“Look at them! Stretch them out and see if they’ve changed color since!” McCarty’s tones shook with excitement and Dennis caught the infection. He drew the limp rubber out and scrutinized each torn balloon in turn, then shook his head.
“There’s nothing different about them that I can see! What are you getting at?”
“Just this! When I picked this up it was blue, as blue as that second one we broke, and look at it now!” The rubber wisp he held out was a greenish-gray mottled with brown spots which were already disintegrating. “Denny, the others didn’t change color because ’twas just air they were filled with but this is different; it’s rotting before our eyes! ’Twas this child’s toy held the poison gas that killed Lucette!”
CHAPTER XV
MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS
The litter of wrecked balloons was cleared away and the one which had changed color with such sinister significance was carefully deposited in an empty tin cracker box. With pipe and cigar alight Dennis and McCarty were discussing the latest development, their fatigue forgotten in their renewed zeal.
“There’s an old guy I know living far uptown that’s a wizard about chemistry,” McCarty observed, neglecting to mention that the “wizard” had an interesting police record. “I’ll take the box with what’s left of that blue balloon in it up to him, come morning, but we’ll not breathe a word of it to another living soul! ’Tis somebody on the Mall or with easy access to it that’s walking around with two murders and a disappearance on the conscience of him, maybe giving us fair words every day and the grand laugh behind our backs. We don’t know who it is and till we do we’ll be telling nothing to any of them.”
“True for you!” Dennis nodded. “I’m thinking, though, ’tis on the north side of the street you’ll find your man, Mac, for everything that’s happened hit the three households on the south side; Orbit’s valet and Goddard’s son and now Mrs. Bellamy’s nurse-girl. The only two houses opposite that are occupied, since the Burminsters are still away, are Five and Seven—the Sloanes’ and the Parsons’. We’ll not be forgetting that Swede Otto who beat it away from the Sloanes’ at the first alarm and we’ve not so much as crossed the doorsill there yet. Then there’s the Parsons, too. They hold themselves better than their neighbors and have them that are next to royalty, no less, for company and still and all they have an ex-convict and suspected poisoner at that to buttle for them. If I was that ambassador I’d have thought twice before I stayed to lunch!”
“They’ve a houseful of crooks, ‘ex’ or no,” McCarty asserted, regarding his cigar thoughtfully. “I got Porter right, but ’twas the inspector first gave me the wire without knowing it when he said the housemaid and page boy looked familiar, as if he’d seen them somewhere before but couldn’t place them. Where would he have seen them, if ’twas not at headquarters or on trial? André put the last touch to it this afternoon, though.”
“Orbit’s cook?”
“He did that. Do you mind when I asked him if he knew the cook over at Parsons’ he said it was a ‘she,’ a great big woman with three moles on her cheek? Jennie Malone shoved about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of the queer in the best stores of the city for the Carpenter counterfeiting gang before she was pinched. She’d never have been caught at all if it hadn’t been for those three moles that gave her away. Ever since André tipped me off I’ve been asking myself what was the rest of that household like, and did they have more reasons than one for keeping the neighbors at arm’s length?”