The Deep Lake Mystery

“You know of no one then, who had sufficient enmity toward Mr. Tracy to desire his death?”

“Absolutely no one. So far as I am aware, he hadn’t an acquaintance in the world who was anything but friendly toward him.”

Everett was dismissed and Billy Dean was called in.

He was a pleasant-faced chap of twenty-three or thereabouts. His work was far from being as important as Everett’s. In fact he was really a high-class stenographer and office boy.

He was good looking with big brown eyes and a curly mop of brown hair. He too, scoffed at the idea of a secret passage in the house.

“Pleasure Dome has all the modern improvements,” he said, “but nothing like that. If there was such a thing, I’d have been through it in no time. I can ferret out anything queer of that sort by instinct, and there’s nothing doing. There’s no way in and out of Mr. Tracy’s suite but by that one hall door. I know that. And it has a special lock. He had that put on about six months ago.”

“Why? Was he afraid of intruders?”

“Don’t think so. But there had been some robberies down in the village and he said it was as well to be on the safe side.”

“Then, Mr. Dean, in your opinion, how did the man who killed Mr. Tracy get out of his rooms?”

“That’s where you get me. I’m positively kerflummixed. I can’t see anybody twisting that peculiar key with a bit of wire. Though that’s easier to swallow than to imagine any one jumping out of the window.”

“Why? The windows are not so very high.”

“No. But the lake there is mighty deep and dangerous.”

“Why specially dangerous?”

“Because there are swirling undercurrents, you see, it’s almost like a caldron. That Sunless Sea, as Mr. Tracy named it, is in a cove and the winds make the water eddy about, and – well, I’m a pretty fair diver, but I wouldn’t dive out of a second story window into that cove!”

“Then, we have to look for either a clever mechanician or an expert diver,” said Keeley Moore. “How about the chauffeur?”

“He’s an expert mechanician all right, but he wouldn’t harm a hair of Mr. Tracy’s head. He loved him, as, indeed, we all did. Nobody could help loving that man. He was always genial, courteous and kindly to everybody.”

“And his niece, Miss Remsen?” asked the Coroner. “She, too, is gentle and lovely?”

Young Dean blushed fiery red.

“Yes, she is,” was all he said, but no clairvoyance was needed to read his thoughts of her.

“Is she here?” asked Moore, knowing we had seen her arrive.

“Yes,” Billy Dean said. “We telephoned her so soon as we knew what had happened, and she came right over.”

“You may go now,” said the Coroner, “and please send Miss Remsen in here.”

CHAPTER V

THE LADY OF THE LAKE

“And so,” I thought to myself, “I shall see again the Lady of the Lake.”

As Alma Remsen entered the room, I realized the aptness of Kee’s term, high-handed. Without any effect of strong-mindedness, the girl showed in face and demeanour a certain self-reliance, an air of determination, that made even a casual observer feel sure she could hold her own against all comers.

Yet she was a gentle sort. Slender, of medium height, with appealing brown eyes, she nodded a sort of greeting that included us all, and addressed herself to the coroner.

“You sent for me, Doctor Hart?” she said, in a low, musical voice.

“Yes, Miss Remsen. Will you answer a few direct questions?”

“Certainly. To the best of my ability.”

“First of all, then, when did you last see your uncle alive?”

“I was over here day before yesterday, Tuesday, that would be. I have not been here since, until this morning.”

My heart almost stopped beating. I had seen her come in her canoe – but stay, that was at one-thirty or thereabouts. Perhaps she salved her conscience for the lie by telling herself that was this morning.

“You mean, when you came over here perhaps half an hour ago?”

“Yes.” Alma looked at him in some surprise. “What else could I mean?”

A finished actress, surely. I was amazed at her coolness and her pretty air of inquiry.

“Who summoned you?”

“Mrs. Fenn. She had been asked to do so by Mr. Ames.”

“What was her message?”

“That Uncle Sampson had died of apoplexy and I’d better come right over.”

“So you came?”

“Yes, as soon as I could get here.”

“Have you seen – er – Mr. Tracy?”

“No; Mr. Ames advised against it.”

“Well, Miss Remsen, I think we want no information from you, except a formal statement of your relationship to the dead man and your standing with him.”

“Standing?”

“Yes. Were you good friends?”

“The best. I loved Uncle Sampson and he loved me, I know. I am his only living relative, except some distant cousins. I am the daughter of his sister, of whom he was very fond.”

The girl was a bit of an enigma. She seemed straightforward and sincere, yet I was somehow conscious of a reservation in her talk, a glibness of speech that carried the idea of a prearranged story.

Why I should mistrust her I couldn’t say, at first. Then I remembered that I had seen her canoeing over to Pleasure Dome in the night, and now she was saying she had not done so.