Shadow 001 - The Living Shadow

CHAPTER XIV AT HOLMWOOD ARMS

THE first week at Holmwood Arms was an enjoyable experience for Harry Vincent. He had lived in luxury at the Metrolite Hotel, but he had been merely one guest among many, and had followed the isolated existence that is the usual routine of those who stay in large hotels.

A different spirit prevailed at Holmwood Arms. The inn was a fashionable one and a great deal of the social life of Holmwood centered about its spacious salons. Many of the guests had been residents for years; all of them were persons well situated in life; and they welcomed a new arrival.

Particularly a gentleman like Harry Vincent. He was very evidently a man of refinement and education. With money at his disposal - and his supply seemed virtually limitless - he was capable of cutting a good figure in such surroundings.

The mysterious stranger of the bridge had chosen well when he had picked Harry Vincent for a henchman. For the young man was serious, yet affable; friendly, yet discreet.

Harry felt that he had assumed a real responsibility; that his work demanded proper living and wise action. The fact that he could obtain money whenever he wanted it made him choose the wise course of economy. He limited his expenditures to reasonable amounts, and kept a careful account of all expenses. This had not been asked of him; but he wanted to be ready with a full account, should it ever be demanded of him.

The great appeal of his unique work lay in the adventure that it offered.

Harry had always craved adventure; but had never possessed the initiative to seek it. In his present position, it might be forced upon him at any time. He felt that he was ready for it.

He had no desire to go through another experience like the disaster at Wang Foo’s; at the same time, he had no fear for his future safety.

The Shadow had been powerful enough to snatch him from the clutches of what seemed certain doom; and Harry felt confident that he would be saved from any danger which might come, or it would not be The Shadow’s fault.

Harry spent his first week at Holmwood Arms without making any effort to gain quick results. He felt that he was gaining the confidence of the people in the inn; that he was establishing himself soundly in the community.

Harry drove about considerably in his coupe. The car was a recent model of a high-priced make - speedy, powerful and reliable. He rode slowly past the Laidlow home and took in the surroundings much more effectively than he had from the newspaper photographs. He walked about the district also, but gained no added information during his casual inspections.

The inn was about half a mile from the town of Holmwood. Leaving the village, one followed a shady avenue that led directly to the home of the murdered millionaire. A side street, turning left from the road to the Laidlow house, went to Holmwood Arms. The millionaire’s house was about a half a mile from the hotel.

Beyond the Laidlow home was the residence of Ezekiel Bingham, the well-known lawyer whose testimony had been so important to the police. Bingham’s house was not a pretentious one; the grounds were small, but the place was well kept.

In his study of the terrain, Harry gained a first-class impression of what must have happened on that eventful night. He rode by the Laidlow house in his car, after dark, and visualized the scene.

The path that the burglar would logically have followed lay straight across the lawn and through the hedge, Harry thought. Old Ezekiel Bingham must have witnessed the man’s entire flight across the dark grass; but even had he possessed youthful agility, he would have been unable to stop the fugitive.

During one of his trips to the village, Harry encountered the elderly lawyer. He was in the bank, cashing a check. The teller spoke to Bingham by name.

Strolling to the door, Harry saw the lawyer enter a large sedan and drive toward his home. Bingham evidently had no chauffeur. He had been driving by the Laidlow house alone on the night of the murder.

Harry smiled as he observed the slow course of the lawyer’s car. He passed it in his coupe as he rode back to Holmwood Arms; then, on sudden thought, he kept on the road toward the Laidlow home and parked in front of the nearest house before the millionaire’s residence.

He watched Bingham’s sedan roll slowly by; one could tell that the driver was probably a man of years. He noted the meager speed of the car as it neared the Laidlow estate. If Bingham always traveled at that snail’s pace there was no wonder that the old man had stopped quickly when he heard the shots.

Back at the inn, Harry did some serious thinking. How far was he getting with his investigation? Not far, he must admit. Nearly ten days had elapsed since his arrival at the Long Island town, and he had merely gained a view of places and people that he had already known about.

He had not even seen Burgess, Laidlow’s secretary. He had noted one or two persons on the Laidlow grounds, but had not viewed any of them closely. Harry had picked up various remarks regarding the murder, but most of them seemed unimportant, although he remembered them.

Burgess, he learned, was still living at the house of the murdered millionaire. Mrs. Laidlow was at home, but neither she nor her two sons were to be seen They were going away shortly; already packing for a trip to Florida, and it was understood that Burgess was going with them.

The secretary had proven his worth by his valiant effort to apprehend the man who had murdered his employer. He belonged definitely to the Laidlow family, and it was obvious that the wife of the dead millionaire would rely upon Burgess to identify the murderer - if the criminal should be captured.

With both Burgess and Bingham as material witnesses, there was an excellent chance that the murderer would be recognized when - and if - arrested.

During his second week at Holmwood Arms, Vincent began to study the guests at the hotel. There must be some possible clew to the murderer in the town of Holmwood - that is, if The Shadow actually expected clews. But otherwise he would not have ordered Vincent there.

Since he was to look for clews, and had not yet discovered any, Harry figured the best course would be to work around the inn for a while. For if a clew lay there, it would be positive negligence to overlook it while it was so close at hand.

When this idea first occurred to Harry, his original thought was to watch the guests who seemed most reticent to talk. He looked for suspicious characters, for persons who kept to themselves and who did not make friends.

There were several guests of this type, but Harry soon realized that his plan was wrong. Any man who might be bold enough to stay so close to the scene of a murder with which he had some connection would seek to avoid suspicion.

Harry tried to picture himself in the place of the imaginary man. How would he behave? In a friendly way, of course. Very much in the way Vincent was now acting - playing the part of a man who had some occupation which did not require all of his time or effort.

As he spent only a few hours of the day at his typewriter, Harry had an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with other guests. There were five men at the hotel whose occupations seemed sketchy. He chatted with them frequently, and gradually eliminated them until he came to Elbert Joyce - a man about forty years of age, a talkative fellow who knew many subjects and loved to swing his conversation from one theme to another.

Joyce claimed to be a salesman. He had left one concern and was awaiting another job on the road - a job which had been promised positively. In the meantime he was taking things easy - why shouldn’t he? He made plenty of money, so he said, and knew how to salt some away.

“I never worry about money,” he told Harry. “I always have it; I always can get it.”

Joyce was affable and entertaining. He seemed always occupied with some trivial matter.

Harry came upon him in the lounge room in the afternoon. Joyce was working on a cross-word puzzle in a newspaper. Vincent laughed.

“Thought that stuff was out of date, Joyce,” he said.

“What’s out of date?”

“Cross-word puzzles.”

“Not for an active mind, Vincent.”

“Don’t you grow tired of them?”

“Occasionally. But I usually do one a day.”

Joyce ran his pencil among the squares, completed the last few blocks with amazing rapidity, and turned to another part of the paper.

“I do these, too,” he remarked, pointing to a jumble of letters.

“What are they?”

“Cryptograms. One letter substituted for another. Sort of a code. An old idea - but popular again. Poe used a cryptogram in his story, ‘The Gold Bug.’”

Joyce’s pencil was at work. In the spaces below the jumbled letters he began to decipher the complex code.

“You work quickly,” observed Harry.

“Most cryptograms are easy,” answered Joyce. “Certain letters must obviously be vowels. E, for instance, is normally a frequent letter. Double letters give a clew also.”

He was continuing while he spoke and he completed the short cryptogram with apparent ease. Harry marveled at the man’s ability; and at the same time felt apprehensive. He recalled the simple code that he had received from Fellows, and which he had committed to memory. How long would it take a chap like Joyce to decipher such a code? Half an hour, perhaps. Vincent realized that he must be careful if he received a letter.

Joyce tossed the paper aside, and yawned.

“How about a ride?” suggested Harry.

“Where to?”

“Just around the country. It’s a nice day. My car is outside.”

“I’ll go with you, Vincent.”

They rolled slowly up the avenue past the Laidlow home.

“There’s a puzzle for you,” remarked Harry, waving his hand toward the house of the murdered millionaire.

“How so?” asked Joyce.

“The Laidlow murder,” Vincent supplied. “That’s where it happened.”

“So that’s the house! I recall reading of the murder some time ago. What came of it?”

“Still unsolved.”

They were passing the next house.

“That’s where Bingham lives,” said Harry.

“Who’s he?”

“A lawyer who saw the burglar escaping.”

Joyce gazed indifferently at the old attorney’s house.

“Thought you might be interested,” observed Vincent. “There’s a real problem. I should think it would intrigue you.”

“I seldom read about murders.”

“This was a very big one.”

“Perhaps. They’re all alike to me. Let the police worry about them. That’s their business.”

The conversation shifted. Harry headed the car toward the Sound, and they rode along beside the broad sheet of glistening water, watching the distant steamers that looked like tiny toys.

Elbert Joyce talked constantly; yet his words were emptiness. He compared Long Island Sound with the Great Lakes; he spoke of sales trips he had made to Detroit; he discussed yacht racing and told of a winter he had spent in Havana.

While Harry listened, his mind kept reverting to a single thought: the indifference that Joyce had expressed regarding the Laidlow murder. This was not consistent with the man’s regular method of conversation. Joyce would talk of any subject that came along - would talk actively until he changed it. Yet he had sidestepped this matter entirely.

Furthermore, Joyce’s apparent ignorance of the story of the murder must surely be a pose. Joyce did not confine his newspaper reading to the puzzle columns. And being interested in such problems, it seemed strange that he would pay no attention to a murder mystery - especially one which had occurred so close at hand.

Perhaps Joyce was connected with the crime! He might even have been the burglar! Harry rejected the latter thought.

Then he began to form a different suspicion. Joyce, he knew, was a clever man. If he had been an active participant in the Laidlow murder, he would have found some opportunity to slide away before this. Also, Harry recalled, Joyce was a newcomer at Holmwood Arms. He had arrived later than Harry.

No. It was impossible that Joyce was the murderer, or that he knew much about the crime other than what he might have read of it. Joyce - Harry decided as they rode along - was a crook of a different sort. He was playing another game. He avoided all discussions of criminal activities of any sort simply as a matter of precaution.

Joyce was probably safe at Holmwood. But why was he there?

They were swinging back to town. They pulled up at the inn just before dinner, and went into the dining-room together.

Joyce was beginning to note Harry’s silence. But there were others at their table; the talk was lively and vivacious.

Harry and Joyce lighted their cigars as they left the dining-room and wandered into the lounge. Here both picked up newspapers. Joyce turned immediately to find a cross-word puzzle. He pulled a pencil from his pocket and blocked in a few letters.

He looked up to catch a glance from Harry. He threw down the paper in disgust.

“Darn these puzzles,” Joyce said. “They’re a lot of foolishness. They annoy me most of the time.”

He went to a card table close by, and called to the attendant for a pack of cards. He began a game of solitaire.

Harry went on reading. His mind was at work. Joyce, he realized, had overstepped himself and knew it. He had shown too much interest in puzzles during the afternoon: now he was trying to disclaim his enthusiasm.

Harry strolled out on the porch. It was a moderately warm Indian Summer evening. He enjoyed the air and talked for a while with several of the other guests.

Then he went back to the lounge. Three other men had joined Joyce, and the four were playing poker. They invited Harry to sit in with them, but he declined. Instead, he took the easy-chair and finished reading the paper. He puffed his cigar contentedly as he lolled back in the chair.

“I’ll take two cards,” he heard Joyce say.

Harry opened his eyes. Joyce was dealing. His hand was turned toward Harry. And that young man’s eyes opened even more widely. For Joyce was discarding the ace of spades and the ace of clubs, to hold three small diamonds in his hand!

His curiosity aroused, Vincent watched for the outcome. He did not see the cards that Joyce dealt to himself, for each man at the table was playing his hand tight. But after the bets were made and the pile of chips had accumulated, Joyce spread his hand on the table and exhibited five diamonds - a flush, which won the pot.

Harry left the room unnoticed while Joyce was raking in the chips.

“So that’s your game, Mr. Joyce,” Harry observed to himself. “A smooth crook - a gentleman gambler. A man who lives to unravel problems, but hesitates to talk of crime!”

Harry was thoughtful as he stood on the porch.

The game had not been one for large stakes. No one gambled high at Holmwood Arms. Why then was Joyce operating here?

Harry smiled as he deduced the answer.

Joyce was in Holmwood on a mission. His services were required by some one - for something. He had been at the inn less than a week. Probably he was still awaiting a call.

In the meantime, the opportunity for picking up expense money by his artifice at the card table was too good to resist. Hence the shifty work that Harry had observed. It was a clew to Joyce’s main purpose, in that it proved the man to be a crook of some caliber.

Here was something to report to Fellows. Harry had not yet heard from the insurance broker, nor had he visited New York.

He’d wait one day more, Harry decided. He would watch Joyce during the afternoon and evening, and perhaps gain some added information.

The day after tomorrow he would report to the office in the Grandville Building.