The Ivory Snuff Box Part 15

"Good-morning, Mr. Brooks," she said, affecting great surprise at seeing him. "You are here still?"

"Oh, yes." His tone was careless, but as he spoke he moved in a direction away from the house, and toward a small bench that stood beside the driveway. "Dr. Hartmann concluded that I needed treatment--I'm afflicted with loss of memory, it seems. Beautiful day, isn't it?"

She murmured some response, waiting for him to speak again. Presently he judged the distance from the house sufficiently great. No one was near enough to possibly overhear them.

"The snuff box is hidden--sewn inside of the false crown of my opera hat," he said, in a low voice. "It is in the room under the doctor's laboratory. He does not know it is there, and I don't dare try to get it, for fear he will find out. If you have a chance--" He paused.

"I understand."

"But be careful--very careful."

"I will." They sat down upon the bench toward which they had been headed. "I had thought of seeing Mr. Phelps to-day, and asking him to have you released."

"It would be useless," he said. "I cannot go without the snuff box."

"Shall I send word to our friends in Brussels?" she asked.

"How can you do that?"

She explained the method, by means of the boy who drove the delivery wagon. He considered the matter carefully. "Let them know that I am here, and why I cannot escape. Tell them that the snuff box is safe--so far. Do not let them know where it is--I trust no one with that--except you, dear."

The tenderness of his voice thrilled her. She longed to grasp his hand--to tell him of the love which filled her heart. Suddenly he spoke, quickly, warningly. "Be careful," he said. "We are being watched. That man Mayer is observing us with an opera gla.s.s, from a window of the house. Don't look at me that way. I shall leave you now. Let us meet during the afternoon." He rose, bowed to her carelessly, and strolled back toward the house, leaving her disconsolate upon the bench.

He entered the hall aimlessly, not knowing what to do next. The situation was one which taxed his resources to the utmost. No case that he had encountered in his whole experience offered the slightest suggestion whereby he might hope to effect a solution of his present difficulties. Courage, resource, ingenuity seemed alike useless. He was helpless.

Dr. Hartmann appeared in the hall as he entered it. "Come in, Mr.

Duvall," he said, holding open the door of the office. "Suppose we have a little chat."

For a moment the detective hesitated, then decided to meet the doctor's good nature in kind. "By all means," he replied. "You owe me some explanation of your conduct in keeping me here."

"Keeping you here, Mr. Duvall? Surely you are mistaken. The gate is open." He waved his hand toward the lawn.

"I have no desire to run away, like a criminal, Dr. Hartmann. When I go, I shall go in a dignified way, and take my belongings with me."

"Your belongings!" The doctor seemed impressed with the remark. "So you have the snuff box hidden somewhere among them, have you?"

Duvall began a hasty denial, but the doctor cut him short. "Absurd, Mr.

Duvall," he exclaimed. "You would leave here quickly enough, if you could take the box with you. But where you have concealed it, I confess I cannot imagine. I have examined your things with the utmost care. It is not among them, of that I am certain. I gave you your liberty this morning, to see whether or not you would attempt to escape. Had you done so I should have known that the box was concealed somewhere in the city, or else in the hands of your confederates. Now I am convinced that it is here. I thought at one time that you might have given it to Miss Ellicott--I have an idea that there is something between you, although of that I am by no means certain. But I know that she hasn't it, for her belongings were searched with equal care, last night, while she slept.

The thing is a mystery to me, Mr. Duvall, and I compliment you upon your ingenuity. Had you been as wise, yesterday, as you were clever, you would have left Brussels before I discovered the trick you had played on me. Why you did not do so--why you foolishly remained to dine at the house of Mr. Phelps, I confess I cannot see. It is beyond me. But all that is beside the case. You have the snuff box--at least you know where it is. Are you going to turn it over to me, or must I force you to do so?"

Duvall listened to the doctor with an impa.s.sive face. "I know nothing about any snuff box," he returned, with a show of anger. "You are wasting your time, Dr. Hartmann. I have nothing more to say on the subject." He turned his back and gazed moodily out across the lawn.

Hartmann regarded him with a scowl of anger. "I give you until to-night, Mr. Duvall, to do as I ask. After that, I shall be compelled to force you to do so."

The detective shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. "You use strong words, my friend. If any harm comes to me, my government will know how to deal with you." His threat did not seem to alarm the doctor particularly. "Do not forget, Mr. Duvall," he said, with an evil smile, "that while I know how to cure mental disorders, I also know how to create them. Good-morning."

The grave threat in his words filled Duvall with uneasiness. What did Hartmann mean? Did he propose to feed him with drugs, cunningly concealed in his food, which would steal away his senses, and leave him a babbling child? The thought was terrifying. Yet he had until to-night.

He decided to return to his room and think, hoping thus to evolve some plan which might prove a solution of his difficulties. In the afternoon he would communicate it to Grace, and she, in return, could send word to Dufrenne, so that the latter might cooperate with him.

He found everything in his room as he had left it, and, seating himself by the window, was soon plunged in deep thought. The arrival of one of the attendants with his luncheon some two hours later woke him from a maze of profitless scheming. The problem was as yet still unsolved.

After luncheon, he decided to go down and have a talk with Grace. By keeping away from the house, and walking through the shrubbery, he hoped to be able to talk with her more freely. Much to his surprise, he found the door of his room once more locked. He sat down with a feeling of utter helplessness. The net was beginning to close about him.

Dinner was brought in at seven, and with it a small bottle of claret. He made an excellent meal, in spite of his unhappy reflections. The claret proved a welcome addition to it. On the tray was also a cigar. Decidedly the doctor was thoughtful, he reflected grimly.

Shortly after dinner he began to feel strangely drowsy. For a time he resisted the feeling--fought against it, but his eyelids seemed weighted with lead. Try as he would, he could not keep his eyes open. He threw up the window, gasping at the fresh air, but it had little effect. He rushed to the door, tried it, found it locked as he had expected, then groped toward the bed and fell heavily upon it, drunk with sleep. "It must have been the wine," he muttered to himself, and in another moment his muscles relaxed and he lay unconscious.

CHAPTER XVI

When Richard Duvall once more opened his eyes, he saw nothing but a blinding glare of light, that hurt and bewildered him with its singular and brilliant intensity. He closed his eyes again at once, unable to bear the irritation which was thus caused him. It was not exactly pain that he felt, but an intense discomfort, such as one experiences when looking directly at the brilliant rays of the sun.

After a few moments spent in futile attempts to cover his eyes with his hands, only to discover that his arms were tightly bound, he thought to secure relief by turning his face to one side, so that his vision might seek the soft darkness which seemed to lie on every side of him. In this effort he was equally unsuccessful. His head, his neck, his whole body, were rigid, immovable. He could not stir an inch in any direction.

He spent a long time in useless speculation upon the meaning of the remarkable situation in which he now found himself. He felt no pain, no discomfort, except that which the brilliance of the light above him caused. He determined at length once more to open his eyes, in order to discover if possible its source.

Even when his eyes were closed, he could see that the strange light burnt upon them. In a way it rendered his eyelids translucent--he was conscious of a dull pulsing redness through which shot a network of lines of fire. He opened his eyes slowly, cautiously, and looked upward.

From some point above him, in what he judged must be the ceiling of the room, extended a beam of violet white light, cutting sharply through the darkness like the rays of a searchlight. At the opening in the ceiling through which it came, this beam was in diameter not more than two inches, but as it extended downward, it widened, taking the form of a long, thin, truncated cone, so that its width, where it impinged upon his face, was perhaps equal to twice that of a man's hand.

The darkness of the room about him made the beam of light seem a tangible, material thing. Its brilliance was unwavering--it extended from the ceiling to the surface of his face with the solidity, almost, of some huge, glittering icicle. He felt as though, were his hands but free, he could brush it aside, fling it off bodily into the darkness.

The effort of looking directly at the source of the light made his eyes smart with pain, but he found that by half-closing them, he could look off into the darkness, through the brilliant cone. In the pathway of its rays danced and tumbled innumerable dust specks--he knew then but for their presence, to afford the light a reflecting surface, its rays would be invisible to him.

In color the light was not yellow, like sunlight, but had a cold violet-blue quality, more nearly resembling moonlight. Its intensity, as well as the shape of the light cone, made him conclude that it was being focused through a powerful lens, or projected by means of a brilliant reflector.

He could imagine no possible reason for the situation in which he found himself. What the purpose of the beam of light was; why it thus focused upon his upturned face, he could not guess. He thought about it for many minutes, his eyes closed, his head straining restlessly toward the soft outer darkness. Presently there flashed into his mind Dr. Hartmann's words at their last meeting: "While I know how to cure mental disorders, I also know how to create them." The thought made him shudder. Was this, then, the explanation of his predicament? Somewhere he had read, not long before, a newspaper account of the investigations of certain Italian scientists, concerning the effect of the violet and ultra-violet light rays upon the cells of the brain. He could not recollect just what the conclusions had been, but he did remember that the newspaper article spoke of the popular superst.i.tion that moonlight could cause insanity.

He knew Hartmann to be a scientist of vast ability and resource, and realized that back of the elaborate preparations he had evidently made must lie some sinister purpose.

For what seemed an eternity he lay thinking, unable to come to any rational conclusion. The distressing effect of the light rays increased, rather than diminished, as his nerves became more and more unstrung. It seemed, even with, his eyes closed, that he could feel the _weight_ of the cone of light upon his face. The desire to escape from its searching glare became well-nigh irresistible. How long would this torture continue? He began to feel intensely tired and worn out and realized that could he but shut out the blinding brilliancy which enveloped him, he would sink exhausted to sleep. Sleep! He could no more sleep, under the present conditions, than he could fly to the moon. Then there came to his mind a recollection of a form of torture practised among the Chinese, the prevention of sleep. Prisoners, he had read, were confined in a cage, in brilliant sunlight, and prevented from sleeping by being prodded from without with spears. At the expiration of a week, he had read, the victim goes raving mad. Was this, then, Hartmann's intention?

Whatever the man did, he knew he would adopt only such methods as would involve him in no damaging consequences. He might be kept in his present situation until insanity ensued, and Hartmann with his reputation as a physician, a scientist, could calmly deny any story he might tell, putting it down to the wanderings of a disordered brain. He realized the cunning of the man, his care to use no physical violence. Should he, Duvall, under the strain of the torture which he realized lay before him, consent to disclose the whereabouts of the ivory snuff box, in return for his liberty, what could he do, in retaliation? Hartmann would calmly deny his story, and would doubtless produce witnesses, such as Mayer, to prove that the detective came to him for treatment for some slight mental disorder, some lapse of memory and that the exposure to the light rays had been but part of his usual treatment. Clearly the doctor had covered his tracks most successfully.

Throughout all these torturing thoughts, the figure of Grace came and went unceasingly. What would she do--what could she do, to aid him? He had warned her not to ask Mr. Phelps to take any steps looking to his release. He realized that were Hartmann to appear now, and give him his freedom, he would not dare to accept it. That the doctor might do this very thing was his greatest fear. If he should insist upon his leaving the place, what could he do, then, to recover Monsieur de Grissac's snuff box? He prayed fervently that Dufrenne and his companions might in some way work out a plan to set matters right.

Presently he fell to thinking of the snuff box, and its safety. How fortunate it seemed, that the doctor and his man Mayer had overlooked the opera hat. He wondered if they had thought of it since? It was clear that they had not, else he would no longer be kept a prisoner. What was the room beneath the laboratory used for? Its appearance had suggested that it was not used at all--a mere lumber-room, a place for storing boxes and crates. And then there flashed into his mind the thought, where was he now? From the apparent distance of the ceiling, as shown by the beam of light, he concluded that he was lying on the floor, a conclusion which the hardness and coldness of the surface beneath him amply proved. Evidently it was a floor of stone, or cement, not one of wood. A certain sense of familiarity in his surroundings came over him.

The faint radiance which was diffused about him by the light cone showed the walls before and on either side of him to be of uniform blackness, unrelieved by any suggestion of windows. He strove with all his power to pierce the shadowy gloom, to come upon some point of recognition, but the darkness baffled him.

In one corner a huge shadow, bulking formless against the wall, suggested the packing case behind which his opera hat had been tossed by Mayer during the search the night before. The thought thrilled him with renewed hope. What more likely place, after all, for Hartmann's deviltries than this silent room beneath the laboratory? If he was lying there now, and chance of escape should come, he might even yet be able to take the missing snuff box with him.

The hours dragged interminably. He was conscious of a keen feeling of pain, a smarting irritation, in his eyes, which caused tiny streams of moisture to trickle beneath their lids and roll unheeded down his cheeks. The muscles of his neck became sore and swollen, from his incessant though useless effort to turn aside his head. A dull pain began to shoot insistently through his temples, and his limbs became numb and cold. The desire to escape from the relentless brilliance of the light cone became unbearable; he felt as though, if relief did not soon come, he would shriek out in a madness of terror. Then the hopelessness of doing so became apparent, and he nerved himself with all the power of his will to endure the ever-increasing torture. Yet this torture was, he knew, largely mental--the actual pain was by no means unbearable; it was only the dull, insistent pounding of the light rays upon his eyes, his brain, from which he longed to escape. With closed eyes and tensely drawn nerves, he waited, watching the endless play of the tracery of light in the dull redness of his eyelids.

The sudden sharp rattle of a key in the door, followed by the turning of the k.n.o.b, told him that someone was entering the room. He had a momentary vision of a patch of light, yellow against the surrounding blackness, which disappeared almost instantly as the door was closed.

Then he was conscious of a shadowy form beside him, and heard the smooth, modulated tones of Dr. Hartmann's voice.

"Well, Mr. Duvall," he said, "how goes the treatment? Memory any better this morning?"