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

with a feeling of nausea, "it was poison."

"Very powerful poison, too, I should say, sir; we didn't get here none too soon. Where shall we put the body, sir?"

"Why not leave it where it is?" I asked, impatiently.

"Very good, sir," said the man, and presently he and his assistant took themselves off, to my intense relief.

"And now, Parks," I began, "there is something I want to say to you.
Let us go somewhere and sit down."

"Suppose we go up to the study, sir. You're looking regularly done up, if you'll permit me to say so, sir. Shall I get you something?"

"A brandy-and-soda," I assented; "and bring one for yourself."

"Very good, sir," and a few minutes later we were sitting opposite each other in the room where Vantine had offered me similar refreshment not many hours before. I looked at Parks as he sat there, and turned over in my mind what I had to say to him. I liked the man, and I felt he could be trusted. At any rate, I had to take the risk.

"Now, Parks," I began again, setting down my glass, "what I have to say to you is very serious, and I want you to keep it to yourself: I know that you were devoted to Mr. Vantine—I may as well tell you that he has remembered you in his will—and I am sure you are willing to do anything in your power to help solve the mystery of his death."

"That I am, sir," Parks agreed, warmly. "I was very fond of him, sir; nobody will miss him more than I will."

I realised that the tragedy meant far more to Parks than it did even to me, for he had lost not only a friend, but a means of livelihood, and I looked at him with heightened sympathy.

"I know how you feel," I said, "and I am counting on you to help me. I have a sort of idea how his death came about. Only the vaguest possible idea," I added hastily, as his eyes widened with interest; "altogether too vague to be put into words. But I can say this much —the mystery, whatever it is, is in the ante-room where the bodies were found, or in the room next to it where the furniture is. Now, I am going to lock up those rooms, and I want you to see that nobody enters them without your knowledge."

"Not very likely that anybody will want to enter them, sir," and
Parks laughed a grim little laugh.

"I am not so sure of that," I dissented, speaking very seriously. "In fact, I am of the opinion that there is somebody who wants to enter those rooms very badly. I don't know who he is, and I don't know what he is after; but I am going to make it your business to keep him out, and to capture him if you catch him trying to get in."

"Trust me for that, sir," said Parks promptly. "What is it you want me to do?"

"I want you to put a cot in the hallway outside the door of the ante-room and sleep there to-night. To-morrow I will decide what further precautions are necessary."

"Very good, sir," said Parks. "I'll get the cot up at once."

"There is one thing more," I went on. "I have given the coroner my personal assurance that none of the servants will leave the house until after the inquest. I suppose I can rely on them?"

"Oh, yes, sir. I'll see they understand how important it is."

"Rogers, especially," I added, looking at him.

"I understand, sir," said Parks, quietly.

"Very well. And now let us go down and lock up those rooms."

They were still ablaze with light; but both of us faltered a little, I think, on the threshold of the ante-room. For in the middle of the floor stood a stretcher, and on it was an object covered with a sheet, its outlines horribly suggestive. But I took myself in hand and entered. Parks followed me and closed the door.

The ante-room had two windows, and the room beyond, which was a corner one, had three. All of them were locked, but a pane of glass seemed to me an absurdly fragile barrier against any one who really wished to enter.

"Aren't there some wooden shutters for these windows?" I asked.

"Yes, sir; they were taken down yesterday and put in the basement.
Shall I get them?"

"I think you'd better," I said. "Will you need any help?"

"No, sir; they're not heavy. If you'll wait here, you can snap the bolts into place when I lift them up from the outside."

"Very well," I agreed, and Parks hurried away.

I entered the inner room and stopped before the Boule cabinet. There was a certain air of arrogance about it, as it stood there in that blaze of light, its inlay aglow with a thousand subtle reflections; a flaunting air, the air of a courtesan conscious of her beauty and pleased to attract attention—just the air with which Madame de Montespan must have sauntered down the mirror gallery at Versailles, ablaze with jewels, her skirts rustling, her figure swaying suggestively. Something threatening, too; something sinister and deadly—

There was a rattle at the window, and I saw Parks lifting one of the shutters into place. I threw up the sash, and pressed the heavy bolts carefully into their sockets, then closed the sash and locked it. The two other windows were secured in their turn, and with a last look about the room, I turned out the lights. The ante-room windows were soon shuttered in the same way, and with a sigh of relief I told myself that no entrance to the house could be had from that direction. With Parks outside the only door, the rooms ought to be safe from invasion.

Then, before extinguishing the lights, I approached that silent figure on the stretcher, lifted the sheet and looked for the last time upon the face of my dead friend. It was no longer staring and terrible, but calm and peaceful as in sleep—almost smiling. With wet eyes and contracted throat, I covered the face again, turned out the lights, and left the room. Parks met me in the hall, carrying a cot, which he placed close across the doorway.

"There," he said; "nobody will get into that room without my knowing it."

"No," I agreed; and then a sudden thought occurred to me. "Parks," I said, "is it true that there is a burglar-alarm on all the windows?"

"Yes, sir. It rings a bell in Mr. Vantine's bedroom, and another in mine, and sends in a call to the police."

"Is it working?"

"Yes, sir; Mr. Vantine himself tested it this evening just before dinner."

"Then why didn't it work when I opened those windows just now?" I demanded.

Parks laughed.

"Because I threw off the switch, sir," he explained, "when I came out to get the shutters. The switch is in a little iron box on the wall just back of the stairs, sir. It's one of my duties to turn it on every night before I go to bed."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Is it on again, now?"

"It certainly is, sir. After what you told me, I'd not be likely to forget it."

"You'd better have a weapon handy, too," I suggested.

"I have a revolver, sir."

"That's good. And don't hesitate to use it. I'm going home—I'm dead tired."

"Shall I call a cab, sir?"

"No, the walk will do me good. I'll see you to-morrow."

Parks helped me into my coat and opened the door for me. Glancing back, after a moment, I saw that he was standing on the steps gazing after me. I could understand his reluctance to go back into that death-haunted house; and I found myself breathing deeply with the relief of getting out of it.

CHAPTER IX GUESSES AT THE RIDDLE

The walk uptown did me good. The rain had ceased, and the air felt clean and fresh as though it had been washed. I took deep breaths of it, and the feeling of fatigue and depression which had weighed upon me gradually vanished. I was in no hurry—went out of my way a little, indeed, to walk out into Madison Square and look back at the towering mass of the Flatiron building, creamy and delicate as carved ivory under the rays of the moon—and it was long past midnight when I finally turned in at the Marathon. Higgins, the janitor, was just closing the outer doors, and he joined me in the elevator a moment later.

"There's a gentleman waiting to see you, sir," he said, as the car started upward. "Mr. Godfrey, sir. He came in about ten minutes ago. He said you were expecting him, so I let him into your rooms."

"That was right," I said, and reflected again upon Godfrey's exhaustless energy.

I found him lolling in an easy chair, and he looked up with a smile at my entrance. "Higgins said you hadn't come in yet," he explained, "so I thought I'd wait a few minutes on the off chance that you mightn't be too tired to talk. If you are, say so, and I'll be moving along."

"I'm not too tired," I said, hanging up my coat. "I feel a good deal better than I did an hour ago."

"I saw that you were about all in."

"How do you keep it up, Godfrey?" I asked, sitting down opposite him.
"You don't seem tired at all."

"I am tired, though," he said, "a little. But I've got a fool brain that won't let my body go to sleep so long as there is work to be done. Then, as soon as everything is finished, the brain lets go and the body sleeps like a log. Now I knew I couldn't go to sleep properly to-night until I had heard the very interesting theory you are going to confide to me. Besides, I have a thing or two to tell you."

"Go ahead," I said.

"We had a cable from our Paris office just before I left. It seems that M. Théophile d'Aurelle plays the fiddle in the orchestra of the Café de Paris. He played as usual to-night, so that it is manifestly impossible that he should also be lying in the New York morgue. Moreover, none of his friends, so far as he knows, is in America. No doubt he may be able to identify the photograph of the dead man, and we've already started one on the way, but we can't hear from it for six or eight days. But my guess was right—the fellow's name isn't d'Aurelle."

"You say you have a photograph?"

"Yes, I had some taken of the body this afternoon. Here's one of them. Keep it; you may have a use for it."

I took the card, and, as I gazed at the face depicted upon it, I realised that the distorted countenance I had seen in the afternoon had given me no idea of the man's appearance. Now the eyes were closed and the features composed and peaceful, but even death failed to give them any dignity. It was a weak and dissipated face, the face of a hanger-on of cafés, as Parks had said—of a loiterer along the boulevards, of a man without ambition, and capable of any depth of meanness and deceit. At least, that is how I read it.

"He's evidently low-class," said Godfrey, watching me. "One of those parasites, without work and without income, so common in Paris. Shop-girls and ladies' maids have a weakness for them."

"I think you are right," I agreed; "but, at the same time, if he was of that type, I don't see what business he could have had with Philip Vantine."

"Neither do I; but there are a lot of other things I don't see, either. We're all in the dark, Lester; have you thought of that? Absolutely in the dark."

"Yes, I have thought of it," I said, slowly.

"No doubt we can establish this fellow's identity in time—sooner than we think, perhaps, for most of the morning papers will run his picture, and if he is known here in New York at all, it will be recognised by some one. When we find out who he is, we can probably guess at the nature of his business with Vantine. We can find out who the woman was who called to see Vantine to-night—that is just a case of grilling Rogers; then