THE EXPLOITS OF ELAINE (& Its Sequel The Romance of Elaine). Arthur B. Reeve

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СКАЧАТЬ long has Rusty been in the room?” asked Craig.

      “All night,” answered Elaine. “I wouldn’t think of being without him now.”

      Kennedy lifted the dog by his front paws. Rusty submitted patiently, but without any spirit.

      “May I take Rusty along with me?” he asked finally.

      Elaine hesitated. “Surely,” she said at length, “only, be gentle with him.”

      Craig looked at her as though it would be impossible to be otherwise with anything belonging to Elaine.

      “Of course,” he said simply. “I thought that I might be able to discover the trouble from studying him.”

      We stayed only a few minutes longer, for Kennedy seemed to realize the necessity of doing something immediately and even Dr. Hayward was fighting in the dark. As for me, I gave it up, too. I could find no answer to the mystery of what was the peculiar malady of Elaine.

      Back in the laboratory, Kennedy set to work immediately, brushing everything else aside. He began by drawing off a little of Rusty’s blood in a tube, very carefully.

      “Here, Walter,” he said pointing to the little incision he had made. “Will you take care of him?”

      I bound up the wounded leg and gave the poor beast a drink of water. Rusty looked at me gratefully from his big sad brown eyes. He seemed to appreciate our gentleness and to realize that we were trying to help him.

      In the meantime, Craig had taken a flask with a rubber stopper. Through one hole in it was fitted a long funnel; through another ran a glass tube. The tube connected with a large U-shaped drying tube filled with calcium chloride, which, in turn, connected with a long open tube with an upturned end.

      Into the flask, Craig dropped some pure granulated zinc. Then he covered it with dilute sulphuric acid, poured in through the funnel tube.

      “That forms hydrogen gas,” he explained to me, “which passes through the drying tube and the ignition tube. Wait a moment until all the air is expelled from the tubes.”

      He lighted a match and touched it to the open, upturned end. The hydrogen, now escaping freely, was ignited with a pale blue flame.

      A few moments later, having extracted something like a serum from the blood he had drawn off from Rusty. He added the extract to the mixture in the flask, pouring it in, also through the funnel tube.

      Almost immediately the pale, bluish flame turned to bluish white, and white fumes were formed. In the ignition tube a sort of metallic deposit appeared.

      Quickly Craig made one test after another.

      As he did so, I sniffed. There was an unmistakable odor of garlic in the air which made me think of what I had already noticed in Elaine’s room.

      “What is it?” I asked, mystified.

      “Arseniuretted hydrogen,” he answered, still engaged in verifying his tests. “This is the Marsh test for arsenic.”

      I gazed from Kennedy to the apparatus, then to Rusty and a picture of Elaine, pale and listless, flashed before me.

      “Arsenic!” I repeated in horror.

      I had scarcely recovered from the surprise of Kennedy’s startling revelation when the telephone rang again. Kennedy seized the receiver, thinking evidently that the message might be from or about Elaine.

      But from the look on his face and from his manner, I could gather that, although it was not from Elaine herself, it was about something that interested him greatly. As he talked, he took his little notebook and hastily jotted down something in it. Still, I could not make out what the conversation was about.

      “Good!” I heard him say finally. “I shall keep the appointment— absolutely.”

      His face wore a peculiar puzzled look as he hung up the receiver.

      “What was it?” I asked eagerly.

      “It was Elaine’s footman, Michael,” he replied thoughtfully. “As I suspected, he says that he is a confederate of the Clutching Hand and if we will protect him he will tell us the trouble with Elaine.”

      I considered a moment. “How’s that?” I queried.

      “Well,” added Craig, “you see, Michael has become infuriated by the treatment he received from the Clutching Hand. I believe he cuffed him in the face yesterday. Anyway, he says he has determined to get even and betray him. So, after hearing how Elaine was, he slipped out of the servant’s door and looking about carefully to see that he wasn’t followed, he went straight to a drug store and called me up. He seemed extremely nervous and fearful.”

      I did not like the looks of the thing, and said so. “Craig,” I objected vehemently, “don’t go to meet him. It is a trap.”

      Kennedy had evidently considered my objection already.

      “It may be a trap,” he replied slowly, “but Elaine is dying and we’ve got to see this thing through.”

      As he spoke, he took an automatic from a drawer of a cabinet and thrust it into his pocket. Then he went to another drawer and took out several sections of thin tubing which seemed to be made to fasten together as a fishing pole is fastened, but were now separate, as if ready for travelling.

      “Well—are you coming, Walter?” he asked finally—the only answer to my flood of caution.

      Then he went out. I followed, still arguing.

      “If you go, I go,” I capitulated. “That’s all there is to it.”

      Following the directions that Michael had given over the telephone Craig led me into one of the toughest parts of the lower West Side.

      “Here’s the place,” he announced, stopping across the street from a dingy Raines Law Hotel.

      “Pretty tough,” I objected. “Are you sure?”

      “Quite,” replied Kennedy, consulting his note book again.

      “Well, I’ll be hanged if I’ll go in that joint,” I persisted.

      It had no effect on Kennedy. “Nonsense, Walter,” he replied, crossing the street.

      Reluctantly I followed and we entered the place.

      “I want a room,” asked Craig as we were accosted by the proprietor, comfortably clad in a loud checked suit and striped shirt sleeves. “I had one here once before—forty-nine, I think.”

      “Fifty—” I began to correct.

      Kennedy trod hard on my toes.

      “Yes, forty-nine,” he repeated.

      The proprietor called a stout negro porter, waiter, and bell-hop all combined in one, who led us upstairs.

      “Fohty-nine, sah,” he pointed out, as Kennedy dropped a dime into СКАЧАТЬ