The amazing adventures of Letitia Carberry
excuse that she had forgotten to send Johnson’s clothes to the office,
a rule in case of death, and on finding nothing there in Barker’s
name, she did the only thing she could think of--took Johnson’s old
brown suit, which, with his worn shoes and not very clean linen, was
tied in a bundle with a piece of bandage and marked with the dying
spiritualist’s name.
“Miss Durand had disappeared, carrying the bundle. Miss Smith searched
the far corners of the basement, but found nothing. Finally, she and
Miss Durand went up-stairs again, to find that Johnson had been dead
for some time. Bates, the convalescent, had seen them go and saw
them return. He had, however, been detected a day or so before by
Miss Durand selling cocaine to a colored man in one of the wards,
and later, under Miss Durand’s eye, he said she had been absent ten
minutes. As a matter of fact, it had been fifty.
“Linda Smith went back to her room at once. She knew she and Miss Blake
would be called to attend to Johnson in the mortuary, and she waited
for the summons. The ghastly trick of hanging the poor old body to the
chandelier followed in due course.
“Thinking Barker still dead, it had been as great a shock to Ruth Blake
as to the others. It was not until the next morning that Linda Smith
told her Barker was still alive, and somewhere in the building. There
was only one comfort: Linda had put the bundle of clothing on the roof,
and it had disappeared.
“The other things followed in quick succession. Miss Blake, half
frenzied, conceived the idea of putting food heavily doped with
morphia, on the roof, along the fire-escape, anywhere that the maniac
might find it. She hardly knew what she hoped to do by this: she was
in an abnormal frame of mind by this time: ill, sleepless and unable to
eat. The food disappeared, but if the morphia had any effect, it was in
daylight, when he probably slept, hidden away under the roof or in the
linen closet.
“The following night she searched the fifth, or mortuary floor,
carrying a candle. She had suspected, from the night before, that
Barker was hiding in the linen closet, and Linda Smith got the key. The
plan had been that Miss Smith should go with her, but she was given
a special case that night, and Miss Blake, courageously enough, went
alone.
“Barker was in the closet, and when she opened the door he seized
her arm in a murderous grip that left it blue and swollen. She tried
speaking to him, and releasing his hold, he darted out through the
closet window and leaped to the fire-escape. Miss Blake pluckily
followed him to the roof, but he had disappeared. As Miss Lizzie has
told, I followed Miss Blake. Just before I reached her, she cried
out and flung her brass candlestick at something behind me. The next
instant I was grasped from behind and thrown head first through the
skylight.
“I did not know I had been bitten in the shoulder. I thought I had been
stabbed, until Jacobs and I together cauterized the wound that night in
the laboratory. Probably during the time we were there, the door being
unlocked, Barker entered and hid in the building. Miss Blake was there
at the same time, having watched Jacobs and myself enter, and being
fearful of further harm. She did not see anything of Barker, however,
and went back to the roof, where she sat huddled until dawn, waiting
for Barker to appear again. But he did not come, and at daylight,
shaking with cold, she went back to her room. There she had a chill,
followed by violent fever and delirium, and there I believe Linda Smith
came, bringing a surgical knife stained with blood, that she had found
on the roof, and which Miss Lewis subsequently found in Miss Blake’s
room.
“The condition of the two girls by that time was pitiable. Miss Blake,
younger and more nervous, had entirely succumbed: Miss Smith, sleepless
and unable to eat, was still making a fight to cover the whole thing
and to drive Barker away from the building. They could not discover
where he hid in the daytime, but at night evidences of his ape-like
mischief were everywhere apparent. He swung by his feet from the
pipe-molding of the walls, squatted on the foot-board of the bed in
private room thirty-six, making hideous grimaces--a story which caused
the nurse in charge to mark ‘delirious’ on the record of a perfectly
rational woman--leaped at giddy heights about the fire-escape and the
roof, and alarmed Miss Aggie into her story of a ghostly foot. The
man’s strength was almost super-human.
“Johnson died on Tuesday night, and it was on Wednesday night that
I was thrown through the skylight. Toward dawn of Thursday morning,
Barker went to the Zoo, distant about a mile from the hospital. By that
time he had donned Johnson’s trousers, but remained in his bare feet.
Access to the monkey house proved easy. The assistant keeper, sleeping
in a small room just inside the entrance, was not aroused until too
late. The key to Hero’s cage hung over his bed, it being his habit to
go in to see the ape several times during the night. On that night,
he opened the cage at one o’clock, and spoke to the ape, who had been
sulky all day. He locked the door and went back to bed, hanging the key
up again on its nail. It was still there in the morning at six o’clock,
but the ape was dead. In spite of his tremendous strength and length of
arm, he had been literally crushed to death, and then hung to the top
of the cage by a roller towel which did not belong to the Zoo.
“The police were put on the case, and had already arrested the
assistant keeper, who had been heard to say that either the ape would
get him or he would get the ape.
“On Wednesday night, Briggs, who had been most unpopular with Barker,
met his death in an almost similar manner, his ribs being crushed
in. In this case, however, Barker’s ingenuity utilized the useless
brown coat, the two towels being gone. Previous to that time, he had
rocked the elevator in impish mischief, or possibly wrath. It was this
incident which caused my Aunt Letitia to suspect a space under the roof
at the top of the elevator shaft, as a hiding place.
“The result of her courageous investigation is well known: mounted on
top of the cage, she was taken to the upper position of the shaft, and
there found what she had been looking for, an unboarded spot behind the
elevator wheel. She was disappointed, however, in finding the space
too dark for inspection, and in hearing or seeing nothing suspicious.
“Being a courageous woman and convinced that what she sought was there
in the cave-like recess, my Aunt Letitia threw her slipper with all the
strength she could summon, and was answered by a growl.
* * * * *
“My wife has just read this and confirms most of it. She suggests,
however, that I have omitted our theory of how Briggs was murdered
without discovery, while Jacobs was in the hall nearby and I myself
guarded the only other means of exit, the fire-escape.
“Barker probably took refuge in the linen closet, arriving at the
mortuary floor ahead of the slow progress of the cage, by scurrying
up the cable. He hid in the closet, and by throwing the coat over
Briggs and squeezing him in his muscular arms, he prevented any outcry.
Immediately after, he locked himself in the closet again, where he
smoked Briggs’ pipe, perhaps in itself the object of the attack.
“On the alarm being raised, Hicks and I came in through the window,
and Jacobs through the door. This left the fire-escape and the roof
unwatched, and he climbed out the window of the linen closet, swinging
himself easily to the fire-escape.
“The rest of the story we know. Barker was found, exhausted and half
starving, and was promptly put in a padded cell, where, a week later,
he died, probably from an infection, having cut his left foot badly,
possibly with the very knife that killed the laboratory guinea-pigs.
The injured foot, which he had crudely bandaged, probably explains
why only prints of a right foot were discovered. With the removal of
suspense Miss Blake recovered, and is now with me, enjoying the lilies
and onion fields of Bermuda. My Aunt Letitia is at Mount Clemens,
taking a series of baths and--I am informed by Miss Lizzie--carrying
on what she believes is a clandestine correspondence with the Wright
brothers. Miss Aggie’s hay fever left with the first frost. I am sorry
to say that Miss Linda Smith has never been heard from.”
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF LETITIA CARBERRY
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
A CIGARETTE CASE, A SHOE, AND A MENU CARD
It was three o’clock in the morning when we got back to the lake, and
it was twenty minutes before Carpenter heard us and started the ferry
across. Tish had lost her glasses in the excitement at the Sherman
House, and she did not see that Carpenter had forgotten to put the bar
across the end of the boat. Aggie and I screamed, but it was too late:
she drove the car down the bank in the moonlight and she did not stop
in time. The first we knew we were sitting waist-deep in Lake Penzance,
with Tish still holding the steering wheel and the stars making little
twinkles in our laps.
As Tish said afterward, it was a fit ending to a sensational night,
but, what with the wetting aggravating Aggie’s hay fever, and my having
bitten through the side of my tongue when the machine struck the bottom
of the lake, it more nearly finished us. The engine drowned with a
gurgle, and after Carpenter’s first yell there wasn’t a sound. Then we
heard him come to the end of the ferry-boat and look down at us, and
the next moment he had dropped the lantern and was doubled up on the
dock, laughing like the fool he is.
“Are you both there?” said Tish, without turning her head.
Aggie sneezed, as she always does after a shock, and a wave moved
slowly in and raised the water level with my breastbone.
“We are both here,” I said, with a bitterness that was natural under
the circumstances. “No thanks to you, Tish Carberry. There’s no fool
like an old fool.”
“What do you mean?” Tish demanded fiercely, twisting around in the
water with her dust cap over her eye. “Who was it said I ought to
buy the dratted thing? Drive it yourself if you think you can do any
better.”
“Row it,” I corrected. “It’s finished for good as a touring car, but by
putting an awning over it we might make it into a tolerable gasoline
launch.”
Aggie was crying.
“I told you something would happen,” she sniffled. “You’ll kill us all
yet, Tish Carberry--and me in my _foulard_ silk that spots with a drop
of rain!”
But Tish wasn’t paying any attention. She picked up the wrench that she
had kept by her as a sort of weapon and stood up on the seat. Tish is a
large woman.
“Abraham Carpenter,” she snapped, with as much dignity as she could
with her clothes glued to her, “if you do not stop that noise I will
brain you.”
Carpenter eased down gradually, and, holding his sides, he leaned over
the end of the ferry.
“What’ll I do, Miss Tish?” he asked, beginning to jerk again, but with
an eye on the wrench. “I can go around to the other dock and get a
rowboat, but it’ll take time.”
“Don’t bother about the other dock,” Tish snapped. “Get that board
there on the ferry and put one end of it down to the automobile. Then
turn your back.”
That’s the way we got out. I went up the board first, on my hands
and knees, and barring a few splinters I got up very nicely. Aggie
came next, and as the board was getting wet she had more trouble. But
Tish had the worst, for by that time the board was as slippery as a
toboggan; twice she got as far as the middle, only to slide back on
her stomach, and the last time she refused to try again. She sat down
on one of the seats, with the water up to her waist, and said that