It was not until early in the afternoon that Grace was able to
accomplish anything toward carrying out the instructions which young
Lablanche had given her with respect to the phonograph. On her return to
Dr. Hartmann's from her expedition to Brussels, she went at once to her
room, and locked the record which Lablanche had given her in her trunk.
There was nothing to be done now, until after luncheon.
When the meal was over, she asked one of the attendants, who seemed to
be a sort of housekeeper, or head nurse, if there would be any objection
to her taking the phonograph, which was a small and rather cheap affair,
to her room. She wished to amuse herself, she explained, playing over
some of the records.
The woman regarded her curiously for a moment, but as there seemed
nothing out of the way in the request, she assented, with the caution,
however, that she should not use the instrument except during the day.
"Some of our patients are very nervous," she explained. "It might annoy
them, if they were sleeping. Of course, if there are any complaints, you
will not continue."
Grace got one of the nurses to carry the instrument to her room, and
selected several records from those which she found in a cabinet on
which it stood. There were several American records--she took all of
these, and some others selected at random.
She did not play The Rosary at once, but made use of one of the other
records. The horn of the instrument she directed toward the open window.
When she had finished the first air, and adjusted her own record upon
the plate of the machine, she felt afraid that it might at once be
recognized as strange and new, but apparently no one paid any attention
to it.
She continued her playing as long as she dared without running the risk
of attracting undue attention. When at last she stopped, she felt as
though she never wanted to hear the strains of The Rosary again.
After dinner, she determined to disregard the suggestion of the
housekeeper to confine her playing to the daytime, and moving the
machine somewhat nearer the window, played the song over three times in
rapid succession. She had just begun to rewind the clockwork for a
fourth time when there was a loud knocking at the door, and Dr. Hartmann
entered hastily in response to her rather frightened "Come in."
He was scowling fiercely, and took no pains to conceal the fact that he
was angry. "Miss Ellicott," he growled, "we cannot possibly permit you
to play the instrument any longer. It annoys the other patients. I am
surprised that my housekeeper did not inform you so at once. Several
have already complained. I shall have to take it back to the library."
He gathered up the instrument and started toward the door, then seemed
for a moment to regret his brusqueness. "You will pardon me, I know, but
it is quite out of the question. Good-evening." In a moment he had gone.
Grace sat down and burst into tears. It was not the taking away of the
phonograph which distressed her--she felt that if anything could be
accomplished by its use, it had already been done--but the hopelessness
of the whole situation.
Nearly eighteen hours had elapsed, since she had stolen, half-fainting,
from the sight of Richard's white and agonized face. Even Lablanche's
assurances that Hartmann would do her husband no serious injury, failed
to comfort her. The whole affair of the phonograph seemed trivial and
useless. What message could the words of this song give him--what in
fact could they mean to anyone, except a message of hopeless love?
When the hour for going to bed had come, she threw herself, without
undressing, on the bed, and lay sleepless, in the darkened room. The
vision of Richard, as she had seen him, his face within the circle of
light, the night before, tortured her incessantly. It seemed somehow so
wrong, so cowardly of her, to lie here in comfort doing nothing to aid
him who, in name at least, was united to her forever, and in love was
more dear to her than her own soul. She could not sleep, and presently
rose and sat at the window, her elbows resting upon the sill, gazing
hungrily out at the little square brick building where she knew Richard
lay confined.
The hours of the night dragged along on leaden feet. Once she heard the
closing of a door, and the sound of footsteps echoing faintly upon the
cement floor of the lower corridor. Within the laboratory all seemed
dark. Evidently the doctor was not there. Then she heard, through her
half-opened door, noises of persons walking in the lower hallway of the
main building and after that the sharp closing of a door. She concluded
that Hartmann had gone into his office.
The woman on duty in the hall sat in her chair, reading and yawning.
After a time, Grace heard the faint ringing of her bell, and the woman,
after consulting the indicator, began to descend the stairs with a
surprised look upon her face. It seemed like a providential opportunity.
She slipped quietly through the doorway and sped as swiftly as she could
down the hall.
She reached the door opening into the corridor, without hearing or
seeing anything to cause her alarm, and passed through it unseen. As she
closed it behind her, she fancied she heard someone walking quickly
along the corridor beneath. The passageway in which she stood was in
reality nothing but a covered bridge, a few feet wide, built for the
sole purpose of providing a means of passing to the laboratory from the
second floor of the main building. Beneath it, a similar passageway
connected the ground floors of the two buildings.
She realized that anyone in the corridor beneath her could readily hear
her footsteps on the wooden floor above, and stood, hesitating, just
inside the door, waiting until they should have passed. In a few
moments, the sounds below ceased, and silence again reigned.
With great timidity and caution, she began to walk toward the laboratory
door. In the center of the corridor, and half way down its length, a
single electric lamp shed a dim light on her path. She realized that if,
by chance, anyone should be within the darkened laboratory, they could
readily see her approaching, and therefore assumed once more the manner
and bearing of a person walking in their sleep. She had passed the light
in the middle of the corridor, and was nearing the darkened laboratory
door, when suddenly she heard a faint click, and almost at once the
laboratory was brilliantly illuminated.
By the light which suddenly flashed upon her, she saw two figures
standing in the open door of the laboratory, watching her intently. One
of these figures was Dr. Hartmann, the other the tall blond man she had
seen with him in the laboratory several nights before. But it was not
the sudden appearance of the two watching figures which caused her heart
to sink, and a cold perspiration to break out upon her forehead. The
sudden rush of light upon the floor of the passageway had shown her
something else--something far more strange and terrifying. As her gaze
swept ahead, she saw that, for a space of some four or five feet, in
front of the laboratory door, the wooden planking which constituted the
floor of the passageway had been removed, and instead of the solid
foot-way there yawned blackly an impassable opening, through which, in
another moment, she would plunge headlong to the concrete floor of the
corridor beneath.
The sight filled her with dismay. She realized at once why Hartmann and
his companion stood there watching her--why the section of flooring had
been removed. He had evidently become suspicious of her movements, the
night before, and had laid this trap to test her. If she was in truth
walking in her sleep, she would, she supposed, walk fearlessly into the
yawning gap before--if her somnambulism was a sham, a trick, she would
hesitate, and her fraud be discovered.
She did not know what to do, as step by step she approached that black
and gaping hole. If she kept up her pretense, if she had sufficient
courage to go ahead, of what would it avail Richard or Monsieur Lefevre,
should she maintain her assumed character at the expense of a broken
leg, or neck? On the other hand, to halt, to hold back, would be to
destroy at once all chance of her being of any further service to her
husband, and that, too, at a time when he most sorely needed her.
These considerations flashed through her brain with the speed of light
itself. She had scarcely taken half a dozen steps before she found
herself upon the brink of the opening, and realized that the next step,
if she took it, might be her last.
Then she suddenly collapsed. The effort was too great--she sank
helplessly upon the floor, her face buried in her arms, her whole body
shaking with the force of her sobbing.
In an instant Hartmann had sprung across the opening and grasped her by
the wrist, while his companion was engaged in rapidly replacing over the
gap the section of flooring which had been removed. Within a few moments
the passageway was as it had been before, and the doctor was dragging
her roughly into the laboratory.
She did not cry out--there was no one from whom she could expect aid.
She drew herself up and faced her captor with dry eyes and a face calm,
though pale. "What do you mean, Dr. Hartmann," she demanded, steadily,
"by treating me in this way?"
He forced her into a chair. "Sit down, young woman," he said, gruffly.
"I have a few questions to ask you."
She did so, without protest, summoning to her aid all her powers of
resistance and will. He should get nothing from her, she determined.
"Why have you come into my house," he presently asked, glaring at her in
anger, "under pretense of desiring medical treatment? What is it you
want here?"
She made no reply, gazing at him steadily--fearlessly.
"What is this man Duvall to you?" he shouted. "Tell me, or it will be
the worse for you both."
Again she faced him, refusing to answer. Her resistance made him
furious. "Your silence will profit you nothing," he went on. "You can do
no further harm here, for I know your purpose. You are working with
him--you are a detective--a spy, as he is. You pretend to be a
somnambulist in order to carry out your ends. I suspected you long ago.
Now I know. This man has robbed me of something that I am determined to
have. What he has done with it--where it is concealed, I do not know,
but I mean to have it--be sure of that. If you know--you had better
confess, if you have any regard for his welfare."
His words, his brutal manner, brought the tears to her eyes. She
realized that she had but to say a few words, to save Richard from she
knew not what fate, yet equally she knew that she could not say
them--that he would not want her to say them. In her agitation she took
a handkerchief from her dress and pressed it to her eyes.
The man Mayer had been regarding her in silence throughout the whole
scene. Suddenly he stepped forward and snatched the handkerchief from
her hand. His quick eyes had detected a monogram in one corner of the
bit of cambric, and with an air of triumph he held it beneath the light,
examining it closely.
Hartmann came to him. "What is it, Mayer?" he asked, eagerly.
His assistant extended the handkerchief to him. Grace realized with a
sinking heart that it was one of several she had herself embroidered
during the weeks preceding her marriage. With what pride, she reflected,
she had worked over the G and D, lovingly intertwined in one corner.
"His wife!" she heard Hartmann cry, with a harsh laugh. "That explains
everything. That was why he did not leave Brussels at once--he was
waiting for her--he would not go without her." He turned to Grace with a
new expression on his face. "So you are his wife, eh? Very well. Now we
shall see whether or not you will tell me what I want to know. Your
husband is confined in the room below us. This"--he indicated the small
black box with wires attached--"is a device which I have constructed for
producing certain light rays--light rays which have a marvelous power,
both for curing, and producing disease. Look!" He held his powerful hand
before her eyes. "This is what they did to me, before I discovered how
to control them." She saw, stretching across the back of his hand and
wrist, a broad red patch, like the scar remaining after a burn. "Now
come here." He seized her by the wrist and dragged her toward the
apparatus at the center of the room. "Look--in there." He indicated a
short brass tube which rose from the center of the box, resembling the
eyepiece of a microscope. "Look!"
Grace bent over and applied her eye to the brass tube, then shrank back
with an exclamation of horror. "Richard!" she screamed, then turned on
Hartmann with the fury of a tigress. "Let him go--let him go--I say, or
I will--" She realized her helplessness--the futility of her threats,
and fell into the chair in a paroxysm of sobbing. Through the brass
tube, and the powerful lens which focused the light rays upon the space
below, she had seen Richard's face, white and drawn, within a disk of
blinding light, and apparently so near to her that she could have
reached out and touched it. In her momentary glance, she noted his
reddened eyes, the tears which coursed from beneath their lids, the
agony which distorted his countenance.
"Now will you tell me what I ask?" cried Hartmann, triumphantly.
Still she made no reply. Her heart was breaking, her suffering at the
knowledge of his suffering made her faint and weak, but even now she
could not bring herself to break the trust which Monsieur Lefevre had
placed in her. She sat huddled up in the chair, shaking from head to
foot with sobs.
Hartmann saw that her resistance was as yet unbroken. "Take her arm,
Mayer," he called out, as he seized her by one wrist. "Come along now.
We'll see if a closer view will have any effect." He snatched up a broad
leather strap from a shelf along the wall, then, with Mayer's
assistance, half-led, half dragged her to the iron stairway in the
corner. In a few moments they had paused before the door of the room
where the detective lay confined. Hartmann threw it open and pushed
Grace inside, while he and Mayer followed, closing the door behind them.
For a moment Grace was dazzled by the brightness of the light cone, and
the darkness of the remainder of the room. Then seeing Richard lying
helpless on the floor before her, she threw herself to her knees, put
her arms about his neck, and covered his face with kisses. "My
darling--my poor boy!" she cried, as she bent over him, her shoulders
shutting off from his tortured face the blinding rays of the light.
"What have they done to you?"