Chapter XX: The Veneer of Intelligence

The doctor’s face betrayed his anxiety, as Cole repeated what he had just heard over the telephone.

“That settles it,” muttered the physician. “We must find Miss Brownell at once.”

Cole nodded. For several minutes he had been watching the physician closely. It was as if a veil had been removed from one phase of Latham’s many-sided character. Cole looked through the contradictions of his personality, and he knew that on one point, at least, the doctor was sincere. That was in his attitude toward Miss Brownell.

“There’s no hurry,” he said calmly. “Nothing is going to happen to her for twenty-four hours.”

“But why delay?”

“Because we can do nothing else. Another reason is that I need sleep. The third reason is Toots.”

“Toots?” Latham frowned. “Who is Toots?”

“The most distracted cat in the State of New York at the present moment. My rooms were invaded by prowlers this afternoon, everything thrown helter-skelter, and Toots just can’t bear fuss of any kind. She is a very temperamental cat, doctor. You will hear from me in the morning.”

He left the scowling physician and walked toward the door. There he stopped and looked back. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We will see Miss Brownell out of this. There’s something of a plan buzzing around in my mind. So long, doctor.”

Cole walked out. Despite his cheerful tone he was not altogether free from worry. The situation, as far as Miss Brownell was concerned, looked critical enough. With the fate of Reeves and McKendrick in mind, Cole knew the gang would not stop short of murder, if it suited their plans. The hope he had tried to instill in Doctor Latham was based on the advantages which he held over the other side. So far Ballinger did not know that he was being suspected, and this was an important point in Cole’s favor. A man who thinks himself safe is apt to make blunders and become incautious. Another advantage lay in the fact that the conspirators knew nothing of the deductions Cole had made from Carmody’s visit to the offices of the Bureau of Civic Research, or of his suspicions in regard to the big safe standing there.

Cole went home, noticed with approval that Mrs. Armstrong had tidied up his rooms, and that Toots was sleeping tranquilly on her favorite cushion. In a few minutes Cole himself was sound asleep. Five hours he slept, and then he awoke clear-eyed and vigorous. After feeding Toots and getting his own breakfast, he went to the offices of The Unknown Seven. On his desk he found a note from Carlin announcing that the lawyer had, in accordance with Cole’s instructions, detailed one of the operatives to watch room 2512 and report at once if the safe should be taken out.

Cole crumpled the note in his fist. It was yet early, and only a few members of the staff were on duty. He went to the end of the hall and glanced into the room where the body of McKendrick lay. What to do with it was a delicate problem in view of the fact that the operations of The Unknown Seven were being conducted secretly. Perhaps the best way, was Cole’s reflection, would be to encase it in a plain box and ship it anonymously to the morgue. Later, in some indirect way, he would endeavor to see that the hunchback was duly punished.

He locked the door of the little room and went back to his office. He had been there only a few minutes when Doctor Ballinger, after a discreet knock, stepped in.

“You are early, doctor,” remarked Cole genially.

Ballinger sat down and crossed his long legs. “I’ve been looking for Miss Brownell,” he explained. “Seen anything of her?”

“No,” said Cole casually, knowing that the doctor was watching him keenly. “A bit too early for her, I guess. No doubt she will be strolling in soon.”

“Making any progress?”

“Rome wasn’t built in one day,” said Cole evasively, knowing that the question was a subtle feeler. “I’m just taking hold of the job, you know.”

“Still think there’s a traitor among us?”

“I not only think it, but I am sure of it,” declared Cole testily, as if reproaching himself for his failure to expose the renegade. He was on the point of saying more, but just then the telephone rang. It was Fessenden, the operative who had been detailed to watch room 2512.

“They’re just taking it out, sir,” reported Fessenden, cautiously hiding the gist of his statement behind the neutral pronoun.

“Well, stay on the job and report developments to me,” said Cole in tones that seemed to indicate that the matter was of no particular importance. “You see,” he went on, turning to the doctor, as he hung up the receiver, “I spilled the beans at dinner. The traitor has had his warning, and from now on he will be a hard man to catch.”

The doctor agreed with him. They discussed the matter from various angles and finally the telephone rang again. Fessenden reported that “it” had been loaded onto a truck.

“Stay with it,” said Cole laconically. “Telephone me when you can.” He was aware of a questioning gleam in the doctor’s eyes, as he hung up, but he pretended to have noticed nothing. “Fessenden thinks he has come across a clew,” he added for Ballinger’s benefit. “Don’t think it amounts to anything, but it’s just as well to run it down.”

“What sort of clew?”

“It seems to have something to do with the murder of Reeves,” said Cole indifferently. “Not more than one clew out of twenty ever pans out, and I haven’t much hope for this one.”

The doctor seemed to have been deceived by his tone. After a few more remarks he walked out. In spite of what he had told Carlin the night before, he had been far from certain that the safe would be taken out; at any rate he had not expected it would be done before another night. Fessenden’s report had started a long train of thoughts in his mind.

Shortly before noon the lawyer walked in.

“I’ve just made some inquiries about the Bureau of Civic Research,” he reported, after he had been told that there was no news of Miss Brownell. “There isn’t the slightest doubt about its genuineness. Some of the biggest men in town belong to it. It’s a sort of reform organization; interested in political uplift and that kind of thing. They’ve occupied the two offices down below ever since the building opened.”

“That’s interesting,” said Cole, looking as if his trend of thought had taken a sharp quirk. “By the way, the safe was taken out of room 2512 a little while ago.”

“Anything startling in that?”

“Well, it’s just possible that, if we can follow the safe to its destination, we shall find Miss Brownell.”

“How do you make that out? What has the safe to do with Miss Brownell?”

“My reasoning is based on the assumption that certain parties are as anxious to hide the one as the other. If that is so then it is only natural to suppose that they will hide both in one place. That safe, Carlin, represents our only hope of getting Miss Brownell out of danger.”

The lawyer scratched his head thoughtfully. “I would advise you to move cautiously. Those blackguards would kill her without the slightest hesitancy if——”

“Oh, I’ll be careful,” promised Cole. “All the same we must move quickly. I think your hunch yesterday was right, Carlin. The gang is getting ready to cash in their chips. They are holding the threat of death over Miss Brownell in the hope of influencing us through her and making us let them alone till after the clean-up. The miserable cowards are hiding behind a woman. The idea makes me mad clean through.”

“You look it,” observed Carlin. Shortly afterward he withdrew, and a little while later Fessenden telephoned that the safe had been transferred to a private yacht, moored at the foot of West One Hundred and Thirtieth Street. Fessenden did not know to whom the craft belonged. He added that it did not look as though the boat would start for a while, for the crew were on shore leave. Cole instructed him to report at once if it should appear that the yacht was about to sail.

“They’ll probably wait till after dark,” he told himself after Fessenden had finished. “Rather bold of them to put it aboard a yacht in broad daylight. Really no reason why they shouldn’t, though,” was his second thought. “As far as they know, nobody suspects anything. It would look as if the safe was being shipped to a summer home somewhere along the shore. Many people keep jewelry and other valuables in such places, and a safe comes in handy. And to transport it by water on a private yacht is less risky than intrusting it to the express companies. There’ll be a merry little chase to-night.”

Cole looked as if a whimsical idea had occurred to him. He called up Latham and inquired if the doctor owned a motor boat. The physician replied that he did; it was a small affair, he explained, but a demon for speed. Cole promised that he would learn something interesting if he would have the boat ready within an hour, at a certain point along the river. Latham’s imagination seemed to cover the gaps in Cole’s statement, for he promptly agreed to do as suggested.

After giving several orders Cole left the office. His rendezvous with Latham was a short distance below the point where the larger craft was moored. Before boarding the doctor’s boat Cole went cautiously forward and sought out Fessenden.

“The wind is slack, and the engine seems to be out of order,” explained the operative. “I believe somebody is tinkering with it.”

“Have you learned who owns the yacht?”

“I’ve made several inquiries, but nobody seems to know. She is brand-new, as you can see, and this appears to be the first time she has been anchored here.”

Cole cast a glance at the queenly craft, its fresh coat of paint gleaming in the pale autumnal sunlight. After telling Fessenden that he could take the rest of the afternoon off he went back to Doctor Latham. The physician, looking fresh and crisp in blue coat and creamy flannel trousers, sat at the tiller.

“When do we start?” he inquired anxiously.

“We’re waiting for the other party to make the first move,” explained Cole, pointing out the larger boat, easily distinguishable among the craft of various types that littered the surface of the river.

“Any news of Miss Brownell?”

“Not a word, doctor. Are you in the mood for a little excitement?”

The physician said nothing, but his smile and the squaring of his shoulders spoke more loudly than words. Cole glanced out over the horizon. A frieze of clouds was creeping up in the south, and a rising wind rippled the water.

“I suppose you are armed?” he asked after a while.

The doctor slapped his hip pocket significantly. “Are we likely to have a scrap?” he inquired in a tone hinting that the prospect appealed to him hugely.

“Quite likely! The rats are scenting danger and crawling into their hole. We may have to tackle a whole nest of them.”

The afternoon waned and still they waited. Darkness fell, and a spanking breeze blew up. At Cole’s suggestion the doctor moved the motor boat a little closer to the larger craft.

“They are hoisting the sail,” observed Latham, as he brought the boat to a stop at a point from which they could watch the yacht without danger of being seen by its crew. Here and there the black ribbon of water was broken by twinkling lights. An excursion steamer swept majestically up the Hudson, with a tail of foaming silver in its wake.

Presently the yacht moved. The two men in the motor boat waited a while to give it headway. Then the doctor flipped the wheel, and, with a gleeful phut-phut, the little boat darted forward. Like an animated thing it skipped giddily across the water, darting in and out among larger vessels. After a little the sprinkling of boats thinned out, and they hugged the shore closely, in order to avoid being seen by the yacht’s crew.

“Think you can keep her in sight, doctor?” asked Cole, noticing with concern that the larger boat was gaining speed.

“Easily,” said the doctor confidently, “unless the motor should start missing, and there’s little danger of that.”

They were silent for a time. Cole, sitting close by, watched the intent look on the doctor’s face as he guided the boat along the curving river bank. The shore line grew more rugged; here and there earth and sky melted into a blur. Now and then the lights of a town threw a yellow sheen over the murky water. At intervals the yacht disappeared from view behind a jutting tongue of land, but it was never out of sight for long.

“Doctor,” said Cole abruptly, “I don’t quite know what to make of you, but we seem to have one interest in common. Both of us are concerned over Miss Brownell. I am partly responsible for whatever happens to her, while you—— But I think you told me that your emotional self is dead.”

A queer little chuckle drifted out on the breeze. There was a note of grim despair in it.

“Anyhow,” Cole went on, “there is a bond of interest between you and me for the present. Seems we ought to understand each other a little better. The other night, when I trailed the hunchback to your house and later found him asleep on the operating table, your conduct was as mysterious as the deuce. What had happened?”

The doctor, one hand on the tiller, gazed rigidly out over the black water to where the gray blur of a sail was visible against the darkness.

“The thing which we call human intelligence is only a thin veneer,” he remarked in whimsical tones. “Sometimes only a slight thrust is needed to break through it. It is very amusing to watch the antics that a supposedly sane being will perform when a crisis of some sort comes along and gives him a jolt. My own part in this affair is an example of what happens when the veneer of intelligence cracks. You would not believe me if I were to tell you, so what is the use?”

“You might try,” suggested Cole. The doctor had been a changed man since he learned that Miss Brownell was in danger. Before that he had been all subterfuge, evasions, and bewildering subtleties. Now Cole felt that he was face to face with the man’s real self.

“The hunchback came to my house that night to dispatch me to a better world,” Latham said.

“He had just performed a similar service for Malcolm Reeves,” Cole observed.

“He had orders to get me, too. The gang feared both of us, and they had come to a pass where they couldn’t afford to stand on ceremony. Well, that night I heard some one getting in the basement way. That’s the advantage of being a light sleeper. I collared the fellow as he came up the stairs. Not knowing what to do with him I gave him a hypodermic to keep him quiet. Then you came and complicated the situation.”

“If the hunchback came to your house to murder you,” said Cole doubtfully, “why didn’t you turn him over to the police?”

The doctor chuckled softly. “That shows how incongruously we sometimes act, strutting around like hens with their heads chopped off. Your own conduct was very peculiar that night. I was wondering why, instead of handcuffing the culprit to my operating table, you didn’t telephone for the police wagon.”

“I had a reason.”

“And so did I.” The doctor chuckled again. “At least I thought I had a sound reason for my conduct. As a matter of fact my reason was at a standstill; no doubt yours was likewise. At any rate I didn’t dare hand the fellow over to the police. Certain things had happened that made it undesirable for me to communicate with the authorities.”

“The operation on Reeves?” Cole suggested.

Again a queer little laugh drifted out on the wind. Cole suddenly sat erect, gazing hard at the shadowy figure beside him. A shaft of intuition had suddenly pierced the fog of contradictions and incongruities in his mind.

“There were two operations, weren’t there?” he asked.

“That’s a very shrewd deduction,” declared the doctor, raising his voice above the roar of the wind. “There were two. I performed one of them. I strongly suspect that Ballinger performed the other. The interesting point about them is that there is an official record of the first, but none of the second.”

For a moment Cole peered sharply ahead. The yacht was momentarily out of sight, but he caught a glimpse of it again, as they rounded a curve in the river bank.

“Go on,” he said. “You were involved with this golden coterie, weren’t you?”

“For a time. I thought they were engaged in strictly scientific and legitimate pursuits. I had known Carmody for some time, as a quiet and scholarly man. It was through him I became connected with the group. For a time all went well. My specialized training helped them solve two or three minor technical problems that came up in connection with their experiments.”

“Then one evening Carmody telephoned me that an accident had occurred at his house on Bleecker Street. He asked me to come over at once. When I arrived he told me that Malcolm Reeves, who was visiting him that evening, had stumbled and fallen down the stairs. My examination revealed a compound fracture and convinced me that the pressure of the bones against the brain made an immediate operation necessary.”

“I had Reeves removed to the nearest hospital. It happened to be one of the smaller private ones. I was assisted by a nurse. She was a little nervous, and I could see that she was new at the game, but at first I thought nothing of it, not until I discovered that there was something wrong with the anæsthetic. She had blundered in administering it. I shudder whenever I think of the result. Perhaps you can realize something of what it means to have a patient awake in the midst of an operation.”

“Did Reeves see you?” asked Cole suddenly.

The tiller wabbled for a moment in Latham’s hand. “He not only saw me, but he recognized me. I shall never forget the expression on his face. It was horrible! Well, luckily there were no serious consequences. After a while Reeves was brought under the anæsthetic again, and the operation was successfully finished. In due time he was taken to his home. To this day I don’t know whether Carmody told me the truth and the injury was accidental, or whether some one deliberately inflicted it.”

“Couldn’t you tell from the nature of the wound?”

“Not with any degree of positiveness. I suspect some one tried to murder him that night, but failed. Perhaps the assassin lost his nerve. Carmody didn’t dare to have Reeves die on his hands, and so he sent for me. I do know that Reeves had been troublesome toward the last, and that the other members of the gang were afraid of him. They had ample reason for wishing him out of the way, or at least rendered harmless.”

“And so they performed a second operation that destroyed his memory?” guessed Cole.

“Presumably, but that’s only a surmise on my part. Reeves recuperated very rapidly after the first operation. One evening, shortly after he became able to move about, he started out on a mysterious errand. He never returned, and the police found no trace of him. About the same time I began to grow suspicious in regard to the activities of the gang. I had no tangible proof, but it was my strong impression that their aims were not strictly legitimate.”

“Isn’t anybody entitled to make all the gold he wants to, if he’s lucky enough to know how?”

“That’s just the point. Carmody assured me he had discovered a process whereby real gold could be produced synthetically. It would not only look like gold, he told me, but it would assay up to the required standard when turned over to the government mints. Carmody put it so convincingly that at the time I believed him, especially when he showed me samples. Later I began to have grave suspicions. Certain things led me to doubt that the gang had sufficient faith in its products to turn it over to the government in the form of bullion. In short, I had reason to believe that I was involved in a huge counterfeiting project.”

“What!” exclaimed Cole. The doctor’s revelation went beyond what he had learned from The Unknown Seven.

“To eliminate all risk the gang decided to take a short cut,” Latham went on. “Instead of taking the gold to Uncle Sam’s mint they set up a mint of their own. In a short time the country will be flooded with spurious gold coins that are practically indistinguishable from the real.”

“And you have kept silent all this time?”

“What did I tell you about the fragile quality of our veneer of intelligence? I went to Carmody’s house and told him of my suspicions. The old fox said nothing for a time, but merely smiled that freezing smile of his. Then he took me to a small room on the second floor. There sat Reeves, a gibbering maniac. Carmody bluntly accused me of having performed the operation that deprived him of his reason and smoothly suggested that it might be well for me to keep my suspicions to myself.”

“Carmody went on talking, mentioning among other things that it was on record that I had performed an operation on Reeves’ skull. Call me a simpleton if you like, but the professor’s words sank in. I guessed that a second operation had been performed under cover of the original one, but I had no means of proving it. I could see nothing but ruin and disaster ahead. The only one who had witnessed my operation was the nurse, and I could expect no help from her. I argued and argued with myself, but, in the end, I decided to say nothing, at least for a time. Sooner or later I suppose I should have spoken, but just then I played the coward’s part. I was very neatly caught. In what was left of Reeves’ mind was a picture of myself, as he had seen me when he woke up in the midst of the operation. Occasionally, when the recollection came back to him, he would shriek my name. The second operation, on the other hand, had been performed under circumstances so deftly arranged that they had left no impression whatever. There, my friend, you have the whole story. Sounds like a travesty, eh? I shan’t feel at all hurt if you refuse to believe me.”

Cole had no reason to doubt him. What Latham had told him coincided at various points of contact with what he had learned at the headquarters of The Unknown Seven. He could piece out the rest. Agents of The Unknown Seven had kidnaped Reeves from the Carmody residence and taken him to headquarters. There he had been placed under Doctor Ballinger’s care, and Ballinger had gone through with the pretense of trying to restore Reeves’ mental functions. Only one contradiction remained. Since Reeves was in the hands of a physician who was friendly to the gang and could be depended upon to destroy any symptoms of returning sanity in Reeves, why had it been thought necessary to kill him? Ballinger himself evidently shrank from such a coarse crime as murder. He must have had several chances to kill Reeves by safe and subtle means, and yet the hunchback had been commissioned to do the crime. Why had Reeves been killed?

For a while the answer to that question eluded Cole. Then he recalled something Carlin had told him. After Reeves had been under Ballinger’s care for a time, without showing any signs of improvement, it had been suggested that he should be removed to a hospital and a consulting physician called in. Evidently Ballinger had seen a danger to himself in that suggestion, and so the murder had been decided upon.

“I have no reason to doubt you,” Cole said. “I don’t know but what I would have acted pretty much the same if I had been in your place. I think, though, that you have done a lot of needless worrying. Ballinger is not at all confident of being able to fasten the second operation on you.”

“How is that?” asked Latham quickly.

“I can’t tell you, but I have every reason to believe that Ballinger is afraid of what an autopsy on the body might show. Not being a scientific man I can’t grasp the details. All I know is that Ballinger is so anxious to prevent an autopsy that he is having the body spirited away.”

Latham’s hand left the tiller, and the boat lurched dangerously. In a moment he had regained control of it.

“Unless I am a very poor guesser,” Cole went on, “the body is on the yacht ahead of us. They are taking it to a place where it can be safely destroyed. It’s hard to do such things in the city.”

Latham stared at him speechlessly through the dusk. The wind had increased, and the waves were swishing and churning against the bow of the little craft.

“It may be Ballinger is suffering from an uneasy conscience,” the doctor murmured. “That’s one of the things that happen when the veneer of intelligence cracks. Conscience makes a man do queer things. However, if your guess is right——”

He stopped short, at the same time peering sharply ahead. Suddenly his hand went out, and the chugging of the motor ceased.

“The chase is over,” he said.

Cole followed his glance. The yacht, with sails lowered, was turning into a small inlet.

“And here is where the excitement begins,” he declared.