# Unseen Hands/Chapter 8
### CHAPTER VIII
#### THE NEEDLE

"I DON'T need the cook to corroborate you, Jane." The detective rose. "But I want to have a little talk with her nevertheless. Will you show me to the kitchen?"
Jane hesitated.
"She'll be starting lunch soon, sir, and I'd not like to be the one to bother her. She's goodhearted but fiery, being French."
"Never mind about that. I want to see her."
With obvious trepidation Jane led the way downstairs to a spacious kitchen where a very fat woman stood at the table beating eggs. She glanced up, lifting a triple row of chins and glared at the intruders; and Jane turned incontinently and fled.
"Good morning, Marcelle." He recalled opportunely that Miss Meade had mentioned her name to him.
"Bon jour, Monsieur," she responded with native politeness, but her small eyes were stony. "Will Monsieur have the goodness to tell me what he desires in my kitchen?"
"Something more important than that very excellent omelette which you are making." He smiled genially. "I'm from Police Headquarters."
"So I have heard, Monsieur, but the children must eat just the same. I do not know where this house would go ​to if it were not for me. No one keeping regular hours, no one eating." She turned to him and held out both hands. "I ask you, Monsieur, how one can take the sorrow when it comes, how one can bear the fear of he knows not what, if he have not the full stomach? Me, I am afraid, I tr-remble, I think I shall be the next that this so evil fiend which possesses this house shall take; but when I have eaten I say: 'If it comes, it comes. C'est tout. If it does not come, I give myself the great fear for nothing.'"
"There's philosophy in that," Odell conceded. "But I can't sit down and let it come to you all again, you know. I am here to find out if I can who this fiend of yours is, and I must have help. As you say, if it were not for you this house would be indeed upside down; and so I came to you. Tell me, Marcelle, what do you think of it all?"
"Me? I think much better of it since this morning. Monsieur." His crass flattery had had its effect, and Marcelle, the omelette forgotten, faced him with a good-natured smile and her fat arms akimbo. "Before, when Monsieur Julian was taken so soon after his mother, I say to myself: 'It is not good. It is not the will of the good God as Mademoiselle Meade try to tell me, nor is it accident which take two from the same family in so quick time. It is evil, and I do not know whether that evil be human or of the infernal spirits.' Now that I know it is human I am not so afraid. I wait only to catch him at his work!"
She made an eloquent gesture and was turning again to the table when Odell asked a hurried question.
"This is the tradesmen's door, is it not? The only back door?"
​"Yes, Monsieur."
"You can see anyone who goes out?"
"No one comes or goes that way that I do not know it, Monsieur."
"Did you see Peters when he left this morning?"
"No, Monsieur. That poltroon! Never did I like his eyes."
Odell started. Could that be what Gerda had meant? But why should she warn him when Peters had already disappeared?
"That he should run when women stay!" Marcelle continued in fine scorn. "He knew better than to go this way, for I should have stopped him. It must be that he used the front entrance. Bête!"
"Jane tells me that you helped her clean the rooms of young Mr. Chalmers after he died. Did you notice any marks upon the tub?"
"But yes, Monsieur. The marks of both the poor child's hands. It was terrible, that sight! It is not well to think of. Me, I am most sorry for poor Monsieur Gene."
"For Monsieur Gene," repeated the detective in astonishment. "Were he and his brother so inseparable, then?"
"It is not that, Monsieur; but the very night before Monsieur Julian died they have so wicked a quarrel! Me, I am a light sleeper and my room is just at the head of the stairs above them. On Tuesday evening I make a soufflé for dessert—and figure to yourself, it is a failure, it falls!" She paused dramatically. "I am disconsolate; for only an artist can make a soufflé, and I think that I am losing my skill. I have the headache and I am sick in my ​heart! I go to bed and at last I sleep, but I wake very late and I hear loud voices.
"I listen, for my door is open because of the heat. It is Monsieur Julian and Monsieur Gene and they are both so angry! I rise to close my door, but I hear one word that make me stand still like a statue. It is 'thief' and it is Monsieur Julian who says it. Then there is the sound of a blow; and me, I go out in the hall and look over the banisters. Monsieur Julian's door is also open, and there is the sound of scuffling and the messieurs breathing hoarsely and cursing.
"At last there came a jar and squeak of the bed-springs, as if one had thrown the other across the bed; and in a moment Monsieur Julian appear at the door of his room dragging Monsieur Gene by the collar.
"He throw him out into the hall and close the door; and me, I go back into my room without waiting to see Monsieur Gene pick himself up. But every time I look at his so sad face now I think he grieves him because his brother died without the reconciliation."
"You do not recall any more of the conversation than just the one word 'thief', do you, Marcelle?"
"No, Monsieur; and that was only the talk of bad little boys calling the names to each other that they did not mean. But this will not help you in your search nor put my omelette in the pan."
She turned with an air of finality to the table, and the detective went slowly upstairs. So Julian and Gene had quarreled on the last night of the former's life, and Gene had been afraid or unwilling to admit it to him that morning.
​Jane met him at the head of the stairs.
"The men are here now to put up the picture, sir."
"Very well, I'll see them." He went to the library, where he found two workmen standing in dubious silence before the portrait which they had raised from the desk. At his approach they turned and the huskier of the two remarked:
"We can't handle this. We ain't used to this sort of work, boss."
"I thought not." Odell smiled. "Are you the same men who were here this morning?"
"We are." The spokesman advanced truculently. "If you think it is any joke comin' twice and we paid by our time—"
"How long would it have taken you to hang that portrait, supposing you had done that sort of work before?" Odell interrupted.
"The good part of an hour," the other responded sulkily.
"Well, I'll pay you for that hour and you can loaf away the rest of it after the next two minutes if you'll give me your expert opinion on something you do know about."
The two men looked at each other and then the smaller one remarked:
"Sounds fair enough; but I knew there was somethin' phoney about this whole business after what happened this morning. What do you say, Bill?"
"All right." The other hitched his overall-strap over one shoulder. "We'll give it a try, sir."
Odell paid them and then drew from his pocket the short lengths of steel wire which he had cut from the back of the portrait-frame that morning.
"This end I clipped myself," he explained. "Can you ​tell me how the other end was cut? By what sort of a tool?"
Each of the men took a piece of the wire and examined it doubtfully. After a moment the smaller one looked up with a grin.
"I give it up, boss," he said. "It wasn't a clipper or the ends would be pinched together more; these are all frayed out. Looks as if it had been chewed. What do you say, Bill?"
Bill proved all at once to be a person of tact as well as discernment.
"It was either one of two things; an electric circular saw or an electric file. If I've tumbled to the game right, mister, I figure there wouldn't have been room to work the circular saw." He winked expansively toward the portrait "I guess you'll find that the party used an electric file, a small one but high-powered, and kept her hummin'."
"How long would it take to cut through one of these wires with the file you mention?" Odell asked.
"Five or six minutes."
"Does it make much noise?" the detective persisted.
"Only a low buzzin' and dronin'."
"Hard to operate?"
"No. A child could work it if it was taught how, but it takes strength to hold her in position once she gets to goin' so fast you can't see her. I wouldn't like to try it in any awk'ard position,"—again he glanced at the portrait—"and I'm the strongest man at Kenny's."
"That's all I wanted to know." Odell put the pieces of wire back into his pocket. "You can go now. You've got forty-five minutes to yourselves."
​"Yes, thank'ee, sir."
After they had taken their departure the detective stood for a minute or two in thought and then turned to ring the bell, but he found himself confronted once more by Miss Meade.
"Sergeant Odell, who were those men?"
"They were sent for to rehang the portrait, I believe, but they were mere carpenters and unable to handle the job," he replied. How long she had been standing there he could not imagine, and he began to feel a certain irritation against her. She was very gentle and appealing and all that, but why couldn't she walk so that one could hear her coming?
"Peters must have sent for them before he left, I suppose, but he should have consulted me." She was gazing at the face of the portrait and her voice was introspective. "That was my father, you know. He—but I am forgetting. I came to ask you if I might send you a tray of lunch in here?"
"Thanks, no." He glanced at his watch. "Miss Meade, will you give me the address of the beauty-parlor where Mrs. Lorne was having treatments at the time of her death?"
"It is not exactly a beauty-parlor; it is called Monsieur Florian's, and is at 681 Fifth Avenue. He considers himself a specialist, I believe; but I saw no difference in my sister. To me she had not changed since her first marriage."
"A specialist, you say? Will you tell me too, Miss Meade, what Doctor Adams's office hours are?"
"From nine to ten, one to two, and five to seven," she replied. "But he will look in sometime this afternoon to see ​how Mr. Lorne is getting along; and you may consult him then if you wish to do so."
"I do not know when I can get back, Miss Meade. I have an appointment now which I must keep. When I return I want to have an interview with Miss Chalmers and also with her brother, her youngest brother."
"I am afraid that will be impossible. He is a semi-invalid, and this is one of his bad days—"
Her expostulation was interrupted by a voice from the doorway.
"If you please, Miss Meade, there are four men here, and they say they want to speak to Sergeant Odell." It was Jane, and at her heels four plainclothesmen entered and stopped just within the doorway.
"Hello, Smith, Kelly, Porter; I asked the chief to be sure to send you. Hello, Taylor." Odell greeted them in turn and then remarked to the shrinking figure beside him, "They're my assistants from headquarters, Miss Meade. I'm sorry to inflict them upon you, but we've got to guard against a repetition of the outrages of last night and this morning. Please give them full liberty to go where they like about the house, and tell everyone that they are acting under my orders and must not be interfered with."
"Certainly, Sergeant Odell." Miss Meade moved to the door. "Let me know if there is anything I can do to aid them."
Odell issued instructions to his men, glanced at a telephone book for a moment, and then left the house. If he walked rapidly enough he could catch Doctor Adams at his office before he started upon his afternoon round of visits. He felt that he needed air and exercise after the morning ​with its problems crowding fast upon each other's heels. He had acquired a bewildering amount of data, most of which must in the end prove to be irrelevant; but he had made progress in one direction at least, and there remained just one more point to be cleared up before he handed in his report of the morning's progress to his chief.
Doctor Adams's office, the address of which he had learned in that last hasty glimpse at the telephone book, was a most imposing one; but the reception room was practically empty owing to the lateness of the hour, and soon Odell was ushered into the private consulting-office.
The doctor proved to be a small, genial man of about sixty, with a shock of snow-white hair and keen twinkling dark eyes beneath bushy white brows.
"From Police Headquarters?" he repeated when his visitor had disclosed his identity.
"Yes, Doctor. We have been asked to inquire into the death of Mrs. Richard Lorne."
"Dear me!" The doctor shook his head. "The medical examiner was quite satisfied with my report and that of the specialists. This will be a sad blow to the family. I cannot think who—"
"It was the family themselves who asked for an investigation," Odell remarked. "I believe that the cause of Mrs. Lorne's death was not fully determined."
"Most certainly it was!" the little doctor replied indignantly. "She died from blood-poisoning. We were all agreed upon that."
"Yet you were unable to check it," Odell reminded him quietly. "Were you all agreed also upon the nature of the poison involved?"
​"What do you mean, sir?"
The specialists admit that the case baffled them from the start; that they advised every known method of cure, but the infection kept spreading; and that they virtually gave up the case at last," Odell explained mendaciously.
"Well, if McCutchen admitted that there is no harm in my telling you that it was unique in my experience. There was every evidence of blood-poison, and yet it failed to respond in the least degree to the treatment usual in such cases," Doctor Adams admitted. "The blood itself, of which we took many samples for analysis, did not reveal the slightest trace of any poison; and the patient, although suffering great pain, remained conscious almost until the last"
"I believe you took some of the embroidery silk with which Mrs. Lorne had been working at the time she pricked her finger; did you not?"
"Yes, Sergeant. I thought that perhaps some of the dye had entered the puncture, but upon analysis it proved to be harmless."
The detective leaned forward in his chair.
"You took the needle also, I believe?"
The physician nodded.
"It was as clean as though it had been sterilized. The infection must have come from something else. If people would only realize the necessity of sterilization of even the smallest abrasion or puncture the death-rate would be lowered to an astonishing degree."
"Perhaps there was something wrong with Mrs. Lorne's blood," Odell ventured "Could that have been a contributory cause. Doctor?*
"No," the other replied emphatically. "Her blood was ​almost one-hundred per cent pure. Mrs. Lorne was in perfect health until the day she ran the needle into her finger. I have been her family physician for many years. I brought all her children into the world, and I knew her constitution thoroughly. Moreover, the analysis of her blood would have shown any impurity."
"You were, aware that up to the time of her illness she was taking a course of beauty treatment of some sort?"
The doctor snorted.
"Beauty butchery, you mean!" he retorted. "Quack surgery! Face-lifting, they call it; cut the skin around the temples and raise it to remove wrinkles and make the skin tight. I did all I could to prevent her making a fool of herself; but if you had known Mrs. Lorne, Sergeant, you would know that you might as well have talked to the winds as try to dissuade her from anything she had set her mind upon. She had the effrontery to tell her husband that I had ordered her to stay in town and undergo a course of electrical treatments; and I—I was weak enough to back her up. But I watched the progress of the skin-lifting process carefully, and I can certify that it had nothing to do with her death. The treatment was completed and the slight incisions fully healed several days before the needle episode."
"Have you that needle now, Doctor?" The query was made in a quiet, almost casual tone, but it seemed an age to the detective before the little doctor responded:
"I have. I don't know why I preserved it; but it marked a case which was, as I have said, unique in my experience. Would you like to see it, Sergeant?"
"If you will be so kind."
The physician walked over to a glass case which stood ​against the wall and removed from it a small box, which he laid upon the table and opened. Odell drew his chair up to the table and took from his pocket the small black paper packet and a piece of scarlet embroidery silk.
Then, while Doctor Adams watched him with growing amazement, he picked up the needle from the box, opened the packet and compared the others with it, afterward laying the packet aside. Next he took up the piece of embroidery silk and endeavored to thread the needle. His maneuvers would have been comic had it not been for the tenseness of his expression as for the following ten minutes he struggled with his unaccustomed task. At last he looked up at the other.
"Doctor Adams, while I was awaiting my turn to consult you I studied the nurse who acts as attendant in your waiting-room. I saw that she had keen eyes and a steady hand. May I ask that you summon her for a moment?"
"Certainly, Sergeant." The physician pressed a button on his desk. "I must confess that I am tremendously interested, but I cannot imagine what point you are trying to satisfy yourself upon."
"I will tell you presently," Odell responded as the trim young woman entered.
"Miss Wardell, this gentleman would like you to do something for him."
She shifted her tranquil gaze from the doctor to his visitor, and Odell held out to her the needle and silk.
"Will you thread this for me, please?"
Wondering, Miss Wardell took them from him; but after one or two fruitless attempts to comply she raised her eyes again to his.
​"It is impossible," she said quietly. "The silk is far too coarse for this needle. Wait." She had spied the packet upon the table, and opening it she selected another needle and threaded it triumphantly. "See. This is the proper needle for this silk; it is at least three sizes larger than the one you gave me first."
"Thank you." The detective's face gave no sign of the excitement which was surging within him. "You have decided a very nice little point for me."
When Miss Wardell had departed the physician bent over the table and demanded: "What does this all mean?"
"It means, Doctor, that I have obtained the last proof I required to convince me that my theory was based on fact. This needle which was given to you was not the one with which Mrs. Lorne pricked her finger; it had been substituted for the original, placed in the embroidery work on which the unfortunate lady had been engaged; and only the haste with which the substitution was made and the carelessness shown in selecting a needle at random from this packet without regard to its size has revealed the truth. Mrs. Lorne was murdered!"