"Just a second," raced on Kennedy. "On this file and brush I found spores of those deadly anaerobes—dead, killed by heat and an antiseptic, perhaps a one-per-cent. solution of carbolic acid at blood heat, ninety-eight degrees—dead, but nevertheless there. I suppose the microscopic examination of finger-nail deposits is too minute a thing to appeal to most people. But it has been practically applied in a number of criminal cases in Europe. Ordinary washing and even cleaning doesn't alter microscope findings. In this case this trifling clue is all that leads to the real brain of this plot, literally to the hand that directed it." He paused a moment.
"Yesterday I found that anaerobe cultures were being received by some one in the Belleclaire, and—"
"They were stolen from me. Some one must have got into my office, where
I was studying them." Doctor Gavira had pressed forward earnestly, but
Craig did not pause again.
"Who were these agents sent over to wage this secret war at any cost?" he repeated. "One of them, I know now, fell in love with the daughter of the man against whom he was to plot." Marjorie cast a furtive glance at Fitzhugh.
"Love has saved him. But the other? To whom do these deadly germs point? Who dum-dummed and poisoned the bullet? Whose own fingers, in spite of antiseptics and manicures, point inexorably to a guilty self?"
Rae Melzer could restrain herself no longer. She was looking at the file and brush, as if with a hideous fascination. "They are mine—you took them," she cried, impulsively. "It was she—always having her nails manicured—she who had been there just before—she—Alma Hillman!"
XI
THE GUN-RUNNER
"With the treaty ratified, if the deal goes through we'll all be rich."
Something about the remark which rose over the babel of voices arrested Kennedy's attention. For one thing, it was a woman's voice, and it was not the sort of remark to be expected from a woman, at least not in such a place.