Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

14 PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY look of blank amazement which his words had brought to her face, the head of the secret-service bureau explained his plan to Grace. "In Brussels," said he, speaking quickly, "a man named Doctor Hartmann has a private sanitarium, which my investigations have shown me is situated on the Boulevard des Sennes, in that city, and is a sanctuary for fashionable folk of both sexes who are suffering, or believe themselves to be, from nervous disorders of various sorts. I want you to go there and gain admittance as a young lady afflicted with neurasthenia. You are to watch the movements of Doctor Hartmann every moment. I expect — and so does Duvall, your husband, I may tell you — that the doctor is going to receive a package through the mail. That package will contain the snuffbox in question. Get it^and you will be reunited with your husband. That I promise you on my word of honor." Grace rose, her lips set in a firm line. "I'll do it," she answered the police chief. "The next train to Brussels will find me on it. I've never played the part of a detective before, but I would do more than that to find Richard safe and sound again !" She was as good as her word, and rode out of Paris two hours later — on board the very train, though neither of them suspected it, which, by a coincidence, was the one with which Duvall had connected on his way from London to Brussels. It was nine o'clock at night when Grace drove up in a taxi to the door of Doctor Hartmann's sanitarium in the last-named city, and, dismissing the chauffeur, rang the doorbell. She was admitted by a powerfully built attendant in a liveried coat, who bade her enter the doctor's waiting room while he went to summon the latter to hear her case. When Doctor Hartmann — a tall, blackbearded man, with a pair of uncannily piercing eyes — entered the room, Grace told him the story Monsieur Lefevre had instructed her to give about the attack of neurasthenia from which she was suffering and that had led her to wish to enter the sanitarium for treatment. After a cursory examination, which satisfied him as to the nervous condition she was in — Grace didn't have to simulate that, for she was as excited as could be over the undertaking on which she was embarked — Doctor Hartmann assured her that he would accept her as a patient, and rang for a nurse to take her to a room on one of the upper floors of the sanitarium. Twice during the night, when Grace attempted to steal from the room to go downstairs and spy on the movements of Doctor Hartmann, as the head of the Paris police force had instructed her to do, she found her efforts in that direction blocked by the* untimely appearance on the threshold of the room of the female nurse, who had been set to watch her by the doctor's orders, as she herself explained. "Doctor Hartmann doesn't wish you to leave this room," the nurse announced firmly to Grace. "You are under his orders now, and must obey them to the letter — or you will have cause to regret it !" "Did the doctor suspect the purpose for which she had entered the sanitarium?" Grace asked herself. No matter. She meant to persist in her efforts to watch him, and to get the snuffbox out of his possession when it came into it, as Monsieur Lefevre had ordered her to do. For in that lay her only hope of quickly finding her husband again. Early the next morning Grace opened her door and peeped out into the hall, to find that the nurse was nowhere in sight. She took a step toward the stairs, and then stopped short. She had just heard Richard Duvall's voice! Grace ran to the stairs and looked down over the baluster. In the hall below she saw her husband step across the threshold of the open front door to confront the same stalwart attendant who had let her into the sanitarium on the night before. "Richard !" Grace called. Duvall did not hear her. For, at the moment that she cried his name, she saw him spring at the attendant. There was a short struggle. Duvall, throwing the attendant to the floor, whipped a revolver from his hip pocket, and. with the butt of the weapon, knocked the man insensible. Then he began to strip off his liveried coat. At that instant the doorbell rang. Swiftly buttoning the coat about him. and tossing aside his hat, Duvall opened the door — in the attendant's place. Grace, peering down, spellbound, over the baluster, saw that a postman stood on the doorstep. She saw him hand Duval a small, oblong package. He took it and closed the door. Then, whisking the package out of sight under his coat, he turned — as the portieres of the waiting room opened and Doctor Hartmann' stepped forth. Grace was just about to cry out to Duvall again. And then she felt her shoulder seized in a grip of steel: Turning, she beheld the nurse who had come up in back of her. The woman pointed sternly to the door of Grace's room. "Go back in there I" she ordered through her locked teeth. "I believe you came here as a spy — go back, I say !" And she pushed Grace roughly into the room,, pointing to a chair. "I'll lock you in here, miss, and you won't get out until Doctor Hartmann hears from me that I' caught you watching what was going on downstairs just now. and decides what's to be done with you !" The nurse went out, locking the door in pursuance of her threat as she did so, and leaving Grace a prisoner. Downstairs, in the hall, Doctor Hartmann was confronting Duvall over the prone body of the attendant, in whose liveried coat the young man stood. As quick as a flash, on catching sight of the doctor, Duvall had opened his eyes wide and summoned a glare of madness to them. He laughed vacantly ai the head of the sanitarium. "Doctor, they're after me !" he informed the man who stood watching him fixedly with his piercing gray eyes. "That's why I took the liberty of knocking your servant down and putting on his coat — to disguise myself so that they couldn't find me ! I had to do it " Doctor Hartmann nodded as he stood surveying Duvall's wild eyes and listened to his no less wild words. "Mad!" he murmured to himself. "Quite hopelessly insane!" That was exactly what Duvall had wanted to make him think, and he smiled with inward satisfaction over the way his quick-witted ruse had taken the doctor in. "I'll hide you where they can't find you," Doctor Hartmann addressed him soothingly, opening the door of the next room and inviting Duvall with a wave of his hand to enter it. "Come in here." Duvall did so, and the next