The Crevice Part 38

"You rang, sir?" Marsh, the secretary, had entered noiselessly.

"Yes. Have these two people--this young lady and her father--conducted in my own limousine to my house, and made comfortable there until I give you further directions as to what I wish done concerning them."

Blaine cut short the old forger's broken words of grat.i.tude in his brusquely kind fas.h.i.+on, but his heart imaged always the light in the girl's soft eyes as she bent a parting glance upon him, like a benediction, before the door closed.

"What are you going to do with them, sir?" young Morrow asked anxiously when they were alone.

Henry Blaine paused a moment before replying.

"I might let him take his chance before the court, on the strength of his years, and his having turned State's evidence voluntarily, Guy, but he's an old offender, and Carlis' faction is strong. My racing car will make ninety miles an hour, easily, and it can do it unmolested, with my private sign on the hood. It can meet the Canadian express at Branchtown at dawn. I've a little farm in a nice community in Canada, not too isolated, and I'm going to make it over to you as part of your reward for your work on the Lawton case....

"No, don't thank me! I'm sworn on the side of law and order, but Justice is stern and sometimes blind because she will not see.

Remember, the Greatest Jurist Himself recommended mercy!"

Soon afterward, as they sat discussing the wind-up of the case, the subject of the second set of cryptograms was broached, and Blaine smiled at Morrow's utter bewilderment concerning them.

"Still puzzling about those, Guy? They weren't as simple as the first one was, that of the system of odd-shaped characters and dots. The later ones were the more difficult because they were of no set system at all--I mean no one system, but a primitive conglomeration, probably evolved by Paddington himself, based on script music and also the old childish trick of writing letters shaped like figures, which can be read by reversing the paper, and holding it up to the light.

"Just a minute, and we'll look at the two notes, the one you found in Brunell's room in the deserted cottage, and the other which came to me in the cigarette box meant for Paddington, from Mac Alarney. Then we'll be able to see how they were worked out. And you'll see that though they look extremely meaningless and confusing, they are in reality extremely simple."

As he spoke, Blaine produced them from his desk drawer, and spread them out before him.

"Before you examine them," he went on, "let me explain the musical script idea on which they are fundamentally based, in case you are unfamiliar with it. The sign '&' before a bar of music means that music is written in the treble clef--that is, all the notes following it are above the central _C_ on the piano keyboard. Thus"--here he drew rapidly on a sc.r.a.p of paper and pa.s.sed a scrawled scale over to the interested operative.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An image of a music scale diagram is shown here in the text.]

"The dot on the line below the five lines which are joined together by the sign of the treble clef is _C_. The dot on the s.p.a.ce between that and the first of the five lines is _D_. The dot on the first line is _E_; on the next s.p.a.ce is _F_, and so forth, in their alphabetical order on the alternating lines and s.p.a.ces. Do you see how easily, they could be used as the letters of words in a cryptogram, by any one of an ingenious turn of mind? Of course, each bar--that is, each section enclosed by lines running straight up and down--represents a word. Now for the rest of it:

"Leaving the script music idea aside, and taking the characters not so represented in the cryptogram, we find that '3' when viewed from the under side of the paper will look very much like an English _E_; 7 like _T_; 9 like _P_; 2 like _S_, and so forth.

"Try it. Here is the first note, the one you found. Puzzle out the musical notes by their alphabetical nomenclature from the key I just gave you on the sc.r.a.p of paper there; then hold the note up to the light, and read the other letters from the under side. Try it with both notes, and tell me what you find."

Guy took the papers, and wonderingly spelled out the letters represented by the musical notes, from the scale Blaine had given him.

Then turning the pages over, he held them up to the light, an exclamation of absorbed interest escaping from him.

The great detective watched him in silence, until at last, with a glowing sense of achievement, Guy read:

"'Beat it at once. You are suspected. Detective on trail. Rite old address. I am sending funds as usual. If caught you get life sentence.

Pad.'"

Blaine nodded.

"Now, the other."

"'Patient still unconscious. Consultation necessary at once to save life. Should he die advise Reddy what disposition to make of body.

Mac.'"

The last cryptogram proved the more easily decipherable, and when the young operative had read it aloud, he looked up with a glowing face.

"By George, it's a world-beater! What put you on the right track?"

"The last one. I realized then that they were afraid the kidnaped man, Ramon Hamilton, who had been grievously wounded, would die on their hands, and that rather than face the results of such a contingency they would attempt to obtain some obscure but experienced medical aid, and in a way which would give the physician no inkling of his patient's ident.i.ty or whereabouts. I therefore sent out that circular letter to every doctor in Illington, warning each one to come to me in the event of his having received a mysterious summons. It worked, as you know, and Doctor Alwyn responded."

"Well, if you hadn't been able to read the cryptogram, sir, the Lord knows what would have happened!"

"And if you hadn't trodden on the cat's tail--" Blaine suggested dryly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An image of a coded message is shown here in the text.]

Guy glanced at him in sudden, swift comprehension.

"Why, look here, sir, I believe you knew that Emily and her father were the two mysterious boarders at Mrs. Quinlan's, all the time! You said it was significant that you hadn't been able to trace the number of the taxicab in which they had run away from the neighborhood! There never was a taxicab in all Illington which couldn't be traced by its number! You knew, of course, that that story of Mrs. Quinlan's was a fake, and then when I told you of the two concealed people there, you had it all doped out! Oh, why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want you to precipitate matters just then, Guy," the detective responded, kindly. "The house was watched--they couldn't get away."

"That's a good one!" Young Morrow looked his self-disgust. "Hire operatives on your staff, sir, and then have to set others to tail them, and see that they don't get into trouble! Heavens, what an idiot I am! I've found out one thing, though, from those cryptograms"--he pointed to the cipher notes on the desk. "Music's a cinch! I can read it already, and I'm going to start in and learn how to play on something or other, the first chance I get! There's a fellow next door to Mrs. Quinlan's with a clarinet--" He paused, and his face sobered as he added: "But I forgot! I sha'n't be there any more."

Before Blaine could speak, there was a knock upon the door, and Marsh entered with hurried circ.u.mspection. There was a look of latent, shocked importance upon his usually impa.s.sive face, and he carried in his hand a newspaper which was still damp from the press.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought you would want to know at once.

There's been a murder! Paddington, the private detective, was found in the Rhododendron Alley, just off the Mall in the park, stabbed to the heart!"

Henry Blaine took the paper and spread it out upon the desk before him, as Guy Morrow, with a soft, low whistle, turned away. The "extra"

imparted little more than the secretary's announcement had done. There was no known motive for the crime, no clue to the murderer. When found, the man had been dead for some hours.

"Well, sir," observed Guy at last, when the secretary had withdrawn, "one by one they're getting away from us--and by the same route. First Rockamore, now Paddington!"

Blaine looked up with a grim smile.

"Putting a woman wise to anything is like lighting a faulty time-fuse: you never can tell when you're going to get your own fingers blown off! But tell me something, Guy. What was that tune you whistled a moment ago, when Marsh came in with the news? It had a vaguely familiar ring."

"Oh, that?" asked the operative, with a sheepishly guileless air. "It was just a bit from an English musical comedy of two or three years back, I think. It's got a silly-sounding name--something like 'There's a Boat Sails on Sat.u.r.day--'"

Blaine's wry smile broadened to a grin of genuine appreciation, and rising, he clapped the young man heartily on the shoulder.

"Right you are, Guy! And it won't be our job to search the sailing lists. You may not always be able to see what lies under your nose, but your perspective is not bad. h.e.l.l has only one fury worse than a woman scorned, that I know of, and that is a woman fooled! We'll let it go at that!"

The evening had already grown late, but that eventful day was not to end without one more brief scene of vital import. Marsh presently reappeared, this time bearing a card.

"'Mr. Mallowe,'" read Blaine, with a half-smile. "Show him in, Marsh, and have your men ready. You know what to do. No, Guy, you needn't go.

This interview will not be a private one."

"Mr. Blaine!" Mallowe entered pompously and then paused, glancing rather uncertainly from the detective to Morrow. It needed no keen observer to note the change in the man since the scene of that morning, at Miss Lawton's. He had become a mere sh.e.l.l of his former self. The smug unctuousness was gone; the jaunty side-whiskers drooped; his chalk-like skin fell in flabby folds, and his crafty eyes s.h.i.+fted like a hunted animal's.

"Mr. Blaine, I had hoped for a strictly confidential conference with you, but I presume this person to be one of your trusted a.s.sistants, and it is immaterial now--the matter upon which I have come is too pressing! Scandal, notoriety must be averted at all costs! I find that a frightful, a hideous mistake has been made, and I am actually upon the point of being involved in a conspiracy as terrible as that of which my poor friend Pennington Lawton was the victim! And I am as innocent as he! I swear it!"

"You may as well conserve your strength and your strategic ingenuity for the immediate future, Mr. Mallowe. You'll need both," Blaine returned, coolly. "If you've come here to make any appeal--"