"You haven't heard--no one outside has heard--of the strange illness and the robbery of
my employer, Mr. Mansfield--'Diamond Jack' Mansfield, you know."
Our visitor was a slight, very pretty, but extremely nervous girl, who had given us a card
bearing the name Miss Helen Grey.
"Illness--robbery?" repeated Kennedy, at once interested and turning a quick glance at
me.
I shrugged my shoulders in the negative. Neither the Star nor any of the other papers had
had a word about it.
"Why, what's the trouble?" he continued to Miss Grey.
"You see," she explained, hurrying on, "I'm Mr. Mansfield's private secretary, and--oh,
Professor Kennedy, I don't know, but I'm afraid it is a case for a detective rather than a
doctor." She paused a moment and leaned forward nearer to us. "I think he has been
poisoned!"
The words themselves were startling enough without the evident perturbation of the girl.
Whatever one might think, there was no doubt that she firmly believed what she
professed to fear. More than that, I fancied I detected a deeper feeling in her tone than
merely loyalty to her employer.
"Diamond Jack" Mansfield was known in Wall Street as a successful promoter, on the
White Way as an assiduous first-nighter, in the sporting fraternity as a keen plunger. But
of all his hobbies, none had gained him more notoriety than his veritable passion for
collecting diamonds.
He came by his sobriquet honestly. I remembered once having seen him, and he was, in
fact, a walking De Beers mine. For his personal adornment, more than a million dollars'
worth of gems did relay duty. He had scores of sets, every one of them fit for a king of
diamonds. It was a curious hobby for a great, strong man, yet he was not alone in his love
of and sheer affection for things beautiful. Not love of display or desire to attract notice
to himself had prompted him to collect diamonds, but the mere pleasure of owning them,
of associating with them. It was a hobby.
It was not strange, therefore, to suspect that Mansfield might, after all, have been the
victim of some kind of attack. He went about with perfect freedom, in spite of the
knowledge that crooks must have possessed about his hoard.
"What makes you think he has been poisoned?" asked Kennedy, betraying no show of
doubt that Miss Grey might be right.
"Oh, it's so strange, so sudden!" she murmured.
"But how do you think it could have happened?" he persisted.
"It must have been at the little supper-party he gave at his apartment last night," she
answered, thoughtfully, then added, more slowly, "and yet, it was not until this morning,
eight or ten hours after the party, that he became ill." She shuddered. "Paroxysms of
nausea, followed by stupor and such terrible prostration. His valet discovered him and
sent for Doctor Murray-- and then for me."
"How about the robbery?" prompted Kennedy, as it became evident that it was
Mansfield's physical condition more than anything else that was on Miss Grey's mind.
"Oh yes"--she recalled herself--"I suppose you know something of his gems? Most
people do." Kennedy nodded. "He usually keeps them in a safe-deposit vault downtown,
from which he will get whatever set he feels like wearing. Last night it was the one he
calls his sporting-set that he wore, by far the finest. It cost over a hundred thousand
dollars, and is one of the most curious of all the studies in personal adornment that he
owns. All the stones are of the purest blue-white and the set is entirely based on platinum.
"But what makes it most remarkable is that it contains the famous M-1273, as he calls it.
The M stands for Mansfield, and the figures represent the number of stones he had
purchased up to the time that he acquired this huge one."
"How could they have been taken, do you think?" ventured Kennedy. Miss Grey shook
her head doubtfully.
"I think the wall safe must have been opened somehow," she returned.
Kennedy mechanically wrote the number, M-1273, on a piece of paper.
"It has a weird history," she went on, observing what he had written, "and this mammoth
blue-white diamond in the ring is as blue as the famous Hope diamond that has brought
misfortune through half the world. This stone, they say, was pried from the mouth of a
dying negro in South Africa. He had tried to smuggle it from the mine, and when he was
caught cursed the gem and every one who ever should own it. One owner in Amsterdam
failed; another in Antwerp committed suicide; a Russian nobleman was banished to
Siberia, and another went bankrupt and lost his home and family. Now here it is in Mr.
Mansfield's life. I--I hate it!" I could not tell whether it was the superstition or the recent
events themselves which weighed most in her mind, but, at any rate, she resumed,
somewhat bitterly, a moment later: "M-1273! M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet,
and 1, 2, 7, 3 add up to thirteen. The first and last numbers make thirteen, and John
Mansfield has thirteen letters in his name. I wish he had never worn the thing--never
bought it!"
The more I listened to her the more impressed I was with the fact that there was
something more here than the feeling of a private secretary.
"Who were in the supper-party?" asked Kennedy.
"He gave it for Madeline Hargrave--the pretty little actress, you know, who took New
York by storm last season in 'The Sport' and is booked, next week, to appear in the new
show, 'The Astor Cup.'"
Miss Grey said it, I thought, with a sort of wistful envy. Mansfield's gay little bohemian
gatherings were well known. Though he was not young, he was still somewhat of a
Lothario.
"Who else was there?" asked Kennedy.
"Then there was Mina Leitch, a member of Miss Hargrave's new company," she went on.
"Another was Fleming Lewis, the Wall Street broker. Doctor Murray and myself
completed the party."
"Doctor Murray is his personal physician?" ventured Craig.
"Yes. You know when Mr. Mansfield's stomach went back on him last year it was Doctor
Murray who really cured him."
Kennedy nodded.
"Might this present trouble be a recurrence of the old trouble?"
She shook her head. "No; this is entirely different. Oh, I wish that you could go with me
and see him!" she pleaded.
"I will," agreed Kennedy.
A moment later we were speeding in a taxicab over to the apartment.
"Really," she remarked, nervously, "I feel lost with Mr. Mansfield so ill. He has so many
interests downtown that require constant attention that just the loss of time means a great
deal. Of course, I understand many of them--but, you know, a private secretary can't
conduct a man's business. And just now, when I came up from the office, I couldn't
believe that he was too ill to care about things until I actually saw him."
We entered the apartment. A mere glance about showed that; even though Mansfield's
hobby was diamonds, he was no mean collector of other articles of beauty. In the big
living-room, which was almost like a studio, we met a tall, spare, polished-mannered
man, whom I quickly recognized as Doctor Murray.
"Is he any better?" blurted out Miss Grey, even before our introductions were over.
Doctor Murray shook his head gravely.
"About the same," he answered, though one could find little reassurance in his tone.
"I should like to see him," hinted Kennedy, "unless there is some real reason why I
should not."
"No," replied the doctor, absently; "on the contrary, it might perhaps rouse him."
He led the way down the hall, and Kennedy and I followed, while Miss Grey attempted to
busy herself over some affairs at a huge mahogany table in the library just off the living-room.
Mansfield had shown the same love of luxury and the bizarre even in the furnishing of his
bedroom, which was a black-and-white room with furniture of Chinese lacquer and
teakwood.
Kennedy looked at the veteran plunger long and thoughtfully as he lay stretched out,
listless, on the handsome bed. Mansfield seemed completely indifferent to our presence.
There was something uncanny about him. Already his face was shrunken, his skin dark,
and his eyes were hollow.
"What do you suppose it is?" asked Kennedy, bending over him, and then rising and
averting his head so that Mansfield could not hear, even if his vagrant faculties should be
attracted. "His pulse is terribly weak and his heart scarcely makes a sound."
Doctor Murray's face knit in deep lines.
"I'm afraid," he said, in a low tone, "that I will have to admit not having been able to
diagnose the trouble, I was just considering whom I might call in."
"What have you done?" asked Kennedy, as the two moved a little farther out of ear-shot
of the patient.
"Well," replied the doctor, slowly, "when his valet called me in, I must admit that my first
impression was that I had to deal with a case of diphtheria. I was so impressed that I even
took a blood smear and examined it. It showed the presence of a tox albumin. But it isn't
diphtheria. The antitoxin has had no effect. No; it isn't diphtheria. But the poison is there.
I might have thought it was cholera, only that seems so impossible here in New York."
Doctor Murray looked at Kennedy with no effort to conceal his perplexity. "Over and
over I have asked myself what it could be," he went on. "It seems to me that I have
thought over about everything that is possible. Always I get back to the fact that there is
that tox albumin present. In some respects, it seems like the bite of a poisonous animal.
There are no marks, of course, and it seems altogether impossible, yet it acts precisely as
I have seen snake bites affect people. I am that desperate that I would try the Noguchi
antivenene, but it would have no more effect than the antitoxin. No; I can only conclude
that there is some narcotic irritant which especially affects the lungs and heart."
"Will you let me have one of the blood smears?" asked Kennedy.
"Certainly," replied the doctor, reaching over and taking a glass slide from several lying
on a table.
For some time after we left the sick-room Craig appeared to be considering what Doctor
Murray had said.
Seeking to find Miss Grey in the library, we found ourselves in the handsome, all-wood-paneled dining-room. It still showed evidences of the late banquet of the night before.
Craig paused a moment in doubt which way to go, then picked up from the table a
beautifully decorated menu-card. As he ran his eye down it mechanically, he paused.
"Champignons," he remarked, thoughtfully. "H-m!--mushrooms."
Instead of going on toward the library, he turned and passed through a swinging door into
the kitchen. There was no one there, but it was in a much more upset condition than the
dining-room.
"Pardon, monsieur," sounded a voice behind us.
It was the French chef who had entered from the direction of the servants' quarters, and
was now all apologies for the untidy appearance of the realm over which he presided. The
strain of the dinner had been too much for his assistants, he hastened to explain.
"I see that you had mushrooms--creamed," remarked Kennedy.
"Oui, monsieur," he replied; "some that Miss Hargrave herself sent in from her
mushroom-cellar out in the country."
As he said it his eye traveled involuntarily toward a pile of ramekins on a table. Kennedy
noticed it and deliberately walked over to the table. Before I knew what he was about he
had scooped from them each a bit of the contents and placed it in some waxed paper that
was lying near by. The chef watched him curiously.
"You would not find my kitchen like this ordinarily," he remarked. "I would not like to
have Doctor Murray see it, for since last year, when monsieur had the bad stomach, I
have been very careful."
The chef seemed to be nervous.
"You prepared the mushrooms yourself?" asked Kennedy, suddenly.
"I directed my assistant," came back the wary reply.
"But you know good mushrooms when you see them?"
"Certainly," he replied, quickly.
"There was no one else in the kitchen while you prepared them?"
"Yes," he answered, hurriedly; "Mr. Mansfield came in, and Miss Hargrave. Oh, they are
very particular! And Doctor Murray, he has given me special orders ever since last year,
when monsieur had the bad stomach," he repeated.
"Was any one else here?"
"Yes--I think so. You see, I am so excited--a big dinner--such epicures--everything must
be just so--I cannot say."
There seemed to be little satisfaction in quizzing the chef, and Kennedy turned again into
the dining-room, making his way back to the library, where Miss Grey was waiting
anxiously for us.
"What do you think?" she asked, eagerly.
"I don't know what to think," replied Kennedy. "No one else has felt any ill effects from
the supper, I suppose?"
"No," she replied; "at least, I'm sure I would have heard by this time if they had."
"Do you recall anything peculiar about the mushrooms?" shot out Kennedy.
"We talked about them some time, I remember," she said, slowly. "Growing mushrooms
is one of Miss Hargrave's hobbies out at her place on Long Island."
"Yes," persisted Kennedy; "but I mean anything peculiar about the preparation of them."
"Why, yes," she said, suddenly; "I believe that Miss Hargrave was to have superintended
them herself. We all went out into the kitchen. But it was too late. They had been
prepared already."
"You were all in the kitchen?"
"Yes; I remember. It was before the supper and just after we came in from the theater-party which Mr. Mansfield gave. You know Mr. Mansfield is always doing
unconventional things like that. If he took a notion, he would go into the kitchen of the
Ritz."
"That is what I was trying to get out of the chef--Francois," remarked Kennedy. "He
didn't seem to have a very clear idea of what happened. I think I'll see him again--right
away."
We found the chef busily at work, now, cleaning up. As Kennedy asked him a few
inconsequential questions, his eye caught a row of books on a shelf. It was a most
complete library of the culinary arts. Craig selected one and turned the pages over
rapidly. Then he came back to the frontispiece, which showed a model dinner- table set
for a number of guests. He placed the picture before Francois, then withdrew it in, I
should say, about ten seconds. It was a strange and incomprehensible action, but I was
more surprised when Kennedy added:
"Now tell me what you saw."
Francois was quite overwhelming in his desire to please. Just what was going on in his
mind I could not guess, nor did he betray it, but quickly he enumerated the objects on the
table, gradually slowing up as the number which he recollected became exhausted.
"Were there candles?" prompted Craig, as the flow of Francois's description ceased.
"Oh yes, candles," he agreed, eagerly.
"Favors at each place?"
"Yes, sir."
I could see no sense in the proceeding, yet knew Kennedy too well to suppose, for an
instant, that he had not some purpose.
The questioning over, Kennedy withdrew, leaving poor Francois more mystified than
ever.
"Well," I exclaimed, as we passed through the dining-room, "what was all that?"
"That," he explained, "is what is known to criminologists as the 'Aussage test.' Just try it
some time when you get a chance. If there are, say, fifty objects in a picture, normally a
person may recall perhaps twenty of them."
"I see," I interrupted; "a test of memory."
"More than that," he replied. "You remember that, at the end, I suggested several things
likely to be on the table. They were not there, as you might have seen if you had had the
picture before you. That was a test of the susceptibility to suggestion of the chef. Francois
may not mean to lie, but I'm afraid we'll have to get along without him in getting to the
bottom of the case. You see, before we go any further we know that he is unreliable--to
say the least. It may be that nothing at all happened in the kitchen to the mushrooms.
We'll never discover it from him. We must get it elsewhere."
Miss Grey had been trying to straighten out some of the snarls which Mansfield's
business affairs had got into as a result of his illness; but it was evident that she had
difficulty in keeping her mind on her work.
"The next thing I'd like to see," asked Kennedy, when we rejoined her, "is that wall safe."
She led the way down the hall and into an ante-room to Mansfield's part of the suite. The
safe itself was a comparatively simple affair inside a closet. Indeed, I doubt whether it
had been seriously designed to be burglar-proof. Rather it was merely a protection against
fire.
"Have you any suspicion about when the robbery took place?" asked Kennedy, as we
peered into the empty compartment. "I wish I had been called in the first thing when it
was discovered. There might have been some chance to discover fingerprints. But now, I
suppose, every clue of that sort has been obliterated."
"No," she replied; "I don't know whether it happened before or after Mr. Mansfield was
discovered so ill by his valet."
"But at least you can give me some idea of when the jewels were placed in the safe."
"It must have been before the supper, right after our return from the theater."
"So?" considered Kennedy. "Then that would mean that they might have been taken by
any one, don't you see? Why did he place them in the safe so soon, instead of wearing
them the rest of the evening?"
"I hadn't thought of that way of looking at it," she admitted. "Why, when we came home
from the theater I remember it had been so warm that Mr. Mansfield's collar was wilted
and his dress shirt rumpled. He excused himself, and when he returned he was not
wearing the diamonds. We noticed it, and Miss Hargrave expressed a wish that she might
wear the big diamond at the opening night of 'The Astor Cup.' Mr. Mansfield promised
that she might and nothing more was said about it."
"Did you notice anything else at the dinner--no matter how trivial?" asked Kennedy.
Helen Grey seemed to hesitate, then said, in a low voice, as though the words were wrung
from her:
"Of course, the party and the supper were given ostensibly to Miss Hargrave. But--lately-
-I have thought he was paying quite as much attention to Mina Leitch."
It was quite in keeping with what we knew of "Diamond Jack." Perhaps it was this
seeming fickleness which had saved him from many entangling alliances. Miss Grey said
it in such a way that it seemed like an apology for a fault in his character which she
would rather have hidden. Yet Sending Completed Page, Please Wait ... out of the corner
of my eye at Kennedy. Involuntarily his hand which held the telltale sequin had sought
his waistcoat pocket, as though to hide it. Then I saw him check the action and
deliberately examine the piece of tinsel between his thumb and forefinger.
Doctor Murray saw it, too, and his eyes were riveted on it, as though instantly he saw its
significance.
"What do you think--Jack as sick as a dog, and robbed, too, and yet Murray says I
oughtn't to see him!" complained Lewis, for the moment oblivious to the fact that all our
eyes were riveted on the spangle between Kennedy's fingers. And then, slowly it seemed
to dawn on him what it was. "Madeline's!" he exclaimed, quickly. "So Mina did tear it,
after all, when she stepped on the train."
Kennedy watched the faces before us keenly. No one said anything. It was evident that
some such incident had happened. But had Lewis, with a quick flash of genius, sought to
cover up something, protect somebody?
Miss Grey was evidently anxious to transfer the scene at least to the living-room, away
from the sick-room, and Kennedy, seeing it, fell in with the idea.
"Looks to me as though this robbery was an inside affair," remarked Lewis, as we all
stood for a moment in the living-room. "Do you suppose one of the servants could have
been 'planted' for the purpose of pulling it off?"
The idea was plausible enough. Yet, plausible as the suggestion might seem, it took no
account of the other circumstances of the case. I could not believe that the illness of
Mansfield was merely an unfortunate coincidence.
Fleming Lewis's unguarded and blunt tendency to blurt out whatever seemed uppermost
in his mind soon became a study to me as we talked together in the living-room. I could
not quite make out whether it was studied and astute or whether it was merely the natural
exuberance of youth. There was certainly some sort of enmity between him and the
doctor, which the remark about the spangle seemed to fan into a flame.
Miss Grey manoeuvered tactfully, however, to prevent a scene. And, after an interchange
of remarks that threw more heat than light on the matter, Kennedy and I followed Lewis
out to the elevator, with a parting promise to keep in touch with Miss Grey.
"What do you think of the spangle?" I queried of Craig as Lewis bade us a hasty good-by
and climbed into his car at the street- entrance. "Is it a clue or a stall?"
"That remains to be seen," he replied, noncommittally. "Just now the thing that interests
me most is what I can accomplish at the laboratory in the way of finding out what is the
matter with Mansfield."
While Kennedy was busy with the various solutions which he made of the contents of the
ramekins that had held the mushrooms, I wandered over to the university library and
waded through several volumes on fungi without learning anything of value. Finally,
knowing that Kennedy would probably be busy for some time, and that all I should get
for my pains by questioning him would be monosyllabic grunts until he was quite
convinced that he was on the trail of something, I determined to run into the up-town
office of the Star and talk over the affair as well as I could without violating what I felt
had been given us in confidence.
I could not, it turned out, have done anything better, for it seemed to be the gossip of the
Broadway cafes and cabarets that Mansfield had been plunging rather deeply lately and
had talked many of his acquaintances into joining him in a pool, either outright or on
margins. It seemed to be a safe bet that not only Lewis and Doctor Murray had joined
him, but that Madeline Hargrave and Mina Leitch, who had had a successful season and
some spare thousands to invest, might have gone in, too. So far the fortunes of the stock-market had not smiled on Mansfield's schemes, and, I reflected, it was not impossible that
what might be merely an incident to a man like Mansfield could be very serious to the
rest of them.
It was the middle of the afternoon when I returned to the laboratory with my slender
budget of news. Craig was quite interested in what I had to say, even pausing for a few
moments in his work to listen.
In several cages I saw that he had a number of little guinea-pigs. One of them was plainly
in distress, and Kennedy had been watching him intently.
"It's strange," he remarked. "I had samples of material from six ramekins. Five of them
seem to have had no effect whatever. But if the bit that I gave this fellow causes such
distress, what would a larger quantity do?"
"Then one of the ramekins was poisoned?" I questioned.
"I have discovered in it, as well as in the blood smear, the tox albumin that Doctor
Murray mentioned," he said, simply, pulling out his watch. "It isn't late. I think I shall
have to take a trip out to Miss Hargrave's. We ought to do it in an hour and a half in a
car."
Kennedy said very little as we sped out over the Long Island roads that led to the little
colony of actors and actresses at Cedar Grove. He seemed rather to be enjoying the
chance to get away from the city and turn over in his mind the various problems which
the case presented.
As for myself, I had by this time convinced myself that, somehow, the mushrooms were
involved. What Kennedy expected to find I could not guess. But from what I had read I
surmised that it must be that one of the poisonous varieties had somehow got mixed with
the others, one of the Amanitas, just as deadly as the venom of the rattler or the
copperhead. I knew that, in some cases, Amanitas had been used to commit crimes. Was
this such a case?
We had no trouble in finding the estate of Miss Hargrave, and she was at home.
Kennedy lost no time introducing himself and coming to the point of his visit. Madeline
Hargr