Lord John in New York Part 12

Nella did know. She had seen the young woman go in. When no alarm followed, however, the girl's stopped heart beat again. But the situation had become impossible. She seized the first chance to call Teano. "It's too late for you to help, even if you could get in again," she whispered into the telephone, fearing to be overheard by some one pa.s.sing. "A lady has gone into 1313 for the night. And I'm supposed to shut my window and go off duty in half an hour. Here comes Shannon, the night watchman, now."

As she spoke, a woman knocked at the door of 1313. Nella listened; soon she could hear voices speaking earnestly. Then they grew loud and shrill. "The women are quarrelling!" she thought. "Can it have anything to do with Maurice?" The transom snapped shut as she asked herself the question. The speakers were afraid of being overheard.

That, at least, proved they believed themselves alone together!

"Well, here I am. I've given you time enough to make up your mind, haven't I, Miss Gibson?" began the new-comer.

"Yes, and I have made it up," answered the younger. "I don't say you're not acting in good faith. The note you brought to the dock looks like Mr. Odell's handwriting. And it's just as you said it would be. I found no letter of instructions waiting here. All the same, Miss Parsons, I won't give up the jewel till morning, when I've made sure the person I expected is not going to call."

"You _are_ silly!" cried the other. "Now, how _could_ I have known there _was_ a jewel coming with a Miss Gibson on this s.h.i.+p, if I wasn't all right?"

"That's true," the younger woman admitted. "I don't see how you could have known except from Mr. Odell. But I'm not taking chances! If n.o.body else shows up before nine to-morrow morning, why then----"

"I have to go west to-morrow morning," explained Miss Parsons, her voice quivering with impatience. "I can't wait. I told you so on the dock. You _must_ give me the thing now."

"I won't--so there!" shrilled Miss Gibson.

The older woman stared at the obstinate young face in desperate silence. Then she broke out fiercely, all effort at suppression over.

"I believe you want me to _bribe_ you!" And she pulled from a velvet handbag a roll of bank-notes.

Mary Gibson drew in her breath with a gasp. "_Why_--you've got hundreds and hundreds of dollars! I believe you're a _fraud_! You're after me to steal the jewel. Get out of this room, you thief, or I'll call----"

The sentence broke off with a queer gurgle. The woman who called herself Miss Parsons had s.n.a.t.c.hed a long hatpin from the other girl's hat on the table, and stabbed Mary Gibson through the heart. She fell without a cry.

This was the tragedy mirrored on my wall at the foot of my bed. I saw the fall. I saw the murderess stoop; I saw her rise with something in her hand--something that gleamed green and blue, like a wonderful b.u.t.terfly's wing. As I stumbled out of bed and groped for the dressing-gown which Teano had unpacked, I saw the woman tiptoe towards the door. Then a man's face came into the picture.

The murderess turned and saw the face also. But instead of trying to escape, she did a wiser thing. Wide open she flung the door and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Help! Murder! A burglar has killed my friend!"

The big night watchman, who had paused on his round for a chat with Nella, seized Morosini as the Italian sprang on the woman at the threshold.

"Maurice!" shrieked Nella, betraying her secret, yet caring not at all.

Her one thought was of the man she loved. "He's innocent. He came to see _me_, not to steal, or murder."

Morosini realised quickly how the case stood. He was lost if he could not get free, he thought. And so it might have been, if that lighted picture had not appeared on the wall at the crucial instant. I came tottering around the corner in time to shout:

"Don't let that woman go: she committed the murder. I saw it. I've enough evidence to convict her, and the jewel she did it for is in her hand now."

Miss Parsons stared at me like a mad creature, flung from her the Eye of Horus, and rus.h.i.+ng back into the room of death, was out of the window before we could reach her.

Never before had the Priscilla Alden been smirched by scandal. The managers were in despair. But the suicide from a window on the thirteenth floor, and the story of my vision in the room opposite, combined with the romance of Nella and Morosini, attracted new clients instead of driving away the old.

"Miss Parsons," identified in death, proved to be an ex-convict, who had mysteriously disappeared from the ken of the police months before.

Thanks, however, to that page of _The World_, missing from Dr. Thorne's office, her tragedy in an attempt to steal the Egyptian Eye of Horus carried me one step further on my own quest.

EPISODE IV

THE DEATH TRYST

For me, one of the strangest things in a strange world is this: the compelling influence exerted upon our lives by people apparently irrelevant, yet without whom the pattern of our destiny would be different.

Take the case of Anne Garth and her connection with Maida Odell--through Maida Odell, with me. Of my adventures in America while attempting to protect Maida, that in which Anne Garth played her part was among the most curious.

It happened while Paul Teano, the private detective, and I were trying our hardest to bring "Doctor Rameses" to book. We were morally certain that he was the Egyptian who had, for a mysterious reason of his own, persecuted the girl's family, and followed her (as its last surviving member) from Europe to New York. Unfortunately, however, a moral certainty and a certainty which can be proved are as far from one another as the poles. We might believe if we liked that "Doctor Rameses," controlling the Grey Sisterhood, intended evil to the girl who had been induced to join it: but it was "up to us" to prove the connection. So far as the police could learn, Doctor Rameses was as philanthropic as wise. If, as we suggested, his was the spirit guiding more than one criminal organisation in New York, he was the cleverest man at proving an alibi ever known to the force. If we reported his presence in a certain place at a certain time, he was invariably able to show that he had been somewhere else, engaged in innocent if not useful pursuits. As for Maida, her confidence in the veiled woman at the head of the Sisterhood was apparently unbroken. Judging from the little I could find out, she was irritatingly happy in her work among rescued women and children, at the lonely old house on Long Island. No doubt there were genuine cases cared for, which made it hard to prove anything crooked, especially to a girl so high-minded.

She had promised to remain for a year, and I had met her too late to change that determination. The rules of the House did not permit the sisters (of whom there were only six) to receive the visits of men, and though now and then I contrived to s.n.a.t.c.h a glimpse of Maida, seldom or never since our real parting had I had word from her except by letter.

How could I be sure the letters were genuine?

While I was in the state of mind engendered by these difficulties, Teano rushed in one morning to say that he was off to Sing Sing.

"There may be something for us," he said, and asked me to go with him.

It seemed that the Head Sister had departed at dawn in her automobile from the Sisterhood House (Teano had someone always watching the place night and day, in these times), and "putting two and two together" he deduced that she might be en route for the prison. He had learned that a notorious woman criminal was coming out that day, after serving a heavy sentence. She had been a member of an international band of thieves; and if the head of the Grey Sisterhood intended to meet her, it could hardly be a case of "rescue."

"I know a 'con. man' whose time is up," Teano went on, "and I shall make an excuse of meeting him if I see the lady's head turned my way.

The same excuse would do for you, my lord. 'Twon't matter putting the woman on her guard, for if she's going to meet Diamond Doll, they'll have met before we give 'em the chance to spot us and we'll know what we want to know."

I was keen on the expedition, and offered my car for it. We overtook the Head Sister, and our hearts bounded with hope: but, though we were able to follow in her wake all the way, our hopes were dashed by finding that she had come to "rescue" a person of a different cla.s.s from buxom "Diamond Doll." The latter was met at the moment of release by a virtuous looking mother; and the tall grey form of the Head Sister advanced toward a small, shabby young woman who might have been a teacher in a Sunday-school.

The latter, unless she were a good actress, could hardly have feigned the start of astonishment with which she received the veiled lady's greeting. She had been glancing about as if she expected someone but that one was not the head of the Grey Sisterhood. She listened with reserve for a moment, then brightened visibly. She had rather a tragic face, as if she were born for suffering, and could not escape.

Evidently, so far, she had not escaped; but she was young, not more than twenty-eight. Her oval face was pale with prison paleness, and there were shadows under the deep-set grey eyes which held no light of hope.

Why should the Head Sister single this girl out? If her object were charitable, there were other women being released who needed encouragement; yet it was to this one alone that help was offered.

As the veiled lady explained herself with the dignity of manner which had won Maida Odell's admiration, a young man joined the two, with an apologetic air. He had to be introduced to the Head Sister, and as he pulled off his cap I recognised a vague likeness between him and the girl.

His decent, ready-made clothes were of the country, and proclaimed themselves "Sunday best." His sunburnt complexion was of the country, and his shy, yet frank manners were of the country too.

The new-comer was out of breath, and apparently had hurried to make up time lost. He kissed the girl; and presently, without seeming to notice us, the Head Sister walked away with the two. She was favourably known to the prison authorities for her "kindness" in finding work for discharged women prisoners, and for her offers of shelter in the Sisterhood House till work could be found. If we had attempted to give warning against her, we should have been laughed at for our pains, and there was nothing we could do but play watchdog.

This we did, making ourselves inconspicuous, but not resorting to the pretext Teano had suggested. We let the "con. man" go off to face the world without a salutation, and devoted our attention to the friends of the Head Sister. It was only the girl who went with her in the closed automobile. The man bade them good-bye, but not with an air of sorrow.

He looked grave as he set off for Ossining station, but satisfied rather than sad. Plainly it pleased him to think that the young woman had a powerful protector.

"Well?" I asked, when Teano and I had let the strapping figure stride out of sight: for the detective had been trying to unearth some memory of the girl's features. "Have you got her dug up?"

"Yes, milord," said the Italian, grinning at my way of putting it.

"She'll be no use to the grey dame in any shady job. They say I have 'camera eyes.' When I see a face--or even a photograph--I don't forget. Anne Garth is the girl's name. She was not bad at heart."

"She doesn't look it," I said. "She'd be beautiful if she were fattened up and happy."

On our way back to Long Island Teano told me Anne Garth's story. She was a country girl, ambitious to become a nurse. Somehow she had worked her way up with credit in a New York hospital. There she had fallen in love with one of the younger doctors; and when his engagement to another woman was announced, she had waited for him outside the hospital one day, and shot him. The wound was not serious, but Anne Garth had spent two years in Sing Sing to pay for the luxury of inflicting it.

"Doran the doctor's name was," Teano remembered. "Not much doubt he flirted with the girl and made her believe he would marry her. She might have got off with a lighter sentence, but she wouldn't show regret. The jury thought her hard. She doesn't look hard to me, though! I expect the fellow we saw was the brother--her only relative, I recall the papers saying. Let me think! Didn't he have some job in the mountains? Something queer--something not usual! I can't bring it to mind. But it doesn't matter."

"I suppose not," I agreed. "Did Doran marry the other girl?"

Teano shook his head. "No," he said. "After what happened, she was afraid to trust him, or else--but there's no use guessing!"

I agreed again. Neither was there much use in "guessing" the Head Sister's object in taking Anne Garth into the Sisterhood House; but there might be more use in trying to find out. During the weeks that followed I did try, with Teano's help, but succeeded only in learning that Miss Garth was employed as a nurse. She was seen in the garden by Teano's watchers, wearing a nurse's dress, but she did not appear outside the gates.