The House Opposite: A Mystery

He had taken me completely by surprise, but I am learning to control my features, and flatter myself that I did not move a muscle as I quietly replied:

“This is a very strange question, and I can only answer that I know nothing.”

“Oh, hardly as little as that,” the detective rejoined, with irritating complacency.

“Just as little as that,” I asserted, with some warmth.

“Well, Doctor, if that is the case, you can no doubt explain a few things that have been puzzling me. In the first place, will you tell me why, if you were not expecting another victim, you showed such surprise at the sight of the corpse? What reason could you have had for being so deeply interested in the relative positions of your roof—not your office, mind you, but your roof—and the room in which the body was found, unless you had noticed something unusual from that point of observation? Why were you so sure that the Derwent’s flat was occupied, if you had not seen some person or persons there? By the way, I noticed that from your roof I could look directly into their windows. Again, you betrayed great surprise when Miss Derwent lifted her veil. Why did you do so, except that you had previously seen a very different looking person in her apartment? And why did you select the Atkins’s two servants out of all the people in the building, to question about a certain noise, but that you yourself had heard a scream coming from their premises? And, lastly, you showed an unexplained interest in the back door of the Rosemere, which is particularly suggestive in view of the fact that this window is exactly opposite to it. I need only add that your presence on the roof during some part of Wednesday night, or early Thursday morning, is attested by the fact that I found some pipe-ash near the chimney. You smoke a pipe, I see” (pointing to a rack full of them); “your janitor does not, neither do your two fellow-lodgers. Besides that, all the other occupants of this house are willing to swear that they have not been on the roof recently, and those ashes could not have been long where I found them; the wind would have scattered them. You see, I know very little, but I know enough to be sure that you know more.”

I was perfectly dumbfounded, and gazed at the detective for some moments without speaking.

“Well, granted that I was on the roof during a part of Wednesday night, what of it? And if I did hear or see anything suspicious, how can you prove it, and above all, how can you make me tell you of it?”

“I can’t,” rejoined Mr. Merritt, cheerfully. “I can only ask you to do so.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I shall have to delay satisfying my curiosity till we meet in court, but I do not doubt that my patience will then be adequately rewarded, for a skilful lawyer will surely be able to get at many details that would escape me, and I hardly think that you would resort to perjury to shield two women whom I am convinced you never laid eyes on before yesterday, and have certainly not seen since.” The detective paused.

I still hesitated, for I felt an extreme reluctance to further compromise that poor girl by anything I might say.

“Come, Doctor,” he urged, leaning forward and placing his hand on my knee, “don’t you think it would be better for all parties for you to tell me what you know? I am as anxious to shield the innocent as you can be. By withholding valuable information you may force me to put a young lady through a very trying and public ordeal, which I am sure might be easily spared her, if I only knew a few more facts of the case.”

This last argument decided me, and making a virtue of necessity I gave him a minute account of all I had seen and heard. When I came to describing the man’s prolonged search Mr. Merritt nodded several times with great satisfaction.

“Can’t you tell me a little more how this man looked?” he eagerly inquired. “You must have seen him pretty clearly while he was moving around that lighted room. Had he any hair on his face?”

“Well,” I confessed, “it is a funny thing, but I can’t for the life of me remember; I’ve tried to; sometimes I think he was clean shaven, and again I am sure he had a small moustache.”

The detective glared at me for a moment; it was difficult for him to forgive such aggravating lack of memory. To be given such an opportunity and to foozel it! He heaved a sigh of resignation as he inquired:

“Can you remember how he was dressed?”

“Oh, yes,” I replied with alacrity, anxious to retrieve myself, “he had on a white shirt and dark trousers, and his sleeves were rolled back.”

“Did he close the windows before he left?”

“Yes, and he pulled down the blinds also.”

“You are sure that you saw no one in the apartment resembling Miss Derwent?”

“Quite sure; the woman I saw was taller and had flat, black hair.”

“What do you mean by ‘flat’?”

“Why, nowadays girls wear their hair loose; it bulges away from their faces; but hers lay tight to her head in a flat, black mass,” I explained.

I then harped on the probability of the return of Miss May’s prodigal brother, and suggested the possibility that the dark-haired woman might be his wife.

“Well, well, Doctor! This is all very interesting. The story of the brother, especially. You see, I had already discovered that a man had spent many hours in her apartment–”

“How did you find that out?” I interrupted.

“Oh, quite easily,” rejoined the detective; “as soon as all the excitement was over yesterday, I made McGorry open the Derwent’s apartments for me. You may imagine what a fuss he made about it. Well anyhow he got me–”

“But why did you want to get in?” I inquired; “did you suspect her?”

“No,” he replied, “I did not. But in my profession you take no chances. Impressions, intuitions, are often of great value, only you must be careful always to verify them. I was almost sure that the young lady was innocent, but it was my business to prove her so. Now, it is certain that the person, or persons, who smuggled the corpse into the room where it was found, must, at one time or another, have had the key of that apartment in their possession, and there are only three people whom we know of as yet who were in a position to have had it. These three are: Miss Derwent, the French butler, and, of course, McGorry. So far I have not been able to connect the latter two, even in the most indirect way, with the catastrophe. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the young lady. One person, at least, has identified the body as that of her visitor, and your behaviour,” he added, with a smile, “led me to believe that you suspected her of something. Not of the crime, I felt sure of that, but of what, then? I determined to find out, and now that I have done so, let me tell you that I am still convinced of her innocence.”

I jumped up and shook him by the hand. “So am I, so am I,” I exclaimed.

“But this is a very queer case,” he continued, “and I shall need all the assistance you can give me, if–”

“You shall have it,” I broke in, enthusiastically; “anything I can do. But tell me, first, how you found out about Miss Derwent’s brother?”

“Not so fast, young man! At present, we know nothing about a brother. I only said that I had discovered in the apartment traces of the recent and prolonged presence of a man, and I may add of a man of some means.”

“How did you find that out? Especially about his means?” I inquired, with a smile.

“Quite easily. In the parlor, which was the first room I entered, I noticed that every piece of furniture had been lately moved from its place. Now, this was too heavy a job for a girl to have undertaken single-handed. Who helped her, I wondered? Her visitor of Tuesday evening might have been the person, but for various reasons I was inclined to doubt it. I thought it more likely to have been the woman whose existence your behaviour had led me to infer. I next examined the dining-room. A few crumbs showed that it had been used, but I could find no traces of her mysterious companion. The library had not even been entered. On the floor above, the front bedroom alone showed signs of recent occupation. Two crumpled sheets were still on the bed, and in the drawers were several articles of woman’s apparel. Returning to the lower floor by the back stairs, I found myself in the kitchen. Here, in the most unexpected place, I discovered an important clue.” Mr. Merritt paused, and looked at me with a gleam of triumph in his eye.

“Yes, yes, and what was that?” I inquired, breathlessly.

“Only the odor, the very faintest ghost of an odor, I may say, of cigar-smoke.”

“In the kitchen?” I exclaimed, incredulously.

“In the kitchen,” repeated the detective. “I at once drew up the blinds, and looked out. The window opened directly on the fire escape, with nothing opposite but the roofs of some low houses. Pulling out my magnifying glass, I crawled out. I soon satisfied myself that the stairs leading up and down had not been recently used; on the other hand, I was equally sure that someone had very lately been out on the small landing. So I sat down there and looked about me. I could see nothing. At last, by peering through the bars of the iron flooring, I thought I could discern a small brown object, caught in between the slats of the landing below. I climbed down there mighty quick, I can tell you, and in a moment held the butt end of a cigar in my hand. It was, as I had suspected, from the delicate odor it had left behind, one which had cost about fifty cents. I now extended my search downward, and examined every window-sill, every crevice, till I reached the basement, and, as a result of my hunt, I collected five cigar stumps, all of the same brand. From the number, I concluded that whoever had been in the apartment had been there a considerable time. From his only smoking in the kitchen or on the fire-escape, I gathered that he was anxious to leave no traces of his presence; and lastly, from the quality of his cigars, I judged him to be a man of means. So you see I had discovered, even without your assistance, that, although Miss Derwent may have told us the truth, she certainly had not told us all of it.”

I nodded gloomily.

“What you tell me of this dark-haired woman is still more puzzling,” the detective continued. “She has covered up her tracks so well that not only did I find no trace of her, but no one, not even yourself, saw her either enter or leave the building. And I should never have dreamed of her existence if I had not noticed your surprise when Miss Derwent lifted her veil. Now, the first thing to be done is to try and find this strange couple, and we will begin by tracing the man whom you saw leaving the Rosemere with a market-basket. It will be easy enough to find out if he is nothing but a local tradesman, and if he is not, then in all probability he is the man we want. The detective who is watching Miss Derwent–”

“A detective watching Miss Derwent!” I exclaimed.

“Why, yes. What did you expect? I sent one down with her to the country yesterday.”

Perhaps I ought to have been prepared for it, but the idea of a common fellow dogging May Derwent’s footsteps, was quite a shock to me, so I inquired, with considerable ill-humor: “And what does he report?”

“Nothing much. The young lady returned to her mother, as she said she would, and since then has kept to her room, but has refused to see a doctor.”

“Have you discovered yet who the dead man really is?” I asked, after a slight pause.

“No,” answered the detective, with a troubled look, “and I can’t make it out. Jim and Joe each persists in his own identification. I expected Jim to weaken, he seemed so much less positive at first, but whether he has talked himself into the belief that the corpse is that of the young lady’s visitor, or whether it really does resemble him so much as to give the boy grounds for thinking so, I can’t make out.”

“I see, however, that you believe the murdered man to be Mrs. Atkins’s friend, of whose history and whereabouts she was so strangely ignorant.”

“Well, I don’t know,” the detective replied. “We have found out that an Allan Brown did engage a berth on the midnight train to Boston.”