THE SECOND PROBLEM UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION

I.

For weeks the five-hundred-thousand-dollar reception of the Jimmy Raeltons had been heralded as the greatest event of the New York social season. The news columns had been filled with accounts of the costly preparations, the wonderful gowns, the millions in jewels that would grace the first appearance of the Raeltons in society since the Carlton-Browne reception of thirteen months before. The newspapers had retold, lest their readers should forget, the tragic story of the mysterious suicide of Mrs. Jimmy Raelton’s sister, Mrs. Donald Wreye, on the night following the Carlton-Browne affair. The consequent retirement of the Raeltons had been reviewed; the report of the ill health of Mrs. Raelton had been substantiated; and the two months’ cruise on the palatial Raelton yacht was said to have brought back the bloom to faded cheeks. And to-night the Jimmy Raeltons were formally to re-enter New York’s social scheme of things; again to fill the niche that had been vacant for thirteen months.

The small army of police herded the curious crowd from the side-walk as a black limousine drove up silently and came to a stop at the canopied curb. The door swung open, and men and women, who would stand patiently for hours to catch a mere 57glimpse of the notables they worshipped from afar, saw the first man alight. The electric globe under the awning brought out the striking whiteness of the face and hair; the contrast of the great blue circles of the smoked-glass, tortoise-rimmed library spectacles that rested lightly on the thin nose; the broad shoulders, and deep chest under the Inverness. The first arrival rapped the pavement lightly with the slim stick he carried as the apple-cheeked, black-haired man who accompanied him spoke a word to the driver and stepped beside him.

A policeman touched his hat. “Early, ain’t you, Mr. Colton?” he greeted the other.

“These things never interest me, Peters,” returned Thornley Colton, in his deep, musical voice. “A quiet chat with Jimmy and my goddaughter before the crowd arrives, then home and quiet.”

He started briskly toward the wide steps, the red-cheeked man so close that his coat-sleeve touched that of the other. The policeman turned to his partner.

“A great guy, Tom,” he observed, in a hoarse whisper. “He says he’s blind, an’ everybody else says he’s blind, but if he is, then I wish I was! That’s all.”

The two men had ascended the steps. A man of impassive face opened the door, two others took their coats and sticks. Silent-footed servants were everywhere, deftly arranging the last details before the guests should arrive. On every hand was evidence of the lavishness that would mark the reception; but it was the lavishness of good taste, not the garishness of mere money. Through the great, high hall they were conducted to the Moorish room, where Jimmy Raelton greeted them with characteristic enthusiasm. But the superkeen ears of Thornley Colton caught an undercurrent of seriousness in the host’s voice.

58“Robbery?” he asked quietly, as the slim, hollow stick he always carried found a chair.

“Scott, yes!” laughed Raelton; then, seriously: “That mind-reading stunt of yours is positively uncanny at times, Colton.”

“Simple elimination,” explained the blind problemist. “Something more serious would have been given publicity before this; something less serious would not have caused you to ask us here an hour before guests should arrive.”

“It’s more puzzling than really serious,” declared Raelton. “You know I’m so foolishly happy to-night because Dorothy is herself again that nothing else could really matter.” His face lighted up boyishly. The Jimmy Raeltons had been married five years, and society still called them the Newlyweds.

He took a small leather case from the inlaid taboret beside him, and snapped open the lid. Sydney Thames, the blind man’s secretary and constant companion, could not repress a gasp of admiration as the wonderful diamond necklace sent its thousand flashing fires toward the shaded lights above.

“This is the thing I wanted to see you about,” quizzically smiled Jimmy Raelton, as he extended the open case toward the blind man. A question would be needed here, at least.

Colton took the case, weighed it on his open palm an instant, brushed the stones ever so lightly with the tip of his forefinger, and snapped shut the lid.

“Worth fifty thousand—if it wasn’t paste,” he announced.

“Good Lord!” Raelton sank weakly into a big morris chair, the one anachronism his comfort-loving body demanded.

“To a person with highly sensitive finger-tips there can be no such thing as a fake diamond; 59because no crystal less hard will hold a sharply-defined facet edge. When, and how, was the substitution made?”

“That is just the point. Since the morning following the Carlton-Browne reception they have been in the safe-deposit vault to which only Dorothy and I have access. You know she has never used them since; she hasn’t been herself for six months or so.” A troubled light came to his eyes. “It wasn’t her sister’s death so much—it seemed to be something else. Sometimes I almost feared that she was discontented; that she didn’t want to stay at home with the kiddies any more. Her father was always a wanderer, and her grandfather died in China—you know how. But, thank God, that’s over. The two months’ cruise on the Sea Mew have made her the same old Dorothy.”

He paused an instant, then came back to the point. “I’m quite an expert in an amateur way, and I recognized the substitution instantly to-night. The discovery seemed to agitate Dorothy terribly. She always set great store by the necklace—it was my wedding-present. The thing has upset her so that she will be positively ill, unless you discover how the substitution was made, and by whom. She wouldn’t let me call the police.”

“Where is Dorothy?” asked Colton anxiously.

“She is lying down. I’m afraid this thing is going to spoil the whole evening.” Again came the troubled note. He touched a small silver bell. “I’ll call her. I want you to convince her that it isn’t worth worrying about. You can do it, because she has always looked upon you as a father.”

A servant entered, bowed at the order, withdrew.

They waited in silence for the coming of Dorothy Raelton. Thornley Colton’s mind went back to the death of Colonel Calvin, the promise given by 60the blind man that he would be a father to the two parentless girls. A look of sadness came to the thin expressive lips. He was thinking of the other beautiful daughter; the suicide that had never been explained.

The servant returned. His ruddy English face had lost a bit of its colour; his voice trembled slightly.

“Mrs. Raelton is sleeping. The door’s locked—and Dora can’t wake her.”

In three minds leaped a single, horrible thought. Jimmy Raelton leaped to his feet, dry-lipped.

“My God, Thornley!” He ran toward the door, and into the hall. Thornley Colton was at his heels, supersensitive ears following each footfall unerringly. Sydney Thames hurried after them; the servant brought up the rear. They raced up the marble stairs. In the upper hall a maid leaned against the wall, wringing her hands.

“Mr. Raelton!” she sobbed. “Oh, I can’t bear it!”

Thornley Colton had not paused; his slim stick found the closed door. He turned to face them, on his countenance an expression Sydney Thames had never seen before. He spoke to the white-faced servant.

“The guests will begin to arrive any moment, now,” he said, and his tone was as strange as the look on his face. “Tell them that Mrs. Raelton has been taken suddenly ill. The reception is postponed—indefinitely. Let no one in.” He waited a moment till the man had gone; then his hand fell on Jimmy Raelton’s shoulder. “Sydney and I will go,” he said huskily.

“She isn’t―⁠―” Raelton could not finish.

Colton shook his head sadly. “She isn’t dead, Jimmy,” he said, and stopped, with a world of suggestion in his tone.

61“Then I want you to stay,” pleaded the husband hysterically. “Nothing else matters—if she is alive.”

He thrust his shoulder against the door. The lock gave way. He staggered in; stopped short with a gasp of horror. On the wide bed lay Dorothy Raelton, unconscious, hair disarranged, priceless gown dishevelled. From one limp hand dangled a long, black opium pipe. On a low table beside the bed a sweet-oil lamp burned flickeringly. A small can of opium was overturned beside it. The needle that had cooked the drug over the flame stained the white coverlet of the bed. The pungent smell of opium smoke was in the air.

Jimmy Raelton darted across the room, flung himself on his knees beside the bed.

“My God!” he moaned in agony. “My God!”

Thornley Colton’s hand fumbled for the knob, found it.

“Come, Sydney,” he murmured softly. Mechanically Thames obeyed. The door closed softly behind them. The Jimmy Raeltons were alone.

II.

Black headlines in the morning papers told of the strange postponement of the Raelton reception. Black type told eager readers of the scene in front of the Raelton home when arriving guests were met at the door with a startling announcement: “Mrs. Raelton is ill. The reception has been postponed indefinitely.” And the door had been closed in their faces!

Eager readers learned of the silent line of servants that had filed from the rear entrance of the darkened house; the fifty thousand dollars’ worth of flowers left to wilt unseen; the caterers’ elaborate 62preparations—estimated to have cost thousands—left to spoil untasted. Much was made of the fact that Jimmy Raelton refused even to see a reporter, and all the papers, yellow and conservative alike, hinted at a sinister something that would explain a thing so unprecedented in the annals of New York society. Two of the most progressive sheets learned that Doctor Henry, the young physician who had made such rapid strides in his practice among the social leaders, had not been called, and knew nothing of Mrs. Raelton’s reported illness until told by the reporters.

In the library of his old-fashioned up-town house Thornley Colton sat with bowed head. At his feet were the crumpled papers Sydney had read to him.

“This is the saddest day of my life, Sydney,” the blind man said slowly. “I promised Colonel Calvin that I would watch over his daughters. His father died an opium fiend.”

Sydney’s eyes widened. “I never knew that!”

“Few did. I have zealously guarded the secret all my life. Not even the girls knew it, though I told Jimmy when he married Dorothy. Colonel Calvin was always afraid of the stain being in the blood. He had fought the craving, but he feared for his daughters. I laughed at him, for atavism, to me, has always seemed merely a cloak for weakness. Now I am reaping my whirlwind. One is dead by her own hand, the other an opium fiend. I can never forget my feelings when I caught the unmistakable smell of opium smoke before we opened that door.”

Silence came again, to be broken by The Fee, a red-haired, freckle-faced blue-eyed boy, who had become a part of the Colton household at the conclusion of a particularly baffling murder case.

63“Dere’s a feller an’ goil downstairs wants to see yuh. Looks like soivents, and says dere name’s Rayton.”

Only for an instant was the expression of surprise on the blind man’s face. “Send them up,” he said quietly, and he rose to meet Jimmy Raelton and his wife.

A cry of pity came to Sydney Thames’s lips as the man and woman entered. Jimmy Raelton, in an ill-fitting suit of blue, a plaid cap pulled down over his eyes, had grown an old man in a night. Mrs. Raelton, in a tawdry dress, leaned heavily on the arm of her husband, as she had leaned when their disguises took them safely past the cordon of newspaper men.

Silently Thornley Colton took a hand in each of his, the mobile face telling them what his tongue could not; silently he lead them to chairs. Not until they were seated did Jimmy Raelton speak.

“We are going away,” he said, and his tone was dead, hopeless. “We are going to fight the fight together. Dorothy wanted to say good-bye—and tell you.”

“I couldn’t go without seeing you,” Dorothy Raelton sobbed chokingly. “It will make it easier—to know that you understand. I’m glad—that Jimmy knows at last.” Her voice steadied, and she went on simply, bravely: “If it hadn’t been for little Jimmy and Dorothy, I would have done as Marjorie did—ended it all. Marjorie, too, had the curse, though I didn’t know it until that hideous morning I waked with a terrible headache and the opium pipe on the floor beside me. I screamed for my maid. Then she told me why Marjorie had written that pitiful, pleading note, begging me to take Dora because she could be trusted if anything 64happened. Dora was the only one who even suspected that my sister was an opium fiend, just as my grandfather was. Marjorie had told her that. Dora said that she had heard me going downstairs in the night, and in a dream I seem to remember going to the Chinese room and taking the opium set and small glass jar of the drug we kept as curiosities; but it seems hazy, unreal.

“I hid the set in my room; I didn’t dare risk getting it out. Every week the longing would come. I’d go blind, insane with craving, and in the morning I would wake, with the opium pipe beside me, and the little lamp still burning. Time after time I tried to hide the things, but in my blind delirium I always found them. One day I gave them to Dora for her to destroy, and that night I went and choked her until she gave them back. She had not had time to carry out my orders. I don’t remember going to her at all, but in the morning I waked with the pipe beside me, and on Dora’s throat were the marks of my fingers.”

She stopped, sobs racking her slender frame. Beside her Jimmy Raelton’s head was in his hands, his body quivering. She went on: “Jimmy thought it was nervous break-down. He insisted on a long cruise in the yacht. For two whole months I never once felt the craving! I thought it was gone! I romped and played with the children; I laughed and joked with my husband. Then we planned last night’s reception. My God! The discovery by Jimmy of the substitute diamonds in my necklace overwrought me. I went upstairs, took a headache powder, and I waked―⁠―”

She broke down utterly. Jimmy Raelton raised his bowed head. “Now you know the whole pitiful story. Will you keep our secret till we win the fight?”

65“Always,” assured Thornley Colton softly. He laid a gentle hand on Dorothy’s shoulder. “You may need help, little goddaughter; will you call on me?”

A nod answered him; she could not speak.

“The fight will be short; such faith cannot help but win quickly,” he added. His voice brought a look that was almost hopeful into the woman’s eyes, so full of assurance was it. Some subtle special sense seemed to tell him, for his thin lips curved in one of their rare smiles of encouragement. “I know you will win,” he repeated. Then, to change the subject: “I will investigate the necklace substitution while you are gone. We’ve forgotten it completely.”

Only the silent Sydney Thames saw the startled look leap to the eyes of the man and woman. Dorothy Raelton found her voice first. “Don’t!” she cried brokenly. “I took the stones. They—were all—I had—to pay some one.”

“What!” The tone of Colton’s voice startled them. In it was amazement; under it was anguish, the anguish of a man who has made a horrible mistake. “You have been paying blackmail?” His voice was almost harsh.

“Yes.” She scarcely breathed it.

“How long? To whom?” He was standing over her now; his attitude half menacing. His voice compelled an answer.

“For six months,” she whispered, “the letters have been coming. They said I must pay, or the world would be told of the curse. I could do nothing else. I burned the letters as fast as they came, and I’ve sent fifty thousand dollars to a lock-box in Philadelphia. I had to sell my diamonds, and have them replaced by imitations to make the last payment.”

66“My God, what a fool I’ve been!” There was only anguish in the blind man’s voice now. He paced the floor with tigerish strides.

“Do you ever remember cooking the opium pill?” It came like a pistol-shot.

“Cooking―⁠―” He gave her no chance to finish.

“Where did you get the headache powders you take?”

“Doctor Grayton gave me the prescription, just before he died. I have never taken any others.”

“How often do you take them?”

“Several times a week. They quiet my nerves. I have been taking them for years, renewing the prescription when necessary.”

“Did you take any on the cruise?”

“Perhaps a dozen. They prevent sea-sickness.”

“You never felt the craving for that two months?”

“Never.”

“They put you to sleep?”

“A light sleep that comes of quieted nerves.” She was answering the questions automatically, staring at him. Her husband listened, lips parted, breath coming fast. Sydney Thames was leaning forward, tense, expectant.

The blind problemist whirled from her and continued his pacing. Twice he made the length of the room.

“The inhuman devils!” they heard him mutter. “God, what devils there are!”

Jimmy Raelton could stand it no longer. “What do you mean?” he cried.

The blind man stopped before him, sightless eyes behind the round, dark glasses apparently staring deep into his. “I mean that my neglect is responsible for this.” There was terrible bitterness in his voice. “Not a breath of opium smoke has ever passed Dorothy Raelton’s lips!”

67Dumb, stupefied, they could only stare; then, as though moved by hidden springs, the man and woman leaped to their feet. But as quickly as it came the look of hope died in Dorothy Raelton’s eyes. She fell back into the chair.

“Don’t!” she sobbed. “I can’t bear it! I’ve used the horrible stuff a hundred times. I couldn’t fight against it!”

The man still stood, swaying ever so slightly, finger-nails biting into his palms, as his hands clenched convulsively.

Gently the blind man forced him down into his chair. “It is true, Jimmy,” he said, and his voice was normal once more. “I should have known it last night when the whole game was in my hands. Now I must start at the beginning. The mind I have trained for years to be purely eliminative, that I have thought impervious to outside influences, is only human, after all. Last night I believed the evidence of my four senses and did not use my brain.”

Only Sydney Thames realized what this confession cost the man who had so prided himself on his infallibility.

“I don’t understand,” came dully from Jimmy Raelton.

The blind man resumed his pacing of the room. “Dorothy doesn’t even know that the opium pill must be ‘cooked’ over the sweet-oil lamp! She doesn’t know the first thing about opium smoking! And last night there was no key on the inside of the door. It was locked from the outside! I remember distinctly that my fumbling fingers felt no key as I went out. I know—now—that none fell. Someone wanted you”—his finger pointed at Jimmy Raelton—“to see your wife!” He paused for an instant, then continued, rapidly, crisply: “The 68whole thing is the most devilish blackmail I have ever heard of. It is based on the one thing that all the past dead centuries have taught us to fear—atavism. When Dorothy’s money had gone, and the selling of the necklace stones told the blackmailers so, the husband must be the next victim of the vampire. The scene of last night was arranged so that only a touch would be needed to explode the powder-magazine the reception postponement had started if Jimmy refused to pay. The fiendish simplicity of it!”

“But who―⁠―” began Dorothy Raelton, and there was almost eagerness in her voice. Then the hopelessness came back. “But it is impossible. I know―⁠―”

“You know nothing! Where is your maid?”

A terrible expression came to Raelton’s face. “The maid! She―⁠―” The words came like curses before the problemist stopped him.

“The maid is absolutely innocent! Absolutely! Remember that above all things!” cried Colton. “Where is she?”

“I sent her to mail a letter so that she would be out of the way when we started. I wouldn’t even trust her,” Jimmy Raelton answered slowly.

“To whom was the letter addressed?”

“To you. I didn’t want to come here, but Dorothy insisted.”

“Did you get a letter from the blackmailer this morning?”

Silently Jimmy Raelton took a letter from his pocket and extended it. Colton received it eagerly, jerked out the inclosure, laid it face down on the desk. His hypersensitive finger-tips brushed lightly the reversed, raised words the typewriter keys had driven through the paper as he read aloud slowly:

69“Mr. Raelton.

“Sir,—May be you don’t know it, but your wife smokes hop. If you don’t want the wurld to get wise, send 25 one-thousand-dollar bills to lock-box 117, Philadelphia. Don’t register. We’ll take a chance they land safe. If you’re too up in the air to-day give you till to-morrow, but put a personal in the Telegram saying when. And do it, too!”

The blind man paused an instant, then continued: “The fact that they want the money in thousand-dollar bills proves that the blackmailers are persons who can pass them without question, despite the childish attempt at illiteracy. They also know that the money would arrive safely without registry, which would necessitate signing a receipt. The fact that they want the money sent to a place so easily watched as a public lock-box proves that they have some means of getting their hands on it before it gets there!”

He grasped the telephone. “Six thousand Greeley. Telegram? Take a personal for the next edition. Ready? ‘Lock-box 117. Not even twenty-five cents.—J. R.’ That’s all. On the street in an hour? Charge it to Thornley Colton. Right.”

They listened, white-faced; he shot a question at Dorothy before a protest could be voiced:

“Have you ever called in Doctor Henry?”

“There are things one can’t tell even one’s physician,” she said simply. “Jimmy called him, once, when he thought I was suffering from nervous break-down. Doctor Henry never suspected, couldn’t suspect. He told Jimmy that his plans for a two months’ cruise were excellent. That is the only time I have seen him during this awful six months. He has dropped in several times to see the children, but I have been out.”

“A curious coincidence,” mused Colton idly; then his questions took a new turn. “You had no suspicion that your sister was an opium fiend?”

70“No—I wouldn’t have believed—if―⁠―” The words choked in her throat.

“Didn’t you drift apart after her marriage?”

“Donald Wreye turned out a cad!” blurted Raelton. “You know that as well as I! He spent every cent of Marjorie’s money. There wasn’t a penny of the hundred thousand her father left when she died. Wreye tried to borrow ten thousand from me five months ago, and I ordered him from the house!”

“Five months ago?” murmured Colton. “He must have got it from someone. I know he was on the ragged edge about that time.” He turned away from them and jabbed two desk-buttons. “You are going back home now. I want you to slip in the way you came. Shrimp will go with you.”

He turned to face The Fee, who had answered one button. “The reporters will probably hold you up, thinking you servants. Let Mr. and Mrs. Raelton slip past, then let the newspaper men get the information that Mrs. Raelton had a serious heart-attack, also that Doctor Henry was asked not to divulge the fact that he had been called. I’ve rung for the machine. It will take you within two or three blocks of your home. Walk the rest of the way, and stay indoors until you hear from me. Now this is important: I want you to give Shrimp two of the headache powders you have been taking, without the knowledge of the maid or any one else. Can you?”

Mrs. Raelton nodded dumbly.

“No one is to know that you have seen me. No one!”

He sat down at the desk and wrote rapidly for a moment.

“Send this telegram on your way back, Shrimp, 71and tell Michael not to wait for you. Sydney and I want to use the machine.”

He held out his hands to the man and woman. “Good-bye, for a little while,” he said. Silently he watched them out, then he turned toward Sydney.

“Tell John to serve us a cold lunch immediately.”

For the first time in an hour Sydney Thames spoke. “Where are we going?” he asked curiously.

“To see Donald Wreye.”

III.

Society had never called the marriage of Marjorie Calvin and Donald Wreye a brilliant one. Seven years before Marjorie had entered New York society, and society had knelt at her feet. She had many offers of marriage; all were laughed aside. Then came Donald Wreye, big, blond, masterful. He carried the little black-haired girl off her feet, swept the other suitors aside like chaff. He had neither money nor family. By sheer doggedness he had fought his way to a ten-thousand-dollar position in the Street. Society had pleaded with Marjorie Calvin. Thornley Colton had pleaded. But she loved with the love that only women of the Southland feel. They eloped.

For five years the marriage had seemed ideal. Then came the last year. Marjorie’s sunny nature changed completely. Wreye was constantly at his club, drinking, gambling. Thornley Colton was received almost coldly by the girl he loved as a daughter. Then she was found in her room, the pistol she had used beside her.

Wreye cast restraint to the winds then. His position was lost because of dissipation. He had opened an office of his own, and although he was 72known to do comparatively little business, for the past few months he had seemed to have plenty of money. But to the men and women he had known in the old days he became a pariah.

And it was to his office that Colton and Sydney Thames started in the big machine an hour later. The blind man’s lips were a thin, straight line; the bloodless face sinister in its grimness. What his thoughts were none could tell. Sydney’s were a maze of conflict. The astounding assertion of Colton’s that Dorothy Raelton had never smoked opium had carried him off his feet, mentally, when it was made, but now, with sober afterthought, came the utter absurdity of it. Dorothy had known—known—that the blind craving could only be satisfied by the drug, and she had used it. It was not within the range of human possibility that she could be mistaken. And they had seen.

The car came to a stop before a tall office-building near Wall Street. Colton, cane in hand, stepped to the side-walk, and, with only the touch of Sydney’s sleeve against his to guide him, made his way to the elevator. On an upper floor they halted before the door with its plain announcement:

“Donald Wreye, Broker. Odd Lots.”

Following Thornley Colton’s knock came the slam of a hastily-shut drawer, and a gruff invitation to enter. The smile of welcome faded as the heavy-featured man with the tawny hair saw his visitors.

“Well?” he snapped ungraciously, slumping into the swivel chair without even inviting them to be seated.

Thornley Colton’s slim stick located a chair before he answered. “You won’t be well very long unless you keep away from that black bottle in the drawer,” he said grimly.

73Wreye jumped to his feet with an oath. “That bottle’s my own affair,” he snarled. “I’ll drink when I damn’ please! I’m not in your bootlicking set any more. I got―⁠―” He stopped suddenly. “Get down to cases! This is my busy day.”

The blind man picked up the chair and placed it directly before the big man, not two feet from him. “I want you to answer a few questions.” He said it simply, quietly, but some indefinable timbre of his voice made it a command.

“I’ll answer if I see fit!” blustered Wreye.

“You’ll answer whether you want to or not.” Still that quiet voice; the velvet covering for the will of steel beneath it. Sydney Thames held his breath as he watched the two men. One, a veritable giant, clumsy in his very bigness, face flushed with anger and liquor; the other, half a head shorter, with the chest and shoulders of an athlete, belied by the well-tailored slimness the faultless clothes gave him; face and hair white, accentuated by the big circles of the smoked library-glasses, his cane, held idly between the slim, supersensitive fingers, touching the floor a few inches from Donald Wreye’s foot.

“I’ll see about that!” blustered Wreye, and the words seemed foolishly puerile.

“When did you first discover that your wife was an opium fiend?” It was put so unexpectedly, so baldly, that even Sydney Thames gasped.

The livid fury mounted to the face of Wreye. “By God! You―⁠―” His voice trembled with unleashed passion.

Knife-like Thornley Colton’s voice cut in: “Answer me!”

And, like lightning, the answer came—a vicious, smashing right fist straight at the face of the seated blind man!

74The exact sequence of ensuing events could never be told by Sydney, for the simple reason that his eyes were incapable of following the moves of the man who was sightless. He remembered leaping to his feet with a cry of horror as the blind man’s chair toppled over. Then he saw a purple-faced, cursing man straining and tugging to release the arms that were being slowly doubled behind him. A crash of a great body hurled downward in the heavy swivel chair, and Thornley Colton, unruffled, breathing accelerated but a trifle, straightened the tortoise-rimmed glasses and smiled down at the man he had so easily mastered.

Mechanically Sydney righted the chair and picked up the blind man’s cane.

“Thanks,” murmured Colton absently, and Sydney Thames gasped in amazement at the smile he saw on the thin lips of the problemist. It was a smile of pure joy; the joy of a man who has learned something more easily than he had expected.

“Don’t you know that a seated man can’t leap to his feet without a warning move of the foot on the floor?” Thornley Colton asked quietly. “My cane told me what you were going to do the instant you knew yourself. Do you want to proceed conversationally or physically?” he finished grimly.

“I could kill you for that!” The big man’s voice was like a sob.

“It was raw,” apologized Colton, but both knew he was referring to the question he had asked, and not the vicious blow, or the struggle. Then the menace came again to his voice. “Where did you get that ten thousand you needed so badly five months ago?”

The effect of this question was fully as startling, in a totally different way, to Sydney Thames as 75the other had been. The red rage receded from Wreye’s face, the snarl went from the lips; a sneering smile came.

“So you come from my lily-fingered brother-in-law, eh? Hasn’t got the nerve to come himself, I suppose?”

“Where did you get it?” repeated Colton.

“Oh, I’ll tell you quick enough. I got it from Jimmy Raelton!”

If this reply was unexpected, it did not cause the slightest change of expression on the face of Thornley Colton.

“Quite strange that he should have given you the money after he had so emphatically refused it once before, wasn’t it?” he observed quietly.

The black scowl came back to Donald Wreye’s face. “The letter that came with the money was devilish plain. The ten thousand was to keep me away from him and his wife. I was told that I’d get something worse than mere loss of position if I even told where it came from. Now I suppose he wants it back.”

“Oh, no,” assured Colton, as he rose. “He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“What do you want, then?” There was snarling suspicion in the voice now.

“Information—which I got.” The blind man smiled down curiously at the scowling man; then the smile went as quickly as it came. “What became of Marjorie’s hundred thousand dollars?” he jerked out.

“She―⁠―” Wreye’s jaws snapped together, the big shoulders hunched aggressively. “If you’re so damn’ clever, find out!” he challenged sullenly.

Sydney Thames could see the man’s huge muscles tighten under the coat, as if he expected force once 76more, and was prepared to meet it. But Colton only nodded and turned toward the door.

“I will,” he promised grimly. “And I’m going to have you on hand when I make the discovery.”

It was not until they were on the side-walk outside that a word was spoken.

“A man like that makes my blood boil!” ejaculated Sydney Thames.

“Yes?” replied the blind man seriously, but the rising inflection made it enigmatical. His beckoning finger brought a leather-lunged newsboy.

“Latest Telegram?”

It was thrust into his hand.

“Did Shrimp see the reporters, Sydney?” he asked, as he handed the paper to Thames and stepped into the car.

“The heart-stroke story is on the first page.”

“Good! Then the advertisement I telephoned must be in. Take us to Doctor Henry’s home, Michael.”

IV.

With plenty of money, a distinguished appearance, and the manners of a courtier, Doctor Charles V. Henry had entered New York society three years before, with letters of introduction from prominent men and women in Paris. He soon opened an office in the fashionable up-town residential district. He had an independent fortune—his bachelor apartments cost him fifteen thousand a year—but it pleased him to follow his profession, and when Doctor Grayton died he fell natural heir to his society practice.

“Do not tell me that you are ill, Mr. Colton!” he laughed, as he ushered the blind man and Sydney into his quietly luxurious office half an hour after they had left Donald Wreye.

77“Old Hippocrates and I are sworn enemies,” smiled the problemist. “I came to get a little professional information.”

“Yes?” politely from the physician, as he accepted a proffered cigarette.

“It is this.” Colton spoke seriously; all trace of the smile had gone. “Is there any medicinal cure for opium craving?”

The heavy lashes of the doctor veiled his eyes as he looked down thoughtfully at the floor. “There are several reputed cures,” he said finally. “The most effective, and simple, probably, is rice powder and morphia. The morphia satisfies the violent craving at first, then the drug is diminished gradually, until the patient is satisfied with the harmless rice powder. This is effective, however, only in the first stages.”

“I am speaking of atavistic craving. The opium craving, having skipped one generation, appears doubly strong in the next.”

“You mention a rare case,” said Doctor Henry slowly; “and an incurable one. The effect of opium smoking, primarily, is a sensation of the nerves, or, rather, lack of sensation. The nerves feel the craving first. When that craving finds lodgment in the brain, the case is hopeless. With the inherited craving the process is absolutely reversed. The seat of the trouble is in the brain before the nerves know the drug, and when the nerves once feel the satisfied craving, it becomes a monomania. There is no cure.”

For a full minute there was silence in the office. Thornley Colton blew thoughtful smoke-rings toward the ceiling. Sydney Thames was conscious of a strange, new feeling toward the man he loved; the man who had picked him up as a bundle of baby-clothes on the banks of the English river that had 78given him the only name he had ever known. The feeling was almost bitter. He could not keep his mind from the man and woman that Colton had sent back to their home but a short time before, full of hope, of joy. Now he realized that the words had been but empty encouragement. And there was no hope!

Thornley Colton spoke again. “I disagree with you, doctor. There is a cure!” He had risen to his feet; his voice trembled with vehemence.

The physician, startled from his usual professional calmness, was on his feet, staring. Colton took a step forward, stumbled blindly against a chair, his hands thrust out gropingly. Before Sydney Thames could reach him, Doctor Henry was again the cool physician. He extended a hand, and led the blind man back to his seat.

“I forgot myself,” apologized the blind man huskily. “This thing has unnerved me.” He swallowed hard, his voice became normal. “The time for equivocation is past, doctor; I’m going to be frank. Dorothy Raelton is an opium fiend!”

The physician half rose again from his chair in amazement. “Why—why—such a thing is incredible!” he gasped.

Briefly, dispassionately, Colton told him of the night before. “Now,” he continued, “for the cure.” Again there was excitement in his voice. “Early to-morrow morning the Raeltons start for a year’s cruise on their yacht. I am making all the arrangements. They will go to the South Pacific, and keep wholly out of touch with the world, Mrs. Raelton will not take her maid, Jimmy will not even have his man. They will be absolutely alone, except for the crew. What do you think of that?”

Doctor Henry’s fingers ceased their nervous drumming on the chair-arm, his lowered eyes raised. 79“It may be effective,” he admitted, in his deepest professional tones. “At what time—do they start?”

“With the seven-o’clock tide. To-night Mrs. Raelton is going to receive a few intimate friends, and explain last night’s postponement. By the way”—he took the newspaper he had purchased from his pocket—“I used your name in explaining to the reporters the cause of last night’s affair. I knew you wouldn’t object.” The physician took the paper eagerly.

The problemist was almost to the door before he remembered another question. “Did you ever suspect that Mrs. Donald Wreye was an opium fiend?” he asked.

The unexpectedness of the question made Doctor Henry forget his usual suave manner for an instant, and his voice was almost sharp as he replied: “She was not! Her death was―⁠―” He stopped suddenly; then, in a different tone, “I am going to meet your frankness with frankness,” he said slowly. “I have always thought Mrs. Wreye’s suicide was a natural result of an utter breaking of her hypersensitive nervous system.”

“Her husband?” put in Colton.

“Yes!” emphatically.

“Marjorie Wreye’s death was not a suicide!” Colton spoke quietly, but in his tone was that ominous menace Sydney Thames had noticed so many times that day. “It was deliberate murder! Good-day, doctor.”

He extended his hand. It was taken by the serious-faced physician. Thornley Colton nodded a jerky farewell, and hurried from the office, his brain automatically counting the steps it had registered when he entered.

In the car, speeding homeward, Sydney Thames drew a long breath.

80“Great Scott!” he murmured. “What a villain he is!”

“Doctor Henry?” There was mild surprise in the blind man’s voice.

“Donald Wreye,” corrected Sydney shortly. “Hanging is too good for him!”

“Did you notice the almost curious resemblance between the deep professional tones of Doctor Henry and the ordinary voice of Wreye?” asked the problemist seriously.

Without giving Thames a chance to reply he leaned forward to speak to the driver. “Take us to the nearest drug-store telephone pay-station, Michael,” he ordered. And as the car turned in toward the curb he explained to Sydney: “I must tell the Raeltons of my plans; also get twenty grains of trional and a heavy rubber band. Trional is one of the few harmless narcotics. The rubber band is highly important. It is going to trap the most inhuman criminal I have ever known!”

V.

Sydney Thames paced the library floor impatiently. Where was Thornley Colton? For three hours he had asked himself that question. The blind problemist had spent fully half an hour in the closed telephone booth at the drug-store after he had purchased two morphia powders and half a dozen strong rubber bands. Then, when Michael had driven them home, Sydney had been curtly ordered from the machine, and the eager-eyed Shrimp had taken his place as guide.

As he walked he tried to piece together the events of the day; to discover some loose end in the snarl of circumstances. But his mind refused to find logic in the tangle of statements, of events that 81apparently led nowhere. Donald Wreye was a villain. He had driven his wife to suicide after squandering her fortune. That was certain. But what part had he in the life of Dorothy Raelton? Why had Jimmy Raelton secretly sent him ten thousand dollars after openly refusing it? Why had Raelton pretended such bitterness against his brother-in-law that morning? Why had Colton made the astounding statement that Dorothy Raelton had never smoked opium, and then sought a physician’s advice for a possible cure? Why had the blind man remarked the similarity of Donald Wreye’s voice to that of Doctor Henry? These, and a hundred more, raced back and forth through his brain like a flying shuttle. He took out his watch for the fiftieth time; then turned eagerly as the blind man hurried into the room.

With a sigh of weariness Thornley Colton dropped into a chair and lighted a cigarette; when he spoke there was weariness in his voice.

“A strange case, Sydney,” he said slowly, as though he had accepted this first quiet opportunity for retrospection. “The strangest I have ever known. A crime so damnably ingenious that even I—who have made a study of crime and criminals for years—did not recognize it. A crime so infernally clever that even the victim refuses to believe that it is a crime. A criminal who could confess this minute, and be laughed to scorn by any jury in the land. It is a crime unique in the annals of crime.”

He took a telegram from his pocket. “Here is the answer to a query I sent regarding the lock-box in Philadelphia.”

Sydney took it and read:

“Lock-box 117 one of six rented to Philadelphia Insurance Co. for past five years.”

82“That means an accomplice there!” ejaculated Sydney.

“It proves my former statement that the blackmailer never allowed the money to get to that box. And there could be only one method of interception in this case. It was never mailed!”

“But Mrs. Raelton said―⁠―” began Sydney dazedly.

“She also said she was an opium fiend,” interrupted Colton brusquely. Again his hand went to his pocket; on his palm as he extended it were two white, folded papers. “These are the powders Shrimp brought. The papers have been changed by me, but these powders have been used to mask the weapon of a fiend. Get me a glass of water.”

Mechanically Sydney obeyed. He returned in a moment with the water and a question.

“But Mrs. Raelton declared that Doctor Grayton had given her those powders?” he objected.

“Yes.” Thornley Colton carefully unfolded one. “And Doctor Grayton has been dead two years.” He held the paper, opened, between his thumb and forefinger. “These powders were used to cause the suicide of Marjorie Wreye and make Dorothy Raelton, to all intents and purposes, an opium fiend!” He raised the powder to his lips, dropped it on his tongue. Sydney could not repress a gasp of horror. The blind man took a sip of the water, and stood up, fingers feeling the crystalless watch in his pocket. “It is seven o’clock, Sydney, time we were starting for the Raelton home. The machine is waiting.”

Thames licked his dry lips. “My God, Thorn!” he choked. “It isn’t—poison?”

“No.” The blind man’s smile held no humour. “These powders are perfectly harmless. Doctor 83Grayton was a careful practitioner, and his prescriptions have helped my headaches before.”

“But what—how―⁠―” gulped Sydney, amazed into incoherence by this new convolution.

“I’ll tell you later,” promised Thornley Colton. “I can’t now. There is too much at stake to spoil with premature explanations.”

He took his hat and coat from the tree, and hurried down the stairs, Sydney following. In the automobile the blind man lay back in the deep seat, only rousing when the machine came to a stop before the Raelton home. The awning canopy was gone now; there was no waiting crowd. Another machine came to a stop behind them; where it had come from Sydney did not know. Then came a feminine greeting; the blind man lifted his hat, and hurried to the other car unerringly.

“How are you, Mrs. Neilton, and you, Mrs. Bracken, also your husbands?” The assumed cheeriness in the voice seemed perfect to the listening Sydney Thames. As the blind man assisted the women to alight, Thames was surprised to note that they were all strangers to him. As Colton’s constant companion and guide he knew most of the blind man’s friends, though his memory of faces was not to be compared with the blind problemist’s wonderful memory of voices.

Sydney was introduced to the men and women as Thornley Colton’s secretary; they were presented to him as friends of the Jimmy Raeltons, who had come to see them on the eve of the departure for the South Pacific.

Together they mounted the steps. Thornley Colton rang the bell. And the door was opened by the red-haired Shrimp!

“The servants is all gone,” explained the boy, as he closed the door after them. “All but Mrs. 84Raelton’s maid. Mr. Raelton’s in the Moorish room.”

But at the first sound of their voices Jimmy Raelton had hurried out to meet them; his face was still haggard, and in the eyes was a piteous expression of pleading.

“Where is Mrs. Raelton?” asked Thornley Colton quietly.

“She is lying down. I’ll call her.” Raelton had not even nodded to the two men and the women who were quietly watching.

“Wait!” Thornley Colton grasped his arm. Some one was coming up the steps outside. The door-bell rang. Shrimp opened it, and into the hall stumbled Donald Wreye! His bloodshot eyes blinked in the bright light as he glared at them, his hands twitched at his sides. He hunched his great shoulders, and clenched his fists to get a grip on himself.

“Where’s―⁠―” he began, in the deep, hoarse voice so like that of the physician.

From above them came a frightened scream—a woman’s scream.

“Mr. Raelton! Mr. Raelton!” It was the maid.

He bounded toward the stairs, the others at his heels. At the top was the maid, weeping and wringing her hands.

“She told me to get myself something to eat, and I wasn’t downstairs twenty minutes,” she cried hysterically. “And I found her―⁠―”

Jimmy Raelton dashed past her. Sydney felt Colton brush past him, and realized that somehow he had gotten behind the others when they started.

At the door of the room where they had stopped the night before they halted again. The door was not even closed this time, and once more their eyes 85took in the same scene. But the electrics were out now, only the flickering rays of the sweet-oil lamp shone on the sleeping woman and the opium-pipe at her side.

“My God! Again!” The words came in sobs from Jimmy Raelton.

He tried to leap forward, but the outstretched hand of Thornley Colton stopped him. Then the others saw the blind man dart across the room to the bed without a false move; saw him pick up a white, dangling arm, brush his fingers up the whole length of it, under the flowing sleeve of the loose kimono, then stop at the wrist. They were all around him now. He straightened up to face them.

“It’s something more, this time,” he said huskily. “Mrs. Raelton is dead!”

“Dead!” the terror-stricken word came from the maid. The others seemed suddenly turned to stone.

Silently Colton held the arm for her to feel the pulse. Her fingers found the artery, her face went dead white. They could hear the fluttering gasp of her breath as she dropped the arm.

Raelton brushed past her; his trembling fingers searched for a single faint heart-beat. A cry of agony burst from him. Colton gently drew him away.

“Phone Doctor Henry, Dora!” he ordered sharply. Then he seemed to sense that the maid was staring at Donald Wreye, who stood in the centre of the room, swaying back and forth, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“You, Wreye!”

The blind man’s voice seemed to galvanize Donald Wreye into action. He whipped a revolver from his pocket.

“Like Marjorie, eh?” His laugh seemed insane. “Get out of here, all of you!”

86He stood beside the door-way, the revolver threateningly sweeping the silent men and women. Jimmy Raelton tensed his body for a spring, but Thornley Colton’s hand viced his arm.

“We can do nothing,” he whispered.

Like sheep they filed past the menacing pistol, the two men and women who had met them outside going first. In the hall-way they stopped.

“Straight ahead!” ordered Wreye. He spoke over his shoulder to the maid. “Call Doctor Henry,” he sneered. “Go downstairs and call him.”

The girl’s limbs seemed hardly able to support her as she walked past him to the head of the stairs. He turned his attention again to the driven men and women. Sydney’s eyes caught a glimpse of a portiered door-way at their left, but Colton’s grip on his arm held him. Down the hall they went. A door was open at the extreme end, the key in the outside of the lock.

“In there, all of you!” ordered Wreye.

The women stumbled in. The men followed. The door slammed behind them. The key turned. Outside they heard running footsteps.

“He’s gone down the backstairs,” muttered one of the men.

The dot of light at the keyhole disappeared.

“He’s put out the lights,” hoarsely whispered the other.

Thornley Colton took something from his pocket. He inserted it in the keyhole; they heard the bolt slip back.

“He’ll return,” he whispered. “You four stay here and kick at the door. The darkness means nothing to me. I’m going to take Sydney and Raelton outside to watch. Give us a minute, and then begin your noise.”

87He opened the door without a sound. His hands on the two men’s arms drew them out. The blackness of the unlighted hall was impenetrable, but the blind man pulled them forward almost on a run. Sydney’s feet mechanically obeyed the pulling arm; Raelton, still in a daze, was merely an automaton obeying the will of a master. The blind man thrust them through the portieres Sydney had noticed before.

“Not a sound!” he warned, as he dragged them down to the floor, his fingers biting deep into their arms.

The house echoed with the blows of feet and fists on the door of the room they had just left. A door slammed downstairs. They heard the voice of The Fee, shrill with fright.

“Dere all locked in back!”

Hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs. They heard a woman’s voice whisper; a man’s deep, hoarse voice in answer. Sydney’s muscles grew tense. It was the heavy voice of Donald Wreye!

“She’s dead, I tell you!” trembled the maid. They were passing the door now.

The man’s answering whisper sounded like the growling of an animal. “You little fool!” he hissed. “You let the other get away from us, and this one was worth a million―⁠―”

The words ended in a woman’s scream. They heard the sound of a falling body. A man’s curse. A short struggle. Then the dull impact of fist against flesh. Thornley Colton’s gripping hands relaxed. He jumped through the sheltering portieres. His voice cut the darkness:

“Stop, Wreye, stop! Doctor Henry is unconscious! Shrimp!”

The incandescents leaped to light.

88On the floor was the maid, senseless. Near her was Doctor Henry, limp, torn, his face bruised and beaten. Standing over him was Donald Wreye, panting, trembling.

The two men who had stayed in the locked room came running forward, shining handcuffs in their hands.

“Handcuff Mrs. Henry,” ordered Colton. “She has only fainted.” He turned to face the still-dazed Jimmy Raelton and Sydney. “There is the atavistic vampire!” He touched the limp body of the physician as though it was a snake. “God knows how many lives he has ruined with his devilish schemes. He blackmailed Marjorie Wreye out of a hundred thousand dollars, and murdered her as surely as though his finger had pulled the trigger that sent the bullet crashing into her brain. He made Donald Wreye a pariah. And he almost succeeded in ruining the lives of you and Dorothy.”

The name aroused Jimmy Raelton.

“Dorothy!” he cried brokenly. “He killed Dorothy!”

The blind man’s hand fell gently on his shoulder. “It was necessary that she should sleep through it all,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think she could stand another dose of the doctor’s morphia, so the powder she took was trional powder. She will wake in an hour, suffering no ill effects. If you’ll remove the tight rubber band I put on her arm under the kimono sleeve the blood will flow back through the pulse.”

VI.

Sydney and Thornley Colton were back in the library of the old-fashioned house. The blind man had removed the tortoise-rimmed glasses, and around his head and over his eyes was an alcohol-soaked 89bandage to relieve the splitting headache the loss of his usual four hours of darkness in the afternoon had produced.

“Yes, it was melodrama, Sydney,” he admitted. “But it was necessary. It was carefully staged to shatter the nerves of the cool Dora, and arouse the doctor’s anger at what he thought was a mistake of his accomplice. That last resulted in the angry confession we overheard. I knew his temper would give way under certain conditions, and I made those conditions. Shrimp was stationed downstairs to let him in at the proper moment, and also to keep the maid and the doctor from confidences until they were upstairs, where they could hear the door-pounding, and would suppose we were all together. Of course, the quartet of men and women were private detectives posing as guests to deceive the maid. They were stationed around the corner with orders to follow right behind us. Wreye was across the street from the Raelton house, so that he could run over and ring the bell a moment after we entered.”

“But how did Doctor Henry happen to be there?” demanded the puzzled Sydney.

“Shrimp, mimicking the maid’s voice, called him up the minute our machine appeared, and told him that Mrs. Raelton was dead. He rang off before the doctor could get in a word. But that gave Henry all the time he needed to get there. Shrimp says the physician fumed and fretted in the vestibule fully three minutes before the boy heard the door-pounding that was the signal to admit him.”

“But I thought Donald Wreye―⁠―” began Sydney helplessly.

“It was Doctor Henry and the maid from the first. Pure elimination and the headache powders told me that.”

90“But you said the powders were harmless, that Doctor Grayton was careful,” objected Sydney.

“Their harmlessness was the crux. It put them above suspicion, but when it became necessary to impress Dorothy Raelton with the fact that she was a hopeless opium fiend the powder the maid gave her was a heavy dose of morphia, which is the base of opium, and produces almost the same after-effects. Of course, as soon as Dorothy became unconscious the outfit was arranged for her awakening. Dorothy’s highly-strung nervous system, like that of her sister, made it easy for a strong mind like that of the maid to make her know—know—that she had smoked the drug in a blind delirium of craving. And the wonderful suggestive stories of the maid, and the fake finger-marks on her throat, made the thing complete. I understood them all when I heard of the blackmail, but it was necessary to impress the Raeltons with Dora’s innocence so that she would be unsuspicious until the time came for the dénouement.

“The ten thousand I knew Wreye must have got puzzled me at first, though it didn’t seem possible that he could be in the plot. The interview in the morning proved his utter incapability of such a thing. The game required a cool, iron-nerved man. His actions during our talk proved conclusively that he was neither. Five minutes’ conversation with Doctor Henry gave me all I wanted to know. His coolness, his nerve, the fact that he had called at the Raelton home several times when Mrs. Raelton was out, ostensibly to see the children, but really to see the maid, the clever way he blamed Wreye for Marjorie’s suicide, his eager desire to know at what time the Raeltons sailed in the morning, the manner in which he took the paper he knew should contain the personal, were all guide-posts on the 91right track. His beautifully clever explanation why the opium craving I described could not be alleviated was intended to show me my helplessness. But it gave me what I wanted. Pretending to stumble, I got his hand in mine; my finger was on his pulse—the Keyboard of Silence. He knew I was going to tell him of Dorothy! Though his face was a mask, his heart-beats showed the nervousness underneath; the nervousness no eye could have detected. That was the final proof.

“Then I realized his real cleverness. He had sent the money to Wreye with a forged note, apparently from Raelton. The maid had undoubtedly told him of Wreye’s need and attempt to borrow from his brother-in-law, and the doctor was afraid that Wreye, in a hot-headed rage at continued refusals, would blurt out Marjorie’s trouble, and cause a premature confession from Dorothy before the blackmailer had gotten her firmly in his clutches. Henry was overlooking no possibility, and the ten thousand was a paltry amount, beside what he expected to get. Of course, you see how he really got the money into his hands? The envelopes containing the bills, given to a trusted maid to mail to the fake lock-box, were merely handed over to the real vampire. There was no chance of detection.

“This afternoon Shrimp and I went to Wreye’s office and explained the whole game to him. He refused to believe, at first, because Marjorie had confessed five months before her death that she was an opium fiend. Wreye was more of a man than we ever thought. He hid the fact from the world. He let her go her own way. He didn’t suspect the blackmailing, because Marjorie probably feared to tell him, lest his temper should lead him to expose the secret in his efforts to seek out the blackmailer. And when she died, penniless, he 92supposed she had lost her money gambling, the usual passion that follows opium smoking. He kept quiet, but naturally he was bitter against the whole world.

“But I finally persuaded him to do his part in trapping the vampire. Remember the similarity of the two voices? That was my trump card. I knew that my story of the Raeltons’ early departure and the curt advertisement would rouse the doctor to drastic action, and force him to call up Dora, and give new instructions. That was what I wanted—it would make her unsuspicious when the second call I planned came. It worked like a charm. She never suspected the voice. It was then, by the way, that we learned Dora was really Mrs. Henry, and that she was getting tired of her part. We learned, also, that Mrs. Raelton was to be given an extra heavy dose of morphia, so that it would be impossible for her to get away in the morning. Doctor Henry needed time, you see.

“Wreye, impersonating the doctor over the phone, gave her new instructions. The same plan was to be followed, but the doctor would send her two new powders—they were my trional powders; I wouldn’t take a chance on morphia again—and she was to arrange the opium set as usual, and scream for Jimmy as soon as Donald Wreye arrived. Then, if anything went wrong, she was to foist suspicion upon Wreye, who, she was told, was on the verge of delirium tremens, and would be sent by the doctor on some pretext.

“Donald, as you saw, could hardly control himself, but that made him perfect in her eyes, though I had to stay behind a second after you started upstairs to warn him, and I also had to give him his cue in the room before he acted. My little trick with the rubber band utterly unnerved 93the maid, who supposed that her husband had really sent poison. So, when the doctor got there, they were at cross-purposes, and the angry betrayal we heard was the logical result.”

For a minute there was silence; then Sydney Thames spoke. “But Wreye, why did you let him―⁠―” There was no need to finish.

“It was pure brutishness, Sydney,” confessed Thornley Colton slowly. “The brutishness that makes us think of physical revenge before we think of the law. There are crimes so foul that we want to pound, to tear their perpetrators. The driving to death of one innocent girl and the nearly successful attempt to make a mental wreck of Dorothy Raelton, who had never known the taste of opium smoke in her life, is one of them. My fingers itched for Doctor Henry’s throat. But Donald Wreye’s right came first. He took it. I am glad.”

94