The Mystery of Murray Davenport Part 14

"None, except a time limit. I want you to steer me around the hospitals, station-houses, morgue, _et cetera_. There's a man missing. You've made those rounds before."

"Yes, twice. When poor Bill Southford jumped from the ferry-boat; and again when a country cousin of mine had knockout drops administered to him in a Bowery dance-hall. It's a dismal quest."

"I know it, but if you have nothing else on your hands this evening--"

"Oh, I'll pilot you. We never know when we're likely to have search-parties out after ourselves, in this abounding metropolis. Who's the latest victim of the strenuous life?"

"Murray Davenport!"

"What! is he occurring again?"

Larcher imparted what it was needful that Tompkins should know. The two made an expeditious dinner, and started on their long and fatiguing inquiry. It was, as Tompkins had said, a dismal quest. Those who have ever made this cheerless tour will not desire to be reminded of the experience, and those who have not would derive more pain than pleasure from a recital of it. The long distances from point to point, the rebuffs from petty officials, the difficulty in wringing harmless information from fools clad in a little brief authority, the mingled hope and dread of coming upon the object of the search at the next place, the recurring feeling that the whole fatiguing pursuit is a wild goose chase and that the missing person is now safe at home, are a few features of the disheartening business. The labors of Larcher and Tompkins elicited nothing; lightened though they were by the impecunious lawyer's tact, knowledge, and good humor, they left the young men dispirited and dead tired. Larcher had nothing to telegraph Miss Kenby. He thought of her pa.s.sing a sleepless night, waiting for news, the dupe and victim of every sound that might herald a messenger. He slept ill himself, the short time he had left for sleep. In the morning he made a swift breakfast, and was off to Mrs. Haze's. Davenport's room was still untenanted, his bed untouched; the telegram still lay unclaimed in the hall below.

Florence and Edna were prepared, by the absence of news during the night, for Larcher's discouraged face when he appeared at the flat in the morning. Miss Kenby seemed already to have fortified her mind for an indefinite season of anxiety. She maintained an outward calm, but it was the forced calm of a resolution to bear torture heroically. She had her lapses, her moments of weakness and outcry, her periods of despair, during the ensuing days,--for days did ensue, and nothing was seen or heard of the missing one,--but of these Larcher was not often a witness.

Edna Hill developed new resources as an encourager, a diverter, and an unfailing optimist in regard to the outcome. The girls divided their time between the flat and the Kenby lodgings down Fifth Avenue. Mr. Kenby was subdued and self-effacing when they were about. He wore a somewhat meek, cowed air nowadays, which was not without a touch of martyrdom. He volunteered none but the most casual remarks on the subject of Davenport's disappearance, and was not asked even for those. His diminution spoke volumes for the unexpected force of personality Florence must have shown in that unrelated interview about the letters, in which she had got back her promise.

The burden of action during those ensuing days fell on Larcher. Besides regular semi-diurnal calls on the young ladies and at Mrs. Haze's house, and regular consultations of police records, he made visits to every place he had ever known Davenport to frequent, and to every person he had ever known Davenport to be acquainted with. Only, for a time Mr.

Bagley had to be excepted, he not having yet returned from Chicago.

It appeared that the big man at police headquarters had really caused the proper thing to be done. Detectives came to Mrs. Haze's house and searched the absent man's possessions, but found no clue; and most of the newspapers had a short paragraph to the effect that Murray Davenport, "a song-writer," was missing from his lodging-house. Larcher hoped that this, if it came to Davenport's eye, though it might annoy him, would certainly bring word from him. But the man remained as silent as unseen. Was there, indeed, what the newspapers call "foul play"? And was Larcher called upon yet to speak of the twenty thousand dollars? The knowledge of that would give the case an importance in the eyes of the police, but would it, even if the worst had happened, do any good to Davenport? Larcher thought not; and held his tongue.

One afternoon, in the week following the disappearance,--or, as Larcher preferred to call it, non-appearance,--that gentleman, having just sat down in a north-bound Sixth Avenue car, glanced over the first page of an evening paper--one of the yellow brand--which he had bought a minute before. All at once he was struck in the face, metaphorically speaking, by a particular set of headlines. He held his breath, and read the following opening paragraph:

"The return of George A. Bagley from Chicago last night puts a new phase on the disappearance of Murray Davenport, the song-writer, who has not been seen since Wednesday of last week at his lodging-house,--East----th Street. Mr. Bagley would like to know what became of a large amount of cash which he left with the missing man for certain purposes the previous night on leaving suddenly for Chicago. He says that when he called this morning on brokers, bankers, and others to whom the money should have been handed over, he found that not a cent of it had been disposed of according to orders. Davenport had for some years frequently acted as a secretary or agent for Bagley, and had handled many thousands of dollars for the latter in such a manner as to gain the highest confidence."

There was a half-column of details, which Larcher read several times over on the way up-town. When he entered Edna's drawing-room the two girls were sitting before the fire. At the first sight of his face, Edna sprang to her feet, and Florence's lips parted.

"What is it?" cried Edna. "You've got news! What is it?"

"No. Not any news of _his_ whereabouts."

"What of, then? It's in that paper."

She seized the yellow journal, and threw her glance from headline to headline. She found the story, and read it through, aloud, at a rate of utterance that would have staggered the swiftest shorthand writer.

"Well! What do you think of _that_?" she said, and stopped to take breath.

"Do you think it is true?" asked Florence.

"There is some reason to believe it is!" replied Larcher, awkwardly.

Florence rose, in great excitement. "Then this affair _must_ be cleared up!" she cried. "For don't you see? He may have been robbed--waylaid for the money--made away with! G.o.d knows what else can have happened! The newspaper hints that he ran away with the money. I'll never believe that.

It must be cleared up--I tell you it _must_!"

Edna tried to soothe the agitated girl, and looked sorrowfully at Larcher, who could only deplore in silence his inability to solve the mystery.

CHAPTER IX.

MR. BUD'S DARK HALLWAY

A month pa.s.sed, and it was not cleared up. Larcher became hopeless of ever having sight or word of Murray Davenport again. For himself, he missed the man; for the man, a.s.suming a tragic fate behind the mystery, he had pity; but his sorrow was keenest for Miss Kenby. No description, nothing but experience, can inform the reader what was her torment of mind: to be so impatient of suspense as to cry out as she had done, and yet perforce to wait hour after hour, day after day, week after week, in the same unrelieved anxiety,--this prolonged torture is not to be told in words. She schooled herself against further outcries, but the evidence of her suffering was no less in her settled look of baffled expectancy, her fits of mute abstraction, the start of her eyes at any sound of bell or knock. She clutched back hope as it was slipping away, and would not surrender uncertainty for its less harrowing follower, despair. She had resumed, as the probability of immediate news decreased, her former way of existence, living with her father at the house in lower Fifth Avenue, where Miss Hill saw her every day except when she went to see Miss Hill, who denied herself the Horse Show, the football games, and the opera for the sake of her friend. Larcher called on the Kenbys twice or thrice a week, sometimes with Edna, sometimes alone.

There was one possibility which Larcher never mentioned to Miss Kenby in discussing the case. He feared it might fit too well her own secret thought. That was the possibility of suicide. What could be more consistent with Davenport's outspoken distaste for life, as he found it, or with his listless endurance of it, than a voluntary departure from it?

He had never talked suicide, but this, in his state of mind, was rather an argument in favor of his having acted it. No threatened men live longer, as a cla.s.s, than those who have themselves as threateners. It was true, Larcher had seen in Davenport's copy of Keats, this pa.s.sage marked:

"... for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death."

But an unhappy man might endorse that saying without a thought of possible self-destruction. So, for Davenport's very silence on that way of escape from his tasteless life, Larcher thought he might have taken it.

He confided this thought to no less a person than Bagley, some weeks after the return of that capitalist from Chicago. Two or three times, meeting by chance, they had briefly discussed the disappearance, each being more than willing to obtain whatever light the other might be able to throw on the case. Finally Bagley, to whom Larcher had given his address, had sent for him to call at the former's rooms on a certain evening. These rooms proved to be a luxurious set of bachelor apartments in one of the new tall buildings just off Broadway. Hard wood, stamped leather, costly rugs, carved furniture, the richest upholstery, the art of the old world and the inventiveness of the new, had made this a handsome abode at any time, and a particularly inviting one on a cold December night. Larcher, therefore, was not sorry he had responded to the summons. He found Bagley sharing cigars and brandy with another man, a squat, burly, middle-aged stranger, with a dyed mustache and the dress and general appearance of a retired hotel-porter, cheap restaurant proprietor, theatre doorkeeper, or some such useful but not interesting member of society. This person, for a time, fulfilled the promise of his looks, of being uninteresting. On being introduced to Larcher as Mr.

Lafferty, he uttered a quick "Howdy," with a jerk of the head, and lapsed into a mute regard of tobacco smoke and brandy bottle, which he maintained while Bagley and Larcher went more fully into the Davenport case than they had before gone together. Larcher felt that he was being sounded, but he saw no reason to withhold anything except what related to Miss Kenby. It was now that he mentioned possible suicide.

"Suicide? Not much," said Bagley. "A man _would_ be a chump to turn on the gas with all that money about him. No, sir; it wasn't suicide. We know that much."

"You _know_ it?" exclaimed Larcher.

"Yes, we know it. A man don't make the preparations he did, when he's got suicide on his mind. I guess we might as well put Mr. Larcher on, Lafferty, do you think?"

"Jess' you say," replied Mr. Lafferty, briefly.

"You see," continued Bagley to Larcher, "I sent for you, so's I could pump you in front of Lafferty here. I'm satisfied you've told all you know, and though that's absolutely nothing at all--ain't that so, Lafferty?"

"Yep,--nothin' 'tall."

"Though it's nothing at all, a fair exchange is no robbery, and I'm willing for you to know as much as I do. The knowledge won't do you any good--it hasn't done me any good--but it'll give you an insight into your friend Davenport. Then you and his other friends, if he's got any, won't roast me because I claim that he flew the coop and not that somebody did him for the money. See?"

"Not exactly."

"All right; then we'll open your eyes. I guess you don't happen to know who Mr. Lafferty here is, do you?"

"Not yet."

"Well, he's a central office detective." (Mr. Lafferty bore Larcher's look of increased interest with becoming modesty.) "He's been on this case ever since I came back from Chicago, and by a piece of dumb luck, he got next to Davenport's trail for part of the day he was last seen.

He'll tell you how far he traced him. It's up to you now, Lafferty.

Speak out."

Mr. Lafferty, pretending to take as a good joke the attribution of his discoveries to "dumb luck," promptly discoursed in a somewhat thick but rapid voice.

"On the Wednesday morning he was las' seen, he left the house about nine o'clock, with a package wrapt in brown paper. I lose sight of'm f'r a couple 'f hours, but I pick'm up again a little before twelve. He's still got the same package. He goes into a certain department store, and buys a suit o' clothes in the clothin' department; s.h.i.+rts, socks, an'

underclothes in the gents' furnis.h.i.+n' department; a pair o' shoes in the shoe department, an' s'mother things in other departments. These he has all done up in wrappin'-paper, pays fur 'em, and leaves 'em to be called fur later. He then goes an' has his lunch."

"Where does he have his lunch?" asked Bagley.

"Never mind where he has his lunch," said Mr. Lafferty, annoyed. "That's got no bearin' on the case. After he has his lunch, he goes to a certain big grocer's and provision dealer's, an' buys a lot o' canned meats and various provisions,--I can give you a complete list if you want it."