Adventure Tales 6. H. Bedford-Jones
him in the park up here, one day—near that damn fountain!”
“I see! Of course, that would do it. I ought to have thought of that. Did you know Wilcox before that?”
“He used to be in a circus where I was,” said Jordan, “but his name wasn’t Wilcox then. It was Brown.”
“You’re a liar!” declared Wilcox savagely.
“Hm-m!” grunted Lavender, “That pretty nearly tells me all I need to know. The statue, of course, suggested this crazy scheme to get Ashenhurst out of his room some night. Wilcox knew you were in the statue line, as it were, and so was born the great idea. He suggested it, of course?”
“Sure,” said Jordan. “He said he wanted to get some guy’s goat, and when the guy ran out at me, I was to beat him up, toss him into the auto and take him off somewhere overnight.”
“You had no objections, I suppose?”
“Well,” hedged the circus performer, “I was pretty broke, and I needed the dough. But I didn’t like his dam fool scheme. I told him I’d go up and drag the guy out, if he wanted me to; or throw stones at his window until he chased me. I didn’t want to dress up. It seemed kinda foolish to me.”
“Quite right,” smiled Lavender. “And what do you think of Wilcox—or Brown—now, Mr. Jordan?”
Jordan looked suddenly significant. He turned his eyes on the recumbent Wilcox, almost stealthily. Then he looked at the police captain, and finally back at Lavender. After these elaborate preparations, he raised his forefinger and touched his temple, where a white curl now hung limply.
“I think he’s coo-coo!” he said.
“Excellent,” said Lavender. “So do I! I think, Captain, we shall have to make things as easy as possible for Mr. Jordan, who is, after all, only an erring person of temperament. If your men will remove both of these gentlemen now, we’ll let these good folks go to bed, and I’ll have a chat with you about this case.”
When the prisoners had been removed, and the oaths of Bernard Wilcox had died away in the distance, Lavender resumed his tale.
“Jordan is perfectly right, of course,” he said. “Wilcox is a bit touched. Nobody but a lunatic would have suggested such a scheme to get a man out of his room. The meeting with Jordan gave him the idea, no doubt; that and the proximity. of the statue.”
He turned suddenly to Mrs. Harden, whose attire now had been augmented by a huge shawl,
“Did you recognize this man Wilcox, Mrs. Harden?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, I did! He’s the man upstairs they call Pomeroy!”
“Pomeroy, eh? It had to be either Pomeroy or Peterson. I wasn’t able to see either of them, and so I couldn’t be sure. You see, Gilly, five years ago, before Mrs. Harden had this flat, this Wilcox-or Pomeroy—or Brown—or whatever his real name is-occupied the room now occupied by our friend Ashenhurst. He roomed with a very decent family named Dickson, but he himself was a clever thief. In time, he was caught and sent to Joliet for a stretch. He had planted some of his loot in this room, however; when, not long ago, he was released on parole, he came back here to get it. He couldn’t get the same room, but he was lucky enough to get a room upstairs, and there he laid his plans to get down here and recover the stuff he had planted.
“I suppose he did a lot of thinking about it, while he was tucked away down in Joliet, and after a while he became—shall we say, a bit obsessed? Once located upstairs—he had a room at the back, I believe—his problem was to get into Ashenhurst’s room some time when Ashenhurst was out. It would seem at first glance to be an easy enough problem, but as it turned out it was a hard one. For one reason and another, he couldn’t gain access, and, finally he hit upon this mad scheme to force Ashenhurst out. I saw D’Arcy today, and he was able to give me some information that fitted in with my preconceived idea of things.
“It was obvious from the first that Jordan’s amazing performance was to draw attention to himself, and after a bit it became equally obvious that he was trying to lure Ashenhurst from the house. But why? So that he, or somebody else, could get into Ashenhurst’s room. I preferred to believe it was somebody else—that Jordan was only a subordinate. This turned, out to be correct, for Jordan now has no idea what Wilcox wanted in this room. It was necessary to find a trace of somebody who for some years had been absent from society, who had occupied this room—at least, this house. D’Arcy remembered a number of men who might answer, among them Wilcox. I looked them all up in the police records, and Wilcox was the man. Under that name he had once been known to live at this address. He had lived here at the time he was sent to Joliet. And when I learned that recently he had been paroled, the whole case was clear. I knew that Bernard Wilcox was somewhere in or near this house, and that Jordan was his agent. I’m hanged if I know whether Wilcox’s scheme to draw Ashenhurst out was a stupid one or a very clever one. Its very madness bothered me, and kept me from guessing the motive earlier than I did.”
D’Arcy, who had listened with many approving nods, now cleared his throat.
“And exactly what did Wilcox want here?” he asked. “Where is this loot, Lavender?”
Lavender rose to his feet and strode over to the corner of the room in which the convict had been at work.
“It is under this splintered board,” he said. “As you represent authority here tonight, suppose you investigate.”
The police captain was beside him at a bound. “By jigger!” he exclaimed, and fell furiously to work.
With a resounding crack the board at length came up—and neatly packed beneath it, in the narrow groove, lay little packages of bills and papers, and a bag of jewels, that cleared the mystery of a dozen unsolved robberies.
When the captain, with many eulogies and handclasps, had departed with his treasure, I turned with a broad grin to Jimmie Lavender, and found him grinning at me. The Hardens, who still remained, looked mystified, and Ashenhurst alternately puffed at his cigar and stroked his battered eye.
“There is one question, Jimmie,” I began; but he took the words away from me.
“That you don’t find an answer to! Neither do I! Gilly, and you, Ashenhurst, and you, too, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Harden—you have seen me turn over two prisoners and a young fortune to the police. You have seen me do things that no doubt appear very clever. Yes, I am a very clever young man! And from first to last there has been one thing I didn’t know, and don’t know now. It has bothered me more than any one detail I have ever encountered; and there seems to be no answer. This case is ended—the men are locked up, or will be shortly—and I know that my reasoning throughout has been accurate and justified. But I’m hanged if I’m not still bothered by that one question. Tell them what it is, Gilly!”
“Why didn’t Wilcox get in during the day when Ashenhurst was at work? Why did he wait until night when he knew Ashenhurst would be at home?”
“There you have it!” agreed Lavender. “Why—exactly why? It was the obvious thing for him to do, the simplest thing to do, one would think. I have no doubt at all that he tried it and failed—but why? In the morning, no doubt, he would be likely to encounter Mrs. Harden on her cleaning-up expedition; but the afternoons were safe. He had a clear field. From at least one o’clock until five, the house would be practically deserted, and this room would be empty as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. Why didn’t he, Ashenhurst?”
A queer clucking noise sounded suddenly from the throat of Mrs. Harden. Her lips were working frantically. It was difficult to say whether she was about to laugh or weep. Lavender gazed upon her with growing suspicion.
“Why, why—” she stammered, “the fact is, Mr. Ashenhurst—I didn’t think there would be any harm in it. I’m getting a bit old—and your bed is the best in the house, you know! I was sure you wouldn’t mind—The fact is, Mr. Ashenhurst, I always came in here for a bit of a nap in the afternoon—right after dinner—and slept till