Part 16

The secret agent took a magnifying glass from his pocket.

“Look at the gilt finger-prints!” ordered the blind man, as his two hands lifted the woman’s arms. “Are the prints cleanly cut, sharp?”

“Not a single blur!” announced Ames, raising his eyes. “She never moved a muscle after those fingers clutched her throat.”

“Ah!” Quiet triumph was in the blind man’s voice. “Madame Gorski was poisoned!”

“Poisoned!” It seemed that every one in the room echoed it. The clutched glove at the throat, the deep graven finger-prints of gilt had seemed to point to but one thing.

“Yes. No hand of that size could have sufficient strength to keep the woman from moving and blurring the gilt prints that were put there with another gilt glove worn on the hand of the murderer. The wearer of the gilt glove would not overlook a detail. He probably carried the other glove in a box so that its shape would not be lost, and fitted it to the prints after. It is the usual way.”

“The bottle and the glass!” Ames took a step nearer, but Colton’s hand picked up the glass beside the tall wine-bottle. He stepped away from the table, and raised the glass to his lips; held it there for several seconds.

“Hedwig Gorski did not drink from this glass!”

“Why? How do you know that?” Ames gasped it.

“Because it was put there by the man whose gloved hand made those marks on Madame Gorski’s throat after she was dead.”

“Bah!” The expletive came in a snarling sneer from the dead woman’s husband. “You think my wonderful Hedwig a fool? She would drink of no wine that had been unguarded all evening! I heard her in the bathroom washing the glass for one, two, three minutes. If she drank she drank fresh water.”

“How long after you heard the water running did she answer you?” asked Colton; and even in his sightless eyes there seemed to come a light.

“Five, six, seven, ten minutes. Ten minutes,” repeated the husband, with sullen positiveness.

“As long as that?”

“Yes.”

“Where is the bathroom, Sydney?” snapped Colton. The muscles under the skin of his lean jaws played back and forth. He was tense as a hound in leash.

“Five steps to the right, half turn,” Sydney answered mechanically, his eyes judging the distance instantly because of years of practice.

Colton darted inside. He turned on the hot water and bent down so that his face was not an inch away from the running stream. He did the same thing when he had turned the cold-water tap.

“The devilish ingenuity of it!” They heard him mutter as he straightened up.

“What is it?” Again Ames asked the question. Student of men as his work had made him, Ames had realised, minutes before, that he was in the presence of a man who would lead always; he understood that he was but a pupil before a master.

“They knew Madame Gorski was too clever to be poisoned in any ordinary way. They knew that she would even suspect the presence of poison in an empty glass, and would wash any glass, under the hot-water tap, before she drank, because the heat would dissolve any poison. They knew, also, that if she wanted a drink it would be of cold water, fresh from the tap. The poison, a paste of peculiar odour that my keen sense of smell instantly detected, is smeared on the inside of the cold-water faucet. The minute it was turned, the stream that flowed was almost pure poison!”

“Good God!” came the horror-stricken voice of the hotel manager.

“But there must have been some one here to make those marks and leave the gilded glove,” put in Ames.

“Where is the clothes-closet?” Colton asked.

The secret agent hurried into the bedroom that adjoined the room of death. Colton was at his heels, the slim, hollow cane locating every piece of furniture as he passed. Ames opened the door of a closet full of clothes, and stepped inside. Colton stood at the threshold, his head bent forward, apparently peering intently into the depths of the closet.

“Another?” he asked curtly.

In the other bedroom was a huge wardrobe. Ames opened it, and again the blind man seemed to look into every corner of it. “The murderer hid in there behind the clothes! Take some of them out and you’ll find flecks of gilt from the glove he wore!”

The secret agent grabbed an armful and threw them on the bed, with no regard for their mussing. He pawed them over. His eyes found what they sought, and he uttered a shout of triumph. “Here they are! On the Inverness and this black evening gown!” Then awe came to his voice. “How did you know that?” he asked. “How could you know it--and blind?”

“Because I am blind. Because my other senses are abnormally developed to recompense the loss of sight. I knew the murderer had hidden in the closet; I knew the gilt from the glove he wore on his hand would come off on the clothes that concealed him, just as I knew the glass on the table was not the one Madame Gorski had used, and just as I knew the crushed glove was at her feet in the restaurant--because I have a sense of smell that is more than doubly acute. Wherever there is gilt there is banana oil. It is always used in gilding, and its odour is unmistakable. I knew of the men of the Gilded Glove, and I suspected that Madame Gorski feared it. When my nostrils caught the odour and located it at the floor beside her chair, I knew instantly what it meant. I covered it with the napkin so that people would not stare. I wanted her to see it so that she might be warned. The glass on the table has the banana-oil odour because the murderer placed it there with the hand that still smelled of the oil with which the soft kid of the glove had become saturated. The smell was also in the wardrobe. Simple, isn’t it?” A mirthless smile curved his thin lips. Thornley Colton could not forget that in the next room was the body of the woman killed by the hand that left its trail so faintly that only his blindness enabled him to follow it.

“Where are the windows?” Colton asked sharply, before any one had a chance to say a word.

“In the next room, overlooking the street.”

“Show them to me.”

Ames hurried back to the sitting-room. The hotel manager still bit his finger-nails. The husband of the woman who was dead had buried his face in his hands, and was sobbing. The eyes of the hotel detective were fixed on Colton, following his every movement, in them a look of wondering admiration.

The blind man’s feeling fingers examined every inch of the casements that overlooked busy Broadway, thirteen storeys below. “Nothing here,” he said, when he had finished. “There must be another window!”

“Only a small one, in the bathroom, that overlooks an air-shaft,” the secret agent informed him.

Colton turned and darted into the bathroom. “This is the one!” Once more his exploring fingers went over every inch.

“But that hasn’t been touched. Not a screw has been loosened,” declared Ames positively.

“No, there hasn’t been a screw touched. The murderer was too clever for that, but he wasn’t clever enough to get the banana-oil smell from his fingers. The entire pane was taken out by cutting away the putty, and probably put back with triangular tin tacks that would never be noticed through the frosted glass.”

“That’s a mighty small opening,” Ames said slowly.

“The murderer must have been small, and as active as a cat. Also----” Colton did not finish; he stepped out of the bathroom. “Who has the rooms directly over this one?” he asked the manager.

“They have no occupants yet,” hesitated the nervous Mr. Jones.

“When were they coming? Who were they?” The questions came sharply, crisply.

“A couple from Philadelphia, who telegraphed to have them reserved. They had occupied them once before, and liked them.”

“Clever,” muttered the blind man. “They wouldn’t take a chance of occupying them, but were going to see to it that they were empty when wanted. Let’s look at them.”

“But what am I going to do?” began the nerve-frayed manager. “The police----”

“Notify them.”

Colton gave the permission grimly; then a look of compassion came to his face as he seemed aware of the presence of Monsieur Gorski for the first time. He took a step toward him; then halted. He could do nothing--now.

“Joe?” he said softly. The house detective glanced at the inert figure of the man, and came forward. “When the police come, let them arrest Gorski,” Colton whispered. “He will be safe in their hands, and God knows he isn’t safe from that band of gilt-handed devils anywhere else. It will only be a short time before the real murderer is found.”

The house detective nodded. “It’ll be best that way,” he admitted.

“Show us the rooms!” ordered Colton; then, as the manager hesitated: “Let Joe telephone police headquarters from here,” he advised shortly.

With Ames and Sydney at his heels, he followed the manager to the floor above. The minute the lights were snapped on in the apartment, Ames ran to the open bathroom window. In a heap on the floor under it was a thin, strong rope. Beside it were fragments of what had been a wine flask, and an empty pasteboard box, with the inside smeared with gilt--the one in which the gilt glove found at the woman’s throat had been carried to prevent its handling. And under the bath-tub was thrown another glove of gilt, with most of the gold worn off the inside of the fingers.

“Good Lord!” gasped Ames eagerly. “There’s clues enough here!”

“Too many!” declared Colton tersely. He turned to the manager. “Who has the apartments opposite this?”

“A German family,” the head of the hotel answered, as a pupil to a teacher.

“How many?”

“Three. A big, bearded man and his wife, and a gawky boy. They’ve been here a week.”

“The boy! Describe him!”

“Well,” began the manager nervously. “He’s about seventeen, I should judge, but small. He’s awkward, and speaks the rottenest English I ever heard in the darndest, squeakiest voice. Seems to like to listen to people, though, and he’s always sitting around the lobby gaping at the guests.”

“I want to see him!” Colton’s voice had a new note, dominant, compelling.

“At this hour?” stammered the manager.

“Now!”

Ames, attracted by the tone and the words, came from the bathroom.

“What is it?” he asked eagerly.

“The man who murdered Madame Gorski.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know--now.” Thornley Colton spoke the words over his shoulder, for he was following the manager out of the room. A knock at the door across the hall brought no response. Colton pushed the manager aside, and, with his horrified protest unheeded, opened the unlocked door. A snap of the fights under Ames’ fingers, and the men saw that the rooms were empty. But in the air was a strong smell of banana oil.

“The floor clerk!” demanded Colton, and the manager went meekly to get him.

Ames was everywhere, rummaging, prying with practiced fingers into every drawer, every closet. Each piece of clothing he pulled out was examined with lightning-moving fingers. He picked the lock of the big trunk, and cursed when the opened lid revealed only cloth-wrapped stones. But in the bottom was an overturned bottle that had once held gilt.

“The glove had just been gilded,” guessed the secret agent.

The floor clerk entered, visibly nervous.

“When did the German boy return here to-night?” asked Colton.

“About twelve-thirty.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Were his mother and father in the room?”

The floor clerk scratched his head. “I didn’t see them come in, but I heard them giving the kid the very devil. They raised an awful row.” He grinned at the recollection.

“Ah!” The blind man’s tone held quiet satisfaction. “And an hour or so later the boy slipped out, saying that his mother and father were asleep, and he was going downstairs to watch the people for a while.”

“Yes.” There was amazement written all over the hotel clerk’s face.

Colton turned to face Ames. “The bird has flown,” he said quietly. “He is the one who entered Madame Gorski’s rooms, put the poison in the tap and the glove at her throat. For a week the three have been waiting their opportunity. To-night all was ready. The father and mother left early in the evening, and did not return. They, or another accomplice, dropped the glove at Madame Gorski’s chair in passing, expecting her to look down and see it. The waiter probably kicked it so near her chair that she couldn’t have noticed it if the smell of the banana oil hadn’t made me find it.”

“But the clerk heard the father and mother talking?” protested Ames. “He didn’t see them go out, and,” he added, “there are several of my men around who would have stopped them instantly.”

“No one left that room but the boy!” There was no gainsaying the positiveness in the floor clerk’s tone.

The grim smile came again to Thornley Colton’s lips. “When I learned that Madame Gorski had answered her husband _ten minutes_ after he had heard the water running, and she must have taken the poison, I began to suspect the true facts. A poison that left no signs of agony must have killed quickly and painlessly. It wasn’t her voice monsieur heard at all! It was the voice of a wonderful mimic; the mimic who made the floor clerk believe that his mother and father were scolding him in this room. And who would stop a gawky German boy? You have his description. Put your men at work.” He rose. “Come, Sydney, it is time for breakfast.”

The secret agent took his hand and shook it fervently. “I can’t tell you how I thank you,” he said, and there was genuine feeling in his voice. “But I will see that Washington recognises this night’s work of yours.”

Once more the mirthless smile that had been in evidence so often that night came to his lips. “I want no recognition,” he said slowly. “I merely want to avenge the death of the most wonderful woman I ever met. There is nothing half so precious as the life of a woman, or a child.”

He bowed gravely. Silently he and Sydney walked to the elevator and into the lobby. Halfway out Thornley Colton stopped.

“I want to telephone the house, Sydney. There’s a foolish fear in my mind that I can’t throw off.” He went into the telephone-booth. When he emerged a minute later, there was a look on his face that Sydney Thames had never seen before; a look terrible in its earnestness.

“Do you believe in presentiments, Sydney?” The blind man’s voice was calm, even. He gave his secretary no chance to answer. “I have just had one come true. John found five finger-smudges of gold on the white table-cloth in the dining-room, and Shrimp has disappeared absolutely!”

III.

Thornley Colton paced the floor of his library with long, tigerish strides. His head was bowed, and over his eyes the lines of concentration had deepened in the hours of the long day. His fingers touched the face of the crystalless watch in his pocket.

“Three o’clock,” he muttered. He turned to the desk and its telephone; stretched forth a hand, withdrew it, and shook his head. Again his strides covered the length of the room; across and back, across and back.

He lifted his head eagerly--lowered it. The steps his superkeen ears had heard were only those of Sydney Thames, as he left his bedroom on the floor above.

“Any news yet, Thorn?” asked the apple-cheeked secretary as he entered. The blind man shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said quietly. He took a half-turn around the room, then suddenly wheeled to face the silent Thames. “If anything happens to that boy, Sydney, I swear to God I’ll punish those responsible!” The voice, always so calm, so unstirred by any inner feeling, now trembled with fierce passion. The blind man seemed to realise that the mask he had cultivated so carefully for years had dropped; for his tone was even as he continued: “I thought when I took him that I could give him the real life he had been denied. But I understand now that I was only bringing him to take the risks that have never caused me a second thought. I realise now the dozens of times I have sent him into places of danger, merely to satisfy my own conceit; to enable me to beat some one else on a baffling case. Now he is gone! All my vaunted powers are useless, and I’m as much at sea as the veriest tyro. A problemist? I!” His voice vibrated with scorn and self-denunciation.

“You are in no way to blame!” defended Sydney Thames instantly.

Colton turned again on his heel. “I’m as guilty as hell!” he declared vehemently. “Why do you suppose John or the other servants heard no noise? Do you think it was because the man who murdered Madame Gorski, the man who made those glove prints downstairs, overcame Shrimp so easily and so quietly? No! It was because of the training I have given the boy; training to be instantly on the alert to follow, to shadow, to discover; training that no boy should have had. Shrimp, sent brusquely to bed by me, couldn’t sleep. What boy could? But I didn’t understand. I only looked at it from my side. He probably heard the man who entered. Instead of raising an alarm as a normal person would, he probably followed him outside. Then----” His hands spread wide before him in a gesture of helplessness.

This was a side of Thornley Colton that Sydney Thames had never seen before; a new side, a human side. He understood now the deep love for the undersized, red-haired boy with the twisted nose that was in the heart of the blind man. He hadn’t understood the depths of Colton’s feelings when the blind man had gone through the house calmly when they returned to search for clues. He hadn’t suspected that there was anything but the cold, analytical love of a problem in the cool voice that had put ten thousand police in the big city on the trail of the missing boy. Nor had he understood the cool way Thornley Colton had directed Ames and his squad of underground diplomatic workers to rake the city with a fine-tooth comb for the murderer of Hedwig Gorski. No, he hadn’t understood then. Through it all Colton had been the same dominant, emotionless machine, directing, suggesting, issuing curt orders.

But the hours of inaction had done their work. For the first time in his life the problemist was completely at sea. The signs he had read so unerringly a hundred times before; signs that were usually hidden from men of eyes, were missing in this new development of the Gorski case. The man who had left the finger-prints of the gilded glove had apparently entered with a key, for there was not a scratch on a window or door. He had touched nothing but the white table-cloth, for there was not a trace of the banana oil anywhere else. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to tell a fact about the disappearance of The Fee. He was gone. That was all. And Thornley Colton could do nothing but wait. His blindness made him helpless now.

The telephone-bell rang, and Colton sprang to answer it. The eager expression died from his face as the voice of the secret agent came over the wire.

“No trace of the boy yet--Ah!--A bundle of manuscript music addressed to Madame Gorski at the post-office?--No word?--Yes, bring it up to the house. I think it will fit a theory I have been constructing for some time. Good-bye.”

He hung up the receiver wearily, and his voice was tired as he spoke to Sydney Thames. “Not a word,” he said slowly. “Ames is wholly engrossed with the search for those harbour-mine plans. That is the big thing to him. The murder of Madame Gorski and the disappearance of Shrimp are only incidents.” He resumed his pacing of the room. “It’s another case like that of the Money Machines, Sydney. Human life and happiness are pushed aside as unimportant because of a few papers and figures in lifeless ink.”

Sydney Thames silently withdrew. He knew that the man who had picked him up, as a bundle of dirty baby-clothes, on the banks of the English river that had given him the only name he ever knew, wanted to be alone. So he left him to his tireless pacing while the wonderful brain behind the high forehead figured each step in the problem; aligning motives; testing theories.

When the front-door bell announced the coming of Ames, Colton seated himself at the desk, and when the secret agent entered there was no inkling of the thoughts in the mind of the blind man.

“There’s absolutely nothing in this,” began Ames apologetically, as he laid the thick envelope on the desk. “It’s just music, poor stuff, too. Probably written by some sentimental amateur who has read of Madame Gorski and her recitals, and wants a criticism.”

“Such persons usually inclose a long letter of pleading,” remarked Colton dryly, as he took the thin sheets from the big envelope and ran his supersensitive finger-tips over the back of the paper to feel the indentations of the pen. “You have no trace of the boy, yet?” His tone was almost uninterested, and his finger-tips still brushed the back of the music sheet.

“No.” Ames shook his head. “The men are combing the city. Finding the boy means finding those harbour-mine plans, probably.”

Colton’s lips tightened. “No, it doesn’t,” he said quietly. “These are the plans of the location of every electrically-operated mine in the harbour and bay.”

“_What!_” Ames fairly shouted the word as he leaped to his feet. He jumped to the desk and picked up one of the manuscript sheets Colton had examined and laid aside. As he stared, the expression of incredulity gave way to one of bewildered puzzlement. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “There is nothing concealed here. This is straight music.”

“It would contain some horrible discords if you tried to play it, I imagine, though it was done by a man who has some knowledge of composing. But, as you said before, any one with _eyes_ would put that down as mere amateurishness. Eyes are the greatest handicap pure eliminative reasoning has. For weeks you have watched Madame Gorski. You have had men at her _musicales_, and have attended them yourself, no doubt. To you those wonderful affairs were merely a cloak the woman had assembled to hide her real purpose for being here. To me they were something else. They were part of a carefully thought-out plan. She knew that you were watching her. She knew that every person who approached her and every bit of her mail would be examined. But who would suspect a dozen sheets of music manuscript? Who but a blind man!” The faint colour of excitement was in his cheeks, the lean, cleft jaw was set. “See!” He turned over the sheet he had examined last. “Every sheet is written in five flats, yet in this page alone there are more than a dozen sharp accidentals. Three notes out of five must be played on the black keys. Every sharp and flat on every sheet denotes the placement of a blind mine! Look!” He snatched up a pencil from the desk, located the middle bar in the top staff with his finger-tip, and drew down the paper a wide, curving line, following the course of his feeling finger, to a measure in the lower right-hand corner. “Notice,” he observed quietly, “that not one of the measures the pencil has touched contains either a sharp or a flat.”

“The secret naval lane through the outer harbour,” whispered Ames, and in his voice was the awe that had been there once before.

“Yes.” Thornley Colton leaned back in his chair. “You know that the harbour is laid out in half-mile squares, subdivided by smaller squares of two-hundred-and-eighty-yard mine placements. Take the sheets numerically, and draw perpendicular parallel lines. Each one of these will represent the two-hundred-and-eighty-yard square. The measures of the treble and bass clefs placed directly under each other will make the half-mile squares. The sheets lettered A, B, C should be laid from left to right, I imagine, to give the anchorage width. I think a line following the staccato notes will give the rough shore-line necessary.” He lighted a cigarette, and his sightless eyes were apparently fixed on the ceiling, his thoughts far away.