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ARTHUR B. REEVE

BLOOD WILL TELL

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Published in Detective Fiction Weekly, 22 September 1928

The original version of this story was published under the title
"Thicker than Water" in Everybody's in September 1925

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2021
Version Date: 2022-05-11
Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

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Detective Fiction Weekly, 22 September 1928, with "Blood Will Tell"


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Craig Kennedy Gives a Baby Girl a Nosebleed to Get
the Evidence to Solve a Millionaire Divorce Case.




"IT'S not the mystery of who is Buster Seton's father I want solved—it's the mystery of what's got into Earle Seton himself—who's pulling the wires—and why?"

Dolly Seton's wistfully beautiful eyes were appealing while her serious, musical voice urged Craig Kennedy to recede from his usual stand to keep clear of divorce cases.

"This is not just a divorce case. Buster is my boy and Earle Seton is his father. But how am I going to prove it in this wisecracking age? Mr. Kennedy, I have no one else to go to in whom I can trust!"

She held out a small, white hand helplessly. "Think of it! To deny he is the father of Buster! Why, Earle has hired lawyers, the cleverest, the crookedest—I am surrounded by enemies. They are like vultures over my Buster, ready to tear and pick at him —anything to hurt me! Sometimes I think they can all be bought—for a price!"

I could see Kennedy regarded Dolly Seton appraisingly. Often when a client was in a high emotional state he let her feelings run free just to see what would happen.

"I'm afraid to trust even my own servants. Oh, the hurt of it all, too! But the slight to me is nothing. What can they have done to Earle or said to him to poison his mind against me so? Sometimes I feel it is more than I can stand—but I'll fight back, for Buster, until they drive me insane or kill me! . . . Even then I'll come back and fight them—my memory will fight them!"

"Please,- Mrs. Seton, don't let your feelings run away with you yet. Maybe it's the other way—maybe they haven't put him up to anything—maybe he has put them up to it. Suspend judgment. Don't get despondent. There is justice, even if it does not seem so at times. You need a clear head. He can't take away the rights of your boy, his heir, as easy as that."

"I don't care for money! I don't care for dower rights. It isn't that that I'm thinking about. It's Buster's name and his mother's honor!" Dolly Seton slumped forward in the big chair in Craig's laboratory and the tears coursed down her pale cheeks.

Dolly Seton's visit came at the height of the bitter and scandalous divorce case of Earle Seton, the real estate broker. His young wife had sued for a divorce, naming Nina Nix, of uncertain origin but well known in the Follies half a dozen seasons before and in Broadway night life ever since.

Nina had a little girl, I knew, nearly five years old, known since the beginning of the case as Betty "Seton." There had been a "love nest," all the things that go to make up a modern scandal. Earle Seton had retaliated with a counter-suit, naming Teddy Tilford, clubman and sportsman. The case had dragged in little Roy Seton—Buster—just a bit over five. Earle had charged that Tilford was the father of Buster.

Earle Seton had a veritable battery of legal and detective talent It must have cost him a fortune alone to retain for his leading attorney Lambert Sparks, of Sparks, Ritchie & Ames, who had been the attorneys for years for the Seton estate. Then, too, he had employed the detective, Harry Lewis, one of those who advertise: "Divorce Evidence Furnished." Lewis had been busy making a case about Dolly, Til-ford and Buster.

It was this sort of thing that had caused Kennedy to take the stand he had about divorce cases. He was not going to become a scientific wheel in a scandal mill, and I doubted whether Dolly Seton could make him change his resolve.

Dolly Seton had suddenly risen, a new resolve in her face, a new spirit of courage to win Kennedy's aid. There was no doubt about her beauty. She was the younger of the Vandam girls who had been popular in the Junior League after their debut. She was small, blond, slender, and straight. She looked like a white lily, her soft, golden hair gleaming in the sunshine that straggled in through the laboratory window. But the strain and heartache had stolen her color. She was pale, and under her fair, white skin the blue veins were delicately traced.

"Mrs. Seton," urged Kennedy, "tell me your story. Tell me about Teddy Tilford. There is nothing better on which to build a case than truth."

"To tell my story is to tell you my humiliation." She looked abstractedly out of the window, unseeing.

"It is the old story—of the neglected wife, ill and left alone. Hanging desperately to the little shreds of love left me, I have stayed on with Earle.

"I have tried to keep my eyes closed to what I saw and my ears to what everybody was talking about. But I'm not that kind. I'm afraid a good many of us are that way—just old-fashioned, after all, when we get into situations —sensitive, proud. I felt at first I couldn't leave him because of the memory of the love he offered me when we were sweethearts. Always I thought I might analyze him, find out what was wrong, win him back—until this last turn of things.

"Earle is older than I, considerably older. He liked the white lights, Broadway—and the girls, I fancy. I liked the lights, too, with Earle. But I find now how unfortunate I am—I am of the mother type. I love my home best. It seems to me sometimes that that's one of the things that just isn't done any more.

"Buster was born in June, five years ago. The year before, in the summer, we went up to Earle's place in the Adirondacks. Toward the fall I became desperately ill, too ill for social engagements of any kind—and I expected my baby. Earl couldn't stand the camp for an extended period, and just then I loved the quiet of it. He seemed to think it was best for me, too. So he left me to go to the city, look after his real estate business, and all that. I saw him only once during the winter—and he was bored to death. I was often ill in bed and had to be very quiet.

"Now that I look back on it, when he left me he seemed nervous and hasty. I begged him to come up the next week but he wouldn't promise. I wanted to go back with him. But he insisted I was better off there. I understand it now. He told Marie, my maid, to watch me carefully. She watched me carefully, all right."

"And you stayed up there in the mountains?"

"Yes, until just before the event. It was a long winter and I was frightfully nervous. But I really was better off there than where I would have had to accept invitations and go out with my old set."

"A physician had advised me to walk every day. I did. One day I attempted too much, went too far on the trail and was exhausted. I sat down by a tree and that was the last I remembered until I felt a dog sniffing my face.

"Then I saw a kindly pair of brown eyes looking down at me. It was my neighbor whom I had never met, Teddy Tilford, you know. He had just bought the lodge next to us. He was up there hunting. Well, I was too ill to walk home. I fainted trying to do it. He carried me. He wouldn't leave until he heard from Marie that I was all right again.

"Then the next day he called. You must remember Teddy Tilford. He enlisted with the Anzacs before we got into the war, was wounded, and when he recovered we had gone in, so he transferred over to the A.E.F. Earle was doing some Red Cross work with supplies. I was a nurse. But Teddy was wounded again, and never got back into action before the Armistice. I was in a hospital just out of Paris. Things might have been different if he had been sent to my hospital."

She paused, looked out of the window again and back. "I asked him about the silver button he wore. My heart stirred with old stories, thrilled at the old battles. He showed me his papers and when he learned I had been over there his generosity was like his own big, boyish heart—overflowing. He sent me books, flowers, many things a kind neighbor might do for a lone, sick woman away from all her friends."

Dolly thought a moment, then added: "I had no thought of Teddy Tilford as other than a good friend and neighbor. No one else could honestly have thought so, either.

"But the servants have been bought by money and promises to swear to lies. They have even sworn they saw me with Teddy Tilford when we first went up there in the summer, and all that sort of thing, but I never met him until November, the time I told you about,

"When Buster came in the spring, back in the city in the hospital, I already knew I was out of Earle's life. He had neglected me so terribly—and I had begun to hear stories and put two and two together. But I tried to be cheerful and was so proud of our baby. Earle even seemed interested in Buster, at first. But that was only acting.

"It wasn't long before he had to go on a trip to some mines in Mexico. I felt my mother cares too seriously either to leave or to attempt to take Buster. The trip would have been different if I had gone—or rather perhaps there wouldn't have been any trip. It's all part of my evidence."

"Did you see Mr. Tilford in the city?"

"Yes—twice before this disagreement became an open break. Once he called expecting to meet Earle, but Earle didn't show up that night, and the other time I ran across him by chance on Fifth Avenue near one of the sporting-goods shops. He sent me tickets to a big dinner the Adventurers were giving to some transatlantic flyers. I went with a friend, but didn't see him there. That was all until I couldn't stand people's gossip about Earle and this Nix woman."

"Then what?"

"Oh, even then months went by. I saw only too well that Earle's life and mine were miles apart. I loved him yet, but he had forgotten me. I tried to sink my feelings in caring for Buster. There's lots of criticism of girls to-day. But I don't think girls would be so bad if the men weren't worse."

Kennedy smiled indulgently and nodded. "That has always been my theory. If a man would give a woman even half a chance—half a chance— she'd make marriage work in the vast majority of cases. Women will be just as good as the men want them.... Well, suppose you tell me about Nina Nix, not to change the subject too abruptly."

"Yes—Nina Nix," she repeated slowly, resuming where she had left off. "Then my pride came uppermost. I heard he had that love nest, as they call it in the papers, with this Nina Nix. I found out quietly a lot of facts. We had a scene when I faced him with them. But I was hoping at first that if he saw he was going to lose me it might bring him to his senses, make him exert himself to keep me. It failed.

"Then I threatened proceedings. I had to go through with it. The situation was intolerable. The newspapers have told you how he retaliated. He attempted to swear away my good name; one thing led him to another; even now he has sunk to the depth of refusing to acknowledge his own son! And he has done it all with such bitterness."

"What about Teddy Tilford?" I could not help interrupting Kennedy as I recalled the gossip of the Star office. "Why didn't he help your case?"

She flushed, shook her head, but her eyes did not lower from mine. "He is a good friend, a very good friend. Unfortunately his defense hurt me. It was too ardent. Once one of the newspaper men located him for an interview - and badgered him into saying something like 'If Earle Seton would only drop dead, I would be happy if she would have me—that's how I believe in her!'

"Oh, gossip did the rest. Even his defense, his faith in me, hurt me with gossips. Now there is the truth you asked for," she cried, almost hysterically, to Craig. "If you will not help me —who can?"

"I think I told you at first I don't like to take divorce cases," Craig said slowly.

She looked startled.

"But," he went on, "I'll take this one—for the sake of that kid, Buster. We'll see what we can do to help Buster prove his right to the name he bears."

It was late in the afternoon when Dolly Seton left. I suggested that the quickest way to get at the case was to go down to the Star and find the facts from the files and from Connolly, who had been handling the assignment.


ON the way down town Craig insisted on stopping off at the Adventurers and inquiring for Tilford.

"I can give you only a few minutes," declared Tilford, whom we unfortunately found in an alcove of the club going over some plans and blue prints. "And I wouldn't do that if I didn't know about you, Kennedy.. I'm off newspaper men for life, I guess. I'm not to be quoted in the papers. You understand that?

"But if you're working on the case for Dolly Vandam, I'll help you, as far as I can without prejudicing the case. It seems that anything I say is used against her. I hope no ill chance throws Earle Seton in my way. It will be unfortunate for him. It's all my own attorneys can do to keep my hands off him!"

Whatever may have happened twice to him in the war, Tilford was a wiry, athletic type. I felt that unless Seton's footwork was good it would be rather hard for him to escape a sound beating up.

"Why, Kennedy, this is the most outrageous case I have ever heard of," he began. "I'll make that badger pay through his nose before my attorneys get through with him. I don't mind getting excited about it with you because I know you are working for Dolly Vandam, but nowadays if you believe in anything or anybody people seem to think there is something wrong with you."

"Or that you have an ax to grind," I put in.

He looked at me as if estimating whether there was anything implied in my remark. "I suppose you mean you wonder if there is anything between us. All the interviewers imply that. Well, the fact is that I felt mighty sorry for that little girl, all alone and in her condition, 'way up there in the North woods. Any man with a heart would have felt the same. I did what I could for her.

"But as for there being anything else to it—there couldn't be, and Seton knows it as well as I do. He's a renegade. He knows that even if she gets her divorce neither Dolly nor I could marry—unless some one should shoot him. And I can say neither of us is going to commit one mortal sin to get out of committing another. Do I make myself clear? He's just a skunk!"

"Quite clear. She's a fine girl. You can't say the same about the other one, though," I agreed.

"You certainly cannot—and yet—" He paused.

"Why—and yet?" queried Kennedy.

"I've been digging into that—for my own self-protection. Do you know that Nina Nix was a friend of Lambert Sparks, of Seton's attorneys, Sparks, Ritchie and Ames; that Sparks got acquainted with her when he was settling up that breach of promise suit years ago that she had against young Melvin Thomas the year he graduated from Harvard; and that it was by Sparks she was originally introduced to Seton?

"I think you could begin to put some things together on that. She's a great little go-getter for business for attorneys when she gets against a sucker with money. I'm not making any charges, but I think you should know these facts."

Tilford was gathering up and rolling the plans and specifications on the table before him. Among other things I noticed a photograph of a houseboat, which was almost like a yacht in its lines. I could not help commenting on it.

"Ah, that? That's a photograph of a houseboat I just bought from an agent who came to me with it. Very cheap. Wanderer is its name. You know I sold that lodge up in the mountains. There were too many unpleasant associations with it."

Kennedy was looking at it with interest. "So you are going to wander with a roof over your head? Good idea. Where is she now?"

"Off the foot of One Hundredth Street, in the river."

Kennedy laid down the photograph and nodded. He seemed to have gained his first impression of Tilford as he had desired, so we parted from him at the door of the club as he turned west and we continued our journey down to the Star office.


FROM the files and envelopes in the biographical department we found a great deal about Nina Nix ever since she had burst on the theatrical firmament in the Follies. We traced her through numerous celebrated scandals. There were all kinds of stories.

Connolly came in and was more than ready to talk about the case. But Kennedy seemed interested in Nina just now.

"I suppose you know she was a friend of that detective, Harry Lewis?" he asked.

"I understood she was a friend of Lambert Sparks."

Connolly nodded. "Yes; but Lewis introduced her to Sparks. I think he used to use her as a sort of stool pigeon in divorce cases. Then she reversed it so that she was using him. She used him in the Melvin Thomas case and the Thomas family settled with her for a hundred thousand.

"Another thing about this Seton case. You've heard of all kinds of 'love nests' in cases, apartments, bungalows, and all that sort of thing. Well, here it was a houseboat that Earle Seton named after her, the Nina. I got a picture of it, taken last summer."

He reached into his desk and drew forth a photograph which he was saving to be used the next time some new angle of the story broke.

Kennedy glanced at it, then quickly at me.

"Why," he exclaimed, "that's the same boat we saw, Walter—the Wanderer now!" He indicated the windows and decks, all the same as the other we had seen not an hour ago.

"Some one put one over on Tilford with the Nina repainted and renamed the Wanderer," I agreed.

"No doubt the work of Sparks and, perhaps, Lewis, to cover a client, just mix things up, weaken the evidence," considered Craig. "I think we ought to see Dolly Seton at once. She ought to know that."


IT was evening by this time. Dolly Seton was not at her apartment we were told by her new maid. Kennedy showed his anxiety.

"Is it so important?" hastened the maid. Dolly must have spoken to her about us, for she seemed to know us and to be genuinely concerned.

"I think I can tell you where Mrs. Seton went. Marie, her other maid, was here just before dinner, very excited. I heard her tell Mrs. Seton how Mr. Seton had promised her so much money to tell lies about Mrs. Seton, that now he wouldn't give her anything like what he promised, now that she had sworn to the affidavits. She cried and went on as if she was crazy. She wanted revenge. Then she said she knew all about Mr. Seton and that Nina Nix."

"What did she tell Mrs. Seton?" asked Kennedy eagerly.

"Why, she asked her if she knew about the house boat, sir. Mrs. Seton did. 'Madame,' she said, 'that house boat has been all fitted up, oh, so beautifully, to take Nina Nix to Florida. It is leaving to-morrow by the inside route. She is on it now. Mr. Seton is spending the last night here on the boat with her before it starts. Then he is going to meet her later at Miami. She wanted me to go. I refused. They don't, play fair with me. They don't keep their promises about money.'"

Don't you understand, madame? If you go with me, it's easy to get the goods on them, now, to-night!'"

"And did she go?" There was anxiety in Craig's voice.

"Yes. She went. She tried to get you on the telephone, sir, but you were out."

Kennedy thanked the maid, turned quickly to the elevator, and at the street door signaled a cab.

"Now, why this story?" I asked as we hopped in.

"It's a plant."

"For us? That's what I was afraid of."

"No. For Dolly Seton. That Marie is a bad actor. I think I see in this the fine hand of that crook detective, Harry Lewis. It's so like his formula. We'd better hurry!"


WE dashed across the city. It was dark, but we finally managed to find the landing float down at the foot of One Hundredth Street.

As we came down the steps from the dock I was wondering what we were going to do, how we were going to operate. It seemed as if the stage was all set for us. There was a little boat with a kicker and an old boatman waiting.

"The two ladies just left, sir," the boatman said in the dark. "But I thought you said there'd be three men, sir. Where's the others?"

I realized that we had just blundered on something without knowing what it was. Kennedy thought quickly. He was ready with an instant answer. "Only two of us. The other man couldn't come. Take us out."

The old boatman spun his engine as we climbed in. We tinned our coat collars up to hide our faces as much as possible. A few moments later we were pulling alongside the Wanderer, once the Nina.

To my astonishment Tilford himself was leaning over the side. "Who is it?" he demanded as we climbed aboard.

I think he was about to fling us off when he caught a good glimpse of our faces. He was very quiet when he saw who it was.

"Mr. Kennedy!"

I turned. There was Dolly Seton. Not for an instant did Kennedy lose his self-command. Instead of evincing any surprise he seemed to accept the whole thing as quite what he anticipated. He looked about as if there was still something missing from the picture.

"I came here, Mr. Kennedy, on my own," Dolly Seton hastened to explain, speaking very slowly. "It was on a tip from Marie, here, about Nina Nix. It was just twilight when I got to the landing. I saw the boat, came out aboard it, suspected nothing in what Marie had told me. I thought it was all straight. But imagine my surprise when I got out here and found not Earle, but Teddy Tilford."

I tried in the dusk to study their faces. There was indignation on the part of Dolly. Marie was defiant. Tilford was nervous and incensed.

"It's a devilish frame-up by that hound, Seton!" he exclaimed as he strode across the salon of the Wanderer.

"Mrs. Seton," said Craig, "I'm sorry I didn't get your call. I would have advised you to wait, to let me get your evidence."

In the midst of her indignation I fancied Dolly Seton was fearful of the consequences of her impulsive detective work. Red spots glowed in her cheeks as she rebuked her former maid, who stood by a window in the salon drumming her fingers defiantly.

"You are one of those women with the heart of a snake! You'd betray an angel into hell! You may cause me some trouble—but I'm not through with you, Marie. You don't leave this boat until I let you leave!"

Marie was startled. She looked about as if she had expected help. Dolly Seton was a fighting woman now.

"I was a fool," continued Dolly. "I came here with Marie. When I saw the boat I suspected nothing like this. I got aboard. I thought I'd faint when I saw Mr. Tilford. I didn't know it was his boat now. He was as surprised as I was. We stared at each other until I heard Marie laugh. Then I heard your boat. Mr. Tilford was vexed. But I'm glad you're here."

I could hear the put-put of another boat now alongside.

"Ah!" exclaimed a voice, as Earle Seton came up over the side, followed by Lambert Sparks and Lewis. "What's said to be a love-nest for the gander is, in fact, a love-nest for the goose!"

At the first sound of some one coming up over the side, Kennedy had pulled me through a door out of vision.

"You lying cad!" Teddy Tilford moved quickly, and before Seton knew what he intended, Seton was sprawling across a chair from a quick straight-arm to the nose. "Men fight to protect women—but you—bah! You're a low breed!"

"Not so fast, Tilford." Lewis had stepped forward.

An instant and the divorce detective was reeling back against the window, his hand cut by broken glass as he sought to catch himself. Seton, bleeding profusely from the nose, stumbled to his feet, and before any one could stop him, had broken a tall glass vase over Tilford's head. Both Tilford and Seton were bleeding when Kennedy and I stepped from behind the door.

Tilford turned, all his fighting blood up. "Throw them overboard!" he muttered.

"Watch Sparks!" shouted Craig to me. "I'll take care of this scum of my profession!" He caught Lewis as he was about to strike again at Tilford from behind.

Marie had gone for Dolly in her hysteria, scratching and clawing.


IT had looked easy to the raiders at first, three men against one. Now, however, it was three against three. That put a different complexion on it, and a rather bloody complexion, too. I don't think there was a person who had not one or more cuts or injuries before Kennedy succeeded in restoring quiet.

I wondered at the time at his solicitude about all the cuts and bruises of Seton and Lewis, Tilford, Sparks and Dolly Seton. I imagined he must have a purpose, especially as he seemed to be retaining carefully each bloody handkerchief or piece of cloth as finally he bound them all up with strips of linen from the house boat service.

Sparks made me maddest. He was the typical lawyer of the smart divorce courts. Even under these circumstances he could not restrain some contemptuous remarks.

"No wonder one in every seven marriages in these days ends in a divorce!"

I could not resist. "Only this is a case where the woman could not have done what is alleged. Look at this dirty work to-night!"

Sparks smiled ironically, shook his head. "You can reason it all out, Jameson, that a certain person could not have done a certain act—and then, by golly, you may find that that person did it. No, you need something better than old-fashioned deduction, if you're going to get anywhere nowadays! Judges and juries know pretty well moral conditions. Circumstances speak loudly."

I despised the man. I believed in Dolly and Tilford. And yet, after all, in these days might not Sparks easily persuade a jury? It seems that even a hint of an idea of self-control or generous feeling inspires in some not merely ridicule and contempt, but actually a fury.

"I intend to see Nina Nix and that little girl of hers, Betty," decided Craig early the next morning after we had slept off our melodramatic debauch.


WE found Nina Nix established in an expensive apartment on Riverside Drive. It was quite in character. Everything breathed riches. However, we had no difficulty in gaining admittance, and fortunately found the lady at home.

Nina Nix was indeed beautiful, but there was no kindly soul shining from those snappy dark eyes. They were speculative, selfish, bold. She regarded us with interest, and I could tell she knew at once we were on the other side. But she was convinced she was a match for any man. She had always been.

Craig offered her his hand even before she extended her own. She smiled, took it, but her smile changed to a look of pain.

"Oh, my arm!"

"Miss Nix, I'm sorry. Forgive me. That wretched laundry of mine must have left a pin sticking in the cuff, loose. Just a moment. It must have scratched you. Oh, I'm so sorry." Kennedy pulled out his immaculate handkerchief and held it around her shapely arm until the slight bleeding-was stopped. I fancied I saw a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.

"I'd change laundries if I were you —or be more careful myself." Nina was curt. Craig stuck the handkerchief back in his pocket. "Now, what brought you here? What do you want to ask?"

"Miss Nix," he began, "you've heard of the fight last night and the failure of the frame-up?"

A dangerous gleam in her eye showed that she had. "Well, what of that?"

She scornfully tossed her head and stretched her slender lissom figure more attractively on the big davenport. Clad in an orange wool dress, the beauty of her raven shaded hair and dark eyes was intensified. I fancied she was vaguely trying it out on Craig as she might on prosecutor, judge and jury.

"I thought you might like to take a trip before the expose that is coming. There will be one. It must come. Dolly Seton has a fine fighting chance now. But I always think of all the women in a case—and I came to you to try to spare you some of the publicity that is bound to come of it."

"You don't have to think of me. My friends will do that. I'll stay, thank you. Dolly Seton can't scare me—and Earle Seton will have to take care of his little daughter, too!"

At that moment a little girl romped into the room. Like most children she was attracted to Craig. She was a little dark-eyed sprite much like her mother.

She ran up to Craig and tried to bury her face in his arms. She did it beautifully twice. But the third time she fell and hit her nose hard. Maybe Craig did something or neglected to do something that caused it. None of us could see it, though. The next thing I knew he had another handkerchief out and at little Elizabeth's face. It was an old-fashioned bumped nose and a good specimen.

Nina Nix was restless now and a bit suspicious, although she had not the faintest idea of what. "It's a good thing we have gauze in the house, too, if you run out of handkerchiefs!"

Craig laughed pleasantly, turning it aside. "Glad I had them and could be of service."

Plainly now Nina wanted the interview ended, although it seemed to me that it had hardly begun. She was worried, as every one was when they were unable to figure out what Kennedy was doing.

Standing near the door she said belligerently: "I'm going to stay, Mr. Detective, and fight for Elizabeth. If Dolly Seton sent you, tell her that is my answer. Good morning!" She bowed us out.

"Well," observed Kennedy jubilantly, "I have samples of the blood of that little gold-digger and of the baby. Last night's fray was my oyster, too. Now we must stop at that apartment of Dolly Seton. I'll come out into the open, then—just prick under the thumb nail of Buster, get a couple of drops, and I'm all set."


THROUGH the forenoon Kennedy was deeply immersed in some work in his laboratory. It was not until after luncheon that he had completed some tests he had undertaken.

"Now, Walter," he directed, "get them all here at the laboratory for a conference at three."

"But will they come?" I objected.

"I think they'll all be here except possibly Nina Nix. And I don't care about her. With all her cleverness and in spite of what she thinks about herself she is only a pawn in the game. If any of them hesitate, just intimate that there may be some kind of compromise proposed. That will bring them."

Sure enough, that afternoon Nina would not come. But the others did. With some of them I think it was curiosity, perhaps fear of not being in possession of all the facts and being caught off guard.

"There's something I am going to tell you," began Kennedy when they had all arrived, "which may be brought up for the first time in a court."

He was speaking to all of us, although his eyes now seemed to single out Dolly Seton, who was sitting in the big laboratory chair with Buster, a lusty, big-eyed little fellow wonderingly clinging to her hand, beside her.

On the other side of the room was Earle Seton, flanked by Lambert Sparks and Harry Lewis. They scarcely even nodded to Dolly and totally ignored Teddy Tilford next to her. As to cordiality there might have been a wall of masonry between the two sides of the room.

"Although the inheritance of what are known as group-specific substances in human blood has been known for over twenty years, the application of that knowledge to medico-legal questions has never been made, as far as I know. Let us make it." He paused and cleared his throat. "It is what is known as the agglutination of red blood cells by contact with blood serum derived from another individual of the same species."

"Is this really scientific, Kennedy?" asked Sparks in his best cross-examiner manner.

"I am not in the habit of dealing with pseudo-science', Sparks," smiled Kennedy. "It is a definite law. In the behavior of their sera and their red blood cells, all human beings without regard to race, sex, or state of health fall into four groups.

"In the first group the red cells are not agglutinable by any other human serum, but the serum agglutinates the red cells of all persons not belonging to this first group. In the second group the red cells are agglutinated by the serums. I think I'll use the English plural rather than the Latin; it sounds less pedantic—by the serums of the first group and the third, while the serum agglutinates the cells of the third group only. The third is the obverse of the second. Its red cells are agglutinated by the serums of the first and second groups and its serum agglutinates only cells of the second group.

"It is due to two kinds of specific agglutinins of which one is present in the serum of Group II, the other in the serum of Group III and both in the serum of Group I. Cells of Group IV are agglutinated by the serum of all the other three groups, while the serum contains no agglutinin whatever. It never changes. It is permanent through life."

"In a baby, too?" put in Sparks, unrepressed as a cross-questioner.

"Yes, in a baby, too," answered Kennedy with polite good humor. He knew Sparks was baiting a hook and he intended to put a big live squid on the hook for Sparks. It was new to Sparks. He had been accustomed to leading questions. Kennedy was an adept in what might be called leading answers.

"As a baby is developed in the embryo, the specific agglutinability of the red cells appears. The agglutinative power of the serum may be absent at birth, but it appears eventually after a few months, always."

"And are these in the blood of everybody?"

"Everybody. Over forty per cent of people are in Group I. This is never hybrid. Just under forty per cent are in Group II, which is hybrid only with regard to its dominant quality. The same is true as to Group III, which comprises from twelve to fifteen per cent of people. There are only two to five per cent in Group IV."

"And when people marry?"

"That's the interesting part, to us. You have hit it. Unions of men and women from each of these groups produce children definitely in groups that can be predicted. Mating of Groups I and I give only in Group I. Groups I and II and Groups II and II produce children only in I and II. Groups I and III and Groups III and III give children only in I and III."

Kennedy paused as he drew out what looked like a chart. "I have reduced the matter here to a definite table of instances where a child must be illegitimate, that is, not the child of a supposed father. This may seem to be rather negative. But it yields results that are positive enough in this case."

Before us he spread the chart:


Title Image

We studied the chart, especially Sparks, waiting for Craig to go on. Sparks would have liked to lay a foundation for pulling it apart, but he did not have the remotest idea what to be destructive about. It was a question either of betraying some gross ignorance or of perhaps laying a destructive foundation for something he might later want to build up. So he did what was the most difficult thing in the world to him—kept silent, as he studied it. I wondered how long it would last.

It did not last long. "Holy smoke, Kennedy," he exclaimed with an easy flippancy. "Give me a copy of this thing. I might need it, myself, some time. You know, it's a wise father that knows his own child, these days!"

Kennedy ignored the flippancy. "Dolly Seton belongs to Group I," he resumed slowly as we all leaned forward. The application of it to the case in hand had been on the minds of all of us. "Teddy Tilford is also in Group I. For instance, as you will see, they could have a child only in Group I; never in II, III, or IV. Little Buster Seton is in Group II, as it happens! Therefore, Buster Seton could not by any possibility be the child of Dolly Seton and Teddy Tilford!"

Dolly started forward in the chair, eyes gleaming eagerly, intently as Kennedy proceeded with provoking slowness.

"Earle Seton is in Group II. Groups I and II produce only in I and II, never in III and IV. I believe that Buster Seton, in Group II, is really the child of Dolly and Earle Seton." Kennedy paused and added: "This fight has already cost you thousands of dollars, Seton, I am told. Who is getting it? Lewis? Sparks? Nina Nix? Some one will get the rest of your fortune, too! You should be elected president of the easy-mark millionaires!"

Earle Seton leaned forward, also studying the chart.

"Just a moment, sir. Nina Nix was in Group I, also," hammered Kennedy relentlessly. "Earle Seton was in Group II. There is some one else in this case in Group III. Nina in Group I and Earle Seton in Group II could have a child only in Groups I and II. They could not have a child in III or IV. But Nina in Group I and this other man in Group III could have a child in Groups I or III—never in II or IV. Little Betty 'Seton,' so-called, is in Group III. She could not have been the daughter of Earle Seton. She is, in all probability, the daughter of this man, this man in Group III."

"Who?" demanded Earle Seton, flabbergasted, but angry.

"For example, Harry Lewis is in Group III," was the provokingly calm answer of Kennedy.

"Now, I am making no assertions; I am dealing only with possibilities and impossibilities. Was it not Harry Lewis who got Lambert Sparks to introduce his intimate friend, Nina Nix, to Mr. Earle Seton, the wealthy client of Sparks? The crooked divorce detective business is a good racket, Lewis, if you know how to play it and make business for yourself."

Earle Seton had swung around watching Lewis. He seemed to realize what a sucker he had been.

"They were Lewis's lies—they were not mine!" he stammered weakly, turning in the direction of Dolly and Buster.

Dolly had risen, pulled Buster closer to her, away from Earle Seton as from a thing unclean.

"No, Earle." Her voice was firm. "I can't forget last night—and what went before, for months, years. You played the cad toward me. I shall have my divorce, such as it is—my honor as it has always been—my boy as I hope he will be—could have a man who truly loves me, if we thought it was right. No, Earle—go with your Nina—and her crew. You should have read Kipling more: 'Let him take her—and keep her; it's hell for them both!'"

Illustration

THE END


Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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