The Doctor Who Held Hands E-Book

Hulbert Footner

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The long envelope inclosed something crisp and firm that immediately suggested bank notes. Madame Storey has taught me to notice such things. The messenger who brought it required a receipt in her own hand. After I had handed him his receipt and returned to my employer's room, I saw the bills scattered on her desk: five smooth, fresh, orange-backed engravings direct from the Federal Reserve Bank, the prettiest pictures on earth. They were thousand-dollar bills, the first I had ever seen. Those five scraps of paper were equivalent to a trip around the world, a high-powered car, or any delightful folly that one might dream about. To me it was a lot of money.
Mme. Storey was reading the letter which had accompanied it. Seeing me goggle at the money, she said airily: "That's only our retaining fee, Bella. There is ten times as much in this case, if we can pull it off. Besides an unlimited expense account."

Leseprobe

THE DOCTOR WHO HELD HANDS

BY HULBERT FOOTNER

1929

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383839712

THE DOCTOR WHO HELD HANDS

1.

The long envelope inclosed something crisp and firm that immediately suggested bank notes. Madame Storey has taught me to notice such things. The messenger who brought it required a receipt in her own hand. After I had handed him his receipt and returned to my employer's room, I saw the bills scattered on her desk: five smooth, fresh, orange-backed engravings direct from the Federal Reserve Bank, the prettiest pictures on earth. They were thousand-dollar bills, the first I had ever seen. Those five scraps of paper were equivalent to a trip around the world, a high-powered car, or any delightful folly that one might dream about. To me it was a lot of money.

Mme. Storey was reading the letter which had accompanied it. Seeing me goggle at the money, she said airily: "That's only our retaining fee, Bella. There is ten times as much in this case, if we can pull it off. Besides an unlimited expense account."

I waited in no little eagerness to hear more. When she had finished the letter she handed it over without comment, and taking a cigarette, leaned back in her chair and puffed a cloud of smoke thoughtfully toward the ceiling. From this I gathered that we were likely to take the case. I read:

DEAR MADAME STOREY:

I am sending you $5,000 in the hope of enlisting your services in a cause which is not only very near my heart but would, if prosecuted to a successful conclusion, confer a benefit on the entire community. I wish, for reasons which will be apparent to you as you read, to remain anonymous in the affair. Therefore I send the money in cash. The truth is, I cannot bear to expose my wounds to the public gaze. In brief, here is my proposition. I will pay you $50,000 if you can put Dr. Jacmer Touchon behind prison bars. In addition, you may draw on me without reserve for all legitimate expenses in connection with the case. The Duane National Bank will act as my disbursing agent. This scoundrel calls himself a "psycho-synthetist" or "soul-builder" and seeks his victims among well-to-do women. Psycho-synthesis, examined coldly, appears to be a blend of all the fakes one ever heard of, but the doctor is an extraordinarily plausible and persuasive practitioner. He appears to possess a really superior mind, which renders him, of course, all the more dangerous.

I can describe to you his modus operandi in one case, but can furnish no proof without exposing my identity. It is up to you to get the proof. One who was dear to me consulted Dr. Touchon in respect to an unfortunate mental condition. He told her that her trouble arose from harbouring evil thoughts, and that if she would relieve herself of such thoughts he could undertake a cure. Well, I suppose everyone harbours some evil thoughts. If one keeps them to one's self they can do no harm. But none would like to see them broadcasted. This person told her thoughts, believing that she was confiding them solely to the doctor's private ear.

For several weeks she regularly visited his office for consultations. His fee was $100 for half an hour's treatment. This figures out rather handsomely for a day's work, you will agree, but still the greedy doctor was not satisfied. His patient finally began to suspect he was a fraud, and she ceased going to his office. Some little time afterward he sent for her to come to him and told her in seeming distress that a part of his records had been stolen from him, including the record of her case. This was the first she knew there was a record of it. He excused himself by saying it was necessary for him to have a record to study, and confessed that while she was confiding her thoughts to him, there had been a clerk concealed within hearing who had taken it all down. Observe the man's fiendish cleverness. He told her that he felt it his duty to let her know that the record had been stolen, but that she need not be under the slightest apprehension concerning it because there was nothing on the card to identify it as her case to anybody but himself.

This was all bunkum, of course. Within a short time the unfortunate woman received a communication ostensibly from another quarter, demanding a large sum of money if she wished to keep her confessions out of print. She paid. She went on paying until she died. Before she died she told me the whole story and the wicked thoughts were not so wicked after all. That is the pity of it. The scoundrel had worked on a nervous woman's fears. There is no doubt but that worry over this affair hastened her end.

There, my dear Madame Storey, is your case. I have restrained myself as far as possible, because I don't want to inflict my private feelings on you. I wish that I might come out into the open, so that we could work together, but I could not bear it, if even so much as a hint of what I have been through should become public property. You may acknowledge this letter through the bank. You will learn there that your financial support is assured. If you don't want the case you will hand them back the money, but I trust that will not happen. For if you won't take it, I fear there will be nothing for me to do but to go out and shoot the scoundrel.

Pray accept my felicitations for the good work you have done in other directions. I always find you on the side of the right.

Yours sincerely, AN ADMIRER.

The contents of this letter inspired me with a vague disquiet. "I hate blackmail cases," I said involuntarily. "It's like digging in pitch."

"Oh, quite," said Mme. Storey. "But you must admit this has intriguing possibilities."

"We have plenty of other work," I said.

"Yes," she said, "but we could take this on quite easily. Barney Craigin is convicted and sentenced. The decks are cleared of that mess."

"And now you're considering dumping a worse mess upon them," I said.

"Well, that's our job," she said, laughing; "cleaning up messes."

I sighed. I saw she was going to take it. I had a strong premonition of evil but it would have been useless to speak of it. I reread the letter. "One who was dear to me," I quoted musingly.

"Wife is suggested," said Mme. Storey.

"We could look up the wives of rich men who have died lately," I said.

"Oh," said my mistress, "if I find the facts as stated, and if the money is all right, I'm not going to bother with trying to explode the anonymity of our client. His reasons for wishing to keep himself in the dark are perfectly natural."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, going over the letter. "To make believe that his records were stolen, then to have the demand for blackmail seem to come from another source! What infernal cleverness!"

"Ah! we would be up against a very superior antagonist here!" said Mme. Storey. "One hears about Dr. Jacmer Touchon on every side. He seems to be the inventor of psycho-synthesis. It is the latest craze. Psychoanalysis is becoming a little demode, you understand; everybody who has the price has been psychoanalyzed by this time, and Dr. Touchon catches them on the rebound by going psychoanalysis one better. 'Soul-building!' Who could resist it? The phrase was an inspiration. He must be coining money! ... But I never suspected that blackmailing was a by-product of the institution. He really ought to have stopped with psycho-synthesis."

She arose and began to pace the long room with very bright eyes. "Years ago I used to know Jacmer Touchon," she went on. "He was professor of psychology in my university. He had written several books on the subject which I as a budding psychologist was bound to read. Very good books, too. In fact, he had an international reputation. Unfortunately he began to take too warm a personal interest in one of his students who shall be nameless. In fact, there was a scene and I was forced to cut his lectures, much as I enjoyed them. Later he resigned his chair and I heard no more of him. Now he turns up as a psycho-synthetist. I suppose he found that the big rewards were never for pure science and so turned crooked. What a strange turn of fortune. Bella, this man was my master in psychology. I foresee that we are going to have the fight of our lives!"

Alas! I am not cast in the heroic mould like my beautiful mistress, and I was filled with a wretched anxiety. By an exceptionally brilliant piece of work she had just succeeded in convicting the notorious Barney Craigin of murder. She was at the very summit of her fame. She had everything to lose and nothing to gain by embarking on such an adventure.

"Hadn't you better call up the bank first?" I suggested drily.

"To be sure!" she said, returning to her desk, and taking down the receiver.

To make a long story short the Duane National confirmed the contents of our letter. The sum of one hundred thousand dollars had been put in the hands of the bank to be paid to Mme. Storey's order upon the submission of vouchers of expenses. The bank claimed not to know the name of their client. The business had been effected through an attorney who likewise claimed to be ignorant of his principal's identity. However, the president of the bank (an acquaintance of my employer's) assured her that the money was there. An officer of the bank was to pass on the correctness of the vouchers.

"That appears to be all right," said Mme. Storey. "You may notify your client—I assume you have the means of doing so—that I will take the case."

When she had hung up I asked, somewhat stiffly I suspect: "What will be your first move?"

"Obviously," she said with a provoking smile, "you must go to Dr. Touchon as a prospective patient. He's a neighbour of ours. His place is in the Westmoreland apartments, cater-cornered across the square."

My heart sank. "But you know," I said helplessly, "I have no natural talent for impersonation."

"You may have no natural talent," she retorted, "but you have brains, which is more important. I can't go myself because he knows me, and there is no other woman I could trust on so important and so difficult an assignment."

I continued to make feeble objections, but she went on as if the matter were settled: "You must be provided with an absolutely watertight character. And you must have a story to tell that will bear the closest examination. Naturally, the doctor will have you looked up before he commits himself to anything.... I have it!" she cried in elation. "You shall masquerade as Mrs. Sylvanus Ensor, that poor woman who comes to me for treatments. She will give her permission. Her husband is a prosperous manufacturer of Detroit and she's supposed to be travelling in Europe while she remains quietly in New York under my care. Such a story would bear investigation as far as Dr. Touchon wanted to go. He would be delighted to get such a patient.... I'll make you up to resemble Mrs. Ensor as far as I am able."

"She looks like a walking corpse!" I objected.

Mme. Storey laughed at my expression of offended vanity. "So much the better!" she said. "A fit subject for the psycho-synthetist!"

2.

This Mrs. Ensor was an unfortunate woman who believed that she had promptings to kill her husband. Hers was one of those obscure borderline cases; she was not mad, she only thought she was. Having tried everything else, she had come to New York to put herself in Mme. Storey's hands for psychological treatments. She already seemed better. She lived very quietly with her maid in a small hotel near our office and came in three mornings a week for treatments. Meanwhile, in order to save the feelings of her family, it had been given out at home that she was travelling in Europe.

As all this was exactly what I needed, I took over her history, her character, and her symptoms entire. It saved a lot of invention. She very willingly gave her permission. Mme. Storey, a past mistress in the art of make-up, experimented in making me resemble her. Mrs. Ensor was in her early thirties but looked ten or twelve years older. She had a strange, dead-leaf complexion with circles almost black under her eyes. It was perfectly easy for me to assume her harassed and tormented air, because, goodness knows! I felt just like that at the prospect of bearding the terrible Dr. Touchon in his den. Mrs. Ensor, who was wealthy, dressed in a very smart, plain style that made an odd contrast with her haggard face. All in all, it was a rather conspicuous make-up, but Mme. Storey considered that there was safety in its very boldness.

On the third day my clothes came home from the makers. I went to Mme. Storey's house to dress and make up. I had a smart tailored ensemble of black messaline with coat to match, and a close-fitting black hat that completely covered my red hair. In a mirror I was absolutely unrecognizable to myself. It made me shiver to see myself looking so exactly like what I was supposed to be: the smart woman of the world who had everything to live for, but who, poor soul, had lost her grip on life. It was just the thing to make a fake doctor's mouth water.

Mme. Storey lent me her Grace to play the part of my maid. When our smart luggage was packed (it all bore the labels of expensive foreign hotels) we drove to the Vandermeer Hotel and engaged an expensive suite; registering as Mrs. Sylvanus Ensor and maid, Detroit. I called up Dr. Touchon's office and was given an appointment for the following morning.

The Westmoreland was the first of the great apartment houses to be built on Gramercy Park. It is old now but has managed to maintain its supremacy amongst the new buildings. Its air of old-fashioned magnificence was well calculated to inspire confidence in those who sought the doctor's advice. He had the ground-floor apartment on the corner. It must have comprised twelve or fourteen rooms. His door was opened by a gentle old man with an innocent and disarming smile. Again the doctor showed his astuteness in choosing such a one for his servant. I was shown into a small reception room. I gather that there were several such waiting rooms, so that the patients need never meet.

In due course the old servant returned to say that the doctor was ready to see me. I followed him with a fast-beating heart. The consultation room was an immense and lofty chamber with a row of tall windows looking out on the Park. It had dark crimson walls covered with fine paintings in elaborate frames, superb Oriental rugs, and a quantity of heavy carved furniture. The subtle psychological effect to be conveyed by this conservative splendour was that the doctor had been established at the head of his profession for a long time past.

The instant I caught sight of the master of the room I recognized his unique power and my heart failed me. How was I to cope with such a man? There was nothing of the greasy and overeager charlatan about Jacmer Touchon. His professional manner was first class. He waited for me in cool dignity, bowed with assurance, and waved me to a seat. A handsome, stalwart, dark man in the prime of his vigour—if anything he was too handsome; there was a certain luscious Oriental quality in his fleshly features and full, beaming dark eye. I suppose many women like that. Perhaps it was not of the Orient so much as the Renaissance; cruel, clever, and sensual; one saw him in one's mind decked out superbly in doublet and hose at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

All the other doctors I have ever consulted took care to seat their patients facing the light, but Dr. Touchon's method was the reverse. The important thing was that you should see him, you understand. When he sat down with the light from the windows falling in his eyes, I received an impression of power that made me feel weak. I can scarcely describe those strange eyes. They seemed to burn with changing flames. They were so dark in colour one could scarcely tell where pupil ended and iris began. Suddenly I perceived that the pupil was widely distended, almost filling the iris. Was it that which gave him his look of insane power? At a later moment I noticed that the pupil had contracted until it was not much larger than a pinhead. It struck a feeling of dread into me. I struggled hard against my feeling of weakness.

"You wish to consult me?" he asked in a velvety voice. It had a hypnotic quality that went with the eyes.

I nodded silently.

"It is only fair to tell you," he said, "that my fee for the first consultation is five hundred dollars; one hundred for subsequent treatments."

"I am prepared to pay it," I murmured.

"Did your physician send you to me?" he asked. (What superb effrontery!)

"No," I said, "a friend recommended you to me; a Mrs. Wilkinson of Detroit."

"I don't seem to remember the name," he said with cold courtesy.

I shivered internally under his look of suspicion. "She was not a patient of yours," I said hurriedly; "it was a friend of hers who was benefited by your treatments. I don't know the friend's name."

Apparently he was satisfied. "How much have you been told about my methods?" he asked.

"Scarcely anything," I said; "only that it was a sort of improved psychoanalysis."

He raised his hand with a look of pretended horror. What an actor the man was! Though I knew he was acting, he was able to prevail upon me. "Oh, no, no!" he said. "There is no relation between psychoanalysis and psycho-synthesis; they are the exact opposites of one another. Psychoanalysis, with its emphasis upon the basest impulses of human nature, destroys the soul! Fortunately it is rapidly becoming discredited." Here he quoted a lot of impressive-sounding authorities. "Whereas psycho-synthesis" (his voice became tender when he spoke the word) "builds the soul and makes it strong! Do not be misled by the similarity of terms, my dear lady; there is the same difference between the two methods as there is between the words 'destructive' and 'constructive'!"

When I write it down it sounds hollow enough. I can give you no idea of how convincingly it came out in his mellow and velvety voice. He was so utterly sure of his power over women!

"You are giving me hope," I murmured.

"What is your particular trouble?" he asked sympathetically.

"I am going mad!" I said in Mrs. Ensor's husky, despairing tones. "At least I think I am. That is worse than actually going mad. For mad people, they say, are happy!"

He nodded understandingly. "What makes you think you are not normal?"

"Half the time I don't know what I'm doing!" I cried in seeming despair. I had rehearsed this over and over. "I suddenly come to and find myself in a place without the least recollection of how I got there."

"What is it that fills your mind to the exclusion of your surroundings?"

"Terrible, terrible things," I murmured, hanging my head.

"Look at me, Mrs. Ensor," he purred. "Lose yourself in my eyes. Yield yourself freely. Let everything come out!"

Plain terror filled me. How could I lose myself in him and at the same time keep my wits about me? For the first time I realized the full difficulty of the part I had to play. And I had to look forward to playing it over and over. I had to lead him on through psycho-synthesis to blackmail. "I can't! I can't!" I murmured.

"How else can I cure you?" he said gently. And then in a soft, peremptory tone: "Look at me!"

It had to be done. Slowly I raised my eyes to his. It was a dreadful experience. Dark lightnings seemed to shoot through and through me, blotting everything out, striking down my personality. Secretly, while I allowed my eyes to submit to his, I was resisting him with all my might. It was like a creeping paralysis. I could feel the fine drops of sweat springing out on my face. The advantage was all with him. Eyes, when you probe into them as deeply as that, cannot lie. He knew I was resisting him still.

"Relax! ... Relax! ... Relax!" he purred.

I sighed deeply to persuade him that I was obeying. In order to help resist the terrible desire to let everything go at the command of those eyes, I fixed my mind on nursery rhymes, repeating them over and over. "How can I go through with this for twenty visits?" I thought in despair.

"What are these terrible things that torment you?" he asked softly.

I used the question as an excuse to cover my face with my hands. "Something urges me to kill my husband," I murmured, as I had heard Mrs. Ensor do. "Yet I love him, too. This temptation is always with me. I have no peace!"

Now I can read eyes, too, and astute as he was, I saw between my fingers a certain complacency appear in his eyes when I said this. He thought he was going to find an easy victim in me. "Poor lady! Poor lady!" he murmured sympathetically; then, very casually: "Have you any reason to make away with him?"

"None whatever!" I wailed. "He is the best of husbands!"

"You are not being quite frank with me now," he said reproachfully. "You must have some reason, or think that you have."

"No reason except that he is so good to me," I said. I had got this from Mrs. Ensor also. I was very thankful I had this ready-made case to draw on, for I was sure I would never have been able to make anything up that would have withstood the scrutiny of those terrible eyes. "It is his very goodness which drives me wild," I added.

"That feeling is perfectly understandable to a psychologist," he said with a judicial air. "To use a slang phrase, you have got yourself in wrong, Mrs. Ensor. It is this wrongness in you that is outraged by your husband's rightness. With your coöperation I will remove the wrongness, and you will be as happy as ever you were."

"Oh, if you could!" I said, clasping my hands. "You might ask me anything! ... anything!"

"But mind, I said with your coöperation," he warned me. "I am a surgeon of souls. You must bare your soul to me before I can operate."

This was exactly in line with what we had been told respecting his methods; everything was going well so far. I even had a little feeling of triumph that, clever as he was, I was fooling him successfully. I started telling him the wicked thoughts I had so carefully rehearsed, and he listened attentively. On my right hand as I sat with my back to the windows there was an arched opening closed with handsome tapestry portières. Behind those portières I made no doubt there was a clerk taking down everything I said. But though things seemed to be going all right, I was still terrified. Dr. Touchon leaned toward me across the corner of his desk, his dark eyes mantling with flame and growing dull again. It was like making friends with a boa constrictor. Repeated shudders went through me. It was well that I was supposed to be half crazy.

He asked me innumerable questions dealing with the relations between my supposed husband and myself. I had to think fast in order to answer them readily. Finally he asked carelessly:

"What sort of razor does your husband shave with, Mrs. Ensor?"

I gaped at him. "A—a safety razor," I stammered.

"That is very important," he said oracularly. "How often does he shave?"

A horrible suspicion occurred to me that this ridiculous question was a trap, and I seemed to fall through space. "What has that got to do——" I started to say.

He shut me off with a peremptory wag of his hand. "Please answer the question," he said. "If I stopped to explain my reasons for everything we should never get anywhere."

The absurd question stumped me. Never having had any brothers, I am not familiar with the domestic habits of men. "I—I never noticed," I stammered.

He passed right on to something else and I could not be sure if any damage had been done. I still had that horrible sinking feeling. I would not give up. I went on confessing to the most outrageous thoughts. I wept and raved and accused myself, just as I had heard Mrs. Ensor do. He listened with every outward appearance of sympathy, but deep in his eyes I imagined that I saw a flicker of cold, amused contempt. It suggested that he was enjoying the spectacle of the genuine terror that was lending so much effect to my pretended ravings. But I could not be sure. I felt as helpless as a wave flinging itself against a cliff. Finally, with a glance at his little desk clock, he remarked deprecatingly:

"I am sorry, but there is another patient waiting."

"When shall I come again?" I faltered.

"It will not be necessary for you to come again," he said in a voice of perfect courtesy—but now he no longer troubled to hide the amused contempt in his eyes. "There is nothing the matter with you, Mrs. Ensor. Go home to your husband and tell him you feel like killing him. It will clear the air!"

He was jeering at me! I had failed! Tears of bitter mortification sprang to my eyes. It was such a little thing to have tripped one up! And after all the mental agony I had been through in order to bring myself up to the sticking point! I fumbled blindly with my pocketbook, supposing that I should have to pay him, anyhow.

"Put up your purse," he said with a wave of his hand. "I only accept pay from those whom I am able to aid." He bowed me out with indescribable courteous insolence. "So nice to have seen you, Mrs. Ensor. We've had a nice talk, anyhow. Be sure to look me up when you are next in town. Good-morning. Good-morning."

I became aware of the fact that the old servant had entered and was shepherding me out of the room. Jacmer Touchon's final smile and wave of the hand was truly devilish. Ah! I could have shot him for it. My eyes were overflowing now with tears of bitter, bitter chagrin. I had failed! What was I to say to my employer?

The old man observed my distress. "Don't grieve, miss," he murmured. "All is bound to come right if your case is in the doctor's hands."

I stared at him in an astonishment that checked my tears. But his sympathy was perfectly genuine. The old man actually believed in the scoundrel for whom he worked. Well, the world is full of innocent souls! I perceived that this was exactly the sort of person Jacmer Touchon would choose to have about him. It would be good for business!

3.

I quickly realized that the situation implied something more serious than my personal humiliation. If Jacmer Touchon's suspicions had been actively aroused, he would certainly have me followed when I left his place. It would have been fatal to allow him to discover who I was. Grace and I were forced to travel all the way out to Indiana on one limited train, and back on another in order to shake off possible espionage.

I pass over the painful interview with my employer that took place on my return. With her customary kindness she made light of my failure.

"It was really my fault, Bella," she said. "I asked the impossible of you. There is one thing that cannot be camouflaged and that is common sense. Anybody who looked in your eyes could see you were no fool."

I took what comfort I could from that.

"Moreover, I underrated our friend the doctor," she went on drily. "I had forgotten his personal charms—until I was reminded yesterday."

"Where did you see him?" I eagerly asked.

"Oh, I picked him up out in the square," she said airily; "I was giving Giannino an airing."

Giannino is Mme. Storey's black ape, a little beast I have not much love for. He is one of her pet vanities. I must confess that the ugly little creature makes an extremely effective foil as he sits in the crook of her arm in his green jacket and cap trimmed with tiny golden bells.

"Picked him up!" I said, aghast.

"Giannino was only an excuse," she said—there was a touch of grimness in her humour; "the truth is, I went out especially to renew my acquaintance with the doctor. Like many another precious scoundrel he has his little softnesses. He comes into the square every day with a pocketful of crumbs to feed the birds."

"All pretense!" I said indignantly.

"Very likely!"

"What happened?" I asked eagerly.

"I was sitting on a bench," she said, "and Giannino was standing up, facing me, pulling on his chain and arguing with me. Along comes Dr. Touchon—very handsome man, eh, Bella?"

I shivered at the recollection of those good looks.

"He stood there smiling at Giannino and me," she went on, "and we smiled back—but Giannino's smile was hardly friendly. In fact, he showed his teeth at the doctor."

"His instinct was sound there," I said.

"'How human!' said the doctor. 'Oh, quite!' I said; 'he is trying to persuade me to unhook the chain so he can climb into the elm tree, and I won't do it because the last time he climbed a tree I had to hire a man to bring him down. He bit the man and I had to pay damages besides.' The doctor laughed heartily and persuaded me to give Giannino another chance. So I released him; he climbed into the tree and the doctor sat down beside me. He had recognized me by this time."

"What did you talk about?" I asked.

"We exchanged compliments," she said with her somewhat grim smile. "I told the doctor that his books on psychology still occupied the first place in my library and he told me how interested he had been in following my recent career by means of the newspapers. In short, we laid the foundation of a beautiful friendship."

"But how can you keep it up—under the circumstances?"

"I can keep it up as long as he can," she replied enigmatically. "He's coming here to call some day soon," she added.

"Good heavens!" I said agitatedly. "Suppose he identifies me as his caller of the other day?"

"I cannot see that it will make much difference if he does," said Mme. Storey with the utmost coolness. "Clever as he is, he must soon find out that we are after him, if he does not know it already. I am counting on it. If I read him aright it would exactly suit his sardonic humour to come here and make believe to be friends while he twitted us with subtle insolence. So be it. It would exactly suit my humour to have him here where I can watch him. He may prove to be a little too clever for his own good. Something tells me that we shall get him in the end through his overconfidence in his own powers. Meanwhile, it will be excellent comedy."

I looked at her in dismay. It will be terrible comedy, I thought. Mme. Storey's eyes were bright and her lips firm. I knew that look. She and Jacmer Touchon would be worthily matched; the contest between them would be like the play of finely tempered rapiers. But unfortunately I had not the spirit to appreciate it. I had to confess to myself that I belonged to a lower order of beings. I wondered how I should ever be able to live through such dangerous scenes.

Mme. Storey picks up her operators in the unlikeliest places. For her chief helper in this case she chose a young man whom I shall call Basil Thorne. He was one of the best known of our younger character actors, a delightful fellow, attractive, clever, and humorous. He jumped at Mme. Storey's offer partly because of the spice of adventure he saw in the affair, and partly because he was out of engagement. He had long been an admirer of my employer, devoted, hopeless, and whimsical. His reports now began to come in. I shall quote from the most significant of them.

In order to explain certain references in his reports, I should state that Gramercy Park, on which our offices faced, and also the luxurious apartment of Jacmer Touchon, is not a park in the usual sense of the word but only a small city square. It is the last of the private squares; that is to say, it is surrounded by an iron fence with locked gates. The people who live upon the park have keys, and none others are admitted. Our offices were on the south side and Dr. Touchon's place on the east.

Report Number 3

... My Scotty, McGillicuddy, gives me a good excuse to be seen walking around outside the railings at all hours. I have done miles to-day. McGillicuddy enjoys it. When we become tired I go inside the park and sit down, but always within sight of the entrance to the Westmoreland. J. T. comes into the park every afternoon and feeds the birds ostentatiously. He also tries to get the kids to gather around him so that he can tell them a story à la patriarch, but the little beggars know their onions. Won't go within fifty yards of him. I have scraped a passing acquaintance with J. T. I shan't attempt to carry it any further. My object was merely to get an opportunity to tell him I was an actor out of work, in order to account for my endless loafing around the park. But nobody ever seems to take a suspicion of happy-go-lucky me. My smile is my fortune. It never occurs to anybody that a man can smile and smile and be a detective still.

..........

Among the various people who enter and leave the Westmoreland, one can generally pick out J. T.'s patients from their style: rich, fat, and discontented. I have succeeded in identifying three of his patients, and will get the names of others from time to time. These three are all the wives of prominent men: Mrs. George J. Julian, Mrs. Joseph Marine, Mrs. Carter Treves.

BASIL.

Report Number 7

At last I am able to report a bit of real progress. Last night as I was watching J. T.'s windows from the pavement outside, the lights of his living room were switched off, switched on, and switched off again. I thought nothing of this at the time. It was just as if somebody had forgotten something in leaving the room, and had switched on the lights again. But to-night the same thing happened again at about the same time, and after the lights were off I noticed that one of the blinds of the room was drawn up. Only one, mark. So I got the notion that some kind of signalling was going on.

The sills of the windows were about four feet above my head as I stood on the sidewalk, and I could see nothing from there. Nor could I see anything from the park. This was about eleven o'clock, and there was no one in that part of the park. I climbed a tree to get sufficient elevation to see over the fence and into J. T.'s room. You can imagine my excitement when I saw the blink of a tiny light deep in J. T.'s room. It was so small it took me several minutes to pick it up, but you could see it plain once you knew it was there. Flashes long and short, evidently sending a message according to code. I don't know the Morse code, but they would scarcely risk that anyway. It was probably a code of their own.

It took me a long time to pick up the answering signal, but I got it at last. It came from a third-story window on the west side of the park. The whole business is very ingeniously contrived. Both signals must be sent from far back in the room, and so directed that they can only be seen in the windows for which they are intended. From the fact that the windows are on different levels, I figure that J. T. must send his while sitting on the floor, while his friend across the park sends back from a stepladder. To-morrow night I will take notebook and pencil, and try to put it down in dots and dashes. With your cleverness perhaps you can decode it.

I have marked the window from which the answering signals were sent, and to-morrow morning I will investigate what is behind it.

BASIL.

Report Number 8

The window with which J. T. was exchanging signals last night is in the third floor of one of the fine old dwellings on the west side of the park which have been converted into furnished apartments. In the letter box the name of the occupant of the third-floor front is given as Francis Fay. In making inquiries at the house I learned that the second-floor front was vacant and I promptly engaged it. I took it under my own name. The fact that I am somewhat well known will help me in my present work. From my windows I will scarcely be able to intercept messages from J. T.'s window, but if I have luck I shall make friends with Fay.

I have already passed him on the stairs. He is a small man in his early thirties, well set up and active. He has thin brown hair, and I suspect is bald on his pate. He has thin lips which suggest a hawk's beak, a long thin nose, and gray eyes that are both wary and piercing. A cagey lad! It is not going to be easy to make up to him. Even in our accidental meeting on the stairs he threw me a dirty look of suspicion. I shall not make any overtures in his direction until a real opportunity presents itself. He is very well dressed in a conservative style. He moves with energy and resolution. Has a sour expression. I hear him working the typewriter overhead. Apparently he sticks around the house most of the day.

BASIL.

Report Number 9

I sat in my tree last night. As well as I could I put down the messages that passed between the two windows in dots and dashes. I had to keep my eyes fastened on the flashes, and let the pencil travel where it would. The result is pretty wild looking. I hope you can make something of it.

This morning while I was in my new rooms I heard Fay go out. I could hear the maid at work in his rooms overhead, and I faked an excuse to go up and speak to her. Thus I got a look at Fay's rooms. There was nothing in them except the furnishings supplied by the landlord; no books, papers, photographs, or knickknacks visible that might furnish information about the tenant. There was a desk with a drop leaf standing innocently open and empty; however, I noticed that a new and efficient lock had been put on the drawers. One thing that caught my eye was a large copper fire extinguisher standing just inside the door. These articles are not supplied by the house and its presence suggests that Fay has something there that he guards carefully. The maid told me that Mr. Fay lived alone and had very little company. Two young men call on him sometimes in the evenings, she said. Always the same two.

At tea time this afternoon, while I was sitting in the park, I saw Fay come out of the house and hail a taxi. I had Pete in his taxi waiting on the north side in case of just such a contingency. Fay had to travel all around the park in order to get headed uptown, and I was ready for him when he started up Lexington Avenue. I gave Pete the word to follow. Fay had himself driven to the Madagascar Hotel and, dismissing his cab, went in. I found him in the long corridor at the rear where all the dates are made, talking with a woman. I could not approach them close or Fay would certainly have spotted me, so I can only give you what I was able to observe at a distance.

It was perfectly clear to me what was the nature of that interview; but unfortunately my observations would hardly be received as evidence in court. The woman was about fifty years old, very smartly dressed, fat, unhealthy looking, and peevish. She's the kind you see dancing in the night clubs until they turn black in the face. In short, the very type of J. T.'s patients. There's a certain something that distinguishes them all, but it's hard to describe; a suggestion of having a minor screw loose; of not being able quite to catch on; of not belonging. Fay's manner toward this lady was cold, courteous, and hard boiled, while she was flabby and agitated. They talked for some time. He gradually wore her down. Finally something passed from her to him that I am sure was a roll of bills, but I did not see it. This pretty well establishes Fay as the head of the blackmailing end.

When they parted I followed the lady home. I have established that she is Mrs. Elmer Sartain of No. — East Sixty-seventh Street. I'm afraid this won't be of much service to you, for you could certainly never get so terrified and weak willed a person to come into court and testify against Fay or J. T.

BASIL.

Report Number 12

I inclose some more of the messages which I took down as well as I could in the park last night.

After I came in I was sitting in my rooms listening to Fay moving about overhead and threshing my brains for some way of getting acquainted with him naturally, when suddenly I thought of that big fire extinguisher, and a fool stunt suggested itself to me. Fortunately it worked. Its very wildness was in its favour.

I set the portières in my apartment alight, and then went out in the hall and yelled "Fire!" I got plenty of action. Fay, who evidently has a dread of fire, came cascading down the stairs with his big extinguisher, and the other tenants appeared from everywhere. Fay had the fire out in a jiffy, and it was not necessary to put in an alarm. There's nothing like the excitement of a fire to establish a fellow feeling. After the other tenants had gone back to bed, Fay lingered on to smoke and chin. I all but fell on his neck in my gratitude, of course, and exerted all the charm for which I am famous (!!!). I think it took, but Lord! he's a ticklish customer; suffers from a complex of some kind that makes him think everybody is trying to get at him. I pose for just what I am, an actor out of work. Saves a lot of lying. Apparently he has a great respect for the stage and is flattered by the idea of having a more or less well-known actor for a friend. He has seen me in several of my parts and so he never dreams that I might be something else at the moment. We made a date to dine together to-night. All goes well.

BASIL.

4.

We were waiting for Dr. Jacmer Touchon to come to tea. Our offices, I should explain, occupied part of the parlour floor of a magnificent old dwelling which once housed a president of the United States in his retirement. You enter through a hall room which I share with the office boy. Mme. Storey's room is the former drawing room of the President, a long and lofty chamber with a row of casements looking out on the park. Its present aspect is that of the sala in an old Italian castle. I was seated in a corner of this room, somewhat nervously occupying myself with the typewriter, since my employer wished me to be present throughout the doctor's stay.