Chapter VII The Key Experiment
Bob Dexter, when he had caught sight of the carious marks, to which attention was called by his chum Ned, found himself wishing that he was a little more alone on this mystery case.
“There are altogether too many cooks here—they’ll spoil the broth,” mused Bob, as he saw the ever-growing crowd following him and his companions around to the side of the cabin where the chimney of the fireplace was erected.
True though the “murder” had turned out to be only a mysterious robbery, coupled with an assault on the old hermit, and in this way spoiling a sensation, there was still much curiosity regarding everything connected with the matter. Even though Hiram had been taken away in the physician’s automobile.
“Where they going?” asked more than one in the throng, as he followed the milling crowd, when the police chiefs, Bob and his two chums and Jolly Bill Hickey had started away from the front door of the cabin. “What are they after?”
“I guess they think the murderer is hiding around here,” was one of the answers.
“Shucks! There ain’t been no murder!” declared a teamster who had left his load of sand near the home of Hiram Beegle. “It’s only a robbery, and not much of one at that I’m going to quit!”
Then, unexpectedly, there came a burst of hand organ music out in front, and Storm Mountain was such an isolated place that even the wheezy tones of an ancient hand organ was sufficient to create diversion. Coupled with this was a cry from some one:
“He’s got a monkey!”
This was enough to attract away most of the crowd that was following Bob and his friends (much to the annoyance of the young detective) so that by the time he reached the place of the queer marks, to which Ned had referred, the most interested investigators had that side of the cabin comparatively to themselves. And by the term “most interested investigators,” I mean Bob and the police chiefs. Of course, Jolly Bill Hickey, a lifelong messmate of the stricken man, must be included. And, of course, Ned and Harry were always anxious to help Bob.
The wheezy organ continued to grind out its “music,” if such it could be called, and accompanying it was the shrill chatter of a monkey. The crowd of men and youths laughed in delight. It did not take much to make a Storm Mountain crowd laugh.
“Well, I’m glad that dago happened along,” remarked Bob to Ned, as he bent over the marks in the soft ground.
“Do you mean you think he can help you solve this mystery?” asked Harry.
“No, but he’ll keep the crowd back while we experiment with the key by dropping it down the chimney, though I know now what the result will be.”
“Yes, he’ll keep the crowd busy,” agreed Ned. “But what do you suppose these marks are, Bob?”
Well might he ask that, for the impressions were curious. They were about a foot in diameter, and roughly circular in shape. As much as anything they resembled the marks left by an elephant’s foot.
And yet it needed but an instant’s thought to shatter that theory. There had been no small circus in the vicinity of Cliffside in many months. The place was not large enough to attract the large traveling shows. And even if it had been no show would go so far off the beaten path as to ascend Storm Mountain with a herd of elephants.
Granting that a circus had been there, and that a lone elephant had wandered off to tramp around the lonely cabin of Hiram Beegle, the marks were too few in number to have been made by any normal elephant.
“What are they, Bob?” asked Ned again. “How could they be made by an elephant?”
The young detective did not answer for a moment, but he was rapidly thinking. The elephant idea was absurd, of course. An elephant has four feet. Taking ten steps would result in forty marks having been made, and there were not half this number visible. Granting that an elephant could jump from one stand to another, and so leaving a place without any marks for a considerable distance, did not fit in with the theory.
“I can tell you what made these marks,” broke out Jolly Bill with his characteristic laugh, while Bob was on the verge of saying something.
“What did?” asked Harry. “A bird?”
“No,” replied the bald-headed, and wooden-legged man who had appeared so unexpectedly on the scene, claiming to be a friend of Hiram Beegle. “No! They were made by some one carrying a sack of potatoes, and setting it down every now and then to rest. Isn’t that it, my young detective friend?” he asked, appealing to Bob. If the latter wondered how Jolly Bill knew his claims to being a sleuth, the lad said nothing. He only remarked:
“Yes, a heavy bag of potatoes, set here and there to ease the arms of whoever was carrying it, would make just such marks as these.”
“That’s right!” cried Chief Drayton. “I’d never have thought of that—a potato sack sure enough! What do you know about that? I s’pose, Chief,” he went on, addressing the head of the Cliffside police, “that it wasn’t a sack of potatoes though, at all.”
“What do you mean—not a sack of potatoes?” asked Mr. Duncan.
“Well, I mean the scoundrel that robbed old Hiram Beegle piled his booty in a potato sack and carried it off this way. He left us a good clew, I’ll say. We can see jist which way he went with his potato sack full of booty!”
The chief seemed to relish this word “booty,” rolling it around on his tongue as if it were a choice tidbit.
“We’ve got him now!” he declared. “Come on over this way!”
“Just a moment!” spoke Chief Duncan. “We came out here to let Bob experiment with a key dropped down the chimney. We want to see if it was possible for the thief to have assaulted Hiram, gone out, locked the door after him and then have gotten the key back inside.”
“Sure we want to find that out,” agreed the Storm Mountain police force.
“Well, let’s stick to business,” proposed Mr. Duncan.
“What, and let this feller get away with his potato sack of booty?”
“There wasn’t any potato sack or any other kind of a sack of booty!” somewhat testily declared Mr. Duncan. “The only thing stolen was a small box belonging to Hiram. The thief could have tucked it under his arm. He didn’t need to carry it in a sack.”
“Oh,” murmured Mr. Drayton, somewhat crestfallen, “that’s so. I forgot about the booty being in a small box. But who was here with a sack of potatoes?” he demanded, as if no one could answer.
“Might have been Hiram himself,” suggested Jolly Bill. “He always was a great hand for potatoes when he and I were shipmates together. Like as not he lugged some spuds in for the winter.”
“Or some farmer may have brought him a bag,” added Harry. “I guess, Ned, this clew isn’t going to amount to anything.”
“Just my luck!” said Ned with a quizzical smile. “We’ll have to let Bob work this out. What say, Bob?”
“It looks as if it was a sack of potatoes that had been set down and picked up again, several times,” answered the young detective. “I guess it doesn’t mean anything in connection with this robbery. Though, of course, it won’t do any harm to ask Mr. Beegle if he carried the sack around or if some one brought him potatoes. But I’d like to try this key experiment now.”
“Yes, let’s clear up one thing at a time,” suggested Mr. Duncan. “I can’t spend all my time over in Storm Mountain. It’s the folks in Cliffside who pay my salary, and I’ve got to do my work there.”
“But I’d like to have you help me out a bit,” complained Chief Drayton. “Course Storm Mountain isn’t any such place as Cliffside, but we police chiefs ought to stick together.”
“Oh, I’ll help you all I can,” readily agreed Mr. Duncan. “But Bob here can do more than I can.”
“Shucks! a youngster like him!” sniffed Mr. Drayton.
“That’s all right—he’s got an old head on young shoulders,” declared Mr. Duncan in a low voice.
Fortunately Bob was engaged just then in climbing up a tree by which easy access could be had to the sloping roof of the log cabin. The lad carried with him the brass key, which he had first carefully examined for any marks that might lead to the discovery of anything. So Bob heard nothing of this alternating talk against him and in his favor.
His examination of the key had disclosed nothing. It was a heavy, ponderous affair, almost as if it had been made by a local locksmith who might have forged it by hand, as he might also have done in respect to the lock on the strong room where Hiram Beegle had been overpowered and robbed.
And aside from numerous scratches on the key Bob could see nothing. The scratches, he knew, must have come there naturally, for they would have resulted from the many times Hiram must have taken the lock-opener from his secret niche and put it back. Also, the key would have been scratched by being put in and taken out of the lock.
“And as for looking for fingerprints on it, I believe it would be worth while to have this photographed with that end in view,” thought Bob. He knew the value of fingerprint comparisons as a means of tracing criminals.
But Bob knew the brass key had passed through many hands that very morning, since the discovery of the crime. And Hiram’s own fingers and thumbs would have left on the surface marks that would have obliterated any of the whorls, curves and twists of the criminal.
As you doubtless know if you take up a shiny piece of metal in your fingers you will leave on it the impression of the tips, or balls, of your fingers or thumbs, as is also the case if you thus handle a piece of looking-glass. And it is possible, by taking a photograph of these marks, to get a picture of the fingerprints of the person handling the metal or glass. Sometimes prints invisible to the unaided eye are brought out in the photograph.
And by comparing these reproduced prints with the finger marks of criminals on file in all large police headquarters, it is sometimes possible to trace the guilty ones.
But Bob Dexter knew that it would be worse than useless in a case like this, for the reasons I have mentioned. So he resolved to do the next best thing, use the key to learn whether or not it was possible to have gotten it where it was found—near the hand of the prostrate Hiram Beegle on the floor of his strong room—by dropping the lock-opener down the fireplace.
“Is any one in the room to notice where the key falls when I drop it?” asked Bob, when he was up on the roof.
“I’ll go in,” offered Chief Drayton. “I’d like to see just how it does fall.”
“I’ll wait until you call up the chimney that you’re ready,” said Bob. “You can call to me up the flue.”
“All right, but don’t drop the key down on me while I’m hollering at you,” begged the Storm Mountain chief. “It’s heavy and it might bang me in the eye.”
“I’ll be careful,” promised Bob, with a smile, in which his chums joined.
The hand organ music was still wailing away out in the road, and the antics of the monkey must have been amusing, for the crowd was kept interested, and thus held away from the cabin for a time, for which Bob was glad.
The lad, up on the roof, was looking at the edges of the brick chimney, but they told him nothing. They were covered with soot from the wood smoke, and this did not appear to have been disturbed.
“Though,” mused Bob to himself as he waited for word from inside, and looked at the black stuff on the chimney, “there might be all sorts of marks and evidence here and I couldn’t see it without a magnifying glass. Guess maybe I’d better get one of those things. I’d look like a regular Sherlock Holmes with one, I reckon. But a photograph camera is better. I wonder how they could take any pictures of this black stuff?” and idly he lingered the soot on the edge of the chimney. “Guess it won’t pay to bother with that on this case,” he went on with his thoughts. “But if I’m going to continue in this line of work I’m going in for all that sort of thing.”
He heard a slight noise down below him and stood at attention.
“All ready—drop the key!” called up Chief Drayton from within the cabin. The voice came to Bob as through a speaking tube, carried up the fireplace flue.
“Here it comes!” answered the lad.
The next instant he had dropped the brass key down the black opening.