Chapter XXII The White Alley
Once again at White Birches, Mr. Stone went systematically to work. He asked for a footman to lead him to such portions of the house as he wished to visit. But it was all done so quietly and unostentatiously that most of the household returned to their own interests and paid no attention to the wanderings of erratic genius.
Mr. Wheeler followed close in the footsteps of Fleming Stone, while Dorothy hovered in the background, eagerly awaiting some development that she might understand.
Stone went at once to the roofs, and glanced about at the trap-doors and scuttles in much the way Wheeler had done before him, thereby causing the heart of the lesser detective to swell with pride.
When Stone opened the scuttle that led to the small dark attic in the old ell, Mr. Wheeler remarked, “There’s no use looking in there, Mr. Stone. That little loft has no outlet into the house. Its only door has been nailed up for years.”
“Thank you,” said Fleming Stone, who had already half disappeared through the scuttle. He went on down and remained in the attic for several minutes, and, after returning to the roof, reentered the house by the trap-door through which they had come up.
Stone’s manner had changed somewhat. Though not discourteous in any way, he was so absorbed in his own thoughts as to seem oblivious to all about him. Descending from one story to another, he paused at certain rooms and looked in. It was an old part of the house, occupied mostly by the servants.
He next asked to speak with Jane and Peters, whose bedrooms he had noticed especially.
“You remember the night your master disappeared?” he asked abruptly of the two servants.
“Yes, sir,” they replied.
“Did you hear any noise at all during the night?”
“No, sir.”
“Not any noise at all? No usual noises?”
“Well, sir,” said Jane, “there was the rats in the wall, sir.”
“And most uncommon bad they was that night, sir,” added Peters reminiscently.
“Ah!” and Fleming Stone seemed deeply interested in the information. “And do you often hear rats in the wall?”
“Now and again, sir; but that night they was worse than usual. This is a very old part of the house, sir, and we can’t seem to get altogether rid of them.”
“That will do.”
Mr. Wheeler noticed the gleam in Fleming Stone’s eye, and felt sure that however inexplicable it might be, the rats in the wall had to do with the mystery of White Birches!
Next Fleming Stone went straight to the cellar, with the footman leading the way, and the faithful Wheeler and the eager Dorothy following.
Stone carefully examined the old oven and the various small rooms in that part of the cellar. An old work-bench stood against a white-washed brick wall. This he pulled away, disclosing an opening into a space behind the chimney. Though thick with dust and dirt and cobwebs, Mr. Stone peered into it, and, stooping, picked up a pocket-knife, which he pocketed without a glance. With a stick, he poked around in the accumulated rubbish, and gave a sudden exclamation as he picked up a small white marble. He gazed at it a moment with intense concentration, and then, turning, he offered it to Dorothy.
“There’s the clue,” he said exultantly.
“What is it?” inquired the girl, as she took the marble, wonderingly.
“It is a white alley.”
“What is it for?”
“It was made for boys to play with; but its present use is to clear your lover from the unjust charge hanging over him. His is a narrow chance, but he will yet make it. You’d better preserve that white alley, for the time will come when you will realize its importance.”
Though she fought against the conviction, Dorothy couldn’t help an impression that Fleming Stone was crazy. But James Wheeler stood as one enthralled. Here was detective work such as he had dreamed of but never accomplished! To pick up a common marble, a boy’s marble, of the type called an alley, and by its aid to discover the man who killed Justin Arnold—this was wonderful work indeed! Not spectacular—Fleming Stone could not be that—but an exhibition of the deduction made by genius from logical observation and inference.
“How did it get there?” inquired Dorothy, for lack of a more intelligent question to ask.
“It has probably been there for twenty years,” replied Stone carelessly, and with this unilluminating speech he turned and went upstairs.
Mr. Stone seemed to look upon Miss Wadsworth as the head of the somewhat disintegrated household, and he at once sought her presence.
“I have to go away now,” he said to her. “I have done all that can be accomplished here at present.”
“But you have been here barely three hours, Mr. Stone.”
“Much may be done in a short time if that time be not wasted. I must go now, but I will return Monday morning, and I expect then to give you the result of my inquiries into this case.”
“Will you not stay to luncheon?” Miss Abby spoke coldly, for she did not believe Mr. Stone had accomplished anything, and thought he only wanted to get away.
“No, thank you. If you will send me back to New York in the motor, I shall be glad to go at once.” Though they did not know it, the very fact that Fleming Stone’s manner was a shade less affable than usual was really a tribute to the fact that he was deeply engrossed in the case.
Only to Dorothy did he smile, when he bade her good-by, and said kindly, “Keep up a good heart, little girl. It will all come out right for you and your lover, but the disclosure of the truth will be a sad event for all.”
“Well, for a story-book detective, he’s the right sort,” said Campbell Crosby, with a supercilious laugh; “but they don’t amount to much when it comes to solving a real mystery.”
“I think he will solve it,” said Dorothy; “and he’s coming back Monday to tell us.”
“Where is he going in the meantime, Dorothy?” said Crosby. “You seem to be in his confidence more than the rest of us.”
“I don’t know, Campbell; but I don’t think it has anything to do with this case. He’s an awfully busy man, and I think he has put us off until Monday so he can attend to something else.”
“I don’t think so,” volunteered Mr. Wheeler. “I think he’s pretty much interested in this case, and I think that, wherever he’s going, it is on business connected with it!”
“I don’t,” said Miss Abby disdainfully. “I think he’s gone off somewhere to a week-end party; and I doubt if we ever see him again!”
But Miss Wadsworth was wrong, for on Monday morning Fleming Stone reappeared. He was courteous and charming, but exceedingly grave.
He asked the members of the household and the guests to assemble in the library, but he advised that the servants be excluded.
“I have discovered,” Mr. Stone began, “to my own satisfaction, the assassin of Justin Arnold. But I will tell you the reasons I have for my opinion, and you may conclude for yourselves if I am right. As you know, a seemingly inexplicable problem confronted us. It appeared that the man who killed Justin Arnold could not have gained entrance to White Birches that night. This was based on the assumption that no entrances were known except the ordinary ones. A search was made to find such an entrance, but it was stopped too soon. Such an entrance exists, and was used. Another direction in which to look is the old principle of seeking him whom the crime will benefit; this too was also done to a degree, but again the search stopped too soon.
“Let us reconstruct the situation. Mr. Arnold is left; alone in his library, late at night. His secretary left him at one o’clock, and Miss Duncan a half hour later. By, let us say, half-past one or soon there after, the entire household was asleep, save Mr. Arnold. We may assume this since he apparently did not go to his bedroom at all. Let us, then, picture an intruder, who enters the house, goes directly to Mr. Arnold in the library, and, after we know not what sort of an interview, stabs him, prevents incriminating evidence of his deed by the use of a pillow hastily snatched from a nearby couch, and then carries the dead body of his friend to the cellar.”
“Why do you say friend, Mr. Stone?” asked Mr. Wheeler, who had been listening intently.
“Had it been other than a friend, Mr. Arnold would have raised an outcry. I said an intruder, but I did not say a marauder. It must have been a man whose unexpected appearance may have surprised but did not alarm Mr. Arnold.”
“And how did this intruder effect this entrance?” inquired Campbell Crosby, thus voicing the question in everybody’s mind.
“By means of the secret entrance of which I spoke.”
“There is no sliding panel or secret stairway in this house,” declared Crosby, in tones of certainty.
“Not a secret passage of the sort built in old castles,” said Fleming Stone quietly, “but, none the less, a secret mode of entrance, unused for years and almost undiscoverable. Suppose I tell you how I found it. It was through the process of elimination. Your really thorough search for such a means of entrance, I found, omitted only one thing; and that was an exploration of the attic over the old ell. I believe you looked down through the scuttle, but did not go in. Clearly, it was the only place left to search, so I searched it. I found footprints in the dust on the old floor, which, though of no especial use for identification, proved that some one had been there recently. As you said, there is no outlet from that attic into the house, the door being nailed up. But as I stood there, looking about by the light of my pocket electric, I noticed, besides the dry garret smell, the characteristic damp odor of the cellar. I found it came up back of the chimney. Investigation proved that the chimney, probably as a precaution against fire, had been built more than a foot away from the external wall of the house. This space or shaft, I concluded, must descend unimpeded to the cellar, to account for that dampness and odor. As a test, I dropped my pocket knife in it and heard it strike down below. I then turned to the roof, and traced the direction of the shaft down through each story. On reaching the cellar, I found, as I had expected, that this vacant space behind the brick chimney extended directly from cellar to attic. I found, moreover, large nails driven zigzag into the old wooden joists, by means of which an agile person could climb up if he desired. I picked up my pocket knife—which had proved the directness of the shaft—and, poking about in the rubbish, I found a white alley. This seemed to me to prove my theory that at some time, years ago, boys used to hide here during their play in the old cellar. I had now found how the intruder could get in and out of the house—if he knew of this shaft. Which knowledge, by the way, would imply that he was one of the boys who used to play in this cellar. By inquiring of the servants, I learned that they heard, or thought they heard, unusually loud noises that night, made by the rats in the walls. These unusual noises I take to be due to the entrance and exit of the intruder, through the shaft behind the chimney, by means of the long nails protruding from the joists—in exactly the same fashion as when he was a boy.”
There was intense silence in the room. No one looked at any one else, each seemingly unwilling to breathe the first suggestion of suspicion.
But James Wheeler, absorbed in the technical work of the detective, said breathlessly, “But how did the intruder get up to the roof of the house, to enter at this scuttle? And, before that, how did he get over the wall into the grounds?”
“Remember, Mr. Wheeler, that if my theory is the right one, this intruder, when a boy, playing with marbles, must have been familiar with every inch of the house and grounds. Moreover, if he made his entrance and exit by that shaft of which I have told you, it presupposes a man—for that boy must now be a man—of unusual ingenuity, agility, athletic strength, and daring. I cannot tell you all the details of his entrance from the outer world, but I can give you enough of them to support my claims to plausibility. To begin, the intruder arrived outside the wall, let us say, not long after one o’clock. He brought with him, by way of paraphernalia, a slight rope-ladder, made of fine, strong fish-line. Also a ball of fine fish-line and a weight, very likely a fish-line sinker. Outside the wall, but near it, there is a tree whose spreading branches should have been trimmed away by people as cautious as the Arnold family. But I understand that their excessive precaution is largely tradition, and so this tree has been allowed to grow until it offers a fine point of vantage for one who wishes to note the movements of the watchman, Malony. Our intruder, let us say, climbed this tree and awaited such a time as the watchman should be at his most distant point. Then, still from the branches of the tree, he throws down a piece of rope-ladder or knotted rope inside the wall at the top, hooking it over the sharp points of broken glass and mortar. He then calmly places a board on these otherwise impassable points—I know this because I have since examined the board—and climbs down his rope-ladder or knotted rope inside the wall. This contrivance he leaves on the wall, as there is no fear of its detection in the darkness. He goes to the house and unrolls a much longer rope-ladder of the same sort. To this is attached his ball of fish-line and sinker. With a good aim he throws the sinker over the low ell of the house. Going around the house and picking up the sinker, he proceeds to pull the line up over the ridge-pole till the ladder reaches the roof, and then fastens his line to a veranda pillar.”
“Do you know he did this?” asked Campbell Crosby quietly.
“I know he did this,” returned Fleming Stone, as quietly, “because I found the mark in the turf where the weight struck it; I found a very little fresh dirt near the veranda post; and I also found an end of the fish-line left in the carving of the pillar, where it had hastily been cut off short. On the other side of the house I found many scratches on the painted clapboards, where the intruder had climbed his ladder, up the side of the house.
“To resume, after climbing his ladder to the roof, he goes in through the scuttle, down through the shaft, and up the cellar-stairs, to Justin Arnold’s library. After accomplishing his premeditated and fiendish purpose, he disposes of the body of his friend, climbs the shaft, and retraces his steps to the wall and over it. As his ingenious rope-ladders, or whatever he may have used, have not been found, we may conclude he carried them away with him; but the board that assisted him over the wall, he was thoughtless enough to toss into some high grass nearby, and that has been found.”
“You looked for it?” exclaimed Mr. Wheeler, with staring eyes.
“I instructed a gardener to look and he found it. Now, granting all this, it only remained to find out who this intruder was, and where he came from. A few odd hints here and there had given me a suspicion and I set to work on it. The finding of the prestolite key proved the real key to the puzzle. This key,” and Fleming Stone took if from his pocket, “I found on the ground near the wall and near that part of the wall where I discovered the intuder had entered. Therefore, I felt sure our man had come in an automobile, and having this key in his pocket he had lost it while climbing the wall. That climb was not an easy one at best, and a small key could very well have slipped out of a coat pocket.”
“Let me see the key,” said Emory Gale, and it was handed to him.
He looked at it a moment and handed it back without a word.
“As I told you,” resumed Stone, “my suspicions had been aroused in a certain quarter, and implicated a man in a motor-car. But where could he leave his car while entering this place by means of the wall? There is no public garage very near, so I assumed he left his car at a garage in New York City, and came up here by subway or elevated railroad. At any rate, I worked along this line. I did not search the city garages, but further assuming that the man must needs cross the ferry to New Jersey on his return trip, I reasoned that he would not miss his key until on the Jersey side, or at least on the ferryboat. For it is not allowed to show those blinding, brilliant lights in the limits of the city, but immediately on striking the country roads they are necessary.”
“The Jersey roads, you said?” and Fred Crane leaned forward in his eagerness.
“Yes, the man started for New Jersey, but his destination was beyond that State. I crossed the ferry myself, assuming that as soon as the missing key was needed, the owner would stop at some garage, and buy or borrow one. Nor was I mistaken. At the third place I inquired, I learned that a motorist did stop at about four o’clock Tuesday morning and ask for the use of a key to turn on his lights, saying he had lost his own.”
“You got a description of this man?” asked Detective Wheeler.
“Certainly. An unmistakable description. He stayed but a moment and then went on; but his own description and that of his car can be verified by the garage keeper at any time. I have nothing more to add, as I think it unnecessary to say the name of the one who benefits most in a mercenary way by this crime; the one who has been familiar with this whole place from boyhood; and the one who is athletic, of strong, wiry build, and possessed of the cool daring and ingenuity required to carry out such an enterprise.”