The letter was dated from Boston, on Saturday evening, two days before. Truly, Friend Lusk had delayed his statement, but as he said, that was human nature, in matters not important to oneself.
The Chief was furiously angry at the lateness of the information, and had already dispatched a messenger to get the weapon and to interview the Boston man.
“It’s all straight on the face of it,” declared Chief Martin; “only an honest, cheerful booby would write like that! He picks up a pistol, forgets all about it, and then, when he learns it’s evidence, – or may be, – he calmly waits forty-eight hours before he pipes up!”
“Is it the pistol?” I asked, quietly.
“How do I know?” blustered Martin. “Likely it is. I don’t suppose half a dozen people sowed pistols around that building at just three o’clock last Wednesday afternoon!”
“How do you fit it in?”
“Well, this way, – if you want to know. Miss – well, that is, – whoever did do the shooting, ran out of the third room, just as Jenny described, and ran downstairs, – it doesn’t matter whether all the way down or not, but at least to the tenth – two floors below, and there dropped the pistol, either by accident or by design, and proceeded to descend, as I said, either by the stairs or by taking an elevator at some intervening floor. Now, we want that pistol. To be sure, it may not incriminate anybody, – and yet, there’s lots of individuality in firearms!”
“In detective stories the owner’s initials are on all well-conducted pistols,” I remarked, casually.
“Not in real life, though. There’s a number on them, of course, but that seldom helps. And yet, I’ve got a hunch that that pistol will tell its own story, and my fingers itch to get a hold of it!”
“When do you expect it?”
“I’ve sent young Scanlon after it. He’s a live wire, and he’ll get back soon’s anybody could. See here, this is the way I dope it out. If a woman did the shooting, she’d be more’n likely to throw away a pistol, – or to drop it unintentional like, in her nervousness, but a man – nixy!”
I had foreseen this. And the statement was, in a way, true. A man, having committed murder, does not drop his pistol, – unless, and I divulged this thought to Martin, unless he wants to throw suspicion on someone else.
“Nothin’ doin’,” was his curt response. “Nobody on that floor possible to suspect, ’ceptin’ it’s Rodman, – and small chance of him.”
“Rodman!” I cried; “why, he got on the elevator at the seventh floor, just after the shooting.”
“He did!” the Chief straightened up; “how do you know?”
“Saw him. I was going down, – in Minny’s elevator, you know, – to look for Jenny – ”
“When was this?”
“About ten minutes after the shooting – and of course I got on at the twelfth floor, and there were no other passengers at first, so I talked to Minny. But at the seventh Rodman got on, and so we stopped talking.”
“His office is on the tenth,” mused Martin; “s’posin’ – just s’posin’ he’d – er – he was implicated, and that he ran downstairs afterward, to his own floor, you know, – and then, later, walked to seven, and took a car there – ”
“Purposely leaving his pistol on his own floor!”
“Shucks, no! Dropped it accidentally.”
“But you said male criminals don’t do that!”
“Oh, pshaw! I say lots of things, – and you would, too, if you were as bothered as I am!”
“That’s so, Chief,” I agreed, “and there is certainly something to be looked into, – I should say, without waiting for a report from Boston.”
“You bet there is! I’m going to send Hudson right up there. He’s as good a sleuth as we’ve got, and he’ll deal with the Rodman matter in a right and proper way. If there’s nothing to find out, Rodman will never know he looked.”
Hudson was duly dispatched, and I returned to the Puritan Building. It was queer, but Rodman had been in the back of my head all along, – and yet, I had no real reason to think him implicated. I did not know whether he knew Mr. Gately or not, but I, too, had confidence in Foxy Jim Hudson’s discretion, and I was pretty positive he’d find out something, – if there were anything worth finding out.
And there was!
Rodman, by good luck, was out and his offices locked. Hudson gently persuaded the locks to let go their grip, and, for he let me go with him, we went in.
The first thing that hit me in the eyes, was a big war map on the wall. Moreover, though not a duplicate of Mr. Gately’s map, it was similar, and it hung in a similar position. That is, as Rodman’s offices were directly under those of the bank president, two floors below, the rooms matched, and in the “third room” as we called it in Mr. Gately’s case, Rodman also had his map hung.
There was but one conclusion, and Hudson and I sprang to it at once.
Together, we pulled aside the map, and sure enough, there was a door exactly like the door in Mr. Gately’s room, a small, flush door, usually hidden by the map.
“To the secret elevator, of course,” I whispered to Hudson, for walls have ears, and these walls were in many ways peculiar.
“By golly, it is!” he returned; “let’s open her up!”
He forced the door open, and assured himself that it did indeed lead into the private elevator shaft, and there were the necessary buttons to cause it to stop, if properly used. But now, the car being down on the ground floor, where it had stayed ever since the day of the murder, of course, the buttons could not be manipulated.
“Now,” said Hudson, his brow furrowed, “to see where else this bloomin’ rogue trap lets ’em off! There’s somethin’ mighty queer goin’ on that we ain’t caught on to yet!”
He carefully closed the door, readjusted the map, and making sure we had left no traces of our visit, he motioned me out and we went away.
He asked me to return to my office, and promised to see me there later.
When he returned, he told me that he had visited every other office in the building through whose rooms the elevator shaft descended and in no other instance was there an opening into the shaft.
“Which proves,” he summed up, “that Mr. Gately and Mr. Rodman was somehow in cahoots, else why would Rodman have access to that secret elevator? Answer me that!”
There were several possible answers. Rodman might have taken his offices after the elevator was built, and might never have used it at all. His map might have hung over it merely to cover the useless door.
Or, Rodman might have been a personal friend of Mr. Gately’s and used the little car for informal visits.
Again, – though I hated myself for the thought, – Mr. Gately might have had guests whom he didn’t wish to be seen entering his rooms, and he might have had an arrangement with Rodman whereby the visitors could go in and out through his rooms, and take the private elevator between the tenth and twelfth floors.
I distrusted Rodman; without any definite reason, but all the same I did distrust him, and I have frequently found my intuitions regarding strangers hit pretty nearly right.
It was unnecessary, however, to answer Foxy Jim’s question, for he answered it himself.
“There’s something about Mr. Gately,” he said, and he spoke seriously, almost solemnly, “that hasn’t come to light yet, but it’s bound to. Yes, sir, it’s bound to! And it’s on the way. Now, if we can hook up that Boston pistol with Mr. George Rodman, well and good; if we can’t, Rodman’s got to be put through the grill anyhow. He’s in it for keeps – that elevator door isn’t easily explained away.”
“Does Mr. Rodman,” it was Norah who spoke, and as before, Hudson turned to her almost expectantly – he seemed to depend on her for suggestions, or at least, he always listened to them – “I wonder, Mr. Brice,” she went on slowly, “does Mr. Rodman look at all like the figure you saw in the shadow?”
I thought back.
“Yes,” I said, decidedly, “he does! Now, hold on, Hudson, it’s only a memory, you know, and I may easily be mistaken. But it seems to me I can remember a real resemblance between that shadowed head and the head of George Rodman.”
“It’s worth an experiment,” returned the foxy detective, and on the strength of his decision he waited in my office until George Rodman returned to his.
I didn’t know, at the time, what argument Hudson used to get Rodman to do it, but his foxiness prevailed and, obeying orders, I found myself watching the shadow of George Rodman’s head on Amos Gately’s glass door, as Hudson engaged his suspect in animated conversation.