Part 30 (1/2)
”I want you to see the ghost's walk,” he wrote. ”Come along!”
Pa.s.sing the sick father's door, Calvin led Duff Salter up to the garret floor, where a room with rag carpet, dumb-bells, boxing-gloves, theological books, and some pictures far from modest, disclosed the varied tastes of an entailed pulpit's expectant. Calvin drew down the curtain of the one window and lighted a lamp. There was a table in the middle of the floor, and there the two men conducted a silent conversation on the ivory tablets.
”This is my room,” wrote Calvin. ”I stay here all day when I study or enjoy myself. The governor doesn't come in here to give me any advice or nose around.”
”Is Mrs. Knox Van de Lear serious as to religious matters?”
”Very,” wrote Calvin, sententiously, and looked at Duff Salter with the most open countenance he had ever been seen to show. Duff merely asked another question:
”Has she a good handwriting? I want to have a small doc.u.ment very neatly written.”
Calvin went over to a trunk, unlocked it, and took out a bundle of what appeared to be lady's letters, and selecting one, folded the address back and showed the chirography.
”Jericho! Jerry-cho! cho! O cho!” sneezed Duff Salter. ”The most admirable writing I have ever seen.”
Calvin took the tablets.
”I have been in receipt of some sundry sums of money from you, Salter, to follow up this Zane mystery. I hope to be able to show you to-night that it has not been misinvested.”
”You have had two hundred dollars,” wrote Duff Salter. ”What are your conclusions?”
”Andrew Zane is in Kensington.”
”Where?”
”In the block opposite are several houses belonging to the Zane estate.
One of them stood empty until within a month, when a tenant unknown to the neighborhood, with small furniture and effects--evidently a mere servant--moved in. My brother's wife has taken a deep interest in the Zane murder, and being at home all day, her resort is this room, where she can see, un.o.bserved, the whole _menage_ and movement in the block opposite.”
”Why did she feel so much interested?”
”Honor bright!” Calvin wrote. ”Well, Mrs. Knox was a great admirer of the late William Zane. They were very intimate--some thought under engagement to marry. Suddenly she accepted my brother, and old Zane turned out to be infatuated with his ward. We may call it rivalry and reminiscence.”
”Jer-i-choo-wo!”
Duff Salter, now full of smiles, proffered a pinch of snuff to his host, who declined it, but set out a bottle of brandy in reciprocal friends.h.i.+p.
”Go on,” indicated Salter to the tablets.
”One morning, just before daybreak, my brother's wife, glancing out of this window--”
”In this room, you say, before daybreak?”
Calvin looked viciously at Duff Salter, who merely smiled.
”She saw,” said Calvin Van de Lear, ”an object come out of the trap-door on Zane's old residence and move under shelter of the ridge of the roof to the newly-tenanted dwelling in the same block, and there disappear down the similar trap.”
”Jericho! Jericho!--Proceed.”