They piled into it and it shot away from the curb.
Clyde got the license number. That, and the fact that neither Snaper or Hooley had seen him, filled him with grim content. He had again established the
fact that the two blackmailers and the man in the brown beard were deadly enemies, bent on rubbing each other out for the privilege of preying on Arnold Dixon.
By trailing Snaper and Hooley, the identity and the motives of the man in the brown beard would be made clearer.
Clyde was still very much on the case.
CHAPTER VI
MR. TIMOTHY IS PUZZLED
WILLIAM TIMOTHY sat comfortably propped in a wide-armed chair with a soft pillow behind his back. Sunlight streamed through the curtained windows of his expensive Pelham Bay home. The house itself and the grounds surrounding it were
nowhere near as pretentious as were Arnold Dixon's five miles to the south along
the curving shore of the bay. Nevertheless, William Timothy had done moderately
well in his years of practice at law.
Clad in a silken dressing gown, with a bandaged foot propped on a stool in
front of him, Timothy smiled as he saw that the upward trend in the stock market
seemed to be firm and sustained. Suddenly, he gave a petulant groan and threw the newspaper aside. He reached out and felt his bandaged foot and ankle with wincing care. The foot seemed to be badly swollen.
Timothy shifted his position in the chair. He was taking a cigar from a beautiful copper humidor, when he heard a light step in the hall outside. A knock sounded at the door.
"Who is it?"
"It's Edith Allen, uncle! May I come in?"
The voice was eager. A moment later, a strikingly pretty girl entered the sunlit room.
Timothy beamed, held out his hand.
"Edith! Well, this is a surprise and a welcome one! What brings you all the way out here to see an old codger of a lawyer with a bad case of arthritis in his foot?"
Edith Allen didn't answer for a moment. Tall, slim, blue eyed, with hair almost the shade of the copper humidor on the sunlit table, Edith was the sort of girl to make even an old man's eyes crinkle appreciatively. She was the daughter of Timothy's dead sister. She had an excellent secretarial job in New York City.
Timothy was an excellent judge of expression. He saw instantly that the corners of Edith's red lips were tremulous. There was shadow in the depths of the lovely blue eyes.
"Is there anything wrong?" he asked, gently.
Her voice quivered. "Uncle, I had to see you. I'm - I'm frightened.
Dreadfully so!"
"Frightened?" He twisted sharply in his chair, unmindful of his bandaged foot. He gave her a steady, searching look. "Are you in danger of some kind, my
dear?"
"It's not danger," she said, slowly. "And it's not myself."
"Well, what is it?"
He could barely hear the name she named. "Bruce Dixon."
Her whole manner puzzled the lawyer. She fiddled with one of her gloves, avoided the searching scrutiny of her uncle.
"You love Bruce, don't you?" he said.
"Yes. I - I do."
"Are you worried because you think Bruce doesn't love you?"
"It's not that," she said, unsteadily.
Timothy laughed reassuringly.
"After all," he pointed out, "there's plenty of time for both of you romantic young colts to make up your minds. Bruce has only been home three months since his - er - trip."
"That's just it," Edith cried out. The flush had faded from her cheeks.
They were pale now. "Is he really Bruce? Oh, uncle, I'm so unhappy!"
TIMOTHY sat up stiffly. He sounded incredulous.
"Are you suggesting that you think Bruce Dixon is an impostor?"
"I don't know what to think," she whispered.
"I'm afraid I don't either. First you tell me that Bruce loves you and that you love him. Then you say in the next breath that you think he's a faker.
Why? You've known Bruce ever since he was a child - long before he left home after that unfortunate quarrel with his father. You grew up with Bruce."
"He seems so different," she said, faintly. "When he was a growing boy, he
was mean, selfish, with a nasty temper. We two, as children, used to fight like
cats and dogs. Then he went away. He was gone for nearly ten years. And when he
came back home, three months ago -"
"Is he so different from the Bruce you used to know?"
"Yes. He's kinder, more thoughtful. It seems a hateful thing to say, but he's been so - so sweet to me and to his father that I - I can't believe he's the same son. Then, suddenly, he changed again. For the last week or two, he's seemed terribly uneasy. He's broken three dates with me. He - he says he loves me, asks me to be patient and he'll explain later. Uncle, could he be a fraud?"
William Timothy laughed. The tension left his shrewd old face. He patted Edith's smooth hand with a gentle, protective gesture.
"You can take my word, he's the genuine Bruce Dixon," he said. "He might have fooled his father. But no fake could have misled me or Charles, the butler. Naturally, we were both suspicious when Bruce returned so ably after years of being away. So we made tests - adequate tests that no impostor could have passed successfully."
His voice hardened.
"We made him strip, examined him physically. And we put him through a memory test - Charles and I and his father - that no one but the real Bruce could possibly have passed. He even remembered things we had overlooked.
Pointed them out to us when we forgot to ask.
"No, my dear, you're being hysterical and imaginative. If Bruce is different - better, finer - it's simply because he's been tempered by life.
He's lost his ugly qualities by those years of rubbing against experience all ever the world."
Edith nodded. The haunted look left her blue eyes.
"You're right, uncle," she said, finally. "I'm glad I came to you. What I really wanted was to talk with you and be reassured. You've done that. I - I feel ashamed of myself!"
"Forget about it," Timothy advised. "If Bruce is worried and breaking dates with a pretty girl like you, there must be a reason. It's probably something trivial. I'll talk to him as deftly as I can approach the subject, and perhaps I can find out what's the matter. After all, I'm not a bad lawyer."
Edith cleaned forward, kissed him impulsively.
"You're a dear! I must be going now. Be very careful what you say to Bruce. I couldn't bear it if anything came between us, now!"
"Try breaking a date or two yourself. Maybe that will bring the boy to his
senses."
TIMOTHY sat for a long time after Edith had left. There was a puzzled frown on his forehead. He hadn't told Edith of the peculiar visits to Dixon's mansion of Hooley and Snaper. Could Bruce actually be in league with them?
Timothy lifted his bowed head.
Instantly, his eyes rounded with terror. He became very still in the wide-armed chair. He was staring at the dull muzzle of a pistol projecting from
the curtains of the rear doorway The gun was in a gloved hand and the face above
the hand and gun was rigid with menace.
The gunman was Joe Snaper.
"One yelp out of you, mister," Snaper breathed, in an ugly undertone,
"and
you'll get it without any noise, see?'
Timothy shuddered as he saw the gun was equipped with a silencer.
Snaper advanced cautiously with noiseless steps. Behind him came another man. Bert Hooley. Both were tense with a sullen rage that made their ordinarily
pasty faces as white as waxen masks.
"Don't kill me!" Timothy begged. "Take anything you want - but don't kill me."
"You dirty rat!" Snaper growled. "Don t try to pull that innocent stuff!