Sam was a youngish man, thirty-eight to be exact, and in good condition. Tall, fair, muscular, leading a regular life with enough amusement and no harmful dissipations, he was not accustomed to the feeling of physical exhaustion resulting from the strain on his nerves and his emotions during the previous twenty-four hours.
He returned to Beekman Place with an absolute longing for home and bed. But before he could hope for that he must again see Miss Livingston and Harvey to arrange a plan for delivering the latter to the good yacht Nautilus, so christened in a burst of inspiration by Bill Martin, who had inclined rather coyly to the Sea Urchin, while refusing to be beguiled by certain bibulous friends who, with one voice, pleased by the connotation, voted for the Sponge.
He rang Miss Livingston’s bell and was admitted promptly by the lady in person.
“Eliza is at the movies again. It’s different now from my young days when the servants had to be in at ten o’clock promptly and say good night to their master and mistress on the way to bed. If the theater kept open all night Eliza would never get any sleep,” she said, adding: “Come in. Did you accomplish anything?”
Sam followed her into her reception-room, and Harvey, who was seated in a stiff chair, doing nothing, turned at his approach.
“Hello, Sam,” he said listlessly. “You back again?”
“Yes. I wanted to tell you that I saw Bill Martin.”
“I hope you warned him not to count on me for this cruise. He’ll get some one else easily enough.”
“No,” Sam returned, “I didn’t. I hadn’t the heart. I found that his whole expedition hangs on your going with him. He has been searching for you all day, and the Nautilus will sail the moment you’re on board. Wait!” He held up his hand as Harvey was about to protest. “If you stay in the city, you will hamper and not help the search for Connie’s slayer.”
Harvey stared at him incredulously.
“How is that possible? It seems to me that you can’t have too much help in a case like this.”
“Did you never hear that ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’?” Sam had begun, when Miss Livingston interposed:
“Harvey is man enough to bear the truth, Commissioner Mellon. This house is under police surveillance, Harvey. I have a plan to get you off to the yacht undetected—with help”—she glanced at Sam—“and when you look at the case as if it concerned not you but another, you’ll acknowledge that if you are found here, your arrest is certain.”
Harvey fixed his eyes on hers, opening and shutting his mouth foolishly without uttering a word. Then he ran a finger around his collar as if its tight fit strangled him.
“You can’t mean that anyone would be so brutal as to fancy that I’d harm Connie, Miss Lucilla?” he burst out at last.
“Once they knew you were here, they’d think of nothing and no one else.”
Noting the impression this made, Sam hastened to confirm the fear he saw growing in the other’s face, and Harvey clutched at him, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of panic.
“Get me away, Sam. I couldn’t bear it. I’d go crazy if I had to stand trial. If I were—were accused of—of——Why, you know I loved her—always. There might not have been another woman in the world, for all I cared. I loved her, I tell you. I swear it!” He was babbling, on the verge of hysteria, and Sam slipped a hand through his arm.
“We’ll get you away, don’t you worry. The thing for you to do now is to go to bed and try to sleep so that you’ll be on your toes in the morning and ready to help rather than to hinder us.” He urged Harvey toward the door of the room he was occupying. “And remember, old chap, that I’m here at the head of the police force of New York and that I’ll never rest until we find and convict—and convict, mind you—the real murderer. Until that day you are to stay out of the city. The less attention is drawn to you and your whereabouts the better I’ll be pleased.”
He shut the door on his friend, who had again lapsed into a listless docility, and rejoined Miss Livingston.
“You look as if a drink wouldn’t hurt you. What will you have? Some of your own benedictine, or Scotch? I warn you I haven’t any soda.”
“Thank you,” said Sam. “I’ll take the Scotch. I want to sleep, myself.”
Miss Livingston selected benedictine and, over their drinks, explained her proposed plan, which Sam approved. Then he rose to go.
“We’ll call that settled and I’ll be here in the morning. What time do you usually start for your office?...Nine?...Good. I’ll get downstairs on the dot.”
At last he was at home, but the telephone was ringing madly. Would he never find rest and quiet? He dropped his coat and hat in the foyer and picked up the nearest instrument, which happened to be the one in the pantry, thus doubtless disappointing Sing, who was emerging from his room, expectant of listening in.
“Commissioner Mellon speaking...Sorry. My man is supposed to be here to take messages in my absence...You did?...Good work!” Evidently there followed quite a recital, for it was some minutes later that Sam said: “Hm. How strange! Still, it’s a step forward and we may learn something more about it tomorrow. It didn’t disappear into thin air. It’s dark green, not a very usual color.”
Hearing this, Sing’s own color took on a greenish hue until Sam’s next words reassured him.
“And two uniformed men on the box. That will attract notice anywhere. Well, tell Inspector Dolan I’ll be in my office as early as possible tomorrow morning.”
The message informed him that the police had located the garage, the Mammoth, patronized by the very rich of Park Avenue; but the mysterious car was there no longer. The bill had been paid without haggling and it had left the day before. It had been entered there about ten weeks previous in the name of the chauffeur, Benoit Sansrancune. A funny name, but the man was a foreigner. In fact, neither he nor the footman spoke much English, and while there were plenty of other chauffeurs ready to be friendly, men who talked their language, too, the two men kept very much to themselves. The general impression around the garage was that it was a case where unusual discretion was called for. The car, perhaps, of the “friend” of some very prominent man. No one so far had been found who had seen its owner. It was operated under a Florida license and telegraphic inquiry there had only uncovered the fact that it was issued under the name of the aforesaid Benoit Sansrancune. It might, of course, he a case where the chauffeur owned his own automobile and rented it out. The men at the garage took no stock in this theory, the car being a Hispano-Suiza, very expensive. A guy with the money to buy it would be more likely to start a garage of his own, or at least a filling station.
That was the sum of the information that had reached him over the telephone and, tired out as he was, standing first on one foot and then on the other, he noted with interest that the time of the car’s arrival in the city coincided with Connie’s return from the Hot Springs and the first appearance of the little lady in black.
It might be well to send some one to the Hot Springs to inquire what had happened there to account for this pursuit of her, for pursuit it appeared to have been. Inspector McCurdy, that human ferret, would be the man for the job. Sam was distinctly bored by his attentions and nothing short of a direct order, which he did not care to give, seemed likely to rid him of the annoyance.
He finally crawled into bed with a sigh of relief, and slept until Sing brought his coffee in the morning.
On the floor below, Miss Livingston was less fortunate. Harvey’s presence had required explanation, if secrecy was to be maintained, and before she had a chance to lock herself in her room, Eliza returned from the movies all a-twitter.
“Just like you said maybe would happen, a terrible swell young man came and sat down right next to me. At least at first there was an empty seat between us, hut when that Sing comes along, he moved up one. Then he spoke to me like a perfect gentleman. ‘If he’s a friend of yours, lady, I’ll give him my place,’ was what he said; so, not wanting anyone think I was chummy with a Chink, I said: ‘Certainly not, sir. Merely a bowing acquaintance, entailing no further obligation.’” Her imitation of her mistress, wholly unconscious, was unmistakable. She continued:
“And so, you see, the ice being broken as you might say, we passed a word now and then, and we come out of the theater side by side, walking together accidental like.” She paused.
“Well?” was all Miss Livingston had to say to induce her to resume her recital.
“Well, ma’am, he asked me some questions. Questions any gentleman might ask a lady. What did I do for my living and such. Nothing real personal, as you might say. And then he wanted to know about you. My mistress was a sort of social lady, wasn’t she? Entertained a lot. Some one had been staying with her lately, hadn’t there? And then I knew he was just the man you had been expecting; though, honest, I wouldn’t never have thought it of him, he had such kind blue eyes. ‘No,’ said I, ‘no one’s been staying. We’ve been unus’al quiet. Miss Livingston’s had this here grippe that’s been going ‘round.’ ‘Indeed!’ says he, awful sharp, ‘then how come the lights are lit in your spare room at night? Extravagant, I call it’...Now what do you think of that for impudence? I wasted no time in letting him know I considered it such, and explained, just like you told me, that I was sleeping there to be handy in case you needed anything at night. But he walked all the way home with me, and when we got here, although the blinds was down, you could see by a streak of light along the sides that the electrics was lit in the room and me down in the street looking at it.
“‘I presoom you’re up there now getting ready for your innocent slumbers,’ says he, awful sneering. ‘No,’ I answered him back, giving as good as he gave, ‘I’m here with a chap that’s mislaid his manners, if he ever had any. And while it’s not my business any more’n it is his, I presoom that Miss Livingston’s at work on some of the files she keeps in that room.’ So then I tossed my head, like this, to show I didn’t care what he thought, and turned into the service entrance without so much as a good night. And the man had the nerve to call after me, ‘I think me an’ Detective McCurdy’ll be in in the morning to have a good look at those files.’”
“Hm,” said Miss Livingston. “You’d better wake me early to get ready for them. You handled the creature extremely well, Eliza.”
“I moved six files in there today, ma’am, just in case,” said Eliza, much gratified by such praise. “Awful exciting, I call it. Exactly like a movie, if you ask me.”
Miss Livingston nodded her head. She was as tired as Sam, being quite unused to emotion such as she had been enduring uncomplainingly.
“It’s too much like a movie for my taste,” she said.
“It ain’t for mine,” Eliza returned, valiantly. “I think it’s grand. Ronald Colman could do the hero, and between us, ma’am, we’ll manage to save the innocent man and perhaps we’ll help convict the guilty.”
“I’m afraid I’ll rest content if we succeed in doing the first,” Miss Livingston sighed wearily.
“I won’t,” Eliza asserted. “Confidential, ma’am, I got my eye on the real criminal. In every other talkie I ever saw except the Charlie Chans, it’s the Chinaman who does the dreadful deed. And all the time there’s that Sing upstairs, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and nobody paying any attention to him at all, just because he’s the Police Commissioner’s chef. As if that was any alibi. If there was a detective worth his salt ‘round the place, he’d have been in jail long before this.”
After exchanging good nights, the two women started on their several ways, but Miss Livingston called Eliza hack as various contingencies passed through her tired brain.
“Make your bed as soon as you’re up,” she warned the woman. “There will be no time to air it. Then bring your night things and slippers with you to leave in Mr. Thorne’s room. And, Eliza, you’ll have to undress in the dark. You can turn on your light a moment to hang up your coat and hat. That would be natural, but switch it off at once. I’m sure your new acquaintance will have an interest in your window, for all his kind blue eyes.”
“I thought of that and it would be like his impudence, ma’am,” the woman rejoined. “Them detectives is up to all sorts of tricks, but I’ll be a match for him. You learn an awful lot in the movies, these days. Good night, ma’am.”
“Good night, Eliza.”
This time they really separated, and with Miss Livingston went the thought, to stay with her while she undressed and to haunt her after she at last was between her lavender-scented sheets: Could Eliza possibly be right? Was Sing a legitimate suspect? Mr. Mellon had said his man was out, but had anyone checked up on his movements? What provocation could have caused him to commit such a crime, if he had committed it?
She had taken a dislike to the man when she had heard him demanding a commission from a small tradesman for work that was evidently done for his master.
That she recognized as a personal prejudice, and she had read enough of the immemorial “squeeze” of China to know that a Chinese servant might look on it as his rightful perquisite. It by no means followed that he was ready to murder one of his master’s friends without thought of gain.
Without thought of gain? Was that the key to the riddle? Had Consuela Thorne had something that had tempted the house man to commit the deed?
Once Harvey was safely on his way to the Caribbean, she must remember to suggest this possibility to the Police Commissioner—who perhaps would not thank her for depriving him of an efficient servant.
Over the crass selfishness implied in this last suggestion she balked.
“I don’t know who the chap’s family are or where he came from, but at least he’s a friend to his friends,” she ruminated, “and he’ll want to find the murderer.”