The Romance of Elaine | Page 8

Rusty, too, dug himself out.
Joshua had run into the house to get a spade when Rusty, like a shot,
bolted for the house, took the window at a leap and all covered with
earth landed before Joshua and Aunt Tabby.
"See!--he went down there--now he's here!" cried Aunt Tabby, pointing
at the fireplace, then looking at the window.
Rusty was running back and forth from Joshua to the window.
"Follow him!" cried Aunt Tabby.
Rusty led the way back again to the garden, to the cave-in.
"Elaine!" gasped Aunt Tabby.
By this time Joshua was digging furiously. Rusty, too, seemed to
understand. He threw back the earth with his paws, helping with every
ounce of strength in his little body.
At last the spade turned up a bit of cloth.
"Elaine!" Aunt Tabby cried out again.
She was in a sort of little pocket, protected by the fortunate formation
of the earth as it fell, yet almost suffocated, weak but conscious.
Aunt Tabby rushed up as Joshua laid down the spade and lifted out
Elaine.
They were about to carry her into the house, when she cried weakly,
but with all her remaining strength.

"No--no--Dig! Craig--Walter!" she managed to gasp.
Rusty, too, was still at it. Joshua fell to again. Man and dog worked
with a will.
"There they are!" cried Elaine, as all three pulled us out, unconscious
but still alive.
Though we did not know it, they carried us into the house, while Elaine
and Aunt Tabby bustled about to get something to revive us.
At last I opened my eyes and saw the motherly Aunt Tabby bending
over me. Craig was already revived, weak but ready now to do
anything Elaine ordered, as she held his hand and stroked his forehead
softly.
. . . . . . .
Meanwhile Long Sin had made his way to the automobile where his
master, Wu, waited impatiently.
"Did you get it?" asked Wu eagerly.
Long Sin showed him the box.
"Hurry, master!" he cried breathlessly, leaping into the car and
struggling to take off the helmet as they drove away. "They may be
here--at any moment."
The machine was off like a shot and even if we had been able to follow,
we could not now have caught it.
Back in Wu's sumptuous apartment, later, Wu and his slave, Long Sin,
after their hurried ride, dismissed all the servants and placed the little
box on the table. Wu rose and locked the door.
Then, together, they took a sharp instrument and tried to pry off the lid
of the box.

The lid flew off. They gazed in eagerly.
Inside was a smaller box, which Wu seized eagerly and opened.
There, on the plush cushion lay merely a round knobbed ring!
Was this the end of their great expectations? Were Bennett's millions
merely mythical?
The two stared at each other in chagrin.
Wu was the first to speak.
"Where there should have been seven million dollars," he muttered to
himself, "why is there only a mystic ring?"
CHAPTER II
THE CRYPTIC RING
Kennedy had been engaged for some time in the only work outside of
the Dodge case which he had consented to take for weeks.
Our old friend, Dr. Leslie, the Coroner, had appealed to him to solve a
very ticklish point in a Tong murder case which had set all Chinatown
agog. It was, indeed, a very bewildering case. A Chinaman named Li
Chang, leader of the Chang Wah Tong, had been poisoned, but so far
no one had been able to determine what poison it was or even to prove
that there had been a poison, except for the fact that the man was dead,
and Kennedy had taken the thing up in a great measure because of the
sudden turn in the Dodge case which had brought us into such close
contact with the Chinese.
I had been watching Kennedy with interest, for the Tong wars always
make picturesque newspaper stories, when a knock at the door
announced the arrival of Dr. Leslie, anxious for some result.
"Have you been able to find out anything yet?" he greeted Kennedy

eagerly as Craig looked up from his microscope.
Kennedy turned and nodded. "Your dead man was murdered by means
of aconite, of which, you know, the active principle is the deadly
alkaloid aconitine."
Craig pulled down from the shelf above him one of his well-thumbed
standard works on toxicology. He turned the pages and read:
"Pure aconite is probably the most actively poisonous substance with
which we are acquainted. It does not produce any decidedly
characteristic post-mortem appearances, and, in fact, there is no reliable
chemical test to prove its presence. The chances of its detection in the
body after death are very slight."
Dr. Leslie looked up. "Then