The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet: A Detective Story, Burton Egbert Stevenson [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

secret drawer."

"And all the rest?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered slowly, "and all the rest." He said nothing more until we stopped before the Vantine house, but I could see, from his puckered brows, how desperately he was trying to untangle this quirk in the mystery.

"The siege seems to have been lifted," I remarked, as we alighted.

"The siege?"

"Parks telephoned me that your esteemed contemporaries had the place surrounded. I told him to hold the fort!"

"Poor boys!" he commented, smiling. "To think that all they know is what Grady is able to tell them!" Then he stopped before the house and made a careful survey of it.

"Which room is the cabinet in?" he asked.

"The ante-room is there at the left where those two shuttered windows are. The cabinet is in the corner room—there is one window on this side and two on the other."

"Wait till I take a look at them," he said, and, vaulting the low railing, he walked quickly along the front of the house and around the corner. He was gone only a minute. "They're all right," he said, in a tone of relief.

"Of course they're all right. You didn't suppose—"

"If that cabinet contains what I thought it did, Lester—yes," he added, a little savagely, as he saw my look, "and what I still think it does—it wouldn't be safe in the strongest vault of the National City Bank," and he motioned for me to ring the bell.

I did so, in silence.

Parks answered it almost instantly, and I could tell from the way his face changed how glad he was to see me.

"Well, Parks," I said, as we stepped inside, "everything is all right, I hope?"

"Yes, sir," he answered. "But—but it gets on the nerves a little, sir."

I heard a movement behind me, as I gave Parks my coat, and turned to see Rogers sitting on the cot.

"Hello," I said, "so you're able to be up, are you?"

"Yes, sir," he answered, without looking at me. "I thought I'd come down and keep Parks company."

Parks smiled a little sheepishly.

"I asked him to, Mr. Lester," he said. "I got so lonesome and jumpy here by myself that I just had to have somebody to talk to. Especially, after the burglar-alarm rang."

"The burglar-alarm?" repeated Godfrey quickly. "What do you mean?"

"We've got a burglar-alarm on the windows, sir. It's usually turned off in the day-time, but I thought I'd better leave it on to-day, and it rang about the middle of the afternoon. I thought at first that one of the other servants had raised a window, but none of them had. Something went wrong with it, I guess."

"Did you take a look at the windows?" I asked.

"Yes, sir; a policeman came to see what was the matter and we went around and examined the windows, but they were all locked. It made me feel kind of scary for a while."

"Does the alarm work now?"

"No, sir; the policeman said there must be a short circuit somewhere, and that he'd notify the people who put it in; but nobody has come around yet to fix it."

"We'd better take a look at the windows, ourselves," said Godfrey. "You stay here, Parks. We can find them, all right; and I don't want you to leave that door unguarded for a single instant."

We went from window to window, and Godfrey examined each of them with a minuteness that astonished me, for I had no idea what he expected to find. But we completed the circuit of the ground floor without his apparently discovering anything out of the way.

"Let's take a look at the basement," he said, and led the way downstairs with a readiness which told me that he had been over the house before.

In the kitchen, we came upon the cook and housemaid sitting close together and talking in frightened whispers. They watched us apprehensively, and I stopped to reassure them, while Godfrey proceeded with his search. Then I heard him calling me.

I found him in a kind of lumber-room, standing before its single small window, his electric torch in his hand.

"Look there," he said, his voice quivering with excitement, and threw a circle of light on the jamb of the window at the spot where the upper and lower sashes met.

"What is it?" I asked, after a moment. "I don't see anything wrong."

"You don't? You don't see that this house was to be entered to-night?
Then what does this mean?"

With his finger-nail, he turned up the end of a small insulated wire.
And then I saw that the wire had been cut.

CHAPTER XI THE BURNING EYES

For an instant, I did not grasp the full significance of that severed wire. Then I understood.

"Yes," said Godfrey drily, "that romance of mine is looking up again. Somebody was preparing for a quiet invasion of the house to-night —somebody, of course, interested in that cabinet."

"He wasn't losing any time," I ventured.

"He knew he hadn't any to lose. When you put those wooden shutters up, you warned him that you suspected his game. He knew, if the alarm was on, it would ring when he cut the wire, but he also knew that the chances were a hundred to one against the cut being discovered, or the alarm put in working order, before to-morrow."

"Why can't we ambush him?" I suggested.

"We might try, but it will be a mighty risky undertaking, Lester."

"One risky undertaking is enough for to-night," I said, with a sigh, for my belief in the existence of the secret drawer and the poison and all the rest of it had come back with a rush. I felt almost apologetic toward Godfrey for ever doubting him. "We'd better wait and see if we survive the first one before we arrange for any more."

"All right," Godfrey laughed. "But I'll fix this break."

He got out his pen-knife, loosened two or three of the staples which held the wire in place, drew it out, scraped back the insulation, and twisted the ends tightly together.

"There," he added, "that's done. If the invader tampers with the window again, he will set off the alarm. But I don't believe he'll touch it. I fancy he already knows his little game is discovered."

"How would he know it?" I demanded, incredulously.

"If he is keeping an eye on this window, as he naturally would do, he has seen my light. Perhaps he is watching us now."

I glanced at the dark square of the window with a little shiver. This business was getting on my nerves again. But Godfrey turned away with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Now for the cabinet," he said, and led the way back upstairs.

Rogers was still sitting dejectedly on the cot, and, looking at him more closely, I could see that he was white and shaken. His trouble, whatever its nature, plainly lay heavy on his mind.

"Have you anything to tell us, this evening, Rogers?" I asked, kindly, but he only shook his head.

"I've told you everything I know, sir," he answered, in a low voice.

"I'm not going to worry you, Rogers," I went on, "but I want you to think it over. You can rely upon me to help you, if I can."

He looked up quickly, but caught himself, and turned his eyes away.

"Thank you, sir," was all he said.

"And now," I added, briskly, "I'll have to ask you to get up. Move the cot away from the door, Parks."

Parks obeyed me with astonished face.

"You're not going in there, sir!" he protested, as I turned the knob.

"Yes, we are," I said, and opened the door. "Is—is…."

"No, sir," broke in Parks, understanding. "The undertakers brought the coffin and put him in it and moved him over to the drawing-room this afternoon, sir."

"I'm glad of that. I want all the lights lit, Parks, just as they were last night."

Parks reached inside the door and switched on the electrics. Then he went away, came back in a moment with a taper, and proceeded to light the gas-lights. A moment later, the lights in the inner room were also blazing.

"There you are, sir," said Parks, and retreated to the door. "Will you need me?"

"Not now. But wait in the hall outside. We may need you." I had a notion to tell him to have an axe handy, but I saw Godfrey smiling.

"Very good, sir," said Parks, evidently relieved, and went out and closed the door.

I led the way into the inner room.

"Well, there it is," I said, and nodded toward the Boule cabinet, standing in the full glare of the light, every inlay and incrustation glittering like the eyes of a basilisk. "It isn't too late to give it up, Godfrey."

"Oh, yes, it is," he said, coolly, removing his coat "It was too late the moment you told me that story. Why, Lester, if I gave it up, I should never sleep again!"

"And if you don't, you may never wake again," I pointed out.

He laughed lightly.

"What a dismal prophet you are! Draw up a chair and watch me."

He pulled back his shirt-sleeves, and placed his electric torch on the floor beside the cabinet. Then he paused with folded arms to contemplate this masterpiece of M. Boule.

"It is a beauty," he said, at last, and then drew out the little drawers, one after another, looked them over, and placed them carefully on a chair. "Now," he added, "let us see if there is any space that isn't accounted for."

He took from his pocket a folding rule of ivory, opened it, and began a series of measurements so searching and intricate that half an hour passed without a word being spoken. Then he pulled up another chair, and sat down beside me.

"I seem to be pretty much up against it," he said, "no doubt just as the designer of the cabinet would wish me to be. The whole bottom of the desk is inclosed, and those three little drawers take up only a small part of the space. Then the back of the cabinet seems to be double—at least, there's a space of three inches I can't account for. So there's room for a dozen secret drawers, if the Montespan required so many. And now to find the combination."

He adjusted the steel gauntlet carefully to his right hand and sat down on the floor before the cabinet.

"I'll begin at the bottom," he said. "If there is any spot I miss, tell me of it."

He ran his fingers up and down the graceful legs, carefully feeling every inequality of the elaborate bronze ornamentation. Particularly did his fingers linger on every boss and point, striving to push it in or move it up or down; but they were all immovable. Then he examined the bottom of the table minutely, using his torch to illumine every crevice; but again without result.

Another half hour passed so, and when at last he came out from under the table, his face was dripping with sweat.

"It's trying work," he said, sitting down again and mopping his face. "But isn't it a beauty, Lester? The more I look at it, the more wonderful it seems."

"I told Philip Vantine I wasn't up to it, and I'm not," I said.

"Nor I, but I can appreciate it to the extent of my capacity. It's the Louis Fourteenth ideal of beauty—splendour carried to the nth degree. Look at the arabesques along the front—can you imagine anything more graceful? And the engraving—nothing cut-and-dried about that. It was done by a burin in the hands of a master—perhaps by Boule himself. I don't wonder Vantine was rather mad about it. But we haven't found that drawer yet," and he drew his chair close to the cabinet.

"I'd point out one thing to you, Godfrey," I said: "if you go on poking about with the fingers of both hands, as you've been doing, you are just as apt to get struck on the left hand as on the right."

"That's true," he agreed. "Stop me if I forget."

There were three little drawers in the front of the table, and these Godfrey had removed. He inserted his hand into the space from which he had taken them, and examined it carefully. Then, inch by inch, he ran his fingers over the bosses and arabesques with which