The hospital physician had bent over her at the words, and before Kennedy could go on interrupted: "This was not a snake bite; it was more likely from an all-gla.s.s hypodermic syringe with a platinum-iridium needle."
Professor Rapport, priest of the Devil, advanced a step menacingly toward Kennedy. "Remember," he said in a low, angry tone, "remember--you are pledged to keep the secrets of the Red Lodge!"
Craig brushed aside the sophistry with a sentence. "I do not recognize any secrets that I have to keep about the meeting this afternoon to which you summoned the Blairs and Mrs. Langhorne, according to reports from the shadows I had placed on Mrs. Langhorne and Dr. Vaughn."
If there is such a thing as the evil eye, Rapport"s must have been a pair of them, as he realized that Kennedy had resorted to the simple devices of shadowing the devotees.
A cry, almost a shriek, startled us. Kennedy"s encounter with Rapport had had an effect which none of us had considered. The step or two in advance which the prophet had taken had brought him into the line of vision of the still half-stupefied Veda lying back of Kennedy on the hospital cot.
The mere sight of him, the sound of his voice and the mention of the Red Lodge had been sufficient to penetrate that stupor. She was sitting bolt upright, a ghastly, trembling specter. Slowly a smile seemed to creep over the cruel face of the mystic. Was it not a recognition of his hypnotic power?
Kennedy turned and laid a gentle hand on the quaking convulsed figure of the woman. One could feel the electric tension in the air, the battle of two powers for good or evil. Which would win--the old fascination of the occult or the new power of science?
It was a dramatic moment. Yet not so dramatic as the outcome. To my surprise, neither won.
Suddenly she caught sight of her husband. Her face changed. All the prehistoric jealousy of which woman is capable seemed to blaze forth.
"I will defend myself!" she cried. "I will fight back! She shall not win--she shall not have you--no--she shall not--never!"
I recalled the strained feeling between the two women that I had noticed in the cab. Was it Mrs. Langhorne who had been the disturbing influence, whose power she feared, over herself and over her husband?
Rapport had fallen back a step, but not from the mind of Kennedy.
"Here," challenged Craig, facing the group and drawing from his pocket the gla.s.s ampoule, "I picked this up at the Red Lodge last night."
He held it out in his hand before the Rapports so that they could not help but see it. Were they merely good actors? They betrayed nothing, at least by face or action.
"It is crotalin," he announced, "the venom of the rattlesnake--crotalus horridus. It has been noticed that persons suffering from certain diseases of which epilepsy is one, after having been bitten by a rattlesnake, if they recover from the snake bite, are cured of the disease."
Kennedy was forging straight ahead now in his exposure. "Crotalin," he continued, "is one of the new drugs used in the treatment of epilepsy.
But it is a powerful two-edged instrument. Some one who knew the drug, who perhaps had used it, has tried an artificial bite of a rattler on Veda Blair, not for epilepsy, but for another, diabolical purpose, thinking to cover up the crime, either as the result of the so-called death thought of the Lodge or as the bite of the real rattler at the Lodge."
Kennedy had at last got under Dr. Vaughn"s guard. All his reticence was gone.
"I joined the cult," he confessed. "I did it in order to observe and treat one of my patients for epilepsy. I justified myself. I said, "I will be the exposer, not the accomplice, of this modern Satanism." I joined it and--"
"There is no use trying to shield anyone, Vaughn," rapped out Kennedy, scarcely taking time to listen. "An epileptic of the most dangerous criminal type has arranged this whole elaborate setting as a plot to get rid of the wife who brought him his fortune and now stands in the way of his unholy love of Mrs. Langhorne. He used you to get the poison with which you treated him. He used the Rapports with money to play on her mysticism by their so-called death thought, while he watched his opportunity to inject the fatal crotalin."
Craig faced the criminal, whose eyes now showed more plainly than words his deranged mental condition, and in a low tone added, "The Devil is in you, Seward Blair!"
CHAPTER XXV
THE "HAPPY DUST"
Veda Blair"s rescue from the strange use that was made of the venom came at a time when the city was aroused as it never had been before over the nation-wide agitation against drugs.
Already, it will be recalled, Kennedy and I had had some recent experience with dope fiends of various kinds, but this case I set down because it drew us more intimately into the crusade.
"I"ve called on you, Professor Kennedy, to see if I can"t interest you in the campaign I am planning against drugs."
Mrs. Claydon Sutphen, social leader and suffragist, had scarcely more than introduced herself when she launched earnestly into the reason for her visit to us.
"You don"t realize it, perhaps," she continued rapidly, "but very often a little silver bottle of tablets is as much a necessary to some women of the smart set as cosmetics."
"I"ve heard of such cases," nodded Craig encouragingly.
"Well, you see I became interested in the subject," she added, "when I saw some of my own friends going down. That"s how I came to plan the campaign in the first place."
She paused, evidently nervous. "I"ve been threatened, too," she went on, "but I"m not going to give up the fight. People think that drugs are a curse only to the underworld, but they have no idea what inroads the habit has made in the upper world, too. Oh, it is awful!" she exclaimed.
Suddenly, she leaned over and whispered, "Why, there"s my own sister, Mrs. Garrett. She began taking drugs after an operation, and now they have a terrible hold on her. I needn"t try to conceal anything. It"s all been published in the papers--everybody knows it. Think of it--divorced, disgraced, all through these cursed drugs! Dr. Coleman, our family physician, has done everything known to break up the habit, but he hasn"t succeeded."
Dr. Coleman, I knew, was a famous society physician. If he had failed, I wondered why she thought a detective might succeed. But it was evidently another purpose she had in mind in introducing the subject.
"So you can understand what it all means to me, personally," she resumed, with a sigh. "I"ve studied the thing--I"ve been forced to study it. Why, now the exploiters are even making drug fiends of mere--children!"
Mrs. Sutphen spread out a crumpled sheet of note paper before us on which was written something in a trembling scrawl. "For instance, here"s a letter I received only yesterday."
Kennedy glanced over it carefully. It was signed "A Friend," and read:
"I have heard of your drug war in the newspapers and wish to help you, only I don"t dare to do so openly. But I can a.s.sure you that if you will investigate what I am about to tell you, you will soon be on the trail of those higher up in this terrible drug business. There is a little center of the traffic on West 66th Street, just off Broadway. I cannot tell you more, but if you can investigate it, you will be doing more good than you can possibly realize now. There is one girl there, whom they call "s...o...b..rd." If you could only get hold of her quietly and place her in a sanitarium you might save her yet."
Craig was more than ordinarily interested. "And the children--what did you mean by that?"
"Why, it"s literally true," a.s.serted Mrs. Sutphen in a horrified tone.
"Some of the victims are actually school children. Up there in 66th Street we have found a man named Armstrong, who seems to be very friendly with this young girl whom they call "s...o...b..rd." Her real name, by the way, is Sawtelle, I believe. She can"t be over eighteen, a mere child, yet she"s a slave to the stuff."
"Oh, then you have actually already acted on the hint in the letter?"
asked Craig.
"Yes," she replied, "I"ve had one of the agents of our Anti-Drug Society, a social worker, investigating the neighborhood."
Kennedy nodded for her to go on.
"I"ve even investigated myself a little, and now I want to employ some one to break the thing up. My husband had heard of you and so here I am. Can you help me?"
There was a note of appeal in her voice that was irresistible to a man who had the heart of Kennedy.
"Tell me just what you have discovered so far," he asked simply.
"Well," she replied slowly, "after my agent verified the contents of the letter, I watched until I saw this girl--she"s a mere child, as I said--going to a cabaret in the neighborhood. What struck me was that I saw her go in looking like a wreck and come out a beautiful creature, with bright eyes, flushed cheeks, almost youthful again. A most remarkable girl she is, too," mused Mrs. Sutphen, "who always wears a white gown, white hat, white shoes and white stockings. It must be a mania with her."
Mrs. Sutphen seemed to have exhausted her small store of information, and as she rose to go Kennedy rose also. "I shall be glad to look into the case, Mrs. Sutphen," he promised. "I"m sure there is something that can be done--there must be."
"Thank you, ever so much," she murmured, as she paused at the door, something still on her mind. "And perhaps, too," she added, "you may run across my sister, Mrs. Garrett."