The Silent Bullet Part 20

The Frenchman faced us, his face livid with rage. "You call me a prestidigitator, a fraud--you shall suffer for that! Sacrebleu! Ventre du Saint Gris! No man ever insults the honour of Poissan. Francois, water on the electrodes!"

The a.s.sistant dashed a few drops of water on the electrodes. The sickish odour increased tremendously. I felt myself almost going, but with an effort I again roused myself. I wondered how Craig stood the fumes, for I suffered an intense headache and nausea.

"Stop!" Craig thundered. "There's enough cyanogen in this room already.

I know your game--the water forms acetylene with the carbon, and that uniting with the nitrogen of the air under the terrific heat of the electric arc forms hydrocyanic acid. Would you poison us, too? Do you think you can put me unconscious out on the street and have a society doctor diagnose my case as pneumonia? Or do you think we shall die quietly in some hospital as a certain New York banker did last year after he had watched an alchemist make silver out of apparently nothing!"

The effect on Poissan was terrible. He advanced toward Kennedy, the veins in his face fairly standing out. Shaking his forefinger, he shouted: "You know that, do you? You are no professor, and this is no banker. You are spies, spies. You come from the friends of Morowitch, do you? You have gone too far with me."

Kennedy said nothing, but retreated and took his coat and hat off the window ledge. The hideous penetrating light of the tongues of flame from the furnace played on the ground-gla.s.s window.

Poissan laughed a hollow laugh.

"Put down your hat and coat, Mistair Kennedy," he hissed. "The door has been locked ever since you have been here. Those windows are barred, the telephone wire is cut, and it is three hundred feet to the street. We shall leave you here when the fumes have overcome you. Francois and I can stand them up to a point, and when we reach that point we are going."

Instead of being cowed Kennedy grew bolder, though I, for my part, felt so weakened that I feared the outcome of a hand-to-hand encounter with either Poissan or Francois, who appeared as fresh as if nothing had happened. They were hurriedly preparing to leave us.

"That would do you no good," Kennedy rejoined, "for we have no safe full of jewels for you to rob. There are no keys to offices to be stolen from our pockets. And let me tell you--you are not the only man in New York who knows the secret of thermite. I have told the secret to the police, and they are only waiting to find who destroyed Morowitch's correspondence under the letter 'P' to apprehend the robber of his safe.

Your secret is out."

"Revenge! revenge!" Poissan cried. "I will have revenge. Francois, bring out the jewels--ha! ha!--here in this bag are the jewels of Mr.

Morowitch. To-night Francois and I will go down by the back elevator to a secret exit. In two hours all your police in New York cannot find us.

But in two hours you two impostors will be suffocated--perhaps you will die of cyanogen, like Morowitch, whose jewels I have at last."

He went to the door into the hall and stood there with a mocking laugh.

I moved to make a rush toward them, but Kennedy raised his hand.

"You will suffocate," Poissan hissed again.

Just then we heard the elevator door clang, and hurried steps came down the long hall.

Craig whipped out his automatic and began pumping the bullets out in rapid succession. As the smoke cleared I expected to see Poissan and Francois lying on the floor. Instead, Craig had fired at the lock of the door. He had shattered it into a thousand bits. Andrews and his men were running down the hall.

"Curse you!" muttered Poissan as he banged the now useless lock, "who let those fellows in? Are you a wizard?"

Craig smiled coolly as the ventilation cleared the room of the deadly cyanogen.

"On the window-sill outside is a selenium cell. Selenium is a bad conductor of electricity in the dark, and an excellent conductor when exposed to light. I merely moved my coat and hat, and the light from the furnace which was going to suffocate us played through the gla.s.s on the cell, the circuit was completed without your suspecting that I could communicate with friends outside, a bell was rung on the street, and here they are. Andrews, there is the murderer of Morowitch, and there in his hands are the Morowitch--"

Poissan had moved toward the furnace. With a quick motion he seized the long tongs. There was a cloud of choking vapour. Kennedy leaped to the switch and shut off the current. With the tongs he lifted out a shapeless piece of valueless black graphite.

"All that is left of the priceless Morowitch jewels," he exclaimed ruefully. "But we have the murderer."

"And to-morrow a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars goes to Mrs. Morowitch with my humblest apologies and sympathy," added Andrews. "Professor Kennedy, you have earned your retainer."

VII. The Azure Ring

Files of newspapers and innumerable clippings from the press bureaus littered Kennedy's desk in rank profusion. Kennedy himself was so deeply absorbed that I had merely said good evening as I came in and had started to open my mail. With an impatient sweep of his hand, however, he brushed the whole ma.s.s of newspapers into the waste-basket.

"It seems to me, Walter," he exclaimed in disgust, "that this mystery is considered insoluble for the very reason which should make it easy to solve--the extraordinary character of its features."

Inasmuch as he had opened the subject, I laid down the letter I was reading. "I'll wager I can tell you just why you made that remark, Craig," I ventured. "You're reading up on that Wainwright-Templeton affair."

"You are on the road to becoming a detective yourself, Walter," he answered with a touch of sarcasm. "Your ability to add two units to two other units and obtain four units is almost worthy of Inspector O'Connor. You are right and within a quarter of an hour the district attorney of Westchester County will be here. He telephoned me this afternoon and sent an a.s.sistant with this ma.s.s of dope. I suppose he'll want it back," he added, fishing the newspapers out of the basket again.

"But, with all due respect to your profession, I'll say that no one would ever get on speaking terms with the solution of this case if he had to depend solely on the newspaper writers."

"No?" I queried, rather nettled at his tone.

"No," he repeated emphatically. "Here one of the most popular girls in the fashionable suburb of Williston, and one of the leading younger members of the bar in New York, engaged to be married, are found dead in the library of the girl's home the day before the ceremony. And now, a week later, no one knows whether it was an accident due to the fumes from the antique charcoal-brazier, or whether it was a double suicide, or suicide and murder, or a double murder, or--or--why, the experts haven't even been able to agree on whether they have discovered poison or not," he continued, growing as excited as the city editor did over my first attempt as a cub reporter.

"They haven't agreed on anything except that on the eve of what was, presumably, to have been the happiest day of their lives two of the best known members of the younger set are found dead, while absolutely no one, as far as is known, can be proved to have been near them within the time necessary to murder them. No wonder the coroner says it is simply a case of asphyxiation. No wonder the district attorney is at his wits'

end. You fellows have hounded them with your hypotheses until they can't see the facts straight. You suggest one solution and before-"

The door-bell sounded insistently, and without waiting for an answer a tall, spare, loose-jointed individual stalked in and laid a green bag on the table.

"Good evening, Professor Kennedy," he began brusquely. "I am District Attorney Whitney, of Westchester. I see you have been reading up on the case. Quite right."

"Quite wrong," answered Craig. "Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Jameson, of the Star. Sit down. Jameson knows what I think of the way the newspapers have handled this case. I was about to tell him as you came in that I intended to disregard everything that had been printed, to start out with you as if it were a fresh subject and get the facts at first hand. Let's get right down to business. First tell us just how it was that Miss Wainwright and Mr. Templeton were discovered and by whom."

The district attorney loosened the cords of the green bag and drew out a bundle of doc.u.ments. "I'll read you the affidavit of the maid who found them," he said, fingering the doc.u.ments nervously. "You see, John Templeton had left his office in New York early that afternoon, telling his father that he was going to visit Miss Wainwright. He caught the three-twenty train, reached Williston all right, walked to the Wainwright house, and, in spite of the bustle of preparation for the wedding, the next day, he spent the rest of the afternoon with Miss Wainwright. That's where the mystery begins. They had no visitors. At least, the maid who answers the bell says they had none. She was busy with the rest of the family, and I believe the front door was not locked--we don't lock our doors in Williston, except at night."

He had found the paper and paused to impress these facts on our minds.

"Mrs. Wainwright and Miss Marian Wainwright, the sister, were busy about the house. Mrs. Wainwright wished to consult Laura about something. She summoned the maid and asked if Mr. Templeton and Miss Wainwright were in the house. The maid replied that she would see, and this is her affidavit. Ahem! I'll skip the legal part: 'I knocked at the library door twice, but obtaining no answer, I supposed they had gone out for a walk or perhaps a ride across country as they often did. I opened the door partly and looked in. There was a silence in the room, a strange, queer silence. I opened the door further and, looking toward the davenport in the corner, I saw Miss Laura and Mr. Templeton in such an awkward position. They looked as if they had fallen asleep. His head was thrown back against the cushions of the davenport, and on his face was a most awful look. It was discoloured. Her head had fallen forward on his shoulder, sideways, and on her face, too, was the same terrible stare and the same discolouration. Their right hands were tightly clasped.

"'I called to them. They did not answer. Then the horrible truth flashed on me. They were dead. I felt giddy for a minute, but quickly recovered myself, and with a cry for help I rushed to Mrs. Wainwright's room, shrieking that they were dead. Mrs. Wainwright fainted. Miss Marian called the doctor on the telephone and helped us restore her mother. She seemed perfectly cool in the tragedy, and I do not know what we servants should have done if she had not been there to direct us. The house was frantic, and Mr. Wainwright was not at home.

"'I did not detect any odour when I opened the library door. No gla.s.ses or bottles or vials or other receptacles which could have held poison were discovered or removed by me, or to the best of my knowledge and belief by anyone else.'"

"What happened next?" asked Craig eagerly.

"The family physician arrived and sent for the coroner immediately, and later for myself. You see, he thought at once of murder."

"But the coroner, I understand, thinks differently," prompted Kennedy.

"Yes, the coroner has declared the case to be accidental. He says that the weight of evidence points positively to asphyxiation. Still, how can it be asphyxiation? They could have escaped from the room at any time; the door was not locked. I tell you, in spite of the fact that the tests for poison in their mouths, stomachs, and blood have so far revealed nothing, I still believe that John Templeton and Laura Wainwright were murdered."

Kennedy looked at his watch thoughtfully. "You have told me just enough to make me want to see the coroner himself," he mused. "If we take the next train out to Williston with you, will you engage to get us a half-hour talk with him on the case, Mr. Whitney?"

"Surely. But we'll have to start right away. I've finished my other business in New York. Inspector O'Connor--ah, I see you know him--has promised to secure the attendance of anyone whom I can show to be a material witness in the case. Come on, gentlemen: I'll answer your other questions on the train."

As we settled ourselves in the smoker, Whitney remarked in a low voice, "You know, someone has said that there is only one thing more difficult to investigate and solve than a crime whose commission is surrounded by complicated circ.u.mstances and that is a crime whose perpetration is wholly devoid of circ.u.mstances."

"Are you so sure that this crime is wholly devoid of circ.u.mstances?"

asked Craig.