CHAPTER XXI

TONY’S REPORT

BARRISON often dined at a chop house in the Thirties, near his own rooms. He repaired thither to-night, after having telephoned his whereabouts to Tony Clay’s boarding house, with a message for that youth to come on to join him there if he could.

As he sat lingeringly over one of the meals he liked best, he endeavored to forget the problems which had stabbed at him relentlessly all day. He wished that it were only from a professional angle that the business worried him; to his own uttermost disgust, he found an enormous mass of personal worry connected with it. He would like, for instance, to have been able to eliminate Miss Templeton. Or—would he? He was alarmed to find his condition so critical that he was not absolutely sure.

He glanced up at last, uncertain whether with relief or disgust, to find Tony Clay wending his way toward him between tables.

“Hello!” he said, with a very fine show of enthusiastic welcome.

Tony bobbed an acknowledgment. When he was seated opposite Jim, he growled:

“How doth the little butterfly
Improve each shining hour,
By sending other folks to spy,
And bring to him more power!

“What pretty things he learns to do,
What merry games he beats!
He lets the other fellow stew,
While he sits still and eats!”

Barrison could not help laughing, as he greeted him:

“What do you suppose I’ve been doing? Sitting here ever since we parted? What are you going to eat, oh, faithful, good, and seemingly hungry servant?”

“I want all the ham and eggs there are in the place, and the ham cut thick, and the eggs fried on both sides!”

“You half-baked little ass!” remarked Jim affectionately. “Give your own order.”

Tony ordered, with a vague yet spectacular carelessness which made Barrison roar.

“Not awake yet, Tony?” he queried, when his young friend had committed himself to mushrooms and guinea hen after the ham and eggs.

“Eh? Sure I’m awake! Say, you didn’t give me a job at all, oh, no!”

“The point is, did you get it?”

“Get it? You bet your life I got it. But, Jim, your hunch about that Golden Arms business was punk. There’s nothing doing there.”

“No?” said Barrison. He tried to sound cool and casual, but it wasn’t much of a success; he felt a bit flat about it all. “Go ahead, Tony; suppose you tell me about it, eh?”

Tony nodded, and straightened up at sight of the ham and eggs.

“Well; first off you wanted a line on the maid. I got that, all right. She was one of those musical-comedy sorts. I spotted her from the beginning, and I guess you did, too. She wasn’t able to get away from her ‘lady’ much, but she was supposed to eat like anybody else, and——”

“Tony, if you tell me that you gave up your sleep to go and fix her at lunch, and that——”

“I don’t, and I didn’t tell you anything. But, as a matter of fact, I’d have bust if I hadn’t got a chance on this thing, Jim; you know that. Maybe I seem a bit slow sometimes, but, take it from me, I’m there with the goods when the time comes! Anyway, the maid’s story is perfectly straight, and I’m certain she’s telling the truth. It seems that she isn’t supposed to knock at Miss Legaye’s door until half after eleven. She sleeps in a room on top of the house, connected by telephone, and only comes down at special times, or when she’s phoned for. Last night, she didn’t expect Miss Legaye in early, so didn’t come downstairs to her door till about twenty minutes past eleven. It being a first night, she really didn’t imagine Miss Legaye would be in much before midnight. But at eleven twenty Maria—that’s the maid—came and knocked. She saw that the lights were turned up inside the room.

“Miss Legaye called out to her: ‘Maria, don’t bother about me to-night; I’m tired, and I’m going to bed right away. Come at about eight to-morrow, please.’

“Maria went up to bed then, and didn’t come down again until eight, the hour she was expected. That was about fifteen minutes before you and I turned up this morning.”

“Well?” demanded Barrison, not so much eagerly as savagely, for he was hot on what he thought to be a trail of some sort, even if not a criminal trail. “Well, what else does she say about when she came in to Miss Legaye’s rooms this morning?”

“She says that she came to the door and knocked, as was always her rule, before using her key. She had a key, but was not expected by Miss Legaye to use it unless there was no answer. This time she didn’t get any answer, so she opened the door, and went in.

“She went in to Miss Legaye’s bedroom, and found her half awake and half asleep. She said she had had a bad night, and had had to take her sleeping medicine. She looked pale. Maria says that the thing that upset her, Maria, most was the sight of Miss Legaye’s fine opera coat on a chair near the window, where the rain had made it all wet. She said she had barely hung it up, and made Miss Legaye comfortable, when we telephoned up.”

Barrison thought a moment. “That sounds all right,” he admitted. “Get ahead, Tony, to the rest of your investigation. For, of course, you must have got at some one else!”

“Yes,” said Tony, as he munched fried ham; “I got at the night clerk of the Golden Arms.”

“The night clerk? But he wasn’t on duty?”

Tony buttered a piece of bread with a glance of scorn. “And would that make him inaccessible to you, you pluperfect sleuth?” he demanded caustically. “To me it merely meant that I would have to dig up his address and call on him when he was not on guard, so to speak. He is a very nice, pleasant youth. You would not get on with him at all; you would hurt his feelings. I have feelings of my own, so we were delighted with each other! You do neglect your opportunities, you know, Jim!”

“Did you find out when Miss Legaye got in last night?” asked Barrison, but Tony’s answer was disappointing.

“I did not,” he rejoined. “I found that my night clerk had not seen Miss Legaye at all last night.”

Barrison jumped and stared at him. “Not seen her!” ejaculated he.

“No. She had not come through the office at all. But he says that she often avoids the crowd in the hotel office by going up to her apartment by the back way. He says she hates publicity.”

“Oh!” Barrison was thinking. “Is there, then, no one who would have seen her, if she came in ‘the back way,’ and went up to her room?”

“I can’t see how any one could have seen her. You see, Jim, it’s this way. In the Golden Arms Hotel, there is a side door, which is kept open and unguarded until after eleven o’clock at night. Lots of people, women especially, who don’t want to go through the crowded office at that hour, prefer to slip in that way. It’s a regular thing; they all do it. As to the elevator boy who——”

“Yes, I was going to ask about him. Did he take her up?”

“No, he didn’t. At that hour of the night, even an elevator boy sometimes nods. Anyway, he remembers the bell ringing for a long time while he was half asleep, and when he got to the lift there was no one there. The answer seems obvious.”

“That she walked upstairs, having become tired of waiting?”

“I should say so. Especially as she lived only one floor up, and often ran up the flight to save time!”

Barrison thought of this as he drank black coffee. “And that is all you found out?” he demanded suddenly, raising his head.

“Not at all!” responded Tony cheerfully. “I found out that the first news the night clerk had had of Miss Legaye last night was a telephone message from her room at about eleven o’clock.”

“A message? What was it?”

“She said that she had a frightful headache, and that she wanted one of the bell boys to go out to the drug store for her, and get a medicine bottle filled—stuff that she often took when she had trouble about sleeping.”

“And then?”

“And then the boy went upstairs, and got the empty bottle from her. She was wearing a wrapper. He took the bottle out and had it filled. That’s all. It establishes the fact that she was in, and undressed, at eleven.”

Barrison called for the check and paid it; then he still knitted his brows over the thing that troubled him.

“Tony!” he said suddenly.

“Well?”

“Could she have gotten upstairs into that hotel without being seen? I can’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“I thought there were maids or guards on every floor.”

“Quite so,” said Tony; “you remind me. There is a maid stationed on every floor of all decent hotels. There was one on every floor of this. But she is human, and therefore she is movable. This one, on Miss Legaye’s floor, was on duty up to twenty minutes to eleven, and she was on duty after eleven had struck. In between she had been called in to settle some newcomer, an old lady who wanted eight hundred and seventy things to which she was not entitled. She was away less than half an hour, but it was during that time that Miss Legaye must have gone to her room.”

Barrison still sat looking at his coffee cup in a troubled way, and Tony suddenly spoke:

“Jim, that’s a cold trail, a dead one. See? Why do you keep tracking back to it? You know, and I know, that there’s nothing doing at that end of the story. What keeps you nosing around it?”

“I can’t tell you, Tony,” said Barrison, low and not too certainly. “It isn’t exactly evidence that keeps me following that trail. It’s——”

“Say!” broke in his subordinate sharply. “Shall I tell you what it is? It’s that woman—it’s Miss Grace Templeton; that’s what it is. You’re dippy about her! And because she’s tipped you that there’s something queer about Miss Legaye, you believe it!”

“I thought you admired Miss Templeton yourself!” said Jim Barrison, rallying his forces.

Tony Clay surveyed him in surprise. “Admired her?” he exclaimed. “Of course I admire her! But that wouldn’t prevent me from doing my bit on a case! I wouldn’t let a thing like that interfere with me professionally!” He spoke most grandiloquently, with a swelling chest.

Jim Barrison looked at him a moment seriously; then his face broke into irrepressible smiles. “Wouldn’t you?” he queried. “Tony, you’ll be a great man one of these days!”