The Treasure-Train Part 6

"Oh yes, candles," he agreed, eagerly.

"Favors at each place?"

"Yes, sir."

I could see no sense in the proceeding, yet knew Kennedy too well to suppose, for an instant, that he had not some purpose.

The questioning over, Kennedy withdrew, leaving poor Francois more mystified than ever.

"Well," I exclaimed, as we pa.s.sed through the dining-room, "what was all that?"

"That," he explained, "is what is known to criminologists as the 'Aussage test.' Just try it some time when you get a chance. If there are, say, fifty objects in a picture, normally a person may recall perhaps twenty of them."

"I see," I interrupted; "a test of memory."

"More than that," he replied. "You remember that, at the end, I suggested several things likely to be on the table. They were not there, as you might have seen if you had had the picture before you.

That was a test of the susceptibility to suggestion of the chef.

Francois may not mean to lie, but I'm afraid we'll have to get along without him in getting to the bottom of the case. You see, before we go any further we know that he is unreliable--to say the least. It may be that nothing at all happened in the kitchen to the mushrooms. We'll never discover it from him. We must get it elsewhere."

Miss Grey had been trying to straighten out some of the snarls which Mansfield's business affairs had got into as a result of his illness; but it was evident that she had difficulty in keeping her mind on her work.

"The next thing I'd like to see," asked Kennedy, when we rejoined her, "is that wall safe." She led the way down the hall and into an ante-room to Mansfield's part of the suite. The safe itself was a comparatively simple affair inside a closet. Indeed, I doubt whether it had been seriously designed to be burglar-proof. Rather it was merely a protection against fire.

"Have you any suspicion about when the robbery took place?" asked Kennedy, as we peered into the empty compartment. "I wish I had been called in the first thing when it was discovered. There might have been some chance to discover fingerprints. But now, I suppose, every clue of that sort has been obliterated."

"No," she replied; "I don't know whether it happened before or after Mr. Mansfield was discovered so ill by his valet."

"But at least you can give me some idea of when the jewels were placed in the safe."

"It must have been before the supper, right after our return from the theater."

"So?" considered Kennedy. "Then that would mean that they might have been taken by any one, don't you see? Why did he place them in the safe so soon, instead of wearing them the rest of the evening?"

"I hadn't thought of that way of looking at it," she admitted. "Why, when we came home from the theater I remember it had been so warm that Mr. Mansfield's collar was wilted and his dress shirt rumpled. He excused himself, and when he returned he was not wearing the diamonds.

We noticed it, and Miss Hargrave expressed a wish that she might wear the big diamond at the opening night of 'The Astor Cup.' Mr. Mansfield promised that she might and nothing more was said about it."

"Did you notice anything else at the dinner--no matter how trivial?"

asked Kennedy.

Helen Grey seemed to hesitate, then said, in a low voice, as though the words were wrung from her:

"Of course, the party and the supper were given ostensibly to Miss Hargrave. But--lately--I have thought he was paying quite as much attention to Mina Leitch."

It was quite in keeping with what we knew of "Diamond Jack." Perhaps it was this seeming fickleness which had saved him from many entangling alliances. Miss Grey said it in such a way that it seemed like an apology for a fault in his character which she would rather have hidden. I could not but fancy that it mitigated somewhat the wistful envy I had noticed before when she spoke of Madeline Hargrave.

While he had been questioning her Kennedy had been examining the wall safe, particularly with reference to its accessibility from the rest of the apartment. There appeared to be no reason why one could not have got at it from the hallway as well as from Mansfield's room.

The safe itself seemed to yield no clue, and Kennedy was about to turn away when he happened to glance down at the dark interior of the closet floor. He stooped down. When he rose he had something in his hand. It was just a little thin piece of something that glittered iridescently.

"A spangle from a sequin dress," he muttered to himself; then, turning to Miss Grey, "Did any one wear such a dress last night?"

Helen Grey looked positively frightened. "Miss Hargrave!" she murmured, simply. "Oh, it cannot be--there must be some mistake!"

Just then we heard voices in the hall.

"But, Murray, I don't see why I can't see him," said one.

"What good will it do, Lewis?" returned the other, which I recognized as that of Doctor Murray.

"Fleming Lewis," whispered Miss Grey, taking a step out into the hallway.

A moment later Doctor Murray and Lewis had joined us.

I could see that there was some feeling between the two men, though what it was about I could not say. As Miss Grey introduced us, I glanced hastily out of the corner of my eye at Kennedy. Involuntarily his hand which held the telltale sequin had sought his waistcoat pocket, as though to hide it. Then I saw him check the action and deliberately examine the piece of tinsel between his thumb and forefinger.

Doctor Murray saw it, too, and his eyes were riveted on it, as though instantly he saw its significance.

"What do you think--Jack as sick as a dog, and robbed, too, and yet Murray says I oughtn't to see him!" complained Lewis, for the moment oblivious to the fact that all our eyes were riveted on the spangle between Kennedy's fingers. And then, slowly it seemed to dawn on him what it was. "Madeline's!" he exclaimed, quickly. "So Mina did tear it, after all, when she stepped on the train."

Kennedy watched the faces before us keenly. No one said anything. It was evident that some such incident had happened. But had Lewis, with a quick flash of genius, sought to cover up something, protect somebody?

Miss Grey was evidently anxious to transfer the scene at least to the living-room, away from the sick-room, and Kennedy, seeing it, fell in with the idea.

"Looks to me as though this robbery was an inside affair," remarked Lewis, as we all stood for a moment in the living-room. "Do you suppose one of the servants could have been 'planted' for the purpose of pulling it off?"

The idea was plausible enough. Yet, plausible as the suggestion might seem, it took no account of the other circ.u.mstances of the case. I could not believe that the illness of Mansfield was merely an unfortunate coincidence.

Fleming Lewis's unguarded and blunt tendency to blurt out whatever seemed uppermost in his mind soon became a study to me as we talked together in the living-room. I could not quite make out whether it was studied and astute or whether it was merely the natural exuberance of youth. There was certainly some sort of enmity between him and the doctor, which the remark about the spangle seemed to fan into a flame.

Miss Grey manoeuvered tactfully, however, to prevent a scene. And, after an interchange of remarks that threw more heat than light on the matter, Kennedy and I followed Lewis out to the elevator, with a parting promise to keep in touch with Miss Grey.

"What do you think of the spangle?" I queried of Craig as Lewis bade us a hasty good-by and climbed into his car at the street-entrance. "Is it a clue or a stall?"

"That remains to be seen," he replied, noncommittally. "Just now the thing that interests me most is what I can accomplish at the laboratory in the way of finding out what is the matter with Mansfield."

While Kennedy was busy with the various solutions which he made of the contents of the ramekins that had held the mushrooms, I wandered over to the university library and waded through several volumes on fungi without learning anything of value. Finally, knowing that Kennedy would probably be busy for some time, and that all I should get for my pains by questioning him would be monosyllabic grunts until he was quite convinced that he was on the trail of something, I determined to run into the up-town office of the Star and talk over the affair as well as I could without violating what I felt had been given us in confidence.

I could not, it turned out, have done anything better, for it seemed to be the gossip of the Broadway cafes and cabarets that Mansfield had been plunging rather deeply lately and had talked many of his acquaintances into joining him in a pool, either outright or on margins. It seemed to be a safe bet that not only Lewis and Doctor Murray had joined him, but that Madeline Hargrave and Mina Leitch, who had had a successful season and some spare thousands to invest, might have gone in, too. So far the fortunes of the stock-market had not smiled on Mansfield's schemes, and, I reflected, it was not impossible that what might be merely an incident to a man like Mansfield could be very serious to the rest of them.

It was the middle of the afternoon when I returned to the laboratory with my slender budget of news. Craig was quite interested in what I had to say, even pausing for a few moments in his work to listen.

In several cages I saw that he had a number of little guinea-pigs. One of them was plainly in distress, and Kennedy had been watching him intently.

"It's strange," he remarked. "I had samples of material from six ramekins. Five of them seem to have had no effect whatever. But if the bit that I gave this fellow causes such distress, what would a larger quant.i.ty do?"

"Then one of the ramekins was poisoned?" I questioned.

"I have discovered in it, as well as in the blood smear, the tox alb.u.min that Doctor Murray mentioned," he said, simply, pulling out his watch. "It isn't late. I think I shall have to take a trip out to Miss Hargrave's. We ought to do it in an hour and a half in a car."