2. The Twilight Sleep
Kennedy had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the solution of the mysterious Dodge case.
Far into the night, after the challenge of the forged finger print, he continued at work, endeavoring to extract a clue from the meagre evidence--the bit of cloth and trace of poison already obtained from other cases, and now added the strange succession of events that surrounded the tragedy we had just witnessed.
We dropped around at the Dodge house the next morning. Early though it was, we found Elaine, a trifle paler but more lovely than ever, and Perry Bennett themselves vainly endeavoring to solve the mystery of the Clutching Hand.
They were at Dodge's desk, she in the big desk chair, he standing beside her, looking over some papers.
"There's nothing there," Bennett was saying as we entered.
I could not help feeling that he was gazing down at Elaine a bit more tenderly than mere business warranted.
"Have you--found anything?" queried Elaine anxiously, turning eagerly to Kennedy.
"Nothing--yet," he answered shaking his head, but conveying a quiet idea of confidence in his tone.
Just then Jennings, the butler, entered, bringing the morning papers. Elaine seized the Star and hastily opened it. On the first page was the story I had telephone down very late in the hope of catching a last city edition.
We all bent over and Craig read aloud:
"CLUTCHING HAND" STILL AT LARGE
NEW YORK'S MASTER CRIMINAL REMAINS UNDETECTED--PERPETRATES NEW DARING MURDER AND ROBBERY OF MILLIONAIRE DODGE
He had scarcely finished reading the brief but alarming news story that followed and laid the paper on the desk, when a stone came smashing through the window from the street.
Startled, we all jumped to our feet. Craig hurried to the window. Not a soul was in sight!
He stooped and picked up the stone. To it was attached a piece of paper. Quickly he unfolded it and read:
"Craig Kennedy will give up his search for the "Clutching Hand"-- or die!"
Later I recalled that there seemed to be a slight noise downstairs, as if at the cellar window through which the masked man had entered the night before.
In point of fact, one who had been outside at the time might actually have seen a sinister face at that cellar window, but to us upstairs it was invisible. The face was that of the servant, Michael.
Without another word Kennedy passed into the drawing room and took his hat and coat.
Both Elaine and Bennett followed.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me--for the present," Craig apologized.
Elaine looked at him anxiously.
"You--you will not let that letter intimidate you?" she pleaded, laying her soft white hand on his arm. "Oh, Mr. Kennedy," she added, bravely keeping back the tears, "avenge him!
All the money in the world would be too little to pay--if only--"
At the mere mention of money Kennedy's face seemed to cloud, but only for a moment.
He must have felt the confiding pressure of her hand, for as she paused, appealingly, he took her hand in his, bowing slightly over it to look closer into her upturned face.
"I'll try," he said simply.
Elaine did not withdraw her hand as she continued to look up at him. Craig looked at her, as I had never seen him look at a woman before in all our long acquaintance.
"Miss Dodge," he went on, his voice steady as though he were repressing something, "I will never take another case until the 'Clutching Hand' is captured."
The look of gratitude she gave him would have been a princely reward in itself.
I did not marvel that all the rest of that day and far into the night Kennedy was at work furiously in his laboratory, studying the notes, the texture of the paper, the character of the ink, everything that might perhaps suggest a new lead. It was all, apparently, however, without result.
. . . . . . . .
It was some time after these events that Kennedy, reconstructing what had happened, ran across, in a strange way which I need not tire the reader by telling, a Dr. Haynes, head of the Hillside Sanitarium for Women, whose story I shall relate substantially as we received it from his own lips:
It must have been that same night that a distinguished visitor drove up in a cab to our Hillside Sanitarium, rang the bell and was admitted to my office. I might describe him as a moderately tall, well-built man with a pleasing way about him. Chiefly noticeable, it seems to me, were his mustache and bushy beard, quite medical and foreign.
I am, by the way, the superintending physician, and that night I was sitting with Dr. Thompson, my assistant, in the office discussing a rather interesting case, when an attendant came in with a card and handed it to me. It read simply, "Dr. Ludwig Reinstrom, Coblenz."
"Here's that Dr. Reinstrom, Thompson, about whom my friend in Germany wrote the other day," I remarked, nodding to the attendant to admit Dr. Reinstrom.
I might explain that while I was abroad some time ago, I made a particular study of the "Daemmerschlaf"--otherwise, the "twilight sleep," at Freiburg where it was developed and at other places in Germany where the subject had attracted great attention. I was much impressed and had imported the treatment to Hillside.
While we waited I reached into my desk and drew out the letter to which I referred, which ended, I recall:
"As Dr. Reinstrom is in America, he will probably call on you. I am sure you will be glad to know him.
"With kindest regards, I am,
"Fraternally yours,
"EMIL SCHWARZ, M. D.,
"Director, Leipsic Institute of Medicine."
"Most happy to meet you, Dr. Reinstrom," I greeted the new arrival, as he entered our office.
For several minutes we sat and chatted of things medical here and abroad.
"What is it, Doctor," I asked finally, "that interests you most in America?"
"Oh," he replied quickly with an expressive gesture, "it is the broadmindedness with which you adopt the best from all over the world, regardless of prejudice. For instance, I am very much interested in the new twilight sleep. Of course you have borrowed it largely from us, but it interests me to see whether you have modified it with practice. In fact I have come to the Hillside Sanitarium particularly to see it used. Perhaps we may learn something from you."
It was most gracious and both Dr. Thompson and myself were charmed by our visitor. I reached over and touched a call-button and our head nurse entered from a rear room.
"Are there any operations going on now?" I asked.
She looked mechanically at her watch. "Yes, there are two cases, now, I think," she answered.
"Would you like to follow our technique, Doctor?" I asked, turning to Dr. Reinstorm.
"I should be delighted," he acquiesced.
A moment later we passed down the corridor of the Sanitarium, still chatting. At the door of a ward I spoke to the attendant who indicated that a patient was about to be anesthetized, and Reinstrom and I entered the room.
There, in perfect quiet, which is an essential part of the treatment, were several women patients lying in bed in the ward. Before us two nurses and a doctor were in attendance on one.
I spoke to the Doctor, Dr. Holmes, by the way, who bowed politely to the distinguished Dr. Reinstrom, then turned quickly to his work.
"Miss Sears," he asked of one of the nurses, "will you bring me that hypodermic needle?
How are you getting on, Miss Stern?" to the other who was scrubbing the patient's arm with antiseptic soap and water, thoroughly sterilizing the skin.
"You will see, Dr. Reinstrom." I interposed in a low tone, "that we follow in the main your Freiburg treatment. We use scopolamin and narkophin."
I held up the bottle, as I said it, a rather peculiar shaped bottle, too.
"And the pain?" he asked.
"Practically the same as in your experience abroad. We do not render the patient unconscious, but prevent her from remembering anything that goes on."
Dr. Holmes, the attending physician, was just starting the treatment. Filling his hypodermic, he selected a spot on the patient's arm, where it had been scrubbed and sterilized, and injected the narcotic.
"How simply you do it all, here!" exclaimed Reinstrom in surprise and undisguised admiration. "You Americans are wonderful!"
"Come--see a patient who is just recovering," I added, much flattered by the praise, which, from a German physician, meant much.
Reinstrom followed me out of the door and we entered a private room of the hospital where another woman patient lay in bed carefully watched by a nurse.
"How do you do?" I nodded to the nurse in a modulated tone. "Everything progressing favorably?"
"Perfectly," she returned, as Reinstrom, Haynes and myself formed a little group about the bedside of the unconscious woman.
"And you say they have no recollection of anything that happens?" asked Reinstrom.
"Absolutely none--if the treatment is given properly," I replied confidently.
I picked up a piece of bandage which was the handiest thing about me and tied it quite tightly about the patient's arm.
As we waited, the patient, who was gradually coming from under the drug, roused herself.
"What is that--it hurts!" she said putting her hand on the bandage I had tied tightly.
"That is all right. Just a moment. I'll take it off. Don't you remember it?" I asked.
She shook her head. I smiled at Reinstrom.
"You see, she has no recollection of my tying the bandage on her arm," I pointed out.
"Wonderful!" ejaculated Reinstrom as we left the room.
All the way back to the office he was loud in his praises and thanked us most heartily, as he put on his hat and coat and shook hands a cordial good-bye.
Now comes the strange part of my story. After Reinstrom had gone, Dr. Holmes, the attending physician of the woman whom we had seen anesthetized, missed his syringe and the bottle of scopolamine.
"Miss Sears," he asked rather testily, "what have you done with the hypodermic and the scopolamine?"
"Nothing," she protested.
"You must have done something."
She repeated that she had not.
"Well, it is very strange then," he said, "I am positive I laid the syringe and the bottle right here on this tray on the table."
Holmes, Miss Sears and Miss Stern all hunted, but it could not be found. Others had to be procured.
I thought little of it at the time, but since then it has occurred to me that it might interest you, Professor Kennedy, and I give it to you for what it may be worth.
It was early the next morning that I awoke to find Kennedy already up and gone from our apartment. I knew he must be at the laboratory, and, gathering the mail, which the postman had just slipped through the letter slot, I went over to the University to see him.
As I looked over the letters to cull out my own, one in a woman's handwriting on attractive notepaper addressed to him caught my eye.
As I came up the path to the Chemistry Building I saw through the window that, in spite of his getting there early, he was finding it difficult to keep his mind on his work. It was the first time I had ever known anything to interfere with science in his life.
I thought of the letter again.
Craig had lighted a Bunsen burner under a large glass retort. But he had no sooner done so than he sat down on a chair and, picking up a book which I surmised might be some work on toxicology, started to read.
He seemed not to be able, for the moment, to concentrate his mind and after a little while closed the book and gazed straight ahead of him. Again I thought of the letter, and the vision that, no doubt, he saw of Elaine making her pathetic appeal for his help.
As he heard my footstep in the hall, it must have recalled him for he snapped the book shut and moved over quickly to the retort.
"Well," I exclaimed as I entered, "you are the early bird. Did you have any breakfast?"
I tossed down the letters. He did not reply. So I became absorbed in the morning paper.
Still, I did not neglect to watch him covertly out of the corner of my eye. Quickly he ran over the letters, instead of taking them, one by one, in his usual methodical way. I quite complimented my own superior acumen. He selected the dainty note.
A moment Craig looked at it in anticipation, then tore it open eagerly. I was still watching his face over the top of the paper and was surprised to see that it showed, first, amazement, then pain, as though something had hurt him.
He read it again--then looked straight ahead, as if in a daze.
"Strange, how much crime there is now," I commented, looking up from the paper I had pretended reading.
No answer.
"One would think that one master criminal was enough," I went on.
Still no answer.
He continued to gaze straight ahead at blankness.
"By George," I exclaimed finally, banging my fist on the table and raising my voice to catch his attention, "you would think we had nothing but criminals nowadays."
My voice must have startled him. The usually imperturbable old fellow actually jumped.
Then, as my question did not evidently accord with what was in his mind, he answered at random, "Perhaps- -I wonder if--" and then he stopped, noncommittally.
Suddenly he jumped up, bringing his tightly clenched fist down with a loud clap into the palm of his hand.
"By heaven!" he exclaimed, "I--I will!"
Startled at his incomprehensible and unusual conduct I did not attempt to pursue the conversation but let him alone as he strode hastily to the telephone. Almost angrily he seized the receiver and asked for a number. It was not like Craig and I could not conceal my concern.
"Wh-what's the matter, Craig?" I blurted out eagerly.
As he waited for the number, he threw the letter over to me. I took it and read:
"Professor Craig Kennedy, "The University, The Heights, City.
"Dear Sir,--
"I have come to the conclusion that your work is a hindrance rather than an assistance in clearing up my father's death and I hereby beg to state that your services are no longer required. This is a final decision and I beg that you will not try to see me again regarding the matter.
"Very truly yours, ELAINE DODGE."
If it had been a bomb I could not have been more surprised. A moment before I think I had just a sneaking suspicion of jealousy that a woman--even Elaine--should interest my old chums. But now all that was swept away. How could any woman scorn him?
I could not make it out.
Kennedy impatiently worked the receiver up and down, repeating the number. "Hello-– hello," he repeated, "Yes--hello. Is Miss--oh-- good morning, Miss Dodge."
He was hurrying along as if to give her no chance to cut him off. "I have just received a letter, Miss Dodge, telling me that you don't want me to continue investigating your father's death, and not to try to see you again about--"
He stopped. I could hear the reply, as sometimes one can when the telephone wire conditions are a certain way and the quality of the voice of the speaker a certain kind.
"Why--no--Mr. Kennedy, I have written you no letter."
The look of mingled relief and surprise that crossed Craig's face spoke volumes.
"Miss Dodge," he almost shouted, "this is a new trick of the Clutching Hand. I--I'll be right over."
Craig hung up the receiver and turned from the telephone. Evidently he was thinking deeply. Suddenly his face seemed to light up. He made up his mind to something and a moment later he opened the cabinet--that inexhaustible storehouse from which he seemed to draw weird and curious instruments that met the ever new problems which his strange profession brought to him.
I watched curiously. He took out a bottle and what looked like a little hypodermic syringe, thrust them into his pocket and, for once, oblivious to my very existence, deliberately walked out of the laboratory.
I did not propose to be thus cavalierly dismissed. I suppose it would have looked ridiculous to a third party but I followed him as hastily as if he had tried to shut the door on his own shadow.
We arrived at the corner above the Dodge house just in time to see another visitor-– Bennett--enter. Craig quickened his pace. Jennings had by this time become quite reconciled to our presence and a moment later we were entering the drawing room, too.
Elaine was there, looking lovelier than ever in the plain black dress, which set off the rosy freshness of her face.
"And, Perry," we heard her say, as we were ushered in, "someone has even forged my name--the handwriting and everything--telling Mr. Kennedy to drop the case--and I never knew."
She stopped as we entered. We bowed and shook hands with Bennett. Elaine's Aunt Josephine was in the room, a perfect duenna.
"That's the limit!" exclaimed Bennett. "Miss Dodge has just been telling me,--"
"Yes," interrupted Craig. "Look, Miss Dodge, this is it."
He handed her the letter. She almost seized it, examining it carefully, her large eyes opening wider in wonder.
"This is certainly my writing and my notepaper," she murmured, "but I never wrote the letter!"
Craig looked from the letter to her keenly. No one said a word. For a moment Kennedy hesitated, thinking.
"Might I--er--see your room, Miss Dodge?" he asked at length.
Aunt Josephine frowned. Bennett and I could not conceal our surprise.
"Why, certainly," nodded Elaine, as she led the way upstairs.
It was a dainty little room, breathing the spirit of its mistress. In fact it seemed a sort of profanation as we all followed in after her. For a moment Kennedy stood still, then he carefully looked about. At the side of the bed, near the head, he stooped and picked up something which he held in the palm of his hand. I bent over. Something gleamed in the morning sunshine--some little thin pieces of glass. As he tried deftly to fit the tiny little bits together, he seemed absorbed in thought. Quickly he raised it to his nose, as if to smell it.
"Ethyl chloride!" he muttered, wrapping the pieces carefully in a paper and putting them into his pocket.
An instant later he crossed the room to the window and examined it.
"Look!" he exclaimed.
There, plainly, were marks of a jimmy which had been inserted near the lock to pry it open.
"Miss Dodge," he asked, "might I--might I trouble you to let me see your arm?"
Wonderingly she did so and Kennedy bent almost reverently over her plump arm examining it.
On it was a small dark discoloration, around which was a slight redness and tenderness.
"That," he said slowly, "is the mark of a hypodermic needle."
As he finished examining Elaine's arm he drew the letter from his pocket. Still facing her he said in a low tone, "Miss Dodge--you did write this letter--but under the influence of the new 'twilight sleep.'"
We looked at one another amazed.
Outside, if we had been at the door in the hallway, we might have seen the sinister-faced Michael listening. He turned and slipped quietly away.
"Why, Craig," I exclaimed excitedly, "what do you mean?"
"Exactly what I say. With Miss Dodge's permission I shall show you. By a small administration of the drug which will injure you in no way, Miss Dodge, I think I can bring back the memory of all that occurred to you last night. Will you allow me?"
"Mercy, no!" protested Aunt Josephine.
Craig and Elaine faced each other as they had the day before when she had asked him whether the sudden warning of the Clutching Hand would intimidate him. She advanced a step nearer. Elaine trusted him.
"Elaine!" protested Aunt Josephine again.
"I want the experiment to be tried," she said quietly.
A moment later Kennedy had placed her in a wing chair in the corner of the room.
"Now, Mrs. Dodge," he said, "please bring me a basin and a towel."
Aunt Josephine, reconciled, brought them. Kennedy dropped an antiseptic tablet into the water and carefully sterilized Elaine's arm just above the spot where the red mark showed. Then he drew the hypodermic from his pocket--carefully sterilizing it, also, and filling it with scopolamine from the bottle.
"Just a moment, Miss Dodge," he encouraged as he jabbed the needle into her arm.
She did not wince.
"Please lie back on the couch," he directed. Then turning to us he added, "It takes some time for this to work. Our criminal got over that fact and prevented an outcry by using ethyl chloride first. Let me reconstruct the scene."
As we watched Elaine going under slowly, Craig talked.
"That night," he said, "warily, the masked criminal of the Clutching Hand might have been seen down below us in the alley. Up here, Miss Dodge, worn out by the strain of her father's death, let us say, was nervously trying to read, to do anything that would take her mind off the tragedy. Perhaps she fell asleep.
"Just then the Clutching Hand appeared. He came stealthily through that window which he had opened. A moment he hesitated, seeing Elaine asleep. Then he tiptoed over to the bed, let us say, and for a moment looked at her, sleeping.
"A second later he had thrust his hand into his pocket and had taken out a small glass bulb with a long thin neck. That was ethyl chloride, a drug which produces a quick anesthesia. But it lasts only a minute or two. That was enough, As he broke the glass neck of the bulb--letting the pieces fall on the floor near the bed--he shoved the thing under Elaine's face, turning his own head away and holding a handkerchief over his own nose.
The mere heat of his hand was enough to cause the ethyl chloride to spray out and overcome her instantly. He stepped away from her a moment and replaced the now empty vial in his pocket.
"Then he took a box from his pocket, opened it. There must have been a syringe and a bottle of scopolamine. Where they came from I do not know, but perhaps from some hospital. I shall have to find that out later. He went to Elaine, quickly jabbing the needle, with no resistance from her now. Slowly he replaced the bottle and the needle in his pocket. He could not have been in any hurry now, for it takes time for the drug to work."
Kennedy paused. Had we known at the time, Michael--he of the sinister face--must have been in the hallway, careful that no one saw him. A tap at the door and the Clutching Hand, that night, must have beckoned him. A moment's parley and they separated-– Clutching Hand going back to Elaine, who was now under the influence of the second drug.
"Our criminal," resumed Kennedy thoughtfully, "may have shaken Elaine. She did not answer. Then he may have partly revived her. She must have been startled. Clutching Hand, perhaps, was half crouching, with a big ugly blue steel revolver leveled full in her face.
"'One word and I shoot!' he probably cried. "Get up!'
"Trembling, she must have done so. 'Your slippers and a kimono,' he would naturally have ordered. She put them on mechanically. Then he must have ordered her to go out of the door and down the stairs. Clutching Hand must have followed and as he did so he would have cautiously put out the lights."
We were following, spell-bound, Kennedy's graphic reconstruction of what must have happened. Evidently he had struck close to the truth. Elaine's eyes were closed. Gently Kennedy led her along. "Now, Miss Dodge," he encouraged, "try--try hard to recollect just what it was that happened last night--everything."
As Kennedy paused after his quick recital, she seemed to tremble all over. Slowly she began to speak. We stood awestruck. Kennedy had been right!
The girl was now living over again those minutes that had been forgotten--blotted out by the drug.
And it was all real to her, too,--terribly real. She was speaking, plainly in terror.
"I see a man--oh, such a figure--with a mask. He holds a gun in my face--he threatens me.
I put on my kimono and slippers, as he tells me. I am in a daze. I know what I am doing-– and I don't know. I go out with him, downstairs, into the library."
Elaine shuddered again at the recollection. "Ugh! The room is dark, the room where he killed my father. Moonlight outside streams in. This masked man and I come in. He switches on the lights.
"'Go to the safe,' he says, and I do it, the new safe, you know. 'Do you know the combination?' he asks me. 'Yes,' I reply, too frightened to say no.
"'Open it then,' he says, waving that awful revolver closer. I do so. Hastily he rummages through it, throwing papers here and there. But he seems not to find what he is after and turns away, swearing fearfully.
"'Hang it!' he cries to me. 'Where else did your father keep papers?' I point in desperation at the desk. He takes one last look at the safe, shoves all the papers he has strewn on the floor back again and slams the safe shut.
"'Now, come on!' he says, indicating with the gun that he wants me to follow him away from the safe. At the desk he repeats the search. But he finds nothing. Almost I think he is about to kill me. 'Where else did your father keep papers?' he hisses fiercely, still threatening me with the gun.
"I am too frightened to speak. But at last I am able to say, 'I--I don't know!' Again he threatens me. 'As God is my judge,' I cry, 'I don't know.' It is fearful. Will he shoot me?
"Thank heaven! At last he believes me. But such a look of foiled fury I have never seen on any human face before.
"'Sit down!' he growls, adding, 'at the desk.' I do.
"'Take some of your notepaper--the best.' I do that, too.
"'And a pen,' he goes on. My fingers can hardly hold it.
"'Now--write!' he says, and as he dictates, I write--"
"This?" interjected Kennedy, eagerly holding up the letter that he had received from her.
Elaine looked it over with her drug-laden eyes. "Yes," she nodded, then lapsed again to the scene itself. "He reads it over and as he does so says, 'Now, address an envelope.'
Himself he folds the letter, seals the envelope, stamps it, and drops it into his pocket, hastily straightening the desk.
"'Now, go ahead of me--again. Leave the room--no, by the hall door. We are going back upstairs.' I obey him, and at the door he switches off the lights. How I stand it, I don't know. I go upstairs, mechanically, into my own room--I and this masked man.
"'Take off the kimono and slippers!' he orders. I do that. 'Get into bed!' he growls. I crawl in fearfully. For a moment he looks about,--then goes out--with a look back as he goes.
Oh! Oh! That hand--which he raises at me--THAT HAND!"
The poor girl was sitting bolt upright, staring straight at the hall door, as we watched and listened, fascinated.
Kennedy was bending over, soothing her. She gave evidences of coming out from the effect of the drug.
I noticed that Bennett had suddenly moved a step in the direction of the door at which she stared.
"My God!" he muttered, staring, too. "Look!"
We did look. A letter was slowly being inserted under the door.
I took a quick step forward. That moment I felt a rough tug at my arm, and a voice whispered, "Wait--you chump!"
It was Kennedy. He had whipped out his automatic and had carefully leveled it at the door. Before he could fire, however, Bennett had rushed ahead.
I followed. We looked down the hall. Sure enough, the figure of a man could be seen disappearing around an angle. I followed Bennett out of the door and down the hall.
Words cannot keep pace with what followed. Together we rushed to the backstairs.
"Down there, while I go down the front!" cried Bennett.
I went down and he turned and went down the other flight. As he did so, Craig followed him.
Suddenly, in the drawing room, I bumped into a figure on the other side of the portieres. I seized him. We struggled. Rip! The portieres came down, covering me entirely. Over and over we went, smashing a lamp. It was vicious. Another man attacked me, too.
"I--I've got him--Kennedy!" I heard a voice pant over me.
A scream followed from Aunt Josephine. Suddenly the portieres were pulled off me.
"The deuce!" puffed Kennedy. "It's Jameson!"
Bennett had rushed plump into me, coming the other way, hidden by the portieres.
If we had known at the time, our Michael of the sinister face had gained the library and was standing in the center of the room. He had heard me coming and had fled to the drawing room. As we finished our struggle in the library, he rose hastily from behind the divan in the other room where he had dropped and had quietly and hastily disappeared through another door.
Laughing and breathing hard, they helped me to my feet. It was no joke to me. I was sore in every bone.
"Well, where DID he go?" insisted Bennett.
"I don't know--perhaps back there," I cried.
Bennett and I argued a moment, then started and stopped short. Aunt Josephine had run downstairs and now was shoving the letter into Craig's hands.
We gathered about him, curiously. He opened it. On it was that awesome Clutching Hand again.
Kennedy read it. For a moment he stood and studied it, then slowly crushed it in his hand.
Just then Elaine, pale and shaken from the ordeal she had voluntarily gone through, burst in upon us from upstairs. Without a word she advanced to Craig and took the letter from him.
Inside, as on the envelope, was that same