Chapter III: Confirmatory Evidence

It was eleven o’clock when the touring car containing the detectives stopped in front of an attractive wooden residence in a quiet and very reputable section of Fordham.

Nick directed Patsy to accompany him, while Danny waited in the car, and his ring brought an elderly, refined-looking woman to the door, whom Nick at first supposed was one of the boarders.

“I wish to see Mrs. Lord, the landlady,” he informed her.

“I am Mrs. Lord, sir,” was the reply, smiling. “Will you walk in?”

“Yes, thank you. I wish to inquire about one of your boarders.”

“One of them!” The woman laughed lightly. “I have only one, sir, and I consented to take her only to slightly increase my limited income. I do not keep what might be more properly termed a boarding house. What Miss Perrot pays me enables me to keep an extra servant, which relieves me of most of the housework. Will you be seated, gentlemen?”

They had followed her into a neatly furnished parlor, and Nick now saw plainly that she was an unassuming and thoroughly honest woman, one upon whom a crafty person could very easily impose. He reasoned, too, that that might be why Pauline Perrot was established there.

“Your boarder is Miss Perrot?” he said inquiringly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is she at home?”

“Oh, no, she never is here at this hour,” said the landlady. “She is employed as a stenographer by a New York banker, Mr. Arthur Gordon. But she now is away on a visit. She will be gone about a week.”

“Gee! that’s sure to be the longest week on record,” thought Patsy.

“When did she go, Mrs. Lord?” Nick inquired.

“She left from her office yesterday, sir, but she sent her trunk away two days ago.”

“Why did she send her trunk in advance?”

“I don’t know, sir. I did not inquire.”

“Did you know Miss Perrot before she came to board here?”

“I did not, sir. She was a stranger.”

“Do you now know anything definite about her?”

“Only what she has told me.”

“I’m afraid that is not very reliable.”

“Dear me! What do you mean?” Mrs. Lord exclaimed apprehensively. “Who are you, sir, that you question me in this way about her?”

“My name is Carter. I am a detective,” Nick now informed her. “Mr. Gordon is mysteriously missing, also a considerable fortune from his office safe. Miss Perrot is suspected of----”

“Not of having robbed Mr. Gordon?” interrupted the landlady incredulously. “Oh, I cannot believe that, sir! She has repeatedly told me that Mr. Gordon was quite likely to marry her.”

“I would not take much stock in what she has told you,” Nick dryly advised. “Nor do I think it probable that she will ever return here.”

“Well, well, you amaze me!”

“Has she been receiving any visitors while here?”

“No, sir, never!” said Mrs. Lord emphatically. “I often have wondered at that. She has no mail, nor appears to have any friends, except Mr. Gordon. He frequently has brought her home from his office, but he never came in.”

“Did she go out evenings?”

“Yes, occasionally. But she always returned at a reasonable hour, and always alone.”

“I wish to inspect her room, Mrs. Lord,” said Nick. “This is a very serious matter, or I would not make the request.”

“If all you have told me is true, sir, I cannot consistently refuse,” was the reply. “I will show you the way.”

Both Nick and Patsy followed her upstairs and into an attractively furnished front chamber.

“Everything is in order, Mr. Carter, but I have deferred sweeping and cleaning the room until the day before I expected Miss Perrot to return,” she said, when they entered.

“We will disturb nothing,” Nick replied. “Has she sent away all of her garments?”

“I cannot say, Mr. Carter. I have not looked.”

“I will do so, then, with your permission,” Nick remarked.

He did not wait for a reply, but at once began a thorough inspection of the room. In the wardrobe closet were some partly worn garments, two shirt waists, a blue woolen skirt, an Eton jacket, and a single pair of button boots on the floor.

Nick examined all of these very carefully, hoping to find some suggestive mark on one of them, or evidence of some significance, but the examination proved entirely futile. They were no different from the garments of a thousand and one other young women.

The drawer of the dressing stand was empty, while the china trays on top contained only a few hairpins, a plated stickpin of no great value, and a few equally insignificant articles.

In one of the bureau drawers, however, Nick found a quantity of underwear, including two pairs of stockings, of all of which he at first made only a cursory examination. He soon noticed one curious fact, however, and remarked to Patsy:

“By Jove, this is strange!”

“What’s that, chief?” questioned Patsy, joining him at the bureau.

“All of this underwear is new,” Nick pointed out. “Not a piece of it has been worn.”

“You’re right, chief.” Patsy peered into the drawer. “That’s plain enough.”

“But why it was left here is not so plain,” said Nick. “A girl going away on a visit usually takes her best garments in preference to those she has worn.”

“That’s right, too, chief,” Patsy agreed. “But she may be well supplied.”

“I’m not at all sure that that explains it,” Nick replied dryly. “What have you there?”

“Fragments of a letter from the waste basket, also the torn envelope in which it came,” said Patsy. “It is written in French.”

“I thought you said, Mrs. Lord, that Miss Perrot has received no letters while here?” said Nick, turning to the waiting landlady. “My assistant has found one in her wastebasket.”

“I meant, sir, that she was not in the habit of receiving letters,” Mrs. Lord hastened to explain. “A letter did come for her two days ago. It was taken in and brought up to her by my servant. I really had forgotten it.”

“I understand,” smiled Nick. “I must ask you to wait, however, while I unite these fragments, so I can read the letter.”

“I am in no hurry, sir.”

“Written in French, eh?” Nick muttered, while he and Patsy seated themselves at a table. “We soon can patch it together. It may provide a clew to the girl’s identity.”

“That was my idea, chief,” nodded Patsy. “There is nothing doing in the desk. I have searched it thoroughly.”

“Is there paste in the desk?”

“Yes.”

“Get it, also a sheet of blank paper,” Nick directed. “This letter is written on only one side of the sheet. We can quickly unite the torn edges and paste it to the other.”

The task was completed in a few minutes. The following letter, dated two days before, and written in French with a pen and ink, then was brought to light:

“MY DEAR PAULINE: You have made me heartless, thoroughly heartless,
and I ought to hate you for it. I am not sure that I do not.
Though horribly averse to taking the hideous step upon which you
insist, your threats leave me no sane alternative, none that would
let me look my family and friends in the face.

“I submit to what you require, therefore, but I will not leave with
you until Thursday. I must adjust many personal matters, and also
prepare for the future. One cannot live on love and kisses.

“Make it Thursday, therefore, and in accord with the plans you have
suggested. Not a word about it in the office to-morrow. It staggers
me when I think of it, the horrible situation in which you have
involved me. Some men would wipe you out of existence, as I perhaps
shall--but, no, no, I could not live with human blood on my hands.
Shame, sorrow, and remorse are terrible enough.

“After Thursday---- Well, we shall see!

“ARTHUR GORDON.”

“Great guns! What do you make of that, chief?” questioned Patsy, after both had read the letter, both being familiar with the French language.

“We will discuss it later,” Nick quietly replied. “This woman has ears, you know, and a tongue.”

“I’ve got you.”

Nick slipped the letter into his pocket, also the torn envelope, then arose and turned to the landlady.

“Do you know where Miss Perrot sent her trunk, or who took it away?” he inquired.

“I do not, Mr. Carter. A man with a wagon came after it.”

“An expressman?”

“I don’t think so. There was no name on the wagon.”

“You saw the man and the team?”

“I did, sir.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Only in a general way. The man was short, thickset, and quite dark. The horse was a gray one, and the wagon of moderate size, without a top.”

“Very good,” Nick said approvingly. “There is no doubt in my mind, Mrs. Lord, that Pauline Perrot will never return to this house. She is probably a very clever criminal.”

“In that case, Mr. Carter, I hope she never will return,” Mrs. Lord said gravely. “I am much surprised. I would not have thought it.”

“Have you missed anything from the house?”

“I have not, sir. I now see, however, that a brush and comb which I loaned her are gone from the dressing stand.”

“H’m! Is that so?”

“She may have taken them by accident when packing her trunk.”

Nick did not reply. Instead, turning to Patsy, he said:

“Raise both curtains, Patsy, as high as they will go.”

Then, dropping on his hands and knees, Nick began a sharp scrutiny of the carpet and a rug near the dressing stand, much to the amazement of the waiting woman.

For more than ten minutes he continued this inspection, and at times using a lens and picking something from the floor. When he arose he had between his fingers several black hairs, some quite long, which evidently had dropped from Pauline Perrot’s brush or comb. He inclosed them in his notebook, which he then replaced in his pocket.

“Now, Mrs. Lord, I am going to take away these few garments Miss Perrot left here,” Nick informed her. “Here is my card. If any inquiries are made, which is entirely improbable, you may refer the person to me.”

The woman glanced at the card, then gazed more intently at the famous detective. She evidently had heard of him, but had not suspected his identity till then, for she said quickly:

“Very well, Mr. Carter. I am sure that anything you do will be right and proper.”

Nick bowed and glanced at Patsy.

“Roll up the garments and the pair of boots in the wardrobe closet,” he directed. “Take them out to the car. I will bring the underwear in the bureau.”

It was noon when they departed with the various articles, all that Pauline Perrot had left as links in the chain, or to tell a fateful and tragic story.

“Back to the Gordon place, Danny,” said Nick, after he and Patsy were seated.

More than half the distance had been covered, when, rounding a curve in the woodland road, two figures appeared some fifty yards in advance of the speeding car.

One was a gaunt, lop-eared hound.

The other was a roughly clad man of middle age, with a shotgun under his left arm, and under his right a large bundle. He turned quickly, as he heard the approaching car, then stepped to the middle of the road and held up the gun.

“Slow down, Danny,” Nick commanded. “That fellow wants us to stop.”

“Gee!” exclaimed Patsy, a bit derisively. “He’s got a gun. Are we up against a holdup?”

“Nothing of that kind. He has something to say to us.”

Nick was right. For when the car stopped near him, the man approached and said a bit gruffly:

“Gimme a lift, gents, will you? I want to go to Jim Bailey’s house, a mile farther on. He’s a county constable. There has been a murder.”

“A murder?” Nick echoed. “How do you know? What have you there?”

“Some things Ginger sniffed out of some underbrush near the old millpond back in the woods a piece,” said the man, with a glance at the hound. “I saw a man and a girl plugging that way early yesterday evening. She had this hat on, I’ll swear to that, and she was lugging this jacket on her arm. Have a look at them.”

The man unrolled a dark-green jacket and a stylish, velvet hat of the same hue. The latter was sadly battered and out of shape, as if beaten with a bludgeon. A crumpled handkerchief fell to the ground.

“Here are two worked letters on the handkerchief,” he added, picking it up. “P. P., as near as I can tell.”

“Pauline Perrot!” cried Patsy, momentarily excited.

He had recalled the description of the dark-green traveling suit worn by Pauline Perrot, as reported by the two women who had seen her with Arthur Gordon.

They were, indeed, the garments of the suspected girl.

All of them were soiled and--red with blood.