"Then he took a box from his pocket, opened it. There must have been a syringe and a bottle of scopolamine. Where they came from I do not know, but perhaps from some hospital. I shall have to find that out later. He went to Elaine, quickly jabbing the needle, with no resistance from her now. Slowly he replaced the bottle and the needle in his pocket. He could not have been in any hurry now, for it takes time for the drug to work."
Kennedy paused. Had we known at the time, Michael—he of the sinister face—must have been in the hallway, careful that no one saw him. A tap at the door and the Clutching Hand, that night, must have beckoned him. A moment's parley and they separated—Clutching Hand going back to Elaine, who was now under the influence of the second drug.
"Our criminal," resumed Kennedy thoughtfully, "may have shaken Elaine. She did not answer. Then he may have partly revived her. She must have been startled. Clutching Hand, perhaps, was half crouching, with a big ugly blue steel revolver leveled full in her face.
"'One word and I shoot!' he probably cried. 'Get up!'
"Trembling, she must have done so. 'Your slippers and a kimono,' he would naturally have ordered. She put them on mechanically. Then he must have ordered her to go out of the door and down the stairs. Clutching Hand must have followed and as he did so he would have cautiously put out the lights."
We were following, spell-bound, Kennedy's graphic reconstruction of what must have happened. Evidently he had struck close to the truth. Elaine's eyes were closed. Gently Kennedy led her along. "Now, Miss Dodge," he encouraged, "try—try hard to recollect just what it was that happened last night—everything."
As Kennedy paused after his quick recital, she seemed to tremble all over. Slowly she began to speak. We stood awestruck. Kennedy had been right!
The girl was now living over again those minutes that had been forgotten—blotted out by the drug.
And it was all real to her, too,—terribly real. She was speaking, plainly in terror.
"I see a man—oh, such a figure—with a mask. He holds a gun in my face—he threatens me. I put on my kimono and slippers, as he tells me. I am in a daze. I know what I am doing—and I don't know. I go out with him, downstairs, into the library."