My idea was that anything from the Metropolitan to the "movies" would do him good, and I had almost carried my point when a big, severely plain black foreign limousine pulled up with a rush at the laboratory door. A large man in a huge fur coat jumped out and the next moment strode into the room. He needed no introduction, for we recognised at once J. Perry Spencer, one of the foremost of American financiers and a trustee of the university.
With that characteristic directness which I have always thought accounted in large measure for his success, he wasted scarcely a word in coming straight to the object of his visit. "Professor Kennedy," he began, chewing his cigar and gazing about with evident interest at the apparatus Craig had collected in his warfare of science with crime, "I have dropped in here as a matter of patriotism. I want you to preserve to America those masterpieces of art and literature which I have collected all over the world during many years. They are the objects of one of the most curious pieces of vandalism of which I have ever heard. Professor Kennedy," he concluded earnestly, "could I ask you to call on Dr. Hugo Lith, the curator of my private museum, as soon as you can possibly find it convenient?"
"Most assuredly, Mr. Spencer," replied Craig, with a whimsical side glance at me that told without words that this was better relaxation to him than either the Metropolitan or the "movies." "I shall be glad to see Dr. Lith at any time—right now, if it is convenient to him."
The millionaire connoisseur consulted his watch. "Lith will be at the museum until six, at least, Yes, we can catch him there. I have a dinner engagement at seven myself. I can give you half an hour of the time before then. If you're ready, just jump into the car, both of you."
The museum to which he referred was a handsome white marble building, in Renaissance, fronting on a side street just off Fifth Avenue and in the rear of the famous Spencer house, itself one of the show places of that wonderful thoroughfare. Spencer had built the museum at great cost simply to house those treasures which were too dear to him to entrust to a public institution. It was in the shape of a rectangle and planned with special care as to the lighting.
Dr. Lith, a rather stout, mild-eyed German savant, plunged directly into the middle of things as soon as we had been introduced. "It is a most remarkable affair, gentlemen," he began, placing for us chairs that must have been hundreds of years old. "At first it was only those objects in the museum that were green that were touched, like the collection of famous and historic French emeralds. But soon we found it was other things, too, that were missing—old Roman coins of gold, a collection of watches, and I know not what else until we have gone over the—"
"Where is Miss White?" interrupted Spencer, who had been listening somewhat impatiently.
"In the library, sir. Shall I call her?"
"No, I will go myself. I want her to tell her experience to Professor Kennedy exactly as she told it to me. Explain while I am gone how impossible it would be for a visitor to do one, to say nothing of all, of the acts of vandalism we have discovered."
Chapter VII
The Green Curse
The American Medici disappeared into his main library, where Miss White was making a minute examination to determine what damage had been done in the realm over which she presided.
"Apparently every book with a green binding has been mutilated in some way," resumed Dr. Lith, "but that was only the beginning. Others have suffered, too, and some are even gone. It is impossible that any visitor could have done it. Only a few personal friends of Mr. Spencer are ever admitted here, and they are never alone. No, it is weird, mysterious."
Just then Spencer returned with Miss White. She was an extremely attractive girl, slight of figure, but with an air about her that all the imported gowns in New York could not have conferred. They were engaged in animated conversation, so much in contrast with the bored air with which Spencer had listened to Dr. Lith that even I noticed that the connoisseur was completely obliterated in the man, whose love of beauty was by no means confined to the inanimate. I wondered if it was merely his interest in her story that impelled Spencer. The more I watched the girl the more I was convinced that she knew that she was interesting to the millionaire.
"For example," Dr. Lith was saying, "the famous collection of emeralds which has disappeared has always been what you Americans call 'hoodooed.' They have always brought ill luck, and, like many things of the sort to which superstition attaches, they have been 'banked,' so to speak, by their successive owners in museums."
"Are they salable; that is, could any one dispose of the emeralds or the other curios with, reasonable safety and at a good price?"
"Oh, yes, yes," hastened Dr. Lith, "not as collections, but separately. The emeralds alone cost fifty thousand dollars. I believe Mr. Spencer bought them for Mrs. Spencer some years before she died. She did not care to wear them, however, and had them placed here."
I thought I noticed a shade of annoyance cross the face of the magnate. "Never mind that," he interrupted. "Let me introduce Miss White. I think you will find her story one of the most uncanny you have ever heard."
He had placed a chair for her and, still addressing us but looking at her, went on: "It seems that the morning the vandalism was first discovered she and Dr. Lith at once began a thorough search of the building to ascertain the extent of the depredations. The search lasted all day, and well into the night. I believe it was midnight before you finished?"
"It was almost twelve," began the girl, in a musical voice that was too Parisian to harmonize with her plain Anglo-Saxon name, "when Dr. Lith was down here in his office checking off the objects in the catalogue which were either injured or missing. I had been working in the library. The noise of something like a shade flapping in the wind attracted my attention. I listened. It seemed to come from the art-gallery, a large room up-stairs where some of the greatest masterpieces in this country are hung. I hurried up there.
"Just as I reached the door a strange feeling seemed to come over me that I was not alone in that room. I fumbled for the electric light switch, but in my nervousness could not find it. There was just enough light in the room to make out objects indistinctly. I thought I heard a low, moaning sound from an old Flemish copper ewer near me, I had heard that it was supposed to groan at night."
She paused and shuddered at her recollection, and looked about as if grateful for the flood of electric light that now illuminated everything. Spencer reached over and touched her arm to encourage her to go on. She did not seem to resent the touch.
"Opposite me, in the middle of the open floor," she resumed, her eyes dilated and her breath coming and going rapidly, "stood the mummy-case of Ka, an Egyptian priestess of Thebes, I think. The case was empty, but on the lid was painted a picture of the priestess! Such wonderful eyes! They seem to pierce right through your very soul. Often in the daytime I have stolen off to look at them. But at night—remember the hour of night, too—oh, it was awful, terrible. The lid of the mummy-case moved. yes, really moved, and seemed to float to one side. I could see it. And back of that carved and painted face with the piercing eyes was another face, a face, real eyes, and they looked out at me with such hatred from the place that I knew was empty—"
She had risen and was facing us with wild terror written on her face as if in appeal for protection against something she was powerless to name. Spencer, who had not taken his hand off her arm, gently pressed her back into the easy chair and finished the story.
"She screamed and fainted. Dr. Lith heard it and rushed up-stairs. There she lay on the floor. The
