The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet Part 19

"Parks telephoned me that your esteemed contemporaries had the place surrounded. I told him to hold the fort!"

"Poor boys!" he commented, smiling. "To think that all they know is what Grady is able to tell them!" Then he stopped before the house and made a careful survey of it.

"Which room is the cabinet in?" he asked.

"The ante-room is there at the left where those two shuttered windows are. The cabinet is in the corner room--there is one window on this side and two on the other."

"Wait till I take a look at them," he said, and, vaulting the low railing, he walked quickly along the front of the house and around the corner. He was gone only a minute. "They're all right," he said, in a tone of relief.

"Of course they're all right. You didn't suppose--"

"If that cabinet contains what I thought it did, Lester--yes," he added, a little savagely, as he saw my look, "and what I still think it does--it wouldn't be safe in the strongest vault of the National City Bank," and he motioned for me to ring the bell.

I did so, in silence.

Parks answered it almost instantly, and I could tell from the way his face changed how glad he was to see me.

"Well, Parks," I said, as we stepped inside, "everything is all right, I hope?"

"Yes, sir," he answered. "But--but it gets on the nerves a little, sir."

I heard a movement behind me, as I gave Parks my coat, and turned to see Rogers sitting on the cot.

"h.e.l.lo," I said, "so you're able to be up, are you?"

"Yes, sir," he answered, without looking at me. "I thought I'd come down and keep Parks company."

Parks smiled a little sheepishly.

"I asked him to, Mr. Lester," he said. "I got so lonesome and jumpy here by myself that I just had to have somebody to talk to.

Especially, after the burglar-alarm rang."

"The burglar-alarm?" repeated G.o.dfrey quickly. "What do you mean?"

"We've got a burglar-alarm on the windows, sir. It's usually turned off in the day-time, but I thought I'd better leave it on to-day, and it rang about the middle of the afternoon. I thought at first that one of the other servants had raised a window, but none of them had.

Something went wrong with it, I guess."

"Did you take a look at the windows?" I asked.

"Yes, sir; a policeman came to see what was the matter and we went around and examined the windows, but they were all locked. It made me feel kind of scary for a while."

"Does the alarm work now?"

"No, sir; the policeman said there must be a short circuit somewhere, and that he'd notify the people who put it in; but n.o.body has come around yet to fix it."

"We'd better take a look at the windows, ourselves," said G.o.dfrey.

"You stay here, Parks. We can find them, all right; and I don't want you to leave that door unguarded for a single instant."

We went from window to window, and G.o.dfrey examined each of them with a minuteness that astonished me, for I had no idea what he expected to find. But we completed the circuit of the ground floor without his apparently discovering anything out of the way.

"Let's take a look at the bas.e.m.e.nt," he said, and led the way downstairs with a readiness which told me that he had been over the house before.

In the kitchen, we came upon the cook and housemaid sitting close together and talking in frightened whispers. They watched us apprehensively, and I stopped to rea.s.sure them, while G.o.dfrey proceeded with his search. Then I heard him calling me.

I found him in a kind of lumber-room, standing before its single small window, his electric torch in his hand.

"Look there," he said, his voice quivering with excitement, and threw a circle of light on the jamb of the window at the spot where the upper and lower sashes met.

"What is it?" I asked, after a moment. "I don't see anything wrong."

"You don't? You don't see that this house was to be entered to-night?

Then what does this mean?"

With his finger-nail, he turned up the end of a small insulated wire.

And then I saw that the wire had been cut.

CHAPTER XI

THE BURNING EYES

For an instant, I did not grasp the full significance of that severed wire. Then I understood.

"Yes," said G.o.dfrey drily, "that romance of mine is looking up again.

Somebody was preparing for a quiet invasion of the house to-night --somebody, of course, interested in that cabinet."

"He wasn't losing any time," I ventured.

"He knew he hadn't any to lose. When you put those wooden shutters up, you warned him that you suspected his game. He knew, if the alarm was on, it would ring when he cut the wire, but he also knew that the chances were a hundred to one against the cut being discovered, or the alarm put in working order, before to-morrow."

"Why can't we ambush him?" I suggested.

"We might try, but it will be a mighty risky undertaking, Lester."

"One risky undertaking is enough for to-night," I said, with a sigh, for my belief in the existence of the secret drawer and the poison and all the rest of it had come back with a rush. I felt almost apologetic toward G.o.dfrey for ever doubting him. "We'd better wait and see if we survive the first one before we arrange for any more."

"All right," G.o.dfrey laughed. "But I'll fix this break."

He got out his pen-knife, loosened two or three of the staples which held the wire in place, drew it out, sc.r.a.ped back the insulation, and twisted the ends tightly together.

"There," he added, "that's done. If the invader tampers with the window again, he will set off the alarm. But I don't believe he'll touch it. I fancy he already knows his little game is discovered."

"How would he know it?" I demanded, incredulously.

"If he is keeping an eye on this window, as he naturally would do, he has seen my light. Perhaps he is watching us now."