things going?”
Wachtmann’s chauffeur must have answered that everything was all right.
“You knew that they had discovered the poisoned wall-paper?” asked
Janeff.
A long parley followed. Finally, Janeff repeated what apparently had
been his instructions. “Now, let me see,” he said. “You want me to stay
here until the last minute so that I can overhear whether any alarm is
given for her? All right. You’re sure it is the nine-o’clock train she
is due on? Very well. I shall meet you at the ferry across the Hudson.
I’ll start from here as soon as I hear the train come in. We’ll get the
girl this time. That will bring Brixton to terms sure. You’re right.
Even if we fail this time, we’ll succeed later. Don’t fail me. I’ll be
at the ferry as soon as I can get past the guards and join you. There
isn’t a chance of an alarm from the house. I’ll cut all the wires the
last thing before I leave. Good-bye.”
All at once it dawned on me what they were planning—the kidnapping of
Brixton’s only daughter, to hold her, perhaps, as a hostage until he
did the bidding of the gang. Wachtmann’s chauffeur was doing it and
using Wachtmann’s car, too. Was Wachtmann a party to it?
What was to be done? I looked at my watch. It was already only a couple
of minutes of nine, when the train would be due.
“If we could seize that fellow in the closet and start for the station
immediately we might save Yvonne,” cried Brixton, starting for the door.
“And if they escape you make them more eager than ever to strike a blow
at you and yours,” put in Craig coolly. “No, let us get this thing
straight. I didn’t think it was as serious as this, but I’m prepared to
meet any emergency.”
“But, man,” shouted Brixton, “you don’t suppose anything in the world
counts beside her, do you?”
“Exactly the point,” urged Craig. “Save her and capture them—both at
once.”
“How can you?” fumed Brixton. “If you attempt to telephone from here,
that fellow Janeff will overhear and give a warning.”
Regardless of whether Janeff was listening or not, Kennedy was eagerly
telephoning to the Woodrock central down in the village. He was using
the transmitter and receiver that were connected with the iron tube
which he had connected to the two regular house lines.
“Have the ferry held at any cost,” he was ordering. “Don’t let the next
boat go out until Mr. Brixton gets there, under any circumstances. Now
put that to them straight, central. You know Mr. Brixton has just a
little bit of influence around here, and somebody’s head will drop if
they let that boat go out before he gets there.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Brixton. “Much good that will do. Why, I suppose
our friend Janeff down in the storeroom knows it all now. Come on,
let’s grab him.”
Nevertheless there was no sound from the detectaphone which would
indicate that he had overheard and was spreading the alarm. He was
there yet, for we could hear him clear his throat once or twice.
“No,” replied Kennedy calmly, “he knows nothing about it. I didn’t use
any ordinary means to prepare against the experts who have brought this
situation about. That message you heard me send went out over what we
call the ‘phantom circuit.’”
“The phantom circuit?” repeated Brixton, chafing at the delay.
“Yes, it seems fantastic at first, I suppose,” pursued Kennedy calmly;
“but, after all, it is in accordance with the laws of electricity. It’s
no use fretting and fuming, Mr. Brixton. If Janeff can wait, we’ll have
to do so, too. Suppose we should start and this Kronski should change
his plans at the last minute? How would we find it out? By telepathy?
Believe me, sir, it is better to wait here a minute and trust to the
phantom circuit than to mere chance.”
“But suppose he should cut the line,” I put in.
Kennedy smiled. “I have provided for that, Walter, in the way I
installed the thing. I took good care that we could not be cut off that
way. We can hear everything ourselves, but we cannot be overheard. He
knows nothing. You see, I took advantage of the fact that additional
telephones or so-called phantom lines can be superposed on existing
physical lines. It is possible to obtain a third circuit from two
similar metallic circuits by using for each side of this third circuit
the two wires of each of the other circuits in multiple. All three
circuits are independent, too.
“The third telephone current enters the wires of the first circuit, as
it were, and returns along the wires of the second circuit. There are
several ways of doing it. One is to use retardation or choke-coils
bridged across the two metallic circuits at both ends, with taps taken
from the middle points of each. But the more desirable method is the
one you saw me install this afternoon. I introduced repeating-coils
into the circuits at both ends. Technically, the third circuit is then
taken off from the mid-points of the secondaries or line windings of
these repeating coils.
“The current on a long-distance line is alternating in character, and
it passes readily through a repeating-coil. The only effect it has on
the transmission is slightly reducing the volume. The current passes
into the repeating-coil, then divides and passes through the two line
wires. At the other end the halves balance, so to speak. Thus, currents
passing over a phantom circuit don’t set up currents in the terminal
apparatus of the side circuits. Consequently, a conversation carried on
over the phantom circuit will not be heard in either side circuit, nor
does a conversation on one side circuit affect the phantom. We could
all talk at once without interfering with each other.”
“At any other time I should be more than interested,” remarked Brixton
grimly, curbing his impatience to be doing something.
“I appreciate that, sir,” rejoined Kennedy. “Ah, here it is. I have the
central down in the village. Yes? They will hold the boat for us? Good.
Thank you. The nine-o’clock train is five minutes late? Yes—what?
Count Wachtmann’s car is there? Oh, yes, the train is just pulling in.
I see. Miss Brixton has entered his car alone. What’s that? His
chauffeur has started the car without waiting for the Count, who is
coming down the platform?”
Instantly Kennedy was on his feet. He was dashing up the corridor and
the stairs from the den and down into the basement to the little
storeroom.
We burst into the place. It was empty. Janeff had cut the wires and
fled. There was not a moment to lose. Craig hastily made sure that he
had not discovered or injured the phantom circuit.
“Call the fastest car you have in your garage, Mr. Brixton,” ordered
Kennedy. “Hello, hello, central! Get the lodge at the Brixton estate.
Tell them if they see the engineer Janeff going out to stop him. Alarm
the watchman and have the dogs ready. Catch him at any cost, dead, or
alive.”
A moment later Brixton’s car raced around, and we piled in and were off
like a whirlwind. Already we could see lights moving about and hear the
baying of dogs. Personally, I wouldn’t have given much for Janeff’s
chances of escape.
As we turned the bend in the road just before we reached the ferry, we
almost ran into two cars standing before the ferry house. It looked as
though one had run squarely in front of the other and blocked it off.
In the slip the ferry boat was still steaming and waiting.
Beside the wrecked car a man was lying on the ground groaning, while
another man was quieting a girl whom he was leading to the waiting-room
of the ferry.
Brixton, weak though he was from his illness, leaped out of our car
almost before we stopped and caught the girl in his arms.
“Father!” she exclaimed, clinging to him.
“What’s this?” he demanded sternly, eying the man. It was Wachtmann
himself.
“Conrad saved me from that chauffeur of his,” explained Miss Brixton.
“I met him on the train, and we were going to ride up to the house
together. But before Conrad could get into the car this fellow, who had
the engine running, started it. Conrad jumped into another car that was
waiting at the station. He overlook us and dodged in front so as to cut
the chauffeur off from the ferry.”
“Curse that villain of a chauffeur,” muttered Wachtmann, looking down
at the wounded man.
“Do you know who he is?” asked Craig with a searching glance at
Wachtmann’s face.
“I ought to. His name is Kronski, and a blacker devil an employment
bureau never furnished.”
“Kronski? No,” corrected Kennedy. “It is Professor Kumanova, whom you
perhaps have heard of as a leader of the Red Brotherhood, one of the
cleverest scientific criminals who ever lived. I think you’ll have no
more trouble negotiating your loan or your love affair, Count,” added
Craig, turning on his heel.
He was in no mood to receive the congratulations of the supercilious
Wachtmann. As far as Craig was concerned, the case was finished,
although I fancied from a flicker of his eye as he made some passing
reference to the outcome that when he came to send in a bill to Brixton
for his services he would not forget the high eyebrowed Count.
I followed in silence as Craig climbed into the Brixton car and
explained to the banker that it was imperative that he should get back
to the city immediately. Nothing would do but that the car must take us
all the way back, while Brixton summoned another from the house for
himself.
The ride was accomplished swiftly in record time. Kennedy said little.
Apparently the exhilaration of the on-rush of cool air was quite in
keeping with his mood, though for my part, I should have preferred
something a little more relaxing of the nervous tension.
“We’ve been at it five days, now,” I remarked wearily as I dropped into
an easy chair in our own quarters. “Are you going to keep up this
debauch?”
Kennedy laughed.
“No,” he said with a twinkle of scientific mischief, “no, I’m going to
sleep it off.”
“Thank heaven!” I muttered.
“Because,” he went on seriously, “that case interrupted a long series
of tests I am making on the sensitiveness of selenium to light, and I
want to finish them up soon. There’s no telling when I shall be called
on to use the information.”
I swallowed hard. He really meant it. He was laying out more work for
himself.
Next morning I fully expected to find that he had gone. Instead he was
preparing for what he called a quiet day in the laboratory.
“Now for some REAL work,” he smiled. “Sometimes, Walter, I feel that I
ought to give up this outside activity and devote myself entirely to
research. It is so much more important.”
I could only stare at him and reflect on how often men wanted to do
something other than the very thing that nature had evidently intended
them to do, and on how fortunate it was that we were not always free
agents.
He set out for the laboratory and I determined that as long as he would
not stop working, neither would I. I tried to write. Somehow I was not
in the mood. I wrote AT my story, but succeeded only in making it more
unintelligible. I was in no fit condition for it.
It was late in the afternoon. I had made up my mind to use force, if
necessary, to separate Kennedy from his study of selenium. My idea was
that anything from the Metropolitan to the “movies” would do him good,
and I had almost carried my point when a big, severely plain black
foreign limousine pulled up with a rush at the laboratory door. A large
man in a huge fur coat jumped out and the next moment strode into the
room. He needed no introduction, for we recognised at once J. Perry
Spencer, one of the foremost of American financiers and a trustee of
the university.
With that characteristic directness which I have always thought
accounted in large measure for his success, he wasted scarcely a word
in coming straight to the object of his visit. “Professor Kennedy,” he
began, chewing his cigar and gazing about with evident interest at the
apparatus Craig had collected in his warfare of science with crime, “I
have dropped in here as a matter of patriotism. I want you to preserve
to America those masterpieces of art and literature which I have
collected all over the world during many years. They are the objects of
one of the most curious pieces of vandalism of which I have ever heard.
Professor Kennedy,” he concluded earnestly, “could I ask you to call on
Dr. Hugo Lith, the curator of my private museum, as soon as you can
possibly find it convenient?”
“Most assuredly, Mr. Spencer,” replied Craig, with a whimsical side
glance at me that told without words that this was better relaxation to
him than either the Metropolitan or the “movies.” “I shall be glad to
see Dr. Lith at any time—right now, if it is convenient to him.”
The millionaire connoisseur consulted his watch. “Lith will be at the
museum until six, at least. Yes, we can catch him there. I have a
dinner engagement at seven myself. I can give you half an hour of the
time before then. If you’re ready, just jump into the car, both of you.”
The museum to which he referred was a handsome white marble building,
in Renaissance, fronting on a side street just off Fifth Avenue and in
the rear of the famous Spencer house, itself one of the show places of
that wonderful thoroughfare. Spencer had built the museum at great cost
simply to house those treasures which were too dear to him to entrust
to a public institution. It was in the shape of a rectangle and planned
with special care as to the lighting.
Dr. Lith, a rather stout, mild-eyed German savant, plunged directly
into the middle of things as soon as we had been introduced. “It is a
most remarkable affair, gentlemen,” he began, placing for us chairs
that must have been hundreds of years old. “At first it was only those
objects in the museum, that were green that were touched, like the
collection of famous and historic French emeralds. But soon we found it
was other things, too, that were missing—old Roman coins of gold, a
collection of watches, and I know not what else until we have gone over
the—”
“Where is Miss White?” interrupted Spencer, who had been listening
somewhat impatiently.
“In the library, sir. Shall I call her?”
“No, I will go myself. I want her to tell her experience to Professor
Kennedy exactly as she told it to me. Explain while I am gone how
impossible it would be for a visitor to do one, to say nothing of all,
of the acts of vandalism we have discovered.”
VII
THE GREEN CURSE
The American Medici disappeared into his main library, where Miss White
was making a minute examination to determine what damage had been done
in the realm over which she presided.
“Apparently every book with a green binding has been mutilated in some
way,” resumed Dr. Lith, “but that was only the beginning. Others have
suffered, too, and some are even gone. It is impossible that any
visitor could have done it. Only a few personal friends of Mr. Spencer
are ever admitted here, and they are never alone. No, it is weird,
mysterious.”
Just then Spencer returned with Miss White. She was an extremely
attractive girl, slight of figure, but with an air about her that all
the imported gowns in New York could not have conferred. They were
engaged in animated conversation, so much in contrast with the bored
air with which Spencer had listened to Dr. Lith that even I noticed
that the connoisseur was completely obliterated in the man, whose love
of beauty was by no means confined to the inanimate. I wondered if it
was merely his interest in her story that impelled Spencer. The more I
watched the girl the more I was convinced that she knew that she was
interesting to the millionaire.
“For example,” Dr. Lith was saying, “the famous collection of emeralds
which has disappeared has always been what you Americans call
‘hoodooed.’ They have always brought ill luck, and, like many things of
the sort to which superstition attaches, they have been ‘banked,’ so to
speak, by their successive owners in museums.”
“Are they salable; that is, could any one dispose of the emeralds or
the other curios with reasonable safety and at a good price?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” hastened Dr. Lith, “not as collections, but separately.
The emeralds alone cost fifty thousand dollars. I believe Mr. Spencer
bought them for Mrs. Spencer some years before she died. She did not
care to wear them, however, and had them placed here.”
I thought I noticed a shade of annoyance cross the face of the magnate.
“Never mind that,” he interrupted. “Let me introduce Miss White. I
think you will find her story one of the most uncanny you have ever
heard.”
He had placed a chair for her and, still addressing us but looking at
her, went on: “It seems that the morning the vandalism was first
discovered she and Dr. Lith at once began a thorough search of the
building to ascertain the extent of the depredations. The search lasted
all day, and well into the night. I believe it was midnight before you
finished?”
“It was almost twelve,” began the girl, in a musical voice that was too
Parisian to harmonize with her plain Anglo-Saxon name, “when Dr. Lith
was down here in his office checking off the objects in the catalogue
which were either injured or missing. I had been working in the
library. The noise of something like a shade flapping in the wind
attracted my attention. I listened. It seemed to come from the
art-gallery, a large room up-stairs where some of the greatest
masterpieces in this country are hung. I hurried up there.
“Just as I reached the door a strange feeling seemed to come over me
that I was not alone in that room. I fumbled for the electric light
switch, but in my nervousness could not find it. There was just enough
light in the room to make out objects indistinctly. I thought I heard a
low, moaning sound from an old Flemish copper ewer near me. I had heard
that it was supposed to groan at night.”
She paused and shuddered at her recollection, and looked about as if
grateful for the flood of electric light that now illuminated
everything. Spencer reached over and touched her arm to encourage her
to go on. She did not seem to resent the touch.
“Opposite me, in the middle of the open floor,” she resumed, her eyes
dilated and her breath coming and going rapidly, “stood the mummy-case
of Ka, an Egyptian priestess of Thebes, I think. The case was empty,
but on the lid was painted a picture of the priestess! Such wonderful
eyes! They seem to pierce right through your very soul. Often in the
daytime I have stolen off to look at them. But at night—remember the
hour of night, too—oh, it was awful, terrible. The lid of the
mummy-case moved, yes, really moved, and seemed to float to one side. I
could see it. And back of that carved and painted face with the
piercing eyes was another face, a real face, real eyes, and they looked
out at me with such hatred from the place that I knew was empty—”
She had risen and was facing us with wild terror written on her face as
if in appeal for protection against something she was powerless to
name. Spencer, who had not taken his hand off her arm, gently pressed
her back into the easy chair and finished the story.
“She screamed and fainted. Dr. Lith heard it and rushed up-stairs.
There she lay on the floor. The lid of the sarcophagus had really been
moved. He saw it. Not a thing else had been disturbed. He carried her
down here and revived her, told her to rest for a day or two, but—”
“I cannot, I cannot,” she cried. “It is the fascination of the thing.
It brings me back here. I dream of it. I thought I saw those eyes the
other night. They haunt me. I fear them, and yet I would not avoid
them, if it killed me to look. I must meet and defy the power. What is
it? Is it a curse four thousand years old that has fallen on me?”
I had heard stories of mummies that rose from their sleep of centuries
to tell the fate of some one when it was hanging in the balance, of
mummies that groaned and gurgled and fought for breath, frantically
beating with their swathed hands in the witching hours of the night.
And I knew that the lure of these mummies was so strong for some people
that they were drawn irresistibly to look upon and confer with them.
Was this a case for the oculists, the spiritualists, the Egyptologists,
or for a detective?
“I should like to examine the art gallery, in fact, go over the whole
museum,” put in Kennedy in his most matter-of-fact tone.
Spencer, with a glance at his watch, excused himself, nodding to Dr.
Lith to show us about, and with a good night to Miss White which was
noticeable for its sympathy with her fears, said, “I shall be at the
house for another half-hour at least, in case anything really important
develops.”
A few minutes later Miss White left for the night, with apparent
reluctance, and yet, I thought, with just a little shudder as she
looked back up the staircase that led to the art-gallery.
Dr. Lith led us into a large vaulted marble hall and up a broad flight
of steps, past beautiful carvings and frescoes that I should have liked
to stop and admire.
The art-gallery was a long room in the interior and at the top of the
building, windowless but lighted by a huge double skylight each half of
which must have been some eight or ten feet across. The light falling
through this skylight passed through plate glass of marvellous
transparency. One looked up at the sky as if through the air itself.
Kennedy ignored the gallery’s profusion of priceless art for the time
and went directly to the mummy-case of the priestess Ka.
“It has a weird history,” remarked Dr. Lith. “No less than seven
deaths, as well as many accidents, have been attributed to the malign
influence of that greenish yellow coffin. You know the ancient
Egyptians used to chant as they buried their sacred dead: ‘Woe to him
who injures the tomb. The dead shall point out the evildoer to the
Devourer of the Underworld. Soul and body shall be destroyed.’”
It was indeed an awesome thing. It represented a woman in the robes of
an Egyptian priestess, a woman of medium height, with an inscrutable
face. The slanting Egyptian eyes did, as Miss White had said, almost
literally stare through you. I am sure that any one possessing a nature
at all affected by such things might after a few minutes gazing at them
in self-hypnotism really convince himself that the eyes moved and were
real. Even as I turned and looked the other way I felt that those
penetrating eyes were still looking at me, never asleep, always keen
and searching.
There was no awe about Kennedy. He carefully pushed aside the lid and
peered inside. I almost expected to see some one in there. A moment
later he pulled out his magnifying-glass and carefully examined the
interior. At last he was apparently satisfied with his search. He had
narrowed his attention down to a few marks on the stone, partly in the
thin layer of dust that had collected on the bottom.
“This was a very modern and material reincarnation,” he remarked, as he
rose. “If I am not mistaken, the apparition wore shoes, shoes with
nails in the heels, and nails that are not like those in American
shoes. I shall have to compare the marks I have found with marks I have
copied from shoe-nails in the wonderful collection of M. Bertillon.
Offhand, I should say that the shoes were of French make.”
The library having been gone over next without anything attracting
Kennedy’s attention particularly, he asked about the basement or
cellar. Dr. Lith lighted the way, and we descended.
Down there were innumerable huge packing-cases which had just arrived
from abroad, full of the latest consignment of art treasures which
Spencer had purchased. Apparently Dr. Lith and Miss White had been so
engrossed in discovering what damage had been done to the art treasures
above that they had not had time to examine the new ones in the
basement.
Kennedy’s first move was to make a thorough search of all the little
grated windows and a door which led out into a sort of little areaway
for the removal of ashes and refuse. The door showed no evidence of
having been tampered with, nor did any of the windows at first sight. A
low exclamation from Kennedy brought us to his side. He had opened one
of the windows and thrust his hand out against the grating, which had
fallen on the outside pavement with a clang. The bars had been
completely and laboriously sawed through, and the whole thing had been
wedged back into place so that nothing would be detected at a cursory
glance. He was regarding the lock on the window. Apparently it was all
right; actually it had been sprung so that it was useless.