"I'm sure it was aimed at him," Marjorie exclaimed. "I don't think it was chance. Don't you see? They've tried everything else. Now if they could get my father, the head of the company, that would be a blow that would cripple the trust."

Marlowe patted his daughter's hand rea.s.suringly and smiled again, as though not to magnify the incident.

"Marjorie was so alarmed," he confessed, "that nothing would satisfy her but that I should come ash.o.r.e and stay here at the Belleclaire, where we always put up when we are in town."

The telephone rang and Marjorie answered it. "I hope you'll pardon me,"

she excused, hanging up the receiver. "They want me very much down-stairs." Then appealing, she added: "I'll have to leave you with father. But, please, you must catch that crank who is threatening him."

"I shall do my level best," promised Kennedy. "You may depend on that."

"You see," explained the captain as she left us, "I've invited quite a large party to attend the launching, for one reason or another.

Marjorie must play hostess. They're mostly here at the hotel. Perhaps you saw some of them as you came in."

Craig was still scanning the bullet. "It looks almost as if some one had dum-dummed it," he remarked, finally. "It's curiously done, too.

Just look at those grooves."

Both the captain and I looked. It had a hard jacket of cupro-nickel, like the army bullet, covering a core of softer metal. Some one had notched or scored the jacket as if with a sharp knife, though not completely through it. Had it been done for the purpose of inflicting a more frightful wound if it struck the captain?

"There've been other shots, too," went on Marlowe. "One of my watchmen was wounded the night before. It didn't took like a serious wound, in the leg. Yet the poor fellow seems to be in a bad way, they tell me."

"How is that?" asked Craig, glancing up quickly from studying the bullet.

"The wound seems to be all puffed up, and very painful. It won't heal, and he seems to be weak and feverish. Why, I'm afraid the man will die."

"I'd like to see that case," remarked Kennedy, thoughtfully.

"Very well. I'll have you driven to the hospital where we have had to take him."

"I'd like to see the yards, too, and the Usona," he added.

"All right. After you go to the hospital I'll meet you at the yards at noon. Now if you'll come down-stairs with me, I'll get my car and have you taken to the hospital first."

We followed Marlowe into the elevator and rode down. In the large parlor we saw that Marjorie Marlowe had joined a group of the guests, and the captain turned aside to introduce us.

Among them I noticed a striking-looking woman, somewhat older than Marjorie. She turned as we approached and greeted the captain cordially.

"I'm so glad there was nothing serious this morning," she remarked, extending her hand to him.

"Oh, nothing at all, nothing at all," he returned, holding the hand, I thought, just a bit longer than was necessary. Then he turned to us, "Miss Alma Hillman, let me present Professor Kennedy and Mr. Jameson."

I was not so preoccupied in taking in the group that I did not notice that the captain was more than ordinarily attentive to her. Nor can I say that I blamed him, for, although he might almost have been her father in age, there was a fascination about her that youth does not often possess.

Talking with her had been a young man, slender, good-looking, with almost a military bearing.

"Mr. Ogilvie Fitzhugh," introduced Marjorie, seeing that her father was neglecting his duties.

Fitzhugh bowed and shook hands, murmured something stereotyped, and turned again to speak to Marjorie.

I watched the young people closely. If Captain Marlowe was interested in Alma, it was more than evident that Fitzhugh was absolutely captivated by Marjorie, and I fancied that Marjorie was not averse to him, for he had a personality and a manner which were very pleasing.

As the conversation ran gaily on to the launching and the gathering party of notables who were expected that night and the next day, I noticed that a dark-eyed, dark-haired, olive-complexioned young man approached and joined us.

"Doctor Gavira," said Marlowe, turning to us, his tone indicating that he was well acquainted about the hotel. "He is our house physician."

Gavira also was welcomed in the party, chatting with animation. It was apparent that the physician also was very popular with the ladies, and it needed only half an eye to discern that Fitzhugh was jealous when he talked to Marjorie, while Marlowe but ill concealed his restlessness when Gavira spoke to Alma. As for Alma, she seemed to treat all men impartially, except that just now it pleased her to bestow the favor of her attention on the captain.

Just then a young lady, all in white, pa.s.sed. Plainly she did not belong to the group, though she was much interested in it. As his eye roved over the parlor, Gavira caught her glance and bowed. She returned it, but her look did not linger. For a moment she glanced sharply at Fitzhugh, still talking to Marjorie, then at Marlowe and Alma Hillman.

She was a very pretty girl with eyes that it was impossible to control.

Perhaps there was somewhat of the flirt in her. It was not that that interested me. For there was something almost akin to jealousy in the look she gave the other woman. Marlowe was too engrossed to see her and she pa.s.sed on slowly. What did it mean, if anything?

The conversation, as usual at such times, consisted mostly of witticisms, and just at present we had a rather serious bit of business in hand. Kennedy did not betray any of the impatience that I felt, yet I knew he was glad when Marlowe excused himself and we left the party and pa.s.sed down the corridor while the captain called his car.

"I don't know how you are going to get at this thing," he remarked, pausing after he had sent a boy for his driver. "But I'll have to rely on you. I've told you all I know. I'll see you at noon, at the yards.

My man will take you there."

As he turned and left us I saw that he was going in the direction of the barber-shop. Next to it and in connection with it, though in a separate room, was a manicure. As we pa.s.sed we looked in. There, at the manicure's table, sat the girl who had gone by us in the parlor and had looked so sharply at Marlowe and Alma.

The boy had told us that the car was waiting at a side entrance, but Kennedy seemed now in no haste to go, the more so when Marlowe, instead of going into the barber-shop, apparently changed his mind and entered the manicure's. Craig stopped and watched. Prom where we were we could see Marlowe, though his back was turned, and neither he nor the manicure could see us.

For a moment the captain paused and spoke, then sat down. Quite evidently he had a keen eye for a pretty face and trim figure. Nor was there any mistaking the pains which the manicure took to please her rich and elderly customer. After watching them a moment Kennedy lounged over to the desk in the lobby.

"Who is the little manicure girl?" he asked.

The clerk smiled. "Seems as if she was a good drawing-card for the house, doesn't it?" he returned. "All the men notice her. Why, her name is Rae Melzer." He turned to speak to another guest before Kennedy could follow with another inquiry.

As we stood before the desk, a postman, with the parcel post, arrived.

"Here's a package addressed to Dr. Fernando Gavira," he said, brusquely. "It was broken in the mail. See?"

Kennedy, waiting for the clerk to be free again, glanced casually at the package at first, then with a sudden, though concealed, interest. I followed his eye. In the crushed box could be seen some thin broken pieces of gla.s.s and a wadding of cotton-wool.

As the clerk signed for another package Craig saw a chance, reached over and abstracted two or three of the broken pieces of gla.s.s, then turned with his back to the postman and clerk and examined them.

One I saw at once had a rim around it. It was quite apparently the top of a test-tube. The other, to which some cotton-wool still adhered, was part of the rounded bowl. Quickly Craig dropped the pieces into one of the hotel envelopes that stood in a rack on the desk, then, changing his mind about asking more now about the little manicure, strode out of the side entrance where Marlowe's car was waiting for us.

Hurriedly we drove across town to the City Hospital, where we had no difficulty in being admitted and finding, in a ward, on a white cot, the wounded guard. Though his wound was one that should not have bothered him much, it had, as Marlowe said, puffed up angrily and in a most peculiar manner. He was in great pain with it and was plainly in a bad way.

Though he questioned the man, Craig did not get anything out of him except that the shot had come from a cruiser which had been hanging about and was much faster than the patrol boat. The nurse and a young intern seemed inclined to be reticent, as though we might imply that the mail's condition reflected on the care he had received, which they were at pains to convince us had been perfect.

Puzzled himself, Craig did not say much, but as he pondered the case, shook his head gravely to himself and finally walked out of the hospital abstractedly.

"We have almost an hour before we are to meet Marlowe at the yard," he considered, as we came to the car. "I think I'll go up to the laboratory first."

In the quiet of his own workshop, Kennedy carefully examined again the peculiar grooves on the bullet. He was about to sc.r.a.pe it, but paused.

Instead, he filled a tube with a soapy solution, placed the bullet in it, and let it stand. Next he did the same with the pieces of gla.s.s from the envelope.

Then he opened a drawer and from a number of capillary pipettes selected a plain capillary tube of gla.s.s. He held it in the flame of a burner until it was red hot. Then carefully he drew out one end of the tube until it was hair fine. Again he heated the other end, but this time he let the end alone, except that he allowed it to bend by gravity, then cool. It now had a siphon curve. Another tube he treated in the same way.

By this time he was ready to proceed with what he had in mind. He took a gla.s.s slide and on it placed a drop from each of the tubes containing the bullet and the gla.s.s. That done, he placed the bent, larger end of the capillary tubes in turn on each of the drops on the slide. The liquid ascended the tubes by capillary attraction and siphoned over the curve, running as he turned the tubes up to the finely pointed ends.