The Deep Lake Mystery. Wells Carolyn
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Don’t make me go in there!”
The girl shivered with real fear, but Hart had to know.
“You must go,” he said, not unkindly. “Get Griscom to go with you, or Mrs. Fenn, if you like. But it is important for me to know if anything has been taken away that you know of. I don’t mean papers or letters from his desk. I mean any of his appointments or small belongings.”
The girl went off, still shuddering, and Hart finished up the rest of the servants in short order.
Next he interviewed Charlie Everett. I had taken a fancy to Everett, and somehow, from the way Kee looked at him, I thought he liked him, too.
He was not a distinguished-looking man, but he seemed a well-balanced sort, and his eyes were alert and showed a sense of humour. Not that the occasion called for humour, but you can always tell by a man’s eyes if he has that desirable trait.
Very quiet and self-possessed was Everett, his manner polite but a little detached. He was quite ready to answer questions but he gave only the answer, no additional information.
Yes, he said, he had spent an hour or so with Mr. Tracy the night before. They had played a game of billiards and had then sat for a short time over a cigar and a whisky and soda. Then, perhaps about ten o’clock, he had said good night to his employer and had gone to his own room. No, he could form no idea whatever as to who could have killed Sampson Tracy, or how he could have got into the room.
“That is,” he amended his speech, “he could get in easy enough, but I don’t see how he could get out and leave the door locked behind him.”
“It is one of those cases,” Hart said, a little sententiously, “where there has been a murder committed in a sealed room.”
Keeley Moore spoke up then.
“A murder cannot be committed in a sealed room,” he said, “unless the murderer stays there. If the murderer left the room, the room was not a sealed room.”
“How did he get out?” demanded Hart.
“That we have yet to learn. But he did get out, not through the door to the hall. Remains the possibility of a secret passage and the windows.”
“I’m sure there is no secret passage,” Everett said, with an unusual burst of unasked information. “I’ve been here three years and if there was such a thing I’m sure I’d know of it.”
“You might and you might not,” said Moore, looking at him. “If Mr. Tracy wanted a private entrance to his suite for any reason, he would have had it built and kept the matter quiet.”
“Not Sampson Tracy,” exclaimed Everett. “He was not a secretive man. I think I may say I knew all about his affairs, both business matters and private dealings, and he trusted me absolutely.”
“Even so,” Moore told him. “But in the lives of most men there is some secret, something that they don’t talk over with anybody.”
“Not Mr. Tracy,” Everett reiterated. “Even his engagement to Mrs. Dallas was freely talked over with me, both before it occurred and since. I know all about his habits and his fads and whims. And in no case was there ever an occasion for a secret passage to or from his rooms.”
“Yet it may be there,” Kee insisted. “But if none can be found, then the murderer either escaped by the windows or – ”
“Or what?” asked Hart.
“Or he had a steel wire contraption to turn the key from the outside. But this I don’t think likely, for the door has a rather complicated lock, and is far from being an easy thing to manipulate.”
“You know the terms of his will, then?” the Coroner inquired.
“Oh, yes,” Everett said. “At present his niece, Miss Remsen, is his principal heir. There are many bequests to friends and to servants, but the bulk of the estate goes to Miss Remsen. Mr. Tracy knew that his marriage would invalidate this will, which was why he had not changed it. He said that after his wedding with Mrs. Dallas, he would revise the will to suite his changed estate.”
“Then, under his existing will, Mrs. Dallas has no legacy?”
“Not unless Mr. Tracy made a change without telling me. He may have done that, but I think it very unlikely.”
“You know of no one then, who had sufficient enmity toward Mr. Tracy to desire his death?”
“Absolutely no one. So far as I am aware, he hadn’t an acquaintance in the world who was anything but friendly toward him.”
Everett was dismissed and Billy Dean was called in.
He was a pleasant-faced chap of twenty-three or thereabouts. His work was far from being as important as Everett’s. In fact he was really a high-class stenographer and office boy.
He was good looking with big brown eyes and a curly mop of brown hair. He too, scoffed at the idea of a secret passage in the house.
“Pleasure Dome has all the modern improvements,” he said, “but nothing like that. If there was such a thing, I’d have been through it in no time. I can ferret out anything queer of that sort by instinct, and there’s nothing doing. There’s no way in and out of Mr. Tracy’s suite but by that one hall door. I know that. And it has a special lock. He had that put on about six months ago.”
“Why? Was he afraid of intruders?”
“Don’t think so. But there had been some robberies down in the village and he said it was as well to be on the safe side.”
“Then, Mr. Dean, in your opinion, how did the man who killed Mr. Tracy get out of his rooms?”
“That’s where you get me. I’m positively kerflummixed. I can’t see anybody twisting that peculiar key with a bit of wire. Though that’s easier to swallow than to imagine any one jumping out of the window.”
“Why? The windows are not so very high.”
“No. But the lake there is mighty deep and dangerous.”
“Why specially dangerous?”
“Because there are swirling undercurrents, you see, it’s almost like a caldron. That Sunless Sea, as Mr. Tracy named it, is in a cove and the winds make the water eddy about, and – well, I’m a pretty fair diver, but I wouldn’t dive out of a second story window into that cove!”
“Then, we have to look for either a clever mechanician or an expert diver,” said Keeley Moore. “How about the chauffeur?”
“He’s an expert mechanician all right, but he wouldn’t harm a hair of Mr. Tracy’s head. He loved him, as, indeed, we all did. Nobody could help loving that man. He was always genial, courteous and kindly to everybody.”
“And his niece, Miss Remsen?” asked the Coroner. “She, too, is gentle and lovely?”
Young Dean blushed fiery red.
“Yes, she is,” was all he said, but no clairvoyance was needed to read his thoughts of her.
“Is she here?” asked Moore, knowing we had seen her arrive.
“Yes,” Billy Dean said. “We telephoned her so soon as we knew what had happened, and she came right over.”
“You may go now,” said the Coroner, “and please send Miss Remsen in here.”
CHAPTER V
THE LADY OF THE LAKE
“And so,” I thought to myself, “I shall see again the Lady of the Lake.”
As Alma Remsen entered the room, I realized the aptness of Kee’s term, high-handed. Without any effect of strong-mindedness, the girl showed in face and demeanour a certain self-reliance, an air of determination, that made even a casual observer feel sure she could hold her own against all comers.
Yet she was a gentle sort. Slender, of medium height, with appealing brown eyes, she nodded a sort of greeting that included us all, and addressed herself to the