Elusive Isabel, by Jacques Futrelle Unknown (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

plain enough,” replied Mr. Grimm. “Where did you find that handkerchief?” There was silence for an instant. “In this room?”

“Yes,” replied Senor Rodriguez at last.

“Near the safe?” Mr. Grimm persisted.

“Yes,” came the slow reply, again. “Just here,” and he indicated a spot a little to the left of the safe.

“And when did you find it? Yesterday afternoon? Last night? This morning?”

“This morning,” and without any apparent reason the diplomatist’s face turned deathly white.

“But, Senor—Senor, you are mistaken! There can be nothing—! A woman! Two hundred pounds of gold! Senor!”

Mr. Grimm was still pleasant about it; his curiosity was absolutely impersonal; his eyes, grown listless again, were turned straight into the other’s face.

“If that handkerchief had been there last night, Senor,” he resumed quietly, “wouldn’t you have noticed it when you placed the gold in the safe?”

Senor Rodriguez stared at him a long time.

“I don’t know,” he said, at last. He dropped back into a chair with his face in his hands. “Senor,” he burst out suddenly, impetuously, after a moment, “if the gold is not recovered I am ruined. You understand that better than I can tell you. It’s the kind of thing that could not be explained to my government.” He rose suddenly and faced the impassive young man, with merciless determination in his face. “You must find the gold, Senor,” he said.

“No matter who may be—who may suffer?” inquired Mr. Grimm.

“Find the gold, Senor!”

“Very well,” commented Mr. Grimm, without moving. “Do me the favor, please, to regain possession of the handkerchief you just returned to Miss Thorne, and to send to me here your secretary, Senor Diaz, and your servants, one by one. I shall question them alone. No, don’t be alarmed. Unless they know of the robbery they shall get no inkling of it from me. First, be good enough to replace the packet in the safe, and lock it.”

Senor Rodriguez replaced the packet without question, afterward locking the door, then went out. A moment later Senor Diaz appeared. He remained with Mr. Grimm for just eight minutes. Senor Rodriguez entered again as his secretary passed on, and laid a lace handkerchief on the desk. Mr. Grimm stared at it curiously for a long time.

“It’s the same handkerchief?”

“Si, Senor.”

“There’s no doubt whatever about it?”

“No, Senor, I got it by—!”

“It’s of no consequence,” interrupted Mr. Grimm. “Now the servants, please—the men first.”

The first of the men servants was in the room two minutes; the second—the butler—was there five minutes; one of the women was not questioned at all; the other remained ten minutes. Mr. Grimm followed her into the hall; Senor Rodriguez stood there helpless, impatient.

“Well?” he demanded eagerly.

“I’m going out a little while,” replied Mr. Grimm placidly. “No one has even an intimation of the affair—please keep the matter absolutely to yourself until I return.”

That was all. The door opened and closed, and he was gone.

At the end of an hour he returned, passed on through to the diplomatist’s private office, sat down in front of the locked safe again, and set the dial at thirty-six. Senor Rodriguez looked on, astonished, as Mr. Grimm pressed the soft rubber sounder of a stethoscope against the safe door and began turning the dial back toward ten, slowly, slowly. Thirty-five minutes later the lock clicked. Mr. Grimm rose, turned the handle, and pulled the safe door open.

“That’s how it was done,” he explained to the amazed diplomatist. “And now, please, have a servant hand my card to Miss Thorne.”

XI

THE LACE HANDKERCHIEF

Still wearing the graceful, filmy morning gown, with an added touch, of scarlet in her hair—a single red rose—Miss Thorne came into the drawing-room where Mr. Grimm sat waiting. There was curiosity in her manner, thinly veiled, but the haunting smile still lingered about her lips. Mr. Grimm bowed low, and placed a chair for her, after which he stood for a time staring down at one slim, white hand at rest on the arm of the seat. At last, he, too, sat down.

“I believe,” he said slowly, without preliminaries, “this is your handkerchief?”

He offered the lacy trifle, odd in design, unique in workmanship, obviously of foreign texture, and she accepted it.

“Yes,” she agreed readily, “I must have dropped it again.”

“That is the one handed to you by Senor Rodriguez,” Mr. Grimm told her. “I think you said you lost it in his office yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes?” She nodded inquiringly.

“It may interest you to know that Senor Rodriguez’s butler positively identifies it as one he restored to you twice at dinner last evening, between seven and nine o’clock,” Mr. Grimm went on dispassionately.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Miss Thorne.

“The senor identifies it as one he found this morning in his office,” Mr. Grimm explained obligingly. “During the night fifty thousand dollars in gold were stolen from his safe.”

There was not the slightest change of expression in her face; the blue-gray eyes were still inquiring in their gaze, the white hands still at rest, the scarlet lips still curled slightly, an echo of a smile.

“No force was used in opening the safe,” Mr. Grimm resumed. “It was unlocked. It’s an old model and I have demonstrated how it could have been opened either with the assistance of a stethoscope, which catches the sound of the tumbler in the lock, or by a person of acute hearing.”

Miss Thorne sat motionless, waiting.

“All this means—what?” she inquired, at length.

“I’ll trouble you, please, to return the money,” requested Mr. Grimm courteously. “No reason appears why you should have taken it. But I’m not seeking reasons, nor am I seeking disagreeable publicity—only the money.”

“It seems to me you attach undue importance to the handkerchief,” she objected.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Mr. Grimm remarked. “It would be useless, even tedious, to attempt to disprove a burglar theory, but against it is the difficulty of entrance, the weight of the gold, the ingenious method of opening the safe, and the assumption that not more than six persons knew the money was in the safe; while a person in the house might have