THE GREEN SHADOW

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 946, 12 April 1930, Page 22

THE GREEN SHADOW

By

HERMAN LANDON

Copyright by Public Ledger

SYNOPSIS Adele Castle has just had the wierdest adventure of her life. She has been ' taken by a mysterious Misss Conway to | meet Mr. Moffett, whom she meets but j cloes not see. For, as sht> enters the . room of ar old house in a p*art of New ! York she does not recognise she is met by a green light, through which she l observes th- vague outline of a man. He tells her he knows her father is the “Mr. Graves ' whom police seek as the associate of Daniel Forrester, who died after getting 10,000,000 dollars by fraud. He claims to have papers which, if made public, would result in Mr. Castle, going to gaol. Adele calls on her father, who tells her Dr. Moffett demands 100,000 dollars :.'n Mr. Castle profited but little by Forrester’s operations, which he did not discover were illegal until after the latter’s death. While Captain Summers is meditating on the escapades of “The Picaroon,” whom he is convinced is really his friend, .Martin Dale, Mr. Alexander Ferryman calls and requests that strange happenings at 262 Bank Street, the house next to the one in which he lives, be investigated. Axelson, a watchman employed by Ferryman to guard the house in which he lived before he moved next door after his wife had deserted him, has heard footsteps and seen an eerie green light. Just as Ferryman is showing the captain a picture of his wife, the telephone rings arid a voice tells of finding a woman’s body at 262 Bank Street. Summers and Ferryman hurry there. The dead woman is Ferryman’s wife. Summers finds only one clue, a piece of a green lens. ‘The Picaroon,” who preys upon the rich and then offers the return of his loot on the payment of 10 per cent, of its value to charity, has written a note to Adele Castle, requesting a meeting in Central Park. Adele has had a terrifying experience. She was taken to a strange house where, through a queer green light, she could glimpse only the outline of a man calling himself Dr. Moffett, who tells her he holds evidence which would convict her father of being connected with a crooked financial deal and send him to prison. Mr. Castle tells Adele Dr. Moffett demands blackmail of 100,000 dollars. CHAPTER IV. (Continued) The visitor pulled himself together and followed the captain from the office and down the stairs. His car was at the kerfl, and they jumped in and drove to Bank Street. The house in question was one of two murky, old-fashioned buildings with green shutters and a fanlight over each door. Summers entered first and was saluted by a policeman standing in tne vestibule. The inner door was opened by a gaunt, elderly man, stoop-shouldered and “What’s happened, Axelson?” Mr. Ferryman asked excitedly. MURDER “Murder, I’m afraid, sir.” The servant pointed a shaking finger up the stairway. “I happened to go up there about an hour ago, and that’s when l found the body. It’s terrible, sir!” Summers started running up the stairs, Mr. Ferryman following as rapidly as he could. A policeman ! and two plain-clothes men were standing beside a cot in a pleasantly furnished room. The captain looked at the figure lying on the cot. The face he saw was distorted by the ravages of a horrible death, yet it showed traces of beauty. Suddenly as he looked, he started violently. It was the same face he had seen inside the lid of Mr. Ferryman’s watch. * In a moment Mr. Ferryman was at the cot. He .stared down at the body. Then, with a long cry of horror, he fell headlong over the cot. Tragedy, had entered the tranquil, green-shuttered house which Alexander Ferryman had maintained as a sanctuary for his errant wife. The pathos of the situation penetrated even Captain Summers’s hard-grained fibre. For four years the husband had lived in hope and grief and faith, waiting hourly for her return, keeping fresh and intact the scenes of their brief married life in order that when she returned they would be able to resume as if there had been no interruption. And now she had come back, but only to meet with a horrible and mystifying death. Everything was scrupulously neat and clean, yet there was an atmosphere about the place that suggested long disuse. The intimate human touch and feeling had somehow vanished from the furnishings. As Summers inspected the surroundings he recalled what Ferryman had told him about certain mysterious things going on in the house. He had not considered them seriously at first, regarding them as meaningless trifles, or as the hallucinations of a disordered brain. Now he began to wonder whether they might not have some significance. He turned to one of the two detectives who had been in the room when he entered —a youngish man, straight and lean, with yellow haid and a pair of keen, blue eyes. Summers knew him. “What do you know about this, McCabe ?” “Not a great deal, sir. The medical examiner left just before you arrived. There wasn’t much for him to do. He discovered the woman came to her death by a revolver bullet that 'penetrated the left lung. He said she must have been dead ten or twelve hours.” The captain arched his black, snarled brows. “Then she must have died about midnight. Why wasn’t , the body found sooner?” “Mr. Ferryman owns the house.” McCabe inclined his blond bead in the direction of the mourner. “He lives next door, in No. 260. The only occupant of this house is Axelson, the caretaker. That’s the old fellow standing over there by the door.” “Yes, I know.” Summers glanced at the caretaker, pale and shaken, who looked as if the tragedy had shocked him to the depths of his being. “Mr. Ferryman told me all that.” “Axelson makes the rounds of the house twice a day, morning and evening,” the young detective continued. “If he finds anything wrong, he steps over to No. 260 and reports to his employer. “Everything seemed to be all right when he went through the house last night. He heard no unusual sounds during the night, but then he lives in the basement, two floors below this room, and only very loud sounds would carry as far as that.” , “Was it Axelson who found the body?” “Yes, sir, about half past nine this morning, when he reached this room on his usual morning rounds. It was lying there.” McCabe indicated a spot on the carpet. “We moved ir after the medical examiner had gone.” Summers cast another keen glanciat the stricken face of the caretaker. “Did Axelson recognise the victim?’’ “No, sir. She was lying face dowy when he found her. He didn't stop to look, but ran to the telephone and notified the precinct station. After «ve had moved her and he had an

opportunity to see her face, he let out a scream and said she was Mr. Ferryman’s missing wife.” "He seemed actually surprised, did he?” Summers spoke out of a mind that took nothing for granted. “Yes, the shock almost bowled him over.” Summers nodded and stroked his sturdy jaw. The other detective had assisted Mr. Ferryman to a chair. Sitting in a crushed and lifeless attitude, he stared hollowly at the dead woman. A lavender evening gown, with a great crimson stain over the chest, covered the slender figure. A diamond blazed on her finger and a crescent of rubies gleamed beneath her throat, the rich lustre of the jewel forming a sharp contrast against the ravaged face. It was indeed a strange homecoming, Summers thought. It seemed as if the returning wife had adorned herself In her loveliest raiment in ord.er to give her waiting husband a delightful surprise. Probably she had gone to their former home to dress and put everything in readiness, meaning to summon him from the house nest door as soon as her preparations were completed. But how had ’she contrived to enter without being heard or seen by Axelson? And what had happened after she entered? Who had fired the shot that turned a joyful reunion into a tragedy? And why? Summers shrugged and decided these questions were futile until he had more facts to go on. Later he would question Mr. Ferryman and the caretaker in detail, but just now it would be useless to try to learn much from them. He let his eyes travel over the room, impressing each detail upon his mind. It looked as if it had at one time served as a writing-room and .study. An incongruous touch caught his eye. It was a cluster of violets in a vase on the writing fable. The flowers were the only intimately human touch in a room that had stood unoccupied for so long that it had lost most of its vital atmosphere. “Where did the flowers come from?” he asked McCabe. “Axelson tells me he has orders to get a fresh bunch every two or three days. It seems violets were Mrs. Ferryman’s favourite flower.” Summers understood. This was another instance of how Ferryman had tried to keep the abandoned home in readiness for his wife’s homecoming. From the violets his glance slid downward. A rubber tube about three feet long was protruding from the long tablecloth and trailing to the floor. “What’s that?” he asked.

“There’s a dictation machine behind that cloth,” said McCabe. “What you see there is the speaking tube. Axelson tells me Mr. Ferryman had a large private correspondence when he lived in this house, and he got into the habit of dictating to his secretary by machine. He sometimes used this -room instead of the library downstairs. Axelson says he dusted the machine only yesterday. He must have left the tube hanging out.” Summers nodded absently. The word that caught, in his mind was “dusted.” By a sequence of thought it suggested fingerprints. “Yes, sir; just what I thought,” said McCabe in reply to his question; “but I didn’t find any. Here is something that may interest you, though.” ■ From his pocket he took something folded in paper and unwrapped it. It was a piece of glass, small and thin. “I found it on the floor, about a foot and a-half away from the body,” he explained. Summers looked at it, turned it over in his palm and felt the rough edges. “Looks like a piece from a lens,” he commented. “Yes, sir; just what I thought. And the queer part of it is that it’s stained green.” “Green?” Summers jerked out; and, from force of habit, he inspected the fragment beneath his magnifying glass. “Some people wear stained glasses," McCabe pointed out. “They are mostly people w'ho drive cars though.”

. Summers nodded as lie returned tkp piece of glass to the wrapping and stuck It in his pocket. “It may turn out to be a clue,” he remarked, without enthusiasm. “Maybe there was a struggle and the murderer’s glasses were knocked off and broken. He picked up all the pieces but one. But that’s a long guess. That sliver of glass may have been lying here a long time. Did you ask Axelson about it?” “He can’t account for it, sir. He says the room has been swept once S a week.” “H’m! Then it looks as if ” Summers did not finish the thought, j but merely whispered something in j McCabe’s ear and left tile room to j make a survey of the other parts of the house. “Green,” he muttered. “That’s 1 queer.” CHAPTER V. SUMMERS FINDS A CLUE But the queerest part of the whole ! affair, in Summers’s estimation, was ! the fact that the news of the murder j had reached him shortly after Ferry- ' man had told him the story of his j missing wife. This was one of those j coincidences which Summers always ! viewed with suspicion. It was somewhat modified, of course, j by the fact that the woman had been dead for ten or twelve hours when J the body was found, yet it gave the ! captain a great deal to think of as he went from room to room on his tour of inspection. Every room was furnished in good taste and arranged in perfect order. Here and there were odd little touches which showed how Ferryman had endeavoured to maintain everything in its original state. ' Yet tile house seemed in need of the living human breath to vitalise it. A sense of emptiness and grief was lurking in the dim nooks and corners, waiting for the enlivening touch of sun and air and laughter.

Summers went from room to room, finding nothing of significance and having no clear idea of what he expected to find. He was merely fixing the arrangement of the house in his mind while he waited. At length be entered a great oak-panelled room that appeared to be the library. There were books and pictures and curios that bespoke a culture and diversified taste, and cosy nooks and easy-chairs that testified to a desire for ease and comforts. The feeling of vacancy and abandonment was less noticeable here than iii the othef

parts of the house. In a vague fashion Summers felt that the big morris chair at the table looked just as if some one might have sat in it only yesterday. He sat down in it himself, spread out his disproportionately short legs, and let his eyes rove over the great room with its high ceiling, its handsome oak panelling and its soft-hued rugs of Oriental pattern. It was here, so Mr. Ferryman had told him, that some of the strange things reported by the caretaker had happened. Axelson had heard sounds of trespassing coming from this room and, upon entering to investigate, a green light had been flashed in his eyes. It had disappeared in an instant, leaving no explanation in its trail Summers had thought it rather strange, but not particularly startling. Since then the discovery of a woman’s body in the house had given an element of importance to the most trifling details. “A green light,” Summers muttered. He scratched his top-heavy head and scowled. “What would any- I body want with a green light?” He got up and crossed over to an i electric switch on the wall. He touched it, and a soft electric light sprang up in various places and flooded the room. It was jhst an ordinary white light, without the faintest trace of green. Summers fingered his jaw and reflected. Axelson might be the excitable sort that is easily mistaken. Possibly the green light had flashed only in his imagination. But, if so, why should he have imagined a green light in particular? Why not a blue or an orange one? Perhaps A CIGAR BAND But Summers decided he would let his speculations rest for the present. Later he W'ould test Axelson’s capacity for accurate observation, with emphasis on his ability to distinguish different colouvs. It would be time enough for that in the afternoon. Summers’s luncheon hour was already past and he was hungry. McCabe and his colleague could be trusted to conduct the preliminary inquiries and make satisfactory notes. He switched off the lights and moved to the door. It happened to be the wrong door, as he discovered in a moment. It opened only into a short hall, which in turn communicated with what appeared to be a music room. He loked in, then started to retrace his steps and find the right way out, but something made him look down. Nestling in the fabric of a rug lay a small bright object which, uppn investigation, proved to be a cigar band. “Verona.” read the embossed inscription on the label. It was the kind of label that adorns only expensive cigars. Summers happened to know something about this particular brand, and he was aware that it was a very rare one. Only one person of ; his acquaintance smoked it —a certain | fastidious gentleman who ate, drank i and smoked only the best. Summers’s eyes narrowed. A hard, knowing grin touched his lips. With the cigar band resting in his palm, he looked down at the spot where he had ’ found it. To be sure, it was far-fetched to suppose that it had been dropped there by the particular person he had in mind, yet his thoughts circled around the idea. It seemed to tickle his fancy in a sardonic way. The fastidious gentleman in question was also a very cautious and adroit individual, one who would scarcely be likely to drop a clue in such a careless manner. He would be even less likely—granting , that Summers’s hazy surmise was correct —to smoke a cigar in a strange house, especially if bent upon an errand of the sort with which Summers always associated his name. “But you can never tell,” was his thought as he carefully tucked the band away in his notebook. “He mightn’t have smoked the cigar here. Maybe the band came loose in his pocket and fell out when he reached for his pencil or watch or something. Anyhow ” Summers left the hall and returned to the library. He had already seen a smoking-stand beside the library table, and among other articles there was a box of cigars. Probably it had stood there untouched since Ferryman fled from the painful associations of the house and moved next door. The captain opened the box and examined one of the cigafs. It was dry and brittle. “Eclipsias,” he observed. His mind was a crowded storehouse of miscellaneous information, and among other things he happened to know a great deal about the various brands of cigars and the type of men who smoked them. “A man who smokes

Verona would never smoke Eclipsias —that’s one sure thing.” Satisfied with his discovery, inconclusive though it was, he went out to luncheon. His favourite restaurant was some distance away, on the other side of the Washington Square section, but the food was good enough to j compensate one for going out of his j way. At this late hour the place was almost deserted. His eyes lighted upon a lone individual at a table in ■ the rear. * MARTIN DALE He smiled grimly and walked down | the aisle between the tables. “Hello, Dale. Mind if I join you?” | And without waiting for an answer j he sat down. Martin Dale's face brightened. He looked as fresh and keen as if he had just emerged from his morning shower. Every little detail of his appearance seemed to blend into a life devoted to intriguing and congenial pursuits. His cravat was just the right shade, the cuff links in the soft shirt of faint lavender were | just the right pattern. His eyes were j frank and open, yet they did not tell j everything, but seemed to hold something in reserve for another hour and.another occasion. “This is luck, Summers,” ha declared. “You know how I detest eating alone. I was just longing for the sight of a familiar face, and there is no face in the w'orld I would rather s.ee than yours.” Summers grumbled something and consulted the menu. “i can recommend the broiled squab,” said Dale. When the fat Latin proprietor appeared, to declare himself honoured and to take personally his valued guest’s order, Summers requested broiled squab. Dale’s suggestions were invariably sound. “You look a bit glum,” Dale observed, studying him out of his lively grey eyes. “Do I?” “You do. All the way from brains | to bunions you are the picture of! dejection.” | “I haven’t any bunions.” “Then it may be some other afflic- I tion. But maybe that’s • a rash deduction. Come to think of it, old top,- you are the only man I know whose face is no index to his state of mind. You never look .what you feel and you never feel what you look. In yonr most hilarious moments j you look like an honorary pall-hearer, j Judging your present sour mein by what I know of your eccentricities, I should say you had something up your sleeve.” “You’re talking rot.” “Maybe so. There is a very fine distinction between rot and profundity, old dear. Seriously, though, if there is nothing up your sleeve, suppose you prove, it by shaking it. if nothing falls out, then I’ll belieye you.” “Oh, go chase yourself. There’s nothing up my sleeve except a pink rabbit and a two-headed baby elephant.” "I’ll wager there is one more thing.” A sly gleam of merriment came into his grey eyes. “Own up, old socks. There is a nice little clue up that sleeve of yours which has to do with a certain enterprising scamp known as The Picaroon, Am i right?” Summers’s reddish face closed up. His -lips tightened. He fixed his com- j panion across the table with a nar- | row gaze as inscrutable as a poker j player’s. The squab' arrived just then, and he gave it his appreciative attention for several minutes before he spoke. “Dale,” he said casually, “do you ever wear glasses?”

“Glasses?” Dale’s eyes contracted in the manner of one who suspects a snare in the most innocent remark. “Why should I? My eyes are good. I have illuminating moments when I can see through even the thick skull of a captain of police.” “But what about glasses?” Summers persisted. “Ever wear them?” “Only automobile goggles.” Dale regarded him guardedly. Behind the faintly mocking smile in his eyes was a gleam of caution. “They keep dust out of my eyes and cobwebs out of my brain. You ought to try them. They will be good for your brain.” “GREEN?” “Thanks for the tip. Automobile goggles, eh? Coloured?” “Yes.” “Green?” The faintest flicker passed across Dale’s eyes. His brow's went up ever so slightly. “No, amber.” Summers fixed him with a shrewd, oblique scrutiny. There was a little tension in the air. Dale’s amused laugh broke it. “You and me, Summers, are seeing things through a glass darkly, as the Good Book says. You can’t read my mind, and for once I can’t read yours. £ infer you are trying to convict The Picaroon of the heinous crime of wearing green-coioured glasses.” “Why The Picaroon in particular?” “Because he seems to be always weighing heavily on your mind.” The captain looked down at his squab again. “One of these bright days,” de declared purposely, “I’ll put The Picaroon where he belongs.” “Really? It will be a great day in your life, Summers.” “Yet bet. The greatest ever.” “I hope to be present and congratulate you on your achievement.” “You will be present,” said Summers darkly, “but you can omit the congratulations. You’ll be in no j fnood for them.” “Wiry, Summers!” Dale’s eyes were i full of gentle mockery. “That sounds [ almost sinister. From your tone and ! your expxession I am almost convinced } that you suspect me”—and he laughed j as if at something very droll and pre- j posterous—“that you suspect me of j being The Picaroon.” “It strikes you as being funny, j does it?” “Uproariously funny,” Dale laughed j again. “Laugh,” said Summers. “It will j do you good, and I like to hear you. j I’ll have a laugh myself one of these days, and I am saving up my strength j for it.” “That’s bad philosophy. When that [ day comes you may have forgotten ! how to laugh.” “No danger.” Summers devoted himself w-ith grim earnestness to his squab. “It isn’t very far distant.” (To be continued on Monday.)