The noise brought more people to the scene. Bellew’s two sons dashed downstairs. Other servants arrived.
The door went down under added blows. The rescuers entered to see the millionaire dead upon the floor. The sight of the telephone brought a warning from one of the dead man’s sons.
“Don’t touch the telephone! I think father has been electrocuted.”
The warning was heeded. A servant was dispatched to another house to call for aid. One of Bellew’s sons and Barcomb alone remained within the room. The butler’s solemn face seemed sad. Not for one instant did it reveal the man’s true emotions.
For Barcomb, agent of The Death Giver, had put the written threat into execution. Stationed in Bellew’s home, he had been in readiness to bear out the terms of the message which had arrived this morning.
More than that, Barcomb had destroyed the one important item of evidence: the letter which explained the cryptic postcards and also set forth The Death Giver’s threat.
Let the police investigate! Once more they would find the victim of what appeared to be no more than an unfortunate accident!
CHAPTER IV. CARDONA SEES NOTHING
DETECTIVE JOE CARDONA was pacing the platform at Felswood station. It was eight thirty-five, and about a dozen commuters were present. Cardona noticed a man stepping from a taxicab, and recognized the nervous individual with the Vandyke beard. Yesterday, Cardona remembered, the man had driven up in his own car. Today, he had evidently decided to leave the sedan at home.
Detectives were on duty as before; three minutes later, Cardona saw the red cars of the local swinging around the bend. The train pulled into the station on time. The commuters walked aboard. Cardona hurried up to the conductor.
“We’ll go through the train,” said the detective. “Let’s find out if anything else has happened.”
The search was made swiftly, but with precision. It brought a smile of relief to Cardona’s tense face.
In no car — particularly in the third — was there any sign of a victimized passenger. Cardona met Mayhew on the platform, and arranged to have the detective sergeant report back from the next telephone.
The train pulled out several minutes later. Cardona waited in the little station until the telephone bell rang.
He listened to Mayhew’s voice.
“Everything all right,” reported Mayhew. “I’m at Gridley, the next stop. Looked through the cars on the way. The train has gone on. I’m coming back.”
“O.K.”
Fifteen minutes later, Mayhew arrived on an eastbound train. He joined Joe Cardona on the other platform. Cardona shrugged his shoulders. This morning’s investigation was satisfactory to the extent that it had brought no new death; but it had not given the slightest clew to the previous crimes.
The telephone bell rang in the station. Cardona went to answer it. He was surprised to hear the voice of Inspector Klein. The detective hastened to report that nothing had occurred at Felswood.
“All right,” came Klein’s gruff voice. “That’s good, Joe — good because there’s been a break in these mysterious deaths. I’ve got another job for you. Up the line at a place called Belgrade. A big manufacturer named Henry Bellew was killed by an electric shock while telephoning. Run out there and see about it. Send Mayhew in here.”
IT was nearly an hour later when Joe Cardona arrived at Henry Bellew’s home. He found the people there anxiously awaiting his arrival. A telephone inspector and two electricians were present. Cardona made an efficient study of the situation, and told the electricians to go to work.
While Cardona was talking to the Bellews, a man entered the house, and the detective recognized Clyde Burke, reporter from the New York Classic. Cardona and Burke were good friends despite the detective’s recent antagonism toward journalists. Cardona greeted Burke with a sour grin.
“Looking for a story, eh?” questioned the detective. “Too bad there wasn’t one at Felswood. Well, stick around, Burke. You’ll get the details when we find them.”
The details came nearly an hour later.
The electricians, after tearing up the baseboard outside of the study, discovered the cause of Henry Bellew’s death. The switch used to disconnect the telephone bell was loose; it was close to a wire that brought electric-power current into the house.
The turning of the bell switch had brought the connection which had sent a terrific voltage over the telephone wire. The telephone, itself, was a faulty instrument. Bellew’s death was one of those rare occurrences which come from mistakes in wiring.
“The way I figure it,” declared the telephone inspector, “is that some one turned the cut-off for the bell once too often. The result was that when Mr. Bellew went to telephone, he took the shock when he picked up the instrument.”
Joe Cardona immediately began to question the members of the household. Most of them had forgotten the switch on the baseboard. Both this switch and the one upstairs had been installed while the family was away. Only Barcomb recalled that Henry Bellew had, on occasion, turned the switch.
“The master was in the study last night,” explained Barcomb, in a methodical tone. “He said that he did not wish to be disturbed. I fancy, sir, that he may have turned the switch before he went into the study.”
The explanation sounded logical.
Cardona also learned that Henry Bellew often went in the study in the morning, it being Barcomb’s duty to call him at a set time. Contrasted with the strange deaths that had occurred at Felswood, this tragedy was both a let-down and a relief to Joe Cardona.
Ordinarily suspicious of crime in every commonplace accident, Cardona was in no mood to make an unsolved mystery out of Henry Bellew’s death, especially where the element of accident seemed so obvious.
If some person had desired to kill off the millionaire, it was unlikely that such a roundabout method would have been employed, especially as the switch for the telephone bell had been installed a few months before.
Nevertheless, Cardona was exacting. He obtained detailed statements from each member of the household. These statements were the final factor that convinced Cardona the death was accidental.
Barcomb, in his story, stated that Henry Bellew had left the dining room; that a few minutes later, Mrs. Bellew had called from the stairway.
The butler was convincing; and Mrs. Bellew’s statement substantiated his words. Here, by curious irony, the one danger that Barcomb had encountered when scurrying back to the dining room now could be used to support his statement.
Barcomb had eluded Mrs. Bellew’s observation, and the woman’s story indicated that she had been on the stairway at the moment when the death had occurred.
The fact that no one was in the hallway near the switch was all that Cardona needed for his final decision.
The detective eliminated members of the household, and merely decided to check up on Henry Bellew’s affairs. He summoned Barcomb into the study and began an examination of the desk.
IN one drawer, Cardona came across odd items of correspondence. He examined several letters, and found them to be of no apparent consequence.
Beside the letters, he discovered three postcards. He turned these over and noticed that they each bore a series of jumbled words which made no sense. The detective’s curiosity was aroused; then it waned momentarily. Cardona hesitated, pondering whether to drop the cards in the drawer or to study them further. It was at that moment that Barcomb spoke:
“Mr. Bellew kept important correspondence in the center drawer of the desk, sir.”
The suggestion was sufficient. Cardona dropped the postcards, and opened the center drawer. Here he found business letters, and a thorough examination of them indicated that all had been well with Bellew’s financial affairs.