The Million-Dollar Suitcase, Alice MacGowan [free ebooks romance novels .TXT] 📗

examination of hers in Clayte's room at the St. Dunstan; the crisp, new-looking bedding, the unworn velvet of the chair cushions; the faded nap of the carpet, quite perfect, while that in the hall had just been renewed. Even had the room been done over recently—and I knew it had not—there was no getting around the total absence of photographs, pictures, books, magazines, newspapers, old letters, the lack of all the half worn stuff that collects about an occupied apartment. No pinholes or defacements on the walls, none of the litter that accumulates. The girl was right; that room hadn't been lived in.

"Beautiful," I said in honest admiration. "It's a pleasure to see a mind like yours, and such powers of observation, in action, clicking out results like a perfectly adjusted machine. Clayte didn't live in his room because he lived with the gang all his glorious outside hours. There was where the poor rabbit of a bank clerk got his fling."

"Oh, yes, it works logically. He held himself down to Clayte at the St. Dunstan and in the bank, and he let himself go to—what?—outside of it, beyond it, where he really lived."

"He let himself go to Steve Skeels—won't that do you?"

"No," she said so positively that it was annoying. "That won't do me at all."

"But it's what you got," I reminded her rather unkindly, and then was sorry I'd done it. "It's what you got for me—and I thank you for it."

"You needn't," she came back at me—spunky little thing. "It isn't worth thanking anybody for. It's only a partial fact."

"And you think half truths are dangerous?" I smiled at her.

"There isn't any such thing," she instructed me. "Even facts can hardly be split into fractions; while the truth is always whole and complete."

"As far as you see it," I amended. "For instance, you insist on keeping the gang all under Clayte's hat—or you did at first. Now you're refusing to believe, as both Worth and I believe, that Steve Skeels is Clayte himself. I should think you'd jump at the idea. Here's your Wonder Man."

She leaned back in her chair and laughed. I was glad to hear the sound again, see the dimples flicker in her cheeks, even if she was laughing at me.

"A wonderful Wonder Man, Mr. Boyne," she said. "One who does things so bunglingly that you can follow him right up and put your hand on him."

"Not so I could," I reminded her gaily. "So you could. Quite a different matter." She took my compliment sweetly, but she said with smiling reluctance,

"I'm not in this, of course, except that your kindness allowed me to be for this day only. But if I were, I shouldn't be following Skeels as you are. I'd still be after Clayte."

"It foots up to the same thing," I said rather tartly.

"Oh, does it?" she laughed at me. "Two and two are making about three and a half this afternoon, are they?"

"What we've got to-day ought to land something," I maintained. "You've been fine help, Barbara—" and I broke off suddenly with the knowledge that I'd been calling her that all through the rush of the work.

"Thank you." She smiled inclusively. I knew she meant my use of her name as well as my commendation. I began clearing my desk preparatory to leaving. Worth was going to take her home and as he brought her coat, he spoke again of the suitcase.

"Hey, there!" I remonstrated, "You don't want to be lugging that thing with you everywhere, like a three-year-old kid that's found a dead cat. Leave it where it is."

"Give me an order for it then," he said. And when I looked surprised, "Might need that box, and you not be in the office."

"Need it?" I grumbled. "I'd like to know what for."

But I scribbled the order. Over by the window the young people were talking together earnestly; they made a picture against the light, standing close, the girl's vivid dark face raised, the lad's tall head bent, attentive.

"But, Bobs, you must get some time to play about," I heard Worth say.

"Awfully little," Her look up at him was like that of a wistful child.

"You said you were in the accounting department," he urged impatiently. "A lightning calculator like you could put that stuff through in about one tenth of the usual time."

"I use an adding machine," she half whispered, and it made me chuckle.

"An adding machine!" Worth exploded in a peal of laughter. "For Barbara Wallace! What's their idea?"

"It isn't their idea; it's mine," with dignity. "They don't know that I used to be a freak mathematician. I don't want them to. Father used to say that all children could be trained to do all that I did—if you took them young enough. But till they are, I'd rather not be. It's horrid to be different; and I'm keeping it to myself—in the office anyhow—and living my past down the best I can."

As though her words had suggested it, Worth spoke again,

"Where did you meet Cummings? Seems you find time to go out with him."

"I've known Mr. Cummings for years," Barbara spoke quietly, but she looked self-conscious. "I knew he was with those friends of mine at the Orpheum last night, but I didn't expect him to call for me at Tait's—or rather I thought they'd all come in after me. There wasn't anything special about it—no special appointment with him, I mean."

I had forgotten them for a minute or two, closing my desk, finding my coat, when I heard some one come into the outer office, a visitor, for little Pete's voice went up to a shrill yap with the information that I was busy. Then the knob turned, the door opened, and there stood Cummings. At first he saw only me at the desk.

"Your friend calling for you again, Bobs—by appointment?" Worth's question drew the lawyer's glance, and he stared at them apparently a good deal taken aback, while Worth added, "Seems to keep pretty close tab on your movements." The low tone might have been considered joking, but there was war in the boy's eye.

It was as though Cummings answered the challenge, rather than opened with what he had intended.

"My business is with you, Gilbert." He came in and shut the door behind him, leaving his hand on the knob. "And I've been some time finding you." He stopped there, and was so long about getting anything else out that Worth finally suggested,

"The money?" And when there was no reply but a surprised look, "How do you stand now?"

"Still seventy-two thousand to raise." Cummings spoke vaguely. This was not what had brought him to the office. He finished with the abrupt question, "Were you at Santa Ysobel last night?"

"Hold on, Cummings," I broke in. "What you got? Let us—"

I was shut off there by Worth's,

"It's Sunday afternoon. I want that money to-morrow morning. You've not come through? You've not dug up what I sent you after?"

I could see that the lawyer was absolutely nonplussed. Again he gave Worth one of those queer, probing looks before he said doggedly,

"The question of that money can wait."

"It can't wait." Worth's eyes began to light up. "What you talking, Cummings—an extension?" And when the lawyer made no answer to this, "I'll not crawl in with a broken leg asking favors of that bank crowd. Are you quitting on me? If so, say it—and I'll find a way to raise the sum, myself."

"I've raised all but seventy-two thousand of the necessary amount," said Cummings slowly. "What I want to know is—how much have you raised?"

"See here, Cummings," again I mixed in. "I was present when that arrangement was made. Nothing was said about Worth raising any money."

Cummings barely glanced around at me as he said, "I made a suggestion to him; in your presence, as you say, Boyne. I want to know if he carried it out." Then, giving his full attention to Worth, "Did you see your father last night?"

On instinct I blurted,

"For heaven's sake, keep your mouth shut, Worth!"

For a detective that certainly was an incautious speech. Cummings' eye flared suspicion at me, and his voice was a menace.

"You keep out of this, Boyne."

"You tell what's up your sleeve, Cummings," I countered. "This is no witness-stand cross-examination. What you got?"

But Worth answered for him, hotly,

"If Cummings hasn't seventy-two thousand dollars I commissioned him to raise for me, I don't care what he's got."

"And you didn't go to your father for it last night?" Cummings returned to his question. He had moved close to the boy. Barbara stood just where she was when the door opened. Neither paid any attention to her. But she looked at the two men, drawn up with glances clinched, and spoke out suddenly in her clear young voice, as though there was no row on hand,

"Worth was with me last night, you know, Mr. Cummings."

"I seem to have noticed something of the sort," Cummings said with labored sarcasm. "And he'd been with that wedding party earlier in the evening, I suppose."

"With me till Miss Wallace came in." Worth's natural disposition to disoblige the lawyer could be depended on to keep from Cummings whatever information he wanted before giving us his own news. "What you got, Cummings?" I prompted again, impatiently. "Come through."

His eyes never shifted an instant from Worth Gilbert's face.

"A telegram—from Santa Ysobel," he said slowly.

Worth shrugged and half turned away.

"I'm not interested in your telegram, Cummings."

Instantly I saw what the boy thought: that the other had taken it on himself to apply for the money to Thomas Gilbert, and had been turned down.

"Not interested?" Cummings repeated in that dry, lawyer voice that speaks from the teeth out; on the mere tone, I braced for something nasty. "I think you are. My telegram's from the coroner."

Silence after that; Worth obstinately mute; Barbara and I afraid to ask. There was a little tremor of Cummings' nostril, he couldn't keep the flicker out of his eye, as he said, staring straight at Worth,

"It states that your father shot himself last night. The body wasn't discovered till late this morning, in his study."

CHAPTER IX SANTA YSOBEL

Of all unexpected things. I went down to Santa Ysobel with Worth Gilbert. It happened this way: Cummings, one of those individuals on whose tombstone may truthfully be put, "Born a man—and died a lawyer," seemed rather taken aback at the effect of the blow he'd launched. If he was after information, I can't think he learned much in the moment while Worth stood regarding him with an unreadable eye.

There was only a little grimmer tightening of the jaw muscle, something bleak and robbed in the glance of the eye; the face of one, it seemed to me, who grieved the more because he was denied real sorrow for his loss, and Worth had tramped to the window and stood with his back to us, putting the thing over in his silent, fighting fashion, speaking to none of us. It was when Barbara followed, took hold of his sleeve and began half whispering up into his face that Cummings jerked his hat from the table where he had thrown it, and snapped,

"Boyne—can I have a few minutes of your time?"

"Jerry," Worth's voice halted me at the door, "Leave that card—an order—for me. For the suitcase."

Cummings was ahead of me, and he turned back to listen, but I crowded him along and was pretty hot when I faced him in the outer office to demand,

"What kind of a deal do you call this—ripping in here to throw this thing at the boy in such a way? What is your idea? What you trying to put over?"

"Go easy, Boyne." Cummings chewed his words a little before he let them out. "There's something queer in this