Deadly Hall

by John Dickson Carr

  Instantly Dave made for the center table. He picked up and threw aside the few magazines that lay there. Finally, after inspecting the table drawer, he faced them with consternation.

  “Somebody, no doubt,” Dave declared, “might think this was a good joke. I don’t think it’s a joke, rot my soul if I do! It’s gone, you hear? The log is gone! It was here last night, because I almost went blind poring over it. But it’s gone now. Whoever took it …”

  Malcolm Townsend had drawn back. His open countenance, which might even have been called handsome in an irregular, non-classical way, wore an almost comical look of dawning alarm.

  “I didn’t take it!” he said. “Accept my assurance: I didn’t take it! Why not look inside my brief-case?”

  Unfastening the catch of the brief-case, he held it open so that they could see it contained only some measuring tapes, two very small, light hammers, and a screwdriver.

  “Sensational fiction, Mr. Hobart—”

  “Look, why don’t you call me Dave? I won’t call you Malcolm; you’re almost old enough to be my father. But why not call me Dave?”

  “Sensational fiction, Dave, suggests that any man carrying a brief-case is probably using it for some nefarious purpose. And I am a stranger, the only stranger. All I can tell you is that I’m not guilty. I didn’t take it!”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t. Not that I think you would. But as a practical fact, sir, you’ve been with me every second of the time since you arrived. If you didn’t take it, though, who else would? I wouldn’t take it; Jeff wouldn’t; Serena wouldn’t. There’s been nobody else here except …”

  “If you want me to prove an alibi for the District Attorney,” answered Jeff, as Dave’s eye strayed towards him, “I can tell you my esteemed uncle was with me whenever he wasn’t with you.”

  “Who’d have taken it, then? Who could have taken it, for Pete’s sake?”

  The glowing lamps here in the study seemed to accentuate the dark weight of the sky outside.

  “Since we seem to have eliminated everybody,” Jeff said, “it follows as a logical proposition that the ledger can’t be missing at all.”

  10

  SO, THAT NIGHT, Jeff borrowed the Stutz and drove to town. What happened during the interval, between the discovery of a loss before noon and his own departure at half-past seven, seemed singularly meaningless.

  After their frantic search of the study, to make sure the missing ledger had not been mislaid, there had been a general inquisition of all available servants. Dave, carrying on like a tough private detective in a pulp-magazine story, thoroughly cowed everybody he failed to scare. All professed ignorance; they said they knew nothing.

  “And I believe ’em,” Dave summed up. “Actually, as far as progress is concerned, losing that log doesn’t amount to much. I can tell you everything the commodore wrote: weights, dimensions, remarks, everything. I’ve read it so often I know the contents practically by heart. What gets me is the utter senselessness of stealing a relic like that!”

  “How much gold,” asked Jeff, “is believed to be hidden?”

  “About five hundredweight.”

  “Five hundred pounds of gold? A quarter of a ton?”

  “That’s a rough estimate. Possibly a little more, possibly a little less.”

  Jeff tried without avail to reach Penny by telephone, being informed that Miss Penny had gone out for the day and wouldn’t be back until evening. Though nobody showed much appetite for lunch, they had a sketchy buffet of sandwiches and coffee.

  At four o’clock tea was served in the open on the flagged terrace behind the house, overlooking a garden combining formal English box-hedges with Louisiana’s near-tropical luxuriance. Serena presided like a divinity at the polished urn.

  “Cream and sugar, Jeff? Or would you rather have lemon?”

  “Not lemon, thanks; that’s a Russian habit I want no traffic with. A little milk or cream; no sugar.”

  “Then you don’t approve,” Serena asked, “of Russia’s beautiful new communistic experiment or its various five-year plans?”

  “I loathe their communistic experiment and everything it stands for. There’s more than that: I don’t like Russians. I can’t like Russians since I tried to read their novels, which highbrows rave about but which to me seem mere humorless hogwash, as pretentious as clumsily inept.”

  Serena handed him the cup. Without a word she filled other cups and handed them round. Avoiding any mention of mystery, she steered the talk to current films, which Dave suggested might become talking films in a year or more.

  Much earlier Townsend, on the plea that they could always run him back to his hotel in one of the cars, had been persuaded to send away a taxi-driver too long waiting, whom he dismissed with a generous tip.

  Permitted to explore on his own, he spent some time measuring lower and upper hall. Jeff examined the library, finding little except a first edition of Gibbon’s first two volumes, while Dave sat in the study and jotted down what he could remember from the missing log. Afternoon became evening and then night. Townsend accepted an invitation to dinner. But Jeff, growing more and more restless, could not sit still.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said at length, “I think I’ll have dinner in town. I don’t meet Ira Rutledge until ten o’clock, as you already know. But I can eat at one of the choicer places and take my time. Will anybody be using the roadster tonight?”

  It seemed nobody would. So he took the Stutz and set out.

  He took his time about driving, too. There was one address he must at least look at before he need choose a restaurant. Approaching the city from the south, he drove up Canal Street and turned to the right into the thoroughfare along which he and Penny had walked the night before.

  If he drove some way up Bourbon Street and then turned to the right to go back along parallel Royal Street in the opposite direction. Royal Street’s odd numbers would be on his right-hand side.

  At your convenience, try 701b Royal Street. Fear nothing, but remember the address.

  Murkily lighted, all but empty at well past eight on a Saturday night, the Bond Street of New Orleans seemed lifeless, even a little sinister.

  But that was nonsense; it couldn’t be! Then he saw the address he sought.

  Number 701b was a shop-front, next door to another shop-front at the intersection of St. Peter Street, closed and dark. Briefly the car’s headlights, no less than the stray gleam of a street-lamp, picked up the display of pipes, tobacco, and cigars behind window-glass across which ran gilded lettering, Bohemian Cigar Divan, by—by somebody whose name Jeff could not quite read as he cruised past. More distinct loomed the figure of the wooden Highlander, bigger than life in kilt with colorful tartan, towering up beside the door.

  One or two old-fashioned tobacconists in England still chose a wooden Highlander for their sign, as some cigar stores in this country still used a wooden Indian. But even in England, today, they wouldn’t call it a cigar divan. If some Briton had set up shop here in the French quarter, it must have been a long time ago.

  Again headed for Canal Street, Jeff found himself troubled by a memory that just eluded him. That tobacconist’s sign had been in some way familiar; it struck a chord; he ought to remember and didn’t.

  Other troubles attended this. Tonight he need only identify the place; he could visit there later. But why an invitation, even a challenge, to visit what must be the most harmless premises in harmless Royal Street? Harmless, eh? Every feature of this affair had a trick of seeming harmless or without meaning until suddenly it turned on you from ambush.

  Realizing he was jumpy, telling himself it must stop, Jeff drove across Canal Street and parked the Stutz in University Place, where Penny had left her car the night before. Though he had meant to eat at a French restaurant in the Vieux Carré, he compromised for Kolb’s because it was so very close here on the American side.

  To make the time pass more quickly, he dawdled over broiled lobster with butter sauce, over
coffee and the evening paper. He must restrain impatience. On the other hand, if Ira Rutledge really had some communication of importance …

  But you can’t make time pass more quickly. At half-past nine Jeff paid his bill, left the restaurant, and went for a walk. Crossing to the French side, he strolled up Bourbon Street with a vague half idea of looking in at Cinderella’s Slipper. This latter notion he discarded. He walked as far as the Esplanade, encountering nobody except two panhandlers and a nymphe du pavé’, and returned by way of Dauphine Street just north. A few minutes before ten found him entering the small lobby of the Garth Building on the west side of Canal Street.

  Old Andy Stockton, who used to operate the Garth Building’s one elevator, still presided there.

  “No, Mr. Rutledge ain’t here yet. Toldya to go up and set; door’d be unlocked? It’s a good thing I knowya, Mr. Caldwell; knowed your dad and your granddad too. That’s it; that’s got it; go right on up and set!”

  On the third floor, where Andy let him out, was the familiar door with its ground-glass panel lettered Rutledge & Rutledge, Attorneys at Law, the other Rutledge being Ira’s son. The neat if somewhat dusty waiting-room, dark except for a pale radiance from Canal Street until Jeff found the light-button, contained four severe wooden armchairs, a stenographer’s modern desk in greenish-colored steel, with telephone but no sign of the typewriter folded up inside, and a dictaphone stand nearby.

  Ten o’clock rang from several steeples, but Ira Rutledge did not appear. In the adjoining law library Jeff found a glass ashtray, returned with it to the anteroom, and chain-smoked. Ten fifteen; still no Ira. At half-past ten the telephone rang. If overbusy Mr. Rutledge, damn him, had phoned to make more excuses … !

  But it wasn’t Ira; it was Penny Lynn.

  “Jeff? I hoped you’d be there! They seemed to think—”

  “Where are you, Penny?”

  “At home; I’ve just got back.”

  “Yes, the maid said you wouldn’t be home until evening. She didn’t say it would be as late as this.”

  “I don’t mean I’m home for the first time. I got back before dinner. When Hetty told me you’d called, I thought I’d better get along to the Hall. They were sitting down to dinner, and insisted I must have dinner too. After dinner …”

  “How’d you get on with Townsend, the secret-passage fellow?”

  “Pretty well, I think. He’s not there now.”

  “Not there now?”

  “After dinner, Jeff, who should turn up but Kate Keith? Kate seemed terribly taken with Mr. Townsend; she was all over him. She had her car there, and said she must show him some night life. If she did take him out, Dave said, she’d have to drop him at his hotel. It seems Isaac, their chauffeur, had asked for the evening off; Dave lets Isaac use the touring-car when Isaac’s got a heavy date. Off went Kate with the old-houses expert; you might almost think she’d met him before. Then …”

  Jeff could visualize Penny bending close to the phone.

  “Serena and Dave!” she breathed. “There’s something awfully peculiar—yes, and upsetting too. They weren’t themselves, either of ’em, though it’s hard to say how or why. Things were so odd I didn’t stay as long as I might have stayed. Since they said you’d gone for an important conference with Mr. Rutledge …”

  “I haven’t had an important conference with Mr. Rutledge; I haven’t even seen him. If the slippery old so-and-so keeps me waiting just five minutes longer …!” He broke off as a humming noise indoors rose above the rattle of traffic from the street. “There’s the elevator now, Penny! See you tomorrow, I hope? This must be the wandering prodigal at last!”

  And so it was. Stoop-shouldered, cadaverous, a derby hat on his head and a raincoat over his arm, Ira Rutledge opened the door of the waiting-room.

  “Yes, my boy, you needn’t remind me; it’s unforgivable. These domestic matters, after all, can be worse than business. I can only apologize for the second time, and suggest we get down to it at once. We shall be more comfortable in the law library, I think. If you will precede me there …?”

  Every room in this suite overlooked Canal Street. To the right a windowless little corridor led first past the small office of Ira junior and then past the larger office of Ira senior. While Ira senior doddered into the corridor, Jeff carried his sustaining ashtray into the longish, narrow law library on the left.

  In the library, its left-hand wall of sectional bookcases containing impressive calf-bound volumes behind glass, he pulled the chain of a green-shaded lamp on the boardroom table. Framed on the walls hung humorous legal drawings of unhumorous aspect. Jeff sat down and studied these until Ira, carrying a buff-colored cardboard folder, joined him and sat down at the head of the table.

  The lawyer still seemed in no hurry. For some moments he tapped the folder, musing over it, after which he pushed aside the extension telephone on the table.

  “Our meeting,” he said at length, “concerns certain unusual aspects of the will left by the late Harald Hobart.”

  “Yes?”

  “The provisions of this will are extremely simple. Everything of which my poor friend died possessed is divided equally between his issue, Dave and Serena. There are no other surviving relatives and no other bequests, the children being merely enjoined to ‘take care of’ certain specified servants. May I suggest,” and Mr. Rutledge looked hard at him through the spectacles, “that you hear me out before offering objection or even comment?”

  “Why should I object?”

  “I anticipate no real objection. But I do seriously suggest it.”

  “If you’ll tell me what this is all about …?”

  “To be sure; forgive me. What might be called the will’s corollary provisions, though also simple as regards disposition of property, are so unusual as to require a word of explanation.

  “Before the heart attack that carried him off, my friend Harald, who knew it might happen at any time, had reflected much on the past. You may perhaps have heard that many years ago Commodore Fitzhugh Hobart had two close friends: your grandfather, for whom you were named, and the (also late) Bernard Dinsmore, formerly of New Orleans. Commodore Hobart quarreled with Bernard Dinsmore, who went to New England and made a considerable fortune. You had heard of this?”

  “Yes; Dave sketched it out some nights ago. Dave said his father always thought Bernard Dinsmore had been very badly treated. Correct?”

  “That, my boy,” said Mr. Rutledge, whirring in his throat, “so sums up the case that I need scarcely elaborate. Now hear the rest of the testator’s provisions.”

  Cars hummed and hooted in the thoroughfare below, threaded through by a distant clangor of streetcar bells. After a brief glance inside the folder without opening it fully, Ira Rutledge rose and went to one of the windows, where he stood looking down. He did not turn when he spoke.

  “If death should overtake either Dave or Serena, the survivor inherits everything. On the other hand, should neither Serena nor Dave be alive by Hallowe’en of this year …”

  “Hallowe’en!” exploded Jeff. “Why shouldn’t either of ’em be alive then? And what’s Hallowe’en got to do with it?”

  “Did I say Hallowe’en?” the lawyer murmured. “Dear me, dear me! That’s bad; I must not grow fanciful. And yet the word, if legally ill-chosen, is not inexact.”

  Here he did turn from the window.

  “Fitzhugh Hobart, as you may or may not be aware, was born on October 31, 1827. He would have lived for a century had he achieved October 31st of this year.”

  “I’d heard the commodore’s dates. But I still ask … !”

  “Here is your answer. Harald’s son and his daughter, though to much less an extent, have both inherited the cardiac weakness that killed their father. So much must be news, I take it?”

  “Not exactly news, no. Dave did tell me a very slight heart condition had kept him out of the Navy during the war. Serena …”

  “Serena, you were saying?”

  “S
he’s always shown athletic tendencies. Yesterday evening Dave remarked that she used to be an expert gymnast until the doctor made her give it up. Then again …”

  “Some other memory, Jeff?”

  “I don’t actually know. The first time I saw Serena this morning, she walked into the refectory dressed for tennis. Dave got up as though for some sort of protest, and burst out, ‘Look, Serena, you’re not—?’ before he stopped. He might have meant anything. But it did cross my mind that it might have been, ‘You’re not going to play tennis, are you?’ or something of the sort. Which she didn’t.”

  “Come, this is capital!” said Mr. Rutledge, rubbing his hands. “I don’t refer to a cardiac weakness, naturally. The reference was to your own mental processes. For one of your wildly imaginative profession, Jeff, you are not altogether unobservant.”

  “Thanks for that saving ‘altogether.’ Have you anything else to tell me?”

  “Yes: the reason you are here.”

  Returning to the head of the table, Ira Rutledge sat down, opened the buff-colored folder, and considered some papers inside before closing it again.

  “Harald Hobart,” he presently continued, “did not expect some fatality to overtake his children; he merely sought to guard against contingencies. Now bear witness that poor Harald, erratic and unpredictable though we might call him, was most anxious to do what he believed to be the right thing! Should neither Dave nor Serena be alive on October 31st, 1927 …”

  “Yes?”

  “In that unlucky and unlikely event, Jeff, the entire estate is to be divided equally between yourself and Bernard Dinsmore’s sole surviving descendant: his grandson, the Rev. Horace Dinsmore of Boston.”

  The cigarette Jeff had just lighted slipped through his fingers and fell on the table. He snatched it up before it could inflict too much of a burn, and crushed it out among other stubs in the ashtray.

  “No, not on your life! You can’t mean that!”