Elaine's body had been placed on a couch, covered by a blanket, and the shades were drawn. The light fell on her pale face.

There was something incongruous about death and the vast collection of scientific apparatus, a ghastly mocking of humanity. How futile was it all in the presence of the great destroyer?

Aunt Josephine had arrived, stunned, and a moment later, Perry Bennett.

As I looked at the sorrowful party, Aunt Josephine rose slowly from her position on her knees where she had been weeping silently beside Elaine, and pressed her hands over her eyes, with every indication of faintness.

Before any of us could do anything, she had staggered into the laboratory itself, Bennett and I following quickly. There I was busy for some time getting restoratives.

Meanwhile Kennedy, beside the couch, with an air of desperate determination, turned away and opened a cabinet. From it he took a large coil and attached it to a storage battery, dragging the peculiar apparatus near Elaine's couch.

To an electric light socket, Craig attached wires. The doctor watched him in silent wonder.

"Doctor," he asked slowly as he worked, "do you know of Professor Leduc of the Nantes Ecole de Medicin?"

"Why--yes," answered the doctor, "but what of him?"

"Then you know of his method of electrical resuscitation."

"Yes--but--" He paused, looking apprehensively at Kennedy.

Craig paid no attention to his fears, but approaching the couch on which Elaine lay, applied the electrodes. "You see," he explained, with forced calmness, "I apply the anode here--the cathode there."

The ambulance surgeon looked on excitedly, as Craig turned on the current, applying it to the back of the neck and to the spine.

For some minutes the machine worked.

Then the young doctor's eyes began to bulge.

"My heavens!" he cried under his breath. "Look!"

Elaine's chest had slowly risen and fallen. Kennedy, his attention riveted on his work, applied himself with redoubled efforts. The young doctor looked on with increased wonder.

"Look! The color in her face! See her lips!" he cried.

At last her eyes slowly fluttered open--then closed.

Would the machine succeed? Or was it just the galvanic effect of the current? The doctor noticed it and quickly placed his ear to her heart.

His face was a study in astonishment. The minutes sped fast.

To us outside, who had no idea what was transpiring in the other room, the minutes were leaden-feeted. Aunt Josephine, weak but now herself again, was sitting nervously.

Just then the door opened.

I shall never forget the look on the young ambulance surgeon's face, as he murmured under his breath, "Come here--the age of miracles is not pa.s.sed--look!"

Raising his finger to indicate that we were to make no noise, he led us into the other room.

Kennedy was bending over the couch.

Elaine, her eyes open, now, was gazing up at him, and a wan smile flitted over her beautiful face.

Kennedy had taken her hand, and as he heard us enter, turned half way to us, while we stared in blank wonder from Elaine to the weird and complicated electrical apparatus.

"It is the life-current," he said simply, patting the Leduc apparatus with his other hand.

CHAPTER XI

THE HOUR OF THREE

With the ominous forefinger of his Clutching Hand extended, the master criminal emphasized his instructions to his minions.

"Perry Bennett, her lawyer, is in favor again with Elaine Dodge," he was saying. "She and Kennedy are on the outs even yet. But they may become reconciled. Then she'll have that fellow on our trail again.

Before that happens, we must 'get' her--see?"

It was in the latest headquarters to which Craig had chased the criminal, in one of the toughest parts of the old Greenwich village, on the west side of New York, not far from the river front.

They were all seated in a fairly large but dingy old room, in which were several chairs, a rickety table and, against the wall, a roll-top desk on the top of which was a telephone.

Several crooks of the gang were sitting about, smoking.

"Now," went on Clutching Hand, "I want you, Spike, to follow them. See what they do--where they go. It's her birthday. Something's bound to occur that will give you a lead. All you've got to do is to use your head. Get me?"

Spike rose, nodded, picked up his hat and coat and squirmed out on his mission, like the snake that he was.

It was, as Clutching Hand had said, Elaine's birthday. She had received many callers and congratulations, innumerable costly and beautiful tokens of remembrance from her countless friends and admirers. In the conservatory of the Dodge house Elaine, Aunt Josephine, and Susie Martin were sitting discussing not only the happy occasion, but, more, the many strange events of the past few weeks.

"Well," cried a familiar voice behind them. "What would a certain blonde young lady accept as a birthday present from her family lawyer?"

All three turned in surprise.

"Oh, Mr. Bennett," cried Elaine. "How you startled us!"

He laughed and repeated his question, adopting the tone that he had once used in the days when he had been more in favor with the pretty heiress, before the advent of Kennedy.

Elaine hesitated. She was thinking not so much of his words as of Kennedy. To them all, however, it seemed that she was unable to make up her mind what, in the wealth of her luxury, she would like.

Susie Martin had been wondering whether, now that Bennett was here, she were not de trop, and she looked at her wrist watch mechanically. As she did so, an idea occurred to her.

"Why not one of these?" she cried impulsively, indicating the watch.

"Father has some beauties at the shop."

"Oh, good," exclaimed Elaine, "how sweet!"