

,0. s._u. LiBRARlES


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS


By WILLIAM JOHNSTON
LIMPY
The Boy Who Felt Neglected
THE YELLOW LETTER


We both of us realized that we must be surrounded with some
potent evil forces. FRONTISPIECE. See page 81


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THE HOUSE OF
WHISPERS
BY
WILLIAM JOHNSTON
wrra ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN


B;O_S,TON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1918


Capyriglzt, 1918,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

All right: reserved.
Published, March, 19! 8.


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
We both of us realized that we must be sur-
rounded With some potent evil forces Frontispiece
PAGE
“ Something wrong here— in this house —— I
tell you!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
As the light ﬂooded the room there was a sup-
pressed scream, followed by a. frightened
gasp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
“ Here it is,” he announced, holding up before
my astounded eyes an automatic revolver . 185


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
CHAPTER I
WITH an exclamation of annoyance I crumpled
up the note from my great-uncle Rufus and ﬂung
it on the ﬂoor, more than half minded to dis-
regard it entirely. My disappointment at its
contents was the one thing needed to complete
the utter misery of a wretched day.
Only that morning, my roommates Birge and
Roller, fortunate fellows, had been informed that
their applications for the ambulance service had
been accepted. There had been barely time for
them to catch the steamship sailing for France.
Our year of happy companionship had come to
an abrupt end.
“ Cheer up, old man,” cried the optimistic
Birge, “ your luck will change some time.”
“ Right,” said Roller, as he stooped to give a
ﬁnal tug to the straps of his new kit bag, “ a chap


2 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
as crazy about Adventure as you are is bound to
meet her soon.”
“ Stop it,” I cried in desperation. “It is you
two who are to have the great opportunity.
Soon you’ll be seeing shrapnel burst, aeroplanes
battling, regiments charging, heroes dying, and
I—I’ll be sitting here alone in a hall room, eating
my heart out with lonesomeness and envy,
spending my days at an uncongenial desk and my
nights, God knows how, after you fellows have
gone.”
“ You never can tell,” chirped old Birge, “ all
kinds of strange things happen right here in New
York. You may be the one that has had a belly-
ful of adventure before we return—if we do.”
His last three words gave us all a sobering
thought. There was a chance, more than a
chance, that never again on this earth would we
three be together again. Eight of our college
mates had preceded Birge and Roller to the great
battleﬁeld. Already three of them lay inhero
graves somewhere under the lilies of France.
The silence of a sad parting fell on us. The
taxicab came and we drove together to the pier
with hardly a word spoken. Men who have been


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 3
through college days together and for a twelve-
month afterward have been congenial room-
mates need no words to express the sort of
thoughts we all were having.
As we shook hands at the gangplank, old
Roller spoke again, a glisten of tears in his eye,
something almost prophetic in his voice.
“ Nelson,” he said, “ I feel it in my bones that
something is going to happen for you soon,
something thrilling.”
“I wish to God something would!” I an-
swered bitterly.
Disconsolately I waved them a last adieu from
the dock and took the subway up town to our
dismantled quarters. In a black mood I railed
against the fate that had left me behind, poign-
antly lamenting the lack of the eight hundred
dollars that would have set me free to accompany
them.
Two letters, thrust under the door in lodging-
house fashion, awaited my home-coming. One
of them I recognized at once as my mother’s
weekly billet of good advice and tossed aside to
be read when I was in a better frame of mind.
The other was in a cramped, unfamiliar hand'


6 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
The girls are now reaching an age when their
expenses will be much greater. I need the
money for them. The least you can do is to pay
it back before you give up your position and g0
oﬁ on wild-goose chases.”
For this argument I could ﬁnd no answer. My
obligation to her was a debt of honor that must
be paid before I could be my own master. Each
week I had been putting away ﬁve dollars and as
it accumulated had been sending her a money
order. If I was to continue to do so, with my
comrades away and no one to share my rent
bills, I realized that I must speedily seek cheaper
quarters.
While I was debating what to do I began to
read my mother’s latest letter. The ﬁrst part of
it repeated her many arguments, but the latter
part was more interesting. She wrote:
“Two days ago I received a letter from my
father’s brother, Rufus Gaston, upon whom you
called when you ﬁrst went to New York. He
asked about you and made me a proposition con-
cerning you. I did not venture to give him an
answer. Your views and mine are so seldom in
accord. I gave him your address and suggested


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 7
that he write to you himself. Probably he has
done so by this time.”
Hastily I rescued my great-uncle’s crumpled
note from the ﬂoor and smoothed it out. If
Rufus Gaston—with his millions and no direct
heir—had made a proposition concerning me, his
letter took on a vastly more interesting com-
plexion. Carefully I reread it, seeking for some
hidden meaning between the lines, but it gave
no clue to what he had in mind. He merely
expressed the hope that I would be able to dine
with him and his wife informally next Thursday
evening.
What could it mean? It was at least well
worth looking into. Mr. Gaston was seventy-
four. He had made a fortune in the South
American trade, retiring at sixty-ﬁve. There
was only himself and his Wife. Their two chil-
dren had died in infancy. On the Gaston side,
through my mother, my sisters and I were the
only blood relations. I wondered if it could be
that old Rufus was thinking of making me his
heir—heir to the Gaston millions!
As I penned a cordial acceptance of his dinner
invitation I determined to set myself to pleasing


8 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
the old couple whom I had met only once, on the
occasion of my call. A few years ago I would
have despised the thought of catering to wealth,
but since I had discovered how difﬁcult it was to
earn money and how much more difﬁcult to save
it, my views had changed.
I could hardly wait for the day he had set for
me to dine with them to arrive. I found my-
self approaching their residence fully three-
quarters of an hour before the time named.
When I discovered how early I was, I decided
to loiter in the Park for a few minutes. Old
Rufus recently had given up his Avenue resi-
dence and now lived in one of those stately
apartment buildings erected in the East Eighties.
I turned into Central Park opposite my great-
uncle’s street and dropped into the ﬁrst bench
I came to, depositing beside me a bunch of roses
I had purchased as my ﬁrst move toward win-
ning my great-aunt’s affections. Lighting my
pipe, I gave myself up to pleasant reveries, from
which I was aroused by ﬁnding my roses tossed
suddenly to the ground at my feet.
“ Pardon me,” I said indignantly, “but those
belong to me.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 9
“Benches ain’t for bundles,” croaked an evil
voice beside me.
Recovering my ﬂowers, I turned to ﬁnd seated
beside me a rat-eyed young fellow, cheaply
dressed, eying me with an insolent stare. As I
looked at him, he began crowding over toward
me. Plainly it was his intention to oust me
from the'bench.
“ There’s plenty of room on those other
benches over there,” I suggested resentfully.
“ Beat it yourself if you don’t like it here,” he
retorted, blowing the smoke from a cheap ciga-
rette in my face. “I got a date here, and I’m
going to stay, see? ”
I answered with an angry retort and hot words
followed. We had almost come to blows when
the bushes opposite us suddenly parted. I
caught sight for just a second of a villainous face,
that of a man about forty, an unforgettable face
with a red scar across the left cheek. He raised
one ﬁnger in an imperative gesture, signaling to
my unwelcome companion on the bench. With
a profane exclamation of dismay, the rat-eyed
fellow sprang up and walked hastily away along
the Park path. Wondering what it was all about,


10 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
I watched him out of sight around a turning of
the asphalt and then glanced toward the apart-
ment house where in a few minutes I was to be
a guest.
As looked a young girl came out of the
house and walked slowly toward the Park. In
mere idle curiosity I watched her, for the sex
has had little attraction for me. A man brought
up in a house of women, with the too constant
companionship of a mother and two sisters, is
apt to be long in discovering fascinations in
feminine charms.
At the corner the young woman hesitated.
She seemed to be debating whether to continue
on down the Avenue or to turn into the Park.
Apparently the lure of the greenery won her, for.
she came on slowly toward where I was sitting.
As she drew nearer I observed her with still
greater interest, for she was one of the prettiest
girls I ever had seen. Her slim ﬁgure, her
dainty ankles, her carriage, everything about
her suggested the patrician. Her face, rosy and
youthful, was set off by a jaunty feathered toque,
from under which a pair of soft, black, roguish
eyes, shaded by long lashes, looked out above a


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 11
dainty nose, just a bit tip-tilted, on either side of
which a fugitive dimple played.
To my great amazement she walked right up
to me and stopped short. I observed then that
she seemed to be greatly agitated. Involuntarily I
sprang to my feet and removed my hat, feeling cer-
tain that she had mistaken me for some one else.
She looked straight at me with an odd tighten-
ing of the lips. Into her great dark eyes came
a look in which pride and fear seemed to mingle
with utter loathing.
“I am here,” she said.
In my confusion I mumbled something, I
hardly knew what. She looked me up and down
with a puzzled air and raised her hand to a red
carnation she was wearing.
“ You were to wear one, too.”
“ I don’t understand,” I answered.
“ Didn’t you,” she asked hesitantly, “ didn’t
you come here about the papers ”
“ What papers? ”
’7

“ You know

“ I don’t know,” I replied. “ I know nothing
about any papers. You must have mistaken me
for some one else.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 13
“ I was to meet some one here,” she faltered;
“you quite understand, don’t you? ”
“ I understand perfectly,” I ansWered, and
recalling the scar-faced man who had been lurk-
ing in the bushes, I hurried on to say, “ but if I

can be of any service
“ Thank you so much,” she interrupted.
“ There is nothing you can do.” Then as if the
words forced themselves out she added desper-
ately, “ There’s nothing any one can do.”
“You are in trouble," I cried. “ Do let me
help you.”
“ N o, no,” she sobbed, apparently over-
whelmed by whatever it was that was besetting
her. “ It’s nothing—nothing any one can help."
“Tell me about the man you were to meet
here.”
“ Who are you? ” she demanded, her suspicion
suddenly rising at my question. “ You’re not a
detective? ”
“ Far from it,” I answered amusedly. “I’m
just plain Spalding Nelson, on my way to dine
with my great-uncle Rufus Gaston.”
“ Oh! ” she said, relieved, “ their apartment is
on the same ﬂoor as ours.”


14. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Tell me about the man you were to meet,” I
insisted. “ I may have seen him."
“ Did you? What was he like? ” she demanded
eagerly. ‘
“ Don’t you know him? ” I countered.
“No, I never saw him. I don’t even know
who he is. I only know that there was to be a
man waiting here on this bench this evening.
We were both to wear red carnations. I was
to come here alone, to see him and to get
the "
She stopped abruptly and tearing off the

ﬂower she was wearing, trampled it viciously
under her foot.
“ It must have been he who was waiting here,”
I said. “ He wore a ﬂower."
“ It must have been,” she cried, all excitement.
“ What was he like? ”
“ Not so loud,” I warned her, fearful lest they
might still be lurking about and overhear us.
“ There were two of them.”
“ Two,” she whispered, turning pale.
“Yes, one waiting here on this bench, and
the other, a villainous scar-faced fellow, hiding
in the bushes yonder.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 15
“ I dare not go on with it,” she sobbed,
“I dare not! I dare not! Oh, what shall I
do? ”
“ The thing to do now,” I replied, “is for you
to let me accompany you back to your home.
They will make no further attempt to meet you
this evening, since my presence has spoiled their
plans. Come, let me escort you, Miss ”
As I hesitated over the name she answered
simply:
“ Bradford—Barbara Bradford.”
She pondered for a moment over my sugges-
tion and then turned to walk with me toward the
apartment house.
“ What were the men like?” she asked.
I described them as best I could, though really
the impression that the youth on the bench had
left was vague. His voice, an insolent, hoarse,
uncultivated one, was almost all I could recall
about him.
“ They could not be any people I know,” she
said doubtfully.
“ Of course not,” I assented.
“I wonder who they were? I wonder how
they knew?”


16 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Knew what? ”
Her lips tightened into a straight line.
“ I can’t tell you. I daren’t. It isn’t my
secret.”
By this time we had reached her home and
the bowing doorman was swinging back the
great iron door for us. It had been my intention
to announce my arrival, but recalling that Miss
Bradford had said that the Gaston apartment
was on the same ﬂoor as hers, I stepped with her
into the elevator. When it had descended, leav-
ing us together in the corridor, she turned to me
and offered her hand.
“ Thank you so much, Mr. Nelson."
“ I wish you’d let me help you,” I cried.
She hesitated as if debating the matter in her
own mind and then observing that all this time I
had been holding her hand, she withdrew it
quickly, blushing, and shook her head.
“ Well, promise me one thing,” I insisted.
“ What is it? ”
“ That you never again will go alone to the
Park to meet those men.”
A tremor shook her body, and once more a
look of terror crept into her eyes.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 17
“I can’t promise that. I must meet them. I
must! I must! ”
I reached out and took her hand again.
“ Promise me then that before you go again
you will let me know.”
“ You must not try to stop my going,” she
cried desperately and freeing her hand turned
quickly and unlocking her door left me standing
there alone, staring after her.
Perplexed beyond measure as to what I ought
to do, after a moment I pressed the bell and was
admitted to the Gaston apartment and to the
presence of my aged relatives.
Although I tried to pretend an interest in their
conversation and absently answered their ques-
tions about my family, my thoughts kept con-
stantly recurring to the strange trouble of the
girl across the hall, her plight interesting me far
more than the purpose for which my great-uncle
had sent for me. I had expected that he would
broach that subject himself, but the coffee
arrived and still the conversation had been
limited to stilted family chat. As we returned to
the living room, I decided to give him a lead:
“ My mother wrote me ” I began.


18 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Oh, yes,” said old Rufus, looking relieved.
“ Yes, yes, of course,” echoed Mrs. Gaston.
I waited for one or the other of them to pro-
ceed but for some reason they both seemed at a
loss for words.
“ You tell him, Rufus,” said my great-aunt at
last, as I looked from one to the other inquir-
ingly.
His tired old eyes studied my countenance
carefully, searchingly as if he was trying to read
my soul.
“ What is it? ” I asked impatiently.
“ It is this," said old Rufus, speaking slowly
and with effort, as if he hated to disclose his
intentions. “Three days from now—that will
be Sunday morning—my wife and I are going to
Maine to be gone for some months. We have
leased a furnished cottage there and shall take
our servants and our motor with us. We do not
like to leave this apartment wholly untenanted,
and it occurred to Mrs. Gaston that you might
occupy it in our absence.”
I am afraid my countenance at that moment
must have betrayed my consternation. My great
expectations vanished, blew up, disappeared.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 19
They did not want me for an heir but for a care-
taker. What a fool I had been to imagine for
one moment that this penurious old couple had
contemplated doing anything for me. They
wanted me to do something for them. They
planned to use me as a convenience—to get a
watchman for nothing. A sarcastic refusal of
their proffer trembled on my lips but was stayed
by my great-aunt speaking:
“ It will enable you to save your room rent.
Mr. Gaston will pay the rent in advance before
we go. There will be no one here to serve your
meals so you will have to get them elsewhere,
but I will arrange with my laundress, a trust-
worthy woman I have employed for many years,
to come in once a day to make up your room,
and you’ll be under no expense.”
Her suggestion that I would have no room
rent to pay decided me. With a smaller budget
it would be easier for me to save money and pay
off my debt. Two other considerations also in-
ﬂuenced me. It might be a plan on the part of
the old people to try me out and see if I was
trustworthy, and then, dwelling under the same
roof with Barbara Bradford, I might have op-


20 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
portunities of seeing her again, and who knows,
perhaps of assisting her out of her mysterious
plight.
“ I shall be very glad indeed to come,” I found
myself saying. “It was nice of you both to
think of me."
“ There was no one else,” said my great-aunt,
with candor.
“ We’ll consider the matter settled,” an-
nounced old Rufus. “ We are unused to guests
here, so you had better come at ten on Sunday,
an hour after we have started. I shall give you
tonight a duplicate set of all our keys.”
“ Rufus,” suggested my great-aunt apprehen-
sively, “had you not better give him the com-
bination of the wall safe, too? My jewels are
I,

there, and in case there should be a ﬁre
“ Why not take them with you? ” I inter-
rupted.
“ They are a nuisance when you are traveling,"
she objected.
“ A safe deposit box would be better, then.”
“ No,” said old Rufus shortly. “ Both my
safe deposit boxes are full and there is no use
hiring another one. The jewels will be all right


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 21
where they are. In case of ﬁre you can remove
them to a place of safety. This is the combina-
tion—see that you remember it—six right, four
left, two right, eight left, 6,428.”
“ I’ll remember it,” I replied, mentally repeat-
ing it over and over again.
“ And now, my dear,” said the old gentleman,
“if you will get the keys from my desk, we can
permit our nephew to depart.”
My great-aunt left the room to do his mission.
The minute she was safely out of hearing old
Rufus’s whole manner underwent a startling
change. Into his deep-set gray eyes came a look
of terror. He seemed all at once to have shrunk
up into a weak, tired, terriﬁed, childish octogena-
rian. His face became ashen, and the withered
hand with which he clutched my arm was trem-
bling violently.
“ Listen, boy,” he hissed, leaning forward that
he might speak into my ear and looking about
apprehensiver as if he feared to be overheard.
“ Listen—there’s something wrong here.”
My ﬁrst thought was that he had been sud-
denly stricken with senile dementia, but recalling
his perfectly rational conduct throughout the


22 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
rest of the evening, I dismissed the theory as
absolutely untenable. His fear, whatever caused
it, certainly seemed very real.
“ Something wrong? ” I repeated, wonder-
ingly. “ What do you mean? What is it? "
He clutched my arm in a still tighter grasp,
and his voice, suppressed to a terriﬁed whisper,
became more insistent.
“ Something wrong here—in this house—I
tell you! ”
“ Wrong in what way? ” I asked, puzzled by
his manner.
“ I don’t know,” he breathed. “ I wish I did.”
He glanced timorously about and went on.
“ There’s something wrong! I sense it. I feel
it. I cannot ﬁnd out what it is. All kinds of
queer things happen. I am always hearing
voices—whispers, whispers, whispers! That is
why we are going away. My wife thinks it is on
account of my health. I don’t want her to know.
Please, please, Spalding, ﬁnd out what it is before
we return. I have no son. There is no one else
but you to do it. Solve the mystery for me.
Find_out about the whispers. Promise me you
H
!
will. Ssh—not a word to her! Not a word


Page 22
'!7
house — I tell you
this
here — in
“Something wrong


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 23
He withdrew his hold on my arm and laid his
ﬁnger on his lips as he heard his wife returning.
With a visible effort he straightened up, and
when she entered the room he apparently had
entirely recovered his self-possession and was
his natural self again, a digniﬁed, world-weary
old man. Even in his eyes there was no trace
of the panic of senseless fear that had so recently
possessed him.
“ I can’t ﬁnd your keys, Rufus,” said my great-
aunt, “you had better get them yourself.”
The minute he left the room she hastened to
my side and she, too, began to whisper mysteri-
ous warnings, exhibiting a terror hardly less
than her aged husband’s.
“ This is a house of mystery,” she announced.
“ I’m always hearing strange sounds, here. He
doesn’t know "—with a nod in the direction
old Rufus had gone, “ and I do not want him to.
That is the reason I am taking him away. All
sorts of things happen in this house—~things no-
body can explain. Solve the mystery of it before
we return. I’ll pay you. I’ll make it well worth
your while.”
Her husband’s shufﬂing in the passage warned


24 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
her of his return, and she quickly dropped my
arm. As he entered she was telling me in quite
normal tones to be sure to remember her to my
mother the next time I wrote.
Old Rufus handed me the keys, explaining
which was which.
“ The laundress has a key to the servants’
entrance,” his wife added, “ so you will not have
to bother to admit her.”
“And remember,” said my great-uncle, as be
escorted me to the door, “ you are not to come
until Sunday morning at ten, after we have gone.
And remember the combination of the safe—
Remember! ”
The insistent way in which he repeated the
word conveyed to me forcefully that what he
most wanted me to remember was the strange
warning he had given me, and as I clasped his
hand in parting I tried by the ﬁrmness of my
grip to let him know that I understood.
“Remember,” repeated my aunt, too, as she
stood there in the door a little behind him, at
the same time giving me a signiﬁcant look.
Yet, puzzling as had been the conduct of both
of them, my memories that night were not of


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 25
their warnings nor of the combination of the safe
nor of the hour at which I was to arrive. They
were of the most beautiful eyes I ever had seen
and of the haunting terror written in them.


CHAPTER II
SUNDAY morning came at last.
It was hardly eight when I set out for my new
quarters, taking with me only one small hand-
bag and leaving my two trunks for the express-
man. In the time intervening since my visit to
the Gaston home I had done but little except
speculate on the mysterious warnings that both
of the old people had surreptitiously given me.
Time and again I had tried to persuade myself
that the only logical explanation of their con-
duct was that they both were suffering from
delusions due to senility. Medical history, I
recalled, had recorded frequent instances where
two persons closely associated suffered from a
sort of sympathetic insanity and had the same
vagaries. It seemed so utterly improbable and
impossible that there could be any inexplicable
mystery about a home in a modern, up-to-date
apartment house in the center of a civilized city.
And if there was a mystery, why did they stay
there? Why didn’t they move?


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 27
Yet, as I pondered over the matter, I was
convinced that both my great-uncle and his wife
were rational. Save for that moment alone with
each of them, their conduct had been entirely
conventional. I dismissed without hesitation
the theory that there could have been any super-
natural happenings to affright them. I would
have to see a ghost or a disembodied spirit be-
fore I believed there were such things. It was
probable, I decided, that their fears might have
been played on by some conspiracy on the part
of their servants to induce them to spend a
season in Maine. They perhaps had been
annoyed by a series of odd sounds or strange
noises, explicable by perfectly natural causes.
Some such circumstance, preying on their aged
nerves, might have driven them both to the
verge of hysteria. Perhaps, too, there was some
spectre from my great-uncle’s past now rising to
confront him that he was seeking to hide from
his wife. It might be that she knew of it or
had received threats and was trying to conceal
the matter from him. There are few men of
millions without some secret shameful pages in
their lives. As I remembered that old Rufus


28 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
Gaston's dollars had been made in South Amer-
ica, all that I had heard and read of plots and
counter-plots below the Equator came buzzing
into my brain. If such should be the case, that
some betrayed conspirator now was seeking
vengeance, more than ever I welcomed the un-
expected chance that had thrown this oppor-
tunity for adventure in my prosaic path.
Yet maybe their warnings were justiﬁed.
There was Barbara Bradford, who lived under
the same roof, on the very ﬂoor with them. She
seemed to be caught in the web of some plot, to
be living in fear of some mysteriOus peril. Only
some very real danger threatening could have
driven a timid girl like her out alone into the
Park to keep a rendezvous with two evil ruf-
ﬁans.
Was she, I wondered, in any way connected
with the mystery that overhung the Gaston
home? Did my great-uncle and his wife know
her? Her mission to the Park had been to get
some papers. Could they have been in any way
involved with what was menacing my great-
uncle’s peace of mind? How I regretted now
that I had not asked the Gastons if they knew


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 29
Miss Bradford. How I welcomed the oppor-
tunity I was now to have of living in the same
apartment house with her, close at hand if ever
I could serve her. I was glad now that cir-
cumstances had prevented my going to France
with Birge and Roller.
I had come down on the West side in a Broad—
way car as far as Fifty-ninth Street and I strolled
leisurely back through the Park, entering by the
Artisan’s Gate at the Circle, musing over the
sudden change in my life. It was barely nine
when I emerged on to the Avenue, so to kill time
I walked ﬁve or six blocks down and back. As
I arrived at my great-uncle’s corner, I saw Miss
Bradford approaching from the opposite direc-
tion. She was in riding togs. Her cheeks were
ﬂushed from exercise, and the wind had blown
her hair in pretty disorder about her face. I
timed my steps to reach the corner as she did.
Would she, I wondered, consider our strange
meeting a few evenings before sufﬁcient intro-
duction to justify her speaking to me.
“ Good morning, Mr. Nelson,” she greeted me
pleasantly. “ Making an early call, aren’t you? ”
“ I’m coming here to live for a while,” I an-


30 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
swered, falling into step with her. “The Gas-
tons are going to Maine this morning and have
asked me to occupy their apartment while they
are away.”
“ That makes us neighbors, doesn’t it? ”
“I suppose so, if people in these New York
apartment houses really have neighbors. I have
always understood that they didn’t."
“I’m afraid they don’t,” she laughed. “We
know no one in the house, not even your rela-
tives.”
“Then you don’t know the Gastons,” I ex-
claimed, in disappointed tones.
“ Only by sight. Plainly, you’re not a New
Yorker.”
“No, I’ve only been here a year.”
As we chatted we had entered the building,
and as before I went into the elevator with her.
As I left her at her door, wondering if she had
had any more encounters in the Park, yet hardly
daring to ask, she turned to me, half apolo-
getically, and said:
“ Mr. Nelson, since you’ve come to live here
in the house, I must be careful. We have not
been introduced, and my people will think it


32 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
at least, I looked about curiously. Certainly at
ﬁrst glance there was nothing mysterious in the
atmosphere. Setting my bag down I began an
immediate inspection of the rooms.
The Gaston apartment, I discovered, occupied
one whole side of the sixth ﬂoor of a twelve-
story building. Around the elevator shaft that
came up through the center was a small square
court with four doors, two opening into the
Bradford apartment opposite and two into the
one I was occupying. The east apartments
were known as Six A and the west as Six B.
The door by which I had entered led into a
lofty foyer, connecting by sliding doors with a
great dining room, and beyond it, in the front
of the housejwith a reception or living room
that ran the entire width of the apartment.
Back of the elevator,- with a separate door for
the servants’ use, were the kitchen, the butler’s
pantry, a servant’s sitting room and two bed-
rooms. From the foyer a long hall ran almost
the length of the building. On the servants’
side it was blank as to doors, save for the passage
from the pantry to the dining room, but on the
other side several doors opened into spacious


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 33
sleeping rooms, each with its own bath. At the
far end of the hall was a small sitting room
which I judged must be the favorite room of my
great-uncle and his wife. Rufus’s mahogany
desk stood there, its pigeonholes crammed full
of papers. Near by was a smaller desk, evi-
dently my great-aunt’s, for on it stood a sewing
basket from which protruded some half-ﬁnished
knitting. As I was wondering which of the bed-
rooms my great-aunt had expected me to occupy,
I noticed still another door which I found led
into a small bedroom on the servants’ side of the
house but unconnected with their quarters.
While it was less elaborately furnished than the
rooms opposite, it was comfortable enough, and
it had a spacious bathroom adjoining. The fact
that the bed here had been left turned down was
evidence enough that it was intended for my
occupancy. Returning to the foyer to get my
bag and unpack it, I was startled by the ringing
of the front doorbell.
I sprang eagerly to answer it. It must be
Miss Bradford. Probably she had reconsidered
and had decided to take me into her conﬁdence.
Who else could it be? There was no one else


34. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
who knew I was in the apartment. The attend-
ants on the main ﬂoor had seen me come in with
Miss Bradford on the two occasions I entered
and would have no reason for not supposing I
was stopping with the Bradfords. My trunks
were still to be delivered, but it was impossible
for them to have followed me so quickly. It
must be Miss Bradford!
With an exclamation of welcome on my lips I
ﬂung open the door. A man stood there—an
utter stranger. In my disappointment I was
almost closing the door in his face, but as if
anticipating my thought he quickly advanced
one foot over the sill and kept it there.
“ Well,” I demanded, almost savagely, “ what
do you want? ”
“Oh, it is you, is it? ” he replied, eying me
with what seemed to me a most insolent stare.
“What do you mean?” I asked, bewildered.
Certainly I never had seen this person before.
He was short and stocky, with sparse nonde-
script hair and weak shifty blue eyes. His face
had an unhealthy pallor, as if he had lived long
away from the sunlight, and was sunken in as
if from undernourishment, yet the breadth of


’THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 35
his shoulders and his huge rough hands seemed
to indicate physical strength beyond the ordi-
nary.
“ You’re Mr. Spalding Nelson, aren’t you? ”
“ That’s my name,” I answered shortly.
“ Mr. Gaston’s ” He paused, as if trying
to recall the relationship.
“ Mr. Gaston’s great-nephew.”
“I guess you are him, all right,” he said, in a
manner of evident relief. “I’m Mr. Wick, the

superintendent of the house.”
“ Of course,” I answered, feeling rather foolish
at my own vexation.
“ Mr. Gaston told me you were coming in this
morning,” he hastened to explain. “ He said he
had left instructions for you not to arrive until
ten o’clock, but that probably you would hardly
wait until he was out of the house.”
“ Is that so? ” I sniffed, indignant at my uncle’s
having foretold my actions so well.
“ He gave me a description of you,” Mr. Wick
went on, unperturbed, “ and the boys in the hall
were pretty sure it was you that came in,
but ”
“ But what? ”


36 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ I couldn’t understand it. You didn’t an-
nounce yourself. It seemed funny, your coming
in with the young lady from next door.”
“ It just happened that way,” I explained, now
understanding his mystiﬁcation. “ I met her
as I was coming in.”
“ Twice," he said, rather insolently.
“ I can’t see that it is any of your business,” I
retorted angrily, “ if it happened a dozen times.”
His manner at once became apologetic, and
he hastened to oﬁer obsequious explanations.
“ Mr. Gaston asked me to take particular
notice. The other evening when you were com-
ing to dinner he told me to tell the hall boys to
look at you closely so that they could identify
you as the right party when you came in today.
That was how it happened. You see, sir, in a
house of this sort we have to be careful. Ten-
ants go away leaving all sorts of valuables lying
around, and it doesn’t do to let strangers prowl
about without ﬁnding out who they are and
what they are doing.”
“ Quite a proper precaution,” I admitted.
“ The elevator boy reported your arrival,” he
continued, “ but he wasn’t quite sure it was you.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 37
The fact that you were chatting with the young
lady bothered him, and me, too. Mr. Gaston
told me you were a stranger in the city, and I
didn’t expect to ﬁnd you knowing one of the
Bradfords.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, “ Well,
you see I do know her,” when I recalled her
request that I would not recognize her until we
had been introduced in some fashion. I con-
tented myself with saying merely: “ Well, I hope
you are satisﬁed now.”
“Of course, Mr. Nelson, of course,” he an-
swered, though his looks belied his words.
Manifestly he was still puzzled over my acquaint-
ance with Miss Bradford and would have liked
to ask further questions, but I had no intention
of satisfying his curiosity.
“I hope you will ﬁnd it comfortable here,”
he said, plainly trying to continue the conversa-
tion. “ If there’s ever anything the matter, just
call me on the house ’phone; Mr. Wick, the
name is.”
“ I will,” I said, and he unwillingly withdrew.
“ If there’s ever anything the matter ”
Was there something sinister in the superin-


38 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
tendent’s parting remark? Once more the
warnings of my relatives ﬂashed into my mind.
What was wrong in the house? Why did he
anticipate that I might be calling him up? Why
did he exhibit such an interest in me and in my
acquaintance with the girl across the hall?
Certainly the precautions he had taken to ascer-
tain my identity were justiﬁable, particularly in
view of my great-uncle’s instructions to him, but
somehow the man’s whole aspect had impressed
me unfavorably.
I carried my bag back to my bedroom and
unpacked it. The various attachments in the
bath looked so inviting that I stripped and
amused myself for half an hour testing the
variety of showers and sprays provided. Don-
ning my bathrobe I leisurely smoked an excellent
cigar from a box old Rufus had thoughtfully—or
perhaps thoughtlessly—left open on his desk,
and then returned to the inspection of my new
quarters.
As it was Sunday, I had a whole day of leisure
before me, and I felt that if I was to clear up the
mystery that had driven the old couple out, it
was incumbent on me to make a minute study of


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 39
my surroundings. There were plenty of pictures
about, both paintings and etchings, but they
showed little individuality in taste. More than
likely, I decided, they had been supplied by the
decorators who had provided the rest of the
furnishings. Only in the little rear sitting room
was there any atmosphere of hominess. All the
rest of the place was done in the best depart-
ment-store style, even to the richly bound sets
of standard authors which lined the walls of the
living room, most of which I found had their
pages uncut. On some shelves in the sitting
room were perhaps a hundred volumes that gave
evidence of use. Most of them were novels of
the trashiest sort, and all of them seemed to have
in their title some reference to gold or money.
Plainly my great-uncle’s selection of ﬁction was
governed by what had been the absorbing pas-
sion of his life—money, money, money.
My search of the place—and it was thorough,
extending even to the empty canisters in the
pantry and kitchen—revealed nothing whatever
that gave any hint as to the cause or explanation
of old Rufus’s fears. The place seemed the least
likely of all places in the world to hide any


40 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
mystery, just a great, modern, luxurious apart-
ment, equipped with every possible device for
the comfort and convenience of its occupants;
refrigerating pipes, electrical appliances of all
sorts, windows that revolved inward to permit
their being cleaned, convenient bells everywhere
to summon service. It Would have to be an
up-to-date ghost to ﬁnd itself at home here.
But wait! Perhaps the safe held some clue
to the problem they wanted me to solve. But
where was the safe? I had not noticed it any-
where in my repeated journeys through the
rooms. I made another tour looking for it, care-
fully examining the panels of the dining room
and living room, sounding the walls of the bed-
rooms, looking behind pictures, peering into
clothes closets, even inspecting the bathrooms.
More than likely it had been located in some
inconspicuous place purposely. But where? At
last I located it, behind a faded crayon portrait
of Mrs. Gaston, in the little sitting room.
I lifted the picture to the ﬂoor and stood
hesitant before the safe. Should I, or should I
not, open it? The fact that they had given me
the combination seemed'to imply that I had a


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 4.1
perfect right to inspect its contents. I had a
natural inclination against prying, and yet, if
there was something wrong about the place,
surely I was justiﬁed in inspecting the treasure
that had been left in my care.
“ Six to the right, four to the left, two to the
right, eight to the left.”
As I turned the knob I repeated the com—
bination to myself. There was a little click,
and the steel door came open. Reaching in I
drew forth two old-fashioned jewel cases of
leather, both securely locked. I took from my
pocket the keys my great-uncle had given me
and toyed with them thoughtfully. Among them
were two tiny keys that undoubtedly belonged
to the jewel cases. Had I the right to use them?
I decided that I had.
The ﬁrst case I opened contained, so far as
my limited knowledge of precious stones enabled
me to judge, nothing but a bunch of cheap junk,
bits of ﬁnery from another century, coral ear-
rings that Mrs. Gaston may have worn when
she was a little girl, combs of jet, amber beads,
quaint hoop earrings and a ring or two, merely
the trinkets of a vain old woman, treasured from


4.2 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
the time when the money to buy them was
scarce. There was nothing in the lot that any
self-respecting thief would take, precious as they
may have been to their owner. I locked up that
case and returned it to the safe and opened the
other.
As I raised the lid an involuntary exclamation
of amazement and admiration escaped me.
There, nestling in the center of a velvet-lined
tray, lay gleaming the most wonderful mass of
iridescent pearls I ever had laid eyes on. Ten-
derly I lifted them up, a double string of perfectly
matched shining globules, surely worth a vast
fortune. Turning them over and over admiringly
in the light, at last I laid them back in the tray
and began to investigate the other treasures the
casket contained. In other trays in the box I
found diamonds galore, a great solitaire that
must have been all of seven carats, dinner rings,
bar pins, crescents, stars, earrings, and in a
compartment all by itself, a tiara of rubies and
diamonds. There was also a variety of other
gems, pins and rings wrought in curious designs
with rubies, diamonds, sapphires, and pearls,
some unset diamonds and loose fragments of


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 43
pieces that had evidently been torn apart to add
to other settings, the collection of a woman with
unlimited money to spend.
With trembling hands I restored the jewels
to their hiding-place, twice testing the knob to
make sure that the combination had set. The
unexpected sight of such a vast fortune in gems
had ﬁlled me with strange emotions, with
thoughts so evil I hardly dared admit them to
myself. There must have been nearly half a
million dollars’ worth of precious stones in that
one casket. The Gaston pearls in themselves
were‘ a fortune.
If only they were mine!
To every honest man at times come tempta-
tions as great as come to any criminal. No man
knows whether or not he is honest until he has
been put to the test. [know] I was tempted,
strongly tempted, to take my great-aunt’s jewels.
What was to hinder? The old couple were to
be absent for months. They had left me in
charge and had given me their keys and the safe
combination. There would be abundant time for
disposing of the jewels before their theft was
discovered. With the money they would bring


44 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
I could satisfy my craving for adventure. I
could travel the world over.
Yet, as I look back at it, all the time I was
thinking these thoughts, I knew I would not
take the jewels. A normal man cannot steal.
Generations of honest ancestors bequeath him
an honest body and a balanced brain. Even
when his desires lead him to theft, his mind
points out the folly and his conscience the
wrong.
Resolutely I put the thought of the jewels out
of my head—or tried to—and stretching myself
out on a couch gave myself up to pleasant rever-
ies about my delightful new acquaintance, the
girl who lived just across the hall. I wondered
what dire necessity had forced her to surrepti-
tious meetings with strange men. I pictured my-
self ﬁnding some way of winning her conﬁdence
and of helping her out of her mysterious trouble.
And what if eventually old Rufus should make
me his heir? Surely I would need a mate with
whom to share the joys of having a fortune.
With visions of Barbara Bradford bedecked
with my great-aunt’s choicest jewels, I fell
asleep.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 4.5
It was almost dusk when I was awakened by
the arrival of the expressman with my trunks.
After I had receipted for them and had unpacked,
I suddenly realized that I was hungry, for I had
eaten nothing since breakfast. Hastily I donned
my clothes, stopping only to count my money.
With a week’s salary in my pocket and no room
rent to pay for several months, surely I could
afford a good dinner to celebrate the change in
my fortunes.
As I went out I stopped in the lower hall to
chat with the telephone girl, ostensibly to ask
her to take any messages for me, though I was
expecting none.
“You’re Mr. Nelson, ain’t you?” she asked,
eying me with curious interest.
“Yes,” I replied, “Mr. Spalding Nelson. I
am occupying the Gaston apartment while they
are away.”
A ﬂicker of amusement crossed her face, with
just the suggestion of a sneer.
“I hope you’ll enjoy living here.”
“Why not?” I replied carelessly. “If any
one calls, say that I will be home by ten,
Miss ”


4.6 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Nellie Kelly,” she added.
As I chatted with her the elevator had de-
scended again, and three persons emerged, one
of them being she for a sight of whom I had been
intentionally loitering. One of the two persons
with her was plainly the mother and the other
I took to be an older sister. She resembled
Barbara strongly, but there was a world-weary
look in her face, and her beauty seemed to me
to be marred by a weak, sensitive, passionate
mouth. But I had no eyes for her, so absorbed
was I in the appearance of the girl I had met
in the Park. If I had thought her beautiful
then, she was ravishing now. Her raven hair
was piled high and caught back with a great
Spanish comb. An ermine trimmed evening
coat of brocade swathed her ﬁgure, opening at
the front just enough to give me a glimpse of
her bared white neck. Involuntarin my hand
went to my hat, but into her eyes came a haughty
look and one hand went to her lips for just a
second, as if she were warning me again not to
recognize her. I stood there abashed as she
swept by me to the waiting motor. The tele-
phone girl’s voice jarred me back to my senses.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 4.7
“ I thought you was a friend of the Bradfords,”
she said sarcastically.
“ Sure he is,” said the voice of Mr. Wick behind
me. “ Didn’t yOu hear the boys telling me he
came in twice with Miss Bradford?”
“Well, what of it?” I answered lamely and
ﬂed from the house, indignant at this open pry-
ing of the employee-s into my affairs, yet entirely
at a loss to know how to stop it. How could I
tell them I knew Barbara Bradford, when she
had just cut me dead?
Feeling vaguely dissatisﬁed with my ﬁrst day
in my new home, I boarded a ’bus and rode
down town to a little French café, where my com-
rades and I had been accustomed to go when we
were in funds. Though my émz'nce Bernard and
my Burgundy were ﬁne, I felt too lonely to enjoy
them. All about me were merry Sunday-even-
ing dinner parties, and I was alone. Birge and
Roller had gone, and Miss Bradford had refused
to recognize me. I hurried through my dinner,
paid my check, and was leaving the restaurant
when at a corner table I spied the scar—faced man
whom I had seen in the Park a few evenings
before.


48 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
I stopped short and stared at him and at the
ﬂashin dressed woman with him. Who were
they? In what way did they ﬁgure in Barbara
Bradford’s life?
He looked up and caught my glance. Into his
face came a strange expression, a look of malig-
nant hate, not unmingled with fear. Boldly I
returned his gaze. I was tempted to walk right
up to him and ask him what he had been doing
in the Park, and why he had warned his mate
away when he saw me there. Yet I had no
right to interfere. Miss Bradford had not taken
' me into her conﬁdence. I had only suspicions to
go on that the two men had been there to at-
tempt some wrong on the girl.
Slowly I left the restaurant, puzzled more than
ever by the malevolent glance he had given me,
and perplexed as to how I was going to serve
Miss Bradford, when she would not even recog-
nize me.


CHAPTER III
MY great-aunt’s pearls were gone—stolen—
vanished from the wall safe!
Still discrediting the evidence of my own eyes,
I lighted a match and peered into the steel-lined
recess. It was empty. On the table beside me
was one of the two jewel boxes it had contained,
the one ﬁlled with worthless trinkets. The other,
which had contained the priceless Gaston pearls
and the other rich treasure, had vanished.
Today was Saturday. Six days before I had
arrived in the apartment. There had been two
jewel cases then. With my own hands I had
put them both back safe in their hiding-place. I
recalled having tested the knob to make sure
that the combination had set. Yet since that
time some one had opened the safe. Some one
had removed the jewels. Who could it have
been?
To the best of my knowledge there had been
but two persons in the rooms, old Mrs. Burke,


50 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
my aunt’s trusted laundress, and myself. Cer-
tainly I had not taken the jewels, and it seemed
absurd to suspect Mrs. Burke, who had been in
Mrs. Gaston’s employ for years and had long
been entrusted with a key to the servants’
entrance. Yet who else was there to suspect?
Recovering a little from my bewilderment I
hastened to the telephone. I must notify the
superintendent and also the police that the apart-
ment had been robbed. I decided, too, that I
should wire my great-uncle Rufus of the robbery,
and then it dawned on me for the ﬁrst time that
I did not know the old couple’s address. They
merely had said that they were going to Maine,
though by what route or to what destination I
had not been made aware. Never mind, there
was nothing that they could do in their absence.
Probably I could get their address from the
superintendent, or from Mr. Gaston’s bankers.
It would be time enough to notify them if it
proved that the jewels were hopelessly gone.
The ﬁrst thing to do was to notify the super-
intendent.
But wait! With my hand on the telephone, I
stopped short. It dawned on me that in all


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 51
~ likelihood I would be the one most under
suspicion.
If detectives were called in, I could see that
their ﬁrst move would be to lay the theft to my
door. Certainly my opportunity for committing
the robbery was far greater than the laundress’s.
They would investigate everything about me,
and I remembered with distress that I, Spalding
Nelson, just now was out of a job—and far worse,
stood discredited at the only place of employ-
ment I had had in New York.
My discharge had come that very morning
like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. The reason
for my peremptory dismissal I had not been able
to fathom. In some mysterious fashion my
employer’s wrath had been roused toward me.
Why, I could not imagine. Certainly my life,
especially since my two comrades had gone away,
had been circumspect enough.
During the whole week my daily routine had
been the same. With kitchen facilities at hand,
I had decided to economize on my meals as well
as my room rent. Each morning I had prepared
my own breakfast, coffee, with condensed milk,
an egg or two, and some crackers. I got up early


52 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
enough to walk to the oﬁice for the sake of exer-
cise. I lunched and dined down town, walking
home again in the evening, stopping only to pur-
chase my food supplies, which I brought in with
me. Each evening I had been in the apartment
by eight or half past and had spent the time
until bedtime in reading—n0, not always reading.
I must confess that many hours had been spent
in dreaming about my neighbor in the next apart-
ment, wondering when I would have another
opportunity of seeing her and talking over with
her the troubles in which she seemed to be in-
volved, wondering, too, whether she had made
any further journeys to the Park alone, making
futile plans for arranging to meet her.
Quickly I had learned how seldom the tenants
of these great modern apartments see each other.
They live in a privacy almost unimaginable to a
dweller in a smaller city where every one lives in
a house. Here in this twelve-story building lived
twenty-four families. In the week that I had
lived there, hardly had I seen any one in the
elevators or halls but the employees.
Perhaps now that I did not have to go to busi-
ness, I might be able to ascertain the hours when


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 53
Miss Bradford went out and time my coming and
going accordingly—but could I, dared I meet
her now?
Even though I was living in a seven-thouSand-
dollar apartment I was unemployed, all but
penniless, just recently dismissed for some un-
explained reason, and now more than likely to be
accused or at least suspected of theft. Even
though I knew I was innocent, my present cir-
cumstances were not such as to recommend me
to any one’s acquaintance.
Yet only this very morning I had been taking
an optimistic view of life. Delighted at having
cut my living expenses in two, I had decided to
take twenty dollars of the thirty-ﬁve I drew that
day and add it to the one hundred and eighty
dollars I had in the savings bank. I would mail
a registered letter to my mother and reduce my
indebtedness to her. On my way to business I
stopped at the bank and drew out every penny I
had there. It was my intention to go to the post-
ofﬁce at lunch time to register the letter. just
before twelve, Mr. Wood, the head of the ﬁrm,
had sent for me.
“ Mr. Nelson,” he had said wrathfully, the


54. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
minute I entered his ofﬁce, “ here is your week’s
salary. You will leave our employ at once.”
Stunned both by his manner and his words, I
gasped out something about not understanding
what he meant. I knew of no reason that would
warrant my discharge. Although I was not at
all in love with my work, still I had faithfully
endeavored to do my best with it and was
conscious of having made no bad break of any
sort in business.
“ I can’t put it in any plainer English, can I? ”
he roared at me. “ Get out! ”
I held my ground.
“ Surely I am entitled to some explanation,” I
protested. “ If there’s been anything wrong
,,

with my work
“ Your work’s all right,” he bellowed. “It’s
this,” he cried, waving at me a letter that had
been lying on his desk. “ This letter is enough.
It exposes you for what you are.”
Dumbfounded at his amazing statement, I de-
manded to see the accusing document. Angrily
he refused.
“ You know as well as I what’s in it.”
In vain I protested. Every word I uttered


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 55
only seemed to add to his wrath. In the end he
almost hustled me out of his ofﬁce. Blindly I
found my way to the street, still clutching in my
hand the week’s pay he had rudely thrust on me.
That letter to which he referred—who could
have written it? What could have been in it
that had so inﬂamed my employer against me?
I racked my brains in vain, puzzling to account
for it. I had not been aware that I had an enemy
in the world, yet who but an enemy could have
written a letter that would have such dire effect?
Perplexed beyond measure, I took the subway
up town. I got off at Fifty-ninth and walked for
miles and miles through the Park, trying to
ﬁgure it out. I gave it up. The mystery of my
dismissal was too great for me to solve. The
one thing I felt thankful for was that it had come
before I had sent off my money. At least I had
two hundred and ﬁfteen dollars in my pocket.
Under my present mode of life that would last
me quite a while, surely until I found another
position. Well, there was nothing to do but
make the best of it.
I dined in a little restaurant in one of the side
streets and walked home. Immediately on enter-


56 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
ing the apartment I decided to put my money in
the wall safe. There would be less temptation
for me to spend it if I carried only a little in my
pocket. As I opened the safe by means of the
combination I made the astounding discovery
that one of the jewel cases had disappeared.
And now I stood hesitating at the telephone.
The loss of his job makes every man a coward.
A week ago if any one had wished to investigate
me, if detectives had been on my trail, I would
have proudly referred them to my place of em-
ployment, and would have given my mother’s
address. Now, I dared refer to neither. After
my distressing experience that morning I was
too fearsome of what would be told them if they
called on my employer. More than likely he
would show the mysterious letter that had
brought about my discharge, even though he had
refused to let me see it. Nor did I want my
mother to know that I had lost my position. She
long ago had prophesied that such would be the
case.
Self-protection bade me notify neither the
superintendent nor the police. Yet I must do
something. The jewels entrusted to my care


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 57
had been stolen. The thief must be found and
the pearls recovered.
Why should not I myself play the detective?
I had abundant leisure now. My great-uncle
had informed me that there was something
wrong in the house and had charged me to dis-
cover what it was. Here was the opportunity
for me to fulﬁll the trust he had imposed on me.
The thought ﬂashed across my mind, too, that
perhaps the crafty old gentleman had deliberately
planned the disappearance of the gems. Per-
haps he had devised an elaborate test to see if I
was honest, if I was of the right caliber to be his
heir. Maybe he and his wife had not gone to
Maine at all. Perhaps they were hiding some-
where in the vicinity where they could keep
watch on my actions. They might even be quar-
tered in another apartment in this very house,
surreptitiously entering when they knew I was
absent. There really had been no necessity for
them to give me the combination of the safe.
They need not have told me anything about the
pearls. I wondered if they themselves might not
have taken away the jewel box just to see if I
would discover the loss and to ascertain what I


58 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
would do about it. Certainly it behooved me to
move cautiously in the matter and not to make
any foolish mistakes in my detective work.
Another theory suggested itself. My aunt
evidently prized her jewels highly. After they
had started she might have repented having left
them behind and have sent the old colored butler
back to get them. He of course would have a
key to admit him, and they would have supplied
him with the safe combination, as they had me.
Probably he had been told to leave some message
for me and had forgotten to do so. More than
likely in a day or two I would receive a letter
from old Rufus that would explain everything.
I was glad now I had not notiﬁed the super-
intendent nor the police. My second theory
surely was far more logical than the ﬁrst. It
seemed preposterous that they would risk hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gems just
to test my honesty. Undoubtedly, I decided, my
great-aunt had sent some one back to get the
jewels.
Still, I determined to make a thorough investi-
gation. If they had been stolen, I would set about
in a scientiﬁc way to discover the method of the


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 59
theft and to bring about restoration. I would
keep my investigation secret, and if it turned out
that the pearls were safe, no one would know of
my fright about the matter. There was no occa—
sion for haste, either. I would go to bed and get
a good night’s sleep and tackle the mystery in the
morriing with a refreshed mind. As I returned I
began outlining my work as a detective.
First, I would examine the safe knob for pos-
sible ﬁnger prints.
Second, I would interrogate Mrs. Burke. I
would watch her carefully for any appearance of
guilt. I would try, without arousing her sus-
picions, to ascertain if she had let her key out of
her possession.
Third, I would insert an advertisement offer-
ing a reward for the return of the jewels, so
worded that only the thief and myself would un-
derstand. ‘
Fourth, I would try to locate the Gastons and
would question the hall boys and telephone girl
as to whether they had surreptitiously returned.
Fifth, I must try and discover what was in the
mysterious letter that had led to my discharge.
While this did not seem to have any connection


60 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
with the other affairs that were troubling me, if
I was to remain in New York and become better
acquainted with Barbara Bradford, as I fondly
hoped, I meant to have nothing hanging over me.
I was about to get into bed, I had turned out
the light in fact, when I recalled the errand that
had led me to open the wall safe. I had more
than two hundred dollars in my trousers pocket
and I purposed putting it where it would be safe.
With the feeling that if the jewels had disap-
peared, so might my money, I pressed the light
button in the sitting room and looked about for a
hiding-place. Recalling a custom of my mother’s,
I stepped over to the bookcase and taking
Macauley’s History, Volume Three, from the
shelf, placed between the leaves all of my money
except ﬁfteen dollars. No burglar was likely to
ﬁnd it there.
I extinguished the light and in the darkness
stepped back into my bedroom, and stopped
stock-still.
‘ From somewhere in the room there came three
distinct taps. Instinctively I crouched in an atti-
tude. of self-defense and strained my ears to
listen. My ﬁrst impression was that there was


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 61
some one in the room, probably the burglar. I
hesitated about turning on the light. If he were
armed it would give him all the advantage. In
the darkness I had a chance.
Breathlessly I listened. Once more there
came three distinct raps, this time apparently
from somewhere outside the room. I wondered
if it had been sounds like these that had so terri-
ﬁed the old couple. Was it that some one was
trying to work on their credulity by skilfully
devised “spirit rappings " and thus get control
of their fortune? If that was the case, they were
going to have a'hard time convincing me. I did
not believe in ghosts or spirits, and I was con-
vinced that for every sound that is heard there is
some logical physical explanation.
I tried to account for the sounds I heard now.
Perhaps it was the echo of some one pounding in
another apartment, the noise being carried along
by a water pipe. The thought that it might be
the crackling of some hidden steam or refrigerat-
ing pipe suggested itself. Both these theories I
rejected. The sound, whatever it was, had
originated close at hand.
It came again. This time I was certain that it


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 63
“ I’ve had another letter.”
“ From those men in the Park? ”
“ I suppose so.”
“ Tell me about it.”
“I can’t now. My maid or my sister may
come in any moment. Can you meet me some-
where tomorrow?”
“ Wherever you say.”
“ Do you ride? ”
“ Yes, indeed.”
“ I’ll be in the cross lane that leads from Mc-
Gowan’s Pass Tavern between eight and eight-
thirty.”
“ I’ll be there.”
Whether or not she heard me I did not know.
She withdrew quickly from the room as if some
one had entered. I did not dare call out for fear
of embarrassing her, though I waited there in
the window for a full hour in case she should
wish to communicate with me again.
By and by the light in her window was ex-
tinguished, but even then I sat there at the win-
dow adjoining, hoping in vain that she would
seek to renew the conversation.
When at last I got into bed I was in a jubilant


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 65
attributed to some impression the subconscious
mind has received in the waking moments. It
was only natural that a message from Miss
Bradford delivered in such an unexpected way
should have been responsible for my odd night-
mare.
I was still thinking about my experience when
I awoke early the next morning. I intended to
hurry down to the Park entrance as soon as I had
breakfasted, to hire a horse at one of the stables I
had observed there.
Springing lightly out of bed, I stopped in utter
bewilderment. There, in the center of the room
on the ﬂoor lay a small white folded slip of paper.
It could not have been a dream after all. I
had heard footsteps and whispers. I had not
imagined it. Some one had been in the room
while I slept. There was the proof, the note
they had dropped.
Wondering if Miss Bradford had found still
another unusual way of communicating with me
I hastened to pick up the folded paper that lay
on the ﬂoor. On the outside it bore my name,
in typewriting, “ Mr. Spalding Nelson.”
With eager ﬁngers I unfolded the paper, won-


66 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
dering what message it contained. As I read it,
I stood there, aghast. It ran:
“Why didn’t you tell the police about the
pearls? "


CHAPTER IV
I HAD twice traversed the cross lane near Mc-
Gowan’s Pass Tavern waiting for Barbara Brad-
ford. Although it had been my intention to ride
thither I was amazed to learn on applying at two
of the stables near the Park entrance to hire a
horse that the few they had there either were
owned privately or had been already engaged.
At one of the stables the proprietor explained the
situation brieﬂy:
“ Autos killed horse breeding and the sudden
demand for war horses for Europe took all them
that was bred, and there you are.”
There was nothing for me to do but to go to
my rendezvous on foot. To save time I took a
car to One Hundred and Tenth Street and enter-
ing the Park there walked the short distance back
to the meeting place. I had almost despaired of
Miss Bradford’s coming when I spied her canter-
ing slowly along the lane, followed at a decorous
distance by a groom. She was looking right and


68 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
left and when she saw me her face brightened but
she rode a few steps past me with no sign of
recognition. I was wondering what to make of
this new slight when she suddenly reined in and
allowed the groom to come up with her. I
noticed as she sat there in the saddle, a graceful
picture in her neat riding costume, that her face
was drawn with anxiety and that in her eyes was
a frightened look.
“ James,” I heard her say to the groom, “ my
head aches, and the riding is making it worse.
Take the horses back to the stable, and I will
walk the rest of the way home.”
“ Very well, Miss Bradford,” he said, touching
his cap, as he assisted her to alight.
She waited until he had vanished and then
hastened to the bench where I was seated, one I
had purposely selected because it was half hidden
by a turn in the road and the branches of a wide-
spreading tree.
She colored vividly as I rose to greet her with
outstretched hand.
“ Oh, Mr. Nelson,” she cried, “I don’t know
what you will think of me, asking you to meet me
here.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 69
“ I think only,” I hastened to reply, “ that you
are in some sort of trouble, and that I am going
to be your big brother and help you out as best
I can.”
“I am in trouble—such trouble. I must tell
some one. I don’t know what to do! ”
“The only thing to do,” I suggested, “is to
begin at the beginning and tell me the whole
story. I’ve sisters of my own. Just pretend
you are one of my sisters and let me help you.”
She looked at me thoughtfully, studying me as
if questioning whether or not I was to be trusted,
and apparently deciding in the afﬁrmative, told
me an amazing story.
“It’s all about my sister, Claire,” she began.
“ She’s ﬁve years older than I. She’s a lovely
girl, but she’s—that is, she used to be—impul-
sive, romantic, and headstrong. She and my
mother never got along well together, and she
was sent away to boarding-school. One winter,
it was six years ago, Mother was in Europe and
only Dad and I were at home .”
She sighed sadly. Evidently her words were
bringing back to her moments of heartache.
“ To make a long story short, Claire ran


70 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
away from the school and married,—married a
French chauffeur employed by a family in the
neighborhood. She took me into her conﬁdence
a week later, and I--well, I told Dad. There
was a terrible time about it all. Dad found out
that her husband was already married, had a wife
and child right here in this city. He had the
marriage annulled and managed to keep every-
thing out of the papers. He threatened Claire’s
husband with prison and made him go back to
France. Dad was simply wonderful. No one
knew anything about Claire’s escapade except
ourselves, the principal of the school, and the
Judge down in Nassau County, who ordered the
marriage annulled. He kept Mother abroad un-
til after it was all over, and to this day she never
has heard a word about it.”
“Your father must be a wonderful man,” I
said enthusiastically.
“He was,” she said simply. “He has been
dead two years.”
“ Oh, I’m so sorry,” I cried, “ I did not know.”
“ If Dad were alive he would know what to do.
You see, when he died, there was not much
money left. We’re really little better than


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 71
paupers. We’ve been living from day to day on
our tiny capital, and Mother has been working
every wire to arrange a good match for Claire.
I wanted to do something, to go out and earn a
living for myself, but she never would consent.
She insisted I’d be damaging Claire’s prospects
if I went into trade, as she calls it, and I promised
her I’d do nothing until after Claire is safely
married.”
“And is she to be married?” I asked.
A troubled expression came into her face.
“ She was to be, but now I don’t know. She
is engaged to marry young Harry D. Thayer,
who is worth a lot of money, but some one has
found out about her secret.”
“ How did they ﬁnd out?” I asked eagerly. I
understood now the mysterious meeting in the
Park that had brought me ﬁrst into touch with
Barbara Bradford. Some band of rascals was
trying to blackmail Claire Bradford, and her
sister was trying to save her.
“ That’s the greatest mystery of all,” ex-
claimed Miss Bradford. “Before Dad died he
turned over to me all the papers about the annul-
ment of Claire’s marriage. Somehow he seemed


72 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
to rely on me far more than on either Mother or
Claire. He explained to me the importance of
always keeping them, in case the past should
ever crop up, but he charged me to see that they
always were safely put away where no one could
find them.”
“ Where did you keep them? ” I asked.
“ In the wall safe in my sitting room.”
“In the wall safe!” I cried, thinking in be-
wilderment of the coincidence that these papers
should have had a similar hiding-place to the
Gaston jewels which had vanished so strangely.
“Yes,” she answered, plainly puzzled at my
bewilderment. “ It was an excellent hiding-place.
No one but myself had the combination. I don’t
see now who could have taken them. I found
the safe locked as it always was.”
“ When did you ﬁrst discover the papers were
missing? ”
“Let me see,” she pondered. “Claire’s en-
gagement was announced at a dinner three weeks
ago last Thursday. The newspapers on Sunday
carried a brief notice of it. Two days later the
ﬁrst note came.”
“ What note? ”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 73
She reached into the pocket of her riding habit
and drew forth a folded slip of paper.
“ I brought it with me to show you; here, this
is the ﬁrst one.”
Like the mysterious note I myself had received
only the preceding night, this one was not
enclosed in an envelope. It was just a folded
slip, addressed in typewriting to “Miss Claire
Bradford.” On the other side was this mes-
sage:
“ What if Thayer knew about your being mar-
ried before? How much will you give to get
those papers back?”
“ Where did you get this? ” I asked.
“ I found it on the ﬂoor of my bedroom one
morning when I got up late. I gave it to my
sister without having read it, thinking she had
dropped it there. She read it and screamed and
fainted. Fortunately Mother was out of the
house at the time. Naturally I read the note
then. I went to the safe and found the docu-
ments gone. Claire has been nearly crazy ever
since. She insists that it is all my fault. She
says I ought to have destroyed the papers, but I
couldn’t, could I?”


74. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Of course not,” I replied warmly. “ You
did quite right in keeping them. It was not your
fault they were stolen.”
“ I couldn’t destroy them. Dad had told me
to keep them,” she said simply.
“ \Nhat did you do then? Did you tell your
mother? "
“ Oh, no, she must never know. Dad did not
want her ever told anything about it. We talked
it over, Claire and I, and decided to put a per-
sonal advertisement in the papers. It simply
said, ‘ Liberal reward and no questions asked for
return of important papers.’ ”
“ Were there any answers? ”
“ Yes and no. We visited, that is I went to
the newspaper oﬂ‘ice every day for a week to see
if there were any replies, but none came. Then
one morning there was a second note.”
“ Delivered like the ﬁrst? ”
“ Yes, I found it, too, on the ﬂoor of my bed-
room. Here it is.”
More amazed and perplexed than ever by the
growing ramiﬁcation of the plots of the thieves
that seemed to involve us both, I took the paper
and read:


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 75
“ Ten thousand is our price for the papers.
Pay it or you’ll never marry Thayer.”
“ Did you go then to meet the man in the
Park?”
“ Not until after I got a third note, more
threatening than the ﬁrst and second. Claire
and I talked it over and over, trying to think who
could have taken the papers. We only keep two
servants now, Sarah and Mary, and they both
have been with us since we were children. It
could not have been either of them. They think
as much of us as our own mother does.”
“ Perhaps your sister had told some one about
her escapade? ”
“ No. I thought of that and asked her about
it. I am certain she did not. She is very much
ashamed of it now.”
“ Do you suppose the man that she married
may have learned of your father’s death and
have returned from France to try to blackmail
her? ”
“ We thought of that. The notes did not come
from him. They do not read as if a Frenchman
wrote them.”
“Who could it be?” I said more to myself


76 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
than to her, as I pondered over the plight in
which this poor girl found herself there, trying
to save her sister.
“ Then there was another note,” she went on.
“It demanded that Claire wear a red carnation
and meet the writer in the Park and bring ten
thousand dollars. That was the time I ﬁrst met
you. Your presence must have frightened them
off, for we had no more demands until night
before last.”
“ Did you have ten thousand with you that
night I ﬁrst met you?”
She shook her head.
“ We haven’t ten thousand dollars in the
world. Outside of our furniture and our jewels
and our motor, we have very little. If all the
bills we owe were paid, we’d have almost nothing
at all.”
“ What did you propose doing when you met
the man—or men? ”
“I didn’t know. I wanted to see who they
were, to see if I could identify them. I was going
to try to plead with them to give me the papers.
I would have promised anything to have gotten
them back.”


78 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Unless we get the money Wednesday,
Thayer gets the papers Thursday. N 0 wedding
then for yours. Same bench at six-thirty.”
“ What can I do about it? ”
“ I’ll go in your place," I suggested.
“ Oh, no, I couldn’t permit that.”
“ Let me explain,” I hastened to say. “I’m
in this mystery as deep as you are. What’s
more, the safe in the apartment I am occupying
has been robbed. Only last night I discovered
that all the Gaston jewels which had been left in
my custody are gone.”
“ Not stolen! ” she cried. “ The Gaston
pearls! ”
“ Yes,” I replied, “ the pearls, too.”
“ Why, they are worth two hundred thousand
dollars, at least. What have you done about it?
Have you notiﬁed the police?”
“ No, as yet I have told no one of the robbery
but yourself.”
“Why not? You must notify the police at
once.”
I hesitated. It was hard to explain my actions
without telling her the whole miserable story,
without admitting to this girl on whom I was


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 79
most eager to make the best of impressions that
I was a young man out of a position, discharged
in disgrace. Yet she had given me her conﬁ-
dence. She had trusted me, almost a stranger,
with the story of her sister’s escapade. It was
only fair to her and to myself that there should
be no secrets between us. I began at the be-
ginning. I told her Of my coming to New York
and how I had seen my great-uncle Rufus only
once or twice. I related the departure of Roller
and Birge for the war-front and told her how
eager I had been to go with them. I even went
into detail as to the reason, my debt to the
mother.
She did not seem greatly interested in the ﬁrst
part of my narrative but when I began telling of
the proposition the Gastons had made to me and
of the mysterious warnings each of them had
separately given me, I could see her interest
kindling.
“ There is something wrong in that apartment
house,” she explained. “ We have had nothing
but trouble ever since we lived there. I wonder
if there is anything in the theory that evil deeds
make bad karma, which spreads its effects all


80 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
about. I know I feel there is a sinister atmos-
phere about the whole place.”
“ I’m beginning to feel it, too," I said bitterly.
I told her then of my unexpected and unwar-
ranted discharge without explanation the day
before.
“ How do you account for it? " she asked per-
plexedly.
“ I don’t account for it. I can’t. I have not
the slightest idea of what the contents of that
letter were.”
“ You must have some enemy, some malicious
person, who has spread some terrible tale about
you.”
“ I haven’t any enemy in the world,” I replied,
yet even as I spoke there ﬂashed across my mind
the malevolent glance the scar-faced man had
given me in the restaurant a few evenings before.
“I wonder,” said Miss Bradford thoughtfully,
“if the same people who are trying to blackmail
us are not trying to involve you with us in some
way? ”
“ Why should they? ”
“ They may have been watching and have seen
you enter the house with me twice. They may


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 8I
think that you and I are friends and that you
were there in the Park purposely that ﬁrst time.”
“Even so,” I replied, “that doesn’t explain
this.”
I pulled from my pocket the note I had found
on the ﬂoor of my bedroom and showed it to her.
“Where did you get that?” she gasped in
astonishment.
“ Last night I heard footsteps and whispers.
I thought at the time I was dreaming. This
morning I found this note on the ﬂoor. That’s
all I know about it except that it was not I who
stole the Gaston jewels.”
“You heard whispers,” she cried excitedly,
“ whispers that seemed to come from up near the
ceiling? ”
“ I thought I heard them. I wasn’t sure.”
“ I know,” she said, shuddering. “ I’ve heard
them—twice.”
We looked at each other despairingly. We
both of us realized that we must be surrounded
with some potent evil forces working to ac-
complish our ruin. The motive in the anony-
mous letters that Miss Bradford had been receiv—
ing had plainly been blackmail. But what was


82 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
the motive in my own case? Why had some one
stolen the Gaston pearls and then in an anony-
mous letter to me spoken of the theft? I won-
dered, too, if the successful attempt to discredit
me at my place of business had not originated
from the same mysterious source.
Was my great-uncle Rufus to blame?
The suspicion of him rose in my mind and
would not be downed. I recalled the unusual
pretext on which he had sent for me after having
paid no attention to my existence for nearly a
year. I recalled his curious warning and that
of his aged wife. I remembered that they had
insisted on leaving the jewels behind against my
urgings, and that they had been insistent on my
having the combination of the safe. Could it be
possible that they also had some grudge against
the Bradfords, their neighbors, and in some way
had got hold of Claire Bradford’s secret?
“I think you said,” I asked Miss Bradford,
“that your family and the Gastons were not
acquainted in any way.”
“ No,” she replied, “we don’t know them at
all. Why do you ask that? ”
“ I was wondering if it could be possible that


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 83
my great-uncle Rufus could have had any hand
in all this. He’s a queer, secretive old chap.”
“It’s probable that he and my father might
have known each other. Both were in business
here in the city for many years. I never remem-
ber, though, of hearing Dad speak of him—wait,
yes, I did once.”
“ When was that?”
“It must have been six or eight years ago.
There was something in the papers about Mr.
Gaston retiring from business.”
“ What was it he said? ” I asked eagerly, won-
dering if some old feud between the two men
might not give us a clue to unravel the web of
mystery.
“ As nearly as I can recall his words were, ‘ I
see that old pirate Gaston has retired with his
ill-gotten gains.’ ”
“ To whom was he talking? ”
“ I don’t remember that, probably some man
' who was visiting at the house. Dad always used
to have a lot of men about.”
“ Did he say anything else? ”
“ That’s all I remember, but I don’t think the
Gastons could have anything to do with it. This


84. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
threatening my sister is more the sort of thing a.
discharged servant would do.”
“ Yes,” I admitted, “ but ﬁnd the discharged
servant. Yours have been with you for years."
“ Oh, what are we going to do? ” she cried in
desperation. “ If I don’t get those papers back,
we’ll all be ruined. They’ll give them to my
sister’s ﬁancé. Her engagement will be broken.
My mother will die of disgrace and shame."
“ Don’t be discouraged,” I cried, trying to in-
spire in her a conﬁdence I was far from feeling
myself. “ This is only Sunday. We have until
Wednesday evening. I’ll ﬁnd some way of trap-
ping those rascals and making them surrender
those papers. Leave it to me."
“ But what are you going to do? What are
you going to do about the jewels? "
“ I don’t know yet. I'll get the papers, and
I’ll solve the mystery of the jewels somehow.”
In spite of my reassuring words, distress was
still written on her countenance. Poor girl, I
could hardly blame her. Her plight was vastly
worse than mine. She had her mother and sister
to consider and to shield. I had only myself.
Even if I should be accused of the theft of the


86 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
you must let me know at once. If I learn any-
thing, I’ll let you know, and I’m going to dis-
cover a lot.”
“ There’s always our windows,” she suggested,
“ they are close together. I can signal you when
I’m alone, and we can talk."
“ I’ll be there in my room every evening from
ten o’clock on,” I said, “waiting to hear from
you. I’ll put a handkerchief on the sill when
I’m there.”
“ And I’ll do the same.”
Having reached this understanding, I walked
with her to the Park entrance within sight of the
house. She would not let me accompany her
farther, fearing that our being together might
cause more comment, a decision in which I un-
willingly concurred. All the way we had been
talking over the puzzling circumstances of the
anonymous notes and of the strange way in
which they had been found on the ﬂoor. Miss
Bradford had spoken again of the whispers she
had heard.
“The voices were vague—just like a ghost’s
might be,” she said.
“ Yes,” I admitted, “ that’s what they sounded


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 87
like. But there aren’t any ghosts. If those
whispers were real, some human being was mak-
ing them. I’m going to ﬁnd out who it was,
and when we’ve learned that, we’ll have learned
a lot about
I hesitated.
“ About whom?” she questioned.
“ I don’t know yet,” I answered.
,,

I was wondering about my great-uncle Rufus.


CHAPTER V
FOR half an hour after Barbara Bradford left
me, I walked the streets, puzzling over the maze
of our circumstances. I was determined to let
the disappearance of the jewels alone until I had
found some way of getting the Bradfords out of
their troubles. The key to the mystery surely
lay in the notes that had been found on the ﬂoor
in both apartments. If I could discover how the
notes had been put there and who put them
there, I would be on the trail of the miscreants.
I felt certain that my own mishaps had been
brought about by my chance meeting with
Miss Bradford. My untimely appearance had
thwarted the carrying out of the blackmail plot,
and the plotters were determined to wreak
vengeance on me.
But how did they gain access to the apart-
ments? The placing of the notes indicated the
necessity of a confederate in the apartment
house. Could it be that one of the employees was


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 89
in league with the plotters? Was one of the
Bradford servants betraying them? Was my
aged great-uncle in hiding somewhere, playing
malevolent pranks on us? How had that note
gotten into my own apartment? Nobody had
access to the place but myself—yes, and Mrs.
Burke, my great-aunt’s trusted old laundress. I
determined to return to the apartment and lie in
wait for her until she came in to do up my room.
In the week that I had lived there I had not even .
laid eyes on her, although each evening when I
came in I found my bed neatly made.
While I awaited her arrival I busied myself
with studying anew the different rooms in the
apartment, hoping ever to ﬁnd some new clue
to the method by which the anonymous notes
had been delivered. I went to the back of the
house and looked out of the rear windows. An
ornamental ledge of stone, perhaps eighteen
inches wide ran along apparently on the level of
the ﬂooring. Any agile person might easily have
crept along it if they dared risk falling six stories
to the ground, but there was no means of access
to it save from either my bedroom or the sitting
room or from the corresponding rooms in the


90 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
Bradford apartment. Certainly no one from my
apartment had been ﬂipping mysterious notes
into the other apartment. Could the converse
be true? Was there some unbalanced person in
the Bradford family who was doing it? Could
it be one of the servants, or possibly Claire Brad-
ford? She always had been ﬂighty, according
to her sister’s description. Had her troubles un-
balanced her to such an extent that she was play-
ing mysterious hysterical pranks on all of us?
I sat down at my uncle’s desk trying to puzzle
it out. The pigeonholes crammed full of papers
caught my eye. Under ordinary circumstances
I would have hesitated to examine them, but now
I felt no scruples. Old Rufus had warned me
that there was some mystery about the place.
The pearls had strangely disappeared. I faced
the accusation of having stolen them. Surely I
was entitled to examine anything and everything
in my efforts at solving the mystery.
Most of the papers were mere business docu-
ments, the accumulation of years, letters from
renting agents, notices of dividends, clues, per-
haps to the extent of his holdings, if I cared to
follow them up, but that subject did not interest


92 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
in which I slept. As I debated the matter I
heard some one moving about my room and
went to investigate. It was Mrs. Burke, making
up my bed. She would know which room my
great-uncle had been accustomed to occupy.
As I entered the bedroom for the purpose of
cross-questioning her, my ﬁrst impression—and
philosophers tell us that the ﬁrst is most likely
to be the correct one—was of a simple-minded,
kindly old Irish woman of the utmost honesty.
Any idea there might have been in my mind that
she was in any way involved in either the dis-
appearance of the Gaston jewels or the con-
spiracy against the Bradfords was at once dis-
pelled. I was certain just by looking at her that
there wasn’t a crooked hair in her head, even if
she had had the intelligence necessary for crimes
beyond the ordinary.
A broad smile spread over her countenance as
I entered.
“ It’s Mr. Nelson I’m seeing at last," she ex-
claimed with satisfaction. “I was wondering
when I would be laying eyes on ye.”
“ Yes,” said I, “ I am Mr. Nelson, Mr. Gaston’s
great-nephew.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 93
“ Sure and I’d have knowed ye anywhere. It’s
as like ye are as two pea‘s, barring the old gentle-
man’s white hairs.”
Her statement rather startled me, for while I
never had regarded myself as an Adonis, on the
other hand I never had supposed I looked any-
thing like old Rufus. I hoped it was only the
old lady’s Irish way of trying to compliment me.
“ Was this my great-uncle’s bedroom when he
was here? ” I asked, trying to make my inquiry
seem casual.
“It was and it wasn’t,” Mrs. Burke replied.
“ He gets queer notions, the ould gentleman
does. In the last few weeks he’s slept in every
room in the house.”
“ What made him do that? ”
Mrs. Burke shook her head mysteriously.
“It’s not for me to be saying.” Devoutly she
crossed herself. “Sometimes I do be thinking
the house is haunted. The old man was all the
H

time mumbling about
She hesitated and looked furtively about.
“About whispers,” I suggested. Instead of
replying to my question she shot another one
at me.


94. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ And have ye been hearing them too? "
I laughed, trying to put a note of merriment
into my tones.
“ I don’t believe in things like that.”
The old woman nodded her head sagely.
“ It ain’t believing in them things that makes
you hear them. Either you hear them or you
don’t. The old man heard them.”
“ How do you know? ”
“ Didn’t I hear him asking meself about it?
He heard them, many times.”
“ How about the others—the servants—did
they hear them, too? ”
“ They may have that. Niggers is always
hearing things anyhow. It’s what the white
folk hear that counts.”
“ How about the other apartments in the
house? Do the people in them hear whispers? "
“ Never that I’ve heard tell of, but how should
I know? This is the only place in the house that
I work.”
“ Did Mrs. Gaston ever speak to you about it?”
“ She did and she did not. She never in so
many words asked me if I heard them. All she
says to me was, ‘ Nora, if ever you see or hear


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 95
anything strange or unusual here, you’re to let
me know at once.’ And I says, ‘ Yis, Mrs. Gas-
ton, I will.’ ”
“ And have you ever seen or heard anything? ”
The old woman busied herself with making up
the bed for a moment before she answered me.
When ﬁnally she turned toward me there was a
strange look in her face, an expression in which
superstitious fear mingled with a desire to talk.
“ I’m not saying I’ve seen anything,” She be-
gan, “but there’s things I could be telling if I
was minded to open my lips.”
“If you know anything,” I said, “you must
tell me. Mr. Gaston put me here to ﬁnd out
what was wrong.”
“ There’s no doubt there’s wrong here.”
“ What makes you say that? What have you
seen? What do you know? ”
“ It’s neither what I’ve seen nor what I know.”
She nodded mysteriously. “ It’s what I’ve been
hearing myself.”
“ For heaven’s sake, woman,” I cried, losing
patience, “ what is it you’ve heard? ”
“ I’ve heard them walking,” she announced
with an air of triumph.


96 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ You’ve heard who walking? ”
“ The little people, of course. Who else would
it be doing it? ”
“ Oh, bosh! ” I exclaimed. I was well enough
acquainted with the superstitions of the Irish to
understand who she meant by “ the little people.”
It’s the habit of the old crones from the Emerald
Isle to attribute anything they cannot understand
to fairies. Probably the talk of the servants and
Mrs. Gaston’s questioning had excited her
imagination, till every sound she heard in the
apartment took on some sinister meaning.
“ You may laugh,” she retorted indignantly,
“ but what I’ve heard I’ve heard. Footsteps it
was, not once but several times when there
wasn’t a soul in the house but meself, with him
and the old lady gone for their ride, and the cook
and the butler both out. I heard them, I tell
,’
ye.
“ Where did you hear them, these footsteps? ”
“ Coming right out of the wall, here in this
room, and in the kitchen, beyond.”
“It was probably somebody in another apart-
ment you heard.”
“It was not. The ﬂoors do be deadened like,


98 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
had announced her decision not to return.
While my impression of her was that she was a
simple-minded old woman of uttermost honesty,
I was just as well satisﬁed that no one but myself
should have entry to the apartment until I had
ﬁnished my investigations and had made further -
progre'ss in solving the mysteries that were so
rapidly developing. I even~took the precaution
of bolting the servants’ entrance from the inside.
If there should happen to be any duplicate key
made already from the one that had been in the
old woman’s possession, it would be useless here-
after, though with the Gaston jewels already
stolen, it was a case of locking the stable door.
Left once more to myself I set about methodic-
ally on my investigations. I sat down at my
great-uncle’s desk and made out a list of ques-
tions that must be answered:
1. Where was Rufus Gaston? Had the old
gentleman really gone away or was he in hiding
in the building?
2. Who had removed the Gaston pearls from
the wall safe? It must be some one who knew
the combination.
3. Who had written the note I found on the


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 99
ﬂoor of my bedroom? How and when had it
been placed on the ﬂoor there?
4. Who were the persons who were trying to
blackmail the family next door?
5. How had the anonymous notes been de-
livered on the ﬁOOr of Barbara Bradford’s room?
(Evidently the writer was the same as in my
case.)
6. Was there anything in the past relations
of Mr. Bradford and my great-uncle that would
cause my great-uncle to plot against the Brad-
ford family?
7. How were the mysterious sounds heard
both by my great—uncle, by Barbara Bradford,
and by myself to be accounted for?
8. How were the mysterious footsteps heard
by Mrs. Burke to be explained? Were they
merely the imaginings of a superstitious old
woman?
I was inclined to think that they were and yet
so many inexplicable things had occurred in the
place in my brief tenancy that I was determined
to make a serious investigation of them. The
relations between Mr. Bradford and Rufus Gas—
ton puzzled me, too. Miss Bradford’s recollec-


100 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
tion of her father’s remark about my great-uncle
certainly indicated that he held no high opinion
of him. My great-uncle’s actions throughout
had been peculiar. His suddenly sending for me
and insisting on my coming here to live, his in-
sistence on leaving his wife’s jewels in my care,
and on entrusting me with the combination of
the safe, all now took on a sinister aspect. Had
the terror he exhibited been assumed merely to
mask his real purposes? Had those entries in
his diary been put there purposely to confuse
and to puzzle me? It certainly was peculiar that
he had gone off without leaving me any address
where he could be reached.
Then, too, there was my own unexpected and
unwarranted discharge at my place of business.
I was positive that in some way it was connected
with my having come to this place to live. Had
my great-uncle himself, who undoubtedly had
still some acquaintance and power in the business
world, brought it about for the purpose of dis-
crediting me? Was it the work of the black-
mailers to get square with me for having acci-
dentally butted in on the meeting they had ar-
ranged with Miss Bradford?


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 101
The scar-faced man! WVho was he? I was
certain that he was in some way involved. It
might have been he who had caused me to lose
my job. Certainly the malevolent glance he had
given me in the restaurant that night showed
that he would have wrought me harm if he could.
The next time I laid eyes on him I was de-
termined to trail him with bulldog tenacity until
I ascertained his identity and where he lived. I
felt sure that the trail of the mystery would lead
to his door. ’
Why should I not try to locate him this even-
ing? But no. I recalled that I had promised
Miss Bradford that I would be waiting in my
room all evening in case she should signal me.
It was important that I should get in communica-
tion with her. I had news for her. I decided
not to leave the apartment all day. I had laid
in a plentiful supply of food the day before so
there was no necessity for my going out. There
was plenty of work for me to do. I must try
to devise some way of examining the safe door
and the jewel box that remained for evi-
dence of ﬁnger-prints, and I must inspect
the building both from within and without to


102 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
see if I could learn how the notes were deliv-
ered.
From one of the toilet tables I obtained some
ﬁne powder and opening the wall safe again I
took out the jewel box and carefully dusted it
over with the powder. I hoped that the powder
would reveal markings of hands on the box, but
either I was too inexperienced or my method was
wrong, for I succeeded in obtaining no sort of
result, beyond ﬁnding out what my own ﬁnger-
prints looked like on a sheet of paper prepared
with some home-made lampblack. After an
hour or two of experimentation I gave it up
as a bad job, and turned to the study of meth-
ods by which the notes might have been deliv-
ered.
Looking out of the rear windows, it was plain
that there was no other building near enough
from the windows of which the notes could have
been projected. The Gaston apartment was on
the sixth ﬂoor of the building, which was sur-
rounded by ordinary three and four-story dwell-
ing houses. It must have been some one in the
building, if not in the apartment itself. It would
be quite possible for some one on the ﬂoor above


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 103
to have projected the notes through my window
and that of Miss Bradford by attaching them to
the end Of a long stick. I made up my mind to
ascertain by judicious inquiry from the telephone
girl downstairs who occupied the apartments
above.
The mystery of the whispers did not seem to
be of such easy solution. While I had been in-
clined at ﬁrst to regard my own experience as a
dream, the coincidence of Miss Bradford and my
great-uncle having had the same illusion con-
vinced me that it was some claptrap devised by
the plotters for preying on the fears of their
intended victims. I tried to recall from just
what part of my bedroom the sounds had seemed
to come. As nearly as I remembered they had
seemed to issue from high up against the wall in
one corner of the room. I determined to ask
Miss Bradford just in what part of her room she
had heard them.
Eagerly I waited for the coming of evening
and from half-past seven on I sat by my win-
dow waiting for her signal. It was nearly nine
o’clock before I heard the three taps that had
so startled me the evening before. Quickly I


104 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
thrust my head out of the window and was
rewarded by seeing hers appear at the same
moment.
“We must not talk long,” she warned me.
“ Some one might see us. Have you learned
anything new? ”
“ Yes,” I whispered. “In my uncle’s diary I
found several entries about the whispers.”
“How strange! ” she exclaimed. “Where is
Mr. Gaston? ”
“ I don’t know.”
“ That’s funny.”
“ It’s more than that. It is decidedly odd that
he left no word where he could be reached.”
“I don’t blame him,” she almost sobbed. “ I
wish we could all get away off somewhere, away
from it all.”
“ Don’t worry. Everything we ﬁnd out will
help discover the plotters. Tell me from what
part of your room did the sounds come.”
“Always from the same place, up in the corner,
near the ceiling.” '
“ I thought so,” I answered. “That’s where
they came from in my room. That shows it is
just some mechanical trick they are using in the


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 107
to see each other somewhere tomorrow and talk
this over. Where can we meet?”
“I’m afraid I can’t manage it tomorrow. I’m
busy with my mother and sister all day long.”
“ But I must see you.”
“ I’ll signal you tomorrow evening, the minute
I am here alone.”
“ But can’t we meet? ”
“ No—not tomorrow; Tuesday, perhaps. But
we mustn’t talk here longer. Good night.”
“ Good night,” I called softly but her head had
been already withdrawn, so quickly that I hardly
knew whether she heard me. So there was
nothing left for me to do but to reluctantly with-
draw from the window and retire. As I was
about ready for bed I recalled that I had spent
most of the money I had had in my pockets, so
I visited the bookcase where I had secreted
my horde and taking out a twenty—dollar
bill, wrapped it about the three one-dollar
bills I had left and put the roll in my trousers
pocket.
In spite of the confusing circumstances in
which I had been so unexpectedly thrust, I slept
soundly. The next morning, as I was dressing,


108 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
I happened to draw forth my money. I gazed at
it horror-stricken.
I distinctly recalled having wrapped the
' twenty-dollar bill about the three smaller bills.
Now one of the dollar bills was on the outside.
There before me was indisputable evidence
that some one had been in my room while I slept,
some one had gone through my pockets and had
examined my money. Some one had put the
dollar bill on the outside of the roll.
Who had done it? How bad they gotten into
the room?


CHAPTER VI
LEFT alone for a moment by my companion, I
sat there at the table in the crowded restaurant,
idly watching the beautifully costumed women
all about me, listening dreamily to the music of
the orchestra, observing with interest the grace-
ful gyrations of the occasional couple who sought
the dancing ﬂoor in the center, when suddenly I
was brought to myself by hearing a gruff voice
saying:
“ What’d you bring that crook in here for? ”
“ What do you mean? ” I gasped in astonish-
ment, looking up at a square-shouldered man
with a neatly trimmed black mustache who was
standing beside my table.
“It’s you I mean,” he announced. “ Don’t
you know you can’t bring that kind of people in
here? ” “
AS- explanation for my presence there in the
White Room of the famous Hundredth Hotel, let
me say that my investigations into the perplex-


no THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
ing chain of mysterious circumstances in which
Barbara Bradford and I seemed to be each day
becoming more ﬁrmly involved, had ﬁnally led
me to deduce three different theories, each more
or less plausible, and each involving an entirely
different set of persons.
There were certain happenings and circum-
stances that made me sometimes wonder if the
whole thing were not a base plot on the part of
my great-uncle Rufus, perhaps inﬂuenced by a
desire for revenge or perhaps led on by an insane
greed for still greater wealth.
Yet, on the other hand, there were those en-
tries in his diary about the mysterious voices.
Apparently, too, his wife and Mrs. Burke had
heard them. Besides, the terror exhibited by
the old couple was too real to be assumed. Nor
did it seem logical to suppose that my great-
uncle’s trembling ﬁngers would be able to open
the Bradford wall safe, as well as his own.
Did it not seem more likely that the arch
plotter was Claire Bradford’s ex-husband?
This theory seemed far more tenable. A man
unscrupulous enough to elope with a schoolgirl
when he was already married, certainly was of


112 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
Suppose a band of criminals was located in the
apartment house on the ﬂoor above the Brad-
fords and me?
Access to either apartment would not be difﬁ-
cult. By short rope ladders they could easily
reach either set of rooms. They would be so
located that there would be little difﬁculty for
them to devise mysterious sounds for terrifying
the people in the apartments below. I recalled
that in every case the voices and the footsteps
seemed to come from somewhere up near the
ceiling. Of course it seemed preposterous that
a criminal band would ﬁnd lodging in a luxurious
apartment house like this, yet, why not? Ten-
ants in these buildings knew little about each
other and cared less. There was no exchange of
neighborly visits. Once having gained access to
such a building by forged references, so long as
they paid their rent promptly, no one in the
building would bother his head about the char-
acter of any of the other tenants.
The last theory seemed the most plausible.
Besides it was the easiest to work on. It ought
not to be difﬁcult to ascertain who lived in the
two apartments above. Once their identity was


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 113
ascertained it would not require much eﬁort to
establish their respectability, or otherwise. Un-
doubtedly my best source of information would
be Nellie Kelly, the telephone operator. Per-
haps, too, she might be able to inform me of my
great-uncle’s whereabouts. More than likely he
had left a forwarding address for his mail with
her.
With a letter I had written to my mother, I
descended to the main ﬂoor and began a con-
versation with Miss Kelly by asking where was
the nearest place that I could buy stamps. As
we chatted I began complaining how lonely it
was in the apartment and wound up by inviting
her to dine with me that evening.
She seemed the ordinary type of New York
business girl, rather nattily dressed, fairly good-
looking, ﬂip of tongue, and thoroughly impressed
with her own ability to take care of herself. I
had anticipated a ready acceptance of my invita-
tion and was amazed to ﬁnd it ﬁrmly refused. In
a much confused manner She advanced a dozen
reasons, or rather pretexts. She did not go out
with the people of the house. Her mother would
not like it. She did not know me well enough.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 115
sort of compulsion from the odious Wick. Un-
der any other circumstances I would have given
the girl an opportunity later for withdrawing her
acceptance, but there were certain things that
she knew that it was important for me to ﬁnd
out, so I felt that I must go on with it.
I met her, at her suggestion, in the parlor of
one of the less pretentious hotels. In the hour
that had elapsed since she left the apartment, she
had exchanged her neat black working suit for
more modish clothes. After one quick glance
at her transformed appearance my mind was
quickly made up as to what sort of a restaurant
to take her. It was manifest that she was of the
type that would enjoy to the utmost the costly
whirl of the fashionable café of the moment. It
was my purpose to give her such a delightful
evening that she would be wishing to spend
others in the same way, for I felt certain that she,
perhaps better than any one else, could supply
me the information I wanted about the tenants
in the building. I was sure it would be well
worth my while to win her good graces, cost
What it may. Calling a taxi, I bade the chauffeur
take us to the “White Room,” the very latest


116 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
fashion in restaurants where hordes of hectic
pursuers of pleasure were wont to assemble to
dine and dance. I observed the gleam of satis-
faction that came into her eyes as she heard me
mention our destination.
As we entered the place I was wondering a
little whether she would know how to conduct
herself in such surroundings, but the grand man-
ner in which she bade the head waiter ﬁnd us a
good table not too near the music convinced me
that she was probably more familiar with café life
than I was myself. At ﬁrst we talked, in Broad-
way fashion, of the theatres and restaurants, of
the place we were in, of the people at the tables
about us, but gradually I led the conversation to
Miss Kelly herself and to her work in the apart-
ment.
“ It was funny, wasn’t it,” I said, “ about Mr.
.Wick insisting on your coming with me? I had
a notion he didn’t like me.”
Hitherto my companion had been most viva-
cious, chatting merrily, ﬂashing back at my
sallies with clever bits of that slangy repartée
of which most of the metropolitan business girls
are such clever mistresses. At my last remark a


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 117
quick change came over her face. It was as if
a mask had been set up between us behind which
she was hiding from me.
“ I guess he likes you,” she answered guard-
. edly. “ I never heard him say one way or the
other.”
“ Do you like him?”
“ Mr. Wick’s all right,” she answered. “ There
are worse than him.”
“ While we’re talking about the apartment,” I
went on, “ did my great-uncle happen to leave a
forwarding address with you? There are some
things I want to send him—some pearls they left
behind—and he has not written me yet where his
address will be.”
I had not intended to mention the Gaston
pearls. I had slipped that phrase in on the spur
of the moment, curious to see if she had heard
about them, hoping that a mention of them
would incite her to discussing my aged relatives,
but little was I prepared for the astounding
effect my words had upon her.
“ The pearls! ” she gasped, turning white.
“ You’re going to send him the Gaston pearls!”
There was a note of amazement, of incredulity


118 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
in her tone. Her brow suddenly puckered as if
in thought, and her ﬁngers clutched nervously at
the tablecloth between us.
“ Excuse me,” she said, rising unexpectedly,
“ I gotta telephone.”
Before I could gather my wits together she
had vanished, leaving me sitting there, staring
after her in dismay. What did she—the tele-
phone girl—know about the Gaston pearls?
How could she possibly know that they were
missing? I had told no one—no one except Bar-
bara Bradford—about the riﬂed wall safe. How
could her excitement and perturbation be ac-
counted for except by the fact that she knew of
their loss? Had she really gone to telephone?
Perhaps she had vanished altogether. I was
half minded to go in search of her when I ob-
served her bag, a handsome beaded affair, still
lying on the table. If she had not intended to
return she would have taken that with her. I
was sitting there, puzzling over her mysterious
conduct, when I became aware that a man was
standing beside my table, glaring down at me. I
looked up, expecting to see the waiter, or head
waiter. Instead it was a man in a dinner jacket,


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 119
a stocky, broad-shouldered chap with a close-
cropped gray mustache.
“ You’ve got your nerve,” he sneered at
me.
“ What do you mean?” I demanded, too
astonished to be even resentful.
“ Bringing a woman of that sort here.”
“A woman of what sort?” I asked eagerly,
surprised to ﬁnd some one in a place of this sort
who knew the Granddeck’s telephone girl.
“ Why, Lefty Moore’s wife, of course. Who’d
you think I was talking about? ”
“I don’t understand,” I replied, “I’m here
with Miss Kelly.”
“Oh, she told you that was her name, did
she?”
“I know it’s her name. She’s the telephone
girl in the apartment where I live—the Grand-
deck.”
I could see his manner toward me change at
the mention of my abode, but he was still in-
sistent about the identity of my companion.
“ How well do you know her? ” he asked.
“ Well ”—I am afraid I colored, as I realized
that my acquaintance with the girl was limited,


120 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
--“ I’ve been living there for a week or so,
and I’ve talked with her two or three times
and ”
“ I thought so,” said my inquisitor. “ There’s
nothing to it. She’s Lefty Moore’s woman all
right. If I’d seen you come in with her, you’d
never have got a table in this place.”
“ What is the matter with her? Who is Lefty
Moore? "

An expression of amazement cameinto the
man’s face.
“ Did you never hear tell of Lefty Moore, the
cleverest three-time burglar there is in or out of
Sing Sing? Fourteen years he got the last time,
and it was quite a write-up the papers gave me
for catching him.”
It began to dawn on me then who the man
was. He must be an ex-policeman employed as
the restaurant bouncer or house detective.
“You’re sure Miss Kelly and Lefty Moore’s
wife are the same person?”
“ I’ve reasons for not forgetting her. She was
with him that time when I took him. I’ve got
the marks of her nails in my face yet. It’s her
all right, even if she has gone to work as Miss


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 121
Kelly while Lefty’s doing his stretch. She’s a
bad one, she is.”
“ Is she a crook, too? " I asked excitedly. I
was trying to measure up the importance of this
astounding bit of information. Already my de-
ductions had convinced me that some band of
criminals were in collusion with some one in the
apartment who was carrying out their plots
against the Bradfords and me. I had been think-
ing of an apartment surreptitiously tenanted by a
criminal gang. How much more likely that an
employee of the place was in the pay of the
plotters! And now to learn that the telephone
girl was, if not a criminal herself, at least the
associate of criminals.
“ She’s got no record that I know of,” the
detective admitted, “but she couldn’t be Lefty
Moore’s wife without being a crook herself.”
“That helps explain things,” I said more to
myself than to him.
“ Explains what? ” he asked suspiciously.
“ Look here,” I said with a new determination.
“ There have been some mysterious happenings
in the Granddeck, and I brought this girl here to
try to pump her. I asked her a question or two,


122 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
and she became much embarrassed and confused.
She jumped up and said she was going to the
telephone. Do you suppose that she saw you
and recognized you? ”
“ Not a chance,” said the detective.
“ Well, I’d like to ﬁnd out to whom she tele-
phoned. Can you ﬁnd out for me? ”
“ Sure I can, but you got to get her out of
here.” ‘
“All right,” I replied. “As soon as she re-
turns to my table, I’ll pay my check and we’ll
leave. I’ll be back by and by to see if you’ve
learned anything.”
“Here she comes now,” said the detective,
hastily taking his departure, but I noticed that
he had stationed himself behind some palms
where he could watch the girl without being
seen.
“ Who was the fellow talking to you as I came
up?” asked Miss Kelly curiously.
She was cool and collected now. Her tele-
phone message—if she had been really ’phon-
ing—seemed in some way to have fortiﬁed her.
There was no trace of the embarrassment she
had shown when she left the table.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 123
“Oh, that fellow,” I replied with assumed
carelessness, “ that was the manager of the
place.”
“ Do you know him? ”
“ Only by sight.”
“ What’d he want?”
“ Nothing in particular. He just asked if
everything was all right. Why? ”
“He looked to me like a bull—like a detect-
ive I used to know,” she hastily corrected her-
self.
Her slip in using the thieves’ slang phrase
served to aid in convincing me that my informant
had been correct in his identiﬁcation. N0 decent
girl, who never has been in the hands of the law,
is likely to use the phrase “bull.” I was as
anxious now as the house detective to get her out
of the restaurant. Being out in public with the
wife of a well-known crook did not appeal to
me in the least, and summoning the waiter I
hastened to pay my check.
“ Let’s stay for a couple of dances,” she sug-
gested.
“ Sorry,” I said, “but I can’t dance "—men-
tally adding the words, “ with you.”


124. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Let’s go then,” she said disappointedly, and
to my surprise on the way out she renewed the
subject of Mr. Gaston.
“ You were asking if the old gentleman left a
forwarding address. He didn't leave any with
me. If you ﬁnd out where he is, will you let me
or Mr. Wick know? Mr. Wick wants to get in
touch with him.”
Something told me then it must have been Mr.
Wick she had telephoned to. Probably she had
informed him I had been asking about the Gas-
tons’ address and had consulted him as to what
answer to give. Putting the girl into a taxi I
paid her driver to take her home and hurried
back into the hotel. I found the house detect-
ive—James Gorman, I learned his name was—
Waiting for me in the lobby.
“ Was it to the Granddeck she telephoned? ”
I asked eagerly.
He shook his head.
“ It was 0909 Plaza. That’s a private number.
I called up information, and she wouldn’t tell me
where it was. I’ll ﬁnd out tomorrow, though.
There’s other ways besides through informa-
tion.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 125
“If you ﬁnd out you’ll ’phone me right away,
won’t you? ” I asked him, giving him my
card. ’
“And have Lefty Moore’s wife listening in,”
he suggested. “ Nothing doing, son. You’d
better call me from a public pay station.”
“You’re right about that,” I replied, “and
say, look here. You must know a lot of crooks
and about the way they work.”
“Sure I do. I was twenty-six years on the
force.” ‘
“Why can’t you meet me somewhere tomor-
row afternoon. There are a lot of mysterious
things happening in the Granddeck. Maybe you
can help me in trying to clear them up.”
“ It’s a date. I’ll be in the back room of Iim
Connor’s place over on Third Avenue at three
o’clock waiting for you.”
“I’ll be there,” I said, as I bade him good
night.
“ Hold on a minute,” he said, calling me back.
“ Do you know where Lefty Moore’s wife lives
now? ”
I recalled the number She had told me to give
the taxi man and repeated it to him, an address


126 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
way over on East Sixty-second Street near the
river.
“ I like to know them sort of things,” he ex-
plained. “ In our business you never know
when you’ll be needing them.”
On my way home, after I left him, I con-
gratulated myself on having made James Gor-
man’s acquaintance. It seemed to me that he
was just the sort of person that Barbara Brad-
ford and I needed to aid us in our troubles. If
either of us complained to the police it would be
likely to involve both of us in a lot of unpleasant
notoriety. In Gorman I had found a man with
police and detective experience. The fact that
he held a responsible position with a big hotel
ought to be sufﬁcient voucher for his honesty.
Of course Miss Bradford must be consulted be-
fore I met Gorman the next afternoon. I could
hardly tell him my own almost unbelievable ex-
periences without bringing in the attempts to
blackmail her sister. Somehow Detective Gor-
man had inspired me with such conﬁdence that I
felt I could tell him of the disappearance of the
Gaston pearls, where I would have hesitated to
conﬁde in the police department for fear of bring-


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 127
ing suspicion on myself. Surely Miss Bradford
would not object to my plan. We were making
such poor headway in solving the mystery our-
selves that I was certain she would welcome
, Gorman’s advice.
And would it not be a surprise to Barbara
Bradford to learn that a criminal—or at least the
wife of a criminal—was employed as a telephone
girl in the apartment house. I was hoping that
she would be at home and in her room when I
arrived at the house so that I might signal her
and tell her my great news at once.
I let myself into the apartment and without
bothering to turn on the lights made my way
back toward my own room. As I reached the
end of the hall my ears detected a scuﬂling noise
that seemed to come from my quarters. I
stopped stock-still and listened breathlessly. Un-
questionably there was some one in my room.
I tiptoed softly forward. As I crept along in
the darkness, making no sound, I found myself
devoutly wishing for some weapon. In case the
intruder should attack me, I would be defense-
less except for my two hands. Of course it
might be Barbara, who had entered by means of


128 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
the ledge to leave some message for me, but if it
were not she, I felt certain that I would dis-
cover who was at the bottom of the plots against
us.
I gained the door without my presence having
been discovered. It had been left standing
slightly ajar, and without a sound I pushed it
slowly open and peered within. In the dim half-
light that came from the open window I could
detect a ﬁgure standing on a chair apparently
feeling along the wall near the ceiling. I recalled
with curiosity that it was from that spot that the
whispers I had heard had seemed to come.
Inch by inch I edged noiselessly forward, my
eyes on the intruder until at last my ﬁngers found
the electric light button. With my hand resting
on the button I peered at the mysterious person,
trying to fathom the meaning of the peculiar pro-
ceedings I was witnessing. Then I pressed the
button sharply, instinctively assuming an atti-'
tude of defence.
As the light ﬂooded the room there was a sup-
pressed scream, followed by a frightened gasp.
The ﬁgure on the chair turned quickly and faced
me. I saw that it was a woman, a badly fright-


AR‘hmﬂ WILLIA“ Ekuwni


As the light ﬂooded the room there was a suppressed scream,
followed by a. frightened gasp. Page 128


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 129
ened woman, with her hands clutching at her
heart. Almost instantly I recognized her. It
was not Barbara Bradford, but her sister, Claire.
She was clad in some sort of a dark hous'e gown
.thrown over her nightgown. Her slippered feet
were bare of stockings, and her hair hung in a.
great braid down her back. The pallor of her
cheeks emphasized the darkness of her eyes, giv-
ing her almost the appearance of a beautiful
ghost.
As I stared at her she sprang from the chair
and made a rush for the open window. I
grabbed for. her and though she fought des-
perately I managed to hold her fast and to drag
her away from the window. After a moment’s
futile resistance she suddenly collapsed in my
arms, moaning in a tense whisper:
“ Let me go, please let me go.”
I placed her in a chair, and still keeping a tight
hold on one of her arms, studied her, debating
what to do. What had been her mission in my
rooms? In what way was she involved? What
desperate motive could have driven this girl to
the daring journey across the narrow ledge by
which she had gained access to my quarters?


130 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
Was she, I wondered, once more in the power of
that evil ex-husband of hers, driven by fear of
him to such desperate deeds.
“ Let me go,” she moaned again.
“ Not until you tell me what you were doing in
my rooms,” I answered ﬁrmly.
“ I did not know there was any one here. I
thought the apartment was vacant. I thought
the Gastons were away.”
“ But why did you come?”
“ I can’t tell that,” she moaned. “ I can’t! I
can’t! ”
“ You must,” I repeated. “ I am going to
keep you here until you do tell me.”
She made a great effort to regain her self-
control, and raising her eyes—wonderful eyes
like her sister’s—studied my face.
“ You must not keep me here,” she said. “ I
don’t want my people to know about my having
been here. You look like a gentleman. Please
let me go.”
“ Doesn’t Barbara—doesn’t your sister know
you are here? ”
At my mention of her sister’s name an ex-
pression of amazement escaped her.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 131
“ Who are you? ” She asked excitedly. “ How
did you know who I was? ”
“I am a friend of your sister,” I answered.
" She will tell you who I am. You may trust
me. But I am in charge of Mr. Gaston’s apart-
ment during his absence. I feel I have a right
to know what you were doing here. Won’t you
tell me? ”
A strange look came into her eyes and she
shook her head.
“ You wouldn’t understand if I did tell you.”
“ Perhaps I might. I may know more than
you suspect.”
“ About what? ” she questioned quickly, a look
of terror coming into her eyes.
“About everything—the missing papers, the
notes. You see, you can trust me.”
Once more she shook her head in a bothered
way.
“ You wouldn’t understand. I was trying to
trace the whispers."
“ The whispers! ” I cried excitedly. “ You
have heard them too.”
“Often,” she said. “I heard them tonight.
Mother and Barbara were out at the theatre.


132 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
They seemed to come from near the ceiling in my
sister’s room. They were louder at ﬁrst and
then they seemed to grow less and less distinct.
They seemed to vanish in the direction of this
room. I thought there was no one here. I
looked out the window and saw your window
open. I decided to creep along the ledge and
see if I could trace them.”
“ And did you succeed? "
She shook her head.
“ When I ﬁrst came in this room I still could
hear them. They seemed to be coming from up
near the ceiling. I got up on a chair and put my
ear to the wall to listen. Then they stopped
altogether and then—you came in. May I go
now—before my mother comes home? ”
“On one condition," I answered, “that you
tell your sister about your having been here."
“ I’ll tell her if you wish me to,” she replied,
“ and now, please may I go? Could you let me
out of your door? See, I brought a key to our
apartment with me. I don’t think I dare make
that trip across the ledge tonight.”
As I escorted her to the door, my mind in a
whirl over the events of the evening, I suddenly


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 133
remembered how important it was that I should
see her sister for a long talk before I kept my
appointment with Gorman.
“ Tell your sister,” I said to Claire Bradford as
she departed, “ that it is imperative that she meet
me at luncheon tomorrow. I have news of the
utmost importance—news that concerns all of us.
Tell her to meet me at the Astor at one. She
must come.”
“ I’ll tell her,” she replied.


CHAPTER VII
IT was the next evening that I made my
astounding discovery, when pure chance led me
plump into what both Barbara Bradford and I
recognized at once as our ﬁrst real clue to the
mysteries surrounding us.
My ﬁnd came unexpectedly at the end of an
exciting day. As may be imagined I slept little
in the hours following my unexpected meeting
with Claire Bradford in my rooms, coming as it
did right on top of Detective Gorman’s revela-
tions as to the identity of the telephone girl.
Coupled with these circumstances was the fact
that if my hopes were realized, Barbara would
be within a very few hours lunching with me for
the ﬁrst time.
I just had to see her before I met Gorman.
The tale I was to unfold to him was so improb-
able, so almost unbelievable, that I wanted to go
over it with her step by step, in order to be able


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 135
to convince the detective that it was the absolute
truth.
I could not help but realize how preposterous
it would sound in the telling. Mr. Gorman could
hardly be blamed for believing that my mind had
been inﬂamed by witnessing too many movie
thrillers. Yet I had proof. There were the
entries in my great-uncle’s diary that I could
Show. I had the anonymous notes. My story
of the Strange whispers, if need be, could be con-
ﬁrmed by the old laundress, by Barbara Brad-
ford, yes, and by Claire, too. That is, if the
reason Claire had given to account for her pres-
ence in my room was the true one. It sounded
logical, and yet I did not place the conﬁdence in
her that I did in Barbara.
But what I relied on most of all to convince
Gorman of the truth of my preposterous tale was
his own knowledge of who the telephone girl
was. just when I had reached the deduction
that the band plotting against us must have a
coadjutor in the building, he had come forward
with the knowledge that pointed toward the
person most apt to be involved.
I was still pondering all this over in my mind


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 137
At last I read the warning. He must be fol-
lowing me, trailing me, shadowing me. How
else could the repetition of his actions be ex-
plained? I determined’to test out my theory.
At the next corner I turned sharply, glancing
quickly back as I did so. He was still following
me, though on the other side of the street and
perhaps half a block away. I went a few steps
out of sight and then stopped as if to look in a
shop window. He came hurrying around the
corner an instant later, slowing down as soon as
he spotted me again and walked on slowly past
me as if not noticing me. I waited until he was
some distance beyond and retracing my steps
quickly to the Avenue again stopped in the
shelter of a building to light a cigar, purposely
wasting a number of matches. In hardly ten
seconds he was back, covertly watching me from
the other side of the street.
There was no question about it. He was
trailing me. But who could be having me
shadowed? Certainly he was not in the employ
of the Bradfords or of Detective Gorman.
Either he must be one of the band of plotters,
or—I hated to voice my suspicion, but some-


138 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
how the thought of my great-uncle Rufus kept
obtruding itself. It would be just like the sus-
picious old miser, if it was he who had planned
all this devilment, to put me in a position of
trust and then to have me watched night and
day.
Whoever it was that had inspired this pursuit,
I determined to lead my shadow a merry chase.
Jumping into a taxi I bade the driver take me to
a department store. Looking back through the
rear glass I saw the shadow hastily entering
another cab. Arrived at my destination I thrust
fare and tip into the driver’s hand and hurrying
inside managed to catch an elevator just ascend-
ing. One ﬂight up I got out and descended to
the main ﬂoor by a staircase at the rear, emerg-
ing thence on to a side street. A second taxi
took me to the Twenty-eighth Street subway
station, and there, with no sign of my pursuer, I
took a train to Times Square and went to the
Astor to meet Barbara Bradford, arriving on the
dot of one. She was there awaiting me and we
quickly found a secluded table in one of the less
conspicuous rooms.
“ I’ve told Claire everything,” she said as soon


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 139
as we were seated. “ I hope you’re not angry
with me.”
“ Of course not. You had to tell her. I am
sorry to have frightened her.”
“ She shouldn’t have gone to your room.
That’s just like her, though. She always acts on
the spur of the moment. She’s awfully worried,
too, poor girl.”
“ We can save her,” I said, speaking with more
enthusiasm than I really felt, hoping to ease the
mind of the brave girl opposite me.
“Why,” she asked quickly, “what have you
learned?”
“I was convinced that they must have some
one in the house aiding them. I’ve found out
who it is.”
“It isn’t—a”—she hesitated as if undesirous
of accusing any one unjustly—“ Mr. Wick? ”
“Not at all,” I cried. “It’s the telephone
girl—Nellie Kelly is the name she goes by.”
“ I can’t believe it,” cried the girl, shocked at
my statement. “ She’s only a girl like myself.
I have talked to her lots of times. I’m certain
there’s nothing wicked or wrong about her.”
“I’m afraid there is,” I explained. “I took


140 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
her out to dinner last night, to the White Room.
The house detective, while she was off telephon-
ing, practically ordered me out of the place be-
cause I was with her. She's notorious."
“ Oh, I can’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”
“ Yes, he told me who she is. Her husband is
Lefty Moore, a well-known burglar. He’s in
Sing Sing now. Detective Gorman arrested him.
He ought to know.”
“ Oh, the poor girl,” exclaimed Miss Bradford,
the tears welling up in her eyes. “Just think of
it, to be only her age and to be married, and to
have her husband in prison. I’m so sorry for
her.”
“ But think of your sister. She’s the one you
should be sorry for. Think what they are trying
to do to her with Miss Kelly’s aid.”
“ But how do you know she’s aiding them? ”
“ I don’t know it. But I do know that nobody
could pull off all the things that have been
happening in the Granddeck without some one
there helping them. We’ve found some one
used to helping criminals-a criminal’s wife.
Isn’t that enough? All we need to do now is to
watch her closely and fasten the thing on her.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 14.1
“ How are you going to do that? ”
“That’s why I insisted on your coming here
today. I am to meet Detective Gorman at three.
I had to see you before then. I feel that he could
aid us, and I think we ought to tell him every-
thing.”
“Tell the police! ” Her face grew white at
the thought. “ Wouldn’t that mean a scandal—
the newspapers and all that sort of thing? ”
I shook my head decisively.
“Gorman’s not with the police now. He is
employed as a hotel detective. But he is just the
man we need to help us. He knows all about
criminals and how to track them. He’ll be able
to ﬁnd out for us the people with whom the tele-
phone girl is working. With his aid we can
quickly clear the whole thing up.”
“ Will you have to-tell him everything—about
Claire’s marriage?”
I read the anxiety in her face. Poor brave
girl, she cared nothing for herself, but she was
determined to shield her sister’s reputation at all
cost, yet I could not answer as she hoped.
“We’ve either got to tell him everything or
nothing.”


142 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ You’ll tell him about the Gaston pearls? "
“ Of course.” .
“ Oh, how I wish we did not have to. The
more people there are who know about things
the more likely they are to become public."
“Yet you trusted me with your sister’s se-
cret.”
She gave me a quick smile of conﬁdence.
“ You’re different.”
“ I’m afraid most people would not agree with
you. They would regard me as a worthless, dis-
credited young fellow out of a job.”
“ But it’s not your fault.”
“ The point is,” I went on, “that we have
reached a place where we need expert advice.
Gorman has fortuitously turned up to give it.
He is already interested on account of Lefty
' Moore’s wife. The only way is to tell him every-
thing.”
For a moment she debated the matter silently,
her pretty forehead puckered in thought.
“ Yes,” she said at last, “I suppose it is the
only way. But won’t he want a lot of money for
his services?”
“ I’ll attend to that,” I answered. “ I’ll make


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 14.3
my great-uncle reward him handsomely for re-
covering the Gaston jewels.”
“ If he does.”
“ He must. We’ve got to get them back.”
From her hand-bag she produced the anonyv
mous letters She had received and handed them
to me.
“ Will you want to Show the detective these? ”
“Yes, I think I had better. The whole tale
sounds so preposterous that I need every bit of
corroborative evidence we can muster.”
For half an hour we lingered over the table,
discussing all the aspects of the case. Eventually
I think I persuaded Miss Bradford that the evi-
dence pointed most damningly to the telephone
girl as one of the conspirators or at least one of
their aides. She was eager to know what plan
of action Gorman would advise and as we parted
we arranged to be at our adjoining windows at
ten that evening in order that we might have
another chat. '
I found Gorman waiting for me at the place he
had mentioned.
“I told you that girl was a bad one,” was his
greeting.


144. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ What do you mean? ” I cried. “ What have
you learned about her? ”
“Nothing except that the address she gave
you last night was phony."
“ Doesn’t she live there? ”
“ Nobody lives there. It’s an old trick she
pulled. The number she gave is the hospital
grounds ”—he pronounced it “ horspital.”
“ Where does she live then?”
“ She’s keeping that under cover. She shook
the taxi at F ifty-ninth and Third.”
“ And the number she called up—the private
number—did you ﬁnd out about that? ”
“ Sure, that was easy. It’s one of the apart-
ments in the Granddeck—Henry Kent’s. Who’s
he? "
“ I never heard of him. I’ll try to ﬁnd out,
though.”
“I would. It may mean something and it
may mean nothing at all, but be careful how you
go asking questions around the place. The
Moore woman may have a pal. They generally
work in pairs.”
The ease and celerity with which Gorman had
learned all these things about the girl impressed


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 145
me greatly, and I said as much. He received my
compliments with a deprecating wave of the
hand.
“ Nothing to it, my boy, when you know the
ropes. But last night you told me you had taken
the girl out to try to pump something out of her.
What was it? What’s doing? ”
From beginning to end I told him the whole
story in all of its perplexing details, starting with
the day that I had received my great-uncle
Rufus’s note that had led to the chance meeting
with Miss Bradford, bringing in my discharge
and the disappearance of the Gaston pearls, and
explaining what made me think these facts were
in some way involved with the attempt to black-
mail the Bradfords.
I had expected as I unfolded my almost un-
believable tale to see in his face some expression
of incredulity, but throughout he listened with
close attention, making no comment beyond
occasionally nodding his head thoughtfully.
“ What do you make of it? ” I asked as I ended
my narrative. “ Who do you think is at the bot-
tom of it? ”
“ I don’t think,” he retorted. “ In our business


14.6 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
it does not pay to think too quick. You’re apt
to convict the wrong party.”
“ But you must think something,” I protested.
“I think,” he said slowly and meditatively,
“ that there’s a lot of crooked work going on—
I’ll say that much. And you and Miss Brad-
ford’s pretty close to being the center of it.”
“ What can we do about it? "
“ There’s a way I learned from a lawyer that
ain’t bad. He’d take his client and put him in
the center of a big circle with lines running in all
directions—alibi, insanity, mistaken identity, no
proof of guilt, lack of jurisdiction, escape of legal
technicality—he’d mark out every possible de-
fense. Then he’d follow each line out and see
where it led and what plan the opposing lawyers
would be likely to spring on him. Generally he
got his man off.”
“I don’t quite see how that applies.”
“ You don’t, eh? ”
He traced an imaginary circle with his fore-
ﬁnger on the table in the little back room where
we were sitting.
“ Here’s you and Miss Bradford in the center
surrounded by a lot of mysterious deviltry.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 14.9
spectre of my poverty. Of what use my talk-
ing to a high-priced investigator like Gorman
when all the money I had in the world was less
than two hundred dollars, out of which I had to
live until I found employment. Yet I must serve
Barbara Bradford.
“ If you clear up this case,” I announced, “I’ll
' give you every cent I’ve got in the world.”
He shook his head.
“It ain’t enough. If I take this case, it won’t
be for the money that’s in it. For that matter I
can get all I want from Old Gaston for getting his
pearls back. That’ll be enough.”
“ Then you will take the case,” I cried
jubilantly.
“ On one condition.”
“ What is that?”
“ That you’ll promise to keep everything away
from the police.”
“I’ll promise that for myself and Miss'Brad-
ford, too. That was the one reason she ad-
vanced against my telling you about things. She
was afraid you’d call in the police.”
“ Never fear about that. There’s nothing I’d
like better than to put it over that bunch of


150 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
young reformers they’ve got down in Center
Street. It ain’t like the old days when I was on
the force. Policemen was real detectives in
those days. This hotel work don’t suit me any-
how. I’ve been thinking of opening up an ofﬁce
of my own. The recovery of the Gaston pearls
would be a nice feather in my cap to start
with.”
“ I see,” I replied, “ but you’ll need money for
expenses and that sort of thing, won’t you? I
have ”
“ Leave that part of it to me,” he retorted with
a quizzical smile. “ After all the years I was on

the police I ain’t exactly broke, by a long shot.
All you’ve got to do is to keep your eyes open
and let me know all that goes on in the apart—
ment house. I’ll attend to the rest. Don’t do
nothing, though, without consulting me ﬁrst.”
“ I’ll gladly promise that.”
“ Good enough. We’d better arrange then to
meet here every day at three sharp. It’s as good
a place as any.”
“I’ll be here.”
“ And look out you’re not trailed. They may
try shadowing you again.”


152 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
time appointed. By no possibility could I have
been there, however much I might have wished
to. Many things had happened in quick suc-
cession.
How it came about that my promise to meet
Gorman went unfulﬁlled can best be explained by
narrating the events of the evening after I re-
turned to the Granddeck. It was nearly ﬁve
when I left the detective. I strolled leisurely
down town and had dinner in the café where on
one occasion I had seen the scar-faced man. I
lingered there for a long time- over my coffee
hoping in vain that he might appear. I even
ventured to cautiously question the waiter and
head waiter, describing the man as best I could,
but both of them insisted that they never had
seen any such person. As I walked home I kept
a wary eye out to make sure I was not being
followed, but apparently no one was now shadow-
ing me.
It was nine-thirty when I reached home. It
had been arranged that Barbara about ten would
signal me that we might have a chat from our
respective windows. As I sat in my room wait-
ing for the time to come, I was reviewing the


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 153
case in all its aspects. Indeed there was hardly
a waking moment that I was not thinking of the
many mysteries about us. I was wondering
whither the clues I had given Gorman might
lead. I was wondering, too, if when the case
was cleared up the mysterious whispers that we
all had heard would also be explained. I recalled
Claire Bradford’s unexpected visit to my apart-
ment the evening before and her confusion when
I had captured her. I wondered if the explana-
tions she had Offered had been the truth. Was
she really trying to locate the source of the
whispers? I looked interestedly up at the sec-
tion of the wall that I had found her inspecting.
What had she hoped to discover there?
It seemed curious that the voices I had heard
had seemed to come from almost that identical
spot. It seemed impossible to account for them.
On the other side of the wall was only the long
hall running through the Gaston apartment. I
was certain that at the time I heard the voices
there could have been no one in the hall. Was
there, I wondered, some fault in the construction
of the building that permitted sounds to be
carried from one apartment to the other along


154 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
certain girders? Assuredly that would be the
most logical explanation. Nevertheless I decided
to make a close inspection of both sides of the
wall. As I lighted up the sitting room and hall
for this purpose, something unusual came to my
notice that had hitherto escaped me entirely.
The inner wall of my room—the one running
along the hall of the apartment—had the ap-
pearance of being at least four feet thick.
It seemed so absurd that I refused to believe
the evidence my eyes had given me. In these
modern days of steel construction there was no
reason for a wall being of mediaeval proportions.
I sprang to my great-aunt’s work basket and be-
gan rummaging to see if I could ﬁnd a tape
measure, and luckily my search was quickly
rewarded.
I sketched a rough diagram of the rear rooms
and began measuring them off, carefully check-
ing my ﬁgures as I went along. I found myself
growing wildly excited as the tape measure con-
ﬁrmed what my eyes already had told me. The
inner wall was at least four feet thick.
With thrills at the thought of the possibility of
a secret passage there, I climbed up on a chair


156 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
push it further back. If there was a passageway
there in the wall I was determined to see whither
it led. My efforts to move the panel further
seemed hopeless. As I worked at it I heard a
tapping on my window sill.
It must be Barbara. In my excitement over
my ﬁnd I had forgotten all about the time. I
sprang from the chair and rushed to the window,
hastily extinguishing my light so that people in
neighboring apartments would not see our
rendezvous. I found her peering out, trying
to ascertain why I had not answered her sig-
nal.
“ Oh,” she breathed with relief as my head ap-
peared, “you were there. Did you see the
detective? ”
“Yes,” I replied, speaking as low as my ex-
cited state would permit me, “but just now I
discovered something vastly more important.”
“ What is it? ”
“ A secret passageway, leading into my room.”
“ Not really? ”
“Yes,” I repeated. “It seems to run along
the hall. The wall there is at least four feet
thick—room enough for a man to walk. There


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 157
is a panel in the wall in my room leading into it.
I was just prying it open when you signaled.”
“ Oh, how I wish I could see it! ”
“ Why can’t you? Slip out of your front door,
and I’ll be at my door to admit you.”
“I can’t do that. Mother and Claire are in
the front part of the house playing bridge with
some guests. They would be sure to hear me
going out.”
“ Come in tomorrow morning then,” I sug-
gested.
She did not answer and before I realized what
she was doing, Barbara was out on the ledge
making her perilous way across it to my window.
9
“If Claire can do this I can,’ she announced
triumphantly, as I, trembling all over at the
thought of the peril she had been in, put my
arms about her and helped her in. One misstep,
and she would have plunged to certain death
below.
“Darling,” I cried, still holding her in my
arms, “ don’t ever do that again. It’s too dan-
gerous. Promise me, Barbara dear, you’ll never
again try that.”
With her pretty face ﬂushed at the terms of


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 159
dark. You and I both know that if it is used by
the people who have been plotting against us, we
are apt to encounter desperate criminals who
would stop at nothing.”
“ I’ll get my revolver.”
“ No,” I insisted. “ We must do nothing until
I have seen the detective. We have put the case
in his hands. He made me promise today that
we would do nothing without consulting him.”
“ But we must ﬁnd out about it,” protested the
girl. I
“ Tomorrow,” I said. “ We know where it is.
\(Ve know where the voices and whispers come
from now.”
“ I wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “ if there is
the same sort of a passageway in our apart-
ment? ”
“ Promise me that if you ﬁnd there is one, you
will not attempt to explore it alone.”
As we argued about it, we both stopped short
and with blanching faces listened. From some-
where—it sounded as if it was right below us—
we heard sounds as if two people were struggling.
Then came a woman’s shriek, a wild scream with
the death terror in it. The sound seemed close


160 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
at hand. It seemed to come right up from the
opening in the panel by which we were standing.
Once more there came an awful scream—a
scream stopped off short as if some brutal hand
had throttled the woman’s throat.
“ What is it? ” cried Barbara.
“ Listen,” I commanded. “ It seems to come
from the ﬂoor below.”
Holding our breaths we strained our ears for
further sounds. Suddenly a shot rang out, and
there was a thud as if a body had fallen to the
ﬂoor. Then all was silence.
With terror in our faces we turned to each
other, seeking an explanation which neither
could give.
“ Mother—Claire! ” cried Barbara. “They’ll
be alarmed. I must go back to them at once.”
I sprang after her, but she moved so quickly
that she was out of the window and safely home
before I could stop her. Only waiting to see her
off the ledge I turned back and hastily pulling the
panel into place I dashed for the front of the
house. The screams and the shots I was sure
had come from the apartment directly below
mine. I was certain that there had been murder


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 161
done there, and my mind was made up to investi-
gate it at once. If I moved quickly there might
be an opportunity to catch the murderer red-
handed. I let myself out and dashed down the
one ﬂight of stairs. As I arrived there, the
ascending elevator stopped, and Mr. Wick burst
out, followed by an excited elevator runner.
Wick was carrying a revolver in his hand.
“ Did you hear anything? ” he asked excitedly.
“I heard a woman screaming in this apart-
ment and then a shot.”
“ I heard it too. In which apartment was it? "
“ Right here,” I said, pointing to the door.
“ Miss Lutan’s,” he said. “ Let’s go in.
Here’s my pass-key. You open the door. I’ll
be right behind you with my revolver.”


CHAPTER VIII
INSERTING the key Mr. Wick handed me, I
turned it sharply and ﬂung the door wide. It
revealed a luxuriously furnished apartment, the
front rooms of which were extravagantly ablaze
with light. Across a carved throne chair in the
foyer was ﬂung a woman’s silk evening wrap
as if its owner had carelessly cast it there on
entering.
For a moment the three of us, Mr. Wick, the
elevator boy and myself, stood there with our
ears alert for any sound from the apartment.
While I do not admit to being a coward, the un-
known has its terrors for all of us, and I must
confess that the knowledge that Mr. Wick had
his revolver drawn was indeed comforting. All
was silence in the place.
“John,” said I/Vick to the elevator boy, “you
stand here right by the door and keep your eye


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 163
on the elevator. If anybody tries to sneak past
you, you holler for us.”
“’Deed I will, Mr. Wick,” said the boy with
chattering teeth. “ I’ll holler, all right.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Nelson,” said the superin-
tendent, “I’m right behind you with the re-
volver.”
Without waiting to explore the front rooms, I
turned at once and ran down the long hall to the
sitting room. If, as I suspected, murder had
been done here, I was conﬁdent that the scene of
the tragedy would be the room directly under
mine. The screams I had heard—and the shot—-
had seemed to come from under my very feet.
Although the lights in the front of the hall
were burning, the sitting room was in darkness.
As I reached the door, my ﬁngers sought the
button, and as the ﬂare of light illuminated the
room I looked hastily about me. There was no
one there, but my one quick glance showed me
that the door of the wall safe, located similarly to
the one in the apartment above, was standing
wide open.
Quickly I sprang to inspect the room corre-
sponding to mine, a room, it will be recalled,


164. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
opening off the sitting room. Here too was
darkness, and as I turned on the lights, I stood}
aghast with horror.
On the ﬂoor, close up to the inner wall, lay the
contorted body of a beautiful young woman.
Her eyes were wide open and staring. One arm
was twisted under her, and the other hand was
,clutching at the front of her bodice, where a
:blotch of ghastly red indicated the’path of the
shot that I had heard. I noticed too that she
was in an evening gown, and that her elaborately
coiffured blonde hair was in disorder.
“ It’s Miss Lutan,” said Mr. Wick’s voice be-
hind me.
“ She’s been murdered," I cried, “ get the
police at once.”
As I bent over her to see if there was any evi-
dence of life, I saw imprinted in her tender white
throat the marks of her assailant’s brutal ﬁngers.
While I could detect no heartbeat, the body was
still warm, and I realized that there was still a
possibility that she was alive.
“ Come," I said, “help me lift her on to this
couch, and then telephone at once for a doctor.”
Mr. Wick had been all the while standing


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 165
there, staring at the body as if stupeﬁed by the
tragedy, but he obeyed my directions, and with
him at her feet and I at her head we laid her
down on the couch, where I proceeded to loosen
her gown and to try by artiﬁcial respiration to
restore her blood to circulation.
“ Get the doctor at once,” I commanded again,
“ and ’phone for the police.”
“ John,” called out Mr. Wick, “go to the
’phone and tell Miss Kelly to send for Doctor
Hunt to come at once.”
“ Tell her to get the police, too,” I insisted.
“ And let the burglar escape while we’re doing
it,” objected Mr. Wick. “Come on, let’s look
through the apartment. He may be hiding
somewhere still.”
Together, while the boy was ’phoning, we
went from room to room, peering into closets
and under beds. There was no one there and no
traces of the murderer’s presence. Even the
servants’ quarters were untenanted. Only one
thing happened that struck me as peculiar. As
I started up the hall to search the bedrooms, I
looked back and caught Mr. Wick furtively clos-
ing the wall safe. His action in surreptitiously


166 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
closing this without saying anything to me made
me suddenly suspicious of him. I recalled that
Detective Gorman had put Mr. Wick into his
circle of suspects along with the burglar’s wife.
Could it be possible that the superintendent of
the building himself was in connivance with the
band of criminals who had been harassing the
Bradfords and me? I determined to watch his
every move. Perhaps this search of the apart-
ment was only a bluff on his part to enable the
murderer to get away.
“There’s no one here,” I said, as we com-
pleted our round of the various rooms. “ The
murderer has made his escape. Hasn’t that boy
’phoned for the police yet? ”
Mr. Wick seemed so averse to carrying out my
suggestion about the police that I think he must
have sensed the suspicion in my voice.
“ I think I had better ask Mr. Kent about it
ﬁrst,” he said nervously.
“ Who’s Mr. Kent?” I demanded.
My thoughts were so taken up with the unex-
pected tragedy that the name at ﬁrst meant noth-
ing to me. Suddenly I remembered. It was to
the apartment of Mr. Henry Kent that Miss


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 167
Kelly had ’phoned last night when she was dining
with me. I recalled, too, that Gorrnan had
charged me to ﬁnd out all I could about him. -
“Who’s Mr. Kent?” I repeated sharply.
“ What’s he got to do with it? ”
“ He’s the owner of the building,” explained
Mr. Wick. “ He doesn’t like the Granddeck to
be mentioned in the papers. He says any
notoriety is bad for its exclusiveness. He’s al-
ways cautioning us never to let anything about
any of our people here get to the reporters.
He’d discharge any of the employees who talked
to one. I don’t believe he’d want the police
called in. In fact, sir, I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
“ Whether he wants it or not,” I said ﬁrmly,
“it’s got to be done. You can’t keep murders
out of the paper. Either you call the police right
away, or else I will.”
My threat forced him to telephone against his
will. I could quite understand his employer’s
aversion to having a crime in the Granddeck
made public. Undoubtedly that sort of pub-
licity would send many of Mr. Kent’s best
tenants scurrying for other apartments. But
there was no help for it. There had been a


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 169
sitting room with the elevator boy still on guard
at the door.
“ Who was Miss Lutan? ” I asked.
“ Why, Daisy Lutan, the actress,” said Mr.
Wick in surprise. “ I supposed every one knew
her.”
“ I’ve heard about her,” I hastened to say,
“ but I had no idea that she lived in the Grand-
deck. I didn’t suppose there were any actresses
here.”
“ She was the only one.”
“ Did she live here alone?”
“She keeps a maid, an old woman that has
been with her for years.”
“ Where’s the maid tonight? ”
“ Out to the movies, I s’pose. That’s where
she goes every night when Miss Lutan isn’t play-
ing. When she is, she goes to the theatre with
her.”
“ Then Miss Lutan is not playing now? ”
“ Not for the last month.”
“ Did she have any gentlemen callers?”
“ I s’pose so. They always do.”
“ Had there been any one here with her
tonight? ”


170 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ I’ll ask the elevator. boy.”
“John says she came in alone about ﬁfteen
minutes ago,” said Mr. Wick when he came back.
“ She went out about seven. Her own chauffeur
was driving her then, but when she came back
she was in a hired taxi. That’s something I
can’t understand.”
“ How do you suppose the murderer escaped?”
I was trying every avenue of questioning to
see if I could not surprise Wick into some damag-
ing admission. I was beginning to suspect that
he knew far more about Miss Lutan’s murderer
than he was telling. I felt somehow that his
whole search for the man who had killed Miss
Lutan had been entirely perfunctory, a blqu to
deceive me. In my growing dislike for the man,
I felt that it would not be beyond the range of
probability for Wick to have been standing guard
at the door while a confederate riﬂed the apart-
ment.
“I’m no detective,” he answered noncom-
mittally. “ All I know is that he has gone. He
certainly ain’t here in the apartment.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest that
we look in the secret passageway. I felt that the


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 171
shock it would be to Wick to learn that I knew
about this might lead him to open his lips. I felt
certain that it was by way of a similar passage-
way to the one I had discovered in my room that
the murderer had escaped. He might at this
very moment be hiding there not ten feet away
from us. But before I could make up my mind
to speak the doctor arrived.
Mr. Wick conducted him at once to the couch
where Miss Lutan’s body lay. He made a hasty
inspection and then said tersely:
“There’s nothing here for me to do. This
woman has been dead for some time.”
“ How long? ” I asked.
“It is impossible for me to judge—maybe
twenty minutes, perhaps an hour. I should say
that death was practically instantaneous. She
was killed by a bullet penetrating the heart.
Who shot her? ”
He looked sharply from me to Mr. Wick, as if
suspecting that it might have been one of us.
“A burglar got her just a few minutes ago,”
Mr. Wick explained. “ Mr. Nelson and me
heard a scream and a shot. We let ourselves in
here with my pass-key and found her here.”


172 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ On the couch? ” the doctor queried.
“ No, on the ﬂoor right near the door. It must
have been a burglar that she surprised when she
entered the apartment.”
“ It looks like it,” assented the physician.
" There are marks on her throat where he tried
to strangle her screams. Have you notiﬁed the
police?”
“ Yes,” said Mr. Wick, “I ’phoned Head-
quarters."
“ There’s nothing more that I can do then,” said
the doctor, making his preparations to depart.
“ Would you not wait until the police come? "
suggested the superintendent. “ They’ll be here
any minute and probably they’ll want a state-
ment from you.”
“ Very well,” said the doctor, “ I’ll wait.”
As we waited, the three of us chatted about the
crime and about the dead actress. From their
conversation I learned that at the height of her
meteoric career on Broadway Daisy Lutan had
become the wife of the young son of a very rich
family. His parents insisted that she had
trapped him into matrimony and after long legal
wrangling she had been divorced about a year


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 173
ago. She had received a large sum in settle-
ment, and this with her earnings as an actress
enabled her to live in luxury.
“ Hadn’t she a sweetheart now?” I asked.
“Better make it plural,” sneered the doctor.
“ Women of her type always have a lot of men
friends.”
“ No men ever came to see her here. I’m posi-
tive of that,” said Mr. Wick.
“ Of course not,” said the doctor sarcastically.
“The reputation of the Granddeck apartments
must be protected at all costs.”
As we talked two detectives in plain clothes
arrived, evidently despatched from the district
ofﬁce in a car. They viewed the body and pro-
ceeded to question the doctor.
“ How was this woman killed? ”
“ By a revolver shot right through the heart.”
“ Who is she? ”
“ Daisy Lutan, the actress.”
“I thought I knew her,” said one of the men.
“ Did the shot croak her at once? ”
“ Yes, death must have been instantaneous.
Her assailant evidently had choked her ﬁrst, try-
ing to silence her.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 175
thought they came from this apartment. I took
out my pass-key and we went in.”
“ Where did you ﬁnd the body? ”
“ Right near the door of the room where it is
now. We lifted it on to the couch.”
“You’d ought to have left it where it was.
That’s the way with people. They’re always
spoiling clues,” said the other detective.
“ Were there any signs of the burglar? ” asked
the other man. ~
“ No, we looked all through the apartment and
found no one.”
“ Did it look as if there had been a ﬁght? ”
“ Well, yes,” said Mr. Wick, “ the body was all
drawn up and the hair was mussed, and you could
see the marks on her throat.”
“ Was anything missing? ”
I waited with bated breath to hear if Wick
would tell of having found the wall safe open.
If he did' not I felt it would be conclusive evi-
dence that there was something he was trying to
conceal.
“ I didn’t notice anything missing,” he said
glibly. “ I wouldn’t know anyhow. I don’t
know what stuff she had here.”


176 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Who would know? ”
“ Her maid might. She’s out now. Generally
she’s home by eleven o’clock.”
“ Did she keep only the one servant? ”
“ Only the maid and a chauffeur. I don’t
know where he lives. You can ﬁnd out about
him at the garage around the corner.”
“Then she was all alone in the apartment?”
“Yes. She’d gone out all dressed up about
seven in her own car. She came home unex-
pectedly in a hired taxi not more than half an
hour ago.”
“ Did she come home alone? ”
“ Sure she was alone. At least the hall
boys told me so. I did not see her come in my-
self.”
More and more I was convinced that Wick was
lying. I was sure he knew far more about affairs
than he was admitting. Why did he keep harp-
ing on the fact that Miss Lutan had come in “ un-
expectedly ” ? What means had he of knowing
what time she was expected home? Further-
more, he had said he was in the elevator when
he heard the screams and the shot. I did not
believe it would have been possible for the sounds


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 177
to have carried that far. The walls were all
deadened, and the room where the tragedy had
taken place was at the back of the house many
feet distant from the elevators. I wondered if
the burglar had not been in the place with Mr.
Wick’s connivance, while he stood guard outside.
As he heard me coming he might have taken
refuge in the elevator. And why did he have his
revolver so conveniently ready?
The detective who had been questioning Wick
turned to me.
“ Who are you? "
“ Spalding Nelson.”
“ What do you do? Where do you work? ”
“ I’m a clerk.”
“ A clerk living at the Granddeck apartments,”
he sneered. “ You must have a good job.”
“ I haven’t any at present,” I replied. “ I’m
living here in Mr. Gaston’s apartment, taking
care of it while he and his wife are away.”
I could see that my statement that I was only
a clerk and was not at present employed had not
made a favorable impression on the detectives.
“Will you explain what you were doing at
the door of this apartment when the superin~


178 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
tendent arrived?” he demanded, with a growing
suspicion in his tones.
“ That’s easy to explain,” I retorted. “ I was
in my apartment directly over this one. My
bedroom is the one corresponding to the one
where Miss Lutan’s body is. ' I heard her scream
and then the shot. It seemed to come from the
ﬂoor right below me, so I ran down to investi-
gate.”
“Is that right?” he asked, turning to Mr.
Wick.
“I guess so,” said Wick. “ That’s where his
room is. He’s only been here in the Grand-
deck a few days. I don’t know much about
him.”
“ And that’s all you know about it?” said the
detective, turning to me again.
I hesitated. Should I or should I not tell them
of the wall safe that I had seen Mr. Wick clos-
ing? There was no way I could prove it. Un—
doubtedly Wick would deny having done so. It
would be his word against mine. As superin-
tendent his word would undoubtedly carry. I
decided it would be best to withhold my informa-’
tion to a more propitious time. There was just


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 179
a chance that the lock had not snapped shut.
That would be proof that it had been opened.
“ That’s all I know, except what Mr. Wick has
told you,” I said.
“ Very well,” said the detective in charge.
“ You can go now, and you, too, Doctor.”
Turning to his partner, he said: “ You wait here
and get the maid’s statement and have her see if
anything’s missing. You might look around too,
and see if you can ﬁnd out how the burglar made
his getaway. I’ll go out and round up the chauf-
feur and report to the chief. You stay here until
I get back.”
Mr. Wick was escorting the doctor to the door.
The detectives had withdrawn to the room where
the body lay and were holding a whispered con-
ference. I stepped quickly to the wall safe, and
making sure that I was unobserved, tested the
knob. It was securely fastened. I congratu-
lated myself on having said nothing about it.
Wick, I felt certain, would deny having shut it,
and there was no proof that it had been opened
when we had entered.
As I returned to my own apartment upstairs, I
was speculating on what the effects of this new


180 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
. development would be on the affairs of the Brad-
fords. I suspected that it would mean a tempo-
rary respite from the threats of the blackmailers.
With the attention of the police so closely drawn
to the Granddeck, they would hardly dare make
any attempts to molest Barbara or her sister for
the present.
Nearing the top of the short ﬂightof steps be-
tween the ﬂoors I was astounded to see a female
ﬁgure ﬂitting across the hall and entering the
Bradford apartment. Though I had opportunity
for only a brief glimpse, I recognized her at once.
It was Claire Bradford.
The door of my apartment was standing wide
open. I remembered that as I had run down-
stairs a few moments ago, I had neglected to
close it after me. From the direction in which
she had come, it was plain that Claire Bradford
had been paying another surreptitious visit to my
quarters. What could have been her purpose?
There must have been some strong impelling
motive to make her dare the perilous journey
along the window ledge, and now, at the im-
minent risk of discovery, to pay me a second visit.
I began seriously to doubt whether the explana-


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 181
tion she had oﬁered was the true one. I made
up my mind to urge Gorman to endeavor to
locate her former husband. I was beginning to
feel that there was more than a possibility that
she was again in the clutches of the unscrupulous
rascal who had once been her husband.
Greatly puzzled, I made a hasty survey of the
apartment but could ﬁnd nothing that appeared
to have been disturbed. Going back to my own
room I hastened to place a handkerchief out of
my window as a signal to Barbara, for I knew
she would be anxious to know the meaning of the
sounds we had heard below. I felt sure that as
soon as she could do so without risk Of discovery,
she would Signal me. In a very few moments I
heard the tap of her riding-crop on my sill and
hurried to answer.
“ What was it? " she asked in an excited
whisper.
“ Daisy Lutan, an actress, who lived on the
ﬂoor below, has been murdered—shot.”
“ Who did it? ”
“I don’t know. Mr. Wick and I went into
the apartment together. There was no one
there.”


184. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
apartment. As I was, in my shirt sleeves, I
answered it. The two detectives I had seen
downstairs stood there. I
“What is it?” I asked. “ What can I do for
you? ”
“ I arrest you for the murder of Daisy Lutan,”
said one of them, and with that they sprang for-
ward and pinioned my arms.
“ Why, this is absurd,” I laughed in their faces,
conscious of my utter innocence of the crime.
“ You can’t arrest me for that. I had nothing
to do with it.”
“ That remains to be seen. Put on your coat
and come along.”
Still holding me fast, they went back with me
to my bedroom. Clutching me tight they made
me put on my coat, and no sooner had I done so
than one of them snapped handcuffs on me.
“ Look at this, Jim,” said one of them, pointing
to a spot on the front of my coat.
“ That’s blood all right,” said the other, after
inspecting it.
“ I got that when I was helping Mr. Wick lift
the body to the couch,” I protested.
“ Tell that to the Judge,” the detective called


New uR wieéialw‘ $10qu »
“ Here it is,” he announced, holding up before my astounded
eyes an automatic revolver. Page 185


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 185
Jim scoffed. “Better look round for the gun,
Cullen.”
“ You’ll ﬁnd no gun here,” I cried. “ I never
owned one.”
Nevertheless Cullen began rummaging through
the drawers of my dresser. Suddenly he gave a
triumphant exclamation and drew something
from beneath a pile of shirts in the second
drawer.
“ Here it is,” he announced, holding up before
my astounded eyes an automatic revolver.
“ I never saw that before,” I gasped.
The detectives merely laughed.
“ There’s one bullet gone,” said the man who
was examining it.
“Come along, young fellow,” said the other
detective grufﬂy. “ The bullet settles it. We’ve
got the right party.”


CHAPTER IX
A PRISONER in a police station cell, I passed a
sleepless night. Conscious as I was of my utter
innocence and conﬁdent of my speedy release,
nevertheless I had to admit that the detectives
from their point of view were perfectly justiﬁed
in placing me under arrest.
On the face of it the tragedy in the Granddeck
looked like an inside job. For a burglar to have
gained access to the apartments without the con-
nivance of the employees seemed almost an im-
possibility. For him to have escaped from the
building after having murdered Miss Lutan with-
out being detected seemed also highly improb-
able. Then, too, there was the damning evi-
dence of the blood on my coat and the fact that I
had been found at the door of the apartment. I
had not observed the stain on my clothing until
the detectives discovered it. My explanation of
how it had gotten there was the true one, yet I
could readily realize that it might sound ﬁshy to
others.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 187
The revolver, with the one bullet missing, was
the hardest thing for me to account for. It was
the strongest sort of evidence that I was the mur-
derer. Yet I never had seen the weapon before
and could not imagine who could have placed it
there. There was only one explanation possible.
It had been purposely planted there with the
deﬁnite object of throwing suspicion on me.
The one person—the only person—Whom I
knew to have been in my rooms after the murder
was committed was Claire Bradford. Could she
have done it? I remembered that Barbara had
showed me a revolver in her possession. I won-
dered if this could be the same weapon. I did
not think it possible that Claire herself could
have used it. So far as I knew she had no
acquaintance with the actress, and I could
imagine no motive why Claire Bradford would
want to kill Miss Lutan, yet it must have been
she who had hidden the revolver in my dresser.
What had been her motive? Who had directed
her to do it? How had she got possession of the
revolver after the murder?
Come what may, I had no intention of telling
any one—not even Gorman—of Claire’s second


188 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
visit to my apartment. For Barbara’s sake I
made up my mind I would keep my lips closed
about that incident, even if I had to stay in prison
indeﬁnitely. I had decided at any rate that for
the present silence would be my best policy. At
the police station when the detectives had
brought me in, I had quietly but ﬁrmly refused
to answer any questions, although they had
badgered me for nearly two hours before they
let me alone. -
“ Where did you live before you came to the
Granddeck? ”
“ Where did you work? ”
“ Where is Rufus Gaston? "
“ Where do your people live? ”
“ Why did you kill Daisy Lutan? ”
“ Where did you get the money you have? ”
“We’ve got the goods on you. Why don’t
you confess? ”
These were the sort of questions that were
ﬂung at me, ﬁrst by one and then the other.
Evidently at ﬁrst they had had hopes of breaking
me down.
“I have nothing to say,” had been my un-
varying answer to all their questions.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 189
Finally they gave it up and locked me in a cell
for the night, leaving me thankful that the honor
of being a suspected murderer relieved me from
sharing a cell with some of the frowsy prisoners
I saw brought past my barred door.
“ Haven’t you any friends you would like to
have notiﬁed? ” was the last question they asked
as they left me.
“ I have nothing to say,” I repeated once more.
Nor was this answer this last time mere stub-
bornness. Who was there that I could notify of
my plight? Birge and Roller, my two intimates,
were somewhere on the high seas. The men
whom I had known in the ofﬁce where I had
worked, for obvious reasons were not to be
called on. The fact that I had recently been dis-
charged in disgrace of some sort would make
them hesitate to aid me. I had no idea of the
whereabouts of my aged relatives beyond the
fact that they were somewhere in Maine. Even
if I had known where they were, I would have
hesitated to telegraph them. I wanted to be
able to explain the disappearance of the Gaston
pearls before I saw them.
I had no intention whatever of communicating


190 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
the fact of my arrest to my mother. Indeed, I
was hoping that she would not hear of it until
after my innocence had been established. In the
‘ little Western town where she made her home no
one read the New York newspapers, and little
news from the East was printed in these times,
when everything was war.
I thought of Gorman. I would have been glad
of his counsel, but I remembered that I did not
know where he lived.’ He had told me he was
giving up his position at the hotel. It would be
useless to try to ﬁnd him until morning. I felt
sure that when he saw the morning papers he
would at once get in touch with me.
Yet in spite of my apparent friendlessness, al-
though to all appearances there was no one in
New York to whom I could turn in this time of
trouble, it was a wonderful comfort to feel that
I was sure of one staunch friend—Barbara Brad-
ford.
Although we had been acquainted but a few
days and although hardly a word of love had
passed between us, I knew that her feeling for
me already was something greater than friend-
ship. I knew that she trusted me and that she


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 191
would remain faithful in her affection for me, no
matter what accusations were brought against
me. I had been madly in love with her from
almost the ﬁrst time I saw her. In the times
since, when we had met in those delightful
surreptitious chats at our windows, there had
grown up between us a perfect bond of under»
standing. I felt sure that she was aware of my
feeling for her. Under other circumstances I
would not have hesitated to ask her to marry me.
I rejoiced that Barbara knew I was innocent.
Whatever happened, I must keep her out of it.
I must ﬁnd some means of warning her to say
nothing to any one. I knew that her ﬁrst im-
pulse as soon as she heard of my arrest would be
to come to my rescue, regardless of the fact that
in establishing an alibi for me she would be blast-
ing her own reputation. Under no circum-
stances, even if I was convicted, must she be
permitted to speak. No explanation can account
for the presence of a young girl alone in a man’s
rooms at eleven o’clock at night, even though she
and I both knew how utterly undeserving of cen-
sure her presence there was and how important
had been her motive in coming there.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 193
glaring headlines and read it with intense in-
terest, my conviction growing with each line that
I read that the police case against me was far
better backed up than I ever imagined it could be.
Then and there I made up my mind never
again to believe anything on purely circum-
stantial evidence. No one knew better than I
how utterly innocent I was of the crime, how
upright my conduct in New York had been, and
how honest my motives for all my recent actions
had been, yet this is what I read there in the“
newspaper:
BURGLAR MURDERS WELL-KNOWN
ACTRESS

Miss Daisy Lutan Found Mysteriously
Shot in Her Luxurious Apart-
ment in the Granddeck

Marks on Throat Where
Murderer Had Choked Her

Police Arrest John 5. Nelson, a Clerk,
Out of Work, in Whose Rooms
They Find a Revolver

Daisy Lutan, an actress, whose matrimonial
affairs recently brought her much notoriety, was
found last night murdered in her apartment in


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 195
Little is known at the Granddeck about young
Nelson, and he stubbornly refuses to make any
statement about himself. He was employed
only a few days ago by Rufus Gaston as care- -
taker for his apartment. As Mr. Gaston is ab-
sent from the city, it cannot be learned how he
happened to give Nelson employment. The
police believe he may have obtained the position
through false references in order to gain an op-
portunity to loot the apartments in the building.
Superintendent Wick had ascertained that
Nelson was once employed by a shipping ﬁrm in
the Wall Street district but had been discredit-
ably discharged. His former employer con-
ﬁrmed this, but would say nothing about Nelson
beyond stating that he had been discharged
for cause.
Although Nelson was not over well supplied
with money, he had been seen recently ordering
elaborate meals in some of the most expensive
restaurants. Miss Nellie Kelly, the telephone
girl at the Granddeck, reported that only the
night before Nelson had taken her to dinner,
ordering champagne and hiring taxicabs, and had
tried to pump her about the tenants in the build-
in g.
There followed a long account of Daisy
Lutan’s stage and matrimonial career, but this


196 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
part of the article did not interest me. The one
fact that stuck out in the whole article that
seemed of vast importance to me was the fact
that Wick had informed the police that I had
been discreditably discharged from my last place
of employment. How did he know that? Cer-
tainly I had not told him. I had told no one of
the occurrence except Barbara Bradford, and I
was sure she had not revealed it to any one.
It was indubitable proof to me that Wick, or
some one with whom he was conniving, had been
having me shadowed. Even my great-uncle
Rufus did not know where my place of employ-
ment was. Evidently the plot to discredit me
had begun the day I arrived at’the Granddeck.
I had been discharged on account of some
mysterious note my employer had received. I
began now to believe that Wick must have had
me followed to my place of business and to have
sent that note for the express purpose of bring-
ing about my discharge. But why? That was
the puzzle.
As I pondered over it I decided that my chance
meeting with Barbara Bradford in the Park had
upset the plans of a blackmailing band, and that


198 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
murder. It must have been she who put the
revolver there.
One of the detectives who had arrested me
appeared at my cell door.
“ Come along,” he commanded grufﬂy.
As I came out I was again shackled and led to
the patrol wagon that was waiting. I had sup-
posed that I was being taken to court to be
arraigned but such was not the case. I found
myself at Police Headquarters, where both my
photograph and my ﬁnger-prints were taken. I
suppose I should have felt disgraced and
ashamed, but the knowledge of my innocence
made me look on the whole thing as a necessary
farce, and I observed everything with an amused
interest. Even the taking of my measurements
by the Bertillon method failed to annoy me. I
refrained, however, from giving any information
about myself, beyond giving my name and age,
being careful to have my name recorded as John
S. Nelson. Out in my home town everybody for
years had known me by my middle name
“ Spalding,” and I was hopeful that they might
fail to identify me if they read anything about
me.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 199
When everything that might serve to identify
me had been recorded, I was taken into a large
room where perhaps half a hundred men were
assembled, most of them wearing masks. I
looked about with curiosity. I had read of this
ceremony. I was being “lined up ” before the
members of the city’s detective force to see if
any of them could identify me and to give them
an opportunity to familiarize themselves with my
features in case it should ever be necessary to
arrest me again.
“ Never saw him before,” I heard one of them
say. “ Guess he must be a Western crook.”
“ He’s no amateur,” said another. “ That job
up at the Granddeck was done by a professional.”
Many slighting comments were made, too, on
my personal appearance. I learned for the ﬁrst
time that I had a “bad ear,” and that my eyes
were shifty. The only emotion these comments
aroused in me was a feeling of pity, not for my-
self, but for all poor unfortunates who fall afoul
of the law. Even though a man is presumed to
be innocent until he has been convicted, I had
observed that since the ﬁrst moment of my arrest
everybody had taken it for granted that I must


200 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
be guilty and had treated me with little respect
or consideration.
From Headquarters I was taken to the police
court and without further delay brought before
a magistrate.
“John S. Nelson, arrested for the murder of
Daisy Lutan,” said the detective.
“ Have you counsel? ” asked the magistrate.
“ No,” I replied.
“ I will assign Mr. Myers as the prisoner’s
counsel,” he announced.
A young chap, evidently just out of law school,
stepped forward, and drew me a little to one side.
“ Plead ‘ Not guilty,’ ” he directed, “and be
careful to say nothing more.”
“ Of course,” I replied. “I’m not guilty. I
had nothing to do with it.”
I could see by his face that he did not believe
me and as I turned again to the court I made up
my mind that even if the court had assigned him
as my counsel, I would tell him nothing.
“ How do you plead? ” asked the court.
“ Not guilty,” I replied.
“ Remanded without bail for further examina-
tion until Thursday morning,” snapped the court


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 201
and I was led back into an anteroom. Mr. Myers
and the detective accompanying me, the latter
there surrendered me to some ofﬁcial, presum-
ably a prison keeper.
“ Looks pretty bad for you,” said Myers, as we
were left alone for consultation.
“ I suppose it does lookthat way,” I laughed,
“if you have read the morning papers.”
“ No chance to make it self-defense,” he went
on, plainly amazed at my manner. “ No jury’d
ever stand for a burglar shooting in self—defense.”
“ No,” I admitted, “I suppose they wouldn’t.
Fortunately I’m no burglar.”
“ If we could make out it was a lover’s quar-
rel,” he suggested.
“ If I had ever known Miss Lutan,” I admitted,
“ that might not make a bad defense.”
“ Look here,” he replied indignantly, “young
fellow, you are up against it harder than you
seem to realize. They’ve got the goods on you,
and it’ll be the chair for yours if you’re not
careful. You’ve got no chance of proving an
alibi.” '
“ Why not? I never saw Miss Lutan until I
saw her body in her rooms. I never was in her


202 THE HOUSE OF _WHISPERS
rooms until I went in there with Mr. Wick after
we had heard the shot.” '
“ You certainly have your nerve with you,” he
interjected.
“ What’s more,” I announced deﬁantly, “ I
never owned a revolver in my life and never saw
the one the detectives found until they pulled it
out of my dresser drawer.”
Incredulously he listened. I could see that he
did not believe a word I was saying.
“ You don’t look like a dope ﬁend either,” he
observed scathingly.
“ Look here,” I retorted, “it is bad enough to
'have the police take it for granted that I am a
criminal and a murderer, but when the counsel
the court assigns me starts out on the same
course, we quit right now. I’ll get a lawyer of
my own, when I need one.”
“ I’ll come around this afternoon and see you
again,” he said coolly. “A few hours in the
Tombs will make you see things differently.”
A few minutes later I found myself ensconced
in a cell again, still conﬁdent of my speedy release,
but somewhat puzzled as to what would be my
best method of procedure. I was unacquainted


204. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
tion and the scandalizing of all her acquaintances.
She must not be permitted to talk. She must
not even try to see me while I was in prison.
The one way—the only way—I saw by which
I could escape from the law’s toils without impli-
cating her, was through the speedy rounding up
of the band of criminals who I was positive were
responsible for Miss Lutan’s murder as well as
for all of our troubles. I was relying on Gorman
to do this.
A keeper’s voice interrupted my chain of
thought.
“ You’re wanted down in the counsel room,”
he said. “ There is a visitor for you.”
“ A visitor,” I cried excitedly. “ Who is it? ”
A feeling of relief came over me. I thought of
course it must be Gorman come to my rescue.
“It’s your sister,” he announced.
My sister! A thrill shot through me at his
announcement. I knew of course it could not be
my sister. Both of them were mere children far
away in the West. It must be Barbara. Un-
doubtedly she had resorted to this ruse to make
sure of seeing me while at the same time conceal-
ing her own identity.


CHAPTER X
FOR a full minute Claire Bradford and I stood
there observing each other. Even before a word
was spoken I think we both sensed our mutual
distrust. As I studied her, I was trying to con-
jecture what could have been the motive so
impelling that she had dared to come even
within prison walls to see me. Had Barbara
sent her? I doubted it. I was sure that more
than likely her visit was to plead with me to keep
silent about her part in the tragedy. I was cer-
tain she was going to ask me to pledge my word
to tell no one of her second visit to the Gaston
apartment. Yet as I studied her weak, beautiful
face, so like Barbara’s and yet so different, with
its sensuous mouth and roving, brilliant eyes, I
still was wondering how it was possible for a
girl of her reﬁnement and social position to have
become enmeshed with such common criminals
as the two employees of the Granddeck, Wick
and the telephone girl.
“ To what am I indebted for the honor of this


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 207
visit,” I asked at length, adding with some sar-
casm, “frOm my sister?”
Never for a second had I imagined that other
than a selﬁsh motive could have brought her
thither, and the conversation that followed was
all the more surprising to me on that account.
“ I had to say I was your sister,” she answered
quickly. “ I wanted to be sure of seeing you and
I did not wish any one to recognize me. You
know, I believe, who I am?”
“ You are Barbara’s sister,” I replied, thinking
to myself that any favor she might ask would be
granted solely on Barbara’s account and not on
her own.
“That’s why I came,” she cried, “for Bar-
bara’s sake. I have come to plead with you for
her.”
“To plead—with me-—for her,” I echoed in
astonishment.
“ Yes,” she cried passionately. “ She’s young.
She’s little more than a child. She did not
realize What she was doing. You mustn’t let
her get mixed up in this horrible murder case.
You must not let any one know you even know
her. You must never, never tell.”


208 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Never tell what? ” I answered noncom-
mittally.
She answered with a convulsive sob. I
thought for a little that she was going to break
down completely. Her manner and the pallor
of her face attracted the attention of the keeper
who was in the room with us, and he started
forward as if expecting her to fall in a faint.
Resolutely she pulled herself together and went
on in calmer tones.
“ Oh, I know all about it. I know that she is
completely fascinated by you. I know that she
has been meeting you in the Park. I know that
she has lunched with you at the Astor.” She
hesitated and her face crimsoned—“ I know that
she has even visited you in your rooms late at
night. Oh, please, please, I beg of you, if there
is a spark of manhood in you, do not take advan-
tage of a silly girl’s weakness. Please help me
protect my little sister’s name; promise—you
will, won’t you? ”
“ Why should I? ” I replied carelessly, repress-
ing my desire to leap at once to Barbara’s de-
fence and explain how pure and honorable her
conduct had been and how lofty the motive that


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 209
had governed her actions. Tempted though I
was to defend her, I realized that this might be
an opportunity to learn something of Claire
Bradford’s associates, and I determined to make
the most of it. How else could she know of all
my meetings-with Barbara unless she was in
league with the persons who had been having me
shadowed? How the knowledge that Barbara had
been in my apartment could have come to her
was a mystery beyond me. I would have sworn
that that was a secret sacred to our two selves.
I
“ Listen to me,’ she commanded, speaking in
low tense tones, “Barbara is my baby sister,
innocent of the ways of the world. I must save
her from herself, and her heedlessness. Never,
never, if I can help it, shall she suffer the agony
and shame and disgrace that I have known. I’m
going to tell you something now I never have
spoken to any one of, any one outside of my
own family: years ago I, just as she is now,
became infatuated with a man far below me in
the social scale. He, too, was a criminal.”
I sniffed indignantly at the “ he, too,” but she
paid no attention.
“ I ran away from school and married him and


210 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
learned too late that he had a wife and child
already. All my life, ever since, that terrible
thing has followed me. It’s like a spectre ever
rising to confront me. It has led me into all
sorts of trouble. Even if I have to kill you, I
am going to save my little sister from following
in my steps. You will keep her out of this,
won’t you? You must! You must!”
“Where is Gaston Maurice now?” I asked.
“ Have you seen him recently? ”
She gasped and shuddered, looking at me
incredulously.
“ You,” she breathed excitedly, “ who are you?
How do you know his name?”
“Never mind how I know it,” I replied.
“What I want to know is where is he now?
when did you see him last?”
“Not for years—not since long before my
father’s death—not since the marriage was an-
nulled.”
“ Nor heard from him,” I persisted.
“No, nor heard from him,” she hesitated,
“unless ”
“Unless what?” I insisted, as she stopped
abruptly.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 211
“I can’t tell you,” she said ﬁrmly. “ I don’t
know. They must have come from him, from
some one that knew—the letters.”
“ What letters? Tell me about them.”
“ I can’t,” she cried piteously. “ I don’t
know.”
“If you want me to promise to keep your
sister out of this, you must tell me every-
thing.”
“ I can’t tell what I don’t know. I haven’t the
least idea where Gaston Maurice is. I had hoped
he was dead in the war. Yet he can’t be. I
have had anonymous letters threatening me.
They must have come from him or from some
one whom he told of our marriage. How else
could they know?”
Her distress was so real and her manner so
convincing that I decided that she must be tell-
ing the truth. She was unaware of the where-
abouts of her former husband. I determined on
another line Of inquiry.
“ Well,” said I, “if you cannot tell me where
to ﬁnd Gaston Maurice there is one thing that
you can tell me.”
“ What is that?”


212 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Why did you visit my apartment late last
night?”
“You saw me,” she cried, terror written in
every line of her countenance.
“ Yes,” I answered. “ Why did you put that
revolver in my dresser? ”
“Revolver,” she queried in a puzzled tone,
“ what revolver? ”
“The revolver with which Miss Lutan was
killed.”
She eyed me in shocked surprise.
“Why do you say this to me? I never saw
the revolver.”
“ You cannot deny that you were in my apart-
ment last night?”
“ But the revolver,” she protested. “ What do
you mean by that? I know nothing of any re-
volver.”
“ Last night, a few minutes after Miss Lutan
was murdered,” I said sternly, “some man or
woman entered my rooms and placed a revolver
with one chamber discharged in the dresser in
my bedroom. It was evidently placed there for
the purpose of throwing suspicion on me, of
making me out the murderer. The detectives


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 215
in conjunction with Wick seemed to ring true,
and I was also inclined to believe her statement
that she knew nothing of her former husband’s
present 'whereabouts. While I was pondering
over her statements, my cell door opened and
Gorman was let in. The keeper relocked the
door, leaving him there with me.
“ Well, young fellow,” he said, “ this sleuthing
business didn’t turn out exactly the way we ex-
pected it to, did it? ”
“ You’re not arrested, too, are you?” I cried.
He laughed aloud.
“ I guess not. After all these years at Head-
quarters I come pretty near having'the run of
this prison. I wanted to have a chat with you
where nobody’d bother us, so I got them to lock
me up with you.” I
“ You don’t think I’m guilty, do you?”
I waited in agony for his answer. If he failed
me, there was no one, absolutely no one, to
whom I could turn.
“It looks like you were guilty from reading
the morning papers,” he answered with a grin.
“ But I don’t believe all I read. They’ve made
out a strong case against you, though.”


216 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ I didn’t do it! ” I cried passionately.
“If you didn't, who did?”
“ It must have been Mr. Wick.”
“ There you go, jumping at conclusions. Why
. not Claire Bradford? ”
“ Why do you mention her? Do you suspect
her?”
“If she didn’t do it, why did she come down
here to see you?”
“ How did you know she was here? ”
“I was watching you all the time you were
talking to her.”
“ But how did you know who she was? ”
“ I saw the other one this morning. They look
alike.”
“ But how did you know which sister it was? ”
“ You didn’t seem to get along well enough
in your talk for it to be Barbara,” he answered
with another grin.
It had not been my intention to reveal
even to him Claire Bradford’s second visit to
my apartment, but I saw how foolish it
would be of me to attempt to deceive or to with—
hold any information from such a shrewd ob-
server.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 217
Without reserve and with the utmost detail I
proceeded to relate everything that had hap-
pened since I had seen him the afternoon before.
I told of my discovery of the secret panel in my
room and of the blind passageway into which it
apparently led, of Barbara’s having made the
perilous journey over the window ledge to
inspect my ﬁnd, of the screams we had heard
followed by the shot, of how Barbara had ﬂed
back by the way she came, and I had run down-
stairs and with Wick had discovered the body.
I told him every detail so far as I could remember
it, winding up with my catching Claire Bradford
leaving my apartment, just before my arrest and
the ﬁnding of the revolver.
“You don’t think the detectives themselves
planted the gun on you? ” he asked. “ I’ve heard
Of them doing things like that.”
He spoke with such an air of innocence that
I had to smile. I doubt if there were many
tricks of detectives that Gorman did not know
all about.
“ They had no opportunity whatever. Neither
of them had been near the dresser before, and I
was watching them every moment.”


218 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Well, who did hide the revolver there, if they
didn’t?”
“ I don’t know.”
“ Couldn’t Wick have done it? ”
“ I was with him every moment after we dis-
covered the body.”
“ Maybe it was Claire Bradford? ”
I shook my head.
“I thought at ﬁrst it might have been she,
but I’m convinced since talking with her that it
was not. She’s either entirely innocent or else
the most wonderful actress in the world.”
“ I think we can leave her out of it,” ventured
Gorman.
“ That leaves only Wick.”
Gorman shook his head positively.
“ Wick didn’t do it. He’s a bad one all right,
and he has done time, but he’s only a tool.”
“ Wick has done time! ” I exclaimed. “ How
did you ﬁnd that out? What have you learned
about him? ”
Gorman grinned at my eager questioning.
“ I don’t know much about him yet, but I’m
sure he’s an ex-con. While you were in court
this morning,” he explained, “I went up to the


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 219
Granddeck to take a look at things for myself.
Wick showed me through the Lutan apartment,
thinking I was from the coroner’s ofﬁce. I
spotted him at once. A crook that has done
time is always sure to give himself away.”
“ How? ” I questioned.
“ Well,” said Gorman judicially, “ men’s busi-
nesses leave their marks on them. A clergyman
don’t have to be wearing a high vest for you to
spot him, and nobody ever took a dancing
teacher for a pugilist. A man that has looked at
as many crooks as I have knows them by in-
stinct, and then there’s little ways you can tell.
As I was going up to the apartment with Wick
he just naturally fell into step with me, showing
he had been used to marching with other prison-
ers. He talks, too, without moving his lips.
That’s a sure Sign. They learn that in prison
so they can talk without the guards knowing
it.”
“ That’s so,” I cried. “ It struck me that there
was something funny about the way Wick talked,
but I couldn’t have told just what it was.”
“ Wick’s a crook, all right,” Gorman went on,
“ but I think he comes from somewhere up-state


220 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
or maybe out West. If he had worked here in
New York, I would be apt to have seen him
before.”
“I don’t think he’s a Westerner,” I said.
“ I’m from the West.”
“More likely from up-state, but he hasn’t
intelligence enough to be anything more than a
runner for the gang.”
“Well, what’s your theory?” I asked. “If
Wick didn’t murder Miss Lutan, who did?”
“I don’t know yet. Wick ain’t big enough.
Big jobs take big men to plan them. This whole
thing is a big affair, carefully planned out. It
takes more brains than Wick ever dreamed of
having to plant anonymous notes and terrify
people nearly out of their senses with mysteri-
ous whispers and then to steal the Bradford
papers and the Gaston pearls and then when
things get hot to have you already framed as
the goat to blame things on.”
“ Then you think my discharge from the ofﬁce
was part of the plot?”
“ Sure it was. You butted in on their black-
mail plans, and they wanted to get square with
you, and a young fellow out of work and dis-


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 221
charged in disgrace is always an easy mark for
suspicion.”
“And was it part of the plot to blame Miss
Lutan’s murder on me?”
“ I don’t think so. The Lutan murder was an
accident. Even the biggest crooks seldom de-
liberately plan murder. They’re all afraid of
the chair. She came in and surprised some one
of the gang in her apartment. He had to shoot
her to make his getaway. It was quick thinking
on somebody’s part after the murder to plant
that gun in your rooms. That sort of scheming
takes brains, and Wick hasn’t got them.”
“ Who was it, then?”
“We’ve got to ﬁnd,” said Gorman, speaking
slowly and with emphasis, “ the big crook that
is back of all this—the master-mind.”
“The master-mind,” I echoed.
“ Yes,” he said, “ there’s a big crooked brain
somewhere that has been directing the whole
plot, and planning the actions of Wick and of
the telephone girl, and maybe of Claire Brad-
ford, too.”
“ I wonder if it could be her ex-husband. She
told me, though, a few moments ago, that she


222 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
had not heard of him for years, and she seemed
to me to be telling the truth.”
“ I don’t think it was him,” said Gorman.
“ He was only a chauffeur. If he’s in it at all,
he’s only one of the gang. He’s not the master-
mind.”
“ I hope we can keep the Bradfords out of it
altogether,” I said. “You see, Gorman ”
“ I understand,” he interrupted. “ I know how

the land lies. You need not worry about that.
If Claire Bradford had any part in the plot, you
can bet she was forced into it and driven to do
what she did. Have you seen her sister? ”
“ No, and I hope she’ll make no effort to see
me. She mustn’t. I won’t have her mixed up
in it. She must not be permitted to try to save
me. You’ll see her, won’t you?”
“Leave it to me,” said the detective. “I’ll
manage to reach her without even her own
family knowing anything about it. I’ll make her
understand that if she tries to see you or says
anything, she’ll only be damaging your case.
Don’t worry about her.”
“There’s one thing, though,” I said, “ that I
wish you could do.”


224. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
bornly made up that it could not exist. He was
the only friend I had in all the great city, and I
must leave it to him to work the thing out in
his own way.
“ What about a lawyer? ” I asked.
“ Didn’t the court assign you one? ”
“ Yes, but he took it for granted that I was
guilty, so I got rid of him.”
“ Well, there ain’t much a lawyer could do
yet. I’ll dig up one when we need him. Bail
is not possible in a murder case, so there is noth-
ing for you to do but to sit tight and take it as
easy as you can. By the way, have you heard
anything from old Gaston since you were
arrested? ”
“ Not a word,” I answered. “I have not the
least idea where he is or how to reach him.”
“ Humph, that’s funny,” said Gorman abstract-
edly. “ Good-by, I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
He pounded on the cell door, and a guard
released him, leaving me alone to ponder over
my plight, and especially over his last question.
What had he meant by it?
Where was old Rufus Gaston?
Once more suspicion of my aged relative shot


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 225
through my brain. Was it possible that his was
the master-mind behind all this plotting? Gor-
man had insisted that the arch criminal behind
Wick and the others must be some man of in-
tellect. My great-uncle Rufus had brains. Out
of a clear Sky he had summoned me to live in
the Granddeck and then had mysteriously dis-
appeared. Certainly he had had opportunities
for knowing Wick and the telephone girl. Bar-
bara had recalled once having heard her father
speak of him in disparaging terms. Had it been
he who was plotting against the Bradfords and
had brought me into the case as a scapegoat?
Was old Rufus Gaston the master-mind?
Where was he?


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 229
with the American troops and could not possibly
aid me.
All of this was pointed out to me by John Mc-
Gregor, a young attorney whom Gorman had
employed for me. While Gorman and I had, I
think, succeeded in convincing him of my inno-
cence, the fact that he was continually citing the
difﬁculties in the way of our proving it made me
realize that he was very dubious as to the out-
come.
The trouble was that we were absolutely with-
out witnesses. Old Rufus Gaston’s whereabouts
still remained a mystery. If we could discover
him in time, we could at least explain satis-
factorily my presence in the Granddeck and
could establish that I was not the homeless,
penniless vagrant they would try to prove me.
The longer old Rufus remained in hiding, the
stronger became my suspicion that he might be
in some way involved in the plot. His action in
keeping his address a secret from me seemed to
have been with deliberate intent.
After some discussion Gorman and I had
agreed not to mention either of the Bradford
girls.


230 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ If one word about either of them slips out in
court,” said Gorman, “they’ll be in for it. The
papers will jump to it and print their pictures and
all that. We’d better leave them out of it.”
With this I heartily concurred. I was deter-
mined that Barbara Bradford must be in no way
involved, come what may. I knew that she her-
self would be apt to be restrained from attempt-
ing to communicate with me by the fact that her
,sister’s marriage was set for the day after to-
morrow. Her loyalty to her family was such
that she would not risk scandal by trying to aid
me, at least not until her sister was married and
the future for Claire and her mother assured.
Two small rays of sunshine lightened the
gloom of my cell—the fact that the newspaper
mention of the tragedy seemed thus far to have
escaped my mother’s notice and the fact that
Barbara still believed in my innocence and
trusted me absolutely. A day or two after my
arrest Gorman had managed to see her and had
told her that it was my wish that she keep
entirely quiet her knowledge of the affair and
that she should make no attempt whatever to
communicate with me while I was in prison. He


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 231
had brought back with him a hastily penciled
note which often in my cell I read and re-read:
DEAR MR. NELSON:
I’m so sorry to hear of your trouble and
the absurd charges against you. I’ll do what-
ever you wish, of course. I trust you absolutely.
If anything I can tell will aid you at any time, I
am ready to speak—cost what it may. I know
you are innocent and must soon be freed. Hop-
ing to see you,
With all conﬁdence,
B. B.
Each time I read anew the penciled lines, my
heart rejoiced. Come what may, I felt sure that
Barbara’s heart was mine. I joyed to know that
come out of prison to her though I might, she
would be glad to see me. joyfully would I have
gone to the electric chair rather than have her
fair name in the least smirched by scandal in
trying to defend me. She alone could prove an
alibi for me, but no one must ever know it.
What would a scandal-loving world say if the
fact became public that She had been alone with
me in my apartment near midnight? If only by
the sacriﬁce of her good name could I go free,
then let me stay in my cell. Let me even go to


232 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
the electric chair. I would not have my life at
the loss of my beloved’s reputation.
One other thing I had kept from my lawyer—
my discovery of the passageway between the
walls in my great-uncle’s apartment. If I could
not get Gorman to believe in this secret passage,
which I was convinced had some connection with
the mysteries and the whisperings at the Grand-
deck, there was little likelihood that McGregor
would believe my tale either. Given one single
hour in my quarters at the Granddeck and I
would have discovered whither it led and who
used it, but once a man is charged with murder,
his hands are tied. It was futile for me to men-
tion it again, even to the detective or to my
lawyer, until such time as I could show it to them
and convince them that I knew what I was talk-
ing about.
While I was debating the situation in my cell,
a keeper opened the door.
“You’re wanted downstairs,” he announced.
“ What is it? ” I asked, wonderingly.
“ You’ve got a visitor.”
“Who?” I questioned eagerly. Could it, I
wondered, be Barbara? Had my sternly


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 233
repressed longing to see her in some way com-
municated itself to her through the ether and
impelled her to throw caution to the winds and
come to the prison to see me?
“I don’t know,” the keeper answered. “It’s
a man. I don’t know who he is.”
A man. Who could it be? In all the monoto-
nous time I had been behind the bars, only two
men had come to see me, Gorman and McGregor.
It could not be either of them, for both were well-
known to the prison attendants. As I hastened
down the long corridor past the dismal row of
barred doors, I was revolving in my mind the
possibilities of my caller’s identity.
Who could it be? Spurred on by my curiosity,
I hastened into the counsel room. There sat my
great-uncle Rufus.
He looked in much better physical condition
than when I had last seen him, more vigorous
and healthier. His skin was browned from ex-
posure to the sun and wind, and his eyes were
clearer and brighter. As I studied his face I
could trace no vestige there of the terrible fear
that had seemed to obsess him on the last occa-
sion of our meeting.


234. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
For a moment we eyed each other without
speaking. I was wondering—and well I think I
might—whether the suspicions I had had at
times in regard to him had been wholly without
foundation. Could it be possible that the crafty,
miserly old chap was the master-mind at the
bottom of all the mystery and plotting? As my
previous suspicions came up in my mind I de-
termined to be wary in what I said to him. The
ﬁres of anger toward him began to kindle within
me as I looked at him. I felt that it was his
fault that I was locked up here.
Meanwhile he had been studying me. His
keen old eyes had surveyed me from head to foot,
returning to rest ﬁxedly on my face, as though
he was trying to read my thoughts. I wondered
what was passing in his mind. Was he inwardly
chortling at the plight in which he found me?
Was he distressed to see a blood-relative behind
the bars? Did he believe that I was guilty of
the murder of Daisy Lutan? How had he
learned of my arrest? What was his purpose in
coming to see me? But his expression was un-
fathomable, so far as I was concerned.
He was the ﬁrst to speak.


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 235 _
“ SO—you didn’t do it, did you? ”
“ Of course not,” I retorted indignantly.
“ Did you suspect that I was a murderer? ”
He shook his head disparagingly, smiling an
inscrutable smile.
“ The evidence against you certainly looks
convincing.”
“I don’t care,” I exclaimed with heat. “I’m
as innocent of the killing of Daisy Lutan as "—
I hesitated—“ as you are.”
He nodded his head approvingly.
“ There, there, boy, don’t get excited. Of
course I know you are innocent. You’re of the
Gaston blood, and there never was a Gaston that
was a murderer or a lawbrea’ker. I never sus-
pected you for a single second. I was off in the
Maine woods twenty miles from a railroad. I
didn’t see a newspaper until day before yesterday
evening. My eye just happened to catch a para-
graph about the Granddeck. It was about your
trial for the murder of Miss Lutan being set for
next week. That was the ﬁrst I had heard
about it. I traveled all night to get to you.”
My feelings toward him underwent a sudden
revulsion. There was every evidence Of sin-


236 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
cerity in his manner. The knowledge that he
believed in me was the most welcome news I had
heard since my incarceration.
“ We’ll soon have you out of here,” he went
on, “ now that I am here to help you. I got you
into this, and I’ll get you out of it if it takes every
cent I possess. There’s more than one ﬁght left
in old Rufus yet. Now start at the very be-
ginning and tell me everything that has happened
since I have been away.”
What a relief it was to talk freely! With my
mind once and for all cleared of all suspicion
toward my old great-uncle, I began my story.
Somehow the tie of blood is strong in time of
trouble. I found it vastly easier to talk with my
aged relative than it had been with either Gor-
man or my lawyer.
I began with my chance meeting with Barbara
Bradford in the Park as the blackmailers awaited
her there. I told everything that had followed
with the utmost detail, even to such small matters
as my ﬁrst meeting with Wick and the undue
curiosity he had exhibited as to my acquaintance
with the Bradfords. I recited the story of my
unaccountable discharge in disgrace from my


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 237
position and told of Gorman’s unavailing efforts
to learn the reason.
“ The day I was discharged,” I went on, “I
had drawn out from the savings bank all my
money with the purpose of sending it to my
mother to whom I was in debt. I still had it
with me when I arrived home at the apartment
and I decided to put it in the wall safe, to which,
you recall, you had given me the combination.
Out of mere curiosity ”—I made this confession
with a blush of shame—“I had inspected the
contents of the safe the day of my arrival and had
examined the two caskets. The minute I opened
the safe this second time I saw that it had been
looted.”
“What,” exclaimed my great—uncle, starting
from his seat, “ not the pearls! ”
I nodded.
“ Everything. The casket with the pearls was
gone. The other with the trinkets was undis-
turbed.”
“ Good heavens! ” he exclaimed. “ My wife’s
pearls stolen! Why, boy, I paid a hundred and
ﬁfty thousand dollars for that string. Tell me
everything about it—everything, at once.”


238 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
I could only repeat what I had told him al-
ready. When I had opened the safe on Sunday the
pearls were there. When I had opened it again
on the following Saturday the pearls were gone.
“ Of course you told the police at once.”
I explained to him why I had not done so, and
my reason seemed to satisfy him.
“ Go on with your story,” he calmly directed.
He seemed to have himself well in hand again.
After the ﬁrst shock at hearing of the loss of the
pearls he showed no sign of emotion or dis-
pleasure.
He listened intently as I told him of my second
meeting with Barbara Bradford when I had
learned that the Bradford wall safe had been
looted, too, and the papers abstracted concern-
ing the annulment of Claire’s ﬁrst marriage. He
nodded his head slightly when I told him of the
anonymous notes found on the ﬂoor in both
apartments. .
“ Did you hear the whispers, too?” he ques-
tioned.
“ Yes,” I answered, “ I heard them several
times. Barbara has heard them, and the laun-
dress, too.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 239
A look of unspeakable relief came over his face.
“I’m glad to know that others have heard
them besides myself. When a man gets Old his
nerves sometimes play him strange pranks. The
whispers seemed so unreal and incredible that I
feared that I was suffering from the hallucina-
tions of old age. Now that I know that the
whispers are real, there is nothing to fear.”
“And,” I observed, “I believe, I am almost
positive, I can explain the origin of the whispers.”
“ Tell me,” he cried, his manner now entirely
changed. He seemed elated at discOvering that
his brain was still dependable. It was as if a
burden had suddenly been lifted from him.
Here was my opportunity. Gorman had
utterly refused to credit my story of a secret
passage and had ridiculed it. There had been
no way that I could prove it, nor was it possible
for Gorman to have investigated the walls of the
Granddeck, even if he had placed any credence
in my story. With my great-uncle it was dif-
ferent. As the occupant of the apartment he
would have every right and opportunity to ex-
plore and verify my statements. I told him how,
while speculating as to the origin of the whispers,


24.0 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
I had observed the discrepancy in the measure-
ments of the apartment and had veriﬁed my
deduction that there was space enough for a
passageway big enough for a man to traverse in
the wall between the room I had occupied and
the long hall. He listened intently as I de-
scribed the plan of the rooms in detail and nodded
his approval.
“ And what is more,” I added triumphantly,
“ Barbara Bradford and I had just discovered an
opening into it by pushing the wall panel in my
room back and then sliding it along. We were
inspecting it when we heard the shot in the
apartment below. I closed the panel and ran
downstairs and have had no opportunity since to
investigate, but I am sure the passage is there.
I am convinced that it was the sound of voices
there that made the whispers. I suspect it was
used by whoever left the anonymous notes in the
room, and that the person or persons who looted
the safes entered and escaped by that means. I
would not be surprised if it was not by means of
this passageway that the murderer of Miss Lutan
escaped, after he had left his revolver in the
drawer of my dresser.”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 241
My great-uncle shook his head perplexedly.
“ It sounds improbable—too much like a
romance. They do not build modern apartment
buildings with secret passageways. Space is far
too valuable, and besides, all plans have to be
ﬁled with the city’s bureau of buildings.”
“ But it’s there,” I cried desperately. “ I saw
it. Barbara Bradford saw it.”
“ Well,” he comforted me, “ we will soon ﬁnd
out about it. I have many matters to attend to
today, but tomorrow I shall go up to the apart-
ment, and if there is such a passageway I shall
ﬁnd it and see where it leads.”
“ Then you are not staying in the apart-
ment? ”
“ No, I Shall remain at a hotel until my wife
returns.”
At this juncture a prison attendant approached
and informed him that the time of his visit was
up. Imperiously my great-uncle waved the man
away. Somehow the possession of great wealth
carries with it a manner of expecting obedience
from every one that generally is successful. The
man withdrew, muttering to himself and left us
undisturbed.


24.2 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Now tell me about the murder,” Mr. Gaston
directed.
Concisely I stated the facts as I knew them.
It was a shock to him to hear that at least two of
the trusted attendants at the Granddeck, Wick
and the telephone girl, were of the criminal
class.
“ Tut, tut, tut,” he exclaimed. “ Just think of
it! That’s the worst of living in a big city. You
never know what sort of people there are about
you. I’ll call up Mr. Kent, the owner of the
building, this afternoon and have him get rid of
them at once.”
“ Please don’t,” I cried. “ Gorman and I are
both convinced that Wick and the girl know
something about the murder. Don’t do any-
thing to let them know that they are under sus-
picion. So long as they are employed at the
Granddeck we know where to lay hands on them
when we want them.”
“ That’s so,” he admitted. “ I’ll say nothing
for the present. As I won’t be living there until
after this is cleared up, it can make no difference.
But, look here, young man, why doesn’t this
' Bradford girl come forward and clear you of this


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 243
charge? She was with you at the time. She
knows you didn’t do it.”
“ Because I will not permit her to do so,” I
replied with heat. “ I love Barbara Bradford! ”
“ That’s it, is it? ” he commented, giving me a
quizzical glance from under his bushy white eye-
brows. ‘
“ I wouldn’t for all the world,” I continued,
“ have her mixed up in this. Her sister is to be
married tomorrow, and the scandal might stop
the wedding; and besides I’m not going to have
it known that she was there alone with me that
night in my rooms. I love her too well for that.
Some day I am going to ask her to be my wife.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“ And on what do you expect to marry?” he
inquired. '
“ Of course I have said nothing as yet,” I -
hastened to explain, “ I’ve nothing to offer her.”
“ No,” he agreed, “ you’ve nothing to offer
her,”—and then with a meaning glance he added
a little word that in spite of my predicament
made my heart sing with joy and stirred my ex-
pectations mightily—“ you’ve nothing to offer
her—yet.


244. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ But cheer up,” he advised as a parting word
of counsel, “ I’ll get in touch with Gorman and
your lawyer as soon as I leave here today, and
tomorrow we will ﬁnd out about that secret
passage you think you have discovered.”
Compunction that I ever had doubted the in-
tegrity of his purpose toward me smote me as he
departed. I tried to think of something to say
to express my gratitude to him, to let him know
how much I appreciated his coming at once to
my aid, but the only thing I could think of slipped
from my lips:
“ I am sorry about the pearls.”
“ SO am I,” he answered grimly and went his
way.
One thing now I certainly was sure of—his
was not the master-mind that had planned all
the criminal deeds, but the mystery of the Grand-
deck was still as much of a mystery as ever.


CHAPTER XII
IT was the second day after this—the day set
for Claire Bradford’s wedding—that in the morn-
ing, much earlier than customary, Gorman came
to the prison to see me.
I met him jubilantly. My uncle’s unexpected
return to the city and his generous and convinc-
ing offers of aid had ﬁlled me with new hopes. I
trusted, too, that old Rufus’s keen eyes quickly
would discover the secret passageway now that
I had indicated to him where to look for it. I
was conﬁdently expecting that the resulting
developments quickly would free me from even
the suspicion of being a murderer. The minute,
however, that I laid eyes on Gorman, I knew that
something had gone wrong.
“What is it?” I cried. “What’s the matter
now?” _
“You’re a wonderful liar, you are,” was his


24.6 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
surly greeting, “ with your pipe dreams about
secret passageways and stolen pearls.”
“ What do you mean? ” I replied. I had not
the least idea what he was getting at.
“ You almost had me believing you,” he said
savagely. “If it wasn’t that I knew that Wick
and that girl up there were crooks, I would wash
my hands of the whole affair.”
“ I don’t understand,” I answered indignantly.
“ Every statement I have made to you has been
the absolute truth.”
“ Yes, it has,” he sneered.
Ordinarily I would have resented any one talk-
ing to me in this manner, but I felt that under no
circumstances could I afford to quarrel with Gor-
man. He was the only friend I had in the whole
city that I could rely on, excepting of course my
great-uncle. I contented myself with merely
reasserting:
“ I tell you it is all true—every word of it.”
“ The old man’s home—old Rufus,” he re-
spondedirrelevantly.
“I know,” I replied. “I saw him for a few
minutes day before yesterday. He promised to
do everything in his power to free me as speedily


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 24.7
as possible. After talking with him, I am con~
ﬁdent that he had nothing whatever to do with
any part of the plot. Have you seen him? ”
“ Yes,” said Gorman, signiﬁcantly, “ I’ve seen
him. He looked me up yesterday and we went
over the case together. He suggested that we
go up to the Granddeck and look over the apart-
ment and we did. The minute we got in, he
7,
went to the wall safe and opened it up and

Gorman stopped short and looked at me. _It
seemed to me that there were doubt and distrust
in his expression.
“ Go on,” I cried, “ What did you ﬁnd? ”
“ We found,” he said, speaking slowly and
putting special emphasis on his third word, “ two
jewel boxes there, the one with the pearls and
the other one.” 1
“What,” I cried, aghast at this incredible bit
of news, “ two jewel cases! ”
“ Sure we did,” he announced triumphantly.
“ And the pearls were there as safe as when the
old man went away. Now what have you got to
say to that?”
What could I say?
I knew as positively as I knew that I was alive


250 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
the Granddeck the old man spoke about it and I
told him that in my opinion there was nothing to
it. After he recovered the pearls he was too ex-
cited to think about anything else. It seemed to
break him all up, and I took him back to his hotel
and left him there. He said he had some writing
to do, and that he would meet me at my ofﬁce at
noon today.”
“ How do you account for the return of the
pearls? ” I cried desperately. “ What’s your
theory about them? ”
“ I haven’t any,” he replied. “It’s up to you
to explain it. Maybe by the time I come to see
you tomorrow you’ll have thought up a new yarn
to spin.”
“ Please, please,” I called after him as he
turned away, “ do look tomorrow and see if that
secret passage is not where I said it was.”
He walked away without answering. Back
once more in my cell, I stretched myself
despondently on my little iron cot, and closing
my eyes, tried to concentrate my thoughts on an
attempt to solve this new mystery, which I could
plainly see had all but destroyed Gorman’s faith
in my honesty. I must solve it if I was to retain


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 251
him in aiding me to get free, yet the whole thing
seemed inexplicable. I could hardly blame him
for doubting me. The great value of the pearls
had been motive enough for their theft, but what
possible motive could there have been for the
thief returning them?
With a shock it came to me, too, that the
restoration Of the pearls practically upset the
whole theory of my defense. If I could have
established the fact of this theft, a jury might be
persuaded to believe my tale of anonymous notes,
mysterious whispers, and a secret passageway by
which the thief had gained access to the apart-
ment, but without the motive of theft, my story,
unsupported by witnesses and uncorroborated by
other evidence, surely would be incredible of
belief.
I had just one hope left. Old Rufus must ﬁnd
that secret passageway and see whither it led.
That, with our knowledge of the identity of the
telephone girl and the possibility of proving
Gorman’s belief that Wick was an ex-convict,
seemed likely to be my only salvation. Old
Rufus must ﬁnd that passageway. He must!
He must! .


252 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
For hours I lay there racking my brains over the
unsolvable problems. My luncheon was brought
in, but I waved it away untouched. Wearily I
wondered whether the recovery of the pearls had
destroyed my aged relative’s faith in me, as it
seemed to have destroyed Gorman’s. I could
hardly blame him if he doubted me after ﬁnding
that my story of the disappearance of the pearls
was apparently untrue. In my brief experience
as a prisoner I had learned all too well the bitter
fact that once a man is discredited, henceforth no
one trusts him. If Rufus Gaston failed me at
this juncture I did not see how I could possibly
extricate myself unscathed from the web that
unseen hands had so skilfully and maliciously
woven around me. The only ray of comfort that
I could ﬁnd anywhere in the whole situation was
in my ﬁrm belief that though old Rufus and Gor-
man and the whole world doubted me, Barbara
Bradford—my Barbara, I ventured to call her in
my innermost heart—would continue to believe
in me. She would be sure, no matter how much
appearances went against me, that I was telling
the truth. Barbara and I knew. Even if she
had not known that I could not possibly have


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 253
ﬁred the shot that killed Miss Lutan, I was cer-
tain that she still would have trusted me.
Thinking about Barbara I recalled that it was
the day of her sister’s wedding. I had one of the
prison attendants get me the evening papers to
see what they had to say about it, for I was fear-
ful lest some breath of scandal at the last moment
involving the Bradfords might bring about a
postponement. Eagerly I was hoping that noth-
ing had happened to prevent the marriage taking
place. With the fortunes of her Sister assured
and her mother’s future safe, I realized that the
course of my relations with Barbara would be
likely to be much smoother sailing, provided of
course that I was acquitted. In the few chats I
had had with her, I had realized that wealth and
luxury and social position meant nothing to Bar-
bara’s happiness. She was the sort of girl who
for a man she loved gladly would brave poverty,
hardship, everything—a sincere, true-hearted
woman with a clear vision of the real values of
existence.
My messenger returned with the newspapers,
and as I picked them up, everything went black.
“ Millionaire Gaston Found Murdered,” was the


254. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
startling headline that ﬂashed before me, right
there in the column next to the account of the
Bradford wedding.
The sinister effect of this terrible news dawned
on me instantly. With my great-uncle Rufus
dead, without the possibility of his corroborating
any part of my story, my case was hopeless,
desperate.’ Unquestionably it would mean that
I would be found guilty of murder and sentenced
_ to death in the electric chair. As soon as I could
sufﬁciently compose myself I read every word
there was in the newspapers about this new
tragedy, smiling grimly at the thought that at
least they could not blame this murder on me.
Mr. Gaston, it appeared, had come to the
Granddeck about ten o’clock in the morning and
had gone at once to his apartment. On his
arrival he had been greeted by the telephone girl
and had informed her that he was only in the
city for a few days and was staying at a hotel.
He had added that he would not be occupying
the apartment for several weeks until his wife’s
return to the city. About half-past twelve there
had come a telephone call for him. The girl had
been unable to get any response from the apart-


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 255
ment. Knowing that he had not gone out, and
fearing that he might have had a sudden attack
of illness, she had become alarmed and notiﬁed
Mr. Wick, the superintendent.
The superintendent, the account continued,
had summoned Mr. Henry. Kent, the owner of
the Granddeck apartments. Together they had
gone to Mr. Gaston’s rooms. Being unable to
get any reply to repeated rings and knocks, they
had ﬁnally let themselves in with a pass-key in ,
possession of the owner of the building.
In his study in the rear of the apartment they
were horriﬁed to ﬁnd old Rufus Gaston, fully
clad, lying on the ﬂoor face down, stone dead.
A great wound on the back of his head showed
that he had been killed, probably instantly, by a
terriﬁc blow from some sort of a blunt instru-
ment. A search of the rooms failed to Show any
sort of weapon.
The police theory is that the crime was un-
doubtedly the work of a burglar who had been
trapped by the return of Mr. Gaston so unexpect-
edly to his apartment. How the murderer
escaped after attacking Mr. Gaston is a puzzle
to the detectives at work on the case. The


256 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
superintendent of the building expressed the
opinion that the murderer had gained access in
the guise of a meter inspector. Attendants in
the hall recalled that there had been such a man
in the building that morning. As he wore the
usual uniform and presented the customary
credentials, he had been permitted to enter and
leave the building unmolested.
There followed a long review of Rufus Gas-
ton’s business career and an estimate of some of
his extensive holdings in stocks, bonds, and real
estate, from which it appeared that his fortune
was likely to run far over ten million dollars. It
was with some surprise that I learned that a
score or more of years ago the old man appar-
ently had been a powerful and prominent ﬁgure
in the life of the metropolis, active both in its
business and social life.
What interested me most was the attention
paid to the remarkable coincidence that only a
few weeks before a murder had taken place in
the apartment just below, under practically the
same circumstances. The police, the account
stated, were inclined to believe that the mur-
derer was one of the gang to which young Nel-,


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 263
“ Oh, my boy, my boy,” she had cried as she
saw me, “ I know you didn’t do it. I know my
boy is innocent! What can I do to help you?”
In that glorious wonderful moment of reaction,
all resentment I had felt toward her forever
vanished. I had one sacred, unforgettable
glimpse of the eternal greatness of the Mother-
heart, ever ready to forgive, ever quick to com-
prehend, ever prompt to aid. For one sweet
hour we talked together, more understandingly
than ever before in our lives. Freely and fully I
told her everything, even to my wonderful but
hopeless love for Barbara Bradford. She was
willing, anxious, eager, to aid me—but what was
there that she could do?—what was there that
any one could do?
It was hopeless for a lone woman of limited
means, unacquainted with the big city and un-
used to its ways, to attempt to battle against such
powerful and desperate criminals as were con-
cerned in the far-reaching plot to make me the
scapegoat for their heinous misdeeds. I could
only advise her that she see McGregor and Gor-
man and be guided by what they suggested.
When the morning of my trial actually arrived


.264. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
I entered the courtroom in a state of dull apathy.
The night before I had not slept at all. I had
spent all the black hours reviewing my life,
especially the last year, thinking with what high
hopes and great expectations I had come to the
metropolis and how miserably everything had
turned out for me. Step by step I had reviewed
the events that had brought me, discredited, all
but friendless, all but penniless, into this dismal
courtroom accused of a horrible cowardly deed,
seeking to see wherein I might have altered my
recent actions or changed the course of my life
to avoid having arrived at this shameful goal.
Yet, strange to say, I found myself after mature
reﬂection convinced that had I this last year to
live over again not in one iota would I have done
differently, no, not even if I could have foretold
what the future had in store for me.
No sense of shame nor of guilt possessed me.
I was aware of having dOne wrong to no one.
A clear conscience kept assuring me that it was
misfortune and not error on my part that had
brought me here. At every point in the strange
chain of circumstances I felt that I had acted as
a man of honor should have acted. My sense of


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 269
wound, and the prosecution put in evidence the
bullet extracted from the body and the revolver
the detectives had found, pointing out that they
were of the same calibre.
“ Call Mr. Wick,” said the District Attorney.
I leaned forward to listen to every word of
Wick’s testimony. In fact from the moment he
was brought in I never took my eyes from him.
It would be black enough for me if he merely
stated the facts as they actually had happened,
but I doubted if he would be content with that.
If, as I felt certain, Wick was in the employ of .
the conspirators, it was more than likely that
they would seek to clinch the case against me
with his testimony.
He gave his name, James Wick, and his occu-
’ pation as superintendent of the Granddeck.
“ How long have you been employed there?”
“ Ever since the building was opened.”
“ Where were you employed previously? ”
Wick hesitated. I wondered if Gorman’s sur-
mise that he had been in prison were true, what
he would say.
“ Before that,” he stammered, “ I was in the
employ of Mr. Kent in the West.”


270 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
“ Who is Mr. Kent? ”
“ He owns the Granddeck. He had known me
for years. He brought me on when he built this
building.”
While his answer seemed to satisfy the Dis-
trict Attorney, I was convinced from Wick’s
nervousness that he was concealing something,
that further questioning into his past might lead
to unexpected developments.
“ Are you acquainted with the defendant? ”
“ Very slightly.”
“ How long have you known him? ”
I was listening intently. Would he admit
knowing that I was a relative of old Rufus
Gaston?
“I don’t really know him,” Wick explained.
“ I’ve seen him two or three times. Mr. Gaston,
one of my tenants, told me that he was going
away and that he had given the key of his apart-
ment to a young man named Nelson whom he
had employed as caretaker. He said that the
caretaker would arrive at ten o’clock on the
Sunday morning that the Gastons went away.”
“ And did the defendant arrive at that time—
at the time he was expected? ”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 271
“ He did not. What ﬁrst attracted my atten—
tion to him was that he sneaked into the building
earlier than he was expected.”
“You say he sneaked in,”—-the District At-
torney’s voice expressed a proper horror of such
conduct. “ Please explain to the jury what you
mean by that.”
“ Instead of announcing his arrival, he watched
his chance and waited till one of the tenants was
coming in. He slipped in beside her and went
up in the elevator without being announced.
Naturally the elevator man thought he was a-
friend of the young lady tenant.”
“ How do you know he was not a friend of the
young woman with whom he entered the build-
ing? ”
“ I asked him if he was acquainted with her,
and he said he was. Later that same day she
passed him in the hall of the building. I noticed
that she did not speak to him or recognize him
in any way.”
The prosecutor waved his hand to the jury as
if to say, “You see, gentlemen,” and followed
on with another question.
“ Was the defendant’s conduct in the building


272 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
in any other way such as to arouse your
suspicion? ”
“He’d hardly got located before he began
buzzing the telephone girl, asking her all kinds
of questions about the other tenants in the build-
ing. He kept trying to get her to go out to
dinner with him.”
“ Did she go? ”
“Yes, she did. She reported his actions to
me, and I suggested that she go with him and try
to ﬁnd out what his game was.”
“ What else do you know about the de-
fendant? ”
“ That’s all—except —”
" Except what? ”
“What I saw on the night Miss Lutan was
murdered.”
“ Tell the circumstances.”
“ I was in the elevator coming down from the
top ﬂoor. I heard the sound of a shot. It
seemed to come from the ﬁfth ﬂoor. I got off
there to investigate. At the door of the Lutan
apartment stood Mr. Nelson.”
“ What was he doing there?”
“Just standing there. It looked to me as if


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 275
me. I felt certain that an abler lawyer could
quickly have riddled his testimony, but Mc-
Gregor showed no disposition to take advantage
of his opportunity.
Nellie Kelly was called. Brieﬂy she told of
her job—switchboard operator at the Grand-
deck. She corroborated Wick’s story of my
ﬁrst arrival at the Granddeck and bore out his
statements about my having chatted with her
and also told of having gone to dinner with me.
When I had begun questioning her about other
tenants, she said, she excused herself and went
to the telephone and called up the Granddeck for
advice as to how she should answer. For some
reason, she said, when she returned after ’phon-
ing, the defendant had not questiOned her further
but had seemed anxious to get away from the
restaurant.
“You say,” said McGregor, as he began her
cross-examination, “that your name is Nellie
Kelly. Is that your real name?”
My counsel’s unexpected question came as a
thunderbolt to the opposition. The whole court-
room seemed to sense that something crucial was
about to be brought out. The jurors to a man


276 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
leaned forward to listen for her answer. The
District Attorney, plainly puzzled, half rose in
his seat and then subsided. Wick’s face went
white, and the girl herself started and her eyes
turned helplessly to Wick, as if seeking instruc-
tions as to how to answer.
“ Is that your real name? ” McGregor re-
peated, this time a little more emphatically.
“ It is—that is—it was,” she stammered.
“ It was your name,” said McGregor sarcastic-
ally, “ and what might be your name now? ”
“ My name,”—the girl hesitated, as if strug-
gling with herself, and then casting a deﬁant
look in Wick’s direction, she answered with pride
rather than with boldness, “my name is Mrs.
Edward Moore.”
“The wife of Lefty Moore, the burglar in
Sing Sing, you mean, do you not? ” sneered Mc-
Gregor.
“ I am,” she replied with a proud lifting of her
chin and a ﬂash in her eye. “ I’m Lefty Moore’s
wife, and I’m proud that I am—his lawfully
wedded wife and I don’t care who knows it. I
love Lefty Moore.”
There was instant consternation in the District


CHAPTER XIV
IMPATIENTLY I waited for the recess to be
over. I could not understand what was happen-
ing. Neither Gorman nor my counsel came near
me. Even my mother made no attempt, so far
as I could learn, to see me. The one glimpse I
had had of Barbara there in the courtroom had
ﬁred me again with wild desires to see her. My
feelings were equally divided between hoping she
would and hoping she would not make any effort
to reach me—at least not until my trial was over.
That something was happening to keep them
all away—something perhaps vital to my free-
dom—I was certain. On no other ground could
I explain the fact of none of them seeking me for
consultation. Yet what it might be I could not
possibly conjecture. Eagerly I hurried into the
courtroom again as soon as the recess was over,
at once turning my eyes to see if the girl I loved
was there.
Quickly I located her still sitting beside my


282 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
made a dash for the door. Gorman, who had
been sitting behind him, sprang after him and
pinioned him by the arms, crying out:
“ Nothing doing, Granders, I’ve got you.”
Wick, sitting up near the counsel table, at the
same time showed evidence that he, too, was
contemplating hasty ﬂight, but a husky chap
whom I suspected of being one of Gorman’s
aides, seized him, too.
“Your honor,” cried my counsel, “ I demand
the issuance of warrants at once for Orville
Granders, alias Henry Kent, and his confederate,
James Wilson, alias James Wick and ‘Stuffy
Jim,’ on the charge of having murdered Daisy
Lutan and Rufus Gaston. I further urge the
immediate release of my client, Mr. Spalding Nel-
son, in my custody. Testimony that we already
have obtained will establish that he was an inno-
cent victim of the dastardly plots of these two
ex-convicts.”
The reaction that came from this sudden clear-
ing of my name left me in a puzzled daze from
which I hardly recovered until late that evening,
when, once more free, I found myself in the
Gaston apartment. Granders, his tool Wick,


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 283
and practically every employee of the Granddeck
were under arrest, and warrants were out for
other members of the band whose identity had
been revealed by the former telephone girl.
And there in the apartment with me were my
mother, Gorman, McGregor—and to my sur-
_ prise and delight, Barbara Bradford. After her
sister’s wedding, it appeared, Barbara’s mother
had gone away for a brief rest, leaving her alone
in the apartment with the servants. She had
welcomed the opportunity to work undisturbed
on the mystery that had landed me behind the
bars. Thinking that at Rufus Gaston’s funeral
she might pick up some clue that would be of
service in unraveling the tangled skein that held
her and me together, she had gone thither, and
seeing my mother there and suspecting at once
who she might be, had introduced herself.
Quickly they had become good friends, and she
it was who had informed my mother of my
plight.
Present also with us, despite the lateness of
the hour, was the District Attorney and two of
his aides, and Nellie Kelly, or as she much pre-
ferred to be called, Mrs. Moore. The girl was


286 THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS
He had built a searetpassageway.
We found it that night and explored it,
familiarizing ourselves with all its exits, greatly
to the amazement and confounding of Gorman.
Connecting with the service elevator by a masked
opening, it ran along the hall of each apartment,
with entrances concealed in wall panels. It en-
abled Granders to wander at will through the
apartments at night, leaving mysterious notes to
terrify his tenants, prying into the secrets hidden
in their wall safes, listening when he chose to
their most private conversations, examining the
contents of their pockets. As he had planned
, from the beginning, he gained in this way much
information that he was able to utilize to his
ﬁnancial proﬁt without arousing suspicion. He
had discovered, Mrs. Moore said, secret stock
market movements one of his tenants was
planning and had made a small fortune out of the
advance information. Several injudicious women
he had successfully blackmailed, turning over to
agents who never came near the Granddeck the
secrets he learned from letters he opened and
telephone conversations he had listened to.
In the case of Rufus Gaston, he had plotted to


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 287
steal the Gaston pearls, Mrs. Moore explained,
ﬁrst terrifying the old couple into leaving the
apartment, the whispers that had been heard
coming of course from the secret passageway.
“ But I can’t understand,” I said, “ why, after
he had once got hold of the pearls in Mr. Gaston’s
absence, he should have restored them to their
hiding-place.”
“ He had a duplicate made of phony pearls,”
explained Mrs. Moore. “ It was part of his plan
not to have any of the tenants discover the thefts
for a long time after they occurred.”
“ If he was so cautious,” said the District At-
torney, “I am puzzled as to Why he killed Miss
Lutan and Mr. Gaston. He must have realized
that both murders would be thoroughly investi-
gated.”
“Both were accidents, so to speak,” the girl
explained. “ Each of them surprised him in
their apartment, and he had to kill them to make
his getaway. I suppose he had been roaming
around so much he had gotten careless.”
“How about the revolver?” asked Gorman.
“ How did he come to plant it in Nelson’s
room?”


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 289
ing that this brave young woman who had
solved the mystery for them, certainly deserved
some reward, and I think we all realized that the
only reward life ever could hold for her was the
freedom of her husband.
Presently they went and left us alone, Gorman,
my mother, Barbara, and I.
“There are still two things I cannot under-
stand,” I said, as we sat talking it over. “ The
ﬁrst .is "—and I turned to Barbara—“ what was
your sister doing in this apartment on the night
of the ﬁrst murder? When I came up from the
' Lutan apartment, I caught her just coming out
of my door. I could not help wondering if they
had made her plant the revolver.”
Barbara started up, blushing.
“ Oh, no,” she cried, “ it was nothing like that.
You remember a few moments before you and I
had been in your room, looking at the secret
passageway. Claire just then had come into my
room looking for me. She was puzzled by my
absence, and the only solution that came to her
was that I must be in your rooms. Alarmed at
what she considered my imprudence, she had
slipped out into the hall, and seeing your door


THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS 291
testifying, I had an inspiration. I heard her say
that she loved her husband, and that she did not
care who knew it—and—and—and—all at once I
realized that love was the strongest inﬂuence in
the world, so I had Mr. McGregor ask for an
H

adjournment, and then
She stopped in confusion, the rosy blushes
once more mantling her cheeks.
“ Go on,” I insisted.
“ I can’t tell it,” she cried.
“ You must tell,” I urged. “ I have a right to
know it. What did you do?”
“ I managed to get to see her alone.”
Again she hesitated.
“ What did you say to her? ” I demanded.
“I just told her,” she faltered, lowering her
eyes as she spoke, “ that—that I loved you just
as much as she loved her husband, and I begged
her for love’s sake not to help send you to the
chair, and she broke down and told everything.”
“ Oh, Barbara, my Barbara,” I cried, springing
up and clasping her in my arms. “ If only I had
,,

something to Offer you besides my love
“ I wouldn’t worry about that just now, Spal-
ding,” interrupted my mother’s voice. “They


By the author of "Truth Better"

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By SIDNEY McCALL
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