Part 6

Sydney Thames paced the library floor impatiently. Where was Thornley Colton? For three hours he had asked himself that question. The blind problemist had spent fully half an hour in the closed telephone booth at the drug-store after he had purchased two morphia powders and half a dozen strong rubber bands. Then, when Michael had driven them home, Sydney had been curtly ordered from the machine, and the eager-eyed Shrimp had taken his place as guide.

As he walked he tried to piece together the events of the day; to discover some loose end in the snarl of circumstances. But his mind refused to find logic in the tangle of statements, of events that apparently led nowhere. Donald Wreye was a villain. He had driven his wife to suicide after squandering her fortune. That was certain. But what part had he in the life of Dorothy Raelton? Why had Jimmy Raelton secretly sent him ten thousand dollars after openly refusing it? Why had Raelton pretended such bitterness against his brother-in-law that morning? Why had Colton made the astounding statement that Dorothy Raelton had never smoked opium, and then sought a physician’s advice for a possible cure? Why had the blind man remarked the similarity of Donald Wreye’s voice to that of Doctor Henry? These, and a hundred more, raced back and forth through his brain like a flying shuttle. He took out his watch for the fiftieth time; then turned eagerly as the blind man hurried into the room.

With a sigh of weariness Thornley Colton dropped into a chair and lighted a cigarette; when he spoke there was weariness in his voice.

“A strange case, Sydney,” he said slowly, as though he had accepted this first quiet opportunity for retrospection. “The strangest I have ever known. A crime so damnably ingenious that even I--who have made a study of crime and criminals for years--did not recognize it. A crime so infernally clever that even the victim refuses to believe that it is a crime. A criminal who could confess this minute, and be laughed to scorn by any jury in the land. It is a crime unique in the annals of crime.”

He took a telegram from his pocket. “Here is the answer to a query I sent regarding the lock-box in Philadelphia.”

Sydney took it and read:

“Lock-box 117 one of six rented to Philadelphia Insurance Co. for past five years.”

“That means an accomplice there!” ejaculated Sydney.

“It proves my former statement that the blackmailer never allowed the money to get to that box. And there could be only one method of interception in this case. It was never mailed!”

“But Mrs. Raelton said----” began Sydney dazedly.

“She also said she was an opium fiend,” interrupted Colton brusquely. Again his hand went to his pocket; on his palm as he extended it were two white, folded papers. “These are the powders Shrimp brought. The papers have been changed by me, but these powders have been used to mask the weapon of a fiend. Get me a glass of water.”

Mechanically Sydney obeyed. He returned in a moment with the water and a question.

“But Mrs. Raelton declared that Doctor Grayton had given her those powders?” he objected.

“Yes.” Thornley Colton carefully unfolded one. “And Doctor Grayton has been dead two years.” He held the paper, opened, between his thumb and forefinger. “These powders were used to cause the suicide of Marjorie Wreye and make Dorothy Raelton, to all intents and purposes, an opium fiend!” He raised the powder to his lips, dropped it on his tongue. Sydney could not repress a gasp of horror. The blind man took a sip of the water, and stood up, fingers feeling the crystalless watch in his pocket. “It is seven o’clock, Sydney, time we were starting for the Raelton home. The machine is waiting.”

Thames licked his dry lips. “My God, Thorn!” he choked. “It isn’t--poison?”

“No.” The blind man’s smile held no humour. “These powders are perfectly harmless. Doctor Grayton was a careful practitioner, and his prescriptions have helped my headaches before.”

“But what--how----” gulped Sydney, amazed into incoherence by this new convolution.

“I’ll tell you later,” promised Thornley Colton. “I can’t now. There is too much at stake to spoil with premature explanations.”

He took his hat and coat from the tree, and hurried down the stairs, Sydney following. In the automobile the blind man lay back in the deep seat, only rousing when the machine came to a stop before the Raelton home. The awning canopy was gone now; there was no waiting crowd. Another machine came to a stop behind them; where it had come from Sydney did not know. Then came a feminine greeting; the blind man lifted his hat, and hurried to the other car unerringly.

“How are you, Mrs. Neilton, and you, Mrs. Bracken, also your husbands?” The assumed cheeriness in the voice seemed perfect to the listening Sydney Thames. As the blind man assisted the women to alight, Thames was surprised to note that they were all strangers to him. As Colton’s constant companion and guide he knew most of the blind man’s friends, though his memory of faces was not to be compared with the blind problemist’s wonderful memory of voices.

Sydney was introduced to the men and women as Thornley Colton’s secretary; they were presented to him as friends of the Jimmy Raeltons, who had come to see them on the eve of the departure for the South Pacific.

Together they mounted the steps. Thornley Colton rang the bell. And the door was opened by the red-haired Shrimp!

“The servants is all gone,” explained the boy, as he closed the door after them. “All but Mrs. Raelton’s maid. Mr. Raelton’s in the Moorish room.”

But at the first sound of their voices Jimmy Raelton had hurried out to meet them; his face was still haggard, and in the eyes was a piteous expression of pleading.

“Where is Mrs. Raelton?” asked Thornley Colton quietly.

“She is lying down. I’ll call her.” Raelton had not even nodded to the two men and the women who were quietly watching.

“Wait!” Thornley Colton grasped his arm. Some one was coming up the steps outside. The door-bell rang. Shrimp opened it, and into the hall stumbled Donald Wreye! His bloodshot eyes blinked in the bright light as he glared at them, his hands twitched at his sides. He hunched his great shoulders, and clenched his fists to get a grip on himself.

“Where’s----” he began, in the deep, hoarse voice so like that of the physician.

From above them came a frightened scream--a woman’s scream.

“Mr. Raelton! Mr. Raelton!” It was the maid.

He bounded toward the stairs, the others at his heels. At the top was the maid, weeping and wringing her hands.

“She told me to get myself something to eat, and I wasn’t downstairs twenty minutes,” she cried hysterically. “And I found her----”

Jimmy Raelton dashed past her. Sydney felt Colton brush past him, and realized that somehow he had gotten behind the others when they started.

At the door of the room where they had stopped the night before they halted again. The door was not even closed this time, and once more their eyes took in the same scene. But the electrics were out now, only the flickering rays of the sweet-oil lamp shone on the sleeping woman and the opium-pipe at her side.

“My God! Again!” The words came in sobs from Jimmy Raelton.

He tried to leap forward, but the outstretched hand of Thornley Colton stopped him. Then the others saw the blind man dart across the room to the bed without a false move; saw him pick up a white, dangling arm, brush his fingers up the whole length of it, under the flowing sleeve of the loose kimono, then stop at the wrist. They were all around him now. He straightened up to face them.

“It’s something more, this time,” he said huskily. “Mrs. Raelton is dead!”

“Dead!” the terror-stricken word came from the maid. The others seemed suddenly turned to stone.

Silently Colton held the arm for her to feel the pulse. Her fingers found the artery, her face went dead white. They could hear the fluttering gasp of her breath as she dropped the arm.

Raelton brushed past her; his trembling fingers searched for a single faint heart-beat. A cry of agony burst from him. Colton gently drew him away.

“Phone Doctor Henry, Dora!” he ordered sharply. Then he seemed to sense that the maid was staring at Donald Wreye, who stood in the centre of the room, swaying back and forth, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“_You_, Wreye!”

The blind man’s voice seemed to galvanize Donald Wreye into action. He whipped a revolver from his pocket.

“Like Marjorie, eh?” His laugh seemed insane. “Get out of here, all of you!”

He stood beside the door-way, the revolver threateningly sweeping the silent men and women. Jimmy Raelton tensed his body for a spring, but Thornley Colton’s hand viced his arm.

“We can do nothing,” he whispered.

Like sheep they filed past the menacing pistol, the two men and women who had met them outside going first. In the hall-way they stopped.

“Straight ahead!” ordered Wreye. He spoke over his shoulder to the maid. “Call Doctor Henry,” he sneered. “Go downstairs and call him.”

The girl’s limbs seemed hardly able to support her as she walked past him to the head of the stairs. He turned his attention again to the driven men and women. Sydney’s eyes caught a glimpse of a portiered door-way at their left, but Colton’s grip on his arm held him. Down the hall they went. A door was open at the extreme end, the key in the outside of the lock.

“In there, all of you!” ordered Wreye.

The women stumbled in. The men followed. The door slammed behind them. The key turned. Outside they heard running footsteps.

“He’s gone down the backstairs,” muttered one of the men.

The dot of light at the keyhole disappeared.

“He’s put out the lights,” hoarsely whispered the other.

Thornley Colton took something from his pocket. He inserted it in the keyhole; they heard the bolt slip back.

“He’ll return,” he whispered. “You four stay here and kick at the door. The darkness means nothing to me. I’m going to take Sydney and Raelton outside to watch. Give us a minute, and then begin your noise.”

He opened the door without a sound. His hands on the two men’s arms drew them out. The blackness of the unlighted hall was impenetrable, but the blind man pulled them forward almost on a run. Sydney’s feet mechanically obeyed the pulling arm; Raelton, still in a daze, was merely an automaton obeying the will of a master. The blind man thrust them through the portieres Sydney had noticed before.

“Not a sound!” he warned, as he dragged them down to the floor, his fingers biting deep into their arms.

The house echoed with the blows of feet and fists on the door of the room they had just left. A door slammed downstairs. They heard the voice of The Fee, shrill with fright.

“Dere all locked in back!”

Hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs. They heard a woman’s voice whisper; a man’s deep, hoarse voice in answer. Sydney’s muscles grew tense. It was the heavy voice of Donald Wreye!

“She’s dead, I tell you!” trembled the maid. They were passing the door now.

The man’s answering whisper sounded like the growling of an animal. “You little fool!” he hissed. “You let the other get away from us, and this one was worth a million----”

The words ended in a woman’s scream. They heard the sound of a falling body. A man’s curse. A short struggle. Then the dull impact of fist against flesh. Thornley Colton’s gripping hands relaxed. He jumped through the sheltering portieres. His voice cut the darkness:

“Stop, Wreye, stop! Doctor Henry is unconscious! Shrimp!”

The incandescents leaped to light.

On the floor was the maid, senseless. Near her was Doctor Henry, limp, torn, his face bruised and beaten. Standing over him was Donald Wreye, panting, trembling.

The two men who had stayed in the locked room came running forward, shining handcuffs in their hands.

“Handcuff Mrs. Henry,” ordered Colton. “She has only fainted.” He turned to face the still-dazed Jimmy Raelton and Sydney. “There is the atavistic vampire!” He touched the limp body of the physician as though it was a snake. “God knows how many lives he has ruined with his devilish schemes. He blackmailed Marjorie Wreye out of a hundred thousand dollars, and murdered her as surely as though his finger had pulled the trigger that sent the bullet crashing into her brain. He made Donald Wreye a pariah. And he almost succeeded in ruining the lives of you and Dorothy.”

The name aroused Jimmy Raelton.

“Dorothy!” he cried brokenly. “He killed Dorothy!”

The blind man’s hand fell gently on his shoulder. “It was necessary that she should sleep through it all,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think she could stand another dose of the doctor’s morphia, so the powder she took was trional powder. She will wake in an hour, suffering no ill effects. If you’ll remove the tight rubber band I put on her arm under the kimono sleeve the blood will flow back through the pulse.”

VI.

Sydney and Thornley Colton were back in the library of the old-fashioned house. The blind man had removed the tortoise-rimmed glasses, and around his head and over his eyes was an alcohol-soaked bandage to relieve the splitting headache the loss of his usual four hours of darkness in the afternoon had produced.

“Yes, it was melodrama, Sydney,” he admitted. “But it was necessary. It was carefully staged to shatter the nerves of the cool Dora, and arouse the doctor’s anger at what he thought was a mistake of his accomplice. That last resulted in the angry confession we overheard. I knew his temper would give way under certain conditions, and I made those conditions. Shrimp was stationed downstairs to let him in at the proper moment, and also to keep the maid and the doctor from confidences until they were upstairs, where they could hear the door-pounding, and would suppose we were all together. Of course, the quartet of men and women were private detectives posing as guests to deceive the maid. They were stationed around the corner with orders to follow right behind us. Wreye was across the street from the Raelton house, so that he could run over and ring the bell a moment after we entered.”

“But how did Doctor Henry happen to be there?” demanded the puzzled Sydney.

“Shrimp, mimicking the maid’s voice, called him up the minute our machine appeared, and told him that Mrs. Raelton was dead. He rang off before the doctor could get in a word. But that gave Henry all the time he needed to get there. Shrimp says the physician fumed and fretted in the vestibule fully three minutes before the boy heard the door-pounding that was the signal to admit him.”

“But I thought Donald Wreye----” began Sydney helplessly.

“It was Doctor Henry and the maid from the first. Pure elimination and the headache powders told me that.”

“But you said the powders were harmless, that Doctor Grayton was careful,” objected Sydney.

“Their harmlessness was the crux. It put them above suspicion, but when it became necessary to impress Dorothy Raelton with the fact that she was a hopeless opium fiend the powder the maid gave her was a heavy dose of morphia, which is the base of opium, and produces almost the same after-effects. Of course, as soon as Dorothy became unconscious the outfit was arranged for her awakening. Dorothy’s highly-strung nervous system, like that of her sister, made it easy for a strong mind like that of the maid to make her know--_know_--that she had smoked the drug in a blind delirium of craving. And the wonderful suggestive stories of the maid, and the fake finger-marks on her throat, made the thing complete. I understood them all when I heard of the blackmail, but it was necessary to impress the Raeltons with Dora’s innocence so that she would be unsuspicious until the time came for the dénouement.

“The ten thousand I knew Wreye must have got puzzled me at first, though it didn’t seem possible that he could be in the plot. The interview in the morning proved his utter incapability of such a thing. The game required a cool, iron-nerved man. His actions during our talk proved conclusively that he was neither. Five minutes’ conversation with Doctor Henry gave me all I wanted to know. His coolness, his nerve, the fact that he had called at the Raelton home several times when Mrs. Raelton was out, ostensibly to see the children, but really to see the maid, the clever way he blamed Wreye for Marjorie’s suicide, his eager desire to know at what time the Raeltons sailed in the morning, the manner in which he took the paper he knew should contain the personal, were all guide-posts on the right track. His beautifully clever explanation why the opium craving I described could not be alleviated was intended to show me my helplessness. But it gave me what I wanted. Pretending to stumble, I got his hand in mine; my finger was on his pulse--the Keyboard of Silence. He knew I was going to tell him of Dorothy! Though his face was a mask, his heart-beats showed the nervousness underneath; the nervousness no eye could have detected. That was the final proof.

“Then I realized his real cleverness. _He_ had sent the money to Wreye with a forged note, apparently from Raelton. The maid had undoubtedly told him of Wreye’s need and attempt to borrow from his brother-in-law, and the doctor was afraid that Wreye, in a hot-headed rage at continued refusals, would blurt out Marjorie’s trouble, and cause a premature confession from Dorothy before the blackmailer had gotten her firmly in his clutches. Henry was overlooking no possibility, and the ten thousand was a paltry amount, beside what he expected to get. Of course, you see how he really got the money into his hands? The envelopes containing the bills, given to a trusted maid to mail to the fake lock-box, were merely handed over to the real vampire. There was no chance of detection.

“This afternoon Shrimp and I went to Wreye’s office and explained the whole game to him. He refused to believe, at first, because Marjorie had confessed five months before her death that she was an opium fiend. Wreye was more of a man than we ever thought. He hid the fact from the world. He let her go her own way. He didn’t suspect the blackmailing, because Marjorie probably feared to tell him, lest his temper should lead him to expose the secret in his efforts to seek out the blackmailer. And when she died, penniless, he supposed she had lost her money gambling, the usual passion that follows opium smoking. He kept quiet, but naturally he was bitter against the whole world.

“But I finally persuaded him to do his part in trapping the vampire. Remember the similarity of the two voices? That was my trump card. I knew that my story of the Raeltons’ early departure and the curt advertisement would rouse the doctor to drastic action, and force him to call up Dora, and give new instructions. That was what I wanted--it would make her unsuspicious when the second call I planned came. It worked like a charm. She never suspected the voice. It was then, by the way, that we learned Dora was really Mrs. Henry, and that she was getting tired of her part. We learned, also, that Mrs. Raelton was to be given an extra heavy dose of morphia, so that it would be impossible for her to get away in the morning. Doctor Henry needed time, you see.

“Wreye, impersonating the doctor over the phone, gave her new instructions. The same plan was to be followed, but the doctor would send her two new powders--they were my trional powders; I wouldn’t take a chance on morphia again--and she was to arrange the opium set as usual, and scream for Jimmy as soon as Donald Wreye arrived. Then, if anything went wrong, she was to foist suspicion upon Wreye, who, she was told, was on the verge of delirium tremens, and would be sent by the doctor on some pretext.

“Donald, as you saw, could hardly control himself, but that made him perfect in her eyes, though I had to stay behind a second after you started upstairs to warn him, and I also had to give him his cue in the room before he acted. My little trick with the rubber band utterly unnerved the maid, who supposed that her husband had really sent poison. So, when the doctor got there, they were at cross-purposes, and the angry betrayal we heard was the logical result.”

For a minute there was silence; then Sydney Thames spoke. “But Wreye, why did you let him----” There was no need to finish.

“It was pure brutishness, Sydney,” confessed Thornley Colton slowly. “The brutishness that makes us think of physical revenge before we think of the law. There are crimes so foul that we want to pound, to tear their perpetrators. The driving to death of one innocent girl and the nearly successful attempt to make a mental wreck of Dorothy Raelton, who had never known the taste of opium smoke in her life, is one of them. My fingers itched for Doctor Henry’s throat. But Donald Wreye’s right came first. He took it. I am glad.”

THE THIRD PROBLEM

THE MONEY MACHINES

I.

The man in the long blue car was a person of consequence. The big traffic policeman had stopped all north and south traffic, but the chauffeur of the blue machine darted in front of a stopped Bowling Green car without the slightest slackening of speed, and shot between an eastbound slot car and a westbound delivery truck. Traffic cop 7389 saluted gravely and silenced with a warning scowl the snarling driver of a held-up van, who had to reach the ten-thirty boat.

The lone occupant of the roomy tonneau, rigidly straight on the cushions, answered the salute with a barely perceptible nod of his head, and a half smile of the thin, almost bloodless lips. But there was no change of expression in the granite-hard gray eyes, nor a movement of the straight back. One lean hand gripped the tonneau door, the fingers resting just above the small silvered monogram on the blue enamel; the other dropped lightly on the seat beside his knee. John T. Villers, the power behind the throne of Money, was on his way to his office.

It was characteristic of the man that he did not lounge back in his seat; that his pose was one of tense rigidity. No one had ever seen John T. Villers relax; none of the hundreds who knew him thought that he could relax. Alert, watchful, a machine for the massing of millions; a machine that never required rest; that never needed the lubrication of pleasure to insure its smooth running; a human mechanism that never deviated a hair’s breadth from its schedule. Such was the king of the kings of finance.

At ten-fifteen he would be at his office in Wall Street. Elsewhere, a monarch of half a million fighting men paced the floor of his castle room, impatiently awaiting the word that a simple touch of a desk button in that Wall Street office would bring. Ten thousand yellow coolies, half a world away, idled in bamboo-thatched construction huts for a stroke of John T. Villers’s pen. And he answered the salute of a traffic policeman!

Men and women on Broadway halted in their hurrying to stare at the big blue car, and the silent, straight-backed occupant; for the face and the pose of the financier were as familiar to the reading public as Broadway itself. Weak-chinned men of the unemployed ranks cursed the “luck” that gave him money and them hunger. Clerks, from high office windows, bemoaned the fate that compelled them to commence work at eight and allowed him to begin at ten. There was no sign in the hard gray eyes of the man who answered the traffic men’s salutes that the money machine had been working until daylight over the inch-thick packet of papers now buttoned tightly beneath his coat. The machine never showed signs of its running.