The House of Mystery Part 15

The force was gone. Alone at his desk, he went over the papers in a complicated calculation which he had made twenty times before. By all devices, Watson could hold back the collapse of the Mongolia Mine until after October 19. By straining his credit to the utmost--liquidating everything--he himself could raise a trifle more than seventy thousand dollars. He hesitated no longer. Methodically, he apportioned out the seventy thousand dollars among a dozen brokers, who to-morrow should buy for him, on a ten point margin, L.D. and M. stock at fifty to fifty-three.

This done, Bulger locked up the papers again, telephoned for a cab, and proceeded to his club, where he dined with his customary hilarity and good humor.

XI

THROUGH THE WALL-PAPER

"You've got to do it!" said Rosalie Le Grange; "no half-way business. I could show better reasons than I'm tellin'."

Blake paused in his slow walk beside her.

"What reasons?" he asked.

"Now listen to the man!" exclaimed Rosalie. "And ain't it man for you!

Right off, first meeting, I told you enough to put me in jail and now you won't trust me!"

Blake seemed to see the logic of what she said.

"I have cause to trust you," he said, "and I hope you don't think that I am afraid of the personal danger. It's just that you're asking me to do something which--will, which people like me don't do."

"So anxious to be a gentleman that you forgit to be a man!" remarked Rosalie with asperity. "Now you listen to me. I've told you that she's held two materializing seances for Robert H. Norcross, haven't I? I've told you it is crooked materialization--even if there was such a thing as real cabinet spooks, which there ain't--because I found the ceiling trap an' the apparatus long ago. And if Mrs. Markham is playin' fake materializing with old Norcross as a dope, what does it come to?

Obtainin' money, an' big money, under false pretenses! That's enough to put her behind the bars. So what risk do you take even if you _are_ caught? She'll be more anxious than you to keep it away from the papers and the police. And Norcross! He'll break his collar-bone to shut it up!"

Half persuaded, he clutched at his sense of honor.

"But it's a sneaking trick--Annette would call it that."

"Yes, an' ain't it a sneakin' trick to hire a housekeeper to be a spy?"

Rosalie hurled back. "Seems to me you draw a fine line between doin'

your own dirty work an' havin' it done!"

At this plain statement of the case, Blake smiled for the first time that morning.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "A good officer never sends a man where he wouldn't go himself. I'm rather sorry I started now."

The dominant thought in all the complex machinery of Rosalie's mind was: "And you'll be sorrier before this night's over, boy." But her voice said:

"I knew you'd see it that way. Now listen and git this carefully: You're to wear a big ulster and old hat and soft-soled shoes--don't forget that. You're to come to the back door at a quarter to nine--exactly. Us servants receive our callers at the back door.

Norcross will be in the parlor at half past, Annette will be in her room, the other help will be out, Ellen and all. Mrs. Markham takes no chances--not even with that fool girl--when she's got Norcross. She's given Ellen theater tickets. That's how careful she is about little things. You can see how clear the coast will be. I'm goin' to bring you straight to my room like a visitor. You walk soft!"

"But how about that electric bell?" he asked.

"I disconnected it this morning at the trap with my manicure scissors an' a hairpin," replied Rosalie, triumphantly.

So, at sixteen minutes to nine, Dr. Blake, feeling a cross between a detective and a burglar, stole through the alley which backed the Markham residence, crossed the area, knocked softly at the kitchen door. It opened cautiously and then suddenly to show the kitchen, lighted with one dim lamp, and the ample form of Rosalie. With a finger on her lips, she closed the door behind him. His heart beat fast, less with a sense of impending adventure than with the thought, which struck him as he mounted the servants' staircase, that he was divided but by thin walls from the object of all these strivings and diplomacies--that for the second time in his life he was under her home roof with Annette. It was a firm, old house. Their footsteps made not the slightest creak on the thick-carpeted stairs. At the door of her room, Rosalie stopped and put her mouth to his ear.

"Step careful inside," she said, "my floor is bare." He stood now in the neat, low-ceiled housekeeper's parlor. Rosalie turned up the gas, and indicated by a gesture that he was to stand still. Elaborately, she closed the registers, plugged the keyhole with her key, and set two chairs beside him.

"Now sit down," she whispered. "They can't hear us talkin', though we'd better whisper for safety, but two sets of footsteps might sound suspicious. The halls are carpeted like a padded cell, which ought to have put me wise in the beginning."

"Are you sure Annette's abed?" he asked anxiously.

Rosalie threw him a swift glance, as of suspicion.

"Sure," she said--"saw her go. Now before I let you out, I want to git one promise from you. Whatever happens, you leave this house quiet,--as quiet as you can. You've got _me_ to guard in this as well as yourself--you can't leave me alone with trouble."

"I'll promise that," he said. "Won't you tell me what I'm going to see?"

Rosalie, under pretense of consulting her watch, looked away.

"You'll know in ten minutes," she said. "Now don't bother me with any questions. I've got directions for you. You're coming with me to the floor below. I'll let you into a hall closet. It was built into a--into a room, and the back of it is only wood. There's an old gas connection, which they papered over, through that wood. Yesterday I punched through the paper and hung a picture over the hole. This afternoon, I took that picture down. To-morrow morning, the picture goes back. But now, there's a peephole into the room."

Dr. Blake bristled.

"Peep through a hole!" he said.

"Now ain't that just like a fas.h.i.+onable bringin-up," said Rosalie, almost raising her voice. "Things a gentleman can do an' things he can't do! You're tryin' to bust a crook, an' you remember what your French nurse told you about the etiquette of keyholes!"

"You're my master at argument, Mme. Le Grange," responded Blake. "Go ahead."

"And you promise to leave quiet?"

"I promise."

"There's one place I can trust your bringin'-up, I guess. When you're inside, feel about till you find a ha.s.sock. Stand on it; 't will bring your eyes up to the hole. Stay there until I knock for you to come out--let's be goin'."

"But what am I to do--why am I here if I am to do nothing?"

"You're to look an' see an' remember what you see--that's all for to-night."

At the door, she looked him full in the eyes again:

"Remember, you've promised."

"I remember."

The dim light of a low gas jet illuminated the upper hall. From below came the faintest murmur of voices. Rosalie led to the hall of the second floor, turned toward the back of the house, opened a door and motioned. He stepped inside; the door closed without noise. He was in black darkness.

His foot found the ha.s.sock; he mounted it and adjusted his eye. He was looking into some kind of a living-room or boudoir. On the extreme left of his range of vision he could see a set of dark portieres; directly before him was a foolish little white desk, over which burned a gas jet, turned low. That, apparently, was the only illumination in the room. For the rest, he could only see a wall decorated with the tiny frivolities of a boudoir, two chairs, a sewing table. He watched until--his eyes, grown accustomed to the dim light--he discerned every detail. From far below, he heard the subdued hum of a conversation, and made out at length, in the rise and fall of voices, that a man and a woman were speaking. Then even that sound ceased; over the house lay a stillness so heavy that he feared his own breathing.

Gradually, he was aware that someone was playing a piano. It began so gently that he doubted, at first, whether it was not a far echo from one of the houses to right or left. But it increased in volume until he located it definitely in the rooms below. The air, unrecognized at first, called up a memory of old-fas.h.i.+oned parlors and of his grandmother. He found himself struggling for words to fit the tune; and suddenly they sprang into his mind--"Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta." Thrice over the unseen musician played the air, and let it die with a last, lingering chord.

Suddenly his heart gave a great leap. For the first time, something was happening in the room before him. It came first as a slight, padded thump, like bare feet striking the floor. He saw that the portieres to left of his range of vision were undulating. They parted--and a pillar of white stood for a moment before them. The thing resolved itself into a human figure, swathed, draped in white, the face concealed by a white veil which fell straight from the head. Now the white figure, with a noiseless, gliding motion, was crossing the room toward the white desk.

It stopped, lifted a hand which crept toward the gaslight. With this motion, the veil fell away from the face. The gaslight shone upon it; he could see it in full profile.