Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

“Oh, think nothing of it,” said Dr. Jellicoe. “There was some writing you wanted to see?”

“That’s it.” The Captain felt himself slipping. “Suppose we try the ultraviolet ray.”

The Doctor took his pince-nez off again and looked with twinkling eyes at Maclain. There were flashes when he almost thought that this blind man was really sane. He had letters from the Commissioner of State Police and Colonel Gray of G-2. At least, those documents seemed to be in order.

Dr. Jellicoe shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, it might be a good idea at that. Come along with me.”

He started to place a hand on the Captain’s arm, but abandoned the idea precipitantly as Schnucke with gentle firmness nosed him out of the way. Instead, he took a position safely in front and led the way to a darkroom farther down the hall.

Once inside, he hesitated a moment before closing the door. Then his years of practice came to his rescue. Duncan Maclain was powerful, but he was blind, and the agile little Doctor had gotten himself out of plenty of tight spots before.

He switched on a quartz lamp filled with mercury gas, seated the Captain in a chair, and searched around until he found a light filter.

“I’m going to test it with nickel oxide glass,” the Doctor explained, keeping a wary eye on Maclain. “It lets through rays of about thirty-six hundred and fifty angstrom units.”

“Yes,” said Maclain placidly. “At least both of us are on an equal basis. Thirty-six hundred and fifty angstrom units are something that neither of us can see. I believe that four thousand angstroms are the least that are visible to the human eye.”

“That’s right,” said Dr. Jellicoe. He felt a little easier. The blind man seemed to know what he was talking about after all.

He held the paper up in front of the filter for quite a while, then turned it so that the rays would strike the other side. “It’s almost certain,” he said, “that any invisible ink would show up luminescence in the ultraviolet ray.”

He clucked disparagingly. “I’m afraid there’s nothing here at all.”

“I didn’t think there would be,” said Duncan Maclain. “I guess I’ll just have to throw it away.”

“By all means.” Dr. Jellicoe switched on overhead lights and turned out the quartz lamp. He had reached the stage where he acted automatically when he restored the letter to Maclain’s outstretched hand.

The Captain turned and unhesitatingly found the doorknob. “Thank you so much, Doctor,” he said cordially as he stepped out into the hall.

The Doctor stood in the doorway and watched the Captain and his canine guide stride confidently away. Suddenly he reached a momentous decision. He put out the lights in the darkroom, closed the door, and almost scurried down the hall. In his office he sat down beside his desk and said, “Hell, I need a drink. This working around in an insane asylum is beginning to get me.”

3

“Home now, Captain?” asked Al Rutgers when Maclain was back in the car.

“Except for one stop,” the Captain told him. “I want to go to a drugstore at the corner of Albany Avenue and Burton Street. It’s called the Ideal Drug Company.”

He settled back in the car. The seventeen-mile run into Hartford seemed distractingly long. Maclain doubted that the scented letter in the bag beside him could be a coincidence in the chain of events which had already cost two lives and which might cost many more. He was a firm believer in cause and effect and for a brief moment the fact that the ultraviolet ray had disclosed nothing weighed on him heavily.

He was finally convinced that Paul Gerente’s murder, Babs’s kidnaping, and the guillotining of Bella, the maid, were steps in a definite plan of some highly organized band. Such a band must have a source, some recognized headquarters. If perfume was their signal, then what better source, what better headquarters, might be found than an outfit so innocent-appearing as the House of Bonnée? Yet his test of the letter had drawn a blank.

His strong teeth clamped down tightly, setting his jaw into fighting lines. He was using weak tactics by hoping for carelessness in adversaries who had shown none so far. Code letters were careless when a message could be detected by the pet of every police department in the country—the ultraviolet ray.

A small touch of ice started at his neck and traveled slowly down his spine. Once again he was face to face with the name of that tiny flower. He began to trace its course: the odor on the Braille instructions; the odor in Paul Gerente’s secret drawer; the odor in the darkness of the Tredwill hall; the scent on the letter in Norma’s morning mail; the perfume in Bella’s room; and traces of it with him right now in Bunny Carter’s car. Then once again he had run against it unwittingly—the ultraviolet ray.

His clenched hand pounded impatiently on his knee. There must be some tie-up, something about those violets, that would break the whole thing; some clue that would bring out a message cleverly buried in the letter from the House of Bonnée. He knew one man, or thought he did—Madoc, who had spoken to Bunny Carter at the plant; but that hung on a slender, easily broken strand—the inadvertent drawling of a vowel and nothing more. Far too little to set in motion the complicated machinery of G-2. He must wait. Piece by piece, as he built his puzzles, he must tie them up together.

“When I strike,” he muttered viciously under his breath, “I can’t be wrong, and I think I know the way to strike at them all.”

The window slid back in front of him and Al Rutgers said, “Captain Maclain, here’s your store.”

CHAPTER XX

1

AL RUTGERS’ swimmingly deep black eyes watched the Captain questioningly as Schnucke preceded him from the car.

“The drugstore’s to your right straight ahead,” Al volunteered. “Can I be of any help to you?”

“Thank you, no.