Adventure, December 1914 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Stolen A moment later he looked up quickly, then bent down farther. On her arm he had discovered a peculiar little red mark! Gently, as if he would not hurt such an exquisite creature even in death, he squeezed a tiny drop of blood from the little puncture and caught it on a sterilized glass slide of a microscope, which he carried in a small com- pact emergency-case in his pocket. He continued to rummage the room. Thrown carelessly into a top drawer of the dressing-table was a chatelaine. He opened it. There seemed to be nothing there except several articles of feminine vanity. In the bottom, however, was a little silver box which he opened. There lay a number of queer little fuzzy buttons— at least they looked like buttons. He took one, examined it closely, found it rather soft, tasted it—made a wry face and dropped the whole thing into his pocket. McBride opened it. It was our [si old friend, Dr. Leslie, the coroner. “Well,” he exclaimed taking in the whole A HEAVY tap sounded on the door. War Secret 5 cour was in all probability an adventuress of a high order, one of those female soldiers of fortune who, in Paris, London, New York, and all large cities, seem to have a way of bobbing up at the most unexpected mo- ments, in some way connected, through masculine frailty, with great national and international events. The questioning over, the coroner or- dered that the body be sent down to one of the city hospitals where an autopsy could be performed, and we rode down in the ele- vator together. “Extraordinary — most extraordinary,” repeated Dr. Leslie as we paused for a mo- ment in an angle of the lobby.to discuss the conclusion of his preliminary investigation. ‘“‘There is just one big point, though, that we shall have to clear up before we can go ahead with anything else. What was the cause of death? There was no gas in the room. It couldn’t have been illuminating gas, then. It must have been a poison of some kind.” ‘You assume then that it was suicide?” asked Kennedy keenly. “T assume nothing—yet,” replied the situation, and hardly more surprised atS¢coroner, quickly backing water, and affect- seeing us than at the strangeness of the handsome figure on the bed. ‘“‘Well—what is all this?” McBride shook his head gravely and repeated substantially what he had already told us. There is no need to go into the lengthy investigation that the. coroner conducted. He questioned one servant and employee after another, without eliciting any more real information than we had already ob- tained. The maid was quite evidently a Mexican and spoke very little and very poor Eng- lish. She seemed to be in great distress, and as far as we could determine it was genuine. Through her broken English and our own fragmentary knowledge of Spanish, we man- aged to extract her story, about as McBride had told it. Madame Valcour had engaged her in Paris, where she had been taken and later had been thrown on her own resources by a family which had been ruined in the revolu- tion in Mexico. As fora Monsieur Valcour, she had never seen him. She thought that Madame was a widow. As the questioning continued, I read be- tween the lines, however, that Madame Val- ing the air of one who could say much if he chose but was stopped by professional and official etiquette. “You'll keep me informed as to what you do discover?” asked Kennedy with a defer- ence that could not fail to be ingratiating. ‘Indeed I will,’? answered the coroner, cordially taking the flattery. ‘‘Now I must be off—let me see—an accident case. Yes indeed, Kennedy, I shall be only too glad to keep you informed and to have your co- operation on the case.” “Poison of some kind,” repeated Ken- nedy as Dr. Leslie disappeared. ‘‘Sounds very simple when you put it that way. I wish I could handle the whole thing for him. However, I suspect he’ll come around in a day or two—begging me to help him save his precious reputation and find out what it really is.” “T know what the’ll do,” asserted Mc- Bride with a scowl. ‘‘He’ll take this chance to rub it in on the Vanderveer. We’ve hada couple of suicides since we opened. It isn’t our fault if such things happen. But some- how or other it seems to appeal to the city official to blame some private agency for anything like this. I tell you, Kennedy, we’ve got to protect the reputation of the MICLOOOK C©