evidently spent the time faithfully hanging about the Prince Edward
Albert, but Whitney had not come in, although the Senora and Alfonso
were about.
"I saw them leaving the dining-room," he reported to us in the
laboratory directly afterward, "just as Whitney came in. They could not
see me. I took good care of that. But, say, there is a change in
Whitney, isn't there? I wonder what caused it?"
"It's as noticeable as that?" asked Kennedy. "And did she notice it?"
"I'm sure of it," replied Norton confidently. "She couldn't help it.
Besides, after he left her and went into the dining-room himself she
and Alfonso seemed to be discussing something. I'm sure it was that."
Kennedy said nothing, except to thank Norton and compliment him on his
powers of observation. Norton took the praise with evident
satisfaction, and after a moment excused himself, saying that he had
some work to do over in the Museum.
He had no sooner gone than Kennedy took from a drawer a little packet
of powder and an atomizer full of liquid, which he dropped into his
pocket.
"I think the Prince Edward Albert will be the scene of our operations,
to-night, Walter," he announced, reaching for his hat.
He seemed to be in a hurry and it was not many minutes before we
entered. As he passed the dining-room he glanced in. There was Whitney,
not half through a leisurely dinner. Neither of the de Moches seemed to
be downstairs.
Kennedy sauntered over to the desk and looked over the register. We
already knew that Whitney and the Senora had suites on the eighth
floor, on opposite sides and at opposite ends of the hall. The de Moche
suite was under the number 810. That of Whitney was 825.
"Is either 823 or 827 vacant?" asked Kennedy as the clerk came over to
us.
He turned to look over his list. "Yes, 827 is vacant," he found.
"I'd like to have it," said Kennedy, making some excuse about our
luggage being delayed, as he paid for it for the night.
"Front!" called the clerk, and a moment later we found ourselves in the
elevator riding up.
The halls were deserted at that time in the evening except for a
belated theatre-goer, and in a few minutes there would ensue a period
in which there was likely to be no one about.
We entered the room next to Whitney's without being observed by any one
of whom we cared. The boy left us, and it was a simple matter after
that to open a rather heavy door that communicated between the two
suites and was not protected by a Yale lock.
Instead of switching on the lights, Kennedy first looked about
carefully until he was assured that there was no one there. It seemed
to me to be an unnecessary caution, for we knew Whitney was down-stairs
and would probably be there a long time. But he seemed to think it
necessary. Positive that we were alone, he made a hasty survey of the
rooms. Then he seemed to select as a starting-point a table in one
corner of the sitting-room on which lay a humidor and a heavy metal box
for cigarettes.
Quickly he sprinkled on the floor, from the hall door to the table on
which the case of cigarettes lay, some of the powder which I had seen
him wrap up in the laboratory before we left. Then, with the atomizer,
he sprayed over it something that had a pungent, familiar
odour--walking backwards from the hall door to the table, as he sprayed.
"Don't you want more light?" I asked, starting to cross to a window to
let the moonlight stream in.
"Don't walk on it, Walter," he whispered, pushing me back. "No, I don't
need any more light."
"What are you doing?" I asked, mystified at his actions.
"First I sprinkled some powdered iodine on the floor," he replied, "and
then sprayed over just enough ammonia to moisten it. It will evaporate
quickly, leaving what I call my anti-burglar powder."
"I'm sure I wouldn't be thought one of the fraternity for the world," I
observed, stepping aside to give him all the room he wanted in which to
operate.
He had finished his work by this time and now the evening wind was
blowing away the slight fumes that had arisen. For a few moments he
left our door into Whitney's room open, in order to insure clearing
away the odour. Then he quietly closed it, but did not lock it again.
We waited a few minutes, then Craig leaned over to me. "I wish you'd go
down and see how near Whitney is through dinner," he said. "If he is
through, do something, anything to keep him down there. Only be as
careful as you can not to be seen by any one who knows us."
I rode down in an empty elevator and cautiously made my way to the
dining-room. Whitney had finished much sooner than I had expected and
was not there. Much as I wanted not to be seen, I found that it was
necessary to make a tour of the hotel to find him and I did so,
wondering what expedient I would adopt to keep him down there if I
found him. I did not have to adopt any, however. Whitney was almost
alone in the writing-room, and a big pile of letters beside him showed
me that he would be busy for some time. I rode back to the room to tell
Craig, flattering myself that I had not been seen.
"Good," he exclaimed. "I don't think we'll have to wait much longer, if
anything at all is going to happen."
In the darkness we settled ourselves for another vigil that was to last
we knew not how long. Neither of us spoke as we half crouched in the
shadow of our room, listening.
Slowly the time passed. Would any one take advantage of the opportunity
to tamper with the box of cigarettes on the table?
I fell to speculating. Who could it possibly have been that had
conceived this devilish plot? What was back of it all? I wondered
whether it were possible that Lockwood, now that Mendoza was out of the
way, could desire to remove Whitney, the sole remaining impediment to
possessing the whole of the treasure as well as Inez? Then there were
the Senora and Alfonso, the one with a deep race and family grievance,
the other a rejected suitor. What might not they do with some weird
South American poison?
Once or twice we heard the elevator door clang and waited expectantly,
but nothing happened. I began to wonder whether, even if some one had a
pass-key to the suite, we could hear him enter if he was quiet. The
outside hall was thickly carpeted, and deadened every footfall if one
exercised only reasonable care. The rooms themselves were much the same.
"Don't you think we might have the door ajar a little?" I suggested
anxiously.
"Sh!" was Kennedy's only comment in the negative.
I glanced now and then at my watch and by straining my eyes was
surprised to see how early it was yet. The minutes were surely
leaden-footed.
In the darkness, I fell again to reviewing the weird succession of
events. I am not by nature superstitious, but in the black silence I
could well imagine a staring succession of eyes, beginning with the
dilated pupils of Whitney and passing on to the corpse-like expression
of Mendoza, but always ending with the remarkable, piercing, black eyes
of the Indian woman with the melancholy-visaged son, as they had
impressed me the first time I saw them and, in fact, ever since. Was it
a freak of my mind, or was there some reason for it?
Suddenly I heard in the next room what sounded like a series of little
explosions, as though some one were treading on match heads.
"My burglar powder works," muttered Craig to me in a hoarse whisper.
"Every step, even those of a mouse running across, sets it off!"
He rose quickly and threw open the door into Whitney's suite. I sprang
after him.
There, in the shadows, I saw a dark form, starting back in quick
retreat. But we were too late. He was cat-like, too quick for us.
In the dim light of the little explosions we could catch a glimpse of
the person who had been craftily working with the dread drug to drive
Whitney and others insane. But the face was masked!
He banged shut the door after him and fled down the hall, making a turn
to a flight of steps.
We followed, and at the steps paused a moment. "You go up, Walter,"
shouted Kennedy. "I'll go down."
It was fifteen minutes later before we met downstairs, neither of us
with a trace of the intruder. He seemed to have vanished like smoke.
"Must have had a room, like ourselves," remarked Craig somewhat
chagrined at the outcome of his scheme. "And if he was clever enough to
have a room, he is clever enough to have a disguise that would fool the
elevator boys for a minute. No, he has gone. But I'll wager he won't
try any more substitutions of stramonium-poisoned cigarettes for a
while. It was too close to be comfortable."
We were baffled again, and this time by a mysterious masked man. Could
it be the same whom we heard over the vocaphone addressed as "Doc"?
Perhaps it was, but that gave us no hint as to his identity. He seemed
just as far away as ever.
We waited around the elevators for some time, but nothing happened.
Kennedy even sought out the manager of the hotel, and after telling who
he was, had a search made of the guests who might be suspected. The
best we could do was to leave word that the employees might be put on
the lookout for anything of a suspicious nature.
Whitney, the innocent cause of all this commotion, was still in the
writing-room with his letters.
"I think I ought to tell him," decided Kennedy as we passed down the
lobby.
He seemed surprised to see us, as we strolled up to his writing desk,
but pushed aside the few letters which he had not finished and asked us
to sit down.
"I don't know whether you have noticed it," began Craig, "but I wonder
how you feel?"
Whitney had expected something else rather than his health as the
subject of a quiz. "Pretty good now," he answered before he knew it,
"although I must admit that for the past few days I have wondered
whether I wasn't slowing up a bit--or rather going too fast."
"Would you like to know why you feel that way?" asked Craig.
Whitney was now genuinely puzzled. It was perfectly evident, as it had
been all the time, that he had not the slightest inkling of what was
going on.
As Craig briefly unfolded what we had discovered and the reason for it,
Whitney watched him aghast.
"Poisoned cigarettes," he repeated slowly. "Well, who would ever have
thought it. You can bet your last jitney I'll be careful what I smoke
in the future, if I have to smoke only original packages. And it was
that, partly, that ailed Mendoza?"
Kennedy nodded. "Don't take any pilocarpine, just because I told you
that was what I used. You have given yourself the best prescription,
just now. Be careful what you smoke. And, don't get excited if you seem
to be stepping on matches up there in your room for a little while,
either. It's nothing."
Whitney's only known way of thanking anybody was to invite them to
adjourn to the cafe, and accordingly we started across the hall, after
he had gathered up his correspondence. The information had made more
work that night impossible for him.
As we crossed from the writing-room, we saw Alfonso de Moche coming in
from the street. He saw us and came over to speak. Was it a
coincidence, or was it merely a blind? Was he the one who had got away
and now calculated to come back and throw us off guard?
Whitney asked him where he had been, but he replied quickly that his
mother had not been feeling very well after dinner and had gone to bed,
while he strolled out and had dropped into a picture show. That, I
felt, was at least clever. The intruder had been a man.
De Moche excused himself, and we continued our walk to the cafe, where
Whitney restored his shattered peace of mind somewhat.
"What's the result of your detective work on Norton?" ventured Kennedy
at last, seeing that Whitney was in a more expansive frame of mind, and
taking a chance.
"Oh," returned Whitney, "he's scared, all right. Why, he has been
hanging around this hotel--watching me. He thinks I don't know it, I
suppose, but I do."
Kennedy and I exchanged glances.
"But he's slippery," went on Whitney. "He knows that he is being
shadowed and the men tell me that they lose him, now and then. To tell
the truth I don't trust most of these private detectives. I think their
little tissue paper reports are half-faked, anyhow."
He seemed to want to say no more on the subject, from which I took it
that he had discovered nothing of importance.
"One thing, though," he recollected, after a moment. "He has been going
to see Inez Mendoza, they tell me."
"Yes?" queried Kennedy.
"Confound him. He pretty nearly got Lockwood in bad with her, too,"
said Whitney, then leaning over confidentially added, "Say, Kennedy,
honestly, now, you don't believe that shoe-print stuff, do you?"
"I see no reason to doubt it," returned Kennedy with diplomatic
firmness. "Why?"
"Well," continued Whitney, still confidential, "we haven't got the
dagger--that's all. There--I never actually asserted that before,
though I've given every one to understand that our plans are based on
something more than hot-air. We haven't got it, and we never had it."
"Then who has it?" asked Kennedy colourlessly.
Whitney shook his head. "I don't know," he said merely.
"And these attacks on you--this cigarette business--how do you explain
that," asked Craig, "if you haven't the dagger?"
"Jealousy, pure jealousy," replied Whitney quickly. "They are so afraid
that we will find the treasure. That's my dope."
"Who is afraid?"
"That's a serious matter," he evaded. "I wouldn't say anything that I
couldn't back up in a case of that kind. I'd get into trouble."
There was nothing to be gained by prolonging the conversation and
Kennedy made a move as though to go.
"Just give us a square deal," said Whitney as we left. "That's all we
want--a square deal."
Kennedy and I walked out of the Prince Edward Albert and turned down
the block.
"Well, have you found out anything more?" asked a voice in the shadow
beside us.
We turned. It was Norton.
"I saw you talking to Whitney in the writing-room," he said, with a
laugh, "then in the cafe, and I saw Alfonso come in. He still has those
shadows on me. I wouldn't be surprised if there was one of them around
in a doorway, now."
"No," returned Kennedy, "he didn't say anything that was important.
They still say they haven't the dagger."
"Of course," said Norton.
"You'll wait around a little longer?" asked Kennedy as we came to a
corner and stopped.
"I think so," returned Norton. "I'll keep you posted."
Kennedy and I walked on a bit.
"I'm going around to see how Burke, O'Connor's man, is getting on
watching the Mendoza apartment, Walter," he said at length. "Then I
have two or three other little outside matters to attend to. You look
tired. Why don't you go home and take a rest? I shan't be working in
the laboratory to-night, either."
"I think I will," I agreed, for the strain of the case was beginning to
tell on me.
XX
THE PULMOTOR
I went directly to our apartment after Craig left me and for a little
while sat up, speculating on the probabilities of the case.
Senora de Moche had told us of her ancestor who had been intrusted with
the engraved dagger, of how it had been handed down, of the death of
her brother; she had told us of the murder of the ancestor of Inez
Mendoza, of the curse of Mansiche. Was this, after all, but a
reincarnation of the bloody history of the Gold of the Gods?
There were the shoe-prints in the mummy case. They were Lockwood's. How
about them? Was he telling the truth? Now had come the poisoned
cigarettes. All had followed the threats:
BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS.
Several times I had been forced already to revise my theories of the
case. At first I had felt that it pointed straight toward Lockwood. But
did it seem to do so now?
Suppose Lockwood had stolen the dagger from the Museum, although he
denied even that. Did that mean, necessarily that he committed the
murder with it, that he now had it? Might he not have lost it? Might
not some one else--the Senora, or Alfonso, or both--have obtained it?
Might not Mendoza have been murdered with it by some other hand to
obtain or to hide the secret on its bloody blade?
I went to bed, still thinking, no nearer a conclusion than before,
prepared to dream over it.
That is the last I remember.
When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the bed still, but Craig
was bending over me. He had just taken a rubber cap off my face, to
which was attached a rubber tube that ran to a box perhaps as large as
a suitcase, containing a pump of some kind.
I was too weak to notice these things right away, too weak to care much
about them, or about anything else.
"Are you all right now, old man?" he asked, bending over me.
"Y-Yes," I gasped, clutching at the choking sensation in my throat.
"What has happened?"
Perhaps I had best tell it as though I were not the chief actor; for it
came to me in such disjointed fragmentary form, that it was some time
before I could piece it together.
Craig had seen Burke, and had found that everything was all right. Then
he had made the few little investigations that he intended. But he had
not been to the laboratory. There had been no light there that night.
At last when he arrived home, he had found a peculiar odour in the
hall, but had thought nothing of it, until he opened our door. Then
there rushed out such a burst of it that he had to retreat, almost
fainting, choking and gasping for breath.
His first thought was for me; and protecting himself as best he could
he struggled through to my room, to find me lying on the bed,
motionless, almost cold.
He was by this time too weak to carry me. But he managed to reach the
window and throw it wide open. As the draught cleared the air, he
thought of the telephone and with barely strength enough left called up
one of the gas companies and had a pulmotor sent over.
Now that the danger was past for me, and he felt all right, his active
mind began at once on the reconstruction of what had happened.
What was it--man or devil? Could a human fly have scaled the walls, or
an aeroplane have dropped an intruder at the window ledge? The lock on
the door did not seem to have been tampered with. Nor was there any way
by which entrance could have been gained from a fire escape. It was not
illuminating gas. Every one agreed on that. No, it was not an accident.
It was an attempt at murder. Some one was getting close to us. Every
other weapon failing, this was desperation.
I had been made comfortable, and he was engaged in one of his
characteristic searches, with more than ordinary eagerness, because
this was his own apartment, and it was I who had been the victim.
I followed him languidly as he went over everything, the furniture, the
walls, the windows, the carpets--there looking for finger-prints, there
for some trace of the poisonous gas that had filled the room. But he
did not have the air of one who was finding anything. I was too tired
to reason. This was but another of the baffling mysteries that
confronted us.
A low exclamation caused me to open my eyes and try to discover what
was the cause. He was bending over the lock of the door looking at it
intently.
"Broken?" I managed to say.
"No--corroded," he replied. "You keep still. Save your energy. I've got
strength enough for two, for a while."
He came over to the bed and bent over me. "I won't hurt you," he
encouraged, "but just let me get a drop of your blood."
He took a needle and ran it gently into my thumb beside the nail. A
drop or two of blood oozed out and he soaked it up with a piece of
sterile gauze.
"Try to sleep," he said finally.
"And you?" I asked.
"It's no use. I'm going over to the laboratory. I can't sleep. There's
a cop down in front of the house. You're safe enough. By George, if
this case goes much further we'll have half the force standing guard.
Here--drink that."
I had made up my mind not to go to sleep, if he wouldn't, but I slipped
up when I obeyed him that time. I thought it was a stimulant but it
turned out to be a sedative.
I did not wake up until well along in the morning, but when I did I was
surprised to find myself so well. Before any one could stop me, I was
dressed and had reached the door.
A friend of ours who had volunteered to stay with me was dozing on a
couch as I came out.
"Too late, Johnson," I called, trying hard to be gay, though I felt
anything but like it. "Thank you, old man, for staying with me. But I'm
afraid to stop. You're stronger than I am this morning--and besides you
can run faster. I'm afraid you'll drag me back."
He did try to do it, but with a great effort of will-power I persuaded
him to let me go. Out in the open air, too, it seemed to do me good.
The policeman who had been stationed before the house gazed at me as
though he saw a ghost, then grinned encouragingly.
Still, I was glad that the laboratory was only a few blocks away, for I
was all in by the time I got there, and hadn't even energy enough to
reply to Kennedy's scolding.
He was working over a microscope, while by his side stood in racks,
innumerable test-tubes of various liquids. On the table before him lay
the lock of our door which he had cut out after he gave me the sleeping
draught.
"What was it?" I asked. "I feel as if I had been on a bust, without the
recollection of a thing."
He shook his head as if to discourage conversation, without taking his
eyes off the microscope through which he was squinting. His lips were
moving as if he were counting. I waited in impatient silence until he
seemed to have finished.
Then, still without a word, he took up a test-tube and dropped into it
a little liquid from a bottle on a shelf above the table. His face
lighted up, and he regarded the reaction attentively for some time.
Then he turned to me, still holding the tube.
"You have been on a bust," he said with a smile as if the remark of a
few minutes before were still fresh. "Only it was a laughing gas
jag--nitrous oxide."
"Nitrous oxide?" I repeated. "How--what do you mean?"
"I mean simply that a test of your blood shows that you were poisoned
by nitrous oxide gas. You remember the sample of blood which I squeezed
from your thumb? I took it because I knew that a gas--and it has proved
to be nitrous oxide--is absorbed through the lungs into the circulation
and its presence can be told for a considerable period after
administration."
He paused a moment, then went on: "To be specific in this case I found
by microscopic examination that the number of corpuscles in your blood
was vastly above the normal, something like between seven and eight
million to a drop that should have had somewhat more than only half
that number. You were poisoned by gas that--"
"Yes," I interrupted, "but how, with all the doors locked?"
"I was coming to that," he said quietly, picking up the lock and
looking at it thoughtfully.
He had already placed it in a porcelain basin, and in this basin he had
poured some liquids. Then he passed the liquids through a fine screen
and at last took up a tube containing some of the resulting liquid.
"I have already satisfied myself," he explained, "but for your benefit,
seeing that you're the chief sufferer, I'll run over a part of the
test. You saw the reaction which showed the gas a moment ago. I have
proved chemically as well as microscopically that it is present in your
blood. Now if I take this test-tube of liquid derived from my treatment
of the lock and then test it as you saw me do with the other, isn't
that enough for you? See--it gives the same reaction."
It did, indeed, but my mind did not react with it.
"Nitrous oxide," he continued, "in contact with iron, leaves distinct
traces of corrosion, discernible by chemical and microscopic tests
quite as well as the marks it leaves in the human blood. Manifestly, if
no one could have come in by the windows or doors, the gas must have
been administered in some way without any one coming into the room. I
found no traces of an intruder."
It was a tough one. Never much good at answering his conundrums when I
was well, I could not even make a guess now.
"The key-hole, of course!" he explained. "I cut away the entire lock,
and have submitted it to these tests which you see."
"I don't see it all yet," I said.
"Some one came to our door in the night, after gaining entrance to the
hall--not a difficult thing to do, we know. That person found our door
locked, knew it would be locked, knew that I always locked it. Knowing
that such was the case, this person came prepared, bringing perhaps, a
tank of compressed nitrous oxide, certainly the materials for making
the gas expeditiously."
I began to understand how it had been done.