Kennedy nodded. ‘What sort of fellow personally was Templeton?’ he asked.
‘Very popular,’ replied the district attorney, ‘both at the country club and in his profession in New York. He was a fellow of naturally commanding temperament – the Templetons were always that way. I doubt if many young men even with his chances could have gained such a reputation at thirty-five as his. Socially he was very popular, too, a great catch for all the sly mamas of the country club who had marriageable daughters. He liked automobiles and outdoor sports, and he was strong in politics, too. That was how he got ahead so fast.
‘Well, to cut the story short, Templeton met the Wainwright girls again last summer at a resort on Long Island. They had just returned from a long trip abroad, spending most of the time in the Far East with their father, whose firm has business interests in China. The girls were very attractive. They rode and played tennis and golf better than most of the men, and this fall Templeton became a frequent visitor at the Wainwright home in Williston.
‘People who know them best tell me that his first attentions were paid to Marian, a very dashing and ambitious young woman. Nearly every day Templeton’s car stopped at the house and the girls and some friend of Templeton’s in the country club went for a ride. They tell me that at this time Marian always sat with Templeton on the front seat. But after a few weeks the gossips – nothing of that sort ever escapes Williston – said that the occupant of the front seat was Laura. She often drove the car herself and was very clever at it. At any rate, not long after that the engagement was announced.’
As he walked up from the pretty little Williston station Kennedy asked: ‘One more question, Mr Whitney. How did Marian take the engagement?’
The district attorney hesitated. ‘I will be perfectly frank, Mr Kennedy,’ he answered. ‘The country-club people tell me that the girls were very cool toward each other. That was why I got that statement from Mrs Wainwright. I wish to be perfectly fair to everyone concerned in this case.’
We found the coroner quite willing to talk, in spite of the fact that the hour was late. ‘My friend, Mr Whitney, here, still holds the poison theory,’ began the coroner, ‘in spite of the fact that everything points absolutely toward asphyxiation. If I had been able to discover the slightest trace of illuminating-gas in the room I should have pronounced it asphyxia at once. All the symptoms accorded with it. But the asphyxia was not caused by escaping illuminating-gas.
‘There was an antique charcoal-brazier in the room, and I have ascertained that it was lighted. Now, anything like a brazier will, unless there is proper ventilation, give rise to carbonic oxide or carbon monoxide gas, which is always present in the products of combustion, often to the extent of from five to ten per cent. A very slight quantity of this gas, insufficient even to cause an odour in a room, will give a severe headache, and a case is recorded where a whole family in Glasgow was poisoned without knowing it by the escape of this gas. A little over one per cent of it in the atmosphere is fatal, if breathed for any length of time. You know, it is a product of combustion, and is very deadly – it is the much-dreaded white damp or afterdamp of a mine explosion.
‘I’m going to tell you a secret which I have not given out to the press yet. I tried an experiment in a closed room today, lighting the brazier. Some distance from it I placed a cat confined in a cage so it could not escape. In an hour and a half the cat was asphyxiated.’
The coroner concluded with an air of triumph that quite squelched the district attorney.
Kennedy was all attention. ‘Have you preserved samples of the blood of Mr Templeton and Miss Wainwright?’ he asked.
‘Certainly. I have them in my office.’
The coroner, who was also a local physician, led us back into his private office.
‘And the cat?’ added Craig.
Doctor Nott produced it in a covered basket.
Quickly Kennedy drew off a little of the blood of the cat and held it up to the light along with the human samples. The difference was apparent.
‘You see,’ he explained, ‘carbon monoxide combines firmly with the blood, destroying the red colouring matter of the red corpuscles. No, Doctor, I’m afraid it wasn’t carbonic oxide that killed the lovers, although it certainly killed the cat.’
Doctor Nott was crestfallen, but still unconvinced. ‘If my whole medical reputation were at stake,’ he repeated, ‘I should still be compelled to swear to asphyxia. I’ve seen it too often, to make a mistake. Carbonic oxide or not, Templeton and Miss Wainwright were asphyxiated.’
It was now Whitney’s chance to air his theory.
‘I have always inclined toward the cyanide-of-potassium theory, either that it was administered in a drink or perhaps injected by a needle,’ he said. ‘One of the chemists has reported that there was a possibility of slight traces of cyanide in the mouths.’
‘If it had been cyanide,’ replied Craig, looking reflectively at the two jars before him on the table, ‘these blood specimens would be blue in colour and clotted. But they are not. Then, too, there is a substance in the saliva which is used in the process of digestion. It gives a reaction which might very easily be mistaken for a slight trace of cyanide. I think that explains what the chemist discovered; no more, no less. The cyanide theory does not fit.’
‘One chemist hinted at nux vomica,’ volunteered the coroner. ‘He said it wasn’t nux vomica, but that the blood test showed something very much like it. Oh, we’ve looked for morphine chloroform, ether, all the ordinary poisons, besides some of the little known alkaloids. Believe me, Professor Kennedy, it was asphyxia.’
I could tell by the look that crossed Kennedy’s face that at last a ray of light had pierced the darkness. ‘Have you any spirits of turpentine in the office?’ he asked.
The coroner shook his head and took a step toward the telephone as if to call the drug-store in town.
‘Or ether?’ interrupted Craig. ‘Ether will do.’
‘Oh, yes, plenty of ether.’
Craig poured a little of one of the blood samples from the jar into a tube and added a few drops of ether. A cloudy dark precipitate formed. He smiled quietly and said, half to himself, ‘I thought so.’
‘What is it?’ asked the coroner eagerly. ‘Nux vomica?’
Craig shook his head as he stared at the black precipitate. ‘You were perfectly right about the asphyxiation, Doctor,’ he remarked slowly, ‘but wrong as to the cause. It wasn’t carbon monoxide or illuminating-gas. And you, Mr Whitney, were right about the poison, too. Only it is a poison neither of you ever heard of.’
‘What is it?’ we asked simultaneously.
‘Let me take these samples and make some further tests. I am sure of it, but it is new to me. Wait till tomorrow night, when my chain of evidence is completed. Then you are all cordially invited to attend at my laboratory at the university. I’ll ask you, Mr Whitney, to come armed with a warrant for John or Jane Doe. Please see that the Wainwrights, particularly Marian, are present. You can tell Inspector O’Connor that Mr Vanderdyke and Mrs Ralston are required as material witnesses – anything so long as you are sure that these five persons are present. Goodnight, gentlemen.’
We rode back to the city in silence, but as we neared the station, Kennedy remarked: ‘You see, Walter, these people are like the newspapers. They are floundering around in a sea of unrelated facts. There is more than they think back of this crime. I’ve been revolving in my mind how it will be possible to get some inkling about this concession of Vanderdyke’s, the mining claim of Mrs Ralston, and the exact itinerary of the Wainwright trip in the Far East. Do you think you can get that information for me? I think it will take me all day tomorrow to isolate this poison and get things in convincing shape on that score. Meanwhile if you can see Vanderdyke and Mrs Ralston you can help me a great deal. I am sure you will find them very interesting people.’
‘I have been told
that she is quite a female high financier,’ I replied, tacitly accepting Craig’s commission. ‘Her story is that her claim is situated near the mine of a group of powerful American capitalists, who are opposed to having any competition, and on the strength of that story she has been raking in the money right and left. I don’t know Vanderdyke, never heard of him before, but no doubt he has some equally interesting game.’
‘Don’t let them think you connect them with the case, however,’ cautioned Craig.
Early the next morning I started out on my quest for facts, though not so early but that Kennedy had preceded me to his work in his laboratory. It was not very difficult to get Mrs Ralston to talk about her troubles with the government. In fact, I did not even have to broach the subject of the death of Templeton. She volunteered the information that in his handling of her case he had been very unjust to her, in spite of the fact that she had known him well a long time ago. She even hinted that she believed he represented the combination of capitalists who were using the government to aid their own monopoly and prevent the development of her mine. Whether it was an obsession of her mind, or merely part of her clever scheme, I could not make out. I noted, however, that when she spoke of Templeton it was in a studied, impersonal way, and that she was at pains to lay the blame for the governmental interference rather on the rival mine owners.
It quite surprised me when I found from the directory that Vanderdyke’s office was on the floor below in the same building. Like Mrs Ralston’s, it was open, but not doing business, pending the investigation by the Post-Office Department.
Vanderdyke was a type of which I had seen many before. Well dressed to the extreme, he displayed all those evidences of prosperity which are the stock in trade of the man with securities to sell. He grasped my hand when I told him I was going to present the other side of the Post-Office cases and held it between both of his as if he had known me all his life. Only the fact that he had never seen me before prevented his calling me by my first name. I took mental note of his stock of jewellery, the pin in his tie that might almost have been the Hope diamond, the heavy watch chain across his chest, and a very brilliant seal ring of lapis lazuli on the hand that grasped mine. He saw me looking at it and smiled.
‘My dear fellow, we have deposits of that stuff that would make a fortune if we could get the machinery to get at it. Why, sir, there is lapis lazuli enough on our claim to make enough ultramarine paint to supply all the artists to the end of the world. Actually we could afford to crush it up and sell it as paint. And that is merely incidental to the other things on the concession. The asphalt’s the thing. That’s where the big money is. When we get started, sir, the old asphalt trust will simply melt away, melt away.’
He blew a cloud of tobacco smoke and let it dissolve significantly in the air.
When it came to talking about the suits, however, Vanderdyke was not so communicative as Mrs Ralston, but he was also not so bitter against either the Post-Office or Templeton.
‘Poor Templeton,’ he said. ‘I used to know him years ago when we were boys. Went to school with him and all that sort of thing, you know, but until I ran across him, or rather he ran across me, in this investigation I hadn’t heard much about him. Pretty clever fellow he was, too. The state will miss him, but my lawyer tells me that we should have won the suit anyhow, even if that unfortunate tragedy hadn’t occurred. Most unaccountable, wasn’t it? I’ve read about it in the papers for old time’s sake, and can make nothing out of it.’
I said nothing, but wondered how he could pass so lightheartedly over the death of the woman who had once been his wife. However, I said nothing. The result was he launched forth again on the riches of his Venezuelan concession and loaded me down with ‘literature,’ which I crammed into my pocket for future reference.
My next step was to drop into the office of a Spanish-American paper whose editor was especially well informed on South American affairs.
‘Do I know Mrs Ralston?’ he repeated, thoughtfully lighting one of those black cigarettes that look so vicious and are so mild. ‘I should say so. I’ll tell you a little story about her. Three or four years ago she turned up in Caracas. I don’t know who Mr Ralston was – perhaps there never was any Mr Ralston. Anyhow, she got in with the official circle of the Castro government and was very successful as an adventuress. She has considerable business ability and represented a certain group of Americans. But, if you recall, when Castro was eliminated pretty nearly everyone who had stood high with him went, too. It seems that a number of the old concessionaires played the game on both sides. This particular group had a man named Vanderdyke on the anti-Castro side. So, when Mrs Ralston went, she just quietly sailed by way of Panama to the other side of the continent, to Peru – they paid her well – and Vanderdyke took the title role.
‘Oh, yes, she and Vanderdyke were very good friends, very, indeed. I think they must have known each other here in the States. Still they played their parts well at the time. Since things have settled down in Venezuela, the concessionaires have found no further use for Vanderdyke either, and here they are, Vanderdyke and Mrs Ralston, both in New York now, with two of the most outrageous schemes of financing ever seen on Broad Street. They have offices in the same building, they are together a great deal, and now I hear that the state attorney-general is after both of them.’
With this information and a very meagre report of the Wainwright trip to the Far East, which had taken in some out-of-the-way places apparently, I hastened back to Kennedy. He was surrounded by bottles, tubes, jars, retorts, Bunsen burners, everything in the science and art of chemistry, I thought.
I didn’t like the way he looked. His hand was unsteady, and his eyes looked badly, but he seemed quite put out when I suggested that he was working too hard over the case. I was worried about him, but rather than say anything to offend him I left him for the rest of the afternoon, only dropping in before dinner to make sure that he would not forget to eat something. He was then completing his preparations for the evening. They were of the simplest kind, apparently. In fact, all I could see was an apparatus which consisted of a rubber funnel, inverted and attached to a rubber tube which led in turn into a jar about a quarter full of water. Through the stopper of the jar another tube led to a tank of oxygen.
There were several jars of various liquids on the table and a number of chemicals. Among other things was a sort of gourd, encrusted with a black substance, and in a corner was a box from which sounds issued as if it contained something alive.
I did not trouble Kennedy with questions, for I was only too glad when he consented to take a brisk walk and join me in a thick porterhouse.
It was a large party that gathered in Kennedy’s laboratory that night, one of the largest he had ever had. Mr and Mrs Wainwright and Miss Marian came, the ladies heavily veiled. Doctor Nott and Mr Whitney were among the first to arrive. Later came Mr Vanderdyke and last of all Mrs Ralston with Inspector O’Connor. Altogether it was an unwilling party.
‘I shall begin,’ said Kennedy, ‘by going over, briefly, the facts in this case.’
Tersely he summarised it, to my surprise laying great stress on the proof that the couple had been asphyxiated.
‘But it was no ordinary asphyxiation,’ he continued. ‘We have to deal in this case with a poison which is apparently among the most subtle known. A particle of matter so minute as to be hardly distinguishable by the naked eye, on the point of a needle or a lancet, a prick of the skin scarcely felt under any circumstances and which would pass quite unheeded if the attention were otherwise engaged, and not all the power in the world – unless one was fully prepared – could save the life of the person in whose skin the puncture had been made.’
Craig paused a moment, but no one showed any evidence of being more than ordinarily impressed.
‘This poison, I find, acts on the so-called endplates of the muscles and nerves. It produces complete paralysis, but not
loss of consciousness, sensation, circulation, or respiration until the end approaches. It seems to be one of the most powerful sedatives I have ever heard of. When introduced in even a minute quantity it produces death finally by asphyxiation – by paralysing the muscles of respiration. This asphyxia is what so puzzled the coroner.
‘I will now inject a little of the blood serum of the victims into a white mouse.’
He took a mouse from the box I had seen, and with a needle injected the serum. The mouse did not even wince, so lightly did he touch it, but as we watched, its life seemed gently to ebb away, without pain and without struggle. Its breath simply seemed to stop.
Next he took the gourd I had seen on the table and with a knife scraped off just the minutest particle of the black licorice-like stuff that encrusted it. He dissolved the particle in some alcohol and with a sterilised needle repeated his experiment on a second mouse. The effect was precisely similar to that produced by the blood on the first.
It did not seem to me that anyone showed any emotion except possibly the slight exclamation that escaped Miss Marian Wainwright. I fell to wondering whether it was prompted by a soft heart or a guilty conscience.
We were all intent on what Craig was doing, especially Doctor Nott, who now broke in with a question.
‘Professor Kennedy, may I ask a question? Admitting that the first mouse died in an apparently similar manner to the second, what proof have you that the poison is the same in both cases? And if it is the same can you show that it affects human beings in the same way, and that enough of it has been discovered in the blood of the victims to have caused their death? In other words, I want the last doubt set aside. How do you know absolutely that this poison which you discovered in my office last night in that black precipitate when you added the ether – how do you know that it asphyxiated the victims?’
American Sherlocks Page 24
