From among the shadows a face gazed down at me, a face that seemed a fitting tenant of the ghostly room below. I saw it as plainly as I might see my own face in a mirror. While I stared at it with horrified eyes, the apparition faded. The rail was there, the Bokhara rug still swung from it, but the gallery was empty.
The cat threw back its head and wailed.
XXIV
His Wife’s Father
I jumped up and seized the fire tongs. The cat’s wail had roused Hotchkiss, who was wide-awake at once. He took in my offensive attitude, the tongs, the direction of my gaze, and needed nothing more. As he picked up the candle and darted out into the hall, I followed him. He made directly for the staircase, and part way up he turned off to the right through a small door. We were on the gallery itself; below us the fire gleamed cheerfully, the cat was not in sight. There was no sign of my ghostly visitant, but as we stood there the Bokhara rug, without warning, slid over the railing and fell to the floor below.
“Man or woman?” Hotchkiss inquired in his most professional tone.
“Neither—that is, I don’t know. I didn’t notice anything but the eyes,” I muttered. “They were looking a hole in me. If you’d seen that cat you would realize my state of mind. That was a traditional graveyard yowl.”
“I don’t think you saw anything at all,” he lied cheerfully. “You dozed off, and the rest is the natural result of a meal on a buffet car.”
Nevertheless, he examined the Bokhara carefully when we went down, and when I finally went to sleep he was reading the only book in sight—Elwell on Bridge. The first rays of daylight were coming mistily into the room when he roused me. He had his finger on his lips, and he whispered sibilantly while I tried to draw on my distorted boots.
“I think we have him,” he said triumphantly. “I’ve been looking around some, and I can tell you this much. Just before we came in through the window last night, another man came. Only—he did not drop, as you did. He swung over to the stair railing, and then down. The rail is scratched. He was long enough ahead of us to go into the dining-room and get a decanter out of the sideboard. He poured out the liquor into a glass, left the decanter there, and took the whisky into the library across the hall. Then—he broke into a desk, using a paper knife for a jimmy.”
“Good Lord, Hotchkiss,” I exclaimed; “why, it may have been Sullivan himself! Confound your theories—he’s getting farther away every minute.”
“It was Sullivan,” Hotchkiss returned imperturbably. “And he has not gone. His boots are by the library fire.”
“He probably had a dozen pairs where he could get them,” I scoffed. “And while you and I sat and slept, the very man we want to get our hands on leered at us over that railing.”
“Softly, softly, my friend,” Hotchkiss said, as I stamped into my other shoe. “I did not say he was gone. Don’t jump at conclusions. It is fatal to reasoning. As a matter of fact, he didn’t relish a night on the mountains any more than we did. After he had unintentionally frightened you almost into paralysis, what would my gentleman naturally do? Go out in the storm again? Not if I know the Alice-sit-by-the-fire type. He went upstairs, well up near the roof, locked himself in and went to bed.”
“And he is there now?”
“He is there now.”
We had no weapons. I am aware that the traditional hero is always armed, and that Hotchkiss as the low comedian should have had a revolver that missed fire. As a fact, we had nothing of the sort. Hotchkiss carried the fire tongs, but my sense of humor was too strong for me; I declined the poker.
“All we want is a little peaceable conversation with him,” I demurred. “We can’t brain him first and converse with him afterward. And anyhow, while I can’t put my finger on the place, I think your theory is weak. If he wouldn’t run a hundred miles through fire and water to get away from us, then he is not the man we want.”
Hotchkiss, however, was certain. He had found the room and listened outside the door to the sleeper’s heavy breathing, and so we climbed past luxurious suites, revealed in the deepening daylight, past long vistas of hall and boudoir. And we were both badly winded when we got there. It was a tower room, reached by narrow stairs, and well above the roof level. Hotchkiss was glowing.
“It is partly good luck, but not all,” he panted in a whisper. “If we had persisted in the search last night, he would have taken alarm and fled. Now—we have him. Are you ready?”
He gave a mighty rap at the door with the fire tongs, and stood expectant. Certainly he was right; someone moved within.
“Hello! Hello there!” Hotchkiss bawled. “You might as well come out. We won’t hurt you, if you’ll come peaceably.”
“Tell him we represent the law,” I prompted. “That’s the customary thing, you know.”
But at that moment a bullet came squarely through the door and flattened itself with a sharp pst against the wall of the tower staircase. We ducked unanimously, dropped back out of range, and Hotchkiss retaliated with a spirited bang at the door with the tongs. This brought another
