The Stolen War Secret/Chapter 16

EÑORA RUIZ had moved! A low exclamation from Kennedy had attracted the attention of those in the room.

“Now, Leslie,” cried Craig, “steady—I rely on you.”

The operation of the vividiffusion apparatus had been stopped, and deftly, working on his mettle as a surgeon, Dr. Leslie was joining up the several arteries and veins, as Kennedy prepared to stimulate the returning consciousness.

Scarcely the sound of a breath now disturbed the tense silence of the room as we watched the efforts to bring the unfortunate little dancer out from the effects of the stupor, now that the poison had been removed.

“Please—please—stand back,” implored Kennedy. “She needs all the quiet and oxygen she can get!”

We drew back reluctantly, watching from a distance.

Evidently she heard dimly, was straining every effort to grasp the fleeting consciousness that had once slipped beyond her.

Kennedy leaned over and adjusted the pillows. There was just a flutter of her eyelids, as if she could feel and appreciate that some one was trying to do something for her.

“The bracelet,” he whispered into her ear, cutting the words short in order to emphasize them and force them past the barrier of her clouded mind, “where did you get the bracelet?”

Her lips moved—but the sound died on them.

Kennedy repeated the question and strained his ears to catch the half-coherent words that struggled to the surface.

“They—gave it—to me,” she whispered faintly.

“Gave it to you—for what?” he prompted.

“To use—if I should be—caught.”

The continued questioning and the interval of time which gave outraged nature a chance to assert her recuperative powers were having their effects.

For a moment her eyes opened and she gave a glassy stare about, seeing nothing perhaps but the unfamiliar faces about her. At least it seemed to start a train of thought, though one which she could not control.

“Oh,” she moaned, “I must tell nothing”

“Nothing of what?” urged Kennedy, lest her own mental censorship should gain control and stop her tongue.

“Nothing until we meet”

The effort was growing too much for her. Kennedy leaned over again. We followed anxiously. What if it should be lost now, when we had gone so far?

Hastily he seized a cloth and dipped it in some water near at hand, passed it over her face and fanned the fresh air to her fevered nostrils. The coolness of the water on her face and on her parched lips seemed momentarily to revive the fleeting brain processes.

“Meet where?” he urged persuasively.

Apparently her mind was making an effort to recall, for her own satisfaction, just where. Her lips moved in response to some uncontrolled motor-impulse.

“At Nichi’s—this morning—at six.”

The effort was too much for her. She repeated it, “Nichi—morning—six,” as people will when they are vibrating on the border-line of anesthesia. Her lips moved, as she said the words over and over, but no sound came from them. She had lapsed again into the stupor of insensibility.

Suddenly Kennedy rose and with another look at her turned to us.

The spell seemed to have fallen for the moment on him. He was thinking aloud himself.

“Nichi’s?” he repeated. “Why Nichi’s? At six.”

Mechanically he looked at his watch. We had been up all night. It was nearly that hour now. The sight of the watch, of something tangible, seemed to stimulate his mind. He snapped it back into his pocket as if it had been in some way instrumental in starting him on the right track.

“I have it,” he almost shouted. “Nichi Moto’s—because as far as they knew he was the only one not suspected. Nichi could get them tickets, disguises, everything that would enable a safe flight from the city.”

It was at least a better hypothesis than any of the rest of us could furnish. As Kennedy reconsidered it, it seemed even more plausible.

“Come,” he cried, “the curio-shop!”

He was hastily reaching for his coat which hung over the back of a chair, talking rapidly to the coroner as he did so.

“Leslie,” he directed, “I can trust you to finish up here. You know better than I do what to do for her. Don’t miss a word—either. Trust your own judgment—have her removed to a hospital if she seems strong enough—only have a nurse with her every moment—don’t miss a thing—we may need it yet.”

WE WERE quickly on the side-walk before Sinclair’s travel-stained car which had carried us successfully through so many tight places during the night. A passer-by looked back at us and shook his head, as if to say that we were a crowd of revelers who had turned night into day at the cabaret, much to his disgust. The morning air seemed to revive our drooping energies, however, and I sprang forward to crank the engine while Sinclair himself slid into the seat in front.

Mrs. Hawley, who had been tacitly accepted as one of us, seemed naturally to take the other front seat, and somehow Burke and Morelos, Kennedy and myself managed to squeeze into the rear.

“Nichi Moto?” I overheard Mrs. Hawley say to Sinclair. “He knew Valcour, Neumeyer—all. He used to come here to the cabaret, though I didn’t know they ever went to the curio-shop.”

“I don’t know as they did,” returned Sinclair, rounding the corner into the avenue and narrowly avoiding a milk-wagon.

WE STOPPED a few minutes later before the ramshackle row of buildings in which was the curio-shop, and I noted with some relief that on all sides they were surrounded by sky-scrapers that offered about as much chance of escape from the rear as the precipitate ledges of a cañon.

Kennedy bounded up to the door and unceremoniously broke the glass, preferring to take the consequences of a forcible entry to the loss of precious moments at such a crucial time.

Sure enough, seated in the alcove of the tokonoma were two roughly dressed men who looked as if they might have been newly arrived Italian immigrant-laborers. Kennedy’s automatic covered them before they were fairly on their feet.

“Not a word!” he shouted as they began gesticulating and protesting. “I’ve been in this business long enough to read features—not clothes—Alvarez and Sanchez!”

Clever though the disguises were, including one lying on a chair, which was to have transformed the Señora into a Sicilian belle, it was indeed the men we sought—Alvarez and Sanchez.

For a moment they glared at Morelos, then suddenly at us as they realized that he, too, was in custody and had not been the informer who had led us there—although they had no reason, outside of first appearances, to suspect that.

A few hasty questions served to piece together at least a portion of the story, although these Government supporters were not more disposed to talk on important matters than was the Revolutionary leader, Morelos.

They had left their car over on Long Island and had crept into the city by train through Brooklyn and then by the subway, fearing the spread of an alarm at the bridges and ferries. Then they had separated for the night, Alvarez seeking a cheap lodging-house, Sanchez an all-night restaurant, and Ruiz the Mexican cabaret.

As for means of escape in the morning, they had decided that the Japanese was best able to engineer that, and so they had agreed to meet at the earliest moment at the curio shop and make their way, if possible, out of the country by steerage.

Beyond that, even Kennedy, ably seconded by the bulldozing methods of Burke, was unable to extract anything.

Craig tried a new lead.

“You may be interested to know, Sanchez,” he insinuated finally, “that, while I have a great respect for your mechanical ability, after going over that wire-tapping wireless at Westport, some one double-crossed even you. That outfit was put to a use in your own house for which you never intended it.”

Sanchez gazed sullenly now at Kennedy, and I am sure would have throttled or poisoned him with equal pleasure.

“Some one used it to project wireless energy into the air,” added Craig quietly.

Sanchez was not able to suppress a look of surprise which was genuine enough. I had been prepared for it and was gazing at Alvarez. He gave no sign of anything. Hastily I turned to Morelos, but Burke, who had been observing his prisoner closely, had evidently seen nothing, for he said nothing, and the slightest tremor on the part of Morelos would have called forth an entirely new catechizing from his captor.

“I’m telling you this,” pursued Kennedy quietly, “for your own information. You didn’t know anything about it. You—the clever schemer who could conceive of stealing the plans of the gyroscope air-ship from Colonel Sinclair, using the adventuress Valcour and a burglar’s microphone—you, Sanchez, were a dupe. You made the fatal mistake of entrusting them to a woman who loved another.”

FOR the first time Morelos allowed his fiery passions to get the upper hand. Kennedy had struck the right chord at last.

With an oath—and Mexican-Spanish is a picturesque language for profanity—he started forward at Sanchez. Quick as a tiger Burke seized him.

“I never had the plans!” ground out Morelos in baffled rage at the fate that had deprived him both of the adventuress who stood ready to dare everything for his love and of the secret which was to have made him the greatest power to be reckoned with in the war.

The outburst of Morelos had scarcely ruffled Kennedy. Gradually he was bringing out the truth of how the stolen plans had cursed every one who had stolen them, successively.

“Valcour having planned to steal them from you, Sanchez,” Kennedy went on in even tone, “was the victim of still another. That other went further in diabolical ingenuity than even you had conceived. In a guise which you did not suspect, he accompanied you to Westport, installed his machine in the top of the house where he could tap the local electric power—and then destroyed the air-ship—made it seem a failure in order to discourage its use until his own government could make use of it. I came here expecting not only to find you, but the final evidence that will catch the real, arch-criminal in the case.”

Kennedy paused long enough for us to catch every shade of expression on the faces he confronted, then added—

“I got my first hint of the true state of affairs from a letter that was sent from Mexico City, which I read without opening by a process that I have.”

The air of mystery he threw about that simple phrase had its effect. He saw it and went on-

“I need not say anything about the remarkable attempts that are being made by some of your countrymen to form a compact by which you will allow the Japanese to gain a foothold both in Mexico and in South America.

“Those of you on both sides of the Pacific who are using this real or supposed relationship of Japan to the aboriginal races of Mexico as a pretext for establishing such a condition little realize with what a two-edged sword you are playing.

“Is the relationship true?” he proceeded. “I do not know. But I do know that if a scientific hypothesis is useful to politicians, they will use it with scientific certainty. Many today are endeavoring to drag anthropology and ethnology into politics. For the time being it may seem very clever. True or not,” he concluded, “in this case, at least, it has ended in disaster for those very persons who thought it most clever.”

All the stories I had read of the plotting and counter-plotting against the United States swept through my mind. I wondered just how much truth there was in them. That they were mere inventions seemed now inconceivable.

“Professor Neumeyer, scholar and gentleman, scarcely knew the depths to which some can descend to debauch science. While he was working on problems that were, it may be, tinged a little bit with the inevitable commercialism of the age, he knew nothing of the subtle forces at work under the surface—and the result was that he lost his life because he stood in the way of one whose avarice and race pride stopped at nothing.”

KENNEDY stopped and turned full upon Alvarez.

“You, Alvarez!” he accused. “You thought you were playing an astute game. But even such masters of intrigue as you can be undone by those who are literally steeped in the fountain of intrigue in the Orient. Only modern science and American common sense in its application have foiled those who have beaten you, almost under your eyes, at your own game.”

Kennedy had been rising to a higher and higher pitch of excitement as he proceeded with the untangling of this remarkable case. He had come at last to the point where he could finish it up with a flourish, like the crack of a whip.

“Unless I am totally mistaken,” he shot out suddenly, “it was under the seductive influence of these supposed friends of yours—in this very alcove—that Valcour was inveigled, entertained with a cup or two of saki, drugged, robbed of the precious plans which she had determined to hand over to her real lover, poisoned and sent forth with just time enough to reach her hotel and die under circumstances that threw suspicion far away from Nichi Moto’s curio-shop. Come—let us see if I am right! I have taken my time in this manner for a purpose.”

Kennedy had sprung suddenly toward the stairs into the basement, up which we had seen Otaka come when he had brought us the saki. We stumbled down after him. The door at the foot of the steps was closed, but not locked.

Craig opened it cautiously. It was pitch dark in spite of the bright sunshine outside now. We entered gingerly.

We had not proceeded a step before, on the floor, I saw vaguely two dark heaps. My foot touched one of them. It yielded in a most uncanny way. I drew back in instinctive horror at the mere feel of it.

It was the body of a man!

KENNEDY struck a light, and, as we looked, we could discern within its circle of illumination a ghastly scene.

“Hari-kiri!” Craig ejaculated. “While we talked upstairs, they must have realized that they were discovered and that there was no way of escape!”

Nichi Moto and his Aino servant had committed suicide with the deadly arrow-poison which they had used to send two of their supposed friends to their death.

On the hearth of an old kitchen-range was a piece of porphyry, smashed into a thousand bits.

“It is the Pillar of Death!” exclaimed Kennedy simply.

“Then the clue to the treasure is lost!” gasped Hattie Hawley, almost fainting at the sight of the tragedy.

Sinclair reached out and caught her.

“I don’t care,” he whispered, “I have found a greater treasure.”

Craig had dropped down on his knees before the fireplace and was poking eagerly in a pile of charred paper and linen, forgetful of the murderers of Valcour for the plans and of Neumeyer for the buried treasure.

“Sinclair, your secret is safe,” he cried. “The duplicate plans have been destroyed!”