Now," he concluded, "doubt it or not, we have to deal with a man who is a proficient student of these sleepmakers. Who is he, where is he, and when will he strike?"

Garrick was now pacing excitedly up and down the room.

"You see," he added, "the police of Europe by their new scientific methods are driving such criminals out of the various countries. Thank heaven, I am now prepared to meet them if they come to America."

"Then you think this is a foreigner?" I asked meekly.

"I didn't say so," Garrick replied. "No. I think this is a criminal exceptionally wide awake, one who studies and adopts what he sees whenever he wants it. If you recall, I warned you to have a wholesome respect for this man at the very start, when we were looking at that empty cartridge."

I could restrain my admiration of him no longer. "Guy," I exclaimed, heartily, astounded by what I had seen, "you--you are a wonder!"

"No," he laughed, "not wonderful, Tom,--only very ordinary. I've had a chance to learn some things abroad, fortunately. I've taken the time to show you all this because I want you to appreciate what it is we are up against in this case of Violet Winslow. You can understand now why I was so particular about instructing Warrington not to let her go anywhere unattended by friends. There's nothing inherently impossible in these poisoned needle stories--given the right conjunction of circ.u.mstances. What we have to guard against princ.i.p.ally is letting her get into any situation where the circ.u.mstances make such a thing possible. I've almost a notion to let the New York end of this case go altogether for a while and take a run up to Tuxedo to warn her and Mrs.

de Lancey personally. Still, I think I put it strongly enough with Warrington so that--"

Our telephone tinkled insistently.

"h.e.l.lo," answered Garrick. "Yes, this is Garrick. Who is this?

Warrington? In Tuxedo? Why, my dear boy, you needn't have gone personally. Are you sure you're strong enough for such exertion?

What--what's that? Warrington--it--it isn't--not to New York?"

Garrick's face was actually pale as he fairly started back from the telephone and caught my eye.

"Tom," he exclaimed huskily to me, "Violet Winslow left for New York on the early train this morning!"

I felt my heart skip a beat, then pound away like a sledge-hammer at my ribs as the terrible possibilities of the situation were seared into my brain.

"Yes, Warrington--a letter to her? Read it--quick," I heard Garrick's tense voice repeating. "I see. Her maid Lucille was taken very ill a few days ago and she allowed her to go to her brother who lives on Ninth Street. I understand. Now--the letter."

I could not hear what was said over the telephone, but later Garrick repeated it to me and I afterwards saw the letter itself which I may as well reproduce here. It said:

"Since I left you, mademoiselle, I am very ill here at the home of my brother. I have a nice room in the back of the house on the first floor and now that I am getting better I can sit up and look out of the window.

"I am very ill yet, but the worst is past and some time when you are in New York I wish I could see you. You have always been so good to me, mademoiselle, that I hope I may soon be back again, if you have not a maid better than your poor Lucille.

"Your faithful servant,

"LUCILLE DE VEAU."

"And she's already in the city?" asked Garrick of Warrington as he finished reading the letter. "Mrs. de Lancey has gone with her--to do some shopping. I see. That will take all day, she said? She is going to call on Lucille--to-night--that's what she told her new maid there?

To-night? That's all right, my boy. I just wanted to be sure. Don't worry. We'll look out for her here, all right. Now, Warrington, you just keep perfectly quiet. No relapses, you know, old fellow. We can take care of everything. I'm glad you told me. Good-bye."

Garrick had finished up his conversation with Warrington in a confident and rea.s.suring tone, quite the opposite to that with which he had started and even more in contrast with the expression on his face as he talked.

"I didn't want to alarm the boy unnecessarily," he explained to me, as he hung up the receiver. "I could tell that he was very weak yet and that the trip up to Tuxedo had almost done him up. It seems that she thought a good deal of Lucille--there's the address--99 Ninth. You can never tell about these maids, though. Lucille may be all right--or the other maid may be all bad, or vice versa. There's no telling. The worst of it is that she and her aunt are somewhere in the city, perhaps shopping. It only needs that they become separated for something, anything, to happen. There's been no time to warn her, either, and she's just as likely to visit that Lucille to-night alone as not.

Gad--I'm glad I didn't fly off up there to Tuxedo, after all. She'll need someone here to protect her."

Garrick was considering hastily what was to be done. Quickly he mapped out his course of action.

"Come, Tom," he said hurriedly to me, as he wrapped up a little cedar box which he took from the cabinet where he kept the endormeur outfit.

"Come--let's investigate that Ninth Street address while we have time."

CHAPTER XVII

THE NEWSPAPER FAKE

Within a few minutes we were sauntering with enforced leisure along Ninth Street, in a rather sordid part, inhabited largely, I made out, by a slightly better cla.s.s of foreigners than some other sections of the West Side.

As we walked along, I felt Garrick tugging at my arm.

"Slow up a bit," he whispered under his breath. "There's the house which was mentioned in the maid's note."

It was an old three-story brownstone building with an entrance two or three steps up from the sidewalk level. Once, no doubt, it had housed people of some means, but the change in the character of the neighbourhood with shifting population had evidently brought it to the low estate where it now sheltered one family on each floor, if not more. At least that was the general impression one got from a glance at the cheapened air of the block.

Garrick pa.s.sed the house so as not to attract any attention, and a little further on paused before an apartment house, not of the modern elevator construction, but still of quiet and decent appearance. At least there were no children spilling out from its steps into the street, in imminent danger of their young lives from every pa.s.sing automobile, as there were in the tenements of the block below.

He entered the front door which happened to be unlatched and we had no trouble in mounting the stairs to the roof.

What he intended doing I had no idea yet, but he went ahead with a.s.surance and I followed, equally confident, for he must have had adventures something like this before. On the roof, a clothesline, which he commandeered and tied about a chimney, served to let him down the few feet from the higher apartment roof to that of the dwelling house next to it, one of the row in which number 99 was situated.

Quickly he tiptoed over to the chimney of the brownstone house a few doors down and, as he did so, I saw him take from his pocket the cedar box. A string tied to a weight told him which of the flues reached down to the room on the first floor, back.

That determined, he let the little cedar box fastened to an entwined pair of wires down the flue. He then ran the wires back across the roof to the apartment, up, and into a little storm shed at the top of the last flight of stairs which led from the upper hall to the roof.

"There is nothing more that we can do here just yet," he remarked after he had hauled himself back to me on the higher roof. "We are lucky not to have been disturbed, but if we stay here we are likely to be observed."

Cautiously we retraced our steps and were again on the street without having alarmed any of the tenants of the flat through which we had gained access to the roofs.

It was now the forenoon and, although Garrick inst.i.tuted a search in every place that he could think of where Mrs. de Laacey and Violet Winslow might go, including the homes of those of their friends whose names we could learn, it was without result. I don't think there can be many searches more hopeless than to try to find someone in New York when one has no idea where to look. Only chance could possibly have thrown them in our way and chance did not favour us.

There was nothing to do but wait for the time when Miss Winslow might, of her own accord, turn up to visit her former maid for whom she apparently had a high regard.

Inquiries as to the antecedents of Lucille De Veau were decidedly unsatisfactory, not that they gave her a bad character, but because there simply seemed to be nothing that we could find out. The maid seemed to be absolutely unknown. Her brother was a waiter, though where he worked we could not find out, for he seemed to be one of those who are constantly shifting their positions.

Garrick had notified Dillon of what he had discovered, in a general way, and had asked him to detail some men to conduct the search secretly for Miss Winslow and her aunt, but without any better results than we had obtained. Apparently the department stores had swallowed them up for the time being and we could only wait impatiently, trusting that all would turn out right in the end. Still, I could not help having some forebodings in the matter.

It was in the middle of the afternoon that we had gone downtown to Garrick's office, after stopping to secure the letter from the safe in the uptown hotel where it had been deposited for security during the night and placing it in a safety deposit vault where Garrick kept some of his own valuables. Garrick had selected his office as a vantage point to which any news of Miss Winslow and her aunt might be sent by those whom we had out searching. No word came, however, and the hours of suspense seemed to drag interminably.

"You're pretty well acquainted on the STAR?" Garrick asked me at last, after we had been sitting in a sort of mournful silence wondering whether those on the other side might not be stealing a march on us.

"Why, yes, I know several people there," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

"I was just thinking of a possible plan of campaign that might be mapped out to bring these people from under cover," he remarked thoughtfully. "Do you think you could carry part of it through?"

I said I would try and Garrick proceeded to unfold a scheme which he had been revolving all day. It consisted of as ingenious a "plant" as I could well imagine.