JOHN PROSPER


KD14960


The Old Corner Book
Storo, Inc.











GOLD-KILLER
JOHN PROSPER





GOLD-KILLER
A MYSTERY OF THE NEW UNDERWORLD
BY
JOHN PROSPER
NEW GDH YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


KD14960
HARVARO
COLLEGE
LIBRARY
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
GD
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY STREET & SMITH CORPORATION.
moment en
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


TO
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART





CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
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.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
• ... · · · · ·
..............
....................
100
110
116
132
.
.
141
.
.
I THE MURDER AT THE OPERA . . . . . .
II A POLICE HYPOTHESIS . . . . .
III WARE UNDERTAKES A QUEST . . . .
IV THE NEW UNDERWORLD . . . . .
V THE MYSTERIOUS FLOWER . . .
VI CLUES OVER TOAST . . . . . .
VII THE GANG GATHERS . . . . . .
VIII ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD . . .
IX WHAT ABOUT JOYCE? . . . . . .
X TEA AND ROMANCE . . . . . .
XI THE CHIEF . . . . . . . . . .
XII THE LAND OF THE FLAMING PETALS. ..
XIII JEALOUSY . . . . . . . . . .
XIV PROHIBITION RUM . . . . . . .
XV ENTER THE UNPLEASANT CARLOS . . . . .
XVI THE TRAIL OF THE APE . . . . . . .
XVII ABDUCTION . . . . . . . . . . .
XVIII JOYCE . . . . . . . . . . . .
XIX THE CHIEF COMMANDS . . . . . . .
XX THE STRANGLING HANDS . . . . . . ..
XXI IT BECOMES NECESSARY TO DEFY THE CHIEF ..
XXII THE GOLD-KILLER AGAIN KILLS . . . . .
XXIII THE PURSUER PURSUED . . . . . . .
XXIV AM I THE GOLD-KILLER? . . . . . .
XXV THE CRYSTAL FLASK . . .
XXVI SURMISES AND CLUES . . .
XXVII A GRIM BET . . . . . . . . . .
XXVIII NOSE-DIVE! . . . . . . . . . . .
XXIX SOLUTION AND COMPROMISE . . . . . .
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149
162
175
180
188
193
198
206
212
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· · ·
228
236
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241
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· · ·
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245
253
266
273
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· .
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vii





GOLD-KILLER


GOLD-KILLER
LU
CHAPTER I
THE MURDER AT THE OPERA
M AP! Tap!” The conductor's baton with its
| irritated "attention” brought the great
Monday night audience at the Metropolitan Opera
House to a quasi-silence. A moment before there
had glimmered in front of the scarlet background
of curtains in the Grand Tier boxes the satins, the
brocades, the jewels and the white shirt fronts of
New York's aristocracy. Now the lights had low-
ered, and the attention of the crowds in that vast
chasm in front of the glow that goes up at the
foot of the great, golden folds of the curtain, was
drawn to the nervous figure of Bodanzky as he
drew the incisive theme of the trombone and the
pounding rhythm of the strings and woodwinds
into the Third Act prelude of Lohengrin.
Those are fervid, tense moments until the vio-
lins swing finally into a great sweep of melody.
Gradually even the sleek arms of fat dowagers
cease fluttering their fans, and high up over the


10
GOLD-KILLER
brass rail in the top gallery the eager eyes of the
real music lovers peer down. There was some-
thing of the very nature of tragedy and sup-
pressed excitement in the mood of the listening
crowd. It is in such moments that a cry of fire
hurtles a crowd to madness. The emotions are
drawn to the surface. The nerves are sensitized,
and just as Bodanzky, with his masterly knowl-
edge of the musical souls of people, had brought
his audience to a climax of feeling, a wild, inco-
herent cry quavered above the great sustained
chord of the orchestra.
For a moment the house trembled on the verge
of panic. Women rose in their seats and turned
toward the aisles. Men, stilling their nervous-
ness by attempting to calm that of others, seized
satin-covered waists and pulled them back. Bo-
danzky turned half around. The orchestra con-
tinued brokenly until the cry was repeated, louder
this time, and all eyes were turned toward a box
half way down on the right side of the Golden
Horseshoe.
For a second there was almost silence, as many
in the house recognized Anne Rice, the daughter
of one of New York's greatest financiers. She
was standing, frantic, at the back of the box, her
slim figure in evening gown silhouetted against
the light shining from behind, one arm raised
clutching the curtain behind her, the other waving


12
GOLD-KILLER
Tom Ware had wandered into the opera alone
after the bachelor dinner of one of his fellow
internes at the Mount Rose Hospital. He had
been feeling aimless and lonely. The first week
of a short vacation had not particularly agreed
with him. At the dinner, with its many congratu-
lations to his friend who was to be married, he
had felt more acutely conscious than ever of his
own bachelorhood. So he had drifted in among
the standees at the opera, and was near the back
of the house when he heard Anne Rice scream.
At the door of the dressing room behind the box
he paused. His bluff face suddenly became tense
and grave at the gruesome sight. In a swift
glance he saw two men bending over the sobbing
figure of Anne Rice, and recognized them as Gor-
don and Blake, cornerstones of the great financial
institution which is the bulwark of Wall Street.
But it was the inert figure lying on the red couch
at the side that caught and held his attention.
He saw the hideous tortured face, the stiff white
collar of the dress suit crushed limp and torn
away from a throat that was marked with great
black blotches where the fingers of some mon-
strous hands had crushed the life breath relent-
lessly out of the great financier. The head was
curiously twisted and fell limply to one side, and
as Ware, with an exclamation to the others in the
room, crossed swiftly to go through the formality


THE MURDER AT THE OPERA 13
of reassuring himself that John Rice was dead, he
remembered vividly and with a strange shudder
of terror, the first time he had ever tried to kill a
chicken by twisting its neck.
He felt the heart and pulse, knowing what the
result would be, and then carefully examined the
disfigured flesh and twisted muscles of the throat.
"Nobody in the world,” he breathed to Gordon,
“could have done this but the Gold-Killer. Who
and what is he?”.
“Watch Miss Rice, doctor," warned Gordon, as
Anne with a little cry slipped from the chair and
fell onto the floor fainting. Ware leaned over,
felt her pulse and raised her gently. As he was
working over her Gordon talked nervously.
“Why don't the police come?” he demanded in
petulant tones. “No one is safe these days," and
he seemed almost to shudder as he said it. “I'll
never forget the way John Rice looked when we
found him there on the floor, Anne and I. She
had been in our box, three to the left, during the
first part of the prelude. I was coming back
with her, for I wanted to talk to John Rice
Then this. It was the same with James Holden.
It was the same with Mark Baldwin-and the
others. Only this—this comes too damned near
home. No one in Wall Street is safe from this
terrible Gold-Killer.” -
No criminal mystery in over a decade had so


GOLD-KILLER
puzzled the authorities, mystified the public, and
terrified New York's socially élite, who realized
that any one of their number might be next se-
lected by this monstrous strangler.
James Holden, President of the River Trust
Company, had been the first victim. He was found
dead in his yacht as it lay at anchor in the river,
his neck crushed, his spinal column twisted by
some force which experts said was unbelievably
powerful for the hand of man. There were no
clues and no apparent motive. Two weeks later,
however, when the headlines of the newspapers
had scarcely ceased carrying reports of the
Holden affair, Mark Baldwin, the great marine
insurance man, was found at the bottom of an
elevator shaft of his office building. He had been
working late. The night watchman could not re-
call having heard or seen anything unusual; but
Mark Baldwin had not been killed by the fall down
the shaft, for the vertebræ of his neck were
· broken, and his throat mangled by what seemed
the same terrible hands that had murdered James
Holden. It was then that the public and the re-
porters had come to speak of the mysterious
strangler as the Gold-Killer. Many persons be-
lieved the monster to be a madman gifted with
the prodigious strength of insanity. There was a
good deal of arming.
Ten days later New York was horrified by


THE MURDER AT THE OPERA
15
another Gold-Killer affair. It was the death of
George J. Vanrest, retired sugar manufacturer,
strangled in his own bed within only a few feet of
his son sleeping in an adjoining room. Vanrest's
home was one of the great Long Island estates
near Oyster Bay. The police figured that a close
survey of both house and grounds were necessary
in order that the crime could have been committed
so quickly and silently. Yet there was no member
of the Vanrest establishment, nor any intimate of
the servants who could, with the wildest stretch of
imagination, be suspected of possessing the hands
of the Gold-Killer.
Wealthy New York was becoming more than
mildly nervous by now. Invectives at the police
department from Wall Street were futile; for the
police and detective forces were doing their ut-
most to uncover some clue, no matter how slight.
There were no results. The Police Commissioner
warned the wealthy men of the town to be on
their guard. Detectives were placed about many
of the more important residences. When Arnold
Stewart Brained, the venerable banker, whose
life had been given to the most altruistic efforts
for the public good, was strangled while he sat in
his automobile, waiting for the chauffeur who had
stepped out of the car to procure a valise Mr.
Brained had left by mistake in his office, public
indignation was at white heat. There, at eleven


16
GOLD-KILLER
o'clock in the evening, in front of a downtown
office building, one of the best respected citizens
of New York had been killed-and in what a
tragic manner! His great leonine white head was
almost wrenched from his body, twisted, the neck
crushed, the breath driven out so suddenly, ap-
parently, that there had been no cry. No one
remembered seeing anyone approach the car as it
waited. At that time there were very few people
on the streets of the business district.
Now the Gold-Killer had murdered John Rice,
and at the opera. It was unthinkable. Thousands
of questions and speculations flashed through
young Ware's mind, as he looked down at the
purple colored lids of Anne Rice's eyes. But
they were quieted by a sudden realization of how
unusually lovely Anne Rice really was, and by
the entrance of Dr. Blackton, the great specialist,
a policeman, and a short, burly man whom Ware
recognized as a member of the Times Square de-
tective squad—Ware had met him on a case not
long before.
Dr. Blackton did not go immediately to the
mutilated body of John Rice, but turned toward
Anne. He recognized Ware with a nod, and felt
the girl's pulse.
“Take her home, Ware," he commanded. “Use
my car." He handed him the number. "I'll ex-


THE MURDER AT THE OPERA
17
plain to the police. They can't see her until she
comes out of this—poor little girl.”
The curious crowd opened as Ware carried
Anne through the corridors. A maid threw her
opera cloak over the silver form. Water brought
the lids fluttering, and as Ware arranged the rug
around her in the limousine, she opened her great
dark eyes, and with a little sob buried her face in
his shoulder. He made no attempt to speak to
her. She was completely unstrung, he knew, so
he held her there tenderly, understanding that
she was quite unconscious of her action. If his
attitude wasn't quite professional, it was scarcely
strange, for Tom Ware was very lonely, and
Anne Rice a beautiful and appealing figure in her
sorrow.
As he and the chauffeur started to help her
from the car at the door of the Rice home, she
smiled faintly and rose unsteadily herself.
The doors of the house were thrown open.
Within, all was excitement. Numerous servants
crowded about to ask questions. Anne leaned
wearily on Tom Ware and closed her eyes. The
young interne waved them away.
“Miss Rice is to be taken directly to her room,"
he commanded. “Are you her maid?”
The little French girl led the way. Ware put
Anne on a chaise longue, ordered whiskey, wrote


18
GOLD-KILLER
a prescription, gave it to the butler to be filled,
and then turned to Anne.
“Miss Rice," he began.
She smiled wanly. “You're the doctor, aren't
you?” she asked. “You've been very nice thank
you—and when are you coming again!”
“In the morning.” Tom's reply was brisk.
“Meanwhile they will give you the medicine I've
ordered. And you are going to try your very best
to sleep.”
She smiled her obedience, and he left.
Once outside, it seemed to him that the whole
performance had been a garbled dream. He had
gone into the opera house because he was lonely,
because he often found music a remedy for the
melancholy that seized him on Spring evenings.
Now he found himself one of the figures in the
newest of the Gold-Killer crimes and he knew
instinctively that he could not leave Anne Rice
without aiding her to his utmost. Like most of
the public who read the papers, he knew that she
was the only daughter of the great financier.
After the death of her mother several years be-
fore, she and her father had been constantly to-
gether; she had given up her life of society to be
with him. And Tom realized that without close
relatives she needed someone who was young,
enthusiastic and eager to help her—why not Dr.
Tom Ware? Of course. Tom Ware. And the


THE MURDER AT THE OPERA
19
young gentleman squared his shoulders, and
stepped along more briskly. A whim caught him.
“What monstrous hands,” he muttered, think-
ing of John Rice's crushed throat. “I can scarcely
believe that they exist. It would be a pleasure to
dissect those hands."
He stepped along filling his head with the
sombre mystery of the Gold-Killer.


CHAPTER II
A POLICE HYPOTHESIS
MTARE got up after a sound sleep, and
V dressed himself as carefully as if he were
getting ready to march solemnly down the aisle at
his own wedding. He was thrusting a seldom-
worn stickpin into his tie when Bobby Merritt
kicked open the door, shouting the jocular non-
sense of a young medicus. A vast grin took pos-
session of his round face as he looked at Tom.
“Who’re you going to prescribe for in those
merry bandages?” he demanded.
“I have a call to make." Ware did not relish
the guying. He tried to chase away a frown.
“Don't look so savage,'' Bobby continued with
the ruthlessness of a best friend, “or the police
will take you for the murderous musician."
“What murderous musician?” Tom turned
quickly. Assassination and arrests were weaving
arabesques in his brain.
“Why, the Gold-Killer,” Bobby replied, sitting
himself on a chair and looking aimlessly about the
little white hospital bed-room.
Tom narrowed his gray eyes angrily. He had
said nothing of his adventure of the night before.
20


A POLICE HYPOTHESIS
21
Still he thought the young medical scapegrace
was joking with him about it.
“Just out in a special edition,” Bobby contin-
ued negligently. “Telephone girl's got a paper.”
- Tom made great strides through the hospital
corridor, past hurrying nurses and white-clad
surgeons and patients on wheeled stretchers wait-
ing to go into the operating room. Bobby fol-
lowed him with a leisurely step, intending to
continue his jibes.
The telephone girl was sitting with the news-
paper spread in front of her nose. She was read-
ing the comics. Tom begged her for the front
sheet. She gave it to him with a friendly smile,
and he saw the phrase in great headlines:
GOLD-KILLER DISCOVERED
IS ANARCHIST MUSICIAN. OPERA EMPLOYEES
GIVE DESCRIPTION OF MONSTER STRANGLER
OF JOHN RICE AND OTHER WEALTHY MEN.
ARREST EXPECTED SOON.
“You're going to bust your frontal bone if you
keep frowning like that. Who is she, anyway?”
Bobby Merritt sat on a window sill and cast an
inspecting glance upon Tom's best gray suit and
shining new shoes.
Ware stood lost in the astonishing reportorial
account. It read:
“That the Gold-Killer is an anarchist musician
was the emphatic statement made by Detective


22
GOLD-KILLER
Inspector Corry after an eight-hour examination
of Metropolitan Opera House employees who
were on duty at the time of the mysterious stran-
gling of the wealthy banker, John Rice, last night.
The slayer was seen by at loast two persons,
David Ordkin, one of the ushers on the Grand Tier
floor of the Opera House, and Roger McManus, a
doorman on duty at the front lobby.
“Ordkin, who lives at 121 Greenhill Ave.,
Bronx, states that not more than three or four
minutes before the scream of the murdered finan-
cier's daughter startled the brilliant opera audi-
ence and announced the discovery of another
Gold-Killer strangling, he saw a man pulling a
pair of yellow chamois gloves from his hands,
hastily leave the Rice box, close the door behind
him and hurry down the stairs to the lobby. He
describes the man as of middle height and build,
smooth shaven and well dressed. He wore a light
overcoat and a black velour hat pulled over his
eyes.
“McManus corroborates Ordkin's statements
by saying that he was on duty during last night's
performance, and that he, too, noticed a man
closely answering to the description given by
Ordkin. This man hastily passed the gate and
left the opera house shortly before the discovery
of the murder. McManus insists that he noted
the suspect particularly, since the act had begun


A POLICE HYPOTHESIS
23
and the lobby was clear, and it was unusual for
anyone to rush out of the house just after the
beginning of an act. The doorman further states
that the man seemed to be very nervous, and bore
the general resemblance of a musician. When
questioned further, Ordkin stated, too, that the
man's appearance was that of a musician.
“Detective Inspector Corry said to the re-
porters:
“While the identification of the murderer as a
musician was not positive, it immediately sug-
gested an explanation of the hitherto inexplicable
mystery of the giant-handed stranglings. It is
known that pianists and violinists frequently have
abnormally large and powerful hands. They are
in most cases trained to finger exercises from
early childhood, and unquestionably acquire a
strength of hands undreamed of among the gen-
eral run of people. The prodigious hands of
Paganini and Liszt are cited as examples. It
then becomes clear, what might have been seen in
the beginning, that the incredible stranglings of
the Gold-Killer could only have been the work of
the unnaturally developed hands of a musician.'”
The reporter embellished his thesis with sandry
disquisitions upon the manual peculiarities of
half a dozen of the pianists and violinists playing
in the concert halls; he speculated upon whether
a pianist or a violinist, or even a cellist, would be


A POLICE HYPOTHESIS
torium for Nerve Restoration. Dr. Rutchers is
one of New York's best known neurologists.
“Mark Baldwin left his estate to his wife, Ma-
tilda Baldwin.
“George J. Vanrest's will named his three chil-
dren and the Beacon Asylum for the Blind.
"Arnold Stewart Brained divided his millions
between a nephew and half a dozen hospitals.
“John Rice, the latest victim, leaves his will,
according to information that the police have se-
cured, unconditionally in favor of his daughter,
Anne Rice.
“Thus no possible motive for the Gold-Killer
murders is to be seen in the disposition of the vic-
tims' estates, and in the absence of any other
element, only one possible explanation remains-
the criminal mania of an anarchist crank.”
Then came the telling of the measures the police
were taking to arrest the anarchist-musician who
was the Gold-Killer. The membership of the
musicians' union was being investigated by detec-
tives. Well known instrumentalists were being
questioned in an effort to learn who among the
virtuosi were infected with anarchy. Especial
attention was to be devoted to composers of mod-
ernistic harmonies, since it is well understood that
radicalism in the arts is not far divorced from
radicalism in politics. In brief, the arrest of the
Gold-Killer was expected hourly.


26
GOLD-KILLER
"The mystery is not so deep as I thought it
was," Ware mused as he laid the paper down.
"It won't be long before those strangling hands
will be ready for dissection."
“Hurry, Tom! She'll have an acute dilation if
you keep her waiting.” Ware's unresponsive
silence had not discouraged Bobby Merritt's
sallies.
Tom hurried out of the hospital and started for
the Rice mansion. ·


CHAPTER III
WARE UNDERTAKES A QUEST
NHERE was an ominous solemnity in the dark
lower hallway of the Fifth Avenue palace
that had been John Rice's. At least, so it seemed
to Tom as the butler led him in from the glare of
a sunny day. Perhaps it was the near presence
of death, perhaps it was the heavy luxuriousness
of tapestried walls, and the hollow sound of his
own footsteps on the mosaic floor. Involuntarily,
with a sudden memory of the dead face of the
man who had made this richness possible, he
shuddered. What had brought the master of this
wealth, built up by hard and grinding years of
work and saving, to his tragic death?
But Ware was no dreamer. Track at college,
flying during the war, and the wards of hospitals
had rendered both his body and his sensibilities
tough. He was no longer thinking of John Rice,
as he stepped into the brilliantly painted house
elevator and was whisked to the third floor.
· Ware was just ready for a romance. Girls for
the college dances, a nurse or two, one brief epi-
sode with a cabaret singer; these were his experi-
ences with women. Impetuous in his affections,
27


28
GOLD-KILLER
he had so far been curiously matter of fact in his
dealings with the opposite sex. There had been
something about the delicate bravery of Anne
Rice's face on the night before that had made a
swift appeal. He found himself a trifle annoyed
that he remembered exactly how her soft dark
hair had curled down over her ears. That was no
sort of thing to remember when she might even
now be in the midst of a nervous collapse. He
felt sure that most of the women he had known,
under the same strain would have been buried
under two comforters, in the company of the hot
water bottle and smelling salts.
“How is Miss Rice?” he demanded nervously
of the butler.
The liveried servant stopped with his hand on
the knob of a door and spoke in a pompous
whisper.
“She's that wonderful, sir, as she's got us all
worried. Even Julie, that's her maid, hasn't seen
her shed a tear. She's got a lot of the old man in
her, only”—and he looked around nervously, as if
he expected to see a ghost coming up the stair-
way, “she's more human!”
Ware would have liked to have asked a leading
question here; but there was no time. The servant
had opened the door and motioned him in. He
straightened, pushed his neck firmly against the


WARE UNDERTAKES A QUEST
29
back of his collar, and adopted his best profes-
sional air.
Anne Rice was lying in front of a fire-place. A
maid, who had been arranging the hot bright coals
of the fire, left as Ware entered. It was a cheery
room, with books, flowers, a good painting or two,
and the bright sun flooding from numerous win-
dows. Anne was wrapped in a soft gray negligee.
Her eyes were a trifle red, Tom thought, and there
was just the slightest trace of nervous tension in
the lines of her face; but her color was excellent,
and the smile she gave him, as he crossed to her,
was brave and not forced.
“Ah! You are the doctor!" and she gave him
her hand gracefully, and drew him to a chair be-
side her. “You are very prompt, sir, and I am
very grateful.”
“Come, you must be prompt, too, in telling me
exactly how you feel.” He took her wrist, felt
for the pulse, found it, smiled reassuringly, and
repeated his demand. “Heart's all right; come
now, how do you feel?”
For an instant, she said nothing. Then she
covered her eyes suddenly with one hand and took
his fingers nervously with the other.
"I do not know! Hurt! Terribly hurt! And
puzzled! Oh, and so lonely!”
He pressed the soft hand with a quick under-
standing. She stiffened and uncovered her eyes.


30
GOLD-KILLER
“Please don't think I'm not a sport! I'm
strong, yes, quite strong, and I shall not embar-
rass you by crying. It's all right, only I don't
know where to turn or what to do. You under-
stand he was everything to me. There are so few
friends on whom I can call, who would not sym-
pathize. It's not sympathy I want. There's just
one thing!” Her eyes blazed, and her delicate
lips straightened to a firm line. “I want to know
who killed him! There's enough in that thought
to keep anyone strong! Only, I do not know
whose advice to seek.”
“Well, it won't hurt you to talk,” Ware said.
“The crime won't go unpaid for. Have you seen
the newspapers?” She shook her head. "Have
the police questioned you?”
“I couldn't bear to see them. The servants
made excuses. I must see them this afternoon.
There is very little to tell," she looked at Ware a
trifle searchingly and added, “to them.”
He pulled out the morning papers, and gave
them to her with their staring brutal headlines.
“Read those!” he commanded. “Read them
carefully, and tell me what you think. It will do
you good to use your mind. You must plan what
you are to tell the police. They are even less
gentle than doctors.”
For ten minutes she did not lift her eyes from
the details of that terrible and mysterious tragedy


WARE UNDERTAKES A QUEST 31
that was so close to her. He could see that she
was forcing herself to be analytical. Her eyes
were narrowed, her lips pursed. Occasionally a
slight frown, or a questioning shake of the head-
that was all. He admired her poise. Indeed, he
admired her very much. He found himself study-
ing intently the delicate lines of her face, the
healthy curves of her young body, rounded by
tennis and swimming, the silken smoothness of
her hands, the softness of her throat. She was
that unusual thing, a beautiful woman, who yet
gives the impression of force and capability.
When she raised her eyes from reading, and
caught him gazing at her intently, he was flustered
for the moment; but she continued to look at him
with a quizzical expression, her great dark eyes
studying him and, perhaps, appealing.
Finally, she shook her head slowly.
“All this,” she said wistfully, “is very clever;
bat it's not right; and there is no one who can
know that now but I.”.
His heart was throbbing at the expression in
her eyes. If he could only comfort her in some
way, assure her that she could trust him, that she
could confide in him, that he would take her quest
and pursue it in all faithfulness. He knew that
it must be from her, though, and he did not press
her; but he was poignantly afraid that she would
ne


32
GOLD-KILLER
send him away without taking him into her confi-
dence.
“I must have someone to whom to tell all these
dreadful things that are torturing me,” she said
at last. Ware did not offer himself; but his eyes
spoke more truly than any word he could have
said.
She let the papers fall on to the floor and began
in a voice scarcely above a whisper:
“The whole thing seems impossible! There is
something peculiarly mysterious and sinister. No
one could have strangled my father like that!
No, no matter what kind of hands he had, because
my father himself was enormously strong. I have
seen him take a huge mahogany table and carry it
as though it were wicker-work. Once, last sum-
mer, he lifted our heavy car from the mud, when
two chauffeurs had failed to move it an inch. He
could take me and toss me about as though I were
a child. He was very shy about it; and did not
care to have people know. Very few of his friends
realized; but my father was inconceivably strong.
The other Gold-Killer murders have been of vic-
tims who were old and weak. This is different."
Ware felt immediately that she was exagger-
ating her father's physical prowess; for John
Rice had been a man well over fifty.
“But that terrible grip around his throat,” he
argued, “would have swept the breath from Sam-


WARE UNDERTAKES A QUEST 33
son himself. Your father could have struggled
only for a moment. You, yourself, would have
heard him. You were sitting not thirty feet
away."
She replied with unshaken conviction.
“Even for that moment, my father could have
torn anyone to pieces. It could certainly not have
been the puny musician for whom they are search-
ing."
“He had not been stunned,” Ware told her.
“He had not been touched in any way; for I exam-
ined him carefully. There was no other blow.
He was conscious until the last moment. It was
the power alone of some enormous crushing
hands. But you must tell the police department
of this great strength of your father's.”
“You don't understand,” she said softly;
“there is something very curious about it. So
curious, indeed, that I would not have a breath of
it reach the ears of detectives. Even if I were
sure that it is as terrible as I believe it to be, I
would rather keep my father's memory as unsul-
lied as it is now. With uncertainty in my own
mind, I'm doubly afraid to have them prying into
his private life with their eager conjecturing.
No, you are the only one to whom I shall confide
this strange foreboding which I have had for
many months, and I know that you will keep it
secret."


34
GOLD-KILLER
He smiled and she went on.
“It has all happened within the last year. It
commenced just after I came back from college,
though, of course, it may have been coming on
during the winter of that year; for I was at home
very little, and vacations were so gay with parties
that I had small chance to see my father. I re-
member we were sitting that evening in the sum-
merhouse on the sea-wall looking out over Long
Island Sound. That afternoon we had been play-
ing tennis. Father was depressed and nervous.
It seemed to me that, for the first time, I noticed
that he was growing old. There was no snap in
his game, and he seemed ill at ease and distracted.
“But there in the summerhouse, his entire mood
changed. He was wearing a dinner-coat; but in
spite of that, he ran out on the sea-wall, and bal.
anced on his hands, walking with his feet over his
head. Then he turned a couple of hand-springs on
the lawn. His whole attitude was that of a restless
boy of twenty, chafing under restraint. Callers
came in to see me, and he excused himself. Later
that night I went to his room, because there had
been a strangeness in his manner that worried me.
No, he had not been drinking. One cocktail, per-
haps, or two; but no more."
She leaned forward.
“He wasn't in his room, nor anywhere on the
place. I know that he did not return antil dawn;


WARE UNDERTAKES A QUEST 35
for I lay awake listening for his motor. He was
driving a small racing car. At breakfast, he
seemed much as usual; but I didn't speak to him
about it, for, although we were the closest com-
panions, he was always secretive about his per-
sonal affairs. This sort of thing happened again
and again all summer.
“Dr. Ware, I think it was a woman!" she
blurted out suddenly.
“I think that he must have had some dreadful
love affair that possessed him and maddened him,
that depressed him and yet led him on to these
periods of elation. Oh, the things that I imagined
during those dreadful months!”.
She rose and went to the window. When she
returned her face was tense and her hands trem-
bling.
“If I had only spoken to him about it, then.
Perhaps I could have saved him from this. It
isn't that I blame him. Mother had been dead for
years. He was lonely, and this woman, whoever
she was, must have had a terrible power to enthrall
a man of my father's will power so completely;
for it was that. A consuming interest that was
with him day and night. What he must have suf-
fered!”
She sat down, calm again. Tom bent forward
toward her, eager to hear more.
“I don't know very much about such things,"


GOLD-KILLER
she took up her story again. “But could it not be
true that tey father fell into the clutches of some
terrible woman? It may have been some evil
woman of the underworld. Perhaps he was in-
volved in some sordid and disgraceful affair, some
terrible predicament where it was impossible for
him to fight his way out without disgracing him-
self and,” her voice softened, “his daughter."
“Then you think that they killed him-an un-
derworld gang?”
“Nobody could have killed him like that if he
had resisted. He did not resist. I know that!
For some hideous reason that murderer stole into
the box and fastened his hands around my father's
throat. He knew that man, and submitted to
death, rather than to struggle and accept inevi-
table disgrace. No one could have killed him
otherwise."
They both said nothing for several minutes.
Then Anne spoke again:
“You are the first person to whom I have spoken
a word of this. I shall say nothing to anyone else.
You understand, don't you, that I cannot have my
father's name disgraced, and I hope that they will
never find out? How, how, though, can we fathom
this dreadful mystery? It seems as if I could not
possibly rest until I knew more clearly what it
was. Not so much to find the murderer; but just


WARE UNDERTAKES A QUEST 37
to know what it was—this evil that has been
threatening my father for so many months.
“It was no musician, nor was it an anarchist,
It was some affair with a woman!” she concluded.
Tom took her hands in his and said quietly:
“We must risk no scandal, and we must find out.
Will you let me undertake the task? I should hold
it a very great privilege. Already I am happy to
be in your confidence.”
“You are too good," she whispered. “How can
I ask you to do a thing that may mean danger and
even death to you? Perhaps it is selfish of me to
keep all this from the police. I could never forgive
myself if I brought you to some fearful trouble.”
Tom laughed.
“You will give me the privilege?” he repeated,
looking into her eyes.
She smiled her reply.
“I will do everything in my power to investigate
the case,” he said. “And I will let you know
every turn of affairs. Good-bye. Keep strong,
and don't tell the police too much.”
He left her quickly, softer emotions quarreling
with the thousand and one plans for action that
were brewing in his mind.
As he crossed the hall to the elevator a maid
passed him with a huge bunch of lilies of the
valley.
If Ware could have seen Anne's eyes as she
we


GOLD-KILLER
read the note that accompanied the flowers, he
might not have set out on his mission with so
warm a heart.
“Is Mr. Dos Andros waiting?" Anne asked the
maid.
“He is in the library, ma'am,” was the reply.
“Tell him I will be down in ten minutes," and
Anne slipped quickly from the loose folds of her
gray gown.


CHAPTER IV
THE NEW UNDERWORLD
FTER a great deal of meditation upon the
significant things that Anne had told him,
and after advising with her, Ware went for aid to
his friend Joyce, the motion picture critic of the
“Record.” If there were some monstrously dis-
graceful woman affair connected with the killing
of John Rice, then it seemed to Tom that the
probable place to look for the woman was in the
underworld. His friend Joyce was a specialist in
crime stories, as well as in motion picture criti-
cism, and knew the New York tenderloin from
the world of musical comedy stars to that of pick-
pockets and sneak thieves.
“A woman!”
Joyce tapped his pencil half a dozen times on
the spacing bar of his typewriter and smiled at
the shift key.
“Yes, a woman!” Ware replied with a warlike
frown. “I don't put any stock in this anarchist
hypothesis.”
“That is sensible, of course. Whenever the
people around here," Joyce waved a large right
hand indicating the expanse of the newspaper
39


40
GOLD-KILLER
office, "and around at police headquarters, can't
blame a murder on a woman, they blame it on the
anarchists. But the reasons of your friend, Miss
Rice, are mighty slender.”
Tom looked earnestly out of the window at the
Woolworth Tower and replied with resolution:
“I know they are slender, but I am going to
investigate them.”
Joyce's laugh disturbed half a dozen reporters
dozing over their typewriters. A rewrite man
called over, asking what the joke was.
“You are going out sherlocking?” Joyce de-
manded.
“Yes, and you are going sherlocking with me."
Ware grinned spitefully at the newspaper man.
Joyce toyed with the big knotty muscles of his
right hand as though he were grooming to strike
somebody, and a look of displeasure came into his
comfortable face.
"I am not a man for romantic adventures,” he
said sternly after an interval. It took him a
moment to realize that the young physician was
talking seriously.
Tom jerked his chair closer, and his eyes nar-
rowed with determination. He wasted neither
reasonings nor implorings, but spoke as one who
states his purpose baldly.
“John Rice may have been caught in some un-
derworld intrigue. Now, it is not probable that a
SO


THE NEW UNDERWORLD
man of such prominence could have gone playing
around in sub-social circles without its having
been talked about there."
“I know a broker,” Joyce chortled, caught by
the profane joy of the remembrance, “who lives
his social life among yeggs. His evenings are
spent listening to tales of the latest safe crackings.
He bewails his love for the company of crooks.
He says there is no variety in his life. The yeggs
are so like stockbrokers."
Tom firmly checked the essay into anecdote. He
fixed his eyes on the shining surface of Joyce's
perfectly bald head and interrupted.
“As the movie editor of this paper and as an
occasional writer of crime stories, you know the
underworld ..."
“As movie editor, I know it,” Joyce fell into
ribaldry again.
“And you can take me to underworld haunts
where we can sit around and make inquiries and
perhaps hear things.”
Ware leaned back and passed his hand over his
cropped head with a gesture of finality.
“Underworld haunts!” Lines of mirth gath-
ered at the sides of Joyce's round brown eyes. “I
suppose you mean dingy side street saloons where
burglars hang out and sit drinking with their
molls, and noisy cabaret dives where pickpockets
gather at night, and tough joints where hold-up


GOLD-KILLER
men plan their crimes. Just as you have read in
underworld stories.”
“There are such places, aren't there?" Tom
returned combatively.
“There were, but there are not.” Joyce leaned
back in his turn and grinned as a mocking fellow
who details that St. Peter's in Rome is a fake built
of papier-maché, "The old underworld has be-
come a new underworld.”
“What do you mean?" Tom spoke subduedly.
He didn't know whether Joyce was serious or
joking.
“I mean that the criminal world has changed its
face as completely as a woman going to one of
these beauty surgeons. Did you ever hear of
McKurk's?”
“No," replied Tom.
"Well, McKurk's was in Baltimore, and it was
a headquarters for yeggs. A few years ago you
could have gone to McKurk's and found a dozen
safe blowers at the bar, and you could have got
word of almost any soup and drill artist in the
country. In the back room you might have seen
parties of yeggs drinking and laying plans for
their next jobs. Then there was Slovin’s in St.
Louis, a combined saloon, hotel and burlesque
show house. It was for years a national resort for
confidence men. In Chicago two brothers ran
three saloons, the first a haunt of burglars, the


THE NEW UNDERWORLD 45
“four rooms and bath.” The money that they
used to spend across the bar as a species of rent
for their bar-room centers, they now put into gen-
erous monthly fees for fine apartments. The more
reputable the place, the safer. Crookdom has be-
come the apartment house neighborhood of upper-
middle class respectability.
The public hangout is in the great crowd on
Broadway. Certain addresses are passwords for
the confraternities, one for forgers, another for
sneak-thieves, and the trail is from Broadway to
the well furnished apartment house where any one
of the boys may go and find half a dozen members
of his profession.
With this the crook has become an ordinary
citizen of the Broadwayite persuasion. In the low
saloon he dressed appropriately to the place, with
cap and sweater. Now he dresses like anyone else.
His old marks are gone. He looks like an ordinary
saunterer along Broadway, and imitates the loud
clothes of the cheap actor, which clothes are also
affected by the office clerk, the waiter, the business
man.
You will have to go far to find an old time joint
where you can meet the underworld, and pick out
the crooks by their traditional garb. You will
have to go into the crowd on Broadway at night,
where you must guess which is the thief and
which the ordinary citizen, or hunt crookdom in


CHAPTER V
THE MYSTERIOUS FLOWER
LAZENBERG'S Genuine Hungarian Table
T d'Hôte was crowded. At one table a flat-
nosed, long-chinned, loudly dressed vaudeville
actor sat with two purple-lipped, vermilion
cheeked chorus girls. At another a swarthy cloak
and suit manufacturer with bursting cheeks dined
his huge wife. Prognathous jawed, sunken nosed
girls came in with skirts to their knees and swag-
gered through the mazes of dirty table cloths, cast-
ing insolent glances right and left with small mis-
shapen eyes; ugly-mouthed men in green and yel-
low suits preceded or followed them. The women's
voices were loud, some blatant with the impure
inflections, coarse slang and brash cameraderie of
low class theatricals, others thick with the dialect
of the Ghetto. The waiters were black-jawed and
indolent.
“Herring or chopped chicken livers?"
Ware replied that he was waiting for a lady.
He sat at a table and marveled. He had no diffi-
culty in seeing about him the sure-thing gamblers,
the grafters, the small time crooks and the big
time crooks that, Joyce had told him, resort in this
49


GOLD-KILLER
modern day to yesterday's dull stodgy haunts of
the respectable.
A girl swaggered in past the short, swollen-
faced owner who bowed to her obsequiously. She
had a pretty, crooked mouth and wore a purple
coat. She paused petulantly for a moment, and
threw open her coat. A gleaming red flower, like
an orchid, lay on her bosom. In the glare of the
electric lights it seemed a great flaming ruby
carved into petals.
"Miss La Fontaine?” Ware arose and stepped
to her.
“So you're the dearie Joycie sent.”
She gave him a bold, kindly smile and allowed
him to divest her of her purple cloak.
They sat down.
“That is an extraordinary flower you have."
The flaming petals seemed moulded of wax and
fresh blood. Every change of light set them flash-
ing anew, glints of topaz in the red luminosity,
shadows of violet, and a fugitive emerald sheen.
And they gave forth a perfume of languorous
sweetness mingled with an acrid pungency.
"Ain't it a beauty?”
"Where did you get it?" Tom kept his eyes on
the rapturous bloom.
“A friend gave it to me."
"A friend?” he mocked.


THE MYSTERIOUS FLOWER 51
“I've got much more than this from him.” She
smiled perversely.
“What kind of flower is that?” he demanded.
“I don't know."
“Where does it grow? Is it hot house! Is it
imported ? I have never before seen such a flower.”
“You're mighty inquisitive, ain't you, dearie.”
She gave him a hard look and called the waiter.
“Herring and beet soup,” she said.
When the waiter had departed for the order she
planted her elbows on the table and her chin on
her two fists, and fastened a pair of yellow eyes on
Tom, who gave her an embarrassed grin, and
wondered why she was so sensitive about the
flower. She smiled a one-sided smile at him and
narrowed her eyes provocatively.
“You think you're foxy, don't you, boy?”
Ware stopped grinning.
“But I don't fall for those old gags."
“Huh.” He hunched forward in astonishment.
“Joycie said you wanted information.” She
pursed her lips satirically and raised one cheek.
Ware was unable to answer.
“Well, I know just what kind of information
you want.” She wagged her head from side to
side. Her broad flexible hat-brim flapped gro-
tesquely.
He longed to run away.
“You want what they all want. Here's what


GOLD-KILLER
you want.” She kissed the back of her hand sev-
eral times resoundingly.
Ware looked at her with profound stupidity.
“I-want-to-love-you-my-dearie,” she sang the
latest Broadway song hit in a full voice, and leaned
across the table with a delighted grin and slapped
his cheek.
“When a boob John gets stuck on me, he always
gets a friend to date me up for him, because he
wants some information from me." She drew her-
self up, made a supercilious face and cocked her
head to one side.
“Whew," Tom stared at her with admiration.
“Now tell me how much you love me,” she de-
manded with a glance.
“Greatly,” he said with mock gallantry, and
lapsed into bewildered silence.
She ate her herring and then her beet soup
rapidly.
“It's good.” Ware guessed that her “I love
you” would not have been more fervent. He
thought the cooking execrable.
While they waited for orders of pot roast she
recommenced her ogling.
“You are a classy boy," she tried to curve the
corners of her mouth enigmatically. “There ain't
many fellows who can take me to a beanery like
this. The Ritz is too cheap for me. I'm the girl
that makes 'em spend it."


THE MYSTERIOUS FLOWER
53
Ware rubbed the side of his straight pointed
nose with his forefinger, and tried to make himself
believe that his sleuthing was making progress.
"You talk like you might have rich folks," she
driveled on. “You talk educated. I just love
fellows that are refined. But good old Joycie says
you're on your uppers. Family chuck you off ?
What's the trouble? Booze? Or do you take a
little sniff once in a while? Too bad. They never
want to let a fellow enjoy himself. I know how it
is. My family won't give me a tumble since I went
on the stage. They're awful refined. But I know
what you need.” She gave him the vampire's
heavy lidded glance. “You ought to have a moll
like me. I'd show you how to get a little jack.”
She took a cigarette from his open case, lit it,
and gave him the half closed passionate eyes
longer and more intensively, blowing blue curling
strands of smoke out of her wide nostrils.
Ware industriously groomed a cigarette to con-
ceal his discomfiture.
“Maybe I can get you a little jack, baby.” She
rested her cheek on her hand and a moody, half
sullen expression came over her face. “I like you
a little bit, and I know you like me.”
Ware began to knit his heavy brows in alarm,
and the vertical lines between his eyes became
deeper as she continued in an erotic voice.
“I know some boys who are going out after a


54
GOLD-KILLER
big piece of change. They need another kid on the
job, and maybe I'll put in a good word for you.
It's a new stunt, the newest what is."
“Bond stuff? Liberties?” He could not resist
trying to appear up-to-date.
"Bond stuff?” She flipped the ashes off her
cigarette superciliously. “Why, kid, bond stuff is
as old as pinochle. This is something new."
"What is it?” Ware was interested in spite of
himself.
“I don't know just what it is, myself," she con-
fessed. “But they're going to get a lot of some
kind of scientific junk. The Chief knows where to
sell it for all kinds of money."
"The Chief ?"
“He's the big boss of the gang. I haven't met
him yet. But they say he's a wonder."
She reached across the table and toyed with his
fingers.
“I don't know why I like you, kid,” she said
with stagey earnestness, “unless it's because I like
your nerve to come up here and try to get me with
a five spot in your jeans. I love a fellow with guts,
and it don't make no difference to me whether he's
busted or not. And I'll give you a chance to swing
some dough. You show up at my flat tomorrow
night at eight o'clock, and the gang'll be there, and
they'll take you in on the big deal. Get me?”
She gave Ware's hand a hard friendly squeeze.


THE MYSTERIOUS FLOWER 55
“No. No," he stammered. His wits dazedly
propounded the question: Was she really senti-
mental, or was she playing some unguessable
game! All that was certain was that he had no
desire to take part in this mysterious robbery.
“I am engaged in some other business," he
blurted.
“Oh-h-h.” She raised her eyebrows exagger-
atedly. "You're a wise one. Got some little game
of your own, hey?”.
She was interested.
Ware thought it was time to end the situation.
He would propound his questions about John Rice
in the underworld, pay the check, and part with
Chickie La Fontaine, never to see her again.
"By the way, I was just wondering, do big
money men ever come playing around in your
crowd,” he limped.
“Do they!” She raised her shoulders and
Alicked an imaginary speck of dust from her
sleeve.
“Do you ever hear anything about any of
them?” His voice became domineering.
“Do I!” She straightened up in her chair and
puckered her lips. “Why, kid, they all take me
out, those big guys down on Wall Street. They
come around all the time, 'Chickie, let's dine at the
Ritz.' 'Chickie, let's go to the big society ball to-
night.' I know them all!"


56
GOLD-KILLER
“Did you know John Rice?” Tom stuttered
with excitement.
She swung her shoulders and tilted her head.
“That big gun the Gold-Killer got? Why, him
and me used to go out all the time.” She leaned
over the table nodding her head and whispering
confidentially. “Why, he spent two thousand dol-
lars on me one night."
Ware was too dizzy to frame a developing ques-
tion. She babbled on.
“He sure was a liberal fellow, and he sure was
stuck on me. Lots of fellows were jealous. Did
you know Jack?” She gave Ware a provocative
glance.
His gray eyes bulged, and he took his nether lip
in his teeth to hold himself.
“How long did you know Rice? Where did you
go with him?" Ware was bursting with questions.
His hand trembled on the table.
She looked at him with a frightened stare. Her
painted lips drooped.
“Don't ask me no more questions, dearie," she
whined. “I didn't do nothing."
Ware ground his teeth and glared at her.
“Who did?” he shouted. Surrounding diners
turned their faces toward them.
“Don't talk to me like that, dearie.” She hung
her head and complained. “Don't look at me like
that.”


58
GOLD-KILLER
"I'll be there,” Ware said grimly. He hailed a
passing cab.
“I'm warm.” Chickie threw open her mantle
and shook it, fanning herself.
Ware could not help looking at the gorgeous
flower on her bosom. It gleamed in the light of a
street lamp as she stood, and its odor came like the
breath of some exotic garden.
A passing athletic looking man with a slouch bat
and a pair of upstanding black mustaches, stopped
and stood staring at Chickie.
“The nerve of that masher," She swung and
stepped into the taxi.
The stranger sprang forward toward them.
“Go ahead, driver.”
Ware jumped into the cab and angrily slammed
the door in the intruder's face.
The cab jerked away from the curb. The stran-
ger cursed violently.
“That was some Johnny," Chickie screamed
with laughter.
Tom, astonished and mystified, looked back and
saw the black mustached man hail a green cab, and
follow them.
“96th Street and Riverside Drive,” Ware cried.
He looked back constantly as they sped up Broad-
way and saw the green cab keeping after them.
A traffic cop stopped them at 59th Street. As
they waited a man in a chauffeur's cap ran along-


60
GOLD-KILLER
the first policeman they saw. He tried to ease
Chickie, who sat staring and motionless.
They were thrown forward as the car stopped
suddenly. Ware looked out and saw a dark de-
serted section of the park. The green car had
halted in front of them. The door of the car was
thrown open.
“Get out,” their chauffeur stood with a revolver
in his hand. The chauffeur of the green car stood
beside him. Back further lounged the black mus-
tached stranger.
“What is this all about?” Tom protested
angrily. He and Chickie got out of the car.
"You just stand there,” their chauffeur replied
roughly.
The black mustached man came forward, stared
at the whimpering Chickie for a moment and
snatched the red flower from her bosom.
“That's mine." His voice was loud and rau-
cous, but that of an educated man.
He crumpled the flower in his hand convulsively
and thrust it into his pocket.
“Who are you?” Ware faced him, his long jaw
moving with wrath.
The stranger looked at him sharply, gave a
short laugh and turned away. He walked rapidly
to his green cab. The two chauffeurs got into their
respective machines and drove off, leaving Tom
and Chickie standing alone on the dark driveway.


THE MYSTERIOUS FLOWER
61
Tom stood motionless.
“Come on. Let's move!” Chickie exclaimed
petulantly. “Guess we'll have to walk it."
He continued to meditate.
“I know that man's face," he said finally, “I
have seen him ecmewhere."
She was grumbling monotonously, and paid no
attention.
They walked along the park pathway, and she
continued to babble her wonderment at the adven-
ture that had befallen them. She could think of no
explanation of it. Ware kept trying to place the
face of the stranger who had taken the flower.
“Tomorrow night at your flat,” he said as he
left her before the big Riverside apartiment house
where she lived.


CHAPTER VI
OLUES OVER TOAST
1 TARE had applied for a month's leave of
absence. It had been granted. He had
rented a room in an apartment house on Wost
Seventy-first Street and moved his luggage from
the hospital. He did not sleep soundly in his new
bed, but started constantly from fitful dreams of
Chickie La Fontaine, the amazing flower, and the
inexplicable stranger who had snatched it from
her. When in the morning he took his way to the
Rice mansion, he walked with short nervous
strides, his thin face eager and tense with the
effort to connect the events of the night's experi-
ence with the murder of John Rice. There were
moments when it seemed to him that he was being
more adventurous than prudent in throwing him-
self into the workings of an apparently flourishing
gang of the new underworld; but then he thought
of Anne, and the memory of her dark eyes made
any rashness that seemed daring become absolute
necessity.
Anne was a trifle pale when Tom found her
dressed and waiting for him in the morning. Her
one salvation, though, he realized, was to be com-


CLUES OVER TOAST
03
pletely absorbed in the task of running down her
father's murderer. Take this interest from her
and the taut nerves would snap in a pitiful col-
lapse.
Grapefruit was waiting them in an airy break-
fast room at the top of the house, where a bronze
nymph laughed at them from a fountain and a
large cage filled with yellow and orange birds gave
the room an almost festive appearance.
“You see,” she waved a hand gently toward the
happy chirping birds, “they sing always, and the
nymph smiles. What goes on out here doesn't
matter to them."
She seemed more beautiful than ever to Ware.
Her pallor only heightened the witchery of her
bright lips and the tracery of arched eyebrows.
How wonderful it would have been to sit there in
the early morning sunshine talking of other things,
of herself and, perhaps, oh! very little of himself
to her. Tom took a savage bite of toast and
crunched it determinedly, then dragged his mind
back to the squalor and din of Glazenberg's, as he
plunged into a recital of the events of the night
before.
Anne had been listening, but only dreamily,
until he mentioned the flaming red flower. When
be described its strange glow and perfume and the
curious fascination it seemed to have for him, as he
saw it for the first time flaunting and tantalizing


CLUES OVER TOAST
65
day perhaps he could find me something about it in
the books of travel. A friend had given it to him.
"What friend?' I asked; but as I became more
eager and pursued the question, he seemed to grow
annoyed, then angry. He left the breakfast table,
went to the floor below and when he returned a few
moments later, the flower had disappeared. Nat-
urally, I did not speak of it to him again.
“Doesn't it all seem plain now? That woman
you met and who claims to have known my father,
did know him all too well. This strange flower was
probably a love token between them. That would
explain my father's annoyance, and embarrass-
ment that his daughter should be so insistent about
a thing which was the symbol to him of something
of which he was ashamed, which he was striving
to conceal. The man at the opera was a jealous
lover of hers-a lover who has used his strange
and terrible strength to kill other rivals in the
same way and for the same reason. What a dread-
ful woman she must be! You won't have to see
her again, will you?”
Ware laughed at her concern. At the same
time, he was amazed and thrilled by the new de-
velopment in the tangled thread of their mystery.
He sketched rapidly the rest of the evening's ex-
perience, treating lightly the plan for the exploit
at Chickie's apartment. But Anne was thoroughly
excited and concerned. She was no longer pale.


GOLD-KILLER
Her cheeks were flushed and she walked nervously
to the window and looked out over the park.
"I want you to promise me you'll stop this fool-
ish plan,' she begged. “It isn't worth the great
danger to you. I can't let you do it."
“What could be a greater lark?” he assured
her. “She believes that I'm in love with her.
Well, let her think so. She believes I'm hard up
and need money. Well, what's the harm in that?
I can find out more now than a dozen detectives.
That is clear, isn't it and you must let me go
through with it. There's no other answer."
“But I don't understand the man in the Green
cab," Anne queried. Her forehead was drawn
and her eyes strained now. Tom felt like a brute
that he had been forced to tell her the strange
details.
"That's not so mysterious, Miss Rice," he ex-
plained. “The man said the flower was his when
he tore it from the La Fontaine woman. The
blossoms are probably very valuable; and, origi-
nally, were filched from a private garden. Doubt-
less he had no connection whatsoever. It's strange,
though, I'm perfectly sure I've seen him some
where before."
Anne was petulant. She even pouted a bit.
"-And people who own private greenhouses know
bow to bribe taxi drivers to hold up their fares in
Central Park? That sounds more like some crimi-


CLUES OVER TOAST
nal of power in the underworld. Doctor, I wish
you wouldn't do this. There's no reason why you
should be throwing yourself into what seems to me
a very great peril, for me-because I- "
“Just think it's because of my love of adven-
ture,” Ware lied; but he was standing by her at
the window, and when he took her hand, it rested
in his lightly for a time which, doubtless, neither
of them calculated.
The house telephone rang. Tom answered.
“Dr. Rutchers and his friend to see Miss Rice.
Shall I tell them you are anwell and cannot "
"No," Anne interrupted, “I was expecting
them. Have them brought here, please. I shall be
glad to have you meet Dr. Rutchers. He was a
close friend of my father's and, though I have
never met him, I feel that I have really known him
for many years."
“It's not Herman Rutchers, the neurologist?”
Ware asked.
“Yes,” Anne told him, "He's quite famous,
isn't he?"
“Indeed. Absolute authority in his line. Of
course, I've just met him; but it will be an honor to
meet him again. Remember his name was men-
tioned as the legatee of James Holden, the first
Gold-Killer victim. And his friend?”
Anne turned to greet the guests as they came
from the hallway, before she could answer. Her


68
GOLD-KILLER
outstretched hand fell to her side. Ware gasped
as he saw-Dr. Rutcher he recognized at once,
slight, nervous, somewhat feeble-a little old man
with keen eyes, a pendulous droopy lip and eye-
lids and a sharp nose. But the object that held
the attention of both riveted was the flower in the
lapel of the old man's coat. It seemed to wink
mockingly at them with its scarlet-green eyes, and
to call to them with its pervasive fragrance. Anne
recovered from her confusion after a moment and
responded to the doctor's greeting and word of
condolence. She introduced him to Ware, then
turned to a younger man who had been waiting in
the shadow.
“You promised to come again last evening,
Dos,” she admonished softly.
Dr. Rutchers was eyeing Tom with a curious
smile and telling of his friendship for John Rice,
of their mutual interest in the establishment of
various hospitals for the insane, when the young
interne overheard Anne's remark. There was a
tenderness in the tone of her voice that sent a
quick throb of anxiety through his blood. He
turned to see a strikingly handsome man of about
his own age, tall, slim, obviously foreign. The
black hair curled in slight waves back from a high
and well-modeled forehead. The eyes were jet
black and the nose narrow, with nostrils that
seemed delicate and, somehow, tremulous. High


CLUES OVER TOAST
69
cheek-bones, and temples that were hollowed and
gave that impression of thinness not usual in a
man so young. Tom tried to place him. Italian?
No, the skin was a warmer brown, the lips were
too red and full. Lord, what a handsome cuss!
Ware squirmed as he saw Anne's hand stray to
the lapel of the stranger's coat.
He made an excuse to Dr. Rutchers, he scarcely
knew what, and approached Anne.
"I must go, Miss Rice,” he said. “I'll let you
know if anything happens tonight.”
She took his hand and pressed it anxiously. The
two men faced each other. Tom thought he saw
the faintest trace of hostility in those cool dark
eyes; but the clasp of the long, nervous fingers
was cordial as Anne introduced them.
“Mr. Dos Andros, Dr. Ware "
“It is most kind of you to take such good care
of Miss Rice," Dos Andros said. “Let me assure
you, sir, we all appreciate it.”
Ware murmured a monosyllabic reply and
strode quickly into the elevator. He pressed the
button marked "I.” “We all appreciate." We
what was that foreigner to Anne? He was puzzled
and annoyed by this dark figure, suddenly appear-
ing on the horizon of what he had just come to
consider a very clear scene of romance for him.
Dos Andros—Dos was Spanish, yet there was
more of the Indian than the Spaniard in that lithe,


CHAPTER VII
THE GANG GATHERS
A T Chickie's apartment on Riverside Drive,
Ware looked around and marveled. So that
was the meeting place of the underworld gang.
There were seven rooms beautifully fitted out
Through the open door that led into the dining
room he could see a sideboard glittering with
superb cut glass. In the library, where he sat,
were shelves of de luxe editions of the master-
pieces.
Chickie La Fontaine wore a gown of filmy blue.
Two diamond pendants dropped from her ears.
She reclined on a lounge, a cigarette hanging from
her lips, and chattered.
“Isn't this some flat. A big architect used to
live here. I took over his lease and bought this
stuff from him. The boys like to come and hang
around.”
Tom did not listen to her long.
“Look here, I was interested in what you told
me about John Rice the other evening." He
embarked upon his quest without delay. “I want
you to tell me more about him.”
“You sure are jealous, dearie,” she laughed,
and then looked at him intently.
71


GOLD-KILLER
“Oh, I'm only curious,” he said reassuringly.
“Of course you are." She laughed louder than
ever.
"You don't understand. I'm merely interested
in knowing everything about you. ..."
Ware was in the middle of an involved explana-
tory exposition when the door bell rang. She went
to answer it.
She ushered Joyce into the room.
“I got out of my engagement tonight, told her
I was busy,” he said to Ware, rubbing his big
hands together, “and I thought I would drop in
here to guide your young footsteps in swift com-
pany."
“It sure is swift company, like the ponies at
the finish,” Chickie shouted cordially, and flopped
on the lounge.
Joyce looked at her ironically.
“Tom was down to see me this afternoon," he
said to her. “He told me about the excellent time
he had with you last night. He said he was coming
up here tonight.”
"He's a nice boy, but he's too jealous.” She
shook Ware's arm with a friendly gestüre. "He'd
better keep his feelings in his pocket, because
there's a fellow coming tonight who might be
jealous of him.”
“Your angel?” Joyce's heavy, mocking face


THE GANG GATHERS
73
took an expression of ironical gallantry. “Or
your archangel?”
"I'm not saying." Chickie clasped her knee in
her two hands, and gave Tom a side glance.
Joyce whispered an elaborate piece of reason-
ing to the young physician.
"If your guess is correct, and the Gold-Killer
is this girl's jealous lover, you had better not
arouse his jealousy tonight or you may feel those
terrible strangling hands."
He chuckled maliciously and apologized to
Chickie for whispering.
“Oh, that's all right, go as far as you like,”
she replied friendlily.
Ware rubbed his hand across the closely clipped
hair at the base of his skull and meditated dubi-
ously.
He grew warm with the thought that there might
be truth in Joyce's jibe. Then what if Chickie
grew indiscreetly affectionate toward him. Or if
she babbled his too persistent inquiries about Rice.
She was rapturous with the idea that he was
motivated by jealousy. But might not the Gold-
Killer, if it were he, suspect something more, sus-
pect his true errand?
Ware's head buzzed with possibilities.
The doorbell rang.
After the sound of greetings from the hall and


74
GOLD-KILLER
exclamations of welcome, Chickie showed four
men into the library.
“This is Ware,” she made the introductions,
"and this is his pal, Joycie.”
“Glad to know you, Ware," cried a dark, fattish
man who seemed to be the leader. His manner
was bumptiously cordial. He shook Tom's hand
violently and slapped him on the back.
The other three greeted Ware and Joyce with
exaggerated gangster hospitality.
“That's right, boys, be real pals,” Chickie
gurgled her delight at the surge of fellowship.
“What is the meaning of this great friendli-
ness?" Tom muttered to Joyce. Chickie had
vouched for him, no doubt, but that seemed
scarcely adequate to account for the extravagant
welcome.
“I don't know."
They all sat down and lit cigarettes.
The newcomers seemed of the cheap actor type.
The leader, who was addressed as Pop Morgan,
wore a sand-colored suit, white spats and a gray
tie. He had a big curved nose, black jaws that
seemed forever in need of a shave, and an ugly
mouth that he constantly screwed to the side. He
smoked a big cigar and moved it about in his
mouth to show his proficiency at cigar smoking.
A tall, straight-featured, blond-headed fellow
kept beside Morgan and whispered to him con-


THE GANG GATHERS
75
fidently on every occasion. He spoke in the full,
distinct voice and with the emotional inflections of
a fourth rate actor in the midst of his part. He
answered to the name of Billy Harty.
Of the other two, Flash Montague was a dapper
little fellow, stocky and red-faced and the pos-
sessor of a cultured, man-of-the-world manner;
Jack West was a strong, burly, short-nosed, big-
jawed man, with a pair of narrow, gray and
comically cunning eyes which forever glanced
covertly and sidewise.
Ware was unable to guess which one might be
Chickie's particular lover. Morgan kept an air of
proprietorship, but he did not glance at the gir)
nor give any token of having any especial under-
standing with her. The cordiality between Chickie
and the tall, blond Harty seemed merely the usual
banality of stage folk. Harty had large, knotty
hands. Morgan had white, fat hands. The other
two were slender-fingered, like pickpockets. Noth-
ing particularly indicative there, save that
Harty's hands looked the strongest. None of
them fitted the description of the man seen at the
opera, but then the descriptions were vague, and
descriptions are notoriously tricky.
“Ware, I sure am glad to meet you,” Morgan
palled his chair beside Tom's.
"That's very kind of you.” Tom was em-
barrassed. He grinned aimlessly,


THE GANG GATHERS
77
The men got up.
“I always feed them in the kitchen; it seems
more like home, doesn't it?” she explained to
Joyce and Ware.
They sat about in the large white kitchen and
watched Chickie put on an apron and go work-
ing at the gas range. Morgan got a bottle of
whiskey, and drinking began.
“What about the job, Morgan? That's what
we came here to talk about.” The cunning-eyed,
heavy-jawed Jack West spoke, and jerked his
head toward Joyce.
“He's all right,” Morgan said as one who
brings good fellowship to all. “He's Ware's pal,
and Ware is one of us. Ware is a friend of the
Chief's.” The crooks looked at the movie critic
amicably. The smallest mention of the Chief
seemed to have a fantastic effect on them.
Joyce's evident interest in the gathering did not
exclude a shade of disquietude. He held his big
hands in his lap and moved his fingers restlessly.
“What's the plan?” the tall, blond Harty de-
manded.
“The Chief says he has found out that a truck-
ing company has been engaged to take the stuff
out to Newark. It is to go at night on account of
the heavy traffic on the plank road during the day,
We will take a couple of cars and wait for the
truck half way across the Meadows."


78
GOLD-KILLER
“When does it happen?” Harty asked.
“Any time. The Chief will get word, and he
will let us know what night and what hour to
be out there waiting for the truck. It will be one
of the Commercial Transfer Company's wagons.”
“Will it be in a week or in a day?" Tom was
interested. He fervently purposed breaking
acquaintanceship with the gang before he was
trapped into participating in any banditry.
“It may be tomorrow night, or a week from
now," Morgan replied. “It may be any time.
The Chief will let us know.”
"And then for a nice clean up,” Chickie shouted
from her rarebit dish.
“Yes, we'll get a million for the stuff,” Morgan
bragged.
“Just what sort of stuff is it?" Ware was
puzzled.
“It must be liquor," Joyce was not comfort-
able.
“No," vouchsafed Morgan, “I don't know just
what the stuff is, but it's some kind of scientific
junk. They call it molium.”
“Molium !” Ware exclaimed in surprise.
He knew molium to be a recently discovered
rare metal. It was extremely hard to get, but it
was used only in some obscure chemical processes,
and had only a moderate value.
“Where can you sell molium for a big price?"


GOLD-KILLER
Ware saw Morgan's black, bulging eyes fixed
on them.
"Answer me,” Ware repeated determinedly.
“Was anybody jealous of Rice?”.
“You're a darling." Chickie laid her head on
his shoulder sentimentally.
Morgan moved about in his chair, and raised
his voice in the discussion.
“Did you give him one of those red flowers?”
Tom rushed on recklessly.
She looked about fearfully.
“Don't say anything about that flower," she
whispered.
Ware could feel her fingers on his arm move
agitatedly. Her mouth drooped, and her face took
a whipped expression.
“So you're getting serious, are you?” Morgan
got up and kicked his chair away. His round eyes
gaped. His thick, shapeless lips hung to one side.
Tom arose slowly. He pressed his teeth to-
gether hard. A look of profound seriousness was
in his lean face. Morgan was Chickie's lover. He
passed his hand across his throat. The act sym-
bolized the thought that blazed in his mind. The
Gold-Killer!
“You're trying to get her, hey!” Morgan
shouted. “Well, you won't get her.” He ad-
vanced slowly across the room.


THE GANG GATHERS
81
“Oh, sit down!” Chickie was laughing as if at
an enormously funny joke.
Joyce, with a look of bewilderment and horror
in his face, started to rise.
“Keep cool.” One of the crooks pushed him
down with a friendly, but decisive gesture. They
stood and watched.
Ware stood immobile. His eyes were fixed on
the advancing Morgan's fat hands. He did not
speak. Every energy in him was throbbing,
ready for the emergency.
“Oh, it's too funny.” Chickie continued to sit
and laugh like a mad woman.
Morgan lurched at Ware. The young man
drove a right hand punch with all his power. Mor-
gan, with a move of his head, avoided the blow,
and threw himself forward. Tom flung up his
arm to protect his throat, and Morgan's right
hand clutched his wrist. Ware convulsed as he
felt the grasp. The strangling hands, a wild voice
cried in his brain. Every muscle in his body
strained in a frantic effort. Morgan went flying
backward onto the floor.
“Aw, cut that out." The men picked the dazed
crook up.
“Are you hurt?” Joyce became diplomatically
solicitous of Morgan.
Chickie, who had been startled out of her laugh-
ter by the quick struggle, fell to scolding Morgan,


82
GOLD-KILLER
as the men restrained him from attacking Ware
again.
Tom stood shaking. He could not understand
his easy victory. Instead of lying with his throat
crushed, another Gold-Killer victim, he had found
Morgan a cheap antagonist. He kept a vivid im-
pression of Morgan's hand clutching his wrist.
That was the moment of the fight which had flamed
in his mind, when the supposed Gold-Killer had
lunged for his throat and had seized his arm.
Morgan's grasp had been pathetically weak. He
had felt it the commonplace straining of a soft,
fat hand. The hold had broken without resist-
ance. Clearly Morgan's hands were exceptional
only in their weakness.
He felt his wrist to confirm his impression. It
was neither sore nor bruised. That lover of
Chickie's, it was certain, was not the Gold-Killer.
Morgan still was furious. He sat exhausted,
but mumbled threateningly.
“Wait till ... wait till. ..."
“Shut up. Are you going to give away your
insides?” one of the men standing around him
said roughly.
“You're a fool,” Chickie continued to rail.
“And you'd better make up with Tom."
"He's a friend of the Chief's, ain't he?” one
of the men said meaningly.
The others chorused assent.


THE GANG GATHERS
83
“Aren't you going to stand by me and give this
guy a licking?” Morgan turned on them angrily.
The door bell rang. The men stood expectant.
Chickie hurried out.
“It's Baldy,” she returned crying excitedly.
A man perfectly hairless, with a long straight
nose, followed her.
“Boys, tonight's the night!” he spoke sharply.
“Tonight?” Morgan came forward.
“Yes,” Baldy replied. “The truck takes the
eleven o'clock ferry. It's ten now. I've just come
from the Chief and he sends orders to go right
out on the job. I've brought the big car, and with
your little racer, we'll have enough for the work.
I've got a good description of the truck. So come
on. We'll get the ten-thirty ferry across."
"This is Ware and his pal Joyce,” Chickie in-
terrupted.
“Glad to meet you, Ware," Baldy shook Tom's
hand fervently. “The Chief has spoken to me
about you. He told me that you were going on
the job tonight, and that he especially wanted to
have you with us. Glad to have you."
Tom could not find a reply.
“I'm going home,” Joyce announced.
“Thought you were coming with us,” Morgan's
manner was ugly. “Ain't you Ware's pal?"
“I've an engagement tonight,” Joyce replied
nervously.


84
GOLD-KILLER
“You know all about the job,” Morgan shouted.
“I'm sorry, boys, but I can't go with you to-
night.” Tom essayed mildness and firmness.
Baldy looked at the two with a steady pair of
green eyes.
“I guess both of you had better come along," he
said.
“But I can't,” Joyce sweated indignation.
“And I won't," Tom gritted his teeth together.
“By the way, boys,” Baldy said with cool
significance, “I've got your gats here."
He took several small automatics out of his coat
pockets and passed them to the gang members.
“Come along," he said to Tom and Joyce. “Or
we'll put holes in the two of you right here. When
the Chief orders something, it's done, or somebody
is killed.”
Ware saw mystery and menace on every side,
and no way to escape.
“I guess we had better get in on this game,”
he said to Joyce, trying to resume his former air
of a gang recruit.
The movie critic looked about hopelessly.
“All right,” he replied.
Two men kept vigilantly beside Ware and Joyce
as they went down the flight of stairs to the street.
A few moments before, Chickie had disap-
peared. Now she came out of the building laugh-
ing, wearing a soft gray suit-a man's suit. It
е от е


THE GANG GATHERS
85
fitted her snugly—and she had hid her hair under
a dark cap with a wide visor.
“You said I could go along on this job,” she
said to Morgan.
“All right, take her,” Baldy said.
Chickie took her place between Morgan and
Joyce on the rear seat of the big car. The two
automobiles drove off to the ferry.


CHAPTER VIII
ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD
TARE found himself in the front car speed-
ing rapidly down Riverside Drive. He
could have wished that the band had placed Joyce
with him, but instead they had hurried Ware into
the front seat of the smaller car beside the man
they called Baldy, who sat perfectly still, his curi-
ous long nose bent toward the wheel, his little
squinting eyes following the line of lantern-like
lights along beside the river.
In the back seat Flash Montague seemed rest-
less. He leaned forward, his elbows touching
Ware, who thought he felt a nervous tremor in
the chubby little fellow's body. Flash kept up a
stream of conversation: shows/races-girls and
· more girls. Obviously he was attempting to in-
terest Tom and to quiet his own nervousness.
But Tom was worried. Ineffectual schemes for
escaping from the net of crime kept revolving in
his bewildered mind. Yet there was no way for
him to act in collusion with Joyce, and to escape
alone would be to desert his friend, who was
wedged in between Pop Morgan and the more than
86


ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD 87
usually coquettish Chickie La Fontaine on the back
seat of the big car.
“Poor Joyce,” thought Tom. He had never
seen a clearer case of stage fright.
Winking little beads of perspiration had stood
out on the movie critic's forehead as he had been
thrust into the big car, a long low red eight pas-
senger, which gave the impression of being of
foreign design, but Chickie La Fontaine, her
dainty figure more trim than ever in well-cut
trousers, had mothered him with soothing phrases.
Flash was taking a flat bottle from his hip
pocket. He passed it forward to Baldy.
"Have a little strength,” he commented with
a peculiar laugh. Baldy grunted seriously, put
the flask to his lips, and carefully took a small
drink.
“How about me?” Tom joked.
Flash snatched the flask back, with a quick
glance at Tom. He too took a small drink.
As they rolled onto the almost empty ferry boat,
Ware squirmed around to take a good look at the
men in the front seat of the second car. Billy :
Harty was driving. His red lipped, carefully mas-
saged countenance seemed more distinctly effemi-
nate because of the square cut green cap he had
pulled down over one eye. Beside him was Jack
West. Here at least, Tom thought, was the con-
ventional criminal of the old underworld. His


88
GOLD-KILLER
great jaws seemed even squarer, his eyes more
sinister, in the odd glare that was thrown on
them from the lights in the vault-like body of the
ferry boat.
“How's my little Ware/hardware? Feeling
like a chicken at her first party?" shouted Chickie
from the red car.
“Shut up, you fool,” and Pop Morgan shoved
one huge hand over her mouth.
“Aw, cut it out,” Chickie squirmed away from
him. “Who's going to bother us here? Eh
Joycie!” And she flipped off Joyce's hat and ran
her hand over his head caressingly.
“Lord, I hope no one,” he stuttered. “If the
police should come along I'd be in for it.”
Pop Morgan lowered at them.
“You two shut up," he grumbled. “If any.
thing goes wrong tonight I got to answer to the
Chief, and you know what that means. I ain't
going to let your sweet mouth do me in for a
marble slab.”
Chickie laughed.
“Don't worry, old dear. You can't ever tell
when I'll come in handy. You know you might
need me on one of these trips some time, and then
you'll be glad I'm here."
Pop grunted.
From the Weehawken station the two cars slid
quietly around the rock-shadowed road under the


ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD 89
Palisades and then to the Jersey meadows, dank,
salty, covered with gaunt, rotting vegetation and
a light mist that blew mysteriously toward them.
Now they rattled over a bridge that stood up like
a black spectre against the sky, which was made
curiously gray by the clouds of a coming storm.
Baldy's little eyes were quick and eager now.
He let his brilliant lights play at full strength,
and for the first time now Ware noticed a trim
little revolving searchlight fixed to one side of
the tonneau and worked mechanically from the
driver's seat. Flash had dropped back and was
silent now, staring moodily into the black night,
his revolver out and lying beside him on the seat.
The red car had dropped behind at the bridge and
they were past range of its sweeping lights. Ware
felt lonely, and more than a little apprehensive.
It seemed so easy for anything, no matter how
horrible, to happen under this pall of dead still-
ness and black, broken only by the weird gleam-
ing lights of the speeding car.
A truck passed. Baldy glanced sidewise and
swung his searchlight around and looked eagerly
for the awaited lettering. In a second he was
back again to his former position, alert, steady,
quiet. It had been only a moving van lumbering
belatedly over the Plank Road.
Three more trucks passed, thundering swiftly,
like dragons come suddenly from the darkness and


90
GOLD-KILLER
away again—toward Newark. Each time Baldy
swept them with quick eagerness. Each time he
snapped back to his driving as if he were an
automaton. Ware was coming to admire the pre-
cision of this odd man who sat silently beside
him.
“Hope we don't croak anybody tonight,” Flash
broke the silence cheerfully.
“Shut up." Baldy's fingers sought the con-
trol of the searchlight as there was a rush and a
rattle behind them. COMMERCIAL TRANS-
FER-
This much Tom saw in gold letters, and then
felt the tensing muscles of the man beside him.
Three blasts on the horn—a wailing siren that
could be heard for miles.
"There she is,” breathed Flash on the back
seat.
The swift little car leaped ahead, as Baldy, his
ugly teeth drawing down his thin upper lip, opened
her wide.
Ware's hands were cold and he was ashamed of
the tremor in his knees.
“What'll I do?” he gasped.
There was no response, but only a quick ugly
look from Baldy, and the steel of Flash's gun
against the back of his neck.
In three minutes they had drawn abreast of the
fated truck. Baldy leaned out.


ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD
91
Ore
"Hey!” he shouted. He repeated his hail three
times, and waved at the driver of the truck, who
looked out with a puzzled face, as he slowed down.
Flash had opened the door of the back seat of
the auto and had crept out onto the running board.
Baldy, driving with his right hand, whipped out
his gun with his left. Simultaneously they leveled
their weapons and Baldy shouted:
“Stop—and stop damned quick."
The truck driver frowned and swore and threw
in his brakes. There was another man on the
seat beside him, a slight boy of twenty or so, who
jumped out nervously.
“Say, look here,” he said, his voice trembling.
“You got us wrong, ain't you? There ain't noth-
ing but some fool chemical junk in this truck, and
it ain't worth this row, is it?".
“Keep still,” said Baldy with a flutter of his
gun hand.
“Here you! Don't sit like a fish. Get out and
see what's in that truck."
Tom moved slowly. He could scarcely seem to
make his senses coördinate. He took in the lay
of the land dully. The lights cutting a blazing
path of yellow across the road and the gray of
the swamp, the truck driver, a huge, heavy-
breasted, blackbearded figure of wrath, slouched
against the front wheel of the truck, glowering
helplessly, the fresh-cheeked boy, with nervous


92
GOLD-KILLER
lips parted, breathing heavily, and fascinatedly
watching every move. The lights of the red car
were just beginning to show, two growing stars
in the black distance.
Ware unloosed the back of the truck. It fell
with a bang. Inside he could see many cases. He
took hold of one, and it was heavy. He lifted it
out with difficulty and staggered with it to the
back seat. Baldy sneered at him.
“What's the matter with you?” he grumbled.
“Scared?"
Tom did not answer. He tried to hide his nerv-
ousness and unload the stuff quickly.
Flash now turned from covering the two truck-
men. He helped Ware with the cases. He opened
one of them, and looked at its contents.
“It's molium all right, Baldy,” he said.
“What did you think it was? Gold dust? Get
a move on.”
By this time the back seat of the car was filled
with cases.
“Get into that front seat," Baldy commanded
Ware.
Tom crawled in.
The big red car was on them. Pop Morgan
jumped out and waved to the others to keep their
seats, and came forward for quick consultation
with Baldy.
“We're all right here,” Baldy told him. “We'll


ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD 93
drive on slowly for a quarter of a mile. By the
time we're back you will have all the stuff we can
carry packed in. Watch those two birds. You
can never tell about those Swedes."
The big black truck driver gave a snort of anger
as Baldy and Flash squeezed into the packed car,
and started slowly away from the truck.
There had been no travel on the Plank Road
until this time. A touring car was approaching
the scene of the robbery now, but Pop Morgan had
seen it coming in the distance, had dimmed the
lights of the truck, had ordered the truck driver
under his car, and had simulated aid to engine
trouble. There was no comment from the passing
motor.
The half mile that Baldy must have driven
seemed interminable to Tom, and when, on their
return to the truck, Morgan motioned them to take
another turn down the road, Ware's nervousness
had increased almost to the point of insanity. He
wanted to run and jump into those black meadows,
slash about among the grasses, get away from
this mad grotesque dream of dancing shadows and
blazing lights, of gleaming revolvers and gross
faces.
They had turned, and, driving very slowly, had
gone only a short distance away from the truck,
when a shout back of them brought them to a halt.
Jack West and Billy Harty jumped onto the run-


94
GOLD-KILLER
ning board to tell them that the truck now was
empty of its precious load and everything was
ready for the get-away. The messengers were in-
terrupted by the sound of a shot behind them.
The five men in the car jumped quickly into the
road. Three of them started back toward the
truck, but Tom and Flash stood staring and fasci-
nated by the terrible thing they saw.
Like two dead black shadows at one side of the
glare from the headlights of the red car were
two swaying figures. Now they were a violent
mass of arms and legs pounded into the dust of
the road. Now they were erect again, twisted for
one brilliant moment into the light of the car.
For that brief second there was a vision of a back-
ward-flung head. Then the contestants were
simply interlocked shadows again, closer, more
like one shadow than two, steadier, quieter-
broken, and one flung out of the circle of light.
There was a moment of silence, then a sudden
burst of activity. Ware thought he caught a glance
of Chickie jumping into the red car, before it tore
away suddenly from the truck, back along the
Plank Road in the direction of New York. Baldy
rushed back to Ware and Flash and motioned
them silently into the car, jumped in himself,
slammed the door, and started in the opposite di-
rection, toward Newark.


ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD 95
Flash leaned forward to question Baldy. Baldy
stopped him with a grunt:
“We'll meet them in half an hour, a mile this
side of Hoboken."
Tom looked at Baldy's pale face, with its
enigmatical eyes, and despaired of questioning.
“When do I get out of this?” he demanded.
Baldy never turned his eyes away from the
roadbed, and scarcely opened his tight lips.
“You don't get.”
“What do you mean?” Ware gasped.
“I mean that you'll spend a couple of weeks
with the Chief,” said Baldy. “Oh, you're all
right,” he turned and looked at Tom squarely.
“Funny how the Chief likes you. He'll give you
some good grub. You look like you might need
it. Say, haven't you ever been on a job before?”
“What was the row?” Flash put in.
“Oh, Morgan let Chickie hold the gun on the
truck driver, and he got ugly with his own gat.
Then there was a free-for-all. Everything turned
out all right.” He looked back at Flash.
“Huh,” said Flash, taking out a long, slender
ivory cigarette holder. He lit himself a cigarette,
leaned back luxuriously, waved one pudgy hand
grandiloquently, and said:
“You like poetry, Tom? Look at the moon,
"That orbed maiden
With white fire laden.'"
SO


96
GOLD-KILLER
Ware turned suddenly, and Flash laughed at
him, his pudgy face wrinkling into almost Fal-
staffian lines.
...Well, what is the matter, Tom? Can't I be a
scholar and gentleman, and rob trucks, too?
You've got a lot to learn, my boy. The under-
world is a large place, where there's room for
many a minister's son.
“ 'Heigh 0, for a drink of brown October ale.'”
Ware was interested, but too tired and per-
plexed to fit in with Flash's jovial mood. The
evening had been singularly without result from
his standpoint. He had learned absolutely noth-
ing that contributed toward the solving of the
Gold-Killer mystery. And he could see no way to
escape a period of confinement under the eyes of
the unknown Chief.
Would they let him send word to Anne, he
wondered? She would be watching for him the
first thing in the morning, and it didn't seem like
conceit to him to know that his failure to appear
or to send a message would add a measure of
anxiety to her already too great burden of grief.
They could see the lights of a car drawn up
beside the road, and it proved to be the rest of
the gang. Baldy went over to them, and returned
with Joyce and Jack West.
“We'll take you two guys to the Chief's," he


ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD 97
said to Ware and Joyce, and they drove rapidly
to the Lackawanna ferry.
Flash, Tom and Joyce were in the back seat,
and Jack West was sitting in the front with
Baldy.
“Guess that was some fight,” said Joyce.
“Who- ?" Tom started his question.
Baldy turned suddenly.
“Don't know," returned Joyce. “I was in the
back seat, and the minute I heard that shot I
ducked under the seat and did not come up for
air until we were under way. Hope the police
don't catch this bunch,” he muttered low. "If
they do we'll go to jail with the rest."
"Well,” said Tom, “you know that we're in for
a little week-end party with the Chief."
“So they tell me," returned Joyce, with a
bravado which did not successfully conceal his
nervousness. “And me with a date for tomor-
row night. What a bore!”
“You guys watch the scenery,'' Baldy snapped
back at them. “I'm sick of hearing you talk.”
From the ferry they switched to Broadway and
then ran rapidly uptown. Ware was beginning
to wonder if the visit to the mysterious Chief's
headquarters might not, after all, be a good thing;
for it did not seem possible that he should spend
a week in that strange household without learning
some interesting facts of the curious new under-


GOLD-KILLER
world into which he was finding himself rapidly
plunged, and in whose ranks he was certain was
somewhere concealed the cruel and terrible mys-
tery of the Gold-Killer.
Just as they were about to cross 42nd Street
at Times Square, the traffic policeman held up the
line of automobiles passing up and down Broad-
way, so that the stream of cars going through 42nd
Street could cross. It was well past midnight,
but there were still many cars buzzing along in
that lively section of the metropolis. As the burly
officer held up his hand peremptorily, Baldy
jammed on the brakes and cursed. It was annoy-
ing while returning from such an adventure to be
detained by the commonplace regulation of traffic.
The cop swaggered alongside the car with the
good-fellowship of a traffic officer. Joyce stared
at him with wide eyes. In the familiar surround-
ings of Broadway and 42nd Street, his assurance
began to return to him.
"Fine evening, officer," he said with a show
of bravado.
One of the robbers thrust a pistol against his
side.
"Looks like it's going to rain,” said the police-
man.
Joyce glanced at the robbers meaningfully.
"Don't you think we'd better go home, boys,"
be said with exaggerated nonchalance.


ROBBERY ON THE PLANK ROAD
99
me
"I wish I could go home,” the policeman mused.
“I've got you covered,” the whisper sounded
menacingly in Joyce's ear.
“Come along, Tom.” Joyce opened the door
boldly and stepped on the running board. Flash
Montague got out beside him, keeping him covered
from his pocket. Ware followed, astonished at the
timid movie critic's brave coup.
“Well, have a good sleep!” the cop said.
“Good night!" Joyce shouted to the robbers.
He and Tom walked across the street. Flash Mon-
tague stood undecided. The cop waved the car to
go on. Flash jumped onto the running board and
the car disappeared up Seventh Avenue.


CHAPTER IX
WHAT ABOUT JOYCE ?
FTER the excitement and exertions of the
A night, Ware had gone to the hospital, a
nearer shelter than the room he had engaged, slept
profoundly, and it was not until an hour before
noon of the following day that he awoke--and
then Bobby Merritt of the round, rosy face was
shaking him.
“Sorry to wake you, Tom,” he apologized, “but
I couldn't hold off any longer. Something about
your affair.” He tossed an armful of newspapers
on the bed.
All the hospital knew that the young heiress,
Anne Rice, had become a patient of Tom's; the
nurses constantly bantered him about it. To his
chum, Bobby, Tom had confided his feeling for
Anne and the joint attempt they were making to
pry into the dark mystery of the Gold-Killer.
“There has been another strangling,” Bobby
sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette.
Ware rose up from under the covers, vividly
awake.
"A what?"
100


WHAT ABOUT JOYCE ?
101
“Some kind of robbery out in Jersey last
night,” Bobby replied, clouding the room with
smoke. “And somebody got his throat twisted;
the Gold-Killer hands. Here are the official com-
muniques.”
Ware seized a newspaper and flung it open. He
sat and stared at the sheet, with occasional pauses
when he was overwhelmed with the ferment
wrought in his brain by the astounding account he
read. Bobby Merritt reclined at ease and pro-
pounded sundry questions which brought no reply
from Ware.
It was related that a motorcycle policeman,
speeding along the Plank Road the night before,
had stopped to investigate a truck standing appar-
ently deserted beside the highway, and had found
the driver of the conveyance lying beside it-dead,
his throat crushed, his neck broken, his head
twisted, as in all the Gold-Killer murders.
Two hours later an exhausted man had sought
aid at a house in Jersey City, a house just down
from the heights. The man had told of having
been a helper on a Commercial Transfer Company
truck carrying a load of molium from New York to
Newark. Out on the Plank Road the truck had
been held up by a party of motor bandits and
robbed of its freight of chemicals. As driver and
helper had stood at the roadside menaced by the
pistol of one of the robbers, the driver had seized


102
GOLD-KILLER
a negligent moment to open fire with his own re-
volver. The helper, in fright, had plunged head
first down the road embankment, and had fled, ter-
rified, through the meadows for several hours.
The account embraced extensive details of the
affair, and laid stress upon the hypothesis which
this latest Gold-Killer deed had inspired in the
police: the monstrous strangler was obviously a
member of a gang of robbers which had plundered
the molium truck in ignorance of the compara-
tively small value of the chemical. It was, then, in
the course of other robberies that the previous
stranglings had occurred. Whenever the bandits
had met with resistance the victim was strangled
by a gang member with gigantic hands, who, pre-
sumably, was assigned to the commission of quick,
silent killings. Thus the Rice case was to be ex-
plained by the supposition that the great financier
had tried to fight back in the course of an incred-
ibly bold hold-up in the Golden Horseshoe of the
Metropolitan Opera House. The theory supposed
that in the instance of each of the millionaire kill-
ings the robbers had been frightened and escaped
without taking any of the loot, since no evidence
of robbery had been found in any.
Ware remained motionless. He stared straight
in front of him. He saw a vision: The scowling,
evil face of the crook, Morgan. Nobody was near
the truck at the time of the fight save Chickie,


WHAT ABOUT JOYCE?
103
e
a
Joyce and Morgan. But as if to mock his vision,
he could feel again the weak, flabby grasp of Mor-
gan's hands apon his arms.
He jerked himself out of his hypnosis, gave a
sharp answer to one of Bobby Merritt's sallies, an
answer which took the grin off that stout young
physician's face, and pulled his clothes on with
angry haste. He ran to the telephone and called
Joyce's office. He received the reply that the
movie critic had not appeared that morning. He
got Joyce's house, and was told that three hours
before his friend had left there for his office.
Somehow this seemed strange to Ware-seemed
like a disappearance-a flight. But the young in-
terne put all feverish speculations out of his head,
and took refuge in a rushing trip to Anne's house.
Anne had breakfasted when Tom arrived. She
had expected him, knowing how well he under-
stood her anxiety to know the issue of his visit to
the underworld meeting in Chickie La Fontaine's
apartment. Then, too, she had seen the morning
papers with their announcement of another Gold-
Killer murder, and although she did not connect
this in any way with Tom's attendance at
Chickie's party, yet it had been the cause of much
speculation on her part. For it was the first time
that the strangling hands had employed them-
selves upon the throat of someone not directly
connected with the great financial world of Wall


104
GOLD-KILLER
Street. For the first time, too, she thought, some
tangible motive was offered. Before, the Gold-
Killer had been one man, working swiftly and
silently, and, so far as anyone knew, by himself.
Now, it was a gang of motor bandits, one of them
necessarily possessed of the great hands of the
Gold-Killer. In these things Anne echoed the rea-
sonings of all the city.
She had scarcely greeted Tom when he burst
into a swift and breathless account of the fantastic
events of the night before. When he had done,
Anne looked at him, bewildered, yet suddenly con-
scious of the simplicity of the problem that had
seemed so complex.
“The Gold-Killer, then," she said, "is one of
three. You said, didn't you, that only Chickie La
Fontaine, Joyce and Morgan were near the truck
at the time when you saw the struggle in the head-
light? Oh, why weren't you nearer? Can't you
recall anything that might give you a clue to
the identity of the figure that struggled with the
big truck-driver?"
Ware laughed a little at this impatience with
events as they were. It seemed so deeply and lov-
ably feminine.
“Well," he said, jestingly, "I don't think it was
Chickie.” Then, more seriously: "It is strange
that a girl of her type should have such tiny
hands."


106
GOLD-KILLER
hold his thoughts from the logical indications of
the case. “As much above suspicion as anyone in
a world where curious psychological phenomena
grow more and more common." He continued like
one who expounds a problem. “This affair pre-
sents a curious piece of circumstantial reasoning.
In the fight before the headlight, Chickie and, to
my certainty, Morgan, are eliminated. Joyce has
huge hands. He has long been connected with the
underworld. He did not want to go out on the
Plank Road robbery. He was decidedly jumpy.
He was vastly afraid of being arrested. The truck-
driver began to shoot at him; what more natural
for him than to have lost his head, and attacked
the fellow with all his might, and used the pro-
digious strength of his hands? He was alarmed
afterward, knowing that he had committed an im-
prudence. The gang, in the excitement of the
moment, did not discover the Gold-Killing. But
they were holding us prisoners, and in the morning
the secret would be out. That is why Joyce engi-
neered the escape last night on Broadway with
such boldness and cleverness by taking advantage
of the policeman's presence, a boldness and clever-
ness which I did not suspect was in hin. Now he
has fled.
“Of course, that's all a wild supposition," he
concluded, trying to laugh.
“Perhaps you are mistaken about Morgan's


WHAT ABOUT JOYCE ?
107
hands,” Anne urged. “Perhaps in the fight in
Chickie's apartment you have confused Morgan
with some other member of the gang. Maybe it is
Morgan who is the Gold-Killer."
“No," Tom replied with complete certainty. “I
am very clear about it all. I should like to think it
was Pop Morgan, but I can't. And, then, where is
Joyce, anyway? I'll 'phone to his office again."
As he rose to his feet, Tom felt suddenly a little
faint. He had forgotten until that moment that he
had had no breakfast. Anne saw his slight pallor.
“Dr. Ware,” she said, "you must have some
lunch. Sit down. You're tired. Let me tele-
phone.”
“I will telephone-please " he replied, “but
I would like a bite to eat. I just realized that I
forgot my breakfast."
“Poor dear,” said Anne, and she went out to
ring the bell for the butler. He looked up quickly,
thrilled every inch of him. But she went on across
the room, quite unconscious of her power appar-
ently, to stir a tempest of excitement by the
slightest sign of solicitude for the young man who
day by day was becoming more her eager and de-
voted admirer.
Again the “Record” showed puzzlement at the
movie critic's continued absence. No word had
been heard of him. Tom came back to find Anne


108
GOLD-KILLER
and the butler arranging a small table in the
library.
“Any news?” Anne asked gayly.
“None," Tom's air had become one of dogged
gloom.
“Now, m'sieu' le docteur," commanded Anne,
crooning to him and taking him by the arm. “I
am now the doctor and you are the patient. Not
another word of the Gold-Killer or mysteries of
any sort. You shall sit down beside me and eat,
-a thing which is far more important than all the
searchings in the world. Shall it be a grape fruit,
or a honey dew melon first-and how doth my lord
prefer his eggs?"
Tom sat down smiling. “Well,” he demanded,
"of what shall I talk now?"
“Sealing wax, if you wish — " and she laughed
archly. “You should have more resourcefulness.
I consider you a stupid and difficult patient.”
“Well-suppose we talk of-you, perhaps."
“You are stupider even than I thought."
She blushed, he imagined, but she did not say
that the topic of conversation which he suggested
was undesirable.
They were interrupted by the crieş of newsboys
on the street outside.
“Extra! Special extra!" And in the jumble of
syllables that followed they seemed to hear the


WHAT ABOUT JOYCE ?
109
words: “Murder-Gold-Killer-All about the
- Extra! Ex-tra!”
The servants had heard, too, and the butler
rushed in and held the black headlines before
them:
POP MORGAN, NOTORIOUS CROOK,
GOLD-KILLER VICTIM!
So Morgan, too, had met with the mysterious
fate. He had been found in a West Street door-
way, dead, with his throat mangled in the same
hideous way that had come to be the mark of the
Gold-Killer.
The newspaper account drew the inference that
the Gold-Killer mystery was now narrowing in its
scope, for it was apparent that the secret lay in
the discovery of some feud in the underworld in
which Morgan had engaged and had met his fear-
ful death.
To Tom and Anne one conclusion loomed omi-
nously. Morgan had been strangled because the
Gold-Killer thought he had seen too much of the
fight before the headlight out on the Plank Road.
Joyce must be found.


· CHAPTER X
TEA AND ROMANCE
FTER a hasty luncheon, Tom left Anne and
A sought Park Row. He could find no word of
Joyce at the “Record” offices. It was the first
time in months that the usually faithful and punc-
tual movie critic had failed to appear. From
there, he took the subway to Fifty-ninth Street.
Joyce lived in a sumptuous studio apartment over-
looking Central Park. On the plea that he was a
reporter sent from the newspaper office, and the
further coaxing of a five dollar bill, Tom succeeded
in persuading the hall-boy to admit him. Here all
was in disorder. Silk pajamas were thrown over a
disordered bed. Shaving implements in the care-
fully appointed bathroom had obviously been used
that morning. Everywhere about the rooms haste
in leaving was evident; but it was a surprise and a
puzzle to Ware to find that Joyce, if he actually
were the Gold-Killer, had delayed his flight until
morning. The hall-man told Tom that Mr. Joyce
had gone out about 9:30 as usual, that he was wear-
ing a gray-checked suit and carried a black stick.
Tom was annoyed and depressed by the turn of
IIO


114
GOLD-KILLER
“Well, he certainly is interested in your mental
and spiritual welfare,” Anne said, "and you'd
better be careful or he'll be marrying you off," she
added banteringly.
“What do you mean?” Tom demanded; but
Anne shook her head.
“There's one thing I want you to do for me,
Tom," she went on.
“And that? Why, anything, Anne!"
“I'm not so sure,” she smiled and poated her
lips. “I want to go with you on your next adven-
ture. I want to go with you to Chickie's. It isn't
fair that you should have all the fun,—now is it?"
“Don't be absurd !” Tom was a bit annoyed.
“It would be much too dangerous. It would lead
to many complications and suspicions."
“I don't care," she persisted. “Do you like me
at all, or are you just pretending to be interested
because you enjoy picturing yourself as an ama-
teur sleuth?”
“Cruel!” he parried.
“No—not cruel-determined. I want to go with
you."
Tom shook his head and frowned.
She turned her head away, almost crying, he
thought. He put his arm half way about her
shoulder. She turned away.
“Please,” he pleaded.
She turned on him, blazing. “If you care any-


TEA AND ROMANCE
115.
thing about me at all you'll take me. Well, do you?
Will you?"
Tom was as weak as most lovers in the face of a
barrage of pleading.
“Oh, yes, hang it, I will — " and he got up to
go.
She clung to the lapels of his coat, shyly
ashamed of her victory-raised her head. He
trembled and bent his lips swiftly to touch her
forehead, then ran down the great stairway before
he had a chance to know whether she was pleased
or annoyed. Tomorrow he would take her with
him to Chickie's, even though it seemed like the
maddest of proceedings. He supposed that it
could do no really great harm. After all, it would
be a lark. Anne and Chickie! He laughed to him-
self at the absurd contrast. What would they
think of each other?


THE CHIEF
117
phrase of the usher, accustomed to the proximity
of musicians, coupled with the bewildering lack of
any explanation assignable to the incredible stran-
glings. From the description upon which so much
theory had been built, almost any smooth shaven
man might have been the mysterious killer of the
opera.
Meanwhile nothing further had been heard of
the movie critic. Phone calls and visits to his
office and residence had disclosed no information
save that he was still missing and presumably had
gone off on some sort of spree, like a good news.
paper man, as he occasionally did.
“I am sure they are right,” Anne said to Tom.
“He has gone away and tried to forget his scare
through recourse to alcohol. He will turn up in a
day or so.”
“That's it, of course," Ware cried violently.
He tried to thrust away his misgiving, but the
picture of Joyce's huge, muscular hands kept in
his mind, and the unyielding logic that flowed from
that nightmare on the Plank Road and the Gold-
Killer death of the gangster Morgan constricted
his brain in its strands.
“We will force that underworld girl to tell the
truth of these murders.” He found the bitter de-
termination the only hope of release from the re-
pellant conviction that his old friend, the merry
and cynical Joyce, was the monstrous Gold-Killer.


THE CHIEF
119
CO
The two men on the stretchers jumped up and
covered Ware and Anne with revolvers.
“Help! Help!” Anne screamed.
“Shut up, gal,” one of the men exclaimed dis-
gustedly. “Do you think anybody will stop an
ambulance because there's screaming inside?
They'll think you're suffering or crazy."
The reasoning was conclusive enough to halt
even a shrieking woman. It stunned Ware com-
pletely. He put up his hands, and said bitterly to
Anne: “I know what an ambulance is. They could
stop in front of a police station and slice us into
bits and not be disturbed.”
One of the men had a long, thin nose, which was
bent acutely to the left, and on one cheek a semi-
circular knife scar. He was loquacious.
“We waited for you outside of the girl's house
for an hour. Fine house it is."
"But what do you want with me?" Ware de-
manded. He narrowed his eyes belligerently.
“We ain't saying nothing,” the man replied
meaningly..
Tom looked at Anne, who had seated herself on
one of the stretchers. Her face was white, but he
saw a sparkle of adventure in her eye. Ware felt
lightning strike through his brain. No doubt they
were being kidnapped by the robber gang.
The crooked-nosed gangster was grinning. His


120
GOLD-KILLER
mate, a rabbit-mouthed ex-prize-fighter, grew im-
patient.
“What are you loafing about,” he sulked;"let's
put the bracelets on them while it's time.”
He suddenly pushed Tom over on the stretcher.
The two men pinioned their captive.
“Don't resist,” Anne spoke up. She seemed
caught by the adventure of their plight.
They handcuffed Tom. Then they handcuffed
Anne.
The captives did not protest as the men laid
them on the stretchers and bound their feet.
“Don't be afraid, dear,” Tom's voice choked up.
“It will be only a curious experience."
The captors gagged their prisoners and threw
sheets over them.
During the ten minutes of speeding that fol-
lowed, Ware felt his courage leaving him. There
across from him was the girl he loved trussed like
a victim for slaughter, helpless in the power of the
criminal band. He could not guess what danger
might be hanging over them.
If by any chance Joyce were the Gold-Killer-
Tom shook with fear. Perhaps the gang wanted to
execute vengeance on him, as Joyce's partner, for
the death of Morgan. And Anne, would they exe-
cute their vengeance on her too?
He turned his mind away from these dire specu-
lations. How had they known where to find him?
W


THE CHIEF
121
OUS
They knew he was a physician. They knew his
hospital. How had they found these things out?
He remembered how the mysterious Chief had
recommended him to the gang.
Tom was deep in the puzzle when the ambulance
stopped short. The doors were thrown open. He
heard them raise Anne on her stretcher and carry
her out. Then they raised him. He felt himself
lowered to the street and then carried.
“Couple of friends. In a trolley accident.” A
voice spoke casually as though explaining to by-
standing neighbors.
They carried him up a flight of stairs and put
the stretcher down.
“Well, we're here, Tom," he heard Anne laugh.
They threw the sheet from him and he saw her
standing beside him. She helped the men unbind
him. They were in a furnished library.
Ware leaped to his feet and grasped Anne's
hands.
"You are not frightened a bit,” he looked at her
admiringly.
“Hello, Tom."
Ware turned and saw the dapper red-faced
Flash Montague.
“What is the meaning of all this?” Tom glared.
“No questions, Tom, please," the dude was a
model of politeness and good fellowship.
He bowed to Anne.


122
GOLD-KILLER
“Miss Rice? I know of you. I am delighted to
have an opportunity to meet you. Won't you in-
troduce us?” Flash turned to Ware smilingly.
Ware, rather stopped by the man's coolness,
made the introduction grufily and ironically.
“Miss Rice-Mr. Flash Montague.”
“That was a great little evening we had not so
long ago, wasn't it, Tom. But we mustn't say, a
word about it." He winked at the irate medicus
amiably. “You know, Miss Rice, there are some
things that men have to keep secret before their
er ... fiancées.”
He winked at her and took Tom to one side.
“Why have we been brought here?” the young
interne demanded again.
Flash replied with a suddenly serious and por-
tentous look:
“The Chief wants to talk to you."
“About what?"
"No more questions." Flash resumed his ur-
bane merry manner. He raised his voice:
“Pardon me. I will return in a moment."
He went out, locking the door behind him.
Ware turned to Anne impulsively, and whis-
pered to her in an air of cheerfulness.
“It is only that the Chief wants to talk to me.”
They did not speak any further, fearing that
there might be means for overhearing them, and


THE CHIEF
123
Tom's direful imaginings returned with renewed
fantasy.
The Chief wanted to talk to him. Did that mean
that there would be some terrible grotesque under-
world trial of himself, and perhaps of Anne, too,
-a trial before the hitherto concealed captain of
the crooks? Would Tom be led into the presence
of a judge among criminals and be condemned
with fantastic ceremony, and Anne, too? Con-
demned for what? He thought of Joyce and the
Gold-Killer and the strangled Morgan. Was the
Chief going to pronounce a vengeful sentence for
the killing of his henchman? Or-Ware's brain
struck fire — did they know that he had gone
among them, trying to pry into the mystery of the
Gold-Killer? Ware knew what spying would mean
in gangs like the Chief's.
Anne lounged in a black leather easy chair and
smiled at him.
“It is a fine lark, isn't it!” she exclaimed.
The door opened, and Flash Montague ap-
peared, as suave as before.
“Please come with me, both of you."
Tom shrugged his shoulders and looked help-
lessly at Anne. She stepped briskly through the
door, pulling Ware with her. Flash smiled at her
appreciatively.
He led them through a carpeted hall hung with
те


124
GOLD-KILLER
modernist pictures and into a bare white-walled,
brightly lighted room.
A dark, long faced man sat at a desk. Over his
head was a black, ball-like cap, covering his ears.
He looked at Tom and Anne with eyes of stone.
The twain stood waiting.
“Why have we been abducted?” Ware de-
manded.
The man kept an immobile face and paused be-
fore answering.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Rice," he said at last,
“for having had you brought here. It must have
caused you some fright."
He paused for a moment. A faint quivering
cough sounded, as though from nowhere.
“I wanted Dr. Ware merely, but as you were
along with the doctor my men had to take you
both."
He spoke in an even, metallic voice. There was
something mechanical about it. As he continued,
he halted frequently, and at each stop the spas-
modic cough, like that of an old man, came from
somewhere. Tom and Anne were still with aston-
ishment.
“Don't worry about the ambulance, doctor,” he
continued. "It was only borrowed (without leave,
perhaps). It has been returned by now."
There was another pause, and the coughing
sounded for a longer interval.


THE CHIEF
125
“I trust that Miss Rice will excuse us. I want
to talk with Dr. Ware alone."
As this was said the door was unlocked and
thrown open and Flash Montague entered with the
endless friendly smile on his ruddy face. He cour-
teously showed Anne to the door. Ware moved
sharply with anger and uneasiness.
“Do not have any misgivings, doctor," the man
at the desk interrupted in his slow monotonous
voice. “No harm will come to her."
Anne made a laughing face at Ware and went
out with Flash.
“I have a number of things to say to you, doc-
tor,” the man at the desk continued even more
slowly and more like an automaton than before,
"and I beg you to give me close attention.” Tom
stood before the desk staring at the strange
speaker.
“First let me say that I know all about you. I
know that you are courting Anne Rice. I don't
blame you. She has money. But I know, too, that
you are in love with Chickie La Fontaine. I don't
blame you there either. She is fascinating. Still,
I think that you will perceive that it is leading
something of a double life, by day to court one of
the greatest heiresses in America, and by night
the belle of the underworld." Tom stared and
could find nothing to say. Chickie, it seemed, had
well advertised her own pleasant version of his


126
GOLD-KILLER
attentions to her, and even this incredible Chief
had been caught by it. Chickie had told Morgan,
and he had told the Chief. The voice went on.
“Suppose that Miss Rice knew of all this, of your
affair with the swagger Chickie. And suppose
she knew that your love for this underworld girl
had led you to participate in a robbery, in the
notorious robbery on the Plank Road. And sup-
pose that you were sent to prison, as you might be
if the police knew that you were one of the Plank
Road bandits. And then your friend Joyce the
movie critic; he has disappeared, hasn't he? You
have tried very hard to find him."
Ware had stood tense and silent as he had lis-
tened to the monotonous droning voice and looked
into the man's long aquiline face. He had felt as
though some other person were talking to him than
this ministerial mask before him. He felt tempted
to think that the speaker was an automaton telling
an endlessly repeated piece. At the mention of
Joyce his body thrilled with the sense that the
moment of danger had come.
"Where is Joyce?" He controlled his voice as
well as he could, but not well enough to keep it
from shaking.
“You know that there was a Gold-Killer murder
on the Plank Road," the man at the desk went on
after a long wait. “Curious. You are courting
Miss Rice. Her father was killed by the Gold-


128
GOLD-KILLER
Joyce was the Gold-Killer. No evidence could
convince him of that.
“What do you want with me?” he shouted with
the rage of a man cornered. There was more
coughing from the distance, and then the voice
continued with a shade of dominance.
“I have learned that your hospital is to receive
a consignment of molium for use in its chemical
research department. That is why I gave orders
to bring you here. You, as a physician, are in a
position to help me get the molium."
“What do you want with it?” Ware was tor-
mented by the puzzle of the chemical. “It is not
worth much.”
“Don't ask any questions,” the man replied.
“I know where to dispose of it, and you must help
me get it. My order for the present is: Make
yourself familiar with the place where the chem-
ical is kept, and hold yourself in readiness for
further commands. They will come soon."
“And if I don't choose to obey them?” Tom
felt almost mastered.
“If you don't,” the man's voice was more
metallic than ever, “if you don't, you will be ex-
posed. Miss Rice will be told of your affair with
the underworld girl, and the police will be in-
formed of your connection with the robbery on the
Plank Road and with the Gold-Killer."


THE CHIEF
129
Ware stood silent, unable to answer. The voice
continued :
“If you are reasonable and obey my commands,
as you shall do, you will find your path smoothed
before you, often by agents you will know nothing
about. You will marry that pretty heiress in
there. I will help you to do that. She has twenty
million. That is the figure, if you haven't
looked it up already. You shall have Chickie La
Fontaine also. And you will be guarded as you
continue your double upper and under world
life. What more happiness can you want? And
if ..."
There was a long pause with more of the ghostly
coughing. Tom waited breathless for the re-
mainder of the phrase that had been broken off.
The man at the desk let his voice sink.
“And if your heiress wearies you-her will
shall favor you, and I will find means to rid you of
her.”
Ware stood as rigid as stone.
“Meanwhile," the voice resumed its former
even, mechanical pitch, "do the things I have told
you, and hold yourself in readiness. I shall have
tasks for you to perform from time to time. That
is all."
Ware stood dumb and dazed.
The door opened, and Flash Montague ushered
Anne in again.


THE CHIEF
131
“I don't know,” said Anne, “but it was a fine
house."
They hailed a taxi and rode to her house. Both
remained silent, thinking of the strange adventure
that had befallen them.
“Anne," Tom said at last, “the Chief is a feeble
old man."
“The one who was coughing?" Anne asked.
“Yes,” Ware replied. “The man at the desk
had some sort of wireless telephone apparatus on
his head. The Chief watched from an adjoining
room, through a peep hole, and dictated his talk
into a wireless telephone receiver, and the man at
the desk repeated it to us."
“That Flash is an amiable and brilliant fellow,"
Anne digressed laughing. “He entertained me
with some merry talk."
Ware repeated with vehement conviction:
“The Chief is a feeble old man with a cough.
And now let me tell you the astonishing things
that were said to me.” He rapidly told her what
had passed between himself and the man-the
mouthpiece at the table.
“And he promised to rid you of me,” Anne's
face paled.
Tom felt the creeping, uncanny terror that had
stolen over her. He gripped her arm to hearten
her.
car


CHAPTER XII
THE LAND OF THE FLAMING PETALS
D ARLY the next morning Anne motored to her
U country house on Long Island. She was
tired and bewildered. Her father's death, the
incredible events that had followed, the fascina-
tion which the attractive South American Dos
Andros seemed to have for her, and her growing
admiration for Tom, which she did not yet ac-
knowledge to herself to be love; these emotions
beating about in her mind, together with her worry
and speculation over their strange interview by
wireless telephone with the hidden old man who
was the Chief, and the ever stronger evidence that
pointed to Joyce as the Gold-Killer, seemed more
than she could really bear.
It was Spring, however. Behind the great walls
of Long Island estates, as she whizzed by them,
were pink and white dogwood, and the faint scent
of fallen apple blossoms came to her and soothed
her. The lane leading up to the low Georgian
house on the Sound was a mass of pink bloom. By
the pond, under a great weeping willow tree, be-
fore the front entrance, a white peacock strutted
132


THE LAND OF THE FLAMING PETALS 133
serenely, unctuously. Anne loved it all, but it
reminded her poignantly of how her father had
planned house and gardens, sea wall and polo
field. She opened the front door to find Dos An-
dros waiting to greet her.
He was paler than she had ever seen him before.
His rich brown skin seemed curiously glassy as it
drew across those high cheek bones. She took his
hand as he offered it, and the long, delicate, cold
fingers seemed to clasp hers convulsively. They
stood there a few moments without speaking.
"I am sorry to bother you, Anne, but it seemed
to me as though I could not live through the
day without seeing you. I was staying at Dr.
Rutchers', and I telephoned to your house, and
they said you were here. Could I talk with you?”
“Of course, Dos,” she told him. “Come, let's
go down into the garden by the fountain. There
are thousands and thousands of daffodils in bloom.
They make the world seem cheerful in spite of
itself."
“Please, Anne,” he said, “not the garden. I
don't want to see flowers today.”
“By the sea, then,” she suggested. And they
went and sat on the great marble steps that led to
the water.
They sat there for a moment. Then Dos Andros
sprang to his feet, his head thrown back, his hands
tightly clasped behind him. Looking down at


134
GOLD-KILLER
Anne with eyes that seemed filled with passion,
and something more: a bitterness that was almost
fear.
“I know you think I come again, Anne, to
bother you with the old tale of wanting to take.
you back to South America with me, but it isn't
that. It couldn't be that. I am going back to
South America, alone. In a little while. In a few
weeks. I must go. I must go."
“Why?” She looked up at him, astonished by
his agitation.
“Why? Why?" he repeated after her in tones
of singular bitterness. “I will tell you why.” A
faint smile of mockery curved his full red lips, and
he talked on slowly as though forced by some in-
ward compulsion.
“You are going to think me very incoherent,
Anne. You will wonder why I tell you this strange
story. It will seem to have no bearing on anything
you know of me. It will seem to have no connec-
tion at all with our lives as we are now living
them. But I know that you understand very well
the strange things that mystery and sorrow and a
strange curse may do to a man; and, although you
won't understand at all the significance of this
story, I must tell it to you. I must, because you
won't understand.”
Anne smiled gently.
“Please sit down, Dos," she pleaded, “and tell


THE LAND OF THE FLAMING PETALS 135
me quietly anything you may have to say. You
know that I am only too happy to hear and will
try the best I can to understand.”.
Dos Andros turned away abruptly and stood
looking out over the Sound.
“I'd rather stand," he said somewhat curtly.
She waited.
“Anne, you have known many types of sorrow,
but I wonder if you could feel sympathy for a man
over whom some sinister and monstrous curse is
hanging? Did I ever tell you of the exploration
trip on which my father sent me out into the
thickets of the upper Amazon river basin in Ecua-
dor and Peru?"
Anne shook her head.
“It was ten years ago, when I was an impres-
sionable boy. It was a small expedition. A few
native guides, myself and a partner of my father's.
He was an American, this partner of my father's,
a man of learning, a scientist. He was something
more than fifty years old then, and at that time not
a bad person. We had been pushing up into the
hills for days. The Indians who lived along the
rivers, small branches of the Amazon, dwelt in
strange barbarism. These are the fearsome Cara-
jonos, who lash their enemies and leave them to
end life hideous with livid scars. There are
strange wild girls with delicate hands and feet,
beautifully formed, who dance the mad dances of


136
GOLD-KILLER
the tribe under peculiarly luxuriant palms whose
tops tower against the sky and burst out into
blossoms of shimmering yellow and lilac.
“It was in one of these towns, high up in the
hills, where no white man ever before had been,
that I was taken ill with the fever. It was impera-
tive that the party reach its destination promptly.
The natives were friendly, and there was no rea-
son why I should not be left behind in care of one
of the Indian guides.
“The old guide packed me into one of those
curious little huts. I really wasn't very sick, you
know, just a little feverish, cross, and not wanting
to move around much.
“One morning I was lying there. In came a
little girl with a bunch of flowers. She was a
sweet little thing, and she sidled up to me shyly,
and dropped the blossoms. Then she sat down
and commenced singing a funny little song. At
first I didn't pay much attention to the flowers or
to her. Then I began to notice the strange sharp
perfume that seemed to be filling the entire room.
Have you ever smelled a bitter scent, Anne, an
odor that, at the same time it makes the insides of
your nostrils smart, yet fills the senses with an
intoxication that is maddeningly delightfull-a
fragrance that you seem to have known ages be-
fore, and that brings back to you haunting mem-
ories and old passions ?


THE LAND OF THE FLẠMING PETALS 137
“The girl sat on the floor, her great brown
eyes watching me every instant. I reached now
for the flowers, and she smiled. She had appar-
ently gathered them, herself, from the jungle.
There was one of those lizard green orchids, and a
bright long-petaled blossom of saffron splotched
with scarlet. But in the center of the bouquet was
a red flower. I call it red because there is no name
to describe the flaming tint of those petals. They
glowed with the colors of dawn and sunset, and
the soft lines of purple that ran down into the
throat of the blossom seemed to squirm like ser-
pents. But as I buried my nostrils in it and the
keen fragrance penetrated my heated brain, there
did not seem to be anything malignant about the
flower. It seemed only to fascinate me. If I could
only have known the curse that was upon it. .
“She seemed pleased that I was enjoying the
fragrance of the blossom. She came to me and
pressed her face, too, against those scarlet, plush-
like petals.
“I was young and very impressionable, Anne,
as I have told you before, and during the rest of
my stay with the tribe, the girl never left me for
an instant, and always in the room were the red
flowers, one, six, a dozen, nodding at me, blinking
at me, and always sending out that blood-mad-
dening, blood-kindling fragrance.
"After my recovery I lingered on for a few


138
GOLD-KILLER
days, but I knew it was only postponing the inevi-
table, and that I must leave and break away from
the girl and her scarlet flowers. She was a daugh-
ter of the chief of the tribe, and when they saw me
making preparations to go, he sent word to me
that my departure would be an insult to him, that
I must not go. Nevertheless we continued our
preparation. My guides had swung their packs
on their backs, and I was in the hut gathering a
few final odds and ends, when there was a cry
back of me and I turned to see the girl swaying in
the doorway. She had wound her arms and legs
with garlands of those damned flowers. There
were so many of them and they were so red that
for a minute I did not notice the stream of blood
down her breast. I rushed to her, but with a
scream of pain she fell across the doorway, dead.
“The tribe was on me before I could move,
dragging me by my arms, by my legs, by my hair,
filling the air with wild yells, prodding me with
the tips of their spears, pushing me before them
as they rushed headlong into the jungle, until we
came to a small clearing among the great trees.
“The light came into that deep, cavernous place
fitfully through a tangled maze of vines that inter-
laced the tree-tops above. You could not imagine,
Anne, the weird gloom of that place, and the terror
with which it filled me, and all across the ground
of the clearing, except for the little path where we


THE LAND OF THE FLAMING PETALS 139
now walked, were gleaming beds of the red flow-
ers; each flower stood tall and proud and shining
magnificently on its own stalk, and as the savages
flung me down into one of these beds, the blossoms
seemed to lay hold of me with soft hands and
dragged me down, down, closer, closer, until the
whole world seemed nothing but a flood of scarlet,
and the air nothing but the bitter magic of their
scent. Dimly I could see a great stone altar before
me, danced about by naked Indians, who leaped to
extraordinary heights in the air, caught to the
branches of trees, tore them down and broke them
across the altar. On the altar glowed a gold cup,
and nodding on the brink of it, ten times larger
than I had ever seen one before, a huge specimen
of the terrible flower.
“Suddenly the line of frenzied savages came
toward me, while one thin, penetrating voice
sounded above all the rest, singing some sort of
wild, angered chant, which seemed like a curse
breathed out against me. I remember nothing
more after that.
“Either I fainted, or was overpowered by the
scent of those innumerable flowers. For I awoke
to find myself surrounded by my own guides, who
said they had found me lying senseless outside the
village of the Indians, who must have thrown me
to one side, thinking me dead.
“That must seem like a wild and incoherent


140
GOLD-KILLER
story to you, Anne, and one that has little reason
for making me so intensely unhappy."
Anne smiled at him, but behind her smile was
complete puzzlement.
“There is no more to tell,” he said, “save that
the American scientist who was my father's part-
ner met me on his return journey, and he had half
a dozen of the mysterious flowers which he had se-
cured from another tribe.
“Please don't try to understand, Anne," he
hurried on, “but remember that I am pursued by a
curse so deep and so real that it makes my nights
unbearable and my days a long desire to forget in
seeing you."
He went abruptly, running across the lawn and
through the house. She heard the door slam on
the other side and the sound of his motor through
the drive.
“The Flaming Petals!”
Anne stood upright with the thought that the
scarlet, curse-bearing flower of Dos Andros was
the same as that which had three times appeared
in the Gold-Killer affair, in her father's button
hole, on the breast of Chickie La Fontaine and on
the coat lapel of Dr. Rutchers, the great neurolo-
gist.


JEALOUSY
143
“How could you tell?” she parried. “You said
yourself that the shadows were so deep and the
scene so weird that you'd hate to have to stand
before a jury and tell anything that happened."
Ware looked at her eagerly. He felt that she
was pleading with her own growing conviction
that Dos Andros was in some way connected with
the murders. He was still afraid that she was
fascinated by the South American. Not love.
Ware wouldn't have admitted that she was in love
with anyone in the world; but there seemed to be
an attraction, and this thought buzzed at the back
of his brain constantly like an insistent angry
little gnat.
“Perhaps you're right,” he admitted slowly.
“There's every reason to believe that this mys-
terious South American flower has something to
do with it. I fancy your friend Dos Andros could
tell us a lot of things that wouldn't have too in-
direct a bearing on the case!" He watched her
narrowly as her great eyes lifted suddenly and the
lids fluttered a trifle.
“Yes," she said, “I think he could.” Then as
she thought she detected a look of relief and per-
haps of triumph in Ware's eye, she added hastily:
“He has nothing to do with the actual crimes I
won't have you think that for an instant. I'm too
good a judge of men”_she smiled at him and he
thrilled to the quiet confidence of her eyes—"to


144
GOLD-KILLER
make a mistake like that. But I'm sure that he
knows the truth behind the Flaming Petals. I'm
sure that they have some connection with the
curse. That the curse is a factor in the Gold-
Killer murders seems ridiculously obvious. I still
do believe that there may be a clue in my idea of
the gigantic Indian.”
“All right," Tom bantered. “Paging! Paging!
Hotel Pennsylvania and Barnum & Bailey's Cir-
cus! One giant Indian to be paged! Report to
Miss Anne Rice immejitly if not sooner.”
She was offended, seeing that his suspicions of
Dos Andros had not been allayed by her convic-
tion of the South American's innocence.
"Perhaps Dos Andros is not guilty of the crime
itself. I'll admit that seems unlikely. He's not a
Dempsey, you know, Anne.”
She shook her head reprovingly and Ware
laughed.
“But there's much more to be learned from
him, and you are the only one who can question
him successfully. There is nothing that he will
not tell you if you are clever about it."
She frowned slightly.
“I know, Anne, but this is a time when we must
all use whatever weapons are ours to command.
Find out more from him about the curse of the
petals. He is nervous. It is on his mind. He
loves you”-she raised a hand protestingly, but


JEALOUSY
145
he went on—"and he'll be anxious to free his mind
by confiding in you. I feel that we must be as
quick as possible now; for it seems to me that
many things point toward Dr. Rutchers as the
next victim of the Gold-Killer. We must save
him, if possible. We have seen him with the
Scarlet Petals. He is in some way identified with
Dos Andros. So, Anne, it's up to us, I guess, and
your part of the job is to find out what you can
from the handsome young friend with the Indian
cheekbones.”
Anne smiled.
“There is something about Dr. Rutchers that I
feel I should tell you; but it's very difficult.”
“Difficult?” he laughed. "Well, after we're
married there won't be anything difficult—so just
go ahead now!"
Anne crimsoned. “Married ?"
"Well,” Ware blustered, “of course. You knew
that, didn't you?”.
“You're very matter of fact, Monsieur!”
“Of course!” Tom squared his shoulders with
a certain measure of bravado. “There isn't time
now for anything else! Come, don't worry
about it now; but out with your news about Dr.
Rutchers."
“Well, he's been urging me to marry you!"-
she laughed, shamefacedly. "You see, after all,


146
GOLD-KILLER
you said just the right thing under the circum-
stances.”
“Good advice. My hat off to the old Doc. And
what do you think about it?"
He leaned across the table to take her hands but
she drew away.
“That isn't the point, my dear; it's the way he
went about it. I see no reason why he should go
out of his way to urge me to marry anyone, least
of all a man whom he scarcely knows. Why! He
scarcely knows me, except as he may have heard of
me through Father."
“This time, Anne, I'm afraid that your imagi-
nation is working overtime. I see no reason why
Dr. Rutchers shouldn't play the matchmaker to
the daughter of an old friend and-hem!-a prom-
ising young physician who has, for the nonce,
turned to playing detective. So there, made-
moiselle. Your work is obviously cut out for you
-Dos Andros to the confessional, Anne-don't
fail me.”
"I won't,” she promised. “He's coming here
for luncheon tomorrow. Sally Peterson, a school
friend of mine, is motoring out from town to keep
me cheerful. You know I do get lonely occa-
sionally.”
“Poor dear!” he sympathized, and went to her.
For a while she stood in his arms looking out over
the trees, quite oblivious to all troubles as she felt


JEALOUSY
147
his lips on her hair, her eyes, her lips. Tom, tact-
less Tom, broke the spell.
“Now as for Chickie! That's my job!"
“Brute!” Anne flung at him. “What's that
woman got to do with it?”
“A lot!” said the dominant male and pulled
Anne to him again in spite of her protests.
“Next to Dos Andros, and perhaps even more
than he, she is wise to the background of their
crimes, and just as I expect you to find out every-
thing from him, I'm going to wring that girl's
story from her if I have to use the Gold-Killer's
own methods."
“You won't," Anne mumbled petulantly into
his shoulder.
“What do you mean?” Ware demanded.
“She's crazy over you,” replied the lady confi-
dently.
"Well, I suppose she is. That makes it all the
easier."
“Tom!” Anne broke away from him. "I'm
going with you to find Chickie.”
He shook his head-troubled a bit by her deter-
mined jealousy, which seemed to him so childish
and absurd.
“It's impossible, Anne; don't be silly. Don't
you remember what happened the last time we
went together to see Chickie? You know perfectly
well that Chickie is absolutely nothing in the


148
GOLD-KILLER
world to me and never could be. Why! that kind
of girl- "
“That's just it!” Anne sobbed. "I want to
go!"
“Your job is here. That's a good Anne." He
kissed her into silence.
“I'm off, lady fair, on another quest. Don't
forget that neither of us is to let any obstacle
stand in the way of getting this information!”
She smiled up at him.
“Don't let Chickie think you like her, will you ?"
she pleaded, half smiling.
Ware put back his head and roared. He was
laughing at the childish pout of her lips; but more
than that as he went to the telephone to ring up
the underworld girl, he was laughing joyously at
the certainty that, after all, as long as she worried
about Chickie that way, Dos Andros could do his
worst. More confident than ever before in his
life, Ware shot his number to Central, and a
moment later Chickie was on the wire. She told
him to meet her at Bridges' Dairy Lunch on 59th
Street that evening.


CHAPTER XIV
PROHIBITION RUM
A T Bridges' Dairy Lunch on 59th Street the
long, shiny-topped tables were streaked with
spilled coffee constantly swabbed by the active,
white-aproned waitresses. At any other branch of
the famous chain of restaurants you would have
found endless working girls partaking of frugal
collations, but at the 59th Street place a rare col-
lection of characters of the lower fringe of Broad-
way were always in attendance. There were out of
work actors not above steering a sucker on occa-
sion; professional dance partners of the trotteries
whose art was to furnish burglars with informa-
tion about jewel-owning women; fascinating,
pointy-mustached gallants of Broadway, who
were specialists at introducing select victims to
swindlers; molls who went for employment as
maids and cleared the way for burglar partners;
chauffeurs who piloted opulent looking fares into
out of the way places where hold-up men might
rob them; pickpockets, burglars, sneak thieves,
bank robbers, forgers, hotel beats, wire tappers,
sure-thing gamblers, fixers, and a dozen other
149


150
GOLD-KILLER
species of the extensive genus of crooks, drank
coffee and ate cakes, saluted friends, and made
new acquaintances. Bridges on 59th Street had
become one of New York's favorite underworld
haunts.
Ware walked into the glaringly lighted place
and spied Chickie. She was facing him. Opposite
her and talking to her sat a black-headed man.
When Chickie saw Tom she gave him a warning
glance. She opened her painted mouth wide and
laughed at some saying of her companion, and
waved her hand in a gesture that meant “stand
away” to Tom. The young interne took his place
behind a coat tree hung with light spring habits,
where he could watch the pair and not be seen.
He opened a paper as an added concealment.
In a moment the man sitting with Chickie turned
his head half around, and Ware saw the bold
profile of the rouged-faced person who had fol-
lowed Chickie and himself in the taxicab chase on
the night when he had met her first, the mysterious
flower snatcher.
Again he felt curiously familiar with that firm-
mouthed, frowning-browed face.
The place was growing noisy with laughter,
occasional quarreling voices and loud talk.
Women in furs and silks and men with gaudy
neckties came and went. It was the new under-
world in all its colors with many staid citizens


152
GOLD-KILLER
his newspaper as they passed toward the door.
Chickie gave him another succession of warning
glances. Ware, pulling his hat over his eyes, and
pressing his handkerchief to his mouth, followed
them out of the restaurant. They stood on the
curb hailing a cab. He watched them from a
nearby doorway. He heard Chickie exclaim:
“Well, are you coming over to the kitchen for a
few drinks and a rarebit?”
"If you will allow us, Miss Chickie," he heard
the South American reply with exaggerated
politeness.
A cab pulled against the curb. The three, got
into it, Chickie giving her Riverside Drive ad-
dress. When they had gone, Ware himself called
a taxi, and gave the same address.
“And hurry!” he cried.
As the cab sped along, a plan matured in his
head. Chickie's kitchen, he remembered, had a
commodious dumb-waiter. It was located near the
gas-range and the crooks at the party that he had
attended on the memorable night of the Plank
Road robbery had sat around near it. With drink-
ing, loud talk would come, and if he could listen at
Chickie's dumb-waiter door, he fancied he would
be able to hear the colloquy among the trio. He
remembered how as a boy he had often pulled
himself up on the dumb-waiter in the house where
he had lived, and he fancied that by the expendi-


PROHIBITION RUM
153
ture of some money he could induce the janitor in
Chickie's house to permit him such a liberty. Of
course, if Chickie and her friends should happen
to open the dumb-waiter door and find him there
listening, it might be an awkward thing for him,
but that seemed a remote possibility. He deter-
mined to make the attempt.
The cab of his quarries was just pulling away as
Ware's cab ran up the Drive and came in sight of
Chickie's apartment house. Ware saw them enter
the building. He paid off his driver a block away
and went to the basement of the house and rang
the janitor's bell.
An old man came to the door.
“I am looking for a good janitor for an apart-
ment house of mine," he said. “I don't mind
paying a decent salary. I have seen the way you
take care of this place, and I'd like to talk to you
about it.”
“Come inside, sir,” the old man said.
He led Tom into his room, the walls lined with
pictures of prize-fighters and chorus girls of an-
other day. He saw Ware glance at the decora-
tions.
“Ah, those were the days," he said, raising his
shoulders and distending his chest. “I used to go
to every big fight that was pulled, and as for the
girls ... Those were the days. There was no
prohibition then."


154
GOLD-KILLER
Tom caught a note of poignant feeling in the old
man's voice at the word "prohibition."
The janitor's face was that of a good liver worn
out by years of jollification. His little gray eyes
were still lively and roguish. His small thin nose
had not lost an imprudent tilt.
“Yes," Tom replied, fencing, “prohibition is a
dreadful thing."
“And they're clamping the lid on tight,” the
little man drooled sadly. “It's hard to get a
drink.”
“I suppose you'd give anything for a pint of
good stuff,” Ware laughed.
“I would,” the janitor made a comically de-
cisive grimace. “I've had prescriptions from the
doctors around here so often that I can't get any
more, and the boot-leggers' stuff isn't fit for a
gentleman to drink.” He wrinkled his short thin
nose contemptuously.
“I'm a physician,” said Tom with studied care-
lessness. He walked around studying the pictures
of prize-fighters.
The janitor looked at him with great interest.
“And you could give me a prescription?”
“Yes,” Ware replied with tantalizing slowness,
"and for a pint of good Scotch.”
The janitor groaned with happiness.
“Will you give it to me?”


PROHIBITION RUM
157
deep and quiet. It was that of the mysterious
flower snatcher, but he could catch no more than
an occasional meaningless word. He could hear
Chickie's voice replying, but again he could not
make out the sense of the talk.
“You are so sweet and charming,” the high,
resonant voice of the South American came clear
in drunken gallantry.
Chickie's clamorous laughter rose.
“There is nothing I will not give you," the
South American's voice sounded again. “I will
give you the moon, or a ball of gold as big as the
moon. I will give you a hundred emeralds as big
as oranges. I will give you diamonds that will
shine like the eyes of love-sick goblins. I will give
you a hundred thousand dollars in greenbacks. I
will give you a patch of red flowers.”
“A patch of red flowers?" Chickie shouted in
laughter.
“Down on Long Island,” Dos Andros narrated
in an alcoholic rhapsody, “there is a wide beauti-
ful garden. In this garden the rose bushes and
tall sun flowers are woven into a thicket like the
thickets of my Brazil. In the middle of this high
thicket, hidden from all eyes save those of the
birds, is a patch of glowing red flowers that match
the blue sky like blood upon a dove's breast. It is
like a small fiery ruby set in a great emerald.
“I will take you down to the Long Island garden


158
GOLD-KILLER
and give you this patch of red blossoms that grow
in the middle of a thicket of rose-bushes and sun-
flowers. I will
“Shut up, Dos Andros !" the deep, hard voice
shouted. “You are talking too much."
“Let him go on!” Chickie cried.
“No," the voice of the flower snatcher came vio-
lently. “Let us make you talk a bit.”
“Yes," assented Dos Andros. “Did that feliow
give you anything?"
“No!" Chickie shrieked.
“He gave you the red flower that I took from
you,' the deep voice returned angrily.
“Yes, that, but nothing more.”
The flower snatcher lowered his voice, but his
words were still distinct.
"Look here, girl. That fellow had a great
secret of ours. It was a secret to bring death ..."
Then—
“He's up there!" a voice shouted from the bot-
tom of the elevator shaft.
Instantly Tom felt a violent tug at the rope and
he began to descend rapidly.
“Pull him down. He's trying to hold back.”
The voices from below grew violent, as Ware, full
of rage that his listening was cut short, tried to
hold the rope and check his descent. He contin-
ued downward through the darkness, with the vio-
lently tugged rope rattling against the box.


PROHIBITION RUM
159
His anger speedily changed to a spasm of anx-
iety as he realized the uncertainties of his descent.
Who were the people pulling him down? Under-
lings of Dos Andros'? Had they caught him spy-
ing? He clutched at the rope, but it was torn
through his hands.
The box struck bottom. Two pairs of hands
reached forth and pulled him from his perch.
“What do you want?” he demanded as indig-
nantly as he could. He adjusted himself on his
feet.
Three rough-looking men stood looking at him
with grim smiles. The cellar lights had been
turned up and Ware saw his captors' faces plainly.
The faces did not reassure him.
"Well, we've got you," one of the men snarled
in the voice of a tough. He opened his coat sig-
nificantly. On his vest was pinned a badge.
"Handing out phoney prescriptions for booze,
eh?” The man was a prohibition officer. “Well,
you've written out one too many. We've been
hunting for rum doctors, and we've been keeping
our eye on the old guy here. He's had a prescrip-
tion from every doc in town. You gave a paper to
the wrong gent. Come along to the station house."
Ware felt ready to die with fury at the absurd
mishap that had tripped him up just as—he was
certain-he was about to hear important things.
The ironical picture came to him of the janitor


160
GOLD-KILLER
running to the drug store to get his Scotch, and of
the revenue agents watching the drug store pounc-
ing on him and browbeating him into telling about
Tom up the dumb-waiter shaft. He cursed the
latest and absurdest vagaries of prohibition en-
forcement, but experienced a great desire to go to
the station house. He wanted to get out of the
neighborhood, so that the word of his arrest might
not get around and to the ears of the flower
snatcher and Dos Andros.
“Come along!” he cried, and the revenue offi-
cers led him down the street, they first warning
the old janitor to keep his mouth shut.
As the four men walked down the street Tom
conned over the things he had heard: The patch
of red flowers hidden in the thicket garden down
on Long Island. He hammered every detail into
his memory. Chickie, he could see, was not in the
confidence of the two men. They suspected her, it
seemed, of knowing something of their secret, and
that somebody had given her something mysteri-
ous. What did she know? What admissions had
they wrung from her after he had been pulled
down from his listening post so roughly? Tom
cursed his fortune, and resolved that Dos Andros
should yield the secret. He presumed that Chickie
would say nothing of his presence in the restau-
rant. All this if he could succeed in keeping out of
jail and the newspapers.


PROHIBITION RUM
161
At the station house the sergeant dismissed
Ware on his own recognizance. The young interne
must appear for trial in the middle of the follow-
ing week.


CHAPTER XV
ENTER THE UNPLEASANT CARLOS
NNE expected Sally Peterson for an early
A lunch. She had risen late and dressed leis-
urely and now stood looking out over the garden
and across the Sound, thinking of the difficulties
of the day that she was facing. She found herself
wishing that Ware were there to help her and
chiding her timidity; for she realized that in the
present circumstances, he could be of no assist-
ance whatsoever.
It was a morning of brilliant moments suddenly
changed to dull-swift-passing dark clouds that
swept the choppy surface of the water to purple,
then passed to leave it sparkling and resplendent.
The weather suited Anne's mood. At one mo-
ment she felt confident and buoyed up by the cer-
tainty of Tom's love. The next, she was over-
come by fear, worry and depression.
Someone in white flannels was coming through
the garden. She bent forward to see who it was.
Dos Andros, trim, erect, immaculate was coming
swiftly toward the house. She could not see his
face; but the easy swing of his walk told her that
162


ENTER THE UNPLEASANT CARLOS 163
he had recovered from his recent attack of nerves.
It would be more difficult to gain information from
him under these circumstances. Involuntarily, she
turned toward the mirror, then blushed at her own
attitude. To win her object by whatever physical
charm she might have for him was unthinkable.
Nevertheless, she brushed back an unruly lock of
hair and pinned a jackrose at the low neck of her
soft flowing white gown. As the butler announced
Dos Andros, the telephone on her desk rang.
“Where is Dos Andros?” came in breathless
tones from Ware at the other end of the wire.
“He has just arrived here. Why?” said Anne.
“Can't tell you everything over the telephone,”
snapped Tom. “Don't let him get away from the
house until I come—and pump him dry. This isn't
any time for sentiment. That guy's a bad one.
Will you do your best for me?”
“Of course," she told him, stifling the innu-
merable questionings that suddenly crowded in on
her mind. “Only can't you tell me something?”.
She listened with breathless fascination to the
briefly sketched story of his thrilling adventures
in the dumb-waiter. “What does it all mean?”
she gasped. “Dos Andros, Chickie, the man with
the painted face, all of them must know. Don't
you think we should put it into the hands of the
police?"
He grunted out a “No” that sounded almost


164
GOLD-KILLER
"se
angry. “Of course not. We must get the truth
from Dos Andros. We must find the patch of
scarlet flowers unless they were simply a vision of
his drunken imagination. He may be a most de-
lightful fellow, Anne, but in this case he knows
entirely too much, and we must find out, and find
out soon, just what he knows."
For a moment she sat there, puzzled. She knew
that his jealousy for Dos Andros must have been
completely dispelled by her own revealings of
the previous day. It could not have misled him
again in suspicion of the Spaniard; Dos Andros,
in the underworld! Was it true, then, that the
South American was a partner of that mysteri-
ous man whom they knew as the flower snatcher,
and who had appeared and disappeared so
enigmatically in the Gold-Killer case; that he had
under his control and operating for him a giant
South American Indian who was in some way
connected with the mysterious Scarlet Petals?
She must use all her tact and ingenuity in dealing
with the attractive foreigner.
He was standing at the foot of the broad stairs
waiting for her. She was an exquisite picture
as she swept down toward him, one hand on the
carved rail, her frail figure set off by the dark
purple mural decorations back of her, and the
life-size portrait of herself at the age of fourteen
perched high on a shaggy white horse. Horse,


166
GOLD-KILLER
talked. “Yet I could gain no clear idea of what
this terrible fate was that so pursues and harries
you."
As she said this, the man beside her leaned
forward and put his head in his hands; but she
did not stop.
“It was in some way connected with the chant-
ing of the South American priest in the grove of
the Scarlet Flower. As you may know, I have
several times during the past year under the
most peculiar circumstances seen such a Scarlet
Flower."
Dos Andros started, lifted his head and seemed
about to protest, but she met his gaze steadily
and went on.
“This gives me a double interest in knowing
the exact nature of the curse which threatens you.
Can you tell me what it is? Will you tell me what
it is?"
There was silence. He did not raise his head,
but mumbled into his arms. “It's impossible to
put it into words. You wouldn't understand.”
“Try,” she pleaded. “At least tell me some-
thing of those strange people with whom you
lived. What were they like? Physically, I mean."
“Why do you want to know that?” The ques-
tion snapped at her as he rose abruptly. She
thought that she detected in those dark eyes dis-
trust, malignant purpose, but most of all, fear.


ENTER THE UNPLEASANT CARLOS 167
“Come, sit down,” she soothed, and reaching
for his hand drew him down beside her. “It's
perfectly natural, Dos, that I should want to know
about the people who are endangering the life or
the happiness of anyone for whom I cared. I
can't imagine your being terrified by anyone but
the most powerful of creatures and I've often
heard that the average South American Indian
is small and relies more on ingenuity than muscu-
lar strength in battle. Surely your intelligence is
a match for such ignorant methods as they must
employ."
“That's just it." His hand closed on hers con-
vulsively. "They are small, puny little beings.
Why, in a fair fight, I'd take my chance with half
a dozen of them. But Anne, it isn't human beings
I'm afraid of. Have you ever known what it is
to be afraid of something intangible and gro-
tesque, something that almost isn't human, some-
thing that pursues you waking and sleeping, that
you always expect to see around the corner, that
makes your life a succession of hideous night-
mares? That's what's following me and you can't
put it in words. It's there, that's all. How could
you understand?"
Anne watched the sleek blackness of his bent
head for a moment despairingly. Then she de-
cided to play a dangerous card. “Dos," she said,
“I am firmly convinced that this fear of yours,


168
GOLD-KILLER
whatever it is, is directly connected with my
father's murder."
He sprang away from her again and paced up
and down the porch. “What makes you think
that? You have no right to think that. It's
absurd.”
“Perhaps I haven't,” she said, “but there have
been many events which seem to point inevitably
toward just that conclusion.”
“You don't think that I- "
“Of course not,” she interrupted, “but I feel
somehow that if you could be perfectly frank with
me it would help us all to straighten out the com-
plexities that surround all these terrible Gold-
Killer murders. Dos, I've gone beyond thinking
of myself or of my father in this affair. So many
others are involved now and I feel that the danger
is by no means past."
He went to the far end of the porch and turned
his back. His hands were twisting violently be-
hind him. She found herself almost unconsciously
noticing that they were small and delicately
formed. Surely these were not the hands of the
Gold-Killer. But why his agitation? Did he
know or was it that he himself feared some time
to feel on his throat the pressure of those terrible
fingers?
“Doctor Rutchers,” she was speaking slowly
and distinctly so that the full effect of her words


ENTER THE UNPLEASANT CARLOS 169
would reach the agitated man at the other end
of the porch, "is in danger.”
“What makes you think that?” He wheeled
on her.
“Once, before my father died,” Anne went on,
“I saw him wearing a flower, the strangeness of
which I think you know well. Dr. Rutchers too
has worn such a blossom. Can you blame me
for wondering and for worrying? Is it so strange
that I should connect these events?".
Dos Andros threw back his head and his lips
came together determinedly. Then he spoke in
a tight strained voice which sounded oddly far
away. "Believe me, Anne, he is in no danger.
You must believe that. I am trusting you. There
is nothing more that I can tell you now. I must
go.”
“No, Dos, not now. You can't go now. I need
you. I'm afraid to be alone."
“Poor girl," and he came swiftly and sat down
beside her. “Of course I'll stay. It was thought-
less of me not to realize how overwrought you
must be by all these events."
Anne realized that she had found little or noth-
ing of importance from her questioning but that
further attempts would only result in disaster
and that she must keep Dos Andros with her by
other methods.
She switched the conversation to talk of tennis
OR


170
GOLD-KILLER
and yachting, of dances at Piping Rock, of the
Steeplechase and of golf. He seemed only too
eager to tell her of the gaieties that she had been
missing and she let him indulge freely in pungent
descriptions of Long Island personalities.
Presently the butler entered and called her
aside. At the same moment there was the sound
of a motor and she noticed out of the corner of
her eye that Sally Peterson's little red and black
landaulet was whizzing up to the front of the
house.
“Mr. Ware is at the back of the house, Miss
Anne, and wants to see you at once,” he told her.
“He seems very anxious.”
Anne turned to Dos Andros. “That's Sally
Peterson, Dos. Please go out and entertain her
for a few minutes. Something's gone wrong in
the kitchen. You didn't know, did you, how
heavily household cares sit on my shoulders?
Bring her out here and I'll join you in a few
moments."
He smiled his assent and she went swiftly to
join Tom. She found him hot and flustered, sit-
ting in the servants' parlor.
“Well,” he demanded, “is Dos Andros here?”
She nodded. “And what have you learned from
him?"
She told him her discouraging story quickly.
He gave an impatient shrug. “There goes your


172
GOLD-KILLER
her. For a few moments no one spoke. Grad-
ually the beast was calmed and slumped sullenly
into a crouching position beside Ware.
“Don't let him go!" shouted Dos Andros.
Don't let him touch me. He'd kill me if you let
him." Then with a quick attempt at calm and a
rather wry smile, he said: “I can't understand
why young ladies bring apes to luncheon parties."
“What do you mean?” demanded Ware.
Dos Andros straightened his collar and swag-
gered across the lawn toward Ware and the but-
ler. The ape snarled again and tried to jump
away.
“Pleasant little fellow, isn't he?” observed Dos
Andros. “A new pet of Miss Peterson's. She
brought him with her quite unattended in her
car. Perhaps she intends making a novel chauf-
feur of him. At any rate his liking for me is not
noticeable. I don't know where Miss Peterson
got him; but he used to belong to me. His name
is Carlos. Isn't it, old dear.” The ape snarled.
“And Carlos and I didn't get along too well to-
gether. So when beatings didn't do any good I
sold him to an East Side animal dealer. If you
will hold him rather tightly, I think I'd better
go.” And Dos Andros looked ruefully at his
white flannels, splotched with the black marks of
those great fingers.


ENTER THE UNPLEASANT CARLOS 173
“Sorry you've got to go,” grunted Ware. But
he made no attempt to detain Dos Andros.
“Take this brute,” he said to the butler, who
rather gingerly led off the now docile animal, but
not before Ware had picked up one of the huge
hands and looked at it thoughtfully.
Sally was sitting up now, weeping and laughing,
still hysterical. Anne, soothing her, had made
no attempt at questions. Ware, however, was not
so patient.
“Where did you get that animal, Miss Peter-
son?” he asked.
“Oh, I don't know, I don't know," she wailed.
“Bobby Potter brought him to me for a birthday
present. I'll never forgive Bobby, never, never,
never, never- "
“That's all right. Don't forgive him. But
tell me if you know anything about where the
beast came from.”
"Bobby said he got him somewhere 'down on
the East Side,” Sally sobbed, and the dealer
said he was perfectly harmless, just as gentle as a
baby. He was, too, only " and she paused
thoughtfully, “he knew Dos Andros and I know
that he hated him. He had been sitting beside
me perfectly quietly until Dos came across the
lawn. As soon as he saw him he gave an angry
cry and jumped out the window of the car. Dos
Andros turned as white as a sheet and started


174
GOLD-KILLER
to run with the ape after him. I followed scream-
ing and then you all came. What can it all
mean?"
“Mean!” Tom laughed grimly. “Mean! It
means that Dos Andros may not be the mysteri-
ous Gold-Killer but he knows the Gold-Killer well
enough. Why, Anne, did you see those hands!
The huge, terrible hands of the strangler. Why
have we been such fools? We should have known
long ago. The Gold-Killer is an ape and he's in
your kitchen now."


CHAPTER XVI
THE TRAIL OF THE APE
TARE went hunting for the East Side ani-
mal dealer from whom Sally Peterson's
madcap friend had bought Carlos, that grotesque
ape with the monstrous hands of the Gold-Killer.
The young lady had given him vague directions,
but finally he came upon a dirty little store down
by the river. Behind the dirty show windows
were parrots in cages and in a barred box a rov-
ing-eyed coyote, which crouched and turned
around every few seconds. Inside, the dusty place
was filled with canaries, parakeets, pigeons, rab-
bits, dogs and a few monkeys, and, prominently
in the center, a cageful of snakes. The keeper was
a short, pudgy old German, who for all his thirty
years in the country, had many difficulties with
English. It took Tom some time to make his
query clear to the man.
“Ja-ja," the crop-headed Teuton blurted
through his yellow mustache. He looked up at
Tom through thick-lensed spectacles. “Such an
intelligent monk. He was like a man-only
smarter.” Tom gleaned from the long and in-
175


THE TRAIL OF THE APE
177
he had corroborated Dos Andros' account of the
ape. He had, however, learned an important de-
tail: The ape was highly trained. After the dra-
matic episode in the garden of the Rice country
house, Tom had been so eager to quiet the terrible
animal, and get it, with the assistance of half a
dozen chauffeurs, into handcuffs, of which one of
the chauffeurs happened by singularly lucky
chance to have a pair, that he had noted little of
the brute's demeanor. It was to be expected,
though, that the ape which had been used for the
Gold-Killer stranglings would be trained to the
last degree. Of course, it seemed impossible that
the beast could have been used in the murder at
the opera or in the Plank Road affair, but details
did not trouble Ware. The fact of the ape was
too glaringly significant, and with it the reason-
ing that the terrible hands of the Gold-Killer could
only have been apes' hands. Tom marveled at
his obtuseness. There he had been threshing his
brains for weeks, trying to think of a possible
explanation of the giant stranglings, and the
notion of an ape—it seemed such a simple and
inevitable notion now-had never come to him.
When he saw Anne in the library of the Rice
mansion that evening, and told her the result of
his visit to the animal dealer, she seemed moody
and subdued.
“The affair is so terribly clear now," she


178
GOLD-KILLER
mused. “Only the details remain to be unfolded.”
She looked up at him with a faint smile of hap-
piness.
“We were wicked, Tom, to suspect poor
Joyce.” Then her face clouded. “But where
can he be?”
He understood the misgivings that were in her
mind. Joyce, though now unaccused, might still
be in grave danger, if not past all danger. The
molium stealers, who perhaps knew nothing of
the Gold-Killer ape, might still have kidnaped
him for his supposed part in killing Morgan,
and ...
“Oh, Joyce, no doubt, is all right. He is prob-
ably away drowning his nerves for a couple of
weeks." Tom strove to be optimistic.
“And it seems a wicked thing," an expression
of intense pain came into her face, “to suspect
an old friend like Dos of being the murderer of
my father. Still, there's no escaping it."
“The ape is entirely too illuminating," Tom
said gently. He pitied her for the cruelty of the
affair, with its ruthless tearing of human rela-
tionships.
“What next, Tom?” She straightened up, smil-
ing bravely.
“We must discover the motives and ramifica-
tions of the conspiracy,” he returned vaguely.


CHAPTER XVII
ABDUCTION
N the bulletin board before a newspaper
building on Columbus Circle, the boy was
chalking the latest "up to the minute” news item.
Ware stopped so suddenly that the man behind
walked into him. The half completed headline
read:
RICE HEIRESS ...
Ware felt the buildings spinning around him
like a merry-go-round as the final word was
spelled out:
KIDNAPPED
He stood panting with excitement. The bulle-
tin was slowly completed:
DAUGHTER OF GOLD-KILLER'S RECENT VIC-
TIM ABDUCTED IN SPECTACULAR DAYLIGHT
KIDNAPPING BEFORE THE RICE PALACE ON
59TH STREET. POLICE ON TRAIL OF MISSING
GIRL.
Ware had passed the day looking for Chickie
La Fontaine. He had gone to her house. No-
180


ABDUCTION
181
body was home. He had waited. She had not
come. He had made a pilgrimage to the resorts
where she might be found, but no one had seen
her that day. He had telephoned Anne in the
morning, saying that he would come to the Rice
house for tea. Now he was on his way there, only
to see, while passing the newspaper bulletin
board, that she had been kidnapped.
Ware shouted his summons to a passing taxi
and drove to the Rice mansion.
When Anne's maid saw him, she burst into
tears.
“Oh doctor, it's too awful,” she buried her
pretty face in her apron. “And I knew it, I knew
it.”
“What has happened?” Ware took the maid
into the library, thrust her into a chair and com-
manded her with the authority of a physician.
“They threw her into that green limousine and
carried her away. They will kill her," the maid
dried her eyes with her apron, still sobbing.
“Come,” Ware clamped his jaw up severely,
"tell me just what occurred."
“Oh, I knew that man was a villain when he
came to the door,” the maid wept anew. “He
had a bad face, and I told Miss Rice not to go
out with him."
“Who was he? What did he say?" Ware
tried to keep a calm, authoritative voice.


182
GOLD-KILLER
“He was a horrible-looking fellow. The bell
rang. I answered it. He said he wanted to see
Miss Rice. I told him to get away. But Madame
passed by and she heard the man. She spoke to
him. He said there was somebody in the car out-
side who wanted to see her. I told her not to go,
but she went."
“And then what?" Ware impatiently drove
the girl on.
"She went to the car," the maid continued,
“the door opened, and a man reached out and
pulled Miss Rice in. Oh, it was awful.”
The maid shed more tears.
“And then what?” Ware grew angry with the
suspense.
“The man slammed the door, and the car drove
away,” the maid spoke petulantly, as though that
were to be understood.
“What became of the man who came to the
door?"
“Oh, he drove the car.”
"A chauffeur?"
“Yes, he was wicked looking,” the maid shud-
dered.
“Do you remember just what he said to Anne
-Miss Rice, I mean?” Ware was seeking relief
from his bewilderment by questioning the maid.
“He told Madame that a man in the car wanted


ABDUCTION
183
to talk to her. She asked who it was. He said
he didn't know.”
“What did the man in the car look like?”
“I could not see. He just reached his arms
and pulled Madame into the car. He was awfully
strong.”
“What did you do then?” Ware could perceive
no hint of an explanation in the maid's account.
“I screamed and ran down the stoop, calling
for the police. But the car turned the corner
quickly, before anybody heard me. Then a po-
liceman came, and then the reporters, and I told
them all about it.”
“Are you sure you told them everything?" the
young doctor demanded ironically.
“Oh yes, everything,” she replied with con-
scious virtue.
“I believe you," he replied. “Did you get the
number of the car?"
“No, it's funny, but the policeman asked me
that too,” she seemed puzzled.
“But you told the reporters everything."
Ware found relief from his emotions in sarcasm.
He sat motionless for some minutes, unable to
find anything to think or do. Who had taken
Anne: The Chief? Or had the South American
taken her? He flamed at the thought. He could
not bear it. He leaped to the telephone and called
Dos Andros' apartment. The South American


184
GOLD-KILLER
answered. He had not heard of the abduction,
he said. He seemed astonished and perturbed.
Ware left the 'phone as uncertain as when he took
it up.
Ware tried his own apartment for information.
They said a man had called to see him twice that
day. They could give no description save that it
was a rough-looking fellow.
Ware was a man of action. Silent brooding
was not his metier. His instinct was to be off
searching for Anne. But what could he do? He
came to the opinion, based on his and Anne's for-
mer experience, that the Chief had kidnapped her.
Again, on the basis of their former experience,
that did not seem such a threatening thing. The
Chief might be dissatisfied with Ware. The
young interne had not yet formally disobeyed the
order (not yet come) to steal the molium, but he
had not made any preparations for the molium
theft, and the old, coughing captain of crooks, who
had such mysterious sources of information,
might have decided to punish him by telling Anne
of his supposed double life. In that case Anne
would return suffering only from the farcical blow
of the disclosure. This was a comfortable belief.
Ware took refuge in it. The thing to do then was
to get hold of Chickie La Fontaine. Again things
hinged on his putting the underworld girl through
an inquisition. He was certain that he could either


186
GOLD-KILLER
about the abduction of Miss Rice," he shouted in
a temper.
“You seem very anxious about her," Chickie's
accents were those of indignation.
“Will you answer me?” Ware's anxiety
whipped him to a pitch of exasperation.
“I don't think you care for me,” Chickie re-
turned angrily. “Go ahead and take her. I don't
care.” She assumed the sarcastic tone sometimes
affected by a jealous woman.
His wrath grew lyrical:
“You are a consummate fool!” he shouted.
Chickie's voice grew pleading, as it always did
when she was frightened.
“You mustn't be angry with me," she whined.
“I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I know
you don't care a rap for that girl. I know. ..."
A scream rang out from the rear of the house.
“The green limousine!” Ware heard the maid
shrieking. He slammed the receiver down on
Chickie's plaintive persuasions, and dashed back.
The maid stood at a side window crying out:
“The green limousine!”.
Through a window Ware saw an automobile
turning around.
“That's the car!" the maid continued hys-
terically.
The doctor vaulted through the window into the
garden and leaped the fence. The green limousine


ABDUCTION
187
was getting up speed down the street. Ware
dashed after it, shouting, “Stop!”
With a sprint worthy of his track days in col-
lege he caught up with the automobile and swung
on to the running board. He tried to tear away
the curtain which was drawn down over the open
window.
“Get away!” a hoarse voice sounded from the
interior. A hand holding a revolver was thrust
violently under the curtain. The barrel of the
weapon jammed against Ware's body.
Ware instantly released his hold and fell on
his back into the street. As he lay there he saw a
head thrust out of the limousine window and look
back at him. He could not mistake the fat white
face.
It was Joyce, the movie critic.
Ware lay on his back for a minute, stunned by
the jar of his fall and the jar of the recognition.
Passersby came running to him, and he got to his
feet and returned dazedly to the house.


CHAPTER XVIII
JOYCE
S he ran up the stoop, Ware saw Anne stand-
ing in the door. He stopped in astonish-
ment.
“Don't be frightened. It is I," she laughed.
Her hair was disheveled, her face flushed, her
eyes wide with excitement. Ware trembled with
feeling as he looked at her slender, graceful
figure.
“As you jumped out of the back window, I
came in through the front door!” she exclaimed.
Ware was beside her, clutching her arm.
“Where have you been?” His face was set
with emotion.
"I've been driving around with your friend
Joyce,” she replied. “Come inside and rest a bit
after your anxiety, and I will tell you a long
story.” She shook his arm with a gesture that
was more than friendly.
When they were comfortably adjusted in easy
chairs in the library, and tea had been ordered,
Anne looked smilingly at Ware and deigned to
answer the questions that were choking him.
188


JOYCE
189
“Joyce has been a prisoner of the Plank Road
robbers,” she began. “He has escaped and is
desperately afraid that they will get their hands
on him again. He is running away to Europe, but
first he wanted to tell you of some things he saw
and heard while among the Chief's gang. He went
to your house, kept himself hid in his car, for fear
that some of the robbers might be watching, and
sent the driver in for you. You were not at home.
In his anxiety to get away, Joyce decided to give
me his message for you. Still afraid to show
his face, he sent the driver to bring me out, and
when I ran out to see him he, in his excitement,
actually dragged me into the machine. He drove
me away up to Yonkers for lunch and spent the
afternoon telling me of his strange adventures."
“Did he say anything about the night on the
Plank Road?" Ware exclaimed eagerly.
“He did," replied Anne with a quiet tri-
umphant glance and smile. "I gathered from his
labored recollections that it may have been the
ape."
“He had very little to add to the account he
gave you. He, Morgan, and the underworld girl
were standing beside the front of the car when
the shot crashed. He instantly jumped into the
rear compartment of the machine and crouched
behind the front seat. He is not certain but that
the ape may have been secreted in the front part


190
GOLD-KILLER
of the car and leaped out as Morgan threw the
driver to the ground. He judged, though, from
what I told him about the flower, Dos Andros and
the ape, that the beast was not in the car. He
had heard much talk of the crooks: while he was
a prisoner, but never any mention of either the
flower, the South American or the ape. He is in-
clined to think that the driver of the truck was
knocked unconscious and that the ape, by sheer
chance passing in a car with Dos Andros that
night, jumped out and strangled the unconscious
man.”
Ware mused a while over this new suggestion.
Then he asked:
“How did the Chief's men catch Joyce?"
“As he left his home on the morning of the
Plank Road robbery," she replied, “they sent a
boy to shout the Gold-Killer headlines at him, in
case he had not read the paper already, and as
he stood startled by the account he was reading,
one of their men with a fake police badge came
and arrested him for complicity in the murder.
He was so shaken and frightened by the news that
he followed the man without protest or question
into an automobile—and then to the Chief's
house, the same place where we were taken. They
blindfolded him going in, but when he got away
he saw it was a fine house on Central Park.”
“They kept him prisoner for a week, eh?!!


JOYCE
191
Ware questioned her. "How did he get away?"
"He was under guard by Flash Montague,
Baldy and a couple of others. They kept the
most vigilant watch over him, never letting him
leave a room on the top floor. Then yesterday
morning he was awakened by Flash Montague's
coming into the room coughing. Flash was in a
bad state, shaking, staggering and gasping. He
seemed to be suffering the after effects of a de-
bauch, Joyce says.”
“Probably the result of bad prohibition
whiskey, which produces strange effects,” Ware
said.
“Whatever it was,” Anne continued, “Flash
was helpless, and Joyce coolly walked past him
and downstairs. He saw the others lying about
shaking and coughing."
“Prohibition whiskey acts strangely on the
nervous system, Ware commented profes-
sionally.
“He walked out into the street and began to
run,” Anne went on, “Finally he hired a limou-
sine, drove to his bank for some money and de-
cided to get out of town right away, and go to
Halifax and catch a steamer for Europe."
“Did he hear anything interesting from the
robbers?” Ware asked.
“Yes,” Anne replied, "one thing. He learned
the secret of the molium."


192
GOLD-KILLER
Ware straightened up.
“Flash, Baldy and the other leaders were en-
tirely close-mouthed,” Anne went on. “But two
of the hangers-on, drivers of the robbers' car ap-
parently, fell to babbling loudly to each other in
the hall one morning. They were drunk, and
Joyce gathered the fact that the molium which the
band had stolen was taken to an old man who kept
a laboratory down on Long Island.”
“Down on Long Island," Ware repeated
musingly after Anne. A phrase came sharply
into his memory:
"A garden thicket down on Long Island,”
which Dos Andros had used several times in his
colloquy with Chickie La Fontaine on the night
of Ware's dumb-waiter adventure.
"Joyce supposes," Anne concluded, “that the
crooks are not only stealing the molium but are
selling it at a cruelly profiteering price to some
rich old secluded scientist who is ignorant of mar-
ket values."
“Down on Long Island.” The phrase haunted
Ware.


CHAPTER XIX
THE CHIEF COMMANDS
In the evening Tom Ware was turning the pages
I of the New York Medical Journal when the
maid came to his door, saying:
“There is a man downstairs to see you."
She handed him a small envelope. Ware
opened it. A card was inside. It read in florid
letters:
THE CHIEF.
Ware dug his fingers into the card to make sure
that he was not suffering from a delusion. He
narrowed his eyes and stared at the writing. The
words remained unaltered:
THE CHIEF.
"What sort of man is it?” he asked the fat lit-
tle servant.
“A queer-looking man,” she said.
“Send him .up.” Ware was filled with curi-
osity.
He had often thought of this captain of the un-
derworld. He had retained a queerly vivid im-
pression of the old man's cough that had sounded
193


THE CHIEF COMMANDS
195
"Perhaps,” he continued, “I did not explain
clearly enough what may happen to you if you
are recalcitrant."
Ware wrinkled his forehead and kept his eyes
on the man. His head was full of the new revela-
tion. The flower snatcher was the Chief. That
connected the South American, the ape and the
flower with the molium-stealing gang. Down on
Long Island, the garden with the red patch of
flowers, the old doctor who bought the raro metal
at absurd prices. He wrestled with the connee-
tion.
“You doubtless think,” the Chief became
urbane, “that because your friend Joyce got
away from us, you can disregard my orders. You
cannot."
He smiled like a man of the world who is rea-
sonable and leaned forward, hands on knees.
“You love Chickie La Fontaine,” he spoke de-
cisively, “you want to marry the Rice millions.
Hence you will not leave the city. As long as you
are in the city, your life is in my hands, and if
you don't get the molium for me from your hos-
pital, why ..,"
He leaned back in the easy chair and chuckled
significantly.
"You mean you will have me killed." Ware
ground his teeth together and resisted an impulse
to snatch the pistol out of the drawer.


196
GOLD-KILLER
“You put it rather roughly, my boy.” The
Chief screwed up his wrinkled, painted right
cheek drolly. “But I will say that you are some-
where near right.”
Ware felt with renewed force that the man's
strange and somewhat handsome face was curi-
ously familiar to him.
“However, I shall not blame you in advance
for disobedience. I merely come to warn you,"
the Chief continued with an air of indulgence.
“I suppose you were not sufficiently impressed at
our first conversation. I should have met you in
person. I couldn't, though, for I was ill then.
I had to talk to you through a representative."
Ware, still standing close to the pistol drawer,
remembered with renewed vividness the quaver-
ing old man's cough. His mind could not attribute
it to the deep voiced man before him. He remem-
bered what Joyce had told Anne about the gang-
sters coughing apparently from prohibition
whiskey
“There is some queer mystery here," Ware
said to himself.
The Chief arose and took his hat and cane from
the table. He gave Ware a menacing stare.
“The order will come in a few days. There
are ten cases of molium stacked in the chemical
store room in the basement of the hospital. You
are to secure the key of the door from the store


THE CHIEF COMMANDS
197
room to the street, and at night take five cases
and place them out on the sidewalk and my men
will come along in a car and get them. If you
fail when the word comes ...".
With a sneer and a final threatening glance the
Chief placed his derby hat on his head. Ware
heard his footsteps on the stairway. Then the
front door slammed.
Ware leaped to the telephone.
“Anne,” he cried, “there is some connection
between the red flower and the molium. I must
-must get hold of that underworld girl-but now
I've quarreled with her.”
"I'll see her anyway," was his last word to.
Anne before he hung up the receiver.
OW


CHAPTER XX
THE STRANGLING HANDS
THEN Ware rang the bell at Chickie La
V Fontaine's apartment, that lady opened
the door. She looked at the young man with as-
tonishment and leaping indignation.
"What do you want?” She leaned her shoul-
der against the casing and pursed her lips dis-
dainfully.
“To see you." He grinned all his amiability
and rubbed his chin.
“After you bawled me out yesterday and
slammed the 'phone in my ear! Go to your mil-
lion dollar baby! I don't care.” She hitched
up her knee length skirts and blinked her little
eyes angrily.
Ware thought indignation would be an excel-
lent device for him.
“What did you mean the other night at
Bridges'? You promised to meet me, and then
met those two fellows." He scowled till half a
dozen wrinkles stood between the ridges of his
eyes.
A slight smile illuminated the left side of
Chickie's face.
198


THE STRANGLING HANDS 199
"Jealous again!”.
She grew sulky once more as she stood aside
and allowed him to pass in.
In the over-furnished drawing room Ware sat
hunched forward and looked up amusedly at
Chickie as she stood in front of him and con-
tinued her tirade.
“Think of treating me like that,” she snapped
a vicious staccato, "after you pretended to care
for me. I want a real man. I don't want no fickle-
ness.”
“But how about those two fellows the other
night?”
The affair at Bridges' gave Ware a ehance to
play jealous and thereby please her, and at the
same time to interrogate Chickie about the com-
plicated matter of the scarlet flower, the ape, the
Chief and Dos Andros.
Chickie replied, raising her mouth in a spiteful
grin:
“Oh, just a couple of Johns.”
She pulled up a chair and seated herself in front
of Ware and looked at him with an exaggerated
stare of cynical inquisition.
“What right have you to be jealous?” she de-
manded. “You don't care for me."
"Who were they?" Ware evaded persistently.
Her face grew enormously supercilious. She


200
GOLD-KILLER
raised one penciled eyebrow until it was half way
up her forehead.
“One of them was the fellow who took the
flower from me that night,” she said. “He is
dead gone on me. He is a big downtown banker.
He wants me to marry him."
Ware leaned back and contemplated her
amazedly. Her voice and manner recalled irre-
sistibly the night at Glazenberg's, when she had
told him of her acquaintance with John Rice.
“Who was the other fellow?” he continued
mechanically.
“Why, he is a Spanish Count.” Chickie raised
her right shoulder and smiled coldly, like a woman
who tells spitefully of an infidelity. “He's crazy
with money, owns a lot of oil wells in Spain. He
wants me to take a trip abroad with him, to Paris
and Monte Carlo. Maybe I will."
She was bragging absurdly.
The ridges over Ware's eyes stood out sharply
as he glared at Chickie
“You are lying to me." His anger rose.
At his violence she took her nether lip between
her teeth and opened her eyes as widely as she
could.
“I don't want you to talk to me like that." She
affected sentimental reproach.
"I want you to tell me who those men were and
what business they had with you." He got out


202
GOLD-KILLER
whether Pop Morgan had given me anything be-
fore the Gold-Killer got him. I didn't tell them.”
“Did Morgan give you anything?" Ware
began to feel that his quest was barren.
“Only a bottle of whiskey." Chickie said this
slowly, and continued in soulful accents. “Maybe
I will give you a drink of it if you will be nice to
me.”
Ware could not believe that she was ignorant
of the flower snatcher's identity as the Chief.
“You are still not telling me the truth about
those men,” he said, scowling at her.
“You must not be so jealous,” she begged. “I
only wanted to peeve you. I don't give a rap for
those guys. And I'll tell you something else."
She smiled at him like a wronged angel who
returns an injury with a heavenly blessing.
“I've told you other things just to make you
jealous. You remember I told you I was sweet
on that millionaire that the Gold-Killer got and
some other big Wall Street guys. Why, I never
even saw them once. I said I did just to make
you jealous."
“You did not know John Rice?” Ware stepped
back aghast and looked at her as though she were
a lunatic.
“No, dearie." She smiled as one awaiting
coronation, and opened her arms.
Ware felt the whole edifice of his discoveries


THE STRANGLING HANDS
203
falling about him. Everything he had done,
everything he had reasoned had been rooted in
the primordial fact that there had been an
acquaintanceship between the murdered capitalist
and this underworld girl. Now he saw with a
clarity that filled him with bitter anger that her
talk, on which he had based his labors, was a piece
of chorus girl's bragging. In his eagerness to
confirm his and Anne's suspicions he had seized
on it like a fish on a minnow.
Chickie stood with her arms open. Ware threw
himself weakly on a lounge.
“What's the matter with you?" Chickie was
astonished and indignant.
He did not reply. He was trying to adjust his
mind to this new development. How did it affect
the case against Dos Andros and his ape? In his
bewilderment Ware could see that the case still
stood.
“What are you thinking about?” Chickie stood
before him sarcastic. "About that million dollar
baby, I guess.”
"But where is the motive! Ware muttered
half aloud. The excellent motive of jealousy was
gone from the case against Dos Andros. Ware
remembered how the South American had told
Anne of the curse of the flower. Was the Gold-
Killer affair, then, the simple working of some
strange exotic curse? Ware half felt himself in


204
GOLD-KILLER
the face of things supernormal. But there now
seemed no possible human motive for the
stranglings done by the ape.
“You can't fool me!" Chickie screamed. “You
give me a call over the 'phone on account of that
million dollar baby, and slam the receiver in my
ear, and now you are thinking about her. Oh, I
hate you!” She glared crazily.
She seized Ware's arm at the wrist and flung
it down violently.
A pain so intense shot through his arm that
Ware leaped to his feet. He felt as though his
wrist had been crushed in a vise.
“Listen to me." Chickie shook him, bared her
teeth in a malignant grin, grasping at his elbow.
Her fingers crushed into the fiber and seemed
ready to smash the bone. In crazy fear Ware
tried to tear away.
“Don't you ever talk to me again.” Chickie
gritted her teeth and held his arm with renewed
force. He shouted with the unendurable pain of
her grasp.
“Who are you? What are you?”
He stared at her, with a primordial fear clutch-
ing him.
“Go to your millionaire's baby” she screamed,
releasing his arm. “Go and marry her, and for-
get me."


THE STRANGLING HANDS
205
She flung herself on the lounge, sobbing clamor-
ously.
Ware made great steps toward the door. He
flung it open, and, moved by transports of fear,
leaped down the stairs and ran out of the build-
ing. He did not stop until he was several blocks
away.
He stood and inspected his bruised wrist and
elbow. They were turning black and were swell-
ing. In Ware's parlance, they were severe con-
tusions with possible fracture.
“She has the hands of the strangler," he spoke
out aloud. “She is the Gold-Killer."


NECESSARY TO DEFY THE CHIEF 207
most inconceivable to him that this dull, crass,
burlesque show girl was the clever, deceitful, in-
triguing type that she must indeed be in the face
of such indisputable evidence.
There were some doubts in his mind. If Chickie
were the murderer, who was the man seen leav-
ing the Rice box on the night of the murder? Per-
haps that might have been the vision of an excited
employee whose imagination was fired by later
events. But whenever he began doubting the
reality of the burlesque girl's guilt, the pain in
his arm and wrist brought him cruelly back to
certainty.
He was burning with eagerness to rush to the
telephone to tell Anne. It would be such a relief
to her to know that Dos Andros was not actually
the perpetrator of the terrible murders. But his
love and his professional realization of her need
for sleep restrained him. Toward morning the
pain in his arms decreased, his mind grew less
active and he dropped to sleep.
At ten o'clock the next morning he woke with
a start. It did not seem possible that he actually
could have slept after the excitement of his great
discovery; but he made up for lost time in dress-
ing that was swift in spite of the intense pain
of his bruises.
As he went out the door, the hall-boy handed
him a slim green envelope. Inside was one short
S


NECESSARY TO DEFY THE CHIEF 211
211
going to be sports and we're going to that party
of Mrs. Graham's tomorrow evening. There may
be lots that can be learned from seeing the lady
Gold-Killer working in the set where she kills.
Am I right?"
“I suppose so, dear,” Anne gave in, and
crumpled ineffectually into his arms.
Noon had passed, the hour when Tom had been
commanded by the Chief to meet Baldy, but the
young man did not even think about the sinister
appointment and the peril of his defiance.


THE GOLD-KILLER AGAIN KILLS 213
seldom missed a Graham soirée. From a person-
age she had become a personality. There were
those who jestingly called her Riverside Drive
apartment the "pink-stocking club.” But others
candidly acknowledged that her strange drawing-
rooms were the nearest approach to a bas-bleu
salon to be found in America.
Her invitation to Chickie, that terrible girl of
the underworld who was the murderous Gold-
Killer! It was not so strange, Ware thought, as
his taxi swept into the Drive at Seventy-second
Street! Of all chorus-girls not directly under the
wand of Mr. Ziegfeld, she was perhaps the best
known. Her publicity man had been clever. At
any rate, she was sufficiently notorious to make
her presence at Alice Graham's a bait for the
blasé broker.
It was 9:45 as Ware stepped out in front of
the huge apartment-house in the eighties. He had
planned to arrive a little before Anne. He could
not bear to think of her entering that strange
home alone; of the possibility of her meeting
Chickie the strangler when he was not there too.
He had a fantastic fear that the incredible girl,
who (despite all absurdity) was the Gold-Killer,
might grow violent under the spell of liquor and
her strange jealousy.
A tall woman in a red evening gown stood in
the door of the Graham apartment as Ware


214
GOLD-KILLER
started to enter. She giggled foolishly and
flicked his ear with an ostrich-feather fan as he
passed by. A rattle of jazz sounded from a dis-
tance. There was no servant to greet him. He
wandered about the heavy-rugged halls until he
found the gentlemen's cloak-room.
Sitting like an exaggerated Billikin, half buried
in summer coats, with one fat hand waving
blandly, and the other brandishing a silver flask,
was Flash Montague! Ware started back. Of
all people whom he might expect to encounter!
“G'd evenin', Tom,” remarked Flash, blinking
comfortably. “Hav' li'l' somethin'?”.
"No thanks!”-and Ware threw down his coat
and stick. “No thanks!”
"Aw c'mon. Have one on me! Di'n' 'spect
tuh fin' me here, did yuh? Well-Told yuh I was
a gen'lem'n, di'n' Il Minister's son, too. Why
shoul'n' I be here? Say!” He became a trifle
belligerent, his anger showing by a pulling in of
his chin and a slight stiffening of the back. “Say!
D'yuh say I wasn' a gen'leman?”
Ware laughed and patted him on the shoulders
reassuringly.
«« 'Course you're a gentleman, old top. Is
Chickie here?”
“Chickie?” Flash's bead-like little eyes
opened wide with horror. “Chickie's not comin'
here? Tell me she isn' comin' here, Tom. She'd


THE GOLD-KILLER AGAIN KILLS 215
give me away. 'S a cousin ah mine out there's
knows my family 'n' Chickie'll give me away.
Tom, she isn’ comin' here? Shay, Tom, you lis'n
t' me-you di’n’ meet Baldy-Schief's sore 's
goin't kill you—might kill y' t'night. I like y',
Tom-you be careful-Baldy's comin'an' he says
t' me'We gotta kill Tom—Chief's ordersh' -
but Chickie's not comin', is she?”.
“Well, maybe not,” Ware comforted, “but I
heard that she was.”
Tom turned to encounter the astonished eyes
of tall Billy Harty, his mop of blond hair care-
fully brushed back, his face soft and pink from a
recent massage, his whole person smelling faintly
of perfume, and very tricked out in an outland-
ishly foppish manner from the bright green of
his shirt-studs to the over-elaborate velvet of his
dress vest. Tom barely nodded at him, then shot
over his shoulder at Flash: “So long! I'm going
in to say how-do-you-do to our hostess."
"See yah later!” said Flash, attacking his sil-
ver flask as if he were a baby with a pacifier.
Tom was not particularly worried by Flash's
drunken rantings, but he found himself wishing
that Anne was not coming, and he resolved to be
doubly on his guard. The huge front room of
Mrs. Graham's apartment was filled with a sub-
dued orange light which came from inverted ceil-
ing disks covered with masses of yellow flowers.


216
GOLD-KILLER
The long windows were thrown open onto a bal-
cony. A battleship anchored in the river shot its
restless searchlights here and there along the
Drive. For a moment, Ware stood bewildered in
the door. What a strange gathering! Here was
where the upper fringes of the curious new under-
world met the lower fringes of New York's aris-
tocracy. It was a degenerating civilization. Then
Mrs. Graham was on him. Tall, slender, dark,
her trim form sheathed tightly in purple spangles,
she was a striking figure. He murmured his name.
“Oh, yes,” she smiled. “Anne Rice has told
me of you. She hasn't come yet; but we shan't
let you be bored. No!" as he suggested that they
dance, "we do not play hostess by seizing upon
our most charming guests. Adele!” she called to
a short-skirted, curly-haired young lady of
eighteen, or perhaps less. “Here is Doctor Ware
-and you are to amuse him until Anne Rice ar-
rives. Take him into a corner and tell him who
people are."
She raised her fan and said sotto voce behind
it: “This is a dear child from Miss Carter's
school. She is quite respectable and somewhat
innocent. Surpising, these days."-And she was
off down the room, with a smile here and a touch
of the hand there. Ware found himself staring
into a pair of wide blue eyes.
“Well,” he took her arm, "it looks as though


218
GOLD-KILLER
dinner jackets and low collars, the girls in short
skirts and necks so low that he wondered if
mothers and chaperons had forgotten to examine
wardrobes. Surely there were no mothers and
chaperons here.
“There's Dr. Lunt,” Adele laughed. “Don't
you know, the unfrocked priest who writes such
delightful novels, and Polly Barr, you must know
Polly, she draws and paints and has a marvelous
studio on West 10th Street. If I like you—she'll
invite you to one of her parties."
“And what must I do to make you like me?"
he bantered.
"That's for you to discover!” Adele simulated
preoccupation. “Otherwise it would be too easy.
You must work hard for my approval.”
“Perhaps I'm too lazy-or too— "
“Oh, very well!” she interrupted. “It's not
necessary. Now—there's Anne Rice-poor dear
-it's good that she could come tonight. She looks
as though she needed something. That's a dear
boy! Get her some punch. Who's that with her?
How extraordinary. I do believe it's Chickie La
Fontaine. Headlines, can't you see them, my
dear! Burlesque Queen enters Alice Graham's
Bohemian drawing room with the black-clad
heiress of the Rice millions. Skip along, old dear.
I'll find me someone more amusing.”
Ware felt an almost uncontrollable desire to


220
GOLD-KILLER
manicured, so well set off by a curiously carved
red-gold ring on the little finger of one of them,
that they seemed the hands of a gentleman.
“I scarcely realized that you two knew each
other," Alice Graham was saying, as Ware joined
them. He was bitterly conscious that the tableau
they made was the center of attention. Nor did
Alice attempt to lessen the interest of her other
guests. Her voice was pointedly strident.
Chickie La Fontaine laughed. Her laugh
caused Ware a moment of uneasiness. The bur-
lesque girl was displaying her ability to act. This
was not the loose boyish laughter of that first
evening at Glazenberg's, or of many other times
when he had seen her. It was an infectious gurgle
-a trifle affected, perhaps, but approaching the
lady-like. If she would only control her
strangler's hands as well as she controlled her
laughter!
“We don't know each other, dear Mrs.
Graham; but we do know-Oh Tom!" and she
whirled on him, a quick hand to the lapel of his
coat. Ware started back absurdly. “We both
know Doctor Ware! That's it, isn't it, Miss
Rice?”
Anne bit her lip, smiled and nodded. Ware
could see the anguish that lay behind her eyes.
Yet they knew the importance of pleasing Chickie,
of doing everything in their power to find out
CO


THE GOLD-KILLER AGAIN KILLS
221
from her any facts that might possibly aid in
fixing the guilt definitely upon her. Ware shud-
dered nervously as he saw her ring-filled fingers
lying along the silk of his dinner jacket. Anne
caught the look and turned her eyes away.
“I'm so happy that you could come,” Mrs.
Graham was saying to Anne. “We've been so
worried about you and so afraid that you would
sit solemnly out on Long Island in those tre-
mendous rooms brooding over your troubles. But
if you'll let me bring you to one of my parties
occasionally, Anne dear, well—you really can't
brood at one of my parties!”
“I should say not!” Chickie jumped into the
conversation. “Come on, Tom!” She took his
hands and whirled him onto the floor before he
could demur. Her clasp was a quite normal one.
“She is controlling her hands," Ware mused
in relief.
She was one of the best dancers in the town
and she half-led him until he had fallen into the
intoxicating rhythm of her grace.
"She's a pretty little thing!” Chickie whis-
pered as her cheek touched his. “I like her!”
“Whom do you mean?” Ware demanded.
“Anne Rice, of course, foolish! But I'm not
jealous of your million dollar baby. Why! She's
not your kind, old dear; you may think so, but
believe me, I've seen a lot of this world and I


THE GOLD-KILLER AGAIN KILLS 225
“Leave me 'lone!” demanded Flash, sullenly.
“Don’ wanta drink!”
Ware took his arm and tried to pull him to his
feet. The crook's fist shot out and took Tom under
the chin. The young doctor snapped his jaws to-
gether, choked down his temper and laughed.
“Oh come on!” he soothed. “Be a good fellow.
Let's go out for some air."
“Leave me 'lone!" This time Flash was more
angry than sullen. His eyes opened and he glared
at Ware.
Chickie leaned over toward them. She had a
champagne glass in one hand, a small ornate flask
in the other.
“Drink this, Tom," she commanded.
He shook his head.
“Please drink it!” He was annoyed; but, in-
tent on his problem with Flash, he gulped it down
without thinking, then seized Flash by his shoul-
ders and lifted him to his feet.
"Get 'way! Damn you! You with yer two
girls. Get 'way!" Flash was swinging wildly
now. Ware's one thought was to get him away
from Anne. He was excited. His head was mud-
dled. He scarcely noticed the crowd; but pulled
the drunken man away from the screen of flowers
and out into the open ball room. He knew that
several men approached and tried to keep them


226
GOLD-KILLER
apart; but he was angry now,—wildly angry that
the drunken fool had insulted Anne.
“Get out of here!” he shouted and plunged at
the swaying little man in front of him.
“He's got his gat on you! Look out!”.
It was Chickie's cry from behind. Ware made
a leap at Flash, knocked his hand up as he fired a
shot. There were screams and a rush for the
street. Ware felt himself in contact with the
pudginess of Flash Montague's body. He knew
that he had pushed him violently down.
Then he felt a hand at the back of his neck. He
saw Flash rolling about like a ridiculous porpoise
on the floor
“You'll turn me down, will you!" He heard a
snarl behind him, but he saw what actually terri-
fied him, the calm eyes and the wolf-like coun-
tenance of Baldy. Not an instant to waste, and
his hands reached for Baldy's throat. The pale
countenance seemed to crumble and break before
his onslaught and the savage form went down.
One hand Tom saw reaching for a gun; but he
twisted this empty with surprising ease. Then he
pressed his fingers in-in-He felt the immense
satisfaction of the physical victor-for a second
he wondered if the cave man had felt this way
when he was fighting for his lady—he must get
Anne out of this-taxi-Anne and Chickie—which
way. It was very strange. He felt the scent of


THE GOLD-KILLER AGAIN KILLS
227
the flaming petals in his nostrils. Who was wear-
ing that curse-haunted bloom, he wondered in his
disordered wits.
Then there came blackness — numbness — he
staggered on and out-taxi !-then absolute black-
ness and dead stillness!


CHAPTER XXIII
THE PURSUER PURSUED
W A RE straightened up suddenly at the pain
V of a policeman's nightstick across his
shins.
“What do you think this park is? A hotel?”
the officer growled with professional roughness.
Ware moved on slowly, coughing violently. He
was very weak. His head was still fogged, and he
spent considerable naïve wonder on the circum-
stance that for the first time in his life he had
slept sitting on a park bench. His clothes were
crumpled and dirty. His hat was missing.
“What have I been doing?” he muttered, dazed
and walking as though he were in a dream.
He remembered as through a haze only the
vaguest generalities of his and Anne's encounter
with the crooks at the party, his fight with Baldy,
his taking Anne and Chickie away and putting
them in taxicabs, and then his wandering through
the streets. He continued coughing.
“That prohibition whiskey,” he muttered con-
fusedly.
He saw before him two old gentlemen taking
their morning stroll. Their animated gestures
228


THE PURSUER PURSUED
229
caught his eye. He looked at them with vague in-
terest, but his wits leaped to attention in his head
as he caught the phrase:
“The Gold-Killer murder last night!”
With a violent impulse Ware leaped forward.
“Pardon me, sirs," he called.
The old men turned in alarm.
"Are you a robber?” one of them quavered.
“You said something about a Gold-Killer mur-
der last night,” Ware's voice was unsteady with
impatience.
The old men looked at the tramp-like figure in
gentle surprise.
“Yes," one of them said, “the Gold-Killer has
been caught—or rather his identity is known.”
Ware's frantic question was choked by his con-
vulsive cough.
“He is a young physician,” the old man con-
tinued, eying Ware with disapproval.
“What is his name?” Ware felt the earth
shaking under him.
“It is—it is—I don't just remember," the old
man replied, overborne by Ware's vehemence.
“It is in all the morning papers,” his compan-
ion interrupted impatiently.
Ware ran headlong out of the park to the near-
est news stand. He bought a newspaper. He saw
his picture splashed all over the front page.
OIL


230
GOLD-KILLER
d
"Doctor Ware of Mount Rose Hospital is the
Gold-Killer!"
He read and nearly swooned. The account con-
tinued. Late the night before the police had been
summoned to the apartment of Mrs. George N.
Graham on West 98th Street, and there had found
a man dead, his throat crushed by the giant hands
of the Gold-Killer. The murdered man was Baldy
McManus, a well-known crook. The apartment
was deserted save for Mrs. Graham, who was in
hysterics. When she had been calmed she had
told a story of a party she had given, at which one
of the guests had been Dr. Ware, and another
Baldy McManus. There had been a quarrel and a
fight. The young physician had seized McManus
by the throat, flung him violently to the floor, and
then run out of the place. McManus had not
stirred after he had fallen, and when, after a few
moments of panic, they had examined him, they
had found his throat crushed in a manner that
told of the Gold-Killer's. The other guests had
fled in terror before the police had arrived.
Then he laughed crazily as illumination came
into his head.
Chickie La Fontaine must have stooped and
strangled Baldy as he lay. Her deed had been un-
noticed in the confusion that had followed the
drawing of the pistol and the scuffle between Baldy
and himself. That terrible woman had made mur-


THE PURSUER PURSUED 231
derous use of her Gold-Killer's hands, as Ware
had feared, but in a way he had not expected, still
in a way utterly disastrous for him. The mad
thought came to him that he might not be able to
establish his innocence, that he might go to legal
execution as the Gold-Killer. He trembled as he
read the sentence that finished the newspaper
account:
“The police expect to arrest Dr. Ware, alias the
Gold-Killer, at any moment."
Ware braced his shoulders against a lamp post.
He looked stupidly at the morning crowds moving
on the sidewalks.
With this crime the Gold-Killer mystery was
solved at last, the newspaper commented. It was
astonishing that the notion of a physician as the
terrible murderer had not suggested itself before,
since the impenetrable secret of the affair had
been the giant hands, and a physician through his
knowledge of anatomy might devise exercises giv-
ing abnormal strength of hands and might know
just how to grasp the throat and crush it in a
manner incomprehensible to the layman. It was
to be assumed, as a monstrous detail of the affair,
that the physician Gold-Killer had made a scien-
tific study of strangling. The inside pages of the
paper held diagrams of the grasping muscles of
the hand and of the anatomy of the throat.
Ware fell into a hypnosis. The assurance of


THE PURSUER PURSUED
233
the Rice heiress, but Tom thought it safer to keep
to the slum parts of the town.
He hung up the receiver with a sensation of
overwhelming fear. Anne's distraught voice stuck
in his ears. He was pierced by the feeling that
some frightful doom had descended on him. He
went to a dingy pawnshop and traded his bedrag-
gled dinner clothes for a few dollars and a shabby
suit. He waited for Anne.
She came walking rapidly down the street. She
stared mutely at Ware. A look of suffering and
terrible interrogation was in her face.
“Let us go into the little park down there where
we can sit and talk.” Ware felt himself bereft of
speech.
They walked rapidly and silently. In the park
Ware motioned Anne to a weather-worn bench
beside the path. She sat and stared at the scraggy
trees. Ware looked at her mournful profile.
Finally he spoke, swinging his arms out wide and
half shouting:
“What is all this, Anne?”
“I don't know.” She replied in mechanical
tones and did not move or change her expression.
Ware spoke with frantic rapidity. It was
Chickie La Fontaine. When he had thrown Baldy
to the floor, she had taken advantage of the panic
to strangle the man unnoticed.
“She did not leave my side until we were out of


THE PURSUER PURSUED
235
face and at his hands. He saw that she was in
fear. He calmed himself and tried to smile at her.
At his expression, she was moved with pity.
“I shall not say a word,” she said. “I suppose
the police are coming to question me. I will tell
them nothing. Let us stay quiet. There is some
monstrous, inexplicable thing somewhere. Keep
hidden, yourself. We can only wait. I will walk
through the park tomorrow, and you can be here
too."
Love had struggled with certainty in her. Love
had prevailed for the while. She arose hurriedly.
“Good-by!" she cried, and walked away rap-
idly.
He stood swaying as he watched her go. When
she had passed around a turn in the path, he fell
heavily onto the bench, crushed with astonish-
ment, fright and horror.


AM I THE GOLD-KILLER ?
237
“Am I the Gold-Killer?” he shouted inwardly,
as blackness descended over him.
He had fallen into a weird stupor at that in-
credible party the night before. He was still
coughing from its effect upon him. Prohibition
whiskey, he had explained to himself. But was
it that? Ware began to tremble with a fear, vague
but terrible; those fantastic states of double men-
tal life that one hears about. As a physician he
had some knowledge and had had some experience
with multiple personality neuroses, and he knew
that such cases exist in far more prodigious aspect
than ever come to the notice of the casual medical
practitioner. In a stupor the night before, he had
used the Gold-Killer's hands—that was sure. But
perhaps the prohibition whiskey had not put him
into the stupor; it may have shaken him out of the
stupor. Perhaps he had been living two lives (he
felt himself wandering into lunacy at the
thought); one as the promising young interne, Dr.
Ware, and the other as the murderous Gold-Killer.
And a freak of destiny had brought his two far
removed lives together at a point. He, as Dr.
Ware, had gone hunting himself, as the Gold-
Killer.
These fancies seethed fantastically through his
head as he plodded along, block after block. He
kept to the poorest sections of the city, thinking
he was safer there; at the back of his mind stood


238
GOLD-KILLER
the unremitting consciousness that he was a fugi-
tive, and he kept his eyes on every side. He made
a detour every time he saw a policeman. He kept
in constant terror of arrest, not knowing how long
a man, with no one to tell on him, may roam the
streets of New York.
His feverish whim was turned again upon the
newspaper reasoning about the surgeon subtly
training his hands and devoting his hard studied
anatomy to strangling. Ware had not before
thought of his own respected profession as being
a likely world in which to hunt the Gold-Killer.
He had seen half a dozen explanations of the
monstrous stranglings wax brightly and then van-
ish. Dos Andros' ape had seemed the inevitable.
Then Chickie La Fontaine's powerful grasp had
come as certainty. But now everything, all sim-
plicities, all complexities, made way before the
overwhelming testimony given by Anne that it
was Ware who had killed Baldy with the giant
hands. It was Ware who was the Gold-Killer.
The evening papers carried accounts of the
police hunt for the missing young physician. De-
tectives had investigated at the Mount Rose Hos-
pital, but had learned nothing of the fugitive's
whereabouts. They had examined his belongings.
They had questioned Anne, and the special feature
writers had made much copy out of the presence
of the Rice heiress in this final aspect of the Gold-


AM I THE GOLD-KILLER ?
239
Riller affair. The police were watching the rail-
way stations and the steamship lines. They ex-
pected to make an arrest at any hour.
Ware read these details slunk in a doorway.
Then he threw the news sheet down and walked
fast for a mile, as though eluding a pursuer. In
his mind he returned to the struggle against the
accusation that had snared him in its evidences.
He wandered over the complex puzzle that had
resulted from his efforts to solve the Gold-Killer
mystery. At the same time he recurred to that
phase of his present dilemma which beguiled him
the most, to the reasoning that it must be a sur-
geon who was the Gold-Killer. A chain of asso-
ciations sprang into his mind. A surgeon — the
American scientist who brought the flaming petals
in Dos Andros' story-the patch of red flowers in
the green garden down on Long Island—the old
man down on Long Island to whom the molium
went! Ware felt that there was significance in
these associations, but he could not detect the
significance. He again turned his mind to the
physician, and he said to himself bitterly that the
accusation against him rested heavily upon the
circumstance that he was a physician. But if the
Gold-Killer must be a physician (with anatomi-
cally developed hands and scientific methods of
strangling), was there any other physician among
the circle of persons whom he had found shrouded


240
GOLD-KILLER
by the Gold-Killer and the flaming petals? Before
the haunted young man's eyes came the aged fig-
ure of Dr. Rutchers, the great neurologist, wear-
ing the ominous red flower on his coat lapel.
Ware broke into a sardonic laugh as he could
not resist dwelling upon the speculation whether
Dr. Rutchers, whom they had been trying to shield
as the next prospective Gold-Killer victim, was
himself the Gold-Killer. Still, Ware said to him-
self, the neurologist, save for Tom himself, was
the only physician who had appeared in the case.
He caught himself trying to remember Dr.
Rutchers' hands. He could not picture them dis-
tinctly.
But it was not long before he wearied of these
straining flights. He sank back into simple fear
and despondency, and was overwhelmed by the
primordial facts: He was hunted. Instinct told
him that he was hunted. He was hunted as the
Gold-Killer. Upon the strongest testimony that
he could think of, upon Anne's word, he was the
Gold-Killer. Then, after a long while, he again
entered upon the hypothesis that there were two
people in him, and, as he had never dreamed, one
of them was the Gold-Killer.
He walked the streets in torment until late at
night, and then, overcome with fatigue, felt it
safest to go to a West Side rooming house, where
he got a dingy room and threw himself on the bed.


CHAPTER XXV
THE CRYSTAL FLASK
DROM the deep valley came a sigh of endless
T foliage rustling in the wind that blew from
the mountains, and the song of birds came in
distant thousand-voiced whistling. Ware stood on
the verge of a crag and looked down upon the
vast thicket that shone under the high sun like a
floor of emerald. In the middle of the wilderness
a spot of scarlet flamed like a ruby set in jade.
Ware rested his eyes on it and could not turn them
away.
The air was filled with a heavy drowsy vapor
that rose from the canyon, and as Ware breathed
it an anodyne of terror and oblivion shrouded him
and made him forgetful of all on earth save the
patch of red that burned in the middle of the green
wilderness. He swayed on the hanging ledge and
a subtle malediction called him. He plunged from
his immense height toward the witching carmine
flare.
Ware started up in his bed. The perfume of
the accursed flower seemed to fill the room. He
glared into the darkness half expecting the heavy
waxen petals to flame forth ruddily like some
241


242
GOLD-KILLER
hellish blossom. He saw nothing save blackness,
but the odor of the flower hung in his nostrils like
an hallucination. With a bursting head and a
feeling that phantoms were assailing him, he sank
back on the pillow again.
Now he was toiling through the green thicket,
where the whistling of birds deafened him, thrust-
ing his way between towering stalks burdened
with great impeding leaves. Finally he came upon
the red heart of the wilderness, and an evil ecstasy
shook him as he walked among the tall reeds which
bore each a single great fire-colored bloom. He
cried out in madness as he went, swelling his lungs
with the opiate fragrance.
Then the stalks around him bent down toward
him, and a hundred blood-hued flowers pressed to
kiss him. He screamed as the lovely waxen petals
crushed against his face and smothered him, and,
gasping with their lethal perfume, he fell to the
ground.
Ware sat up vividly awake. He leaped out of
bed, trying to shake the witchery and terror of
his dream from him, but the languorous odor of
the flaming petals remained, and filled the room
with a subtle emanation. Ware, now clear-headed
and alert, stood in the darkness and asked himself
whether some delusion of insanity had not taken
him. He tried to reason away the sensation that


THE CRYSTAL FLASK
243
beset him, but the faint odor of the accursed
flower hung in the darkness and, almost unwill-
ingly, he moved to hunt for the scarlet flower that
must be hid somewhere in the room. He took
his coat from the chair beside the bed to get a
match. The perfume of the flower grew more in-
tense. The coat reeked of the mysterious blossom.
The ominous flower in his coat pocket! The
thought filled Ware with fear. What did the por-
tent signify? In crazy haste he thrust his hand
into the pockets as he stood in the darkness, and
found no flower, but a flask that felt of cut glass.
He lighted the gas hastily.
He saw a small flat bottle half full of an amber
fluid. The flask exhaled the perfume of the flower.
The rubber cork had become loosened, and some
drops of the liquid had leaked into the coat-pocket.
As Ware smelled the bottle he caught the odor of
whiskey mingled with the perfume. He sank onto
the bed and the bottle shook in his hand as illumi-
nation came to him.
A drug! A drug distilled from the flaming
petals! A South American drug a thousand times
more powerful than the hasheesh of the Orient!
A drug that quickened the body to supernormal
strength! That was the Gold-Killer's secret.
Tom felt himself choking, his bosom bursting
with the tremendous joy that swelled in him, and,


244
GOLD-KILLER
in all the inferences and conjectures that rushed
on him, one thought clutched him. He must go
and tell Anne. He threw on his clothes and rushed
out of the house.


CHAPTER XXVI
SURMISES AND CLUES
RAY day was breaking. The dingy side
T street carried the dismal desolation of
early morning. There was no sound abroad save
the rattle of the inevitable milk wagon and the
clanging of a distant street car. His breast
throbbing with a delirious gladness, Ware made
long rapid steps over the blocks to the Rice man-
sion. He stood and rang the bell for ten minutes.
Finally a sleepy, scowling man servant came to
the door. He straightened up as by a spring when
he saw Ware.
“Tell Miss Rice that I must see her," Tom
commanded urgently.
The servant's fat, pasty face twitched with
fright, and he stammered incoherently.
“Hurry. This is urgent." Ware put on his
authority as a medicus.
With an air of piteous indecision the man
blinked his vague blue eyes, hesitated, turned
back into the house, leaving Ware standing at the
open door. He stepped into the hall and waited,
trembling with impatience. After a minute, the
man returned, saying:
245


246
GOLD-KILLER
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- - -
-
-
-
“Miss Rice asks you to wait. She will be down
presently." He showed Ware into the library and
drew up the shades.
Tom sat and eased his nerves by inspecting
again and again the cut-glass flask of the drugged
whiskey. Finally Anne appeared in a kimono, her
face pale and agitated.
Tom sprang to his feet as he saw her. “Anne,"
he called in a voice of fantastic joy. “I have come
to tell you the secret of the Gold-Killer."
They stood in the library with its shiny table
and shelves of books all lighted vaguely by the
early morning light, Tom's face a rush of happi-
ness, Anne's eyes dark with pity and fear.
“Anne, I did kill Baldy at the party,” Ware
said in tones of uncanny quiet.
“Tom, what is the matter with you?" Her
voice sounded full of emotion and misgiving. She
was afraid that he was mad.
“Don't be afraid, Anne." He laughed and took
her shoulders. She stood passive and full of fear.
“Sit down,” he continued in a big, jubilant voice,
"and I will tell you a story."
She sank into the lounge obediently. He placed
himself beside her and took her hands.
“Listen, Anne," he said.
“In South America, among the foothills of the
Andes, there are Indians who have a strange drug
which they brew from the juice of a great, glori-


SURMISES AND CLUES
247
ously perfumed red flower, a drug which makes a
man young and full of vigor and endowed with an
incredible strength of body. Down on Long
Island lives an old doctor who has a garden, in
which, surrounded by walls of green vegetation,
grows a patch of these flaming petals. Here in
New York there has been a circle of worshipers of
the red flower and its potent juice, a circle half
made up of men from the money heights of society
and half of thieves from the underworld. Some
terrible thing has set this circle exterminating
itself—its master has fallen to killing off his fol-
lowers. He has killed with a terrible weapon,
with the strangling hands of an addict full of the
drug and its unnatural strength."
Anne was filled with horror at the thought of
her father a drug slave.
“But what evidence have you of this, Tom?"
she queried slowly.
Ware handed her the flask of drugged whiskey.
“Smell it,” he commanded.
She uncorked the bottle and inhaled its fra-
grance.
“Yes,” she murmured, "that is the perfume of
the great red flower that my father wore.”
Tom settled himself back with a determined air.
“And now let me tell you the true version of our
adventures in quest of the Gold-Killer's secret."
He narrated thoughtfully while she sat beside


248
GOLD-KILLER
him and looked at him with a fascinated interest.
“The strength you saw in your father was the
strength of the drug. He felt young and brave
when under its spell and he liked to display his
powers. In an hour of vanity he wore the ac-
cursed blossom in his coat and you saw it. He did
not have the drug-strength in him on the night of
his murder.
“The crook Morgan, one of the flower fiends,
because of his infatuation for Chickie La Fon-
taine, gave her one of the blossoms as a love token.
She wore it on the night when I met her, a most
impudent thing. The Chief saw us and held us up
and took the flower from her. Later he and Dos
Andros encountered her at Bridges', where she
was waiting for me. They suspected that before
his death Morgan had given her some of the drug.
She denied this, but Morgan had. She told me in
a peculiar way of the whiskey that Morgan gave
her. In her fear that the Chief's bandits would
kill me at Mrs. Graham's party, she induced me to
take a huge drink, an overdose, of the drugged
whiskey—that is what stupefied me--and thrust
her flask of it into my pocket. Probably she told
me of this and I in my stupor did not notice it.
That is how I came to strangle Baldy.
“The Plank Road strangling, then, was the
work of Morgan. His hands were weak when he
wrestled with me-he had none of the drug in


SURMISES AND CLUES
249
him. Do you remember what I told you about
Flash Montague's and Baldy's each taking a small
drink, and how reticent they were afterward? All
the crooks fortified themselves with the drugged
drink.
“At our interview by wireless, the Chief would
not see us personally because he was just coming
out of a drug fit. Remember the coughing from
the outside. Remember that Joyce escaped while
his guards were in a coughing fit, and the way I
coughed yesterday morning.
“The curse that Dos Andros had said was upon
him was the curse of the drug.
“Chickie La Fontaine had drunk of her drugged
whiskey on the day when she had startled me with
her powerful hands. She, indeed, had been boast-
ing when she had said that she had known your
father."
Anne had listened eagerly, watching him every
moment. Daylight had broadened in the library
and the young interne's face seemed aglow with
new life and hope.
“But, Tom,” she asked, “who is the Gold-
Killer?"
“The actual strangler—the man seen at the
opera-may be almost any member of the under-
world devotees of the drug. Or there may have
been several. But the Gold-Killer is the master of


250
GOLD-KILLER
the Flaming Petals, the captain of the company of
devotees of the drug."
“Who is he?" Anne was fascinated by the
dominant figure of evil that Tom's hypothesis pre-
supposed.
“The Chief," he replied, decisively. “The
hard-mouthed, painted-faced lord of the gang of
underworld robbers.
“The evidence is conclusive," he pronounced in
the manner of a prosecuting attorney. “When he
snatched the flower from Chickie La Fontaine that
night in the park, he exclaimed That's mine!'
His manner with Dos Andros was that of master.
You remember how Flash at the party said that
the Chief was the final master of everything. And
then you said that Chickie told you as you left the
party that night that the Chief would think one of
the others did it. That means that the Chief, not
knowing of my getting a portion of the drug, can-
not think that I really killed Baldy, but must sur-
mise-as I surmised of Chickie—that someone else
of the gang at the party took occasion to strangle
Baldy as he lay on the floor. From that it seems
probable that there is no suspicion among the
worshipers of the Flaming Petals that we may
have any of the drug and may fathom the mys-
tery, and at the same time it indicates that Chickie
La Fontaine knows the Chief to be the master of
the Flaming Petals and the Gold-Killer."


CHAPTER XXVII
A GRIM BET
R. STRONG, the house physician, sat behind
the desk in his office at the Mount Rose Hos-
pital, and listened with a grave face. Occasion-
ally, as if to confirm Ware's extraordinary recital,
he glanced at Anne, who sit at one corner of the
desk, her face filled with an expression of intense
earnestness. Although he had just been routed
out of his bed at the impossible hour of 5 a. M., Dr.
Strong was perfect in his suit of surgeon's white
He might have just finished arraying himself with
immaculate care for an important operation.
Tom and Anne had hurried to the hospital, and
she had gone in, while he had waited on the street,
and had summoned Ware's young interne chum,
Bob Merritt. Briefly she had told him the circum-
stances that had brought her, and he had aroused
Dr. Strong and had let Ware into the building
through the basement.
Dr. Strong's square face carried an air of in-
terest and sympathy as he looked at the haggard
young man standing in front of his desk and
talking with feverish eagerness. He had cherished
Ware as the most promising of his young internes,
253


254
GOLD-KILLER
and it had almost jarred him out of his invincible
equanimity when the police had come to arrest the
young man as the monstrous Gold-Killer.
Ware rapidly sketched his adventures since the
night of the strangling of James Rice at the opera.
He told of the various surmises concerning the
secret of the giant hands: the musician, Joyce, the
supposed Indian colossus from South America,
Dos Andros' ape, Chickie La Fontaine. He did
not dare to mention his feverish conjectures about
Dr. Rutchers, the great neurologist. He climaxed
with the final hypothesis, the drug, and handed
Dr. Strong the flask of mysterious fluid he had
found in his pocket.
Dr. Strong took the flask with professional in-
terest, held it to the light, sniffed at it again and
again and with great attention.
“It has been known," he asserted in the man-
ner of giving a professional opinion, “that certain
Indian tribes in South America possess powerful
drugs of whose physiological action we have only
the vaguest hints."
"I want to test for a drug of the strychnine
series.” Ware thrust his two fists down heavily
on the glass cover of the desk, and stuck his head
forward combatively.
Anne arose, her face immensely serious, as
though testing for the strychnine series were a
stirring slogan with her.


A GRIM BET
255
Dr. Strong smiled at them, and finally he said
that Ware should receive the secret use of the
laboratory until noon. The door of the chemical
workshop would be locked while he was at his ex-
periments, and entrance forbidden. Ware's
friend, Bobby, would be assigned to watch the hall
and keep prying intruders away. Thus the hunted
man's presence in the institution would remain
unguessed.
The laboratory was a fine square room the
whiteness of which gleamed in the morning light.
It was lined with long tables burdened with jars
of chemical, test tubes, retorts, mortars, apothe-
caries' scales, bunsen burners, blow pipes and the
other paraphernalia of chemistry. Ware, his hair
dishevelled, and his face lined and weary, flung his
hat on a chair and breathed eagerly. In the fa-
miliar, friendly surroundings of the science that
had been his favorite study in medical school, the
evil consciousness of being a fugitive left him, and
he felt that he was his old unhunted self once
more.
While Ware joyously took possession of a work
table and arranged for himself an array of labora-
tory instruments, Anne stood beside him and
straightened her hair. She had come without a
hat, and the excitement and the night winds had
disordered her masses of rich, brown hair. Her
face was placid and hopeful, and she showed little


256
GOLD-KILLER
of the harassing anxiety that she had undergone.
Ware took the flask of amber fluid and poured a
few drops into a test tube. He felt he must be
sparing with the precious stuff. His tests might
be long, and he must make the drugged whiskey
last them through. He held the test tube over the
blue flame of a bunsen burner. The half spoonful
of stuff boiled up with a hiss, and the scent of the
Flaming Petals, mingled with the reek of whiskey,
filled the room. This indispensable preliminary
to chemical analysis done, Ware prepared for a
reaction test.
As he worked at his apparatus, Anne encour-
aged him merrily.
"You remind me of our old professor of chem-
istry,” she laughed. “He was almost as much in
earnest as you are."
A whim caught her.
"I wonder how much of my chemistry I remem-
ber,” she prattled on. “Let's see. I studied some
analysis. There was the blow pipe test. You watch
how the substance colors the flame: sodium yellow
(like shaking salt in a fire)-potassium red-lith-
ium green "
She took up a piece of platinum wire, dipped it
into the flask, which Ware had left standing on
the table, and playfully thrust the wire into the
bunsen flame. There was a hissing, and the flame
shot up a glaring violet.


258
GOLD-KILLER
1
lative efficiency of the Gold-Killer's band Ware
had had ample experience.
Ware looked up at Anne. She was standing
and gazing at him expectantly. He said:
"Joyce told you that he had overheard from
underlings among the robbers that the molium
had been delivered to an old physician down on
Long Island.”
Anne assured him that Joyce had said just that.
“Listen, Anne," Ware stared at her earnestly.
“The molium goes to an old doctor's estate down
on Long Island. Dos Andros tells of the patch of
red flowers in a garden down on Long Island.
Does there not seem to be some connection there?”
She nodded with a puzzled expression. She did
not see where his logical chain was taking them.
“Do you remember the partner of Dos Andros'
father, the strange old American scientist, who,
like Dos Andros, encountered the flaming petals
among the Indians and brought specimens of them
from the wilderness? The quavering old man's
cough that came from somewhere at our wireless
telephone interview with the Chief?”
“Yes, yes!” she exclaimed in eager compre-
hension.
"The Gold-Killer is an old doctor down on Long
Island, who has a thicket garden with a patch of
the flaming petals in the middle of it, who was the
partner of Dos Andros' father in South America,


A GRIM BET
259
and who was the real interviewer in the wireless
telephone affair."
Ware got up and paced the floor silently for a
while. Anne followed him with her eyes and did
not disturb his reverie. At last he said harshly:
“Among all the members of the Gold-Killer's
circle we have encountered only one physician.
That one is Dr. Rutchers."
“Tom!" Anne exclaimed in sharp reproach.
“I have thought of this before,” he placed his
hand on her shoulder to mollify her indignation.
“When I saw that the accusation against me of
having the giant hands was supported by the fact
that I was a physician, I could not help thinking of
the other physician in the affair-Dr. Rutchers,
who wore the flaming petals on his coat lapel. We
saw from the very first that the flower was a badge
of membership in the Gold-Killer circle. And we
have been fearing all the while that Dr. Rutchers
would be the next victim of the giant hands."
“There is nothing in that, Tom,” Anne's brown
eyes were indignant. “Dr. Rutchers is our friend.
Your friend! Hasn't he been urging our mar-
riage, urging me as hard as you, yourself, have
urged me?"
“Urging our marriage as hard as the Chief
urged it at the wireless interview." Ware faced
Anne calmly and spoke with relentless logic.
“The Gold-Killer wanted me to marry you so that


260
GOLD-KILLER
he could get into his power the husband of the
Rice heiress. He knew all about me and you-
from the very first. Don't you remember how it
puzzled us? It is clear now. Dr. Rutchers knew
about me—and you.”
Ware took up another train of thought.
1 “All of the murdered wealthy men were con-
stant patients of Dr. Rutchers'. John Holden, the
first man killed, left his fortune to Dr. Rutchers'
Neuro-chemical Clinic. If we assume that the
Gold-Killer stranglings began with one murder
from which the others followed, as one lie is suc-
ceeded by a dozen lies—then the first killing re-
mains unmotivated. It remains unmotivated un-
less we assume that Dr. Rutchers is the Gold-
Killer. If we do, everything is clear. The master
of the flaming petals stood in need of money. He
had the group of millionaire patients in his power.
He induced one of them to make a will in his favor,
and he went into the new underworld and enslaved
a practiced criminal with the drug and had the
man strangle the victim. From this seed other
murders hatched (though the Gold-Killer was too
sagacious to have any more wills favor him), and
the underworld organization developed and served
as an agent not merely for the killings but also for
the procuring of the necessary molium.”
Anne's face was troubled. She was unable to
make any reply, save the obstinate phrase:


262
GOLD-KILLER
“What next?” His jaw clamped tightly.
“I think that the Chief is the Gold-Killer," she
said diffidently.
He did not reply, and she continued with an air
of mental effort:
“The Chief, on the night when he filched the
flower from Chickie La Fontaine in the park, cried
out arrogantly that the Flaming Petals were his."
Her sense of the ludicrous got the best of her and
she began to mimic Ware's own previous reason-
ings. “That is one of the irrefutable clues in the
mystery. The robbers, and Dos Andros, too, have
acted like servants before a master in the presence
of the Chief. And Flash Montague in his drunk-
enness exclaimed that the black-mustached Chief
was the great master of everything."
Ware looked troubled. He could not blind him-
self to the reasonableness of Anne's arguments.
His hypothesis that Dr. Rutchers was the Gold-
Killer did not explain quite everything.
“It is the Chief,” Anne laughed at Ware's per-
turbation.
“It is the old neurologist,” Ware could not help
smiling at her.
“I will bet you it is the Chief,” she persisted.
“I will bet you it is the old neurologist." He
realized that they were bantering about serious
matters. But levity and romance caught them
both.


A GRIM BET
265
know me. I don't think there will be any trouble
in getting a machine for the morning."
“I am going along with you," Anne took his
arm determinedly.
He looked at her admiringly.
“It is going to be nothing more than an obser-
vation flight,” he replied. “We will merely see
what is to be seen and return, and I guess you can
go."


NOSE-DIVE!
267
Tom looked worried for an instant. “You're
not going to be frightened, are you, dear? It
would make a pretty mess, if you were.”
Her eyes reproved him.
“Oh, of course you aren't! What a fool I am!”
he reproached himself. “Now, dear, I'll crawl
back to my hole and try to get some sleep. You'd
best do the same—and don't be worrying your
precious head too much about whether it's the
Chief or whether it's Dr. Rutchers—maybe you'll
have to marry me, you know—and that might al-
most be worse than shipping me off to Europe.
Here's Bobby. What's the news?”
“All set,” replied the young interne. “I'll take
Miss Rice home, and as for you-don't let the de-
tectives get you. Can you meet us at the left hand
corner of the avenue at the Williamsburg Bridge
at a quarter of two-A. M., my dear chap! Don't
oversleep, anyone!”
They broke up, laughing to conceal their excite-
ment. Would the morning bring success and a
clearing of the mystery and of the shadow over
Tom that was beginning to prove more than har-
assing? There were no sentimental regrets in
Tom's mind as to the killing of Baldy. It had
been a clear case of self-defense; but Tom occa-
sionally thought bitterly of his friends and of his
cousins, the only relatives he had. What in hell
did they think of him anyway? Ah, well, it didn't


CHAPTER XXIX
SOLUTION AND COMPROMISE
WIZENED, thin little yellow face, a pair of
H yellowish-green eyes, a few wisps of gray
hair—these, bending over her, called Anne to the
realization that she was not dead. She had been
lying, looking up at the blue sky, seeing nothing
else, thinking how strange and how still the state
of death was, but now she stirred and, carefully,
fearful that she was hurt, she raised herself, first
on one elbow and then to a sitting position. Then
she stood, shakily. She had been thrown clear of
the aeroplane—the safety strap had broken. She
rushed toward the machine as she thought of Tom.
One wing had been badly smashed, and part of
the under carriage had snapped. Tom sat crum-
pled forward over the controls. She was sick with
fear. She turned to look at the strange creature
who had been bending over her. He was a tiny old
man, whose eyes blinked at her widely, without
seeming to comprehend what was going on.
“Come," she commanded, "help me.”
The little old man grumbled indistinctly, but
followed her. Together they lifted Tom from the
crushed seat of the aëroplane. He stirred as they
273


274
GOLD-KILLER
did so, but did not open his eyes. There was a
gash across his forehead. They rested him on the
grass, while Anne tried to stop the flow of blood
with her handkerchief.
“Who lives here?” Anne demanded. Then she
remembered the patch of red flowers in the garden
about the house, and her heart went cold. She
looked about hastily. Yes, through a hedge of
sunflowers she could see a glow of red, and the
peculiar fragrance of the flower had hung in the
air since they had crashed. She had not realized
its presence, but now it came to her bitterly.
“Who lives here?” she demanded again.
The old man mumbled in a way that was com-
pletely unintelligible.
Anne realized with a start of horror that he was
either crazy or dumb, perhaps both. At any rate,
she could catch no word of what he was saying to
her. He turned and walked rapidly toward the
house. Anne bent over Tom. By now the young
doctor's eyes were open.
“Could you get up, dear?" she asked. Tom
smiled and made an attempt to rise. He fell back
once more.
“It's my leg, dear girl," he explained. “Just a
second and I'll be with you."
The funny little gray man now returned, and
beckoned peremptorily. Tom was able, with
Anne's assistance, to rise, and, with one arm


276
GOLD-KILLER
mysterious being owned the house and its tell-tale
garden; for steps were sounding along the hall.
The shriveled old servant turned toward them,
smiling. He spoke now, and his words were clear:
“Dr. Rutchers is coming."
Anne started and looked at Tom. They turned
toward the door, awaiting the approach of the
man they had suspected. The door opened, and
there walked in before them, not the bent form of
the old neurologist with his drooping nether lip,
but the straight, pink-cheeked, hard-mouthed fig-
ure of the Chief.
“Dr. Rutchers—the Chief-they are one, the
Gold-Killer!” gasped Tom, as he understood the
feeling of familiarity that he had felt all along as
he had looked at the painted face of the Chief. It
was the effect of the drug. The bent form had
straightened, the lower lip pulled up, the eyelids
drawn, the muscles of the cheeks stretched and
filled. This, with the rouge and dyeing of hair
and mustache, created an almost perfect disguise.
This, too, was the explanation of that dry, hacking
cough of an old man, the cough that had mystified
on the day they were kidnaped. Of course the
Chief would not see them at the wireless telephone
interview, when he was coming out of the drug
and changing from the strong, middle-aged cap-
tain of the underworld gang to the old, shaking
neurologist.


SOLUTION AND COMPROMISE
281
rible, strength-giving drug, as was your father, as
was the group of great financiers and of under-
world crooks, all swayed by the influence of that
one man lying dead there: the Gold-Killer-Dr.
Rutchers in the high world—the Chief in the
underworld. He is the scientist who, I told you,
was with me on that fatal expedition in the Andes.
It was he who studied the terrible properties of
the drug, and transported some of the flowers to
this garden on Long Island. He developed them
so that they would grow in this clime. He discov-
ered a process of distillation so that, by a com-
pounding of whiskey, molium and the juice of the
flaming petals, the strength-giving, youth-revive
ing drug could be made far more powerful than it
was as the crude Indians knew it. At first he used
it for good purposes only, for giving vigor and
health to some of his most wealthy patients so that
they might throw off their ailments. Then he went
mad over his pet hobby, his asylum for the study
of certain types of insanity, and for the effect of
his flower-drug upon the mental processes. James
Holden, one of his addicts, had willed all of his
fortune to the institution, and it was then that the
scientist conceived the idea of securing a band of
underworld slaves of the drug, and of using one of
them to put Holden out of the way, thus securing
for his hospital and himself the great fortune. To
this end he went into the underworld, disguising


282
GOLD-KILLER
himself by the clever use of the youth-giving prop-
erties of the drug, and, through the power of the
drug, established himself as the masterful under-
world Chief. None of his underworld followers
knew him as Dr. Rutchers, the society specialist,
and none of the millionaires knew him as the
powerful master of the underworld. But your
father, Miss Rice, and some of the others, sus-
pected that the mysterious hands of the Gold-
Killer were operating under the sway of the drug,
and because of this suspicion the Gold-Killer de-
cided that they must all go. From then on, fear
spread in the ranks of the drug-takers, but so
great was their enslavement to the drug that they
did not dare to expose the affair."
He was silent for a moment, as he looked in-
tently at Anne.
“I trust you know, Anne, that I really loved
yon, and that I was hoping against hope that
somehow I would be able to throw off the curse of
which I tried so hard to tell you. I like you, too,
Tom Ware, and I wish you all luck. Good-by,
I'll get out of this, if you are willing. You won't
have any trouble in clearing up the whole affair
now without me.”
He did not wait for a word from them, but went
quickly out of the room. Anne called after him,
but Tom restrained her.
“Let him go, dear.”


SOLUTION AND COMPROMISE 283
She helped him limp out of the ghastly room.
In the hall they looked at each other silently and
laughed.
“Dr. Rutchers—or the Chief-guess we both
won and lost,” said Tom. “Suppose we settle the
question by getting married and going to Europe,
too—that is, as soon as my broken leg gets well.”
Anne sighed. “Oh, well, well. But first we've
got to 'tend to that silly old leg, and who knows,
perhaps they may have you in jail yet on that
bootlegging charge?”
“Practical Anne," said Tom, but what did he
care for Europe or jail as he looked down again
at her up-turned eyes and ready lips.
THE END