The Twenty-Six Clues/Chapter 17

T was a very pale and agitated Etta who awaited McCarty's coming at the hour designated that night. Her buxom figure drooped and her face in the flaring light of the street lamp looked swollen and distorted as from much weeping.

"Good-evening, my dear," McCarty saluted her with marked gallantry. "I got your note and it's proud I am that you sent for me in your trouble, whatever it is. Would you come for a little walk, maybe?"

He had noted that she wore her hat and cloak and at his words she nodded and slipping out of the area door, closed it noiselessly behind her.

"Yes. We can't talk here, and the house gives me the creeps, anyway. It was good of you to come, Mr. McCarty, but I dunno as I did right to send for you. He'd half kill me if he knew I was giving him away, even though you've nothing to do with the police now. Still we've got to know what to do or I'll go crazy with the worry of it!"

"If it's a police matter I can put you right on it in no time. There's no trick of the trade I'm not on to," McCarty replied promptly. "Is it a friend of yours that's in trouble?"

"It's my brother, Dick." The words came low and half unwillingly from her lips and McCarty with difficulty repressed a whistle of astonishment.

Her brother I Norwood's description of the young man returned to his mind: "lazy, impudent, drank up everything he could lay his hand on"

"I've heard of him," he said slowly. "Mr. Jarvis em-ployed him as second man at one time, didn't he?"

"Yes, and you've heard no good of him, III be bound!" Etta retorted fiercely. "Dick never had a fair show! He's not really bad; not any worse than a lot of other young men, but he's had hard luck and he can't keep a steady job and it gets him crazy to think of the soft snap the rich have of it, while he and the likes of us have to slave and take their abuse just for enough to eat and something to put on our backs! Dick tried to go straight, but something always seemed to go wrong. When he worked for the Jarvises old Henry, the butler, was jealous of him and forever complaining to the master. Of course, Dick wasn't going to stand having all the old man's work put off on his shoulders and take his jawing too, besides! Then Henry told Mr. Jarvis that Dick was drinking up his whisky, which was a he, but Mr. Jarvis wouldn't listen and discharged him."

"And now he's in trouble?" McCarty suggested to stem the flow of reminiscence.

"Yes, through no fault of his own. He got in with a gang over on the East Side; not gunmen, but tough, young fellows that—that put notions in his head and showed him easy ways of getting money." She hesitated. "I've begged him on my knees to cut loose from them, but what was the use? There was no one to give him a job or a good word. I went to Mrs. Jarvis to see if she could get her husband to give him another trial, but she wouldn't do anything for me; that Margot had her wrapped around her little finger and she had no more use for me than shy had for my brother, though my aunt was cook in the Jarvis family before Mr. Oliver ever knew she was alive!"

The vindictive resentment in the girl's tone was a revelation, but McCarty commented soothingly:

"'Twas hard lines on the young fellow. But what's happened to him?"

"The other night a watchman at some foundry was beaten up and a lot of brass work, fixtures and such, was stolen." Etta dropped her voice and glanced half-fearfully over her shoulder as she spoke. "The police traced them to a place downtown, a fence who made a business of buying up such stuff and asking no questions. He talked quick enough to the police, though, and said it was the gang Dick belongs to that turned the trick. I dunno whether it was or not, but Dick wasn't in on it, that I can swear! However, the watchman woke up in the hospital and identified two of the crowd as them that had set on him, describing another that sounded enough like Dick to be his brother. The fellows wouldn't squeal and tell who'd been with them and so the police went scouting around and last night they—they found Dick and arrested him!"

"Well," observed McCarty after a pause. "My advice to him would be to get a good lawyer that stands in, maybe, with the Prosecutor, and a couple of witnesses that don't come too high. You can get them to swear to anything for from five up."

"You wouldn't be doing much, would you, and Dick with no money nor nothing!" Etta jeered sarcastically. "Besides, he had nothing to do with it. He wasn't with them that night and didn't even know what was coming off!"

McCarty glanced shrewdly at her.

"Then why don't he tell the police where he was?"

"He—he can't. That's the trouble, and I dunno what to do. I know where he was, all right, but if I was to tell, it would get him in worse trouble, and me, too."

At her words a sudden light flashed across Mccarty's brain and he demanded:

"When* was it that the foundry was broke into? Last Friday night?"

The girl made no reply, but he could feel her tremble violently as she withdrew her arm from his.

"You might just as well tell me, my dear, for I can find out from Headquarters, and remember, I'm your friend. I told you'd I'd stand by you. 'Twas last Friday night, wasn't it? "

"Y-yes!" Etta began to sob wildly. "I'll not tell you any more, so don't ask it of me! I never meant to let out that much, but you dragged it from me!"

"You don't have to tell me," McCarty retorted. "'Twas your brother who ransacked Mrs. Jarvis' dressing-room and you that let him in to do it, wasn't it? You'd put up a job between you"

"We had not!" The girl turned upon him with flashing eyes. "Dick was sick! Cigarettes and drink and the tough life here in the city was getting him and he wanted a chance to go West and start all over again, but where was the money coming from? He's all I've got, and I didn't mean to see him die here or maybe go up for turning some cheap trick like pinching a few bits of brass! He'd as much right to a fresh start as anyone and if the Jarvises had been the open-handed kind he would have gone to them. They'd never missed the few dollars, and 'twould have been only decent, him being the cook's nephew, and all. But we knew he didn't stand a chance of getting a cent from them, and here they were going off to Europe this week and turning me out with a reference, maybe, but nothing to show for the year and more I've slaved for them! Margot was going with them, Margot was the pet, but I was no more than the dirt under their feet! My aunt was to get a pension, but they've turned her against Dick, too, and she'd have nothing to do with him.

"Dick and me, we talked it all over and I was near wild, for his health had been breaking fast lately. A few of the trumpery pins and things that Mrs. Jarvis used to leave around so careless on her dresser would have paid his way to the coast and set him up in the billiard parlor he's been wanting to run, but I wouldn't hear of it first off when he spoke. I told him to come back the next night and we'd think up some other way, but in the meantime that sneaking Margot went to Mrs. Jarvis with some tale about me breaking a homely old vase in the drawing-room and I got scolded right in front of her. That settled it for me, and I thought that if I could get her in trouble it would only be paying her back!"

"I see," McCarty nodded. "You thought if anything was missed she'd be accused of taking it. You didn't know your brother was going to pull the dressing-room to pieces, nor yet did you figure on the murder"

"Oh-h!" Etta gave a little scream and clutched convulsively at his arm. "Mr. McCarty, as God is my judge we had nothing to do with that! I never liked Mrs. Jarvis for the way she put Margot before me, but I'd not have harmed a hair of her head, nor Dick either! He's that tender-hearted he wouldn't hurt a cat, for all his rough ways, and Mrs. Jarvis was gone before ever I let him into the house. I can swear to that for I stayed by him every minute he was there, keeping watch that Margot didn't hear anything and come snooping around. Except for her down in the front basement the house was empty."

"And what time was it when you let your brother in?" McCarty asked. "You'd better tell me the whole thing, Etta, till I see if I can't fix a way out of it for you. Aiding and abetting a burglary is a serious matter, but I've influence at Headquarters yet and you don't want to keep silent and have your brother sent up for something he didn't do. That toothache business was a bluff, wasn't it?"

"Partly, but I was sick, anyway, with the thought of what I'd agreed to. I must have been crazy, looking back on it, but I'd been getting more and more sore about Margot and the way I was going to be turned off. I knew there'd be no one home Friday night but the two of us, and when she brought up my supper I told her I was going to sleep so as to get rid of her. Dick came at nine, and I was waiting for him up at the front door. I let him in quiet and then all at once a different feeling came over me and I begged him to give it up and go away; I saw 'twas wrong, what we had planned.

"But Dick had been drinking to nerve himself up and he wouldn't quit like that. He was bound to go through with it, and upstairs he went with me after him. I took him through Mrs. Jarvis' rooms to the dressing-room and then I went back to the door leading into the hall to watch and listen for Margot. Mrs. Jarvis wasn't there, anywhere. Whatever had happened to her, she'd been gone long before."

"And Margot didn't hear the racket when your brother began upsetting things?"

"No. My heart was in my mouth, but 'tis an old house and the floors are thick. When I heard the bang of a chair going over I ran back and stopped him. He was mad with rage at not finding anything except the gold stuff on the dresser, and he didn't dare take that, not knowing how to get rid of it without letting the gang in on it. 'Twas all I could do to calm him down and make him go quietly, but I got him out at last, and I never was so thankful for anything in my life! I was glad even that he'd got nothing, and we'd no theft on our souls! I hadn't the nerve to go back into that room and straighten it up for fear Margot would catch me at it and see the safe open, that I didn't know how to close. I didn't care, either, for with Dick gone and me supposed to be sick upstairs they'd never put the blame of it on me, and they could think what they liked."

"Do you know what time it was when your brother left the house?"

"I flew straight back to my room and the clock pointed to half-past nine." Etta responded, adding anxiously: "Oh, Mr. McCarty, whatever shall we do?"

"There's only one thing for you to do, and that is to go to Inspector Druet yourself and tell him the truth." McCarty smiled oddly to himself in the darkness. "Tell him I sent you and he'll do what he can to get you both off."

"Him!" the girl exclaimed scornfully. "After the way he roared at me the other day? I think I see myself! He'd be the first to clap me in jail and goodness knows but he'd charge us both with the murder!"

"You've got him wrong," McCarty urged earnestly. "He was only trying to get at the truth, that you were holding out on him, and if you'd told him then, your brother would not be facing the charge he is now. He'll go up, as sure as you're alive, if you don't speak, and you needn't fear being accused of the murder, for Mrs. Jarvis had been dead three hours and more when you let your brother into the house. He didn't break in, nor did he take anything, so there's no question of robbery, after all, and even if the Inspector should be a bit hard on him I know one that'll put in a good word, and that's Mr. Jarvis himself."

"Why should he?" Etta demanded. "He was mean enough to him before. If I do tell, Mr. McCarty, and they don't let my brother go"

"They will. Tell the Inspector I said for you to go straight to him and that he would fix it to get you both out of the scrape."

Etta wavered, but McCarty called all his powers of persuasion into play, and when he left her at the basement door of the Jarvis house a half hour later he had wrung from her a reluctant promise to go with her confession to Inspector Druet on the following day.

"Twice I've scored on him!" he chuckled to himself as he turned up his collar once more and started across town. "And neither time did I have to lift my little finger! The news came to me; first young Jarvis' alibi and now the matter of the dressing-room. The Inspector has the department behind him and Terhune has his science, but I've my luck, praise God, and it's going strong!"

An hour later, as engine 023 honked its way wearily into the firehouse after a futile dash to a false alarm, Dennis swung himself down from his appointed place to find McCarty confronting him, suitcase in hand and the light of purpose in his eyes.

"You're off on a trip, the night?" Dennis regarded him wistfully. "My eyes have been bothering me again from smoke and only to-day the Lieutenant said he could fix it for me to lay off for a week and rest up. If you'd given me the word, Mac, I could have been with you."

"Tis hardly worth while," McCarty rejoined. "I'm off to Atlantic City on the midnight train and if I get what I'm after I'll be back to-morrow night or the next day. Save up your eyes, Denny, till next week for I'm thinking we've a longer trip ahead of us then. I just stopped in to tell you that Pm on my way to see Kate Stricker."

"The woman that sold the wallet to Norwood!" Dennis stared. "You've located her then? Good for you!"

McCarty nodded.

"And shot the Inspector's grand little theory full of holes," he supplemented complacently. "Wait till you hear what happened since I left you this morning!"

He recounted the events of the day and Dennis listened in absorbed interest, thrilling in sympathetic indignation at Inspector Druet's attitude and jubilant over the thought of that official's coming surprise.

"You've put it over on him, though 'twas none of your doing!" he declared when the story was finished. "You had the right hunch about Etta, too. I hope it's still working now that those little matters are cleared up and you're out for the real dope!"

"None of my doing," McCarty repeated musingly. "That's what Mrs. Jarvis said."

"What's that?" Dennis asked, startled.

"It's what she said when Miss Norwood was sitting by her that time last spring that I just told you about, when she started up from her bed. 'It was none of my doing,' and 'why must the shadow of it follow me?' If I can get the truth from that woman to-morrow"

"Taking into consideration the amount of brains he's provided with, I don't wonder that English fellow would have believed that whole blackmailing stunt to be some sort of a practical joke," Dennis interrupted, intent upon his own train of thought "That cake, now. Margot said that when it came the bare sight of it all but made Mrs. Jarvis faint. Yet what was there in the gift of it that should have warned her of what was coming? 'Twas the same as other big fancy cakes, wasn't it, except for that foreign word on it, that you say means 'Christmas'?—What's got you, Mac?"

For it was McCarty's turn to stare, with dropped jaw and eyes into which a sudden light had gleamed.

"By all the saints, you've struck it!" he ejaculated. "You've hit the nail on the head, Denny! Twas not the cake at all but the one word on it that told Mrs. Jarvis the past wasn't buried as deep as she'd thought! Noel! It means Christmas, all right, but what else would it stand for, to her? "

"Ask me another!" invited Dennis. "If the blackmailing blackguard wanted to remind her of something by the one word, why did he go to all the trouble of fixing up the cake? Why didn't he write it to her, or maybe spell it out in those macaroni letters?"

"'Twas the art of him, Denny! The damned cleverness of him! To anyone else 'twould look just like a fine Christmas cake, the way it did to all of us until this minute, but to her it meant that someone had raked up what she was trying to forget. 'Twas the only way he could get that word to her without anyone else being the wiser. Terhune had him right; 'tis no ordinary strangling thug we're up against but a shrewd, crafty devil that planned every move ahead and knew just how to play on her fears. She must have been as helpless in his hands as a bird in a snare, poor thing!"

"He did not plan the last move far ahead, that's a safe bet," Dennis remarked. "If 'twas him found her there in the museum he acted quick enough then on the spur of the moment, without giving her time to scream once!"

"And 'tis because of that we'll get him, Denny," predicted McCarty. "There was never a clever crook yet that didn't over-reach himself sooner or later, and this is the one time he didn't look ahead; that is, if 'twas him. That's one thing I can't get through my head yet; why the black- mailer should have spoiled his own game by killing the source of the income. There's just one answer that would fit it, but yeu'd think me stark crazy if I was to spring it now."

"I'm not Inspector Druet," Dennis reminded him reproachfully. "I took your word for it last year, didn't I, when I let you dump me in the middle of an Illinois wheat field, looking for a girl that had lain in another one's grave for two weeks? If you're going to hold out on me now"

"'Twas only a notion, and 'twill keep till I get hold of that ex-stewardess and learn what was in those letters," McCarty demurred. "They must have been written to Leonidas Hoyos himself if that old wallet was his." But there's one thing sure, Denny; the cake was a reminder of that case that had meant trouble for her or hers, no less. 'Twas the Hoyos murder that she was paying to keep dark and the secret of it cost her her own life!"