The Room Under the Stairs

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 855, 26 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. Howard Watt. Serialised by Ledger Syndicate.

CHAPTER XVl.—Continued

The lawyer appeared to hesitate, and his answer, when it came, was evasive. “Dean seems very solicitous about Lamont’s health. He has been making daily inquiries, I understand. I wonder why.”

“When a lawyer talks that way, he generally knows the answer. What do you think?”

“Oh, nothing. It just occurred to me that perhaps Dean suspects that Lamont is holding something back and is afraid that he may divulge It before he dies.”

“In other words, he would be pleased to learn that I have lost a patient?” “Something like that. It’s just a surmise, you understand. By the way, how did you find Lamont this evening?”

“Very weak, but still hanging on. I fear something is still worrying him. I asked Miss Farnham if anything had happened to disturb him, but she could offer no explanation. If he lives another day ” “Dean’s secret may leak out;” Littleby suggested. “I didn’t mean that. Dean impresses me as an upright young man. 1 am not sure he has any secrets. What I meant was that if Lamont lives one more day, the crisis will be past and he may hang on indefinitely. Has his daughter turned up yet?” “No,” said Littleby in a baffled tone. “Most mysterious how she appeared and then vanished again so suddenly. I can’t imagine why she should Good Lord!” A crack, viciously sharp, came out of the stillness of the old house. Dean felt a tremor under his feet. The house seemed full of sinister echoes. Then a silence came, broken only by the beat of huge raindrops against the windows. MURDER “What was that?” gasped Littleby. “Sounded like a pitsol shot.,” remarked the doctor in a curiously calm tone. “And it was tired in this house, unless I am mistaken. Let’s investigate.” Two dim figures moved hurriedly across the hall, a few feet from where Dean stood leaning over the balustrade. In a moment he was following them, without thinking it strange that they should be walking straight toward the sickroom. It seemed only the logical thing to do. Lamont's name had instantly leaped into his own mind the moment he heard the shot. Miss Farnliam's terrified face appeared in the doorway as Littleby and the lawyer approached the room. She pointed dumbly toward the bed, and Dean, entering shortly behind the other two men, saw the figure of Lamont crumpled back against the pillows. One arm was flung wide, the other hung limply over the side of the bed. The face, lying on its side and partly buried in the pillow, bore an expression of fixed horror. For a moment Dean’s eyes rested on a splash of red above the chest, and then a morbid attraction drew his gaze toward the telephone beside the bed, an inanimate thing of metal, yet imbued with a voice of dread. With Lamont dead, would the mystery of the fearful cries ever be solved?” It was Ballinger, who, after a brief inspection of the body, spoke first. “What has happened?” he inquired of the nurse.

For a moment Miss Farnham could not speak. Her professional poise seemed to have deserted her. Dean, as yet unobserved by the others, shifted his gaze from the telephone to the nurse. She appeared to be in her late twfenties, rather stout for her age, with regular but rather heavy

features and the appearance of impassive capability that sometimes characterises the profession. Now, however, she appeared to have received a shock which her calmly efficient nature was unable to withstand. Trembling, she bent a frightened gaze on Dr. Ballinger. “He was peeping quietly,” she explained, “so I lay down on the -cot for a few moments. I’ve had a hard day, but 1 didn’t mean to go to sleep. I must have dozed off, though, for the next thing I knew was that dreadful shot, and then ”

“How did it happen that the night nurse did not relieve you?” asked Dr. Ballinger sharply. “Miss Thompson had an engagement, and I offered to stay on until midnight.” A faint scowl appeared in Dr. Ballinger’s gojKl-natured face. He glanced about the room, his eyes lingering for a moment on the cot on the farther side. “Did you see any one in the room when you got up?” Miss Farnham shook her head. “Was the door closed?”

“I think so,” she replied uncertainly. “It must have been, for I am sure it was closed when' I lay down. But 1 heard a slam of some kind just after the shot. I’m not sure just what it was. though. I was so horrified that “I understand. Miss Farnham,” said Ballinger gently. His eyes swept the room as if looking for a weapon, but he either ignored Dean’s presence or else was curiously unaware of it. “Well, Littleby,” he added, “it seems I’ve lost my patient.” The lawyer, grim, erect and saturnine, frowned at the doctor’s little jest. “And I have lost an old friend," he solemnly pointed out. With his back turned to Dean, he stood gazing at the still form on the bed. “Why should any one wish to murder a dying man?”

Dr. Ballinger shrugged. “I was just remarking a minute or two before we heard the shot that if Lamont lived one more day he might live indefinitely. Perhaps an indefinite prolongation of his life did not coincide with the murderer’s plans.” “That’s possible.” Littleby nodded thoughtfully. "Remember what else we said, Ballinger? Something about a certain person who might be seriously embarrassed if Lamont should live long enough to —” “That was your conjecture, not mine,” interrupted the physician. “The person you had in mind is here. He will doubtless answer for himself. How about it, Dean?” The lawyer whirled round abruptly and faced Dean, whose presence he had not noticed until now. The grief went out of his eyes; they took on a hard, lustrous look. “How did you enter my house, sir?” he demanded. Dean came forward and measured the lawyer’s long, gaunt figure with a slightly Impudent glance. “In the time-honoured way," he replied. "I rang the bell and a servant let me in.” "When was this?” “Shortly after 7, I should say.” “Sewn?” There was a tightening of the fine lines in Littleby’s face. “That’s more than two hours ago. What have you been doing?” Dean glanced at the doctor, who was listening with an air of tolerant cynicism. “I called on Dr. Ballinger late this afternoon.” he answered, “and asked if I could see Lamont for a few minutes. Dr. Ballinger stated it was inadvisable and suggested I interview Miss Farnham instead. I told the servant who admitted me that I knew the way to Lamont's room and

that she needn't trouble to show me.” Littleby glanced at the doctor, who nodded by way of verifying the statement.

“And did you see Miss Farnham?” Littleby inquired. “No; apparently she was out. 1 knocked on the door, but no one answered.” “And then?”

“I took a look around the house,” said Dean, eliding the episode of the elephone from his narrative, but otherwise adhering strictly to the truth. “An old house like this always has its points of interest. Hope you don’t mind the liberty I took, Littleby?” Littleby stroked his smooth chin and looked meaningly at the physician. “Did you hear the shot?” was his next question.

“I had not yet reached the foot of the stairs when it rang out,” replied Dean, again skirting the edges of the truth. “I saw you and Dr. Ballinger rushing in from the balcony, and followed you. That’s all.” “It’s enough," remarked Littleby dryly. “You admit being a trespasser in my house at the time Lamont was murdered.”

“That’s putting an ugly twist on a plain statement of fact.”

Littleby merely compressed his lips into a tight line. “We are wasting time,” he observed. “The authorities must be notified. Not in a hurry, I hope, Dean?” There was a faint sarcasm in the question. “Well,” said Dean, looking at his watch, “it has just occurred to me that there is a certain little matter that requires my immediate attention. I must run out to my home and look after it.”

“Indeed?” drawled the lawyer. “And you have just now remembered it.” He cocked an eye in Ballinger’s direction.’ “Anything very important?”

“Rather. It’s a matter of dietetics. Dr. Ballinger will bear me out in the statement that it isn’t good for a man to go without food for eight hours.” Dean’s glance shifted from one man to the other as he spoke. Dr. Ballinger drew up his head a little, and an inscrutable gleam entered his narrowing eyes. But Littleby’s face betrayed nothing but stark bewilderment.

“I call that unseemly levity,” he declared stiffly. “But I am afraid,” said Dean, looking him full in the eyes, “that Freddie Mills would call It cruel and inhuman treatment. He must be a very hungry man by this time.” For a mere instant the lawyer looked as startled as if Dean’s fist had swung out and struck him between the eyes. Something too fleeting for the eye to catch passed across his face and was instantly gone. “Freddie Mills?” he murmured with a slow shake of his head. “Why worry about a gentleman of his type?” “Freddie Mills isn’t a gentleman, as you probably know,” Dean explained. “But one needn’t be a gentleman to have a healthy appetite. How about it, doctor?”

Ballinger turned to him, looking rather awkward. “You are right, I dare say. I have known persons whose gentlemanly instincts were in inverse ratio to their appetites.” Dean moved casually toward the door. Freddie Mills's predicament was a grotesquely irrelevant topic for discussion in that room of tragedy, but he had gained a point in throwing the lawyer off his superb mental balance, even if only for a moment. And Dean had no desire to be present at the investigation that would soon be in progress. The lawyer, while conversing with Ballinger on the balcony, had dropped several disturbing hints, each conveying a warning to Dean that he might be called upon to answer a number of difficult questions. Littleby had even cleared the way for attributing a motive to Dean in the event that Lamont’s lingering existence should come to an abrupt end. It was all very absurd, but the entire chain of events leading up to the firing of the pistol shot was intimately interwoven with things that touched the core of his sensitiveness. The door stood ajar. A little knot of awed and gaping servants were

gathered outside. Ballinger stood with arms folded across his chest, a thin smile playing about his lips, while Littleby gazed irresolutely at the retreating figure. “You will know where to find me if you should want me, gentlemen,” said Dean. In a moment he was at the front door one flight below. He opened it a foot or so and, s£ill remaining inside, closed it again with a slam calculated to reach the ears of the little group upstairs. Then, swiftly and silently, he darted back across the vestibule and down the dark basement stairs. “A few hours’ fasting will do Freddie Mills a world of good,” was his thought. “It may even make a gentleman of him.” CHAPTER XVII. MIDNIGHT. In the light of a match Dean saw that his watch pointed to a quarter to twelve. For upward of two hours he had sat glistening to footsteps overhead, alternating now and then with the opening and closing of doors and an occasional loud-spoken word, all sounding oddly remote and unreal in the vastness and gloom of the house. His hiding place was a room cluttered with odds and ends of discarded furniture, with a small iron-grated window looking out over the lawn in front. Now and then a flash of lightning illuminated his dismal retreat, full of gnawing and creeping noises. A face haunted him as he waited, offering a piquant relief from tedium and suspense. Time and again he recalled the brief but unforgettable expression that had crossed Littleby’s features as lie mentioned the name of Freddie Mills. • It could not have been the name itself that disturbed the lawyer, for he had previously admitted having had certain dealings with the thug, so his momentary perturbation must have been due to the particular connection in which Dean had alluded to the fellow’s famished condition.

Granting that Littleby had instigated the attempt on Dean’s life, the details would probably have been arranged by a middleman, as was the custom in quarters where murder was a commodity to be bought and paid for, and there would be no need of communication between the man who paid and the man who committed tlm deed. It was all the more puzzling in that the lawyer, unlike Miss Gray and Dr. Ballinger, had shown no commotion whatever when he came unexpectedly face to face with Dean in the presence of Lieutenant Shane that morning. Since the novelist’s appearance had failed to shock him, why should he be disturbed by a castual reference to the thug’s appetite.

Dean found the question unanswerable, but he wondered how Littleby would comport himself after the hubbub of the investigation had subsided and, the authorities having withdrawn and the servants retired to their quarters, the house would be quiet once niore. That was his reason for waiting in that remote and squalid basement room.

Doubts assailed him as he tried to while away the heavy-footed minutes. Perhaps his suspicions in regard to Littleby were rooted only in a stubborn and unreasonable bias, nourished perhaps, by Lieutenant Shane’s refusal to consider his views seriously. Suspicion feeds and thrives on ridicule and skepticism. Moreover, the behaviour of Miss Gray and Dr. Ballinger had been just as equivocal as Littleby’s. Both had shown unmistakable surprise at his appearance in flesh and blood following 'Freddie Mills’ attempt on his life, yet these two .had made no distinct impression upon him, nothing stronger than an acute sense of. mystification. With Littleby it was different, and he wondered whether .he was being led astray by superficial appearances. The commotion upstairs was gradually quieting down. Looking out through the little iron-barred window in front, he saw a number of shadowy forms hustle through the downpour and step into a waiting car. Evidently

the investigation was over for the night, and he wondered what turn it had taken and how many times his name had been mentioned during the questioning. He chuckled grimly as his imagination pictured Littleby deftly turning suspicion in his direction, elaborating on the idea he had outlined to Dr. Ballinger on the balcony. The murder of Lamont was an astonishing thing, baffling in the extreme with its apparent lack of motive, and the authorities would clutch at any straw that came floating along in their efforts to solve the mystery.

Dean found himself dealing with staggering enigmas whenever his thoughts turned to the murder. Well, on that point at least, the lawyer was beyond suspicion, even such suspicion as might be conceived in the mind of an imaginative novelist. Dean himself could vouch for Littleby’s absolute alibi, for he could testify that he had been in conversation with Dr. Ballinger when the shot rang out. But neither Littleby nor the doctor, even if so inclined, would be able to support any alibi that Dean might be required to produce.

“Xo reciprocity in a situation like that,” thought Dean, leaving the upturned packing case on which he had sat and fumbling his way toward the door. “I can testify that neither Littleby nor the doctor committed the murder, but they can’t oblige me in return. That's what comes of being an eavesdropper." He opened the door and listened. No sounds came, but he waited a while longer before he stepped out in in the wide open space that occupied the greater part of the basement. Cautiously he picked his way toward the stairs and looked upward to where a light glow-ed dimly far above his head. The utter silence of the house, disturbed only by the slashing beat of rain and wind against the walls, testified that the members of the household had gone in search of whatever rest was to be found in a place haunted by the ghosts of tragedy. (To be continued tomorrow >