Vincent Starrett - The Blue Door

“The place with the blue door is the place we’ve got to find, Bart,” declared Norway with emphasis.

“I know—and thanks to Silvernail, we can find it. He said it was in the next block, and I don’t think he lied about that. You thought yourself that we might be a block off in our calculations. Well, I’m going there, myself, to-night.”

“Alone?” Norway’s question was a protest.

“Yes, alone. We’re probably being watched and followed, Norway, and you’re more dangerous than I am, because you know Pemberton. I’ve got a plan turning in my mind, and I’ll tell you about it when it’s ready.”

In Norway’s mailbox, when they returned to his apartment, there was a letter in a strange hand, and its recipient quickly tore open the envelope. After a moment he whistled in surprise, and then he laughed.

“By heaven, Bart,” he cried, “we’ve been on a wild goose chase all along. Nothing has happened to Pemberton at all! This is from him . He’s simply out of town.”

“What?” cried the writer, snatching the paper from his friend’s hand.

But the letter, which was only a friendly note, said quite plainly that Pemberton, who had been out of town for a few days, would be back shortly and hoped to see Norway upon his return.

“Let’s get upstairs,” said Honeywell; and in the apartment he slumped down in a chair and reread the surprising letter a number of times.

“It certainly takes the wind out of our sails, doesn’t it?” asked Norway.

“It does,” admitted the story writer, “and I’m wondering if it wasn’t intended to do just that.”

“Now what the devil do you mean?”

“I’m wondering whether the writer of that note isn’t trying to call us off the chase.”

“But the writer of the note is Pemberton,” protested Norway. “There hasn’t been any chase except the one we cooked up for ourselves.”

Honeywell was again deep in thought. After a few minutes he asked: “How do you know the note is from Pemberton? Because it’s signed with his name?”

“Why—yes—I suppose so.”

“Did you ever have a letter from him before? Do you know his handwriting? As I understand it, you met Pemberton at the Jack o’ Lantern Club the night of the Sea Lions’ Frolic. If nothing has happened to Pemberton, there was no occasion for this note. He could have waited until his return and then called you up. No, this note is too damned timely , Norway; and I don’t believe your friend ever wrote it. It was written by someone who knows you are searching for Pemberton, and who is desperately afraid you are going to find him—or what’s left of him, maybe! It was written to call off the hunt, to allay suspicion, to help you to forget your fears for Pemberton’s safety.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated Norway. “Who could that be?”

“Who? Well, it might have been written by Silvernail, just for instance, or by somebody else at Silvernail’s dictation. He knows about Pemberton. We babbled about him enough to that little thug, and he probably knew all about him before.”

Again for a time the writer became thoughtful. Then, “I’m going to find that other place to-night,” he said grimly. “I’ve got to. It holds the secret of Pemberton’s fate. And I’m more than ever certain, now, that Pemberton has either been murdered or is being held captive by those who are afraid of what he has seen.”

Thus it fell out that Arthur Norway sat at home that evening, close to a telephone, while Bartlett Honeywell, creator of mysteries, fared forth alone on the trail of the blue door.

It was close to eight o’clock when the amateur detective turned briskly out of Dearborn Street into the little thoroughfare of tall houses that held the bootlegger’s palace which he sought. He was exactly a block removed from the scene of their earlier exploit, and no sleeping cabman nodded on his box to mark the entrance. But Honeywell was not disturbed. He realized that the cabby had been removed for good and proper reasons. So long as the search for Pemberton continued, no helpful clue would be furnished by the opposing forces.

It was a night of stars and soft breezes, and the writer’s mind reacted happily to the background of vibrant darkness. He strolled casually past the suspected doorway and glanced casually in at the open door. He noted the metal-bound edges of the steps and the soft pile of the scarlet stair runner; but he made no attempt to enter. He was merely an honest citizen out for a stroll on a balmy evening of spring. His light cap was pulled a little sidewise on his head, a pipe was in the corner of his mouth, his hands were in his trouser pockets. On the second floor the blinds were drawn, but a thin line of light escaped beneath the edges.

He circled the block at easy gait and, returning, noted that the nearest intersecting highway was Baker Street. The house he watched was the second from the corner.

In Baker Street, too, the houses were tall and solemn, the very twins of those in the little street that held the apartment with the blue door. The entire square was small, and in a moment he knew why. There was no intervening alley. If an alley existed, it was a private one, somewhere in the center of the buildings, reached probably from the courts. In that case, he reflected, the rear entrances of the several buildings that clustered at the corner would be rather near together. Perhaps they even adjoined.

An odd idea occurred to him. Was it not even possible that the entire square was given over to the lucrative business of selling illegal liquor? A speakeasy in every flat! Dumbwaiters that lifted the “stuff” from huge storerooms in the basements! An entire city block that was a stronghold of criminal enterprise! A great fortress made up of adjoining buildings, connecting from the inside! The headquarters of a vast bootleg industry whose ramifications extended to all quarters of the city!

It was not possible, of course; but the idea pleased him. It was the sort of fancy that made his stories popular in the magazines, an extravagance of imagination that made him the one and only Bartlett Honeywell, purveyor of mystery fiction to innumerable thousands.

With this notion running pleasantly through his head, he continued his stroll, and out of the wild idea was born another and less spectacular one. It was at least probable that there were two entrances to the house with the blue door and the scarlet stair runner. Since there was no visible access to the rear, where could the second entrance be?

Approaching the Baker Street intersection from another direction, he looked with close attention at all the houses within eye sweep and reached a tentative decision. If there were any connections between the houses at the corner, they would be between the three that made the triangle, that is, the corner house itself and those that stood on either side of it, one in Baker Street, one in the little street of the sleeping cabman.

Here, at any rate, was a valid idea. The commercial entrance to the gin palace was obviously the stairway that led to the blue door. Ergo, the private entrance would be in Baker Street. There might be a flaw in his reasoning, he realized; it was quite possible that no connection existed whatever; but it might pay him to give a trifle of attention to the corner house and to the second house in Baker Street.

He crossed the street and resumed his stroll upon the sidewalk directly across from the two houses that had interested him. Low lights burned in several of the windows, but the shades of all were drawn.

Then, with startling suddenness, his dream castle was given a foundation. A door opened in the second house, and a woman came out and stood upon the steps. She was clad in a light coat over a dark suit, and something in her height and manner made the writer’s heart beat rapidly. He shrank back in the shadow of a bush upon a neighboring lawn and watched her.