Miss Maitland Private Secretary Part 22

"Say nothing," came the answer. "Bring the child back here-that's your job. Leave him to me. Mrs. Janney and I'll have it out with him when the time comes."

On the tick of half-past seven O'Malley appeared. Trickles of perspiration ran down his red face, and his collar was melted to a sodden band.

"Gee," he panted as he ran a handkerchief round his neck, "it's like a Turkish bath down there in the street."

"Well," said George, impatient of all but the main issue, "is it all right?"

"Yep-I've left two men in charge-every exit's covered. And there's only one they could use-no way out back except over the fences and through other houses."

"He could hardly tackle that with a child."

"He couldn't tackle it alone and make it-not the way I've got things fixed. And I've worked out our line of action; Stebbins relieved me at half-past six and I went and had a seance with the janitor. Said I was coming round later with a man who was looking for a room-the room I'd been inquiring about. That'll let us in quiet; right up to the top floor and no questions asked."

"The only hitch possible can come from Chapman-he may be ugly and show his teeth."

The old man answered:

"I guess he'll be tractable. If he's inclined to argue bring him along with you. It's after eight. I don't want to sit here half the night. Get busy and go."

O'Malley had a taxi waiting and they slid off up the deserted regions of Broadway. After a few blocks they swerved to the left, plunging into a congeries of mean streets where a network of fire-escapes encaged the house fronts. The lights from small shops illumined the sidewalks, thick with sauntering people. The taxi moved slowly, children darting from its approach, swept round a corner and ran on through less animated lanes of travel, upper windows bright, disheveled figures leaning on the sills, vague groupings on front steps. At intervals, like the threatening voice of some advancing monster, came the roar of the elevated trains, sweeping across a vista with a rocking rush of light. O'Malley drew himself to the edge of the sea and peered out ahead.

"We're not far off now," he muttered. "We'll stop at the corner of the block-there's a bookbinding place there that's dark and quiet. If we go to the door they might catch on, get panicky, and make a row."

At one end of the street's length the lamp-spotted darkness of Was.h.i.+ngton Square showed like a spangled curtain. The cab turned from it and crossed a wide avenue over which the skeleton structure of the elevated straddled like a vast centipede. Beyond stretched a darkling perspective touched at recurring intervals with the white spheres of lamps. It was a propitious time, the evening overflow dispersed, the loneliness of the deep night hours, when a footfall echoes loud and a solitary figure looms mysterious, not yet come.

The cab drew up at the curb by the shuttered face of the book bindery and the man alighted. With a low command to the driver, O'Malley, George beside him, walked up the block. From a shadowy doorway a figure detached itself, slunk by them with a whispered hail and vanished.

Toward the street's far end they stopped at a door level with the sidewalk, and O'Malley, bending to scrutinize a line of push b.u.t.tons, pressed one.

"Is this the place?" George whispered, in startled revulsion.

"This is the place. And a good one for Price's purpose as you'll see when you get in."

The young man noted the battered doorway, slightly out of plumb, then stepped back and glanced at the facade. Many of the windows, uncurtained and open, were lit up. Those of the top floor-dormers projecting from a mansard roof-were dark. He was about to call O'Malley's attention to this, when the sounds of footsteps within the house checked him.

There was a rattling of locks and bolts and the door swung open disclosing a man, grimy, old and bent, a lamp in his hand. He squinted uncertainly at them, then growled irritably as he recognized O'Malley:

"Oh, it's you. I thought you wasn't comin'? If you'd been any later you wouldn't 'a got me up."

O'Malley explained that the gentleman was detained-couldn't get away any earlier, very sorry, but they'd be quick and make no noise-just wanted to see the rooms and get out.

In single file, the janitor leading, they mounted the stairs. To the aristocratic senses of George the place seemed abominable. The staircase, narrow and without bal.u.s.trade, ran up steeply between walls once painted green, now blotched and smeared. At the end of the first flight there was a small landing, a gas bracket holding aloft a tiny point of flame. It was as hot as an oven, the stifling atmosphere impregnated with mingled odors of cooking, stale cigar smoke, and the mustiness of close, unaired s.p.a.ces.

On the second landing one of the doors was open, affording a glimpse of a squalid interior, and a man in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves bent over a table writing. He did not look up as they creaked by. From somewhere near, m.u.f.fled by walls, came the thin, frail tinkling of guitar strings. As they ascended the temperature grew higher, the air held in the low attic story under the roof, baked to a sweltering heat. The janitor muttered an excuse-the top floor being vacant the windows were kept shut-it would be cool enough when they were opened.

He had gained the last landing, which broadened into a small square of hall cut by three doors. As he turned to one on the left, O'Malley slipped by him and drew away toward that on the right. There was a moment of silence, broken by the clinking of the man's keys. He had trouble in finding the right one and set his lamp down on a chair, his head bent over the bunch. George was aware of O'Malley's figure casting a huge wavering shadow up the wall, edging closer to the right hand door.

The key was found and inserted in the lock and the janitor entered the room, his lamp diffusing a yellow aura in the midst of which he moved, a black, retreating shape. With his withdrawal the light in the hall, furnished by a bead of gas, faded to a flickering obscurity. O'Malley's shadow disappeared, and George could see him as a formless oblong, pressed against the panel. There was a moment of intense stillness, the guitar tinkling faint as if coming through illimitable distances. The detective's voice rose in a whisper, vital and intimate, against the music's spectral thinness:

"Queer. There's not a sound."

His hand stole to the handle, clasped it, turned it. Noiselessly the door opened upon darkness into which he slipped equally noiseless.

That slow opening was so surprising, so dreamlike in its quality of the totally unexpected, that George stood rooted. He stared at the square of the door, waiting for voices, clamor, the antic.i.p.ated in some form. Then he saw the darkness pierced by the white ray of an electric torch and heard a sound-a rumbled oath from O'Malley. It brought him to the threshold. In the middle of the room, his torch sending its shaft over walls and floor, stood the detective alone, his face, the light s.h.i.+ning upward on the chin and the tip of his nose, grotesque in its enraged dismay.

"Not here-d--n them!" and his voice trailed off into furious curses.

"Gone?" The surprise had made George forgetful.

"Gone-no!" The man almost shouted in his anger. "How could they go?-Didn't I say every outlet was blocked. They ain't been here. They ain't had her here. Get a match, light the gas-I got to see the place anyway."

The torch's ray had touched a gas fixture on the wall and hung steady there. As the men fumbled for matches, the janitor came clumping across the hall, calling in querulous protest:

"Say-how'd you get in there? That ain't the place-it's rented."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _His face was ludicrous in its enraged enmity_]

He stopped in the doorway, scowling at them under the glow of his upheld lamp. A match sputtered over the gas and a flame burst up with a whistling rush. In the combined illumination the room was revealed as bleak and hideous, the walls with blistered paper peeling off in shreds, the carpet worn in paths and patches, an iron bed, a bureau, by the one window, a table. The janitor continuing his expostulations, O'Malley turned on him and flashed his badge with a fierce:

"Shut up there. Keep still and get out. We've got a right here and if you make any trouble you'll hear from us."

The man shrank, scared.

"Police!" he faltered, then looking from one to the other. "But what for? There's no one here, there ain't ever been any one-it's took but it's been empty ever since."

O'Malley who had sent an exploring glance about him, made a dive for a newspaper lying crumpled on the floor by the bed. One look at it, and he was at the man's side, shaking it in his face:

"What do you say to this? Yesterday's-how'd it get here? Blew in through the window maybe."

The janitor scanned the top of the page, then raised his eyes to the watching faces. His fright had given place to bewilderment and he began a stammering explanation-if any one had been there he'd never known it, never seen no one come in or go out, never heard a sound from the inside.

"Did you see any one-any one that isn't a regular resident-come into the house yesterday or to-day?" It was George's question.

He didn't know as he'd seen anybody-not to notice. The tenants had friends, they was in and out all day and part of the night. And anyway he wasn't around much after he'd swept the halls and taken down the pails. Yesterday and to-day he guessed he'd stayed in the bas.e.m.e.nt most of the time. If anybody had been in the room-and it looked like they had-it was unbeknownst to him. The lady had the key; she could have come in without him seeing; it wasn't his business to keep tab on the tenants. He showed a tendency to diverge to the subject of his duties and George cut him off with a greenback pushed into his grimy claw and an order to keep their visit secret.

Meantime O'Malley had started on an examination of the room. There was more than the paper to prove the presence of a recent occupant. The bed showed the imprint of a body; pillow and counterpane were indented by the pressure of a rec.u.mbent form. On its foot lay a book, an unworn copy, as if newly bought, of "The Forest Lovers." The table held an ink bottle, the ink still moist round its uncorked mouth, some paper and envelopes and a pen. There was a scattering of pins on the bureau, two gilt hairpins and a black net veil, crumpled into a bunch. Pushed back toward the mirror was the cover of the soap dish containing ashes and the b.u.t.ts of four cigarettes.

O'Malley studied the bureau closely, ran the light of his torch back and forth across it, shook out the veil, sniffed it, and put it and the two hairpins carefully into his wallet. Then with the book and the paper in his hand he straightened up, turned to George, and said:

"That about cleans it up. There's nothing for it now but to go back."

The janitor, anxiously watchful, followed on their heels as they went down the stairs. Their clattering descent was followed by the strains of the guitar, thinly debonair and mocking as if exulting over their discomfiture. In the street the same shape emerged from the shadows and slouched toward them. A grunted phrase from O'Malley sent it drifting away, spiritless and without response, like a lonely ghost come in timid expectation and repelled by a rebuff.

O'Malley dropped into a corner of the taxi and as it glided off, said:

"That's the last of 76 Gayle Street as far as they're concerned."