“How could they have been taken, do you think?” ventured Kennedy. Miss Grey shook her head doubtfully.
“I think the wall safe must have been opened somehow,” she returned.
Kennedy mechanically wrote the number, M-1273, on a piece of paper.
“It has a weird history,” she went on, observing what he had written, “and this mammoth blue-white diamond in the ring is as blue as the famous Hope diamond that has brought misfortune through half the world. This stone, they say, was pried from the mouth of a dying negro in South Africa. He had tried to smuggle it from the mine, and when he was caught cursed the gem and every one who ever should own it. One owner in Amsterdam failed; another in Antwerp committed suicide; a Russian nobleman was banished to Siberia, and another went bankrupt and lost his home and family. Now here it is in Mr. Mansfield’s life. I—I hate it!” I could not tell whether it was the superstition or the recent events themselves which weighed most in her mind, but, at any rate, she resumed, somewhat bitterly, a moment later: “M-1273! M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, and 1, 2, 7, 3 add up to thirteen. The first and last numbers make thirteen, and John Mansfield has thirteen letters in his name. I wish he had never worn the thing—never bought it!”
The more I listened to her the more impressed I was with the fact that there was something more here than the feeling of a private secretary.
“Who were in the supper-party?” asked Kennedy.
“He gave it for Madeline Hargrave—the pretty little actress, you know, who took New York by storm last season in ‘The Sport’ and is booked, next week, to appear in the new show, ‘The Astor Cup.’”
Miss Grey said it, I thought, with a sort of wistful envy. Mansfield’s gay little bohemian gatherings were well known. Though he was not young, he was still somewhat of a Lothario.
“Who else was there?” asked Kennedy.
“Then there was Mina Leitch, a member of Miss Hargrave’s new company,” she went on. “Another was Fleming Lewis, the Wall Street broker. Doctor Murray and myself completed the party.”
“Doctor Murray is his personal physician?” ventured Craig.
“Yes. You know when Mr. Mansfield’s stomach went back on him last year it was Doctor Murray who really cured him.”
Kennedy nodded.
“Might this present trouble be a recurrence of the old trouble?”
She shook her head. “No; this is entirely different. Oh, I wish that you could go with me and see him!” she pleaded.
“I will,” agreed Kennedy.
A moment later we were speeding in a taxicab over to the apartment.
“Really,” she remarked, nervously, “I feel lost with Mr. Mansfield so ill. He has so many interests downtown that require constant attention that just the loss of time means a great deal. Of course, I understand many of them—but, you know, a private secretary can’t conduct a man’s business. And just now, when I came up from the office, I couldn’t believe that he was too ill to care about things until I actually saw him.”
We entered the apartment. A mere glance about showed that; even though Mansfield’s hobby was diamonds, he was no mean collector of other articles of beauty. In the big living-room, which was almost like a studio, we met a tall, spare, polished-mannered man, whom I quickly recognized as Doctor Murray.
“Is he any better?” blurted out Miss Grey, even before our introductions were over. Doctor Murray shook his head gravely.
“About the same,” he answered, though one could find little reassurance in his tone.
“I should like to see him,” hinted Kennedy, “unless there is some real reason why I should not.”
“No,” replied the doctor, absently; “on the contrary, it might perhaps rouse him.”
He led the way down the hall, and Kennedy and I followed, while Miss Grey attempted to busy herself over some affairs at a huge mahogany table in the library just off the living-room.
Mansfield had shown the same love of luxury and the bizarre even in the furnishing of his bedroom, which was a black-and-white room with furniture of Chinese lacquer and teakwood.
Kennedy looked at the veteran plunger long and thoughtfully as he lay stretched out, listless, on the handsome bed. Mansfield seemed completely indifferent to our presence. There was something uncanny about him. Already his face was shrunken, his skin dark, and his eyes were hollow.
“What do you suppose it is?” asked Kennedy, bending over him, and then rising and averting his head so that Mansfield could not hear, even if his vagrant faculties should be attracted. “His pulse is terribly weak and his heart scarcely makes a sound.”
Doctor Murray’s face knit in deep lines.
“I’m afraid,” he said, in a low tone, “that I will have to admit not having been able to diagnose the trouble, I was just considering whom I might call in.”
“What have you done?” asked Kennedy, as the two moved a little farther out of ear-shot of the patient.
“Well,” replied the doctor, slowly, “when his valet called me in, I must admit that my first impression was that I had to deal with a case of diphtheria. I was so impressed that I even took a blood smear and examined it. It showed the presence of a tox albumin. But it isn’t diphtheria. The antitoxin has had no effect. No; it isn’t diphtheria. But the poison is there. I might have thought it was cholera, only that seems so impossible here in New York.” Doctor Murray looked at Kennedy with no effort to conceal his perplexity. “Over and over I have asked myself what it could be,” he went on. “It seems to me that I have thought over about everything that is possible. Always I get back to the fact that there is that tox albumin present. In some respects, it seems like the bite of a poisonous animal. There are no marks, of course, and it seems altogether impossible, yet it acts precisely as I have seen snake bites affect people. I am that desperate that I would try the Noguchi antivenene, but it would have no more effect than the antitoxin. No; I can only conclude that there is some narcotic irritant which especially affects the lungs and heart.”
“Will you let me have one of the blood smears?” asked Kennedy.
“Certainly,” replied the doctor, reaching over and taking a glass slide from several lying on a table.
For some time after we left the sick-room Craig appeared to be considering what Doctor Murray had said.
Seeking to find Miss Grey in the library, we found ourselves in the handsome, all-wood-paneled dining-room. It still showed evidences of the late banquet of the night before.
Craig paused a moment in doubt which way to go, then picked up from the table a beautifully decorated menu-card. As he ran his eye down it mechanically, he paused.
“Champignons,” he remarked, thoughtfully. “H-m!—mushrooms.”
Instead of going on toward the library, he turned and passed through a swinging door into the kitchen. There was no one there, but it was in a much more upset condition than the dining-room.
“Pardon, monsieur,” sounded a voice behind us.
It was the French chef who had entered from the direction of the servants’ quarters, and was now all apologies for the untidy appearance of the realm over which he presided. The strain of the dinner had been too much for his assistants, he hastened to explain.
“I see that you had mushrooms—creamed,” remarked Kennedy.
“Oui, monsieur,” he replied; “some that Miss Hargrave herself sent in from her mushroom-cellar out in the country.”
As he said it his eye traveled involuntarily