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

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СКАЧАТЬ Craig, it was fifty-nine, not forty-nine. This is the wrong room.”

      “I know it,” he replied. “I had it written in the book. But I want forty-nine—now. Just follow me, Walter.”

      Nervously I followed him into the room.

      “Don’t you understand?” he went on. “Room forty-nine is probably just the same as fifty-nine, except perhaps the pictures and furniture, only it is on the floor below.”

      He gazed about keenly. Then he took a few steps to the window and threw it open. As he stood there he took the parts of the rods he had been carrying and fitted them together until he had a pole some eight or ten feet long. At one end was a curious arrangement that seemed to contain lenses and a mirror. At the other end was an eye-piece, as nearly as I could make out.

      “What is that?” I asked as he completed his work.

      “That? That is an instrument something on the order of a miniature submarine periscope,” Craig replied, still at work.

      I watched him, fascinated at his resourcefulness. He stealthily thrust the mirror end of the periscope out of the window and up toward the corresponding window up stairs. Then he gazed eagerly through the eye-piece.

      “Walter—look!” he exclaimed to me.

      I did. There, sure enough, was Michael, pacing up and down the room. He had already preceded us. In his scared and stealthy manner, he had entered the Raines Law hotel which announced “Furnished Rooms for Gentlemen Only.” There he had sought a room, fifty-nine, as he had said.

      As he came into the room, he had looked about, overcome by the enormity of what he was about to do. He locked the door. Still, he had not been able to avoid gazing about fearfully, as he was doing now that we saw him.

      Nothing had happened. Yet he brushed his hand over his forehead and breathed a sigh of relief. The air seemed to be stifling him and already he had gone to the window and thrown it open. Then he had gazed out as though there might be some unknown peril in the very air. He had now drawn back from the window and was considering. He was actually trembling. Should he flee? He whistled softly to himself to keep his shaking fears under control. Then he started to pace up and down the room in nervous impatience and irresolution.

      As I looked at him nervously walking to and fro, I could not help admitting that things looked safe enough and all right to me. Kennedy folded the periscope up and we left our room, mounting the remaining flight of stairs.

      In fifty-nine we could hear the measured step of the footman. Craig knocked. The footsteps ceased. Then the door opened slowly and I could see a cold blue automatic.

      “Look out!” I cried.

      Michael in his fear had drawn a gun.

      “It’s all right, Michael,” reassured Craig calmly. “All right, Walter,” he added to me.

      The gun dropped back into the footman’s pocket. We entered and Michael again locked the door. Not a word had been spoken by him so far.

      Next Michael moved to the center of the room and, as I realized later, brought himself in direct lines with the open window. He seemed to be overcome with fear at his betrayal and stood there breathing heavily.

      “Professor Kennedy,” he began, “I have been so mistreated that I have made up my mind to tell you all I know about this Clutching— "

      Suddenly he drew a sharp breath and both his hands clutched at his own breast. He did not stagger and fall in the ordinary manner, but seemed to bend at the knees and waist and literally crumple down on his face.

      We ran to him. Craig turned him over gently on his back and examined him. He called. No answer. Michael was almost pulseless.

      Quickly Craig tore off his collar and bared his breast, for the man seemed to be struggling for breath. As he did so, he drew from Michael’s chest a small, sharp-pointed dart.

      “What’s that?” I ejaculated, horror stricken.

      “A poisoned blow gun dart such as is used by the South American Indians on the upper Orinoco,” he said slowly.

      He examined it carefully.

      “What is the poison?” I asked.

      “Curari,” he replied simply. “It acts on the respiratory muscles, paralyzing them, and causing asphyxiation.”

      The dart seemed to have been made of a quill with a very sharp point, hollow, and containing the deadly poison in the sharpened end.

      “Look out!” I cautioned as he handled it.

      “Oh, that’s all right,” he answered casually. “If I don’t scratch myself, I am safe enough. I could swallow the stuff and it wouldn’t hurt me—unless I had an abrasion of the lips or some internal cut.”

      Kennedy continued to examine the dart until suddenly I heard a low exclamation of surprise from him. Inside the hollow quill was a thin sheet of tissue paper, tightly rolled. He drew it out and read:

      “To know me is death Kennedy—Take Warning!”

      Underneath was the inevitable Clutching Hand sign.

      We jumped to our feet. Kennedy rushed to the window and slammed it shut, while I seized the key from Michael’s pocket, opened the door and called for help.

      A moment before, on the roof of a building across the street, one might have seen a bent, skulking figure. His face was copper colored and on his head was a thick thatch of matted hair. He looked like a South American Indian, in a very dilapidated suit of castoff American clothes.

      He had slipped out through a doorway leading to a flight of steps from the roof to the hallway of the tenement. His fatal dart sent on its unerring mission with a precision born of long years in the South American jungle, he concealed the deadly blow-gun in his breast pocket, with a cruel smile, and, like one of his native venomous serpents, wormed his way down the stairs again.

      My outcry brought a veritable battalion of aid. The hotel proprietor, the negro waiter, and several others dashed upstairs, followed shortly by a portly policeman, puffing at the exertion.

      “What’s the matter, here?” he panted. “Ye’re all under arrest!”

      Kennedy quietly pulled out his card case and taking the policeman aside showed it to him.

      “We had an appointment to meet this man—in that Clutching Hand case, you know. He is Miss Dodge’s footman,” Craig explained.

      Then he took the policeman into his confidence, showing him the dart and explaining about the poison. The officer stared blankly.

      “I must get away, too,” hurried on Craig. “Officer, I will leave you to take charge here. You can depend on me for the inquest.”

      The officer nodded.

      “Come on, Walter,” whispered Craig, eager to get away, then adding the one word, “Elaine!”

      I followed hastily, not slow to understand his fear for her.

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