On Secret Service Part 48

"How do you know he hasn't it already?"

"He doesn't return from New York until six o'clock this evening, and the paper is far too valuable to intrust to the mails or to an underling.

Remember, I'm not certain that it is he who is supposed to get the paper eventually, but I do know who impersonated Mrs. Prentice, and I likewise know that the lady in question has not communicated with any foreign official in person. Beyond that we'll have to take a chance on the evening's developments," and the receiver was replaced before Taylor could frame any one of the score of questions he wanted to ask.

Even at the reception that night he was unable to get hold of Madelaine James long enough to find out just what she did know. In fact, it was nearly midnight before he caught the signal that caused him to enter one of the smaller and rather secluded rooms apart from the main hall.

There he found a tableau that was totally unexpected.

In one corner of the room, her back against the wall and her teeth bared in a snarl which distorted her usually attractive features into a mask of hate, stood Mrs. Armitage. Her hands were crossed in front of her in what appeared to be an unnatural att.i.tude until Taylor caught a glimpse of polished steel and realized that the woman had been handcuffed.

"There," announced Madelaine, "in spite of your friend the watchman, stands 'Mrs. Prentice.' You'll find the green cloak in one of the closets at her home, and the stethoscope is probably concealed somewhere around the house. However, that doesn't matter. The main thing is that we have discovered the missing slip of paper. You'll find it on the table over there."

Taylor followed the girl's gesture toward a table at the side of the room. But there, instead of the cipher key that he had expected, he saw only--a gold bracelet!

"What's the idea?" he demanded. "Where's the paper?"

"Snap open the bracelet," directed the girl. "What do you see?"

"It looks like--by gad! it is!--a tightly wrapped spindle of paper!" and a moment later the original of the Carruthers Code reposed safely in the Secret Service agent's vest pocket. As he tossed the empty bracelet back on the table he heard a sound behind him and turned just in time to see the woman in the corner slip to the floor in a dead faint.

"Now that we've got her," inquired Madelaine James, "what'll we do with her?"

"Take off the handcuffs, leave the room, and close the door," directed Taylor. "She'll hardly care to make any fuss when she comes to, and the fact that she is unconscious gives us an excellent opportunity for departing without a scene."

"But what I'd like to know," he asked, as they strolled back toward the main ballroom, "is how you engineered the affair?"

"I told you I had an intuition," came the reply, "and you laughed at me.

Yes you did, too! It wasn't apparent on your face, but I could feel that inside yourself you were saying, 'Just another fool idea.' But Mrs.

Armitage was preying on my mind. I didn't like the way she had slipped one over on us in connection with the leak on the peace note. Then, too, she seemed to have no visible means of support, but plenty of money.

"I felt certain that she wasn't guilty of blackmail or any of the more sordid kinds of crime, but the fact that she was on terms of familiarity with a number of diplomats, and that she seemed to have a fondness for army and navy officials, led me to believe that she was a sort of super spy, sent over here for a specific purpose. The instant you mentioned the Carruthers Code she sprang to my mind. A bill, slipped into the fingers of her maid, brought the information about the green cloak, and the rest was easy.

"I figured that she'd have the cipher key on her to-night, for it was her first opportunity of pa.s.sing it along to the man I felt certain she was working for. Sure enough, as she pa.s.sed him about half an hour ago she tapped her bracelet, apparently absent-mindedly. As soon as he was out of sight I sent one of the maids with a message that some one wanted to see her in one of the smaller rooms. Thinking that it was the amba.s.sador, she came at once. I was planted behind the door, handcuffed her before she knew what I was doing, and then signaled you!

"Quite elementary, my dear Melville, quite elementary!"

"That," added Quinn, "was the last they heard of Mrs. Armitage. Taylor reported the matter at once, but the chief said that as they had the code they better let well enough alone. The following day the woman left Was.h.i.+ngton, and no one has heard from her since--except for a package that reached Taylor some months later. There was nothing in it except that photograph yonder, and, as Taylor was interested only in his bride, _nee_ Madelaine James, he turned it over to me for my collection."

XXIV

FIVE INCHES OF DEATH

"Quinn," I said one evening when the veteran of the United States Secret Service appeared to be in one of his story-spinning moods, "you've told me of cases that have to do with smuggling and spies, robberies and fingerprints and frauds, but you've never mentioned the one crime that is most common in the annals of police courts and detective bureaus."

"Murder?" inquired Quinn, his eyes s.h.i.+fting to the far wall of his library-den.

"Precisely. Haven't government detectives ever been instrumental in solving a murder mystery?"

"Yes, they've been mixed up in quite a few of them. There was the little matter of the Hallowell case--where the crime and the criminal were connected by a shoelace--and the incident of 'The Red Circle.' But murder, as such, does not properly belong in the province of the government detective. Only when it is accompanied by some breach of the federal laws does it come under the jurisdiction of the men from Was.h.i.+ngton. Like the Montgomery murder mystery, for example."

"Oh yes, the one connected with the postmark that's framed on your wall over there!" I exclaimed. "I'd forgotten about that. Hal Preston handled it, didn't he--the same man responsible for running down 'The Trail of the White Mice'?"

"That's the one," said Quinn, and I was glad to see him settle luxuriously back in his old armchair--for that meant that he was preparing to recall the details of an adventure connected with a member of one of the government detective services.

If it hadn't been for the fact that Preston was in California at the time, working on the case of a company that was using the mails for illegal purposes, it is extremely doubtful if the mystery would ever have been solved [Quinn continued]; certainly not in time to prevent the escape of the criminal.

But Hal's investigations took him well up into the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevadas, and one morning he awoke to find the whole town in which he was stopping ablaze with a discussion of the "Montgomery mystery," as they called it.

It appeared from the details which Preston picked up in the lobby of his hotel that Marshall Montgomery had settled down in that section of the country some three years before, but that he had surrounded himself with an air of aloofness and detachment which had made him none too popular.

Men who had called to see him on matters of business had left smarting under the sting of an ill-concealed snub, while it was as much as a book agent's life was worth to try to gain entrance to the house.

"It wasn't that he was stingy or close-fisted," explained one of the men who had known Montgomery. "He bought more Liberty Bonds than anyone else in town--but he bought them through his bank. Mailed the order in, just as he did with his contributions to the Red Cross and the other charitable organizations. Wouldn't see one of the people who went out to his place. In fact, they couldn't get past the six or eight bulldogs that guard the house."

"And yet," said Preston, "I understand that in spite of his precautions he was killed last night?"

"n.o.body knows just when he was killed," replied the native, "or how.

That's the big question. When his servant, a Filipino whom he brought with him, went to wake him up this morning he found Montgomery's door locked. That in itself was nothing unusual--for every door and window in the place was securely barred before nine o'clock in the evening. But when Tino, the servant, had rapped several times without receiving any reply, he figured something must be wrong. So he got a stepladder, propped it up against the side of the house, and looked in through the window. What he saw caused him to send in a hurry call for the police."

"Well," snapped Preston, "what did he see?"

"Montgomery, stretched out on the floor near the door, stone dead--with a pool of blood that had formed from a wound in his hand!"

"In his hand?" Preston echoed. "Had he bled to death?"

"Apparently not--but that's where the queer angle to the case comes in.

The door was locked from the inside--not only locked, but bolted, so there was no possibility of anyone having entered the room. The windows were tightly guarded by a patented burglar-proof device which permitted them to be open about three inches from the bottom, but prevented their being raised from the outside."

"Was there a chimney or any other possible entrance to the room?"

"None at all. Three windows and a door. Montgomery's body was sprawled out on the rug near the doorway--a revolver in his right hand, a bullet hole through the palm of his left. The first supposition, of course, was that he had accidentally shot himself and had bled to death. But there wasn't enough blood for that. Just a few drops on the table and a small pool near the body. They're going to hold an autopsy later in the day and--"

It was at that moment that the Post-office operative became conscious that some one was calling his name, and, turning, he beckoned to the bell-boy who was paging him.

"Mr. Preston? Gentleman over there'd like to speak to you." Then the boy added in a whisper, "Chief o' police."

Excusing himself, Preston crossed the lobby to where a large and official-looking man was standing, well out of hearing distance of the guests who pa.s.sed.

"Is this Mr. Preston of the Postal Inspection Service?" inquired the head of the local police force, adding, after the government operative had nodded. "I am the chief of police here."

"Glad to meet you, Chief," was Preston's response. "I haven't had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, though of course I know you by sight." (He neglected to add how recently this knowledge had been acquired.) "What can I do for you?"