Suddenly, as if she had seen an apparition, she raised herself with almost superhuman strength.
“Duncan!” she cried. “Duncan! Why—didn’t you—get away—while there was time—after you warned me?”
Kennedy had wheeled about and was facing us. He was holding in his hand some of the letters he had taken from the trunk. Among others was a folded piece of parchment that looked like a diploma. He unfolded it and we bent over to read.
It was a diploma from the Central Western College of Nursing. As I read the name written in, it was with a shock. It was not Dora Sears, but Dora Baldwin.
“A very clever plot,” he ground out, taking a step nearer us. “With the aid of your sister and a disreputable gang of chauffeurs you planned to hasten the death of Mrs. Blake, to hasten the inheritance of the Blake fortune by your future wife. I think your creditors will have less chance of collecting now than ever, Duncan Baldwin.”
CHAPTER XXII
THE DEVIL WORSHIPERS
Tragic though the end of the young nurse, Dora Baldwin, had been, the scheme of her brother, in which she had become fatally involved, was by no means as diabolical as that in the case that confronted us a short time after that.
I recall this case particularly not only because it was so weird but also because of the unique manner in which it began.
“I am damned—Professor Kennedy—damned!”
The words rang out as the cry of a lost soul. A terrible look of inexpressible anguish and fear was written on the face of Craig’s visitor, as she uttered them and sank back, trembling, in the easy chair, mentally and physically convulsed.