The Man Who Fell Through the Earth

“I see it, as you put it,” I said, “but I will not believe Amos Gately a spy, – or conniving at spy business until I have to. I shall continue to believe he was a tool – an innocent tool – of the Rodman and Sadie Kent combination.”

“All right, Brice, keep your faith as long as you can, but, I tell you, you’ll soon have to admit that I’m right. Gately, as we all know, was a peculiar man. He had few friends, he had little or no social life, and he did have secret callers and a secret mode of entrance and exit from his offices. All this shows something to hide, – it is unexplainable for a man who has nothing to conceal.”

“All right, Wise,” I said, finally, “I suppose you are right. But still we must continue our search for the murderer. We don’t seem to progress much in that matter.”

“Not yet, but soon,” Wise said, optimistically; “the ax is laid at the root of the tree, – we are on the right track – ”

“Meaning Case Rivers?” I cried, in alarm.

“Meaning Case Rivers, – perhaps,” he returned. “I’m not as sure as Zizi is that the evidence points to him as the murderer, but we must conclude that he was in this room the day of the murder, – and what else could he have been here for?”

“What else?” I stormed. “Dozens of things! Hundreds of things! Why, man alive, every person who set foot in this room on that day didn’t necessarily kill Amos Gately!”

“Every person who set foot in this room on that day is his potential murderer,” Wise returned, calmly. “Every person must be suspected, – or, at least, investigated.”

“Well,” I said, after realizing that he spoke truly, “you investigate the question of Rivers’ visit here that day. I don’t want to do that. But I’m going down to Headquarters now, and perhaps I’ll dig up something of importance.”

And I did. A visit to the Chief told me the interesting tale of the further discoveries of Sadie Kent’s industries. It seems the Federal agents had found a complete and powerful wireless station in a cottage at Southeast Beach, a fairly popular summer resort. The cottage was seemingly untenanted, but some unexplained wires which ran along the rafters of an adjoining house led to the discovery of the auxiliary wireless station.

Experts had broken into the locked house and had found a cleverly concealed keyboard of a wireless apparatus. Further search had disclosed the whole thing, and, moreover, had brought out the fact, that the adjoining cottage was occupied by two apparently innocent old people, who were really in the employ of Sadie Kent.

“The Link” was a person of importance, and though she passed for a mere telegraph operator, she was one of the most important links in the German spy system in the United States.

In the room where the wireless apparatus was found there were also quantities of letter paper from the various hotels of New York City.

These sheets, abstracted from the writing-rooms of the hotels, were the code system used in forwarding the stolen intelligence.

It all hung together, and the bunch of those hotel papers found in Gately’s desk, and especially the fact that one reached his address the day after his demise proved, beyond all doubt, his implication in the despicable business.

Now, I thought, to what extent or in what way was Case Rivers concerned? Surely the man had been in Gately’s office on that fatal day. I had no idea that he had killed the banker, – that was only Zizi’s foolishness, – but he had certainly been there.

It came to me suddenly that if Rivers could be taken again to the Gately offices, the rooms, the associations, might possibly bring back his lost memory, and let him reinstate himself in his real personality. To be sure, this might prove him the murderer, but if so, it would be only the course of justice; and, on the other hand, if it explained his innocent or casual call on Gately that, too, was what the man deserved.

And so I went at once to see Rivers. I found him in his rooms, the ones he had taken while he was to assist Wise in his work, and he greeted me cordially.

“The plot thickens,” he said as I told him of Sadie’s wireless station. “I knew that girl was a sly one. She’s one of the most important people in the big spy web. She’s one of their spyders, who spin a pretty web and attract gullible flies. Amos Gately fell for her charms, – you know, Brice, she is a siren, – and somehow she lured him into the web she so deftly spun. To my mind, Gately was a good, upright citizen, who fell for a woman’s wiles. I’m not sure about this, it may be he was mixed up in spy work before Sadie came on the scene, – but I’m certain she was accessory before, during, or after the fact.”

“Accessory to his murder?” I asked.

“Not necessarily; but strongly accessory to his wrongdoing in the matter of treason. I think she, for a time, worked Gately through Rodman, but, latterly, she grew bolder or found she could do more by personal visits and she came and went by the secret elevator, pretty much as she chose.”

“I hate to have Miss Raynor know this,” I said with a covert glance at Rivers, to see how he took the remark.

“So do I,” he said, as frankly as a boy; “I may as well tell you, Brice, that I love that girl. She is, to me, the very crown of womanhood. I have worshiped her from the first moment I saw her. But, understand, I have no hopes, – no aspirations. I shall never offer my hand and heart to any woman while I have no name to offer. And I shall never have a name. If I haven’t yet discovered my own identity I never can. No, I’m no pessimist, and I know that some time some sudden shock might restore my memory all in a minute, yet I can’t bank on such a possibility. I’ve talked this over with Rankin, – he’s the doctor who’s following up my case, – time and again. He says that a sudden and very forcible shock is needed to restore my memory, and that it may come and – it may not. He says it can’t be forced or brought about knowingly, – it will have to be a coincidence, – a happening that will jar the inert cells of my brain – or, something like that, – I don’t remember the scientific terms.”

Rivers passed his hand wearily across his forehead.

I was in a quandary. I had gone to see the man with full purpose of luring him to Gately’s office and confronting him with the sketched snowflake on the blotting-pad. Now, since he had confided to me his love for Olive Raynor, I shrank from doing anything that might prove him to be Amos Gately’s murderer. For I was fond of Miss Raynor, in a deeply respectful and unpresumptuous fashion. And I had noticed several things of late that made me feel pretty sure that her friendship for Rivers was true and deep, if indeed it were not something more than friendship. This, to be sure, would argue but a fickle loyalty to the memory of Amory Manning, but as Norah and I agreed, when talking it over, Miss Raynor had never shown any desperate grief at Manning’s disappearance, – at least, not more than the loss of a casual friend might arouse.

But I knew where my duty lay. And so I said, “Rivers, I wish you’d go round to Mr. Gately’s office with me. Don’t you think that if you were there, – and you never have been, – you might chance upon some clew that has escaped the notice of Wise or Hudson or myself?”

“Righto!” he said; “I’ve thought myself I’d like to go there. Not, as you politely suggest, to find overlooked clews, but just as a matter of general interest. I’m out, you know, to find the murderer, and also to trace the vanished Amory Manning.”

CHAPTER XVII

Zizi’s Hunch

“He’s afraid,” and Norah wagged her head sagaciously, while her gray eyes had an apprehensive expression.

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of the truth. You see, Mr. Brice, our friend Rivers is nobody’s fool. He’s onto most points regarding this case, and now, he’s getting onto himself. That astute little scrap of humanity, Zizi, knows he is. Of course, living with Miss Raynor, as she does, she has opportunities every day to see Mr. Rivers, for he’s eternally hanging around the Raynor house. Oh, I don’t mean he’s an idler; not by a long shot. On the contrary, his middle name is efficiency! He puts over a lot of work in a day.”

“What sort of work and how do you know so much about him?”

We were in my office, waiting for Rivers, who had promised to come to see me, and to look into the Gately rooms. It was now nearly half an hour after the time he had set for his call, and as it was not his habit to be tardy, I was surprised. I had begun to look upon Rivers as a man of importance, not only in the matters with which we were associated, but he showed so much general ability and force of character that I wondered who or what he would turn out to be. For I felt sure he would find himself, and even if he never discovered who he had been he would make a new name and a well worthwhile individuality for himself yet.

Norah, too, admired him, and seemed to know as much of his capabilities, or more, than I did myself.

“I don’t know just what sort of work, but I think it’s connected with the mysteries we’re up against ourselves. And I know about him, because Zizi told me. She sees everything he does, – when she’s with him, I mean. Not a gesture or motion escapes her notice. And she’s watching his attitude toward Miss Raynor. She says, – Zizi does, – that Mr. Rivers is over head and ears in love with Olive, but he won’t tell her so because he is, as he puts it, a self-named man! Zizi heard him call himself that when talking to Miss Raynor, and then he just looked away, and resolutely changed the subject. But she thinks, – Zizi does, – that he’s working night and day to find out who he is, and she’s sure he’ll find out. And also, he’s working to find Mr. Gately’s murderer, and he’s hunting for Amory Manning. No wonder the man’s busy!”

“Well, why is he afraid to come here?”

“I’m not sure that he is; but you know Zizi has a hunch that he’s the murderer, and I think maybe he is. That snowflake sketch proves he was there that day and as his presence isn’t accounted for, why may he not have been the slayer? And, why may he not have an inkling or a suspicion of it, and dread to verify his fears?”

“But, good gracious, Norah, even granting he was in Gately’s office that day, he needn’t have done the shooting. There are about one million other errands he could have been there on. Perhaps he was a commercial traveler, selling laces, and drew the design for a sample.”

“Sometimes, Mr. Brice, you talk like a Tom-noddy! Drummer, indeed! I can tell you whatever calling Case Rivers followed, it was far different from that of a selling agent! I’ll bet he was a lawyer, at least!”

“At least!” I mocked her; “understand, pray, I consider my profession somewhat above the least of the professions!”

“Yes, for you dignify it to a high standing,” and the gray eyes flashed me the smile of appreciation that I was looking for. I may as well admit that I was growing very fond of those two gray eyes and their owner, and I had a pretty strong conviction that after the present case was all settled I should turn my attention to the winning of the exclusive right to the tender glances those eyes could give.

But just now, I had to exclude all distracting thoughts, and forcing my mind back to the present situation, I again marveled at the non-appearance of Case Rivers.

“Perhaps he’s fallen through the earth again,” Norah suggested; “by the way, Mr. Brice, what do you think about that fall? Mr. Rivers is no doubt under some strange hallucination, but all the same, may there not be some foundation on which he based his dream?”

“Maybe! There must be! That mind of his is too sure-fire to hang on so desperately to a mere dream. He had some experience of a strange nature, and it included something that he looks upon as falling through the earth.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve a vague idea of a motor accident. Say, a motor car ran into a stone wall, and he was hurled high in the air, and landed in the East River – ”

“But I don’t see how that implies falling through the earth.”

“Well, say he slid down a high bank to reach the river – ”

“There’s no high bank near the morgue, and he was fished out in that locality.”