“First of all, take a match and burn this letter to avoid spreading the disease. Then change your clothes and burn the old ones. Enclosed you will find in a germ-proof envelope an exact copy of this letter. The room should then be thoroughly fumigated. Do not come into close contact with anyone near and dear to you until you have used the prophylactic. Tell no one. In case you do, the prophylactic will not be sent under any circumstances. Very truly yours, DR. HANS HOPF.”
“Blackmail!” exclaimed Kennedy, looking intently again at the gelatine on the second page, as I involuntarily backed away and held my breath.
“Yes, I know,” responded Mrs. Blake anxiously, “but is it true?”
There could be no doubt from the tone of her voice that she more than half believed that it was true.
“I cannot say—yet,” replied Craig, still cautiously scanning the apparently innocent piece of gelatine on the original letter which Mrs. Blake had not destroyed. “I shall have to keep it and examine it.”
On the gelatine I could see a dark mass which evidently was supposed to contain the germs.
“I opened the letter here in this room,” she went on. “At first I thought nothing of it. But this morning, when Buster, my prize Pekinese, who had been with me, sitting on my lap at the time, and closer to the letter even than I was, when Buster was taken suddenly ill, I—well, I began to worry.”
She finished with a little nervous laugh, as people will to hide their real feelings.
“I should like to see the dog,” remarked Kennedy simply.
“Miss Sears,” asked her mistress, “will you get Buster, please?”