The Exploits of Elaine | Page 4

"Where is Mr. Dodge?" asked Kennedy. "Is he all right?"
"Of course he is--in bed," replied the butler.
Just then we heard a faint cry, like nothing exactly human. Or was it
our heightened imaginations, under the spell of the darkness?

"Listen!" cautioned Kennedy.
We did, standing there now in the hall. Kennedy was the only one of us
who was cool. Jennings' face blanched, then he turned tremblingly and
went down to the library door whence the sounds had seemed to come.
He called but there was no answer. He turned the knob and opened the
door. The Dodge library was a large room. In the center stood a big
flat-topped desk of heavy mahogany. It was brilliantly lighted.
At one end of the desk was a telephone. Taylor Dodge was lying on the
floor at that end of the desk--perfectly rigid--his face distorted--a
ghastly figure. A pet dog ran over, sniffed frantically at his master's
legs and suddenly began to howl dismally.
Dodge was dead!
"Help!" shouted Jennings.
Others of the servants came rushing in. There was for the moment the
greatest excitement and confusion.
Suddenly a wild figure in flying garments flitted down the stairs and
into the library, dropping beside the dead man, without seeming to
notice us at all.
"Father!" shrieked a woman's voice, heart broken. "Father! Oh--my
God--he--he is dead!"
It was Elaine Dodge.
With a mighty effort, the heroic girl seemed to pull herself together.
"Jennings," she cried, "Call Mr. Bennett--immediately!"
From the one-sided, excited conversation of the butler over the
telephone, I gathered that Bennett had been in the process of disrobing
in his own apartment uptown and would be right down.

Together, Kennedy, Elaine and myself lifted Dodge to a sofa and
Elaine's aunt, Josephine, with whom she lived, appeared on the scene,
trying to quiet the sobbing girl.
Kennedy and I withdrew a little way and he looked about curiously.
"What was it?" I whispered. "Was it natural, an accident, or--or
murder?"
The word seemed to stick in my throat. If it was a murder, what was the
motive? Could it have been to get the evidence which Dodge had that
would incriminate the master criminal?
Kennedy moved over quietly and examined the body of Dodge. When
he rose, his face had a peculiar look.
"Terrible!" he whispered to me. "Apparently he had been working at
his accustomed place at the desk when the telephone rang. He rose and
crossed over to it. See! That brought his feet on this register let into the
floor. As he took the telephone receiver down a flash of light must have
shot from it to his ear. It shows the characteristic electric burn."
"The motive?" I queried.
"Evidently his pockets had been gone through, though none of the
valuables were missing. Things on his desk show that a hasty search
has been made."
Just then the door opened and Bennett burst in.
As he stood over the body, gazing down at it, repressing the emotions
of a strong man, he turned to Elaine and in a low voice, exclaimed,
"The Clutching Hand did this! I shall consecrate my life to bring this
man to justice!"
He spoke tensely and Elaine, looking up into his face, as if imploring
his help in her hour of need, unable to speak, merely grasped his hand.
Kennedy, who in the meantime had stood apart from the rest of us, was

examining the telephone carefully.
"A clever crook," I heard him mutter between his teeth. "He must have
worn gloves. Not a finger print--at least here."
. . . . . . . .
Perhaps I can do no better than to reconstruct the crime as Kennedy
later pieced these startling events together.
Long after I had left and even after Bennett left, Dodge continued
working in his library, for he was known as a prodigious worker.
Had he taken the trouble, however, to pause and peer out into the
moonlight that flooded the back of his house, he might have seen the
figures of two stealthy crooks crouching in the half shadows of one of
the cellar windows.
One crook was masked by a handkerchief drawn tightly about his lower
face, leaving only his eyes visible beneath the cap with visor pulled
down over his forehead. He had a peculiar stoop of the shoulders and
wore his coat collar turned up. One hand, the right, seemed almost
deformed. It was that which gave him his name in the underworld--the
Clutching Hand.
The masked crook held carefully the ends of two wires attached to an
electric feed, and sending his pal to keep watch outside, he entered the
cellar of the Dodge house through a window whose pane they had
carefully removed. As he came through the window he dragged the