A faint smile appeared upon Paget’s lips.
Reaching in the watch pocket of his trousers, the clubman drew forth an object and held it in his half-closed hand. It was the scarab ring which Doctor Lukens had worn the night before — the ring which had once belonged to Henry Marchand.
Still smiling, Paget replaced the ring in his pocket. Calmly and leisurely, he opened his cigarette case and removed a cigarette. He put it carefully in the long holder.
Rodney Paget was puffing slowly and contentedly when the cab stopped in front of the Merrimac Club.
CHAPTER IX. PAGET BECOMES ACTIVE
SEVERAL days had passed since the murder of Doctor George Lukens. The hue and cry of the tabloids had died away. The death of the physician had become one of those unsolved mysteries that are soon forgotten.
The pair of dice with their constant seven were not even mentioned in the newspapers. Cardona had pocketed the cubes and had shown them to Inspector Klein. They had seen a strange significance.
At intervals, New York had been victimized by startling crimes that had gone unsolved. There had been no direct proof that they had been the work of the same organization. The only clew had been the fact that the number seven had appeared, in each instance.
The bank safe had contained seven pennies. Seven buttons had been clipped from a murdered man’s coat. A dying gangster had gasped the word “Seven” when the police had captured him during an attempted burglary.
There was little discussion of Lukens’s death at the Merrimac Club, although the physician had been a member. The members kept to themselves as a rule. Once a man had become accustomed to the silence of the vast rooms, he moved about in his own particular fashion.