The Treasure-Train Part 34

"Mr. Errol," he summoned, placing the second folded paper on the table with the first.

Errol rose and went forward and Karatoff placed him in the chair as he had Mrs. Gaines. There seemed to be no hesitation, at least on the part of Karatoff's followers, to being hypnotized.

Whatever it was written on the paper, the writer had evidently not trusted to chance, as I had, but had told specifically what to do.

At the mute bidding of Karatoff Errol rose. We watched breathlessly.

Deliberately he walked across the room to the table, and, to the astonishment of all save one, picked up a rubber dagger, one of those with which children play, which was lying in the miscellaneous pile on the table. I had not noticed it, but some one's keen eye had, and evidently it had suggested a melodramatic request.

Quickly Errol turned. If he had been a motion-picture actor, he could not have portrayed better the similitude of hate that was written on his face. A few strides and he had advanced toward our little audience, now keyed up to the highest pitch of excitement by the extraordinary exhibition.

"Of course," remarked Karatoff, as at a word Errol paused, still poising the dagger, "you know that under hypnotism in the psychological laboratory a patient has often struck at his 'enemy' with a rubber dagger, going through all the motions of real pa.s.sion. Now!"

No word was said by Karatoff to indicate to Errol what it was that he was to do. But a gasp went up from some one as he took another step and it was evident that it was Marchant whom he had singled out. For just a moment Errol poised the rubber dagger over his "victim," as if gloating. It was dramatic, realistic. As Errol paused, Marchant smiled at the rest of us, a sickly smile, I thought, as though he would have said that the play was being carried too far.

Never for a moment did Errol take from him the menacing look. It was only a moment in the play, yet it was so unexpected that it seemed ages. Then, swiftly, down came the dagger on Marchant's left side just over the breast, the rubber point bending pliantly as it descended.

A sharp cry escaped Marchant. I looked quickly. He had fallen forward, face down, on the floor.

Edith Gaines screamed as we rushed to Marchant and turned him over. For the moment, as Kennedy, Karatoff, and Gaines bent over him and endeavored to loosen his collar and apply a restorative, consternation reigned in the little circle. I bent over, too, and looked first at Marchant's flushed face, then at Kennedy. Marchant was dead!

There was not a mark on him, apparently. Only a moment before he had been one of us. We could look at one another only in amazement, tinged with fear. Killed by a rubber dagger? Was it possible?

"Call an ambulance--quick!" directed Kennedy to me, though I knew that he knew it was of no use except as a matter of form.

We stood about the prostrate form, stunned. In a few moments the police would be there. Instinctively we looked at Karatoff. Plainly he was nervous and overwrought now. His voice shook as he brought Errol out of the trance, and Errol, dazed, uncomprehending, struggled to take in the horribly unreal tragedy which greeted his return to consciousness.

"It--it was an accident," muttered Karatoff, eagerly trying to justify himself, though trembling for once in his life. "Arteriosclerosis, perhaps, hardening of the arteries, some weakness of the heart. I never--"

He cut the words short as Edith Gaines reeled and fell into her husband's arms. She seemed completely prostrated by the shock. Or was it weakness following the high mental tension of her own hypnotization?

Together we endeavored to revive her, waiting for the first flutter of her eyelids, which seemed an interminable time.

Errol in the mean time was pacing the floor like one in a dream. Events had followed one another so fast in the confusion that I had only an unrelated series of impressions. It was not until a moment later that I realized the full import of the affair, when I saw Kennedy standing near the table in the position Karatoff had a.s.sumed, a strange look of perplexity on his face. Slowly I realized what was the cause. The papers on which were written the requests for the exhibitions of Karatoff's skill were gone!

Whatever was done must be done quickly, and Kennedy looked about with a glance that missed nothing. Before I could say a word about the papers he had crossed the room to where Marchant had been standing in the little group about Edith Gaines as we entered. On a side-table stood the teacup from which he had been sipping. With his back to the rest, Kennedy drew from his breast pocket a little emergency case he carried containing a few thin miniature gla.s.s tubes. Quickly he poured the few drops of the dregs of the tea into one of the tubes, then into others tea from the other cups.

Again he looked at the face of Marchant as though trying to read in the horrified smile that had petrified on it some mysterious secret hidden underneath. Slowly the question was shaping in my mind, was it, as Karatoff would have us believe, an accident?

The clang of a bell outside threw us all into worse confusion, and a moment later, almost together, a white-coated surgeon and a blue-coated policeman burst into the room. It seemed almost no time, in the swirl of events, before the policeman was joined by a detective a.s.signed by the Central Office to that district.

"Well, doctor," demanded the detective as he entered, "what's the verdict?"

"Arteriosclerosis, I think," replied the young surgeon. "They tell me there was some kind of hypnotic seance going on. One of them named Errol struck at him with a rubber dagger, and--"

"Get out!" scoffed the Central Office man. "Killed by a rubber dagger!

Say, what do you think we are? What did you find when you entered, sergeant?"

The policeman handed the detective the rubber dagger which he had picked up, forgotten, on the floor where Errol had dropped it when he came out from the hypnotization.

The detective took it gingerly and suspiciously, with a growl. "I'll have the point of this a.n.a.lyzed. It may be--well--we won't say what may be. But I can tell you what is. You, Doctor Karatoff, or whatever your name is, and you, Mr. Errol, are under arrest. It's a good deal easier to take you now than it will be later. Then if you can get a judge to release you, we'll at least know where you are."

"This is outrageous, preposterous!" stormed Karatoff.

"Can't help it," returned the officer, coolly.

"Why," exclaimed Carita Belleville, excitedly projecting herself before the two prisoners, "it's ridiculous! Even the ambulance surgeon says it was arteriosclerosis, an accident. I--"

"Very well, madam," calmed the sergeant. "So much the better. They'll get out of our hands that much quicker. Just at present it is my duty."

Errol was standing silent, his eyes averted from the hideous form on the floor, not by word or action betraying a feeling. The police moved to the door.

Weak and trembling still from the triple shock she had received, Edith Gaines leaned heavily on the arm of her husband, but it was, as nearly as I could make out, only for physical support.

"I told you, Edith, it was a dangerous business," I heard him mutter.

"Only I never contemplated that they'd carry it this far. Now you see what such foolishness can lead to."

Weak though she was, she drew away and flashed a glance at him, resenting his man's "I-told-you-so" manner. The last I saw of them in the confusion was as they drove off in the car, still unreconciled.

Kennedy seemed well contented, for the present at least, to allow the police a free hand with Errol and Karatoff. As for me, Mrs. Gaines and Carita Belleville presented a perplexing problem, but I said nothing, for he was hurrying back now to his laboratory.

At once he drew forth the little tube containing the few drops of tea and emptied a drop or two into a beaker of freshly distilled water as carefully as if the tea had been some elixir of life. As he was examining the contents of the beaker his face clouded with thought.

"Do you find anything?" I asked, eagerly.

Kennedy shook his head. "There's something wrong," he hazarded.

"Perhaps it's only fancy, but I am sure that there is something with a slight odor in the tea, something tea-like, but with a more bitter taste, something that would be nauseous if not concealed in the tea.

There's more than tannin and sugar here."

"Then you think that some one present placed something in the tea?" I inquired, shuddering at the thought that we had run some unknown danger.

"I can't just say, without further investigation of this and the other samples I took."

"Still, you have eliminated that ridiculous dagger theory," I ventured.

"The police can never appreciate the part it played," Craig answered, non-committally, laying out various chemicals preparatory to his exhaustive a.n.a.lysis. "I began to suspect something the moment I noticed that those notes which we all wrote were gone. When we find out about this tea we may find who took them. Perhaps the mystery is not such a mystery after all, then."

There seemed to be nothing that I could do, in the mean time, except to refrain from hindering Kennedy in his investigations, and I decided to leave him at the laboratory while I devoted my time to watching what the police might by chance turn up, even if they should prove to be working on the wrong angle of the case.

I soon found that they were showing energy, if nothing else. Although it was so soon after the death of Marchant, they had determined that there could not have been anything but rubber on the end of the toy dagger which had excited the doubts of the detective.

As for the autopsy that was performed on Marchant, it did, indeed, show that he was suffering from hardening of the arteries, due to his manner of living, as Karatoff had a.s.serted. Indeed, the police succeeded in showing that it was just for that trouble that Marchant was going to Karatoff, which, to my mind, seemed quite sufficient to establish the therapeutic hypnotist as all that Gaines had accused him of being. Even to my lay mind the treatment of arteriosclerosis by mental healing seemed, to say the least, incongruous.

Yet the evidence against Karatoff and Errol was so flimsy that they had little trouble in getting released on bail, though, of course, it was fixed very high.

My own inquiries among the other reporters on the Star who might know something offered a more promising lead. I soon found that Errol had none too savory a reputation. His manner of life had added nothing to his slender means, and there was a general impression among his fellow club-members that unfortunate investments had made serious inroads into the princ.i.p.al of his fortune. Still, I hesitated to form even an opinion on gossip.

Quite unsatisfied with the result of my investigation, I could not restrain my impatience to get back to the laboratory to find out whether Kennedy had made any progress in his tests of the tea.

"If you had been five minutes earlier," he greeted me, "you would have been surprised to find a visitor."