  Fibsy was at his wits’ end. And the wits’ end of Terence McGuire was at some distance from their beginning. But he had scrutinized every step of the way, and now he disconsolately admitted to himself that he had really reached the end. He had been shut up in the strange house nearly a week. He was most comfortably lodged and fed, he had much reading matter supplied for his perusal, though none of it was newspapers, and Kito offered to play parchesi with him by way of entertainment. The Japanese was polite, even kindly, but he was inflexible in the matter of obeying his orders. And his scrupulous fidelity precluded any possibility of Fibsy’s getting away, or even getting out of the rooms allotted to his use. But when the boy rose one morning after a refreshing night’s sleep and had a satisfying breakfast, and was at last locked in his room for the morning, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and clinched his impotent young fists in rage and despair. “I gotta make me bean woik better,” he groaned to himself, the tenseness of the situation causing him to revert to his use of street slang. “I gotter get outen here, an’ most likely it’s too late now. I’m a nice detective, I am, can’t get out the fust time I’m in a hole! Gee! I’m gonta get out!” Followed a long session of hard thinking, and then a gleam of light came to him. But he needs must wait till Kito brought up his dinner. And at noon or thereabouts, Kito came with the usual well-appointed tray of good food. Fibsy looked it over nonchalantly. “All right, Kite,” he said, “but say, I gotta toothache. I wish you’d gimme a toothpick,—not quill,—the wooden kind.” Sympathetic and solicitous, the Japanese produced from his own pocket a little box of his native toothpicks, of which Fibsy accepted a couple, and pocketed them. And then, came the strategical moment. His purpose must be effected while the Jap was still in the room. And it was. Sidling to the half-open door, Fibsy called Kite’s attention to a dish on the tray, and then thrust a toothpick quickly in beside the bolt of the lock, and broke it off short. In order to keep his jailer’s attention distracted, Fibsy then waxed loquacious, and dilated on the glories of a wonderful movie show. Kito listened attentively, and though he said no word about going to see it, he inquired carefully where it was, and Fibsy’s hopes began to rise. “But if ever you go, Kite,” he said, “you wanter see the very beginnin’, ’relse you lose all the fun.” At last, Fibsy finished his dinner and the Jap took up the tray. Breathlessly, but unnoticeably, Fibsy watched him, and as he went out of the door, and turned the key in the lock, he didn’t notice that the bolt didn’t shoot home as usual, but the door was really left unlocked. Fibsy’s heart beat like a trip-hammer as he heard the catlike footsteps go down stairs. Unable to wait, he tried the door, and found it was open. He slipped out into the hall. Down two flights, he could hear the Japanese, going about his business. Warily, Fibsy crept down one stair-case. Then he stepped into the front room on that floor. It was evidently the room of a grand lady. Silver trinkets were here and there, but Fibsy’s quick eyes noted that the bureau was dismantled, and there were no appearances of actual occupancy. “Mrs. Autchincloss is away fer the summer,” he said, sapiently. “Lessee furder.” It was a risk, but Kito rarely came upstairs so soon after dinner, so the boy went through to the back room on the second floor. “Bachelor,” he said, nodding his head at the appointments on the chiffonier. “Stayin’ in town. Kinder Miss Nancy,—here’s a little sewin’ kit some dame made fer him. An’ the way his brushes an’ things is fixed, shows he ain’t got no wife. So this ain’t Mr. Autchincloss. Well, lemmesee. Writin’ table next. Not much doin’. Fixin’s all fer show. Spose he writes down in the liberry. Wisht I could git down there. Here’s a lot of his friends.” Fibsy had spied a pack of snapshots and small photographs, and hastily ran them over. They were all unknown faces to him, except one which chanced to be the postcard of Judge Hoyt taken in Philadelphia station. “Hello! The guy wot lives here is a frien’ o’ Judge Hoyt. No, not a friend, but a nennermy. Cos, I dope it out, that friend guy’s locked me up here fer fear I’ll help Judge Hoyt’s case. Oh, no, I dunno, as it’s that. I dunno what it is. I wisht I could get word to Mr. Stone. If I only dared use that telephone. But Kite would fly up here quicker’n scat! Well, I’ll swipe this card, cos it looks interestin’.” Then Fibsy, still with a wary eye on the hall door, searched the room and its dressing-room and closets, and was rewarded by some further discoveries, one of which was a dirk cane. This article was among a number of other canes and umbrellas in the far end of a deep closet. “Now, o’ course,” he mused, “maybe tain’t the right cane, an’ maybe ’tis. But if it is, then this here’s the moiderer’s house, an’ he locked me in cos he’s scared o’ me. Well, it’s all too many fer me. Hello, wot’s this?” He opened a small door in the side of the deep closet. There seemed to be an elevator shaft, with no car. As a matter of fact, it was a laundry chute, but Fibsy was unacquainted with conveniences of that sort, and didn’t know its purpose. But he saw at once that the shaft led to the basement, and that it went upward, to a similar opening in the room above. And the room above was his room! Softly he crept back upstairs, and re-entered his room. He dislodged the fragment of toothpick, and closed the door. If Kito discovered it was unlocked, he couldn’t help that now. He went straight to his own closet, and sure enough there was the same sort of a slide door, and it gave onto the same chute, hung over it. At last a possible way of exit. Precarious, for he had not yet decided on a safe way of descending a bare shaft, but his mind was at work now, and something must come of it. And his mind produced this plan. He knew where Kito was now. Always at that time in the afternoon, the Japanese was in his own room in the rear part of the first floor of the house. Previous desultory chat had brought out this fact. And Fibsy’s plan was to make a soft bed at the foot of the shaft and jump down. Dangerous, almost positively disastrous, but the only chance. “’Course I’ll break me bloomin’ back or legs or suthin’, but anyway the horsepital’d be better’n this, an’ then I could get aholt of Mr. Stone.” So, swiftly and noiselessly, he removed all the bedding from his bed, and down the chute he threw the mattress, dropping on it the blankets and pillows. “Here goes!” he said, not pausing to consider consequences, and, balancing for an instant on the ledge, he let himself go, and came down with a soft thud on the pillows. Whether it was because he relaxed every muscle and fell limply, or whether it was because of a kind fate looking after him, he sustained no injuries. Not a bone broke, and though the jar was stunning, he recovered after a few minutes, and sat up half-dazed, but rapidly becoming alert, and looking about him. The semi-darkness of the shaft showed him the exit, and it proved to be into the laundry in the basement of the house. The rest was easy. Listening intently for a sound of Kito, and hearing none, Fibsy deliberately walked out of the basement door, and into the street. He did not hurry, being desirous not to attract attention in any way, and as he went through the area gate, he looked up and noted the number of the house. It was as he had surmised, a house closed for the summer during the absence of the family. The Japanese butler had been retained as caretaker, and whoever was Fibsy’s captor, gave the orders. Kito was so trustworthy and faithful, there could have been no chance of Fibsy’s escape save by some such ingenious method as he had used. “Only,” he blamed himself, “why the dickens didn’t I think of it sooner?” Reaching the corner, he noted the street the house was on, but the fashionable locality, in the upper West Seventies, was unfamiliar to him, and he had no idea whose house he had been living in. Nor had he had time to find out. An investigation of a street directory might have told him, but he concluded to lose no time in communicating with Fleming Stone. But first, he telephoned his aunt to relieve the anxiety he knew she must be feeling. “It’s all right, Aunt Becky,” he announced, cheerily. “Don’t you worry, don’t you fret. I’m on important business, and I’ll be home when I get there. So long!” Then he called up Fleming Stone’s office. The detective was not in, but Fibsy made it so plain to a secretary that Mr. Stone must be found at once, that the finding was accomplished, and by the time Fibsy in his taxicab reached the office, Fleming Stone was there too. “Terence!” exclaimed the detective, grasping the boy’s hand in his own. “Come in here.” He took the lad to his inner sanctum, and said, “Tell me all about it.” “There’s such a lot, Mr. Stone,” began Fibsy, breathlessly, “but first, how’s the trial goin’? I ain’t seen a pape since I was caught. I wanted to get one on the way here, but I got so int’rested in this here card,—say, look here. This is a pitcher of Judge Hoyt in the Philly Station the day of the moider. You know he was in Philly that day.” “Yes, he was,” and Stone looked harassed. “He certainly was. He wrote from there and telegraphed from there and I’ve seen a card like the one you have there, and that settles it. I wish I could prove he wasn’t there.” “Well, Mr. Stone, he prob’ly was there, all right, but this here picture wasn’t took on that day.” “How do you know?” “De-duck-shun!” and Fibsy indulged in a small display of vanity, quite justified by his further statement. “You see, this card shows the big news stand in the waitin’ room. Well, the papers on the news stand ain’t that week’s papers!” “What?” “No, sir, they ain’t. You see, I read every week ‘The Sleuth’s Own Magazine’, an’ o’ course I know every number of that ’ere thing’s well’s I know my name. An’ here, you see, sir, is the magazine I’m speakin’ of, right here in the picture. Well, on it is a cover showin’ a lady tied in a chair wit’ ropes. Well, sir, that roped lady was on the cover two weeks after Mr. Trowbridge was killed, not the day of the moider.” “You’re sure of this, Terence?” and Stone looked at the boy with an expression almost of envy. “This is very clever of you.” “Aw, shucks, tain’t clever at all. Only, I know them magazines like a mother’d know her own children. I read ’em over an’ over. An’ I know that picture on that cover came out more’n two weeks later’n what Judge Hoyt said it did. I mean, he didn’t have that card taken of himself on the day he said he did.” “Motive?” “That I dunno. I do know Judge Hoyt is tryin’ sumpin’ fierce to clear Mr. Landon—has he done it yet?” “No, Terence, but the trial is almost over, and I think the judge has something up his sleeve that he’s holding back till the last minute. I never was in such a baffling mystery case. Every clue leads nowhere, or gets so tangled with contradictory clues that it merely misleads. Now tell me your story.” Fibsy told the tale of his imprisonment, and the manner of his escape. He told the street and number of the house, and he told of his discovery of a dirk cane in a cupboard. “An’ Mr. Stone,” he went on, “I found the shoe the button came off of.” “You’re sure it was a shoe button?” and Fleming Stone smiled at recollection of the button that had been described as of several varieties. “Yes, sir. An’ every time I said that button was a kind of button that it wasn’t, I was glad afterward that I said it. Yes, Mr. Stone it’s a shoe button an’ in that same house I was in, is the shoe it useter be on.” “Look out now, Terence, don’t let your zeal and your imagination run away with you.” “No, sir, but can’t you go there yourself, and get the shoe and the cane, or send for ’em, and if they fit the cane mark in the mud, and if the button I’ve got is exactly like those on that shoe, then ain’t there sumpin in it, Mr. Stone? Ain’t there?” The freckled face was very earnest and the blue eyes very bright as Fibsy waited for encouragement. “There’s a great deal in it, Fibsy. You have done wonderful work. In fact so wonderful, that I must consider very carefully before I proceed.” “Yes, sir. You see maybe the place where I was, might be the house of that Mr. Lindsay, he’s a friend of Mr. Landon’s—” “Wait a bit, child. Now you’ve done much, so very much, have patience to go a little slowly for the next move. Do you remember what the inspector told about the noises he heard when the Italian woman first telephoned him about Mr. Trowbridge?” “Yes sir, every woid. Rivetin’ goin on. Phonograph playin’ an’ kids whoopin’-coughin’ like fury.” “Well, from the Board of Health I’ve found the general location of whooping-cough cases at about that time, now if we can eliminate others and find the Italian ones—” “Yep, I und’stand! Goin’ now?” “Yes, at once.” Calling a taxicab, they started, and Stone went to an Italian quarter near 125th Street, where whooping-cough had been prevalent a few weeks previous. “Find the house, Fibsy,” he said, as they reached the infected district. Unsmilingly, Fibsy’s sharp, blue eyes scanned block after block. “New buildin’,” he said, at last, thoughtfully; and then, darting across the street, to a forlorn little shop, he burst in and out again, crying, “Here you are, Mr. Stone!” Stone crossed the street and entered the shop. There was a swarthy Italian woman, and several children, some coughing, others quarreling and all dirty. A phonograph was in evidence, and Fibsy casually looked over the records till he found the rag-time ditty the inspector had recalled. He called up headquarters and asked Inspector Collins if that were the music he heard before. “Yes,” said Collins, and Stone shouted, “Hold that wire, Fibsy, wait a minute,” and dragging the scared woman to the telephone he bade her repeat the message she had given the day of the murder. “Same voice! Same woman!” declared the inspector, and Stone hung up the receiver. Then he soothed the frightened Italian, promising no harm should come to her if she told the truth. The truth, as she tremblingly divulged it, seemed to be, that some man had come to her shop that afternoon, and forced her to telephone as he dictated. She remembered it all perfectly, and had been frightened out of her wits ever since. He had given her ten dollars which she had never dared to spend, as it was blood money! “Describe the man,” said Stone. “I not see heem good. He hold noosa-paper before his face, and maka me speak-a telephone.” “How did he make you? Did he threaten you?” “He have-a dagger. He say he killa me, if I not speak as he say.” “Ah, a dagger! An Italian stiletto?” “No, not Italiano. I not see it much, I so fright’. But I know it if I see it more!” After a few more questions, Stone was ready to go. But Fibsy sidled up to the woman. “Say,” he said, “what you give your bambinos for the cough, hey? Med’cine?” “No, I burna da Vaporina, da Vap’ da Cressar lina——” “Gee! Quite so! All right, old lady, much obliged!” After that matters whizzed. On the ride down town, Fibsy told Stone much. Stone listened and made that much more. The two acted as complements, the boy having gathered facts which the man made use of. |
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