Then a horrid possibility occurred to me. Whatever Antoinette Moulton may have been and done, some one must have her in his power. What a situation for the woman! My sympathy went out to her in her supreme struggle. Even if it had been a real robbery, Schloss might easily recover from it. But for her every event spelled ruin and seemed only to be bringing that ruin closer.
We left Winters, still watching on the trail of Schloss, and went on uptown to the laboratory.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BURGLAR’S MICROPHONE
That night I was sitting, brooding over the case, while Craig was studying a photograph which he made of the smudge on the glass door down at Schloss’. He paused in his scrutiny of the print to answer the telephone.
“Something has happened to Schloss,” he exclaimed seizing his hat and coat. “Winters has been watching him. He didn’t go to the Recherche. Winters wants me to meet him at a place several blocks below it Come on. He wouldn’t say over the wire what it was. Hurry.”
We met Winters in less than ten minutes at the address he had given, a bachelor apartment in the neighborhood of the Recherche.
“Schloss kept rooms here,” explained Winters, hurrying us quickly upstairs. “I wanted you to see before anyone else.”
As we entered the large and luxuriously furnished living room of the jeweler’s suite, a gruesome sight greeted us.
There lay Schloss on the floor, face down, in a horribly contorted position. In one hand, clenched under him partly, the torn sleeve of a woman’s dress was grasped convulsively. The room bore unmistakable traces of a violent struggle, but except for the hideous object on the floor was vacant.
Kennedy bent down over him. Schloss was dead. In a corner, by the door, stood a pile of grips, stacked up, packed, and undisturbed.