The Exploits of Elaine | Page 7

but more lovely than ever, and
Perry Bennett themselves vainly endeavoring to solve the mystery of
the Clutching Hand.
They were at Dodge's desk, she in the big desk chair, he standing
beside her, looking over some papers.
"There's nothing there," Bennett was saying as we entered.
I could not help feeling that he was gazing down at Elaine a bit more
tenderly than mere business warranted.
"Have you--found anything?" queried Elaine anxiously, turning eagerly
to Kennedy.
"Nothing--yet," he answered shaking his head, but conveying a quiet
idea of confidence in his tone.
Just then Jennings, the butler, entered, bringing the morning papers.
Elaine seized the Star and hastily opened it. On the first page was the
story I had telephone down very late in the hope of catching a last city
edition.
We all bent over and Craig read aloud:
"CLUTCHING HAND" STILL AT LARGE
NEW YORK'S MASTER CRIMINAL REMAINS
UNDETECTED--PERPETRATES NEW DARING MURDER AND

ROBBERY OF MILLIONAIRE DODGE
He had scarcely finished reading the brief but alarming news story that
followed and laid the paper on the desk, when a stone came smashing
through the window from the street.
Startled, we all jumped to our feet. Craig hurried to the window. Not a
soul was in sight!
He stooped and picked up the stone. To it was attached a piece of paper.
Quickly he unfolded it and read:
"Craig Kennedy will give up his search for the "Clutching Hand"-- or
die!"
Later I recalled that there seemed to be a slight noise downstairs, as if
at the cellar window through which the masked man had entered the
night before.
In point of fact, one who had been outside at the time might actually
have seen a sinister face at that cellar window, but to us upstairs it was
invisible. The face was that of the servant, Michael.
Without another word Kennedy passed into the drawing room and took
his hat and coat. Both Elaine and Bennett followed.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me--for the present," Craig
apologized.
Elaine looked at him anxiously.
"You--you will not let that letter intimidate you?" she pleaded, laying
her soft white hand on his arm. "Oh, Mr. Kennedy," she added, bravely
keeping back the tears, "avenge him! All the money in the world would
be too little to pay--if only--"
At the mere mention of money Kennedy's face seemed to cloud, but
only for a moment. He must have felt the confiding pressure of her
hand, for as she paused, appealingly, he took her hand in his, bowing

slightly over it to look closer into her upturned face.
"I'll try," he said simply.
Elaine did not withdraw her hand as she continued to look up at him.
Craig looked at her, as I had never seen him look at a woman before in
all our long acquaintance.
"Miss Dodge," he went on, his voice steady as though he were
repressing something, "I will never take another case until the
'Clutching Hand' is captured."
The look of gratitude she gave him would have been a princely reward
in itself.
I did not marvel that all the rest of that day and far into the night
Kennedy was at work furiously in his laboratory, studying the notes,
the texture of the paper, the character of the ink, everything that might
perhaps suggest a new lead. It was all, apparently, however, without
result.
. . . . . . . .
It was some time after these events that Kennedy, reconstructing what
had happened, ran across, in a strange way which I need not tire the
reader by telling, a Dr. Haynes, head of the Hillside Sanitarium for
Women, whose story I shall relate substantially as we received it from
his own lips:
It must have been that same night that a distinguished visitor drove up
in a cab to our Hillside Sanitarium, rang the bell and was admitted to
my office. I might describe him as a moderately tall, well-built man
with a pleasing way about him. Chiefly noticeable, it seems to me,
were his mustache and bushy beard, quite medical and foreign.
I am, by the way, the superintending physician, and that night I was
sitting with Dr. Thompson, my assistant, in the office discussing a
rather interesting case, when an attendant came in with a card and

handed it to me. It read simply, "Dr. Ludwig Reinstrom, Coblenz."
"Here's that Dr. Reinstrom, Thompson, about whom my friend in
Germany wrote the other day," I remarked, nodding to the attendant to
admit Dr. Reinstrom.
I might explain that while I was abroad some time ago, I made a
particular study of the "Daemmerschlaf"--otherwise, the "twilight
sleep," at Freiburg where it was developed and at other places in
Germany where the subject had attracted great