Chapter V: Disguised

To Cole’s rapt gaze the insane man presented a picture at once fearful and fascinating. Reeves was no longer looking at the keen-bladed knives, but now he was staring at the black-bearded surgeon with an intensity that seemed to strain every nerve and muscle in his body. The knotted cords at his temple swelled and took on a livid hue. Slowly and shakily he drew himself erect in the chair, and then his whole body was rocked by a paroxysm so violent that, for an instant, Cole thought the cords were about to snap.

The surgeon, with the reeking sponge in his hand, turned and watched the maniac. A smile twisted the bearded lips, and he stepped to the chair and spoke a few words in Reeves’ ears. The insane man’s chest heaved out, but the cry and the paroxysm seemed to have exhausted his energies, and only a feeble, fluttering moan came.

The spectacle had held Cole spellbound. Now, while the surgeon was leaning over the insane man and whispering in his ear, a sudden realization of his peril caused him to throw off the weird fascination which the scene had cast on him. He had only a few moments in which to act. Soon the reeking sponge would be at his nostrils, deadening his mental faculties.

His darting glance fell on the knives lying on the glass-topped table beside the cot. They were so close to him that they seemed to mock and taunt him. Again it occurred to him that they had been placed like that for the sole purpose of impressing their infernal purpose upon him and battering down his fortitude. It had been a touch of refined cruelty on the black-bearded man’s part, but it only strengthened Cole’s determination not to yield.

Suddenly, as he kept looking at the knives, the gleam of an inspiration crept into his narrowing eyes. He cast a swift glance about the room. The black-bearded man was still occupied with Reeves and stood with his back turned to the cot. Cole, trembling with excitement, turned over on his side and wriggled as close to the edge of the cot as he could. He reached out his manacled hands over the glass-topped table. The cords around the wrists gave the fingers considerable leeway. In an instant they had closed around the handle of the nearest knife.

Cole tingled from head to foot. The subtle bit of strategy by which the black-bearded man had hoped to shatter his victim’s nerve had now been turned to Cole’s advantage. It gave him a fighting chance, though the odds were still overwhelmingly against him. His lips curled a little, and there was a belligerent sparkle in his eyes. Turning over on his back he dropped the knife beside him on the pillow, so that his head would temporarily screen it from the surgeon’s sight. Then, letting his arms fall limply back against his abdomen, he waited for the surgeon to act.

Presently the black-bearded man turned away from Reeves and stepped up to the cot. Cole lay motionless, with eyes half closed, as if partly dazed by contemplation of the terrible fate that awaited him. Inwardly he was straining and quivering with suspense. As yet the surgeon did not seem to have noticed that one of the knives was missing from the table, but he might do so any moment, and then Cole’s only hope would be gone.

“Well, Mr. Cole?” he asked lightly. “For the last time I ask you to reconsider your refusal.”

Cole lay very still. The last few minutes of suspense seemed to have wrought a great change in him. His lips moved as if he were trying to speak, but was too weak to use his voice.

The surgeon grinned into his beard. Evidently he thought the knives placed so close to his victim’s side had exerted the intended psychological effect.

“Have you anything to say?” he asked, bending over the cot in an effort to catch Cole’s faintly mumbled words.

Cole flexed his muscles for action. The moment for which he had waited was at hand. His chance had come; everything depended upon how he used it. He mumbled again, and the surgeon’s head came a little closer to his chest.

“A little louder, please,” said the black-bearded man.

Slowly, by imperceptible degrees, Cole drew up his manacled hands toward his chin. Suddenly his arms shot upward, forming a circular loop that instantly descended over the surgeon’s head. With a startled cry the black-bearded man tried to draw back, but the arms that encircled his shoulders were as strong and hard as springs of steel. He struggled frantically, but the encircling grip pinned his arms tightly to his sides, and his head was constantly being forced lower and lower toward the reclining man’s chest. The sponge had dropped from his hand the moment Cole’s arms were flung around his neck.

An exultant thrill went through Cole as the other’s resistance grew feebler. Now the surgeon’s head was almost level with his face. The only sounds in the room were the hard panting of the adversaries and an occasional giggle from the insane man. Fumes of ether were slowly filling the air.

Cole turned his head. In an instant the handle of the knife was firmly gripped between his strong, even teeth. He thrust out his jaw, and the point of the weapon grazed the black-bearded man’s throat. Cole saw a look of fear creep into the man’s eyes. The surgeon made a final attempt to wriggle free, but Cole’s arms held him as in a vise. Once more the knife, tightly clasped between Cole’s jaws, scratched the other’s flesh. He remarked again the look of terror that was stamped on the surgeon’s face. In view of the diabolical fate which the man had meant to inflict on him Cole was human enough to enjoy the other’s agony.

Suddenly he bent a sharper look on the man’s face. Once before he had wondered why there seemed to be something peculiar about it, but this was his first chance to examine the features at close quarters. Now he noticed that the beard which covered most of the face had an unnatural appearance. There were lines about the eyes that did not seem quite genuine, and the exposed portions of the skin had an odd coloring. Obviously the man was disguised, and Cole could see that it had been rather cleverly done. He wondered why the disguise had been put on, since the surgeon had had every reason to expect that Cole would leave the room a raving lunatic and that there would be no danger of recognition if they should meet again.

He had not time to think further about it. The deadlock was only temporary; any fortuitous incident might upset Cole’s advantage; instantly the door might open and admit one or more of the other members of the gang. Just now he had the surgeon at his mercy. Only a little slash with the knife, clamped between his teeth was needed to open an artery, but that would not release him from his predicament. Though he might be able to sever the cords around his ankles he could not move his hands with sufficient freedom to cut the strings around his wrists. While he was casting about for a plan a muffled groan of fright and pain broke from the surgeon’s lips. Unconsciously Cole had once more scratched the man’s throat with the knife.

“You’re killing me!” protested the other man in a feeble voice.

“It would serve you right,” declared Cole unfeelingly. “I don’t know why I should have any compunction about killing a rat of your kind. We might come to some arrangement, however. What will you do if I spare your life?”

“Anything, anything you say.”

Cole considered. The thing of first importance was to get his hands free of the cords. In his present position, with his arms pinned tightly in Cole’s embrace the surgeon could not untie them, and Cole did not see how he could give the man any freedom of movement without imperiling his own advantage.

“I am going to give you a chance for your life,” he said, “but if you make the slightest false move you die instantly. Understand that?”

“I’ll do whatever you say.”

“All right, then. Turn over.”

Cole relaxed his hold a trifle, and the surgeon turned in his arms. The point of the knife did not leave his flesh for an instant, and at any moment Cole could have inflicted a mortal wound by merely thrusting his head forward. Now, with the end of the blade in dangerous proximity to the surgeon’s jugular vein, Cole gingerly released one of the man’s arms, then commanded him to untie the cords around his wrists. The black-bearded man obeyed, and Cole transferred the knife from his mouth to his right hand. In a short time his feet had been released, and now he flung the surgeon aside and slipped from the cot.

Reeves had watched the proceeding with a dull stare. Now and then a hoarse giggle of glee had escaped him.

The surgeon got to his feet and drew a long breath of relief. His eyes, with a glint of lingering fear in their depths, watched Cole admiringly.

“You’re a great scrapper, Mr. Cole,” he admitted. “You turned the tables with a truly artistic touch. For a time I was in fear for my life. There was no time to explain, and you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.”

“Explain?” Cole asked contemptuously. The little knife was still clutched tightly in his hand. “One doesn’t expect explanations from curs of your type.”

The surgeon laughed, and in the same instant his fingers touched a button. Cole flexed his muscles for another supreme test. Out of the corner of an eye he watched the surgeon; the other eye was fixed on the door. In a moment or two it would probably open in response to the surgeon’s ring, and men would come tumbling upon him from all directions. Cole smiled grimly. He would die fighting rather than expose himself to the other and more terrible fate from which he had just escaped.

The door opened, and he poised himself, ready to spring forward. The nerve-racking suspense, which he had undergone on the cot, was forgotten now. His eye was clear, and his brain was rapidly throwing off the ether fumes that had escaped from the surgeon’s sponge. The hand in which he held the knife came upward, prepared to strike down the first man who should approach.

Some one entered through the open door, and the arm fell limply to Cole’s side. With gaping mouth he stared at the newcomer who executed a profound bow, while he pointed to the outer room. “Will you kindly step this way, Mr. Cole?” he asked in the courteous tones of a well-trained servant.

Cole laughed. The sudden reaction made him feel giddy. He had expected at least half a dozen men to pounce on him when the door opened. By contrast there was something ludicrous about the salaaming figure, now confronting him.

“If you please, Mr. Cole.” The man again waved his hand toward the outer room, and Cole obligingly followed his direction. There seemed to be nothing else to do than wait for the other side to make the next move. If he was walking into a trap, as appeared not at all unlikely, he still had the knife to defend himself with. And that was not all, he suddenly remembered; his pistol was still in his hip pocket. It was rather odd, he reflected, as he walked behind the servant, that no attempt had been made to take it from him.

In a few moments he was back in the long room with the circular table. The seven masked men were again grouped around it, and the light was as dim as before. The servant ushered him up to the chair occupied by the spokesman, then silently glided away. Once more Cole felt seven pairs of eyes searching his face, but this time he was aware of a new quality in the air.

“You may feel quite at ease, Mr. Cole,” the spokesman began. “I can promise that no harm will come to you.”

The calm, matter-of-fact tones incensed Cole when he recalled by what a narrow margin he had escaped the fate which these men had tried to inflict upon him.

“How magnanimous!” he gibingly exclaimed.

The other chuckled. “Oh, we can understand that you don’t feel particularly friendly toward us. Incidentally we know all that happened in the other room. You acquitted yourself nobly, Mr. Cole.”

“Save your compliments. They are on a par with your promises.”

“You would naturally feel that way after what has happened. Mr. Cole, I am going to ask you to forget what occurred in the other room.”

“Forget?” asked Cole incredulously, feeling as though the episode he had just passed through would live in his memory till his dying day.

“Well, perhaps that is asking too much,” the other admitted. “By the way, your bitterness toward us is natural enough, but don’t you find some compensation in the knowledge that you have passed through fire unscathed? You remained true to yourself in one of the severest tests a man can be subjected to. Isn’t there some satisfaction for you in that?”

“Oh, yes, a lot,” said Cole ironically. “It’s worth something to a man to know that nothing can bend him. If you expect me, however, to get down on my knees and thank you for giving me a chance to prove myself you are mistaken.”

“We don’t expect anything of the kind. I am merely trying to point out that you have cause for self-congratulation as well as bitterness. You probably won’t be able to forget what has happened, but I am going to ask you to dismiss it from your mind temporarily, while I make a new proposition to you.”

Cole felt a trifle dazed. The effrontery of the man was unbelievable. For a moment he suspected it was all a weird jest. “Go on,” he said dryly. “Your superb insolence interests me. I am curious to see how far it will carry you.”

“You shall see in a few minutes. I will begin by stating certain facts. Perhaps later on I shall be able to prove them to their satisfaction, but just now I must ask you to accept them as an hypothesis.”

“Proceed,” said Cole. “I’ll try to believe that black is white.”

“That’s practically what it amounts to. The first fact I am asking you to accept on faith, for the present, is that we are not responsible for Malcolm Reeves’ deplorable condition. An operation was performed on his brain, but we had nothing to do with it.”

He paused as if expecting an objection.

“The second fact I am asking you to accept provisionally,” he went on when Cole showed no inclination to speak, “is that we are just as anxious to solve the Carmody case as you can possibly be. We are more anxious, in fact, for we know more about its vast scope and enormous complexities than you do. Are you with me so far, Mr. Cole?”

Cole’s shoulder made a seesawing motion. The whole thing was preposterous, but there was a quality in the man’s tone that impressed him against his will. “You are asking me to believe that you are sheep in wolves’ clothing,” he remarked.

“That’s undoubtedly how it looks to you. Won’t you try to brush your doubts aside, Mr. Cole? Remember that in due time I will prove everything I say.”

Cole’s indignation was cooling. There was something about the spokesman that seemed to exert a subtle magnetism on him. Already his dreadful experience in the other room seemed dim and remote, though a few minutes ago he had thought it was indelibly etched on the scroll of his memory. “If what you say is true, then why——”

“No questions, please. You would not believe me if I were to answer them. All I can say now is that we have excellent reasons for what we have done. Some time before long I think you yourself will approve them. Just now you must accept my statements on faith. Will you try to believe that we had nothing to do with Reeves’ condition and that we are on your side in the Carmody matter?”

“You can’t deny that you tried to put me in the same condition Reeves is in?”

“We can, but we won’t just at present. What happened in the other room I am asking you to dismiss from your mind in order that you may view the facts I have placed before you in an unbiased frame of mind. With that episode eliminated can’t you place a little temporary credence in what I say?”

Cole tried to clarify his thoughts, but without much success. He realized with satisfaction that his hand was still clutching the knife. He wondered whether, but for his quickness of mind and his deft handling of the little weapon, he would not now be a raving madman. It seemed strange that he was able to think coolly about the matter, and stranger still that he found himself listening to the spokesman’s arguments with any degree of seriousness.

Finally he shook his head. “It won’t quite go down,” he declared. “You are asking me to take too much for granted. One’s brain was made to think with, and your statements won’t bear too close reasoning. You will have to give me your proofs before I can believe you.”

A pause followed his words; then a chorus of whispers went around the table. The spokesman leaned over and consulted the man seated beside him.

“I don’t blame you,” he declared, again turning to Cole. “After all, your skepticism is quite natural. It is even a tribute to your intellectual powers, for only children and feeble-minded persons accept unsupported statements. Now, as for proofs, let me see. Would you be convinced if you should find the man who is responsible for Reeves’ condition?”

“You know who he is?”

“We have had our suspicions for some time, but we were not certain until a short while ago. A delicate operation, by which certain brain cells were deadened, was performed on Reeves. We knew Professor Carmody could not have performed it, for he is not a surgeon. We began to look for an accomplice, and finally we found a man who seemed to fit into our theory of the case. Mr. Cole, did you ever hear of Doctor Dickson Latham?”

“Never,” said Cole.

“Well, certain circumstances, which needn’t be mentioned just now, made us believe that Doctor Latham was the man whom we were looking for. The matter was really of no great importance, only one of the minor angles of the case, but any little light, shed on the corners of the mystery, might help toward solving the whole. We felt fairly certain Doctor Latham was our man; in the last hour we have become positive of it.”

“In the last hour!” exclaimed Cole. “How?”

“Malcolm Reeves told us.”

“Reeves told you?”

“By his actions, while you were lying on the cot. We had two reasons for staging that little scene in the other room. The primary one we won’t go into at present. The other was to jog the dead part of Reeves’ brain back to life, by having him witness the preparations for an operation that, in its essential aspects, must have resembled the one performed on himself. We hoped that the smell of the ether, the sight of the knives and the preparations in general would awaken a slumbering memory in his mind. The experiment was only partly successful, but Reeves’ actions proved beyond doubt that he recognized the officiating surgeon.”

Through the dusk Cole stared into the speaker’s calm face. “Then the surgeon——”

“You probably didn’t notice it,” the other interrupted, “but the man who officiated as the surgeon was disguised. The disguise was put on by one of our men, an expert in that line.”

“I noticed it, and it was a good job,” Cole remarked. “I couldn’t see why it was necessary, though.”

“The disguise was put on, not to hoodwink you, but for its effect on Reeves.”

“I don’t understand.”

“But you will when I tell you that the disguise gave the officiating surgeon a superficial, but fairly convincing, resemblance to Doctor Dickson Latham.”

“Clever, I’ll say!” exclaimed Cole who could appreciate ingenuity even in men who had caused him the most agonizing moments in his life. He recalled Reeves’ intense agitation while the preparations were in progress. At the time he had not known what it meant, but he remembered that the surgeon had watched Reeves very closely, and this had given Cole his chance to snatch up the knife from the table.

“There is no doubt that Reeves thought he was seeing the man who had performed the operation upon him,” the spokesman went on. “One of us was watching the scene through a small opening in the wall, and it was quite evident that the surgeon’s resemblance to Doctor Latham gave Reeves a profound shock. Our suspicions have been confirmed, but as yet we have no legal proof. We want you, Mr. Cole, to go out and get the evidence against Doctor Latham.”

“Me?”

“Why not? You are a detective, a very good one, though the fact isn’t generally known. If you find that Latham is guilty you will be more inclined to credit our statements and think favorably of the proposition we shall make you. You will leave here as you came, blindfolded and under guard. Until we understand each other better we don’t want you to learn too much about us. You will wish to sleep late in the morning, but to-morrow afternoon you can attack the Carmody case from a new angle.”

“And my clients?” asked Cole.

“You will be all the better able to serve them because of your connection with us. As soon as you have found your evidence against Latham, or learned enough to convince you that we are trustworthy, you will come here again and report. We shall find a way of communicating with you in due time. What do you say to the idea?”

Cole pondered. He tried to analyze the situation, but all he could see were contradictions and perplexities. His only clear thought was that he had nothing to lose and perhaps much to gain by adopting the suggestion. His glance swept the circle of masked faces, all of them turned expectantly in his direction.

“The idea is good,” he finally declared. “I shall pay my respects to Doctor Latham to-morrow afternoon.”