The mode of entrance had been simple — a jimmy applied to one of the windows opening on the front veranda. Apparently the thieves were familiar with the house and the habits of the family, knew that his chauffeur had taken his daughter away in his car to spend the summer with relatives and that the master being out for the evening, old Martha would be alone in the mansion. Naturally, they had unlocked the front door from the inside and their escape had been equally simple.
The well-kept lawns and graveled walks and drives revealed no sign of footprints. Even in the clump of rose bushes where he had fallen there were only a few marks of knees, heels and toes to mark the brief encounter. The deaf man, apparently, had run from there straight across the lawn to the main highway and vaulted the stone wall. But the other two had run at a tangent over the rising ground beyond which lay his vegetable garden. Perhaps there was something to be found there.
A detective might never have read the signs beyond the little hill, but to the physician they were as plain as if he had seen what had happened. Just over the brow, the slighter growth of grass had been torn as one of the men stumbled and fell. More than that, there were signs of a struggle between them and marks as though the rearward of the two was being dragged along with his toes scraping up the soil. Just beyond was a bit of cloth which proved to be the cleanly ripped off patch pocket of a cheap coat.
Beyond that the track divided. One man had run straight and true across the tilled vegetable garden to the board fence beyond and apparently made his way to the trolley line. But the other had blundered about, crashing into trees, fences and shrubbery and then run in a zigzag fashion, tumbled into a cress pond and finally crashed through a board fence and fallen sprawling in a lane.
“Crazed by fright,” a trained detective might have said.
“The third man is blind,” stated the doctor as he turned back to his library.
A careful search of the floor by daylight revealed no more of the pearls. A check of the remnant showed that the string had broken, scattering their matched treasures, and it seemed probable that the thieves in a hasty search had found only the largest, as though they had groped for them by the touch of their hands. Sadly, Dr. Porter placed the rifled case in his pocket, gathered up his scattered papers, kicked his expertly opened safe, and started by trolley for the city.
On the way in he heard several things that interested him, but kept his own counsel. He had fully decided upon his plan, which had for its object the recovery of the pearls rather than the punishment of the thieves. That could come later. He had formulated a plan which was based upon medical rather than detective science. He smiled grimly as he heard the gossip in the village, where the news of the robbery was not yet known. Corner loiterers were discussing the strange case of a blind man who had appeared at daybreak, scratched and bruised and with a broken cane, who told a tale of having been separated from his companion and forced to spend the night in the fields. From this rambling and conflicting gossip he managed to gain a sort of description of the man — rather a stout, unkempt kind of fellow, it seemed, wearing blue goggles and a short, heavy beard, sprinkled with gray.
There was other talk of a second stranger who had passed through the village twice on trolley cars, seemingly somewhat bewildered as to his whereabouts, who listened attentively to what was said in his hearing, but refused to answer any questions as to where he was going or wanted to go. Some said he was a foreigner who couldn’t understand English; others that he was merely one of those sullen fellows who never can be sociable.
Of him, too, there were meagre descriptions — slight, about thirty, smooth-shaven, dressed in a cheap suit with one pocket ripped from the side of the coat and the back of one hand scratched as though by thorns or finger-nails.
The trail plainly led to the city, and there Dr. Porter followed it, with his eye cocked for a blind man with blue goggles and a beard. In a crowded city, he fully realized, a deaf man can hide his lack of hearing, a dumb man his inability to speak, but a blind man cannot disguise his lack of sight.
This must be a case of the blind leading the blind. If he could locate the man with the blue goggles he felt sure he could find the others and through one of them his pearls. Determinedly he made his way to the poorer lodging-house section of the city, where his experience told him a blind man of this type, especially one separated from his pals, would be most likely to be found. Of course he might be “holed-up,” but that seemed improbable. No one had seen him in the house and who would suspect a blind man of being a burglar, even though he had been seen in the vicinity of a crime?
Nevertheless the first day’s search was fruitless. There were scores of blind men, but not the blind man — blind men of all sorts, but not one showing signs of the brand of viciousness that would lead him into safe-robbery — many blind men who were not blind, but the man he sought really was blind, he knew.
Toward evening he decided that if it were to be a long hunt he must have headquarters on the spot, and found one ready-made for him. At a free dispensary in the neighborhood he was gladly granted permission to open a private charity clinic for the treatment of those specialties in which he was famous. His explanation that he was looking for material for a series of new experiments was readily accepted and a private office, with sleeping room attached, speedily cleared for the distinguished physician. To it he brought down from his home some personal belongings, bedding and a few decorations, including two or three Chinese and Japanese bronzes that were one of his hobbies.
II
It was along about noon on the second day after that the series of events his logic demanded began to shape themselves. A tattered boy emerged from a lodging house leading an almost burly figure in beard and blue goggles, who tapped ahead of him with a long cane. About his neck were suspended the regulation tin cup and placard reading, “Please Help the Blind.” With almost a lump in his throat, Porter followed the pair across to one of the busy business streets, where the boy left his charge against the iron railing of a graveyard and darted away. Porter took up his stand nearby to await developments.
These were not long in coming. Coins for the cup were few. The figure was a trifle too burly and the expression a trifle too belligerent to awaken pity in many hearts among the hurrying throng, but finally a man appeared who deliberately halted and searched his pockets for a coin. Porter observed him carefully. He had noticed him as he crossed the street. The normal man jumps when an automobile horn honks just behind him. This man had not even started. He was a tall man, slightly stooped, smooth-shaven, with a long, pointed jaw, and when he spoke to the blind beggar it was in a low monotone which Porter could not catch, even though he edged closer in the effort.
Neither could he hear the beggar’s reply — but he could read it, for the blind man answered with his fingers, with his hand held high, almost under the other’s nose — answered emphatically and with warmth which swept beyond the limits of the silent code and required spoken oaths to express his feelings.
Porter’s hands gripped the railing behind him as he stood tense a few yards away from the strangely quarreling pair.
“Where’d I go?” shouted the fingers. “What’d you care where I went? You left me with that damn Dummy, didn’t you? You left me with him so he could ditch me. Didn’t have the heart to throw down an old pal like that yourself. Where’d you go? That’s what I want to know. Where’d you go and where’s my share of them pearls?”
The deaf man apparently replied at some length, but without changing his tone or position. He stood as though interested in some charitable quest, but his explanation fell upon ears as deaf as his own. It was discarded with a gesture of angry scorn.