The unknown seven A detective story
come to renew our discussion where we left off last night.” He fixed
his bleak and very alert eyes on Doctor Latham.
“Better save your breath,” suggested the physician. “You may need it
before we are through with you.”
Englebreth smiled serenely. “I don’t blame you, doctor, for trying
to bolster up your courage. People usually resort to false bravado
when they are hopelessly situated. Our friend Cole enacted quite a
spectacular scene last night, but he will hardly try anything like that
again. He has learned his lesson. Well, doctor, are you ready to oblige
us?”
“If you will drop that automatic, I’ll oblige you with a smash on the
jaw,” said the physician in unprofessional but impressive language.
“Still stubborn, I see.” His smile took on a sinister quality. “I
suppose you are wondering what has become of Miss Brownell?”
The doctor bit his lip, but his gaze did not waver. “If anything
happens to Miss Brownell,” he muttered hotly, “I’ll choke you to death
with my bare hands.”
“Save your threats, doctor. They don’t interest me in the least. As
yet nothing whatever has happened to Miss Brownell, but something will
unless you adopt a more reasonable attitude. I warn you that it will be
something decidedly unpleasant.” He turned slightly in the chair and
addressed one of his bodyguards. “Ask Doctor Ballinger to step in here.”
The man nodded and left the room. A questioning glance passed between
Latham and Cole, the former looking as if a dread suspicion had
suddenly occurred to him. In a few moments the messenger returned with
Ballinger. The physician strode in with a jaunty air and saluted Cole
and Latham with exaggerated politeness.
“Ah, Ballinger,” said the cripple in an undertone, yet loud enough for
the two prisoners to hear, “I just wished to make certain that you have
made all necessary arrangements for the—ahem—experiment we discussed
last night.”
Cole, casting a sidelong glance at Latham, saw him stiffen suddenly. A
film of pallor spread above the bearded portion of his face.
“Yes, everything is ready,” announced Ballinger.
“The instruments came?”
“Just a little while ago.”
“And the ether?”
“It is here too.”
“Good, Ballinger. Be ready to proceed the moment you hear from me.” He
waved a withered hand in dismissal.
Ballinger, an inscrutable smile playing about his lips, left the room.
An intense silence followed. The cripple’s gelid gaze moved from Latham
to Cole, and then back to Latham.
“You understood?” he asked.
Neither man answered. A harrowing suspicion seemed to have come over
both of them. Latham looked as if his powerful body was racked by an
agonizing dread.
“Ballinger is a very clever man,” murmured the invalid. “You know
what happened to Malcolm Reeves.” He paused, looked stonily at Doctor
Latham, as if waiting for his last words to produce their utmost
effect. “The same thing,” he added slowly, measuring each word, “will
happen to Miss Brownell unless you change your mind, Latham.”
A cry of mingled horror, loathing and hate broke from Latham’s
compressed lips. He sprang toward the cripple, hand raised as if to
strike, but in an instant two of the bodyguards intervened.
“Glad we understand each other, Latham,” said the cripple calmly. “The
operation will start in fifteen minutes unless you submit to my terms.”
Latham stood speechless. The only sound heard in the room was a great
sigh.
“Don’t like the idea, eh, Latham?” the invalid went on in smooth,
dulcet tones. “The spectacle of Miss Brownell reduced to a gibbering
lunatic is a little too much for your imagination to dwell on. You have
a vivid recollection of what happened to Reeves.”
A dull, hoarse groan sounded in the physician’s chest. Cole, watching
him, thought he was about to give way under an overwhelming strain.
“You’re mistaken, Englebreth,” he managed to say. “There is no such
thing as the seventh ingredient. I let you go on thinking so because——”
Englebreth interrupted with a wave of his hand. “I expected you to
say that. It would be your logical evasion. You can’t deceive me with
such nonsense. Only last night you discussed the possibilities of the
seventh ingredient with Professor Carmody. As he explained it to me,
it’s a sort of electronic reaction. Not being a scientific man, I don’t
understand what that means, but it doesn’t matter. I have the utmost
respect for your scientific achievements, doctor. Will you give us the
formula?”
Latham fumbled in vain for a convincing argument. His advantage had not
only slipped away from him, but it had become a deadly boomerang in
Englebreth’s hand.
“I swear I am telling you the truth!” he cried brokenly.
A cold smile curled the cripple’s lips. “Such childish subterfuge
doesn’t go with me,” he said contemptuously. “Either you give me the
formula instantly, or Miss Brownell will be a lunatic inside of an
hour. Take your choice.”
He leaned back in the chair, slowly and playfully twisting the
automatic in his hand. Cole stepped forward.
“Latham has told you the truth,” he declared. “The seventh ingredient
never existed outside of his imagination.”
Englebreth shrugged with an air of utter incredulity. Cole could see
that there was no way of disturbing his firmly rooted belief. And he
knew that, even if the seventh ingredient had been a reality, Latham’s
submission would not have altered their situation.
Englebreth looked at his watch, then summoned one of his bodyguards and
whispered something in his ear. The man left the room. The slamming
of the door sounded like a death knell in the tense silence. Latham’s
chest heaved in a frenzy of suppressed emotions. Minutes passed, and
then hurried footsteps sounded overhead, accompanied by the sound of
a resisting body being dragged over the floor. Latham, with a wild
look in his face, started forward, but one of the guards shoved him
back. Breathing fast and raspingly he swayed unsteadily on his feet.
Of a sudden he gave a violent start, then stood as if frozen into
immobility. From the room above came a long cry of terror, uttered in a
woman’s voice.
Latham’s bulging eyes stared upward. There was a look of insanity in
his face.
“Stop it!” he cried hoarsely. “For God’s sake——”
Another cry, more poignant than the others, shrilled through the house.
“Stop it—you fiend!” cried Latham.
“I will, on one condition,” said Englebreth calmly. “There is still
time. They are only making preparations upstairs. She won’t cry when
the real business begins.”
Latham’s hand went to his eyes as if to exclude a hideous vision.
“Careful, Englebreth!” said Cole evenly. “If you go too far, Latham may
lose his mind.”
“And if he does, what then?” demanded the cripple jeeringly.
“A number of things may happen.” Cole gave the physician a level,
significant glance. “For instance, Latham may take it into his head to
kill himself.”
The physician’s head went up. His hands left his face. A look of
dawning comprehension crept into his features. He turned his head and
for an instant his eyes met Cole’s, reading a message there.
“Kill himself?” echoed the cripple, astonished. “What rot, Cole! How
would he do it, and why?”
“Ask him,” said Cole with a careless gesture. “I can only point out to
you that if he kills himself the secret of the seventh ingredient dies
with him. Look! He is——”
He simulated a cry of astonishment and horror. Latham, quickly
interpreting the message he had read in Cole’s eyes, had snatched the
stick pin from under the lapel of his coat.
“Watch me, Englebreth,” he declared in a voice that had suddenly
retrieved all its lost vigor. “Even a stick pin makes quite a
formidable weapon if it’s pointed in the right direction. I am pointing
this one straight at my jugular vein. The moment anybody in this room
makes a move, I drive it in. Where will your seventh ingredient be
then, Englebreth?”
The cripple stared at him in speechless bafflement. He raised a hand,
but it fell limply to his side.
“You—you’re crazy!” he stuttered.
“Maybe,” said Latham coolly.
“Or else you are only bluffing.” There was a trace of doubt in
Englebreth’s tones.
“Why should I be bluffing? I would rather kill myself than be killed by
your bunch of hyenas. I know you meant to kill me, anyway, Englebreth.
One thing is certain. Unless you stop the preparations upstairs within
the next sixty seconds, your last hope of obtaining that formula will
be gone. You can’t get anything out of a dead man.”
Englebreth strained forward in his chair, staring into the physician’s
grim, determined face.
“He means what he says,” Cole declared, smiling despite the tension of
the moment. “You will have to act quickly, Englebreth.”
The cripple considered a moment longer, then bawled an order to one
of the men at the door. The fellow hurried away, and in a moment
they heard him scurrying up the stairs. An exchange of words sounded
overhead, then all was quiet.
Englebreth made an impatient gesture with his hand. The bodyguard
closed in around him, and with petulant motions he wheeled himself out
of the room. At the door he turned his head for a moment, and a little
chill rippled down Cole’s back as he saw the cold, malignant look in
the cripple’s eye.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE WAY OUT
Doctor Latham stroked his beard thoughtfully as the door closed behind
the invalid and his retinue. “It worked like magic,” he remarked.
“It worked,” Cole amplified, “because we were dealing with a logical
mind, one that deals mainly with reason and fails to consider the human
equation. We know that Englebreth means to kill us in the end, and he
knows that we know it. That being the case, it wasn’t hard for him
to put himself in your place a little while ago. He would have done
what you threatened to do, because it was the logical move under the
circumstances. I wonder what deviltry Englebreth will be planning next.”
“A seven-course dinner, I hope,” said the doctor wistfully. “I’m
famished.”
Cole regarded him musingly, marveling at the resiliency of his spirits.
Latham appeared to have shaken off all external cares the moment he saw
that Miss Brownell was no longer in immediate danger.
“You might as well restrain your appetite, doctor,” he murmured. “You
heard what Englebreth said, that a man is most amenable to argument
when he is hungry. At any rate, it is worth something to know that he
doesn’t want you to die just yet. He showed that plainly when you made
that monumental bluff with the stick pin. I saw him turn white as a
ghost.”
“Thanks to the seventh ingredient,” said Latham with a chuckle. “It’s
the best kind of life insurance, but I fear it won’t last long. Any
more tricks in your repertory, Cole?”
“One more, I think.” Cole glanced toward the shadowy corner where he
had stood during Englebreth’s presence in the room. “I understand,” he
went on casually, “that Dutchess Point was once a very gay place.”
“If so, its gayety hasn’t improved with age.”
Cole ignored his flippancy. “I’ve been told it was once a notorious
gambling resort. Places of that kind are usually equipped with
contrivances for making hasty exits—trapdoors, sliding panels and that
sort of thing.”
Latham raised his brows. “What are you getting at?”
But Cole seemed in no hurry to approach his subject. “Ever notice,
Latham, that many people find it very hard to remain motionless when
they are in a state of deep mental concentration? Physical movement
of some sort seems a necessary relief from mental effort. One man I
know is always plucking at his watch chain when he is absorbed in some
mental task. Another taps his desk with a pencil. My own favorite
diversion on such occasions is to beat a tattoo with my knuckles.”