IN THE PARROT'S CAGE

FOR some minutes after he had brought his interview with Miss Chalmers to a close Barry Odell tramped back and forth across the library-floor deep in thought. It was patent that the young woman had lied when she mentioned a hotel as her proposed destination that morning; yet there had been truth and a ring of desperation in her tone when she defied her aunt and declared that she had no intention of going near any of their friends. If Samuel Titheredge's tale of her infatuation for Farley Drew were based on fact it might have been her intention to go to him; but the detective knew that her reception had she done so would have meant a sad awakening for her.

Farley Drew might have been quite willing to marry a young girl of assured social position and comparative wealth even in these days of colossal fortunes; but to elope with her when the shadow of murder hung over her home, and notoriety of the most sinister sort loomed close, would have been an entirely different matter. Drew himself was traveling too close to the line just then, as the detective knew, to invite any publicity and place himself even indirectly in the path of the investigation.

He had not yet had an opportunity to examine the letters which he had appropriated from Gene's desk, but he had ​detailed one of his men to keep a sharp look-out on that young gentleman's activities; trail him if he left the house, intercept any letter he might attempt to send, and record a possible telephone message. Perhaps he had already tried to communicate with Drew.

A discreet knock upon the library door interrupted his meditations, and he opened it to find Taylor, another of the men to whom he had assigned a special duty, confronting him.

"Jane told me you had got back, Sergeant, and I thought I had better report to you now if you've got time to hear me.

"Shut the door and fire away, Taylor." Odell seated himself once more. "You searched the servants' rooms first, as I directed?"

"Yes, sir. That butler must have changed from his livery into a plain suit; and Jane says that his derby hat, light overcoat, and a cane with a dog's head on it are missing. Everything is wide open in his room, none of the bureau drawers nor the trunk locked; and he left in such a hurry that he forgot his bank-book, although there is no check-book around."

"Have you the bank-book?"

"Here it is." Taylor handed him a thin tan book and a handful of letters, together with a page or two of papers upon which names and figures were arranged in a sort of chart.

Odell ran his eye down the columns in the bank-book first.

"Humph! He had over two thousand last spring, and his account has fluctuated since like a miniature ​stock-market gone crazy," the detective commented. "He has drawn out two or three hundred at a clip and sometimes put back double the amount on the following day; but he's drawn out more than he has deposited in the long run. According to this, he has less than seven hundred left now."

Taylor grinned.

"Give a look at those papers and you will find the explanation for that, sir. The old bird played the races. The letters are all innocent enough. They are from that sister of his on Staten Island; and there isn't another thing in his room except clothes and a sporting magazine or two."

Odell glanced over a letter, noted that the rest were all in the same writing, and handed them back together with the bank-book and racing-charts.

"Put them back where you found them, Taylor; there's a chance that he will turn up yet of his own accord. Now tell me what you found in the other rooms."

"Nothing in Jane's room or the cook's that would interest you; and there was no grate or fireplace in any of the servants' rooms. Jane has a lot of cheap showy clothes and a stack of letters from a bunch of fellows, but they are all innocent enough. Marcelle has just a few letters written in a foreign language—French, I think—some books the same, and a rosary. She has mighty few clothes; but her room is the cleanest of the lot, and her bank-book shows four thousand dollars, all small deposits at a time and none drawn out. She's a thrifty soul, that Marcelle! I don't quite get this Gerda, though; the lady's maid."

"Why?"

"Well, her trunk and bag are cheap and unmarked but ​new, as though she had just bought them before she came here, Sergeant; and there isn't a letter or scrap of paper in her room. I've been makin' up to Jane to get the dope, like I always do on a case of this kind; and she tells me that Gerda hasn't written a letter nor received one in all the six months she has been here. Now, I ask you, is that usual with servants?" Taylor leaned over the table the better to carry his point. "I've gone through the rooms of many of 'em but this is the first one I ever saw that didn't have a personal thing in it except just clothes and toilet articles all unmarked. The store tabs have even been taken out of the dresses and coats and hats. There's another thing strange about 'em, too; they're all dark and plain but they're fine quality, finer than any ordinary servant would appreciate or pay for; and the toilet articles are real ivory, or I'll eat my hat!"

"Sure you haven't been listening too much to Jane?" Odell looked quizzically at his subordinate. "She's got it in for Gerda and tried to make a mystery of her to me; but I've already interviewed the woman, and although she is a superior sort for a lady's maid her story is straight enough; she gave me a complete account of where she worked before and how she happened to get this place. Lay off her, Taylor; you'll draw a blank there."

It was no part of Odell's plan to have his henchmen get a line on the case and begin to speculate on their own account concerning it; they were there merely to carry out his orders and he would brook no self-appointed assistants as a matter of authority.

"Oh, all right," Taylor responded shortly. "Have it your own way, Sergeant; but if you ask me—"

​"I didn't!" Odell interrupted sharply. "Where did you search next?"

"The young lady, the youngest one, was sitting with her father, so I had a chance to give her room the once over; but there was nothin' doin' there either. She has a coal-grate, but it was clean and polished." Taylor sat back somewhat sulkily in his chair, but he was careful to reply promptly. "Her desk was full of the things a young society girl usually keeps—invitations and theater programs and dance-cards and all that flummery. There were some letters of condolence, too, on the death of her mother and brother, and a bundle tied with a blue ribbon; lot of sentimental kid stuff and all of them signed 'Tad.'"

"I know all about that." Odell cast a glance toward the door. "Anything else?"

"High-brow books and a golf-bag, riding-breeches, and a Red-Cross uniform that's seen a lot of wear." Taylor's good-natured grin reasserted itself. "She must be a regular girl if she is a swell, that Miss Nan. There wasn't a thing locked in her room, either."

"Her room is on the third floor opposite Mr. Chalmers's, isn't it? Did you see Porter?"

"I didn't see him but I heard him." Taylor's grin expanded into a chuckle. "Mr. Gene must have seen him on guard and invited him in, for from what I heard outside the door they were playin' 'rum' together and Porter had about mortgaged his next three months' pay to the young gentleman!"

Odell did not smile. He felt that he had taken Gene's measure to the weak, snobbish soul of him; and if he had ​stooped to fraternize with a plainclothesman there was some ulterior motive behind it. Porter was not easily taken in, but Odell resolved to caution him nevertheless.

"I went down to the second floor, but I couldn't disturb Mr. Lorne of course; and the old lady, Miss Meade, was in her room. Just then Miss Chalmers—Miss Cissie, as Jane calls her—came out like a whirlwind, slammed her door, and went off down the back stairs clicking her heels at every step as if she were mad clear through; and I took a peep into her room!" Taylor threw up both hands. "Lace and ribbons, perfume and powder, and all in a hopeless jumble. It'd take a day to go through it properly; but I steered straight for the only thing I could find locked up, a little drawer in her vanity dresser. The only things I found in it, after I got it open were these notes, a box of cigarettes, a bottle of medicine, and a little round jar of rouge. Looks like the young lady was tryin' to learn to be a sport on the quiet. There was a grate in her room, too; but it was as clean as the one in her sister's. The notes are all in the same handwriting, you see, and all as proper as you please; but this one taken in connection with the bottle of medicine I found in the drawer looks kind of"—Taylor recalled his late rebuke and shrugged. "Oh, well, judge for yourself, sir."

He placed the notes before Odell upon the table and pointed out one of them as he spoke. A glance sufficed to show the detective that they were, as Taylor had said, in the same writing; and that writing was the unmistakable hand of Farley Drew, whose letters to Gene were now reposing in Odell's pocket. He picked up the note indicated and read:

Odell folded the note and put it into his pocket with the others.

"What was that bottle of medicine you found in the drawer, Taylor?" he asked.

"It was labeled 'extract of camomilla,' but I've seen and smelled and tasted chloral before. A fine little habit to start a young girl on! I didn't bring it down to you, but if you want it I'll slip in the first chance I get—"

"No, don't disturb it as long as you're sure of its contents; but get in when the opportunity offers and put back these notes in the drawer. Is that all?"

Taylor hesitated, and his expression changed.

"Well, no, Sergeant. When I came out of that room just a few minutes ago I heard the most unearthly screechin' and chatterin' goin' on behind a closed door across the hall; and then somebody said quite distinctly over and over as if they were bragging about it: 'Nobody knows how strong I am. Nobody knows how strong I am.' It was a queer voice, and I stopped to listen. After it kept that up for a while it changed and began to whimper like a kid fretting. 'Hot,' it repeated again and again. 'Hot. It burns.'

​"I knocked, meaning to ask a fool question as an excuse just to see who was talking, and the same voice called 'come in'; so I opened the door. There, right facin' me was a big parrot's cage with the blame bird in it hangin' upside down first from one foot and then from the other, and twistin' its neck around so as to stare at me. It was a man's room all right, with a bunch of neckties hangin' on a rack by the dresser and a collar-box and military brushes in plain sight. I didn't notice any fireplace or grate. The head of the bed was hidden by the open door, but the foot of it looked smooth; and I never thought anyone was there.

"I started to walk over to the parrot's cage when a high whining voice behind me made me turn in a hurry; and there all curled up in a knot on the bed, as high up on the pillows as he could get, was a hunchback, grinnin' at me with a mean twisted kind of a smile.

"I don't mind tellin' you, Sergeant, that it gave me a turn; for though Jane had said somethin' about young Mr. Chalmers bein' crippled I didn't expect anythin' like that. He's got a face—but wait till you see him. I backed up to the door, apologizin' as well as I could; but he pulled himself up in bed and asked if I was Sergeant Odell. I said 'no,' that I was just one of your men. I could see then that he was only a kid, about seventeen or eighteen, but he looks as old as the world.

"He asked in a kind of a mockin' way if we'd made up our minds yet who the practical joker was that had dropped the picture on his brother and thrown his stepfather downstairs; and when I said 'no' again, he laughed in a shrill cackle like an old woman, and the parrot imitated him. I got out of that room as soon as I could, and I met Jane at ​the foot of the servants' staircase. She told me you were here, and I thought I'd report, as I've finished the job you gave me, all but Miss Meade's room and Mr. Lorne's and Mr. Gene's."

"How about Kelly and Smith?"

Taylor grinned once more.

"Kelly's down in the cellar diggin' in the coal for those tools you told him to find; he's looked everywhere else. Smith's down in the kitchen tryin' out his correspondence-school French on the cook. Gerda wouldn't give him a look!"

"Well, go and cultivate Jane, and see if you can get any dope out of her along the lines I told you this morning. Work on her fears and discount her imagination, and you'll soon have every detail of the past week from her point of view. I'm going now to have a little talk with Randall Chalmers."

As he went slowly up the back stairs Odell mentally listed the data which Taylor's search of the rooms had revealed. The most significant point seemed to be Gerda's strange aloofness not only from the other members of the household but from the world in general, and her efforts to efface all record of the past and render it as difficult as possible for her identity to be traced back farther than the day she had entered the house, as evidenced by her care in removing even the tabs from her clothing.

Yet she had willingly enough volunteered information that morning as to where she had worked previously, and it was improbable that the late Mrs. Lorne would have taken into her service, particularly in such an intimate position ​as that of lady's maid, a woman of whose past record and references she had not satisfied herself.

Leaving the problem for future meditation, Odell walked softly along the hall and paused before Randall Chalmers's door. From behind it there came to him the raucous voice of the parrot raised once more in the same whimpering plaint which Taylor had heard: "Hot. It burns."

He knocked upon the door.

"Come in," a whining voice called irascibly; and the detective entered.

The bed was empty but upon the couch was curled a hunchbacked figure clad in a grotesquely patterned bathrobe. Odell was conscious of a pair of flashing black eyes staring at him from behind a disordered shock of long dark hair, and of thin lips drawn into an indescribable leer. Yet the detective's tones were curiously gentle when he spoke.

"Sorry to intrude upon you, Mr. Chalmers; but I know you'll help me if you can, and when I tire you just tell me to go away. I'm Odell."

He had struck the right note, and his primary object was achieved; for the boy pulled himself up on his pillows with an air of suddenly awakened interest and pushed the hair back from his eyes.

"And what makes you think I can help you?" he demanded bruskly but with the habitual whine temporarily banished from his tones.

"Well, for one thing, you certainly hit the nail on the head last night at dinner, you know." Odell's smile robbed the words of any offensive significance. "Your family were laboring under what we might call a hunch, I suppose; but ​you were the first to realize that it was a feeling of fear and suspense held in common among you all and to give voice to it. I fancy you are rather given to studying the people around you, digging under the surface, for your own amusement perhaps; and that's why I've come to you."

"Amusement? Good Lord, do you think it's amusing to find out that your family are a pack of hypocritical—". The boy broke off suddenly, his thin, sallow, claw-like hands clenched. "I've had nothing else to do but study them, hang it. I know them all backward, like a fellow who's marooned on some desert island with a few books by indifferent authors."

Odell nodded understandingly.

"I know. That's just why I've come to you. I haven't had time to read these books, you see; and I must know their contents quickly or another of them may be permanently closed."

He had continued the boy's metaphor, and the latter lay for some moments staring fixedly at him with no change of expression. Then gradually the sneering smile vanished as if a hand had passed across his lips.

"Another of them?" he repeated. "Gene got off scot-free, and Dad with only his arm and a rib or two out of commission. You must mean—"

"That your fears were well founded? I am afraid so." Odell's tone was studiously callous. "That's the trouble with people when they start murder on a large scale; success makes them too confident, too impatient. These tragic accidents which have occurred under this roof might have passed unsuspected for what they seemed on the surface to be; but they came too close together. The coincidence ​impressed itself upon all your minds; and when you brought matters to a head last night you precipitated the later events."

"Mother and Julian," the boy breathed but without audible emotion; his tone suggested rather a grim confirmation. "So you got it, did you, Sergeant? I've known it all along; and when the rest talked about fate and coincidence I could have laughed at their smug blindness!"

"How did you know?" the detective asked coolly.

"How do you know someone is staring at you in a crowd when your back is turned?" He twisted uneasily upon the couch. "What makes you conscious of another's presence sometimes when they've entered without a sound? I knew it, that's all. Even before Julian's death I was waiting; I have felt as though there was someone else in the house, another personality hiding behind a familiar one—but all this must sound like rot to you."

"By no means." Odell seated himself where he could see every changing expression on that dark, saturnine, strangely old face. "We know, you and I, that there is someone in this household who if not the prime mover in this series of events is at least an accomplice. You can't shut your eyes to that fact."

"I don't want to, Sergeant," the boy retorted grimly. You say that when I brought matters to a head last night I precipitated the attacks upon Gene and Dad. That presupposes the idea that someone at the dinner-table is guilty. It is rather a rotten thing for a fellow to face, but at any cost this damnable business has got to stop! After all, it is only what has been in the back of my head for more than a week. The devil of it is that I can't see any motive, nor, ​well as I think I know the family and small as my regard is for most of them, could I believe any one of them capable of conceiving and carrying out such a scheme.

"Gene is too weak and cowardly for one—you see I am perfectly frank with you. The girls are out of it, I'm sure; Nan's only a serious-minded kid, and Cissie is a selfish, calculating little beast, but there is nothing of the potential murderess in her make-up. Aunt Effie is afraid of her own shadow, and she wouldn't hurt a mouse; while as for Dad—well, he worshiped mother, and her death nearly killed him; so if all these accidents were the work of one person that lets him out. Moreover, he wouldn't have deliberately thrown himself downstairs to avert a suspicion which didn't even exist; nor did he have an opportunity last night, as far as I can learn, to tamper with that top step. Old Sam Titheredge stayed overnight and shared his room."

There was something—a touch of cynicism, the shadow of a sneer—in the boy's tone which made Odell scan his face more closely, but he merely asked:

"And the servants?"

"Peters is a pompous old fool, and I think he has only beaten it because he is scared stiff; Marcelle is stupid and shrewd at the same time, like so many of the peasant class in France, but she's loyal and crazy about all of us. Jane is a blockhead; and Gerda—well, what do you think of Gerda yourself, Sergeant?"

A suggestion of that significant cunning smile played once more about his bloodless lips as he put the question; and the detective replied noncommittally:

"She appears to be a very superior sort of maid."

The boy chuckled dryly.

​"Cagey, aren't you? Not that I blame you; I suppose I'm under suspicion myself along with the rest. And the opinions I've expressed to you of my family aren't exactly dutiful; are they? The fact is that I have no more use for any of them than they have for me, and plain speaking is one of the few indulgences left to me. Aunt Effie is the only one who hasn't treated me ever since I can remember as though I were some sort of blight on the family. Not that I'm looking for sympathy." The black eyes flashed. "I'm not trying to make out a brief for myself, Sergeant; but I wouldn't take the trouble to put any of them out of the way."

Despite the callous words Odell felt a certain sympathy for the pitiful, repulsive creature lying there; for beneath the bitter contempt he read the underlying resentment of the boy's lonely, proud spirit. Warped though his mentality might be by constant brooding over his infirmity, there had been a ring of sincerity im his tone, and the detective responded quickly:

"I do not think that you would. But about Gerda; your mother was quite satisfied with her services, was she not? Liked her, in fact?"

"I suppose so or she would not have kept her along. What's the idea, Sergeant? Think her a bit above her place? She may be; but if she has any ulterior motive in being here, you can take it from me it is not for the purpose of exterminating us."

Could he have spoken from knowledge? Was there a mystery within a mystery in this strange household? In the presence of this weirdly precocious lad the detective experienced again that same sense of bafflement which had ​attacked him more than once since he took hold of the case, as if a door had suddenly been shut in his face.

Rannie had turned his head away and closed his eyes as if to indicate that as far as he was concerned the interview was over, and Odell rose.

"Well, I won't bother you any more now; and I'll see that my men do not. I understand that one of them blundered in a while ago."

"No. Old Socks here, short for Socrates, you know, invited him in. Didn't you, old boy?"

He nodded toward the parrot's cage, and the bird still hanging upside down ruffled its feathers and remarked dolorously:

"It burns."

"What is he talking about?" Odell walked over to the cage and poked a tentative finger between the bars.

"Look out, he'll give you a nasty nip," Rannie warned. "He doesn't like strangers—well, what do you know about that?"

The parrot had hooded his eyes in speculative fashion, shifted his feet, and finally sidled over and presented his head to be scratched. For a full minute Odell stood there with his back to the couch, his eyes traveling swiftly over the cage and its inmate. Then he turned and nodding casually to Rannie started for the door.

"Wise old bird," he commented.

"You'll drop in and let me know how you get on?" the boy asked almost eagerly.

Odell promised, and closing the door softly behind him he went downstairs. The last two minutes in the invalid's room had served to dash to chaos all his previous ​calculations, vague though they had been; and the fog of mystery which encompassed him seemed to have deepened to a solid, impenetrable wall.

It was the parrot which had furnished him with the last and most conflicting clue. Neither the bird's whimpering plaint nor its suspended position in the cage was without reason. On the detective's first approach to the bird he had observed that its upturned feet were both badly blistered. The rods upon which it habitually stood had not been replaced in their supports, but lay on a table close by; and the sliding tray which formed the bottom of the cage was charred black.

His first thought was that the boy in sheer love of cruelty might have been torturing his pet, but a closer inspection had revealed amidst the gravel with which the tray had been lightly sprinkled a few blackened slivers of wood.

Gene Chalmers had told the truth. The sawdust had not been burned in his grate but in the tray from the parrot's cage, and the ashes later placed where they were found.