THE SIXTH PROBLEM THE GILDED GLOVE

I.

A hundred eyes turned as the woman entered the dining-room; a hundred lips parted in admiration as she made her way through the winding aisle of tables in the wake of the straight-backed head-waiter. There were many beautiful women in the room, but, among them all, she was wonderful. Under the soft glow of shaded lights the ivory tints of her skin, with the colour of rich warm blood under it, were accentuated by the burnished gold of her hair. Behind the full red lips the pearl of her teeth showed; the great brown eyes looked over the room calmly, with aloofness. There was nothing girlish about the new arrival. Every line, every curve, bespoke perfect maturity.

Then the lips that had been parted in admiration curved in a smile as the eyes saw the man who followed her. He was scarcely five feet tall; a caricature of a man. His small moustache and ragged Vandyke were so colourless that they could not be seen at a distance. And he walked behind the woman with a peculiar lifting of knees at each step that reminded every one who saw of a helpless little coach-dog. To a hundred minds flashed the simile: the beauty and the beast of Madame Villeneuve’s immortal story.

210The waiter, conscious of the new attraction that was to make his dining-room picture perfect, stopped at a table in the corner and pulled back a chair with an unconscious flourish.

“Your table, ma-dame!” Then real regret tinged his tone: “It was all we had.”

A startled look leaped to the eyes of the woman; died on the instant. Her tone was merely casual as she asked:

“You got the reservation—how long ago?”

“A scant ten minutes, ma-dame.”

She turned her great eyes on the little man, and in her voice as she spoke was the lilt of badinage. “And you were to telephone an hour ago, Pierre?” she censured. Her hand idly moved the napkin on the table.

But the man did not answer. He had slumped into the chair at the other side of the small table even before she had made a move toward taking her own seat. His teeth chewed his ragged moustache-ends. Under the table his fingers interlocked and twitchingly separated.

The woman’s opera cloak slipped to the back of the chair, revealing the white purity of the skin of her shoulders, and the curves of the throat. She picked up the carte du jour languidly, and a little pout came to her lips, and a tracery of a scowl appeared on her forehead as she studied the items.

“Absinthe, Pierre, and a cup of bouillon?” she smiled.

The man nodded.

“Only the bouillon for me.”

A slight inclination of her head dismissed the waiter, and he hurried away. The woman rested an elbow on the table-edge and leaned forward. The wonderful smile still curved her lips, but the 211voice was hard as flint as she whispered in sibilant Italian:—

“Stop it, you fool of a coward!”

His tongue touched his lips. “It has found us!” he muttered chokingly, and the language he used was Russian.

“Hasn’t it always found us?” she demanded hissingly, but the expression on her face changed not a bit. “Hasn’t it always been on our heels? But have I not laughed at it for years? Laugh!” The last word came like the lash of a whip through the smiling lips.

The man’s throat twitched, his face contorted, and a tremulous parody of laughter came.

“Hideous!” she snapped. “Pitiful ape of a man! Stop it!”

“We cannot all be creatures of steel and stone!” he muttered, in the curious patois of northern Hungary.

“We can all act! We can play our parts! Be a gay boulevardier of Paris with the false courage of the green poison in the water of your veins!” She spoke vehemently, and her words were the words of the Gascony peasant.

She turned her gracious smile on the waiter as he appeared with the bouillon and the absinthe for the little man.

“We shall order again presently,” she said, in her perfect English, and the serving-man backed away.

Without touching the folded napkin, she took a sip of the bouillon. Her eyes, pin-points of fire under the shade of the long lashes, watched the man take up the glass of dull-green liquor and drain it at a gulp. The fire died from her eyes as they saw the faint flush of colour come to the yellow skin of the man and the steadiness of the hand that put the empty glass on the cloth.

212“Ah,” she murmured, in liquid Spanish, her eyes fixed fondly on the face of the little man. “My Pierre is himself again. Sip of your bouillon, my dear.”

The little man obeyed her meekly. “The gaming-table has played the devil with my nerves,” he growled.

“But they are strong once more. See!” Her fingers lifted the folded napkin and laid it on her knee. The man leaned forward to stare at the white tablecloth it had covered. A gasping whistle of indrawn breath came from his lips. On the white linen beside the woman’s bouillon cup were five smudges of gold; prints of the finger and thumb tips of a right hand.

“The sign of the Gilded Glove!” he choked, and the colour went from his face.

“Cease staring, owl of a man!” she commanded in Italian. “Have you not seen the sign before? Do the wrecked nerves of the rouge et noir table need another franc’s worth of green heart? Summon the waiter.”

With a doglike shake of his body the man threw off the fear that gripped him. He touched his empty glass. The woman gave another order, and the waiter hurried away. Then the man’s eyes were drawn again to the five spots of gold.

“The finger prints of warning, the crushed glove of sentence, the clutched glove of death!” He repeated it as though it were a lesson that, once learned, was never to be forgotten.

“But have they not always been at my side?” she asked quietly. “In Paris, in Constantinople, in Budapest, in St. Petersburg, have I not seen them always by my side? Yet I live! Should I fear in New York, when I have escaped in Europe, where the Long Arm sweeps everything?”

213The waiter returned with the absinthe. The little man took the glass up slowly, sipped part of the liquor, and set it down. A glance from the eyes of the woman rewarded him.

“Does my Pierre see any one who might wear the Gilded Glove?” she asked.

His small eyes roved around the dining-room, gazing intently at every face. He shook his head. “They are all Americans; men of wood and women of china. Asses all!” The heavy gutturals of the German he now used made even more incongruous the puniness of his body.

She nodded. “Those who so carefully reserved the table that we might see the sign have gone,” she said, “and other ears cannot follow our talking.”

The man caught a glimpse of some one his eyes had missed before; he moved a trifle to the left, to see behind a great pillar in a far corner of the room.

“Your blind friend is eating his midnight meal of bread and beef-gravy,” he said.

“Mr. Colton?” There was a new tone in the voice now, and the man instantly recognised it.

“A blind man?” There was a sneer in the words.

“I fear him!” she whispered. “He is the only man on earth I have ever feared. He is the only man on earth I know I cannot deceive. All the things I have—my beauty, my nerves of steel, my acting, are to him as nothing. They delude only men of keen eyes! The American secret agents who watch us are fools, but he―⁠―.”

“Bah! A blind pig of an American!” he sneered again. It was the man whose nerve was perfect now; it was the woman who was unstrung.

“His blindness makes me afraid!” She was 214talking passionately in French. “Minds that are closed to all the world are an open book to him. I know it!”

“You think he knows of the plans; of our going away to-morrow?” The voice was sarcastic, but the words came slowly, haltingly, droned in the dialect of the lower Yang-tse-Kiang River.

“I know not!” she whispered, in purest Japanese. “He may; he may not. But no mistake have I ever made in a man!”

“Then hide your fear,” warned the man. “He has emptied his last glass of Célestin, and is coming toward this table.”

The woman’s hand fluttered tremulously toward her throat; but in an instant she was her calm, collected self. As she ate, and talked French commonplaces to the little man, she watched the approach of Thornley Colton from the corner of her eyes. She saw the white hair that curled and waved from the pink scalp; the wonderful paleness of the face that was brought out strikingly by the great round lenses of the smoked-glass library spectacles with their tortoise-shell rims. She knew that the eyes behind them had been sightless from birth; yet the strides of the approaching man through the winding aisle of tables were long and confident. Not a false move did he make, stepping aside at just the proper moment to avoid hurrying waiters, halting a second to let a nimble omnibus pass; never once turning to ask a question of the black-haired, apple-cheeked man who followed at his heels.

At the table he stopped, a smile of pleasure lighting his pale, strong face, as he extended his hand. “A delightful surprise, Madame Gorski!” he said, with quiet enthusiasm. “Sydney told me that you were here, but I could scarcely credit my good fortune. When is the next of your marvellous recitals to be?”

215The woman’s smile of joy and surprise as she took his hand had been wonderful in its perfection, and as she answered his last question, no human ear could have detected the lie behind the words: “In a few days, M’seur Colton. You are an inspiration. One seldom finds so appreciative a person. My husband thinks them frightful affairs.”

“But Monsieur Gorski is not blind,” smiled Colton, as he took the hand of the little man. “Music is the only beautiful thing we of the darkness have, you know. Eyes can see God’s wonderful creations and the beautiful things man’s hands have wrought. We can only hear.”

A tender look of genuine sympathy came to the eyes of Madame Gorski. “Won’t you sit down and talk?” she invited.

She saw Thornley Colton’s hand go to his vest-pocket, and she knew that the supersensitive finger-tips were feeling the face of the crystalless watch he carried.

He shook his head. “It is twelve-forty,” he apologised. “I make it my invariable rule to be in bed at one.” He stepped back regretfully. “Pardon me,” he said suddenly, “your napkin has fallen to the floor.” He leaned over quickly, picked it up, and put it on the end of the table. “Au revoir.” He smiled again, and with a nod to the silent Sydney Thames, who had merely bowed to the man and the woman, he started between the tables towards the entrance of the dining-room.

The woman’s eyes followed him. When he had disappeared through the door she turned to her husband. “A wonderful man!” she murmured. “Wonderful!” She expected a sneer, but her husband was staring at the crumpled-up napkin Thornley Colton had picked up.

“You say he is blind!” he hissed, in French.

216She nodded, puzzled.

“Then how did he know your napkin had fallen? Can he hear the fall of linen on velvet? Can he?”

She reached toward the napkin, lifted a corner as she pulled it toward her; then withdrew her hand suddenly. In the crumpled-up folds of the linen both had seen the dull glint of gilt; both knew that concealed in the napery was a crushed, gilded glove!

“The sentence!” choked the man.

The woman lifted her eyes to the door through which Thornley Colton had passed a few minutes before. “Can he be one of the sinews of the Long Arm?” she murmured: “A man like that!”

Her fingers toyed with her fork a moment. “Pay the check, Pierre,” she said finally, and there was a note of hopelessness in her voice. “We will go home. I am tired.”

The admiring eyes that had watched the woman enter followed her as she left the room. The face, calm, patrician, was beautiful; and the long lashes hid the look in the deep, brown eyes. In the taxi seat she relaxed; the beautiful face held an expression of utter weariness. The little man’s hand touched her shoulder reverently, caressingly.

“Do not falter now, ma chère,” he murmured. “To-morrow we will have the plans of the harbour mines and the hundred thousand dollars they will bring. We will go far away, then, out of reach of the Long Arm and its glove of gilt.”

“To-morrow,” she breathed softly, and she touched his cheek with her lips. She was a woman, was Hedwig Gorski, strange, unreadable. Her heart was a woman’s heart, and grim-lipped men in a hundred cities knew that she loved this little 217caricature of a man. A smile came to her lips. “Yes,” she whispered, in low-voiced Russian, “to-morrow we will be through with it all.”

At the big hotel where they stopped the woman commanded the same admiration; the man the same derisive smiles. But they did not see. In their apartment on the thirteenth floor, whose door was watched night and day by the floor clerks they had bribed to see that no one entered, the woman sank into a big chair beside the table. The man snapped on the lights in every room, and peered into every corner. “No one has entered,” he announced, when he had seen that every window still held the screws he had driven through the frames the first hour they had occupied the apartments.

“Leave me a few minutes, mon cher,” the woman said, and she pulled his head down to kiss him. “I must think—alone.”

Obediently, doglike, he went out into the hall and turned the key in the lock behind him. The woman sighed. She rose and went to the small cabinet, took from it a bottle of wine and a glass. She started to pour the liquor; then shook her head.

“Poison,” she whispered. “That would be their only chance. I can’t risk it.” She went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water, rinsing the glass under the stream until the water was almost boiling. Then she filled the glass to the brim under the cold-water tap, drained it. She walked slowly back to the room, switched off the lights, and seated herself again in the big chair.

The minutes passed. The woman never moved; her eyes stared unwaveringly into the darkness before her. And from out the dark a gilded hand came slowly, certainly. It touched the throat of the woman. Hedwig Gorski did not move. The fingers of gold tightened.

218Outside the door came the voice of Gorski: “Do you wish anything, Hedwig, ma chère?”

And from the darkness came the voice of his wife: “Non, Pierre, mon cher.”

But neither the eyes nor the lips of the woman, nor yet the gilded fingers, had moved.

Silence. The man’s voice called again. There was no answer. Shaking, he unlocked the door and entered the room. A curtain that had been pulled to the bottom of the window was up now. A shaft of moonlight shone on the woman’s face—a dead face. At her throat a golden hand seemed clutched. But he came nearer, and saw that it was an empty, gilded glove. And in the air of the room was the faint odour of crushed bananas.

II.

The little French clock had just chimed the hour of three when the tinkling telephone-bell waked Thornley Colton. He reached forth a hand to the crystalless watch on the small table at his bed-side and whistled. The bell jingled again. He threw a bath robe over his shoulders and went into the library.

He answered the inquiring voice instantly: “Good morning, Mr. Ames. Certainly. I will be ready in ten minutes.”

For a minute after he had hung up the receiver he stood in the darkness, his sightless eyes fixed on the mouthpiece of the instrument. Then he went into Sydney Thames’s room and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Get dressed,” he said quietly, but the apple-cheeked secretary saw the grim, ominous lines that were around the thin lips. “Ames, of the diplomatic secret service, will be here in fifteen minutes. Madame Gorski has been murdered.”

219“Murdered!” The emotional, highly-strung Thames echoed the word in horror.

“Yes.” Still that tone of quiet certainty. “An hour or so ago, I should judge. We will probably go down to the hotel. Hustle!” he admonished again, as he hurried from the room.

In less than ten minutes Thornley Colton, fully dressed, and smoking a cigarette, was seated in the library awaiting the coming of the secret agent. The door-bell rang, and he rose to answer it.

He stopped in the hall, when his superkeen ears caught the patter of bare feet on the carpet. “Go back to bed, Shrimp,” he ordered.

“Gee, is it a case, Mister Colton?” The wide-eyed boy, with the fiery-red hair, the multitude of freckles, and the slightly-twisted nose, asked the question eagerly. His hands literally trembled with anticipation as they fumbled with the front of his purple pyjama coat.

“Yes.” Thornley Colton’s lip curved in a slight smile, and he patted the boy’s shoulder fondly. “But you can do nothing to-night. Go back to bed, and to-morrow there may be some real detective work for you to do.”

“Gosh, I hope so!” the boy exclaimed fervently; then his voice became almost wistful: “Gee, Mister Colton. I wisht youh’d let me get in a case where there was real Nick Carter stuff; blackjacks, an’ assaults, an’ stuff like that.”

“You’ve got a long life before you, Shrimp,” smiled the blind man, as he started downstairs to answer the second ring of the bell.

The man who entered had his rain-coat buttoned up to his chin, and the brim of his soft hat came down to the eyes that gleamed from under it.

Colton bowed gravely. “Rather an early-morning call, Mr. Ames.”

220The gimlet eyes of the secret agent were fixed on his pale face, seeming to bore and probe into the very soul of the blind man. “Mind telling me how you knew my name?” he asked. “To my knowledge we have never met before.”

“I think we never have.” The grave smile still curved Thornley Colton’s thin lips. “But I never forget a voice I have once heard. I heard yours several years ago, when I was trying to solve the puzzle of the missing Villers code book. The diplomatic service was somewhat interested in that case, I believe.”

“So you’re that man!” There was new respect in the tone, and the eyes of the secret agent gleamed brighter.

“A lucky touch of the fingers found the solution of the case,” explained Colton modestly. “If you will come up to my library we can talk more comfortably.” He turned and ascended the stairs.

Sydney Thames was already in the library, and Thornley Colton introduced him. “My secretary, Mr. Ames.” He seemed to sense the other’s desire for a private conversation, and added: “My eyes, also.”

The secret agent accepted the presence of a third person, and took off his rain-coat. Seated in a big chair, which a gesture of the blind man’s arm had indicated, he asked his first question abruptly, curtly:—

“Mr. Colton, what do you know about Hedwig Gorski?”

A thin ribbon of blue smoke rose from the blind man’s lips. He seemed to watch the smoke waver ceilingward before he answered: “I think she is one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. There is no subject she cannot discuss intelligently. She speaks all languages, apparently, and she is the 221only woman I ever met who can interpret Grieg properly. In fact, I would consider her the most accomplished and wonderful international spy I ever met.”

Ames straightened in his chair as though he had been suddenly jabbed with a pin. “How did you know that?” he demanded.

“By a process of elimination made necessary by lack of eyes. I sought an introduction to Madame Gorski after I had heard her husband address her in the Cantonese dialect. I spent several years in China, and, naturally, I was interested. And her musicales have been wonderful affairs—wonderful, and food for considerable thought!” he finished musingly.

“You know that she is dead—murdered?”

“Your visit at this hour could mean nothing else. I have known for some time that Madame Gorski feared something. I have known also that she was constantly watched.”

For a minute there was silence in the room. Ames took a cigarette from his case, lighted it, and became absorbed in the spiraling smoke. Sydney Thames, silent, as always, sat back to listen. The secret agent reached his decision and spoke:—

“Mr. Colton, I came here with a different plan of procedure in my mind. I’m going to be frank. For months we have known that negotiations have been going on with a foreign government to obtain possession of the secret naval plans of the harbour mines in New York harbour. When you understand that those planted electrical mines are the only real safeguard against the invasion of the greatest city in America, you will know just what they are worth. We know Hedwig Gorski came to this country to get them—from whom we have never been able to discover. But we have watched every movement, opened every line of mail she has received, and have 222not been able to find a single clue. For a month my wife and I have occupied an apartment in the hotel directly opposite the Gorski rooms. We have been on guard day and night, as have the floor clerks we learned that she had bribed. This morning at one-twenty-five Hedwig Gorski and her husband returned to their apartment. They went in, lighted every light, and I know they were examining everything to see whether or not the rooms had been entered. In a few minutes Gorski came out, locked the door, and began pacing up and down before it. This was something new, and we watched him curiously. He called. His wife answered cheerily in French. Ten minutes later he called again. There was no answer. He unlocked the door and stumbled in. I was at his heels. Madame Gorski was dead in her chair. At her throat was an empty gilded glove—like a hand of gold that had strangled her.”

“A gilded glove.” Colton repeated it without incredulity or surprise in his voice; merely as the verification of a known fact.

“You know of the Gilded Glove?” asked the secret agent quickly.

“Yes. My world wanderings have taken me to Russia. The glove has always had a peculiar significance. In China two thousand years ago a glove was always given to make legal the transfer of land. The custom was also in vogue among the ancient Egyptians and Phœnicians. In the correct literal translations of the Bible the word ‘glove’ is found instead of ‘shoe’ in the fourth chapter of Ruth, and in the one hundred and eighth Psalm.”

Ames nodded, and the blind man went on: “Twenty years ago a certain Russian order first used the gilded glove as a death sign for traitors to the government. With a love of the significant that only the true Oriental mind has—and the mind 223of the Russian is all Oriental—the gilded glove was left at the throat of persons who transferred their allegiance for gold.”

“That is right,” corroborated Ames. “Hedwig Gorski and her husband were the greatest spies Russia had. Then, for some unknown reason, they went into the service of another country. And for five years she has laughed at the Gilded Glove and its wearers, who have been constantly on her trail.” Again he smoked in silence for a few minutes, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “You seem to know a whole lot about this thing, Mr. Colton,” he said frankly. “I’d like you to come with me to the hotel. When I entered the room, Gorski, who is a little rat, and heaven only knows how a woman like Hedwig could love him, was absolutely insane. He moaned and cried without seeing me for several minutes. When he did, he accused you of the murder!”

“Accused―⁠―” Sydney Thames half rose in his chair and flopped back into it with a gasp of amazed horror.

Thornley Colton’s face had not a flicker of expression. “Yes?” he said politely.

The gimlet eyes of the secret agent went ceilingward once more. “He muttered something about his wife having always feared you—which is the highest compliment that could possibly come from a woman like Hedwig Gorski. He also babbled something about your not being blind because you had seen his wife’s napkin fall to the floor, and that, when you put it on the table, its folds concealed a crushed gilded glove—the sentence of death. He swears that you couldn’t have heard the napkin fall on the velvet carpet.”

“The napkin had not fallen,” Colton said evenly. “I pulled it from Madame Gorski’s knees as I leaned over to pick up the crushed gilt glove I knew was 224on the carpet by her chair.” His fingers felt the crystalless watch in his pocket. “If you don’t mind,” he apologised, “I’d like to get down to the hotel as soon as possible. The most valuable clue, I think, will disappear shortly.”

Ames opened his mouth, then closed it. “My taxi is waiting at the door,” he said quietly, as he picked up his rain-coat. “I warned the hotel manager that the police were not to be notified until I gave permission. Even the murder is of secondary importance to finding a clue to the damned traitor who is going to sell those harbour plans!”

“A human life, to me, is a wonderful thing,” murmured Colton, as he slipped into his overcoat and took the thin cane that gave its messages to his supersensitive finger-tips. There was unconscious rebuke in his tone.

It was not until they were in the taxi, well on their way down, that the silence was broken. Then Ames spoke again. “I’ll frankly admit that the murder is a most wonderful piece of work. I went over every inch of the rooms while Gorski was gibbering. The door is absolutely the only entrance, and I know they looked over the apartment pretty thoroughly. Gorski could not have done it, even if he had the nerve. I heard his wife answer him. I couldn’t see a thing!”

In the darkness Colton nodded. “I don’t think this will be a case where eyes will be of much use,” he said quietly.

The taxi stopped at the entrance of the big hotel, and they went through the lobby without exciting comment or receiving a single stare. The news of the murder had not been allowed to get downstairs. But a man lounging, half asleep, in a leather chair, made a slight signal that Ames understood. The 225secret-service agents had covered the hotel, and were working in a dozen different places.

As the three men entered the Gorski apartment, Monsieur Gorski rose from his chair with a half-suppressed scream of rage. “Murderer!” he hissed, in French. “Murderer!”

A heavy hand forced him back, and an apologetic voice came to the ears of Thornley Colton.

“He’s been ravin’ that way for an hour, Mister Colton,” put in the red-faced man at Gorski’s side.

“Good morning, Joe,” Colton greeted the house detective.

The white-faced manager of the hotel, who had stood back, nervously biting his finger-nails, came forward. “We must notify the police, Mr. Ames,” he protested. “I have obeyed your instructions, but if they ever know―⁠―” The manager left unspoken the horrible possibilities, but his whole manner cried them aloud.

“You can notify them in a very few minutes, Mr. Jones,” the blind man’s voice cut in curtly. He went to the side of the dead woman unerringly. A faint flush seemed to mount to his pale cheeks; his thin nostrils quivered like those of a hound on the scent. Almost reverently he touched the cheek of Hedwig Gorski. His fingers, light as wind-blown thistledown, brushed the beautiful cold skin under the eyes, then down to the throat, stopping short before reaching the five finger-marks of gold that were deep in the flesh. The gilded glove was on the table, where it had fallen as soon as Gorski had touched it. The blind man seemed not even aware of its existence.

“Have you a glass, Mr. Ames?” asked the problemist, and there was unintentional curtness in his tone. Thornley Colton’s whole mind was on the case before him; nothing else existed.

226The secret agent took a magnifying glass from his pocket.

“Look at the gilt finger-prints!” ordered the blind man, as his two hands lifted the woman’s arms. “Are the prints cleanly cut, sharp?”

“Not a single blur!” announced Ames, raising his eyes. “She never moved a muscle after those fingers clutched her throat.”

“Ah!” Quiet triumph was in the blind man’s voice. “Madame Gorski was poisoned!”

“Poisoned!” It seemed that every one in the room echoed it. The clutched glove at the throat, the deep graven finger-prints of gilt had seemed to point to but one thing.

“Yes. No hand of that size could have sufficient strength to keep the woman from moving and blurring the gilt prints that were put there with another gilt glove worn on the hand of the murderer. The wearer of the gilt glove would not overlook a detail. He probably carried the other glove in a box so that its shape would not be lost, and fitted it to the prints after. It is the usual way.”

“The bottle and the glass!” Ames took a step nearer, but Colton’s hand picked up the glass beside the tall wine-bottle. He stepped away from the table, and raised the glass to his lips; held it there for several seconds.

“Hedwig Gorski did not drink from this glass!”

“Why? How do you know that?” Ames gasped it.

“Because it was put there by the man whose gloved hand made those marks on Madame Gorski’s throat after she was dead.”

“Bah!” The expletive came in a snarling sneer from the dead woman’s husband. “You think my wonderful Hedwig a fool? She would drink of no wine that had been unguarded all evening! I heard 227her in the bathroom washing the glass for one, two, three minutes. If she drank she drank fresh water.”

“How long after you heard the water running did she answer you?” asked Colton; and even in his sightless eyes there seemed to come a light.

“Five, six, seven, ten minutes. Ten minutes,” repeated the husband, with sullen positiveness.

“As long as that?”

“Yes.”

“Where is the bathroom, Sydney?” snapped Colton. The muscles under the skin of his lean jaws played back and forth. He was tense as a hound in leash.

“Five steps to the right, half turn,” Sydney answered mechanically, his eyes judging the distance instantly because of years of practice.

Colton darted inside. He turned on the hot water and bent down so that his face was not an inch away from the running stream. He did the same thing when he had turned the cold-water tap.

“The devilish ingenuity of it!” They heard him mutter as he straightened up.

“What is it?” Again Ames asked the question. Student of men as his work had made him, Ames had realised, minutes before, that he was in the presence of a man who would lead always; he understood that he was but a pupil before a master.

“They knew Madame Gorski was too clever to be poisoned in any ordinary way. They knew that she would even suspect the presence of poison in an empty glass, and would wash any glass, under the hot-water tap, before she drank, because the heat would dissolve any poison. They knew, also, that if she wanted a drink it would be of cold water, fresh from the tap. The poison, a paste of peculiar odour that my keen sense of smell instantly detected, is smeared on the inside of the cold-water faucet. The 228minute it was turned, the stream that flowed was almost pure poison!”

“Good God!” came the horror-stricken voice of the hotel manager.

“But there must have been some one here to make those marks and leave the gilded glove,” put in Ames.

“Where is the clothes-closet?” Colton asked.

The secret agent hurried into the bedroom that adjoined the room of death. Colton was at his heels, the slim, hollow cane locating every piece of furniture as he passed. Ames opened the door of a closet full of clothes, and stepped inside. Colton stood at the threshold, his head bent forward, apparently peering intently into the depths of the closet.

“Another?” he asked curtly.

In the other bedroom was a huge wardrobe. Ames opened it, and again the blind man seemed to look into every corner of it. “The murderer hid in there behind the clothes! Take some of them out and you’ll find flecks of gilt from the glove he wore!”

The secret agent grabbed an armful and threw them on the bed, with no regard for their mussing. He pawed them over. His eyes found what they sought, and he uttered a shout of triumph. “Here they are! On the Inverness and this black evening gown!” Then awe came to his voice. “How did you know that?” he asked. “How could you know it—and blind?”

“Because I am blind. Because my other senses are abnormally developed to recompense the loss of sight. I knew the murderer had hidden in the closet; I knew the gilt from the glove he wore on his hand would come off on the clothes that concealed him, just as I knew the glass on the table was not the one Madame Gorski had used, and just as I knew the crushed glove was at her feet in the 229restaurant—because I have a sense of smell that is more than doubly acute. Wherever there is gilt there is banana oil. It is always used in gilding, and its odour is unmistakable. I knew of the men of the Gilded Glove, and I suspected that Madame Gorski feared it. When my nostrils caught the odour and located it at the floor beside her chair, I knew instantly what it meant. I covered it with the napkin so that people would not stare. I wanted her to see it so that she might be warned. The glass on the table has the banana-oil odour because the murderer placed it there with the hand that still smelled of the oil with which the soft kid of the glove had become saturated. The smell was also in the wardrobe. Simple, isn’t it?” A mirthless smile curved his thin lips. Thornley Colton could not forget that in the next room was the body of the woman killed by the hand that left its trail so faintly that only his blindness enabled him to follow it.

“Where are the windows?” Colton asked sharply, before any one had a chance to say a word.

“In the next room, overlooking the street.”

“Show them to me.”

Ames hurried back to the sitting-room. The hotel manager still bit his finger-nails. The husband of the woman who was dead had buried his face in his hands, and was sobbing. The eyes of the hotel detective were fixed on Colton, following his every movement, in them a look of wondering admiration.

The blind man’s feeling fingers examined every inch of the casements that overlooked busy Broadway, thirteen storeys below. “Nothing here,” he said, when he had finished. “There must be another window!”

“Only a small one, in the bathroom, that overlooks an air-shaft,” the secret agent informed him.

230Colton turned and darted into the bathroom. “This is the one!” Once more his exploring fingers went over every inch.

“But that hasn’t been touched. Not a screw has been loosened,” declared Ames positively.

“No, there hasn’t been a screw touched. The murderer was too clever for that, but he wasn’t clever enough to get the banana-oil smell from his fingers. The entire pane was taken out by cutting away the putty, and probably put back with triangular tin tacks that would never be noticed through the frosted glass.”

“That’s a mighty small opening,” Ames said slowly.

“The murderer must have been small, and as active as a cat. Also―⁠―” Colton did not finish; he stepped out of the bathroom. “Who has the rooms directly over this one?” he asked the manager.

“They have no occupants yet,” hesitated the nervous Mr. Jones.

“When were they coming? Who were they?” The questions came sharply, crisply.

“A couple from Philadelphia, who telegraphed to have them reserved. They had occupied them once before, and liked them.”

“Clever,” muttered the blind man. “They wouldn’t take a chance of occupying them, but were going to see to it that they were empty when wanted. Let’s look at them.”

“But what am I going to do?” began the nerve-frayed manager. “The police―⁠―”

“Notify them.”

Colton gave the permission grimly; then a look of compassion came to his face as he seemed aware of the presence of Monsieur Gorski for the first time. He took a step toward him; then halted. He could do nothing—now.

231“Joe?” he said softly. The house detective glanced at the inert figure of the man, and came forward. “When the police come, let them arrest Gorski,” Colton whispered. “He will be safe in their hands, and God knows he isn’t safe from that band of gilt-handed devils anywhere else. It will only be a short time before the real murderer is found.”

The house detective nodded. “It’ll be best that way,” he admitted.

“Show us the rooms!” ordered Colton; then, as the manager hesitated: “Let Joe telephone police headquarters from here,” he advised shortly.

With Ames and Sydney at his heels, he followed the manager to the floor above. The minute the lights were snapped on in the apartment, Ames ran to the open bathroom window. In a heap on the floor under it was a thin, strong rope. Beside it were fragments of what had been a wine flask, and an empty pasteboard box, with the inside smeared with gilt—the one in which the gilt glove found at the woman’s throat had been carried to prevent its handling. And under the bath-tub was thrown another glove of gilt, with most of the gold worn off the inside of the fingers.

“Good Lord!” gasped Ames eagerly. “There’s clues enough here!”

“Too many!” declared Colton tersely. He turned to the manager. “Who has the apartments opposite this?”

“A German family,” the head of the hotel answered, as a pupil to a teacher.

“How many?”

“Three. A big, bearded man and his wife, and a gawky boy. They’ve been here a week.”

“The boy! Describe him!”

“Well,” began the manager nervously. “He’s 232about seventeen, I should judge, but small. He’s awkward, and speaks the rottenest English I ever heard in the darndest, squeakiest voice. Seems to like to listen to people, though, and he’s always sitting around the lobby gaping at the guests.”

“I want to see him!” Colton’s voice had a new note, dominant, compelling.

“At this hour?” stammered the manager.

“Now!”

Ames, attracted by the tone and the words, came from the bathroom.

“What is it?” he asked eagerly.

“The man who murdered Madame Gorski.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know—now.” Thornley Colton spoke the words over his shoulder, for he was following the manager out of the room. A knock at the door across the hall brought no response. Colton pushed the manager aside, and, with his horrified protest unheeded, opened the unlocked door. A snap of the fights under Ames’ fingers, and the men saw that the rooms were empty. But in the air was a strong smell of banana oil.

“The floor clerk!” demanded Colton, and the manager went meekly to get him.

Ames was everywhere, rummaging, prying with practiced fingers into every drawer, every closet. Each piece of clothing he pulled out was examined with lightning-moving fingers. He picked the lock of the big trunk, and cursed when the opened lid revealed only cloth-wrapped stones. But in the bottom was an overturned bottle that had once held gilt.

“The glove had just been gilded,” guessed the secret agent.

The floor clerk entered, visibly nervous.

233“When did the German boy return here to-night?” asked Colton.

“About twelve-thirty.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Were his mother and father in the room?”

The floor clerk scratched his head. “I didn’t see them come in, but I heard them giving the kid the very devil. They raised an awful row.” He grinned at the recollection.

“Ah!” The blind man’s tone held quiet satisfaction. “And an hour or so later the boy slipped out, saying that his mother and father were asleep, and he was going downstairs to watch the people for a while.”

“Yes.” There was amazement written all over the hotel clerk’s face.

Colton turned to face Ames. “The bird has flown,” he said quietly. “He is the one who entered Madame Gorski’s rooms, put the poison in the tap and the glove at her throat. For a week the three have been waiting their opportunity. To-night all was ready. The father and mother left early in the evening, and did not return. They, or another accomplice, dropped the glove at Madame Gorski’s chair in passing, expecting her to look down and see it. The waiter probably kicked it so near her chair that she couldn’t have noticed it if the smell of the banana oil hadn’t made me find it.”

“But the clerk heard the father and mother talking?” protested Ames. “He didn’t see them go out, and,” he added, “there are several of my men around who would have stopped them instantly.”

“No one left that room but the boy!” There was no gainsaying the positiveness in the floor clerk’s tone.

234The grim smile came again to Thornley Colton’s lips. “When I learned that Madame Gorski had answered her husband ten minutes after he had heard the water running, and she must have taken the poison, I began to suspect the true facts. A poison that left no signs of agony must have killed quickly and painlessly. It wasn’t her voice monsieur heard at all! It was the voice of a wonderful mimic; the mimic who made the floor clerk believe that his mother and father were scolding him in this room. And who would stop a gawky German boy? You have his description. Put your men at work.” He rose. “Come, Sydney, it is time for breakfast.”

The secret agent took his hand and shook it fervently. “I can’t tell you how I thank you,” he said, and there was genuine feeling in his voice. “But I will see that Washington recognises this night’s work of yours.”

Once more the mirthless smile that had been in evidence so often that night came to his lips. “I want no recognition,” he said slowly. “I merely want to avenge the death of the most wonderful woman I ever met. There is nothing half so precious as the life of a woman, or a child.”

He bowed gravely. Silently he and Sydney walked to the elevator and into the lobby. Halfway out Thornley Colton stopped.

“I want to telephone the house, Sydney. There’s a foolish fear in my mind that I can’t throw off.” He went into the telephone-booth. When he emerged a minute later, there was a look on his face that Sydney Thames had never seen before; a look terrible in its earnestness.

“Do you believe in presentiments, Sydney?” The blind man’s voice was calm, even. He gave his secretary no chance to answer. “I have just 235had one come true. John found five finger-smudges of gold on the white table-cloth in the dining-room, and Shrimp has disappeared absolutely!”

III.

Thornley Colton paced the floor of his library with long, tigerish strides. His head was bowed, and over his eyes the lines of concentration had deepened in the hours of the long day. His fingers touched the face of the crystalless watch in his pocket.

“Three o’clock,” he muttered. He turned to the desk and its telephone; stretched forth a hand, withdrew it, and shook his head. Again his strides covered the length of the room; across and back, across and back.

He lifted his head eagerly—lowered it. The steps his superkeen ears had heard were only those of Sydney Thames, as he left his bedroom on the floor above.

“Any news yet, Thorn?” asked the apple-cheeked secretary as he entered. The blind man shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said quietly. He took a half-turn around the room, then suddenly wheeled to face the silent Thames. “If anything happens to that boy, Sydney, I swear to God I’ll punish those responsible!” The voice, always so calm, so unstirred by any inner feeling, now trembled with fierce passion. The blind man seemed to realise that the mask he had cultivated so carefully for years had dropped; for his tone was even as he continued: “I thought when I took him that I could give him the real life he had been denied. But I understand now that I was only bringing him to take the risks that have never caused me a 236second thought. I realise now the dozens of times I have sent him into places of danger, merely to satisfy my own conceit; to enable me to beat some one else on a baffling case. Now he is gone! All my vaunted powers are useless, and I’m as much at sea as the veriest tyro. A problemist? I!” His voice vibrated with scorn and self-denunciation.

“You are in no way to blame!” defended Sydney Thames instantly.

Colton turned again on his heel. “I’m as guilty as hell!” he declared vehemently. “Why do you suppose John or the other servants heard no noise? Do you think it was because the man who murdered Madame Gorski, the man who made those glove prints downstairs, overcame Shrimp so easily and so quietly? No! It was because of the training I have given the boy; training to be instantly on the alert to follow, to shadow, to discover; training that no boy should have had. Shrimp, sent brusquely to bed by me, couldn’t sleep. What boy could? But I didn’t understand. I only looked at it from my side. He probably heard the man who entered. Instead of raising an alarm as a normal person would, he probably followed him outside. Then―⁠―” His hands spread wide before him in a gesture of helplessness.

This was a side of Thornley Colton that Sydney Thames had never seen before; a new side, a human side. He understood now the deep love for the undersized, red-haired boy with the twisted nose that was in the heart of the blind man. He hadn’t understood the depths of Colton’s feelings when the blind man had gone through the house calmly when they returned to search for clues. He hadn’t suspected that there was anything but the cold, analytical love of a problem in the cool voice that had put ten thousand police in the big city on the trail of 237the missing boy. Nor had he understood the cool way Thornley Colton had directed Ames and his squad of underground diplomatic workers to rake the city with a fine-tooth comb for the murderer of Hedwig Gorski. No, he hadn’t understood then. Through it all Colton had been the same dominant, emotionless machine, directing, suggesting, issuing curt orders.

But the hours of inaction had done their work. For the first time in his life the problemist was completely at sea. The signs he had read so unerringly a hundred times before; signs that were usually hidden from men of eyes, were missing in this new development of the Gorski case. The man who had left the finger-prints of the gilded glove had apparently entered with a key, for there was not a scratch on a window or door. He had touched nothing but the white table-cloth, for there was not a trace of the banana oil anywhere else. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to tell a fact about the disappearance of The Fee. He was gone. That was all. And Thornley Colton could do nothing but wait. His blindness made him helpless now.

The telephone-bell rang, and Colton sprang to answer it. The eager expression died from his face as the voice of the secret agent came over the wire.

“No trace of the boy yet—Ah!—A bundle of manuscript music addressed to Madame Gorski at the post-office?—No word?—Yes, bring it up to the house. I think it will fit a theory I have been constructing for some time. Good-bye.”

He hung up the receiver wearily, and his voice was tired as he spoke to Sydney Thames. “Not a word,” he said slowly. “Ames is wholly engrossed with the search for those harbour-mine plans. That is the big thing to him. The murder of Madame Gorski and the disappearance of Shrimp are only 238incidents.” He resumed his pacing of the room. “It’s another case like that of the Money Machines, Sydney. Human life and happiness are pushed aside as unimportant because of a few papers and figures in lifeless ink.”

Sydney Thames silently withdrew. He knew that the man who had picked him up, as a bundle of dirty baby-clothes, on the banks of the English river that had given him the only name he ever knew, wanted to be alone. So he left him to his tireless pacing while the wonderful brain behind the high forehead figured each step in the problem; aligning motives; testing theories.

When the front-door bell announced the coming of Ames, Colton seated himself at the desk, and when the secret agent entered there was no inkling of the thoughts in the mind of the blind man.

“There’s absolutely nothing in this,” began Ames apologetically, as he laid the thick envelope on the desk. “It’s just music, poor stuff, too. Probably written by some sentimental amateur who has read of Madame Gorski and her recitals, and wants a criticism.”

“Such persons usually inclose a long letter of pleading,” remarked Colton dryly, as he took the thin sheets from the big envelope and ran his supersensitive finger-tips over the back of the paper to feel the indentations of the pen. “You have no trace of the boy, yet?” His tone was almost uninterested, and his finger-tips still brushed the back of the music sheet.

“No.” Ames shook his head. “The men are combing the city. Finding the boy means finding those harbour-mine plans, probably.”

Colton’s lips tightened. “No, it doesn’t,” he said quietly. “These are the plans of the location of every electrically-operated mine in the harbour and bay.”

239“What!” Ames fairly shouted the word as he leaped to his feet. He jumped to the desk and picked up one of the manuscript sheets Colton had examined and laid aside. As he stared, the expression of incredulity gave way to one of bewildered puzzlement. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “There is nothing concealed here. This is straight music.”

“It would contain some horrible discords if you tried to play it, I imagine, though it was done by a man who has some knowledge of composing. But, as you said before, any one with eyes would put that down as mere amateurishness. Eyes are the greatest handicap pure eliminative reasoning has. For weeks you have watched Madame Gorski. You have had men at her musicales, and have attended them yourself, no doubt. To you those wonderful affairs were merely a cloak the woman had assembled to hide her real purpose for being here. To me they were something else. They were part of a carefully thought-out plan. She knew that you were watching her. She knew that every person who approached her and every bit of her mail would be examined. But who would suspect a dozen sheets of music manuscript? Who but a blind man!” The faint colour of excitement was in his cheeks, the lean, cleft jaw was set. “See!” He turned over the sheet he had examined last. “Every sheet is written in five flats, yet in this page alone there are more than a dozen sharp accidentals. Three notes out of five must be played on the black keys. Every sharp and flat on every sheet denotes the placement of a blind mine! Look!” He snatched up a pencil from the desk, located the middle bar in the top staff with his finger-tip, and drew down the paper a wide, curving line, following the course of his feeling finger, to a measure in the lower right-hand corner. 240“Notice,” he observed quietly, “that not one of the measures the pencil has touched contains either a sharp or a flat.”

“The secret naval lane through the outer harbour,” whispered Ames, and in his voice was the awe that had been there once before.

“Yes.” Thornley Colton leaned back in his chair. “You know that the harbour is laid out in half-mile squares, subdivided by smaller squares of two-hundred-and-eighty-yard mine placements. Take the sheets numerically, and draw perpendicular parallel lines. Each one of these will represent the two-hundred-and-eighty-yard square. The measures of the treble and bass clefs placed directly under each other will make the half-mile squares. The sheets lettered A, B, C should be laid from left to right, I imagine, to give the anchorage width. I think a line following the staccato notes will give the rough shore-line necessary.” He lighted a cigarette, and his sightless eyes were apparently fixed on the ceiling, his thoughts far away.

Ames lifted his eyes from the papers to the impassive face of the blind man. “My God, Mr. Colton!” he cried, and his voice shook with feeling. “Do you realise what you’ve done? Do you understand that in ten minutes you have accomplished a thing that has baulked every secret agent in the country for months? Do you know that you have kept in the hands of this country the greatest naval secret we possess”—his voice choked—“the secret I was about to let slip through my fingers? It means―⁠―”

A wave of the problemist’s hand stopped him. “It means that my boy is missing, perhaps dead,” the blind man said dispassionately. “It means that the most wonderful woman I ever knew is dead. That is all.”

241A look of pity came to the face of the secret agent. “We will do all we can,” he assured. “We will find the boy just as surely as we will find the traitor who is responsible for these.” He picked up the precious sheets, and put them carefully in his pocket, and buttoned his coat.

“Finding the traitor should be comparatively easy,” Colton told him. “Men who have the knowledge of music composition necessary to put that together are not common in the war department.”

Ames picked up his hat and held out his hand. “Believe me, Mr. Colton, Washington will not forget this work of yours. I will let you know the instant we hear anything. Good day!”

Colton sat quiet while the secret agent and Sydney Thames left the room. There was no hope in his heart. By his showing the government agent the secret of the music he had filled his mind with thoughts of finding the man who was responsible. Every effort of the secret agents would be in that direction now. What was a little, red-headed kid beside a traitor who would betray his country? Nothing—to the men who were paid to guard the secrets of state.

By silence Colton could have kept the trained government-men on the trail of the boy he loved. But he had given all that was in him to solve the puzzle of the music. The secret agents would go on that track now. The police could do nothing against men like those of the Gilded Glove. They had been content to arrest Monsieur Gorski; they had proclaimed in every morning-paper that he was the murderer. They were already lying back on their laurels, smug, complacent. No, there was no one but the blind man to find The Fee!

The long hours of the afternoon passed. Still 242Thornley Colton sat in the arm-chair, immovable. From time to time Sydney Thames came to the doorway, looked in, and went away. He knew that the problemist did not want to be disturbed. And the blind man’s mind through the hours was the mind of the men who were behind the gilded glove. His mind worked as their minds would work; planning out each step they would take in their next move; leading off into tangents that made necessary the discarding of entire trains of thought. Patiently he would start again at the beginning. Finally his brow cleared; the rigid lip-lines softened.

“It is the only way,” he murmured, and his hand went out to the button on the desk that would summon his automobile any hour of the day or night. Another button brought Sydney on the run.

Colton sensed the unasked question and shook his head. “No,” he anticipated. “I am going out in the machine to get a breath of fresh air—alone.”

“But―⁠―” Sydney started to protest.

“Alone,” repeated the blind man. “I shall not be gone more than an hour.”

Sydney Thames went with him to the waiting car, and watched with anxious eyes as the stolid Irish chauffeur whirled him away. It was less than an hour later that the blind man returned.

“Any news?” he asked of Thames, as he threw off his hat and coat.

“Headquarters report that they have gone through every house in the Russian sections.”

“The one place where he would not be likely to be,” sneered the blind man. Then weariness made his voice heavy. “I’m going to bed, Sydney. I don’t want to be disturbed under any circumstances. Good-night.”

He went to the bedroom that adjoined the library, undressed, and in a few minutes was under the covers, 243sleeping peacefully. Sydney Thames shook his head and went to his own room. It was the first time in years he had known the blind man to miss an evening out.

When the little clock on the mantel chimed twelve, Thornley Colton waked immediately, got up noiselessly, and put on his clothes, all but his collar and tie, coat and vest. From his overcoat-pocket he took the thing he had gone out for in the early evening. It was a small rubber bulb with a long rubber tube that had a curved end of hollow, red glass. He carefully placed the bulb in his right armpit, adjusted the tube down the length of his arm, so that the curved end of red glass was concealed in his half-shut right palm. He drew the coat of his pyjamas over his shirt, and, without even removing his shoes, crawled back under the covers.

The little clock chimed one—two. The calm, even breathing of the blind man came regularly. The superkeen ears caught the faint sound of an opening door. But he did not move. Dead silence. He heard the library-door open, and to his nostrils came the strong odour of banana oil. His regular breathing was the only sound that broke the stillness. The library-door closed. Instantly, noiselessly, he was out of bed. Seemingly with one motion he was in his coat, and vest, and overcoat. His hand touched the loaded automatic in his outside pocket. He did not even wait to put on the smoked glasses his sensitive, sightless eyes needed to protect them from the burning light. He did not wait to pick up the thin, hollow stick that gave its message to his finger-tips. Nor did he pause an instant in the library, where the smell of bananas told him that a crushed glove of gilt had been laid on the desk. Down the stairs he ran with steps that were as silent as the night itself. He flung wide the front door. 244Down the street he heard an automobile door slam; the engine barked.

“Was I mistaken? Was it all wrong?” ran the bitter thought through his mind. He had staked everything on his ability to anticipate a probable plan of action on the part of the murderers. Then an eager look came to his face.

“Gee, Mister Colton, I’m glad yuh come!” The piping boy’s voice came from his side.

“What is it, Shrimp?” he asked tensely. “Where have you been?”

“I been watchin’ them guys. I follered the one that got in the house, an’ I know where dey hang out. Gee, Mister Colton, dere’s a taxi.”

“Hail it!”

The shrill voice brought the cab to the curb. The chauffeur nodded at the low-voiced instructions. In the darkness Thornley Colton lolled back in the cushions. On his face was a curious look of resolution, content, victory. His wonderfully-keen ears, trained for years to know every sound, every voice and inflection of voice, knew that the person at his side was not Shrimp! He had known from the first that the voice was that of the man whose marvellous mimicry of Hedwig Gorski’s voice had deceived even her husband. He knew that the man beside him was Madame Gorski’s murderer. Blind, helpless but for the automatic pistol in his pocket, he was allowing himself to be taken to the men who had left their death-sentence sign on the desk in his library; to the men who had taken the boy he loved!

One chance in a thousand there had been, and the blind man had grasped it eagerly. He knew that one false move would destroy even that chance. He had realized that hours before. He had not dared give an inkling of his plan to a soul; he had not 245dared ask for help in the one desperate chance, for he did not know how many keen eyes were watching. He did not know where he was going, and he could not risk having men who would come to his aid shadowing him. No, the one chance in a thousand could only be taken alone.

As they rode the voice chattered on, telling of trailing the man who had left the glove-prints to a little house in Harlem; of stealing a basement-door key from a servant. Thornley Colton complimented quietly and often, but his whole mind was fixed on the street-corners the cab turned, calculating distance, remembering directions. And he knew they were not going near Harlem; but were in the dark, winding side-streets of Greenwich Village.

The taxi came to a stop. “The house is three doors down, Mister Colton. We’ll chase dis guy an’ slide up soft.”

Colton took a bill from his pocket, and the hand of the murderer snatched it to pay the driver. “Dis way,” whispered the voice, when the chauffeur had gone. Colton felt a hand lightly touch his elbow to guide him.

Stealthily they went, keeping close to the dark shadows of the houses. With a hiss of warning the hand drew him against the wall of a house, seconds after the blind man had heard the sound of approaching footsteps. A policeman passed, swinging his stick and whistling softly.

“Come on!” The hand pulled him forward and down an area-way. He heard a handle turn and an iron-grille door open rustily. A key in the hand of his guide opened another door, and he felt the carpet of the basement-hall under his feet as the door closed behind him.

“Wait here a minute, Mister Colton,” came the whisper at his side. “I want a scout ’round a little.”

246Obediently the blind man stood in the darkness. He heard the light, almost soundless footsteps retreating until they died away somewhere in the depths of the house. Like a flash he whirled to the door. His fingers found the catch, sprung it back. The way to escape was open! Then he crept forward into the darkness, every nerve strained to catch the slightest warning sound. From the floor above came the hoarse murmur of voices, but even his wonderful ears could not distinguish words. Then his lips tautened to a thin, straight line. A moan, faint, quavering, came from the darkness. He knew instantly that it was the voice of the boy he had come to find. He had heard it before, years ago, when the boy had tossed on his bed and dreamed horrid dreams of his murdered mother and his murderer father, from whom Thornley Colton had taken him.

“Only a few minutes more, kiddie,” he breathed, then he darted back to the place his guide had left him. His superkeen ears had warned him.

“Here upstairs playin’ cards an’ half drunk,” whispered the piping voice so like that of Shrimp. “Got a gun?”

Thornley Colton knew that the man was leaning forward, watching him in the darkness, but his hand touched the pocket that contained the heavy pistol, and he nodded. The lips of the blind man set even grimmer as he heard the sharp breath-intake of satisfaction. So the thousandth chance demanded that he lose even the pistol! Well, he would play the game according to their own set rules.

Up the stairs he followed at the heels of his leader, his brain automatically counting the steps and turns, as it had been taught to do years before. The guide stopped. Colton could hear the faint murmur of voices.

247“Dere’s where dey are!” whispered the voice. “Get in before dey know where dey’s at.” The blind man’s hand fumbled for the door-handle. He flung the door wide.

The bright lights of the room stung his naked eyeballs like a million swords of living fire; his hands went involuntarily to shield them. Instantly he felt the fingers of the man who had guided him dive toward his pocket, snatch out the pistol.

“Welcome, Herr Colton!” The voice came from in front of him in heavy German, and each word was a sneer. “Fool!” grated the voice. “Into our hands like a baby you come. Three pistols are pointed at your heart! Sit down!”

Colton groped forward blindly, his hand found a chair, his fingers told him that it was set close to a heavy oak table.

“Goot!” grunted the man who had spoken. Colton knew that he was sitting directly in front of him, across the table. The blind man’s ears also informed him that on either side of the voice was another man. Three against one! Three with loaded pistols against an unarmed man who was blind!

The door closed softly, and Colton knew that the man who had led him was gone.

“Where’s my boy?” demanded the problemist suddenly, fiercely. “Where is he!” He leaned across the table, and the heavy voice commanded him to sit back. But Thornley Colton had learned the table’s width; a powerful lift of his knee had told him of its weight. That table was his thousandth chance! He slumped back in his chair, his left hand protecting his burning eyes, his right hand half closed on the arm of his chair.

“You have offended the Gilded Glove,” began the rumbling German voice.

248“I understand Russian!” broke in the blind man curtly.

The man at the right drew in his breath sharply. Colton heard the man at the left tilt his chair until its back touched a wall.

“The Gilded Glove has always been sacred to traitors,” the voice went on, and the language was Russian. “But you have learned things that men with eyes would never have learned. We have watched you with Hedwig Gorski, and we knew that you knew. We know that you discovered the secret written in the music. But for you, that secret would have been our secret. The clutching fingers of the Long Arm are always reaching for those who fight the Little Father. You fell into our trap. You are a brave man. Your hands do not shake, nor does your body tremble. Your death will be an easy death.”

“Thanks.” The word came laconically from the blind man, but every nerve, every sense was alert as he mentally pictured the room and its occupants. He knew that the heavy table must be less than three feet from the wall. The tilted chair had told him that. Even the quiet breathing of the men located them for the blind man, who was waiting the thousandth chance.

“This chamber is sound-proof. Its secrets are always secrets,” continued the voice. “We could riddle you with bullets, and the world would be none the wiser. But we will be merciful.”

Colton heard the click of a bottle-neck on a glass, heard the gurgle of the flowing wine, then the glass was pushed across the table.

“Drink!” ordered the harsh voice. “It is the poison that killed Hedwig Gorski; swift, powerful, painless. Drink!”

Thornley Colton drew back, a look of horror on his face.

249“That, or the bullets which do not kill painlessly!”

The problemist’s right hand reached blindly for the glass. His palm almost tipped it as it covered the top for an instant; then his fingers lifted it.

“You will not harm my boy?” he asked, and there was a queer chokiness in his voice.

“Drink!”

“You will not harm my boy?” The voice was pleading.

“I shall count three!”

Slowly, his hands shaking so that it required both of them to keep the drink from spilling. Thornley Colton lifted the glass to his lips. Six eyes watched him, but the nervousness seemed to pass as the fire of the wine entered his veins. He set down the empty glass and wiped his lips with his handkerchief. Narrowly the men watched him. A hectic flush seemed to mount the pale cheeks; the lean, cleft jaw was set rigidly. Suddenly Thornley Colton bent forward across the table; his left hand gripping its edge. And his voice came to their ears like the snap of a steel cable.

“For every minute of pain you have caused the boy I will make you suffer hours of agony!” he swore passionately. The voice became dull, then, the words came slowly, haltingly. “Hours—hours—for my boy’s—hours—hours―⁠―”

The half-closed right fist dropped to his chair arm; the left hand dropped limply to his side; his body convulsively turned in the chair so that his hip was at the table-edge; the eyes stared straight ahead.

“It has done its work—as always,” whispered the man at the left.

“A pity we could not make of him another Boris!” said the man at the right.

250“Put away the needless pistols!” commanded the heavy voice. “Darkness for the sign!” The hand that had held the pistol reached back of him. The fingers pulled a switch, and the lights went out. The door opened softly.

From the darkness a gilded hand came slowly, certainly. The fingers touched the throat of the blind man―⁠―

With every ounce of strength in his powerful body, Thornley Colton sent the table crashing on the three men, pinning them like rats in the narrow space their chairs had occupied, knocking the breath from them, half stunning them. So instantaneously that it seemed part of the same lightning movement the blind man’s hand darted out to grasp the invisible arm that held the gilded glove. A snapping jerk, and Madame Gorski’s murderer was on his knees. Colton’s right fist went out; the curved glass tube in his palm that had sucked up the wine to the bulb in his arm-pit while his hands had concealed the wineglass, shattered with the impact, cutting his tender palm in a dozen places. A choking gurgle came from the torn lips of the murderer, and the problemist knew that the sudden movement of his right arm had sent a spurting stream of the poison down the throat of the mimic. He let the lax body slide to the floor. A groan came from one of the pinned-down men. It was only a matter of seconds now.

The steps of a running man sounded in the hall-way. The superkeen ears of the problemist located them in the direction of the basement-stairs, and he realised that the approaching man must have been on the lower floor guarding the boy. That would leave the coast clear! He darted across the room; crouched beside the door. The man who had groaned cursed jerkingly, and one of the heavy 251chairs creaked as he tried to writhe from under the big table. A hoarse growl came from the doorway. Like a cat, crouching, Thornley Colton spun on the balls of his feet and caught the man around the knees. A wrestler’s twist of his body, and the new comer went down. The problemist pulled the door closed with a slam and jumped into the hall-way.

A shot sounded in the room, and the blind man’s lips curved in a grim smile. The way to escape was clear! In the darkness of the closed room the men of the Gilded Glove would be for precious minutes wholly at sea; in the darkness of the halls, Colton was at home—himself. He knew that he had gained several minutes now, because in the dark and the confusion of returning senses the men would not realise that he had escaped; every suspicious sound made by one of them would mean, to the others’ bewildered brains, the location of the enemy.

Colton ran down the hall noiselessly; every nerve, every faculty alert to warn him of danger before a man with eyes would ever suspect its presence. His brain counted the steps without conscious effort. At the top of the basement-stairs he paused a second. From the room came a crash, and he knew the crushing weight of the table had been lifted. Then another shot. They were fighting among themselves in the darkness! Down the basement-stairs he ran. His wonderful ears told him that no other guard was there.

His hand brushing the wall, as he hurried back into the dark lower hall-way, located the door. He found the bolt and slid it back. From the corner came a faint moan. In a single stride he was across the floor. He leaned over a pile of blankets in the corner, and his hand brushed the face of the boy; 252his fingers felt the warm stickiness of the hair, and he cursed the men upstairs.

“Shrimp!” he called softly. The boy stirred, and his eyes opened as Thornley Colton picked him up tenderly in his strong arms.

“I fought ’em like—the very dickens!” Shrimp’s voice was scarcely a whisper, but it took every bit of the gameness in the small body to make it even that. “They blackjacked me.” His body went limp.

Colton ran with his burden down the dark hall to the front door. The confusion upstairs had ceased. He heard a door slam; a rumbling Russian curse; running footsteps. The minutes he had counted on had become seconds again! He jerked open the door he had unlatched, swung back the iron grille, and took a great gulp of the cool night air; let the wind fan his still-burning eyeballs. Running footsteps sounded; a dozen of them.

“Colton! My God, Colton!” It was the voice of Ames; and there were men with him.

“In the house with the open basement-door!” gasped Colton, and in his voice was a prayer of thankfulness for the thousandth chance. “The whole crowd!” he finished.

The running footsteps sounded once more. Ames lingered.

“The taxi-driver put us wise,” he jerked out. “He knew the boy, and realised there was something wrong when the man with you imitated his voice. Reported it to the police. I got the tip instantly. Called up your house, and Thames found you gone. I got half a dozen of my men here in taxis.”

“Where are the cabs?” snapped Colton. “I want one. My boy is hurt!”

253“Around the corner.” Ames whistled shrilly. “Here comes one. I’ve got to be with my men!” He was gone.

Colton laid the boy gently on the cushions, and, as the taxi started uptown, Shrimp’s eyes fluttered open. “Gee!” he murmured faintly. “I got m’ real detective work—that—time—assaults—blackjacks―⁠―” The voice died as unconsciousness came again.

IV.

The afternoon sun came slantingly through the great glass windows, lighting the happy face of the blind man and the pale, smiling face of The Fee, as he lay in bed, his head swathed in bandages, one arm in a sling.

“I was goin’ round, ’cause I couldn’t sleep, an’ I heard somebody open the front door”—Shrimp scowled as his voice became weak, and set his teeth for a moment. “I thought it was you. Then I seen his whole head was covered with a black thing, an’ there was black gloves on his hands, an’ he didn’t wear no shoes.”

Colton nodded. “So that he could not be seen, nor heard, in the darkness. The hood covered everything but his eyes and lips; the latter were left free so that he could mimic a voice.”

“I watched him sneak into the library an’ come out. Then I beat it down the backstairs, an’ when he got in his automobile I was hangin’ on the back. He musta knew I was there all the time, but he never let on. I was scoutin’ ’round the house when three of ’em jumped me. I guess they knocked me out good, for it was a long time ’fore I come round. Then a guy I couldn’t see came in the dark room where I was an’ started knockin’ you. I told him where he stood, all right.”

254“It was the mimic,” Colton explained. “He wanted to learn every tone of your voice.”

“The government agents got every one of them,” put in Sydney unnecessarily.

“Yes, and the house has been the scene of many crimes. Ames and his men found a lot of valuable papers, together with the ringleaders of the Gilded Glove. Jones, of the hotel, identified the bearded man who did all the talking as the German husband who had the rooms. The chair arms didn’t protect him very much from the falling table, and his three broken ribs will keep him quiet for a while. The one who posed as his wife, and the third man at the table, have bruises and contusions enough to last them a lifetime. The murderer of Hedwig Gorski”—Thornley Colton paused a minute and went on—“was brought around all right by the ambulance surgeon; only a little of the poison went down his throat; but he told his story. He was a wonderful boy mimic fifteen years ago. Any sound, any voice was as easy for him to learn as names would be to you and me. Then the Gilded Glove got him. What devilish method they used I don’t know, but they made him their tool. Boris Strevelski forgot that he had ever been anything but a dealer of death to traitors; that he was the Hammer of God was the only idea left in his mind. But they taught him all languages, and he picked them up as the average man would remember names.

“He worked for half an hour to get the pane of glass from the window of the Gorski bathroom, and, in a skin-tight suit of black silk that covered everything but his mouth and eyes, he hid behind the coat and dress in the closet after putting the poison in the tap. He had on the same suit at the house. My hands told me that.”

255“But how did you know he would come here?” asked Sydney breathlessly.

“I risked everything on my mental ability to follow the workings of the Oriental mind,” Colton said slowly. “The Caucasian mind is always content with mere killing. But the Oriental mind must have the significant! Think of the risk of staying in the Gorski rooms when they knew the poison would do its work. But to them the mere death was only part; their whole course of thought demanded that the sign be left.

“I knew it would be the same in my case. So I gave them no chance to leave the crushed glove anywhere but here; and I knew they would come. I didn’t know that they had been watching me for weeks because of my friendship with Madame Gorski, nor that they had gotten a duplicate key. But I was almost at the heels of the stranger. When he saw me I knew he would instantly think of luring me to my death. The sign had been left, and death was next. I knew, also, that he would never overlook the opportunity to mimic Shrimp’s voice, because in the years mimicry has become a mania with him. He slammed the door of the car in which he came so that I would think he had escaped. Then his playing Shrimp’s part seemed easy and logical. What was there to do but take me to the New York headquarters of the Gilded Glove? Following out their mind-processes further, I had no doubt that they would give me a chance to drink the poison, for that, too, is a peculiar kink of the Oriental mind. Hence my precaution. The rest was simple.”

“Simple!” gasped Sydney Thames, and there was sweat on his brow. “My God, Thorn, think of you, blind, risking yourself alone with those men.”

256“My blindness was my greatest ally there,” smiled Colton faintly. “The instant darkness came they were helpless, while I was my normal self, which I couldn’t be in the burning light, but”—he touched the alcohol-soaked bandage that covered his head and eyes—“the tortures of the Inquisition were mild beside that light on my unprotected eyeballs.”

He patted the hand of the boy gently. “And it was Shrimp who led the secret agents, after all,” he said quietly. “If the taxi-driver hadn’t been one of the hundred friends he has made around the city, there might have been another story to tell. The men of the Gilded Glove weren’t far behind me.”

The door-bell rang downstairs. “Ames again,” commented Colton, a trifle wearily, and in a few minutes the government agent was ushered into the room by John, the butler.

“We got everything, Mr. Colton!” he cried. “The whole gang is cleaned up. Gorski was released from jail to-day, and is going back to Paris. Without his wife he will never bother any one. Even the Gilded Glove didn’t think him worthy of their attention. And those harbour-mine plans! A wonderful piece of work! Placed in order under an onion-skin paper map of the harbour, with the staccato-note marks at certain points on the shore line, every sharp and flat traced on the map gave, as you said, the exact locations of the mines.”

“Have you found the traitor?” asked Colton.

“Yes.” Ames’s voice was sober. “His body was found this morning in his office. The pistol he had used was beside him. A closed incident.” Then enthusiasm came to his tone once more. “What you have done on this case will never be forgotten, Mr. Colton,” he said earnestly. “It will not be made public, of course, but the secretary of state 257will write you a personal letter offering you any reward you may ask. The president himself will tender you a position that―⁠―”

Thornley Colton’s upraised hand stopped him. The blind man turned his sightless eyes toward the closed eyes of The Fee, and gently withdrew his fingers from the clasp of the small hand. “Hush,” he said softly. “The boy is sleeping.”

258