For a long time he stayed like that. Any sound in the room would subtly vibrate the windowpane, which would in turn impart tiny vibrations to his jaws.
There was no sound; so Wilson raised his head and looked in.
There was a glimpse of a fireplace flanked by books, several leather chairs almost like club chairs, a small table on wheels with luncheon things on it — scraps of food told that lunch had just been completed — and paneling around the walls.
There was no one in the room.
Wilson bent his wire again and thrust it between the sashes in the middle, first on one side and then the other. That there would be a burglar catch on this first-floor window, he assumed.
His wire caught the tiny obstruction, turned in his hand as he slowly raised the lower sash, and held the catch while the window slid by.
He stepped into the room, thanking his stars that there wasn’t a burglar alarm as well as a catch; or, if there was one, that it was turned off in the daytime.
He started toward the door opposite the window, and then stopped, motionless. There were steps out there, and they were nearing that door!
Wilson could have gotten to the window and out, but he didn’t want to do that. He stared swiftly around.
The fireplace would just about hold him, and it had a fancy tip-screen in front of it of inlaid wood. He raced to it, crammed himself in with the andirons, and drew the big wooden plaque back in front of the fender.
He’d just gotten his hand away from the base of the screen when the door opened and a servant came in. He went to the wheeled table, obviously having come in to get the luncheon things.
He was a middle-aged man of the professional-servant type, looking rather sour of face. He started to wheel the table toward the door, when it opened again and another man poked his head in.
This was not a servant. At least, if he was, he did not look it. He looked like an old-time rumrunner. Or perhaps a modern one; since rumrunning is a long way from being stopped, in spite of the death of prohibition.
The man had a gun in his hand, and his not-too-intelligent face was viciously pugnacious. He handled the gun quite expertly.
“Oh!” he said, and the gun disappeared. “It’s you, huh? I heard a noise in here, and that dimwit cook said she thought she’d got a gander at some guy comin’ over the fence; so I shoved in to investigate.”
“Yes, it is I,” said the servant with dignity. “That dimwit cook happens to be my wife.” The servant’s face twisted with fury. “How much longer are you, and the rest like you, going to stay in this house? And why are you here, anyhow?”
The gunman shrugged, grinning.
“I wouldn’t know, pal. Your boss is playin’ some kind of a game where he thinks he needs guys like us. Ask him the questions you just asked me. It might get you more dope than I can give you.”
He went out, swaggering. The servant, still fuming, took the wheeled table away. And Wilson came from the fireplace, with his pants pretty laden with ashes.
Wilson had noted the servant’s voice particularly, for he had an experiment in mind that might require the man’s intonation.
He resumed his interrupted journey to the front hall, on which this room was located. He peered from the crack between door and jamb, saw the coast was clear, and started along the hall toward stairs. And he had another bad break.
There was a phone on a small table near the stairs. And it began to ring.
Wilson looked around for another hiding place, and didn’t see any save the partly opened doorway from which he had just come. He ducked back to it, but first lifted the phone off its cradle. The ringing stopped.
For quite a while there was silence. Wilson’s luck was in. He had gambled on the fact that in a house with many around, everyone waits for someone else to answer a phone. And he had won.
He went out, put the phone back on its cradle, and jumped as a voice came from the head of the stairs.
“What was the call, Baker?”
Wilson kept the voice of the servant firmly in mind.
“I don’t know, sir.” It was quite a creditable imitation. “The connection was broken almost as soon as I took up the phone, sir.”
“Oh!”
Sweat stood out a little on Cole’s high forehead. He thought this was Beall himself; he had heard the man talk several times in his trailing. If Beall stepped close enough to the head of the stairs to see who was impersonating the servant, Baker, and if he then called his tough-looking bodyguard—
But tight as the squeeze was, Wilson couldn’t resist trying an experiment that popped into his mind.
“I think, sir, it might have been Mr. Farquar,” he called. “It sounded a bit like his voice — the few words I heard.”
“Oh!” This was a different “Oh” from the first.
Wilson made sounds with his feet as if he were going down the hall toward the kitchen in the rear. Instead, he went back to the room he first entered. And he got a bite from his clever bait-casting.
Quite a while passed; then there were furtive steps on the stairs. There was a dialing sound, then Beall’s voice out there at the phone.
“Hello. Farquar? You know who this is, I think. I called to tell you something, and I’m going to tell you just once, so don’t interrupt and don’t miss any of it.”
Beall’s voice was as harsh as sandstone, though like his steps, it was made furtive so no one in the house would hear.
“You have gotten the aid of the man called Richard Benson. I want you to stop that. Do you understand? I want you to call off all investigation instantly. If you do not, I will at once turn over to the police the evidence I have against you on a certain matter very relevant to your safety.”
There was a click as Beall hung up. And Wilson’s black eyes blazed. After that threatening little conversation, there was no longer much doubt as to Beall’s guilt! And now for the second trick — the one Cole had had in mind when he made such a careful note of the servant’s voice.
He went swiftly to the window.
“Mr. Beall!” he called, in Baker’s tone. “Quick! Men are coming up the drive! A lot of them! I…”
He let his voice die as he leaped out of the window. Then he crouched just under the sill.
There were pounding, frantic steps in the room. He ventured to peer in. Beall had galloped in there and was fussing frenziedly with a section of paneling. It was that paneling that had given Wilson the hunch that this would be the room where things would be hidden. Nothing like paneling for concealing things. And again he had been right.
Beall fairly ripped a hidden door out from the paneling, with the false alarm still ringing in his ears. He took something out of a wall safe with trembling fingers. And Wilson’s black eyes took on even greater brightness as he saw what it was.
A small woman’s jewel case. And it was in a jewel case that Farquar had thought Beall held the blackmailing murder-frame evidence.
Beall started to run for the door with it, and Cole said: “Stand where you are. Don’t turn around.”
Beall’s back showed such trembling agitation that it seemed the man must be ready to drop in his tracks. He stood still.
“Drop that jewel case,” said Wilson, as if he had six guns pointing at Beall instead of none at all.
A sort of croaking sound came from Beall, but he dropped the case.
“Just stand there,” said Wilson, getting back in the room.
He took the jewel case and started backing to the window.
Sheer animal terror did for Beall what courage could not do. He leaped galvanically for the door and out. He slammed it as he passed, and Wilson heard a key turn.