GOLD
After dinner Cole looked the picture of a man whose faith in himself
has received a staggering blow. He seemed to take the outcome of his
ruse very much to heart. He moved gloomily among the members of the
organization, getting personally acquainted with a number of the men
on his staff, and all the while he appeared to be making valiant, but
not very successful, efforts to shake off his depression. Carlin did
his best to gloss over the apparent frustration of the scheme, but Cole
proved a hard man to console.
Doctor Ballinger approached him after he had retired into a corner,
and gave him a vigorous slap on the shoulder. “Don’t take it so hard,
old man,” he said cheerily. “Know just exactly how you feel. It’s
embarrassing to turn up a flivver right at the start, but don’t you
mind. Better luck next time. Have a smoke.”
“Thanks,” said Cole dejectedly, as he helped himself to a cigar from
the doctor’s case. “What hurts me most is that I know I was right.
Nothing is so humiliating to a man as to be sure of his facts and not
be able to prove them. I know positively that there’s a black sheep in
this fold. If I had worked the scheme properly——”
“Tut, tut!” interrupted Ballinger. “Your scheme was all right in
principle. You were simply out of luck, that’s all. The traitor, if
you’re right in the assumption that there is such a creature among us,
is probably a very slick customer. No doubt you had him scared stiff
for a moment, but his emotional reaction didn’t last long enough for
him to betray himself. He assumed that you were only bluffing. At any
rate he saw that, having already drained his glass, nothing could be
gained by making a show of himself. In other words his mind outstripped
his emotions, and that’s where your psychology fell down. No matter!
You’ll get him next time.”
Cole walked away, a faint twitching at the corners of his lips. In
the main Doctor Ballinger’s analysis had been correct. He had only
forgotten to mention one little detail. Just as the traitor’s mind
had outstripped his emotions, so had Cole’s alert glance outstripped
both. For just an instant Ballinger had shown all the symptoms of acute
terror. He had shaken them off with superb self-control, but not before
Cole’s eye had registered his momentary confusion.
The revelation that Ballinger was the traitor had given Cole a shock
at first. The doctor was one of the last men in the organization whom
he would have suspected of treachery. Having found him out, Cole saw
no reason for apprising the doctor of the fact. He preferred to let
Ballinger lull himself into a false security until he should show his
hand more plainly. Neither did it seem advisable to Cole to take the
other members into his confidence in regard to his discovery. It would
be hard to keep a secret among so many, and the more hotheaded ones
among them would probably demand drastic action.
As inconspicuously as he could, Cole left the others and withdrew to
the room that had been pointed out to him as his private office. It was
small and comfortable and devoid of the drabness that characterizes
the workroom of the average executive. There was a vase containing red
roses on the desk, and he noticed that the pictures on the wall had
been carefully chosen. He stretched himself out in the swivel chair and
rocked in an experimental way. His glance fell on three white buttons
affixed to the side of the desk. He pushed the one nearest him, just to
see what would happen.
The door opened, and in strode the biggest negro Cole has ever seen.
“Who are you?” he inquired.
“Sambo, sah.”
“And what’s your job, Sambo?”
“Just now mah bussiness is to answer dese heay bells, sah. Dat ain’t
mah reg’lar job, though, but Rufus is done laid up in the hosspittle,
and I’se takin’ his place.”
“What happened to Rufus? Sick?”
“Yas, sah. Mighty sick, sah.” Sambo grinned expansively. “You ought to
know, boss, ’cause you made him sick yusself. Dat was an a’ful wallop
you handed Rufus, sah.”
Cole smiled reminiscently, as he recalled one of the numerous
experiences that had enlivened his first visit to the establishment of
The Unknown Seven.
“Too bad about Rufus,” he remarked. “Now, Sambo, I want you to find
Mr. McKendrick and ask him to come here at once.”
“Yas, sah.” With a profound bow Sambo waddled out.
McKendrick, one of the young operatives with whom Cole had chatted
since the dinner, appeared after a brief wait. He had a clear eye, a
whimsical expression about the mouth that had appealed to Cole on first
sight, and a firmly molded chin.
“Go into the main office,” Cole directed. “You will find a dictaphone
in the ventilator shaft. The wire apparently runs out on the roof.
Trace it to the other end, then report to me.”
“Very well, sir.” As McKendrick walked out, Cole noticed with approval
the easy swing to his shoulders. Once more he touched the nearest
button, and Sambo appeared almost instantly.
“Find Sloane and tell him I want him,” Cole directed.
Sloane entered in a few moments. With his keen intellectual features
and shell-rimmed spectacles he looked a good deal like a college
professor.
“Sloane,” began Cole, “I want you to go to the block in which Doctor
Latham resides. Somewhere in the neighborhood, in a basement entrance
across the street, perhaps, you’ll find a young chap of dilapidated
appearance who answers to the name of Tony Pinto. He’s been watching
the doctor’s house for the past twenty-four hours and must be sadly in
need of food and sleep. Tell him I have sent you to relieve him.”
“I understand perfectly, sir.”
Cole gave him a few more instructions, and then Sloane withdrew. Again
Cole pressed the button, this time to summon a man whom he instructed
to make a thorough search all over the establishment for hidden disks
and wires. When the man had gone, Cole leaned back in his chair and
pondered. He had set the machinery in motion, but the hardest task he
had reserved for himself. Something had to be done very soon about the
body of Reeves. What to do with it was a problem that would demand all
his resourcefulness. Too, a watch must be kept over Doctor Ballinger,
and Cole did not like to delegate that business to any one else. He
expected to learn a great deal from the unsuspecting doctor’s movements
during the next twenty-four hours.
He was deep in thought when a knock sounded on the door. In response to
his rather brusque “Come in,” Miss Brownell entered.
“I’ve been thinking,” she announced.
“So I see,” said Cole, placing a chair for her. Miss Brownell, he
observed, was one of the few women whom he had met who could wear a
thoughtful frown becomingly. Where another woman’s forehead would have
wrinkled, hers merely rippled.
“You have been doing a lot of thinking yourself,” she remarked,
regarding him with that curious impersonal glance of hers.
“Yes, but mostly in the dark,” Cole admitted. “I’m pretty much in the
same fix as the man who walks into a theater in the middle of the
second act. The only thing that’s clear so far is that the principal
actors in this drama seem to be doctors.”
“You refer to Latham and Ballinger, of course. There is still another
doctor involved.”
“Still another? Who is he?”
“In a sense he is the real instigator of the plot, although he died one
hundred and thirty-eight years ago.”
Cole blinked bewilderedly. “Sounds rather ghostly.”
“His name was James Price, an English physician of high repute, who
discovered a method of transforming baser metals into gold. You can
read up on him in history or the biographical encyclopedias, if you
like. He wrote a book entitled ‘An Account of Some Experiments,’ but
it has been out of print a long time and copies are hard to obtain.
Professor Carmody owns one of the few still in existence.”
“Oh!” said Cole, elevating his brows. “So that’s what the mystery is
about? But you don’t mean to tell me that sane men like Latham and
Ballinger are dabbling in the exploded myth of alchemy?”
“I do. And that myth, by the way, seems to die very hard, Mr. Cole.
It’s been exploded and reëxploded since the dawn of history, and yet it
keeps bobbing up every now and then.”
Cole gave a little impatient shrug. “It’s rubbish,” he declared. “I
have managed to forget most of the things I learned at school, but I
seem to recall that modern science has absolutely established the fact
that one element cannot be transformed into another.”
She looked at him amusedly. “We women always smile when you men speak
of absolute facts. The phrase is so delightfully characteristic of
the sterner sex. And the world has moved since you went to school,
Mr. Cole. Science has hedged and quibbled and reversed itself a good
many times on the subject of the transformation of metals. It wasn’t
so very long ago that some one discovered that radium can be produced
from helium, or was it the other way round? Anyway, right there is an
instance of the transformation of one element into another.”
Cole opened his lips to speak, but seemed unable to find the right
words.
“I was telling you about James Price,” Miss Brownell went on. “He
claimed to have discovered a method whereby he could transform sixty
parts of mercury into one part of gold. He was rather secretive about
his discovery and hedged it about with a lot of mystic hocus-pocus.
About all that is definitely known is that a mysterious red powder
figured prominently in the process. The red powder was mixed with
mercury and fluid borax, and the concoction was then put in a crucible
and stirred with an iron rod. The result was gold.”
“The iron rod must have been a magic scepter,” suggested Cole dryly.
“Perhaps; anyway the Royal Society of England got interested in Price’s
experiments and made an investigation. A committee of England’s
foremost scientists went to his laboratory, firmly expecting to expose
Price as a faker or lunatic. I can imagine the long, bewhiskered faces
of those learned old fogies when they put the gold through an assaying
process and found that it proved genuine in every respect.”
Cole’s pupils dilated a trifle, but he looked still dubious.
“What I have told you is a matter of history, amply documented and
supported by incontrovertible evidence,” declared Miss Brownell. “There
can be no doubt but that Price produced a form of gold that proved
genuine on assay. I am now coming to the strangest part of the story.
Having solved this problem, that has tantalized scientific minds since
the beginning of history, Price turned a sort of mental somersault.
Just what happened to him has never become definitely known. Some
still insist that he was a faker, despite the tests that were made.
Others believe that his mind collapsed under the strain, and that he
went insane. That seems to be nature’s way of punishing those who peep
behind the curtain of the unknown, and Price was neither the first nor
the last to go mad on the subject of gold. Still others think that
gold became an obsession with him, a sort of monomania, and that he
could not endure the thought of sharing his discovery with others. Then
there are those who cling to the theory that his production of gold was
nothing but an accident.”
“What happened?” asked Cole.
“The committee of scientists wanted to learn Price’s formula and asked
him to repeat the experiment in their presence. Price refused on the
pretext that his supply of red powders was exhausted. Shortly afterward
he committed suicide by drinking laurel water. It has been generally
supposed that his secret died with him. His book is somewhat vague
in regard to the composition of the red powders. Repeated attempts
have been made to learn exactly what they consisted of, but without
success. Last year, however, Professor Carmody returned from abroad
after browsing in the libraries of the Old World for many months. He
brought back with him a number of faded and forgotten manuscripts, said
to be in Doctor Price’s handwriting. Where he found them, and how he
got possession of them we don’t know, but we do know that they gave him
a clew to the secret which Price guarded so jealously.”
“How do you know?” demanded Cole.
“Our organization has eyes and ears everywhere. However, it was mostly
through accident that we learned what was on foot. I shan’t bore you
with the details. Carmody saw a chance to become enormously rich by
manufacturing gold on a large scale, using Doctor Price’s formula. But
he needed money to swing the enterprise, and so he guardedly approached
a number of wealthy men with a scheme for multiplying their fortunes
many times. Besides he knew that he lacked the executive ability
required to engineer a project of such magnitude. He talked to Malcolm
Reeves so engagingly that Reeves was smitten with the gold fever and
supplied a great portion of the cash that he needed. No doubt he
enlisted the assistance of other rich men in a similar manner. The lure
of gold is a terrible thing, Mr. Cole.”
“A curse,” said Cole. “But what about Latham?”
“Latham is an extremely clever and very versatile man. Though he
practices medicine he has dabbled in various sciences. Perhaps
Carmody needed his assistance in solving some of the problems that he
encountered in working out Price’s formula. However that may be, we
know he has been very close to Professor Carmody for several weeks.”
“Then you think Carmody is the moving spirit in the enterprise?”
“No; Carmody merely supplied the formula and his scientific knowledge.
He is a small man, physically and mentally, with a sharp, but narrow,
intellect, and he is deficient in the qualities required to direct an
enterprise of this sort. Knowing his shortcomings, he was willing to
put the management of the project into stronger hands than his own.”
“Latham’s, for instance?” asked Cole.
“Or Ballinger’s. Both are very shrewd and energetic men, though I
hadn’t thought of Ballinger in that connection until to-night. It is
your job to find the master mind that is directing the operations of
this gold-mad crowd, Mr. Cole. We know that they are already producing
gold, or a substitute for gold, on a very large scale.”
“Where?” inquired Cole quickly.
“That’s another thing for you to find out. In some secluded spot in New
York City or its environs there is a large and fully equipped plant.
From snatches of conversation which we have overheard we know that it
exists, but we haven’t been able to locate it. We also know that the
conspirators feel confident that their product will stand every test,
that it resembles natural gold in every respect. In order to eliminate
all risk, however, they have decided to hold the gold in storage until
the desired quantity has been manufactured. You can imagine what will
happen when a golden flood is suddenly released and poured out over the
country.”
“A few men will become enormously rich over night, and the monetary
system will be utterly disorganized. I suppose the ultimate result will
be the worst panic the world has ever seen.”
“That’s exactly what Mr. Carlin and the others think,” declared Miss
Brownell.
They sat silent for a time, neither looking at the other. Their minds
were stunned by the contemplation of the golden havoc which their
imagination pictured. Cole recalled the look of insane ecstasy which
he had seen in Malcolm Reeves’ face. The words, “Pretty yellow,” which
the insane man mumbled, suddenly assumed a vivid significance. He shook
himself a little.
“I suppose Reeves had a falling out with the others,” he remarked.
“That’s why they first destroyed his mind and afterward killed him.”
“Presumably.” Her eyes looked a little dim, as if they had gazed too
long upon a dazzling vision. “It was about Reeves I was thinking
just before I walked in here and disturbed you. I was wondering why
Ballinger didn’t commit the murder. He had free access to the place and
nobody had any suspicions against him. Why was it necessary to have the
hunchback sneak in here and do it?”
“I think the answer to that question is fairly clear.” Cole’s smile
seemed to say that women, even the cleverest of them, were rather
simple-minded at times. “The job had to be done by an outsider in
order to conceal the fact that the conspirators had an associate in
your midst.”
“But they didn’t conceal it. The ease with which the hunchback got in
and out proved clearly that he was assisted by some one on the inside.”
“That’s so,” admitted Cole, somewhat abashed. “Well, then it’s quite
likely that Ballinger balked at the job. Murder is pretty nasty
business. It is a coarser crime than depriving a man of his reason.
Many criminals of the intellectual type shrink from it.”
“Maybe that was the way of it. There’s another thing that has been
troubling me lately. Who do you think performed the operation on
Reeves?”
Cole stared at her for an instant. “It seems to be pretty well
established that Doctor Latham was the man.”
“Yes, I know that’s what they all seem to think. Their reason is that
Reeves seemed to recognize Ballinger when he was made up to resemble
Latham.”
“It was more than recognition. The sight of Ballinger made up as Latham
fairly terrified the poor man. I’ll never forget how he looked.”
“But isn’t that a flimsy reason for supposing that Latham performed the
operation?”
Cole leaned out of his chair and regarded her closely, as if wondering
whether her intuition was once more at work. “Can you imagine any other
explanation for the way Reeves acted that night?”
“Yes; can’t you?”
Cole shook his head ponderously.
“Just think about it,” she said, smiling faintly; then she rose and
walked out of the room.
For a long time Cole sat very still, with a thoughtful pucker across
his forehead. Once, from force of habit, he reached for his pipe,
frowning when he realized it wasn’t there. Now and then he bent a
quizzical gaze on the chair which Miss Brownell had vacated.
“What the deuce did she mean?” he mumbled. “What else is there to——”
With a jerky motion he sat erect in his chair. He gave the desk in
front of him a vigorous thump.
“By Jove, she wins!” he declared. “There is another explanation. It’s
beginning to look as though——” He checked himself, scowling. “But that
only muddles the situation. What’s the good of an explanation that
doesn’t explain. But I suppose a woman can’t see it that way. They’re
all alike, from Toots down.”
He shrugged as if to banish unprofitable speculations. He suddenly
remembered that there had been weighty things on his mind when Miss
Brownell interrupted his thoughts. He had given several orders to the
men, and he had been studying what to do with the body of Reeves, and
how he might make the most of his discovery that Doctor Ballinger was
the traitor. He jumped from the chair as the physician’s name ran
through his mind. For half an hour or more he had given not a single
thought to Ballinger. He hurried from the office and crossed the
corridor, but a glance into the smoking room reassured him. Ballinger
was sprawled out leisurely in an armchair, evidently in the midst of
an anecdote which he seemed to be relating with great gusto to his
companion.
Cole went farther down the corridor and rapped on the door to Miss
Brownell’s private room. “Wish you would keep an eye on Ballinger for a
while,” he whispered when she opened. She lifted her brows in a knowing
way and nodded. In the main office he found Carlin bent over a stack of
papers. The man seemed a veritable dynamo of energy.
“I’ve been thinking about Reeves,” he said.
Carlin looked up and took an obese cigar from his mouth. “What do you
suggest?”
“That we obey the spirit of the law and blink the letter. The ends of
justice will be met if the murderer is convicted and punished. It won’t
be necessary to drag all the embarrassing details into light.”
“How can it be avoided?”
“I have a plan, but, before I go any farther, I would like to see the
body.”
The lawyer got up. “I would have shown it to you when I took you over
the place, but Miss Brownell was with us then, and you know how women
are about such things.”
He led the way from the room, and they went to the end of the corridor.
There Carlin opened a door, and they stepped in. It was dark, and Cole
could see nothing. He heard a slight scraping sound, as the lawyer ran
his hand over the wall in search of a switch. Then a light flashed on.
Carlin raised an arm and pointed.
“There,” he said a trifle thickly, indicating a shape spread out on a
cot at the farther side of the room.
Cole walked up to the cot and looked down at the dead man. He jerked
back a little as his glance fell on the lifeless face. Then he bent
over the body and gazed fixedly into the rigid features. Finally he
stood up and turned to Carlin, who had remained behind.
“When did you last see the body?” he inquired, and his voice sounded a
trifle husky.
“Why, I think it was this morning. Yes, that was it, about ten o’clock
this morning. Why do you ask?”
“Because—— But see for yourself.”
With a wondering glance at the detective, Carlin crossed the floor. He
looked down at the motionless figure, and suddenly he shrank back a
step. A husky exclamation sounded in his throat, then he slowly raised
his eyes, and for a long moment the two men stared blankly at each
other.
“It—it isn’t Reeves!” stammered the lawyer.
“No—it isn’t Reeves!” echoed Cole.