For the “Night Extra” people paid five, ten, even fifteen cents. Rumor ran wild. Other papers, even, look the matter up as news, and commented upon the meaning of the extraordinary advertisement. This time, the red-dotted line went as far up Fifth Ave title as Fiftieth Street. And the legend was ominous:
WHEN I TURN, I STRIKE
That was all that evening. The dotted line did not turn.
Keen as newspaper conjecture is, it failed to connect the “red-line maps,” with the fame of which the city was raging, with an item of shipping news printed in the evening papers of the following day:
CLEARED—For South American Ports, steam yacht Electra, New York. Owner John M. Colwell.
And not until the following morning did the papers announce that President Colwell, of the Canned Meat Trust, having been ordered by his physician on a long sea voyage to refurbish his depleted nerves, after closing his house on West Fifty-first Street, had sailed in his own yacht. The same issue carried a few lines about the “freak ads.” which had so sensationally blazed and so suddenly waned from the “yellows.” The opinion was offered that they represented the exploitation of some new brand of whisky which would announce itself later. But that announcement never came, and President Colwell sailed to far seas, and Mr. Curtis Fleming came to New York, keen for explanations, for he, too, had seen the “fudge” and marveled. Hence, Average Jones had him, together with young Mr. Dorr, at a private room luncheon at the Cosmic Club, where he offered an explanation and elucidation.
“The whole affair,” he said, “was a problem in the connecting up of loose ends. At the New York terminus we had two deaths in the office of a man with powerful and subtle enemies, that office being practically sealed against intrusion except for a very large keyhole. Some deadly thing is introduced through that keyhole; so much is practically proven by the breaking out of the chewing gum with which I coated it. Probably the scheme was carried out in the evening when the building was nearly deserted. The killing influence reaches a corner far out of the direct line of the keyhole. Being near the radiator, that corner represents the attraction of warmth. Therefore, the invading force was some sentient creature.”
Dorr shuddered. “Some kind of venomous snake,” he surmised.
“Not a bad guess. But a snake, however small, would have been instantly noticed by the dogs. Now, let’s look at the Bridgeport end. Here, again, we have a deadly influence loosed; this time by accident. A scientific experimentalist is the innocent cause of the disaster. Here, too, the peril is somewhat dependent upon warmth, since we know, from Professor Moseley’s agonized eagerness for a frost, that cold weather would have put an end to it. The cold weather fails to come. Dogs are killed. Finally a child falls victim, and on that child is found a circular mark, similar to the mark on Mr. Dorr’s dog’s lip. You see the striking points of analogy?”
“Do you mean us to believe poor old Moseley a cold-blooded murderer?” demanded Mr. Curtis Fleming.