gone, Dr. Hayward, Aunt Josephine and Marie were distracted.
More than that, the Clutching Hand had not neglected the opportunity, either.
Suddenly, just before our return, a stone had come hurtling through the window, without warning of any kind, and had landed on Elaine’s bed.
Below, as we learned some time afterwards, a car had drawn up hastily and the evil-faced crook whom the Clutching Hand had used to rid himself of the informer, “Limpy Red,” had leaped out and hurled the stone through the window, as quickly leaping back into the car and whisking away.
Elaine had screamed. All had reached for the stone. But she had been the first to seize it and discover that around it was wrapped a piece of paper on which was the ominous warning, signed as usual by the Hand:
“Michael is dead. Tomorrow, you. Then Kennedy. Stop before it is too late.”
Elaine had sunk back into her pillows, paler than ever from this second shock, while the others, as they read the note, were overcome by alarm and despair, at the suddenness of the thing.
It was just then that Kennedy and I arrived and were admitted.
“Oh, Mr. Kennedy,” cried Elaine, handing him the note.
Craig took it and read. “Miss Dodge,” he said, as he held the note out to me, “you are suffering from arsenic poisoning—but I don’t know yet how it is being administered.”
He gazed about keenly. Meanwhile, I had taken the crumpled note from him and was reading it. Somehow, I had leaned against the wall. As I turned, Craig happened to glance at me.
“For heaven’s sake, Walter,” I heard him exclaim. “What have you been up against?”
He fairly leaped at me and I felt him examining my shoulder where I had been leaning on the wall. Something on the paper had come off and had left a white mark on my shoulder. Craig looked puzzled from me to the wall.
“Arsenic!” he cried.
He whipped out a pocket lens and looked at the paper. “This heavy fuzzy paper is fairly loaded with it, powdered,” he reported.
I looked, too. The powdered arsenic was plainly discernible. “Yes, here it is,” he continued, standing absorbed in thought. “But why did it work so effectively?”
He sniffed as he had before. So did I. There was still the faint smell of garlic. Kennedy paced the room. Suddenly, pausing by the register, an idea seemed to strike him.
“Walter,” he whispered, “come down cellar with me.”
“Oh—be careful,” cried Elaine, anxious for him.
“I will,” he called back.
As he flashed his pocket electric bull’s-eye about, his gaze fell on the electric meter. He paused before it. In spite of the fact that it was broad daylight, it was running. His face puckered.
“They are using no current at present in the house,” he ruminated. “Yet the meter is running.”
He continued to examine the meter. Then he began to follow the electric wires along. At last he discovered a place where they had been tampered with and tapped by other wires.
“The work of the Clutching Hand!” he muttered.
Eagerly he followed the wires to the furnace and around to the back. There they led right into a little water tank. Kennedy yanked them out. As he did so he pulled something with them.
“Two electrodes—the villain placed there,” he exclaimed, holding them up triumphantly for me to see.
“Y-yes,” I replied dubiously, “but what does it all mean?”
“Why, don’t you see? Under the influence of the electric current the water was decomposed and gave off oxygen and hydrogen. The free hydrogen passed up the furnace pipe and combining with the arsenic in the wall paper formed the deadly arseniuretted hydrogen.”
He cast the whole improvised electrolysis apparatus on the floor and dashed up the cellar steps.
“I’ve found it!” he cried, hurrying into Elaine’s room. “It’s in this room—a deadly gas—arseniuretted hydrogen.”
He tore open the windows and threw them all open. “Have her moved,” he cried to Aunt Josephine. “Then have a vacuum cleaner go over every inch of wall, carpet and upholstery.”
Standing beside her, he breathlessly explained his discovery. “That wall paper has been loaded down with arsenic, probably Paris green or Schweinfurth green, which is aceto-arsenite of copper. Every minute you are here, you are breathing arseniuretted hydrogen. The Clutching Hand has cleverly contrived to introduce the nascent gas into the room. That acts on the arsenic compounds in the wall paper and hangings and sets free the gas. I thought I knew the smell the moment I got a whiff of it. You are slowly being poisoned by minute quantities of the deadly gas. This Clutching Hand is a diabolical genius. Think of it—poisoned wall paper!”
No one said a word. Kennedy reached down and took the two Clutching Hand messages Elaine had received. “I shall want to study these notes, more, too,” he said, holding them up to the wall at the head of the bed as he flashed his pocket lens at them. “You see, Elaine, I may be able to get something from studying the ink, the paper, the handwriting—”
Suddenly both leaped back, with a cry.
Their faces had been several inches apart. Something had whizzed between them and literally impaled the two notes on the wall.
Down the street, on the roof of a carriage house, back of a neighbor’s, might have been seen the uncouth figure of the dilapidated South American Indian crouching behind a chimney and gazing intently at the Dodge house.
As Craig had thrown open Elaine’s window and turned to Elaine, the figure had crouched closer to his chimney.
Then with an uncanny determination he slowly raised the blow-gun to his lips.
I jumped forward, followed by Dr. Hayward, Aunt Josephine, and Marie. Kennedy had a peculiar look as he pulled out from the wall a blow-gun dart similar in every way to that which had killed Michael.
“Craig!” gasped Elaine, reaching up and laying her soft white hand on his arm in undisguised fear for him, “you—you must give up this chase for the Clutching Hand!”
“Give up the chase for the Clutching Hand?” he repeated in surprise. “Never! Not until either he or I is dead!”
There was both fear and admiration mingled in her look, as he reached down and patted her dainty shoulder encouragingly.
Chapter VI
The Vampire
Kennedy went the next day to the Dodge house, and, as usual, Perry Bennett was there in the library with Elaine, still going over the Clutching Hand case,
