# Unseen Hands/Chapter 2
### CHAPTER II
#### THE UNSEEN HAND

RICHARD LORNE bent forward, his stout knees shaking beneath him, and examined the cable-ends where they protruded from just under the edge of the frame. The tips of the sundered steel strands glittered as if burnished, and some had been turned inward from the force of the blows which had parted them.
He glanced up at the inscrutable face of his companion.
"What devil's work has been going on in this house!" He spoke in an awestruck whisper.
For answer the attorney merely touched his finger suggestively to his closed lips with a scarcely perceptible shake of his head as Gene hastened toward them.
"Dad!" The young man's face was working convulsively. "That didn't just happen! It couldn't! Why, it doesn't seem as though it fell at all, but as though something pulled it down over the place where I'd been working only a minute before. Look at the wall!"
The two older men raised their eyes and saw a number of small, deep, round holes spaced at regular intervals which roughly outlined the size and shape of the portrait, and then glancing down at the upturned back of the fallen picture beheld a row of stout iron stakes equally spaced driven outward from the under part of the frame.
​"That's a mere detail," Samuel commented "Evidently the person who hung the portrait did not put any too much faith in the strength of the stakes driven into the wall; and wisely, seeing what has occurred, he supplemented them by the steel cable which has just parted, as you see. You had a narrow escape, then, Eugene; but it was sheer accident—?"
He was interrupted by a patter of little silken mules upon the stairs, and in another moment Cissie and Nan rushed into the room and paused, rooted to the spot at sight of the fallen picture. Both were clad in kimonos, and with the golden curls and straight, fine, black hair flowing about their shoulders and mingling as they clung instinctively to each other, they looked like little children. It was Nan who first drew away from her sister's tense embrace. She could see only her father and the attorney, for Gene stood behind them, and as she advanced the childish look left her face.
"Where is my brother?" Her tone rang with tragic grief through the room. "Is he there, beneath that—?"
"Nan!" All the good in the boy's weak face shone forth as he sprang forward and caught her in his arms. "I'm safe! I missed it by a fraction of a minute!"
"How did it happen?" Cissie's voice rose shrilly, but before anybody could reply a faint cry came from the doorway behind her.
"Grene! You are hurt! Something has happened!"
Looking more mouselike than ever with her gray hair lying in soft folds about her face and her slender figure encased in a drab dressing-gown, Miss Meade glided into the room.
​"No, I'm not hurt, Aunt Effie. I had just gone to ask Dad about one of the letters when the portrait fell," Gene explained as she stood swaying, her thin, delicate hand gripping his arm until the fingers almost disappeared in the folds of his coatsleeve. "Mr. Titheredge says it was a sheer accident, but after what Rannie said at dinner to-night; after we know how we've all felt since Jule—" He broke off and added: "Ouch! Aunt Effie, you hurt!"
She removed her hand from his arm and repeated mechanically in a dazed fashion:
"You had gone to ask your stepfather about one of the letters?"
"Yes. These condolence things, you know. But I'm sure it couldn't have been an accident! Why should that one picture in all this house have fallen just at the moment when I left the desk? I'd been sitting there for more than an hour."
"What a merciful blessing that you escaped!" Miss Effie spoke in a low tone, then added quickly with a sharper note: "But I—it was I who asked you to reply to the letters, and suggested that you use the library desk here! I even arranged the light for you! Had you been killed it would have been my fault!"
"Come, Miss Meade, that's all nonsense!" Samuel Titheredge stepped forward. "No one can foresee accidents; and that portrait has hung there more than twenty years without falling. In any event it is all right; Gene wasn't hurt, and you and the girls had better go back to bed and try to forget all about it."
As if conscious for the first time of their appearance she ​glanced down shrinkingly at her own attire and then turned to where Nan and Cissie stood.
"Mr. Titheredge is right; let us go back to our rooms. I—I should never have forgiven myself if anything had happened to Gene!"
When she and the girls had taken their departure the attorney turned to the white-faced young man.
"You, too, Gene. No use trying to clear up this mess to-night, and your Dad and I have some business matters still to talk over. You've had a bad shock and you must try to get a sound night's rest."
"Do you suppose I could sleep?" Gene turned on him hotly. "You and Dad may be blind, but I tell you I know there is something horribly wrong! We are dying one by one, and I was scheduled to be the third! There was no coincidence about any of it. Someone is trying deliberately to do us all to death, someone who knows what we are doing from hour to hour!" His voice had risen to a shrill scream. "How can you shut your eyes?"
Titheredge compressed his lips and nudged Lorne, who glanced at him and then spoke with sudden sternness:
"Eugene, you are hysterical! You are behaving like a child! This matter of the fall of the portrait will be thoroughly investigated to-morrow, but meanwhile you must try to pull yourself together. Things will look different to you in the morning. Go on up to bed like a good chap, and let Mr. Titheredge and me finish our conference."
Gene went shakily from the room and they heard him ascending the steep, old-fashioned staircase. Waiting until his footsteps had ceased with the thud of a closing door, Lorne turned to his companion.
​"Nevertheless, Sam, the boy is dead right! There is something horribly sinister back of the whole thing, and it is an insult to even his intelligence to try to convince him of the fallacy of mere coincidence. I'm not going to wait until morning and perhaps find some other member of the family dead in bed! At the risk of the derisive notoriety you were talking about a little while ago I'm going to have the authorities in here now!"
"I agree with you that it looks very much as if some human agency has been at work. We can at least be certain of it in this last case, with the evidence of the cut cable; but it is after midnight, and I don't believe another attempt will be made to-night." The attorney's calm, sane voice fell upon the other's ears like a dash of cold water. "Besides, if you call up now you'll have a mob of heavy-footed, matter-of-fact plainclothesmen in here who wouldn't be able to comprehend your almost superstitious apprehension and who would obliterate any clue which may remain. There is just one lad in the Homicide Bureau at Headquarters who could Understand your point of view and carry out the investigation with the necessary tact and discretion if we are to avoid undue notoriety, and that is Barry Odell. I'll stay here to-night with you and keep guard if you think it necessary, turn and turn about; and in the morning we'll go down to Headquarters. I'll have a word with the Commissioner, and we'll bring young Odell back with us."
Agitated as he was, Lorne saw the wisdom of the attorney's advice and accepted it. After a further examination of the fallen portrait they turned out the lights and went upstairs. Samuel elected to share his friend's room; ​but sleep did not come and they were still discussing the extraordinary chain of tragic events when Lorne stopped in the middle of a sentence and held up a warning hand.
"Did you hear that?" he whispered after a moment.
"What? Don't let your nerves run away with you, old man.
"Nerves nothing! Don't speak aloud! I'm sure I heard a step out in the hall."
"Well, I didn't, and I've keener ears than you," retorted Titheredge.
Lorne padded softly to the door and listened for a space of several minutes, then turned away with a sigh of relief.
"I guess I must have been mistaken. I'll go to pieces myself, like Gene, if I'm not careful. God! I wish this night would end, and we could get hold of that young fellow you spoke of! Perhaps it would be better, though, to go to some private detective agency and avoid the police."
"And have your home overrun with operatives, every member of your household shadowed and their affairs investigated; and nothing to show for it but a bill as long as a Japanese letter?" Titheredge demanded contemptuously. "Use your head, Dick! I wouldn't recommend this young—"
He paused, silenced by a swift gesture from his companion.
"Listen! Do you hear it—that grating, gnawing sound?" It was a cool September night and the windows were open, but the sweat was pouring down Lorne's chubby countenance. He padded to the door as before, then beckoned insistently, "Come over here! Don't you dare pretend—"
​With an expression of boredom the attorney rose and tiptoed across the room. He placed his ear to the keyhole for a minute and then straightened with a shrug.
"Of course I hear it. Mice or even rats in the walls; you can't drive them out of an old house like this. That's probably what you heard before." He resumed his seat. "You can hear all sorts of noises at night if you only listen for them."
"I suppose so," Lorne muttered somewhat doubtfully as he went back to his chair. "I could have sworn, though, that it sounded louder than any rat."
"As I was saying when you interrupted"—Titheredge ignored the last remark—^"I would not have recommended Barry Odell to you if I didn't know all about him and his capabilities. He's young still, about twenty-eight or thirty; but I've watched his work on a couple of murder cases, and I tell you he will go far."
Lorne stirred uneasily in his chair.
"Murder! That's rather a strong word, isn't it? We don't actually know yet that those wires were severed; and we don't want the affair treated as an ordinary murder, or series of them. It's the devilish ingenuity of the whole thing that staggers me, Sam." He drummed on the arms of his chair. "If they hadn't come so rapidly, one after the other within the month, any sane person would have sworn they were each the result of pure accident! How could my poor wife have been poisoned before my very eyes? And Julian; what terrible influence could have made him slash his throat in just that vital spot? It would have been unbelievable except for the damning evidence of those cut wires!"
​"I thought you just said that we did not know they were actually cut," the attorney put in quietly.
"D—n it, I don't know what to think!" exploded the harassed little man. "When we discuss it the whole thing seems wildly impossible; and yet I feel it, the entire family does! Can you ask a police detective to go on that?"
"You can ask Barry Odell to start at the ends of those severed picture-wires and be certain that he will finish the job, no matter where the trail leads him—now, what's the matter? Got a listening-spell on again?"
For Richard Lorne's rotund form had tensed, and his ear was turned to the door. After a moment he relaxed with a grunt.
"Thought I heard footsteps again." He rose. "Let's go to bed and try to get a wink of sleep. If I keep on hearing things I'll be a wreck to-morrow; and I want to have all my wits about me, if I ever had in my life!"
Morning dawned with a hint of autumnal frost in the air, and Lorne shook his peacefully slumbering companion.
"It's seven o'clock, Sam. I just rang and told Peters to have breakfast on the table in ten minutes, and to order a taxi. For heaven's sake, let's get on downtown and interview your man!"
"Eh?" Titheredge stretched his long, lanky frame. "With you in a minute, Dick."
His host was dressed first and nervously consulted the clock on the bed-stand.
"Eight minutes past," he announced. "I'll go on down ahead, old man, and see if breakfast is ready."
He closed the door after him, and the attorney heard his footsteps die away down the hall. Then all at once there ​came a hideous, sickening crash, and the sound of a heavy body hurtling down the stairs.
Collarless, Samuel Titheredge tore open the door and rushed to the head of the stairs. Other doors were opening, and voices in which Gene's nervous tones mingled with higher feminine ones in a chorus of startled cries; but the attorney was oblivious to them. His gaze traveled from the top step of the stairs, which had collapsed like cardboard, to the bottom, where a huddled figure lay.
Leaping down, he raised the head of his friend and called sharply:
"Peters!"
"Sir?" The white, frightened face of the butler peered from the dining-room door.
"Bring some water, quickly! Mr. Lorne has fallen down the stairs."
The ice in the glass tinkled violently as Peters obeyed, and the attorney watched his face closely as he bent over his unconscious master.
"Is—is he hurt bad, sir?" The butler clutched the newel post as he straightened his shaking knees.
"I don't know yet. How is it that you did not hear the sound of his fall and come to his assistance?" He fairly shot the question at Peters, and the latter responded haltingly:
"I didn't hear anything, sir; I was in the back pantry." A slight flush came into his pale cheeks. "I didn't know anything was wrong until you called me."
"Well, go and telephone for the doctor at once." Titheredge passed over the palpable lie. "Then come back here and help me lift him to the couch in the library."
​The family, in various stages of disarray, had appeared at the top of the staircase and were demanding in frightened accents what had happened, but Titheredge had ears for none of them as they rushed down and crowded about. Lorne was breathing stertorously, and under the shock of icy water dashed into his face he opened his eyes at last.
"I say, what—" The sentence ended in a groan as he strove to sit up and fell back again. "My arm!"
Titheredge noticed then that his left arm was crumpled and twisted under him, and when they lifted him and bore him to the couch it swung limp and useless at his side.
He opened his eyes once more as the attorney bent over him and the others gathered about.
"The stairs," he whispered faintly. "The top one collapsed as I pressed my weight on it. You remember the noise I heard last night?"
Titheredge nodded briefly, then turned to the others.
"Move back, please, all of you, and give him air." As they obeyed he asked: "Feel better now, Dick?"
"Yes. My side hurts a little when I breathe, and that arm's broken, I think; but I'm lucky not to have been killed." In a whisper once more he added: "I'm all right. Don't wait here a minute longer. Go and get your Barry Odell."