Book: The House of Mystery

W >> William Henry Irwin >> The House of Mystery




"Come Tuesday--week ago to-day and my afternoon off. I was comin' home
early, about nine o'clock. I've got front door privileges, but I
generally use the servants' entrance just the same. Right ahead of me,
a green automobile with one of those limousine bodies drove up to the
front door. It's dark down in the area by the servants' entrance. I
stopped like I was huntin' through my skirt for my key, and looked. Out
of the automobile come a man. He turned around to speak to the
chauffeur and I got the light on his face. _Who_ do you suppose it was?
Robert H. Norcross!"

"The railroad king?"

Rosalie pursed her lips and nodded wisely.

"How did you know? You've never seen him before."

"Ain't it my business to know the faces of everybody? What do I read
the personals in the magazines for? You'd know Theodore Roosevelt if
you saw him first time, wouldn't you? But I made surer than that. Next
day I matched the number of his automobile with the automobile
register. That number belongs to Robert H. Norcross."

Dr. Blake whistled.

"Playing for big game!" he said.

"That was what struck me," said Rosalie, "and while it wasn't
impossible that this Mr. Norcross might have a straight interest in the
spirit world--well, when you see big medium and big money together, it
looks like big _fake_. And there was the man with the notes who read
the financial pages--he jumped back into my mind.

"The servants' entrance comes out through the kitchen onto the second
floor. When I come into the hall, Ellen was waiting for me. She was
tiptoeing and whispering.

"'Mrs. Markham,' she says, 'wanted that I should tell you she has
sitters unexpected. There's some of her devil doin's going on
downstairs to-night. She wanted me to catch you when you came in and
ask you to go very quiet to your room.'

"While I went upstairs, I listened hard. Just before I came out on the
landing of the servants' hall, I heard a bell ring, away down below.
Just a little ring--b-r-r. Now, you know if there's one thing more 'n
another that I've got, it's ears--and ears that remember, too. I hadn't
been a day in that house when I knew every bell in it and who was
ringin' besides. This wasn't any of 'em. But that wasn't the funny
thing. _It lasted just about as long as my foot rested on a step of the
stairs_. I didn't make the break of going back and ringin' again; but I
remembered that step--third from the top.

"'T ain't easy to admit you've been fooled, and 't ain't easy to give
up somebody you've believed in. I couldn't have slept that night even
if I'd wanted. I opened the registers in my room, because open
registers help you to hear things, and sat in the darkness. I could
catch that the sitting was over, because the front door slammed. Then
Ellen came upstairs, and the bell rang b-r-r again. I could hear
someone come upstairs to the second floor, where Mrs. Markham and the
girl have their rooms. I listened for that bell when she struck the
stairs. I couldn't hear nothing. The current has been switched off,
thinks I. Maybe it was ten minutes later when I got a faint kind of
thud, like somebody had let down a folding bed, though there ain't a
one of those man-killers in our house. Sort of stirred up a
recollection, that sound. I lay puzzling, and the answer came like a
flash. Worst fake outfit I ever had anything to do with was Vango's
Spirit Thought Institute in St. Paul. I've told you before how ashamed
I am of that. I left because there's some kinds of work I won't stand
for. Well, he used a ceiling trap for his materializin'; though the
wainscot is a sight better and more up-to-date in my experience. When
he let it drop careless, in practicing before the seance, it used to
make a noise like that. I fell asleep by-and-bye; and out of my dreams,
which was troubled and didn't bring nothing definite, I got the general
impression that Mrs. Markham wasn't all right and that I'd been fooled.

"Mrs. Markham and the little girl went to the matinee next afternoon.
Now I'm comin' to her. You let me tell this story _my_ way. The cook
was bakin' in the kitchen, Ellen the parlor maid, who had to stay home
to answer bells, was gossipin' with her. Martin was cleanin' out the
furnace. I had the run of the house. First thing I looked at was the
third step from the top of the stairs. I worked out two tacks in the
carpet--wasn't much trouble; they come out like they was used to it. I
pulled the carpet sideways. Sure enough, there was a wide crack just
below the step, and when I peeked in, I could see the electric
connections. Question was, where was the bell? But I had something to
think of first. Where would Mrs. Markham have a cabinet if she ever
done materializin'? I had thought that all out--a little alcove library
in the rear of the back parlor. Give you plenty of room, when the
folding doors were open, for lights and effects. If there _was_ a
ceiling trap, it must be in the rooms above. I went into--into the
rooms"--here Rosalie paused an infinitesimal second as though making a
mental shift--"into the room above. Just over the alcove library is a
small sittin'-room. The--a bedroom opens off it--but has nothing to do
with the case. It's one of those new-fangled bare floor rooms. Right
over the cabinet space was a big rug. I pulled it aside and pried
around with a hair pin until I found a loose nail."

[Illustration: "I WAS LOOKING STRAIGHT DOWN ON THE BACK PARLORS"]

Rosalie paused for breath before she resumed:

"I went over the house again to be sure I was alone, before I pulled
out the nail. Well, sir, what happened like to knocked me over. The
minute that nail come out, a trap rose right up--on springs. I just
caught it in time to stop it from making a racket. I was looking
straight down on the back parlors. It's one of those flossy, ornamented
ceilings down there, and a panel of those ceiling ornaments came up
with the bottom of the trap. But that wasn't the funny thing about that
trap, nice piece of work as it was. It's a regular cupboard. Double,
you understand. Space in between--and all the fixings for a
materializin' seance, the straight fixings that the dope sees and the
crooked ones that only the medium and the spook sees, tucked inside. A
shutter lamp, blue glass--a set of gauze robes, phosphorescent stars
and crescents, a little rope ladder all curled up--and whole books of
notes. Right on top was"--she paused impressively to get suspense for
her climax--"was them notes on yellow foolscap that I seen in the hands
of the visitor last week. And"--another impressive pause--"they're the
dope for Robert H. Norcross!"

"The what?"

"The full information on him--dead sweetheart, passed out thirty years
ago up-state. Fine job with good little details--whoever got 'em must
'a' talked with somebody that was right close to her--an old aunt, I'm
thinking. But no medium made them notes. Looks like a private
detective's work. Not a bit of professional talk. The notes on Robert
H. Norcross. See!"

Dr. Blake, whose face had lightened more and more as he listened,
jumped up and grasped Rosalie's hand.

"Didn't I tell you!" he cried. "Didn't I tell you!"

But she failed to respond to his enthusiasm. She turned on him a grave
face; and her eyes shone.

"What I'm wondering," she said, "is who plays her spook? 'Cause if she
has a trap, she uses confederates, and it can't be none of the
servants, unless I'm worse fooled on that little Ellen than ever I was
on Mrs. Markham. That's the next thing to consider."

"Does look curious," replied Dr. Blake, "but of course you can be
trusted to discover that! But about Annette?"

"Something's a little wrong there," responded Rosalie. "Quiet, and
dopey, and strange. That,"--her voice fell to soft contemplation,--"is
another thing to find out."

"We must get her out of there!" he exploded; "away from that vampire!"

"Well, that's what I'm takin' your money for, ain't it?" responded
Rosalie.

After they parted Rosalie Le Grange stood on a corner, among the
push-cart peddlers and the bargaining wives, and watched Dr. Blake's
taxicab disappear down Stanton Street.

"Ain't it funny?" she said half aloud, "that a smart young man like him
never thought to ask whose room it was I found the trap in?"




X

THE STREAMS CONVERGE


Bulger, trailing whiffs of out-door air, had dropped into the Norcross
offices to join the late afternoon drink. He sat now sipping his
highball, tilted back with an affectation of ease. Norcross, in his
regular place at the glass-covered desk, laid his glass down; and his
gaze wandered again to the spire of Old Trinity and then, following
down, to the churchyard at its foot. Had he faced about suddenly at
that moment, he would have surprised Bulger in a strained attitude of
attention. But he did not turn; he spoke with averted glance.

"You never asked me, Bulger, how I was making it with that medium
woman."

Bulger took a deep swallow of whiskey and water that he might control
his voice. When, finally, he spoke, he showed a fine assumption of
indifference.

"Well, no. Can't say I'm heavily interested. When I found for you the
best medium that money could buy, I decided that my job was done. Of
course," he added, "I was complimented to have you tell me--what I've
forgotten. If you want to consult a medium, it's really none of my
business. How the Lusitania does loom up at her dock out there!"

Norcross let his eyes wander in search of the Lusitania, but his mind
refused to stray from the vital subject.

"You've no business to be indifferent, Bulger. When you come to my age,
you won't be. Martha says it's the most important thing. And she's
right--she's right. What's the ten or twenty years I've got to live in
this world, compared with all that's waiting us out there? Of course,"
he added, "I don't know much about your private life; I don't know if
you have another part of you waiting."

"Who's Martha?" enquired Bulger.

"No one in _this_ world," responded Norcross. "She's a control
now--Mrs. Markham's best control." Norcross jumped up, and began to
pace the floor in his hurried little walk. Bulger did not fail to
notice that, within a minute or two, a heavy, beady perspiration came
out on his face and forehead. The room was cool; the railroad king was
old and spare. Nothing save some struggle of the inner consciousness
could produce that effect of mighty labor.

"Bulger," said Norcross, speaking in quick, staccato jerks, "if I told
you what I'd seen and heard in the last fortnight, I couldn't make you
believe it. Proofs! Proofs! I've wasted thirty years. I might have had
her--the best part of her--all this time. You think I'm crazy--" he
stopped and peered into Bulger's face. "If anyone had talked this way
to me six months ago, I'd have thought so myself. Do you or don't you?"
he exploded.

"About as crazy as you ever were," responded Bulger. "Not to sugar coat
the pill, people have always said you were crazy--just before you let
off your fireworks. You've got there because you dared do things that
only a candidate for Bloomingdale would attempt. But you always landed,
and we've another name for it now."

"That's it!" exclaimed Norcross. "That's exactly it. I dare to say now
that the dead do return! People have believed in ghosts as long as
they've believed in a Divine Providence--just as many centuries and
ages--every race, every nation. We hear in this generation that certain
people have proved it--found! the way--set up the wires--and we laugh,
and call it all fraud. I don't laugh! Why, we're on the verge of things
which make the railroad and the steamboat and the telegraph seem like
toys--if we only dared. I dare--I dare!" He went on pacing the floor;
and now the beads had assembled into rivers, so that a tiny stream
trickled down and fogged his reading-glasses. He jerked them off, wiped
them, wiped his face and forehead. The action calmed him, brought him
back to his reasonable grip on himself. At the end of his route across
the room, he sat down abruptly.

Bulger did not miss this shift of the new Norcross back toward the old,
iron, inscrutable Norcross whom the world knew. The next remark he
directed against that aspect of his man.

"It's all right," said Bulger, "if you want to follow that line."
During the short pause which ensued, he thought and felt intensely.
Working under the direction of a mind infinitely his superior for
intrigue and subtlety, he had instruction to play gently upon the
Norcross contrariety, the Norcross habit of rejecting advice. This, if
ever, seemed the time. With a bold hand, he laid his counter upon the
board. "Just one thing to be careful about--of course, it's a mouse
trying to steer a lion for me to advise you--but watch those people,
when they get on the subject of business. Sometimes they work people,
you know."

Norcross's face, fixed on the third monument from the south door of Old
Trinity, permitted itself the luxury of a slight smile.

"I'm safe there," he responded. "Don't think I haven't tried her
out--put tests of my own. I know what you're thinking about--Marsh and
Diss Debar. I tried at my very first seance to make her talk business
and I've tried it twice since. I couldn't get a single rise out of
_that_. This medium receives from me her regular rate, and no more. I
established that in the beginning. Though I suppose the guides could
advise on business as well as on anything else. But they think about
other things on the other side than this"--his hand swept over Lower
Manhattan--"this money grubbing."

Bulger leaned his elbows on his knees.

"It sounds wonderful," he said.

"Not more wonderful than wireless telegraphy," answered Norcross. "And
the ancients, she says, dreamed of talking with spirits long before
they dreamed of talking to each other across an ocean. We only need an
exceptional force to do it. And Mrs. Markham is that force. You know
the locket I showed you?"

"I promised to forget it."

"Well, remember for a minute. I"--his voice exploded--"I may see her,
Bulger--before the month is over, I may see her!"

Bulger threw himself back in his chair.

"What!" he exclaimed, jumping with an affectation of surprise.

It was as though the sudden motion, the exclamation had touched a
spring in the mind of Norcross, had projected his spirit from that
disintegrating, anaemic cell in his brain to the sound, full-blooded
cells by which he did his daily business. His form, which had seemed
relaxed and old, stiffened visibly. He turned his eyes on Bulger.

"Forget that, too," he said. "Some day, when I'm strong enough, you'll
go with me and you'll believe too." And now the secretary had signalled
the chauffeur, and Norcross had risen to go.

* * * * *

The streams of destiny were converging that afternoon; the lines were
drawing close together. Among the towers of Lower Manhattan, Norcross
sat baring his soul; on a bench in Stuyvesant Square, Rosalie Le Grange
had reported the consummation of her investigations to Dr. Walter
Huntington Blake; in a back parlor of the Upper West Side, Paula
Markham, with many a sidelong glance at the approaches, sat memorizing
the last syllable of a set of notes on yellow legal cap paper. But the
master current was flowing elsewhere. In the offices of the _Evening
Sun_, the stereotypers had just shot the front page of the Wall Street
edition down to the clanking basement. It carried a "beat"; and that
item of news had as much to do with this story as with the ultimate
destinies of the L.D. and M. railroad. On October 19, two weeks hence,
the directors of the road were to meet and decide whether to pay or
pass the dividend. "The directors"--that, as the _Sun_ insinuated,
meant none other than Norcross. Holding a majority of the L.D. and M.
stock, holding the will of those directors, his creatures, he alone
would decide whether to declare the dividend or to pass it. The stock
wavered at about fifty, waiting the decision. If Norcross put it on a
dividend-paying basis, it was good for eighty. To know which way he
would decide, to extract any information from that inscrutable
mind--that were to open a steel vault with a pen-knife. "All trading,"
the _Sun_ assured its readers, "will be speculative; it is considered a
pure gamble."

As Bulger parted with Norcross on the street and turned south, a
newsboy thrust the Wall Street _Sun_ into his face. The announcement of
the L.D. and M. situation jumped out at him from a headline. The inside
information, held for two weeks by the group of speculators in which
Bulger moved, was out; the public was admitted to the transaction; now
was the time, if ever, to strike. He found a sound-proof telephone, and
did a few minutes of rapid talking. Then he proceeded to his office.

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 fashionable 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 hassock. 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 hassock; 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-fashioned 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.

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