The Dream Doctor Part 38

A scream from the drawing-room brought us to a halt. It was Mrs.

Brainard, tall, almost imperial in her loose morning gown, her dark eyes snapping fire at the sudden intrusion. I could not tell whether she had really noticed that the house was watched or was acting a part.

"What does this mean?" she demanded. "What--Gladys--you--"

"Florence--tell them--it isn't so--is it? You don't know a thing about those plans of father's that were--stolen--that night."

"Where is Nordheim?" interjected Burke quickly, a little of his "third degree" training getting the upper hand.

"Nordheim?"

"Yes--you know. Tell me. Is he here?"

"Here? Isn't it bad enough to hound him, without hounding me, too? Will you merciless detectives drive us all from, place to place with your brutal suspicions?"

"Merciless?" inquired Burke, smiling with sarcasm. "Who has been hounding him?"

"You know very well what I mean," she repeated, drawing herself up to her full height and patting Gladys's hand to rea.s.sure her. "Read that message on the table."

Burke picked up a yellow telegram dated New York, two days before.

It was as I feared when I left you. The secret service must have rummaged my baggage both here and at the hotel. They have taken some very valuable papers of mine.

"Secret service--rummage baggage?" repeated Burke, himself now in perplexity. "That is news to me. We have rummaged no trunks or bags, least of all Nordheim's. In fact, we have never been able to find them at all."

"Upstairs, Burke--the servants' quarters," interrupted Craig impatiently. "We are wasting time here."

Mrs. Brainard offered no protest. I began to think that the whole thing was indeed a surprise to her, and that she had, in fact, been reading, instead of making a studied effort to appear surprised at our intrusion.

Room after room was flung open without finding any one, until we reached the attic, which had been finished off into several rooms. One door was closed. Craig opened it cautiously. It was pitch dark in spite of the broad daylight outside. We entered gingerly.

On the floor lay two dark piles of something. My foot touched one of them. I drew back in horror at the feeling. It was the body of a man.

Kennedy struck a light, and as he bent over in its little circle of radiance, he disclosed a ghastly scene.

"Hari-kiri!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "They must have got my message to Burke and have seen that the house was surrounded."

The two j.a.panese servants had committed suicide.

"Wh-what does it all mean?" gasped Mrs. Brainard, who had followed us upstairs with Gladys.

Burke's lip curled slightly and he was about to speak.

"It means," hastened Kennedy, "that you have been double crossed, Mrs.

Brainard. Nordheim stole those plans of Captain s.h.i.+rley's submarine for his t.i.tan Iron Works. Then the j.a.ps stole them from his baggage at the hotel. He thought the secret service had them. The j.a.ps waited here just long enough to try the plans against the Z99 herself--to destroy Captain s.h.i.+rley's work by his own method of destruction. It was clever, clever. It would make his labours seem like a failure and would discourage others from keeping up the experiments. They had planned to steal a march on the world. Every time the Z99 was out they worked up here with their improvised wireless until they found the wave-length s.h.i.+rley was using. It took fifteen or twenty minutes, but they managed, finally, to interfere so that they sent the submarine to the bottom of the harbour. Instead of being the criminal, Burke, Mrs. Brainard is the victim, the victim both of Nordheim and of her servants."

Craig had thrown open a window and had dropped down on his knees before a little stove by which the room was heated. He was poking eagerly in a pile of charred paper and linen.

"s.h.i.+rley," he cried, "your secret is safe, even though the duplicate plans were stolen. There will be no more interference."

The Captain seized Craig by both hands and wrung them like the handle of a pump.

"Oh, thank you--thank you--thank you," cried Gladys, running up and almost dancing with joy at the change in her father. "I--I could almost--kiss you!"

"I could let you," twinkled Craig, promptly, as she blushed deeply.

"Thank you, too, Mrs. Brainard," he added, turning to acknowledge her congratulations also. "I am glad I have been able to be of service to you."

"Won't you come back to the house for dinner?" urged the Captain.

Kennedy looked at me and smiled. "Walter," he said, "this is no place for two old bachelors like us."

Then turning, he added, "Many thanks, sir,--but, seriously, last night we slept princ.i.p.ally in day coaches. Really I must turn the case over to Burke now and get back to the city to-night early."

They insisted on accompanying us to the station, and there the congratulations were done all over again.

"Why," exclaimed Kennedy, as we settled ourselves in the Pullman after waving a final good-bye, "I shall be afraid to go back to that town again. I--I almost did kiss her!"

Then his face settled into its usual stern lines, although softened, I thought. I am sure that it was not the New England landscape, with its quaint stone fences, that he looked at out of the window, but the recollection of the bright das.h.i.+ng figure of Gladys s.h.i.+rley.

It was seldom that a girl made so forcible an impression on Kennedy, I know, for on our return he fairly dived into work, like the Z99 herself, and I did not see him all the next day until just before dinner time. Then he came in and spent half an hour restoring his acid-stained fingers to something like human semblance.

He said nothing about his research work of the day, and I was just about to remark that a day had pa.s.sed without its usual fresh alarum and excursion, when a tap on the door buzzer was followed by the entrance of our old friend Andrews, head of the Great Eastern Life Insurance Company's own detective service.

"Kennedy," he began, "I have a startling case for you. Can you help me out with it?"

As he sat down heavily, he pulled from his immense black wallet some sc.r.a.ps of paper and newspaper cuttings.

"You recall, I suppose," he went on, unfolding the papers without waiting for an answer, "the recent death of young Montague Phelps, at Woodbine, just outside the city?"

Kennedy nodded. The death of Phelps, about ten days before, had attracted nation-wide attention because of the heroic fight for life he had made against what the doctors admitted had puzzled them--a new and baffling manifestation of coma. They had laboured hard to keep him awake, but had not succeeded, and after several days of lying in a comatose state he had finally succ.u.mbed. It was one of those strange but rather frequent cases of long sleeps reported in the newspapers, although it was by no means one which might be cla.s.sed as record-breaking.

The interest in Phelps lay, a great deal, in the fact that the young man had married the popular dancer, Anginette Petrovska, a few months previously. His honeymoon trip around the world had suddenly been interrupted, while the couple were crossing Siberia, by the news of the failure of the Phelps banking-house in Wall Street and the practical wiping-out of his fortune. He had returned, only to fall a victim to a greater misfortune.

"A few days before his death," continued Andrews, measuring his words carefully, "I, or rather the Great Eastern, which had been secretly investigating the case, received this letter. What do you think of it?"

He spread out on the table a crumpled note in a palpably disguised handwriting:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

You would do well to look Into the death of Montague Phelps, Jr. I accuse no one, a.s.sert nothing. But when a young man apparently in the best of health, drops off so mysteriously and even the physician in the case can give no very convincing information, that case warrants attention. I know what I know.

AN OUTSIDER.

XXI

THE GHOULS