The Dream Doctor Part 26

"This promises to be an off-day," Craig remarked, the next morning over the breakfast table. "Meet me in the forenoon and we'll take a long, swinging walk. I feel the need of physical exercise."

"A mark of returning sanity!" I exclaimed.

I had become so used to being called out on the unexpected, now, that I almost felt that some one might stop us on our tramp. Nothing of the sort happened, however, until our return.

Then a middle-aged man and a young girl, heavily veiled, were waiting for Kennedy, as we turned in from the brisk finish in the cutting river wind along the Drive.

"Winslow is my name, sir," the man began, rising nervously as we entered the room, "and this is my only daughter, Ruth."

Kennedy bowed and we waited for the man to proceed. He drew his hand over his forehead which was moist with perspiration in spite of the season. Ruth Winslow was an attractive young woman, I could see at a glance, although her face was almost completely hidden by the thick veil.

"Perhaps, Ruth, I had better--ah--see these gentlemen alone?" suggested her father gently.

"No, father," she answered in a tone of forced bravery, "I think not. I can stand it. I must stand it. Perhaps I can help you in telling about the--the case."

Mr. Winslow cleared his throat.

"We are from Goodyear, a little mill-town," he proceeded slowly, "and as you doubtless can see we have just arrived after travelling all day."

"Goodyear," repeated Kennedy slowly as the man paused. "The chief industry, of course, is rubber, I suppose."

"Yes," a.s.sented Mr. Winslow, "the town centres about rubber. Our factories are not the largest but are very large, nevertheless, and are all that keep the town going. It is on rubber, also, I fear, that the tragedy which I am about to relate hangs. I suppose the New York papers have had nothing to say of the strange death of Bradley Cus.h.i.+ng, a young chemist in Goodyear who was formerly employed by the mills but had lately set up a little laboratory of his own?"

Kennedy turned to me. "Nothing unless the late editions of the evening papers have it," I replied.

"Perhaps it is just as well," continued Mr. Winslow. "They wouldn't have it straight. In fact, no one has it straight yet. That is why we have come to you. You see, to my way of thinking Bradley Cus.h.i.+ng was on the road to changing the name of the town from Goodyear to Cus.h.i.+ng. He was not the inventor of synthetic rubber about which you hear nowadays, but he had improved the process so much that there is no doubt that synthetic rubber would soon have been on the market cheaper and better than the best natural rubber from Para.

"Goodyear is not a large place, but it is famous for its rubber and uses a great deal of raw material. We have sent out some of the best men in the business, seeking new sources in South America, in Mexico, in Ceylon, Malaysia and the Congo. What our people do not know about rubber is hardly worth knowing, from the crude gum to the thousands of forms of finished products. Goodyear is a wealthy little town, too, for its size. Naturally all its investments are in rubber, not only in our own mills but in companies all over the world. Last year several of our leading citizens became interested in a new concession in the Congo granted to a group of American capitalists, among whom was Lewis Borland, who is easily the local magnate of our town. When this group organised an expedition to explore the region preparatory to taking up the concession, several of the best known people in Goodyear accompanied the party and later subscribed for large blocks of stock.

"I say all this so that you will understand at the start just what part rubber plays in the life of our little community. You can readily see that such being the case, whatever advantage the world at large might gain from cheap synthetic rubber would scarcely benefit those whose money and labour had been expended on the a.s.sumption that rubber would be scarce and dear. Naturally, then, Bradley Cus.h.i.+ng was not precisely popular with a certain set in Goodyear. As for myself, I am frank to admit that I might have shared the opinion of many others regarding him, for I have a small investment in this Congo enterprise myself. But the fact is that Cus.h.i.+ng, when he came to our town fresh from his college fellows.h.i.+p in industrial chemistry, met my daughter."

Without taking his eyes off Kennedy, he reached over and patted the gloved hand that clutched the arm of the chair alongside his own. "They were engaged and often they used to talk over what they would do when Bradley's invention of a new way to polymerise isoprene, as the process is called, had solved the rubber question and had made him rich. I firmly believe that their dreams were not day dreams, either. The thing was done. I have seen his products and I know something about rubber.

There were no impurities in his rubber."

Mr. Winslow paused. Ruth was sobbing quietly.

"This morning," he resumed hastily, "Bradley Cus.h.i.+ng was found dead in his laboratory under the most peculiar circ.u.mstances. I do not know whether his secret died with him or whether some one has stolen it.

From the indications I concluded that he had been murdered."

Such was the case as Kennedy and I heard it then.

Ruth looked up at him with tearful eyes wistful with pain, "Would Mr.

Kennedy work on it?" There was only one answer.

XV

THE VAMPIRE

As we sped out to the little mill-town on the last train, after Kennedy had insisted on taking us all to a quiet little restaurant, he placed us so that Miss Winslow was furthest from him and her father nearest. I could hear now and then sc.r.a.ps of their conversation as he resumed his questioning, and knew that Mr. Winslow was proving to be a good observer.

"Cus.h.i.+ng used to hire a young fellow of some scientific experience, named Strong," said Mr. Winslow as he endeavoured to piece the facts together as logically as it was possible to do. "Strong used to open his laboratory for him in the morning, clean up the dirty apparatus, and often a.s.sist him in some of his experiments. This morning when Strong approached the laboratory at the usual time he was surprised to see that though it was broad daylight there was a light burning. He was alarmed and before going in looked through the window. The sight that he saw froze him. There lay Cus.h.i.+ng on a workbench and beside him and around him pools of coagulating blood. The door was not locked, as we found afterward, but the young man did not stop to enter. He ran to me and, fortunately, I met him at our door. I went back.

"We opened the unlocked door. The first thing, as I recall it, that greeted me was an unmistakable odour of oranges. It was a very penetrating and very peculiar odour. I didn't understand it, for there seemed to be something else in it besides the orange smell. However, I soon found out what it was, or at least Strong did. I don't know whether you know anything about it, but it seems that when you melt real rubber in the effort to reduce it to carbon and hydrogen, you get a liquid substance which is known as isoprene. Well, isoprene, according to Strong, gives out an odour something like ether. Cus.h.i.+ng, or some one else, had apparently been heating isoprene. As soon as Strong mentioned the smell of ether I recognised that that was what made the smell of oranges so peculiar.

"However, that's not the point. There lay Cus.h.i.+ng on his back on the workbench, just as Strong had said. I bent over him, and in his arm, which was bare, I saw a little gash made by some sharp instrument and laying bare an artery, I think, which was cut. Long spurts of blood covered the floor for some distance around and from the veins in his arm, which had also been severed, a long stream of blood led to a hollow in the cement floor where it had collected. I believe that he bled to death."

"And the motive for such a terrible crime?" queried Craig.

Mr. Winslow shook his head helplessly. "I suppose there are plenty of motives," he answered slowly, "as many motives as there are big investments in rubber-producing ventures in Goodyear."

"But have you any idea who would go so far to protect his investments as to kill?" persisted Kennedy.

Mr. Winslow made no reply. "Who," asked Kennedy, "was chiefly interested in the rubber works where Cus.h.i.+ng was formerly employed?"

"The president of the company is the Mr. Borland whom I mentioned,"

replied Mr. Winslow. "He is a man of about forty, I should say, and is reputed to own a majority of the--"

"Oh, father," interrupted Miss Winslow, who had caught the drift of the conversation in spite of the pains that had been taken to keep it away from her, "Mr. Borland would never dream of such a thing. It is wrong even to think of it."

"I didn't say that he would, my dear," corrected Mr. Winslow gently.

"Professor Kennedy asked me who was chiefly interested in the rubber works and Mr. Borland owns a majority of the stock." He leaned over and whispered to Kennedy, "Borland is a visitor at our home, and between you and me, he thinks a great deal of Ruth."

I looked quickly at Kennedy, but he was absorbed in looking out of the car window at the landscape which he did not and could not see.

"You said there were others who had an interest in outside companies,"

cross-questioned Kennedy. "I take it that you mean companies dealing in crude rubber, the raw material, people with investments in plantations and concessions, perhaps. Who are they? Who were the men who went on that expedition to the Congo with Borland which you mentioned?"

"Of course, there was Borland himself," answered Winslow. "Then there was a young chemist named Lathrop, a very clever and ambitious fellow who succeeded Cus.h.i.+ng when he resigned from the works, and Dr. Harris, who was persuaded to go because of his friends.h.i.+p for Borland. After they took up the concession I believe all of them put money into it, though how much I can't say."

I was curious to ask whether there were any other visitors at the Winslow house who might be rivals for Ruth's affections, but there was no opportunity.

Nothing more was said until we arrived at Goodyear.

We found the body of Cus.h.i.+ng lying in a modest little mortuary chapel of an undertaking establishment on the main street. Kennedy at once began his investigation by discovering what seemed to have escaped others. About the throat were light discolourations that showed that the young inventor had been choked by a man with a powerful grasp, although the fact that the marks had escaped observation led quite obviously to the conclusion that he had not met his death in that way, and that the marks probably played only a minor part in the tragedy.

Kennedy pa.s.sed over the doubtful evidence of strangulation for the more profitable examination of the little gash in the wrist.

"The radial artery has been cut," he mused.

A low exclamation from him brought us all bending over him as he stooped and examined the cold form. He was holding in the palm of his hand a little piece of something that shone like silver. It was in the form of a minute hollow cylinder with two grooves on it, a cylinder so tiny that it would scarcely have slipped over the point of a pencil.

"Where did you find it?" I asked eagerly.

He pointed to the wound. "Sticking in the severed end of a piece of vein," he replied, half to himself, "cuffed over the end of the radial artery which had been severed, and done so neatly as to be practically hidden. It was done so cleverly that the inner linings of the vein and artery, the endothelium as it is called, were in complete contact with each other."