LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

exactly human. Or was it our heightened imaginations, under the spell of the darkness?

      “Listen!” cautioned Kennedy.

      We did, standing there now in the hall. Kennedy was the only one of us who was cool. Jennings’ face blanched, then he turned tremblingly and went down to the library door whence the sounds had seemed to come.

      He called but there was no answer. He turned the knob and opened the door. The Dodge library was a large room. In the center stood a big flat-topped desk of heavy mahogany. It was brilliantly lighted.

      At one end of the desk was a telephone. Taylor Dodge was lying on the floor at that end of the desk—perfectly rigid—his face distorted—a ghastly figure. A pet dog ran over, sniffed frantically at his master’s legs and suddenly began to howl dismally.

      Dodge was dead!

      “Help!” shouted Jennings.

      Others of the servants came rushing in. There was for the moment the greatest excitement and confusion.

      Suddenly a wild figure in flying garments flitted down the stairs and into the library, dropping beside the dead man, without seeming to notice us at all.

      “Father!” shrieked a woman’s voice, heart broken. “Father! Oh—my God—he—he is dead!”

      It was Elaine Dodge.

      With a mighty effort, the heroic girl seemed to pull herself together.

      “Jennings,” she cried, “Call Mr. Bennett—immediately!”

      From the one-sided, excited conversation of the butler over the telephone, I gathered that Bennett had been in the process of disrobing in his own apartment uptown and would be right down.

      Together, Kennedy, Elaine and myself lifted Dodge to a sofa and Elaine’s aunt, Josephine, with whom she lived, appeared on the scene, trying to quiet the sobbing girl.

      Kennedy and I withdrew a little way and he looked about curiously.

      “What was it?” I whispered. “Was it natural, an accident, or—or murder?”

      The word seemed to stick in my throat. If it was a murder, what was the motive? Could it have been to get the evidence which Dodge had that would incriminate the master criminal?

      Kennedy moved over quietly and examined the body of Dodge. When he rose, his face had a peculiar look.

      “Terrible!” he whispered to me. “Apparently he had been working at his accustomed place at the desk when the telephone rang. He rose and crossed over to it. See! That brought his feet on this register let into the floor. As he took the telephone receiver down a flash of light must have shot from it to his ear. It shows the characteristic electric burn.”

      “The motive?” I queried.

      “Evidently his pockets had been gone through, though none of the valuables were missing. Things on his desk show that a hasty search has been made.”

      Just then the door opened and Bennett burst in.

      As he stood over the body, gazing down at it, repressing the emotions of a strong man, he turned to Elaine and in a low voice, exclaimed, “The Clutching Hand did this! I shall consecrate my life to bring this man to justice!”

      He spoke tensely and Elaine, looking up into his face, as if imploring his help in her hour of need, unable to speak, merely grasped his hand.

      Kennedy, who in the meantime had stood apart from the rest of us, was examining the telephone carefully.

      “A clever crook,” I heard him mutter between his teeth. “He must have worn gloves. Not a finger print—at least here.”

      Perhaps I can do no better than to reconstruct the crime as Kennedy later pieced these startling events together.

      Long after I had left and even after Bennett left, Dodge continued working in his library, for he was known as a prodigious worker.

      Had he taken the trouble, however, to pause and peer out into the moonlight that flooded the back of his house, he might have seen the figures of two stealthy crooks crouching in the half shadows of one of the cellar windows.

      One crook was masked by a handkerchief drawn tightly about his lower face, leaving only his eyes visible beneath the cap with visor pulled down over his forehead. He had a peculiar stoop of the shoulders and wore his coat collar turned up. One hand, the right, seemed almost deformed. It was that which gave him his name in the underworld—the Clutching Hand.

      The masked crook held carefully the ends of two wires attached to an electric feed, and sending his pal to keep watch outside, he entered the cellar of the Dodge house through a window whose pane they had carefully removed. As he came through the window he dragged the wires with him, and, alter a moment’s reconnoitering attached them to the furnace pipe of the old-fashioned hot-air heater where the pipe ran up through the floor to the library above. The other wire was quickly attached to the telephone where its wires entered.

      Upstairs, Dodge, evidently uneasy in his mind about the precious “Limpy Red” letter, took it from the safe along with most of the other correspondence and, pressing a hidden spring in the wall, opened a secret panel, placed most of the important documents in this hiding place. Then he put some blank sheets of paper in an envelope and returned it to the safe.

      Downstairs the masked master criminal had already attached a voltmeter to the wires he had installed, waiting.

      Just then could be heard the tinkle of Dodge’s telephone and the old man rose to answer it. As he did so he placed his foot on the iron register, his hand taking the telephone and the receiver. At that instant came a powerful electric flash. Dodge sank on the floor grasping the instrument, electrocuted. Below, the master criminal could scarcely refrain from exclaiming with satisfaction as his voltmeter registered the powerful current that was passing.

      A moment later the criminal slid silently into Dodge’s room. Carefully putting on rubber gloves and avoiding touching the register, he wrenched the telephone from the grasp of the dead man, replacing it in its normal position. Only for a second did he pause to look at his victim as he destroyed the evidence of his work.

      Minutes were precious. First Dodge’s pockets, then his desk engaged his attention. There was left the safe.

      As he approached the strong box, the master criminal took two vials from his pockets. Removing a bust of Shakespeare that stood on the safe, he poured the contents of the vials in two mixed masses of powder forming a heap on the safe, into which he inserted two magnesium wires.

      He lighted them, sprang back, hiding his eyes from the light, and a blinding gush of flame, lasting perhaps ten seconds, poured out from the top of the safe.

      It was not an explosion, but just a dazzling, intense flame that sizzled and crackled. It seemed impossible, but the glowing mass was literally sinking, sinking down into the cold steel. At last it burned through—as if the safe had been of tinder!

      Without waiting a moment longer than necessary, the masked criminal advanced again and actually put his hand down through the top of the safe, pulling out a bunch of papers. Quickly he thrust them all, with just a glance, into his pocket.

      Still working quickly, he took the bust of the great dramatist which he had removed and placed it under the light. Next from his pocket he drew two curious stencils, as it were, which he had apparently carefully prepared. With his hands, still carefully gloved, he rubbed the stencils on his hair, as if to cover them with a film of natural oils. Then he deliberately pressed them over the statue in several places. It was a peculiar action and he seemed to fairly gloat over it when it was done, and the bust returned to its place, covering the hole.

      As noiselessly as he had come, he made his exit after one last malignant look at Dodge. It was now but the work of a moment to remove the wires he had placed, and climb out of the window, taking them and destroying the evidence down in the cellar.

      A low whistle from the masked crook, now again in the shadow, brought

Скачать книгу