Chapter 13

Several times I had been forced already to revise my theories of the case. At first I had felt that it pointed straight toward Lockwood. But did it seem to do so now?

Suppose Lockwood had stolen the dagger from the Museum, although he denied even that. Did that mean, necessarily that he committed the murder with it, that he now had it? Might he not have lost it? Might not some one else--the Senora, or Alfonso, or both--have obtained it? Might not Mendoza have been murdered with it by some other hand to obtain or to hide the secret on its bloody blade?

I went to bed, still thinking, no nearer a conclusion than before, prepared to dream over it.

That is the last I remember.

When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the bed still, but Craig was bending over me. He had just taken a rubber cap off my face, to which was attached a rubber tube that ran to a box perhaps as large as a suitcase, containing a pump of some kind.

I was too weak to notice these things right away, too weak to care much about them, or about anything else.

"Are you all right now, old man?" he asked, bending over me.

"Y-Yes," I gasped, clutching at the choking sensation in my throat. "What has happened?"

Perhaps I had best tell it as though I were not the chief actor; for it came to me in such disjointed fragmentary form, that it was some time before I could piece it together.

Craig had seen Burke, and had found that everything was all right. Then he had made the few little investigations that he intended. But he had not been to the laboratory. There had been no light there that night.

At last when he arrived home, he had found a peculiar odour in the hall, but had thought nothing of it, until he opened our door. Then there rushed out such a burst of it that he had to retreat, almost fainting, choking and gasping for breath.

His first thought was for me; and protecting himself as best he could he struggled through to my room, to find me lying on the bed, motionless, almost cold.

He was by this time too weak to carry me. But he managed to reach the window and throw it wide open. As the draught cleared the air, he thought of the telephone and with barely strength enough left called up one of the gas companies and had a pulmotor sent over.

Now that the danger was past for me, and he felt all right, his active mind began at once on the reconstruction of what had happened.

What was it--man or devil? Could a human fly have scaled the walls, or an aeroplane have dropped an intruder at the window ledge? The lock on the door did not seem to have been tampered with. Nor was there any way by which entrance could have been gained from a fire escape. It was not illuminating gas. Every one agreed on that. No, it was not an accident. It was an attempt at murder. Some one was getting close to us. Every other weapon failing, this was desperation.

I had been made comfortable, and he was engaged in one of his characteristic searches, with more than ordinary eagerness, because this was his own apartment, and it was I who had been the victim.

I followed him languidly as he went over everything, the furniture, the walls, the windows, the carpets--there looking for finger-prints, there for some trace of the poisonous gas that had filled the room. But he did not have the air of one who was finding anything. I was too tired to reason. This was but another of the baffling mysteries that confronted us.

A low exclamation caused me to open my eyes and try to discover what was the cause. He was bending over the lock of the door looking at it intently.

"Broken?" I managed to say.

"No--corroded," he replied. "You keep still. Save your energy. I've got strength enough for two, for a while."

He came over to the bed and bent over me. "I won't hurt you," he encouraged, "but just let me get a drop of your blood."

He took a needle and ran it gently into my thumb beside the nail. A drop or two of blood oozed out and he soaked it up with a piece of sterile gauze.

"Try to sleep," he said finally.

"And you?" I asked.

"It's no use. I'm going over to the laboratory. I can't sleep. There's a cop down in front of the house. You're safe enough. By George, if this case goes much further we'll have half the force standing guard. Here--drink that."

I had made up my mind not to go to sleep, if he wouldn't, but I slipped up when I obeyed him that time. I thought it was a stimulant but it turned out to be a sedative.

I did not wake up until well along in the morning, but when I did I was surprised to find myself so well. Before any one could stop me, I was dressed and had reached the door.

A friend of ours who had volunteered to stay with me was dozing on a couch as I came out.

"Too late, Johnson," I called, trying hard to be gay, though I felt anything but like it. "Thank you, old man, for staying with me. But I'm afraid to stop. You're stronger than I am this morning--and besides you can run faster. I'm afraid you'll drag me back."

He did try to do it, but with a great effort of will-power I persuaded him to let me go. Out in the open air, too, it seemed to do me good. The policeman who had been stationed before the house gazed at me as though he saw a ghost, then grinned encouragingly.

Still, I was glad that the laboratory was only a few blocks away, for I was all in by the time I got there, and hadn't even energy enough to reply to Kennedy's scolding.

He was working over a microscope, while by his side stood in racks, innumerable test-tubes of various liquids. On the table before him lay the lock of our door which he had cut out after he gave me the sleeping draught.

"What was it?" I asked. "I feel as if I had been on a bust, without the recollection of a thing."

He shook his head as if to discourage conversation, without taking his eyes off the microscope through which he was squinting. His lips were moving as if he were counting. I waited in impatient silence until he seemed to have finished.

Then, still without a word, he took up a test-tube and dropped into it a little liquid from a bottle on a shelf above the table. His face lighted up, and he regarded the reaction attentively for some time. Then he turned to me, still holding the tube.

"You have been on a bust," he said with a smile as if the remark of a few minutes before were still fresh. "Only it was a laughing gas jag--nitrous oxide."

"Nitrous oxide?" I repeated. "How--what do you mean?"

"I mean simply that a test of your blood shows that you were poisoned by nitrous oxide gas. You remember the sample of blood which I squeezed from your thumb? I took it because I knew that a gas--and it has proved to be nitrous oxide--is absorbed through the lungs into the circulation and its presence can be told for a considerable period after administration."

He paused a moment, then went on: "To be specific in this case I found by microscopic examination that the number of corpuscles in your blood was vastly above the normal, something like between seven and eight million to a drop that should have had somewhat more than only half that number. You were poisoned by gas that--"

"Yes," I interrupted, "but how, with all the doors locked?"

"I was coming to that," he said quietly, picking up the lock and looking at it thoughtfully.

He had already placed it in a porcelain basin, and in this basin he had poured some liquids. Then he passed the liquids through a fine screen and at last took up a tube containing some of the resulting liquid.

"I have already satisfied myself," he explained, "but for your benefit, seeing that you're the chief sufferer, I'll run over a part of the test. You saw the reaction which showed the gas a moment ago. I have proved chemically as well as microscopically that it is present in your blood. Now if I take this test-tube of liquid derived from my treatment of the lock and then test it as you saw me do with the other, isn't that enough for you? See--it gives the same reaction."

It did, indeed, but my mind did not react with it.

"Nitrous oxide," he continued, "in contact with iron, leaves distinct traces of corrosion, discernible by chemical and microscopic tests quite as well as the marks it leaves in the human blood. Manifestly, if no one could have come in by the windows or doors, the gas must have been administered in some way without any one coming into the room. I found no traces of an intruder."

It was a tough one. Never much good at answering his conundrums when I was well, I could not even make a guess now.

"The key-hole, of course!" he explained. "I cut away the entire lock, and have submitted it to these tests which you see."

"I don't see it all yet," I said.

"Some one came to our door in the night, after gaining entrance to the hall--not a difficult thing to do, we know. That person found our door locked, knew it would be locked, knew that I always locked it. Knowing that such was the case, this person came prepared, bringing perhaps, a tank of compressed nitrous oxide, certainly the materials for making the gas expeditiously."

I began to understand how it had been done.

"Through the keyhole," he resumed, "a stream of the gas was injected. It soon rendered you unconscious, and that would have been all, if the person had been satisfied. A little bit would have been harmless enough. But the person was not satisfied. The intention was not to overcome, but to kill. The stream of gas was kept up until the room was full of it.

"Only my return saved you, for the gas was escaping very slowly. Even then, you had been under it so long that we had to resort to the wonderful little pulmotor after trying both the Sylvester and Schaefer methods and all other manual means to induce respiration. At any rate we managed to undo the work of this fiend."

I looked at him in surprise, I, who didn't think I had an enemy in the world.

"But who could it have been?" I asked.

"We are pretty close to that criminal," was the only reply he would give, "providing we do not spread the net in sight of the quarry."

"Why should he have wanted to get me?" I repeated.

"Don't flatter yourself," replied Craig. "He wanted me, too. There wasn't any light in the laboratory last night. There was a light in our apartment. What more natural than to think that we were both there? You were caught in the trap intended for both of us."

I looked at him, startled. Surely this was a most desperate criminal. To cover up one murder--perhaps two--he did not hesitate to attempt a third, a double murder. The attack had been really aimed at Kennedy. It had struck me alone. But it had miscarried and Craig had saved my life.

As I reflected bitterly, I had but one satisfaction. Wretched as I felt, I knew that it had spared Craig from slowing up on the case at just the time when he was needed.

The news of the attempt spread quickly, for it was a police case and got into the papers.

It was not half an hour after I reached the laboratory that the door was pushed open by Inez Mendoza, followed by a boy spilling with fruit and flowers like a cornucopia.

"I drove to the apartment," she cried, greatly excited and sympathetic, "but they told me you had gone out. Oh, I was glad to hear it. Then I knew it wasn't so serious. For, somehow, I feel guilty about it. It never would have happened if you hadn't met me."

"I'm sure it's worth more than it cost," I replied gallantly.

She turned toward Kennedy. "I'm positively frightened," she exclaimed. "First they direct their attacks against my father--then against me--now against you. What will it be next? Oh--it is that curse--it is that curse!"

"Never fear," encouraged Kennedy, "we'll get you out--we'll get all of us out, now, I should say. It's just because they are so desperate that we have these things. As long as there is nothing to fear a criminal will lie low. When he gets scared he does things. And it's when he does things that he begins to betray himself."

She shuddered. "I feel as though I was surrounded by enemies," she murmured. "It is as if an unseen evil power was watching over me all the time--and mocking me--striking down those I love and trust. Where will it end?"

Kennedy tried his best to soothe her, but it was evident that the attack on us could not have had more effect, if it had been levelled direct at her.

"Please, Senorita," he pleaded, "stand firm. We are going to win. Don't give in. The Mendozas are not the kind to stop defeated."

She looked at him, her eyes filled with tears.

"It was my father's way," she choked back her emotion. "How could you, a stranger, know?"

"I didn't know," returned Kennedy. "I gathered it from his face. It is also his daughter's way."

"Yes," she said, straightening up and the fire flashing from her eyes, "we are a proud, old, unbending race. Good-bye. I must not interrupt your work any longer. We are also a race that never forgets a friend."

A moment later she was gone.

"A wonderful woman," repeated Kennedy absently.

Then he turned again to his table of chemicals.

The telephone had begun to tinkle almost continuously by this time, as one after another of our friends called us up to know how we were getting on and be assured of our safety. In fact I didn't know that it was possible to resuscitate so many of them with a pulmotor.

"By George, I'm glad it wasn't any more serious," came Norton's voice from the doorway a moment later. "I didn't see a paper this morning. The curator of the Museum just told me. How did it happen?"

Kennedy tried to pass it off lightly, and I did the same, for as I was up longer I really did feel better.

Norton shook his head gravely, however.

"No," he said, "there were four of us got warnings. They are a desperate, revengeful people."

I looked at him quickly. Did he mean the de Moches?

XXI

THE TELESCRIBE

I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and that I had better go slow that day and regain my strength, a fortunate decision, as it turned out.

Kennedy, also, spent most of the time in the laboratory, so that, after all, I did not feel that I was missing very much.

It was along in the afternoon that the telephone began acting strangely, as it will do sometimes when a long distance connection is being made. Twice Kennedy answered, without getting any response.

"Confound that central," he muttered. "What do you suppose is the matter?"

Again the bell rang.

"Hello," shouted Kennedy, exasperated. "Who's this?"

There was a pause. "Just a minute," he replied.

Quickly he jammed the receiver down on a little metal base which he had placed 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.

"Who is it?" he answered.

Apparently the voice at the other end of the wire replied rather peevishly, for Kennedy endeavoured to smooth over the delay. I wondered what was going on, why he was so careful. His face showed that, whatever it was, it was most important.

As he restored the telephone to its normal condition, he looked at me puzzled.

"I wonder whether that was a frame-up!" he exclaimed, pulling a little cylinder off the instrument into which he had inserted the telephone receiver. "I thought it might be and I have preserved the voice. This is what is known as the telescribe--a recent invention of Edison which records on a specially prepared phonograph cylinder all that is said--both ways--over a telephone wire."

"What was it about?" I asked eagerly.

He shoved the cylinder on a phonograph and started the instrument.

"Professor Kennedy?" called an unfamiliar voice.

"Yes," answered a voice that I recognized as Craig's.

"This is the detective agency employed by Mr. Whitney. He has instructed us to inform you that he has obtained the Peruvian dagger for which you have been searching. That's all. Good-bye."

I looked at Kennedy in blank surprise.

"They rang off before I could ask them a question," said Craig. "Central tells me it was a pay station call. There doesn't seem to be any way of tracing it. But, at least I have a record of the voice."

"What are you going to do?" I queried. "It may be a fake."

"Yes, but I'm going to investigate it. Do you feel strong enough to go down to Whitney's with me?"

The startling news had been like a tonic. "Of course," I replied, seizing my hat.

Kennedy paused only long enough to call Norton. The archaeologist was out, and we hurried on downtown to Whitney's.

Whitney was not there and his clerk was just about to close the office. All the books were put away in the safe and the desks were closed. Now and then there echoed up the hall the clang of an elevator door.

"Where is Mr. Whitney?" demanded Craig of the clerk.

"I can't say. He went out a couple of hours ago."

"Did he have a visit from one of his detectives?" shot out Craig suddenly.

The clerk looked up suspiciously at us.

"No," he replied defiantly.

"Walter--stand by that door," shouted Craig. "Let no one in until they break it down."

His blue-steel automatic gleamed a cold menace at the clerk. A downtown office after office hours is not exactly the place to which one can get assistance quickly. The clerk started back.

"Did he have a visit from one of his detectives?"

"Yes."

"What was it about?"

The clerk winced. "I don't know," he replied, "honest--I don't."

Craig waved the gun for emphasis. "Open the safe," he said.

Reluctantly the clerk obeyed. Under the point of the gun he searched every compartment and drawer of the big chrome steel strong-box which Whitney had pointed out as the safest place for the dagger on our first visit to him. But there was absolutely no trace of it. Had we been hoaxed and was all this risk in vain?

"Where did Mr. Whitney go?" demanded Craig, as he directed the clerk to shut the door and lock the safe again, baffled.

"If I should try to tell you," returned the man, very much frightened, "I would be lying. You would soon find out. Mr. Whitney doesn't make a confidant of me, you know."

It was useless. If he had the dagger, at least we knew that it was not at the office. We had learned only one thing. He had had a visit from one of his detectives.

As fast as the uptown trend of automobiles and surface cars during the rush hour would permit, Kennedy and I hurried in a taxicab to the Prince Edward Albert in the hope of surprising him there.

"It's no use to inquire for him," decided Craig as we entered the hotel. "I still have the key to that room, 827, next to his. We'll ride right up in the elevator boldly and get in."

No one said anything to us, as we let ourselves into the room next to Whitney's. A new lock had been placed on the door between the suites, but, aside from the additional time it took to force it, it presented no great difficulty.

"He wouldn't leave the dagger here, of course," remarked Kennedy, as at last we stepped into Whitney's suite. "But we may as well satisfy ourselves. Hello--what's this?"

The room was all upset, as though some one had already gone through it. For a moment I thought we had been forestalled.

"Packed a grip hastily," Craig remarked, pointing to the marks on the bedspread where it had rested while he must literally have thrown things into it.

We made a hasty search ourselves, but we knew it was hopeless. Two things we had learned. Whitney had had a visit from his detectives, and he had gone away hurriedly. An anonymous telephone message had been sent to Kennedy. Had it been for the purpose of throwing us off the track?

The room telephone rang. Quickly Craig jumped to it and took down the receiver.

"Hello," he called. "Yes, this is Mr. Whitney."

A silence ensued during which, of course, I could not gather any idea of what was going on over the wire.

"The deuce!" exclaimed Kennedy, working the hook up and down but receiving no response. "The fellow caught on. Something must have happened to Norton, too."

"How's that?" I asked.

"Why," he replied, "some one just called up Whitney and said that Norton had got away from him."

"Perhaps they're trying to keep him out of the way just as they are with us," I suggested. "I think the thing is a plant."

Down the hall, Kennedy stopped and tapped lightly at the door of 810, the de Moche suite. I think he was surprised when the Senora's maid opened it.

"Tell Senora de Moche it is Professor Kennedy," he said quickly, "and that I must see her."

The maid admitted us into the sitting-room where we had had our first interview with her and a moment later she appeared. She was evidently not dressed for dinner, although it was almost time, and I saw Kennedy's eye travel from her to a chair in the corner over which was draped a linen automobile coat and a heavy veil. Had she been preparing to go somewhere, too? The door to Alfonso's room was open and he clearly was not there. What did it all mean?

"Have you heard anything of a report that the dagger has been found?" demanded Kennedy abruptly.

"Why--no," she replied, greatly surprised, apparently.

"You were going out?" asked Kennedy with a significant glance at the coat and veil.

"Only for a little ride with Alfonso, who has gone to hire a car," she answered quickly.

I felt sure that she had heard something about the dagger.

We had no further excuse for staying and on the way out, now that he had satisfied himself that Whitney was not there, Craig inquired at the office for him. They could tell us nothing of his whereabouts, except that he had left in his car late in the afternoon in a great hurry.

Kennedy stepped into a telephone booth and called up Lockwood, but no one answered. Inquiry in the garages in the neighbourhood finally located that at which Lockwood kept his car. There, all that they could tell us was that the car had been filled with gas and oil as if for a trip. Lockwood was gone, too.

Kennedy hastily ordered a touring car himself and placed it at a corner of the Prince Edward Albert where he could watch two of the entrances, while I waited on the next corner where I could see the entrance on the other street.

For some time we waited and still she did not come out. Had she telephoned to Alfonso and had he gone alone? Perhaps she had already been out and had taken this method of detaining us, knowing that we would wait to watch her.

It must have been a mixture of both motives, for at length I was rewarded by seeing her come cautiously out of the rear entrance of the hotel alone and start to walk hurriedly up the street. I signalled to Craig who shot down and picked me up.

By this time the Senora had reached a public cab stand and had engaged a hack.

Sinking back in the shadows of the top, which was up, Craig directed our driver to follow the hack cautiously, keeping a couple of blocks behind. There was some satisfaction, though slight, in it, at least. We felt the possibility of the trail leading somewhere, now.

On uptown the hack went, while we kept discreetly in the rear. We had reached a part of the city where it was sparsely populated, when the hack suddenly turned and doubled back on us.

There was not time for us to turn and we trusted that by shrinking back in the shadow we might not be observed.

As the hack passed us, however, the Senora leaned out until it was perfectly evident that she must recognize us. She said nothing but I fancied I saw a smile of satisfaction as she settled back into the cushions. She was deliberately going back along the very road by which she had led us out. It had been an elaborate means of wasting our time.

She did not have the satisfaction, however, of shaking us off, for we followed all the way back to the hotel and saw her go in. Then Kennedy placed the car where we had it before and left the driver with instructions to follow her regardless of time if she should come out again.