consequent increased strain on the heart. This may lead, has led in
this case, to a long train of distressing symptoms, and, of course, to
ultimate death. Heart disease, according to statistics, is carrying off
a greater percentage of persons than formerly. This fact cannot be
denied, and it is attributed largely to worry, the abnormal rush of the
life of to-day, and sometimes to faulty methods of eating and bad
nutrition. On the surface, these natural causes might seem to be at
work with Mr. Pitts. But, Walter, I do not believe it, I do not believe
it. There is more than that, here. Come, I can do nothing more
to-night, until I learn more from these animals and the cultures which
I have in these tubes. Let us take a turn or two, then dine, and
perhaps we may get some word at our apartment from Edward.”
It was late that night when a gentle tap at the door proved that
Kennedy’s hope had not been unfounded. I opened it and let in Edward,
the valet, who produced the fragments of a note, torn and crumpled.
“There is nothing new, sir,” he explained, “except that Mrs. Pitts
seems more nervous than ever, and Mr. Pitts, I think, is feeling a
little brighter.”
Kennedy said nothing, but was hard at work with puckered brows at
piecing together the note which Edward had obtained after hunting
through the house. It had been thrown into a fireplace in Mrs. Pitts’s
own room, and only by chance had part of it been unconsumed. The body
of the note was gone altogether, but the first part and the last part
remained.
Apparently it had been written the very morning on which the murder was
discovered.
It read simply, “I have succeeded in having Thornton declared ...” Then
there was a break. The last words were legible, and were, “... confined
in a suitable institution where he can cause no future harm.”
There was no signature, as if the sender had perfectly understood that
the receiver would understand.
“Not difficult to supply some of the context, at any rate,” mused
Kennedy. “Whoever Thornton may be, some one has succeeded in having him
declared ‘insane,’ I should supply. If he is in an institution near New
York, we must be able to locate him. Edward, this is a very important
clue. There is nothing else.”
Kennedy employed the remainder of the night in obtaining a list of all
the institutions, both public and private, within a considerable radius
of the city where the insane might be detained.
The next morning, after an hour or so spent in the laboratory
apparently in confirming some control tests which Kennedy had laid out
to make sure that he was not going wrong in the line of inquiry he was
pursuing, we started off in a series of flying visits to the various
sanitaria about the city in search of an inmate named Thornton.
I will not attempt to describe the many curious sights and experiences
we saw and had. I could readily believe that any one who spent even as
little time as we did might almost think that the very world was going
rapidly insane. There were literally thousands of names in the lists
which we examined patiently, going through them all, since Kennedy was
not at all sure that Thornton might not be a first name, and we had no
time to waste on taking any chances.
It was not until long after dusk that, weary with the search and
dust-covered from our hasty scouring of the country in an automobile
which Kennedy had hired after exhausting the city institutions, we came
to a small private asylum up in Westchester. I had almost been willing
to give it up for the day, to start afresh on the morrow, but Kennedy
seemed to feel that the case was too urgent to lose even twelve hours
over.
It was a peculiar place, isolated, out-of-the-way, and guarded by a
high brick wall that enclosed a pretty good sized garden.
A ring at the bell brought a sharp-eyed maid to the door.
“Have you—er—any one here named Thornton—er—?” Kennedy paused in
such a way that if it were the last name he might come to a full stop,
and if it were a first name he could go on.
“There is a Mr. Thornton who came yesterday,” she snapped ungraciously,
“but you can not see him, It’s against the rules.”
“Yes—yesterday,” repeated Kennedy eagerly, ignoring her tartness.
“Could I—” he slipped a crumpled treasury note into her hand—“could I
speak to Mr. Thornton’s nurse?”
The note seemed to render the acidity of the girl slightly alkaline.
She opened the door a little further, and we found ourselves in a
plainly furnished reception room, alone.
We might have been in the reception-room of a prosperous country
gentleman, so quiet was it. There was none of the raving, as far as I
could make out, that I should have expected even in a twentieth century
Bedlam, no material for a Poe story of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather.
At length the hall door opened, and a man entered, not a prepossessing
man, it is true, with his large and powerful hands and arms and
slightly bowed, almost bulldog legs. Yet he was not of that aggressive
kind which would make a show of physical strength without good and
sufficient cause.
“You have charge of Mr. Thornton?” inquired Kennedy.
“Yes,” was the curt response.
“I trust he is all right here?”
“He wouldn’t be here if he was all right,” was the quick reply. “And
who might you be?”
“I knew him in the old days,” replied Craig evasively. “My friend here
does not know him, but I was in this part of Westchester visiting and
having heard he was here thought I would drop in, just for old time’s
sake. That is all.”
“How did you know he was here?” asked the man suspiciously.
“I heard indirectly from a friend of mine, Mrs. Pitts.”
“Oh.”
The man seemed to accept the explanation at its face value.
“Is he very—very badly?” asked Craig with well-feigned interest.
“Well,” replied the man, a little mollified by a good cigar which I
produced, “don’t you go a-telling her, but if he says the name Minna
once a day it is a thousand times. Them drug-dopes has some strange
delusions.”
“Strange delusions?” queried Craig. “Why, what do you mean?”
“Say,” ejaculated the man. “I don’t know you, You come here saying
you’re friends of Mr. Thornton’s. How do I know what you are?”
“Well,” ventured Kennedy, “suppose I should also tell you I am a friend
of the man who committed him.”
“Of Dr. Thompson Lord?”
“Exactly. My friend here knows Dr. Lord very well, don’t you, Walter?”
Thus appealed to I hastened to add, “Indeed I do.” Then, improving the
opening, I hastened: “Is this Mr. Thornton violent? I think this is one
of the most quiet institutions I ever saw for so small a place.”
The man shook his head.
“Because,” I added, “I thought some drug fiends were violent and had to
be restrained by force, often.”
“You won’t find a mark or a scratch on him, sir,” replied the man.
“That ain’t our system.”
“Not a mark or scratch on him,” repeated Kennedy thoughtfully. “I
wonder if he’d recognise me?”
“Can’t say,” concluded the man. “What’s more, can’t try. It’s against
the rules. Only your knowing so many he knows has got you this far.
You’ll have to call on a regular day or by appointment to see him,
gentlemen.”
There was an air of finality about the last statement that made Kennedy
rise and move toward the door with a hearty “Thank you, for your
kindness,” and a wish to be remembered to “poor old Thornton.”
As we climbed into the car he poked me in the ribs. “Just as good for
the present as if we had seen him,” he exclaimed. “Drug-fiend, friend
of Mrs. Pitts, committed by Dr. Lord, no wounds.”
Then he lapsed into silence as we sped back to the city.
“The Pitts house,” ordered Kennedy as we bowled along, after noting by
his watch that it was after nine. Then to me he added, “We must see
Mrs. Pitts once more, and alone.”
We waited some time after Kennedy sent up word that he would like to
see Mrs. Pitts. At last she appeared. I thought she avoided Kennedy’s
eye, and I am sure that her intuition told her that he had some
revelation to make, against which she was steeling herself.
Craig greeted her as reassuringly as he could, but as she sat nervously
before us, I could see that she was in reality pale, worn, and anxious.
“We have had a rather hard day,” began Kennedy after the usual polite
inquiries about her own and her husband’s health had been, I thought, a
little prolonged by him.
“Indeed?” she asked. “Have you come any closer to the truth?”
Kennedy met her eyes, and she turned away.
“Yes, Mr. Jameson and I have put in the better part of the day in going
from one institution for the insane to another.”
He paused. The startled look on her face told as plainly as words that
his remark had struck home.
Without giving her a chance to reply, or to think of a verbal means of
escape, Craig hurried on with an account of what we had done, saying
nothing about the original letter which had started us on the search
for Thornton, but leaving it to be inferred by her that he knew much
more than he cared to tell.
“In short, Mrs. Pitts,” he concluded firmly, “I do not need to tell you
that I already know much about the matter which you are concealing.”
The piling up of fact on fact, mystifying as it was to me who had as
yet no inkling of what it was tending toward, proved too much for the
woman who knew the truth, yet did not know how much Kennedy knew of it.
Minna Pitts was pacing the floor wildly, all the assumed manner of the
actress gone from her, yet with the native grace and feeling of the
born actress playing unrestrained in her actions.
“You know only part of my story,” she cried, fixing him with her now
tearless eyes. “It is only a question of time when you will worm it all
out by your uncanny, occult methods. Mr. Kennedy, I cast myself on you.”
X
THE TOXIN OF DEATH
The note of appeal in her tone was powerful, but I could not so readily
shake off my first suspicions of the woman. Whether or not she
convinced Kennedy, he did not show.
“I was only a young girl when I met Mr. Thornton,” she raced on. “I was
not yet eighteen when we were married. Too late, I found out the curse
of his life—and of mine. He was a drug fiend. From the very first life
with him was insupportable. I stood it as long as I could, but when he
beat me because he had no money to buy drugs, I left him. I gave myself
up to my career on the stage. Later I heard that he was dead—a
suicide. I worked, day and night, slaved, and rose in the
profession—until, at last, I met Mr. Pitts.”
She paused, and it was evident that it was with a struggle that she
could talk so.
“Three months after I was married to him, Thornton suddenly reappeared,
from the dead it seemed to me. He did not want me back. No, indeed. All
he wanted was money. I gave him money, my own money, for I made a
great deal in my stage days. But his demands increased. To silence him
I have paid him thousands. He squandered them faster than ever. And
finally, when it became unbearable, I appealed to a friend. That friend
has now succeeded in placing this man quietly in a sanitarium for the
insane.”
“And the murder of the chef?” shot out Kennedy.
She looked from one to the other of us in alarm. “Before God, I know no
more of that than does Mr. Pitts.”
Was she telling the truth? Would she stop at anything to avoid the
scandal and disgrace of the charge of bigamy? Was there not something
still that she was concealing? She took refuge in the last
resort—tears.
Encouraging as it was to have made such progress, it did not seem to me
that we were much nearer, after all, to the solution of the mystery.
Kennedy, as usual, had nothing to say until he was absolutely sure of
his ground. He spent the greater part of the next day hard at work over
the minute investigations of his laboratory, leaving me to arrange the
details of a meeting he planned for that night.
There were present Mr. and Mrs. Pitts, the former in charge of Dr.
Lord. The valet, Edward, was also there, and in a neighbouring room was
Thornton in charge of two nurses from the sanitarium. Thornton was a
sad wreck of a man now, whatever he might have been when his blackmail
furnished him with an unlimited supply of his favourite drugs.
“Let us go back to the very start of the case,” began Kennedy when we
had all assembled, “the murder of the chef, Sam.”
It seemed that the mere sound of his voice electrified his little
audience. I fancied a shudder passed over the slight form of Mrs.
Pitts, as she must have realised that this was the point where Kennedy
had left off, in his questioning her the night before.
“There is,” he went on slowly, “a blood test so delicate that one might
almost say that he could identify a criminal by his very
blood-crystals—the fingerprints, so to speak, of his blood. It was by
means of these ‘hemoglobin clues,’ if I may call them so, that I was
able to get on the right trail. For the fact is that a man’s blood is
not like that of any other living creature. Blood of different men, of
men and women differ. I believe that in time we shall be able to refine
this test to tell the exact individual, too.
“What is this principle? It is that the hemoglobin or red
colouring-matter of the blood forms crystals. That has long been known,
but working on this fact Dr. Reichert and Professor Brown of the
University of Pennsylvania have made some wonderful discoveries.
“We could distinguish human from animal blood before, it is true. But
the discovery of these two scientists takes us much further. By means
of blood-crystals we can distinguish the blood of man from that of the
animals and in addition that of white men from that of negroes and
other races. It is often the only way of differentiating between
various kinds of blood.
“The variations in crystals in the blood are in part of form and in
part of molecular structure, the latter being discovered only by means
of the polarising microscope. A blood-crystal is only one
two-thousand-two-hundred-and-fiftieth of an inch in length and one
nine-thousandth of an inch in breadth. And yet minute as these crystals
are, this discovery is of immense medico-legal importance. Crime may
now be traced by blood-crystals.”
He displayed on his table a number of enlarged micro-photographs. Some
were labelled, “Characteristic crystals of white man’s blood”; others
“Crystallisation of negro blood”; still others, “Blood-crystals of the
cat.”
“I have here,” he resumed, after we had all examined the photographs
and had seen that there was indeed a vast amount of difference, “three
characteristic kinds of crystals, all of which I found in the various
spots in the kitchen of Mr. Pitts. There were three kinds of blood, by
the infallible Reichert test.”
I had been prepared for his discovery of two kinds, but three
heightened the mystery still more.
“There was only a very little of the blood which was that of the poor,
faithful, unfortunate Sam, the negro chef,” Kennedy went on. “A little
more, found far from his body, is that of a white person. But most of
it is not human blood at all. It was the blood of a cat.”
The revelation was startling. Before any of us could ask, he hastened
to explain.
“It was placed there by some one who wished to exaggerate the struggle
in order to divert suspicion. That person had indeed been wounded
slightly, but wished it to appear that the wounds were very serious.
The fact of the matter is that the carving-knife is spotted deeply with
blood, but it is not human blood. It is the blood of a cat. A few years
ago even a scientific detective would have concluded that a fierce
hand-to-hand struggle had been waged and that the murderer was,
perhaps, fatally wounded. Now, another conclusion stands, proved
infallibly by this Reichert test. The murderer was wounded, but not
badly. That person even went out of the room and returned later,
probably with a can of animal blood, sprinkled it about to give the
appearance of a struggle, perhaps thought of preparing in this way a
plea of self-defence. If that latter was the case, this Reichert test
completely destroys it, clever though it was.” No one spoke, but the
same thought was openly in all our minds. Who was this wounded criminal?
I asked myself the usual query of the lawyers and the detectives—Who
would benefit most by the death of Pitts? There was but one answer,
apparently, to that. It was Minna Pitts. Yet it was difficult for me to
believe that a woman of her ordinary gentleness could be here to-night,
faced even by so great exposure, yet be so solicitous for him as she
had been and then at the same time be plotting against him. I gave it
up, determining to let Kennedy unravel it in his own way.
Craig evidently had the same thought in his mind, however, for he
continued: “Was it a woman who killed the chef? No, for the third
specimen of blood, that of the white person, was the blood of a man;
not of a woman.”
Pitts had been following closely, his unnatural eyes now gleaming. “You
said he was wounded, you remember,” he interrupted, as if casting about
in his mind to recall some one who bore a recent wound. “Perhaps it was
not a bad wound, but it was a wound nevertheless, and some one must
have seen it, must know about it. It is not three days.”
Kennedy shook his head. It was a point that had bothered him a great
deal.
“As to the wounds,” he added in a measured tone “although this occurred
scarcely three days ago, there is no person even remotely suspected of
the crime who can be said to bear on his hands or face others than old
scars of wounds.”
He paused. Then he shot out in quick staccato, “Did you ever hear of
Dr. Carrel’s most recent discovery of accelerating the healing of
wounds so that those which under ordinary circumstances might take ten
days to heal might be healed in twenty-four hours?”
Rapidly, now, he sketched the theory. “If the factors that bring about
the multiplication of cells and the growth of tissues were discovered,
Dr. Carrel said to himself, it would perhaps become possible to hasten
artificially the process of repair of the body. Aseptic wounds could
probably be made to cicatrise more rapidly. If the rate of reparation
of tissue were hastened only ten times, a skin wound would heal in less
than twenty-four hours and a fracture of the leg in four or five days.
“For five years Dr. Carrel has been studying the subject, applying
various extracts to wounded tissues. All of them increased the growth
of connective tissue, but the degree of acceleration varied greatly. In
some cases it was as high, as forty times the normal. Dr. Carrel’s
dream of ten times the normal was exceeded by himself.”
Astounded as we were by this revelation, Kennedy did not seem to
consider it as important as one that he was now hastening to show us.
He took a few cubic centimetres of some culture which he had been
preparing, placed it in a tube, and poured in eight or ten drops of
sulphuric acid. He shook it.
“I have here a culture from some of the food that I found was being or
had been prepared for Mr. Pitts. It was in the icebox.”
Then he took another tube. “This,” he remarked, “is a
one-to-one-thousand solution of sodium nitrite.”
He held it up carefully and poured three or four cubic centimetres of
it into the first tube so that it ran carefully down the side in a
manner such as to form a sharp line of contact between the heavier
culture with the acid and the lighter nitrite solution.
“You see,” he said, “the reaction is very clear cut if you do it this
way. The ordinary method in the laboratory and the text-books is crude
and uncertain.”
“What is it?” asked Pitts eagerly, leaning forward with unwonted
strength and noting the pink colour that appeared at the junction of
the two liquids, contrasting sharply with the portions above and below.
“The ring or contact test for indol,” Kennedy replied, with evident
satisfaction. “When the acid and the nitrites are mixed the colour
reaction is unsatisfactory. The natural yellow tint masks that pink
tint, or sometimes causes it to disappear, if the tube is shaken. But
this is simple, clear, delicate—unescapable. There was indol in that
food of yours, Mr. Pitts.”
“Indol?” repeated Pitts.
“Is,” explained Kennedy, “a chemical compound—one of the toxins
secreted by intestinal bacteria and responsible for many of the
symptoms of senility. It used to be thought that large doses of indol
might be consumed with little or no effect on normal man, but now we
know that headache, insomnia, confusion, irritability, decreased
activity of the cells, and intoxication are possible from it.
Comparatively small doses over a long time produce changes in organs
that lead to serious results.
“It is,” went on Kennedy, as the full horror of the thing sank into our
minds, “the indol-and phenol-producing bacteria which are the
undesirable citizens of the body, while the lactic-acid producing germs
check the production of indol and phenol. In my tests here to-day, I
injected four one-hundredths of a grain of indol into a guinea-pig. The
animal had sclerosis or hardening of the aorta. The liver, kidneys, and
supra-renals were affected, and there was a hardening of the brain. In
short, there were all the symptoms of old age.”
We sat aghast. Indol! What black magic was this? Who put it in the food?
“It is present,” continued Craig, “in much larger quantities than all
the Metchnikoff germs could neutralise. What the chef was ordered to
put into the food to benefit you, Mr. Pitts, was rendered valueless,
and a deadly poison was added by what another—”
Minna Pitts had been clutching for support at the arms of her chair as
Kennedy proceeded. She now threw herself at the feet of Emery Pitts.
“Forgive me,” she sobbed. “I can stand it no longer. I had tried to
keep this thing about Thornton from you. I have tried to make you happy
and well—oh—tried so hard, so faithfully. Yet that old skeleton of my
past which I thought was buried would not stay buried. I have bought
Thornton off again and again, with money—my money—only to find him
threatening again. But about this other thing, this poison, I am as
innocent, and I believe Thornton is as—”
Craig laid a gentle hand on her lips. She rose wildly and faced him in
passionate appeal.
“Who—who is this Thornton?” demanded Emery Pitts.
Quickly, delicately, sparing her as much as he could, Craig hurried
over our experiences.
“He is in the next room,” Craig went on, then facing Pitts added: “With
you alive, Emery Pitts, this blackmail of your wife might have gone on,
although there was always the danger that you might hear of it—and do
as I see you have already done—forgive, and plan to right the
unfortunate mistake. But with you dead, this Thornton, or rather some
one using him, might take away from Minna Pitts her whole interest in
your estate, at a word. The law, or your heirs at law, would never
forgive as you would.”
Pitts, long poisoned by the subtle microbic poison, stared at Kennedy
as if dazed.
“Who was caught in your kitchen, Mr. Pitts, and, to escape detection,
killed your faithful chef and covered his own traces so cleverly?”
rapped out Kennedy. “Who would have known the new process of healing
wounds? Who knew about the fatal properties of indol? Who was willing
to forego a one-hundred-thousand-dollar prize in order to gain a
fortune of many hundreds of thousands?”
Kennedy paused, then finished with irresistibly dramatic logic;
“Who else but the man who held the secret of Minna Pitts’s past and
power over her future so long as he could keep alive the unfortunate
Thornton—the up-to-date doctor who substituted an elixir of death at
night for the elixir of life prescribed for you by him in the
daytime—Dr. Lord.”
Kennedy had moved quietly toward the door. It was unnecessary. Dr. Lord
was cornered and knew it. He made no fight. In fact, instantly his keen
mind was busy outlining his battle in court, relying on the conflicting
testimony of hired experts.
“Minna,” murmured Pitts, falling back, exhausted by the excitement, on
his pillows, “Minna—forgive? What is there to forgive? The only thing
to do is to correct. I shall be well—soon now—my dear. Then all will
be straightened out.”
“Walter,” whispered Kennedy to me, “while we are waiting, you can
arrange to have Thornton cared for at Dr. Hodge’s Sanitarium.”
He handed me a card with the directions where to take the unfortunate
man. When at last I had Thornton placed where no one else could do any
harm through him, I hastened back to the laboratory.
Craig was still there, waiting alone.
“That Dr. Lord will be a tough customer,” he remarked. “Of course
you’re not interested in what happens in a case after we have caught
the criminal. But that often is really only the beginning of the fight.
We’ve got him safely lodged in the Tombs now, however.”
“I wish there was some elixir for fatigue,” I remarked, as we closed
the laboratory that night.
“There is,” he replied. “A homeopathic remedy—more fatigue.”
We started on our usual brisk roundabout walk to the apartment. But
instead of going to bed, Kennedy drew a book from the bookcase.
“I shall read myself to sleep to-night,” he explained, settling deeply
in his chair.
As for me, I went directly to my room, planning that to-morrow I would
take several hours off and catch up in my notes.