The Brand of Silence: A Detective Story by Johnston McCulley (electric book reader .TXT) 📗

right," Prale said, laughing; and then he stopped still and gasped.

"What is it?" Farland asked.

"Kate Gilbert!"

"Where?"

"There—just getting into that limousine. See her? The girl with the red hat!"

"I see her," Farland replied, signaling the chauffeur of a passing taxicab. "This is what I was hoping for, Sid. Go on to the hotel with Murk and guard. I'm going to find out a few things about Miss Kate Gilbert!"

He gave the chauffeur of the taxicab whispered directions, and then sprang into the machine.

CHAPTER XI CONCERNING KATE GILBERT

Given a definite trail to follow, Jim Farland was one of the best trackers in the business. He liked to know his quarry by sight, and conduct the hunt in a proper manner. And so he rejoiced, that now he was following a person he believed to be interested in some way in the Shepley case.

The limousine went up Fifth Avenue toward Central Park, and the taxicab with Jim Farland inside followed half a block behind. Farland did nothing except look ahead continually and make sure that his chauffeur did not lose the other machine. He wanted to discover, first, where Miss Kate Gilbert was going, and after that he wanted to acquire all the information he could concerning her.

There was little traffic on the Avenue at this hour, and the limousine made good progress. It curved around the Circle and went up Central Park West. In the Eighties it turned off into a side street, and finally drew up to the curb and stopped. The taxicab came to a halt a hundred feet behind it. "Wait," Jim Farland instructed the chauffeur, showing his shield. "Wait until I come back, even if I don't come back until morning. You will get good pay, all right."

The chauffeur settled back behind his wheel, and Farland stepped to one side in the darkness and watched. He saw an elderly gentleman emerge from the limousine and turn to help Kate Gilbert out. Then the elderly gentleman got into the car again and was driven away, and Kate Gilbert went into the apartment house before which the limousine had stopped.

Detective Jim Farland hurried forward, but when he came opposite the apartment house he slowed down and walked slowly, glancing in. It was not an apartment house of the better sort. The lobby was small, there was an automatic elevator, and no hall boy was on duty, that Farland could see. There was a row of mail boxes against a wall, with name plates over them.

Farland went up the steps, opened the door, and stepped inside the lobby. He walked across to the mail boxes and began looking at the names. He found some one named Gilbert had an apartment on the third floor, front.

The stairs were before him, and Farland was about to start up them when a door leading to the basement was opened, and a janitor appeared. He was an old man, bent and withered, and he looked at Farland with sudden suspicion.

"You want to see somebody in the house?" he asked, in a voice that quavered.

"I want to see you," Jim Farland answered.

"What about, sir?"

Farland exhibited his shield, and the old janitor recoiled, fright depicted in his face.

"I ain't done anything wrong, mister," he said hoarsely. "I obey all the regulations about ashes and garbage and everything like that."

"Don't be afraid of me," Farland said. "I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong, am I? I can see that you're a law-abiding man. You haven't nerve enough to be anything else. Suppose you step outside with me for a few minutes. I just want to ask you a few questions about something."

"All right, sir, if that's it," the old janitor said.

He opened the front door and led the way outside, and Farland forced him to walk a short distance down the street, and there they stopped in a doorway to talk.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions, and you are going to answer them, and then you are going to forget that you ever saw me or that I ever asked you a thing," Farland said.

"I understand, sir. I won't give away any police business," the old janitor replied. "I know all about such things. I had a nephew once who was a policeman."

"There's a party living in your place who goes by the name of Gilbert, isn't there?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many are there in the family, and who are they, and what do you know about them?"

"There is an old man, sir," the janitor answered. "He's a sort of cripple, I guess. He always sits in one of them invalid chairs, and when he goes out somebody has to wheel him. If he ain't exactly a cripple, then he's mighty sick and weak."

"Who else is in the family?"

"He's got a daughter, whose name is Miss Kate," the janitor said. "She's a mighty fine-lookin' girl, too. She's a nice woman, I reckon. 'Pears to be, anyway."

"Do you know anything in particular about her?" Jim Farland asked him.

"Well, she's been away for about three months, and she just got back," the janitor replied. "I don't know where she was—didn't hear. While she was gone, there was a man nurse 'tended to her father—cooked the meals and kept the apartment clean and took him out in his wheel chair. Miss Kate has a maid they call Marie—a big, ugly woman. She takes care of things generally when she is here, but she was away with Miss Kate."

"How long have they lived here?" Farland asked.

"About three years, sir. But I don't know much about them. They ain't the kind of folks a man can find out a lot about. They act peculiar sometimes."

"Are they rich?"

"My gracious, no!" said the old janitor. "They pay their rent on time, and they always seem to have plenty to eat, and I guess they can afford to keep that maid and hire a nurse once in a while, but they ain't what you'd call rich. But Miss Kate comes home in a big automobile now and then, and she seems to have a lot of clothes. There's something funny about it, at that."

"Think she isn't a decent woman?" Farland asked.

"Oh, I don't think she's a bad sort, sir, if that is what you mean. She doesn't seem to be, at all. I guess she gets her swell clothes honest enough. I think that she works for somebody and has to dress that way."

"Do they get much mail and have many visitors?"

"They get a few letters, and some newspapers and magazines," the janitor replied. "And they don't seem to have many visitors. I've seen a man come here once or twice to see them, and once he brought Miss Kate home in an auto. He looks like a rich man."

"Is he old or young?" Farland asked.

"Oh, he has gray hair, sir, and looks like a distinguished gentleman, like a lawyer or something. I guess he's rich. I think maybe he is an old friend of Mr. Gilbert's, or something like that."

"They live on the third floor, don't they?"

"Yes, sir."

"Any vacant apartments up there?"

"Why, the apartment adjoining theirs happens to be vacant just now, sir."

"You take me up to that vacant apartment," Jim Farland directed. "Let me in without making any noise, and then forget all about me until I speak to you again. Here is a nice little bill, and there will be more if you attend to business. I'm an officer, so you'll not get in trouble with the landlord."

The old janitor accepted the bill gladly, and led the way back to the house. Jim Farland refused to use the elevator; he insisted on walking up the stairs, and on going up noiselessly. When they reached the third floor, he was doubly alert.

The old janitor pointed out the door of the vacant apartment, and handed Farland a key. Then he pattered back down the stairs. Farland slipped along the hall, unlocked the door of the vacant apartment, darted inside, and locked the door again, putting the key in his pocket. And then he moved noiselessly through the apartment until he had reached the front.

He could hear voices in the apartment adjoining, and could make out the conversation. A woman was speaking—Farland decided that she was Kate Gilbert—and the weak voice of a sick man was answering her now and then.

"Let's not talk about it any more to-night, father," the girl was saying. "You'll not sleep well, if you get to thinking about it. You must go to bed now, and we'll have a real talk about things when I have something of importance to tell you. Get a good sleep, and in the morning Marie can take you out in the Park."

Jim Farland could hear the old man mutter some reply, and then there reached his ears the squeaking of a wheel chair being rolled across the floor. He remained for a time standing against the wall, listening. He decided that those in the Gilbert apartment were preparing to retire. Half an hour later, Farland slipped from the room and went to the basement to find the janitor.

"Here's your key," he said. "I'll be back here in the morning, and I'll want to see you. And remember—you're not to say a word about all this."

"Not a single word, sir."

Farland went back to the taxicab and drove to his own modest home, where he tumbled into bed and slept the sleep of the just. When Jim Farland slept, he slept—and when he worked, he worked. Farland did not mix labor and rest.

He arose early, hurried through his breakfast, got another taxicab and went up into the Eighties again. The old janitor was sweeping off the walk in front of the apartment house. The curtains at the windows of the Gilbert apartment were still down.

"Give me that key again and give me a pass key, too," Farland told the old janitor. "If the maid takes Mr. Gilbert out, and Miss Gilbert is gone at the same time, I want to get into their apartment and take a look around. Understand? And I'll want you to watch, so I'll not be caught in there."

"I understand, sir. Here are the keys."

Farland reached the vacant apartment without being seen. The Gilberts were up now and eating breakfast. He could hear Kate Gilbert trying to cheer her father, but not a word she said had anything to do with Sidney Prale, or Rufus Shepley, or anybody connected in any way with the Shepley murder case.

"Now you must let Marie take you to the Park, father," he heard the girl say. "It is a splendid day, and you must get a lot of fresh air. You can go down and watch the animals. I'm going out now, but I'll be back some time during the afternoon, and then we'll talk about things."

Jim Farland waited in the vacant apartment until he heard Kate Gilbert depart. A quarter of an hour later, he opened the front door a crack and saw the gigantic Marie wheel out the chair with Mr. Gilbert in it. They went down in the elevator.

Farland waited for another quarter of an hour, until the old janitor came up and told that he had watched the maid wheel Mr. Gilbert into the Park.

"I'll just leave the elevator up here until somebody rings," the old janitor said, "and I'll watch the floor below from the top of the stairs. Then, if any of them come back, I'll tell you so you can get out."

He took his station at the head of the stairs, leaving the elevator door open so that the contrivance could not be operated from below. Jim Farland unlocked the door of the Gilbert apartment and stepped inside.

The first glance told him that it was an ordinary apartment furnished in quite an ordinary manner. It certainly did not look like a home of wealth, and Sidney Prale had said that it had been understood in Honduras that Kate Gilbert was of a rich family and traveling for her health.

Many tourists claim to have money when they are away from home, of course, but the part about traveling for her health seemed to Jim Farland to be going a bit too far. Would such a woman be traveling for her health and leave behind her at home an old father who was an invalid?

"There's something behind that little trip of hers," Farland told himself. "It looks to me as if she had gone down to Honduras to look up Sid Prale for some reason. And Honduras isn't exactly on the health-trip list, either."

He began a close inspection of the apartment, leaving no trace of his search behind him, disarranging nothing that he did not replace. Jim Farland was an expert at such things.

He ransacked a small desk that stood in one corner of the living room and