Chapter VI

Sydney and Thornley Colton were back in the library of the old-fashioned house. The blind man had removed the tortoise-rimmed glasses, and around his head and over his eyes was an alcohol-soaked bandage to relieve the splitting headache the loss of his usual four hours of darkness in the afternoon had produced.

“Yes, it was melodrama, Sydney,” he admitted. “But it was necessary. It was carefully staged to shatter the nerves of the cool Dora, and arouse the doctor’s anger at what he thought was a mistake of his accomplice. That last resulted in the angry confession we overheard. I knew his temper would give way under certain conditions, and I made those conditions. Shrimp was stationed downstairs to let him in at the proper moment, and also to keep the maid and the doctor from confidences until they were upstairs, where they could hear the door-pounding, and would suppose we were all together. Of course, the quartet of men and women were private detectives posing as guests to deceive the maid. They were stationed around the corner with orders to follow right behind us. Wreye was across the street from the Raelton house, so that he could run over and ring the bell a moment after we entered.”

“But how did Doctor Henry happen to be there?” demanded the puzzled Sydney.

“Shrimp, mimicking the maid’s voice, called him up the minute our machine appeared, and told him that Mrs. Raelton was dead. He rang off before the doctor could get in a word. But that gave Henry all the time he needed to get there. Shrimp says the physician fumed and fretted in the vestibule fully three minutes before the boy heard the door-pounding that was the signal to admit him.”

“But I thought Donald Wreye----” began Sydney helplessly.

“It was Doctor Henry and the maid from the first. Pure elimination and the headache powders told me that.”

“But you said the powders were harmless, that Doctor Grayton was careful,” objected Sydney.

“Their harmlessness was the crux. It put them above suspicion, but when it became necessary to impress Dorothy Raelton with the fact that she was a hopeless opium fiend the powder the maid gave her was a heavy dose of morphia, which is the base of opium, and produces almost the same after-effects. Of course, as soon as Dorothy became unconscious the outfit was arranged for her awakening. Dorothy’s highly-strung nervous system, like that of her sister, made it easy for a strong mind like that of the maid to make her know--_know_--that she had smoked the drug in a blind delirium of craving. And the wonderful suggestive stories of the maid, and the fake finger-marks on her throat, made the thing complete. I understood them all when I heard of the blackmail, but it was necessary to impress the Raeltons with Dora’s innocence so that she would be unsuspicious until the time came for the dénouement.

“The ten thousand I knew Wreye must have got puzzled me at first, though it didn’t seem possible that he could be in the plot. The interview in the morning proved his utter incapability of such a thing. The game required a cool, iron-nerved man. His actions during our talk proved conclusively that he was neither. Five minutes’ conversation with Doctor Henry gave me all I wanted to know. His coolness, his nerve, the fact that he had called at the Raelton home several times when Mrs. Raelton was out, ostensibly to see the children, but really to see the maid, the clever way he blamed Wreye for Marjorie’s suicide, his eager desire to know at what time the Raeltons sailed in the morning, the manner in which he took the paper he knew should contain the personal, were all guide-posts on the right track. His beautifully clever explanation why the opium craving I described could not be alleviated was intended to show me my helplessness. But it gave me what I wanted. Pretending to stumble, I got his hand in mine; my finger was on his pulse--the Keyboard of Silence. He knew I was going to tell him of Dorothy! Though his face was a mask, his heart-beats showed the nervousness underneath; the nervousness no eye could have detected. That was the final proof.

“Then I realized his real cleverness. _He_ had sent the money to Wreye with a forged note, apparently from Raelton. The maid had undoubtedly told him of Wreye’s need and attempt to borrow from his brother-in-law, and the doctor was afraid that Wreye, in a hot-headed rage at continued refusals, would blurt out Marjorie’s trouble, and cause a premature confession from Dorothy before the blackmailer had gotten her firmly in his clutches. Henry was overlooking no possibility, and the ten thousand was a paltry amount, beside what he expected to get. Of course, you see how he really got the money into his hands? The envelopes containing the bills, given to a trusted maid to mail to the fake lock-box, were merely handed over to the real vampire. There was no chance of detection.

“This afternoon Shrimp and I went to Wreye’s office and explained the whole game to him. He refused to believe, at first, because Marjorie had confessed five months before her death that she was an opium fiend. Wreye was more of a man than we ever thought. He hid the fact from the world. He let her go her own way. He didn’t suspect the blackmailing, because Marjorie probably feared to tell him, lest his temper should lead him to expose the secret in his efforts to seek out the blackmailer. And when she died, penniless, he supposed she had lost her money gambling, the usual passion that follows opium smoking. He kept quiet, but naturally he was bitter against the whole world.

“But I finally persuaded him to do his part in trapping the vampire. Remember the similarity of the two voices? That was my trump card. I knew that my story of the Raeltons’ early departure and the curt advertisement would rouse the doctor to drastic action, and force him to call up Dora, and give new instructions. That was what I wanted--it would make her unsuspicious when the second call I planned came. It worked like a charm. She never suspected the voice. It was then, by the way, that we learned Dora was really Mrs. Henry, and that she was getting tired of her part. We learned, also, that Mrs. Raelton was to be given an extra heavy dose of morphia, so that it would be impossible for her to get away in the morning. Doctor Henry needed time, you see.

“Wreye, impersonating the doctor over the phone, gave her new instructions. The same plan was to be followed, but the doctor would send her two new powders--they were my trional powders; I wouldn’t take a chance on morphia again--and she was to arrange the opium set as usual, and scream for Jimmy as soon as Donald Wreye arrived. Then, if anything went wrong, she was to foist suspicion upon Wreye, who, she was told, was on the verge of delirium tremens, and would be sent by the doctor on some pretext.

“Donald, as you saw, could hardly control himself, but that made him perfect in her eyes, though I had to stay behind a second after you started upstairs to warn him, and I also had to give him his cue in the room before he acted. My little trick with the rubber band utterly unnerved the maid, who supposed that her husband had really sent poison. So, when the doctor got there, they were at cross-purposes, and the angry betrayal we heard was the logical result.”

For a minute there was silence; then Sydney Thames spoke. “But Wreye, why did you let him----” There was no need to finish.

“It was pure brutishness, Sydney,” confessed Thornley Colton slowly. “The brutishness that makes us think of physical revenge before we think of the law. There are crimes so foul that we want to pound, to tear their perpetrators. The driving to death of one innocent girl and the nearly successful attempt to make a mental wreck of Dorothy Raelton, who had never known the taste of opium smoke in her life, is one of them. My fingers itched for Doctor Henry’s throat. But Donald Wreye’s right came first. He took it. I am glad.”

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THE THIRD PROBLEM

THE MONEY MACHINES