“You—don’t think Doctor Chapelle had anything to do with it?” she asked, in a hoarse whisper.
“Then Hampton Haynes has been here?” avoided Kennedy.
“Yes,” she admitted, as though the question had been quite logical. “He told me of your visit to Carl.”
There was no concealment, now, of her anxiety. Indeed, I saw no reason why there should be. It was quite natural that the girl should worry over her lover, if she thought there was even a haze of suspicion in Kennedy’s mind.
“Really I have found out nothing yet,” was the only answer Craig gave, from which I readily deduced that he was well satisfied to play the game by pitting each against all, in the hope of gathering here and there a bit of the truth. “As soon as I find out anything I shall let you and your mother know. And you must tell me everything, too.”
He paused to emphasize the last words, then slowly turned again toward the door. From the corner of my eye I saw Cynthia take a step after him, pause, then take another.
“Oh, Professor Kennedy,” she called.
Craig turned.
“There’s something I forgot,” she continued. “There’s something wrong with mother!” She paused, then resumed: “Even before Virginia was taken down with this—illness I saw a change. She is worried. Oh, Professor Kennedy, what is it? We have all been so happy. And now—Virgie, mother—all I have in the world. What shall I do?”
“Just what do you mean?” asked Kennedy, gently.
“I don’t know. Mother has been so different lately. And now, every night, she goes out.”
“Where?” encouraged Kennedy, realizing that his plan was working.
“I don’t know. If she would only come back looking happier.” She was sobbing, convulsively, over she knew not what.
“Miss Blakeley,” said Kennedy, taking her hand between both of his, “only trust me. If it is in my power I shall bring you all out of this uncertainty that haunts you.”
She could only murmur her thanks as we left.
“It is strange,” ruminated Kennedy, as we sped across the city again to the laboratory. “We must watch Mrs. Blakeley.”
That was all that was said. Although I had no inkling of what was back of it all, I felt quite satisfied at having recognized the mystery even on stumbling on it as I had.
In the laboratory, as soon as he could develop the skiagraphs he had taken, Kennedy began a minute study of them. It was not long before he looked over at me with the expression I had come to recognize when he found something important. I went over and looked at the radiograph which he was studying. To me it was nothing but successive gradations of shadows. But to one who had studied roentgenography as Kennedy had each minute gradation of light and shade had its meaning.
“You see,” pointed out Kennedy, tracing along one of the shadows with a fine-pointed pencil, and then along a corresponding position on another standard skiagraph which he already had, “there is a marked diminution in size of the sella turcica, as it is called. Yet there is no evidence of a tumor.” For several moments he pondered deeply over the photographs. “And it is impossible to conceive of any mechanical pressure sufficient to cause such a change,” he added.
Unable to help him on the problem, whatever it might be, I watched him pacing up and down the laboratory.
“I shall have to take that picture over again—under different circumstances,” he remarked, finally, pausing and looking at his watch. “Tonight we must follow this clue which Cynthia has given us. Call a cab, Walter.”
We took a stand down the block from the Blakeley mansion, near a large apartment, where the presence of a cab would not attract attention. If there is any job I despise it is shadowing. One must keep his eyes riveted on a house, for, once let the attention relax and it is incredible how quickly any one may get out and disappear.
Our vigil was finally rewarded when we saw Mrs. Blakeley emerge and hurry down the street. To follow her was easy, for she did not suspect that she was being watched, and went afoot. On she walked, turning off the Drive and proceeding rapidly toward the region of cheap tenements. She paused before one, and as our cab cruised leisurely past we saw her press a button, the last on the right-hand side, enter the door, and start up the stairs.
Instantly Kennedy signaled our driver to stop and together we hopped out and walked back, cautiously entering the vestibule. The name in the letter-box was “Mrs. Reba Rinehart.” What could it mean?
Just then another cab stopped up the street, and as we turned to leave the vestibule Kennedy drew back. It was too late, however, not to be seen. A man had just alighted and, in turn, had started back, also realizing that it was too late. It was Chapelle! There was nothing to do but to make the best of it.
“Shadowing the shadowers?” queried Kennedy, keenly watching the play of his features under the arc-light of the street.
“Miss Cynthia asked me to follow her mother the other night,” he answered, quite frankly. “And I have been doing so ever since.”
It was a glib answer, at any rate, I thought.
“Then, perhaps you know something of Reba Rinehart, too,” bluffed Kennedy.
Chapelle eyed us a moment, in doubt how much we knew. Kennedy played a pair of deuces as if they had been four aces instead.
“Not much,” replied Chapelle, dubiously. “I know that Mrs. Blakeley has been paying money to the old woman, who seems to be ill. Once I managed to get in to see her. It’s a bad case of pernicious anemia, I should say. A neighbor told me she had been to the college hospital, had been one of Doctor Haynes’s cases, but that he had turned her over to his son. I’ve seen Hampton Haynes here, too.”
There was an air of sincerity about Chapelle’s words. But, then, I reflected that there had also been a similar ring to what we had heard Hampton say. Were they playing a game against each other? Perhaps—but what was the game? What did it all mean and why should Mrs. Blakeley pay money to an old woman, a charity patient?
There was no solution. Both Kennedy and Chapelle, by a sort of tacit consent, dismissed their cabs, and we strolled on over toward Broadway, watching one another, furtively. We parted finally, and Craig and I went up to our apartment, where he sat for hours in a brown study. There was plenty to think about even so far in the affair. He may have sat up all night. At any rate, he roused me early in the morning.
“Come over to the laboratory,” he said. “I want to take that X-ray machine up there again to Blakeley’s. Confound it! I hope it’s not too late.”
I lost no time in joining him and we were at the house long before any reasonable hour for visitors.
Kennedy asked for Mrs. Blakeley and hurriedly set up the X-ray apparatus. “I wish you would place that face mask which she was wearing exactly as it was before she became ill,” he asked.
Her mother did as Kennedy directed, replacing the rubber mask as Virginia had worn it.
“I want you to preserve that mask,” directed Kennedy, as he finished taking his pictures. “Say nothing about it to any one. In fact, I should advise putting it in your family safe for the present.”
Hastily we drove back to the laboratory and Kennedy set to work again developing the second set of skiagraphs. I had not long to wait, this time, for him to study them. His first glance brought me over to him as he exclaimed loudly.
At the point just opposite the sore which he had observed on Virginia’s forehead, and overlying the sella turcica, there was a peculiar spot on the radiograph.
“Something in that mask has affected the photographic plate,” he explained, his face now animated.
Before I could ask him what it was he had opened