CHAPTER XIII

A DOSE OF SLEEPING POWDER

Jack rushed out into the hallway. It was not, as he had expected, smoke-filled, nor was there any odor of fire in the air. Somewhere he could hear the voices of officers shouting above the distant hub-bub in the saloon: “Keep your heads! There is no fire.”

Doctor Flynn, the ship’s surgeon, came hurrying by. Jack stopped him and explained what had occurred in Colonel Minturn’s cabin.

“We must send for help and carry them both out of danger at once,” he said.

“Danger? But there is no danger,” exclaimed the doctor.

“But the fire?” gasped the boy.

“There is none. It was either the overwrought nerves of a silly woman that started the panic, or else there was some malicious design underlying the whole thing.”

The thought of what he had seen as he stood in the shadow of the saloon stairway rushed across Jack’s mind: Miss Jarrold’s sudden appearance and then the scream of fire. Could it have been possible that this was the thing that Sam had overheard her and her uncle debating? That, taking advantage of the panic they knew would be caused by such an alarm in the dead of night, Jarrold had schemed a way to enter Colonel Minturn’s cabin?

“Will you come into Colonel Minturn’s cabin with me at once, doctor?” asked Jack.

“Certainly, my boy. But,” and the doctor stared at him in amazement, “what has happened to you? Your face is bruised and marked. Have you been fighting?”

“A little bit,” said Jack grimly.

“With whom?”

“With a man I believe to be a consummate scoundrel. By the merest accident on earth, I happened along here just in time to frustrate what I believe to be a plot against Colonel Minturn.”

All this Jack explained hastily as they retraced their way down the corridor to Colonel Minturn’s cabin. The panic had died down, and the passengers, reassured now, were making their divers ways back to their cabins. Some tried to turn the whole matter into a joke. Others looked sheepish over the panic-stricken way in which they had behaved.

But when the two entered the colonel’s cabin a surprise awaited them.

_Jarrold was not there._

Jack rubbed his mental eyes. He could have sworn he had left the man lying across the lounge, to all appearances stunned. Now, in the brief interval that the boy had been out of the cabin, the man had gone.

“He must have been playing ’possum,” said the surgeon, when Jack had briefly explained the circumstances; “but now let us see to Colonel Minturn.”

The doctor bent over the officer’s form as it lay in the bunk. The colonel was breathing heavily, his pulse was slow, his face gray.

“Run to my cabin for my medicine bag,” ordered the doctor to Jack. “You will find it on my lounge. Hurry back.”

Jack waited to ask no questions but sped off. The corridors were still choked with passengers discussing the fire scare. Most of them appeared to think it had been a grim and criminal form of joke on somebody’s part. There was talk of offering a reward for the discovery of the culprit.

But Jack, knowing what he did, placed, as we know, a more sinister construction on the midnight alarm. He was soon back with the doctor’s bag. The surgeon took out of it a small syringe and injected some sort of solution into the unconscious man’s arm.

“What is the matter with him, sir, do you think?” ventured Jack, as the doctor, his hand on Minturn’s pulse, sat by the side of the bunk.

“He has been drugged. That much is plain. Although what the agency was, I cannot guess,” was the rejoinder.

A small glass article lying on the floor caught Jack’s eye. It was an atomizer, such as are used for perfumes. But this was filled with a gray powder. He pressed the rubber bulb and an impalpable cloud of the powder was sprayed into the air. He immediately felt sick and dizzy.

“Look here, sir, what do you make of this?” he cried excitedly, handing it to the doctor. “I found it on the floor. It must have dropped from Jarrold’s pocket while we were struggling. I’m sure that that powder in it is some sort of drug. When I sprayed it out, it made me feel weak and faint.”

The doctor took the glass vessel, unscrewed the top and shook out a small quantity of the powder on his palm.

“This is an important discovery, indeed,” he exclaimed. “It is a sleeping powder used by a certain South African tribe. A sufficient quantity sprayed into the atmosphere would send anyone into a coma. It is not poisonous, merely sleep producing.”

“Then you think that some of it was sprayed into this room, possibly through the transom, by Jarrold before——”

“We’ll leave Mr. Jarrold’s name out of this for the present,” said the doctor shortly. “Remember, we have no proof against him. For all you know, and for all that appears, he broke in here to try to save the colonel when the cry of fire occurred.”

“But he attacked me,” protested Jack.

“His answer to that would be that you were not at your post, where you should have been.”

Jack colored. This was true. Jarrold had indeed a rejoinder to everything he might say against the man. When it came to a point, the lad had plenty of suspicions and theories, but absolutely no proofs to offer. He couldn’t even state positively that the atomizer full of the sleeping powder was Jarrold’s.

The colonel moved uneasily and opened his eyes. In a few moments he was able to talk.

“Why, what has happened?” he asked drowsily, looking first at the doctor and then at Jack.

“First, will you tell us the last thing you recollect, Colonel?”

“Most assuredly. I came to bed early. Before turning in, I examined certain papers of mine and found they were all in perfect order. This done, I lay down with a book. Suddenly I felt unaccountably drowsy, and—and that’s all. But what has occurred in the meantime? I can tell by your presence in the cabin that something out of the ordinary is up.”

“Will you first oblige me by making sure your papers are safe?” asked the doctor.

“Certainly; they are in this box under my pillow. Ah yes, everything is in perfect order. As you see, this is a combination lock. I could tell in an instant if it had been tampered with.”

“Then, Colonel, I think that you should thank this young man here for saving you from a theft that might have cost you dearly,” said the doctor, indicating Jack.