chronic morphine-eater and was ‘dead’ forty minutes.”
I stood like one frozen, the thing was so incomprehensible, after the many surprises of the evening that had preceded. Torreon, in fact, did not comprehend for the moment.
As Kennedy and I bent over, Guerrero’s eyes opened, but he apparently saw nothing. His hand moved a little, and his lips parted. Kennedy quickly reached into the pockets of the man gasping for breath, one after another. From a vest pocket he drew a little silver case, identical with that he had found in the desk uptown. He opened it, and one mescal button rolled out into the palm of his hand. Kennedy regarded it thoughtfully.
“I suspect there is at least one devotee of the vision-breeding drug who will no longer cultivate its use, as a result of this,” he added, looking significantly at the man before us.
“Guerrero,” shouted Kennedy, placing his mouth close to the man’s ear, but muting his voice so that only I could distinguish what he said, “Guerrero, where is the money?”
His lips moved trembling again, but I could not make out that he said anything.
Kennedy rose and quietly went over to detach his apparatus from the electric light socket behind Torreon.
“Car‑ramba!” I heard as I turned suddenly.
Craig had Torreon firmly pinioned from behind by both arms. The policeman quickly interposed.
“It’s all right, officer,” exclaimed Craig. “Walter, reach into his inside pocket.”
I pulled out a bunch of papers and turned them over.
“What’s that?” asked Kennedy as I came to something neatly enclosed in an envelope.
I opened it. It was a power of attorney from Guerrero to Torreon.
“Perhaps it is no crime to give a man mescal if he wants it—I doubt if the penal code covers that,” ejaculated Kennedy. “But it is conspiracy to give it to him and extract a power of attorney by which you can get control of trust funds consigned to him. Manuel Torreon, the game is up. You and Señora Mendez have played your parts well. But you have lost. You waited until you thought Guerrero was dead, then you took a policeman along as a witness to clear yourself. But the secret is not dead, after all. Is there nothing else in those papers, Walter? Yes? Ah, a bill of lading dated today? Ten cases of ‘scrap iron’ from New York to Boston—a long chance for such valuable ‘scrap,’ señor, but I suppose you had to get the money away from New York, at any risk.”
“And Señora Mendez?” I asked as my mind involuntarily reverted to the brilliantly lighted room uptown. “What part did she have in the plot against Guerrero?”
Torreon stood sullenly silent. Kennedy reached in another of Torreon’s pockets and drew out a third little silver box of mescal buttons. Holding all three of the boxes, identically the same, before us he remarked: “Evidently Torreon was not averse to having his victim under the influence of mescal as much as possible. He must have forced it on him—all’s fair in love and revolution, I suppose. I believe he brought him down here under the influence of mescal last night, obtained the power of attorney, and left him here to die of the mescal intoxication. It was just a case of too strong a hold of the mescal—the artificial paradise was too alluring to Guerrero, and Torreon knew it and tried to profit by it to the extent of half a million dollars.”
It was more than I could grasp at the instant. The impossible had happened. I had seen the dead—literally—brought back to life and the secret which the criminal believed buried wrung from the grave.
Kennedy must have noted the puzzled look on my face. “Walter,” he said, casually, as he wrapped up his instruments, “don’t stand there gaping like Billikin. Our part in this case is finished—at least mine is. But I suspect from some of the glances I have seen you steal at various times that—well, perhaps you would like a few moments in a real paradise. I saw a telephone downstairs. Go call up Miss Guerrero and tell her her father is alive—and innocent.”
The Steel Door
It was what, in college, we used to call “good football weather”—a crisp, autumn afternoon that sent the blood tingling through brain and muscle. Kennedy and I were enjoying a stroll on the drive, dividing our attention between the glowing red sunset across the Hudson and the string of homeward-bound automobiles on the broad parkway. Suddenly a huge black touring car marked with big letters, “P.D.N.Y.,” shot past.
“Joyriding again in one of the city’s cars,” I remarked. “I thought the last Police Department shakeup had put a stop to that.”
“Perhaps it has,” returned Kennedy. “Did you see who was in the car?”
“No, but I see it has turned and is coming back.”
“It was Inspector—I mean, First Deputy O’Connor. I thought he recognised us as he whizzed along, and I guess he did, too. Ah, congratulations, O’Connor! I haven’t had a chance to tell you before how pleased I was to learn you had been appointed first deputy. It ought to have been commissioner, though,” added Kennedy.
“Congratulations nothing,” rejoined O’Connor. “Just another new-deal-election coming on, mayor must make a show of getting some reform done, and all that sort of thing. So he began with the Police Department, and here I am, first deputy. But, say, Kennedy,” he added, dropping his voice, “I’ve a little job on my mind that I’d like to pull off in about as spectacular a fashion as I—as you know how. I want to make good, conspicuously good, at the start—understand? Maybe I’ll be ‘broke’ for it and sent to pounding the pavements of Dismissalville, but I don’t care, I’ll take a chance. On the level, Kennedy, it’s a big thing, and it ought to be done. Will you help me put it across?”
“What is it?” asked Kennedy with a twinkle in his eye at O’Connor’s estimate of the security of his tenure of
