The Million-Dollar Suitcase - Alice MacGowan (guided reading books TXT) 📗

flow from under the lids.

"Now, Miss Barbie," Hughes remonstrated. "You let me at that thing. This'll pull it out and never touch you." I saw it was a horse-shoe magnet he carried.

"Do you think it will?"

"Sure," and Eddie approached the magnet to her face. "It won't hurt you a-tall. She'll begin to pull before she even touches. Now, steady. Want to come as near contact as I can. Don't jump.... Hell!"

Barbara had sprung away from him. But for Worth's quick arm, she would have been into the machines.

"No!" she said between locked teeth, tears on her cheeks, "I can't let him."

"Why, Barbara!" I said, astonished; and poor Eddie almost blubbered as he begged,

"Aw, come on, Miss Barbie. It was my fault in the first place—leavin' that damned lathe run. Yuh got to let me—"

"But if it doesn't work?"

"Sure it'll work. Would I offer to use it for you if I hadn't tried it out lots o' times—to pull splinters and—"

"Give me that magnet," Worth reached the long arm of authority, got what he wanted, shouldered Hughes aside, and took hold of the girl with, "Quit being a little fool, Barbara. That thing's only caught in your lashes now. Let it get in against the eyeball and you'll have trouble. Hold still."

The command was not needed. Without a word, Barbara raised her face, put her hands behind her and waited.

Delicately, Worth caught the dark fringe of the closed eye, turned back the lid so that he could see just what he was at, brought the horse-shoe almost in touch, then drew it away—and there was the tiny steel splinter that could have cost her sight, clinging to the magnet's edge.

"Here you are," he smiled. "Wasn't that enough to call you names for?"

"You didn't call me names," dabbing away with a small handkerchief. "You told me to quit being a little fool. Maybe I will. How would you like that?"

Apparently Hughes did not resent Barbara's refusing his help and accepting Worth's. He went back to his vise; the two others strolled together through the doorway into the garage, talking there for a moment in quick, low tones; then Barbara returned to perch on the end of Eddie's bench, play with the magnet and watch him at work. I lit up again and stepped out.

I could see Barbara gather some nails, screws and loose pieces of iron, hold a bit of board over them, and trail the magnet back and forth along its top. Though a half inch of wood intervened, the metal trash on the bench followed the magnet to and fro. I got nothing out of that except that Barbara was still a child, playing like a child, till I looked up suddenly to find that she had ceased the play, brought her feet up to curl them under her in the familiar Buddha pose, while the busy hands were dropped and folded before her. Her rebellion of yesterday evening—and now her taking up the concentration unasked—she wouldn't want me to notice what she was doing; I ducked out of sight. I had walked up and down that yard a half dozen times more, when over me with a rush came the significance of those moving bits of iron, trailing a magnet on the other side of a board. Three long steps took me to the door.

"Hughes," I shouted, "I'm taking my machine now. Be back directly."

The man grunted without turning around. I had forgotten Barbara, but as I was climbing into the roadster, I heard her jump to the floor and start after me.

"Mr. Boyne! Wait! Mr. Boyne!"

I checked and sat grinning as she came up, the magnet in her hand. I reached for it.

"Give me that," I whispered. "Want to go along and see me use it?"

"No—no—" in hushed protest. "You're making a mistake, Mr. Boyne."

"Mistake? I saw what you did in there. Said you never would again—then went right to it! You sure got something this time! Girl—girl! You've turned the trick!"

"Oh, no! You mustn't take it like that, Mr. Boyne. This is nothing—as it stands. Just a single unrelated fact that I used with others to concentrate on. Wait. Do wait—till Worth comes back, anyhow."

"All right." I felt that our voices were getting loud, that we'd talked here too long. No use of flushing the game before I was loaded. "First thing to do is to verify this." I felt good all over.

"Yes, of course," she smiled faintly. "You would want to do that." And she climbed in beside me.

I drove so fast that Barbara had no chance to question me, though she did find openings for remonstrating at my speed. I dashed into the driveway of the Gilbert place and came to an abrupt stop at the doors of the garage. And right away I bumped up against my first check. I gripped the magnet, raced to the study door with it, she following more slowly to watch while I passed it along the wooden panel where the bolt ran on the other side; and nothing doing!

Again she followed as I ran around to the outside door, opened up and tried it on the bare bolt itself; no stir. While she sat in the desk chair at that central table, her elbows on its top, her hands lightly clasped, the chin dropped in interlaced fingers, following my movements with very little interest, I puffed and worked, opened a door and tried to move the bolt when it wasn't in the socket, and felt like cursing in disappointment.

"A little oil—" I grumbled, more to myself than to her, and hurried to the garage workbench for the can that would certainly be there. It was, but I didn't touch it. What I did lean over and clutch from where they lay tossed in carelessly among rubbish and old spare parts, were three more magnets exactly the same as the one we had brought from Capehart's. I sprinted back with them.

"Barbara," I called in an undertone. "Come here. Look."

Held side by side, the four, working as one, moved the bolts as well as fingers could have done, and through more than an inch of hard wood.

"Yes," she looked at it; "but that doesn't prove Eddie Hughes the murderer."

"No?" her opposition began to get on my nerves. "I'm afraid that'll be a matter for twelve good men and true to settle." She stood silent, and I added, "I know now whose shadow I saw on the broken panel of that door there, the first Sunday night."

"Oh, it was Eddie's," she agreed rather unexpectedly.

"And he came to steal the 1920 diary," I supplied.

"He came to get a drink from the cellaret, and a cigar from the case. That's the use he made of his power to move these bolts."

"Until the Saturday night when he killed his employer, the man he hated, and left things so the crime would pass as suicide. Barbara, are you just plain perverse?"

Instead of answering, she went back to the table, got the contraption Hughes had made for her, and started as if to leave me. On the threshold, she hesitated.

"I don't suppose there's anything I can say or do to change your mind," her tone was inert, drained. "I know that Eddie is innocent of this. But you don't want to listen to deductions."

"Later," I said to her, briskly. "It'll keep. I've something to do now."

"What? You promised Worth to make no move against Eddie Hughes until you had his permission." She seemed to think that settled it. I let her keep the idea.

"Run along, Barbara," I said, "get to your paint daubing. I'll forgive you everything for deducing—well, discovering, if you like that better—about these bolts and magnets."

Skeet burst from the kitchen door of the Thornhill house, caught sight of us, shouted something unintelligible, and came racing through the grounds toward Vandeman's.

"Been waiting for me long, angel?" she called, as Barbara moved up with a lagging step, then, waving two pairs of overalls, "Got pants for both of us, honey. The paints and brushes are over there. We'll make short work of that old banner, now."

Promised Worth, had I? But the situation was changed since then. No man of sense could object to my moving on what I had now. I locked the study door, went back to my roadster, and headed her uptown.

CHAPTER XXV AN ARREST

It was a thankful if not a joyous Jerry Boyne who crossed the front pergola of the Vandeman bungalow that evening in the wake of Worth Gilbert, bound for an informal dinner. The tall, unconscious lad who stepped ahead of me had been made safe in spite of himself. This weight off my mind, I felt kindly to the whole world, to the man under whose dining table we were to stretch our legs, whose embarrassing private affairs I had uncovered. He'd taken it well—seconding his wife's dinner invitation, meeting my eye frankly whenever we encountered. My mood was expansive. When Vandeman himself opened the door to us, explaining that he was his own butler for the day, I saw him quite other than he had ever appeared to me.

For one thing, here in his own house—and this was the first time I had ever been in it—you got the man with his proper background, his suitable atmosphere. The handsome living room into which he took us, showed many old pieces of mahogany, and some of the finest oriental stuff I ever saw; books in cases, sets of standard writers, such as people of culture bought thirty or forty years ago, some family pictures about. This was Vandeman; a lot behind such a fellow, after all, if he did seem rather a lightweight.

Ina joined us, very beautifully dressed. She also showed the ability to sink unpleasant considerations in the present moment of hospitality. We lingered a moment chatting, then,

"Shall we go and look at the artists working?" she suggested, and led the way. We followed out onto a flagged terrace at the rear. A dozen great muslin strips were tacked over the walls there, and two small figures, desperate, smudged, wearing the blue overalls Skeet Thornhill had waved at us, toiled manfully smearing the blossom festival colors on in lettering and ornamental designs.

"Ina!" Skeet yawped at her sister, "Another dirty, low Irish trick! Get yourself all dressed up like a sore thumb, and then show us off in this fix!"

Mutely Barbara revolved on the box she occupied. There was fire in her soft eyes; her color was high as her glance came to rest on Worth.

"Fong Ling's nearly ready to serve dinner," said Ina calmly. "Stop fussing, and go wash up."

"Hello, Mr. Boyne." As Skeet passed me, she wiped a paw on a paint rag and offered it to me without another word. I got a grip and a look that told me there was no hang-over with her from that scene yesterday in her mother's sick-room. Vandeman was commenting on his depleted bamboo clumps.

"Mine suffered worse than yours, Worth. Fong Ling kicked like a bay steer about our taking so much. He's nursed the stuff for years like a fond mother. But we had to have it for that effect up around the orchestra stand."

"Then he's been with you a long time?" I caught at the chance for information on this chink—information that I'd found it impossible to get from the chink himself.

"Ever since I came in here. Chinamen, you know—not like Japs. Some loyalty. You can keep a good one for half a lifetime."

We strolled back to the living room; the girls were there before us, Skeet picking out bits of plum-blossoms and bunches of cherry bloom from a great bowl on the mantel, and sticking them in Barbara's dark hair, wreath fashion.

"Best we could do at a