The tattooed arm

Contents

CHAPTER

I

4°

Chapter I

AN eminently respectable attorney was John Wells, of r\ Wells, Burchard & Wells, so respectable that his appearance in court was enough in itself to impress a jury favorably toward his client, and so eminent that he might long ago have retired had bridge or golf or even a presidential nomination offered him the mental dissipation to which legal problems had for a lifetime addicted him.

Yet, because of the dainty, exquisitely groomed little Patricia Drake who was seated opposite him at the consultation table in his inner sanctum, John Wells was, for the first time, telephoning to Police Headquarters and requesting as a favor the confidential services of the most intelligent of the younger men connected with the detective bureau.

The desire expressed from such a source caused in an incredibly short space of time the appearance at his office of a tall, dark-haired young man: a young man in well-cut, carelessly worn clothes and with a polite but bored manner which rather hinted that he could have personal knowledge of the Police Department only through the possible misadventure of driving one of his cars beyond the speed limit and being caught at it. Yet on being announced this young man observed in crisp, clear-cut accents:

“Headquarters, Mr. Wells. I am Sergeant Miles. You sent for me?”

John Wells granted the new arrival a swift, shrewd glance of appraisal . The young man’s appearance evidently satisfied him, for with a slight gesture he indicated not only his youthful, feminine client but a vacant chair facing the cold light of early spring.

“Miss Drake, this is Sergeant Miles. I should advise you to be as frank with him as you have been with me, and I have no doubt he will solve our little problem for us. Be seated here, Sergeant, if you please.”

The detective bowed formally and took the chair indicated, and the young girl drew a quick, convulsive breath.

“How — how do you do? I would have consulted an alienist rather than my father’s attorney had it not been for the fact that I feel that I, at least, am still sane, Sergeant Miles, and Mr. Wells agrees with me that the matter upon which I have come to him, incomprehensible as it appears, may have some logical solution, however dreadful! — Do — do you know anything about psychology?”

“Psychology” from a big-eyed, eighteen-year-old girl! Owen Miles, university graduate, pauperized by his father’s mining operations, and member of the Police Department through an innate passion for criminology, pricked up his ears, repressed a smile and replied gravely:

“A little, Miss Drake. Enough, I think, for practxal purposes. I am all attention.”

It was John Wells’ turn to conceal surprise at the cultivated, veiledly amused accents of this most extraordinary emissary from Headquarters, but the young girl merely fingered her handbag nervously, hesitated a moment and then spoke in a quick little rush.

'Then perhaps you can understand why, with no insanity in the family as far back as we can trace, three dignified, middle-aged gentlemen, brothers, should suddenly become victims of the wildest hallucinations like — like three Mad Hatters, and do such queer, ridiculous things that they are the talk of the town.” There was a hint of tears in her voice. “I suppose this will seem disrespectful when I tell you that it is of my father and my two uncles I am speaking, but it is the truth!”

“What sort of hallucinations have they, Miss Drake?” Sergeant Miles demanded eagerly. “What are the strange things they do?”

“Perhaps,” the attorney interposed in his urbane, wellrounded tones, “it will be well for me to tell you a little of Miss Drake’s family before she continues, so that you may the better comprehend this extraordinary situation. She is the daughter of Hobart Drake of the New York Stock Exchange. His wife died when Miss Patricia, here, was born, and she was brought up by his maiden sister, Miss Jerusha Drake, a lady, I may say, of the soundest practical commonsense. They have always lived in the old family residence out on Long Island; at Brooklea, which is a sleepy little village just within the borders of Greater New York, you know, Sergeant, or I should not have been able to enlist your services.”

Owen Miles nodded quickly without speaking, and the attorney went on:

“Five years ago, Roger Drake, the oldest of the family and a scientist of world-wide reputation, returned from Europe to the old home at Brooklea. A few months since, the other brother, Andrew, came back from Australia — where he had amassed quite a fortune, even for these times, in sheep-ranching on an extensive scale — and thus completed the family circle. You can see from their various interests and pursuits that the three brothers are widely dissimilar in character and temperament, yet a very great affection has always existed between them, which years of separation could not change. I have known them all since they were mere boys and I can speak from personal observation. Pat,” Wells turned to the young girl, “how long ago did you first notice anything unusual in the manner of your father or uncles, and did all three exhibit the symptoms at the same time?”

“No. Poor father was the first to — to break out.” Her lips quivered. “I thought that you must surely have heard of it, for people put the most — most scandalous construction on it, connected with the wine cellar, and I know that it wasn’t true! Father has a large private stock, of course, but you know yourself, Mr. Wells, how seldom he ever touches it.”

“I know, my child.” The attorney nodded in turn and sat back in his chair. “Go on.”

“I don’t know whether it has anything to do with it, of course, but for the past month or two I have fancied that father was worried about something or else he was not very well. He looked tired all the time and seemed to lose weight, and he was quite irritable now and then over almost nothing. I didn’t think very seriously about it, though, until that dreadful time a fortnight ago when right in the middle of the night we were all awakened by a loud sounding of the brass knocker on the front door, and finally Carter went down in his bathrobe and opened it — Carter is our butler and he has been with the family since long b'efore I was born,” Patricia explained to the detective. “I was leaning over the balustrade, and what do you think I saw? Our local policeman— but he’s still called ‘constable’ — Sam Clark, and he was bringing in a stout figure dressed all in flowing white like a ghost, that reeled as it walked. I didn’t recognize it until Sam spoke but I think I must have given a little cry, for Aunt Jerusha, who had been standing in her bedroom door, came up and leaned over the rail beside me and she heard it, too. ‘I’ve brought Mr. Hobart home, Carter,’ Sam said. ‘If I was you I’d get him to bed real quiet, but in the morning you tell him for me that if it happens again we’ll have to confiscate what he’s got left down in that, there cellar of his.’ ” “Aunt Jerusha started right down stairs, hair crimpers and all, and demanded to know what Sam meant, and he said: ‘He was down in front of the soldiers’ monument, ma’am, rigged out in these here bed-sheets like you see him now, and spouting like a Fourth of July orator that he was Julius Caesar. Lucky it was so late or he’d have had the whole town jround him, but as it is an automobile party stopped, and Old Man Tomlin was there and two- three more that had been hanging ’round the Mansion House, and every dog from here to Hempstead. He wouldn’t pay no attention to me but soon’s I touched him he seemed to sort of collapse and he come along home without any trouble. I guess he ain’t feeling very well, ma’am, but he’ll likely be all right in the morning.’ ”

Patricia had given an unconsciously graphic imitation of the country constable, but as she paused and covered her face with her hands there was nothing of amusement in the expressions of either of her hearers. John Wells was very grave and his eyes sought the detective’s eagerly interested ones in mute questioning.

“Did you get a closer view of your father, Miss Drake?” the latter asked after a moment.

Patricia dropped her hands and though her own eyes were very bright there was no sign of tears, but a flush of anger and humiliation burned brightly in her childishly rounded cheeks.

“Yes. As soon as the constable finished speaking Aunt Jerusha declared that what he had insinuated was an outrageous lie, that father must have walked in his sleep; and Sam Clark went away. Edward, the houseman, passed me to go down and help Carter get father to his room and Aunt Jerusha called up to me to go straight back to bed, but I wouldn’t. While the constable was talking I had heard a sort of gasp behind me and turned to find Uncle Roger there, staring down at father with such a shocked, horrified expression that I thought he was going to have a stroke or something. I put my hand on his arm and it seemed to steady him, and we stood there together watching them bring father upstairs.”

“Can you describe your father’s appearance when he came close to you, Miss Drake?” Sergeant Miles persisted, but very gently.

Patricia shuddered.

“I shall never be able to forget it!” she exclaimed. “He’s quite portly, you know, but he seemed to have become shrunken and the flesh of his face hung in grayish folds. He put his feet forward mechanically like a — a person in a dream, leaning all his weight on Carter and Edward, and his eyes were half closed, but just at the door of his room he turned and stared back without recognizing or even appearing to see us, as though he were demented! I wanted to send for a doctor but Aunt Jerusha wouldn’t have it and even Uncle Roger demurred.”

“And where was your other uncle, Mr. Andrew Drake, during this time? You said that you had all been awakened when the constable sounded the knocker.”

“Did I? I meant all except Uncle Andrew. He never heard a thing, but slept right through it all.” Patricia paused. “He is awfully jolly and likes to make a joke out of everything, and the next morning at breakfast when Uncle Roger told him what had occurred he tried to make light of it, but when he learned how really ill father was he was terribly worried and anxious and angry, too, that he had not been awakened.”

“Your father was seriously ill, then?”

“Yes. He kept to his room for several days but he wouldn’t have a doctor, and Aunt Jerusha told me that he had often walked in his sleep as a child and she was afraid the trouble was returning again. It was a week before he went to his office in Wall Street and he hasn’t gone to the village once,— I don’t blame him!” Her small gloved hands clenched on the arms of her chair. “The things that were said and the horrid jokes that have been made! I was ashamed before — before everybody, but it is even worse now! I just couldn’t endure it any longer, - wondering what dreadful thing was going to happen next, and so I came to Mr. Wells.”

“ Tt is even worse now?’ ” the detective repeated. “You mean that your uncles have exhibited similar signs of — er — eccentricity?” Patricia nodded.

“Not exactly similar, but they have done things that it seems to me only people whose minds were deranged would do! And Aunt Jerusha’s attitude is the most inexplicable of all!”

“My dear Pat!” John Wells exclaimed. “You cannot mean that she also !”

“Oh, no, Aunt Jerusha hasn’t gone crazy too, but she insists in the face of everything that there is nothing wrong and that she will not have any doctors consulted. When I suggested an alienist this morning she was angrier than I have ever seen her. She just goes around tight-lipped and white, and holds her head higher than ever, but I made up my mind that something must be done if we were to avoid everlasting disgrace! People are beginning to shun me already, as though we had some fearful contagious mental disease in the house.” Patricia bit her lips and the tears stood frankly in her eyes now, but she controlled herself and went on: “Nothing more happened for the first week after father’s strange attack of somnambulism or dementia or whatever it was, except that Uncle Roger, who had been so horrified over it, seemed to grow more deeply troubled as father became better. He has always been very dignified and grave in his manner, but he went about the house after that like a mere shadow of his former self and was so absent-minded that it was necessary to speak to him several times before one could attract his attention. He had promised to give a lecture on one of his favorite hobbies, archaeology, at the High School last Wednesday, and I thought that he was worrying about that, too, because he was always retiring and hated to come out of his shell. If I had only known!”

“What do you mean, Miss Drake?” Sergeant Miles leaned forward in his chair. “Was the lecture not given!”

“It was!” Bitterness sharpened her soft, girlish tones. “And the next day the village was talking worse than it had over father’s behavior! Brooklea is a sleepy little place, as Mr. Wells says, but there are a number of cultured, scholarly people among the older families who have formed literary and scientific clubs and try to keep up with modern research. These formed the bulk of the audience at the lecture, which I am happy to say none of the rest of our household attended, owing to the gossip and scandal about father. Sergeant Miles, that lecture was the most hideous travesty imaginable! Had it been utterly meaningless, sheer drivel, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but I understand that it was a fairly clever satire, casting ridicule on the archaeological discoveries of recent years, and the audience didn’t know whether to laugh with Uncle Roger at his unexpected joke or to feel affronted at his insult to their intelligence. Mehitabel attended prayer meeting that evening and when she came home I knew by her face that something was wrong, although she went straight to Aunt Jerusha’s room without a word to me. She has been my aunt’s maid since they were girls together and they don’t stand on much ceremony with each other.

‘‘The next day everybody went about as though there — there had been a funeral in the house, but no one told me anything until the tradesmen began to come with the gossip, and then Mr. Grayle came over and I heard it all. It was awful!”

“Who is Mr. Grayle?” queried the detective.

“A neighbor of ours, a naturalist,” Patricia responded. “He and Uncle Roger have been great friends ever since he bought The Rose Tree, next to the Kemp estate ”

She paused and a deeper flush suffused her face. Sergeant Miles glanced at the attorney, who smiled and nodded almost imperceptibly.

“What was your uncle’s explanation of the unlooked-for trend of his lecture?” The detective ignored the young girl’s hesitation.

“He made none.” She shrugged. “He looked dreadfully worn and ill but he was as dignified as ever and merely said that he regretted his discourse had not met with the approval of his hearers. The village was all stirred up for the rest of the week, but on Saturday when the paper came out there was a perfect furore. The editor didn’t consider Uncle Roger’s lecture either a witticism or an affront but intimated as clearly as he dared that it was the work of a disordered mind and recalled father’s oration before the soldiers’ monument, insinuating that they had both fallen victims to some strange aberration. Of course it wasn’t as broad as that, but everybody could read between the lines — and did! In the very face of it Aunt Jerusha made me go to church with her yesterday, and I never thought I could go through such an agony of mortification! People bowed, but the way they stared and whispered made me want to fall right down and die!”

“Perhaps you imagined it, my dear Pat,” John Wells suggested consolingly. “Your family are among the oldest residents of Brooklea and have been there for generations, respected by everyone. It may be that with your father’s little — er — adventure still fresh in their minds, the audience magnified some eccentricity or arbitrary statement in your uncle’s lecture, and such an incident would be manna in the wilderness to a country editor.”

“No, Mr. Wells.” Patricia sighed. “I should like to think that, but somebody who was present took the lecture down in shorthand and sent a copy to a scientific journal and the editors wrote to Uncle Roger that they were going to send a representative down to interview him this week. From the tone of the letter there was no mistaking what their attitude was! When we returned from church yesterday I made up my mind that whether Aunt Jerusha liked it or not I would come in town to see you today. Then when Uncle Andrew was found this morning !”

She broke off once more as though too much overcome for the moment to continue. The detective and the attorney glanced silently at each other before the latter remarked:

“Go on, my child. Tell the sergeant exactly what you told me.”

“When — when Edward, the houseman, went down to clean the front hall earlier than it is customary for any of the family to be about, he heard funny sounds coming from the drawing-room. On opening the door he found Uncle Andrew sitting on the floor in his pajamas, playing like a child with some ornaments which he had taken from the cabinet and mantel. When he saw Edward he ran toward him on all fours growling as though he were pretending to be some kind of an animal. Edward has never gotten over being shell-shocked and he has been more nervous than ever since the night when the constable brought father home. This morning was the last straw and he gave immediate notice, so Aunt Jerusha sent me into town to engage another houseman, and a gardener, too, now that the spring is opening up. That gave me my opportunity to come and consult Mr. Wells.” She hesitated once more. “I don't know, though, what she will say when she sees you, Sergeant, nor how you can account for your presence; if she knew that I had been instrumental in bringing an investigator there ”

“She need see in me only what she sent for — the new houseman,” Sergeant Miles announced with a disarming smile. “I confess I never heard of one employed in a private residence before in place of a housemaid, but I fancy his duties would be identical, with the addition of window-washing and porch-cleaning. I can fill the position competently while I am carrying on my investigation and no one but Mr. Wells and yourself need know that I am other than what I seem.”

Patricia's blue eyes opened very wide.

“Oh, could you?” she breathed. “That would be splendid because you could watch everything that went on indoors ”

“I want an assistant outside as well,” interrupted the detective. “You say that a gardener is needed, too?”

“Yes. We have a general handy man, Euripides Lunt, but he doesn’t know anything about pruning or growing flowers; he just rakes the paths and driveway, and trims the borders and mows the lawn. You — you don’t know any detective who is a gardener, too, do you?”

“The very man!” Sergeant Miles exclaimed with enthusiasm. “He has retired from the Police Department now but he will be glad to take this on with me for the sheer gratification of solving the mystery, if we can. He comes of a long line of Scotch gardeners and is a perfect wizard at making things grow; I am sure, Miss Drake, that your aunt will be more than satisfied with his work. I’ll bring him out on the late afternoon train.”

“It will be necessary for you to have some sort of reference or recommendation, if you can manage it, Sergeant, for Aunt Jerusha is very strict and — and peculiar in some ways.” Patricia looked a trifle doubtful. “She is very sensible and practical, as Mr. Wells says, but ”

‘‘Miss Drake, like most maiden ladies of settled age, has her idiosyncracies,” John Wells interposed smoothly. “For instance, she will tolerate no women servants in the house except her own maid, of whom her niece has told you, and she has always been proud to the point of arrogance of the family position in the community, but you will find her eminently sensible and level-headed. I think your suggestion is a good one, Sergeant, and I shall look for some interesting developments.”

Patricia glanced from one serious face to the other.

“Then you don’t think it is just that they’re losing their minds, my father and — and my uncles? You don’t think my aunt will be the next to go and then — perhaps !”

She faltered once more, but her meaning was unmistakable, and, although the attorney was discreetly silent, he laid one slim, blue- veined hand upon her arm reassuringly. It was the young police sergeant who responded, and there was a peculiar ambiguity in his tones.

“Perhaps you, yourself?” he finished for her. “No, my dear Miss Drake, from the bare facts which you have been able to give me I do not think that either you or your aunt are in any danger of falling victims to such unusual symptoms as have manifested themselves in the other members of your family. The hope that I may be of some small service in helping to restore them to their normal state of mind is the most urgent factor in my desire to undertake this investigation.”

Chapter II

“1\ /TY professional experience has been a long and 1 V I var^ one> Sergeant«Miles, but I am willing to admit to you in confidence that I have never encountered so strange a case,” John Wells remarked to the detective when the office door had closed behind their young client. “Have you?”

“None with exactly these features, sir,” the other replied. “I need not remind you, however, of what the records themselves show: that the more unusual the factors in a problem, the easier it is of solution when once you hit upon — well, let us say, the greatest common denominator. Paradoxically, it is the commonplace which proves the most baffling. Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not cocksure about this affair, by any means, but I am tremendously interested. Can you tell me anything more of these people? Anything, I mean, which you might not have cared to go into before Miss Drake? You say that you have known them all for practically a generation.”

“I have been the attorney for Hobart Drake and his sister Jerusha for the past twenty years and their affairs are in perfect shape.” The attorney sat back in his chair and placed the tips of his fingers together reflectively. “Roger’s brilliant scientific career speaks for itself and Andrew made a big financial success of his sheep ranch. He came to me on his return to this country in regard to investing his capital and I found that he had more than doubled his share of the original inheritance. Hobart’s daughter, whom you just met, is an heiress in her own right through the estate left by her mother. They are one of the oldest families in that section of Long Island and hitherto the most respected. As little Miss Patricia told you, there has never been a hint of insanity in any past generation of which I ever heard.”

“You have known them, then, only since you became the attorney for Miss Drake’s father and her aunt?” Sergeant Miles asked after a slight pause.

“I had been acquainted with the whole family for many years, but not intimately so.” There was a note of surprise in Wells’ voice. “My father’s old homestead was near theirs but I was more than ten years older than any of them and then they were not the sort to encourage friendship; they held themselves aloof from the neighbors with the bitter pride of poverty which resents the memory of past affluence. But why do you ask, Sergeant?”

“Because if Miss Drake plays her part and enables me to investigate from the inside I shall be able to study her relatives as they now are for myself, but if you don’t mind, I should like to know how they impressed you; in the old days before prosperity returned to them, I mean,” the detective explained frankly. “Later I want to try to gauge, if I can, just what changes the past twenty years have made in their several characters. It’s evident from the widely different careers which they chose that, as you tell me, the three brothers are as far apart in temperament as the poles.’ *

4 They always were.” Wells nodded reminiscently.

“Roger is the oldest of the family — he must be about forty-eight — and except in outward appearance he has changed the least, in my estimation. He was always a dreamer, a shy, ascetic, introspective sort of youth. Andrew, two years his junior, was just the opposite; boisterous and fun-loving, and more sociable than any of the rest. Jerusha — Miss Drake — comes next. She was demure but dignified and austere even as a mere girl; in a word, typically mid-Victorian.

Miles nodded. “And what of the third brother, the father of the young lady?”

“There you will find the greatest change, Sergeant.” The attorney spoke hastily and in a more confidential tone “Hobart was a drab, colorless young bank clerk, stoop-shouldered at twenty-three, conscientious, but wholly without ambition to get out of the rut. Now he is a dynamic force on the Street and until this unfortunate episode the leading citizen of his community. I have noticed though, as his daughter has, that for the last month or so he has appeared to have something on his mind, but I put it down to an impending deal of more than ordinary importance. I cannot believe that his sanity is in question, much less that all three brothers should be attacked at virtually the same time! I feel that there must be some other explanation!”

“That is self-evident, since you communicated with Headquarters on their behalf, Mr. Wells.”

John Wells half rose from his chair and then controlled himself with more of an effort than he had ever displayed in court.

“Yes, and for an investigator of the utmost discretion!” he replied. “I could not very well apply for a lunacy commission without the consent of the elder Miss Drake, which I know would never be given, but it is imperative that Miss Patricia’s story be fully looked into and this astounding state of affairs cleared up. I would not have given credence to the child for a moment, I would have thought that she herself was the victim of some form of hysteria amounting to temporary dementia, but I have heard rumors ”

He halted suddenly but the other caught him up.

“There have been other manifestations of — er — eccentricity, sir?”

“No, no! The tale of Hobart Drake’s midnight oration has leaked out on the Street, however, and become more or less of a joke, although I am sure that the fact has not reached his ears,” Wells explained. “The generally accepted reason, as Miss Patricia told you, was that he must have gone too deeply into his private stock; if he did, it will have been the first time in all my knowledge of him. Then, too, an old friend of mine, a professor at a certain well-known university, was present at that lecture of Roger’s last Wednesday, and to say that he was astounded is putting it mildly. He called upon me the following evening and gave me the gist of it, and I fear that it will cause even greater mischief than little Miss Patricia suggested. It was more than a clever travesty, casting ridicule on the archaeological discoveries of recent years, Sergeant; it was a deliberate, libelous satire on the achievements of several noted personages in the scientific world, with devilishly close imitations of the characteristic, individual literary style of each in recent signed articles of theirs, and unless some adequate explanation can be produced in the immediate future, Roger Drake will be stripped of the honors that have been heaped upon him. And he is the gentlest, most sensitive soul alive!”

There was a brief pause and then Sergeant Miles asked:

“Have you heard anything except from Miss Patricia about Mr. Andrew Drake’s peculiar actions this morning?”

“No, but as she in no way exaggerated her account of the other two incidents I am fully prepared to believe her statement concerning this.” The attorney pushed back his chair. Rising, he moved to the window, where he stood for a moment gazing out at the clustering, irregular tops of the lesser office buildings. Then he wheeled suddenly. “Sergeant, I haven’t a theory, a suspicion, an idea of a possible solution! The whole thing is monstrous, incredible! If I were ignorant and superstitious, if I believed in the Evil Eye !”