The Mark of Cain

Reaching the corner, he noted the street the house was on, but the fashionable locality, in the upper West Seventies, was unfamiliar to him, and he had no idea whose house he had been living in.

Nor had he had time to find out. An investigation of a street directory might have told him, but he concluded to lose no time in communicating with Fleming Stone.

But first, he telephoned his aunt to relieve the anxiety he knew she must be feeling.

“It’s all right, Aunt Becky,” he announced, cheerily. “Don’t you worry, don’t you fret. I’m on important business, and I’ll be home when I get there. So long!”

Then he called up Fleming Stone’s office. The detective was not in, but Fibsy made it so plain to a secretary that Mr. Stone must be found at once, that the finding was accomplished, and by the time Fibsy in his taxicab reached the office, Fleming Stone was there too.

“Terence!” exclaimed the detective, grasping the boy’s hand in his own. “Come in here.”

He took the lad to his inner sanctum, and said, “Tell me all about it.”

“There’s such a lot, Mr. Stone,” began Fibsy, breathlessly, “but first, how’s the trial goin’? I ain’t seen a pape since I was caught. I wanted to get one on the way here, but I got so int’rested in this here card, – say, look here. This is a pitcher of Judge Hoyt in the Philly Station the day of the moider. You know he was in Philly that day.”

“Yes, he was,” and Stone looked harassed. “He certainly was. He wrote from there and telegraphed from there and I’ve seen a card like the one you have there, and that settles it. I wish I could prove he wasn’t there.”

“Well, Mr. Stone, he prob’ly was there, all right, but this here picture wasn’t took on that day.”

“How do you know?”

“De-duck-shun!” and Fibsy indulged in a small display of vanity, quite justified by his further statement. “You see, this card shows the big news stand in the waitin’ room. Well, the papers on the news stand ain’t that week’s papers!”

“What?”

“No, sir, they ain’t. You see, I read every week ‘The Sleuth’s Own Magazine’, an’ o’ course I know every number of that ’ere thing’s well’s I know my name. An’ here, you see, sir, is the magazine I’m speakin’ of, right here in the picture. Well, on it is a cover showin’ a lady tied in a chair wit’ ropes. Well, sir, that roped lady was on the cover two weeks after Mr. Trowbridge was killed, not the day of the moider.”

“You’re sure of this, Terence?” and Stone looked at the boy with an expression almost of envy. “This is very clever of you.”

“Aw, shucks, tain’t clever at all. Only, I know them magazines like a mother’d know her own children. I read ’em over an’ over. An’ I know that picture on that cover came out more’n two weeks later’n what Judge Hoyt said it did. I mean, he didn’t have that card taken of himself on the day he said he did.”

“Motive?”

“That I dunno. I do know Judge Hoyt is tryin’ sumpin’ fierce to clear Mr. Landon – has he done it yet?”

“No, Terence, but the trial is almost over, and I think the judge has something up his sleeve that he’s holding back till the last minute. I never was in such a baffling mystery case. Every clue leads nowhere, or gets so tangled with contradictory clues that it merely misleads. Now tell me your story.”

Fibsy told the tale of his imprisonment, and the manner of his escape. He told the street and number of the house, and he told of his discovery of a dirk cane in a cupboard.

“An’ Mr. Stone,” he went on, “I found the shoe the button came off of.”

“You’re sure it was a shoe button?” and Fleming Stone smiled at recollection of the button that had been described as of several varieties.

“Yes, sir. An’ every time I said that button was a kind of button that it wasn’t, I was glad afterward that I said it. Yes, Mr. Stone it’s a shoe button an’ in that same house I was in, is the shoe it useter be on.”

“Look out now, Terence, don’t let your zeal and your imagination run away with you.”

“No, sir, but can’t you go there yourself, and get the shoe and the cane, or send for ’em, and if they fit the cane mark in the mud, and if the button I’ve got is exactly like those on that shoe, then ain’t there sumpin in it, Mr. Stone? Ain’t there?”

The freckled face was very earnest and the blue eyes very bright as Fibsy waited for encouragement.

“There’s a great deal in it, Fibsy. You have done wonderful work. In fact so wonderful, that I must consider very carefully before I proceed.”

“Yes, sir. You see maybe the place where I was, might be the house of that Mr. Lindsay, he’s a friend of Mr. Landon’s – ”

“Wait a bit, child. Now you’ve done much, so very much, have patience to go a little slowly for the next move. Do you remember what the inspector told about the noises he heard when the Italian woman first telephoned him about Mr. Trowbridge?”

“Yes sir, every woid. Rivetin’ goin on. Phonograph playin’ an’ kids whoopin’-coughin’ like fury.”

“Well, from the Board of Health I’ve found the general location of whooping-cough cases at about that time, now if we can eliminate others and find the Italian ones – ”

“Yep, I und’stand! Goin’ now?”

“Yes, at once.”

Calling a taxicab, they started, and Stone went to an Italian quarter near 125th Street, where whooping-cough had been prevalent a few weeks previous.

“Find the house, Fibsy,” he said, as they reached the infected district.

Unsmilingly, Fibsy’s sharp, blue eyes scanned block after block.

“New buildin’,” he said, at last, thoughtfully; and then, darting across the street, to a forlorn little shop, he burst in and out again, crying, “Here you are, Mr. Stone!”

Stone crossed the street and entered the shop. There was a swarthy Italian woman, and several children, some coughing, others quarreling and all dirty.

A phonograph was in evidence, and Fibsy casually looked over the records till he found the rag-time ditty the inspector had recalled.

He called up headquarters and asked Inspector Collins if that were the music he heard before. “Yes,” said Collins, and Stone shouted, “Hold that wire, Fibsy, wait a minute,” and dragging the scared woman to the telephone he bade her repeat the message she had given the day of the murder.

“Same voice! Same woman!” declared the inspector, and Stone hung up the receiver.

Then he soothed the frightened Italian, promising no harm should come to her if she told the truth.

The truth, as she tremblingly divulged it, seemed to be, that some man had come to her shop that afternoon, and forced her to telephone as he dictated. She remembered it all perfectly, and had been frightened out of her wits ever since. He had given her ten dollars which she had never dared to spend, as it was blood money!

“Describe the man,” said Stone.

“I not see heem good. He hold noosa-paper before his face, and maka me speak-a telephone.”

“How did he make you? Did he threaten you?”

“He have-a dagger. He say he killa me, if I not speak as he say.”

“Ah, a dagger! An Italian stiletto?”

“No, not Italiano. I not see it much, I so fright’. But I know it if I see it more!”

After a few more questions, Stone was ready to go. But Fibsy sidled up to the woman. “Say,” he said, “what you give your bambinos for the cough, hey? Med’cine?”