The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri
Page 28
It was Carson in the next room who brought order into momentary chaos. “Quick, Cary — downstairs to the cellar — and turn off the cylinder of Ethine. Stay with it till I call. I’ll get the window up in the next room.” And like a flash the two were off, Cary down the cellar steps two at a time, Carson running around through the doorways and across the dark library with lips and nostrils tightly compressed, where he flung open the window to its fullest extent and clambered out into the fresh air just in time to breathe. Already, as he struck the turf at the side of the house, he could hear the hiss of the Ethine lowering perceptibly in pitch as the cylinder containing it was turned off by Cary in the cellar below. Looking backward, he saw the insensible figure of Kate Barwick lying like one dead in the rays of the torch which strangely had remained upright. He hurried around to the front of the house and in the front door which he found now open. There he snapped on the lights in the hall. As he did so he heard van Twillingham whistling stridently out on the curbing in front of the house. A moment later and the millionaire was back, fumbling at the hat-rack for his travelling bag. “Got exactly ten minutes to make my train,” he poured forth hastily. “Don’t go. Let woman lie a bit first till she comes to.” As he talked he pulled from his breast pocket a leather billfold. A quick motion and he jerked from it a crisp oblong of salmon-colored paper. Carson’s first glance at it showed him the figures twenty-five thousand dollars in one corner, and his second glance showed him a cashier’s stamp of certification from a day-and-night bank in Chicago’s Loop.
“You boys have a man-trap all right,” said van Twillingham, speaking in extreme haste. “And it’s a devil when it’s unleashed. If this anaesthetic Ethine knocks ‘em out like that — then hydrocyanic acid gas will kill ‘em in their tracks like flies. Here’s check — all signed and certified. Way I do business, my boy. Have you got that signed transfer of rights handy? Good!” Carson could hear the whining of the brakes of the limousine which had drawn up in front of the house, and as he jerked from his own pocket the brief legal transfer which had been prepared earlier in the evening, van Twillingham took it from his fingers and jammed it into his breast pocket without even the formality of inspecting it. The multi-millionaire seized his travelling bag and pulled his checked travelling cap over his head. “Get me the blue prints and full description of invention by registered mail to Moana Hotel, Honolulu. Call in the reporters tomorrow and tell ‘em you’ve sold me the idea — let ‘em look at the check — but no further information, if you please. When I get back I may call on you two boys to help me cast a big man-trap four or five times the size of that. Good-bye. Good luck. Must run.” He was halfway out of the door. “Better take care of that woman soon. Don’t let her know what struck her. Let her go as soon as she comes to.” And he was off, a gentleman, a sportsman, but nevertheless a poor human mortal who had to combat the obstacles of time and space to catch his own special train.
For perhaps a second Carson stood alone in the hallway, the check in his hand. Then he laid it on the telephone stand. The hiss of the Ethine had ceased entirely in the little room a few feet down the hall. The clear cool breeze, due to the open window of the room, blew in strongly from the front doors of the house, and he knew that the vapor-laden room must by this time be completely aired out by the powerful draft. So he tiptoed quietly in the library. He sniffed cautiously. The air was indeed fresh and clean now. He snapped on the electric bulb in the fixture which protruded from the wall over the head of the couch. Then leaning down and bracing all the muscles of his young athletic body for the strain, he raised the unconscious form of Kate Barwick and carried it to the couch where he studied the woman’s face with troubled eyes. She lay as one dead, her eyes closed, and in his heart came a sudden tightening fear. Had the man-trap by any possibility been a killer after all their precautions? But no. Her eyelids fluttered, the color slowly filtered back to her face, her right hand moved. Then the two eyes opened entirely, and surveyed Carson with a look of mortal despair. She half raised herself on one elbow, and the low-pitched words that came from her lips were the words of one who even in a mental daze saw doom staring her in the face.
“A trap — the police — my God! In the hands of the law.”
But in that brief dizzy rise to one elbow, a peculiar thing took place. The wealth of brown hair fell entirely away — it was nothing more nor less than an elaborate wig — and its falling away revealed a close-cropped head that looked strange indeed in conjunction with the rouged cheeks and jet pendants. Then Carson came suddenly to himself, and with a cry he leaned over and placed one hand gently on the figure.
“Lie back,” he commanded tenderly. “Take it easy. Everything is all right.” Into the tired bewildered eyes that looked up at him he gazed in the manner that a boy would look into the eyes of his own father. “It isn’t the police. It isn’t the law. Everything is all right. You’re back in time by nine hours to save your share in your own estate — your share worth fifty thousand dollars. You’ve entered no other but the home of those who belong to you — and in so doing you’ve demonstrated your own son’s invention and earned a big sum of money for him. Your wanderings in the circus as Madame Mercedes are over now forever and ever, old friend. Welcome home, Henry Desmond. Welcome home!”
THE END
Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, western, and romance genres. Discover more today:
www.prologuebooks.com
This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.prologuebooks.com
Copyright © 1930 by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,
Cover images ©clipart.com
Registration Renewed in the name of the author, 1957
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-4823-4
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4823-9
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4320-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4320-3