“I say all this so that you will understand at the start just what part rubber plays in the life of our little community.  You can readily see that such being the case, whatever advantage the world at large might gain from cheap synthetic rubber would scarcely benefit those whose money and labour had been expended on the assumption that rubber would be scarce and dear.  Naturally, then, Bradley Cushing was not precisely popular with a certain set in Goodyear.  As for myself, I am frank to admit that I might have shared the opinion of many others regarding him, for I have a small investment in this Congo enterprise myself.  But the fact is that Cushing, when he came to our town fresh from his college fellowship in industrial chemistry, met my daughter.”

Without taking his eyes off Kennedy, he reached over and patted the gloved hand that clutched the arm of the chair alongside his own.  “They were engaged and often they used to talk over what they would do when Bradley’s invention of a new way to polymerise isoprene, as the process is called, had solved the rubber question and had made him rich.  I firmly believe that their dreams were not day dreams, either.  The thing was done.  I have seen his products and I know something about rubber.  There were no impurities in his rubber.”

Mr. Winslow paused.  Ruth was sobbing quietly.

“This morning,” he resumed hastily, “Bradley Cushing was found dead in his laboratory under the most peculiar circumstances.  I do not know whether his secret died with him or whether some one has stolen it.  From the indications I concluded that he had been murdered.”

Such was the case as Kennedy and I heard it then.

Ruth looked up at him with tearful eyes wistful with pain, “Would
Mr. Kennedy work on it?” There was only one answer.

XV

THE VAMPIRE

As we sped out to the little mill-town on the last train, after Kennedy had insisted on taking us all to a quiet little restaurant, he placed us so that Miss Winslow was furthest from him and her father nearest.  I could hear now and then scraps of their conversation as he resumed his questioning, and knew that Mr. Winslow was proving to be a good observer.

“Cushing used to hire a young fellow of some scientific experience, named Strong,” said Mr. Winslow as he endeavoured to piece the facts together as logically as it was possible to do.  “Strong used to open his laboratory for him in the morning, clean up the dirty apparatus, and often assist him in some of his experiments.  This morning when Strong approached the laboratory at the usual time he was surprised to see that though it was broad daylight there was a light burning.  He was alarmed and before going in looked through the window.  The sight that he saw froze him.  There lay Cushing on a workbench and beside him and around him pools of coagulating blood.  The door was not locked, as we found afterward, but the young man did not stop to enter.  He ran to me and, fortunately, I met him at our door.  I went back.