|OUTSIDE the house Crang continued to run. He was unconscious that he
had forgotten his hat. His face worked in livid fury. Alternately he
burst out into short, ugly gusts of laughter that made of laughter an
evil thing; alternately, racked with unbridled passion, he mouthed a
flood of oaths.
He ran on for some three blocks, and finally dashed up the steps of a
small, drab-looking, cheap frame house. A brass sign, greenish with mold
from neglect, flanked one side of the door. Under the street light it
could just barely be deciphered: SYDNEY ANGUS CRANG, M.D.
He tried the door. It was locked. He searched impatiently and hastily in
his pockets for his pass-key, and failing to find it instantly he rang
the bell; and then, without waiting for an answer to the summons, he
immediately began to bang furiously upon the panels.
An old woman, his housekeeper, whose bare feet had obviously been
thrust hurriedly into slippers, and who clutched at the neck of a woolen
dressing gown that also obviously, and with equal haste, had been flung
around her shoulders over her nightdress, finally opened the door.
“Get out of the road!” Crang snarled--and brushed his way roughly past
her.
He stepped forward along an unlighted hall, opened a door, and slammed
it behind him. He switched on the light. He was in his consulting room.
The next instant he was standing beside his desk, and had wrenched
John Bruce's letter from his pocket. He spread this out on the desk and
glared at it. Beyond any doubt whatever, where Claire's tears had fallen
on the paper, traces of writing were faintly discernible. Here, out of
an abortive word, was a well-formed “e”; and there, unmistakably, was a
capital “L.”
Crang burst into a torrent of abuse and oaths; his fists clenched, and
he shook one of them in the air.
“Double-crossed--eh?--damn him!” he choked. “He tried to double-cross
me--did he?”
Carrying the letter, he ran now into a little room behind his office,
where he compounded his medicines, and that was fitted up as a sort of
small laboratory.
“I'm a clever man,” Crang mumbled to himself. “We'll see about this!”
With sudden complacence he began to study the sheet of paper. He nodded
curtly to himself as he noted that the traces of the secret writing were
all on the lower edge of the paper.
“We'll be very careful, _very_ careful”--Doctor Crang was still
mumbling--“it may be useful in more ways than one.”
He turned on the water faucet, wet a camel's-hair brush, and applied the
brush to the lower edge of the letter. The experiment was productive of
no result. He stared at the paper for a while with wrinkled brow, and
then suddenly he began to laugh ironically.
“No, of course, not!” He was jeering at himself now. “Clever? You are
not clever, you are a fool! She _cried_ on the paper. Tears! Tears
possess a slight trace of”--he reached quickly for a glass container,
and began to prepare a solution of some sort--“a very slight trace...
that's why the characters that already show are so faint. Now we'll see,
Mr. John Bruce, what you've got to say.... Salt!... A little salt, eh?”
He dipped the camel's-hair brush in the solution and drew it across the
bottom edge of the paper again.
“Ha, ha!” exclaimed Doctor Crang in eager excitement. Letters, words and
sentences began to take form under the brush. “Ha, ha! He'd play that
game with me, would he? Damn him!”
Very carefully Sydney Angus Crang, M.D., worked his brush upward on
the paper line by line, until, still well below the signature that John
Bruce had affixed in his, Crang's, presence, there failed to appear
any further trace of the secret writing. He read as fast as a word
appeared--like a starving beast snatching in ferocious greed at morsels
of food. It made whole and complete sense. His eyes feasted on it now in
its entirety:
Keep away. This is a trap. Stall till you can turn tables. Information
obtained while I was delirious. Am a prisoner in hands of a gang whose
leader is a doctor named Crang. Veniza will tell you where Crang lives.
Get Veniza's address from Lavergne at the house. The only way to save
either of Us is to trick Crang. Look out for yourself. Bruce.
He tossed the camel's-hair brush away, returned to his desk, spread the
letter out on a blotter to allow the lower edge to dry, and slumping
down in his desk chair, glued his eyes on the secret message, reading it
over and over again.
“Trick Crang--eh?--ha, ha!” He began to chuckle low; then suddenly his
fingers, crooked and curved until they looked like claws, reached out
as though to fasten upon some prey at hand. And then he chuckled once
more--and then grew somber, and slumped deeper in his chair, and his
eyes, brooding, were half closed. “Not to-night,” he muttered. “One job
of it to-morrow... squeal like a pair of rats that----”
He sat suddenly bolt upright in his chair. It came again---a low tapping
on the window; two raps, three times repeated. He rose quickly, crossed
the room, opened the door, and stood motionless for a moment peering
out into the hall. It was a purely precautionary measure--he had little
doubt but that his old housekeeper had long since mounted the stairs and
returned to her bed. He stepped rapidly then along the hall, and opened
the front door.
“That you, Birdie?” he called in a low voice.
A man's form appeared from the shadow of the stoop.
“Sure!” the man answered.
“Come in!” Doctor Crang said tersely.
He led the way back into the consulting room, and slumped down again in
his chair.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Peters arrived all right,” Birdie reported. “He registered at the
Bayne-Miloy Hotel, and he's there now.”
“Good!” grunted Crang.
For a full five minutes he remained silent and without movement in his
chair, apparently utterly oblivious of the other, who stood, shifting a
little awkwardly from foot to foot, on the opposite side of the desk.
Then Crang spoke--more to himself than to Birdie.
“He'll be anxious, of course, and growing more so,” he said. “He might
make a break of some kind. I'll have to fix that. I'm not ready yet.
What?”
Birdie, from staring inanely at the wall, came to himself with a sudden
start at what he evidently interpreted as a direct question.
“Yes--sure!” he said hurriedly. “No--I mean, no, you're not ready.”
Crang glared at the man contemptuously.
“What the hell do you know about it?” he inquired caustically.
He picked up the telephone directory, studied it for a moment, then,
reaching for the desk telephone, asked for his connection. Presently the
Bayne-Miloy Hotel answered him, and he asked for Mr. R. L. Peters' room.
A moment more and a voice reached him over the phone.
“Is that Mr. Peters?” Crang inquired quietly. “Mr. R. L. Peters, of San
Francisco?... Yes? Then I have a message for you, Mr. Peters, from the
person who sent you a telegram a few days ago... I beg your pardon?...
Yes, I am sure you do... Myself? I'd rather not mention any names over
the phone. You understand, don't you? He told me to tell you that it is
absolutely necessary that no connection is known to exist between you,
and for that reason he does not dare take the chance of getting
into touch with you to-night, but he will manage it somehow by early
afternoon to-morrow... What say?... Yes, it is very serious, otherwise
he would hardly have telegraphed you to come on from San Francisco...
No, personally, I don't know. That was his message; but I was also to
warn you on no account to leave your rooms, or have communication
with anybody until you hear direct from him.... No, I do not know the
particulars. I only know that he is apparently in a hole, and a bad one,
and that he is now afraid that you will get into it too.... Yes. You are
sure you fully understand?... No, not at all! I am only too glad....
Good-night.”
Crang, with a curious smile on his lips, hung up the receiver. He turned
abruptly to Birdie.
“You get a taxi to-morrow,” he said brusquely. “We'll want it for two or
three hours. Slip the chauffeur whatever is necessary, and change places
with him. See? You'll know where to find one that will fall for that.
Then you come here for me at--let's see--the boat sails at four--you
come here at half past one sharp. Get me?”
“Sure!” said Birdie, with a grin. “That's a cinch!”
“All right, then!” Crang waved his hand. “Beat it!”
Birdie left the room. A moment later the front door closed behind him.
Crang picked up the letter and examined it critically. The lower three
or four inches of the paper was slightly crinkled, but quite dry now;
the body of the original letter showed no sign whatever of his work upon
the lower portion.
Doctor Crang nodded contentedly.
He rose abruptly, secured his surgical bag, and from it selected a
lance. With the aid of a ruler and the keen-bladed little instrument,
he very carefully cut away the lower section of the paper. The slip
containing the erstwhile secret message he tucked away in his inside
pocket; then he examined the letter itself again even more critically
than before. For all evidence that it presented to the contrary,
it might have been the original size of the sheet. There was even a
generous margin of paper still left beneath John Bruce's signature.
He folded the letter, replaced it in its envelope--and now sealed the
envelope.
“To-morrow!” said Doctor Sydney Angus Crang with a sinister smile, as he
produced a hypodermic syringe from his pocket and rolled up the
sleeve of his left arm. He laughed as the needle pricked his flesh.
“To-morrow--John Bruce!”
He slumped far down in his chair once more. For half an hour he sat
motionless, his eyes closed. Then he spoke again.
“Damn you!” he said.