Arthur B. Reeve

“ There was the sound of a car outside, and a call for Dr. Putnam. Kennedy followed the doctor. Sydney and I turned from Gladys and Hilda. I felt sorry for Gladys. Here were those who had mothered her from baby days passing out; Hilda, who had loved her, also failing; a lover of whom she was now uncertain. It was staggering for the girl. She followed Craig pitifully. It seemed as if she had matured unnaturally in the last two days.
“Hello, Doc! I couldn’t find her. She hasn’t been on any ferry. Is Talcott back? Or Mabel?” John Greene did not wait for an answer. “Where shall I go next?” ”

“ Putnam moving slowly toward the door, but Craig did not move. The door had been locked.
Passing her hand wearily over her forehead, Hilda moaned:
“He tried to kill me. I know now. I complained about feeling tired. ‘I’ll have a fine tonic for you to take,’ he said. It all comes back to me now. I felt strange each time and I seemed to forget about it.”
Kennedy had been preparing an antidote. He now gave it to Hilda.
“Don’t worry any more, Hilda. You’ll not need any of that tonic in the future. You know your enemies. That is enough.”
“You dear old Hilda!” Gladys had come over to her. ”

“ Kennedy,” she replied to his hurried question. “Who wouldn’t? If you’re young, the thing forbidden is the lure. When everybody, including Sydney, seemed so anxious for me to stay away from my own home, why, that is the time I wanted to go there most. So I came.” She surveyed ruefully the cord and gag Craig had just taken off. “Let me talk. It feels good. My mouth has been held open so long that just to be able to make sounds is a change.”
“I’m giving you a splendid chance, Gladys,” smiled Craig. ”

“ Spinning, mentally.”
“What ails everybody? How is Miss Emma?”
“Sinking rapidly now,” interposed Dr. Putnam.
Greene caught sight of Sydney’s face.
“What’s the matter with you, Sydney? You don’t look pleased to see me. Thinking about that interrupted wedding?” He paused. “What else could I do in my position? I couldn’t see a little girl with two dying aunts, the heiress to millions, rush headlong into an elopement.” He jerked his head with a smile toward Kennedy. “There’s your man; he stopped the wedding, really. Gladys wouldn’t have listened to me.” ”

“ The holidays were coming—cheerless holidays for Gladys.
“But how had that Hilda Hildreth been affected so—and why?” I inquired, when at last we had got to Craig’s laboratory.
Kennedy had lost no time in plunging into a study of the few drops of blood from the maid’s finger.
“A hyoscyamin compound,” he found. “The eyes gave me the first suspicion. It’s a mydriatic alkaloid—like the twilight-sleep. Put an idea into one’s head, awake, the very circumstances, everything is forgotten. But under the drug, in the abnormal state, it seems almost as if consciousness were retained. ”

“ Craig took the call before Putnam could get to it.
“It’s from the county hospital,” he said, facing us as he set the instrument down. “Mabel Sinclair is dead—drowned—in the bay. The hospital had a call from a drug store down there for an ambulance and sent a pulmotor. Come; we had better all go.”
It was almost too much for Gladys.
“Then we shall never know what it was Mabel was going to tell!” she exclaimed. “Mr. Kennedy,” she murmured, as we all piled into the cars, “why must all my people go at once? Please hurry. Maybe they can do something with the pulmotor.” ”

“ The other two sisters, Anna and Emma, disliked their elder sister. But they always liked the youngest. In a joint will, drawn fifteen years or so back, they had left all to this baby, Gladys, cutting off Mabel Sinclair. But about five years ago there was a new will, dividing the estate equally between Mabel and Gladys. Now, these two old aunts are pretty feeble, minds failing rapidly and all that. Miss Sinclair has had to get them to take treatment, but I understand Dr. Putnam—you know Putnam, the great specialist?—says it is only a question of time. Oh, we’ve got it all sewed up. ”

“ Hilda is gone again, too.”
Gladys faced him white, startled.
“What shall I do?” she asked helplessly. “Where’s John?”
“Over there. Halsey Talcott is there, too. Call up Sydney. Get him to come over right away. Tell him—oh, tell him you’ll do as your Aunt Emma wants—marry him—anything.” Kennedy scowled as she took the receiver tremulously. “We’ll give Greene his chance to explain that letter.”
Kennedy hustled us out into the car, and we were off.
“Aunt Anna dead; Aunt Emma dying,” repeated Gladys mechanically. “But Mabel—Mabel never seemed to care for me before. It’s strange. ”

“ There was an ill-concealed resentment on the part of the older brother, Halsey Talcott, too, who growled something about the disappointment of the younger of the old aunts, Emma, who evidently liked Sydney.
“Halsey Talcott,” I repeated to myself. “Are you the architect, sir?”
“Yes.”
I recalled it now. There had been published in the papers an architect’s drawing of a proposed new Art Center on a big block on upper Broadway. The drawing had borne Halsey Talcott’s name, and Halsey Talcott was the chairman of a committee that had promoted the scheme, and was organized to secure the financing. ”

“ Donald Tobey was a typical promoter, just as breezy in putting over a real-estate proposition in the guise of art as in the promotion of a new moving-picture company or in exploiting an oil-well—provided there was something to sell to the descendants of Barnum’s customers. ”

“ She flung one bag over his head down the stairs. Then the other rolled down at our feet. There was a struggle.
“Just a moment, please!” Kennedy called up at them.
“Who are you?” demanded a rather prepossessing young man.
“Who are you?”
“I? I’m John Knox Greene, attorney—Greene & Gates, who administer the Wagstaff estate. Come now; who are you? How did you get in?”
“With a key, of course.”
Kennedy displayed the bunch. Gladys gave a gasp. “The key-ring! Why, that’s Hilda’s!”
“Hilda? Who’s Hilda?” ”

“ You have your license, of course. You can marry at any time. But think it over. It’s a mighty serious step.”
The telephone proved to be cut off.
“Then I must go down there,” continued Craig. “Greene, I’d prefer to avoid a scene. Let me take her alone. Trust me.
Greene agreed with ill grace.
IN THE rectory of the Little Church we found two men—one young, about the age of Gladys or a year older, the other his senior by perhaps ten years.
The younger, Sydney Talcott, was in a boiling rage at Greene’s interference with the elopement, at Kennedy’s officiousness. ”

“ IT WAS not much of a ride, and we drew up before the drug store on the Shore Road where already were the ambulance and the doctor.
The pulmotor had already been used, but it had failed. The young doctor told of massaging the heart.
“But it was useless, too,” he whispered to Kennedy. “She’s dead all right!” ”

“ The druggist handed him a new, long hypodermic needle, then the epinephrin.
“We hear a great deal nowadays about the glands, the endocrine glands,” said Kennedy, proceeding quickly with his sterilizing and antiseptic preparations. “One gland that has a striking influence on the chemical overturn in the body is the central, or medullary, portion of the adrenal. ”

“ Gladys Goodwin.
Craig exclaimed:
“She’s just the kind! If she is warned away from a thing, that’s the very thing she wants to do—and does. We go!”
At the old house again, in the middle of the night, we let ourselves in quietly, closed the door—listened. ”

“ Together with the part of the nervous system which springs into action at times of great fear or anger, this medulla of the adrenal—and hence this drug—helps to render the body more efficient in physical struggle, mobilizes the body-forces for special heroic effort during a critical emergency. ”