Arthur B. Reeve Crime & Mystery Boxed Set. Arthur B. Reeve
ocean view, Inez suggested that we go down to the concert, as had been their custom. It was the first time that Kennedy had not seemed to fall in with any of her suggestions, but I knew that that, too, must be part of his preconcerted plan.
"If you will pardon us," he excused, "Mr. Jameson and I have some friends over at Stillson Hall whom we have promised to run in to see. I think this would be a good opportunity. We'll rejoin you—in the alcove where we were last night, if possible."
No one objected. In fact I think Lockwood was rather glad to have a chance to talk to Inez, for Kennedy had monopolized a great deal of her attention.
We left them at the elevator, but instead of leaving the Inn Kennedy edged his way around into the shadow of a doorway where we could watch. Fortunately the Señorita managed to get the same settee in the corner which we had occupied the night before.
A moment later I caught a glimpse of a familiar face at the long window opening on the veranda. Señora de Moche and her son had drawn up chairs, just outside.
They had not seen us and, as far as we knew, had no reason to suspect that we were about. As we watched the two groups, I could not fail to note that the change in Don Luis was really marked. There was none of the wildness in his conversation, as there had been. Once he even met the keen eye of the Señora, but it did not seem to have the effect it had had on the previous occasion.
"What was it you had the Señorita drop into his coffee?" I asked Craig under my breath.
"You saw that?" he smiled. "It was pilocarpine, jaborandi, a plant found largely in Brazil, one of the antidotes for stramonium poisoning. It doesn't work with everyone. But it seems to have done so with Mendoza. Besides, the caffeine in the coffee probably aided the pilocarpine. Did you notice how it contracted his pupils almost back to normal again?"
Kennedy did not take his eyes off the two groups as he talked. "I've got at the case from a brand-new angle, I think," he added. "Unless I am mistaken, when the criminal sees Don Luis getting better, it will mean another attempt to substitute more cigarettes doped with that drug."
Satisfied so far with the play he was staging, Kennedy moved over to the hotel desk, and after a quiet conference with the head clerk, found out that the room next to the suite of the Mendozas was empty. The clerk gave him several keys and with a last look at the Señora and her son, to see whether they were getting restive, I followed Craig into the elevator and we rode up to the eighth floor again.
The halls were deserted now and we entered the room next to the Mendozas without being observed. It was a simple matter after that to open a rather heavy door that communicated between the two suites.
Instead of switching on the light, Kennedy first looked about carefully until he was assured that no one was there. Quickly he sprinkled on the floor from the hall door to the table on which the case of cigarettes lay some of the powder which I had seen him wrap up in the laboratory before we left. Then with the atomizer he sprayed over it something that had a pungent, familiar odor, walking backwards from the hall door as he did so.
"Don't you want more light?" I asked, starting to cross to a window to raise a shade to let the moonlight stream in.
"Don't walk on it, Walter," he whispered, pushing me back. "First I sprinkled some powdered iodine and then ammonia enough to moisten it. It evaporates quickly, leaving what I call my anti-burglar powder."
He had finished his work and now the evening wind was blowing away the slight fumes that had risen. For a few moments he left the door into the next room open to clear away the odor, then quietly closed it, but did not lock it.
In the darkness we settled ourselves now for a vigil that was to last we knew not how long. Neither of us spoke as we half crouched in the shadow of the next room, listening.
Slowly the time passed. Would anyone take advantage of the opportunity to tamper with that box of cigarettes on Mendoza's table? Who was it who had conceived and executed this devilish plot? What was the purpose back of it all?
Once or twice we heard the elevator door clang and waited expectantly, but nothing happened. I began to wonder whether if someone had a pass-key to the Mendoza suite we could hear them enter. The outside hall was thickly carpeted and deadened every footfall if one exercised only reasonable caution.
"Don't you think we might leave the door ajar a little?" I suggested anxiously.
"Sh!" was Kennedy's only comment in the negative.
I glanced now and then at my watch and was surprised to see how early it was. The minutes were surely leaden-footed.
In the darkness and silence I fell to reviewing the weird succession of events which had filled the past two days. I am not by nature superstitious, but in the darkness I could well imagine a staring succession of eyes, beginning with the dilated pupils of Don Luis and always ending with those remarkable piercing black eyes of the Indian woman with the melancholy-visaged son.
Suddenly I heard in the next room what sounded like a series of little explosions, as though someone were treading on match-heads.
"My burglar powder," muttered Craig in a hoarse whisper. "Every step, even those of a mouse running across, sets it off!"
He rose quickly and threw open the door into the Mendoza suite. I sprang through after him.
There, in the shadows, I saw a dark form, starting back in retreat. But it was too late.
In the dim light of the little explosions, I caught a glimpse of a face—the face of the person who had been craftily working on the superstition of Don Luis, now that his influence had got from the government the precious concession, working with the dread drug to drive him insane and thus capture both Mendoza's share of the fortune as well as his daughter, well knowing that suspicion would rest on the jealous Indian woman with the wonderful eyes whose brother had already been driven insane and whose son Inez Mendoza really loved better than himself—the soldier of fortune, Lockwood.
The Ear in the Wall