Kennedy placed the five glasses which I had carefully sealed and labelled on the table before us.
“The next step,” he said, “was to find out whether any articles of clothing in the house showed marks that might be suspected of being blood-spots. And here I must beg the pardon of all in the room for intruding in their private wardrobes. But in this crisis it was absolutely necessary, and under such circumstances I never let ceremony stand before justice.
“In these five glasses on the table I have the washings of spots from the clothing worn by Tom, Mr. James Langley, Junior, Harrington Brown, and Doctor Putnam. I am not going to tell you which is which—indeed I merely have them marked, and I do not know them myself. But Mr. Jameson has the marks with the names opposite on a piece of paper in his pocket. I am simply going to proceed with the tests to see if any of the stains on the coats were of blood.”
Just then Doctor Putnam interposed. “One question, Professor Kennedy. It is a comparatively easy thing to recognise a blood-stain, but it is difficult, usually impossible, to tell whether the blood is that of a man or of an animal. I recall that we were all in our hunting-jackets that day, had been all day. Now, in the morning there had been an operation on one of the horses at the stable, and I assisted the veterinary from town. I may have got a spot or two of blood on my coat from that operation. Do I understand that this test would show that?”
“No,” replied Craig, “this test would not show that. Other tests would, but not this. But if the spot of human blood were less than the size of a pin-head, it would show—it would show if the spot contained even so little as one twenty-thousandth of a gram of albumin. Blood from a horse, a deer, a sheep, a pig, a dog, could be obtained, but when the test was applied the liquid in which they were diluted would remain clear. No white precipitin, as it is called, would form. But let human blood, ever so diluted, be added to the serum of the inoculated rabbit, and the test is absolute.”
A death-like silence seemed to pervade the room. Kennedy slowly and deliberately began to test the contents of the glasses. Dropping into each, as he broke the seal, some of the serum of the rabbit, he waited a moment to see if any change occurred.
It was thrilling. I think no one could have gone through that fifteen minutes without having it indelibly impressed on his memory. I recall thinking as Kennedy took each glass, “Which is it to be, guilt or innocence, life or death?” Could it be possible that a man’s life might hang on such a slender thread? I knew Kennedy was too accurate and serious to deceive us. It was not only possible, it was actually a fact.
The first glass showed no reaction. Someone had been vindicated.
The second was neutral likewise—another person in the room had been proved innocent.
The third—no change. Science had released a third.
The fourth—
Almost it seemed as if the record in my pocket burned—spontaneously—so intense was my feeling. There in the glass was that fatal, telltale white precipitate.
“My God, it’s the milk ring!” whispered Tom close to my ear.
Hastily Kennedy dropped the serum into the fifth. It remained as clear as crystal.
My hand trembled as it touched the envelope containing my record of the names.
“The person who wore the coat with that blood-stain on it,” declared Kennedy solemnly, “was the person who struck Lewis Langley down, who choked him and then dragged his scarcely dead body across the floor and obliterated the marks of violence in the blazing log fire. Jameson, whose name is opposite the sign on this glass?”
I could scarcely tear the seal to look at the paper in the envelope. At last I unfolded it, and my eye fell on the name opposite the fatal sign. But my mouth was dry, and my tongue refused to move. It was too much like reading a death-sentence. With my finger on the name I faltered an instant.
Tom leaned over my shoulder and read it to himself. “For Heaven’s sake, Jameson,” he cried, “let the ladies retire before you read the name.”
“It’s not necessary,” said a thick voice. “We quarrelled over the estate. My share’s mortgaged up to the limit, and Lewis refused to lend me more even until I could get Isabelle happily married. Now Lewis’s goes to an outsider—Harrington, boy, take care of Isabelle, fortune or no fortune. Good—”
Someone seized James Langley’s arm as he pressed an automatic revolver to his temple. He reeled like a drunken man and dropped the gun on the floor with an oath.
“Beaten again,” he muttered. “Forgot to move the ratchet from ‘safety’ to ‘fire.’”
Like a madman he wrenched himself loose from us, sprang through the door, and darted upstairs. “I’ll show you some combustion!” he shouted back fiercely.
Kennedy was after him like a flash. “The will!” he cried.
We literally tore the door off its hinges and burst into James Langley’s room. He was bending eagerly over the fireplace. Kennedy made a flying leap at him. Just enough of the will was left unburned to be admitted to probate.
IX. THE TERROR IN THE AIR
“There’s something queer about these aeroplane accidents at Belmore Park,” mused Kennedy, one evening, as his eye caught a big headline in the last edition of the Star, which I had brought uptown with me.
“Queer?” I echoed. “Unfortunate, terrible, but hardly queer. Why, it is a common saying among the aeronauts that if they keep at it long enough they will all lose their lives.”
“Yes, I know that,” rejoined Kennedy; “but, Walter, have you noticed that all these accidents have happened to Norton’s new gyroscope machines?”
“Well, what of that” I replied. “Isn’t it just barely possible that Norton is on the wrong track in applying the gyroscope to an aeroplane? I can’t say I know much about either the gyroscope or the aeroplane, but from what I hear the fellows at the office say it would seem to me that the gyroscope is a pretty good thing to keep off an aeroplane, not to put on it.”
“Why?” asked Kennedy blandly.
“Well, it seems to me, from what the experts say, that anything which tends to keep your machine in one position is just what you don’t want in an aeroplane. What surprises them, they say, is that the thing seems to work so well up to a certain point—that the accidents don’t happen sooner. Why, our man on the aviation field tells me that when that poor fellow Browne was killed he had all but succeeded in bringing his machine to a dead stop in the air. In other words, he would have won the Brooks Prize for perfect motionlessness in one place. And then Herrick, the day before, was going about seventy miles an hour when he collapsed. They said it was heart failure. But tonight another expert says in the Star—here, I’ll read it: ‘The real cause was carbonic-acid-gas poisoning due to the pressure on the mouth from driving fast through the air, and the consequent inability to expel the poisoned air which had been breathed. Air once breathed is practically carbonic-acid-gas. When one is passing rapidly through the air this carbonic-acid-gas is pushed back into the lungs, and only a little can get away because of the rush of air pressure into the mouth. So it is rebreathed, and the result is gradual carbonic-acid-gas poisoning, which produces a kind of narcotic sleep.’”
“Then it wasn’t the gyroscope in that case?” said Kennedy with a rising inflection.
“No,” I admitted reluctantly, “perhaps not.”
I could see that I had been rash in talking so long. Kennedy had only been sounding me to see what the newspapers thought of it. His next remark was characteristic.
“Norton has asked me to look into the thing,” he said quietly. “If his invention is a failure, he is a ruined man. All his money is in it, he is suing a man for infringing on his patent, and he is liable for damages to the heirs, according to his agreement with Browne and Herrick. I have known Norton some time; in fact, he worked out his ideas