“I think I can answer the ‘when’ part of that question,” put in Thornley
Colton, as he appeared at the doorway. “I apologise to the man here for
the things I said upstairs. But even I didn’t give the master
counterfeiter credit for such diabolical ingenuity as this. The fake
servants left the minute you entered Nelson’s house to question the
girl. And the man that went with them as the Frenchman was Dryden F.
Nelson. That’s the only way he could go!”
The Frenchman stirred, and tried to lift his head. “Zat is right,” he
gasped chokingly. “He----” His eyes closed.
“Get an ambulance, Jim!” ordered the chief. “This man’s in bad shape.
Get the boys from outside! Put two on the trail of the carriage. Nelson
and his gang won’t get far. Bring the others in to search the house!”
The man darted out, and the chief picked the invalid up in his strong
arms and carried him gently to a couch in the dining-room.
The Frenchman moaned, and a shudder shook his body. “Don’t make ze bear
hurt me!” he cried weakly. “Don’t knock ze glasses togezzer and make him
mad-crazee.” He lapsed back into unconsciousness.
The chief looked at Colton significantly, but the blind man only nodded.
“But how did old man Nelson ever get a chance to get in here?” puzzled
the chief.
“He didn’t!” Colton’s voice was sharp. “The man who posed as the doctor
is the ringleader.” There came a ring of menace in his tone. “I’ll find
him! I know him!”
“You know him?” The chief did not even nod to the three men who entered
the room and stood respectfully by for orders.
“Yes! He’s tanned a dark brown, an expert telegrapher, thirty-five years
old, a man who likes to pet and fondle a bear, and his first name is
Joe. There are a few other details I’ll give you when the proper time
comes.”
“Great Scott!” Amazement, incredulity were in the chief’s voice. He
turned to one of his men. “Was the doctor here last night, Tom?” he
asked.
“We saw him coming out a minute before we got the alarm from you, chief.
Said good evening, and told us it was only a matter of days for the old
guy here.”
“Eyes attach no significance to things they have seen a dozen times
before,” Colton observed.
The chief turned to him again. “Where did you get those facts?” he
demanded, with the brusqueness of chagrin in his voice.
“The Brazilian tobacco and pectoral papers told me he had spent years in
South America. Naturally he’d be tanned a dark brown. The fact that he
must be an expert telegrapher is obvious. I know that he is thirty-five
years old because I know that he is fifteen years older than Nadine
Nelson. How I knew that you’ll know later. This told me his name--and
another fact.” The blind man held out a charred fragment of paper
scarcely two inches square, a deep brown in colour from heat and smoke.
“The fact that the man you want takes pleasure in fondling and handling
a bear my keen sense of smell told me. The bear-fur odour is
unmistakable and clings to a thing for hours. It was on the handkerchief
in the kitchen, and in the corner of the linen was the initial J!”
“It’s impossible to decipher a word of this!” protested the chief,
looking up from the charred fragment of paper.
“With eyes--yes. But my finger-tips found the tracery of that name, even
though the ink had entirely disappeared! The pen-ridges remain, and
would remain until the paper was consumed.” He changed the subject
suddenly. “There comes the ambulance. I want to go up and see the girl
again.”
“I’ll go with you.” Chief Whittson’s tone was curiously humble. He
turned to give curt orders to the men, and followed the blind man out of
the room.
Despite the minutes that had passed, Nadine Nelson was just where they
had left her. The secret-service guard sat easily on a gilt chair.
Sydney Thames and the girl’s cousin were alternately pleading with her
to sit down. As the chief and Thornley Colton stepped into the room her
teeth gripped her lower lip, and her hands clenched tighter at her
sides.
“Who is the man who has been coming into this room every night to send
those messages?” Thornley Colton’s voice was hard, stern.
The face of the girl went white at the cruelty of it. Sydney Thames took
a half step forward, and a gesture of the blind man stopped him.
“Who is he?” snapped the blind man again.
She raised her head to look straight into his sightless eyes.
“My husband!” she answered defiantly.
“That isn’t true!” The words came like the lash of a whip.
“Thorn!” In Sydney Thames’s voice was agony that the man he loved could
say such a thing to a woman.
“And you were the man I thought could help me!” Scorn, bitterness,
self-accusation were in the vibrant voice of the girl. “You’re worse
than those curs who listened to every word! You’ve _killed_ my father!
If I were a man I’d kill _you_--even though you are blind!”
The last words came through her clenched, white teeth, and she advanced
half a step, so that her hot breath reached the face of the blind man.
But he only idly twirled his slim cane and looked down at her with a
tolerant, amused grin that was maddening.
“You’ll talk!” he promised curtly. “She’ll talk in jail, chief!”
“I wouldn’t talk if you tore me to little pieces!” she cried vehemently.
Colton did not answer; he nodded curtly to the chief, and with a “Come,
Sydney!” he hurried from the room, and from the girl who stared straight
ahead of her with dull, fixed eyes.
Sydney Thames followed him down the stairs silently. In the lower hall
he spoke. “God, Thorn, that was barbarous! It almost made me forget----”
“Find the telephone and get me the number of the United Fruit Company,”
ordered the blind man sharply.
Without a word Thames found the ’phone in an alcove of the hall, and
gave the number to Colton.
“What boat sails for South America to-day?” asked the problemist when
the connection had been established. “The _Carracas_? Is there a bear
consigned on that boat? Hasn’t arrived yet? The sailing’s at five? Thank
you!”
As he hung up the receiver the angry boy’s tone of Nadine Nelson’s
cousin came to them indistinctly. Sydney Thames jumped as though a pin
had jabbed him. When he spoke to the blind man there was a look on his
face that had never been on it before.
“Thorn,” he said, and there was a break in his voice, “you’ve been the
only father I ever knew, but I _won’t_ leave that girl to the mercy of
those police brutes!”
“This is no time for sentiment!” snapped Colton.
“It is time for good-bye, then!” Sydney Thames, the colourless, the
characterless, the counter of steps for the man who had picked him up, a
bundle of baby-clothes on the banks of the English river that had given
him the only name he ever knew, held out his hand.
The blind man’s lips tightened; he ignored the outstretched hand as he
pulled on a glove. “Make it _auf wiedersehen_,” he said wearily. “Shrimp
and I are going to catch the boat for Brazil at five o’clock!”