Hayden, his quiet professional manner in striking contrast to the excitement about him, prepared some stimulant and then bent over Burnham. Slipping his arm deftly under the unconscious man’s head he lifted him up and placed the small glass to his lips and tipped it slowly upward.
The next instant the glass was plucked from his grasp and an iron hand hurled him to the floor.
“Quick, Mitchell, there’s your prisoner!” shouted the man in the bed, and with leaping pulses and reeling senses Marian recognized Dan Maynard’s voice.
Tossing aside his make-up, Maynard set down the glass he still held and collared the physician as he struggled to his knees. “Your prisoner,” he said tersely, as Mitchell sprang forward. “Lewis Hayden, German spy and would-be murderer.”
CHAPTER XXII
THE MISSING DIAGRAMS
MRS. BURNHAM was the first to arouse from the stupor which had held her and her companions equally silent.
“My husband!” she gasped. “Where is Peter?” Maynard, relaxing his hold on his prisoner as Mitchell slipped handcuffs on his wrists, swung himself out of bed.
“There’s Burnham coming in the door now with Chief Connor,” he stated, and all turned in that direction. Burnham, his eyes half starting out of his head, looked first at Hayden, then at La Montagne, and last at James Palmer.
“Good God! Wasn’t it either La Montagne or Palmer?” he demanded.
“La Montagne and Palmer are innocent,” announced Maynard. “When I impersonated you, Burnham, and not for the first time—” he smiled at Hayden’s furious look—“I used Palmer as a stalking horse. The announcement that I had the key to the German’s cipher code did the trick. You were quick, Hayden,” addressing the physician whose ghastly face and horror-filled eyes testified to his feelings. “It was infernally clever of you to seize the opportunity to administer poison under pretext of reviving a supposedly dying man, and thus prevent his ever exposing you and the key to the cipher.”