The Artificial Paradise
"The Artificial Paradise" is a short detective story by Arthur B. Reeve featuring the scientific criminologist Craig Kennedy and his journalist companion Walter Jameson. The story opens with Jameson rushing home to tell Kennedy about rumors that Vespuccian revolutionists have captured half a million silver dollars from the government. He finds Kennedy already meeting with a client, the beautiful Latin-American Miss Guerrero, who has come seeking help in locating her missing father. Señor Guerrero is a prominent landowner and the head of the Vespuccian revolutionary junta in New York, responsible for purchasing arms and arranging their secret shipment to the rebels back home. Miss Guerrero explains that her father has lately been behaving strangely, appearing moody and distracted, and that she suspects the influence of a certain Señora Mendez, at whose home the older members of the junta frequently gather. She fears the señora may be a government spy or may otherwise be manipulating her father against the interests of the revolution. The situation becomes more alarming when a message arrives reporting that a large shipment of silver dollars, recently arrived in New York for the junta's use, has vanished along with Guerrero himself. Kennedy and Jameson first visit Señor Torreon, another junta member who was among the last to see Guerrero, and find him evasive and nervous. Torreon reluctantly agrees to take them to Señora Mendez without alerting her in advance. At the señora's apartment, they find a group of Vespuccian exiles engaged in a "mescal evening," consuming buttons of the peyote cactus and listening to music adapted from Kiowa Indian ritual songs. Kennedy and Jameson are drawn into the gathering and partake of the drug, experiencing vivid and spectacular hallucinations of light, color, and shifting imagery. Despite the powerful sensory effects, Kennedy retains enough presence of mind to note that both Torreon and Señora Mendez react with telltale nervousness when Guerrero's whereabouts are mentioned. He also observes that Torreon tries to prevent the mescal from being served to them, suggesting he does not want the investigators' senses sharpened or their inhibitions lowered in a way that might reveal information. After leaving the señora's apartment, Kennedy and Jameson return to Miss Guerrero, where Kennedy searches through her father's desk and finds a silver box containing mescal buttons. Shortly afterward, Torreon telephones with the news that he has discovered Guerrero unconscious and apparently dead in a locked loft above the junta's South Street office, where the group stores its secret cache of weapons and revolutionary supplies. Miss Guerrero faints at the news. Kennedy rushes to the scene with electrical resuscitation apparatus he has borrowed from a physician familiar with the techniques of Professor Leduc of the Nantes School of Medicine. The young ambulance surgeon on the scene has declared Guerrero dead, his face deeply blue from asphyxia brought on by alkaloid poisoning. Working with an induction coil powered by the storage batteries of an electric taxicab summoned to the street below, Kennedy applies precisely calibrated currents to the body. Jameson watches in astonishment as color gradually returns to Guerrero's face and the heart resumes its function. The man who was dead is restored to life. As Guerrero begins to regain consciousness, Kennedy quickly searches his pockets and finds another silver mescal box, confirming that the drug played a central role in his near-death. Leaning close, Kennedy asks Guerrero where the money is, but the stricken man cannot clearly respond. Kennedy then moves behind Torreon and pins his arms, directing Jameson to search his pockets. Among Torreon's papers, Jameson finds a power of attorney signed by Guerrero and a bill of lading for ten cases of so-called scrap iron being shipped from New York to Boston, the missing half-million dollars smuggled out of the city under a false description. Kennedy reconstructs the conspiracy. Torreon and Señora Mendez had cultivated Guerrero's dependence on mescal, exploiting his addiction to extract the power of attorney that would give Torreon control over the revolutionary funds. Torreon had then brought Guerrero to the loft under the influence of the drug, intending to leave him there to die of an overdose, and had brought a policeman along as a witness to his supposed discovery of the body, hoping to appear innocent while having already arranged the removal of the money. The scheme had been both a financial theft and an attempted murder dressed as an accidental death. With the conspiracy exposed, Guerrero recovering, and Torreon in custody, Kennedy wraps up his apparatus and sends Jameson to telephone Miss Guerrero with the news that her father is alive and innocent.
By Arthur B. Reeve · First published 1911 · Genre: Mystery, Detective Fiction, Crime Fiction