though more distinctly sedative. It is a hypnotic used often in mania
and mental excitement. The feeling which Mrs. Cranston described is one
of its effects. You recall the brightness of her eyes? That is one of
the effects of the mydriatic alkaloids, of which this is one. The
ancients were familiar with several of its peculiar properties, as they
knew of the closely allied poison hemlock.
"Many of the text-books at the present time fail to say anything about
the remarkable effect produced by large doses of this terrible
alkaloid. This effect can be described technically so as to be
intelligible, but no description can convey, even approximately, the
terrible sensation produced in many insane patients by large doses. In
a general way, it is the condition of paralysis of the body without the
corresponding paralysis of the mind."
"And it's this stuff that somebody has been putting into her tonic?" I
asked, startled. "Do you suppose that is part of Burr's system, or did
Miss Giles lighten her work by putting it into the tonic?"
Kennedy did not betray his suspicion, but went on describing the drug
which was having such a serious effect on Mrs. Cranston.
"The victim lies in an absolutely helpless condition sometimes with his
muscles so completely paralyzed that he cannot so much as move a
finger, cannot close his lips or move his tongue to moisten them. This
feeling of helplessness is usually followed by unconsciousness and then
by a period of depression. The combined feeling of helplessness and
depression is absolutely unlike any other feeling imaginable, if I may
judge from the accounts of those who have experienced it. Other
sensations, such as pain, may be judged, in a measure, by comparison
with other painful sensations, but the sensation produced by hyoscyamin
in large doses seems to have no basis for comparison. There is no
kindred feeling. Practically every institution for the insane used it a
few years ago for controlling patients, but now better methods have
been devised."
"The more I think of what I saw at the Trocadero," I remarked, "the
more I wonder if Miss Giles has been seeking to win Cranston herself."
"In large-enough doses and repeated often enough," continued Kennedy,
"I suppose the toxic effect of the drug might be to produce insanity.
At any rate, if we are going to do anything, it might better be done at
once. They are all out there now. If we act to-night, surely we shall
have the best chance of making the guilty person betray himself."
Kennedy telephoned for a fast touring-car, and in half an hour, while
he gathered some apparatus together, the car was before the door. In it
he placed a couple of light silk-rope ladders, some common wooden
wedges, and an instrument which resembled a surveyor's transit with two
conical horns sticking out at the ends.
We made the trip out of New York and up the Boston post-road, following
the route which Cranston and Miss Giles must have taken some hours
before us. In the town of Montrose, Kennedy stopped only long enough to
get a bite to eat and to study up in the roads in the vicinity.
It was long after midnight when we struck up into the country. The
night was very dark, thick, and foggy. With the engine running as
muffled as possible and the lights dimmed, Kennedy quietly jammed on
the brakes as we pulled up along the side of the road.
A few rods farther ahead I could make out the Belleclaire Sanatorium
surrounded by its picketed stone wall. Not a light was visible in any
of the windows.
"Now that we're here," I whispered, "what can we do?"
"You remember the paper I gave Mrs. Cranston when the excitement in the
hall broke loose?"
"Yes," I nodded, as we moved over under the shadow of the wall.
"I wrote on a sheet from my note-book," said Kennedy, "and told her to
be ready when she heard a pebble strike the window; and I gave her a
piece of string to let down to the ground."
Kennedy threw the silk ladder up until it caught on one of the pickets;
then, with the other ladder and the wedges, he reached the top of the
wall, followed by me. We pulled the first ladder up as we clung to the
pickets, and let it down again inside. Noiselessly we crossed the lawn.
Above was Mrs. Cranston's window. Craig picked up some bits of broken
stone from a walk about the house and threw them gently against the
pane. Then we drew back into the shadow of the house, lest any prying
eyes might discover us. In a few minutes the window on the second floor
was stealthily opened. The muffled figure of Mrs. Cranston appeared in
the dim light; then a piece of string was lowered.
To it Kennedy attached a light silk ladder and motioned in pantomime
for her to draw it up. It took her some time to fasten the ladder to
one of the heavy pieces of furniture in the room. Swaying from side to
side, but clinging with frantic desperation to the ladder while we did
our best to steady it, she managed to reach the ground. She turned from
the building with a shudder, and whispered:
"This terrible place! How can I ever thank you for getting me out of
it?"
Kennedy did not pause long enough to say a word, but hurried her across
to the final barrier, the wall.
Suddenly there was a shout of alarm from the front of the house under
the columns. It was the night watchman, who had discovered us.
Instantly Kennedy seized a chair from a little summer-house.
"Quick, Walter," he cried, "over the wall with Mrs. Cranston, while I
hold him! Then throw the ladder back on this side. I'll join you in a
moment, as soon as you get her safely over."
A chair is only an indifferent club, if that is all one can think of
using it for. Kennedy ran squarely at the watchman, holding it out
straight before him. Only once did I cast a hasty glance back. There
was the man pinned to the wall by the chair, with Kennedy at the other
end of it and safely out of reach.
Mrs. Cranston and I managed to scramble over the wall, although she
tore her dress on the pickets before we reached the other side. I
hustled her into the car and made everything ready to start. It was
only a couple of minutes after I threw the ladder back before Craig
rejoined us.
"How did you get away from the watchman?" I demanded, breathlessly, as
we shot away.
"I forced him back with the chair into the hall and slammed the door.
Then I jammed a wedge under it," he chuckled. "That will hold it better
than any lock. Every push will jam it tighter."
Above the hubbub, inside now, we could hear a loud gong sounding
insistently. All about were lights flashing up at the windows and
moving through the passageways. Shouts came from the back of the house
as a door was finally opened there. But we were off now, with a good
start.
I could imagine the frantic telephoning that was going on in the
sanatorium. And I knew that the local police of Montrose and every
other town about us were being informed of the escape. They were
required by the law to render all possible assistance, and, as the
country boasted several institutions quite on a par with Belleclaire,
an attempt at an escape was not an unusual occurrence.
The post-road by which we had come was therefore impossible, and
Kennedy swung up into the country, in the hope of throwing off pursuit
long enough to give us a better chance.
"Take the wheel, Walter," he muttered. "I'll tell you what turns to
make. We must get to the State line of New York without being stopped.
We can beat almost any car. But that is not enough. A telephone message
ahead may stop us, unless we can keep from being seen."
I took the wheel, and did not stop the car as Kennedy climbed over the
seat. In the back of the car, where Mrs. Cranston was sitting, he
hastily adjusted the peculiar apparatus.
"Sounds at night are very hard to locate," he explained. "Up this side
road, Walter; there is some one coming ahead of us."
I turned and shot up the detour, stopping in the shadow of some trees,
where we switched off every light and shut down the engine. Kennedy
continued to watch the instrument before him.
"What is it?" I whispered.
"A phonometer," he replied. "It was invented to measure the intensity
of sound. But it is much more valuable as an instrument that tells with
precision from what direction a sound comes. It needs only a small dry
battery and can be carried around easily. The sound enters the two
horns of the phonometer, is focused at the neck, and strikes on a
delicate diaphragm, behind which is a needle. The diaphragm vibrates
and the needle moves. The louder the sound the greater the movement of
this needle.
"At this end, where it looks as though I were sighting like a surveyor,
I am gazing into a lens, with a tiny electric bulb close to my eye. The
light of this bulb is reflected in a mirror which is moved by the
moving needle. When the sound is loudest the two horns are at right
angles to the direction whence it comes. So it is only necessary to
twist the phonometer about on its pivot until the sound is received
most loudly in the horns and the band of light is greatest. I know then
that the horns are at right angles to the direction from which the
sound proceeds, and that, as I lift my head, I am looking straight
toward the source of the sound. I can tell its direction to a few
degrees."
I looked through it myself to see how sound was visualized by light.
"Hush!" cautioned Kennedy.
Down on the main road we could see a car pass along slowly in the
direction of Montrose, from which we had come. Without the phonometer
to warn us, it must inevitably have met us and blocked our escape over
the road ahead.
That danger passed, on we sped. Five minutes, I calculated, and we
should cross the State line to New York and safety.
We had been going along nicely when, "Bang!" came a loud report back of
us.
"Confound it!" muttered Kennedy; "a blowout always when you least
expect it."
We climbed out of the car and had the shoe off in short order.
"Look!" cried Janet Cranston, in a frightened voice, from the back of
the car.
The light of the phonometer had flashed up. A car was following us.
"There's just one chance!" cried Kennedy, springing to the wheel. "We
might make it on the rim."
Banging and pounding, we forged ahead, straining our eyes to watch the
road, the distance, the time, and the phonometer all at once.
It was no use. A big gray roadster was overtaking us. The driver
crowded us over to the very edge of the road, then shot ahead, and,
where the road narrowed down, deliberately pulled up across the road in
such a way that we had to run into him or stop.
Quickly Craig's automatic gleamed in the dim beams from the side lights.
"Just a minute," cautioned a voice. "It was a plot against me, quite as
much as it was against her--the nurse to lead me on, while the doctor
got a rich patient. I suspected all was not right. That's why I gave
you the card. I knew you didn't come from Burr. Then, when I heard
nothing from you, I let the Giles woman think I was coming to Montrose
to be with her. But, really, I wanted to beat that fake asylum--"
Two piercing headlights shone down the road back of us. We waited a
moment until they, too, came to a stop.
"Here they are!" shouted the voice of a man, as he jumped out, followed
by a woman.
Kennedy stepped forward, waving his automatic menacingly.
"You are under arrest for conspiracy--both of you!" he cried, as we
recognized Doctor Burr and Miss Giles.
A little cry behind me startled me, and I turned. Janet Cranston had
flung herself into the arms of the only person who could heal her
wounded soul.
IV
THE MYSTIC POISONER
"It's almost as though he had been struck down by a spirit hand,
Kennedy."
Grady, the house detective of the Prince Edward Charles Hotel, had
routed us out of bed in the middle of the night with a hurried call for
help, and now met us in the lobby of the fashionable hostelry. All that
he had said over the wire was that there had been a murder--"an
Englishman, a Captain Shirley."
"Why," exclaimed Grady, lowering his voice as he led us through the
lobby, "it's the most mysterious thing, I think, that I've ever seen!"
"In what way?" prompted Kennedy.
"Well," continued Grady, "it must have been just a bit after midnight
that one of the elevator-boys heard what sounded like a muffled report
in a room on the tenth floor. There were other employees and some
guests about at the time, and it was only a matter of seconds before
they were on the spot. Finally, the sound was located as having come
probably from Captain Shirley's room. But the door was locked--on the
inside. There was no response, although some one had seen him ride up
in the elevator scarcely five minutes before. By that time they had
sent for me. We broke in. There was Shirley, alone, fully dressed,
lying on the floor before a writing-table. His face was horribly set,
as though he had perhaps seen something that frightened and haunted
him--though I suppose it might have been the pain that did it. I think
he must have heard something, jumped from the chair, perhaps in fear,
then have fallen down on the floor almost immediately.
"We hurried over to him. He was still alive, but could not speak. I
turned him over, tried to rouse him and make him comfortable. It was
only then that I saw that he was really conscious. But it seemed as if
his tongue and most of his muscles were paralyzed. Somehow he managed
to convey to us the idea that it was his heart that troubled him most.
"Really, at first I thought it was a case of suicide. But there was no
sign of a weapon about and not a trace of poison--no glass, no packet.
There was no wound on him, either--except a few slight cuts and
scratches on his face and hands. But none of them looked to be serious.
And yet, before we could get the house physician up to him he was dead."
"And with not a word?" queried Kennedy.
"That's the strangest part of it. No; not a word spoken. But as he lay
there, even in spite of his paralyzed muscles, he was just able to
motion with his hands. I thought he wanted to write, and gave him a
pencil and a piece of paper. He clutched at them, but here is all he
was able to do."
Grady drew from his pocket a piece of paper and handed it to us. On it
were printed in trembling, irregular characters, "G A D," the "D"
scarcely finished and trailing off into nothing.
What did it all mean? How had Shirley met his death, and why?
"Tell me something about him," said Kennedy, studying the paper with a
frown. Grady shrugged his shoulders.
"An Englishman--that's about all I know. Looked like one of the younger
sons who so frequently go out to seek their fortunes in the colonies.
By his appearance, I should say he had been in the Far East--India, no
doubt. And I imagine he had made good. He seemed to have plenty of
money. That's all I know about him."
"Is anything missing from his room?" I asked. "Could it have been a
robbery?"
"I searched the room hastily," replied Grady. "Apparently not a thing
had been touched. I don't think it was robbery."
By this time we had made our way through the lobby and were in the
elevator.
"I've kept the room just as it was," went on Grady to Kennedy, lowering
his voice. "I've even delayed a bit in notifying the police, so that
you could get here first."
A moment later we entered the rooms, a fairly expensive suite,
consisting of a sitting-room, bedroom, and bath. Everything was in a
condition to indicate that Shirley had just come in when the shot, if
shot it had been, was fired.
There, on the floor, lay his body, still in the same attitude in which
he had died and almost as Grady had found him gasping. Grady's
description of the horrible look on his face was, if anything, an
understatement.
As I stood with my eyes riveted on the horror-stricken face on the
floor, Kennedy had been quietly going over the furniture and carpet
about the body.
"Look!" he exclaimed at last, scarcely turning to us. On the chair, the
writing-table, and even on the walls were little pitted marks and
scratches. He bent down over the carpet. There, reflecting the electric
light, scattered all about, were little fine pieces of something that
glittered.
"You have a vacuum cleaner, I suppose?" inquired Craig, rising quickly.
"Certainly--a plant in the cellar."
"No; I mean one that is portable."
"Yes; we have that, too," answered Grady, hurrying to the room
telephone to have the cleaner sent up.
Kennedy now began to look through Shirley's baggage. There was,
however, nothing to indicate that it had been rifled.
I noted, among other things, a photograph of a woman in Oriental dress,
dusky, languorous, of more than ordinary beauty and intelligence. On it
something was written in native characters.
Just then a boy wheeled the cleaner down the hall, and Kennedy quickly
shoved the photograph into his pocket.
First, Kennedy removed the dust that was already in the machine. Then
he ran the cleaner carefully over the carpet, the upholstery,
everything about that corner of the room where the body lay. When he
had finished he emptied out the dust into a paper and placed it in his
pocket. He was just finishing when there came a knock at the door, and
it was opened.
"Mr. Grady?" said a young man, entering hurriedly.
"Oh, hello, Glenn! One of the night clerks in the office, Kennedy,"
introduced the house detective.
"I've just heard of the--murder," Glenn began. "I was in the
dining-room, being relieved for my little midnight luncheon as usual,
when I heard of it, and I thought that perhaps you might want to know
something that happened just before I went off duty."
"Yes; anything," broke in Kennedy.
"It was early in the evening," returned the clerk, slowly, "when a
messenger left a little package for Captain Shirley--said that Captain
Shirley had had it sent himself and asked that it be placed in his
room. It was a little affair in a plain, paper-wrapped parcel. I sent
one of the boys up with it and a key, and told him to put the package
on the writing-desk tip here."
Kennedy looked at me. That, then, was the way something, whatever it
might be, was introduced into the room.
"When the captain came in," resumed the night clerk, "I saw there was a
letter for him in the mailbox and handed it to him. He stood before the
office desk while he opened it. I thought he looked queer. The contents
seemed to alarm him."
"What was in it?" asked Kennedy. "Could you see?"
"I got one glimpse. It seemed to be nothing but a little scarlet bead
with a black spot on it. In his surprise, he dropped a piece of paper
from the envelope in which the bead had been wrapped up. I thought it
was strange, and, as he hurried over to the elevator, I picked it up.
Here it is."
The clerk handed over a crumpled piece of notepaper. On it was scrawled
the word "Gadhr," and underneath, "Beware!" I spelled out the first
strange word. It had an ominous sound--"Gadhr." Suddenly there flashed
through my mind the letters Shirley had tried to print but had not
finished, "G A D."
Kennedy looked at the paper a moment.
"Gadhr!" he exclaimed, in a low, tense tone. "Revolt--the native word
for unrest in India, the revolution!"
We stared at each other blankly. All of us had been reading lately in
the despatches about the troubles there, hidden under the ban of the
censorship. I knew that the Hindu propaganda in America was as yet in
its infancy, although several plots and conspiracies had been hatched
here.
"Is there any one in the hotel whom you might suspect?" asked Kennedy.
Grady cleared his throat and looked at the night clerk significantly.
"Well," he answered, thoughtfully, "across the hall there is a new
guest who came to-day--or, rather, yesterday--a Mrs. Anthony. We don't
know anything about her, except that she looks like a foreigner. She
did not come directly from abroad, but must have been living in New
York for some time. They tell me she asked for a room on this floor, at
this end of the hall."
"H'm!" considered Kennedy. "I'd like to see her--without being seen."
"I think I can arrange that," acquiesced Grady. "You and Jameson stay
in the bedroom. I'll ask her to come over here, and then you can get a
good look at her."
The plan satisfied Kennedy, and together we entered the bedroom,
putting out the light and leaving the door just a trifle ajar.
A moment later Mrs. Anthony entered. I heard a suppressed gasp from
Kennedy.
"The woman in the photograph!" he whispered to me.
I studied her face minutely from our coign of vantage. There was,
indeed, a resemblance, too striking to be mere coincidence.
In the presence of Grady, she seemed to be nervous and on guard, as
though she knew, intuitively, that she was suspected.
"Did you know Captain Shirley?" shot out Grady.
Kennedy looked over at me and frowned. I knew that something more
subtle than New York police methods would be necessary in order to get
anything from a woman like this.
"No," she replied, quietly. "You see, I just came here to-day." Her
voice had an English accent.
"Did you hear a shot?"
"No," she replied. "The voices in the hall wakened me, though I did not
know what was the matter until just now."
"Then you made no effort to find out?" inquired Grady, suspiciously.
"I am alone here in the city," she answered, simply. "I was afraid to
intrude."
Throughout she gave the impression that she was strangely reticent
about herself. Evidently Kennedy had not much faith that Grady would
elicit anything of importance. He tiptoed to the door that led from the
bedroom to the hall and found that it could be opened from the inside.
While Grady continued his questioning, Craig and I slipped out into the
hall to the room which Mrs. Anthony occupied.
It was a suite much plainer than that occupied by Shirley. Craig
switched on the light and looked about hastily and keenly.
For a moment he stood before a dressing-table on which were several
toilet articles. A jewel-case seemed to attract his attention, and he
opened it. Inside were some comparatively trifling trinkets. The thing
that caused him to exclaim, however, was a necklace, broken and
unstrung. I looked, too. It was composed of little crimson beads, each
with a black spot on it!
Quickly he drew from his pocket the photograph he had taken from
Shirley's baggage. As I looked at it again there could be no doubt now
in my mind of the identity of the original. It was the same face. And
about the neck, in the picture, was a necklace, plainly the same as
that before us.
"What are the beads?" I asked, fingering them. "I've never seen
anything like them."
"Not beads at all," he replied. "They are Hindu prayer-beans, sometimes
called ruttee, jequirity beans, seeds of the plant known to science as
Abrus precatorius. They produce a deadly poison--abrin." He slipped
four or five of them into his pocket. Then he resumed his cursory
search of the room. There, on a writing-pad, was a note which Mrs.
Anthony had evidently been engaged in writing. Craig pored over it for
some time, while I fidgeted. It was nothing but a queer jumble of
letters:
SOWC FSSJWA EKNLFFBY WOVHLX IHWAJYKH 101MLEL EPJNVPSL WCLURL GHIHDA
ELBA.
"Come," I cautioned; "she may return any moment."
Quickly he copied off the letters.
"It's a cipher," he said, simply, "a new and rather difficult one, too,
I imagine. But I may be able to decipher it."
Kennedy withdrew from the room and, instead of going back to Shirley's,
rode down in the elevator to find the night clerk.
"Had Captain Shirley any friends in the city?" asked Craig.
Glenn shrugged his shoulders.
"He was out most of the time," he replied. "He seemed to be very
occupied about something. No, I don't think I ever saw him speak to a
soul here, except a word to the waiters and the boys. Once, though," he
recollected, "he was called up by a Mrs. Beekman Rogers."
"Mrs. Beekman Rogers," repeated Kennedy, jotting the name down and
looking it up in the telephone-book. She lived on Riverside Drive, and,
slender though the information was, Kennedy seemed glad to get it.
Grady joined us a moment later, having been wondering where we had
disappeared.
"You saw her?" he asked. "What did you think of her?"
"Worth watching," was all Kennedy would say. "Did you get anything out
of her?"
Grady shook his head.
"But I am convinced she knows something," he insisted.
Kennedy was about to reply when he was interrupted by the arrival of a
couple of detectives from the city police, tardily summoned by Grady.
"I shall let you know the moment I have discovered anything," he said,
as he bade Grady good-by. "And thank you for letting me have a chance
at the case before all the clues had been spoiled."
Late though it was, in the laboratory Kennedy set to work examining the
dust which he had swept up by the vacuum cleaner, as well as the
jequirity beans he had taken from Mrs. Anthony's jewel-case.