# Bluff

Extracted from Detective Story magazine, 1919 Apr 26, pp. 75–85.
Bluff
By
Anthony M. Rud
Author of “The Invisible Blinker,” etc.
TO those who have followed in the newspapers the exploits of Kurt Barron, and who know of his sad accident—falling through the well of a spiral stair—the crime clinic will come as no surprise. Though condemned to a sedentary life because of the paralysis that resulted from an injury to his spine, Kurt Barron could not give up his absorbing occupation. At first his injury was thought to be nothing more than a broken collar bone, but the more insidious and permanent injury developed shortly after the collar bone had knit together. Nor could he bear to see the fruits of his research and logic lost forever to criminology. So he gathered about him ten of the most promising young detectives of America with the avowed intent of teaching each of them all he had learned in his wide and varied career. Each case which appeared was handled individually by one of the ten—under Barron’s supervision and check. The remaining nine—supposing only one case were in hand as rarely happened—made separate diagnoses, Then all results were checked by Barron, and the true solution compared with the individual deductions. Such cases as are deemed worthy of especial notice shall be presented here, each student of the crime clinic telling his own story with the aid and advice of Mr. Rud. J. H. E.
Really, I thought the chap a bit daft. Privations act that way sometimes, holding off, say, till their victim passes fifty, and then hitting him over the head with a cerebral sandbag. Besides, I’ve always felt a bit queer about the antarctic, shivery and sort of creepy—and not because of the cold, either, because that I have not felt. It was my client himself, old Nelson Conover, who gave us the sinister facts concerning the fauna and flora of McKinley Land and described first the horrible antiscians of the Esquimos. I had heard him lecture in Orchestra Hall, and if the sights and experiences of his three years out of Hobart weren’t enough to give him waking nightmares for life—— But I must not stray from my story into this.
Except I saw Kurt Barron close his eyes while he listened, I’d have known old Nels was inviting me on a corned-beef shooting trip. With the chief looking as if he had fallen asleep, stiff and straight in that shoulder cast of his, I knew he gave more credence than I did to the yarn. It was always Kurt Barron’s way, at least since I have known him. If he looked alert and interested you might feel sure he thought you a consummate ass. If he seemed to go to sleep, only punching through a pertinent inquiry now and then as you grew discouraged, it might be that the eager, forceful brain behind that lined, white mask of face was grappling with the problem you presented.
“And you expect a third attempt?”
It was Kurt Barron’s voice cutting through the slurred, hesitating recital of the explorer like a circular saw slices through white pine. I saw the closed eyes flicker to slits.
“W-why, yes, wouldn’t you, my dear sir? The fiend has tried for me once—ah—with illuminating gas, locking me in my chamber, and once has shot at me, tearing off this ear.” Nelson Conover lifted his left hand to the vestigial remnant, “Isn’t it—ah—reasonable to presuppose a third attempt, and after that a fourth, and so on—ah—until one proves successful? Or until I manage to line up the criminal along the sights of my gun? I may say that now I go everywhere well armed, sir!” With that, Conover unbuttoned and pulled back his jacket, revealing the butt of a small automatic projecting from an armpit holster.
A slight twitch of derision tugged at Barron’s mouth. “You'll find that caliber not worth much against a determined criminal,” he suggested, adding with a bored air: “And buttoning that high coat puts it farther away than the hip pocket. Did you go gunning for Esquimos in that fashion, Mr. Conover?”
Conover stiffened with a jerk. “The records of my voyages are public property, sir!” he retorted. “You are at liberty to examine them at any time. That is not the question now. I am aware that I cannot cope with this cunning madman who is after me, and that is why I come to you.”
“To have us trace him out?”
It was the peculiar tone in the chief’s voice that made me sit up. I did not understand, yet for some reason he wanted me to watch the effect of this question on Conover.
“No—yes, of course. Trace him out, by all means.” For some occult reason Nelson Conover seemed a trifle confused. “As I said, though, I want a man to come with me who can shoot quick and—ah—straight, when the mark is another man. If he comes with me and stays by my side while you close in upon the rear, we ought to get the assassin.”
Barron agreed, and he had me lead Conover to a chair in the next room. Then I returned for last instructions.
“I don’t like him, Ellsworth,” Barron told me rapidly, when the sound-proof door closed. “He is smug and fishy in spite of his white hair. Yet there is no doubt that his life is in danger. Go with him, and do your level best. Report every occurrence in the usual way. I venture to suggest that if you should happen to capture this criminal alive, you might discover more than Nelson Conover would care to have published.”
My eyes widened. “Then you think——” I began.
Barron hushed me. “Mere conjecture,” he replied. “Conjecture based on some discrepancies both in Conover and in his book. But go along, and be ready for surprises. It wouldn’t surprise me if there proved to be more than one criminal to deal with.”
The surprises Barron promised came fast when once I had quitted the audience chamber, where, behind the flowered tapestry wall, sat the rest of the crime clinic, making notes and observations.
Conover’s limousine waited at the curb, its driver slouched deep in his fur coat. Conover, aways a stickler for service from subordinates, growled something nasty about the worthlessness of a sleepy chauffeur.
I was on my guard, for Kurt Barron aroused me to a sort of prickly alertness. I fancied something sinister in this somnolence of the driver—something beyond inattention. And I was right, though it was not until I had preceded Conover into the car that certainty came.
And I stepped in slowly, half expecting a crouching assailant to rush out upon me. None did. The interior of the car was empty. Gazing about guardedly I did fasten upon a discovery fully as startling, however. From the hand-buffed Spanish leather cushions of the rear seat projected three tiny points, none more than a half inch above the luxurious upholstery! Pushing Conover back with a cry of warning, I placed the tips of my fingers cautiously about the base of one of the needles—for needles I saw them to be—and pressed downward. A thin, bubbling stream of greenish slime—overpoweringly fetid and musty in odor—spurted out of the needle over the back of my left hand!
I jumped, and wasted no time wiping off the stuff, you may be sure. Nelson Conover watched me, horror bulging in his rotund countenance. In spite of thrill and a certain exultation at having defeated our opponents in this first meeting, I oddly formed a mental lampoon of the fat, hypocritical face convulsed by the pain, surprise, and terror that must have come had Conover fallen into the trap. I had little sympathy for him. Somehow he reminded me always of a fat, squashy toad, rather than the steel-souled venturer into the far places his work proclaimed. Had I been ignorant of his record I should have guessed him to be a coward.
“Hypodermic needles—snake venom, probably!” I explained tersely, seeing to it that the last trace of slime was cleaned from my skin. “Do you happen to know this variety of snake, Mr. Conover?”
It was a random shot, inspired by the suspicion which Barron had implanted in my mind, yet it told. The explorer fell back a pace, his jaw quivering, and from his puttylike pallor I thought him on the verge of fainting.
“Snake?” he echoed. “N-no, I—why do you ask me that?” he cried. “How should I know anything about snakes, and snake poisons?”
“Oh, for no reason,” I shrugged. “I thought that perhaps while you were on Reber Peninsula——”
Speculation died in my throat. At that moment Conover’s chauffeur had slumped downward from his seat and fallen across the gear and brake levers. I caught him up, lifting him back on the seat for purposes of examination. He was dead, beyond doubt. When I lifted off his stiff cap, which had been crammed closely over his brows, I found the top center of his skull riven through by a heavy instrument. He doubtless had not known what hit him.
Conover seemed much less concerned over the luckless driver than over the poison needles in back, though.
“Th-they p-put in a w-whole new cushion!” he stammered. “T-this isn’t mine at all. See, it doesn’t match!” He spoke the truth. Instead of brown to match the other leather, this cushion alone was green. The conspirators had relied upon shadow in the back of the car for carrying through their purpose.
“Well, I'll send it up to Kurt Barron,” I told him. “He'll soon know the poison employed and-be on the trail of the man or men who put it there.”
But Conover strangely would have none of it. He leaped into the front seat, helping me stow the chauffeur’s body behind, and asked me to drive him to the police station. He insisted upon taking the cushion along with us, seeming to dread having Barron see it at all. That made me suspicious, of course. The first thing I did, while he told the police captain of the chauffeur’s violent and inexplicable death, was to squirt a few drops of the venom into a test vial—unobserved, of course. I joined the conversation in time to discover that Nelson Conover told nothing of his fears for his own life to the police—a fact I thought suspicious in itself, Then, when I reached Conover Glen I scribbled a short descriptive note, adding that circumstances now had brought the police into the matter along with us, and handed this with the vial to the first pencil-and-shoestring mendicant I found passing by the estate. A strange proceeding, perhaps, but that beggar—who was a member of Barron’s crime clinic—had offered me a pencil in a manner distinctive and peculiar.
The daring of men who would execute one murder and plant the means for performing another while their intended victim was engaged in placing the case in the hands of one of the shrewdest detectives in North America bothered me so I lay awake almost the whole of my first night at Conover Glen—and nothing happened. Nelson Conover watched with me for several hours after dinner, a sawed-off shotgun across his knees. Then he took his bath and retired. At his special request I made a round of the doors and windows, finding them triple locked and apparently safe against even the ingenuity of a Raffles. I have found from experience that while sandpapered fingers may solve the tumblers of a safe, bars for the windows and pairs of simple check bolts on doors usually balk the cleverest intruder. Of course these may be circumvented in other ways—but that is part of my story.
I stayed closer than a noontide shadow to Nelson Conover next day. Although nothing had actually happened, yet when at dinner he had uncorked a quart of champagne, a fragrance of bitter almonds flung itself high above the bouquet of wine. I seized the bottle, and at the same second he looked horrified understanding at me. Sufficient cyanide of potassium had been dumped into the vintage quart to poison a platoon of troops!
There is no gain in describing each step in the development of his cowardice, which manifested itself in truly disgusting fashion. This time, still shaken from the experience which had done for poor Belford, his chauffeur, he collapsed like weak jelly released from its mold. Sending a sample of the wine to Barron, together with my usual report, I ordered Conover to his room. There he could read, or bathe, or sweat out his fear; I did not care. I wished to interview some of the servants,. for I had developed life-sized suspicion, particularly of the butler.
Horrocks, the butler, was a grim, clean-shaven man of forty or thereabouts. The skin of his obtuse chin was leaden-hued with a weight of black hair beneath the surface. He was shorter than I—perhaps five feet eight inches in height—but built so stockily that no bulge or thinning appeared between his shoulders and knees. He was not stooped, and his arms were not exceptionally long; he had brows meeting above a rather flattened nose.
And he never smiled. I had discovered in those narrow jet eyes a gleam I diagnosed as cruelty. This light shone when he waited upon Conover.
I quizzed him concerning the poisoned champagne, but could arrive at no confirmation of my suspicions. The bottle he had opened had been one of a case of which three quarts already had been consumed. He had noticed nothing peculiar about either when he removed it from its straw encasement or when he twisted out the stopper. True, it had not plopped with sufficient zest.
“No, I gives you my word I ain’t seen nobody monkeying with the liquor in this house,” he answered emphatically to my further questioning. “Mr. Conover, he’s a fair crank about it. Every few days, since prohibition came, he goes down and checks over what he’s got. Crazy about it, you might say. I guess it’s because he’s scared of something and don’t want to lose the booze—which he says is the only thing keeps him up.”
This was interesting. I pressed after the butler’s surmise concerning that “something” of which Conover was frightened.
“Well, first it was some nutty stuff about a picture,” answered Horrocks. “I wasn’t here then, nor none of the rest of us, but Annie—she’s the upstairs maid—heard it from the daughter of the cook Conover fired, and Annie told us.
“I never saw the picture and don’t know what it was, but I heard that Conover always was a-hunting the fillum—the black strip they make the pictures off’n. It was lost, and he’d go around swearing that only two prints was left and he had them. But every now and then he’d open a book in the den or library and let out a yell like he’d seen a ghost.
“They’d all come running, only to find him clutching at one of them prints which he claimed was an extra one. He’d never show the picture, acting funny, like he was awful scared, so the servants got to thinking him plain bugs. I think so now!”
“I see.” This was far from the truth, but I pretended to accept his explanation as a factor which fitted perfectly my supposed understanding of the matter. “How long have you been here, Horrocks?” I asked.
“Two years come next June.”
“And that was when all of you were hired?”
“Yes, all except the shuvver who was killed. He come still later, because Brownie, the other one, didn’t keep the cars washed good enough.”
“All right. Where did you work before you came here?”
The glitter flashed a moment in the butler’s eyes. “Oh, you can’t hang nothing on me!” he stated defiantly. “I’ve got a character, I have. Before I was here I worked for the Middletons and only left them because I could get more jack here. Mr. Conover’s looked up my references; he’s mighty particular about them things.”
He stopped, the words cut off by the cleaver of calamity. From above us, unmistakably in the direction of Nelson Conover’s rooms, grated out a horrible, chattering shriek such as might have emanated from the throat of a gibbering gorilla! It swelled, stopped, was renewed for perhaps three seconds, and then died quickly, yet such was the sensation of apprehension flooding my brain that I scarcely could pull out my revolver. Trembling as with ague, I hurried for the stairs, Horrocks on my heels. There had been death agony in that scream!
Fool that I had been! I had consigned Conover to his chambers without a suspicion that danger might be lurking there, and now he was in extremity! Also—and I cursed my lack of forethought—his suite was locked and bolted from the inside, just as I should have expected. The doors were double and of solid quarter-sawed oak. Smashing them in, except with an ax or other heavy instrument, was out of the question.
“Mr. Conover!” I cried. “Are you hurt?”
No answer returned to me, though I rattled the knob and pounded, but I thought I detected within the clink of metal striking tile.
“Get an ax, quick!” I commanded, turning on Horrocks. For an instant I thought he hesitated, but then he swung toward the staircase, and below I heard his heavy voice demanding the whereabouts of such a tool.
In the five minutes which elapsed ere he returned with a small hatchet, explaining that the ax was not to be found, I tried to get response from Conover by all possible means. Yet I felt in the depths of my heart that such striving was useless. When we broke in I expected to see grim tragedy, though its nature had me guessing.
The reality was worse than I dreamed! Smashing through the oak panels we burst into the alcoved living room which adjoined Conover’s chamber. He was not here, nor was he in bed. Both rooms were empty.
Just one possibility remained. I tried the door to his bathroom. It was locked, but I did not wait to ascertain from which side. Swinging the hatchet, I broke through.
As the door fell before us a cloud of steam met us like the waving of a wet blanket in our faces. The room was thicker with vapor than the steam room of a Turkish bath—though not so hot by far. In fact, though the sticky vapor at the cabinet itself had a certain amount of warmth to it, the first factor I noticed was a strange undertone of chill in the room!
“The windows!” I cried, feeling my way through to the wall.and obeying my own command. Then, stumbling about blindly among the rose spray cabinets, electric baths, and other apparatus—for Conover’s private bathroom was equipped with every known variety of dinkus intended to separate man from bodily dirt—I found the source of the blinding vapor. It came from the vapor bath, a cabinet sunk in the floor! With difficulty I located the knobs and shut off the hot vapor. Then, by dint of Horrocks’ help, I managed to clear the air somewhat by swinging my jacket like a fan.
Midway in the work I stopped, stricken anew. For the first time I had seen Conover!
He was in the vapor cabinet, his head lolling through the opening which showed just above floor level. Crying to Horrocks to help, I lifted the cover back on its hinges, reached down, and dragged out Conover’s limp body to the mosaic tiles—and thence to the bed in his own chamber. The other servants, men and women, were crowding in, but Horrocks shooed them away. He had seen the same thing I had seen.
Poor Conover! I had detested the man while he lived, yet his had been a horrible fate. My contempt had vanished. I looked down upon him, lying upon the bed and realized that he had paid in full for all his cowardice.
The vapor had done for him. About his neck and chin the cuticle had been fairly scorched away in hideous red welts, while every square inch of his torso and limbs was blistered, swollen, and red. He must have seated himself in the vapor cabinet, reached for the knob, and turned it on so full that the pain of live steam held him helpless. Otherwise I could not imagine a reason why he had not thrown back the cover and leaped out—unless some one had held him in, of course. This was impossible. No other human being had been in the room when we appeared, and no method of passing through those barred windows or locked doors was possible to conjecture.
In relating our stories each of us in the clinic has agreed to uttermost frankness. We all are cubs, and one who attempted to lionize himself at the expense of Kurt Barron surely would be found out directly. In my own defense on this problem I offer only that an exceedingly brief space of time was allowed me in which to gather data and draw conclusions. Had another day been mine I might have done better. I say, might! The truth is, I was delighted when Kurt Barron arrived.
Annie, the maid, announced that a stranger in a wheel chair was downstairs, attended by seven young men. Could he be brought up? He acted most “pow’ful anxious.” I acceded with gladness. That would be Barron, although I never had heard of his visiting a case in person since his illness. The seven must be the crime clinic—all of us save myself, Jimmy Leffingwell who was out on the “Blinker” case, and Refton Keyes whom Barron had sent on a mission unknown to me as yet.
Barron was pale and anxious when he came in, wheeled by Bert Loder. One glance at the figure on the bed told him what he feared.
“Sorry, Ellsworth!” he said laconically, frowning.
I started a flood of explanations, for the one man in the world whose judgment I most respected was Kurt Barron. With a slight wave of his hand he stopped me, however.
“Not till I received your snake message did I imagine it might come so fast. The fault is really mine,” he said. “Now, let me see just how much real blame—— Loder, turn him over!” He gestured toward the figure on the bed.
Loder obeyed. Fastened by its sticky, gelatinous surface to the middle of Conover’s back, between the shoulder blades, was a black strip of kodak film, post card size!
“Ha! What’s that?” cried Barron. “Handle it gently, Ellsworth. It looks soft.”
I did my level best, but part of the gelatinous film adhered to the skin. Still, a fraction of picture remained on the negative as I handed it carefully to Barron.
He looked puzzled, albeit a curious light played in his eyes. “Hm!” he mused. “It might be an iceberg—— Have you heard anything of this photograph before, Ellsworth?”
I thought I had. By all tokens this might be the same picture which Horrocks had spoken of—the one which Conover had sought so long, and which he had not shown to any one. Quickly I related all I knew of it, and Barron smiled. For a second his eyes closed, and I knew he was coordinating this information with other in his possession,
At his command then I related the circumstances under which Horrocks and I had found the body. Also I made mention of how I had suspected the butler—giving him a clean bill of health as having been at my side at the time of the tragedy. Barron’s expression was unreadable.
“Loder,” he said. “That must be a strange vapor bath, indeed. Go over and open up the jet for just an instant, will you?”
My associate did as requested. Again the stream of vapor arose.
“Step down there a moment,” commanded Barron, and then, “Is it hot?”
“Not so very,” replied Loder, looking puzzled as he came out. I guessed that no one but Barron could have induced him to make that experiment. He shut off the steam.
Barron smiled. “Well, that should be all the data needed, gentlemen!” he said. “I give you five minutes in which to examine the body. Then I shall ask opinions.”
Those were busy minutes, for Barron had us all guessing. At that, however, the method of Conover’s death seemed mysterious to me no longer. His skin fairly had been boiled. I knew little of such a process, but imagined that the pain might cause death in a very short space of time.
“I see you’re ready, Ellsworth,” said Barron smilingly. “All right, how did Conover come to his end?”
“Conover was accidentally scalded to death by an excess of live steam!” I declared, shifting uneasily. With some relief I saw my associates nod concurrence with this dictum.
Only Barron shook his head. “Wrong!” he retorted. “Gentlemen, I am surprised. Loder has demonstrated how no one could be scalded in that vapor bath. It is my belief one might stand in there for an hour with the tap opened wide and never experience any tremendous discomfort.
“And then, I call your attention to the victim’s skin. Though it does bear some resemblance to the effect of burn, I wish you to note the purplish welts. Has any one of you ever frozen his ears?” Then, without waiting for an answer, Barron smiled grimly about the circle of eager faces. “Gentlemen, Nelson Conover was not scalded, but frozen to death! Steam merely confused the issue!”
For the space of three heartbeats one could hear the drip of water in the vapor cabinet. All of us gaped first at the victim on the bed, then at Barron, and then at each other. The ghastly suggestion was probable enough so far as the condition of Conover was concerned, but how——
Perhaps it was instinct. My eyes rested upon Horrocks, and the fearsome scowl corrugating his charcoal smudges of brows caused a quiver deep within me. I sensed climax.
It came instantly. With the inarticulate snarl of a trapped beast, the butler sprang at me. I did not stop to consider that his probable reason for selecting me was because I stood between him and the door. The old football rule for tackling a runner flashed into mind, I hurled myself to meet him, and my arms clenched about his pumping knees. The two of us banged sidewise to the floor, fighting in a furious scramble of ups and downs that forbade interference from the others.
All at once I saw that he had managed to draw something black from his pocket and was pulling it toward my head. An automatic! Loosing my hold I struck at it blindly. Two reports sounded almost simultaneously, and Horrocks went limp beneath me.
Rising, I saw Barron sitting with smoking pistol. Barron’s bullet had entered at the butler’s left ear and had emerged at the crown of his head.
“Didn’t want to do it,” Barron said cheerfully, “but it’s probably just as well. This is the murderer of Conover’s chauffeur, Belford, but not the killer of Conover. Draw your guns, men! All right, you behind the panel! As you doubtless know, police are in Horrocks’ room in the servants’ wing. Would you prefer to surrender to one of us or have us shoot you out?”
Except for my deep respect for Barron I might have thought him suddenly insane. He spoke toward an apparently tiled, blank wall, and as he spoke his revolver came up again, so that we might not mistake the direction of his interest. I am sure not one of us actually expected any development from the challenge.
Surprises were not over, however. Slowly a section of the white paneling, painted to resemble tile, swung open, and a straight, dignified figure of a man stepped out. He was well into middle age, clean-shaven, and with calm, serious eyes. Though he, too, bore a revolver he made no effort to shoot, but flipped the weapon about in his hand and offered it to Barron with a bow.
“Congratulations on your penetration” he said with a trace of caustic irony lying back of the courtesy. “I shall surrender, as it makes no difference. You doubtless know who I am, so I shall indulge in no useless heroics. My work is done, and done just as I planned it. Conover knew who killed him, and he died exactly as painful a death as he thought he had meted out to me, Horrocks, who was called Kummer then, and one other, who actually did succumb to cold.
“You are Remington?” asked Barron, his tone expressionless.
The other nodded. “Daniel Remington!” he admitted, pridefully.
It was not until then that I recognized him. He was Daniel Remington, the chemist, anthropologist, and explorer, whose expedition had been lost in the antarctic two years before Conover had ventured there! Conover spoke of him in his book—claimed to have discovered the bodies of Remington and some of his party!
“Unless it is necessary to your record of accomplishment,” he went on quickly, “no one need know it, however. What I did was not murder, but justice. Horrocks, here, was too impatient—and too lacking in discrimination. I am sorry about Horrocks and poor Belford. Horrocks was to have stunned the chauffeur, but overdid it.
“When both of us are dead, however, the credit for Reber Peninsula might as well remain with Conover. He wrote a book from my notes—something I might not have found time to do. Of course he never saw the place. You knew that. He came on my camp at Beddy Island, where we had been marooned in the ice. All but one of my men had died, and he, John Moreton, got mighty little help from Conover. He died, too. Conover appropriated all the records of the camp, and my notes.
“At the time of his arrival, Horrocks, a chap named Clathorne, and I had set out for help. We traveled three days on the choked, creaking floes, and then we found ourselves adrift in black water. The great floe had broken from its ice-bound moorings.
“Our supplies were slim and gave out. For twelve days we ate nothing save a single fish which Clathorne caught off the edge of the berg. On the eleventh day Clathorne died. Then Conover came along and sighted us.
“I imagine it must have been a terrific jolt to him to have to rescue us, after he had enjoyed visions of appropriating all my work as his own, but he did. Though I tried to thank him, he almost bit my head off. Twice or thrice later he snarled at me that he wished he’d left me on the berg to freeze, but I passed this up. One can’t quarrel with a man to whom one owes life.
“Would to Heaven I had quarreled—and killed the snake. For that is just what he was, a snake, cold, conscienceless, and cowardly. Do you remember his narrative of the loss of his vessel? How it burned, and how he swam for over an hour, his precious records in a waterproof case strapped to his belt? How he found an overturned boat, righted it, and floated three days in this before he was picked up?
“Lies, plain lies! The Botany Bay went up in flames all right, and Conover had no hint that any one was saved, as he deserted in the night after setting the fire and staving in the three remaining boats. The only mystery to me in it all is how that white-livered pig dared such a chance with his own precious hide. I suppose he figured that the attachable gasoline motor would take him far enough so he would fall in with another ship—as that is what happened. Six of the rest of us did get away on a raft while the oil-fed flames of the doomed vessel licked at us. Three died of thirst. Horrocks and I and one sailor lived through. We were near unconsciousness when a tramp two-master bound for Apia picked us up. She was far out of her course, owing to a week of northers, or else Conover’s dastardly plan would have been completely successful. As it was, we alone, out of the crews of seven improvised rafts I saw launched, won through. All the rest of those seamen were murdered in cold blood by that soft, heartless devil lying there!” And Remington shook his clenched fist at the body, almost as though he would have wreaked upon it the recrudescence of his long-cherished anger.
“I understand,” said Barron quietly. “But how was it you never asserted yourself; never brought down vengeance of the law upon Conover?”
“Law!” replied Remington” with scorn. “Can the law repay forty lives sacrificed to ambition—forty men burned or drowned? What greater punishment could be given him upon this earth than the torture meted out to him by those who had witnessed the untold- agonies and deaths of those forty men? And the living witnesses of that tragedy were Horrocks and myself.
“We wanted vengeance. We dreamed of it, talked it while awake, and formed innumerable schemes. Two years passed by with nothing done. Horrocks—as I have called him for years—was for putting a bullet through Conover, but I could not see it that way. I meant to make that beast suffer at least a fraction of the torment he had imposed upon others.
“And I put it through, though it was slow business. First, both of us got house-servant positions. Then, I managed to be taken on at the Conovers. I devoted the whole of that first period to putting the fear of God into Conover’s beastly heart. I broke his nerve—for in the earlier days he did have nerve of a sort, I guess.
“You see, he had snapped a photograph of the Botany Bay as she burned at the edge of the ice field. For some reason he never showed that picture, probably because it scared him too much. I stole the negative, and though he had made only two prints of it, I had several dozen printed. Every now and then I'd put one where he’d find it. Of course, after he’d found five or six, each additional one scared him stiff.
“A couple or three times I howled in the corridors when he thought no one was at home but himself. Oh, he was scared, all right!
“I conceived the plan of killing him. To get it just right I needed assistance, but unluckily then I was fired with all the other servants. That made it bad.
“To cut a long story short, Horrocks managed to get a place and later hid me in his room. Between us, we cut and fitted the wall panel once when Conover was away for two weeks lecturing. The wall itself, in between, had a wide enough air space to hold my apparatus and to serve as an emergency hiding place for a man,
“And then I had Horrocks amuse himself by pretending to try to kill Conover. He turned on the illuminating gas, knowing Conover would smell it right away. He took a shot with a rifle at him and really came a little too close—as he did cut away part of an ear.”
“But the snake venom and the cyanide!” I cried, breaking in. “Surely they would have done the work?”
Remington smiled grimly, turning toward Barron. “You analyzed the ‘snake venom,’ didn’t you?” he asked. Barron nodded.
“You knew, of course, that it was harmless—a mixture of plant chlorophyll, glycerin, and asafedita, made to resemble closely the venom of the zebra adder, which is the most poisonous snake found in the Reber Peninsula. My only fear in using it was that Conover might die of fright before he found out that it was harmless.
“The cyanide was real. Horrocks, however, would not have allowed Conover or any one else to drink it. The idea there, you see, being to provide the butler himself with a good alibi, and also to scare Conover. In case the odor had not been noticed, Horrocks would have remarked upon it while pouring. And, of course, Conover’s suspicions would have done the rest, for by to-day, as you know, he was jumping at his own shadow.
“When Conover came up here to take his bath, I was waiting in the wall. As soon as he was blinded by the rising vapor and also unable to hear for the rushing sound of steam, I came out, bringing with me my two tanks and my revolver. I did not expect such luck, but I actually managed to place the tanks in position beside Conover’s head before he saw me.
“Then for a time he was too scared even to shriek. There in the rising vapor, with a gun leveled at him, I suppose I looked the part of an avenging angel. I told him briefly that I had come to repay him for his past sins, and then I slipped the nozzles of the containers down past his neck. I know he had not the slightest idea what they contained, else he must have chosen to risk the revolver. If you look on his neck closely you can see the red welts where the two streams started to play——” He stopped, indicating the spots.
I shuddered. “Heavens! What was in those cylinders?”
“Oh, didn’t you know?”
Remington was surprised, but I saw that he interpreted Barron’s smile aright. “But he did,” continued the explorer. “Liquid air, of course. Under high pressure it shot down, filling the cabinet. Liquid air under pressure is at absolute zero, or near to it, you know. And, as all gas tends to become colder when its pressure is released, the whole inside of that bath cabinet went down to something like two hundred degrees below zero in about one minute. In the first few seconds Conover felt physical pain where the knifelike stream cut into him, but physical pain was not what I was after. I had tortured him enough. I froze him solid, then plastered that negative he had wanted so badly to his back. I shut off the liquid air and hid the cylinders. Then, for a blind, I turned on the steam wider. It thawed him out, of course, though too late to do him any good.
“And that’s all, isn’t it?”
He glanced about quickly, but Kurt Barron had nothing to ask. Probably Barron knew what was coming, for even I felt a sudden premonition.
It was too late, however. Like a courtier Daniel Remington bowed to us, and then out came his second revolver—but not in menace for us. A single shot, and he lay stretched before us on the tiles.
For a full minute none of us spoke. Then Kurt Barron said quietly, “It was the best way, poor fellow.”
The affair was entirely clear to all my associates—who had enjoyed Barron’s confidence—but not to me. Therefore I elected myself to the job of wheeling him home. On the way I asked a few pointed questions. Barron was quite willing to explain.
“Really I was suspicious of Conover for a long time before he came to me,” he said. “I suppose that really hindered us, yet because I found discrepancies in his book and in the man himself I was able to guess something of what must be seeking him out of the past. When you wrote about the snake venom, and I found it a crude imitation of the venom described so volubly in Conover’s book, I began to be sure.
“Horrocks, of course, could not have executed anything so clever. I knew that, so looked for a directing mind. As soon as I saw the layout of the rooms, and the manner in which all the exits were locked from the inside, I knew our man could not be far away. The servant’s wing is built adjoining the inside wall of Conover’s bath. I surmised that probably Horrocks would have the nearest room. If so, the entrance must lie there.”
“But how,” I asked impetuously, “how did you guess that before you had seen the bath? How did you know enough to station police on the other side?”
Barron smiled rather wanly. “My boy,” he asked, “did you see any police?”
I was forced to admit that I had not.
“Well, then, don’t believe all you hear—sometimes. They have a card game in this country known as poker. I recommend it to your perusal and study for a few nights until you learn to read a bluff. Then you'll win more big pots!”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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