The Sleep-Maker

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ARTHUR B. REEVE

THE SLEEP-MAKER*

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[* Arthur B. Reeve also wrote a "Craig Kennedy" story under this title. It was
about horse-racing and appeared in the July 1915 issue of The Cosmpolitan.]

First published in The Red Book Magazine, May 1914

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2021
Version Date: 2021-07-16

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright.

Click here for more Craig Kennedy stories

The Red Book Magazine, May 1914,
with "The Sleep-Maker"

ONE of the distinctive features of a story of scientific criminal detection written by Arthur B. Reeve is that his material is all scientifically correct. Mr. Reeve is an authority, as well as a polished writer and a weaver of fascinating plots. His series of stories of the exploits of Guy Garrick, of which this is the first, is a brilliant addition to the RED BOOK'S list of fiction from the real "star" writers of the day.

"THERE'S a criminal after your own heart aboard this ship, Mr. Garrick." Tom Marshall, purser of the Herculean, dropped down deeply into an easy chair in a secluded corner of the smoking-room beside a young man who seemed to be engaged in a peculiarly uninteresting game of solitaire.

"How is that?" asked the man addressed as Mr. Garrick, as he swept the cards off the table and shuffled them with the air of one to whom anything would have been a welcome relief to the tedium of the voyage.

Marshall handed to him a proof of a column of the Daily Wireless Herculean, a newspaper published on ship under his own direction.

"Some one has the true instincts of a headline writer, at any rate," remarked Garrick, his face brightening as he caught what stood at the head of the single column of proof. "Who wrote this?"

"I did," replied Marshall with pardonable pride. "It's in the blackest type the ship's limited composing room possesses. Oh, Lord," he added, "in addition to all my other duties, I'm a printer, too. What do you think of it, Mr. Garrick?"

Famous Chateaurouge Solitaire,
Engagement Ring of
Miss Demarest of New York,
Among Stolen Brilliants.

Miss Vesta Demarest, of New York, was robbed last night in a most peculiar manner, of a diamond necklace valued at many thousands of dollars and of the historic Chateaurouge diamond which Count Armand de Chateaurouge gave her on the occasion of their recent betrothal.

Miss Demarest and her fiancé had left the Ritz restaurant after supper following the entertainment last night, for a few minutes on the upper deck. It was cool and the Count asked if he might got her a heavier coat or steamer rug. While waiting for him to get the wraps, Miss Demarest sat in a deck chair.

Returning, Count Chateaurouge found her lying unconscious in the chair. His call for help was answered quickly and Miss Demarest was carried to her room, where she now is in a critical condition from the shock. She recalls nothing of what happened on deck and thinks she may have fainted, though those who have seen how athletically she has entered into the games on shipboard cannot believe it possible.

The Steamship Company has posted an offer of $5,000 reward for the apprehension of the thief, to which Truxton Demarest, her brother, and Count Chateaurouge add an equal amount.

"Of course," he remarked slowly, "she should have deposited the jewels with you, Marshall. That's what a ship's safe is for—although in these progressive days I expect at any moment to hear of a transatlantic cracksman."

"Of course," assented Marshall, "but she didn't. Still, we can't afford to have such things take place—not on this line. So, I've been authorized to offer the reward. I came to you first because I thought you'd be interested. The young lady and her friends join in it. Will you take up the case?"

"By George," exclaimed Garrick, evidently considering a mere "yes" superfluous, "what a strange coincidence it is! Even before I have landed, comes a chance to put my new knowledge to the test."

He bit his pipe contemplatively. "You remember, Marshall, that I told you some months ago that there were scores of these chances, only I never felt able to tackle them before."

Marshall nodded. Garrick had sought him out on the passage over earlier in the year, mainly because Marshall had to do with the ship's finances and finances seemed to interest the young man at the time.

Guy Garrick was a detective of the new type: young, clean-cut in face and manner, university-bred, of good family, alert, athletic, and altogether of an interesting personality. He had gone to London. Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and other cities to study the amazing growth in Europe of the new criminal science. Now he was returning after sitting at the feet of the masters, like Bertillon, Gross, Reiss, Lacassagne, and perhaps a dozen others.

As he often put it, "There must be something new in order to catch criminals nowadays. The old methods are all right—as far as they go. But while we have been using them, the criminal has kept pace with modern science. Fortunately, the crime-hunters have gone ahead faster than they. Its my job to catch criminals and show them that they never can hope to beat the modern scientific detective."

Marshall had thought of that, and had waited only until he felt sure that he could make it worth Garrick's while before placing the case before him. Returning now, after his schooling abroad, Garrick had at first amused himself by studying his fellow passengers. A couple of days had found him impatient to reach New York again and work.

He had often noticed Vesta Demarest, as his keen eye had run over the faces in the ship's company. She was indeed one of those noticeable girls of to-day, equally at home with tango and tennis, theatre and topics of the times.

He had often noticed Vesta Demarest, as his keen eye
had run over the faces in the ship's company in the
salon. "Take the case?" inquired Marshall briefly. "Of
course I'll take it," answered Garrick, "and gladly."

TOGETHER Garrick and Marshall presented themselves at the suite occupied by the Demarest party, which consisted of Vesta, her brother Truxton, the Count, and a maiden aunt as duenna.

Vesta was indeed much upset by the robbery and they found her reclining in an easy chair, quite changed in appearance.

With a quick look, Garrick noticed that her room was one that ran to the skin of the vessel, the ports opening directly on the water and not on deck as with those above. Directly across the corridor were the rooms of Truxton and Chateaurouge, and next hers those of the aunt and Vesta's maid, Lucille. It was evident that if the robber had contemplated anything here, he would have found her amply protected by her friends, to say nothing of the ship's stewards, who were prowling about on the look-out at all hours.

"I feel terribly ill—exhausted—almost seasick," she murmured in response to Garrick's solicitous inquiry.

It was only too evident how worried she was over the loss, mostly, of course, over the solitaire which had a sentimental value in addition to its great antique and intrinsic worth.

"And to think," she cried bravely, forcing back the tears in her big blue eyes, "that I was so careful! Why, I wore the jewels always, even slept with the necklace about my neck."

"Doubtless that was why the thief took the only possible method of getting them." responded Garrick confidently.

Garrick smiled at the naive interpretation she had placed on his deduction, but did not answer. His eyes were fixed on her sun-tanned arm, which she had raised with an expressive gesture to her throat as she described her care of the necklace. There was a peculiar little red strawberry mark on the fleshy part of the forearm.

"No," she replied, watching his eyes, "I can't say I felt any pain—or anything. I think I must have struck my arm when I fainted—that is, if I did faint. You see, it is all a blank to me."

"The Count had just left me," she-went on, struggling to recollect, "and I sat down, gazing out at sea—and, then, somehow. I woke up here—to find the Count, Truxton, Mr. Harrington, a friend of my brother's, and the ship's doctor trying to revive me, with the help of Aunt Ruth and Lucille. There: I have told you all I know—all."

"None—unless there may be something suspicious in being stared at. There are two or three men aboard, to say nothing of some women, who have stared at me a great deal."

Garrick smiled. He was thinking of himself, for he had not been able to resist the charm of Vesta's fresh youth.

And yet it seemed impossible that she could have told all. It was so strange, so incomprehensible. He wondered if there could be something that she was concealing.

Garrick thanked her for her graciousness, and with Marshall excused himself, as their presence plainly added to her nervousness.

On the way out they encountered, in a little private passageway, a tall, very pretty girl in a neat white apron and a little lace cap set coquettishly on the masses of dark hair over her dreamy brown eyes.

Minutely Garrick went over the deck where Vesta had been sitting when the robbery took place. It seemed to be an unpromising thing to do, yet as he remarked, one could never tell until he had reconstructed the scene of a crime how some little thing might change its aspect entirely.

As he approached the spot from various angles, his attention was suddenly arrested by a little place on the deck which really seemed to glitter brightly in the sunlight, if he caught it just right.

He was down on his knees in a moment, with a sharp penknife, carefully scraping at it. At last, on a piece of paper, he took up what looked like a few grains of fine powder.

"Powdered glass," replied Garrick briefly, "ground in. The strong wind must have carried most of the particles away."

A low exclamation told that he had found something more, perhaps a larger particle, something also gleaming in the light.

He picked it up too, and rolled it back and forth on the paper. Marshall bent over to look at it more closely.

There, in Garrick's hand, was a tiny bit of steel, scarcely three-eighths of an inch long, a mere speck. It was like nothing of which Marshall had ever heard or read. Yet he regarded the minute thing with awe. For, might it not be a new peril?

"What is it?" he asked at length, seeing that Garrick was not disposed to talk, without prompting.

"It looks like one of those new poisoned needles." he answered laconically, holding it up to the light and showing Marshall that it was in reality a very minute, pointed tube.

"Bosh!" exclaimed Marshall, reacting from the apparent simplicity of his tone. "I've heard those needle stories before. But I doubt them. In the first place, the insertion of a hypodermic needle—ever have it done, Garrick?—is something so painful that anyone would cry aloud. Then, to administer a drug that way requires great skill and knowledge of anatomy, if it is to be done with full and quick effect."

Garrick, with another glance about to satisfy himself that he had exhausted the possibilities of this line of inquiry, had seemed to accept the remark tacitly, and started to walk rapidly away in the direction of his stateroom, taking Marshall's arm.

"Why, such an injection." continued Marshall as they walked along, "couldn't act so instantaneously as she says it did on her, either. After the needle is inserted, the plunger has to be pushed down, and the whole thing would take at least thirty seconds. And then, the action of the drug—that would take some time. It seems to me that in no case could it be done without the person's being instantly aware of it and, before lapsing into unconsciousness, calling for help or at least remembering—"

"On the contrary," interrupted Garrick quietly, "it is absurdly easy. You are right, though. Marshall, in one respect. It is not easy by the old methods that everyone now knows. For instance, take the use of chloral—knock-out drops, you know. That is crude, too. Hypodermics and knock-out drops may answer well enough, perhaps, for the criminal whose victims are found in cafés and dives of a low order. But for the operations of an aristocratic criminal of to-day, such as this one appears to have been, far more subtle methods are required. Come on in."

They had reached his room. Carefully he closed the door, and from a corner of his portmanteau, where it was concealed in the lining, he pulled out a little case; he opened it, and in it displayed a number of tiny globes and tubes of thin glass, each with a liquid in it, some lozenges and bonbons, and several cigars and cigarettes.

Then from another part of the case he drew a peculiar-looking affair and handed it to Marshall without a word. It consisted of a glass syringe about two inches long, fitted with a glass plunger and an asbestos washer. On the other end of the tube was a hollow point about three-eighths of an inch long—just a little shiny bit of steel such as he had picked up where it had been ground into the deck near the powdered glass.

Marshall looked at it, in spite of his former assurance, and began to wonder whether, after all, the possibility of being struck down and robbed or worse, perhaps, for a girl—in public places might not take on the guise of ghastly reality.

"What do you make of it?" asked Garrick, evidently enjoying the puzzled look on his friend's face.

"Well," drawled the detective, "that is a weapon, the possibilities of which are terrifying. Why, it could easily be plunged through a fur coat without breaking."

"When people tell you that the hypodermic needle cannot be employed in cases like this," he continued, "they are thinking of ordinary hypodermics. Those things wouldn't be very successful usually: anyhow, under such circumstances. But this is different. The form of this needle makes it particularly effective for anyone who wishes to use it for crime. Draw back the plunger—so—one quick jab—then drop it on the floor and grind it under your heel. The glass is splintered into a thousand bits. All evidence of guilt is destroyed, unless some one is looking for it practically with a microscope."

"Yes," persisted Marshall, "that is all right—but the pain, and the moments before the drug begins to work?"

With one hand Garrick reached into the case, selecting a little thin glass tube, and with the other he pulled out his handkerchief.

"Smell that!" he exclaimed, landing over the purser so that he could see every move and be prepared for it.

"Ugh!" ejaculated Marshall in surprise, as Garrick manipulated the thing with a legerdemain swiftness that quite baffled him, even though he had given his warning to expect something.

Everyone has seen freak moving-picture films where the actor suddenly bobs up in another place, without visibly crossing the intervening space. The next thing Marshall knew, Garrick was standing across the room, in that way. The handkerchief was folded up and in his pocket.

It couldn't have been done possibly in less than a minute. Where had that minute gone? Marshall felt a sickening sensation.

"I could have jabbed a dozen needles into you and you would never have known it," asserted Garrick with a quiet smile playing over his face.

"Kelene—ethyl chloride. Whiff!—and you are off almost in a second. It is an anaesthetic of nearly unbelievable volatility. It comes in little hermetically-sealed tubes, with a tiny capillary orifice, to prevent its too rapid vaporizing even when opened for use. Such a tube may be held in the palm of the hand, and the end crushed off. The warmth of the hand alone is sufficient to start a veritable spray. It acts violently on the senses, too. But kelene anaesthesia lasts only a minute or so. That fraction of time, however, is long enough. Then comes the jab with the real needle—perhaps another whiff of kelene to give the injection a chance. In two or three minutes the injection itself is working and the victim is unconscious, without a murmur—perhaps, as in your case, without any clear idea of how it all happened, or, as in Vesta's, apparently without any recollection even of a handkerchief—unable to recall any sharp pain of a needle or anything else."

"And what is that?" asked Marshall, properly tamed and no longer disposed to be disputatious.

"One one-hundredth of a grain, perhaps less, of this sample will render a person unconscious," replied Garrick. "The first symptom is faintness; the pupils of the eyes dilate: speech is lost; vitality seems to be floating away, and the victim lapses into unconsciousness. It is derived from henbane, among other things, and is a rapid, energetic alkaloid, more rapid than chloral or morphine. And, preceded by a whiff of kelene, not even the sensations I have described are remembered."

"In Paris, where I got this," continued the detective, "they call these people who use it 'endormeurs'—sleep-makers. The standard equipment of such a criminal consists of these little thin glass globes, a tiny glass hypodermic syringe, doped cigars and cigarettes. They use various derivatives of opium, like morphine, also codeine, heroin, dionin, narcein, ethyl chloride and bromide, nitrite of amyl, amylin—and the skill that they have acquired in the manipulation of these powerful drugs stamps them as the most dangerous côterie of criminals in existence. Now," he concluded, "doubt it or not, we have one of those fellows or a proficient student of him, aboard this ship. The question is: Who is he?"

"You see," he added, "the police are driving such criminals out of Europe by their new methods. Thank heaven, I am prepared to meet them if they come to America."

"Garrick," exclaimed Marshall, astounded by what he had seen, "you—you are a wonder!"

GARRICK and Marshall searched the ship together from truck to keel, but not a clue developed. The passenger list was thoroughly scrutinized, but no names that would have suggested any tangible clue to an old-time sleuth were found. As far as Garrick could tell, there were no transatlantic crooks aboard, or professional gamblers. Players at cards there were, and heavy players, but that signified nothing.

Even Truxton himself and Harrington came in for their share of suspicion. Truxton Demarest was a debonair, dashing young man, tremendously popular, a free spender and a general social favorite. Like Harrington, he was ostensibly a broker in New York, though in his own case his business consisted chiefly in managing the estate that had been left him and Vesta by the recent death of their parents. Truxton even gave up sleep over the case, and led his faithful valet, McIntyre, a merry chase to keep his young master from searching anyone he chose.

Harrington, not being an immediate member of the family though a close friend, said very little, though once or twice, when he had something that seemed significant, he came quietly and laid it before Garrick modestly.

And sometimes it seemed that in spite of his joining Chateaurouge in the offer of a reward. Truxton was watching even his prospective brother-in-law, the Count.

"Often it seems to me, Garrick," Marshall remarked, "after reasoning the matter out in default of tangible facts, that this Chateaurouge himself could cast some light on the subject, if he chose. You know, he is of a race not without an eye to feminine beauty, and Lucille, even though she is a maid, is one of no ordinary charms and intelligence."

"Even Lucille does not escape," smiled Garrick enigmatically, "though I suppose Vesta herself and Aunt Ruth are absolved."

"Well," persisted Marshall, "I can't see that we're any closer to catching anybody."

Garrick said nothing. But as the Herculean at last sailed majestically up the harbor of New York, he stood in the long saloon watching the Demarest party busy making their declarations to the boarding officers of the customs service.

He himself had very little to declare, and as he stood in an angle, watching, Marshall approached him. Marshall had evidently singled out Chateaurouge with the idea that the customs ordeal through which all were about to go might develop something.

"You don't like Chateaurouge, do you?" observed Garrick, impersonally, after a quick sidelong glance at the purser's face.

"No," Marshall admitted frankly, taken by surprise at his reading of what in reality was obvious. "No, to tell the truth, I don't like his face. I was just thinking it was of a sinister type."

Garrick shot another glance at him. "The latest work of the criminologists," he commented, "like Dr. Goring, of London, has given a body-blow to Lombroso's theories. They tell us that there is no such thing as a criminal type."

"Well," insisted Marshall, "I don't like it, anyhow." He was not any too positive in his opinion, however, mindful of a previous encounter with Garrick.

"Of course," the detective went on in a low voice. "I'm not prepared to say anyone is guilty or innocent—yet. I expect some surprises in this case, and I'm not saying anything about Chateaurouge one way or the other.

"Hut when you begin to base judgments on faces, never forget the classic story about Lavater. He had been given the pictures of a highwayman who had been hanged, and of the philosopher Kant, whom he had never seen. When he was asked to pick out the philosopher, he picked the highwayman's picture. 'There can be no doubt in this case,' he said, 'for here one sees profound penetration in the eye and that capacious forehead which denotes the man of reflection, the mind that can separate cause and effect, analyze and synthesize. Now the calm, thinking villain is so well expressed in the other that it needs no comment.'

"No, Marshall, neither can you say that it is impossible from the appearance and nature of a person that he could have committed a certain crime. Perhaps he did commit it. The deeper you go into actual crime, the more truth you will find in those two rules."

The Herculean was warped into her berth and the usual hold-up of the customs inspection began. In this case, the regular "frisking" of passengers by the agents of Uncle Sam was even more thorough than usual.

The dock was roped off under its arching roof of steel girders, and the opposing lines of passengers and inspectors, to say nothing of plain clothes appraisers, with here and there a city detective, met each other.

Baggage was turned inside out. Piles of feminine finery were tumbled into formless heaps and pawed over by alien hands. Reticules and purses were nosed into inquisitively, as the extra search proceeded in that panorama of a vast mass of open luggage. Over at Ellis Island the same search was being made of the third-class passengers, and more city and private detectives were watching the crew.

And yet, in spite of the rigid search of the customs men aided by the police, not even a clue to the jewels was found. A criminal who was clever enough to get them in the first place, was surely clever enough to elude so obvious a danger as the customs inspection.

"This fellow is as dark and mysterious a robber as ever lived," exclaimed the purser, in despair, as nothing developed. "What reason is there to suppose that he will ever be caught now?"

"Stop a moment," cautioned Garrick. "Think it out from the other end. We shall hear more of it—soon, I believe. In the first place, the spoils of a successful theft consist generally of precious stones in precious settings, as in this case. Of themselves, they will buy nothing. To offer them for sale is suspicious. Yet they must be turned into cash—or what is the use of the robbery? In some way, the booty must disappear into the bosom of the world's wealth.

"Now I believe that there is a man, or group of men, whose sole business it is to pay cash for stolen property. They are not rough-necks of the ordinary type with which we have been familiar. Hut we shall hear more of them, before long."

IT was the day before the Herculean was to sail on her return trip that Garrick dropped in on Marshall on shipboard.

"I see you maintain the same discipline while you are in port that you do on the sea," observed the detective, noticing also that the vigilance in seeking the suspected thief had not relaxed.

"Yes, that's to keep the men from getting rusty. Any word?" asked Marshall, secretly gloating at his own judgment of the case.

"Yes," Garrick replied with a quiet confidence that swept Marshall off his feet, then adding frankly, "but not the kind I expected. Miss Demarest has received a letter about the jewels."

"A few days after she arrived. Lucille was taken very ill and, as there was no place for her at the hotel, Miss Demarest allowed her to go to her brother, who lives on Ninth Street. This morning she received this letter from Lucille. Read it."

Since I left you, mademoiselle, I am very ill here at the home of my brother. I have a nice room in the back of the house on the first floor, and now that I am getting better I can sit up and look out of the window.

To-day a message came to me and it is about that which I write. I must not tell you all of even the little I know, but I have heard regarding the jewels you lost. They can be returned for $10,000. You must call on me first, alone, and I will tell you what I have heard. Show this letter to no one, for if you are followed here, the person who has them is watching and will he warned. Can you come to see me here tonight at nine o'clock?

"Of course you warned her against going?" Marshall remarked, handing the letter back to Garrick.

"Of course. Also I have told her of the handkerchief and needle, trick, lest she should be molested again some time. I gave her a little pistol, like this."

The detective displayed a little ivory-handled revolver, broke it, and as he snapped it shut again, the purser fancied that the cartridges in the pistol looked like blanks.

"Want to investigate with me?" asked Garrick, suddenly coming to the point of his visit.

Marshall assented readily, and together they sauntered up to Ninth Street. There they found the house which Lucille's note had indicated. It was an old three-story brownstone building with an entrance two or three steps up from the sidewalk level.

Garrick passed it so as not to attract any attention, and a little further on, paused before an apartment house, not of the modern elevator construction, but still of quiet and decent appearance. He had no trouble in getting past the front door, and together they mounted the stairs to the roof.

Garrick had had adventures like this before. On the roof, a clothesline tied about a chimney served to let him down the few feet from the higher apartment roof to that of the dwelling house next it.

Quickly he tiptoed over to the chimney of the brownstone house a few doors down, and as he did so, Marshall saw him take from his pocket a box. A string tied to a weight told him which of the flues reached down to the room on the first floor, back.

That determined, he let the little cedar box fastened to an entwined pair of wires down the flue. He then ran the wires back across the roof to the apartment, up, and into a little storm shed at the top of the last flight of stairs leading to the roof.

"There is nothing we can do just yet," he remarked after he had hauled himself back to Marshall on the next roof. "We are lucky not to have been disturbed, but if we stay here we are likely to be observed. Meet me to-night. Marshall, at eight o'clock in Washington Square."

PROMPTLY to the dot, Marshall met the detective. Garrick was tugging a heavy suitcase and a small package wrapped up in paper.

"I'm not surprised at your being winded," panted the purser, soon finding himself in the same condition. "What's in this—lead?"

"Something that we may need, or may not," Garrick answered enigmatically, as they stopped in the shadow to rest.

He carefully took the little ivory-handled revolver from an inside pocket and stowed it where it would be handy, in his coat.

Again, they managed to elude the tenants of the apartment and to reach the roof, where, now that it was dark, they felt comparatively safe.

Unwrapping the smaller package, Garrick attached the wires, as he had left them, to another little cedar box, which now Marshall had a chance to examine more closely under the light of his electric bull's-eye. It was oblong, with a sort of black disk fixed to the top. In the face of the box itself were two little square holes, with sides also of cedar that converged inward in the box, making a pair of little quadrangular pyramidal holes which seemed to end in a small round black circle in the interior, small end.

The minutes that followed seemed like hours, as they waited, not daring to talk lest they should attract attention.

Marshall leaped to his feet, prepared to meet anything, man or devil. Garrick seized him and pulled him down, a strong hint to be quiet. Too surprised to remonstrate, since nothing happened, he waited, breathless.

"Yes, but that is better than to be late. Besides, we've got to watch that Garrick," said another voice. "He might be around."

Garrick laughed outright, not boisterously, but still in a way which to his friend was amazing in its bravado if they were so near.

"I didn't have to go to Europe to find out what an American vocaphone was," he said aloud, yet careful not to raise his voice, as before, so as not to disturb the apartment dwellers.

"Yes, this cedar box." he explained tapping it; "the little box that hears and talks. It talks right out, you know."

"Those square holes in the face," Garrick went on, "act like little megaphones to that receiver inside, magnify the sound and throw it out so that we can listen just as well, perhaps better, up here than if we were down there in the room with them."

Still perceiving the puzzled look of amazement which his explanation had not entirely removed from his friend's face, he added: "Why, Marshall, don't you understand? They are down there in that back-room—Lucille, I think, and a man. Listen."

"Have you heard from her?" asked the man whose voice Marshall could not quite recognize.

"Non—but she will come. Voilà—she has cried her pretty eyes out over the ring already. She will come."

"Lucille," broke in the man coaxingly, "you are a wonder. I owe you much, and I owe much to the friends in Paris who helped me and introduced you to me. I could not have found a better partner in all Paris. But—love! You know no more of love than the dealers in fine gems with whom we work. The gay life—you love that. So do I—with you. But this is different. Lucille, you must meet her when she arrives. Reassure her. Then, when I appear, after I explain, there will be no more trouble—you know. And the fifty thousand francs I promised you are yours. Think of it—what wealth! How far it will take you, my beauty!"

It was evident that the two had a certain regard for each other, a sort of wild animal affection, above, below, beyond, without the law. They seemed at least to understand each other.

Garrick made a motion as if to turn a switch in the little vocaphone, and rested his hand on it.

"I could make those two jump out of the window with fright and surprise," he said, still fingering the switch. "You see, it works the other way, too, if I choose to throw this lever. Suppose I should shout out, and they should hear, apparently coming out of the fireplace, 'You are discovered. Thank you for telling me all your plans, but I am prepared for them already.' What do you suppose they would—"

A moment later came a knock at a door and Lucille's silken rustle as she hurried to open it.

"How do you do. Lucille?" they heard a tremulous voice repeated by the faithful little vocaphone.

"Mademoiselle honors her poor Lucille beyond her dreams. Will you not be seated here in this easy-chair?"

"My God!" exclaimed Garrick, starting back from the vocaphone, "she has gone there—in spite of my warning!"

Instantly Marshall recognized now, even in the mechanical reproduction, the voice of Vesta Demarest.

Independent, self reliant to the point of being headstrong, she had disregarded the explicit warning of Garrick in her anxiety for the diamonds, and especially the ring of Chateaurouge.

"I have them not here. But if Mademoiselle will wait, and will go with me in a cab to get the money for them, I know how to get them, but that is all. Shall I call a cab?"

Evidently Vesta, having gone so far, had little compunction about going further.

At once Marshall was alive to the danger. All the stories of white slavery and kidnapping that he had ever read rioted through his head. He felt like calling out a warning. Yet Garrick still delayed his finger on the switch.

"Jewels? You shall have those and a thousand others, Vesta. Jewels? What are jewels to me, who have only to speak the word and wait, and any jewel in the world will be mine? There is one jewel I—I want." he concluded. "You!"

"You do not dare. All the money I have will be poured out by Truxton to get me back and run you down, if you dare—"

"Money!" He laughed grimly. "Money! You haven't a penny. Your brother owes me on stocks more than his and your combined fortunes, every penny of it. Vesta, listen to reason. You are a poor girl. I am a rich man. All he had belongs to me now, and more, much more. Yet all is yours. Come!"

"Vesta, this is Garrick. Reach into your bag—the pistol—shoot—point blank. Quick! I shall be with you in a minute."

There was a moment of startled surprise in the room below; then followed a mocking laugh.

"Ha! ha! I thought you'd pull something like that, Garrick. I don't know where you are. But it makes no difference. There are many ways of getting out of this place and at two of them I have a high-powered limousine. Vesta—will you go—quietly"—there were sounds of a struggle—"after the needle—!"

A scream had been followed immediately by the crack of a shot, ringing out through the vocaphone.

A thud as of a heavy person falling was followed by a groan. In the instant that had intervened before the effects of the needle, after she had contrived to avoid the handkerchief, Vesta had fired the shot.

Garrick had already picked up the heavy suit-case and was running down the steps two at a time. Marshall hard after him.

Without waiting to ring the bell, he dashed the suitcase through the plate glass of the front door, reached in and turned the lock. They hurried through to the last barrier into the back room.

As the light wooden door yielded to their united shoulders, they found that the room was full of stifling vapor.

Marshall rushed blindly to the windows. He could see Vesta lying across a divan. Garrick bent over and felt her fluttering pulse, looked into her dilated eyes. She had evidently been struggling blindly to the window for air, also.

As he managed to smash a pane, then manipulated the catches, Marshall saw Garrick drop on his knees beside the girl. He had quickly opened the heavy suitcase. A moment later he had taken from it a sort of cap, at the end of a rubber tube, and had fastened it carefully over her face.

He did, furiously. Garrick stooped down and picked up the little ivory-handled pistol from her nerveless grasp.

"It was that that saved her," he exclaimed, "the German secret service chemical pistol that shoots cartridges of gas instead of bullets—choking, stupefying—keep on with that pulmotor, Marshall. Thank heaven I came prepared with it!"

At last a feeble moan and a flutter of the eyelids from her told that she was coming out from the effects of both the gas and drug.

"Truxton," she moaned over and over again, "my money! Has he really got it from you? Oh, Truxton, Truxton, how could you—how could you?"

There was a deep cough and a sneeze from the other side of the room. Garrick was on the man with both knees, in an instant. A bright steel gleam followed and handcuffs snapped over his wrists.

All this Marshall caught out of the tail of his eye as he continued to supply oxygen to the lovely girl before him.

The figure at the other end of the room struggled in returning consciousness, with an imaginary foe.

Garrick had already withdrawn from his hand a little glass syringe such as the endormeurs used, and from his pocket he had taken a bundle of papers in a capacious wallet.

"Let me up, you—you—Chateaurouge—you French dude," Harrington was raving in the delirium induced by the stifling vapors of the pistol. "Let me up, I say. I hold your I.O.U's, too, for that mortgaged estate of yours—pay—pay! Ha!—you can't. You know it. Then the girl—Stand out of my way— where—where—am I?"

Blinking, sputtering, choking, he suddenly became aware that he was dreaming, and that the struggle was with the steel of the handcuffs, not with Chateaurouge, against whom he had plotted. The half light about him was the reality.

"It's all right, Miss Demarest," Garrick reassured her as she moaned Truxton's name. "Harrington shall never leave this room until he restores the jewels and your property and tears up those I.O.U's against Truxton and the Count."

THE END

ARTHUR B. REEVE

THE SLEEP-MAKER*

First published in The Red Book Magazine, May 1914 This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2021 Version Date: 2021-07-16 Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright. Click here for more Craig Kennedy stories

THE END

First published in The Red Book Magazine, May 1914

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2021
Version Date: 2021-07-16

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright.

Click here for more Craig Kennedy stories