THE CREVICE

“But I don’t understand” Guy Morrow’s voice was plaintive, and he eyed his chief reproachfully, as he stood before Blaine’s desk, twisting his hat nervously “why you didn’t nail him! You’ve got the goods on him, all right; and now, just because you only had him arrested on a charge of assault with intent to kill, he’s gone and used his influence, and got himself released under heavy bail. Oh, why won’t you go heeled or guarded? We can’t afford to lose you, sir, any of us, and now he’ll do for you, as sure as shooting!”

“Who Carlis?” Blaine spoke almost absently, as if the portentous scene of two hours before had already almost slipped from his memory. “Oh, he won’t get away, and I’m not afraid of him! I let him go for the same reason that I didn’t have Mallowe arrested this morning for the same reason why I haven’t stopped Paddington’s philandering with the French girl, Fifine: because a link is still missing in the chain; the shell, the exterior of the whole conspiracy is in the hollow of my hand, but I can’t find the chink, the crevice into which to insert my lever and split it apart, lay the whole dastardly scheme irrefutably open to the light of day. I want to complete my case: in other words, Guy I want to win!”

“And you will, sir; you’ve never failed yet! Only I I don’t have any luck!” The young man’s haggard face grew wistful. “I want Emily Brunell; I need her and I seem farther from finding her than ever!”

“I didn’t know that was your job!” the detective objected, with a brusqueness which was not unkind. “I told you I’d take care of that, in my own way. I thought I assigned you to the task of finding out who fired at you, from the darkened window of your own room, when you were in Brunell’s house across the street; also I wanted a line on those two mysterious boarders of Mrs. Quinlan’s.”

“Nothing doing on either count, sir,” Morrow returned, ruefully. “I can’t get a glimpse of them, or a line on either of them; and as for who tried to plug me well, there isn’t an iota of evidence, that I can discover, beyond the bare fact. I didn’t come to report, for there’s nothing to say, except that I’m sticking at it, and if I don’t get a sight of those two before long I’m going to burn a red sulphur light some fine night, and yell ‘fire!’ I bet that’ll bring the old codger out, for all his rheumatism!”

“Not a bad idea,” Blaine commented, adding dryly: “What did you come for, then, Guy?”

“To find out if you had any news you were willing to tell me yet, sir of Emily?”

“Yes.” The detective’s slow smile was quizzical. “The most significant news in the world.”

“You’ve discovered their destination hers and her father’s?” the young operative cried eagerly. “You traced their taxi, of course!”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

“Just that, Guy that I haven’t been able to trace the taxicab in which they left their house. Think it over. Report to me when you’ve got anything definite to tell me.”

With a curt nod Blaine dismissed him, but he glanced after the dejected, retreating figure with a very kindly, affectionate light in his fatherly eyes. It was dusk when he was aroused from a deep study of his carefully annotated resume of the case by the excited jangle of the telephone bell, to hear Guy Morrow’s no less excited but joyous voice at the other end of the wire.

“I’ve found her! I’ve found Emily! She loves me! She does! I made her listen, and she understands everything! She don’t mind a bit about my hounding her father down, because she sees how it all had to be, and the old man’s a regular brick about it!”

“Where

“It was the kitten did it that blessed Caliban! And think of it, sir; I’ve always hated cats, ever since I was a kid! Emily says

“But how

“Maybe if the hall had been lighted but Mrs. Quinlan’s got that parsimony peculiar to all landladies and I trod on its tail, and it was all up!”

“Morrow, are you a driveling idiot, or an operative? Are you reporting, or exploding? If you called me up to tell me that you trod on the tail of your landlady’s parsimony, you don’t need a job in a detective bureau; you need a lunacy commission!” Blaine’s voice was vexed, but little smiling lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes.

“I beg your pardon, sir; I am almost crazy, I think with happiness. I’ve found Mr. Jimmy Brunell and his daughter. They are the two mysterious boarders whom Mrs. Quinlan has been shielding all this time, and I never even suspected it! It was Jimmy Brunell who fired at me that night of the day they disappeared. He didn’t recognize me, and thought I was one of his enemies one of Paddington’s men, like young Charley Pennold.

“You remember, I told you I found the kitten in the deserted house and brought it home for Mrs. Quinlan to take care of? Well, she never lights the gas until the very last minute, and late this afternoon, about half an hour ago, I was stumbling along the second-floor hallway to my room in the dark, when I stepped on the kitten. It yelled like mad, and Emily heard it from her room above. Forgetting caution and everything else, she opened the door and called it!

“Of course, when I heard her voice, I was upstairs two steps at a time, with the cat under my arm clawing like a vixen. She was perfectly freezing at first not the cat; it’s a he; I mean Emily. But after I explained that when I’d gotten to care for her I only tried to help her, she oh, well, I’m going to let her tell you herself, if you’re willing, sir! I’ll bring them both down to you now, if you say so, she and her father. Jimmy Brunell’s more than anxious to see you; he wants to make a clean breast of the whole affair tell all he knows about the case; and I think what he’s got to say will astonish you and finish the whole thing crack that nut you were talking to me about this afternoon, provide the link in the chain, the crevice in the crime cube! May I bring them?”

Blaine acquiesced, and after issuing his orders to the subordinates about him, waited in a fever of impatience which he could scarcely control, and which, had he stopped to think of it, would have astonished him beyond measure. That he who had daily, almost hourly, awaited unmoved the appearance of men famous and infamous, illustrious and obscure, should so agitatedly view the coming of this old offender, was incomprehensible.

Yet although he had really learned little that was conclusive from Guy’s somewhat incoherent account, he felt, in common with his young operative, that the crux of the matter lay here, to his hand, that from the lips of this old ex-convict would fall the magic word which would open to him the inner door of this mystery of mysteries which would prove, as the golden key of truth, absolute and unassailable.

After what seemed an incredibly long period of suspense, the door opened and Marsh ushered them in Morrow, his face wreathed in triumph and smiles; a brown-haired, serene-eyed girl whom Blaine remembered from his memorable interview with her at the Anita Lawton Club; and a tall, grizzled, smooth-shaven man, who held himself proudly erect, as if the weight of years had fallen from his shoulders.

“Yes, sir, I’m Brunell,” the latter announced, when the incidental salutations were over, “ Jimmy Brunell, the forger. I’ve lived straight, and tried to keep the truth from my little girl, for her own sake, but perhaps it is better as it is. She knows everything now, and has forgiven much, because she’s a woman like her mother, God bless her! I’ve come of my own free will, to tell you all you want to know, and prove it, too!”

“Sit down, all of you. Brunell, you forged the signature to the mortgage on Pennington Lawton’s home, at Paddington’s instigation?”

“Yes, sir. And the signature on the note given for the loan from Moore, and the whole letter supposed to be from Mr. Lawton to Mallowe, asking him to procure that loan for him, and all the other crooked business which helped sweep Mr. Lawton’s fortune away. But I didn’t understand how big the job was, nor just what they were trying to put over, or I wouldn’t have done it. I wish to heaven I hadn’t, now, but it’s too late for that; I can only do what’s left me to help repair the damage. I wish I’d taken the consequences Paddington threatened me with, through Charley Pennold curse them both!

“For it wasn’t because of the money I did it, sir, although what they offered me was a small fortune, and would have been a mighty hard temptation in the old days. It was because if I refused they were going to strike at me through my little girl, the one thing on earth I’ve got left to love! They were going to have me sent up on an old score which no one else even had suspected I’d been mixed up in. I didn’t know until just now when this young friend here, Mr. Morrow, told me that it had been outlawed long years ago, and I can see that they counted on my not knowing. How they found out about it, anyway, is a mystery to me, but that Paddington is the devil himself! However, if I didn’t do the trick for them, they’d have me convicted, and once out of the way, my little girl would be helpless in their hands. They talked of sweatshops, and worse

The old man broke down, and shuddering, covered his face with his thin fingers. But in a moment, before the pitying, outstretched hand of his daughter could reach his shoulder, he had regained control of himself, and resumed:

“I did what they asked of me all they asked. But I was suspicious, not only because they didn’t take me fully into their confidence, but because I knew Paddington and his breed; and also, Miss Lawton had been kind to my little girl. If they meant any harm to Pennington Lawton’s daughter, or if their scheme, whatever kind of a hold-up it was, failed to pan out as they expected, and they tried to make me the scape-goat well, I meant to protect myself and Lawton. My word would have to be proof against theirs that they forced me into what I did, but I could fix it so that I could prove to anybody, without any doubt, that Lawton never wrote that note to Mallowe from Long Bay about that loan two years ago, and that would sort of substantiate my word that the signatures weren’t his, either.”

“How could you prove such a thing?” Blaine leaned forward tensely.

“Young Morrow, here, tells me that you’ve got that note the note asking Mallowe to arrange the loan for Lawton. Will you get it, please, sir? I don’t want to see it; I want you to read it to me, and then I’ll tell you something about it. They thought they were clever, the rascals, but I fooled them at their own game! I cut out the words from a bundle of Lawton’s old letters which they gave me, and I manufactured the note, all right. I did it, word for word, just like they wanted me to but I put my own private mark on it, that they couldn’t discover, so that I could prove anywhere, any time, that it was a forgery!”

In a concealed fever of excitement, the detective produced the fateful note from his private file.

“That looks like it!” chuckled old Jimmy. “It’s dated August sixteenth, nineteen hundred and twelve, isn’t it? Now, sir, will you read it out loud, please?”

Blaine unfolded the single sheet of hotel note-paper, and looked once more at the following message:

My Dear Mallowe:

Kindly regard this letter as strictly confidential. I desire to negotiate a private loan immediately, for a considerable amount, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in fact, but for obvious reasons, which you, as a man of discretion and financial astuteness second to none in this country, will readily understand, a public assumption of it by me would be disastrous to a degree, under the prevailing conditions. Ask Moore if he can arrange the matter for me, but feel him out tentatively first. If he does not see his way clear to it, let me know without delay, and I will come to Illington and confer with you.

I am prepared, of course, to give him my personal note for same, but do not desire any direct dealings with him. In fact, it would be exceedingly dangerous to my interests if he ever mentioned it to me personally, even when he fancied himself alone with me. Impress this upon him. I will pay far above the legal rate of interest, of course. You can arrange this with him.

I will go into the whole matter of this contingency
confidentially with you when I see you. In
the meantime, I know that I can rely upon you.

Awaiting the earliest possible reply, and thanking
you for the interest I know you will take
in this affair,

Sincerely, your friend,

Pennington Lawton.

After glancing at it a moment Blaine read the letter aloud in a calm, unemotional voice which gave no hint of the tumult within him. He had scarcely finished when Jimmy Brunell, greatly excited, interrupted triumphantly:

“That’s it! That’s the note! Don’t see anything phony about it, do you, sir? Neither did they! Now, leave out the ‘My dear Mallowe,’ and beginning with the next as the first line, count down five lines. The last letter of the last word on that line is f, isn’t it? Omit a line and take the last letter of the next, and so on for four letters that is, the last words of the four alternate lines beginning with the fifth from the top are: of, a, ask, and see, and the last letters of those four spell a word. That word is fake, and so is the note, and the whole infernal business! Fake, from beginning to end! I put my mark on it, sir, so it could be known for what it is, in case of need. Now the need has come.”

“By Jove, so it is!” Guy Morrow cried, unable to restrain himself longer. “You’re a wonder, Mr. Brunell!”

“You have rendered us a greater service than you know,” supplemented Blaine, the while his pulses throbbed in time to his leaping heart. The crevice! The rift in the criminal’s almost perfected scheme, into which he had succeeded in inserting the little silver probe of his specialized knowledge, and disclosed to a gaping world the truth! He had found it at last, and his work was all but done.

“But what’s to happen to me now?” The exultation had died out of his voice, and Jimmy Brunell looked suddenly pinched and gray and tired, and very, very old. “I don’t care much what happens to me, but my daughter Emily

“I’ll take care of her, whatever happens!” Guy’s heart was in his buoyant voice. “But you’ll be all right. Don’t you worry! Haven’t you got Mr. Blaine on your side?”

“I’ll try to see that you don’t suffer for your enforced share in the Lawton conspiracy, Brunell. It seems to me that you’ve already gone through trouble enough on that score, great as was the damage you half-unwittingly wrought,” Blaine remarked, reassuringly adding: “But why didn’t you come forward before, and give your testimony?”

“There wasn’t any court action,” the old man returned, hesitatingly. “And besides, I was afraid to come forward and tell what I knew, because of Emily. I would have done it, though, as soon as I learned they had robbed Miss Lawton of everything. I wasn’t sure of that, you see.”

“One thing more!” Blaine pressed the bell which would summon his secretary. “Why, if you had reformed, did you keep in your possession all these years your forging apparatus?”

“I had it taken care of for me while I served my term, meaning to use it again when I came out. I was bitter and revengeful, and I meant to do everybody up brown that I could. But when I was free and found my my wife had gone and left me Emily, it seemed like a hostage from her gentle spirit given to the world, that I wouldn’t do any more wrong. I kept the plant because I didn’t know how to dispose of it so no one else could use it, and as the years went by, I got more and more scared at the thought of it.

“I was afraid both ways afraid it would be discovered, but more afraid I’d be found out if I tried to get rid of it. So I buried it in the cellar of my little shop and did my level best to forget it. I’d almost succeeded when, God knows how, Paddington found me. You know the rest.”

“You rang, sir?” Marsh, the secretary, had entered noiselessly.

“Yes. Have these two people this young lady and her father conducted in my own limousine to my house, and made comfortable there until I give you further directions as to what I wish done concerning them.”

Blaine cut short the old forger’s broken words of gratitude in his brusquely kind fashion, but his heart imaged always the light in the girl’s soft eyes as she bent a parting glance upon him, like a benediction, before the door closed.

“What are you going to do with them, sir?” young Morrow asked anxiously when they were alone.

Henry Blaine paused a moment before replying.

“I might let him take his chance before the court, on the strength of his years, and his having turned State’s evidence voluntarily, Guy, but he’s an old offender, and Carlis’ faction is strong. My racing car will make ninety miles an hour, easily, and it can do it unmolested, with my private sign on the hood. It can meet the Canadian express at Branchtown at dawn. I’ve a little farm in a nice community in Canada, not too isolated, and I’m going to make it over to you as part of your reward for your work on the Lawton case....

“No, don’t thank me! I’m sworn on the side of law and order, but Justice is stern and sometimes blind because she will not see. Remember, the Greatest Jurist Himself recommended mercy!”

Soon afterward, as they sat discussing the wind-up of the case, the subject of the second set of cryptograms was broached, and Blaine smiled at Morrow’s utter bewilderment concerning them.

“Still puzzling about those, Guy? They weren’t as simple as the first one was, that of the system of odd-shaped characters and dots. The later ones were the more difficult because they were of no set system at all I mean no one system, but a primitive conglomeration, probably evolved by Paddington himself, based on script music and also the old childish trick of writing letters shaped like figures, which can be read by reversing the paper, and holding it up to the light.

“Just a minute, and we’ll look at the two notes, the one you found in Brunell’s room in the deserted cottage, and the other which came to me in the cigarette box meant for Paddington, from Mac Alarney. Then we’ll be able to see how they were worked out. And you’ll see that though they look extremely meaningless and confusing, they are in reality extremely simple.”

As he spoke, Blaine produced them from his desk drawer, and spread them out before him.

“Before you examine them,” he went on, “let me explain the musical script idea on which they are fundamentally based, in case you are unfamiliar with it. The sign ‘&’ before a bar of music means that music is written in the treble clef that is, all the notes following it are above the central C on the piano keyboard. Thus” here he drew rapidly on a scrap of paper and passed a scrawled scale over to the interested operative.

“The dot on the line below the five lines which are joined together by the sign of the treble clef is C. The dot on the space between that and the first of the five lines is D. The dot on the first line is E; on the next space is F, and so forth, in their alphabetical order on the alternating lines and spaces. Do you see how easily, they could be used as the letters of words in a cryptogram, by any one of an ingenious turn of mind? Of course, each bar that is, each section enclosed by lines running straight up and down represents a word. Now for the rest of it:

“Leaving the script music idea aside, and taking the characters not so represented in the cryptogram, we find that ‘3’ when viewed from the under side of the paper will look very much like an English E; 7 like T; 9 like P; 2 like S, and so forth.

“Try it. Here is the first note, the one you found. Puzzle out the musical notes by their alphabetical nomenclature from the key I just gave you on the scrap of paper there; then hold the note up to the light, and read the other letters from the under side. Try it with both notes, and tell me what you find.”

Guy took the papers, and wonderingly spelled out the letters represented by the musical notes, from the scale Blaine had given him. Then turning the pages over, he held them up to the light, an exclamation of absorbed interest escaping from him.

The great detective watched him in silence, until at last, with a glowing sense of achievement, Guy read:

“’Beat it at once. You are suspected. Detective on trail. Rite old address. I am sending funds as usual. If caught you get life sentence. Pad.’”

Blaine nodded.

“Now, the other.”

“’Patient still unconscious. Consultation necessary at once to save life. Should he die advise Reddy what disposition to make of body. Mac.’”

The last cryptogram proved the more easily decipherable, and when the young operative had read it aloud, he looked up with a glowing face.

“By George, it’s a world-beater! What put you on the right track?”

“The last one. I realized then that they were afraid the kidnaped man, Ramon Hamilton, who had been grievously wounded, would die on their hands, and that rather than face the results of such a contingency they would attempt to obtain some obscure but experienced medical aid, and in a way which would give the physician no inkling of his patient’s identity or whereabouts. I therefore sent out that circular letter to every doctor in Illington, warning each one to come to me in the event of his having received a mysterious summons. It worked, as you know, and Doctor Alwyn responded.”

“Well, if you hadn’t been able to read the cryptogram, sir, the Lord knows what would have happened!”

“And if you hadn’t trodden on the cat’s tail ” Blaine suggested dryly.

Guy glanced at him in sudden, swift comprehension.

“Why, look here, sir, I believe you knew that Emily and her father were the two mysterious boarders at Mrs. Quinlan’s, all the time! You said it was significant that you hadn’t been able to trace the number of the taxicab in which they had run away from the neighborhood! There never was a taxicab in all Illington which couldn’t be traced by its number! You knew, of course, that that story of Mrs. Quinlan’s was a fake, and then when I told you of the two concealed people there, you had it all doped out! Oh, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want you to precipitate matters just then, Guy,” the detective responded, kindly. “The house was watched they couldn’t get away.”

“That’s a good one!” Young Morrow looked his self-disgust. “Hire operatives on your staff, sir, and then have to set others to tail them, and see that they don’t get into trouble! Heavens, what an idiot I am! I’ve found out one thing, though, from those cryptograms” he pointed to the cipher notes on the desk. “Music’s a cinch! I can read it already, and I’m going to start in and learn how to play on something or other, the first chance I get! There’s a fellow next door to Mrs. Quinlan’s with a clarinet ” He paused, and his face sobered as he added: “But I forgot! I sha’n’t be there any more.”

Before Blaine could speak, there was a knock upon the door, and Marsh entered with hurried circumspection. There was a look of latent, shocked importance upon his usually impassive face, and he carried in his hand a newspaper which was still damp from the press.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought you would want to know at once. There’s been a murder! Paddington, the private detective, was found in the Rhododendron Alley, just off the Mall in the park, stabbed to the heart!”

Henry Blaine took the paper and spread it out upon the desk before him, as Guy Morrow, with a soft, low whistle, turned away. The “extra” imparted little more than the secretary’s announcement had done. There was no known motive for the crime, no clue to the murderer. When found, the man had been dead for some hours.

“Well, sir,” observed Guy at last, when the secretary had withdrawn, “one by one they’re getting away from us and by the same route. First Rockamore, now Paddington!”

Blaine looked up with a grim smile.

“Putting a woman wise to anything is like lighting a faulty time-fuse: you never can tell when you’re going to get your own fingers blown off! But tell me something, Guy. What was that tune you whistled a moment ago, when Marsh came in with the news? It had a vaguely familiar ring.”

“Oh, that?” asked the operative, with a sheepishly guileless air. “It was just a bit from an English musical comedy of two or three years back, I think. It’s got a silly-sounding name something like ’There’s a Boat Sails on Saturday ’”

Blaine’s wry smile broadened to a grin of genuine appreciation, and rising, he clapped the young man heartily on the shoulder.

“Right you are, Guy! And it won’t be our job to search the sailing lists. You may not always be able to see what lies under your nose, but your perspective is not bad. Hell has only one fury worse than a woman scorned, that I know of, and that is a woman fooled! We’ll let it go at that!”

The evening had already grown late, but that eventful day was not to end without one more brief scene of vital import. Marsh presently reappeared, this time bearing a card.

“‘Mr. Mallowe,’” read Blaine, with a half-smile. “Show him in, Marsh, and have your men ready. You know what to do. No, Guy, you needn’t go. This interview will not be a private one.”

“Mr. Blaine!” Mallowe entered pompously and then paused, glancing rather uncertainly from the detective to Morrow. It needed no keen observer to note the change in the man since the scene of that morning, at Miss Lawton’s. He had become a mere shell of his former self. The smug unctuousness was gone; the jaunty side-whiskers drooped; his chalk-like skin fell in flabby folds, and his crafty eyes shifted like a hunted animal’s.

“Mr. Blaine, I had hoped for a strictly confidential conference with you, but I presume this person to be one of your trusted assistants, and it is immaterial now the matter upon which I have come is too pressing! Scandal, notoriety must be averted at all costs! I find that a frightful, a hideous mistake has been made, and I am actually upon the point of being involved in a conspiracy as terrible as that of which my poor friend Pennington Lawton was the victim! And I am as innocent as he! I swear it!”

“You may as well conserve your strength and your strategic ingenuity for the immediate future, Mr. Mallowe. You’ll need both,” Blaine returned, coolly. “If you’ve come here to make any appeal

“I’ve come to assert my innocence!” the broken man cried with a flash of his old proud dignity. “I only learned this evening of the truth, and that those scoundrels Carlis and Rockamore had implicated me! How a man of your discernment and experience could believe for a moment that I was a party to any fraudulent

Blaine pressed the bell.

“There is no use in prolonging this interview, Mr. Mallowe!” he said, curtly. “All the evidence is in my hands.”

“But allow me to explain!” The flabby face grew more deathlike, until the burning eyes seemed peering from the face of a corpse.

Two men entered, and at sight of them, the former pompous president of the Street Railways of Illington plumped to his fat, quaking knees.

“For God’s sake, listen! You must listen, Blaine!” he shrieked. “I am one of the prominent men of this country! I have three married daughters, two of them with small children! The disgrace, the infamy of this, will kill them! I will make restitution; I will

“Pennington Lawton had one daughter, unmarried, unprovided for! Did you think of her?” asked Blaine, grimly. “I’m sorry for the innocent who must suffer with you, Mr. Mallowe, but in this instance the law must take its course. Lead him away.”

When the wailing, quavering voice had subsided behind the closing door, Henry Blaine turned to young Morrow with a weary look of pain, age-old, in his eyes.

“Unpleasant, wasn’t it?” he asked grimly. “I try to school myself against it, but with all my experience, a scene like this makes me sick at heart. I know the wretch deserves what is coming to him, just as Rockamore knew when he unfalteringly sped that bullet just as Carlis knew when he heard his own voice repeated by the dictagraph. And yet I, who make my living, and shall continue to make it, by unearthing malefactors; I, who have built my career, made my reputation, proved myself to be what I am by the detection and punishment of wrong-doing I wish with all my heart and soul, before God, that there was no such thing as crime in all this fair green world!”