“Don’t move, or I’ll stand on the trap and break your arm,” I panted. What else could I threaten? I couldn’t shoot, I couldn’t even fight. “Johnson!” I called.
And then I realized the thing that stayed with me for a month, the thing I can not think of even now without a shudder. The hand lay ice cold, strangely quiescent. Under my fingers, an artery was beating feebly. The wrist was as slender as - I held the hand to the light. Then I let it drop.
“Good Lord,” I muttered, and remained on my knees, staring at the spot where the hand had been. It was gone now: there was a faint rustle in the, darkness below, and then silence.
I held up my own hand in the starlight and stared at a long scratch in the palm. “A woman!” I said to myself stupidly. “By all that’s ridiculous, a woman!”
Johnson was striking matches below and swearing softly to himself. “How the devil do you get to the roof?” he called. “I think I’ve broken my nose.”
He found the ladder after a short search and stood at the bottom, looking up at me. “Well, I suppose you haven’t seen him?” he inquired. “There are enough darned cubbyholes in this house to hide a patrol wagon load of thieves.” He lighted a fresh match. “Hello, here’s another door!”
By the sound of his diminishing footsteps I supposed it was a rear staircase. He came up again in ten minutes or so, this time with the policeman.
“He’s gone, all right,” he said ruefully. “If you’d been attending to your business, Robison, you’d have watched the back door.”
“I’m not twins.” Robison was surly.
“Well,” I broke in, as cheerfully as I could, “if you are through with this jolly little affair, and can get down my ladder without having my housekeeper ring the burglar alarm, I have some good Monongahela whisky - eh?”
They came without a second invitation across the roof, and with them safely away from the house I breathed more freely. Down in the den I fulfilled my promise, which Johnson drank to the toast, “Coming through the rye.” He examined my gun rack with the eye of a connoisseur, and even when he was about to go he cast a loving eye back at the weapons.
“Ever been in the army?” he inquired.
“No,” I said with a bitterness that he noticed but failed to comprehend. “I’m a chocolate cream soldier - you don’t read Shaw, I suppose, Johnson?”
“Never heard of him,” the detective said indifferently. “Well, good night, Mr. Blakeley. Much obliged.” At the door he hesitated and coughed.
“I suppose you understand, Mr. Blakeley,” he said awkwardly, “that this - er - surveillance is all in the day’s work. I don’t like it, but it’s duty. Every man to his duty, sir.”
“Sometime when you are in an open mood, Johnson,” I returned, “you can explain why I am being watched at all.”
CHAPTER XV
THE CINEMATOGRAPH
On Monday I went out for the first time. I did not go to the office. I wanted to walk. I thought fresh air and exercise would drive away the blue devils that had me by the throat. McKnight insisted on a long day in his car, but I refused.
“I don’t know why not,” he said sulkily. “I can’t walk. I haven’t walked two consecutive blocks in three years. Automobiles have made legs mere ornaments - and some not even that. We could have Johnson out there chasing us over the country at five dollars an hour!”
“He can chase us just as well at five miles an hour,” I said. “But what gets me, McKnight, is why I am under surveillance at all. How do the police know I was accused of that thing?”
“The young lady who sent the flowers - she isn’t likely to talk, is she?”
“No. That is, I didn’t say it was a lady.” I groaned as I tried to get my splinted arm into a coat. “Anyhow, she didn’t tell,” I finished with conviction, and McKnight laughed.
It had rained in the early morning, and Mrs. Klopton predicted more showers. In fact, so firm was her belief and so determined her eye that I took the umbrella she proffered me.
“Never mind,” I said. “We can leave it next door; I have a story to tell you, Richey, and it requires proper setting.”
McKnight was puzzled, but he followed me obediently round to the kitchen entrance of the empty house. It was unlocked, as I had expected. While we climbed to the upper floor I retailed the events of the previous night.
“It’s the finest thing I ever heard of,” McKnight said, staring up at the ladder and the trap. “What a vaudeville skit it would make! Only you ought not to have put your foot on her hand. They don’t do it in the best circles.”
I wheeled on him impatiently.
“You don’t understand the situation at all, Richey!” I exclaimed. “What would you say if I tell you it was the hand of a lady? It was covered with rings.”
“A lady!” he repeated. “Why, I’d say it was a darned compromising situation, and that the less you say of it the better. Look here, Lawrence, I think you dreamed it. You’ve been in the house too much. I take it all back: you do need exercise.”
“She escaped through this door, I suppose,” I said as patiently as I could. “Evidently down the back staircase. We might as well go down that way.”
“According to the best precedents in these affairs, we should find a glove about here,” he said as we started down. But he was more impressed than he cared to own. He examined the dusty steps carefully, and once, when a bit of loose plaster fell just behind him, he started like a nervous woman.
“What I don’t understand is why you let her go,” he said, stopping once, puzzled. “You’re not usually quixotic.”
“When we get out into the country, Richey,” I replied gravely, “I am going to tell you another story, and if you don’t tell me I’m a fool and a craven, on the strength of it, you are no friend of mine.”
We stumbled through the twilight of the staircase into the blackness of the shuttered kitchen. The house had the moldy smell of closed buildings: even on that warm September morning it was damp and chilly. As we stepped into the sunshine McKnight gave a shiver.
“Now that we are out,” he said, “I don’t mind telling you that I have been there before. Do you remember the night you left, and, the face at the window?”
“When you speak of it - yes.”
“Well, I was curious about that thing,” he went on, as we started up the street, “and I went back. The street door was unlocked, and I examined every room. I was Mrs. Klopton’s ghost that carried a light, and clumb.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Only a clean place rubbed on the window opposite your dressing-room. Splendid view of an untidy interior. If that house is ever occupied, you’d better put stained glass in that window of yours.”
As we turned the corner I glanced back. Half a block behind us Johnson was moving our way slowly. When he saw me he stopped and proceeded with great deliberation to light a cigar. By hurrying, however, he caught the car that we took, and stood unobtrusively on the rear platform. He looked fagged, and absent-mindedly paid our fares, to McKnight’s delight.
“We will give him a run for his money,” he declared, as the car moved countryward. “Conductor, let us off at the muddiest lane you can find.”
At one o’clock, after a six-mile ramble, we entered a small country hotel. We had seen nothing of Johnson for a half hour. At that time he was a quarter of a mile behind us, and losing rapidly. Before we had finished our luncheon he staggered into the inn. One of his boots was under his arm, and his whole appearance was deplorable. He was coated with mud, streaked with perspiration, and he limped as he walked. He chose a table not far from us and ordered Scotch. Beyond touching his hat he paid no attention to us.
“I’m just getting my second wind,” McKnight declared. “How do you feel, Mr. Johnson? Six or eight miles more and we’ll all enjoy our dinners.” Johnson put down the glass he had raised to his lips without replying.