Chapter XVI: Gold

After dinner Cole looked the picture of a man whose faith in himself has received a staggering blow. He seemed to take the outcome of his ruse very much to heart. He moved gloomily among the members of the organization, getting personally acquainted with a number of the men on his staff, and all the while he appeared to be making valiant, but not very successful, efforts to shake off his depression. Carlin did his best to gloss over the apparent frustration of the scheme, but Cole proved a hard man to console.

Doctor Ballinger approached him after he had retired into a corner, and gave him a vigorous slap on the shoulder. “Don’t take it so hard, old man,” he said cheerily. “Know just exactly how you feel. It’s embarrassing to turn up a flivver right at the start, but don’t you mind. Better luck next time. Have a smoke.”

“Thanks,” said Cole dejectedly, as he helped himself to a cigar from the doctor’s case. “What hurts me most is that I know I was right. Nothing is so humiliating to a man as to be sure of his facts and not be able to prove them. I know positively that there’s a black sheep in this fold. If I had worked the scheme properly——”

“Tut, tut!” interrupted Ballinger. “Your scheme was all right in principle. You were simply out of luck, that’s all. The traitor, if you’re right in the assumption that there is such a creature among us, is probably a very slick customer. No doubt you had him scared stiff for a moment, but his emotional reaction didn’t last long enough for him to betray himself. He assumed that you were only bluffing. At any rate he saw that, having already drained his glass, nothing could be gained by making a show of himself. In other words his mind outstripped his emotions, and that’s where your psychology fell down. No matter! You’ll get him next time.”

Cole walked away, a faint twitching at the corners of his lips. In the main Doctor Ballinger’s analysis had been correct. He had only forgotten to mention one little detail. Just as the traitor’s mind had outstripped his emotions, so had Cole’s alert glance outstripped both. For just an instant Ballinger had shown all the symptoms of acute terror. He had shaken them off with superb self-control, but not before Cole’s eye had registered his momentary confusion.

The revelation that Ballinger was the traitor had given Cole a shock at first. The doctor was one of the last men in the organization whom he would have suspected of treachery. Having found him out, Cole saw no reason for apprising the doctor of the fact. He preferred to let Ballinger lull himself into a false security until he should show his hand more plainly. Neither did it seem advisable to Cole to take the other members into his confidence in regard to his discovery. It would be hard to keep a secret among so many, and the more hotheaded ones among them would probably demand drastic action.

As inconspicuously as he could, Cole left the others and withdrew to the room that had been pointed out to him as his private office. It was small and comfortable and devoid of the drabness that characterizes the workroom of the average executive. There was a vase containing red roses on the desk, and he noticed that the pictures on the wall had been carefully chosen. He stretched himself out in the swivel chair and rocked in an experimental way. His glance fell on three white buttons affixed to the side of the desk. He pushed the one nearest him, just to see what would happen.

The door opened, and in strode the biggest negro Cole has ever seen.

“Who are you?” he inquired.

“Sambo, sah.”

“And what’s your job, Sambo?”

“Just now mah bussiness is to answer dese heay bells, sah. Dat ain’t mah reg’lar job, though, but Rufus is done laid up in the hosspittle, and I’se takin’ his place.”

“What happened to Rufus? Sick?”

“Yas, sah. Mighty sick, sah.” Sambo grinned expansively. “You ought to know, boss, ’cause you made him sick yusself. Dat was an a’ful wallop you handed Rufus, sah.”

Cole smiled reminiscently, as he recalled one of the numerous experiences that had enlivened his first visit to the establishment of The Unknown Seven.

“Too bad about Rufus,” he remarked. “Now, Sambo, I want you to find Mr. McKendrick and ask him to come here at once.”

“Yas, sah.” With a profound bow Sambo waddled out.

McKendrick, one of the young operatives with whom Cole had chatted since the dinner, appeared after a brief wait. He had a clear eye, a whimsical expression about the mouth that had appealed to Cole on first sight, and a firmly molded chin.

“Go into the main office,” Cole directed. “You will find a dictaphone in the ventilator shaft. The wire apparently runs out on the roof. Trace it to the other end, then report to me.”

“Very well, sir.” As McKendrick walked out, Cole noticed with approval the easy swing to his shoulders. Once more he touched the nearest button, and Sambo appeared almost instantly.

“Find Sloane and tell him I want him,” Cole directed.

Sloane entered in a few moments. With his keen intellectual features and shell-rimmed spectacles he looked a good deal like a college professor.

“Sloane,” began Cole, “I want you to go to the block in which Doctor Latham resides. Somewhere in the neighborhood, in a basement entrance across the street, perhaps, you’ll find a young chap of dilapidated appearance who answers to the name of Tony Pinto. He’s been watching the doctor’s house for the past twenty-four hours and must be sadly in need of food and sleep. Tell him I have sent you to relieve him.”

“I understand perfectly, sir.”

Cole gave him a few more instructions, and then Sloane withdrew. Again Cole pressed the button, this time to summon a man whom he instructed to make a thorough search all over the establishment for hidden disks and wires. When the man had gone, Cole leaned back in his chair and pondered. He had set the machinery in motion, but the hardest task he had reserved for himself. Something had to be done very soon about the body of Reeves. What to do with it was a problem that would demand all his resourcefulness. Too, a watch must be kept over Doctor Ballinger, and Cole did not like to delegate that business to any one else. He expected to learn a great deal from the unsuspecting doctor’s movements during the next twenty-four hours.

He was deep in thought when a knock sounded on the door. In response to his rather brusque “Come in,” Miss Brownell entered.

“I’ve been thinking,” she announced.

“So I see,” said Cole, placing a chair for her. Miss Brownell, he observed, was one of the few women whom he had met who could wear a thoughtful frown becomingly. Where another woman’s forehead would have wrinkled, hers merely rippled.

“You have been doing a lot of thinking yourself,” she remarked, regarding him with that curious impersonal glance of hers.

“Yes, but mostly in the dark,” Cole admitted. “I’m pretty much in the same fix as the man who walks into a theater in the middle of the second act. The only thing that’s clear so far is that the principal actors in this drama seem to be doctors.”

“You refer to Latham and Ballinger, of course. There is still another doctor involved.”

“Still another? Who is he?”

“In a sense he is the real instigator of the plot, although he died one hundred and thirty-eight years ago.”

Cole blinked bewilderedly. “Sounds rather ghostly.”

“His name was James Price, an English physician of high repute, who discovered a method of transforming baser metals into gold. You can read up on him in history or the biographical encyclopedias, if you like. He wrote a book entitled ‘An Account of Some Experiments,’ but it has been out of print a long time and copies are hard to obtain. Professor Carmody owns one of the few still in existence.”

“Oh!” said Cole, elevating his brows. “So that’s what the mystery is about? But you don’t mean to tell me that sane men like Latham and Ballinger are dabbling in the exploded myth of alchemy?”

“I do. And that myth, by the way, seems to die very hard, Mr. Cole. It’s been exploded and reëxploded since the dawn of history, and yet it keeps bobbing up every now and then.”

Cole gave a little impatient shrug. “It’s rubbish,” he declared. “I have managed to forget most of the things I learned at school, but I seem to recall that modern science has absolutely established the fact that one element cannot be transformed into another.”

She looked at him amusedly. “We women always smile when you men speak of absolute facts. The phrase is so delightfully characteristic of the sterner sex. And the world has moved since you went to school, Mr. Cole. Science has hedged and quibbled and reversed itself a good many times on the subject of the transformation of metals. It wasn’t so very long ago that some one discovered that radium can be produced from helium, or was it the other way round? Anyway, right there is an instance of the transformation of one element into another.”

Cole opened his lips to speak, but seemed unable to find the right words.

“I was telling you about James Price,” Miss Brownell went on. “He claimed to have discovered a method whereby he could transform sixty parts of mercury into one part of gold. He was rather secretive about his discovery and hedged it about with a lot of mystic hocus-pocus. About all that is definitely known is that a mysterious red powder figured prominently in the process. The red powder was mixed with mercury and fluid borax, and the concoction was then put in a crucible and stirred with an iron rod. The result was gold.”

“The iron rod must have been a magic scepter,” suggested Cole dryly.

“Perhaps; anyway the Royal Society of England got interested in Price’s experiments and made an investigation. A committee of England’s foremost scientists went to his laboratory, firmly expecting to expose Price as a faker or lunatic. I can imagine the long, bewhiskered faces of those learned old fogies when they put the gold through an assaying process and found that it proved genuine in every respect.”

Cole’s pupils dilated a trifle, but he looked still dubious.

“What I have told you is a matter of history, amply documented and supported by incontrovertible evidence,” declared Miss Brownell. “There can be no doubt but that Price produced a form of gold that proved genuine on assay. I am now coming to the strangest part of the story. Having solved this problem, that has tantalized scientific minds since the beginning of history, Price turned a sort of mental somersault. Just what happened to him has never become definitely known. Some still insist that he was a faker, despite the tests that were made. Others believe that his mind collapsed under the strain, and that he went insane. That seems to be nature’s way of punishing those who peep behind the curtain of the unknown, and Price was neither the first nor the last to go mad on the subject of gold. Still others think that gold became an obsession with him, a sort of monomania, and that he could not endure the thought of sharing his discovery with others. Then there are those who cling to the theory that his production of gold was nothing but an accident.”

“What happened?” asked Cole.

“The committee of scientists wanted to learn Price’s formula and asked him to repeat the experiment in their presence. Price refused on the pretext that his supply of red powders was exhausted. Shortly afterward he committed suicide by drinking laurel water. It has been generally supposed that his secret died with him. His book is somewhat vague in regard to the composition of the red powders. Repeated attempts have been made to learn exactly what they consisted of, but without success. Last year, however, Professor Carmody returned from abroad after browsing in the libraries of the Old World for many months. He brought back with him a number of faded and forgotten manuscripts, said to be in Doctor Price’s handwriting. Where he found them, and how he got possession of them we don’t know, but we do know that they gave him a clew to the secret which Price guarded so jealously.”

“How do you know?” demanded Cole.

“Our organization has eyes and ears everywhere. However, it was mostly through accident that we learned what was on foot. I shan’t bore you with the details. Carmody saw a chance to become enormously rich by manufacturing gold on a large scale, using Doctor Price’s formula. But he needed money to swing the enterprise, and so he guardedly approached a number of wealthy men with a scheme for multiplying their fortunes many times. Besides he knew that he lacked the executive ability required to engineer a project of such magnitude. He talked to Malcolm Reeves so engagingly that Reeves was smitten with the gold fever and supplied a great portion of the cash that he needed. No doubt he enlisted the assistance of other rich men in a similar manner. The lure of gold is a terrible thing, Mr. Cole.”

“A curse,” said Cole. “But what about Latham?”

“Latham is an extremely clever and very versatile man. Though he practices medicine he has dabbled in various sciences. Perhaps Carmody needed his assistance in solving some of the problems that he encountered in working out Price’s formula. However that may be, we know he has been very close to Professor Carmody for several weeks.”

“Then you think Carmody is the moving spirit in the enterprise?”

“No; Carmody merely supplied the formula and his scientific knowledge. He is a small man, physically and mentally, with a sharp, but narrow, intellect, and he is deficient in the qualities required to direct an enterprise of this sort. Knowing his shortcomings, he was willing to put the management of the project into stronger hands than his own.”

“Latham’s, for instance?” asked Cole.

“Or Ballinger’s. Both are very shrewd and energetic men, though I hadn’t thought of Ballinger in that connection until to-night. It is your job to find the master mind that is directing the operations of this gold-mad crowd, Mr. Cole. We know that they are already producing gold, or a substitute for gold, on a very large scale.”

“Where?” inquired Cole quickly.

“That’s another thing for you to find out. In some secluded spot in New York City or its environs there is a large and fully equipped plant. From snatches of conversation which we have overheard we know that it exists, but we haven’t been able to locate it. We also know that the conspirators feel confident that their product will stand every test, that it resembles natural gold in every respect. In order to eliminate all risk, however, they have decided to hold the gold in storage until the desired quantity has been manufactured. You can imagine what will happen when a golden flood is suddenly released and poured out over the country.”

“A few men will become enormously rich over night, and the monetary system will be utterly disorganized. I suppose the ultimate result will be the worst panic the world has ever seen.”

“That’s exactly what Mr. Carlin and the others think,” declared Miss Brownell.

They sat silent for a time, neither looking at the other. Their minds were stunned by the contemplation of the golden havoc which their imagination pictured. Cole recalled the look of insane ecstasy which he had seen in Malcolm Reeves’ face. The words, “Pretty yellow,” which the insane man mumbled, suddenly assumed a vivid significance. He shook himself a little.

“I suppose Reeves had a falling out with the others,” he remarked. “That’s why they first destroyed his mind and afterward killed him.”

“Presumably.” Her eyes looked a little dim, as if they had gazed too long upon a dazzling vision. “It was about Reeves I was thinking just before I walked in here and disturbed you. I was wondering why Ballinger didn’t commit the murder. He had free access to the place and nobody had any suspicions against him. Why was it necessary to have the hunchback sneak in here and do it?”

“I think the answer to that question is fairly clear.” Cole’s smile seemed to say that women, even the cleverest of them, were rather simple-minded at times. “The job had to be done by an outsider in order to conceal the fact that the conspirators had an associate in your midst.”

“But they didn’t conceal it. The ease with which the hunchback got in and out proved clearly that he was assisted by some one on the inside.”

“That’s so,” admitted Cole, somewhat abashed. “Well, then it’s quite likely that Ballinger balked at the job. Murder is pretty nasty business. It is a coarser crime than depriving a man of his reason. Many criminals of the intellectual type shrink from it.”

“Maybe that was the way of it. There’s another thing that has been troubling me lately. Who do you think performed the operation on Reeves?”

Cole stared at her for an instant. “It seems to be pretty well established that Doctor Latham was the man.”

“Yes, I know that’s what they all seem to think. Their reason is that Reeves seemed to recognize Ballinger when he was made up to resemble Latham.”

“It was more than recognition. The sight of Ballinger made up as Latham fairly terrified the poor man. I’ll never forget how he looked.”

“But isn’t that a flimsy reason for supposing that Latham performed the operation?”

Cole leaned out of his chair and regarded her closely, as if wondering whether her intuition was once more at work. “Can you imagine any other explanation for the way Reeves acted that night?”

“Yes; can’t you?”

Cole shook his head ponderously.

“Just think about it,” she said, smiling faintly; then she rose and walked out of the room.

For a long time Cole sat very still, with a thoughtful pucker across his forehead. Once, from force of habit, he reached for his pipe, frowning when he realized it wasn’t there. Now and then he bent a quizzical gaze on the chair which Miss Brownell had vacated.

“What the deuce did she mean?” he mumbled. “What else is there to——”

With a jerky motion he sat erect in his chair. He gave the desk in front of him a vigorous thump.

“By Jove, she wins!” he declared. “There is another explanation. It’s beginning to look as though——” He checked himself, scowling. “But that only muddles the situation. What’s the good of an explanation that doesn’t explain. But I suppose a woman can’t see it that way. They’re all alike, from Toots down.”

He shrugged as if to banish unprofitable speculations. He suddenly remembered that there had been weighty things on his mind when Miss Brownell interrupted his thoughts. He had given several orders to the men, and he had been studying what to do with the body of Reeves, and how he might make the most of his discovery that Doctor Ballinger was the traitor. He jumped from the chair as the physician’s name ran through his mind. For half an hour or more he had given not a single thought to Ballinger. He hurried from the office and crossed the corridor, but a glance into the smoking room reassured him. Ballinger was sprawled out leisurely in an armchair, evidently in the midst of an anecdote which he seemed to be relating with great gusto to his companion.

Cole went farther down the corridor and rapped on the door to Miss Brownell’s private room. “Wish you would keep an eye on Ballinger for a while,” he whispered when she opened. She lifted her brows in a knowing way and nodded. In the main office he found Carlin bent over a stack of papers. The man seemed a veritable dynamo of energy.

“I’ve been thinking about Reeves,” he said.

Carlin looked up and took an obese cigar from his mouth. “What do you suggest?”

“That we obey the spirit of the law and blink the letter. The ends of justice will be met if the murderer is convicted and punished. It won’t be necessary to drag all the embarrassing details into light.”

“How can it be avoided?”

“I have a plan, but, before I go any farther, I would like to see the body.”

The lawyer got up. “I would have shown it to you when I took you over the place, but Miss Brownell was with us then, and you know how women are about such things.”

He led the way from the room, and they went to the end of the corridor. There Carlin opened a door, and they stepped in. It was dark, and Cole could see nothing. He heard a slight scraping sound, as the lawyer ran his hand over the wall in search of a switch. Then a light flashed on. Carlin raised an arm and pointed.

“There,” he said a trifle thickly, indicating a shape spread out on a cot at the farther side of the room.

Cole walked up to the cot and looked down at the dead man. He jerked back a little as his glance fell on the lifeless face. Then he bent over the body and gazed fixedly into the rigid features. Finally he stood up and turned to Carlin, who had remained behind.

“When did you last see the body?” he inquired, and his voice sounded a trifle husky.

“Why, I think it was this morning. Yes, that was it, about ten o’clock this morning. Why do you ask?”

“Because—— But see for yourself.”

With a wondering glance at the detective, Carlin crossed the floor. He looked down at the motionless figure, and suddenly he shrank back a step. A husky exclamation sounded in his throat, then he slowly raised his eyes, and for a long moment the two men stared blankly at each other.

“It—it isn’t Reeves!” stammered the lawyer.

“No—it isn’t Reeves!” echoed Cole.