Chapter III

Society had never called the marriage of Marjorie Calvin and Donald Wreye a brilliant one. Seven years before Marjorie had entered New York society, and society had knelt at her feet. She had many offers of marriage; all were laughed aside. Then came Donald Wreye, big, blond, masterful. He carried the little black-haired girl off her feet, swept the other suitors aside like chaff. He had neither money nor family. By sheer doggedness he had fought his way to a ten-thousand-dollar position in the Street. Society had pleaded with Marjorie Calvin. Thornley Colton had pleaded. But she loved with the love that only women of the Southland feel. They eloped.

For five years the marriage had seemed ideal. Then came the last year. Marjorie’s sunny nature changed completely. Wreye was constantly at his club, drinking, gambling. Thornley Colton was received almost coldly by the girl he loved as a daughter. Then she was found in her room, the pistol she had used beside her.

Wreye cast restraint to the winds then. His position was lost because of dissipation. He had opened an office of his own, and although he was known to do comparatively little business, for the past few months he had seemed to have plenty of money. But to the men and women he had known in the old days he became a pariah.

And it was to his office that Colton and Sydney Thames started in the big machine an hour later. The blind man’s lips were a thin, straight line; the bloodless face sinister in its grimness. What his thoughts were none could tell. Sydney’s were a maze of conflict. The astounding assertion of Colton’s that Dorothy Raelton had never smoked opium had carried him off his feet, mentally, when it was made, but now, with sober afterthought, came the utter absurdity of it. Dorothy had known--_known_--that the blind craving could only be satisfied by the drug, and she had used it. It was not within the range of human possibility that _she_ could be mistaken. And _they_ had seen.

The car came to a stop before a tall office-building near Wall Street. Colton, cane in hand, stepped to the side-walk, and, with only the touch of Sydney’s sleeve against his to guide him, made his way to the elevator. On an upper floor they halted before the door with its plain announcement:

“Donald Wreye, Broker. Odd Lots.”

Following Thornley Colton’s knock came the slam of a hastily-shut drawer, and a gruff invitation to enter. The smile of welcome faded as the heavy-featured man with the tawny hair saw his visitors.

“Well?” he snapped ungraciously, slumping into the swivel chair without even inviting them to be seated.

Thornley Colton’s slim stick located a chair before he answered. “You won’t be well very long unless you keep away from that black bottle in the drawer,” he said grimly.

Wreye jumped to his feet with an oath. “That bottle’s my own affair,” he snarled. “I’ll drink when I damn’ please! I’m not in your bootlicking set any more. I got----” He stopped suddenly. “Get down to cases! This is my busy day.”

The blind man picked up the chair and placed it directly before the big man, not two feet from him. “I want you to answer a few questions.” He said it simply, quietly, but some indefinable timbre of his voice made it a command.

“I’ll answer if I see fit!” blustered Wreye.

“You’ll answer whether you want to or not.” Still that quiet voice; the velvet covering for the will of steel beneath it. Sydney Thames held his breath as he watched the two men. One, a veritable giant, clumsy in his very bigness, face flushed with anger and liquor; the other, half a head shorter, with the chest and shoulders of an athlete, belied by the well-tailored slimness the faultless clothes gave him; face and hair white, accentuated by the big circles of the smoked library-glasses, his cane, held idly between the slim, supersensitive fingers, touching the floor a few inches from Donald Wreye’s foot.

“I’ll see about that!” blustered Wreye, and the words seemed foolishly puerile.

“When did you first discover that your wife was an opium fiend?” It was put so unexpectedly, so baldly, that even Sydney Thames gasped.

The livid fury mounted to the face of Wreye. “By God! You----” His voice trembled with unleashed passion.

Knife-like Thornley Colton’s voice cut in: “Answer me!”

And, like lightning, the answer came--a vicious, smashing right fist straight at the face of the seated blind man!

The exact sequence of ensuing events could never be told by Sydney, for the simple reason that his eyes were incapable of following the moves of the man who was sightless. He remembered leaping to his feet with a cry of horror as the blind man’s chair toppled over. Then he saw a purple-faced, cursing man straining and tugging to release the arms that were being slowly doubled behind him. A crash of a great body hurled downward in the heavy swivel chair, and Thornley Colton, unruffled, breathing accelerated but a trifle, straightened the tortoise-rimmed glasses and smiled down at the man he had so easily mastered.

Mechanically Sydney righted the chair and picked up the blind man’s cane.

“Thanks,” murmured Colton absently, and Sydney Thames gasped in amazement at the smile he saw on the thin lips of the problemist. It was a smile of pure joy; the joy of a man who has learned something more easily than he had expected.

“Don’t you know that a seated man can’t leap to his feet without a warning move of the foot on the floor?” Thornley Colton asked quietly. “My cane told me what you were going to do the instant you knew yourself. Do you want to proceed conversationally or physically?” he finished grimly.

“I could kill you for that!” The big man’s voice was like a sob.

“It was raw,” apologized Colton, but both knew he was referring to the question he had asked, and not the vicious blow, or the struggle. Then the menace came again to his voice. “Where did you get that ten thousand you needed so badly five months ago?”

The effect of this question was fully as startling, in a totally different way, to Sydney Thames as the other had been. The red rage receded from Wreye’s face, the snarl went from the lips; a sneering smile came.

“So you come from my lily-fingered brother-in-law, eh? Hasn’t got the nerve to come himself, I suppose?”

“Where did you get it?” repeated Colton.

“Oh, I’ll tell you quick enough. _I got it from Jimmy Raelton!_”

If this reply was unexpected, it did not cause the slightest change of expression on the face of Thornley Colton.

“Quite strange that he should have given you the money after he had so emphatically refused it once before, wasn’t it?” he observed quietly.

The black scowl came back to Donald Wreye’s face. “The letter that came with the money was devilish plain. The ten thousand was to keep me away from him and his wife. I was told that I’d get something worse than mere loss of position if I even told where it came from. Now I suppose he wants it back.”

“Oh, no,” assured Colton, as he rose. “He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“What do you want, then?” There was snarling suspicion in the voice now.

“Information--which I got.” The blind man smiled down curiously at the scowling man; then the smile went as quickly as it came. “What became of Marjorie’s hundred thousand dollars?” he jerked out.

“She----” Wreye’s jaws snapped together, the big shoulders hunched aggressively. “If you’re so damn’ clever, find out!” he challenged sullenly.

Sydney Thames could see the man’s huge muscles tighten under the coat, as if he expected force once more, and was prepared to meet it. But Colton only nodded and turned toward the door.

“I will,” he promised grimly. “And I’m going to have you on hand when I make the discovery.”

It was not until they were on the side-walk outside that a word was spoken.

“A man like that makes my blood boil!” ejaculated Sydney Thames.

“Yes?” replied the blind man seriously, but the rising inflection made it enigmatical. His beckoning finger brought a leather-lunged newsboy.

“Latest _Telegram_?”

It was thrust into his hand.

“Did Shrimp see the reporters, Sydney?” he asked, as he handed the paper to Thames and stepped into the car.

“The heart-stroke story is on the first page.”

“Good! Then the advertisement I telephoned must be in. Take us to Doctor Henry’s home, Michael.”