THE SEVENTH PROBLEM THE RINGING GOBLETS

I.

His chin resting on his chest, his hands gripping the wide-spread leather arms of the chair, the man stared at the log fire—fixedly, intently; as though the ceaseless war the flames waged against the darkness held him enthralled by its hopelessness. The wind, whistling encouragement down the wide chimney, caused the fire to leap upward and drive the shadows in retreat to the farthest corner of the library. For an instant the flames crackled their triumph; then died down. The shadows rushed forward, swiftly and silently, to recover the territory they had lost. The fire sputtered its chagrin.

The man in the chair shivered, though his hands felt the warmth of the leather arms. For an instant the hopeless look went from his eyes; his chin lifted. Then the eyes resumed their staring at the flames. “I won’t!” he muttered. “I won’t! I’ll―⁠―” The thin right fist doubled; he raised it to smite the arm of the chair. In the air it unclenched and dropped lifelessly.

“There must be some way!” Hope again shone in his eyes. The flames, apparently encouraged by his spirit, again leaped to their fight with the shadows. “There is!” His voice, low, passionate, died suddenly. He jerked his head around the side 259of the high chair, and darted a fearful glance at a dark corner. A trembling chill shook his body, and his lips formed the silent words: “I mustn’t forget that devilish thing!”

The door opened softly, and the man in the chair heard, but he did not move. The impassive-faced servant came forward with soundless footsteps.

“You wish anything, sir?” he asked humbly.

“Nothing, Paul.”

“A bit more wood on the fire, sir?”

The seated man turned his eyes back to the glowing logs that had given up their fight with the darkness, and whose flames no longer leaped their defiance, but spluttered their defeat.

“I think not,” came finally.

“Your wine, sir?”

“At eight, Paul.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll remember, sir.” The servant bowed himself back a step, then stopped. “Miss Nadine says as ’ow she ’opes you are quite fit this evenin’, sir.”

A sudden draft of cold air seemed to strike the man, for his body shook and his hands gripped tighter on the leather arms.

“Tell her I feel much better,” he lied pitifully, moistening his dry lips with his tongue.

“I will, sir.” The man bowed gravely and withdrew, closing the door quietly behind him.

Silence came again to the room, broken only by the crackle of the dying fire that gave to the haggard, deep-lined face of the man a pink glow of health that belied the hunted look in his eyes, and the lines of utter hopelessness around the mouth. For minutes he sat, immovable, swallowed in the depths of the big leather chair.

The door opened again, and the sound of it brought a new expression to his face; a curious expression 260of mingled joy and dread. His thin hands clenched as if the very action were intended to brace his whole body. Then his lips formed a tremulous smile as the golden-haired, pink-cheeked girl ran across the room, and flung her arms around his neck. Her lips touched his cheek; she drew back and gazed deep into his eyes for an instant before he lowered them.

“Oh, daddy-father,” she pleaded. “You mustn’t worry so!” She seated herself on the chair-arm, her small hand patted his shoulder. “It will all come out right,” she whispered fondly.

“Hush!” he breathed, and she could feel his body tremble under her fingers.

“The curs!” she said passionately, lifting her head to look over the back of the high leather chair and gaze into the dark corner, as her father had done a few minutes before.

He lifted a hand and touched her lips warningly, but she shook her head away.

“It’s killing you, daddy-father!” There was a sobbing catch in her voice. “You’ve grown old, old, in the past month. Won’t you please let that wonderful blind man help you? Oh, daddy-father”—both hands were on his shoulders now; her eyes bright with held-back tears, looked into his—“think of what he did for Ned—and I love you so!”

“No, no!” he choked. “I—he—please don’t make me talk.” The last was a whisper, even the girl in the arm-chair barely heard it.

“I don’t care!” she cried. “I’ll―⁠―”

From the shadowed shelf over the fire-place came the mellow chime of a clock. The girl and the man started as though some sudden electric shock had passed through them. Her hand clutched at his shoulder; a sob came from her throat. The man’s 261fingers picked at the leather chair-arms; his dry lips moved mechanically as he counted the eight strokes of the clock-bell. When the last note had died away the girl’s hand fell lifelessly from his shoulder; she rose to her feet.

“You are going to the opera to-night, Nadine?” he asked, trying bravely to keep the quaver from his voice.

“Yes,” she said steadily. She bent down to kiss him, her hand touched his thin white hair for a minute before she turned to go. Half-way across the room she stopped, and her little hands clenched at her sides as the door-handle turned softly; but she merely bowed bravely and hurried past the wooden-faced manservant who entered.

“Your wine, sir?”

The man rubbed his hands together, as though warming them in the glow of the logs; his face was hidden in the shadows above.

“Yes, Paul.”

From the shadow beside the fire-place the servant brought a small, round tabouret, and set it beside the big chair.

“Turn me around a bit, Paul. The light hurts my eyes.”

Obediently the servant placed the big chair so that its side was to the fire-light. The little man was completely swallowed up in its depths. Only the tip of one slippered foot showed in the ruddy crimson that came under the chair. The tabouret was in the dark at the side away from the fire.

“The usual two goblets, sir?” asked the servant, as he swung back the door of the cellaret.

“Yes, Paul, and a cigar.”

The man placed the two wine-filled goblets on the small table, and a few drops of the wine spilled as it swayed a trifle on its uneven legs.

262“Table seems a trifle wabbly, sir. Shall I put something under the legs to steady it?”

The seated man merely shook his head and stretched forth a hand to lift one of the goblets to his lips. Slowly he sipped it while the servant stood patiently by with the box of cigars. In the flare of the match, held to light the cigar he had selected, the servant’s eyes, invisible in the shadows above, studied every line of the haggard face. But there was no commiseration in the studying—only satisfaction and triumph.

“That is all; I won’t need you again to-night, Paul.”

“Very well, sir.” The servant bowed and withdrew.

For several minutes the smoke from the unmoving cigar spiraled in the darkness. Then the seated man turned in the big chair, and the ashes dropped to his knee unheeded as he shuddered. His two hands on the small tabouret moved it an inch toward him. He shook his head, and moved it half an inch to the right. The wine in the full glass was spilling, and he poured half of it into the other goblet. Apparently the uneven legs that caused the tabouret to teeter back and forth bothered him, for he spent several minutes setting it to his satisfaction. Then he carefully placed the two goblets in the exact centre, so that the rims touched, and leaned back in the big leather chair.

One hand showed on the arm-chair nearest the fire; the other was in the shadow. Suddenly the two glasses clicked together with a musical, ringing sound, as though his hand had nervously fallen on the table and caused it to sway. Then his shaking fingers on the tabouret-edge caused a musical soothing jingle of the egg-shell rims. The sound seemed to please him, for the clink-click-tap-tap-clink kept up for minutes.

263“I won’t!” he cried suddenly, vehemently. His trembling fingers made the wine dance in the ringing goblets.

The hand holding the cigar rested on the chair-arm, the fingers clenched so that the wrapper almost crackled under their pressure.

“No, no! Nadine―⁠―” The moaning voice died; he bent forward in his chair. The slipper that showed in the light under the chair lifted, then dropped back to its original position. The cigar smoke curled upward from the chair-arm, an iridescent ribbon in the feeble glow of the darkness-defeated logs.

Clink! Clink-clink! Tap! Tap-tap! came the ring of the goblets on the tabouret. The clock on the mantel ticked off minute after minute.

Softly, silently the door opened—an inch, two inches. From the darkness of the hall outside two eyes stared into the darkness of the room.

The streamer of smoke rose steadily; the glasses still sang their song of nervousness. Suddenly the door opened a full half. The owner of the watching eyes had smelled burning leather. The servant stepped into the room, stumbled over a big chair near the door, and swore softly.

“Do you wish anythink, sir?” It was the respectful voice of the servant.

The smoke still ascended unwaveringly; the music of the goblets did not cease. But no answer came from the big chair.

The servant approached the chair on tiptoe. A sound made him turn toward the door. It was swinging open. He walked to it, and stopped it before it struck the heavy bookcase, and closed it noiselessly.

“Do you wish anythink, sir?” he whispered again.

264The slipper still showed in the ribbon of light. The glasses were still ringing. The cigar still burned. The man sniffed again, then reached the side of the chair in a single bound.

A curse escaped him; a deep curse of bafflement, rage.

The chair was empty!

On the arm the cigar was burning the leather. The empty slipper was just where the foot had been. The wine still moved in the now-silent glasses. But the man he had left a few minutes before, the man whose nervous fingers had caused the glasses to ring but a second before, had vanished!

Two steps took the servant across the room. A snap, and the incandescents sprang to light. The big chair by the door, a counterpart of the one at the fire-place, was unmoved. Everything in the room was as he had left it. But the man was gone.

“Damn him!” muttered the fellow who had been a servant. But he wasn’t a servant now. His shoulders were hunched aggressively. The wooden look had gone. In its place was tenseness, animal strength; the muscles played back and forth under the tightly-drawn skin of the cheek-bones.

“He’s gone, chief!” he said, and his voice was low. “How the devil he did it is more than I can figure.” He ran to the fire-place and knelt on the hearth, his sharp eyes studying every inch. And as he leaned over the fire he talked: “I watched the door every minute. His infernal nervousness gave me the willies. I heard the glasses clink till I got to the chair, chief—to the chair!”

He ran to the high window, and searched every inch of the sill and curtains, still speaking in that level, even tone: “Get the boys out and cover the house! Spread ’em around the block! He can’t 265have been gone more than ten minutes. There’s not a damn’ crack in the wall. I know that!”

His fingers were running over the bookcases, his eyes seeming to bore into their very depths as he went on: “The girl’s all ready for the opera―⁠―” His keen ears heard footsteps, and his voice changed to an agonised wail as the girl entered: “’E’s gone, Miss Nadine, ’e’s gone!”

“Gone!” she cried, staggering against the chair near the door. “Gone!” she repeated, and her voice was scarcely a whisper.

“I smelled ’is cigar burning the leather. I thought as ’ow ’e was asleep.”

She forced her limbs to support her weight across the floor. She looked down into the chair where the untouched cigar still burned. The opera cloak slipped from her shoulders unheeded as she touched the tabouret-edge with her fingers for an instant. The glasses clinked mockingly.

“Gone!” she said again. “He has gone to them—at last!”

She swayed, fell, sending the tabouret and glasses crashing to the floor. The servant leaned over her for an instant; then ran to the corner of the room.

“Hear that, chief!” he whispered tensely. “Get it? Rip out the wires when I cut ’em. There’ll be merry hell around here in a little while!”

A gleam of nickel showed in his hand as he thrust it behind a high bookcase. Came two sharp clicks, and as he turned toward the girl he put into his pocket a round, black disc. It was a dictograph.

II.

For two hours Nadine Nelson had sat, white-faced but steady-voiced, as the three men questioned, cajoled, badgered, and threatened. At her right, 266his chair within a foot of that in which she sat, was the man who had posed as a servant. At her left was another, just as keen-eyed and alert. Before her sat a heavy-chinned, broad-shouldered man whose fingers crackled the typewritten sheets as he jerked out his questions. The girl’s eyes met his fairly, unwaveringly. Yet she knew he was Chief Whittson, of the United States secret service.

“You know that, for months, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been passed through the agency of your father’s bank?” he snapped.

“I know nothing,” she said unemotionally.

“Then why did you say―⁠―” He referred to the typewritten sheets: “‘It will all come out right?’”

“Because it will,” she replied steadily.

The men at her sides snorted impatiently.

“Did you know that your father was the head of the best-organised counterfeiting gang in the country?” jerked out the secret-service chief.

Her eyes did not flinch for an instant. “I knew nothing.”

“Where is your father, Miss Nelson?”

“I do not know.”

“Then why did you say”—his forefinger punched the typewritten page viciously, and in his voice was snarled impatience—“‘he has gone to them at last.’ Who did you mean?”

“I know nothing,” came the unvarying answer she had given a hundred times before.

“Why didn’t you call in the police when you knew that your father had disappeared?”

For the first time a shade of expression came to the girl’s face; her lips curved in contempt. “Because I knew that the police could do no more than the secret-service men of the United States.” There was more than a tinge of contempt in her voice.

267Chief Whittson straightened back in his chair. “Did you know that your servant was not what he pretended to be?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she said defiantly. “We knew from the first that he was a spy.”

The former servant leaped to his feet, face red with rage. “So that’s why you took it so cool, eh? That’s why you didn’t raise the fuss I expected?” he flared. “And you went to your own room and locked the door to cry. And I was sorry for you. Me! A wise guy! Some—clever—actress!”

She shrank back before the lashing sneer in the words.

“Then you knew of the dictograph?” demanded the chief, instantly alert to take advantage of the first signs of break-down.

“Yes,” she whispered tremulously. “We knew, and we―⁠―” she stopped, her breath catching suddenly.

“‘We,’” repeated the chief sharply. “What? What?”

Her lips quivered piteously. The nerve that had forced her frail woman’s body to bear the rack for hours was breaking.

“What did you do? Tell me!” he commanded viciously.

“Don’t you think you’ve gone quite far enough on that line?” The quiet, even voice of the man in the door-way caused the two men at the girl’s side to leap to their feet, and the chief to jerk his body erect. “If I were you, Miss Nelson,” the man in the door-way spoke to the girl, and his voice was gentle, “I would answer only courteous questions.”

His white face, with its lean, cleft chin, and thin, firm lips, lighted in a wonderful smile of encouragement; the hand that was not holding the slim stick brushed back from his high forehead the hair whose 268whiteness was accentuated by the great blue circles of the tortoise-rimmed library glasses.

“Who are you?” demanded the chief, but there was no bluster in his tone. The manner he had assumed for the girl had dropped like a mask. He was the calm, alert detective once more, and his keen judgment told him instantly that the new comer was not the type to bluff.

Before the man at the door-way could answer, a youth rushed past him to the girl’s side.

“I found him, Nadine,” he cried joyously. “Here’s Mr. Colton. He’ll find uncle.”

“Thank God!” breathed the girl, and her body relaxed.

Thornley Colton turned his head to speak over his shoulder. “A glass of water, Sydney. Quickly!”

“So you’re Thornley Colton, eh?” The secret-service chief eyed him sharply. “I understand you’ve done some rather remarkable work—for a blind man.”

Colton smiled, then stepped aside as his black-haired, apple-cheeked secretary came in with a glass of water. The girl’s eyes fluttered open, and the blind man realised that she needed time to regain her scattered senses.

“You have the average person’s idea of the blind, chief,” he said. “And the average person gets his notion from the blind beggar on the street-corners who hobbles along led by a small boy and a dog, and taps every inch of the side-walk with a heavy cane. Very few realise that is mostly for effect. Fewer still know that in New York there are nearly two hundred sightless men and women who go to business every day without help or guidance. Some of the highest-paid private secretaries and stenographers in the country are blind. Several of the blind proof-readers are famous. And for many years 269the court of last resort in the dead-letter office at Washington was a blind man. He was the most expert ever employed by the government, and could read with his supersensitive finger-tips addresses that had passed through the hands of the keenest-eyed readers of illegible writing in the world. So you see, the blind are not so helpless as one might imagine. Ah, Miss Nelson, do you feel better?”

“Yes.” She looked up at him with a curious expression in her eyes. It was the look of a child who has sought a protector only to be a little frightened at the result. But she smiled bravely. “You did such a wonderful thing for Ned”—she rested her hand fondly on her cousin’s arm—“when he was arrested for the murder of the girl in the theatre, and I thought―⁠―” Again came the look that was almost fear.

“I will do my best,” promised the blind man. “Do you mind my hearing the story from Chief Whittson—his side of it?”

“No,” she said, with only a bit of nervousness in her voice.

Whittson smiled quizzically. This blind man might be interesting. On his face and the faces of his men there was no doubt of the outcome. They were government men, trained, efficient; the interloper was an amateur—and blind.

“We know that Dryden F. Nelson was the biggest passer of counterfeit money in the country!” began the chief. “He is the cleverest of them all. Who would suspect the bank of a man like Nelson as a clearing house for the cleverest counterfeits ever made? The scheme was wonderful, the only organised gang in the country who could pass ‘queer’ at its face value was that of this girl’s father. How long it’s been going on we don’t know. The bills have the ‘feel,’ something no other counterfeiter 270has ever been able to get. It was only within the past six months we traced the bills to their source. And that was Nelson’s bank! For six months we have tried to locate the plant, and failed. For the past three weeks my man here has been in the house, and there has been a dictograph in the library.”

“And you discovered nothing?”

“Nothing except to make morally certain his guilt. And he knew we were closing in. He was frightened stiff! Now we find out that the girl, here, was wise. She’s fooled us right along. We never suspected that she was one of the gang.”

The girl cowered in her chair. “I’m not,” she faltered. “It isn’t true.”

“Now Nelson’s slipped through our fingers,” went on the chief relentlessly. “Just when we had him worked up to a confession. He got out of that room in some devilish way.”

“I’ve got the facts of his disappearance,” put in Colton.

“So have we!” snapped the chief. “Within ten minutes of the time he went, every inch of this block was covered, and to-day ten thousand police and two hundred secret-service men are scouring the city for him. He can’t get out of it, and he can’t stay in it—long.”

“Why didn’t you arrest him before if you were so certain of his guilt?”

“Because we wanted his pals! We wanted to locate the plant! And he went while Jim was watching the door every minute! While my ears were glued to the dictograph-receivers and my pencil taking every word down in shorthand.”

“You heard nothing?”

“After Jim brought the wine there wasn’t a sound but the infernal ringing of the two glass rims 271on the teetery tabouret he insisted on having beside his chair.”

Colton looked up with sudden interest. “Did you ever hear those glasses ring before?”

“Every night at eight, when Jim here served his wine.”

“What other time did he have wine served?”

The former servant answered: “He only had it at eight in the library, and he wanted it on the minute.”

“Significance—somewhere,” mused the problemist. For several seconds there was silence as his slim cane idly tapped his shoe-sole.

Suddenly the girl sat rigid in her chair. “I can’t!” she cried. “Oh, please! Please! I can’t!”

The expression on the blind man’s face was the only one that did not change. The three secret-service men looked the amazement the sudden irrelevant words had caused. The youth who was kneeling at the girl’s side gazed at her in wonder.

“The truth will help us all, Miss Nelson,” said Colton gently.

But she paid no attention to the words. Her eyes, widened in fear, were fixed on the shoe of the problemist.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice was barely a whisper. “Every night!”

The chief jumped to his feet. “What’s that?” he demanded. “What’s that?”

“The one thing you overlooked; the significance of two plus two,” declared Thornley Colton. “If you will show me the library perhaps I can point out some other things that your eyes have missed.”

The girl lifted her bowed head. “Oh, Mr. Colton,” she pleaded, “do not show them—you don’t know what it means!”

The blind man went to her side, and put his hand 272gently on her shoulder. “It is necessary,” he said, and his voice was tender. Then, to the chief: “If you will lead the way.”

Chief Whittson rose, and jerked his thumb toward the girl as she buried her head in her arms. One of the men nodded. She was to be guarded every minute.

“I’ll stay here,” whispered Sydney Thames, as Colton passed him. The black-haired secretary, tender-hearted, deifier of all women, was going to guard the girl against further badgering.

The government man who had posed as the servant opened the door of the library. “This is the room,” he growled. “There isn’t a break in the walls. We’ve gone over every inch.”

Colton’s thin cane located the big chair near the door. He walked around it, touched its back, the walls behind it, and measured the distance to the room entrance. On his white cheeks was a hectic flush of excitement; his nostrils quivered like those of a hound on the scent.

“You were watching the door every minute?” His voice was unconsciously sharp.

“Yes.”

The blind man turned to the chief, a curious smile on his face. “This is an instance of the blind’s superiority. You and your man know that there is but one possible way for a man to get out of this room. You’re as sure of that as you are of death. Yet you can’t realise that that is the way Nelson got out because your eyes deceive your brain into thinking it impossible. Sight is the greatest handicap pure reasoning has. Even a man with eyes instinctively closes them when he is trying to figure out some particularly intricate problem. The trouble is that you haven’t closed your eyes. Nelson went out through that door!”

273“What?” The chief and his man chorused it blankly.

The blind problemist did not answer at once. He darted across the room. His stick found the chair at the fire-place.

“Nelson wanted you to turn this chair away from the fire?” he said suddenly.

“How did you know that?” asked the chief, and in his tone was wonder.

“Because it was necessary for his escape.” The words came like staccato notes on a taut wire. “He knew that a man was watching that door. He didn’t know what instant it might open an inch. But he knew that with the high sides of the chair toward the fire he would be invisible in the depths. He pulled his slippers off, and left one so that it could be seen—young Nelson, who came to see his cousin last night, gave me most of the facts. Then he slid from the chair, and crawled across the floor to crouch down behind that other big chair near the door. From past tests he knew just how the servant would enter the room and just what he would do. It was the work of an instant to slip through the open door as the servant was crossing the room toward the fire-place. His stockinged feet made his exit absolutely noiseless. The very simplicity of the thing would deceive any man in the world who could see. Yet you knew it was the only way he could have gone!”

“I saw the door open!” gasped the secret-service man. “I thought it was a draught.”

“Yes,” nodded the blind man, “because your eyes saw the cigar-smoke and the slipper. They wouldn’t let your brain get any idea but that he was in the chair.”

“But the very simplicity of that would make elaborate preparations necessary,” objected the 274chief. “The thing would have to be timed to the instant. Nelson hadn’t a chance to communicate with any one without our knowledge. Jim, here, and the dictograph took care of that.”

Colton’s lips curved in a mirthless smile. “They made it possible! Their very actions prove that both Nelson and his daughter knew of the dictograph. They understood that, so long as you didn’t suspect they knew, you would take no other precautions. They knew that you would depend on the instrument to hear every word, and on this man to see that there wasn’t a written word of instruction put into their hands. And they fooled you! Tricked you every day!”

At the last word he dropped to his knees beside the big chair by the fire-place. His supersensitive finger-tips brushed the carpet. Back and forth they went a dozen times, then stopped. “See that!” he cried. “See that!”

The two men leaned forward. For a minute they stared.

“Only a nail-hole through the rug,” declared the chief.

“Yes, only a nail-hole,” Colton repeated quietly. “That’s the only thing your eyes can see. But my finger-tip felt the point of a nail under the carpet and on a level with the floor.”

“Nail?” repeated the chief dumbly. He had forgotten his superior attitude of a short time before. The dominant personality of the blind man; his absolute sureness of himself compelled respect, and brought a realisation that Thornley Colton was the master, he the pupil.

The blind man walked from the chair. His stick, poking in the corner beside the fire-place, found the tabouret. With an exclamation of satisfaction he pulled it out and touched its edge with his finger-tips.

275“You spoke of it as being ‘teetery.’ See how finely it is balanced on the two legs that are a fraction of an inch longer than the others. And see here!” His stick fell to the floor as he used both hands to turn it upside-down. The two secret-service men saw that all four legs were tipped with metal balls. “See the scars of the nail-point on the balls of the short legs?” cried Colton. He took his knife from his pocket, and tapped with the blade. A low, musical click-click-click that could be heard distinctly by the men resulted. “Hear that?” he demanded.

“What does it mean?” The chief made no effort to keep the bewilderment from his voice.

“It means that under the floor, and under that nail-hole in the rug, is a finely-adjusted magnet with a nail-pointed plunger in the centre of the coil. That’s how Nelson beat your dictograph! That’s how he beat your spy. Just as the girl inside understood the Morse messages I tapped with my cane.”

“Telegraphy!” gasped the chief. “Nelson was chief staff-telegrapher in the army for years.”

The blind man nodded. “The table was set here at eight because that is the time the person at the other end would be ready to send the messages. Nelson adjusted the tabouret so that one of the short legs would be directly above the magnet-plunger, which was as sensitive to the touch of the telegraph-key sending the current through the magnet-coils as the most delicate instrument in the world. To the trained operator who has learned to take a message from any single instrument in a room where a thousand others are clattering away, the click of the plunger against that hollow metal ball would be as easy to read as print to the average man. But ordinarily the dictograph would also 276hear. That’s why the goblets were placed rim to rim—so that the ringing would drown the other sound over the wires of the dictograph, or to a man listening at the door. Acoustics would take care of that. The dot-dash of the magnet-plunger could not be heard five feet away, though the man in the chair could get every word.”

“By God, that’s clever!” There was admiration in Chief Whittson’s tone. “Pull back that chair, Jim! We’ll get the rug up and see the thing! We’ll follow those wires and land the whole gang.”

He stopped as Nadine Nelson entered the room. She wasn’t the sobbing girl they had left who now entered; but a white-cheeked, white-lipped woman who did not speak until she had crossed the room and stood before the chief.

“I am the ‘gang’ you speak of,” she said quietly. “The wires go to my room!”

III.

Calmly, disdainfully, the girl stood at the door of her room, and watched the secret-service men search it with no regard for care. At her side stood her cousin, looking on helplessly. His boyish protests had been stilled by a terse “Shut up!” from the chief. At the other side of the girl, his face black with a scowl, and his hands clenched at his sides, stood Sydney Thames. To the soft-hearted Sydney no crime was so great as that of causing a woman pain. So he gritted his teeth, and darted murderous glances at the secret-service men, and looks of pleading at the blind man who leaned against the wall, apparently watching the searchers.

The girl had shown them the room. She had flung open the door of the closet, and cleverly concealed behind hanging clothes they had found a 277telegraph-key on a small shelf. They had pulled out the wires, and found they led to the magnets in the library. Now they were beginning a systematic search of the room—and finding nothing. The girl had evidently told the truth. She, and only she, could have sent the messages.

“Where did you learn telegraphy?” demanded the chief suddenly.

“I can’t remember when I didn’t have a key to play with,” she answered coolly. “Father was an expert telegrapher for years, and he taught us almost before we could read and write.”

“‘Us?’” snapped out the chief.

“My brother and me,” she answered, and the ears of the blind man, trained to interpret every inflection of tone, caught the sudden forced note.

“Where is your brother, Miss Nelson?” he asked.

“He died ten years ago, in the tropics,” she answered, and there was a curious break in her voice.

“And you left the library every night at eight so you could send your father messages?” asked the chief sarcastically.

“Yes. We did not dare talk because of your spy. And his eyes were never off my father.”

“Well,” the chief’s tone was even more sarcastic than before, “you might have found an easier way.”

She did not answer, but watched Thornley Colton as he stepped across the room to the closet. For a minute he poked inside with his cane, moving the hanging clothes away from the telegraph-instrument. He leaned over it, and seemed to be examining it intently. There was a frown of puzzlement on his forehead as he straightened up. It disappeared almost instantly, and in its place came a look of sudden enlightenment.

278“Did you ever smoke South American cigarettes with licorice-pectoral papers, Miss Nelson?” he asked.

“No, never!” She tried to make the denial indignant, but Colton’s superkeen ears caught the false note instantly, as did the keen-eyed chief of the secret service. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but the blind man forestalled him.

“The next house is built right against this one, isn’t it, chief?”

“Yes, but the crazy Frenchman next door is absolutely above suspicion. We looked up his whole life’s history. He’s a semi-invalid and nutty. He has a pet bear; also two servants to take care of the animal.”

“Crazy, eh?” muttered Colton. He hurried across the room, his cane locating every piece of furniture. He stopped before the bureau, and leaned forward toward a drawer-pull. An instant he paused, and in that instant came the betrayal he had hoped to bring from the girl.

“Don’t, please!” She stopped suddenly, biting her lips until the blood came.

Colton straightened up; his lips set grimly. “Pull out the bureau, and you’ll find an opening into the house of the crazy Frenchman,” he said.

“What?” The chief jumped across the room, and pulled out the heavy piece of furniture. Behind it was a jagged hole that a crouching man could go through with ease.

The two secret-service men jumped through the opening, but the chief paused. “How did you know that?” he asked wonderingly.

“Because the clothes in the closet held the faint licorice odour of the pectoral cigarette papers that South Americans affect. Therefore some man must have been sending those messages. It wasn’t a 279man in this house. There had to be an entrance—and I tricked the girl into telling me that it was concealed behind the bureau. It had to be in this room because the message-sender wouldn’t risk entering another to get where the telegraph-key was!”

The girl leaned back against the wall, and a sob came from her lips. “Oh, why did I ask Ned to find you!” she cried. “Their eyes could have seen nothing, and you―⁠―”

“It was necessary, Miss Nelson!” The gentleness that had been in the blind man’s voice downstairs was missing now; it was brusque, sharp. “Better have one of your men remain here, chief,” he said, and there was no mistaking his meaning. “I’d like to go through that house.”

The chief looked at him curiously; then, with the docility that came to most men when the blind man advised or ordered, he whistled sharply. One of the men returned.

“Stay here!” commanded the chief, and he stepped aside as the blind man bent low and entered the next house. The chief followed.

“What do you know about the occupant here?” Colton asked the chief as he walked around the room, his thin cane locating furniture again, and giving his brain a mental picture of the whole chamber.

“He’s lived here for some time. We looked him up from A to Izzard, also his three servants. About six months ago, it appears, he bought a pet bear, a nasty beast, and sometimes takes him out. Attracts quite a lot of attention because the old man wears a huge fur coat that makes him look like the animal’s big brother.”

“And because every man in your business thinks the crook is always seeking cover there would be no 280suspicion of a man who courts attention by means of keeping a pet bear. Clever game enough to throw any man that had eyes off the track!”

“Oh, the Frenchman’s on the level,” resented the chief. “He’s getting worse, failing fast. Anybody can see that. Doctor comes twice a day to see him.”

“And he comes every night about eight o’clock!” declared Colton suddenly. “He’s the man that’s been sending those messages. He’s the chief of the gang you’ve been trying to locate so long. He must be, or he’d stay here all the time. He has to attend to the outside work while the men here do the actual counterfeiting. And it was never suspected because all you could see was a pet bear! Look!” He pulled open the drawer of a dresser. “Here’s a dozen cigarette ends, all of pectoral paper and Brazilian paper. The doctor smoked them here the times he had to wait for eight o’clock and the time to talk to Nelson.”

“By Jove! You’re―⁠―”

“Hey, chief!” The cry came from downstairs.

“It’s Jim. He’s found something!” The chief started toward the door and stopped. “Do you want me to guide you?” he asked.

“Go ahead!” Colton said dryly. “My ears will follow your footfalls.”

“This way, chief! Quick!” The voice directed them to the kitchen. The chief stopped with an ejaculation of amazement at the door.

The secret-service operative who had entered the house first was lifting an unconscious man from a heavy wooden chair. On the floor were the cut ropes that had bound him, and the wadded handkerchiefs that had prevented outcries.

“The Frenchman!” gasped the chief. “He’s got to talk! Lay him down, Jim!”

281The Frenchman groaned feebly as they put him on the floor, and choked when a pocket flask was held to his lips.

“Mon Dieu!” he moaned weakly. Then his dazed brain realised that men were standing over him. “Pleeze stop! I do nozzing!” he cried supplicatingly.

“We are friends—gendarmes.” Chief Whittson said the words slowly and distinctly, so that the man could understand. “Who did this?”

The fear went from the Frenchman’s eyes. “My servants,” he whispered hoarsely. “Zay have kep’ me prisoner for mont’s; ever since my old servants go an’ zay come.”

“Damn!” jerked out the chief. “They’ve tricked us right along. We looked up the old servants’ records, and didn’t suspect for an instant the impersonation. Where did they go? When?”

The Frenchman fell back, his eyes closed

“I think I can answer the ‘when’ part of that question,” put in Thornley Colton, as he appeared at the doorway. “I apologise to the man here for the things I said upstairs. But even I didn’t give the master counterfeiter credit for such diabolical ingenuity as this. The fake servants left the minute you entered Nelson’s house to question the girl. And the man that went with them as the Frenchman was Dryden F. Nelson. That’s the only way he could go!”

The Frenchman stirred, and tried to lift his head. “Zat is right,” he gasped chokingly. “He―⁠―” His eyes closed.

“Get an ambulance, Jim!” ordered the chief. “This man’s in bad shape. Get the boys from outside! Put two on the trail of the carriage. Nelson and his gang won’t get far. Bring the others in to search the house!” The man darted out, and 282the chief picked the invalid up in his strong arms and carried him gently to a couch in the dining-room.

The Frenchman moaned, and a shudder shook his body. “Don’t make ze bear hurt me!” he cried weakly. “Don’t knock ze glasses togezzer and make him mad-crazee.” He lapsed back into unconsciousness.

The chief looked at Colton significantly, but the blind man only nodded.

“But how did old man Nelson ever get a chance to get in here?” puzzled the chief.

“He didn’t!” Colton’s voice was sharp. “The man who posed as the doctor is the ringleader.” There came a ring of menace in his tone. “I’ll find him! I know him!”

“You know him?” The chief did not even nod to the three men who entered the room and stood respectfully by for orders.

“Yes! He’s tanned a dark brown, an expert telegrapher, thirty-five years old, a man who likes to pet and fondle a bear, and his first name is Joe. There are a few other details I’ll give you when the proper time comes.”

“Great Scott!” Amazement, incredulity were in the chief’s voice. He turned to one of his men. “Was the doctor here last night, Tom?” he asked.

“We saw him coming out a minute before we got the alarm from you, chief. Said good evening, and told us it was only a matter of days for the old guy here.”

“Eyes attach no significance to things they have seen a dozen times before,” Colton observed.

The chief turned to him again. “Where did you get those facts?” he demanded, with the brusqueness of chagrin in his voice.

“The Brazilian tobacco and pectoral papers told 283me he had spent years in South America. Naturally he’d be tanned a dark brown. The fact that he must be an expert telegrapher is obvious. I know that he is thirty-five years old because I know that he is fifteen years older than Nadine Nelson. How I knew that you’ll know later. This told me his name—and another fact.” The blind man held out a charred fragment of paper scarcely two inches square, a deep brown in colour from heat and smoke. “The fact that the man you want takes pleasure in fondling and handling a bear my keen sense of smell told me. The bear-fur odour is unmistakable and clings to a thing for hours. It was on the handkerchief in the kitchen, and in the corner of the linen was the initial J!”

“It’s impossible to decipher a word of this!” protested the chief, looking up from the charred fragment of paper.

“With eyes—yes. But my finger-tips found the tracery of that name, even though the ink had entirely disappeared! The pen-ridges remain, and would remain until the paper was consumed.” He changed the subject suddenly. “There comes the ambulance. I want to go up and see the girl again.”

“I’ll go with you.” Chief Whittson’s tone was curiously humble. He turned to give curt orders to the men, and followed the blind man out of the room.

Despite the minutes that had passed, Nadine Nelson was just where they had left her. The secret-service guard sat easily on a gilt chair. Sydney Thames and the girl’s cousin were alternately pleading with her to sit down. As the chief and Thornley Colton stepped into the room her teeth gripped her lower lip, and her hands clenched tighter at her sides.

“Who is the man who has been coming into this 284room every night to send those messages?” Thornley Colton’s voice was hard, stern.

The face of the girl went white at the cruelty of it. Sydney Thames took a half step forward, and a gesture of the blind man stopped him.

“Who is he?” snapped the blind man again.

She raised her head to look straight into his sightless eyes.

“My husband!” she answered defiantly.

“That isn’t true!” The words came like the lash of a whip.

“Thorn!” In Sydney Thames’s voice was agony that the man he loved could say such a thing to a woman.

“And you were the man I thought could help me!” Scorn, bitterness, self-accusation were in the vibrant voice of the girl. “You’re worse than those curs who listened to every word! You’ve killed my father! If I were a man I’d kill you—even though you are blind!”

The last words came through her clenched, white teeth, and she advanced half a step, so that her hot breath reached the face of the blind man. But he only idly twirled his slim cane and looked down at her with a tolerant, amused grin that was maddening.

“You’ll talk!” he promised curtly. “She’ll talk in jail, chief!”

“I wouldn’t talk if you tore me to little pieces!” she cried vehemently.

Colton did not answer; he nodded curtly to the chief, and with a “Come, Sydney!” he hurried from the room, and from the girl who stared straight ahead of her with dull, fixed eyes.

Sydney Thames followed him down the stairs silently. In the lower hall he spoke. “God, Thorn, that was barbarous! It almost made me forget―⁠―”

285“Find the telephone and get me the number of the United Fruit Company,” ordered the blind man sharply.

Without a word Thames found the ’phone in an alcove of the hall, and gave the number to Colton.

“What boat sails for South America to-day?” asked the problemist when the connection had been established. “The Carracas? Is there a bear consigned on that boat? Hasn’t arrived yet? The sailing’s at five? Thank you!”

As he hung up the receiver the angry boy’s tone of Nadine Nelson’s cousin came to them indistinctly. Sydney Thames jumped as though a pin had jabbed him. When he spoke to the blind man there was a look on his face that had never been on it before.

“Thorn,” he said, and there was a break in his voice, “you’ve been the only father I ever knew, but I won’t leave that girl to the mercy of those police brutes!”

“This is no time for sentiment!” snapped Colton.

“It is time for good-bye, then!” Sydney Thames, the colourless, the characterless, the counter of steps for the man who had picked him up, a bundle of baby-clothes on the banks of the English river that had given him the only name he ever knew, held out his hand.

The blind man’s lips tightened; he ignored the outstretched hand as he pulled on a glove. “Make it auf wiedersehen,” he said wearily. “Shrimp and I are going to catch the boat for Brazil at five o’clock!”

IV.

The Fee, red-haired, freckle-faced boy, who had become a member of the Colton household as the blind man’s only pay for solving a particularly 286baffling murder case, eased his plaster-encircled arm on the rail of the Carracas, and watched with all the power of his round blue eyes the lowering of the big cage on the forward deck. As it swung for an instant on a level with the promenade deck on which they stood, the boy caught a glimpse of the shaggy animal under the canvas protecting-hood that covered the top and fitted tightly halfway down the sides.

“Gee, Mister Colton, it’s certain’y got some claws on its feet!” observed the boy admiringly. A hitch of the rope jarred the cage, and brought forth a deep growl that could be heard above the creaking of ropes and the squeaky wheels of the stevedores’ trucks as they rushed the last few cases of freight on deck. “There she bumps!” cried the boy as the cable touched the deck.

Then came a shriek of pain. “Gee whiz!” gasped the boy, and the blind man’s cane felt him jump a foot. “One of the workin’men bent down to get the rope off the bottom of the cage, and the bear reached under the canvas, tore his arm with its claws. Darn it, but he’s wicious!”

The bawling voice of an officer broke in: “Here, you men that own that bear! Unsling the cage!”

Three ragged, dark-skinned men jumped to the cage, and unslung the tackle ropes without arousing even a deep-throated growl from the animal.

The tense look left Thornley Colton’s face as he heard the block slip to the deck, and for the first time in hours there came the slightest trace of satisfaction in the curve of the thin lips. He was right! Once more he had risked everything on his judgment and his wonderful mental ability to find logic in seeming chaos by following to their end the mind processes of men against whom he was pitted.

The proof had come with the shriek of the clawed 287stevedore. Thornley Colton’s whole mind had been concentrated to catch one other sound among the multitude of noises. He had heard it and recognised it—the musical clink of glass on glass—the ring of a goblet! That had been the thing that had aroused the fury of the bear at exactly the instant that the workman was within reach of the tearing claws. That was the thing that had sent Dryden F. Nelson’s daughter to jail, and had caused Sydney Thames to renounce the man who loved him.

“I’ll bet nobody but them guys that own the bear’ll go near him after this,” observed the boy sagely.

“I don’t think they will,” the blind man said grimly. “Let’s take a walk around.”

The boy’s eyes squinted along the deck from his feet to the rail at the other side. “It’s ten steps,” he calculated. “They’s a man an’ a fat woman five ahead lookin’ down at the front deck, an’ at the other rail there’s a guy in a chair readin’ a paper. Yuh gotta step out a bit for him.”

“All right,” nodded the blind man, as he started.

The boy walked at his side, and he avoided the man and the woman, but his foot seemed to slip at the steamer chair, and he fell sprawling into the lap of the seated man, sending the thin glass he had held in his hands behind the paper in a hundred pieces to the deck.

“What the devil!” snapped the hoarse voice of the man, as he angrily brushed away the sparks of fire that had fallen on his coat when the black-brown cigarette had fallen from his lips.

Instantly Colton was on his feet, apologising. “I am blind; I made a false step,” he said contritely.

“Oh, all right,” growled the man ungraciously.

The problemist started again on his walk. The grim lines had returned around his thin-lipped 288mouth, but there was no other change in the blind man’s expression, not even triumph. Yet he had located the man he wanted; the man who had fooled the entire secret service of the country for months! Reasoning had done it; the pure eliminative reasoning that was made possible by his lack of sight. The man into whose lap he had just fallen was the one who had aroused the bear’s anger with the tap of his glass. He was the man whose pectoral cigarette papers and tobacco had scented the closet at the Nelson home. And he had recently handled a bear!

As his brain worked at lightning speed behind his high, white forehead, the blind man walked with the boy aimlessly around the decks, hardly hearing Shrimp’s delighted chatter. The Carracas was in mid-stream now, her nose pointed toward the Narrows. Most of the passengers had gone to their state-rooms, and the steam hissed from the winch cylinders forward as the last pieces of cargo were lowered into the hold. The blind man’s ears were strained to catch each sound, or suspicion of sound that would tell him the things he could not see, and his brain counted the steps, measuring distance, memorising directions as years of training had taught it to do. Suddenly Colton realised that some one was following them, watching every move. A growingly familiar furtive footstep every little while as the shadow quickly dodged, whiffs of the Brazilian tobacco smoke wafted to his nostrils on sudden gusts of wind, told him more than eyes could have told. His fall, crude because of its necessity, had aroused the other man’s suspicion.

“Show me our stateroom, Shrimp,” he said finally. “Then you can come up on deck again. I’ll remember all the steps.”

“Gee!” grinned the boy, in huge relief. “I’m 289glad I don’t have to stay down there. I wanta watch that little yacht that’s comin’ out.”

Colton nodded. He knew why the “little yacht” was coming out. He knew she should be flying a flag with perpendicular red stripes—the flag of the revenue service. And he knew that on board her was Chief Whittson and his men, who awaited his signal.

The boy proudly opened the door of the little white room, and Colton closed it behind him. “Wait a minute, Shrimp,” he said quietly. From his pocket he took a memorandum book and pencil. For a minute he wrote, then he handed the torn-out leaf to the boy, who read, with widening eyes:

If you miss me for fifteen minutes, or see me on deck with the man I fell over, run to the wireless house and give the operator this message: John Jones, 56 Cedar Street, New York. Close.

Payton.

“Gee!” whispered the boy joyfully. “I knowed it was a case! I knowed you didn’t mean what you said about not lettin’ me in on any more when I broke this arm. Gee!”

“Go up on the deck and see all the sights you can, Shrimp,” smiled the blind man. “See you later.”

The problemist sat down on the edge of the brass bed to go over the situation again and make sure that there was not a loose end. He had figured out on deck the only way, but he wanted to prove his reasoning by mental tests. The master counterfeiter, cunning, desperate, could do only one thing—eliminate the man he knew suspected him. And Thornley Colton could do but one thing—“watch” every minute the head of the gang. The success of the whole case depended on Colton’s alertness in preventing the criminal from making one move that the problemist knew he would make the instant the master rogue discovered all was lost. 290Yet the presence of the man at the dénouement was necessary! Colton rose. He must take a desperate chance, just as he had taken them many times before.

He opened the door, and went down the narrow corridor, his brain automatically counting the steps it had registered when he entered. He stopped. He smelled the heavy licorice odour of the pectoral papers again. For an instant a grim smile flashed to his lips. He had followed the mind-processes of the man correctly once more. The smell of the smoke was too obvious; it had been overdone.

A stateroom door opened before him.

“Got a match?” asked a voice, and Colton understood the disguising of tone instantly.

The blind man held out his match safe; then the snarling whisper of the man cut the stillness, and he felt a gun-muzzle jab viciously into his ribs. “Get in here!” Colton quietly obeyed the order, and stepped over the threshold into the stateroom that was filled almost to suffocation with cigarette smoke.

“Put ’em over your head! Up!” The snarl changed to a sneer. “So you’re the slick blind man that sister of mine talked about, eh? The lonehander that makes boobs of the police and secret service? Well, little bat-eye, I’ve been laying for you ever since I got wise to that slick fall trick. Got a damn’ fine nose, eh, smelling that pec smoke I’ve been filling the lower deck with ever since you and the kid came down.”

“Humour palls when the audience is forced to stand in so uncomfortable a position,” said the blind man evenly.

He felt his own pistol snatched away.

“Back up a step, and you’ll find the bed!” ordered the voice.

291The blind man sat down and waited patiently. When the other man spoke again there was grudging admiration in his voice. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he admitted. “I didn’t think there was one man on earth that’d get wise. Now I suppose you want the old man?”

“I want you first,” Colton told him.

“You got me!” laughed the man with the gun. “But you haven’t got me like you got that sister of mine, have you? She wouldn’t say a word, would she? Well, it’s a damn’ good thing she didn’t!”

“I knew that,” said Colton quietly.

“You didn’t think the wayward son could come back after ten years, with a counterfeiting process that couldn’t be beat, and then get his father in on the scheme to pass the phony money through his bank, did you? And you didn’t know that staid old Dryden Nelson would ever become head of the gang, and then slide out under the noses of the secret-service men. I guess he’s the man you want to get, eh? Well, I’m the little man that’s going to see that you don’t!”

“I will find him when the time comes.”

“You will, eh—you will!” Snarling viciousness dominated the voice. “Well, you won’t! You, with your lone hand! Why, you poor boob, it’d take a gang to get me!”

“I had about concluded you were just taking a chance on a word dropped by Miss Nelson and a thing or two you might have heard of me,” Colton said quietly. “I didn’t think you’d dare have any one near enough to get real information. This is one of the games where I don’t play a lone hand. The boat that’s been following us ever since we left the dock is the revenue cutter Proctor, with Chief Whittson and his men aboard.”

292The man ripped out an oath. “So that’s it!” he snarled. “Fooled me, eh? Stand up! Put your hands behind your back! No funny work! I’ve tied men before with one hand.”

Colton smiled at him sardonically. “If I am off the deck fifteen minutes Chief Whittson and his men will board the Carracas, and nab the fake owners of the bear. Quite a scheme, that. No one would ever suspect ignorant, ragged-looking, brown men with a dancing bear as counterfeiters, would they?” His tone was a burlesque of the man’s own. “And what do you suppose the chief’ll do when he finds me here? Tied up or dead makes no difference. I promised myself to get you, and get you alone. But it’ll be just as good that way.” The mockery had died out of his voice at that last sentence; there was a tinge of bitterness that the man instantly recognised.

“Well, you couldn’t put him wise to me!” gritted the man. “So you are a lone-handed worker, after all. Get up!” he commanded. Colton obeyed the jabbing gun-barrel. “I’m a single-hander, too!” went on the counterfeiter. “We’re going up on the deck, and if there’s a move to get me, out you go! This gun’ll be in my pocket, jamming your kidneys every minute. Let ’em get the gang! I’m through with ’em! Let ’em have the bear, too! It’ll be no good to anybody! I’ll see to that. But if you even lift a finger to point me out―⁠―” He made a horrible gurgling sound in his throat that was more than significant. “Come on!” he ordered sharply.

They left the stateroom, Colton idly twirling his slim stick, the man at his side talking commonplaces in a grim tone that made them anything but commonplaces. To the passengers who saw them on the deck they were only ship acquaintances, but 293the blind man felt the gun-muzzle now and then in his side.

“We’ll stop here,” growled the man at the forward rail, overlooking the open deck below. “I want to be where I can watch those men of mine. Put your hands on the rail where I can see ’em!”

Colton quietly obeyed, resting his elbows on the wood and dangling his cane over the edge. The crash of the wireless sender broke out; the blind man felt his companion grow tense as his trained ears read the dots and dashes. Then he knew that the message he had written so that the man who was an expert telegrapher could not suspect had flashed to the revenue cutter, “John Jones, 56 Cedar Street,” meant nothing but a business deal.

Minutes passed. Below them the three ragged men lounged around the cage. Four or five other men, of the crew off watch, stood around, scowling vindictively at the bear cage and its sleeping animal. Then came the thing that the blind man had been waiting for. He felt the big engines slow down. Not a muscle of his body seemed to move, but the knuckles of his right hand whitened as he gripped the end of his cane.

An oath came from the man at his side. “So you tricked―⁠―”

So sudden that it seemed but a whir in the light, the slim cane in the hand of the blind man swished around, straight for the other man’s eyes. There had been not a warning move but a lightning turn of the wrist. The first instinct man has is to protect his eyes. The criminal obeyed it, forgetting all else. He dodged with a gasp. Colton’s knees seemed to give way under him, he spun around on the balls of his feet like a cat; then his whole body straightened like a suddenly released whalebone, his right fist 294found the jaw of the other, and the master counterfeiter fell without a groan and lay still.

Colton’s whistle rang out shrilly. A screamed oath came from the deck below. The sound of a struggle.

“Get the bear!” shouted Colton.

A shot rang out. Another. He could hear the big cage rattle and groan as the dying animal thrashed out its life. Around the cage seven men were struggling, the three ragged, dark-skinned men who had guarded the cage and the four men who had been apparently lounging sailors.

The blind man listened for a moment, then he smiled a grim smile. “A lone hand!” he murmured. “I hate assistants—but I’m not such an egotistical fool as all that!”

On the port side of the boat he heard the scrambling of men to the high, white deck. Then Chief Whittson’s voice came:

“Did you get him?”

Colton touched the unconscious body of the man near the rail just as he would have touched the body of a snake with his foot.

“Where’s Nelson?” asked the chief eagerly.

“Down there in the false, canvas-covered top of that bear cage!”

“What!”

“Yes. Drugged! For God’s sake get that suffocating cover off, and send for the ship’s doctor.”

The order was bawled to the men below. Willing hands ripped the cover to pieces, and on a thin mattress, in a steel-floored, steel-meshed upper compartment of the cage, was Dryden F. Nelson, white-faced, unconscious!

“By Heaven, he had his nerve with him to take that chance to get away!” gasped the chief, in admiration. “It’s a new one! We’d never have 295suspected a bear cage in a thousand years. And we had every way out of the city guarded.”

“Yes!” The word came as a half groan, half snarl, from the man on the deck, whom one of the secret-service operatives had just manacled. “He had his nerve! He’s my father! And he’s the greatest counterfeiter of them all!”

Thornley Colton leaned forward. He grasped a wrist of the man, and almost pulled the arm out of its socket.

“You dirty, lying cur!” he said, and his tone was one that he had never used before. “You forced that old man to serve you after he had discovered what you were doing! You forced the girl who thought you were her brother to protect you! By God, if ever a man deserved hanging you’re the one!”

“He’s my father!” grated the handcuffed man. “If I go to jail he’ll go, too! He knows I’m his son!”

“You dog!” Colton’s voice fairly shook with passion. “You fooled him into believing that you were his rotten-hearted son that died ten years ago. But you can’t fool me! You may look like Joe Nelson! You may deceive even the eyes of a father! But I’m blind! Blind! I talked for an hour with a school chum who played in the football game in which Joe Nelson broke his wrist. You never had a broken wrist in your life! The bones are perfect!” He turned to the chief. “Keep a careful guard on that cage, chief, until we get to the cutter. I think there’s a million or so dollars that this dog got from Nelson’s bank stuffed into that mattress!”

“Damn you!” The man half rose to his knees as he shrieked it. “I tricked them all! And you―⁠―”

“That’s the confession I wanted to vindicate Nelson,” said the blind man contentedly.

296

V.

Nadine Nelson rose as the blind man entered the room, her lips curved in a wonderful smile of joyous greeting, and she hurried across the floor to meet him.

“Can you ever forgive me?” he asked, in his rich, musical voice.

“Forgive you?” she cried happily. “Why, I could—kiss you!” She stopped, crimson-cheeked.

He smiled seriously down at her. “It was necessary, the way I spoke to you,” he said gently. “Before, I did not realise how desperate the game was. I knew that your father’s life hung on the thread of your silence. And I knew that the only way I could assure myself that you wouldn’t break down and talk was to arouse every bit of that wonderful fighting gameness you have. The men who had your father would have killed him rather than risk getting him away if they thought there was a breath of suspicion.”

“I know,” she said; “I know—and understand.”

“The ringleader talked a little to the chief on the way back in the revenue cutter,” went on Colton. “He had been a pal of your brother’s for years in South America. They worked together in a telegraph office in Rio.”

“He was a wonderful operator,” murmured the girl. “He is the only man I ever knew of who could imitate another man’s touch on the key. That was the proof that convinced father that he was Joe. You know the touch of an operator on a sender is as individual as handwriting.”

Colton nodded. “My knowledge of that fact is what threw me off the track at first. You knew your brother was implicated the minute you spoke of him in your room. I remembered then the stories I had heard of him. I remembered that he 297was fifteen years older than you, and was supposed to have been shot in South America ten years ago, where he went following some trouble here.”

“Joe always was wild,” the girl confessed softly, “though I only remember him as a big, strong brother who used to hold me on his knee while he told me wonderful stories. I couldn’t believe sometimes that the man who was making daddy do such horrible things could be the brother I knew. But I couldn’t convince father. The counterfeiter knew every incident of Joe’s life, and there was the touch of the operator that father thought was so indisputable. I tried to get father to confess it all. I refused to carry him the messages that were left in my room after we knew the secret-service men were watching us, and that Joe and his men were next door. Then Joe—I can’t call him anything else―⁠―”

“That is the name he has gone under for years,” put in Colton.

“Then Joe rigged up the magnets and key,” went on the girl. “He had to give father instructions every night where to distribute the counterfeit money that was packed in the vaults of the bank in place of the reserve. And he made father sell all his bonds to cover the shortage. Then, with the help of a watchman, who was another of the gang, they got the counterfeit money in to take the place of that father had gotten to make good. Every day Joe promised that he would make restitution, for he had made father believe that he had sent the money to Brazil for investment, and it would double in a month. So father hoped and prayed, and got years older every hour. The secret-service men were dogging every step, watching every move. Jail stared him in the face—and he believed the man he thought his son, believed that he would have the 298money to look the world squarely in the face once more.

“Then Joe told him one night, over the wire, that he had lost all. Father must go. I watched outside my door every night to see that Paul did not come near. I caught a word. I pleaded with father. For four days I fought against them. Then they won. I was at the door last night when father came running up the stairs, panting, half dead with the excitement of having slipped past the secret-service man. He darted past me. I followed. Joe grabbed me by the arm when I started to protest. ‘Get downstairs and throw a fit because your father has gone!’ he hissed. ‘You’ll be along in a little while, and be with him!’ he finished, and there was a look in his eyes that frightened me. So you see it wasn’t only acting in the library.” She shuddered.

Colton understood, even more than she, for he had heard the confession of the master counterfeiter on the revenue cutter that had brought them all back to the city. He had learned then why he had taken such pains to get the old man away. The crook had not been satisfied to take every dollar of the old man’s fortune. He had seen the girl; he had wanted her, and she was to have been the price of her father’s life!

“The chief’s men got the whole plant next door,” he put in hastily. “It’s a new process of bleaching one-dollar bills, and making hundreds from them with a new photographic process. The master crook had been perfecting it for years in Brazil, waiting for a big stake in New York. He put one of his assistants as correspondent of your father’s bank down there. A year ago he had him write a humble letter asking for a position in New York. Your father gave it to him.”

299“Yes,” admitted the girl. “And the man who took the position was the one who posed as my brother. He pretended to be very dull. That’s why the secret-service men never suspected him. When he had been in the bank three months, father discovered a shortage of sixty thousand dollars. He accused the man who came from Brazil. Father’s bank, you know, is a private institution, and only has seven employees. The man confessed, and convinced father that he was Joe. He said he would make good the loss. And he did, with the clever counterfeits. That was the entering wedge. After that father was only putty in his hands. Six months ago he resigned, after seeing to it that one of his gang was put in as watchman and another took his place.”

“That is when he took up his role as doctor,” put in Colton, “and got his scheme of taking the poor Frenchman’s house. And at the hospital they say the Frenchman will recover fully.”

“And father is upstairs sleeping,” she said softly. “You brought him back to me—and he knows that the man who tried to ruin him, the man who would have killed him if you had not been there to prevent him when the revenue men came, was not his son! That is the greatest of all! We owe you a debt that we can never repay; you and Sydney, here, who stood so bravely by when I thought all the world had turned against me.”

She touched the arm of the black-haired man who had sat silent beside her, and he looked at her with a wonderful new light in his eyes. Gone, now, was Sydney Thames’s great fear of women that had been his obsession all his life. He had met the woman.

“Can you ever forgive me, Thorn?” he asked, speaking for the first time. He had not even raised his eyes to the face of the man he had renounced that 300morning. Ever since Dryden Nelson had been brought back to his home, and the wireless message from the revenue cutter had opened the jail-door for the girl, his thoughts had been torturing him.

“I must forgive myself first,” the blind man said quietly. “It hurt me more than anything else to talk to you like that. But a man’s life hung in the balance. I could not tell you, for I knew you would tell the girl rather than see her suffer a minute.” One of his rare smiles lighted up his face. “Let’s make it a burned paper, more completely burned than the charred fragment I found in the Frenchman’s house; the part of a note one of the outside men sent to the master counterfeiter. For on that my fingers read three words: Joe, cage, Carracas. That finished the case—my case.” And his sightless eyes seemed to look at them with understanding and joy.

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