CHAPTER VI
ALL THE YOUNG PEOPLE
BRENT smiled openly and Graham discreetly at Bernard’s expense. Landis contented himself with an inquiring glance toward his imperturbable friend.
Here was the type of case to arouse every man-hunting instinct in the subtle old detective. Bernard was subtle, far more subtle than his brusque, sometimes overbearing methods seemed to indicate. Of this he had shown ample evidence in the Carson case. No doubt he would give proof of it in this case as well. In the meantime, Landis proposed to give him full share of the road, go his own pace and get there first if he could.
Entirely unruffled, Bernard had not shifted his grim, speculative regard from Miss Mount’s face. She returned it unsmiling, as composed as he.
“Well, Miss Mount,” he growled at last, “that covers what happened, I think. We’re much obliged to you. Now perhaps we ought to have a clear idea of the plan of the house. Suppose you describe the general plan of it.”
“Certainly!” Miss Mount paused a moment to arrange her data. “I’ll describe the main building first. On this floor, the rooms from front to back on the left of the front door are the drawing-room, the dining-room, the butler’s pantry, the kitchen and beyond that a wide back porch.
“From front to back in the center there is the vestibule, the main hall, the main staircase, the back hall which opens upon the same rear porch and the back stairs down to the cellar and up to the second floor.
“On this side of the house from front to back, we have the reception-room where Mr. Harrison was killed, then this library, then the hall beyond the armor there and then the billiard-room. Beyond that lies the sunken garden.
“The plan of the wing is the same on all three floors; a suite of two bedrooms and a bath facing the front of the house and a similar suite facing the rear. The suites are separated by a long hall. At the end of the wing toward the rear, a servants’ staircase and fire escape runs from the ground floor to the third floor. On the second and third floors there is a window at the end of the hall. On this floor there is a door leading out to the garage.”
“Are any of the wing bedrooms occupied on this floor?” inquired Landis.
“Mr. Allen occupies the rear bedroom toward the end of the hall on the ground floor and has the use of the adjoining bath this side of it. Mr. Russell occupies the far front bedroom and uses the adjoining bath. The front and rear bedrooms next the main building are unoccupied.”
Bernard got to his feet and glanced at Landis.
“Believe I’ll have a look at the wing again and get that clear,” he said. “Like to come?”
The others, including Miss Mount, rose to their feet. Landis and Graham prepared to follow Bernard and Miss Mount. Brent glanced at the big desk and moved toward it.
“I’ll stay here,” he said, “and look over Mr. Harrison’s papers. That is my duty as executor—”
“That’s perfectly all right, Mr. Brent,” Landis cut in courteously. “Only please don’t change the position of anything or remove anything until we have examined the desk. There may be something there that will help us.”
“Very well,” retorted Brent testily. “I shall merely arrange the papers—”
Landis shook his head, smiling. “Just what I don’t want you to do, Mr. Brent! But we’ll look the desk over now. Then you may do as you please.”
He caught Bernard’s eye. With a word of apology to Miss Mount, Bernard left her and walked past the ruffled lawyer to the desk, which Landis had already approached.
Each taking an end, they examined the papers and documents on the polished surface and studied the contents of the drawers, while Brent looked on in high dudgeon. They found a few unanswered business letters on top of the desk, drawers full of answered letters in files—and innumerable prospectuses. One drawer contained pipes, tobacco and cigars; another, odds and ends of personal possessions. The center drawer held a huge checkbook and nothing else.
“Who typed his letters for him since he retired?” Bernard demanded suddenly.
Miss Mount smiled a wintry smile.
“Most of his correspondence consisted of writing checks and enclosing them in envelopes,” she said. “He wrote very briefly and in long hand, as a rule. When there was a longer letter or a document to be written, I typed it for him.”
“All right,” nodded Bernard. “Now for the wing.”
“There you are, Mr. Brent,” Landis smiled. “Sorry to delay you!”
Brent became genial.
“Not at all, Mr. Landis! One can only admire a man for doing his duty!” He drew Harrison’s chair to the desk and sat down.
“Thanks,” replied Landis as he joined the others. They passed into the front hall, leaving Brent drumming with his fingers on the edge of the teakwood monstrosity, his eyes lowered.
Miss Mount led the way toward the swing door at the back of the hall. Bernard fell behind the others and waited for Landis to join him, then jerked his head toward the library door. Landis turned and moved back the way he had come, his feet making no sound on the deep hall carpet. When he reached the doorway he took one quick glance around the edge of it. Brent was going methodically through the file of unanswered letters.
Smiling at his own expense, Landis retraced his steps and overtook the others in the billiard-room, where Russell and Allen were still playing a leisurely game.
They passed through the arch into the hall of the wing. Here Bernard turned to Miss Mount.
“Are these near bedrooms unlocked?” he demanded.
“Certainly. Do you wish to inspect them?”
“Wouldn’t mind,” grunted Bernard.
Miss Mount opened the nearest door on their left and pressed the switch just inside. Bernard crossed a corner of the lighted room to the bathroom door, tried it and found it locked, the key under his hand. He turned this and the door opened. The bathroom, used by Allen, was cluttered with discarded underwear and damp towels.
Bernard relocked the door, switched out the light and crossed the hall, where he found the corresponding bathroom door locked on the near side and unbolted on the bathroom side. Russell’s bathroom, also obviously used that evening, was in worse confusion than the other.
Leaving these rooms, as they had found them, and led by Bernard, they retraced their steps to the front hall. Here the older detective turned to Landis.
“If you agree and Miss Mount will be so kind,” he said, “I’d like to get a line on the second floor and the occupants of the bedrooms up there.”
Catching an inconspicuous nod of assent from Landis, Bernard started up the main staircase without waiting for Miss Mount’s views on the subject. With an air of stern determination she mounted rapidly in pursuit, while Landis and Graham brought up the rear.
Half-way up, Miss Mount addressed Bernard’s broad back in a tone electric with displeasure.
“Do you propose to intrude on Mr. Harrison’s bereaved daughters?” she demanded.
“Certainly, if it seems necessary!”
Near the top, the main staircase divided left and right at a landing backed with carved paneling and guarded by a rail above. Beyond this, across the head of the stairs, ran a wide hall similar to the one across the back of the library below. This upper hall, however, extended a little farther to the left. On the right, where it reached the house wall, it was blank like the hall beneath. But on this floor, immediately above the door into the billiard-room, a narrower hall extended back to the rear of the main building. Out of it on the right opened an archway into the hall of the wing, similar to and directly over the archway from the billiard-room. These two second-floor halls formed an “L” in the angle of which were the bedroom and bath assigned to Joel Harrison. Both rooms were exactly over the billiard-room.
The branching stairs from the landing opened upon two balconies running to the front of the house along both sides of the long well of the main hall.
On the landing Bernard stopped and eyed Miss Mount.
“I’d be obliged if you’d describe this floor as you described the one below,” he told her gruffly. “You might mention the occupants of the various rooms as you go along.”
Landis and Graham exchanged expectant glances. But Miss Mount had her formidable temper well in leash. She turned to face the front of the house and pointed to the left.
“That front bedroom over the reception-room is the one Mr. Harrison occupied,” she explained curtly. “Next to it comes Mr. Harrison’s bathroom and the bedroom formerly used by Mrs. Harrison. They are both over the library of course. Mrs. Harrison’s room is unoccupied at present.
“On the right, from front to rear, are Miss Isabelle’s room, then her bath, then a guest room, then the linen room, then another guest room, a bathroom and Miss Anita’s room over the kitchen.”
Miss Mount turned as she indicated these rooms until she was facing the back of the house.
“Across the back from left to right,” she continued, “are the enclosed back stairs, Mr. Joel’s bedroom and his bath. The last door on the left-hand side of the house toward the rear is, of course, that of Miss Anita’s room. The door at the back there, close to it, opens into the back hall and the back stairs, up and down. This door in the middle at the back is that of Mr. Joel’s room. His bathroom to the right has no outlet other than through his bedroom.”
“Very clearly expressed,” said Bernard. “Now, does Anita’s room open into the back hall as well as into this one across the head of the stairs?”
“No, it does not.”
With a nod, Bernard mounted the right-hand flight, crossed a corner of the lateral hall and entered the narrower hall which led to the wing. In the archway he paused.
“As I understand it,” he said, “there are four bedrooms and two baths on this floor of the wing. Mr. and Mrs. Graham have the rear bedrooms and the bath between. You occupy the near front room opposite that of Mr. Graham?”
“That is correct.”
“And have, presumably, the exclusive use of the front bathroom adjoining your room?”
“I have.”
“Then the far front bedroom is unoccupied?”
“No one sleeps there, Mr. Bernard. The room has been turned into a sort of play—a sort of den for Mr. Joel Harrison. He keeps his stamp collection and his personal treasures there and potters about with his experiments.”
“Chemical experiments?”
“Oh, no. He has a workbench in there and sometimes makes things. At the moment his interest is in bows and arrows.”
“Oh!” said Bernard.
“Joel Harrison,” observed Miss Mount evenly, “is as harmless as a sweet-tempered child.”
“Thank you!” Bernard walked down the hall and tried the door of Joel Harrison’s den. It was locked. “I suppose there’s another door through your bathroom?” he asked. “I’d like to see the den.”
“You may come through my bedroom if you wish,” said Miss Mount patiently. “The door from my bathroom to the den is locked on my side, as Mr. Joel has a bathroom of his own adjoining his bedroom.” She opened her door for them.
Her room had an air of spartan simplicity. In the near right-hand corner stood a chest of drawers. Then came a big four-poster, a bedside table and in the right front corner an old easy-chair. Between the two windows stood a small table with a book or two and a vase of field flowers. In the left front corner stood an old typewriter desk of the type in which the machine sinks down to leave a flat top. It was down now and the surface bore a blotting-pad, ink-well, pens and stationery. Next to it came the door to the bathroom, then a dressing table and then, in the near left corner, a smaller door which opened into a clothes-closet.
Miss Mount led them to the bathroom door, passed through and unlocked the door beyond into darkness. In a moment three overhead lights and a hanging lamp with a green glass shade showed them a room packed almost everywhere with a collection of possessions in the wildest disorder. The exception was the workbench against the far wall, at and about which a place had been cleared. The hanging lamp shone down upon this, revealing rows of large and small tools stuck anyhow into racks along the wall, arrows and a bow dumped on the flat surface and in a vise a single unfletched arrow. Near the pile of arrows lay an old pair of soft leather gloves, several finger guards and an arm guard.
On chairs and tables about the rest of the room lay stamp albums and books on stamp collecting; thousands of stamps in envelopes and in heaps; sheets of loose manuscript written in a round, childish hand; boomerangs; an old box-kite; electrical parts of all sorts; clockwork; cross-bows, light and heavy; long bows and short bows, in one piece and spliced; also many lengths and types of arrows.
There were countless other articles, relics of previous fads impossible to catalogue in a brief inspection. If ever the disorder of a room expressed the pathetic, struggling disorder of a man’s mind, this one did.
Landis and Bernard and Graham, too, looked soberly about the silent room. After a moment Bernard spoke for all three.
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s all.”
They returned in silence to the head of the main staircase. Here Landis addressed Miss Mount, who had preserved a stony silence since they left her room.
“We may as well be thorough,” he said. “What about the third floor? Do the servants sleep up there?”
“Yes, all of them. Do you wish to see it?”
“Where are the servants now, Miss Mount?”
“They are all waiting in the kitchen in case you wish to question them.”
“Anything else up there of interest?”
“There is a big play-room where the girls still go sometimes. They were shooting up there on Tuesday, I believe, the day it rained.”
“The girls were?” inquired Bernard.
“All the young people, I believe.”
“I think I’d like to see the third floor, too,” said Landis cheerfully.