The Black Eagle Mystery Part 22

Inside an hour O'Mally, Babbitts and I were on our way to Philadelphia.

All friction was forgotten, a bigger issue had extinguished the sparks that had come near bursting into flame. A mutual desire united us, the finding of Barker.

The train, an express, seemed to crawl like a tortoise, but the way I felt I guess the flight of an aeroplane would have been slow. I had hideous fears that he might give us the slip, but O'Mally was confident.

One of his men had got a lead on Barker through a vendor of newspapers, from whom the capitalist twice in the last week had purchased the big New York dailies. It had taken several days to locate his place of hiding-a quiet boarding house far removed from the center of the city-which was now under surveillance. As we swung through the night, shut close in a smoke-filled compartment, we speculated as to whether he would try and throw a bluff or see the game was up and tell the truth.

At the station O'Mally's man met us and the four of us piled into a taxi, and started on a run across town. It was moonlight, and going down those quiet streets, lined with big houses and then with little houses-still, dwindling vistas sleeping in the silver radiance-seemed to me the longest drive I'd ever taken in my life. As we sped the detective gave us further particulars. By his instructions the newsstand man, who left the morning papers at the boarding house, had got into communication with the servant, a colored girl. From her he had learnt that Barker-he pa.s.sed under the name of Joseph Sammis-had been away for twenty-four hours and had come back that morning so ill that a doctor had been called in. The doctor had said the man's heart was weak, and that his condition looked like the result of strain or shock. Questioned further the girl had said he was "A pleasant, civil-spoken old gentleman, giving no trouble to anybody." He went out very little, sitting in his room most of the time reading the papers. He received no mail there, but that he did get letters she had found out, as she had seen one on his table addressed to the General Delivery.

The house was on a street, quiet and deserted at this early hour, one of a row all built alike. As we climbed out of the taxi the moon was bright, the shadows lying like black velvet across the lonely roadway.

On the opposite side, loitering slow, was a man, who, raising a hand to his hat, pa.s.sed on into the darkness along the area railings. Though it was only a little after nine, many of the houses showed the blankness of unlit windows, but in the place where we had stopped a fan-light over the door glowed in a yellow semicircle.

As the taxi moved off we three-O'Mally's detective slipped away into the shadow like a ghost-walked up a little path to the front door where I pulled an old-fas.h.i.+oned bell handle. I could hear the sound go jingling through the hall, loud and cracked, and then steps, languid and dragging, come from somewhere in the rear. I was to act as spokesman, my cue being to ask for Mr. Sammis on a matter of urgent business.

The door was opened by the colored girl, who looked at us stupidly and then said she'd call Miss Graves, the landlady, as she didn't think anyone could see Mr. Sammis.

Standing back from the door she let us into a hall with a hatrack on one side and a flight of stairs going up at the back. The light was dim, coming from a globe held aloft by a figure that crowned the newel post.

The paper on the walls, some dark striped pattern, seemed to absorb what little radiance there was and the whole place smelled musty and was as quiet as a church.

The colored girl had disappeared down a long pa.s.sage and presently a door opened back there and a woman came out, tall and thin, in a skimpy black dress. She approached us as we stood in a group by the hatrack, leaning forward near-sightedly and blinking at us through silver-rimmed spectacles.

"My maid says you want to see Mr. Sammis," she said, in an unamiable voice.

"Yes," I answered. "We've come from New York and it's imperative we see him this evening."

"But you can't," she snapped. "He's sick. The doctor says he mustn't be disturbed."

Talking it over afterward we all confessed that we were seized by the same idea-that this lanky old spinster might be in the game and Barker's illness was a fake. Feeling as I did I was ready to leap forward, grab her, and lock her in her own parlor while the others chased up the stairs. I could sense the slight, uneasy stir of the two men beside me, and I tried to inject a determination into my voice, that while it was civil was also informing:

"I'm sorry, but it's absolutely necessary that we transact our business with him now."

"Can't you give me a message?" she demurred, squinting her eyes up behind the gla.s.ses. "I'll see that it's delivered in the morning."

"No, Madam. This is important and can't wait. We won't be long, we only have to consult with him for a few minutes."

She gave a shrug as much as to say, "Well, this is your affair!" and, drawing back, pointed to the stairs.

"He's up there, fourth floor front, second door to your left."

To each of us the suspicion that she was in with Barker had grown with every minute. The idea once lodged in our minds, possessed them, and we went up those stairs, slow at first, and then, as we got out of earshot, faster and faster. It was a run on the second flight and a gallop on the third. On this landing there was no gas lit, but a window at the end of the pa.s.sage let in a square of moonlight that lay bright on the floor and showed us the hall's dim length and the outlines of closed doors.

It was the second of these, on the left-hand side, and creeping toward it we stood for a moment getting our wind. The place was very cold, as if a window was open, and there was not a sound. Standing by the door O'Mally knocked softly. There was no answer.

In that half-lit pa.s.sage, chilled with the icy breath of the winter night and held in a strange stillness, I was seized by a grisly sense of impending horror. If I'd been a small boy my teeth would have begun to chatter. At thirty years of age that doesn't happen, but I doubt whether anyone whose body was supplied with an ordinarily active nervous system would not have felt something sinister in that cold, dark place, in the silence behind that close-shut door.

O'Mally knocked again and again; there was no answer.

"Try it," I whispered and the detective turned the handle.

"Locked," he breathed back, then-"Stand away there. I'm going to break it. There's something wrong here."

He turned sideways, bracing his shoulder against the door. There was a cracking sound, and the lock, embedded in old soft wood, gave way, the door swinging in with O'Mally hanging to the handle.

The room was unlit but for the silver moonlight that came from the window, uncurtained and open. At that sight the same thought seized the three of us-the man was gone-and O'Mally, fumbling in his pocket for matches, broke into furious profanity.

I had a box and as I dug round for it, took a look about, and saw the shapes of a chair with garments hanging over it, an open desk, and, against the opposite wall, the bed. It was only a pale oblong, and looked irregular, as if the clothes were heaped on it as the man had thrown them back. I could have joined O'Mally in his swearing. Gone-when our fingers were closing on him! Then I found the matches and the gas burst out over our heads.

My eyes were on the bed and O'Mally's must have been, for simultaneously I gave an exclamation and he leaped forward. There, asleep, under the covers lay a man. Quick as a flash of lightning the detective was beside him, bending to look close at the face, then he drew back with a sound-a cry of amazement, disbelief-and pulling off the bed clothes laid his hand on the sleeper's chest.

"G.o.d in Heaven!" he gasped, turning to us. "He's dead!"

Babbitts and I made a rush for the bed, I to the head, where I leaned low to make sure, staring into the gray, pale face with its prominent nose and sunken eyes. Then it was my turn to cry out, to stagger back, looking from one man to the other, aghast at what I'd seen:

"It's not Barker at all."

For a moment we stared at one another, jaws fallen, eyes stony. Not a word came from one of us, the silence broken by the hissing rush of the gas turned up full c.o.c.k in a sputtering ribbon of flame. I came to myself first, turned from them back to the dead face, its marble calm in strange contrast to the stunned consternation of the living faces.

"It's not he," I repeated. "I've often seen him. It's _not_ the man."

"Well-well--" stammered O'Mally, coming out of his stupor. "Who on earth is it?"

"How do I know-Sammis, I suppose. It's like him-the nose, the eyes and the eyebrows, and the mustache. But," I looked at them, gazing like two stupefied animals at the head on the pillow, "it's _not_ Johnston Barker."

O'Mally, with a groan of baffled desperation, fell into a chair, his hands hanging over the arms, his feet limp on the floor before him.

Babbitts stood paralyzed, leaning on the foot of the bed. It was an extraordinary situation-three live men, hot on the chase of a fourth and in the moment of victory faced by the most inscrutable and solemn thing that life holds-a dead man. We couldn't get over it, couldn't seem to think or act, grouped round the bed with the whistling rush of the gas loud on the silence.

Then suddenly, another and more distant sound broke up our stupefaction.

Someone was coming up the stairs. It jerked us back to life, and I made a run for the door, O'Mally's whisper hissing after me:

"If it's that woman, keep her away for a while. I want to go over the room."

It was Miss Graves, ascending slowly with the help of the bal.u.s.trade. I caught her on the landing and told her what we'd found. She was not greatly surprised-the doctor had warned her. I explained the broken door by telling her we had been alarmed by the silence and had forced our way in. That, too, she took quietly, and turned away, gliding shadowlike down the stairs to send out the servant for the doctor.

When I reentered the room its aspect was changed. A sheet covered the dead man and O'Mally and Babbitts, with all the burners in the chandelier blazing, had started looking over the room. The detective was already at work on the papers in the desk, Babbitts going through the clothes over the chair and the few others that hung in the cupboard.

"Hustle and get busy," said O'Mally, as he heard me come in. "If this isn't Johnston Barker, it's the man we've been trailing and I'm pretty sure it's the one that attacked Ford."

There was a table by the bedside with a reading lamp and some books on it. Moving these I came upon two newspaper clippings, relating to the suicide of Harland. In both Anthony Ford was mentioned. The reporters had evidently spoken to him that night on the street, gleaning any fragments of information they could. One alluded to the fact that he was employed in the offices below Harland's, the Azalea Woods Estates. These words were heavily underlined in pencil.

"Looks like it from this," I said, showing the clipping to O'Mally.

He glanced at it and grunted, going back to his inspection of a sheaf of papers he had found in one of the desk pigeonholes.

Meantime Babbitts had found in the coat that hung over the chair a wallet containing a hundred dollars, a tailor's bill for a suit and coat, receipted and bearing a New York address, and Tony Ford's house and street number written in pencil on a neatly folded sheet of note paper. Besides these there was one letter, dated January 13, typed and bearing no signature. Its contents was as follows:

Enclosed please find one hundred dollars in two bills of fifty.

Will send same amount on same date next month if work should be still delayed. Will communicate further later.

The envelope, also addressed in typewriting, was directed to Joseph Sammis, General Delivery, Philadelphia, and bore a New York postmark.