Drury Lane’s Last Case (30 page)

“Isn't it right?” asked Patience fretfully.

But Lane was not watching her lips; he seemed intent on the frowsy contour of a curiously formed cloud.

“There's another thing,” said Rowe crisply. “There's that monocle we found in the hall of the house. That's pretty good evidence that Sedlar was in the house. Was he the victim or the murderer? Off-hand it would seem he was the victim. The corpse corresponded to his specific description.…”

“Unless,” said Patience, “the corpse was Dr. Ales's.”

“But who set the bomb?” demanded the Inspector.

Quacey came pattering up before a mahogany-faced man in uniform.

“You Inspector Thumm?” demanded the stranger.

“Yeah.”

“I'm from Chief Bolling of Tarrytown.”

“Oh, yes! I called him this morning to tell him I'd come back.”

“Well, he said to tell you people that a man's been found wandering on the road between Irvington and Tarrytown sort of dazed. Looks nigh starved, too. Bum physical condition. Half-dotty. Won't tell his name but keeps mumbling something about a blue hat.”

“Blue hat!”

“Yep. They've taken him to the hospital in Tarrytown. If you want to see him, the Chief says, hop to it.”

They found Bolling striding hugely up and down in the waiting-room of the hospital. He shook Thumm's hand heartily. “Haven't seen
you
for a good many years, Inspector! Well, this is just getting messier day by day. Want to see him?”

“You bet. Who is he?”

“Search me. They're just getting him out of it now. He's a husky old boy, but he's so thin you can see his ribs. Starved.”

They followed Bolling along the corridor with mounting excitement.

Bolling opened the door of a private room. A middle-aged man lay very still on the hospital bed. A heap of tattered dirty clothing lay on a chair nearby. His face was emaciated, deeply lined and covered with a ragged short beard; and his eyes were open, staring at the wall.

Inspector Thumm's jaw dropped. “Donoghue!” he roared.

“Is that the Irishman who disappeared?” asked Bolling eagerly.

Mr. Drury Lane quietly closed the door. He approached the bed and looked down upon the old Irishman. The eyes suddenly filled with pain, and the head turned slowly. They met Lane's gaze blankly, shifted to the Inspector's face.… Recognition sparked at once. He licked his lips. “Inspector,” he whispered.

“The same,” said Thumm heartily, approaching the bed. “Well, you cantankerous old Mick, you've led us one hell of a chase. Where've you been? What happened to you?”

A slight flush suffused the thin cheeks. Donoghue croaked once before he could find his voice. “It's—it's a long story.” And he tried to grin. “They've been feedin' me here through a dum' pipe, bedad! I'd give me right arm for a juicy steak. How—how'd ye find me, Chief?”

“We've been looking for you since you took that runout powder, Donoghue. Feel strong enough to talk?”

“Sure, an' it'll be a pleasure.” Donoghue rubbed his bearded cheeks and then in a steadily strengthening voice told a fantastic story:

On the afternoon when the Indiana party had visited the Britannic Museum, he had noticed a tall thin moustached man carrying a peculiar blue soft hat slipping out of the building with something under his arm—it looked like a book. On the alert always for thieves, Donoghue had not had time to give the alarm but had dashed after the man. His quarry had jumped into a cab, and Donoghue had trailed him in another. The chase had led by devious means of transportation out of the city to a ramshackle wooden house about a mile from the main highway between Tarrytown and Irvington. He had hidden in the shrubbery while an old man in black clothes left the house; and had then mounted the porch. A name-plate under the bell had told him that this was the house of a Dr. Ales. He had rung the bell and the man himself had come to the door. Donoghue recognized him despite the fact that he had discarded his hat and no longer wore the bushy grey moustache. The moustache, then, had been a disguise! Donoghue had been in a quandary. He had no proof that the man was a thief; perhaps it had been his imagination. Yet the absence of the moustache was promising.… Having no authority to make an arrest, he had permitted himself to be courteously invited into the house. He was ushered into a study lined with books. Taking the bull by the horns, Donoghue had then accused his host of having stolen a book from the museum.

“He was a mild divil,” said Donoghue, his eyes bright. “Admitted th' charge! Then he says he'll make full restitootion, says he'll pay for it an' all that blarney. I took out me dickey-pipe an' begun to smoke, thinkin' I'll kid him along till I can git to a 'phone an' sick the nearest police on to him. But I was nervous an' I broke me pipe on the floor. So he shows me out of th' house, smooth as ye please, an' I'm walkin' down that lane thinkin' hard, when all of a suddint somethin' cracks down on th' top of me shkull an' that's all I know for a long, long time.”

When he awakened, he found himself bound and gagged in a dark room. He had thought at the time that Dr. Ales had followed and attacked him; he had held to this theory all along until to-day, when on making his escape he had discovered that his prison had not been Dr. Ales's house but a totally different house which he had never seen before.

“You're sure of that? But then, sure. The Ales house went up,” muttered the Inspector. “Go on, Donoghue.”

“I'd no idee how long I'd been trussed up like a dum' pig,” continued the resurrected Irishman comfortably. “What's t'day? Well, it makes no diff'rence. I was fed oncet a day by a masked man with a gun.”

“Was it Dr. Ales?” cried Patience.

“No, mum, that I can't say. Th' light was niver good. But his voice was kind of the same—spoke like a blinkin' Britisher, he did, an' well I know that accent, me havin' seen an' heard many of thim in the ould country. Divil th' day if he didn't go an' threaten me time after time with torture, bedad!”

“Torture?” gasped Patience.

“Th' very same, miss. On'y threaten; niver did it. He wanted me to tell him ‘where is th' documint.'” Donoghue chuckled. “So I says: ‘Are ye daft?' an' he threatens me some more.
I
didn't know what he meant by documint, ye see.”

“Strange,” said Rowe.

“Some days he didn't feed me a-tall,” complained Donoghue. “Cripes, for a leg o' mutton!” He licked his lips and continued the odd tale. At one time—long ago, he said, although he could not place the exact date or period since he had lost all track of time—he had heard a commotion somewhere in the building. He heard the sound of a heavy body being dragged and apparently dumped in a room near his; and then a man's groans. A few moments later he heard the faint slam of a door. He attempted to communicate by signal with his neighbour, whom he took to be a fellow-prisoner, but bound and gagged as he himself was, his attempt was unsuccessful. For the past three days Donoghue had not been fed, nor had he seen his masked captor. This morning, after days of agonizing effort, he had managed to rid himself of his bonds; he had forced the lock on his door and found himself in a dark, dirty, smelly hall. He listened, but the house seemed deserted. He had tried to locate the room which held his companion prisoner, but all doors were locked and he could get no reply to his rappings. Weak himself, afraid his captor might return, he had crept out of the house and made his escape.

“Do you think,” said Inspector Thumm fiercely, “you could find that dump again, Donoghue?”

“Sure, an' I'll niver forgit it.”

“Just a moment,” protested a white-clad young man near the door. “This man is still very weak. I strongly advise against his moving.”

“Advise an' be dum'ed to ye!” shouted Donoghue, attempting to sit up in bed. Then he sank back with a groan. “I ain't as spry as I used to be. Give me another swig o' your soup, Doc, and I'll lead the rescuin' party. Whisht, Inspector, 'tis like ould times!”

At Donoghue's direction Lane's car, followed by Bolling with a squad of men in another, proceeded to the point where he had been found wandering by a trooper earlier in the day. Thumm assisted him from the limousine, and the doughty old Irishman stood squinting up the road.

“This way,” he said finally, and the two men got back into the car. Dromio drove slowly. Not a hundred yards away Donoghue shouted something, and Dromio turned the car into a narrow drive. It was a side-road no more than a mile from the lane which led to the Ales house.

The two cars proceeded cautiously. Three cottages slipped by, set far back from the road, when Donoghue suddenly cried out “There!”

It was a small old house, no more than a shack, as lonely and dilapidated as an archæological exhibit. There was no sign of life; the place was boarded up and looked as if it had not been occupied for years.

Bolling's men made short shrift of the feeble barriers. An old log served as a battering-ram and the front door crumpled in like the shell of a rotten nut. They swarmed through the house, guns drawn. It was empty, hollow, dirty, and, except for the room in which Donoghue had been kept prisoner, unfurnished. They crashed in door after door. And finally they came upon a black sour-smelling cubicle provided with a cot, a basin, and a chair. Upon the cot lay the bound body of a man.

He was unconscious.

Bolling's men carried him out into the sunlight. They all stared at the man's drawn yellowed face. The same question was mirrored in all their eyes. Was this victim of foul air and starvation Hamnet or William Sedlar? For that he was one or the other they could not doubt.

Donoghue, his work done, uttered a faint groan and collapsed in the Inspector's arms. An ambulance which had trailed the two cars sped up, and Donoghue was deposited inside. An interne bent over the limp figure of the unconscious Englishman.

“He's just fainted. Tight bonds, lack of food, rotten air—general debilitation. He'll come around with a little attention.”

The thin cheeks were covered with a silky blond stubble. The young doctor applied restoratives and the man's eyes fluttered open. But they were dazed, and he returned blank stares to the Inspector's shouted questions. Then he closed his eyes again.

“All right,” grumbled Bolling. “Take 'em both to the hospital. We'll talk to this bird to-morrow.”

As the ambulance shot away, a car drove up and a hatless young man jumped out. He was, it proved, a reporter drawn to the scene by that mysterious under-current of rumour which seems to serve the gentlemen of the Press as a happy vehicle. Bolling and Thumm were overwhelmed with questions. Despite all of Lane's frantic signs the news came out: all they knew about Dr. Ales, the “fugitive from French justice,” the dramatic story of Donoghue, the confusion of identities concerning the Sedlar twins.… The young man dashed away grinning with triumph.

“That,” said Lane coldly, “was an error of judgment, Inspector.”

Thumm blushed. At this moment a man came up to Bolling and reported failure to turn up the slightest clue to the identity of the two prisoners' captor despite a thorough search of the house.

“I called Tarrytown, too,” he reported, “and located the owner of this property. He didn't even know anybody was living here. He says it's been ‘vacant' for three years.”

The two parties clambered into their respective automobiles in silence. It was a full ten minutes later that Gordon Rowe said wearily: “Talk about puzzles!”

27

The 300-Year-Old Crime

“The first thing we want to settle,” said Inspector Thumm grimly, “is who you are.” They were congregated about the Englishman's bed the next morning in the Tarrytown hospital. A call from the House Physician had informed them that the patient was in good enough condition to talk; careful nourishment, sedatives, and a sound night's sleep had worked wonders with him. He had been shaved, and there was a slight flush on his flat cheeks, and his eyes were remote and intelligent. They had entered the room to find the man propped in bed, a profusion of morning newspapers strewn on the coverlet talking amiably to Donoghue in the next bed.

The Englishman's sandy brows lifted. “Was there any doubt? I'm afraid I don't understand.” He looked keenly from one to another of them, as if weighing them in some secret balance of his own. The voice was weak, but had a familiar timbre. “I am Dr. Hamnet Sedlar.”

“Ah,” said Lane. “This will be excellent news for Choate.”

“Choate? Oh, yes, Dr. Choate! He must have been worried,” said the Englishman smoothly. “Horrible time! Your friend Donoghue here thought I was his quarry of the blue hat. Ha, ha! The resemblance is—was startling.” He sobered. “He was my twin brother, y'know.”

“Then you do know he's dead?” cried Patience. Lane glanced once at the Inspector, and the Inspector grew very red.

“I've been besieged by reporters all morning. And then these newspapers——They told me everything. From the Medical Examiner's description of the corpse, it must have been my brother William. He used the pseudonym Dr. Ales, y'know, in his professional writing.”

“Hmm,” said Thumm. “Look here, Dr. Sedlar. It looks very much as if this case is solved. But what the solution is I'm blamed if I know. We've learned, as we told you, some suspicious things about you—and now about your brother—and we want the truth. If your brother's dead there's no longer any reason to keep quiet.”

Dr. Sedlar sighed. “I suppose that's so. Very well, I shall tell you everything.” He closed his eyes; his voice was very feeble. “You and the papers have made a great point about my untruth concerning the date of my arrival in this country. The fact is that I came here in secret before my announced arrival in an attempt to avert a dishonourable act. My brother William's act.” He stopped; no one spoke. He opened his eyes. “There are too many people here,” he said abruptly.