The Room Under the Stairs

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 852, 21 December 1929, Page 26

The Room Under the Stairs

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

By

Herman Landon

Copyright by G. Howard, Watt. Serialised by Ledger Syndicate.

CHAPTER XIII. "It was about two weeks ago, I think. Mills came to my office and tried to interest me on behalf of a friend who was under arrest. The case did not interest me, and I referred Mills to another lawyer who specialises in matters of that kind.”

“You have not been in communication with Mills since?” “Why, no,” said the lawyer, as if wondering at the trend of the questioning. “He is a repulsive character, and I have as little to do with his kind as possible.” “Don’t blame you,” said Shane. “Well, thanks, Mr. Dittleby. You have helped me a lot, and I appreciate it. We'll try to get on the trail of Miss Lamont at once.” For a full minute after the lawyer had departed Dean and Shane faced each other silently across the desk; then the lieutenant remarked; “Well, Dean, it seems our seance fell flat. To tell you the truth, I expected it would.” "Why?” “Because, in the first place, when a wise gazabo like Littleby goes in for crooked work he is too smart to get caught at it. In the second place, I have no evidence that he has done anything crooked.” “Except my hunch,” said Dean ironically. “Except the hunch of a man who makes his living exercising his imagination.” “Why not call me a liar and be done with it?” “All right—just as yoti like. No offence meant, though. There are licensed liars, just as there are licensed embalmers and chauffeurs. But I don’t think you are lying exactly. You are just slicking up the facts. Now, Littleby didn’t act like a guilty man, did he?” “A clever man never looks guilty.” “Something in that. I admit Littleby is clever. It takes a clever man to collect the fees he gets. But cleverness wouldn’t have helped him very far in this case. He couldn’t have stood there, cool as a cucumber, without batting an eyelid-, if he’d had any reason for thinking that Mills bumped you off last night. And he didn’t deny that he knew Mills, as he would have done if he had anything to hide. He told the truth like an honest man.” “Or like a man who is too shrewd to get caught in a lie,” Dean suggested. “However, I wasn’t, positive that Littleby was the rascal. I only contended that out of the five persons we mentioned he seemed the most likely suspect. I wish one of the others would drop in.” He grinned and looked wistfully at the door. “Tell me, Shane, do you really believe that everything in connection with Lamont’s confession is just as it appears on the surface?” The lieutenant considered, and his answer, when it came, evaded the question. “You have a queer knack, Dean, of firing shots in the dark and almost hitting something.” “For instance?” “You fired one at Littleby when you asked him how he could know the time of Miss Lamont’s arrival. I had a funny feeling that he was about to trip on that question, but he caught himself in time.” He paused and peered queerly in Dean’s direction without looking straight at him. "And then there are those pieces of glass you found in the floor in the Hudson Street house—the ones that did not match the crystal of the watch I discovered. I’ve been thinking about that, too. And I am still wondering what was in Lamont’s mind when he stared at you in that peculiar manner.” Dean felt a gentle shiver at the recollection. “I wonder if we shall ever know,” he mumbled. “And I am wondering whether you want it to be known,” said Lieutenant Shane. Dean chuckled ironically as he walked out of Lieutenant Shane’s office. It seemed as if all the threads of destiny had been drawn into an inextricable knot. He walked briskly, as if trying to outdistance a horde of nagging perplexities. Everything his thoughts touched seemed to turn into a wilderness of paradoxes. Shane’s suspicious attitude was merely a triilling detail in the maddeningly claotie scheme of things. It scarcely mattered any longer, but he was forced to the conclusion that the lieutenant had definite reasons, beyond those he had stated, for questioning Dean’s story of his encounter with the thug. The fact that he had tricked the novelist into admitting the existence of the scar on his neck was an embarrasing, but relatively unimportant, detail. In a situation where incongruities were heaped upon incongruities, isolated complications lost their significance. For, want of something better to do, he boarded a train and went out to Top O’ The Hill. He fancied that Mrs. Blossom received hint with an air of gloomy suspicion, but he could not be certain. Mrs. Blossom’s repertory of moods had always baffled him. He ate the luncheon she set before him, smuggled food and drink to the prisoner in the dilapidated garage, smoked a pipe in his workshop and, shortly after 2 o’clock, announced to the housekeeper that he was returning to the city and might not be back in time for dinner.

“By the way,” he added as an afterthought, "did any one call this morning?” “Nobody, sir.” “Any telephone calls?” “No. sir.” For a moment she regarded him with a sort of sour anxiety. “Hadn’t you better see a doctor, Mr. Dean? You haven’t been acting right since Tuesday.”

Dean assured her he had never felt better in his life, and in a moment he was on his way. There was a crumb of satisfaction in the thought that there had been neither visitors nor -telephone calls. It meant that the person seeking his life had not taken the trouble to verify Freddie Mills’s monosyllabic report over the wire. At least until the evening papers came out, his unknown enemy would be in ignorance of the outcome of the murderous attack. But Dean’s expectations in that direction had already received a setback. There had been more of instinct than of logic in his suspicions against Dittleby, and they had crumbled like a punctured toy balloon. He could see now that his distrust of the lawyer had been rather; absurd.

An inscrutable manner and an unreadable physiognomy did not prove a man a criminal. The elimination of Littleby from the range of his speculations left his suspicions without a perch to light on. As for the other four persons he had mentioned to Shane, it was hard to think of any one of them as the would-be murderer. Lamont, Dr. Ballinger, the nurse, this notary—it was preposterohs! There remained only one Miss Gray. For some reason, Dean had not mentioned her in the lieutenant’s presence, although he dimly felt that she had her dainty little foot in the mystery—how deeply Heaven only knew. It could not have been just an accident that her visit to Top O’ The Hill should have coincided with his introduction to the riddle. And there still lingered in his mind, as a result, of her visit, a distinct impression of a subtle and intriguing personality. “Rot!” said Dean, half aloud, abruptly punctuating his thought. It were sheer idiocy to think of Viola Gray as an instigator of murder. It would be just as reasonable to suspect the notary, or even Dr. Ballinger —yes, even the nurse at Lamont’s bedside. He had caught only a glimpse of her, enough to fix in his mind as a colourless and matter-of-fact individual and far removed from the inner circle of the mystery, her only connection with the case being her position as attendant to the dying man. Dismissing all these speculations as useless. Dean suddenly decided to go out to Kew Gardens. Anyhow, the air would be fresher out there, and his brain needed the stimulant of fresh air. Besides, there might have been developments explaining the mystifying movements of Shirley Lamont, the dying man’s daughter, of whose arrival and subsequent disappearance Littleby had told. It was of her he was thinking as he alighted at the little station and swung down the street leading to the Littleby residence. He had proceeded only a few blocks when the sight of a roadster, flashing r.ed in the sunlight, made him draw in his steps. A slight, vividly garbed figure was exploring the mysteries under the hood. For a moment he studied the profile; then walked up and tipped his hat. “Can I be of assistance, Miss Gray? ’ he inquired. BLANCHING CHEEKS She looked up from her bewildered inspection of spark plugs and coils. Possibly she had not recognised his voice, but the proffer of assistance, even if coming from a stranger, must have been a relief. Her pout gave way to a hopeful smile, but in an instant, as she saw his face, Dean stood thunderstruck at the change that came over her. ‘ It was as if a demon’s wand had touched her face, transforming its young charm into a look of ghastliness!. There was terror in her eyes, a look of icy fear about her gaping lips. She shrank back, shuddering. “You?” she gasped, in a curiously hollow voice. “You —I thought you were ” , , Dean steadied himself. Her stricken face had telegraphed a staggering revelation to his brain, and he was still reeling from the shock of it. Her face —it seemed a decade older of a sudden —swam -before his eyes in bits of grey film and distorted lines, but he thought he knew how to complete the sentence she had left unfinished. It seemed incredible, preposterous, but the fragmentary utterance admitted of tut one interpretation. CHAPTER XIV. STARTLING DISCOVERIES Even as he tried to gauge the limits of her involuntary self-betrayal y-ie regained a paltry semblance of composure. “You gave me such a fright, sue told him, and he could see that the words cost her a desperate effort. “You see I had just been thinking of you, and then to see you appear In person like that was—-. Well, it gave a sort of shock.” “So I see,” said Dean, unsympathetically, steadily watching her face. The colour was coming back, and with it some of the loveliness that had been erased from it. “It isn’t often one’s thoughts materialise as mine did just now,” she went on, sweeping back a few curls of her glorious hair that had fallen into disarray. “That’s why I got so startled.” “I can understand. You must have felt all the thrills and shivers that one experiences.at a seance when the spirit materialises.” “Yes; something like that,” she said, hesitantly, with a keen glance out of her great amber eyes, as if half suspecting that he had spoken with a double meaning. “Only your appearance was entirely unexpected.” “One is more or less prepared for the materialisation of a spirit. That’s why I got a double shock.” “Sorry,” said Dean, looking anything but contrite. "At any rate, it is flattering to know that you were thinking of me. I would have guessed from iyour expression that your whole mind was on the engine.” “Why on earth should you try to guess what a woman is thinking from the way she looks?”

"It’s foolish, I know.” Dean regarded her with a mingling of wonder and admiration. Her quick transition from terror to light-heartedness was marvellous, hinting of a more mature experience with life than went with Viola Gray’s flowering youth. But again, as on their first meeting, it came to him that probablv she had more years and more worldly wisdom to her credit than one would have judged from her face. “Not only foolish, but disillusioning,” she corrected him. She seemed to have herself well in hand once more, but he detected an undercurrent of excitement beneath her vivacious exterior. “Now that you have shocked me out of my wits,” she added, “please make yourself useful. What in the world do you suppose is ailing this car! It stopped all of a sudden.” Dean made a rapid diagnosis, conscious that her eyes followed his every movement. The trouble, an obstruction in the carburettor, was soon found an. easily remedied. She thanked him gaily, though again he perceived a hidden strain under her outward sprightliness, climbed to her seat, and was off. “Don’t forget that I shall expect an,

(To be continued on Monday.)

invitation to afternoon tea soon,” she : flung back over her shoulder. Dean nodded grimly. His head was in a state of aching confusion as he started off down the street. The scene just closed could have but one significance, and that one his mind refused to accept. His thoughts were haunted by the withering film of pallor that had rushed across her features as she saw his face. Who would have thought that little Miss Gray, a mere child in many ways, had guilty knowledge of Freddie Mills’s attempt on his life? A mere child! He laughed in scorn as he recalled his earliest impression of her and how he had revised it in the meantime. As he saw her now she was a strange amalgam of childish naivete and womanly maturity, of youthful caprices balanced by precocious'- adroitness and a marked resilience of mental fibre, but a murderess? Dean’s mind simply refused to accept the verdict of his senses. He glanced back before turning a corner, just in time to see the red roadster draw up at the curb and its occupant step out and hurriedly enter a drugstore. To purchase something soothing for her nerves, perhaps? But no—little Miss Gray was not the kind of person whose nerves were dependent on stuff that came out of bottles and jars. Far more likely that she had stepped into the drugstore to telephone some one.

That seemed much more plausible than the theory of smelling salts. Dean, gazing absently at the empty roadster two blocks down the street, gave a start all of a sudden. Had she entered the drug store in order to telephone a warning to somebody? The suspicion entered his mind with the abruptness of an inspiration, but in the next moment he shrugged his shoulders and walked on. Even if he had been so disposed, ft was now too late to steal up behind the booth and eavesdrop. Besides, he had learned all that his mind could hold for the present. He walked on a few blocks, and then, for the second time in two days, the brightly polished plate in Dr. Ballinger’s office window caught his eye. The door stood open, and a servant was energetically scrubbing the latticed glass panes. Deciding to have a chat with the genial physician, Dean turned and walked up to the door. “The doctor’s in his office, sir,” announced the servant. “You can walk right in.” Dean entered. The white-capped attendant who had admitted him on his first visit was nowhere in sight. The door to the doctor’s office stood open, and Ballinger was seated at a cluttered desk. He was gazing absently at the opposite wall as if pondering some difficult problem, perhaps a baffling case of illness. His powerful body was motionless, so deeply did he seen absorbed in his reflections. His face, with its strong and bcdly etched lines, appeared hard and cold for want of the smile that had softened and illuminated it the day before. It was a face, perplexing in its total detachment, that seemed closed up against scrutiny. “Hello!” said Dean, standing in the doorway. “Not intruding, I hope?”