The Twenty-Six Clues/Chapter 8

T Inspector Druet's suggestion Oliver Jarvis accompanied him and the maid back to his own house. Terhune, murmuring something about the interests of his client, prepared to follow and Norwood turned to McCarty.

"Don't you want to come, also? I am going whether the Inspector desires my presence or not. I am Oliver's closest friend and I do not propose to be barred from this investigation by any jealousy on the part of the police. I'll show them yet that my life-long study of crime is of more value than their haphazard, bull-dozing methods! How about it, Mr. McCarty?"

"Thanks, sir, but I'll not be going over there again. 'Tis different with me, and being as I've left the force I don't want to get in Dutch with the Inspector by butting in. If you don't mind, I'll wait here for you. There are one or two little points sticking in my mind and I'd like to look over the ground again."

"The museum? Go as far as you like," responded his host affably. "Victor will unlock the door for you if he's not there already. But don't leave till I return; I want to talk this all over with you."

Left alone, McCarty, approached the table where the blind secretary's typewriter stood and selecting a page or two at random from the scattered notes examined them. The subject-matter was unintelligibly scientific to him but the typing itself was as precise and cleancut [sic] as though the young man's sight were unimpaired. A book printed in the Braille system for the blind lay open beside the machine; it was in some foreign language, presumably French; but the spacing of the lines denoted poetry, and McCarty whistled softly to himself as he replaced it.

Leaving the library he made his way down the hall, treading as lightly as his solid weight permitted. The museum door stood ajar and through the narrow aperture he could see a man's form bent over a case in the far corner between the fireplace and the window. Tiptoeing, McCarty had reached the threshold before the figure turned revealing the thin, keenly sensitive countenance of Captain Marchal.

"Who is it?" he asked in a high strained voice.

"'Tis me, Captain; Timothy McCarty, that had dinner here last night with Mr. Norwood and yourself."

The Frenchman bowed gravely.

"You will forgive my surprise, Monsieur McCarty. I did not hear you enter." His tone was unfailingly courteous but there was a shade of hauteur in his bearing as though he resented the intrusion upon his solitude.

"I've been having a little talk with Mr. Norwood and the rest of them in the library but they've all gone over to Mr. Jarvis' house now, and Mr. Norwood told me I could look about a bit in here," McCarty explained.

"Here?" The secretary raised his eyebrows. "You will find nothing more here, Monsieur, to be of use in solving this most terrible affair. Were you not with the others last night? Do you not know that the crime was committed in Madame Jarvis' own home?"

He spoke with an eagerness which made McCarty's eyes narrow speculatively but the latter replied in bland nonchalance.

"Still, 'twas here we found the body and I thought I'd have a look at that window by daylight, but if I'm disturbing you, Captain?"

"Not at all, Monsieur." The secretary closed the case with a snap. "I was but rearranging some fingerprint records. If I can be of any assistance to you"

"Fingerprints!" McCarty interrupted. "I didn't know Mr. Norwood collected them, too!"

"He has here everything pertaining to the identification of criminals and the investigation of crime." Captain Marchal pointed toward a distant corner. "You see those astronomical instruments and charts upon that stand? With them Monsieur Norwood can calculate what autumn day corresponded in luminosity at dusk with a certain day in spring and in this way he can study if necessary the scene of a crime in autumn in order to discover if this or that could be seen at a certain day in spring."

"Can he, now?" McCarty rubbed his chin. "Have they not enough evidence on the earth to help them find a crook, without dragging in the heavens, too? Many's the time I've looked through a telescope at a nickel a throw on the Island, but devil a thing could I see, though once 'twas because I had my hat hung on the end of it. Mr. Norwood will be beating Terhune yet at his own game. Howsomever, 'tis fingerprints I'm asking after, Captain Marchal. Is it only criminals he's kept a record of?"

The secretary shook his head with a trace of impatience.

"No; at one time I believe Monsieur Norwood had a toquade, a hobby of collecting those of his friends also, but he is now more interested in handwriting specimens. Perhaps, Monsieur, you would desire to have me show to you?"

He turned suggestively toward another case, but McCarty held his ground:

"No, Captain; it's the fingerprints I'd like to see. Has he a record of Mrs. Jarvis', by any chance?"

"It is possible, Monsieur; I do not know." The secretary shrugged. "Of the many impressions which Monsieur Norwood took he has retained comparatively few for his collection and I have not yet started to catalogue them."

He opened the spring lock of the fingerprint case with a small key which he carried and stepped aside.

"Voilà, Monsieur. You will perhaps desire to look them over for yourself. I have no data concerning them so I cannot be of assistance, but if there is anything else in which I can aid your search you will find me in the library."

He bowed and departed, but McCarty spent little time over the case in which he had evinced such interest. He fingered a few of the slides and molds tentatively, then closed the case and tiptoeing to the door, examined the lock with minute care. Upon its surface about the keyhole a few very fine angular scratches caught his eye and he nodded to himself in satisfaction. The seemingly untenable thought which had presented itself to him during his talk with the butler on the way to the house was strengthening in probability with each point gained, yet he would have hesitated to lay it before anyone else for serious consideration, so preposterous would it have appeared.

A glance from the window showed him that the ladder still remained propped against the ledge as it had been left the night before, and leaving the museum he descended the back stairs to the passageway leading to the yard.

Viewed through the slanting curtain of rain the ladder seemed even more frail and insecure than it had previously as it trembled and creaked in each gust of wind. Umbrellaless, McCarty turned up his coat collar and advancing, shook the light support speculatively. Then, heedless of the downpour he paused and gazed about him.

A few small branches detached by the storm lay beneath the sprinkling group of stunted trees, but otherwise the yard was immaculate.

Beneath the porch formed by the jutting museum extension a burlap sack and an orderly row of small wooden boxes met his eye, flanked by a small heap of loose bricks, and behind, in the kitchen window a tall, gaunt, female form could be discerned peering curiously at him from between the curtains but McCarty gave small heed to it. The concrete floor of the porch was sunk a foot or two below the level of the yard and clambering down he examined the burlap sack. It was almost empty but a few potatoes still weighed its end and McCarty dumped them unceremoniously into a box and began refilling the sack with bricks from the pile beside him.

When it was half full, he twisted the top, slung it over his shoulder with a mighty heave and scrambling up to the path once more started for the ladder.

The curtains at the kitchen window parted and the woman watched with bulging eyes as he clumsily essayed the first round of the ladder. It creaked ominously and its slender rungs, slippery from the rain, afforded but precarious hold for his square-toed, generous-soled boots, but he plodded upward doggedly.

The ladder trembled and swayed, its lower end held fast in the soft, glutinous mud but its top grated alarmingly as the center sagged beneath the unprecedented weight placed upon it. Perspiration mingled with the raindrops on McCarty's brow and he tested the rung above apprehensively with each upward step.

The sill of the museum window was within reach when the bending supports of the ladder emitted a warning crack and McCarty with a quick swing of his shoulder dropped the bag of bricks with a squelching thud and crash into the mud below. The sudden release from weight made the light ladder rebound so swiftly that the climber was almost jarred from his place, but he held on tenaciously. It had been a close call, but he had pushed his experiment to the limit of safety and for a moment he clung there gazing down with immense satisfaction at the bricks tumbling in all directions from the burst bag.

He had proved his theory, even though he had all but broken his neck in the effort and his purpose was achieved.

Gingerly he felt his backward way down once more and as his feet found the solid ground at last he heard the voice of his host, Calvin Norwood, from just behind him:

"Well, McCarty, upon my soul!"

"Yes, sir." McCarty turned hastily. "I near broke your ladder."

There was more satisfaction than regret in his tones and Norwood peering at him from beneath his umbrella remarked drily:

"So I observe. Why on earth were you carrying a load of bricks up to the museum?"

"'Twas just a bit of an experiment, sir," McCarty explained. "A fine mess I've made of your yard with the bricks, too! I'd no notion the bag would burst so easy!"

"Well, never mind. Come into the house and let us have a talk." At arm's length Norwood held the umbrella over his dripping guest and drew him into the passageway. "You will be the better for a drop of something, too, man; you're soaked to the skin!"

McCarty was nothing loath and in a few minutes he was seated with his host before the cracking library fire, a steaming glass at his elbow and a fragrant cigar poised at an argumentative angle between his lips.

"'What do I think of the Inspector?'" he repeated in response to a query just voiced by the other. "He's the best man on the force to-day, sir. There's not much gets by him, though to them that don't understand his way of getting results he might seem a trifle bull-headed. I worked under him on many a case and it's seldom he falls down."

"'Bull-headed'!" Norwood repeated in his turn. "I should say he was! It has never before been my privilege to watch the inner workings of the police force from the inception of a case, but I must admit I am disappointed. These sledgehammer methods of Inspector Druet are certainly not getting him anywhere now; for all his bullying, Margot is sticking steadfastly to her statement that Mrs. Jarvis' dressing-room was undisturbed at eight o'clock last night and her manner is so convincing that if I had not seen the state it was in later with my own eyes, I declare I would be inclined to believe her."

"They've found nothing else, sir, in the dead lady's rooms?" asked McCarty after a meditative pause.

"Nothing. I don't know what use the Inspector has made of the glove you gave him last night—the one your friend found on the top of the ladder—but I don't believe it will prove of any value in the investigation."

"No, sir?" McCarty's tone was a question and as the other did not reply he went on: "'Tis an expensive one, of foreign make, and it might be easy traced to the shop that sold it."

"But think of the number of men who walk into a shop, buy a pair or two of gloves and take them away with them," Norwood objected. "There would be no possible way of tracing them unless they were regular customers, and then that glove, although originally good, was so worn and soiled that it may have been kicking around some garage for weeks and changed hands many times. For some reason, Inspector Druet had turned his attention when I left from Margot to the housemaid, Etta, but bullying won't have any effect on that girl."

"Etta?" McCarty bent forward suddenly, both hands outspread upon his knees. "The one that had her face tied up, that was sick all yesterday?"

Norwood nodded.

"There's no sign of her toothache this morning, but when the servants over there were told the truth—they had to be, of course, when the body was brought home—she collapsed. Everyone who came in contact with Mrs. Jarvis loved her, you know, and though this girl had given her a good deal of trouble, she seems after all to have worshiped her mistress, like the rest."

"What kind of trouble?" McCarty asked quickly.

"Well, she was insubordinate, and hot-tempered and sullen by turns. I've heard Mrs. Jarvis speak of her difficulties with her to my niece, Joan. I don't think she would have kept the girl in her service but for the fact of her relationship to the cook. She had to let Dick go."

"Who is Dick?"

"Etta's brother. Oliver employed him for a time as second man, but he was utterly no good; lazy, impudent, drank up everything he could lay his hand on and drove old Henry nearly crazy. Oliver told me he was surprised and touched this morning at the grief Etta displayed, but it evidently hasn't modified her temper. Inspector Druet tried to cross-examine her about yesterday, making her repeat what she told us all last night and she flared up at him like a spitfire and then refused point blank to answer another question." Norwood chuckled. "He'll have his hands full with her."

"Mrs. Jarvis knew your friend Professor Parlowe, didn't she?" McCarty remarked somewhat irrelevantly.

"Yes. It was she who brought me his invitation to join him in his experiment yesterday," the other responded. "I was engaged when she dropped in on Tuesday afternoon to tell me of it, but she spoke of it particularly on Wednesday evening after her dinner party. She was always so interested, poor dear child, in whatever interested her friends. That was one of her greatest charms."

McCarty removed his cigar and Knocked the ash off carefully on the hearth.

"Mr. Norwood, who was present at that dinner?"

"Let me see. It was just a small, informal affair, you know. Beside Oliver, his wife and myself there were the Blakes, the Gardners, Mrs. Hilton and the Fowlers, all intimate members of their circle."

"Who are they; those people?" persisted McCarty. "What are they like?"

"The Blakes are a bridal couple; he's off to the front in a fortnight." Norwood explained indulgently. "The Gardners are elderly; they were friends of Oliver's family. Mrs. Hilton is a young widow, and the Fowlers are the powder-works people. All quite above suspicion in this affair, McCarty, I assure you."

"What did they talk about, during the dinner?" McCarty accepted the final observation with a nod. "You remember, sir, 'twas just after you'd all gone that Mrs. Jarvis herself went to pieces, if that girl Margot is telling the truth. If she'd no warning from outside and nobody else got to her, there must have been something said that brought her trouble back to her again; something to do with that matter of blackmail."

"That is quite impossible!" Norwood declared. "The conversation was of the most general character, as I remember it, and it could not have had the most remote bearing on whatever this secret trouble is which was preying on the poor young woman's mind. She seemed as cheerful and happy"

He broke off and McCarty, watching him, saw a shadow cross the older man's face.

"Was she so?" he asked. "Didn't her manner change at all during the evening, Mr. Norwood? Was she just as gay at the end as she was when the dinner started?"

"No; I can't say that she was," the other admitted. "It did occur to me that she grew very quiet all of a sudden; not sad nor troubled but just silent and abstracted. It was during dinner, but I cannot remember what the sub- ject under discussion was at the moment. It could only have been some pleasant triviality. Whatever caused Mrs. Jarvis' change of mood was merely passing, for she quite recovered her spirits before the evening was over."

"Before I played the fool with that ladder awhile ago, I was talking to Captain Marchal in the museum." McCarty lowered his voice and glanced cautiously about him but the secretary had not been in evidence since their return to the house. "He tells me that you once made quite a collection of your friends' fingerprints. Did you ever by any chance, sir, take an impression of Mrs. Jarvis'?"

"Why, yes." Norwood glanced up in surprise. "I didn't keep the slide, of course, but the enlarged photograph of it is there with the rest. What do you want it for?"

"Oh, I just thought I'd like to see it," McCarty responded diffidently.

"Didn't Victor show it to you?" Norwood arose. "Come, then, and I will. I collected scores but kept just twenty-five aside from those of interest from a criminological standpoint I remember distinctly the occasion on which I obtained Mrs. Jarvis' fingerprints; she didn't want me to take them for some inexplicable reason, and her husband teased her unmercifully about it."

As he spoke, he had led the way down the hall to the museum and McCarty asked:

"When was this, Mr. Norwood?"

"Oh, about four years ago; just after their return from abroad. Here are the photographs. As you see, each one is plainly marked on the back"

He shuffled through the handful of prints which he took from the case McCarty had previously examined and the latter waited expectantly, but his host shook his head.

"This is very odd. Mrs. Jarvis' prints are missing, and they are the only ones that have been mislaid. I told you I had twenty-five such records; there are only twenty-four here, and hers are not among them." He eyed his companion in bewilderment. "I—I don't know what to make of it!"

"Maybe 'tis in some other part of the case, mixed up with those slides," suggested McCarty. There was a curious tenseness in his manner.

"No; it is not here, anywhere. Really this is most extraordinary! I was showing it, together with the others to Professor Parlowe only the other day. I must ask Victor at once"

"Uncle Cal! I've come home!"

At the sound of the fresh, clear, young voice incongruously joyous in that room where tragedy and death had stalked but a few short hours before, both men turned to the doorway.

On the threshold there appeared a pretty, fair-haired girl, her blue eyes dancing with mischievous delight, her hands extended for the welcome she knew would greet her. Just behind her stood a tall, broad-shouldered masculine figure, with hair as light as hers and a small blonde mustache lifted in a half smile.

"Joan!" Norwood's voice was hushed but filled with emotion as he advanced to the girl. "My dear, what brought you home? You—you cannot have received my letter so soon!"

"I haven't had a line from you in days, but I wanted to surprise you!" She faltered and with a little gesture drew her companion forward. "Uncle Cal, I've something to tell you, and, oh! I want you to be happy about it, because I am!"

"Then you don't know? You haven't heard?" Norwood stammered, ignoring in his troubled preoccupation the significance of her words. "My poor child"

"I haven't heard anything!" The gay, heedlessly joyous tones interrupted him. "But just wait till you hear my news! Uncle Cal, this is Eric Vivaseur, and though you've never met him before I know you are going to be very good to him because I—I have promised to be his wife!"