Kennedy's first move was to go downtown to the old building opposite the City Hall and visit the post-office inspectors.
"I've heard of the government's campaign against the medical quacks who are using the mails," he introduced when we at last found the proper inspector. "I wonder whether you know a Dr. Adam Loeb?"
"Loeb?" repeated the inspector, O'Hanlon, who was in charge of the investigation which was then in progress. "Of course we know Loeb—a very slippery customer, too, with just enough science at his command to make the case against him difficult.
"I suppose," went on O'Hanlon, "you know that in Europe the popular furore about radium and its applications appeared earlier than it did here. But now we have great numbers of dishonest and fake radium cure establishments. Usually they have neither radium nor knowledge. They promise a cure, but they can't even palliate the trouble. Loeb has some radium, I guess, but that's about all."
"I think I'd like to visit the 'doctor' and his 'medical museum,'" ventured Kennedy when O'Hanlon had finished describing the case to us.
"Very well," agreed O'Hanlon. "Our cases against the quacks are just about completed. I've heard a great deal about you, Mr. Kennedy. I think I may trust you."
The inspector paused. "Tomorrow," he added, looking at us significantly, "we have planned a simultaneous raid of all of them in the city. However, there's no objection to your seeing Dr. Loeb, if you'll be careful to give no hint that something is about to be pulled off. I'm sure any new evidence we may get against him will be quite welcome."
"I'd like to see him in action before the raid," hastened Craig.
"Well, I think the best way, then, for you to get at him," advised the inspector, "would be to adopt the method my investigators use with these fakers. I mean for one or the other of you to pose as a prospective patient. Only don't let him treat you too much with any of those electrical things of his."
Craig glanced over at me whimsically.
"Oh," I said good-humoredly, "I'll be the goat, if that's what you're going to ask me."
Craig laughed.
"Come in tomorrow," called the inspector as we left. "I'd like to hear what happens and I may be able to add something to what you find out."
We found Dr. Loeb established in a palatial suite of offices in an ultra-modern office building. Outside was what he called his "medical museum." It was a grewsome collection of wax figures and colored charts well calculated to prepare one for the worst. At the end of the room was a huge sign bearing his name and the words, "Positive Cure for Cancer Without Cautery or the Knife."
There were no cappers or steerers about the place, though I have no doubt he had them working for him outside to bring in business. Instead, we were met by a very pretty, fluffy-haired girl, evidently the doctor's secretary. She, I gathered, was the Miss Golder whom Lionel had mentioned. In fact, I felt that she was really much above the level of such a position.
Loeb's office was elaborately equipped. There were static machines, electric coils, high frequency appliances, X-ray outfits, galvanic and faradic cabinets, electric light reflectors of high power, light bath cabinets, electric vibrators, high pressure nebulizers and ozonizers—everything, as Craig expressed it later, to impress the patient that Loeb could cure any disease the flesh was heir to. I know that it impressed me.
The doctor himself was a pompous man of middle age, with a very formidable beard and a deep voice that forbade contradiction.
"I've come to you on the recommendation of a patient of yours," began Craig, adding hastily, "not for myself, but for my friend here, whom I'm afraid isn't very well."
The doctor eyed me through his gold-rimmed spectacles. Already I began to feel shaky.
"Who recommended you?" he asked casually.
"My friend, Mr. Darius Moreton of Norwood. I suppose you remember him?"
"Oh, very well, very well. A most peculiar case, that of the Moretons. I have succeeded in prolonging their lives beyond what anyone else could have done. But I fear that they haven't all followed my treatment. You know, you must put yourself entirely in my hands, and there is a young doctor out there, I believe, whom they have also. That isn't fair to me. I wonder whether you are acquainted with my methods of treatment?"
Kennedy shook his head negatively.
"Miss Golder," the doctor called, as the fluffy-haired secretary responded quickly, "will you give these gentlemen some of my booklets on the Loeb Method."
Miss Golder took from a cabinet several handsomely printed pamphlets extolling the skill and success of Dr. Loeb. Like everything else about him, no expense had been spared to impress the reader.
As Miss Golder left the office, Dr. Loeb began a rapid examination of me, using an X-ray machine. I am sure that if I had not received a surreptitious encouraging nod from Craig now and then, I should have been ready to croak or cash in, according to whichever Dr. Loeb suggested—probably the latter, for I could not help thinking that a great deal of time was spent in mentally X-raying my pocketbook.
When he finished, the doctor shook his head gravely. Of course I was threatened. But the thing was only incipient. Still, if it were not attended to immediately it was only a question of a short time when I might be as badly, as the wax figures and charts outside. I had fortunately come just in time to be saved.
"I think that with the electrical treatment we can get rid of that malignant growth in a month," he promised, fixing a price for the treatment which I thought was pretty high, considering the brief time he had actually spent on me, and the slight cost of electric light and power.
I paid him ten dollars on deposit, and after a final consultation we left the doctor's office. I was to return for a treatment in a couple of days.
We turned out of the entrance of the office building just as scores of employés were hurrying home. As we reached the door, I felt Kennedy grasp my arm. I swung around. There, in an angle of the corridor, I caught sight of a familiar figure. Dr. Goode was standing, evidently waiting for someone to come out. There were several elevators and the crowd of discharging passengers was thick. He had been so intent on looking for someone he expected, apparently, that he had missed us.
Kennedy drew me on into the doorway of the building next door, from which we could observe everyone who went in and out of the skyscraper in which Dr. Loeb had his offices.
"I wonder what he's down here for," scowled Kennedy.
"Perhaps he's doing some detective work of his own," I suggested.
"Lionel Moreton said that Miss Golder and he used to be intimate," ruminated Kennedy. "I wonder if he's waiting for her?"
We did not have long to wait. It was only a few minutes when Kennedy's surmise proved correct. Miss Golder and Dr. Goode came out, and turned in the direction of the railroad station for Norwood. He was eagerly questioning her about something, perhaps, I imagined, our visit to Dr. Loeb. What did it mean?
There was no use and it was too risky to follow them. Kennedy turned and we made our way uptown to the laboratory, where he plunged at once into an examination of the blood specimens he had taken from the Moretons and of the peculiar porcelain cone which he had picked up in the rubbish pile between the two houses.
Having emptied the specimens of blood in several little shallow glass receptacles which he covered with black paper and some very sensitive films, he turned his attention to the cone. I noted that he was very particular in his examination of it, apparently being very careful to separate whatever it was he was looking for on the inside and the outside surfaces.
"That," he explained to me at length as he worked, "is what is known as a Berkefeld filter, a little porous cup, made of porcelain. The minute meshes of this filter catch and hold bacteria as if in the meshes of a microscopic sieve, just like an ordinary water filter. It is so fine that it holds back even the tiny bacillus fluorescens liquefaciens which are used to test it. These bacilli measure only from a half to one and one-and-a-half micromillimeters in diameter. In other words 130,000 germs of half a micromillimeter would be necessary to make an inch."
"What has it been used for?" I ventured.
"I can't say, yet," he returned, and I did not pursue the inquiry, knowing Kennedy's aversion to being questioned when he was not yet sure of his facts.
It was the next day when the post-office inspectors, the police and others who had been co-operating had settled on the raid not only of Dr. Loeb's but of all the medical quacks who were fleecing the credulous of the city out of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by one of the most cruel swindles that have ever been devised.
For the time, Kennedy dropped his investigations in the laboratory and we went down to O'Hanlon's office, where a thick batch of warrants, just signed, had been received.
Quickly O'Hanlon disposed his forces so that in all parts of the town they might swoop down at once and gather in the medical harpies. Dr. Loeb's stood first on the list of those which O'Hanlon decided to handle himself.
"By the way," mentioned O'Hanlon as we hurried uptown to be ready in time, "I had a letter from Darius Moreton this morning threatening me with all kinds of trouble unless we let up on Dr. Loeb. It's pretty hard to keep a big investigation like this secret, but I think we've planned a little surprise for this morning."
With the post-office inspector we climbed into a patrol wagon with a detail of police who were to make a general round-up of the places on Forty-second Street.
As the wagon backed up to the curb in front of the building in which Loeb's office was, the policemen hopped out and hurried into the building before a crowd could collect. Unceremoniously they rushed through the outer office, headed by O'Hanlon.
Quickly though the raid was executed, it could not be done without some warning commotion. As we entered the front door of the office, we could just catch a glimpse of a man retreating through a back door. There was something familiar about his back, and Kennedy and I started after him. But we were too late. He had fled without even waiting for his hat, which lay on Miss Golder's desk, and had disappeared down a back stairway which had been left unguarded.
"Confound it," muttered O'Hanlon, as we returned, "Loeb hasn't been here today. Who was that?"
"I don't know," replied Craig, picking up the hat, underneath which lay a package.
He opened the package. Inside were half a dozen Berkefeld filters, those peculiar porcelain cones such as we had found out at Norwood.
Quickly Craig ran his eye over the mass of papers on Miss Golder's desk. He picked up an appointment book and turned the pages rapidly. There were several entries that seemed to interest him. I bent over. Among other names entered during the past few days I made out both "Moreton" and "Dr. Goode." I recalled the letter which O'Hanlon had received from Moreton. Had he or someone else got wind of the raids and tipped off Dr. Loeb?
Above the hubbub of the raid I could hear O'Hanlon putting poor little Miss Golder through a third degree.
"Who was it that went out?" he shouted into her face. "You might as well tell. If you don't it'll go hard with you."
But, like all women who have been taken into these get-rich-quick swindles, she was loyal to a fault. "I don't know," she sobbed, dabbing at her eyes with a bit of a lace handkerchief.
Nor could all of O'Hanlon's bulldozing get another admission out of her except that it was a "stranger." She protested and wept. But she even rode off in the patrol wagon with the rest of the employés unmoved.
Whom was she shielding? All we had was the secretary, a couple of cappers, and half a dozen patients, regular and prospective, who had been waiting in the office. We had a wagon-load of evidence, including letters and circulars, apparatus of all kinds, medicines, and pills. But there was nothing more. Craig did not seem especially interested in the mass of stuff which the police had seized.
In fact the only thing that seemed to interest him was the man who had disappeared. We had his hat and the package of filters. Craig picked up the hat and examined it.
"It's a soft hat and consequently doesn't tell us very much about the shape of his head," he remarked. Then his face brightened. "But he couldn't have left anything much better," he remarked complacently, as he went over to one of the little wall cabinets which the towel service companies place over wash-basins in offices. He took from it a comb and brush and wrapped them up carefully.
I looked at the hat also. There was no name in it, not even the usual initials. What did Craig mean?
Other raids in various parts of the city proved far more successful than the one in which we had participated and O'Hanlon quickly forgot his chagrin in the reports that soon came piling in. As for ourselves we had no further interest except in the disposition of this case, and Craig decided shortly to go back to work again in the laboratory among his test-tubes, slides, and microscopes.
"I will leave you to follow the cases against the quacks, particularly Dr. Loeb and Miss Golder, Walter," he said. "By the way, you saw me take that hair brush. I wish I had a collection of them. In some way you must get me a hair brush from Dr. Goode. You'll have to take a trip out to Norwood. And while you are there, get the brushes from Darius Moreton and Lionel. I don't know how you'll get Goode's, but Myra will help you with the others, I'm sure."
He turned to his work and was soon absorbed in some microscopic studies, leaving me no chance to question him about his strange commission.
I was surprised to run into O'Hanlon himself in the train out to Norwood. The failure to get Dr. Loeb troubled him and he had reasoned that if Darius Moreton took the trouble to write a letter about his friend he might possibly know more of his whereabouts than he professed. We discussed the case nearly the whole journey, agreeing to separate just before we reached the station in order not to be seen together.
It took me longer to carry out Kennedy's request than I had expected. I found Myra at home alone, very much excited.
"Someone called me up from New York this morning," she said, "and asked whether father and Lionel were at home. I thought they were at the factory, but when I called there, the foreman told me they hadn't been there. And Dr. Goode is out, too—hasn't seen any of his patients today. Oh, Mr. Jameson, what does it all mean? Where have they gone?"
I was a poor one to comfort her, for I had no idea myself. Still, I did my best, and incidentally secured the brushes, though I must confess I had to commit a little second-story work to get into Dr. Goode's.
It seemed heartless to leave the poor girl all alone, but I knew that Kennedy was waiting anxiously for me. I promised to make inquiries all over about her father, Lionel, and Dr. Goode, and, I think, the mere fact that someone showed an interest in her cheered her up, especially when I told her Kennedy was working hard on the case.
As I waited for the train that was to take me back to the city, the train from New York pulled in. Imagine my surprise when I saw Miss Golder step off nervously and hurry up the main street.
I watched her, debating what to do, whether to let Kennedy wait and follow her, or not.
"Someone, they don't know who, bailed her out," I heard a voice whisper in my ear.
I turned quickly. It was O'Hanlon. "She put up cash bail," he added under his breath. "No one knows where she got it. I'm waiting until she turns that corner—then I'm going to shadow her. I can't seem to find anyone in this town just now. Perhaps she knows where Loeb is."
"If you get on the trail, will you wire me?" I asked. "Here's my train now."
O'Hanlon promised, and as I swung on the step I caught a last glimpse of him sauntering casually in the direction Miss Golder had taken.
I handed Kennedy the brushes I had obtained, but he gave me no opportunity to satisfy my curiosity. Instead, he started me out again to keep in touch with the progress made in the cases of the quacks, particularly the search for Dr. Loeb, which seemed to interest him quite as much as the bailing out of Miss Golder.
It was after dinner and I was preparing to follow the cases on into the night court, if necessary, when one of O'Hanlon's assistants hurried up to me.
"We've just had a wire from Mr. O'Hanlon," he cried excitedly, handing me a telegram.
I read:
"Loeb captured Norwood. Darius Moreton hiding him in vacant house outside town. Advise Kennedy."
"Loeb captured Norwood. Darius Moreton hiding him in vacant house outside town. Advise Kennedy."
I dashed for the nearest telephone and called up Craig.
"Fine, Walter," he shouted back. "I am ready. Meet me at the station and wire O'Hanlon to wait there for us."
We made the journey to Norwood as impatiently as any two passengers on the accommodation at that hour of night, Craig carrying his evidence in the case in a little leather hand satchel.
Already, out at the old house, O'Hanlon had gathered the Moreton family, Dr. Goode, who had turned up with the rest, Dr. Loeb, and Miss Golder. Myra Moreton was even more agitated than she had been when I left her during the afternoon. In fact the secrecy maintained by both her family and Dr. Goode, to say nothing of the presence of Dr. Loeb in the house under arrest, had all but broken her down. She greeted Kennedy almost as though he had been a life-long friend.
"I want you to look after Miss Moreton, Walter," he said in a low tone as we three stood in the hall. "And you, Miss Moreton, I want to trust me when I tell you I am going to bring you safely out of this thing. Be a brave girl," he encouraged, taking her hand. "Remember that Mr. Jameson and I are here solely in your interest."
"I know it," she murmured, her lip trembling. "I will try."
A moment later we entered the Moreton library. Dr. Loeb was glaring impartially at everybody. I am sure that if he had been able to get at any of his formidable electrical apparatus he would have made short work of us "without cautery or knife." Darius Moreton was indignant, Lionel supercilious, Dr. Goode silent.
Kennedy lost no time in getting down to the business that had brought him out to Norwood, for this was not exactly a sociable gathering.
"Of course," he began, laying his leather case on the table and unlocking, but not opening it, "references to cancer houses abound in medical literature, but I think I am safe in saying that nothing has been conclusively proved in favor either of the believers or the skeptics. At least, it may be said to be an open question, with the weight of opinion against it. Such physicians as Sir Thomas Oliver have said that the evidence in favor is too strong to be ignored. Others, equally brilliant, have shown why it should be ignored.
"In the absence of better proof—or rather in the presence of other facts—perhaps, in this case, it would be better to see whether there is not some other theory that may fit the facts better."
"Dr. Goode thought that the cancers might have been caused artificially by X-rays or radium," I ventured.
Craig shook his head. "I have taken a piece of filter paper saturated with a solution of potassium iodide, starch paste, and ferrosulphate and laid it over a sample of blood, not four millimeters away. The whole I have kept in the dark.
"Now, we know that blood gives off peroxide of hydrogen. Peroxide of hydrogen is capable of attacking photographic plates. The paper can be permeated by a gas. No, that was not a case of photo-activity observed by Dr. Goode. It was the emission of gas from the blood that affected the plates."
"But suppose that is the case," objected Dr. Goode hastily. "There are the deaths from cancer. How do you explain them? It is not a cancer house, you say. Is it mere chance?"
"Anyone may be pardoned for believing that cancer houses or even cancer districts exist," reiterated Craig. "Indeed some observations seem to show it, as I have said, though the opponents of the theory claim to have found other causes. Here, as you hint, five people, living in close association, have died in five years."
He paused and drew from the satchel the little porcelain cone which he had picked up between the Moreton and Goode houses.
"I have here," he resumed, "what is known as a Berkefeld filter. Its meshes let through none of the germs that we can see with a microscope. It is bacteria-proof. Only something smaller than these things can pass through it, something that we cannot see, a clear watery fluid. That something in this case is a filterable virus."
Kennedy paused again, then went on, "Although the filterable viruses have only recently come to attention, it is known that they are of very diverse character. Here we have opened up the world of the infinitely little—the universe that lies beyond the range of the microscope. The study of these tiny particles is now one of the greatest objects in scientific medicine.
"Are they living? It seems so, for a very little of the virus gives rise to growths from which many others start. It may, of course, be chemical, but it looks as if it were organic, since it resists cold, although not heat, and can be destroyed by phenol, toluol, and other antiseptics. Perhaps the virus may be visible, but not by any means yet known. Still, we do know that these things which no eye can see may cause some of the commonest diseases."
Kennedy paused. As usual he had his little audience following him breathlessly. Even Dr. Loeb forgot to glower.
"In recent experiments with cancer in chickens," continued Craig, "tumor material ground fine and treated in various ways has been filtered through these filters. Cancers have been caused by this agent which has passed through the filter.
"On the inside of the filter which I picked up back of this very house, near the boundary of Dr. Goode's, I have found the giant cells of cancer. On the outside was something which I have been able to develop into a virus, these micro-organisms that belong to the ultra-invisible. I do not pretend to know just how this bacteriological dwarf has been used. But I know enough to say that someone has, without doubt, been using some sort of filterable virus to induce cancers, just as the experimenters at the Rockefeller Institute have done with animals.
"Naturally, in the Moreton family, this person found a fertile soil. Perhaps he waited until he saw what looked like a favorable wound, or traumatism. It is well-known that cancer often can be traced to a wound. Perhaps he introduced this virus surreptitiously into a cut, now and then. For, experiments show that the virus is strikingly dependent for its action on the derangement of the tissues with which it is brought in contact.
"This person must have had a high percentage of failures in his attempts to inoculate the virus successfully. But by persistence and taking advantage of every predisposition afforded by nature, he succeeded. At any rate, this person must have been intimately acquainted with the family, must have had some motive for seeking their deaths,—for instance the family fortune.
"It makes no difference whether the victims might have had cancer sooner or later, anyway. Even if that were so, this cold-blooded villain was at least hastening the development, if not actually causing the frightful and fatal disease."
Myra Moreton shuddered, and looked at Dr. Goode anxiously as Kennedy proceeded. He seemed about to interrupt, but managed to check himself. Craig reached over and picked out from the satchel the hat which we had found on a desk at the office of the cancer quack.
"In the raid of Dr. Loeb's," he explained, changing tone, "a man disappeared. I have here a soft hat which he left behind in his hurry to escape, as well as some of the filters he was carrying."
He turned the hat inside out. "You will see," Craig pointed out, "that on the felt of the inside there are numerous hairs, from the head of the wearer."
I leaned forward, breathlessly. I began to see the part I had played in building up his case.
"Human hair," he remarked, "differs greatly. Under the microscope one may study the oval-shaped medulla, the long pointed cortex, and the flat cuticle cells of an individual hair. The pigment in the cortex can be studied also.
"I have taken some of the hairs from the inside of this hat, examined, photographed, and measured them. I have compared them with a color scale perfected by the late Alphonse Bertillon. In fact, in France quite a science has been built up about hair by the so-called 'pilologists.' The German scientific criminalists have written minute treaties on the hair and astounding results have been obtained by them in detection.
"I have been able to secure samples of the hair of everyone in this case and I have studied them also. These hairs in the hat which was left over the package of filters have furnished me with a slender but no less damning clew to a veritable monster."
One could have heard a pin drop, as if Kennedy were a judge pronouncing a death sentence.
"Dr. Loeb is guilty of being one of the most heartless of quacks, it is true," Kennedy's voice rang out tensely, as he faced us. "But the slow murders, one by one, bringing the family estate nearer and nearer—they were done by one who hoped to throw the blame on Dr. Loeb, by the man whose hair I have here—Lionel Moreton."
"Everybody's crazy, Kennedy. The whole world is going mad!"
Our old friend, Burke, of the Secret Service, scowled at the innocent objects in Craig's laboratory as he mopped his broad forehead.
"And the Secret Service is as bad as the rest," he went on, still scowling and not waiting for any comment from us. "Why, what with these European spies and agitators, strikers and dynamiters, we're nearly dippy. Here, in less than a week I've been shifted off war cases to Mexico and now to Hayti. I don't mean that I've been away, of course,—oh, no. You don't have to go to them. They come to us. Confound it, New York is full of plots and counterplots. I tell you, Kennedy, the whole world is crazy."
Craig listened with sympathy mixed with amusement. "Can I help you out?" he asked.
"If you don't I'll be dippy, too," returned Burke with a whimsical grimace.
"What's the trouble with Hayti, then?" encouraged Kennedy seriously.
"Trouble enough," answered Burke. "Why, here's that Caribbean liner,Haytien, just in from Port au Prince. She's full of refugees—government supporters and revolutionists—you never saw such a menagerie since the ark."
I watched Burke keenly as he cut loose with his often picturesque language. Somehow, it seemed rather fascinating to have the opera bouffe side of the Black Republic presented to us. At least it was different from anything we had had lately—and perhaps not at all opera bouffe, either. Kennedy, at least, did not seem to think so, for although he was very busy at the time, seemed prepared to lay aside his work to aid Burke.
"You haven't heard about it yet," continued the Secret Service man, "but on theHaytienwas a man—black of course—Guillaume Leon. He was a friend of the United States—at least so he called himself, I believe—wanted a new revolution down there, more American marines landed to bolster up a new government that would clean things up, a new deal all around."
Burke paused, then added by way of explanation of his own attitude in the matter, "That may be all right, perhaps,—may be just what they need down there, but we can't let people come here and plot revolutions like that right in New York. They're sore enough at us without our letting them think in Latin America that we're taking a hand in their troubles."
"Quite right," agreed Kennedy. "About Leon."
"Yes, Leon," resumed Burke, getting back to the subject. "Well, I was told by the Chief of the Service to look out for this fellow. And I did. I thought it would make a good beginning to go down the bay on a revenue tug to meet theHaytienat Quarantine. But, by Jingo, no sooner was I over the side of the ship than what do you suppose I ran up against?"
He did not pause long enough to give us a guess, but shot out dramatically, "Leon was dead—yes, dead!"
Kennedy and I had been interested up to this point. Now we were eager to have him go on. "He died on the voyage up," continued Burke, "just after passing the Gulf Stream, suddenly and from no apparent cause. At least the ship's surgeon couldn't find any cause and neither could they down at Quarantine. So after some time they let the ship proceed up the bay and placed the whole thing in the hands of the Secret Service."
"Is there anyone you suspect?" I asked.
"Suspect?" repeated Burke. "I suspect them all. TheHaytienwas full of niggers—as superstitious as they make 'em. The ship's surgeon tells me that after the body of Leon was discovered there was such a scene as he had never witnessed. It was more like bedlam than a group of human beings. Some were for putting the body over into the sea immediately. Others threatened murder if it was done. Most of them didn't know what it was they wanted. Then, there was a woman there. She seemed to be nearly crazy—"
There came a knock at the laboratory door.
"If you'll just go into the next room with Walter," said Craig to Burke, "I'll see you in a few minutes. Sit down, make yourself at home."
I went in with him and Burke dropped into a chair beside my typewriter. The laboratory door opened. From where we were sitting we could see in a mirror on the opposite wall that it was a girl, dark of skin, perhaps a mulatto, but extremely beautiful, with great brown eyes and just a trace of kinkiness in her black hair. But it was the worried, almost haunted, look on her face that attracted one's attention most.
I happened to glance at Burke to see whether he had noticed it. I thought his eyes would pop out of his head.
Just then Kennedy walked across the laboratory and closed our door.
"What's the matter?" I whispered.
But before Burke could reply, a draught opened the door just a bit. He placed his finger on his lips. We could not close the door, and we sat there in our corner unintentional but no less interested eavesdroppers.
"Mademoiselle Collette Aux Cayes is my name," she began, with a strangely French accent which we could just understand. "I've heard of you, Professor Kennedy, as a great detective."
"I should be glad to do what I can for you," he returned. "But you mustn't expect too much. You seem to be in some great trouble."
"Trouble—yes," she replied excitedly. "My name isn't really Aux Cayes. That is the name of my guardian, a friend of my father's. Both my father and mother are dead—killed by a mob during an uprising several years ago. I was in Paris at the time, being educated in a convent, or I suppose I should have been killed, too."
She seemed to take it as a matter of course, from which I concluded that she had been sent to Paris when she was very young and did not remember her parents very well.
"At last the time came for me to go back to Hayti," she resumed. "There is nothing that would interest you about that—except that after I got back, in Port au Prince, I met a young lawyer—Guillaume Leon."
She hesitated and looked at Craig as though trying to read whether he had ever heard the name before, but Kennedy betrayed nothing. There was more than that in her tone, though. It was evident that Leon had been more than a friend to her.
"Hayti has been so upset during the past months," she went on, "that my guardian decided to go to New York, and of course I was taken along with him. It happened that on the ship—theHaytien—Monsieur Leon went also. It was very nice until—"
She came to a full stop. Kennedy encouraged her gently, knowing what she was going to tell.
"One night, after we had been out some time," she resumed unexpectedly, "I could not sleep and I went out on the deck to walk and watch the moonlight. As I walked softly up and down, I heard voices, two men, in the shadow of one of the cabins. They were talking and now and then I could catch a word. It was about Guillaume. I heard them say that he was plotting another revolution, that that was the reason he was going to New York—not because he wanted to be on the boat with me. There was something about money, too, although I couldn't get it very clearly. It had to do with an American banking house, Forsythe & Co., I think,—money that was to be paid to Guillaume to start an uprising. I think they must have heard me, for I couldn't hear any more and they moved off down the deck, so that I couldn't recognize them. You see, I am not a revolutionist. My guardian belongs to the old order."
She stopped again, as though in doubt just how to go on. "Anyhow," she continued finally, "I determined to tell Guillaume. It would have made it harder for us—but it was he, not his politics, I loved." She was almost crying as she blurted out, "But it was only the next day that he was found dead in his stateroom. I never saw him alive after I overheard that talk."
It was some moments before she had calmed herself so that she could go on. "You know our people, Professor Kennedy," she resumed, choking back her sobs. "Some said his dead body was like Jonah, and ought to be thrown off to the sea. Then others didn't even want to have it touched, said that it ought to be embalmed. And others didn't want that, either."
"What do you mean? Who were they?"
"Oh, there was one man,—Castine," she replied, hesitating over the name, as though afraid even to mention it.
"He wanted it thrown overboard?" prompted Craig.
"N—no, he didn't want that, either," she replied. "He urged them not to touch it—just to leave it alone."
She was very much frightened, evidently at her own temerity in coming to Craig and saying so much. Yet something seemed to impel her to go on.
"Oh, Professor Kennedy," she exclaimed in a sudden burst of renewed feeling, "don't you understand? I—I loved him—even after I found out about the money and what he intended to do with it. I could not see his dear body thrown in the ocean."
She shivered all over at the thought, and it was some time before she said anything more. But Kennedy let her do as she pleased, as he often did when deep emotion was wringing the secrets from people's hearts.
"He is dead!" she sobbed wildly. "Was he poisoned? Oh, can't you find out? Can't you help me?"
Suddenly her voice in wild appeal sank almost to a hoarse whisper. "You must not let anybody know that I came to you," she implored.
"Why not?"
"Oh—I—I am just afraid—that's all."
There was real fear in her tone and face now, fear for herself.
"Where is the body?" asked Kennedy, to get her mind off whatever hung like an incubus over it.
"Down on theHaytien, at the pier, over in Brooklyn, still," she replied. "They kept us all interned there. But my guardian had enough influence to get off for a time and while he is arranging for quarters for our stay after we are released, I slipped away to see you."
"You must go back to the boat?"
"Oh, yes. We agreed to go back."
"Then I shall be down immediately," Craig promised. "If you will go ahead, I will see you there. Perhaps, at first you had better not recognize me. I will contrive some way to meet you. Then they will not know."
"Thank you," she murmured, as she rose to go, now in doubt whether she had done the best thing to come to Craig, now glad that she had some outside assistance in which she could trust.
He accompanied her to the door, bidding her keep up her courage, then closed it, waiting until her footsteps down the hall had died away.
Then he opened our door and caught sight of Burke's face.
"That's strange, Burke," he began, before he realized what the expression on his face meant. "There's a woman—what? You don't mean to tell me that you knew her?"
"Why, yes," hastened Burke. "There was a rich old planter, Henri Aux Cayes, aboard, too. She's his ward, Mademoiselle Collette."
"That's right," nodded Craig in surprise.
"She's the woman I was telling you about. She may be a little dark, but she's a beauty, all right. I heard what she said. No wonder she was so frantic, then."
"What do you know of the bankers, Forsythe & Co.?" asked Craig.
"Forsythe & Co.?" considered Burke. "Well, not much, perhaps. But for a long time, I believe, they've been the bankers and promoters of defunct Caribbean islands, reaping a rich harvest out of the troubles of those decrepit governments, playing one against the other."
"H-m," mused Kennedy. "Can you go over to Brooklyn with me now?"
"Of course," agreed Burke, brightening up. "That was what I hoped you'd do."
Kennedy and I were just about to leave the laboratory with Burke when an idea seemed to occur to Craig. He excused himself and went back to a cabinet where I saw him place a little vial and a hypodermic needle in his vest pocket.
Our trip over to the other borough was uneventful except for the toilsome time we had to get to the docks where South and Central American ships were moored. We boarded theHaytienat last and Burke led us along the deck toward a cabin. I looked about curiously. There seemed to be the greatest air of suppressed excitement. Everyone was talking, in French, too, which seemed strange to me in people of their color. Yet everything seemed to be in whispers as if they were in fear.
We entered the cabin after our guide. There in the dim light lay the body of Leon in a bunk. There were several people in the room, already, among them the beautiful Mademoiselle Collette. She pretended not to recognize Kennedy until we were introduced, but I fancied I saw her start at finding him in company with Burke. Yet she did not exhibit anything more than surprise, which was quite natural.
Burke turned the sheet down from the face of the figure in the bunk. Leon had been a fine-looking specimen of his race, with good features, strong, and well groomed. Kennedy bent over and examined the body carefully.
"A very strange case," remarked the ship's surgeon, whom Burke beckoned over a moment later.
"Quite," agreed Craig absently, as he drew the vial and the hypodermic from his pocket, dipped the needle in and shot a dose of the stuff into the side of the body.
"I can't find out that there is any definite cause of death," resumed the surgeon.
Before Craig could reply someone else entered the darkened cabin. We turned and saw Collette run over to him and take his hand.
"My guardian, Monsieur Aux Cayes," she introduced, then turned to him with a voluble explanation of something in French.
Aux Cayes was a rather distinguished looking Haytian, darker than Collette, but evidently of the better class and one who commanded respect among the natives.
"It is quite extraordinary," he said with a marked accent, taking up the surgeon's remark. "As for these people—" he threw out his hands in a deprecating gesture—"one cannot blame them for being perplexed when your doctors disagree."
Kennedy had covered up Leon's face again and Collette was crying softly.
"Don't, my dear child," soothed Aux Cayes, patting her shoulder gently. "Please, try to calm thyself."
It was evident that he adored his beautiful ward and would have done anything to relieve her grief. Kennedy evidently thought it best to leave the two together, as Aux Cayes continued to talk to her in diminutives and familiar phrases from the French.
"Were there any other people on the boat who might be worth watching?" he asked as we rejoined Burke, who was looking about at the gaping crowd.
Burke indicated a group. "Well, there was an old man, Castine, and the woman he calls his wife," he replied. "They were the ones who really kept the rest from throwing the body overboard."
"Oh, yes," assented Kennedy. "She told me about them. Are they here now?"
Burke moved over to the group and beckoned someone aside toward us. Castine was an old man with gray hair, and a beard which gave him quite an appearance of wisdom, besides being a matter of distinction among those who were beardless. With him was Madame Castine, much younger and not unattractive for a negress.
"You knew Monsieur Leon well?" asked Kennedy.
"We knew him in Port au Prince, like everybody," replied Castine, without committing himself to undue familiarity.
"Do you know of any enemies of his on the boat?" cut in Burke. "You were present when they were demanding that his body be thrown over, were you not? Who was foremost in that?"
Castine shrugged his shoulders in a deprecatory manner. "I do not speak English very well," he replied. "It was only those who fear the dead."
There was evidently nothing to be gained by trying on him any of Burke's third degree methods. He had always that refuge that he did not understand very well.
I turned and saw that Collette and Aux Cayes had come out of the cabin to the deck together, he holding her arm while she dabbed the tears away from her wonderful eyes.
At the sight of us talking to Castine and the other woman, she seemed to catch her breath. She did not speak to us, but I saw the two women exchange a glance of appraisal, and I determined that "Madame" Castine was at least worth observing.
By the attitude of the group from which we had drawn them, Castine, it seemed, exercised some kind of influence over all, rich and poor, revolutionist and government supporter.
The appearance of Collette occasioned a buzz of conversation and glances, and it was only a moment before she retreated into the cabin again. Apparently she did not wish to lose anything, as long as Kennedy and Burke were about.
Kennedy did not seem to be so much interested in quizzing Castine just yet, now that he had seen him, as he was in passing the time profitably for a few minutes. He looked at his watch, snapped it back into his pocket, and walked deliberately into the cabin again.
There he drew back the cover over Leon's face, bent over it, raised the lids of the eyes, and gazed into them.
Collette, who had been standing near him, watching every motion, drew back with an exclamation of horror and surprise.
"The voodoo sign is on him!" she cried. "It must be that!"
Almost in panic she fled, dragging her guardian with her.
I, too, looked. The man's eyes were actually green, now. What did it mean?
"Burke," remarked Kennedy decisively, "I shall take the responsibility of having the body transferred to my laboratory where I can observe it. I'll leave you to attend to the formalities with the coroner. Then I want you to get in touch with Forsythe & Co. Watch them without letting them know you are doing so—and watch their visitors, particularly."
A private ambulance was called and, with much wagging of heads and tongues, the body of Leon was carried on a stretcher, covered by a sheet, down the gangplank and placed in it. We followed closely in a taxicab, across the bridge and uptown.
For some days, I may say, Kennedy had been at work in his laboratory in a little anteroom, where he was installing some new apparatus for which he had received an appropriation from the trustees of the University.
It was a very complicated affair, one part of which seemed to be a veritable room within the room. Into this chamber, as it were, he now directed the men to carry Leon's body and lay it on a sort of bed or pallet that was let down from the side wall of the compartment.
I had been quite mystified by the apparatus which Kennedy had set up, but had had no opportunity to discuss it with him and he had been so busy installing it that he had not taken time, often, for meals. In fact, the only way I knew that he had finished was that when Burke had called he had seemed interested in the call.
Outside the small chamber I have spoken of, in the room itself, were several large pieces of machinery, huge cylinders with wheels and belts, run by electric motors. No sooner had the body been placed in the little chamber and the door carefully closed than Kennedy threw a switch, setting the apparatus in motion.
"How could Leon have been killed?" I asked, as he rejoined me in the outside laboratory. "What did Collette mean by her frightened cry of the 'voodoo sign'?"
The incident had made a marked impression on me and I had been unable quite to arrive at any sensible explanation.
"Of course, you know that voodoo means literally anything that inspires fear," remarked Kennedy after a moment's thought. "The god of voodoo is the snake. I cannot say now what it was that she feared. But to see the eyeballs turn green is uncanny, isn't it?"
"I should say so," I agreed. "But is that all?"
He shook his head. "No, I don't believe it is. Hayti is the hotbed of voodoo worship. The cult has inaugurated a sort of priesthood—often a priest and a priestess, called 'papaloi' and 'mammaloi'—papa and mamma, probably with a corruption of the French word, 'roi,' king. They are, as it were, heads of the community, father and mother, king and queen. Some of the leading men of the communities in the islands of the Caribbean are secret voodoists and leaders. Just what is going on under the surface in this case, I cannot even hazard a guess. But there is some deviltry afoot."
Just then the telephone rang and Craig answered it.
"It was from Burke," he said as he hung up the receiver. "Confidential agents of his have been about. No one from the ship seems to have been down to see Forsythe, but Forsythe has had people over at the ship. Burke says someone is sending off great bunches of messages to Hayti—he thinks the powerful wireless apparatus of theHaytienis being used."
For a moment Kennedy stood in the center of the laboratory, thinking. Then he appeared to make up his mind to something.
"Has that taxicab gone?" he asked, opening a cabinet from which he took several packages.
I looked out of the window. The ambulance had gone back, but the driver of the car had evidently waited to call up his office for instructions. I beckoned to him, and together Kennedy and I placed the packages in the car.
Thus we were able quickly to get back again to the wharf where theHaytienwas berthed. Instead of going aboard again, however, Kennedy stopped just outside, where he was not observed and got out of the car, dismissing it.
In the office of the steamship company, he sought one of the employés and handed him a card, explaining that we were aiding Burke in the case. The result of the parley was that Kennedy succeeded in getting to the roof of the covered pier on the opposite side from that where the ship lay.
There he set to work on a strange apparatus, wires from which ran up to a flag pole on which he was constructing what looked like a hastily improvised wireless aerial. That part arranged, Kennedy followed his wires down again and took them in by a window to a sort of lumber-room back of the office. Outside everyone was too busy to watch what we were doing there and Craig could work uninterrupted.
"What are you doing?" I asked. "Installing a wireless plant?"
"Not quite," he smiled quietly. "This is a home-made wireless photo-recording set. Of course, wireless aerials of amateurs don't hum any more since war has caused the strict censorship of all wireless. But there is no reason why one can't receive messages, even if they can't be sent by everybody.
"This is a fairly easy and inexpensive means by which automatic records can be taken. It involves no delicate instruments and the principal part of it can be made in a few hours from materials that I have in my laboratory. The basis is the capillary electrometer."
"Sounds very simple," I volunteered, trying not to be sarcastic.
"Well, here it is," he indicated, touching what looked like an ordinary soft glass tube of perhaps a quarter of an inch diameter, bent U-shaped, with one limb shorter than the other.
"It is filled nearly to the top of the shorter limb with chemically pure mercury," he went on. "On the top of it, I have poured a little twenty per cent sulphuric acid. Dipping into the acid is a small piece of capillary tube drawn out to a very fine point at the lower end."
He filled the little tube with mercury also. "The point of this," he observed, "is fine enough to prevent the mercury running through of its own weight—about as fine as a hair."
He dipped the point and held it in the sulphuric acid and blew through the capillary tube. When the mercury bubbled through the point in minute drops, he stopped blowing. It drew back for a short distance by capillary attraction and the acid followed it up.
"You can see that connections are made to the mercury in the arm and the tube by short pieces of platinum wire," he continued. "It isn't necessary to go into the theory of the instrument. But the most minute difference of potential between the two masses of mercury will cause the fine point at the junction of the liquids to move up and down.
"Connected to the aerial and the earth, with a crystal detector in series, it is only a matter of applying an ordinary photo-recording drum, and the machine is made."
He had been setting up a light-tight box, inside of which was a little electric lamp. Opposite was a drum covered with bromide paper. He started the clockwork going and after a few moments' careful observation, we went away, and left the thing, trusting that no one was the wiser.
Nothing further occurred that day, except for frequent reports from Burke, who told us how his men were getting on in their shadowing of Forsythe & Co. Apparently, the death of Leon had put a stop to revolutionary plots, or at least had caused the plotters to change their methods radically.
The time was shortening, too, during which Burke could keep the passengers of theHaytienunder such close surveillance, and it was finally decided that on the next morning they should be released, while all those suspected were to be shadowed separately by Secret Service agents, in the hope that once free they would commit some overt act that might lead to a clew.
It was early the next morning, about half an hour after the time set for the release of the passengers, that our laboratory door was flung open and Collette Aux Cayes rushed in, wildly excited.
"What's the matter?" asked Kennedy anxiously.
"Someone has been trying to keep me on the boat," she panted. "And all the way over here a man has been following me."
Kennedy looked at her a minute calmly. We could understand why she might have been shadowed, though it must have been a bungling job of Burke's operative. But who could have wanted her kept on the boat?
"I don't know," she replied, in answer to Kennedy's question. "But somehow I was the only one not told that we could go. And when I did go, one of the Secret Service men stopped me."
"Are you sure it was a Secret Service man?"
"He said he was."
"Yes, but if he had been, he would not have done that, nor let you get away, if he had. Can't you imagine anyone who might want you detained longer?"
She looked at us, half frightened. "N—not unless it is that man—or the woman with him," she replied, clasping her hands.
"You mean Castine?"
"Yes," she replied, avoiding the use of his name. "Ever since you had the body removed, he has been in great fear. I have heard him ask fifty times, 'Where have they taken him?' and 'Is he to be embalmed?'"
"That's strange," remarked Kennedy. "Why that anxiety from him? I remember that it was he who wanted the body left alone. Is it for fear that we might discover something which might be covered up?"
Kennedy disappeared into the anteroom and I heard him making a great fuss as he regulated the various pieces of machinery that surrounded the little chamber.
Some minutes later, he emerged.
"Meet us here in an hour," he directed Collette, "with your guardian."
Quickly Craig telephoned for a tank of oxygen to be sent over to the laboratory, then got Burke on the wire and asked him to meet us down at the dock.
We arrived first and Craig hurried into the lumber-room, where fortunately he found everything undisturbed. He tore off the strip of paper from the drum and held it up. On it was a series of marks, which looked like dots and dashes, of a peculiar kind, along a sort of base line. Carefully he ran his eye over the strip. Then he shoved it into his pocket in great excitement.
"Hello," greeted Burke, as he came up puffing from the hurried trip over from the Customs House, where his office was. "What's doing now?"
"A great deal, I think," returned Kennedy. "Can you locate Castine and that woman and come up to the laboratory—right away?"
"I can put my finger on them in five minutes and be there in half an hour," he returned, not pausing to inquire further, for, like me, Burke had learned that Kennedy could not be hurried in any of his revelations.
Together, Craig and I returned to the laboratory to find that Collette Aux Cayes was already there with her guardian, as solicitous as ever for her comfort and breathing fire and slaughter against the miscreants who had tried to detain her, without his knowledge.
Some minutes later Castine and "Madame" Castine arrived. At sight of Collette she seemed both defiant and restless, as though sensing trouble, I thought. Few words were spoken now by anyone, as Burke and I completed the party.
"Will you be so kind as to step into the little anteroom with me?" invited Craig, holding open the door for us.
We entered and he followed; then, as he led the way, stopped before a little glass window in the compartment which I have described. Collette was next to me. I could feel the tenseness of her senses as she gazed through the window at the body on the shelf-like pallet inside.
"What is this thing?" asked Aux Cayes, as Collette drew back, and he caught her by the arm.
For the moment Kennedy said nothing, but opened a carefully sealed door and slid the pallet out, unhinging it, while I saw Castine trembling and actually turning ashen about the lips.
"This," Kennedy replied at length, "is what is known as a respiration calorimeter, which I have had constructed after the ideas of Professors Atwater and Benedict of Wesleyan, with some improvements of my own. It is used, as you may know, in studying food values, both by the government and by other investigators. A man could live in that room for ten or twelve days. My idea, however, was to make use of it for other things than that for which it was intended."
He took a few steps over to the complicated apparatus which had so mystified me, now at rest, as he turned a switch on opening the carefully sealed door.
"It is what is known as a closed circuit calorimeter," he went on. "For instance, through this tube air leaves the chamber. Here is a blower. At this point, the water in the air is absorbed by sulphuric acid. Next the carbon dioxide is absorbed by soda lime. Here a little oxygen is introduced to keep the composition normal and at this point the air is returned to the chamber."
He traced the circuit as he spoke, then paused and remarked, "Thus, you see, it is possible to measure the carbon dioxide and the other respiration products. As for heat, the walls are constructed so that the gain or loss of heat in the chamber is prevented. Heat cannot escape in any other way than that provided for carrying it off and measuring it. Any heat is collected by this stream of water which keeps the temperature constant and in that way we can measure any energy that is given off. The walls are of concentric shells of copper and zinc with two of wood, between which is 'dead air,' an effective heat insulator. In other words," he concluded, "it is like a huge thermos bottle."
It was all very weird and fascinating. But what he could have been doing with a dead body, I could not imagine. Was there some subtle, unknown poison which had hitherto baffled science, but which now he was about to reveal to us?
He seemed to be in no hurry to overcome the psychological effect his words had on his auditors, for as he picked up and glanced at a number of sheets of figures, he went on: "In the case of live persons, there is a food aperture here, a little window with air locks arranged for the passage of food and drink. That large window through which you looked admits light. There is also a telephone. Everything is arranged so that all that enters, no matter how minute, is weighed and measured. The same is true of all that leaves. Nothing is too small to take into account."
He shook the sheaf of papers before us. "Here I have some records which have been made by myself, and, in my absence, by one of my students. In them the most surprising thing that I have discovered is that in the body of Leon metabolism seems still to be going on."
I listened to him in utter amazement, wondering toward what his argument was tending.
"I got my first clew from an injection of fluoriscine," he resumed. "You know there are many people who have a horror of being buried alive. It is a favorite theme of the creepy-creep writers. As you know, the heart may stop beating, but that does not necessarily mean that the person is dead. There are on record innumerable cases where the use of stimulants has started again the beating of a heart that has stopped.
"Still, burial alive is hardly likely among civilized people, for the simple reason that the practice of embalming makes death practically certain. At once, when I heard that there had been objections to the embalming of this body, I began to wonder why they had been made.
"Then it occurred to me that one certain proof of death was the absolute cessation of circulation. You may not know, but scientists have devised this fluoriscine test to take advantage of that. I injected about ten grains. If there is any circulation, there should be an emerald green discoloration of the cornea of the eye. If not, the eye should remain perfectly white.
"I tried the test. The green eye-ball gave me a hint. Then I decided to make sure with a respiration calorimeter that would measure whatever heat, what breath, no matter how minute they were."
Collette gave a start as she began to realize vaguely what Craig was driving at.
"It was not the voodoo sign, Mademoiselle," he said, turning to her. "It was a sign, however, of something that suggested at once to me the connection of voodoo practices."
There was something so uncanny about it that my own heart almost skipped beating, while Burke, by my other side, muttered something which was not meant to be profane.
Collette was now trembling violently and I took her arm so that if she should faint she would not fall either on my side or on that of her guardian, who seemed himself on the verge of keeling over. Castine was mumbling. Only his wife seemed to retain her defiance.
"The skill of the voodoo priests in the concoction of strange draughts from the native herbs of Hayti is well known," Kennedy began again. "There are among them fast and slow poisons, poisons that will kill almost instantly and others that are guaged in strength to accumulate and resemble wasting away and slow death.
"I know that in all such communities today no one will admit that there is such a thing still as the human sacrifice, 'the lamb without horns.' But there is on record a case where a servant was supposed to have died. The master ordered the burial, and it took place. But the grave was robbed. Later the victim was resuscitated and sacrificed.
"Most uncanny of the poisons is that which will cause the victim to pass into an unconscious condition so profound that it may easily be mistaken for death. It is almost cataleptic. Such is the case here. My respiration calorimeter shows that from that body there are still coming the products of respiration, that there is still heat in it. It must have been that peculiar poison of the voodoo priests that was used."
Racing on now, not giving any of us a chance even to think of the weird thing, except to shudder instinctively, Kennedy drew from his pocket and slapped down on a table the photographic records that had been taken by his home-made wireless recording apparatus.
"From Mr. Burke," he said, as he did so, "I received the hint that many messages were being transmitted by wireless, secretly perhaps, from theHaytien. I wanted to read those messages that were being flashed so quietly and secretly through the air. How could it be done? I managed to install down at the dock an apparatus known as the capillary electrometer. By the use of this almost unimaginably delicate instrument I was able to drag down literally out of the air the secrets that seemed so well hidden from all except those for whom they were intended. Listen."
He took the roll of paper from the drum and ran his finger along it hastily, translating to himself the Morse code as he passed from one point to another.
"Here," cried Craig excitedly. "'Leon out of way for time safely. Revolution suppressed before Forsythe can make other arrangements. Conspiracy frustrated.' Just a moment. Here's another. 'Have engaged bridal suite at Hotel La Coste. Communicate with me there after tomorrow.'"
Still holding the wireless record, Kennedy swung about to Burke and myself. "Burke, stand over by the door," he shouted. "Walter—that tank of oxygen, please."
I dragged over the heavy tank which he had ordered as he adjusted a sort of pulmotor breathing apparatus over Leon. Then I dropped back to my place beside Collette, as the oxygen hissed out.
Castine was now on his knees, his aged arms outstretched.
"Before God, Mr. Kennedy—I didn't do it. I didn't give Leon the poison!"
Kennedy, however, engrossed in what he was doing, paid no attention to the appeal.
Suddenly I saw what might have been a faint tremor of an eyelid on the pallid body before us.
I felt Collette spring forward from my side.
"He lives! He lives!" she cried, falling on her knees before the still cataleptic form. "Guillaume!"
There was just a faint movement of the lips, as though as the man came back from another world he would have called, "Collette!"
"Seize that man—it is his name signed to the wireless messages!" shouted Kennedy, extending his accusing forefinger at Aux Cayes, who had plotted so devilishly to use his voodoo knowledge both to suppress the revolution and at the same time to win his beautiful ward for himself from her real lover.