Lonesome Town

by E. S. Dorrance and James French Dorrance

  CHAPTER VIII--EMPTY

  Pape, the while, had grown most anxious to know the exact whereabouts ofthe young woman in the case. He found it nervous work, this expectingher appearance every minute--this playing the detective when she, withone glance, could detect him. Would she or would she not expose him? Thefull imperativeness of the question was in the gaze he bent upon thematron.

  "Miss Lauderdale will soon be down, I am sure. She went to her room tochange her gown."

  "And why, pray, should she bother changing her gown at a time like this?The one she had on was very--I mean to say, wasn't the one she had onbecoming?"

  This demand Mrs. Sturgis met with an increase of dignity. "We thought itmight be necessary for her to go to Police Headquarters or whatever itis you call the place where one swears to complaints. I'll send her wordto hurry if you wish."

  Pape did wish. However, the sending of word to that effect provedunnecessary. Even as Mrs. Sturgis was crossing the room to ring forJasper, Jane entered, dressed in a black and white checked skirt andloose white silk blouse. At sight of the caller she stopped short.

  "Well, I'll be ----"

  "Oh no, you won't, Miss Lauderdale--I believe?" Pape's advance hadinterrupted her ejaculation. "You're too much of a lady for that and fartoo good a sport to--to be in despair over your loss. The game is youngyet and I am here to win it."

  Although his tone was pompous, the eyes he fixed on her outragedexpression were urgent, imploring.

  Yet at the moment she did not look much as though she had dropped thenote as summons No. 2. Twice her lips opened in angry hesitation. Buther aunt interrupted before she actually spoke.

  "I was just about to send Jasper up for you, my dear," she said. "Mindyour nerves, now. This is an operative who has come over from TheArsenal to solve our mystery. Mr. Pope, Miss Lauderdale."

  "Pape, you mean," Jane corrected, then bit her lip.

  "Of course, I mean Pape. I am _so_ bad at names, Mr. Pape. Here I'vebeen calling you Pope. But, Jane dear, how could you know?"

  The ensuing slight pause was shattered by the soundless insistence of apair of gray eyes addressing a pair of tropic blue: "Play my game. It'sa good game. Why not--_why not_ play my game?"

  "Jasper told me."

  Her compliance was brief and cold--but still compliance. With his widesmile Pape thanked and thanked her, triumphed over her, caressed her.Jane refused to smile back. But she did blush--slowly, deliciously,revealingly blushed. At that moment she looked, after all, as though she_had_ meant to drop the note. He wanted to accuse her of it and be sure.

  But there was Mrs. Sturgis to be considered. Readjusting his expressioninto lines professional, he returned to the case.

  "Suppose, madame, we take a look at that safe."

  Mrs. Sturgis led the way into the room from which she had appeared onhis arrival. It was a library, its far end one huge window of manycolored panes and its walls lined with book-shelves except where familyportraits in oils were hung or where the fireplace and its mantelinterfered. An antique writing desk in the window, a magazine-coveredtable off center, a pillow-piled couch and a scattering of severalcomfortable-looking, upholstered chairs comprised the furnishings, therich old mahogany of which was brought out by the glow from acompanionable fire of cannel coal.

  To a corner of this room repaired Mrs. Sturgis and there pressed herpalm against an autumnal colored leaf in the wall-paper design. A shelf,laden with books moved out, one volume, by chance, falling to the floor.Another touch--exactly what or where Pape did not see--caused a panel toslide back, disclosing the nickeled face of a wall safe. With assuredfingers she began to turn the dial--to the right, to the left, then acomplete turn to the right again. Every movement added evidence of herboast of precision. Seizing the knob, she pulled upon it hard andharder. The door of the safe, however, did not yield.

  "Peculiar!" she ejaculated, all the well-bred softness whittled off hervoice. "Never before have I made a mistake on that combination. I knowit like my own initials."

  "Mind _your_ nerve now, Aunt Helene," advised Jane from just behind, hertone, too, rather sharp.

  For such a sweet-looking girl, she certainly could soundsour--malicious! Not another word or glance had she spared to him, thedouble-barreled interloper. She was playing his game--yes. But was itbecause he had asked her or for reasons of her own? This dame he hadself-selected would seem to be an intricate creature.

  So Pape reflected as he picked up and held in his hands the book whichhad fallen. But he, at least, was simple enough; with his verysimplicity in the past had solved more than one intricate problem. Hewould, if she permitted, try to solve her.

  Again Mrs. Sturgis turned and twirled; again tugged at the knob, butwith no more effect than before; again faced about with consternation,even superstition on her face.

  "There must be something wrong here," she half-whispered.

  "That we already know," Jane agreed, "else why the detective in ourmidst?"

  In Pape's hands, suppose we say by accident, the volume he had rescuedfrom the floor opened upon one of O. Henry's _immortelles_--"AliasJimmie Valentine." To him the work of the lamented Mr. Porter ever hadbeen fraught with suggestion for more than the "kick" that, unlikehome-brew, is always to be found at the bottom of his bottle--at the_finis_ of his tale.

  The latest in amateur detectives, thus opportunely reminded, decidedthat he must rise to the occasion. And he had reason to hope that hecould, once upon a time having been shown some tricks of the tumblerprofession by a professional.

  "Why else should I be in your midst," he offered cheerfully, "if not toopen your safe for you?"

  Mrs. Sturgis at once gave him the benefit of doubt; made way for him;took a stand beside her skeptical-looking niece. But Jane's contemptover his essay was frank--really, made her look downright disagreeable.

  Pape made up his mind to disappoint her evident expectations if withinhis powers so to do. He knelt down; wedged his head into the vacancyleft by the swinging shelf; pressed his ear close to the lock; began tofinger the dial. There was more than hope in his touch; there was alsopractice. In his ranch-house out Hellroaring way he long ago hadinstalled a wall safe of his own in which to deposit the pay-roll andother cash on hand. And one day it had disobligingly gone on strike; butnot so disobligingly that a certain derelict whom he had fed-up onhe-man advice as well as food--one who had followed the delicateprofession of "listener"--was beyond reach.

  This turned-straight cracksman, without admitting his former avocation,had solved a pay-day dilemma by conquering the refractory dial and laterhad given his benefactor a series of lessons in the most-gentle "art,"that the emergency might not recur. Pape, miles and miles from thenearest town which might afford an expert, had been convinced by theexperience that a safe is unsafe which cannot be opened at the owner'swill.

  In the course of present manipulations, the "under-graduate" consideredwhat he could say or do to the contemptuous half of his audience shouldhe fail, but reached no satisfactory conclusion. Indeed, he felt thatthe only real way of venting his chagrin would be to wring her graceful,long, white neck for doubting him before he failed, a proceeding quitebeyond consideration of any man from Montana. So he must not fail. Yethow succeed?

  Just as he was reminding himself for the seventh time--seventhturn--that "slow and careful" was also the watchword for this sort ofacquaintanceship, an electrifying response to his light-fingeringsounded from within ---- a click. Turning the knob, he pulled out thedoor. The yielding hinges completed an electric circuit and anincandescent bulb lighted in the roof.

  Pape sprang to his feet and back, as much amazed over his feat as thedazed-looking Miss Lauderdale. Then, at once, he got control of himself;straightened his cuffs, as his teacher always had done after turning thetrick; remarked most calmly:

  "The thief must have been changing the combination in the hope ofdelaying the discovery of his crime and been frightened into such apanic that he didn't take time to close the door."

>   Mrs. Sturgis again bent to the safe. She had reached well into it when,with a poignant cry, she put both hands to her eyes and started back."It's there again! This is getting too much for my nerves. Was I madbefore or am I going mad now? Jane--Mr. Pape--_it isn't gone_--_atall_!"

  The girl next applied to the cavity in the wall. Her face set in anapparent effort to "mind" her nerves. She reached in and drew out anoblong box of gold beautifully carved and set with small rubies in adesign of peacocks. From her expression--no longer disagreeable, butbeautiful from an ecstasy of relief--Pape judged this to be the "stolen"heirloom upon which she was said to set such store.

  That her aunt might be absolutely reassured, Jane Lauderdale handed herthe _tabatiere_ so recently accounted missing. That good lady, however,looked weak, as if about to drop the jeweled box. Pape relieved her ofit; led her to a chair.

  "I--I don't understand."

  Like a child utterly dependent on grown-ups for explanation, she glancedfrom one to the other of the younger pair.

  "Except for that famous precision of yours, it would seem easy enough,"Jane offered with more clarity than respect. "You must have pushed thebox aside when you took out the pieces Irene wanted to wear. Your handswere full and you neglected to close the safe. When you came down againfor your black pearl set and found the door open you thought at once ofmy snuffbox and jumped at the conclusion, since it wasn't in the placeyou remembered putting it, that it wasn't there at all. Cheer up. Youwouldn't be the dearest auntie in the world if you weren't human."

  Pape seconded her. "The most precise of us are liable to figments of theimagination, madam. All's well that ends that way. A snuffbox in hand isworth two in the ----"

  But Aunt Helene wasn't so sure. She interrupted in a complaining voice,as if offended at their effort to cheer her.

  "I never jump at conclusions--_never_. If I was startled into jumping atthe one you mention, Jane, it seems strange that I selected these blackpearls so accurately. _Doesn't_ it? And I'd almost take oath that thebox wasn't pushed to one side--that it stood, when I found it just now,exactly on the spot where I first placed it. And then, Mr. Pape, thetrouble with the combination----"

  "Don't worry any more about it, poor dear," Jane begged with a suddenlysweet, soothing air, the while laying a sympathetic palm against herrelative's puckered brow. "I've noticed that you haven't seemed justyourself for days. Perhaps these headaches you've complained of meanthat you need eyeglasses. It's only natural that a strain on the opticnerves should confuse your mind, which usually _is_ so precise aboutall----"

  "Nothing of the sort, Jane. You can't mental-suggest me into old age!"snapped the recalcitrant patient. "My eyes are just as good as yours.And I feel positive that I am quite myself."

  "Then why, Aunt Helene, didn't you go with us to hear Farrar to-night?You aren't usually so squeamish about----"

  "Of course not. It was indigestion, if you must know. Certainly it hadnothing to do with my optic nerves. You shouldn't accuse me of jumpingat conclusions, Jane, with all your irritating, positive ideas aboutother people's----"

  "It is my opinion--" the unofficial investigator thought advisable atthis point to remind them that an outsider was present--"that yourremembrance of the combination figures and the various turns wasabsolutely correct--ab-so-lutely. But you may have jolted the delicatemechanism of the lock when you shut the door. You _may_ have slammedit."

  He received two glances for his pains to maintain peace, a quick,resentful one from the niece and a long, grateful one from her aunt.

  "A beauty, isn't it?" he continued buoyantly, looking at Jane, butreferring to the snuffbox in his hands, lowered for closer inspectioninto the light of the electric lamp. "I don't wonder that the thought oflosing it distressed you, my dear Miss Lauderdale."

  "Associations, my dear Mr. Pape."

  Her brevity, cut even shorter by her accent, evidently was calculated toinform him that, although she had played, she didn't care much for hisgame. For a young person who could warm one up so one minute, shecertainly could make one feel like an ice-crusher the next! Since that'swhat he was up against, however, he proceeded with all his surplusenthusiasm to crush ice.

  "The sight of this heirloom takes one right back to the days of old,doesn't it, when ladies fair and gallants bold----"

  "You wax poetic from hearsay, Mr. Pape? You don't look exactly old orwise enough to have lived in those good old days."

  "Miss Lauderdale, no. I don't claim to have staked any 'Fountain ofYouth.' In fact, I ain't much older or wiser than I look and act. ButI've read a bit in my day--and night. The courtly Colonial gent, if Iremember aright, first placed the left hand on the heart--so." Then hebent gracefully, not to say carefully, so that the seams of his satinstraight-jackets should not give--thus. With his right hand he nextsnapped open his jeweled box and passed it around the circle ofsnufflers of _the_ sex, who would likely have swooned at the thought ofa cigarette as at the sight of a mouse--in this wise.

  "Oh don't--don't you _dare_ open it!"

  Pape, who duly had pressed his heart, bowed with care, if not grace, andwas in the act of pressing the catch, felt the box snatched from hisgrasp. In his fumbling, however, his thumb had succeeded. As Jane seizedher treasure the lid sprang back. One look she gave into it, then swayedin the patch of lamplight very like the limp ladies he had beenmentioning. A face of the pure pallor of hers scarcely could be said toturn pale, but a ghastly light spread over it. Her eyes distended anddarkened with horror. A shudder took her. She looked about to fall.

  "It is--empty! See, _it is empty_," she moaned.

  Pape was in time to steady her into a chair. Aunt Helene hovered overher anxiously.

  "What's gone wrong with you, childie? You're the one that's in arun-down state. Here's your box, Jane dear. Look, it isn't stolen atall. Pinch yourself. Waken up. Everything's all right."

  But Jane did not return her relative's smile; clutched both fat arms ofthe chair with both slim hands; stared ahead fixedly, as if trying tothink.

  "It is," she repeated under her breath, "_empty_."

  From his urgent desire to relieve and help her, Pape intruded into herpainful abstraction.

  "Then it wasn't the box you valued, so much as its contents," he statedto her. "From the shock you have shown on finding it empty, I gatherthat the safe has been robbed after all. Will you tell me of what?"

  Her lips moved. He had to lean low to hear her sporadic utterances.

  "I have failed--in a trust. It meant more to me than--it will killhim--simply kill him. He trusted me. I can't understand--who----"

  A sudden glance of virile suspicion she flung up into the youngWesterner's eyes.

  "Who and what are you?" she demanded. "Answer me!"