The Silent Bullet Page 3

  II. The Scientific Cracksman

  "I'm willing to wager you a box of cigars that you don't know the mostfascinating story in your own paper to-night," remarked Kennedy, as Icame in one evening with the four or five newspapers I was in the habitof reading to see whether they had beaten the Star in getting any newsof importance.

  "I'll bet I do," I said, "or I was one of about a dozen who worked itup. It's the Shaw murder trial. There isn't another that's even a badsecond."

  "I am afraid the cigars will be on you, Walter. Crowded over on thesecond page by a lot of stale sensation that everyone has read for thefiftieth time, now, you will find what promises to be a real sensation,a curious half-column account of the sudden death of John G. Fletcher."

  I laughed. "Craig," I said, "when you put up a simple death fromapoplexy against a murder trial, and such a murder trial; well, youdisappoint me--that's all."

  "Is it a simple case of apoplexy?" he asked, pacing up and down theroom, while I wondered why he should grow excited over what seemed avery ordinary news item, after all. Then he picked up the paper and readthe account slowly aloud.

  JOHN G. FLETCHER, STEEL MAGNATE, DIES SUDDENLY

  SAFE OPEN BUT LARGE SUM OF CASH UNTOUCHED

  John Graham Fletcher, the aged philanthropist and steelmaker, was founddead in his library this morning at his home at Fletcherwood, GreatNeck, Long Island. Strangely, the safe in the library in which he kepthis papers and a large sum of cash was found opened, but as far as couldbe learned nothing is missing.

  It had always been Mr. Fletcher's custom to rise at seven o'clock. Thismorning his housekeeper became alarmed when he had not appeared by nineo'clock. Listening at the door, she heard no sound. It was not locked,and on entering she found the former steel-magnate lying lifeless onthe floor between his bedroom and the library adjoining. His personalphysician, Dr. W. C. Bryant, was immediately notified.

  Close examination of the body revealed that his face was slightlydiscoloured, and the cause of death was given by the physician asapoplexy. He had evidently been dead about eight or nine hours whendiscovered.

  Mr. Fletcher is survived by a nephew, John G. Fletcher, II., who is theBlake professor of bacteriology at the University, and by a grandniece,Miss Helen Bond. Professor Fletcher was informed of the sad occurrenceshortly after leaving a class this morning and hurried out toFletcherwood. He would make no statement other than that he wasinexpressibly shocked. Miss Bond, who has for several years resided withrelatives, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Greene of Little Neck, is prostrated bythe shock.

  "Walter," added Kennedy, as he laid down the paper and, without any moresparring, came directly to the point, "there was something missing fromthat safe."

  I had no need to express the interest I now really felt, and Kennedyhastened to take advantage of it.

  "Just before you came in," he continued, "Jack Fletcher called me upfrom Great Neck. You probably don't know it, but it has been privatelyreported in the inner circle of the University that old Fletcher wasto leave the bulk of his fortune to found a great school of preventivemedicine, and that the only proviso was that his nephew should be deanof the school. The professor told me over the wire that the will wasmissing from the safe, and that it was the only thing missing. From hisexcitement I judge that there is more to the story than he cared totell over the 'phone. He said his car was on the way to the city, and heasked if I wouldn't come and help him--he wouldn't say how. Now, I knowhim pretty well, and I'm going to ask you to come along, Walter, forthe express purpose of keeping this thing out of the newspapersunderstand?--until we get to the bottom of it."

  A few minutes later the telephone rang and the hall-boy announced thatthe car was waiting. We hurried down to it; the chauffeur lounged downcarelessly into his seat and we were off across the city and river andout on the road to Great Neck with amazing speed.

  Already I began to feel something of Kennedy's zest for the adventure.I found myself half a dozen times on the point of hazarding a suspicion,only to relapse again into silence at the inscrutable look on Kennedy'sface. What was the mystery that awaited us in the great lonely house onLong Island?

  We found Fletcherwood a splendid estate directly on the bay, with a longdriveway leading up to the door. Professor Fletcher met us at the portecochere, and I was glad to note that, far from taking me as an intruder,he seemed rather relieved that someone who understood the ways of thenewspapers could stand between him and any reporters who might possiblydrop in.

  He ushered us directly into the library and closed the door. It seemedas if he could scarcely wait to tell his story.

  "Kennedy," he began, almost trembling with excitement, "look at thatsafe door."

  We looked. It had been drilled through in such a way as to break thecombination. It was a heavy door, closely fitting, and it was the bestkind of small safe that the state of the art had produced. Yet clearlyit had been tampered with, and successfully. Who was this scientificcracksman who had apparently accomplished the impossible? It was noordinary hand and brain which had executed this "job."

  Fletcher swung the door wide, and pointed to a little compartmentinside, whose steel door had been jimmied open. Then out of it hecarefully lifted a steel box and deposited it on the library table.

  "I suppose everybody has been handling that box?" asked Craig quickly.

  A smile flitted across Fletcher's features. "I thought of that,Kennedy," he said. "I remembered what you once told me aboutfinger-prints. Only myself has touched it, and I was careful to takehold of it only on the sides. The will was placed in this box, and thekey to the box was usually in the lock. Well, the will is gone. That'sall; nothing else was touched. But for the life of me I can't find amark on the box, not a finger-mark. Now on a hot and humid summer nightlike last night I should say it was pretty likely that anyone touchingthis metal box would have left finger-marks. Shouldn't you think so,Kennedy?"

  Kennedy nodded and continued to examine the place where the compartmenthad been jimmied. A low whistle aroused us: coming over to the table,Craig tore a white sheet of paper off a pad lying there and deposited acouple of small particles on it.

  "I found them sticking on the jagged edges of the steel where it hadbeen forced," he said. Then he whipped out a pocket magnifying-glass."Not from a rubber glove," he commented half to himself. "By Jove,one side of them shows lines that look as if they were the lines on aperson's fingers, and the other side is perfectly smooth. There's not achance of using them as a clue, except--well, I didn't know criminals inAmerica knew that stunt."

  "What stunt?"

  "Why, you know how keen the new detectives are on the finger-printsystem? Well, the first thing some of the up-to-date criminals in Europedid was to wear rubber gloves so that they would leave no prints. Butyou can't work very well with rubber gloves. Last fall in Paris I heardof a fellow who had given the police a lot of trouble. He never left amark, or at least it was no good if he did. He painted his hands lightlywith a liquid rubber which he had invented himself. It did all thatrubber gloves would do and yet left him the free use of his fingers withpractically the same keenness of touch. Fletcher, whatever is at thebottom of this affair, I feel sure right now that you have to deal withno ordinary criminal."

  "Do you suppose there are any relatives besides those we know of?" Iasked Kennedy when Fletcher had left to summon the servants.

  "No," he replied, "I think not. Fletcher and Helen Bond, his secondcousin, to whom he is engaged, are the only two."

  Kennedy continued to study the library. He walked in and out of thedoors and examined the windows and viewed the safe from all angles.

  "The old gentleman's bedroom is here," he said, indicating a door. "Nowa good smart noise or perhaps even a light shining through the transomfrom the library might arouse him. Suppose he woke up suddenly andentered by this door. He would see the thief at work on the safe.Yes, that part of reconstructing the story is simple. But who was theintruder?"

  Just then Fletcher returned with the servants. The questioning was longand tedious, and developed nothing except that the butler admitted thathe was uncertain whether the windows in the library were locked. Thegardener was very obtuse, but finally contributed one possibly importantfact. He had noted in the morning that the back gate, leading into adisused road closer to the bay than the main highway in front of thehouse, was open. It was rarely used, and was kept closed only by anordinary hook. Whoever had opened it had evidently forgotten to hook it.He had thought it strange that it was unhooked, and in closing it he hadnoticed in the mud of the roadway marks that seemed to indicate that anautomobile had stood there.

  After the servants had gone, Fletcher asked us to excuse him for awhile, as he wished to run over to the Greenes', who lived across thebay. Miss Bond was completely prostrated by the death of her uncle, hesaid, and was in an extremely nervous condition. Meanwhile if we foundany need of a machine we might use his uncle's, or in fact anythingaround the place.

  "Walter," said Craig, when Fletcher had gone, "I want to run back totown to-night, and I have something I'd like to have you do, too."

  We were soon speeding back along the splendid road to Long Island City,while he laid out our programme.

  "You go down to the Star office," he said, "and look through all theclippings on the whole Fletcher family. Get a complete story of the lifeof Helen Bond, too--what she has done in society, with whom she has beenseen mostly, whether she has made any trips abroad, and whether shehas ever been engaged--you know, anything likely to be significant. I'mgoing up to the apartment to get my camera and then to the laboratory toget some rather bulky paraphernalia I want to take out to Fletcherwood.Meet me at the Columbus Circle station at, say half-past-ten."

  So we separated. My search revealed the fact that Miss Bond had alwaysbeen intimate with the ultra-fashionable set, had spent last summerin Europe, a good part of the time in Switzerland and Paris with theGreenes. As far as I could find out she had never been reported engaged,but plenty of fortunes as well as foreign titles had been flitting aboutthe ward of the steel-magnate.

  Craig and I met at the appointed time. He had a lot of paraphernaliawith him, and it did not add to our comfort as we sped back, but itwasn't much over half an hour before we again found ourselves nearingGreat Neck.

  Instead of going directly back to Fletcherwood, however, Craig had toldthe chauffeur to stop at the plant of the local electric light and powercompany, where he asked if he might see the record of the amount ofcurrent used the night before.

  The curve sprawled across the ruled surface of the sheet by theautomatic registering-needle was irregular, showing the ups and downs ofthe current, rising sharply from sundown and gradually declining afternine o'clock, as the lights went out. Somewhere between eleven andtwelve o'clock, however, the irregular fall of the curve was broken by aquite noticeable upward twist.

  Craig asked the men if that usually happened. They were quite sure thatthe curve as a rule went gradually down until twelve o'clock, when thepower was shut off. But they did not see anything remarkable in it. "Oh,I suppose some of the big houses had guests," volunteered the foreman,"and just to show off the place perhaps they turned on all the lights.I don't know, sir, what it was, but it couldn't have been a heavy drain,or we would have noticed it at the time, and the lights would all havebeen dim."

  "Well," said Craig, "just watch and see if it occurs again to-nightabout the same time."

  "All right, sir."

  "And when you close down the plant for the night, will you bring therecord card up to Fletcherwood?" asked Craig, slipping a bill into thepocket of the foreman's shirt.

  "I will, and thank you, sir."

  It was nearly half-past eleven when Craig had got his apparatus set upin the library at Fletcherwood. Then he unscrewed all the bulbs from thechandelier in the library and attached in their places connections withthe usual green silk-covered flexible wire rope. These were then joinedup to a little instrument which to me looked like a drill. Next hemuffed the drill with a wad of felt and applied it to the safe door.

  I could hear the dull tat-tat of the drill. Going into the bedroom andclosing the door, I found that it was still audible to me, but an oldman, inclined to deafness and asleep, would scarcely have been awakenedby it. In about ten minutes Craig displayed a neat little hole in thesafe door opposite the one made by the cracksman in the combination.

  "I'm glad you're honest," I said, "or else we might be afraid ofyou--perhaps even make you prove an alibi for last night's job!"

  He ignored my bantering and said in a tone such as he might haveused before a class of students in the gentle art of scientificsafe-cracking: "Now if the power company's curve is just the sameto-night as last night, that will show how the thing was done. I wantedto be sure of it, so I thought I'd try this apparatus which I smuggledin from Paris last year. I believe the old man happened to be wakefuland heard it."

  Then he pried off the door of the interior compartment which had beenjimmied open. "Perhaps we may learn something by looking at thisdoor and studying the marks left by the jimmy, by means of this newinstrument of mine," he said.

  On the library table he fastened an arrangement with two upright postssupporting a dial which he called a "dynamometer." The uprights werebraced in the back, and the whole thing reminded me of a miniatureguillotine.

  "This is my mechanical detective," said Craig proudly. "It was devisedby Bertillon himself, and he personally gave me permission to copy hisown machine. You see, it is devised to measure pressure. Now let's takean ordinary jimmy and see just how much pressure it takes to duplicatethose marks on this door."

  Craig laid the piece of steel on the dynamometer in the position it hadoccupied in the safe, and braced it tightly. Then he took a jimmy andpressed on it with all his strength. The steel door was connected withthe indicator, and the needle spun around until it indicated a pressuresuch as only a strong man could have exerted. Comparing the marks madein the steel in the experiment and by the safe-cracker, it was evidentthat no such pressure had been necessary. Apparently the lock on thedoor was only a trifling affair, and the steel itself was not very,tough. The safe-makers had relied on the first line of defence to repelattack.

  Craig tried again and again, each time using less force. At last he gota mark just about similar to the original marks on the steel.

  "Well, well, what do you think of that?" he exclaimed reflectively. "Achild could have done that part of the job."

  Just then the lights went off for the night. Craig lighted the oil-lamp,and sat in silence until the electric light plant foreman appeared with;the card-record, which showed a curve practically identical with that ofthe night before.

  A few moments later Professor Fletcher's machine came up the driveway,and he joined us with a worried and preoccupied look on his face thathe could not conceal. "She's terribly broken up by the suddenness of itall," he murmured as he sank into an armchair. "The shock has been toomuch for her. In fact, I hadn't the heart to tell her anything aboutthe robbery, poor girl." Then in a moment he asked, "Any more clues yet,Kennedy?"

  "Well, nothing of first importance. I have only been trying toreconstruct the story of the robbery so that I can reason out a motiveand a few details; then when the real clues come along we won't haveso much ground to cover. The cracksman was certainly clever. He used anelectric drill to break the combination and ran it by the electric lightcurrent."

  "Whew!" exclaimed the professor, "is that so? He must have been abovethe average. That's interesting."

  "By the way, Fletcher," said Kennedy, "I wish you would introduce me toyour fiancee to-morrow. I would like to know her."

  "Gladly," Fletcher replied, "only you must be careful what you talkabout. Remember, the death of uncle has been quite a shock to her--hewas her only relative besides myself."

  "I will," promised Kennedy, "and by the way, she may think it strangethat I'm out here at a time like this. Perhaps you had better tellher I'm a nerve specialist or something of that sort--anything not toconnect me with the robbery, which you say you haven't told her about."

  The next morning found Kennedy out bright and early, for he had not hada very good chance to do anything during the night except reconstructthe details. He was now down by the back gate with his camera, where Ifound him turning it end-down and photographing the road. Together wemade a thorough search of the woods and the road about the gate, butcould discover absolutely nothing.

  After breakfast I improvised a dark room and developed the films, whileCraig went down the back lane along the shore "looking for clues," as hesaid briefly. Toward noon he returned, and I could see that he was ina brown study. So I said nothing, but handed him the photographs ofthe road. He took them and laid them down in a long line on the libraryfloor. They seemed to consist of little ridges of dirt on either sideof a series of regular round spots, some of the spots very clear anddistinct on the sides, others quite obscure in the centre. Now and thenwhere you would expect to see one of the spots, just for the symmetry ofthe thing, it was missing. As I looked at the line of photographs on thefloor I saw that they were a photograph of the track made by the tire ofan automobile, and I suddenly recalled what the gardener had said.

  Next Craig produced the results of his morning's work, which consistedof several dozen sheets of white paper, carefully separated into threebundles. These he also laid down in long lines on the floor, eachpackage in a separate line. Then I began to realise what he was doing,and became fascinated in watching him on his hands and knees eagerlyscanning the papers and comparing them with the photographs. At lasthe gathered up two of the sets of papers very decisively and threw themaway. Then he shifted the third set a bit, and laid it closely parallelto the photographs.

  "Look at these, Walter," he said. "Now take this deep and sharpindentation. Well, there's a corresponding one in the photograph. So youcan pick them out one for another. Now here's one missing altogether onthe paper. So it is in the photograph."

  Almost like a schoolboy in his glee, he was comparing the little roundcircles made by the metal insertions in an "anti-skid" automobile tire.Time and again I had seen imprints like that left in the dust and greaseof an asphalted street or the mud of a road. It had never occurred to methat they might be used in any way. Yet here Craig was, calmly tracingout the similarity before my very eyes, identifying the marks made inthe photograph with the prints left on the bits of paper.

  As I followed him, I had a most curious feeling of admiration for hisgenius. "Craig," I cried, "that's the thumb-print of an automobile."

  "There speaks the yellow journalist," he answered merrily. "'Thumb PrintSystem Applied to Motor Cars'--I can see the Sunday feature storyyou have in your mind with that headline already. Yes, Walter, that'sprecisely what this is. The Berlin police have used it a number of timeswith the most startling results."

  "But, Craig," I exclaimed suddenly, "the paper prints, where did you getthem? What machine is it?"

  "It's one not very far from here," he answered sententiously, and I sawhe would say nothing more that might fix a false suspicion on anyone.Still, my curiosity was so great that if there had been an opportunity Icertainly should have tried out his plan on all the cars in the Fletchergarage.

  Kennedy would say nothing more, and we ate our luncheon in silence.Fletcher, who had decided to lunch with the Greenes, called Kennedy upon the telephone to tell him it would be all right for him to call onMiss Bond later in the afternoon.

  "And I may bring over the apparatus I once described to you to determinejust what her nervous condition is?" he asked. Apparently the answer wasyes, for Kennedy hung up the receiver with a satisfied, "Good-bye."

  "Walter, I want you to come along with me this afternoon as myassistant. Remember I'm now Dr. Kennedy, the nerve specialist, and youare Dr. Jameson, my colleague, and we are to be in consultation on amost important case."

  "Do you think that's fair?" I asked hotly, "to take that girl off herguard, to insinuate yourself into her confidence as a medical adviser,and worm out of her some kind of fact incriminating someone? I supposethat's your plan, and I don't like the ethics, or rather the lack ofethics, of the thing."

  "Now think a minute, Walter. Perhaps I am wrong; I don't know. CertainlyI feel that the end will justify the means. I have an idea that Ican get from Miss Bond the only clue that I need, one that will leadstraight to the criminal. Who knows? I have a suspicion that the thingI'm going to do is the highest form of your so-called ethics. If whatFletcher tells us is true that girl is going insane over this thing.Why should she be so shocked over the death of an uncle she did notlive with? I tell you she knows something about this case that it isnecessary for us to know, too. If she doesn't tell someone, it will eather mind out. I'll add a dinner to the box of cigars we have already beton this case that what I'm going to do is for the best--for her best."

  Again I yielded, for I was coming to have more and more faith in the oldKennedy I had seen made over into a first-class detective, and togetherwe started for the Greenes', Craig carrying something in one of thoselong black handbags which physicians use.

  Fletcher met us on the driveway. He seemed to be very much affected,for his face was drawn, and he shifted from one position to anothernervously, from which we inferred that Miss Bond was feeling worse. Itwas late afternoon, almost verging on twilight, as he led us throughthe reception-hall and thence onto a long porch overlooking the bay andredolent with honeysuckle.

  Miss Bond was half reclining in a wicker chair us we entered. Shestarted to rise to greet us, but Fletcher gently restrained her, saying,as he introduced us, that he guessed the doctors would pardon anyinformality from an invalid.

  Fletcher was a pretty fine fellow, and I had come to like him; but Isoon found myself wondering what he had ever done to deserve winningsuch a girl as Helen Bond. She was what I should describe as the idealtype of "new" woman,--tall and athletic, yet without any affectationof mannishness. The very first thought that struck me was theincongruousness of a girl of her type suffering from an attack of"nerves," and I felt sure it must be as Craig had said, that she wasconcealing a secret that was having a terrible effect on her. A casualglance might not have betrayed the true state of her feelings, for herdark hair and large brown eyes and the tan of many suns on her face andarms betokened anything but the neurasthenic. One felt instinctivelythat she was, with all her athletic grace, primarily a womanly woman.

  The sun sinking toward the hills across the bay softened the brown ofher skin and, as I observed by watching her closely, served partiallyto conceal the nervousness which was wholly unnatural in a girl of suchpoise. When she smiled there was a false note in it; it was forced andit was sufficiently evident to me that she was going through a mentalhell of conflicting emotions that would have killed a woman of lessself-control.

  I felt that I would like to be in Fletcher's shoes--doubly so when, atKennedy's request, he withdrew, leaving me to witness the torture of awoman of such fine sensibilities, already hunted remorselessly by herown thoughts.

  Still, I will give Kennedy credit for a tactfulness that I didn't knowthe old fellow possessed. He carried through the preliminary questionsvery well for a pseudo-doctor, appealing to me as his assistant oninconsequential things that enabled me to "save my face" perfectly. Whenhe came to the critical moment of opening the black bag, he made a veryappropriate and easy remark about not having brought any sharp shinyinstruments or nasty black drugs.

  "All I wish to do, Miss Bond, is to make a few, simple little tests ofyour nervous condition. One of them we specialists call reaction time,and another is a test of heart action. Neither is of any seriousness atall, so I beg of you not to become excited, for the chief value consistsin having the patient perfectly quiet and normal. After they are overI think I'll know whether to prescribe absolute rest or a visit toNewport."

  She smiled languidly, as he adjusted a long, tightly fitting rubberglove on her shapely forearm and then encased it in a larger, absolutelyinflexible covering of leather. Between the rubber glove and the leathercovering was a liquid communicating by a glass tube with a sort ofdial. Craig had often explained to me how the pressure of the blood wasregistered most minutely on the dial, showing the varied emotions askeenly as if you had taken a peep into the very mind of the subject.I think the experimental psychologists called the thing a"plethysmograph."

  Then he had an apparatus which measured association time. The essentialpart of this instrument was the operation of a very delicate stop-watch,and this duty was given to me. It was nothing more nor less thanmeasuring the time that elapsed between his questions to her and heranswers, while he recorded the actual questions and answers and notedthe results which I worked out. Neither of us was unfamiliar with theprocess, for when we were in college these instruments were just cominginto use in America. Kennedy had never let his particular branch ofscience narrow him, but had made a practice of keeping abreast of allthe important discoveries and methods in other fields. Besides, Ihad read articles about the chronoscope, the plethysmograph, thesphygmograph, and others of the new psychological instruments. Craigcarried it off, however, as if he did that sort of thing as an every-dayemployment.

  "Now, Miss Bond," he said, and his voice was so reassuring andpersuasive that I could see she was not made even a shade more nervousby our simple preparations, "the game--it is just like a children'sparlour game--is just this: I will say a word--take 'dog,' for instance.You are to answer back immediately the first word that comes into yourmind suggested by it--say 'cat.' I will say 'chain,' for example, andprobably you will answer 'collar,' and so on. Do you catch my meaning?It may seem ridiculous, no doubt, but before we are through I feel sureyou'll see how valuable such a test is, particularly in a simple case ofnervousness such as yours."

  I don't think she found any sinister interpretation in his words, but Idid, and if ever I wanted to protest it was then, but my voice seemed tostick in my throat.

  He was beginning. It was clearly up to me to give in and not interfere.As closely as I was able I kept my eyes riveted on the watch and otherapparatus, while my ears and heart followed with mingled emotions thelow, musical voice of the girl.

  I will not give all the test, for there was much of it, particularly atthe start, that was in reality valueless, since it was merely leading upto the "surprise tests." From the colourless questions Kennedy suddenlychanged. It was done in an instant, when Miss Bond had been completelydisarmed and put off her guard.

  "Night," said Kennedy. "Day," came back the reply from Miss Bond.

  "Automobile." "Horse."

  "Bay." "Beach."

  "Road." "Forest."

  "Gate." "Fence."

  "Path." "Shrubs."

  "Porch." "House."

  Did I detect or imagine a faint hesitation?

  "Window." "Curtain."

  Yes, it was plain that time. But the words followed one another in quicksuccession. There was no rest. She had no chance to collect herself. Inoted the marked difference in the reaction time and, in my sympathy,damned this cold; scientific third degree.

  "Paris." "France."

  "Quartier Latin." "Students."

  "Apaches." Craig gave it its Gallicised pronunciation, "Apash.""Really, Dr. Kennedy," she said, "there is nothing I can associatewith them--well, yes, les vaches, I believe. You had better count thatquestion out. I've wasted a good many seconds."

  "Very well, let us try again," he replied with a forced unconcern,though the answer seemed to interest him, for "les vaches" meant "thecows," otherwise known as the police.

  No lawyer could have revelled in an opportunity for putting leadingquestions more ruthlessly than did Kennedy. He snapped out his wordssharply and unexpectedly.

  "Chandelier." "Light."

  "Electric light," he emphasised. "Broadway," she answered, endeavouringto force a new association of ideas to replace one which she strove toconceal.

  "Safe." "Vaults." Out of the corner of my eye I could see that theindicator showed a tremendously increased heart action. As for thereaction time, I noted that it was growing longer and more significant.Remorselessly he pressed his words home. Mentally I cursed him.

  "Rubber." "Tire."

  "Steel." "Pittsburg," she cried at random.

  "Strong-box," No answer.

  "Lock." Again no answer. He hurried his words. I was leaning forward,tense with excitement and sympathy.

  "Key." Silence and a fluttering of the blood pressure indicator.

  "Will."

  As the last word was uttered her air of frightened defiance was sweptaway. With a cry of anguish, she swayed to her feet. "No, no, doctor,you must not, you must not," she cried with outstretched arms. "Why doyou pick out those words of all others? Can it be--" If I had not caughther I believe she would have fainted.

  The indicator showed a heart alternately throbbing with feverishexcitement and almost stopping with fear. What would Kennedy do next, Iwondered, determined to shut him off as soon as I possibly could. Fromthe moment I had seen her I had been under her spell. Mine should havebeen Fletcher's place, I knew, though I cannot but say that I felt acertain grim pleasure in supporting even momentarily such a woman in hertime of need.

  "Can it be that you have guessed what no one in the world, no, not evendear old Jack, dreams Oh, I shall go mad, mad, mad!"

  Kennedy was on his feet in an instant, advancing toward her. The look inhis eyes was answer enough for her. She knew that he knew, and she paledand shuddered, shrinking away from him.

  "Miss Bond," he said in a voice that forced attention--it was low andvibrating with feeling--"Miss Bond, have you ever told a lie to shield afriend?"

  "Yes," she said, her eyes meeting his.

  "So can I," came back the same tense voice, "when I know the truth aboutthat friend."

  Then for the first time tears came in a storm. Her breath was quick andfeverish. "No one will ever believe, no one will understand. They willsay that I killed him, that I murdered him."

  Through it all I stood almost speechless, puzzled. What did it all mean?

  "No," said Kennedy, "no, for they will never know of it."

  "Never know?"

  "Never--if in the end justice is done. Have you the will? Or did youdestroy it?"

  It was a bold stroke.

  "Yes. No. Here it is. How could I destroy it, even though it was burningout my very soul?"

  She literally tore the paper from the bosom of her dress and cast itfrom her in horror and terror.

  Kennedy picked it up, opened it, and glanced hurriedly through it. "MissBond," he said, "Jack shall never know a word of this. I shall tell himthat the will has been found unexpectedly in John Fletcher's desk amongsome other papers. Walter, swear on your honour as a gentleman that thiswill was found in old Fletcher's desk."

  "Dr. Kennedy, how can I ever thank you?" she exclaimed, sinking wearilydown into a chair and pressing her hands to her throbbing forehead.

  "By telling me just how you came by this will, so that when you andFletcher are married I may be as good a friend, without suspicion, toyou as I am to him. I think a full confession would do you good, MissBond. Would you prefer to have Dr. Jameson not hear it?"

  "No, he may stay."

  "This much I know, Miss Bond. Last summer in Paris with the Greenes youmust have chanced to hear, of Pillard, the Apache, one of the most notedcracksmen the world has ever produced. You sought him out. He taughtyou how to paint your fingers with a rubber composition, how to use anelectric drill, how to use the old-fashioned jimmy. You went down toFletcherwood by the back road about a quarter after eleven the night ofthe robbery in the Greenes' little electric runabout. You entered thelibrary by an unlocked window, you coupled your drill to the electriclight connections of the chandelier. You had to work quickly, for thepower would go off at midnight, yet you could not do the job later, whenthey were sleeping more soundly, for the very same reason."

  It was uncanny as Kennedy rushed along in his reconstruction of thescene, almost unbelievable. The girl watched him, fascinated.

  "John Fletcher was wakeful that night. Somehow or other he heard youat work. He entered the library and, by the light streaming from hisbedroom, he saw who it was. In anger he must have addressed you, and hispassion got the better of his age--he fell suddenly on the floor with astroke of apoplexy. As you bent over him he died. But why did you everattempt so foolish an undertaking? Didn't you know that other peopleknew of the will and its terms, that you were sure to be traced outin the end, if not by friends, by foes? How did you suppose you couldprofit by destroying the will, of which others knew the provisions?"

  Any other woman than Helen Bond would have been hysterical long beforeKennedy had finished pressing home remorselessly one fact after anotherof her story. But, with her, the relief now after the tension of manyhours of concealment seemed to nerve her to go to the end and tell thetruth.

  What was it? Had she some secret lover for whom she had dared all tosecure the family fortune? Or was she shielding someone dearer to herthan her own reputation? Why had Kennedy made Fletcher withdraw?

  Her eyes dropped and her breast rose and fell with suppressed emotion.Yet I was hardly prepared for her reply when at last she slowly raisedher head and looked us calmly in the face.

  "I did it because I loved Jack."

  Neither of us spoke. I, at least, had fallen completely under the spellof this masterful woman. Right or wrong, I could not restrain a feelingof admiration and amazement.

  "Yes," she said as her voice thrilled with emotion, "strange as it maysound to you, it was not love of self that made me do it. I was, I ammadly in love with Jack. No other man has ever inspired such respect andlove as he has. His work in the university I have fairly gloated over.And yet--and yet, Dr. Kennedy, can you not see that I am different fromJack? What would I do with the income of the wife of even the dean ofthe new school? The annuity provided for me in that will is paltry. Ineed millions. From the tiniest baby I have been reared that way. I havealways expected this fortune. I have been given everything I wanted.But it is different when one is married--you must have your own money. Ineed a fortune, for then I could have the town house, the country house,the yacht, the motors, the clothes, the servants that I need--they areas much a part of my life as your profession is of yours. I must havethem.

  "And now it was all to slip from my hands. True, it was to go in such away by this last will as to make Jack happy in his new school. I couldhave let that go, if that was all. There are other fortunes that havebeen laid at my feet. But I wanted Jack, and I knew Jack wanted me. Dearboy, he never could realise how utterly unhappy intellectual povertywould have made me and how my unhappiness would have reacted on him inthe end. In reality this great and beneficent philanthropy was finallyto blight both our love and our lives.

  "What was I to do? Stand by and see my life and my love ruined or refuseJack for the fortune of a man I did not love? Helen Bond is not thatkind of a woman, I said to myself. I consulted the greatest lawyer Iknew. I put a hypothetical case to him, and asked his opinion in such away as to make him believe he was advising me how to make an unbreakablewill. He told me of provisions and clauses to avoid, particularly inmaking benefactions. That was what I wanted to know. I would put one ofthose clauses in my uncle's will. I practised uncle's writing till Iwas as good a forger of that clause as anyone could have become. I hadpicked out the very words in his own handwriting to practise from.

  "Then I went to Paris and, as you have guessed, learned how to getthings out of a safe like that of uncle's. Before God, all I plannedto do was to get that will, change it, replace it, and trust that unclewould never notice the change. Then when he was gone, I would havecontested the will. I would have got my full share either by courtproceedings or by settlement out of court. You see, I had planned it allout. The school would have been founded--I, we would have founded it.What difference, I said, did thirty millions or fifty millions make toan impersonal school, a school not yet even in existence? The twentymillion dollars or so difference, or even half of it, meant life andlove to me.

  "I had planned to steal the cash in the safe, anything to divertattention from the will and make it look like a plain robbery. I wouldhave done the altering of the will that night and have returned it tothe safe before morning. But it was not to be. I had almost opened thesafe when my uncle entered the room. His anger completely unnerved me,and from the moment I saw him on the floor to this I haven't had a sanethought. I forgot to take the cash, I forgot everything but that will.My only thought was that I must get it and destroy it. I doubt if Icould have altered it with my nerves so upset. There, now you have mywhole story. I am at your mercy."

  "No," said Kennedy, "believe me, there is a mental statute oflimitations that as far as Jameson and myself are concerned has alreadyerased this affair. Walter, will you find Fletcher?"

  I found the professor pacing up and down the gravel walk impatiently.

  "Fletcher," said Kennedy, "a night's rest is all Miss Bond really needs.It is simply a case of overwrought nerves, and it will pass off ofitself. Still, I would advise a change of scene as soon as possible.Good afternoon, Miss Bond, and my best wishes for your health."

  "Good afternoon, Dr. Kennedy. Good afternoon, Dr. Jameson."

  I for one was glad to make my escape.

  A half-hour later, Kennedy, with well-simulated excitement, was racingme in the car up to the Greenes' again. We literally burst unannouncedinto the tete-a-tete on the porch.

  "Fletcher, Fletcher," cried Kennedy, "look what Walter and I have justdiscovered in a tin strong-box poked off in the back of your uncle'sdesk!"

  Fletcher seized the will and by the dim light that shone through fromthe hall read it hastily. "Thank God," he cried; "the school is providedfor as I thought."

  "Isn't it glorious!" murmured Helen.

  True to my instinct I muttered, "Another good newspaper yarn killed."