Part 63

She was about to ask what Kennedy had found when the telephone rang and the maid announced that Miss Guerrero was wanted by Senor Torreon.

A smile of gratification flitted over Kennedy's face as he leaned over to me and whispered: “It is evident that Torreon is anxious to clear himself. I'll wager he has done some rapid hustling since we left him.”

“Perhaps this is some word about my father at last,” murmured Miss Guerrero as she nervously hurried to the telephone, and answered, “Yes, this is Senorita Guerrero, Senor Torreon. You are at the office of the junta? Yes, yes, you have word from my father--you went down there to-night expecting some guns to be delivered?--and you found him there--up-stairs in the loft--ill, did you say?--unconscious?”

In an instant her face was drawn and pale, and the receiver fell clattering to the hard-wood floor from her nerveless fingers.

“He is dead!” she gasped as she swayed backward and I caught her. With Kennedy's help I carried her, limp and unconscious, across the room, and placed her in a deep armchair. I stood at her side, but for the moment could only look on helplessly, blankly at the now stony beauty of her face.

“Some water, Juanita, quick!” I cried as soon as I had recovered from the shock. “Have you any smelling-salts or anything of that sort? Perhaps you can find a little brandy. Hurry.”

While we were making her comfortable the telephone continued to tinkle.

“This is Kennedy,” I heard Craig say, as Juanita came hurrying in with water, smelling-salts, and brandy. “You fool. She fainted. Why couldn't you break it to her gently? What's that address on South Street? You found him over the junta meeting-place in a loft? Yes, I understand. What were you doing down there? You went down expecting a shipment of arms and saw a light overhead I see--and suspecting something you entered with a policeman. You heard him move across the floor above and fall heavily? All right. Someone will be down directly. Ambulance surgeon has tried everything, you say? No heart action, no breathing? Sure. Very well. Let the body remain just where it is until I get down. Oh, wait. How long ago did it happen? Fifteen minutes? All right. Good-bye.”

Such restoratives as we had found we applied faithfully. At last we were rewarded by the first flutter of an eyelid. Then Miss Guerrero gazed wildly about.

“He is dead,” she moaned. “They have killed him. I know it. My father is dead.” Over and over she repeated: “He is dead. I shall never see him again.”

Vainly I tried to soothe her. What was there to say? There could be no doubt about it. Torreon must have gone down directly after we left Senora Mendez. He had seen a light in the loft, had entered with a policeman--as a witness, he had told Craig over the telephone--had heard Guerrero fall, and had sent for the ambulance. How long Guerrero had been there he did not know, for while members of the junta had been coming and going all day in the office below none had gone up into the locked loft.

Kennedy with rare skill calmed Miss Guerrero's dry-eyed hysteria into a gentle rain of tears, which relieved her overwrought feelings. We silently withdrew, leaving the two women, mistress and servant, weeping.

“Craig,” I asked when we had gained the street, “what do you make of it? We must lose no time. Arrest this Mendez woman before she has a chance to escape.”

“Not so fast, Walter,” he cautioned as we spun along in a taxicab. “Our case isn't very complete against anybody yet.”

“But it looks black for Guerrero,” I admitted. “Dead men tell no tales even to clear themselves.”

“It all depends on speed now,” he answered laconically.

We had reached the university, which was only a few blocks away, and Craig dashed into his laboratory while I settled with the driver. He reappeared almost instantly with some bulky apparatus under his arm, and we more than ran from the building to the near-by subway station. Fortunately there was an express just pulling in, as we tumbled down the steps.

To one who knows South Street as merely a river-front street whose glory of other days has long since departed, where an antiquated horsecar now ambles slowly uptown, and trucks and carts all day long are in a perpetual jam, it is peculiarly uninteresting by day, and peculiarly deserted and vicious by night. But there is another fascination about South Street. Perhaps there has never been a revolution in Latin America which has not in some way or other been connected with this street, whence hundreds of filibustering expeditions have started. Whenever a dictator is to be overthrown, or half a dozen chocolate-skinned generals in the Caribbean become dissatisfied with their portions of gold lace, the arms- and ammunition-dealers of South Street can give, if they choose, an advance scenario of the whole tragedy or comic opera, as the case may be. Real war or opera-bouffe, it is all grist for the mills of these close-mouthed individuals.

Our quest took us to a ramshackle building reminiscent of the days when the street bristled with bowsprits of ships from all over the world, an age when the American merchantman flew our flag on the uttermost of the seven-seas. On the ground floor was an apparently innocent junk dealer's shop, in reality the meeting-place of the junta. By an outside stairway the lofts above were reached, hiding their secrets behind windows opaque with decades of dust.

At the door we were met by Torreon and the policeman. Both appeared to be shocked beyond measure. Torreon was profuse in explanations which did not explain. Out of the tangled mass of verbiage I did manage to extract, however, the impression that, come what might to the other members of the junta, Torreon was determined to clear his own name at any cost. He and the policeman had discovered Senor Guerrero only a short time before, up-stairs. For all he knew, Guerrero had been there some time, perhaps all day, while the others were meeting down-stairs. Except for the light he might have been there undiscovered still. Torreon swore he had heard Guerrero fall; the policeman was not quite so positive.

Kennedy listened impatiently, then sprang up the stairs, only to call back to the policeman: “Go call me a taxicab at the ferry, an electric cab. Mind, now, not a gasoline-cab--electric.”

We found the victim lying on a sort of bed of sailcloth in a loft apparently devoted to the peaceful purposes of the junk trade, but really a perfect arsenal and magazine. It was dusty and cobwebbed, crammed with stands of arms, tents, uniforms in bales, batteries of Maxims and mountain-guns, and all the paraphernalia for carrying on a real twentieth-century revolution.

The young ambulance surgeon was still there, so quickly had we been able to get down-town. He had his stomach-pump, hypodermic syringe, emetics, and various tubes spread out on a piece of linen on a packing-case. Kennedy at once inquired just what he had done.

“Thought at first it was only a bad case of syncope,” he replied, “but I guess he was dead some minutes before I got here. Tried rhythmic traction of the tongue, artificial respiration, stimulants, chest and heart massage--everything, but it was no use:”

“Have you any idea what caused his death?” asked Craig as he hastily adjusted his apparatus to an electric light socket--a rheostat, an induction-coil of peculiar shape, and an “interrupter.”

“Poison of some kind--an alkaloid. They say they heard him fall as they came up-stairs, and when they got to him he was blue. His face was as blue as it is now when I arrived. Asphyxia, failure of both heart and lungs, that was what the alkaloid caused.”

The gong of the electric cab sounded outside. As Craig heard it he rushed with two wires to the window, threw them out, and hurried downstairs, attaching them to the batteries of the cab.

In an instant he was back again.