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.”
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