Trent’s Talk With the Former Insane Asylum Head Reveals an Amazing Clew to the Addison Case
John Addison, Wall Street financier, tells his daughter Cynthia to send the servants to bed and stay indoors. Later that night Cynthia and Roger Ellis, Addison’s secretary and her fiancé, hear the dragging step of Hubbard, the lame butler.
Ellis investigates at once, but finds Hubbard in his room, at least the butler’s voice answers his knock.
The next morning Addison is found on the floor of the library, his face horribly battered. He is not dead, and explains it was an accident. Hubbard has a black eye which he sullenly refuses to discuss. Inspector Edwards, who has been called, arrests and releases both Ellis and Hubbard. Mr. Jessup, an invalid; Nurse Gregory, Mrs. Addison and the other servants are all questioned. It was learned that Ellis had received a mysterious blackmail call from a woman the day before the attack, a call which he declines to explain.
Anthony Trent, millionaire sportsman, takes an interest in the case. Addison hires a corps of private detectives to guard his place. Trent smuggles his way into the house to continue his investigations. Addison and his wife quarrel, she accuses him of hitting the faithful Hubbard, and then replacing him with a detective-butler. He denies hitting the butler, saying it was the same person who attacked him. Night before Addison planned to return to New York he is again attacked and kidnaped from the locked library room. Trent visits a Robert Camplyn to run down a new clew.
Ellis tells Trent that he believes foreign powers are after financial secrets held by Addison, to use in swaying the stock market. Trent confides in Ellis, confessing that he was the fake Mr. Jessup outside the door of the library the night Addison disappeared, and he then demonstrates to all in the house that he can escape from the locked library. Trent learns from Mrs. Colton, Addison’s first wife, that John Addison’s cousin, Marcus North, is insane and his whereabouts unknown. Trent also learns from Hubbard that a fist greeted his queries at the library door the night of the first attack.
Chapter XII
Marcus North’s “Past”
When Anthony Trent left Dartmouth for New York and the newspaper game he was fortunate in having as city editor a famous journalist named Clarke, who in those Park Row days was used to imbibe constant stimulant in the alluring bars of the neighborhood.
It was as a cub reporter under Clarke that Trent covered police headquarters and came into touch with crime. Later, when Clarke fell from his position he and his wife lived in the same boarding house as Trent. Just before the war, when Trent sailed on the Leviathan for France, he bought an old house in the Chelsea district and installed Mrs. Clarke and the boarding house proprietress as joint owners. It was a gift from one who did not expect to return.
Trent had a definite use for Clarke. He had an extraordinarily retentive memory for sensational front page cases. More than once Clarke’s card-index system had saved him months of research. Trent had not seen him since the Deal Beach case. At that time Clarke, raving at prohibition, was engaged in distilling his own poisons. But all the toxins that live in imaged alcohol had taken their toll of him and for a time he was near death. Thereafter he dared not try strong drink, and Trent, on his way to see him after leaving Mrs. Colton, wondered in what condition he would find him.
The exterior of the house surprised him. Where there had been one quiet red-brick house there were two united by a basement restaurant that seemed to be doing good business.
The small upper room in which he had last seen Clarke was now as large again. The wall between his room and the corresponding chamber in the new house had been removed. Clarke was no longer thin. He seemed to be better than he had been for years. He looked at his visitor with affection. He used to say Trent could have been managing editor of any paper in the world if he had stuck to it. But Trent had adventured into fiction instead.
Mr. Clarke, who had formerly sung so loudly the praises of the Demon Rum now chanted pastorals that had to do with milk. He liked to think that two cows passed contented lives so that their lacteal fluid should be his.
“My boy,” he said, “if you want a real nightcap, try a pint of hot milk before you go to bed with a pinch of salt in it and ten drops of Worcester sauce. Look at me.” He tapped his head, “And the old brain still functions. I keep up with my card-index. It was mighty good of you to have all those out-of-town papers sent me. I’m working on a big thing. I’m getting up an annual so that you’ll be able to see what New York, or Detroit or Kansas City or any big town were interested in on any day of the year you like to mention. Front page stuff is all I’ve time for. Take February 15 for example. Chicago is talking about the assassination of the Moran gang in a garage by rivals pretending to be police officers.” He picked up another card. “Los Angeles is still interested in the Keyes expose.
But why the happy occasion? It wasn’t to look at your old milk-fed city editor. You only come when you want something.” But there was no reproach in his tone. He knew of Trent’s innumerable activities and his infrequent visits to New York.
“It’s the Addison case,” Trent told him. “It was one of those things that didn’t ring true to me and as I had friends near their summer place I took the opportunity to meet the Addisons.”
“A fine man, Addison,” Clarke commented. “I’ve no dirt on him.”
“He never would meet me,” Trent said, “although at first when he heard I wanted to make sketches of his house he sent cordial messages. In the end I felt I was being asked to go.”
Clarke was again the astute city editor. “What have you found out?” he demanded.
“Practically nothing. I’ve just left his first wife. Mrs. Sidney Colton.”
“Messalina,” Clarke cried, “Faustina, Catherine of Russia, Cleopatra and what have you. My boy, she’s high voltage danger.”
“I felt it,” Trent admitted. “In the end I permitted myself to offend her. She has emerald eyes, Clarke, and a caressing voice and not a shred of conscience. It is better to be her enemy than her friend.”
“She gets that way honestly,” Clarke said. “Her father was about the gayest rip this old town had in the mauve decade. I could have told you all about her — and him. I remember now that Addison did marry her.” Clarke closed his eyes. His old pupil knew that in a few moments the front page of some forgotten paper would be called into being for Clarke to glance at. After that all the details would be clear. “I wonder how I forgot that,” Clarke said. “Sometimes I think milk is too soothing.”
“What I want to know about is Marcus North, whose divorced wife Addison married.”
“Sure I remember Marcus,” Clarke said. “Funny how the vicious remain in the memory when the good sort of fade out. There was a rip-snorter for you,” Clarke cried. “A handsome devil and if he had any good in him nothing ever brought it out. The divorce case was a famous one. Weren’t you on the Leader then?”
“Before my time. Why was he found insane?”
“To keep him from the chair. In those days we didn’t know how to pull the Remus stuff successfully. He tried to kill John Addison for the beating he took from him and actually did beat up a valet, who testified against him, so badly that he died from the effects.”
“How did I miss that?” Trent cried eagerly. “It must have happened while I was in Europe on my first trip and didn’t take any interest at all in crime.” He frowned. “Why didn’t that fool butler tell me?”
“I guess Marcus is dead by now,” Clarke said, “and people have too much to attend to without rattling skeletons. My files don’t go back that far, but you can read about it in the public library, Forty-second Street and the Avenue. You can bet the Addisons and Norths don’t want it known. Not that they have anything to fear, but it wouldn’t soothe the second Mrs. Addison.”