We noted the number and Kennedy and I hurried up-town to the laboratory which we had left only a few short hours before.
Already there were waiting for him, by special messenger, the materials from the autopsy which had been promised by the Westport coroner, who for once had appreciated the importance of a case and had acted with speed and decision.
Kennedy lost no time in throwing off his coat and donning his acid-stained smock. For some minutes I watched him in silence as he arranged his jars and beakers and test-tubes for the study which he had in mind. He had taken some of the material and placed it over a Bunsen burner in an apparatus which looked like a miniature still. Another apparatus which he took from a cabinet was disposed on a table. It seemed to consist primarily of three tubes. In one was a slit, and through the slit evidently rays of light were caused to stream. Inside I saw a lens. Each of the tubes seemed to radiate from a triangular prism of some substance that looked like glass. Two of the radiating tubes had an eye-piece and on one was a sort of scale.
As Kennedy made these rapid preparations he paused now and then to study carefully the slivers of bright metal he had picked up from the carpet in the state-room, while on a porcelain plate he placed the powder which he had scraped from the brass fittings.
“I’m not doing you a bit of good here, Craig,” I remarked, at length. “Isn’t there something I can do while you are working? I can come back here in time to go down and meet Hastings and Burke with you.”
He paused a moment. “Yes,” he replied, “there is something that you might be doing. I have been wondering just how intimate that little Mexican dancer was with Marshall Maddox and whether Shelby actually knew her in New York before he met her out at Westport the other night. I think you might make some inquiries along that line, and by the time you find anything you may find me more interesting also.”
Glad of the opportunity to be of service, for anything was better than to sit about idle in the present high-keyed state of my nerves, I started out.
My first impulse was to visit the New Amsterdam Club, one of the oldest clubs in the city, of which I knew that Maddox had been a member.
I knew several men who were members, and I was sure that among them I might find some one at the club at that time, and perhaps either from him learn something of Maddox or at least obtain an introduction to some one who did know.
I found that I had not acted without reason. In the big window that overlooked Fifth Avenue, ensconced in the deep leather chairs, looking out on the fashionable throng of shoppers who passed up and down the Avenue, I found several men, among whom was Conigsby, whom I had known for some time as assiduous first-nighter and man about town.