Chapter XXIII: The Seventh Ingredient

When, some thirty or forty minutes later, Cole opened his eyes and fingered his swollen jaw, he found himself sprawling in a chair in a strange room. In front of him stood Doctor Latham, a humorously sympathetic look on his face.

The room, with its faded tawdriness and crumbling decorations, looked as if it had once been a private dining room. The scratched woodwork and the liquid stains on the wall paper were reminiscent of hilarious times. Cole noticed that the two windows were shuttered on the outside.

“How do you feel?” inquired the physician.

“As if I was all jaw,” said Cole, opening his eyes a little wider and gazing stupidly at the doctor. It took him several minutes to recall that he was still in the big house on Dutchess Point. A rhythmic vibration that seemed to come from beneath the floor, accompanied by the remote humming of machinery, brought him back to the present.

“Why are you here?” he demanded of the physician. “Didn’t I tell you to stay outside?”

“So you did, and it was excellent advice, my friend. I wish now I had heeded it. But I grew impatient and proceeded to find out what had become of you. All I got for my pains was an ungentle tap in the region of the occipital bone.”

With a serio-comic expression the doctor caressed the back of his head. His clothing was rumpled and looked as if he had been dragged over a dusty floor.

Again Cole stroked his jaw. “Where is Miss Brownell?” he suddenly asked.

Latham pointed across the room where, white-faced but smiling, the girl sat in a chair.

“I’ve justified my existence at last,” he remarked. “I managed to straighten out Miss Brownell’s ankle. Didn’t have my kit with me, and I fear I dealt rather roughly with her. How about it, Miss Brownell?”

“I hardly felt it,” she assured him. “For a big man, you are gentleness itself.”

The physician looked long into her smiling face, and when he turned away there was a sad, wistful expression in his eyes. Miss Brownell caught a fleeting glimpse of it, and her face sobered instantly.

“Cheerful place!” murmured Latham, glancing up at the dilapidated ceiling. “Anyway, we ought to be thankful that the three of us are together. Wonder what the amiable ruffians plan to do next. What happened to you after you left me, Cole?”

It took Cole some little time to remember, but at length he gave the doctor a brief summary of the episode in the tower, ending with the unexpected attack that had left him with a swollen jaw. The doctor seemed amused.

“Laid them both out, eh?” he said with a chuckle. “Good work, Cole. I believe you could manage a massacre all by yourself if you had the chance.”

“The chance may come sooner than we think,” said Cole dryly, with a glance at the door. “Miss Brownell told me some of the things she has learned during her term of imprisonment here. It seems we have one advantage, doctor.”

“What’s that?”

“The seventh ingredient.”

A thin smile parted the physician’s lips. “That’s so. I’d forgotten about that. It’s a minor detail I worked out independently. Professor Carmody made several attempts to make me reveal the secret of it, but I refused. You see, by that time I had discovered that the scheme was crooked, and I would have nothing more to do with the gang. However, the seventh ingredient, as they call it, isn’t of great importance. Its value is almost nil.”

“But they seem to think otherwise.”

“They are mistaken, and naturally so. I was mistaken myself for a while. I exaggerated the importance of the so-called seventh ingredient. Afterward, when I knew better, I saw no reason why I should put them right.”

“Glad you didn’t, Latham. As long as they are laboring under a misapprehension, we have an advantage over them.”

“How is that?”

“They think you have something that they want. The fact that they are mistaken makes no difference. As matters stand at present, you are in a position to bargain with them.”

“Bargain over what?”

“Oh, several things.” Cole stepped a little closer to him and spoke in an undertone. “Miss Brownell’s safety, for instance.”

Latham’s brows went up. “Of course!” he murmured. “I’m a bit dull to-night. Glad you have your thinking cap on, Cole. The amiable ruffians will be given to understand that I refuse to discuss the seventh ingredient until Miss Brownell is at a safe distance. After that nothing will matter. Smoke?”

Cole helped himself to a cigarette from the physician’s case, slanting a quick glance in the girl’s direction as he lighted it. She looked both puzzled and amused.

“Were you saying something I was not supposed to hear?” she inquired.

The question remained unanswered, for just then the door opened, and the gaunt, frock-coated figure of Professor Carmody strutted into the room. In his hand was an automatic, which he managed very cautiously, and his shrunken face was all smiles.

“Hello, Cole,” he chirped gleefully. “Good evening, Miss Brownell. How are you, doctor? Glad to see you all here.” He chuckled wheezily and rubbed his bony hands with their talonlike fingers. “Too bad you didn’t follow my advice the other day, Latham. You would have escaped a lot of trouble if you had been sensible.”

“Go to blazes,” said the doctor contemptuously, advancing a step toward Carmody.

The pistol came upward in the professor’s hand. “Don’t move,” he warned. “And it won’t do either of you any good to reach for your weapons. They were removed while you were—ahem—incapacitated. We object to rowdyism in this place. Our leader is a peaceful man and does not like disturbances. Cole, you have caused us a lot of embarrassment, and see what it has led you to. I believe our last meeting took place in room 2512, the Security Building.”

Cole made a wry face as he recalled how the professor had tricked him. “You were a bit too clever for me that time, Carmody,” he admitted.

The professor gave a cackling, complacent laugh. “Even an old man like me must have his little jokes,” he remarked, still adhering to his ludicrous habit of raising and dropping his voice on almost every other word. “I’ll wager you don’t know even now what my object was. Eh, Cole?”

Cole measured him with a cool glance. “I think I do,” he declared quietly. “The body of Reeves was in the safe. Members of your illustrious gang had removed it from its former place and put it there. One of my men learned what the safe contained, and he paid with his life for his discovery. Later you dropped in to see that everything was in readiness to sneak the safe and its contents out of town.”

“You are a very shrewd guesser, Mr. Cole. It is a matter of keen regret to me that one of such fine intellect must be on the wrong side of this situation. As for the body of Reeves, it will very soon be reduced to a handful of fine dust. The process will be scientific in every respect. Nothing coarse or gruesome, you understand. We couldn’t have disposed of it satisfactorily in the city. It would have been too dangerous. But that isn’t what I came in here to talk about. Doctor Latham, you were once a friend of mine, and in the beginning of this enterprise you gave us several valuable hints. For the last time I ask you to be reasonable. It is your last chance.”

“And if I refuse?”

The professor screwed his face into a melancholy expression. “In that event you, too, will soon be only a handful of dust.”

“Even so I will have the advantage over you, professor. When your end comes there won’t be enough dust to make a thimbleful. I hope I make my meaning clear?”

“You will not reconsider your decision?”

“No!” declared Latham explosively.

“Not even in order to save the life of this charming young lady?” Carmody turned his beatifically smiling face toward Miss Brownell.

A pallor crept up under the doctor’s eyes. He stared with a horrified expression at the professor.

“You mean that——”

“Precisely, my dear doctor. The young lady is dangerous to us. Under the circumstances the law of self-preservation demands that she be rendered harmless, and the only effective way of doing that is to remove her from this sad world. However, in appreciation of the services you once rendered us, she shall be spared if you will reconsider your decision.”

The doctor appeared to hesitate. His eyes, full of tenderness, were fixed on Miss Brownell. Cole could see that he pretended to be wavering. Then the girl spoke.

“Doctor Latham has decided,” she declared in a clear, calm voice. “He is not the type of man who bargains with blackguards. I wouldn’t permit it, even if he were so inclined. Go away!” she added, turning her eyes, full of cold contempt, on the professor.

Carmody winced beneath her scornful gaze. For a moment he plucked nervously at the lapel of his coat. Then, with a soft chuckle that sounded diabolical to the other three in the room, he turned to the doctor.

“The young lady has spoken,” he remarked. “I’m afraid her pretty head is full of silly notions. Youth is always like that. You are older and wiser, Latham. What do you say?”

The doctor regarded him calculatingly. “Just what do you want, Carmody?”

“Ah, that’s better! Getting down to terms, eh? I see I was not mistaken in relying on your common sense. You know what I want, doctor. It is something we have discussed before. Miss Brownell and Mr. Cole will not understand what I mean, but it has something to do with the seventh ingredient.”

Latham nodded. “Thought so. Very curious on that point, aren’t you, professor? I used all my spare time during three or four months working out that interesting angle. It was quite fascinating, I assure you. Do you know, professor, I sometimes wonder if the late lamented Doctor Price was not about two hundred years ahead of his time? From the very beginning of our experiments I suspected that Doctor Price’s secret—the secret which he never divulged—was a sort of electronic reaction applied to chemical compounds. When I learned how to use that reaction in the process we had under way, my problem was solved.”

Carmody regarded him narrowly. “The electron wasn’t known in Doctor Price’s day.”

“And that’s why I say he was about two centuries ahead of his time. At any rate, I am satisfied he stumbled upon something which closely resembles our modern discoveries. Nothing else explains the marvelous achievement that he took with him to his grave.”

“And you claim to have resurrected his discovery, Latham?”

“I am not in the habit of making claims,” said the doctor modestly, with an air of mysteriousness that was well calculated to impress Carmody. “I prefer to let facts speak for themselves.”

Carmody pondered, his sharp, greedy little eyes wandering from one face in the group to another.

“You made memoranda of your experiments, of course?”

“Naturally.”

“Where are your notes?”

Latham smiled blandly. “In two places. Here,” tapping his head, “I carry the whole process. My written memoranda are in a safe place, a place which I shan’t divulge to you until you have given us reasonable guarantees in regard to our safety.”

Professor Carmody scowled. “You are hardly in a position to dictate terms.”

“Do as you like,” said Latham with a shrug. “If you reject my conditions, I shall follow Doctor Price’s example and take my little secret with me to my grave.”

“And what about Miss Brownell?”

The physician winced, but before he could answer the girl spoke for herself.

“Don’t mind me,” she said spiritedly. “Doctor Latham, why don’t you tell the professor that he is beneath contempt?”

Carmody turned his head and regarded her with a look of lofty disdain. “Haughty little devil!” he muttered under his breath, then faced the physician again. “Well, Latham, what would you call reasonable guarantees?”

“Cole and myself will remain here for the present. As far as Miss Brownell is concerned, I’ll be satisfied when she telephones me from her home in town that she has arrived there safely. Does that strike you as reasonable, Cole?”

“Perfectly.”

Carmody scratched his jaw perplexedly. “It is a very difficult situation. I shall refer it to the leader of our organization.”

With that he backed cautiously toward the door, his automatic gripped tightly in his thin, gnarled hand. In a moment the door closed behind him, then came the sound of a heavy bolt turning in the lock, and the two men and the girl were alone.