The Diamond Cross Mystery Part 31

"Yes, thank you. What is it?"

"I didn't hear all the particulars. But Miss Brill, the young lady clerk, received an electrical shock from some wires hidden under the metal edge of one of the showcases, so Mr. Kettridge says, and she was knocked down."

"Killed?"

"No, but her head struck on the edge of a case and she's badly cut. I sent for the ambulance. It happened when the store was crowded and made a bit of excitement."

"I should think it would! Hidden electric wires!" and the colonel thought of a certain discovery he had made.

CHAPTER XV

A DOG

With the help of the police, and when the stricken, though not dangerously injured, girl had been taken away in the ambulance, the crowd was dispersed. It was then Colonel Ashley had a chance to speak to Mr. Kettridge.

"What's all this I hear?" asked the detective.

"I don't know," and the manager smiled wearily. "If you heard all of the rumors I did they would include everything from an I.W.W. plot to a combined attack by New York gunmen."

"But what was it?"

"Well, one of our clerks, Miss Brill, was waiting on a customer at one of the silver showcases. They are arranged with electric lights inside that may be switched on when needed.

"She turned on the current to illuminate the inside of the case, so that her customer might make a selection to have spread out on top, when, in some manner, Miss Brill received a severe electrical shock.

She was thrown backward to the floor, and her head struck a projecting corner of one of the rear showcases. She was badly cut, but the hospital doctor said there was no fracture."

"Did she get shocked from the wires that run into the interior of the case?" asked the detective.

"No, and that's the queer part of it," said the manager. "She was shocked while leaning against the silvered, metal edge of the gla.s.s case, and, on examination, I find some hidden electrical wires there--wires that must, in some way, have become crossed on the lighting circuit. I didn't know the wires were there."

"I did," said the colonel, quietly.

"You did?"

"Yes, when I tested them with an instrument I secured from an electrician here in town the wires were dead. There was not the slightest current in them. Either they have been changed lately, or some sudden jar or misplacement brought them in contact with a live circuit."

"What were the wires for?" asked Mr. Kettridge.

"That's what I've been wanting to find out. Originally I think they were for some system of burglar alarm installed by Mrs. Darcy. But now those wires run to the work bench that was used by James Darcy."

"To his work bench?" The manager was obviously startled.

"Yes. But don't jump at conclusions. You know he was working on an electric lathe he hoped to patent. Those wires may be merely part of his equipment,"

"Yes, and they may--wait a minute!" suddenly exclaimed the manager. "I wonder--"

From his private office, into which he had ushered the colonel, he looked down the store. It was almost deserted now, save for a few customers and the clerks.

"It's the same place!" murmured the manager,

"What is?" asked the detective.

"Miss Brill was shocked, and fell at the very spot where the dead body of Mrs. Darcy was found!" said Mr. Kettridge in a low, intense voice.

"Except for the fact that she fell behind the showcase and Mrs. Darcy in front of it, the place is the same!"

With a muttered exclamation the colonel got to his feet and also looked out from the private office.

"You're right," he admitted. "I wonder if that is a coincidence or--something else. I must go to see Darcy."

The prisoner was measurably startled when the detective told him the latest development at the jewelry store.

"Those were never my wires in the showcase!" cried the young man. "I knew some were there, for we did have an antiquated burglar alarm system when I first came to work for my cousin. I had another one put in, and I supposed they had ripped out the old wires. But the wires I used for my lathe experiments had no connection with those, I'm sure.

What is your theory?"

"I have so many I don't know at which one to begin," admitted Colonel Ashley. "But I was wondering if it was possible that the showcase wires, which when I tested them were dead, could have, in some manner, become charged, and have given Mrs. Darcy a shock that might have sent her reeling to the floor, toppling the heavy statue over on her head, and so killing her."

"By _accident_ do you mean?" asked Darcy, his face lighting up with hope.

"Yes. This young lady received a severe blow on her head by her fall, and your cousin--"

"You forget the stab wound, Colonel."

"No, I didn't exactly _forget_ it. I was wondering how we could account for that if we accepted the shock theory. I guess we can't.

I'm still up against it. I've struck a snag--maybe a stone wall, Darcy!"

"Do you--do you think you can get over it, Colonel?"

"By gad, sir! I will! That's all there is to it! _I will_!"

The silence of the colonel's room was broken by a peculiar scratching at the door, interrupting his perusal of this pa.s.sage:

"I told you angling is an art, either by practice or long observation or both. But take this for a rule--"

"Come in!" invited the colonel, thinking it might be s.h.a.g, who sometimes, for the lesser disturbance of his master's thoughts or reading, thus announced himself.

But there entered no black and smiling s.h.a.g, nor one of the hotel employees, but a little dog which wagged its tail both in greeting to the colonel, seated before a gas log in his room, and also as a sort of applause for the dog itself, because it had succeeded in pus.h.i.+ng open the door which was left ajar, but which, nevertheless, was rather stiff on the hinges. And Chet, the dog in question, was rather proud of his achievement. Thus his wagged tail had a double meaning, so to speak.

"Ah, Chet, you've come in for another talk, have you?" asked the colonel as he leaned over to pat the dog's head.

More wagging of the tail to indicate pleasure, satisfaction, and whatever else dogs thus express.

"Glad to see you," went on the colonel, as though talking to a human, and, with more gyrations of the tail, which const.i.tuted Chet's side of the talk with the colonel, the little creature sought a warm spot near the gas log, stretched out and sighed long in contentment.

Chet was the pet of a man--a permanent resident of the hotel--who had the suite next Colonel Ashley's, and, early in his stay at the hostelry, the detective had made friends with the little animal, which, when Mr. Bland, its own master, was out, often came in to visit the fisherman, just as he had done now.