“Jameson, here’s a story I wish you’d follow up,” remarked the managing editor of the Star to me one evening after I had turned in an assignment of the late afternoon.
He handed me a clipping from the evening edition of the Star and I quickly ran my eye over the headline:
“THE CLUTCHING HAND” WINS AGAIN
NEW YORK’S MYSTERIOUS MASTER CRIMINAL
PERFECTS ANOTHER COUP
City police completely baffled
“Here’s this murder of Fletcher, the retired banker and trustee of the University,” he explained. “Not a clue—except a warning letter signed with this mysterious clutching fist. Last week it was the robbery of the Haxworth jewels and the killing of old Haxworth. Again that curious sign of the hand. Then there was the dastardly attempt on Sherburne, the steel magnate. Not a trace of the assailant except this same clutching fist. So it has gone, Jameson—the most alarming and most inexplicable series of murders that has ever happened in this country. And nothing but this uncanny hand to trace them by.”
The editor paused a moment, then exclaimed, “Why, this fellow seems to take a diabolical—I might almost say pathological— pleasure in crimes of violence, revenge, avarice and self-protection. Sometimes it seems as if he delights in the pure deviltry of the thing. It is weird.”
He leaned over and spoke in a low, tense tone. “Strangest of all, the tip has just come to us that Fletcher, Haxworth, Sherburne and all the rest of those wealthy men were insured in the Consolidated Mutual Life. Now, Jameson, I want you to find Taylor Dodge, the president, and interview him. Get what you can, at any cost.”
I had naturally thought first of Kennedy, but there was no time now to call him up and, besides, I must see Dodge immediately.
Dodge, I discovered over the telephone, was not at home, nor at any of the clubs to which he belonged. Late though it was I concluded that he was at his office. No amount of persuasion could get me past the door, and, though I found out later and shall tell soon what was going on there, I determined, about nine o’clock, that the best way to get at Dodge was to go to his house on Fifth Avenue, if I had to camp on his front doorstep until morning. The harder I found the story to get, the more I wanted it.
With some misgivings about being admitted, I rang the bell of the splendid, though not very modern, Dodge residence. An English butler, with a nose that must have been his fortune, opened the door and gravely informed me that Mr. Dodge was not at home, but was expected at any moment.
Once in, I was not going lightly to give up that advantage. I bethought myself of his daughter, Elaine, one of the most popular debutantes of the season, and sent in my card to her, on a chance of interesting her and seeing her father, writing on the bottom of the card: “Would like to interview Mr. Dodge regarding Clutching Hand.”
Summoning up what assurance I had, which is sometimes considerable, I followed the butler down the hall as he bore my card. As he opened the door of the drawing room I caught a vision of a slip of a girl, in an evening gown.
Elaine Dodge was both the ingenue and the athlete—the thoroughly modern type of girl—equally at home with tennis and tango, table talk and tea. Vivacious eyes that hinted at a stunning amber brown sparkled beneath masses of the most wonderful auburn hair. Her pearly teeth, when she smiled, were marvellous. And she smiled often, for life to her seemed a continuous film of enjoyment.
Near her I recognized from his pictures, Perry Bennett, the rising young corporation lawyer, a mighty good looking fellow, with an affable, pleasing way about him, perhaps thirty-five years old or so, but already prominent and quite friendly with Dodge.
On a table I saw a book, as though Elaine had cast it down when the lawyer arrived to call on the daughter under pretense of waiting for her father. Crumpled on the table was the Star. They had read the story.
“Who is it, Jennings?” she asked.
“A reporter, Miss Dodge,” answered the butler glancing superciliously back at me, “and you know how your father dislikes to see anyone here at the house,” he added deferentially to her.
I took in the situation at a glance. Bennett was trying not to look discourteous, but this was a call on Elaine and it had been interrupted. I could expect no help from that quarter. Still, I fancied that Elaine was not averse to trying to pique her visitor and determined at least to try it.
“Miss Dodge,” I pleaded, bowing as if I had known them all my life, “I’ve been trying to find your father all the evening. It’s very important.”
She looked up at me surprised and in doubt whether to laugh or stamp her pretty little foot in indignation at my stupendous nerve.
She laughed. “You are a very brave young man,” she replied with a roguish look at Bennett’s discomfiture over the interruption of the tete-a-tete.
There was a note of seriousness in it, too, that made me ask quickly, “Why?”
The smile flitted from her face and in its place came a frank earnest expression which I later learned to like and respect very much. “My father has declared he will eat the very next reporter who tries to interview him here,” she answered.
I was about to prolong the waiting time by some jolly about such a stunning girl not having by any possibility such a cannibal of a parent, when the rattle of the changing gears of a car outside told of the approach of a limousine.
The big front door opened and Elaine flung herself in the arms of an elderly, stern-faced, gray-haired man. “Why, Dad,” she cried, “where have you been? I missed you so much at dinner. I’ll be so glad when this terrible business gets cleared up. Tell—me. What is on your mind? What is it that worries you now?”
I noticed then that Dodge seemed wrought-up and a bit unnerved, for he sank rather heavily into a chair, brushed his face with his handkerchief and breathed heavily. Elaine hovered over him solicitously, repeating her question.
With a mighty effort he seemed to get himself together. He rose and turned to Bennett.
“Perry,” he exclaimed, “I’ve got the Clutching Hand!”
The two men stared at each other.
“Yes,” continued Dodge, “I’ve just found out how to trace it, and tomorrow I am going to set the alarms of the city at rest by exposing—”
Just then Dodge caught sight of me. For the moment I thought perhaps he was going to fulfill his threat.
“Who the devil—why didn’t you tell me a reporter was here, Jennings?” he sputtered indignantly, pointing toward the door.
Argument, entreaty were of no avail. He stamped crustily into the library, taking Bennett with him and leaving me with Elaine. Inside I could hear them talking, and managed to catch enough to piece together the story. I wanted to stay, but Elaine, smiling at my enthusiasm, shook her head and held out her hand in one of her frank, straight-arm hand shakes. There was nothing to do but go.
At least, I reflected, I had the greater part of the story—all except the one big thing, however,—the name of the criminal. But Dodge would know him tomorrow!
I hurried back to the Star to write my story in time to catch the last morning edition.
Meanwhile, if I may anticipate my story, I must tell of what we later learned had happened to Dodge so completely to upset him.
Ever since the Consolidated Mutual had been hit by the murders, he had had many lines out in the hope of enmeshing the perpetrator. That night, as I found out the next day, he had at last heard of a clue. One of the company’s detectives had brought in a red-headed, lame, partly paralyzed crook who enjoyed the expressive monniker of “Limpy Red.” “Limpy Red” was a gunman of some renown, evil faced and having nothing much to lose, desperate. Whoever the master criminal of the Clutching Hand might have been he had seen fit to employ Limpy but had not taken the precaution of getting rid of him soon enough when he was through.
Wherefore Limpy had a grievance and now descended under pressure to the low level of snitching to Dodge in his office.
“No, Governor,” the trembling wretch had said as he handed over a grimy envelope, “I ain’t never seen his face—but here is directions how to find his hang-out.”
As Limpy ambled out, he turned to Dodge, quivering at the enormity of his unpardonable sin in gang-land, “For God’s sake, Governor,” he implored, “don’t let on how you found out!”
And yet Limpy Red had scarcely left with his promise not to tell, when Dodge, happening to turn over some papers came upon an envelope left on his own desk, bearing that mysterious Clutching Hand!
He tore it open, and read in amazement:
“Destroy Limpy Red’s instructions within the next hour.”
Dodge gazed about in wonder. This thing was getting on his nerves. He determined to go home and rest.
Outside the house, as he left his car, pasted over the monogram on the door, he had found another note, with the same weird mark and the single word:
“Remember!”
Much of this I had already gathered from what I overheard Dodge telling Bennett as they entered the library. Some, also, I have pieced together from the story of a servant who overheard.
At any rate, in spite of the pleadings of young Bennett, Dodge refused to take warning. In the safe in his beautifully fitted library he deposited Limpy’s document in an envelope containing all the correspondence that had lead up to the final step in the discovery.
It was late in the evening when I returned to our apartment and, not finding Kennedy there, knew that I would discover him at the laboratory.
“Craig,” I cried as I burst in on him, “I’ve got a case for you— greater than any ever before!”
Kennedy looked up calmly from the rack of scientific instruments that surrounded him, test tubes, beakers, carefully labelled bottles.
He had been examining a piece of cloth and had laid it aside in disappointment near his magnifying glass. Just now he was watching a reaction in a series of test tubes standing on his table. He was looking dejectedly at the floor as I came in.
“Indeed?” he remarked coolly going back to the reaction.
“Yes,” I cried. “It is a scientific criminal who seems to leave no clues.”
Kennedy looked up gravely. “Every criminal leaves a trace,” he said quietly. “If it hasn’t been found, then it must be because no one has ever looked for it in the right way.”
Still gazing at me keenly, he added, “Yes, I already knew there was such a man at large. I have been called in on that Fletcher case—he was a trustee of the University, you know.”
“All right,” I exclaimed, a little nettled that he should have anticipated me even so much in the case. “But you haven’t heard the latest.”
“What is it?” he asked with provoking calmness,
“Taylor Dodge,” I blurted out, “has the clue. To-morrow he will track down the man!”
Kennedy fairly jumped as I repeated the news.
“How long has he known?” he demanded eagerly.
“Perhaps three or four hours,” I hazarded.
Kennedy gazed at me fixedly.
“Then Taylor Dodge is dead!” he exclaimed, throwing off his acid-stained laboratory smock and hurrying into his street clothes.
“Impossible!” I ejaculated.
Kennedy paid no attention to the objection. “Come, Walter,” he urged. “We must hurry, before the trail gets cold.”
There was something positively uncanny about Kennedy’s assurance.
I doubted—yet I feared.
It was well past the middle of the night when we pulled up in a night-hawk taxicab before the Dodge house, mounted the steps and rang the bell.
Jennings answered sleepily, but not so much so that he did not recognize me. He was about to bang the door shut when Kennedy interposed his foot.
“Where is Mr. Dodge?” asked Kennedy. “Is he all right?”
“Of course he is—in bed,” replied the butler.
Just then we heard a faint cry, like nothing exactly human. Or was it our heightened imaginations, under the spell of the darkness?
“Listen!” cautioned Kennedy.
We did, standing there now in the hall. Kennedy was the only one of us who was cool. Jennings’ face blanched, then he turned tremblingly and went down to the library door whence the sounds had seemed to come.
He called but there was no answer. He turned the knob and opened the door. The Dodge library was a large room. In the center stood a big flat-topped desk of heavy mahogany. It was brilliantly lighted.
At one end of the desk was a telephone. Taylor Dodge was lying on the floor at that end of the desk—perfectly rigid—his face distorted—a ghastly figure. A pet dog ran over, sniffed frantically at his master’s legs and suddenly began to howl dismally.
Dodge was dead!
“Help!” shouted Jennings.
Others of the servants came rushing in. There was for the moment the greatest excitement and confusion.
Suddenly a wild figure in flying garments flitted down the stairs and into the library, dropping beside the dead man, without seeming to notice us at all.
“Father!” shrieked a woman’s voice, heart broken. “Father! Oh—my God—he—he is dead!”
It was Elaine Dodge.
With a mighty effort, the heroic girl seemed to pull herself together.
“Jennings,” she cried, “Call Mr. Bennett—immediately!”
From the one-sided, excited conversation of the butler over the telephone, I gathered that Bennett had been in the process of disrobing in his own apartment uptown and would be right down.
Together, Kennedy, Elaine and myself lifted Dodge to a sofa and Elaine’s aunt, Josephine, with whom she lived, appeared on the scene, trying to quiet the sobbing girl.
Kennedy and I withdrew a little way and he looked about curiously.
“What was it?” I whispered. “Was it natural, an accident, or—or murder?”
The word seemed to stick in my throat. If it was a murder, what was the motive? Could it have been to get the evidence which Dodge had that would incriminate the master criminal?
Kennedy moved over quietly and examined the body of Dodge. When he rose, his face had a peculiar look.
“Terrible!” he whispered to me. “Apparently he had been working at his accustomed place at the desk when the telephone rang. He rose and crossed over to it. See! That brought his feet on this register let into the floor. As he took the telephone receiver down a flash of light must have shot from it to his ear. It shows the characteristic electric burn.”
“The motive?” I queried.
“Evidently his pockets had been gone through, though none of the valuables were missing. Things on his desk show that a hasty search has been made.”
Just then the door opened and Bennett burst in.
As he stood over the body, gazing down at it, repressing the emotions of a strong man, he turned to Elaine and in a low voice, exclaimed, “The Clutching Hand did this! I shall consecrate my life to bring this man to justice!”
He spoke tensely and Elaine, looking up into his face, as if imploring his help in her hour of need, unable to speak, merely grasped his hand.
Kennedy, who in the meantime had stood apart from the rest of us, was examining the telephone carefully.
“A clever crook,” I heard him mutter between his teeth. “He must have worn gloves. Not a finger print—at least here.”
Perhaps I can do no better than to reconstruct the crime as Kennedy later pieced these startling events together.
Long after I had left and even after Bennett left, Dodge continued working in his library, for he was known as a prodigious worker.
Had he taken the trouble, however, to pause and peer out into the moonlight that flooded the back of his house, he might have seen the figures of two stealthy crooks crouching in the half shadows of one of the cellar windows.
One crook was masked by a handkerchief drawn tightly about his lower face, leaving only his eyes visible beneath the cap with visor pulled down over his forehead. He had a peculiar stoop of the shoulders and wore his coat collar turned up. One hand, the right, seemed almost deformed. It was that which gave him his name in the underworld—the Clutching Hand.
The masked crook held carefully the ends of two wires attached to an electric feed, and sending his pal to keep watch outside, he entered the cellar of the Dodge house through a window whose pane they had carefully removed. As he came through the window he dragged the wires with him, and, alter a moment’s reconnoitering attached them to the furnace pipe of the old-fashioned hot-air heater where the pipe ran up through the floor to the library above. The other wire was quickly attached to the telephone where its wires entered.
Upstairs, Dodge, evidently uneasy in his mind about the precious “Limpy Red” letter, took it from the safe along with most of the other correspondence and, pressing a hidden spring in the wall, opened a secret panel, placed most of the important documents in this hiding place. Then he put some blank sheets of paper in an envelope and returned it to the safe.
Downstairs the masked master criminal had already attached a voltmeter to the wires he had installed, waiting.
Just then could be heard the tinkle of Dodge’s telephone and the old man rose to answer it. As he did so he placed his foot on the iron register, his hand taking the telephone and the receiver. At that instant came a powerful electric flash. Dodge sank on the floor grasping the instrument, electrocuted. Below, the master criminal could scarcely refrain from exclaiming with satisfaction as his voltmeter registered the powerful current that was passing.
A moment later the criminal slid silently into Dodge’s room. Carefully putting on rubber gloves and avoiding touching the register, he wrenched the telephone from the grasp of the dead man, replacing it in its normal position. Only for a second did he pause to look at his victim as he destroyed the evidence of his work.
Minutes were precious. First Dodge’s pockets, then his desk engaged his attention. There was left the safe.
As he approached the strong box, the master criminal took two vials from his pockets. Removing a bust of Shakespeare that stood on the safe, he poured the contents of the vials in two mixed masses of powder forming a heap on the safe, into which he inserted two magnesium wires.
He lighted them, sprang back, hiding his eyes from the light, and a blinding gush of flame, lasting perhaps ten seconds, poured out from the top of the safe.
It was not an explosion, but just a dazzling, intense flame that sizzled and crackled. It seemed impossible, but the glowing mass was literally sinking, sinking down into the cold steel. At last it burned through—as if the safe had been of tinder!
Without waiting a moment longer than necessary, the masked criminal advanced again and actually put his hand down through the top of the safe, pulling out a bunch of papers. Quickly he thrust them all, with just a glance, into his pocket.
Still working quickly, he took the bust of the great dramatist which he had removed and placed it under the light. Next from his pocket he drew two curious stencils, as it were, which he had apparently carefully prepared. With his hands, still carefully gloved, he rubbed the stencils on his hair, as if to cover them with a film of natural oils. Then he deliberately pressed them over the statue in several places. It was a peculiar action and he seemed to fairly gloat over it when it was done, and the bust returned to its place, covering the hole.
As noiselessly as he had come, he made his exit after one last malignant look at Dodge. It was now but the work of a moment to remove the wires he had placed, and climb out of the window, taking them and destroying the evidence down in the cellar.
A low whistle from the masked crook, now again in the shadow, brought his pal stealthily to his side.
“It’s all right,” he whispered hoarsely to the man. “Now, you attend to Limpy Red.”
The villainous looking pal nodded and without another word the two made their getaway, safely, in opposite directions.
When Limpy Red, still trembling, left the office of Dodge earlier in the evening, he had repaired as fast as his shambling feet would take him to his favorite dive upon Park Row. There he might have been seen drinking with any one who came along, for Limpy had money—blood money,—and the recollection of his treachery and revenge must both be forgotten and celebrated.
Had the Bowery “sinkers” not got into his eyes, he might have noticed among the late revellers, a man who spoke to no one but took his place nearby at the bar.
Limpy had long since reached the point of saturation and, lurching forth from his new found cronies, he sought other fields of excitement. Likewise did the newcomer, who bore a strange resemblance to the look-out who had been stationed outside at the Dodge house a scant half hour before.
What happened later was only a matter of seconds. It came when the hated snitch—for gangdom hates the informer worse than anything else dead or alive—had turned a sufficiently dark and deserted corner.
A muffled thud, a stifled groan followed as a heavy section of lead pipe wrapped in a newspaper descended on the crass skull of Limpy. The wielder of the improvised but fatal weapon permitted himself the luxury of an instant’s cruel smile—then vanished into the darkness leaving another complete job for the coroner and the morgue.
It was the vengeance of the Clutching Hand—swift, sure, remorseless.
And yet it had not been a night of complete success for the master criminal, as anyone might have seen who could have followed his sinuous route to a place of greater safety.
Unable to wait longer he pulled the papers he had taken from the safe from his pocket. His chagrin at finding them to be blank paper found only one expression of foiled fury—that menacing clutching hand!
Kennedy had turned from his futile examination for marks on the telephone. There stood the safe, a moderate sized strong box but of a modern type. He tried the door. It was locked. There was not a mark on it. The combination had not been tampered with. Nor had there been any attempt to “soup” the safe.
With a quick motion he felt in his pocket as if looking for gloves. Finding none, he glanced about, and seized a pair of tongs from beside the grate. With them, in order not to confuse any possible finger prints on the bust, he lifted it off. I gave a gasp of surprise.
There, in the top of the safe, yawned a gaping hole through which one could have thrust his arm!
“What is it?” we asked, crowding about him.
“Thermit,” he replied laconically.
“Thermit?” I repeated.
“Yes—a compound of iron oxide and powdered aluminum invented by a chemist at Essen, Germany. It gives a temperature of over five thousand degrees. It will eat its way through the strongest steel.”
Jennings, his mouth wide open with wonder, advanced to take the bust from Kennedy.
“No—don’t touch it,” he waved him off, laying the bust on the desk. “I want no one to touch it—don’t you see how careful I was to use the tongs that there might be no question about any clue this fellow may have left on the marble?”
As he spoke, Craig was dusting over the surface of the bust with some black powder.
“Look!” exclaimed Craig suddenly.
We bent over. The black powder had in fact brought out strongly some peculiar, more or less regular, black smudges.
“Finger prints!” I cried excitedly.
“Yes,” nodded Kennedy, studying them closely. “A clue—perhaps.”
“What—those little marks—a clue?” asked a voice behind us.
I turned and saw Elaine, looking over our shoulders, fascinated. It was evidently the first time she had realized that Kennedy was in the room.
“How can you tell anything by that?’” she asked.
“Why, easily,” he answered picking up a brass blotting-pad which lay on the desk. “You see, I place my finger on this weight—so. I dust the powder over the mark—so. You could see it even without the powder on this glass. Do you see those lines? There are various types of markings—four general types—and each person’s markings are different, even if of the same general type—loop, whorl, arch, or composite.”
He continued working as he talked.
“Your thumb marks, for example, Miss Dodge, are different from mine. Mr. Jameson’s are different from both of us. And this fellow’s finger prints are still different. It is mathematically impossible to find two alike in every respect.”
Kennedy was holding the brass blotter near the bust as he talked.
I shall never forget the look of blank amazement on his face as he bent over closer.
“My God!” he exclaimed excitedly, “this fellow is a master criminal! He has actually made stencils or something of the sort on which by some mechanical process he has actually forged the hitherto infallible finger prints!”
I, too, bent over and studied the marks on the bust and those Kennedy had made on the blotter to show Elaine.
The finger prints on the bust were Kennedy’s own.
Kennedy had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the solution of the mysterious Dodge case.
Far into the night, after the challenge of the forged finger print, he continued at work, endeavoring to extract a clue from the meagre evidence—the bit of cloth and trace of poison already obtained from other cases, and now added the strange succession of events that surrounded the tragedy we had just witnessed.
We dropped around at the Dodge house the next morning. Early though it was, we found Elaine, a trifle paler but more lovely than ever, and Perry Bennett themselves vainly endeavoring to solve the mystery of the Clutching Hand.
They were at Dodge’s desk, she in the big desk chair, he standing beside her, looking over some papers.
“There’s nothing there,” Bennett was saying as we entered.
I could not help feeling that he was gazing down at Elaine a bit more tenderly than mere business warranted.
“Have you—found anything?” queried Elaine anxiously, turning eagerly to Kennedy.
“Nothing—yet,” he answered shaking his head, but conveying a quiet idea of confidence in his tone.
Just then Jennings, the butler, entered, bringing the morning papers. Elaine seized the Star and hastily opened it. On the first page was the story I had telephone down very late in the hope of catching a last city edition.
We all bent over and Craig read aloud:
“Clutching hand” Still at large
New York’s master criminal remains undetected—perpetrates new daring murder and robbery of millionaire dodge
He had scarcely finished reading the brief but alarming news story that followed and laid the paper on the desk, when a stone came smashing through the window from the street.
Startled, we all jumped to our feet. Craig hurried to the window. Not a soul was in sight!
He stooped and picked up the stone. To it was attached a piece of paper. Quickly he unfolded it and read:
“Craig Kennedy will give up his search for the “Clutching Hand”— or die!”
Later I recalled that there seemed to be a slight noise downstairs, as if at the cellar window through which the masked man had entered the night before.
In point of fact, one who had been outside at the time might actually have seen a sinister face at that cellar window, but to us upstairs it was invisible. The face was that of the servant, Michael.
Without another word Kennedy passed into the drawing room and took his hat and coat. Both Elaine and Bennett followed.
“I’m afraid I must ask you to excuse me—for the present,” Craig apologized.
Elaine looked at him anxiously.
“You—you will not let that letter intimidate you?” she pleaded, laying her soft white hand on his arm. “Oh, Mr. Kennedy,” she added, bravely keeping back the tears, “avenge him! All the money in the world would be too little to pay—if only—”
At the mere mention of money Kennedy’s face seemed to cloud, but only for a moment. He must have felt the confiding pressure of her hand, for as she paused, appealingly, he took her hand in his, bowing slightly over it to look closer into her upturned face.
“I’ll try,” he said simply.
Elaine did not withdraw her hand as she continued to look up at him. Craig looked at her, as I had never seen him look at a woman before in all our long acquaintance.
“Miss Dodge,” he went on, his voice steady as though he were repressing something, “I will never take another case until the ‘Clutching Hand’ is captured.”
The look of gratitude she gave him would have been a princely reward in itself.
I did not marvel that all the rest of that day and far into the night Kennedy was at work furiously in his laboratory, studying the notes, the texture of the paper, the character of the ink, everything that might perhaps suggest a new lead. It was all, apparently, however, without result.
It was some time after these events that Kennedy, reconstructing what had happened, ran across, in a strange way which I need not tire the reader by telling, a Dr. Haynes, head of the Hillside Sanitarium for Women, whose story I shall relate substantially as we received it from his own lips:
It must have been that same night that a distinguished visitor drove up in a cab to our Hillside Sanitarium, rang the bell and was admitted to my office. I might describe him as a moderately tall, well-built man with a pleasing way about him. Chiefly noticeable, it seems to me, were his mustache and bushy beard, quite medical and foreign.
I am, by the way, the superintending physician, and that night I was sitting with Dr. Thompson, my assistant, in the office discussing a rather interesting case, when an attendant came in with a card and handed it to me. It read simply, “Dr. Ludwig Reinstrom, Coblenz.”
“Here’s that Dr. Reinstrom, Thompson, about whom my friend in Germany wrote the other day,” I remarked, nodding to the attendant to admit Dr. Reinstrom.
I might explain that while I was abroad some time ago, I made a particular study of the “Daemmerschlaf”—otherwise, the “twilight sleep,” at Freiburg where it was developed and at other places in Germany where the subject had attracted great attention. I was much impressed and had imported the treatment to Hillside.
While we waited I reached into my desk and drew out the letter to which I referred, which ended, I recall:
“As Dr. Reinstrom is in America, he will probably call on you. I am sure you will be glad to know him.
“With kindest regards, I am,
“Fraternally yours,
“EMIL SCHWARZ, M. D.,
“Director, Leipsic Institute of Medicine.”
“Most happy to meet you, Dr. Reinstrom,” I greeted the new arrival, as he entered our office.
For several minutes we sat and chatted of things medical here and abroad.
“What is it, Doctor,” I asked finally, “that interests you most in America?”
“Oh,” he replied quickly with an expressive gesture, “it is the broadmindedness with which you adopt the best from all over the world, regardless of prejudice. For instance, I am very much interested in the new twilight sleep. Of course you have borrowed it largely from us, but it interests me to see whether you have modified it with practice. In fact I have come to the Hillside Sanitarium particularly to see it used. Perhaps we may learn something from you.”
It was most gracious and both Dr. Thompson and myself were charmed by our visitor. I reached over and touched a call-button and our head nurse entered from a rear room.
“Are there any operations going on now?” I asked.
She looked mechanically at her watch. “Yes, there are two cases, now, I think,” she answered.
“Would you like to follow our technique, Doctor?” I asked, turning to Dr. Reinstorm.
“I should be delighted,” he acquiesced.
A moment later we passed down the corridor of the Sanitarium, still chatting. At the door of a ward I spoke to the attendant who indicated that a patient was about to be anesthetized, and Reinstrom and I entered the room.
There, in perfect quiet, which is an essential part of the treatment, were several women patients lying in bed in the ward. Before us two nurses and a doctor were in attendance on one.
I spoke to the Doctor, Dr. Holmes, by the way, who bowed politely to the distinguished Dr. Reinstrom, then turned quickly to his work.
“Miss Sears,” he asked of one of the nurses, “will you bring me that hypodermic needle? How are you getting on, Miss Stern?” to the other who was scrubbing the patient’s arm with antiseptic soap and water, thoroughly sterilizing the skin.
“You will see, Dr. Reinstrom.” I interposed in a low tone, “that we follow in the main your Freiburg treatment. We use scopolamin and narkophin.”
I held up the bottle, as I said it, a rather peculiar shaped bottle, too.
“And the pain?” he asked.
“Practically the same as in your experience abroad. We do not render the patient unconscious, but prevent her from remembering anything that goes on.”
Dr. Holmes, the attending physician, was just starting the treatment. Filling his hypodermic, he selected a spot on the patient’s arm, where it had been scrubbed and sterilized, and injected the narcotic.
“How simply you do it all, here!” exclaimed Reinstrom in surprise and undisguised admiration. “You Americans are wonderful!”
“Come—see a patient who is just recovering,” I added, much flattered by the praise, which, from a German physician, meant much.
Reinstrom followed me out of the door and we entered a private room of the hospital where another woman patient lay in bed carefully watched by a nurse.
“How do you do?” I nodded to the nurse in a modulated tone. “Everything progressing favorably?”
“Perfectly,” she returned, as Reinstrom, Haynes and myself formed a little group about the bedside of the unconscious woman.
“And you say they have no recollection of anything that happens?” asked Reinstrom.
“Absolutely none—if the treatment is given properly,” I replied confidently.
I picked up a piece of bandage which was the handiest thing about me and tied it quite tightly about the patient’s arm.
As we waited, the patient, who was gradually coming from under the drug, roused herself.
“What is that—it hurts!” she said putting her hand on the bandage I had tied tightly.
“That is all right. Just a moment. I’ll take it off. Don’t you remember it?” I asked.
She shook her head. I smiled at Reinstrom.
“You see, she has no recollection of my tying the bandage on her arm,” I pointed out.
“Wonderful!” ejaculated Reinstrom as we left the room.
All the way back to the office he was loud in his praises and thanked us most heartily, as he put on his hat and coat and shook hands a cordial good-bye.
Now comes the strange part of my story. After Reinstrom had gone, Dr. Holmes, the attending physician of the woman whom we had seen anesthetized, missed his syringe and the bottle of scopolamine.
“Miss Sears,” he asked rather testily, “what have you done with the hypodermic and the scopolamine?”
“Nothing,” she protested.
“You must have done something.”
She repeated that she had not.
“Well, it is very strange then,” he said, “I am positive I laid the syringe and the bottle right here on this tray on the table.”
Holmes, Miss Sears and Miss Stern all hunted, but it could not be found. Others had to be procured.
I thought little of it at the time, but since then it has occurred to me that it might interest you, Professor Kennedy, and I give it to you for what it may be worth.
It was early the next morning that I awoke to find Kennedy already up and gone from our apartment. I knew he must be at the laboratory, and, gathering the mail, which the postman had just slipped through the letter slot, I went over to the University to see him. As I looked over the letters to cull out my own, one in a woman’s handwriting on attractive notepaper addressed to him caught my eye.
As I came up the path to the Chemistry Building I saw through the window that, in spite of his getting there early, he was finding it difficult to keep his mind on his work. It was the first time I had ever known anything to interfere with science in his life.
I thought of the letter again.
Craig had lighted a Bunsen burner under a large glass retort. But he had no sooner done so than he sat down on a chair and, picking up a book which I surmised might be some work on toxicology, started to read.
He seemed not to be able, for the moment, to concentrate his mind and after a little while closed the book and gazed straight ahead of him. Again I thought of the letter, and the vision that, no doubt, he saw of Elaine making her pathetic appeal for his help.
As he heard my footstep in the hall, it must have recalled him for he snapped the book shut and moved over quickly to the retort.
“Well,” I exclaimed as I entered, “you are the early bird. Did you have any breakfast?”
I tossed down the letters. He did not reply. So I became absorbed in the morning paper. Still, I did not neglect to watch him covertly out of the corner of my eye. Quickly he ran over the letters, instead of taking them, one by one, in his usual methodical way. I quite complimented my own superior acumen. He selected the dainty note.
A moment Craig looked at it in anticipation, then tore it open eagerly. I was still watching his face over the top of the paper and was surprised to see that it showed, first, amazement, then pain, as though something had hurt him.
He read it again—then looked straight ahead, as if in a daze.
“Strange, how much crime there is now,” I commented, looking up from the paper I had pretended reading.
No answer.
“One would think that one master criminal was enough,” I went on.
Still no answer.
He continued to gaze straight ahead at blankness.
“By George,” I exclaimed finally, banging my fist on the table and raising my voice to catch his attention, “you would think we had nothing but criminals nowadays.”
My voice must have startled him. The usually imperturbable old fellow actually jumped. Then, as my question did not evidently accord with what was in his mind, he answered at random, “Perhaps—I wonder if—” and then he stopped, noncommittally.
Suddenly he jumped up, bringing his tightly clenched fist down with a loud clap into the palm of his hand.
“By heaven!” he exclaimed, “I—I will!”
Startled at his incomprehensible and unusual conduct I did not attempt to pursue the conversation but let him alone as he strode hastily to the telephone. Almost angrily he seized the receiver and asked for a number. It was not like Craig and I could not conceal my concern.
“Wh-what’s the matter, Craig?” I blurted out eagerly.
As he waited for the number, he threw the letter over to me. I took it and read:
“Professor Craig Kennedy, “The University, The Heights, City.
“Dear Sir,—
“I have come to the conclusion that your work is a hindrance rather than an assistance in clearing up my father’s death and I hereby beg to state that your services are no longer required. This is a final decision and I beg that you will not try to see me again regarding the matter.
“Very truly yours, Elaine dodge.”
If it had been a bomb I could not have been more surprised. A moment before I think I had just a sneaking suspicion of jealousy that a woman—even Elaine—should interest my old chums. But now all that was swept away. How could any woman scorn him?
I could not make it out.
Kennedy impatiently worked the receiver up and down, repeating the number. “Hello—hello,” he repeated, “Yes—hello. Is Miss—oh— good morning, Miss Dodge.”
He was hurrying along as if to give her no chance to cut him off. “I have just received a letter, Miss Dodge, telling me that you don’t want me to continue investigating your father’s death, and not to try to see you again about—”
He stopped. I could hear the reply, as sometimes one can when the telephone wire conditions are a certain way and the quality of the voice of the speaker a certain kind.
“Why—no—Mr. Kennedy, I have written you no letter.”
The look of mingled relief and surprise that crossed Craig’s face spoke volumes.
“Miss Dodge,” he almost shouted, “this is a new trick of the Clutching Hand. I—I’ll be right over.”
Craig hung up the receiver and turned from the telephone. Evidently he was thinking deeply. Suddenly his face seemed to light up. He made up his mind to something and a moment later he opened the cabinet—that inexhaustible storehouse from which he seemed to draw weird and curious instruments that met the ever new problems which his strange profession brought to him.
I watched curiously. He took out a bottle and what looked like a little hypodermic syringe, thrust them into his pocket and, for once, oblivious to my very existence, deliberately walked out of the laboratory.
I did not propose to be thus cavalierly dismissed. I suppose it would have looked ridiculous to a third party but I followed him as hastily as if he had tried to shut the door on his own shadow.
We arrived at the corner above the Dodge house just in time to see another visitor—Bennett—enter. Craig quickened his pace. Jennings had by this time become quite reconciled to our presence and a moment later we were entering the drawing room, too.
Elaine was there, looking lovelier than ever in the plain black dress, which set off the rosy freshness of her face.
“And, Perry,” we heard her say, as we were ushered in, “someone has even forged my name—the handwriting and everything—telling Mr. Kennedy to drop the case—and I never knew.”
She stopped as we entered. We bowed and shook hands with Bennett. Elaine’s Aunt Josephine was in the room, a perfect duenna.
“That’s the limit!” exclaimed Bennett. “Miss Dodge has just been telling me,—”
“Yes,” interrupted Craig. “Look, Miss Dodge, this is it.”
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 sunshine—some little thin pieces of glass. 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 glass 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 glass 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.”