The Mark of Cain

“I know.”

“Has he one?”

“No.”

“Did he ever have one?”

“Yaes.”

“Not like this.”

“Yes, just all same like that one.”

And then Stone, with his almost hypnotic power of suggestion, so hinted and insinuated and urged, that finally Kito, after a short search in a closet, triumphantly showed a pencil-sharpener exactly like the one Stone had offered.

Looking chagrined and disappointed, Stone returned his to his bag.

“Why did your master stop using it?” he asked, noting the pencil on the desk tray, undoubtedly sharpened with a knife.

“Two, four weeks, mebbe more.”

“But when?” and Stone picked up a calendar. “When?”

Slowly tracing back through his memory, Kito suddenly smiled.

“Then!” he exclaimed pointing to a date. “I know, be-cause, the same day almost, my birt’day. An’ I hoped my master give him to me for plesent. But no.”

“That’s too bad,” agreed Stone. “Well, if your master doesn’t care for his, of course he won’t buy mine. Good-day.”

Picking up his bag, he went away, and Kito closed the door behind him.

The date the Japanese had pointed to, was the day after the murder of Rowland Trowbridge!

CHAPTER XXIV

ESCAPE

Fibsy was at his wits’ end. And the wits’ end of Terence McGuire was at some distance from their beginning. But he had scrutinized every step of the way, and now he disconsolately admitted to himself that he had really reached the end.

He had been shut up in the strange house nearly a week. He was most comfortably lodged and fed, he had much reading matter supplied for his perusal, though none of it was newspapers, and Kito offered to play parchesi with him by way of entertainment. The Japanese was polite, even kindly, but he was inflexible in the matter of obeying his orders. And his scrupulous fidelity precluded any possibility of Fibsy’s getting away, or even getting out of the rooms allotted to his use.

But when the boy rose one morning after a refreshing night’s sleep and had a satisfying breakfast, and was at last locked in his room for the morning, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and clinched his impotent young fists in rage and despair.

“I gotta make me bean woik better,” he groaned to himself, the tenseness of the situation causing him to revert to his use of street slang. “I gotter get outen here, an’ most likely it’s too late now. I’m a nice detective, I am, can’t get out the fust time I’m in a hole! Gee! I’m gonta get out!”

Followed a long session of hard thinking, and then a gleam of light came to him. But he needs must wait till Kito brought up his dinner.

And at noon or thereabouts, Kito came with the usual well-appointed tray of good food.

Fibsy looked it over nonchalantly. “All right, Kite,” he said, “but say, I gotta toothache. I wish you’d gimme a toothpick, – not quill, – the wooden kind.”

Sympathetic and solicitous, the Japanese produced from his own pocket a little box of his native toothpicks, of which Fibsy accepted a couple, and pocketed them. And then, came the strategical moment. His purpose must be effected while the Jap was still in the room. And it was. Sidling to the half-open door, Fibsy called Kite’s attention to a dish on the tray, and then thrust a toothpick quickly in beside the bolt of the lock, and broke it off short.

In order to keep his jailer’s attention distracted, Fibsy then waxed loquacious, and dilated on the glories of a wonderful movie show.

Kito listened attentively, and though he said no word about going to see it, he inquired carefully where it was, and Fibsy’s hopes began to rise.

“But if ever you go, Kite,” he said, “you wanter see the very beginnin’, ’relse you lose all the fun.”

At last, Fibsy finished his dinner and the Jap took up the tray. Breathlessly, but unnoticeably, Fibsy watched him, and as he went out of the door, and turned the key in the lock, he didn’t notice that the bolt didn’t shoot home as usual, but the door was really left unlocked.

Fibsy’s heart beat like a trip-hammer as he heard the catlike footsteps go down stairs.

Unable to wait, he tried the door, and found it was open. He slipped out into the hall. Down two flights, he could hear the Japanese, going about his business. Warily, Fibsy crept down one stair-case. Then he stepped into the front room on that floor. It was evidently the room of a grand lady. Silver trinkets were here and there, but Fibsy’s quick eyes noted that the bureau was dismantled, and there were no appearances of actual occupancy.

“Mrs. Autchincloss is away fer the summer,” he said, sapiently. “Lessee furder.”

It was a risk, but Kito rarely came upstairs so soon after dinner, so the boy went through to the back room on the second floor.

“Bachelor,” he said, nodding his head at the appointments on the chiffonier. “Stayin’ in town. Kinder Miss Nancy, – here’s a little sewin’ kit some dame made fer him. An’ the way his brushes an’ things is fixed, shows he ain’t got no wife. So this ain’t Mr. Autchincloss. Well, lemmesee. Writin’ table next. Not much doin’. Fixin’s all fer show. Spose he writes down in the liberry. Wisht I could git down there. Here’s a lot of his friends.”

Fibsy had spied a pack of snapshots and small photographs, and hastily ran them over. They were all unknown faces to him, except one which chanced to be the postcard of Judge Hoyt taken in Philadelphia station.

“Hello! The guy wot lives here is a frien’ o’ Judge Hoyt. No, not a friend, but a nennermy. Cos, I dope it out, that friend guy’s locked me up here fer fear I’ll help Judge Hoyt’s case. Oh, no, I dunno, as it’s that. I dunno what it is. I wisht I could get word to Mr. Stone. If I only dared use that telephone. But Kite would fly up here quicker’n scat! Well, I’ll swipe this card, cos it looks interestin’.”

Then Fibsy, still with a wary eye on the hall door, searched the room and its dressing-room and closets, and was rewarded by some further discoveries, one of which was a dirk cane. This article was among a number of other canes and umbrellas in the far end of a deep closet.

“Now, o’ course,” he mused, “maybe tain’t the right cane, an’ maybe ’tis. But if it is, then this here’s the moiderer’s house, an’ he locked me in cos he’s scared o’ me. Well, it’s all too many fer me. Hello, wot’s this?” He opened a small door in the side of the deep closet. There seemed to be an elevator shaft, with no car. As a matter of fact, it was a laundry chute, but Fibsy was unacquainted with conveniences of that sort, and didn’t know its purpose. But he saw at once that the shaft led to the basement, and that it went upward, to a similar opening in the room above. And the room above was his room!

Softly he crept back upstairs, and re-entered his room. He dislodged the fragment of toothpick, and closed the door. If Kito discovered it was unlocked, he couldn’t help that now. He went straight to his own closet, and sure enough there was the same sort of a slide door, and it gave onto the same chute, hung over it. At last a possible way of exit. Precarious, for he had not yet decided on a safe way of descending a bare shaft, but his mind was at work now, and something must come of it.

And his mind produced this plan. He knew where Kito was now. Always at that time in the afternoon, the Japanese was in his own room in the rear part of the first floor of the house. Previous desultory chat had brought out this fact. And Fibsy’s plan was to make a soft bed at the foot of the shaft and jump down. Dangerous, almost positively disastrous, but the only chance.

“’Course I’ll break me bloomin’ back or legs or suthin’, but anyway the horsepital’d be better’n this, an’ then I could get aholt of Mr. Stone.”

So, swiftly and noiselessly, he removed all the bedding from his bed, and down the chute he threw the mattress, dropping on it the blankets and pillows.

“Here goes!” he said, not pausing to consider consequences, and, balancing for an instant on the ledge, he let himself go, and came down with a soft thud on the pillows.

Whether it was because he relaxed every muscle and fell limply, or whether it was because of a kind fate looking after him, he sustained no injuries. Not a bone broke, and though the jar was stunning, he recovered after a few minutes, and sat up half-dazed, but rapidly becoming alert, and looking about him.

The semi-darkness of the shaft showed him the exit, and it proved to be into the laundry in the basement of the house.

The rest was easy. Listening intently for a sound of Kito, and hearing none, Fibsy deliberately walked out of the basement door, and into the street.

He did not hurry, being desirous not to attract attention in any way, and as he went through the area gate, he looked up and noted the number of the house. It was as he had surmised, a house closed for the summer during the absence of the family. The Japanese butler had been retained as caretaker, and whoever was Fibsy’s captor, gave the orders. Kito was so trustworthy and faithful, there could have been no chance of Fibsy’s escape save by some such ingenious method as he had used.

“Only,” he blamed himself, “why the dickens didn’t I think of it sooner?”