The newspapers which were wrapped about the deadly thing were
burning, and Kennedy quickly tore them off, throwing them into the
fireplace.
A startled cry from Elaine caused us to turn.
She was standing directly before her shattered picture where it
hung awry on the wall. The heavy charges of buckshot had knocked
away large pieces of paper and plaster under it.
"Craig!" she gasped.
He was at her side in a second.
She laid one hand on his arm, as she faced him. With the other she
traced an imaginary line in the air from the level of the buckshot
to his head and then straight to the infernal thing that had lain
in the fireplace.
"And to think," she shuddered, "that it was through ME that he
tried to kill you!"
"Never mind," laughed Craig easily, as they gazed into each
other's eyes, drawn together by their mutual peril, "Clutching
Hand will have to be cleverer than this to get either of us--
Elaine!"
CHAPTER V
THE POISONED ROOM
Elaine and Craig were much together during the next few days.
Somehow or other, it seemed that the chase of the Clutching Hand
involved long conferences in the Dodge library and even, in fact,
extended to excursions into that notoriously crime-infested
neighborhood of Riverside Drive with its fashionable processions
of automobiles and go-carts--as far north, indeed, as that
desperate haunt known as Grant's Tomb.
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