The Stolen War-Secret. Arthur B. Reeve

      I. The Mystery of the Spy

      CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      THE MYSTERY OF THE SPY

      IT WAS during the dark days at the beginning of our recent unpleasantness with Mexico that Craig Kennedy and I dropped in one evening at the new Vanderveer Hotel to glance at the ticker to see how affairs were going.

      We were bending over the tape, oblivious to everything else about us, when we felt a hand on each of our shoulders.

      “We’ve just had a most remarkable tragedy right here in the hotel,” a voice whispered. “Are you busy tonight, Kennedy?”

      Craig and I turned simultaneously and found Michael McBride, the house-detective of the hotel, an old friend of ours some years before in the city detective-bureau.

      McBride was evidently making a great effort to appear calm, but it was very apparent that something had completely upset him.

      “How’s that?” asked Kennedy shaking hands.

      McBride gave a hasty glance about and edged us over into a quiet corner away from the ticker.

      “Why,” he replied in an undertone, “we’ve just discovered one of our guests—a Madame Valcour—in her room—dead!”

      “Dead?” repeated Kennedy in amazement.

      “Yes—the most incomprehensible thing you can imagine. Come upstairs with me, before the coroner gets here,” he urged. “I’d like you to see the case, Kennedy, before he musses things up.”

      We followed the house-detective to the tenth floor. As we left the elevator he nodded to the young woman floor-clerk who led the way down the thickly carpeted hall. She stopped at a door, and through the transom overhead we could see that the room was dimly lighted. She opened the door and we caught a glimpse of a sumptuously furnished suite.

      On the snowy white bed, in all her cold, stony beauty, lay the beautiful Madame Valcour, fully dressed in the latest of Parisian creations, perfect from her hat which breathed of the Rue de la Paix to her dainty tango-slippers peeping from a loosely draped skirt which accentuated rather than concealed her exquisite form.

      She was a striking woman, dark of hair and skin. In life she must have been sensuously attractive. But now her face was drawn and contorted with a ghastly look.

      There she lay, alone, in an elegantly appointed room of an exclusive hotel. Only a few feet away were hundreds of gay guests chatting and laughing, with no idea of the terrible tragedy so near them.

      In the comer of the room I could see her maid sobbing hysterically.

      “Oh—niña—niña,” cried the maid, whose name I learned afterward was Juanita. “She was muy simpatica—muy simpatica.”

      “ ‘Niña,’ ” remarked Kennedy to us in an undertone, “means ‘little girl,’ the familiar term for mistress. As for ‘muy simpatica,’ it means, literally, ‘very sympathetic,’ but really can not be done justice to in English. It is that charming characteristic of personal attractiveness, the result of a sweet disposition.”

      He looked down keenly at the woman before us.

      “I can well imagine that she had it, that she was muy simpatica."

      While Craig was taking in the situation, I turned to McBride and asked—

      “Who was Madame Valcour—where did she come from?”

      “You haven’t heard of her?” he repeated. "Well—I’m not surprised after all. Really I can’t say I know much about her myself—except that she was a beauty and attracted everybody’s attention here at the hotel. Among other things, she was a friend of Colonel Sinclair, I believe. You know him, don’t you—the retired army-engineer—interested in Mexican mines and railroads, and a whole lot of things? Oh, you’ve seen his name in the newspapers often enough. Lately, you know, he has been experimenting with air-ships for the army—has a big estate out on Long Island.”

      Kennedy nodded.

      “Rather a remarkable chap, I’ve heard.”

      “I don’t know whether you know it or not,” continued McBride, “but we seem to have quite a colony of Mexican refugees here at the Vanderveer. She seemed to be one of them—at least she seemed to know them all. I think she was a Frenchwoman. At least, you know how all the Latin-Americans seem naturally to gravitate to Paris and how friendly the French are toward them.”

      “How did you come to discover her?” asked Kennedy, bending over her again. “She couldn’t have been dead very long.”

      “Well—she came into the hotel during the dinner-hour. As nearly as I can find out, the elevator boy, who seems to have been the only person who observed her closely, says that she acted as if she were dazed.

      “They tell me her maid was out at the time. But about half an hour after Madame came in, there was a call for her over