Odor of Violets by Baynard Kendrick (books for 6 year olds to read themselves .TXT) 📕

call. One of us has been here off and on all day. When we got here the butler, who let us in, had to take a safety chain off the front door. Every window was locked inside, on the basement and ground floor. I’ll stake nine years in the State Police that nobody got in and out of this house at all.”

“Mrs. Tredwill got in late last night,” Cheli reminded him. “She’d been with some friends, the Carters. Couldn’t someone have come in the front door before she got home?”

“How’d he get out?” The officer shrugged. “We saw the tire tracks of Mr. Carter’s car. It snowed here all day long and most of last night, too. There was that one set of tire tracks up the driveway from the village—no more.”

“Which doesn’t mean much, Stinson,” the Captain said. “Any former tracks might have been effaced by passage of the Carter car and the snow. I suppose you and Halick checked for footprints, too.”

“Captain Maclain,” said Stinson earnestly, “I’ve been in this racket nine years, as I said before. We not only checked for footprints, we checked for fingerprints, and pick locks, and breaking and entering, and marks on the window sills—inside and outside on the ledges in the packed-up snow. I’m telling you now—if anybody got in here last night without leaving a trace, then he’s still in here. Either that—or he flew.”

“Maybe he had on winged galoshes,” said Duncan Maclain. “I think he’d have needed them with all that snow.”

CHAPTER XIII

CHELI AND Gilbert watched with interest as Maclain followed Schnucke’s imperceptible signals down the length of the high domed hall. The Captain proceeded slowly. Twice he stopped and explored the mounted suits of armor with fluttering touches of his fingers. Each time, Schnucke’s dark eyes turned up inquiringly to the glittering metal men.

“I don’t think she likes them,” Cheli said in a low tone to Gil.

Maclain’s keen ears caught it. “I don’t like them much, myself.” He spoke for the first time since the State Trooper had gone. “Do you think it was the best thing to do, Mr. Tredwill—sending that officer away?”

“My father’s been anxious to get rid of him ever since we got home this afternoon.”

“Why?” Maclain stopped at the end of the hall with one hand resting on the ornate knob of the theater door.

“He thinks my sister’s been kidnaped,” said Gil.

“Kidnaped,” Cheli whispered, and uttered a stifled “Oh!”

“Can I take it, Miss Scott,” Maclain inquired with a quick turn of his head, “that you’re inclined to disagree?”

“I don’t know why, Captain Maclain, but somehow it seems preposterous. Babs didn’t know she was going in town herself until yesterday. I thought that kidnapers—”

“Planned their coups in advance,” Maclain supplied. “That’s quite true. But Mr. Tredwill’s father must have some justification for his idea.”

“He hated Paul Gerente,” Gil said simply. “Dad thinks that’s why Gerente was seeing Barbara—that he planned this kidnaping and something slipped. Dad believes that the kidnapers killed Gerente. He was certain he’d hear something from them today.”

“If he’s right,” said Cheli, “maybe he will, Gil, now that you’ve sent the police away.”

“That’s why I let Stinson go.”

“Perhaps it was the best thing to do.” The Captain opened the theater door. “What’s in here?”

“Dad’s theater.” They had stepped inside and Gil’s voice echoed in the resonant room.

“Your father’s wife was an actress, wasn’t she?” asked Maclain. He walked down toward the stage counting the rows of seats by touching them with his hand.

“Norma? She played the lead in Dawn before Darkness. Thad married her after the close of the play.”

“I wish I could get her for the one I’m working on now,” said Cheli.

“I doubt if she’ll ever return to the stage,” said Gil.

The Captain turned at the first row and came back to join them. “Can you get outside of the house from this theater?” He rested himself against the back of the aisle seat in the last row and addressed his question to Gil.

Cheli said, “There’s a door at the back of the stage. The police examined it today and said it hadn’t been opened for a long time.”

“It was locked?”

“Barred,” corrected Gil. “It’s fireproof and fastens with a big iron bar inside. Nobody could have come in there—or gotten out without leaving it unbarred.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Let’s go downstairs.” The Captain stood erect. They left the theater with Gilbert leading the way.

The Captain was silent until they reached the basement. He spoke when Gilbert started across the laundry toward the passage Norma had taken the night before.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to get a little more information, Miss Scott. I understand that Mrs. Tredwill came down here last night because she heard the slamming of the workshop door.”

“That’s not quite right.” Cheli glanced at Gil, who was watching the Captain with a wondering frown. “Norma thought the storeroom door was open. She had been down here to close it before.”

“Last night?” Maclain asked quickly.

“No. I meant in the past.”

“That’s true,” said Gil. “Unless it’s locked it has a pesky habit of banging. I’ve fastened it more than once when I’ve been working late down here.”

“Where is the storeroom?”

“Straight ahead of you,” said Gil.

Maclain moved forward until Schnucke paused, signaling his nearness to the door. He found the knob after a single try. “It’s locked now. Who keeps the key?”

“It was locked last night,” Cheli told him. “The key hangs on a hook to the right of the door. Norma saw it there when she came down.”

The Captain ran his hand upward along the wall.

“Farther right,” said Gil. “Here, let me.” He stepped up beside Maclain and handed him the key.

The Captain unlocked the door, stepped back, and slammed it to. The lock clicked but slipped out again, and the door swung free. For a moment Maclain stared at the door almost as though he had the power to see.

“Leave it open, please,” he said. “Something about this interests me. Suppose we go into