The Exploits of Elaine Part 6

He handed her the letter. She almost seized it, examining it carefully, her large eyes opening wider in wonder.

"This is certainly my writing and my notepaper," she murmured, "but I never wrote the letter!"

Craig looked from the letter to her keenly. No one said a word. For a moment Kennedy hesitated, thinking.

"Might I--er--see your room, Miss Dodge?" he asked at length.

Aunt Josephine frowned. Bennett and I could not conceal our surprise.

"Why, certainly," nodded Elaine, as she led the way upstairs.

It was a dainty little room, breathing the spirit of its mistress. In fact it seemed a sort of profanation as we all followed in after her.

For a moment Kennedy stood still, then he carefully looked about. At the side of the bed, near the head, he stooped and picked up something which he held in the palm of his hand. I bent over. Something gleamed in the morning suns.h.i.+ne--some little thin pieces of gla.s.s. As he tried deftly to fit the tiny little bits together, he seemed absorbed in thought. Quickly he raised it to his nose, as if to smell it.

"Ethyl chloride!" he muttered, wrapping the pieces carefully in a paper and putting them into his pocket.

An instant later he crossed the room to the window and examined it.

"Look!" he exclaimed.

There, plainly, were marks of a jimmy which had been inserted near the lock to pry it open.

"Miss Dodge," he asked, "might I--might I trouble you to let me see your arm?"

Wonderingly she did so and Kennedy bent almost reverently over her plump arm examining it.

On it was a small dark discoloration, around which was a slight redness and tenderness.

"That," he said slowly, "is the mark of a hypodermic needle."

As he finished examining Elaine's arm he drew the letter from his pocket. Still facing her he said in a low tone, "Miss Dodge--you did write this letter--but under the influence of the new 'twilight sleep.'"

We looked at one another amazed.

Outside, if we had been at the door in the hallway, we might have seen the sinister-faced Michael listening. He turned and slipped quietly away.

"Why, Craig," I exclaimed excitedly, "what do you mean?"

"Exactly what I say. With Miss Dodge's permission I shall show you. By a small administration of the drug which will injure you in no way, Miss Dodge, I think I can bring back the memory of all that occurred to you last night. Will you allow me?"

"Mercy, no!" protested Aunt Josephine.

Craig and Elaine faced each other as they had the day before when she had asked him whether the sudden warning of the Clutching Hand would intimidate him. She advanced a step nearer. Elaine trusted him.

"Elaine!" protested Aunt Josephine again.

"I want the experiment to be tried," she said quietly.

A moment later Kennedy had placed her in a wing chair in the corner of the room.

"Now, Mrs. Dodge," he said, "please bring me a basin and a towel."

Aunt Josephine, reconciled, brought them. Kennedy dropped an antiseptic tablet into the water and carefully sterilized Elaine's arm just above the spot where the red mark showed. Then he drew the hypodermic from his pocket--carefully sterilizing it, also, and filling it with scopolamine from the bottle.

"Just a moment, Miss Dodge," he encouraged as he jabbed the needle into her arm.

She did not wince.

"Please lie back on the couch," he directed. Then turning to us he added, "It takes some time for this to work. Our criminal got over that fact and prevented an outcry by using ethyl chloride first. Let me reconstruct the scene."

As we watched Elaine going under slowly, Craig talked.

"That night," he said, "warily, the masked criminal of the Clutching Hand might have been seen down below us in the alley. Up here, Miss Dodge, worn out by the strain of her father's death, let us say, was nervously trying to read, to do anything that would take her mind off the tragedy. Perhaps she fell asleep.

"Just then the Clutching Hand appeared. He came stealthily through that window which he had opened. A moment he hesitated, seeing Elaine asleep. Then he tiptoed over to the bed, let us say, and for a moment looked at her, sleeping.

"A second later he had thrust his hand into his pocket and had taken out a small gla.s.s bulb with a long thin neck. That was ethyl chloride, a drug which produces a quick anesthesia. But it lasts only a minute or two. That was enough, As he broke the gla.s.s neck of the bulb--letting the pieces fall on the floor near the bed--he shoved the thing under Elaine's face, turning his own head away and holding a handkerchief over his own nose. The mere heat of his hand was enough to cause the ethyl chloride to spray out and overcome her instantly. He stepped away from her a moment and replaced the now empty vial in his pocket.

"Then he took a box from his pocket, opened it. There must have been a syringe and a bottle of scopolamine. Where they came from I do not know, but perhaps from some hospital. I shall have to find that out later. He went to Elaine, quickly jabbing the needle, with no resistance from her now. Slowly he replaced the bottle and the needle in his pocket. He could not have been in any hurry now, for it takes time for the drug to work."

Kennedy paused. Had we known at the time, Michael--he of the sinister face--must have been in the hallway, careful that no one saw him. A tap at the door and the Clutching Hand, that night, must have beckoned him.

A moment's parley and they separated--Clutching Hand going back to Elaine, who was now under the influence of the second drug.

"Our criminal," resumed Kennedy thoughtfully, "may have shaken Elaine.

She did not answer. Then he may have partly revived her. She must have been startled. Clutching Hand, perhaps, was half crouching, with a big ugly blue steel revolver leveled full in her face.

"'One word and I shoot!' he probably cried. 'Get up!'

"Trembling, she must have done so. 'Your slippers and a kimono,' he would naturally have ordered. She put them on mechanically. Then he must have ordered her to go out of the door and down the stairs.

Clutching Hand must have followed and as he did so he would have cautiously put out the lights."

We were following, spell-bound, Kennedy's graphic reconstruction of what must have happened. Evidently he had struck close to the truth.

Elaine's eyes were closed. Gently Kennedy led her along. "Now, Miss Dodge," he encouraged, "try--try hard to recollect just what it was that happened last night--everything."

As Kennedy paused after his quick recital, she seemed to tremble all over. Slowly she began to speak. We stood awestruck. Kennedy had been right!

The girl was now living over again those minutes that had been forgotten--blotted out by the drug.

And it was all real to her, too,--terribly real. She was speaking, plainly in terror.

"I see a man--oh, such a figure--with a mask. He holds a gun in my face--he threatens me. I put on my kimono and slippers, as he tells me.

I am in a daze. I know what I am doing--and I don't know. I go out with him, downstairs, into the library."

Elaine shuddered again at the recollection. "Ugh! The room is dark, the room where he killed my father. Moonlight outside streams in. This masked man and I come in. He switches on the lights.

"'Go to the safe,' he says, and I do it, the new safe, you know. 'Do you know the combination?' he asks me. 'Yes,' I reply, too frightened to say no.

"'Open it then,' he says, waving that awful revolver closer. I do so.

Hastily he rummages through it, throwing papers here and there. But he seems not to find what he is after and turns away, swearing fearfully.