THE BLIND GODDESS (Murder Mystery Classic) (eBook)

CHAPTER II

The Devens mansion first gained immortality as the original of the familiar mot that: “If architecture is frozen music, that house must be frozen ragtime!” Richard Devens, selecting his architect for no better reason than that he had found himself sitting beside a confident young man at a sheriff’s jury banquet, had bidden him go as far as he liked, with the result that the latter had taken him at his word.

On the theory that it pays to advertise it had been a huge success, resembling nothing else created by the hand of man except possibly a gigantic cake of marzipan, whence one might expect to see a flight of Easter rabbits come leaping through the windows, and where the pantheon of shameless gods and goddesses who shouldered the upper stories, amused themselves by nonchalantly tossing stony fruits across the façade or carelessly lassoing one another with rococo garlands.

Its architectural extravagances, even had Hugh been qualified to appreciate them, were lost in darkness as the motor stopped beneath the porte-cochère, and the shaded windows looked exactly like any other windows, the door like any other door. Moira, having dismissed the car, ran up the steps. A white-haired butler received Hugh’s coat, hat, and brief-case, arranging them methodically upon a polished table that stood beneath a massive oaken staircase.

“There’ll be one extra for dinner, Shane.”

“Yes, Miss Moira.”

“Where’s father?”

“In the library, Miss Moira.”

“This way, Mr.—” she gave that same little cooing chuckle. “Dillon, isn’t it?”

“Dillon it is!”

The adventure was becoming queerer and queerer. He had never before been in a house like this, except once when billeted on the outskirts of Compiègne in a small château hastily stripped by the owner of everything of value in anticipation of the immediate arrival of the Heinies. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers. Everywhere he caught the glint of gold frames, of marble, of carving. Cotton wool! She led him up one flight, then along a passage lined with paintings to a closed door.

His brain was awhirl, his heart pumping. The same spots burned in his cheeks as had been there in the court-room. He would have followed her anywhere—as glamoured as if she had been a fairy princess leading him through subterranean passages to the treasure-chambers of a dream palace. What was behind that wall of oak?

“Dad’s den!” she explained. “Sound-proof!”

Without knocking she pushed it open.

Two oldish men were sitting under a shaded drop-light at a huge flat-topped desk strewn with papers. To Hugh they looked very much alike. Both were grey-headed, thick-set, smooth-shaven, and rather red in the face, and both had kindly and very blue eyes. Moira kissed each of them.

“Hello, Daddy! Hello, Uncle Dan!” she said.

The former, who was more heavily built as well as slightly younger in appearance than his associate, slipped his arm about the girl’s waist without getting up, and squinted inquisitively at Hugh.

“See what I found in the Criminal Court Building, Daddy!”

She beckoned Hugh with a lift of her chin.

“I want you to know my father——”

Devens extended his hand without removing his cigar. It was large and powerful.

“Glad to meet you, Mr.——?”

“Dillon. Mr. Hugh Dillon—barrister-at-law,” explained Moira. “And this is Mr. Daniel Shay.”

Mr. Shay arose with the slightly deprecating manner of an old retainer who is received on a footing of intimacy.

“I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Mister Dillon.”

“If you know the Devens you can’t help knowing Uncle Dan, can he, daddy?” Moira smiled at him affectionately. “Mr. Dillon is going to show me how I can help some of the poor people who are in—I mean outside—the Tombs.”

Her father studied them thoughtfully through the smoke.

“Is he, now!” he remarked finally. “You’ll have your hands full, I’m thinking. How about helping Uncle Dan and me a little! We have our troubles, haven’t we, Danny? They say ‘charity begins at home!’ And what are you going to show him in return?”

Moira’s eyes grew innocently large.

“I’m going to make him Mayor of New York!”

Uncle Dan grinned.

“I’ll say she will!” he muttered.

Her father eyed Hugh whimsically.

“If she sets out to she’ll do it!” he declared. “Are you Irish, Mr. Dillon?”

“Sure, he is!” retorted his daughter. “Can’t you tell it from his black hair and eyes? Now I’m going to give him a cup of tea and show him the family skeleton.”

“Won’t you stay and dine with us?” inquired Devens. “Always glad to have any friend of Moira’s—particularly if he’s going to be our next mayor.”

“Thank you very much,” said Hugh, who felt entirely lost. “But I——”

“Of course he will!” she interrupted. “That was all settled long ago!”

“Dinner is served, miss.”

They had passed the intervening time in the great library overlooking Fifth Avenue, and, while Moira had exhibited no skeleton, she had shown him much that thrilled him—illuminated manuscripts, marvellous ivory carvings, priceless jades and ceramics, wonderful paintings, rivalling, he was fain to believe, those he had seen in the galleries of Europe.

He had speedily found himself at ease and entirely disarmed of suspicion. As hostess she was charming. The arrogance of her manner he now perceived to be due partly to her natural exuberance and impulsiveness, partly to her being a little spoiled, the independent mistress of so large an establishment while still so young, but also in large measure to a curious self-consciousness which led her to endeavour to conceal the warmth of heart and generosity with which Providence had endowed her. He concluded that he had been quite unjust; that there was, in fact, nothing insincere, patronizing, or tinsel in her expressed wish to be “of service,” although it was, nevertheless, coloured by an almost childish willfulness and instinct for the theatrical, which at times tended to discolour it entirely. As changeable as a slip of litmus, she alternately annoyed and delighted him. Whenever he thought that he had found the real Moira, pst! she had slipped away from him again—and her little cooing chuckle was floating over the hedge from the other side of the conversational road.

Her father was standing with Mr. Shay at the sideboard as Moira and Hugh entered the dining-room.

“Have a drop o’ the cruiskeen lawn?”

And when Hugh declined:

“Then he’ll never be mayor; will he, Danny?”

“And never go to jail, either!” commented the older man approvingly.

Hugh had never eaten a meal so strangely commingled of the plainest fare and the most exotic culinary mysteries. It was a bewildering experience. Was it possible that less than two hours before he had been defending Renig on a charge of assault? How did he come to be sitting here at a Lucullan feast in this magnificent room, when only three months before he had been a homeless and almost penniless stranger in New York! Only a fairy’s wand could have done it! But there was the fairy right across the table watching him devour his dinner. Under the softly diffused light she was even more alluring than before. It made him a little uncomfortable. Had she really cast a spell upon him? And he liked Devens. Force, will power, the ability to dominate stuck out all over him. A man without pretense. Simple and kindly. He wondered what his business might be, but did not think it polite to ask. Was there a Mrs. Devens? His eyes wandered to the full-length portrait above the mantel.

“My wife,” explained his host. “She died when my daughter was two years old.”

To Hugh there was something slightly unpleasant about the picture, as if the artist had taken an unconscious dislike to his sitter. He concluded that Moira looked more like her father than her mother. Mrs. Devens had been a brunette of the darkest type. There was little resemblance to be detected between the warm colouring of his young hostess and the rather cold, classic beauty of the woman over the fireplace. No, the girl was not like her, either outwardly or inwardly probably; and he felt glad that she was not.

It was the pleasantest evening Hugh could remember, and for the first time in his brief career in New York he was made to feel entirely at home. Under the influence of the friendly atmosphere he was led to tell them the story of his struggle against conditions which nevertheless he discovered to his surprise to have been no more difficult than those faced by his host when he had landed forty years before, an uncouth immigrant boy, at Castle Garden.

Hugh Dillon had been the only son of a country lawyer in a small village on the Hudson, who all his life had fought a losing battle against ill-health and poverty, while striving gamely to give his boy the opportunities which his abilities deserved. Hugh had got his schooling from such teachers as the town, and later the county, could afford, supplemented, as he grew older, by lessons from his father and mother. They had managed to send him first to Williams College, and then to the Harvard Law School, from which he had been graduated a year before the death of his father, the junior partner in the local firm of Safford & Dillon, to whose place he had succeeded. Here he had begun the practice of his profession, chiefly in...