Part 18

“I risked everything on my mental ability to follow the workings of the Oriental mind,” Colton said slowly. “The Caucasian mind is always content with mere killing. But the Oriental mind must have the significant! Think of the risk of staying in the Gorski rooms when they knew the poison would do its work. But to them the mere death was only part; their whole course of thought demanded that the sign be left.

“I knew it would be the same in my case. So I gave them no chance to leave the crushed glove anywhere but here; and I knew they would come. I didn’t know that they had been watching me for weeks because of my friendship with Madame Gorski, nor that they had gotten a duplicate key. But I was almost at the heels of the stranger. When he saw me I knew he would instantly think of luring me to my death. The sign had been left, and death was next. I knew, also, that he would never overlook the opportunity to mimic Shrimp’s voice, because in the years mimicry has become a mania with him. He slammed the door of the car in which he came so that I would think he had escaped. Then his playing Shrimp’s part seemed easy and logical. What was there to do but take me to the New York headquarters of the Gilded Glove? Following out their mind-processes further, I had no doubt that they would give me a chance to drink the poison, for that, too, is a peculiar kink of the Oriental mind. Hence my precaution. The rest was simple.”

“Simple!” gasped Sydney Thames, and there was sweat on his brow. “My God, Thorn, think of you, _blind_, risking yourself alone with those men.”

“My blindness was my greatest ally there,” smiled Colton faintly. “The instant darkness came they were helpless, while I was my normal self, which I couldn’t be in the burning light, but”--he touched the alcohol-soaked bandage that covered his head and eyes--“the tortures of the Inquisition were mild beside that light on my unprotected eyeballs.”

He patted the hand of the boy gently. “And it was Shrimp who led the secret agents, after all,” he said quietly. “If the taxi-driver hadn’t been one of the hundred friends he has made around the city, there might have been another story to tell. The men of the Gilded Glove weren’t far behind me.”

The door-bell rang downstairs. “Ames again,” commented Colton, a trifle wearily, and in a few minutes the government agent was ushered into the room by John, the butler.

“We got everything, Mr. Colton!” he cried. “The whole gang is cleaned up. Gorski was released from jail to-day, and is going back to Paris. Without his wife he will never bother any one. Even the Gilded Glove didn’t think him worthy of their attention. And those harbour-mine plans! A wonderful piece of work! Placed in order under an onion-skin paper map of the harbour, with the staccato-note marks at certain points on the shore line, every sharp and flat traced on the map gave, as you said, the exact locations of the mines.”

“Have you found the traitor?” asked Colton.

“Yes.” Ames’s voice was sober. “His body was found this morning in his office. The pistol he had used was beside him. A closed incident.” Then enthusiasm came to his tone once more. “What you have done on this case will never be forgotten, Mr. Colton,” he said earnestly. “It will not be made public, of course, but the secretary of state will write you a personal letter offering you any reward you may ask. The president himself will tender you a position that----”

Thornley Colton’s upraised hand stopped him. The blind man turned his sightless eyes toward the closed eyes of The Fee, and gently withdrew his fingers from the clasp of the small hand. “Hush,” he said softly. “The boy is sleeping.”

THE SEVENTH PROBLEM

THE RINGING GOBLETS

I.

His chin resting on his chest, his hands gripping the wide-spread leather arms of the chair, the man stared at the log fire--fixedly, intently; as though the ceaseless war the flames waged against the darkness held him enthralled by its hopelessness. The wind, whistling encouragement down the wide chimney, caused the fire to leap upward and drive the shadows in retreat to the farthest corner of the library. For an instant the flames crackled their triumph; then died down. The shadows rushed forward, swiftly and silently, to recover the territory they had lost. The fire sputtered its chagrin.

The man in the chair shivered, though his hands felt the warmth of the leather arms. For an instant the hopeless look went from his eyes; his chin lifted. Then the eyes resumed their staring at the flames. “I won’t!” he muttered. “I won’t! I’ll----” The thin right fist doubled; he raised it to smite the arm of the chair. In the air it unclenched and dropped lifelessly.

“There must be some way!” Hope again shone in his eyes. The flames, apparently encouraged by his spirit, again leaped to their fight with the shadows. “There is!” His voice, low, passionate, died suddenly. He jerked his head around the side of the high chair, and darted a fearful glance at a dark corner. A trembling chill shook his body, and his lips formed the silent words: “I mustn’t forget _that_ devilish thing!”

The door opened softly, and the man in the chair heard, but he did not move. The impassive-faced servant came forward with soundless footsteps.

“You wish anything, sir?” he asked humbly.

“Nothing, Paul.”

“A bit more wood on the fire, sir?”

The seated man turned his eyes back to the glowing logs that had given up their fight with the darkness, and whose flames no longer leaped their defiance, but spluttered their defeat.

“I think not,” came finally.

“Your wine, sir?”

“At eight, Paul.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll remember, sir.” The servant bowed himself back a step, then stopped. “Miss Nadine says as ’ow she ’opes you are quite fit this evenin’, sir.”

A sudden draft of cold air seemed to strike the man, for his body shook and his hands gripped tighter on the leather arms.

“Tell her I feel much better,” he lied pitifully, moistening his dry lips with his tongue.

“I will, sir.” The man bowed gravely and withdrew, closing the door quietly behind him.

Silence came again to the room, broken only by the crackle of the dying fire that gave to the haggard, deep-lined face of the man a pink glow of health that belied the hunted look in his eyes, and the lines of utter hopelessness around the mouth. For minutes he sat, immovable, swallowed in the depths of the big leather chair.

The door opened again, and the sound of it brought a new expression to his face; a curious expression of mingled joy and dread. His thin hands clenched as if the very action were intended to brace his whole body. Then his lips formed a tremulous smile as the golden-haired, pink-cheeked girl ran across the room, and flung her arms around his neck. Her lips touched his cheek; she drew back and gazed deep into his eyes for an instant before he lowered them.

“Oh, daddy-father,” she pleaded. “You _mustn’t_ worry so!” She seated herself on the chair-arm, her small hand patted his shoulder. “It will all come out right,” she whispered fondly.

“Hush!” he breathed, and she could feel his body tremble under her fingers.

“The curs!” she said passionately, lifting her head to look over the back of the high leather chair and gaze into the dark corner, as her father had done a few minutes before.

He lifted a hand and touched her lips warningly, but she shook her head away.

“It’s killing you, daddy-father!” There was a sobbing catch in her voice. “You’ve grown old, old, in the past month. Won’t you _please_ let that wonderful blind man help you? Oh, daddy-father”--both hands were on his shoulders now; her eyes bright with held-back tears, looked into his--“think of what he did for Ned--and I love you so!”

“No, no!” he choked. “I--he--please don’t make me talk.” The last was a whisper, even the girl in the arm-chair barely heard it.

“I don’t care!” she cried. “I’ll----”

From the shadowed shelf over the fire-place came the mellow chime of a clock. The girl and the man started as though some sudden electric shock had passed through them. Her hand clutched at his shoulder; a sob came from her throat. The man’s fingers picked at the leather chair-arms; his dry lips moved mechanically as he counted the eight strokes of the clock-bell. When the last note had died away the girl’s hand fell lifelessly from his shoulder; she rose to her feet.

“You are going to the opera to-night, Nadine?” he asked, trying bravely to keep the quaver from his voice.

“Yes,” she said steadily. She bent down to kiss him, her hand touched his thin white hair for a minute before she turned to go. Half-way across the room she stopped, and her little hands clenched at her sides as the door-handle turned softly; but she merely bowed bravely and hurried past the wooden-faced manservant who entered.

“Your wine, sir?”

The man rubbed his hands together, as though warming them in the glow of the logs; his face was hidden in the shadows above.

“Yes, Paul.”

From the shadow beside the fire-place the servant brought a small, round tabouret, and set it beside the big chair.

“Turn me around a bit, Paul. The light hurts my eyes.”

Obediently the servant placed the big chair so that its side was to the fire-light. The little man was completely swallowed up in its depths. Only the tip of one slippered foot showed in the ruddy crimson that came under the chair. The tabouret was in the dark at the side away from the fire.

“The usual two goblets, sir?” asked the servant, as he swung back the door of the cellaret.

“Yes, Paul, and a cigar.”

The man placed the two wine-filled goblets on the small table, and a few drops of the wine spilled as it swayed a trifle on its uneven legs.

“Table seems a trifle wabbly, sir. Shall I put something under the legs to steady it?”

The seated man merely shook his head and stretched forth a hand to lift one of the goblets to his lips. Slowly he sipped it while the servant stood patiently by with the box of cigars. In the flare of the match, held to light the cigar he had selected, the servant’s eyes, invisible in the shadows above, studied every line of the haggard face. But there was no commiseration in the studying--only satisfaction and triumph.

“That is all; I won’t need you again to-night, Paul.”

“Very well, sir.” The servant bowed and withdrew.

For several minutes the smoke from the unmoving cigar spiraled in the darkness. Then the seated man turned in the big chair, and the ashes dropped to his knee unheeded as he shuddered. His two hands on the small tabouret moved it an inch toward him. He shook his head, and moved it half an inch to the right. The wine in the full glass was spilling, and he poured half of it into the other goblet. Apparently the uneven legs that caused the tabouret to teeter back and forth bothered him, for he spent several minutes setting it to his satisfaction. Then he carefully placed the two goblets in the exact centre, so that the rims touched, and leaned back in the big leather chair.

One hand showed on the arm-chair nearest the fire; the other was in the shadow. Suddenly the two glasses clicked together with a musical, ringing sound, as though his hand had nervously fallen on the table and caused it to sway. Then his shaking fingers on the tabouret-edge caused a musical soothing jingle of the egg-shell rims. The sound seemed to please him, for the clink-click-tap-tap-clink kept up for minutes.

“I won’t!” he cried suddenly, vehemently. His trembling fingers made the wine dance in the ringing goblets.

The hand holding the cigar rested on the chair-arm, the fingers clenched so that the wrapper almost crackled under their pressure.

“No, no! Nadine----” The moaning voice died; he bent forward in his chair. The slipper that showed in the light under the chair lifted, then dropped back to its original position. The cigar smoke curled upward from the chair-arm, an iridescent ribbon in the feeble glow of the darkness-defeated logs.

Clink! Clink-clink! Tap! Tap-tap! came the ring of the goblets on the tabouret. The clock on the mantel ticked off minute after minute.

Softly, silently the door opened--an inch, two inches. From the darkness of the hall outside two eyes stared into the darkness of the room.

The streamer of smoke rose steadily; the glasses still sang their song of nervousness. Suddenly the door opened a full half. The owner of the watching eyes had smelled burning leather. The servant stepped into the room, stumbled over a big chair near the door, and swore softly.

“Do you wish anythink, sir?” It was the respectful voice of the servant.

The smoke still ascended unwaveringly; the music of the goblets did not cease. But no answer came from the big chair.

The servant approached the chair on tiptoe. A sound made him turn toward the door. It was swinging open. He walked to it, and stopped it before it struck the heavy bookcase, and closed it noiselessly.

“Do you wish anythink, sir?” he whispered again.

The slipper still showed in the ribbon of light. The glasses were still ringing. The cigar still burned. The man sniffed again, then reached the side of the chair in a single bound.

A curse escaped him; a deep curse of bafflement, rage.

_The chair was empty!_

On the arm the cigar was burning the leather. The empty slipper was just where the foot had been. The wine still moved in the now-silent glasses. But the man he had left a few minutes before, the man whose nervous fingers had caused the glasses to ring but a second before, had vanished!

Two steps took the servant across the room. A snap, and the incandescents sprang to light. The big chair by the door, a counterpart of the one at the fire-place, was unmoved. Everything in the room was as he had left it. But the man was gone.

“Damn him!” muttered the fellow who had been a servant. But he wasn’t a servant now. His shoulders were hunched aggressively. The wooden look had gone. In its place was tenseness, animal strength; the muscles played back and forth under the tightly-drawn skin of the cheek-bones.

“He’s gone, chief!” he said, and his voice was low. “How the devil he did it is more than I can figure.” He ran to the fire-place and knelt on the hearth, his sharp eyes studying every inch. And as he leaned over the fire he talked: “I watched the door every minute. His infernal nervousness gave me the willies. I heard the glasses clink till I got to the chair, chief--to the _chair_!”

He ran to the high window, and searched every inch of the sill and curtains, still speaking in that level, even tone: “Get the boys out and cover the house! Spread ’em around the block! He can’t have been gone more than ten minutes. There’s not a damn’ crack in the wall. I know that!”

His fingers were running over the bookcases, his eyes seeming to bore into their very depths as he went on: “The girl’s all ready for the opera----” His keen ears heard footsteps, and his voice changed to an agonised wail as the girl entered: “’E’s gone, Miss Nadine, ’e’s gone!”

“Gone!” she cried, staggering against the chair near the door. “Gone!” she repeated, and her voice was scarcely a whisper.

“I smelled ’is cigar burning the leather. I thought as ’ow ’e was asleep.”

She forced her limbs to support her weight across the floor. She looked down into the chair where the untouched cigar still burned. The opera cloak slipped from her shoulders unheeded as she touched the tabouret-edge with her fingers for an instant. The glasses clinked mockingly.

“Gone!” she said again. “He has gone to them--at last!”

She swayed, fell, sending the tabouret and glasses crashing to the floor. The servant leaned over her for an instant; then ran to the corner of the room.

“Hear that, chief!” he whispered tensely. “Get it? Rip out the wires when I cut ’em. There’ll be merry hell around here in a little while!”

A gleam of nickel showed in his hand as he thrust it behind a high bookcase. Came two sharp clicks, and as he turned toward the girl he put into his pocket a round, black disc. It was a dictograph.

II.

For two hours Nadine Nelson had sat, white-faced but steady-voiced, as the three men questioned, cajoled, badgered, and threatened. At her right, his chair within a foot of that in which she sat, was the man who had posed as a servant. At her left was another, just as keen-eyed and alert. Before her sat a heavy-chinned, broad-shouldered man whose fingers crackled the typewritten sheets as he jerked out his questions. The girl’s eyes met his fairly, unwaveringly. Yet she knew he was Chief Whittson, of the United States secret service.

“You know that, for months, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been passed through the agency of your father’s bank?” he snapped.

“I know nothing,” she said unemotionally.

“Then why did you say----” He referred to the typewritten sheets: “‘It will all come out right?’”

“Because it will,” she replied steadily.

The men at her sides snorted impatiently.

“Did you know that your father was the head of the best-organised counterfeiting gang in the country?” jerked out the secret-service chief.

Her eyes did not flinch for an instant. “I knew nothing.”

“Where is your father, Miss Nelson?”

“I do not know.”

“Then why did you say”--his forefinger punched the typewritten page viciously, and in his voice was snarled impatience--“‘he has gone to them at last.’ Who did you mean?”

“I know nothing,” came the unvarying answer she had given a hundred times before.

“Why didn’t you call in the police when you knew that your father had disappeared?”

For the first time a shade of expression came to the girl’s face; her lips curved in contempt. “Because I knew that the police could do no more than the secret-service men of the United States.” There was more than a tinge of contempt in her voice.

Chief Whittson straightened back in his chair. “Did you know that your servant was not what he pretended to be?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she said defiantly. “We knew from the first that he was a spy.”

The former servant leaped to his feet, face red with rage. “So that’s why you took it so cool, eh? That’s why you didn’t raise the fuss I expected?” he flared. “And you went to your own room and locked the door to cry. And I was _sorry_ for you. Me! A wise guy! Some--clever--actress!”

She shrank back before the lashing sneer in the words.

“Then you knew of the dictograph?” demanded the chief, instantly alert to take advantage of the first signs of break-down.

“Yes,” she whispered tremulously. “We knew, and we----” she stopped, her breath catching suddenly.

“‘We,’” repeated the chief sharply. “What? What?”

Her lips quivered piteously. The nerve that had forced her frail woman’s body to bear the rack for hours was breaking.

“What did you do? Tell me!” he commanded viciously.

“Don’t you think you’ve gone quite far enough on that line?” The quiet, even voice of the man in the door-way caused the two men at the girl’s side to leap to their feet, and the chief to jerk his body erect. “If I were you, Miss Nelson,” the man in the door-way spoke to the girl, and his voice was gentle, “I would answer only courteous questions.”

His white face, with its lean, cleft chin, and thin, firm lips, lighted in a wonderful smile of encouragement; the hand that was not holding the slim stick brushed back from his high forehead the hair whose whiteness was accentuated by the great blue circles of the tortoise-rimmed library glasses.

“Who are you?” demanded the chief, but there was no bluster in his tone. The manner he had assumed for the girl had dropped like a mask. He was the calm, alert detective once more, and his keen judgment told him instantly that the new comer was not the type to bluff.

Before the man at the door-way could answer, a youth rushed past him to the girl’s side.

“I found him, Nadine,” he cried joyously. “Here’s Mr. Colton. He’ll find uncle.”

“Thank God!” breathed the girl, and her body relaxed.

Thornley Colton turned his head to speak over his shoulder. “A glass of water, Sydney. Quickly!”

“So you’re Thornley Colton, eh?” The secret-service chief eyed him sharply. “I understand you’ve done some rather remarkable work--for a blind man.”

Colton smiled, then stepped aside as his black-haired, apple-cheeked secretary came in with a glass of water. The girl’s eyes fluttered open, and the blind man realised that she needed time to regain her scattered senses.

“You have the average person’s idea of the blind, chief,” he said. “And the average person gets _his_ notion from the blind beggar on the street-corners who hobbles along led by a small boy and a dog, and taps every inch of the side-walk with a heavy cane. Very few realise that is mostly for effect. Fewer still know that in New York there are nearly two hundred sightless men and women who go to business every day without help or guidance. Some of the highest-paid private secretaries and stenographers in the country are blind. Several of the blind proof-readers are famous. And for many years the court of last resort in the dead-letter office at Washington was a blind man. He was the most expert ever employed by the government, and could read with his supersensitive finger-tips addresses that had passed through the hands of the keenest-eyed readers of illegible writing in the world. So you see, the blind are not so helpless as one might imagine. Ah, Miss Nelson, do you feel better?”

“Yes.” She looked up at him with a curious expression in her eyes. It was the look of a child who has sought a protector only to be a little frightened at the result. But she smiled bravely. “You did such a wonderful thing for Ned”--she rested her hand fondly on her cousin’s arm--“when he was arrested for the murder of the girl in the theatre, and I thought----” Again came the look that was almost fear.

“I will do my best,” promised the blind man. “Do you mind my hearing the story from Chief Whittson--his side of it?”

“No,” she said, with only a bit of nervousness in her voice.

Whittson smiled quizzically. This blind man might be interesting. On his face and the faces of his men there was no doubt of the outcome. They were government men, trained, efficient; the interloper was an amateur--and blind.

“We know that Dryden F. Nelson was the biggest passer of counterfeit money in the country!” began the chief. “He is the cleverest of them all. Who would suspect the bank of a man like Nelson as a clearing house for the cleverest counterfeits ever made? The scheme was wonderful, the only organised gang in the country who could pass ‘queer’ at its face value was that of this girl’s father. How long it’s been going on we don’t know. The bills have the ‘feel,’ something no other counterfeiter has ever been able to get. It was only within the past six months we traced the bills to their source. And that was Nelson’s bank! For six months we have tried to locate the plant, and failed. For the past three weeks my man here has been in the house, and there has been a dictograph in the library.”

“And you discovered nothing?”

“Nothing except to make morally certain his guilt. And he knew we were closing in. He was frightened stiff! Now we find out that the girl, here, was wise. She’s fooled us right along. We never suspected that she was one of the gang.”

The girl cowered in her chair. “I’m not,” she faltered. “It isn’t true.”

“Now Nelson’s slipped through our fingers,” went on the chief relentlessly. “Just when we had him worked up to a confession. He got out of that room in some devilish way.”

“I’ve got the facts of his disappearance,” put in Colton.

“So have we!” snapped the chief. “Within ten minutes of the time he went, every inch of this block was covered, and to-day ten thousand police and two hundred secret-service men are scouring the city for him. He can’t get out of it, and he can’t stay in it--long.”

“Why didn’t you arrest him before if you were so certain of his guilt?”