The hands shot into action. They swept up the slips of paper and deposited them upon the copy of the code. The right hand carried away the watch. A click; the light went out.
Again came the laugh. It pervaded the solid darkness. Then the room was silent. The being who had occupied it was gone.
A TAXICAB rolled up Broadway shortly after midnight. Several persons hailed it at intervals, thinking that it was empty. The driver paid no attention to them, for he had a passenger.
The man in the back seat was shrouded in darkness. He was clad in black that rendered him almost invisible from the street. His face was hidden beneath the broad brim of a black hat. His head was bent forward. His unseen hands were at work. Their long fingers were stroking the sides of the man’s face, as in an effort to change the features which existed there.
The cab stopped at a brownstone house on Eighty-first Street. The passenger reached through the partition and paid the driver. He opened the door and stepped from the cab.
The driver looked about him in amazement. He realized that the door of the cab had opened; but what had become of the rider? In some mysterious manner the man had disappeared when he reached the sidewalk.
The driver shrugged and drove on.
THE house where the cab had stopped was the residence of Henry Marchand, deceased. Its thick, sullen portals and shuttered windows indicated that the building was empty. But there was a light upstairs in the room which had once been Marchand’s sanctuary.
There, at the desk which the old man had used, sat Doctor George Lukens. The physician was lost in thought. Before him lay the unfolded sheet of paper that bore the original code found in Marchand’s desk.
The physician’s brow wrinkled as he vainly studied the code. The oddly formed characters resembled the letters of an unknown alphabetical system. Doctor Lukens was at loss to find a starting point. He rubbed his forehead.