But ordinarily the endormeur does not kill. He is
usually satisfied to stupefy, rob, and then leave his victim. There
is something more to this case than a mere suicide or murder,
McBride. Of course she may have committed suicide with the drugs of
the endormeurs; then again she may merely have been rendered
unconscious by those drugs and some other poison may have been
administered. Depend on it, there is something more back of this
affair than appears on the surface. Even as far as I have gone I
do not hesitate to say that we have run across the work of one or
perhaps a band of the most up-to-date and scientific criminals."
Kennedy had scarcely finished when McBride brought his right fist
down with a resounding smack into the palm of his left hand.
" Say," he cried in great excitement, "here's another thing which
may or may not have some connection with the case. The evening
after Madame arrived, I happened to be walking through the caf=82,
where I saw a face that looked familiar to me. It was that of a
dark-haired, olive-skinned man, a fascinating face, but a face to
be afraid of. I remembered him, I thought, from my police experience,
as a notorious crook who had not been seen in New York for years,
a man who in the old days used to gamble with death in South American
revolutions, a soldier of fortune.
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