From the sea, as we finally saw it, the place seemed the most inaccessible spot in the world. Standing high on a great cliff, the waves beat interminably on jagged rocks that formed its base. Always the spray seemed to dash halfway up this great 300-foot pedestal upon which the house stood. Down below was the little cove in which the canoes and the motorboats were stored, but even these had been dragged to the spot through the forest and the nearest really safe havens for watercraft were fifty miles south and in Barclay Sound beyond the Strait of Juan de Fuca far to the north.
It was heart-breaking work, but it had to be done. We quartered and criss-crossed that whole tangled section of primeval forest. We made trails through parts of it that not even a pheasant had ever seen, so thick was it. Ahead of us we drove Indian guides and Scandinavian axemen until they were reeling with weariness, wet with perspiration and soaked with the eternal dampness of these woods, and nothing could we find. Finally, absolute exhaustion drove us back to the “Aerie” to rest up, but principally we went there to collect our frazzled wits and think things over.
Naturally, we had made a complete search of the house — or as complete as we could. Stanwood had not been there at the time. He had pleaded important business in Seattle and as we had him constantly shadowed in the city, we were rather glad of his absence, but he came out while we were there the second time and with him along with us we went through the house again with a fine-toothed comb, to say nothing of flashlights, jimmies and other tools. We had said we were going to tear the whole house apart until we had solved the mystery. But we didn’t find anything.
The house itself was a beauty. Built all on one floor, with the exception of an observatory on the roof to give it a little touch of distinction, I imagine, it was apparently hewn out of solid logs from the little clearing behind it. Even the floors were of solid slabs of cedar and so was the woodwork with which the interior was finished.
From the rear, or the land side, you stepped into an entrance hall alongside the kitchen and from there into a great combined living- and dining-room that took up the whole center of the house. To the right were four or five bedrooms and to the left the private suite built for the personal use of the king. In front of this was a sort of sun-parlor and study and a private dining-room, and along the side a huge bedchamber with a massive bed in it made out of native cedar.
Most of the beds in the house were of the usual brass variety but the royal couch was a huge and most interesting affair. Stanwood confided to us that he had made it himself for Plainfield’s room, but the boss had done him the honor of selecting it for the king because it was such a fine example of the craftman’s skill. It was, indeed. We all had to take our hats off to Stanwood as a master at carpenter work.
He had a marvelous set of woodworking tools and he seemed to be more worried about them than about anything else as we searched the house, ruining the edge of one after another as we tested floors and walls and sought to pry up huge timbers with delicate chisels. We tapped and tested and sawed and bored until the house was pretty near a wreck. And still we could not find anything.
At last, as the best boatman in the party, I volunteered to make a search of the ocean front. We had done it before from the motorboat, keeping well off the rocks and searching the face of the cliff through binoculars. But I wanted to get in closer and finally persuaded an Indian to go with me in a canoe. It was plain he did not want to go. I had to talk real rough to him, but he knew about the federal prison on McNeil Island and he recognized my badge. He figured that the sea was safer than my anger and we started out.
It was a hair-raising trip, although we had selected the ebbing tide of a fairly calm day for our exploration. Even On the ebb the swells of the wide Pacific were torn into surf by great hidden rocks and dashed into foaming spray as they were broken by the claws of the cliff. We could only edge in a way, then turn and paddle for our lives — turn back and try it over again the same way.
Not much satisfaction in that sort of work, I soon decided, but the sea has always been my ally in duty along the coast and I had a hunch it would help us out in this baffling case and I was playing that hunch strong. Just as we edged in for the last time I saw something — a shadow, it might have been, or a discoloration in the cliff, but at any rate it was something — and dropped my glasses to seize my paddle to swing in closer, but before I could dip we were nearly capsized on a hidden rock and only the caution of the Indian, whose muscles had already been set for flight, saved us from death as the vision was snatched from my eyes.
IV
When I got back the other fellows listened politely enough but they were too busy with another angle of the case to take my fleeting vision very seriously. Brierly and Campbell were seated at the big table in the living-room with the notes and papers they had taken from their pockets before them. Stanwood was in his room and Corrigan was keeping watch on things outside, as one of us always did.
Brierly was talking, or rather thinking aloud, as he reviewed the facts we all knew and sought to find some hidden meaning in them.
“There was Adams,” he said, “the first one to drop out, Seattle shipbuilder, supposed to be a millionaire, bachelor and privileged to have brought this Miss Johnson here with him if he wanted to, I suppose. No discoverable reason for running away or committing suicide. No idiot would try to run away from here on foot anyway.
“The Johnson girl knows nothing about it or I’m a Dutchman. Says he went to the king’s room to go to bed, she heard him scream and the room was empty when she got there. Windows all closed — no other door. No one here who could run the car and after two days of it she went sort of off her head and tried to get out on foot.
“Then come Hunt and Terwilliger. They were here together and alone except for a Jap valet and chauffeur. No one knows what door they went through. The Jap says he had gone to his room over the garage after eating his supper and that they were gone in the morning. Certainly they left the car behind. Both were good friends, prosperous business men, happily married, out here, apparently, just for a little rest.
“Now we come to the boss’s friend. What happened to him? Successful lawyer, fine record, brilliant future, no troubles that we know of. Bit of a rounder, he was, they say, and I guess it’s true if that Kilmer girl came out here with him. Tried to find him, she says, after he vanished. Doesn’t remember where she last saw him, she says, but thinks it was some place inside the house here. Now what became of him?”
“What in hell became of any of them?” Campbell answered with a shrug of his shoulders.
We were silent for several minutes. Then Brierly shifted his position suddenly and hurriedly relighted his pipe — a sign that he had an idea, or at least thought he had.
“What business was Adams in?” he demanded of us.
“Shipbuilding, you idiot,” I answered, because he knew as well as I did.
“And what business were Hunt and Terwilliger in?” was his second question.
“Airplane spruce — what’s the idea?” I grunted in reply.
“And the boss’s friend. What was his game? Lawyer, wasn’t he, but what kind of clients did he have?”
That set Campbell and me to thinking. Who were his clients?
“Corporation lawyer, wasn’t he?” Brierly asked, eagerly. “Handled things in a legal way for big firms, gave advice to big manufacturers, didn’t he?”
We agreed that he did.
“Was he attorney for Adams’s shipyard?” Brierly went on. “He was. Here’s his name on the letterhead as one of the directors. He was general counsel for Hunt and Terwilliger’s lumber company, wasn’t he? You bet he was and a stockholder in it, too.