The unknown seven A detective story
his emotions, and that’s where your psychology fell down. No matter!
You’ll get him next time.”
Cole walked away, a faint twitching at the corners of his lips. In
the main Doctor Ballinger’s analysis had been correct. He had only
forgotten to mention one little detail. Just as the traitor’s mind
had outstripped his emotions, so had Cole’s alert glance outstripped
both. For just an instant Ballinger had shown all the symptoms of acute
terror. He had shaken them off with superb self-control, but not before
Cole’s eye had registered his momentary confusion.
The revelation that Ballinger was the traitor had given Cole a shock
at first. The doctor was one of the last men in the organization whom
he would have suspected of treachery. Having found him out, Cole saw
no reason for apprising the doctor of the fact. He preferred to let
Ballinger lull himself into a false security until he should show his
hand more plainly. Neither did it seem advisable to Cole to take the
other members into his confidence in regard to his discovery. It would
be hard to keep a secret among so many, and the more hotheaded ones
among them would probably demand drastic action.
As inconspicuously as he could, Cole left the others and withdrew to
the room that had been pointed out to him as his private office. It was
small and comfortable and devoid of the drabness that characterizes
the workroom of the average executive. There was a vase containing red
roses on the desk, and he noticed that the pictures on the wall had
been carefully chosen. He stretched himself out in the swivel chair and
rocked in an experimental way. His glance fell on three white buttons
affixed to the side of the desk. He pushed the one nearest him, just to
see what would happen.
The door opened, and in strode the biggest negro Cole has ever seen.
“Who are you?” he inquired.
“Sambo, sah.”
“And what’s your job, Sambo?”
“Just now mah bussiness is to answer dese heay bells, sah. Dat ain’t
mah reg’lar job, though, but Rufus is done laid up in the hosspittle,
and I’se takin’ his place.”
“What happened to Rufus? Sick?”
“Yas, sah. Mighty sick, sah.” Sambo grinned expansively. “You ought to
know, boss, ’cause you made him sick yusself. Dat was an a’ful wallop
you handed Rufus, sah.”
Cole smiled reminiscently, as he recalled one of the numerous
experiences that had enlivened his first visit to the establishment of
The Unknown Seven.
“Too bad about Rufus,” he remarked. “Now, Sambo, I want you to find
Mr. McKendrick and ask him to come here at once.”
“Yas, sah.” With a profound bow Sambo waddled out.
McKendrick, one of the young operatives with whom Cole had chatted
since the dinner, appeared after a brief wait. He had a clear eye, a
whimsical expression about the mouth that had appealed to Cole on first
sight, and a firmly molded chin.
“Go into the main office,” Cole directed. “You will find a dictaphone
in the ventilator shaft. The wire apparently runs out on the roof.
Trace it to the other end, then report to me.”
“Very well, sir.” As McKendrick walked out, Cole noticed with approval
the easy swing to his shoulders. Once more he touched the nearest
button, and Sambo appeared almost instantly.
“Find Sloane and tell him I want him,” Cole directed.
Sloane entered in a few moments. With his keen intellectual features
and shell-rimmed spectacles he looked a good deal like a college
professor.
“Sloane,” began Cole, “I want you to go to the block in which Doctor
Latham resides. Somewhere in the neighborhood, in a basement entrance
across the street, perhaps, you’ll find a young chap of dilapidated
appearance who answers to the name of Tony Pinto. He’s been watching
the doctor’s house for the past twenty-four hours and must be sadly in
need of food and sleep. Tell him I have sent you to relieve him.”
“I understand perfectly, sir.”
Cole gave him a few more instructions, and then Sloane withdrew. Again
Cole pressed the button, this time to summon a man whom he instructed
to make a thorough search all over the establishment for hidden disks
and wires. When the man had gone, Cole leaned back in his chair and
pondered. He had set the machinery in motion, but the hardest task he
had reserved for himself. Something had to be done very soon about the
body of Reeves. What to do with it was a problem that would demand all
his resourcefulness. Too, a watch must be kept over Doctor Ballinger,
and Cole did not like to delegate that business to any one else. He
expected to learn a great deal from the unsuspecting doctor’s movements
during the next twenty-four hours.
He was deep in thought when a knock sounded on the door. In response to
his rather brusque “Come in,” Miss Brownell entered.
“I’ve been thinking,” she announced.
“So I see,” said Cole, placing a chair for her. Miss Brownell, he
observed, was one of the few women whom he had met who could wear a
thoughtful frown becomingly. Where another woman’s forehead would have
wrinkled, hers merely rippled.
“You have been doing a lot of thinking yourself,” she remarked,
regarding him with that curious impersonal glance of hers.
“Yes, but mostly in the dark,” Cole admitted. “I’m pretty much in the
same fix as the man who walks into a theater in the middle of the
second act. The only thing that’s clear so far is that the principal
actors in this drama seem to be doctors.”
“You refer to Latham and Ballinger, of course. There is still another
doctor involved.”
“Still another? Who is he?”
“In a sense he is the real instigator of the plot, although he died one
hundred and thirty-eight years ago.”
Cole blinked bewilderedly. “Sounds rather ghostly.”
“His name was James Price, an English physician of high repute, who
discovered a method of transforming baser metals into gold. You can
read up on him in history or the biographical encyclopedias, if you
like. He wrote a book entitled ‘An Account of Some Experiments,’ but
it has been out of print a long time and copies are hard to obtain.
Professor Carmody owns one of the few still in existence.”
“Oh!” said Cole, elevating his brows. “So that’s what the mystery is
about? But you don’t mean to tell me that sane men like Latham and
Ballinger are dabbling in the exploded myth of alchemy?”
“I do. And that myth, by the way, seems to die very hard, Mr. Cole.
It’s been exploded and reëxploded since the dawn of history, and yet it
keeps bobbing up every now and then.”
Cole gave a little impatient shrug. “It’s rubbish,” he declared. “I
have managed to forget most of the things I learned at school, but I
seem to recall that modern science has absolutely established the fact
that one element cannot be transformed into another.”
She looked at him amusedly. “We women always smile when you men speak
of absolute facts. The phrase is so delightfully characteristic of
the sterner sex. And the world has moved since you went to school,
Mr. Cole. Science has hedged and quibbled and reversed itself a good
many times on the subject of the transformation of metals. It wasn’t
so very long ago that some one discovered that radium can be produced
from helium, or was it the other way round? Anyway, right there is an
instance of the transformation of one element into another.”
Cole opened his lips to speak, but seemed unable to find the right
words.
“I was telling you about James Price,” Miss Brownell went on. “He
claimed to have discovered a method whereby he could transform sixty
parts of mercury into one part of gold. He was rather secretive about
his discovery and hedged it about with a lot of mystic hocus-pocus.
About all that is definitely known is that a mysterious red powder
figured prominently in the process. The red powder was mixed with
mercury and fluid borax, and the concoction was then put in a crucible
and stirred with an iron rod. The result was gold.”
“The iron rod must have been a magic scepter,” suggested Cole dryly.
“Perhaps; anyway the Royal Society of England got interested in Price’s
experiments and made an investigation. A committee of England’s
foremost scientists went to his laboratory, firmly expecting to expose
Price as a faker or lunatic. I can imagine the long, bewhiskered faces
of those learned old fogies when they put the gold through an assaying
process and found that it proved genuine in every respect.”
Cole’s pupils dilated a trifle, but he looked still dubious.
“What I have told you is a matter of history, amply documented and
supported by incontrovertible evidence,” declared Miss Brownell. “There
can be no doubt but that Price produced a form of gold that proved
genuine on assay. I am now coming to the strangest part of the story.
Having solved this problem, that has tantalized scientific minds since
the beginning of history, Price turned a sort of mental somersault.
Just what happened to him has never become definitely known. Some
still insist that he was a faker, despite the tests that were made.
Others believe that his mind collapsed under the strain, and that he
went insane. That seems to be nature’s way of punishing those who peep
behind the curtain of the unknown, and Price was neither the first nor
the last to go mad on the subject of gold. Still others think that
gold became an obsession with him, a sort of monomania, and that he
could not endure the thought of sharing his discovery with others. Then
there are those who cling to the theory that his production of gold was
nothing but an accident.”
“What happened?” asked Cole.
“The committee of scientists wanted to learn Price’s formula and asked
him to repeat the experiment in their presence. Price refused on the
pretext that his supply of red powders was exhausted. Shortly afterward
he committed suicide by drinking laurel water. It has been generally
supposed that his secret died with him. His book is somewhat vague
in regard to the composition of the red powders. Repeated attempts
have been made to learn exactly what they consisted of, but without
success. Last year, however, Professor Carmody returned from abroad
after browsing in the libraries of the Old World for many months. He
brought back with him a number of faded and forgotten manuscripts, said
to be in Doctor Price’s handwriting. Where he found them, and how he
got possession of them we don’t know, but we do know that they gave him
a clew to the secret which Price guarded so jealously.”
“How do you know?” demanded Cole.
“Our organization has eyes and ears everywhere. However, it was mostly
through accident that we learned what was on foot. I shan’t bore you
with the details. Carmody saw a chance to become enormously rich by
manufacturing gold on a large scale, using Doctor Price’s formula. But
he needed money to swing the enterprise, and so he guardedly approached
a number of wealthy men with a scheme for multiplying their fortunes
many times. Besides he knew that he lacked the executive ability
required to engineer a project of such magnitude. He talked to Malcolm
Reeves so engagingly that Reeves was smitten with the gold fever and
supplied a great portion of the cash that he needed. No doubt he
enlisted the assistance of other rich men in a similar manner. The lure
of gold is a terrible thing, Mr. Cole.”
“A curse,” said Cole. “But what about Latham?”
“Latham is an extremely clever and very versatile man. Though he
practices medicine he has dabbled in various sciences. Perhaps
Carmody needed his assistance in solving some of the problems that he
encountered in working out Price’s formula. However that may be, we
know he has been very close to Professor Carmody for several weeks.”
“Then you think Carmody is the moving spirit in the enterprise?”
“No; Carmody merely supplied the formula and his scientific knowledge.