The Window at the White Cat Part 22

"Like Wardrop," I confessed. "By Jove, they didn't both do it."

"And he didn't do it himself for two good reasons: he had no revolver that night, and there were no powder marks."

"And the eleven twenty-two, and Miss Maitland's disappearance?"

He looked at me with his quizzical smile.

"I'll have to have another steak, if I'm to settle that," he said. "I can only solve one murder on one steak. But disappearances are my specialty; perhaps, if I have a piece of pie and some cheese--"

But I got him away at last, and we walked together down the street.

"I can't quite see the old lady in it," he confessed. "She hadn't any grudge against Fleming, had she? Wouldn't be likely to forget herself temporarily and kill him?"

"Good Lord!" I said. "Why, she's sixty-five, and as timid and gentle a little old lady as ever lived."

"Curls?" he asked, turning his bright blue eyes on me.

"Yes," I admitted.

"Wouldn't be likely to have eloped with the minister, or advertised for a husband, or anything like that?"

"You would have to know her to understand," I said resignedly. "But she didn't do any of those things, and she didn't run off to join a theatrical troupe. Burton, who do you think was in the Fleming house last night?"

"Lightfoot," he said succinctly.

He stopped under a street lamp and looked at his watch.

"I believe I'll run over to the capital to-night," he said. "While I'm gone--I'll be back to-morrow night or the next morning--I wish you would do two things. Find Rosie O'Grady, or whatever her name is, and locate Carter. That's probably not his name, but it will answer for a while.

Then get your friend Hunter to keep him in sight for a while, until I come back anyhow. I'm beginning to enjoy this; it's more fun than a picture puzzle. We're going to make the police department look like a kindergarten playing jackstraws."

"And the second thing I am to do?"

"Go to Bellwood and find out a few things. It's all well enough to say the old lady was a meek and timid person, but if you want to know her peculiarities, go to her neighbors. When people leave the beaten path, the neighbors always know it before the families."

He stopped before a drug-store.

"I'll have to pack for my little jaunt," he said, and purchased a tooth-brush, which proved to be the extent of his preparations. We separated at the station, Burton to take his red hair and his tooth-brush to Plattsburg, I to take a taxicab, and armed with a page torn from the cla.s.sified directory to inquire at as many of the twelve Anderson's drug-stores as might be necessary to locate Delia's gentleman friend, "the clerk," through him Delia, and through Delia, the mysterious Carter, "who was not really a butler."

It occurred to me somewhat tardily, that I knew nothing of Delia but her given name. A telephone talk with Margery was of little a.s.sistance: Delia had been a new maid, and if she had heard her other name, she had forgotten it.

I had checked off eight of the Andersons on my list, without result, and the taximeter showed something over nineteen dollars, when the driver drew up at the curb.

"Gentleman in the other cab is hailing you, sir," he said over his shoulder.

"The other cab?"

"The one that has been following us."

I opened the door and glanced behind. A duplicate of my cab stood perhaps fifty feet behind, and from it a familiar figure was slowly emerging, carrying on a high-pitched argument with the chauffeur. The figure stopped to read the taximeter, shook his fist at the chauffeur, and approached me, muttering audibly. It was Davidson.

"That liar and thief back there has got me rung up for nineteen dollars," he said, ignoring my amazement. "Nineteen dollars and forty cents! He must have the thing counting the revolutions of all four wheels!"

He walked around and surveyed my expense account, at the driver's elbow.

Then he hit the meter a smart slap, but the figures did not change.

"Nineteen dollars!" he repeated dazed. "Nineteen dollars and--look here," he called to his driver, who had brought the cab close, "it's only thirty cents here. Your clock's ten cents fast."

"But how--" I began.

"You back up to nineteen dollars and thirty cents," he persisted, ignoring me. "If you'll back up to twelve dollars, I'll pay it. That's all I've got." Then he turned on me irritably. "Good heavens, man," he exclaimed, "do you mean to tell me you've been to eight drug-stores this Sunday evening and spent nineteen dollars and thirty cents, and haven't got a drink yet?"

"Do you think I'm after a drink?" I asked him. "Now look here, Davidson, I rather think you know what I am after. If you don't, it doesn't matter. But since you are coming along anyhow, pay your man off and come with me. I don't like to be followed."

He agreed without hesitation, borrowed eight dollars from me to augment his twelve and crawled in with me.

"The next address on the list is the right one," he said, as the man waited for directions. "I did the same round yesterday, but not being a plutocrat, I used the street-cars and my legs. And because you're a decent fellow and don't have to be chloroformed to have an idea injected, I'm going to tell you something. There were eleven roundsmen as well as the sergeant who heard me read the note I found at the Fleming house that night. You may have counted them through the window.

A dozen plain-clothes men read it before morning. When the news of Mr.

Fleming's mur--death came out, I thought this fellow Carter might know something, and I trailed Delia through this Mamie Brennan. When I got there I found Tom Brannigan and four other detectives sitting in the parlor, and Miss Delia, in a blue silk waist, making eyes at every mother's son of them."

I laughed in spite of my disappointment. Davidson leaned forward and closed the window at the driver's back. Then he squared around and faced me.

"Understand me, Mr. Knox," he said, "Mr. Fleming killed himself. You and I are agreed on that. Even if you aren't just convinced of it I'm telling you, and--better let it drop, sir," Under his quiet manner I felt a threat: it served to rouse me.

"I'll let it drop when I'm through with it," I a.s.serted, and got out my list of addresses.

"You'll let it drop because it's too hot to hold," he retorted, with the suspicion of a smile. "If you are determined to know about Carter, I can tell you everything that is necessary."

The chauffeur stopped his engine with an exasperated jerk and settled down in his seat, every line of his back bristling with irritation.

"I prefer learning from Carter himself."

He leaned back in his seat and produced an apple from the pocket of his coat.

"You'll have to travel some to do it, son," he said. "Carter left for parts unknown last night, taking with him enough money to keep him in comfort for some little time."

"Until all this blows over," I said bitterly.

"The trip was for the benefit of his health. He has been suffering--and is still suffering, from a curious lapse of memory." Davidson smiled at me engagingly. "He has entirely forgotten everything that occurred from the time he entered Mr. Fleming's employment, until that gentleman left home. I doubt if he will ever recover."

With Carter gone, his retreat covered by the police, supplied with funds from some problematical source, further search for him was worse than useless. In fact, Davidson strongly intimated that it might be dangerous and would be certainly unpleasant. I yielded ungraciously and ordered the cab to take me home. But on the way I cursed my folly for not having followed this obvious clue earlier, and I wondered what this thing could be that Carter knew, that was at least surmised by various headquarters men, and yet was so carefully hidden from the world at large.

The party newspapers had come out that day with a signed statement from Mr. Fleming's physician in Plattsburg that he had been in ill health and inclined to melancholia for some time. The air was thick with rumors of differences with his party: the dust cloud covered everything; pretty soon it would settle and hide the tracks of those who had hurried to cover under its protection.

Davidson left me at a corner down-town. He turned to give me a parting admonition.

"There's an old axiom in the mills around here, 'never sit down on a piece of metal until you spit on it.' If it sizzles, don't sit." He grinned. "Your best position just now, young man, is standing, with your hands over your head. Confidentially, there ain't anything within expectorating distance just now that ain't pretty well het up."

He left me with that, and I did not see him again until the night at the White Cat, when he helped put me through the transom. Recently, however, I have met him several times. He invariably mentions the eight dollars and his intention of repaying it. Unfortunately, the desire and the ability have not yet happened to coincide.