a strange disappearance(奇怪的消失)

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A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

A STRANGE

DISAPPEARANCE

By Anna Katharine Green

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

CHAPTER I

A NOVEL CASE

"Talking of sudden disappearances the one you mention of Hannah in

that Leavenworth case of ours, is not the only remarkable one which has

come under my direct notice. Indeed, I know of another that in some

respects, at least, surpasses that in points of interest, and if you will

promise not to inquire into the real names of the parties concerned, as the

affair is a secret, I will relate you my experience regarding it."

The speaker was Q, the rising young detective, universally

acknowledged by us of the force as the most astute man for mysterious

and unprecedented cases, then in the bureau, always and of course

excepting Mr. Gryce; and such a statement from him could not but arouse

our deepest curiosity. Drawing up, then, to the stove around which we

were sitting in lazy enjoyment of one of those off-hours so dear to a

detective's heart, we gave with alacrity the required promise; and settling

himself back with the satisfied air of a man who has a good story to tell

that does not entirely lack certain points redounding to his own credit, he

began:

I was one Sunday morning loitering at the ----- Precinct Station, when

the door opened and a respectable-looking middle-aged woman came in,

whose agitated air at once attracted my attention. Going up to her, I asked

her what she wanted.

"A detective," she replied, glancing cautiously about on the faces of

the various men scattered through the room. "I don't wish anything said

about it, but a girl disappeared from our house last night, and"--she

stopped here, her emotion seeming to choke her--"and I want some one to

look her up," she went on at last with the most intense emphasis.

"A girl? what kind of a girl; and what house do you mean when you

say our house?"

She looked at me keenly before replying. "You are a young man," said

she; "isn't there some one here more responsible than yourself that I can

talk to?"

I shrugged my shoulders and beckoned to Mr. Gryce who was just then

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

passing. She at once seemed to put confidence in him. Drawing him aside,

she whispered a few low eager words which I could not hear. He listened

nonchalantly for a moment but suddenly made a move which I knew

indicated strong and surprised interest, though from his face--but you

know what Gryce's face is. I was about to walk off, convinced he had got

hold of something he would prefer to manage himself, when the

Superintendent came in.

"Where is Gryce?" asked he; "tell him I want him."

Mr. Gryce heard him and hastened forward. As he passed me, he

whispered, "Take a man and go with this woman; look into matters and

send me word if you want me; I will be here for two hours."

I did not need a second permission. Beckoning to Harris, I

reapproached the woman. "Where do you come from," said I, "I am to go

back with you and investigate the affair it seems."

"Did he say so?" she asked, pointing to Mr. Gryce who now stood with

his back to us busily talking with the Superintendent.

I nodded, and she at once moved towards the door. "I come from No. -

--- Second Avenue: Mr. Blake's house," she whispered, uttering a name so

well known, I at once understood Mr. Gryce's movement of sudden

interest "A girl--one who sewed for us--disappeared last night in a way to

alarm us very much. She was taken from her room--" "Yes," she cried

vehemently, seeing my look of sarcastic incredulity, "taken from her room;

she never went of her own accord; and she must be found if I spend every

dollar of the pittance I have laid up in the bank against my old age."

Her manner was so intense, her tone so marked and her words so

vehement, I at once and naturally asked if the girl was a relative of hers

that she felt her abduction so keenly.

"No," she replied, "not a relative, but," she went on, looking every way

but in my face, "a very dear friend--a--a--protegee, I think they call it, of

mine; I--I--She must be found," she again reiterated.

We were by this time in the street.

"Nothing must be said about it," she now whispered, catching me by

the arm. "I told him so," nodding back to the building from which we had

just issued, "and he promised secrecy. It can be done without folks

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

knowing anything about it, can't it?"

"What?" I asked.

"Finding the girl."

"Well," said I, "we can tell you better about that when we know a few

more of the facts. What is the girl's name and what makes you think she

didn't go out of the house-door of her own accord?"

"Why, why, everything. She wasn't the person to do it; then the looks

of her room, and--They all got out of the window," she cried suddenly,

"and went away by the side gate into ------ Street."

"They? Who do you mean by they?"

"Why, whoever they were who carried her off."

I could not suppress the "bah!" that rose to my lips. Mr. Gryce might

have been able to, but I am not Gryce.

"You don't believe," said she, "that she was carried off?"

"Well, no," said I, "not in the sense you mean."

She gave another nod back to the police station now a block or so

distant. "He did'nt seem to doubt it at all."

I laughed. "Did you tell him you thought she had been taken off in this

way?"

"Yes, and he said, 'Very likely.' And well he might, for I heard the men

talking in her room, and--"

"You heard men talking in her room--when?"

"O, it must have been as late as half-past twelve. I had been asleep and

the noise they made whispering, woke me."

"Wait," I said, "tell me where her room is, hers and yours."

"Hers is the third story back, mine the front one on the same floor."

"Who are you?" I now inquired. "What position do you occupy in Mr.

Blake's house?"

"I am the housekeeper."

Mr. Blake was a bachelor.

"And you were wakened last night by hearing whispering which

seemed to come from this girl's room."

"Yes, I at first thought it was the folks next door,--we often hear them

when they are unusually noisy,--but soon I became assured it came from

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

her room; and more astonished than I could say,--She is a good girl," she

broke in, suddenly looking at me with hotly indignant eyes, "a--a--as good

a girl as this whole city can show; don't you dare, any of you, to hint at

anything else o--"

"Come, come," I said soothingly, a little ashamed of my too

communicative face, "I haven't said anything, we will take it for granted

she is as good as gold, go on."

The woman wiped her forehead with a hand that trembled like a leaf.

"Where was I?" said she. "O, I heard voices and was surprised and got up

and went to her door. The noise I made unlocking my own must have

startled her, for all was perfectly quiet when I got there. I waited a moment,

then I turned the knob and called her: she did not reply and I called again.

Then she came to the door, but did not unlock it. 'What is it?' she asked.

'O,' said I, 'I thought I heard talking here and I was frightened,' 'It must

have been next door,' said she. I begged pardon and went back to my room.

There was no more noise, but when in the morning we broke into her

room and found her gone, the window open and signs of distress and

struggle around, I knew I had not been mistaken; that there were men with

her when I went to her door, and that they had carried her off--"

This time I could not restrain myself.

"Did they drop her out of the window?" I inquired.

"O," said she, "we are building an extension, and there is a ladder

running up to the third floor, and it was by means of that they took her."

"Indeed! she seems at least to have been a willing victim," I remarked.

The woman clutched my arm with a grip like iron. "Don't you believe

it," gasped she, stopping me in the street where we were. "I tell you if

what I say is true, and these burglars or whatever they were, did carry her

off, it was an agony to her, an awful, awful thing that will kill her if it has

not done so already. You don't know what you are talking about, you never

saw her--"

"Was she pretty," I asked, hurrying the woman along, for more than

one passer-by had turned their heads to look at us. The question seemed in

some way to give her a shock.

"Ah, I don't know," she muttered; "some might not think so, I always

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

did; it depended upon the way you looked at her."

For the first time I felt a thrill of anticipation shoot through my veins.

Why, I could not say. Her tone was peculiar, and she spoke in a sort of

brooding way as though she were weighing something in her own mind;

but then her manner had been peculiar throughout. Whatever it was that

aroused my suspicion, I determined henceforth to keep a very sharp eye

upon her ladyship. Levelling a straight glance at her face, I asked her how

it was that she came to be the one to inform the authorities of the girl's

disappearance.

"Doesn't Mr. Blake know anything about it?"

The faintest shadow of a change came into her manner. "Yes," said she,

"I told him at breakfast time; but Mr. Blake doesn't take much interest in

his servants; he leaves all such matters to me."

"Then he does not know you have come for the police?"

"No, sir, and O, if you would be so good as to keep it from him. It is

not necessary he should know. I shall let you in the back way. Mr. Blake is

a man who never meddles with anything, and--"

"What did Mr. Blake say this morning when you told him that this girl-

-By the way, what is her name?"

"Emily."

"That this girl, Emily, had disappeared during the night?"

"Not much of anything, sir. He was sitting at the breakfast table

reading his paper, he merely looked up, frowned a little in an absent-

minded way, and told me I must manage the servants' affairs without

troubling him."

"And you let it drop?"

"Yes sir; Mr. Blake is not a man to speak twice to."

I could easily believe that from what I had seen of him in public, for

though by no means a harsh looking man, he had a reserved air which if

maintained in private must have made him very difficult of approach.

We were now within a half block or so of the old-fashioned mansion

regarded by this scion of New York's aristocracy as one of the most

desirable residences in the city; so motioning to the man who had

accompanied me to take his stand in a doorway near by and watch for the

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

signal I would give him in case I wanted Mr. Gryce, I turned to the woman,

who was now all in a flutter, and asked her how she proposed to get me

into the house without the knowledge of Mr. Blake.

"O sir, all you have got to do is to follow me right up the back stairs;

he won't notice, or if he does will not ask any questions."

And having by this time reached the basement door, she took out a key

from her pocket and inserting it in the lock, at once admitted us into the

dwelling.

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

CHAPTER II

A FEW POINTS

Mrs. Daniels, for that was her name, took me at once up stairs to the

third story back room. As we passed through the halls, I could not but

notice how rich, though sombre were the old fashioned walls and heavily

frescoed ceilings, so different in style and coloring from what we see now-

a-days in our secret penetrations into Fifth Avenue mansions. Many as are

the wealthy houses I have been called upon to enter in the line of my

profession, I had never crossed the threshold of such an one as this before,

and impervious as I am to any foolish sentimentalities, I felt a certain

degree of awe at the thought of invading with police investigation, this

home of ancient Knicker-bocker respectability. But once in the room of

the missing girl, every consideration fled save that of professional pride

and curiosity. For almost at first blush, I saw that whether Mrs. Daniels

was correct or not in her surmises as to the manner of the girl's

disappearance, the fact that she had disappeared was likely to prove an

affair of some importance. For, let me state the facts in the order in which

I noticed them. The first thing that impressed me was, that whatever Mrs.

Daniels called her, this was no sewing girl's room into which I now

stepped. Plain as was the furniture in comparison with the elaborate

richness of the walls and ceiling, there were still scattered through the

room, which was large even for a thirty foot house, articles of sufficient

elegance to make the supposition that it was the abode of an ordinary

seamstress open to suspicion, if no more.

Mrs. Daniels, seeing my look of surprise, hastened to provide some

explanation. "It is the room which has always been devoted to sewing,"

said she; "and when Emily came, I thought it would be easier to put up a

bed here than to send her upstairs. She was a very nice girl and

disarranged nothing."

I glanced around on the writing-case lying open on a small table in the

centre of the room, on the vase half full of partly withered roses, on the

mantel-piece, the Shakspeare, and Macaulay's History lying on the stand

at my right, thought my own thoughts, but said nothing.

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

"You found the door locked this morning?" asked I, after a moment's

scrutiny of the room in which three facts had become manifest: first, that

the girl had not occupied the bed the night before; second, that there had

been some sort of struggle or surprise,--one of the curtains being violently

torn as if grasped by an agitated hand, to say nothing of a chair lying upset

on the floor with one of its legs broken; third, that the departure, strange as

it may seem, had been by the window.

"Yes," returned she; "but there is a passageway leading from my room

to hers and it was by that means we entered. There was a chair placed

against the door on this side but we easily pushed it away."

I stepped to the window and looked out. Ah, it would not be so very

difficult for a man to gain the street from that spot in a dark night, for the

roof of the newly-erected extension was almost on a level with the

window."

"Well," said she anxiously, "couldn't she have been got out that way?"

"More difficult things have been done," said I; and was about to step

out upon the roof when I bethought to inquire of Mrs. Daniels if any of the

girl's clothing was missing.

She immediately flew to the closets and thence to bureau drawers

which she turned hastily over. "No, nothing is missing but a hat and cloak

and--" She paused confusedly.

"And what?" I asked.

"Nothing," returned she, hurriedly closing the bureau drawer; "only

some little knick-knacks."

"Knick-knacks!" quoth I. "If she stopped for knick-knacks, she

couldn't have gone in any very unwilling frame of mind." And somewhat

disgusted, I was about to throw up the whole affair and leave the room.

But the indecision in Mrs. Daniels' own face deterred me.

"I don't understand it," murmured she, drawing her hand across her

eyes. "I don't understand it. But," she went on with even an increase in her

old tone of heart-felt conviction, "no matter whether we understand it or

not, the case is serious; I tell you so, and she must be found."

I resolved to know the nature of that must, used as few women in her

position would use it even under circumstances to all appearance more

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

aggravated than these.

Why, must?" said I. "If the girl went of her own accord as some things

seem to show, why should you, no relative as you acknowledge take the

matter so to heart as to insist she shall be followed and brought back?"

She turned away, uneasily taking up and putting down some little

matters on the table before her. "Is it not enough that I promise to pay for

all expenses which a search will occasion, without my being forced to

declare just why I should be willing to do so? Am I bound to tell you I

love the girl? that I believe she has been taken away by foul means, and

that to her great suffering and distress? that being fond of her and

believing this, I am conscientious enough to put every means I possess at

the command of those who will recover her?"

I was not satisfied with this but on that very account felt my

enthusiasm revive.

"But Mr. Blake? Surely he is the one to take this interest if anybody."

"I have before said," returned she, paling however as she spoke, "that

Mr. Blake takes very little interest in his servants."

I cast another glance about the room. "How long have you been in this

house?" asked I.

"I was in the service of Mr. Blake's father and he died a year ago."

"Since when you have remained with Mr. Blake himself?"

"Yes sir."

"And this Emily, when did she come here?"

"Oh it must be eleven months or so ago."

"An Irish girl?"

"O no, American. She is not a common person, sir,"

"What do you mean by that? That she was educated, lady-like, pretty,

or what?"

"I don't know what to say. She was educated, yes, but not as you

would call a lady educated. Yet she knew a great many things the rest of us

did'nt. She liked to read, you see, and--O sir, ask the girls about her, I

never know what to say when I am questioned."

I scanned the gray-haired woman still more intently than I had yet

done. Was she the weak common-place creature she seemed, or had she

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ASTRANGEDISAPPEARANCE1ASTRANGEDISAPPEARANCEByAnnaKatharineGreenASTRANGEDISAPPEARANCE2CHAPTERIANOVELCASE"TalkingofsuddendisappearancestheoneyoumentionofHannahinthatLeavenworthcaseofours,isnottheonlyremarkableonewhichhascomeundermydirectnotice.Indeed,Iknowofanotherthatinsomerespects,atleast,surpassest...

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a strange disappearance(奇怪的消失)

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