“If you will take a seat inside,” said he, “I will send you whatever you may desire for your comfort.”
“I think you know what that is,” I rejoined, at which he nodded again and left me, closing the door carefully behind him as he went.
The few minutes which elapsed before my quiet was disturbed were spent by me in thinking. There were many little questions to settle in my own mind, for which a spell of uninterrupted contemplation was necessary. One of these was whether, in the event of finding the police amenable, I should reveal or hide from these children of my old friend, the fact that it was through my instrumentality that their nefarious secret had been discovered. I wished—nay, I hoped—that the affair might be so concluded, but the possibility of doing so seemed so problematical, especially since Mr. Gryce was not on hand to direct matters, that I spent very little time on the subject, deep and important as it was to all concerned.
What most occupied me was the necessity of telling my story in such a way as to exonerate the girls as much as possible. They were mistaken in their devotion and most unhappy in the exercise of it, but they were not innately wicked and should not be made to appear so. Perhaps the one thing for which I should yet have the best cause to congratulate myself, would be the opportunity I had gained of giving to their connection with this affair its true and proper coloring.
I was still dwelling on this thought when there came a knock at my door which advised me that the visitor I expected had arrived. To open and admit him was the work of a moment, but it took more than a moment for me to overcome my surprise at seeing in my visitor no lesser person than Mr. Gryce himself, who in our parting interview had assured me he was too old and too feeble for further detective work and must therefore delegate it to me.
“Ah!” I ejaculated slowly. “It is you, is it? Well, I am not surprised.” (I shouldn’t have been.) “When you say you are old, you mean old enough to pull the wool over other people’s eyes, and when you say you are lame, you mean that you only halt long enough to let others get far enough ahead for them not to see how fast you hobble up behind them. But do not think I am not happy to see you. I am, Mr. Gryce, for I have discovered the secret of Lost Man’s Lane, and find it somewhat too heavy a one for my own handling.”
To my surprise he showed this was more than he expected.
“You have?” he asked, with just that shade of incredulity which it is so tantalizing to encounter. “Then I suppose congratulations are in order. But are you sure, Miss Butterworth, that you really have obtained a clue to the many strange and fearful disappearances which have given to this lane its name?”
“Quite sure,” I returned, nettled. “Why do you doubt it? Because I have kept so quiet and not sounded one note of alarm from my whistle?”
“No,” said he. “Knowing your self-restraint so well, I cannot say that that is my reason.”
“What is it, then?” I urged.
“Well,” said he, “my real reason for doubting if you have been quite as successful as you think, is that we ourselves have come upon a clue about which there can be no question. Can you say the same of yours?”
You will expect my answer to have been a decided “Yes,” uttered with all the positiveness of which you know me capable. But for some reason, perhaps because of the strange influence this man’s personality exercises upon all—yes, all—who do not absolutely steel themselves against him, I faltered just long enough for him to cry:
“I thought not. The clue is outside the Knollys house, not in it, Miss Butterworth, for which, of course, you are not to be blamed or your services scorned. I have no doubt they have been invaluable in unearthing a secret, if not the secret.”
“Thank you,” was my quiet retort. I thought his presumption beyond all bounds, and would at that moment have felt justified in snapping my fingers at the clue he boasted of, had it not been for one thing. What that thing is I am not ready yet to state.
“You and I have come to issue over such matters before,” said he, “and therefore need not take too much account of the feelings it is likely to engender. I will merely state that my clue points to Mother Jane, and ask if you have found in the visit she paid at the house last night anything which would go to strengthen the suspicion against her.”
“Perhaps,” said I, in a state of disdain that was more or less unpardonable, considering that my own suspicions previous to my discovery of the real tragedy enacted under my eyes at the Knollys mansion had played more or less about this old crone.
“Only perhaps?” He smiled, with a playful forbearance for which I should have been truly grateful to him.
“She was there for no good purpose,” said I, “and yet if you had not characterized her as the person most responsible for the crimes we are here to investigate, I should have said from all that I then saw of her conduct that she acted as a supernumerary rather than principal, and that it is to me you should look for the correct clue to the criminal, notwithstanding your confidence in your own theories and my momentary hesitation to assert that there was no possible defect in mine.”
“Miss Butterworth,”—I thought he looked a trifle shaken—“what did Mother Jane do in that closely shuttered house last night?”
Mother Jane? Well! Did he think I was going to introduce my tragic story by telling what Mother Jane did? I must have looked irritated, and indeed I think I had cause.
“Mother Jane ate her supper,” I snapped out angrily. “Miss Knollys gave it to her. Then she helped a little with a piece of work they had on hand. It will not interest you to know what. It has nothing to do with your clue, I warrant.”
He did not get angry. He has an admirable temper, has Mr. Gryce, but he did stop a minute to consider.
“Miss Butterworth,” he said at last, “most detectives would have held their peace and let you go on with what you have to tell without a hint that it was either unwelcome or unnecessary, but I have consideration for persons’ feelings and for persons’ secrets so long as they do not come in collision with the law, and my opinion is, or was when I entered this room, that such discoveries as you have made at your old friend’s house” (Why need he emphasize friend—did he think I forgot for a moment that Althea was my friend?) “were connected rather with some family difficulty than with the dreadful affair we are considering. That is why I hastened to tell you that we had found a clue to the disappearances in Mother Jane’s cottage. I wished to save the Misses Knollys.”
If he had thought to mollify me by this assertion, he did not succeed. He saw it and made haste to say:
“Not that I doubt your consideration for them, only the justness of your conclusions.”
“You have doubted those before and with more reason,” I replied, “yet they were not altogether false.”
“That I am willing to acknowledge, so willing that if you still think after I have told my story that yours is apropos, then I will listen to it only too eagerly. My object is to find the real criminal in this matter. I say at the present moment it is Mother Jane.”
“God grant you are right,” I said, influenced in spite of myself by the calm assurance of his manner. “If she was at the house night before last between eleven and twelve, then perhaps she is all you think her. But I see no reason to believe it—not yet, Mr. Gryce. Supposing you give me one. It would be better than all this controversy. One small reason, Mr. Gryce, as good as”—I did not say what, but the fillip it gave to his intention stood me in good stead, for he launched immediately into the matter with no further play upon my curiosity, which was now, as you can believe, thoroughly aroused, though I could not believe that anything he had to bring up against Mother Jane could for a moment stand against the death and the burial I had witnessed in Miss Knollys’ house during the two previous nights.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE ENIGMA OF NUMBERS
“When in our first conversation on this topic I told you that Mother Jane was not to be considered in this matter, I meant she was not to be considered by yo
u. She was a subject to be handled by the police, and we have handled her. Yesterday afternoon I made a search of her cabin.” Here Mr. Gryce paused and eyed me quizzically. He sometimes does eye me, which same I cannot regard as a compliment, considering how fond he is of concentrating all his wisdom upon small and insignificant objects.
“I wonder,” said he, “what you would have done in such a search as that. It was no common one, I assure you. There are not many hiding-places between Mother Jane’s four walls.”
I felt myself begin to tremble, with eagerness, of course.
“I wish I had been given the opportunity,” said I—“that is, if anything was to be found there.”
He seemed to be in a sympathetic mood toward me, or perhaps—and this is the likelier supposition—he had a minute of leisure and thought he could afford to give himself a little quiet amusement. However that was, he answered me by saying:
“The opportunity is not lost. You have been in her cabin and have noted, I have no doubt, its extreme simplicity. Yet it contains, or rather did contain up till last night, distinct evidences of more than one of the crimes which have been perpetrated in this lane.”
“Good! And you want me to guess where you found them? Well, it’s not fair.”
“Ah, and why not?”
“Because you probably did not find them on your first attempt. You had time to look about. I am asked to guess at once and without second trial what I warrant it took you several trials to determine.”
He could not help but laugh. “And why do you think it took me several trials?”
“Because there is more than one thing in that room made up of parts.”
“Parts?” He attempted to look puzzled, but I would not have it.
“You know what I mean,” I declared; “seventy parts, twenty-eight, or whatever the numbers are she so constantly mutters.”
His admiration was unqualified and sincere.
“Miss Butterworth,” said he, “you are a woman after my own heart. How came you to think that her mutterings had anything to do with a hiding-place?”
“Because it did not have anything to do with the amount of money I gave her. When I handed her twenty-five cents, she cried, ‘Seventy, twenty-eight, and now ten!’ Ten what? Not ten cents or ten dollars, but ten—”
“Why do you stop?”
“I do not want to risk my reputation on a guess. There is a quilt on the bed made up of innumerable pieces. There is a floor of neatly laid brick—”
“And there is a Bible on the stand whose leaves number many over seventy.”
“Ah, it was in the Bible you found—”
His smile put mine quite to shame.
“I must acknowledge,” he cried, “that I looked in the Bible, but I found nothing there beyond what we all seek when we open its sacred covers. Shall I tell my story?”
He was evidently bursting with pride. You would think that after a half-century of just such successes, a man would take his honors more quietly. But pshaw! Human nature is just the same in the old as in the young. He was no more tired of compliment or of awakening the astonishment of those he confided in, than when he aroused the admiration of the force by his triumphant handling of the Leavenworth Case. Of course in presence of such weakness I could do nothing less than give him a sympathetic ear. I may be old myself some day. Besides, his story was likely to prove more or less interesting.
“Tell your story?” I repeated. “Don’t you see that I am”—I was going to say “on pins and needles till I hear it,” but the expression is too vulgar for a woman of my breeding; so I altered the words, happily before they were spoken, into “that I am in a state of the liveliest curiosity concerning the whole matter? Tell your story, of course.”
“Well, Miss Butterworth, if I do, it is because I know you will appreciate it. You, like myself, placed weight upon the numbers she is forever running over, and you, like myself, have conceived the possibility of these numbers having reference to something in the one room she inhabits. At first glance the extreme bareness of the spot seemed to promise nothing to my curiosity. I looked at the floor and detected no signs of any disturbance having taken place in its symmetrically laid bricks for years. Yet I counted up to seventy one way and twenty-eight the other, and marking the brick thus selected, began to pry it out. It came with difficulty and showed me nothing underneath but green mold and innumerable frightened insects. Then I counted the bricks the other way, but nothing came of it. The floor does not appear to have been disturbed for years. Turning my attention away from the floor, I began upon the quilt. This was a worse job than the other, and it took me an hour to rip apart the block I settled upon as the suspicious one, but my labor was entirely wasted. There was no hidden treasure in the quilt. Then I searched the walls, using the measurements seventy by twenty-eight, but no result followed these endeavors, and—well, what do you think I did then?”
“You will tell me,” I said, “if I give you one more minute to do it in.”
“Very well,” said he. “I see you do not know, madam. Having searched below and around me, I next turned my attention overhead. Do you remember the strings and strings of dried vegetables that decorate the beams above?”
“I do,” I replied, not stinting any of the astonishment I really felt.
“Well, I began to count them next, and when I reached the seventieth onion from the open doorway, I crushed it between my fingers and—these fell out, madam—worthless trinkets, as you will immediately see, but—”
“Well, well,” I urged.
“They have been identified as belonging to the peddler who was one of the victims in whose fate we are interested.”
“Ah, ah!” I ejaculated, somewhat amazed, I own. “And number twenty-eight?”
“That was a carrot, and it held a really valuable ring—a ruby surrounded by diamonds. If you remember, I once spoke to you of this ring. It was the property of young Mr. Chittenden and worn by him while he was in this village. He disappeared on his way to the railway station, having taken, as many can vouch, the short detour by Lost Man’s Lane, which would lead him directly by Mother Jane’s cottage.”
“You thrill me,” said I, keeping down with admirable self-possession my own thoughts in regard to this matter. “And what of No. ten, beyond which she said she could not count?”
“In ten was your twenty-five-cent piece, and in various other vegetables, small coins, whose value taken collectively would not amount to a dollar. The only numbers which seemed to make any impression on her mind were those connected with these crimes. Very good evidence, Miss Butterworth, that Mother Jane holds the clue to this matter, even if she is not responsible for the death of the individuals represented by this property.”
“Certainly,” I acquiesced, “and if you examined her after her return from the Knollys mansion last night you would probably have found upon her some similar evidence of her complicity in the last crime of this terrible series. It would needs have been small, as Silly Rufus neither indulged in the brass trinkets sold by the old peddler nor the real jewelry of a well-to-do man like Mr. Chittenden.”
“Silly Rufus?”
“He was the last to disappear from these parts, was he not?”
“Yes, madam.”
“And as such, should have left some clue to his fate in the hands of this old crone, if her motive in removing him was, as you seem to think, entirely that of gain.”
“I did not say it was entirely so. Silly Rufus would be the last person any one, even such a non compos mentis as Mother Jane, would destroy for hope of gain.”
“But what other motive could she have? And, Mr. Gryce, where could she bestow the bodies of so many unfortunate victims, even if by her great strength she could succeed in killing them?”
“There you have me,” said he. “We have not been able as yet to unearth any bodies. Have you?”
“No,” said I, with some little show of triumph showing through my disdain, “but I can show you where to unearth one
.”
He should have been startled, profoundly startled. Why wasn’t he? I asked this of myself over and over in the one instant he weighed his words before answering.
“You have made some definite discoveries, then,” he declared. “You have come across a grave or a mound which you have taken for a grave.”
I shook my head.
“No mound,” said I. Why should I not play for an instant or more with his curiosity? He had with mine.
“Ah, then, why do you talk of unearthing? No one has told you where you can lay hand on Silly Rufus’ body, I take it.”
“No,” said I. “The Knollys house is not inclined to give up its secrets.”
He started, glancing almost remorsefully first at the tip, then at the head of the cane he was balancing in his hand.
“It’s too bad,” he muttered, “but you’ve been led astray, Miss Butterworth—excusably, I acknowledge, quite excusably, but yet in a way to give you quite wrong conclusions. The secret of the Knollys house—But wait a moment. Then you were not locked up in your room last night?”
“Scarcely,” I returned, wavering between the doubts he had awakened by his first sentence and the surprise which his last could not fail to give me.
“I might have known they would not be likely to catch you in a trap,” he remarked. “So you were up and in the halls?”
“I was up,” I acknowledged, “and in the halls. May I ask where you were?”
He paid no heed to the last sentence. “This complicates matters,” said he, “and yet perhaps it is as well. I understand you now, and in a few minutes you will understand me. You thought it was Silly Rufus who was buried last night. That was rather an awful thought, Miss Butterworth. I wonder, with that in your mind, you look as well as you do this morning, madam. Truly you are a wonderful woman—a very wonderful woman.”
“A truce to compliments,” I begged. “If you know as much as your words imply of what went on in that ill-omened house last night, you ought to show some degree of emotion yourself, for if it was not Silly Rufus who was laid away under the Flower Parlor, who, then, was it? No one for whom tears could openly be shed or of whose death public acknowledgment could be made, or we would not be sitting here talking away at cross purposes the morning after his burial.”
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 47
