C. N. Williamson & A. N. Williamson: 30+ Murder Mysteries & Adventure Novels (Illustrated). Charles Norris Williamson
successful in establishing the fact all along his route that Harvey Farnham had not only returned in safety to America, but had shown himself at home. So much having been gained, Wildred must perforce be relieved of all suspicion of the crime which I had tried to fasten upon him, and this being the case, I assured myself that it was Wildred's hand only which had contrived this intricate and ingenious plot. This man, disguised as Farnham, was in Wildred's pay, there could be no doubt of that, and had in all probability been engaged for the purpose he was now carrying out before the murder had taken place.
I tried as I walked to put myself in the place of the schemers, and thus hew out, through an intimate mental process, some idea as to how the loose ends of the mystery were to be disposed of.
"If I were that fellow," I said to myself at last, "I should think it was about time to disappear. I should feel sure I'd come to the end of my tether, and that somehow or other Harvey Farnham, as represented by me, had got to be unostentatiously wiped out."
Farnham, however, was too rich and important a man in the western states of his own country to disappear conveniently and with impunity. There would be a hue and cry, and suspicious facts might somehow be brought to light. The only safe way, I decided, would be for the alleged Harvey Farnham to kill himself; but this it did not appear very likely that the most dazzling bribe could induce him to do. He meant to find some more comfortable way out of the hole into which he had so deliberately crept than the way of suicide, and it began to seem that the only method by which I could prove my case would be by finding out what that way was to be.
At present, unless I could have the fellow arrested, and such disguise as he might wear dragged off, I should have great difficulty in obtaining credence of my story. The incidents were all so remarkable that they must be certified with the best of evidence, and such evidence as I wanted could only be forthcoming from Bennett, or someone else in Denver who knew Farnham equally well.
What I must do, I thought, would be to keep on the man's track, and never for an hour lose sight of him. I must do this without arousing any suspicion on his part as to my motives until the last moment, when I should be prepared to accuse him.
This conclusion naturally reminded me that at the very moment it was reached I had virtually lost sight of my quarry, and that already I might have missed my chance. Accordingly, I hurried back to the Santa Anna Hotel, and though it was then too late to wire Bennett, I determined to do so early the next morning. I would request him to come on to San Francisco at once on a matter of extreme importance, and–his mind being already disturbed concerning his employer–he would lose no time in obeying. In Bennett, if I could fairly corner the bogus Farnham, I should have the most valuable witness in the world.
My first question was as to whether Mr. Farnham were in the hotel. He had not yet returned from a call which he had gone to make after dinner, and I sat down, therefore, in the corridor inside the front doors, through which he would have to pass on entering.
I pretended to be absorbed in a local paper, but in reality my thoughts were a maelstrom. Suppose he had already escaped me!
At half-past eleven, however, he came in. I did not seem to lift my eyes from the pages before them. He would have to go directly by me on his way upstairs; time enough to appear to observe him then.
"Cablegram for you, Mr. Farnham," said the clerk of the hotel.
"Ah!" The exclamation was one of surprise. He had not, then, been expecting the message.
I could not resist looking up after all to watch him in the act of reading it, and as I did so my eyes caught a gleam from his, under the green shade, as they turned to my face with an expression that was like a hunted animal's. In the instant I was as positive as though he had told me in so many words that the cablegram he had received was from Carson Wildred, and intimately concerned me. Probably it said, "If a man named Noel Stanton turns up, he is an enemy–beware of him."
I regretted immediately that I had given him my real name when we met at dinner, for, warned now by Wildred, he would be ever on his guard. He was seized with a creditable fit of coughing as he passed me, and having growled out something about being "deuced tired, and sleeping like a log," he went upstairs.
I followed him in time to see him enter his own room, which was only half a dozen doors from mine, and to hear him noisily lock the door. It occurred to me that he was desirous to have me know that he had locked it, and I wondered if already he had begun to suspect my motive.
Chapter XXIV.
Fire!
I went to bed determined not to sleep, but to keep my ears open for any sound in the passage outside. Luckily there was a creaky board on which he had stepped a few minutes ago. If he attempted to go away during the night he would very possibly step on it again. But I was exceedingly tired after my long journey. Before I had been in bed an hour I was dreaming so vividly a pursuit of my quarry through the streets of San Francisco, that I fully believed I had waked, got up, and gone out after him.
In the end the dream seemed to change. The pretender had boarded a railway train, and I was with the engine-driver of another, following at a dare-devil speed. The place was reeking hot. In my dream I choked in the smoke which flew into my face, and was dazzled with the red glare of the fire, on which the engine-driver was piling great pieces of fat bacon. As we flew along the rails the locomotive swayed from side to side, and I could hear a loud rattling of wheels and of window glass.
Suddenly a puff of smoke seemed on the very point of stifling me, and I awoke to find myself sitting up in bed and gasping for breath.
I had not dreamed the rattling of glass, nor the jarring sensation, nor yet the smoke and heat and lurid light. The walls shook with a dull vibration, and the window-panes were like castanets. Through the glass transom over the door I could see a shimmering, ruddy glow that rose and fell, and was brightened by bursting sparks and little darting tongues of yellow flame. Apart from this one lurid spot all was thickly curtained into darkness by a heavy pall of smoke.
Had I lain for a few moments longer I must have suffocated in my sleep. Even as it was, my brain felt dull and stupid, and I could scarcely collect my senses.
Choking and coughing, tears running from my eyes that smarted with the pungent wood smoke, I sprang out of bed, and then sat down again with a slight exclamation, drawing up my feet. The floor was so hot that the touch of it, even for an instant, had almost scorched my skin.
Close at hand were my boots. I drew them on and then fumbled about for one or two articles of clothing. The wild light that rushed past the transom told me that escape by way of the passage was already cut off, and even as I looked a small, curling tress of flame blew in through the crack between the door and the worn sill.
The window was less easy to find. As I felt for it through the veil of smoke strange conjectures stole into my brain. What if this were the plan of Carson Wildred's wily accomplice for getting safely rid of me?
I had no intention of being got rid of thus easily, however. I found the window and opened the lower sash. With the rush of air from outside my oppressed lungs got relief for a second or two, but the draught drew in the flames that rioted through the hall; the glass in the transom, already cracked, burst with a loud explosive sound, and a torrent of fire and smoke poured in through the aperture.
Had I not leaped on to the window-sill, and without an instant's hesitation let myself swing over, I could not have kept my senses in that raging furnace.
If I had had a room in the main building of the hotel, I should only have had to step on to a verandah outside my window, but in this wing (which I had chosen as my place of residence because I had inhabited it before) there was nothing of the sort, and I had now the space of about ten seconds to decide whether to jump or have my hands burnt off my wrists.
In any case the decision could not have been a difficult one, but, as it happened, the need was rendered the more imperative by the