Arthur B. Reeve Crime & Mystery Boxed Set. Arthur B. Reeve
her hands on her breast as if it were about to burst and tell the secret before her lips could frame the words, "yes, I killed her, and I would follow her to the end of the earth if I had not succeeded. She was there, the woman who had stolen from me what was more than life itself. Yes, I wrote the note, I poisoned the envelope. I killed her."
All the intense hatred that she had felt for that other woman in the days that she had vainly striven to equal her in beauty and win back her husband's love broke forth. She was wonderful, magnificent, in her fury. She was passion personified; she was fate, retribution.
Collins looked at his wife, and even he felt the spell. It was not crime that she had done; it was elemental justice.
For a moment she stood, silent, facing Kennedy. Then the colour slowly faded from her cheeks. She reeled.
Collins caught her and imprinted a kiss, the kiss that for years she had longed and striven for again. She looked rather than spoke forgiveness as he held her and showered them on her.
"Before Heaven," I heard him whisper into her ear, "with all my power as a lawyer I will free you from this."
Gently Dr. Leslie pushed him aside and felt her pulse as she dropped limply into the only easy chair in the laboratory.
"O'Connor," he said at length, "all the evidence that we really have hangs on an invisible thread of quartz a mile away. If Professor Kennedy agrees, let us forget what has happened here to-night. I will direct my jury to bring in a verdict of suicide. Colline, take good care of her." He leaned over and whispered so she could not hear. "I wouldn't promise her six weeks otherwise."
I could not help feeling deeply moved as the newly reunited Collinses left the laboratory together. Even the bluff deputy, O'Connor, was touched by it and under the circumstances did what seemed to him his higher duty with a tact of which I had believed him scarcely capable. Whatever the ethics of the case, he left it entirely to Dr. Leslie's coroner's jury to determine.
Burke Collins was already making hasty preparations for the care of his wife so that she might have the best medical attention to prolong her life for the few weeks or months before nature exacted the penalty which was denied the law.
"That's a marvellous piece of apparatus," I remarked, standing over the connections with the string galvanometer, after all had gone. "Just suppose the case had fallen into the hands of some of these old-fashioned detectives—"
"I hate post-mortems—on my own cases," interrupted Kennedy brusquely. "To-morrow will be time enough to clear up this mess. Meanwhile, let us get this thing out of our minds."
He clapped his hat on his head decisively and deliberately walked out of the laboratory, starting off at a brisk pace in the moonlight across the campus to the avenue where now the only sound was the noisy rattle of an occasional trolley car.
How long we walked I do not know. But I do know that for genuine relaxation after a long period of keen mental stress, there is nothing like physical exercise. We turned into our apartment, roused the sleepy hall-boy, and rode up.
"I suppose people think I never rest," remarked Kennedy, carefully avoiding any reference to the exciting events of the past two days. "But I do. Like every one else, I have to. When I am working hard on a case—well, I have my own violent reaction against it—more work of a different kind. Others choose white lights, red wines and blue feelings afterwards. But I find, when I reach that state, that the best anti-toxin is something that will chase the last case from your brain by getting you in trim for the next unexpected event."
He had sunk into an easy chair where he was running over in his mind his own plans for the morrow.
"Just now I must recuperate by doing no work at all," he went on slowly undressing. "That walk was just what I needed. When the fever of dissipation comes on again, I'll call on you. You won't miss anything, Walter."
Like the famous Finnegan, however, he was on again and gone again in the morning. This time I had no misgivings, although I should have liked to accompany him, for on the library table he had scrawled a little note, "Studying East Side to-day. Will keep in touch with you. Craig."
My daily task of transcribing my notes was completed and I thought I would run down to the Star to let the editor know how I was getting along on my assignment.
I had scarcely entered the door when the office boy thrust a message into my hand. It stopped me even before I had a chance to get as far as my own desk. It was from Kennedy at the laboratory and bore a time stamp that showed that it must have been received only a few minutes before I came in.
"Meet me at the Grand Central," it read, "immediately."
Without going further into the office, I turned and dropped down in the elevator to the subway. As quickly as an express could take me, I hurried up to the new station.
"Where away?" I asked breathlessly, as Craig met me at the entrance through which he had reasoned I would come. "The coast or Down East?"
"Woodrock," he replied quickly, taking my arm and dragging me down a ramp to the train that was just leaving for that fashionable suburb.
"Well," I queried eagerly, as the train started. "Why all this secrecy?"
"I had a caller this afternoon," he began, running his eye over the other passengers to see if we were observed. "She is going back on this train. I am not to recognise her at the station, but you and I are to walk to the end of the platform and enter a limousine bearing that number."
He produced a card on the back of which was written a number in six figures. Mechanically I glanced at the name as he handed the card to me. Craig was watching intently the expression on my face as I read, "Miss Yvonne Brixton."
"Since when were you admitted into society?" I gasped, still staring at the name of the daughter of the millionaire banker, John Brixton.
"She came to tell me that her father is in a virtual state of siege, as it were, up there in his own house," explained Kennedy in an undertone, "so much so that, apparently, she is the only person he felt he dared trust with a message to summon me. Practically everything he says or does is spied on; he can't even telephone without what he says being known."
"Siege?" I repeated incredulously. "Impossible. Why, only this morning I was reading about his negotiations with a foreign syndicate of bankers from southeastern Europe for a ten-million-dollar loan to relieve the money stringency there. Surely there must be some mistake in all this. In fact, as I recall it, one of the foreign bankers who is trying to interest him is that Count Wachtmann who, everybody says, is engaged to Miss Brixton, and is staying at the house at Woodrock. Craig, are you sure nobody is hoaxing you?"
"Read that," he replied laconically, handing me a piece of thin letter-paper such as is often used for foreign correspondence. "Such letters have been coming to Mr. Brixton, I understand, every day."
The letter was in a cramped foreign scrawl:
John Brixton,
Woodrock, New York.
American dollars must not endanger the peace of Europe. Be warned in time. In the name of liberty and progress we have raised the standard of conflict without truce or quarter against reaction. If you and the American bankers associated with you take up these bonds you will never live to receive the first payment of interest
The Red Brotherhood of the Balkans.
I looked up inquiringly. "What is the Red Brotherhood?" I asked.
"As nearly as I can make out," replied Kennedy, "it seems to be a sort of international secret society. I believe it preaches the gospel of terror and violence in the cause of liberty and union of some of the peoples of southeastern Europe. Anyhow, it keeps its secrets well. The identity of the members is a mystery, as well as the source of its funds, which, it is said, are immense."
"And they operate so secretly that Brixton can trust no one about him?" I asked.
"I believe he is ill," explained Craig. "At any rate, he evidently suspects almost every one about him except his daughter. As nearly as I