The adventuress

Books By

Arthur B. Reeve

_Craig Kennedy Detective Stories_

THE ADVENTURESS THE TREASURE-TRAIN THE SILENT BULLET THE POISONED PEN THE DREAM DOCTOR THE EXPLOITS OF ELAINE THE ROMANCE OF ELAINE THE EAR IN THE WALL THE WAR TERROR GOLD OF THE GODS THE SOCIAL GANGSTER

_Other Detective Stories_

Guy Garrick Constance Dunlap

Harper & Brothers, New York [Established 1817]

[Illustration: CRAIG KENNEDY IN HIS LABORATORY]

The Adventuress

A Craig Kennedy Detective Story

By Arthur B. Reeve

AUTHOR OF _“The Treasure Train” and other Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Stories_

Frontispiece By Will Foster

[Illustration]

Harper & Brothers Publishers New York And London

The Adventuress

Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published November, 1917

Contents

Chap. Page

I. THE MYSTERY OF THE “SYBARITE” 1 II. THE SECRET SERVICE 15 III. THE CABARET DANCER 31 IV. THE BURGLAR’S MICROPHONE 44 V. THE WHITE LIGHT CAFÉ 55 VI. THE POISON GAS 69 VII. THE DIVORCE DETECTIVE 80 VIII. THE PULMOTOR 97 IX. THE TRAILING OF PAQUITA 109 X. THE DETECTAPHONE DETECTOR 124 XI. THE FRAME-UP 135 XII. THE EAVESDROPPERS 149 XIII. THE SERPENT’S TOOTH 160 XIV. THE GEOPHONE 171 XV. THE NIGHT OF TERROR 183 XVI. THE INVISIBLE INK 196 XVII. THE CIPHER LETTER 211 XVIII. THE RADIO DETECTIVE 226 XIX. THE WIRELESS WIRETAPPER 242 XX. THE SPEED DEMON 256 XXI. THE SUBMARINE EAR 270 XXII. THE TELAUTOMATON 285 XXIII. THE CURB MARKET 300 XXIV. THE PHANTOM CIRCUIT 315 XXV. THE ADVENTURESS 329

The Adventuress

The Adventuress

I

The Mystery Of The “Sybarite”

A revolver-shot followed by the crash of glass sounded in our hall.

At the same instant the laboratory door burst open and an elderly, distinguished-looking man stumbled in on us, his hat now off, his coat and collar awry, his hair rumpled, and his face wearing a dazed, uncertain expression, as though he did not yet comprehend what had so suddenly taken place.

“My God!” he exclaimed, gazing about in a vain effort to restore his dignity and equilibrium. “What was that? I hardly had my hand on the knob when it happened.”

A glance was enough to assure Kennedy that the man was unhurt, except for the shock, and in a moment he dashed out into the hall.

The front door of the Chemistry Building had been shattered by a revolver-shot. But not even the trace of a skulking figure could be seen on the campus. Pursuit was useless. There was, apparently, no one to pursue.

Pale and agitated still, the man sank limply into a chair as I forced a stimulant into his trembling lips.

Kennedy closed the door and stood there a moment, a look of inquiry on his face, but without a word.

“Some one――must have――shadowed me――all the way,” gasped the man as he gulped hard, “must have seen me come in――tried to shoot me before I had a chance to tell you my story.”

It was some minutes before our strange visitor regained his poise, and Craig refrained from questioning him, though I was consumed with curiosity to know the reason of his sudden entrance.

When at last he did speak, his first words were so different from anything I had expected that I could hardly believe him to be the same person. In spite of his nervousness, his tone was that of a hard, practical man of business.

“I suppose you know something of Maddox Munitions, Incorporated?” he inquired, somewhat brusquely.

I did not quite understand a man who could be himself so soon after an episode such as he had been through, nor do I think Kennedy did, either.

“I have no interest in ‘war brides,’” returned Craig, coldly.

“Nor have I――as such,” the man agreed, apparently rather pleased than otherwise at the stand-off attitude Kennedy had assumed. “But I happen to be Maxwell Hastings, attorney for Marshall Maddox, who was――”

Kennedy wheeled about suddenly, interrupting. “Whose body was found floating in Westport Bay this morning. Yes, Mr. Jameson and I have read the little five-line despatch in the papers this morning. I thought there was something back of it.”

As for me, I was even more excited now than Kennedy and I could see a smile of satisfaction flit over the face of Hastings. In a few sentences the clever lawyer had extracted from us what others took all manner of time and art to discover. He knew that we were interested, that he could depend on Kennedy’s taking the case.

Kennedy and I exchanged a significant glance. We had discussed the thing cursorily at the breakfast-table as we did any odd bit of news that interested us.

Already I knew, or fancied I knew, something of the affair. For it was at the time when explosions in munitions plants had furnished many thrilling chapters of news.

All the explosions had not been confined to the plants, however. There had been and still were going on explosions less sanguinary but quite as interesting in the Maddox family itself.

There was a hundred million dollars as the apple of discord, and a most deadly feud had divided the heirs. Together they had made money so fast that one might think they would not feel even annoyance over a stray million here and there. But, as so often happens, jealousy had crept in. Sudden wealth seemed to have turned the heads of the whole family. Marshall Maddox was reported to have been making efforts to oust the others and make himself master of the big concern.

“Maddox had had some trouble with his wife, hadn’t he?” I asked, recalling scattered paragraphs lately in the papers.

Hastings nodded. “They were separated. That, too, was part of the family disagreement. His sister, Frances, took the part of his wife, Irene, I believe.”

Hastings considered a moment, as though debating how far he should go in exposing the private affairs of his client, then caught the eye of Kennedy, and seemed to realize that as long as he had called Craig into the case he must be frank, at least with us.

“At the Westport Harbor House,” he added, deliberately, “we know that there was a little Mexican dancer, Paquita. Perhaps you have heard of her on the stage and in the cabarets of New York. Marshall Maddox knew her in the city.”

He paused. Evidently he had something more to say and was considering the best way to say it.

Finally Hastings leaned over and whispered, “We know, too, that Shelby Maddox, his brother, had met Paquita at the Harbor House just before the family conference which brought them all together.”

It was evident that, at least to Hastings, there was something in the affair that looked ugly to him as far as Shelby was concerned.

“It’s not at all strange,” he added, “that two men as unlike as Marshall and Shelby should disagree. Marshall was the dominating type, eager for power; Shelby easy-going, more interested in having a good time. In this affair of Paquita――whatever it amounted to――I’m not at all surprised at Shelby. He is younger than Marshall was――and inclined to be a sport. Still, there was a vein of susceptibility in Marshall, too. There must have been.”

Hastings paused. Human frailties were out of his ken as a lawyer. Property he understood; passions, no. With him the law had been a jealous mistress and had brooked no rival.

“It was on Shelby’s yacht, the _Sybarite_, was it not, that the tragedy occurred?” ventured Kennedy.

It was a leading question and Hastings knew it. He drew in a long, contemplative breath as he decided whether he should consent to be led.

“Yes――and no,” he answered, finally. “They were there on the yacht, of course, to agree to disagree and to divide the family fortune. Shelby Maddox went to Westport on the yacht, and it was so hot at the Harbor House that they decided to hold the conference on the _Sybarite_. Marshall Maddox and I had motored out from town. The sister, Frances, and her husband, Johnson Walcott, live on the other side of the island. They motored over, also bringing with them Johnson Walcott’s sister, Winifred, who stayed at the Harbor House. Johnson Walcott himself went ashore from the yacht early in the evening, having to go to the city on business. That was all right, for there was Bruce, the lawyer who represented Frances Maddox――I mean Mrs. Walcott, of course. You see, I’ve known the family so long that I often forget that she is married. Shelby had his lawyer, also, Mr. Harvey. That was the party. As for the tragedy, I can’t say that we know positively that it took place on the yacht. No. We don’t _know_ anything.”

“Don’t know anything?” hastened Kennedy. “How’s that? Wasn’t the conference amicable?”

“Well,” temporized Hastings, “I can’t say that it was especially. The division was made. Marshall won control of the company――or at least would have done so if the terms agreed on had been signed in the morning. He agreed to form a syndicate to buy the others out, and the price at which the stock was to be sold was fixed.”

“But did they dispute about anything?” persisted Kennedy, seeing how the lawyer had evaded his question.

Hastings seemed rather to appreciate the insistence than to be annoyed by it. So far, I could see that the great corporation lawyer was taking Kennedy’s measure quite as much as Craig was doing the same by him.

“Yes,” he answered, “there was one thing that occasioned more dispute than anything else. Maddox Munitions have purchased a wonderful new war invention, the telautomaton――wireless control of submarines, torpedoes, ships, vehicles, aeroplanes, everything,――the last word in the new science of telautomatics.”

An exclamation of surprise escaped Kennedy. Often he and I had discussed the subject and he had even done some work on it.

“Of course,” resumed Hastings, “we have had to acquire certain rights and the basic, pioneer patents are not ours. But the manner in which this telautomaton has been perfected over everything yet devised by inventors renders it the most valuable single piece of property we have. At last we have an efficient electric arm that we can stretch out through space to do our work and fight our battles. Our system will revolutionize industry as well as warfare.”

It was not difficult to catch the enthusiasm which Hastings showed over the telautomaton. There was something fascinating about the very idea.

Kennedy, however, shook his head gravely. “Too big a secret to be in the hands of a corporation,” he objected. “In warfare it should only be possessed by the Government, and in industry it is――well, it is a public service in itself. So that went to Marshall Maddox also?”

Hastings nodded.

“There will be trouble over that,” warned Kennedy. “Mark my words. It is too big a secret.” For a moment he pondered, then changed the subject. “What happened after the conference?”

“It was so late when we finished,” continued Hastings, “and there were still some minor details to be cleared up in the morning. We all decided to stay on the yacht rather than go ashore to the Harbor House. The _Sybarite_ is a large yacht, and we each had a cabin, so that we all turned in. There wasn’t much sociability in a crowd like that to keep them up later than was necessary.”

“Yes,” prompted Kennedy as Hastings paused. “Marshall Maddox seemed all right when he retired?”

“Perfectly. I went into his cabin and we chatted a few moments before I went to mine, planning some steps we would take in the morning to clear things up, especially to release all claims on the telautomaton. I remember that Maddox seemed in very good spirits over the way things had been going, though very tired. To my mind, that removes the possibility of its having been suicide.”

“Nothing is impossible until it is proved so,” corrected Kennedy. “Go on. Tell me how it was discovered.”

“I slept later than usual,” replied Hastings, seeking to get everything in order. “The first thing I heard was Shelby’s Jap, Mito, rapping on all the doors to make sure that we were awake. We had agreed to that. Well, we gathered on the deck, all except Mr. Maddox. We waited, no one thinking much about it except myself. I can’t say why it was, but I felt uneasy. Mr. Maddox had always been so punctual and I had known him so long. It was not like him to be the last on an occasion like this.

“Finally some one, I think it was Shelby, suggested that inasmuch as I was in a sense his representative, I might go and hurry him up. I was only too glad to go. I walked forward to the cabin he occupied and rapped on the door. No answer. I tried the handle. To my surprise it turned and I pushed the door open.”

“Don’t stop,” urged Kennedy, eagerly. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” replied Hastings. “There was nothing there. The bed had been slept in. But Mr. Maddox was gone!”

“How about his clothes?”

“Just as he had left them.”

“What did you do next?”

“I shouted an alarm and they all came running to me. Shelby called the crew, Mito, the steward, every one. We questioned them all. No one had seen or heard anything out of the way.”

“At least that’s what everybody said,” observed Craig. “What then?”

“No one knew what to do. Just about that time, however, we heard a horn on a small boat tooting shrilly, as though for help. It was an oysterman on his way to the oyster beds. His kicker had stopped and he was signaling, apparently for help. I don’t know why it was, but Mrs. Walcott must have thought something was wrong. Even before one of the crew could find out what was the matter she picked up a marine glass lying on a wicker chair.

“‘It――it’s a body!’ she cried, dropping the glasses to the deck.

“That was enough for us. Like a flash it went through my mind that it could be no other than Mr. Maddox.”

“What did you do then?”

“The most natural thing. We did not wait for the oysterman to come to us. We piled into one of Shelby’s tenders and went to him. Sure enough, the oysterman had found the body, floating in the bay.”

There was a trace of a tear in Hastings’s eye, and his voice faltered a bit. I rather liked him better for it. Except for fear at the revolver-shot, I had almost begun to think him devoid of feeling.

“So far as we could see,” he resumed, as though ashamed to show weakness even over one whom he had known so long, “there was nothing to show whether he might not have got up, fallen overboard in some way, and have been drowned, or might have been the victim of foul play――except one thing.”

“What was that?” inquired Kennedy, eagerly.

“Maddox and I had taken out with us, in a brief-case which he carried, the plans of the telautomaton. The model is in the company’s safe here in New York. This morning when we went back to Maddox’s room I found that the brief-case was missing. The plans are gone! You were right. There has been trouble over them.”

Kennedy eyed Hastings keenly. “You found nothing in the room that would give a hint?”

“I didn’t look,” returned Hastings. “I sealed the door and window――or port-hole――whatever you call it――had them locked and placed a wax seal bearing the impression of my ring, so that if it is broken, I will know by whom. Everything there is just as it was. I wanted it that way, for I had heard of you, and determined to come to town myself and get you.”

“The body?”

“I had the oysterman take it to an undertaking establishment in the town so that we would have witnesses of everything that happened after its discovery.”

“Did any of them suggest a theory?” asked Kennedy, after a moment’s thought. “Or say anything?”

Hastings nodded negatively. “I think we were all too busy watching one another to talk,” he ventured. “I was the only one who acted, and they let me go ahead. Perhaps none of them dared stop me.”

“You don’t mean that there was a conspiracy?” I put in.

“Oh no,” smiled Hastings, indulgently. “They could never have agreed long enough, even against Marshall Maddox, to conspire. No, indeed. I mean that if one had objected, he would immediately have laid himself open to suspicion from the rest. We all went ashore together. And now I must get back to Westport immediately. I’m not even going to take time to go down to the office. Kennedy, will you come?”

“An unnecessary question,” returned Craig, rising. “A mystery like this is the breath of my life. You could scarcely keep me away.”

“Thank you,” said Hastings. “You won’t regret it, financially or otherwise.”

We went out into the hall, and Kennedy started to lock the laboratory door, when Hastings drew back.

“You’ll pardon me?” he explained. “The shot was fired at me out here. I naturally can’t forget it.”

With Kennedy on one side and myself on the other, all three of us on the alert, we hurried out and into a taxicab to go down to the station.

As we jolted along Kennedy plied the lawyer with a rapid fire of questions. Even he could furnish no clue as to who had fired the shot at him or why.

II

The Secret Service

Half an hour later we were on our way by train to Westport with Hastings. As the train whisked us along Craig leaned back in his chair and surveyed the glimpses of water and countryside through the window. Now and then, as we got farther out from the city, through a break in the trees one could catch glimpses of the deep-blue salt water of bay and Sound, and the dazzling whiteness of sand.

Now and then Kennedy would break in with a question to Hastings, showing that his mind was actively at work on the case, but by his manner I could see that he was eager to get on the spot before all that he considered important had been messed up by others.

Hastings hurried us directly from the train to the little undertaking establishment to which the body of Marshall Maddox had been taken.

A crowd of the curious had already gathered, and we pushed our way in through them.

There lay the body. It had a peculiar, bloated appearance and the face was cyanosed and blue. Maddox had been a large man and well set up. In death he was still a striking figure. What was the secret behind those saturnine features?

“Not a scratch or a bruise on him, except those made in handling the body,” remarked the coroner, who was also a doctor, as he greeted Kennedy.

Craig nodded, then began his own long and careful investigation. He was so busily engaged, and I knew that it was so important to keep him from being interrupted, that I placed myself between him and those who crowded into the little room back of the shop.

But before I knew it a heavily veiled woman had brushed past me and stood before the body.

“Irene Maddox!” I heard Hastings whisper in Kennedy’s ear as Craig straightened up in surprise.

As she stood there there could be no doubt that Irene Maddox had been very bitter toward her husband. The wound to her pride had been deep. But the tragedy had softened her. She stood tearless, however, before the body, and as well as I could do so through her veil I studied her face. What did his death mean to her, aside from the dower rights that came to her in his fortune? It was impossible to say.

She stood there several minutes, then turned and walked deliberately out through the crowd, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I found myself wondering at the action. Yet why should she have shown more emotion? He had been nothing to her but a name――a hateful name――for years.

My speculation was cut short by the peculiar action of a dark-skinned, Latin-American-looking man whose face I had not noticed in the crowd before the arrival of Mrs. Maddox. As she left he followed her out.

Curious, I turned and went out also. I reached the street door just in time to see Irene Maddox climb into a car with two other people.

“Who are they?” I asked a boy standing by the door.

“Mr. and Mrs. Walcott,” he replied.

Even in death the family feud persisted. The Walcotts had not even entered.

“Did you know that the Walcotts brought Mrs. Maddox here?” I asked Hastings as I returned to Kennedy.

“No, but I’m not surprised,” he returned. “You remember I told you Frances took Irene’s part. Walcott must have returned from the city as soon as he heard of the tragedy.”

“Who was that sallow-faced individual who followed her out?” I asked. “Did you notice him?”

“Yes, I saw him, but I don’t know who he can be,” replied Hastings. “I don’t think I ever saw him before.”

“That Latin-American?” interposed Kennedy, who had completed his first investigation and made arrangements to co-operate with the coroner in carrying on the autopsy in his own laboratory. “I was wondering myself whether he could have any connection with Paquita. Where is she now?”

“At the Harbor House, I suppose,” answered Hastings――“that is, if she is in town.”

Kennedy hurried out of the establishment ahead of us and we looked down the street in time to see our man headed in the direction the Walcott automobile had taken.

He had too good a start of us, however, and before we could overtake him he had reached the Harbor House and entered. We had gained considerably on him, but not enough to find out where he went in the big hotel.

The Harbor House was a most attractive, fashionable hostelry, a favorite run for motor parties out from the city. On the water-front stood a large, red-roofed, stucco building known as the Casino, entirely given over to amusements. Its wide porch of red tiles, contrasting with the innumerable white tables on it, looked out over the sheltered mouth of Westport Bay and on into the Sound, where, faintly outlined on the horizon, one saw the Connecticut shore.

Back of the Casino, and on a hill so that it looked directly over the roof of the lower building, was the hotel itself, commonly known as the Lodge, a new, up-to-date, shingle-sheathed building with every convenience that money and an expensive architect could provide. The place was ideal for summer sports――golf, tennis, motoring, bathing, boating, practically everything one could wish.

As we walked through the Lodge we could almost feel in the air the excited gossip that the death of Maddox had created in the little summer colony at Westport.

Vainly seeking our dark-skinned man, we crossed to the Casino. As we approached the porch Hastings took Kennedy’s arm.

“There are Shelby Maddox and Winifred Walcott,” he whispered.

“I should like to meet them,” said Kennedy, glancing at the couple whom Hastings had indicated at the far end of the porch.

Following the lawyer, we approached them.

Shelby Maddox was a tall young chap, rather good-looking, inclined to the athletic, and with that deferential, interested manner which women find almost irresistible.

As we approached he was talking earnestly, oblivious to everything else. I could not blame him. Winifred was a slender, vivacious girl, whose gray-blue eyes caught and held yours even while you admired her well-rounded cheeks, innocent of make-up. Her high forehead denoted an intellect which the feminine masses of puffy light-brown hair made all the more charming. One felt her personality in every action. She was not afraid of sun and air. A pile of the more serious magazines near her indicated that she was quite as much alive to the great movements that are stirring the world to-day as she was to the outdoor life that glowed in her face. It was easy to see that Shelby Maddox was having a new experience.

“Good morning,” greeted Hastings.

Winifred smiled, but Shelby was plainly annoyed at the intrusion of the lawyer. I could not make out whether there was an aversion to Hastings behind the annoyance or not.

The introductions over, we sat down for a moment. Hastings had been careful not to say that Kennedy was a detective, but to hint that he was a friend and, by implication, a lawyer.

“It must have been a severe shock when you heard what had happened,” he began, speaking to Winifred.

“It was indeed,” she replied, gravely. “You see, I stayed here at the Harbor House while my brother and sister-in-law were on the yacht. Johnson came off early because he had to go to the city, and telephoned up to the room that they were going to be late and Frances would stay out on the yacht. Then when I came down this morning they were just bringing the body ashore.”

She shuddered at the recollection and Shelby flashed a look at Kennedy as though he could knife him for bringing up the distasteful subject. It seemed as though Shelby Maddox was pretty unconcerned about his brother’s death.

“Strange that you heard nothing on the yacht,” switched Kennedy, looking full at Shelby.

“We didn’t,” returned the young man, but in a tone that showed his attention was somewhere else.

I followed the direction of his eyes.

A petite, frilly, voluptuous figure stood in the doorway. She had an almost orchid beauty that more than suggested the parasite. Of a type quite the opposite of Winifred, she had nevertheless something interesting about her. For the born adventuress is always a baffling study.

Even before Hastings whispered I knew it must be Paquita.

She passed across the porch toward a flight of steps that led down to the shore, and as she did so nodded to Shelby with a smile, at the same time casting a look at Winifred such as only one woman can when she is taking in another at a glance. Winifred was first of all a woman. Her face flushed almost imperceptibly, but her own glance of estimation never faltered. I felt that there was a silent clash. Winifred was the antithesis of Paquita.

Shelby failed even with his cigarette to cover up his confusion. But as I searched his face I thought I saw one thing at least. Whatever might or might not have been the truth in Hastings’s story of Shelby’s acquaintance with Paquita once, it was evident now that Winifred Walcott quite filled his eye.

As she paused before going down the steps Paquita darted back one more look at Shelby. Had he once felt the lure? At least now he made no move. And Paquita was insanely jealous.

“I should like to have Mr. Kennedy look over the _Sybarite_, especially the room which I sealed,” suggested Hastings in a tone which was not peremptory, but nevertheless was final.

Shelby looked from Hastings to Winifred. The passing of Paquita seemed to have thrown a cloud over the sunshine which had brightened the moments before. He was torn between two emotions. There was no denying the request of Hastings. Yet this was no time to leave Winifred suspicious.

“I think you had better go,” she said, finally, as Shelby hesitated.

“Would you not be one of the party?” he asked, eagerly.

“I don’t think I could stand it,” she replied, hastily.

It was perfectly natural. Yet I could see that it left Shelby uncertain of her real reason.

Reluctantly he said good-by and we four made our way down the dock to the float where was moored a fast tender of the yacht. We climbed aboard, and the man in charge started the humming, many-cylindered engine. We darted off in a cloud of spray.

Once I saw Kennedy looking back, and I looked back also. In the far corner of the Casino stood the sallow-faced man, watching us intently. Who and what could he be?

Westport Bay is one of those fjords, as they almost might be called, which run in among the beautifully wooded hills of the north shore of Long Island.

The _Sybarite_ was lying at anchor a mile or so offshore. As we approached her we saw that she was a 150-foot, long, low-lying craft of the new type, fitted with gas-engines, and built quite as much for comfort as for speed. She was an elaborately built craft, with all the latest conveniences, having a main saloon, dining-room, library, and many state-rooms, all artistically decorated. In fact, it must have cost a small fortune merely to run the yacht.

As we boarded it Shelby led the way to the sheltered deck aft, and we sat down for a moment to become acquainted.

“Mito,” he called to a Japanese servant, “take the gentlemen’s hats. And bring us cigars.”

The servant obeyed silently. Evidently Shelby spared nothing that made for comfort.

“First of all,” began Craig, “I want to see the state-room where Marshall Maddox slept.”

Shelby arose, apparently willingly enough, and led the way to the lower berth deck. Hastings carefully examined the seal which he had left on the door and, finding it intact, broke it and unlocked the door for us.

It was a bedroom rather than a state-room. The walls were paneled in wood and the port-hole was finished inside to look like a window. It was toward this port-hole that Kennedy first directed his attention, opening it and peering out at the water below.

“Quite large enough for a man to get through――or throw a body through,” he commented, turning to me.

I looked out also. “It’s a long way to the water,” I remarked, thinking perhaps he meant that a boat might have nosed up alongside and some one have entered that way.

“Still, if one had a good-sized cruiser, one might reach it by standing on the roof of the cabin,” he observed. “At any rate, there’d be difficulty in disposing of a body that way.”

He turned. The wind had swung the yacht around so that the sun streamed in through the open port. Kennedy bent down and picked up some little bright slivers of thin metal that lay scattered here and there on the carpet.

He looked about at the furniture, then bent down and examined the side of the bedstead. It seemed to be pitted with little marks. He rose, and as he did so his gaze fell on one of the brass fittings of the cabin. It seemed to have turned green, almost to be corroded. With his penknife he scraped off some of the corrosion and placed it on a piece of paper, which he folded up.

The examination of the state-room completed, Shelby took us about the boat. First of all, he showed us the handsomely furnished main saloon opening into a little library, almost as if it were an apartment.

“It was here,” he volunteered, “that we held the conference last night.”

For the first time I became aware, although Kennedy had noticed it before, that when we boarded the _Sybarite_ Mito had been about. He had passed twice down the hall while we were in the state-room occupied by Marshall Maddox. He was now busy in the library, but on our entrance had withdrawn deferentially, as though not wishing to intrude.

Henceforth I watched the Japanese keenly as he padded about the boat. Everywhere we went I fancied that he turned up. He seemed ubiquitous. Was it that he was solicitous of the wants of his master? Had he received instructions from him? Did the slant-eyed Oriental have something hidden behind that inscrutable face of his?

There did not seem to be anything else that we could discover aboard the yacht. Though we interviewed the officer and those of the crew who had been on watch, we were unable to find out from them that anything unusual had been observed, either as far as any other boat was concerned or on the _Sybarite_ itself. In spite of them, the affair was as completely shrouded in mystery as ever.

Having looked the yacht over, Kennedy seemed now to be eager to get ashore again.

“I hope you are satisfied, gentlemen?” asked Shelby at last as our tour brought us to the mahogany steps that led from the outside of the white hull to the tender which had brought us out.

“Very well――so far,” returned Kennedy.

Maddox looked up quickly, but did not ask what he meant. “If there is any way in which I can be of service to you,” he continued, “you have only to command me. I have as much reason as any one to clear up the mystery in this unfortunate affair. I believe I will go ashore with you.”

He did not need to say that he was eager to get back to see Winifred Walcott, any more than Kennedy needed to tell me that he would like to see our sallow-faced friend again.

The tender skimmed over the waves, throwing the spray gaily as we sped back to the Harbor House dock.

We landed and Maddox excused himself, repeating his desire to aid us. Down the beach toward the bath-houses I could make out the frilly Paquita, surrounded now by several of the bathers, all men. Maddox saw her, but paid no attention. He was headed for the veranda of the Lodge.

The day was growing older and the Casino was beginning to liven up. In the exquisitely appointed ballroom, which was used also for morning and afternoon dances, strains of the one-step attracted some dozen couples. Kennedy sauntered along, searching the faces we passed in the hope of seeing some one who might be of value to know on the case, now and then reminding Hastings not to neglect to point out any one who might lend aid. Hastings saw no one, however, and as we mounted the steps to the Lodge excused himself for a minute to send some telegrams to those of the family whom he had forgotten.

We had promised to meet him in the lobby by the desk, and thither Kennedy bent his steps.

“I think I’ll look over the register,” he remarked, as we approached the busiest part of the hotel. “Perhaps, too, some of the clerks may know something.”

There was nothing on the register, apparently, for after turning it around and running through it he merely laid his finger on the name “Señorita Paquita Gonzales, Maid and Chauffeur, New York,” written under the date of the day before the arrival of the Maddoxes for the conference, and among the last of the day, showing that she had arrived late.

As we were looking over the names we were startled by a voice softly speaking behind us.

“Well, I should have known you fellows would be out here before long. It’s a big case. Don’t notice me here. I’ll see you in the writing-room. It’s empty now.”

We turned in surprise. It was our old friend Burke, of the Secret Service.

He had already lounged off, and we followed without seeming to do so, stopping only for a moment at the news-stand.

“Why are you here?” demanded Craig, pointedly, as we three settled ourselves in an angle of the deserted writing-room.

“For the same reason that you are,” Burke returned, with a smile; then added, gravely, “I can trust you, Kennedy.”

Craig was evidently much impressed by the low tone and the manner of the detective, but said nothing.

“They tell me Hastings was in town this morning, at your laboratory,” went on Burke. “Too bad he didn’t take the time to call up his office. But he knows something now――that is, if he has that note I left for him.”

“Why, what is that?” chorused both Craig and I.

Just then Hastings himself almost ran into the room as if his life depended on finding us.

As he saw us he darted over to our corner.

“You are Mr. Burke, of the Secret Service?” he queried as Burke nodded. “Kennedy, the safe in the office of Maddox Munitions in New York was robbed late last night or early this morning, and the model of the telautomaton is stolen!”

III

The Cabaret Dancer

We could only stare from Burke to Hastings, startled at the magnitude of the affair as it developed so rapidly.

For a moment Hastings was at a loss, then darted quickly into a telephone-booth to call up his office on long distance for confirmation of the news.

As we waited I happened to glance out into the lobby. At the far end, in an angle, to my surprise I saw Shelby and Paquita. Evidently she had hovered about, waiting for a chance to find him alone, and had at last succeeded.

Already Kennedy and Burke had seen them.

Paquita was talking earnestly. Of course, we could not overhear what was said, and they were so placed that even if we moved closer to them they would be likely to see us. Still, from our corner we could observe without being observed.

It seemed as if Paquita were making a desperate effort to attract Shelby, while, on his part, it was quite evident that he was endeavoring to get away.

Paquita was indeed a fascinating figure. From what I had already observed, a score of the young fellows about the Harbor House would have given their eyes to have been in Shelby’s place. Why was he seeking so to avoid her? Was it that he did not dare to trust himself with the little dancer? Or was there some hold that she had over him which he feared?

The interview had not proceeded long when Shelby deliberately seemed to excuse himself and walked away. Paquita looked after him as he hurried off, and I would have given much to have been close enough to observe her expression. Was it one of fury, of a woman scorned? At any rate, I would have wagered that it boded no good for Shelby.

I turned to say something to Kennedy and found that he was looking in another direction. We were not the only observers. From a window outside on the porch the sallow-faced man was also watching. As Shelby walked away the man seemed to be very angry. Was it the anger of jealousy because Paquita was with Shelby or was it anger because Shelby had repulsed her advances? Who was the fellow and why was he so interested in the little dancer and the young millionaire?

Hastings rejoined us from the telephone-booth, his face almost pale.

“It’s a fact,” he groaned. “They have been trying to reach me all day, but could not. The secret of the telautomaton stolen――the secret that is too terrible to be in the hands of any one except the Government. How did you hear of it?” he asked Burke.

Burke answered slowly, watching the expression on Hastings’s face. “When the cashier of the company arrived at the office this morning he found the safe had been rifled. It seems an almost incomprehensible thing――as you will understand when you see it for yourself. The cashier telephoned at once to the Secret Service in the Custom-House, and I jumped out on the case. You did not go to your own office. I did a little hasty deduction――guessed that you might have gone to see Kennedy. At any rate, I wanted to see him myself.”

Kennedy interrupted long enough to tell about the revolver-shot and the attack on Hastings at our very door.

“Whew!” exclaimed Burke, “just missed you. Well,” he added, with a dry sort of humor, “I missed you, too, and decided to come out here on the train. Kennedy, you must go back to town with me and look at that safe. How anybody could get into it is a mystery beyond me. But the telautomaton is gone. My orders are simple――get it back!”

For a moment neither Kennedy nor Hastings spoke. It was most peculiar――the plans gone in Westport, the model gone in New York.

“Who could have stolen the model?” I asked, finally. “Have you any theory, Burke?”

“A theory, yes,” he replied, slowly, “but no facts to back it. I suppose you know that the war has driven out some of the most clever and astute crooks that Paris, Vienna, London, and other capitals ever produced. The fact is that we are at present in the hands of the largest collection of high-grade foreign criminals that has ever visited this country. I think it is safe to say that at present there are more foreign criminals of high degree in New York and at the fashionable summer resorts than could be found in all the capitals of Europe combined. They have evaded military service because at heart they are cowards and hate work. War is hard work. Then, there is little chance of plying their trade, for their life is the gay life of the cafés and boulevards. Besides, America is the only part of the world where prosperity is reigning. So they are here, preying on American wealth. Suppose some one――some foreign agent――wanted the telautomaton. There are plenty of tools he could use for his purpose in obtaining it.”

The countenance of the sallow-faced man recurred to me. It was an alarming possibility that Burke’s speculation raised. Were we really not involved in a pure murder case, but in the intricacies of the machinations of some unknown power?

Burke looked at his watch, then again at Kennedy. “Really, I think you ought to go back to town,” he reiterated, “and take the case up there.”

“And leave these people all here to do as they please, cover up what they will?” objected Hastings, who had tried to prevent just that sort of thing by bringing Kennedy out post-haste.

“My men are perfectly competent to watch anything that goes on at Westport,” returned Burke. “I have them posted all about and I’m digging up some good stuff. Already I know just what happened the night before the conference. That cabaret dancer, Paquita, motored out here and arrived about the time the _Sybarite_ cast anchor. She met Shelby Maddox at the Casino and they had a gay supper party. But it ended early. She knew that Marshall Maddox was coming the next day. I know he had known her in the city. As to Shelby we don’t know yet. The meeting may have been chance or it may have been prearranged.”

I recalled not only the little incident we had just seen, but the glance of jealousy Paquita had given Shelby when she saw him with Winifred. What did it mean? Had Shelby Maddox been using Paquita against his brother, and now was he trying to cast her off? Or was Burke’s theory correct? Was she a member of a clever band of super-criminals, playing one brother against the other for some ulterior end? Was the jealousy feigned or was it real, after all?

“What I am endeavoring to do now,” went on Burke, “is to trace the doings of Paquita the night of the murder. I cannot find out whether she came out at the invitation of Marshall Maddox or not. Perhaps it was Shelby. I don’t know. If it was Marshall, what about his former wife? Did he suppose that she would not be here? Or didn’t he care?”

“Perhaps――blackmail,” suggested Hastings, who, as a lawyer, had had more or less to do with such attempts.

Burke shook his head. “It might have been, of course, but in that case don’t you think you, as Maddox’s lawyer, would have heard something of it? You have not――have you? You don’t know anything about her?”

Burke regarded the lawyer keenly, as though he might be concealing something. But Hastings merely shook his head.

“Mr. Maddox did not confide his weaknesses to me,” Hastings remarked, coldly.

“If we are going back to the city,” returned Burke, cheerfully changing the subject, to the evident surprise of Hastings, “I must find my operative, Riley, and let him know what to do while we are gone.”

“Look,” muttered Kennedy under his breath to us and nodding down the lobby.

Shelby Maddox had sought and found Winifred, and was chatting as animatedly as if there had been no Paquita in the world less than five minutes before.

As we watched, Hastings remarked: “It was only the day before the murder that Shelby first met Winifred Walcott. I believe he had never seen his brother-in-law’s sister before. She had been away in the West ever since Frances Maddox married Walcott. Winifred seems to have made a quick conquest.”

Remembering what had happened before, I took a quick look about to see whether any one else was as interested as ourselves. Seeing no one, Kennedy and I strolled down the corridor quietly.

We had not gone far before we stopped simultaneously. Nestled in the protecting wings of a big wicker chair was Paquita, and as we watched her she never took her eyes from the couple ahead.

What did this constant espionage of Shelby mean? For one thing, we must place this little adventuress in the drama of the Maddox house of hate. We moved back a bit where we could see them all.

A light footfall beside us caused us to turn suddenly. It was Mito, padding along on some errand to his master. As he passed I saw that his beady eyes had noted that we were watching Shelby. There was no use to retreat now. We had been observed. Mito passed, bestowing a quick sidewise glance on Paquita as he did so. A moment later he approached Shelby deferentially and stood waiting a few feet away.

Shelby looked up and saw his valet, bowed an excuse to Winifred, and strode over to where Mito was standing. The conversation was brief. What it was about we had no means of determining, but of one thing we were certain. Mito had not neglected a hasty word to his master that he was watched. For, an instant later when Mito had been dismissed, Shelby returned to Winifred and they walked deliberately out of the hotel across a wide stretch of open lawn in the direction of the tennis-courts. To follow him was a confession that we were watching. Evidently, too, that had been Shelby’s purpose, for as he chatted he turned half-way, now and then, to see if they were observed. Again Mito padded by and I fancied I caught a subtle smile on his saturnine face. If we were watching, we were ourselves no less watched.

There was nothing to be gained in this blind game of hide-and-seek, and Kennedy was evidently not yet prepared to come out into the open. Paquita, too, seemed to relinquish the espionage for the moment, for she rose and walked slowly toward the Casino, where she was quickly joined by some of her more ardent admirers.

I glanced at Kennedy.

“I think we had better go back to Burke and Hastings,” he decided. “Burke is right. His men can do almost as much here as we could at present. Besides, if we go away the mice may play. They will think we have been caught napping. That telautomaton robbery is surely our next big point of attack. Here it is first of all the mystery of Marshall Maddox’s death, and I cannot do anything more until the coroner sends me, as he has promised, the materials from the autopsy. Even then I shall need to be in my laboratory if I am to discover anything.”

“Your sallow-faced friend seemed quite interested in you,” commented Burke as we rejoined him.

“How’s that?” inquired Kennedy.

“From here I could see him, following every move you made,” explained the Secret Service man.

Kennedy bit his lip. Not only had Mito seen us and conveyed a warning to Shelby, but the dark-skinned man of mystery had been watching us all. Evidently the situation was considerably mixed. Perhaps if we went away it would really clear itself up and we might place these people more accurately with reference to one another.

Burke looked at his watch hurriedly. “There’s a train that leaves in twenty minutes,” he announced. “We can make the station in a car in fifteen.”

Kennedy and I followed him to the door, while Hastings trailed along reluctantly, not yet assured that it would be safe to leave Westport so soon.

At the door a man stepped up deferentially to Burke, with a glance of inquiry at us.

“It’s all right, Riley,” reassured Burke. “You can talk before them. One of my best operatives, Riley, gentlemen. I shall leave this end in your charge, Val.”

“All right, sir,” returned the Secret Service operative. “I was just going to say, about that dark fellow we saw gum-shoeing it about. We’re watching him. We picked him up on the beach during the bathing hour. Do you know who he is? He’s the private detective whom Mrs. Maddox had watching her husband and that Paquita woman. I don’t know what he’s watching her yet for, sir, but,” Riley lowered his voice for emphasis, “once one of the men saw him talking to Paquita. Between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to double-cross Mrs. Maddox.”

Hastings opened his eyes in wonder at the news. As for me, I began to wonder if I had not been quite mistaken in my estimate of Irene Maddox. Was she the victim, the cat’s-paw of some one?

Riley was not finished, however. “Another thing before you leave, Mr. Burke,” he added. “The night watchman at the Harbor House tells me that he saw that Japanese servant of Shelby Maddox last night, or, rather, early this morning. He didn’t go down to the dock and the watchman thought that perhaps he had been left ashore by mistake and couldn’t get out on the _Sybarite_.”

“That’s impossible,” cut in Hastings, quickly. “He was on the yacht last night when we went to bed and he woke me up this morning.”

“I know it,” nodded Riley. “You see, I figure that he might have come off the yacht in a rowboat and landed down the shore on the beach. Then he might have got back. But what for?”

The question was unanswered, but not, we felt, unanswerable.

“Very well, Riley,” approved Burke. “Keep right after anything that turns up. And don’t let that Paquita out of sight of some of the men a minute. Good-by. We’ve just time to catch the train.”

Hastings was still unreconciled to the idea of leaving town, in spite of the urgency of the developments in New York.

“I think it’s all right,” reassured Kennedy. “You see, if I stayed I’d have to call on an agency, anyhow. Besides, I got all I could and the only thing left would be to watch them. Perhaps if I go away they may do something they wouldn’t dare otherwise. In that case we have planted a fine trap. You can depend on it that Burke’s men will do more for us, now, than any private agency.”

Hastings agreed reluctantly, and as we hurried back to New York on the train Kennedy quizzed Burke as he had Hastings on the journey out.

There was not much that Burke could add to what he had already told us. The robbery of the safe in the Maddox office had been so cleverly executed that I felt that it would rank along with the historic cases. No ordinary yeggs or petermen had performed this operation, and as the train neared the city we were all on edge to learn what possibly might have been uncovered during the hours that we had been working on the other end of the case out at Westport.

IV

The Burglar’S Microphone

As we crossed the city Hastings, remembering the sudden attack that had been made on him on the occasion of his last visit, looked about nervously in the crowds.

Sometimes I wondered whether the lawyer had been frank with us and told all he knew. However, no one seemed to be following him and we lost no time in hustling from the railroad terminal to the office of Maddox Munitions.

The office was on the top floor of the new Maddox Building, I knew, one of the recent tower skyscrapers down-town.

As we turned into the building and were passing down the corridor to the express elevator a man stepped out from behind a pillar. Hastings drew back nervously. But it was Burke that the man wanted to see. He dropped back and we halted, catching only the first whispered sentence.

“We’ve been watching Randall, sir,” I overheard the man say, “but he hasn’t done anything――yet.”

There was a hasty conference between the man and Burke, who rejoined us in a few seconds, while the man went back to his post of watching, apparently, every face of the crowd that thronged forward to the elevators or bustled away from them.

“My men have been at work ever since I was called in on the case,” explained Burke to Kennedy. “You see, I had only time to map out a first campaign for them, and then I decided to hurry off to find you and later to look over the ground at Westport. Randall is the cashier. I can’t say that I had anything on him――really――but then you never can tell, you know.”

We rode up in the elevator and entered the imposing offices of the great munitions corporation, where the executive business was conducted for the score or more plants owned or controlled by the company in various parts of the country.

Hastings led the way familiarly past the girl sitting at a desk in the outside office and we soon found ourselves in the section that was set apart for the accounting department, over which Randall had charge.

It seemed that the lawyer was well acquainted with the cashier as he introduced him to us, and we noted that Randall was a man approaching middle age, at least outwardly, with that solid appearance that seems to come to men who deal with numbers and handle large sums of money.

While we talked I looked about curiously. Randall had an inner office, though in the outer office stood the huge safe which was evidently the one which had been rifled.

The cashier himself seemed to have lost, for the time, some of his customary poise. Trying to make him out, I fancied that he was nearly frantic with fear lest he might be suspected, not so much, perhaps, of having had anything to do with the loss of the telautomaton as of being remiss in his duties, which included the guardianship of the safe.

The very anxiety of the man seemed to be a pretty good guarantee of his honesty. There could be no doubt of how deeply he felt the loss, not only because it was of such vital importance, but from the mere fact that it might reflect on his own management of his department.

“It seems almost incredible,” Randall exclaimed as we stood talking. “The most careful search has failed to reveal any clue that would show even how access to the office was gained. Not a lock on any of the doors has been tampered with, not a scratch indicates the use of a jimmy on them or on the windows. In fact, entrance by the windows at such a height above the surrounding buildings is almost beyond the range of possibility as well as probability. How could it have been accomplished? I am forced to come back to the explanation that the outer office doors had been opened by a key!”

“There were keys――in the hands of several people, I suppose?” inquired Kennedy.

“Oh yes! There are in every large office like this,” hastened Randall.

“Mr. Maddox had a key, of course?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“Certainly.”

“Who else?”

“The agent of the building.”

“I mean who else in the office?”

“My assistant――oh, several. Still, I am sure that no one had a key except those whom we could trust.”

“Did Shelby Maddox ever have a key?” cut in Hastings.

The cashier nodded in the negative, for the moment surprised, apparently, at the very idea that Shelby would ever have had interest enough in business to have such a thing.

I saw Burke looking in covert surprise at Hastings as he asked the question. For the moment I wondered why he asked it. Had he really thought that Shelby might have a key? Or was he trying hard to make a case? What was his own connection with the affair? Kennedy had been looking keenly about.

“Is that the safe over there?” he indicated. “I should like to examine it.”

“Yes, that’s it, and that’s the strangest part of it,” hastened Randall, as though eager to satisfy us on all points, leading the way to a modern chrome-steel strong-box of a size almost to suggest a miniature bank vault surely a most formidable thing to tackle.

“You see,” he went on, nervously, as though eager to convince us, “there is not a mark on it to show that it has been tampered with. Yet the telautomaton is gone. I know that it was there last night, all right, for I looked in the compartment where we keep the little model, as well as the papers relating to it. It is a small model, and of course was not charged with explosive. But it is quite sufficient for its purpose, and if its war-head were actually filled with a high explosive it would be sufficiently deadly against any ordinary ship in spite of its miniature size.”

Kennedy had already begun his examination, first of all assuring himself that it was useless to try to look for finger-prints, inasmuch as nearly everybody had touched the safe since the robbery and any such clue, had it once existed, must have been rendered valueless.

“How did you discover the loss?” I ventured as Craig bent to his work. “Did anything excite your suspicion?”

“N-no,” returned the cashier. “Only I have been very methodical about the safe. The model was kept in that compartment at the bottom. I make it a practice in opening and closing the safe to see that that and several other valuable things we keep in it are there. This morning nothing about the office and certainly nothing about the safe suggested that there was anything wrong until I worked the combination. The door swung open and I looked through it. I could scarcely believe my own eyes when I saw that that model was gone. I couldn’t have been more astonished if I had come in and found the door open. I am the only one who knows the combination――except for a copy kept in a safety deposit box known only to Marshall Maddox and Mr. Hastings.”

Before any of us could say a word Kennedy had completed his first examination and was facing us. “I can’t find a mark on it,” he confessed. “No ‘soup’ has been used to blow it. Nitroglycerin enough might have wrecked the building. The old ‘can-opener’ is of course out of the question with a safe like this. No instrument could possibly rip a plate off this safe unless you gave the ripper unlimited time. There’s not a hint that thermit or the oxy-acetylene blowpipe have been used. Not a spot on the safe indicates the presence of anything that can produce those high temperatures.”

“Yet the telautomaton is gone!” persisted Hastings.

Kennedy was looking about, making a quick search of the office.

As his eye traveled over the floor he took a step or two forward and bent down. Under a sanitary desk, near a window, he picked up what looked like a small piece of rubber tubing. He looked at it with interest, though it conveyed no idea to me. It was simply a piece of rubber tubing. Then he took another step to the window and raised it, looking out. Far below, some hundred or more feet, was the roof of the next building, itself no mean structure for height.

“Have you searched the roof below?” he asked, turning to Burke.

Burke shook his head. “How could any one get in that way?” he negatived.

“Well――search the roof below,” repeated Kennedy.

Even though he did not understand what good might come of such a strange request, Burke had known Kennedy long enough not to question his actions. He moved away, seeking one of his men whom he could send on the errand.

While we waited Kennedy continued to question Randall.

“Mr. Maddox was very careful of his key, I suppose?” he ventured.

“Yes, sir, very careful. So we all were of the combination, too. Not even my assistant knows that. If I should drop dead, there would be only one way to get it――to open that safety deposit box, and that must be done by some one with the proper authority. It has all been carefully safeguarded.”

“You know of no one intimate with Mr. Maddox――who might have obtained the key――or the combination?”

I wondered at what Kennedy was driving. Had he the little dancer, Paquita, in mind? Did he suspect that she might have wormed from Maddox the secret? Or was he, too, thinking of Shelby?

Randall shook his head, and Kennedy continued his quick examination of the office, questioning the assistant, who was unable to add anything of value.

So far there had been nothing to show that the robbery might not have been an inside job. As Kennedy was still pondering on the new mystery that confronted us Burke approached with the man whom he had sent to make the search.

His face indicated that he was puzzled. In his hand he was holding a disk that was something like the flat telephone receivers one sees often on interior office telephones. To it was attached a rubber tube like that which Kennedy had picked up in the office a few minutes before.

“My man found this thing on the roof below,” explained Burke, with a look of inquiry. “What do you suppose it is? How did it get there?”

Kennedy took the disk and began examining it carefully, fitting on the other rubber tube.

“Perhaps it had served its purpose――was no longer of use,” he meditated. “At any rate, if some one had to get away with that telautomaton he would not want to burden himself with anything else that was unnecessary. He might very well have discarded this.”

What the thing was I could not imagine. We all crowded about, examining it, not even Burke offering an explanation.

Suddenly Craig’s face lightened up. He thrust the tubes into his ears and walked over to a smaller safe that was still locked. As he turned the combination handle he held the black disk up close to the safe. The intent look on his face caused us all to watch without a word. Around and around he turned the handle slowly. Finally he stopped. Then, with a few quick turns, he gave the door a pull and it swung open on its oiled hinges.

We fairly gasped. “What is it?” I demanded. “Magic?”

Kennedy smiled. “Not magic, but black science,” he replied. “This is a burglar’s microphone.”

“A burglar’s microphone?” I repeated. “What’s that?”

“Well,” he explained, “the microphone is now used by burglars for picking combination locks. When you turn the lock a slight sound is made when the proper number comes opposite the working part. It can be heard by a sensitive ear, sometimes, I am told. However, it is imperceptible to most persons. But by using a microphone it is an easy matter to hear the sounds. Having listened to the fall of the tumblers, the expert can determine what are the real numbers of the combination and open the safe. That is what happened in this case.”

We followed Kennedy, speechless. What was there to say? We had already seen him open a safe with it himself.

Though we were thus far on our way, we had not even a clue as to the identity of the criminal or criminals.

I recalled Burke’s own theory as he had expressed it. Could it be that some one had betrayed to a foreign government agent the priceless secret of the telautomaton?

V

The White Light Café

“As long as I am back in the city,” continued Kennedy, while we stared at one another, wondering what next move to make, “I think that I had better take the opportunity to make some investigations in my laboratory which would be impossible out at Westport.”

In the mean time Burke had been examining the burglar’s microphone, turning it over and over thoughtfully, as if in the hope that it might furnish some clue.

“It might have been possible,” he ruminated, “for some one to get into the building at night if the night watchman was off his guard and he had a key to the building. I suppose he might get out again, too, under the same circumstances.”

“A good lead,” agreed Kennedy. “While you are finding the night watchman and getting anything else along that line of reconstructing what actually did take place it will give me just the chance I need. Let us meet in two or three hours――say, at Mr. Hastings’s office. Let me see, I believe your firm is Hastings & Halsey, isn’t it?”

“Hastings & Halsey,” repeated the lawyer. “You are quite welcome to meet again there. You know where it is, on Wall Street?”

We noted the number and Kennedy and I hurried up-town to the laboratory which we had left only a few short hours before.

Already there were waiting for him, by special messenger, the materials from the autopsy which had been promised by the Westport coroner, who for once had appreciated the importance of a case and had acted with speed and decision.

Kennedy lost no time in throwing off his coat and donning his acid-stained smock. For some minutes I watched him in silence as he arranged his jars and beakers and test-tubes for the study which he had in mind. He had taken some of the material and placed it over a Bunsen burner in an apparatus which looked like a miniature still. Another apparatus which he took from a cabinet was disposed on a table. It seemed to consist primarily of three tubes. In one was a slit, and through the slit evidently rays of light were caused to stream. Inside I saw a lens. Each of the tubes seemed to radiate from a triangular prism of some substance that looked like glass. Two of the radiating tubes had an eye-piece and on one was a sort of scale.

As Kennedy made these rapid preparations he paused now and then to study carefully the slivers of bright metal he had picked up from the carpet in the state-room, while on a porcelain plate he placed the powder which he had scraped from the brass fittings.

“I’m not doing you a bit of good here, Craig,” I remarked, at length. “Isn’t there something I can do while you are working? I can come back here in time to go down and meet Hastings and Burke with you.”

He paused a moment. “Yes,” he replied, “there is something that you might be doing. I have been wondering just how intimate that little Mexican dancer was with Marshall Maddox and whether Shelby actually knew her in New York before he met her out at Westport the other night. I think you might make some inquiries along that line, and by the time you find anything you may find me more interesting also.”

Glad of the opportunity to be of service, for anything was better than to sit about idle in the present high-keyed state of my nerves, I started out.

My first impulse was to visit the New Amsterdam Club, one of the oldest clubs in the city, of which I knew that Maddox had been a member.

I knew several men who were members, and I was sure that among them I might find some one at the club at that time, and perhaps either from him learn something of Maddox or at least obtain an introduction to some one who did know.

I found that I had not acted without reason. In the big window that overlooked Fifth Avenue, ensconced in the deep leather chairs, looking out on the fashionable throng of shoppers who passed up and down the Avenue, I found several men, among whom was Conigsby, whom I had known for some time as assiduous first-nighter and man about town.

Conigsby welcomed me and I soon saw that the topic of conversation was the reports that all had been reading in the papers about the mystery that shrouded the death of Marshall Maddox.

“Peculiar fellow, Maddox,” commented Conigsby. “What do the boys down on the _Star_ have to say about the case, Jameson?”

I had no desire to commit myself, yet I wanted to glean as much as I could. For although we are prone to accuse the ladies of gossip, I think most men will back me up when I say that there is no place for the genuine article that cannot be beaten by a comfortable window in a club where congenial spirits have gathered over a succession of brandies and soda.

“It promises to be the great case of the year,” I returned, guardedly. “So far, I understand there is much more in the life of Maddox than even some of his friends suspect.”

At the mere suggestion of scandal all eyes were fixed on me. Yet I was determined to speak in riddles and betray nothing, in the hope that some of them might open up a rich vein of inquiry.

Conigsby laughed. “Perhaps more than _some_ of his friends imagined――yes,” he repeated.

“Why, what was it?” inquired one of the group. “Is there another woman in the case? I thought Maddox was divorced.”

“So he was,” returned the clubman. “I knew his wife, Irene, before they were married. Really, it was a shame the way that man treated her. I can claim no special virtue,” he added, with a shrug, “but then I haven’t a wife――not so much as a friend who would care whether I was here or in No Man’s Land. But Maddox――well, he was one of those men who have worked hard all their lives, but in middle age seem to begin sowing the wild oats they failed to sow in youth. You know the kind. I guess he must have reached the dangerous age for men, if there is such a thing.”

“What was it――chorus girls?” chimed in the other, ever ready for a spicy bit of gossip.

“Yes――lately cabaret dancers――one in particular――at The White Light――a little Mexican――Paquita.”

“What――Paquita?” chorused the group, and I could see by the inflection that she was not unknown to several of them. “You don’t say. Well, you must admit he was a good picker.”

“I rather suspect that his acquaintance cost him high, though,” persisted Conigsby. “Paquita has a scale of prices. It costs so much to take dinner with her. She’ll drive out of an afternoon with you――but you must pay. There’s a union scale.”

“It takes dough to make tarts,” frivolously suggested another of the group, forgetful of the tragedy that they were discussing.

Indeed, I was amazed at the nonchalant attitude they took. Yet, on analysis, I concluded that it also might be significant. No doubt the estimate of Maddox by his club members was more accurate than that of the world at large.

“If it had been Shelby,” put in another man, “I wouldn’t have been surprised.”

“Don’t worry,” interposed Conigsby. “Shelby Maddox is clever. Remember, Shelby is young. Underneath his wildness there is ambition. I think you’ll hear more of that boy before we are through. I know him, and he’s likely to prove a chip off the old Maddox block. Nothing that Shelby does would surprise me.”

“How about the other sister, Frances?” inquired another. “Do you know her husband, Walcott?”

“Not very well. You’re more likely to find him on Broad Street than Broadway. You know what I care for Broad Street. I’d never visit it if my bankers were not down there. Walcott has a deuced pretty little sister, though. I hear that Shelby is quite smitten.”

“Well, whatever you may think of him, I have seen Shelby Maddox with Paquita, too. I’ll lay you a little bet that that little baggage knows something about the case. Remember, the murder was on Shelby’s yacht.”

Conigsby shrugged. “Quite possible――another case of notoriety for The White Light.”

“Notoriety for Paquita, you mean,” corrected another. “I hear she plans to get back into musical comedy this fall. She’s not at The White Light any longer.”

“Well, I think she’ll make good,” agreed Conigsby. “I wonder who the angel is for her new show?”

The conversation was now hopelessly drifting, and I excused myself. At least I had learned enough to give me an insight into another phase of the life of Marshall Maddox.

Pondering what I had just heard, I decided to wander over toward the café and theater district, and drop into the cabaret which they had mentioned――The White Light.

As I entered the place in broad daylight I was struck by the sordidness of it. Deserted except by those who were cleaning up for the coming late afternoon and evening, it was positively tawdry. It needed the glamour of bright faces and night life, and even then it must be viewed through the bottom of a glass to wear even the semblance of attraction.

In the main dining-room of the café, grouped about the little dancing floor before the platform on which sat the orchestra when things were in full swing, stood innumerable little white tables. Just now there seemed to be no one there except a man at the piano and a girl who was evidently rehearsing her dance steps.

I paused for a moment and a waiter who had been arranging the tables for the coming crowd moved over to tell me that the place was not yet open.

I satisfied him that it was on other business that I had come, then asked him whether Paquita was at The White Light any more.

“No, sir,” he replied, brusquely. “She hasn’t been here for several days. I’ve heard that she has gone away to the country――has another contract. It is a rehearsal for the girl who is to do her number that is going on now. Is there anything I can do for you?”

I thanked him. It was not the waiter I wanted, but the proprietor, Henri.

In a little office in the rear I at last discovered him, a rather stout, genial Frenchman who had made a reputation as one of New York’s restaurateurs to the _risqué_. I had known Henri once when I had the assignment on the _Star_ that covered the theater and hotel district, and I had no fear that he would not talk.

“Well, Henri,” I began cautiously, “I suppose you saw in the papers this morning about your friend, Marshall Maddox?”

Henri, who was matching up checks showing the business done up to an early hour of the morning, shrugged. “Monsieur was more the friend of La Paquita than of me,” he returned, still matching checks.

“Still, he came here a great deal,” I asserted, taking a chance.

“_Oui_,” he agreed, “but it was not to see us. Always La Paquita, La Paquita. So different from his brother.”

“Indeed?” I queried, quite overjoyed at the turn the conversation was taking. “Then you know Shelby, too?”

“Ver’ well. Oh yes. He has been here. A fine fellow, but――it is all right. Business is not for him. He is always ready for the good time――a sport, you call it?”

I smiled. “Was he a friend of Paquita’s, too?” I hazarded, watching Henri’s face.

He lifted his eyebrows a fraction of an inch. “No more than of the rest,” he returned, with a deprecating gesture. “Pretty faces and figures all look good to Shelby,” he added, with a smile; then, seriously: “But he will settle down. We will see him here no more, some day. Also I know his brother-in-law, Messtair Walcott. I do not like him.”

“Why?” I asked, somewhat amused at getting his point of view.

“Too quiet. He will come in, not often, perhaps, bow, maybe speak, then go away.”

I thought I “got” him. One must be a good spender to appeal to Henri. I could not imagine Johnson Walcott as such. In fact, I could scarcely imagine him coming to Henri’s at all.

“Paquita was quite intimate with Marshall Maddox, wasn’t she?” I ventured again.

Henri brought into play his ready shrug. It was not for him to say anything about his patrons, much less about the dead. Still, his very manner gave the impression that his lips would not frame.

“Did any one ever seem to be watching him here?” I asked, the thought of the sallow-faced man at Westport recurring to my mind.

Henri stopped matching his checks and looked up. Was he growing suspicious of my disinterestedness?

“Such things are not unusual,” he answered, showing a fine assortment of ivory beneath his black mustache.

I met his eye frankly. He seemed to understand.

“Not for the _Star_, you understand?” he nodded, still looking at me fixedly.

“Oh, no, no!” I hastened, truthfully. “I am not playing reporter now, Henri.”

He appeared to be satisfied, and it did not occur to him to inquire why else I should be interested.

“Yes,” he went on, slowly, “he has been watched. I have seen it myself. Several times there was a man who came in, Spanish-looking.”

“Did Mr. Maddox know it?” I inquired, more eager than ever.

Henri shook his head negatively. “Not until one day when La Paquita was talking to the man. Monsieur came in unexpectedly.”

The manager laughed a little to himself.

“Why do you laugh?” I asked. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he returned. “It was not what happened. It was what she told him. So clever, too. She said it was a detective set to trail him by Mrs. Maddox, that she had flirted with the man and found out.”

“Then you do not think he was a detective?” I asked, puzzled.

“How should I know?” replied Henri, with another question. “It might have been. It might not have been. She is clever.”

“What did Maddox do?” I persisted. “Was he more cautious?”

Again Henri shook his head. “He gave orders that the man was not to be admitted. And we? He was a ver’ wealthy man, Mr. Maddox. We could not afford to lose him.”

“But this Spaniard,” I reiterated, convinced it was the same man whom we had seen at Westport, “isn’t it possible that Mrs. Maddox really did pick him out as a detective in the hope that he might get acquainted with Paquita and so report on her husband?”

“We are just guessing, monsieur,” dodged Henri. “I speak only of the things I know――and not all of them.”

He had evidently told me in substance about all that he was sure of. I knew him of old. Even after he had told his story he liked to leave a sort of “continued in our next” at the close of it, just so that you would not think he was not what Broadway calls a “live one.” I had absorbed about all that he had at first hand. It was enough. It gave me a view of the characters of the chief actors, from an angle which others did not know. I rose nonchalantly, thanked Henri, and sauntered out as I had in the old days when the _Star_ picked on me to expose some new society scandal.

The visit to Henri’s White Light cabaret had shown me one very important thing, however. Shelby Maddox had known Paquita before the night of the gay dinner party preceding the arrival of the Maddox family for the conference on the yacht.

What that might indicate I did not yet venture to guess. And yet I felt sure that it must prove significant. Else why had Paquita arrived at Westport at just that particular time? It seemed as though it must have something to do with the calling of the family conference.

Above all, however, stood forth the strange coincidence of the murder of Marshall Maddox, head of the family, and the stealing of the telautomaton, the most valuable single piece of property that the family owned. There was mystery enough in this case to satisfy even Kennedy.

VI

The Poison Gas

A glance at my watch was sufficient to assure me that I should have no time for further inquiries if I wanted to meet Kennedy before going down to the office of Hastings. I wanted to do that, too, for I felt sure that Craig would talk more freely to me than to the rest, and my interest in the affair had by this time become insatiable.

Accordingly, I retraced my steps to the laboratory. Kennedy was still at work, partly over some reactions in test-tubes, but mostly using the strange three-tubed instrument I had noted. As I outlined to him rapidly what I had discovered and the plain inferences to be drawn from it, he listened attentively, still working.

“Very good,” was Kennedy’s sole comment as I concluded my story. “That’s very interesting――possibly very important. It begins to look as though Maddox had been in some one’s way and that that some one was taking no chances in order to ‘get’ him.”

“What have you discovered so far?” I hesitated, not sure yet whether he was willing to talk, for Kennedy never said anything, even to me, until he was perfectly sure of his ground.

“Marshall Maddox was not drowned, at least,” he vouchsafed.

“Not drowned?” I repeated, more to lead him on than because I was surprised.

“No. Whatever was the cause of his death, he was not killed by drowning. The lungs and stomach show that. In fact, I knew at Westport that he might have died a natural death or might even have been a suicide. But he certainly did not die of drowning. Only more careful tests than either the coroner or I could make at Westport were necessary.”

“How did it happen, then?” I continued, emboldened by his apparent readiness to talk.

Kennedy took a bottle with a ground-glass stopper and held it up so that I could see its greenish-yellow contents. Then he pulled out the stopper, covered with vaseline, for an instant and shoved it back again.

The instant was enough. A most unpleasant odor filled the laboratory. I felt a sense of suffocation in the chest, an irritation in the nose and throat, as though by the corrosive action of some gas on the air passages.

“If we could only have seen him before he died,” continued Kennedy, “I suspect we should have found his face as blue as it was when we did see him, his lips violet, his pulse growing weaker until it was imperceptible, and perhaps he would have been raising blood. It would have been like an acute bronchitis, only worse. Look.”

From a little pin prick which he made on his own thumb Craig squeezed out a drop of blood into a beaker containing some distilled water.

“This is a spectroscope,” he explained, touching the instrument I had noticed. “I think you are acquainted with it in a general way. Blood in water, diluted, shows the well-known dark bands between what we call ‘D’ and ‘E.’ These are the dark bands of oxyhemoglobin absorption. Now, I add to this, drop by drop, the water from that bottle which I uncorked. See――the bands gradually fade in intensity and finally disappear, leaving a complete and brilliant spectrum devoid of any bands whatever. In other words, here is a substance that actually affects the red coloring matter in the blood, bleaches it out, and does more――destroys it.”

I listened in amazement at the fiendish nature of his discovery.

“Marshall Maddox was overcome by the poison gas contained in a thin-shelled bomb that was thrown through his state-room window. The corrosion of the metal in the room gave me a clue to that. Then――”

“But what is this poison gas?” I demanded, horrified.

Kennedy looked at me fixedly a moment. “Chlorine,” he replied, simply; adding, “the spectroscope shows that there is a total absence of pigment in the blood. You can readily see that it is no wonder, if it has this action, that death is sometimes so rapid as to be almost instantaneous. Why, man alive, this thing destroys without the possibility of reconstitution! It is devilish in the quantity he inhaled it.”

I could only gasp with surprise at the discovery.

“But how was it done?” I repeated. “You think a bomb was thrown through the open port?”

“Without a doubt. Perhaps, as you guessed, from a boat outside, the roof of a cruiser, anything, as far as that end of it goes. Whoever did it might also have entered the room in the same way.”

“Entered the room?” I asked.

“Yes, wearing a mask composed of several layers of gauze impregnated with glycerinated solution of sodium hypophosphate. That is one of many substances used. All that was necessary was to wet the mask with water and adjust it. It would have served a double purpose――to protect the wearer’s life as well as his identity.”

Amazed at Kennedy’s powers of reconstruction from evidence that looked so slender, I merely waited for him to proceed.

“Then whoever it was probably rifled his clothes and so obtained the keys to the building and the office. From the brief-case they must have extracted the copies of the telautomaton plans. After that it was a simple matter to throw the body overboard in the hope that the affair might possibly be covered up as an accident or suicide. In the course of the night the wind cleared the room of the gas. They did not reckon, however, on what science can discover――or if they did, cared little. After that, I suppose, some one went to New York, perhaps in a high-powered car.”

“Mito couldn’t have gone to New York――and got back again,” I exclaimed, impulsively, recalling that Mito had been seen ashore that night without apparent reason.

“Mito may or may not have played his part,” was all that Kennedy would comment.

He left me wildly speculating. Was Mito a cog in the wheel, of which Paquita and the gang suspected by Burke were other cogs? Was Shelby Maddox also a cog, willingly or unwillingly? Could he have got away from the yacht and got back again? A host of unanswered questions raced through my mind. But Kennedy had said all that he was prepared to say now.

“We had better be going,” he remarked, calmly, “if we are to keep that appointment with Hastings and Burke.”

He was evidently much more interested in what Burke might turn up than in his own investigation, which was quite natural, for what he had told me was already an old story to him, and his restless mind craved to be speeding toward the solution of the mystery.

Half an hour later Kennedy and I entered the office of Hastings. I looked about curiously. There were, as in many lawyers’ offices, two private offices for the members of the firm, while outside was a large room for the clerks, the stenographers, and the telephone girl.

As we were welcomed by Hastings in his own office I wondered what the walls might have heard. Marshall Maddox and his lawyer must have had many conferences there during the time that Maddox was planning his great coup in the munitions company.

“Burke hasn’t arrived yet,” remarked Hastings, nervously. “I’ve been expecting him any moment. I wonder what is keeping him?”

There was no way of finding out, and we were forced to sit impatiently.

A few moments later we heard hurried footsteps down the hall and Burke burst in, his face flushed with excitement.

“This thing is devilish,” he exclaimed, looking keenly at Hastings. “I must be in your class.”

“How’s that? Did some one shoot at you?” queried the lawyer.

“No, but I came within an ace of being poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” we inquired, incredulously.

“Yes. You know I started to find that night watchman. Well, I found him. He knows nothing――and I think he is telling the truth. But after I had questioned him I made him admit that sometimes he takes a meal in the middle of the night. Of course he has to leave the front hall of the ground floor unguarded to do so. I figured that the robber might have got in and got away during that time. And I guess I’m right.

“After that I saw the policeman who walks the beat at night. I thought he was going to prove a better witness. He remembers, under questioning, seeing a speedster that stopped around the next corner and was left there standing some time――about the time that the robbery must have taken place, if I am right. He thought it was strange and hung about.

“When the fellow who drove the car came back the policeman walked over. The fellow offered no explanation of leaving his car on the street at such an hour, except that he had stopped to shift a shoe that had blown. Then he asked where there was an all-night lunch-room. The policeman directed him and the fellow thanked him and drove off in that direction.”

“But the poisoning,” prompted Craig. “How did that happen?”

“I’m coming to it. Well, I thought at once of going to the lunch-room and inquiring. You see, I thought I might check up both the night watchman’s story and the cop’s. So I went in and it happened that the night man was just going to work. I hadn’t had anything to eat since this morning and I ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I left the coffee standing on a little table while I talked to the man behind the counter.

“I found out from him that the night watchman had been there, all right. But he didn’t remember any one in a speedster. In fact, I hadn’t expected that he would. I don’t believe the fellow went there.

“Anyhow, when I went to look for my coffee I noticed something on the lip of the cup. It looked like sugar, and I recollected that I hadn’t put any sugar in the coffee. Besides, this looked like powdered sugar, and I wouldn’t have put powdered sugar in when there was lump sugar. I tasted a bit of it. It was bitter――very bitter. Here’s some of it.”

Kennedy took from Burke a few particles of a white powder which he had carefully preserved in a piece of paper and began examining the particles closely.

“There were lots of people coming and going at the lunch-room,” went on Burke, “but I didn’t pay much attention to any of them.”

Kennedy had placed just a particle of the powder on his tongue, and was now making a wry face. As he turned toward us he exclaimed, “Strychnine!”

“See?” nodded Burke, excitedly. “I thought it was some poison. I knew there was something wrong.”

Burke looked at Kennedy fixedly. There could be no doubt now that we were watched. Some one was evidently desperate to prevent discovery. First the attack had been leveled at Hastings. Now it was Burke. Who would be next? I think we all realized that we were marked, though none of us said anything at the time.

Burke looked over questioningly at Kennedy.

“I’ve found out how Maddox was killed,” volunteered Craig, understanding the query implied in his glance.

“Indeed――already?” interrupted Hastings, to whom Kennedy was already frankly incomprehensible.

“How?” demanded Burke, checking himself in time to protect himself from setting forth a theory of his own, for Burke was like all other police detectives――first forming a theory and then seeking facts that confirmed it.

Eagerly both Burke and Hastings listened as Kennedy repeated briefly his discoveries of the spectroscopic tests which he had already told me.

“Gassed, by George!” muttered Burke, more puzzled than ever. “I may as well admit that I thought he had been thrown overboard and drowned. The shot at Mr. Hastings rather confirmed me in the rough-neck methods of the criminal. But this burglar’s microphone and the strychnine have shaken my theory. This fellow is clever beyond anything I had ever suspected. And to think of his using gas! I tell you, Kennedy, we don’t know what to expect of criminals these days.”

Burke shook his head sagely. At least he had one saving grace. He realized his own shortcomings.

“How about the speedster?” reverted Kennedy, passing over the subject, for both Craig and I had a high regard for Burke, whatever might be his limitations. “What did the patrolman say the fellow in the speedster looked like?”

Burke threw up his hands in mock resignation. “As nearly as I could make out, he looked like a linen duster and a pair of goggles. You know that kind of cop――doomed always to pound pavements. Why, it might have been anybody――a woman, for all he knew.”

“I think we’ve been away from Westport long enough,” concluded Kennedy. “Perhaps our unexpected return may result in something. A speedster――h’m. At least we can look over the garage of the Harbor House.”

I remember that I thought the words of little consequence at the moment. Yet, as it proved, it was a fateful statement made at this time and place.

VII

The Divorce Detective

At the Westport station, when our train pulled in, there was the usual gathering of cars to meet the late afternoon express from the city.

As we four were searching for a jitney ’bus to take us down to the Harbor House I caught sight in the press of cars of the Walcott car. Sitting in the back were Winifred and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Walcott, sister of the murdered man. They had come up to meet her husband, Johnson Walcott, who now came down the platform from the club car, which had been well forward.

The train was pulling out, clearing the road across the track, and as it did so there flashed past a speedster with a cream-colored body, a shining aluminium hood, and dainty upholstery. No one could have failed to notice it. As if the mere appearance of the car was not loud enough, the muffler cut-out was allowing the motor to growl a further demand for attention.

In the speedster sat Paquita, and as we looked across from our jitney I caught sight of Winifred eying her critically, turning at the same time to say something to Mrs. Walcott.

Paquita saw it, too, and shot a glance of defiance as she stepped her dainty toe on the gas and leaped ahead of all the cars that were pulling out with passengers whom they had met.

“Did you get that?” whispered Kennedy to me. “Not only have we a mystery on our hands, but we have something much harder to follow――conflict between those two women. Shelby may think he is a principal in the game, but one or the other of them is going to show him that he is a mere miserable pawn.”

“I wonder where she could have been?” I speculated. “That road up past the station leads to the turnpike to the city. Could she have been there, or just out for a spin?”

Kennedy shook his head. “If we are going to follow that color-scheme about the country we’ll need to get a car that can travel up to the limit.”

“Well,” snorted Burke, “it does beat all how these dancers can sport cars with special bodies and engines that would drown out the hammers of hell; but――I suppose it would cut down the work of us detectives by half if it weren’t so.”

Hastings said nothing. Perhaps he was calculating the cost of the outfit that had just passed, and wondering whether the bill had been paid by his client――or some one else.

The Walcott car had got away and we were now jolting along in our more modest flivver, eager to get back to the scene of our labors and learn what had taken place in our absence.

Back at the Harbor House Burke’s man, Riley, was waiting, sure enough, with a full budget of news as we entered quietly by another than the main entrance and drew him off in a corner.

“What’s happened?” demanded Burke.

“Plenty,” returned Riley, his reticence before us now overcome. “You remember that dark-skinned fellow?” he asked, excitedly.

“An unnecessary question,” returned Burke. “He has not been out of my thoughts since I left. I hope you’ve watched him closely. We saw Paquita. She must have slipped through your fingers. You’ll have to get a car that can keep up with her, Riley, if we are going to handle this affair successfully.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Riley, evidently relieved that his chief had not administered a severer rebuke. “I was about to tell you of how she slips away from us in that car, sir. Well,” he graced on, as though eager to change the subject, “we have not only found out who that spiggoty chap is, but that he has reported to Mrs. Maddox finally, to-day. It seems as though she has paid him for his work of watching her husband, and now that Mr. Maddox is dead has no further use for him.”

“And he has gone away?” asked Craig.

“No,” replied Riley, quickly, “that’s just the point. Even though she has discharged him――at least that is what it looks like――he is sticking around. At first I thought he was watching Paquita――and he is. But twice I have caught him talking to her. It may be that it’s all right. I don’t get it at all. I can’t make out yet whether he is with her or against her.”

“That’s strange,” agreed Burke, turning to Kennedy. “I don’t understand that. Do you? Do you suppose the fellow has been double crossing Irene Maddox all the time? These divorce sleuths are an unprincipled lot, usually.”

Kennedy shook his head non-commitally. “I think it will be worth looking into,” he considered. “Has anything else happened?”

“Plenty,” replied Riley cheerfully. “Since you went away Shelby Maddox has given up living out on the _Sybarite_, I understand. He is to live at the Harbor House all the time, and has brought his stuff ashore, although he hasn’t been about much. He is another one who has a speedster that can do some traveling.”

“What do you make of that move?” encouraged Hastings.

Riley shrugged. “Sometimes,” he remarked, slowly, “I think he is watching the others. I don’t know yet whether he does it because he suspects something of them, or because he thinks they suspect something of him. Anyhow, he has brought that Jap, Mito, ashore, too. Is he afraid of him? Has Mito something that gives him a leverage on Shelby Maddox? I don’t know. Only, it’s mighty strange.”

“Has Mito done anything suspicious?” asked Kennedy.

“His whole conduct is suspicious,” asserted Riley, positively. “Why was he in town so late last night? Besides, the fellow is well educated――too well educated to be a servant. No, sir, you can’t make me believe that he is here for any good. He’s clever, too. They tell me he can run a motor-boat or a car as well as the best. And he’s quiet. There’s something deep about him. Why, you can see that he knows that he is being watched.”

“But what has he done?” emphasized Kennedy.

“N-nothing. Only, he acts as though he was covering up something. I know the symptoms.”

I tried to analyze our feelings toward Mito. Was it merely that Riley and the rest of us did not understand the subtle Oriental, and that hence we suspected everything we did not understand? There was no denying that Mito’s actions out on the _Sybarite_, for instance, had been open to question. Yet, as far as I knew, there was nothing on which one could place his finger and accuse the little man, except his alleged presence in town so late the night before.

From the corner in which we were sitting we could see through an open window the porte-cochère beside the hotel at which guests were arriving and departing.

“Look!” pointed out Riley. “There’s Shelby Maddox now.”

His motor had purred up silently around the corner of the road that led about the shore, and as he pulled up before the door the omnipresent Mito appeared from nowhere. Shelby crawled out from under the steering-wheel and turned the car over to Mito to run around to the hotel garage. For a moment he stood talking to the Jap, giving him some parting instructions, when another car tooted its horn and came up to the steps. It was the Walcott car. Evidently they had not come directly from the station, but had taken a little ride along the shore to get the stuffy air of the railroad train out of Johnson Walcott’s lungs.

It was just the opportunity Shelby wanted. He quickly waved to Mito to pull away and turned to the new arrival, opening the rear door before the officious starter could get to it, and handing out Winifred Walcott most attentively――so much so that he forgot all about his own sister and Johnson Walcott.

He and Winifred stood talking, evidently about Shelby’s own departing roadster, for they were looking after Mito as he shot up the road to the garage.

“Do you guess what they are talking about?” queried Kennedy to me. “I would be willing to wager that I can reproduce at least a part of the conversation. As they watched the speedster get away she spoke first, and he nodded his head in the negative as he replied. She spoke again, and he nodded in the affirmative――and smiled.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“Remember Paquita? So does Winifred. First she asked Shelby if his roadster was hard to drive――or something of the sort. He said it was not. Then she asked whether he would show her some of the fine points of driving it――I am sure that Winifred Walcott can drive, for she looks like that sort of a girl. Shelby fairly leaped ahead like his motor does when he feeds it gas. That was easy long-distance eavesdropping.”

“What are they talking about now?” I demanded, rather spoofing him than serious, for Shelby was standing on the steps yet, quite oblivious to everything about him except Winifred.

“I don’t know,” he confessed, “but I can predict that something will happen in thirty seconds. Look up the road.”

I glanced away. Paquita in her speedster was shooting down as though she had a fourth speed. A second, and she had pulled up, leaping lightly to the ground. She nodded gaily to the starter to take her car for her to the garage, and bounded up the steps, not neglecting to display a generous vision of a trim ankle that almost caused the starter to turn the car up the steps instead of wide from the Walcott car.

Deliberately she passed close to Shelby, as though to show him the contrast between the fluffy little girl of the morning and the motor girl of the afternoon. She smiled sweetly at Shelby, not neglecting a quick glance of superciliousness at Winifred, such as only a true actress can give.

At that moment Irene Maddox appeared in the door, to greet Johnson and Mrs. Walcott. Paquita had not seen her, nor if she had would she probably have avoided the dramatic meeting.

For an instant the two women were face to face. Men would have been at each other’s throats in a brutal grip. Paquita was no less brutal. Without turning an eyelash she looked steadily into the face of the woman who had been so grievously wronged, and for all the surprise or emotion she displayed she might have been gazing at a bisque ornament. Irene Maddox, stately in her black suit of mourning, drew herself to her full height and the color in her cheeks deepened as her eyes flashed at the other woman.

Paquita swept on gaily. She was supremely happy. She had gone up-stage and had thrown two bombs.

From our coign of vantage I saw that another was watching. It was our sallow-faced friend, who smiled darkly to himself as he watched, then, a moment later, was gone, observed by none of them.

Paquita had passed. One might have easily paraphrased “Pippa Passes,” and it was not God who was in his heaven, either, nor was all right with the world.

The group at the porte-cochère glanced at one another, and for the moment each was reminded of his own particular hate and rivalry. Shelby was plainly chagrined. He had been getting along famously with Winifred, when a cold shower had been plunged over him. Irene Maddox had received a sharp reminder of her trying position. Frances Walcott was again a Maddox, unsoftened by the tragedy. Winifred listened while Shelby tried to finish what he had been saying, but nothing was the same as before. Only Johnson Walcott seemed able to remain the unconcerned outsider.

All turned into the hotel now, and as they separated and disappeared I wondered whether Paquita had been trailing about and had deliberately framed the little incident. What was the meaning of the continued observation by the man of the sallow face?

Just then one of the boys came through the lobby, where we were sitting in the angle, calling “Mr. Sanchez! Mr. Sanchez!”

From around the angle, where he could not have seen us, appeared the sallow-faced individual who had so disturbed our thoughts. He took the telegram which the boy carried, tore it open, and read it. As he did so his face, lined with anger, happened to turn in our direction and he saw us. Without appearing to notice us, he slowly tore the telegram as well as the envelope and stuffed the pieces into his pocket. Then he turned and coolly sat down again as though nothing had occurred.

“At least we know that one of his names is Sanchez,” commented Kennedy. “I’d like to see that message.”

“You’re not likely to see it now, unless we can pick his pocket,” returned Burke. “Don’t look around. There comes Mito.”

The Japanese padded silently past, unconcerned, casting no look at either our party or Sanchez. But I knew that his beady eyes had already taken us in. I felt that he was watching us. But was it for his own or some one else’s benefit?

I determined that, given an opportunity, I would try to find out two things――what the telegram contained and why Mito had been in town the night before.

It was the dinner hour, and the guests of the Harbor House, either singly or in groups, were stringing into the brilliantly lighted dining-room, where the orchestra had already tuned up. We moved over, nearer the door, as Shelby Maddox, all alone, placed his hat on the rack and entered, allowing the head waiter to seat him.

“Let us go in and observe them,” decided Kennedy. “Hastings, you brought us out here. It will look queer if we all go in together. So I think that you, Burke, and Riley had better sit at another table in another part of the room; then we won’t appear to be all together and we may get more, too.”

Accordingly, Hastings, Kennedy, and I entered, and by a little manœuvering managed to get ourselves placed by a window where we could see pretty much everything that went on.

Winifred Walcott was already there, at a table with her brother, her sister-in-law, and Irene Maddox. They did not seem to be talking much. I wondered what could be the matter. Perhaps it was fancy, but it seemed as if the two older women were not quite so friendly as they had been when I saw them in the automobile in the morning. Johnson Walcott also said little, but appeared to be engrossed in reading the despatches from Westport in the papers. None of them ate as though they enjoyed it, and all seemed preoccupied, especially Winifred, who let dish after dish go untasted. What had she on her mind? Was it solely Paquita?

I looked over at a table on the other side of the room where there was a lone diner, Shelby Maddox. He, too, was preoccupied. He had placed himself so that he could catch the eye of Winifred whenever she chose to cast it his way. But though he was never off guard, she did not choose. Something, too, was seriously affecting his appetite. As far as food was concerned, his presence was a mere formality.

“There’s something strange going on in that family,” I commented at length.

Hastings smiled dryly. “They can’t agree, even on a tragedy,” he returned. “What you have seen so far to-day was merely a lull in the storm. And now, if that is complicated by outsiders――well, we shall need all Mr. Kennedy’s acumen if we are to untangle the snarl.”

Kennedy appeared oblivious to the compliment, which was something for Hastings to pay, for very little in this mundane sphere met the approval of his legal mind. Craig was studying a large mirror at the end of the dining-hall thoughtfully. I turned and placed myself as nearly as possible in the same angle of vision.

“Please, Walter,” he cautioned, “your head is opaque――I mean to the human eye, old man.”

My one glance had been sufficient to whet my curiosity. By means of the mirror he could see around an “L” in the dining-room, and there, at a little table, alone, was seated Paquita. She had chosen the coign of vantage quite apparently because it put her in range of Shelby, without its being apparent to the other guests. But Shelby was busy. He had not even noticed Paquita, in his eagerness to catch the crumb of a glance from Winifred’s table.

Not being able to watch Paquita without interfering with Kennedy, and finding the strained relations of the others rather tiresome, I glanced out on the veranda by the window where our table stood. Some one was pacing quietly up and down. Almost with a feeling of certainty I strained my eyes in the darkness.

“That Sanchez is outside, watching everything,” I called Craig’s attention.

He nodded.

At the other end of the dining-room Burke and Riley were quite as busy as we were, observing how those whom we were watching acted when they were all together.

The Walcott party finished dinner first and soon afterward rose and left the room. Down in the Casino there was dancing every night, but, of course, they did not go there. Instead, they chose a secluded corner of the porch at the Lodge. Though there was no lost cordiality, apparently they did not want to separate. At least they had their conflicting interests in common.

Shelby needed nothing but a finger-bowl in order to finish his dinner, and left hurriedly, much to the astonishment of the waiter.

Burke and Riley had already gone out and had disappeared when we followed shortly.

Prompted by Kennedy, Hastings sauntered around to the end of the porch which the Walcotts and Mrs. Maddox had occupied. Shelby Maddox had already joined them, unable to keep away from Winifred longer.

One could feel the constraint of the party, although to an outsider it might readily have been accounted for by the tragedy. However, we knew by this time that there was something deeper.

Shelby was apparently endeavoring to overcome the impression which the appearance and smile of Paquita had produced, but I could see that Winifred was not yet entirely mollified.

The Maddox party welcomed us――not cordially, but at least not coldly, for it was no part of their character ever to betray their real feelings before one another.

As we drew up chairs I could feel the close scrutiny to which we were being subjected.

“Well?” queried Shelby at length, after we had talked about several inconsequential things, “what have you found out, Hastings?”

He said it in a tone that was meant to imply that he knew that some kind of investigation was on. Was it bravado?

“Oh, several things,” returned Hastings, turning to Kennedy as if to leave the answer to him.

“For one thing,” shot out Kennedy, taking advantage of the opportunity, “we have determined that your brother died from the effects of a poisonous gas――I won’t say yet what it was or how administered.”

The light from a window was shining full on Shelby’s face as Craig said it, and he knew that we were all watching intently the effect it would have.

“Is that so?” he replied, with an interest this time unfeigned. “I suppose you know who did it?”

“I have an idea,” replied Kennedy, “a theory on which I am proceeding. But it is too early to talk about it yet.”

If Shelby had been trying to “pump” us he was getting something to think about, at least. I felt sure that Craig was telling the family this much in the hope that it would spur them to some action, or at least reach ears that would be affected.

It was while Kennedy was talking that I noticed that Winifred showed her first real interest in what was going on about her. She was about to ask a question when the sound of footsteps on the veranda interrupted. If I had wondered what the cause of the coolness between Shelby and Winifred was I had here a partial answer at least.

Again, as though to foment trouble, Paquita crossed the veranda and walked slowly down the steps to the Casino, whence floated the rhythmic strains of the orchestra. Though she did not know it, she produced the result she sought. A few minutes later Winifred excused herself to retire to her room, her question still unasked and unanswered.

Shelby bowed a reluctant good-night, but I could see that inwardly he was furious. And I felt impelled to ask myself, also, why Paquita was so apparently dogging Shelby’s every step. Could it be that the notorious little heart-breaker was actually in love with him――or had she some darker motive?

VIII

The Pulmotor

Shelby was plainly angry and disconcerted. For the moment he seemed to hesitate between hurrying after Winifred and striding down the steps toward Paquita, as though to demand an explanation of her haunting appearances and disappearances.

In the moment that elapsed during his indecision he seemed to think a second time and to check both impulses. Better, he evidently considered, to affect to ignore the matter altogether.

Still, he could not conceal his chagrin. Nor was it lost on the others. The Maddox family were watching one another like hawks. Each knew that the other knew something――though not how much.

Winifred’s desertion seemed to throw a damper on the entire group. As for Shelby, life had lost its attraction for him with Winifred Walcott gone. He was about to make some excuse to leave the party, then decided that perhaps he might better stay. If anything was going to be said or to happen, at least he would learn it. Meanwhile I noticed that Johnson Walcott was covertly observing Shelby, who seemed to be aware of the scrutiny of the brother of the girl with whom he was in love. I felt that Shelby would not antagonize Walcott at least.

“Then you are getting closer to the truth of the death of my brother?” inquired Shelby.

“Step by step,” replied Kennedy. “I am trying now to reconstruct what might have been hidden in his private life.”

Irene Maddox gave a quick glance at Kennedy. The others were silent. It was a queer family. There was no word of grief for Marshall Maddox. Each seemed merely to consider what bearing the tragedy might have on his own fortune.

A moment later Walcott excused himself, pleading that he had some letters to write, and passed slowly down the porch in the direction of the office and writing-room. His wife, however, and Irene Maddox showed no disposition to move. None of us said anything about the incident, but I know that I did a lot of wondering why the mere appearance of Paquita seemed to break up the party each time as though a shell had burst. Was there something lying back which neither Kennedy nor myself knew anything about? Was it more than revenge or jealousy?

As for myself, somehow I had become mightily interested in the drama of the little Mexican dancer and Shelby, whatever it might be. How did Sanchez complicate it? Could it be that Burke was right and that he was an international crook? Besides, Mito was on my mind now more than any of the Maddoxes in the group, anyhow.

Accordingly, I leaned over and whispered to Kennedy. “I’d like to follow that girl Paquita and watch her a bit.”

“Very good, Walter,” he whispered back. “See if you can find her. I want to stay here with Hastings and talk to them. Molasses will catch more flies than vinegar. I will stick along until there is an open break.”

Glad of the release he had given me, I made some excuse to the party, and without seeming to do so wandered off from the Lodge toward the Casino in the direction taken by Paquita. As I approached the Casino, which was now ablaze with lights and gaiety, I paused outside in the shadow to survey the long line of snowy white tables on a balcony whose outlook was directly on the dark-blue waters of the bay and out between the two necks of land into the Sound. It seemed a veritable fairy-land.

One after another, I scanned the faces of the parties at the tables in the hope of catching a glimpse of Paquita, but she was at none of them.

As I stood in the shadow of a clump of shrubbery I was suddenly aware that some one had crossed the thick grassy carpet and was standing almost directly behind me. I turned to find Burke.

“I don’t suppose you have seen that Jap, Mito, about?” he asked, modulating his voice.

“No,” I replied. “I just came down here. Kennedy and Hastings are on the porch with the Maddoxes and I thought I might do some investigating on my own account. Why? What has Mito been doing?”

Burke shrugged. “Perhaps nothing――perhaps much. Riley and I have been strolling about the outside, on a chance. Once we found Mito sitting apart, apparently looking out over the harbor, although I am sure that that was not all he was doing. For when he saw Paquita coming down the path, almost before we knew it he had given us the slip in the darkness. I think he had been waiting for her to appear.”

“Where is she?” I asked. “It was really to follow her that I came down here.”

Burke nodded toward the dancing-floor of the Casino. “I suppose she is in there,” he replied. “At least she was a moment ago. I would feel a great deal safer in putting my finger on her than on that Jap. He is eely. Every time I think I have caught him he gets through my grasp. It may be that he is only a faithful servant to his master, although I would like to be convinced of it. All the time that you and Kennedy were up there on the veranda he was watching. I don’t know what Paquita did, but when she walked down he spotted her in a moment――and was gone.”

“That’s just the point,” I hastened. “She didn’t do a thing except pass near us and bestow a sweet smile on Shelby. It’s the second time since we got back from the city. I can’t make out what she is up to, unless it is to separate the lovers.”

“I think I shall try to see Kennedy,” concluded Burke.

“All right,” I agreed as he turned away. “You’ll find him at the Lodge on the porch. I am going to stay here awhile and see what Paquita does. How about Sanchez?” I recollected.

“Nothing at all,” imparted Burke as he left me. “Since dinner he seems to have dropped out of sight entirely.”

Burke having left me, I sauntered into the light, and, being alone, chose a table from which I could see both the dancers and the gay parties at the other little round tables.

Intently my gaze wandered in toward the dancing. The lively strains of a fox-trot were sending the crowded couples ricocheting over the polished floor. It was a brilliant sight――the myriad lights, the swaying couples, the musical rhythm pervading all.

Sure enough, there was Paquita. I could pick her out from among them all, for there was none, even among these seasoned dancers, who could equal the pretty professional.

Dancing with her was a young man whom I did not recognize. Nor did it seem to matter, for even in the encore I found that she had another partner. Without a doubt they were of the group of the younger set to whom Paquita was a fascinating creature. What, if anything, her partners might have to do with the Maddox mystery I was unable to determine, though I inclined to the belief that it was nothing. Sophisticated though they may have thought themselves, they were mere children in the hands of Paquita. She was quite apparently using her very popularity as a mask.

From my table on the terrace over the bay I caught sight of a face, all alone, which amazed me. Johnson Walcott was quite as much interested in Paquita as any of the younger set.

It was too late for me to move. Walcott caught sight of me and soon had planted himself in the chair opposite.

“What do you make of that girl?” he asked, finally, as though frankly confessing the object of his visit to the Casino.

I was on guard. I did not want to admit to any of the family that neither Kennedy nor myself had fathomed her. “I don’t know,” I replied, carefully avoiding the appearance of having come down solely to watch her. “She seems to be quite interested in the Maddox family.”

Walcott laughed as though to indicate to me that he understood that I knew the scandal. Just then Paquita caught sight of us together. I thought she seemed distrait. She rose and a moment later disappeared through the French window.

Inwardly I cursed Walcott for his intrusion at that moment, for under the circumstances I could not abruptly jump up and leave him to follow her. Yet it was just that second in which she was gone.

The dancing seemed to have no attraction for her to-night. Evidently there was something lying back in her strange actions. More than likely she had come down to the Casino for the sole purpose of passing Shelby again when Winifred was present.

As soon as I conveniently could I managed to detach myself from Walcott, but, as I had expected, by the time I got around to the French window through which Paquita had gone she was nowhere about.

What of Sanchez? Where was he? I loitered about for a moment, then slowly mounted the steps that led back to the Lodge, intending to rejoin Kennedy and Hastings.

When I reached the porch again all were gone. Shelby had got away, and the others had either gone to their rooms or to the more lively corridor of the hotel. I looked about, but could see neither Kennedy nor Hastings. They, too, seemed to have disappeared on some mission.

What I would do next I did not know. Suddenly there flashed through my mind the thought of the high-powered car that the policeman had told Burke of seeing near the Maddox Building the night before.

I wondered whether there might not be some clue that I might obtain from the garage back of the Lodge. There must be at least two speedsters there, Paquita’s and Shelby’s. Perhaps there were others. At least I might find out whether either of them had been out the night of the murder. Having nothing better to do, I determined to make a little tour of investigation in that direction myself.

As I made my way to the rear of the hotel I saw that there were indeed two garages, one large one that was most generally used and a smaller one that looked as though it might have been built as an afterthought to accommodate an overflow of cars. The smaller one was near and I determined to examine it first. It was dark, too, as though not being used except over week-ends, when the hotel was crowded.

Almost before I was aware of it it seemed as if I saw a figure flit past a window. Perhaps it was my imagination. At any rate I would not have conscientiously sworn to it, for my attention at the time was directed at the other, lighted, garage.

The impression was enough, however. I quickened my pace until I came to the dark building. Mechanically I tried the door, fully expecting that it would be locked. To my surprise, it was open, and before I realized it I had swung the door and my foot was on the threshold.

“Who’s――”

The words were scarcely out of my lips when a spit of fire in the blackness of the interior replied. For a moment my head seemed in a whirl. Sight and hearing left me.

That is all I remember.

An hour later, vaguely, indistinctly, as though far away, I heard a familiar voice calling me.

It seemed to be far off, and I struggled after it, blindly groping. There seemed to be something over my face, something that covered my eyes. I felt that if I could only get it off I would be all right. But try as I would, I had not the strength.

Still, I was encouraged. The voice seemed nearer, more distinct. Was it Kennedy’s? It sounded strangely like it.

I clawed again at the thing that seemed to keep me from him. To my surprise it came off itself, leaving me blinking in a flood of light.

“Walter――are you all right?” I now heard the voice distinctly.

“Wh-where am I? What happened?” I gasped, feeling still a suffocating sensation in the throat and chest, my mouth parched, dry and irritated, and my nose tingling as though afire.

“Here in the garage,” replied Craig, holding a peculiar rubber face mask in one hand, while Burke stood beside a sort of box about the size of a suit-case from which rubber tubes ran to the mask. “I thought the pulmotor would do the trick.”

“It’s lucky you are that there was a gas company in town that’s up-to-date and has one of the things,” returned Burke, breaking back into a vernacular more natural than that veneered on his honest tongue. “Praise be that he’s all right. A night’s sleep will do him good, don’t you say, Mr. Kennedy?”

“But――but what is it all about?” I choked, striving to get my feet, but finding myself still a bit weak. My eye caught the motors and pumps and tubes in the pulmotor, but that conveyed no idea to me. “Tell me――Craig――who was it?”

“I wish I could, old fellow,” replied Craig, smoothing back my hair. “We were just a bit late for that――heard the shot――dashed in, and found you, of all people. How did you come here?”

Propped up gently by Craig, I told what I could of the story, though there was next to nothing to tell.

“Whoever it was,” I concluded, pressing my aching temples ruefully, “he had just time to get away. You heard a shot? Am I wounded? What’s that pulmotor for?”

“Not wounded,” Craig returned. “But you can be thankful we had that thing and that the gas in this asphyxiating pistol was not chlorine. I don’t know what it was――possibly sabadilla veratrine, some of those things they’re using abroad in asphyxiating bombs.”

“Whoever it was, he was prepared for us here,” called Burke, who, now that I was out of danger, had turned his attention to the garage itself. “He’s removed whatever might be incriminating. It’s all as clean as a whistle here. Some one expected us.”

“I knew that all along,” returned Craig, quietly. “Walter blundered into a trap that was set for me.”

I felt the pressure of his hand on mine. It was worth it all to know that I had at least saved Kennedy something, even if I had accomplished nothing.

“But who could have known that we were going to the garage?” I asked.

Kennedy was silent a moment.

“Some one is spying on us――knows our movements, must know even what we talk about,” he said, slowly.

We looked at one another blankly. It was uncanny. What could we do? Were we in the hands of a power greater than any of us had imagined?

IX

The Trailing Of Paquita

Rapidly recovering now from the effects of the asphyxiating gun, thanks to the prompt aid of Kennedy, I was soon able to sit up in my improvised bed on the garage floor. As well can be imagined, however, I did not feel like engaging in very strenuous activity. Even the simple investigation of Burke, as he explored the garage, seemed like a wonderful exhibition of energy to me.

“Well, there certainly is no car here now,” he remarked as he surveyed the obvious emptiness of the place.

“Which is not to say that there has not been one here recently,” added Kennedy, who was now dividing his attention between me and the building. “Some one has been here with a car,” he added, pointing to some fresh oil spots on the floor, and bending down beside them. “Jameson’s inhospitable host has evidently taken the pains to remove all traces that might be of any value. See――he has obliterated even the tire tracks by which the car might have been identified.”

“Must have had great respect for your ability,” remarked Burke, also examining the marks that showed how carefully the floor had been gone over to guard against leaving a clue. “Whoever it was was clever enough to keep just a jump ahead of us. Not a single trace was left. I wonder who it could be?”

“I’ve narrowed it down to two theories,” interposed Burke’s Secret Service man, Riley, always fertile with conjectures, “but I can’t say which I prefer. To my way of thinking, either the presence of Mito in the town last night would explain everything, or else this all has something to do with the telegram that we saw the sallow-faced Sanchez receive.”

Either conjecture was plausible enough, on the face of it. Kennedy listened, but said nothing. There seemed to be no reason for remaining longer in the garage.

“How do you feel now, Walter?” asked Craig. “Do you think you could stand being moved to the hotel?”

An oppressive dizziness still affected me, but I knew that I could not continue to lie on the damp floor. With Kennedy’s aid, I struggled to my feet.

Barely able to walk, and leaning heavily on his arm, I managed to make my way from the garage and across the bit of lawn to the side veranda of the Harbor House. Still weak, I was forced to drop into a wicker chair to recover my strength.

“Why, Mr. Jameson, what is the matter?” asked a woman’s voice beside us.

I looked up to see Winifred Walcott. Evidently when she left us she had not gone to her room.

As Craig told her briefly what had happened, she was instantly sympathetic.

“That’s strange,” she murmured. “I felt restless and I was strolling about the paths back of the Lodge. I heard the shot――thought it was an automobile tire or a back-fire. Why, not ten minutes before, I am sure I saw Paquita with Shelby’s valet, Mito.”

Burke whispered to Riley, who nodded and disappeared with alacrity.

I thought of the cordiality I had often observed between Mexicans and Japanese. Was that the case in this instance? Could it be that Paquita knew something about the attack on me? Was Mito the mysterious attacker?

It was scarcely a moment later that Johnson Walcott appeared around the corner, evidently seeking his sister.

Just then Riley returned, dragging the reluctant Mito.

“Where have you been?” bellowed Burke.

The little Jap’s face was impassive.

“I was sitting just outside the servants’ quarters, sir, most of the evening,” he returned, in bland surprise.

“Think a moment,” shouted Burke, advancing close to him and peering into his face. “Who have you been talking to? Tell me, and mind you tell the truth――or it’ll go hard with you.”

“With no one, sir,” asserted Mito, positively.

Burke was by this time red in the face with rage as all that he had ever learned in his third-degree days came to the surface.

“You lie!” he exclaimed. “I saw you with――”

“Well,” demanded a voice, interrupting, “what’s all this? What has Mito been doing?”

It was Shelby Maddox, who had been attracted from the lobby by the loud voices.

“Doing enough,” returned Burke. “Some one’s taken a shot at Mr. Jameson in the garage. Now, look here, you little brown brother. Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t been with any one all the evening? Think――think hard.”

Mito protested, but Burke was not satisfied.

“Don’t try to hide it,” he urged. “This lady saw you.”

Shelby gave a quick glance at Winifred. Then he turned to Mito. “Tell him,” he commanded.

“Only Miss Paquita passed me once,” replied the Jap. “She did not say anything. I saw Mr. Jameson, too, before, on the shore by the Casino.”

It was clever, whatever else it might be. No matter what either Paquita or I might say later, Mito had protected himself. He had admitted everything and confessed nothing.

Burke was far from satisfied. He was about to turn to Winifred when her brother interposed.

“Winifred,” interrupted Johnson Walcott in a tone approaching authority, “I think you had better not get mixed up in this affair.”

“Quite right,” agreed Shelby. “I see no reason why Miss Walcott should be annoyed by this cross-examination.”

Winifred looked open defiance at her brother’s interference.

“I can promise you that if I find that Mito has been doing anything he should not, I shall be responsible for him,” smoothed Shelby.

A moment later both Winifred and her brother left. She still resented his brotherly interference.

Burke had not got anywhere with his questioning and Kennedy apparently believed that the time for such a course was not yet ripe.

“I think the best thing we can do is to get Jameson to his room,” he suggested, by way of cutting off an unprofitable examination before any damage was done.

Burke accepted the broad hint. While Shelby and Mito withdrew, Hastings and Craig between them managed to get me up to our room and to bed.

As I lay there, glad enough to be quiet, we held a hasty conference to consider the strange attack that had been made.

“What I don’t understand,” I repeated, “is how any one should know that we ever thought of visiting either that garage or the other.”

Kennedy had been saying very little. As Hastings and I talked he seemed to be thinking over something deeply. Suddenly his face registered the dawn of an idea.

“To-morrow, Hastings,” he exclaimed, “we must go into town. I want to go to your office. As for to-night, there doesn’t seem to be anything more that we can do. Burke and Riley are on guard down-stairs. I think Walter needs a good rest. So do we all. Good night, Mr. Hastings. I will see you to-morrow early.”

A night’s rest fixed me up all right and I was anxiously down in the lobby early next morning.

Fortunately nothing further of any great importance had happened during the night and I felt a sense of satisfaction at not having missed anything. Among us all we had been able to keep a pretty close surveillance on those in Westport whom we suspected might have any information. The day before had brought with it a grist of new mystery instead of clearing up the old, but Kennedy was happy. He was in his element, and the harder it was to crack the nut the more zest he put into the cracking of it.

To my surprise, the morning express found the entire Maddox family, except Irene Maddox, gathered on the platform of the quaint little station.

“What do you suppose has given them this sudden impulse to go in to town?” whispered Kennedy to Hastings.

The lawyer shrugged. “I shouldn’t be surprised if they were getting back into their normal state after the first shock,” he replied, dryly. “I think they are all going to consult their various attorneys――Shelby probably will see Harvey, and Mrs. Walcott and her husband will see Duncan Bruce.”

As we waited for the train I realized why it was that Westport was popular. The little town was not only within fair access to the city, but it was far enough away to be beyond the city’s blight. Going back and forth was so easy that each of the contending parties was able to take it as a matter of course that he should go to New York.

The crowning surprise came, however, just a moment before the express swung around the curve. The cream-colored speedster swung up to the platform, turned, and backed in with the other cars. No one could miss it. The beautiful Paquita jumped airily out, more baffling than ever in her artificiality.

As I watched her my former impression was confirmed that the notoriety which she courted was paradoxically her “cover.” She seemed to seek the limelight. In so doing did she hope to divert attention from what was really going on back-stage? It would have been a bold stroke. I expressed my idea to Kennedy. He smiled, but not with his usual indulgence. Was it his own idea, too?

Nothing occurred during the ride in to town in the chair-car, except that each was still furtively watching the other and all were watching Paquita. Paquita was trying desperately to attract the notice of Shelby. The young man seemed greatly embarrassed. As he sat beside his sister I saw that Frances Walcott was keenly appreciative of the efforts of the little dancer.

Once I excused myself on the pretext that I wanted another morning paper, and walked forward into the smoking-car. It was as I had suspected. Sanchez was there.

“I think we had better split our forces,” planned Kennedy, when I reported to him what I had seen. “Sanchez, I suppose, will trail along after Paquita. In that case, Walter, I shall leave them to you. I want to handle Shelby myself. Meet me at the laboratory and then we can go down to your office, Mr. Hastings. And, by the way, if you will take a hint from me, sir, you will be careful what you do and what you say at your office. I think you’ll understand when I see you there again.”

The astonished look on Hastings’s face was quite worth study. It was as though some one had told him to guard his thoughts. The very possibility that there could be a “leak,” which was evidently the way in which he interpreted Kennedy’s cryptic remark, had never seemed to occur to him, so sure was he about those whom he employed.

Nothing more was said about the matter, however, and as our train rolled through the under-river tube into the station the various groups began to break up as we had expected.

With a parting word from Kennedy I wormed my way through the crowd in the direction of the cab-stand and was already in a cab and half-way up the ramp to the street when, looking back through the little glass window, I saw, as I had expected, Paquita trip gaily up to the same starter and enter another. On the avenue a stop gave me ample time to tip my driver and instruct him to follow the cab that was coming up back of us. Then by settling back from the windows I was able to let Paquita’s cab pass and pick her up again without her knowing that she was being trailed. Without looking back, I knew that Sanchez had tried to follow, but it was not until we had gone several blocks and made a sudden turn into Broadway that I realized, on looking cautiously around, that somehow he had missed out. Perhaps there had not been another cab on the instant. Anyhow, I was not myself followed.

On up-town Paquita’s cab proceeded, until finally it stopped before a building which I knew to be full of theatrical agencies and offices. I could not, of course, follow her into the office into which she went, but I managed to find out that she had gone to the office that had recently been opened by a company that proposed to put on a new feature in the fall known as La Danza Mexicana. It seemed like a perfectly legitimate business trip, yet according to my idea Paquita was merely using her notoriety to attract those whom she might use for her own purposes. What interested me was whether it was purely money or a deeper motive that actuated her.

From the office of her agent she hurried over to Fifth Avenue, and there she made several lengthy stops at fashionable costumers, milliners, and other dealers and designers of chic wearing apparel. In all this there seemed to be nothing to take exception to and I became weary of the pursuit. It was not her legitimate theatrical career that interested me.

However, so it went until the lunch hour arrived. Quite demurely and properly she stopped at a well-known tea-room where tired shoppers refreshed themselves. I swore softly under my breath. I could not well follow her in, for a man is a marked card in a tea-room. To go in was like shouting in her ear that I was watching her.

Therefore, I stayed outside and, instead of lunching, watched the passing crowd of smart shoppers while the clock on the taximeter mounted steadily.

I had fidgeted in my cab for perhaps half an hour when I became aware that mine was not the only cab that was waiting in the neighborhood. In these shadowing jobs one has to keep his eyes glued on the door through which the “subject” must exit, for it is unbelievable how easily a person, even when not aware of being watched, may slip out into a crowd and disappear. Consequently I had not paid much attention to my surroundings.

But once when I leaned forward to speak to my driver, who by this time was fully convinced that I was crazy, I happened to glance across the street. At the window of another cab I saw a familiar face. Sanchez had lost Paquita at the station, but by some process of reason had picked her up again at the tea-room. I was determined more than ever now to hang on to both of them.

Luncheon over, Paquita finally emerged, still alone. What business she may have transacted over the telephone during her various stops I do not know. What I wanted was for her to feel perfectly free, in the hope that she might do something. Yet she had not given me the satisfaction of meeting a single person whom she should not have met.

Again her cab started on its round, but this time it rolled back into the theater district.

My driver almost jolted me from the seat as he stopped once. I looked ahead. Paquita’s cab had pulled up before the office of a well-known music publisher and she was getting out.

To my surprise, however, instead of entering she deliberately turned and walked back in the direction of my cab. I sank farther back into its shallow recesses, trusting that she would not glance my way.

A dainty creation of headgear intruded itself through the open window of my cab.

“You have been following me all day, Mr. Jameson,” purred Paquita in her sweetest tone, as her baffling brown eyes searched my face and enjoyed the discomfiture I could not hide. “I know it――have known it all the time. There’s another cab, too, back of you. I’ve been going about my own business――haven’t I?――making arrangements for my new show this fall. You haven’t anything――except a bill, have you? Neither has the man in the other cab. Now I’m going to go right on. You are welcome to follow.”

Before I could reply she had swept disdainfully back and had entered the building. Chagrined though I was at the way she had led the chase, I determined to stick to her, nevertheless.

In the publishing house she remained an uncommonly long time, but when at last she came out I saw that she gave a little petulant glance first to see whether I was still there.

Her cab shot away, but my man was alert and we trailed along down the avenue. Twice, now, I saw her looking back at me. That, at least, was some encouragement. Perhaps vexation might impel her to do something.

As we came to a tangle of cars crossing Longacre Square, Paquita leaned forward through the front window of her taxicab and deliberately turned the wheel that the driver was steering. The unexpected interference caused him to stop suddenly.

As my driver pulled up, there came a crash and a smashing of glass behind me. His pulling up had fortunately thrown me forward. The car in which Sanchez was riding had crashed into mine, and only my being thrown forward prevented me from receiving the shattered glass.

Instantly the traffic policeman was beside us and a crowd began to collect. Before I knew it Paquita in her taxi was off and there was no possibility of following.

Where she was going I could not now find out. Perhaps there was, as Burke suspected, a gang, and she had all day been seeking to get to their rendezvous. As I watched the officer and the crowd blankly, I had but one satisfaction. At least Sanchez could not follow, either.

Quickly I gave the policeman my name as a witness, glanced at the “clock,” and paid my taxicab bill. Sanchez saw what I did and that it was no use for him to try to get away. He paid his own bill and deliberately turned away, on foot, and walked down Seventh Avenue.

A few feet behind I followed.

He paid no attention to me, but kept on down-town, until at last I realized that we had come to the neighborhood of the railroad terminal.

At the station he turned, and I knew that he had decided to take the early train back to Westport. Still following, I went through all the motions of having also decided to take the train myself. I let Sanchez go through the gate, then at the last moment retreated and walked over to the telegraph office as the gate banged shut.

I would not have missed the appointment with Kennedy and Hastings for anything, and the train, except for one stop, was an express to Westport. A wire to Riley out there would prevent Sanchez from getting away from sight, even if he should decide to get off at the only other stop.

What the little dancer was up to was just as mysterious as ever.

X

The Detectaphone Detector

Kennedy was waiting impatiently for me at the laboratory and enjoyed a quiet laugh at my expense when I told him of my fiasco in untangling the secret of Paquita.

“Is there any news?” I asked, hastily endeavoring to change the subject.

“Yes,” he replied, glancing at his watch. “Irene Maddox and Winifred have come in to town on a later train. As nearly as I can make out they’ve joined forces. They have a common hatred of Paquita, whatever else they may lack.”

“How do you know they are here?” I queried.

“They have called me up and made an appointment to meet me at the laboratory. They ought to be here any minute, now. I’m glad you came. I shouldn’t like to meet them alone. I’d rather have some one as a witness. It’s strange that they should be seeking to have me work for them,” considered Kennedy.

“What do you mean,” I asked. “Hastings sought you out first. It may be quite natural that Irene Maddox should consult the detective retained by her former husband’s lawyer in such a case. Have any of the others been after you?”

“Yes,” he replied, thoughtfully. “After I left you this morning I had a most peculiar experience. Shelby Maddox is either the most artless or else the most artful of all of them.”

“How is that?” I inquired.

“Just as I said,” repeated Kennedy. “Shelby hurried into one of those slot-machine telephone booths in the station and I slipped into the next one. Instead of calling up, I put my ear to the wall and listened. There wasn’t anything much to what he said. It was merely a call to his lawyer, Harvey, telling him that he was on his way down-town. The strange thing came afterward. By that time the station was cleared of those who had come on the train. Shelby happened to glance into the other booth as he left his own and saw me in the act of making a fake telephone call. Instead of going away, he waited. When I came out, he looked about quickly to see if we were alone, then took my arm and hurried me into another part of the station. I didn’t know what was coming, but I was hardly prepared for what he said.”

“And that was?” I asked, eagerly.

“That I work for him, too, in the case,” exclaimed Kennedy, to my utter surprise.

“Work for him?” I repeated. “Was it a stall?”

Kennedy shook his head doubtfully. “I’m not prepared to say. It was either clever or simple. He even asked me to go down-town with him and see Harvey.”

“And you went?”

“Certainly. But I can’t say I learned anything new. I haven’t quite decided whether it was because they knew too much or too little.”

“Are you going to do it? What did you tell him?”

“I told him quite frankly that as long as I had come into the case as I was――without mentioning any names or facts――the best I could do was to see that he got a square deal.”

“Did that satisfy him?”

“Not much. But it was all that I would say. At least it gave me a chance to study him at close range.”

“What do you think of him?”

“Shelby Maddox is nobody’s fool,” replied Kennedy, slowly. “I may not know his story yet, but I have begun to get his number.”

“How about Harvey?”

“A very clever lawyer. Shelby will keep out of a great deal of trouble if he takes Harvey’s advice.”

The sound of footsteps down the hall outside interrupted us, and an instant later the laboratory door opened. Irene Maddox entered first and for a moment Winifred stood in the doorway, rather timidly, as though not yet quite convinced that she was right in coming to Kennedy.

Kennedy advanced to greet them, but still Winifred did not seem to be thoroughly reassured that the visit was just the proper thing. She looked about curiously at the instruments and exhibits which Kennedy had collected in his long warfare of science against crime, and it was evident that she would a great deal rather have had this a social visit than one in connection with the case. I guessed that it was Irene Maddox who had urged her on.

“I――we’ve come to see you about that woman, Paquita,” began Mrs. Maddox, almost before she had settled herself in one of our easy-chairs, which Craig had installed to promote confidences on the part of his clients.

Mrs. Maddox’s voice was trembling slightly with emotion and Winifred’s quick glance at Kennedy indicated that Paquita had furnished the leverage by which Mrs. Maddox had persuaded Winifred to accompany her.

“Yes,” encouraged Kennedy, “we have been watching the young lady――and others――with some interest. Do you know anything about her that you think we ought to know?”

“Know anything?” repeated Mrs. Maddox, bitterly. “I ought to know that woman.”

Her feelings were easily understood, although as far as I could see that did us very little good in getting at the real mystery that surrounded the little dancer.

“You must have noticed,” went on Mrs. Maddox, nervously, “how she is hanging around out there. For weeks and months I have been watching that woman. Sometimes I think they are all in league against me――the lawyers, the detectives, everybody.”

Kennedy was about to say something, then checked himself. How could we know but that this was merely an attempt to find out just how much it was we knew? I longed to ask about Sanchez, yet felt that it would be better not to disclose how much――or rather how little――we actually had discovered.

“Why,” she continued, “it even seems as if her hostility was leveled against Winifred, too.”

Winifred said nothing, though it was evident that she was consumed with curiosity to find out what hold, if any, Paquita had on Shelby.

“Then you really do not know who or what Paquita is?” asked Kennedy, directly.

“I know that she is an adventuress,” asserted Mrs. Maddox. “Mr. Hastings has always professed to know nothing of her. At least so he has said. Even when I have watched her I must admit I have found out only what she was doing at that time. But my intuition tells me that there is something more. Oh, Professor Kennedy, is there no such thing as _justice_ in this world? Must that woman continue to flaunt herself brazenly before me? Cannot you _do_ something?”

“You may depend on it,” assured Kennedy. “I shall make my investigation――arrive at the truth. Even my own client cannot prevent me from doing that. And if I find that an injustice is being done, you may be sure that I will do my best to set it straight. More than that I could not say even to Shelby Maddox this morning when he asked me to take up the case for him.”

Both women glanced quickly at Kennedy. The mention of Shelby’s name came, quite apparently, as a surprise to them. Winifred seemed rather more reticent now than ever before. It was evident that Irene Maddox had not succeeded in what she had intended. Yet she did not betray her disappointment.

“Thank you,” she said, rising. “Then I may expect you to help me――I mean us?”

“In every way in my power,” promised Kennedy, accompanying them to the door.

Kennedy looked after them as the door closed. “I wonder what that visit was for,” he considered as their footsteps died away.

Having no answer for the query, I attempted none.

“What has Burke been doing?” I inquired, suddenly recollecting the Secret Service man. “Have you heard anything from him to-day since we came to the city?”

“Yes,” he replied, opening a cabinet. “Burke has undertaken some work along another line in tracing out the telautomaton robbery and what may have become of that model. I haven’t heard from him and I don’t imagine that anything will develop right away in that direction.”

“What is that?” I inquired, watching Craig as he took from one cabinet an apparatus which appeared to consist of two coils, or rather sets of wires, placed on the ends of a magnet bar. He began to adjust the thing, and I saw from the care with which he was working that it must be an instrument of some delicacy.

“Just an instrument that may enable me to discover how that attack was made on you last night,” Kennedy answered, perfunctorily, forgetting even my question as he worked over the thing.

For several minutes I watched him, wondering at the strange turn of events that had sent both Shelby and Winifred secretly to Kennedy.

“By the way,” exclaimed Craig, suddenly looking at his watch, “if we are to meet Hastings and accomplish anything we had better be on our way down there.”

In the Subway Kennedy relapsed into a brown study of the events of the day, only breaking away from his reverie as, above the rattle and bang of the train, he tapped the package he was carrying.

“I was just thinking of that garage incident of yours last night,” he remarked. “What struck you as being peculiar about it?”

“The whole thing,” I repl