The Romance of Elaine Part 59

"Won't you come in?" asked Elaine as we got out.

"Thank you, I believe I will for a few minutes," consented Del Mar, concealing his real eagerness to follow me. "I'm all shaken up."

As we entered the living-room, I was thinking about the map. I opened a table drawer, hastily took the plan from my pocket and locked it in the drawer. Elaine, meanwhile, was standing with Del Mar who was talking, but in reality watching me closely.

A smile of satisfaction seemed to flit over his face as he saw what I had done and now knew where the paper was.

I turned to him. "How are you now?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm much better--all right," he answered. Then he looked at his watch. "I've a very important appointment. If you'll excuse me, I'll walk over to my place. Thank you again, Miss Dodge, ever so kindly."

He bowed low and was gone.

Down the road past where we had turned, before a pretty little shingle house, the taxicab chauffeur stopped. One of the bullets had taken effect on him and his shoulder was bleeding. But the worst, as he seemed to think it, was that another shot had given him a flat tire.

He jumped out and looked up the road whence he had come. No one was following. Still, he was worried. He went around to look at the tire.

But he was too weak now from loss of blood. It had been nerve and reserve force that had carried him through. Now that the strain was off, he felt the reaction to the full.

Just then the doctor and his driver, whom the valet had already summoned to Del Mar's, came speeding down the road. The doctor saw the chauffeur fall in a half faint, stopped his car and ran to him. The chauffeur had kept up as long as he could. He had now sunk down beside his machine in the road.

A moment later they picked him up and carried him into the house. There was no acting about his hurts now. In the house they laid the man down on a couch and the doctor made a hasty examination.

"How is he?" asked one of the kind Samaritans.

"The wound is not dangerous," replied the physician, "but he's lost a lot of blood. He cannot be moved for some time yet."

We talked about nothing else at Dodge Hall after dressing for dinner but the strange events over at Del Mar's and what had followed. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that we would never be left over night in peaceful possession of the plan which both Elaine and I decided ought on the following day to be sent to Washington.

Accordingly I cudgelled my brain for some method of protecting both ourselves and it. The only thing I could think of was a scheme once adopted by Kennedy in another case. How I longed for him. But I had to do my best alone.

I had a small quick shutter camera that had belonged to Craig and just as we were about to retire, I brought it into the living-room with a package I had had sent up from the village.

"What are you going to do?" asked Elaine curiously.

I a.s.sumed an air of mystery but did not say, for I was not sure but that even now some one was eavesdropping. It was not late, but the country air made us all sleepy and Aunt Josephine, looking at the clock, soon announced that she was going to retire.

She had no sooner said good-night than Elaine began again to question me. But I had determined not to tell her what I was doing, for if my imitation of Kennedy failed, I knew that she would laugh at me.

"Oh, very well," she said finally in pique, "then, if you're going to be so secret about it, you can sit up alone--there!"

She flounced off to bed. Sure as I could be at last that I was alone, I opened the package. There were the tools that I had ordered, a coil of wire and some dry cells. Then I went to the table, unlocked the drawer and put the plan in my pocket. I had determined that whether the idea worked or not, no one was to get the plan except by overcoming me.

Although I was no expert at wiring, I started to make the connections under the table with the drawer, not a very difficult thing to do as long as it was to be only temporary and for the night. From the table I ran the wires along the edge of the carpet until I came to the book-case. There, masked by the books, I placed the little quick shutter camera, and at a distance also concealed the flash-light pan.

Next I aimed the camera carefully and focussed it on a point above the drawer on the writing-table where any one would be likely to stand if he attempted to open it. Then I connected the shutter of the camera and a little spark coil in the flash-pan with the wires, using an apparatus to work the shutter such as I recalled having seen Craig use. Finally I covered the sparking device with the flash-light powder, gave a last look about and snapped off the light.

Up in my bedroom, I must say I felt like "some" detective and I could not help slapping myself on the chest for the ingenuity with which I had duplicated Craig.

Then I lay down on the bed with my clothes on and picked up a book, determined to keep awake to see if anything happened. It was a good book, but I was tired and in spite of myself I nodded over it, and then dropped it.

In his bungalow, now that Smith had gone back again to New York and Washington, Del Mar was preparing to keep the important engagement he had told us about, another of his nefarious nocturnal expeditions.

He drew a cap on his head, well over his ears and forehead. His eyes and face he concealed as well as he could with a mask to be put on later. To his equipment he added a gun. Then with a hasty word or two to his valet, he went out.

By back ways so that even in the glare of automobile headlights he would not be recognized, he made his way to Dodge Hall. As he saw the house looming up in the moonlight he put on his mask and approached cautiously. Gaining the house, he opened a window, noiselessly turning the catch as deftly as a house-breaker, and climbed into the living-room.

A moment he looked around, then tiptoed over to the table. He looked at it to be sure that it was the right one and the right drawer. Then he bent down to force the drawer open.

"Pouf!" a blinding flash came and a little metallic click of the shutter, followed by a cloud of smoke.

As quick as it happened, there went through Del Mar's head, the explanation. It was a concealed camera. He sprang back, clapping his hands over his face. Out of range for a moment, he stood gazing about the room, trying to locate the thing.

Suddenly he heard footsteps. He dived through the window that he had opened, just as some one ran in and switched on the lights.

Half asleep, I heard a m.u.f.fled explosion, as if of a flash-light. I started up and listened. Surely some one was moving about down-stairs.

I pulled my gun from my pocket and ran out of the room. Down the steps I flung myself, two at a time.

In the living-room, I switched on the lights in time to see some one disappear through an open window. I ran to the window and looked out.

There was a man, half doubled up, running around the side of the house and into a clump of bushes, then apparently lost. I shot out of the window and called.

My only answer was an imprecation and return volley that shattered the gla.s.s above my head. I ducked hastily and fell flat on the floor, for in the light streaming out, I must have been a good mark.

I was not the only one who heard the noise. The shots quickly awakened Elaine and she leaped out of bed and put on her kimono. Then she lighted the lights and ran down-stairs.

The intruder had disappeared by this time and I had got up and was peering out of the window as she came breathlessly into the living-room.

"What's the matter, Walter?" she asked.

"Some one broke into the house after those plans," I replied. "He escaped, but I got his picture, I think, by this device of Kennedy's.

Let's go into a dark room and develop it."

There was no use trying to follow the man further. To Elaine's inquiry of what I meant, I replied by merely going over to the spot where I had hidden the camera and disconnecting it.

We went up-stairs where I had rigged up an impromptu dark room for my amateur photographic work some days before. Elaine watched me closely.

At last I found that I had developed something. As I drew the film through the hypo tray and picked it up, I held it to the red light.

Elaine leaned over and looked at the film with me. There was a picture of a masked man, his cap down, in a startled att.i.tude, his hands clapped to his face, completely hiding what the mask and cap did not hide.

"Well, I'll be blowed!" I cried in chagrin at the outcome of what I thought had been my cleverest coup.

A little exclamation of astonishment escaped Elaine. I turned to her.