Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 12.djvu/42

1120 since. Because of her marked ability my father put her in complete charge of the house's correspondence with our foreign agents; for in addition to English she speaks and writes fluently German, French, the Magyar dialect of Hungary, Russian, and Spanish.

"I was in love with her almost from the first, in spite of my father's objection to the attachment. The first Edwards of our family, Mr. Trant, came to Massachusetts in 1660. So my father has the idea that anybody who came later cannot possibly be our equal; and Miss Silber, who came to America to work—the women of our family have stayed idly at home—did not get here until 1906."

"Coming from where?' [sic]" asked the psychologist.

"I don't know," the boy answered, simply. "I think she is an Austrian; for the Magyar dialect she speaks is the least likely of the languages she knows that she would learn by choice. I spoke of this to her once and she did not contradict me." He paused to control his agitation and then went on:

"She had, so far as I know, no friends. So you see, Mr. Trant, that all that makes my father's consent to marrying her only a greater proof of her evident goodness and charm!"

"Then he did consent to your marrying her?" Trant interjected.

"Yes; two weeks ago. I had begged and begged her to, but she never had been willing to give me her promise. A week ago last Wednesday, after she had known for more than a week that father had agreed to it, she finally consented—but only conditionally. I was going away for a short business trip, and Eva told me that she wanted that much time to think it over, but when I came back she would tell me all about herself and, if I still wanted to marry her after hearing it, she would marry me. I never imagined that anyone could force her to change her mind!"

"Yet she did change her mind, you think?"

"Without question, Mr. Trant! And it seems to have been wholly because of the visit of the 'hammering man,' who came to see her at the office the day after I left Chicago. It sounds queer to call him that; but I do not know his name or anything about him, except the fact of his hammering."

"But if the people in the office saw him, you have at least his description."

"They say he was unusually large, gross, almost bestial in appearance, and red-headed. He was plainly dressed. He asked to see Eva. When she caught sight of him she turned back and refused to speak with him."

"How did the man take her refusal?"

"He seemed very angry for a moment and then went out into the public corridor. For a long time he walked back and forth in the corridor, muttering to himself. The people in the office had practically forgotten him when they were startled by a noise of hammering or pounding in the corridor. One wall of the inner office where Eva had her desk is formed by the wall of the corridor, and the man was beating upon it with his fists."

"Hammering excitedly?" asked Trent.

"No. In a rather deliberate and measured manner. My father, who heard the sound, says it was so very distinctive as to be recognizable if heard again."

"Odd!" said Trant. "And what effect did this have on Miss Silber?"

"That is the strangest part of it, Mr. Trant. Eva had seemed worried and troubled ever since she learned the man was there, but this hammering seemed to agitate and disturb her out of all reason. At the end of the day's business she went to my father and abruptly resigned the position of trust she held with us. My father, surprised and angry at her refusal to give a reason for this action, accepted her resignation."

"You do not happen to know whether, before this visit, Miss Silber had received any letter which troubled her."

"She may have received a message at her house, but not at the office. However, there is something still more mysterious. On Sunday, my father, sorry that he had accepted her resignation so promptly, in view of our relationship, ordered the motor and went out to see her— But, good Heavens!"

HE loud rat-tat-tat of a cane had shaken Trant's door and cracked its ground glass from corner to corner, and the door was flung open to admit a determined little man, whose carefully groomed pink-and-whiteness was accentuated by his anger.

"Winton, go home!" The elder Edwards glared sternly at his son, and then about the office. "Mr. Trant—you are Mr. Trant, I suppose! I want you to have nothing to do with this matter! I prefer to let the whole affair drop where it is!"

"I reserve the right, Mr. Edwards," the psychologist said, rising, "to take up or drop cases only as I myself see fit. I have heard nothing yet in your son's story to explain why you do not want the case investigated."

"Then you shall have it explained," Cuthbert Edwards answered. "I called on Miss Silber last Sunday, and it is because of what I learned there, that I want Winton to have nothing more to do with her. I went to Miss Silber on Sunday, Mr. Trant, feeling that I had been too hasty on Thursday. I offered her an apology and was reasoning with her when I heard suddenly, in an upper room, the same noises that had so disturbed the quiet of my office on Thursday afternoon!"

"You mean the hammering?" Trant exclaimed.

"Precisely, Mr. Trant! The hammering! If you had heard that sound yourself, you would know that it is a very definite and distinctive blow, given according to some intentional arrangement. I no sooner heard it and saw the uneasiness it again caused in Miss Silber, than I became certain that the same disreputable man who had been to see Miss Silber at my office was then housed in her very home. I insisted, as she was provisionally my son's promised wife, on searching the house."

"Did you find him?" Trant inquired, sharply.

"No, I did not, Mr. Trant, though I went into every room and opened every closet. I found only what appeared to be the usual inmates of the house —Miss Silber's father and the woman who kept house for her."