The unknown seven A detective story
Pistol in one hand, Cole proceeded cautiously down the stairs. They
were dark, and the constant winding made progress difficult. He had
discovered that Miss Brownell was brave and resourceful, but he would
breathe more easily when he had got her out of harm’s way.
They reached another turn, and suddenly the girl stumbled and lurched
violently against him.
“Ouch!” she moaned, trying to repress an exclamation of pain. “My
ankle! I think I twisted it.”
Cole cursed softly as he gathered her in his arms. Her figure was
writhing in the throes of physical distress.
“As I told you once before,” she complained mockingly, trying to make
light of the injury, “you are not at all gallant. Almost any other man
would have welcomed the chance.”
Cole muttered something under his breath. A dislocated ankle
complicated a situation that was already critical enough, but the
girl’s superb behavior stirred him to unwilling admiration. His fears
were all for her, not for himself. He was almost at the foot of the
stairs now. If he could only get her safely out of the building and
place her in Doctor Latham’s care. If only——
Abruptly he stopped before a door. With his burden in his arms he had
reached the foot of the stairs. For a moment he stopped and listened,
but all seemed quiet on the other side. An involuntary moan of pain
told that Miss Brownell was suffering intensely. Balancing her on his
shoulder he reached out a hand and pushed the door open.
Instantly he felt a premonition that something was wrong. The sentry,
whom he had left unconscious at the door before ascending to the tower,
was no longer there. He started to draw back, but it was too late. A
shadow leaped swiftly across the path of light in front of the open
door. A hand clutching a bludgeon was raised to strike. Cole, with
the girl on his shoulder, could not dodge the blow. It caught him
squarely on the jaw, and the terrific impact sent him reeling against
the stairs. The girl slipped away from him, and in his last conscious
moment he tried to ease her fall.
“I take it all back,” she whispered in his ear, her bantering tone
edged with pain and anguish. “You—you _are_ gallant, Mr. Cole.”
But Cole heard nothing.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SEVENTH INGREDIENT
When, some thirty or forty minutes later, Cole opened his eyes and
fingered his swollen jaw, he found himself sprawling in a chair in
a strange room. In front of him stood Doctor Latham, a humorously
sympathetic look on his face.
The room, with its faded tawdriness and crumbling decorations, looked
as if it had once been a private dining room. The scratched woodwork
and the liquid stains on the wall paper were reminiscent of hilarious
times. Cole noticed that the two windows were shuttered on the outside.
“How do you feel?” inquired the physician.
“As if I was all jaw,” said Cole, opening his eyes a little wider and
gazing stupidly at the doctor. It took him several minutes to recall
that he was still in the big house on Dutchess Point. A rhythmic
vibration that seemed to come from beneath the floor, accompanied by
the remote humming of machinery, brought him back to the present.
“Why are you here?” he demanded of the physician. “Didn’t I tell you to
stay outside?”
“So you did, and it was excellent advice, my friend. I wish now I had
heeded it. But I grew impatient and proceeded to find out what had
become of you. All I got for my pains was an ungentle tap in the region
of the occipital bone.”
With a serio-comic expression the doctor caressed the back of his
head. His clothing was rumpled and looked as if he had been dragged
over a dusty floor.
Again Cole stroked his jaw. “Where is Miss Brownell?” he suddenly asked.
Latham pointed across the room where, white-faced but smiling, the girl
sat in a chair.
“I’ve justified my existence at last,” he remarked. “I managed to
straighten out Miss Brownell’s ankle. Didn’t have my kit with me, and I
fear I dealt rather roughly with her. How about it, Miss Brownell?”
“I hardly felt it,” she assured him. “For a big man, you are gentleness
itself.”
The physician looked long into her smiling face, and when he turned
away there was a sad, wistful expression in his eyes. Miss Brownell
caught a fleeting glimpse of it, and her face sobered instantly.
“Cheerful place!” murmured Latham, glancing up at the dilapidated
ceiling. “Anyway, we ought to be thankful that the three of us are
together. Wonder what the amiable ruffians plan to do next. What
happened to you after you left me, Cole?”
It took Cole some little time to remember, but at length he gave the
doctor a brief summary of the episode in the tower, ending with the
unexpected attack that had left him with a swollen jaw. The doctor
seemed amused.
“Laid them both out, eh?” he said with a chuckle. “Good work, Cole.
I believe you could manage a massacre all by yourself if you had the
chance.”
“The chance may come sooner than we think,” said Cole dryly, with a
glance at the door. “Miss Brownell told me some of the things she has
learned during her term of imprisonment here. It seems we have one
advantage, doctor.”
“What’s that?”
“The seventh ingredient.”
A thin smile parted the physician’s lips. “That’s so. I’d forgotten
about that. It’s a minor detail I worked out independently. Professor
Carmody made several attempts to make me reveal the secret of it, but
I refused. You see, by that time I had discovered that the scheme was
crooked, and I would have nothing more to do with the gang. However,
the seventh ingredient, as they call it, isn’t of great importance. Its
value is almost nil.”
“But they seem to think otherwise.”
“They are mistaken, and naturally so. I was mistaken myself for
a while. I exaggerated the importance of the so-called seventh
ingredient. Afterward, when I knew better, I saw no reason why I should
put them right.”
“Glad you didn’t, Latham. As long as they are laboring under a
misapprehension, we have an advantage over them.”
“How is that?”
“They think you have something that they want. The fact that they are
mistaken makes no difference. As matters stand at present, you are in a
position to bargain with them.”
“Bargain over what?”
“Oh, several things.” Cole stepped a little closer to him and spoke in
an undertone. “Miss Brownell’s safety, for instance.”
Latham’s brows went up. “Of course!” he murmured. “I’m a bit dull
to-night. Glad you have your thinking cap on, Cole. The amiable
ruffians will be given to understand that I refuse to discuss the
seventh ingredient until Miss Brownell is at a safe distance. After
that nothing will matter. Smoke?”
Cole helped himself to a cigarette from the physician’s case, slanting
a quick glance in the girl’s direction as he lighted it. She looked
both puzzled and amused.
“Were you saying something I was not supposed to hear?” she inquired.
The question remained unanswered, for just then the door opened, and
the gaunt, frock-coated figure of Professor Carmody strutted into the
room. In his hand was an automatic, which he managed very cautiously,
and his shrunken face was all smiles.
“Hello, Cole,” he chirped gleefully. “Good evening, Miss Brownell. How
are you, doctor? Glad to see you all here.” He chuckled wheezily and
rubbed his bony hands with their talonlike fingers. “Too bad you didn’t
follow my advice the other day, Latham. You would have escaped a lot of
trouble if you had been sensible.”
“Go to blazes,” said the doctor contemptuously, advancing a step toward
Carmody.
The pistol came upward in the professor’s hand. “Don’t move,” he
warned. “And it won’t do either of you any good to reach for your
weapons. They were removed while you were—ahem—incapacitated. We object
to rowdyism in this place. Our leader is a peaceful man and does not
like disturbances. Cole, you have caused us a lot of embarrassment,
and see what it has led you to. I believe our last meeting took place
in room 2512, the Security Building.”
Cole made a wry face as he recalled how the professor had tricked him.
“You were a bit too clever for me that time, Carmody,” he admitted.
The professor gave a cackling, complacent laugh. “Even an old man like
me must have his little jokes,” he remarked, still adhering to his
ludicrous habit of raising and dropping his voice on almost every other
word. “I’ll wager you don’t know even now what my object was. Eh, Cole?”
Cole measured him with a cool glance. “I think I do,” he declared
quietly. “The body of Reeves was in the safe. Members of your
illustrious gang had removed it from its former place and put it there.
One of my men learned what the safe contained, and he paid with his
life for his discovery. Later you dropped in to see that everything was
in readiness to sneak the safe and its contents out of town.”
“You are a very shrewd guesser, Mr. Cole. It is a matter of keen regret
to me that one of such fine intellect must be on the wrong side of this
situation. As for the body of Reeves, it will very soon be reduced to a
handful of fine dust. The process will be scientific in every respect.
Nothing coarse or gruesome, you understand. We couldn’t have disposed
of it satisfactorily in the city. It would have been too dangerous.
But that isn’t what I came in here to talk about. Doctor Latham, you
were once a friend of mine, and in the beginning of this enterprise
you gave us several valuable hints. For the last time I ask you to be
reasonable. It is your last chance.”
“And if I refuse?”
The professor screwed his face into a melancholy expression. “In that
event you, too, will soon be only a handful of dust.”
“Even so I will have the advantage over you, professor. When your end
comes there won’t be enough dust to make a thimbleful. I hope I make my
meaning clear?”
“You will not reconsider your decision?”
“No!” declared Latham explosively.
“Not even in order to save the life of this charming young lady?”
Carmody turned his beatifically smiling face toward Miss Brownell.
A pallor crept up under the doctor’s eyes. He stared with a horrified
expression at the professor.
“You mean that——”
“Precisely, my dear doctor. The young lady is dangerous to us.
Under the circumstances the law of self-preservation demands that
she be rendered harmless, and the only effective way of doing that
is to remove her from this sad world. However, in appreciation of
the services you once rendered us, she shall be spared if you will
reconsider your decision.”
The doctor appeared to hesitate. His eyes, full of tenderness, were
fixed on Miss Brownell. Cole could see that he pretended to be
wavering. Then the girl spoke.
“Doctor Latham has decided,” she declared in a clear, calm voice. “He
is not the type of man who bargains with blackguards. I wouldn’t permit
it, even if he were so inclined. Go away!” she added, turning her
eyes, full of cold contempt, on the professor.
Carmody winced beneath her scornful gaze. For a moment he plucked
nervously at the lapel of his coat. Then, with a soft chuckle that
sounded diabolical to the other three in the room, he turned to the
doctor.
“The young lady has spoken,” he remarked. “I’m afraid her pretty head
is full of silly notions. Youth is always like that. You are older and
wiser, Latham. What do you say?”
The doctor regarded him calculatingly. “Just what do you want, Carmody?”
“Ah, that’s better! Getting down to terms, eh? I see I was not mistaken
in relying on your common sense. You know what I want, doctor. It is
something we have discussed before. Miss Brownell and Mr. Cole will not
understand what I mean, but it has something to do with the seventh
ingredient.”
Latham nodded. “Thought so. Very curious on that point, aren’t you,