De Grandin’s eyes had lifted as our caller spoke. Now they were fixed in an unwinking cat-stare on a point a little beyond Mr. Roggenbuck’s shoulder. For the first time the other seemed aware of the Frenchman’s intent gaze, and a tremor ran through his hard-shaven, rather fleshy face. His jaws seemed suddenly to sag flaccidly like the dewlaps of a hound, and his mouth began to twist convulsively. “What—who—is it?” he demanded in a voice that seemed to come from a clogged throat.
The little Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. “Who can say, Monsieur? Perhaps it was no more than a shadow.”
“What sort of shadow—what did it look like?”
“On ne sait pas? Perhaps it was like that of a man, perhaps that of a curtain shaken in the wind, perhaps a trick of the lamplight. N’en parlons plus. At any rate, it is gone now.”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh, quite sure, Monsieur.”
“Then”—Mr. Roggenbuck drew a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow—“what would you advise, Dr. de Grandin? Are you willing—can you help?”
“I am willing, and I think that I can help the cause of justice, Monsieur Roggenbuck. My fee will be a thousand dollars, in advance.”
“A thousand dollars!”
“Perfectly. In fifteen minutes it will be increased to fifteen hundred. In half an hour I am not for hire at any price.”
He pocketed the check, and, “Now, Monsieur,” he suggested, “suppose we go to your house and inspect the scene of your late brother’s déces.”
THE HOUSE IN BELVEDERE Street was a substantial frame dwelling, neither opulent nor unpretentious, with a wide portico behind the tall, white pillars of which shadows seemed to be imprisoned. No lights showed anywhere in it, and Mr. Roggenbuck had to feel for the keyhole before he was able to admit us. Inside the place was quite as uninspiring as it was outwardly. It seemed to have been ordered, straighted into complete impersonality. The furniture was of good quality and obviously expensive, and just as obviously chosen without taste. Mahogany of no particular period stood cheek-by-jowl with golden oak and maple patently of neo-Grand Rapids design. The floors were waxed and highly polished, and on them were some simulated Kashan rugs arranged without regard to pattern or color. Such pictures as adorned the walls were of the Landseer-Rosa Bonheur school. I almost expected to see “The Stag at Bay” or “Pharaoh’s Horses,” or an enlarged sepia print of the Colosseum.
“The basement first, if you will be so kind,” de Grandin asked, and led by our host we descended a flight of narrow stairs. The room ran under the entire house and was in nowise remarkable. In one corner was the gas furnace, flanked by the hot water tank, with stationary washtubs and a mechanical washer beside them. Odds and ends of cast-off furniture, rolled-up summer matting rugs and similar lumber lay around the walls.
“Here was where my brother was found,” Mr. Roggenbuck told us, pointing to an iron pipe that snaked between the joists supporting the first floor. “He hung, as I told you, with his feet almost on the ground, and there was nothing under or near him which he could have stood on while adjusting the noose—”
“Did you observe him before he was cut down?” de Grandin interrupted.
“Why, yes—”
“He wore no slippers, I believe?”
“They had dropped from his feet, I assume—”
“One does not make assumptions in such cases, Monsieur. Have you any reason to believe that they had fallen, rather than been slipped off?”
“No-o; I can’t say I have.”
“Bien. Bon. We begin to make the progress. Now, what, exactly, was his position?”
Roggenbuck was silent for a moment, then dropped to one knee. “I’d say he hung just about here, with his feet clear of the floor.”
“U’m. And he was five feet and a half in height, the rope by which he hung was approximately two feet long, his feet lacked four or so inches of contact with the floor?”
“That is correct, sir.”
“H’m. Then something less than a foot high—something perhaps no more than six or seven inches would have been sufficient for him to mount as a scaffold—”
“But there was nothing there, I tell you—”
“Not even this, perhaps?” Wheeling as if on a pivot, the little Frenchman walked to the wall opposite the place where we stood, stooped and retrieved an object lying in the shadow.
It was a bowling ball of some eight inches diameter, black and highly polished, but overlaid with a thin film of dust. As he held it daintily, with thumb and forefinger in the grip-holes, we saw the dust upon its surface had been wiped away in two parallel patches roughly oblong in shape, and that a wavering diagonal of cleared space ran down one side. “Unless I am far more mistaken than I think,” he told us, “Monsieur le Suicide stood on this globe while he adjusted the loop to his neck, then kicked it from him so it rolled to the spot where I spied it. That we can readily determine. Your brother balanced barefoot on this ball, Monsieur. The slippery soles of his straw shoes would not have afforded a purchase on its smooth surface. Alors, he left the prints of his feet on the polished wood. See them?” He indicated the two spots where the dust was disturbed. “The ridges on the friction skin of hands and feet are as highly individual as the prints of the fingers. Your brother has not yet been buried. It is necessary only that we bring the prints on this ball out, make an impression of the pattern of the soles of his feet, and voilà, we can be sure that he stood upon the sphere before he did la danse macabre. Yes, certainly.” He wrapped his salvage in a newspaper taken from the pile that stood in readiness for the trash-collector, then:
“If you will be so kind as to conduct us to Madame your sister-in-law, we shall be obliged,” he said.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t permit her to be disturbed,” Mr. Roggenbuck refused.
“Très bien; just as you say,” de Grandin agreed. “I think that we have gleaned sufficient data for one call already. If you will be so good as to give me an order on the mortician permitting me to make prints of your brother’s feet we need not trouble you further at this time, Monsieur.”
“WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?” I demanded as he came in sometime after eleven the next evening and began attacking the snack of turkey sandwiches, champagne, lemon pie and coffee Nora had left for him with a ferocity that would have made a famished wolf seem daintily abstemious by comparison.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, where have I not been, my old one?” he answered between mouthfuls. “Me, I have been up hill and down dale, and completely round the barn of Monsieur Robin Hood. I have visited the excellent mortician, the newspaper office, the office of the county clerk, the house of Monsieur Roggenbuck—grand Dieu, what a name!—and a dozen other places, also.
“And has my search been vain? Par la barbe d’une pieuvre, I shall say otherwise!” He finished the last morsel of sandwich, washed it down with the last sip of champagne, poured a cup of steaming coffee, and prepared to demolish a great wedge of lemon meringue. “My friend,” he leveled his fork at me like a weapon, “my old and fare one, I learned a number of most interesting things today. Some of them may have a bearing on l’affaire Roggenbuck, although at present I cannot make out their pattern. Consider, if you please:
“The Brothers Roggenbuck appear to have worked as a team for years, the estimable Rodney furnishing the invention, his less talented kinsmen attending to the details. Before the 1929 debacle their specialty was peddling securities, stock of goldless gold mines, oilless oil wells, real estate entirely under water, and the like. Their favorite clients were bereaved ladies left some small insurance, or, failing those, old couples who had laid away a little for their final years. Frédéric, the younger brother, went to jail, Théobald was fined, but not incarcerated; Rodney went free for lack of evidence.
“Let us, like surveyors, drive a peg down there, and proceed with our examination of the terrain. The present Madame Roggenbuck is not the first, nor second, nor third spouse of this manqué evangelist. He has, it seems, been
married three times previously. It seems she was the elder of two orphan daughters of a viellard named Stretfuse.”
“Old Henry Stretfuse?” I asked. “I remember him. He had a farm out on the Andover Road—”
“Précisément. A very old, worked-out farm which was considered worthless when he left it to his daughters. But with the coming of the war, when the city commenced expanding like a blown-up bladder, it became most valuable for building sites. The boom in building had just begun when Monsieur Roggenbuck married Mademoiselle Stretfuse.
“She was, as I have said, the elder of two sisters, and much flattered to receive attention from the reverend gentleman. Eulalia, her younger sister, was already suffering from incipient tuberculosis.” He paused, swallowed the last crumb of pie, and added, “According to the terms of the will, the sisters were named joint tenants in the land. Does that mean anything to you?”
I shook my head.
“Nor did it signify to me until I bad consulted Monsieur Mitchell the avoué. Then I began to scent a little so small mouse. Joint tenancy, the lawyer told me, means that tenants hold the land in equal, undivided shares, but at the death of one the whole estate passes to the other instead of going partly to the heirs of him who dies. Et puis? No one will buy the share of one joint tenant unless the other also signs the deed, since he who buys is subrogated only to the rights of his grantor, and liable to have his heirs’ inheritance defeated if he dies before the other joint tenant. Do you also begin to smell the rodent?”
“H’m; can’t say that I do.”
“Très bien. Regard me: If Monsieur Roggenbuck married Mademoiselle Eulalia the chances are that she, the victim of an often fatal malady, would predecease her elder sister; but if he married Mademoiselle Sara, as he did, the chances are that she, though older, will survive and become sole owner of a valuable property. For that reason, and no other, I am convinced, he chose the elder of the sisters for his bride.
“However, complications rose when Mademoiselle the younger sister married Monsieur Frye. Under his loving care and cherishment she might outlive her elder sister, then pouf! where would the reverend gentleman be?
“Not to be caught napping, pardieu! Not he! When Monsieur Frye goes to the war he takes his sister-in-law to his house, sees that she has no medical attention, and hopes for the best.
“Hélas, the soldier-husband comes home from the battlefields, so stronger measures must be taken. He takes the young wife from her home and holds her virtually a prisoner, incommunicado.
“Now, listen carefully. Monsieur the husband is about to ask the court to give him back his wife when he meets death upon the highway. The accident occurs on a steep hill, and, quite fortuitously, two of the firm of Roggenbuck Frères are there at or about the time it happens.”
“Are you implying—”
“I am implying nothing. I am merely marshalling the facts for our review. Two days before this fatal accident Monsieur Frédéric buys a motor car, a swift vehicle fitted with a driving searchlight, such as police cars carry. Moreover, he goes to garageman and has an even more powerful light installed. He is a city-dweller and not given to much driving on the country roads. Why should he desire so powerful a search light?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea.”
“Well spoken, my good, trusting friend. You would be the last to entertain unworthy suspicions. Me, I am otherwise.”
“What d’ye mean?”
“Not anything at present. This is just another peg we drive down in our surveying tour. But listen further, if you please:
“This afternoon I made it my business to watch Monsieur Roggenbuck’s house. By a ’phone call I ascertained that he was at his office. I saw Madame his wife go out; I telephoned his house and got no answer. ‘Bien,’ I tell me. ‘The house are empty; the domestic is not there.’ So, like the robber in the night, I break into that house. Parbleu, I tell you a most excellent burglar was lost when Jules de Grandin decided to be comparatively honest.
“I went through that house carefully. And in an upper room, a little so small sunless room set high beneath the roof, I find poor Madame Frye. She are locked in like any félone. She lies upon a narrow, unkempt bed, her robe de nuit is far from clean, she coughs almost incessantly.
“I speak to her, me. She answers feebly, between coughings. She tells me that her brother-in-law keeps at her constantly to deed her share of the farm to her sister. He tells her that her husband is dead, but she will not believe him. She stubbornly withholds her signature, for he, her husband had told her to sign nothing. Until he comes she will not sign. Parbleu, unless we intervene all soon she will assuredly succumb, and Madame Roggenbuck will be sole heiress. When that occurs, cordieu, I do not think that she will be a good risk for insurance. No. I ask to know if it is not a pretty pan of fish I have discovered?”
“It’s infamous!” I exclaimed. “We must do something—”
“Précisément, mon vieux, we must, indeed. Come, let us go.”
“Go? Where?”
“About a little piece of business that I have in mind.”
PETEROS, READ THE SMALL bronze tablet on the red-brick house before which we stopped half an hour later. As far as I could see it was the only thing distinguishing it from the other houses in the eminently respectable block. When de Grandin pressed the bell a neatly uniformed maid answered and led us to a parlor.
I glanced about me curiously. The place was rather elegant. A Chinese rug of the Kien-lung period lay on the floor, against the farther wall hung a Ghiordes prayer-cloth, the furniture was clearly of French manufacture, gilt wood upholstered in an apple-green brocade. The only picture in the room was a life-sized portrait of a blond woman with wide, brooding eyes and a sad mouth. A latch clicked, and a small, neat gentleman entered.
He was perhaps fifty, his hair was slightly gray at the temples, his rather long face was clean-shaven, the dark eyes behind the tortoise-shell spectacles were serious and thoughtful. His dinner clothes were impeccable, but of a slightly foreign cut. He might have been a lawyer or a banker, or perhaps the curator of an art gallery, but I recognized him as Gregor Peteros who, though professionally a medium and clairvoyant, was so highly thought of that psychologists of reputable standing did not hesitate to consult him, and whose monographs on extrasensory perception had been printed in a dozen scientific magazines. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he greeted. “I’ll be with you in a moment. If you don’t mind I’ll take a topcoat; I’m rather sensitive to chill.”
“AS NEAR AS I could determine from studying the newspapers and police reports, this is the spot,” de Grandin told us as we drew up at a curve that twisted down a steep hill above Harrison Creek. The roadway had been widened recently, and where a hundred-foot drop led to the rock-studded, bawling waters of the stream a breast-high wall of stone and reinforced concrete had been erected. The spot had been a famous—or infamous—one for fatal accidents until this safeguard had been put up, I recalled.
“Can you put yourself en rapport with the past, Monsieur Peteros?” de Grandin asked. “I realize it may be difficult, for much traffic has passed since—”
“Do not tell me the details!” Mr. Peteros broke in. “When did the accident occur?”
“September eighteenth, two years ago.”
“I see.” The medium made a note on a slip of paper, did a quick calculation, and tapped his teeth with his pencil. “That would have been under the sign of Virgo in the decanus of Mercury.” He settled himself back on the cushions, closed his eyes, and seemed about to take a nap. For several minutes there was complete silence, and we could hear the ticking of our watches beating out a fugue; from the distance came the dismal wailing of a freight train’s locomotive, somewhere nearer a dog barked, and the mounting sound was slender as a strand of spider-web.
Abruptly Mr. Peteros sat up. His eyes were closed, but his face worked excitedly. “I see him!” he exclaimed. “He has swung around the curve at the hilltop and commenced the descent. He see
ms distrait; he is not watching the road. He should not rely on his brakes, he ought to put his engine into low gear.”
He swallowed with excitement, then turned his closed eyes down the road. “There is another car coming,” he announced. “It’s a small, open car, with two men in it. One drives, the other leans out. He is watching . . . watching. He has his hand upon a driving searchlight set upon a rod beside the windshield. It is covered with some kind of cloth, a bag or sack of heavy felt through which no light can pass. The two cars are not more than fifty feet apart now. The man descending the hill swerves to the right, toward the guardrail. The other car swings to the left. They are approaching head-on. Ah! The man beside the driver of the second car has turned his hooded spotlight squarely on the driver of the first vehicle. Now he snatches the hood off. A-a-ah! There is a beam of dazzling light shining full into the other driver’s eyes. It blinds him. He—his car is out of control! He will crash against the barrier. He has crashed through it! His car is turning over and over as it tumbles down the bank. Kyrie eleïson! The glass of his windshield has shattered. He is pierced by a great splinter of it. He is bleeding, dying. . . .”
He paused a moment, breathing hard, like an exhausted runner, then, more calmly: “The other car has stopped and its passengers have gotten out. They are slipping, sliding down the steep bank. They have reached the wreck, but they make no move to take its occupant out. One of them reaches in and feels his pulse, shakes his head, and steps back. They wait . . . wait. Now they feel the wreck victim’s pulse again, and still they make no move to lift him out. Now they seem satisfied. They reach into the wreck and lift the victim out. He is dead. I see them nod to each other, then turn to scramble up the bank again. . . .”
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