Craig hastily laid down the receiver, seized me and rushed me to
the back of the laboratory where he drenched my hand with a
neutralizing liquid.
He bound up the wounds caused by the acid, which proved to be
slight, after all, and then returned to the telephone.
To his evident annoyance, he discovered that the acid had burned
through the wires and cut off all connection.
Though I did not know it, my hand was, in a sense at least, the
hand of fate.
At the other end of the line, Elaine was listening impatiently for
a response to her first eager words of inquiry. She was astounded
to find, at last, that Kennedy had apparently left the telephone
without any explanation or apology.
"Why--he rang off," she exclaimed angrily to herself, as she hung
up the receiver and left the room.
She rejoined her Aunt Josephine and Bennett who had been chatting
together in the drawing room, still wondering at the queer rebuff
she had, seemingly, experienced.
Bennett rose to go, and, as he parted from Elaine, found an
opportunity to whisper a few words reminding her of her promised
reply on the morrow.
Piqued, at Kennedy, she flashed Bennett a meaning glance which
gave him to understand that his suit was not hopeless.
In the center of a devious and winding way, quite unknown to all
except those who knew the innermost secrets of the Chinese quarter
and even unknown to the police, there was a dingy tenement house,
apparently inhabited by hardworking Chinamen, but in reality the
headquarters of the notorious devil worshippers, a sect of
Satanists, banned even in the Celestial Empire.
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