RGL e-Book Cover©
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover©
The famous criminologist is hot on the trail of Artifex, arch-enemy of
society—a trail strewn with shattered lives and hopes. Kennedy in this
story discovers... an heiress caught in the net of a mysterious love-cult.
"IT'S planted—Professor Kennedy—all this talk of wild parties—and a love cult... I'm the victim of these newspaper detectives... My reputation—everything—at stake... You—you must help me!"
Eugenia Vance was plainly unstrung. At least twice a season she was good for a full-page spread illustrated by some of her bizarre work at her studio in Washington Mews. But this was publicity of quite a different sort.
It was just nine days since Vladimir Volsky, promoter of the Siberian Oil Concession, had been found dead, shot through the side, in a studio he had rented on Eleventh Street.
The case had all the customary details that go with the shooting of an elderly man who loves the white lights—pale blue kimonos, pink silk nighties, locked doors, no trace of the weapon. And the newspapers had indulged in the usual scandal stories, into which had been dragged the name of the "millionaire sculptress," as they chose to call Eugenia.
"Of course you know that the Volsky case has been taken up by the District Attorney's office and turned over to Chester Ormsby because he knows some of the people—knows me. I thought—"
She stopped as though hesitating to tell just what she thought.
"And—I don't want Chester to think—I can't have him think—Professor Kennedy, the newspapers have just simply run amuck... I can tell you—I think—where you'll find Volsky's missing valet, that Chinaman, Wong."
"Where?" asked Kennedy evenly, knowing well that only by letting loose the flood of pent-up feeling would Eugenia conquer her evident hysteria.
Instead, she sprang up with a stifled scream of alarm.
"Quick! He must not see me here! What excuse can I give him?"
I saw that she had caught a glimpse out of the window of a city automobile. Ormsby himself was stepping out.
Kennedy moved over and opened the secret exit to his laboratory.
"The Old Ship Café—foot of Christopher Street," she murmured, then darted into the passage.
CHESTER ORMSBY had just been appointed assistant district
attorney through the influence of Judge Pyle and I knew him
slightly. Up to this time his practice had consisted mostly in
the management of the Ormsby estate under the guidance of the
Judge, his father's partner, in the firm that still kept the old
name, Ormsby, Pyle & Ormsby. The fact was that Chester had been
also somewhat of an amateur composer. He wrote better music than
he did briefs. That had taken him into many circles of curious
culture.
Something was evidently not only racking Ormsby's mind, but clawing at his heart as he faced Craig haggardly.
"Could a girl—with a dual personality—murder a man—as her second self—and know nothing about it—as her real self?"
Framing the sentences with the care that a lawyer frames a hypothetical question for an expert witness, Ormsby leaned forward tensely, studying Kennedy's face as he built up each step in his hypothesis.
"If she did—would she—her real self—be guilty?"
Ormsby paused an instant, drew in his breath sharply, then went on without waiting for Kennedy's answer.
"Well, that is the problem I may have to face with Eugenia Vance. I don't know... sometimes she is not Eugenia Vance. She is another Eugenia. I think she is developing a dual personality—that the other Eugenia is absolutely irresponsible—hates me."
It was evident that Ormsby was only a degree less wrought up than Eugenia, and Kennedy adopted the same attitude to him.
"It's not only what I call Eugenia I and Eugenia II," he raced on, "but little Violet Vane, that little flapper who is sowing her wild oats, and Leonie Romaine, who owns the Eleventh Street house, Radcliffe, the writer, and Earl Hunter, the poster artist—they're all—queer, I tell you. Kennedy, have a look at them—tell me what you think."
It was evident that it was more than the mystery whether a love-crazed girl or jealous man was guilty. Ormsby feared it was Eugenia—and prayed it was not.
"I have a clue to where that missing valet, Wong, may be," remarked Craig quietly. "Would you like to come along?"
"You have? Where did you get it?" Ormsby was wide-eyed in amazement and admiration.
"Come along," said Kennedy tersely.
We piled into Ormsby's car.
WE were nearing the big city piers, when we turned a corner and almost ran into three other fellows.
"Hulloa—Kennedy," greeted Dunphy of the Narcotic Division, in plain clothes. "I saw' you the other day with Deputy O'Connor, the day you had that queer wireless apparatus at headquarters. But didn't get a chance to speak to you."
"What are you on now?"
"I've just found that drugs—synthetic cocaine, heroin, everything—are being smuggled in by the hundredweight. They used to sneak them off the ships. We broke that up. Now they're being landed from transatlantic freighters on their coastwise trips down from Boston to New York—fast motor boats go out into the Sound and the stuff is transshipped there."
Dunphy nodded to Ormsby. "We all know'," he confided, "that drug addiction is a vice as secret as the system by which the stuff is distributed. Addicts in groups know one another; agents in the same ring work together; dealers and smugglers of the same clique cooperate. But each clique, ring and group is separate and only the unseen manipulators appreciate it all. Now I'm on the trail of the man higher up—a secret agent—Dr. Heinrich Radke, at the Old Ship."
"And I," confided Kennedy in turn, "am on the trail of the missing Chink, Wong, in that Volsky case—also at the Old Ship!"
"Crossed trails!" laughed Dunphy. "Let's make it a party!"
"The Old Ship" was a disreputable looking frame building, a tavern of several generations ago, once historically famous, but now, like a decayed man-about-town, relegated to the company of those whom formerly he would have scorned. It had gone through the saloon stage, then the bootleg stage, and now a dirty sign proclaimed that only soft drinks ware sold. Even that change did not seem to have done much for its respectability.
Dunphy was hastily disposing the six of us for a sudden swoop on the place from every quarter, when suddenly there came a detonation that almost knocked us flat. A barrage of broken glass from a tenement missed us by only two feet. As it was, two of Dunphy's men were cut.
Kennedy and Dunphy did not wait to turn the corner and we followed. Apparently the whole rear of "The Old Ship" had been blown out by a mysterious explosion. It looked as if only his chance meeting with Kennedy had saved Dunphy and his men.
We waited impatiently while crowds gathered and police arrived to establish fire lines. It might have been foolhardy, but neither Kennedy nor Dunphy waited long. Their reward was finding the mangled body of Wong and whatever evidence there was of the drug ring headquarters absolutely wiped out.
Dunphy was a bit discouraged; but Kennedy did not seem to mind it in the least, even if all the clues were blotted out at the very outset. We stood aside from the wreckage and Craig took advantage of the opportunity to piece together the information of both the District Attorney's office and the police on the Volsky case.
Betraying nothing of the reason, he began by quizzing Ormsby on Eugenia.
"Why," Ormsby said excitedly, "it's almost as if someone had a mental mastery over her."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, you see, she belongs to a society—the Psychoanalysis Society. I've been with them—but by Gad!—they're far beyond me—at least I mean this particular group is. Weekends they often meet out at Romaine House, a queer, mysterious old house at Lloyd's Neck on Long Island."
"Romaine House?" repeated Dunphy curiously.
"Yes—belongs to Leonie Romaine—part of the Romaine estate—almost all there is left of it except the town house on West Eleventh Street. Leonie is really hand poor. She has rented out the town house for studios. That brings in a little money. It was one that Volsky rented. But about all she had left of the personal property is an old closed car and motor boat out on the Island which she rents for the summer with the house. Neither of them would be of any use to her if it weren't that she uses Eugenia's Japanese chauffeur, Zuki, a great deal."
Ormsby scowled disapproval of the highbrow panhandling. But I saw Dunphy's ears literally go up and I knew we should hear more from him of Romaine House.
"Then there is Henry Radcliffe," went on Ormsby.
"Professor Henry Radcliffe," from Dunphy sarcastically.
"Professor of psychoanalysis, he calls himself. He writes now and then for papers and magazines—a literary lion."
Ormsby's reaction was evident as he went on.
"Leonie writes, too—she eats this psychological raw meat. Leonie and Radcliffe are having a most fascinating—Dr—radical romance. They're supposed to be radically married—untrammelled, and all that sort of thing. Neither interferes with the career of the other."
"La—de—dah!" with Dunphy's sarcasm, while Ormsby frowned and cleared his throat.
"There's another one, too—Earl Hunter, the poster artist. He rents a studio from Leonie, right over Volsky's."
"He's another artistic genius," put in Dunphy, "always in need of money."
"H'm," ignored Ormsby. "And little Violet Vane—alternately model and show girl—now rehearsing in a production, 'Scandals of the Studios, 1922' or something. They are also—radically married—that is, on the door of the apartment are two cards, 'Miss Violet Vane', and 'Mr. Earl Hunter'."
"Very modern," nodded Dunphy.
"But who has this control over Eugenia, do you think?" recalled Kennedy.
Ormsby hesitated.
"Radcliffe?"
He shrugged. "Perhaps."
Ormsby was cautious, almost secretive. Yet his suspicion broke through at last.
"Often," he blurted out, "when she is the other Eugenia—it seems to me that Earl Hunter has the greatest influence over her."
"Earl Hunter? How does Violet regard that?"
Ormsby smiled. "Radically. She has bribed Zuki, the chauffeur to watch Eugenia and Earl."
Kennedy regarded him narrowly.
"No—on my word—I didn't—I would have no use for a fellow who puts a spy on a woman's trail. No, it was Violet—and can you blame her?" Ormsby paused, his face twitching at the thought of Hunter. "And tonight," he added bitterly, "they are both going to the notorious Studio Masque Ball. I—I wish I could—kidnap her!"
"I would like to see her—at her studio," considered Kennedy. "Can you frame some excuse for me?"
"No use to go to the studio. She is working on some setting for this pageant, 'The Dream Dance,' whatever it is, that they are to give at the Masque. You'll find her there—at Helicon Hall—find them, I mean. Drop in—everybody does."
"Very well. I'll happen along—and if you hear nothing to the contrary from me, I'll see you at the Masque tonight. So long, Dunphy. If you need for anything, call on me."
THROUGH the maze of downtown streets, we came at last to the Helicon. Outside stood a big English car, in charge of a dapper, alert son of Nippon.
"That must be her car and Zuki," muttered Craig.
We entered the hall and discovered several people there already. From scraps of conversation I gathered that "The Dream Dance" was to be a pagan pageant, a reincarnation, a sort of road to yesterday.
At the far end of the hall I could see a man whom I took to be Earl Hunter, standing erect, finishing a huge water-colored flat of scenery as backing to a group of nymphs and satyrs in plaster over which Eugenia in a smock was bending at work.
Unobtrusively Kennedy moved over toward the spot where Eugenia was working.
"A very effective combination of arts," he finally remarked.
Eugenia looked up quickly. Kennedy's eyes met hers—large, lustrous, liquid, even more compelling, I thought, than they had seemed at the laboratory. But there seemed to be an unaccountable hostility in her manner, now. There was a most amazing change from the girl who had almost begged for help. What was it, I wondered?
I studied her delicately moulded face, sensitive, not sensuous. Yet now she seemed inspired by an abandon as she worked on the odd setting, an abandon which I could not help feeling was utterly foreign to her true nature. Was this the "other" Eugenia, her artificial self?...
I did not neglect to appraise Earl Hunter—tall, spare, with thin sandy hair, small, close-cropped mustache, in every action an artistic affectation which gave me the impression of covering up a latent moral obliquity.
Hunter regarded Kennedy sourly as he drifted from praising the set as expressing the avatar dream life of the dancers to the more intimate subject of dreams themselves.
"The more I study dreams," remarked Kennedy keenly, "the more fascinated I am at getting at the real self underneath the artificial self."
I saw Eugenia shoot a covert glance at Kennedy. As for Hunter he was all sullen suspicion. His type and Kennedy's mixed like a cobra and a mongoose. Was Kennedy psychoanalyzing Eugenia herself, laying a foundation for a conflict, a war of wills?
Hunter, with his artistic ease, appealed to Eugenia, quite evidently to break up the tête-à-tête. Nor did Kennedy offer any resistance.
The moment Eugenia crossed to the other side of the set, Kennedy quietly nudged me between himself and them. It was not till then that I noticed a wicker table on which, among other things, was a handbag that must have belonged to her.
Quickly, Kennedy picked it up, snapped it noiselessly open. Out of the tail of my eye I made out that among other things there seemed to be a package of cigarettes in a gold monogrammed case. He removed a couple, then closed the bag, laid it down, and took a few paces forward.
"What do you think?" I asked under my breath.
He shook his head. "Think?" he muttered, edging toward the door, "I think if I can get Violet Vane in conflict with her, we would learn something!"
By the time we arrived at the Eleventh Street house, he had invented not only a plausible but an attractive excuse. We were agents of a producer who was contemplating a play, 'The Hidden Self' for Broadway.
Not only was Violet there, in the big living-room downstairs, but Leonie and Radcliffe as well, apparently engaged in some conference of which Violet was the center.
Ormsby's description had been accurate. Leonie was the typical artistic dilettante, with a shock of curly bobbed hair, soulful eyes, long-throated neck, and a stock of all the -isms and spasms that convulse the volcanic intellectual belt bordering her home. Radcliffe had the assurance of one who believed that everything bearing those mystic syllables "psycho" was his as if by trademark registered at the United States patent office.
In this fringe of culture, little Violet seemed ruled by the latest overwhelming emotion, in a state of constant mental ebullition. And, by the same token, at the mere mention of the mythical "Hidden Self," Violet spilled the beans.
"Why, you know, the Psychoanalysis Society down here gave a play last winter, an original sketch, 'Dreams.' It was weird, wonderful, exotic. Why, we had a character we called 'The Sinister Shadow.' He exerted a sort of malicious mesmerism over the other characters, just as I imagine you have a character in your play (although Kennedy had said absolutely nothing about anything of the kind) and seemed to drive them mentally in any direction he pleased. The climax comes when he exercises what we called 'The Death Thought.' And just fancy! Our pioneering is waking up Broadway!"
As we excused ourselves, having learned even more than we bargained for, I could not help exclaiming on the street, "Thinker fakers!"
Kennedy, usually dispassionate, was more tolerant. "Really, Walter, I feel sorry for that little girl. Radcliffe may be a sophist and Leonie may be blinded by the glitter. I'm thinking of Violet, and Hunter, and the fascination he excites in a certain type of woman who thinks she thinks. Hunter believes woman may be a creature of diaphanous draperies and man the eternal explorer of her charms. Maybe Violet's legitimate prey. But can we sit idly by and see Eugenia Vance drawn into it?"...
I spent the rest of the afternoon in a vain attempt to get more information from or about Zuki. Recalling what Ormsby had said, I felt nothing would be too desperate for Violet to attempt in order to hold Hunter.
I was rewarded by nothing better than my own thoughts. Somehow there stuck in my mind what Violet had told us about the play, about the "Sinister Shadow." I was obsessed by the idea of the "Death Thought." What did it mean to them? What potential hold had it? What might be this "Death Thought"—what modern mummery, twentieth century witchcraft, scientific obeah?
So I came at last to rejoin Kennedy at the laboratory that evening.
"I strongly suspect." he volunteered, "that Dunphy's case and mine are the same."
"You mean—Hunter may be the man higher up?"
Kennedy shrugged. "If the Romaine House out on the Island was the base, the stuff could be brought in in the Romaine car, even Eugenia's, by Zuki—or anyone. They'd need him for the motor boat, too."
"That would be lurid. Highbrow crooks of lowbrow vices!"
"Worse than that," remarked Craig gravely, and for the first time I noticed the genuinely sober cast of his face. "I believe," he said slowly, "that Artifex is back of it!"
"The Soul Slayer—again!" I gasped.
"Remember," Kennedy went on, "Artifex has discovered how to create out of crude coal tar—by replacing hydrogen atoms with the other elements and groups—compounds that have never existed in nature—compounds that have merely existed in the imagination of man—selective elixirs of the mind cells—made-to-order derivatives to produce any mental result he desires! Artifex has created a new chemistry—the chemistry of the mind. He has created an Artificial Soul! And, recall, with his malignant molecules his blows are against the very foundations of our social order!"
"But—what makes you suspect the mind chemist?"
Craig did not answer directly. "It is most remarkable, this Freud theory. I wonder it never occurred to anyone before to take advantage of it—in this way. What a fertile field there is here in discovering and playing on suppressed emotions!"
As Craig thought aloud, I began to realize how devilish might be the work of one who, like Artifex, delved under the surface of society.
"Now that I come to think of it," I exclaimed, "you struck a complex in Eugenia—in the very theory itself."
Craig smiled, as he broke one of the cigarettes which he had taken from the case in Eugenia's handbag.
"Try it," he offered, handing one half to me, at the same time lighting the other. I did the same.
"This smoke tastes differently from any tobacco I've ever smoked," I remarked doubtfully. "It's not unpleasant—just peculiar."
I soon felt the effect, however, although I cannot begin adequately to describe it. A subtle warmth seemed to penetrate my body. I had a sense of elevation. What a whole one, or more, of the cigarettes might have done I cannot say. There was a sensuous feeling of drifting along that overcame me as I relaxed on the cushioned chair.
I closed my eyes. It seemed to me that I was in the midst of an exquisite dream. I seemed carried along in a current of well-being. A beautiful face appeared. It was neither Eugenia's nor Leonie's—yet it was a composite of each, of features in each that I admired. At least I knew that she was sensuous—whoever she might be...
SUDDENLY, as though another stream of consciousness merged in
the pleasant river down which I floated, I recalled where we were
and why.
For a moment I felt a most intense horror and fear of the monster, Artifex. I seemed to see a shadowy figure... gradually it took form... I felt my flesh creep... It was Oriental... Zuki?... No... it seemed that the face was shifting as if the phantasmagoria was picturizing my own thoughts. Slowly the indistinct features became more blended and then distinct... and it was Radcliffe I saw... as plainly as if he had been standing in the opposite corner by Kennedy's laboratory table!
I leaped up with a start—eyes widened.
"What is it—that stuff?" I gasped.
"Some hypnotic—not in the sense of sleep producing, but rather will-destroying."
"But the name—are you familiar with the thing?"
"Yes—hashish!" he answered simply. "That is, at least it is a hashish composition. You know, there are five common narcotics used the world over—tobacco, opium, coca, the betel nut, and Indian hemp or hashish. Hashish may be smoked in the narghile, chewed, taken in a drink with alcohol, or eaten as a confection."
"It makes the nerves walk and dance and run, heightens feelings and sensibilities to distraction, produces what is really hysteria. If the day is bright, it means unbounded joy to the hashishen. If it is dark, then gloom almost to suicide. Fear becomes abject terror. Liking translates itself into passionate love."
"The real, natural stuff goes by a dozen names, in the Orient—cannabis indica, or bhang. It is what makes the coolie run amuck. It will make the highest type of mind run amuck. You experienced the dreams yourself, on just a bit of the stuff. But, remember, this is probably synthetic—and can be used in any way the maker wants."
I began to gather the significance of it. Perhaps, impatient over results of psychoanalysis, Artifex had used this physical, physiological aid in weakening the resistance of his victims. Again flashed over me the thought of the "Sinister Shadow" in the play. I saw how fear, once created, could be intensified into a "death thought."
In Artifex, now, I saw the incarnation of his god, Lucifer. For the thousandth time, it came to me that this was a deeper case than Kennedy had ever faced before. In it all I saw the inevitable conflict between spirituality and materialism, that thing which, for want of a better name, is often called the conflict between science and religion.
"Science amuck," remarked Kennedy as I haltingly expressed my feelings, "is far worse for the world than religion amuck. Religion is striving, however blindly and unmistakenly, upward. Science of this sort is plunging down—ruthlessly. Artifex, whoever he is, is the spirit of frightfulness... science without soul!" he exclaimed.
IT was late when we arrived at the Studio Masque at the Helicon. As a costume dance it was exotic, erotic. We were accepted as strangers who had been attracted either out of curiosity or interest in the "new art." I looked about keenly for Ormsby, but he was not in sight; at least I could not recognize him.
From the snatches of gay laughter and repartee, we gathered quickly that the climax which was building was the Dream Dance—a reincarnation of the bacchanal in the grove on the Aventine Hill when the women first admitted men to these rites of revelry hitherto monopolized by them.
Led by Eugenia, a superb figure of woman, in flowing Roman robe of shimmering white, there developed what might be best described as a riotous dance-poem in which each dancer expressed not some set series of steps, but rather interpreted in rhythm of movement the feelings that the bacchanalian music inspired in her personality.
Among the bacchantes I recognized Leonie, but I sought in vain for Violet. Earl Hunter, as Bacchus, made a classic figure, while before him, Radcliffe, his chief votary, presided over an altar covered with chalices of Bacchic ambrosia.
Momentarily the wild and mystic festival of Dionysus seemed duplicated—that is, to a degree. As all crowded forward I felt that what in the others was gross was in Eugenia, at least, graceful.
As they passed, the chief votary of the god of revelry was handing chalices to the bacchantes and the other votaries. The music and the rhythmic dance were working toward a climax. Each, with a chalice, poised, awaited the signal of the god.
Slowly Hunter, holding his cup in one hand, waved the other, rhythmically to signal the drinking orgy.
There was a hysterical scream of a woman—and a spectator strode forward, shouldering the dancers roughly out of his way. In an instant he had dashed the chalice from Eugenia's hand. It fell in a hundred bits on the floor.
Instantly the dance hall was in an uproar. Above the voices boomed the voice of Ormsby.
"Eugenia's chalice is drugged—with a sleeping draught!"
Silence succeeded.
"That other—of Bacchus—is poisoned!"
I shot a glance at Kennedy. Beside him was little Violet Vane, hysterically clutching him.
"I tell you, sir—" she chattered, "—I know! It's my dream—no, my intuition—I—I know! The professor needs Eugenia's money—her prestige! Outside—Zuki—the motor running—in here—the sleeping potion—a cave-man capture—off in the car—drugged—she will marry—or be compromised—they will have her fortune! He is using Earl—oh, save Earl from it—if you can!"
"Walter—keep her quiet—a moment," commanded Kennedy.
The next instant he was in the center of the astounded dancers. He picked up the chalice before Hunter, sniffed it, and his face clouded in perplexity. Was it poisoned? Holding it an instant, he raised it to his lips and tasted an infinitesimal drop.
"No—no—no—don't!" shrieked Eugenia, panic-stricken by the sudden tenseness.
Kennedy set the chalice down quickly, and picked up that which Radcliffe had set before him. Again he sniffed, made as though he would taste it, then set it down, dipped his finger in it, and quickly smeared it on Radcliffe's eye. Then he turned his face and peered into the eye.
"Dilating—just a trifle—deadly night-shade—atropa belladonna!"
A gasp swept over the crowd. The poisoned cup had actually been in the hands of Radcliffe. What did it mean?
I turned as Ormsby shouldered his way again through the panic-stricken revellers. Was it merely that I imagined, in the shadows of the lobby, that I saw a figure turn and slink away?
An instant and pandemonium broke loose among the masquers. I swung about to catch the arm of the hysterical Violet, but I was too late. She had sifted into the surging crowd. That moment of diversion had been enough. Neither Hunter nor Radcliffe were where I had seen them last. All I could see was Eugenia, appealing to Kennedy, as the one strong figure in the welter of unmasking.
Kennedy whispered a few earnest sentences to her. She wheeled, facing Leonie, and above the clamor I caught the words: "—and, Leonie,—back of it all—was Radcliffe!"
A surge of the milling crowd swept me away as I saw Eugenia grip herself, as it were.
The next few minutes were but a succession of panic-stricken faces until at last I found myself by chance at the side of Violet Vane. She was standing, dazed, in the lobby, reading a crumpled paper in her hand. I bent over and read:
"The mental mastery must end before it gives me the Death Thought.
"Eugenia."
"The car is still there, with the motor running. Where's Zuki?"
It was Ormsby, frantically dashing back front the street. Through the thinning crowd now pushed Kennedy.
"Where is she?" demanded Ormsby. "I thought she might be with you."
"No—what's that, Violet,—where did you get that?"
"Somebody crushed it into my hand—in the crowd."
We gazed at each other blankly. All had melted away except Violet and Leonie, who walked as though in a trance.
Who had prepared and marked the different chalices? As nearly as we could make out from the confused replies of Leonie and Violet, that work had been done by Hunter and Radcliffe themselves, assisted by Zuki, before the dance. There was no clue there.
All trace had been lost of Eugenia; it was certain she could not have fled in her deserted car. Nor could we gather anything of the whereabouts of Hunter, Radcliffe or Zuki. It was as though all had dropped out of existence. Or had the plot, hastily modified, been carried out in another way?
Quickly Kennedy decided to leave it to O'Connor and Dunphy to locate the missing masquers.
Ormsby remonstrated, but Craig insisted. "This is a case of locating missing persons. In that, no one without an organization can be half as efficient as the police with organization—provided the police want to do so badly enough. Just trust me, Ormsby."
THERE was nothing for Ormsby to do but curb his impatience
both during those early morning hours and, in fact, most of the
next day.
I thought, myself, Kennedy's nonchalance in the matter strange, but decided that he had other leads he intended working, and it was not until the evening that I met Craig at the laboratory.
"Dunphy's on the trail of Radcliffe. In his own vernacular, he expects to 'crash' him tonight."
"Where's Ormsby?"
"Ormsby's on a mission for me." The buzzer sounded at the door. "I'm expecting Leonie," motioned Craig.
"No trace of Eugenia?" she inquired anxiously as I admitted her.
Kennedy's implied negative did not tend to reassure her. "Do you think she could have—?" Her voice died off in uncertainty. Leonie seemed rudderless, drifting, without the guidance of the mind master.
Quite apparently she was concealing the conflict of Violet's accusation of Radcliffe's plot against Eugenia by clinging to the fact that the poisoned chalice had been in Radcliffe's hands. And indeed it was perplexing.
"I sent for you, Miss Romaine," shot out Kennedy in quick staccato, "because there is something that you haven't told—yet! Where is the headquarters of this Psychoanalysis Society?"
"Oh—down in the Village—I'll take you there—some time!"
It was no mere fancy that there was a nameless terror in her tone. She did not even pause to see whether Kennedy was in reality diverted from his question.
"Not long ago," she hastened, "we gave a play which we called 'Dreams.' It dealt with the uncovering of suppressed desires. You are familiar with the Freud theory, I imagine?"
"Tolerably," nodded Kennedy. "I think I was a pioneer in using it in criminology."
I wondered why he had put the answer so pointedly. But then I figured that there must be a reason. No one would ever have accused Leonie of suffering from an "inferiority complex." Perhaps it was in the nature of a dare.
"And that chauffeur, Zuki. Where did Eugenia get Zuki? Did he come well recommended?"
"Why... yes... he was a young Japanese... working his way through at the University. His doctor's thesis was, I believe, 'The Psychoanalysis of the Occult.'... He—Dr—was often at the Psychoanalysis Society... we tried to make it democratic and cosmopolitan... We even built a part into the play for him..."
"About this Society—" reverted Craig.
"We gave the play at the Village Theatre."
"All right, then. Tell me about it. When you were constructing the play, studying your parts and rehearsing—did anyone try psychoanalysis?"
"Why, yes... of course... practical work... what of it? Of course we studied the Freud theory... who does not, nowadays?"
Her defiance was now low and tremulous, in a frightened tone.
"Did Eugenia ever tell any of her dreams?" asked Kennedy directly.
"Yes... we all exchanged dream data."
"Do you remember any of them?"
Was she Freudian enough to know the betrayal of a hesitation? She had an exceptionally acute mind. But she was not quick thinker enough.
"Yes... Eugenia often dreamed of animals... of dogs, once of a serpent... and once of a mad bull. They frightened her... but fascinated, too... Many of her dreams, though, were about people... the poor. She was always interested in social work, you know, or reform... But it was the fear dreams that interested us."
"I take it, then," he queried, turning full toward her, "that you are a student of the Freud theory?"
"Y-yes," she hesitated, on guard. "You know, then, that the theory teaches that dreams give us the most reliable and intimate information concerning the individual. You know that dreams are all personal. You know that they often represent the realization of an unconsciously repressed wish."
He stopped an instant, but not long enough to give her a chance to reply. "I shall not attempt to interpret for you any dreams which either you or she may have had—the interpretation of the fears and morbid anxieties they probably showed. I do not know what... anyone... told you. Perhaps he told you only a part. But your answers to me show one thing—among many others. To me, they—you—show that, though you endeavor to conceal it, there is indeed a sinister shadow lurking in the depths of your own life!"
He watched the effect of the words "sinister shadow" on her. Her face was not able to conceal a certain shock. Evidently Kennedy had struck the truth.
"The fact is," raced on Craig, before she could resist, "somebody discovered the weaknesses, known and unknown, of you all. Then, it looks as if someone—by playing on those weaknesses—exerted a strange power!"
She could not meet his eyes... "Where is this place in Greenwich Village?" Craig shot out suddenly.
"But..." stammered Leonie, obsessed with fear, "there is no one there... now... In the afternoon... perhaps..."
The telephone interrupted. Kennedy answered, then turned to us. He fixed his eyes on Leonie.
"A message from Dunphy. The Romaine house—your house—on Lloyd's Neck—has been blown up and set on fire."
The girl started. Craig leaned forward: "There was nobody staying there—isn't that so?" he cried.
Leonie nodded—staring, crushed. "No one," she breathed...
Quickly my mind pieced the story together. The mystery house had been blown up to destroy evidence of the drug smuggling at the moment Dunphy was about to make a raid. Could it be that the staring, crushed girl before us was, with all her pretensions of modernism, merely an ignorant tool?
"Now... Miss Romaine," demanded Kennedy firmly, "the time has come to do what you have so far avoided. You must take us to that Psychoanalysis Society... quick!"
There was a dominance in Kennedy's tone and manner before which the last shreds of her resistance crumpled.
"Yes," she stammered, high-strung, almost on the verge of collapse, "I'll go... I'll go... It is in Minetta Lane... in Greenwich Village!"
Kennedy paused in the laboratory just long enough to hold a hasty telephone conversation with our old friend, O'Connor, now the third deputy and in charge of the detective bureau. We could not hear what he said in the booth.
Startled and excited, Leonie looked fearsomely about the laboratory at the strange scientific apparatus which Kennedy had collected in years of warfare of science against crime.
Craig took a small package from a closet where I knew he kept some of his newest and choicest apparatus, and we were off.
EVEN as Kennedy went into swift action I felt a half-formed fear. Could anyone be trusted? The thought flashed over me: Was Artifex playing now against us? Might Leonie prove to be really his alter ego? Had it all been a plant set out by Artifex to lure us on?
Kennedy was determined—even though the quest took us to the gates of Hell. And where Kennedy went I went.
Would it lead us to the headquarters, the workshop, the den of Hunter, of Radcliffe, of Zuki, or some master mind behind them? There, at least, Kennedy felt, would be some clue to the personality of Artifex.
Still Leonie's lips were sealed as if by some strange compulsion. A fearful conflict seemed to be raging within her. Or was it that she did not know, merely feared?...
Minetta Lane was one of those narrow, tortuous streets in that part of old New York south and west of Washington Square where crime and culture, poverty and aristocracy rub elbows.
The site of the Psychoanalysis Society was, to say the least, picturesque. It was reached through an alley after perhaps five minutes' walk into the heart of Greenwich Village.
Tremblingly, Leonie admitted us.
Here we were at last—in the secret haunt of Artifex!
It was half laboratory, half den and study—a strange combination of science and mysticism—Orientalism of Egypt, of the Near East, of India, of the Far East—Occidental scientific equipment that had a strong savor of the Continent.
Kennedy plunged at once into the examination of the curious scientific paraphernalia—seeking to unlock the secrets of Artifex—the psychological chemist—and his science of the soul.
"The devil—himself!"
Craig was examining a pile of blueprints that lay on a flat desk.
I looked over his shoulder and found that he was intently studying a diagram, his first clue to what he was here destandard* with a glass bulb with four apertures. The rest of it, however, I did not understand.
[* As in source file. Presumably a typographical error.]
But the lettering was plain enough to me—in sweeping capitals, white on blue—The Destroyer.
"What do you think it is?" I asked.
"A wireless incendiary," replied Craig in, for him, a startled tone. "A drawing of what may he called an igniting resonator!"
Vaguely I understood, but it was rather from the startled look on his face than from his words that I got the significance of the discovery.
"You know," quickened Kennedy, "in certain cases, radio telegrams have provoked fires from a distance. Probably these misdeeds of wireless gave Artifex his first clue to what he has here described. Why, Walter, so simple a thing as a broken metal strap about a cotton bale may be effective as even this elaborate apparatus. This fellow has studied the wide but obscure possibilities of combustion under the most ordinary conditions of household and industrial life..."
"But," I gasped, still with my eye full of the word on it, "but—Craig... 'The Destroyer.' What does it mean?"
"Mean? I could tell you better if f knew more of this Artifex—and his ideals. Were he a Bolshevist, I would say that his idea was to place one of these igniting resonators in every factory... Sabotage could go no further! Were he an imperialist, I could say that with deadly germ bombs equipped with this device, he might plan to engulf a whole nation with one sweep of wireless impulses in a pestilence that would wipe it out, and render powerless an army of physicians ten times greater than all our medical schools could turn out in a decade!
"I suspect... I suspect that this Artifex has some international record, some secret-agent scheme of world terror. Perhaps, in an age when we talk of disarmament—and know that wars of the future must be waged with chemicals, with poisons, with gases, with fatal disease germs—perhaps his Destroyer is a simple instrument and cheap, a marvelous war engine designed to give world supremacy in that war which will follow mythical disarmament?"
My head was spinning with the immensity of the idea.
"Conditions after the World War, Walter, have bred an entirely new' species of criminal," he went on, "the enemy of society itself. The criminal of the past felt himself a criminal—hunted. Today... he hunts!
"And here, the Destroyer—the wireless incendiary—the igniting resonator—this elaborate little apparatus by which combustion—and hence explosion—can be started at a distance by an electric wave—this is in the hands of an enemy of society—an enemy of America!"
Leonie tiptoed over beside us.
"The fact is," added Kennedy, awed himself as he considered the possibilities, "there is no probing the depths of a mind at once capable of conceiving the corruption of what should be the highest level of our society, to undermine it, for whatever may be his racial, or imperial, or social purpose... and at the same time conceiving a war-engine, like this Destroyer, as violent physically as his corruption is insidious socially!"
Slowly he swept his eyes over the room. "And," he added, "without a doubt—one of these resonators—is hidden here—for protection in case of a raid—just such as we are making!"
It was an idea that seemed never to have entered Leonie's mind.
"Mr. Jameson!" she shrilled. "The door!"
I sprang to it. It had automatically locked!
Frantically I beat it. It was steel, grained to resemble wood!
The walls were concrete! Windows there were none—and already I could sense that the system of automatic ventilation was failing!
"No air! How long can we breathe?"
Just then the telephone tinkled, almost as if by induction. Kennedy answered it. Over it came a mocking laugh.
"You shall live... just long enough for me to get to my secret central station from which I fired the 'Old Ship' and Romaine House!"...
As Kennedy repeated the mocking message, Leonie seemed transformed. Her face was like a study of cyclone sky. I saw the struggle within herself. Though she did not know Artifex—she feared him as medieval man feared Satan. And the desertion of everyone about her yesterday was tearing her heart in a conflict of fear and faithfulness.
"Someone... Radcliffe... had learned his power!" she vibrated intuitively. "So... he must use one of his creatures to remove him... then remove that creature... Now... I... you are his instruments!"
Kennedy glanced sidewise at me. This was no time for philosophizing. He was over by the lone electric light socket. Frantically I jiggled the telephone receiver hook. Somehow the telephone wire had been disconnected or cut. I looked about in despair and was about to exclaim.
"Thank heaven," remarked Kennedy calmly, "they've left us the lighting circuit!"
With that—the light flashed out!
Leonie screamed, but, closer to him, I could feel that he was unscrewing the lamp from its socket and connecting something in its place.
Above the hysterical breathing now of Leonie I heard Kennedy.
"O'Connor! O'Connor! Are you there?"
Was Craig crazy—talking to thin air in this huge tomb—with that deadly Destroyer hidden somewhere—at any moment about to blow us to eternity?
"We're prisoners... in that Society room I told you about... Bring that apparatus... Yes... Hurry... We may be blown to hell... any moment!"
"Wh-what is it?" chattered Leonie, who had groped her way through the darkness and was now clinging to the very Kennedy she feared.
"De Forest's new wireless telephone. Wherever there's an electric light circuit, you can attach this new radiophone... and talk. I took the precaution... weeks ago when I first experimented with it... to have a receiver placed in headquarters... by my friend O'Connor. Every electric light socket is a potential transmitter!"
Its wonders seemed small help to me. I paced up and down, tripping on rugs, stumbling over furniture in my excitement—overturning a stand of test-tubes with a crash of glass. It was a race of death—O'Connor against Artifex! Was it a losing race? Would O'Connor come prepared? How battle against steel and concrete?
We were trapped!
Her hands pressed to her throbbing temples, Leonie crouched back, as Kennedy stripped the veneer off the social set that she had believed so modern... and demonstrated how they had been merely puppets in the hands of one who... by his drugs... his philosophy... drove people headlong in a riot of primal passions... to what?
"You did not know... but you know now... there is something back of it all in this case... some terrible personality that lurks behind all these events—one who calls himself Artifex!"
Leonie listened, wide-eyed, aghast.
"You mean," she whispered hoarsely, "that our thinking—our lives—were not our own—were his—were created and changed by—those drugs—that it was Hunter against Radcliffe—Eugenia against myself—pawns in his game—played against each other to save himself—as he is now playing you—against me—that he may go on in his frightful scheme?"
"I mean just that," emphasized Kennedy. "I mean that in one girl, Eugenia, among the most talented I have ever met, he was changing a wholesome personality into a dud personality—an artificial self—fashioning what was to be one of his worst and most potent weapons!"
Leonie's voice rose shrilly as, sweeping in on her, came a realization of the fact that what she had stamped "sterling" was a base counterfeit.
"But who—which is Artifex?" I broke in insistently. "You must know!"
She laughed in hollow hysteria. It was as though Leonie herself was but a part of some maleficent influence which even now she could not throw off.
I heard a hissing at the door. An instant later a sharp piercing flame shot out! There was a shower of sparks in the darkness, like a pyrotechnic display.
"My God!" screamed Leonie. "The Destroyer!"
Kennedy was unruffled.
Along the outline of the door the shower of sparks traced and, with a rush of relief, I realized that Craig had provided O'Connor with an oxyacetylene blow torch—and that it was cutting the steel as if it were a knife!
Tense the seconds followed as the knife of flame traveled about the sheet-steel, bolt-studded door.
At last it fell in. A shadowy figure leaped through and gripped Kennedy.
"Great work—O'Connor!" triumphed Craig.
The deputy flashed about his pocket electric bull's-eye—then, with the second nature of a detective to make a search, started over toward the laboratory table.
"No—Chief—no! Beat it!—Beat it!" shouted Kennedy, seizing him.
Outside we found a tense group.
"Here he is," growled Dunphy, "Radke—Radcliffe!"
Leonie screamed.
But in my astoundment I had eyes for only a group of three back of the detectives. Ormsby had his arm about, supporting, Eugenia, who clung to him. Beside her stood a tall, distinguished-looking man, who I knew must be her father, Junius Vance, the banker...
AS Kennedy with outstretched arms forced us all back rapidly,
I caught in hasty fragments answers to my questions from the
changed Eugenia.
In the shock after the Dream Dance, she had thrown herself on Kennedy's care. Instantly she had felt the war of wills between him and someone else. In the mêlée he had spirited her through a side entrance, into a cab, and not to her studio, but to her family house.
Leonie, close beside me, caught the last explanation.
"But... how about the note... the Death Thought?"
"I wrote it—myself," panted Kennedy, pressing us hack. "She put herself in my care... I meant that she should have one day... at least... to throw off that artificial... drug."
As we struggled into the alley, I heard Leonie inquire about Violet from the unsympathetic Dunphy.
"She?... She has her Earl... I dropped him at Eleventh Street... where she can collect her radical alimony!"
Ormsby wedged himself between Eugenia and the danger behind us.
"And Chester," she murmured. "There'll be no card with a maiden name on a studio door... I'm Mrs. Ormsby!"
It was like a motion picture cut in three-foot flashes. In the hurly-burly I found myself beside Radcliffe, with Dunphy and O'Connor ahead and only Kennedy just at our heels.
All the intellectual swank of Radcliffe was lost in the captured Radke.
"That poisoned chalice—and now the police!" he muttered to himself.
Instantly I got it. He was between the devil, Artifex, and the deep sea, the law.
We were just emerging toward the street lights at the end of the alley in Minetta Lane when Radcliffe unexpectedly turned, reached out in desperation, seized Kennedy, shoved him aside.
"Craig! No!"
I braced myself, flinging myself before Kennedy as he turned after him. Radcliffe disappeared into the blackness.
"He's got it—the Death Thought—too!" Kennedy panted as O'Connor came abreast, flanking him on the other side and holding him back...
There was a terrific detonation... flinging us all three in a promiscuous heap.
Radcliffe had retraced his steps down the alley just far enough to be caught in the explosion in which the secrets of the den of Artifex were blown to atoms.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.