CHAPTER XX.
THE LEAD-LINED VAT.
Sprague seated himself upon the long pine box; and Sturgis, dropping into the only chair, began his narrative. As he talked, he carelessly whittled the cover of the wooden box with the knife which he still held in his hand. He began with an account of his investigation at the Knickerbocker bank, and explained the result of his observations and inferences down to the time of his visit to Murdock's house, omitting, however, to mention any of the names of the actors in the reconstructed drama.
"So you see," he concluded, "we have established the identity of the body in the cab, and of the young man who disappeared after the cab was upset. But one of the most salient features of the case, from the start, was the fact that neither of these two men had derived much, if any, pecuniary profit from his crime. The bookkeeper, as we have seen, was a mere catspaw in the control of the accountant, and his posthumous confession has given us the explanation of the power exerted over him by his accomplice. It was not so easy to establish the motive which controlled the actions of the accountant, who was himself only a tool in the hands of a higher intelligence. The deus ex machinâ of this crime is a man of genius who has hardly appeared upon the scene at all, but whose traces I have found at every turn. He was the brains of the whole scheme; the other men in his hands were mere puppets. Through the accountant, this master spirit managed the bookkeeper; and the accountant himself was controlled by him more directly, but no less surely. If he held the former through his fear of exposure and consequent ruin, he influenced the latter through even more potent motives. He is the father of a beautiful girl, whom he did not scruple to use as a decoy. The price agreed upon for the accountant's assistance was the hand of this daughter, for whom the young man had doubtless conceived a passionate love. Whether or not the leader would have had the power to carry out his part of the contract matters little; for it is highly probable that he never had the slightest intention of so doing. He evidently realized very early in the game that the bookkeeper could not long escape the clutches of the law. But as he had taken every precaution to prevent him from knowing anything of his very existence, the fate of the unfortunate bookkeeper would have mattered little to this heartless villain, had not the probability remained that, when brought to bay, the bookkeeper would denounce the accountant's connection with the crime. This would have been extremely awkward, since the accountant was very likely in possession of some dangerous secrets. The safest way out of the difficulty was to quietly suppress the now useless bookkeeper. This plan was decided upon, and would doubtless have been carried into execution, had not fate otherwise decreed. After the bookkeeper's death, under the circumstances which I have related, it became quite probable that the accountant's connection with the case would be discovered; for luck had been against him from the start, and he became more and more entangled in the chain of circumstantial evidence of whose existence his leader was soon fully aware. In the first place, the accountant was wounded; and thus not only partially disabled, but also,—what is far worse,—conspicuously marked. A man who carries his arm in a sling can hardly fail to attract attention, especially when this distinguishing mark is accompanied by another equally glaring one in the form of a head of brilliant red hair——"
"Hold on, Sturgis!" interrupted Sprague, who had been listening with growing interest; "don't you know the accountant's name?"
"Yes," replied the reporter; "his name is Thomas Chatham."
"Thomas Chatham!" exclaimed Sprague, as the image of the miserable young man came to his mind.
"Yes," replied Sturgis, answering his thought, "the man you met only a few hours ago."
There was a brief silence, broken at last by Sprague, who asked:
"Has he escaped?"
Sturgis hesitated.
"That depends upon how we look at it," he said gravely at length; "he has paid the penalty of his crimes."
"What do you mean?"
"He is dead," answered the reporter.
"Dead? But I tell you I saw him——"
"I know; but he has died since."
"Suicide?"
"No;" the reporter's voice sank to a whisper; "murder!"
"Murder?" repeated the artist, startled. "But how do you know that?"
"This lump of lead tells the story," said Sturgis, holding up the shapeless piece of metal which he had taken out of the vat.
"What is it? A bullet?"
"Yes; the bullet which Chatham carried in his arm from the time that he was wounded by Arbogast, the bullet which has enabled me to trace him step by step, from his flight from the overturned cab, to Doctor Thurston's, and finally to his death in this very room; the bullet whose peculiar shape is recorded in this shadow picture taken by Thurston by means of the Roentgen rays."
So saying, he handed Sprague the photograph. But the artist had ceased to listen.
"In this very room?" he mused aloud, looking about him with awe.
"Yes. The story is simple enough. The man whose instrument Chatham was, is not one who would care to be lumbered up with tools, which become positively dangerous as soon as they cease to be useful. This man, totally unhampered by pity, gratitude or fear, determined to destroy the accountant, whose discovery might have imperilled his own welfare. What mattered a human life or two, when weighed against the possible loss of his own life or liberty, or of his high social standing and his enormous wealth; for this man is both renowned and rich, and he appears to have brought wholesale murder to a science."
"Do you mean to say that wholesale murder can be indulged in with impunity in a city like New York, at the end of the nineteenth century?" asked Sprague aghast.
"Yes; when it is done in the systematic and scientific manner that has been employed here. For this murderer is the most remarkable criminal of modern times. He has not been satisfied with killing his victims; he has succeeded in completely wiping them out of existence. Criminals have often attempted to destroy the bodies of their victims, but they have never before succeeded as this man has. He is a chemist of remarkable talent, and he has discovered a compound in which bone as well as human tissue is rapidly and totally dissolved. There it is in yonder tank. See how completely the liquid has destroyed the bone handle of this knife."
Sturgis, after showing the damaged knife to his companion, resumed his whittling upon the cover of the box on which the artist was seated.
"Chatham's body has been dissolved in that tank within a very short time. It has entirely disappeared; this flattened bullet alone is left, lead being one of the few substances which are not soluble in the contents of that tank. Fortunately he overlooked that fact. Genius has its lapses."
Presently Sprague ventured to say:
"If numerous crimes have been committed here, as you intimate, I do not understand how it is that suspicion has never rested on this house before."
"The author of these crimes has taken every precaution to render the chance of discovery quite remote. His dwelling-house on one street, and the bogus Chemical Company on the other, are in communication through this underground passage, while apparently having no connection with each other. Moreover, he is too shrewd to make frequent use of this death chamber. That does well enough as a last resort, when he is obliged to commit the murders with his own hands; but I suspect that this man has other agents like Chatham, who do the dirty work for him and then quietly ship the bodies here for annihilation, as it was intended should be done with Arbogast's. Ah! yes; I thought so. You are sitting upon one of these bodies now."
Sprague started to his feet; and, following the direction in which Sturgis was pointing with his open knife, he vaguely discerned, through the opening which the reporter had whittled, a small surface of what had once been the features of a human being.
After gazing for some minutes in horror-stricken silence at the distorted face, the artist asked in a low voice:
"How did Chatham meet his death?"
"I don't know yet," answered Sturgis gravely; "this man is no ordinary criminal. His work is clean and leaves no blood-stains and no disorder to tell of its accomplishment. He takes life with his own hands only when he is forced to do so; but, when he does, his method is masterly. It was easier to make away with Chatham than to pay him the price agreed upon for his complicity in the Knickerbocker bank embezzlement; and so his life was taken. I hope to discover how before I leave here."
Sprague started as the reporter ceased speaking.
"The price of his complicity?" he exclaimed, laying his hand upon Sturgis's arm, and looking earnestly into his eyes.
"Yes," replied the reporter, steadily meeting his friend's gaze, "his daughter's hand."
Sprague looked away from the honest eyes of the reporter, as if he dreaded to read in them the answer to his next question.
"Who is this fiend incarnate, who is willing to traffic in his own flesh and blood, and with whom murder is a science?"
"The man who is capable of these crimes, and of any others which might serve to remove an obstacle from his way, is——"
The reporter did not finish his sentence. He suddenly grasped his companion by the arm and stood transfixed, his eyes dilated, his neck craned in a listening attitude, every muscle tense like those of a wild animal in ambush, about to spring upon its approaching prey.
Presently a click was heard as though a bolt had been shot from its socket.
"Draw your revolver!" Sturgis whispered hoarsely to his companion. "Quick!——Look there!"
At the same time he drew his own weapon and pointed in the direction of the door at the head of the stairs. The door opened, and a man entered, quietly smoking a cigar.
"Doctor Murdock!" exclaimed Sprague with horror.
Murdock, still holding the door ajar, eyed the two men for an instant, his impassive face betraying not the slightest sign of emotion; Then, taking his cigar from his lips:
"Ah, gentlemen," he drawled in his ironical way, "I am delighted to see you. I trust you will make yourselves perfectly at home for a few minutes. I shall return directly. You can continue to work out your little problem in the meantime, Mr. Sturgis."
With these words he calmly turned to leave the room.
"Stop!" shouted Sturgis, levelling his revolver at Murdock's head; "stand where you are or I fire!"
The reporter's shot rang out almost before he had finished his sentence; but Murdock, unscathed, passed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Sprague, dazed by the rapidity with which this scene had been acted, stood rooted to the spot, without having made any attempt to use the revolver which he had drawn at Sturgis's bidding.
The reporter sprang up the stairs and threw his weight against the door. But it was doubtless intended to withstand great shocks, for it remained unshaken.
"Check!" came the sound of a mocking voice from the other side of the door.
Then, rushing down the stairs again, Sturgis shouted to his companion:
"Come quick! We must get out of here!"
And he led the way through the subterranean passage toward the cellar of the Manhattan Chemical Company.