THE THIRD PROBLEM THE MONEY MACHINES

I.

The man in the long blue car was a person of consequence. The big traffic policeman had stopped all north and south traffic, but the chauffeur of the blue machine darted in front of a stopped Bowling Green car without the slightest slackening of speed, and shot between an eastbound slot car and a westbound delivery truck. Traffic cop 7389 saluted gravely and silenced with a warning scowl the snarling driver of a held-up van, who had to reach the ten-thirty boat.

The lone occupant of the roomy tonneau, rigidly straight on the cushions, answered the salute with a barely perceptible nod of his head, and a half smile of the thin, almost bloodless lips. But there was no change of expression in the granite-hard gray eyes, nor a movement of the straight back. One lean hand gripped the tonneau door, the fingers resting just above the small silvered monogram on the blue enamel; the other dropped lightly on the seat beside his knee. John T. Villers, the power behind the throne of Money, was on his way to his office.

It was characteristic of the man that he did not lounge back in his seat; that his pose was one of tense rigidity. No one had ever seen John T. Villers relax; none of the hundreds who knew him 95thought that he could relax. Alert, watchful, a machine for the massing of millions; a machine that never required rest; that never needed the lubrication of pleasure to insure its smooth running; a human mechanism that never deviated a hair’s breadth from its schedule. Such was the king of the kings of finance.

At ten-fifteen he would be at his office in Wall Street. Elsewhere, a monarch of half a million fighting men paced the floor of his castle room, impatiently awaiting the word that a simple touch of a desk button in that Wall Street office would bring. Ten thousand yellow coolies, half a world away, idled in bamboo-thatched construction huts for a stroke of John T. Villers’s pen. And he answered the salute of a traffic policeman!

Men and women on Broadway halted in their hurrying to stare at the big blue car, and the silent, straight-backed occupant; for the face and the pose of the financier were as familiar to the reading public as Broadway itself. Weak-chinned men of the unemployed ranks cursed the “luck” that gave him money and them hunger. Clerks, from high office windows, bemoaned the fate that compelled them to commence work at eight and allowed him to begin at ten. There was no sign in the hard gray eyes of the man who answered the traffic men’s salutes that the money machine had been working until daylight over the inch-thick packet of papers now buttoned tightly beneath his coat. The machine never showed signs of its running.

At Murray Street a deeper inclination of the head was the honour paid a business friend in a passing automobile. At Park Place the blue machine skirted ahead of the traffic block where the huge Woolworth Building mounted skyward. A taxi darted in front of it, tried to cut in ahead; then 96stopped. Villers’s chauffeur cursed under his breath as he swerved toward the curb. The wheels of the smooth-running car struck the thin end of a building girder, ran over it with a great jolt that jarred the car body down on its springs. A fat traffic cop hurried across the street just as the stalled taxi came to life and scurried down Broadway. The blue car had never even paused; the incident was closed.

The chauffeur bent lower over his wheel so that his muttered oaths would not reach the silent man behind him, for he knew that his job hung on the hair of his employer’s morning humour. John T. Villers’s one rule, whether it be for trusted clerks or chauffeurs, was smoothness; he did not like jolts.

The next traffic cop, who had sworn sympathetically when he saw that jar, let his jaw drop and his salute become a gesture of surprise. The lone man in the tonneau was lying back in the cushions, his eyes closed, the fingers of the hand that had been on the door relaxed.

“’Tis a tired man he is this mornin’,” muttered the traffic man in sympathy.

The car swung into Wall Street, stopped before the world-known banking house of Villers. Instantly the chauffeur was down, his hand pulled open the door. But the machine that never relaxed was sleeping. Wonderment came to the face of the driver; then fear. He laid a hand lightly on the shoulder of his employer. The breathing man did not stir. The fear on the chauffeur’s face deepened. Mr. Villers must be sick!

He obeyed the first instinct, and looked wildly around. Relief chased some of the fear away when he saw the approaching private watchman, who had been stationed before the Villers’s house for years.

97“Mr. Villers is sick!” he cried.

The watchman brushed him aside, and stared at the bloodless face with the closed, blue-veined lids.

“He must ’a’ fainted!” gasped the watchman; and he, too, looked wildly around for help.

“Can I be of any assistance?” Both jumped nervously as the stout, full-bearded man with the black satchel spoke. “I am a doctair.” He enunciated the words slowly, distinctly, with a pause after each.

“Mr. Villers has fainted.” They chorused it, huge relief in their voices, and stepped back instantly.

The bearded man stepped to the car, ripped open the unconscious man’s coat and vest, and placed his hand over the beating heart professionally.

“Heart trouble. Seerious,” he told them slowly, as if the words caused him trouble. “Tell them inside.” Both started. He called the watchman back. “Spread the robe on the side-walk.” The watchman’s clumsy fingers fumbled with the robe as the physician put his ear to the financier’s chest, muttered an angry ejaculation, and fumbled with the black bag at his feet.

“It’s ready, sir.” Then the watchman swore under his breath at the crowding men and boys who had apparently sprung from the very side-walk.

The big man paid not the slightest attention. He lifted the slight form of the man of millions and laid it gently on the robe-covered stones. “He must go to a hospital,” he announced with precise distinctness. “I will call the ambu-lance.”

The crowd parted, he hurried through.

Inside the banker’s office the chauffeur blurted the news to the multi-millionaire’s private secretary, utterly unmindful of the two strangers who were with him.

“Fainted?” echoed the secretary blankly.

98“Fainted?” repeated the red-cheeked, black-haired stranger.

“Men like Villers don’t faint. Where is he?” The chauffeur stared at the deep-chested, striking-looking man with the wavy white hair, fine as silk, and the strong, lean face, whose extreme paleness was accentuated by the great blue circles of the smoked tortoise-shell library glasses that rested lightly on the nose with its delicate, sensitive nostrils. “Show me where he is, Sydney.” The cleft chin was set at an ominous angle, his slim stick, apparently of heavy ebony, dangled idly between the tapering fingers of his right hand.

“Can’t you see the crowd running?” The shock had made the chauffeur forget that he was only a chauffeur; he jerked his head toward the door he had opened so unceremoniously.

“I am blind.” The white-haired man said it simply, quietly.

“Come, Thorn.” His apple-cheeked secretary led the way from the office, the blind man at his heels. Villers’s private secretary and the chauffeur followed dumbly after.

There were now two policemen to keep the surging crowd from the still body of the master of millions on the cold side-walk. The outer ranks parted for the apple-cheeked man, the blind one followed him to the centre. One of the policemen mopped his brow in relief as they entered the small circle.

“It looks like heart trouble, Mr. Colton,” he murmured nervously.

“Think so, Thompson?” The end of the slim stick touched a knee of the prostrate man lightly. Thornley Colton knelt and picked up a lax arm. His fingers felt the pulse.

“That’s what the doctor said it was.” The 99watchman licked his dry lips. “He ought to be back by now.”

“Doctor?” snapped the kneeling man, without looking up.

“He laid him there t’ call th’ ambulance.” Once more the watchman wet his lips.

“Who is Mr. Villers’s physician?” The blind man’s finger-tips were lightly brushing the coat-lining.

“Doctor Clayton.” The private secretary answered.

“Get him. Quick!” The tone of the voice sent a bareheaded clerk who had followed them on the jump to obey.

“Is it a serious heart attack?” stammered the still-dazed private secretary.

“Heart attack? No!” The blind man spoke sharply, crisply. “This is a morphine stupor!”

“Morphine?” gasped the dazed secretary incredulously.

“Yes!” The word was jerked out, a slim fore-finger and thumb raised an eyelid of the prostrate man. “See the contracted pupils? Pin-points!”

“But how―⁠―Thank Heaven, Mr. MacLaren!” The secretary’s voice changed from helpless amazement to joyous relief as the square-shouldered, square-chinned man with the iron-gray hair pushed his way though the crowd.

“My God! What does this mean?” cried the new comer.

The blind man rose, picked up his stick, and brushed his trousers knees.

“It means robbery—now,” he said grimly. “It will probably mean murder in a few hours!”

Dreyfus MacLaren, the one man in all the world who enjoyed the full confidence of John T. Villers, paced the floor of his office with nervous strides, halting at every turn, ears strained to catch the 100faintest sounds from the inner room, where the doctor worked over the unconscious money machine. On the street outside, stretching from the sub-treasury steps to the dingy buildings where the sugar brokers buy and sell, the crowd still waited, whispered. In the outer room of the financier’s office came the low-voiced hum of half a hundred newspaper men, tensely waiting a word from that inner room. At the end of his small office MacLaren swung around to face the blind problemist, who rolled the thin, hollow stick he always carried between his tapering white fingers.

“My God, Mr. Colton!” he broke out. “It couldn’t have happened!”

“It did,” answered the blind man mildly.

“But he was in an open automobile; a thousand persons saw him; he answered the salutes of, perhaps, fifty policemen along Broadway. No one was near him; no one could have got near enough to render him unconscious with morphine.”

“The fact that he is still in a morphine stupor is the best answer to that.” Thornley Colton’s voice was still mild, even gentle.

“You say that the man who lifted him out of the car did not inject the stuff?”

“Yes. The bounding pulse my fingers felt told me immediately that it had been in the system at least ten minutes. The bounding pulse, as it is called, is peculiar to morphia. I have made a special study of pulse beats.” The blind man did not add that the pulse, to him, was the Keyboard of Silence that told many secrets of the heart to the supersensitive finger-tips that always rested on the wrist when he shook hands.

“Then that puts it right up to the chauffeur, whom the police arrested,” admitted MacLaren. “But I can’t see how he did it,” he added.

101Sydney Thames, silent in a corner chair, also shook his head.

“He didn’t!” snapped Colton. “If the police were forced to use brains instead of feet to hold their jobs, there wouldn’t be so many fool mistakes made. They should have arrested the automobile,” he finished seriously.

Before the surprised expression on MacLaren’s face could be put into words the inner door opened, and the grave-faced doctor stood before them.

“Has Mr. Villers’s family been notified?” he asked.

“He won’t die!” There was utter disbelief in MacLaren’s tone.

“He will die,” amended the physician quietly. “His nerve has been keeping his worn-out body going for years; such an overdose of morphine could not but be fatal. I have tried to arouse him, but heroic methods would only result in an instant stopping of his heart. He will sleep for, perhaps, an hour more; then he will quietly stop breathing.”

“My God, doctor! That is murder!” MacLaren’s great body dropped limply into a chair, his face was white. He had refused to believe, before, that the master of millions could die. It was impossible. The wonderful machine could not stop. Now it was silent, useless.

The doctor was speaking: “There is no doubt that a heavy dose of morphia is responsible; every symptom points to it unmistakably, but”—the physician stroked his Vandyke perplexedly—“I have been unable to find the spot on his body where the hypodermic needle entered. I have minutely examined the chest, the abdomen, the arms, thighs, even the face. It is puzzling, very.”

“Mr. Villers is still lying on his back?” The question was put casually by the blind man, whom the physician had not even noticed.

102“Certainly!” The doctor answered as one answers a foolish question.

“If you will turn him gently on his side for a moment you will probably find the broken point of the hypodermic needle under his shoulder-blade.”

“His back—why―⁠―” The physician darted through the inner door.

The doctor’s going left them silent. MacLaren’s square shoulders were hunched forward, his eyes fixed steadily on the closed door. Sydney Thames, in the big leather chair in the corner, was tense, rigid. A hundred times he had heard the blind man, whom he loved, make a statement of this kind. Never had he known him to be wrong; but always did he fear that Thornley Colton would make some terrible mistake in his sureness of himself. And the sightless problemist smoked his cigarette calmly, the great, blue circles of eyes fixed on the ceiling above him. The door opened; the doctor faced them.

“The needle had broken under the right shoulder-blade—as you said.” Doctor Clayton’s keen eyes bored the blind man with a look of half-suspicion.

The words seemed to arouse MacLaren; he realized their significance. “How—did—you—know—that?” Each separate word was a gasp. “And blind!” The tone of his voice was a demand for explanation.

“I knew it because of my blindness,” explained the problemist quietly. “We of the darkness must learn to visualize, mentally, what your eyes accept unconsciously. We learn to see with our brains, you see without them. My whole life has been spent in this development of mental visualization. I can instantly picture, in my brain, a scene that has been given me in pieces by my four other senses. 103And that mental picture often goes back to events that lead up to, and make, the scene.”

“Do you mean that you can imagine who administered the morphine?” asked MacLaren incredulously.

“Not at all!” There was just a shade of impatience in the tone. “I have no clairvoyant powers. I haven’t the remotest idea of the guilty persons’ identity—yet. But I knew Mr. Villers; I knew his habits, just as every man in New York, and Europe, too, who reads the papers, knows them. He has probably been given more columns of newspaper space than any other man who ever lived. Everything he did was machine-like, never changing; as sure as the sun and moon. I know how he sits in an automobile; I know the attention he attracts. You do, too, but you accepted them merely as something too obvious for the brain—as merely a routine report of the eyes. So, when I felt the unmistakable morphia pulse, an instant’s thought told me the only possible way it could have been administered. The trained mind doesn’t have to take up time with the consideration of innumerable possibilities; it is trained to the instant elimination of impossibilities. The back was the only place it could have been injected.”

“How? By whom?” They chorused it eagerly.

“By the innocent tool of a master mind: Mr. Villers’s automobile.”

“The automobile! What do you mean?” Incredulity, amazement were in the voices of the excited men.

“During the excitement attending the carrying of Mr. Villers to his office my fingers were examining the cushions of the tonneau. The upholstery had been cut in the crease formed by the two tuft buttons, about where a man’s back would come. A specially 104made hypodermic was inserted, and the cut sewed. Of course, the crease concealed the stitches. No one ever used the car but Villers, and every one knows how he sits in the machine. You heard the statement of the chauffeur before the police arrested him. The jolt caused by the girder and the stalled taxi in front of the Woolworth Building were all that was needed. If that had not succeeded, the taxi would have swung in front and caused a collision. Then the ‘doctor’ would have gotten right on the job there, as he did here, when the taxi hurried on ahead to be on hand here. The breaking of the hypo needle was almost a certainty. It only required the barest fraction of an instant for the stuff to enter the body, and the broken needle would at once destroy the instrument and make its presence for some time unsuspected by any one sitting in the car.”

“How fiendish,” murmured Doctor Clayton, and the words seemed puerile.

MacLaren shook his head, as if to clear the cobwebs from his usually alert brain; then he leaped to his feet, totally unmindful of the dying man in the next room.

“Colton, he can’t die! The quarter-billion Chinese loan must be put through to-day. The new German bond bid is being held open for us till midnight. Another twenty-four hours’ delay means that we lose both. He had all the data, the papers! They were―⁠―”

“Stolen,” finished Thornley Colton quietly. “That was the object of the game—as I told you outside.”

“I never thought of them!” In MacLaren’s voice was the strong man’s contrition for an unpardonable oversight. His teeth snapped together with the squaring of his jaw as he paced the room 105before the silent blind man and the red-cheeked, black-haired Sydney Thames. Behind the closed door they could hear the hum of the doctor’s voice, as he tried vainly to call up the Villers’s up-town house; though a hundred thousand black-typed extras were on the street telling of the racing special train that was bringing the family to the city and the dying man.

MacLaren made a circuit of the office before he stopped in front of the blind man, who idly twirled his cane. The sudden stopping of the machine that he had thought could not stop had unnerved him completely, driven every other thought from his mind. But theft was something he understood. It meant money. MacLaren, too, was a money machine.

“The loss of those papers means millions!” He was calm now, with the calm of deadly earnestness. “More than that! The stealing of those data Mr. Villers had means that the United States will be frozen out of both the Chinese and German loans. You know how we had to fight for the chance! Ours is the only American banking house that could handle them. All the figures were prepared by Mr. Villers, and you know his invariable rule to hold things like this until his last minute of grace. Those papers must be recovered before midnight! Even the murder—there seems to be no doubt that it will be murder—pales into insignificance beside this, and”—there was a curious catch in his voice—“God knows I loved John T. Villers. But the loss of that Chinese loan means that the United States won’t have a say in the new republic; that American interests will be crowded out by the powers who control China financially. Every last detail was in those papers he was to have ready to-day. Think of the German loan!” He was pacing the floor again, talking as he walked. One 106money machine had stopped; another must take its place. “The loss of those papers means a loss of at least ten millions to us, and American interests in China and Germany will lose a hundred millions in the next ten years!”

“Midnight,” murmured Thornley Colton, as a sensitive finger-tip touched the crystalless watch in his pocket. “And it’s now one-fifteen.”

“Less than eleven hours!” MacLaren fairly jumped to the telephone on his desk. “The police must have inducements to hustle!” One hand lifted the receiver; then he swung round. “You!” It was almost an accusation as he hurled it at the blind problemist. “You solved that code-book theft for us a year ago. I’d forgotten! There isn’t a minute to lose!”

“A man is dying in the next room,” reminded Thornley Colton quietly.

MacLaren wet his dry lips. “I know.” His voice was lower, calmer. “But think what it means. The hugeness of it! A theft of a hundred millions!” It wasn’t lack of human feeling in MacLaren. He was a money machine, doing what the man in the next room would wish done.

The blind man nodded understandingly. “I came in this morning to see Mr. Villers regarding his cheque for our Home for Blind Children. We haven’t received it this year.”

“If you can recover those papers I will give you my personal cheque for a hundred thousand!”

“I never accept fees,” corrected Colton. “The solving of mysteries is my recreation. But if you will continue Mr. Villers’s contributions to the home―⁠―” His expressive lips finished the sentence without words.

“Yes! Ten times the amount.” MacLaren was half out of his chair, staring at the blind man.

107“Thank you. That home means a lot to me.” The blind man spoke reverently. “Sydney and I will look into the case after lunch; I am hungry.”

“Hungry? My God!” MacLaren fell back weakly into the chair. “Don’t you realize that you have less than eleven hours? Don’t you understand that every minute of delay may be fatal?”

“Oh, no,” replied the problemist easily. “It will be at least several hours before the man who has the papers finishes his elaborate precautions for putting the police off his trail. There is no sense in hurrying after a man who is dodging and doubling to avoid possible pursuit. When he is convinced that his trail has been covered he will resume his normal way. The chased hare can wear out a hundred dogs that follow his devious windings, and when they are worn out he returns to the bosom of his family, contented and serene. That’s where the ferret gets him.”

For a full minute MacLaren stared, as if the blind man had presented a problem in Euclid which he could not understand. Then he brushed his sweat-beaded forehead with a trembling hand. “But the police didn’t waste an instant,” he protested. “There are two hundred detectives working now. They’ve got a minute description of the man.” He stopped suddenly. “You weren’t even present when they questioned the chauffeur and the watchman!”

“The senseless bulldozing of the police always makes me lose my temper,” confessed Thornley Colton. “I spoke to the chauffeur for ten minutes before the detectives arrived. Afterward I preferred to sit here, where I could smoke a cigarette and use the telephone.”

“But the police learned that the man who lifted Mr. Villers from the car was stout, with a full brown 108beard, and dressed in light gray,” persisted MacLaren.

“And in this office, alone with my cigarette, I learned that he was slim and smooth-shaven,” smiled Thornley Colton, as he rose. “But those are minor details. He had the nail of his right index finger broken, and wore a curious thumb ring. Also, he did not actually place the hypodermic in the tonneau cushions. That was done by a small, slightly built man, and a very beautiful woman who is left-handed.”

“Without eyes―⁠―” began MacLaren gaspingly.

“With my ten eyes.” Thornley Colton held out his two hands, with their tapering hypersensitive fingers.

Broadway was a pandemonium of newsboys’ shouts; Wall Street a murmur of low-voiced speculation; newspaper offices a buzz of humming activity. John T. Villers was dead—murdered. London whispered it solemnly, Paris gesticulated over it, Berlin gutturaled the news phlegmatically, Tokyo took it with characteristic lack of characteristics. Men in tin-roofed cable offices on the coast of Africa caught the telegraph clicks with news eagerness instead of curses. The wireless aerials of a thousand ships filched the story from the air. The man who had builded the American empire of money was dead. Would the empire crumble? Would the world-power of money return to the seats of the mighty on the other side of the ocean, where it had been before the money machine had demanded a hand-grasp on the golden sceptre the jealous hands of Europe had wielded so long? The money machines of Paris, London, Berlin awaited the answer that would be in the Chinese loan, the German loan—the answer that was in the pocket of a murderer!

109And in the quiet dining-room of the old Astor House Thornley Colton complained to the waiter of the lack of crust shortening in the apple-pie he was eating. It was three o’clock.

Across the table Sydney Thames chewed his cigar nervously and tried to keep his mind on the “latest” extra he held in his hands. He had read the life story of John T. Villers, printed under the great black word: “DEAD!” It was the story of the poor boy who came to the city, the story of machine-like habits, of putting through vast deals only when he had taken the last possible hour to consider every point, until he became known in Europe and America as “Last-Minute” Villers.

He read of Johnson, Villers’s personal chauffeur, who slept alone with his wife and three small children in the big private garage that was now empty because the dozen other Villers machines and their drivers had gone to Bar Harbour with Mrs. Villers and the two sons. He read of Johnson’s five years of service, of his exemplary habits, his nights spent at home with his family; even of his taking his wife and two larger children to the theatre the night before, while the baby was cared for by a neighbour. Even the police admitted that he was innocent, but police-like, they still held him.

The story of finding the curious hypodermic, surrounded by a strong spring to hold it in place, caused Sydney to laugh nervously. The police had not discovered it until reporters, who had interviewed MacLaren after Thornley Colton had left, told them of it. Now the search was on for the taxi which had caused the Villers machine to run over the girder. And there was no clue! The three traffic policemen who had seen the whole thing had neither number nor idea of the machine. It was red; so were a thousand others. An expert had 110said that the hypodermic of death had been made abroad, possibly in Germany. And that was all.

But the papers revelled in the details; they gave inch-typed prominence to the announcement that MacLaren had offered a huge reward for certain papers stolen from the unconscious Villers. It was a big story; the biggest story of the most daring crime New York had ever known.

Yes, Sydney read, and re-read, until the inch paragraph in the lower left-hand corner regarding the activities of a band of international smugglers was a relief. On any other day that story would have been given prominence, to-day it was only a filler. He glanced up at the clock on the wall, then his eyes turned toward the blind man, in them a look of appeal for hurry.

“Nervous, Sydney?” smiled Thornley Colton over the top of his glass of milk.

Thames flushed, as he usually did when this man, who had picked him up as a bundle of baby-clothes on the banks of the English river that had given him the only surname he had ever known, read his thoughts.

“It is five minutes past three,” he murmured apologetically.

“And we haven’t done a thing,” finished Colton, the smile still on his thin, expressive lips.

“But this is so big; the consequences―⁠―”

“Do you expect the success of this murder to pave the way for others?” interjected Thornley Colton mildly.

“I wasn’t thinking―⁠―” Sydney stopped suddenly.

“Of the murder.” The problemist again finished the sentence for him. “You were thinking of the stolen data. So are a million others.” The smile was cynical, now. “What a pitiful thing a human 111life is, compared to a few millions. No one thinks of Villers’s death as the death of a man. It is merely the stopping of a machine with its work unfinished.” He took a bill from his fold and laid it beside his plate. “Come, then; I’ll get busy.”

“To the Villers garage?” asked Thames eagerly. “There should be countless clues, for you, leading to the persons who placed the hypodermic.”

“All superfluous,” declared Thornley Colton, with a slight wave of the thin, hollow stick he always carried. “Following a multitude of unimportant clues is police work. We are going to the office of the Manhattan Tug and Lighterage Company; yesterday was quite foggy. Remember?”

“What―⁠―” began Sydney amazedly.

Thornley Colton interrupted. “The same?” he asked quietly.

Sydney Thames choked back the words and glanced over the dining-room. His brain, trained for years to count steps for the man who could not see, and who refused a guiding arm, calculated rapidly. “The waiter is serving the table twelve steps straight. Turn eleven, four right, and seven to the door, left.”

A nod, and the blind man hurried forward confidently with long, swinging strides, the hollow cane dangling idly from his fingers. Sydney followed, and, at the door, he stepped beside Colton. The slight touch of his sleeve on the sightless man’s arm guided him to a taxi-cab. It was not until the directions had been given, and they were on their way toward the Battery, that Thornley Colton spoke.

“The Manhattan Tug and Lighterage Company got a whole lot of free publicity a few weeks ago in connection with that rescue at sea of the Oldwell private yacht by one of their big sea-going tugs that happened to be near. Recollect?”

112“Yes,” admitted Thames, puzzled. “But what has that to do with it?”

“Nothing, except that the story went the rounds, and the name would naturally occur to any one who needed a sea-going tug. I have an idea that the fog of yesterday caused several persons a whole lot of anxiety. Ah, here we are.”

Dazedly Sydney Thames followed the blind man to the side-walk. What had a sea-going tug to do with a robbery on Wall Street? What had the fog of yesterday to do with the murder of to-day? But Sydney knew the uselessness of the eager questions that were in his mind. The problemist would tell him, all in good time. So, silently, he fell in beside Thornley Colton, and guided him into the offices with the slight touch of his sleeve.

President M‘Inness was the man Colton asked for, and they were shown into the private office immediately.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Colton; glad to see you!” boomed the wide-shouldered, rugged-faced man, as he took the other’s fingers in his vice-like grip. “What is it this time; smugglers again? They say a new gang’s workin’. They’re even watching my boats.”

Thornley Colton shook his head, for answer to that last. Then he came right to the point.

“You got a wireless from the Moravia, early yesterday morning, to take a passenger off at Quarantine, and rush him to New York.” It was not a question; it was a simple statement of a known fact.

“Sure,” admitted M‘Inness. “Then the Lord stepped in and brushed away the fog at midnight, and the Moravia docked at eight o’clock this morning.”

113“Can you give us the name that was on the wireless?”

“Sure. I guess you’ve heard it often enough. Percy Vanderpoole.”

Sydney Thames could not repress a gasp of surprise; but Thornley Colton’s tone was merely casual as he said:

“Dreyfus MacLaren’s nephew?”

“That’s him. He’s got about nine million dollars, you know, and he’s certainly been making it fly in the four years since he left college. Hasn’t brains enough to get in out of the rain, either.”

“Um!” Thornley rolled the hollow stick between his fingers absently. “Nothing else in the wireless, I suppose?”

“Nope. Just wanted a tug if the Moravia was held up after two o’clock. Wasn’t. The fog lifted, she docked, and we lost two hundred dollars.” The sentence ended in a wry smile.

“From what I’ve heard of Vanderpoole, and from what I know of him, I should think he’d have taken that tug anyway, and hang the expense.” The blind man rose. “He must have been taking some one’s advice,” he finished.

“Be the first time he ever did, then, according to the papers,” grunted M‘Inness. “Accordin’ to them I’ve seen, he has a bug for giving fool dinners.”

“So I’ve heard,” murmured Colton, backing toward the door.

“Ain’t any use asking your game, I guess?” grinned the amiable Mr. M‘Inness.

“You’ll probably read about it in the morning papers,” smiled Colton. Then he hurried out, his brain automatically counting the steps it had registered as he entered.

On the side-walk outside, Sydney allowed his thoughts to find expression in two words:

114“Great Scott!”

“It was a surprise,” admitted the problemist. “It means a total change of plans. Take me to a telephone.”

There was one at hand in the corridor of a big office building. For nearly half an hour Colton telephoned, while Sydney waited outside the closed booth vainly trying to understand this new complication. What connection had the nephew of the man who had offered them a hundred thousand dollars for the recovery of the papers with their theft, and with the murder of John T. Villers?

Colton emerged from the booth, a smile of triumph on his thin lips.

“Now a jewellery store, Sydney,” he said crisply. “I want to buy a cheap, unset diamond.”

“A diamond?” echoed Thames blankly.

“Exactly. I’ve just accepted an invitation for you and me and MacLaren to a little dinner aboard Percy Vanderpoole’s yacht this evening. I’m going to see if a diamond really has the wonderful power of suggestion so often attributed to it.”

II.

The Fee’s eyes sparkled with delight as he listened. When Thornley Colton had finished, queer gurgling noises of joy issued from the boy’s throat before the words came:

“Jumpin’ Jiminy, Mr. Colton! A motor boat at night an’ a disguise. That’s real detective work!”

The blind man’s lips framed a whimsical smile as he gazed down at the red-haired, freckled-faced youth, with the slightly twisted nose, who had become a member of the Colton household as the result of a particularly baffling murder case, for which he had been the only fee.

115“A whole lot depends on you, Shrimp,” said Thornley Colton seriously. “Michael will go with you, but your part will have to be done all alone. I don’t think you will be in any personal danger; if I did I wouldn’t let you go.”

Some of the joyous light went from the boy’s eyes. “Chee! I wisht there was goin’ t’ be some real gun play,” he sighed.

“You have a long life before you,” laughed Colton. “Hurry now; here comes Sydney.”

As his secretary entered he turned to face him. “Your foolish fear of women is not going to spoil it, Sydney?” he asked amusedly.

“No!” Sydney answered with the gruffness that was always in his voice when this subject was brought up. Sydney’s fear of woman was really adoration. All women, to him, were angels; his fear was that he would fall in love with one—and he was nameless, a bundle of rags, abandoned on the banks of the Thames in London. This was constantly in Sydney Thames’s mind.

“Here comes MacLaren,” the blind man said suddenly; a moment later the big, square-jawed man burst into the room.

“Where are they? Have you got them?” he gasped, the top-coat, flung over his arm, dragging on the floor.

“Your coat will need the services of a dozen brushers in a short while,” murmured Colton.

“Damn the coat!” flared MacLaren, flinging it on to the library desk. “I’ve walked forty miles, in that office of mine, this afternoon. Every reporter in the world has baited me. I’ve had a very devil of a time getting here without them on my trail. Our code messages from Europe say the financiers are grinning up their sleeves at us. They know! And all the word I get from you is to be here at 116seven o’clock, and you’d show me where the papers were.”

“I said I’d get the papers, and show you where the murderers were,” corrected Colton mildly. “I have an old-fashioned idea of the value of human life.”

“Yes. Certainly,” choked MacLaren. The hours of inaction had done their work.

“We have a dinner engagement at eight,” went on Colton smoothly.

“Dinner!” exploded the square-jawed man. “My God, man! You―⁠―”

“Exactly.” The voice of the blind man held a new tone now; a steel-like timbre that Sydney Thames instantly recognized. “I am taking you to that dinner to get your mind off the terrible events of this afternoon. Nothing else!”

“Where is the dinner?” The meekness of the big man was almost ludicrous.

“On the yacht of your nephew, Percy Vanderpoole.”

“That fool!” There was acridity in the voice this time.

“He has that reputation.” Sydney Thames thought the tone dry. “He is giving what he calls a wireless dinner on his yacht, anchored off the Metropolis Yacht Club. All the arrangements were made, and the invitations sent out from the Moravia, by wireless. You know Percy has quite a reputation for unique affairs of this kind. I called him up this afternoon regarding some other matter, and he insisted that I come. I sought an invitation for you, and I got it. Several men who were friends on the way over are included.”

“All right,” agreed MacLaren gloweringly.

“We’ll go to the club in your car,” was all Thornley Colton said, as he led the way from the room.

117Vanderpoole’s guests were all awaiting their appearance, and introductions were hurried through. There was a gushy, black-haired Miss Clements, who was paired with an anæmic, slightly-built American; a tall, stout German, who answered the name of Von Wagnen, with pale cheeks, and chin that contrasted strangely with his ruddy forehead; a dissipated-looking Englishman named Brookes; several feminine nonentities, and one or two of Percy’s male society friends. It was a mixed party, characteristic of the money-flinging Percy Vanderpoole.

The hurry was in honour of the military-looking Count d’Auboi whom Percy had met in Europe two years before, with his charming wife, the countess. The count had been aboard the Moravia. So had the countess, though Percy chaffed her for taking her cabin before he even knew she was aboard, and staying there the whole time. Her cheeks were colourless, but her eyes shone, despite the fearful ordeal of seasickness she now laughed over. And there was the great joke of the count, who confessed that he had never been in America, losing Percy on the pier, and wandering around the city for several hours, with his nervous wife, until they succeeded in locating Percy by telephone.

“They finally got to the Waldorf, Lord knows how,” laughed Percy, as he led the way to the dining-cabin. “And now they’re going on the midnight train to Frisco, so we’ll have to hustle this little affair through.”

“My seestair, she is married there,” smiled the count, in his broken English. Then, with entire disregard of connection: “An’ I even mees my brodair-in-law, Mr. Clauson”—he indicated the anæmic-looking American—“who come to meet us.”

118Sydney took his seat, almost tremulously between the Countess d’Auboi and the vivacious Miss Clements, at the table in the mahogany-finished cabin. But in a few minutes he was surprised and delighted to find that his foolish fear of the sex was being driven away like mist before the sunshine of the charming countess’s conversation. Miss Clements, at his left, chattered away at a mad rate to Clauson, and did not bother him. But the countess, her wonderful voice surcharged with sympathy and the intuitive understanding of women, drew him from his shell immediately.

Across the table the blind man chatted with Count d’Auboi, who was even more charming, if possible, than his wife. At the head of the table Percy laughed uproariously at the dissipated-looking Englishman’s account of his first pigsticking in India. At the foot, MacLaren glowered in silence, utterly ignoring the sullen-looking German and the yellow-haired woman who was his partner. The dissipated Englishman and the German were cabin friends Percy had met on the Moravia. They had both been interesting, and that was all Percy ever asked.

During a lull in the conversation Percy happened to glance at the face of the German, who had relapsed into sullen silence after repeated attempts to get a word from MacLaren.

“Any one would think you’d committed a crime, Von Wagnen,” he laughed.

The blind man was the only one who did not see the blood mount to the strangely pale cheeks of the Teuton; but MacLaren was the only one who caught the lighting eye signal from the Englishman. His own eyes narrowed cunningly. This was no mere dinner engagement!

“But what a horrible crime the murder of Mr. Villers was!” gushed Miss Clements, with a shiver.

119“By Jove!” The ejaculation came from Percy Vanderpoole. “You used to be quite clever at solving mysteries, Mr. Colton. Why don’t you get on this one?”

MacLaren cursed under his breath. Sydney Thames could not keep the startled look from his eyes.

“You are a detective, Mr. Colton?” The countess asked it almost accusingly, the charming touch of accent in her voice giving it a subtle undercurrent of laughter.

Thornley Colton’s thin lips smiled back at her. “I do a little in that line,” he admitted.

“Tell us about eet.” It was the count at his side, eyes eager with interest.

“My cases are only simple little affairs, naturally,” deprecated the blind man. He thrust two fingers into his waistcoat pocket. “Here is something that I expect to solve a mystery for me.” He held a small, glittering diamond on his outstretched palm. MacLaren’s keen ears caught the sharp intake of breath of the German at his side. “Yes,” continued the problemist. “That came from the thumb ring of a pickpocket, torn from the prongs by the lining of his victim’s coat.”

“An’ he deed not know eet—what a joke!” laughed the count, picking up the diamond from the extended palm, more closely to examine the stone. The light from the shaded incandescents above reflected in the four small rubies that formed the eyes of the twisted snake ring he wore on his thumb.

The sullen-looking German had apparently recovered his nerve. MacLaren looked puzzled.

“Let’s see it; I know a bit about the bally things.” The Englishman took the stone from the count. “There’s a flaw in it as big as a shilling!” 120he announced, with the disgust of an expert. Again MacLaren caught the signal of eyes to the German beside him.

“Dere iss few goot stones,” announced the Teuton ponderously.

“Ple-ese tell us about it?” pleaded the countess.

“Oh, do, please do,” pouted Miss Clements, as if to forestall a refusal. The request was chorused by the others.

“It really isn’t worth it,” protested Colton; then he seemed to know, for the first time, that the Englishman held the stone for him to take back. “Thank you,” he smiled, as he replaced it carefully in his pocket. “I was afraid some one would switch off the lights and steal it in the darkness and confusion. By the way, Percy, is that deck-light switch still where it used to be when your father was alive?”

“The same place,” nodded Vanderpoole. “Right beside the cabin-door, on the after-deck.”

“See!” Colton’s laugh was loud, but somehow it did not seem to ring true. “Any one could steal the stone in the darkness, and get away with it.”

MacLaren scowled. His quick mind understood that Colton wanted the location of that switch for some purpose of his own. And, without eyes, he must take this method of learning its location. But he knew that the other guests, too, had recognized some sinister motive under the palpable affectation of banter the blind man had assumed. There came a tenseness there had not been before. And every one knew the location of the switch that could plunge the decks into instant darkness.

“Let’s have the coffee and cigarettes under the awnings on the after-deck,” suggested Percy, to cover the break.

121“Let’s,” acquiesced Colton eagerly, then he paused impressively for an instant. “If you’ll hurry I’ll tell you something about the Villers murder. I am working on that case!”

Instantly chairs were pushed back as the guests crowded to the door.

As Sydney rose, the countess found time to whisper in his ear:

“He speaks strangely, your Mr. Colton.” There was feminine nervousness in her voice. Sydney nodded dumbly, sick at heart. The blind man he loved had made a mistake.

MacLaren kept close to the sullen German, utterly ignoring his yellow-haired dinner partner. The money machine’s hands were clenched in his pockets, his shoulders braced for some attack. “A big, stout man, with a full beard,” was the description he remembered. The Teuton answered that description perfectly; the pale cheeks showed where the beard had been recently shaven. He passed out to the awninged, dimly-lighted deck, brushing the coat of the blind man, who stood beside the door, almost over the small wicker table where the countess and Sydney had taken their seats with the brother-in-law of the count and the chatty Miss Clements.

For several seconds the blind man stood there, apparently calmly eyeing them. The light of the switch incandescent shone on his wavy, white hair, his broad shoulders, his deep chest. The German moved uneasily. The dissipated-looking Englishman, who had manœuvred to a seat beside him, gripped his arm. Every muscle in MacLaren’s body was tense. The yellow-haired woman and the three other feminine nonentities bit their lips nervously.

Sydney Thames could not repress his own nervousness. Was the blind man going to accuse desperate 122men who had murdered a man and robbed him of papers worth a hundred millions? No help was near. The sky was cloudy, the anchorage was deserted, except for an empty speed boat that rode at anchor in the silent darkness two hundred yards away.

Then Thornley Colton spoke quietly, smoothly. “The story of the diamond is the story of the Villers murder.” One hand drew out the crystalless watch. “It is now ten-thirty; at ten-forty-five the police will search this boat for the papers stolen from the unconscious man in front of his office!” Men and women jumped to their feet. “Sit still!” His hand went above his head. The switch snapped out. They were in darkness.

A chair toppled over. They heard him fumble with the switch lever. Then, shrill, frightened, came the voice of a boy:

“Let go! Let go! I’m workin’ fer Mister Colton!”

The lights came. Startled men and women saw a small boy squirming in the grasp of a brawny man. Sydney Thames knocked over the empty chair at his right as he leaped to his feet. It was The Fee, caught, and in his hand was a black bag.

“It’s the papers!” yelled The Fee.

Thames knew instantly the reason for that sudden darkness. It was Colton’s plan—and an ignorant deck hand had ruined it!

But almost in a bound Thornley Colton was at the boy’s side. He tore the man’s hands from his arm, with fingers like steel.

“It’s all right, Mike; start ’er!” screamed the freckle-faced boy.

Under their very feet, seemingly, came the bark of a gasoline engine.

“Stand back!” ordered Colton.

123Dumbly, as if dazed, they obeyed. The boy stood alone at the rail. Below him the motor boat coughed.

Dreyfus MacLaren jumped forward to take the bag. A clenched fist sent him sprawling. A hand tore the bag from the boy’s hand. A black automatic swept before the circle of white faces. Behind it was Count d’Auboi, lips drawn back in a snarl.

“I take it!” The snarling smoothness went out of the voice; it rose to a yell: “Jean!”

At the signal the darkness again shut down on them. They stood huddled together before the menacing automatic they could not see.

“A move, I shoot into ze crowd, a woman, maybe,” came the flint-like voice of the count before them. Somewhere behind them came the sounds of a short scuffle, a snarled oath. A man leaped to the rail. A splash sounded below; then a hoarse order in French.

“’Nette!” snapped the count. There was no response. Again came that hoarse voice from the water. A scrambling shadow over the rail. The motor boat leaped away from the side.

Out of the darkness came the piercing call of a police whistle. Across the black waters a broad beam of dazzling white shot out—picked up the boat—held it. Men were running on the decks of the speed craft two hundred yards away. It fairly leaped in pursuit of the smaller boat.

The white searchlight brought out the escaping boat with startling vividness. The two men crouched over the wheel. The black bag was on the seat beside them. A line of fire shot from the pursuing boat. Another. The small engine went dead. The space was closing now—fifty yards—twenty—the searchlight still held like a calcium.

The stupefied watchers on the yacht saw the count stand up in the boat; saw him look wildly 124around. He stooped, picked up the black satchel, and flung it far out into the water. In the bright glare they could see his very teeth bared in a snarling smile as he waited. The ripples gleamed in an ever-widening circle where the satchel had sunk.

“Nervy devil, isn’t he?” It was the cool voice of Thornley Colton. For the first time the watchers realized that the lights were on again; that they had been actors in reality, not wraiths in a dream.

Dreyfus MacLaren was first to recover, and as he raised his voice it had in it the strong man’s sob:

“My God! The data!”

“The charming Countess Annette is sitting on them,” smiled Thornley Colton. “I couldn’t bear exposing her to police shots. She is handcuffed to her chair.”

III.

“Yes, Sydney, the police can’t be beaten when it comes to making arrests. Find the guilty ones, label them, lead them up to the police, and the cops’ll get them every time. And the police dearly love a plant, that’s why they worked so well to-night. You see, I made all the arrangements this afternoon when you had left me in disgust to walk off your nervousness. The telephone is a mighty handy thing for the blind.” He took a sip of the vichy at his elbow, and touched the crystalless watch lying on the old-fashioned library table before him. It was twelve-thirty.

“But how—where?” Sydney Thames changed it to a confession. “I am still dazed.”

“I suppose you’ll have to have it all,” smiled Colton. “All right. Ten minutes’ intelligent conversation with the chauffeur before the fool detectives arrived gave me practically all of the 125information I needed. He told me of the theatre party with his wife and two eldest children. I was interested because they went to a famous Broadway children’s show, where the seat prices are high. The tickets had been given his wife by a rich woman who devoted her time to showing mothers how to care for their babies, and had taken an interest in his own. Of course, that told me immediately how the chauffeur had been gotten away while the car was fixed. Through his wife and tots was the only way he could be reached.

“Then I wanted to know if there was a good, quiet hotel near by. The woman must have taken quarters near his home to be on the watch for the opportunity to get acquainted with his wife and children. They are fairly well-to-do, and would resent the professional interference of a settlement worker. There was. A telephone call from MacLaren’s office while you and the others were outside with the police—with the description the chauffeur had given me—fixed her as a Mrs. Allen, a widow, who was spending her money and time on poor babies. She had been there two weeks. She wasn’t in when I called, but would be in the morning. See how clever. Not a breath of suspicion by telling them that she was going to leave. Did she have a habit of calling a special taxi? She did, from the Nelson House. It was easy to get a description of the chauffeur from the starter there. The calls had been made without any attempt at concealment; for who would connect a settlement worker in New York with the wife of a French count? The chauffeur had been employed a week. He was undoubtedly an American. The woman was French, though she spoke English perfectly. See how simple the possibilities are when the foolish impossibilities the police delight in are eliminated?

126“Then the chauffeur’s recollection of the bearded man who had lifted Villers out of the car; his stilted way of speaking. I knew then that he, too, was a Frenchman, trying to hide it by repeating, slowly and carefully, without his usual accent, words he had learned by rote. Where had he been while the other two were making the arrangements? A man with the brains and knowledge to plan a crime like that couldn’t be common enough, even in appearance, to hide successfully for two weeks. I remembered the Moravia, due from Havre last night. What could be a greater alibi than that of a man who had been in the city but a few hours? But the fog must have caused him considerable anxiety. That’s why I went to see M‘Inness. I knew the name of the Manhattan Tug and Lighterage Company would still be in everybody’s mind. You know that Percy stepped in and sent that message on his own hook—at a hint from the count, of course, who was quick to see that that would cover his last possible connection. When I got him on the phone I learned of the count and his wife for the first time. Then I realized how infernally clever they were, and knew I’d have to act accordingly. The Englishman and the German also entered to complicate affairs. I didn’t know whether they were in it or not.”

“But the description you gave in MacLaren’s office,” interrupted Sydney. “It was wholly at variance with that of every one who had seen him. And the left-handed woman who placed the hypodermic?”

Colton laughed. “The first came from knowledge of human nature. If he was stout and full-bearded when he exposed himself before the eyes of several hundred persons, it was a moral certainty that he was neither, with the disguise off. He’d absolutely reverse it when he stepped into the taxi that was 127waiting around the corner after it had let him off in time to get the papers. The stitches in the cushions told me the other. They were too fine to have been made by a man. My fingers showed me that the needle had been thrust upward, instead of downward, as would have been the case with a right-handed person.”

“But the actual robbery?” insisted Sydney. “The man with the broken finger-nail? I paid particular attention at the dinner. All seemed perfect.”

“You are learning to observe,” smiled the blind man. “When my fingers brushed the coat-lining of the unconscious man they felt the torn threads of the caught finger-nail as it swept upward when he thrust his hand under the coat for the thick packet of papers. But the packet was evidently wedged, in some way, for it was necessary for him to thrust his whole hand down into the pocket. His thumb ring tore the lining slightly at the corner. These things could not be seen with the naked eye, but they could be felt with fingers trained to read handwriting by touching the reverse side of the paper, and feeling the indentations of the pencil.”

Sydney nodded understandingly. “Now if you’ll explain the diamond, and The Fee’s entrance?” he asked.

“Suggestion. Psychology,” declared Thornley Colton seriously. “The diamond held on my palm was primarily intended to find the man whose broken finger-nail had pulled the threads from the coat lining. Held on my palm, the man who picked it up must touch my flesh with his finger-nail. The count’s was cut to the quick; that of his thumb was long and tapering. Then the Englishman wanted to see it. I knew he wasn’t the man, therefore I caused the stampede to the after-deck with the promise of telling about the Villers murder to 128find out what he and his German friend really were. A quick touch in the crowd, as they came through the door, felt the heavy belt around the German’s waist. Smugglers!

“That was easy, merely an incident in the case. But the police seemed glad to get them. They were part of the long-sought band. So we’ll dismiss them. But their presence shows further cleverness on the part of the wily count in including them to divert suspicion if it became necessary. He probably knew their game, and would have used it to cover his, if he had to.

“My talk of the thumb-ringed pickpocket was intended to make the count suspicious of me. My reference to the light switch and the darkness were for the sole purpose of showing him how he could escape if it came to a show-down. My idiotic attempt to cover up what he, and others, supposed to be the only means I had of locating that switch was not intended to deceive them; it was intended to make them understand that I thought I was deceiving them. I knew the papers must be somewhere near; they planned to get away at midnight. But I couldn’t take a chance of arresting them, and then searching; for men clever enough to steal those papers would be clever enough to put them where no one could get them. Therefore the talk of the police search and the pulling of the switch to put out the lights.

“By that time they understood that the only thing they could do was get away. I’d stood watching them in silence long enough to let them see that the anchorage was deserted, and that they had a pretty fair chance of escaping. When the darkness came I knew one of them would take instant advantage of it, and get the papers if they weren’t already on his person. You didn’t give a thought 129to Clauson’s being absent when you toppled over his empty chair, as you saw The Fee with that fake bag bait. I did, and I knew the count would look at that bag as I intended he should. He wasn’t given an opportunity to see that Clauson had gone. He was told of the ready boat, given an opportunity to grab the bag from the boy’s hand. He called ‘Jean’ as a signal for Clauson to put out the lights. Jean wasn’t there, but the quick-witted countess was. Jean, of course, heard that call, and came running. I met him at the cabin-door, held him long enough to get the packet from his inside pocket. It was easy, for”—a whimsical-smile came to the thin lips—“I am quite at home in the darkness. It was done so quickly that the frightened Jean hardly knew it, I guess, and, of course, the count supposed the boy had gotten the data for me. Then the police stepped in, and we saw the spectacular play of the greatest crook I ever had the pleasure of meeting, while the countess struggled on the chair to escape. I’d put the papers under her for safe-keeping, and also because they wouldn’t go in my dinner-coat pocket.”

“Then,” puzzled Sydney, “the doctor who first attended Villers was—this count! But I can’t see why—he needed his bag?”

“Because he was a mighty clever man. He knew it would be easy to take a thick packet of papers from Villers’s pocket without being seen, but he also knew that it would be almost impossible to slip them into his own unobserved. Therefore the open doctor’s bag at his feet, where they could be dropped in an instant.”

“Papers worth a hundred million,” murmured Sydney Thames, almost in awe.

“And costing a single, human life,” digressed Thornley Colton wearily.

130