10. The Life Current
Assignments were being given out on the Star one afternoon, and I was standing talking with several other reporter in the busy hum of typewriters and clicking telegraphs.
"What do you think of that?" asked one of the fellows. "You're something of a scientific detective, aren't you?"
Without laying claim to such a distinction, I took the paper and read: THE POISONED KISS AGAIN Three More New York Women Report Being Kissed by Mysterious Stranger--Later Fell into Deep Unconsciousness. What Is It?
I had scarcely finished, when one of the copy boys, dashing past me, called, "You're wanted on the wire, Mr. Jameson."
I hurried over to the telephone and answered.
A musical voice responded to my hurried hello, and I hastened to adopt my most polite tone.
"Is this Mr. Jameson?" asked the voice.
"Yes," I replied, not recognizing it.
"Well, Mr. Jameson, I've heard of you on the Star and I've just had a very strange experience. I've had the poisoned kiss."
The woman did not pause to catch my exclamation of astonishment, but went on, "It was like this. A man ran up to me on the street and kissed me--and--I don't know how it was-– but I became unconscious--and I didn't come to for an hour--in a hospital-- fortunately. I don't know what would have happened if it hadn't been that someone came to my assistance and the man fled. I thought the Star would be interested."
"We are," I hastened to reply. "Will you give me your name?"
"Why, I am Mrs. Florence Leigh of number 20 Prospect Avenue," returned the voice.
"Really, Mr. Jameson, something ought to be done about these cases."
"It surely had," I assented, with much interest, writing her name eagerly down on a card.
"I'll be out to interview you, directly."
The woman thanked me and I hung up the receiver.
"Say," I exclaimed, hurrying over to the editor's desk, "here's another woman on the wire who says she has received the poisoned kiss.
"Suppose you take that assignment," the editor answered, sensing a possible story.
I took it with alacrity, figuring out the quickest way by elevated and surface car to reach the address.
The conductor of the trolley indicated Prospect Avenue and I hurried up the street until I came to the house, a neat, unpretentious place. Looking at the address on the card first to make sure, I rang the bell.
I must say that I could scarcely criticize the poisoned kisser's taste, for the woman who had opened the door certainly was extraordinarily attractive.
"And you really were--put out by a kiss?" I queried, as she led me into a neat sitting room.
"Absolutely--as much as if it had been by one of these poisoned needles you read about," she replied confidently, hastening on to describe the affair volubly.
It was beyond me.
"May I use your telephone?" I asked.
"Surely," she answered.
I called the laboratory. "Is that you, Craig?" I inquired.
"Yes, Walter," he answered, recognizing my voice.
"Say, Craig," I asked breathlessly, "what sort of kiss would suffocate a person."
My only answer was an uproarious laugh from him at the idea.
"I know," I persisted, "but I've got the assignment from the Star- -and I'm out here interviewing a woman about it. It's all right to laugh--but here I am. I've found a case-– names, dates and places. I wish you'd explain the thing, then."
"Oh, all right, Walter," he replied indulgently. "I'll meet you as soon as I can and help you out."
I hung up the receiver with an air of satisfaction. At least now I would get an explanation of the woman's queer story.
"I'll clear this thing up," I said confidently. "My friend, Craig Kennedy, the scientific detective is coming out here."
"Good! That fellow who attacked me ought to be shown up. All women may not be as fortunate as I."
We waited patiently. Her story certainly was remarkable. She remembered every detail up to a certain point--and then, as she said, all was blankness.
The bell rang and the woman hastened to the door admitting Kennedy.
"Hello, Walter," he greeted.
"This is certainly a most remarkable case, Craig," I said, introducing him, and telling briefly what I had learned.
"And you actually mean to say that a kiss had the effect--" Just then the telephone interrupted.
"Yes," she reasserted quickly. "Excuse me a second."
She answered the call. "Oh--why--yes, he's here. Do you want to speak to him? Mr. Jameson, it's the Star."
"Confound it!" I exclaimed, "isn't that like the old man--dragging me off this story before it's half finished in order to get another. I'll have to go. I'll get this story from you, Craig."
. . . . . . . .
The day before, in the suburban house, the Clutching Hand had been talking to two of his emissaries, an attractive young woman and a man.
They were Flirty Florrie and Dan the Dude.
"Now, I want you to get Kennedy," he said. "The way to do it is to separate Kennedy and Elaine--see?"
"All right, Chief, we'll do it," they replied.
"I've rigged it so that you'll reach him through Jameson, understand?"
They nodded eagerly as he told them the subtle plan.
Clutching Hand had scarcely left when Flirty Florrie began by getting published in the papers the story which I had seen.
The next day she called me up from the suburban house. Having got me to promise to see her, she had scarcely turned from the telephone when Dan the Dude walked in from the next room.
"He's coming," she said.
Dan was carrying a huge stag head with a beautifully branched pair of antlers. Under his arm was a coil of wire which he had connected to the inside of the head.
"Fine!" he exclaimed. Then, pointing to the head, he added, "It's all ready. See how I fixed it? That ought to please the Chief."
Dan moved quickly to the mantle and mounted a stepladder there by which he had taken down the head, and started to replace the head above the mantle.
He hooked the head on a nail.
"There," he said, unscrewing one of the beautiful brown glass eyes of the stag.
Back of it could be seen a camera shutter. Dan worked the shutter several times to see whether it was all right.
"One of those new quick shutter cameras," he explained.
Then he ran a couple of wires along the moulding, around the room and into a closet, where he made the connection with a sort of switchboard on which a button was marked, "SHUTTER" and the switch, "WIND FILM."
"Now, Flirty," he said, coming out of the closet and pulling up the shade which let a flood of sunlight into the room, "you see, I want you to stand here--then, do your little trick.
Get me?"
"I get you Steve," she laughed.
Just then the bell rang.
"That must be Jameson," she cried. "Now--get to your corner."
With a last look Dan went into the closet and shut the door.
Perhaps half an hour later, Clutching Hand himself called me up on the telephone. It was he--not the Star--as I learned only too late.
. . . . . . . .
I had scarcely got out of the house, as Craig told me afterwards, when Flirty Florrie told all over again the embroidered tale that had caught my ear.
Kennedy said nothing, but listened intently, perhaps betraying in his face the scepticism he felt.
"You see," she said, still voluble and eager to convince him, "I was only walking on the street. Here,--let me show you. It was just like this."
She took his arm and before he knew it, led him to the spot on the floor near the window which Dan had indicated. Meanwhile Dan was listening attentively in his closet.
"Now--stand there. You are just as I was--only I didn't expect anything."
She was pantomiming someone approaching stealthily while Kennedy watched her with interest, tinged with doubt. Behind Craig, in his closet, Dan was reaching for the switchboard button.
"You see," she said advancing quickly and acting her words, "he placed his hands on my shoulders--so--then threw his arms about my neck--so."
She said no more, but imprinted a deep, passionate kiss on Kennedy's mouth, clinging closely to him. Before Kennedy could draw away, Dan, in the closet, had pressed the button and the switch several times in rapid succession.
"Th-that's very realistic," gasped Craig, a good deal taken aback by the sudden osculatory assault.
He frowned.
"I--I'll look into the case," he said, backing away. "There may be some scientific explanation--but--er--"
He was plainly embarrassed and hastened to make his adieux.
Kennedy had no more than shut the door before Dan, with a gleeful laugh, burst out of the closet and flung his own arms about Florrie in an embrace that might have been poisoned, it is true, but was none the less real for that.
. . . . . . . .
How little impression the thing made on Kennedy can be easily seen from the fact that on the way downtown that afternoon he stopped at Martin's, on Fifth Avenue, and bought a ring--a very handsome solitaire, the finest Martin had in the shop.
It must have been about the time that he decided to stop at Martin's that the Dodge butler, Jennings, admitted a young lady who presented a card on which was engraved the name Miss FLORENCE LEIGH 20 Prospect Avenue.
As he handed Elaine the card, she looked up from the book she was reading and took it.
"I don't know her," she said puckering her pretty brow. "Do you? What does she look like?"
"I never saw her before, Miss Elaine," Jennings shrugged. "But she is very well dressed."
"All right, show her in, Jennings. I'll see her."
Elaine moved into the drawing room, Jennings springing forward to part the portieres for her and passing through the room quickly where Flirty Florrie sat waiting. Flirty Florrie rose and stood gazing at Elaine, apparently very much embarrassed, even after Jennings had gone.
There was a short pause. The woman was the first to speak.
"It IS embarrassing," she said finally, "but, Miss Dodge, I have come to you to beg for my love."
Elaine looked at her nonplussed.
"Yes," she continued, "you do not know it, but Craig Kennedy is infatuated with you."
She paused again, then added, "But he is engaged to me."
Elaine stared at the woman. She was dazed. She could not believe it.
"There is the ring," Flirty Florrie added indicating a very impressive paste diamond.
Elaine frowned but said nothing. Her head was in a whirl. She could not believe.
Although Florrie was very much embarrassed, she was quite as evidently very much wrought up. Quickly she reached into her bag and drew out two photographs, without a word, handing them to Elaine. Elaine took them reluctantly.
"There's the proof," Florrie said simply, choking a sob.
Elaine looked with a start. Sure enough, there was the neat living room in the house on Prospect Avenue. In one picture Florrie had her arms over Kennedy's shoulders. In the other, apparently, they were passionately kissing.
Elaine slowly laid the photographs on the table.
"Please--please, Miss Dodge--give me back my lost love. You are rich and beautiful--I am poor. I have only my good looks. But--I-- I love him--and he--loves me--and has promised to marry me."
Filled with wonder, and misgivings now, and quite as much embarrassed at the woman's pleadings as the woman herself had acted a moment before, Elaine tried to wave her off.
"Really--I--I don't know anything about all this. It--it doesn't concern me. Please--go."
Florrie had broken down completely and was weeping softly into a lace handkerchief.
She moved toward the door. Elaine followed her.
"Jennings--please see the lady to the door."
Back in the drawing room, Elaine almost seized the photographs and hurried into the library where she could be alone. There she stood gazing at them--doubt, wonder, and fear battling on her plastic features.
Just then she heard the bell and Jennings in the hall.
She shoved the photographs away from her on the table.
It was Kennedy himself, close upon the announcement of the butler. He was in a particularly joyous and happy mood, for he had stopped at Martin's.
"How are you this afternoon?" he greeted Elaine gaily.
Elaine had been too overcome by what had just happened to throw it off so easily, and received him with a quickly studied coolness.
Still, Craig, man-like, did not notice it at once. In fact he was too busy gazing about to see that neither Jennings, Marie, nor the duenna Aunt Josephine were visible. They were not and he quickly took the ring from his pocket. Without waiting, he showed it to Elaine.
In fact, so sure had he been that everything was plain sailing, that he seemed to take it almost for granted. Under other circumstances, he would have been right. But not tonight.
Elaine very coolly admired the ring, as Craig might have eyed a specimen on a microscope slide. Still, he did not notice.
He took the ring, about to put it on her finger. Elaine drew away. Concealment was not in her frank nature.
She picked up the two photographs.
"What have you to say about those?" she asked cuttingly.
Kennedy, quite surprised, took them and looked at them. Then he let them fall carelessly on the table and dropped into a chair, his head back in a burst of laughter.
"Why--that was what they put over on Walter," he said. "He called me up early this afternoon--told me he had discovered one of these poisoned kiss cases you have read about in the papers. Think of it--all that to pull a concealed camera! Such an elaborate business--just to get me where they could fake this thing. I suppose they've put some one up to saying she's engaged?"
Elaine was not so lightly affected. "But," she said severely, repressing her emotion, "I don't understand, MR. Kennedy, how scientific inquiry into 'the poisoned kiss' could necessitate this sort of thing."
She pointed at the photographs accusingly.
"But," he began, trying to explain.
"No buts," she interrupted.
"Then you believe that I--"
"How can you, as a scientist, ask me to doubt the camera," she insinuated, very coldly turning away.
Kennedy rapidly began to see that it was far more serious than he had at first thought.
"Very well," he said with a touch of impatience, "if my word is not to be taken--I--I'll--"
He had seized his hat and stick.
Elaine did not deign to answer.
Then, without a word he stalked out of the door.
As he did so, Elaine hastily turned and took a few steps after him, as if to recall her words, then stopped, and her pride got the better of her.
She walked slowly back to the chair by the table--the chair he had been sitting in--sank down into it and cried.
. . . . . . . .
Kennedy was moping in the laboratory the next day when I came in.
Just what the trouble was, I did not know, but I had decided that it was up to me to try to cheer him up.
"Say, Craig," I began, trying to overcome his fit of blues.
Kennedy, filled with his own thoughts, paid no attention to me. Still, I kept on.
Finally he got up and, before I knew it, he took me by the ear and marched me into the next room.
I saw that what he needed chiefly was to be let alone, and he went back to his chair, dropping down into it and banging his fists on the table. Under his breath he loosed a small volley of bitter expletives. Then he jumped up.
"By George--I WILL," he muttered.
I poked my head out of the door in time to see him grab up his hat and coat and dash from the room, putting his coat on as he went.
"He's a nut today," I exclaimed to myself.
Though I did not know, yet, of the quarrel, Kennedy had really struggled with himself until he was willing to put his pride in his pocket and had made up his mind to call on Elaine again.
As he entered, he saw that it was really of no use, for only Aunt Josephine was in the library.
"Oh, Mr. Kennedy," she said innocently enough, "I'm so sorry she isn't here. There's been something troubling her and she won't tell me what it is. But she's gone to call on a young woman, a Florence Leigh, I think."
"Florence Leigh!" exclaimed Craig with a start and a frown. "Let me use your telephone."
I had turned my attention in the laboratory to a story I was writing, when I heard the telephone ring. It was Craig. Without a word of apology for his rudeness, which I knew had been purely absent-minded, I heard him saying, "Walter--meet me in half an hour outside that Florence Leigh's house."
He was gone in a minute, giving me scarcely time to call back that I would.
Then, with a hasty apology for his abruptness, he excused himself, leaving Aunt Josephine wondering at his strange actions.
At about the same time that Craig had left the laboratory, at the Dodge house Elaine and Aunt Josephine had been in the hall near the library. Elaine was in her street dress.
"I'm going out, Auntie," she said with an attempted gaiety. "And," she added, "if anyone should ask for me, I'll be there."
She had showed her a card on which was engraved, the name and address of Florence Leigh.
"All right, dear," answered Aunt Josephine, not quite clear in her mind what subtle change there was in Elaine.
. . . . . . . .
Half an hour later I was waiting near the house in the suburbs to which I had been directed by the strange telephone call the day before. I noticed that it was apparently deserted. The blinds were closed and a "To Let" sign was on the side of the house.
"Hello, Walter," cried Craig at last, bustling along. He stopped a moment to look at the house. Then, together, we went up the steps and we rang the bell, gazing about.
"Strange," muttered Craig. "The house looks deserted."
He pointed out the sign and the generally unoccupied look of the place. Nor was there any answer to our ring. Kennedy paused only a second, in thought.
"Come on, Walter," he said with a sudden decision. "We've got to get in here somehow."
He led the way around the side of the house to a window, and with a powerful grasp, wrenched open the closed shutters. He had just smashed the window viciously with his foot when a policeman appeared.
"Hey, you fellows--what are you doing there?" he shouted.
Craig paused a second, then pulled his card from his pocket.
"Just the man I want," he parried, much to the policeman's surprise, "There's something crooked going on here. Follow us in."
We climbed into the window. There was the same living room we had seen the day before. But it was now bare and deserted. Everything was gone except an old broken chair. Craig and I were frankly amazed at the complete and sudden change and I think the policeman was a little surprised, for he had thought the place occupied.
"Come on," cried Kennedy, beckoning us on.
Quickly he rushed through the house. There was not a thing in it to change the deserted appearance of the first floor. At last it occurred to Craig to grope his way down cellar.
There was nothing there, either, except a bin, as innocent of coal as Mother Hubbard's cupboard was of food. For several minutes we hunted about without discovering a thing.
Kennedy had been carefully going over the place and was at the other side of the cellar from ourselves when I saw him stop and gaze at the floor. He was not looking, apparently, so much as listening. I strained my ears, but could make out nothing. Before I could say anything, he raised his hand for silence. Apparently he had heard something.
"Hide," he whispered suddenly to us.
Without another word, though for the life of me I could make nothing out of it, I pulled the policeman into a little angle of the wall nearby, while Craig slipped into a similar angle.
We waited a moment. Nothing happened. Had he been seeing things or hearing things, I wondered?
From our hidden vantage we could now see a square piece in the floor, perhaps five feet in diameter, slowly open up as though on a pivot. Beneath it we could make out a tube-like hole, perhaps three feet across, with a covered top. It slowly opened.
A weird and sinister figure of a man appeared. Over his head he wore a peculiar helmet with hideous glass pieces over the eyes, and tubes that connected with a tank which he carried buckled to his back. As he slowly dragged himself out, I could wonder only at the outlandish headgear.
Quickly he closed down the cover of the tube, but not before a vile effluvium seemed to escape, and penetrate even to us in our hiding places. As he moved forward, Kennedy gave a flying leap at him, and we followed with a regular football interference.
It was the work of only a moment for us to subdue and hold him, while Craig ripped off the helmet.
It was Dan the Dude.
"What's that thing?" I puffed, as I helped Craig with the headgear.
"An oxygen helmet," he replied. "There must be air down the tube that cannot be breathed."
He went over to the tube. Carefully he opened the top and gazed down, starting back a second later, with his face puckered up at the noxious odor.
"Sewer gas," he ejaculated, as he slammed the cover down. Then he added to the policeman, "Where do you suppose it comes from?"
"Why," replied the officer, "the St. James Drain--an old sewer--is somewhere about these parts."
Kennedy puckered his face as he gazed at our prisoner. He reached down quickly and lifted something off the man's coat.
"Golden hair," he muttered. "Elaine's!"
A moment later he seized the man and shook him roughly.
"Where is she--tell me?" he demanded.
The man snarled some kind of reply, refusing to say a word about her.
"Tell me," repeated Kennedy.
"Humph!" snorted the prisoner, more close-mouthed than ever.
Kennedy was furious. As he sent the man reeling away from him, he seized the oxygen helmet and began putting it on. There was only one thing to do--to follow the clue of the golden strands of hair.
Down into the pest hole he went, his head protected by the oxygen helmet. As he cautiously took one step after another down a series of iron rungs inside the hole, he found that the water was up to his chest. At the bottom of the perpendicular pit was a narrow low passage way, leading off. It was just about big enough to get through, but he managed to grope along it. He came at last to the main drain, an old stone-walled sewer, as murky a place as could well be imagined, filled with the foulest sewer gas. He was hardly able to keep his feet in the swirling, bubbling water that swept past, almost up to his neck.
The minutes passed as the policeman and I watched our prisoner in the cellar, by the tube.
I looked anxiously at my watch.
"Craig!" I shouted at last, unable to control my fears for him.
No answer. To go down after him seemed out of the question.
By this time, Craig had come to a small open chamber into which the sewer widened. On the wall he found another series of iron rungs up which he climbed. The gas was terrible.
As he neared the top of the ladder, he came to a shelf-like aperture in the sewer chamber, and gazed about. It was horribly dark. He reached out and felt a piece of cloth. Anxiously he pulled on it. Then he reached further into the darkness.
There was Elaine, unconscious, apparently dead.
He shook her, endeavoring to wake her up. But it was no use.
In desperation Craig carried her down the ladder.
With our prisoner, we could only look helplessly around. Again and again I looked at my watch as the minutes lengthened. Suppose the oxygen gave out?
"By George, I'm going down after him," I cried in desperation.
"Don't do it," advised the policeman. "You'll never get out."
One whiff of the horrible gas told me that he was right. I should not have been able to go fifty feet in it. I looked at him in despair. It was impossible.
"Listen," said the policeman, straining his ears.
There was indeed a faint noise from the black depths below us. A rope alongside the rough ladder began to move, as though someone was pulling it taut. We gazed down.
"Craig! Craig!" I called. "Is that you?"
No answer. But the rope still moved. Perhaps the helmet made it impossible for him to hear.
He had struggled back in the swirling current almost exhausted by his helpless burden.
Holding Elaine's head above the surface of the water and pulling on the rope to attract my attention, for he could neither hear nor shout, he had taken a turn of the rope about Elaine. I tried pulling on it. There was something heavy on the other end and I kept on pulling.
At last I could make out Kennedy dimly mounting the ladder. The weight was the unconscious body of Elaine which he steadied as he mounted. I tugged harder and he slowly came up.
Together, at last, the policeman and I reached down and pulled them out.
We placed Elaine on the cellar floor, as comfortably as was possible, and the policeman began his first-aid motions for resuscitation.
"No--no," cried Kennedy, "Not here--take her up where the air is fresher."
With his revolver still drawn to overawe the prisoner, the policeman forced him to aid us in carrying her up the rickety flight of cellar steps. Kennedy followed quickly, unscrewing the oxygen helmet as he went.
In the deserted living room we deposited our senseless burden, while Kennedy, the helmet off now, bent over her.
"Quick--quick!" he cried to the officer, "An ambulance!"
"But the prisoner," the policeman indicated.
"Hurry--hurry--I'll take care of him," urged Craig, seizing the policeman's pistol and thrusting it into his pocket. "Walter--help me."
He was trying the ordinary methods of resuscitation. Meanwhile the officer had hurried out, seeking the nearest telephone, while we worked madly to bring Elaine back.
Again and again Kennedy bent and outstretched her arms, trying to induce respiration. So busy was I that for the moment I forgot our prisoner.
But Dan had seen his chance. Noiselessly he picked up the old chair in the room and with it raised was approaching Kennedy to knock him out.
Before I knew it myself, Kennedy had heard him. With a half instinctive motion, he drew the revolver from his pocket and, almost before I could see it, had shot the man. Without a word he returned the gun to his pocket and again bent over Elaine, without so much as a look at the crook who sank to the floor, dropping the chair from his nerveless hands.
Already the policeman had got an ambulance which was now tearing along to us.
Frantically Kennedy was working.
A moment he paused and looked at me--hopeless.
Just then, outside, we could hear the ambulance, and a doctor and two attendants hurried up to the door. Without a word the doctor seemed to appreciate the gravity of the case.
He finished his examination and shook his head.
"There is no hope--no hope," he said slowly.
Kennedy merely stared at him. But the rest of us instinctively removed our hats.
Kennedy gazed at Elaine, overcome. Was this the end?
It was not many minutes later that Kennedy had Elaine in the little sitting room off the laboratory, having taken her there in the ambulance, with the doctor and two attendants.
Elaine's body had been placed on a couch, covered by a blanket, and the shades were drawn. The light fell on her pale face.
There was something incongruous about death and the vast collection of scientific apparatus, a ghastly mocking of humanity. How futile was it all in the presence of the great destroyer?
Aunt Josephine had arrived, stunned, and a moment later, Perry Bennett. As I looked at the sorrowful party, Aunt Josephine rose slowly from her position on her knees where she had been weeping silently beside Elaine, and pressed her hands over her eyes, with every indication of faintness.
Before any of us could do anything, she had staggered into the laboratory itself, Bennett and I following quickly. There I was busy for some time getting restoratives.
Meanwhile Kennedy, beside the couch, with an air of desperate determination, turned away and opened a cabinet. From it he took a large coil and attached it to a storage battery, dragging the peculiar apparatus near Elaine's couch.
To an electric light socket, Craig attached wires. The doctor watched him in silent wonder.
"Doctor," he asked slowly as he worked, "do you know of Professor Leduc of the Nantes Ecole de Medicin?"
"Why--yes," answered the doctor, "but what of him?"
"Then you know of his method of electrical resuscitation."
"Yes--but--" He paused, looking apprehensively at Kennedy.
Craig paid no attention to his fears, but approaching the couch on which Elaine lay, applied the electrodes. "You see," he explained, with forced calmness, "I apply the anode here--the cathode there."
The ambulance surgeon looked on excitedly, as Craig turned on the current, applying it to the back of the neck and to the spine.
For some minutes the machine worked.
Then th