*---





BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?





*
**


The little butler was still trying to fight them off. “Let
me die, I tell you ! Let me die! Ain't it no proof
to you—that—that I’m 'ere to die?’’ (Page 86.)


BE HIND THE
BOLTED DOOR.?
BY
ARTHUR. E. MCFARLANE
ILLUSTRATED BY
HENRY RALEIGH
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1916


To Dunnie, who is always making people
happy; to Harrison, where at least one or two of
the murders in this story were committed; to
Benjamin, in his bathing suit; and to those other
worthy Jones Streeters and Greenwich Willagers,
who likewise did their part in making the above-
mentioned murders thoroughly enjoyable, this
book is dedicated with respect, appreciation, and
affectionate regards.
Greenwich House, January, 1916.





CHAPTER
I
II
III
IV
VII
VIII
IX
XI
CONTENTS
PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND A RIDE UP-
TOWN . • • • e ©
OF DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED, OF A
VOICE, OF KNOCKINGS, AND WHAT
WAS FOUND BY THE SWIMMING POOL
OF A MURDER NOTE, THREE SPECIAL
DEPUTIES, AND ZANCRAY's PoSTU-
LATE AGAIN . • • • o
OF THE EVIDENCE THAT MAY LIE IN
THE DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE—
AND A HANDFUL OF ASHES . e
AGAIN D. HoPE, AND OWLY WILLINGs;
SOME COMPARATIVELY ANCIENT HIS-
ToRY; AND A BEGINNING AT “390”
A HOUSEHOLD FILE, AND A PURSUIT AT
MIDNIGHT . • • • ©
JIMMY’s STORY, AND A FIRST “RE-
TURN’’ • • • - •
A NEW BEGINNING AND THE WRITING
ON MADDALINA’s WALL . • •
A FIRST VISIT TO CHRISTIE STREET .
MADDALINA AND “IL MALOCCHIO” .
AN EXPERIMENT UPON MADDALINA,
AND A “SCRITTO’’. • • •
PAGE
15
30
50
58
72
88
108
122
129
143
vii


viii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
A REVIEw, AND A VISIT FROM MC-
GLOYNE
THE CONVINCING OF INSPECTOR MC-
GLOYNE
OF AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR, AND AN
ELEVATOR SHAFT .
A FACE IN A LANDAULET
GLASBURY, THE LITTLE BROwN STUDY,
AND AN INTERLUDE
AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR, THE MATTER
OF A WILL, AND ANOTHER ‘‘RE-
TURN’’
THE SECOND MURDER
SEEN FROM AN ELEVATOR, AND THE
CONTENTS OF A WASTEPAPER BASKET
A MEETING IN GLASBURY's APART-
MENTS .
PAGE
157
167
182
196
206
216
226
239
252
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
FOUND BY THE SwiMMING-PooL, AND
MORE OF ZANCRAY
A S£ANCE IN THE CASA GRANDE .
GLASBURY'S STORY
THE WILL, AND THE STORY OF ONE OF
THE JEWEL THIEVES
THE DOCTOR'S STORY
THE END • • • •
265
278
292
311
321
337


ILLUSTRATIONS
The little butler was still trying to fight them
off. “Let me die, I tell you! Let me die!
Ain’t it no proof to you—that—that I’m
'ere to die?” (Page 86) • . Frontispiece
IFACING PAGE)
The whole weight of that unknown, silent, furi-
ous attacker fell upon him and heaved him
Outward . • • • - • . 192
“He lepped, an’ leppin’ he strook me as he
passed. I’d got to one knee, an” had one
arm to guard with” • • • . 232
“I met her first nearly a year ago at an Arts
and Letters dinner” o © • . 294





CHAPTER I
PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND A RIDE UP-Town
“WoRDERFUL, Holmes, wonderful! Sherlock,
you astonish me!”
The Judge was a big man. He spoke and
looked like Tom Reed. And he laughed like
him.
Laneham grinned the tight-lipped grin of
challenged battle, and worked the car through
into snow-pyramided Broadway.
“Take Zancray’s postulate, too,” he said;
“Zancray says that practically never does any
friend of the victim tell everything. Either for
his own good, or for the good name of the gen-
tleman murdered, the helpful friend will always
hold out something. Learn what those hold-
outs are, Zancray shows, and five times out of
six you will have the solution of your mystery.”
“All right! All right!” Again the Judge
haw-hawed hugely: “Bring on old Doc Zan-
cray, and we’ll give him a job.”
1.


2 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
In their professions both were big men.
Laneham, alert, trim, crisp, professionally Wan-
dycked, possessed among neuropaths a name
fast becoming international. The Judge,
smooth, dewlapped, benign, was Judge Fulton
Bishop, lately of the Appeals bench, at present
of the notable firm of Bishop, Potter, and
Bishop, and soon—with the morrow and the
New Year—to be the Greater City’s new Dis-
trict Attorney. They were both big men. But
being old friends and Americans, their manner
to each other was almost exactly that of two
sophomores “on the josh.” They were on their
way up to Laneham’s winter bungalow in West-
chester to see the year out fitly, playing Kelley
pool. And the Doctor had seized upon the occa-
sion as a chance to explain once more why the
“new medicine”—the “newest medicine”—
psychoanalysis, must in the scientific future
become the sole and logical medium for the
detection of crime.
With determination, and in the face of
Bishop’s joyous scoffing, he resolutely con-
tinued, too.
“Did you ever stop to ask yourself,” he


PSYCHOANALYSIS 3
inquired, “why people are sent to medicos of
my particular sort at all?”
“Often. Often.”
Laneham grinned anew.
“They’re sent because, while not crazy in any
ordinary sense—most of them are a good deal
too keen—they have morbid psychoses: from
certain troubles in their bodies their minds are
kinked. And when we’ve had 'em under obser-
vation for a while, they begin to hang out signs
which tell us all about it. Well, your criminal—
at any rate at the moment of his crime—is
simply a Johnny with a kink. For the com-
petent psychoanalyst he leaves his signs be-
hind him. And any of us worth his salt ought
to be able to take those signs and reconstruct
him.”
“As to how?”
“Why, tell you police and lawyer bats, for
example, how he’ll most likely try to make his
getaway, and whether he’s going to come back
again; how he’ll try to cover up, and what sort
of evidence he’s going to destroy. That alone,
now: with us, the sort of evidence destroyed
—‘the evidence in the destruction of evidence’


4 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
—is one of the things that begin to differentiate
morbid kinks at once.”
“Huh !” said the Judge, “as a good criminal
lawyer, destroying evidence is my strong suit.”
‘‘Take the detective-bureau examination,”
Laneham persevered. “In place of a bullying,
elephant-footed third degree, some time you
may come to realise the possibilities of the
‘confrontation’—the French are using it al-
ready—of auto-suggestion, of hypnosis, or
even of a well-controlled trance and medium.”
Bishop raised his legal hands and waved as
if for aid.
“Or go back again to the arrest. When the
regulation, present-order detective makes it,
in general he knows from the prisoner’s ac-
tions in the first half minute whether he is in-
nocent or guilty. But could he offer a jury any
valid reasons for his belief? I suppose I could
offer you half a dozen, and every one of them
cleanly and basically scientific.”
“Laney,’’—and the Judge gave in—“there’s
only one thing for it. The first dark, bloody
mystery of crime that comes my way—that is,
providing it’s sufficiently dark and bloody—”


6 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
Laneham missed a five-ton truck by half an
inch. And his face showed that it was a thing
he liked to do.
“You say you’ve got to stop and see Mrs.
Fisher,” he said. “Why that?”
“Heaven knows. I didn’t get her note till
three. And when I’phoned her apartment, no
one seemed to be there to answer. But it’ll
only be some trifle; I’ve always had her private
business. The Casa Grande is right on our way
and I won’t let her keep me for more'n a jiff.”
“It’s all right. It’s all right. And I’ll have
to run in to 390 to make sure I’m clear myself.”
“If it hadn’t been Miss Daphne Hope's aft-
ernoon off,” said the Judge, again, still half
apologising, “I’d have had her go up and take
care of her.”
“Ah, Miss D. Hope!”
And thereupon and with obvious pleasure
they began to talk of her.
“Has she enough law yet for suffrage pur-
poses?” Laneham asked.
“Enough? She’s running the whole office
now. We just stick around to make things
legal.”


PSYCHOANALYSIS 7
“And has she ever told you exactly why she
left Atlanta?”
“Old man a malefactor of great wealth or
something, isn’t he?”
“He’s merely the boss employer of child
labour in those parts. And when the said D.
Hope awakened to that, she gave him his ulti-
matum, disinherited herself between lunch and
dinner, and came on here to live on a dollar a
day at the Hudson Street Settlement. Spirit
of the century, my son, spirit of the century!”
Then they found themselves stalled behind
some five hundred other cars by the snow-
cleaners’ wagons and the new subway work at
Fourteenth street. And for a time they could
not even talk of Miss D. Hope.
What they didn’t know was that less than an
hour before, the young woman herself had been
seeing a young man into the old Subway station
at Fourteenth street. And if she herself was
not going up to Mrs. Fisher’s and the Casa
Grande, the young man was.
He was thin and dark, with the long under
jaw of war and humour. And he wore a pair
of large, round, black-rimmed glasses which,


8 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
from his boys’ club in that Hudson Street Set-
tlement, had promptly won him the name of
“Owly.” His other name was Willings, Wal-
ter Willings.
As for Miss D., or Daphne Hope—it was as
“D. Hope” that she always signed herself—
she was, first of all, exceedingly good to look
at; but all details of that sort can be left till
later. She was, secondly, and obviously, of
the new or muscular type of femininity. To
be born to tennis and golf and motoring and .
surf-bathing and mountain-climbing may, as
is well known, damage you fearfully in some
ways. But it likewise leaves you with a phy-
sique which cannot be seriously injured, even
by a year of Hudson street. Thirdly, she was,
at the present moment, very much in earnest.
It was clear that Mr. Owly Willings had some
more than ordinary mission with Mrs. Fisher.
And with anxiety D. Hope was giving him her
final counsel.
“And don’t, above all things,” she entreated,
“feel that you’re asking too much.”
“No danger. I intend to be very firm and
direct with her.”


PSYCHOANALYSIS 9
“Firm and direct!” And, knowing Mr.
Willings, her tone immediately became that of
suspicion.
“Precisely. Something like this: ‘Madam,”
I hiss”—he began to throw it into melodrama,
and a young patrolman on the corner turned
and gaped—‘‘‘Madam, we must have one hun-
dred thousand dollars and at once!” “What,
one hundred thousand dollars! But, my Gawd,
if I cannot?” “If you cannot? Then,
death-th-th’—business of choking and death
rattle—‘and your justly famous azur-r-re
pear-r-rls!’”
“Mr. Willings!” She looked at him half
like a baffled big sister, half with the expression
of the woman who sees again in a man the thing
that made her like him first. Then she noticed
the young patrolman. And giggling a lit-
tle, she could only drop her voice and whis-
per:
“It’d just serve you right if you suddenly
got nervous aphasia, or whatever it is, and
found yourself actually saying something like
that up there.” -
“Oh, I’m nervous enough now, inside.”


10 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
And at that she promptly became serious
and intense again.
“Well, then, you needn’t be. I know from
the way she’s spoken a dozen times that she’s
going to do it. All she’ll ask is, Are we sure
we’re asking for enough?”
“And you’re making me go alone to give
me all the glory of it.”
“I’m not. Believe me, I’m not.”
But already he had stayed too long. And
with smiling one more good-bye, he went on
down the Subway stairs.
And, very briefly, the meaning of the forego-
ing was this:
For more than a year that same very wealthy
Mrs. Fisher on whom Judge Bishop was to
call had been one of Hudson Street Settlement’s
most generous supporters. She had been
brought to it by D. Hope. Under her guidance
and that of Mr. Owly Willings, she had been
learning what it really needed most, which was
money. From the beginning she had been pay-
ing a regular quarterly subscription of $500.
And now, with these last weeks of the year, it
was increasingly evident that she was going


PSYCHOANALYSIS 11
to do much more than that. Willings had
spoken in his burlesque of $100,000. But that
was the actual amount, as Mrs. Hansi Fisher
knew, that that Hudson Street Settlement need-
ed for a really adequate endowment. And,
within the next hour, there was every prob-
ability that he would have her check for
it.
Meanwhile Dr. Henry Laneham and Judge
Fulton Bishop had entered the triple traffic
lines of the rippling, gonging avenue. And
they, too, were still talking of Mrs. Fisher.
“But I hadn’t any idea,” said the Judge,
“that she’d ever been one of your patients.”
“And she never has. More than that, it’s
years since I’ve seen her. Changed a good deal
lately, I believe?”
“Changed! No one more so. But it’s merely
your woman evolution in another phase, and
this time a woman who at last has found her-
Self.”
He waggled return salutations to some one
in a taxi.
“A few years ago it was jewelry.”
“Oh, yes, the pearls, and such like outbreaks.


12 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
And she’s incorrigibly romantic still. You
never know where it’ll take her next. But now,
thanks largely to Miss Daphne Hope, she’s
spending the large amounts on ‘the cause,”
and factory improvements and tuberculosis
homes and fresh air funds.”
“Hasn’t arrived at prison reform yet?”
asked the Doctor mischievously.
“Prison reform? Son, that’s right where
she lives. Both her servants, as I understand
it, are Prison Gate. She has only the two just
now—the Casa Grande house service takes
care of almost everything. But, English man,
and Italian maid, I believe they’ve both done
time.”
“Good enough,” said the Doctor. “Sounds
like the real thing.”
“It is. And, by the way, you’ll have to come
in with me, if it’s only to meet Jimmy.”
“Jimmy?”
“The man. A sort of general-utility butler,
a little Cockney. He’s not only undersized, but
he wears a moustache, and he calls me “Judge,
your lordship.’”
“Ha!”


PSYCHOANALYSIS 13
“Then, too, there’s the new swimming pool.
You’ll have to see that.”
“No,” said Laneham, “I won’t go in even to
see the new swimming pool. My only call is
here.” They had swung across town, turned
into West Seventy-second street, and stopped
at 390, the Doctor’s city house.
He let himself out. “There’s always the
chance,” he explained again, “of something
having been sent on at the last moment from
the office.”
And, evidently, something had been.
The Judge could see that, even from the car.
For Miss Hunt, Laneham’s secretary, had come
out to meet him with her call book.
And when he turned back, it was with an ex-
pression of the oddest. He waited, too, for the
Judge to speak.
“Well, Laney?” asked Bishop, wonderingly.
“Well?”
“Bish,” said the Doctor, “it’s a call, all
right. But I’d give you one million guesses,
and then feel safe.”
“Not—not Mrs. Fisher?”
“No One else!”


14 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“No?—And, Lord, it was a hurry, too,
wasn’t it?”
“Oh, that—you mustn't let that trouble you.
They’re all hurries, over the 'phone.”
He jumped in again.
“Well, at any rate,” said the Judge, still
puffing, “you’re going to see her now, after all.
There were no particulars?”
“No. But Miss Hunt didn’t get the call di-
rect. It was sent up from my Thirty-fourth
street office.”
He sent the car swiftly into the snowy Drive.
“What’s Fisher himself doing now?” he
asked abruptly. “He’s quit practising, I un-
derstand.”
“Long ago. And ‘managing the estate’ I
believe he calls his present work. But Lord,
with that patent-medicine face of his!”
“Seen much of him lately?”
“He’s been down in our offices all day. And
he’s taking Potter back with him to dinner.”
In the falling dusk they sped on up to the big
Riverside block containing the towering Tudor-
Gothic façades of the Casa Grande, and the
Casa Reale, its annex.


CHAPTER II
OF DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED, OF A volcE, OF
KNOCKINGS, AND WHAT WAS FOUND BY THE
SWIMMING POOL
THE Fishers had seventeen rooms on the ninth
floor, or more accurately, on the ninth and
tenth; for their apartment was “duplex.” And
stepping from the softly clashing elevator, the
Doctor followed Bishop down fifty yards of the
padded, French-grey corridor which led to the
right.
They stopped at the Fisher door and rang.
And they heard some one pass the door on the
inside. Yet minute followed minute, and their
ring remained unanswered.
It was Laneham who pressed the button a
second time.
“Considering that after all,” he said, “it was
a hurry call.”
Again, on the inside, some one seemed to ap-
15


16 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
proach, and again to turn back or to go on
again.
“Really!” This time Bishop rang again.
And this time, too, the door was opened.
It was opened by the admired “Jimmy,” a
pale, nervous-looking little Britisher. And
even in the half darkness of that inner hall the
reason for his delay seemed plain enough. He
had been changing into his street clothes; and,
at the last moment, he had apparently been
trying to choke himself into his tie. It was
still awry. And he was still swallowing whitely
and spasmodically.
“I beg y” pardon, Judge your lordship,” he
gasped. “But I thought as the maid It’s
rightly ’er afternoon on the door 99
“All right, Jimmy, all right. So long as
we’ve scared you a-plenty. And how’s the good
lady?”
“I’ll see, sir. If you’ll just go in, I’ll see.”
And taking their cards, he went hastily on up
to the mezzanine, or floor above.
“I should say there’s nothing very much to
be anxious about,” the Doctor said. And they
turned to the windows.


DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED 17
They heard themselves announced. Jimmy
came down the stairs again—as they thought,
to switch on the lights. For the dusk was
deeper now. Outside another snow squall,
black as a thunder cloud, was blowing up. And
the big, beamed, Jacobean living-room was fast
becoming like night itself. But the man went
on past their door, and back to the service
rooms beyond.
“After candles, no doubt,” Bishop explained.
“Mrs. Fisher’s always had a pretty taste in
things like that.”
And they waited again.
But two, three, five minutes passed, and no
candles came. Nor did Jimmy return. Nor did
any maid come down to bring a message from
Mrs. Fisher. In a darkness every moment
growing deeper, they still waited.
“Well, Jove,” said Laneham, “if this is a
sample of your prison-gate service—”
The Judge took it a bit sheepishly. “I sup-
pose I can find the switch myself,” he said.
But he could not. And finally the Doctor rose
again, and walked with a certain sharpness back
to the windows.


18 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“It would seem, too, from the silence,”
he said, “that every one has gone to
sl—”
And then his voice changed wholly. “Well,
by the Lord! Bishy, will you look here?”
He was pointing out of the window and down-
ward. On the other side of the street a man,
carrying an overcoat and suit case, was half
running towards the boulevard. And even at
that distance and through the snow, the figure
was unmistakable. It was that of their little
Cockney butler!
There is this in the sinister: It speaks at
once. But for a moment the Judge tried weakly
and instinctively to evade the truth.
“Well,” he said, “he told us it was his day
Off.”
Laneham looked at him. “With or without
the Silver?”
“Nonsense, man, nonsense. But I’ll go up
myself and try to locate the lady.”
First, though, he again attempted, and Lane-
ham with him, to locate the switches. But the
Fisher wiring was concealed wiring, and it still
kept its secret.


DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED 19
“Bother it!” And, half groping, the Judge
mounted the stairs in the darkness.
“Mrs. Fisher!” he called. “Mrs. Fisher!”
There was no answer. And, continuing to
grope, he laid his hand upon the nearest door.
Even as he touched it, from the inside it was
quietly and smoothly locked.
That was all. There was no more than that.
But despite himself Bishop let his hand drop,
and he felt himself grow suddenly cold.
“Mrs. Fisher!” he called again. “Mrs.
Fisher! It’s I—Judge Bishop.”
Again, in a silence now death-like, he went
unanswered.
But, a few steps further on, he could make
out a second door.
He stumbled on to it, reached it, lifted his
hand—and then its lock clicked fast.
“Doctor l’’ He could not now control his
voice. “Doctor! Will you come up here? Or
no, first find a 'phone, and get the house!”
“I’m just doing it.” Laneham was some-
where below. “Meanwhile,” he called up,
“I’ve been doing some exploring myself in the
servants’ hall, and I can tell you that both your


20 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
English Jimmy and your Italian maid have
cleared out bag and baggage!”
But the Judge scarcely heard him. In the
creeping darkness at the end of that little up-
per hall, his eyes had made out still a third
door. And, his skin rising in goose flesh, he
had stretched his hand to it.
He stretched his hand to it. And, a third
time, there came that same soft and horrid
click. The third and last door was locked!
“Mrs. Fisher!” Then in a sheer nervous
reaction he threw himself violently against it.
“Mrs. Fisher! We’re right here,” he cried.
“We’re right here, and we’ll be inside in a
moment!”
He was no longer muscular, but he was a big
and heavy man. And he put all his heaving
weight behind his drive. But the door was of
solid, bronze-set oak. And his first attempt
told him that in that way he could do nothing.
By then, too, somewhere below, Laneham had
found a telephone, and could be heard speak-
ing at it.
“Yes . . . Yes . . . The Fisher apartment
. . . On the ninth, I tell you. . . . Are you


DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED 21
deaf or foolish? And get an officer—a police-
man!”
Meanwhile, again, and yet again, cold sweat
beading him, the Judge hurled himself against
that furthest door. “Whoever you are,” he
shouted, “I warn you now that at least you
can’t get out! Doctor,” he called pantingly
over his shoulder, “will you watch the stairs?
It’s his only way. Lord, if we only had a
little light!”
But help was coming now. At the end of
the long outside corridor, elevators were stop-
ping. And to the Doctor’s voice there were
adding themselves half a dozen more.
Yet among them there rose the voice of a
woman, and a woman half hysterical.
‘‘I knew it! I knew it!” she iterated. “And
how I could ever be such a fool! But I told my-
self it might be just some sort of argument, as
you might say, with a servant, and you know
how it is if you go shoving into a thing like
that l’’
“Laneham!—Laneham!”—It came from the
Judge in a falsetto—“Will you come up here—
at Once?”


22 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
And then at last the Doctor seemed to get
himself away.
“It’s all right, old man,” he answered.
“We’ll be with you now, in a shake. Some of
you boys find the light switches. Two of you—
you two-stay down here at the foot of the
stairs. And the rest of you—”
“Boss,” a hall-man was speaking, “we
cain’t find the switches! Mrs. Fisher, suh,
the way she had these here lights con-
nected—”
And then the hysterical woman began again:
“I couldn’t hear what she was saying. But
the other person, whoever it was—and I never
heard any voice like that before—just kept say-
ing, “See! See! See!’ to raise your hair, and
after that, ‘No, no, no!’ so fast like they was
dying of it!”
“Doctor,” cried Bishop again, “for God’s
sake! Never mind the lights. Never mind
anything else. But get those boys up here and
help me force a door!”
“We’re comin', boss, we’ll be right there!”
And soon, tripping and jostling, half a dozen
West Indian hall-men and elevator boys were


DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED 23
putting themselves against all the doors at
OnGe.
They moved them no more than had the
Judge himself.
“I guess, boss,” one of them gasped, “we
sure got to have some tools for it. It’s a job
for the Sup’intendent, or the Engineer.”
“Get them, then, get them!”
And, in his turn, the Doctor began to call.
“Mrs. Fisher! Mrs. Fisher!”
But no longer now did they hope to be an-
Swered.
Outside, another elevator was stopping.
And this time a new voice made itself heard,
panting and troubled:
“Why, only an hour ago. . . . And I’ve just
found that an envelope—some money she’d left
for me—for our Settlement—has been tam-
pered with. But I’d—made up my mind I’d
come back, anyway. Things were queer then, -
only I wouldn’t let myself believe it. I never
saw her. And just when I was leaving I heard
some crazy, unaccountable sort of knocking—as
if some one, up there in her room—”
“How long? How long? How long?” In


24 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
his nervousness the Judge went to the head
of the stairs. “And will you, whoever you may
be down there, will you please be quiet, for a
moment? . . . Laneham—all of you—listen.
Can you hear anything in there now?”
All alike, they fell unbreathingly to silence.
And then, halting them where they stood, from
far within, and as if given by the muffled,
bony hand of death itself, that “crazy,
unaccountable knocking” could be heard
again. . . .
There could be no doubt of it. And, follow-
ing it, came a sound of some one, or something,
that moved stealthily, and of a door that
opened.
“Good Lor—”
“Hush! Please!” For from nearer, that
hand in cerements had begun to knock a second
time.
Even while they listened, too, a third time,
and still nearer it sounded. And then—hol-
lowly, sighingly, moaningly,—one would have
said a soul being led already to everlasting tor-
ture, there breathed out to them, “Oh, God!
Oh, my God, my God!”


DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED 25
At the foot of the stairs the woman in hys-
terics uttered shriek on shriek.
“Down with those doors!” cried Bishop;
“down with them, some way!” -
But as, qualmy and quivering, once more he
hurled his flaccid bulk against the nearest, a
Suddenly wafted reek of oil and engine grease
came up the little stairs to them. And,—“All
right, Cap,” called some one, thickly; “Comin'!
Comin’?”
It was the Casa Grande engineer.
“Here’s an ‘E. P. man, too,” he puffed,
“an Electric Protection officer. They’ve just
had a wire alarm—from the inside. Some one’s
been tryin’ to crack the Fisher jew’lry box,
that’s all.”
The “E. P.” man—he looked like a bicycle
patrolman—was lighting the way with a pocket
flash.
“But have you—have you a weapon with
you?” Bishop asked him.
For answer he turned the flash upon his
other hand, and showed his gun.
“Good. And we’re all of us backing you—
all of us backing you!”


26 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
The man of oil and grease had brought his
ten-pound sledge with him. “Now, just hold
your glim steady, Cap,” he said, “on that there
lock.”
He swung. And with a snapping crash of
bolt and casing, the door fell open.
“Some of youse coons stay outside,” said
the engineer.
And they were very willing to.
Meanwhile, following the miniature wheeling
searchlight, the others found themselves look-
ing here and there in Mrs. Fisher’s morning
TOOrn.
But, clearly, it was empty and deserted.
“All right, Bill,” said the “E. P.” man.
“Come on to the next.”
The next room was a little library.
“Nobody here.”
From the library there opened—the last of
the suite in that direction—a tiny panelled
writing-room.
“Nothin’ doin’ here, neither. Nor no place
for him to hide l’’
They took hold of themselves again, and
turned back to the rooms on the right.


DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED 27
“You boys stay on the door now. An’,
Colonel, ready with your little joker!”
The first room on the right was the bed-
room, the second was Mrs. Fisher’s dressing-
room. And both alike were ordered and un-
disturbed, sweet and delicate and fragrant.
The third, and in that direction the last, was
t " I t
Roosa #E
Library ROOM BED ROOM
ftft.p-act */
N.
coRRiDoR
"I stairs to
corridor
the big “two-floor” room which contained the
swimming pool. Its door was closed. -
“All right, bo’s, he’s in there. By G—
he's got to be l’’
“Ain’t no other way out?”
“Only to the hall. An’ it’s covered now,
twice over.’’
“Then come along.”
The “E. P.” patrolman opened the door just
wide enough to admit his weapon.


25-> - Come on Of
-- ~5-ou lined",
- > Here was
== once, to
H* <> door. d he
+H=- -> bove the pool :
inder of th
***** ing-hun
== *:: ter bell,
*: quiet Wa er
+E- ite tile Of
~">T . +a_Vy shado
*::: pool, the
*::. above the flo
+ = *To the *ight, the
<>L-C*W Was *eened
** T. “E. P.
*::: started arou
TBut he 8.
1 -m-e 'pped.
“It’s
ge:
3 *
*HIND T
*nswe
O, there
it
at, closed,
HE BOLTED D00)
now, friend. Fo
* and he pushed
* Switch but
rew it On
*lf-about Which t]
WaS merely a fram
"noon-like
down thr
Out every blue


DOORS THAT WERE LOCKED 29
And more of that terrible crimson led them on
and around those screening plants.
On a low rattan sun couch in the alcove lay
the body of Mrs. Fisher, clothed and girdled
in her bath robe. Her temple had been crushed
in by some round knobbed instrument. The
hole was almost an inch in width. Her throat
was blue-black, banded, and horribly tumid.
Upon the whiteness of her left arm, where her
sleeve had fallen back, were other markings,
only too clearly made by fingers. And she had
been dead, Laneham told them, for probably
two hours.
But that was only a part of it.
The door from that swimming pool to the
hall was locked. The key was on the inside.
Every door of the apartment was locked; every
window. And no detailed searching, taken up
again and again, from doors to windows, and
from windows to every closet and corner where
a man might hide, revealed either murderer or
madman, or any way in which he could have
made his escape.


CHAPTER III
OF A MURDER NOTE, THREE SPECIAL DEPUTIES,
AND ZANCRAY’s PoSTULATE AGAIN
“GooD! Sit down, now. And we’re going to
stay here for an hour if need be—till our nerves
are right again!”
It was the Doctor who was speaking. Tak-
ing the Judge with him, he had returned and
sought a haven for a time at least at his house
and office in Seventy-second street. But all
the horror of the thing was still upon them
both.
“And, Bishy,” Laneham continued, “you
ask if, after all, it mightn’t in some way have
been an accident? Then, before we go further,
I’ll have to show you this.”
He took something from his wallet.
“I hadn’t intended to bring it out till later.
But I guess you’ll have to get it here. I picked
it up behind the desk in Mrs. Fisher’s little
writing-room.”
30


A MURDER NOTE 31
It was a three-inch square of greyish bond,
such as is often made up into memorandum
pads. And it bore a memorandum now. For
beneath a death's-head in red ink, drawn like
a school-boy’s caricature,—and somehow the
more horrible for that,-somebody had writ-
ten, with the same pen apparently, the follow-
ing:
We have now reached the point where it must be
either murder or suicide.
And beneath that, in black ink and in another
hand:
Couldn’t it be made to look like an accident?
“Do you know the writing below?” the Doc-
tor asked.
“Laney!” Bishop was a strong man and in
his eventful life he had experienced much. But
at that moment he was only the murdered
woman’s family lawyer and confidant. “La-
ney,” he said, weakly, “it’s—it’s Mrs. Fisher’s
OWn!’”
“I thought so. But you don’t know the first
writing?”


32 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“No.” The Judge’s fat round face looked
sick and grey. “But it’s murder—murder,
even if she believed she was consenting. And
the cruel devil seems to have written without
a tremor!”
“Well, there’s this: the writing at least is
recognisable enough.”
It was. The script in red ink at the top had
the fine, Elzevir-type distinction seen in old
manuscripts, and, sometimes, in the label-writ-
ing of old druggists.
Bishop had let himself shakenly down into
a chair.
“Old man,” he said, “is there any part of
this that we’ll ever be able to understand?
Even my note from her—why should she have
sent for me on this day of all others? And
have you learned yet who sent the hurry call
that took you to her apartment?”
“No. It went first to my Thirty-fourth street
office, you remember. And it’s closed now for
the night.”
“And the woman from across the court in
hysterics—who heard the “argument,’ and
some one crying ‘See, see!’ and ‘No, no, no!’”


A MURDER NOTE 33
“I had her show me where her windows are.
She couldn’t have heard anything within ten
rooms of the swimming-pool. It’s the Fisher
servants’ quarters that look on hers.”
“And that alarm to the Electric Protection
people from the jewel safe?”
“They’re blocked, too, absolutely. So far,
they haven’t even been able to locate the safe!
The thing is worked into the wall, and probably
covered by the built-in furniture somewhere.
They always hide them now. And until the E.
P. diagram boss gets back from Balti-
more—”
“I know, I know. But, Lord, Lord, at bot-
tom, what has all that to do with it? Wall
safes and pearls, and a cheap, every-day at-
tempt at robbery! All that is outside—utterly
beside the mark!”
Once more Bishop got to his feet.
“I—I don’t know what that knocking—that
knocking alone—seemed to say to you. But it
took me straight back to stories my nurse
used to tell me of people who’d sold their
souls, and then, at the dreadfully appointed
hour—”


34 BEEIIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“Yes, yes! That is the very feeling it put in
me.’’
“And then, the voice! If that was not the
voice of the lost man’s spirit But—lost
man’s? After that, Doctor, after that?” And
he pointed to where, before him on the table,
there still lay that little memorandum of
murder. “Shall I not rather say lost wo-
man’s?”
“Easy, now, Bishy. Easy! You know, in a
few minutes we’ll have to be going back again.
Tell me about Fisher. It was you who had to
meet him, wasn’t it?”
“Yes—and that, too.” He tried to smoke
again. “Laney, you know they never hit it off
—no woman could with a man like him. But,
at times like this, I think it’s sometimes hard-
est on the man when he hasn’t—when he hasn’t
played the game.”
“No doubt of it.”
“I’ve always detested him, and said so.
Even when he comes to the office on business,
I make Potter take him. And he’d been at the
office all to-day—since morning. I heard him
'phoning her at noon. Daphne Hope was speak-


A MURDER NOTE 35
ing to her, too. And he tried to reach her again
when I did, about three. It seems he’d been
getting himself in bad somehow only yesterday.
. . . She’d threatened to leave him. . . . And
he kept telling me about it, over and over again
to-night. I couldn’t get away from it. . . .
But they’d made it up, he says. That’s how
he came to be bringing Potter home for dinner.
And afterward they were all going to ‘Car-
Imen”!”
“Could he tell you anything that might of-
fer any light?”
“He wouldn’t believe the half of what we had
to tell him—any more than the police would.
But would any one? Think of how it sounds.
The doors bolted. Some one—or something—
still there, and yet not there—and the poor
woman dead perhaps for hours!”
He turned and smiled at Laneham, unhappily.
“Do you remember, too, what our talk was
about, on the way uptown to-day? Crimes and
mysteries! You were asking for one.”
“No!—no, thank you!” The Doctor shud-
dered and drank again. “I prefer something
more human and less—”


36 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
The telephone was ringing. He crossed to
the desk and answered it.
“Yes. Yes, speaking. . . . Why, D. Hope!
. . . Oh, it’s the Judge you want? No? Both
of us? Then I’ll put him on at the other
receiver.”
He motioned to Bishop that there was a sec-
ond instrument behind his chair.
“I’m at the Casa Grande,”—the girl’s strong
young voice came to them, poignantly and ach-
ingly,—“and I was one of Mrs. Fisher’s
friends, you know.”
“Yes—yes.”
“But it isn’t only that. They—the police—
the head detective—are holding Mr. Willings.”
“Mr. Willings?”
“He’s in our Settlement. And he called here
to see Mrs. Fisher just before you, this after-
noon. He came back while you were here. You
must have seen him—the young man with the
big glasses?”
“Oh—oh, yes. Now we know. But the po-
lice holding him? What for?”
“Why, just because he was here, and because
no one saw him leaving again—and some money


A MURDER NOTE 37
has been taken. And there’s something else,
too—something absurd—that they can twist
into looking a great deal worse!”
“We’ll be up there immediately.”
“Well!” said Laneham, thoroughly puzzled.
“But we’d have been going back very soon in
any case.”
And in a few moments they were in their
great coats.
Once more it was storming—a wild drive of
sleet and snow. But, with an officer, D. Hope
was waiting for them, coat open and wide of
eye, at the crowded curb.
“Come in—this way.” And she hurried
them to an elevator. When they pushed out
again, she led them straight down the corri-
dor, through more reporters and patrolmen and
plain-clothes men, to the big Fisher reception-
TOOIn.
Police officers half filled it. At a table in
the centre sat Inspector McGloyne, Chief of the
iDetective Bureau. Boyce, the Commissioner,
was present too. But, plainly,–for the time,
at any rate,—he was leaving full authority to


38 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
the Inspector, the Judge’s “Hell-Roaring
Jake.”
And because Bishop was to be the new Dis-
trict Attorney, the man lifted his big blue jowl
in a half-greeting as they entered.
“Glad t” see you, Judge, glad t” see you.”
Then he turned back, jaw out, to young Wil-
lings, who stood, white and very quiet, in front
of him.
D. Hope had taken her stand again at Wil-
lings’ right. Her hand seemed feeling out for
his.
“An’ now, young people, now maybe we can
start again.”
McGloyne’s hand was big and puffy and red-
haired and toad-freckled. He kept lifting it
from the table and, in a sort of punctuation,
dropping it again. “We won’t say anything
about this, Mr. Willings,”—he picked up a
large blue bank envelope. “By your own say-
so, Mrs. Fisher had likely put $500 of
nice new money in it for your Settlement house.
An’ yet, when you look into it the money is
gone and there’s only this.” He spilled
out its contents, a dozen sheets of bill-sized,


A MURDER NOTE 39
blank grey paper, upon the table. “An’ we
won’t say any more about just when an” how
you left this apartment an’ apartment-house
when you were through. No more, at present,
about that. I’ll just ask you and the young
lady to repeat your pretty little good-bye talk
at the corner of Fourteenth street. All just
jokin’, of course—just pure jokin’.”
“Any decent person would know that it
WaS l’’
That from D. Hope; and she flamed it.
“Please!” Willings tried to stop her. “You
can see what a rotter he is.”
“Oh, sure! Sure!” And suddenly Hell-
Roaring Jake began to live up to his name.
“Oh, sure you can! An’ sure you were just
jokin’! That’s why you two smooth little silk-
stockin’s never bothered mentionin’ it your-
selves. An’ now, Meehan,”—he swivelled
about to a young patrolman standing at his
left,-“will you just repeat said talk for us
again?”
“Why,” began that young patrolman wor-
riedly, “I’ve got to say, Chief, that I took it for
kiddin’ myself. An I only brought it up—”


A MURDER NOTE 41
me have a moment with the young people
alone? Judge, and Dr. Laneham—”
He got no further. Cursing and crying out
inarticulately, some one was forcing his way
out of another group of police officers in the
Ireal".
It was Professor Fisher himself. And even
a first glance would have shown them that the
man was beside himself.
He had what Bishop had called a “patent-
medicine face”—the eyes too large and mag-
netic, the richly curling beard, the too ex-
otic good looks—of the face of the physician
printed with the typical yellow-journal rem-
edy.
But now, with his wife’s body lying in that
room beyond, his eyes were bloodshot and his
cheeks pastily colourless. More than ever, too,
did his German accent come out.
“I desire to ask,” he cried, shaking his hand
at Willings—“I desire to ask if, after all, you
are going to led him go? He was here. He
came—he came to demand money from my wife
for his Settlement. He was the last one to see
her alife— And you are going to led him


42 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
go! And the girl—bei Gott, the girl—is lid-
dle better!’”
“They’re dismissed on my recognisance,”
Bishop answered him. “It was unpardonable
ever to attach suspicion to them.”
“Unpardonable! Un pard on a ble!” he
foamed; “then I gif you notice right away now,
if you think all law and justice can be stopped
in the first hour 99
“Professor Fisher ” The Commissioner
tried to calm him, “if you will merely trust in
me—”
‘‘I will not! I will not!”
Boyce waited for no more.
“Judge, will you bring your friends this
way.”
He opened the door to the big dining-room.
And when they were alone at last, he turned
to Bishop again.
“I’ll have them both dismissed on your re-
cognisance—”
“Thank you.”
“But as for preventing publicit 99
“Oh, no escape now from that!”
“Or even from the implication of guilt—”


44 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
him, with a sort of horror: “Im-impossible!”
“Oh, you must! You will!”
It was D. Hope who was appealing now. And
she had all but thrown herself upon him. Yet
from the first one could see that it was not
of herself that she was thinking. “You’ve so
often told me, too, of what you believed that
you—that a little modern science—”
“My dear girl!” The Doctor still resisted,
and turned to Willings.
“You’ll have the good will of Judge Bishop,
you know, and the Commissioner—”
“Yes, Laney,” repeated the Judge; “but
they must have your help, first of all.” He
shook him by the shoulder: “Come, come, old
man, you might as well give in at once.”
And in that moment Laneham did give in. He
turned again, and his consent came in the form
of a question.
“Both you children live at that Hudson
Street Settlement of yours?”
‘‘Yes.”
“And, for a time at least, it’ll not be very
comfortable for you there?”
“Oh,” cried D. Hope, “it’ll be awful!”


A MURDER NOTE 45
“Very well. Then I engage to do what I
can if you two will do this for me—pick up your
traps and come up and stay and work along
with me.”
“Dr. Laneham!”
“Why not? Can you give me one good rea-
son? We’ll all be amateur detectives together,
and no two people are in a position to help me
more. As for the chaperonage, as long as Mrs.
Neilson is on her job, no possible chance to
cavil at that!”
He looked at the Judge again: “I’ll be tak-
ing away your confidential secretary, you
know.”
“I give you both my blessing.”
“Very well.” And then the Doctor ad-
dressed himself to Boyce. “I suppose if you
can take on one special deputy, you can take
on three—?”
“I can give you your papers within an
hour.’’
“DOne!” -
And, a moment later, the Commissioner had
gone back to McGloyne and left them alone.


46 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
It was Laneham’s first intention, too, to take
both young people down to his car, and send
them home at once. He was very soon to regret
that he had not.
It was the Judge who prevented him. Bishop
had continued to pat D. Hope’s shoulder re-
assuringly.
“When you see,” he told her, “what the Doc-
tor can really produce from his bag of
tricks—!”
“I hope so,” said Laneham; “I hope
there’ll be something, anyway.”
“Let’s see,” Bishop went on. “Some of
those basic principles you were laying down for
me this afternoon, what were they again?
That Zancray lad, now, what was his method
of getting at the truth?’”
“Zancray? Zancray’s postulate?” Lane-
ham could hardly put the question aside, and
he explained the allusion to the others. “Why,
Zancray is a French psychologist who’s been
making a study of crime and criminal investi-
gations. And he bases his work most largely
on a theory that in general no friend of—of
the victim ever tells everything. Either for


A MURDER NOTE 47
what they imagine are the victim’s best in-
terests, or for their own, they always hold out
something.”
At the moment he was looking at Willings;
and it was his expression that began first to
bring him to a halt. “They always hold out
something,” he repeated, “and if you could
only get all those hold-outs and fit them to-
gether—”
He did not really finish at all. For from
Willings’ face he had turned his eyes incredu-
lously to Miss Hope’s, to the Judge’s. And
upon all three—it was absurd, it was impossi-
ble, but it was there—upon the faces of all of
them there was the selfsame betrayal. In the
psychological laboratory he had heard it given
a name—“the Zancray look”! Next moment,
indeed, seeing one another, all three had real-
ised that it was there.
The Judge was the first to give the preposter-
ous situation a sputtering and indignant denial.
“Well, really, Laneham, really! When, for
years, I have been Mrs. Fisher’s personal at-
torney!—and when every professional man is
intrusted with certain confidences—certain se-


48 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
crets, if you like—if you can imagine for one
moment—”
“Bishy!”
But by then young Willings, as white as he
had been an hour before, was speaking:
“Dr. Laneham, if I give you my word of
honour that anything I may be “holding
Out’—”
The Doctor could only wave at him implor-
ingly to stop. And, for that matter, it was at
D. Hope that he was looking now. For if ever
nerves had plainly reached their breaking
point
“Doctor,” she began quiveringly, “when I
tell you that the incident in my mind—the thing
I’m holding out—was the merest trifle—”
“D. Hope,”—he made it an order—“you go
home. And, Willings, you go too ! I’m so
thoroughly ashamed of myself and Zancray and
his postulate! Just say we’ve decided to for-
get it—or to file it for future reference—or
anything you please to get it buried !”
Absurd and impossible! It was more than
that. And once more he had to assure them
all that, so far from doubting them, his only


A MURDER NOTE 49
feeling was one of anger against himself. Only
then did he realise that had the affair been that
of any of his patients, in no case could he have
told everything.
“Let me send you off in the car,” he said.
And, Bishop with him, he took the young people
down to the street.
“Everything comfy? And you're going to
forget, really? For that’s only fair to me, you
know. Then back to your Settlement with you,
and be up at Seventy-second street as early as
possible to-morrow for our real beginning!”


CHAPTER IV
OF THE EVIDENCE THAT MAY LIE IN THE DESTRUC-
TION OF EVIDENCE-AND A HANDFUL OF ASHES
“LANEHAM,” began the Judge again, “allow
me to say once more—” Again he stopped to
gulp his indignation.
“Please put it out of your mind,” asked the
Doctor. “Please be like the youngsters, and
forgive and forget it.”
“Oh, if you say so. But it seems to me, as a
beginning—”
“There are other beginnings we can make.”
And, at that moment Boyce, the Commis-
sioner, joined them again.
“Doctor,” he said, “wouldn’t you like to take
a preliminary look around at once?”
“Do,” said Bishop, “by all means.”
“I should like to, very much,” said Lane-
ham.
“Good. For the present it’d be just as well
to stay away from McGloyne.”
50


HANDFUL OF ASHES 51
“Of course.”
“And I’ve promised Professor Fisher—”
he pointed up the stair—“his private rooms are
up there, to the right, —that he’ll be left un-
troubled. But, otherwise, you can go anywhere
in the apartment.”
And in a few minutes Laneham and the
Judge were walking through it together.
Its general arrangement was one that, to any-
body familiar with the big, modern, two-story
apartment de luxe, revealed itself at once.
Above, to the right and left, were the suites
of the master and the mistress; below, their
common rooms. And in the wing on the court
were first the service rooms and then the liv-
ing quarters—the maid’s above, the butler’s
below—of the servants themselves. All was
perfectly simple. There were neither unlooked-
for doors, nor unsuspected passages. The
swimming pool alone was out of the common.
And the Doctor began by leading the way to it.
It was as they had seen it first. The coro-
ner’s physician gravely pointed out to Lane-
ham that death would have resulted from the
blow on the temple alone; and that though the


52 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
markings on the throat were, in a sense, almost
identical with those often caused by asphyxi-
ation or even electric shock, the finger marks
on the arm made it needless to go so far afield.
All of which had been seen and said before.
Nor was any new light given, Bishop told him-
self, by that great, moon-like electric hanging
above the pool. The Doctor moved about the
swimming pool for a few minutes longer. Then
they went on to the rooms beyond.
They could now see Mrs. Fisher’s little pri-
vate suite from end to end. And it, too, told
no more than it had told at first. It had shown
no slightest evidence of disturbance then, and
it showed none now. It was a small tragic
vision of lovely old rose and dull blues and
egg-shell white. And two “E. P.” men were
still searching for the hidden wall safe. By
the old French fireplace in the little library
some Central Office men were turning out the
drawers of a fine old Washington desk. “The
boss,” said one of them—he meant Professor
Fisher—“told us to make it thorough—no bars
up anywhere. An’ we are.”
Another had again opened the window of


HANDFUL OF ASHES 53
the tiny writing-room, on the theory, perhaps,
that even without a fire-escape or connecting
balcony, some one might have entered from the
apartment next door. But the snow on the
outer sill was a soft crust of sleet that had not
been broken in weeks. -
They descended the stairs again to the com-
mon rooms. And then they went on through to
the service quarters. Nowhere was there any-
thing out of the unusual in any form whatever.
There still remained the servants’ private
living rooms. Each of them had two. And if
both those servants had fled, their rooms at
least established this difference.
Maddalina, the Italian maid, must have had
her warning. The events, whatever they were,
of that day had not taken her by surprise;
the proof being that she had removed all her
belongings to the last old shoe. And to do
that, it was a fair inference, she must have
been “getting out” for the week before.
But in the rooms of Jimmy, the little Eng-
lish butler, on the contrary, everywhere lay
the indications of flight without warning. On
all sides was the litter of rejected possessions


54 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
left by a man who has had to pack frenziedly
and get away in a matter of minutes.
Here, too, more Central Office men were at
work, thumbing their way through the contents
of a disordered dresser.
“Have you found anything in the way of
torn paper, or the signs of anything having been
burnt?” asked Laneham.
They looked at him doubtfully. But the
Judge’s presence gave them sufficient authority
for answering, and one of them produced a
piece of stamped paper.
“It ain’t tore or burnt,” he said, “but it
gives us a look at the fist he writes.”
It was a duplicate deposit slip—the small
mutual receipt one has to make out when de-
positing without a pass-book. It was on the
West Side Bank for Savings. It showed that
forty dollars had been deposited on December
the second preceding, that Jimmy’s name in
full—as given there—was James H. Higham,
and that the “fist” he wrote was quite as
scrawling and characterless as might have been
expected. It bore no remotest resemblance to
the unknown writing of the murder note.


HANDFUL OF ASHES 55
“Nothing else?”
“Not a thing.”
In the corridor they again encountered
Boyce. And, though he let the Judge go on,
he stopped Laneham for a moment to speak
to him.
“Nothing so far, Doctor?”
“Nothing so far.”
And then they, in their turn, were inter-
rupted by some one coming down the stairs be-
side them. It was Professor Fisher. He passed
on, hat in hand, to the outer hall.
His leaving, too, seemed to give Boyce an
idea.
“I barred you out of those rooms up there
before,” he said, “but now that the Professor’s
no longer in them, and if it’ll only take a min-
ute—?”
“Oh, never mind. Never mind.”
“Better go. For our friend Jimmy would
above all have the run up there.”
So Laneham mounted to the master’s suite.
There were four rooms altogether. And he
was about to leave the second, a sort of loung-
ing and gun room, when his eyes were drawn


56 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
to the fireplace. There were ashes in it, a little
fluttering heap, seemingly the ashes from some
burnt magazine. But it was where it ought to
be; and, though he turned back to it, he did so
incuriously.
Incuriously at least until, kneeling he bent
down over it, looked more closely, and then put
his hand out.
From the way in which he withdrew it one
might have thought that he had been burnt.
And, two minutes later, he was with Boyce
again.
“Tell me, Mr. Commissioner,” he asked at
once, “have the E. P. people located the wall
safe yet?”
“No. But it’s only a sort of hidden pigeon-
hole. The Professor himself doesn’t know
where Mrs. Fisher had it placed.”
“And therefore you can’t even say yet that
the pearls were here at all?”
“Why, n-no. No.”
“And, that being so, can you have the news-
papers print just that, and nothing more:
“The pearls were supposed to have been kept in
some sort of hidden wall safe, but so far it


HANDFUL OF ASHES 57
has not been found.” Can you hold it at that
till further notice, too, even if everything
should be found in the next half hour?”
“Why, Doctor—!”
But Laneham took his acquiescence for
granted. And he hastened on to find the Judge.
“Well?” asked Bishop. “Well?”
“Bishy, I was speaking of something besides
Vancray this afternoon—the thing we chaps call
‘the evidence in the destruction of evidence.’”
“Yes, I remember!”
“The honest man makes no effort to cover
his tracks. But the criminal—or the homicidal
maniac—will go so far out of his way to cover
them that right there he may tell the begin-
ning of the story.” /
“Yes? Yes? But the application here?”
“Don’t ask me to tell you now. And in all
probability I’m wrong. But at any rate I have
the sense of having made my commencement.”
Yet even then the Doctor knew that he had
in his pocket, loose wrapped in a handker-
chief, his “evidence in the destruction of evi-
dence” in the shape of a few fragments of
brown and flimsy paper ash.


CHAPTER V
AGAIN D. HOPE, AND OWLY WILLINGs; SOME COM-
PARATIVELY ANCIENT HISTORY; AND A BEGINNING
AT “390”
IN Hudson Street Settlement House Miss
Daphne Hope was what is known as a part-
time worker. She lived at “The House.” But
during most of the day her work was in Judge
Bishop’s law office. It was her evenings that
she gave to the Settlement. And she had “ju-
nior cooking” and a dramatic club, and the
girls’ athletics. She could pitch a baseball, too,
almost as well as any man or boy on Hudson
street.
As for Mr. Owly Willings, he was a “full-
timer,” and he had boys’ athletics, and the
editing of The Hudson Street Whoop-her-up,
and the work of turning certain very bad gangs
into at least the beginnings of good clubs by
way of a basket of six-ounce gloves and a thor-
oughly professional ring in the basement. And
58


AGAIN D. HOPE 59
for these things he received his board and
lodging and about five hundred dollars a year.
Five hundred dollars a year means a check for
less than forty-two dollars a month. And when
Miss Daphne Hope came to Hudson street, and
Mr. Owly Willings learned that she was the
only daughter of a gentleman worth anywhere
from five to fifteen millions, in those checks for
less than forty-two dollars per mensem lay the
secret of an attitude on the young man’s part
which for long puzzled Miss D. Hope greatly.
In those first weeks, Mr. Willings kept about
as far away from her as it was, in politeness,
possible to keep. He displayed an aloofness
which at first, in her simplicity, she mistook
for something that had come from his college
and fraternity standing. Then, when she dis-
covered that he had long ago forgotten all about
his college and fraternity standing, and that in
Hudson street he was loved most of all for his
eternal boyishness, and an inexhaustible capac-
ity for inventing new forms of nonsense, Miss
Hope gave it up. Or rather, she went tight-
lippedly to her mirror, and tried to learn from
it just exactly what it was in her that made


60 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR 2
him dislike her so particularly. She thought
a great deal about it, too, at night.
And the thing that had brought them to-
gether was this: One evening about half-past
eleven she was returning alone to Hudson
street from a performance in the old Garrick,
when she found herself walking straight into
one of those gang fights—and knifings—for
which that part of the lower West Side has
long been famous. She didn’t know what she
was looking at, at first. All she saw was a
young rough suddenly burst his way out of a
surging, yelling crowd. And she thought he
was wearing a red neck-tie. But it wasn’t a
neck-tie. And two other young gentlemen were
after him. And others were behind them, yell-
ing at them to “make it a job,” and “get him
good!”
But before they could “get” him that young
rough ran into a store, a delicatessen store.
And then Miss D. Hope found herself think-
ing very rapidly—and acting almost more rap-
idly than she was thinking. In the first sec-
onds she told herself—like any carefully
brought up young lady—that she must get


AGAIN D. HOPE 61
away at once, that she mustn't even dream of
interfering. And then she told herself: “Yes,
run away! Run away!—Do exactly the thing
that has made women an inferior sex, and
we have been, since the beginning of
time!”
By then, too,—and she had taken the step
in about three jumps—she was inside that deli-
catessen store. She had seized the biggest ham
knife from the counter. She had leaped back
to the door. And she was still holding it against
all comers—when Mr. Owly Willings had ar-
rived upon the scene.
After that, of course, and on the way home,
there had been explanations.
Miss Hope said that she had been at the the-
atre.
So also had Mr. Willings. And he added,
later on, and quite unnecessarily, that he had
been in the gods.
Unnecessary though the remark was, it had
this result. Miss Hope promptly followed it
with the statement that she also had been in
the gods.
She also? And the mere look on Mr. Owly


62 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
Willings’ face was a question that had to be an-
swered.
Why, of course, the gods, she told him. And
if he would look up the pay of women law clerks
he would never need to ask her why.
Then, on the remainder of that walk home,
there had been further explanations, from
which Mr. Willings had gradually come to un-
derstand that, compared with Miss D. Hope’s
present financial position,—however self-im-
posed—his own was one of affluence. He
learned, too, that if there had been a hundred
millions waiting Miss Hope in Atlanta, there
was no earthly possibility of her going back to
it till she could go with her head up, and on
her own terms. By then he had discovered
that he had liked her from the beginning, and
liked her very much indeed. And it was shortly
after that that they had gone to the theatre
again, and sat in the gods together.
It was about that time, too, that they had be-
gun to know Mrs. Fisher.
Mrs. Fisher had first been D. Hope’s friend.
Then they had taken her about together. They
had shown her the meaning of the tenement


AGAIN D. HOPE 63
dark room, of the street playground, of tene-
ment labour. With them she had seen chil-
dren stringing beads and making artificial
flowers for fourteen hours a day. And from
them she had begun to learn some of the things
that money could do.
She had begun to learn it. It had been a
lesson of months. . . . And now, in a few
hours, or a few days more—l Who, or what,
they asked themselves again, had done the deed
that had brought everything to an end?
At the Settlement there were already re-
porters waiting to interview them. And even
had they not arranged to leave Hudson street
at the earliest possible moment they would
have done it then. Every effort was made to
keep them. From the directress to the door
boy there was a loyalty which almost forbade
them to go. But they had no real choice. Dr.
Laneham had offered them a chance which
for the sake of the Settlement itself must not be
lost. Both spent half the night packing. And
in the morning they were on their way together
to Seventy-second street.


64 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
For days, perhaps for weeks, they would be
under the same roof, working and living in an
intimacy greater even than that of “The
House.” But neither of them was thinking of
that now. Who had killed Mrs. Fisher? And
why? And why did it seem so horribly mixed
with the impossible and the supernatural?
And why had chance drawn them into it?
At “390,” Jacobs, Laneham’s man, received
them.
The Doctor himself was still dressing. He
had been up most of the night. For one thing
he had had to arrange, so far as was humanly
possible, to free himself of all professional
duties for the next ten days. Fortunately, he
had been able with an almost easy mind to
turn things over to McMaster, of his Wards-
dale sanatorium. And now he was soon wel-
coming his special deputies in the breakfast-
TOOIn.
“Well! We’re here. And how did your Set-
tlement people take it?”
They told him.
“And your pater?” he asked D. Hope.
“What of him?”


AGAIN D. HOPE 65
“He’s in Japan somewhere. All my people
are. And they won’t hear of it for another
month.”
“So much the better. And now to business
at once. Willings, I want your story first of all.
I can understand that nonsense at Fourteenth
street. You needn’t go back over that. But
tell me everything that occurred after you
reached the Casa Grande.”
And Willings told him.
It must have been about four, he said, when
he reached the Fisher apartment. He had
waited, expecting every moment that Mrs.
Fisher would come down, for almost an hour.
But in the end he had given up and left again.
Why had no one seen him leaving? Because
he had walked down the stairs. There was
some tie-up in the elevators, and he had waited
another five minutes at them. And if no one
had seen him, as he remembered it now, he
hadn’t seen any Casa Grande people, even in
the lower hall.
The knocking? He had heard it just as he
was leaving; but at that time there was no
voice. Had he seen Jimmy—Mrs. Fisher’s


AGAIN D. HOPE 67
“It may be so, it may be so,” said Laneham,
solemnly. “At any rate we’re at work now.
And I’ve had something over the 'phone my-
self this morning.”
“And what is that?”
“I’ve just heard from Miss McCollum—in
my Thirty-fourth street office, you know—to
which that Fisher hurry call for me was sent.
And it’s practically certain that the voice that
cried out so terribly in those rooms after the
murder was the same that sent my call.”
“Doctor 1’’
“Little question. The words used were sim-
ple enough: I was merely to come at once. But
Miss McCollum remembered the voice the mo-
ment I asked her about it. She said she’d know
it again if she heard it anywhere. And she imi-
tated it for me.”
He turned away to his desk, and added a few
lines to a page of notes he had already scrib-
bled on his office pad. Then he brought those
notes back to his special deputies.
It was much as if he had been classifying the
ghastly data of the morning and the night be-
fore for some sort of hospital record.


68 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“I’ll read it to you as I have it,” he said,
“and if either of you can add to it, or suggest
any changes, speak up now.”
What he read was this:
(A) Facts apparently explicable, and criminal in
the ordinary sense.
1. Body found by Judge Bishop, self, and others at
about 5:15, in Mrs. Fisher's private suite, near swim-
ming-pool. Death had taken place between one and
two hours previously.
2. Italian maid, Maddalina—prison record—had al-
ready fled.
3. English butler, Jimmy—also prison record—
showed great nervousness, and fled after admitting
myself and Bishop to reception-room.
4. Blank paper had been substituted for genuine
notes in bank envelope left by Mrs. Fisher for Will-
ings.
5. Even after Bishop and myself had begun our at-
tempt to gain an entrance, some one was still trying to
break into the small wall safe in Mrs. Fisher’s rooms,
containing her famous pearls. This is proven by the
time record of the Electric Protection Company.
(B) Facts apparently inexplicable, and, on the
surface, more than natural.
1. All doors of Mrs. Fisher’s private suite were
locked on inside—no access by windows—and last
doors were locked from inside even as Judge touched
their handles to open them.


AGAIN D. HOPE 69
2. Following this a thrice-repeated sound of rap-
ping or knocking was heard from within, and a voice
crying in great spiritual agony: “Oh, my God, my
God!” Voice extremely deep and broken. It was
this voice, it is almost certain, that sent my hurry call.
(The rapping or knocking was also heard an hour
earlier by Willings.)
3. Cause of death not apparent—bruises and mark-
ings on arms and throat, and temple crushed in-
weapon, if any, gone.
4. Though murderer (?) was still plainly in rooms
on arrival of Judge and myself, and all doors and
windows were locked, upon our entrance he had gone;
and his method of escape was wholly inexplicable.
And then, as a final note, the Doctor read:
For the present, absolutely disregard all the seem-
ingly supernatural. And begin by making every
effort to find Jimmy the butler, and another copy of
the burned magazine.
“The burned magazine?” asked Willings.
He told them about it, but he offered no ex-
planation of the importance he attached to it.
And while he spoke he seemed to narrow his
eyes half professionally, half friendly wise,
and scrutinise them both anew.
Both looked very quiet and pale and busi-
nesslike. The girl, deep-breasted, supple, free


70 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
of limb, was almost the larger. But in Willings’
face there was all the pluck and spirit needed.
And with them there was all he needed of clean-
tanned muscle and sinew.
“We’ll leave Jimmy for the present,” the
Doctor ended, “and I’ll ask you two to go after
the burned magazine. If I could tell you more
I would. But the word in the upper right-hand
corner—in good big advertising type, at that,
—and the only word not ashes—was “mund’—
‘m-u-n-d, mund.’ It was probably the back of
the magazine. And because ‘mund’ is a Ger-
man word—the word for “world’ of course—
you’d better try the German book-stores first.”
He was just finishing when Bishop was
shown in.
The Judge waited till the young people were
gone. Then: “Well!” he said, “well! At any
rate you sound like the real thing. And what’s
the answer?”
“Bishy,” the Doctor put him off, “as I an-
swered you last night, I don’t believe I'll tell
you. Because quite probably I’m wrong. At
the start at least I’ll probably be wrong four
times out of five. And since, from this morn-


AGAIN D. HOPE 71
ing, you’re District Attorney, it won’t help a
lot to gum you up along with me.”
“All right. Whatever you think.”
And they went up to the Casa Grande to-
gether.


CHAPTER VI
A HOUSEHOLD FILE, AND A PURSUIT AT MID-
NIGHT
THEY went, first, because it was the hour set
for the coroner’s inquest.
It was the customary inquest, too. It called
attention to the obvious and shut its eyes to
all that was not. But it at least made it pos-
sible for the poor body to be removed. The
funeral was to be on the morrow, from the
Fisher country place at Greenwich. And after
the inquest Laneham and the Judge again
moved out in silence to the corridor.
“Well, Laney, what now?”
“I must try now to put myself right with
McGloyne.”
“McGloyne! The saints help you! Now that
he knows you have official credentials, he’ll eat,
sleep, and live to keep you from getting any-
thing.”
“Maybe so; but I must play the game.”
72


A HOUSEHOLD FILE 73
“You mean, for example, you’re going to
show him that murder note?”
“If he shows even the first signs of reci-
procity.”
“All right. As for me, I must get back to
my office. I’ll see you again to-night.”
And seeking out the big Chief of Detec-
tives, with all the tact that was in him, the Doc-
tor began to explain himself.
He told McGloyne that he had been asked
to help in the case simply because of special
medical and psychopathic knowledge. His only
desire was to be useful; perhaps they might be
able to help each other. And, for his part, he
wanted to ask first if the Identification Bureau
records had as yet yielded anything—on either
the Fisher butler or Maddalina, the maid?
It was rather a long speech. And McGloyne
waited, half staring at him, till he had finished.
Then, without answering, he laughed sourly,
turned away, and began to talk to one of his
lieutenants.
The insult was gross enough, but only as a
last resort did Laneham intend to go over his
head to Bishop or the Commissioner. It still


74 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
remained for him to learn just how far the big
Inspector’s powers extended.
Before an hour was over he might well have
decided that for him they amounted to some-
thing very like complete blockade.
He wanted a set of floor-plans, both for the
Casa Grande and the Casa Reale, its annex.
Though without either door or elevator con-
nections, both were simply halves of the same
building. And he made his request at the
renting office.
He was refused, absolutely—“under orders
just issued by the Detective Bureau.”
He tried to talk to one of the house men.
Did he know, the Doctor asked him, whether
Jimmy, the butler, had any friends? Would
he recognise them if he saw them?
The man would not answer. He, too, had
had his orders. And they were orders that had
mentioned him, Laneham, in particular.
He went to the woman across the court, a
Mrs. Deremeaux. It was she who had heard
the voice crying “See! Seel” and “No, no,
no!” Would she know, he asked her, the voices
of the Fisher servants?


A HOUSEHOLD FILE 75
But Mrs. Deremeaux also had been warned
against him.
There was still the matter of tracing his
hurry call. And, visiting the local telephone
exchange, he showed his credentials and asked
to see the record. They had it, of course?
“Oh, certainly. But they were very sorry,
there was an order against it.”
“An Order?”
“Yes, and it had just been repeated. But no
doubt he could get the information he wanted
by going where the order had come from.”
“Which was—?”
“Why, of course, the Detective Depart-
ment.”
“All right,” he told himself. “It’s about
time, in any case, that I was trying something
else from what Bishop calls my own bag of
tricks.”
And, once back in the Casa Grande, he went
first to those private rooms of Professor
Fisher’s. Apparently he wished only to look
again at the fireplace where he had found the
paper ashes. But the ashes were gone now;
and all had been swept clean.


A HOUSEHOLD FILE 77
other. Then, on a sudden, his face seemed to
change and fill. He looked at those Central
Office men. They were no longer observing
him. And he began to go swiftly back over
those files.
Five minutes later he was at an outside tele-
phone.
He got Jacobs, at “390.” He gave him or-
ders that when next either Miss Hope or Mr.
Willings called up—as per instructions—he
himself should be put in touch. And he had not
long to wait. Before another half hour had
passed, he was speaking again to Willings.
“Our butler, Jimmy,” he said, “was em-
ployed last by a Mrs. Morson Dillingham, now
living at the Sorrento, in East Eighty-fourth
street. He was everything from chauffeur to
houseman. She was very fond of him, and he
is almost certain to go back to her. In fact,
he may have gone already, but I think not.
And if not, he will probably call to-night or
to-morrow night. In any case, I want you and
D. Hope to leave your burned magazine for
the present, and from now on to cover the Sor-
rento every minute. I’ll be up there myself,


78 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
as soon as possible, to see how best I can place
you. And I’ll see that you have the runabout,
in case it should come in handy.”
About eleven that night, too, he was repeat-
ing the above, in substance, to Judge Bishop.
The Judge pushed back from the library fire,
and swung his chair around with a sort of fixed
bewilderment.
“And how, Laney, how? If you’ll just begin
with the explanation—”
But at that moment the telephone broke in
on them, and Laneham turned and answered it.
D. Hope was speaking: and “Doctor, Doc-
tor!” she was crying, “he’s here! He's here!
And Mr. Willings is up at a garage with the car.
But I’ve called him, and he’s coming now.”
Ever since afternoon, the day had been
clouding up for more snow. And by evening
the snow had begun to come. But the Doctor
had arranged cover for his watchers. Direct-
ly opposite the Sorrento is a little French mil-
linery, “La Belle Bergère.” Though apparent-
ly it was closed and deserted for the night, ac-


A HOUSEHOLD FILE 79
tually it was not. East Eighty-fourth street
is not a wide street. On both sides of the Sor-
rento entrance are big pillar lights. And from
the curtained window of “La Belle Bergère.”
one could watch that entrance almost as well as
from the street itself.
For the last fifteen minutes, too, D. Hope
had been maintaining the watch alone. This
was because Willings, who had a mechanic’s
instinct for motors, had got the idea that the
Doctor’s runabout was not responding as it
should; and to get it a professional look-over,
he had just taken it three blocks north to the
Lexington Garage. And, not two minutes
after he had gone, D. Hope, at that window of
“La Belle Bergère,” gave a great start, and
caught her breath, and rushed to the Belle
Bergère telephone.
It was Jimmy! He had shaved off his mous-
taches, but that had changed him little. And
he was approaching the Sorrento from D.
Hope's side of the street. Had that window
been open, indeed, she could have touched
him.
“He didn’t do it! I know he didn’t!” She


80 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR%
kept telling herself vehemently. “But if he can
help us learn who did—!”
And, at the 'phone now, she got Willings
first. Next, she sent her message to the Doc-
tor. And then, as if determined, if need be,
to make the capture alone, she hurried to the
street.
She kept her own side of the street, because
she knew she must not attract attention. She
forced herself to walk first to the Avenue cor-
ner; then, against the drive of snow and wind,
back toward the elevated, and then—but never
really losing sight of that Sorrento entrance—
once more toward the Avenue. And, just as
again she came opposite, Mr. Owly Willings
and the runabout arrived.
She had only to nod. “He’s in there now.”
The car turned sharply. In the snow-cleared
space at the curb another car, a big limousine,
was waiting. But there was room for the run-
about behind it.
“Better get inside and cover up,” said Will-
ings, “and let me talk to him alone.”
They waited—two minutes—three—four-
ten. And then, suddenly, Jimmy came out.


A HOUSEHOLD FILE 81
Now, though Willings’ heart was beating
fast, at no time was he the sort of young man
who acts without a plan. From the Doctor,
moreover, he had received advice as to certain
things he hadn’t thought of for himself. And
as the little butler started to pass him, “Jim-
my!” he whispered, “Jimmy!”
But there was one thing that neither the Doc-
tor nor Willings had thought of; and that was
the one thing Jimmy did.
At the first sound of his name he had jumped
back, his eyes staring. Then, as he recognised
Willings, “H’all right!” he cried—“h’all
right! But I’ll never be took alive!” And
he threw himself upon him. From the mere im-
pact, Willings was overbalanced; and the little
Cockney, getting his foot behind him, was able
to tumble him headlong into the snow-piled
gutter.
From the big limousine ahead there leaped
a big chauffeur, in bearskins.
“Hi, what’s the excitement?”
“An’ you too, by Gord, if you come in, you
too !”
And on the word Jimmy flung himself at him.


82 BEEIIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“Cripes, what you at?” The man fell has-
tily back into the Sorrento doorway. Seeing
him do it,-even as if he planned it so,-the
little butler jumped to the empty driving-seat
of that big limousine, threw the power on, and
was away. No time to call for help. Willings,
once more on his feet, could only pitch himself
to the wheel of the runabout, and launch it in
the big car’s wake.
Behind him there dwindled the shouts of the
bear-skinned chauffeur. In Willings’ face was
a whirl of snow that was fast becoming a bliz-
zard. But, ahead, the big car had now whipped
south into the Avenue. How to stop it? That
was the only question. He knew already he was
gaining. The runabout had the speed. But
would mere speed be enough? The big limou-
sine turned and again shot eastward into the
dark and tunnel-like narrowness of a side
street. Then Willings, suddenly remembering,
dropped his hand into his side pocket, into
which the Doctor had slipped a little blue-steel
automatic. At the same moment he felt a soft
weight press his shoulder. It was D. Hope
drawing herself perilously over, and letting


A HOUSEHOLD FILE 83
herself down into the seat beside him! And,
as if her mind had been a part of his, “Shoot
at his rear tires,” she said—“as soon as you’re
near enough again. And let me drive!”
The limousine passed under the elevated,
skidded from a glacier of ice and snow, shot
south for a block, and turned riverward again
in another empty, storm-swept side street. But
that side street was at least lighter. The lit-
tle car closed up through the flying spindrift.
D. Hope’s hands came down upon the wheel,
and unyieldingly took charge of it. And, with
a queer feeling of being in the movies, Willings
brought his gun into play and began to shoot.
From a group seen blurrily in a doorway as
they flicked by, there came a yell.
But he shot again.
This time, too, the driver of the big limou-
sine heard him. And under the next electric
he turned back a face of sick-white despera-
tion. Moreover, it was evident he was in a part
of the town he didn’t know. For, following
his present course, he must soon run into a cul-
de-sac and trap himself between the river and
the new market.


84 BEEIIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
Again Willings fired. Another yell from a
lone pedestrian, head down against the gale.
But they were a block nearer the dock-front.
If, now, their man did not turn south again
He did not. Even after he had seen the trap
before him, he still kept crazily on. Along the
whole water-side no soul seemed to be moving
save themselves. The runabout closed up once
more. D. Hope held them steady by the wheel,
and again Willings fired.
It was as if the explosion of the bursting tire
had drowned the report of the gun itself. The
big car dropped, slewed to the right, and fin-
ished, snow-stalled against a lamp-post. But,
as the little butler threw himself out on the
other side, the light from that lamp again let
them see his face. And they knew then why he
had taken them almost straight for the river.
“You’ll never!” he cried wildly as he ran,
lurching and swaying, and no longer did he
seem to know them. “Gord, 'e knows I’m h’in-
nocent. But I done my seven years 'ard for
being h’innocent once before. An’ never—I’ll
never be took to be sent back to that! Not till
you can stop me drown!”


A HOUSEHOLD FILE 85
He had reached the string-piece of the near-
est pier. And there he turned again.
“Keep h’off, now, keep h’off!”
But, when Willings still came on—“H’all
right!” Jimmy cried—like some wretched ani-
mal to its torturers. “I’m done!” And he
plunged over.
It was not till afterward that Miss D. Hope
knew why Mr. Owly Willings halted for the
bare two seconds that he did. But it was only
to get his glasses off. Then, poising, he dived
clear. The girl herself was ready to follow.
But she still kept a feminine clear-headedness
which made her first pause at least one sec-
ond to use her eyes. And then she saw that al-
most directly beneath them was a dock ladder.
As if there had been no such thing as skirts,
she dropped down it. Hand over hand she
went, till she was waist-deep. Between two big
pieces of slush ice, but within seizing distance,
Willings had come up again. And she caught
him by the shoulder, even as he had just man-
aged to catch Jimmy.
Yet the little butler was still trying to fight
them off.


86 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“Let me die, I tell you! Let me die! Ain’t
it no proof to you—that—that I’m 'ere to die?”
“Yes, Jimmy; yes, indeed it is!” gasped D.
Hope. “And I never believed you did it, from
the Start!”
And, by then, she had got her arm around
him.
“We’re not the police, you know,” choked
Willings, getting his arm around him from the
other side. “They’re accusing us, too. Come
back with us now—and we’ll all of us—help
each other.”
Persuaded or not, he no longer had the
strength to resist. Indeed, he was fast falling
into complete collapse. But they got his feet
upon the steps; and, foot by foot, they thrust
him up.
Over the string-piece there now leaned a
staring bargeman.
“Gosh!” he said. “Gosh! What’s the
racket? Was he drivin’ tanked?”
“No,” panted Willings. “He just wanted
some ice for his exhaust.”
“Say!” said the man. “Well, he sure want-
ed it dang bad!”


A HOUSEHOLD FILE 87
Bedraggled, and with their oozy garments
already beginning to freeze, they got Jimmy
back to the runabout and lifted him in.
“Now you,” said Willings, turning to the
girl.
“No,” she cried. “No, you. I’m going to
drive. I look all right, up above; but you’d be
stopped by the first policeman. The engine’ll
keep me warm, too. Get in, and cover up—
both of you—up to the chin.”
And, in the end, when he had seen to it that
she herself was wrapped in the biggest robe,
he let her drive. Meanwhile, half a dozen other
gaping longshoremen had come up.
“But, hell!” one of them demanded, “who
owns the other car?”
“An old friend of ours named Dinnis,” an-
swered Willings, without batting an eye. “Just
tell him we’ll see him later.”
Meanwhile, behind the wheel, D. Hope was
waving at them in entreaty and command.
“Please. You’re in our way, you know.”
And, with one long, triumphant hoot, the lit-
tle runabout was on its way back through the
storm to 390.


CHAPTER VII
JIMMY’s STORY, AND A FIRST “RETURN.”
“I’M h’innocent, Judge your lordship,” pas-
sionately repeated Jimmy. “That I can tell
you now. But who did do it, and ’ow to account
for the things that 'appened afterwards, that
I can never tell you—if there's any one alive
that can l’’
Outside, the storm was now blowing harder
than ever. But the three—Jimmy, Willings,
and Miss Hope—were in dry clothes again—
Jimmy in one of Doctor Laneham’s old suits.
Laneham had had coffee and bouillon made for
them. And now, warmed back to speech and
confidence, the little butler seemed almost hys-
terically eager to tell his story.
“Oh, h’all I want is to tell it,” he said; “for
then you’ll know for yourselves if I’m tellin’
you the truth!”
“Good,” said the Doctor. “But, Jimmy,
88


JIMMY'S STORY 89
this is our first chance to talk to any one who
was there in that Fisher apartment from the
beginning. And before you begin, I want to
ask you one or two questions.”
“There’s nothink you can h’ask, sir, but
what’ll be as quickly answered.”
“Good again. Then, from breakfast on, the
day of the murder, was any one in those rooms,
to your knowledge, except you and Maddalina,
the maid, and Professor and Mrs. Fisher them-
Selves?” -
“No, sir; and h’after breakfast the Profes-
sor he went out.”
“Yes,” Judge Bishop put in; “he was down
in our office, with Potter, all through the day.”
“I know, sir. And I 'eard 'im say 'e
was going to bring Mr. Potter back for din-
ner.”
“Exactly,” said Laneham. “And, now, Jim-
my, did you at any time, during the afternoon,
hear a voice that you could not account for?”
Jimmy paled a little. But, “No, sir,” he
said; “no.”
“Very well. And now there’s something
that I want to show you.”


90 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
From one of his desk drawers the Doctor
produced the murder note.
He showed it first to D. Hope.
“It’d have been kinder,” he said, “if I’d
let you see it in the beginning. But I kept
telling myself it mightn’t be necessary.”
The death's-head in red ink. The two lines
in that heartlessly fine and beautiful Gothic
script: “We have now reached the point where
it must be either murder or suicide.” And then
that last line, written by Mrs. Fisher herself:
“Couldn’t it be made to look like an acci-
dent?”
For a moment the girl could not speak. She
could only knot and twist her handkerchief be-
tween her fingers.
“I suppose it means,” she breathed, “that
there was—was what they call a suicide pact?”
“It would seem so on the surface.”
“But there wasn’t There wasn’t ! S’’elp
me, there wasn’t!”
It was Jimmy who was crying out the denial.
He was standing over the bit of paper, with
mouth and eyes a-gape. “It’s ’er writing, the
bottom part of it, that’s sure. But Gord 'e


JIMMY'S STORY 91
knows Mrs. Fisher was the last woman that
Would ever do for ’erself!”
“I would think so too, Jimmy,” said the
Judge. “But, tell us, have you ever seen that
other writing anywhere before?”
“No, sir; never, sir!”
“Nor I,” said D. Hope. “Nor Il”
“None of us have,” said Willings.
“And now,” said the Doctor, “will you go
ahead, Jimmy, and tell your story? You told
us yesterday, when we found you in the rooms,
that it was your day off. Tell us first how it
was that, in that case, you were there at all.”
“I will, sir; I will. It was my h’afternoon
h’off, and I’d started h’out, too. But I didn’t
get anywhere. I’d only walked a square or
two when I found myself fairly blown through
with the cold in the light great-coat I’d put on.
An' I went back to get a ’eavier one.”
g ‘Yes?”
“Dr. Laneham, if you can lay your 'ands on
that Eyetalian trollop Maddalina, there’s a
black deal that she can tell you. She didn’t do
the murder. She couldn’t 'ave. To that I’d
’ave to swear, myself. But if she didn’t, she 'as


92 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
the guilty knowledge of it on ’er soul! . . . I
say, I’d come back. And, as I h’entered, Mrs.
Fisher came down from Maddalina’s rooms, –
right above mine, they are, you know,-an”
that she’d been 'aving trouble with Maddalina
I could see at once. She 'eld 'er 'and at 'er
throat, and she was white and gasping with it,
and she beckoned me to follow her.
“She didn’t make no explanation. “Jimmy,”
was all she says, “I know it’s your day out, but
will you take the door again for just a few
minutes—till I’ve time to pull myself together?
I think I’ll have to take a plunge.” A great
woman she was, you know, for settin’ herself
up in that way. And all I said was that as al-
ways I was at her service. ‘Another thing, too,”
she says. “In case Mr. Willings calls, and I
have to keep him, will you just give him this
while he is waiting?”
“It was a big blue envelope that she 'ad
there on 'er library table. But that was noth-
ing to make a mystery of. She’d left the same
sort of envelopes for 'im before. An I gave
it to 'im, too, as 'e 'imself will tell you.”
“You did,” said Willings. “But, Jimmy,


JIMMY'S STORY 93
had you any idea what was in that big blue
envelope?”
“Bank-notes, wasn’t it, sir,” he answered
simply, “for your Settlement 'ouse? But, Mr.
Willings, sir,”—and his voice changed and
trembled,—“think twice as 'ow you use them.
For Mrs. Fisher—Gord rest 'er—was dead be-
fore ever that money reached you!”
“Dead then!” exclaimed Willings. “But
you—”
“Oh, not that I knowed it then. And not
that I’m even sure yet that I 'eard 'er end.
All that got to me was the sound of something
falling, and at that distance it might only 'ave
been a ’eavy book. I 'eard it just as I was
goin’ in to announce you. I’d gone as far as
the library to get that envelope; and she didn’t
answer. But I took it that the water must
be runnin’ in the pool and she didn’t 'ear
my voice on that account—it ’ad 'appened so
before. So I just pressed 'er bell. She could
always 'ear that. I knew she'd know what it
meant, too. And then I went on back again to
my own quarters.
“Well, there I sat, 'earing Maddalina mov-


94 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
ing about above me, and thinking, ‘Well, what-
ever devilment you’ve been h’up to, you vixen,
this is a precious note, me doing your work an’
you just as busy as ever on your own!” For
ten, fifteen, twenty minutes I sat there. And
then it came to me that although by now Mrs.
Fisher 'ad 'ad time to dress, I 'adn’t 'eard 'er
come out to Mr. Willings, an’ maybe, after all,
she 'adn’t ’eard the bell. So I went to look.
“She wasn’t in the drawing-room. She
wasn’t in 'er library. I listened. The water
wasn’t running in the pool. And I rang again
—I rang a dozen times; but she didn’t answer.
. . . Judge your lordship, I began to get the
fear and chill of it then, if it was only because
everything was that quiet! And I pushed on
into 'er bedroom, 'er dressing-room, and then
on to the pool itself. An’ there”—his eyes
widened again—“oh, Gord, the blood alone!—
there I found ’er! . . .”
“Jimmy,” said Bishop, ending the silence,
“what I want to ask you is this: Why didn’t
you tell Mr. Willings? Or why didn’t you cry
out at once and rouse the house?”
“Yes, Judge your lordship, why didn't I?


JIMMY'S STORY 95
For that’s what any h’onest man would 'a'
done. And for that first minute, while I was
still trying to make my tongue speak and my
limbs move at all, that was my first thought.
I, too, was thinking of myself as a h’onest man.
And then
“Judge, I’ve a record. I’ve done my seven
years 'ard in Dartmouth. And that’s the only
thing that counts in my life. I served it for
killing a man I never saw or ’eard of. But no
matter for that. That’s neither 'ere nor there.
I’ve got my murder record. And, Judge,
there’s no man who 'as ever done his seven
years 'ard in Dartmouth will ever, this side of
'ell, take h’even a ’undredth chance of being
sent that road again!”
“But, Jimmy,” asked D. Hope, her eyes wet,
“why should they think that you had done it?”
“And who but me could 'ave done it? From
where I was I could see that nobody 'ad come
in through the 'all. I couldn’t 'ave let any
one think, could I, that it might 'ave been Mr.
Willings? And it couldn’t 'ave been Madda-
lina. As I’ve told you, up to then I’d 'eard
’er moving about above me. That is, up to my


96 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
going to look for Mrs. Fisher she 'ad been.
But now, as I got back to my own room again,
and sat down, water-knee’d, to try to think
where I should run for first, I realised I didn’t
'ear ’er any more. Minute followed minute,
an’I didn’t. Then I crep” up the stairs to see.
Her doors were open. She was gone, and
everything stripped clean.
“So much for 'er! She’d been Warned
ahead, and was prepared enough. But she
couldn’t 'ave done the thing 'erself. That
wasn’t 'umanly possible. And who could 'ave
done it, Judge? No one came down the 'all
that afternoon but Mr. Willings! All the win-
dows were locked! Who was it? Who did
do it?”
For a moment he halted. And the Doctor
asked another question:
“Jimmy, were you in the Professor’s rooms
that afternoon? Did you burn any paper
there???
“Burn h’any paper—in the Professor’s
h'apartment? No, sir, no. Nor any other time.
But, gentlemen, there’s more to come, and
worse. It’s—it’s sticking in my throat.”


JIMMY'S STORY 97
Behind them at the windows, the wind
whined and rose to long howlings that almost
shook the house. And the little butler seemed
now to be shaking with it.
“I 'adn’t the nerves left to go out to Mr.
Willings again. About fifteen minutes more,
maybe, an’ I’eard 'im leaving. An’ then, at
the same moment, I—I–’eard something else.”
“Jimmy, old man,” said Willings, “was it a
sound of some one knocking?”
“It was, sir—it was. Oh, sir, so you ’eard
it, too? An’ then, after that, you ’eard the
ring?”
“The ring?”
“What ring?” asked the Judge.
“You mean some one on the 'phone?” de-
manded Laneham.
“No, gentlemen, no. There was no one at
the 'phone, either calling or ringing, at any
time. The ring I mean was some one ringing
in 'er rooms—maybe from that swimming-pool
itself. It was 'er private bell, and it was sound-
ing h’up above, for Maddalina.”
**YOU’re Sure???
“If I dreamed it, it’s a dream I’m never


98 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
likely to forget! And the ring didn’t come
h’only that once. It came a second, and then
a third time. And by then it’d got me sort of
crazed like. An I says to myself, ‘Well, Gord
'elpin’ me now, whoever you are, ghost or devil,
I will face you! I will, if it’s only that it might
'elp me, some way, to clear myself.”
“Judge your lordship, and you, Dr. Lane-
ham, that was just before you came, and I’ad
to take 'old of myself to let you in. And after
I’d answered your ring, all I wanted was to get
away.
“But what I’m going to tell you now came
first, between Mr. Willings’ ring and your com-
ing, while I was there alone. And, as you’ll
remember, night was falling then. In corners
and in the closets it was dark. But I looked
everywhere. I was 'alf out of my wits. If I’d
found any one, it would 'a’ been, Kill me or I
kill you. But I found no one. What I found
was something else, an’ different, and I began
to find it from the start.
“Judge your lordship, when I left those
rooms after first I’d come on Mrs. Fisher's
body, I closed every door behind me coming out


JIMMY'S STORY 99
—three doors closed tight. It seemed like I’ad
to, or it’d follow me. Well, the first thing I
saw now was that the door to the bedroom,
and the next door to the dressing-room, and
after that the next one, to the swimming-pool
itself, all were open. An’ more—an’ more
than that.” Again, with a shudder, he
stopped.
“You’re going to tell us, aren’t you,” asked
the Doctor quietly, “that in the meantime the
body had been moved?”
D. Hope jerked in her chair. In a sense,
they all did. And Jimmy cried out:
“It 'ad!—I don’t know ’ow you knew it, but
it 'ad! I found ’er this second time as the
papers describe it—lying on the rattan couch,
be’ind the plants. But she 'adn’t been there at
first. She’d been 'anging in ’er bathrobe, ’ead
down, over the outside of the pool. It was there
that she’d been killed. An’ more”—he stopped
with a jerk—“Dr. Laneham! What was that?”
They all sat unmoving. At their own door
some hand had knocked.
“Why, it’s only Jacobs, I imagine,” said
Laneham, “only Jacobs.”


100 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
And it was his man Jacobs, knocking to call
the Doctor to the telephone.
The message was from the night operator of
the Electric Protection Company.
“Dr. Henry Laneham?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“We promised to let you know if we received
any further alarms from the Fisher apartment.
Well, we’ve had another from there just
now.” -
The Doctor came back and repeated the mes-
sage to the others.
This time the Judge himself fairly cried out:
“Laney, in the name of heaven!”
“Gentlemen, it’s the thing that murdered
her,” cried Jimmy, his lips white. “It’s come
again for the body, and it’ll take it, too!”
“No, no,” Laneham quieted him. “No, no,
Jimmy. The body isn’t there: it was taken
away after the inquest. It’s in Greenwich
nOW.’’
“Thank God,” said Willings.
And D. Hope merely moved her lips as if
to try to moisten them.
“But we must go over there,” said the Doc-


JIMMY'S STORY 101
tor, “and find out for ourselves.” He looked
at Willings first. “Will you come?”
“Surely.”
“And you, Bishop?”
“No.” The Judge refused absolutely, though
no one would really have taxed his stout person
with any actual fear. “I’ve been in this thing
too much for my office already. I’ll stay here
with D. Hope and Jimmy.”
And the Doctor and Willings went alone.
Just inside the entrance to the Casa Grande
stood the Electric Protection patrolman who
had responded to the murder alarm itself. It
was easy to see that he was very much excited.
With him was the E. P. ‘‘diagram boss” whom
every one had been seeking the night before.
He introduced himself:
“Grady, my name is, Doctor. They told me
from the office to be expectin’ you. I don’t
exactly know your line, but if you’re helpin’
that McGloyne outfit, God knows they need it.
This is Carney”—he beckoned to the excited
man in uniform. “An’ friend yegg anyways
came near to gettin’ him!”
“Came near to getting him?”


102 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“Sure. Didn’t the office tell you that? Hell,
the knife’s stickin’ in the wainscot yet! But
come on up an’ I’ll show you!”
But for a moment the Doctor kept him where
he was.
“Just a minute,” he said, “just a minute till
I get this straight. Do you mean to tell me that,
with all these policemen of McGloyne’s on duty
in the halls, some one got into the apartment
and sent an alarm from the safe to your office
—and was still inside when your man ar-
rived?”
“Sure. That’s just what I’m tellin' you.”
“Sure!” echoed Patrolman Carney; “and
the son-of-a-gun must 'a' been workin’ dark as
well as quiet. But he heard my key all righty.
For I’d just got that first inside door open to
Mrs. Fisher’s rooms when—zim, whizz, zowie
—it come!”
“Friend yegg threw his stabber at him,”
explained Mr. Grady.
“He cert'inly did!” said Carney. “An’ the
next minute I was losin’ my step an’ goin’ down.
them stairs backward. An’ them two McGloyne
bulls, they takes me for the yegg, o' course, an’


104 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
And, jerking his thumb toward the left, he
turned on another light.
“My Lord!” said the Doctor, and for a mo-
ment fell back. For, driven into that oaken
wainscoting a good inch was one of those
long, angular, pointed blades—greasy black
of handle and heavy as a cleaver—that
are used in Italian butcher shops. Carney
stood up beside it, and it touched his Adam’s
apple.
“If it’d caught me square it would 'a' gone
right through,” he said.
“No doubt of that,” said Grady. “An’ now,
friends, just come inside. First I’ll show you
that long-lost little hidy-hole.” He threw on
more lights ahead of him and went straight on
through to Mrs. Fisher’s little library. In the
chimney-breast, on the right side of the fire-
place, there had been set into the brick a small
brass-and-silver “shield” of Bikri work.
Grady put his thumb against its lower edge.
What they, or any one, would have taken for
a solid inset, was simply a hinged and hanging
mask. Within it was a steel door—now with
its lock broken. And inside of that again was


JIMMY'S STORY 105
a steel “combination door’’ and the little safe
itself.
Grady looked at them, and spun the clicking
gears back and forward pleasantly.
“And you can be absolutely certain,” Lane-
ham asked, “that your alarm to-night was
genuine?”
“Well, if the wind did it, it had to lift both
these covers an’ make a battery contact! In
fact, I take it that friend yegg wasn’t just ready
with his soup or his can-opener, or to-night he’d
sure have made his blow.”
“But, of course,” said Willings, “the pearls
aren’t in them now?”
Mr. Grady laughed.
“Why, followin’ a personal request to the
press—from some one now present, I under-
stand, the newspapers say we haven’t even
learned yet where this little hidy-hole is hid-
den. You might say”—he grinned—“that no-
body knows, except friend yegg himself! But
there was somethin’ in there, fast enough, two
nights ago. An’ they say tear drops like them
are worth their six an’ seven thou’ apiece.
Well, proof enough of the value the yegg puts


106 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
on 'em, ain’t it, that he’d chance comin’ back a
second time, even after it had cost him a mur-
der to make it a flivver the first?” He snapped
the Bikri shield back into place again.
“An’ now let me show you somethin’ else.
Some one has been callin’ this a ghost job from
the start. A ghost job! Say, stand a minute
where you are. What do you see? Doors
everywhere. Get-aways enough for a killin’ in
Chinatown! An’ when you add to that
dark halls—well,”—suddenly he turned off
all the lights at once,—“just get it for your-
Self!”
It was so sudden, indeed, that it was wholly
unnerving. If the darkness was not complete,
it was worse: it was a darkness filled glidingly
with spectres.
And, in part simply to break the silence:
“Mr. Grady,” said Willings, “there's at least
one person besides your friend yegg who knows
about this wall safe.”
“An’ who?”
“The man who put it in.”
“What? Tut, tut, tut. That for you. Even
if he was around, you might as well look slant-


JIMMY'S STORY 107
ways at the Chief himself. Ain’t that right,
Carney? Not old Throaty!”
“Old Throaty?”
“Oh, that’s the name we used to give him,
from his voice. You’d say he fetched it from
the bottom of a well. Regular Hamlet’s-father
stuff. Once you heard it, you’d remember it
for life.”
Grady still kept them in that haunted dark-
IneSS.
“I believe he done some other work for Mrs.
Fisher, too, off his own bat. An’ then, some-
how, he got sore on her an’ quit.”
He began to feel his way back to the fire-
place.
“And your man Throaty,” asked Laneham
—“where is he now?”
“Where is he now? Well, say, I guess I
ain’t made myself just clear. The old geezer
croaked in Bellevue less’n a week ago!”


CHAPTER VIII
A NEW BEGINNING AND THE WRITING ON MADDA-
LINA’s wALL
“WELL?”
“Well, to say the least, it doesn’t seem to be
getting a great deal simpler.”
Willings said that. But neither had spoken
till they were almost back at 390. There they
told the others.
As if from sheer spinal coldness, the Judge
got to his feet and threw more wood upon the
fire.
“It’s—it’s all just uncanny horror,” shiv-
ered D. Hope. “All just one mixed-up blur of
it!”
Jimmy had gone a grim-grey again. “You’ll
never get to the bottom of it, gentlemen—never
in this world!”
“And the question is, Laneham,” said the
Judge, “what do you now propose to do?”
108


A NEW BEGINNING 109
“I propose to go ahead exactly as before.”
“What?”
“If the man Throaty is dead, he is dead. If
from the beginning there has been much that
has seemed to be more than natural, I am going
to leave it to prove itself so. In the meantime,
there is enough that is purely and simply crim-
inal. And it will be sufficient for the present
if we try to deal with that.”
“Oh, naturally! If one could find anything
to take hold of, or anything to base a theory
On.”
“I have found something to take hold of,
and I have my theory—at any rate, in part.”
Bishop, now walking the room, rounded to
a halt.
“And is it anything that you can share with
US?”
“No, Bishy, not till later. You must allow
me my reservations for the present.” Lane-
ham spoke in a sort of self-defence. “As you
know, I went into this as a psychologist and a
psychoanalyst. I can only follow the methods
and principles of my profession most applicable
to criminal work. But to any one else they


110 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
would in many ways be absolutely misleading.”
“For example?” Bishop pressed him.
“Yes, I’ll give you an example, though only
a distant one. Take this: After every crime,
we say, there will enter in the ‘law of dispersal.”
The crime is a kind of exploding bomb. It
scatters the innocent with the guilty. All peo-
ple want is to get away from it. And we rea-
son that the guilty may try to get away under
cover of the innocent. Well, up at the Casa
Grande,—and in the Casa Reale next door too,
—tenants are already giving notice: the Van
Ziles, Glasbury the playwright, Colonel Hack-
ett, and others. And, under the ‘law of dis-
persal, theoretically I must keep my eyes on
them. But have I any earthly right to give it
out, even to you, that I’m doing so?”
“Oh, no, no, no. But, Laney, what about
that m-u-n-d, mund?”
“Just this. If I can find the magazine, or
whatever it was, that had that word on the
back of it, I should say that the purely criminal
part of our mystery would come very near to
being solved.”
And then he turned to Jimmy.


A NEW BEGINNING 111
“Jimmy, for the time being, we’re going to
keep you here. But it’s late now, to-night.” He
rang for Jacobs. “And I’m going to put you
away till morning.”
Jacobs came, received his charge, and the
Doctor followed them to the landing. Then he
came back to the others.
“Listen,” he said. “I think I’ve talked too
much as it is. And I hope, after to-night, it’ll
be mainly action. But let me say this now.
I’ve made no pretence of any sort of superhu-
man methods, but such as I’m using are begin-
ning already to work out—a little. We went
after Jimmy, and we got him. I had reasons
for believing that somebody or something
—whoever or whatever was in the apart-
ment the afternoon of the murder; call it
Grady’s “friend yegg, if you like—or call it
old Throaty—would come back again if we let
him believe that his treasure was still there.
And to-night he did come back. If we feel that
we’ve a problem that in some ways may be in-
soluble, the more reason why we should be con-
tent to take it step by step. And for me to-day
has meant just this: A first step has eliminated


112 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
Jimmy as a suspect. But so much the more
does his story convince us that our next step
may come through the maid Maddalina.”
“Little doubt of that,” said the Judge,
“when we can find the girl.”
“I think we can. I think I’ve already been
able to make the initial move. Oh, no, no! I’m
not going to go into it to-night. It’s as late
for us as it is for Jimmy. Come in for break-
fast and I’ll tell you about it then.”
But neither Laneham nor the Judge was at
the breakfast-table. When Willings and D.
Hope came down, they found that, in spite
of all the Doctor’s professional arrangements
with McMaster, he had been called from his bed
to an urgency case at his Wardsdale sanato-
rium. And he had had time only to leave them
a scribbled note. It read:
I want you two to go up to the Casa Grande, and
to Maddalina's rooms (the Commissioner or Judge
Bishop will have fixed it for you; I’ll 'phone them
both), and look everywhere and thoroughly for any-
thing that may look like writing on her walls.
Writing on Maddalina’s walls? The thing
had the flavour of the purely theatrical. And


A NEW BEGINNING 113
what should she write on them? And why?
And if she had written anything, would it not
have been found by McGloyne and his men in
the first half hour after the murder? But the
Doctor’s instructions were explicit, and they
must be followed.
At the last moment, however, Willings tried
to keep D. Hope from going with him.
“In last night’s work, in that chase after
Jimmy,” he said, ‘‘you’ve been through enough
for awhile, at any rate.”
“And wasn’t I of some use last night?”
“You were all the use in the world. If
any woman ever showed more pluck and
brains 9%
“Very well. Then maybe I'll be able to help
again to-day.”
Yet even then, he still tried to put her off.
“But, tell me,” he asked, “do you realise
what it’ll mean to you to return to those Fisher
rooms?’”
“I know. But it’ll only be to Maddalina’s.
I know I’m good for that.”
And they went together.
At those ninth-floor exits from the Casa


114 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
Grande elevators, Central Office men and uni-
formed patrolmen now barred the way in every
direction. But the Commissioner had “fixed
it.” The doors were opened to them. And one
Lieutenant Hooley, McGloyne’s right-hand
man, came heavily and gloweringly out to pass
them through.
“The Commissioner is bail that you leave
things exactly like you found them. Does that
go?”
“Certainly.”
“Well an’ good, then. But you’ve sure got
your nerve with you, young feller. You’ve
sure got your nerve!”
As has been said, Maddalina’s two rooms—
or three, with her bath—were at the extreme
end of the upper floor of the servants’ wing.
And a first glance showed that Mrs. Fisher
had provided the girl with quarters little less
dainty than her own—rugs and matting of a
soft-piled stone-blue, furniture all of light
wicker and cheerful chintz, and walls rough-
washed in restful old ivory. To associate such
walls and such surroundings with what had
been done, seemingly with Maddalina’s guilty


116 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
length. “The outside light doesn’t reach to
the back.”
“That makes it pretty certain, doesn’t it?”
he asked, “that no one has been doing any writ-
ing there.”
But he brought out his matches, and they
finished examining the clothes-closet together.
Maddalina had evidently used the lighter
part of it as a place to black her shoes. Every-
where upon the floor there were greasy smears
of polish. And other smears and finger-marks
soiled the walls as high as the woodwork of the
hat shelf. But nowhere was there any writing.
“Where else?”
They returned to the sitting-room. From
its windows they could look into the snowy
court. And for a moment they stood there,
looking out side by side.
Neither of them believed in their quest. But
they intended to carry it to its end.
“Would you know her writing if you saw it?”
Willings whispered.
“Why, I’ve never seen any of it. I’ve hardly
seen her, you know. Don’t you remember how
I used to tell you we both had the same ‘Thurs-


118 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
He was dressed wholly in black, save for an
incongruous white evening tie. His face was
cavernously and cadaverously pallid. His eyes
glared at them with the set fixity of the de-
mented, or the drugged. And he was gesticu-
lating crazily.
“I’ll call one of the policemen,” whispered
D. Hope. And skirting the wall, she began to
move around Fisher toward the door.
He paid no attention to her. He looked only
at Willings.
“What are you toing here?”
“I’m here—I’m here for Dr. Laneham.”
“You lie! You lie! I know what you are
here for!” And next moment he was whipping
out a pistol.
The thing was so sudden that Willings could
only stand staring at him.
“You haf killed my wife”—he continued to
come straight on—“and now—now 9%
The time was short. It was a moment for
action, not thinking. And it was D. Hope who
acted.
She acted, too, with a swift directness which
for an instant left nothing to Willings himself.


A NEW BEGINNING 119
With one rush, much like that of Jimmy the
night before, she fairly leaped upon the man,
but from behind. With her right hand she
caught Fisher’s pistol hand. Her left she
clapped across his forehead. She got her knee
into his back. And by the time Willings reached
him, she was bringing him crashingly down.
The pistol, a poor silver and mother-of-pearl
affair, went clattering over the floor. Willings
kicked it to the other end of the room, and
took charge of the rest of the situation himself.
A minute later, roused by the noise, half a
dozen police officers came tumbling in to help
him.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right.
Thanks to Miss Hope, here, there’s no harm
done. But I think you’d better get the Pro-
fessor back to his quarters.”
And, still breathing hard, they were alone
again.
At least they were alone till Sergeant Hooley,
already mentioned, came back to Willings for a
final word. It was entirely unabashed.
“Well, he pretty near got you, didn’t he?”
he asked. “And the question is, are you findin’


120 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
it? Are you findin’ it? There’s some swell big
spots o' candle grease on the floor over there.
You might look anunder them.”
And then he took himself off again.
Willings turned and looked at D. Hope.
“I can’t stand much more,” she said, mis-
understanding him. “I think we might almost
as well go now.”
But next moment she saw that he was hurry-
ing back to the bedroom.
She followed him puzzledly.
He had entered the clothes-closet, and there
he was lighting another match.
“There’s more candle grease here, too,” he
said. “Maybe I was wrong when I said we
needn’t look for writing.”
“But We did look.”
Yet already he was giving her his answer.
He was holding a second match to the unpainted
wooden support of the hat shelf, and to the
biggest smear of shoe polish left on it. Only
now, examined more closely, that particular
smear wasn’t shoe polish but the smudge made
by a wet thumb blurring out something in lead
pencill


A NEW BEGINNING 121
“Let me look at it from the side.” And he
laid his cheek against the wood. “Good
enough. It’s sunk right in. Wash off the wood,
and we can read it all.”
And they did. The graphite itself had been
Smudged out. But almost every letter and
figure remained, sunk in the soft pine as if by
a stylus. And, burning match after match,
they could spell out and copy down three sev-
eral addresses:
654 south river street, patersone.
1106 twelt street, pasaic.
489 cristie street, city.
But it was several hours before they could
tell their story. When they returned to 390,
they learned that the Doctor had come home and
gone again. Not till mid-afternoon did he come
in a second time. Only then could they make
their report at last.
“I thought so,” he said, as once more he re-
read those three addresses. “And I think we’re
safe in saying that we’ll find Maddalina at one
of them.”


CHAPTER IX
A FIRST VISIT TO CHRISTIE STREET
“BUT why,” repeated Willings, “why should
those addresses have been there at all?”
“The answer is perfectly simple,” the Doc-
tor answered. “A mere matter of racial
psychoanalysis. But, if you don’t mind, that,
too, is something we’ll leave till later.”
“And I think I know that Christie street ad-
dress,” said D. Hope.
“I, too,” said Willings. “At least I know
the block it’s in. And it’s a mighty bad one—
what the police call a bomb block. Dynamite
in almost constant use as the knife itself.”
“That’s the place!” D. Hope took it up
again. “And, Doctor, if those other addresses
are like that, how can you hope to get her out
of any of them without going directly to the
police for help?”
“Why, I don’t know”—he considered it a
122


124 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
“Won’t they—won’t they have to do some-
thing with him for awhile?” asked D. Hope.
“Oh, I think not. No, I think I can give
you my professional word that he won’t be like
that again, now—not after to-day.”
“You mean,” said Willings, his voice falling,
“that it’s the funeral?”
“That would be one explanation. It’s this
afternoon, you know. He was up at Green-
wich early this morning. Indeed, I don’t know
why he should have come back. But no doubt,
when he came upon you, he’d just been getting
ready to go up there again—” He broke off.
“Well, we’ll forget about it. Or better, we’ll
go out for an hour in the car, and get a little
fresh air, and try to devise the easiest means of
locating Maddalina.”
But it was not till they were on their way
back that D. Hope really joined in the talk
again.
“Doctor,” she said then, “when we’ve found
her, and have to get her out, wouldn’t nurses
be almost as good as ambulance orderlies?”
“Why, yes, in a way.”
“Then will you let me run back to Hudson


126 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
see plain she was a bad one from the first. But
Mrs. Fisher, Gord rest 'er, wouldn’t be warned.
She knowed that Maddalina ’ad 'ad 'er run-in
with the police. A matter of being mixed up in
some kidnapping business, she’d ’eard it was.
But she wouldn’t be warned. And the girl
didn’t come to her from no regular Prison Gate,
either. Mrs. Fisher had gave 'er 'er chance on
some private recommend.” *
For the rest Jimmy knew neither Madda-
lina’s friends—to his knowledge none had ever
visited her—nor her correspondents, nor where
she went on her days off.
“H’all I can tell you personal,” he said, “is
that she’s a she-devil of she-devils for temper.
An’ she’s as strong as h’any man!”
By then it was nine o’clock. And D. Hope
was still away. Half-past nine came, and then
ten.
They called up the Settlement again—to learn
that Miss Hope had herself 'phoned back to it
about an hour before; and she had left a mes-
sage for the Doctor and Willings, if they should
inquire for one. They were not to worry, even
if she did not return that night!


VISIT TO CHRISTIE STREET 127
Laneham pushed away the instrument, and
they sat looking at each other.
“A bit out of character, isn’t it?” the Doc-
tor asked.
“So much out of character,” said Willings,
“that I’m going down there at once to learn
who saw her last!”
And in another half hour he was in Hudson
street.
But he came back knowing as little as he had
before. Laneham, too, had been out, and was
just entering the door. In silence they mounted
the stairs together.
In the library they could hear Mrs. Neilson
talking to some one, a stranger. And, once in-
side, they saw it was a woman in a nurse’s uni-
form. But, because she herself was not speak-
ing, they did not really recognise her till she
had turned to meet them.
“D. Hope!” For she it was.
“My dear girl! Where have you been?”
“You—you said that a nurse”—her voice
still seemed very uncertain—“would be as good
as an orderly, when we found her. And when I
got down there—to the Settlement—and saw


128 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
Miss Stewart—in her uniform—and remem-
bered the things she’s had to do—I couldn’t see
why a nurse, if she went about it right, wouldn’t
be the one to find Maddalina.” For a moment
her voice failed her again. “I—I had a feeling
that she was in that house on Christie street—
and it would be only a matter of going from
one room to another—and pretending a little.
And she was there—she is there—on the fourth
floor—back. And I think we can get her, any
time!”


130 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
And there’s nothing better suited for such a
purpose than, item one, a good up-to-date am-
bulance.”
He went into explanations. It appeared, too,
that he had already arranged for the said am-
bulance through his friend Dr. Schumacher of
Riverside Private Hospital. And he had ob-
tained an Italian orderly from the Ospitale
Garibaldi to serve as interpreter. He himself
knew some Italian, but a good deal might be
needed.
Did he want D. Hope? Yes, since she had
already been able to make an identification.
without being identified herself, he would be
very glad to have her come along with the
proper precautions and do it again. As for
Willings, as Maddalina didn’t know him at all,
in the proper white ducks he should make an
excellent orderly. And again the Doctor,
though he had now provided automatics all
round, assured them that there needn’t be any
danger.
Above all he showed he was determined that
this, his own party, should do the thing alone.
He would ask the Commissioner to post two


MADDALINA AND “IL MALOCCHIO’’ 131
plainclothesmen somewhere within call in
Christie street. And when he, himself, was
quite finished with Maddalina, he might 'phone
to McGloyne to come and get her. But, for the
first hour after the capture, he wanted a chance
to deal with the young woman without any out-
side witnesses whatsoever.
Clearly he had confidence enough. And he
assured them that they really were taking no
risks whatever.
“Because,” he said, “we’re going to do only
what is being done in Little Italy every day;
what Maddalina and her friends have grown
accustomed to from their first hours on Ellis
Island. When cases of diphtheria, or “typhoid
Mary’s’ are reported from Christie street, cer-
tain gentlemen in white ducks and a nurse or
two in blue arrive, they get at once to business,
and in general those diphtheria cases and “Ty-
phoid Mary’s’ first know that they are wanted
only when they find themselves on the stretch-
ers. No health officers ever stop to explain
down there. They just say ‘Come!’”
And, about eight that night, as they got un-
der way, he was adding some final remarks


132 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
from the orderly’s “bench” inside the ambu-
lance itself.
“I’ve explained a little to Virgilio,” he said
—Virgilio was the orderly from the Ospitale
Garibaldi—“but, once more, no explanations in
Christie street! We’re after a lady who is re-
ported, say, to be suffering from pellagra.
Maddalina herself may feel that we’re making
a mistake, and may cut up a little. But after
all why should she—or her friends—worry
more than is called for? She’ll tell herself that
at any rate we’re not the police; and the
mistake will be discovered at the hospital.
Very likely she’ll be in the car, here, two
minutes after we’ve told her to put her hat
on.”
And fifteen minutes later they were in Chris-
tie street.
Number 489 was the typical Italian tenement.
Flight after flight, they climbed its foul and
narrow stairs, till they were on the fourth floor.
Then they felt their way down an unlit narrow
hallway to the “fourth floor back.”
There came out to them a smell of garlic and
minestra, and a clucking gabble of Sicilian.


MADDALINA AND “IL MALOCCHIO’’ 133
“That's the door, over there,” breathed D.
Hope.
“All right,” said the Doctor. “Remember,
too, all you need do is nod your head. After
that, you keep out of it.”
And Virgilio gave the orderly’s peremptory
double knock.
Instantly the gabble fell dumb. And then
in an old crone’s voice came a halting “Che
vuole?—What do you want?”
For answer Virgilio merely drove his heavy
official toe against the door, and shook the knob.
“Open, nom’ de dio, open!”
And it was opened.
They were looking into a middle room, half
bed-, half dirty living-room. And the old wom-
an with two thickset, and very ill-favoured,
gentlemen were all backing furiously to the fur-
ther wall.
Then seeing the hospital uniforms, all three
snarled their relief.
“Nessuno!” they cried. “Nessuno—no one
is seek here. You have meesteck!”
But the Doctor had already pushed on into
the next room. It was another bedroom. And


134 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
like little animals two very dirty children had
jumped to the high bed in a big-eyed, fright-
ened clump.
Laneham went straight on over to them, and,
taking hold of them in turn, he pulled down
their chins between thumb and finger and ex-
amined their throats.
“All well, all well,” the old woman kept
nervously parroting. “Bene, molto bene!”
“Yes, yes.” And then, going on, the Doctor
reached the door that led to the kitchen.
The girl within it must have had her eye at
the keyhole. In an instant, as the door swung
back, she must also have recognised D. Hope.
For, barely had D. Hope recognised her when,
spitting her rage and fury, Maddalina—for she
it was—seized a huge Italian table knife and
sprang forward.
“Look out!” cried the Doctor. And they all
fell back through the door together.
Which, obviously, was exactly what Madda-
lina had reckoned on. For, with another leap,
she had flung herself to the window, had jerked
it open, and was dropping down the rear-court
fire escape.


MADDALINA AND ‘‘IL MALOCCHIO” 135
Next moment, too, Virgilio, hot with battle,
was following her.
And at first the Doctor was for following in
his turn. But the fire escape was slippery with
sleet and ice, and Willings pulled him back
again.
“We can make it from below,” he said,
“through the lower hall.” And he stayed only
to catch D. Hope by the hand. She let him,
and they flew down the stairway side by side.
Once at the bottom, though, he rushed her to
the door.
“Now you just beat it out to the car!” he
ordered her, and waved to the ambulance chauf-
feur.
Then again, and on the run, he turned to fol-
low Laneham.
By then the Doctor was in the yard. And
Maddalina and her pursuer had wholly disap-
peared. But there was no need of asking where.
Almost at the foot of the fire escape there
opened a narrow cellar-way. Already other
tenants from 489 were pouring into it as if into
a hopper. In his turn, too, the Doctor was
plunging after them. And, tripping and stum-


136 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
bling, Willings dropped down after him. He
had just reached the bottom when he felt some
one catching at his coat. He turned and knew,
rather than saw, that D. Hope had stayed with
him after all!
“Lord! And what did you do it for?” he
asked her. “What did you do it for?”
“There’s no more reason why I should stay
behind—than you.”
And there was nothing for it now. Gripping
hands again, once more they started on to-
gether.
So far they were in a long, irregular wood-
house. Here and there a lantern hung. And
endless bundles of limey kindlings were piled
high on either side. But soon they were in the
cellar beyond. And in it, surrounded by bins
of potatoes and crates of beets and cabbages,
Maddalina stood at bay.
It was their first real chance to get a look at
her. And she was handsome enough, with the
lithe and vivid swiftness of a gipsy. But it
was not a moment now when any one would
think of that. When first surprised she had
spat like a cat. And now, as she swayed blaz-


MADDALINA AND “IL MALOCCHIO’’ 137
ingly to and fro, wild-animal gutterings seemed
to choke her throat. She seemed on the point
of throwing down her knife, and striking at
that Garibaldi orderly with her teeth and
claws.
“Via! Via!'” she cried, with grindings of
her teeth: “Keep off! Keep off!”
Yet this, too, was gradually becoming evi-
dent: whatever accomplices she had had at the
Casa Grande, none of them was with her now.
Even the two men who had been in the same
rooms up above did not seem really to know
her. They, and fifty more, had followed fast.
“Che cosa? What is the matter?” they kept
shouting. Apparently they were prepared to
offer help if needed. But in the meantime, with
a sort of sporting spirit they were merely wid-
ening the circle to give her knife-hand room.
Again Virgilio tried to close.
‘‘Let her be!” the Doctor commanded him.
‘‘Let her be!”
“But no! But no!” Being a man, and an
orderly of the Ospitale Garibaldi, Virgilio
could not conceive of that. “She has a mala-
dia!” he harangued the crowd. “The city has


138 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
commanded that we take her to the ambu-
lanza!”
And, feinting, he made a first swift try for
that hand, which held the knife.
He did not get it. And only by dropping
knee-down did he escape it on the come-back.
There was a yell of delight, and other knives
began to show themselves.
“Will you stop, you fool?” the Doctor cried
again. Willings, too, tried to halt him.
But Virgilio’s Sicilian eyes were blazing
now. And he twisted away from them. “I
will get her! The roba—the baggage!”
And, catching up an empty basket, he ran
at her with it.
He used it almost exactly as the Roman re-
tiarius used his entangling net. In half a min-
ute he had caught the blow as he wanted it.
The knife went through, stuck, and amid cries
of anger, Virgilio was about to make his vic-
tory good when some one threw the girl a sec-
ond knife.
It was all that was needed—in every way.
The Doctor jumped forward only in time. He
saved Virgilio. But the blade doubled back


MADDALINA AND “IL MALOCCHIO” 139
and cut the buttons from his sleeve. Next mo-
ment, too, a hairy hand was jerking him away.
And, from behind, some one was jumping upon
Willings. He tried to cover D. Hope with one
arm while with the other he reached for his
automatic. Anything might have followed
then.
But the thing that did follow was the one
thing that no one could have looked for.
The first note of it came from Virgilio, him-
self. He had managed somehow to get posses-
sion of Maddalina’s second knife. And he was
trying to pinion her upon the floor, when with
a sudden yell he scrambled to his feet
again.
“Il malocchio!” he cried, goggling at her.
“Il malocchio !”
And in a moment, with a horrified urge for-
ward, and a wild surging back again, -“Il ma-
locchiol Il malocchio!’’ all the rest of them be-
gan to cry!
What did it mean? Willings and D. Hope
only knew that no longer was any one troubling
them, that the Doctor was pushing through to
Maddalina’s aid, that as she lay there gasping,


140 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
her body had begun to arch, her jaws to set,
and her eyeballs to turn terrifyingly back-
wards. But none of her own people had stopped
to help her. “Nom’ de dio!—Madonna!” they
yelled. And, Virgilio leading, they fought for
the nearest way to the street and daylight.
And the meaning of it all was this: “Il ma-
locchio’’ is Sicilian for “the evil eye.” And,
while any “evil eye” is bad enough, no Sicilian
not prepared for death itself will stay to face
the awful “evil eye” of epilepsy!
Meanwhile the Doctor had continued to give
a little first aid.
“Oh, I don’t know what they’re running
for !” he said jerkily, and a little hysterically.
“But she’s all right. Don’t you worry about
her a little bit. It’ll only take some of the
demon out of her. More than that,—if any-
thing could be better for what I have ahead—!
But, come, we must get her out.”
Already, too, one might have thought that
she had only fainted. And he motioned to
Willings to take her by the shoulders.
The ambulance driver was waiting for them
at the sidewalk. Two minutes more and they


MADDALINA AND “IL MALOCCHIO” 141
had her inside. And in another two minutes
they were on their way uptown.
Virgilio was nowhere in sight. But Laneham
manifested no concern for him. Again he began
to work over the girl. A bit of soiled, much-
folded paper dropped from her dress front. It
was a letter, a love letter. And he ceased his
professional intentions, and used his Italian to
decipher it as they rode. It assured Maddalina
that now, without doubt, the writer’s passion
would endure forever; and that she should have
two of them—whatever they might be—for her-
self, alone.
“All right!” he said. “We’ll file that for
future reference. And, Willings, as soon as we
make Seventy-second street, I want you to help
me upstairs with her, and to the library. I’ve
made my preparations there.”
“Preparations?”
“I’ll explain in a moment.”
The car swung in and stopped. And Wil-
lings could only give him the help he needed
in silence.
On the stairs, too, Laneham spoke quickly to
Jacobs.


142 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“That kettle and the boiling water—and the
envelope and paper!”
And it was only then, indeed, that they real-
ised that the Judge had been waiting for them.
Laneham merely nodded. And as the Judge
rose from the big reading chair, in his turn the
Doctor put Maddalina into it, and began to
prop her up with pillows.
“Laneham,” Bishop demanded, “in the
name of all that's unholy!—what are you going
to do?”
“What am I going to do? Easy, now. And,
Willings, will you 'phone the Commissioner
that he can send for her at ten? What am I
going to do?” His face was lit by a sort of
professional ruthlessness. “I’m going to try
to obtain a little evidence by methods not yet
admissible in police departments and courts of
law: which is why I insisted on going after
Maddalina myself. And her present state could
not be more receptive to the business if I’d
worked and planned to have it so. I’m going to
try the effects of a few minutes of scientific
hypnotism.”


CHAPTER XI
AN EXPERIMENT UPON MADDALINA, AND A
‘‘SCRITTO’’
MEANwHILE Jacobs had nervously brought in
the “preparations”—the kettle and boiling wa-
ter, and the envelope and paper.
The kettle was the little copper kettle which
Laneham had bought that morning, the dupli-
cate of the one in Maddalina’s bathroom. And
with it was a gas tube and ring, which he rap-
idly attached and lit and set up on a pipe-stool
at Maddalina’s knee.
The envelope was practically a replica of the
big blue envelope from which Mrs. Fisher’s
bank-notes had been taken. And the paper
might have been that bill-sized blank paper
which had been substituted for them. To make
the thing complete the Doctor had drawn forth
his wallet and was filling that big envelope with
genuine bank-notes of his own, and gumming it
down on them.
143


144 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
Then, and then only, did he turn to the girl
herself.
With long, broken sighs, with eye-flutterings,
and troubled pickings of the fingers she had be-
gun to come to. He waited for another mo-
ment, as if watching the effects of an anesthetic,
until, plainly, he decided that the moment had
COIne.
“Now!” And, placing himself directly in
front of her, he pressed her hands down into
her lap, began to smooth and palm her tem-
ples, to draw her opening eyes to his, and to
put her under the modern enchanter’s spell.
“One of the minor details not yet explained,”
he whispered to Bishop, “is how, and by whom,
that substitution was made.” He slipped the
big envelope into Maddalina’s hand. “Possi-
bly, as a beginning, she may answer that.”
And, while they looked, she had begun to an-
swer it.
Into her eyes there was coming a kind of
consciousness, a kind of comprehension—and
then memory. And then—it halted their
breathing to see it—with a furtive, twitching
eagerness she was stooping over. She was lay-


EXPERIMENT UPON MADDALINA 145
ing the gummed wrapper of that big envelope
against the now steaming kettle spout. She
was holding it there till it was soft, and open-
ing it, and slipping Laneham’s genuine money
out, and thrusting in the imitation. Then,
swaying with emotion, she sealed it down again.
“Gad!” said the judge.
“It isn’t legal evidence,” Laneham repeated.
“But I think it’s tolerably convincing, and we
know now where Mrs. Fisher’s money went to
first. The stolen bills were fifties. From a love
letter I read a few moments ago, I should say
that Maddalina is still waiting for two of those
fifties that were promised to her. And now
we’ll see if we can take another step.”
He spoke to D. Hope. “Will you do some-
thing to help? Come here and stand in front
of her, for just a minute?”
“Oh, Doctor—I can’t!”
“For just a minute. And it may be the one
thing needed.”
And when she had let him place her, he
turned to Maddalina again.
“Maddalina, Maddalina !”
“Si, si, signore.”


146 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“This is the Signora Fisher. Do you see
her? The Signora Fisher.”
“Si, si, the Signora.”
“And she says she doesn’t trust you any
more—that you are dishonest—a bad girl—and
she must send you away. Do you understand?
You are a bad girl—molto cattiva—very bad.”
From the first instant the girl’s fierce eyes
had begun to change—to narrow and to blaze
again.
“No, no, no, no!”
“You have been spying—trying to find where
she keeps her jewels, her pearls.”
“No, no, no, no!” Again those furious wild-
animal gutterings seemed to choke her throat.
And, more than that, by those thick, burst-
ingly repeated “No, no, no’s” they were all
alike horribly though vaguely reminded of
something.
“Laneham!” asked the Judge, “tell me—
where have we heard just that before?”
“I’ll tell you. It was one of the things which
Mrs. Deremeaux, from across the court, heard
in that “argument.’ The “argument’ took place
between Mrs. Fisher and Maddalina, here. It


EXPERIMENT UPON MADDALINA. 147
was then that Mrs. Fisher last saw Maddalina
before her death. And Jimmy met Mrs. Fisher,
as, white and holding her throat, she came down
from the girl’s room, after it. Well, perhaps
we can now bring out another word or two.”
And once more he went back to the girl.
“Maddalina,” he told her, “I don’t believe
you.”
“Ma, si, sil”
“You are plotting something. I know it.”
“No, no, no, Signore!”
“You will not deny it if I bring in the po-
lice.”
“Ma, si—Si!—Si!”
“Si!—Si!—Si!” – or “See!—See!—See?”
Again, it was merely that, the Italian word for
“yes”—though raucous with fear and rage—
which Mrs. Deremeaux had heard!
In part at least the Doctor had been able
to reproduce that scene. And if any further
confirmation had been needed, a moment later
Maddalina herself was supplying it.
“Take care!” cried Bishop suddenly;
“Daphne!”
For, whatever the actual scene had been be-


148 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
tween Maddalina and her soon-to-be mur-
dered mistress, the virago was now giving them
a horrid picture of the end of it. She had
sprung at D. Hope, sunk her fingers into her
arm, and was making attempt after attempt
to reach her throat and throttle her!
They pulled her off, and thrust the shaking,
gibbering creature back into her chair. But
again—and it made them sick—all were think-
ing of the same thing; upon the death-white
arm of Mrs. Fisher, too, there had been the
marks of fingers.
The Doctor himself was strainedly and ex-
haustedly wiping the perspiration from his
forehead.
“Can we hope for anything else?” asked the
Judge.
“I doubt it. And in any case I’ll have to
take her out of the hypnosis now. She won’t
stand much more. . . . But first, these little
guarantors of peace.”
And he snapped a pair of handcuffs upon
her wrists. -
“Ah-hl–Madre de dio !’” That wakened
her! And it was as if, in her first waking mo-


EXPERIMENT UPON MADDALINA 149
ment, she realised how fully she had been made
to betray herself. For a time all four men
were not too many to hold her in her chair.
Then, falling back spent and flagging, she
would only and ceaselessly deny.
She knew nothing of Mrs. Fisher’s death,
she said. She had not heard of it till next
morning when she had read of it in Il Tele-
grafo. She knew nothing of her jewels, her
pearls, or of any stolen money.
Again the Doctor showed her that big blue
envelope. For an instant she gaped, blenching.
But, next moment, again came her denials. If
money had been taken she had never heard
of it.
What, then, Laneham asked her, was the
meaning of that letter she had been carrying?
In spite of herself, her hand went to her
breast in one jerking catch. Then, as before,
she clenched her hands, and denied and again
denied.
From the street below there came up the
sound of a gong. The Doctor went to the win-
dow. It was a Headquarters' patrol wagon.
“Oh, well,” said Bishop, “let them have her


150 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR?
now. We’ll get no more from her in any case.”
“Possibly not,” said Laneham. “It would
anyway appear so.”
Jacobs came back from the door. “Shall I
tell the officers to come up?” he asked.
“Just a moment,” the Doctor held him.
“It’ll do no harm to let her know, first, that
at any time we can talk to Jimmy.”
And he sent for him.
Before the little butler entered, she had rec-
ognised his step!
“A-i-i—!” She shrieked her recognition.
They had believed her physically spent. But
now, at the sight of Jimmy, such pure beast
fury seethed up in her as she had scarcely
shown before.
“Liar! English dog! Delator’ e traditore!
Spy and traitor!” And next moment, while
she shook her handcuffs together, she was cry-
ing out such things as, clearly, Laneham him-
Self had never looked for.
“Let them ask their questions of him, too,”
she screamed. “Let them ask him, first about
that scritto—that writing—which the Signora
Fisher had had them sign, and that only a few


EXPERIMENT UPON MADDALINA 151
hours before her death! If it was thieves who
killed her—jewel thieves from Italy—let Jim-
my say what it—what that writing meant!
“Let him tell, too, about a certain quar-
relling they had heard! Oh, si, si, si!” she went
on. “He had heard it as well as shel Let him
tell about that, and say if it had had nothing
to do with the killing of the Signora!”
It was coming now, the full flood, one would
say, of all that had been pent up in her de-
nials!
“And let them ask him, too, about the voice
he had heard so often l Let him tell of that!
Many times he had heard it, and so had she.
In that voice was the devil’s work!” The cor-
ners of her mouth were slavered. She seemed
about to have another seizure. “Let him tell
of that—of that—of that!”
And, as all turned to him, clearly and for
all to see on the face of Jimmy was that be-
traying “Zancray look”—the confession in his
case, of evidence held back.
But by now three of the Commissioner’s
men were standing in the door. Maddalina had
been promised to them when they should call


152 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
for her. It was not possible to keep her longer,
even had any one really wanted to.
Furthermore, it was necessary that some one
from 390 should go along with her, if only to
make the called-for and formal report.
“I’ll go,” said the Judge. “It’s only right
I should, if merely because of my official po-
sition.”
Would he be back again? He doubted it,
for he could not know how long he might be
kept. And, five minutes later, Laneham and
Willings and D. Hope were facing Jimmy
alone.
“Well,” asked the Doctor, “how about it,
Jimmy?” And no psychoanalyst was needed
to say that-once more; it was a case of “Zan-
cray.” “You gave us to understand, you know,
that you were telling us everything. And if
you’re not ?”
The little Englishman still stood unspeak-
ing. Perspiration streamed from him, and his
eyes were round with a kind of piteousness.
But he made no answer.
“How about it? Supposing we take the
quarrel first.”


EXPERIMENT UPON MADDALINA 153
“Dr. Laneham, don’t h’ask me, for I carn’t
tell you.”
“Very well. Maybe we can get at it through
the voice. You know, Jimmy, we, too, heard
a voice. And you told us before that you didn’t
hear it.”
“And I didn’t. I didn’t. You were speak-
ing of some 'orrid, fearful voice that you and
Judge Bishop and Mr. Willings 'ere 'eard
when you broke in after the murder. That I
never 'eard. On the day of the murder I "eard
no voice of any kind!”
“Jimmy,”—Willings entered into the cross-
examination. “Jimmy,” he said, “supposing
for the time we leave the voice. There’s still
that third thing—that scritto—the writing.
We all want to keep our belief in you. Are
you going to keep back everything about that,
tOO?’”
“No, Mr. Willings,”—it burst out of him.
“Not when you put it so, I won’t. And that
scritto—you’ll know anyways why I didn’t
speak of it before. For, gentlemen, that scritto
—that writing was a will, that’s what it was !”
“A Will?”


CHAPTER XII
A REVIEW, AND A VISIT FROM McGLOYNE
WHEN the Judge returned, it was after eleven.
But had it been hours later it would still have
been not less out of the question for any of
them to think of sleeping. And Bishop seemed
to take it for granted that it was.
“Well, Laney,” he said, “first it was Jimmy
—though we didn’t seem to get all of him at
once—and now it has been Maddalina. Who is
it to be next? After all, will it be old
Throaty?”
“Never,” Laneham answered without even
raising his voice. “Not till everything else is
exhausted.”
“But you can’t quite put him out of your
mind, I take it?”
“I have the ordinary human weaknesses.
But I can make up my mind not to yield to
them.”
157


A REVIEW 159
oretically, to be solved. But that does not say
that the mystery is not a highly complicated
one. We’ve had proof enough that it is! And,
step by step, we’re at least feeling our way
through the outer circles of the labyrinth.”
“You are. That’s evident.”
“Two days ago we knew nothing. Now we
know what, for most crimes, would be enough
to offer us their full solution. But leave that
aside. In as few words as possible I’ll do my
reviewing.”
He clipped a cigar.
“First, the locating of Jimmy. And that
was ridiculously simple. There was nothing
to do but follow the most rudimentary logic.
For one thing, at the very beginning I could
see that he was innocent.”
“I always believed he was,” cried D. Hope.
“Yes, but there was evidence for it, and it
was this: He had stayed to give Willings that
rifled money letter. He gave it to him, and
then remained there for another half hour,
when there was every probability that Willings
would open that letter and discover that the
money had been stolen, at once. Is there any


160 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
criminal, or the accomplice of criminals who
would take a chance like that?
“Jimmy was innocent. Yet he had run
away! Why? No matter. The question was,
where would he go to? If he had been guilty,
and had had his share of those stolen fifty-dol-
lar bills, the question would have been a dif-
ferent one. As it was, the one piece of written
paper—that duplicate deposit slip—that he left
behind him, supplied a first finger-post.
“It said that nearly a month before he had
deposited $40, presumably his wages or his
wages minus the amount of ready cash he
would naturally keep out to carry him along
till next pay day. Next pay day—his last being
nearly a month before. How much, then, would
he likely have left on that, the day of the mur-
der? Almost nothing, if there is anything in
probability. We have then, Jimmy fleeing, in-
ferentially without money, and without any
warning or preparation, as the litter of clothes
in his room made plain. Also he had a prison
record, and must have resolved to take no
chances with the police. Very well, where
would he be fleeing to? In mere everyday hu-


A REVIEW 161
man nature to friendship—to some one who
would give him haven and protection, perhaps
the wherewithal to flee further. But how find
the names of any of his friends?
“In a sense it was chance that told me—
but only in so much as chance gave me the an-
swer very quickly. I could, of course, have
used the Commissioner’s influence to get me ac-
cess to the police records. But they were not
needed. In Mrs. Fisher’s library, you may re-
member, two Central-Office men had been set
to go through her papers. And at the start
they had laid aside the thing that was to tell
everything—one of those modern, up-to-date
household card indexes. These Central-Office
men might look for dark secrets in the depths
of Mrs. Fisher’s personal correspondence. But
was there not every likelihood that the facts
about Mr. James H. Higham, otherwise Jim-
my, would simply be waiting for any one to
find, in Drawer Three, Letter H?
“They were there. He had come to Mrs.
Fisher from Mrs. Dillingham of the Sorrento.
In Mrs. Dillingham’s letter of recommendation
she said that she was letting him go only be-


162 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
cause financial reasons compelled her to; that
she had never had a better servant; and that
if ever he needed a friend she had made him
promise that he would come to her the first.
Well, he did. Since then, I may say that our
Central-Office friends have arrived at Drawer
Three, Letter H. They have also been to Mrs.
Dillingham. But—one more case of that men-
tal blind spot in the psychology of the regula-
tion detective—the thing which refuses to look
for the solution of mysteries in something
squarely before the eyes—I had been one day
ahead.”
He walked the length of the library, and back
again.
“Now come to Maddalina, and the writing
on her wall. Again it was no case of any sec-
ond-sight necromancy on my part. As I’ve told
Willings already, the thing I used there was
a mere application of racial psychoanalysis.
One of the facts recently brought out by God-
dard of Yale is that no Italian, or any other
Southern European with little education, can
remember our five- and six-number American
addresses. ‘654 South River street,”—“1106


A REVIEW 163
Twelfth street,” “489 Christie street’—those
were the addresses of Maddalina’s friends.
They are typical addresses—and they frighten
the Angelo’s and the Esposito’s to death. Re-
member them? They won’t even trust them to
paper, for the paper might get lost or burnt.
They write them on their walls. Go down to
any four-room flat in Little Italy, and you’ll find
such an address-book somewhere. According-
ly, there was every probability that Madda-
lina would have one. Only, because she did
not appear to be the sort of young lady to
wish to advertise her particular friends, her
address-book would probably be kept some-
where where it would attract the least possible
attention. Willings and D. Hope found it in
the back of her clothes-closet. She had made
an attempt to erase the said memoranda, but,
fortunately, the softness of the wood prevented
that. And so we arrived at Christie street, and
Maddalina.
“Third, there was the matter of the first at-
tempt to steal Mrs. Fisher’s pearls. It was suf-
ficiently evident that it was not successful. It
was also sufficiently evident that the gentleman


164 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
—or spirit if you like—that made it had some
method of entering the Fisher apartment pecul-
iarly his own. How find that means of access?
No tapping of walls seemed to offer anything.
Very well, why not persuade him to give us
another chance by encouraging him to come
back again? What bait could we offer? One,
at least—the pearls themselves. If he had
failed to get them the first time, obviously he
knew where they were. Under the Commis-
sioner’s sanction I let the newspapers say that
we didn’t know where they were, which at the
time was true. ‘Friend Yegg,” as Mr. Grady
of the Electric Protection Company would call
him, obviously reads the papers. Obviously,
too, he believed he had a way of getting back
into those Fisher rooms which no amount of
regular patrol work would interfere with. Sup-
posing, he asked himself, he made another at-
tempt? And that same night he made it, and
left his knife. If we didn’t get him then, that
is at least not the fault of 390 West Seventy-
second street. Maybe if he comes back
again—”
“Comes back again?” the Judge demanded.


A REVIEW 165
“Why not, Bishy? He still hopes for those
pearls. And he still has what he believes is
a safe and open door. Well, maybe when next
he tries it—” He broke off, and looked at
the two young people. “But I think for the
present we can leave what is to come. We’ve
had enough, too, for this one night. Thank the
Lord it’s ended!”
Ended! Even while he spoke, the street bell
was ringing again. And a minute later the
downstairs man came up to say that Professor
Fisher, with Inspector McGloyne and two po-
licemen were in the hall.
What did Professor Fisher and the Inspec-
tor want? That downstairs man couldn’t right-
ly understand.
But McGloyne had heard the question from
below. And with his foot already on the stairs,
he himself was answering it.
“I’ll tell you what I want! I want to know
right here an” now who’s runnin’ the Depart-
ment! I want to get to the bottom of that
Maddalina steal! An’ while I’m here, by-y
G—, I’m just going to have your Jimmy but-
ler lad!”


166 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
Ended? That night ended? They were to
feel afterwards that, at that point, it had only
begun. And with the hours to follow, the mys-
tery of those bolted doors in the Casa Grande
was to enter upon a chapter wholly new.


CHAPTER XIII
TEIE CONWINCING OF INSPECTOR MCGLOYNE
FIRST,-and at the time it seemed the only
thing—how were they to answer that demand
for Jimmy?
It had come suddenly. It was from a clear
sky. And no less immediately must it be
met.
Even at that minute’s delay McGloyne had
begun to mount to them.
“I’m makin’ no threats. I don’t want to say
nothin’ to be took back afterwards. But by the
Lord, unless my job’s a joke—”
The Doctor walked out to the landing.
D. Hope, however, was the first to speak.
“You’ll never, Doctor?” she cried, “you’ll
never give him up? You won’t so much as
think Of it?”
And for a moment he turned back. “At any
rate,” he said, “there’ll be some questions to
167


168 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
answer first. . . . Jacobs, you might call Jim-
my. . . . And, Inspector, will you just come up,
and bring Professor Fisher with you.”
They came up. The big detective had evi-
dently come from the Bureau in a single raging
burst of speed. And his lips, his fingers, his
very body still trembled with that insult suf-
fered by the man who finds, or believes he finds,
that he is no longer held to be fit to do his work.
For all his hard-shell brutality, too, one could
not but feel in him a sort of honesty and sense
of honour.
“Dr. Laneham,” he said, “I don’t know what
the Professor here has got to say to you. He
was in the Bureau to-night when we heard of
Maddalina. An’ if he feels like I do—”
“I haf this to say,” broke in Fisher, “and
only this. If you haf Jimmy here you shall
gif him up and that at once!”
At that moment Jimmy himself came down to
them. He could never have gone to bed.
“Professor!” he cried. “In the name o’
Gord! You don’t believe it was me that done
it? You can’t You couldn’t!”
“You say you dit not. But it may be the po-


CONWINCING OF MCGLOYNE 169
lice know more! That iss he, Inspector, that iss
he 1”
The man was absolutely hard. On this, the
first day after Mrs. Fisher’s funeral, he was no
longer acting like a maniac. But he would
have been more lovable if he had been.
McGloyne himself now gave no heed to him.
“It’s got to come to a show-down,” he said,
“an” nothin’ more to it! Whether the Com-
missioner is with you or whether he ain’t, the
kind of stuff that’s been put on me to-night,
when I’m supposed to be coverin’ the job as
detective head—”
Again in his passion, he could not go on.
“I know,” said Laneham, “I know. But, In-
spector, will you let me ask you just one thing.
If you’re covering this job as it ought to be
covered, how was it possible, two nights ago,
for the thief or murderer to come back again?”
“How was it possible? How was it possi-
ble?” The veins on McGloyne's big neck
swelled and knotted. “Because there wasn’t
any come-back, see, there wasn’t any l’’
“I have only the ‘E. P.” evidence for it.”
“Yes, by cripes, that’s all you’ve got! A


170 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
fake alarm an’ a planted knife! Any way that
they can find to do me dirt! It’s about in the
same class as your ghost voice an’ spirit rap-
pin’s A come-back! In all my twenty years
I’ve never had one, an’ I never will have, an’
any one knowin’ only how I’ve placed my boys
up there at the Casa Grande will know that,
by the Livin', there couldn’t 'a' been 1”
“I can understand your believing that there
Wasn't.”
“I believe it, an’ I know it!” He struck his
hand down upon the table—“an’ if you want
to go up there right now I’ll prove it to you!”
“And what of Jimmy? What of him?”
“Yess, yess,” cried Fisher. “What of
him?”
“I’ll tell you what about Jimmy. If you or
any man can show me where I been leavin’
holes, by G— you can keep Jimmy, see, you
can keep him!”
The turn came as quickly as that. Fisher
began at once to mouth his protests. And to
quiet him it was agreed that McGloyne’s two
patrolmen should be left in charge. D. Hope
also stayed with Jimmy.


CONVINCING OF MCGLOYNE 171
Willings for his part turned back with Lane-
ham to get his great-coat.
“Doctor,” he said, worryingly, “we know
we’re right. But how are you going to prove
it?”
“I think the condition of those wall-safe bat-
tery contacts and the inside door should be
enough. If not, then there’ll be something
else.” He would say no more.
And presently they were all on their way
together in McGloyne’s low green police car.
As they neared the corner of the Casa
Grande block, the Inspector turned around.
“To show you if I’m coverin’ this job,” he
said, “I’ll begin right here, outside.”
And dropping from the machine he lightly
whistled.
Immediately a big figure, clearly a plain-
clothesman, stepped out from the shelter of a
doorway.
McGloyne waved him back again.
“That’s number one. An I got his fellow
up above.”
He spoke to the driver, and standing on the
running-board, had himself carried on to the


172 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
great apartment house’s southern service en-
trance.
“Here’s a second place where a hole might
be.”
This time he tapped on the high iron grill-
work gate.
And again a sentry showed himself at onco.
“Same peg-post work at the north side,” he
said, “an’ I’d like to see what your friend
Grady could put again’ that!”
“How about the Casa Reale?” Laneham
asked.
“There ain’t any connection between the two
houses. You can’t even get from a Casa
Grande to a Casa Reale winda’. If you could,
I’d have things screwed down there, as well.
Now we’ll go inside.”
And he opened the door for them, and pushed
on through to the big main entrance hall.
Yet even in the rotunda he stopped again,
to point with his blunted thumb to the little
room behind the telephone desk.
“An’ I’ve got another plainclothes right in
there !”
Then he turned back to an elevator.


CONWINCING OF MCGLOYNE 173
The house was already asleep. Those upper
floors were as quiet as they might have been
at two in the morning. And though he aban-
doned little of his emphasis, McGloyne him-
self dropped his voice as he led the way down
that soft, grey-padded corridor.
“They tell me Grady said he could 'a' walked
in on his hands. Well, things is exactly now
as they was a-Thursday night—unless you
want to put me down a liar—an’ you’ll see for
yourselves how far your hands would take you!
Big as it is, this here apartment has just two
outside doors, an’ only two. There’s one.”
He turned the corner, and a sentry stepped out
to meet them. “What’s more it’s locked.” He
showed them that it was. “And here—”
he turned another corner,—“here’s the other.”
At it one more patrolman stood on guard.
“Grady an” his hands! An’ now come
in.”
He opened. The deep-piled hall “runner”
of the inside corridor took their foot-falls muf-
flingly. And, pulling out the clicking key, the
big Inspector had turned towards the little in-
ner stair—when he stopped.


174 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
He stopped, and they all stopped. And once
more Willings at least had that sense of his
heart stopping. From above them, and from
the rooms that had been Mrs. Fisher’s, there
had come what might have been the echo of
that clicking key.
But it was not an echo. They all of them
knew it was not. And while they stood there
it came again.
“Well, what the—” and in a moment Mc-
Gloyne’s eyes were on the Doctor. But it need-
ed no second look to see that Laneham knew
as little as he did himself.
And it was the click of door metal. For,
next moment, once more a hand was knocking!
“What the—” The big man whispered it.
The patrolman from the door moved toward
him galvanically as if asking him for orders.
But he only lifted his hand unevenly to hold
him dumb.
Laneham was looking at Fisher. But he,
clearly, had nothing to tell them.
“What iss it?” His voice was dry with
fear. “Ah, Gott, what iss it?”
As if the thing were drawing nearer to give


CONWINCING OF MCGLOYNE 175
them its answer itself, the knocking came a sec-
ond time.
Beyond any question, too, it was that same
knocking they had heard in the hour of the mur-
der. It came from the same bony hand, if
hand it was. And once more—there could be
no doubting it—those doors in Mrs. Fisher’s
rooms were opening to it.
Scarcely an hour before, Willings had been
telling himself that if ever again he should
experience anything of the sort, he would try
better to note and analyse what it was he felt
and thought he heard. But now—! Once
more he could only stiffen himself there, blood-
chilled, his very pulses listening.
Beside him the patrolman kept crossing him-
self and again crossing himself.
Then, as before, it came a third time. And
with that third knocking came the voice.
“My God!” it moaned, slowly and horribly,
as from the damned: “My God! Oh, my
GOd!”
None stirred. None could stir, till the last
sighing echo of it had died away. Now Mc-
Gloyne, too, was crossing himself. Nor could


176 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
any one have believed that so much colour could
have left that purple jowl.
“You’ve got me, Doctor,” he said huskily.
“But I guess you’d better look first to the
Professor there.”
Fisher was holding to the jamb of the cor-
ridor door. Without it, he plainly would have
fallen.
“I haf an aneurism—my heart iss bad,” he
said thickly. “Let me get oudt.”
Laneham took him by one arm, and McGloyne
lifted him by the other.
“You ain’t ever heard it before, Professor?”
he asked.
“No, no! No, neffer!” Again he had no
need to say it. “Let me get oudt. Help me
Oudt.”
They helped him into the big Jacobean re-
ception room, turned on the lights and left him
with the patrolman who had been at the other
door.
Then they returned to the white-faced officer
who had been with them.
“Call up Hines from below,” McGloyne com-
manded, “an’ we’ll go through. I’ll say now


CONWINCING OF MCGLOYNE 177
there’ll be nothin’ for eyes to see or hands to
touch. But it’s in the line o’ duty an’ we’ll
make the inspection.”
They mounted the little stair. Again, even
as when Laneham and the Judge had tried to
break in after the murder itself, all three cor-
ridor doors to that private suite were locked.
Again, when they had thrown on the inside
lights, they could see at a first glance that those
little rooms were empty.
McGloyne crossed to the windows. “We left
them locked,” he said, “an’ they’re all locked
now.”
“Can you tell me,” Laneham asked, “what
walls abut on other rooms or apartments?”
“What walls abut? Doctor, to-morrah I’ll
see you get them floor plans—or as soon as
we can get out duplicates. But so far as that
goes, I can tell you now. There’s only that lit-
tle writin’ place at the end there, an’—God
save the mark, the swimmin” pool itself.”
“Well, we’ll look again at them.”
They looked at the little writing-room first.
Its windows, like the others, were still locked.
But they were only the narrowest lancets; not


CONWINCING OF MCGLOYNE 179
“There’s this to learn yet,” said Willings,—
“if there was an ‘E. P. alarm.”
“I’ll call them up,” said McGloyne, at once,
‘‘an” ask.”
A telephone stood beside him, and he made
the call. “I know there ain’t been, though,”
he said. “It was no wall safe that thing was
lookin’ for to-night!”
And a minute later the E. P. operator an-
swered. There had been no alarm.
“That’s the way it was goin’,” went on the
big Inspector, and he pointed towards the
pool.
One of the patrolmen had already stepped
in upon the white-tiled floor, and had switched
on the big, bell-like lighting dome. As they
followed him, the same tranquil radiance shone
down upon marble and tiles and water as had
lit their first search, and revealed the horrors
of the murder itself. There was the same dead-
ly stillness, too.
Once more they examined walls and win-
dows, the bank of plants, now beginning to
wither, the very pool itself.
They found nothing. If any one, or any-


CONWINCING OF MCGLOYNE 181
He was pointing to the dressing-table, and
to something which, had it not been so direct-
ly under their eyes, they must all have seen
on their first entrance.
Upon a tiny lace handkerchief, spotted with
dried blood, and marked “G. F.”—Mrs. Fish-
er’s initials—lay a bit of funeral palm, and a
freshly cut white rose.


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 183
and pearls. Again their listening ears had
heard those dreadful rappings, those soul-mov-
ing cries to the Creator. Last of all, man or
thing, it had left behind that rose and palm
and tiny blood-flecked handkerchief.
A transfixing, wordless horrible message!
And from whom? Was the hand that had left
it the same that had struck Mrs. Fisher down?
And, if so, why should it not have been the same
hand, too, that had hurled that murderous
knife? The hand that had locked the doors
against their entrance on the murder day?
Of all the silent group it was McGloyne
himself who now seemed the most over-
whelmed.
“Boys,” he said, “you’ll take those things
to Headquarters, an’ have them marked as ex-
hibits. But don’t ask me to touch them. An’
no more newspaper talk, either, till all this is
cleared up some way.” He turned away with
Laneham. “But that’ll be never. That’ll be
never. Doctor, what opened them doors will
open them again, an’ keep on openin’ them, if
we had them chained an’ barred !”
All his Irish memories from an island storied


184 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
and haunted with banshees and leprechauns
seemed to breathe and quiver through him.
“But come,” and he pulled himself to-
gether. “We’ll get the Professor away again.
He won’t start till some of us start with him.
An’ we’d best see him all the way down an’ to
the door.”
Fisher was still half crouched, half hanging
over the side of one of the great oak chairs in
the reception room.
“You might better be gettin’ back to your
hotel, Professor,” McGloyne told him bluntly.
And he took him by the arm.
They all walked together toward the eleva-
tors. And it was then, in the Doctor’s first
words since the discovery of the rose and palm
and bloody handkerchief, that, for Willings,
that night’s next chapter had its commence-
ment.
“Inspector,” Laneham asked, “can you tell
me this: How was it that the Casa Grande
servants were allowed to enter the apartment
after the crime and do their regular cleaning
WOrk?”
“What—? What’s that?” The nerves of


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 185
the big man seemed to jump. It wasn’t merely
that the question was a startling one. It seemed
to say, too, that Laneham had already put out
of his mind all they had just come through.
“I—I don’t know as I get you?”
The Doctor repeated. “Or at any rate,” he
said, “it’s evident that cleaners were allowed
to work in the rooms of the Professor,
here.”
“Nothin’ to it!” answered McGloyne at once.
“No, no, you’ve got that wrong.”
“No, I’m right. And they took their clean-
ings with them.”
No elevator was up, and they stood there
waiting for one.
“The hell they did! An’ you mean that they
took away somethin’ that might count?”
“If nothing else, they took some ashes—from
the fireplace in Professor Fisher’s study.”
McGloyne turned to Fisher himself. “How
about it, Professor? Was it while you was
in?”
Apparently Fisher had not heard them. He
was holding, and supporting himself by the
metal work of the elevator shaft, even as, a


186 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
few minutes before, he had been holding to the
door jamb at the threshold of Mrs. Fisher’s
haunted rooms.
Laneham raised his voice. “It appeared to
be the ashes of a burned magazine—probably
a German one, because I could make out the
word ‘mund,’ the German word for “world,” in
big letters on what seemed to have been the
back of it.”
Willings was ready to believe that he had
not heard aright. What the Doctor was now
speaking of freely—and before Fisher—he had
said, only a few hours before, might be at the
very heart of their mystery.
But the big Inspector for his part seemed
merely to be reassured. “Well,” he said, “a
little ashes—it wouldn’t be so much, would it,
Professor?”
And turning he dropped his hand upon Fish-
er’s shoulder.
“What iss?” Fisher started, with a jerk of
nerves that was like an explosion. “What iss
it?” And when McGloyne repeated,—
“Ashes?” he cried angrily. “I know nothing
of ashes. If, too, anybody hass been in my


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 187
rooms, it iss your men, Inspector, who should
know it.”
But an elevator was stopping. Stepping into
it, they started down.
And as they started down, the Doctor began
to speak again.
“This, too. How was it that these elevator
men were able to make it appear that they
could have seen Mr. Willings as he went out,
just after the murder, when, as a matter of
fact, none of them was in the lower hall at
all, and at least two were looking out from
the scuttle of the roof?”
Again Willings had that feeling of not hav-
ing heard aright. Had the Doctor suddenly
lost his senses? But he had made the speech,
made it aloud. And that being so, in this pres-
ent case, there was only one inference, that
he had made it deliberately and for the benefit
of the youth beside them at the levers.
And, in point of fact, that young West In-
dian was already offering the best proof that
Something in the speech had gone home. On
the instant his colour had sickened to a sort of
café-au-lait. His hand slipped from the safety


188 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
clutch, to get back to it only when they were
bounding upward again. Finally, when the boy
had at last got them down, his hand fumbled
again and again before he could get the door
open. Then, once free of them, he waited for
neither passengers nor starter’s call. In the
same sick panic, he clashed the door to, and
ran up empty.
Fisher alone seemed to have noticed nothing.
He was groping heavily at the front of his
waistcoat.
“I haf left my glasses behind,” he said, “and
I must go up again.”
McGloyne paid no attention to him. As the
Professor entered a second car, he, McGloyne,
turned back to the Doctor. And, despite every-
thing the big man had been through in those
rooms above, now filling his whole mind and
heart there was, plainly, only one mixture of
emotions—wonder—exasperation—inability to
believe! All the old detective in him seemed to
wish to cry aloud.
“Doctor!” he cried. “Say—! That ashes
an’ elevator boy an’ roof scuttle stuff—what’s
it all about?”


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 189
He pushed him ahead of him into the little
alcove room behind the telephone desk, and
turned out the big plainclothesman there on
post, and closed the door. Then and then only
was he able to speak again.
“Now, tell me about it, Doc,” he whispered.
“Tell me. An’, my Gawd, to begin on it
in the car! Have you gone dead off your
Inut?”
Laneham merely shook his head. “No. I
wanted that lad to hear.”
“Well, cripes, he sure did! He got it, all
right! An’ now, what's the answer?”
“For the present I'm afraid there isn’t
any.”
‘‘There What?’”
“I’m not half sure of what I know myself.”
“Then, Lord, why did you need to go tip-
pin’ the little squirt your hand like that?”
Again Laneham would not answer. “I’m
sorry,” he said. “But I shan’t be able to tell
even Willings, here.”
“Say!—but look here—look here—” Ob-
viously the big detective was attempting to
speak with self-restraint—“you know, don’t


190 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
you, that them damn’ Jamaica chocolates are
just goin’ to run for it now?”
“I don’t think so. But if you want, you can
put a spotter on them.”
“Put a spotter on them! Say, listen. Listen
to me. You tell me you ain’t got all the infor-
mation yet you want yourself. Let me take
hold of them an’ put 'em through down at
Headquarters for about three hours!”
“No,” and the Doctor spread his hands—
“that’s exactly what I don’t want. It'd lose
us everything.”
He opened the door and looked out.
“Don’t think any more about that, to-night,”
he said. “For that matter, I’m going home,
too, now, almost right away. But I’d like, first,
to take a little look about upstairs.”
He let Willings and McGloyne go with him.
It was another elevator man who took them up.
Nothing more was said before him. And Lane-
ham himself did not speak again till they stood
in the Fisher inner hall. Then he explained
that he only wished to “dig about a little on
the floors above and below.”
“I’d like to get the stair and elevator con-


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 191
nections clearer in my mind,” he said. “There
seems to be some irregularity on the tenth, at
any rate.”
He insisted, too, on being allowed to go alone.
What was there that could harm him?
In the modern skyscraper apartment house,
one common stairway is called for under the
law. But it is not to be confused with the lit-
tle private flights of stairs which, inside, con-
nect the first and second floors of every big
“duplex” two-story apartment. In a bare, fire-
proof “wall” of its own, this necessary, legal
stairway mounts from floor to floor beside the
elevator shaft. Its smoke-tight doors give it
access to every floor. But it is only an emer-
gency exit. And save by the house service, it
is practically never used.
But the Doctor used it now. And he de-
scended first to the floor below.
Under the law a stair-well light should have
been burning on every landing. And, far be-
neath him in that narrow shaft one was glim-
mering, even as another glimmered far above.
But about him all was shadow.
He found the door to the eighth floor corri-


192 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
dor, opened it, and looked out. On the other
side an elevator shot smoothly up, with its lu-
bricated tick-a-lick. But whatever he looked
for, obviously he did not find it there. He shut
the door, turned back, and started to mount
again.
About him on all sides there was almost the
silence of those spectral Fisher rooms them-
selves. His nerves were still sufficiently shaken
to make him believe, at times, that the echo of
his footsteps on the slaty treads was the sound
of other footsteps following him. He would
not have owned to it, but he was glad enough
when at the tenth floor he could feel for the
door and once more let himself out into the
good brightly lit hallway.
There, too, he found the irregularity of cor-
ridor arrangement that he had been looking
for. The very fact of the Fisher apartment
being “duplex”—that is, having rooms on two
floors—and the fact that it had access to the
elevators only on the ninth floor, left this end
of that tenth-floor corridor a blind, or “dead”
hallway. Two elevators opened upon it. But
they could have nothing to stop for. The in-


The whole weight of that unknown, silent, furious
attacker fell upon him and heaved him outward





AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 193
dicators had been removed from the grill work,
and, indeed, so little attention had of late been
given to that unused cul-de-sac by the Casa
Grande management that a section of wired
glass which had been broken out of one of the
elevator doors had been left hanging, unmend-
ed, where it was.
The hole allowed of Laneham’s putting his
hand through and opening the gate. And not
knowing himself what he expected to find, lean-
ing far over the shaft, he looked down. Noth-
ing to be learned there, though a descending
car stopped as if to observe him wonderingly,
stopped again on the floor below, and then
dropped on to the bottom. Raising his head,
he now looked upward.
Merely from the light of the storm-chased
moon a thin, flickering line showed the posi-
tion of the roof scuttle. It was this elevator,
then—
From behind came the sound of a swiftly
opened door. With a snap of the switch but-
ton the little hallway was in surging darkness.
And, through it, while he, Laneham, still strug-
gled to regain his balance, came a rush of leap-


194 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
ing feet. A clutching hand spread itself upon
his mouth. A second broke the grip of his own
left hand upon the upright of the shaft. And
then the whole weight of that unknown, silent,
furious attacker fell upon him and heaved him
outward.
He had no time to turn, to resist, to catch
himself. He threw his free hand back. It
grasped clothing of some sort, which instantly
was torn away again. Then his fingers struck
the other upright, tried to hold to it, slipped
down, slipped more, and slipped again, as his
feet plunged vainly and in that fearful void,
fought desperately to find a holding place.
Through it all, too, his ears caught a kind of
panting, crying laugh. He heard that stair-
way door close again. He even heard an un-
known hand deftly putting the inside latch upon
it. . . .
The sharp metal was now cutting him to the
finger joints. His body seemed to have a
weight of tons. His wrist was twisting off.
Yet, even so, for another moment he held, while
once more he wrenched himself lurchingly up-
ward. And at that last moment his left foot


CHAPTER XV
A FACE IN A LANDAULET
HE found Willings in the Fisher outer hall.
And, still gasping, he told him all that it was
necessary to tell.
“But, gad, Doctor,” gasped Willings in his
turn, “gad, you—you invited it, you know—
talking like that before those lads themselves!”
“Perhaps I did.”
“Have you seen McGloyne yet? And are you
going to have him grab them all?”
“I haven’t seen him—and I don’t intend
to—” by then he was rapidly being overtaken
by the weakness of the full physical reaction
—“and I’ve no intention of having him gra
any of them.” -
“What? Look here,—but, of course, if you
still want to keep this part of it from me 9 3
“I’ll have to, son, for a while at any rate.”
“All right. But at least why did you want
that elevator thug to know you knew?”
196


198 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“And you’re not going to make an arrest?”
Her indignation and her complete inability to
understand surged up like Willings’.
But her protests were of no more avail than
his. And, “Well,” she said, giving up at last,
“at any rate we know we’ve gone another step.
First it was Jimmy, then it was Maddalina,
and now it’s those elevator beasts!”
“It’s only a matter,” added Willings, “of
knowing where the step will lead us to.”
“It will probably lead nowhere,” said the
Doctor. “And I doubt very much if it is the
next step.”
It was not? When the first hint to that
young Jamaican that he was suspected had
brought that murderous response!
“Then if it isn’t, in the Lord’s name,” de-
manded Willings, “what will the next step
be?”
“I don’t know yet myself. But we’ll know
it when we make it,” was all that Laneham an-
Swered. A speech that he himself was later
to remember.
It was the Doctor, too, who proposed the
thing that was to bring the night's record to


A FACE IN A LANDAULET 199
the full. Though it was now after midnight,
sleep was still out of the question. And, “Sup-
posing I call up Collett and a car,” he sug-
gested, “and we go out, as we’ve done before,
for a little freshening night air?”
They went gladly, and they took the limou-
sine. Though not an open car, with its win-
dows down it was almost the same thing. And
it gave them full freedom to talk without their
chauffeur’s overhearing them. In a few min-
utes they were speeding to the Park.
They talked very little. It was enough just
to sit quietly and try to forget things. The
wind was again snow-laden. And as it washed
their temples gust on gust, it seemed gradually
to carry away all the obsessions of the day
upon its cooling streams. They went north
around the reservoir, skirted the lake and the
ponds and the new plantations, and came back
down the east drive to the Plaza gate. They
would sleep now. The Doctor’s prescription
had been good. And, turning west along Fifty-
ninth street, they started homeward.
They had reached the Circle when they found
themselves stalled in a crush of theatre supper


200 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR%
traffic. There was the usual starting-and-stop-
ping tangle of other limousines and taxis and
landaulets. D. Hope was looking out of one
window, and Willings out of the other. But
Willings at least was hardly conscious of look-
ing at anything in particular, until suddenly
his eyes were halted. They had fallen upon
the face of a young man in the last lan-
daulet to draw alongside him. His first thought
was that he had seen that young man some-
where before, his next that in any case he would
remember his face now for a long time to
COIne.
It was a fine face, a good face, a face pale
and aquiline and slenderly intellectual. But
in every feature there was a haggardness, and
in the eyes a seared hollowness which sent
Willings’ hand to the Doctor’s knee—to draw
his attention to him, too.
Just at that moment, however, the landaulet
drew ahead again.
“What was it?” Laneham asked.
“Oh, nothing. Only a poor devil that I guess
has had his smash, all right.”
“In the grey car?”


A FACE IN A LANDAULET 201
“Yes, I was thinking he'd make a case for
you.”
And then, next moment, their own car came
abreast again.
“Why,” the Doctor whispered, “it’s Glas-
bury.”
“Glasbury?”
“The playwright, one of the tenants who
moved out of the Casa Reale. Don’t you re-
member my ‘law of dispersal’? Lord, he has
had his smash, no doubt of that!”
Meanwhile D. Hope was still gazing quietly
from the other window. And both had re-
solved tacitly not to trouble her, when some-
thing in their very silence stirred her atten-
tion. And she, too, turned and looked.
Next moment Willings and the Doctor were
looking, startledly, at each other.
They had seen, first, that Glasbury was
known to her. She recognised him. And, as
she did, her face seemed to fill and grey
with premonition. The landaulet moved on
again.
And then—“Who—who is it?” she asked,
her voice barely audible.


202 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
“Who is it?” repeated Laneham. “Why,
but D. Hope,—you knew him!”
“I—I don’t know his name.” That grey
fear upon her face every moment grew. “And
—and he didn’t look like that before.”
Again the two men could only stare at each
other bewilderedly.
“What—what is his name?” asked D. Hope.
There was a dry, nervous catch in her
voice.
“It’s Glasbury, the playwright,” Laneham
answered. “And until two days ago he was
living at the Casa Reale, the Casa Grande an-
nex. You didn’t know that?”
“No.” Her lips had fallen apart, and she
appeared to be unable to bring them together
again. “But I know it can’t matter—can’t
have any connection with anything, no matter
where he lived.”
Once more both men sat wordless.
“D. Hope,” said the Doctor at last. “Tell
us—we don’t understand. You mean that
there’s no connection whatever between your
knowing him—and—and poor Mrs. Fisher?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that. I meant no connec-


204 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
were frozenly parted. His cheeks were drawn.
And his eyes were wide with newly encount-
ered, or newly remembered horror. Horror,
too, to abide with him both in the light of day
and in the nightmare of dreams!
“Willings,” said the Doctor quietly, “will
you take the first taxi, and go home with D.
Hope. I must keep track of Glasbury now, till I
learn at least where he is going to-night. But I
hope I shan’t be long.”
And, a few minutes later, the Doctor was
following the grey landaulet alone.
It took him to the St. Hilaire, one of the
small bachelor-apartment hotels off Longacre
Square. And, when Glasbury had had time to
take his elevator, Laneham went on to the desk.
He spoke to the night clerk.
“I want to leave Mr. Glasbury a note.”
“He’s just come in. You can telephone.”
“No, a note will do.” And picking up a card
and envelope, he was stepping aside to write
it when the clerk spoke again.
“Oh, I say, maybe this is meant for you. I
remember him saying some one was to come
in.” And he slid a letter across the glass.


A FACE IN A LANDAULET 205
It was addressed to a Courtney Jones, “to
be called for.” But the name was of no ac-
count. It mattered neither then nor later. It
was the writing which, from the first instant,
held the Doctor’s eyes. If six words could of-
fer any proof, he had that night, when little
expecting to himself, taken his third step. For
the writing on that envelope was, line for line,
the writing of the “murder note.”


CHAPTER XVI
GLASBURY, THE LITTLE BROWN STUDY, AND AN
INTERLUDE
MEAN whDLE D. Hope and Owly Willings were
on their way back to 390.
A big fire still blazed in the library, and a
smaller one in the little study at the end of the
passage behind it. Without really knowing
what they did, for their thoughts were on noth-
ing around them, they went on into the brown
little room, and threw their out-of-door things
upon the lounge.
D. Hope let herself tremulously down in the
Doctor’s leather inglenook.
“Now, if you don’t want to,” said Willings,
“don’t tell me another word.”
“Oh, I might have told you this, at the be-
ginning: it is that Zancray thing again—the
thing I was holding back—back there at the
very first.”
206


GLASBURY 207
“I thought it was.”
“And I’m only holding it back because it
was a promise to Mrs. Fisher.”
“A promise?”
But, for the moment, she broke off at that,
and began to talk again about Glasbury.
“You do feel that he couldn’t have done it,
don’t you?” It was a plea.
“Yes, yes, indeed, I do.”
“Of course he had that look when he came
out, there at the Casa Reale. But how can you
say that that proves anything?”
“No one would say it.”
“When it’s days after her death, too! And
even—even suppose him capable of killing a
person—I mean in the sense that the Doctor
says we all are, under passion or anger enough
—could you possibly think of him as stealing
from a money envelope, and trying to rifle a
jewel safe, and—and intriguing with some low
fury of an Italian lady’s maid?”
“Of course you couldn’t. I don’t know any
more about him, personally, than you do. Be-
fore to-night I’ve seen him only once. And
I’ve never spoken to him at all. But we—we


208 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
all know about him as a dramatist. He’s about
the wholesomest and finest and cleanest in the
whole new school. And I’ve heard people say
how fine he is as a man as well.”
“Yes, and I have, too, often. Oh, I don’t
mean Mrs. Fisher—!” For she had seen the
look of puzzlement which, in spite of him, had
again begun to come into Willings’ face.
“You’re not going to think that? Not when
you knew her almost as well as I did?”
He caught her hand. “Hardly, hardly. I’m
not altogether a rotter. And if you say an-
other word—”
“But I will, I will!” she continued quiver-
ingly. “If it’s only for her sake—and the poor
dear woman hardly cold in her grave! There
are some people you know are good. Most of
us you can’t tell about. Maybe we’re good and
maybe we’re not. I know Mrs. Fisher was ro-
mantic. I know she’d do perfectly crazy things
—never caring how they’d look to other people.
But that she was ever anything but—but—”
‘‘I know.”
“And if there was any way I could make
you understand without telling you—” she


GLASBURY 211
“But—but you have a right,” she whispered
at last,-‘‘any man has—to say—say any-
thing.”
“I haven’t. I haven’t. But I’m going to say
it.” Her hand tightened swiftly over his
anew. “And then afterwards if you want to
consider it unsaid ” He had to begin again.
“Oh, say it,” she murmured, “say it.”
“Then I will, and it’s this, that even from
the first time I saw you—before I’d even
spoken to you—I thought you were the finest
girl I’d ever seen. I—I kept away from you
—for reasons. And I oughtn’t to be—be say-
ing things now. But I—I cared for you all the
time—and always more—and now—Oh, I love
you, that’s all, and I always will—and if you’ll
only give me a little time—I feel every minute
how crazy and absurd it is of me to be speak-
ing now. You know what my income is—or
was—at The House, -about six hundred a year
—and residence! And now I don’t know that
I can go on taking that. In a sense I haven’t
any future at all—”
“You have. You have. Every one knows
you have.”


GLASBURY - 213
“Well, say you have. But there’s—there’s
the very position I’m in now—I mean if Mc-
Gloyne had had his way I suppose at the pres-
ent moment I’d be in the Tombs.”
“Yes, and I. I’d be with you! Even
there—”
She stopped. Some one was opening the
street door below.
It was the Doctor.
“Oh, I can’t see him again, now,” she said,
“not to-night.”
From the little study a door gave access to
the rear landing, and, still holding Willings’
hand in hers, she slipped out to it.
“Tell him about it for me—I mean about
the promise—and that it was just that Zan-
cray thing again. I’ll—I’ll talk to him, my-
self, in the morning.”
And, a few minutes later, Willings was lis-
tening to the Doctor’s story alone.
“I’m very glad D. Hope has gone to bed,”
he said. “With her belief in Glasbury I don’t
know how she would have taken it.”
“And you think,” Willings asked him, try-
ing to keep his mind on what he said, “that


GLASBURY 215
drawn by Glasbury’s pen. And, for the mat-
ter of that, in the drawing of it, there was a
sort of gaiety!
There were other things which Willings
might well have been thinking of in that hour,
but he could not.
We have now reached the point where it must be
either murder or suicide.
They went back over it again.
“In one way,” said the Doctor, “it admits
of an interpretation absolutely simple and in-
nocent.”
“Simple and innocent!”
The younger man still saw the expression—
that memory horror—which had looked out
from the hollowness of Glasbury's young face.
“Simple and innocent. And yet we both of
us feel how much the man must know!”
“Well, I suppose we may call this the third
step.”
“Yes, and once more we’ll get really to work
in the morning.”


CELAPTER XVII
AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR, THE MATTER OF A WILL,
AND ANOTHER ‘‘RETURN’’
BUT the first development next day, as it came
to Willings, seemed to have nothing to do with
Glasbury whatever. D. Hope was late for
breakfast. So was the Doctor. And as he
waited, from the Doctor’s office Willings sud-
denly began to hear a new voice.
It was a voice which he knew at once was
either that of a negro or a mulatto. It was
steadily rising—from terror apparently. And
presently it was pleading for mercy!
“Sure, boss, sure we done that! Was it
true?” And now there was a note of cower-
ing evasion: “Lord a” mercy, boss, ain’t I
tellin’ you that, true or not, it didn’t go to hurt
nobody—not nohow it didn’t Them police of-
ficers, they was a-at us, an a-at us, an’ befo’
Gawd, I couldn’t rightly say now jest what we
216


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 217
did tell them! But they’ll tell you—they’ll tell
you we sure didn’t have nawthin’ to do with
that—that thing up there in the Fishers’l . . .
Boss! Why, befo” Gawd, don’t you-all remem-
ber I was one of the boys what done hailped
you an’ the Judge to break in? An’ if I sure
had knowed what was waitin’ for us in there,
could I 'a' done that, now, could I 'a' done
that?” The voice was now running up into
cracking arpeggios.
“You heard what I told the Inspector,” Lane-
ham answered. “And all I can tell you more
is that you’re being watched now, every min-
ute, and every one of you. If you try even to
go to the roof again—”
“Which we won’t, boss! No more o’ that!
An’, befo” Gawd, if we could ever 'a' knowed
they’d be puttin’ it on us—!”
“Another thing: If you start talking again
—even to the police 9 3
“We won’t! We won’t! H’avens above,
didn’t we take our Gawd’s oath at the start-
off that we wouldn’t?”
Then, next moment, he was trying to take
that back.


218 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “I know quite well
that you did!”
And, with his early-morning visitor burst-
ing into new promises and protestations, Lane-
ham showed him out and started him down the
stairs.
As he passed the breakfast room, goggle-
eyed, his colour a muddy paste, Willings saw
him plainly, and as he had already guessed,
it was that Casa Grande elevator man, or
“boy,” who had taken them down in his car,
when the Doctor had talked so amazingly the
night before. . . . Presumably, it was he, too,
who had attempted, the same night, to hurl
Laneham down the open shaft!
In the present, however, the Doctor had noth-
ing more to say of the matter.
“When the time comes,” he said, “I’ll let
him talk. Till then, son, you just forget about
it, too.”
What was more, a few minutes before he had
received another urgency call from the sana-
torium at Wardsdale.
“I’ll have to leave within an hour,” he ex-
plained, “and before then I must get in touch,


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 219
if possible, with the Judge and McGloyne.”
“And our first work?” asked Willings—
meaning that of D. Hope and himself.
“If, by the time you’ve had your breakfasts
I could have the contents of Glasbury’s office
wastepaper baskets, I could answer that at
once. As it is, I think you’d just better go
out on that “mund’ search again, and not think
of anything else till noon.”
Before he had drunk his coffee he was in
touch with the big Inspector. He told him of
Glasbury, without reserve. And, though, as in
the case of the elevator men, he persuaded him
not to make any immediate arrest, he arranged
to have Glasbury thoroughly shadowed,—on
the street by a regular Headquarters’ man, and
inside the St. Hilaire by an officer lately as-
signed to special service in a big hotel across
the way. Also he told McGloyne that Glas-
bury had his working office in the Savoy Build-
ing. And he asked him to have one of his
“pigeons” get him the contents of Glasbury’s
wastepaper baskets at once.
Finally, McGloyne himself again remem-
bered the floor plans he had promised Lane-


220 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
ham; the blue prints would be ready by even-
ing, he said, and he should have them then.
Then McGloyne, in his turn, reported on
Maddalina.
“She’s sure the original hell-in-petticoats!”
he said. “Hard through an’ through! There’s
no third degree invented that’ll ever get any-
thing out of her. An’ her friends are huntin’
her yet in the hospitals.”
“Good. And you’ll have to keep them doing
that. For if once it gets out that she’s in po-
lice hands, I tell you again it’ll undo about
everything we’ve done so far, and that in half
a minute!”
Again McGloyne promised.
“But Fisher heard of it some way,” he add-
ed. “He knows we’ve got her. And he was
around to-day just as crazy eager to see her
put through, as he was when I thought we
could put it up to butler Jimmy! You’d say,
wouldn’t you, that last night would 'a' shook
him out of all o’ that? But, by gee—it turned
me kind o' sick—I believe he’d volunteer to
strap her in the Chair himself! Lord, I don’t
know how he’ll act when he hears of Glasbury.


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 221
Well, so long. An’ I’ll get after that waste-
paper—whatever you want with it—P. D. Q!”
Meanwhile, the Judge was still to see. He
arrived just as Laneham was getting into his
car. And he took him with him to the sta-
tion.
He told him in the fewest possible words of
that new “return” the night before; of the at-
tempt to kill him in the elevator shaft; of Glas-
bury, and what they now knew of that murder
note. And, then, leaving him no time for com-
ment, he turned and asked him point blank:
“Bishy, you have always been Mrs. Fisher’s
legal confidant. You knew more of her affairs
than any one else. Will you tell me why al-
most her last act on earth should have been
to make her Will?”
“Good God,” said Bishop, “do you tell me
that?’”
“You heard Maddalina speak of a writing,
a ‘scritto’ she had had to witness. That was
what it was. Jimmy told us last night, after
you had gone.”
“My heavens!”
“And now, old man, will you say to me that


222 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR 7
she had never, within the weeks before, spoken
of making a new will to you?”
Again it was the Judge’s expression that
made his answer.
“Is it Zancray once more?” asked Lane-
ham. “Is this the thing, of no importance,
that you felt justified in keeping to yourself?”
When Bishop replied at all, it was only after
slowly taking hold of himself. And then it
was with another question.
“Laneham, if there was such a will—if Mrs.
Fisher attempted, that morning, to make one
for herself, what was her reason for such haste
as that? You remember her call for me to
come and see her in the afternoon.”
‘‘I remember.”
“And more. If she made such a will—if
that sort of melodrama is to enter into it—
where did that will go to?”
“I don’t know. The police search was thor-
ough enough, and it revealed nothing. Fur-
thermore, there are wills and wills, just as
there may be different sorts of suicide pacts.”
“Laney!”
“By this time, too,” Laneham continued lev-


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 223
elly, “you must have noticed that there have
been two distinct species of return visits.”
“Stop it! Stop it!” Bishop threw himself
back, and twisted in his seat. “You ask me
to think that your—your spectre, or your de-
mon, has been making his accursed returns for
that?’”
“I ask nothing, and I suppose nothing. I only
know that Mrs. Fisher made a will, or some-
thing that Jimmy believed was a will, in all
haste and not three hours before her as yet
inexplicable death. And we’ve got a long way
now past believing that we’ve been following
any mere attempt to steal her pearls.”
“Enough!—Laneham, for Heaven’s sake!”
The Judge made a motion to stop the car and
get out. “Is this your psychoanalysis? Man,
you start my hair! . . . And if there was any
such document, all I hope and pray is that your
devil friend may soon find it and be satisfied!”
In the afternoon the Doctor called McGloyne
again from Wardsdale.
He learned first that Glasbury had apparent-
ly been away from his office since the day of the


224 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR."
murder. Anyway, since then his waste-baskets
had been empty. And according to the people
at the St. Hilaire, on the day of Mrs. Fisher’s
funeral, he seemed to have been out of the city.
“I’m takin’ new measures, too,” said the de-
tective chief, “in the matter of coverin’ them
Fisher rooms. I’m not dependin’ any longer
on bars an’ bolts. O’ course, I’m keepin’ all
that, an’ my outside men as well. But in addi-
tion I'm puttin’ two inside, Sergeant Hooley
an’ a plainclothesman. It ain’t the job I’d like
myself—but it’s got to be done. An’ if need
be I'll take my turn along with them.”
“I know it, Inspector. And perhaps to-mor-
row night we can watch together.”
He did not get back from Wardsdale till after
midnight. And at about half past one he was
awakened by the telephone. He had the feeling,
too, of knowing, at least in part, what was com-
ing. For, since the day of the murder, had not
every night call been a sort of notice, or a new
warning and portent?
It was McGloyne who was speaking.
“Dr. Laneham? . . . I’m callin’ you from
my house, where a call has just come in for me.


AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR 225
Your man, or whatever he is, has been back in
them devilled rooms again. He's killed Hooley
—done for him with the same Smash on the tem-
ple that killed Mrs. Fisher. And they don’t
know yet but what he’s finished my other man
along with him. . . . Did he get away again?
Oh, sure he did! An’ no more trace of him
than ever! But get up there, won’t you, the
quickest you can, an’ learn anything you can
yourself.”


CHAPTER XVIII
TEIE SECOND MURDER
HE tapped only on Willings’ door. Willings
answered at once. And it was in the limousine
that they really finished dressing. At the Casa
Grande a police car had arrived just ahead of
them. It held a detail under Captain McGowan
of the Central Bureau. And McGloyne had
given him orders to look for the Doctor. An-
other physician had also been called—one Ham-
merling, from the Drive. And they all went
in together.
Running their elevator was the self-same
young West Indian operator who had visited
and pleaded with Laneham that forenoon, and
now his twitching countenance showed a degree
of terror that, once seen, kept them from look-
ing at him again. But he took them up in some
way. The police officers gave him little heed.
For, by then, was there any one in the Casa
Grande who was calm? And they pushed out
226


THE SECOND MURDER 227
into the crowd of tenants moving fearfully
about in the corridor.
There, one of the patrolmen left on outside
guard that night took charge of them and led
them through.
McGowan asked him only a single ques-
tion:
“The locks were right again?”
“Not a one of them touched, Cap’. We had
to use our keys to get in ourselves. That was
what kep’ us, or we’d 'a’ been in there the mo-
ment we heard Hooley go down!”
‘‘Where is he?”
“Right in beyond, where the devil got him.
We left him so for evidence.”
Hooley was lying diagonally across the front
of the fireplace in Mrs. Fisher’s little library.
Almost directly above his head, indeed, was
that inlaid Bikri shield which masked the tiny
wall-safe itself. Two patrolmen were stooping
over him.
“It’s no use, Cap’,” said one of them. “He
was dead, you’d say, before he hit the floor.
He likely never knew what killed him.”
But the two physicians could at least verify


228 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
the cause of death. It was what McGloyne had
said it had been, a blow that had crushed in the
temple even as Mrs. Fisher’s had been crushed
in. Once the blood had again been wiped away,
too, there was visible exactly the same clean,
inch-round hole as had been left in the side of
Mrs. Fisher’s brow.
“No bullet wound, of course,” said Dr. Ham-
merling; “for it goes in only about an inch. It
was enough, though.”
“And made by the same instrument.”
But McGowan was hurrying them on into the
middle room, where lay the wounded plain-
clothesman.
“How is it with you, Grogan?” he asked of
him.
The man did not answer. He was still uncon-
scious. He had lost much blood. And from his
lips there still came the heavy, stertorous
breathing resultant upon shock.
A basin of water stood near. And while
Laneham bathed his head with it, his fellow
physician felt along the suture lines for a pos-
sible fracture.
“I don’t find anything,” he said at last. “A


THE SECOND MURDER 229
little concussion, maybe. But I doubt if there’s
even that.”
Calling for a hand mirror he made an eye
test. The pupils were almost normal.
“Right. Nothing the matter whatever.”
And next moment, with a sudden throwing
out of his hands, and a first starting stare,
Plainclothesman Grogan had begun to come to
again.
Plainly, though, he was still living in the
moment when he had received his blow.
“Get him!” he cried. “Get him! He went
that way—to’rds the swimmin’ tank!”
“Now, now, now,” said McGowan. “Just
you sit tight a little. We’ll get him, all right,
in time!”
“Turn them other lights on! Turn them—
Ah-h!”
And with that there came the first words of
real consciousness.
“Where am I? An’ where—where’s the Ser-
geant?”
“You’re where you got your crack, Grogan.
An’ the Sergeant, don’t you ask us about him.
You just go ahead an’ tell us what you know.”


230 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
They propped him up against a chair, and
he looked now this way, now that, like a child
that has just fought itself awake, but only half
awake, from night-mare.
“An’ he’s gone, now?” he asked. “He’s
gone?”
“Oh, gone this half hour, the devil.”
“An’ devil he was ! Captain, you’ve named
him. Devil he was in all the meanin’ of it. But
have you called the Father? For I say to you
that I’m worse hurted than I look!”
“You’re all right, I tell you,” and McGowan
gave him another drink. “Now, out with it,
Billy, and set us right on this.”
“Set you right! Set you right! There’s no
man’ll ever do that. But I’ll tell you all I seen
an’ know, if that’ll help.”
“Get to it. First, where did he come from?”
“He came from nowhere, an” he went no-
where, if he ain’t in the room there with the
swimmin’ tank, where the first murder was
done. But I’ll be honest with you, Cap', from
the beginnin’; I couldn’t lie with the Sergeant
layin’ dead in there. It’s like we both were
sleepin’.”


THE SECOND MURDER 231
“Sleeping?”
“It don’t sound likely now. An’ I wouldn’t
have thought, meself, that I could ever have
slept—not in these rooms. For I was feared of
the post, feared. The stories I’d heard—even
if I’d only believed the half—had put the dread
in me. An’I doubt if the Sergeant, for all his
joshin’, enjoyed it any too well himself. But
we were both of us dog-weary when sent in.
An’ what with the heat bein’ left on, an” every
winda’ tight down, an’ the dark an’ all—”
“You had no lights burning?” Laneham
halted him.
“Not a one! Accordin’ to the Inspector’s
orders. What good, indeed, to be lyin’ hid
there, with a lot of electhrics goin’? But we
were both of us close by switches so that, if
the time come, we could have light enough with
a thumb twist. . . . Well, I didn’t have the
time even for that!
“Doctor”—he seemed to know Laneham—
“I’ve said I was likely sleepin’. But if I was,
I began to dream it before I woke! An’ I’ll
never tell you whether I was dreamin’ or wak-
in’ when I seen him first.”


232 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“Where did he come from?”
“From nowhere, I’ve told you, unless it was
that swimmin” place, where he done his first
murder. An’ where else would he come from?
An’ he was all in white—savin’ his face. If
there was no lights, too, there was the shadows
from the moon, which were light enough for
him. An’ when I got my eyes on him, he’d
just spied the Sergeant, an’ was swingin’ clear
to do for him!
“Cap', did you ever have the feelin’ in your
sleep that you must wake—an’ you thried to
wake, but you couldn’t wake? Did you ever
thry to call out, an’ all the sound you could
make went sand-dry inside your throat? An’
did you ever thry to move, an” not a limb, not
a muscle could you move? An’ if that could
come to me wakin’ could it come from anything
but a devil’s spell laid on? I don’t know
what he hit the Sergeant with. His back
was to’rds me. But he didn’t strike him
till he’d swung once an’ twice an’ three
times, like some goff player offerin” at a
ball! An’ then, with the Sergeant’s death
cry, he give a kind of deep-down little


“He lepped, an’ leppin’ he struck me as he passed.
I’d got to one knee, an had one arm to guard
With’’





234 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
the corridors were still to question. Had they
seen anything? Either before they had burst
into the rooms, or after?
Nothing at all.
Grogan had said that Hooley's slayer had
passed through the wall of the swimming pool
after they were inside. Hadn’t they seen even
a shadow?
“We weren’t lookin’ for any then,” said one
of them. “But it might be so. We’ll believe
anything now. And Grogan—we had run first
to him—he was screechin’ ‘He’s in there! He's
in there!’ But when we’d got the lights on
and could look, nothin’ was changed in
that swimmin” place by so much as a dust
spot!”
Laneham made sure of that for himself.
Then he walked back to the little library and
the fireplace, and lifting the Bikri shield
looked at the outer door of the miniature safe.
It seemed not to have been touched. But he
called up the Electric Protection night office
again. As on the previous night, there had
been no alarm.
At that moment McGloyne himself arrived.


THE SECOND MURDER 235
“What are you going to do this time?” the
Doctor asked him.
“You may ask it!” he answered. “For I’ve
got Hooley’s blood upon me, now. Do?—what
can I do? But no doubt I’ll go the same old
circuit, tappin’ walls an’ lookin’ at windows.”
He called one of his aides. “Send Grogan in
again. There’d ought to be at least a little
more that he can tell us.”
“Grogan,” he asked the wounded man, “you
say he was all in white?”
“Like a sheeted ghost,” Grogan answered,
and he himself was still almost as pale as one.
“Always, o' course, exceptin’ for his face.”
“Yes, and what do you think yourself he was,
ghost, man or devil?”
“Does a ghos’ carry annything he can strike
a man dead with? An’, Captain, would he
laugh, too, when he done it?”
“Then you think,” said McGloyne, with a
shake of his jaw, “that he’s just plain devil?”
“Nor I didn’t say that, neither.”
“Then what is it you do think? Oh, go ahead,
tell us, tell us.”
“Captain,”—and at that first note in Gro-


236 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
gan’s voice, now a whisper again, once more
they had that feeling of knowing what was com-
ing,-“have you ever heerd tell, in the Old
Coontry, of men that, tempted of evil, have
sold their souls to the evil one himself?”
“Well? Well? And if I have?—”
“To clench your bargain, as they say, you’ve
first to kill the one you should by rights be
lovin’ best. But, once you have, it’s settled.
An’, in the hours when you ain’t soul-wrung
with penitence, more killin’ is all your pleas-
ure. As for the rest, you can go annywhere,
you can do annything. An’ to pass through a
wall is nawthin’—nawthin’ at all!”
“All right,” said McGloyne. “We’ll say
that your man is blood-paid an’ Devil-bought.
What kind of figure of a man would you say he
WaS?’”
“I’d say he was a yoong man.”
“Yes?”
“And I’d say he was slim an’ slender, an’
light on his feet.”
“Yes?”
“For a minute I thought I could see his eyes.
An’, oh, the depth they had! An’, for all he


THE SECOND MURDER 237
was joyin’ in his killin’ then, oh, the misery
he’d been through to win to it!”
“And you heard him laugh?”
“That I did! That I did. And it was a kind
of voice so hollow deep you’d say it had come
from the Pit itself!”
Five minutes later the Doctor was calling up
the St. Hilaire, Glasbury’s apartment hotel, and
was speaking to a new house detective there on
duty.
“It’s Doctor Laneham calling. Have you
anything to report now?”
“I have, sir.”
“And What?”
“Mr. Glasbury went out about two hours ago,
at one-twenty. An’ it’s only just now that he’s
come in again.”
‘‘Did Morris trail him?”
“Every minute.”
“And where did he go?”
“He went to his office, in the Savoy Buildin’.
Morris saw him in an’ out o’ there.”
“Yes, and did Morris notice anything about
him when he came out?”


238 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“He did. An’ I noticed it, too, when he come
back here to the St. Hilaire. If we hadn’t knew
where he’d been, we'd 'a said that he’d just
come back from croakin’ Some one!”


240 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
was here in the Casa Grande killing Hooley,
that must be told me from the lips of the man
himself. Till then there is enough for us to
work upon in other ways.”
And next morning brought them, among other
things, the first contents of Glasbury’s office
waste basket.
What did the Doctor hope to find amid such
mere debris of the man’s every-day working
life? Apparently nothing, with any certainty.
It was only one means among a dozen. But it
was at least a possibility. And the fact that,
after being away from his office for days, Glas-
bury should return to it at such an hour, to tear
up anything whatever, seemed at least to prom-
ise something.
The Central Bureau “pigeon” who had rifled
the basket might well have been the uncombed
and dirty son of one of the Savoy scrubwomen.
But he knew all he needed to know.
“Your guy’s come back in this mornin',
too,” he told Laneham. “So this bein’ a Sata”-
day, See, an’ only half a day, maybe I'll be
switchin' youse some more this afternoon.”
What he had “switched” this first time he


242 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
so that there might be as much as possible un-
der their eyes at once.
“I know,” he told D. Hope, “that this is
mighty hard on you.”
“No,” she answered, “it isn’t. Because I
know that the more we learn, the sooner we’ll
prove Mr. Glasbury innocent.”
But it became evident almost immediately
that at least half of that torn paper had once
been merely the manuscript, or the successive
manuscripts, of a play! It established the iden-
tity of Glasbury’s writing. He had penned the
murder note—there could no longer be any
doubt of that. But a play? Why should any
man, however haunted, go to his office at one
in the morning to destroy a play? Certainly
there was little hope of getting an answer from
any internal evidence in the play itself. It
would have taken weeks to piece its thousand
shreds and tatters together. Meanwhile they
faced a blank wall.
As far as they could, they put the bits of man-
uScript aside, and began to sort out everything
that looked like the remains of correspond-
ence.


244 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
The other:
GENTLEMEN: I very greatly regret that owing to
circumstances not under my control, I have not been
in my office for several days and therefore . . .
And it, too, had ended there.
In both there was a something about the writ-
ing—a rigid tremor, a sort of quivering power-
lessness—that seemed of itself to show that the
hand could go no further.
“It’s as if his will power had suddenly been
snapped,” said Willings.
But that they had known, or felt, before.
Again they had learned nothing that was new.
They went back to the first business letters
and began to work through them a second time.
Meanwhile, the Doctor had gone directly to
the Savoy Building.
In a sense, he had gone only to get its general
topography, and, even as in the case of the
Fisher apartment in the Casa Grande, to study
the arrangement of the doors and corridors on
Glasbury’s particular floor.
But he had hardly reached the Savoy ele-


SEEN FROM AN ELEVATOR 245
vators when some one touched him lightly and
spoke to him. It was Morris, McGloyne’s “out-
side man.”
“He ain’t come down yet,” he said, “but if
you’d like to go up and take a little look
around in the halls?”
And, since Glasbury would not know either of
them even if they came upon him face to face,
Laneham told the man to lead ahead.
The Savoy was an old building, the typical
flimsy seven-story fire-trap of the 80’s. It had
only one entrance, with an open stairway
mounting from landing to landing around the
elevator shaft. They walked up.
Glasbury’s office was on the fourth floor. His
door was almost exactly across the hall from
the further elevator. A postman was just en-
tering. And passing quickly, they started on
up to the floor above.
But when, on the halfway landing, they came
opposite again, and could look through the ele-
vator shaft, Laneham saw that Glasbury’s door
was topped by an old-fashioned fan-light.
From the ceiling level, therefore, an observer in
the further elevator could command at least a


246 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
part of his rooms. In the same moment Mor-
ris had the same thought.
“Could you get the use of an elevator?”
Laneham asked him.
“Sure I can. I got in right with the starter,
as my beginnin’. I can run a car, too, at that.”
And, two minutes later, they had their own
car, and were going slowly up alone.
To give himself a possible opportunity of
observing Glasbury, himself unobserved—that
had been the Doctor’s only thought. And as
their car came gradually to a stop half way
above that fourth-floor level, he found, by stand-
ing well over to the left, he could see, through
the fan-light and an inner open door, the young
playwright’s desk, his shoulder, and then, as
he moved, more and more plainly his half-
averted face.
Again, what did it say? What story, what
explanation of hideous mystery, spoke from it?
At that moment it held only a suffering blank-
ness, a hunted misery to wring the heart.
But as Laneham still watched, the man’s
shoulder moved again. His hands went out.
He seemed to be opening his mail. And next


SEEN FROM AN ELEVATOR 247
moment that blank misery in his face had
changed again—to horror, and to the same hor-
ror it had worn that night as he came from the
Casa Reale!
The look was there, and Laneham was half
prepared for it. But for what followed, noth-
ing had prepared him. On Glasbury’s desk a
letter fluttered, held in a hand that shook and
shook. Then on a sudden that shaking stopped,
and the hand went blindly into an open drawer.
It came out again. At Glasbury’s right tem-
ple there flickered the swift, level glitter of pol-
ished nickel. A click, then another. And Lane-
ham, powerless even to move, knew that Glas-
bury was trying to shoot himself.
He was trying to. But, because of some mer-
ciful defect, the weapon refused to serve him.
And next moment he let it drop heavily to the
desk again. Once more, too, his look was chang-
ing—to the expression of the man who believes,
harriedly, that he can not die, and tells himself
that in death itself there would be no escape for
him. Then, trembling and shaking, he got to
his feet. Standing over his waste-basket, he
was tearing that letter—whatever it was—into


248 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
such shredded bits as the Doctor had already
seen. Somehow he steadied himself. His every
feature now said desperately that, whatever
must be faced, he would still endure and face it
through !
A few minutes more and he moved quickly
to the door, took an elevator, and was in the
street again. And Laneham, following, was
telephoning to McGloyne.
“Yes, yes,” he repeated; “for Glasbury’s
own sake—to save his life—though I think
there is no more danger now. But watch him
every moment. . . . Yes, and make absolutely
certain of getting me everything from this
morning’s basket.”
About two o'clock the contents of that second
basket reached 390.
It held little compared with the first, but it
held enough: again the three cleared the big
desk and went to work. The Doctor said noth-
ing as to what they might expect to find. He
merely laid out that murder note once more,
and once more began to match tatter against
tatter.
But it was no matter of hand-writing, but of


SEEN FROM AN ELEVATOR 249
paper itself that first brought his hands to a
halt.
“Willings, look here,” he said jerkily. He
was holding a tiny strip of that water-lined, al-
most transparent foreign note-paper known as
onion-skin.
“Well?”
“Where have you seen that before? You
don’t recognise it?”
In the meantime he had found a second strip,
this time bearing a line of writing.
“But at any rate you recognise the pen work?
You don’t? But I see. Of course the other was
in Italian.”
And as Willings and D. Hope stood waiting,
he crossed to his desk and brought back the
letter, the love letter he had taken from Mad-
dalina in the ambulance.
He translated parts of it: “You are an angel
of heaven. . . . Of a surety my love will now
endure forever. . . . And you shall have at
least two of them for yourself.”
“We decided some time ago,” he said, “that
the “two of them” referred to two of those fifty-
dollar notes which our precious Maddalina took


250 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
from Mrs. Fisher’s money letter. Well, it
would seem that her lover friend has now been
writing to Glasbury. But let us get the whole
letter together.”
A thing that promised to be easy. Small
though they were, those bits of “onion-skin.”
now seemed to stand out from everything
else.
Again they went to work. And they had
scarcely begun—Laneham had just spread him-
self out a second little pile—when, looking
again, he suddenly put his hand over it, and
spoke quickly to D. Hope.
“Without asking why,” he said, “will you
just let Willings and me finish this alone?”
And, to give her something to do, he asked
her to go out for the rest of the afternoon, and
go on with the search for that lost magazine
with its clue-word “mund.”
“Try some of the scientific publications,” he
said, “the German chemical journals, and that
sort of thing.”
Not until she was gone did he lift his hand
again.
Beneath it lay three scraps of that slippery


SEEN FROM AN ELEVATOR 251
“onion-skin”: on each piece were smears and
blotches of fresh blood.
“My Lord!” cried Willings.
Neither spoke again till the last terrible little
shreds had been fitted into place, the whole let-
ter was together, and it could be read.
It ran as follows:
The signore Glasbury,
Sir
This is twise I rite and I will not rite again. we
can not dare now to go back again to try get them
pearls so now you must pay. last nigt the police leave
two guards. they will not guard again. We too, can
kill in those fisher rooms. we need 5,000$. You get
it for us tonigt. We come at ten. After that we
troble you no more. I give you the marks from him
I kill last nigt, so you will know.
And the entire bottom of the letter was one
daub of what—there could be no doubting it—
was the life-blood of Sergeant Hooley.


CHAPTER XX
A MEETING IN GLASBURY's APARTMENTS
IT was a second murder note, and one more
ghastly, almost, than the first. For a time
neither could touch it again. But, blood-
smeared and dreadful, the thing was there.
“The-the beast must have written it,” said
Willings, “as soon as he got back to his dig-
gings.”
“Little question. He can hardly have needed
to re-moisten his fingers! . . . Well, so much
for poor Grogan’s ghost-demon. So much for
his apparition from nowhere that passed
through the solid walls!”
Willings read the hideous screed again.
“But, Doctor, what does this mean?—“We,
too, can kill in those Fisher rooms”? It's per-
fectly evident that the Italian devil believes that
Glasbury did it. If he didn’t—”
He was stopped by a warning in Laneham’s
252


254 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR."
gotten the existence of those blood-daubed pa-
per scraps beneath the newspaper.
“Oh, I’m not forgetting to-night. And, Wil-
lings, old man, before I go, for a minute I must
talk to you.”
He did. Then, by telephone, he got McGloyne
and his man Morris and made certain arrange-
ments with them. If, at ten that night, those
Italian jewel thieves and murderers expected
to be in Glasbury’s rooms at the Casa Reale, he,
Laneham, was clearly going to do everything in
his power to prepare for them. And he did
not leave the house until he had.
But, having gone, hour after hour went by
before he returned. Five o’clock passed, and
six. He called up to say that he could not be
home for dinner. They did not see him again,
indeed, till after eight. And then—a first
glance at his face told the story: they knew that
he had taken one more step—and that again he
had found the thing he sought! It was unmis-
takable.
But not less obvious was it that he had no
thought of going into anything then.
“There’s only one thing we must do to-


256 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
hind the telephone-board and spread them out.
“There you have it. The Fisher apartment
in the Casa Grande, here, and Glasbury’s bach-
elor rooms, here, in the Casa Reale adjoin.
They abut at Mrs. Fisher’s little writing-
room.” McGloyne stifled an exclamation, and
the Doctor turned to him. “But, right now,”
he said, “whatever the appearances seem to be,
I ask you to take my word for it that never for
a moment has there been anything that could
lie against the honour of either of them.”
McGloyne dropped his hands. “As you say,
Doctor, as you say. Only it’s brought them
death an” hell. Well, now to business.” He
handed Laneham a latch-key. “There’s one
thing you’ll be needin’.”
‘‘GOOd.”
“It’s for Glasbury’s middle room. When
are you going over?”
“At once. For Willings and I would like to
get a preliminary look around.”
They all walked around the block to the en-
trance of the Casa Reale together.
But McGloyne got no further than the en-
trance. A message had just come in for him.


A MEETING 257
It was a warning from Morris. Glasbury was
on his way.
“No time for any lookin’ around !” said the
Inspector. “But my men are placed. Payton’s
planted on the inside. You’ll find him there.
An’ if Mr. Willings is still wantin’ to make a
Second?”
“I am,” said Willings. “That was my first
thought.”
“Well an’ good. Get in then, get in, the
quickest you know how!”
In another minute Willings and the Doctor
were in Glasbury’s rooms.
“Officer Payton?” the Doctor called.
“Right here.” Payton, a lanky “special,”
showed his head from behind the curtain of the
trunk closet. “And you’ll find more cover,”
he said, “back of a big desk in a den place at
the other end.”
They hurried through to it. The desk was
an old-fashioned, low-bodied, high-backed secre-
tary. It had been placed across the corner by
the window; and nothing could have offered
better concealment. Willings slipped behind it,
and pulled it in again. And once more he had


258 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
an automatic in his pocket. Laneham made
him take it.
“But never fear,” he reassured him; “you
won’t need to use it. Remember, though, try
to see Glasbury first, and then give them time
to talk.” And he was gone.
He could hardly have left the elevators be-
fore Glasbury was entering. It seemed to Wil-
lings that they must have met. But he was
alone. And, throwing on the lights, he came
slowly through to the little study. “Try to see
Glasbury first”!—it was as if Glasbury had
known he was there! While Willings still
crouched uncertainly, the young playwright
crossed to his desk and began to write some-
thing. He rose from it, with a face once more
filled with a white but resolute despair—and
Willings showed himself.
“Who—who are you?” With his first back-
ward leap Glasbury’s hand went to his own coat
pocket; “and what are you doing here?”
Yet it was not what he said nor the words
he used that struck through Willings’ mem-
Ory.
He tried to explain his presence in a single


260 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
own key. They seemed, in fact, to be entirely
familiar in his rooms.
“Allora—now!” said one of them, the Ital-
ian, doubtless Hooley’s murderer. And the
other, suspecting an ambush, went straight on
through to the rooms beyond. He went directly
indeed to that trunk closet where the “special,”
Payton, was lying and discovered him!
With a stumbling rush, Payton leaped out.
But he was not quick enough. Even before he
could raise his voice, a black-jack did its work,
and he went down like the dead.
Instantly, as though by a kind of reflex ac-
tion, the Italian whirled back to the hall doors
and shot their bolts: for the present, at least,
no one could interrupt from outside. Next mo-
ment both blackmailers were fleeing towards
the little room where Willings was con-
cealed.
He jumped for them. And before they could
use their weapons—almost before he knew him-
self that he was using his—he had put a bullet
through the shoulder of the man with the black-
jack.
“Hands up!” he shouted.


262 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
and through it all he manoeuvred to keep Glas-
bury behind him.
He was down on the floor now—they all were
—but he was still fighting. He had some one
by the throat. And in some way he managed
to get hold of the winged man’s black-jack.
Then suddenly he knew that Laneham and Mc-
Gloyne and McGloyne’s men were inside. An-
other burst of shots, and the thud, thud, thud
of subduing night-sticks. And when, amid
smoke and the salty smell of powder, Willings
again found himself sitting up and looking
around, he became gradually aware that Glas-
bury was still behind him, and some one was
working over him.
It was the Doctor. In almost complete col-
lapse the young playwright was passing from
one fainting fit to another. And, “Oh, my
God!” he was crying, “Oh, my God!”
The Doctor looked up and caught Willings’
gaze fixed on him. That voice—would they
ever forget it? It was the lost-soul voice they
had heard twice before in the Fisher rooms.
And, “Oh, my God, my God!” it came again.
“Well, at any rate,” said Willings, “it was a


A MEETING 263
human voice.” Then he turned back to help the
others.
Ten minutes later two would-be jewel thieves
and blackmailers sat trussed and ready for the
patrol wagon. But in the little room of the
high-backed desk, Laneham was having a last
word with McGloyne:
“You must leave Glasbury with me. For the
next few days he’d have to go into hospital in
any case.”
“As you say.”
“Till further notice, too, I’ll ask you not to
try to talk to the two worthies out there, either.
And, if possible, keep it absolutely quiet that
you’ve even caught them.”
“You mean keep it even from Fisher?”
“Fisher? Oh-h. Oh, if you want, tell him.
But no one else.”
“But, Lord,” McGloyne protested, “when
you might say we’ve got the thing cleared up!”
“Cleared up? Inspector, once more, who
killed Mrs. Fisher? Those two thugs in the
handcuffs don’t know. Why, and how, was she
killed? Do you know that? And how did the
murderer get in? Has any one of those ques-


264 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
tions been answered? Has any part of the real
mystery been solved? No. But, if you will give
me the opportunity, to-night I think we can at
last begin.”
McGloyne shook his head uncomprehending-
ly. But the matter was in Laneham’s hands.
“Doctor,” he said, “what do you want to do?”
“Several things, one of which will again con-
vince you that I’ve lost my senses. But first
of all—and nothing could be gained by letting
any one else know this—first of all I want a
chance to take Willings and go back to Mrs.
Fisher’s rooms, and be free if need be to spend
the entire night making another search.”
“Another search? An’ what for?”
“A certain tiny pellet of fused white metal,”
Laneham answered, “which should still be
Somewhere near or in the swimming-pool.”


266 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
Once more they had only to throw on the elec-
trics in the great alabaster bell hanging above
the pool to have light enough. But the Doctor
had also brought along a pocket flash.
He closed and locked both doors, so that they
would not be interrupted. On one of the dusty
green flower benches lay a long-handled brush.
He picked it up and handed it to Willings.
“I want you to sweep around the edge of the
pool with this,” he said. “But wait a minute;
I think we can make our first verification from
the water itself.”
He stepped back to the pool, bent far over its
barrier-like brim, and took up a little in his
palm.
“If what I believe to be true is true,” he
said, “this water should be salt.”
And, after holding back a moment, each in
turn dipped a finger in and tasted it.
It was salt.
“But mightn’t it—isn’t it just sea salt?”
Willings asked.
“No; this is common salt. And there’s all
the difference in life—or death—between them
here. Well, now to our real work.”


FOUND BY THE SWIMMING-POOL 267
Willings followed him, and took up his brush
again.
The Doctor explained roughly.
According to McGloyne, no matter what
might have been done in Fisher’s own rooms,
no cleaning work of any sort had been done
about the pool since the hour of the crime.
Therefore, anything that had been on the floor
then, if not so small that it could be carried
out on some one’s shoes, should still be
there.
“It may be only the minutest globule,” he
said, “like a droplet from a plumber’s iron.
But we must try to find it. At first, though, my
own work will be higher up.”
“How do you mean?” Willings asked him.
“I’m going to look first for some place where
a file, a very small file, has been in use.”
And crossing to the other side of the room,
he began to run his eyes along the walls.
For a moment Willings himself stood await-
ing further instructions. And while he did he
followed Laneham. It was evident, moreover,
that he was working according to some definite
plan or course. If his eyes had started at the


268 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR!
wall, they had moved rapidly to the ceiling, then
along it to that great, whitely-radiant, moon-
like bell. But there he looked again at Willings,
and the younger man took up his brush, and
turned away to his own work. He saw only
that the Doctor had mounted the flower stand.
And next moment he gave a little triumphant
gaSp.
“It’s here!” he cried. “Oh, no, never mind
about the details now. I'll just go to work
again with you, and maybe we’ll get every-
thing!”
There was no second brush. But, dropping
almost face down, Laneham laid his flashlight
in front of him upon the tiles, and began to
sweep them levelly with its little searching
beam.
“It’s an even chance our drop of metal is in
the water,” he said. “But, at least we must
look outside first. Up there near the faucets
and the nickel work 3 *
He got no further. A second time his search
had ended before it really had begun. To the
right of the faucets was a small marble step. In
the corner between it and the side of the pool,


FOUND BY THE SWIMMING-POOL 269
some dust and fluff had gathered; and there, in
the midst of it, was something that glittered
faintly.
The Doctor picked it up. It looked exactly
as he had said it might look. One would have
said it was some little solder globule left by
plumbing work. But, handing it to Willings,
“What do you notice first?” he asked.
“Why, its weight! The thing’s as heavy as
gold.”
“Yes; it’s platinum.”
“Platinum!” Willings stared at him.
“Yes, platinum. But in itself there is noth-
ing in that.”
“Oh, no; not in itself.” Willings’ voice had
fallen to a whisper, and into his face there had
come a look never brought to it by any mere
droplet of heavy metal. “Doctor,” he said, “I
want to tell you something.”
“Well?”
“It’s the evidence—the Zancray stuff—that
I’ve been holding out. I believed implicitly till
this minute that it couldn’t matter, and my only
idea was to protect the innocent. But I’ve got
to tell you now.”


FOUND BY THE SWIMMING-POOL 271
with the joy of it. And he clasped her closer.
“Oh, I love you, love you!” he whispered.
“You do? Only you don’t want to say as yet
that you’re engaged?”
“No, not till—till 5 %
“Till you have about a hundred times more
money than you really need. Is that it?” she
asked him. “Oh, very well. For I can wait.
But now we must go to the others.”
And, in another five minutes, they were once
more with the Doctor and Judge Bishop and
Jimmy in the library.
The Doctor went to his point at once.
“Willings, here, has just been telling me
something,” he said, “and something to the
last degree important. No, I won’t say what it
was; but it was his ‘Zancray evidence,” the
thing he felt justified in holding back at the be-
ginning. And all three of you have confessed
to doing the same thing; you have your hold-
backs, too. Now, once again, to prevent the
martyring of some one who may be guiltless, I
ask you to speak before it is too late. In a few
hours Glasbury may confess; but until he
does—”


FOUND BY THE SWIMMING-POOL 273
But—even then—I didn’t suspect that it was
that l’’
“No, I suppose that no one could have.” The
Doctor himself was greatly moved. “Poor
woman! Poor, poor woman | And Glasbury—!
D. Hope, if you still pray, won’t you say some-
thing to-night for him?”
He turned away to Jimmy.
“And now, my son, isn’t there something
coming from you?”
“Doctor Lyneham, don’t hask me! I can’t!
An’ it eyn’t any matter of protecting the h’in-
nocent. For I don’t know who did it and who
didn’t, no more now than hever! I’m only try-
ing to protect a good nyme—the nyme of one
that’s dead, too, and that I’d go to 'Ell for!”
“Jimmy,” said D. Hope, taking his hand,
“if you mean Mrs. Fisher’s name, it needs no
protection now. And if you can only add some-
thing to what the Doctor knows already, maybe
everything will be understood again.”
“You think so, Miss?” And even then he
hung back. “Your—your 'and on your 'eart,
you can promise that?”
“I can, Jimmy; I can l”


FOUND BY THE SWIMMING-POOL 275
off. “I—I—I—I give you my professional
word—!”
“Yes, and in a way, so did all the rest of
them.’”
“I tell you it’s absurd—as crazy as—as some
of your dream theories.”
“All right,” the Doctor answered quietly,
“supposing we try it on the basis of those crazy
dream theories.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“Just this, that since Mrs. Fisher’s murder,
at least once and probably twice, you’d had a
certain dream. Well, instead of making your
confession, supposing you simply tell me it?”
“What?” The Judge’s hands lifted them-
selves almost in a posture of defence. “Lane-
ham, this—this is no time, and no occasion, for
—for foolery!”
“What I propose is very far from being fool-
ery. It’s the soundest of sound psychology.
All I ask now is that you tell me that dream.
But, of course, if you fear the test?—”
“Fear it? Fear it? Why, if it’s a challenge,
then, in the Lord’s name, come along! I'll take
my turn in the confessional!”


A SEANCE 279
“All right—go ahead. I give you my bless-
in’. An’ who do you want to have there? Glas-
bury, first of all?”
“If he’s physically up to it by to-night.”
“An’ if he’s not? You’ll postpone it?”
“Yes, for a day or two.”
“Good. You’ll be wantin’ those elevator-
boys, too?”
“Both of them. Will you see to that?”
“They’ll be there!”
“And I’d like to have Grogan—your pa-
trolman who was with poor Hooley when they
got him. Then, of course, there will be your-
self and Willings and Judge Bishop and my-
Self.”
“What about Fisher? Oh,” McGloyne has-
tened to explain, “I don’t want him. He’s got
to be too much for me. No more mercy in him
than the death-house itself. I’ve been fightin’
him off of Glasbury ever since he heard of
him. You can leave him out for all of me. But,
o’ course, when you’re goin’ to hold it in his
own apartments—”
“Yes, of course, we must have him. I’d have
asked him myself.”


280 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
But the Doctor offered no further explana-
tions to any one. If what he proposed to do
now was unusual beyond anything that had
gone before it, it was evident that his rea-
sons and his justification were to be offered
with the end alone. He asked Willings to help
him make his preparations. But he did not
tell him what, this time, those preparations
were to be. Later that afternoon Bishop sought
him out in those Fisher rooms themselves. But
Laneham had as little to say to him.
. For the matter of that, after the first min-
utes, the Judge, like McGloyne, confined his re-
marks almost wholly to the question of Pro-
fessor Fisher.
“I’ve nothing more to ask as to just what
you’re fixing up here,” he said. “Maybe you
will get something out of it 9 *
‘‘I trust so.”
“But I think you’ve made a mistake in let-
ting the Professor even hear of it. For he’s
coming, all right—don’t worry about that. Not
that he can get it clear what you’re up to, any
more than the rest of us. But he’s been told
that Glasbury hasn’t really confessed as yet.


A SEANCE 283
ciety,” he answered laconically. “She’s done
a good deal of work for them.”
But no one except Laneham really saw that
medium until the night, when they were tak-
ing their places for the séance itself.
And at first they did not see her then. For
that middle room, like the whole apartment,
was in almost absolute darkness, and the medi-
um was still in her cabinet. The Doctor had
made that for her by simply cutting off one
corner of the room with another curtain of
black. In front of the cabinet they could make
out the lines of a table, and of the chairs which
awaited them about it. The Doctor was still
going and coming between the table and the
open door.
Willings and the Judge arrived first, with
Glasbury. And Bishop began at once to make
a last protest.
“Laneham,” he whispered, “once more you
see the shape the man is in. And if he were
a thousand times guilty—”
“I know,” the Doctor said, “I know. But
the thing must go on now.”


A SEANCE 285
did not really know when it was wholly gone.
And, while the darkness seemed tangibly to
creep upon them, all sat silent, rigid and un-
moving.
For a minute they sat so—for two, for three;
ten minutes, indeed, it might have been. And
then—
Slowly at first, then more quickly, the table
itself was moving.
It was not rising from the floor, as tables
are supposed to do at séances. It was not
“turning,” or moving from side to side. It
was as if its surface had become charged and
wavelike, as if it were rising and pushing it-
self against their palms in waves of living
power. Willings knew, from the little out-
breathed gasps of those about him, that the
others felt it also. And he looked again at the
medium. In one sense, he could not see her.
In another he could see her with a distinctness
more than earthly. For the outline of her
head and shoulders seemed pricked out in
a species of wavering, shifting phosphores-
cence. And, at the same moment, from the
direction of the library and the little writing-


286 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
room, he heard a sound, a sound of knock-
ing.
It was the knocking that had followed the
murder. And, even as then, it seemed to stop
his heart. He knew, too, that the same shud-
der was going through the circle from end to
end.
He looked back at the medium. That phos-
phorescence was gone. Save for a moving
greyness, one could no longer have said that
the woman was even there.
And then the next thing followed. The Doc-
tor, after placing his mirrors, had closed all
the doors and locked them. But now—there
could be no doubt of it—slowly, without the
help apparently either of hand or key, one of
those doors was opening.
From the nearest mulatto elevator-man came
a long, shuddering whine of terror.
“Oh, h’avens above, boss,” he said, “h'avens
above! My Lawd, let me out!”
“If you go out now,” breathed Laneham,
“you go alone.”
At the same moment the knocking had come
again. And the fellow dropped back into his


A SEANCE 287
chair in a new reaction of fear. “Boss,” he
began, “I—I—I—”
‘‘GaWC !”
It was Grogan who spoke then.
For something was moving and swelling out
the curtain of the cabinet. It was more like an
emanation than an actual presence. The medi-
um was still there. But next moment they all
felt that the door from the library was open-
ing. And Willings, his skin lifting like fur,
knew that some one, or something, was passing
through the room.
The thing, whatever it was, was passing
through to the doors that led to the bedroom
and dressing-room and swimming-pool. But at
the first door it stopped. It knocked again—
with the very hand of death—and, “Oh, God!
Oh, my God, my God!” it cried.
They were Glasbury’s words, and it was
Glasbury’s voice. And yet, beside him, Will-
ings could feel the man himself. He put out
his hands and touched him—a touch that came
back to him in an answering shudder.
But the medium now was speaking:
“Whom do you seek?”


290 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
only the door to the swimming-pool itself. And
then, from the other side of that door came a
third sound of knocking.
“Hell!” choked McGloyne. “Hell!”
“She must come out!” The thing in that
middle room was speaking again. “She must
come out.” For a moment the voice waited,
then it spoke again. “The woman who is dead
is seeking some one. He, and only he, must
open to her.”
Again, too, came the knocking. Yet still no
one stirred.
“Then,” continued the voice, “then I must
open to her!”
But that séance, if séance it could be called,
got no further.
“Let me go! Let me go!”
The cry was bursting from some one in end-
less shrieks. Chairs were falling, too, one
over another. A whole group of figures, in-
deed, seemed to reach the door together. And
a moment later pursuers were mingling with
pursued. Willings saw only that one figure
had disappeared into the central stairway—
the stairway up which the Doctor had all but


A SEANCE 291.
gone to his death two nights before. And, like
Laneham, that figure burst through the fire-
door that led to the elevator landing on the
floor above.
The hole where the wire-glass had been
broken out was still there. And therefore it
was still possible to reach in through it and
open the elevator door. It was what the Doc-
tor had done. It was what that figure was do-
ing. But, having done it, with one more shriek,
ending only in eternity, it was plunging to the
bottom of the shaft!


CHAPTER XXIII
GLASBURY'S STORY
“ALL I desire is to tell you everything. I feel
equal to it now. And it’s the least that I can
do.”
It was Glasbury who was speaking. And
they heard once more the voice that cried out
in Mrs. Fisher’s rooms after the murder. The
scene was Dr. Laneham’s library. And Glas-
bury was half sitting, half lying on the big
brown leather couch. On a little table beside
him was a worn seal-leather portfolio. About
him were the Doctor, Judge Bishop, D. Hope
and Willings, Jimmy and Inspector McGloyne.
In the room below, too, a certain yegg in hand-
cuffs was waiting to be brought up to tell his
part of the story when the time should come.
In the meantime the young playwright, his
brow grey and damp as with the greyness of a
mortal illness, had made his beginning.
292


GLASBURY'S STORY 293
“My only comfort is my knowing that I am
in no way responsible for the death of Mrs.
Fisher. How heavily that of Hooley must rest
on me you will judge when I have finished.
I have been such a moral coward as I did not
believe existed in this world. I know, and Dr.
Laneham knows, that a little more and my mind
would have gone. Yet so far from having any
knowledge of Mrs. Fisher’s murder, my own
relationship to her was solely that of a man
who tried to help her, and who, for weeks, had
been working by her side.”
“Workin’ by her side?” repeated McGloyne.
“Yes, we had been writing a play together.”
“Oh,” cried D. Hope, “was that it?”
“Yes, that was it. I remember you, Miss
Hope. You came upon us one evening in a
Casa Grande corridor. And, following her first
impulse, Mrs. Fisher hurried back to beg you,
I think, to say nothing about it till you, and
every one, would understand.”
“She did. She did! I didn’t know then who
you were, and she didn’t tell me. She only
said—and her eyes were shining so—that I
would understand some time—‘when she was


294 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
famous.’ I promised, and that was what I kept
from Dr. Laneham.”
“We were writing a play together,” Glas-
bury went on. “I met her first nearly a year
ago at an Arts and Letters dinner. And I
could see at once that she was an unhappy
woman. She had just begun to find herself.
And she had been trying to find happiness in
the usual things, old furniture, rare jewelry
—the famous pearls, for example, that we’ve
heard so much about—and your Settlement-
House work. From that I knew she was get-
ting a lot. But she had never found any real
expression for herself. And almost the first
thing she asked me was whether I thought she
could ever write anything. Above all, she
said, she had always longed to try to write a
play.
“I made all the usual evasions, too, till I
learned first that she was in earnest; and then,
by degrees, that she was the sort of woman who
would do what she set out to do. She had
thought of a play, she said, because there were
so many things that she had always wanted
to say; and she felt somehow that she could


3 *
Inner"
st nearly a year ago at an Arts and Let-
ters d
fir
r
‘‘I met he





GLASBURY'S STORY 295
say them in a play. And in the end it came to
her asking me, or half asking me if I would
help her.
“The best tribute I can pay her is to tell
you that I found myself only too glad to. But
even by then I had begun to see how big she
was. Dr. Laneham, Mrs. Fisher was in many
ways a very unusual woman. There was some-
thing Elizabethan about her—or, if you like,
really of this century. And she had something
to say; that, too, I began to feel. She had
none of the technique, but she had the heart
and brain. And very soon I was proposing
that we work out something together from the
beginning.
“It was not till then, I think, that she fully
realised what one of her real difficulties was
going to be. Judge Bishop, you knew her pri-
vate affairs. And from the first you’ve known
Fisher. Well, I am going to say now the thing
that he must answer later. If Mrs. Fisher did
not act openly, and normally, with a man like
that, it was simply impossible that she should.
“I suggested, naturally, that she should come
to my office to work. But I soon found that


302 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
written was in the portfolio. " I had only to
pick it up as I ran through. And a moment
later I was back in my own room, with the
door between fast closed again. I found that
I was still carrying one of her handkerchiefs,
a mere sop of blood. As I’ll tell you, I re-
turned it later. In the meantime, I had begun
to play the coward. I knew that I ought to
telephone for a physician. Yet I did not dare
telephone from my own rooms. But as soon as
I could get back any kind of command over my-
self, I hurried out and around the corner to
Stryker’s. I told myself that when I had done
that, I had done all that could be asked of me!
Well, once back in my rooms again, I soon
found what was really to be asked of me! For
by the one hellish chance in a million those
two—two devils who did the rest were wait-
ing for me then and there!”
“I’ve got one of them downstairs,” said In-
spector McGloyne. “An’ he’s talkin’ a-plenty
now, at that. But let’s hear your part of it
the first.”
“There’s part of it that I can only guess at.
I’ll never know how the pair learned about the


GLASBURY'S STORY 303
door. I suppose they learned of the wall safe
and the pearls through Maddalina. One of
them was an Italian, you know. And he was
the beast who seemed to be the professional.
I mean the professional safe-breaker. But the
minute I stepped inside my door both of them
jumped me—I don’t even know yet how they
got a key to my rooms—and they weren’t long
in letting me know what they were after. From
the first they kept their guns at my head, and
they simply shoved me through to my writing-
room, and then demanded the key to the door
between. I’ve wished often enough since that
I’d let them kill me then. But even that
mightn’t have helped much. The mischief had
been done. They knew the way. And while
the American stayed and covered me, the other
went on through.
“And here, again, I can tell only the part of
it. The devil that went in must have gone
straight to the wall safe. And then something
must have disturbed him.”
“You, Willings, most likely,” said the
Judge.
“No, you and the Doctor, probably,” Will-


308 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
oranda she brought to it, day by day, she de-
stroyed afterwards. But none the less it
seemed to me that every line of that play spoke
with her mouth, and denounced me. And late
one night I went to my offices in the Savoy, and
tore it up. I could not burn it. There was no
way; but I tore it into pieces so small that I
knew there would never be any betrayal
there.”
“And there was not,” said Laneham. “But
next morning your waste-basket was in my
rooms. And a few hours later we had the frag-
ments of that blood-smeared blackmail note.”
“I know. I know. But there is more to tell
of that portfolio. When I opened it I found in
it more than the manuscript of a play. Gen-
tlemen, I swear to you that that day Mrs.
Fisher must have been in the fear of
death—”
“Leave that, leave that,” said Laneham.
“That, too, we may come back to, in its own
time. Simply tell us what you found.”
‘‘I found a will. She had written it herself,
that morning, and had had it witnessed by the
Servants,” -


GLASBURY'S STORY 309
“Yes, sir,” cried Jimmy, “we witnessed it
—me an’ that she-devil, Maddalina!”
Glasbury put his hand into his wallet pocket.
‘‘I have it here.”
“Exactly,” said the Doctor. “Bishop, shall
we look at it now, or leave it till later, with
the rest?”
But the Judge was already looking at it.
And next moment he was turning strangely to
Willings and D. Hope. “Tell me,” he asked,
after a pause, “have you two youngsters any
idea of what there is in this?”
“Why, no, no, indeed,” the girl answered.
“And what do you mean ? But if it’s any-
thing for the Settlement House—?”
“There’s a great deal for the Settlement
House—an endowment that should carry it for
all time to come.” He was still reading. “And,
so far as I can make out, though it quashes
everything before it, she’s made it perfectly
sound and legal. . . . Ah-h—!” and again his
eyes turned wonderingly to the two “young-
sters”—“Ah!—I think you had better read
this together.”
“But why?” asked Willings. “We are con-


310 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
cerned only so far as it concerns the Settle-
ment.”
“You may believe so. But if you will be-
gin to read here— Or, no, take it with you
into the study for a moment, and look at it
alone.”


316 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“In the first place,” said the Doctor, “to go
back to the beginning with you, what part did
Maddalina play in it?”
“A good fat part, considerin’ she was a skirt
an’ all. She went an” hired to Mrs. Fisher
only because we’d heard about them drops o'
milk. Her and Lotufo—that’s my guinea
friend—they always been strong pals. An’ she
was put in to make the inside lay. One thing
she learned pretty soon, too, was that there was
a chanst for a double lift. She got onto it that,
every three months, Mrs. Fisher was in the
habit of havin’ one of them big blue envelopes
full of yella-backs waitin’ on the premises for
your friend Willin’s. An’ when we were fixin’
for the pearls there didn’t seem to be no good
reason why we shouldn’t have Maddalina make
her get-away with the money. Only a matter
of timin’ the job right.”
“Yes,” said McGloyne, “you timed it right.
But how did you know you could get in through
Glasbury’s rooms?”
“Maddalina again. If she was keen enough
to find where that little safe was planted, you
can bet yours she wasn’t believin’ long in any


THE WILL 317
spooks causin’ them voices. An’ one afternoon
Lotufo decided to lay up in Glasbury’s dump
an’ learn for himself. He learned all right.
How did he get in first? With a key. An’
where did he get it? Sho, what’s a key? Any
one can fix up for a key! The thing I’m tellin’
you is that he found out about that door. An’
after that it was only an argyment as to when.
That was for Maddalina to tip us to.
“An’ she tipped us wrong. She’d got the
idea that Mrs. Fisher was goin’ to be out that
afternoon. She’d heard her 'phonin’ to Mr.
Willin's; an’ as Maddalina got it, the money
was to be there for him, but she, Mrs. Fisher,
would have to be away. An’ as it was Jimmy
the butler’s day off on top of it, what more
would any two ginks want for an open door?
“Howsomever, Maddalina was all wrong.
An’ she went wrong in somethin’ else, too. That
day around noon she made a play that give
Mrs. Fisher at least the cold beginnin’ of a
hunch; an’ there was a plenty row in Madda-
lina’s room. Only Mrs. Fisher didn’t suspect
enough—an’ act.
“All right. Come on to our part in it. But,


322 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR%
rushes forth and seeks only the nearest oppor-
tunity to commit suicide, that alone would ap-
pear to be evidence enough. I believe it’s even
an old legal maxim that suicide is confession.
I knew when I arranged that séance it was
Fisher who was our murderer. I had every
suspicion of it the night of the murder. And
every day since then has simply furnished me
new confirmations.
“In every crime the psychoanalyst looks first
for the man morally capable of committing it.
And Fisher was morally capable of it. I felt
sure of that. But against that, his character,
there seemed to be something that absolutely
guaranteed his innocence, the fact, I repeat,
that he was not in the apartment either for
hours before or for hours after a murder which
seemed to have been one of brutal violence.
Nor was he the sort of man who would ever run
the risks of hiring an accomplice.” He turned
to Bishop.
“Judge, you will remember that when I took
up the case, the first thing I set myself to look
for was what we call “evidence in the destruc-
tion of evidence.” The criminal will half the


324 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
there wasn’t any chance of your allowing that.
I made up my mind that if I could get hold of
another copy of that magazine, I would have
at least a beginning of knowledge. Miss Hope
was able to find another copy for me. And
what it contained I’ll tell you in due course.
In the meantime many other things had taken
place.
“For one thing, we had found Jimmy. From
the first I believed him innocent, for reasons
you’ve already heard. You’ve already heard,
too, how I was able to learn where to look for
him.
“Well and good. We found Jimmy. He told
a straight story. At any rate, he didn’t hold
back any more than every other “friend in the
case” felt the same moral need of doing. Of
that more in its place. And Jimmy clearly indi-
cated the guilt of the maid Maddalina.
“But now, before going further, let us see
what our problem really was.
“The mystery was seemingly inexplicable
simply because it contained so many elements
that appeared from their nature to be mutual-
ly contradictory.


THE DOCTOR'S STORY 325
“There was, first of all, murder, and murder
apparently without motive. For if you will
recall the order in which the incidents fol-
lowed one another that day between half-past
four and six, the second entry, and the attempt
upon the wall safe did not take place for at
least fifteen or twenty minutes after Mrs. Fish-
er’s death!
“Second, there entered some one else. Was
it man, or apparition, or some sort of demon-
ridden soul? We did not know. We knew only
that he had, apparently, been in the apartment
before the would-be safe-breakers, that he was
there after they were; and that he knocked
crazily upon the doors and cried out upon his
God. Could he, conceivably, have been em-
ployed to kill Mrs. Fisher? Not for a moment.
Think only how Fisher’s every look and motion
when first he heard that voice and heard that
knocking showed that it was something he un-
derstood as little as the rest of us. Again, was
it the voice and the action of any conceivable
jewel thief? And to add to that, it was equally
plain that Fisher knew of no secret means of
access to the apartment. In a word, every


THE DOCTOR'S STORY 327
In her haste she had Jimmy and Maddalina
witness it. And, since at the same time she
sent a note to the Judge, here, asking him to
call in the afternoon, it was reasonable to
believe that she wanted to see him about
the same thing. And so we reach our next
step.
“For why this sudden—this ghastly sudden
feeling on her part that she must make a will—
or rather make haste if she was to make a new
one? What did she fear? And why? The
facts are these. As Judge Bishop can tell you,
she made her former will when she married
Fisher. She then believed herself in love with
him. In that former will she made him prac-
tically her sole inheritor. As the Judge can
also tell you, she had been intending to alter
all that for some time.”
“She had,” said Bishop. “And that was the
thing I was holding back. She hadn’t merely
come to find life intolerable with the man; she
had grown vaguely to fear him. I don’t mean
that till the last day, perhaps, she could actual-
ly believe she was in danger from him. But
she had at least taken a resolve that he should


328 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
not profit by her death—and I think she had
let him know it. Oh, I know. I should have
told all that. But it would simply have been
to accuse the man, without a tittle of evidence,
when he had been away the whole day of the
crime, and when, obviously, he expected to find
her alive when he came home that night. For
he did, Laneham, he did!”
“No question of it,” said the Doctor. “And
to tell you now, he did not expect her to meet
her death until the morning!”
“Good Lord!” gasped Glasbury.
“Man,” said Bishop, “what are you going to
tell us next?”
And, as before, even the big Inspector seemed
to shudder and shrink in upon himself.
“But get on with it,” he said, “get on with
it!”
“We have not finished with the will,” said
Laneham. “What was it, that morning and a
few hours before her death, that made her sud-
denly resolve to make that new will, and at once?
That is something we can never know. But
just as the man in the death cell can pick out
among a dozen the keeper who is to kill him,


332 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
“They really got themselves into their
trouble, and allowed of my making use of them
by their own ill behaviour in the beginning.
For while they cannot be accused of having
even the remotest knowledge of Mrs. Fisher’s
murder, both, at the start,—and with them all
their fellows—united in a fine case of whole-
sale perjury.
“At the hour of the murder, or just after
it, you’ll recall that Willings very suspicious-
ly walked down the stairs instead of using the
elevator, because, as he said, the elevators
were not running. And they were not. Both
young gentlemen supposed to be in charge of
them were just then interested in something
else. I early inferred that they must have been.
And I set to work to learn what it was. Well,
merely by consulting the police records, I found
that substantially at that moment a pigeon
thief was being chased and arrested on the roof
opposite. There was only one place from which
our friends could watch the excitement, the
Casa Grande roof. And it was a safe guess that
to remain unseen themselves when thus neglect-
ing duty they would keep in cover of the scuttle.


CHAPTER XXVI
TEIE END
A FEw minutes more and they were on their
way. And, as they went, Laneham took up his
story again.
“We are going to the Casa Reale. But from
there we shall enter the Casa Grande through
the door itself. And in that there is the ex-
planation of everything not yet explained. We
examined the walls often enough and carefully
enough on the Fisher side; but we never ex-
amined them on the Glasbury side. From the
construction of apartment houses, apartments,
or sections of apartments, correspond. I sup-
pose it was the arrangement of the halls or
something which said that both those little
rooms—both used as writing-rooms or studies,
too,—should be almost counterparts of one an-
other. And when the interior decorator de-
cided that both should be panelled, he did the
rest. We tested the panelling in the Fisher
337


340 BEHIND THE BOLTED DOOR.?
In the meantime, we’ll go on through to the
Fisher side, and the swimming-pool, and learn
the rest.”
Once more, however, Laneham had an ex-
planation to make on the way.
“In a sense, all our mystery has been
the mystery it has been, simply and solely be-
cause of the joint and several facts the vari-
ous witnesses—with the best intentions and
against all warnings—kept to themselves. And
the one thing of that kind still to tell is this:
Two days before the murder Willings saw
Fisher buy a length of fine platinum wire. It
was in an electrical supply house; it was a per-
fectly legitimate thing to buy; there was no
reason why Fisher shouldn’t have bought it.
Yet simply because he showed some uncalled-
for agitation at being seen buying it, Willings
must make up his mind to say nothing about
it. There was evidence, as he believed, that
made it certain Fisher could have had nothing
to do with the crime. Therefore, why put in
as evidence something that could only throw
unjust suspicion on a man perfectly inno-
cent?


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*~


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