American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

sun was throwing a yellow shaft of light across my bed, but it wasn’t the sun that had wakened me. Madelyn was standing in the doorway, dressed, with an expression on her face which brought me to my elbow.

‘What has happened now?’

‘Burglars!’

‘Burglars?’ I repeated dully.

‘I am going down to the library. Someone is making news for us fast, Nora. When will it be our turn?’

I dressed in record-breaking time, with my curiosity whetted by sounds of supressed excitement which forced their way into the upper hall. The Duffield home not only was early astir, but was rudely jarred out of its customary routine.

When I descended, I found a nervous group of servants clustered about the door of the library. They stood aside to let me pass, with attitudes of uneasiness which I surmised would mean a wholesale series of ‘notices’ if the strange events in the usually well-regulated household continued.

Behind the closed door of the library were Senator Duffield, his son Fletcher, and Madelyn Mack. It was easy to appreciate at a glance the unusual condition of the room. At the right, one of the long windows, partly raised, showed the small round hole of a diamond cutter just over the latch. It was obvious where the clandestine entrance and exit had been obtained. The most noticeable feature of the apartment, however, was a small square safe in the corner, with its heavy lid swinging awkwardly ajar, and the rug below littered with a heap of papers, that had evidently been torn from its neatly tabulated series of drawers. The burglarious hands either had been very angry or very much in a hurry. Even a number of unsealed envelopes had been ripped across, as though the pillager had been too impatient to extract their contents in the ordinary manner. To a man of Senator Duffield’s methodical habits, it was easy to imagine that the scene had been a severe wrench.

Madelyn was speaking in her quick, incisive tones as I entered.

‘Are you quite sure of that fact, Senator?’ she asked sharply, as I closed the door and joined the trio.

‘Quite sure, Miss Mack!’

‘Then nothing is missing, absolutely nothing?’

‘Not a single article, valuable or otherwise.’

‘I presume then there were articles of more or less value in the safe?’

‘There was perhaps four hundred dollars in loose bills in my private cash drawer, and, so far as I know, there is not a dollar gone.’

‘How about your papers and memoranda?’

The Senator shook his head ‘There was nothing of the slightest use to a stranger. As a matter of fact, just two days ago, I took pains to destroy the only portfolio of valuable documents in the safe.’

Madelyn stooped thoughtfully over the litter of papers on the rug. ‘You mean three evenings ago, don’t you?’

‘How on earth, Miss Mack –’

‘You refer to the memoranda that you and Mr Rennick were working on the night before his death, do you not?’

‘Of course!’ And then I saw Senator Duffield was staring at his curt questioner as though he had said something he hadn’t meant to.

‘I think you told me once before that the combination of your safe was known only to yourself and Mr Rennick?’

‘You are correct.’

‘Then, to your knowledge, you are the only living person, who possesses this information at the present time?’

‘That is the case. It was a rather intricate combination, and we changed hardly a month ago.’

Madelyn rose from the safe, glancing reflectively at a huge leather chair, and sank into its depths with a sigh.

‘You say nothing has been stolen, Senator, that the burglar’s visit yielded him nothing. For your peace of mind I would like to agree with you, but I am sorry to inform you that you are mistaken.’

‘Surely, Miss Mack, you are hasty! I am confident that I have searched my possessions with the utmost care.’

‘Nevertheless, you have been robbed!’

Senator Duffield glanced down at the small lithe figure impatiently. ‘Then, perhaps, you will be good enough to tell me of what my loss consists?’

‘I refer to the article for which your secretary was murdered! It was stolen from this room last night.’

Had the point of a dagger pressed against Senator Duffield’s shoulders, he could not have bounded forward in greater consternation. His composure was shattered like a pane of glass crumbling.

He sprang toward the safe with a cry like a man in sudden fear or agony. Jerking back its door, he plunged his hand into its lower left compartment. When he straightened, he held a long, wax phonograph record.

His dismay had vanished in a quick blending of relief and anger, as his eyes swept from the cylinder to the grave figure of Madelyn Mack.

‘I fail to appreciate your joke, Miss Mack – if you call it a joke to frighten a man without cause as you have me!’

‘Have you examined the record in your hand, Senator?’

Fletcher Duffield and I stared at the two. There was a suggestion of tragedy in the scene as the impatience and irritation gradually faded from the Senator’s

‘It is a substitute!’ he groaned. ‘A substitute! I have been tricked, victimized, robbed!’

He stood staring at the wax record as though it were a heated iron burning into his flesh. Suddenly it slipped from his fingers and was shattered on the floor.

But he did not appear to notice the fact as he burst out, ‘Do you realize that you are standing here inactive while the thief is escaping? I don’t know how your wit surprised my secret, and don’t care now, but you are throwing away your chances of stopping the burglar while he may be putting miles between himself and us! Are you made of ice, woman? Can’t you appreciate what this means? In the name of heaven, Miss Mack –’

‘The thief will not escape, Mr Duffield!’

‘It seems to me that he has already escaped.’

‘Let me assure you, Senator, that your missing property is as secure as though it were locked in your safe at this moment!’

‘But do you realize that, once a hint of its