Howard Saxon was that curious anomaly, a sporting editor who could wear evening clothes and get away with it. He was that even more curious anomaly, a sporting editor whose name was in the Blue Book. His father had been the notorious J. Andrew Saxon, at one time a mighty name in the city. His mother had been Sally Blankenship, the actress. The crash of the Saxon fortunes, some years before, had been a notable event in the financial world, but it had failed to dent the social standing of the J. Andrew Saxons.
The elder Saxon was now dead. He had saved enough out of his reverses to take care of his wife, and the sum—comfortable but not enormous—had passed to the younger Saxon upon the marriage of his mother to another man, almost as wealthy as had been J. Andrew.
Young Mr. Saxon was a newspaper man by choice. The union of finance and the stage had given him a curious heritage. His first impulse had been to run joyously through his money. This he had done, gracefully and without scandal. His second impulse had been to refuse the munificent offers of assistance made by his mother. When it had become apparent that he would have to seek employment, he had cast about him, leisurely, for something that would offer excitement along with the necessary remuneration. He had found it in newspaper work, greatly to the horror of his mother and her friends, and to the delight of the younger members of the dwindling phalanx known as Society.
He knew everybody, which was an advantage. It was at times a disadvantage that everybody knew him. Since he had become sporting editor of the Telegram it was particularly disadvantageous, for everybody asked him for tickets. Tickets to the fights, tickets to the football games, tickets for everything for which it was supposed he had received large quantities of free passes. He was more popular in season than the drama critic.
Young Mr. Saxon, in short, was a likable individual ; and he was twenty-six years of age. He was supposed to be remarkably good-looking.
He had known Lear, the actor, for a number of years. They had met casually at teas and prize fights and other functions whenever the actor had come to town. They had met at some such gathering, in fact, only the day before the murder of Patrick Lear at his first Wednesday matinée—an affair at which the busy Rainfall also had managed to be present. It was after this meeting that Lear had sent the two of them tickets to the performance—a circumstance that, later, both of them had been inclined to regard as significant.
The police, when they got around to it, thought so too. They had noted the seemingly innocent fact, mentioned by both men in their testimony at the inquest, and it became one of their several lines of investigation. Rainfall’s sardonic prediction that both he and Saxon would, in time, be looked upon with suspicion, bore fruit with a rapidity that surprised even the cynical physician. The interrogations were friendly, however.
Saxon, by good fortune, was able to prove at once that he had left his office in the Telegram building with just time to make the theater comfortably and take his seat. For some hours previous to his departure from the office, he had been more or less under somebody’s eye in the sports room. It was impossible that he could have murdered Lear, even if his hands had been red with the blood of Bluefield and Gaunt.
For a time his subordinates had considered the colossal joke of denying this airtight alibi and sending Saxon to the Chair; but they had decided in the end that his successor as sporting editor might be less amiable and easy-going than the good-natured Howard. With a certain humorous reluctance, they cleared his name of the stain of homicide and were ironically thanked for their generosity.
Rainfall’s explanation was made more difficult by the admitted fact that he had reached the theater late. He had not, he asserted frankly, the faintest idea who the taxi driver was who had driven him from the hospital. The police idea, rather obviously, was that he might have murdered Lear in the actor’s dressing room while the latter was waiting for his cue; then in some manner have escaped unseen, strolled around the block a number of times, and returned to the theater tardily to join his waiting friend.
In the nick of time the doctor remembered the jam at the bridgehead and the episode of the noble sunflower, upon whom he had bestowed a cigar. The noble sunflower, interviewed by his confrères, recalled the incident, and the day was saved. The police graciously retired from both fields, and, since the sporting editor of the Telegram and the chief surgeon of the Gatacre Memorial Hospital were men of distinction, were careful not to broadcast their earlier suspicion.
Other minor suspects fared less well. They received publicity enough to last them for the rest of their lives. In the eyes of their landlords, they became definitely criminal characters.
Saxon, cleared of the suspicion of murder, felt himself more than ever a part of the strange case, and in Walter Ghost, it occurred to the newspaper man, he had found a fellow with whom he could discuss it. Ghost, he decided, was a man very much to his liking. A curious fellow, however, very curious indeed. A fellow who was genuinely different. But a man with a name like that would have to be.
Ghost also was sinfully ugly, except when he smiled, when, quite suddenly, he became almost beautiful. His voice and his eyes were magnificent. His personality was quiet yet overwhelming. All this was to young Mr. Saxon very attractive—and their common dislike of story-book detective methods was another bond between them. Yes, he liked this Walter Ghost. He liked him a great deal.
There was something, too, about Ghost that it was difficult to name—charm—personality—more than either, really—what was it?
When Ghost spoke of Columbus, dead four hundred years and more, and an island in the Caribbean all but unknown to any but ships’ captains and cartographers, one’s more immediate and timely interests somehow faded into insignificance. Chicago, not the remote island, was a mere speck upon the map. Newspapers became rather meaningless and unnecessary.
Decidedly, the fellow had a way with him. Yet he could think about immediate matters, too. His suggestion of a murder sequence as yet only begun had seemed at first a staggering piece of melodrama; yet, when one came to think it over, it was more than just plausible. By the Lord Harry, it had all the earmarks of an inspiration!
In a day or so this unusual man would be leaving the hospital—perhaps had already done so.
“H’m,” mused the sporting editor of the Telegram.
He visualized the telephone at Ghost’s bedside. Then he laid aside his cigarette and lifted the receiver at his own elbow. In a few seconds—miraculously enough—he was talking to Walter Ghost.
“I say,” said young Mr. Saxon, “I want you to come to my rooms when you’re discharged. Will you? I’m way out south, you know—away from the noise. It’d be a very decent place in which to convalesce. Hotels are pretty lonesome, really. I’ve a spare bed—and a spare table—and a spare typewriter, if you use the damn things—and—well, what do you say?”
A fine chuckle came to him over the wire.
“It’s kind of you, Saxon. I’m afraid I’d be a nuisance. I’ll have to move carefully for a time, I suppose. Well, I’ll consider it. I have to go some place soon. I’ll look in on you, anyway, sometime.”
“Look in before you sign up,” urged Saxon. “I’m immensely interested in your researches, you know. Also, I’m interested in your murdersequence idea. Not professionally! I’m not a reporter.”
Again he listened to the low rumble of Ghost’s laughter. “Are you forswearing your aversion? Are you going to be one of the hounds?”
“By Jiminy!” said Saxon, into the rubber mouthpiece, “I may be one of the hares! Kelly and Sheets have already been after me for my alibi.”
“Shelley and Keats?”
“Kelly and Sheets—the detectives, not the poets. They’re on the theater end of the case. They seemed to think I might have committed the murder and have forgotten to mention it. Maybe they still think so—I hope they do.”
“‘There has been much throwing about of brains,’” chuckled Ghost. “Did you?”
“Not that I remember. It’s an experience one would be likely to bear in mind, don’t you think?”
“There is precedent for believing so. Though it have no tongue, we are told, murder will speak ‘with most miraculous organ.’ You see, I have been reading my book again.”
Saxon laughed. “I’m a little rusty on the Bard, but I’ll read him, too, if you’ll accept my invitation.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Ghost. “Thank you.”
The sporting editor of the Telegram returned to his duties in a pleasant frame of mind. It had been a happy thought to ask Ghost to share his lodgings.
In his room at the hospital, however, Walter Ghost leaned back upon his pillow and decided that the arrangement would not do at all.
Not that there was anything wrong with Saxon. He liked Saxon well enough. But another idea had entered his leisurely mind. It was just possible, he thought, that he would find himself, shortly, at home with the Chandler W. Moments, as he mentally designated the professor and his daughter. The invitation, after all, had been standing now for several years; and what better time to accept it? Supposing, of course, they wanted him. But he rather fancied they would want him. It was just conceivable, it had occurred to Ghost, that Holly Moment was in considerable danger. An active search was going forward for a most ingenious murderer, and she was the only person known to have seen him.
Not that she could have seen much! But what did the murderer know of that? He read the papers, no doubt—but what might not the police be concealing from the press? In the mind of the unknown murderer, Holly Moment was definitely a puzzling problem, and it was possible that she was regarded as a menace.
A strange solution, thought Ghost, lay behind those three fantastic murders. Some curious passage in life—now hidden or obscure, like the meaning of a disputed stanza, yet capable of being resolved by a patient scholar. Was he not himself perhaps, that scholar?
The mystery fascinated him. He admitted it, smiling wryly. In some fashion—and as usual tshrough no particular fault of his own—he had been brought into this odd affair, and he felt that he must see it through. Once more, in spite of his pretended aversion to the profession, he might be Walter Ghost, Detective—a sorry enough figure, doubtless, as measured beside the famous amateurs of fiction, but a fellow of some little talent, after all. It was not detection that he disliked, but theatrical detective methods. Mystery attracted him in every form, and it was at the heart of everything.
Just as in most persons there was a latent criminal, enabling them to flee in fancy with the hare, there was in most persons a latent detective, in whose person they hunted with the hounds. The criminal instinct, on the whole, was more than balanced by the instinct to support the rule of order. In his own case, Ghost realized, he had always been a detective, although his quarry only occasionally had been crime. Was not his quest of the Columbian landfall sheer detection? To a very considerable degree, in point of fact, it was not only detection but deduction.
Well, the Columbian investigation could wait, if necessary; it had waited a long time for solution, anyway. And the proof that the two historic Shakespeares—the poet-dramatist and the actor from Stratford—were one and the same? What of that! He smiled. That, too, could wait a little longer. The problem in Chicago concerned a number of his friends, for one thing, and it was as immediate as it was alluring. The murderer was still alive and dangerous. At most, the solution could go back no farther than a decade or two in human history.
“Yes,” murmured Ghost, “I shall pitch my tent with the professor and his daughter—if they will have me.”
Later that evening, when his private nurse had left the room, he called the Moment home and revealed a part of his intention: to wit, that he would be happy to accept an invitation of long standing if it were still in force.
“Why, you old rascal!” shrilled Chandler W. Moment. “To think that you have been here for more than a week and didn’t let us know. Two weeks? Terrible, Walter! And in a hospital, too! But I warn you that you are coming to a place that is marked for death and destruction!”
He laughed in a high, unnatural key.
“What do you mean?” asked Ghost sharply. “I’ve read about your daughter in the papers, but nothing of that sort. Are you joking, Chandler?”
“My daughter,” said Chandler W. Moment, “is going to be packed off to Florida as rapidly as I can get her ready. We have received a letter threatening her life. It may be a joke, but I’m not taking any chances.”
“Listen,” said Ghost. “Listen to me, Chandler! Don’t be an elderly idiot! Do you understand? Don’t send Holly to Florida or any place else. Why, good God, man, don’t you realize— But of course you don’t! She might be murdered before she ever reached her destination. On the train—on the way to the train—on her own doorstep as she was making ready to leave! The safest place for Holly Moment just now, is in her own home, and it is your job to see that she stays there.”
“Well,” grumbled the professor, relieved, “that’s what she thought, herself, I must confess. But it’ll be quite a job to keep her in the house. Quite a job, Walter! You see, the little fool isn’t a bit afraid.”
“You tell her to stay indoors until I arrive,” ordered Ghost crisply. “Do you hear? Until I arrive! I’ll be along as soon as I can get away.”