The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective MEGAPACK ®. Brander Matthews
without being told that he was bound by the next train to the pretty little New Jersey suburb of Glenclair.
It was late when we arrived, yet Kennedy had no hesitation in calling at the quaint home of Mrs. Courtney Woods on Woodridge Avenue.
Mrs. Woods, a well-set-up woman of middle age, who had retained her youth and good looks in a remarkable manner, met us in the foyer. Briefly, Kennedy explained that we had just come in from Pittsburgh with Mr. Denison and that it was very important that we should see Haughton at once.
We had hardly told her the object of our visit when a young woman of perhaps twenty-two or three, a very pretty girl, with all the good looks of her mother and a freshness which only youth can possess, tiptoed quietly downstairs. Her face told plainly that she was deeply worried over the illness of her fiance.
“Who is it, mother?” she whispered from the turn in the stairs. “Some gentlemen from the company? Hartley’s door was open when the bell rang, and he thought he heard something said about the Pittsburgh affair.”
Though she had whispered, it had not been for the purpose of concealing anything from us, but rather that the keen ears of her patient might not catch the words. She cast an inquiring glance at us.
“Yes,” responded Kennedy in answer to her look, modulating his tone. “We have just left Mr. Denison at the office. Might we see Mr. Haughton for a moment? I am sure that nothing we can say or do will be as bad for him as our going away, now that he knows that we are here.”
The two women appeared to consult for a moment.
“Felicie,” called a rather nervous voice from the second floor, “is it some one from the company?”
“Just a moment, Hartley,” she answered, then, lower to her mother, added, “I don’t think it can do any harm, do you, mother?”
“You remember the doctor’s orders, my dear.”
Again the voice called her.
“Hang the doctor’s orders,” the girl exclaimed, with an air of almost masculinity. “It can’t be half so bad as to have him worry. Will you promise not to stay long? We expect Dr. Bryant in a few moments, anyway.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE SPINTHARISCOPE
We followed her upstairs and into Haughton’s room, where he was lying in bed, propped up by pillows. Haughton certainly was ill. There was no mistake about that. He was a tall, gaunt man with an air about him that showed that he found illness very irksome. Around his neck was a bandage, and some adhesive tape at the back showed that a plaster of some sort had been placed there.
As we entered his eyes traveled restlessly from the face of the girl to our own in an inquiring manner. He stretched out a nervous hand to us, while Kennedy in a few short sentences explained how we had become associated with the case and what we had seen already.
“And there is not a clue?” he repeated as Craig finished.
“Nothing tangible yet,” reiterated Kennedy. “I suppose you have heard of this rumor from London of a trust that is going into the radium field internationally?”
“Yes,” he answered, “that is the thing you read to me in the morning papers, you remember, Felicie. Denison and I have heard such rumors before. If it is a fight, then we shall give them a fight. They can’t hold us up, if Denison is right in thinking that they are at the bottom of this—this robbery.”
“Then you think he may be right?” shot out Kennedy quickly.
Haughton glanced nervously from Kennedy to me.
“Really,” he answered, “you see how impossible it is for me to have an opinion? You and Denison have been over the ground. You know much more about it than I do. I am afraid I shall have to defer to you.”
Again we heard the bell downstairs, and a moment later a cheery voice, as Mrs. Woods met some one down in the foyer, asked, “How is the patient tonight?”
We could not catch the reply.
“Dr. Bryant, my physician,” put in Haughton. “Don’t go. I will assume the responsibility for your being here. Hello, Doctor. Why, I’m much the same tonight, thank you. At least no worse since I took your advice and went to bed.”
Dr. Bryant was a bluff, hearty man, with the personal magnetism which goes with the making of a successful physician. He had mounted the stairs quietly but rapidly, evidently prepared to see us.
“Would you mind waiting in this little dressing room?” asked the doctor, motioning to another, smaller room adjoining.
He had taken from his pocket a little instrument with a dial face like a watch, which he attached to Haughton’s wrist. “A pocket instrument to measure blood pressure,” whispered Craig, as we entered the little room.
While the others were gathered about Haughton, we stood in the next room, out of earshot. Kennedy had leaned his elbow on a chiffonier. As he looked about the little room, more from force of habit than because he thought he might discover anything, Kennedy’s eye rested on a glass tray on the top in which lay some pins, a collar button or two, which Haughton had apparently just taken off, and several other little unimportant articles.
Kennedy bent over to look at the glass tray more closely, a puzzled look crossed his face, and with a glance at the other room he gathered up the tray and its contents.
“Keep up a good courage,” said Dr. Bryant. “You’ll come out all right, Haughton.” Then as he left the bedroom he added to us, “Gentlemen, I hope you will pardon me, but if you could postpone the remainder of your visit until a later day, I am sure you will find it more satisfactory.”
There was an air of finality about the doctor, though nothing unpleasant in it. We followed him down the stairs, and as we did so, Felicie, who had been waiting in a reception room, appeared before the portieres, her earnest eyes fixed on his kindly face.
“Dr. Bryant,” she appealed, “is he—is he, really—so badly?”
The Doctor, who had apparently known her all her life, reached down and took one of her hands, patting it with his own in a fatherly way. “Don’t worry, little girl,” he encouraged. “We are going to come out all right—all right.”
She turned from him to us and, with a bright forced smile which showed the stuff she was made of, bade us good night.
Outside, the Doctor, apparently regretting that he had virtually forced us out, paused before his car. “Are you going down toward the station? Yes? I am going that far. I should be glad to drive you there.”
Kennedy climbed into the front seat, leaving me in the rear where the wind wafted me their brief conversation as we sped down Woodbridge Avenue.
“What seems to be the trouble?” asked Craig.
“Very high blood pressure, for one thing,” replied the Doctor frankly.
“For which the latest thing is the radium water cure, I suppose?” ventured Kennedy.
“Well, radioactive water is one cure for hardening of the arteries. But I didn’t say he had hardening of the arteries. Still, he is taking the water, with good results. You are from the company?”
Kennedy nodded.
“It was the radium water that first interested him in it. Why, we found a pressure of 230 pounds, which is frightful, and we have brought it down to 150, not far from normal.”
“Still that could have nothing to do with the sore on his neck,” hazarded Kennedy.
The Doctor looked at him quickly, then ahead at the path of light which his motor shed on the road.
He said nothing, but I fancied that even he felt there was something strange in his silence over the new complication. He did not give Kennedy a chance to ask whether there were any other such sores.
“At