THE RESPIRATION CALORIMETER
It was early the next morning, about half an hour after the time set for
the release of the passengers, that our laboratory door was flung open
and Collette Aux Cayes rushed in, wildly excited.
"What's the matter?" asked Kennedy anxiously.
"Someone has been trying to keep me on the boat," she panted. "And all
the way over here a man has been following me."
Kennedy looked at her a minute calmly. We could understand why she might
have been shadowed, though it must have been a bungling job of Burke's
operative. But who could have wanted her kept on the boat?
"I don't know," she replied, in answer to Kennedy's question. "But
somehow I was the only one not told that we could go. And when I did go,
one of the Secret Service men stopped me."
"Are you sure it was a Secret Service man?"
"He said he was."
"Yes, but if he had been, he would not have done that, nor let you get
away, if he had. Can't you imagine anyone who might want you detained
longer?"
She looked at us, half frightened. "N--not unless it is that man--or the
woman with him," she replied, clasping her hands.
"You mean Castine?"
"Yes," she replied, avoiding the use of his name. "Ever since you had
the body removed, he has been in great fear. I have heard him ask fifty
times, 'Where have they taken him?' and 'Is he to be embalmed?'"
"That's strange," remarked Kennedy. "Why that anxiety from him? I
remember that it was he who wanted the body left alone. Is it for fear
that we might discover something which might be covered up?"
Kennedy disappeared into the anteroom and I heard him making a great
fuss as he regulated the various pieces of machinery that surrounded the
little chamber.
Some minutes later, he emerged.
"Meet us here in an hour," he directed Collette, "with your guardian."
Quickly Craig telephoned for a tank of oxygen to be sent over to the
laboratory, then got Burke on the wire and asked him to meet us down at
the dock.
We arrived first and Craig hurried into the lumber-room, where
fortunately he found everything undisturbed. He tore off the strip of
paper from the drum and held it up. On it was a series of marks, which
looked like dots and dashes, of a peculiar kind, along a sort of base
line. Carefully he ran his eye over the strip. Then he shoved it into
his pocket in great excitement.
"Hello," greeted Burke, as he came up puffing from the hurried trip over
from the Customs House, where his office was. "What's doing now?"
"A great deal, I think," returned Kennedy. "Can you locate Castine and
that woman and come up to the laboratory--right away?"
"I can put my finger on them in five minutes and be there in half an
hour," he returned, not pausing to inquire further, for, like me, Burke
had learned that Kennedy could not be hurried in any of his revelations.
Together, Craig and I returned to the laboratory to find that Collette
Aux Cayes was already there with her guardian, as solicitous as ever for
her comfort and breathing fire and slaughter against the miscreants who
had tried to detain her, without his knowledge.
Some minutes later Castine and "Madame" Castine arrived. At sight of
Collette she seemed both defiant and restless, as though sensing
trouble, I thought. Few words were spoken now by anyone, as Burke and I
completed the party.
"Will you be so kind as to step into the little anteroom with me?"
invited Craig, holding open the door for us.
We entered and he followed; then, as he led the way, stopped before a
little glass window in the compartment which I have described. Collette
was next to me. I could feel the tenseness of her senses as she gazed
through the window at the body on the shelf-like pallet inside.
"What is this thing?" asked Aux Cayes, as Collette drew back, and he
caught her by the arm.
For the moment Kennedy said nothing, but opened a carefully sealed door
and slid the pallet out, unhinging it, while I saw Castine trembling and
actually turning ashen about the lips.
"This," Kennedy replied at length, "is what is known as a respiration
calorimeter, which I have had constructed after the ideas of Professors
Atwater and Benedict of Wesleyan, with some improvements of my own. It
is used, as you may know, in studying food values, both by the
government and by other investigators. A man could live in that room for
ten or twelve days. My idea, however, was to make use of it for other
things than that for which it was intended."
He took a few steps over to the complicated apparatus which had so
mystified me, now at rest, as he turned a switch on opening the
carefully sealed door.
"It is what is known as a closed circuit calorimeter," he went on. "For
instance, through this tube air leaves the chamber. Here is a blower. At
this point, the water in the air is absorbed by sulphuric acid. Next the
carbon dioxide is absorbed by soda lime. Here a little oxygen is
introduced to keep the composition normal and at this point the air is
returned to the chamber."
He traced the circuit as he spoke, then paused and remarked, "Thus, you
see, it is possible to measure the carbon dioxide and the other
respiration products. As for heat, the walls are constructed so that the
gain or loss of heat in the chamber is prevented. Heat cannot escape in
any other way than that provided for carrying it off and measuring it.
Any heat is collected by this stream of water which keeps the
temperature constant and in that way we can measure any energy that is
given off. The walls are of concentric shells of copper and zinc with
two of wood, between which is 'dead air,' an effective heat insulator.
In other words," he concluded, "it is like a huge thermos bottle."
It was all very weird and fascinating. But what he could have been
doing with a dead body, I could not imagine. Was there some subtle,
unknown poison which had hitherto baffled science, but which now he was
about to reveal to us?
He seemed to be in no hurry to overcome the psychological effect his
words had on his auditors, for as he picked up and glanced at a number
of sheets of figures, he went on: "In the case of live persons, there is
a food aperture here, a little window with air locks arranged for the
passage of food and drink. That large window through which you looked
admits light. There is also a telephone. Everything is arranged so that
all that enters, no matter how minute, is weighed and measured. The same
is true of all that leaves. Nothing is too small to take into account."
He shook the sheaf of papers before us. "Here I have some records which
have been made by myself, and, in my absence, by one of my students. In
them the most surprising thing that I have discovered is that in the
body of Leon metabolism seems still to be going on."
I listened to him in utter amazement, wondering toward what his argument
was tending.
"I got my first clew from an injection of fluoriscine," he resumed. "You
know there are many people who have a horror of being buried alive. It
is a favorite theme of the creepy-creep writers. As you know, the heart
may stop beating, but that does not necessarily mean that the person is
dead. There are on record innumerable cases where the use of stimulants
has started again the beating of a heart that has stopped.
"Still, burial alive is hardly likely among civilized people, for the
simple reason that the practice of embalming makes death practically
certain. At once, when I heard that there had been objections to the
embalming of this body, I began to wonder why they had been made.
"Then it occurred to me that one certain proof of death was the absolute
cessation of circulation. You may not know, but scientists have devised
this fluoriscine test to take advantage of that. I injected about ten
grains. If there is any circulation, there should be an emerald green
discoloration of the cornea of the eye. If not, the eye should remain
perfectly white.
"I tried the test. The green eye-ball gave me a hint. Then I decided to
make sure with a respiration calorimeter that would measure whatever
heat, what breath, no matter how minute they were."
Collette gave a start as she began to realize vaguely what Craig was
driving at.
"It was not the voodoo sign, Mademoiselle," he said, turning to her. "It
was a sign, however, of something that suggested at once to me the
connection of voodoo practices."
There was something so uncanny about it that my own heart almost skipped
beating, while Burke, by my other side, muttered something which was not
meant to be profane.
Collette was now trembling violently and I took her arm so that if she
should faint she would not fall either on my side or on that of her
guardian, who seemed himself on the verge of keeling over. Castine was
mumbling. Only his wife seemed to retain her defiance.
"The skill of the voodoo priests in the concoction of strange draughts
from the native herbs of Hayti is well known," Kennedy began again.
"There are among them fast and slow poisons, poisons that will kill
almost instantly and others that are guaged in strength to accumulate
and resemble wasting away and slow death.
"I know that in all such communities today no one will admit that there
is such a thing still as the human sacrifice, 'the lamb without horns.'
But there is on record a case where a servant was supposed to have died.
The master ordered the burial, and it took place. But the grave was
robbed. Later the victim was resuscitated and sacrificed.
"Most uncanny of the poisons is that which will cause the victim to pass
into an unconscious condition so profound that it may easily be mistaken
for death. It is almost cataleptic. Such is the case here. My
respiration calorimeter shows that from that body there are still coming
the products of respiration, that there is still heat in it. It must
have been that peculiar poison of the voodoo priests that was used."
Racing on now, not giving any of us a chance even to think of the weird
thing, except to shudder instinctively, Kennedy drew from his pocket and
slapped down on a table the photographic records that had been taken by
his home-made wireless recording apparatus.
"From Mr. Burke," he said, as he did so, "I received the hint that many
messages were being transmitted by wireless, secretly perhaps, from the
_Haytien_. I wanted to read those messages that were being flashed so
quietly and secretly through the air. How could it be done? I managed
to install down at the dock an apparatus known as the capillary
electrometer. By the use of this almost unimaginably delicate instrument
I was able to drag down literally out of the air the secrets that seemed
so well hidden from all except those for whom they were intended.
Listen."
He took the roll of paper from the drum and ran his finger along it
hastily, translating to himself the Morse code as he passed from one
point to another.
"Here," cried Craig excitedly. "'Leon out of way for time safely.
Revolution suppressed before Forsythe can make other arrangements.
Conspiracy frustrated.' Just a moment. Here's another. 'Have engaged
bridal suite at Hotel La Coste. Communicate with me there after
tomorrow.'"
Still holding the wireless record, Kennedy swung about to Burke and
myself. "Burke, stand over by the door," he shouted. "Walter--that tank
of oxygen, please."
I dragged over the heavy tank which he had ordered as he adjusted a sort
of pulmotor breathing apparatus over Leon. Then I dropped back to my
place beside Collette, as the oxygen hissed out.
Castine was now on his knees, his aged arms outstretched.
"Before God, Mr. Kennedy--I didn't do it. I didn't give Leon the
poison!"
Kennedy, however, engrossed in what he was doing, paid no attention to
the appeal.
Suddenly I saw what might have been a faint tremor of an eyelid on the
pallid body before us.
I felt Collette spring forward from my side.
"He lives! He lives!" she cried, falling on her knees before the still
cataleptic form. "Guillaume!"
There was just a faint movement of the lips, as though as the man came
back from another world he would have called, "Collette!"
"Seize that man--it is his name signed to the wireless messages!"
shouted Kennedy, extending his accusing forefinger at Aux Cayes, who had
plotted so devilishly to use his voodoo knowledge both to suppress the
revolution and at the same time to win his beautiful ward for himself
from her real lover.