Part 43 (1/2)
The hospital physician had bent over her at the words, and before Kennedy could go on interrupted: ”This was not a snake bite; it was more likely from an all-gla.s.s hypodermic syringe with a platinum-iridium needle.”
Professor Rapport, priest of the Devil, advanced a step menacingly toward Kennedy. ”Remember,” he said in a low, angry tone, ”remember--you are pledged to keep the secrets of the Red Lodge!”
Craig brushed aside the sophistry with a sentence. ”I do not recognize any secrets that I have to keep about the meeting this afternoon to which you summoned the Blairs and Mrs. Langhorne, according to reports from the shadows I had placed on Mrs. Langhorne and Dr. Vaughn.”
If there is such a thing as the evil eye, Rapport's must have been a pair of them, as he realized that Kennedy had resorted to the simple devices of shadowing the devotees.
A cry, almost a shriek, startled us. Kennedy's encounter with Rapport had had an effect which none of us had considered. The step or two in advance which the prophet had taken had brought him into the line of vision of the still half-stupefied Veda lying back of Kennedy on the hospital cot.
The mere sight of him, the sound of his voice and the mention of the Red Lodge had been sufficient to penetrate that stupor. She was sitting bolt upright, a ghastly, trembling specter. Slowly a smile seemed to creep over the cruel face of the mystic. Was it not a recognition of his hypnotic power?
Kennedy turned and laid a gentle hand on the quaking convulsed figure of the woman. One could feel the electric tension in the air, the battle of two powers for good or evil. Which would win--the old fascination of the occult or the new power of science?
It was a dramatic moment. Yet not so dramatic as the outcome. To my surprise, neither won.
Suddenly she caught sight of her husband. Her face changed. All the prehistoric jealousy of which woman is capable seemed to blaze forth.
”I will defend myself!” she cried. ”I will fight back! She shall not win--she shall not have you--no--she shall not--never!”
I recalled the strained feeling between the two women that I had noticed in the cab. Was it Mrs. Langhorne who had been the disturbing influence, whose power she feared, over herself and over her husband?
Rapport had fallen back a step, but not from the mind of Kennedy.
”Here,” challenged Craig, facing the group and drawing from his pocket the gla.s.s ampoule, ”I picked this up at the Red Lodge last night.”
He held it out in his hand before the Rapports so that they could not help but see it. Were they merely good actors? They betrayed nothing, at least by face or action.
”It is crotalin,” he announced, ”the venom of the rattlesnake--crotalus horridus. It has been noticed that persons suffering from certain diseases of which epilepsy is one, after having been bitten by a rattlesnake, if they recover from the snake bite, are cured of the disease.”
Kennedy was forging straight ahead now in his exposure. ”Crotalin,” he continued, ”is one of the new drugs used in the treatment of epilepsy.
But it is a powerful two-edged instrument. Some one who knew the drug, who perhaps had used it, has tried an artificial bite of a rattler on Veda Blair, not for epilepsy, but for another, diabolical purpose, thinking to cover up the crime, either as the result of the so-called death thought of the Lodge or as the bite of the real rattler at the Lodge.”
Kennedy had at last got under Dr. Vaughn's guard. All his reticence was gone.
”I joined the cult,” he confessed. ”I did it in order to observe and treat one of my patients for epilepsy. I justified myself. I said, 'I will be the exposer, not the accomplice, of this modern Satanism.' I joined it and--”
”There is no use trying to s.h.i.+eld anyone, Vaughn,” rapped out Kennedy, scarcely taking time to listen. ”An epileptic of the most dangerous criminal type has arranged this whole elaborate setting as a plot to get rid of the wife who brought him his fortune and now stands in the way of his unholy love of Mrs. Langhorne. He used you to get the poison with which you treated him. He used the Rapports with money to play on her mysticism by their so-called death thought, while he watched his opportunity to inject the fatal crotalin.”
Craig faced the criminal, whose eyes now showed more plainly than words his deranged mental condition, and in a low tone added, ”The Devil is in you, Seward Blair!”
CHAPTER XXV
THE ”HAPPY DUST”
Veda Blair's rescue from the strange use that was made of the venom came at a time when the city was aroused as it never had been before over the nation-wide agitation against drugs.
Already, it will be recalled, Kennedy and I had had some recent experience with dope fiends of various kinds, but this case I set down because it drew us more intimately into the crusade.
”I've called on you, Professor Kennedy, to see if I can't interest you in the campaign I am planning against drugs.”