Just then she heard the bell and Jennings in the hall.
She shoved the photographs away from her on the table.
It was Kennedy himself, close upon the announcement of the butler. He was in a particularly joyous and happy mood, for he had stopped at Martin's.
"How are you this afternoon?" he greeted Elaine gaily.
Elaine had been too overcome by what had just happened to throw it off so easily, and received him with a quickly studied coolness.
Still, Craig, man-like, did not notice it at once. In fact he was too busy gazing about to see that neither Jennings, Marie, nor the duenna Aunt Josephine were visible. They were not and he quickly took the ring from his pocket. Without waiting, he showed it to Elaine. In fact, so sure had he been that everything was plain sailing, that he seemed to take it almost for granted. Under other circumstances, he would have been right. But not tonight.
Elaine very coolly admired the ring, as Craig might have eyed a specimen on a microscope slide. Still, he did not notice.
He took the ring, about to put it on her finger. Elaine drew away.Concealment was not in her frank nature.
She picked up the two photographs.
"What have you to say about those?" she asked cuttingly.
Kennedy, quite surprised, took them and looked at them. Then he let them fall carelessly on the table and dropped into a chair, his head back in a burst of laughter.
"Why—that was what they put over on Walter," he said. "He called me up early this afternoon—told me he had discovered one of these poisoned kiss cases you have read about in the papers. Think of it—all that to pull a concealed camera! Such an elaborate business—just to get me where they could fake this thing. I suppose they've put some one up to saying she's engaged?"
Elaine was not so lightly affected. "But," she said severely, repressing her emotion, "I don't understand, MR. Kennedy, how scientific inquiry into 'the poisoned kiss' could necessitate this sort of thing."
She pointed at the photographs accusingly.
"But," he began, trying to explain.
"No buts," she interrupted.
"Then you believe that I—"
"How can you, as a scientist, ask me to doubt the camera," she insinuated, very coldly turning away.
Kennedy rapidly began to see that it was far more serious than he had at first thought.
"Very well," he said with a touch of impatience, "if my word is not to be taken—I—I'll—"
He had seized his hat and stick.
Elaine did not deign to answer.
Then, without a word he stalked out of the door.
As he did so, Elaine hastily turned and took a few steps after him, as if to recall her words, then stopped, and her pride got the better of her.
She walked slowly back to the chair by the table—the chair he had been sitting in—sank down into it and cried.
. . . . . . . .
Kennedy was moping in the laboratory the next day when I came in.
Just what the trouble was, I did not know, but I had decided that it was up to me to try to cheer him up.
"Say, Craig," I began, trying to overcome his fit of blues.
Kennedy, filled with his own thoughts, paid no attention to me. Still,I kept on.
Finally he got up and, before I knew it, he took me by the ear and marched me into the next room.
I saw that what he needed chiefly was to be let alone, and he went back to his chair, dropping down into it and banging his fists on the table. Under his breath he loosed a small volley of bitter expletives. Then he jumped up.
"By George—I WILL," he muttered.
I poked my head out of the door in time to see him grab up his hat and coat and dash from the room, putting his coat on as he went.
"He's a nut today," I exclaimed to myself.
Though I did not know, yet, of the quarrel, Kennedy had really struggled with himself until he was willing to put his pride in his pocket and had made up his mind to call on Elaine again.
As he entered, he saw that it was really of no use, for only AuntJosephine was in the library.
"Oh, Mr. Kennedy," she said innocently enough, "I'm so sorry she isn't here. There's been something troubling her and she won't tell me what it is. But she's gone to call on a young woman, a Florence Leigh, I think."
"Florence Leigh!" exclaimed Craig with a start and a frown. "Let me use your telephone."
I had turned my attention in the laboratory to a story I was writing, when I heard the telephone ring. It was Craig. Without a word of apology for his rudeness, which I knew had been purely absent-minded, I heard him saying, "Walter—meet me in half an hour outside that Florence Leigh's house."
He was gone in a minute, giving me scarcely time to call back that I would.
Then, with a hasty apology for his abruptness, he excused himself, leaving Aunt Josephine wondering at his strange actions.
At about the same time that Craig had left the laboratory, at the Dodge house Elaine and Aunt Josephine had been in the hall near the library. Elaine was in her street dress.
"I'm going out, Auntie," she said with an attempted gaiety. "And," she added, "if anyone should ask for me, I'll be there."
She had showed her a card on which was engraved, the name and address of Florence Leigh.
"All right, dear," answered Aunt Josephine, not quite clear in her mind what subtle change there was in Elaine.
. . . . . . . .
Half an hour later I was waiting near the house in the suburbs to whichI had been directed by the strange telephone call the day before. Inoticed that it was apparently deserted. The blinds were closed and a"To Let" sign was on the side of the house.
"Hello, Walter," cried Craig at last, bustling along. He stopped a moment to look at the house. Then, together, we went up the steps and we rang the bell, gazing about.
"Strange," muttered Craig. "The house looks deserted."
He pointed out the sign and the generally unoccupied look of the place. Nor was there any answer to our ring. Kennedy paused only a second, in thought.
"Come on, Walter," he said with a sudden decision. "We've got to get in here somehow."
He led the way around the side of the house to a window, and with a powerful grasp, wrenched open the closed shutters. He had just smashed the window viciously with his foot when a policeman appeared.
"Hey, you fellows—what are you doing there?" he shouted.
Craig paused a second, then pulled his card from his pocket.
"Just the man I want," he parried, much to the policeman's surprise,"There's something crooked going on here. Follow us in."
We climbed into the window. There was the same living room we had seen the day before. But it was now bare and deserted. Everything was gone except an old broken chair. Craig and I were frankly amazed at the complete and sudden change and I think the policeman was a little surprised, for he had thought the place occupied.
"Come on," cried Kennedy, beckoning us on.
Quickly he rushed through the house. There was not a thing in it to change the deserted appearance of the first floor. At last it occurred to Craig to grope his way down cellar. There was nothing there, either, except a bin, as innocent of coal as Mother Hubbard's cupboard was of food. For several minutes we hunted about without discovering a thing.
Kennedy had been carefully going over the place and was at the other side of the cellar from ourselves when I saw him stop and gaze at the floor. He was not looking, apparently, so much as listening. I strained my ears, but could make out nothing. Before I could say anything, he raised his hand for silence. Apparently he had heard something.
"Hide," he whispered suddenly to us.
Without another word, though for the life of me I could make nothing out of it, I pulled the policeman into a little angle of the wall nearby, while Craig slipped into a similar angle.
We waited a moment. Nothing happened. Had he been seeing things or hearing things, I wondered?
From our hidden vantage we could now see a square piece in the floor, perhaps five feet in diameter, slowly open up as though on a pivot. Beneath it we could make out a tube-like hole, perhaps three feet across, with a covered top. It slowly opened.
A weird and sinister figure of a man appeared. Over his head he wore a peculiar helmet with hideous glass pieces over the eyes, and tubes that connected with a tank which he carried buckled to his back. As he slowly dragged himself out, I could wonder only at the outlandish headgear.
Quickly he closed down the cover of the tube, but not before a vile effluvium seemed to escape, and penetrate even to us in our hiding places. As he moved forward, Kennedy gave a flying leap at him, and we followed with a regular football interference.
It was the work of only a moment for us to subdue and hold him, whileCraig ripped off the helmet.
It was Dan the Dude.
"What's that thing?" I puffed, as I helped Craig with the headgear.
"An oxygen helmet," he replied. "There must be air down the tube that cannot be breathed."
He went over to the tube. Carefully he opened the top and gazed down, starting back a second later, with his face puckered up at the noxious odor.
"Sewer gas," he ejaculated, as he slammed the cover down. Then he added to the policeman, "Where do you suppose it comes from?"
"Why," replied the officer, "the St. James Drain—an old sewer—is somewhere about these parts."
Kennedy puckered his face as he gazed at our prisoner. He reached down quickly and lifted something off the man's coat.
"Golden hair," he muttered. "Elaine's!"
A moment later he seized the man and shook him roughly.
"Where is she—tell me?" he demanded.
The man snarled some kind of reply, refusing to say a word about her.
"Tell me," repeated Kennedy.
"Humph!" snorted the prisoner, more close-mouthed than ever.
Kennedy was furious. As he sent the man reeling away from him, he seized the oxygen helmet and began putting it on. There was only one thing to do—to follow the clue of the golden strands of hair.
Down into the pest hole he went, his head protected by the oxygen helmet. As he cautiously took one step after another down a series of iron rungs inside the hole, he found that the water was up to his chest. At the bottom of the perpendicular pit was a narrow low passage way, leading off. It was just about big enough to get through, but he managed to grope along it. He came at last to the main drain, an old stone-walled sewer, as murky a place as could well be imagined, filled with the foulest sewer gas. He was hardly able to keep his feet in the swirling, bubbling water that swept past, almost up to his neck.
The minutes passed as the policeman and I watched our prisoner in the cellar, by the tube. I looked anxiously at my watch.
"Craig!" I shouted at last, unable to control my fears for him.
No answer. To go down after him seemed out of the question.
By this time, Craig had come to a small open chamber into which the sewer widened. On the wall he found another series of iron rungs up which he climbed. The gas was terrible.
As he neared the top of the ladder, he came to a shelf-like aperture in the sewer chamber, and gazed about. It was horribly dark. He reached out and felt a piece of cloth. Anxiously he pulled on it. Then he reached further into the darkness.
There was Elaine, unconscious, apparently dead.
He shook her, endeavoring to wake her up. But it was no use.
In desperation Craig carried her down the ladder.
With our prisoner, we could only look helplessly around. Again and again I looked at my watch as the minutes lengthened. Suppose the oxygen gave out?
"By George, I'm going down after him," I cried in desperation.
"Don't do it," advised the policeman. "You'll never get out."
One whiff of the horrible gas told me that he was right. I should not have been able to go fifty feet in it. I looked at him in despair. It was impossible.
"Listen," said the policeman, straining his ears.
There was indeed a faint noise from the black depths below us. A rope alongside the rough ladder began to move, as though someone was pulling it taut. We gazed down.
"Craig! Craig!" I called. "Is that you?"
No answer. But the rope still moved. Perhaps the helmet made it impossible for him to hear.
He had struggled back in the swirling current almost exhausted by his helpless burden. Holding Elaine's head above the surface of the water and pulling on the rope to attract my attention, for he could neither hear nor shout, he had taken a turn of the rope about Elaine. I tried pulling on it. There was something heavy on the other end and I kept on pulling.
At last I could make out Kennedy dimly mounting the ladder. The weight was the unconscious body of Elaine which he steadied as he mounted. I tugged harder and he slowly came up.
Together, at last, the policeman and I reached down and pulled them out.
We placed Elaine on the cellar floor, as comfortably as was possible, and the policeman began his first-aid motions for resuscitation.
"No—no," cried Kennedy, "Not here—take her up where the air is fresher."
With his revolver still drawn to overawe the prisoner, the policeman forced him to aid us in carrying her up the rickety flight of cellar steps. Kennedy followed quickly, unscrewing the oxygen helmet as he went.
In the deserted living room we deposited our senseless burden, whileKennedy, the helmet off now, bent over her.
"Quick—quick!" he cried to the officer, "An ambulance!"
"But the prisoner," the policeman indicated.
"Hurry—hurry—I'll take care of him," urged Craig, seizing the policeman's pistol and thrusting it into his pocket. "Walter—help me."
He was trying the ordinary methods of resuscitation. Meanwhile the officer had hurried out, seeking the nearest telephone, while we worked madly to bring Elaine back.
Again and again Kennedy bent and outstretched her arms, trying to induce respiration. So busy was I that for the moment I forgot our prisoner.
But Dan had seen his chance. Noiselessly he picked up the old chair in the room and with it raised was approaching Kennedy to knock him out.
Before I knew it myself, Kennedy had heard him. With a half instinctive motion, he drew the revolver from his pocket and, almost before I could see it, had shot the man. Without a word he returned the gun to his pocket and again bent over Elaine, without so much as a look at the crook who sank to the floor, dropping the chair from his nerveless hands.
Already the policeman had got an ambulance which was now tearing along to us.
Frantically Kennedy was working.
A moment he paused and looked at me—hopeless.
Just then, outside, we could hear the ambulance, and a doctor and two attendants hurried up to the door. Without a word the doctor seemed to appreciate the gravity of the case.
He finished his examination and shook his head.
"There is no hope—no hope," he said slowly.
Kennedy merely stared at him. But the rest of us instinctively removed our hats.
Kennedy gazed at Elaine, overcome. Was this the end?
It was not many minutes later that Kennedy had Elaine in the little sitting room off the laboratory, having taken her there in the ambulance, with the doctor and two attendants.
Elaine's body had been placed on a couch, covered by a blanket, and the shades were drawn. The light fell on her pale face.
There was something incongruous about death and the vast collection of scientific apparatus, a ghastly mocking of humanity. How futile was it all in the presence of the great destroyer?
Aunt Josephine had arrived, stunned, and a moment later, Perry Bennett. As I looked at the sorrowful party, Aunt Josephine rose slowly from her position on her knees where she had been weeping silently beside Elaine, and pressed her hands over her eyes, with every indication of faintness.
Before any of us could do anything, she had staggered into the laboratory itself, Bennett and I following quickly. There I was busy for some time getting restoratives.
Meanwhile Kennedy, beside the couch, with an air of desperate determination, turned away and opened a cabinet. From it he took a large coil and attached it to a storage battery, dragging the peculiar apparatus near Elaine's couch.
To an electric light socket, Craig attached wires. The doctor watched him in silent wonder.
"Doctor," he asked slowly as he worked, "do you know of Professor Leduc of the Nantes Ecole de Medicin?"
"Why—yes," answered the doctor, "but what of him?"
"Then you know of his method of electrical resuscitation."
"Yes—but—" He paused, looking apprehensively at Kennedy.
Craig paid no attention to his fears, but approaching the couch on which Elaine lay, applied the electrodes. "You see," he explained, with forced calmness, "I apply the anode here—the cathode there."
The ambulance surgeon looked on excitedly, as Craig turned on the current, applying it to the back of the neck and to the spine.
For some minutes the machine worked.
Then the young doctor's eyes began to bulge.
"My heavens!" he cried under his breath. "Look!"
Elaine's chest had slowly risen and fallen. Kennedy, his attention riveted on his work, applied himself with redoubled efforts. The young doctor looked on with increased wonder.
"Look! The color in her face! See her lips!" he cried.
At last her eyes slowly fluttered open—then closed.
Would the machine succeed? Or was it just the galvanic effect of the current? The doctor noticed it and quickly placed his ear to her heart. His face was a study in astonishment. The minutes sped fast.
To us outside, who had no idea what was transpiring in the other room, the minutes were leaden-feeted. Aunt Josephine, weak but now herself again, was sitting nervously.
Just then the door opened.
I shall never forget the look on the young ambulance surgeon's face, as he murmured under his breath, "Come here—the age of miracles is not passed—look!"
Raising his finger to indicate that we were to make no noise, he led us into the other room.
Kennedy was bending over the couch.
Elaine, her eyes open, now, was gazing up at him, and a wan smile flitted over her beautiful face.
Kennedy had taken her hand, and as he heard us enter, turned half way to us, while we stared in blank wonder from Elaine to the weird and complicated electrical apparatus.
"It is the life-current," he said simply, patting the Leduc apparatus with his other hand.
With the ominous forefinger of his Clutching Hand extended, the master criminal emphasized his instructions to his minions.
"Perry Bennett, her lawyer, is in favor again with Elaine Dodge," he was saying. "She and Kennedy are on the outs even yet. But they may become reconciled. Then she'll have that fellow on our trail again. Before that happens, we must 'get' her—see?"
It was in the latest headquarters to which Craig had chased the criminal, in one of the toughest parts of the old Greenwich village, on the west side of New York, not far from the river front.
They were all seated in a fairly large but dingy old room, in which were several chairs, a rickety table and, against the wall, a roll-top desk on the top of which was a telephone.
Several crooks of the gang were sitting about, smoking.
"Now," went on Clutching Hand, "I want you, Spike, to follow them. See what they do—where they go. It's her birthday. Something's bound to occur that will give you a lead. All you've got to do is to use your head. Get me?"
Spike rose, nodded, picked up his hat and coat and squirmed out on his mission, like the snake that he was.
. . . . . . . .
It was, as Clutching Hand had said, Elaine's birthday. She had received many callers and congratulations, innumerable costly and beautiful tokens of remembrance from her countless friends and admirers. In the conservatory of the Dodge house Elaine, Aunt Josephine, and Susie Martin were sitting discussing not only the happy occasion, but, more, the many strange events of the past few weeks.
"Well," cried a familiar voice behind them. "What would a certain blonde young lady accept as a birthday present from her family lawyer?"
All three turned in surprise.
"Oh, Mr. Bennett," cried Elaine. "How you startled us!"
He laughed and repeated his question, adopting the tone that he had once used in the days when he had been more in favor with the pretty heiress, before the advent of Kennedy.
Elaine hesitated. She was thinking not so much of his words as of Kennedy. To them all, however, it seemed that she was unable to make up her mind what, in the wealth of her luxury, she would like.
Susie Martin had been wondering whether, now that Bennett was here, she were not de trop, and she looked at her wrist watch mechanically. As she did so, an idea occurred to her.
"Why not one of these?" she cried impulsively, indicating the watch."Father has some beauties at the shop."
"Oh, good," exclaimed Elaine, "how sweet!"
She welcomed the suggestion, for she had been thinking that perhapsBennett might be hinting too seriously at a solitaire.
"So that strikes your fancy?" he asked. "Then let's all go to the shop. Miss Martin will personally conduct the tour, and we shall have our pick of the finest stock."
A moment later the three young people went out and were quickly whirled off down the Avenue in the Dodge town car.
It was too gay a party to notice a sinister figure following them in a cab. But as they entered the fashionable jewelry shop, Spike, who had alighted, walked slowly down the street.
Chatting with animation, the three moved over to the watch counter, while the crook, with a determination not to risk missing anything, entered the shop door, too.
"Mr. Thomas," asked Susie as her father's clerk bowed to them, "please show Miss Dodge the wrist watches father was telling about."
With another deferential bow, the clerk hastened to display a case of watches and they bent over them. As each new watch was pointed out, Elaine was delighted.
Unobserved, the crook walked over near enough to hear what was going on.
At last, with much banter and yet care, Elaine selected one that was indeed a beauty and was about to snap it on her dainty wrist, when the clerk interrupted.
"I beg pardon," he suggested, "but I'd advise you to leave it to be regulated, if you please."
"Yes, indeed," chimed in Susie. "Father always advises that."
Reluctantly, Elaine handed it over to the clerk.
"Oh, thank you, ever so much, Mr. Bennett," she said as he unobtrusively paid for the watch and gave the address to which it was to be sent when ready.
A moment later they went out and entered the car again.
As they did so, Spike, who had been looking various things in the next case over as if undecided, came up to the watch counter.
"I'm making a present," he remarked confidentially to the clerk. "How about those bracelet watches?"
The clerk pulled out some of the cheaper ones.
"No," he said thoughtfully, pointing out a tray in the show case, "something like those."
He ended by picking out one identically like that which Elaine had selected, and started to pay for it.
"Better have it regulated," repeated the clerk.
"No," he objected hastily, shaking his head and paying the money quickly. "It's a present—and I want it tonight."
He took the watch and left the store hurriedly.
. . . . . . . .
In the laboratory, Kennedy was working over an oblong oak box, perhaps eighteen inches in length and half as high. In the box I could see, besides other apparatus, two good sized spools of fine wire.
"What's all that?" I asked inquisitively.
"Another of the new instruments that scientific detectives use," he responded, scarcely looking up, "a little magnetic wizard, the telegraphone."
"Which is?" I prompted.
"Something we detectives might use to take down and 'can' telephone and other conversations. When it is attached properly to a telephone, it records everything that is said over the wire."
"How does it work?" I asked, much mystified.
"Well, it is based on an entirely new principle, in every way different from the phonograph," he explained. "As you can see there are no discs or cylinders, but these spools of extremely fine steel wire. The record is not made mechanically on a cylinder, but electromagnetically on this wire."
"How?" I asked, almost incredulously.
"To put it briefly," he went on, "small portions of magnetism, as it were, are imparted to fractions of the steel wire as it passes between two carbon electric magnets. Each impression represents a sound wave. There is no apparent difference in the wire, yet each particle of steel undergoes an electromagnetic transformation by which the sound is indelibly imprinted on it."
"Then you scrape the wire, just as you shave records to use it over again?" I suggested.
"No," he replied. "You pass a magnet over it and the magnet automatically erases the record. Rust has no effect. The record lasts as long as steel lasts."
Craig continued to tinker tantalizingly with the machine which had been invented by a Dane, Valdemar Poulsen.
He had scarcely finished testing out the telegraphone, when the laboratory door opened and a clean-cut young man entered.
Kennedy, I knew, had found that the routine work of the Clutching Hand case was beyond his limited time and had retained this young man, Raymond Chase, to attend to that.
Chase was a young detective whom Craig had employed on shadowing jobs and as a stool pigeon on other cases, and we had all the confidence in the world in him.
Just now what worried Craig was the situation with Elaine, and I fancied that he had given Chase some commission in connection with that.
"I've got it, Mr. Kennedy," greeted Chase with quiet modesty.
"Good," responded Craig heartily. "I knew you would."
"Got what?" I asked a moment later.
Kennedy nodded for Chase to answer.
"I've located the new residence of Flirty Florrie," he replied.
I saw what Kennedy was after at once. Flirty Florrie and Dan the Dude had caused the quarrel between himself and Elaine. Dan the Dude was dead. But Flirty Florrie might be forced to explain it.
"That's fine," he added, exultingly. "Now, I'll clear that thing up."
He took a hasty step to the telephone, put his hand on the receiver and was about to take it off the hook. Then he paused, and I saw his face working. The wound Elaine had given his feelings was deep. It had not yet quite healed.
Finally, his pride, for Kennedy's was a highly sensitive nature, got the better of him.
"No," he said, half to himself, "not—yet."
Elaine had returned home.
Alone, her thoughts naturally went back to what had happened recently to interrupt a friendship which had been the sweetest in her life.
"There MUST be some mistake," she murmured pensively to herself, thinking of the photograph Flirty had given her. "Oh, why did I send him away? Why didn't I believe him?"
Then she thought of what had happened, of how she had been seized by Dan the Dude in the deserted house, of how the noxious gas had overcome her.
They had told her of how Craig had risked his life to save her, how she had been brought home, still only half alive, after his almost miraculous work with the new electric machine.
There was his picture. She had not taken that away. As she looked at it, a wave of feeling came over her. Mechanically, she put out her hand to the telephone.
She was about to take off the receiver, when something seemed to stay her hand. She wanted him to come to her.
And, if either of them had called the other just then, they would have probably crossed wires.
Of such stuff are the quarrels of lovers.
Craig's eye fell on the telegraphone, and an idea seemed to occur to him.
"Walter, you and Chase bring that thing along," he said a moment later.
He paused long enough to take a badge from the drawer of a cabinet, and went out. We followed him, lugging the telegraphone.
At last we came to the apartment house at which Chase had located the woman.
"There it is," he pointed out, as I gave a groan of relief, for the telegraphone was getting like lead.
Kennedy nodded and drew from his pocket the badge I had seen him take from the cabinet.
"Now, Chase," he directed, "you needn't go in with us. Walter and I can manage this, now. But don't get out of touch with me. I shall need you any moment—certainly tomorrow."
I saw that the badge read, Telephone Inspector.
"Walter," he smiled, "you're elected my helper."
We entered the apartment house hall and found a Negro boy in charge of the switchboard. It took Craig only a moment to convince the boy that he was from the company and that complaints had been made by some anonymous tenant.
"You look over that switchboard, Kelly," he winked at me, "while I test out the connections back here. There must be something wrong with the wires or there wouldn't be so many complaints."
He had gone back of the switchboard and the Negro, still unsuspicious, watched without understanding what it was all about.
"I don't know," Craig muttered finally for the benefit of the boy, "but I think I'll have to leave that tester after all. Say, if I put it here, you'll have to be careful not to let anyone meddle with it. If you do, there'll be the deuce to pay. See?"
Kennedy had already started to fasten the telegraphone to the wires he had selected from the tangle.
At last he finished and stood up.
"Don't disturb it and don't let anyone else touch it," he ordered. "Better not tell anyone—that's the best way. I'll be back for it tomorrow probably."
"Yas sah," nodded the boy, with a bow, as we went out.
We returned to the laboratory, where there seemed to be nothing we could do now except wait for something to happen.
Kennedy, however, employed the time by plunging into work, most of the time experimenting with a peculiar little coil to which ran the wires of an ordinary electric bell.
Back in the new hang-out, the Clutching Hand was laying down the law to his lieutenants and heelers, when Spike at last entered.
"Huh!" growled the master criminal, covering the fact that he was considerably relieved to see him at last, "where have YOU been? I've been off on a little job myself and got back."
Spike apologized profusely. He had succeeded so easily that he had thought to take a little time to meet up with an old pal whom he ran across, just out of prison.
"Yes sir," he replied hastily, "well, I went over to the Dodge house, and I saw them finally. Followed them into a jewelry shop. That lawyer bought her a wrist watch. So I bought one just like it. I thought perhaps we could—"
"Give it to me," growled Clutching Hand, seizing it the moment Slim displayed it. "And don't butt in—see?"
From the capacious desk, the master criminal pulled a set of small drills, vices, and other jeweler's tools and placed them on the table.
"All right," he relented. "Now, do you see what I have just thought of—no? This is just the chance. Look at me."
The heelers gathered around him, peering curiously at their master as he worked at the bracelet watch.
Carefully he plied his hands to the job, regardless of time.
"There," he exclaimed at last, holding the watch up where they could all see it. "See!"
He pulled out the stem to set the hands and slowly twisted it between his thumb and finger. He turned the hands until they were almost at the point of three o'clock.
Then he held the watch out where all could see it.
They bent closer and strained their eyes at the little second hand ticking away merrily.
As the minute hand touched three, from the back of the case, as if from the casing itself, a little needle, perhaps a quarter of an inch, jumped out. It seemed to come from what looked like merely a small inset in the decorations.
"You see what will happen at the hour of three?" he asked.
No one said a word, as he held up a vial which he had drawn from his pocket. On it they could read the label, "Ricinus."
"One of the most powerful poisons in the world!" he exclaimed. "Enough here to kill a regiment!"
They fairly gasped and looked at it with horror, exchanging glances. Then they looked at him in awe. There was no wonder that Clutching Hand kept them in line, once he had a crook in his power.
Opening the vial carefully, he dipped in a thin piece of glass and placed a tiny drop in a receptacle back of the needle and on the needle itself.
Altogether it savored of the ancient days of the Borgias with their weird poisoned rings.
Then he dropped the vial back into his pocket, pressed a spring, and the needle went back into its unsuspected hiding place.
"I've set my invention to go off at three o'clock," he concluded. "Tomorrow forenoon, it will have to be delivered early—and I don't believe we shall be troubled any longer by Miss Elaine Dodge," he added venomously.
Even the crooks, hardened as they were, could only gasp.
Calmly he wrapped up the apparently innocent engine of destruction and handed it to Spike.
"See that she gets it in time," he said merely.
"I will, sir," answered Spike, taking it gingerly.
Flirty Florrie had returned that afternoon, late, from some expedition on which she had been sent.
Rankling in her heart yet was the death of her lover, Dan the Dude. For, although in her sphere of crookdom they are neither married nor given in marriage, still there is a brand of loyalty that higher circles might well copy. Sacred to the memory of the dead, however, she had one desire—revenge.
Thus when she arrived home, she went to the telephone to report and called a number, 4494 Greenwich.
"Hello, Chief," she repeated. "This is Flirty. Have you done anything yet in the little matter we talked about?"
"Say—be careful of names—over the wire," came a growl.
"You know—what I mean."
"Yes. The trick will be pulled off at three o'clock."
"Good!" she exclaimed. "Good-bye and thank you."
With his well-known caution Clutching Hand did not even betray names over the telephone if he could help it.
Flirty hung up the receiver with satisfaction. The manes of the departed Dan might soon rest in peace!
The next day, early in the forenoon, a young man with a small package carefully done up came to the Dodge house.
"From Martin's, the jeweler's, for Miss Dodge," he said to Jennings at the door.
Elaine and Aunt Josephine were sitting in the library when Jennings announced him.
"Oh, it's my watch," cried Elaine. "Show him in."
Jennings bowed and did so. Spike entered, and handed the package toElaine, who signed her name excitedly and opened it.
"Just look, Auntie," she exclaimed. "Isn't it stunning?"
"Very pretty," commented Aunt Josephine.
Elaine put the watch on her wrist and admired it.
"Is it all right?" asked Spike.
"Yes, yes," answered Elaine. "You may go."
He went out, while Elaine gazed rapturously at the new trinket while it ticked off the minutes—this devilish instrument.
Early the same morning Kennedy went around again to the apartment house and, cautious not to be seen by Flirty, recovered the telegraphone. Together we carried it to the laboratory.
There he set up a little instrument that looked like a wedge sitting up on end, in the face of which was a dial. Through it he began to run the wire from the spools, and, taking an earpiece, put another on my head over my ears.
"You see," he explained, "the principle on which this is based is that a mass of tempered steel may be impressed with and will retain magnetic fluxes varying in density and in sign in adjacent portions of itself—little deposits of magnetic impulse.
"When the telegraphone is attached to the telephone wire, the currents that affect the receiver also affect the coils of the telegraphone and the disturbance set up causes a deposit of magnetic impulse on the steel wire.
"When the wire is again run past these coils with a receiver such as I have here in circuit with the coils, a light vibration is set up in the receiver diaphragm which reproduces the sound of speech." He turned a switch and we listened eagerly. There was no grating and thumping, as he controlled the running off of the wire. We were listening to everything that had been said over the telephone during the time since we left the machine.
First came several calls from people with bills and she put them off most adroitly.
Then we heard a call that caused Kennedy to look at me quickly, stop the machine and start at that point over again.
"That's what I wanted," he said as we listened in:
"Give me 4494 Greenwich."
"Hello."
"Hello, Chief. This is Flirty. Have you done anything yet in the little matter we talked about?
"Say—be careful of names—over the wire."
"You know—what I mean."
"Yes, the trick will be pulled off at three o'clock.
"Good! Good-bye and thank you!"
"Good-bye."
Kennedy stopped the machine and I looked at him blankly.
"She called Greenwich 4494 and was told that the trick would be pulled off at three o'clock today," he ruminated.
"What trick?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't know. That is what we must find out. I hadn't expected a tip like that. What I wanted was to find out how to get at the Clutching Hand."
He paused and considered a minute, then moved to the telephone.
"There's only one thing to do and that's to follow out my original scheme," he said energetically. "Information, please."
"Where is Greenwich 4494?" he asked a moment later.
The minutes passed. "Thank you," he cried, writing down on a pad an address over on the west side near the river front. Then turning to me he explained, "Walter, we've got him at last!"
Craig rose and put on his hat and coat, thrusting a pair of opera glasses into his pocket, in case we should want to observe the place at a distance. I followed him excitedly. The trail was hot.
Kennedy and I came at last to the place on the West Side where the crooked streets curved off.
Instead of keeping on until he came to the place we sought, he turned and quickly slipped behind the shelter of a fence. There was a broken board in the fence and he bent down, gazing through with the opera glasses.
Across the lot was the new headquarters, a somewhat dilapidated old-fashioned brick house of several generations back. Through the glass we could see an evil-countenanced crook slinking along. He mounted the steps and rang the bell, turning as he waited.
From a small aperture in the doorway looked out another face, equally evil. Under cover, the crook made the sign of the clutching hand twice and was admitted.
"That's the place, all right," whispered Kennedy with satisfaction.
He hurried to a telephone booth where he called several numbers. Then we returned to the laboratory, while Kennedy quickly figured out a plan of action. I knew Chase was expected there soon.
From the table he picked up the small coil over which I had seen him working, and attached it to the bell and some batteries. He replaced it on the table, while I watched curiously.
"A selenium cell," he explained. "Only when light falls on it does it become a good conductor of electricity. Then the bell will ring."
Just before making the connection he placed his hat over the cell. Then he lifted the hat. The light fell on it and the bell rang. He replaced the hat and the bell stopped. It was evidently a very peculiar property of the substance, selenium.
Just then there came a knock at the door. I opened it.
"Hello, Chase," greeted Kennedy. "Well, I've found the new headquarters all right,—over on the west side."
Kennedy picked up the selenium cell and a long coil of fine wire which he placed in a bag. Then he took another bag already packed and, shifting them between us, we hurried down town.
Near the vacant lot, back of the new headquarters, was an old broken down house. Through the rear of it we entered.
I started back in astonishment as we found eight or ten policemen already there. Kennedy had ordered them to be ready for a raid and they had dropped in one at a time without attracting attention.
"Well, men," he greeted them, "I see you found the place all right. Now, in a little while Jameson will return with two wires. Attach them to the bell which I will leave here. When it rings, raid the house. Jameson will lead you to it. Come, Walter," he added, picking up the bags.
Ten minutes later, outside the new headquarters, a crouched up figure, carrying a small package, his face hidden under his soft hat and up-turned collar, could have been seen slinking along until he came to the steps.
He went up and peered through the aperture of the doorway. Then he rang the bell. Twice he raised his hand and clenched it in the now familiar clutch.
A crook inside saw it through the aperture and opened the door. The figure entered and almost before the door was shut tied the masking handkerchief over his face, which hid his identity from even the most trusted lieutenants. The crook bowed to the chief, who, with a growl as though of recognition, moved down the hall.
As he came to the room from which Spike had been sent on his mission, the same group was seated in the thick tobacco smoke.
"You fellows clear out," he growled. "I want to be alone."
"The old man is peeved," muttered one, outside, as they left.
The weird figure gazed about the room to be sure that he was alone.
When Craig and I left the police he had given me most minute instructions which I was now following out to the letter.
"I want you to hide there," he said, indicating a barrel back of the house next to the hang-out. "When you see a wire come down from the headquarters, take it and carry it across the lot to the old house. Attach it to the bell; then wait. When it rings, raid the Clutching Hand joint."
I waited what seemed to be an interminable time back of the barrel and it is no joke hiding back of a barrel.
Finally, however, I saw a coil of fine wire drop rapidly to the ground from a window somewhere above. I made a dash for it, as though I were trying to rush the trenches, seized my prize and without looking back to see where it came from, beat a hasty retreat.
Around the lot I skirted, until at last I reached the place where the police were waiting. Quickly we fastened the wire to the bell.
We waited.
Not a sound from the bell.
Up in the room in the joint, the hunched up figure stood by the table. He had taken his hat off and placed it carefully on the table, and was now waiting.
Suddenly a noise at the door startled him. He listened. Then he backed away from the door and drew a revolver.
As the door slowly opened there entered another figure, hat over his eyes, collar up, a handkerchief over his face, the exact counterpart of the first!
For a moment each glared at the other.
"Hands up!" shouted the first figure, hoarsely, moving the gun and closing the door, with his foot.
The newcomer slowly raised his crooked hand over his head, as the blue steel revolver gaped menacingly.
With a quick movement of the other hand, the first sinister figure removed the handkerchief from his face and straightened up.
It was Kennedy!
"Come over to the center of the room," ordered Kennedy.
Clutching Hand obeyed, eyeing his captor closely.
"Now lay your weapons on the table."
He tossed down a revolver.
The two still faced each other.
"Take off that handkerchief!"
It was a tense moment. Slowly Clutching Hand started to obey. Then he stopped. Kennedy was just about to thunder, "Go on," when the criminal calmly remarked, "You've got ME all right, Kennedy, but in twenty minutes Elaine Dodge will be dead!"
He said it with a nonchalance that might have deceived anyone less astute than Kennedy. Suddenly there flashed over Craig the words: "THE TRICK WILL BE PULLED OFF AT THREE O'CLOCK!"
There was no fake about that. Kennedy frowned. If he killed ClutchingHand, Elaine would die. If he fought, he must either kill or be killed.If he handed Clutching Hand over, all he had to do was to keep quiet.He looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes of three.
What a situation!
He had caught a prisoner he dared not molest—yet.
"What do you mean—tell me?" demanded Kennedy with forced calm.
"Yesterday Mr. Bennett bought a wrist watch for Elaine," the Clutching Hand said quietly. "They left it to be regulated. One of my men bought one just like it. Mine was delivered to her today."
"A likely story!" doubted Kennedy.
For answer, the Clutching Hand pointed to the telephone.
Kennedy reached for it.
"One thing," interrupted the Clutching Hand. "You are a man of honor."
"Yes—yes. Go on."
"If I tell you what to do, you must promise to give me a fighting chance."
"Yes, yes."
"Call up Aunt Josephine, then. Do just as I say."
Covering Clutching Hand, Kennedy called a number. "This is Mr. Kennedy,Mrs. Dodge. Did Elaine receive a present of a wrist watch from Mr.Bennett?"
"Yes," she replied, "for her birthday. It came this forenoon."
Kennedy hung up the receiver and faced Clutching Hand puzzled as the latter said, "Call up Martin, the jeweler."
Again Kennedy obeyed.
"Has the watch purchased for Miss Elaine Dodge been delivered?" he asked the clerk.
"No," came back the reply, "the watch Mr. Bennett bought is still here being regulated."
Kennedy hung up the receiver. He was stunned.
"The watch will cause her death at three o'clock," said the Clutching Hand. "Swear to leave here without discovering my identity and I will tell you how. You can save her!"
A moment Kennedy thought. Here was a quandary.
"No," he shouted, seizing the telephone.
Before Kennedy could move, Clutching Hand had pulled the telephone wires with almost superhuman strength from the junction box.
"In that watch," he hissed, "I have set a poisoned needle in a spring that will be released and will plunge it into her arm at exactly three o'clock. On the needle is ricinus!"
Craig advanced, furious. As he did so, Clutching Hand pointed calmly to the clock. It was twenty minutes of three!
With a mental struggle, Kennedy controlled his loathing of the creature before him.
"All right—but you'll hear from me—sooner than you suspect," he shouted, starting for the door.
Then he came back and lifted his hat, hiding as much as possible the selenium cell, letting the light fall on it.
"Only Elaine's life has saved you."
With a last threat he dashed out. He hailed a cab, returning from some steamship wharves not far away.
"Quick!" he ordered, giving the Dodge address on Fifth Avenue.
Minute after minute the police and I waited. Was anything wrong? Where was Craig?
Just then a tremor grew into a tinkle, then came the strong burr of the bell. Kennedy needed us.
With a shout of encouragement to the men I dashed out and over to the old house.
Meanwhile Clutching Hand himself had approached the table to recover his weapon and had noticed the queer little selenium cell. He picked it up and for the first time saw the wire leading out.
"The deuce!" he cried. "He's planned to get me anyhow!"
Clutching Hand rushed to the door—then stopped short. Outside he could hear the police and myself. We had shot the lock on the outside and were already inside.
Clutching Hand slammed shut his door and pulled down over it a heavy wooden bar. A few steps took him to the window. There were police in the back yard, too. He was surrounded.
But he did not hurry. He knew what to do with every second.
At the desk he paused and took out a piece of cardboard. Then with a heavy black marking pencil, he calmly printed on it, while we battered at the barricaded door, a few short feet away.
He laid the sign on the desk, then on another piece of cardboard, drew crudely a hand with the index finger, pointing. This he placed on a chair, indicating the desk.
Just as the swaying and bulging door gave way, Clutching Hand gave the desk a pull. It opened up—his getaway.
He closed it with a sardonic smile in our direction, just before the door crashed in.
We looked about. There was not a soul in the room, nothing but the selenium cell, the chairs, the desk.
"Look!" I cried catching sight of the index finger, and going over to the desk.
We rolled back the top. There on the flat top was a sign:
Dear Blockheads:
Kennedy and I couldn't wait.
Yours as ever,
Then came that mysterious sign of the Clutching Hand.
We hunted over the rooms, but could find nothing that showed a clue.Where was Clutching Hand? Where was Kennedy?
In the next house Clutching Hand had literally come out of an upright piano into the room corresponding to that he had left. Hastily he threw off his handkerchief, slouch hat, old coat and trousers. A neat striped pair of trousers replaced the old, frayed and baggy pair. A new shirt, then a sporty vest and a frock coat followed. As he put the finishing touches on, he looked for all the world like a bewhiskered foreigner.
With a silk hat and stick, he surveyed himself, straightening his tie. At the door of the new headquarters, a few seconds later, I stood with the police.
"Not a sign of him anywhere," growled one of the officers.
Nor was there. Down the street we could see only a straight well-dressed, distinguished looking man who had evidently walked down to the docks to see a friend off, perhaps.
Elaine was sitting in the library reading when Aunt Josephine turned to her.
"What time is it, dear?" she asked.
Elaine glanced at her pretty new trinket.
"Nearly three, Auntie—a couple of minutes," she said.
Just then there came the sound of feet running madly down the hall way.They jumped up, startled.
Kennedy, his coat flying, and hat jammed over his eyes, had almost bowled over poor Jennings in his mad race down the hall.
"Well," demanded Elaine haughtily, "what's—"
Before she knew what was going on, Craig hurried up to her and literally ripped the watch off her wrist, breaking the beautiful bracelet.
He held it up, gingerly. Elaine was speechless. Was this Kennedy? Was he possessed by such an inordinate jealousy of Bennett?
As he held the watch up, the second hand ticked around and the minute hand passed the meridian of the hour.
A viciously sharp little needle gleamed out—then sprang back into the filigree work again.
"Well," she gasped again, "what's the occasion of THIS?"
Craig gazed at Elaine in silence.
Should he defend his rudeness, if she did not understand? She stamped her foot, and repeated the question a third time.
"What do you mean, sir, by such conduct?"
Slowly he bowed.
"I just don't like the kind of birthday presents you receive," he said, turning on his heel. "Good afternoon."