Drury Lane’s Last Case

22 The Hacker

A battered automobile stood in the garage, which was strewn with rusty bolts, oily rags, wooden cases — a litter of evil-smelling débris. An ancient chair stood between the windowed wall and the car, and festoons of ragged rope hung from it. Between the chair and the double door lay the body of Maxwell, black garments streaked with dust; he was lying prone, his legs crumpled beneath him. There was no sign of a wound, although the knot of a bound cloth was visible at the nape of his neck. Two feet from his outstretched right hand there was a paint-smeared taboret on which lay an extension telephone. Its receiver dangled at the end of the cord. Patience dully replaced it on the hook.

Rowe and Lane knelt by the side of the still figure and turned it over. Maxwell’s gaunt face was a creamy white; beneath his chin like a bib there was a thickly folded cloth, apparently a gag which he had managed to work loose after freeing himself from the ropes which had held him tied to the chair beyond. Then, incredibly, his face began to twitch, and he uttered a croaking groan.

“Why, he’s alive!” cried Patience, flying to his side. She went down on her knees, ignoring the grime and the concrete floor, and patted the old man’s cheeks. His eyes flickered open, and closed again. Rowe scrambled to his feet and made for a greenish tap at the rear of the garage; he soaked his handkerchief in water and returned. Patience bathed the white face gently.

“Poor fellow,” said Lane slowly. “I think between us, Gordon, we can manage to get him into the house.”

They lifted the limp sharp-boned body carefully and carried it across the clearing through the shattered front door into the parlor. Patience struggled with an overturned sofa, managing to right it; its upholstery had been slashed to strips. They laid Maxwell upon it and stood silently looking down on him. His eyes fluttered open again, and a faint tinge of color began to suffuse his withered cheeks. There was fear and horror in his eyes; but when he saw the concerned faces above him he sighed and began to lick his lips.

At this moment there was the roar of a motor outside and they quickly went out on to the porch. A thick-set man with a red face, dressed in a blue uniform, was hurrying up the steps, two policemen at his heels.

“I’m Chief Bolling of Tarrytown,” he snapped. “Were you the one that called my office this morning, young lady?... Couldn’t find this damned place and that’s why we’re late. Now tell me what’s happened here.”

When introductions and explanations had been made, and Maxwell had been sufficiently revived, they gathered about the old man in the shattered parlor and listened to his story.

On the previous night at 11.30 — a dark threatening Sunday night — Maxwell had been alone in the house playing patience when the door-bell rang. He had hurried to the door, a little apprehensive; it was pitch-black outside, he was alone, far from a human habitation... Who might a visitor be at this time of night — to this house which had had so few visitors? Then the thought came to him that perhaps it was Dr. Ales returning; and at the insistent demand of the bell he had opened the door. Instantly a foot had slipped over the threshold and in the dim light of the hall he had seen a tall man muffled to the eyes. Maxwell started back with a squeal of alarm, but the visitor pushed something small and round and hard against Maxwell’s quivering belly and he realized with a weakening of his knees that he was being threatened with a revolver. Then, as the man advanced and the feeble light fell directly upon him, Maxwell saw with a convulsion of horror that the man was masked.

“I... I was so scared,” said Maxwell in a cracked voice, “that I thought I’d faint. He turned me around and made me march out of the house in front of him, keeping the gun pressed into my back. I shut my eyes; I thought he — he was going to shoot me. But he only made me go into the garage, and he found some old rope and tied me to the broken old chair there, and he gagged me with a piece of cloth. Then he went off. But he came back right away and searched me. I knew why. When we’d left the house the front door had clicked shut; it’s got a spring-lock. He couldn’t get back into the house. But I had a duplicate key in my jeans — Dr. Ales had the original — and he took it from me. Then he went away and locked the garage door and I was left in the dark. Everything was so quiet... I was in the garage all night, hardly breathing.” He shivered. “The ropes hurt. I couldn’t sleep. I felt strained, and my arms and legs sort of fell asleep. But in the morning I finally managed to loosen the ropes, and I took the gag out of my mouth, and then I found in my pocket the card Inspector Thumm left with me. So I called up on the extension ’phone... I guess I must have fainted. That’s all I know.”

They went over the house thoroughly, Maxwell tottering after them. They began with the study.

It was evident at once that Maxwell’s captor had been incredibly ruthless in the pursuit of whatever purpose had brought him to the lonely country house. The room had been devastated in the search. Not only had furniture been overturned and glass objects broken, but the paneled walls showed unmistakable evidence of having been attacked in places by some sharp instrument. The instrument was very quickly found by Chief Bolling. It was a small chopper and it lay on the floor near the fireplace.

“That’s our ax,” said Maxwell, licking his lips again. “It comes from the tool-box in the kitchen. I used it for chopping wood for the fireplaces.”

“Is it the only ax on the premises?” asked Patience.

“Yes, miss.”

The woodwork and paneling had been viciously attacked: long splinters lay on the molding at the base of the walls. Even the floor had been hacked in one place, where there had been a ring, according to Maxwell. The rug now lay crumpled in a corner, as if it had been violently hurled aside. An ornate grandfather clock of Victorian vintage which had stood in another corner now lay prone on the floor in a litter of glass. Examination showed that the wielder of the ax had deliberately smashed its case, torn away the brass pendulum, tipped the clock over, and then hacked away its back and sides, revealing its intricate gears and works. The hands stood at precisely twelve o’clock.

“Was this clock going last night?” asked Rowe sharply.

“Yes, sir. I was in here playing patience when — when the door-bell rang, so I know. It had a very loud tick. It was going, all right.”

“Then he attacked the clock at midnight,” murmured Patience. “That might be useful.”

“I don’t see for what,” grunted Bolling. “We know he came at half-past eleven from Maxwell’s story, don’t we?”

Mr. Drury Lane, wrapped in a mantle of reverie, stood quietly to one side, watching. Only his eyes were alert — deeply sparkling.

Patience moved slowly about the room. She surveyed the desk, whose drawers had been pulled out and their contents scattered; on the top lay strewn playing-cards. Then she caught sight of something across the room and her eyes narrowed. It was a cheap tinny alarm-clock, and it stood on the oak mantel above the fireplace.

“What is it, Pat?” asked Rowe, noticing her preoccupation.

“That alarm-clock. Queer thing to be in a study,” and she walked over and picked it up. It was ticking away cheerfully.

“I brought that in here, miss,” said Maxwell apologetically; he seemed to have recovered from his shock and was watching the proceedings with curious eyes.

“You did? But why did you need the small clock when there was the big grandfather-clock in the room?” demanded Patience suspiciously.

“Oh, for the alarm,” Maxwell hastened to reply. “I had a slight cough the last few days, miss, and I’d got some cough medicine in Tarrytown on Saturday. The druggist told me to take a spoonful every four hours, you see. I’d taken one at eight last night but I’m sort of absent-minded, miss” — he smiled weakly — “and I thought maybe I’d forget to take it again before I went to sleep. So I brought the alarm in here while I was playing patience and set the alarm to ring at midnight to remind me to take the medicine, and then I was going to bed. But before I could—”

“I see,” said Patience; the story seemed innocent enough, for there was a small bottle of brown liquid on the mantelpiece near the clock, three-quarters full, and a sticky spoon. She looked over the clock and found, just as Maxwell had said, that its alarm was still set to go off at twelve o’clock; its little lever was pushed against the end of the slot marked Alarm. “I wonder now—” she murmured; and consulted her own tiny wrist-watch. It was 11.51. “What time have you, Gordon?”

“Just about eleven-fifty.”

“Have you the time, Mr. Bolling?”

“Eleven-fifty-two,” snapped Bolling. “What’s all this—?”

“I was just wondering how correct this clock was, that’s all,” said Patience with a faint smile; but her eyes were perturbed. “As you see, it’s on the dot.” And indeed the hands of the cheap alarm-clock stood at 11.51.

“Ah— Patience,” murmured Lane, coming forward. “May I see that for a moment, please?” He examined it briefly, set it back on the mantel, and returned to his corner.

“What the deuce is that?” asked Rowe wonderingly; he had been wandering about among the wreckage, poking things. His head was thrown back and he was gazing at something high on one of the walls.

This wall differed from the others in that its built-in book-shelves ran almost to the ceiling whereas the others ran only half-way to the ceiling. A sliding ladder, such as is used in shoe shops and libraries, ran along a metal track at the foot of this wall, evidently put in by the original owner of the house to provide easy access to the uppermost shelves out of normal reach. Above the topmost shelf there was a series of walnut panels, like the paneling on the other three walls. They were narrow and carved in the ginger-bred style of a bygone generation. What had caught Gordon Rowe’s eyes was one of these panels. It was swung away from the wall, quite as if it were a door.

“Looks like a secret compartment, by George,” chuckled the young man. “In another minute I’ll expect the Count of Monte Cristo to pop out of the fireplace.” He ran lightly up the ladder, which stood directly below the opening in the panel near the ceiling.

“What the devil’ve we run into?” groaned Bolling. “Secret compartment! Sounds like one of these here detective stories... Maxwell, did you know about this?”

The old man was staring upward open-mouthed. “N-no, sir! That’s the first time I ever saw it. Why, it’s a little door—”

“Empty,” announced Rowe grimly. “Swell hiding-place! It’s about — let’s see now — eight inches wide by two inches high by two inches deep... Ales must have made it, and a clever job he did, too! It’s of recent vintage; you can still see the fresh chisel-marks inside.” He squinted about, while they watched him intently. “Whoever demolished this place was unlucky. He didn’t find the hole. See?” And he pointed to the narrow strip of paneling above the topmost shelf. Here and there the blade of the ax had bitten savagely into the wood; but when Rowe swung the little door shut they could see that it bore no marks of any kind. “Missed it clean! Clever, isn’t it! Now how the devil do you get it open again?”

“Let me up there, young fellow,” said Bolling grimly.

Rowe reluctantly descended, and the police chief mounted with a heavy caution. The secret compartment, as Rowe had said, was ingeniously made. Now that the little door was swung to, there was no sign of its existence. The cracks had been so contrived that they came at the edge of the frame of carving and were thus undetectable. Bolling pushed and pulled until his red face became redder; but the door remained shut and the panel outwardly innocent, although it gave out a hollow sound when he rapped it with his knuckled. The frame of this panel, as uniformly of the others, was set with tiny wooden rosettes. Bolling panted: “Some trick to it,” and began to finger the rosettes. Then he exclaimed aloud. One of them had turned in his fingers. He revolved it once, and nothing happened. He revolved it again; and the door flew open with such coiled vigor that he almost fell off the ladder... He took the door off and examined the interior. It contained a crude but clever mechanism of catch-and-spring.

“Well,” he said, descending to the floor, “no use worrying about that. Whatever was in it, if anything ever was, is gone. Mighty small space, hey? Let’s take a look around upstairs.”

Dr. Ales’s bedroom was as badly hacked as the study downstairs. The bed had been taken apart, mattress sliced open, furniture split, floor attacked — obviously the wielder of the ax, not having found what he was seeking downstairs, had mounted to Dr. Ales’s bedroom to continue his search. There was a small gilt clock in the bedroom; and, oddly enough, this had been damaged also in the tornado which had swept the room, having fallen to the floor from the night-table, perhaps when the hacker had upset the table in his haste to get the bed apart. The hands had stopped at 12.24.

Patience’s eyes sparkled. “Our friend’s left almost a time-table of his activities,” she exclaimed. “This proves that he attacked the lower part of the house first... Maxwell, do you know if this clock kept correct time?”

“Yes, miss. All the clocks were good ones, even if they were cheap, and I regulated them so that they corresponded all the time.”

“That’s very fortunate,” murmured Lane. “How stupid this man was!”

“What?” asked Bolling sharply.

“Eh? Oh, nothing, Mr. Bolling. I was just commenting upon the essential imbecility of criminals.”

A bass voice rolled upstairs. “Hey, Chief! Look what I found!”

They tumbled down the stairs in their haste. One of the policemen was standing in the hall, focusing a flashlight on a dark and dirty corner. In the rays of the light they saw three pieces of glass, to one of which was attached a long loop of black silk ribbon, torn in one place.

Lane picked up the pieces and took them into the parlor. He fitted the three pieces together; they made a perfect circle of glass.

“A monocle,” he said quietly.

“Good Lord,” muttered Rowe.

“A monocle?” Maxwell blinked. “That’s funny, sir. Dr. Ales didn’t wear any, and I’ve never seen one about the house. And of course I—”

“Dr. Sedlar,” said Patience gloomily.