Chapter 8

It was verging on midnight when Kennedy suddenly cried: “Here, Walter, take this receiver. You remember how the buzzing sounded. Listen. Tell me if you, too, can detect the change.”

I clapped the receiver quickly to my ear. Indeed I could tell the difference. In place of the load buzzing there was only a mild sound. It was slower and lower.

“That means,” he said excitedly, “that some one has entered that pitch-dark storeroom by the broken window. Let me take the receiver back again. Ah, the buzzing is coming back. He is leaving the room. I suppose he has found the electric light cane and the pistol where he left them. Now, Walter, since you have become accustomed to this thing take it and tell me what you hear.”

Craig had already seized the other apparatus connected with the art-gallery and had the wireless receiver over his head. He was listening with rapt attention, talking while he waited.

“This is an apparatus,” he was saying, “that was devised by Dr. Fournier d’Albe, lecturer on physics at Birmingham University, to aid the blind. It is known as the optophone. What I am literally doing now is to HEAR light. The optophone translates light into sound by means of that wonderful little element, selenium, which in darkness is a poor conductor of electricity, but in light is a good conductor. This property is used in the optophone in transmitting an electric current which is interrupted by a special clockwork interrupter. It makes light and darkness audible in the telephone. This thing over my head is like a wireless telephone receiver, capable of detecting a current of even a quarter of a microampere.”

We were all waiting expectantly for Craig to speak. Evidently the intruder was now mounting the stairs to the art-gallery.

“Actually I can hear the light of the stars shining in through that wonderful plate glass skylight of yours, Mr. Spencer,” he went on. “A few moments ago when the moon shone through I could hear it, like the rumble of a passing cart. I knew it was the moon both because I could see that it must be shining in and because I recognised the sound. The sun would thunder like a passing express-train if it were daytime now. I can distinguish a shadow passing between the optophone and the light. A hand moved across in front of it would give a purring sound, and a glimpse out of a window in daylight would sound like a cinematograph reeling off a film.

“Ah, there he is.” Craig was listening with intense excitement now. “Our intruder has entered the art-gallery. He is flashing his electric light cane about at various objects, reconnoitring. No doubt if I were expert enough and had had time to study it, I could tell you by the sound just what he is looking at.”

“Craig,” I interrupted, this time very excited myself, “the buzzing from the high-frequency current is getting lower and lower.”

“By George, then, there is another of them,” he replied. “I’m not surprised. Keep a sharp watch. Tell me the moment the buzzing increases again.”

Spencer could scarcely control his impatience. It had been a long time since he had been a mere spectator, and he did not seem to relish being held in check by anybody.

“Now that you are sure the vandal is there,” he cut in, his cigar out in his excitement, “can’t we make a dash over there and get him before he has a chance to do any more damage? He might be destroying thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff while we are waiting here.”

“And he could destroy the whole collection, building and all, including ourselves into the bargain, if he heard so much as a whisper from us,” added Kennedy firmly.

“That second person has left the storeroom, Craig,” I put in. “The buzzing has returned again full force.”

Kennedy tore the wireless receiver from his ear. “Here, Walter, never mind about that electric detective any more, then. Take the optophone. Describe minutely to me just exactly what you hear.”

He had taken from his pocket a small metal ball. I seized the receiver from him and fitted it to my ear. It took me several instants to accustom my ears to the new sounds, but they were plain enough, and I shouted my impressions of their variations. Kennedy was busy at the window over the heavy package, from which he had torn the wrapping. His back was toward us, and we could not see what he was doing.

A terrific din sounded in my ears, almost splitting my ear-drums. It was as though I had been suddenly hurled into a magnified cave of the winds and a cataract mightier than Niagara was thundering at me. It was so painful that I cried out in surprise and involuntarily dropped the receiver to the floor.

“It was the switching on of the full glare of the electric lights in the art-gallery,” Craig shouted. “The other person must have got up to the room quicker than I expected. Here goes.”

A loud explosion took place, apparently on the very window-sill of our room. Almost at the same instant there was a crash of glass from the museum.

We sprang to the window, I expecting to see Kennedy injured, Spencer expecting to see his costly museum a mass of smoking ruins. Instead we saw nothing of the sort. On the window-ledge was a peculiar little instrument that looked like a miniature field-gun with an elaborate system of springs and levers to break the recoil.

Craig had turned from it so suddenly that he actually ran full tilt into us. “Come on,” he cried breathlessly, bolting from the room, and seizing Dr. Lith by the arm as he did so. “Dr. Lith, the keys to the museum, quick! We must get there before the fumes clear away.”

He was taking the stairs two at a time, dragging the dignified curator with him.

In fewer seconds than I can tell it we were in the museum and mounting the broad staircase to the art-gallery. An overpowering gas seemed to permeate everything.

“Stand back a moment,” cautioned Kennedy as we neared the door. “I have just shot in here one of those asphyxiating bombs which the Paris police invented to war against the Apaches and the motor-car bandits. Open all the windows back here and let the air clear. Walter, breathe as little of it as you can—but—come here—do you see?—over there, near the other door—a figure lying on the floor? Make a dash in after me and carry it out. There is just one thing more. If I am not back in a minute come in and try to get me.”

He had already preceded me into the stifling fumes. With a last long breath of fresh air I plunged in after him, scarcely knowing what would happen to me. I saw the figure on the floor, seized it, and backed out of the room as fast as I could.

Dizzy and giddy from the fumes I had been forced to inhale, I managed to drag the form to the nearest window. It was Lucille White.

An instant later I felt myself unceremoniously pushed aside. Spencer had forgotten all about the millions of dollars’ worth of curios, all about the suspicions that had been entertained against her, and had taken the half-conscious burden from me.

“This is the second time I have found you here, Edouard,” she was muttering in her half-delirium, still struggling. “The first time—that night I hid in the mummy-case, you fled when I called for help. I have followed you every moment since last night to prevent this. Edouard, don’t, DON’T! Remember I was—I am your wife. Listen to me. Oh, it is the absinthe that has spoiled your art and made it worthless, not the critics. It is not Mr. Spencer who has enticed me away, but you who drove me away, first from Paris, and now from New York. He has been only—No! No!—” she was shrieking now, her eyes wide open as she realised it was Spencer himself she saw leaning over her. With a great effort she seemed to rouse herself. “Don’t stay. Run—run. Leave me. He has a bomb that may go off at any moment. Oh—oh—it is the curse of absinthe that pursues me. Will you not go? Vite! Vite!”

She had almost fainted and was lapsing into French, laughing and crying alternately, telling him to go, yet clinging to him.

Spencer paid no attention to what she had said of the bomb. But I did. The minute was up, and Kennedy was in there yet. I turned to rush in again to warn him at any peril.

Just then a half-conscious form staggered against me. It was Craig himself. He was holding the infernal machine of the five glass tubes that might at any instant blow us into eternity.

Overcome himself, he stumbled. The sinking sensation in my heart I can never describe. It was just a second that I waited for the terrific explosion that was to end it all for us, one long interminable second.

But it did not come.

Limp as I was with the shock, I dropped down beside him and bent over.

“A glass of water, Walter,” he murmured, “and fan me a bit. I didn’t dare trust myself to carry the thing complete, so I emptied the acid into the sarcophagus. I guess I must have stayed in there too long. But we are safe. See if you can drag out Delaverde. He is in there by the mummy-case.”

Spencer was still holding Lucille, although she was much better in the fresh air of the hall. “I understand,” he was muttering. “You have been following this fiend of a husband of yours to protect the museum and myself from him. Lucille, Lucille—look at me. You are mine, not his, whether he is dead or alive. I will free you from him, from the curse of the absinthe that has pursued you.”

The fumes had cleared a great deal by this time. In the centre of the art-gallery we found a man, a tall, black-bearded Frenchman, crazy indeed from the curse of the green absinthe that had ruined him. He was scarcely breathing from a deadly wound in his chest. The hair-spring ring of the Apache pistol had exploded the cartridge as he fell.

Spencer did not even look at him, as he carried his own burden down to the little office of Dr. Lith.

“When a rich man marries a girl who has been earning her own living, the newspapers always distort it,” he whispered aside to me a few minutes later. “Jameson, you’re a newspaperman—I depend on you to get the facts straight this time.”

Outside, Kennedy grasped my arm.

“You’ll do that, Walter?” he asked persuasively. “Spencer is a client that one doesn’t get every day. Just drop into the Star office and give them the straight story, I’ll promise you I’ll not take another case until you are free again to go on with me in it.”

There was no denying him. As briefly as I could I rehearsed the main facts to the managing editor late that night. I was too tired to write it at length, yet I could not help a feeling of satisfaction as he exclaimed, “Great stuff, Jameson,—great.”

“I know,” I replied, “but this six-cylindered existence for a week wears you out.”

“My dear boy,” he persisted, “if I had turned some one else loose on that story, he’d have been dead. Go to it—it’s fine.”

It was a bit of blarney, I knew. But somehow or other I liked it. It was just what I needed to encourage me, and I hurried uptown promising myself a sound sleep at any rate.

“Very good,” remarked Kennedy the next morning, poking his head in at my door and holding up a copy of the Star into which a very accurate brief account of the affair had been dropped at the last moment. “I’m going over to the laboratory. See you there as soon as you can get over.”

“Craig,” I remarked an hour or so later as I sauntered in on him, hard at work, “I don’t see how you stand this feverish activity.”

“Stand it?” he repeated, holding up a beaker to the light to watch a reaction. “It’s my very life. Stand it? Why, man, if you want me to pass away—stop it. As long as it lasts, I shall be all right. Let it quit and I’ll—I’ll go back to research work,” he laughed.

Evidently he had been waiting for me, for as he talked, he laid aside the materials with which he had been working and was preparing to go out.

“Then, too,” he went on, “I like to be with people like Spencer and Brixton. For example, while I was waiting here for you, there came a call from Emery Pitts.”

“Emery Pitts?” I echoed. “What does he want?”

“The best way to find out is—to find out,” he answered simply. “It’s getting late and I promised to be there directly. I think we’d better take a taxi.”

A few minutes later we were ushered into a large Fifth Avenue mansion and were listening to a story which interested even Kennedy.

“Not even a blood spot has been disturbed in the kitchen. Nothing has been altered since the discovery of the murdered chef, except that his body has been moved into the next room.”

Emery Pitts, one of the “thousand millionaires of steel,” overwrought as he was by a murder in his own household, sank back in his easy-chair, exhausted.

Pitts was not an old man; indeed, in years he was in the prime of life. Yet by his looks he might almost have been double his age, the more so in contrast with Minna Pitts, his young and very pretty wife, who stood near him in the quaint breakfast-room and solicitously moved a pillow back of his head.

Kennedy and I looked on in amazement. We knew that he had recently retired from active business, giving as a reason his failing health. But neither of us had thought, when the hasty summons came early that morning to visit him immediately at his house, that his condition was as serious as it now appeared.

“In the kitchen?” repeated Kennedy, evidently not prepared for any trouble in that part of the house.

Pitts, who had closed his eyes, now reopened them slowly and I noticed how contracted were the pupils.

“Yes,” he answered somewhat wearily, “my private kitchen which I have had fitted up. You know, I am on a diet, have been ever since I offered the one hundred thousand dollars for the sure restoration of youth. I shall have you taken out there presently.”

He lapsed again into a half dreamy state, his head bowed on one hand resting on the arm of his chair. The morning’s mail still lay on the table, some letters open, as they had been when the discovery had been announced. Mrs. Pitts was apparently much excited and unnerved by the gruesome discovery in the house.

“You have no idea who the murderer might be?” asked Kennedy, addressing Pitts, but glancing keenly at his wife.

“No,” replied Pitts, “if I had I should have called the regular police. I wanted you to take it up before they spoiled any of the clues. In the first place we do not think it could have been done by any of the other servants. At least, Minna says that there was no quarrel.”

“How could any one have got in from the outside?” asked Craig.

“There is a back way, a servants’ entrance, but it is usually locked. Of course some one might have obtained a key to it.”

Mrs. Pitts had remained silent throughout the dialogue. I could not help thinking that she suspected something, perhaps was concealing something. Yet each of them seemed equally anxious to have the marauder apprehended, whoever he might be.

“My dear,” he said to her at length, “will you call some one and have them taken to the kitchen?”

IX

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

As Minna Pitts led us through the large mansion preparatory to turning us over to a servant she explained hastily that Mr. Pitts had long been ill and was now taking a new treatment under Dr. Thompson Lord. No one having answered her bell in the present state of excitement of the house, she stopped short at the pivoted door of the kitchen, with a little shudder at the tragedy, and stood only long enough to relate to us the story as she had heard it from the valet, Edward.

Mr. Pitts, it seemed, had wanted an early breakfast and had sent Edward to order it. The valet had found the kitchen a veritable slaughter-house, with, the negro chef, Sam, lying dead on the floor. Sam had been dead, apparently, since the night before.

As she hurried away, Kennedy pushed open the door. It was a marvellous place, that antiseptic or rather aseptic kitchen, with its white tiling and enamel, its huge ice-box, and cooking-utensils for every purpose, all of the most expensive and modern make.

There were marks everywhere of a struggle, and by the side of the chef, whose body now lay in the next room awaiting the coroner, lay a long carving-knife with which he had evidently defended himself. On its blade and haft were huge coagulated spots of blood. The body of Sam bore marks of his having been clutched violently by the throat, and in his head was a single, deep wound that penetrated the skull in a most peculiar manner. It did not seem possible that a blow from a knife could have done it. It was a most unusual wound and not at all the sort that could have been made by a bullet.

As Kennedy examined it, he remarked, shaking his head in confirmation of his own opinion, “That must have been done by a Behr bulletless gun.”

“A bulletless gun?” I repeated.

“Yes, a sort of pistol with a spring-operated device that projects a sharp blade with great force. No bullet and no powder are used in it. But when it is placed directly over a vital point of the skull so that the aim is unerring, a trigger lets a long knife shoot out with tremendous force, and death is instantaneous.”

Near the door, leading to the courtyard that opened on the side street, were some spots of blood. They were so far from the place where the valet had discovered the body of the chef that there could be no doubt that they were blood from the murderer himself. Kennedy’s reasoning in the matter seemed irresistible.

He looked under the table near the door, covered with a large light cloth. Beneath the table and behind the cloth he found another blood spot.

“How did that land there?” he mused aloud. “The table-cloth is bloodless.”

Craig appeared to think a moment. Then he unlocked and opened the door. A current of air was created and blew the cloth aside.

“Clearly,” he exclaimed, “that drop of blood was wafted under the table as the door was opened. The chances are all that it came from a cut on perhaps the hand or face of the murderer himself.”

It seemed to be entirely reasonable, for the bloodstains about the room were such as to indicate that he had been badly cut by the carving-knife.

“Whoever attacked the chef must have been deeply wounded,” I remarked, picking up the bloody knife and looking about at the stains, comparatively few of which could have come from the one deep fatal wound in the head of the victim.

Kennedy was still engrossed in a study of the stains, evidently considering that their size, shape, and location might throw some light on what had occurred. “Walter,” he said finally, “while I’m busy here, I wish you would find that valet, Edward. I want to talk to him.”

I found him at last, a clean-cut young fellow of much above average intelligence.

“There are some things I have not yet got clearly, Edward,” began Kennedy. “Now where was the body, exactly, when you opened the door?”

Edward pointed out the exact spot, near the side of the kitchen toward the door leading out to the breakfast room and opposite the ice-box.

“And the door to the side street?” asked Kennedy, to all appearances very favorably impressed by the young man.

“It was locked, sir,” he answered positively.

Kennedy was quite apparently considering the honesty and faithfulness of the servant. At last he leaned over and asked quickly, “Can I trust you?”

The frank, “Yes,” of the young fellow was convincing enough.

“What I want,” pursued Kennedy, “is to have some one inside this house who can tell me as much as he can see of the visitors, the messengers that come here this morning. It will be an act of loyalty to your employer, so that you need have no fear about that.”

Edward bowed, and left us. While I had been seeking him, Kennedy had telephoned hastily to his laboratory and had found one of his students there. He had ordered him to bring down an apparatus which he described, and some other material.

While we waited Kennedy sent word to Pitts that he wanted to see him alone for a few minutes.

The instrument appeared to be a rubber bulb and cuff with a rubber bag attached to the inside. From it ran a tube which ended in another graduated glass tube with a thin line of mercury in it like a thermometer.

Craig adjusted the thing over the brachial artery of Pitts, just above the elbow.

“It may be a little uncomfortable, Mr. Pitts,” he apologised, “but it will be for only a few minutes.”

Pressure through the rubber bulb shut off the artery so that Kennedy could no longer feel the pulse at the wrist. As he worked, I began to see what he was after. The reading on the graded scale of the height of the column of mercury indicated, I knew, blood pressure. This time, as he worked, I noted also the flabby skin of Pitts as well as the small and sluggish pupils of his eyes.

He completed his test in silence and excused himself, although as we went back to the kitchen I was burning with curiosity.

“What was it?” I asked. “What did you discover?”

“That,” he replied, “was a sphygmomanometer, something like the sphygmograph which we used once in another case. Normal blood pressure is 125 millimetres. Mr. Pitts shows a high pressure, very high. The large life insurance companies are now using this instrument. They would tell you that a high pressure like that indicates apoplexy. Mr. Pitts, young as he really is, is actually old. For, you know, the saying is that a man is as old as his arteries. Pitts has hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis—perhaps other heart and kidney troubles, in short pre-senility.”

Craig paused: then added sententiously as if to himself: “You have heard the latest theories about old age, that it is due to microbic poisons secreted in the intestines and penetrating the intestinal walls? Well, in premature senility the symptoms are the same as in senility, only mental acuteness is not so impaired.”

We had now reached the kitchen again. The student had also brought down to Kennedy a number of sterilised microscope slides and test-tubes, and from here and there in the masses of blood spots Kennedy was taking and preserving samples. He also took samples of the various foods, which he preserved in the sterilised tubes.

While he was at work Edward joined us cautiously.

“Has anything happened?” asked Craig.

“A message came by a boy for Mrs. Pitts,” whispered the valet.

“What did she do with it?”

“Tore it up.”

“And the pieces?”

“She must have hidden them somewhere.”

“See if you can get them.”

Edward nodded and left us.

“Yes,” I remarked after he had gone, “it does seem as if the thing to do was to get on the trail of a person bearing wounds of some kind. I notice, for one thing, Craig, that Edward shows no such marks, nor does any one else in the house as far as I can see. If it were an ‘inside job’ I fancy Edward at least could clear himself. The point is to find the person with a bandaged hand or plastered face.”

Kennedy assented, but his mind was on another subject. “Before we go we must see Mrs. Pitts alone, if we can,” he said simply.

In answer to his inquiry through one of the servants she sent down word that she would see us immediately in her sitting-room. The events of the morning had quite naturally upset her, and she was, if anything, even paler than when we saw her before.

“Mrs. Pitts,” began Kennedy, “I suppose you are aware of the physical condition of your husband?”

It seemed a little abrupt to me at first, but he intended it to be. “Why,” she asked with real alarm, “is he so very badly?”

“Pretty badly,” remarked Kennedy mercilessly, observing the effect of his words. “So badly, I fear, that it would not require much more excitement like to-day’s to bring on an attack of apoplexy. I should advise you to take especial care of him, Mrs. Pitts.”

Following his eyes, I tried to determine whether the agitation of the woman before us was genuine or not. It certainly looked so. But then, I knew that she had been an actress before her marriage. Was she acting a part now?

“What do you mean?” she asked tremulously.