The Room Under the Stairs

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 866, 9 January 1930, 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 XXVIII. (Continued!. Littleby chuckled complacently. "That's what comes of being so hotheaded. You supposed Miss Earnout was following, didn’t you? But she wasn’t. She never got through the opening. It closed automatically behind us while you were doing violence to my coat-tails.’* Dean stared at him in consternation, but gradually his face cleared. “No matter,** he said. “Miss Lament can stand imprisonment a few minutes longer. I’ll find her as soon as I’ve disposed of you.” “How will you find her?” asked the lawyer mockingly. “I’ll get an axe and smash the walls, if necessary.” “Unfortunately there is no such implement handy. Even if you find one, the walls are quite substantial, and it will take you some time to demolish them. And really, Dean, you have no time to waste. In ten minutes —fifteen at the most—Miss Lamont will be deed.” A look of incredulity followed quickly by one of horrified comprehension, came into Dean’s face. Littleby regarded him gloatingly. *‘l see you understand/* he murmured. “Yes, the arselene is at work again. Turned on full force this time. It acts quickly when the entire current is turned on.’* A gasp of horror broke from Dean’s lips. He sprang on the lawyer, standing erect before him with a faint leer on his thin lips, but in a moment he saw the futility of violence. He threw open the inner door, the one Lit;tleby had stepped through a few minutes before, but all he saw were the usual fixtures of a well-appointed bathroom. 'Quite useless, my friend,” said Little by. “It would take you a long time to find the contrivance that governs the flow of arselene, and by that time—. Well, you can guess.” Dean, conquering his tumultous arguish, took out his watch. “I’ll give you precisely 60 seconds,” ho said evenly, “to shut off your devilish arselene. If you refuse. I’ll choke you to death.” Littleby gave him a long, appraising look. “I believe you would/' he said quietly. “You are crazy enough for anything. But how could such violence benefit Miss Lamont?” "Thirty seconds,” said Dean. “Thirty hours would be all the •same. Life would be of no use to me unless I succeed in my present enterprise. You and Miss Lamont stand in tty way. if you win, I might as well d e. But I don’t intend that you shall. There is only one thing can save Miss Lamont’s life, but you fooled me the lsst time I suggested a compromise. Tou shan’t fool me again. Care to hsar my terms?” With a gesture of complete indifference he folded his arms across his ciest. Dean looked down at his watch. serene ticking shrieked in his cars like a thunderous knell of doom. Suddenly he jerked up his head and

stared fixedly at a door to his left, directly opposite the bathroom. A dull booming sound came. Littleby awoke from his sublime composure with a gasp and levelled a startled glance at the side of the room.

“A shot?” he muttered, then whirled round just as the door leading to the hall came open. In the doorway stood Lieutenant Shane, with a uniformed officer at his side, and behind them appeared the powerful figure of Doctor Ballinger. “Hear anything?” asked Shane, casting an oddly incurious glance about the room, his eyes resting for a moment on Dean’s pale face. “Something that sounded like a shot,” replied Littleby, evidently ill at ease.

The lieutenant chuckled dryly. “I guess you wouldn’t have heard it if there hadn’t been a communicating door between this room and the one where Lamont was murdered.” He glanced for a moment at the door through which the booming sound had come. “Maybe it doesn’t fit quite tight at the bottom.” “What—what of it?” stammered Littleby, seemingly bewildered and also greatly worried. “And what does this intrusion mean?” he added, making an unsuccessful show of dignity. “It means,” said Shane, “that Dr. Ballinger, Officer Buckley and myself have been making a little experiment. I’m sure you don’t mind, Mr. Littleby. We have demonstrated that, with the door closed, a shot fired in the room where Lamont died can’t be beard by a person standing on the balcony. The walls looked as though they were almost soundproof when we examined them, and our experiment proved it. Get the idea, Mr. Littleby?” For a moment the lawyer stared uncomprehendingly at the three faces in the doorway, then a great tremor shook him, an ashen pall rushed across his face, his lips twisted into a ghastly smile; a devastating terror seemed to come over him. “It’s quite plain,” he said, in a weak, hollow voice. Dean had watched the scene through a blur. It seemed so grotesquely trivial by contrast with the agonising fear that was uppermost in his mind. He rushed toward the door, scattering the little group standing there. “Lee-—arselene—axe!” he shouted incoherently. “We must find an axe —quick!” “You’ll have to hurry,” said Littleby in a voice strangely unlike his own, yet edged with malignant sarcasm. “I fear you will be too late, Dean. I win there, anyhow.” Doctor Ballinger followed as Dean rushed breathlessly from the room. “Hold on!” he shouted, seizing the novelist’s arm on the run. “Where to? What was that you said about arselene?” Dean turned, looked into the physician's eyes for a moment, saw something in them which upset all the inchoate suspicions of the past and instantly won his confidence. He blurted out a few rambling but illuminating statements. The 'doctor loosed a few curt and blistering invectives at Littleby’s expense, thereby completing his conquest of Dean's confidence.

“Wait here,” he said brusquely. In a few moments he was back, carrying a huge axe, and Dean conducted him up the stairs and down the hall toward the point where an apparently impregnable wall blocked their progress. The novelist dealt a thunderous blow with the axe.

“Run and get an antidote of some sort,” he shouted hoarsely as he swung the axe over his shoulder. “You’ve got something at your office, haven’t you? It will probably be needed by the time we break through.” “Antidote?” echoed the physician grimly. “There is no antidote for arselene.” The axe bit into the wood with a resounding crash. Time and again Dean struck, working with desperate strength. “Let me have a chance at it,” said the doctor after a while. Dean continued the whacking, refusing to Jet Ballinger relieve him. Even though he had the strength of a bull, the doctor lacked the terrific incentive that put power into Dean’s blows. A grim and savage melody thundered in his brain; a picture, at once enchanting and terrible, flashed in and out of his mind as he worked, and groaned with each fresh assault. The seasoned pine timbers shivered The axe bit hungrily into the wood,

each crashing blow sinking deeper and deeper, as if the inanimate implement felt the ecstasy of fury that governed the man wielding it. LIFE OR DEATH? “Marvellous!” muttered the doctor. “Never saw a man of sedentary habits wield an axe like that. Bravo!” With a long, splintering din the obstruction yielded. Dean dropped the axe and squeezed through the ragged hole. “One at a time,” he said hoarsely as Ballinger started to follow. “If these hellish fumes get me before I can get her out, then it’s up to you.” He sprang forward, floundering in a welter of stinging, sense-drugging vapours, shouting Lee’s name, fumbling for her in the misty gloom. No response came; his voice grew husky, each intake of breath seemed to blister his lungs and scorch the lining of his nose and throat. His head felt as if ravaged by fire; an insidious weakness was stealing over him, making him giddy and filling him with despair. What if he should be overcome before he could find Lee in this swirl of horrors? What assurance was there that Ballinger would succeed where he had failed? And if both of them succumbed A husky shout rose from his tortured i lungs. His feet encountered an

obstruction, something soft, yielding. In a moment, staggering over his limp burden, he was hastening toward the opening, guided by Ballinger’s anxious shouts. He passed his burden through the aperture into the doctor’s waiting arms. “To the balcony!” cried the doctor. Carrying the unconscious girl between them, they reached the balcony, and stretched her out on a wicker sofa. As the doctor made a hasty examination, Dean looked despairingly into her rigid face, fringed by hair in tumultous disorder. With a provokingly methodical air, Ballinger produced a needle from a leather wallet, dipped it into a small vial and inserted the point in the girl’s arm. CHAPTER XXIX. THE SECRET OF ARSELENE “Another minute's delay might have been fatal,” he said in reply to Dean’s anxious glance of inquiry. “As I told you, there is no known antidote, but the stimulant I gave her may carry her through the crisis. Nasty stuff, arselene. Ever heard of it before?” “Never. That is, not until Littleby mentioned it.” ‘That’s strange,” said Ballinger in an odd voice, but Dean scarcely heard him. He was watching anxiously a flicker of returning life in the girl’s face. The eyelids were fluttering; there was a feeble rising and falling movement beneath the lines of the throat. “For the present she is as well off here as she would be in a hospital,” remarked Ballinger. “Next to a heart stimulant, fresh air is what she needs most. So, you never heard of arselene before? Well, well.” He rose from the stooping position over the patient and regarded Dean in a queer way. “Aren’t you Paul Forrester?” Dean shrugged. The matter of identities seemed suddenly to have lost all significance. His whole world revolved round the feebly palpitating form on the soft. “You needn’t answer,” said Ballinger. “I asked only because a Forrester ought to know arselene. Jordan Forrester discovered it.” “My father?” asked Dean in a dull, mildly curious voice. Ballinger nodded. “Your father was a Jack of a thousand trades, and the discovery of arselene was one of those lucky accidents that come along now and then. Your father didn’t realise the importance of his discovery; in fact, nobody realised it i.ill long aftei* he was dead. Today a certain European principality is willing to pay fifteen million dollars for it.”

“Eh?” said Dean, dazedly. “Fifteen millions,” repeated the doctor. “Littleby has been negotiating for some time with the representatives of the foreign Power. Arselene —it’s a composition of arsenic and acetylene gas and a few other ingredients, by tlie way—is one of the most destructive poison gases ever invented. No nation, or combination of nations, could stand up against a foe equipped with it. It’s a hellish thing, Dean. With arselene in its possession, even a small army would be invincible. It would be a blessing in the cause of righteousness, but a terrible thing if employed on the side of imperialism and greed. It would change the map of the world in no time.” The astounding statement seemed to touch only a small corner of Dean’s mind. An agency that could turn the world topsy-turvy and demolish empires seemed of little consequence just now in comparison with his concern for the girl on the sofa. He watched in tremulous anxiety as a pale wisp of colour returned to her cheeks. “She’ll be all right in a little while now,” said Ballinger, after another examination. “Don't blame you. Dean, for not showing more interest in what

I am telling 3’ou about arselene. Anyhow, all the empires in the world don’t amount to a row of pins. The only things that really matter are those that live in here.” He administered a slap to the left side of his powerful chest.

Dean g'-v/e him a wide-eyed glance. It was strange talk, coming from a physician. He wondered suddenly if little Miss Gray had a nestling place inside Ballinger’s expansive chest.

“Damnable stuff!” muttered the doctor. “It’s fascinating, in its way, but I wish now I had never got interested in it. There are two formulas in existence. One is in my possession; the other in Littleby’s. Littleby and the foreign agent have had their heads together for some time, making demonstrations and calculating profits. I never dreamed, though, that Littleby would demonstrate it in this particular way.”

His indignant glance travelled to the girl on the sofa. “I suppose it gave him a convenient weapon,” he muttered. “The minutest quantity of the stuff is enough to fill a house and kill everybody in it. Fine!” he exclaimed, feeling the girl’s pulse. “Getting stronger every moment. She will be on her feet soon. Dean. You see, your father, Littleby, myself and a few others were engaged in various enterprises out West some years ago. We formed a close corporation, informal in a way, yet having a legal standing. When your father died—practically penniless as he himself and everybody else supposed—he left a will providing that whatever property he left behind should go to his son—to you, In other words —but that in the event of his son’s death the estate should go to his former associates. Littleby can tell you all about the legal phases of the will. It was a joke in a way, for there was no estate, as far as anybody knew; consequently there was nothing to inherit. Furthermore, everybody supposed that Paul Forrester was dead.

“Then one day Littleby tumbled to the commercial value of arselene. How it happened I can’t tell you, but he sent for me to give my professional opinion of the formula. Before long we saw that old Jordan Forrester had left us a legacy that, if handled properly, would make us immensely wealthy. Right away a demon got into Littleby: He could think and talk only in terms of millions. I was smitten myself, but in a different way. There was something in the immensity of the project that appealed to my imagination. We had our first disagreement when Littleby insisted in selling the product to the highest bidder instead of offering it to the United States Government, and we’ve been having disagreements ever since. t knew only a little of what was going on between Littleby and the foreign agent, and, because of certain circumstances, I couldn’t say anything." He gazed off into space with a scowl on his face. “What a ridiculous fix a man can get into!” he muttered. “I wouldn’t go through it again for all the millions in the world. Littleby, Lamont and myself were the only ones left out of the old group of associates; the others were dead. That meant that the formula belonged to us three, for nobody supposed that Paul Forrester was still living.” He glanced queerly at Dean. “We night not have known till this day that he was living under an assumed name if j the newspaper reports of Lamont’s ! compound had not brought him out of ; the woods.” ! “And I don’t see yet how Lamont ! c ? m ®, make such an absurd eonfesj sion,” said Dean, looking pointedly at | the doctor. I don’t know,” said Ballinger, scowl- : in S- “I can only guess. I prefer you I get the explanation from Littleby. He : can tell if he will.” lie threw back his head and sniffed. “The arselene is coming this way,” he remarked. “I

think we had better remove Miss Lamont to a safer place.” THE MURDERER OF LAMONT

After Dean and Dr. Ballinger had left the room, Buckley, the uniformed officer, came forward impressively and touched the lawyer’s arm.

“I arrest you, Mr. Littleby,” he declared, repeating the stereotyped phrase with a solemn air, ’’for the murder of Martin Lamont. You’re a a lawyer, so I needn’t warn you that anything you may say will be held against you.”

“I say you are a fool,” retorted Littleby. “I have the best alibi in the world. Doctor Ballinger and I were on the balcony when the shot was fired that killed. Lamont.” “Yes, I know,” interposed Shane dryly. “An hour or two ago, when Miss Gray and I were here and she asked you all those questions, mimind kept revolving a million turns a minute. I couldn’t make head or tail to what she said, but as we walked away from here she explained a few things. She would have explained them before, but it would have caused a sensation, and she has a sick mother, who can’t stand too much of a shock. In a few hours she will do the sensible thing and : take her mother on a sea voyage. By the way, do you know Miss Farnham?” “Of course. She was * Lamont’s nurse.” “Wasn't slje formerly known as i Beulah Vance?” ‘ “Far be it from me to inquire into a lady’s past.” j “And didn’t you advise her in the matter of her breach of promise suit | against Paul Forrester?” | “I refuse to gratify idle curiosity.” i “Then I'll answer my own question. After the suit had been dragi ging along for a time you told Miss J Vance she had better drop it. Y'ou 1 convinced her that she w-ould never be able to collect anything. Young i Forrester had disappeared, and as far as anybody knew he never had more i than a few dollars to his name. Some time afterward you discovered that Jordan Forrester. Paul's father, had left something behind him that was worth a good many millions. In the | meantime you had been keeping in j touch with Miss Farnham, thinking

she might prove useful, and you sent for her when Lamont came to your house sick.”

“Naturally. She lived near by.” “You promised her,” Shane went on, "that if she would oblige you in certain matters you would pay her twice as much as she could ever have collected on the breach of promise suit, even if young Forrester had been a rich man.”

Littlebv was momentarily taken aback. “Oh, he said stiffly. “I perceive you have gone to the trouble of interviewing Miss Farnham. Well, no harm done. The word of a common adventuress, even though she is masquerading as a nurse, will net have great weight in court. I am not ” He paused and glanced toward the open door. “Sounds like somebody wrecking the house,” muttered Shane. “Wonder what Dean’s up to this time. Well, Littleby, I convinced Miss Farnham that you would never be able to live up to your promise, and finally I persuaded her to come clean. She didn’t seem to realise until then that complicity in a murder is just as serious as the act of murder itself, and she took the one chance she had of escaping the chair. I know all about your alibi, Mr. Littleby. Y'ou knew Dr. Ballinger was coming that night, and you had everything arranged beforehand.”

Littleby’s face sagged a little. An intensified pallor settled over his features. He started nervously as a deafening crash sounded over their heads. From the hall came the excited voices of servants rudely startled out of their early morning slumber. “Hope Dean doesn’t tear down the house over our heads,” muttered the lieutenant. “Let's go back over the case and see what we have, Mr. Littlebj". Y'ou and Dr. Ballinger were out on the balcony, smoking your cigars. There is no doubt on that point, for each of you supported the other in that statement. A shot rang out, and you rushed into Lamont’s bedroom, followed by Dean, who appeared mysteriously from somewhere. Miss Farnham told you she had been dozing on the cot, a..d that she knew nothing until the shot wakened her. (To be Continued Tomorrow.).