The Million-Dollar Suitcase Part 10

She'd guessed right again! I wheeled on her, ejaculating,

"For the love of Mike! Tell a mere man how you deduced this stairway.

Feminine intuition, I suppose."

I hadn't meant to be offensive with that last, but her firm little chin was in the air as she countered,

"Is it a stairway? It might be a ladder, you know."

It was a ladder, an iron ladder, as I found when I ushered them in. My eyes snapped inquiry at her.

"Very simple," she said. Worth was pus.h.i.+ng aside pails and boxes to make a better way for her to the ladder's foot. "There wouldn't be a roof scuttle in the rented rooms, so I knew when you called in to tell us there was none in the halls."

"I didn't. I said nothing of the sort." Where was the girl's fine memory that she couldn't recollect a man's words for the little time I'd been gone! "All I said was, 'Just a minute and I'll be back.'"

"Yes, that's all you said to Worth." She glanced at the boy serenely as he waited for her at the ladder's foot. "He's not a trained observer; he doesn't deduce even from what he does observe." There were twinkling lights in her black eyes. "But what your hurried trip to the office said to me was that you'd gone for the key of the room that led to the roof scuttle."

Well, that was reasonable--simple enough, too; but,

"This room? How did you find it?"

She stepped to the open door and placed the tip of a gloved finger on the nickeled naught that marked the panels.

"The significant zero again, Mr. Boyne," she laughed. "Here it means the room is not a tenanted one, and is therefore the way to the roof. Shall we go there?"

"Well, young lady," I said as I led her along the trail Worth had cleared, "it must be almost as bad to see everything that way--in minute detail--as to be blind."

"Carry on!" Worth called from the top of the ladder, reaching down to aid the girl. She laughed back at me as she started the short climb.

"Not at all bad! You others seem to me only half awake to what is about you--only half living," and she placed her hand in the strong one held down to her. As Worth pa.s.sed her through the scuttle to the roof, I saw her glance carelessly at the hooks and staples, the clumsy but adequate arrangement for locking the hatch, and, following her, gave them more careful attention, wondering what she had seen--plenty that I did not, no doubt. They had no tale to tell my eyes.

Once outside, she stopped a minute with Worth to adjust herself to the sharp wind which swept across from the north. Here was a rectangular s.p.a.ce surrounded by walls which ran around its four sides to form the coping, unbroken in any spot; a gravel-and-tar roof, almost flat, with the scuttle and a few small, dust covered skylights its only openings, four chimney-tops its sole projections. It was bare of any hiding-place, almost as clear as a tennis court.

We made a solemn tour of inspection; I wasn't greatly interested--how could I be, knowing that between this roof and my fugitive there had been locked windows, and a locked door under reliable human eyes? Still, the lifelong training of the detective kept me estimating the possibilities of a getaway from the roof--if Clayte could have reached it. Worth crossed to where the St. Dunstan fire escape came up from the ground to end below us at a top floor window. I joined him, explaining as we looked down,

"Couldn't have made it that way; not by daylight. In open view all around."

"Think he stayed up here till dark?" Worth suggested, quite as though the possibility of Clayte's coming here at all was settled.

"My men were all over this building--roof to cellar--within the hour.

They'd not have overlooked a crack big enough for him to hide in. Put yourself in Clayte's place. Time was the most valuable thing in the world with him right then. If ever he got up to this roof, he'd not waste a minute longer on it than he had to."

"Let's see what's beyond, then," and Worth led the way to the farther end.

The girl didn't come with us. Having been once around the roof coping, looking, it seemed to me, as much at the view as anything else, she now seemed content to settle herself on a little square of planking, a disused scuttle top or something of the sort, in against one of the chimneys where she was sheltered from the wind. Rather to my surprise, I saw her thoughtfully pulling off her gloves, removing her turban, all the time with a curiously disinterested air. I was reminded of what Worth had said the night before about the way her father trained her.

Probably she regarded the facts I'd furnished her, or that she'd picked up for herself, much as she used to the problems in concentration her father spread in the high chair tray of her infancy. I turned and left her with them, for Worth was calling me to announce a fact I already knew, that the adjoining building had a roof some fifteen feet below where we stood, and that the man, admitting good gymnastic ability, might have reached it.

"Sure," I said. "But come on. We're wasting time here."

We turned to go, and then stopped, both of us checked instantly by what we saw. The girl was sitting in a strange pose, her feet drawn in to cross beneath her body, slender hands at the length of the arms meeting with interlaced finger-tips before her, the thumbs just touching; shoulders back, chin up, eyes--big enough at any time, now dilated to look twice their size--velvet circles in a white face. Like a Buddha; I'd seen her sit so, years before, an undersized girl doing stunts for her father in a public hall; and even then she'd been in a way impressive. But now, in the fullness of young beauty, her fine head relieved against the empty blue of the sky, the free winds whipping loose flying ends of her dark hair, she held the eye like a miracle.

Sitting here so immovably, she looked to me as though life had slid away from her for the moment, the mechanical action of lungs and heart temporarily suspended, so that mind might work unhindered in that beautiful sh.e.l.l. No, I was wrong. She was breathing; her bosom rose and fell in slow but deep, placid inhalations and exhalations. And the pale face might be from the slower heart-beat, or only because the surface blood had receded to give more of strength to the brain.

The position of head of a Bankers' Security Agency carries with it a certain amount of dignity--a dignity which, since Richardson's death, I have maintained better than I have handled other requirements of the business he left with me. I stood now feeling like a fool. I'd grown gray in the work, and here in my prosperous middle life, a boy's whim and a girl's pretty face had put me in the position of consulting a clairvoyant. Worse, for this was a wild-cat affair, without even the professional standing of establishments to which I knew some of the weak brothers in my line sometimes sneaked for ghostly counsel. If it should leak out, I was done for.

I suppose I sort of groaned, for I felt Worth put a restraining hand on my arm, and heard his soft,

"Psst!"

The two of us stood, how long I can't say, something besides the beauty of the young creature, even the dignity of her in this outre situation getting hold of me, so that I was almost reverent when at last the rigidity of her image-like figure began to relax, the pretty feet in their silk stockings and smart pumps appeared where they belonged, side by side on the edge of the planking, and she looked at us with eyes that slowly gathered their normal expression, and a smile of rare human sweetness.

"It _is_ horrid to see--and I loathe doing it!" She shook her curly dark head like a punished child, and stayed a minute longer, eyes downcast, groping after gloves and hat. "I thought maybe I'd get the answer before you saw me--sitting up like a trained seal!"

"Like a mighty pretty little heathen idol, Bobs," Worth amended.

"Well, it's the only way I can really concentrate--effectively. But this is the first time I've done it since--since father died."

"And never again for me, if that's the way you feel about it." Worth crossed quickly and stood beside her, looking down. She reached a hand to him; her eyes thanked him; but as he helped her to her feet I was struck by a something poised and confident that she seemed to have brought with her out of that strange state in which she had just been.

"Doesn't either of you want to hear the answer?" she asked. Then, without waiting for reply, she started for the scuttle and the ladder, bare headed, carrying her hat. We found her once more adjusting turban and veil before the mirror of Clayte's dresser. She faced around, and announced, smiling steadily across at me,

"Your man Clayte left this room while Mrs. Griggsby was kneeling almost on its threshold--left it by that window over there. He got to the roof by means of a rope and grappling hook. He tied the suitcase to the lower end of the rope, swung it out of the window, went up hand over hand, and pulled the suitcase up after him. That's the answer I got."

It was? Well, it was a beaut! Only Worth Gilbert, standing there giving the proceeding respectability by careful attention and a grave face, brought me down to asking with mild jocularity,

"He did? He did all that? Well, please ma'am, who locked the window after him?"

"He locked the window after himself."

"Oh, say!" I began in exasperation--hadn't I just shown the impractical little creature that those locks couldn't be manipulated from outside?

"Wait. Examine carefully the wooden part of the upper sash, at the lock--again," she urged, but without making any movement to help.

"You'll find what we overlooked before; the way he locked the sash from the outside."

I turned to the window and looked where she had said; nothing. I ran my fingers over the painted surface of the wood, outside, opposite the latch, and a queer, chilly feeling went down my spine. I jerked out my knife, opened it and sc.r.a.ped at a tiny inequality.

"There is--is something--" I was beginning, when Worth crowded in at my side and pushed his broad shoulders out the window to get a better view of my operations, then commanded,

"Let me have that knife." He took it from my fingers, dug with its blade, and suddenly from the inside I saw a tiny hole appear in the frame of the sash beside the lock hasp. "Here we are!" He brought his upper half back into the room and held up a wooden plug, painted--dipped in paint--the exact color of the sash. It had concealed a hole; pierced the wood from out to in.

"And she saw that in her trance," I murmured, gaping in amazement at the plug.

I heard her catch her breath, and Worth scowled at me,

"Trance? What do you mean, Boyne? She doesn't go into a trance."

"That--that--whatever she does," I corrected rather helplessly.

"Never mind, Mr. Boyne," said the girl. "It isn't clairvoyance or anything like that, however it looks."