“A spangle from a sequin dress,” he muttered to himself; then, turning to Miss Grey, “Did any one wear such a dress last night?”
Helen Grey looked positively frightened. “Miss Hargrave!” she murmured, simply. “Oh, it cannot be—there must be some mistake!”
Just then we heard voices in the hall.
“But, Murray, I don’t see why I can’t see him,” said one.
“What good will it do, Lewis?” returned the other, which I recognized as that of Doctor Murray.
“Fleming Lewis,” whispered Miss Grey, taking a step out into the hallway.
A moment later Doctor Murray and Lewis had joined us.
I could see that there was some feeling between the two men, though what it was about I could not say. As Miss Grey introduced us, I glanced hastily out of the corner of my eye at Kennedy. Involuntarily his hand which held the telltale sequin had sought his waistcoat pocket, as though to hide it. Then I saw him check the action and deliberately examine the piece of tinsel between his thumb and forefinger.
Doctor Murray saw it, too, and his eyes were riveted on it, as though instantly he saw its significance.
“What do you think—Jack as sick as a dog, and robbed, too, and yet Murray says I oughtn’t to see him!” complained Lewis, for the moment oblivious to the fact that all our eyes were riveted on the spangle between Kennedy’s fingers. And then, slowly it seemed to dawn on him what it was. “Madeline’s!” he exclaimed, quickly. “So Mina did tear it, after all, when she stepped on the train.”
Kennedy watched the faces before us keenly. No one said anything. It was evident that some such incident had happened. But had Lewis, with a quick flash of genius, sought to cover up something, protect somebody?
Miss Grey was evidently anxious to transfer the scene at least to the living-room, away from the sick-room, and Kennedy, seeing it, fell in with the idea.
“Looks to me as though this robbery was an inside affair,” remarked Lewis, as we all stood for a moment in the living-room. “Do you suppose one of the servants could have been ‘planted’ for the purpose of pulling it off?”
The idea was plausible enough. Yet, plausible as the suggestion might seem, it took no account of the other circumstances of the case. I could not believe that the illness of Mansfield was merely an unfortunate coincidence.
Fleming Lewis’s unguarded and blunt tendency to blurt out whatever seemed uppermost in his mind soon became a study to me as we talked together in the living-room. I could not quite make out whether it was studied and astute or whether it was merely the natural exuberance of youth. There was certainly some sort of enmity between him and the doctor, which the remark about the spangle seemed to fan into a flame.
Miss Grey manoeuvered tactfully, however, to prevent a scene. And, after an interchange of remarks that threw more heat than light on the matter, Kennedy and I followed Lewis out to the elevator, with a parting promise to keep in touch with Miss Grey.
“What do you think of the spangle?” I queried of Craig as Lewis bade us a hasty good-by and climbed into his car at the street-entrance. “Is it a clue or a stall?”
“That remains to be seen,” he replied, noncommittally. “Just now the thing that interests me most is what I can accomplish at the laboratory in the way of finding out what is the matter with Mansfield.”
While Kennedy was busy with the various solutions which he made of the contents of the ramekins that had held the mushrooms, I wandered over to the university library and waded through several volumes on fungi without learning anything of value. Finally, knowing that Kennedy would probably be busy for some time, and that all I should get for my pains by questioning him would be monosyllabic grunts until he was quite convinced that he was on the trail of something, I determined to run into the up-town office of the Star and talk over the affair as well as I could without violating what I felt had been given us in confidence.
I could not, it turned out, have done anything better, for it seemed to be the gossip of the Broadway cafes and cabarets that Mansfield had been plunging rather deeply lately and had talked many of his acquaintances into joining him in a pool, either outright or on margins. It seemed to be a safe bet that not only Lewis and Doctor Murray had joined him, but that Madeline Hargrave and Mina Leitch, who had had a successful season and some spare thousands to invest, might have gone in, too. So far the fortunes of the stock-market had not smiled on Mansfield’s schemes, and, I reflected, it was not impossible that what might be merely an incident to a man like Mansfield could be very serious to the rest of them.
It was the middle of the afternoon when I returned to the laboratory with my slender budget of news. Craig was quite interested in what I had to say, even pausing for a few moments in his work to listen.
In several cages I saw that he had a number of little guinea-pigs. One of them was plainly in distress, and Kennedy had been watching him intently.
“It’s strange,” he remarked. “I had samples of material from six ramekins. Five of them seem to have had no effect whatever. But if the bit that I gave this fellow causes such distress, what would a larger quantity do?”
“Then one of the ramekins was poisoned?” I questioned.
“I have discovered in it, as well as in the blood smear, the tox albumin that Doctor Murray mentioned,” he said, simply, pulling out his watch. “It isn’t late. I think I shall have to take a trip out to Miss Hargrave’s. We ought to do it in an hour and a half in a car.”
Kennedy said very little as we sped out over the Long Island roads that led to the little colony of actors and actresses at Cedar Grove. He seemed rather to be enjoying the chance to get away from the city and turn over in his mind the various problems which the case presented.
As for myself, I had by this time convinced myself that, somehow, the mushrooms were involved. What Kennedy expected to find I could not guess. But from what I had read I surmised that it must be that one of the poisonous varieties had somehow got mixed with the others, one of the Amanitas, just as deadly as the venom of the rattler or the copperhead. I knew that, in some cases, Amanitas had been used to commit crimes. Was this such a case?
We had no trouble in finding the estate of Miss Hargrave, and she was at home.
Kennedy lost no time introducing himself and coming to the point of his visit. Madeline Hargrave was a slender, willowy type of girl, pronouncedly blond, striking, precisely the type I should have imagined that Mansfield would have been proud to be seen with.
“I’ve just heard of Mr. Mansfield’s illness,” she said, anxiously. “Mr. Lewis called me up and told me. I don’t see why Miss Grey or Doctor Murray didn’t let me know sooner.”
She said it with an air of vexation, as though she felt slighted. In spite of her evident anxiety to know about the tragedy, however, I did not detect the depth of feeling that Helen Grey had shown. In fact, the thoughtfulness of Fleming Lewis almost led me to believe that it was he, rather than Mansfield, for whom she really cared.
We chatted a few minutes, as Kennedy told what little we had discovered. He said nothing about the spangle.
“By the way,” remarked Craig, at length, “I would very much like to have a look at that famous mushroom-cellar of yours.”
For the first time she seemed momentarily to lose her poise.
“I’ve always had a great interest in mushrooms,” she explained, hastily. “You—you do not think it could be the mushrooms—that have caused Mr. Mansfield’s illness, do you?”
Kennedy passed off the remark as best he could under the circumstances. Though she was not satisfied with his answer, she could not very well refuse his request, and a few