CHAPTER XIV
THE HIDDEN WIRES
Donovan looked at the deputy as if about to dispute the statement. The detective even opened his lips to speak, but no sound came through them. Donovan sat down in a chair.
"Do you mean—" he asked, passing his hand over his face, as though to brush away unseen cobwebs. "Do you mean that he's dead?"
"Sure," was the answer. "Croaked, I told you. Deader 'n a burned out cigarette."
"Well," observed Donovan dispassionately, "that's the limit!"
"I agree with you," said the colonel, and there was a curious look on his face. "Though if you mean it's the end I beg to differ. It's only the beginning."
"How'd it happen?" asked Donovan sharply.
"We don't know," was the answer. "The Dago was all right to-day, except he seemed a little glummer than usual. He didn't eat any supper though but that's nothing. Lots of times the birds in here get off their feed," and the deputy warden made a comprehensive gesture.
"He was locked up with the rest to-night and we got sort of quiet and comfortable here and I was having a game of pinochle with Tom Doyle when one of our boarders in murderers' row lets out a howl. Course I went to see what it was, and there was the Dago—croaked!"
"What did it?" asked Donovan.
"We don't know. Doc Warren's in now giving him the once-over."
"Did he have any visitors to-day?" asked the colonel.
"Yes, a fellow like himself—Indian I reckon. But we didn't let him further than the corridor. It wasn't visiting day for the fellows in his row, so the Dago left a package and went away."
"What was in the package?" the colonel questioned further.
"Oh, just some cigarettes. Singa Phut didn't like the kind we keep, and he had to have his own fancy kind. He's had 'em before, so we knew they was all right."
"Was that all?"
"Every blessed thing that was in the package. So we let him have the cigarettes. That was about four o'clock. He was dead at eight. Here comes the doctor now. Maybe he can tell you something."
Doctor Warren, rubbing his hands to get rid of the lint from the warden's towel, came along settling himself into his coat which he had removed the better to examine the body of the East Indian.
"Well, Donovan," said the county physician, "your friend saved you the trouble of convicting him."
"Yep. But I'd a had him all right. I'd a sent him to the chair without any trouble. But what ailed him, Doc?"
"I can't say yet. Looks like a case of heart disease. I'll hold an autopsy in the morning. He's dead all right."
"I thought maybe some of the other prisoners might have got in and croaked him," commented the headquarters detective. "Riley was saying some one let out a yell."
"That was Schmidt—fellow that killed his wife," interposed the deputy warden. "He's in the cell next to where the Dago was. Schmidt said he heard the foreigner breathing awful funny. It was his last breath all right. He was dead when I got in, Doc."
"Yes, they go quick that way."
"Are you sure it was heart disease, Dr. Warren?" asked the colonel.
"No, not at all. I just mentioned that as most probable. He didn't look strong. I can't tell for a certainty until to-morrow."
"Pardon me, Dr. Warren, for presuming on what is particularly your own ground, but did you look to see if any of the cigarettes were left in his cell?"
"I didn't notice. If you want to take a look come on back. And I don't in the least mind any suggestions from you, Colonel. I'm too much interested in your work. In fact, I'd be glad to have you help in this investigation if you think there's anything crooked."
"Oh, not at all. Suicide is, of course, the most natural suspicion in a case like this, and it isn't hard to conceal enough opium in a cigarette to kill a dozen men."
"Blazes! I never thought of that!" ejaculated the deputy. "Come on!" and he led the way back to the cell.
Singa Phut's body had been removed to another part of the jail. But the cell was as it had been when the final summons came to the East Indian.
There were the few poor possessions he had been allowed to have with him—simple and apparently safe enough. And, scattered on the floor, were some of the cigarettes, made from strong Latakia tobacco, the peculiar odor of which was, even yet, noticeable in the corners of the cell.
"He smoked some of 'em all right," observed the deputy.
"Let's have a look," suggested the colonel. "If we had a better light in here it might help."
"I'll bring one of the two-hundred watt bulbs we use down in the office," said the warden, who had joined the little group. There was an electric light socket in each cell—recently installed as the result of the agitation of a prison reform committee. The low-powered bulb was taken out and the glaring nitrogen gas one substituted. It made the cell very bright, and by the glare the colonel gathered up a number of the cigarettes. Some had been smoked down to a mere stub; others had not been lighted, and two or three were broken in half, neither end showing signs of either having been scorched by a match or wet by the lips of Singa Phut.
"Queer he'd waste 'em that way," observed Donovan. "Usually they can't get enough to smoke."
"He didn't exactly waste them," said the colonel grimly, as he looked at the divided but otherwise perfect cigarettes in his hand.
"What do you call it then?" demanded the headquarters detective.
"Well, I think he was looking for something in the cigarettes—and—he found it."
"What do you mean?" asked Dr. Warren.
"Wait. Maybe I can show you."
Colonel Ashley carefully gathered up all the cigarettes in the cell, a number of them being perfect. With them, and the black butts, as well as the broken paper tubes, he moved over to the small table in the cell, and spread them out.
Donovan reached under the colonel's arm and broke open one of the whole cigarettes. "I don't see—" he began. "For the love of Mike look at this!" he suddenly exclaimed. "There's a needle in this dope stick!"
"And, if you value your life don't touch it!" cried the colonel. "That's what I was looking for! Don't so much as scratch yourself the hundredth part of an inch or— Well, you saw Singa Phut," he ended grimly.
"Poisoned needle, Colonel?" asked Dr. Warren, as he shoved the cigarette Donovan had broken toward the middle of the table.
"That's what I suspect. If we had a cat now or a rat—"
"Easy enough to get a rat," interposed the warden. "There's always some of the beasts in the traps we set about. We catch 'em alive. I don't like poison. Here, Riley, go and see if you can find a rat in one of the traps. What you going to do, Colonel? Try it on him?"
"If you have one, yes. You get my idea, I guess. Some one of Singa Phut's Indian friends, knowing he would rather go out this way than pay the penalty of his crime, brought in a package of his favorite cigarettes.
"In two, three, or in perhaps more of the 'dope sticks,' as my friend Donovan calls them, he shoved a fine needle, the tip of which was dipped in some swift, subtle Indian poison, the secret of which these two alone, perhaps, knew.
"With the cigarettes in his possession it was easy enough for Singa Phut to smoke some and extract a needle from another. It was probably marked in some secret way. More than one needle was sent to guard against failure. But the first one must have worked. I'd like to find it."
"I'll have the cell swept for you," promised the warden as his deputy went off to look for a rat. A keeper was summoned with a broom, and brushed out the cell. It did not take long, for it was very clean. Most of the debris was cigarette ash and scraps of paper and tobacco. And it was in this debris, carefully poked over with a lead pencil, that a needle was found.
Colonel Ashley, using extreme care, laid the two together, after an examination of the other unbroken cigarettes had disclosed the fact that none of them concealed anything.
"I got one, Warden! A beaut!" came Riley's voice from down the corridor, and he came in with a wire cage containing a large rat which cowered in one corner of his cell, even as Singa Phut had shrunk into his when the end came.
"How you going to get at him, Colonel?" asked the warden. "They're nasty to handle. One of 'em nipped my dog fierce when I gave him a chance at killing it a day or so ago."
"I'm not going to let it out. If I had a stick, or something that I could fasten the needle on, I could work a sort of javelin," remarked the colonel.
"I'll get you one," offered Riley, much interested in the coming experiment. Donovan, too, looked on in startled wonder.
A long, slender stick was brought and, using great care, with his rubber gloves on that he used in autopsies, Doctor Warren fastened the needle to the wand. Then Colonel Ashley thrust the improvised spear through the wires of the cage and lightly punctured the rat, which gave a protesting squeak.
"It didn't hurt him much," observed the colonel, "and, if I have guessed right, his death will be painless."
"How soon?" asked Donovan.
"I can't say, but it ought not be very long. The kind of poison they use is calculated to work swiftly."
In the glaring light from the nitrogen bulb they stood in the cell of the dead man, gathered about the cage of the rat—a prison within a prison. After the first start caused by the needle prick, the rodent again shrank back into its corner. For perhaps ten minutes it remained thus, and then it began to exhibit signs of uneasiness. It stood up on its haunches and began to bite at the wires of the cage. It squeaked, more as though uneasy than in pain,
In another minute it began to run around the tin floor of its prison, and then it suddenly stopped in its tracks, fell over in a lump and was still.
"Well, I'll be—" began Donovan, and then, with a look at the colonel, he substituted: "This gets me! It sure does!"
"It evidently went right to the heart, just as in Singa Phut's case," observed the colonel grimly.
"You were right," said Doctor Warren, "it was poison. He probably jabbed himself with the point of the needle, and whatever was smeared on it did the rest. I shall be interested in making the autopsy."
"You will probably find very little trace of the poison," said the colonel. "The kind they use is designed to disappear almost as soon as it becomes effective. Still you may discover something."
But Doctor Warren did not. Aside from a little scratch near the prisoner's heart, where he had evidently dug the needle deep into his skin, there was no sign that death was other than by natural causes. The poison had gone directly into the blood, as does the venom of a snake, and had brought death in the same way. In fact, it was the opinion of Colonel Ashley that some form of snake poison was used, though what it was, no one could say.
And so passed out and beyond Singa Phut, and the charge of murder, having been quashed by a higher tribunal than that of the county court, the matter was soon forgotten.
The colonel's theory, that some fellow countryman had supplied the East Indian means of escaping the electric chair, was generally accepted. And that Singa Phut was guilty of having killed his partner in a sudden fit of passion following one of their frequent quarrels was also believed by those who cared to exercise any thought in the matter.
"But what gets me, though," said the colonel, "is where does Singa Phut fit in with the watch in Mrs. Darcy's hand. That watch! Ah, there's a link I haven't had time to examine as I'd like to. I must see to it."
The colonel fell into a reverie. His eyes went to the closet where he had put away his fishing rods.
"Oh, friend Izaak!" he murmured, "How basely I have deserted you! But
I'm coming back. Yes, I'll stop this detective work. I'll wire for
Kedge to-night to come on and take up the case. He can do it as well
as I. I'll get Kedge!"
He started for the telephone to dictate a telegram. And then, as he chanced to look out of the window, a different expression came into his face.
Down on the sidewalk he saw Amy Mason walking slowly along. The girl's pretty face was drawn and careworn. Evidently the anxiety over Darcy was beginning to tell on her.
The old detective shook his head slowly.
"Oh, I suppose I can't back out now," he sighed. "I've gone too far.
It would look like quitting, and I never was a quitter!"
He straightened up to his soldierly height.
"Besides," he went on, "Kedge would only mix matters up now. He wouldn't know what to do, even if I told him. Kedge is all right for some things, but— Oh, well, I'll keep on with the case!"
This was the day following the discovery of the suicide of the East Indian in his cell, and any intentions Colonel Ashley may have had of subjecting to a close examination the queer watch had to be postponed.
He had ventured to keep it after Donovan had shown it to him, ready to make some plausible excuse if it was called for, but the arrest of the East Indian, and the preparation of the case for trial, in connection with the prosecutor's office, evidently made Donovan forget, for the time being, that the watch was not among other criminal relics in his closet.
As a matter of fact, Colonel Ashley had had it in his possession since that night Donovan went out with his friend, the stool pigeon. And now, carrying out a plan he had made, the colonel, one bright May morning, put the odd timepiece in his pocket and started for the Darcy jewelry store, intending to have Kettridge look at the mechanism and other parts of the watch.
But when the detective reached the establishment he saw, to his surprise, a great crowd gathered out in front—a crowd that needed the services of several policemen to keep it from stopping traffic in the roadway.
"Hello! More trouble at the place," mused the colonel, quickening his steps. "I wonder what's up this time?"
He inquired casually from those on the outskirts of the throng, and received enough information to justify the getting out of several extra newspapers.
"Burglar tried to blow up the safe and got blowed up himself."
"Hold-up man shot three of the girls behind the diamond counter and then killed himself."
"Naw! Somebody tried to set fire to the place!"
"Aw, only one of the girls fainted; that's all."
These opinions came mostly from boys or young men. No one seemed to know exactly what had happened. The colonel spied Mulligan, the officer who had been the first official on the scene at the murder of Mrs. Darcy, and nodded in friendly fashion. The bluecoat escorted the colonel through the crowd into the store.
"I guess you'll be interested," said Mulligan.
"Yes, thank you. What is it?"
"I didn't hear all the particulars. But Miss Brill, the young lady clerk, received an electrical shock from some wires hidden under the metal edge of one of the showcases, so Mr. Kettridge says, and she was knocked down."
"Killed?"
"No, but her head struck on the edge of a case and she's badly cut. I sent for the ambulance. It happened when the store was crowded and made a bit of excitement."
"I should think it would! Hidden electric wires!" and the colonel thought of a certain discovery he had made.