Raphael Sabatini - "The Suitors of Yvonne"

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Ronald Reagan - "State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan"

P. G. Wodehouse - "The White Feather"

The Treasure Train

A >> Arthur B. Reeve >> The Treasure Train




"Don't move--don't fire," cautioned Kennedy. "Perhaps they will
think it was only a shadow they saw. Let them act first. They
must. They haven't any too much time. Let them get impatient."

For some minutes we waited.

Sure enough, separated widely, but converging toward the treasure-
train at last, we could see several dark figures making their way
from the road across a strip of field and over the rails. I made a
move with my gun.

"Don't," whispered Kennedy. "Let them get together."

His ruse was clever. Evidently they thought that it had been
indeed a wraith at which they had fired. Swiftly now they hurried
to the nearest of the gold-laden cars. We could hear them,
breaking in where the guards had either been rendered unconscious
or had fled.

I looked around at Maude Euston. She was the calmest of us all as
she whispered:

"They are in the car. Can't we DO something?"

"Lane," whispered Kennedy, "crawl through under the trucks with
me. Walter, and you, Dugan," he added, to the guard, "go down the
other side. We must rush them--in the car."

As Kennedy crawled under the train again I saw Maude Euston follow
Lane closely.

How it happened I cannot describe, for the simple reason that I
don't remember. I know that it was a short, sharp dash, that the
fight was a fight of fists in which guns were discharged wildly in
the air against the will of the gunner. But from the moment when
Kennedy's voice rang out in the door, "Hands up!" to the time that
I saw that we had the robbers lined up with their backs against
the heavy cases of the precious metal for which they had planned
and risked so much, it is a blank of grim death-struggle.

I remember my surprise at seeing one of them a woman, and I
thought I must be mistaken. I looked about. No; there was Maude
Euston standing just beside Lane.

I think it must have been that which recalled me and made me
realize that it was a reality and not a dream. The two women stood
glaring at each other.

"The woman in the tea-room!" exclaimed Miss Euston. "It was about
this--robbery--then, that I heard you talking the other
afternoon."

I looked at the face before me. It was, had been, a handsome face.
But now it was cold and hard, with that heartless expression of
the adventuress. The men seemed to take their plight hard. But, as
she looked into the clear, gray eyes of the other woman, the
adventuress seemed to gain rather than lose in defiance.

"Robbery?" she repeated, bitterly. "This is only a beginning."

"A beginning. What do you mean?"

It was Lane who spoke. Slowly she turned toward him.

"You know well enough what I mean."

The implication that she intended was clear. She had addressed the
remark to him, but it was a stab at Maude Euston.

"I know only what you wanted me to do--and I refused. Is there
more still?"

I wondered whether Lane could really have been involved.

"Quick--what DO you mean?" demanded Kennedy, authoritatively.

The woman turned to him:

"Suppose this news of the robbery is out? What will happen? Do you
want me to tell you, young lady?" she added, turning again to
Maude Euston. "I'll tell you. The stock of the Continental Express
Company will fall like a house of cards. And then? Those who have
sold it at the top price will buy it back again at the bottom. The
company is sound. The depression will not last--perhaps will be
over in a day, a week, a month. Then the operators can send it up
again. Don't you see? It is the old method of manipulation in a
new form. It is a war-stock gamble. Other stocks will be affected
the same way. This is our reward--what we can get out of it by
playing this game for which the materials are furnished free. We
have played it--and lost. The manipulators will get their reward
on the stock-market this morning. But they must still reckon with
us--even if we have lost." She said it with a sort of grim humor.

"And you have put Granville Barnes out of the way, first?" I
asked, remembering the chlorin. She laughed shrilly.

"That was an accident--his own carelessness. He was carrying a
tank of it for us. Only his chauffeur's presence of mind in
throwing it into the shrubbery by the road saved his life and
reputation. No, young man; he was one of the manipulators, too.
But the chief of them was--" She paused as if to enjoy one brief
moment of triumph at least. "The president of the company," she
added.

"No, no, no!" cried Maude Euston.

"Yes, yes, yes! He does not dare deny it. They were all in it."

"Mrs. Labret--you lie!" towered Lane, in a surging passion, as he
stepped forward and shook his finger at her. "You lie and you know
it. There is an old saying about the fury of a woman scorned." She
paid no attention to him whatever.

"Maude Euston," she hissed, as though Lane had been as
inarticulate as the boxes of gold about, "you have saved your
lover's reputation--perhaps. At least the shipment is safe. But
you have ruined your father. The deal will go through. Already
that has been arranged. You may as well tell Kennedy to let us go
and let the thing go through. It involves more than us."

Kennedy had been standing back a bit, carefully keeping them all
covered. He glanced a moment out of the corner of his eye at Maude
Euston, but said nothing.

It was a terrible situation. Had Lane really been in it? That
question was overshadowed by the mention of her father.
Impulsively she turned to Craig.

"Oh, save him!" she cried. "Can't anything be done to save my
father in spite of himself?"

"It is too late," mocked Mrs. Labret. "People will read the
account of the robbery in the papers, even if it didn't take
place. They will see it before they see a denial. Orders will
flood in to sell the stock. No; it can't be stopped."

Kennedy glanced momentarily at me.

"Is there still time to catch the last morning edition of the
Star, Walter?" he asked, quietly. I glanced at my watch.

"We may try. It's possible."

"Write a despatch--an accident to the engine--train delayed--now
proceeding--anything. Here, Dugan, you keep them covered. Shoot to
kill if there's a move."

Kennedy had begun feverishly setting up the part of the apparatus
which he had brought after Whiting had set up his.

"What can you do?" hissed Mrs. Labret. "You can't get word
through. Orders have been issued that the telegraph operators are
under no circumstances to give out news about this train. The
wireless is out of commission, too--the operator overcome. The
robbery story has been prepared and given out by this time.
Already reporters are being assigned to follow it up."

I looked over at Kennedy. If orders had been given for such
secrecy by Barry Euston, how could my despatch do any good? It
would be held back by the operators.

Craig quickly slung a wire over those by the side of the track and
seized what I had written, sending furiously.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "You heard what she said."

"One thing you can be certain of," he answered, "that despatch can
never be stolen or tapped by spies."

"Why--what is this?" I asked, pointing to the instrument.

"The invention of Major Squier, of the army," he replied, "by
which any number of messages may be sent at the same time over the
same wire without the slightest conflict. Really it consists in
making wireless electric waves travel along, instead of inside,
the wire. In other words, he had discovered the means of
concentrating the energy of a wireless wave on a given point
instead of letting it riot all over the face of the earth.

"It is the principle of wireless. But in ordinary wireless less
than one-millionth part of the original sending force reaches the
point for which it is intended. The rest is scattered through
space in all directions. If the vibrations of a current are of a
certain number per second, the current will follow a wire to which
it is, as it were, attached, instead of passing off into space.

"All the energy in wireless formerly wasted in radiation in every
direction now devotes itself solely to driving the current through
the ether about the wire. Thus it goes until it reaches the point
where Whiting is--where the vibrations correspond to its own and
are in tune. There it reproduces the sending impulse. It is wired
wireless."

Craig had long since finished sending his wired wireless message.
We waited impatiently. The seconds seemed to drag like hours.

Far off, now, we could hear a whistle as a train finally
approached slowly into our block, creeping up to see what was
wrong. But that made no difference now. It was not any help they
could give us that we wanted. A greater problem, the saving of one
man's name and the re-establishment of another, confronted us.

Unexpectedly the little wired wireless instrument before us began
to buzz. Quickly Kennedy seized a pencil and wrote as the message
that no hand of man could interfere with was flashed back to us.

"It is for you, Walter, from the Star," he said, simply handing me
what he had written on the back of an old envelope.

I read, almost afraid to read:

Robbery story killed. Black type across page-head last edition,
"Treasure-train safe!"
McGRATH.

"Show it to Miss Euston," Craig added, simply, gathering up his
wired wireless set, just as the crew from the train behind us ran
up. "She may like to know that she has saved her father from
himself through misunderstanding her lover."

I thought Maude Euston would faint as she clutched the message.
Lane caught her as she reeled backward.

"Rodman--can you--forgive me?" she murmured, simply, yielding to
him and looking up into his face.




II

THE TRUTH DETECTOR


"You haven't heard--no one outside has heard--of the strange
illness and the robbery of my employer, Mr. Mansfield--'Diamond
Jack' Mansfield, you know."

Our visitor was a slight, very pretty, but extremely nervous girl,
who had given us a card bearing the name Miss Helen Grey.

"Illness--robbery?" repeated Kennedy, at once interested and
turning a quick glance at me.

I shrugged my shoulders in the negative. Neither the Star nor any
of the other papers had had a word about it.

"Why, what's the trouble?" he continued to Miss Grey.

"You see," she explained, hurrying on, "I'm Mr. Mansfield's
private secretary, and--oh, Professor Kennedy, I don't know, but
I'm afraid it is a case for a detective rather than a doctor." She
paused a moment and leaned forward nearer to us. "I think he has
been poisoned!"

The words themselves were startling enough without the evident
perturbation of the girl. Whatever one might think, there was no
doubt that she firmly believed what she professed to fear. More
than that, I fancied I detected a deeper feeling in her tone than
merely loyalty to her employer.

"Diamond Jack" Mansfield was known in Wall Street as a successful
promoter, on the White Way as an assiduous first-nighter, in the
sporting fraternity as a keen plunger. But of all his hobbies,
none had gained him more notoriety than his veritable passion for
collecting diamonds.

He came by his sobriquet honestly. I remembered once having seen
him, and he was, in fact, a walking De Beers mine. For his
personal adornment, more than a million dollars' worth of gems did
relay duty. He had scores of sets, every one of them fit for a
king of diamonds. It was a curious hobby for a great, strong man,
yet he was not alone in his love of and sheer affection for things
beautiful. Not love of display or desire to attract notice to
himself had prompted him to collect diamonds, but the mere
pleasure of owning them, of associating with them. It was a hobby.

It was not strange, therefore, to suspect that Mansfield might,
after all, have been the victim of some kind of attack. He went
about with perfect freedom, in spite of the knowledge that crooks
must have possessed about his hoard.

"What makes you think he has been poisoned?" asked Kennedy,
betraying no show of doubt that Miss Grey might be right.

"Oh, it's so strange, so sudden!" she murmured.

"But how do you think it could have happened?" he persisted.

"It must have been at the little supper-party he gave at his
apartment last night," she answered, thoughtfully, then added,
more slowly, "and yet, it was not until this morning, eight or ten
hours after the party, that he became ill." She shuddered.
"Paroxysms of nausea, followed by stupor and such terrible
prostration. His valet discovered him and sent for Doctor Murray--
and then for me."

"How about the robbery?" prompted Kennedy, as it became evident
that it was Mansfield's physical condition more than anything else
that was on Miss Grey's mind.

"Oh yes"--she recalled herself--"I suppose you know something of
his gems? Most people do." Kennedy nodded. "He usually keeps them
in a safe-deposit vault downtown, from which he will get whatever
set he feels like wearing. Last night it was the one he calls his
sporting-set that he wore, by far the finest. It cost over a
hundred thousand dollars, and is one of the most curious of all
the studies in personal adornment that he owns. All the stones are
of the purest blue-white and the set is entirely based on
platinum.

"But what makes it most remarkable is that it contains the famous
M-1273, as he calls it. The M stands for Mansfield, and the
figures represent the number of stones he had purchased up to the
time that he acquired this huge one."

"How could they have been taken, do you think?" ventured Kennedy.
Miss Grey shook her head doubtfully.

"I think the wall safe must have been opened somehow," she
returned.

Kennedy mechanically wrote the number, M-1273, on a piece of
paper.

"It has a weird history," she went on, observing what he had
written, "and this mammoth blue-white diamond in the ring is as
blue as the famous Hope diamond that has brought misfortune
through half the world. This stone, they say, was pried from the
mouth of a dying negro in South Africa. He had tried to smuggle it
from the mine, and when he was caught cursed the gem and every one
who ever should own it. One owner in Amsterdam failed; another in
Antwerp committed suicide; a Russian nobleman was banished to
Siberia, and another went bankrupt and lost his home and family.
Now here it is in Mr. Mansfield's life. I--I hate it!" I could not
tell whether it was the superstition or the recent events
themselves which weighed most in her mind, but, at any rate, she
resumed, somewhat bitterly, a moment later: "M-1273! M is the
thirteenth letter of the alphabet, and 1, 2, 7, 3 add up to
thirteen. The first and last numbers make thirteen, and John
Mansfield has thirteen letters in his name. I wish he had never
worn the thing--never bought it!"

The more I listened to her the more impressed I was with the fact
that there was something more here than the feeling of a private
secretary.

"Who were in the supper-party?" asked Kennedy.

"He gave it for Madeline Hargrave--the pretty little actress, you
know, who took New York by storm last season in 'The Sport' and is
booked, next week, to appear in the new show, 'The Astor Cup.'"

Miss Grey said it, I thought, with a sort of wistful envy.
Mansfield's gay little bohemian gatherings were well known. Though
he was not young, he was still somewhat of a Lothario.

"Who else was there?" asked Kennedy.

"Then there was Mina Leitch, a member of Miss Hargrave's new
company," she went on. "Another was Fleming Lewis, the Wall Street
broker. Doctor Murray and myself completed the party."

"Doctor Murray is his personal physician?" ventured Craig.

"Yes. You know when Mr. Mansfield's stomach went back on him last
year it was Doctor Murray who really cured him."

Kennedy nodded.

"Might this present trouble be a recurrence of the old trouble?"

She shook her head. "No; this is entirely different. Oh, I wish
that you could go with me and see him!" she pleaded.

"I will," agreed Kennedy.

A moment later we were speeding in a taxicab over to the
apartment.

"Really," she remarked, nervously, "I feel lost with Mr. Mansfield
so ill. He has so many interests downtown that require constant
attention that just the loss of time means a great deal. Of
course, I understand many of them--but, you know, a private
secretary can't conduct a man's business. And just now, when I
came up from the office, I couldn't believe that he was too ill to
care about things until I actually saw him."

We entered the apartment. A mere glance about showed that; even
though Mansfield's hobby was diamonds, he was no mean collector of
other articles of beauty. In the big living-room, which was almost
like a studio, we met a tall, spare, polished-mannered man, whom I
quickly recognized as Doctor Murray.

"Is he any better?" blurted out Miss Grey, even before our
introductions were over. Doctor Murray shook his head gravely.

"About the same," he answered, though one could find little
reassurance in his tone.

"I should like to see him," hinted Kennedy, "unless there is some
real reason why I should not."

"No," replied the doctor, absently; "on the contrary, it might
perhaps rouse him."

He led the way down the hall, and Kennedy and I followed, while
Miss Grey attempted to busy herself over some affairs at a huge
mahogany table in the library just off the living-room.

Mansfield had shown the same love of luxury and the bizarre even
in the furnishing of his bedroom, which was a black-and-white room
with furniture of Chinese lacquer and teakwood.

Kennedy looked at the veteran plunger long and thoughtfully as he
lay stretched out, listless, on the handsome bed. Mansfield seemed
completely indifferent to our presence. There was something
uncanny about him. Already his face was shrunken, his skin dark,
and his eyes were hollow.

"What do you suppose it is?" asked Kennedy, bending over him, and
then rising and averting his head so that Mansfield could not
hear, even if his vagrant faculties should be attracted. "His
pulse is terribly weak and his heart scarcely makes a sound."

Doctor Murray's face knit in deep lines.

"I'm afraid," he said, in a low tone, "that I will have to admit
not having been able to diagnose the trouble, I was just
considering whom I might call in."

"What have you done?" asked Kennedy, as the two moved a little
farther out of ear-shot of the patient.

"Well," replied the doctor, slowly, "when his valet called me in,
I must admit that my first impression was that I had to deal with
a case of diphtheria. I was so impressed that I even took a blood
smear and examined it. It showed the presence of a tox albumin.
But it isn't diphtheria. The antitoxin has had no effect. No; it
isn't diphtheria. But the poison is there. I might have thought it
was cholera, only that seems so impossible here in New York."
Doctor Murray looked at Kennedy with no effort to conceal his
perplexity. "Over and over I have asked myself what it could be,"
he went on. "It seems to me that I have thought over about
everything that is possible. Always I get back to the fact that
there is that tox albumin present. In some respects, it seems like
the bite of a poisonous animal. There are no marks, of course, and
it seems altogether impossible, yet it acts precisely as I have
seen snake bites affect people. I am that desperate that I would
try the Noguchi antivenene, but it would have no more effect than
the antitoxin. No; I can only conclude that there is some narcotic
irritant which especially affects the lungs and heart."

"Will you let me have one of the blood smears?" asked Kennedy.

"Certainly," replied the doctor, reaching over and taking a glass
slide from several lying on a table.

For some time after we left the sick-room Craig appeared to be
considering what Doctor Murray had said.

Seeking to find Miss Grey in the library, we found ourselves in
the handsome, all-wood-paneled dining-room. It still showed
evidences of the late banquet of the night before.

Craig paused a moment in doubt which way to go, then picked up
from the table a beautifully decorated menu-card. As he ran his
eye down it mechanically, he paused.

"Champignons," he remarked, thoughtfully. "H-m!--mushrooms."

Instead of going on toward the library, he turned and passed
through a swinging door into the kitchen. There was no one there,
but it was in a much more upset condition than the dining-room.

"Pardon, monsieur," sounded a voice behind us.

It was the French chef who had entered from the direction of the
servants' quarters, and was now all apologies for the untidy
appearance of the realm over which he presided. The strain of the
dinner had been too much for his assistants, he hastened to
explain.

"I see that you had mushrooms--creamed," remarked Kennedy.

"Oui, monsieur," he replied; "some that Miss Hargrave herself sent
in from her mushroom-cellar out in the country."

As he said it his eye traveled involuntarily toward a pile of
ramekins on a table. Kennedy noticed it and deliberately walked
over to the table. Before I knew what he was about he had scooped
from them each a bit of the contents and placed it in some waxed
paper that was lying near by. The chef watched him curiously.

"You would not find my kitchen like this ordinarily," he remarked.
"I would not like to have Doctor Murray see it, for since last
year, when monsieur had the bad stomach, I have been very
careful."

The chef seemed to be nervous.

"You prepared the mushrooms yourself?" asked Kennedy, suddenly.

"I directed my assistant," came back the wary reply.

"But you know good mushrooms when you see them?"

"Certainly," he replied, quickly.

"There was no one else in the kitchen while you prepared them?"

"Yes," he answered, hurriedly; "Mr. Mansfield came in, and Miss
Hargrave. Oh, they are very particular! And Doctor Murray, he has
given me special orders ever since last year, when monsieur had
the bad stomach," he repeated.

"Was any one else here?"

"Yes--I think so. You see, I am so excited--a big dinner--such
epicures--everything must be just so--I cannot say."

There seemed to be little satisfaction in quizzing the chef, and
Kennedy turned again into the dining-room, making his way back to
the library, where Miss Grey was waiting anxiously for us.

"What do you think?" she asked, eagerly.

"I don't know what to think," replied Kennedy. "No one else has
felt any ill effects from the supper, I suppose?"

"No," she replied; "at least, I'm sure I would have heard by this
time if they had."

"Do you recall anything peculiar about the mushrooms?" shot out
Kennedy.

"We talked about them some time, I remember," she said, slowly.
"Growing mushrooms is one of Miss Hargrave's hobbies out at her
place on Long Island."

"Yes," persisted Kennedy; "but I mean anything peculiar about the
preparation of them."

"Why, yes," she said, suddenly; "I believe that Miss Hargrave was
to have superintended them herself. We all went out into the
kitchen. But it was too late. They had been prepared already."

"You were all in the kitchen?"

"Yes; I remember. It was before the supper and just after we came
in from the theater-party which Mr. Mansfield gave. You know Mr.
Mansfield is always doing unconventional things like that. If he
took a notion, he would go into the kitchen of the Ritz."

"That is what I was trying to get out of the chef--Francois,"
remarked Kennedy. "He didn't seem to have a very clear idea of
what happened. I think I'll see him again--right away."

We found the chef busily at work, now, cleaning up. As Kennedy
asked him a few inconsequential questions, his eye caught a row of
books on a shelf. It was a most complete library of the culinary
arts. Craig selected one and turned the pages over rapidly. Then
he came back to the frontispiece, which showed a model dinner-
table set for a number of guests. He placed the picture before
Francois, then withdrew it in, I should say, about ten seconds. It
was a strange and incomprehensible action, but I was more
surprised when Kennedy added:

"Now tell me what you saw."

Francois was quite overwhelming in his desire to please. Just what
was going on in his mind I could not guess, nor did he betray it,
but quickly he enumerated the objects on the table, gradually
slowing up as the number which he recollected became exhausted.

"Were there candles?" prompted Craig, as the flow of Francois's
description ceased.

"Oh yes, candles," he agreed, eagerly.

"Favors at each place?"

"Yes, sir."

I could see no sense in the proceeding, yet knew Kennedy too well
to suppose, for an instant, that he had not some purpose.

The questioning over, Kennedy withdrew, leaving poor Francois more
mystified than ever.

"Well," I exclaimed, as we passed through the dining-room, "what
was all that?"

"That," he explained, "is what is known to criminologists as the
'Aussage test.' Just try it some time when you get a chance. If
there are, say, fifty objects in a picture, normally a person may
recall perhaps twenty of them."

"I see," I interrupted; "a test of memory."

"More than that," he replied. "You remember that, at the end, I
suggested several things likely to be on the table. They were not
there, as you might have seen if you had had the picture before
you. That was a test of the susceptibility to suggestion of the
chef. Francois may not mean to lie, but I'm afraid we'll have to
get along without him in getting to the bottom of the case. You
see, before we go any further we know that he is unreliable--to
say the least. It may be that nothing at all happened in the
kitchen to the mushrooms. We'll never discover it from him. We
must get it elsewhere."

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