the art-gallery,” Craig shouted. “The other person must have got up to
the room quicker than I expected. Here goes.”
A loud explosion took place, apparently on the very window-sill of our
room. Almost at the same instant there was a crash of glass from the
museum.
We sprang to the window, I expecting to see Kennedy injured, Spencer
expecting to see his costly museum a mass of smoking ruins. Instead we
saw nothing of the sort. On the window-ledge was a peculiar little
instrument that looked like a miniature field-gun with an elaborate
system of springs and levers to break the recoil.
Craig had turned from it so suddenly that he actually ran full tilt
into us. “Come on,” he cried breathlessly, bolting from the room, and
seizing Dr. Lith by the arm as he did so. “Dr. Lith, the keys to the
museum, quick! We must get there before the fumes clear away.”
He was taking the stairs two at a time, dragging the dignified curator
with him.
In fewer seconds than I can tell it we were in the museum and mounting
the broad staircase to the art-gallery. An overpowering gas seemed to
permeate everything.
“Stand back a moment,” cautioned Kennedy as we neared the door. “I have
just shot in here one of those asphyxiating bombs which the Paris
police invented to war against the Apaches and the motor-car bandits.
Open all the windows back here and let the air clear. Walter, breathe
as little of it as you can—but—come here—do you see?—over there,
near the other door—a figure lying on the floor? Make a dash in after
me and carry it out. There is just one thing more. If I am not back in
a minute come in and try to get me.”
He had already preceded me into the stifling fumes. With a last long
breath of fresh air I plunged in after him, scarcely knowing what would
happen to me. I saw the figure on the floor, seized it, and backed out
of the room as fast as I could.
Dizzy and giddy from the fumes I had been forced to inhale, I managed
to drag the form to the nearest window. It was Lucille White.
An instant later I felt myself unceremoniously pushed aside. Spencer
had forgotten all about the millions of dollars’ worth of curios, all
about the suspicions that had been entertained against her, and had
taken the half-conscious burden from me.
“This is the second time I have found you here, Edouard,” she was
muttering in her half-delirium, still struggling. “The first time—that
night I hid in the mummy-case, you fled when I called for help. I have
followed you every moment since last night to prevent this. Edouard,
don’t, DON’T! Remember I was—I am your wife. Listen to me. Oh, it is
the absinthe that has spoiled your art and made it worthless, not the
critics. It is not Mr. Spencer who has enticed me away, but you who
drove me away, first from Paris, and now from New York. He has been
only—No! No!—” she was shrieking now, her eyes wide open as she
realised it was Spencer himself she saw leaning over her. With a great
effort she seemed to rouse herself. “Don’t stay. Run—run. Leave me. He
has a bomb that may go off at any moment. Oh—oh—it is the curse of
absinthe that pursues me. Will you not go? Vite! Vite!”
She had almost fainted and was lapsing into French, laughing and crying
alternately, telling him to go, yet clinging to him.
Spencer paid no attention to what she had said of the bomb. But I did.
The minute was up, and Kennedy was in there yet. I turned to rush in
again to warn him at any peril.
Just then a half-conscious form staggered against me. It was Craig
himself. He was holding the infernal machine of the five glass tubes
that might at any instant blow us into eternity.
Overcome himself, he stumbled. The sinking sensation in my heart I can
never describe. It was just a second that I waited for the terrific
explosion that was to end it all for us, one long interminable second.
But it did not come.
Limp as I was with the shock, I dropped down beside him and bent over.
“A glass of water, Walter,” he murmured, “and fan me a bit. I didn’t
dare trust myself to carry the thing complete, so I emptied the acid
into the sarcophagus. I guess I must have stayed in there too long. But
we are safe. See if you can drag out Delaverde. He is in there by the
mummy-case.”
Spencer was still holding Lucille, although she was much better in the
fresh air of the hall. “I understand,” he was muttering. “You have been
following this fiend of a husband of yours to protect the museum and
myself from him. Lucille, Lucille—look at me. You are mine, not his,
whether he is dead or alive. I will free you from him, from the curse
of the absinthe that has pursued you.”
The fumes had cleared a great deal by this time. In the centre of the
art-gallery we found a man, a tall, black-bearded Frenchman, crazy
indeed from the curse of the green absinthe that had ruined him. He was
scarcely breathing from a deadly wound in his chest. The hair-spring
ring of the Apache pistol had exploded the cartridge as he fell.
Spencer did not even look at him, as he carried his own burden down to
the little office of Dr. Lith.
“When a rich man marries a girl who has been earning her own living,
the newspapers always distort it,” he whispered aside to me a few
minutes later. “Jameson, you’re a newspaperman—I depend on you to get
the facts straight this time.”
Outside, Kennedy grasped my arm.
“You’ll do that, Walter?” he asked persuasively. “Spencer is a client
that one doesn’t get every day. Just drop into the Star office and give
them the straight story, I’ll promise you I’ll not take another case
until you are free again to go on with me in it.”
There was no denying him. As briefly as I could I rehearsed the main
facts to the managing editor late that night. I was too tired to write
it at length, yet I could not help a feeling of satisfaction as he
exclaimed, “Great stuff, Jameson,—great.”
“I know,” I replied, “but this six-cylindered existence for a week
wears you out.”
“My dear boy,” he persisted, “if I had turned some one else loose on
that story, he’d have been dead. Go to it—it’s fine.”
It was a bit of blarney, I knew. But somehow or other I liked it. It
was just what I needed to encourage me, and I hurried uptown promising
myself a sound sleep at any rate.
“Very good,” remarked Kennedy the next morning, poking his head in at
my door and holding up a copy of the Star into which a very accurate
brief account of the affair had been dropped at the last moment. “I’m
going over to the laboratory. See you there as soon as you can get
over.”
“Craig,” I remarked an hour or so later as I sauntered in on him, hard
at work, “I don’t see how you stand this feverish activity.”
“Stand it?” he repeated, holding up a beaker to the light to watch a
reaction. “It’s my very life. Stand it? Why, man, if you want me to
pass away—stop it. As long as it lasts, I shall be all right. Let it
quit and I’ll—I’ll go back to research work,” he laughed.
Evidently he had been waiting for me, for as he talked, he laid aside
the materials with which he had been working and was preparing to go
out.
“Then, too,” he went on, “I like to be with people like Spencer and
Brixton. For example, while I was waiting here for you, there came a
call from Emery Pitts.”
“Emery Pitts?” I echoed. “What does he want?”
“The best way to find out is—to find out,” he answered simply. “It’s
getting late and I promised to be there directly. I think we’d better
take a taxi.”
A few minutes later we were ushered into a large Fifth Avenue mansion
and were listening to a story which interested even Kennedy.
“Not even a blood spot has been disturbed in the kitchen. Nothing has
been altered since the discovery of the murdered chef, except that his
body has been moved into the next room.”
Emery Pitts, one of the “thousand millionaires of steel,” overwrought
as he was by a murder in his own household, sank back in his
easy-chair, exhausted.
Pitts was not an old man; indeed, in years he was in the prime of life.
Yet by his looks he might almost have been double his age, the more so
in contrast with Minna Pitts, his young and very pretty wife, who stood
near him in the quaint breakfast-room and solicitously moved a pillow
back of his head.
Kennedy and I looked on in amazement. We knew that he had recently
retired from active business, giving as a reason his failing health.
But neither of us had thought, when the hasty summons came early that
morning to visit him immediately at his house, that his condition was
as serious as it now appeared.
“In the kitchen?” repeated Kennedy, evidently not prepared for any
trouble in that part of the house.
Pitts, who had closed his eyes, now reopened them slowly and I noticed
how contracted were the pupils.
“Yes,” he answered somewhat wearily, “my private kitchen which I have
had fitted up. You know, I am on a diet, have been ever since I offered
the one hundred thousand dollars for the sure restoration of youth. I
shall have you taken out there presently.”
He lapsed again into a half dreamy state, his head bowed on one hand
resting on the arm of his chair. The morning’s mail still lay on the
table, some letters open, as they had been when the discovery had been
announced. Mrs. Pitts was apparently much excited and unnerved by the
gruesome discovery in the house.
“You have no idea who the murderer might be?” asked Kennedy, addressing
Pitts, but glancing keenly at his wife.
“No,” replied Pitts, “if I had I should have called the regular police.
I wanted you to take it up before they spoiled any of the clues. In the
first place we do not think it could have been done by any of the other
servants. At least, Minna says that there was no quarrel.”
“How could any one have got in from the outside?” asked Craig.
“There is a back way, a servants’ entrance, but it is usually locked.
Of course some one might have obtained a key to it.”
Mrs. Pitts had remained silent throughout the dialogue. I could not
help thinking that she suspected something, perhaps was concealing
something. Yet each of them seemed equally anxious to have the marauder
apprehended, whoever he might be.
“My dear,” he said to her at length, “will you call some one and have
them taken to the kitchen?”
IX
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
As Minna Pitts led us through the large mansion preparatory to turning
us over to a servant she explained hastily that Mr. Pitts had long been
ill and was now taking a new treatment under Dr. Thompson Lord. No one
having answered her bell in the present state of excitement of the
house, she stopped short at the pivoted door of the kitchen, with a
little shudder at the tragedy, and stood only long enough to relate to
us the story as she had heard it from the valet, Edward.
Mr. Pitts, it seemed, had wanted an early breakfast and had sent Edward
to order it. The valet had found the kitchen a veritable
slaughter-house, with, the negro chef, Sam, lying dead on the floor.
Sam had been dead, apparently, since the night before.
As she hurried away, Kennedy pushed open the door. It was a marvellous
place, that antiseptic or rather aseptic kitchen, with its white tiling
and enamel, its huge ice-box, and cooking-utensils for every purpose,
all of the most expensive and modern make.
There were marks everywhere of a struggle, and by the side of the chef,
whose body now lay in the next room awaiting the coroner, lay a long
carving-knife with which he had evidently defended himself. On its
blade and haft were huge coagulated spots of blood. The body of Sam
bore marks of his having been clutched violently by the throat, and in
his head was a single, deep wound that penetrated the skull in a most
peculiar manner. It did not seem possible that a blow from a knife
could have done it. It was a most unusual wound and not at all the sort
that could have been made by a bullet.
As Kennedy examined it, he remarked, shaking his head in confirmation
of his own opinion, “That must have been done by a Behr bulletless gun.”
“A bulletless gun?” I repeated.
“Yes, a sort of pistol with a spring-operated device that projects a
sharp blade with great force. No bullet and no powder are used in it.
But when it is placed directly over a vital point of the skull so that
the aim is unerring, a trigger lets a long knife shoot out with
tremendous force, and death is instantaneous.”
Near the door, leading to the courtyard that opened on the side street,
were some spots of blood. They were so far from the place where the
valet had discovered the body of the chef that there could be no doubt
that they were blood from the murderer himself. Kennedy’s reasoning in
the matter seemed irresistible.
He looked under the table near the door, covered with a large light
cloth. Beneath the table and behind the cloth he found another blood
spot.
“How did that land there?” he mused aloud. “The table-cloth is
bloodless.”
Craig appeared to think a moment. Then he unlocked and opened the door.
A current of air was created and blew the cloth aside.
“Clearly,” he exclaimed, “that drop of blood was wafted under the table
as the door was opened. The chances are all that it came from a cut on
perhaps the hand or face of the murderer himself.”
It seemed to be entirely reasonable, for the bloodstains about the room
were such as to indicate that he had been badly cut by the
carving-knife.
“Whoever attacked the chef must have been deeply wounded,” I remarked,
picking up the bloody knife and looking about at the stains,
comparatively few of which could have come from the one deep fatal
wound in the head of the victim.
Kennedy was still engrossed in a study of the stains, evidently
considering that their size, shape, and location might throw some light
on what had occurred. “Walter,” he said finally, “while I’m busy here,
I wish you would find that valet, Edward. I want to talk to him.”
I found him at last, a clean-cut young fellow of much above average
intelligence.
“There are some things I have not yet got clearly, Edward,” began
Kennedy. “Now where was the body, exactly, when you opened the door?”
Edward pointed out the exact spot, near the side of the kitchen toward
the door leading out to the breakfast room and opposite the ice-box.
“And the door to the side street?” asked Kennedy, to all appearances
very favorably impressed by the young man.
“It was locked, sir,” he answered positively.
Kennedy was quite apparently considering the honesty and faithfulness
of the servant. At last he leaned over and asked quickly, “Can I trust
you?”
The frank, “Yes,” of the young fellow was convincing enough.
“What I want,” pursued Kennedy, “is to have some one inside this house
who can tell me as much as he can see of the visitors, the messengers
that come here this morning. It will be an act of loyalty to your
employer, so that you need have no fear about that.”
Edward bowed, and left us. While I had been seeking him, Kennedy had
telephoned hastily to his laboratory and had found one of his students
there. He had ordered him to bring down an apparatus which he
described, and some other material.
While we waited Kennedy sent word to Pitts that he wanted to see him
alone for a few minutes.
The instrument appeared to be a rubber bulb and cuff with a rubber bag
attached to the inside. From it ran a tube which ended in another
graduated glass tube with a thin line of mercury in it like a
thermometer.
Craig adjusted the thing over the brachial artery of Pitts, just above
the elbow.
“It may be a little uncomfortable, Mr. Pitts,” he apologised, “but it
will be for only a few minutes.”
Pressure through the rubber bulb shut off the artery so that Kennedy
could no longer feel the pulse at the wrist. As he worked, I began to
see what he was after. The reading on the graded scale of the height of
the column of mercury indicated, I knew, blood pressure. This time, as
he worked, I noted also the flabby skin of Pitts as well as the small
and sluggish pupils of his eyes.
He completed his test in silence and excused himself, although as we
went back to the kitchen I was burning with curiosity.
“What was it?” I asked. “What did you discover?”
“That,” he replied, “was a sphygmomanometer, something like the
sphygmograph which we used once in another case. Normal blood pressure
is 125 millimetres. Mr. Pitts shows a high pressure, very high. The
large life insurance companies are now using this instrument. They
would tell you that a high pressure like that indicates apoplexy. Mr.
Pitts, young as he really is, is actually old. For, you know, the
saying is that a man is as old as his arteries. Pitts has hardening of
the arteries, arteriosclerosis—perhaps other heart and kidney
troubles, in short pre-senility.”
Craig paused: then added sententiously as if to himself: “You have
heard the latest theories about old age, that it is due to microbic
poisons secreted in the intestines and penetrating the intestinal
walls? Well, in premature senility the symptoms are the same as in
senility, only mental acuteness is not so impaired.”
We had now reached the kitchen again. The student had also brought down
to Kennedy a number of sterilised microscope slides and test-tubes, and
from here and there in the masses of blood spots Kennedy was taking and
preserving samples. He also took samples of the various foods, which he
preserved in the sterilised tubes.
While he was at work Edward joined us cautiously.
“Has anything happened?” asked Craig.
“A message came by a boy for Mrs. Pitts,” whispered the valet.
“What did she do with it?”
“Tore it up.”
“And the pieces?”
“She must have hidden them somewhere.”
“See if you can get them.”
Edward nodded and left us.
“Yes,” I remarked after he had gone, “it does seem as if the thing to
do was to get on the trail of a person bearing wounds of some kind. I
notice, for one thing, Craig, that Edward shows no such marks, nor does
any one else in the house as far as I can see. If it were an ‘inside
job’ I fancy Edward at least could clear himself. The point is to find
the person with a bandaged hand or plastered face.”
Kennedy assented, but his mind was on another subject. “Before we go we
must see Mrs. Pitts alone, if we can,” he said simply.
In answer to his inquiry through one of the servants she sent down word
that she would see us immediately in her sitting-room. The events of
the morning had quite naturally upset her, and she was, if anything,
even paler than when we saw her before.
“Mrs. Pitts,” began Kennedy, “I suppose you are aware of the physical
condition of your husband?”
It seemed a little abrupt to me at first, but he intended it to be.
“Why,” she asked with real alarm, “is he so very badly?”
“Pretty badly,” remarked Kennedy mercilessly, observing the effect of
his words. “So badly, I fear, that it would not require much more
excitement like to-day’s to bring on an attack of apoplexy. I should
advise you to take especial care of him, Mrs. Pitts.”
Following his eyes, I tried to determine whether the agitation of the
woman before us was genuine or not. It certainly looked so. But then, I
knew that she had been an actress before her marriage. Was she acting a
part now?
“What do you mean?” she asked tremulously.
“Mrs. Pitts,” replied Kennedy quickly, observing still the play of
emotion on her delicate features, “some one, I believe, either
regularly in or employed in this house or who had a ready means of
access to it must have entered that kitchen last night. For what
purpose, I can leave you to judge. But Sam surprised the intruder there
and was killed for his faithfulness.”
Her startled look told plainly that though she might have suspected
something of the sort she did not think that any one else suspected,
much less actually perhaps knew it.
“I can’t imagine who it could be, unless it might be one of the
servants,” she murmured hastily; adding, “and there is none of them
that I have any right to suspect.”
She had in a measure regained her composure, and Kennedy felt that it
was no use to pursue the conversation further, perhaps expose his hand
before he was ready to play it.
“That woman is concealing something,” remarked Kennedy to me as we left
the house a few minutes later.
“She at least bears no marks of violence herself of any kind,” I
commented.
“No,” agreed Craig, “no, you are right so far.” He added: “I shall be
very busy in the laboratory this afternoon, and probably longer.
However, drop in at dinner time, and in the meantime, don’t say a word
to any one, but just use your position on the Star to keep in touch
with anything the police authorities may be doing.”
It was not a difficult commission, since they did nothing but issue a
statement, the net import of which was to let the public know that they
were very active, although they had nothing to report.
Kennedy was still busy when I rejoined him, a little late purposely,
since I knew that he would be over his head in work.
“What’s this—a zoo?” I asked, looking about me as I entered the
sanctum that evening.
There were dogs and guinea pigs, rats and mice, a menagerie that would
have delighted a small boy. It did not look like the same old
laboratory for the investigation of criminal science, though I saw on a
second glance that it was the same, that there was the usual
hurly-burly of microscopes, test-tubes, and all the paraphernalia that
were so mystifying at first but in the end under his skilful hand made
the most complicated cases seem stupidly simple.
Craig smiled at my surprise. “I’m making a little study of intestinal
poisons,” he commented, “poisons produced by microbes which we keep
under more or less control in healthy life. In death they are the
little fellows that extend all over the body and putrefy it. We nourish
within ourselves microbes which secrete very virulent poisons, and when
those poisons are too much for us—well, we grow old. At least that is
the theory of Metchnikoff, who says that old age is an infectious
chronic, disease. Somehow,” he added thoughtfully, “that beautiful
white kitchen in the Pitts home had really become a factory for
intestinal poisons.”
There was an air of suppressed excitement in his manner which told me
that Kennedy was on the trail of something unusual.
“Mouth murder,” he cried at length, “that was what was being done in
that wonderful kitchen. Do you know, the scientific slaying of human
beings has far exceeded organised efforts at detection? Of course you
expect me to say that; you think I look at such things through coloured
glasses. But it is a fact, nevertheless.
“It is a very simple matter for the police to apprehend the common
murderer whose weapon is a knife or a gun, but it is a different thing
when they investigate the death of a person who has been the victim of
the modern murderer who slays, let us say, with some kind of deadly
bacilli. Authorities say, and I agree with them, that hundreds of
murders are committed in this country every year and are not detected
because the detectives are not scientists, while the slayers have used
the knowledge of the scientists both to commit and to cover up the
crimes. I tell you, Walter, a murder science bureau not only would
clear up nearly every poison mystery, but also it would inspire such a
wholesome fear among would-be murderers that they would abandon many
attempts to take life.”
He was as excited over the case as I had ever seen him. Indeed it was
one that evidently taxed his utmost powers.
“What have you found?” I asked, startled.
“You remember my use of the sphygmomanometer?” he asked. “In the first
place that put me on what seems to be a clear trail. The most dreaded
of all the ills of the cardiac and vascular systems nowadays seems to
be arterio-sclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. It is possible for
a man of forty-odd, like Mr. Pitts, to have arteries in a condition
which would not be encountered normally in persons under seventy years
of age.