The seventh shot A detective story
closely. “I’ve a good mind to go and call on Miss Merivale myself.”
“Do!” said Lowry, turning to his desk with the air of a man dismissing
a lot of troublesome business, and glad of it. “You will find that she
is too ill to see a soul; utterly prostrated since last night. Will
that hold you for a while, you uppity young shrimp?”
CHAPTER XXI
TONY’S REPORT
Barrison often dined at a chop house in the Thirties, near his own
rooms. He repaired thither to-night, after having telephoned his
whereabouts to Tony Clay’s boarding house, with a message for that
youth to come on to join him there if he could.
As he sat lingeringly over one of the meals he liked best, he
endeavored to forget the problems which had stabbed at him relentlessly
all day. He wished that it were only from a professional angle that
the business worried him; to his own uttermost disgust, he found an
enormous mass of personal worry connected with it. He would like, for
instance, to have been able to eliminate Miss Templeton. Or—would
he? He was alarmed to find his condition so critical that he was not
absolutely sure.
He glanced up at last, uncertain whether with relief or disgust, to
find Tony Clay wending his way toward him between tables.
“Hello!” he said, with a very fine show of enthusiastic welcome.
Tony bobbed an acknowledgment. When he was seated opposite Jim, he
growled:
“How doth the little butterfly
Improve each shining hour,
By sending other folks to spy,
And bring to him more power!
“What pretty things he learns to do,
What merry games he beats!
He lets the other fellow stew,
While he sits still and eats!”
Barrison could not help laughing, as he greeted him:
“What do you suppose I’ve been doing? Sitting here ever since we
parted? What are you going to eat, oh, faithful, good, and seemingly
hungry servant?”
“I want all the ham and eggs there are in the place, and the ham cut
thick, and the eggs fried on both sides!”
“You half-baked little ass!” remarked Jim affectionately. “Give your
own order.”
Tony ordered, with a vague yet spectacular carelessness which made
Barrison roar.
“Not awake yet, Tony?” he queried, when his young friend had committed
himself to mushrooms and guinea hen after the ham and eggs.
“Eh? Sure I’m awake! Say, you didn’t give me a job at all, oh, no!”
“The point is, did you get it?”
“Get it? You bet your life I got it. But, Jim, your hunch about that
Golden Arms business was punk. There’s nothing doing there.”
“No?” said Barrison. He tried to sound cool and casual, but it wasn’t
much of a success; he felt a bit flat about it all. “Go ahead, Tony;
suppose you tell me about it, eh?”
Tony nodded, and straightened up at sight of the ham and eggs.
“Well; first off you wanted a line on the maid. I got that, all right.
She was one of those musical-comedy sorts. I spotted her from the
beginning, and I guess you did, too. She wasn’t able to get away from
her ‘lady’ much, but she was supposed to eat like anybody else, and——”
“Tony, if you tell me that you gave up your sleep to go and fix her at
lunch, and that——”
“I don’t, and I didn’t tell you anything. But, as a matter of fact, I’d
have bust if I hadn’t got a chance on this thing, Jim; you know that.
Maybe I seem a bit slow sometimes, but, take it from me, I’m there with
the goods when the time comes! Anyway, the maid’s story is perfectly
straight, and I’m certain she’s telling the truth. It seems that she
isn’t supposed to knock at Miss Legaye’s door until half after eleven.
She sleeps in a room on top of the house, connected by telephone, and
only comes down at special times, or when she’s phoned for. Last night,
she didn’t expect Miss Legaye in early, so didn’t come downstairs to
her door till about twenty minutes past eleven. It being a first
night, she really didn’t imagine Miss Legaye would be in much before
midnight. But at eleven twenty Maria—that’s the maid—came and knocked.
She saw that the lights were turned up inside the room.
“Miss Legaye called out to her: ‘Maria, don’t bother about me to-night;
I’m tired, and I’m going to bed right away. Come at about eight
to-morrow, please.’
“Maria went up to bed then, and didn’t come down again until eight, the
hour she was expected. That was about fifteen minutes before you and I
turned up this morning.”
“Well?” demanded Barrison, not so much eagerly as savagely, for he
was hot on what he thought to be a trail of some sort, even if not a
criminal trail. “Well, what else does she say about when she came in to
Miss Legaye’s rooms this morning?”
“She says that she came to the door and knocked, as was always her
rule, before using her key. She had a key, but was not expected by Miss
Legaye to use it unless there was no answer. This time she didn’t get
any answer, so she opened the door, and went in.
“She went in to Miss Legaye’s bedroom, and found her half awake and
half asleep. She said she had had a bad night, and had had to take her
sleeping medicine. She looked pale. Maria says that the thing that
upset her, Maria, most was the sight of Miss Legaye’s fine opera coat
on a chair near the window, where the rain had made it all wet. She
said she had barely hung it up, and made Miss Legaye comfortable, when
we telephoned up.”
Barrison thought a moment. “That sounds all right,” he admitted. “Get
ahead, Tony, to the rest of your investigation. For, of course, you
must have got at some one else!”
“Yes,” said Tony, as he munched fried ham; “I got at the night clerk of
the Golden Arms.”
“The night clerk? But he wasn’t on duty?”
Tony buttered a piece of bread with a glance of scorn. “And would that
make him inaccessible to _you_, you pluperfect sleuth?” he demanded
caustically. “To me it merely meant that I would have to dig up his
address and call on him when he was not on guard, so to speak. He is
a very nice, pleasant youth. You would not get on with him at all;
you would hurt his feelings. I have feelings of my own, so we were
delighted with each other! You do neglect your opportunities, you know,
Jim!”
“Did you find out when Miss Legaye got in last night?” asked Barrison,
but Tony’s answer was disappointing.
“I did not,” he rejoined. “I found that my night clerk had not seen
Miss Legaye at all last night.”
Barrison jumped and stared at him. “Not seen her!” ejaculated he.
“No. She had not come through the office at all. But he says that she
often avoids the crowd in the hotel office by going up to her apartment
by the back way. He says she hates publicity.”
“Oh!” Barrison was thinking. “Is there, then, no one who would have
seen her, if she came in ‘the back way,’ and went up to her room?”
“I can’t see how any one could have seen her. You see, Jim, it’s this
way. In the Golden Arms Hotel, there is a side door, which is kept open
and unguarded until after eleven o’clock at night. Lots of people,
women especially, who don’t want to go through the crowded office at
that hour, prefer to slip in that way. It’s a regular thing; they all
do it. As to the elevator boy who——”
“Yes, I was going to ask about him. Did he take her up?”
“No, he didn’t. At that hour of the night, even an elevator boy
sometimes nods. Anyway, he remembers the bell ringing for a long time
while he was half asleep, and when he got to the lift there was no one
there. The answer seems obvious.”
“That she walked upstairs, having become tired of waiting?”
“I should say so. Especially as she lived only one floor up, and often
ran up the flight to save time!”
Barrison thought of this as he drank black coffee. “And that is all you
found out?” he demanded suddenly, raising his head.
“Not at all!” responded Tony cheerfully. “I found out that the first
news the night clerk had had of Miss Legaye last night was a telephone
message from her room at about eleven o’clock.”
“A message? What was it?”
“She said that she had a frightful headache, and that she wanted one of
the bell boys to go out to the drug store for her, and get a medicine
bottle filled—stuff that she often took when she had trouble about
sleeping.”
“And then?”
“And then the boy went upstairs, and got the empty bottle from her. She
was wearing a wrapper. He took the bottle out and had it filled. That’s
all. It establishes the fact that she was in, and undressed, at eleven.”
Barrison called for the check and paid it; then he still knitted his
brows over the thing that troubled him.
“Tony!” he said suddenly.
“Well?”
“_Could_ she have gotten upstairs into that hotel without being seen? I
can’t believe it.”
“Why not?”
“I thought there were maids or guards on every floor.”
“Quite so,” said Tony; “you remind me. There is a maid stationed on
every floor of all decent hotels. There was one on every floor of this.
But she is human, and therefore she is movable. This one, on Miss
Legaye’s floor, was on duty up to twenty minutes to eleven, and she was
on duty after eleven had struck. In between she had been called in to
settle some newcomer, an old lady who wanted eight hundred and seventy
things to which she was not entitled. She was away less than half an
hour, but it was during that time that Miss Legaye must have gone to
her room.”
Barrison still sat looking at his coffee cup in a troubled way, and
Tony suddenly spoke:
“Jim, that’s a cold trail, a dead one. See? Why do you keep tracking
back to it? You know, and I know, that there’s nothing doing at that
end of the story. What keeps you nosing around it?”
“I can’t tell you, Tony,” said Barrison, low and not too certainly. “It
isn’t exactly evidence that keeps me following that trail. It’s——”
“Say!” broke in his subordinate sharply. “Shall I tell you what it is?
It’s that woman—it’s Miss Grace Templeton; that’s what it is. You’re
dippy about her! And because she’s tipped you that there’s something
queer about Miss Legaye, you believe it!”
“I thought you admired Miss Templeton yourself!” said Jim Barrison,
rallying his forces.
Tony Clay surveyed him in surprise. “Admired her?” he exclaimed.
“Of course I admire her! But that wouldn’t prevent me from doing my
bit on a case! I wouldn’t let a thing like that interfere with me
professionally!” He spoke most grandiloquently, with a swelling chest.
Jim Barrison looked at him a moment seriously; then his face broke into
irrepressible smiles. “Wouldn’t you?” he queried. “Tony, you’ll be a
great man one of these days!”
CHAPTER XXII
“RITA THE DAREDEVIL”
Promptly at eight o’clock, Barrison presented himself at the entrance
to Coyne’s Theater, where he had agreed to meet Teddy Lucas, of the
_Blaze_.
The house was of the flagrantly cheap variety, to judge by the people
then going in. On either side of the glaringly illuminated doorway were
vivid lithographs of ladies with extremely pink cheeks and tights,
and gorgeously yellow hair and jewelry; also, of prodigiously muscled
acrobats, performing miraculous feats in impossible positions.
Barrison found his own eyes attracted, almost at once, by something
which stood out, oasislike, among the more lurid and obvious sheets;
a large frame containing three photographs, under the plainly printed
title: “Rita the Daredevil! Late of the World-famous Blankley
Daredevils!”
Then this _was_ the girl who had been playing in the riding act with
Mortimer when Dukane came upon him first. Now, if by any chance Jim
could connect that girl with Wrenn’s disagreeable daughter, whom Miss
Templeton remembered! He was eager for a sight of her. Would that
rather dim snapshot he had seen prove sufficient to identify her?
He wondered! None of these pictures looked particularly like that