Aunt Josephine, reconciled, brought them.  Kennedy dropped an antiseptic tablet into the water and carefully sterilized Elaine’s arm just above the spot where the red mark showed.  Then he drew the hypodermic from his pocket—­carefully sterilizing it, also, and filling it with scopolamine from the bottle.

“Just a moment, Miss Dodge,” he encouraged as he jabbed the needle into her arm.

She did not wince.

“Please lie back on the couch,” he directed.  Then turning to us he added, “It takes some time for this to work.  Our criminal got over that fact and prevented an outcry by using ethyl chloride first.  Let me reconstruct the scene.”

As we watched Elaine going under slowly, Craig talked.

“That night,” he said, “warily, the masked criminal of the Clutching Hand might have been seen down below us in the alley.  Up here, Miss Dodge, worn out by the strain of her father’s death, let us say, was nervously trying to read, to do anything that would take her mind off the tragedy.  Perhaps she fell asleep.

“Just then the Clutching Hand appeared.  He came stealthily through that window which he had opened.  A moment he hesitated, seeing Elaine asleep.  Then he tiptoed over to the bed, let us say, and for a moment looked at her, sleeping.

“A second later he had thrust his hand into his pocket and had taken out a small glass bulb with a long thin neck.  That was ethyl chloride, a drug which produces a quick anesthesia.  But it lasts only a minute or two.  That was enough, As he broke the glass neck of the bulb—­letting the pieces fall on the floor near the bed—­he shoved the thing under Elaine’s face, turning his own head away and holding a handkerchief over his own nose.  The mere heat of his hand was enough to cause the ethyl chloride to spray out and overcome her instantly.  He stepped away from her a moment and replaced the now empty vial in his pocket.

“Then he took a box from his pocket, opened it.  There must have been a syringe and a bottle of scopolamine.  Where they came from I do not know, but perhaps from some hospital.  I shall have to find that out later.  He went to Elaine, quickly jabbing the needle, with no resistance from her now.  Slowly he replaced the bottle and the needle in his pocket.  He could not have been in any hurry now, for it takes time for the drug to work.”

Kennedy paused.  Had we known at the time, Michael—­he of the sinister face—­must have been in the hallway, careful that no one saw him.  A tap at the door and the Clutching Hand, that night, must have beckoned him.  A moment’s parley and they separated—­ Clutching Hand going back to Elaine, who was now under the influence of the second drug.

“Our criminal,” resumed Kennedy thoughtfully, “may have shaken Elaine.  She did not answer.  Then he may have partly revived her.  She must have been startled.  Clutching Hand, perhaps, was half crouching, with a big ugly blue steel revolver leveled full in her face.