The unknown seven A detective story
reason to believe that I was involved in a huge counterfeiting project.”
“What!” exclaimed Cole. The doctor’s revelation went beyond what he had
learned from The Unknown Seven.
“To eliminate all risk the gang decided to take a short cut,” Latham
went on. “Instead of taking the gold to Uncle Sam’s mint they set up
a mint of their own. In a short time the country will be flooded with
spurious gold coins that are practically indistinguishable from the
real.”
“And you have kept silent all this time?”
“What did I tell you about the fragile quality of our veneer of
intelligence? I went to Carmody’s house and told him of my suspicions.
The old fox said nothing for a time, but merely smiled that freezing
smile of his. Then he took me to a small room on the second floor.
There sat Reeves, a gibbering maniac. Carmody bluntly accused me of
having performed the operation that deprived him of his reason and
smoothly suggested that it might be well for me to keep my suspicions
to myself.”
“Carmody went on talking, mentioning among other things that it was
on record that I had performed an operation on Reeves’ skull. Call me
a simpleton if you like, but the professor’s words sank in. I guessed
that a second operation had been performed under cover of the original
one, but I had no means of proving it. I could see nothing but ruin
and disaster ahead. The only one who had witnessed my operation was
the nurse, and I could expect no help from her. I argued and argued
with myself, but, in the end, I decided to say nothing, at least for a
time. Sooner or later I suppose I should have spoken, but just then I
played the coward’s part. I was very neatly caught. In what was left of
Reeves’ mind was a picture of myself, as he had seen me when he woke
up in the midst of the operation. Occasionally, when the recollection
came back to him, he would shriek my name. The second operation, on the
other hand, had been performed under circumstances so deftly arranged
that they had left no impression whatever. There, my friend, you have
the whole story. Sounds like a travesty, eh? I shan’t feel at all hurt
if you refuse to believe me.”
Cole had no reason to doubt him. What Latham had told him coincided at
various points of contact with what he had learned at the headquarters
of The Unknown Seven. He could piece out the rest. Agents of The
Unknown Seven had kidnaped Reeves from the Carmody residence and taken
him to headquarters. There he had been placed under Doctor Ballinger’s
care, and Ballinger had gone through with the pretense of trying to
restore Reeves’ mental functions. Only one contradiction remained.
Since Reeves was in the hands of a physician who was friendly to the
gang and could be depended upon to destroy any symptoms of returning
sanity in Reeves, why had it been thought necessary to kill him?
Ballinger himself evidently shrank from such a coarse crime as murder.
He must have had several chances to kill Reeves by safe and subtle
means, and yet the hunchback had been commissioned to do the crime. Why
had Reeves been killed?
For a while the answer to that question eluded Cole. Then he recalled
something Carlin had told him. After Reeves had been under Ballinger’s
care for a time, without showing any signs of improvement, it had been
suggested that he should be removed to a hospital and a consulting
physician called in. Evidently Ballinger had seen a danger to himself
in that suggestion, and so the murder had been decided upon.
“I have no reason to doubt you,” Cole said. “I don’t know but what I
would have acted pretty much the same if I had been in your place. I
think, though, that you have done a lot of needless worrying. Ballinger
is not at all confident of being able to fasten the second operation on
you.”
“How is that?” asked Latham quickly.
“I can’t tell you, but I have every reason to believe that Ballinger
is afraid of what an autopsy on the body might show. Not being a
scientific man I can’t grasp the details. All I know is that Ballinger
is so anxious to prevent an autopsy that he is having the body spirited
away.”
Latham’s hand left the tiller, and the boat lurched dangerously. In a
moment he had regained control of it.
“Unless I am a very poor guesser,” Cole went on, “the body is on the
yacht ahead of us. They are taking it to a place where it can be safely
destroyed. It’s hard to do such things in the city.”
Latham stared at him speechlessly through the dusk. The wind had
increased, and the waves were swishing and churning against the bow of
the little craft.
“It may be Ballinger is suffering from an uneasy conscience,” the
doctor murmured. “That’s one of the things that happen when the veneer
of intelligence cracks. Conscience makes a man do queer things.
However, if your guess is right——”
He stopped short, at the same time peering sharply ahead. Suddenly his
hand went out, and the chugging of the motor ceased.
“The chase is over,” he said.
Cole followed his glance. The yacht, with sails lowered, was turning
into a small inlet.
“And here is where the excitement begins,” he declared.
CHAPTER XXI
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
While Doctor Latham fastened the boat, Cole’s eyes swept the black
masses of wooded hills that slanted upward at a sharp angle from the
river bank. At the apex of the tallest peak a light gleamed, but
otherwise there was no sign of human habitation on this side of the
river. The lights of a town twinkled across the foaming welter of
waves, and they helped Cole to fix their location. They were in one
of the wildest and most rugged sections of Dutchess County. The peak,
on which the solitary light shone, had once been a popular pleasure
resort, and in the old days a cable railway had carried week-end
excursionists to the top. Of late, what with the dry era and the
public’s fickle fancy, the place had lost its popularity, and the
buildings on the peak were falling into decay. The ruggedly romantic
setting seemed an ideal one for the kind of adventure Cole anticipated.
With the doctor at his heels, he moved cautiously toward the point
where the yacht had anchored a short distance ahead. Of a sudden they
stopped. The crack of a pistol rose sharply above the whine of the wind.
“Only a signal, I think,” said Cole, after waiting tensely for a few
moments.
They advanced a little farther, then stopped on a slight elevation from
which they had an unobstructed view of the yacht. In the lights from
the craft they saw a number of men going ashore, and several of them
were carrying a bulky object. Their faces were not recognizable at that
distance, but Cole thought there were about a dozen in all.
“We may have quite a lively tussle,” he observed in an undertone. “I
could have brought a few helpers along, but safety doesn’t always lie
in numbers.”
“I like this better,” said Latham. “If there were more of us there
might not be enough thrills to go around. Where are we?”
“That place, up there in the clouds, where you see the light, is called
Dutchess Point. I believe there is a car coming down. That’s probably
what the pistol shot meant.”
A light was treading its way in a zigzagging course down the side of
the hill. Soon were heard the chugging of motors and the metallic snarl
of brakes. The two men waited until the car reached the group that had
come off the yacht. As soon as the loaded vehicle started to retread
its path up the hill they followed. It proved a hard climb, and they
reached the top a full half hour behind the car.
The apex was composed mostly of huge flat rock, with here and there a
few scrawny trees. There were half a dozen buildings scattered about,
and in the largest one several lights had appeared by the time the two
climbers reached the top. They stood in a dark spot behind a little
cluster of starving hemlocks. No one was in sight, but the sound of
voices drifted out to them through the open windows of the large
building.
“Hear that noise?” whispered Latham. “What do you suppose it is?”
Cole listened. A gentle, rhythmic whirring was heard. He looked down at
his feet, for it seemed to come from underground.
“Machinery,” he said, and suddenly he remembered the words spoken by
Malcolm Reeves in his insane glee: “Yellow—pretty yellow.” The whirring
noise that he heard, as he stood there under the hemlocks, brought them
back to his mind.
“Look!” said Latham suddenly.
Cole, following his pointing finger, glanced upward. The large
building, he now noticed, was equipped with a high tower, and near its
top a light had appeared in the last few moments. At the lighted window
a face was dimly discernible. Cole strained his eyes at the point of
illumination, and suddenly he gripped his companion’s arm.
“It’s a woman, Latham!”
The doctor gasped. “It must be Miss Brownell, then!”
The two men continued staring upward. Their imaginations touched up the
dim and remote picture which they saw with their eyes. The face was
very white, thought Cole, and the eyes held a look of terror. She was
looking downward; their glances met somewhere in mid-air, and yet she
appeared not to see the two watchers below.
“What shall we do?” asked Latham.
“You stay here,” said Cole. “I’m going to look around a bit.”
He slipped away among the trees, avoiding the open space in front
of the building. The tower was in the rear, overlooking the steep
incline, and he moved in that direction. He looked up a sheer wall
to where the light shone. To climb up there was out of the question,
for the blank wall offered no hold for either hands or feet. He moved
cautiously toward the front entrance. For a moment he listened outside
the sagging door, then boldly pushed it open and entered.
He was in a dark corridor. Under one of the doors at the side was a
thin wedge of light. A number of voices issued from it; evidently a
conference of some kind was in progress. Knowing that the stairway
leading to the tower must be in that direction, Cole tiptoed farther
down the hall. A bold and reckless move, he had learned from
experience, was often more effective than a thought-out plan. Before he
could do anything else Miss Brownell must be rescued. His hands were
tied, as long as she was held as a hostage by the gang. Once she was
out of harm’s way he could proceed against them as ruthlessly as he
pleased.
He came to the end of the hall, and there he brought up against another
door. He opened it, almost sure that it must lead to the stairs, but
instead he found himself in a large, square room. A small electric
bulb glowed in the ceiling, and in its light he caught a glimpse of a
forbidding figure guarding a door at the farther side. The sentinel was
thickset and broad-shouldered. His bushy brows seemed top-heavy for his
very small eyes which glared out at Cole in a startled way.
“Stop right where you are!” he commanded, at the same instant reaching
for his hip pocket. As his fingers closed around the handle of an
automatic, Cole lunged forward. His fist landed with explosive force in
the man’s face, and he fell to the ground without a sound.
“Sorry, old top, but it had to be done,” Cole told the insensible man,
as he opened the door which the fellow had been guarding. Before him
was a winding stairway that seemed to extend upward interminably. Very
quickly Cole lifted the man through the door and stretched him out
along the steps, then drew the door to.
He hurried up the stairs. The long ascent would have exhausted a weaker
man, but Cole’s lungs and muscles were in the pink of condition. At
length, panting a little, he reached the top. Before him was a door. He
rapped, and footfalls crossed the floor within.
“Who’s there?” demanded a voice which he recognized as Miss Brownell’s.