Chapter II

The little French clock had just chimed the hour of three when the tinkling telephone-bell waked Thornley Colton. He reached forth a hand to the crystalless watch on the small table at his bed-side and whistled. The bell jingled again. He threw a bath robe over his shoulders and went into the library.

He answered the inquiring voice instantly: “Good morning, Mr. Ames. Certainly. I will be ready in ten minutes.”

For a minute after he had hung up the receiver he stood in the darkness, his sightless eyes fixed on the mouthpiece of the instrument. Then he went into Sydney Thames’s room and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Get dressed,” he said quietly, but the apple-cheeked secretary saw the grim, ominous lines that were around the thin lips. “Ames, of the diplomatic secret service, will be here in fifteen minutes. Madame Gorski has been murdered.”

“Murdered!” The emotional, highly-strung Thames echoed the word in horror.

“Yes.” Still that tone of quiet certainty. “An hour or so ago, I should judge. We will probably go down to the hotel. Hustle!” he admonished again, as he hurried from the room.

In less than ten minutes Thornley Colton, fully dressed, and smoking a cigarette, was seated in the library awaiting the coming of the secret agent. The door-bell rang, and he rose to answer it.

He stopped in the hall, when his superkeen ears caught the patter of bare feet on the carpet. “Go back to bed, Shrimp,” he ordered.

“Gee, is it a case, Mister Colton?” The wide-eyed boy, with the fiery-red hair, the multitude of freckles, and the slightly-twisted nose, asked the question eagerly. His hands literally trembled with anticipation as they fumbled with the front of his purple pyjama coat.

“Yes.” Thornley Colton’s lip curved in a slight smile, and he patted the boy’s shoulder fondly. “But you can do nothing to-night. Go back to bed, and to-morrow there may be some real detective work for you to do.”

“Gosh, I hope so!” the boy exclaimed fervently; then his voice became almost wistful: “Gee, Mister Colton. I wisht youh’d let me get in a case where there was real Nick Carter stuff; blackjacks, an’ assaults, an’ stuff like that.”

“You’ve got a long life before you, Shrimp,” smiled the blind man, as he started downstairs to answer the second ring of the bell.

The man who entered had his rain-coat buttoned up to his chin, and the brim of his soft hat came down to the eyes that gleamed from under it.

Colton bowed gravely. “Rather an early-morning call, Mr. Ames.”

The gimlet eyes of the secret agent were fixed on his pale face, seeming to bore and probe into the very soul of the blind man. “Mind telling me how you knew my name?” he asked. “To my knowledge we have never met before.”

“I think we never have.” The grave smile still curved Thornley Colton’s thin lips. “But I never forget a voice I have once heard. I heard yours several years ago, when I was trying to solve the puzzle of the missing Villers code book. The diplomatic service was somewhat interested in that case, I believe.”

“So you’re that man!” There was new respect in the tone, and the eyes of the secret agent gleamed brighter.

“A lucky touch of the fingers found the solution of the case,” explained Colton modestly. “If you will come up to my library we can talk more comfortably.” He turned and ascended the stairs.

Sydney Thames was already in the library, and Thornley Colton introduced him. “My secretary, Mr. Ames.” He seemed to sense the other’s desire for a private conversation, and added: “My eyes, also.”

The secret agent accepted the presence of a third person, and took off his rain-coat. Seated in a big chair, which a gesture of the blind man’s arm had indicated, he asked his first question abruptly, curtly:--

“Mr. Colton, what do you know about Hedwig Gorski?”

A thin ribbon of blue smoke rose from the blind man’s lips. He seemed to watch the smoke waver ceilingward before he answered: “I think she is one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. There is no subject she cannot discuss intelligently. She speaks all languages, apparently, and she is the only woman I ever met who can interpret Grieg properly. In fact, I would consider her the most accomplished and wonderful international spy I ever met.”

Ames straightened in his chair as though he had been suddenly jabbed with a pin. “How did you know that?” he demanded.

“By a process of elimination made necessary by lack of eyes. I sought an introduction to Madame Gorski after I had heard her husband address her in the Cantonese dialect. I spent several years in China, and, naturally, I was interested. And her _musicales_ have been wonderful affairs--wonderful, and food for considerable thought!” he finished musingly.

“You know that she is dead--murdered?”

“Your visit at this hour could mean nothing else. I have known for some time that Madame Gorski feared something. I have known also that she was constantly watched.”

For a minute there was silence in the room. Ames took a cigarette from his case, lighted it, and became absorbed in the spiraling smoke. Sydney Thames, silent, as always, sat back to listen. The secret agent reached his decision and spoke:--

“Mr. Colton, I came here with a different plan of procedure in my mind. I’m going to be frank. For months we have known that negotiations have been going on with a foreign government to obtain possession of the secret naval plans of the harbour mines in New York harbour. When you understand that those planted electrical mines are the only real safeguard against the invasion of the greatest city in America, you will know just what they are worth. We know Hedwig Gorski came to this country to get them--from whom we have never been able to discover. But we have watched every movement, opened every line of mail she has received, and have not been able to find a single clue. For a month my wife and I have occupied an apartment in the hotel directly opposite the Gorski rooms. We have been on guard day and night, as have the floor clerks we learned that she had bribed. This morning at one-twenty-five Hedwig Gorski and her husband returned to their apartment. They went in, lighted every light, and I know they were examining everything to see whether or not the rooms had been entered. In a few minutes Gorski came out, locked the door, and began pacing up and down before it. This was something new, and we watched him curiously. He called. His wife answered cheerily in French. Ten minutes later he called again. There was no answer. He unlocked the door and stumbled in. I was at his heels. Madame Gorski was dead in her chair. At her throat was an empty gilded glove--like a hand of gold that had strangled her.”

“A gilded glove.” Colton repeated it without incredulity or surprise in his voice; merely as the verification of a known fact.

“You know of the Gilded Glove?” asked the secret agent quickly.

“Yes. My world wanderings have taken me to Russia. The glove has always had a peculiar significance. In China two thousand years ago a glove was always given to make legal the transfer of land. The custom was also in vogue among the ancient Egyptians and Phœnicians. In the correct literal translations of the Bible the word ‘glove’ is found instead of ‘shoe’ in the fourth chapter of Ruth, and in the one hundred and eighth Psalm.”

Ames nodded, and the blind man went on: “Twenty years ago a certain Russian order first used the gilded glove as a death sign for traitors to the government. With a love of the significant that only the true Oriental mind has--and the mind of the Russian is all Oriental--the gilded glove was left at the throat of persons who transferred their allegiance for gold.”

“That is right,” corroborated Ames. “Hedwig Gorski and her husband were the greatest spies Russia had. Then, for some unknown reason, they went into the service of another country. And for five years she has laughed at the Gilded Glove and its wearers, who have been constantly on her trail.” Again he smoked in silence for a few minutes, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “You seem to know a whole lot about this thing, Mr. Colton,” he said frankly. “I’d like you to come with me to the hotel. When I entered the room, Gorski, who is a little rat, and heaven only knows how a woman like Hedwig could love him, was absolutely insane. He moaned and cried without seeing me for several minutes. When he did, he accused _you_ of the murder!”

“Accused----” Sydney Thames half rose in his chair and flopped back into it with a gasp of amazed horror.

Thornley Colton’s face had not a flicker of expression. “Yes?” he said politely.

The gimlet eyes of the secret agent went ceilingward once more. “He muttered something about his wife having always feared you--which is the highest compliment that could possibly come from a woman like Hedwig Gorski. He also babbled something about your not being blind because you had seen his wife’s napkin fall to the floor, and that, when you put it on the table, its folds concealed a crushed gilded glove--the sentence of death. He swears that you couldn’t have heard the napkin fall on the velvet carpet.”

“The napkin had not fallen,” Colton said evenly. “I pulled it from Madame Gorski’s knees as I leaned over to pick up the crushed gilt glove I knew was on the carpet by her chair.” His fingers felt the crystalless watch in his pocket. “If you don’t mind,” he apologised, “I’d like to get down to the hotel as soon as possible. The most valuable clue, I think, will disappear shortly.”

Ames opened his mouth, then closed it. “My taxi is waiting at the door,” he said quietly, as he picked up his rain-coat. “I warned the hotel manager that the police were not to be notified until I gave permission. Even the murder is of secondary importance to finding a clue to the damned traitor who is going to sell those harbour plans!”

“A human life, to me, is a wonderful thing,” murmured Colton, as he slipped into his overcoat and took the thin cane that gave its messages to his supersensitive finger-tips. There was unconscious rebuke in his tone.

It was not until they were in the taxi, well on their way down, that the silence was broken. Then Ames spoke again. “I’ll frankly admit that the murder is a most wonderful piece of work. I went over every inch of the rooms while Gorski was gibbering. The door is absolutely the only entrance, and I know they looked over the apartment pretty thoroughly. Gorski could not have done it, even if he had the nerve. I heard his wife answer him. I couldn’t see a thing!”

In the darkness Colton nodded. “I don’t think this will be a case where eyes will be of much use,” he said quietly.

The taxi stopped at the entrance of the big hotel, and they went through the lobby without exciting comment or receiving a single stare. The news of the murder had not been allowed to get downstairs. But a man lounging, half asleep, in a leather chair, made a slight signal that Ames understood. The secret-service agents had covered the hotel, and were working in a dozen different places.

As the three men entered the Gorski apartment, Monsieur Gorski rose from his chair with a half-suppressed scream of rage. “Murderer!” he hissed, in French. “Murderer!”

A heavy hand forced him back, and an apologetic voice came to the ears of Thornley Colton.

“He’s been ravin’ that way for an hour, Mister Colton,” put in the red-faced man at Gorski’s side.

“Good morning, Joe,” Colton greeted the house detective.

The white-faced manager of the hotel, who had stood back, nervously biting his finger-nails, came forward. “We must notify the police, Mr. Ames,” he protested. “I have obeyed your instructions, but if they ever know----” The manager left unspoken the horrible possibilities, but his whole manner cried them aloud.

“You can notify them in a very few minutes, Mr. Jones,” the blind man’s voice cut in curtly. He went to the side of the dead woman unerringly. A faint flush seemed to mount to his pale cheeks; his thin nostrils quivered like those of a hound on the scent. Almost reverently he touched the cheek of Hedwig Gorski. His fingers, light as wind-blown thistledown, brushed the beautiful cold skin under the eyes, then down to the throat, stopping short before reaching the five finger-marks of gold that were deep in the flesh. The gilded glove was on the table, where it had fallen as soon as Gorski had touched it. The blind man seemed not even aware of its existence.

“Have you a glass, Mr. Ames?” asked the problemist, and there was unintentional curtness in his tone. Thornley Colton’s whole mind was on the case before him; nothing else existed.

The secret agent took a magnifying glass from his pocket.

“Look at the gilt finger-prints!” ordered the blind man, as his two hands lifted the woman’s arms. “Are the prints cleanly cut, sharp?”

“Not a single blur!” announced Ames, raising his eyes. “She never moved a muscle after those fingers clutched her throat.”

“Ah!” Quiet triumph was in the blind man’s voice. “Madame Gorski was poisoned!”

“Poisoned!” It seemed that every one in the room echoed it. The clutched glove at the throat, the deep graven finger-prints of gilt had seemed to point to but one thing.

“Yes. No hand of that size could have sufficient strength to keep the woman from moving and blurring the gilt prints that were put there with another gilt glove worn on the hand of the murderer. The wearer of the gilt glove would not overlook a detail. He probably carried the other glove in a box so that its shape would not be lost, and fitted it to the prints after. It is the usual way.”

“The bottle and the glass!” Ames took a step nearer, but Colton’s hand picked up the glass beside the tall wine-bottle. He stepped away from the table, and raised the glass to his lips; held it there for several seconds.

“Hedwig Gorski did not drink from this glass!”

“Why? How do you know that?” Ames gasped it.

“Because it was put there by the man whose gloved hand made those marks on Madame Gorski’s throat after she was dead.”

“Bah!” The expletive came in a snarling sneer from the dead woman’s husband. “You think my wonderful Hedwig a fool? She would drink of no wine that had been unguarded all evening! I heard her in the bathroom washing the glass for one, two, three minutes. If she drank she drank fresh water.”

“How long after you heard the water running did she answer you?” asked Colton; and even in his sightless eyes there seemed to come a light.

“Five, six, seven, ten minutes. Ten minutes,” repeated the husband, with sullen positiveness.

“As long as that?”

“Yes.”

“Where is the bathroom, Sydney?” snapped Colton. The muscles under the skin of his lean jaws played back and forth. He was tense as a hound in leash.

“Five steps to the right, half turn,” Sydney answered mechanically, his eyes judging the distance instantly because of years of practice.

Colton darted inside. He turned on the hot water and bent down so that his face was not an inch away from the running stream. He did the same thing when he had turned the cold-water tap.

“The devilish ingenuity of it!” They heard him mutter as he straightened up.

“What is it?” Again Ames asked the question. Student of men as his work had made him, Ames had realised, minutes before, that he was in the presence of a man who would lead always; he understood that he was but a pupil before a master.

“They knew Madame Gorski was too clever to be poisoned in any ordinary way. They knew that she would even suspect the presence of poison in an empty glass, and would wash any glass, under the hot-water tap, before she drank, because the heat would dissolve any poison. They knew, also, that if she wanted a drink it would be of cold water, fresh from the tap. The poison, a paste of peculiar odour that my keen sense of smell instantly detected, is smeared on the inside of the cold-water faucet. The minute it was turned, the stream that flowed was almost pure poison!”

“Good God!” came the horror-stricken voice of the hotel manager.

“But there must have been some one here to make those marks and leave the gilded glove,” put in Ames.

“Where is the clothes-closet?” Colton asked.

The secret agent hurried into the bedroom that adjoined the room of death. Colton was at his heels, the slim, hollow cane locating every piece of furniture as he passed. Ames opened the door of a closet full of clothes, and stepped inside. Colton stood at the threshold, his head bent forward, apparently peering intently into the depths of the closet.

“Another?” he asked curtly.

In the other bedroom was a huge wardrobe. Ames opened it, and again the blind man seemed to look into every corner of it. “The murderer hid in there behind the clothes! Take some of them out and you’ll find flecks of gilt from the glove he wore!”

The secret agent grabbed an armful and threw them on the bed, with no regard for their mussing. He pawed them over. His eyes found what they sought, and he uttered a shout of triumph. “Here they are! On the Inverness and this black evening gown!” Then awe came to his voice. “How did you know that?” he asked. “How could you know it--and blind?”

“Because I am blind. Because my other senses are abnormally developed to recompense the loss of sight. I knew the murderer had hidden in the closet; I knew the gilt from the glove he wore on his hand would come off on the clothes that concealed him, just as I knew the glass on the table was not the one Madame Gorski had used, and just as I knew the crushed glove was at her feet in the restaurant--because I have a sense of smell that is more than doubly acute. Wherever there is gilt there is banana oil. It is always used in gilding, and its odour is unmistakable. I knew of the men of the Gilded Glove, and I suspected that Madame Gorski feared it. When my nostrils caught the odour and located it at the floor beside her chair, I knew instantly what it meant. I covered it with the napkin so that people would not stare. I wanted her to see it so that she might be warned. The glass on the table has the banana-oil odour because the murderer placed it there with the hand that still smelled of the oil with which the soft kid of the glove had become saturated. The smell was also in the wardrobe. Simple, isn’t it?” A mirthless smile curved his thin lips. Thornley Colton could not forget that in the next room was the body of the woman killed by the hand that left its trail so faintly that only his blindness enabled him to follow it.

“Where are the windows?” Colton asked sharply, before any one had a chance to say a word.

“In the next room, overlooking the street.”

“Show them to me.”

Ames hurried back to the sitting-room. The hotel manager still bit his finger-nails. The husband of the woman who was dead had buried his face in his hands, and was sobbing. The eyes of the hotel detective were fixed on Colton, following his every movement, in them a look of wondering admiration.

The blind man’s feeling fingers examined every inch of the casements that overlooked busy Broadway, thirteen storeys below. “Nothing here,” he said, when he had finished. “There must be another window!”

“Only a small one, in the bathroom, that overlooks an air-shaft,” the secret agent informed him.

Colton turned and darted into the bathroom. “This is the one!” Once more his exploring fingers went over every inch.

“But that hasn’t been touched. Not a screw has been loosened,” declared Ames positively.

“No, there hasn’t been a screw touched. The murderer was too clever for that, but he wasn’t clever enough to get the banana-oil smell from his fingers. The entire pane was taken out by cutting away the putty, and probably put back with triangular tin tacks that would never be noticed through the frosted glass.”

“That’s a mighty small opening,” Ames said slowly.

“The murderer must have been small, and as active as a cat. Also----” Colton did not finish; he stepped out of the bathroom. “Who has the rooms directly over this one?” he asked the manager.

“They have no occupants yet,” hesitated the nervous Mr. Jones.

“When were they coming? Who were they?” The questions came sharply, crisply.

“A couple from Philadelphia, who telegraphed to have them reserved. They had occupied them once before, and liked them.”

“Clever,” muttered the blind man. “They wouldn’t take a chance of occupying them, but were going to see to it that they were empty when wanted. Let’s look at them.”

“But what am I going to do?” began the nerve-frayed manager. “The police----”

“Notify them.”

Colton gave the permission grimly; then a look of compassion came to his face as he seemed aware of the presence of Monsieur Gorski for the first time. He took a step toward him; then halted. He could do nothing--now.

“Joe?” he said softly. The house detective glanced at the inert figure of the man, and came forward. “When the police come, let them arrest Gorski,” Colton whispered. “He will be safe in their hands, and God knows he isn’t safe from that band of gilt-handed devils anywhere else. It will only be a short time before the real murderer is found.”

The house detective nodded. “It’ll be best that way,” he admitted.

“Show us the rooms!” ordered Colton; then, as the manager hesitated: “Let Joe telephone police headquarters from here,” he advised shortly.

With Ames and Sydney at his heels, he followed the manager to the floor above. The minute the lights were snapped on in the apartment, Ames ran to the open bathroom window. In a heap on the floor under it was a thin, strong rope. Beside it were fragments of what had been a wine flask, and an empty pasteboard box, with the inside smeared with gilt--the one in which the gilt glove found at the woman’s throat had been carried to prevent its handling. And under the bath-tub was thrown another glove of gilt, with most of the gold worn off the inside of the fingers.

“Good Lord!” gasped Ames eagerly. “There’s clues enough here!”

“Too many!” declared Colton tersely. He turned to the manager. “Who has the apartments opposite this?”

“A German family,” the head of the hotel answered, as a pupil to a teacher.

“How many?”

“Three. A big, bearded man and his wife, and a gawky boy. They’ve been here a week.”

“The boy! Describe him!”

“Well,” began the manager nervously. “He’s about seventeen, I should judge, but small. He’s awkward, and speaks the rottenest English I ever heard in the darndest, squeakiest voice. Seems to like to listen to people, though, and he’s always sitting around the lobby gaping at the guests.”

“I want to see him!” Colton’s voice had a new note, dominant, compelling.

“At this hour?” stammered the manager.

“Now!”

Ames, attracted by the tone and the words, came from the bathroom.

“What is it?” he asked eagerly.

“The man who murdered Madame Gorski.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know--now.” Thornley Colton spoke the words over his shoulder, for he was following the manager out of the room. A knock at the door across the hall brought no response. Colton pushed the manager aside, and, with his horrified protest unheeded, opened the unlocked door. A snap of the fights under Ames’ fingers, and the men saw that the rooms were empty. But in the air was a strong smell of banana oil.

“The floor clerk!” demanded Colton, and the manager went meekly to get him.

Ames was everywhere, rummaging, prying with practiced fingers into every drawer, every closet. Each piece of clothing he pulled out was examined with lightning-moving fingers. He picked the lock of the big trunk, and cursed when the opened lid revealed only cloth-wrapped stones. But in the bottom was an overturned bottle that had once held gilt.

“The glove had just been gilded,” guessed the secret agent.

The floor clerk entered, visibly nervous.

“When did the German boy return here to-night?” asked Colton.

“About twelve-thirty.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Were his mother and father in the room?”

The floor clerk scratched his head. “I didn’t see them come in, but I heard them giving the kid the very devil. They raised an awful row.” He grinned at the recollection.

“Ah!” The blind man’s tone held quiet satisfaction. “And an hour or so later the boy slipped out, saying that his mother and father were asleep, and he was going downstairs to watch the people for a while.”

“Yes.” There was amazement written all over the hotel clerk’s face.

Colton turned to face Ames. “The bird has flown,” he said quietly. “He is the one who entered Madame Gorski’s rooms, put the poison in the tap and the glove at her throat. For a week the three have been waiting their opportunity. To-night all was ready. The father and mother left early in the evening, and did not return. They, or another accomplice, dropped the glove at Madame Gorski’s chair in passing, expecting her to look down and see it. The waiter probably kicked it so near her chair that she couldn’t have noticed it if the smell of the banana oil hadn’t made me find it.”

“But the clerk heard the father and mother talking?” protested Ames. “He didn’t see them go out, and,” he added, “there are several of my men around who would have stopped them instantly.”

“No one left that room but the boy!” There was no gainsaying the positiveness in the floor clerk’s tone.

The grim smile came again to Thornley Colton’s lips. “When I learned that Madame Gorski had answered her husband _ten minutes_ after he had heard the water running, and she must have taken the poison, I began to suspect the true facts. A poison that left no signs of agony must have killed quickly and painlessly. It wasn’t her voice monsieur heard at all! It was the voice of a wonderful mimic; the mimic who made the floor clerk believe that his mother and father were scolding him in this room. And who would stop a gawky German boy? You have his description. Put your men at work.” He rose. “Come, Sydney, it is time for breakfast.”

The secret agent took his hand and shook it fervently. “I can’t tell you how I thank you,” he said, and there was genuine feeling in his voice. “But I will see that Washington recognises this night’s work of yours.”

Once more the mirthless smile that had been in evidence so often that night came to his lips. “I want no recognition,” he said slowly. “I merely want to avenge the death of the most wonderful woman I ever met. There is nothing half so precious as the life of a woman, or a child.”

He bowed gravely. Silently he and Sydney walked to the elevator and into the lobby. Halfway out Thornley Colton stopped.

“I want to telephone the house, Sydney. There’s a foolish fear in my mind that I can’t throw off.” He went into the telephone-booth. When he emerged a minute later, there was a look on his face that Sydney Thames had never seen before; a look terrible in its earnestness.

“Do you believe in presentiments, Sydney?” The blind man’s voice was calm, even. He gave his secretary no chance to answer. “I have just had one come true. John found five finger-smudges of gold on the white table-cloth in the dining-room, and Shrimp has disappeared absolutely!”