The Man Who Fell Through the Earth

I felt that I now knew a lot, too, and as I went away I determined to see Penny Wise at once, and report all I had learned. I dropped in first at my own office, and found Norah in a brown study, her hands behind her head and a half-written letter in her typewriter.

She gazed at me absently, and then, noting my air of excitement, she became alert and exclaimed, “What’s happened? What do you know new?”

“Heaps,” I vouchsafed, and then I told her, briefly, of Rodman’s probable guilt and also of the offered rewards.

“Jenny’s your trump card,” she said after a thoughtful silence. “That girl knows a good deal that she hasn’t told. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s in Rodman’s employ.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, she’s too glib. She admits so many things that she has seen or heard and then when you ask her about others, she is a blank wall. Now, she does know about them, but she won’t tell. Why? Because she’s paid not to.”

“Then how can we get around her?”

“Pay her more.” And Norah returned to her typing. But she looked up again to say: “Mrs. Russell called here about an hour ago.”

“She did! What for?”

“I don’t know. She wanted to see you. She was a bit forlorn, so I talked to her a little.”

“I’m glad you did. Poor lady, she feels her brother’s absence terribly.”

“Yes; we discussed it. She thinks he has been killed.”

“Has she any reason to think that?”

“No, except that she dreamed it.”

“A most natural dream for a nervous, worried woman.”

“Of course. I wonder if she knows there’s a reward offered for Mr. Manning?”

“Maybe she offered it, – through the Kellogg people.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Pray, how do you know, oh, modern Cassandra?”

“I don’t know your old friend Cassandra, but I do know Mrs. Russell isn’t offering any five thousand dollars. She can’t afford it.”

“Why, she’s a rich woman.”

“She passes for one, and, of course, she isn’t suffering for food or clothes. But she is economizing. She was wearing her last year’s hat and muff, and she maids herself.”

“Perhaps she wore her old clothes because she was merely out to call on my unworthy self.”

“No. She was on her way to a reception. They’re her best clothes now. And a tiny rip in one glove and a missing snap-fastener on her bodice proves she keeps no personal lady’s maid, as people in her position usually do. So, I’m sure she isn’t offering big reward money, though she loves her brother.”

“You’re a born detectivess, Norah. You’ll beat Penny Wise at his own game, if he doesn’t watch out!”

“Maybe,” said Norah, and she laid her fingertips gracefully back on her typewriter keys.

CHAPTER XII

The Link

It was the next afternoon that Penny Wise came into my office. It was his first visit there, and I gave him a hearty welcome. Norah looked so eagerly expectant that I introduced him to her, for I couldn’t bear to disappoint the girl by ignoring her.

Wise was delightfully cordial toward her, and indeed Norah’s winsome personality always made people friendly.

I had tried to get in touch with the detective the day before but he was out on various errands, and I missed him here and there, nor could we get together until he found this leisure.

I told him all I had learned from the police, but part of it was already known to him. He was greatly interested in the news which he had not heard before, that there was somebody implicated, who was called “The Link.”

“That’s the one we want!” he cried; “I suspected some such person.”

“Man or woman?” asked Norah, briefly, and Wise glanced at her.

“Which do you think?”

“Woman,” she replied, and Penny Wise nodded his head. “Yes, I’ve no doubt ‘The Link’ is a woman, and a mighty important factor in the case.”

“But I don’t understand,” I put in. “What does she link?”

“Whom, – not what,” said Wise, and he looked very serious. “Of course, you must realize, Brice, there’s a great big motive behind this Gately murder, and there’s also a big reason for Amory Manning’s disappearance. The two are connected, – there’s no doubt of that, – but that doesn’t argue Manning the murderer, of course. No, this Link is a woman of parts, – a woman who is of highest value to the principals in this crime, and who must be found, and that at once!”

“Did she have to do with Mr. Gately?” asked Norah, her gray eyes burning with interest.

“I – don’t – know.” Wise’s hesitating answer was by no means because of disinclination to admit his ignorance, but because he was thinking deeply himself. “Look here, Brice, can’t we go over Gately’s rooms now? I don’t want to ask permission of the police, but if the Trust Company people would let us in – ”

“Of course,” I responded, and I went at once to the vice-president for the desired permission.

“It’s all right,” I announced, returning with the keys, “come ahead.”

We went into the beautiful rooms of the late bank president.

Pennington Wise was impressed with their rich and harmonious effects, and his quick eyes darted here and there, taking in details. With marvelous swiftness he went through the three rooms of the suite nodding his head as he noted the special points of which he had been told. In the third room, – the Blue Room, – he glanced about, raised the map from the wall, and dropped it back in place, opened the door to the hall, and closed it again, and then turned back to the middle room, the office of Amos Gately, and apparently, to the detective’s mind, the principal place of interest.

He sat down in the fine big swivel-chair, whose velvet cushioning deprived it of all look of an ordinary desk-chair, and mused deeply as his eyes fairly devoured the desk fittings. Nothing had been disturbed, that I noticed, except that the telephone had been set up in its right position, and also the chair which I had found overturned was righted.

Wise fingered only a few things. He picked up the penholder, a thick magnificent affair made of gold.

“Probably a gift from his clerks,” said I, smiling at the ornate and ostentatious looking thing. “All the other gimcracks are in better taste.”

Pennington Wise opened the desk drawers. There was little to see, for all financial papers had been taken away by Mr. Gately’s executors.

“Here’s a queer bunch,” Wise observed, as he picked up a packet of papers held together by a rubber band. He sorted them out on the desk.

They were sheets of paper of various styles, each bearing the address or escutcheon of some big city hotel. Many of the principal hostelries of New York were represented among them. Each sheet bore a date stamped on it with an ordinary rubber dating-stamp.