No word came from him, however, all day, and I had not only caught up in my notes, but, my appet.i.te whetted by our first case, had become hungry for more. In fact I had begun to get a little worried at the continued silence. A hand on the k.n.o.b of the door or a ring of the telephone would hare been a welcome relief. I was gradually becoming aware of the fact that I liked the excitement of the life as much as Kennedy did.
I knew it when the sudden sharp tinkle of the telephone set my heart throbbing almost as quickly as the little bell hammer buzzed.
"Jameson, for Heaven"s sake find Kennedy immediately and bring him over here to the Novella Beauty Parlour. We"ve got the worst case I"ve been up against in a long time. Dr. Leslie, the coroner, is here, and says we must not make a move until Kennedy arrives."
I doubt whether in all our long acquaintance I had ever heard First Deputy O"Connor more wildly excited and apparently more helpless than he seemed over the telephone that night.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Never mind, never mind. Find Kennedy," he called back almost brusquely. "It"s Miss Blanche Blaisdell, the actress--she"s been found dead here. The thing is an absolute mystery. Now get him, GET HIM."
It was still early in the evening, and Kennedy had not come in, nor had he sent any word to our apartment. O"Connor had already tried the laboratory. As for myself, I had not the slightest idea where Craig was. I knew the case must be urgent if both the deputy and the coroner were waiting for him. Still, after half an hour"s vigorous telephoning, I was unable to find a trace of Kennedy in any of his usual haunts.
In desperation I left a message for him with the hall-boy in case he called up, jumped into a cab, and rode over to the laboratory, hoping that some of the care-takers might still be about and might know something of his whereabouts. The janitor was able to enlighten me to the extent of telling me that a big limousine had called for Kennedy an hour or so before, and that he had left in great haste.
I had given it up as hopeless and had driven back to the apartment to wait for him, when the hall-boy made a rush at me just as I was paying my fare.
"Mr. Kennedy on the wire, sir," he cried as he half dragged me into the hall.
"Walter," almost shouted Kennedy, "I"m over at the Washington Heights Hospital with Dr. Barron--you remember Barron, in our cla.s.s at college?
He has a very peculiar case of a poor girl whom he found wandering on the street and brought here. Most unusual thing. He came over to the laboratory after me in his car. Yes, I have the message that you left with the hall-boy. Come up here and pick me up, and we"ll ride right down to the Novella. Goodbye."
I had not stopped to ask questions and prolong the conversation, knowing as I did the fuming impatience of O"Connor. It was relief enough to know that Kennedy was located at last.
He was in the psychopathic ward with Barron, as I hurried in. The girl whom he had mentioned over the telephone was then quietly sleeping under the influence of an opiate, and they were discussing the case outside in the hall.
"What do you think of it yourself?" Barron was asking, nodding to me to join them. Then he added for my enlightenment: "I found this girl wandering bareheaded in the street. To tell the truth, I thought at first that she was intoxicated, but a good look showed me better than that. So I hustled the poor thing into my car and brought her here. All the way she kept crying over and over: "Look, don"t you see it? She"s afire! Her lips shine--they shine, they shine." I think the girl is demented and has had some hallucination."
"Too vivid for a hallucination," remarked Kennedy decisively. "It was too real to her. Even the opiate couldn"t remove the picture, whatever it was, from her mind until you had given her almost enough to kill her, normally. No, that wasn"t any hallucination. Now, Walter, I"m ready."
III
THE SYBARITE
We found the Novella Beauty Parlour on the top floor of an office-building just off Fifth Avenue on a side street not far from Forty-second Street. A special elevator, elaborately fitted up, wafted us up with express speed. As the door opened we saw a vista of dull-green lattices, little gateways hung with roses, windows of diamond-paned gla.s.s get in white wood, rooms with little white enamelled manicure-tables and chairs, amber lights glowing with soft incandescence in deep bowers of fireproof tissue flowers. There was a delightful warmth about the place, and the seductive scents and delicate odours betokened the haunt of the twentieth-century Sybarite.
Both O"Connor and Leslie, strangely out of place in the enervating luxury of the now deserted beauty-parlour, were still waiting for Kennedy with a grim determination.
"A most peculiar thing," whispered O"Connor, dashing forward the moment the elevator door opened. "We can"t seem to find a single cause for her death. The people up here say it was a suicide, but I never accept the theory of suicide unless there are undoubted proofs. So far there have been none in this case. There was no reason for it."
Seated in one of the large easy-chairs of the reception-room, in a corner with two of O"Connor"s men standing watchfully near, was a man who was the embodiment of all that was nervous. He was alternately wringing his hands and rumpling his hair. Beside him was a middle-sized, middle-aged lady in a most amazing state of preservation, who evidently presided over the cosmetic mysteries beyond the male ken.
She was so perfectly groomed that she looked as though her clothes were a mould into which she had literally been poured.
"Professor and Madame Millefleur--otherwise Miller,"--whispered O"Connor, noting Kennedy"s questioning gaze and taking his arm to hurry him down a long, softly carpeted corridor, flanked on either side by little doors. "They run the shop. They say one of the girls just opened the door and found her dead."
Near the end, one of the doors stood open, and before it Dr. Leslie, who had preceded us, paused. He motioned to us to look in. It was a little dressing-room, containing a single white-enamelled bed, a dresser, and a mirror. But it was not the scant though elegant furniture that caused us to start back.
There under the dull half-light of the corridor lay a woman, most superbly formed. She was dark, and the thick ma.s.ses of her hair, ready for the hairdresser, fell in a tangle over her beautifully chiselled features and full, rounded shoulders and neck. A scarlet bathrobe, loosened at the throat, actually accentuated rather than covered the voluptuous lines of her figure, down to the slender ankle which had been the beginning of her fortune as a danseuse.
Except for the marble pallor of her face it was difficult to believe that she was not sleeping. And yet there she was, the famous Blanche Blaisdell, dead--dead in the little dressing-room of the Novella Beauty Parlour, surrounded as in life by mystery and luxury.
We stood for several moments speechless, stupefied. At last O"Connor silently drew a letter from his pocket. It was written on the latest and most delicate of scented stationery.
"It was lying sealed on the dresser when we arrived," explained O"Connor, holding it so that we could not see the address. "I thought at first she had really committed suicide and that this was a note of explanation. But it is not. Listen. It is just a line or two. It reads: "Am feeling better now, though that was a great party last night.
Thanks for the newspaper puff which I have just read. It was very kind of you to get them to print it. Meet me at the same place and same time to-night. Your Blanche." The note was not stamped, and was never sent.
Perhaps she rang for a messenger. At any rate, she must have been dead before she could send it. But it was addressed to--Burke Collins."
"Burke Collins!" exclaimed Kennedy and I together in amazement.
He was one of the leading corporation lawyers in the country, director in a score of the largest companies, officer in half a dozen charities and social organisations, patron of art and opera. It seemed impossible, and I at least did not hesitate to say so. For answer O"Connor simply laid the letter and envelope down on the dresser.
It seemed to take some time to convince Kennedy. There it was in black and white, however, in Blanche Blaisdell"s own vertical hand. Try to figure it out as I could, there seemed to be only one conclusion, and that was to accept it. What it was that interested him I did not know, but finally he bent down and sniffed, not at the scented letter, but at the covering on the dresser. When he raised his head I saw that he had not been looking at the letter at all, but at a spot on the cover near it.
"Sn-ff, sn-ff," he sniffed, thoughtfully closing his eyes as if considering something. "Yes--oil of turpentine."
Suddenly he opened his eyes, and the blank look of abstraction that had masked his face was broken through by a gleam of comprehension that I knew flashed the truth to him intuitively.
"Turn out that light in the corridor," he ordered quickly.
Dr. Leslie found and turned the switch. There we were alone, in the now weird little dressing-room, alone with that horribly lovely thing lying there cold and motionless on the little white bed.
Kennedy moved forward in the darkness. Gently, almost as if she were still the living, pulsing, sentient Blanche Blaisdell who had entranced thousands, he opened her mouth.
A cry from O"Connor, who was standing in front of me, followed. "What"s that, those little spots on her tongue and throat? They glow. It is the corpse light!"
Surely enough, there were little luminous spots in her mouth. I had heard somewhere that there is a phosph.o.r.escence appearing during decay of organic substances which once gave rise to the ancient superst.i.tion of "corpse lights" and the will-o"-the-wisp. It was really due, I knew, to living bacteria. But there surely had been no time for such micro-organisms to develop, even in the almost tropic heat of the Novella. Could she have been poisoned by these phosph.o.r.escent bacilli?
What was it--a strange new mouth-malady that had attacked this notorious adventuress and woman of luxury?
Leslie had flashed up the light again before Craig spoke. We were all watching him keenly.
"Phosphorus, phosphoric acid, or phosphoric salve," Craig said slowly, looking eagerly about the room as if in search of something that would explain it. He caught sight of the envelope still lying on the dresser.
He picked it up, toyed with it, looked at the top where O"Connor had slit it, then deliberately tore the flap off the back where it had been glued in sealing the letter.
"Put the light out again," he asked.
Where the thin line of gum was on the back of the flap, in the darkness there glowed the same sort of brightness that we had seen in a speck here and there on Blanche Blaisdell"s lips and in her mouth. The truth flashed over me. Some one had placed the stuff, whatever it was, on the flap of the envelope, knowing that she must touch her lips to it to seal it She had done so, and the deadly poison had entered her mouth.
As the light went up again Kennedy added: "Oil of turpentine removes traces of phosphorus, phosphoric acid, or phosphoric salve, which are insoluble in anything else except ether and absolute alcohol. Some one who knew that tried to eradicate them, but did not wholly succeed.
O"Connor, see if you can find either phosphorus, the oil, or the salve anywhere in the shop."
Then as O"Connor and Leslie hurriedly disappeared he added to me: "Another of those strange coincidences, Walter. You remember the girl at the hospital? "Look, don"t you see it? She"s afire. Her lips shine--they shine, they shine!""
Kennedy was still looking carefully over the room. In a little wicker basket was a newspaper which was open at the page of theatrical news, and as I glanced quickly at it I saw a most laudatory paragraph about her.
Beneath the paper were some torn sc.r.a.ps. Kennedy picked them up and pieced them together. "Dearest Blanche," they read. "I hope you"re feeling better after that dinner last night. Can you meet me to-night?