The Blue Door, page 19
“That’s nice of him,” commented Michael.
Clayton looked abashed for a moment, and uncomfortable.
“Well, here’s the liquor.”
They drank down the stirrup cups in silence and solemnly shook hands. “Good luck,” said Clayton perfunctorily.
“Thanks,” said Michael. “Thanks for—everything.”
“That’s all right,” said Clayton, and opened the door himself.
In the street, Michael found a slant-eyed, burly man watching the next doorway, as if suspecting that the thief had not yet made his escape. The detective, recognizable as such as far as he could be seen, looked at the poet suspiciously.
“Live in there?” he asked, approaching heavily.
“No,” said Michael, “but my brother does—Clayton Hardesty.”
Apparently the man knew the name, as many people did.
“Been with him long?” he continued.
“You mean just now? About half an hour. Why?”
“I’m from the Hammond Avenue station,” explained the detective unnecessarily. “We had a report that a sneak thief had got into one of the apartments and scared a woman half to death.”
“Here?” asked Michael in astonishment. “I didn’t hear anything, or see anything. What did he get?”
The man from the Chicago Avenue station shrugged. “Don’t know yet,” he replied. “My partner’s upstairs now getting the dope.”
“Next door, eh?” commented Michael. “Not old Mrs. Bartlett, I hope?”
“No,” grunted the detective. “Howard was the name we got.”
“I’m afraid I don’t even know the Howards,” said Michael politely. “Well, good luck, officer!”
“Thanks,” growled the detective. “Good-night.”
The neighborhood appeared to be unsafe. Fortunately, Clayton’s fifty had been accepted in ten-dollar bills. Still more fortunately, a taxicab was rounding the windy cape of buildings and discharging a fare at one of the doorways.
Michael held up his hand and the driver nodded. He climbed in and quickly slammed the door behind him. Through the front window he gave the driver the name and address of a modest restaurant, and sank back thoughtfully on the seat.
4.
To the rest of Chicago, the morning papers were much as usual; but to Michael they were sensational. It had not occurred to him that his brisk little adventure, over in ten minutes, could be so brilliantly exaggerated. He read the varying accounts with fascination.
The yellowest of the morning journals made him out to be a brutal desperado of the most horrendous type. It seemed that he had entered the apartment of Mrs. F. M. Howard, age and address noted, and so terrified that elderly woman that she was still prostrated and under the care of a physician. When she had called out, at sight of him, it appeared that he had half strangled the poor old creature, and then fled down the stairs to the street. She had come upon him within a few minutes of his entering the apartment, but not quite soon enough to prevent him from snatching a jewel case from her dresser. As a result, Mrs. F. M. Howard was in bed, and jewels valued at $30,000 were missing.
Michael’s name was not, of course, mentioned; but the description, to his apprehensive mind, seemed to fit him exactly. Come to think of it, the man who had actually entered the place had been of about his height and build! He remembered the back that had preceded him up the stairs.
“What about the girl?” asked Michael aloud, as if expecting an answer from the newspaper.
There was no mention whatever of the girl. Possibly the press did not care to celebrate maids-of-all-work.
It was a funny thing, though, about that girl. Just as sure as spring followed winter—and both Shelley and Hutchinson had assured Michael that this phenomenon did occur—he had seen that girl somewhere; he knew her as well as—not perhaps as well as his own mother, but certainly as well as the girl in the anteroom at McMurtry’s Monthly.
Michael turned the situation over in his mind. Obviously, he thought, he was in hourly danger of being arrested. It did not occur to him that the description of the actual attacker was one that would fit almost any of some millions of men in the United States. In his mind there was one upstanding thought: that infernal girl had recognized him and had furnished his description to the police. But if she knew him, why hadn’t she given his name? Another dreadful thought entered his mind. Perhaps she had! Perhaps she had, and the police were simply keeping it quiet until they had him laid by the heels—to lull his suspicions, perhaps. They were smarter than people gave them credit for, those heavy-footed, slow-witted fellows.
There was only one thing to be done. As long as he kept quiet he was as good as confessing himself the criminal. The best thing to do, he reflected, was to make a clean breast of his own innocent part in the affair. And the first thing to do was to visit Mrs. F. M. Howard. If she had seen her attacker, surely she would know at a glance that Michael Hardesty was not the man. Then he could safely confront the police. It was one of the remaining relics of his early training— this belief that honesty was, in all circumstances, the best and safest policy. Clayton Hardesty, of course, knew better—but then, Clayton was not Michael.
Michael shaved hurriedly and went out into the world again. He caught a street car at the corner, and in a short time was once more conducting a brief reconnaissance in front of his brother’s block of buildings. A number of men were in view. They might be detectives, or they might be bill collectors. Probably they were detectives; but there was nothing like a bold front.
Michael entered the doorway with complete assurance, and rang the Howard doorbell. There was an immediate response from the buzzer, and he jerked open the inner door and mounted the steps. At the second floor a surprise awaited him.
A large, blue-clad policeman stood in the partly open door, awaiting him.
The policeman frowned. “Well?” he demanded. “What is it?”
“I—ah—beg pardon,” said Michael. “I called to see Mrs. Howard.
The bluecoat looked him over in silence for a moment. Then, “Mrs. Howard ain’t seeing anyone to-day,” he answered. “What was it about?”
Michael took his courage in both hands. After all, he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“The fact is,” he said, “it’s about—last night!”
“Ah!” said the policeman. “Information?”
“Well, yes,” said Michael, “information.”
The burly one swung the door open more widely.
“You should-a gone to the station,” he observed brusquely. “Come in, anyway. You can talk to Sergeant Cassidy. He’s here.”
He indicated a front room with a jerk of his thumb, and Michael entered on tiptoe, as if he were entering a sickroom. There was no one in the room, however, and he sat down in a big rocking chair and looked around him. The place was similar to his brother’s place, but held more furniture. The woman’s touch, too, was evident; and everything was a bit old-fashioned. Instead of a radio, there was an ancient piano. Instead of etchings of nude women, there were old portraits. One was that of a man with a beard like General Grant’s, and no mustache. His mouth was shut like a steel trap. It occurred to Michael that Mrs. Howard would look like that—except for the beard.
A brisk, blue-eyed young man entered the room and said, “Good-morning,” crisply. Obviously, this was Sergeant Cassidy. He looked less like a policeman than any of the breed Michael ever had seen.
“Good-morning, Sergeant,” said Michael. “I’ve got something on my mind.” He smiled.
The sergeant smiled, too. In his plain clothes he looked like a pleasant-faced clerk in almost any wholesale house. “I’d like to hear it,” he answered. “Burns said you had something to tell us about last night.”
“Yes,” said Michael. He hesitated. “The truth is, I came expecting to see and talk with Mrs. Howard. I didn’t expect to find the police here. Maybe it’s better this way…. Well, what I have to say is this: I was outside that door last night when the thief ran out.”
The detective sergeant stared. “The deuce you were!”
“Yes,” continued the poet. “In fact, the maid thought I was the thief. It was after me that she screamed. The man in the lower apartment ran out to stop me, and he wouldn’t listen to my explanation, either. I had to choke him.”
Cassidy’s blue eyes were contracting. “It was you that wrestled with Mr. Liddy last night?”
“If that was his name,” answered Michael.
The detective seemed to be struggling with some nameless emotion. After a moment he said: “Tell me all about it. By the way, what’s your name?”
“Michael Hardesty,” said Michael. “It was this way, Sergeant.” He told everything that had occurred from the time he left his own hotel, excepting only the reason for visiting his brother.
As he spoke, the sergeant’s gaze became more and more peculiar. “Well, I’ll be hanged,” he observed at length. “Of course, your brother can bear you out in this—in part of it anyway. You didn’t get a good look at the man on the stairs?”
“I suppose I did,” said Michael, “but there wasn’t anything extraordinary about him. To me, he was just a man—see? He was clean-shaven, if that’s any help to you, and he wore a hat.” He smiled, and Cassidy chuckled.
“If he wore a hat he wasn’t one of the college boys,” said the detective. “That lets out a whole schoolful of fellows anyway, eh?”
Michael laughed outright. “You’re not a bit like the sort of fellow I thought a detective would be.”
“Well, I’ll return the compliment. You’re not a bit like the sort of fellow I expect a sneak thief to be. I can think of some fellows in the department who would lock you up immediately, on suspicion.”
Then his face became grave. “But there’s one thing, Mr. Hardesty! That maid!”
Michael became interested at once. He was troubled about the maid himself.
“Say,” he burst out, “she bothers me. I’ve seen her some place. I can’t think where; but I know her face. Isn’t that funny? She didn’t know me, apparently, or she’d have mentioned me. Eh?”
“No, she didn’t mention you,” said the detective. “In fact, she didn’t mention anybody. In fact, we don’t know anything about her. In fact, there wasn’t any maid here when our fellows arrived, and there hasn’t been any since. In fact,” he concluded, “Mrs. Howard doesn’t know anything about any maid of that kind. The only maid she has is colored and she went home at four o’clock!”
5.
Michael left the building with his head in a whirl. The whole affair began to assume the outrageous proportions of a nightmare.
If the maid had not been there when the police arrived, what had become of her? Of course, Cassidy must be right! She was one of the thieves. She had entered the place only a few minutes before the man that he had seen—just about long enough before to take off her hat and put on an apron. Had she worn an apron? To save his soul, Michael couldn’t remember.
Anyway, the two were in cahoots. That was it. Then the man had blundered. Or maybe Mrs. Howard had just walked in on him while he was looting her bedroom. Where had the maid been all that time? Why did she run to the door and scream? Cassidy was probably right about that, too. The maid had been hiding while Mrs. Howard and the attacker were struggling; she had run to the door afterward, to follow her accomplice; on the landing she had bumped into Michael Hardesty, and her quick wits had solved that situation very cleverly.
But what about the man called Liddy? Funny he hadn’t known there was no maid upstairs! Michael remembered his brother’s words: One doesn’t know who one’s neighbors are. Probably that was true of Liddy.
He strolled quietly toward the car line, deep in thought. Anyway, he had a job at last. It occurred to him that it was a job that Clayton Hardesty would not approve. Cassidy had said: “You say you have seen this woman—this ‘maid’—some place. Try to remember where! She’s our only clue. If you can place her, and we can catch her, the case is over.”
So now Michael Hardesty was a detective! In a small way, of course. There was nothing in it, to be sure, except experience. But it was rather good fun. Who was the confounded woman, anyway?
His mind went back over the years. He tried to remember every woman he had ever known, every woman he had ever met. She simply didn’t fit in any place. Yet her face was as familiar as—as familiar as—well, it was very familiar. Had he seen it in a newspaper? But no! It wasn’t anything as casual as that. It was a face he had seen often. Somewhere, sometime, he had seen that woman, more than once—many times, in fact. Could she be an actress? Had he seen her on the stage? A waitress? Somebody who brought him his coffee and rolls?
He went over them all in his mind, and when he finished he was as far from the truth as ever. In the end, he decided that he must have been deceived by a resemblance, or have just imagined that he knew her. That was the devil of having an imagination!
He got off at his own corner, and glanced casually in at the corner lunchroom. But the Amazonian blonde who was rustling coffee for a pair of teamsters aroused no spark of recognition in his eye. The night girl, he remembered, was small and dark and walked with a slight limp. Nothing doing there, anyway!
In his tiny apartment hotel he dug up the house-keeper—an elderly gray-haired woman with a shrewd face.
“Mrs. Freeman,” said Michael earnestly, “did we ever have a maid here who looked like—like—” He made a profound attempt to describe the maid of the night before.
The housekeeper looked at him as if she would have liked to say, “Let me smell your breath.” She answered: “Not that I remember, Mr. Hardesty. The girl you describe sounds to me like somebody out of the Greenwich Village Follies.” She pronounced the name of that Bohemian-seacoast village “Green-witch,” and Michael turned away with a sigh.
Anyway, his name got into the newspapers. With mingled fascination and distress, he read the accounts next morning of his testimony as rendered to Sergeant Cassidy. Only one fact had been suppressed: that concerning his recognition of the maid. But his wrestling match with Martin Liddy had been played up strongly. The description, “six-foot poet,” delighted him.
One thing was positive. Wherever he had seen the missing maid, it was not far from the general scene of activities. His own small hotel was within a mile of his brother’s more luxurious residence. His acquaintances, such as they were, all lived or worked in the neighborhood of one place or the other. His morning walks rarely took him any farther south than Belmont Harbor, or any farther north than Lawrence Avenue. Roughly, then, he had probably met this girl some place within a radius of, say, four square miles. He supposed it narrowed the search a little, anyway. Once, however, he had lived on the West Side. Possibly he had seen her over there. He became vastly discouraged.
It occurred to him that he might look up Cassidy and report progress. Not that there was any progress to report; but he had taken a liking to Cassidy, and possibly Cassidy would let him prowl round with him.
Michael again boarded a street car and went to the Hammond Avenue police station. He contrived to arrive there as the detective was preparing to have some lunch, and accepted the invitation to join the repast. Together they went to a neighboring lunchroom and climbed aboard adjoining food saddles.
“Here’s the way I figure it,” said Cassidy. “This precious pair of crooks found out that Mrs. Howard was a widow, and lived practically alone. The girl probably posed as a solicitor, or something, and had a look at the premises. Then, a day or so later, along toward evening, she went back—the man with her. He waited outside, or in the front hall, while she let herself in. That would be easy. She’d have sized up the situation the first day she was there. Those places are easy enough to get into. They look solid; but a table knife is all you need to get in. You slip it in, back of the door strip, and shove the latch back. It’s a cinch unless the door is double-locked. I’ve done it myself. The girl got in, and concealed herself. A few minutes later the man followed, and you followed the man. See?”
“Why did they go together?”
“Well, one would have been enough; but they figured somebody had to choke the old lady, in case of trouble. The girl figured she’d be in the kitchen, along about supper time—Mrs. Howard, I mean—and it would be easy to slip into the bedroom. Well, the man got in— the door being left ajar—and entered the bedroom, and the girl was somewhere handy, keeping an eye on the old lady in the kitchen. The girl was probably behind the hangings in the front room. That way, she could look right down the hall to the kitchen. See? But it all went wrong. The old lady came out of the kitchen before the girl could warn her friend, and entered the bedroom. I know that, because that’s what Mrs. Howard said she did. Then the fellow grabbed her and threw her across the bed. When she got her wits back they were both gone.
“Meantime, the girl had followed the man, and was just in time to meet you coming downstairs. She was quick and she raised an alarm, thinking that if you were caught she could escape in the excitement. The old lady’s screams, inside, had her pretty well frightened, but she did her best, and it was enough. You can gamble that she followed you downstairs as quickly as she could after you had finished rowing with Liddy.”
“I wish I had known,” said Michael.
“Well, so do I,” smiled Cassidy. “However, if it hadn’t been for you we’d know less about this case than we do.”
“What’s being done?” asked Michael.
“Damn’ little,” admitted the detective. “I’m going back there now to have a talk with Mrs. Howard’s colored maid. She’ll be on duty at this time, and for all we know she may have had a hand in it. She may have furnished the first information about the old woman’s jewels.”
“I see,” said Michael. “I’ll go with you, if I may.”
“All right. Put away your coffee and we’ll start.”
