"Great God! The fiends!" shouted Dr. Lake, his voice echoing through the empty rooms. "They tied poor old Dr. Waugh to this track and—"
He shuddered at the picture which his mind swiftly drew — the picture of a man, ignorant of the make believe harmlessness, bound helpless as those cars creeped upon him.
The floor was thick with accumulated dust and the dirt film was broken by footprints, blurred in the spot about the steel ring in the floor, as if someone had nervously scraped his feet back and forth. The young doctor's heart leaped with hope as he saw, also, the clear-cut impression of a man's hand spread flat, fingers and thumb extended.
"Here's where I turn detective," mused Lake, remembering the camera in his car. "Ill try my hand at a bit of photography. I've a notion that the hand, fingerprints and all, will photograph very well."
At that moment a bit of sunshine, breaking through an open space between the maple trees, streamed into the room, lighting the shadows under the strange make-believe cars and glinting against a bit of yellow metal that lay there. Dr. Lake reached for it and found it to be a stickpin of rather fantastic design, something European without a doubt — the gold fashioned into a claw which grasped a blood ruby.
"Now," breathed Lake with satisfaction, "if I'm going to turn detective, I think I've got something to work on."
Lake had just finished taking his photograph of the fingerprints — and a glance at Dr. Waugh's slim, tapering fingers was sufficient to tell him that the impression in the dust was not that of the dead man's hand — when Coroner Hopkins, a bearded old patriarch who had held his office for many years, arrived, peering nearsightedly through a pair of thick-lensed glasses and shaking his head hopelessly.
"Oh, yes," he greeted Dr. Lake; "you're the young doctor from Alamont. They tell me that Doctor — Doctor Waugh is — is dead. Terrible business — can't understand it — what would Dr. Waugh be doing out here? Answer me that! Terrible business — can't understand it. And — what the devil is this contraption?"
His eyes, for the first time, caught sight of the cars. The young doctor explained what he had found.
"I am told that you have already examined, Doctor — the body," pursued the aged coroner. "What do you find?"
Dr. Lake told him.
"Humph!" mourned the coroner sadly. "Queer business; I knew Dr. Waugh by reputation — a wonderful specialist, he was. Great loss to the medical profession — can't understand it."
"What do you propose to do?" ventured Dr. Lake.
Coroner Hopkins shook his head.
"I'm not so young as I used to be, young man. I generally name an assistant to perform an autopsy."
"But," protested Dr. Lake, "won't you proceed with some sort of an investigation?"
"I'm not a detective, young man; I'm the coroner. I shall perform the autopsy, turn my findings over to the state's attorney and examine what witnesses can be found. So far, Mr. — er — Wheaton, who found the body, is the only witness.
Dr. Lake frowned impatiently.
"But, Mr. Coroner," he insisted, "there's a mystery here to be cleared up; we are outside of the city where expert detective talent is available. Of course the reporters for the city newspapers will take a hand at Sherlocking, but really something should be done."
"What would you suggest?" demanded the coroner dryly.
Dr. Lake accepted the invitation eagerly.
"If you would deputize me, I would be glad to serve," he replied. "Dr. Waugh was one of my instructors at medical school and I feel a very deep personal interest in this case. I should like to see no stone unturned—"
"You're deputized, my young friend," cut in Coroner Hopkins. "Be sworn."
II
Dr. John Lake jeopardized his slim but growing practice by abruptly deserting his patients and plunging headlong into the Dr. Waugh mystery. He rushed to the city to delve into the incidents which had preceded the specialist's death. Nor was he alone; a small army of reporters was encountered at every turn; he bumped into feature writers at every step. The city editors had gone frantic over the Dr. Waugh mystery; they printed columns upon columns of entertaining description and fruitless deductions; they plastered their pages with photographs of the Thatcher farmhouse and the mysterious "steel" cars.
The real estate agent who had the renting of the Thatcher farm in charge was able to throw no light on the mystery. He had rented the place by phone. He had received a money order for a year's rent, sent in the name of "Julius Smith." The lessee had never showed up to sign the papers. The Julius Smiths listed in the directory furnished ample proof that it must be some other "Julius Smith."
The autopsy verified Dr. Lake's first examination; there had been no violence done, no poison administered; there was no clot on the brain, no heart lesion.
It remained for Dr. Lake, armed with the stickpin which he had found at the Thatcher farmhouse, to find the only real clue and, for reasons of his own, this clue never got to the newspapers.
Dr. Waugh had no family; he lived alone in a house on Belden Avenue, attended by a servant named Samuels, a reticent and rather wooden-headed and non-observing man of near sixty.
The body of Dr. Waugh had been discovered on Thursday morning. Samuels related, for the benefit of Dr. Lake and reporters alike, that on Tuesday Dr. Waugh had brought home a young man of very shabby and disreputable appearance. The young man had worn a bandage about his eyes and Dr. Waugh had explained to Samuels that he was a patient, suffering from temporary blindness. This was unusual, for Dr. Waugh seldom treated charity patients and never at his home.
Samuels, due to the bandage about the young man's face, could not supply any sort of an adequate description; about all that he was able to say was that he believed the man's hair had been brown and that his chin was black with an untidy stubble of beard.
On Wednesday afternoon Dr. Waugh had dispatched Samuels to the bank with a check for five thousand dollars. This amount, in cash, Samuels had brought home and turned it over to the doctor. No trace of the money was found; it had vanished utterly.
Still later on Thursday Samuels was dispatched on another errand. When he departed, Dr. Waugh and his blind patient were in the house; when he returned both were gone. The specialist's chauffeur furnished another link in the far from complete chain.
Dr. Waugh seldom drove his own car, but, at the time he left his Belden Avenue home for the last time, he had summoned his car from the nearby public garage where it was kept, dismissed the chauffeur, saying that he preferred to do his own driving that afternoon.
When Dr. Lake and Samuels were alone, the young doctor produced the stickpin which he had found in the Thatcher farmhouse.
"Samuels," he said, "did this belong to Dr. Waugh?"
"No, sir," said Samuels promptly, "but I've seen it before."
"Where?"
"Well, sir, I ain't much hand to notice things, but I did notice that pin. The blind young man that the doctor brought home with him was in a terrible condition, sir; his shoes were very badly broken and his clothing hung to him only in shreds. His linen was actually black, sir; he actually looked the tramp — a bum. Yet I noticed that he wore that stickpin; perhaps the reason I noticed it was that I could tell by the glance at it that it was a bit valuable and I wondered why he didn't pawn it and get himself a clean shirt and a pair of shoes."
Dr. Lake grinned triumphantly.
"My hunch wins!" he exulted. "Something told me the minute I found this pin that it was going to be a clue. By the way, Samuels, don't say anything to the newspaper men about this stickpin. I want to work this out in my own way — if I can."
"Very well, sir," agreed Samuels obediently.
After a time the city editors began to lose interest in the Dr. Waugh case; the city detective bureau which had tried to render some little assistance soon found troubles of their own more pressing. Yet once and sometimes twice a week there appeared in the want-ads columns of the newspapers, under the "Lost and Found" classification, this advertisement: