The Room Under the Stairs

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 841, 9 December 1929, Page 5

The Room Under the Stairs

* The Baffling Story of a Man Who Read of His Own Murder.

By

Herman Landon

Copyright by G. lloicard Watt. Serialised by Ledger Syndicate.

CHAPTER I.

A CUKIOUS CONFESSION Over his coffee arul toast Thomas Dean glanced idly at the headlines on the front page of his newspaper. Always squeamishly conservative in its; treatment of the day’s news “The Era’’ seemed more than ordinarily dull this morning. There were long and ponderous accounts of the Ruhr situation, of the prospects of an early

revival in the buildiHg trades, of the diffle ulties experienced in enforcing a certain amendment to the Coustitudon. together with the usual quota of Political gossip and prognostication, most of Which Bean would dutifully read later in the day as soon as he nad finished another chapter of his oithpoming novel. A man who lived ■ imagination had to have an antidote of some kind to sustain his mental equipoise, and the dreamy columns of “The Era” supplied it. He was about to toss the paper aside ik en a headline below the middle of •no rage caught his eve: CONFESSES MURDER ON HIS DEATHBED A* l ® captiou was printed in small, u Ure G'Pe, as if conveying an hit y * or P resen fihE a sensation of Th S< lT l * n sacrosanct pages of mil,?. . • Oeau gazed at it with w a Merest. Three out of the five if mk the kind of material ‘A 1 ™ h e was always in search. He * ounced them slowly: “Confesses” h^ io I ?, Ur k Cler "■—•‘deathbed” Each one stied with dramatic possibilities, re,”? 8 , tb o alcliemising faculty of nrH Q *l braiu iuto action. Yet, on secthought, a deathbed confession man a ra * ber ordinary thing. Ever so dio People, when their time came to w \ j Un 't something of which they r!l»i '7 unburden their conscience. m».. e88 « 6 circumstances should prove unusual and striking, “The lira’s” frr ru Possessed no particular value Bean. He tore it out from the hi. tt>eau i n S to give it more care“attention later. As he did so a ■ me seemed to leap out from the half Cl| mmu of type. •.A 3 '’* Forrester!” he exclaimed, vneu he laughed shortly, huskily, the .; - a man might laugh when his faculforrene I ?.? meurarily stunned. “Paul . h P? an 1 oplenished his cup from the bv h* 8 l icke * P°t placed at his elbow housekeeper, the estimable Blossom. t° olj two deep, bracing swallows, i,. 1 Forrester! It was a bit staggerth,» •'°* K> dy had a better right to -tk nan,e than Thomas Dean himself, y. ÜBa he had not used it for several hi. S ‘ though the reading public, Publishers, his few friends and Th„ Uaintances knew him only as r , ( luas Dean, he was still Paul ForTe , er - Partly as a matter of con- , ,< ' nce a ud partly for certain other t <ai° DS ' his P seu donym had to all pracr Purposes become his one and only t I$ ut that did not alter the fact la. i vas B, *ll. legally and by birth, “ Forrester. And Paul Forrester, ~ ruing to the account in the acutely servatiye •■j.; ra — , va;J dead, He bad murdered five and a-half years y °he Martin Lamont, who now, reli<> - * ate wi, h eternity, sought to ki ev ® bis conscience by confessing urliue. it was there, in black and

white, before Dean’s blinking eyes, and it was all the more impressive because the “Era” bore the reputation of being at all times scrupulously truthful.

He tried to clear the confusion in his mind. It was all a ridiculous mistake, of course; a case of mistaken identity, no doubt. Perhaps the “Era” had got the facts tangled somehow. Perhaps Martin Lamont's mind had been wandering, the way a dying man's sometimes does. At any rate, the statements were a flat contradiction of what Dean knew to be the truth. Yet the thought that some one had confessed to the murder of a person named Paul Forrester was bewildering. And the name was a rather Uncommon one, particularly the combination of surname and Christian name. . If it had been George Brown or William .Tones it would have been different. Yet it was conceivable, of course, that, there had been another Paul Forrester. In fact, it was the only sensible explanation. Dean steadied himself and started to read the account from beginning

to end. No doubt a careful perusal of the confession would show convincingly that what appeared to he inexplicable was only a coincidence. Dean read on, and again the type began to whirl and blur before his eyes. Coincidences, though it was growing increasingly difficult to regard them as such, were piled up Iu astounding profusion. One familiar reference after another caused his mind to reel. His name was accurately given, and so was the name of his father, Jordan Forrester. The murder, according to the confession, had been committed In (he old and creaky house on Hudson Street formerly occupied by the Forrester family. The motive, the execution of the crime, the scene with Its intimate details of description, the disposition of the body and the murderer’s subsequent movements, were all related with a wealth of circumstantial colouring that left nothing to the imagination. Violently as his reason rebelled against it. Dean was forced to the conclusion that he was the Paul Forrester whom the dying man had had in mind when he made his confession. If nothing else, the biographical matter at the end of the article shattered all doubt on that point. _ . . Thoroughly dazed, Dean let the torn-out extract slip to the floor. To few men is given the dubious privilege of reading their own obituaries, although newspapers are in the habit of preparing such matters in advance of death when the subject, is a person of importance. Dean felt quite sure that he was the only man who had ever experienced the sensations of reading a vivid and circumstantia. account of his own demise by murder. He felt an impulse to laugh, but there was an element of gruesomeness in the thing that sobered him. His reason told him that it was a ghastly mistake, for he was very much alive, and no deliberate attempt had ever

been made on his life, but how such a blunder had come about was beyond him. Again picking up the article, he scanned each detail of the account with great care. READS OF HIS OWN MURDER Martin Lamont, being of sound mind and realising that the time had come to make his peace with Gou, was setting forth the following facts: For a number of years prior to 1917 he had been associated in various business enterprises with Jordan Forrester, father of the man he declared he had subsequently murdered. In the year mentioned the elder Forrester had died in Colorado, following a series of unlucky ventures. At the time of his death lie owed Lamont the sum of 10,000 dollars, leaving behind him barely enough to defray his fune--al expenses. In the months that followed, Lamont was hard pressed for money because of his daughter’s serious illness and other reverses. Finally, in desperation, he decided to try to collect the money due him, or a portion of it, from Forrester’s son. i Paul Forrester, the confession stated, was then living in New York, occupying the same house on Hudson Street in which his father had lived during his periodic visits to the mettropolis. His numerous letters to young Forrester remaining unanswered, Lamont went to New York to appeal to him in person. Arriving in the city late in the evening, he took dinner in a restaurant and then went to (he house on Hudson Street. Young Forrester received him coldly, even insultingly, and flatly declared that he was neither cognisant of nor responsible for his father’s obligations.

At this point in the narrative, Dean looked up from the article and tried to steady his brain before he went on with the perusal. It was true that for a short time following his father’s death he had occupied the old house on Hudson Street, but he had never heard of Lamont, nor xvas he aware that his father had left any unpaid debts behind him. This might easily have been the case, however, for the elder Forrester, an irresponsible knight of fortune, was sadly lacking in business acumen, and he had had his financial ups and downs as far back as the son could remember. In a sardonic humour Dean went on with the reading of the article, which this point grew more and more dramatic. Lamont related how he had pleaded with young Forrester, whom he believed to be in possession of ample funds, explaining that the money was a vital necessity to him in view of his poverty and his daughter's illness. The latter was in need of hospital care and the services of costly specialists. He told the young man that his daughter was everything in his life, that his heart would break if she should die for the want of the few thousands which young Forrester could so easily spare. "The young fellow just stood there and laughed at me,” the account went on. “Finally, he got insulting and showed me the door. Things began to swim before my eyes. I thought of my sick daughter, whom I loved a thousand times more than my life, and then the sight of. his grinning face and the sound of his mocking voice maddened me, and I lost control of myself. Even now I hardly know how it happened, but all of a sudden I saw young Forrester stretched out on t.he floor, with an ugly bruise on his temple, and I was standing over’ him with a fire tongs in my hand. I must have grabbed it without realising what I was doing, and struck at him with all the fury that was in me. “For a while I just stood there and

stared at him. I think I shouted to him to get up, but he never moved. Finally I bent over him and felt his face, and then I knew he was dead. His heart had stopped, and he had ceased breathing. “Since then I have deeply repented my crime, committed in the heat of passion, but at the time I could think of nothing else than that I mustn’t be found out. I felt young Forrester had goaded me to it, but I knew it w-ould go hard with me if I should be brought to trial. Some time—maybe fifteen minutes or half an hour —passed before I could think straight. It seemed to me that the only safe thing was to hide the body so it wouldn’t be found till I was out of New York. I looked around for a while, wondering where it would be best to conceal it. Then I remembered that right under the main stairway there was a room that had never been used by anybody but Jordan ->orrester. He showed it to me once when I went to New York with aim and spent several days at his house, explaining that he went there when he wanted to be alone to figure out some problem. The door was so arranged that people wouldn’t be likely to find it unless they knew it was there.

“I decided to hide the body in that room under the stairs. The lock gave me some trouble, but finally I managed it. Going back to the sitting room to get the body, I happened to glance at the Are tongs. There was a red smear at the end. I rubbed it with' my handkerchief, hut it didn’t seem to come off. That red stain bothered me; I stared at it till the whole room seemed to he full of red. Finally I decided to hide the tongs beside the body in the room under the stairs. I had heard of murderers being caught through just such things as that. After hiding the body and the tongs, I closed the door and left the house, taking the first train out of New York.”

The confession, duly attested and signed, ended with the repeated declarations of repentance, and it was also stated that the condition of Lamout’s daughter had taken a sudden turn for the better and that she was still living. Dean drew a long breath when he came to the end of Lamont’s statement. The article went on to state that Lamont, who had made his confession late at night, was still alive at the time of going to press, but that his death was expected any moment. It vas explained that he had come to New York to attend to certain business matters, and that on the night of his arrival he had been seized with a cardiac affection that had troubled him for several years. The attending physician gave no hope of his recovery.

Dean got up, crossed the floor twice, then sat down again and stared dully at the article. Most of the contents were incongruous, but here and there was a statement that he knew to be a fact. He had a vague recollection of the room under the stairway of the old house. His father, who had a penchant for turning his hands to mysterious and unaccustomed tasks, often puttered around in there at night, after the others of the household were asleep. Furthermore, the confession was couched in terms so simple and straightforward that Dean, could he have read it in a detached and impersonal mood, would not have doubted its authenticity for a moment. As it was, being vitall\ concerned through the use of his name, he felt that to let his mind dwell on it was not only useless but a strain on his sanity as well. The opening of the door and the appearance of Mrs. Blossom gave a welcome interruption to his tortuous pro cesses of mind. “Lady calling, Mr. Dean,” announced the housekeeper. CHAPTER 11. BACK INTO THE PAST The turning point in the life of Thomas Dean had been intimately associated with the designs of a young

charmer known as Beulah Vance, at that time one of the chief attractions in the chorus of “The Fools’ Revel.” Thomas, then a pale and impressionable youth of 23, had lost both his heart and his head in a way that afterward made him wonder at youth’s capacity for idiotic behaviour. The upshot of it had been a suit for breach of promise, which the chorus girl apparently had instituted under the erroneous impression that her young admirer had unlimited wealth at his disposal. Thomas -wondered at the time how she could have so grossly overestimated his financial status, and he did not realise till months afterward that the entire episode had been an ingenious ‘and fairly successful manoeuvre on the part of the fair Beulah’s press agent. His distaste of newspapers, especially the saffronhued kind, dated from that time. The breach of promise suit was still treading its leisurely way through legal routine when Thomas received word that his father had died near Leadville, Col. In recent years he had seen his father only at infrequent intervals, the elder Forrester being an indefatigable and usually luckless rover over the face of the earth, but an intimate correspondence had been conducted between father and son. His mother w r as only a misty memory in Thomas’s mind, and his only close associate during these years was an old female servant who did her valiant best to keep the old house on Hudson Street from crumbling into decay. She had died shortly before Thomas received new's of his father’s death. Upon the arrival of the telegram he proceeded immediately to Colorado, arriving at the mountain town just in time to attend the funeral.

The simple ceremony, attended by a handful of the elder Forrester’s acquaintances, took place on an afternoon when leaden clouds hung low over the frozen hills. Thomas walked away from the little cemetery alone, for he felt a vague distrust of the stern-faced and tight-lipped men who had been his father’s associates. An overwhelming loneliness was upon him, and in addition to his grief over his father’s death, Beulah Vance’s trickery still rankled. Thomas walked on, neither knowing nor caring where he was going, and of a sudden, as often happens in mountain regions, the world was transformed into a -wilderness of w r hirling snow. He walked on for hours, finally stumbling upon a trapper’s cabin, occupied by a sour and lynx-eyed individual named Simon Cabell, whose churlish and sullen manner contrasted unpleasantly with the stern but generous natures of the other men Thomas had met in the mountain region.

Upon his offer to pay for the accommodation, Cabell ungraciously set food and drink before the hungry and frozen man. It developed that ne had known Thomas’s father and the mere mention of Jordan Forrester's name stirred him to fury and insulting invective. The slurs against his dead father’s name incensed Thomas, -who gathered that the trappers hostility dated from an occasion when he had received a well-earned trouncing from Jordan Forrester, a quick-tempered man, though full of generous impulses. Although he was ill and exhausted, Thomas hotly demanded a retraction, but Cabell only grew more insulting, and the tw-o men came to blows. The trapper fought with a savagery suggesting that all his pentup hatred against the father had suddenly descended upon the son. He was of wiry build, with arms hard as flails, but Thomas profited from the rigorous athletic training to which he had subjected himself in order to overcome a physical handicap that had been with him since childhood. He did not know exactly, how it happened, but of a sudden there was a flash of steel in Cabell's haud, and he felt the sting of a treacherous knife thrust slashing at his throat. The perfidy of the attack rallied his scattering strength. Cabell reeled back from an explosive blow to the jaw, striking his.head heavily against the corner of the wood stove as he fell. He rolled over once with curi-

ous fragmentary groan on lips stained red. In an instant the ecstasy of combat deserted Thomas, leaving him dazed and horrified. To all appearances the trapper was dead, for neither heart beat nor sign of breathing could be detected, yet there might still be life left in his body. The motionles form, with the features frozen into a fixed look of malevolence, left an imprint on Thomas’s impressionable mind that was never erased. Unthinkingly he rushed out into the storm. The wound at the side of his throat was bleeding, but he could tell that the knife had not cut deep. He was conscious only that he must summon help, if possible find a doctor, in order that any spark of life in his fallen adversary might be revived. Not until he was completely lost in the white, swirling chaos did he realise the folly of the attempt. How he found his way out he never knew, but three days after he boarded a train at a little mining town some thirty or forty miles from the point where his father had been buried. Snatches of conversation which he heard as he stood on the platform waiting for the belated train told him that a Sheriff's posse was searching

the hills for the murderer of Simon Cabell. Murderer! The word rang with sinister echoes in his ears during the journey back to New York. Trying to forget the encounter in in the lonely cabin in the hills, Thomas went back to the house on Hudson Street, but the old surroundings had become unbearable. On the side of his throat was a deep, ragged scar, an unpleasant reminder of his fight with Cavell, but a high collar obscured it successfully except wher. he twisted his neck too far to the left, side. He found that Beulah Vance’s press agent had made the most of his opportunity. Though never known as a wealthy man, Thomas's father had been prominent in various ways, and this made the son a shining mark for the wiles of a publicity agent. Finally, in disgust, Thomas closed the house and boarded a steamer for a foreign port. He spent the next two years visiting strange places and acquiring a new philosophy of life. When he returned, the pale, slender and melancholy youth of two years before had been transformed into a robust man with healthily bronzed cheeks, a keen sparkle in his brown eyes, and the springiness of exuberant spirits and virility in his step. In odd moment during the last years he had exercised his imagination at writing, and now he took it up as his profession, throwing all his vigour and perseverance into the task. His output appeared under the name of Thomas Dean, and as Thomas

Dean he became known. Of his former self there was little left save a livid scar which he took pains to conceal by appropriate neckwear. Paul Forrester, he soon learned, had been all but forgotten except by those who associated -the name with Beulah Vance’s publicity campaign. The breach of promise suit, by the way, appeared to have been dropped; at least Thomas heard nothing more of it. If news of the trapper’s death had drifted Eastward, it appeared to have attracted no attention. The memory of the episode remained with him, however, for it had occurred at a time when he was peculiarly susceptible to impressions and in a mood to exaggerate the importance of anything that touched his emotions deeply. (To be continued tomorrow.)