Chapter III

Calmly, disdainfully, the girl stood at the door of her room, and watched the secret-service men search it with no regard for care. At her side stood her cousin, looking on helplessly. His boyish protests had been stilled by a terse “Shut up!” from the chief. At the other side of the girl, his face black with a scowl, and his hands clenched at his sides, stood Sydney Thames. To the soft-hearted Sydney no crime was so great as that of causing a woman pain. So he gritted his teeth, and darted murderous glances at the secret-service men, and looks of pleading at the blind man who leaned against the wall, apparently watching the searchers.

The girl had shown them the room. She had flung open the door of the closet, and cleverly concealed behind hanging clothes they had found a telegraph-key on a small shelf. They had pulled out the wires, and found they led to the magnets in the library. Now they were beginning a systematic search of the room--and finding nothing. The girl had evidently told the truth. She, and only she, could have sent the messages.

“Where did you learn telegraphy?” demanded the chief suddenly.

“I can’t remember when I didn’t have a key to play with,” she answered coolly. “Father was an expert telegrapher for years, and he taught us almost before we could read and write.”

“‘Us?’” snapped out the chief.

“My brother and me,” she answered, and the ears of the blind man, trained to interpret every inflection of tone, caught the sudden forced note.

“Where is your brother, Miss Nelson?” he asked.

“He died ten years ago, in the tropics,” she answered, and there was a curious break in her voice.

“And you left the library every night at eight so you could send your father messages?” asked the chief sarcastically.

“Yes. We did not dare talk because of your spy. And his eyes were never off my father.”

“Well,” the chief’s tone was even more sarcastic than before, “_you_ might have found an easier way.”

She did not answer, but watched Thornley Colton as he stepped across the room to the closet. For a minute he poked inside with his cane, moving the hanging clothes away from the telegraph-instrument. He leaned over it, and seemed to be examining it intently. There was a frown of puzzlement on his forehead as he straightened up. It disappeared almost instantly, and in its place came a look of sudden enlightenment.

“Did you ever smoke South American cigarettes with licorice-pectoral papers, Miss Nelson?” he asked.

“No, never!” She tried to make the denial indignant, but Colton’s superkeen ears caught the false note instantly, as did the keen-eyed chief of the secret service. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but the blind man forestalled him.

“The next house is built right against this one, isn’t it, chief?”

“Yes, but the crazy Frenchman next door is absolutely above suspicion. We looked up his whole life’s history. He’s a semi-invalid and nutty. He has a pet bear; also two servants to take care of the animal.”

“Crazy, eh?” muttered Colton. He hurried across the room, his cane locating every piece of furniture. He stopped before the bureau, and leaned forward toward a drawer-pull. An instant he paused, and in that instant came the betrayal he had hoped to bring from the girl.

“Don’t, please!” She stopped suddenly, biting her lips until the blood came.

Colton straightened up; his lips set grimly. “Pull out the bureau, and you’ll find an opening into the house of the crazy Frenchman,” he said.

“What?” The chief jumped across the room, and pulled out the heavy piece of furniture. Behind it was a jagged hole that a crouching man could go through with ease.

The two secret-service men jumped through the opening, but the chief paused. “How did you know that?” he asked wonderingly.

“Because the clothes in the closet held the faint licorice odour of the pectoral cigarette papers that South Americans affect. Therefore some man must have been sending those messages. It wasn’t a man in this house. There had to be an entrance--and I tricked the girl into telling me that it was concealed behind the bureau. It had to be in this room because the message-sender wouldn’t risk entering another to get where the telegraph-key was!”

The girl leaned back against the wall, and a sob came from her lips. “Oh, why did I ask Ned to find you!” she cried. “Their eyes could have seen nothing, and you----”

“It was necessary, Miss Nelson!” The gentleness that had been in the blind man’s voice downstairs was missing now; it was brusque, sharp. “Better have one of your men remain here, chief,” he said, and there was no mistaking his meaning. “I’d like to go through that house.”

The chief looked at him curiously; then, with the docility that came to most men when the blind man advised or ordered, he whistled sharply. One of the men returned.

“Stay here!” commanded the chief, and he stepped aside as the blind man bent low and entered the next house. The chief followed.

“What do you know about the occupant here?” Colton asked the chief as he walked around the room, his thin cane locating furniture again, and giving his brain a mental picture of the whole chamber.

“He’s lived here for some time. We looked him up from A to Izzard, also his three servants. About six months ago, it appears, he bought a pet bear, a nasty beast, and sometimes takes him out. Attracts quite a lot of attention because the old man wears a huge fur coat that makes him look like the animal’s big brother.”

“And because every man in your business thinks the crook is always seeking cover there would be no suspicion of a man who courts attention by means of keeping a pet bear. Clever game enough to throw any man that had eyes off the track!”

“Oh, the Frenchman’s on the level,” resented the chief. “He’s getting worse, failing fast. Anybody can see that. Doctor comes twice a day to see him.”

“And he comes every night about eight o’clock!” declared Colton suddenly. “He’s the man that’s been sending those messages. He’s the chief of the gang you’ve been trying to locate so long. He must be, or he’d stay here all the time. He has to attend to the outside work while the men here do the actual counterfeiting. And it was never suspected because all you could see was a _pet bear_! Look!” He pulled open the drawer of a dresser. “Here’s a dozen cigarette ends, all of pectoral paper and Brazilian paper. The doctor smoked them here the times he had to wait for eight o’clock and the time to talk to Nelson.”

“By Jove! You’re----”

“Hey, chief!” The cry came from downstairs.

“It’s Jim. He’s found something!” The chief started toward the door and stopped. “Do you want me to guide you?” he asked.

“Go ahead!” Colton said dryly. “My ears will follow your footfalls.”

“This way, chief! Quick!” The voice directed them to the kitchen. The chief stopped with an ejaculation of amazement at the door.

The secret-service operative who had entered the house first was lifting an unconscious man from a heavy wooden chair. On the floor were the cut ropes that had bound him, and the wadded handkerchiefs that had prevented outcries.

“The Frenchman!” gasped the chief. “He’s got to talk! Lay him down, Jim!”

The Frenchman groaned feebly as they put him on the floor, and choked when a pocket flask was held to his lips.

“_Mon Dieu!_” he moaned weakly. Then his dazed brain realised that men were standing over him. “Pleeze stop! I do nozzing!” he cried supplicatingly.

“We are friends--gendarmes.” Chief Whittson said the words slowly and distinctly, so that the man could understand. “Who did this?”

The fear went from the Frenchman’s eyes. “My servants,” he whispered hoarsely. “Zay have kep’ me prisoner for mont’s; ever since my old servants go an’ zay come.”

“Damn!” jerked out the chief. “They’ve tricked us right along. We looked up the old servants’ records, and didn’t suspect for an instant the impersonation. Where did they go? When?”

The Frenchman fell back, his eyes closed

“I think I can answer the ‘when’ part of that question,” put in Thornley Colton, as he appeared at the doorway. “I apologise to the man here for the things I said upstairs. But even I didn’t give the master counterfeiter credit for such diabolical ingenuity as this. The fake servants left the minute you entered Nelson’s house to question the girl. And the man that went with them as the Frenchman was Dryden F. Nelson. That’s the only way he could go!”

The Frenchman stirred, and tried to lift his head. “Zat is right,” he gasped chokingly. “He----” His eyes closed.

“Get an ambulance, Jim!” ordered the chief. “This man’s in bad shape. Get the boys from outside! Put two on the trail of the carriage. Nelson and his gang won’t get far. Bring the others in to search the house!” The man darted out, and the chief picked the invalid up in his strong arms and carried him gently to a couch in the dining-room.

The Frenchman moaned, and a shudder shook his body. “Don’t make ze bear hurt me!” he cried weakly. “Don’t knock ze glasses togezzer and make him mad-crazee.” He lapsed back into unconsciousness.

The chief looked at Colton significantly, but the blind man only nodded.

“But how did old man Nelson ever get a chance to get in here?” puzzled the chief.

“He didn’t!” Colton’s voice was sharp. “The man who posed as the doctor is the ringleader.” There came a ring of menace in his tone. “I’ll find him! I know him!”

“You know him?” The chief did not even nod to the three men who entered the room and stood respectfully by for orders.

“Yes! He’s tanned a dark brown, an expert telegrapher, thirty-five years old, a man who likes to pet and fondle a bear, and his first name is Joe. There are a few other details I’ll give you when the proper time comes.”

“Great Scott!” Amazement, incredulity were in the chief’s voice. He turned to one of his men. “Was the doctor here last night, Tom?” he asked.

“We saw him coming out a minute before we got the alarm from you, chief. Said good evening, and told us it was only a matter of days for the old guy here.”

“Eyes attach no significance to things they have seen a dozen times before,” Colton observed.

The chief turned to him again. “Where did you get those facts?” he demanded, with the brusqueness of chagrin in his voice.

“The Brazilian tobacco and pectoral papers told me he had spent years in South America. Naturally he’d be tanned a dark brown. The fact that he must be an expert telegrapher is obvious. I know that he is thirty-five years old because I know that he is fifteen years older than Nadine Nelson. How I knew that you’ll know later. This told me his name--and another fact.” The blind man held out a charred fragment of paper scarcely two inches square, a deep brown in colour from heat and smoke. “The fact that the man you want takes pleasure in fondling and handling a bear my keen sense of smell told me. The bear-fur odour is unmistakable and clings to a thing for hours. It was on the handkerchief in the kitchen, and in the corner of the linen was the initial J!”

“It’s impossible to decipher a word of this!” protested the chief, looking up from the charred fragment of paper.

“With eyes--yes. But my finger-tips found the tracery of that name, even though the ink had entirely disappeared! The pen-ridges remain, and would remain until the paper was consumed.” He changed the subject suddenly. “There comes the ambulance. I want to go up and see the girl again.”

“I’ll go with you.” Chief Whittson’s tone was curiously humble. He turned to give curt orders to the men, and followed the blind man out of the room.

Despite the minutes that had passed, Nadine Nelson was just where they had left her. The secret-service guard sat easily on a gilt chair. Sydney Thames and the girl’s cousin were alternately pleading with her to sit down. As the chief and Thornley Colton stepped into the room her teeth gripped her lower lip, and her hands clenched tighter at her sides.

“Who is the man who has been coming into this room every night to send those messages?” Thornley Colton’s voice was hard, stern.

The face of the girl went white at the cruelty of it. Sydney Thames took a half step forward, and a gesture of the blind man stopped him.

“Who is he?” snapped the blind man again.

She raised her head to look straight into his sightless eyes.

“My husband!” she answered defiantly.

“That isn’t true!” The words came like the lash of a whip.

“Thorn!” In Sydney Thames’s voice was agony that the man he loved could say such a thing to a woman.

“And you were the man I thought could help me!” Scorn, bitterness, self-accusation were in the vibrant voice of the girl. “You’re worse than those curs who listened to every word! You’ve _killed_ my father! If I were a man I’d kill _you_--even though you are blind!”

The last words came through her clenched, white teeth, and she advanced half a step, so that her hot breath reached the face of the blind man. But he only idly twirled his slim cane and looked down at her with a tolerant, amused grin that was maddening.

“You’ll talk!” he promised curtly. “She’ll talk in jail, chief!”

“I wouldn’t talk if you tore me to little pieces!” she cried vehemently.

Colton did not answer; he nodded curtly to the chief, and with a “Come, Sydney!” he hurried from the room, and from the girl who stared straight ahead of her with dull, fixed eyes.

Sydney Thames followed him down the stairs silently. In the lower hall he spoke. “God, Thorn, that was barbarous! It almost made me forget----”

“Find the telephone and get me the number of the United Fruit Company,” ordered the blind man sharply.

Without a word Thames found the ’phone in an alcove of the hall, and gave the number to Colton.

“What boat sails for South America to-day?” asked the problemist when the connection had been established. “The _Carracas_? Is there a bear consigned on that boat? Hasn’t arrived yet? The sailing’s at five? Thank you!”

As he hung up the receiver the angry boy’s tone of Nadine Nelson’s cousin came to them indistinctly. Sydney Thames jumped as though a pin had jabbed him. When he spoke to the blind man there was a look on his face that had never been on it before.

“Thorn,” he said, and there was a break in his voice, “you’ve been the only father I ever knew, but I _won’t_ leave that girl to the mercy of those police brutes!”

“This is no time for sentiment!” snapped Colton.

“It is time for good-bye, then!” Sydney Thames, the colourless, the characterless, the counter of steps for the man who had picked him up, a bundle of baby-clothes on the banks of the English river that had given him the only name he ever knew, held out his hand.

The blind man’s lips tightened; he ignored the outstretched hand as he pulled on a glove. “Make it _auf wiedersehen_,” he said wearily. “Shrimp and I are going to catch the boat for Brazil at five o’clock!”