Part 38 (2/2)
The Captain seized Craig by both hands and wrung them like the handle of a pump.
”Oh, thank you--thank you--thank you,” cried Gladys, running up and almost dancing with joy at the change in her father. ”I--I could almost--kiss you!”
”I could let you,” twinkled Craig, promptly, as she blushed deeply.
”Thank you, too, Mrs. Brainard,” he added, turning to acknowledge her congratulations also. ”I am glad I have been able to be of service to you.”
”Won't you come back to the house for dinner?” urged the Captain.
Kennedy looked at me and smiled. ”Walter,” he said, ”this is no place for two old bachelors like us.”
Then turning, he added, ”Many thanks, sir,--but, seriously, last night we slept princ.i.p.ally in day coaches. Really I must turn the case over to Burke now and get back to the city to-night early.”
They insisted on accompanying us to the station, and there the congratulations were done all over again.
”Why,” exclaimed Kennedy, as we settled ourselves in the Pullman after waving a final good-bye, ”I shall be afraid to go back to that town again. I--I almost did kiss her!”
Then his face settled into its usual stern lines, although softened, I thought. I am sure that it was not the New England landscape, with its quaint stone fences, that he looked at out of the window, but the recollection of the bright das.h.i.+ng figure of Gladys s.h.i.+rley.
It was seldom that a girl made so forcible an impression on Kennedy, I know, for on our return he fairly dived into work, like the Z99 herself, and I did not see him all the next day until just before dinner time. Then he came in and spent half an hour restoring his acid-stained fingers to something like human semblance.
He said nothing about his research work of the day, and I was just about to remark that a day had pa.s.sed without its usual fresh alarum and excursion, when a tap on the door buzzer was followed by the entrance of our old friend Andrews, head of the Great Eastern Life Insurance Company's own detective service.
”Kennedy,” he began, ”I have a startling case for you. Can you help me out with it?”
As he sat down heavily, he pulled from his immense black wallet some sc.r.a.ps of paper and newspaper cuttings.
”You recall, I suppose,” he went on, unfolding the papers without waiting for an answer, ”the recent death of young Montague Phelps, at Woodbine, just outside the city?”
Kennedy nodded. The death of Phelps, about ten days before, had attracted nation-wide attention because of the heroic fight for life he had made against what the doctors admitted had puzzled them--a new and baffling manifestation of coma. They had laboured hard to keep him awake, but had not succeeded, and after several days of lying in a comatose state he had finally succ.u.mbed. It was one of those strange but rather frequent cases of long sleeps reported in the newspapers, although it was by no means one which might be cla.s.sed as record-breaking.
The interest in Phelps lay, a great deal, in the fact that the young man had married the popular dancer, Anginette Petrovska, a few months previously. His honeymoon trip around the world had suddenly been interrupted, while the couple were crossing Siberia, by the news of the failure of the Phelps banking-house in Wall Street and the practical wiping-out of his fortune. He had returned, only to fall a victim to a greater misfortune.
”A few days before his death,” continued Andrews, measuring his words carefully, ”I, or rather the Great Eastern, which had been secretly investigating the case, received this letter. What do you think of it?”
He spread out on the table a crumpled note in a palpably disguised handwriting:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
You would do well to look Into the death of Montague Phelps, Jr. I accuse no one, a.s.sert nothing. But when a young man apparently in the best of health, drops off so mysteriously and even the physician in the case can give no very convincing information, that case warrants attention. I know what I know.
AN OUTSIDER.
XXI
THE GHOULS
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