THE TRAP

“You are ready, Miss Lawton? Nerves steady enough for the ordeal?” asked Blaine the following morning.

“I am ready.” Anita’s voice was firm and controlled, and there was the glint of a challenge in her eyes. A wondrous change had come over her since the previous day. With the rescue of the man she loved, and the certainty that he would recover, all the latent, indomitable courage and fighting spirit which had come to her as an heritage from her father, and which had made of him the ruler of men and arbiter of events which he had been, arose again within her. The most crushing weight upon her heart had been lifted; hope and love had revivified her; and she was indeed ready to face the world again, to meet her enemies, the murderers and traducers of her father, and to give battle to them on their own ground.

“In a few moments, a man will enter this library a man whom you know well. You will be stationed behind the curtains at this window here, and you must summon all your self-control to restrain yourself from giving any start or uttering a sound of surprise which would betray your presence. While I talk to him, I want you to try with all your might to put from your mind the fact that you know him. Do not let his personality influence you in any way, or his speech. Only listen to the tones of his voice listen and try to recall that other voice which you heard here on the night of your father’s death. If in his tones you recognize that voice, step from behind those curtains and face him. If not and you must be absolutely sure that you do recognize the voice, that you could swear to it under oath in a court of justice, realizing that it will probably mean swearing away a man’s life if you are not sure, remain silent.”

“I understand, Mr. Blaine. I will not fail you. I could not be mistaken; the voice which I heard here that night rings still in my ears; its echo seems yet to linger in the room.” Her gaze wandered to the great leather chair, which had been replaced in its usual position. “Now that you have restored Ramon to me, I want only to avenge my father, and I shall be content. To be murdered, in his own home! Poisoned like a rat in a trap! I shall not rest until the coward who killed him has been brought to justice!”

“He will be, Miss Lawton! The trap has been baited again, and unless I am greatly mistaken, the murderer will walk straight into it. There is the bell! I gave orders that you were to be at home to no one except the man I expect and that he was to be ushered in here immediately upon his arrival, without being announced so take your place, now, please, behind the curtains. Do not try to watch the man only listen with all your ears; and above all do not betray yourself until the proper moment comes for disclosing your presence.”

Without a word Anita disappeared into the window-seat, and the curtains fell into place behind her. The detective had only time to step in the shadow of a dark corner beside one of the tall bookcases, when the door was thrown open. A man stood upon the threshold a tall, fair man of middle age, with a small blond mustache, and a monocle dangling from a narrow black ribbon about his neck. From the very correct gardenia in his buttonhole to the very immaculate spats upon his feet, he was a careful prototype of the Piccadilly exquisite a little faded, perhaps, slightly effete, but perfect in detail. He halted for a moment, as if he, too, were blinded by the swift change from sunshine to gloom. Then, advancing slowly, his pale, protruding eyes wandered to the great chair by the fireplace, and lingered as if fascinated. He approached it, magnetized by some spell of his own thoughts’ weaving, until he could have stretched out his hand and touched it. A pause, and with a sudden swift revulsion of feeling, he turned from it in a sort of horror and went to the center-table. There he stood for a moment, glanced back at the chair, then quickly about the room, his eyes passing unseeingly over the shadowy figure by the bookcase. Then he darted back to the chair and thrust his hand deep into the fold between the back and seat. For a minute he felt about with frenzied haste, until his fingers touched the object he sought, and with a profound sigh of relief he drew it forth a tiny flat vial.

He glanced at it casually, his hand already raised toward his breast-pocket; then he recoiled with a low, involuntary cry. The vial was filled with a sinister blood-red fluid.

At that moment Blaine stepped from behind the bookcase and confronted him.

“You have succeeded in regaining your bottle, haven’t you, Mr. Rockamore?” he asked, significantly. “Are you surprised to find within it the blood of an innocent man?”

Rockamore turned to him slowly, his dazed, horror-stricken eyes protruding more than ever.

“Blood?” he repeated, thickly, as if scarcely understanding. Then a realization of the situation dawned upon him, and he demanded, hoarsely: “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“My name is Blaine, and I am here to arrest the murderer of Pennington Lawton,” the detective replied, his dominant tones ringing through the room.

“Blaine Henry Blaine!” Rockamore stepped back a pace or two, and a sneer curled his thin lips, although his face had suddenly paled. “I’ve heard of you, of course the international meddler! What sort of sensation are you trying to work up now, my man, by such a ridiculous assertion? Pennington Lawton murdered! Why, all the world knows that he died of heart-disease!”

“All the world seldom knows the truth, but it shall, in this instance,” returned Blaine, trenchantly. “Pennington Lawton was murdered poisoned by a draught of prussic acid.”

“You’re mad!” Rockamore retorted, insolently. He tossed the incriminating little vial carelessly on the blotter of the writing-desk, and when he turned again to the detective his face, with its high, thin, hooked nose and close-drawn brows, was vulture-like in its malevolent intensity. “You don’t deserve serious consideration! If you make public such a ridiculous statement, you’ll only be laughed at for your pains.”

“I shall prove it. The murderer’s midnight visit, his secret conference with his victim, did not proceed unwitnessed. His motive is known, but his act was futile. It came too late.”

“This is all very interesting, no doubt, or would be if it could be credited. However, I cannot understand why you have elected to take me into your confidence.” Rockamore was livid, but he controlled himself sufficiently to speak with a simulation of contemptuous boredom. “I came here to see Miss Lawton, in response to an urgent call from her; I don’t know by what authority you are here, but I do know that I do not propose to be further annoyed by you!”

“I am afraid that you will find yourself very seriously annoyed before this affair comes to an end, Mr. Rockamore,” said Blaine. “Miss Lawton’s butler summoned you this afternoon by my instructions, and with gratifying promptness you came and did just what I expected you would do betrayed yourself irretrievably in your haste to recover the evidence which now will hang you!”

The other man laughed harshly, a discordant, jarring laugh which jangled on the tense air.

“Your accusation is too absurd to be resented. I knew that Miss Lawton herself could not have been a party to this melodramatic hoax!”

Blaine walked to the desk before replying, and taking up the crimson-tinged vial, weighed it in his hand.

“You did not find the poison bottle which you yourself thrust in that chair the night Pennington Lawton died, Mr. Rockamore, because his daughter discovered it and communicated with me,” he said. “She anticipated you by less than twenty-four hours. We have known from the beginning of your nocturnal visit to this room; every word of your conversation was overheard. It’s no use trying to bluff it; we’ve got a clear case against you.”

“You and your ‘clear case’ be d d!” the other man cried, his tones shaking with anger. “You’re trying to bluff me, my man, but it won’t work! I don’t know what the devil you mean about a midnight visit to Lawton; the last I saw of him was at a directors’ meeting the afternoon before his death.”

“Then why has that chair the chair in which he died exerted such a peculiar, sinister influence over you? Why is it that every time you have entered this room since, you have been unable to keep away from it? Why, this very hour, when you thought yourself unobserved, did you walk straight to this chair and place your hand deliberately upon the place where the poison bottle was concealed? Why did you recoil? Why did that cry rise from your lips when you saw what it contained?”

“I touched the chair inadvertently, while I waited for Miss Lawton’s appearance, and my hand coming accidentally in contact with a hard substance, mere idle curiosity impelled me to draw it out. Naturally, I was startled for the moment, when I saw what it was.” The man’s voice deepened hoarsely, and he gave vent to another sneering, vicious laugh. As its echo died in the room, Blaine could have sworn that he heard a quick gasp from behind the curtains of the window-seat, but it did not reach the ears of Rockamore.

The latter continued, his voice breaking suddenly, with a rage at last uncontrolled:

“I could not, of course, know that that bottle of red ink was a cheap, theatrical trick of a mountebank, a creature who is the laughing-stock of the press and the public, in his idiotic attempts to draw sensational notoriety upon himself. But I do know that this effort has failed! You have dared to plant this outrageous, puerile trap to attempt to ensnare me! You have dared to strike blindly, in your mad thirst for publicity, at a man infinitely beyond your reach. Your insolence ceases to be amusing! If you try to push this ridiculous accusation, I shall ruin you, Henry Blaine!”

“No man is beyond my reach who has broken the law.” The detective’s voice was quietly controlled, yet each word pierced the silence like a sword-thrust. “I have been threatened with ruin, with death, many times by criminals of all classes, from defaulting financiers to petty thieves, but I still live, and my fortunes have not been materially impaired. I do not court publicity, but I cannot shirk my duty because it entails that. And in this case my duty is plain. You, Bertrand Rockamore, came here, secretly, by night, to try to persuade Mr. Lawton to go in with you on a crooked scheme to force him to, by blackmail, if necessary, on an old score. Failing in that, you killed him, to prevent the nefarious operations of yourself and your companions from being brought to light!”

“You’re mad, I tell you!” roared Rockamore. “Whoever stuffed you with such idiotic rot as that is making gammon of you! That conversation is a chimera of some disordered mind, if it isn’t merely part of a deliberate conspiracy of yours against me! You’ll suffer for this, my man! I’ll break you if it is the last act of my life! Such a conference never took place, and you know it!”

“‘Come, Lawton, be sensible; half a loaf is better than no bread,’” Blaine quoted slowly. “’There is no blackmail about this it is an ordinary business proposition.’

“’It’s a damnable crooked scheme, and I shall have nothing to do with it. This is final! My hands are clean, and I can look every man in the face and tell him to go where you can go now!’

“You remember that, don’t you, Rockamore?” Blaine interrupted himself to ask sharply. “Do you also recall your reply? ’How about poor Herbert Armstrong? His wife ’”

“It’s a lie! A d d lie!” cried Rockamore. “I was not in this room that night! Such a conversation never occurred! Who told you of this? Who dares accuse me?”

“I do!” A clear, flute-like voice, resonant in its firmness, rang out from behind him as he spoke, and he wheeled abruptly, to find Anita standing with her slender form outlined against the dark, rich velvet of the curtains. Her head was thrown back, her eyes blazing; and as she faced him, she slowly raised her arm and pointed a steady finger at the recoiling figure. “I accuse you, Bertrand Rockamore, of the murder of my father! It was I who heard your conversation here in this room; it was I who found the vial which contained the poison you used when your arguments and threats failed! I am not mistaken I knew that I could never be mistaken if I heard that voice again, shaken, as it was that night, with rage and defiance and fear! I knew that I should hear it again some time, and all these weeks I have listened for it, until this moment. Mr. Blaine, this is the man!”

“Anita, you have lost your mind!” With the shock of the girl’s appearance, a steely calm had come to the Englishman, and although a tremor ran through his tones, he held them well in leash. “My poor child, you do not know what you are saying.

“As for you,” he turned and looked levelly into Blaine’s eyes, “I am amazed that a man of your perception and experience should for a moment entertain the idea that he could make out a case of capital crime against a person of my standing, solely upon the hysterical pseudo-testimony of a girl whose brain is overwrought. This midnight conference, which you so glibly quote, is a figment of her distraught mind or, if it actually occurred (a fact of which you have no proof), Miss Lawton admits, by the words she has just uttered, that she did not see the mysterious visitor, but is attempting to identify me as that person merely by the tones of my voice. She has made no accusation against me until this moment, yet since her father’s death she has heard my voice almost daily for several weeks. Come, Blaine, listen to reason! Your case has tumbled about your ears! You can only avoid serious trouble for both Miss Lawton and yourself by dropping this absurd matter here and now.”

“It is true that I did not recognize your voice before, but I have not until now heard it raised in anger as it was that night ” began Anita, but Blaine silenced her with a gesture.

“And the bottle of prussic acid which was found yesterday hidden in the chair where just now you searched for it?” he demanded, sternly. “The incontrovertible evidence, proved late last night by an autopsy upon the body of Pennington Lawton, which shows that he came to his death by means of that poison how do you account for these facts, Rockamore?”

“I do not propose to account for them, whether they are facts or not,” returned the other man, coolly. “Since I know nothing whatever about them, they are beyond my province. Unless you wish to bring ruin upon yourself, and unwelcome notoriety and possibly an official inquiry into her sanity upon Miss Lawton, you will not repeat this incredible accusation. Only my very real sympathy for her has enabled me to listen with what patience I have to the unparalleled insolence of this charge, but you are going too far. I see no necessity for further prolonging this interview, and with your permission I will withdraw unless, of course,” he added, sneeringly, “you have a warrant for my arrest?”

To Anita’s astonishment, Henry Blaine stepped back with a slight shrug and Rockamore, still with that sarcastic leer upon his lips, bowed low to her and strode from the room.

“You you let him go, Mr. Blaine?” she gasped, incredulously. “You let him escape!”

“He cannot escape.” Blaine smiled a trifle grimly. “I’m giving him just a little more rope, that is all, to see if he will help us secure the others. His every move is under strict surveillance for him there is no way out, save one.”

“And that way?” asked Anita.

The detective made no reply. In a few minutes he took leave of her and proceeded to his office, where he spent a busy day, sending cables in cipher, detailing operatives to many new assignments and receiving reports.

Late in the afternoon replies began to come in to his cablegrams of the morning. Whatever their import, they quite evidently afforded him immense satisfaction, and as the early dusk settled down, his eyes began to glow with the light of battle, which those closest to him in his marvelous work had learned to recognize when victory was in sight.

Suraci noted it when he entered to make his report, and the glint of enthusiasm in his own eyes brightened like burnished steel.

“I relieved Ross at noon, as you instructed me, sir,” he began, “in the vestibule of Mr. Rockamore’s apartment house. It was a good thing that I had the six-cylinder car handy, for he surely led me a chase! Ten minutes after I went on duty, Rockamore came out, jumped into his automobile, and after circling the park, he turned south, zig-zagging through side streets as if to cut off pursuit. He reached South-end Ferry, but hovered about until the gates were on the point of closing. Then his chauffeur shot the car forward, but before I could reach him, Creghan stepped up with your warrant.

“‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I heard him say as I came up. ’I’m to use this only in case you insist on attempting to leave the city, sir. Mr. Blaine’s orders.’

“Rockamore turned on him in a fury, but thought better of it, and after a minute he leaned forward with a shrug, and directed the chauffeur north again. This time he tried the Great Western Station, but Liebler was there, waiting for him; then the North Illington branch depot Schmidt was on hand. As a forlorn hope he tried the Tropic and Oriental steamship line, one of their ships goes out to-night, but Norris intercepted him; at last he speeded down the boulevard and out on the eastern post-road, but Kearney was on the job at the toll-gate.

“He gave it up then, and went back to his rooms, and Ross relieved me there, just now. The lights are flaring in the windows of his rooms, and you can see his shadow he’s pacing up and down like a caged animal!”

“All right, Suraci. Go back and tell Ross to have one of his men telephone to me at once if Rockamore leaves his rooms before nine. That will be all for you to-night. I’ve got to do the rest of the work myself.”

At nine o’clock precisely, Henry Blaine presented himself at Rockamore’s door. As he had anticipated he was admitted at once and ushered into the Englishman’s presence as if his coming had been expected.

“I say, Blaine, what the devil do you mean by this game you’re playing?” Rockamore demanded, as he stood erect and perfectly poised upon the hearth, and faced the detective. A faint, sarcastic smile curved his lips, and in his pale eyes there was no hint of trouble or fear merely a look of tolerant, half-contemptuous amusement. Immaculate in his dinner-coat and fresh boutonniere, his bearing superb in his ease and condescension, he presented a picture of elegance. Blaine glanced about the rich, somber den before he replied.

“I’m not playing any game, Mr. Rockamore. Why did you try so desperately to leave the city?”

The Englishman shrugged.

“A sudden whim, I suppose. Would it be divulging a secret of your profession if you informed me why one of your men did not arrest me, since all had warrants on the ridiculous charge you brought against me this morning, of murdering my oldest and closest friend?”

“I merely wanted to assure myself that you would not leave the city until I had obtained sufficient data with which to approach you,” the detective responded, imperturbably. “I have come to-night for a little talk with you, Mr. Rockamore. I trust I am not intruding?”

“Not at all. As a matter of fact, after to-day’s incidents I was rather expecting you.” Rockamore waved his unbidden guest to a chair, and produced a gold cigarette-case. “Smoke? You perhaps prefer cigars no? A brandy and soda?”

“Thank you, no. With your permission, I will get right down to business. It will simplify matters for both of us if you are willing to answer some questions I wish to put to you; but, of course, there is no compulsion about it. On the other hand, it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you.”

“Fire away, Mr. Blaine!” Rockamore seated himself and stretched out his legs luxuriously to the open wood-fire. “I don’t fancy that anything I shall say will militate against me. I was an idiot to lose my temper this morning, but I hate being made game of. Now the whole situation merely amuses me, but it may become tiresome. Let’s get it over.”

“Mr. Rockamore, you were born in Staffordshire, England, were you not? Near a place called Handsworth?”

The unexpected question brought a meditative frown to the other man’s brow, but he replied readily enough:

“Yes, at Handsworth Castle, to be exact. But I can’t quite gather what bearing that insignificant fact has upon your amazing charge this morning.”

“You are the only son of Gerald Cecil Rockamore, third son of the Earl of Stafford?” The detective did not appear to have heard the protest of the man he was interrogating.

“Precisely. But what

“There were, then, four lives between you and the title,” Blaine interrupted, tersely. “But two remain, your father and grandfather. Your uncles died, both of sudden attacks of heart-disease, and curiously enough, both deaths occurred while they were visiting at Handsworth Castle.”

“That is quite true.” The cynical banter was gone from Rockamore’s tones, and he spoke with a peculiar, hushed evenness, as if he waited, on guard, for the next thrust.

“Lord Ashfrith, your father’s oldest brother, and next in line to the old Earl, was seated in the gun-room of the castle, sipping a brandy and soda, and carving a peach-stone. Twenty minutes before, you had brought the peaches in from the garden, and eaten them with him. He was showing you how, in his boyhood, he had carved a watch-charm from a peach-stone, and you were close at his side when he suddenly fell over dead. Two years later, your Uncle Alaric, heir to the earldom since his older brother was out of the way, dropped dead at a hunt breakfast. You were seated next him.”

“Are you trying to insinuate that I had anything to do with these deaths?” Rockamore still spoke quietly, but there was a slight tremor in his tones, and his face looked suddenly gray and leaden in the glow of the leaping flames.

“I am recalling certain facts in your family history. When your Uncle Alaric died, he had just set down his cordial glass, which had contained peach brandy. An odd coincidence, wasn’t it, that both of these men died with the odor of peaches about them, an odor which incidentally you had provided in both cases, for it was you who suggested the peach brandy as a cordial at the hunt breakfast, and induced your uncle to partake of it.”

“It was a coincidence, as you say. I had not thought of it before.” The Englishman moistened his lips nervously, as if they suddenly felt dry. “Uncle Alaric was a heavy, full-blooded man, and he had ridden hard that morning, contrary to the doctor’s orders. I suggested the brandy as a bracer, I remember.”

“An unfortunate suggestion, wasn’t it?” Blaine asked, significantly. The other man made no reply.

“There was another coincidence.” The detective pursued relentlessly. “The brandy-and-soda, which Lord Ashfrith was drinking at the moment of his death, was naturally a pale amber color. So was the brandy which your Uncle Alaric drank as he died. And prussic acid is amber-colored, too, Mr. Rockamore! Lord Ashfrith was carving a peach-stone when the end came, and the odor of peaches clung to his body. Your Uncle Alaric partook of peach brandy, and the same odor hovered about him in death. Prussic acid is redolent of the odor of peaches!”

Rockamore started from his chair.

“I understand what you are attempting to establish by the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence!” he sneered. “But you are away beyond your depth, my man! May I ask where you obtained this interesting but scarcely valuable information?”

“From Scotland Yard, by cable, to-day.” Blaine rose also and faced the other man. “An investigation was started into the second death, upon the Earl’s request, but it was dropped for lack of evidence. About that time, Mr. Rockamore, you decided rather suddenly, and for no apparent reason, to come to America, where you have remained ever since.”

“Mr. Blaine, if I were in the mood to be facetious, I might employ your American vernacular and ask that you tell me something I don’t know! Come to the point, man; you try my patience.”

“In view of recent developments, I am under the impression that Scotland Yard would welcome your reappearance on British soil, but I fear that will be forever impossible,” Blaine said slowly. “Just as you were beside your uncles when each met with his end, so you were beside Pennington Lawton when death came to him! That has been proved. Just as brandy and soda, and peach brandy, are amber-colored, so are Scotch high-balls, which you and Pennington Lawton were drinking. No odor of peaches lingered about the room, for Miss Lawton had lighted a handful of joss-sticks in a vase upon the mantel earlier in the evening, and their pungent perfume filled the air. But the odor of peaches permeated the room when the tiny bottle which you hid in the folds of the chair was uncorked the odor of peaches rose above the stench of mortifying flesh, when the body of your victim was exhumed late last night for a belated autopsy! The heart would have revealed the truth, had there been no corroborative evidence, for it was filled with arterial blood incontrovertible proof of death by prussic-acid poisoning.”

There was a tense pause, and then Rockamore spoke sharply, his voice strained to the breaking point.

“If you are so certain of my guilt, Blaine, why have you come to me secretly here and now? What is your price?”

“I have no price,” the great detective answered, simply.

“Then why did you not arrest me at once? Why this purposeless interview?”

“Because ” Blaine paused, and when he spoke again, a solemn hush, almost of pity, had crept into his tones. “You come of a fine old line, Mr. Rockamore, of a splendid race. Your grandfather, the aged Earl, is living only in the past, proud of the record of his forebears. Your father is a soldier and statesman, valuable to the nation; his younger brother, Cedric, has achieved deserved fame and glory in the Boer War. There remains only you. For the sake of the innocent who must suffer with you, I have come to you to-night, that you may have an opportunity to prepare yourself. In the morning I must arrest you. My duty is plain.”

As he uttered the words, the craven fear which had struggled through the malicious sneer on the other man’s face faded as if an obliterating hand had passed across his brow, and a look of indomitable courage and resignation took its place. There was something akin to nobility in his expression as he turned to the detective with head proudly erect and shoulders squared.

“I thank you, Mr. Blaine,” he said, simply. “I understand. I shall not fail them the others! You have been far more generous to me than I deserve. And now good-night. You will find me here when you come in the morning.”

But in the morning Henry Blaine did not carry out his expressed intention. Instead, he sat at his desk, staring at the headlines in a paper spread out before him. The Honorable Bertrand Rockamore had been found dead on the floor of his den, with a bullet through his head. He would never allow his man to touch his guns, and had been engaged in cleaning one of them, as was his custom, in preparation for his annual shooting trip to Florida, when in some fashion it had been accidentally discharged.

“I wonder if I did the right thing!” mused Blaine. “He had the courage to do it, after all. Blood will tell, in the end.”