"You can get the plain water from my carafe in the office," he suggested.
The boy nodded and hastened on his errand.
"Lynn needs a drink in a hurry," Kinkaid remarked to Vance. "No use holding him up, with that crowd in the bar. . . . The damned fool! He won't have a dollar when he goes home tonight."
As if to verify Kinkaid's prophecy, Llewellyn made a large wager and lost. As he consulted his book for the next number, the boy came up again and placed a glass of clear water beside him. Llewellyn emptied his whisky glass at one gulp and immediately drank the water. Shoving the two empty glasses to one side, he made his next play.
Again he lost. He doubled on the following spin; and lost again. Then he redoubled, and once more he lost. He was playing Black 20 and Red 5, and on the next turn he halved his former bet between Red 21 and Black 4. "Eleven" came. He now quartered, playing 17, 18, 20 and 21 with one stack, and 4, 5, 7 and 8 with another. "Eleven" repeated.
When Bloodgood had raked in the chips Llewellyn sat staring at the green cloth without moving. For fully five minutes he remained thus, letting the plays pass without paying any attention. Once or twice he brushed his hand across his eyes and shook his head violently, as if some confusion of mind were overpowering him.
Vance had moved forward a step and was watching him intently, and Kinkaid, too, appeared deeply concerned about Llewellyn's behavior. Bloodgood glanced at him from time to time, but without any indication of more than a casual interest.
Llewellyn's face had now turned scarlet, and he pressed the palms of his hands to his temples and breathed deeply, as a man will do when his head throbs with pain and he experiences a sense of suffocation.
Suddenly, as though he were making a great effort, he sprang to his feet, upsetting his chair, and turned from the table. His hands had fallen to his sides. He took three or four steps, staggered, and then collapsed in a distorted heap on the floor.
A slight commotion followed, and several of the men on Llewellyn's side of the table crowded about the prostrate figure. But two of the uniformed attendants at the entrance hurried forward, and, elbowing their way through the spectators, lifted Llewellyn and carried him toward Kinkaid's private office. Kinkaid was already at the door, holding it open for them when they reached it with the motionless form.
Vance and I followed them into the office before Kinkaid had time to close the door.
"What do you want here?" snapped Kinkaid.
"I'm stayin' a while," Vance returned in a cold, firm voice. "Put it down to youthful curiosity—if you must have a reason."
Kinkaid snorted and waved the two attendants out.
"Here, Van," requested Vance; "help me lift the chap into that straight chair."
We raised Llewellyn into the chair, and Vance held the man's body far forward so that his head hung between his knees. I noticed that Llewellyn's face had lost all its color and was now a deathly white. Vance felt for his pulse and then turned to Kinkaid, who stood rigidly by the desk, a faint cynical sneer on his mouth.
"Any smelling salts?" Vance asked.
Kinkaid drew out one of the desk drawers and handed Vance a squat green bottle which Vance took and held under Llewellyn's nose.
At this moment Bloodgood opened the office door, stepped inside, and closed it quickly behind him.
"What's the trouble?" he asked Kinkaid. There was a look of alarm on his face.
"Get back to the table," Kinkaid ordered angrily. "There's no trouble. . . . Can't a man faint?"
Bloodgood hesitated, shot a searching look at Vance, shrugged his shoulders, and went out.
Vance again tried Llewellyn's pulse, forced the man's head back, and, lifting one of the eyelids, inspected the eye. Then he placed Llewellyn on the floor and slipped a flat leather cushion, from one of the chairs, under his head.
"He hasn't fainted, Kinkaid," Vance said, rising and facing the other grimly. "He's been poisoned. . . ."
"Rot!" The word was a guttural ejaculation.
"Do you know a doctor in the neighborhood?" Vance's tone was significantly calm.
Kinkaid drew in his breath audibly.
"There's one next door. But—"
"Get him!" commanded Vance. "And be quick about it."
Kinkaid stood in rigid resentment for a brief moment; then he turned to the telephone on the desk and dialed a number. After a pause he cleared his throat and spoke in a strained voice.
"Doctor Rogers? . . . This is Kinkaid. There's been an accident here. Come right away. . . . Thanks."
He banged the receiver down and turned to Vance with a muttered oath.
"A sweet mess!" he complained furiously.
He stepped to a small stand beside the desk, on which stood a silver water-service, and, picking up the carafe, inverted it over one of the crystal glasses. The carafe was empty.
"Hell!" he grumbled. He pressed a button in one of the walnut panels of the east wall. "I'm going to have a brandy. How about you?" He gave Vance a sour look.
"Thanks awfully," murmured Vance. The door leading into the bar opened and an attendant appeared.
"Courvoisier," Kinkaid ordered. "And fill that bottle," he added, pointing to the water-service.
The man picked up the carafe and returned to the bar. (He had started slightly at the sight of Llewellyn's body on the floor, but by no other sign had he indicated that there was anything amiss. Kinkaid had chosen his personnel with shrewd discrimination.) When the cognac had been brought in and served, Kinkaid drank his in one swallow. Vance was still sipping his when one of the uniformed men from the reception hall below rapped on the door and admitted the doctor, a large rotund man with a benevolent, almost childlike, face.
"There's your patient," Kinkaid rasped, jerking his thumb toward Llewellyn. "What's the verdict?"
Doctor Rogers knelt down beside the prone figure, mumbling as he did so: "Lucky you caught me. . . . Had a confinement—just got in. . . ."
He made a rapid examination: he looked at Llewellyn's pupils, took his pulse, put the stethoscope to his heart, and felt his wrists and the back of his neck. As he worked he asked several questions regarding what had preceded Llewellyn's present condition. It was Vance who answered all of the questions, describing Llewellyn's nervousness at the roulette table, his high color, and his sudden prostration.
"Looks like a case of poisoning," Doctor Rogers told Kinkaid, opening his medicine case swiftly and preparing a hypodermic injection. "I can't say what it is yet. He's in a stupor. Small, accelerated pulse; rapid, shallow respiration; dilated pupils . . . all symptoms of acute toxæmia. What you tell me of the flush, the staggering and the collapse; and now the pallor—all point to some sort of poison. . . . I'm giving him a hypo of caffein. It's all I can do here. . . ." He rose ponderously and threw the syringe back into his bag. "Must get him to a hospital immediately—he needs heroic treatment. I'll call an ambulance. . . ." And he waddled to the telephone.
Kinkaid stepped forward: he was again the cool, poker-faced gambler.
"Get him to the nearest hospital—the best you know," he said, in a businesslike voice. "I'll take care of everything."
Doctor Rogers nodded.
"The Park End—it's in the neighborhood." And he began dialing a number clumsily.
Vance moved toward the door.
"I think I'll be staggerin' along," he drawled. His face was grim, and he gave Kinkaid a long significant look. "Interestin' letter I received—eh, what? . . . Cheerio!"
A few minutes later we were out in 73rd Street. It was a raw cold night, and a chilling drizzle had begun to fall.
Vance's car was parked a hundred feet or so west of the entrance to the Casino, and as we walked toward it, Detectives Snitkin and Hennessey[6] stepped out of the doorway of a near-by house.
"Everything all right, Mr. Vance?" Snitkin asked, in a low, sepulchral voice.
"'Pon my word!" exclaimed Vance. "What are you two gallant sleuths doing here on a night like this?"
"Sergea
nt Heath[7] told us to come up here and hang around the Casino, in case you might want us," Snitkin explained. "The Sergeant said you were expecting something to break around here."
"Really! Did he, now? Fancy that!" Vance appeared puzzled. "Stout fella, the Sergeant. . . . However, everything is taken care of. I'm dashed grateful to you for coming, but there's no earthly reason for you to hover about any longer. I'm toddlin' off to bed myself."
But instead of going home he drove to Markham's apartment in West 11th Street.
Markham, much to my surprise, was still up, and greeted us cordially in his drawing-room.[8] When we had settled ourselves before the gas-logs Vance turned to him with a questioning air.
"Snitkin and Hennessey were guarding me like good fellows tonight," he said. "Do you, by any chance, ken the reason for such solicitous devotion?"
Markham smiled, a bit shamefacedly.
"The truth is, Vance," he apologetically explained; "after I left your apartment this afternoon I got to thinking there might be something in that letter, after all; and I called up Sergeant Heath and told him—as near as I could remember—everything that was in it. I also told him you had decided to go to the Casino tonight to watch young Llewellyn. I suppose he thought it might be just as well to send a couple of the boys up there to be on hand in case there was any truth in the letter."
"That explains it," nodded Vance. "There was no need, however, for the bodyguard. But the letter proved amazingly prophetic."
"What's that!" Markham swung round in his chair.
"Yes, yes. Quite a prognosticatin' epistle." Vance took a deep draw on his cigarette. "Lynn Llewellyn was poisoned before my eyes."
Markham sprang to his feet and stared at Vance.
"Dead?"
"He wasn't when I left him. But I didn't tarry." Vance was thoughtful. "He was in bad shape though. He's under the care of a Doctor Rogers at the Park End Hospital. . . . Deuced curious situation. I'm rather confused." He, too, got up. "Wait a bit." He went into the den, and I heard him at the telephone.
In a few minutes he returned.
"I've just talked to the pudgy Æsculapius at the hospital," he reported. "Llewellyn's about the same—except that his respiration has become slower and more shallow. His pressure is down to seventy over fifty, and he's having convulsive movements. . . . Everything's being done that's possible—adrenalin, caffein, digitalis, and gastric lavage by the nasal route. No positive diagnosis possible, of course. Very mystifyin', Markham. . . ."
Just then the telephone rang and Markham answered it. A minute later he emerged from the den. His face was pale, and there were deep corrugations on his forehead. He came back to the centre-table, like a man in a daze.
"Good God, Vance!" he muttered. "Something devilish is going on. That was Heath on the wire. A call has just come through to Headquarters. Heath relayed it to me—because of that letter, I imagine. . . ."
Markham paused, looking out into space; and Vance glanced up at him curiously.
"And what, pray, was the burden of the Sergeant's song?"
Markham, as if with considerable effort, turned his eyes back to Vance.
"Llewellyn's young wife is dead—poisoned!"
4. THE DEAD GIRL'S ROOM
(Sunday, October 16; 1:30 a.m.)
Vance's eyebrows went up sharply.
"My word! I didn't expect that." He took his cigarette from his mouth and looked at it with concern. "And yet . . . there may be a pattern. I say, Markham, did the Sergeant happen to say what time the lady died?"
"No." Markham shook his head abstractedly. "A doctor was summoned first, it seems; and then the call was sent through to Headquarters. We can assume that death occurred about half an hour ago—"
"Half an hour!" Vance tapped the arm of his chair in thoughtful tattoo. "Just about the time Llewellyn collapsed. . . . Simultaneity, what? . . . Queer—deuced queer. . . . No other information?"
"No, nothing more. Heath was just hopping a car with some of the boys, headed for the Llewellyn house. He'll probably phone again when he gets there."
Vance threw his cigarette on the hearth and rose.
"We sha'n't be here, however," he said, with a curiously grim intonation, turning toward Markham. "We're going to Park Avenue to find out for ourselves. I don't like this thing, Markham—I don't at all like it. There's something fiendish and sinister—and abnormal—going on. I felt it when I first read that letter. Some terrible killer is abroad, and these two poisonings may be only the beginning. A poisoner is the worst of all criminals,—there's no knowing how far he may go. . . . Come."
I had rarely seen Vance so perturbed and insistent; and Markham, feeling the force of his resolution and his fears, permitted himself, without protest, to be driven in Vance's car to the old Llewellyn mansion on Park Avenue.
The house, of brownstone, stood back a few yards from the Avenue. A high black scroll-iron fence, with a wide iron gate, extended the entire width of the lot, which was about fifty feet; and the shallow areaway had not been paved, but was still set with an old square box hedge, two trimmed cypress trees, and two small rectangular flowerbeds, one on each side of the flagstone walk that led to the massive oak front door.
When we arrived at the Llewellyn home, the police were already there. Two uniformed officers from the local precinct station stood in the areaway. On recognizing the District Attorney, they saluted and came forward.
"Sergeant Heath and some of the boys of the Homicide Squad just went in, Chief," one of them told Markham, thrusting his thumb against the pushbutton of the door-bell.
The front door was immediately opened by a tall, thin, and very pale man in a black-and-white checked dressing-gown.
"I'm the District Attorney," Markham told him, "and I want to see Sergeant Heath. He came a few minutes ago, I believe."
The man bowed with stiff, exaggerated dignity.
"Certainly, sir," he said, with an oily, slightly cockney accent. "Won't you come in, sir. . . . The police officers are upstairs—in Mrs. Lynn Lewellyn's room at the south end of the hall.—I'm the butler, sir, and I was told to remain here at the door." (This last remark was his apology for not showing us the way.)
We brushed past him and ascended the wide circular stairs, which were brilliantly lighted. As we reached the first landing, Detective Sullivan, standing in the hall above, greeted Markham.
"Howdy, Chief. The Sergeant'll be glad you've come. It looks like a dirty job." And he led the way down the hall.
In the south wing of the house Sullivan threw open a door for us. We entered a room which was large and almost square, with a high ceiling, an old-fashioned carved mantelpiece, and heavy over-drapes of a bygone era hanging from the great double-shuttered windows. The furniture—all Empire—looked authentic and costly; and hanging on the walls were many rare old prints which would have been an asset to any art museum.
On the high canopied bed to our left lay the still figure of a woman of about thirty. The silk cover had been partly thrown back, and both her arms were drawn up over her head. Her hair was brushed back flat, and over it was a hair-net, tied at the back of her neck.
Her face, under a layer of recently applied cold-cream, was cyanosed and blotchy, as if she had died in a convulsion; and her eyes were wide open and staring. It was an unlovely and blood-chilling sight.
Sergeant Heath, two members of the Homicide Bureau—Detectives Burke and Guilfoyle—and a Lieutenant Smalley, from the local station, were in the room. The Sergeant was seated at the large marble-topped centre-table, his note-book before him.
Facing the table stood a tall vigorous woman of about sixty, with a strong aquiline face. She was dabbing her eyes with a small lace handkerchief. Though I had never seen her before, I recognized her, from pictures that had appeared in the newspapers from time to time, as Mrs. Anthony Llewellyn.
Near her stood a young woman who looked singularly like Lynn Llewellyn, and I rightly assumed that she was Amelia Llewellyn, Lynn's sister. Her dark hair w
as parted in the middle and combed straight back over her ears to a twisted knot low on the back of her head. Her face, like her mother's, was strong and aquiline, with a marked hardness and an almost contemptuous expression. She glanced at us, when we entered, with a cold and indifferent, and somewhat bored, look. Both women were wearing silk tufted dressing-gowns, cut on the lines of a Japanese kimono.
Before the mantel stood a slender, nervous man of about thirty-five, in dinner clothes, smoking a cigarette in a long ivory holder. We soon learned that he was Doctor Allan Kane, a friend of Miss Llewellyn's, who lived within a block of the Llewellyn home, and who had been called in by Miss Llewellyn. It was Doctor Kane who had informed the police of young Mrs. Llewellyn's death. Kane, though he appeared to be agitated, had an air of professional seriousness. His face was flushed, and he kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other; but his gaze was direct and appraising as he looked at each of us in turn.
Sergeant Heath rose and greeted us as we came in.
"I was hoping you'd come, Mr. Markham," he said, with an air of obvious relief. "But I wasn't expecting Mr. Vance. I thought he'd be at the Casino."
"I was at the Casino, Sergeant," Vance told him in a serious low tone. "And thanks awfully for Snitkin and Hennessey. But I didn't need them. . . ."
"Lynn!" The name, like an agonized wail, split the gloomy atmosphere of the room. It had come from the lips of Mrs. Llewellyn; and she turned to Vance with a face distorted with apprehension. "Did you see my son there? And is he all right?"
Vance regarded the woman for several moments, as if making up his mind how to answer her question. Then he said sympathetically but with determined precision:
"I regret, madam, that your son, too, has been poisoned—"
"My son dead?" The intensity of her words sent a chill through me.
Vance shook his head, his eyes fixed intently on the distracted woman.
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