

The little reception room into which he had been ushered seemed on the contrary to be almost bare, with its delicately carved chairs and tables, its grotesque lamps and the curiously lacquered cabinet upon the broad top of which a lone vase of washed-out-looking blue stood in solitary state. Dennis Riordan's comfortably married sister, Molly, was the only woman whom McCarty admitted to his friendship and her cluttered "parlor" was to him the epitome of cheerful good taste; give her a few dollars and she would have had that room looking like something that was meant to be lived in, yet it had an air about it, at that, although he could not have told wherein lay the distinction. Had he known that each article it contained was wellnigh priceless, that some of them—like the washed-out-looking vase—had graced the palaces of emperors long dead, and that each had a history which would have rivaled an Arabian Nights of the antiquarians he would have been duly impressed, but it would have made no difference in his personal opinion.

The old man-servant had closed the door upon him with a certain definiteness of gesture which made him hesitate to reopen it and listen but he had not long to wait. Almost immediately the former reappeared and this time he beamed upon the visitor.

"Mr. Cutter has been expecting you, sir. Come this way."

McCarty followed, dumb with astonishment, as the other led him across the hall and ceremoniously opened another door. How could the man Cutter have anticipated his coming? Was it sheer bravado or was Cutter informed by the papers of the investigation and the names of those in charge of it, and prepared to give him some facts which would help in the solution of the mystery?

As he passed over the threshold he was aware at first only of a rich, ruby glow falling on rows upon rows of exquisitely tooled books which lined the walls, tipping with gold the magnificent bronze groups that stood here and there in the vast recesses of the room and gleaming softly on warm-hued silken tapestries and mellow, deep-piled rugs into which his own heavy-soled boots sank with what seemed to him an almost profane pressure.

He started when the butler touched his arm and murmured deprecatingly: "Your hat, sir," and relinquished it with the same feeling with which he would have handed over his favorite blackthorn at the entrance to some museum.

Then all at once he was conscious of a tall, distinguished figure advancing toward him with erect, soldierly bearing, and a rich, musical, hearty voice with just a hint of amused tolerance running through it exclaimed:

"I have been awaiting you, Mr. McCarty! Take this chair and have a cigar; I think you'll find these to your taste."

As though in a daze McCarty felt the grip of a soft but vigorous hand, and found himself in the depths of a great chair with the best cigar he had ever smoked between his teeth and keen, inscrutable gray eyes smiling down at him.

"You're Mr. Nicholas Cutter, sir?" he asked when he could find his voice, and then at the other's nod he added: "You've been waiting for me? I don't get you—?"

"Your former colleague, or—er—competitor, Mr. Wade Terhune, has already paid me a call and he told me that I might expect you shortly." Mr. Cutter dropped indolently into a chair and stretched out his long, slim legs luxuriously. "I'm quite ready to tell you anything I can about our late friend Eugene Creveling."

So Terhune had been before him and left that ironic warning, knowing that it would be repeated! McCarty stifled a profane observation and his own honest blue eyes traveled in swift appraisal over his companion. He saw a man in the late forties with a dark, lean, almost ascetic face and hair just graying at the temples; a man who bore himself with the cordial but unconsciously aloof air of an aristocrat and yet about whom there appeared to be an alert tensity as of one habitually on guard. There seemed to McCarty to be something vaguely familiar about that expression; upon whose face had he encountered it before?

"You'll excuse me for intruding on you, sir, but we've hardly any clews to work on and 'tis only through Mr. Creveling's friends and associates that we can hope to get a line on him," McCarty began at last. "We're trying to find out what motive he could have had for killing himself."

Mr. Cutter's eyebrows went up and he put the tips of his long, slender, tapering fingers together.

"So? The authorities have come to the conclusion that it was suicide? That was not the impression I gathered from Mr. Terhune."

"Mr. Terhune is a private detective, sir; a scientific criminologist, he calls himself, and a wonder he is in some respects with his little recording machines and such, but I'm a special deputy on the police force and one of the old school. Suicide the assistant medical examiner names it, and as a suicide I'm investigating the case." McCarty's tone was that of one harnessed to routine, but there was a speculative gleam in the gaze he bestowed upon his host.

Mr. Cutter shook his head.

"Of course you know your business, Mr. McCarty, and your medical expert's diagnosis ought to be conclusive, but isn't there room for doubt? I'm not actually insinuating that some one broke in and shot Mr. Creveling, but have you looked at the case from all sides?"

"If there was room for doubt that it was suicide what else are you thinking of but murder, Mr. Cutter?" McCarty demanded.

The other shrugged.

"I have formed no opinion, personally. I can no more conceive of Mr. Creveling killing himself than I can of any one wishing to take his life, yet the fact remains that he is dead from the shot of a pistol fired by his hand or that of another. If the authorities are satisfied that it is a case of suicide that is one step on the way to its solution."

"You've known Mr. Creveling a long time?"

"Since he left the university, but only casually in those earlier years. He was having his fling in the bright lights and my tastes drew me in quite another direction; it was only after his marriage and through a mutual friend that I really came into contact with him and discovered that we had an interest in common which rendered us congenial."

"And what was that interest, Mr. Cutter?" McCarty asked quickly.

"A love of the beautiful in all things: textiles, books, paintings, porcelains, sculpture. It had lain dormant in him but with me it was innate, the passion of a lifetime; he had the acquisitive zeal of a collector and I the appreciation of an hereditary possessor, but I was naturally interested in finding a kindred spirit where I had least thought to discover one. If you were a connoisseur, Mr. McCarty, you would understand what a pleasure it was to me to instruct and advise him in his choice. He made many mistakes but he was learning—he was learning. What a pity!"

"Yes, sir." McCarty agreed gravely. "Who was the mutual friend that brought you together?"

"Mr. Douglas Waverly."

"Him!" McCarty ejaculated. "And is he what you call a connoisseur, too?"

Mr. Cutter smiled, with evident amusement.

"You have already interviewed him, I see.—No. Mr. Waverly is a good sportsman and a capital fellow but he has no interest in—er—antiques. However, I fear we are wasting your valuable time. As I said, I cannot conceive why Mr. Creveling should have killed himself unless—"

"Unless what?" McCarty leaned forward and his teeth clamped upon his cigar.

"I was going to say, unless he had suddenly taken leave of his senses," Mr. Cutter replied, stirring uneasily in his chair. "I would not have suggested it as a possibility but now that I have permitted myself this indiscretion I must tell you quite frankly that on several occasions of late Mr. Creveling has seemed to be rather—er—peculiar. Not exactly irrational, but he has let go, lost control of himself over the merest trifles, worked himself up into a state of ungovernable fury because of some small annoyance or difference of opinion at which he would have laughed a year ago.

"'Difference of opinion?'" McCarty repeated. "With whom, Mr. Cutter?"

"Oh, any one; I do not recall any particular instance, but it has seemed as though he had been rather going to pieces. I am telling you this in confidence; it may have been simply a case of nerves, but in the light of what has occurred and in the absence of any possible motive as far as I can imagine it may be worth looking into."

"It may that!" McCarty assented. "Do you know if any of his other friends noticed the change in him? He was here at your house last Tuesday evening, wasn't he?"

"Yes, poor chap! That is the last time I saw him alive." Mr. Cutter eyed him steadily.

"Did he show any of the temper that you've been telling me about then before the others?"

"'The others'?" Mr. Cutter's straight brows lifted inquiringly. "Oh, you mean my other guests of the evening?"

"Yes. Mrs. Kip and the O'Rourkes and Fords and Mr. Waverly. Did he act peculiar then?"

"I see you have quite a comprehensive list of our mutual friends." The other laughed shortly. "Mr. Creveling displayed no ill-temper, if that is what you mean, but it did occur to me that he was preoccupied and laboring under some sort of excitement."

"Was he on good terms with every one?" McCarty persisted. "Did you notice any coolness between him and one of your other guests?"

Mr. Cutter frowned.

"I did not. He appeared to be on excellent terms with himself and the world. I may be all wrong, but his eccentricities have assuredly become more marked of late and isn't it quite possible that he may have had a violent quarrel with some one over some unintentional or imaginary injury, brooded over it until the tension snapped and in a moment of temporary aberration shot himself? I realize how far-fetched such an explanation may appear to you, but I can think of no other. He had everything to live for and not an enemy in the world."

"Did he have any delusions, now? Was he a crank on any one subject that you can recall?"

"No. He was a man with more than the average self-assurance; his egotism was marked, but if that were a gauge of sanity I fancy that many of us would be in the hands of alienists!" Mr. Cutter smiled, then his face grew grave. "He was arrogant because he had been pampered and spoiled from birth, and he never seemed able to realize that any one had a right to cross his will, but we got on wonderfully well together and his death will be a distinct loss to me, at least."

McCarty darted a swift glance at his host for although the words had been uttered with the proper decorum there was an odd note of risibility in the tone as thou the speaker were secretly amused at some unvoiced thought, but Mr. Cutter's face expressed only deep concern and regret. The ex-roundsman realized that nothing further was to be gained at the present interview without showing his own hand and reluctantly dropping the stub of his cigar upon the ash-tray he got up from his chair.

"Well, sir, I'll not say the tip came from you, but I'll look into this matter of Mr. Creveling being maybe off his head. I don't mind telling you that it's the first idea I've got hold of that might bear out the medical examiner's report. Young and rich and popular and all as he was, it stands to reason that he must have been nutty to do a thing like that. By the way, Mr. and Mrs. Ford were here last night, weren't they?"

"Yes. They dined with me and we talked until an unconscionable hour. Clever fellow, Ford; one of the shrewdest operators on the street. Take a few of these cigars with you if you liked that one," Mr. Cutter invited cordially as he held out a handful. "You won't find any of the same sort in the city for they are made especially for me. Look in on me again any time you care to do so; I shall be glad to learn how your investigation is coming along."

McCarty thanked him, reclaimed his hat from the aged butler in the hall and departed. It was nearly six o'clock and the early spring dusk was settling about him as he made his way to the nearest public telephone booth and called up Dennis Riordan.

"As soon as ever I can get into my regular clothes," the latter promised. "What was that you said this morning about a dress suit?"

"You'd not be needing it to-night," McCarty chuckled. "Don't make it more than half an hour for if it's not mistaken I am, we have a job like the old times before us, Denny. I'll be at the table in the corner, waiting for you."

Ringing off, McCarty inserted another nickel in the slot and calling Headquarters, got an eager and impatient inspector on the wire.

"Is that you, Inspector Druet?" he demanded cautiously.

"Where the devil have you been, Mac? Here I've been waiting for your report—!"

"'Twill keep, sir, at least for a while, for I've nothing definite, but I think I'm on the heels of something. You mind that party you took up this morning on suspicion?"

"Bodansky?"

"No, sir. The valet. Has he laid low or yelled for a lawyer?"

"He's standing pat. Says he'll ask for a lawyer when he needs one and seems confident we'll have to let him go for lack of evidence. I had him up on the carpet for three hours but no amount of grilling will get out of him where he was during the hours between eleven and six."

"Well, I guess he's right!" McCarty observed. "If you'll take a little tip from me, sir, you'll turn him loose."

"Turn him—!' What-t!" The wires fairly sizzled.

"Let him go, sir, at eight sharp to-night," McCarty urged. "Give him an idea that you've grand new evidence that leaves him out of the case entirely and you don't give a damn where he spent the night. Get that through his head and then throw him out, but not a minute before eight. Have you Martin there, or Yost?"

"Martin. But what have you got under your hat, Mac?"

"My head, sir, and it's a wonder 'tis still on my shoulders with all the queer dope I've been getting this day!" responded McCarty with fervor. "However, when you let our bird out have Martin on the job. I'll pick the fellow up just outside and do you tell Martin, please, sir, to trail along after me but do nothing until I give him the sign. I may be wanting Yost later but if I do, I'll 'phone again."

"You're all wrong this trip, Mac, but I'll let you see it through." The inspector laughed meaningly. "Our bird is too wise to lead you to his covey, but when he's trailed his broken wing before you long enough, pull him in again and come down here with him. Understand? I've got something to talk over with you."

"Yes, sir," McCarty agreed noncommittally. "But until I do see you, sir, for the love of the saints keep the newspaper boys of the same opinion as the medical examiner! Don't let them know but that the case is closed as far as we are concerned and it might be a nice little diversion for them if you dropped a hint about there being insanity in the family and our late friend having showed signs of going bugs himself. Don't put it too strong, sir; a whiff is enough for them news hounds to get on the scent and 'tis being laid careful for them and for us too, if I'm not mistaken."

"I get you." There was a new note in the inspector's tone. "Your party will be under way at eight sharp."

An hour later, over a thick steak and very black coffee, McCarty recounted to the eager Dennis all that had taken place since he left him at the firehouse that morning.

"And that's the whole of it!" he summed up, waving a greasy knife comprehensively. "Every last one of them bluffing and hedging and lying like hell except the O'Rourke's, and not a soul of them knowing that they're giving themselves away with every stall they make! If it's all the one thing they're working together to keep dark, then 'tis better organized they are than Tammany itself was in the old days, but if they've each got their own private reasons—outside an aversion to notoriety—for warding off an investigation, they must be a fine bunch of crooks! There's something queer about the lot, Denny, something I don't understand. I told you the dope I got on them from Jimmie Ballard; now, leaving out my old friends the O'Rourkes—though God only knows how they come to be mixed in that crowd!—take the Kip woman. She knew well I was no reporter but she tried to bluff it out and put over the lie that she was asleep in her bed all night and had hurt her arm by a fall. She didn't dare deny, though, that 'twas Waverly sent her the message about what had happened to Creveling because she wasn't sure of her ground, and when. I sprung it on her that 'twas suicide it swept her clean off her feet; if she don't actually know it was murder she's got a mighty strong suspicion, and so have the rest of them."

"'Twas a fool move she made, quarreling with the old dame she'd hired to boost her into society," Dennis commented. "Knowing the woman had something on her she'd ought to have kidded her along to keep her mouth shut."

McCarty shook his head.

"Fool she may be, but she knew that the Frost woman wouldn't talk unless it was dragged out of her for fear that notoriety would spoil her chances with another sucker; one hint of scandal and her graft would be gone. As it was, when I put it up to her she cleaned her own skirts by blackening the other woman's. What was it that took Mrs, Kip out of her house at all hours almost against her will? Blackmail, or something like drink or dope that she couldn't keep away from? What kind of investments is her money tied up in, that she's flush one minute and broke the next?"

"Like a gambler." Dennis nodded.

"Why did she break her dates and run a chance of getting in Dutch with the very people she'd been trying to know all these years?" pursued McCarty. "Why did she keep that old leech around her at all if she knew the woman was on to her; for a cloak?—Of course, if all this has nothing to do with Creveling's death and her little game, whatever it is, doesn't come under the statutes I'm wasting time and brains on her, but to-morrow she'll come across with an alibi for last night or I'll take her downtown."

"To-morrow will be another day," Dennis remarked. "What if we had a quiet talk with her now?"

"Because we've a little date of our own downtown," retorted McCarty. "Now, there's the Fords. She was ready enough to talk until she let that slip about expecting to see Creveling at Cutter's house the night before, and then she looked for a minute as though she could have cut her tongue out. Why? Whatever it was, her husband was afraid of her talking, too."

"I should think when you heard him ask her if she knew, and then say that they were done for, you would have called it a day and run him in," Dennis observed.

"When the two of them had a perfectly good alibi that Cutter himself vouches for?" snorted McCarty. "Use the brains that God gave you, Denny, and don't be criticizing your betters! I'm thinking Ford's trouble was not as to how Creveling died, but that he was dead, and 'twas not grief that was consuming him, either!"

"Then what was it?" Dennis demanded, nettled at the rebuke.

"That's one of about a million questions I'm after asking myself," admitted McCarty. "The Crevelings' doctor wasn't any help, nor yet Mrs. Waverly."

"She's on to her husband's gallivanting, though, that's plain." Dennis attacked his second piece of pie with gusto. "He said he'd be at the Belterre but she was taking no chances on proving him a liar by calling up even to tell him about Creveling. She's probably got over the quarreling stage and had rather let well enough alone."

"And since when do you know anything about women?" asked McCarty with scorn. "'Tis not in reason, that she could care enough for him to be jealous but the only time a woman is not glad to have something to hang on a man is when she's in her grave. However, that's neither here nor there. Who put up that ten thousand dollars bail for the girl Ilsa? Where is she now? Who's back of her? The jewels don't matter, but I tell you, Denny, I'd like a few words with her!"

"Let her go," advised Dennis, quite as though the elusive Ilsa were within reach of their hands. "'Tis not a thieving housemaid you're after but the man that shot Creveling."

"The man that shot him may never be found," McCarty remarked and then at his companion's stare of incredulity he added hastily: "Cutter is the smoothest proposition of them all. Of course, his alibi is as good as the Fords' since they were all together in his house, but why did he try to steer me on to the idea of insanity as the reason for Creveling's supposed suicide? Just because it was the only way to let everybody else out of responsibility, or knowing that Creveling had no motive for killing himself, did he grab that as the wool to pull over our eyes to keep us from going over to the murder theory and investigating them all?"

"But you say he's of a grand old family with money and position and all; what's he got to be afraid of in an investigation?" protested Dennis. "If Creveling was murdered and he thinks he knows who did it why should he shield him?"

"What is he doing, or the O'Rourkes, either, going around with a crowd like that?" McCarty crooked his finger at the waiter. "Mrs. Creveling was there with the family tree and so was Mrs. Waverly according to Jimmie Ballard, but they both married plain upstarts and bounders for their money as far as I can make out, and look at the rest of the lot! Mrs. Kip, a climber and God knows what else besides, the Fords as common as bog Irish and hanging on by their eyelids, and George Alexander a has-been in spats and a goatee! What is it makes them all hang together? It's not love of each other's company for there never were birds of such different feathers, Denny. What's it that binds them together? What's the game? When I've found that out I'm thinking I'll be a long way to knowing who killed Eugene Creveling."