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The Social Gangster

by Arthur B. Reeve · English · Gutenberg #33466 · 504,196 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Social Gangster

Author: Arthur B. Reeve

Illustrator: Will Foster


        
Release date: August 19, 2010 [eBook #33466]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33466

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOCIAL GANGSTER ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                           THE SOCIAL GANGSTER

                         THE CRAIG KENNEDY SERIES

                           BY ARTHUR B. REEVE


FRONTISPIECE BY WILL FOSTER

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright, 1916, by HARPER & BROTHERS
Printed in the United States of America


[Illustration: JUST BEFORE WE WERE OFF A TELEGRAM CAME TO HER, WHICH SHE
READ AND HASTILY STUFFED INTO A POCKET OF HER RIDING HABIT]




CONTENTS


I. THE SOCIAL GANGSTER

II. THE CABARET ROUGE

III. THE FOX HUNT

IV. THE TANGO THIEF

V. THE "THE DANSANT"

VI. THE SERUM DIAGNOSIS

VII. THE DIAMOND QUEEN

VIII. THE ANESTHETIC VAPORIZER

IX. THE TWILIGHT SLEEP

X. THE SIXTH SENSE

XI. THE INFERNAL MACHINES

XII. THE SUBMARINE BELL

XIII. THE SUPER-TOXIN

XIV. THE SECRET AGENTS

XV. THE GERM OF ANTHRAX

XVI. THE SLEEPMAKER

XVII. THE INTER-URBAN HANDICAP

XVIII. THE TOXIN OF FATIGUE

XIX. THE X-RAY DETECTIVE

XX. THE MECHANICAL CONNOISSEUR

XXI. THE RADIOGRAPH WITNESS

XXII. THE ABSOLUTE ZERO

XXIII. THE VACUUM BOTTLE

XXIV. THE SOLAR PLEXUS

XXV. THE DEMON ENGINE

XXVI. THE ELECTROLYSIS CLEW

XXVII. THE PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE

XXVIII. THE CANCER HOUSE

XXIX. THE QUACK DOCTORS

XXX. THE FILTERABLE VIRUS

XXXI. THE VOODOO MYSTERY

XXXII. THE FLUORISCINE TEST

XXXIII. THE RESPIRATION CALORIMETER

XXXIV. THE EVIL EYE

XXXV. THE BURIED TREASURE

XXXVI. THE WEED OF MADNESS




THE SOCIAL GANGSTER




CHAPTER I

THE SOCIAL GANGSTER


"I'm so worried over Gloria, Professor Kennedy, that I hardly know what
I'm doing."

Mrs. Bradford Brackett was one of those stunning women of baffling age
of whom there seem to be so many nowadays. One would scarcely have
believed that she could be old enough to have a daughter who would worry
her very much.

Her voice trembled and almost broke as she proceeded with her story,
and, looking closer, I saw that, at least now, her face showed marks of
anxiety that told on her more than would have been the case some years
before.

At the mention of the name of Gloria Brackett, I saw that Craig was
extremely interested, though he did not betray it to Mrs. Brackett.
Already, with my nose for news I had scented a much bigger story than
any that had been printed. For the Bracketts had lately been more or
less in the news of the day.

Choking back a little suppressed sob in her throat, Mrs. Brackett took
from a delicate gold mesh bag and laid on the desk before Kennedy a
small clipping from the "Lost and Found" advertisements in the _Star_.
It read:

     "REWARD of $10,000 and absolutely no questions asked for the
     return of a diamond necklace of seventy-one stones which
     disappeared from a house at Willys Hills, Long Island, last
     Saturday or Sunday.

     "LA RUE & CO., Jewelers,
     "---- Fifth Avenue."

I recognized the advertisement as one that had occasioned a great deal
of comment on the _Star_, due to its peculiar nature. It had been a
great mystery, perhaps much more so than if the advertisement had been
worded and signed in the usual way.

I knew also that the advertisement had created a great furore of
excitement and gossip at the fashionable North Shore Hunt Club of which
Bradford Brackett was Master of Fox Hounds.

"At first," explained Mrs. Brackett nervously, "La Rue & Co. were able
to keep the secret. They even refused to let the police take up the
case. But as public interest in the advertisement increased at last the
secret leaked out--at least that part of it which connected our name
with the loss. That, however, seemed only to whet curiosity. It left
everybody wondering what was back of it all. That's what we've been
trying to avoid--that sort of publicity."

She paused a moment, but Kennedy said nothing, evidently thinking that
the best safety valve for her overwrought feelings would be to let her
tell her story in her own way.

"Why, you know," she resumed rapidly, to hide her agitation, "the most
ridiculous things have been said. Some people have even said that we
lost nothing at all, that it was all a clever attempt at notoriety, to
get our names in the papers. Some have said it was a plan to collect the
burglary insurance. But we are wealthy. They didn't stop to think how
inconceivable that was. We have nothing to lose, even if the necklace is
never heard of again."

For the moment her indignation had got the better of her worry. Most
opinions, I recalled, had been finally that the disappearance was mixed
up with some family affairs. At any rate, here was to be the real story
at last. I dissembled my interest. Mrs. Brackett's indignation was
quickly succeeded by the more poignant feelings that had brought her to
Kennedy.

"You see," she continued, now almost sobbing, "it is really all, I fear,
my own fault. I didn't realize that Gloria was growing so fast and so
far out of my life. I've let her be brought up by governesses and
servants. I've sent her to the best schools I could find. I thought it
was all right. But now, too late, I realize that it is all wrong. I
haven't kept close enough to her."

She was rattling on in this disjointed manner, getting more and more
excited, but still Kennedy made no effort to lead the conversation.

"I didn't think Gloria was more than a child. But--why, Mr. Kennedy,
she's been going, I find, to these afternoon dances in the city and out
at a place not far from Willys Hills."

"What sort of places?" prompted Kennedy.

"The Cabaret Rouge," answered Mrs. Brackett, flashing at us a look of
defiance that really masked fear of public opinion.

I knew of the place. It had an extremely unsavory reputation. In fact
there were two places of the same name, one in the city and the other
out on Long Island.

Mrs. Brackett must have seen Kennedy and me exchange a look askance at
the name.

"Oh, it's not a question of morals, alone," she hastened. "After all,
sometimes common sense and foolishness are fair equivalents for right
and wrong."

Kennedy looked up quickly, genuinely surprised at this bit of worldly
wisdom.

"When women do stupid, dangerous things, trouble follows," she
persisted, adding, "if not at once, a bit later. This is a case of it."

One could not help feeling sorry for the woman and what she had to face.

"I had hoped, oh, so dearly," she went on a moment later, "that Gloria
would marry a young man who, I know, is devoted to her, an Italian of
fine family, Signor Franconi--you must have heard of him--the inventor
of a new system of wireless transmission of pictures. But with such a
scandal--how can we expect it? Do you know him?"

"Not personally, though I have heard of him," returned Kennedy briefly.

Both Craig and myself had been interested in reports of his invention,
which he called the "Franconi Telephote," by which he claimed to be able
to telegraph either over wires or by wireless light and dark points so
rapidly and in such a manner as to deceive the eye and produce at the
receiving end what amounted to a continuous reproduction of a picture
at the transmitting end. At least, in spite of his society leanings,
Franconi was no mere dilettante inventor.

"But--the necklace," suggested Craig, after a moment, for the first time
interrupting the rather rambling trend of Mrs. Brackett's story, "what
has this all to do with the necklace?"

She looked at him almost despairingly. "I don't really care for a
thousand such necklaces," she cried. "It is my daughter--her good
name--her--her safety!"

Suddenly she had become almost hysterical as she thought of the real
purpose of her visit, which she had not yet been able to bring herself
to disclose even to Kennedy. Finally, with an effort, she managed to
control herself and go on.

"You see," she said in a low tone, almost as if she were confessing some
fault of her own, "Gloria has been frequenting these--_recherche_
places, without my knowledge, and there she has become intimate with
some of the fastest of the fast set.

"You ask about the necklace. I don't know, I must admit. Has some one of
her friends taken advantage of her to learn our habits and get into the
house and get it? Or, have they put her up to getting it?"

The last query was wrung from her as if by main force. She could not
even breathe it without a shudder. "When the necklace was stolen," she
added tremulously, "it must have been an inside job, as you detectives
call it. Mr. Brackett and I were away at the time at a week-end party.
We supposed Gloria was visiting some friends in the city. But since
then we have learned that she motored out with some of her dance-crazed
acquaintances to the Cabaret Rouge, not far from Willys Hills. It must
have been taken then--by some of them."

The recital to comparative strangers, even though they were to be
trusted to right the wrong, was more than she could bear. Mrs. Brackett
was now genuinely in tears, her shoulders trembling under the emotion,
as she bowed her head. Her despair and self-accusation would really have
moved anyone, much less were needed to enlist Kennedy. He said nothing,
but his look of encouragement seemed to nerve her up again to go on. She
forced back her feelings heroically.

"We put the advertisement that way because--well, now you understand
why," she resumed; then anticipating our question, added, "But there has
been no response."

I knew from her tone that even to herself she would not admit that
Gloria might have been guilty. Yet subconsciously it must have been in
her mind and she knew it was in ours. Her voice broke again.

"Mr. Brackett has repeatedly ordered Gloria to give up her fast
acquaintances. But she defies him. Even to my pleadings she has turned a
deaf ear."

It was most pathetic to watch the workings of the mother's face as she
was forced to say this of her daughter. All thought of the necklace was
lost, now.

"I--I want my daughter back," she almost wailed.

"Who are these rapid youngsters?" asked Craig gently.

"I don't know all of them," she replied. "There is young Rittenhouse
Smith; he is one. The Rittenhouse Smiths, you know, are a very fine
family. But young 'Ritter,' as the younger set call him, is wild.
They've had to cut his allowance two or three times, I believe. Another
of them is Rhinelander Brown. I don't think the Browns have much money,
but it is a good family. Oh," she added with a faint attempt at a smile,
"I'm not the only mother who has heart-aches. But the worst of it is
that there are some professionals with whom they go--a dancer, Rex Du
Mond, and a woman named Bernice Bentley. I don't know any more of them,
but I presume there is a regular organization of these social
gangsters."

"Did Signor Franconi--ever go with them?" asked Craig.

"Oh, mercy, no," she hastened.

"And they can't seem to break the gang up," ruminated Craig, evidently
liking her characterization of the group.

She sighed deeply and wiped away another tear. "I've done what I could
with Gloria. I've cut her allowance--but it has done no good. I'm losing
my hold on her altogether. You--you will help me--I mean, help Gloria?"
she asked eagerly, leaning forward in an appeal which must have cost her
a great deal, so common is the repression of such feelings in women of
her type.

"Gladly," returned Kennedy heartily. "I will do anything in my power."

Proud though she was, Mrs. Brackett could scarcely murmur her thanks.

"Where can I see Gloria?" asked Kennedy finally.

She shook her head. "I can't say. If you want to, you may see her
tomorrow, though, at the drag hunt of the club. My husband says he is
not going to take Gloria's actions without a protest. So he has
peremptorily ordered her to attend the meet of the Hunt Club. We thought
it would get her away, at least for a time, from her associates, though
I must say I can't be sure that she will obey."

I thought I understood, partly at least. Bradford Brackett's election as
M. F. H. had been a crowning distinction in his social career and he did
not propose to have Gloria's escapades spoil the meet for him. Perhaps
he thought this as good an occasion as any to use his power to force her
back into the circle to which she rightfully belonged.

Mrs. Brackett had risen. "How can I ever thank you?" she exclaimed,
extending her hand impulsively. "I know nothing has been changed--yet.
But already I feel better."

"I shall do what I can; depend on me," reiterated Kennedy modestly. "If
I can do nothing before, I shall be out at the Hunt Club
tomorrow--perhaps I shall be there anyhow."

"This is a most peculiar situation," I remarked a few minutes later, as
Mrs. Brackett was whisked away from the laboratory door in her motor.

"Indeed it is," returned Kennedy, pacing up and down, his face wrinkled
with thought. "I don't know whether I feel more like a detective or a
spiritual adviser." He pulled out his watch. "Half-past four," he
considered. "I'd like to have a look at that Cabaret Rouge here in
town."




CHAPTER II

THE CABARET ROUGE


It was a perfect autumn afternoon, one of those days when one who is
normal feels the call to get out of doors and enjoy what is left of the
fine weather before the onset of winter. We strode along in the bracing
air until at last we turned into Broadway at the upper end of what might
be called "Automobile Row." Motor cars and taxicabs were buzzing along
in an endless stream, most of them filled with women, gowned and
bonneted in the latest mode.

Before the garish entrance of the Cabaret Rouge they seemed to pile up
and discharge their feminine cargoes. We entered and were quickly
engulfed in the tide of eager pleasure seekers. A handsome and judicious
tip to the head waiter secured us a table at the far end of a sort of
mezzanine gallery, from which we could look down over a railing at the
various groups at the little white tables below. There we sat, careful
to spend the necessary money to entitle us to stay, for to the average
New Yorker the test seems to be not so much what one is getting for it
as how much money is spent when out for a "good time."

Smooth and glittering on the surface, like its little polished dancing
floor in the middle of the squares of tables downstairs, the Cabaret
Rouge, one could see, had treacherous undercurrents unsuspected until an
insight such as we had just had revealed them.

The very atmosphere seemed vibrant with laughter and music. A string
band played sharp, staccato, highly accentuated music, a band of negroes
as in many of the showy and high-priced places where a keen sense of
rhythm was wanted. All around us women were smoking cigarettes.
Everywhere they were sipping expensive drinks. Instinctively one felt
the undertow in the very atmosphere.

I wondered who they were and where they all came from, these expensively
dressed, apparently refined though perhaps only veneered girls, whirling
about with the pleasantest looking young men who expertly guided them
through the mazes of the fox-trot and the canter waltz and a dozen other
steps I knew not of. This was one of New York's latest and most approved
devices to beguile the languid afternoons of ladies of leisure.

"There she is," pointed out Kennedy finally. "I recognize her from the
pictures I've seen."

I followed the direction of his eyes. The music had started and out on
the floor twisting in and out among the crowded couples was one pair
that seemed to attract more attention than the rest. They had come from
a gay party seated in a little leather cozy corner like several about
the room, evidently reserved for them, for the cozy corners seemed to be
much in demand.

Gloria was well named. She was a striking girl, not much over nineteen
surely, tall, lissome, precisely the figure that the modern dances must
have been especially designed to set off. I watched her attentively. In
fact I could scarcely believe the impression I was gaining of her.

Already one could actually see on her marks of dissipation. One does not
readily think of a girl as sowing her wild oats. Yet they often do. This
is one of the strange anomalies of the new freedom of woman. A few years
ago such a place would have been neither so decent nor attractive. Now
it was superficially both. To it went those who never would have dared
overstep the strictly conventional in the evil days when the reformer
was not abroad in the land.

I watched Gloria narrowly. Clearly here was an example of a girl
attracted by the glamor of the life and flattery of its satellites. What
the end of it all might be I preferred not to guess.

Craig was looking about at the variegated crowd. Suddenly he jogged my
elbow. There, just around the turn of the railing of the gallery, sat a
young man, dark of hair and eyes, of a rather distinguished foreign
appearance, his face set in a scowl as he looked down on the heads of
the dancers. One could have followed the tortuous course of Gloria and
her partner by his eyes, which the man never took off her, even
following her back to the table in the corner when the encore of the
dance was finished.

The young man's face at least was familiar to me, though I had not met
him. It was Signor Franconi, quietly watching Gloria and her gay party.

After a few moments, Craig rose, paid his check, and moved over to the
table where Franconi was sitting alone. He introduced himself and
Franconi, with easy politeness, invited us to join him.

I studied the man's face attentively. Signor Franconi was still young,
in spite of the honors that had been showered on him for his many
inventions. I had wondered before why such a man would be interested in
a girl of Gloria's evident type. But as I studied him I fancied I
understood. To his serious mind it was just the butterfly type that
offered the greatest relief. An intellectual woman would have been
merely carrying into another sphere the problems with which he was more
than capable of wrestling. But there was no line of approval in his fine
face of the butterfly and candle-singeing process that was going on
here. I must say I heartily liked him.

"What are you working on now?" asked Kennedy as a preliminary step to
drawing him out against the time when we might become better acquainted
and put the conversation on a firmer basis.

"A system of wireless transmission of pictures," he returned
mechanically. "I think I have vastly improved the system of Dr. Korn.
You are familiar with it, I presume?"

Kennedy nodded. "I have seen it work," he said simply.

That telephotograph apparatus, I remembered, depended on the ability of
the element selenium to vary the strength of an electric current passing
through it in proportion to the brightness with which the selenium is
illuminated.

"That system," he resumed, speaking as though his mind was not on the
subject particularly just now, "produces positive pictures at one end of
the apparatus by the successive transmission of many small parts
separately. I have harnessed the alternating current in a brand-new way,
I think. Instead of prolonging the operation, I do it all at once,
projecting the image on a sheet of tiny selenium cells. My work is
done. Now the thing to do is to convince the world of that."

"Then you have the telephote in actual operation?" asked Kennedy.

"Yes," he replied. "I have a little station down on the shore of the
south side of the island." He handed us a card on which he wrote the
address at South Side Beach. "That will admit you there at any time, if
I should not be about. I am testing it out there--have several
instruments on transatlantic liners. We think it may be of use in
war--sending plans, photographs of spies--and such things."

He stopped suddenly. The music had started again and Gloria was again
out on the dancing floor. It was evident that at this very important
time in his career Franconi's mind was on other things.

"Everyone seems to become easily acquainted with everyone else here,"
remarked Craig, bending over the rail.

"I suppose one cannot dance without partners," returned Franconi
absently.

We continued to watch the dancers. I knew enough of these young fellows,
merely by their looks, to see that most of them were essential replicas
of one type. Certainly most of them could have qualified as social
gangsters, without scruples, without visible means of support, without
character or credit, but not without a certain vicious kind of ambition.

They seemed to have an unlimited capacity for dancing, freak foods, joy
rides, and clothes. Clothes were to them what a jimmy is to a burglar.
Their English coats were so tight that one wondered how they bent and
swayed without bursting. Smart clothes and smart manners such as they
affected were very fascinating to some women.

"Who are they all, do you suppose?" I queried.

"All sorts and conditions," returned Kennedy. "Wall Street fellows whose
pocketbooks have been thinned by dull times on the Exchange; actors out
of engagements, law clerks, some of them even college students. They
seem to be a new class. I don't think of any other way they could pick
up a living more easily than by this polite parasitism. None of them
have any money. They don't get anything from the owner of the cabaret,
of course, except perhaps the right to sign checks for a limited amount
in the hope that they may attract new business. It's grafting, pure and
simple. The women are their dupes; they pay the bills--and even now and
then something for 'private lessons' in dancing in a 'studio.'"

Franconi was dividing his attention between what Kennedy was saying and
watching Gloria and her partner, who seemed to be a leader of the type I
have just described, tall and spare as must be the successful dancing
men of today.

"There's a fellow named Du Mond," he put in.

"Who is he?" asked Craig, as though we had never heard of him.

"To borrow one of your Americanisms," returned Franconi, "I think he's
the man who puts the 'tang' in tango. From what I hear, though, I think
he borrows the 'fox' from fox-trot and plucks the feathers from the
'lame duck.'"

Kennedy smiled, but immediately became interested in a tall blonde girl
who had been talking to Du Mond just before the dancing began. I noticed
that she was not dancing, but stood in the background most of the time
giving a subtle look of appraisal to the men who sat at tables and the
girls who also sat alone. Now and then she would move from one table to
another with that easy, graceful glide which showed she had been a
dancer from girlhood. Always after such an excursion we saw other
couples who had been watching in lonely wistfulness, now made happy by a
chance to join the throng.

"Who is that woman?" I asked.

"I believe her name is Bernice Bentley," replied Franconi. "She's
the--well, they call her the official hostess--a sort of introducer.
That's the reason why, as you observed, there is no lack of friendliness
and partners. She just arranges introductions, very tactfully, of
course, for she's experienced."

I regarded her with astonishment. I had never dreamed that such a thing
was possible, even in cosmopolitan New York. What could these women be
thinking of? Some of them looked more than capable of taking care of
themselves, but there must be many, like Gloria, who were not. What did
they know of the men, except their clothes and steps?

"Soft shoe workers, tango touts," muttered Kennedy under his breath.

As we watched we saw a slender, rather refined-looking girl come in and
sit quietly at a table in the rear. I wondered what the official
introducer would do about her and waited. Sure enough, it was not long
before Miss Bentley appeared with one of the dancing men in tow. To my
surprise the "hostess" was coldly turned down. What it was that happened
I did not know, but it was evident that a change had taken place.
Unobtrusively Bernice Bentley seemed to catch the roving eye of Du Mond
while he was dancing and direct it toward the little table. I saw his
face flush suddenly and a moment later he managed to work Gloria about
to the opposite side of the dancing floor and, though the music had not
stopped, on some pretext or other to join the party in the corner again.

Gloria did not want to stop dancing, but it seemed as if Du Mond
exercised some sort of influence over her, for she did just as he
wished. Was she really afraid of him? Who was the little woman who had
been like a skeleton at a feast?

Almost before we knew it, it seemed that the little party had tired of
the Cabaret Rouge. Of course we could hear nothing, but it seemed as if
Du Mond were proposing something and had carried his point. At any rate
the waiter was sent on a mysterious excursion and the party made as
though they were preparing to leave.

Little had been said by either Franconi or ourselves, but it was by a
sort of instinct that we, too, paid our check and moved down to the coat
room ahead of them. In an angle we waited, until Gloria and her party
appeared. Du Mond was not with them. We looked out of the door. Before
the cabaret stood a smart hired limousine which was evidently Gloria's.
She would not have dared use her own motor on such an excursion.

They drove off without seeing us and a moment later Du Mond and Bernice
Bentley appeared.

"Thank you for the tip," I heard him whisper. "I thought the best thing
was to get them away without me. I'll catch them in a taxi later.
You're off at seven? Ritter will call for you? Then we'll wait and all
go out together. It's safer out there."

Just what it all meant I could not say, but it interested me to know
that young Ritter Smith and Bernice Bentley seemed on such good terms.
Evidently the gay party were transferring the scene of their gayety to
the country place of the Cabaret Rouge. But why?

We parted at the door with Franconi, who repeated his invitation to
visit his shop down at the beach.

I started to follow Franconi out, but Kennedy drew me back. "Why did you
suppose I let them go?" he explained under his breath, as we retreated
to the angle again. "I wanted to watch that little woman who came in
alone."

We had not long to wait. Scarcely had Du Mond disappeared when she came
out and stood in the entrance while a boy summoned a taxicab for her.

Kennedy improved the opportunity by calling another for us and by the
time she was ready to drive off we were able to follow her. She drove to
the Prince Henry Hotel, where she dismissed the machine and entered. We
did the same.

"By the way," asked Kennedy casually, sauntering up to the desk after
she had stopped to get her keys and a letter, "can you tell me who that
woman was?"

The clerk ran his finger down the names on the register. At last he
paused and turned the book around to us. His finger indicated: "Mrs.
Katherine Du Mond, Chicago."

Kennedy and I looked at each other in amazement. Du Mond was married and
his wife was in town. She had not made a scene. She had merely watched.
What could have been more evident than that she was seeking evidence and
such evidence could only have been for a court of law in a divorce suit?
The possibilities which the situation opened up for Gloria seemed
frightful.

We left the hotel and Kennedy hurried down Broadway, turning off at the
office of a young detective, Chase, whom he used often on matters of
pure routine for which he had no time.

"Chase," he instructed, when we were seated in the office, "you recall
that advertisement of the lost necklace in the _Star_ by La Rue & Co.?"

The young man nodded. Everyone knew it. "Well," resumed Kennedy, "I want
you to search the pawnshops, particularly those of the Tenderloin, for
any trace you can find of it. Let me know, if it is only a rumor."

There was nothing more that we could do that night, though Kennedy found
out over the telephone, by a ruse, that, as he suspected, the country
place of the Cabaret Rouge was the objective of the gay party which we
had seen.




CHAPTER III

THE FOX HUNT


The next day was that of the hunt and we motored out to the North Shore
Hunt Club. It was a splendid day and the ride was just enough to put an
edge on the meet that was to follow.

We pulled up at last before the rambling colonial building which the
Hunt Club boasted as its home. Mrs. Brackett was waiting for us already
with horses from the Brackett stables.

"I'm so glad you came," she greeted us aside. "Gloria is here--under
protest. That young man over there, talking to her, is Ritter Smith.
'Rhine' Brown, as they call him, was about a moment ago--oh, yes, there
he is, coming over on that chestnut mare to talk to them. I wanted you
to see them here. After the hunt, if you care to, I think you might go
over to the Cabaret Rouge out here. You might find out something."

She was evidently quite proud of her handsome daughter and that anything
should come up to smirch her name cut her deeply.

The Hunt Club was a swagger organization, even in these degenerate days
when farmers will not tolerate broken fences and trampled crops, and
when democratic ideas interfere sadly with the follies of the rich. In a
cap with a big peak, a scarlet hunting coat and white breeches with top
boots, Brackett himself made a striking figure of M. F. H.

There were thirty or forty in the field, the men in silk hats. For the
most part one could not see that the men treated Gloria much
differently. But it was evident that the women did. In fact the coldness
even extended to her mother, who would literally have been frozen out if
it had not been for her quasi-official position. I could see now that it
was also a fight for Mrs. Brackett's social life.

As we watched Gloria, we could see that Franconi was hovering around,
unsuccessfully trying to get an opportunity to say a word to her alone.
Just before we were off a telegram came to her, which she read and
hastily stuffed into a pocket of her riding habit.

But that was all that happened and I fell to studying the various types
of human nature, from the beginner who rode very hard and very badly and
made himself generally odious to the M. F. H., to the old seasoned
hunter who talked of the old days of real foxes and how he used to know
all the short cuts to the coverts.

It was a keen, crisp day. Already a man had been over the field pulling
along the ground a little bag of aniseed, and now the hunt was about to
start.

Noses down, sterns feathering zigzag over the ground, sniffing earth and
leaves and grass, the hounds were brought up. One seemed to get a good
whiff of the trail and lifted his head with a half yelp, half whine,
high pitched, frenzied, never-to-be-forgotten. Others joined in the
music. "Gone away!" sounded a huntsman as if there were a real fox. We
were off after them. Drag hounds, however, for the most part run mute
and very fast, so that that picturesque feature was missing. But the
light soil and rail fences of Long Island were ideal for drag hunting.
Nor was it so easy as it seemed to follow. Also there was the spice of
danger, risk to the hunters, the horses and the dogs.

We went for four or five miles. Then there was a check for the
stragglers to come up. Some had fresh mounts, and all of us were glad of
the breathing space while the M. F. H. "held" the hounds.

While we waited we saw that Mrs. Brackett was riding about quickly, as
if something were on her mind. A moment she stopped to speak to her
husband, then galloped over to us.

Her face was almost white. "Gloria hasn't come up with the rest!" she
exclaimed breathlessly.

Already Brackett had told those about him and all was confusion. It was
only a moment when the members of the hunt were scouring the country
over which we had passed, with something really definite to find.

Kennedy did not pause. "Come on, Walter," he shouted, striking out down
the road, with me hard after him.

We pulled up before a road-house of remarkable quaintness and luxury of
appointment, one of the hundreds about New York which the automobile has
recreated. Before it swung the weathered sign: Cabaret Rouge.

To our hurried inquiries the manager admitted that Du Mond had been
there, but alone, and had left, also alone. Gloria had not come there.

A moment later sounds of hoofs on the hard road interrupted us and
Ritter Smith dashed up.

"Just overtook a farmer down the road," he panted. "Says he saw an
automobile waiting at the stone bridge and later it passed him with a
girl and a man in it. He couldn't recognize them. The top was up and
they went so fast."

Together we retraced the way to the stone bridge. Sure enough, there on
the side of the road were marks where a car had pulled up. The grass
about was trampled and as we searched Kennedy reached down and picked up
something white. At least it had been white. But now it was spotted with
fresh blood, as though someone had tried to stop a nose-bleed.

He looked at it more closely. In the corner was embroidered a little
"G."

Evidently there had been a struggle and a car had whizzed off. Gloria
was gone. But with whom? Had the message which we had seen her read at
the start been from Du Mond? Was the plan to elope and so avoid his
wife? Then why the struggle?

Absolutely nothing more developed from the search. An alarm was at once
sent out and the police all over the country notified. There was nothing
to do now but wait. Mrs. Brackett was frantic. But it was not now the
scandal that worried her. It was Gloria's safety.

That night, in the laboratory, Kennedy took the handkerchief and with
the blood on it made a most peculiar test before a strange-looking
little instrument.

It seemed to consist of a little cylinder of glass immersed in water
kept at the temperature of the body. Between two minute wire pincers or
serres, in the cylinder, was a very small piece of some tissue. To the
lower serre was attached a thread. The upper one was attached to a sort
of lever ending in a pen that moved over a ruled card.

"Every emotion," remarked Kennedy as he watched the movement of the pen
in fine zigzag lines over the card, "produces its physiological effect.
Fear, rage, pain, hunger are primitive experiences, the most powerful
that determine the actions of man. I suppose you have heard of the
recent studies of Dr. Walter Cannon of Harvard of the group of
remarkable alterations in bodily economy under emotion?"

I nodded and Kennedy resumed. "On the surface one may see the effect of
blood vessels contracting, in pallor; one may see cold sweat, or the
saliva stop when the tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth, or one may
see the pupils dilate, hairs raise, respiration become quick, or the
beating of the heart, or trembling of the muscles, notably the lips. But
one cannot see such evidences of emotion if he is not present at the
time. How can we reconstruct them?"

He paused a moment, then resumed. "There are organs hidden deep in the
body which do not reveal so easily the emotions. But the effect often
outlasts the actual emotion. There are special methods by which one can
study the feelings. That is what I have been doing here."

"But how can you?" I queried.

"There is what is called the sympathetic nervous system," he explained.
"Above the kidney there are also glands called the suprarenal which
excrete a substance known as adrenin. In extraordinarily small amounts
adrenin affects this sympathetic system. In emotions of various kinds a
reflex action is sent to the suprarenal glands which causes a pouring
into the blood of adrenin.

"On the handkerchief of Gloria Brackett I obtained plenty of
comparatively fresh blood. Here in this machine I have between these two
pincers a minute segment of rabbit intestine."

He withdrew the solution from the cylinder with a pipette, then
introduced some more of the dissolved blood from the handkerchief. The
first effect was a strong contraction of the rabbit intestine, then in a
minute or so the contractions became fairly even with the base line on
the card.

"Such tissue," he remarked, "is noticeably affected by even one part in
over a million of adrenin. See. Here, by the writing lever, the
rhythmical contractions are recorded. Such a strip of tissue will live
for hours, will contract and relax beautifully with a regular rhythm
which, as you see, can be graphically recorded. This is my adrenin
test."

Carefully he withdrew the ruled paper with its tracings.

"It's a very simple test after all," he said, laying beside this tracing
another which he had made previously. "There you see the difference
between what I may call 'quiet blood' and 'excited blood.'"

I looked at the two sets of tracings. Though they were markedly
different, I did not, of course, understand what they meant. "What do
they show to an expert?" I asked, perplexed.

"Fear," he answered laconically. "Gloria Brackett did not go
voluntarily. She did not elope. She was forced to go!"

"Attacked and carried off?" I queried.

"I did not say that," he replied. "Perhaps our original theory that her
nose was bleeding may be correct. It might have started in the
excitement, the anger and fear at what happened, whatever it was.
Certainly the amount of adrenin in her blood shows that she was laboring
under strong enough emotion."

Our telephone rang insistently and Kennedy answered it. As he talked,
although I could hear only one side of the conversation, I knew that the
message was from Chase and that he had found something important about
the missing necklace.

"What was it?" I asked eagerly as he hung up the receiver.

"Chase has traced the necklace," he reported; "that is, he has
discovered the separate stones, unset, pawned in several shops. The
tickets were issued to a girl whose description exactly fits Gloria
Brackett."

I could only stare at him. What we had all feared had actually taken
place. Gloria must have taken the necklace herself. Though we had feared
it and tried to discount it, nevertheless the certainty came as a shock.

"Why should she have taken it?" I considered.

"For many possible reasons," returned Kennedy. "You saw the life she was
leading. Her own income probably went to keeping those harpies going.
Besides, her mother had cut her allowance. She may have needed money
very badly."

"Perhaps they had run her into debt," I agreed, though the thought was
disagreeable.

"How about that other little woman we saw?" suggested Kennedy. "You
remember how Gloria seemed to stand in fear of Du Mond? Who knows but
that he made her get it to save her reputation? A girl in Gloria's
position might do many foolish things. But to be named as co-respondent,
that would be fatal."

There was not much comfort to be had by either alternative, and we sat
for a moment regarding each other in silence.

Suddenly the door opened. Mrs. Brackett entered. Never have I seen a
greater contrast in so short a time than that between the striking
society matron who first called on us and the broken woman now before
us. She was a pathetic figure as Kennedy placed an easy chair for her.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Kennedy. "Have you heard anything new?"

She did not answer directly, but silently handed him a yellow slip of
paper. On a telegraph blank were written simply the words, "Don't try to
follow me. I've gone to be a war nurse. When I make good I will let you
know. Gloria."

We looked at each other in blank amazement. That was hardly an easy way
to trace her. How could one ever find out now where she was, in the
present state of affairs abroad, even supposing it were not a ruse to
cover up something?

Somehow I felt that the message did not tell the story. Where was Du
Mond? Had he fled, too,--perhaps forced her to go with him when Mrs. Du
Mond appeared? The message did not explain the struggle and the fear.

"Oh, Mr. Kennedy," pleaded Mrs. Brackett, all thought of her former
pride gone, as she actually held out her hands imploringly and almost
fell on her knees, "can't you find her--can't you _do_ something?"

"Have you a photograph of Gloria?" he asked hurriedly.

"Yes," she cried eagerly, reaching into her mesh bag and drawing one
out. "I carry it with me always. Why?"

"Come," exclaimed Kennedy, seizing it. "It occurs to me that it is now
or never that this device of Franconi's must prove that it is some good.
If she really went, she wasted no time. There's just a bare chance that
the telephote has been placed on some of these vessels that are carrying
munitions abroad. Franconi says that he has developed it for its war
value."

As fast as Mrs. Brackett's chauffeur could drive us, we motored down to
South Side Beach and sought out the little workshop directly on the
ocean where Franconi had told us that we should always be welcome.

He was not there, but an assistant was. Kennedy showed him the card that
Franconi had given us.

"Show me how the machine works," he asked, while Mrs. Brackett and I
waited aside, scarcely able to curb our impatience.

"Well," began the assistant, "this is a screen of very minute and
sensitive selenium cells. I don't know how to describe the process
better than to say that the tones of sound, the human voice, have
hundreds of gradations which are transmitted, as you know, by wireless,
now. Gradations of light, which are all that are necessary to produce
the illusion of a picture, are far simpler than those of sound. Here, in
this projector--"

"That is the transmitting part of the apparatus?" interrupted Kennedy
brusquely. "That holder?"

"Yes. You see there are hundreds of alternating conductors and
insulators, all synchronized with hundreds of similar receivers at
the--"

"Let me see you try this photograph," interrupted Kennedy again, handing
over the picture of Gloria which Mrs. Brackett had given him. "Signor
Franconi told me he had the telephote on several outgoing liners. Let me
see if you can transmit it. Is there any way of sending a wireless
message from this place?"

The assistant had shoved the photograph into the holder from which each
section was projected on the selenium cell screen.

"I have a fairly powerful plant here," he replied.

Quickly Kennedy wrote out a message, briefly describing the reason why
the picture was transmitted and asking that any station on shipboard
that received it would have a careful search made of the passengers for
any young woman, no matter what name was assumed, who might resemble the
photograph.

Though nothing could be expected immediately at best, it was at least
some satisfaction to know that through the invisible air waves,
wirelessly, the only means now of identifying Gloria was being flashed
far and wide to all the big ships within a day's distance or less on
which Franconi had established his system as a test.

The telephote had finished its work. Now there was nothing to do but
wait. It was a slender thread on which hung the hope of success.

While we waited, Mrs. Brackett was eating her heart out with anxiety.
Kennedy took the occasion to call up the New York police on long
distance. They had no clew to Gloria. Nor had they been able to find a
trace of Du Mond. Mrs. Du Mond also had disappeared. At the Cabaret
Rouge, Bernice Bentley had been held and put through a third degree,
without disclosing a thing, if indeed she knew anything. I wondered
whether, at such a crisis, Du Mond, too, might not have taken the
opportunity to flee the country.

We had almost given up hope, when suddenly a little buzzer on the
telephote warned the operator that something was coming over it.

"The _Monfalcone_," he remarked, interpreting the source of the
impulses.

"We gathered breathlessly about the complicated instrument as, on a
receiving screen composed of innumerable pencils of light polarized and
acting on a set of mirrors, each corresponding to the cells of the
selenium screen and tuned to them, as it were, a thin film or veil
seemed gradually to clear up, as the telephote slowly got itself into
equilibrium at both ends of the air line. Gradually the face of a girl
appeared.

"Gloria!" gasped Mrs. Brackett in a tone that sounded as if ten years
had been added to her life.

"Wait," cautioned the operator. "There is a written message to follow."

On the same screen now came in letters that Mrs. Brackett in her joy
recognized the message: "I couldn't help it. I was blackmailed into
taking the necklace. Even at the hunt I received another demand. I did
not mean to go, but I was carried off by force before I could pay the
second demand. Now I'm glad of it. Forgive us. Gloria."

"Us?" repeated Mrs. Brackett, not comprehending.

"Look--another picture," pointed Kennedy.

We bent over as the face of a man seemed to dissolve more clearly in
place of the writing.

"Thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Brackett fervently, reading the face by a
sort of intuition before it cleared enough for us to recognize. "He has
saved her from herself!"

It was Franconi!

Slowly it faded and in its place appeared another written message.

"Recalled to Italy for war service. I took her with me by force. It was
the only way. Civil ceremony in New York yesterday. Religious will
follow at Rome."




CHAPTER IV

THE TANGO THIEF


"My husband has such a jealous disposition. He will never believe the
truth--never!"

Agatha Seabury moved nervously in the deep easy chair beside Kennedy's
desk, leaning forward, uncomfortably, the tense lines marring the beauty
of her fine features.

Kennedy tilted his desk chair back in order to study her face.

"You say you have never written a line to the fellow nor he to you?" he
asked.

"Not a line, not a scrap,--until I received that typewritten letter
about which I just told you," she repeated vehemently, meeting his
penetrating gaze without flinching. "Why, Professor Kennedy, as heaven
is my witness, I have never done a wrong thing--except to meet him now
and then at afternoon dances."

I felt that the nerve-racked society woman before us must be either
telling the truth or else that she was one of the cleverest actresses I
had ever seen.

"Have you the letter here?" asked Craig quickly.

Mrs. Seabury reached into her neat leather party case and pulled out a
carefully folded sheet of note paper.

It was all typewritten, down to the very signature itself. Evidently the
blackmailer had taken every precaution to protect himself, for even if
the typewriting could be studied and identified, it would be next to
impossible to get at the writer through it and locate the machine on
which it was written among the thousands in the city.

Kennedy studied the letter carefully, then, with a low exclamation,
handed it over to me, nodding to Mrs. Seabury that it was all right for
me to see it.

"No ordinary fellow, I'm afraid," he commented musingly, adding, "this
thief of reputations."

I read, beginning with the insolent familiarity of "Dear Agatha."

     "I hope you will pardon me for writing to you," the letter
     continued, "but I find that I am in a rather difficult position
     financially. As you know, in the present disorganized state of
     the stock market, investments which in normal times are good
     are now almost valueless. Still, I must protect those I already
     have without sacrificing them.

     "It is therefore necessary that I raise fifty thousand dollars
     before the end of the week, and I know of no one to appeal to
     but you--who have shared so many pleasant stolen hours with me.

     "Of course, I understand all that you have told me about Mr.
     Seabury and his violent nature. Still, I feel sure that one of
     your wealth and standing in the community can find a way to
     avoid all trouble from that quarter. Naturally, I should prefer
     to take every precaution to prevent the fact of our intimacy
     from coming to Mr. Seabury's knowledge. But I am really
     desperate and feel that you alone can help me.

     "Hoping to hear from you soon, I am,
     "Your old tango friend,
     "H. MORGAN SHERBURNE."

I fairly gasped at the thinly veiled threat of exposure at the end of
the note from this artistic blackmailer.

She was watching our faces anxiously as we read.

"Oh," she cried wildly, glancing from one to the other of us, strangers
to whom in her despair she had been forced to bare the secrets of her
proud heart, "he's so clever about it, too. I--I didn't know what to do.
I had only my jewels. I thought of all the schemes I had ever read, of
pawning them, of having paste replicas made, of trying to collect the
burglary insurance, of--"

"But you didn't do anything like that, did you?" interrupted Craig
hastily.

"No, no," she cried. "I thought if I did, then it wouldn't be long
before this Sherburne would be back again for more. Oh," she almost
wailed, dabbing at the genuine tears with her dainty lace handkerchief
while her shoulders trembled with a repressed convulsive sob, "I--I am
utterly wretched--crushed."

"The scoundrel!" I muttered.

Kennedy shook his head at me slowly. "Calling names won't help matters
now," he remarked tersely. Then in an encouraging tone he added, "You
have done just the right thing, Mrs. Seabury, in not starting to pay the
blackmail. The secret of the success of these fellows is that their
victims prefer losing jewelry and money to going to the police and
having a lot of unpleasant notoriety."

"Yes, I know that," she agreed hastily, "but--my husband! If he hears,
he will believe the worst, and--I--I really love and respect
Judson--though," she added, "he might have seen that I liked dancing
and--innocent amusements of the sort still. I am not an old woman."

I could not help wondering if the whole truth were told in her rather
plaintive remark, or whether she was overplaying what was really a minor
complaint. Judson Seabury, I knew from hearsay, was a man of middle age
to whom, as to so many, business and the making of money had loomed as
large as life itself. Competitors had even accused him of being ruthless
when he was convinced that he was right, and I could well imagine that
Mrs. Seabury was right in her judgment of the nature of the man if he
became convinced for any reason that someone had crossed his path in his
relations with his wife.

"Where did you usually--er--meet Sherburne?" asked Craig, casually
guiding the conversation.

"Why--at the Vanderveer--always," she replied.

"Would you mind meeting him there again this afternoon so that I could
see him?" asked Kennedy. "Perhaps it would be best, anyhow, to let him
think that you are going to do as he demands, so that we can gain a
little time."

She looked up, startled. "Yes--I can do that--but don't you think it is
risky? Do you think there is any way I can get free from him? Suppose he
makes a new demand. What shall I do? Oh, Professor Kennedy, you do not,
you cannot know what I am going through--how I hate and fear him."

"Mrs. Seabury," reassured Craig earnestly, "I'll take up your case.
Clever as the man is, there must be some way to get at him."

Sherburne must have exercised a sort of fascination over her, for the
look of relief that crossed her face as Kennedy promised to aid her was
almost painful. As often before, I could scarcely envy Kennedy in his
ready assumption of another's problems that seemed so baffling. It
meant little, perhaps, to us whether we succeeded. But to her it meant
happiness, perhaps honor itself.

It was as though she were catching at a life line in the swirling
current of events that had engulfed her. She hesitated no longer.

"I'll be there--I'll meet him--at four," she murmured, as she rose and
made a hurried departure.

For some time after she had gone, Kennedy sat considering what she had
told us. As for myself, I cannot say that I was thoroughly satisfied
that she had told all. It was not to be expected.

"How do you figure that woman out?" I queried at length.

Kennedy looked at me keenly from under knitted brows. "You mean, do I
believe her story--of her relations with this fellow, Sherbourne?" he
returned, thoughtfully.

"Exactly," I assented, "and what she said about her regard for her
husband, too."

Kennedy did not reply for a few minutes. Evidently the same question had
been in his own mind and he had not reasoned out the answer. Before he
could reply the door buzzer sounded and the colored boy from the lower
hall handed a card to Craig, with an apology about the house telephone
switchboard being out of order.

As Kennedy laid the card on the table before us, with a curt "Show the
gentleman in," to the boy, I looked at it in blank amazement.

It read, "Judson Seabury."

Before I could utter a word of comment on the strange coincidence, the
husband was sitting in the same chair in which his wife had sat less
than half an hour before.

Judson Seabury was a rather distinguished looking man of the solid,
business type. Merely to meet his steel gray eye was enough to tell one
that this man would brook no rivalry in anything he undertook. I foresaw
trouble, even though I could not define its nature.

Craig twirled the card in his fingers, as if to refresh his mind on a
name otherwise unfamiliar. I was wondering whether Seabury might not
have trailed his wife to our office and have come to demand an
explanation. It was with some relief that I found he had not.

"Professor Kennedy," he began nervously, hitching his chair closer,
without further introduction, in the manner of a man who was accustomed
to having his own way in any matter he undertook, "I am in a most
peculiar situation."

Seabury paused a moment, Kennedy nodded acquiescence, and the man
suddenly blurted out, "I--I don't know whether I'm being slowly poisoned
or not!"

The revelation was startling enough in itself, but doubly so after the
interview that had just preceded.

I covered my own surprise by a quick glance at Craig. His face was
impassive as he narrowly searched Seabury's. I knew, though, that back
of his assumed calm, Craig was doing some rapid thinking about the
ethics of listening to both parties in the case. However, he said
nothing. Indeed, Seabury, once started, hurried on, scarcely giving him
a chance to interrupt.

"I may as well tell you," he proceeded, with the air of a man who for
the first time is relieving his mind of something that has been weighing
heavily on him, "that for some time I have not been exactly--er--easy in
my mind about the actions of my wife."

Evidently he had arrived at the conclusion to tell what worried him, and
must say it, for he continued immediately: "It's not that I actually
know anything about any indiscretions on Agatha's part, but,--well,
there have been little things--hints that she was going frequently to
_thes dansants_, and that sort of thing, you know. Lately, too, I have
seen a change in her manner toward me, I fancy. Sometimes I think she
seems to avoid me, especially during the last few days. Then again, as
this morning, she seems to be--er--too solicitous."

He passed his hand over his forehead, as if to clear it. For once he did
not seem to be the self-confident man who had at first entered our
apartment. I noticed that he had a peculiar look, a feeble state of the
body which he was at times at pains to conceal, a look which the doctors
call, I believe, cachectic.

"I mean," he added hastily, as if it might as well be said first as
last, "that she seems to be much concerned about my health, my food--"

"Just what is it that you actually know, not what you fear?" interrupted
Kennedy, perhaps a little brusquely, at last having seen a chance to
insert a word edgewise into the flow of Seabury's troubles, real or
imaginary.

Seabury paused a moment, then resumed with a description of his health,
which, to tell the truth, was by no means reassuring.

"Well," he answered slowly, "I suffer a good deal from such terrible
dyspepsia, Professor Kennedy. My stomach and digestion are all
upset--bad health and growing weakness--pain, discomfort--vomiting after
meals, even bleeding. I've tried all sorts of cures, but still I can
feel that I am still losing health and strength, and, so far, at least,
the doctors don't seem to be doing me much good. I have begun to wonder
whether it is a case for the doctors, after all. Why, the whole thing is
getting on my nerves so that I'm almost afraid to eat," he concluded.

"You have eaten nothing today, then, I am to understand?" asked Craig
when Seabury had finished with his minute and puzzling account of his
troubles.

"Not even breakfast this morning," he replied. "Mrs. Seabury urged me to
eat, but--I--I couldn't."

"Good!" exclaimed Kennedy, much to our surprise. "That will make it just
so much easier to use a test I have in mind to determine whether there
is anything in your suspicions."

He had risen and gone over to a cabinet.

"Would you mind baring your arm a moment?" he asked Seabury.

With a sharp little instrument, carefully sterilized, Craig pricked a
vein in the man's arm. Slowly a few drops of darkened venous blood
welled out. A moment later Kennedy caught them in a sterile test tube
and sealed the tube.

Before our second visitor could start again in retailing his suspicions
which now seemed definitely, in his own mind at least, directed in some
way against Mrs. Seabury, Kennedy skillfully closed the interview.

"I feel sure that the test I shall make will tell me positively, soon,
whether your fears are well grounded or not, Mr. Seabury," he concluded
briefly, as he accompanied the man out into the hall to shake hands
farewell with him at the elevator door. "I'll let you know as soon as
anything develops, but until we have something tangible there is no use
wasting our energies."




CHAPTER V

THE "THE DANSANT"


I felt, however, that Seabury accepted this conclusion reluctantly, in
fact with a sort of mental reservation not to cease activity himself.

The remainder of the forenoon, and for some time during the early
afternoon, Craig plunged into one of his periods of intense work and
abstraction at the laboratory.

It was, indeed, a most unusual and delicate test which he was making.
For one thing, I noticed that he had, in a sterilizer, some peculiar
granular tissue that had been sent to him from a hospital. This tissue
he was very careful to cleanse of blood and then by repeated boilings
prepare for whatever use he had in mind.

As for myself, I could only stand aside and watch his preparations in
silence. Among the many peculiar pieces of apparatus which he had, I
recall one that consisted of a glass cylinder with a siphon tube running
into it halfway up the outside. Inside was another, smaller cylinder.
All about him as he proceeded were glass containers, capillary pipettes,
test tubes, Bunsen burners, and dialyzers of porous parchment paper
whose wrappers described them as "permeable for peptones, but not for
albumins."

Carefully set aside was the blood which he had drawn from Seabury's
veins, allowed to stand till the serum separated out from the clot.
Next he pipetted it into a centrifuge tube and centrifuged it at high
speed, some sixteen thousand revolutions, until the serum was perfectly
clear, with no trace of a reddish tint, nor even cloudy. After that he
drew off the serum into a little tube, covered it with a layer of a
substance called toluol from another sterile pipette, and finally placed
it in an incubator at a temperature of about ninety-eight.

It was well along toward four o'clock when he paused as if some mental
alarm clock had awakened him to another part of the plan of action he
had laid out.

"Walter," he remarked, hastily doffing his stained old laboratory coat,
"I think we'd better drop around to the Vanderveer."

Curious as I had been at the preparations he was making in the
laboratory, I was still glad at even the suggestion of something that my
less learned mind could understand and it was not many seconds before we
were on our way.

Through the lobby of the famous new hostelry we slowly lounged along,
then down a passage into the tea room, where, in the center of a circle
of quaint little wicker chairs and tables, was a glossy dancing floor.

Kennedy selected a table not in the circle, but around an "L,"
inconspicuously located so that we could watch the dancing without
ourselves being watched.

At one end of the room an excellent orchestra was playing. I gazed
about, fascinated. At the dancing tea was represented, apparently, much
wealth--women whose throats and fingers glittered with gold and gems,
men whose very air exuded prosperity--or at least its veneer.

About it all was the glamor of the _risque_. One felt a sort of
compromising familiarity in this breaking down of old social restraints
through the insidious influence of the tea room, with its accompaniments
of music and dancing.

"I suppose," remarked Craig after we had for some time settled ourselves
and watched the brilliant scene, "that, like many others, Walter, you
have often wondered whether these modern dances are actually as
stimulating as they seem."

I shrugged my shoulders non-committally.

"Well, there is what psychologists might call a real dance neurosis," he
went on, contemplatively, toying with a glass. "In fact few persons can
withstand the physical effect of the peculiar rhythm, the close contact,
and the sinuous movements--at least where, so to speak, the surroundings
are suggestive and the dance becomes less restrained and more sensuous,
as it does often in circumstances like these, often among strangers."

The music had started again and one after another couples seemed to
float past in unhesitating hesitation--dowager and debutante, dandy and
doddering octogenarian.

"Why," he exclaimed, looking out at the whirling kaleidoscope, "here in
the most advanced epoch, people of culture and intelligence frankly say
they are 'wild' for something primitive."

"Still," I objected, "dancing even in the wild, stimulating emotional
manner you see here need not be merely an incitement to love, need it?
May it not be a normal gratification of the love instinct--eroticism
translated into rhythm? Perhaps it may represent sex, but not
necessarily badly."

Kennedy nodded. "Undoubtedly the effect of the dances is in direct ratio
to the sexual temperament of the dancer," he admitted.

He paused and again watched the whirl.

"Does Mrs. Seabury herself understand it?" he mused, only half speaking
to me. "I'm sure that this Sherburne is clever enough to do so, at any
rate."

A hearty round of applause came from the dancers as the music ceased.
None left the floor, however, but remained waiting for the encore
eagerly, scarcely changing the positions in which they had stopped.

"To my mind," Kennedy resumed, with the music, "several things seem
significant. Many people have noticed that after marriage women
generally lose much of their ardor for dancing. I feel that it is an
unsafe matter on which to generalize, but--well--Mrs. Seabury seems not
to have lost it."

"Then," I inquired quickly, "you imply that--she is not really as much
in love with her husband as she would have us think--or, perhaps,
herself believes?"

"Not quite that," he replied doubtfully. "But I am wondering whether
there is such a factor that must be considered."

Before I could answer Kennedy touched my arm. Instinctively I followed
the direction of his eye and saw Mrs. Seabury step out on the floor
across from us. Without a word from Craig, I realized that the man with
her must be Sherburne, our "tango thief."

Fashionably dressed, affable, seemingly superficially, at least, well
educated, tall, graceful, with easy manners, I could not help seeing at
a glance that he was one of the most erotic dancers on the little floor.

As they passed near us, Mrs. Seabury caught Kennedy's eye in momentary
recognition. Her face, flushed with the dance, colored perhaps a shade
deeper, but not noticeably to her partner, who was devoting himself
wholly and skillfully to leading her in a manner that one could see
called forth frequent comment from others, less favored.

As they sat down after this dance and the encore, Craig motioned to the
waiter at our table and whispered to him.

A few moments later, a man whom I had seen around the hotel on my
infrequent visits, but did not know, slipped quietly into a seat beside
Kennedy, even deeper in the shadow of the recess in which we were
sitting.

"Walter, I'd like to have you meet Mr. Dunn, the house detective,"
whispered Kennedy under his breath.

The usual interchange of remarks followed, during which Dunn was
evidently waiting for Kennedy to reveal the real purpose of our visit.

"By the way, Dunn," remarked Craig at length, "who is that fellow--over
there with the woman in blue--the fellow with the heavy braided coat?"

Dunn craned his neck cautiously, then shrugged his shoulders. "I've seen
him here with her before," he remarked. "I don't know him, though. Why?"

Briefly Kennedy sketched such facts of a supposedly hypothetical case as
would be likely to secure an opinion from the house man. Dunn narrowed
his eyes thoughtfully.

"That's rather a ticklish situation, Kennedy," Dunn remarked when Craig
had stated the case, omitting all reference to Seabury's name as well as
his suspicions. "Of course," he went on, "I know we've got to protect
the name of the hotel. And I know we can't have men meeting our women
patrons, doing a gavotte or two--and then fox-trotting them into
blackmail."

Dunn stroked his chin thoughtfully. "You see, we can do a great deal to
suppress card sharps, agents for fake mining stocks, passers of
worthless checks, and confidence men of that sort. But it is not so
simple to thwart the vultures who prey on the gullibility and passions
of the so-called idle rich."

"There must be something you can do to get it on this fellow, though,"
persisted Craig.

"Well," considered the house man, "we have what might be called our
hotel secret service--several men and women operating entirely apart
from the hotel force of detectives who, like myself, are too well known
to clever crooks. Nobody knows them, except myself. There's one--that
girl over there dancing with that middle-aged man who has mail sent here
but doesn't live here. Could they be of use?"

"Just the thing," exclaimed Craig enthusiastically. "Can't you have her
get acquainted--just as a precaution--with that man? His name, by the
way, I understand is Sherburne."

"I'll do it," agreed Dunn, rising unostentatiously.

Just then I happened to glance across the floor and over the heads of
those seated at the tables at a door opposite us. It was my turn hastily
to seize Kennedy's elbow.

"Good God!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

There, in the further doorway of the tea room, stood Judson Seabury
himself!

Without a word, Craig rose and quickly crossed the dancing floor,
stopping before Mrs. Seabury's table. Instead of waiting to be
introduced, he sat down deliberately, as though he had been there all
the time and had just gone out of the room and come back. He did it all
so quickly that he was able in a perfectly natural way to turn and see
that Seabury himself had been watching and now was advancing slowly,
picking his way among the crowded tables.

From around my corner I saw Craig whisper a word or two to Mrs. Seabury,
then rise and meet Seabury less than halfway from the door by which he
had been standing.

The tension of the situation was too much for Mrs. Seabury. Confounded
and bewildered, she fled precipitately, passing within a few feet of my
table. Her face was positively ghastly.

As for Sherburne, he merely sat a moment and surveyed the irate husband
with calm and studied insolence at a safe distance. Then he, too, rose
and turned deliberately on his heel.

Curious to know how Craig would meet the dilemma, I watched eagerly and
was surprised to see Seabury, after a moment's whispered talk, turn and
leave the tea room by the same door through which he had entered.

"What did you do?" I asked, as Craig rejoined me a few moments later.
"What did you say? My hat's off to you," I added in admiration.

"Told him I had trailed her here with one of my operatives, but was
convinced there was nothing wrong, after all," he returned.

"You mean," I asked as the result of Craig's quick thinking dawned on
me, "that you told him Sherburne was _your_ operative?"

Kennedy nodded. "I want to see him, now, if I can," he said simply.




CHAPTER VI

THE SERUM DIAGNOSIS


We paid our check and Kennedy and I sauntered in the direction Sherburne
had taken, finding him ultimately in the cafe, alone. Without further
introduction Kennedy approached him.

"So--you are a detective?" sneered Sherburne superciliously, elevating
his eyebrows just the fraction of an inch.

"Not exactly," parried Kennedy, seating himself beside Sherburne. Then
in a tone as if he were willing to get down, without further
preliminary, to business, seemingly negotiating, he asked: "Mr.
Sherburne, may I ask just what it is on which you base your claim on
Mrs. Seabury? Is it merely meeting her here? If that is so you must know
that it amounts to nothing--now."

The two men faced each other, each taking the other's measure.

"Nothing?" coolly retorted Sherburne. "Perhaps not--in itself.
But--suppose--I--had--"

He said the words slowly, as he fumbled in his fob pocket, then cut them
short as he found what he was looking for. Safely, in the palm of his
hand, he displayed a latch-key, momentarily, then with a taunting smile
dropped it back again into the fob pocket.

"Perhaps she gave it to me--perhaps I was a welcome visitor in her
apartment," he insinuated. "How would she relish having that told to
Mr. Seabury--backed up by the possession of the key?"

I could not help feeling that for the moment Kennedy was checkmated.
Sherburne was playing a desperate game and apparently held the key,
however he got it, as a trump card.

"Thank you," was all that Kennedy said, as he rose. "I wanted to know
how far you could go. Perhaps we can meet you halfway."

Sherburne smiled cynically. "All the way," he said quietly, as we left
the cafe.

In silence Kennedy left the hotel and jumped into a cab, directing the
driver to the laboratory, where he had asked Mrs. Seabury to wait for
him. We found her there, still much agitated.

Hastily Craig explained to her how he had saved the situation, but her
mind was too occupied over something else to pay much attention.

"I--I can't blame you, Professor Kennedy," she cried, choking down a sob
in her voice, "but I have just discovered--he has told me that it is
even worse than I had anticipated."

We were both following her closely, the incident of the latch-key still
fresh in mind.

"Some time ago," she hurried on, "I missed my latch-key. I thought
nothing of it at the time--thought perhaps I had mislaid it. But today
he told me--just after the dance, even while I was making him think I
would pay him the money, because--because I liked him--he told me he had
it. The brute! He must have picked my handbag!"

Her eyes were blazing now with indignation. Yet as she looked at us
both, evidently the recollection of what had just happened came
flooding over her mind, and she dropped her head in her hands in
helpless dismay at the new development.

Craig pulled out his watch hastily. "It is about six, Mrs. Seabury," he
reassured. "Can you be here at, say, eight?"

"I will be here," she murmured pliantly, realizing her own helplessness.

She had scarcely closed the door when Craig seized the telephone, and
hurriedly tried to locate Seabury himself.

"Apparently no trace of him yet," he fumed, as he hung up the receiver.
"The first problem is how to get that key."

Instantly I thought of Dunn's secret service girl. Kennedy shook his
head doubtfully. "I'm afraid there is no time for that," he answered.
"But will you attend to that end of the affair for me, Walter? I have
just a little more work here at the laboratory before I am ready. I
don't care how you do it, but I want you to convey to Sherburne the
welcome news that Mrs. Seabury is prepared to give in, in any way he may
see fit, if he will call her up here at eight o'clock."

Kennedy had already plunged back among his beakers and test tubes, and
with these slender instructions I sallied forth in my quest of
Sherburne. I had little difficulty in locating him and delivering my
message, which he received with a satisfaction that invited assault and
battery and mayhem. However, I managed to restrain myself and rejoin
Craig in the laboratory, shortly after seven o'clock.

I had scarcely had time to assure Kennedy of the success of my mission,
when we were surprised to see the door open and Seabury himself appear.

His face was actually haggard. Whether or not he had believed the
hastily concocted story of Kennedy at the Vanderveer, his mind had not
ceased to work on the other fears that had prompted his coming to us in
the first place.

"I've been trying to locate you all over," greeted Craig.

Seabury heaved a sigh and passed his hand, with its familiar motion,
over his forehead. "I thought perhaps you might be able to find out
something from this stuff," he answered, unwrapping a package which he
was carrying. "Some samples of the food I've been getting. If you don't
find anything in this, I've others I want tested."

As I looked at the man's drawn face, I wondered whether in fact there
might be something in his fears. On the surface, the thing did indeed
seem to place Agatha Seabury in a bad light. At the sight of the key in
Sherburne's possession I had grasped at the straw that he might have
conceived some diabolical plan to get rid of Seabury for purposes of his
own. But then, I reasoned, would he have been so free in showing the key
if he had realized that it might cast suspicion on himself? I was forced
to ask myself again whether she might, in her hysterical fear of
exposure by the adroit blackmailer, have really attempted to poison her
husband.

It was a desperate situation. But Kennedy was apparently ready to meet
it, though he seemed to take no great interest in the food samples
Seabury had just brought.

Instead he seemed to rely wholly on the tests he had already begun with
the peculiar tissue I had seen him boiling and the blood serum derived
from Seabury himself.

Without a word he took three tubes from the incubator, in which I had
seen him place them some time before, and, as they stood in a rack,
indicated them lightly with his finger.

"I think I can clear part of this mystery up immediately," he began,
speaking more to himself than to Seabury and myself. "Here I have a
tested dialyzer in which has been placed a half cubic centimeter of pure
clear serum. Here is another dialyzer with the same amount of serum, but
no tissue, such as Mr. Jameson has seen me place in this first one. Here
is still another with the tissue in distilled water, but no blood serum.
I have placed all the dialyzers in tubes of distilled water and all are
covered with a substance known as toluol and corked to keep them from
contamination."

Kennedy held up before us the three tubes and Seabury gazed on them with
a sort of fascination, scarcely believing that in them in some way might
be contained the verdict on the momentous problem that troubled his mind
and might perhaps mean life or death to him.

Carefully Kennedy took from each tube a few cubic centimeters of the
dialyzate and into each he poured a little liquid from a tiny vial which
I noticed was labelled "Ninhydrin."

"This," he explained as he set down the vial, "is a substance which
gives a colorless solution with water, but when mixed with albumins,
peptones, or amino-acids becomes violet on boiling. Tube number three
must remain colorless. Number two may be violet. Number one may
approximate number two or be more deeply colored. If one and two are
about the same I call my test negative. But if one is more deeply
colored than two, then it is positive. The other tube is the control."

Impatiently we waited as the three tubes simmered over the heat. What
would they show? Seabury's eyes were glued on them, his hand trembling
in the presence of some unknown danger.

Slowly the liquid in the second tube turned to violet. But more rapidly
and more deeply appeared the violet in number one. The test was
positive.

"What is it?" gasped Seabury hoarsely, leaning over close.

"This," exclaimed Kennedy, "is the famous Abderhalden
test--serum-diagnosis--discovered by Professor Emile Abderhalden of
Halle. It rests on the fact that when a foreign substance comes into the
blood, the blood reacts, with the formation of a protective ferment
produced as a result of physiologic and pathologic conditions.

"For instance," he went on, "a certain albumin always produces a certain
ferment. Presence in the blood stream of blood-foreign substances calls
forth a ferment that will digest them and split them into molecules. The
forces of nature form and mobilize directly in the blood serum.

"Let me get this clearly. Albumin cannot pass through the pores of an
animal membrane, since the individual molecules are too large. If,
however, the albumin is broken up by a ferment-action, then the
molecules become small enough to pass through."

Seabury was listening like a man on whom a stunning blow was about to
descend.

"Thus we can tell," proceeded Kennedy, "whether there is such a ferment
in blood serum as would be produced by a certain condition, for when the
ferment is there blood from the individual possessing it will digest a
similar proteid in a dialyzing thimble kept at body temperature.

"Why," cried Kennedy, swept along by the wonder of the thing, "this test
opens up a vista of alluring and extensive possibilities. The human
organism actually diagnoses its own illnesses automatically. It is
infinitely more exact, more rapid, and more certain than all that human
art can attain. Each organ contains special ferments in its cells in the
most subtle way attuned to the molecular condition of the particular
cell substance and with complete indifference to other cells.

"Don't you see? It diagnoses at the very first stage. You take a small
quantity of blood, derive the serum, then introduce a piece of tissue
such as you wish to find out whether it is diseased or not. The thing is
of overwhelming importance. One can discover a condition even before the
organ itself shows it outwardly. It means a new epoch in medicine. As
for me, I call it the new 'police service' of the organism--working with
perfect, scientific accuracy."

"Wh-what do you find?" reiterated Seabury.

"I have made tests for about everything I can suspect," returned
Kennedy, taking the tubes and pouring the liquid from number two into
number one until they were equalized in color, thus testing them, while
we watched every action closely.

"You see," he digressed, "to get the two the same shade I have to dilute
the first by the second. Now, the dialyzers are not permeable to
albumin. Therefore the violet color indicates that the blood serum in
this case contains ferments which the body is making to split up some
foreign substance in the blood, such as I suspected and obtained from
the hospital. The test is positive. Mr. Seabury, how long have you felt
as you say that you do?"

"Several weeks," the man returned weakly.

"That is fortunate," cried Kennedy, "fortunate that it has not been
several months."

He paused, then added the startling statement, "Mr. Seabury, I can find
no evidence here of poison. As a matter of fact, the wonderful
Abderhalden test shows me that you have one of the most common forms of
internal disease that occur for the most part in persons at or after
middle life, about the age of fifty, more common in men than in women--a
disease which taken in time, as it has been revealed by this wonderful
test, may be cured and you may be saved--an incipient cancer of the
stomach."

Kennedy paused a moment and listened. I fancied I heard someone in the
hall. But he went on, "The person whom you suspect of poisoning you--"

There came a suppressed scream from the door, as it was flung open and
Agatha Seabury stood there, staring with fixed, set eyes at Kennedy,
then at her husband. Mechanically I looked at my watch. It was precisely
eight. Kennedy had evidently prolonged the test for a purpose.

"The person whom you suspected," he repeated firmly, "is innocent!"

A moment Agatha stood there, then as the thing dawned on her, she
uttered one cry, "Judson!"

She reeled as Kennedy with a quick step or two caught her.

Seabury himself seemed dazed.

"And I have--" he ejaculated, then stopped.

Kennedy raised his hand. "Just a moment, please," he interrupted, as he
placed Mrs. Seabury in a chair, then glanced hastily at his watch.

She saw the motion and seemed suddenly to realize that it was nearing
the time for Sherburne to call up. With a mighty effort she seemed to
grip herself. She had just been shocked to know that she was charged
unjustly. But had she been cleared from one peril only to fall a victim
to another--the one she already feared? Was Sherburne to escape, after
all, and ruin her?

The telephone tinkled insistently. Kennedy seized the receiver.

"Who is it?" we heard him ask. "Mr. Sherburne--oh yes."

Mrs. Seabury paled at the name. I saw her shoot a covert glance at her
husband, and was relieved to see that his face betrayed as yet no
recognition of the name. She turned and listened to Kennedy, straining
her ears to catch every syllable and interpret every scrap of the
one-sided conversation.

Quickly Craig had jammed the receiver down on a little metal base which
we had not noticed near the instrument. Three prongs reaching upward
from the base engaged the receiver tightly, fitting closely about it.
Then he took up a watch-case receiver to listen through, in place of the
regular receiver.

"Sherburne, you say?" he repeated. "H. Morgan Sherburne?"

Apparently the voice at the other end of the wire replied rather
peevishly, for Kennedy endeavored to smooth over the delay. We waited
impatiently as he reiterated the name. Why was he so careful about it?
The moments were speeding fast and Mrs. Seabury found the suspense
terrific.

"Must pay--we'll never get anything on you?" Craig repeated after a few
moments further parley. "Very well. I am commissioned to meet you there
in ten minutes and settle the thing up on those terms," he concluded as
he clapped the regular receiver back on its hook with a hasty good-by
and faced us triumphantly.

"The deuce I won't get anything. I've got it!" he exclaimed.

Judson Seabury was too stunned by the revelation that he had a cancer to
follow clearly the maze of events.

"That," cried Kennedy, rising quickly, "is what is known as the
telescribe--a new invention of Edison that records on a specially
prepared phonograph cylinder all that is said--both ways--over a
telephone wire. Come!"

Ten minutes later, in a cab that had been waiting at the door, we pulled
up at the Vanderveer.

Without a word, leaving Judson Seabury and his wife in the waiting cab,
Craig sprang out, followed by me, as he signaled.

There was Sherburne, brazen and insolent, in the cafe as we entered,
from a rear door, and came upon him before he knew it, our friend,
Dunn, whom we had met in the lobby, hovering concealed outside, ready to
come to our assistance.

In a moment Kennedy was at Sherburne's elbow, pinching it in the manner
familiar to international crooks.

"Will you tell me what your precise business is in this hotel?" shot out
Craig before Sherburne could recover from his surprise.

Sherburne flushed and flared--then became pale with rage.

"None of your damned insolence!" he ground out, then paused, cutting the
next remark short as he gritted, "What do you mean? Shall I send a wax
impression of that key--"

Kennedy had quickly flashed the cylinder of the telescribe before his
eyes and instinctively Sherburne seemed to realize that with all his
care in using typewriters and telephones, some kind of record of his
extortion had been obtained.

For a moment he crumpled up. Then Kennedy seized him by the elbow,
dragging him toward a side door opposite that at which our cab was
standing.

"I mean," he muttered, "that I have the goods on you at last and you'll
get the limit for blackmail through this little wax cylinder if you so
much as show your face in New York again. I don't care where you go, but
it must be by the first train. Understand?"

A moment later we returned to the cab, where it had pulled up in the
shadow, away from the carriage entrance.

"You--you'll forgive me--for my--unjust suspicions--Agatha?" we heard a
voice from the depths of the cab say.

Kennedy pulled me back in time not to interrupt a muffled "Yes."

Craig coughed.

As he reached a hand in through the cab door to bid good-night to the
reunited couple, I saw Mrs. Seabury start, then turn and drop into her
handbag the key which Kennedy had extracted from Sherburne's pocket in
the _melee_ and now conveyed back to her in the handshake.




CHAPTER VII

THE DIAMOND QUEEN


"Meet _Sylvania_ Quarantine midnight. Strange death Rawaruska. Retain
you in interest steamship company. Thompson, Purser."

Kennedy had torn open the envelope of a wireless message that had come
from somewhere out in the Atlantic and had just been delivered to him at
dinner one evening. He read it quickly and tossed it over to me.

"Rawaruska," I repeated. "Do you suppose that means the clever little
Russian dancer who was in the 'Revue' last year?"

"There could hardly be two of that unusual name who would be referred to
so familiarly," returned Craig. "Curious that we've had nothing in the
wireless news about it."

"Perhaps it has been delayed," I suggested. "Let me ring up the _Star_.
They may have something now."

A few minutes later I rejoined Craig at the table. A report had just
been received that Rawaruska had been discovered, late the night before,
unconscious in her room on the _Sylvania_. The ship's surgeon had been
summoned, but before he was able to do anything for her she died. That
was all the report said. It was meager, but it served to excite our
interest.

Renee Rawaruska, I knew, was a popular little Russian dancer abroad who
had come to America the season previous and had made a big hit on
Broadway. Beautiful, strange, fiery, she incarnated the mysterious Slav.
I knew her to be one of those Russian dancers before whose performances
Parisian audiences had gone wild with admiration, one who had carried
her art beyond anything known in other countries, fascinating, subtle.

Hastily over the telephone Kennedy made arrangements to go down to
Quarantine on a revenue tug that was leaving to meet the _Sylvania_.

It was a weird trip through the choppy winter seas of the upper bay and
the Narrows, in the dark, with the wind cold and bleak.

The tug had scarcely cast off from the Battery, where we met it, when a
man, who had been watching us from a crevice of his turned-up ulster
collar, quietly edged over.

"You are Professor Kennedy, the detective?" he began, more as if
asserting it than asking the question.

Craig eyed him a moment, but said nothing.

"I understand," he went on, not waiting for a reply, "that you are
interested in the case of that little Russian actress, Rawaruska?"

Still Kennedy said nothing.

"My name is Wade--of the Customs Service," pursued the man, nothing
abashed. Sticking his head forward between the corners of his high
collar he added, in a lowered voice, "You have heard, I suppose, of the
great amber diamond, 'The Invincible'?"

Kennedy nodded and I thought hurriedly of all the big stones I had ever
heard--the Pitt, the Orloff, the Koh-i-noor, the Star of the South, the
Cullinan, and others.

"The Invincible, you know," he added, "is the largest amber diamond in
the world, almost the size of the famous Cullinan, over three hundred
carats. It was found in the dry diggings of the Vaal River, a few miles
from Kimberley. The dry diggings are independent of the De Beers
combine, of course. Well, its owner has always been in the position of
Mark Twain's man with the million-dollar bank-note who found it too
large to cash. No one knows just what an amber diamond of that size is
really worth. This one is almost perfect, resembles the huge top of a
decanter stopper. It's a beautiful orange color and has been estimated
at--well, as high as close to a quarter of a million, though, as I said,
that is all guesswork."

"Yes?" remarked Kennedy, more for politeness than anything else.

Wade leaned over closer.

"The Invincible," he whispered, shielding his lips from the keen, biting
gale, "was last known to belong to the De Guerres, of Antwerp. One of my
special agents abroad has cabled me to look out for it. He thinks there
is reason to believe it will be smuggled into America for safe keeping
during the troubles in Belgium."

It seemed to make no difference to the customs man that Kennedy did not
exactly welcome him with open arms. "The De Guerres are well-known
dealers in diamonds, one of the leading houses in the 'city of
diamonds,' as Antwerp has been called. One of the De Guerres is on the
_Sylvania_, the junior partner--" he paused, then added,--"the husband,
I believe, of Rawaruska. I thought perhaps you might be willing to try
to help me."

"I should be glad to," replied Kennedy tersely, pondering what the
officer had told us.

Nothing more was said on the trip and at last we came to the _Sylvania_,
lying grim and dark of hull off the little cluster of Quarantine
buildings, with myriads of twinkling lights on her, far above but
scarcely relieving the blackness of the leviathan form.

Thompson, the purser, a quiet, unexcitable Englishman, met us as we came
over the side, and for the moment we lost sight of our new-found friend,
Wade.

"Perhaps you didn't know it," informed Thompson as we made our way
through the ship, "but Rawaruska was married--had been for some time."

"Who was her husband?" queried Kennedy, seeking confirmation of what we
had already heard.

"Armand De Guerre, a Belgian, of Antwerp," was the reply, "one of the
partners in a famous old diamond-cutting firm of that city."

Kennedy looked at the purser keenly for a moment, then asked, "Were they
traveling together?"

"Oh, yes,--that is, he had engaged a room, but you know how crowded the
boats are with refugees fleeing to America from the war. He gave up his
room, or rather his share of it, to a woman, a professional saleswoman,
well known, I believe, in Antwerp as well as the Rue de la Paix in Paris
and Maiden Lane and Fifth Avenue of your city, a Miss Hoffman--Elsa
Hoffman. She shared the room with Rawaruska, while De Guerre took his
chances in the steerage."

As we walked down one of the main corridors we noticed ahead of us a
seemingly very nervous and excited gentleman engaged apparently in a
heated conversation with another.

"Monsieur De Guerre," whispered Thompson as we approached.

The two seemed to be just on the point of parting, as we neared them,
and, I think, our approach hastened them. I could not hear what one of
them said, but I heard De Guerre almost hiss, as he turned on his heel,
"Well, sir, you were the last one seen with her alive."

A moment later the purser introduced us to De Guerre. There was
something about him which I can hardly express on paper, a sort of
hypnotic fascination. I felt instinctively that such a man would wield a
powerful influence over some women. Was it in his eyes, or was it merely
his ardent foreign grace?

"You _must_ find out the truth," he cried eagerly. "Already they are
saying that it was suicide. But I cannot believe it. It cannot be.
No,--she was murdered!"

Kennedy ventured no opinion, but now, more than ever, hastened to
signify to the purser that he wanted to look over the ground as quickly
as possible before the ship docked.

Rawaruska, we found, had occupied Room 186, on the port side of one of
the lower decks. Kennedy seemed to be keenly interested, as we
approached the room in which the body still lay, awaiting arrival at the
pier a few hours later.

The stateroom, apparently, ran to the very skin of the vessel and the
ports opened directly on the water, not upon an outside deck, as with
the rooms above it. It was an outside room at the end of a sort of
cross alleyway, and it was impossible that anyone could have reached it
except through the corridors.

Attached to it was a little bath and directly across from the bath, on
the other side, was another small room which was occupied by her maid,
Cecilie, a French girl.

In the main bedroom was a double bed, a couch, a wardrobe, and a small,
thin-legged writing or dressing table.

On the white bed lay the now cold and marble figure of the once
vivacious little dancer who had enchanted thousands in life--petite,
brunette, voluptuous. Rawaruska was beautiful, even in death.

Her finely chiseled features, lacking that heaviness which often
characterizes European women, were, however, terribly drawn and her
perfect complexion on which she had prided herself was now all mottled
and bluish.

As Kennedy examined the body, I could not help observing that there
seemed to be every evidence that the girl had been asphyxiated in some
strange manner.

Had it been by a deft touch on a nerve of her beautiful, soft neck that
had constricted the throat and cut off her breath? I had heard of such
things. Or had it been asphyxiation due to a poison that had paralyzed
the chest muscles?

The purser, as soon as we came aboard, had summoned the ship's surgeon,
and we had scarcely arrived at Rawaruska's room when he joined us. He
was one of those solid, reliable doctors, not brilliant, but one in whom
you might place great confidence, a Dr. Sanderson, educated in
Edinburgh, and long a follower of the sea.

"Was there any evidence of a struggle?" asked Kennedy.

"No, none whatever," replied the doctor.

"No peculiar odor, no receptacle of any kind near her that might have
held poison?"

"No, nothing that could have been used to hold poison or a drug."

Kennedy was regarding the face of the little dancer attentively. "Most
extraordinary," he remarked slowly, "that congested look she has."

"Yes," agreed Dr. Sanderson, "her face was flushed and blue when I got
to her--cyanotic, I should say. There seemed to be a great dryness of
her throat and the muscles of her throat were paretic. Her pupils were
dilated, too, and her pulse was rapid, as if from a greatly increased
blood pressure."

"Was she conscious?" asked Kennedy, almost reverently turning over her
rigid body and looking at the back of her neck and the upper spine. "Did
she recognize anything, say anything?"

"She seemed to be in a state of amnesia," replied Sanderson slowly.
"Evidently if she had seen anything she had forgotten or wouldn't tell,"
he added cautiously.

"Who found her?" asked Craig. "How was she discovered?"

"Why, Miss Hoffman found her," replied the purser quickly. "She called
one of the stewards. She had been sitting in the library reading until
quite late and Rawaruska had retired early, for she was not a good
sailor, they tell me. It must have been nearly midnight when De Guerre
and a friend, pausing at the library door on their way from the smoking
room, saw Miss Hoffman, and all three stopped in the Ritz restaurant for
a bite to eat.

"De Guerre walked down the corridor with Miss Hoffman afterwards," he
continued, "and left her as she went into the room with his wife.
Perhaps a minute later--long enough anyway so that he had reached the
other end of the corridor--she screamed. She had turned on the light and
had found Rawaruska lying half across the bed, unconscious. Miss Hoffman
called to the steward to summon Dr. Preston, but he came to me first,
instead."

"Dr. Preston?" repeated Kennedy.

"Yes, a young American physician, the friend who had been with De Guerre
in the smoking room part of the evening, and later made up the party in
the restaurant," vouchsafed Sanderson.

"The man De Guerre was talking to as we came down the hall," put in
Thompson.

"H'm," mused Kennedy, evidently thinking of the remark we had overheard.

"I've talked with him now and then myself," admitted Sanderson; "a
bright fellow who has been studying abroad and after many adventures
succeeded in getting across the border into Holland and thence to
England. He managed to squeeze into the steerage of the _Sylvania_,
though, of course, like De Guerre, he was classed as a first-cabin
passenger. He had become very friendly with Rawaruska and her party
while they were waiting for bookings in London."

Thompson leaned over. "The steward in the corridor tells me," he said in
a low tone, "that early in the evening Dr. Preston and Rawaruska were
on the promenade deck together."

I tried vaguely to piece together the scraps of information which we had
gleaned. Kennedy, however, said nothing, but was now leaning over the
body of the little dancer, looking at the upper region of her spine
attentively. Quietly, from a group of three or four little red marks on
her back he squeezed out several drops of liquid, absorbing them on a
piece of sterile gauze.

A moment later, De Guerre, who had quietly slipped away during the
examination, as if unable to bear the sight of the tragedy, returned,
and with him was a young woman.

"Miss Elsa Hoffman," he introduced.

Elsa Hoffman was of a fascinating type, tall, finely gowned, of superb
poise, physically perfect. One could not help admiring her deep blue
eyes and blonde radiance. Indeed, I felt that one must rely much on her
attractions in pursuit of her business of selling gems to wealthy men
and women. Still, in spite of her evident poise, the tragedy seemed to
have oppressed and unnerved her.

She did not seem to be able to add much to the scanty stock of facts we
had, even after repeating the story of her discovery of Rawaruska, which
was substantially as the purser had already told it.

"I--I think perhaps Mr. Kennedy ought to question Cecilie," she
suggested finally, turning toward De Guerre, who nodded his assent.

A sudden movement in the passageway followed, and the door opened
quietly. A man entered, a youngish fellow of fine physique and
attractive face. I recognized him immediately as Dr. Preston. His
apparently usually debonair manner was visibly subdued by the presence
of death.

Evidently he had just heard that someone was investigating the tragedy
and had hastened to be present. Both De Guerre and Elsa nodded to him, a
trifle coldly. Only a moment did he pause to look at the drawn face on
the pillow, then stood apart, ill at ease until Kennedy had finished his
minute examination.

As Kennedy moved away from the bed, Dr. Preston contrived to place
himself near him and apart from the rest.

"Mr. Kennedy," he began in a husky undertone, "they tell me you have
been engaged to investigate this--this awful affair."

Kennedy assented.

"If there is anything I can do to help you," Preston added anxiously, "I
hope you will command me. In fact," he added as Kennedy nodded while
Preston glanced covertly at De Guerre and Miss Hoffman, "I hope you'll
get at the truth."

"Thank you," responded Kennedy, meeting his eye squarely this time; "I
shall be glad to call on you if occasion arises."

I watched Preston closely, not quite making out just what he was driving
at, nor the reason for the strained relations that now seemed to exist
among the former friends. Still following Kennedy's every motion,
Preston retired to the position of a more than interested spectator.




CHAPTER VIII

THE ANESTHETIC VAPORIZER


Craig had completed a hasty search of the room, with its little dressing
table, two trunks, and a cabinet. Everything seemed to have been kept in
a most neat and orderly manner by the attentive Cecilie, who was
apparently a model servant.

The little white bathroom was equally immaculate, and Kennedy passed
next to an examination of the little room of the French maid.

Cecilie was a pretty, dark little being, with snapping black eyes, the
type of winsome French maid that one would naturally have expected
Rawaruska, with her artist's love of the beautiful, to have picked out
to serve her dainty self.

As I ran my eye over the group that was now intently watching Kennedy at
work, I fancied I caught Elsa Hoffman eyeing Cecilie sharply, and I am
sure that once at least those black eyes snapped back a wireless message
of defiance at the penetrating eyes of blue. I could feel instinctively
the atmosphere of hostility between the two women.

"The door was not locked, you say?" repeated Craig, following up one of
the first of his own questions to Cecilie, which had resulted in
unearthing this new fact.

"Non, monsieur," replied Cecilie in accented English which was charming.
"Mam'selle--we all called her that, her stage name,--used to leave it
open in case of fire or accident. She had a terrible fear of drowning.
You know there have been some awful wrecks lately, and she was, oh, so
nervous."

"But her valuables?" prompted Craig quickly, watching the effect of his
question.

"All in the ship's safe, in care of the purser," replied Cecilie. "So
were Miss Hoffman's."

"Yes," corroborated Thompson, "and, besides, the corridors and
passageways are well patrolled by stewards at all times."

The search of Cecilie's room, which was smaller and more scantily
furnished, took only a few minutes.

A suppressed exclamation from Craig served to divert my attention from
the study of those around me to the study of Kennedy himself, and what
he had discovered.

Hidden away in the back of a drawer in a small chiffonier, he had come
across several articles that aroused interest if they did not whet the
blade of suspicion.

"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed the maid as Kennedy suppressed a smile of
gratification at the outcome of the search. "But that is not mine!"

Kennedy drew out from the back of the drawer, where it had been tucked,
a little silken bag. He opened it. On the surface it seemed that the bag
was empty. But as he brought it cautiously closer to his face to peer
in, I could see that just a whiff of its contents was enough.

"What have you there?" I asked Kennedy, careful that no one else could
overhear us.

"Cayenne pepper, snuff, and some other chemical," sneezed Craig. "Very
effective to throw into the face of anyone," he commented, closing
quickly the bag by its loose drawing strings, "that is, if you merely
want to blind him and put him out temporarily."

I did not pay much attention to the protests of the maid, nor the look
of triumph that crossed the face of Elsa Hoffman and surprise exhibited
by Dr. Preston. For Kennedy had picked up from the same drawer a little
toilet vaporizer, too, and was examining it minutely.

As he held it up, I could see, or rather I fancied that it was empty. He
pressed the bulb lightly, then seemed to start back quickly.

"What's that?" I queried, mystified at his actions.

"Something the French secret service spies call the 'bad perfume,'" he
returned frankly, "an anesthetic so incredibly rapid and violent that
the spies, usually women, who use it wear a filter veil over their own
mouths and noses to protect themselves."

The whole thing was so queer that I could only wonder what might be the
explanation. Cecilie was protesting volubly, now in fair English, now in
liquid French, that she knew absolutely nothing of the articles.

I wondered whether Rawaruska herself might not have placed them there.
Might she not have been a spy, one of those clever little dancers who
had wormed themselves by their graceful agility into the good graces of
some of the world's leading men and made Russia a recognized diplomatic
power?

Something like the same idea must have been suggested to Dr. Sanderson,
who was standing next me, for he bent over and remarked to me in an
undertone, with a significant glance at what Kennedy had discovered, "I
suppose you realize that the position of the Russian government has
undergone a marked change since the Russian dancers have won
international popularity?"

I had not thought much about it before, but now that he mentioned it, I
could not help a nod of assent.

"Why, I have heard," he continued with the air of a man who is imparting
a big piece of information, "that the beautiful young women of the
imperial ballet mingle in the society of the capitals of the world, make
friends with politicians, social leaders, high officials, and exert a
great influence in favor of their own country wherever they go. No
doubt," he added, "they sometimes convey valuable information to the
Foreign Office which could not be obtained in any other way."

I was not paying much attention to him, but still the doctor rattled on
in an undertone, "Some of these dancers are past masters in the art of
intrigue. Do you suppose Rawaruska and the rest have had the task set
for them to win back the public opinion of your country, which departed
from its traditional policy of friendliness during the Japanese war?"

I made no answer. I was engrossed in considering the primary question.
Could it have been a suicide, after all? Surely she had removed the
evidences of it much better than in any other case I had ever seen.

Or, had there been a "triangle," perhaps a quadrangle here? I could not
persuade myself that De Guerre cared greatly for his wife, except
perhaps to be jealous of anyone else having her. He was too attentive to
Elsa Hoffman, and she, in turn, was not of the type to care much for
anyone. As for Dr. Preston, although he seemed to have had a friendship
for Rawaruska, I could not exactly fit him into the scheme of things.

We proceeded up the bay on the _Sylvania_, but were able to discover
nothing further that night. As we left the ship at the dock in the
morning we ran across Wade, who was quietly directing a dozen or so of
his men.

"Any trace yet of the Invincible?" asked Craig, stopping in an
unostentatious corner.

The customs man shook his head gravely. "Not yet," he replied. "But I'm
not discouraged. If we miss it here in the customs inspection it will be
sure to turn up later. There's a shady jeweler on Fifth Avenue, Margot,
who knows these Antwerp people pretty well. I have a man working there,
a diamond cutter, and other agents in the trade. Oh, I'll hear about it
soon enough, if it is here. Only I'd like to have done something
spectacular, something that would count for me at Washington. Have you
found out anything?"

Briefly Kennedy told him some of the scattered facts we had discovered,
just enough to satisfy him without taking him into our confidence.

"I'm going to be busy in the laboratory, Walter," remarked Kennedy as
our taxicab extricated itself from the ruck of the river-front streets.
"I don't know that there is anything that you can do--except--well, yes.
I wish you'd try to keep an eye on some of these people--that maid,
Cecilie, especially."

We had learned that De Guerre was to stop at the Vanderveer and, later
in the morning, I dropped into the hotel and glanced over the register.
De Guerre was registered there and Cecilie had a little room, also,
pending the disposal he would make of her. Miss Hoffman had rooms of her
own, which she had evidently re-engaged, with a family in a residential
street not far from the hotel.

The clerk told me that De Guerre was out, but that the maid had returned
after having been out alone, for a short time, also. The lobby of the
Vanderveer was fairly crowded with people by this time, and I found no
difficulty in keeping in the background and still seeing pretty much
everything that went on.

It was rather tame, however, and I was still debating whether I should
not do something active, when I happened to glance up and catch sight of
a familiar face. It was Dr. Preston making inquiries for someone of the
room clerk. I dodged back of a pillar and waited, covering myself with
an early morning war extra that repeated the news of the night before.

A few moments later, Preston, who had received an answer from whomever
he was calling, edged his way toward one of the deserted little
reception rooms near a side carriage entrance. Carefully, I trailed him.

It was some minutes before I could make up my mind to risk passing the
door of the little parlor and being discovered, but I was growing
impatient. As I glanced in I was astonished to see him talking earnestly
to Cecilie. I did not dare stop, for fear one or the other might look
up, but I could see that Preston was eagerly questioning her. Her face
was averted from me and I could not read even her expression. The
passageway was deserted, and if I paused I would inevitably attract
attention. So I kept on, turning instinctively in the labyrinth and
coming back to the lobby, where I found a position near the telephone
booths which gave me a concealed view at least of the door of the parlor
around an angle. I waited.

Perhaps five minutes passed. Then Cecilie and Dr. Preston suddenly
emerged from the reception room. Evidently the maid was anxious to get
away, perhaps afraid to be seen with him. With a word, she almost ran
down the corridor in the direction of the rear elevators, and Preston,
with a queer look on his face, came slowly toward me.

Instinctively I drew back into a telephone booth; then it occurred to me
that if I emerged just as he passed he would not be likely to suspect
anything, and I might have a chance to study him.

I did so, and was quite amused at the look of surprise on his face as I
greeted him. Still, I do not think he thought I was shadowing him. We
paused for a moment on the street, after a conventional exchange of
remarks about the tragedy to poor little Rawaruska.

"That Miss Hoffman seems to be a very capable woman," I remarked, by way
of dragging the conversation into channels into which it seemed unlikely
to drift naturally.

"Y-yes," he agreed, as I caught a sidelong glance from the corner of his
eye. "I believe she has had a rather checkered career. I understand that
she was a nurse, a trained nurse, once."

There was something about the remark that impressed me. It was made
deliberately, I fancied. What his purpose was, I could not fathom, but I
felt that in the instant while he had hesitated he had debated and made
up his mind to say it.

My face betraying nothing to his searching glance, he pulled hastily at
his watch. "I'm going downtown on the subway--to clear up some of the
muss that this European business has got me in with my bankers," he said
quickly. "I'd be glad to have you call on me at any time at the
Charlton, just up the avenue a bit. Good-day, sir. I'm glad to have met
you. Drop in on me."

He was gone, scarcely waiting for me to reply, leaving me to wonder what
was the cause of his strange actions.

Mechanically I looked at my own watch and decided that I had left Craig
undisturbed long enough.




CHAPTER IX

THE TWILIGHT SLEEP


As I entered the laboratory I saw before him a peculiar, telescope-like
instrument, at one end of which, in a jar of oxygen, something was
burning with a brilliant, penetrating flame.

He paused in his work and I hastened to tell him of the peculiar
experience I had had in the forenoon. But he said nothing, even at the
significant actions of Dr. Preston.

"How about those things you found in the maid's room?" I asked at
length. "Do they explain Rawaruska's death?"

"The trouble with them," he replied, thoughtfully shaking his head, "is
that the effects of such things last only for a short time. They might
have been used at first--but there was something used afterward."

"Something afterward?" I repeated, keenly interested, and fingering the
telescope-like arrangement curiously. "What's this?"

"One of the new quartz lens spectroscopes used by Dr. Dobbie of the
English Government laboratories," he answered briefly. "I think
chemists, police officials, coroners and physicians are going to find it
most valuable. You see, by throwing the ultra-violet part of the
spectrum from a source of light as I obtain from the sparking of iron in
oxygen through the lenses of a quartz spectroscope, the lines of many
dangerous drugs, especially of the alkaloids, can be distinctly and
quickly located in the spectrum. Each drug produces a characteristic
kind of line. We use a quartz lens because glass cuts off the
ultra-violet rays. Why, even the most minute particle of poison can be
detected in this revolutionary fashion."

He had resumed squinting through the spectroscope.

"Well," I asked, "do you find anything there?"

He had evidently been using the piece of gauze on which he had preserved
the liquid from the peculiar little marks on Rawaruska's spine.

"Narcophin," he muttered, still squinting.

"Narcophin?" I repeated. "What is that?"

"A derivative of opium--morphine. There's another poison here, too," he
added.

"What is it?"

"Scopolamine," he answered tersely, "scopolamine hydrobromide."

"Why," I exclaimed, "that is the drug they use in this new 'twilight
sleep,' as they call it."

"Exactly," he replied, "the _daemmerschlaf_. I suspected something of the
kind when I saw those little punctures on her back. Some people show a
marked susceptibility to it; others just the reverse. Evidently she was
one of those who go under it quietly and quickly."

I looked at Kennedy in amazement.

"You can see," he went on, catching the expression on my face, "if it
could be used for medical science, it could also be used for crime.
That's the way I reasoned, the way someone else must have reasoned."

He paused, then went on. "Someone thought out this plan of using
narcophin and scopolamine to cause the twilight sleep, to keep Rawaruska
just on the borderland of unconsciousness, destroying her memory and
producing forgetfulness. That is the _daemmerschlaf_; perception is
retained but memory lost. You are acquainted with the test? They show an
object to a patient and ask her if she sees it. Say, half an hour later,
it is shown again. If she remembers it, it is a sign that a new
injection is necessary.

"Only in this case the criminal went too far, disregarded the danger of
the thing. Scopolamine in too great a quantity causes death by paralysis
of respiration--a paralysis, by the way, against which artificial
respiration and all means of stimulating are ineffective because of the
rigidity of the muscles. And so, you see, in this case Rawaruska died."

I could not help thinking of Preston, the young doctor who had been
studying in Germany. More than likely he had heard of and had
investigated the Frieberg "twilight sleep" treatment. We had made some
progress, even though we did not know why or by whom the drugs had been
administered.

Wade, of the Customs Service, had, as I have said, told us that he had
several secret agents about in the trade, constantly picking up bits of
information that might interest the Treasury Department. It did not
surprise Kennedy, therefore, late in the forenoon, to have Wade call up
and tell him that among the early callers at Margot's, the jeweler, was
the maid Cecilie.

"That was where she must have been before I reached the Vanderveer," I
exclaimed.

Kennedy nodded. "But why did she go there?" he asked. "And why was she
talking with Preston?"

Inasmuch as I couldn't answer the questions I didn't try, but waited
while Craig reasoned out some method of attack on them.

"Since it's known that we're working on the case of Rawaruska," he
ruminated half an hour later over an untasted lunch, "we might just as
well take the risk of seeing Margot himself. Let's go down and look his
shop over."

So in the middle of the afternoon, when Fifth Avenue was crowded with
shoppers, we paused before Margot's window, looking over the entrancing
display of precious stones gleaming out from the rich black velvet
background, and then sauntered in, like any other customers.

Kennedy engaged the salesman in talk about necklaces and lavallieres,
always leading the conversation around to the largest stones that he
saw, and dwelling particularly on those that were colored. As I
listened, trying to throw in a word now and then that would not sound
absolutely foolish, I was impressed by a feeling that Margot's, even
though it was such a fashionable place, was what might be called only a
high-class shyster's. In fact, I recalled having heard that Margot had
engineered several rather questionable transactions in gems.

"I'm much interested in orange stones," remarked Kennedy, casually
turning up a flawless white diamond and discarding it as if it did not
interest him. "Once when I was abroad I saw the famous Invincible, and a
handsomer gem than it is I never hope to see."

The clerk, ever obliging, replaced the tray before us in the safe and
retired toward the back of the shop.

"He suspects nothing, at least," whispered Kennedy.

A moment later he returned. "I'm sorry," he reported, "but we haven't
any such stones in the house. But I believe we expect some in a few
days. If you could--"

"I shall remember it; thank you," interrupted Kennedy brusquely, as I
caught a momentary gleam of satisfaction in his eye. "That's most
fortunate. I'll be in again. Thank you."

We turned toward the door. In an instant it flashed over me that perhaps
they were recutting the big Invincible.

"Just a moment, please, gentlemen," interrupted a voice behind us.

A short, stocky man had come up behind us.

"I thought you did not look like purchasers, nor yet like crooks," he
said defiantly. "Did I hear you refer to the Invincible?"

It was Margot himself, who had been hovering about behind us. Kennedy
said nothing.

"Yes," he went on, "I am cutting a large diamond, but it is not like the
Invincible. It is much handsomer--one that was discovered right here in
this country in the new diamond fields of Arkansas. The diamond itself
is already sold. And you would nevair guess the buyer, oh, nevair!"

"No?" queried Kennedy.

"Nevair!" reiterated Margot.

"It could not be delivered to a woman who was once the maid of
Rawaruska, the Russian dancer?" Craig asked abruptly.

Margot shot a quick and suspicious glance at us.

"Then you are, as I suspected, a detectif?" he cried.

Kennedy eyed him sharply without admitting the heinous charge. Margot
returned his look and I felt that of all sayings that about a dishonest
man not being able to look you in the eye was itself the least credible.
He laughed daringly. "Well, perhaps you are right," he said. "But
whoever it is, he is lucky to have bought a stone like it so cheaply!"

The man was baffling. I could not figure it out. Had Margot been simply
a high-class "fence" for the disposal and convenient reappearance of
stolen goods?

We returned uptown to our apartment to find that in the meantime Wade
had called up again. Kennedy got him on the wire. It seemed that shortly
after we left Margot's Cecilie had called again and had gone off with a
small, carefully wrapped package.

"A strange case," pondered Kennedy, as he hung up the receiver. "First
there is a murder that looks like a suicide, then the sale of a diamond
that looks like a fake." He paused a moment. "They have worked quickly
to cover it up; we must work with equal quickness if we are to uncover
them."

With almost lightning rapidity he had seized the telephone again and had
our old friend First Deputy O'Connor on the wire. Briefly he explained
the case, and arranged for the necessary arrests that would bring the
principal actors in the little drama to the laboratory that night. Then
he fell to work on a little delicate electrical instrument consisting,
outwardly at least, of a dial with a pointer and several little carbon
handles attached to wires, as well as a switchboard.

I know that Kennedy did not relish having his hand forced in this
manner, but nevertheless he was equal to the emergency and when, after
dinner, those whom O'Connor had rounded up began to appear at the
laboratory, no one would ever have imagined that he had not the entire
case on the very tip of his tongue, almost bursting forth an accusation.

De Guerre had complied with the police order by sending Cecilie alone in
a cab, and later he drove up with Miss Hoffman. Dr. Preston came in
shortly afterward, shooting a keen glance at Cecilie, and avoiding more
than a nod to De Guerre. Margot himself was the last to arrive,
protesting volubly. Wade, of course, was already there.

"I really must beg your pardon," began Kennedy, as he ignored the
querulousness of Margot, the late arrival, adding significantly, "that
is, of all of you except one, for monopolizing the evening."

Whatever might have been in their minds to say, no one ventured a word.
Kennedy's tone when he said, "Of all of you except one," was too tense
and serious. It demanded attention, and he got it.

"I am going to put to you first a hypothetical case," he continued
quietly. "Let us say that the De Guerres of Antwerp decided to smuggle a
great jewel into America for safe keeping, perhaps for sale, during the
troublous times in their own country.

"Now, any man would know," he went on, "that he had a pretty slim chance
when it came to smuggling in a diamond. Besides, everyone knew that the
De Guerres owned this particular stone, of which I shall speak later.
But a woman? Smuggling is second nature to some women."

Quickly he ran over the strange facts that had been unearthed regarding
the death of the dainty Russian dancer.

"You were right, Monsieur De Guerre," he concluded, turning
to the diamond merchant; "it was no suicide. Your wife was
killed--unintentionally, it is true,--but killed in an attempt to steal
a great diamond from her while she was smuggling it."

De Guerre made no answer, save a hasty glance at Wade that did not carry
with it an admission of smuggling.

"You mean to say, then, Mr. Kennedy," Margot demanded, "that while
Rawaruska was smuggling in the big diamond of which you speak someone
heard of it and deliberately _murdered_ her?"

"Not too fast," cautioned Craig. "Think again before you use those
words, 'deliberately murdered.' If it had been murder that was intended,
how much more surely it might have been accomplished by more brutal
methods--or by more scientific. No, murder was never deliberately
intended."

He stopped, as if to emphasize the point, then slowly began to
distribute to each of us one of the carbon handles I had seen him
adjusting to the peculiar little electrical instrument.

"Let me reconstruct the case," he hurried on, giving a final twist or
two to the instrument itself, now placed before him on a table, with its
dial face away from us. "Rawaruska had retired for the night. Where had
she placed the diamond? It would probably take a long search to find it.
Well, the twilight sleep was chosen because it was supposed to be a
safe and sure means to the end. Even if she retained some degree of
consciousness, she would forget what happened. That is partly the reason
for the treatment, anyhow,--the loss of memory.

"Someone believed this was a safe and sure anesthetic. First perhaps a
whiff of the secret service 'bad perfume' to insure that she would not
cry out--then an injection of narcophin and scopolamine--another--and
the twilight sleep. A few minutes, and Rawaruska was unconscious.

"Then came the search. Perhaps she was restless. Another injection
settled that. At last the great diamond was found. But the twilight
sleep meant not forgetfulness but death to Rawaruska!"

Craig paused. It was almost as if one could see the word picture of the
scene as he painted it.

"What was to be done? The diamond must be recut--anything to hide its
identity, at once, and at any cost. And Margot? The story of the
Arkansas diamond and the sale is a blind. The case is perfect!"

Kennedy raised his eyes for the first time from the study of the little
electrical machine before him, and caught the eye of Cecilie, holding
it, unwilling.

"Did you ever hear of the great diamond, the Invincible?" Kennedy
smashed out.

I felt that it might not have been exactly chivalrous, but it was
necessary.

Cecilie's breast, which had showed a wildly beating heart as Kennedy
told of how her mistress had died, was calmer now. Her air of surprise
at the mention of the diamond was perfect. Elsa Hoffman was gazing at
her, too, in tense interest. De Guerre was outwardly cool, Margot
openly cynical, Preston leaning forward in ill-suppressed excitement.

For a moment Kennedy paused again, as if allowing all to collect
themselves before he took them by assault.

"I have lately been studying," he remarked casually, "the experiments of
Dr. Von Pfungen of Vienna showing the protective resistance of the human
skin against an electric current. Normally, this resistance averages
from seventy to eighty thousand ohms. In the morning, owing to the
accumulation of waste products, the resistance may mount to almost
double. In persons suffering from nervous anxiety, it decreases to five
thousand and even down to a thousand ohms in cases of hysteria. Von
Pfungen has also measured a human being's emotional feelings by the
electric current. I have a copy of his instrument here. There is one
person who sits gripping the carbon electric handle connected with this
galvanometer who, to begin with, had a resistance of over sixty
thousand. But when I began to tell of how Rawaruska met her death, of
the hypothetical case I have built up by my observations and experiments
here in this very laboratory, the needle of the galvanometer started to
oscillate downward. It went down until it reached thirty-eight thousand
at the mention of murder. When I said the case was perfect, it had got
as low as under twenty thousand, swinging lower and lower as the person
saw hope depart!"

Kennedy was no longer paying any attention to the little instrument. As
I followed him, I became more and more impatient. What was it he had
discovered? Who was it?

"Preston," cried Kennedy, suddenly wheeling on the young doctor,
"through your regard--honorable, I am sure--for Rawaruska you have let
yourself be drawn into doing a little amateur detective work. Let me
warn you. Instead of clearing up the case, you merely laid yourself open
to suspicion. Fortunately the galvanometer absolves you. You should have
known that Cecilie was only a tool. De Guerre, your black wallet, that
all diamond dealers carry--thank you, Wade--that's it."

Kennedy had turned from Preston to Cecilie, then to De Guerre so
suddenly that no one was prepared for the signal he gave to the customs
officer.

Wade had covered the surprised dealer and was now emptying out the
contents of the wallet.

There, on the table, gleaming in the light of the laboratory, lay a
wonderful brilliant, some three hundred carats--perfect in its blazing
crystalline orange beauty. There it lay, a jewel which might charm and
arouse the cupidity of two hemispheres. It shone like a thing of life.
Yet back of its orange fire lay a black tragedy.

Margot was on his feet instantly.

"That is not the--"

"Just a moment, Mr. Margot," interrupted Kennedy. "I think Mr. Wade will
be able to show that it is the Invincible when he matches up the parts
that have been hurriedly cut from--from the wonderful Arkansas diamond,"
Craig added sarcastically. "Miss Hoffman, Dr. Preston tells us that
before you were a diamond saleswoman you had been a trained nurse!"

The look Elsa Hoffman flashed, as her calm exterior refused to conceal
her emotions longer, was venomous.

Kennedy was the calmest one of us all as he tapped the little
galvanometer significantly with his index finger.

"De Guerre," he exclaimed, leaning forward slightly, "you and your
lover, Elsa Hoffman, planned cunningly to rob your own brothers. But,
instead of robbers merely," he ground out, "you are murderers!"




CHAPTER X

THE SIXTH SENSE


"I suppose you have read in the papers of the mysterious burning of our
country house at Oceanhurst, on the south shore of Long Island?"

It had been about the middle of the afternoon that a huge automobile of
the latest design drew up at Kennedy's laboratory and a stylishly
dressed woman, accompanied by a very attentive young man, alighted.

They had entered and the man, with a deep bow, presented two cards
bearing the names of the Count and Countess Alessandro Rovigno.

Julia Rovigno, I knew, was the daughter of Roger Gaskell, the retired
banker. She had recently married Count Rovigno, a young foreigner whose
family had large shipping interests in America and at Trieste in the
Adriatic.

"Yes, indeed, I have read about it," nodded Craig.

"You see," she hurried on a little nervously, "it was a wedding present
to us from my father."

"Giulia," put in the young man quickly, giving her name an accent that
was not, however, quite Italian, "thinks the fire was started by an
incendiary."

Rovigno was a tall, rather boyish-looking man of thirty-two or
thirty-three, with light brown hair, light brown beard and mustache. His
eyes and forehead spoke of intelligence, but I had never heard that he
cared much about practical business affairs. In fact, to American
society Rovigno was known chiefly as one of the most daring of
motor-boat enthusiasts.

"It may have been the work of an incendiary," he continued thoughtfully,
"or it may not. I don't know. But there has been an epidemic of fires
among the large houses out on Long Island lately."

I nodded to Kennedy, for I had myself compiled a list for the _Star_,
which showed that considerably over a million dollars' worth of show
places had been destroyed.

"At any rate," added the Countess, "we are burned out, and are staying
in town now--at my father's house. I wish you would come around there.
Perhaps father can help you. He knows all about the country out that
way, for his own place isn't a quarter of a mile away."

"I shall be glad to drop around, if I can be of any assistance," agreed
Kennedy as the young couple left us.

The Rovignos had scarcely gone when a woman appeared at the laboratory
door. She was well dressed, pretty, but looked pale and haggard.

"My name is Mrs. Bettina Petzka," she began, singling out Kennedy. "You
do not know me, but my husband, Nikola, was one of the first students
you taught, Professor."

"Yes, yes, I recall him very well," replied Craig. "He was a brilliant
student, too--very promising. What can I do for you?"

"Why, Professor Kennedy," she cried, no longer able to control her
feelings, "he has suddenly disappeared."

"What line of work had he taken up?" asked Craig, interested.

"He was a wireless operator--had been employed on a liner that runs to
the Adriatic from New York. But he was out of work. Someone has told me
that he thought he saw Nikola in Hoboken around the docks where a number
of the liners that go to blockaded ports are laid up waiting the end of
the war."

She paused.

"I see," remarked Kennedy, pursing up his lips thoughtfully. "Your
husband was not a reservist of any of the countries at war, was he?"

"No--he was first of all a scientist. I don't think he had any interest
in the war--at least he never talked much about it."

"I know," persisted Craig, "but had he taken out his naturalization
papers here?"

"He had applied for them."

"When did he disappear?"

"I haven't seen him for two nights," she sobbed.

It flashed over me that it was now two nights since the fire that had
burned Rovigno's house, although there was no reason for connecting the
events, at least yet.

The young woman was plainly wild with anxiety. "Oh, can't you help me
find Nikola?" she pleaded.

"I'll try my best," reassured Kennedy, taking down on a card her address
and bowing her out.

It was late in the afternoon before we had an opportunity to call at the
Gaskell town house where the Rovignos were staying. The Count was not at
home, but the Countess welcomed us and led us directly into a large
library.

"I'd like to have you meet my father," she introduced. "Father, this is
Professor Kennedy, whom Alex and I have engaged to look into the burning
of our house."

Old Roger Gaskell received us, I thought, with a curious mixture of
restraint and eagerness.

"I hope you'll excuse me?" asked the Countess a moment later. "I really
must dress for dinner. But I think I've told you all I can. I wanted you
to talk to my father."

"I've heard of the epidemic of fires from my friend Mr. Jameson here, on
the _Star_," remarked Kennedy when we were alone. "Some, I understand,
have attributed the fires to incendiaries, others have said they were
the work of disgruntled servants, others of an architect or contractor
who hasn't shared in the work and thinks he may later. I've even heard
it said that an insurance man may be responsible--hoping to get new
business, you know."

Gaskell looked at us keenly. Then he rose and approached us, raising his
finger as though cautioning silence.

"Do you know," he whispered so faintly that it was almost lost,
"sometimes I think there is a plot against me?"

"Against _you_?" whispered back Kennedy. "Why, what do you mean?"

"I can't tell you--here," he replied. "But, I believe there are
detectaphones hidden about this house!"

"Have you searched?" asked Kennedy keenly.

"Yes, but I've found nothing. I've gone over all the furniture and such
things. Still, they might be inside the walls, mightn't they?"

Kennedy nodded.

"Could you discover them if they were?" asked Gaskell.

"I think I could," replied Craig confidently.

"Then there's another peculiar thing," resumed Gaskell, a little more
freely, yet still whispering. "I suppose you know that I have a country
estate not far from my daughter?"

He paused. "Of course I know," he went on, watching Kennedy's face,
"that sparks are sometimes struck by horses' shoes when they hit stones.
But the shoes of my horses, for instance, out there lately have been
giving forth sparks even in the stable. My groom called my attention to
it, and I saw it myself."

He continued looking searchingly at Kennedy. "You are a scientist," he
said at length. "Can you tell me why?"

Kennedy was thinking deeply. "I can't, offhand," he replied frankly.
"But I should like to have a chance to investigate."

"There may be some connection with the fire," hinted Gaskell anxiously
as he accompanied us to the door.

At our own apartment, when we returned, we found our friend, Burke, of
the Secret Service, waiting for us.

"Just had a hurry call to come to New York," he explained, "and thought
I'd like to drop in on you first."

"What's the trouble?" asked Kennedy.

"Why, there's been a mysterious yacht lurking about the mouth of the
harbor for several days and they want to look into it."

"Whose yacht do they think it is?"

"They don't know, but it is said to resemble one that belongs to a man
named Gaskell."

"Gaskell?" repeated Craig, turning suddenly.

"Yes,--the _Furious_--a fast, floating palace--one of these new power
yachts, run by a gas engine--built for speed. Why, do you know anything
about it?"

Kennedy said nothing.

"The revenue cutter _Uncas_ has been assigned to me," went on Burke. "If
you have nothing better to do, I'd like to have you give me a hand in
the case. You might find it a little different from the ordinary run."

"I shall be glad to go with you," replied Craig cordially. "Only, just
now I've got a particular case of my own. I'll see you tomorrow at the
Customs House, though, if I can."

"Good!" exclaimed Burke. "I don't think either of you, particularly
Jameson, will regret it. It promises to be a good story."

Burke had scarcely left us when Kennedy decided on his next move. We
went directly over to the Long Island Railroad station and caught the
next train out to Oceanhurst, not a long run from the city.

Thus, early in the evening, Kennedy was able to begin, under cover, his
investigation of the neighborhood of the Rovigno and Gaskell houses.

We entered the Gaskell estate and looked it over as we made our way
toward the stable to find the groom. Out on the bay we could see the
_Furious_ at anchor. Nearer in shore were a couple of Count Rovigno's
speedy racing motor-boats. Along the shore, we saw a basin for yachts,
capable even of holding the _Furious_.

The groom proved to be a rather dull-witted fellow, and left us pretty
much to our own devices.

"Ya-as--sparks--I saw 'em," he drawled in answer to Kennedy's question.
"So did Mr. Gaskell. Naw--I don't know nawthin' about 'em."

He had lumbered out into another part of the stable when I heard a low
exclamation from Craig, of "Look, Walter!"

I did look in amazement. There were indeed little sparks, in fact a
small burst of them in all directions, where there were metal surfaces
in close proximity to one another.

Kennedy had brought along with him a strange instrument and he was now
looking attentively at it.

"What is that?" I asked.

"The bolometer," he replied, "invented by Professor Langley."

"And what does it do?"

"Detects waves," he replied, "rays that are invisible to the eye. For
instance, just now it tells me that shooting through the darkness are
invisible waves, perhaps infra-red rays."

He paused, and I looked at him inquiringly.

"You know," he explained, "the infra-red rays are closer to the heat
rays than those of the upper end of the spectrum and beyond, the
ultra-violet rays, with which we have already had some experience."

Kennedy continued to look at his bolometer. "Yes," he remarked
thoughtfully, half to himself, "somewhere around here there is a
generator of infra-red rays and a projector of those rays. It reminds me
of those so-called F-rays of Ulivi--or at least of a very powerful
wireless."

I was startled at the speculations that his words conjured up in my
mind. Was the "evil eye" of superstition a scientific fact? Was there a
baneful beam that could be directed at will--one that could not be seen
or felt until it worked its havoc? Was there a power that steel walls
could not hold, which, in fact, was the more surely transmitted by them?

Somehow, the fact of the strange disappearance of Petzka, the wireless
operator, kept bobbing up in my mind. I could not help wondering
whether, perhaps, he had found this strange power and was using it for
some nefarious purpose. Could it have been Petzka who was responsible
for the fires? But, why? I could not figure it out.

Early the next morning we called at the Gaskell town house again.
Kennedy had brought with him a small piece of apparatus which seemed to
consist of two sets of coils placed on ends of a magnet bar. To them was
attached a long flexible wire which he screwed into an electric light
bulb socket. Then he placed a peculiar telephone-like apparatus,
attached to the other end, to his ears. He adjusted the magnets and
carried the thing carefully about the room.

At one point he stopped and moved the thing vertically up along the
wall, from floor to ceiling.

"That's a gas pipe," he said simply.

"What's the instrument?" I asked.

"A new apparatus for finding pipes electrically, which I think can be
just as well applied to finding other things concealed in walls under
plaster and paper."

He paused to adjust the thing. "The electrical method," he went on, "is
a special application of well-known induction balance principles. You
see one set of coils receives an alternating or vibrating current. The
other is connected with this telephone. First I established a balance so
that there was no sound in the telephone."

He moved the thing about. "Now, when the device comes near metal-piping,
for example, or a wire, the balance is disturbed and I hear a sound.
That was the gas pipe. It is easy to find its exact location. Hulloa--"

He paused again in a corner, back of Gaskell's desk and appeared to be
listening intently.

A moment later he was ruthlessly breaking through the plaster of the
beautifully decorated wall.

Sure enough, in there was a detectaphone, concealed only a fraction of
an inch beneath the paper, with wires leading down inside the partition
in the direction of the cellar.




CHAPTER XI

THE INFERNAL MACHINES


He ripped the little mechanical eavesdropper out, wires and all, but he
did not disconnect the wires, yet.

We traced it out, and down into the cellar the wires led, directly, and
then across, through a small opening in the foundations into the next
cellar of an apartment house, ending in a bin or storeroom.

In itself the thing, so far, gave no clew as to who was using it or the
purpose for which it had been installed. But it was strange.

"Someone _was_ evidently trying to get something from you, Mr. Gaskell,"
remarked Craig pointedly, after we returned to the Gaskell library. "Why
do you suppose he went to all that trouble?"

Gaskell shrugged his shoulders and averted his eyes.

"I've heard of a yacht outside New York harbor," added Craig casually.

"A yacht?"

"Yes," he said nonchalantly, "the _Furious_."

Gaskell met Kennedy's eye and looked at him as though Craig had some
occult power of divination. Then he moved over closer to us.

"Is that detectaphone thing out of business now?" he asked, hoarsely.

"Yes."

"Absolutely?"

"Absolutely."

Gaskell leaned over.

"Then I don't mind telling you, Professor Kennedy," he said in a low
tone, "that I am letting a friend of mine from London use that yacht to
supply some allied warships on the Atlantic with news, supplies and
ammunition, such as can be carried."

Kennedy looked at him keenly, but for some moments did not answer. I
knew he was debating on how he might properly dove-tail this with
Burke's case, ethically.

"Someone is trying to find out from eavesdropping just what your plans
are, then," remarked Craig thoughtfully, with a significant tap on the
detectaphone.

A moment later he turned his back to us and knelt down. He seemed to be
wrapping the detectaphone up in a small package which he put in his
pocket and closing the hole in the wall as best he could where he had
ripped the paper.

"All I ask of you," concluded Gaskell, as we left a few minutes later,
"is to keep your hands off that phase of things. Find the
incendiary--yes; but this other matter that you have forced out of
me--well--hands off!"

On our way downtown to keep the appointment Kennedy had made with Burke
the night before, he stopped at the laboratory to get a heavy parcel
which he carried along.

We found Burke waiting for us, impatiently, at the Customs House.

"We've just discovered that the liners over at Hoboken have had steam up
for a couple of days," he said excitedly. "Evidently they are waiting to
make a break for the ocean--perhaps in concert with a sortie of the
fleets over in Europe."

"H-m," mused Kennedy, looking fixedly at Burke, "that complicates
matters, doesn't it? We must preserve American neutrality."

He thought a moment. "I should like to go aboard the revenue cutter. May
I?"

"Surely," agreed Burke.

A few moments later we were on the _Uncas_, Kennedy and Burke in earnest
conversation in low tones which I did not overhear. Evidently Craig was
telling him just enough of what he had himself discovered so as to
enlist Burke's services.

The captain in charge of the _Uncas_ joined the conversation a few
moments later, and then Kennedy took the heavy package down below. For
some time he was at work in one of the forward tanks that was full of
water, attaching the thing, whatever it was, in such a way that it
seemed to form part of the skin of the ship.

Another brief talk with Burke and the captain followed, and then the
three returned to the deck.

"Oh, by the way," remarked Burke, as he and Kennedy came back to me, "I
forgot to tell you that I have had some of my men working on the case
and one of them has just learned that a fellow named Petzka, one of the
best wireless operators,--a Hungarian or something--has been engaged to
go on that yacht."

"Petzka?" I repeated involuntarily.

"Yes," said Burke, in surprise, "do you know anything about him?"

I turned to Kennedy.

"Not much," replied Craig. "But you can find out about him, I think,
through his wife. He used to be one of my students. Here's her address.
She's very anxious to hear from him. I'm sure that if you have any news
she will be only too glad to receive it."

Burke took the address and a little while later we went ashore.

I was not surprised when Kennedy proposed, as the next move, to revisit
the cellar in the apartment next to Gaskell's house. But I was surprised
at what he said, after we had reached the place.

All along I had supposed that he was planning to wait there in hope of
catching the person who had installed the detectaphone. That, of course,
was a possibility, still. But in reality he had another purpose, also.

We had scarcely secreted ourselves in the cellar storeroom, which was in
a dark corner where one might remain unobserved even if the janitor
entered the cellar, provided he did not search that part, when Kennedy
took the receiving headpiece of the detectaphone and placed it over his
head, quite as if nothing had happened.

"What's the use of that?" I queried. "You ripped the transmitter out up
above."

He smiled quietly. "While my back was turned toward you, so that you
couldn't see," he said, "I slipped the thing back again, only down
further where Gaskell wouldn't be likely to find it, even if he looked.
I don't know whether he was frank with us, so I thought I'd try the
eavesdropping game myself, in place of the man who put this thing in in
the first place, whoever he was."

We took turns listening, but could hear not a sound. Nor did anyone come
into the cellar.

So a good part of the afternoon passed, apparently fruitless.

My patience was thoroughly exhausted when, suddenly, a motion from Craig
revived my flagging interest. I waited impatiently for him to tell me
what it was that he heard.

"What was it?" I asked finally as he pulled the receivers off his head
and stood for a moment, considering.

"At first I heard the sound of voices," he answered quickly. "One was
the voice of a woman, which I recognized. It was the Countess. The other
was the Count.

"'Giulia,' I heard him say, as they entered the room, 'I don't see why
you should want to go. It's dangerous. And besides, it's none of our
business if your father lets his yacht be used for such a purpose.'

"'But I want to go, Alex,' she said. 'I will go. I'm a good sailor. It's
father's yacht. He won't care.'

"'But what's the use?' he expostulated. 'Besides--think of the danger.
If it was our business, it might be different.'

"'I should think you'd want to go.'

"'Not I. I can get all the excitement I want in a motor-boat race
without risking my precious neck pulling the chestnuts out of the fire
for someone else.'

"'Well, I want the adventure,' she persisted, petulantly.

"'But, Giulia, if you go tonight, think of the risk--'

"That was the last I heard as they left the room, still arguing.
Evidently, someone is going to pull off something tonight."

It did not take Kennedy long to make up his mind what to do next. He
left the cellar hurriedly and in the laboratory hastily fixed up a
second heavy and bulky package similar to that which he had taken down
to the revenue cutter earlier in the day, making it into two parcels so
as to distribute the burden between us.

That night we journeyed out to Oceanhurst again. Avoiding the regular
road, we made our way from the station to the Gaskell place by a
roundabout path and it was quite dark by the time we got there.

As we approached the basin we saw that there were several men about.
They appeared to be on guard, but since Oceanhurst at that season of the
year was pretty deserted and the Gaskell estate was out of the town,
they were not especially vigilant.

Dark and grim, with only one light showing weakly, lay the yacht, having
been run into the basin, now. A hawser had been stretched across the
mouth of the basin. Outside was a little tender, while a searchlight was
playing over the water all the time. Evidently whatever interference was
feared was expected from the water rather than from the land.

We slunk into the shadow of a row of bath-houses, in order to get our
bearings. On the opposite side from the road that led down from the
house, it was not so likely that anyone would suspect that interlopers
were hiding there.

Still, they were not neglecting that side of the basin, at least in a
perfunctory sort of way.

Kennedy drew me back into the shadow, deeper, at the sound of footsteps
on the boardwalk leading in front of the bath-houses.

From our hiding place we could now hear two voices, apparently of
sailors.

"Do you know the new wireless operator who goes with us tonight?" asked
one.

"No. They've been very careful of him. I guess they were afraid that
someone might get wise. But there couldn't very well be any leak, there.
One of those Englishmen has been with him every minute since he was
engaged."

"They say he's pretty good. Who is he?"

"A Servian, he says, and his name sounds as if it might be so."

The voices trailed off. It was only a scrap of conversation, but Kennedy
had not missed a word of it.

"That means Petzka," he nodded to me.

"What is he--a Hungarian or a Servian?" I asked quickly.

Kennedy had craned his neck out beyond the corner of the bath-houses and
was looking at the _Furious_ in the basin.

"Come on, Walter," he whispered, not taking time to answer my question.
"Those fellows have gone. There's no one at all on this side of the
basin and I just saw the men on deck go up the gangplank to the
boat-house. They can't do any more than put us off, anyhow."

He had watched his chance well. As quickly as we could, burdened down by
our two heavy packages, we managed to slip across the boardwalk to the
piling that formed that side of the basin. The _Furious_ had swung over
with the tide nearer our side than the other. It was a daring leap, but
he made it as lightly as a cat, landing on the deck. I passed over the
packages to him and followed.

Kennedy scarcely paused to glance about. He had chosen a moment when no
one was looking, and, bending down under the weight of the packages we
dodged back of a cabin. A dim light shining into the hold told us that
no one was there and we dived down. It was the work of a moment to
secrete ourselves in the blank darkness behind a pile of boxes, aft.

A noise startled us. Someone was coming down the steep, ladder-like
stairs. A moment later we heard another noise. There were two of them,
moving about among the boxes. From our hiding place we could overhear
them talking in hoarse whispers, but could not see them.

"Where did you put them?" asked a voice.

"In every package of explosives and in as many of the boxes of canned
goods as I had time. There wasn't much opportunity except while the
stuff was in the boat-house."

I looked at Kennedy, wild-eyed. Was there treachery in the crew? He was
leaning forward as much as our cramped quarters would permit, so as not
to miss a word.

"All right," said the other voice. "No one suspects?"

"No. But the Secret Service has been pretty busy. They suspect
something--but not this."

"Good. You are sure that you can detonate them when the time comes?"

"Positive. Everything is working fine. I've done my part of it.
Changing wireless operators gave me just the chance I wanted."

"All right. I guess I'll go now."

"Remember the signal. As soon as the things are detonated I will get
off, some way, by wireless the S O S--as if it came from the fleet, you
understand?"

"Yes--that will be the signal for the dash. Good luck--I'm going ashore
now."

As they passed up the ladder, I could no longer restrain myself.

"Craig," I cried, "this is devilish!"

I thought I saw it all now. In the cases of goods on the _Furious_ were
some terrible infernal machines which had been hidden, to be detonated
by these deadly rays of wireless.

Kennedy was busy, working quickly putting together the parts he had
taken from the two packages we had carried.

As I watched him, I realized that the burning of the Rovigno house was
not the action of an incendiary, after all. It had been done by these
deadly rays, probably by mere accident.

As nearly as I could make it out, there was a counterplot against the
_Furious_. Somewhere was an infernal workshop, possibly hedged about by
doors of steel which ordinary force would find hard to penetrate, but
from which, any moment, this super-criminal might send out his deadly
power.

The more I considered it, while Kennedy worked, the more uncanny it
seemed. This man had rendered the mere possession of explosives more
dangerous to the possessor than to the enemy.

Archimedes had been outdone!

The problem before us now was not only the preservation of American
neutrality, but the actual safety of life.

Through the open hatch I could now hear voices on the deck. One was that
of a woman, which I recognized quickly. It was Julia Rovigno.

"I'll be just as quiet as a mouse," she was saying. "I'll stay in the
cabin--I won't be in the way."

I could not hear the man's voice in reply, but it did not sound like
Rovigno's. It was rather like Gaskell's.

Still, we had heard enough to know that Julia Rovigno was on the yacht,
had insisted on going on the expedition for the excitement of the thing,
just as we had heard over the detectaphone.

"Hadn't we better warn her?" I asked Craig, who had paused in his work
at the sound of voices.

Before he could answer we were plunged in sudden darkness. Someone had
switched out the light that had been shining down through the hatchway.
Before we knew it the opening to the hatchway had been closed.




CHAPTER XII

THE SUBMARINE BELL


Kennedy groped about for a light, stumbling over boxes and bags.

"For heaven's sake, Craig," I entreated. "Be careful. Those packages are
full of the devilish things!"

He said nothing.

At least we had a little more freedom to move and I managed to find my
way over to a little round porthole and open it.

As I looked out, I almost fainted at the realization. The _Furious_ was
under way! We were locked in the hold--virtual prisoners--our only
company those dastardly infernal machines, whose very nature we did not
know!

Helplessly I gazed around me. There seemed to be only this one porthole,
open, looking out over the dark and turbulent water, which slipped
ominously past as we gained speed.

Why had Kennedy not foreseen this risk? I glanced at him. He had found
an electric light, connected with the yacht's dynamo, and, before
turning it on, closed and covered the port so that it threw no
reflection out.

Far from being disconcerted, on the contrary, he seemed rather pleased
than otherwise at the unexpected turn of events.

As I looked at our scant and cramped quarters I could see absolutely no
way of getting word to anyone off the _Furious_ who might help us.

What he was working on I did not know, but if it was some sort of
wireless, even if we were able to send a message, what hope was there
that it would get past the delicate wireless detector which this
criminal must have somewhere near for tapping messages that were being
flashed through the air? Had we not heard him say that the signal was to
be an S O S sent, as it were, from the fleet far out on the ocean?

I could well have believed that Kennedy could rig up some means of
communication. But, if the possessor of this terrible infra-red ray, or
wireless wave, secret should learn that we, too, knew it, the only
result that he would accomplish would be to insure our destruction
immediately.

It was a foggy night and a drizzle had set in. The _Furious_ could not
under such circumstances make such good speed as she was accustomed to
make. Fortunately, also, the waves were not running high.

Craig had taken a desperate chance. How would he meet it? I watched him
at work, fascinated by our peril.

Finishing as quickly as he could, he put out our sole electric light,
unscrewed the bulb and attached to the socket a wire which he had
connected with the instrument over which he had spent so many precious
moments.

Through the little porthole he cast a peculiar disk, heavy, such as I
had seen him place so carefully aboard the _Uncas_.

It sank in the water with a splash and trailed along beside the yacht,
held by a wire, submerged, perhaps, ten or twelve feet.

He made a final inspection of the thing as well as he could by the light
of a match, then pressed a key which seemed to close a circuit.

I could feel a dull, metallic vibration, as it were.

"What are you doing?" I asked, looking curiously also at an arrangement,
like a microphone, which he had placed over his ears.

"It works!" he cried excitedly.

"What works?" I reiterated.

"This Fessenden oscillator," he explained. "It's a system for the
employment of sound for submarine signals. I don't know whether you
realize it, but great advance has been made recently since it was
suggested to use water instead of air as the medium for transmitting
signals. I can't stop to explain this apparatus just now, but it is
composed of a ring magnet, a copper tube which lies in an air gap of a
magnetic field, and a stationary central armature. The magnetic field is
much stronger than that in the ordinary dynamo.

"The copper tube, which has an alternating current induced in it, is
attached to solid disks of steel which in turn are attached to a steel
diaphragm an inch thick. In the _Uncas_ I had a chance to make that
diaphragm practically a part of the side of the ship. Here I have had to
hang it overboard, with a large water-tight diaphragm attached to the
oscillator."

I listened eagerly, even if I were not an electrical engineer.

"The same oscillator," he went on, "is used for sending and receiving,
for, like the ordinary electric motor it is also capable of acting as a
generator, and a very efficient one, too. All I have to do is to throw a
switch in one direction when I want to telegraph or telephone under
water, and in the other direction when I want to listen in."

I could scarcely credit what I heard. Craig had circumvented even the
spectacular wireless. He was actually talking through water. Craig had
virtually endowed himself with a sixth sense!

I watched him spellbound. Would he succeed in whatever it was that he
was planning? I waited anxiously.

"There's the answer!" he exclaimed in sudden exultation. "Burke is on
the _Uncas_. He tells me that he went to see Mrs. Petzka and she is with
him--insisted on going, when she heard that her husband had been engaged
by the _Furious_."

He waited a moment.

"You see, Walter," he resumed, "what I am doing is to send out signals
by which the _Uncas_ can locate and follow us. She is fast, but, thank
heaven, this yacht has to go slow tonight. Sound travels in water at a
velocity of about four thousand feet a second. For instance, I find that
I get an echo in about one-twentieth of a second. That is the reflected
sound wave from the bottom, and indicates that we are in water of about
one hundred feet depth. Then I get another echo in something over two
seconds. That is the waves reflected from the _Uncas_, which has been
hovering about, waiting for something to happen. They can't be much more
than a mile and a half away, now. I had expected to signal them from the
shore, a dock or something of the sort, using this oscillator to get
around that fellow's wireless. But we're much better off on the boat."

I looked at him in amazement. "Surrounded by all this junk that may blow
us to kingdom come any second?" I demanded.

"Burke says steam is still up on all the ships tied up in the harbor so
that they can make a dash for it. They are evidently waiting for that S
O S signal."

"That's all right," I said in desperation, "But suppose they blow us up,
first?"

"Blow us up first?" he repeated. "Why, don't you understand? It is not
the _Furious_ that they are after. The whole war fleet that is hanging
around in this part of the Atlantic is to be blown up in mid-ocean, as
part of the plan to aid the escape of the interned ships in New York."

"Oh," I breathed, with a sigh of relief, "that's it, is it?"

"Yes. We'll get in bad all around if we can't stop it--Burke with the
Secret Service and ourselves with Gaskell, who doesn't dream that his
yacht is being used for the exact opposite of the purpose for which he
thinks he has lent it--to say nothing of the mess that our government
will have to face for letting these precious schemers play ducks and
drakes with our neutrality."

We waited eagerly, Kennedy sending out and receiving the submarine
signals, and I peering out anxiously into the almost impenetrable fog.

Suddenly, apparently from nowhere in the shifting mist, lights seemed to
loom up. Instead of stopping, however, the _Furious_ put on a sudden
burst of reckless speed.

The _Uncas_ was no match for her at that game. Would she escape finally,
after all?

A sharp report rang out. The _Uncas_ had sent a shot across our bows, so
dangerously close that it snapped one of the cables that held the mast.

The vibration of our engine slowed, and ceased, and we lay, idly
wallowing in the waves as the revenue cutter, bearing our friend Burke
and help, came up.

A couple of boats put out from the cutter and in almost no time we could
hear the tread of feet and the exchange of harsh words as the government
officers swarmed up the ladder to our deck.

It was only a moment later that the hatch was broken open and we heard
the welcome brogue of Burke, calling, "Kennedy--are you and Jameson all
right?"

"Right here," sang out Craig, detaching the oscillator and replacing the
electric bulb, which he lighted.

The commotion on deck was too great for anyone to make much of finding
us, two stowaways. The Countess was surprised, however, and, I felt,
rather glad to see us at a time when we might, possibly exert some
influence in her favor if matters came to a more serious pass.

There was scarcely time for a word. Burke's men were working quickly.
They had entered the hold, after a word from Kennedy, and far out into
the ocean they were casting the boxes and bags overboard, one at a time,
as fast as they could. They worked feverishly, as Burke spurred them on,
and I must say that it was with the utmost relief that I saw the things
thrown over.

The boxes sank, but rose again and floated, bobbing up and down, at
least some of them, perhaps a third above water and two-thirds below.

It was not for several minutes that I noticed that with those who had
come aboard the _Furious_ from the cutter stood Bettina Petzka. A moment
later she caught sight of Kennedy.

"Where is my husband?" she demanded, running to him.

Kennedy had no chance to reply.

Suddenly a series of flashes shattered the darkness. A terrific roar
seemed to rise from the very ocean, while a rain of sparks lighted up
great spurts of water and then fell back, to perish in the dark waves.
The _Furious_ trembled from end to end.

We looked, startled, at each other. But we were all safe. The things had
been detonated in the water.

"Only the fact that he would have blown himself up prevented him from
blowing up the yacht and all the evidence against him, now that we have
discovered his plot," cried Burke, excitedly, dashing down the deck.

Recovered scarcely from our surprise at the explosion and the queer
actions of the Secret Service man, we rushed after him as best we could,
Craig leading.

He led the way to the little wireless room. The door was bolted on the
inside, but we managed soon to burst it open.

I shall never forget the surprise which greeted us. In a chair, bound
and gagged, as though he had been overcome only after a struggle, sat
Petzka.

Mrs. Petzka threw herself frantically on him, tearing at the stout cords
that held him.

"Nikola--what is the matter?" she cried. "What has happened?"

Through his gag, which she had loosened a bit, he made a peculiar,
gurgling noise. As nearly as I could make out, he was struggling to say,
"He came in--surprised me--seized me--locked the door."

Julia Rovigno stood rooted to the spot--utterly speechless.

There, surrounded by electric batteries, condensers, projectors,
regulators, resonators, reflectors, voltmeters, and ammeters, queer
apparatus which he had smuggled secretly on the _Furious_, before a
strange sort of device, with a wireless headgear still over his ears,
stood the owner of at least two of the liners of the belligerents which
were to have made the dash for the ocean after he had succeeded by his
new wireless ray device in removing the hostile fleet--Count Rovigno
himself.




CHAPTER XIII

THE SUPER-TOXIN


"I've got to make good in this Delaney case, Kennedy," appealed our old
friend, Dr. Leslie, the coroner, one evening when he had dropped
unexpectedly into the laboratory, looking particularly fagged and
discouraged.

"You know," he added, "they've been investigating my office--and now,
here comes a case which, I must confess, completely baffles us again."

"Delaney," mused Craig. "Let me see. That's the rich Texas rancher who
has been blazing a trail through the white lights of Broadway--with that
Baroness Von Dorf and----"

"And other war brokers," interrupted Leslie.

"War brokers?" queried Craig.

"Yes. That's what they call them. They're a new class--people with
something to sell to or with commissions to buy for belligerent
governments. In Delaney's case it was fifty thousand or so head of
cattle and horses, controlled by a syndicate of which he was the
promoter. That's why he came to New York, you know,--to sell them at a
high price to any European power. The syndicate stands to make a small
fortune."

"I understand," nodded Kennedy, interested.

"Just as though there wasn't mystery enough about Delaney's sudden
death," Leslie hurried on, "here's a letter that came to him today--too
late."

Kennedy took the note Leslie handed him. It was postmarked "Washington,"
and read:

     DEAR DALEY:

     I intended writing to you sooner but haven't felt well enough
     since I came here. The strangest thing about it is that the
     doctors I have consulted seem to be unable to tell me
     definitely what is the matter.

     I can tell you I have been badly frightened. I seemed to have a
     lot of little boils on my face and new ones kept coming. I felt
     weak and chilly and had headaches that almost drove me crazy.
     Perhaps the thing, whatever it is, has made me insane, but I
     cannot help wondering whether there may not be something back
     of it all. Do you suppose someone could have poisoned me,
     hoping to ruin my beauty, on which, to a great measure, depends
     my success in my mission to America during the war?

     Since I came here I have been wondering, too, how you are. If
     there should be anything in my suspicions, perhaps it would be
     safest for you to leave New York. There is nothing more I can
     say, but if you feel the least bit unwell, do not disregard
     this warning.

     If you will meet me here, we can arrange the deal with those I
     represent at almost any price you name.

     Try hard to get here.
     As ever,
     LOUISE.

Craig looked up quickly. "Have you communicated with the Baroness?" he
asked.

Dr. Leslie leaned forward in his chair. "The fact is," he replied
slowly, "the woman who calls herself the Baroness Von Dorf has suddenly
disappeared, even in Washington. We can find no trace of her whatever.
Indeed, the embassy down there does not even admit that she is a war
buyer. Oh, the newspapers haven't got the whole Delaney story--yet. But
when they do get it"--he paused and glanced significantly at
me--"there's going to be _some_ sensation."

I recalled now that there had been an air of mystery surrounding the
sudden death of Daley Delaney the day before. At least one of the papers
had called it "the purple death"--whatever that might mean. I had
thought it due to the wild career of the ranchman, perhaps a plain case
of apoplexy, around which the bright young reporters had woven a slender
thread of romance. Kennedy, however, thought otherwise.

"The purple death," he ruminated, turning the case over in his mind.
"Have you any idea what the papers mean by that?"

"Why, it's one of the most grewsome things you ever heard of," went on
Leslie eagerly, encouraged. "In some incomprehensible way the hand of
fate seems to have suddenly descended on the whole Delaney entourage.
First his Japanese servant fell a victim to this 'purple death,' as they
call it.

"He had scarcely been removed to a hospital where, after fighting a
brave fight, he succumbed to the unknown peril, when the butler was
stricken. Delaney himself packed up, to leave, in panic, when suddenly,
apparently without warning, the purple death carried him off. In three
days three of them have died suddenly. Then came this letter from the
Baroness. It set me thinking. Perhaps it _was_ poison--I don't know."

Craig read the letter of the Baroness again. "Most interesting," he
exclaimed energetically as Dr. Leslie finished. "I shall be only too
glad to help you if I can. Could you take us up to Delaney's rooms? Is
the body still there?"

"No, it has been removed to a private undertaking establishment and the
apartment is guarded by police. We can stop at the undertaker's on the
way over to the apartment."

There could be no doubt that Leslie was considerably relieved to think
that Craig would consent to take the case. As for Kennedy, I could see
that the affair aroused his interest to the keenest point.

"Was anyone associated with Delaney in the syndicate here?" inquired
Craig as we settled ourselves in Dr. Leslie's car.

"Yes," answered the coroner, hurrying us along, "another member of the
syndicate was his friend, Dr. Harris Haynes."

"Who is he?" asked Kennedy.

"Haynes has been a veterinary, but found that there was more money in
the cattle business than in practicing his profession. The needs of
European war seemed to offer just the opportunity they needed to reap a
quick fortune."

"I've heard," nodded Craig, "that conditions abroad have led to a great
influx of adventurers with other people's money."

"Yes. According to all accounts, Delaney and Haynes have been leading a
rather rapid existence since they came to New York. It's quite right.
The city is full of queer and mysterious characters, both men and women,
who profess to be agents for various foreign governments, often
unnamed. Delaney and Haynes have met about all of this curious army, I
suppose."

"I see," prompted Craig. "Among them, I take it, was this stunning woman
who calls herself the Baroness Louise Von Dorf. How friendly were they?"

"Well, she spent a great deal of time, when she was in the city, up at
the apartment Delaney had rented."

Leslie and Kennedy exchanged a significant glance. "Who is she?" asked
Craig. "Do you know?"

"No one seems to know. Yet she is always plentifully supplied with money
and they tell me she talks glibly of those whose 'influence' she can
command in Washington."

"But she has disappeared," mused Kennedy. "Were there any others?"

"Haynes hasn't been proof against their wiles," answered the coroner. "I
have found out that he was introduced by one of the 'war brokers' to a
Madame Daphne Dupres."

"And she?"

Leslie shook his head. "I don't know anything about her, except that she
lives at the Hotel St. Quentin--the same place, by the way, where Haynes
makes his headquarters."

Our car pulled up at the private morgue of the burial company to which
Delaney's body had been taken.

We entered, and Kennedy wasted no time in making a careful examination
of the remains of the unfortunate victim.

"I couldn't make anything out of it, even after an autopsy," confessed
Dr. Leslie. "It seemed as though it were something that had been
conveyed by the blood all over the body, something that blocked the
capillaries and caused innumerable hemorrhages into organs and tissues,
and especially nerve centers."

The body seemed to be discolored and variegated in color, with here and
there little marks of boils or vesicles.

"It looks like something that has depleted the red corpuscles of
oxygen," continued Leslie, noticing that Kennedy had drawn off a little
of the body fluids, evidently for future study. "As nearly as I could
make out there had been a cyanosis in a marked degree. He had all the
appearance of having been asphyxiated."

"Which seems to have been enough to suggest to some imaginative mind the
'purple death,'" remarked Kennedy dryly.

Still, I could not help noticing that it was really no exaggeration to
call it the purple death.

One of the morgue attendants had called Dr. Leslie aside and a moment
later he rejoined us.

"They tell me Haynes has been here," he reported. "I left word that any
visitors were to be carefully watched."

"Strange," muttered Kennedy, absorbing Dr. Leslie's latest information
and then looking back at the body, puzzled. "Very strange. Let us go up
to the apartment right away."

Kennedy stowed the little tube in which he had placed the body fluid
safely in his pocket and led the way out again to our waiting car.

Delaney had picked out a fashionable neighborhood in which to live. As
we entered the bronze grilled door and rode up in the elevator, Kennedy
handed each of us a cigar and lighted one himself. I lighted up, too,
thinking that perhaps there might be some virtue in tobacco to ward off
the unseen perils into which we were going.

The wealthy ranchman, evidently, on his arrival in New York had rented
an apartment, furnished, from a lawyer, Ashby Ames, who had gone south
on account of his health.

We entered and found that it was a very attractive place that Ames had
fitted up. At one side of a library or drawing-room opened out a little
glass sun-parlor or conservatory on a balcony. Into it a dining-room
opened also. In fact, the living rooms of the whole suite could be
thrown into one, with this sun-parlor as a center.

Everything about the apartment was quite up-to-date, also. For instance,
I noticed that the little conservatory was lighted brilliantly by a
mercury vapor tube that ran around it in a huge rectangle of light.

Dr. Leslie and the police had already ransacked the place and there did
not seem to be much likelihood that anything could have escaped them.
Still, Kennedy began a searching examination after his own methods,
while we waited, gazing at him curiously.

By the frown on his forehead I gathered that he was not meeting with
much encouragement, when, suddenly, he withdrew the cigar from his
mouth, looked at it critically, puffed again, then moved his lips and
tongue as if trying to taste something.

Mechanically I did the same. The cigar had a peculiar flavor. I should
have flung it away if Kennedy himself had not given it to me. It was not
mere imagination, either. Surely there had been none of that
sweetishness about the fragrant Havana when I lighted it on the way up.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"There's cyanogen in this room," Craig remarked keenly, still tasting,
as he stood near the sun-parlor.

"Cyanogen?" I repeated.

"Yes, there are artificial aids to the senses that make them much keener
than nature has done for us. For instance, if air contains the merest
traces of the deadly cyanogen gas--prussic acid, you know--cigar smoke
acquires a peculiar taste which furnishes an efficient alarm signal."

Dr. Leslie's face brightened as Kennedy proceeded.

"That is something like my idea," he exclaimed. "I have thought all
along that it looked very much like a poisoning case. In fact, the very
first impression I had was that it might have been due to a cyanide--or
at least some gas like cyanogen."

Kennedy said nothing, and the coroner proceeded. "And the body looked
cyanotic, too, you recall. But the autopsy revealed nothing further. I
have even examined the food, as far as I can, but I can't find anything
wrong with it."

There was a noise at the door, outside in the hall, and Dr. Leslie
opened it.

"Dr. Haynes," he introduced, a moment later.

Haynes was a large man, good-looking, even striking, with a
self-assertive manner. We shook hands, and taking our cue from Craig,
waited for him to speak.

"It's very strange what could have carried Delaney off so suddenly,"
ventured Haynes a moment later. "I've been trying to figure it out
myself. But I must admit that so far it has completely stumped me."

He was pacing up and down the room and I watched him more or less
suspiciously. Somehow I could not get the idea out of my head that he
had been listening to us outside. Now and then, I fancied, he shot a
glance at us, as if he were watching us.

"They tell me at the burial company that you were there today," put in
Dr. Leslie, his eyes fixed on Haynes' face.

Haynes met his gaze squarely, without flinching. "Yes. I got thinking
over what the papers said about the 'purple death,' and I thought
perhaps I might have overlooked something. But there wasn't--"

The telephone rang. Haynes seized the receiver before any of the rest of
us could get to it. "That must be for me," he said with a brusque
apology. "Why--yes, I am here. Dr. Leslie and Professor Kennedy are up
here. No--we haven't discovered anything new. Yes--I shall keep the
appointment. Good-by."

The conversation had been short, but, to me at least, it seemed that he
had contrived to convey a warning without seeming to do so.




CHAPTER XIV

THE SECRET AGENTS


Dr. Leslie looked at Haynes searchingly. "Who was it?" he asked. "Madame
Dupres?"

Haynes did not hesitate. "Yes," he nodded. "I had an appointment with
her and told her that if I was late it would probably be that I had
stopped here."

The answer came so readily that I must confess that I was suspicious of
it.

"Did Madame Dupres know the Baroness Von Dorf?" asked Craig quickly.

"Yes, indeed," returned Haynes, then stopped suddenly.

"But they didn't travel in the same circle, did they?" asked Dr. Leslie,
with the air of the cross-examiner who wished to place on record a fact
that might later prove damaging.

"Not exactly," answered Haynes, with some hesitation.

"You knew her, of course?" added Craig.

Haynes nodded.

"I wonder if you could locate the Baroness," pursued Kennedy.

Haynes seemed to express no surprise at the obvious implication that she
was missing. "I have no objection to trying," he answered simply; then,
with a glance at his watch, he reached for his hat and stick and
excused himself. "I'm afraid I must go. If I can be of any assistance,"
he added, "don't hesitate to call on me. Delaney and I were pretty
closely associated in this deal and I feel that nothing is too much to
ask of me if it is possible to clear up the mystery of his death, if
there is any."

He departed as quickly as he had come.

"I wonder what he dropped in for?" I remarked.

"Whatever it was, he didn't get it," returned Leslie.

"I'm not so sure of that," I said, remembering the brief telephone
conversation with Madame Dupres.

Kennedy did not appear to be bothering much about the question one way
or the other. He had let his cigar go out during Haynes' visit, but now
that we were alone again he continued his minute search of the premises.

He opened a closet which evidently contained nothing but household
utensils and was about to shut the door when an idea occurred to him. A
moment later he pulled from the mystic depths an electric vacuum cleaner
and dragged it over to the sun-parlor.

Without a word we watched him as he ran it over the floor and walls,
even over the wicker stands on which the plants stood, and then over the
floor coverings and furniture of the other rooms that opened into the
conservatory. What he was after I could not imagine, but I knew it was
useless to ask him until he had found it or had some reason for telling
it.

Carefully he removed the dust and dirt from the machine and wrapped it
up tightly in a package.

We parted from Dr. Leslie at the door of the apartment, promising to
keep in touch with him and let him know the moment anything happened.

At the first telegraph office Kennedy entered and sent off a long
message to our friend Burke of the Secret Service in Washington, asking
him to locate the Baroness, if possible, in that city, and to give any
information he might have about either Haynes or Madame Dupres.

"It's still early in the evening," remarked Kennedy as we left the
telegraph office. "Suppose we drop around to the St. Quentin. Perhaps we
may run into our friends there."

The St. Quentin was a favorite resort of foreigners in New York, and I,
at least, entered prepared to suspect everyone.

"Not all these mysterious-looking men and women," laughed Kennedy,
noticing me as we walked through the lobby, "are secret agents of
foreign governments."

"Still they look as if they might give you the 'high sign,'" I replied,
"particularly if you flashed a bankroll."

"I don't doubt it," he agreed, his eye roving over the throng. "I
suspect that Scotland Yard and the Palais de Justice might be quite
pleased to see some faces here rather than on the other side of the
Atlantic."

He drew me into an angle and for some moments we studied the passing
crowd of diplomats and near-diplomats.

A moment later I saw Kennedy bow and, following the direction of his
eyes, looked up to a sort of mezzanine gallery. There were Haynes and a
most attractive woman, talking earnestly.

"Madame Dupres," Craig whispered to me, aside.

She was tall, slender, gowned in the most modish manner, and had a
foreign way about her that would have fascinated one even more
cosmopolitan than a Texas veterinary.

Now and then someone would stop and chat with them and it seemed that
they were on very good terms, at least with a certain group at the St.
Quentin.

Kennedy moved out further into the lobby where he was more noticeable;
then, with a sudden resolution, mounted the steps to the mezzanine floor
and approached Haynes.

"Let me introduce Professor Kennedy, Madame Dupres," presented Haynes.

Kennedy bowed.

Whatever one's opinion of madame, he was forced to admit that she was
clever. It was evident, also, that she and Haynes were on very intimate
terms, also.

"I hope that you will be able to clear up the mystery that the
newspapers have found in Mr. Delaney's death," she remarked. "Mr. Haynes
has told me that he met you tonight with Dr. Leslie. By the way, has he
told you his own theory?" she asked.

"We shall do our best," replied Kennedy, meeting her eye in as
impersonal a manner as it was possible, for it is always difficult to
dissociate a beautiful woman from a case like this and judge her not as
a beautiful woman but on the merits of the case. "No, Mr. Haynes has not
told me his theory--yet."

"I'm very glad to have met you," she added, extending her daintily
gloved hand to Kennedy, "and you may be sure that if there is any way in
which I can be of service I shall expect you to call on me. Just now I
hope you will excuse me. I have some letters to get off--and I will
leave you men to discuss Mr. Haynes' theory without being hampered by a
mere woman. Never mind, Harris," she added as Haynes made as if to
escort her to the ladies' writing room.

As Madame Dupres passed down the steps there was no denying that she
made a splendid impression. Haynes watched her with a glance that was
almost ravenous. There could be no doubt of her influence over him.

As she passed through the lobby she paused at the telegraph desk a
moment, then went into the writing room.

"Yes, I think I have an explanation," began Haynes, when she was out of
sight. "I've been trying to figure out what could have killed Delaney.
Of course I can only guess, but I don't think it is such a bad guess."

"What is it?" asked Craig.

"You remember the mercury vapor light?"

Kennedy nodded.

"Mercury vapor lights of that sort are a pretty good source of
ultra-violet rays sometimes," went on Haynes. "Well, doubtless you know
that various plants belonging to different families produce free prussic
acid. They are really cyanogenetic plants. Light and the assimilation
processes depending on light exert a favorable influence on
cyanogenesis. For instance, a mixture of citric acid with a much
smaller amount of potassium nitrite and a trace of bicarbonate of iron,
if exposed to light, will generate hydrocyanic acid. That, I believe, is
what actually happens in some plant tissues. Animals rarely touch such
plants. I believe that such a process might be aided rather than
retarded by ultra-violet rays. What do you think of it?"

Craig was following Dr. Haynes keenly. As for me, I was astounded by his
frankness. I recalled what Kennedy had already said up in Delaney's
apartment, and watched his face covertly.

"Your explanation is plausible," was all that Craig said. "By the way,
have you found out anything about the Baroness?"

"Not a word, yet," replied Haynes unhesitatingly. "She seems to be out
of town."

"And madame--has she any idea where she is?"

Haynes shook his head. "You may rest assured," replied Haynes in a tone
that was meant to carry conviction, "that if we can find out we shall be
only too happy to do so--ourselves."

There was nothing to be gained by further inquiry here, and I could
imagine that Kennedy was burning with anxiety to get at work on his own
line of inquiry at the laboratory. After a few minutes of conversation
we excused ourselves and left the hotel.

Craig's air of abstraction was not such as to invite further
questioning, and I left him an hour or so later in the laboratory
surrounded by his microscopes, slides, and innumerable test-tubes which
he had prepared for some exceedingly minute investigation in which his
exact soul delighted.

How late he worked I do not know, for I did not hear him come into our
apartment. But he was up very early, in fact woke me up stirring around
the living room.

I had scarcely completed dressing, while he scanned the morning papers
in a vain hope that some stray news item might shed some light on the
mystery in which we were now involved, when the whirr of our door buzzer
announced that we had an unusually early caller.

Kennedy opened the door and admitted a stranger. He was one of those
well-groomed middle-aged men whose appearance denotes with what care
they seek by every means to retain youth that is fast passing. I could
imagine him calmly calculating even his vices.

"My name is Ames--Ashby Ames," he introduced. "Dr. Leslie, the coroner,
has suggested that I see you."

Ames looked as if he had been traveling all night and had not had a
chance to freshen himself up in his haste.

"I've just heard about that trouble down at my apartment," he continued,
"and, though I had planned a trip for my health to the southern resorts,
I thought it best for me to come right back to New York. It's a beastly
mess."

He had thrown his hat vindictively on the table, though his manner to us
was rather that of one seeking advice. "Why," he stormed, "this affair
is the limit! I rent my apartment to an apparently reputable person. And
what do I find? It is not even a mere scandal. It is worse. The place
is closed and guarded--quarantined, as it were. I can't get back into
my own rooms!"

Kennedy smiled. "I can't blame you for feeling vexed, Mr. Ames," he
soothed, "but I'm sure I don't know what I can do for you more than I am
doing. We are making every effort to clear the thing up--and I have been
on the case, you must remember, less than twelve hours."

"Oh, I've no criticism of you," rejoined Ames, somewhat mollified. "I
didn't come here to criticise. I came only because I thought you might
like to know that I was back in town, and because Dr. Leslie mentioned
your name. No, indeed--no criticism. Only," he added, "now that my
vacation is spoiled and I am back in town, there is going to be some
action--that's all."

"It can't come too swiftly for me," encouraged Craig.

"I'm going to jump right into this beastly row," pursued Ames
aggressively. "This morning I'm going to look these people up. They tell
me that Baroness has been spending a good deal of time at my place. Pine
business--eh? She's disappeared. But I'll get after that Haynes and the
Madame Dupres they tell me about--and I'll let you know if I find out
anything."

He had not given Kennedy a chance to say anything, and in fact Kennedy
did not seem to want to say anything yet.

"Just thought I'd drop in," concluded Ames, who hadn't taken a chair,
but now extended his hand to us; "I think I'll drop into a Turkish bath
and freshen up a bit. Keep in touch with me."

We shook hands and Ames departed, bustling out as he had bustled in.

Kennedy looked at me and laughed as the door closed. "If we have many
more people co-operating with us," he exclaimed, "we may resign and let
this case solve itself."

"I don't think that is likely," I replied.

"Not unless we hear from Burke," he agreed. "There is plenty for me to
do in the laboratory--but I do wish Burke would wire."

The morning passed, and still there was no word from Burke.

"I think we might drop around to the St. Quentin for lunch," suggested
Kennedy in the forenoon. "We might pick up some news there."

We had scarcely entered when we met Haynes pacing up and down the lobby
furiously.

"What's the matter?" inquired Craig, eyeing him searchingly.

"Why," he replied nervously, sticking his thumbs into his waistcoat
pockets and then plunging them into his trousers pockets as if it was
with the utmost difficulty he controlled those unruly members from doing
violence to somebody, "that fellow Ames from whom Delaney hired the
apartment had just returned suddenly to town. I saw him talking to
Madame Dupres in the hotel parlor. She seemed a bit nervous, so I went
in to speak to her. But she said everything was all right and that she'd
meet me out here in a few minutes. It's quarter of an hour now. I think
he's threatening her with something."

Haynes was evidently worried. I wondered whether he was afraid that Ames
might worm from her some secret common to the two, for I did not doubt
that Ames was a clever and subtle attorney and capable of obtaining a
great deal of information by his kind of kid-glove third degree.

"I should like to see both of them," decided Craig quickly.

Before Haynes could say anything more, he strode into the hotel parlor.
Haynes and I followed a short distance behind.

There was an air of tense, suppressed excitement in the group, but of
all of us, I felt that Madame Dupres was the coolest.

"I see you've lost no time in getting busy," nodded Craig to Ames.

"No," he replied easily. "This is certainly a very interesting situation
which madame here has just outlined to me."

Haynes came up just in time to catch the last words.

"I say, Ames," he almost roared, "you may be a clever lawyer, but you
must remember that you are also expected to be a gentleman. There are
limits to questioning a woman when she has not the advantage of having a
friend to advise her."

For a moment I thought there was going to be a fight, but Kennedy moved
unobtrusively between the two men. As for Madame Dupres, I felt that
really she was a match for both of them.

Instead of getting mad, however, Ames merely laughed.

"Why, Haynes," he said quietly, "I don't think you ought to complain. I
understand that you, now representing Delaney's Texas syndicate, have
already signed the final contract for the deal with those whom Madame
Dupres represents and have received a certified check from them as a
first payment to bind the bargain."

Haynes turned almost livid, then recovering himself, glanced at Madame
Dupres.

"Why, Harris, I didn't think there was any secrecy about it now," she
said, seeing the change in him. "If there is, I'm sorry."

"There isn't," replied Haynes, quickly recovering his composure. "Only I
just didn't like to see a lawyer, an outsider, quizzing you, that's
all."

Jealousy was stamped in every line of Haynes' face. Ames said nothing,
but it was impossible to escape the look of gratification which he shot
at Kennedy as he brought out the startling new development.

Madame Dupres was clever enough to see that no good could come of
prolonging an interview for which now there was an excuse to break up.

"Take me in to lunch, Harris," she said, slipping her arm familiarly
into his. "Good-morning, gentlemen."

Somehow I felt that she would have liked to add, "And if you see the
Baroness, tell her I have beaten her to it."

Ames watched them depart with an air of cynical satisfaction, paused a
moment, then in turn excused himself from us.

What did it mean? What was behind all this intrigue. Was it merely to
get this cattle contract, big as that was?

We lunched together at the St. Quentin, and it was evident that Madame
Dupres was doing her best to smooth over the ruffled feelings of her
lover.

Luncheon over, Kennedy plunged with redoubled energy into his laboratory
investigation. He said little, but I could tell from his manner that he
had found something that was very fascinating to him.




CHAPTER XV

THE GERM OF ANTHRAX


It was not until the middle of the afternoon that there came a sudden,
brief message from the Secret Service in Washington:

     Mr. Craig Kennedy,
     New York.

     I have located the Baroness Von Dorf in a private sanitarium
     here and will have her in New York tonight by eight o'clock.

     BURKE.

"In a private sanitarium--will have her in New York tonight," reread
Craig, studying the message. "Then it wouldn't seem that there could be
much the matter with her."

For a few moments he paced the laboratory floor, alternately studying
the boards and the yellow telegram. At last, his face seemed to light up
as if he had reasoned something out to his satisfaction. Quickly he
reached for the telephone and called Dr. Leslie.

"I shall have the Baroness here tonight at eight, Leslie," I heard him
say. "Don't tell a soul about it. But I'd like to have you make all the
arrangements to secure the attendance of Haynes, Ames, and Madame Dupres
here just a bit ahead of that time."

There was nothing that I could do to aid Craig more in the hours that
remained than to efface myself, and I did it in the most effectual way I
could think of, compatible with my interest in the case. I rode down to
Dr. Leslie's office and dined hurriedly with him. The only new
information I gleaned was that Haynes had visited him during the
afternoon and had outlined his theory of cyanogen, which certainly
seemed to me to fit in quite readily with the facts.

When we reached the laboratory, early, Kennedy was still absorbed in
studying his microscope. He said nothing, but apparently had gained an
air of confidence which he lacked the night before.

The Baroness had not yet arrived, but a few minutes after us came Ashby
Ames, still complaining about the closing of his apartment and the
inconvenience the whole affair had put him to. Haynes arrived and Ames
cut short his tirade, glancing resentfully at the veterinary as though
in some way he were responsible for his troubles. Madame Dupres arrived
shortly, and I could not help noticing that Haynes was patently jealous
of even the nod of recognition she gave to Ames.

"I don't think I need say that this is one of the most baffling cases
that we have ever had," began Kennedy, with a glance at Dr. Leslie.

"It certainly is," chimed in the coroner, as though he had been appealed
to for corroboration.

"In the first place," resumed Kennedy, "I discovered in the air up there
in Delaney's room just a trace of cyanogen."

Haynes nodded approvingly, glancing from one to the other of us.

"But," added Craig, as if he had built up a house of cards merely to
demolish it, "I don't think that cyanogen was the cause of Delaney's
death--although it furnished the clew."

"What could it have been, then?" demanded Haynes, his face clouding.

Kennedy looked at him calmly. "You've heard of anthrax?" he asked
simply.

"Y-yes," replied Haynes, meeting his eye fixedly. "Murrain--the cattle
disease."

"That is so deadly to human beings sometimes," added Craig. "Well, I've
found something very much like anthrax germs in the sweepings that I
took up with the vacuum cleaner up there."

Dr. Leslie was listening intently.

"I can't see how it could have been anthrax," he put in, slowly shaking
his head. "Why, Kennedy, the symptoms were entirely different."

"No, this was a poisoning of some kind," added Dr. Haynes. "Dr. Leslie
himself tells me that you found traces of cyanogen in the air--and you
have just said so, too."

Kennedy indicated the microscope. "Take a look at that slide under the
lens," he said simply.

I was nearest and as he evidently meant each of us to look, I did so.
Under the high-power lens I could see some little roundish dots moving
slowly through the field.

Haynes looked next. "But, Professor Kennedy," he objected, almost as
soon as he had time for a good look, "the bacilli of anthrax have
normally the form of straight bars strung together in a row."

"Yes, rod bacilli," added Dr. Leslie, also looking. "Like long rows of
hyphens, slender cylindric, non-motile chains joined end to end."

We looked at Craig inquiringly.

"Like that," he indicated, substituting another slide.

We looked again. The field had somewhat the appearance of an exaggerated
war map with dark units of supposed troops.

"That's it," nodded Haynes.

Kennedy removed the slide. "Those are some anthrax germs I obtained here
in the city from a pathologist," he said, turning a switch that threw on
in a lamp a peculiar, purplish light. "This is a machine for the
propagation of ultra-violet rays."

He placed the second slide, with its germs of anthrax, in the light,
allowing it to play over the slide.

"Now look," he said.

We did. Something had evidently happened. The chains were broken and
smaller units were moving.

"If anthrax germs are exposed for a few seconds, even, to ultra-violet
light, they change more or less," Kennedy proceeded. "These new forms
are not stable. They quickly change back again into their original
form."

For about ten minutes we sat in silence while the weird light played as
if with ghostly fingers on the deadly invisible peril on the little
glass microscope slide.

"But if the action of the ultra-violet rays is continued," went on
Craig, "the microbe changes into a coccus, and then into a filiform
bacillus. This form is stable. And the germ is changed in other
respects than mere shape. It has entirely new characteristics. It is a
true mutation. It produces a disease entirely different from that of the
anthrax bacillus from which it is derived. I have tried it on a guinea
pig--and it has died in forty-eight hours."

Startled as I was by this remarkable discovery, I yet had time to watch
Haynes. He had not taken his eyes off Kennedy once since he began to
speak.

"In anthrax," continued Craig, "an autopsy reveals an enormous serous
swelling, about the point of inoculation, with a large gathering of
microbes which are formed in the blood and spleen. Death seems to be due
to septic poisoning. But this new microbe

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