Arthur B. Reeve

“ Minna Pitts was pacing the floor wildly, all the assumed manner of the actress gone from her, yet with the native grace and feeling of the born actress playing unrestrained in her actions.
"You know only part of my story," she cried, fixing him with her now tearless eyes. "It is only a question of time when you will worm it all out by your uncanny, occult methods. Mr. Kennedy, I cast myself on you." ”

“ There we were alone, in the now weird little dressing-room, alone with that horribly lovely thing lying there cold and motionless on the little white bed. Kennedy moved forward in the darkness. Gently, almost as if she were still the living, pulsing, sentient Blanche Blaisdell who had entranced thousands, he opened her mouth.
A cry from O'Connor, who was standing in front of me, followed. "What's that, those little spots on her tongue and throat? They glow. It is the corpse light!" ”

“ One is tortured by the suffering which the stuff brings; the other laughs at the fears and pains. But it brings such thoughts! It stimulates my mind, makes it work without, against my will, gives me such visions—oh, I can not go on. They would kill me if they knew I had come to you. Why have I? Has not Haddon cast me off? What is he to me, now?"
It was evident that she was growing hysterical. I wondered whether, after all, the story of the kidnapping of Haddon might not be a figment of her brain, simply an hallucination due to the drug.
"They?" inquired Kennedy, observing her narrowly. ”

“ It must have been an hour that we sat there discussing the merits of the case and speculating on the strange actions of Loraine Keith.
Suddenly the red light flashed out brilliantly.
"What's that?" asked Carton quickly.
"I can't tell, yet," remarked Kennedy. "Perhaps it is nothing at all. Perhaps it is a draught of cold air from opening the door. We shall have to wait see."
We bent over the little machine, straining our eyes and ears to catch the visual and audible signals which it gave.
Gradually the light faded, as the thermopile adjusted itself to the change in temperature. ”

“ She merely inclined her head to Masterson, seemed almost to avoid the eye of Dr. Ross, glared at Dr. Leslie, and absolutely ignored me.
Craig had been standing aloof at his laboratory table, beyond a nod of recognition paying little attention to anything. He seemed to be in no hurry to begin.
"Great as science is," he commenced, at length, "it is yet far removed from perfection. There are, for instance, substances so mysterious, subtle, and dangerous as to set the most delicate tests and powerful lenses at naught, while they carry death most horrible in their train." ”

“ While millions of the poor toilers slave and starve and shiver, the slave-drivers of to-day, like the slave-drivers of ancient Egypt, spend the money wrung from the blood of the people in useless and worthless toys of art while the people have no bread, in old books while the people have no homes, in jewels while the people have no clothes. Thousands are spent on dead artists, but a dollar is grudged to a living genius. ”

“ But the threads of the typewriter ribbon, the alignment of the letters, the paper, all the 'finger-prints' of that type-written note of suicide were those of the machine belonging to the man who caused the soul-wound, who knew Madeline Maitland's inmost heart better than herself—because he had heard of Freud undoubtedly, when he was in Vienna—who knew that he held her real love still, who posed as a patient of Dr. Ross to learn her secrets as well as to secure the subtle poison of the cobra. ”

“ No wonder he pleaded with Kennedy.
"Why, Walter," exclaimed Craig, as we walked back to the warden's office to telephone to town for a car to take us up to East Point, "whenever he looks out of that cage he sees it. He may close his eyes—and still see it. When he exercises, he sees it. Thinking by day and dreaming by night, it is always there. Think of the terrible hours that man must pass, knowing of the little woman eating her heart out. ”

“ In the centre of the art-gallery we found a man, a tall, black-bearded Frenchman, crazy indeed from the curse of the green absinthe that had ruined him. He was scarcely breathing from a deadly wound in his chest. The hair-spring ring of the Apache pistol had exploded the cartridge as he fell.
Spencer did not even look at him, as he carried his own burden down to the little office of Dr. Lith.
"When a rich man marries a girl who has been earning her own living, the newspapers always distort it," he whispered aside to me a few minutes later. ”

“ On a desk at one end of the long room was a typewriter. Kennedy rose. There was not a sound of any one in either the hallway or the adjoining rooms. A moment later he was bending quietly over the typewriter in the corner, running off a series of characters on a sheet of paper. A sound of a closing door upstairs, and he quickly jammed the paper into his pocket, retraced his steps, and was sitting quietly opposite me again.
Mrs. Maitland was a tall, perfectly formed woman of baffling age, but with the impression of both youth and maturity which was very fascinating. ”

“ Harris," accused Kennedy, avoiding the mad rush at himself, and speaking in a tone that thrilled us, "you are the man who sucked the blood of Cushing into your own veins and left him to die. But the state will never be able to exact from you the penalty of your crime. Nature will do that too soon for justice. Gentlemen, this is the murderer of Bradley Cushing, a maniac, a modern scientific vampire." ”

“ Ten miles away a vehicle, a ship, an aeroplane, a submarine obeys me. It may carry enough of the latest and most powerful explosive that modern science can invent, enough, if exploded, to rival the worst of earthquakes. Yet it obeys my will. It goes where I direct it. It explodes where I want it. And it wipes off the face of the earth anything which I want annihilated.
"That's telautomatics, and that is what has been stolen from our navy and dimly sensed by you clever newspaper men, from whom even the secret service can't quite hide everything. ”

“ Now, as nearly as any one can get the story, there seems to have been a mysterious, phantom boat, very swift, without lights, and with an engine carefully muffled down which has been coming up to the old dock for the past few nights when the tide was high enough. A light has been seen moving on the dock, then suddenly extinguished, only to reappear again. Who carried it and why, no one knows. Any one who has tried to approach the place has had a scare thrown into him which he will not easily forget. ”

“ When people write letters to a newspaper, it means something. I might reply, in this case, that he is as real as science, as real as the fight of society against the criminal. But I want to do more than that."
The editor had risen, as if shaking himself momentarily loose from the ordinary routine of the office.
"You get me?" he went on, enthusiastically, "In other words, your assignment, Jameson, for the next month is to do nothing except follow your friend Kennedy. Start in right now, on the first, and cross-section out of his life just one month, an average month. ”

“ To-day she had evidently been watching in both directions, watching eagerly the carriages as they climbed the hill, as well as in the direction of the prison.
"How can I ever thank you, Professor Kennedy," she greeted us at the door, keeping back with difficulty the tears that showed how much it meant to have any one interest himself in her husband's case.
There was that gentleness about Mrs. Godwin that comes only to those who have suffered much. ”

“ We bent over to seize him as Kennedy secured the dog.
"She's a devil," ground out the prone figure on the grass.
"Dana Phelps!" exclaimed Andrews, as the man turned his face toward us. "What are you doing, mixed up in this?"
Suddenly there was a movement in the rear, toward the mausoleum itself. We turned, but it was too late. Two dark figures slunk through the gloom, bearing something between them. Kennedy slipped the leash off Schaef and she shot out like a unchained bolt of lightning. ”

“ In the early night it is positively uncanny. What was gruesome in the daylight became doubly so under the shroud of darkness.
We made our way into the grounds through a gate, and I, at least, even with all the enlightenment of modern science, could not restrain a weird and creepy sensation.
"Here is the Phelps tomb," directed Andrews, pausing beside a marble structure of Grecian lines and pulling out a duplicate key of a new lock which had been placed on the heavy door of grated iron. ”

“ But we are safe. See if you can drag out Delaverde. He is in there by the mummy-case."
Spencer was still holding Lucille, although she was much better in the fresh air of the hall. "I understand," he was muttering. "You have been following this fiend of a husband of yours to protect the museum and myself from him. Lucille, Lucille—look at me. You are mine, not his, whether he is dead or alive. I will free you from him, from the curse of the absinthe that has pursued you." ”

“ He can see the invisible, hear the inaudible, feel the intangible, with mathematical precision. Barron has now read the electro-cardiograms. Each is a picture of the beating of the heart that made it, and each smallest variation has a meaning to him. Every passion, every emotion, every disease, is recorded with inexorable truth. The person with murder in his heart cannot hide it from the string galvanometer, nor can that person who wrote the false note in which the very lines of the letters betray a diseased heart hide that disease. ”

“ A man sprang up the narrow hatchway and opened the cover through which we could see a little patch of blue sky again. The gasoline motor was started, and we ran leisurely back to the dock. The trip was over—safely. As we landed I felt a sense of gladness to get away from that feeling of being cut off from the world. It was not fear of death or of the water, as nearly as I could analyse it, but merely that terrible sense of isolation from man and nature as we know it.
A message from Burke was waiting for Kennedy at the wharf. He read it quickly, then handed it to Captain Shirley and myself. ”

“ As Dana Phelps disappeared down the road, Andrews turned to Kennedy. "What did you do that for?" he asked, half critically.
"Because we can watch him, anyway," answered Craig, with a significant glance at the now empty casket. "Have him shadowed, Andrews. It may lead to something and it may not. But in any case don't let him get out of reach."
"Here we are in a worse mystery than ever," grumbled Andrews. "We have caught a prisoner, but the body is gone, and we can't even show that he was an accomplice." ”

“ Kennedy seemed to be looking at and through Andrews as if he would hypnotise the truth out of him. "Let me see," he said quickly. "It is not very late now. Can we visit the mausoleum to-night?"
"Easily. My car is down-stairs. Woodbine is not far, and you'll find it a very attractive suburb, aside from this mystery."
Andrews lost no time in getting us out to Woodbine, and on the fringe of the little town, one of the wealthiest around the city, he deposited us at the least likely place of all, the cemetery. A visit to a cemetery is none too enjoyable even on a bright day. ”

“ Here was Kennedy, as it were, overturning what had been considered the last word in science as it had been laid down by the experts for the prosecution, opinions so impregnable that courts and juries had not hesitated to condemn a man to death.
"There have been cases," Craig went on solemnly, "and I believe this to be one, where death has been pronounced to have been caused by wilful administration of a vegetable alkaloid, which toxicologists would now put down as ptomaine-poisoning cases. Innocent people have possibly already suffered and may in the future. ”

“ Why, you have no idea how common the crime of suicide for the sake of the life insurance is becoming. Nowadays, we insurance men almost believe that every one who contemplates ending his existence takes out a policy so as to make his life, which is useless to him, a benefit, at least, to some one—and a nightmare to the insurance detective. ”

“ They do not seem to realise that a human life is at stake. With them it is almost like a game in which we are the pawns. And sometimes I fear, in spite of what the lawyers say, that without some new evidence, it—it will go hard with him."
"You have not given up hope in the appeal?" asked Kennedy gently.
"It is merely on technicalities of the law," she replied with quiet fortitude, "that is, as nearly as I can make out from the language of the papers. Our lawyer is Salo Kahn, of the big firm of criminal lawyers, Smith, Kahn & Smith."
"A good lawyer," encouraged Kennedy. ”

“ The motor started. The Z99 hummed and trembled. The fumes of gasoline were almost suffocating at first, in spite of the prompt ventilation to clear them off. There was no escape from the smell. I had heard of "gasoline heart," but the odour only made me sick and dizzy. Like most novices, I suppose, I was suffering excruciating torture. Not so, Kennedy. He got used to it in no time; indeed, seemed to enjoy the very discomfort.
I felt that there was only one thing necessary to add to it, and that was the odour of cooking. Cooking, by the way, on a submarine is uncertain and disagreeable. ”

“ I had heard stories of mummies that rose from their sleep of centuries to tell the fate of some one when it was hanging in the balance, of mummies that groaned and gurgled and fought for breath, frantically beating with their swathed hands in the witching hours of the night. And I knew that the lure of these mummies was so strong for some people that they were drawn irresistibly to look upon and confer with them. ”

“ There is nothing that they will stop at to protect themselves. Why, they are using gangs of thugs to terrorise any one who informs on them. The gunmen, of course, hate a snitch worse than poison. There have been bomb outrages, too—nearly a bomb a day lately—against some of those who look shaky and seem to be likely to do business with my office. But I'm getting closer all the time."
"How do you mean?" asked Kennedy.
"Well, one of the best witnesses, if I can break him down by pressure and promises, ought to be a man named Haddon, who is running a place in the Fifties, known as the Mayfair. ”

“ This machine records every variation of the pulsations of the heart with such exquisite accuracy that it gives Dr. Barron, who is up there now, not merely a diagram of the throbbing organ of each of you seated here in my laboratory a mile away, but a sort of moving-picture of the emotions by which each heart here is swayed. Not only can Dr. Barron diagnose disease, but he can detect love, hate, fear, joy, anger, and remorse. This machine is known as the Einthoven 'string galvanometer,' invented by that famous Dutch physiologist of Leyden. ”