The Bartlett Mystery

“Surprised to see me?” he began. “Well, it’s this way. We may drop in for a rough-house to-day. Between them, Voles and ‘Mick the Wolf,’ own three sound legs and three strong arms. I can’t risk Clancy. He’s too precious. He kicked like a mule, of course, but I made it an order.”

“What of the local police?” said Carshaw.

“Nix on the cops,” laughed the chief. “You share the popular delusion that a policeman can arrest any one at sight. He can do nothing of the sort, unless he and his superior officers care to face a whacking demand for damages. And what charge can we bring against Voles and company? Winifred bolted of her own accord. We must tread lightly, Mr. Carshaw. Really, I shouldn’t be here at all. I came only to help, to put you on the right trail, to see that Winifred is not detained by force if she wishes to accompany you. Do you get me?”

“I believe there is good authority for the statement that the law is an ass,” grumbled the other.

“Not the law. Personal liberty has to be safeguarded by the law. Millions of men have died to uphold that principle. Remember, too, that I may have to explain in court why I did so-and-so. Strange as it may sound, I’ve been taught wisdom by legal adversity. Now, let’s talk of the business in hand. It’s an odd thing, but people who wish to do evil deeds often select secluded country places to live in. I don’t mind betting a box of cigars that ‘East Orange’ means a quiet, old-fashioned locality where there isn’t a crime once in a generation.”

“Some spot one would never suspect, eh?”

“Yes, in a sense. But if ever I set up as a crook – which is unlikely, as my pension is due in eighteen months – I’ll live in a Broadway flat.”

“I thought the city police kept a very close eye on evil-doers.”

“Yes, when we know them. But your real expert is not known; once held he’s done for. Of course he tries again, but he is a marked man – he has lost his confidence. Nevertheless, he will always try to be with the crowd. There is safety in numbers.”

“Do you mean that East Orange is a place favorable to our search?”

“Of course it is. The police, the letter-carriers, and the storekeepers, know everybody. They can tell us at once of several hundred people who certainly had nothing to do with the abduction of a young lady. There will remain a few dozens who might possibly be concerned in such an affair. Inquiry will soon whittle them down to three or four individuals. What a different job it would be if we had to search a New York precinct, which, I take it, is about as populous as East Orange.”

This was a new point of view to Carshaw, and it cheered him proportionately. He stepped on the gas, and a traffic policeman at Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue cocked an eye at him.

“Steady,” laughed Steingall. “It would be a sad blow for mother if we were held for furious driving. These blessed machines jump from twelve to forty miles an hour before you can wink twice.”

Carshaw abated his ardor. Nevertheless, they were in East Orange forty minutes after crossing the ferry.

Unhappily, from that hour, the pace slackened. Gateway House had been rented from a New York agent for “Mr. and Mrs. Forest,” Westerners who wished to reside in New Jersey a year or so.

Its occupants had driven thither from New York. Rachel Craik, heavily veiled and quietly attired, did her shopping in the nearest suburb, and had choice of more than one line of rail. So East Orange knew them not, nor had it even seen them.

In nowise discouraged, the man from the Bureau set about his inquiry methodically. He interviewed policemen, railway officials, postmen, and cabmen. Although the day was Sunday, he tracked men to their homes and led them to talk. Empty houses, recently let houses, houses tenanted by people who were “not particular” as to their means of getting a living, divided his attention with persons who answered to the description of Voles, Fowle, Rachel, or even the broken-armed Mick the Wolf; while he plied every man with a minutely accurate picture of Winifred.

Hither and thither darted the motor till East Orange was scoured and noted, and among twenty habitations jotted in the detective’s notebook the name of Gateway House figured. It was slow work, this task of elimination, but they persisted, meeting rebuff after rebuff, especially in the one or two instances where a couple of sharp-looking strangers in a car were distinctly not welcome. They had luncheon at a local hotel, and, by idle chance, were not pleased by the way in which the meal was served.

So, when hungry again, and perhaps a trifle dispirited as the day waned to darkness with no result, they went to another inn to procure a meal. This time they were better looked after. Instead of a jaded German waiter they were served by the landlord’s daughter, a neat, befrilled young damsel, who cheered them by her smile; though, to be candid, she was anxious to get out for a walk with her young man.

“Have you traveled far?” she asked, by way of talk while laying the table.

“From New York,” said Steingall.

“At this hour – in a car?”

“Yes. Is that a remarkable thing here?”

“Not the car; but people in motors either whizz through of a morning going away down the coast, or whizz back again of an evening returning to New York.”

“Ah!” put in Carshaw, “here is a pretty head which holds brains. It goes in for ratiocinative reasoning. Now, I’ll be bound to say that this pretty head, which thinks, can help us.”

A good deal of this was lost on the girl, but she caught the compliment and smiled.

“It all depends on what you want to know,” she said.

“I really want to find a private prison of some sort,” he said. “The sort of place where a nice-looking young lady like you might be kept in against her will by nasty, ill-disposed people.”

“There is only one house of that kind in the town, and that is out of it, as an Irishman might say.”

“And where is it?”

“It’s called Gateway House – about a mile along the road from the depot.”

Steingall, inclined at first to doubt the expediency of gossip with the girl, now pricked up his ears.

“Who lives in Gateway House?” he asked.

“No one that I know of at the moment,” she answered. “It used to belong to a mad doctor. I don’t mean a doctor who was mad, but – ”

“No matter about his sanity. Is he dead?”

“No, in prison. There was a trial two years ago.”

“Oh! I remember the affair. A patient was beaten to death. So the house is empty?”

“It is, unless some one has rented it recently. I was taken through the place months ago. The rooms are all right, and it has beautiful grounds, but the windows frightened me. They were closely barred with iron, and the doors were covered with locks and chains. There were some old beds there, too, with straps on them. Oh, I quite shivered!”

“After we have eaten will you let us drive you in that direction in my car?” said Carshaw.

She simpered and blushed slightly. “I’ve an appointment with a friend,” she admitted, wondering whether the swain would protest too strongly if she accepted the invitation.

“Bring him also,” said Carshaw. “I assume it’s a ‘he.’”

“Oh, that’ll be all right!” she cried.

So in the deepening gloom the automobile flared with fierce eyes along the quiet road to Gateway House, and in its seat of honor sat the hotel maid and her young man.

“That is the place,” she said, after the, to her, all too brief run.

“Is this the only entrance?” demanded the chief, as he stepped out to try the gate.

“Yes. The high wall runs right round the property. It’s quite a big place.”

“Locked!” he announced. “Probably empty, too.”

He tried squinting through the keyhole to catch a gleam of interior light.

“No use in doin’ that,” announced the young man. “The house stands way back, an’ is hidden by trees.”

“I mean having a look at it, wall or no wall,” insisted Carshaw.