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The Poisoned Pen

by Arthur B. Reeve · English · Gutenberg #5007 · 593,845 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Poisoned Pen

Author: Arthur B. Reeve


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #5007]
                Most recently updated: September 15, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5007

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POISONED PEN ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.











THE CRAIG KENNEDY SERIES

THE POISONED PEN


BY


ARTHUR. B. REEVE


FRONTISPIECE BY WILL FOSTER






CONTENTS

CHAPTER
   I THE POISONED PEN

  II THE YEGGMAN

 III THE GERM OF DEATH

  IV THE FIREBUG

   V THE CONFIDENCE KING

  VI THE SAND-HOG

 VII THE WHITE SLAVE

VIII THE FORGER

  IX THE UNOFFICIAL SPY

   X THE SMUGGLER

  XI THE INVISIBLE RAY

 XII THE CAMPAIGN GRAFTER




THE POISONED PEN



I

THE POISONED PEN


Kennedy's suit-case was lying open on the bed, and he was literally
throwing things into it from his chiffonier, as I entered after a
hurried trip up-town from the Star office in response to an urgent
message from him.

"Come, Walter," he cried, hastily stuffing in a package of clean
laundry without taking off the wrapping-paper, "I've got your suit-case
out. Pack up whatever you can in five minutes. We must take the six
o'clock train for Danbridge."

I did not wait to hear any more. The mere mention of the name of the
quaint and quiet little Connecticut town was sufficient. For Danbridge
was on everybody's lips at that time. It was the scene of the now
famous Danbridge poisoning case--a brutal case in which the pretty
little actress, Vera Lytton, had been the victim.

"I've been retained by Senator Adrian Willard," he called from his
room, as I was busy packing in mine. "The Willard family believe that
that young Dr. Dixon is the victim of a conspiracy--or at least Alma
Willard does, which comes to the same thing, and--well, the senator
called me up on long-distance and offered me anything I would name in
reason to take the case. Are you ready? Come on, then. We've simply got
to make that train."

As we settled ourselves in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman,
which for some reason or other we had to ourselves, Kennedy spoke again
for the first time since our frantic dash across the city to catch the
train.

"Now let us see, Walter," he began. "We've both read a good deal about
this case in the papers. Let's try to get our knowledge in an orderly
shape before we tackle the actual case itself."

"Ever been in Danbridge?" I asked.

"Never," he replied. "What sort of place is it?"

"Mighty interesting," I answered; "a combination of old New England and
new, of ancestors and factories, of wealth and poverty, and above all
it is interesting for its colony of New-Yorkers--what shall I call
it?--a literary-artistic-musical combination, I guess."

"Yes," he resumed, "I thought as much. Vera Lytton belonged to the
colony. A very talented girl, too--you remember her in 'The Taming of
the New Woman' last season? Well, to get back to the facts as we know
them at present.

"Here is a girl with a brilliant future on the stage discovered by her
friend, Mrs. Boncour, in convulsions--practically insensible--with a
bottle of headache-powder and a jar of ammonia on her dressing-table.
Mrs. Boncour sends the maid for the nearest doctor, who happens to be a
Dr. Waterworth. Meanwhile she tries to restore Miss Lytton, but with no
result. She smells the ammonia and then just tastes the
headache-powder, a very foolish thing to do, for by the time Dr.
Waterworth arrives he has two patients."

"No?" I corrected, "only one, for Miss Lytton was dead when he arrived,
according to his latest statement."

"Very well, then--one. He arrives, Mrs. Boncour is ill, the maid knows
nothing at all about it, and Vera Lytton is dead. He, too, smells the
ammonia, tastes the headache-powder--just the merest trace--and then he
has two patients, one of them himself. We must see him, for his
experience must have been appalling. How he ever did it I can't
imagine, but he saved both himself and Mrs. Boncour from
poisoning--cyanide, the papers say, but of course we can't accept that
until we see. It seems to me, Walter, that lately the papers have made
the rule in murder cases: When in doubt, call it cyanide."

Not relishing Kennedy in the humour of expressing his real opinion of
the newspapers, I hastily turned the conversation back again by asking,
"How about the note from Dr. Dixon?"

"Ah, there is the crux of the whole case--that note from Dixon. Let us
see. Dr. Dixon is, if I am informed correctly, of a fine and
aristocratic family, though not wealthy. I believe it has been
established that while he was an interne in a city hospital he became
acquainted with Vera Lytton, after her divorce from that artist
Thurston. Then comes his removal to Danbridge and his meeting and later
his engagement with Miss Willard. On the whole, Walter, judging from
the newspaper pictures, Alma Willard is quite the equal of Vera Lytton
for looks, only of a different style of beauty. Oh, well, we shall see.
Vera decided to spend the spring and summer at Danbridge in the
bungalow of her friend, Mrs. Boncour, the novelist. That's when things
began to happen."

"Yes," I put in, "when you come to know Danbridge as I did after that
summer when you were abroad, you'll understand, too. Everybody knows
everybody else's business. It is the main occupation of a certain set,
and the per-capita output of gossip is a record that would stagger the
census bureau. Still, you can't get away from the note, Craig. There it
is, in Dixon's own handwriting, even if he does deny it: 'This will
cure your headache. Dr. Dixon.' That's a damning piece of evidence."

"Quite right," he agreed hastily; "the note was queer, though, wasn't
it? They found it crumpled up in the jar of ammonia. Oh, there are lots
of problems the newspapers have failed to see the significance of, let
alone trying to follow up."

Our first visit in Danbridge was to the prosecuting attorney, whose
office was not far from the station on the main street. Craig had wired
him, and he had kindly waited to see us, for it was evident that
Danbridge respected Senator Willard and every one connected with him.

"Would it be too much to ask just to see that note that was found in
the Boncour bungalow?" asked Craig.

The prosecutor, an energetic young man, pulled out of a document-case a
crumpled note which had been pressed flat again. On it in clear, deep
black letters were the words, just as reported:

                 This will cure your headache.

                          DR. DIXON.

"How about the handwriting?" asked Kennedy.

The lawyer pulled out a number of letters. "I'm afraid they will have
to admit it," he said with reluctance, as if down in his heart he hated
to prosecute Dixon. "We have lots of these, and no handwriting expert
could successfully deny the identity of the writing."

He stowed away the letters without letting Kennedy get a hint as to
their contents. Kennedy was examining the note carefully.

"May I count on having this note for further examination, of course
always at such times and under such conditions as you agree to?"

The attorney nodded. "I am perfectly willing to do anything not illegal
to accommodate the senator," he said. "But, on the other hand, I am
here to do my duty for the state, cost whom it may."

The Willard house was in a virtual state of siege. Newspaper reporters
from Boston and New York were actually encamped at every gate, terrible
as an army, with cameras. It was with some difficulty that we got in,
even though we were expected, for some of the more enterprising had
already fooled the family by posing as officers of the law and
messengers from Dr. Dixon.

The house was a real, old colonial mansion with tall white pillars, a
door with a glittering brass knocker, which gleamed out severely at you
as you approached through a hedge of faultlessly trimmed boxwoods.

Senator, or rather former Senator, Willard met us in the library, and a
moment later his daughter Alma joined him. She was tall, like her
father, a girl of poise and self-control. Yet even the schooling of
twenty-two years in rigorous New England self-restraint could not hide
the very human pallor of her face after the sleepless nights and
nervous days since this trouble had broken on her placid existence. Yet
there was a mark of strength and determination on her face that was
fascinating. The man who would trifle with this girl, I felt, was
playing fast and loose with her very life. I thought then, and I said
to Kennedy afterward: "If this Dr. Dixon is guilty, you have no right
to hide it from that girl. Anything less than the truth will only
blacken the hideousness of the crime that has already been committed."

The senator greeted us gravely, and I could not but take it as a good
omen when, in his pride of wealth and family and tradition, he laid
bare everything to us, for the sake of Alma Willard. It was clear that
in this family there was one word that stood above all others, "Duty."

As we were about to leave after an interview barren of new facts, a
young man was announced, Mr. Halsey Post. He bowed politely to us, but
it was evident why he had called, as his eye followed Alma about the
room.

"The son of the late Halsey Post, of Post & Vance, silversmiths, who
have the large factory in town, which you perhaps noticed," explained
the senator. "My daughter has known him all her life. A very fine young
man."

Later, we learned that the senator had bent every effort toward
securing Halsey Post as a son-in-law, but his daughter had had views of
her own on the subject.

Post waited until Alma had withdrawn before he disclosed the real
object of his visit. In almost a whisper, lest she should still be
listening, he said, "There is a story about town that Vera Lytton's
former husband--an artist named Thurston--was here just before her
death."

Senator Willard leaned forward as if expecting to hear Dixon
immediately acquitted. None of us was prepared for the next remark.

"And the story goes on to say that he threatened to make a scene over a
wrong he says he has suffered from Dixon. I don't know anything more
about it, and I tell you only because I think you ought to know what
Danbridge is saying under its breath."

We shook off the last of the reporters who affixed themselves to us,
and for a moment Kennedy dropped in at the little bungalow to see Mrs.
Boncour. She was much better, though she had suffered much. She had
taken only a pinhead of the poison, but it had proved very nearly fatal.

"Had Miss Lytton any enemies whom you think of, people who were jealous
of her professionally or personally?" asked Craig.

"I should not even have said Dr. Dixon was an enemy," she replied
evasively.

"But this Mr. Thurston," put in Kennedy quickly. "One is not usually
visited in perfect friendship by a husband who has been divorced."

She regarded him keenly for a moment. "Halsey Post told you that," she
said. "No one else knew he was here. But Halsey Post was an old friend
of both Vera and Mr. Thurston before they separated. By chance he
happened to drop in the day Mr. Thurston was here, and later in the day
I gave him a letter to forward to Mr. Thurston, which had come after
the artist left. I'm sure no one else knew the artist. He was here the
morning of the day she died, and--and--that's every bit I'm going to
tell you about him, so there. I don't know why he came or where he
went."

"That's a thing we must follow up later," remarked Kennedy as we made
our adieus. "Just now I want to get the facts in hand. The next thing
on my programme is to see this Dr. Waterworth."

We found the doctor still in bed; in fact, a wreck as the result of his
adventure. He had little to correct in the facts of the story which had
been published so far. But there were many other details of the
poisoning he was quite willing to discuss frankly.

"It was true about the jar of ammonia?" asked Kennedy.

"Yes," he answered. "It was standing on her dressing-table with the
note crumpled up in it, just as the papers said."

"And you have no idea why it was there?"

"I didn't say that. I can guess. Fumes of ammonia are one of the
antidotes for poisoning of this kind."

"But Vera Lytton could hardly have known that," objected Kennedy.

"No, of course not. But she probably did know that ammonia is good for
just that sort of faintness which she must have experienced after
taking the powder. Perhaps she thought of sal volatile, I don't know.
But most people know that ammonia in some form is good for faintness of
this sort, even if they don't know anything about cyanides and---"

"Then it was cyanide?" interrupted Craig.

"Yes," he replied slowly. It was evident that he was suffering great
physical and nervous anguish as the result of his too intimate
acquaintance with the poisons in question. "I will tell you precisely
how it was, Professor Kennedy. When I was called in to see Miss Lytton
I found her on the bed. I pried open her jaws and smelled the sweetish
odour of the cyanogen gas. I knew then what she had taken, and at the
moment she was dead. In the next room I heard some one moaning. The
maid said that it was Mrs. Boncour, and that she was deathly sick. I
ran into her room, and though she was beside herself with pain I
managed to control her, though she struggled desperately against me. I
was rushing her to the bathroom, passing through Miss Lytton's room.
'What's wrong?' I asked as I carried her along. 'I took some of that,'
she replied, pointing to the bottle on the dressing-table.

"I put a small quantity of its crystal contents on my tongue. Then I
realised the most tragic truth of my life. I had taken one of the
deadliest poisons in the world. The odour of the released gas of
cyanogen was strong. But more than that, the metallic taste and the
horrible burning sensation told of the presence of some form of
mercury, too. In that terrible moment my brain worked with the
incredible swiftness of light. In a flash I knew that if I added malic
acid to the mercury--perchloride of mercury or corrosive sublimate--I
would have calomel or subchloride of mercury, the only thing that would
switch the poison out of my system and Mrs. Boncour's.

"Seizing her about the waist, I hurried into the dining-room. On a
sideboard was a dish of fruit. I took two apples. I made her eat one,
core and all. I ate the other. The fruit contained the malic acid I
needed to manufacture the calomel, and I made it right there in
nature's own laboratory. But there was no time to stop. I had to act
just as quickly to neutralise that cyanide, too. Remembering the
ammonia, I rushed back with Mrs. Boncour, and we inhaled the fumes.
Then I found a bottle of peroxide of hydrogen. I washed out her stomach
with it, and then my own. Then I injected some of the peroxide into
various parts of her body. The peroxide of hydrogen and hydrocyanic
acid, you know, make oxamide, which is a harmless compound.

"The maid put Mrs. Boncour to bed, saved. I went to my house, a wreck.
Since then I have not left this bed. With my legs paralysed I lie here,
expecting each hour to be my last."

"Would you taste an unknown drug again to discover the nature of a
probable poison?" asked Craig.

"I don't know," he answered slowly, "but I suppose I would. In such a
case a conscientious doctor has no thought of self. He is there to do
things, and he does them, according to the best that is in him. In
spite of the fact that I haven't had one hour of unbroken sleep since
that fatal day, I suppose I would do it again."

When we were leaving, I remarked: "That is a martyr to science. Could
anything be more dramatic than his willing penalty for his devotion to
medicine?"

We walked along in silence. "Walter, did you notice he said not a word
of condemnation of Dixon, though the note was before his eyes? Surely
Dixon has some strong supporters in Danbridge, as well as enemies."

The next morning we continued our investigation. We found Dixon's
lawyer, Leland, in consultation with his client in the bare cell of the
county jail. Dixon proved to be a clear-eyed, clean-cut young man. The
thing that impressed me most about him, aside from the prepossession in
his favour due to the faith of Alma Willard, was the nerve he
displayed, whether guilty or innocent. Even an innocent man might well
have been staggered by the circumstantial evidence against him and the
high tide of public feeling, in spite of the support that he was
receiving. Leland, we learned, had been very active. By prompt work at
the time of the young doctor's arrest he had managed to secure the
greater part of Dr. Dixon's personal letters, though the prosecutor
secured some, the contents of which had not been disclosed.

Kennedy spent most of the day in tracing out the movements of Thurston.
Nothing that proved important was turned up, and even visits to near-by
towns failed to show any sales of cyanide or sublimate to any one not
entitled to buy them. Meanwhile, in turning over the gossip of the
town, one of the newspapermen ran across the fact that the Boncour
bungalow was owned by the Posts, and that Halsey Post, as the executor
of the estate, was a more frequent visitor than the mere collection of
the rent would warrant. Mrs. Boncour maintained a stolid silence that
covered a seething internal fury when the newspaperman in question
hinted that the landlord and tenant were on exceptionally good terms.

It was after a fruitless day of such search that we were sitting in the
reading-room of the Fairfield Hotel. Leland entered. His face was
positively white. Without a word he took us by the arm and led us
across Main Street and up a flight of stairs to his office. Then he
locked the door.

"What's the matter?" asked Kennedy.

"When I took this case," he said, "I believed down in my heart that
Dixon was innocent. I still believe it, but my faith has been rudely
shaken. I feel that you should know about what I have just found. As I
told you, we secured nearly all of Dr. Dixon's letters. I had not read
them all then. But I have been going through them to-night. Here is a
letter from Vera Lytton herself. You will notice it is dated the day of
her death."

He laid the letter before us. It was written in a curious greyish-black
ink in a woman's hand, and read:

DEAR HARRIS:

Since we agreed to disagree we have at least been good friends, if no
longer lovers. I am not writing in anger to reproach you with your new
love, so soon after the old. I suppose Alma Willard is far better
suited to be your wife than is a poor little actress--rather looked
down on in this Puritan society here. But there is something I wish to
warn you about, for it concerns us all intimately.

We are in danger of an awful mix-up if we don't look out. Mr.
Thurston--I had almost said my husband, though I don't know whether
that is the truth or not--who has just come over from New York, tells
me that there is some doubt about the validity of our divorce. You
recall he was in the South at the time I sued him, and the papers were
served on him in Georgia, He now says the proof of service was
fraudulent and that he can set aside the divorce. In that case you
might figure in a suit for alienating my affections.

I do not write this with ill will, but simply to let you know how
things stand. If we had married, I suppose I would be guilty of bigamy.
At any rate, if he were disposed he could make a terrible scandal.

Oh, Harris, can't you settle with him if he asks anything? Don't forget
so soon that we once thought we were going to be the happiest of
mortals--at least I did. Don't desert me, or the very earth will cry
out against you. I am frantic and hardly know what I am writing. My
head aches, but it is my heart that is breaking. Harris, I am yours
still, down in my heart, but not to be cast off like an old suit for a
new one. You know the old saying about a woman scorned. I beg you not
to go back on

                  Your poor little deserted

                              VERA.

As we finished reading, Leland exclaimed, "That never must come before
the jury."

Kennedy was examining the letter carefully. "Strange," he muttered.
"See how it was folded. It was written on the wrong side of the sheet,
or rather folded up with the writing outside. Where have these letters
been?"

"Part of the time in my safe, part of the time this afternoon on my
desk by the window."

"The office was locked, I suppose?" asked Kennedy. "There was no way to
slip this letter in among the others since you obtained them?"

"None. The office has been locked, and there is no evidence of any one
having entered or disturbed a thing."

He was hastily running over the pile of letters as if looking to see
whether they were all there. Suddenly he stopped.

"Yes," he exclaimed excitedly, "one of them is gone." Nervously he
fumbled through them again. "One is gone," he repeated, looking at us,
startled.

"What was it about?" asked Craig.

"It was a note from an artist, Thurston, who gave the address of Mrs.
Boncour's bungalow--ah, I see you have heard of him. He asked Dixon's
recommendation of a certain patent headache medicine. I thought it
possibly evidential, and I asked Dixon about it. He explained it by
saying that he did not have a copy of his reply, but as near as he
could recall, he wrote that the compound would not cure a headache
except at the expense of reducing heart action dangerously. He says he
sent no prescription. Indeed, he thought it a scheme to extract advice
without incurring the charge for an office call and answered it only
because he thought Vera had become reconciled to Thurston again. I
can't find that letter of Thurston's. It is gone."

We looked at each other in amazement.

"Why, if Dixon contemplated anything against Miss Lytton, should he
preserve this letter from her?" mused Kennedy. "Why didn't he destroy
it?"

"That's what puzzles me," remarked Leland. "Do you suppose some one has
broken in and substituted this Lytton letter for the Thurston letter?"

Kennedy was scrutinising the letter, saying nothing. "I may keep it?"
he asked at length. Leland was quite willing and even undertook to
obtain some specimens of the writing of Vera Lytton. With these and the
letter Kennedy was working far into the night and long after I had
passed into a land troubled with many wild dreams of deadly poisons and
secret intrigues of artists.

The next morning a message from our old friend First Deputy O'Connor in
New York told briefly of locating the rooms of an artist named Thurston
in one of the co-operative studio apartments. Thurston himself had not
been there for several days and was reported to have gone to Maine to
sketch. He had had a number of debts, but before he left they had all
been paid--strange to say, by a notorious firm of shyster lawyers, Kerr
& Kimmel. Kennedy wired back to find out the facts from Kerr & Kimmel
and to locate Thurston at any cost.

Even the discovery of the new letter did not shake the wonderful
self-possession of Dr. Dixon. He denied ever having received it and
repeated his story of a letter from Thurston to which he had replied by
sending an answer, care of Mrs. Boncour, as requested. He insisted that
the engagement between Miss Lytton and himself had been broken before
the announcement of his engagement with Miss Willard. As for Thurston,
he said the man was little more than a name to him. He had known
perfectly all the circumstances of the divorce, but had had no dealings
with Thurston and no fear of him. Again and again he denied ever
receiving the letter from Vera Lytton.

Kennedy did not tell the Willards of the new letter. The strain had
begun to tell on Alma, and her father had had her quietly taken to a
farm of his up in the country. To escape the curious eyes of reporters,
Halsey Post had driven up one night in his closed car. She had entered
it quickly with her father, and the journey had been made in the car,
while Halsey Post had quietly dropped off on the outskirts of the town,
where another car was waiting to take him back. It was evident that the
Willard family relied implicitly on Halsey, and his assistance to them
was most considerate. While he never forced himself forward, he kept in
close touch with the progress of the case, and now that Alma was away
his watchfulness increased proportionately, and twice a day he wrote a
long report which was sent to her.

Kennedy was now bending every effort to locate the missing artist. When
he left Danbridge, he seemed to have dropped out of sight completely.
However, with O'Connor's aid, the police of all New England were on the
lookout.

The Thurstons had been friends of Halsey's before Vera Lytton had ever
met Dr. Dixon, we discovered from the Danbridge gossips, and I, at
least, jumped to the conclusion that Halsey was shielding the artist,
perhaps through a sense of friendship when he found that Kennedy was
interested in Thurston's movement. I must say I rather liked Halsey,
for he seemed very thoughtful of the Willards, and was never too busy
to give an hour or so to any commission they wished carried out without
publicity.

Two days passed with not a word from Thurston. Kennedy was obviously
getting impatient. One day a rumour was received that he was in Bar
Harbour; the next it was a report from Nova Scotia. At last, however,
came the welcome news that he had been located in New Hampshire,
arrested, and might be expected the next day.

At once Kennedy became all energy. He arranged for a secret conference
in Senator Willard's house, the moment the artist was to arrive. The
senator and his daughter made a flying trip back to town. Nothing was
said to any one about Thurston, but Kennedy quietly arranged with the
district attorney to be present with the note and the jar of ammonia
properly safeguarded. Leland of course came, although his client could
not. Halsey Post seemed only too glad to be with Miss Willard, though
he seemed to have lost interest in the case as soon as the Willards
returned to look after it themselves. Mrs. Boncour was well enough to
attend, and even Dr. Waterworth insisted on coming in a private
ambulance which drove over from a near-by city especially for him. The
time was fixed just before the arrival of the train that was to bring
Thurston.

It was an anxious gathering of friends and foes of Dr. Dixon who sat
impatiently waiting for Kennedy to begin this momentous exposition that
was to establish the guilt or innocence of the calm young physician who
sat impassively in the jail not half a mile from the room where his
life and death were being debated.

"In many respects this is the most remarkable case that it has ever
been my lot to handle," began Kennedy. "Never before have I felt so
keenly my sense of responsibility. Therefore, though this is a somewhat
irregular proceeding, let me begin by setting forth the facts as I see
them.

"First, let us consider the dead woman. The question that arises here
is, Was she murdered or did she commit suicide? I think you will
discover the answer as I proceed. Miss Lytton, as you know, was, two
years ago, Mrs. Burgess Thurston. The Thurstons had temperament, and
temperament is quite often the highway to the divorce court. It was so
in this case. Mrs. Thurston discovered that her husband was paying much
attention to other women. She sued for divorce in New York, and he
accepted service in the South, where he happened to be. At least it was
so testified by Mrs. Thurston's lawyer.

"Now here comes the remarkable feature of the case. The law firm of
Kerr & Kimmel, I find, not long ago began to investigate the legality
of this divorce. Before a notary Thurston made an affidavit that he had
never been served by the lawyer for Miss Lytton, as she was now known.
Her lawyer is dead, but his representative in the South who served the
papers is alive. He was brought to New York and asserted squarely that
he had served the papers properly.

"Here is where the shrewdness of Mose Kimmel, the shyster lawyer, came
in. He arranged to have the Southern attorney identify the man he had
served the papers on. For this purpose he was engaged in conversation
with one of his own clerks when the lawyer was due to appear. Kimmel
appeared to act confused, as if he had been caught napping. The
Southern lawyer, who had seen Thurston only once, fell squarely into
the trap and identified the clerk as Thurston. There were plenty of
witnesses to it, and it was point number two for the great Mose Kimmel.
Papers were drawn up to set aside the divorce decree.

"In the meantime, Miss Lytton, or Mrs. Thurston, had become acquainted
with a young doctor in a New York hospital, and had become engaged to
him. It matters not that the engagement was later broken. The fact
remains that if the divorce were set aside an action would lie against
Dr. Dixon for alienating Mrs. Thurston's affections, and a grave
scandal would result. I need not add that in this quiet little town of
Danbridge the most could be made of such a suit."

Kennedy was unfolding a piece of paper. As he laid it down, Leland, who
was sitting next to me, exclaimed under his breath:

"My God, he's going to let the prosecutor know about that letter. Can't
you stop him?"

It was too late. Kennedy had already begun to read Vera's letter. It
was damning to Dixon, added to the other note found in the ammonia-jar.

When he had finished reading, you could almost hear the hearts
throbbing in the room. A scowl overspread Senator Willard's features.
Alma Willard was pale and staring wildly at Kennedy. Halsey Post, ever
solicitous for her, handed her a glass of water from the table. Dr.
Waterworth had forgotten his pain in his intense attention, and Mrs.
Boncour seemed stunned with astonishment. The prosecuting attorney was
eagerly taking notes.

"In some way," pursued Kennedy in an even voice, "this letter was
either overlooked in the original correspondence of Dr. Dixon or it was
added to it later. I shall come back to that presently. My next point
is that Dr. Dixon says he received a letter from Thurston on the day
the artist visited the Boncour bungalow. It asked about a certain
headache compound, and his reply was brief and, as nearly as I can find
out, read, 'This compound will not cure your headache except at the
expense of reducing heart action dangerously.'

"Next comes the tragedy. On the evening of the day that Thurston left,
after presumably telling Miss Lytton about what Kerr & Kimmel had
discovered, Miss Lytton is found dying with a bottle containing cyanide
and sublimate beside her. You are all familiar with the circumstances
and with the note discovered in the jar of ammonia. Now, if the
prosecutor will be so kind as to let me see that note--thank you, sir.
This is the identical note. You have all heard the various theories of
the jar and have read the note. Here it is in plain, cold black and
white--in Dr. Dixon's own handwriting, as you know, and reads: 'This
will cure your headache. Dr. Dixon.'"

Alma Willard seemed as one paralysed. Was Kennedy, who had been engaged
by her father to defend her fiance, about to convict him?

"Before we draw the final conclusion," continued Kennedy gravely,
"there are one or two points I wish to elaborate. Walter, will you open
that door into the main hall?"

I did so, and two policemen stepped in with a prisoner. It was
Thurston, but changed almost beyond recognition. His clothes were worn,
his beard shaved off, and he had a generally hunted appearance.

Thurston was visibly nervous. Apparently he had heard all that Kennedy
had said and intended he should hear, for as he entered he almost broke
away from the police officers in his eagerness to speak.

"Before God," he cried dramatically, "I am as innocent as you are of
this crime, Professor Kennedy."

"Are you prepared to swear before ME," almost shouted Kennedy, his eyes
blazing, "that you were never served properly by your wife's lawyers in
that suit?"

The man cringed back as if a stinging blow had been delivered between
his eyes. As he met Craig's fixed glare he knew there was no hope.
Slowly, as if the words were being wrung from him syllable by syllable,
he said in a muffled voice:

"No, I perjured myself. I was served in that suit. But--"

"And you swore falsely before Kimmel that you were not?" persisted
Kennedy.

"Yes," he murmured. "But--"

"And you are prepared now to make another affidavit to that effect?"

"Yes," he replied. "If--"

"No buts or ifs, Thurston," cried Kennedy sarcastically. "What did you
make that affidavit for? What is YOUR story?"

"Kimmel sent for me. I did not go to him. He offered to pay my debts if
I would swear to such a statement. I did not ask why or for whom. I
swore to it and gave him a list of my creditors. I waited until they
were paid. Then my conscience"--I could not help revolting at the
thought of conscience in such a wretch, and the word itself seemed to
stick in his throat as he went on and saw how feeble an impression he
was making on us--"my conscience began to trouble me. I determined to
see Vera, tell her all, and find out whether it was she who wanted this
statement. I saw her. When at last I told her, she scorned me. I can
confirm that, for as I left a man entered. I now knew how grossly I had
sinned, in listening to Mose Kimmel. I fled. I disappeared in Maine. I
travelled. Every day my money grew less. At last I was overtaken,
captured, and brought back here."

He stopped and sank wretchedly down in a chair and covered his face
with his hands.

"A likely story," muttered Leland in my ear.

Kennedy was working quickly. Motioning the officers to be seated by
Thurston, he uncovered a jar which he had placed on the table. The
colour had now appeared in Alma's cheeks, as if hope had again sprung
in her heart, and I fancied that Halsey Post saw his claim on her
favour declining correspondingly.

"I want you to examine the letters in this case with me," continued
Kennedy. "Take the letter which I read from Miss Lytton, which was
found following the strange disappearance of the note from Thurston."

He dipped a pen into a little bottle, and wrote on a piece of paper:

What is your opinion about Cross's Headache Cure? Would you recommend
it for a nervous headache? BURGESS THURSTON, c/o MRS. S. BONCOUR.

Craig held up the writing so that we could all see that he had written
what Dixon declared Thurston wrote in the note that had disappeared.
Then he dipped another pen into a second bottle, and for some time he
scrawled on another sheet of paper. He held it up, but it was still
perfectly blank.

"Now," he added, "I am going to give a little demonstration which I
expect to be successful only in a measure. Here in the open sunshine by
this window I am going to place these two sheets of paper side by side.
It will take longer than I care to wait to make my demonstration
complete, but I can do enough to convince you."

For a quarter of an hour we sat in silence, wondering what he would do
next. At last he beckoned us over to the window. As we approached he
said, "On sheet number one I have written with quinoline; on sheet
number two I wrote with a solution of nitrate of silver."

We bent over. The writing signed "Thurston" on sheet number one was
faint, almost imperceptible, but on paper number two, in black letters,
appeared what Kennedy had written: "Dear Harris: Since we agreed to
disagree we have at least been good friends."

"It is like the start of the substituted letter, and the other is like
the missing note," gasped Leland in a daze.

"Yes," said Kennedy quickly. "Leland, no one entered your office. No
one stole the Thurston note. No one substituted the Lytton letter.
According to your own story, you took them out of the safe and left
them in the sunlight all day. The process that had been started earlier
in ordinary light, slowly, was now quickly completed. In other words,
there was writing which would soon fade away on one side of the paper
and writing which was invisible but would soon appear on the other.

"For instance, quinoline rapidly disappears in sunlight. Starch with a
slight trace of iodine writes a light blue, which disappears in air. It
was something like that used in the Thurston letter. Then, too, silver
nitrate dissolved in ammonia gradually turns black as it is acted on by
light and air. Or magenta treated with a bleaching-agent in just
sufficient quantity to decolourise it is invisible when used for
writing. But the original colour reappears as the oxygen of the air
acts upon the pigment. I haven't a doubt but that my analyses of the
inks are correct and on one side quinoline was used and on the other
nitrate of silver. This explains the inexplicable disappearance of
evidence incriminating one person, Thurston, and the sudden appearance
of evidence incriminating another, Dr. Dixon. Sympathetic ink also
accounts for the curious circumstance that the Lytton letter was folded
up with the writing apparently outside. It was outside and unseen until
the sunlight brought it out and destroyed the other, inside, writing--a
change, I suspect, that was intended for the police to see after it was
completed, not for the defence to witness as it was taking place."

We looked at each other aghast. Thurston was nervously opening and
shutting his lips and moistening them as if he wanted to say something
but could not find the words.

"Lastly," went on Craig, utterly regardless of Thurston's frantic
efforts to speak, "we come to the note that was discovered so queerly
crumpled up in the jar of ammonia on Vera Lytton's dressing-table. I
have here a cylindrical glass jar in which I place some sal-ammoniac
and quicklime. I will wet it and heat it a little. That produces the
pungent gas of ammonia.

"On one side of this third piece of paper I myself write with this
mercurous nitrate solution. You see, I leave no mark on the paper as I
write. I fold it up and drop it into the jar-and in a few seconds
withdraw it. Here is a very quick way of producing something like the
slow result of sunlight with silver nitrate. The fumes of ammonia have
formed the precipitate of black mercurous nitrate, a very distinct
black writing which is almost indelible. That is what is technically
called invisible rather than sympathetic ink."

We leaned over to read what he had written. It was the same as the note
incriminating Dixon:

     This will cure your headache.

     DR. DIXON.

A servant entered with a telegram from New York. Scarcely stopping in
his exposure, Kennedy tore it open, read it hastily, stuffed it into
his pocket, and went on.

"Here in this fourth bottle I have an acid solution of iron chloride,
diluted until the writing is invisible when dry," he hurried on. "I
will just make a few scratches on this fourth sheet of paper--so. It
leaves no mark. But it has the remarkable property of becoming red in
vapour of sulpho-cyanide. Here is a long-necked flask of the gas, made
by sulphuric acid acting on potassium sulpho-cyanide. Keep back, Dr.
Waterworth, for it would be very dangerous for you to get even a whiff
of this in your condition. Ah! See--the scratches I made on the paper
are red."

Then hardly giving us more than a moment to let the fact impress itself
on our minds, he seized the piece of paper and dashed it into the jar
of ammonia. When he withdrew it, it was just a plain sheet of white
paper again. The red marks which the gas in the flask had brought out
of nothingness had been effaced by the ammonia. They had gone and left
no trace.

"In this way I can alternately make the marks appear and disappear by
using the sulpho-cyanide and the ammonia. Whoever wrote this note with
Dr. Dixon's name on it must have had the doctor's reply to the Thurston
letter containing the words, 'This will not cure your headache.' He
carefully traced the words, holding the genuine note up to the light
with a piece of paper over it, leaving out the word 'not' and using
only such words as he needed. This note was then destroyed.

"But he forgot that after he had brought out the red writing by the use
of the sulpho-cyanide, and though he could count on Vera Lytton's
placing the note in the jar of ammonia and hence obliterating the
writing, while at the same time the invisible writing in the mercurous
nitrate involving Dr. Dixon's name would be brought out by the ammonia
indelibly on the other side of the note--he forgot"--Kennedy was now
speaking eagerly and loudly--"that the sulpho-cyanide vapours could
always be made to bring back to accuse him the words that the ammonia
had blotted out."

Before the prosecutor could interfere, Kennedy had picked up the note
found in the ammonia-jar beside the dying girl and had jammed the
state's evidence into the long-necked flask of sulpho-cyanide vapour.

"Don't fear," he said, trying to pacify the now furious prosecutor, "it
will do nothing to the Dixon writing. That is permanent now, even if it
is only a tracing."

When he withdrew the note, there was writing on both sides, the black
of the original note and something in red on the other side.

We crowded around, and Craig read it with as much interest as any of us:

"Before taking the headache-powder, be sure to place the contents of
this paper in a jar with a little warm water."

"Hum," commented Craig, "this was apparently written on the outside
wrapper of a paper folded about some sal-ammoniac and quicklime. It
goes on:

"'Just drop the whole thing in, PAPER AND ALL. Then if you feel a
faintness from the medicine the ammonia will quickly restore you. One
spoonful of the headache-powder swallowed quickly is enough.'"

No name was signed to the directions, but they were plainly written,
and "PAPER AND ALL" was underscored heavily.

Craig pulled out some letters. "I have here specimens of writing of
many persons connected with this case, but I can see at a glance which
one corresponds to the writing on this red death-warrant by an almost
inhuman fiend. I shall, however, leave that part of it to the
handwriting experts to determine at the trial. Thurston, who was the
man whom you saw enter the Boncour bungalow as you left--the constant
visitor?"

Thurston had not yet regained his self-control, but with trembling
forefinger he turned and pointed to Halsey Post.

"Yes, ladies and gentlemen," cried Kennedy as he slapped the telegram
that had just come from New York down on the table decisively, "yes,
the real client of Kerr & Kimmel, who bent Thurston to his purposes,
was Halsey Post, once secret lover of Vera Lytton till threatened by
scandal in Danbridge--Halsey Post, graduate in technology, student of
sympathetic inks, forger of the Vera Lytton letter and the other notes,
and dealer in cyanides in the silver-smithing business, fortune-hunter
for the Willard millions with which to recoup the Post & Vance losses,
and hence rival of Dr. Dixon for the love of Alma Willard. That is the
man who wielded the poisoned pen. Dr. Dixon is innocent."




II

THE YEGGMAN


"Hello! Yes, this is Professor Kennedy. I didn't catch the name--oh,
yes--President Blake of the Standard Burglary Insurance Company.
What--really? The Branford pearls--stolen? Maid chloroformed? Yes, I'll
take the case. You'll be up in half an hour? All right, I'll be here.
Goodbye."

It was through this brief and businesslike conversation over the
telephone that Kennedy became involved in what proved to be one of the
most dangerous cases he had ever handled.

At the mention of the Branford pearls I involuntarily stopped reading,
and listened, not because I wanted to pry into Craig's affairs, but
because I simply couldn't help it. This was news that had not yet been
given out to the papers, and my instinct told me that there must be
something more to it than the bare statement of the robbery.

"Some one has made a rich haul," I commented. "It was reported, I
remember, when the Branford pearls were bought in Paris last year that
Mrs. Branford paid upward of a million francs for the collection."

"Blake is bringing up his shrewdest detective to co-operate with me in
the case," added Kennedy. "Blake, I understand, is the head of the
Burglary Insurance Underwriters' Association, too. This will be a big
thing, Walter, if we can carry it through."

It was the longest half-hour that I ever put in, waiting for Blake to
arrive. When he did come, it was quite evident that my surmise had been
correct.

Blake was one of those young old men who are increasingly common in
business today. There was an air of dignity and keenness about his
manner that showed clearly how important he regarded the case. So
anxious was he to get down to business that he barely introduced
himself and his companion, Special Officer Maloney, a typical private
detective.

"Of course you haven't heard anything except what I have told you over
the wire," he began, going right to the point. "We were notified of it
only this noon ourselves, and we haven't given it out to the papers
yet, though the local police in Jersey are now on the scene. The New
York police must be notified tonight, so that whatever we do must be
done before they muss things up. We've got a clue that we want to
follow up secretly. These are the facts."

In the terse, straightforward language of the up-to-date man of
efficiency, he sketched the situation for us.

"The Branford estate, you know, consists of several acres on the
mountain back of Montclair, overlooking the valley, and surrounded by
even larger estates. Branford, I understand, is in the West with a
party of capitalists, inspecting a reported find of potash salts. Mrs.
Branford closed up the house a few days ago and left for a short stay
at Palm Beach. Of course they ought to have put their valuables in a
safe deposit vault. But they didn't. They relied on a safe that was
really one of the best in the market--a splendid safe, I may say. Well,
it seems that while the master and mistress were both away the servants
decided on having a good time in New York. They locked up the house
securely--there's no doubt of that--and just went. That is, they all
went except Mrs. Branford's maid, who refused to go for some reason or
other. We've got all the servants, but there's not a clue to be had
from any of them. They just went off on a bust, that's clear. They
admit it.

"Now, when they got back early this morning they found the maid in
bed--dead. There was still a strong odor of chloroform about the room.
The bed was disarranged as if there had been a struggle. A towel had
been wrapped up in a sort of cone, saturated with chloroform, and
forcibly held over the girl's nose. The next thing they discovered was
the safe--blown open in a most peculiar manner. I won't dwell on that.
We're going to take you out there and show it to you after I've told
you the whole story.

"Here's the real point. It looks all right, so far. The local police
say that the thief or thieves, whoever they were, apparently gained
access by breaking a back window. That's mistake number one. Tell Mr.
Kennedy about the window, Maloney."

"It's just simply this," responded the detective. "When I came to look
at the broken window I found that the glass had fallen outside in such
a way as it could not have fallen if the window had been broken from
the outside. The thing was a blind. Whoever did it got into the house
in some other way and then broke the glass later to give a false clue."

"And," concluded Blake, taking his cigar between his thumb and
forefinger and shaking it to give all possible emphasis to his words,
"we have had our agent at Palm Beach on long-distance 'phone twice this
afternoon. Mrs. Branford did NOT go to Palm Beach. She did NOT engage
rooms in any hotel there. And furthermore she never had any intention
of going there. By a fortunate circumstance Maloney picked up a hint
from one of the servants, and he has located her at the Grattan Inn in
this city. In other words, Mrs. Branford has stolen her own jewels from
herself in order to collect the burglary insurance--a common-enough
thing in itself, but never to my knowledge done on such a large scale
before."

The insurance man sank back in his chair and surveyed us sharply.

"But," interrupted Kennedy slowly, "how about--"

"I know--the maid," continued Blake. "I do not mean that Mrs. Branford
did the actual stealing. Oh, no. That was done by a yeggman of
experience. He must have been above the average, but everything points
to the work of a yeggman. She hired him. But he overstepped the mark
when he chloroformed the maid."

For a moment Kennedy said nothing. Then he remarked: "Let us go out and
see the safe. There must be some clue. After that I want to have a talk
with Mrs. Branford. By the way," he added, as we all rose to go down to
Blake's car, "I once handled a life insurance case for the Great
Eastern. I made the condition that I was to handle it in my own way,
whether it went for or against the company. That's understood, is it,
before I undertake the case?"

"Yes, yes," agreed Blake. "Get at the truth. We're not seeking to
squirm out of meeting an honest liability. Only we want to make a
signal example if it is as we have every reason to believe. There has
been altogether too much of this sort of fake burglary to collect
insurance, and as president of the underwriters it is my duty and
intention to put a stop to it. Come on."

Maloney nodded his head vigorously in assent with his chief. "Never
fear," he murmured. "The truth is what will benefit the company, all
right. She did it."

The Branford estate lay some distance back from the railroad station,
so that, although it took longer to go by automobile than by train, the
car made us independent of the rather fitful night train service and
the local cabmen.

We found the house not deserted by the servants, but subdued. The body
of the maid had been removed to a local morgue, and a police officer
was patrolling the grounds, though of what use that could be I was at a
loss to understand.

Kennedy was chiefly interested in the safe. It was of the so-called
"burglar-proof" variety, spherical in shape, and looking for all the
world like a miniature piece of electrical machinery.

"I doubt if anything could have withstood such savage treatment as has
been given to this safe," remarked Craig as he concluded a cursory
examination of it. "It shows great resistance to high explosives,
chiefly, I believe, as a result of its rounded shape. But nothing could
stand up against such continued assaults."

He continued to examine the safe while we stood idly by. "I like to
reconstruct my cases in my own mind," explained Kennedy, as he took his
time in the examination. "Now, this fellow must have stripped the safe
of all the outer trimmings. His next move was to make a dent in the
manganese surface across the joint where the door fits the body. That
must have taken a good many minutes of husky work. In fact, I don't see
how he could have done it without a sledge-hammer and a hot chisel.
Still, he did it and then--"

"But the maid," interposed Maloney. "She was in the house. She would
have heard and given an alarm."

For answer, Craig simply went to a bay-window and raised the curtain.
Pointing to the lights of the next house, far down the road, he said,
"I'll buy the best cigars in the state if you can make them hear you on
a blustery night like last night. No, she probably did scream. Either
at this point, or at the very start, the burglar must have chloroformed
her. I don't see any other way to explain it. I doubt if he expected
such a tough proposition as he found in this safe, but he was evidently
prepared to carry it through, now that he was here and had such an
unexpectedly clear field, except for the maid. He simply got her out of
the way, or his confederates did--in the easiest possible way, poor
girl."

Returning to the safe, he continued: "Well, anyhow, he made a furrow
perhaps an inch and a half long and a quarter of an inch wide and, I
should say, not over an eighth of an inch deep. Then he commenced to
burgle in earnest. Under the dent he made a sort of little cup of red
clay and poured in the 'soup'--the nitroglycerin--so that it would run
into the depression. Then he exploded it in the regular way with a
battery and a fulminate cap. I doubt if it did much more than discolour
the metal at first. Still, with the true persistency of his kind, he
probably repeated the dose, using more and more of the 'soup' until the
joint was stretched a little, and more of an opening made so that the
'soup' could run in.

"Again and again he must have repeated and increased the charges.
Perhaps he used two or three cups at a time. By this time the outer
door must have been stretched so as to make it easy to introduce the
explosive. No doubt he was able to use ten or twelve ounces of the
stuff at a charge. It must have been more like target-practice than
safe-blowing. But the chance doesn't often come--an empty house and
plenty of time. Finally the door must have bulged a fraction of an inch
or so, and then a good big charge and the outer portion was ripped off
and the safe turned over. There was still two or three inches of
manganese steel protecting the contents, wedged in so tight that it
must have seemed that nothing could budge it. But he must have kept at
it until we have the wreck that we see here," and Kennedy kicked the
safe with his foot as he finished.

Blake was all attention by this time, while Maloney gasped, "If I was
in the safe-cracking business, I'd make you the head of the firm."

"And now," said Craig, "let us go back to New York and see if we can
find Mrs. Branford."

"Of course you understand," explained Blake as we were speeding back,
"that most of these cases of fake robberies are among small people,
many of them on the East Side among little jewellers or other
tradesmen. Still, they are not limited to any one class. Indeed, it is
easier to foil the insurance companies when you sit in the midst of
finery and wealth, protected by a self-assuring halo of moral
rectitude, than under less fortunate circumstances. Too often, I'm
afraid, we have good-naturedly admitted the unsolved burglary and paid
the insurance claim. That has got to stop. Here's a case where we
considered the moral hazard a safe one, and we are mistaken. It's the
last straw."

Our interview with Mrs. Branford was about as awkward an undertaking as
I have ever been concerned with. Imagine yourself forced to question a
perfectly stunning woman, who was suspected of plotting so daring a
deed and knew that you suspected her. Resentment was no name for her
feelings. She scorned us, loathed us. It was only by what must have
been the utmost exercise of her remarkable will-power that she
restrained herself from calling the hotel porters and having us thrown
out bodily. That would have put a bad face on it, so she tolerated our
presence. Then, of course, the insurance company had reserved the right
to examine everybody in the household, under oath if necessary, before
passing on the claim.

"This is an outrage," she exclaimed, her eyes flashing and her breast
rising and falling with suppressed emotion, "an outrage. When my
husband returns I intend to have him place the whole matter in the
hands of the best attorney in the city. Not only will I have the full
amount of the insurance, but I will have damages and costs and
everything the law allows. Spying on my every movement in this way--it
is an outrage! One would think we were in St. Petersburg instead of New
York."

"One moment, Mrs. Branford," put in Kennedy, as politely as he could.
"Suppose--"

"Suppose nothing," she cried angrily. "I shall explain nothing, say
nothing. What if I do choose to close up that lonely big house in the
suburbs and come to the city to live for a few days--is it anybody's
business except mine?"

"And your husband's?" added Kennedy, nettled at her treatment of him.

She shot him a scornful glance. "I suppose Mr. Branford went out to
Arizona for the express purpose of collecting insurance on my jewels,"
she added sarcastically with eyes that snapped fire.

"I was about to say," remarked Kennedy as imperturbably as if he were
an automaton, "that supposing some one took advantage of your absence
to rob your safe, don't you think the wisest course would be to be
perfectly frank about it?"

"And give just one plausible reason why you wished so much to have it
known that you were going to Palm Beach when in reality you were in New
York?" pursued Maloney, while Kennedy frowned at his tactless attempt
at a third degree.

If she had resented Kennedy, she positively flew up in the air and
commenced to aviate at Maloney's questioning. Tossing her head, she
said icily: "I do not know that you have been appointed my guardian,
sir. Let us consider this interview at an end. Good-night," and with
that she swept out of the room, ignoring Maloney and bestowing one
biting glance on Blake, who actually winced, so little relish did he
have for this ticklish part of the proceedings.

I think we all felt like schoolboys who had been detected robbing a
melon-patch or in some other heinous offence, as we slowly filed down
the hall to the elevator. A woman of Mrs. Branford's stamp so readily
and successfully puts one in the wrong that I could easily comprehend
why Blake wanted to call on Kennedy for help in what otherwise seemed a
plain case.

Blake and Maloney were some distance ahead of us, as Craig leaned over
to me and whispered. "That Maloney is impossible. I'll have to shake
him loose in some way. Either we handle this case alone or we quit."

"Right-o," I agreed emphatically. "He's put his foot in it badly at the
very start. Only, be decent about it, Craig. The case is too big for
you to let it slip by."

"Trust me, Walter. I'll do it tactfully," he whispered, then to Blake
he added as we overtook them: "Maloney is right. The case is simple
enough, after all. But we must find out some way to fasten the thing
more closely on Mrs. Branford. Let me think out a scheme to-night. I'll
see you tomorrow."

As Blake and Maloney disappeared down the street in the car, Kennedy
wheeled about and walked deliberately back into the Grattan Inn again.
It was quite late. People were coming in from the theatres, laughing
and chatting gaily. Kennedy selected a table that commanded a view of
the parlour as well as of the dining-room itself.

"She was dressed to receive some one--did you notice?" he remarked as
we sat down and cast our eyes over the dizzy array of inedibles on the
card before us. "I think it is worth waiting a while to see who it is."

Having ordered what I did not want, I glanced about until my eye rested
on a large pier-glass at the other end of the dining-room.

"Craig," I whispered excitedly, "Mrs. B. is in the writing-room--I can
see her in that glass at the end of the room, behind you."

"Get up and change places with me as quietly as you can, Walter," he
said quickly. "I want to see her when she can't see me."

Kennedy was staring in rapt attention at the mirror. "There's a man
with her, Walter," he said under his breath. "He came in while we were
changing places--a fine-looking chap. By Jove, I've seen him before
somewhere. His face and his manner are familiar to me. But I simply
can't place him. Did you see her wraps in the chair? No? Well, he's
helping her on with them. They're going out. GARCON, L'ADDITION--VITE"

We were too late, however, for just as we reached the door we caught a
fleeting glimpse of a huge new limousine.

"Who was that man who just went out with the lady?" asked Craig of the
negro who turned the revolving-door at the carriage entrance.

"Jack Delarue, sah--in 'The Grass Widower,' sah," replied the doorman.
"Yes, sah, he stays here once in a while. Thank you, sah," as Kennedy
dropped a quarter into the man's hand.

"That complicates things considerably," he mused as we walked slowly
down to the subway station. "Jack Delarue--I wonder if he is mixed up
in this thing also."

"I've heard that 'The Grass Widower' isn't such a howling success as a
money-maker," I volunteered. "Delarue has a host of creditors, no
doubt. By the way, Craig," I exclaimed, "don't you think it would be a
good plan to drop down and see O'Connor? The police will have to be
informed in a few hours now, anyhow. Maybe Delarue has a criminal
record."

"A good idea, Walter," agreed Craig, turning into a drug-store which
had a telephone booth. "I'll just call O'Connor up, and we'll see if he
does know anything about it."

O'Connor was not at headquarters, but we finally found him at his home,
and it was well into the small hours when we arrived there. Trusting to
the first deputy's honour, which had stood many a test, Craig began to
unfold the story. He had scarcely got as far as describing the work of
the suspected hired yeggman, when O'Connor raised both hands and
brought them down hard on the arms of his chair.

"Say," he ejaculated, "that explains it!"

"What?" we asked in chorus.

"Why, one of my best stool-pigeons told me to-day that there was
something doing at a house in the Chatham Square district that we have
been watching for a long time. It's full of crooks, and to-day they've
all been as drunk as lords, a sure sign some one has made a haul and
been generous with the rest, And one or two of the professional
'fences' have been acting suspiciously, too. Oh, that explains it all
right."

I looked at Craig as much as to say, "I told you so," but he was
engrossed in what O'Connor was saying.

"You know," continued the police officer, "there is one particular
'fence' who runs his business under the guise of a loan-shark's office.
He probably has a wider acquaintance among the big criminals than any
other man in the city. From him crooks can obtain anything from a jimmy
to a safe-cracking outfit. I know that this man has been trying to
dispose of some unmounted pearls to-day among jewellers in Maiden Lane.
I'll bet he has been disposing of some of the Branford pearls, one by
one. I'll follow that up. I'll arrest this 'fence' and hold him till he
tells me what yeggman came to him with the pearls."

"And if you find out, will you go with me to that house near Chatham
Square, providing it was some one in that gang?" asked Craig eagerly.

O'Connor shook his head. "I'd better keep out of it. They know me too
well. Go alone. I'll get that stool-pigeon--the Gay Cat is his name--to
go with you. I'll help you in any way. I'll have any number of
plain-clothes men you want ready to raid the place the moment you get
the evidence. But you'll never get any evidence if they know I'm in the
neighbourhood."

The next morning Craig scarcely ate any breakfast himself and made me
bolt my food most unceremoniously. We were out in Montclair again
before the commuters had started to go to New York, and that in spite
of the fact that we had stopped at his laboratory on the way and had
got a package which he carried carefully.

Kennedy instituted a most thorough search of the house from cellar to
attic in daylight. What he expected to find, I did not know, but I am
quite sure nothing escaped him.

"Now, Walter," he said after he had ransacked the house, "there remains
just one place. Here is this little wall safe in Mrs. Branford's room.
We must open it."

For an hour if not longer he worked over the combination, listening to
the fall of the tumblers in the lock. It was a simple little thing and
one of the old-timers in the industry would no doubt have opened it in
short order. The perspiration stood out on his forehead, so intent was
he in working the thing. At last it yielded. Except for some of the
family silver, the safe was empty.

Carefully noting how the light shone on the wall safe, Craig unwrapped
the package he had brought and disclosed a camera. He placed it on a
writing-desk opposite the safe, in such a way that it was not at all
conspicuous, and focused it on the safe.

"This is a camera with a newly-invented between-lens shutter of great
illumination and efficiency," he explained. "It has always been
practically impossible to get such pictures, but this new shutter has
so much greater speed than anything ever invented before that it is
possible to use it in detective work. I'll just run these fine wires
like a burglar alarm, only instead of having an alarm I'll attach them
to the camera so that we can get a picture. I've proved its speed up to
one two-thousandth of a second. It may or it may not work. If it does
we'll catch somebody, right in the act."

About noon we went down to Liberty Street, home of burglary insurance.
I don't think Blake liked it very much because Kennedy insisted on
playing the lone hand, but he said nothing, for it was part of the
agreement. Maloney seemed rather glad than otherwise. He had been
combing out some tangled clues of his own about Mrs. Branford. Still,
Kennedy smoothed things over by complimenting the detective on his
activity, and indeed he had shown remarkable ability in the first place
in locating Mrs. Branford.

"I started out with the assumption that the Branfords must have needed
money for some reason or other," said Maloney. "So I went to the
commercial agencies to-day and looked up Branford. I can't say he has
been prosperous; nobody has been in Wall Street these days, and that's
just the thing that causes an increase in fake burglaries. Then there
is another possibility," he continued triumphantly. "I had a man up at
the Grattan Inn, and he reports to me that Mrs. Stanford was seen with
the actor Jack Delarue last night, I imagine they quarrelled, for she
returned alone, much agitated, in a taxi-cab. Any way you look at it,
the clues are promising--whether she needed money for Branford's
speculations or for the financing of that rake Delarue."

Maloney regarded Craig with the air of an expert who could afford to
patronise a good amateur--but after all an amateur. Kennedy said
nothing, and of course I took the cue.

"Yes," agreed Blake, "you see, our original hypothesis was a pretty
good one. Meanwhile, of course, the police are floundering around in a
bog of false scents."

"It would make our case a good deal stronger," remarked Kennedy
quietly, "if we could discover some of the stolen jewellery hidden
somewhere by Mrs. Branford herself." He said nothing of his own
unsuccessful search through the house, but continued: "What do you
suppose she has done with the jewels? She must have put them somewhere
before she got the yeggman to break the safe. She'd hardly trust them
in his hands. But she might have been foolish enough for that. Of
course it's another possibility that he really got away with them. I
doubt if she has them at Grattan Inn, or even if she would personally
put them in a safe deposit vault. Perhaps Delarue figures in that end
of it. We must let no stone go unturned."

"That's right," meditated Maloney, apparently turning something over in
his mind as if it were a new idea. "If we only had some evidence, even
part of the jewels that she had hidden, it would clinch the case.
That's a good idea, Kennedy."

Craig said nothing, but I could see, or fancied I saw, that he was
gratified at the thought that he had started Maloney off on another
trail, leaving us to follow ours unhampered. The interview with Blake
was soon over, and as we left I looked inquiringly at Craig.

"I want to see Mrs. Branford again," he said. "I think we can do better
alone today than we did last night."

I must say I half expected that she would refuse to see us and was
quite surprised when the page returned with the request that we go up
to her suite. It was evident that her attitude toward us was very
different from that of the first interview. Whether she was ruffled by
the official presence of Blake or the officious presence of Maloney,
she was at least politely tolerant of us. Or was it that she at last
began to realise that the toils were closing about her and that things
began to look unmistakably black?

Kennedy was quick to see his advantage. "Mrs. Branford," he began,
"since last night I have come into the possession of some facts that
are very important. I have heard that several loose pearls which may or
may not be yours have been offered for sale by a man on the Bowery who
is what the yeggmen call a 'fence.'"

"Yeggmen--'fence'?" she repeated. "Mr. Kennedy, really I do not care to
discuss the pearls any longer. It is immaterial to me what becomes of
them. My first desire is to collect the insurance. If anything is
recovered I am quite willing to deduct that amount from the total. But
I must insist on the full insurance or the return of the pearls. As
soon as Mr. Branford arrives I shall take other steps to secure
redress."

A boy rapped at the door and brought in a telegram which she tore open
nervously. "He will be here in four days," she said, tearing the
telegram petulantly, and not at all as if she were glad to receive it.
"Is there anything else that you wish to say?"

She was tapping her foot on the rug as if anxious to conclude the
interview. Kennedy leaned forward earnestly and played his trump card
boldly.

"Do you remember that scene in 'The Grass Widower,'" he said slowly,
"where Jack Delarue meets his runaway wife at the masquerade ball?"

She coloured slightly, but instantly regained her composure. "Vaguely,"
she murmured, toying with the flowers in her dress.

"In real life," said Kennedy, his voice purposely betraying that he
meant it to have a personal application, "husbands do not forgive even
rumours of--ah--shall we say affinities?--much less the fact."

"In real life," she replied, "wives do not have affinities as often as
some newspapers and plays would have us believe."

"I saw Delarue after the performance last night," went on Kennedy
inexorably. "I was not seen, but I saw, and he was with----"

She was pacing the room now in unsuppressed excitement. "Will you never
stop spying on me?" she cried. "Must my every act be watched and
misrepresented? I suppose a distorted version of the facts will be
given to my husband. Have you no chivalry, or justice, or--or mercy?"
she pleaded, stopping in front of Kennedy.

"Mrs. Branford," he replied coldly, "I cannot promise what I shall do.
My duty is simply to get at the truth about the pearls. If it involves
some other person, it is still my duty to get at the truth. Why not
tell me all that you really know about the pearls and trust me to bring
it out all right?"

She faced him, pale and haggard. "I have told," she repeated steadily.
"I cannot tell any more--I know nothing more."

Was she lying? I was not expert enough in feminine psychology to judge,
but down in my heart I knew that the woman was hiding something behind
that forced steadiness. What was it she was battling for? We had
reached an impasse.

It was after dinner when I met Craig at the laboratory. He had made a
trip to Montclair again, where his stay had been protracted because
Maloney was there and he wished to avoid him. He had brought back the
camera, and had had another talk with O'Connor, at which he had mapped
out a plan of battle.

"We are to meet the Gay Cat at the City Hall at nine o'clock,"
explained Craig laconically. "We are going to visit a haunt of yeggmen,
Walter, that few outsiders have ever seen. Are you game? O'Connor and
his men will be close by--hiding, of course."

"I suppose so," I replied slowly. "But what excuse are you going to
have for getting into this yegg-resort?"

"Simply that we are two newspaper men looking for an article, without
names, dates, or places--just a good story of yeggmen and tramps. I've
got a little--well, we'll call it a little camera outfit that I'm going
to sling over my shoulder. You are the reporter, remember, and I'm the
newspaper photographer. They won't pose for us, of course, but that
will be all right. Speaking about photographs, I got one out at
Montclair that is interesting. I'll show it to you later in the
evening--and in case anything should happen to me, Walter, you'll find
the original plate locked here in the top drawer of my desk. I guess
we'd better be getting downtown."

The house to which we were guided by the Gay Cat was on a cross street
within a block or two of Chatham Square. If we had passed it casually
in the daytime there would have been nothing to distinguish it above
the other ramshackle buildings on the street, except that the other
houses were cluttered with children and baby-carriages, while this one
was vacant, the front door closed, and the blinds tightly drawn. As we
approached, a furtive figure shambled from the basement areaway and
slunk off into the crowd for the night's business of pocket-picking or
second-story work.

I had had misgivings as to whether we would be admitted at all--I might
almost say hopes--but the Gay Cat succeeded in getting a ready response
at the basement door. The house itself was the dilapidated ruin of what
had once been a fashionable residence in the days when society lived in
the then suburban Bowery. The iron handrail on the steps was still
graceful, though rusted and insecure. The stones of the steps were
decayed and eaten away by time, and the front door was never opened.

As we entered the low basement door, I felt that those who entered here
did indeed abandon hope. Inside, the evidences of the past grandeur
were still more striking. What had once been a drawing-room was now the
general assembly room of the resort. Broken-down chairs lined the
walls, and the floor was generously sprinkled with sawdust. A huge
pot-bellied stove occupied the centre of the room, and by it stood a
box of sawdust plentifully discoloured with tobacco-juice.

Three or four of the "guests"--there was no "register" in this
yeggman's hotel--were seated about the stove discussing something in a
language that was English, to be sure, but of a variation that only a
yegg could understand. I noted the once handsome white marble mantel,
now stained by age, standing above the unused grate. Double
folding-doors led to what, I imagine, was once a library. Dirt and
grime indescribable were everywhere. There was the smell of old clothes
and old cooking, the race odours of every nationality known to the
metropolis. I recalled a night I once spent in a Bowery lodging-house
for "local colour." Only this was infinitely worse. No law regulated
this house. There was an atmosphere of cheerlessness that a
half-blackened Welsbach mantle turned into positive ghastliness.

Our guide introduced us. There was a dead silence as eight eyes were
craftily fixed on us, sizing us up. What should I say? Craig came to
the rescue. To him the adventure was a lark. It was novel, and that was
merit enough.

"Ask about the slang," he suggested. "That makes a picturesque story."

It seemed to me innocuous enough, so I engaged in conversation with a
man whom the Gay Cat had introduced as the proprietor. Much of the
slang I already knew by hearsay, such as "bulls" for policemen, a
"mouthpiece" for a lawyer to defend one when he is "ditched" or
arrested; in fact, as I busily scribbled away I must have collected a
lexicon of a hundred words or so for future reference.

"And names?" I queried. "You have some queer nicknames."

"Oh, yes," replied the man. "Now here's the Gay Cat--that's what we
call a fellow who is the finder, who enters a town ahead of the gang.
Then there's Chi Fat--that means he's from Chicago and fat. And Pitts
Slim--he's from Pittsburgh and--"

"Aw, cut it," broke in one of the others. "Pitts Slim'll be here
to-night. He'll give you the devil if he hears you talking to reporters
about him."

The proprietor began to talk of less dangerous subjects. Craig
succeeded in drawing out from him the yegg recipe for making "soup."
"It's here in this cipher," said the man, drawing out a dirty piece of
paper. "It's well known, and you can have this. Here's the key. It was
written by 'Deafy' Smith, and the police pinched it."

Craig busily translated the curious document:

Take ten or a dozen sticks of dynamite, crumble it up fine, and put it
in a pan or washbowl, then pour over it enough alcohol, wood or pure,
to cover it well. Stir it up well with your hands, being careful to
break all the lumps. Leave it set for a few minutes. Then get a few
yards of cheesecloth and tear it up in pieces and strain the mixture
through the cloth into another vessel. Wring the sawdust dry and throw
it away. The remains will be the soup and alcohol mixed. Next take the
same amount of water as you used of alcohol and pour it in. Leave the
whole set for a few minutes.

"Very interesting," commented Craig. "Safeblowing in one lesson by
correspondence school. The rest of this tells how to attack various
makes, doesn't it?"

Just then a thin man in a huge, worn ulster came stamping upstairs from
the basement, his collar up and his hat down over his eyes. There was
something indefinably familiar about him, but as his face and figure
were so well concealed, I could not tell just why I thought so.

Catching a glimpse of us, he beat a retreat across the opposite end of
the room, beckoning to the proprietor, who joined him outside the door.
I thought I heard him ask: "Who are those men? Who let them in?" but I
could not catch the reply.

One by one the other occupants of the room rose and sidled out, leaving
us alone with the Gay Cat. Kennedy reached over to get a cigarette from
my case and light it from one that I was smoking.

"That's our man, I think," he whispered--"Pitts Slim."

I said nothing, but I would have been willing to part with a large
section of my bank-account to be up on the Chatham Square station of
the Elevated just then.

There was a rush from the half-open door behind us. Suddenly everything
turned black before me; my eyes swam; I felt a stinging sensation on my
head and a weak feeling about the stomach; I sank half-conscious to the
floor. All was blank, but, dimly, I seemed to be dragged and dropped
down hard.

How long I lay there I don't know. Kennedy says it was not over five
minutes. It may have been so, but to me it seemed an age. When I opened
my eyes I was lying on my back on a very dirty sofa in another room.
Kennedy was bending over me with blood streaming from a long deep gash
on his head. Another figure was groaning in the semi-darkness opposite;
it was the Gay Cat.

"They blackjacked us," whispered Kennedy to me as I staggered to my
feet. "Then they dragged us through a secret passage into another
house. How do you feel?"

"All right," I answered, bracing myself against a chair, for I was weak
from the loss of blood, and dizzy. I was sore in every joint and
muscle. I looked about, only half comprehending. Then my recollection
flooded back with a rush. We had been locked in another room after the
attack, and left to be dealt with later. I felt in my pocket. I had
left my watch at the laboratory, but even the dollar watch I had taken
and the small sum of money in my pocketbook were gone.

Kennedy still had his camera slung over his shoulder, where he had
fastened it securely.

Here we were, imprisoned, while Pitts Slim, the man we had come after,
whoever he was, was making his escape. Somewhere across the street was
O'Connor, waiting in a room as we had agreed. There was only one window
in our room, and it opened on a miserable little dumbwaiter air-shaft.
It would be hours yet before his suspicions would be aroused and he
would discover which of the houses we were held in. Meanwhile what
might not happen to us?

Kennedy calmly set up his tripod. One leg had been broken in the
rough-house, but he tied it together with his handkerchief, now wet
with blood. I wondered how he could think of taking a picture. His very
deliberation set me fretting and fuming, and I swore at him under my
breath. Still, he worked calmly ahead. I saw him take the black box and
set it on the tripod. It was indistinct in the darkness. It looked like
a camera, and yet it had some attachment at the side that was queer,
including a little lamp. Craig bent and attached some wires about the
box.

At last he seemed ready. "Walter," he whispered, "roll that sofa
quietly over against the door. There, now the table and that bureau,
and wedge the chairs in. Keep that door shut at any cost. It's now or
never--here goes."

He stopped a moment and tinkered with the box on the tripod. "Hello!
Hello! Hello! Is that you, O'Connor?" he shouted.

I watched him in amazement. Was the man crazy? Had the blow affected
his brain? Here he was, trying to talk into a camera. A little
signalling-bell in the box commenced to ring, as if by spirit hands.

"Shut up in that room," growled a voice from outside the door. "By God,
they've barricaded the door. Come on, pals, we'll kill the spies."

A smile of triumph lighted up Kennedy's pale face. "It works, it
works," he cried as the little bell continued to buzz. "This is a
wireless telephone you perhaps have seen announced recently--good for
several hundred feet--through walls and everything. The inventor placed
it in a box easily carried by a man, including a battery, and mounted
on an ordinary camera tripod so that the user might well be taken for a
travelling photographer. It is good in one direction only, but I have a
signalling-bell here that can be rung from the other end by Hertzian
waves. Thank Heaven, it's compact and simple.

"O'Connor," he went on, "it is as I told you. It was Pitts Slim. He
left here ten or fifteen minutes ago--I don't know by what exit, but I
heard them say they would meet at the Central freightyards at midnight.
Start your plain-clothes men out and send some one here, quick, to
release us. We are locked in a room in the fourth or fifth house from
the corner. There's a secret passage to the yegg-house. The Gay Cat is
still unconscious, Jameson is groggy, and I have a bad scalp wound.
They are trying to beat in our barricade. Hurry."

I think I shall never get straight in my mind the fearful five minutes
that followed, the battering at the door, the oaths, the scuffle
outside, the crash as the sofa, bureau, table, and chairs all yielded
at once--and my relief when I saw the square-set, honest face of
O'Connor and half a dozen plainclothes men holding the yeggs who would
certainly have murdered us this time to protect their pal in his
getaway. The fact is I didn't think straight until we were halfway
uptown, speeding toward the railroad freight-yards in O'Connor's car.
The fresh air at last revived me, and I began to forget my cute and
bruises in the renewed excitement.

We entered the yards carefully, accompanied by several of the
railroad's detectives, who met us with a couple of police dogs.
Skulking in the shadow under the high embankment that separated the
yards with their interminable lines of full and empty cars on one side
and the San Juan Hill district of New York up on the bluff on the other
side, we came upon a party of three men who were waiting to catch the
midnight "side-door Pullman"--the fast freight out of New York.

The fight was brief, for we outnumbered them more than three to one.
O'Connor himself snapped a pair of steel bracelets on the thin man, who
seemed to be leader of the party.

"It's all up, Pitts Slim," he ground out from his set teeth.

One of our men flashed his bull's-eye on the three prisoners. I caught
myself as in a dream.

Pitts Slim was Maloney, the detective.

An hour later, at headquarters, after the pedigrees had been taken, the
"mugging" done, and the jewels found on the three yeggs checked off
from the list of the Branford pearls, leaving a few thousand dollars'
worth unaccounted for, O'Connor led the way into his private office.
There were Mrs. Branford and Blake, waiting.

Maloney sullenly refused to look at his former employer, as Blake
rushed over and grasped Kennedy's hand, asking eagerly: "How did you do
it, Kennedy? This is the last thing I expected."

Craig said nothing, but slowly opened a now crumpled envelope, which
contained an untoned print of a photograph. He laid it on the desk.
"There is your yeggman--at work," he said.

We bent over to look. It was a photograph of Maloney in the act of
putting something in the little wall safe in Mrs. Branford's room. In a
flash it dawned on me--the quick-shutter camera, the wire connected
with the wall safe, Craig's hint to Maloney that if some of the jewels
were found hidden in a likely place in the house, it would furnish the
last link in the chain against her, Maloney's eager acceptance of the
suggestion, and his visit to Montclair during which Craig had had hard
work to avoid him.

"Pitts Slim, alias Maloney," added Kennedy, turning to Blake, "your
shrewdest private detective, was posing in two characters at once very
successfully. He was your trusted agent in possession of the most
valuable secrets of your clients, at the same time engineering all the
robberies that you thought were fakes, and then working up the evidence
incriminating the victims themselves. He got into the Branford house
with a skeleton key, and killed the maid. The picture shows him putting
this shield-shaped brooch in the safe this afternoon--here's the
brooch. And all this time he was the leader of the most dangerous band
of yeggmen in the country."

"Mrs. Branford," exclaimed Blake, advancing and bowing most profoundly,
"I trust that you understand my awkward position? My apologies cannot
be too humble. It will give me great pleasure to hand you a certified
check for the missing gems the first thing in the morning."

Mrs. Branford bit her lip nervously. The return of the pearls did not
seem to interest her in the least.

"And I, too, must apologise for the false suspicion I had of you
and--and--depend on me, it is already forgotten," said Kennedy,
emphasising the "false" and looking her straight in the eyes.

She read his meaning and a look of relief crossed her face. "Thank
you," she murmured simply, then dropping her eyes she added in a lower
tone which no one heard except Craig: "Mr. Kennedy, how can I ever
thank you? Another night, and it would have been too late to save me
from myself."




III

THE GERM OF DEATH


By this time I was becoming used to Kennedy's strange visitors and, in
fact, had begun to enjoy keenly the uncertainty of not knowing just
what to expect from them next. Still, I was hardly prepared one evening
to see a tall, nervous foreigner stalk noiselessly and unannounced into
our apartment and hand his card to Kennedy without saying a word.

"Dr. Nicholas Kharkoff--hum--er, Jameson, you must have forgotten to
latch the door. Well, Dr. Kharkoff, what can I do for you? It is
evident something has upset you."

The tall Russian put his forefinger to his lips and, taking one of our
good chairs, placed it by the door. Then he stood on it and peered
cautiously through the transom into the hallway. "I think I eluded him
this time," he exclaimed, as he nervously took a seat. "Professor
Kennedy, I am being followed. Every step that I take somebody shadows
me, from the moment I leave my office until I return. It is enough to
drive me mad. But that is only one reason why I have come here
to-night. I believe that I can trust you as a friend of justice--a
friend of Russian freedom?"

He had included me in his earnest but somewhat vague query, so that I
did not withdraw. Somehow, apparently, he had heard of Kennedy's rather
liberal political views.

"It is about Vassili Saratovsky, the father of the Russian revolution,
as we call him, that I have come to consult you," he continued quickly.
"Just two weeks ago he was taken ill. It came on suddenly, a violent
fever which continued for a week. Then he seemed to grow better, after
the crisis had passed, and even attended a meeting of our central
committee the other night. But in the meantime Olga Samarova, the
little Russian dancer, whom yon have perhaps seen, fell ill in the same
way. Samarova is an ardent revolutionist, you know. This morning the
servant at my own home on East Broadway was also stricken, and--who
knows?--perhaps it will be my turn next. For to-night Saratovsky had an
even more violent return of the fever, with intense shivering,
excruciating pains in the limbs, and delirious headache. It is not like
anything I ever saw before. Can you look into the case before it grows
any worse, Professor?"

Again the Russian got on the chair and looked over the transom to be
sure that he was not being overheard.

"I shall be only too glad to help you in any way I can," returned
Kennedy, his manner expressing the genuine interest that he never
feigned over a particularly knotty problem in science and crime. "I had
the pleasure of meeting Saratovsky once in London. I shall try to see
him the first thing in the morning."

Dr. Kharkov's face fell. "I had hoped you would see him to-night. If
anything should happen----"

"Is it as urgent as that?"

"I believe it is," whispered Kharkoff, leaning forward earnestly. "We
can call a taxicab--it will not take long, sir. Consider, there are
many lives possibly at stake," he pleaded.

"Very well, I will go," consented Kennedy.

At the street door Kharkoff stopped short and drew Kennedy back.
"Look--across the street in the shadow. There is the man. If I start
toward him he will disappear; he is very clever. He followed me from
Saratovsky's here, and has been waiting for me to come out."

"There are two taxicabs waiting at the stand," suggested Kennedy.
"Doctor, you jump in the first, and Jameson and I will take the second.
Then he can't follow us."

It was done in a moment, and we were whisked away, to the chagrin of
the figure, which glided impotently out of the shadow in vain pursuit,
too late even to catch the number of the cab.

"A promising adventure," commented Kennedy, as we bumped along over New
York's uneven asphalt. "Have you ever met Saratovsky?"

"No," I replied dubiously. "Will you guarantee that he will not blow us
up with a bomb?"

"Grandmother!" replied Craig. "Why, Walter, he is the most gentle,
engaging old philosopher----"

"That ever cut a throat or scuttled a ship?" I interrupted.

"On the contrary," insisted Kennedy, somewhat nettled, "he is a
patriarch, respected by every faction of the revolutionists, from the
fighting organisation to the believers in non-resistance and Tolstoy. I
tell you, Walter, the nation that can produce a man such as Saratovsky
deserves and some day will win political freedom. I have heard of this
Dr. Kharkoff before, too. His life would be a short one if he were in
Russia. A remarkable man, who fled after those unfortunate uprisings in
1905. Ah, we are on Fifth Avenue. I suspect that he is taking us to a
club on the lower part of the avenue, where a number of the Russian
reformers live, patiently waiting and planning for the great
'awakening' in their native land."

Kharkoff's cab had stopped. Our quest had indeed brought us almost to
Washington Square. Here we entered an old house of the past generation.
As we passed through the wide hall, I noted the high ceilings, the
old-fashioned marble mantels stained by time, the long, narrow rooms
and dirty-white woodwork, and the threadbare furniture of black walnut
and horsehair.

Upstairs in a small back room we found the venerable Saratovsky,
tossing, half-delirious with the fever, on a disordered bed. His was a
striking figure in this sordid setting, with a high intellectual
forehead and deep-set, glowing coals of eyes which gave a hint at the
things which had made his life one of the strangest among all the
revolutionists of Russia and the works he had done among the most
daring. The brown dye was scarcely yet out of his flowing white
beard--a relic of his last trip back to his fatherland, where he had
eluded the secret police in the disguise of a German gymnasium
professor.

Saratovsky extended a thin, hot, emaciated hand to us, and we remained
standing. Kennedy said nothing for the moment. The sick man motioned
feebly to us to come closer.

"Professor Kennedy," he whispered, "there is some deviltry afoot. The
Russian autocracy would stop at nothing. Kharkoff has probably told you
of it. I am so weak----"

He groaned and sank back, overcome by a chill that seemed to rack his
poor gaunt form.

"Kazanovitch can tell Professor Kennedy something, Doctor. I am too
weak to talk, even at this critical time. Take him to see Boris and
Ekaterina."

Almost reverently we withdrew, and Kharkoff led us down the hall to
another room. The door was ajar, and a light disclosed a man in a
Russian peasant's blouse, bending laboriously over a writing-desk. So
absorbed was he that not until Kharkoff spoke did he look up. His
figure was somewhat slight and his face pointed and of an ascetic mould.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "You have recalled me from a dream. I fancied I was
on the old mir with Ivan, one of my characters. Welcome, comrades."

It flashed over me at once that this was the famous Russian novelist,
Boris Kazanovitch. I had not at first connected the name with that of
the author of those gloomy tales of peasant life. Kazanovitch stood
with his hands tucked under his blouse.

"Night is my favourite time for writing," he explained. "It is then
that the imagination works at its best."

I gazed curiously about the room. There seemed to be a marked touch of
a woman's hand here and there; it was unmistakable. At last my eye
rested on a careless heap of dainty wearing apparel on a chair in the
corner. "Where is Nevsky?" asked Dr. Kharkoff, apparently missing the
person who owned the garments.

"Ekaterina has gone to a rehearsal of the little play of Gershuni's
escape from Siberia and betrayal by Rosenberg. She will stay with
friends on East Broadway to-night. She has deserted me, and here I am
all alone, finishing a story for one of the American magazines."

"Ah, Professor Kennedy, that is unfortunate," commented Kharkoff. "A
brilliant woman is Mademoiselle Nevsky--devoted to the cause. I know
only one who equals her, and that is my patient downstairs, the little
dancer, Samarova."

"Samarova is faithful--Nevsky is a genius," put in Kazanovitch.
Kharkoff said nothing for a time, though it was easy to see he regarded
the actress highly.

"Samarova," he said at length to us, "was arrested for her part in the
assassination of Grand Duke Sergius and thrown into solitary
confinement in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. They tortured
her, the beasts--burned her body with their cigarettes. It was
unspeakable. But she would not confess, and finally they had to let her
go. Nevsky, who was a student of biology at the University of St.
Petersburg when Von Plehve was assassinated, was arrested, but her
relatives had sufficient influence to secure her release. They met in
Paris, and Nevsky persuaded Olga to go on the stage and come to New
York."

"Next to Ekaterina's devotion to the cause is her devotion to science,"
said Kazanovitch, opening a door to a little room. Then he added: "If
she were not a woman, or if your universities were less prejudiced, she
would be welcome anywhere as a professor. See, here is her laboratory.
It is the best we--she can afford. Organic chemistry, as you call it in
English, interests me too, but of course I am not a trained
scientist--I am a novelist."

The laboratory was simple, almost bare. Photographs of Koch, Ehrlich,
Metchnikoff, and a number of other scientists adorned the walls. The
deeply stained deal table was littered with beakers and test-tubes.

"How is Saratovsky?" asked the writer of the doctor, aside, as we gazed
curiously about.

Kharkoff shook his head gravely. "We have just come from his room. He
was too weak to talk, but he asked that you tell Mr. Kennedy anything
that it is necessary he should know about our suspicions."

"It is that we are living with the sword of Damocles constantly
dangling over our heads, gentlemen," cried Kazanovitch passionately,
turning toward us. "You will excuse me if I get some cigarettes
downstairs? Over them I will tell you what we fear."

A call from Saratovsky took the doctor away also at the same moment,
and we were left alone.

"A queer situation, Craig," I remarked, glancing involuntarily at the
heap of feminine finery on the chair, as I sat down before
Kazanovitch's desk.

"Queer for New York; not for St. Petersburg," was his laconic reply, as
he looked around for another chair. Everything was littered with books,
and papers, and at last he leaned over and lifted the dress from the
chair to place it on the bed, as the easiest way of securing a seat in
the scantily furnished room.

A pocketbook and a letter fell to the floor from the folds of the
dress. He stooped to pick them up, and I saw a strange look of surprise
on his face. Without a moment's hesitation he shoved the letter into
his pocket and replaced the other things as he had found them.

A moment later Kazanovitch returned with a large box of Russian
cigarettes. "Be seated, sir," he said to Kennedy, sweeping a mass of
books and papers off a large divan. "When Nevsky is not here the room
gets sadly disarranged. I have no genius for order."

Amid the clouds of fragrant light smoke we waited for Kazanovitch to
break the silence.

"Perhaps you think that the iron hand of the Russian prime minister has
broken the backbone of revolution in Russia," he began at length. "But
because the Duma is subservient, it does not mean that all is over. Not
at all. We are not asleep. Revolution is smouldering, ready to break
forth at any moment. The agents of the government know it. They are
desperate. There is no means they would not use to crush us. Their long
arm reaches even to New York, in this land of freedom."

He rose and excitedly paced the room. Somehow or other, this man did
not prepossess me. Was it that I was prejudiced by a puritanical
disapproval of the things that pass current in Old World morality? Or
was it merely that I found the great writer of fiction seeking the
dramatic effect always at the cost of sincerity?

"Just what is it that you suspect?" asked Craig, anxious to dispense
with the rhetoric and to get down to facts. "Surely, when three persons
are stricken, you must suspect something."

"Poison," replied Kazanovitch quickly. "Poison, and of a kind that even
the poison doctors of St. Petersburg have never employed. Dr. Kharkoff
is completely baffled. Your American doctors--two were called in to see
Saratovsky--say it is the typhus fever. But Kharkoff knows better.
There is no typhus rash. Besides"--and he leaned forward to emphasise
his words--"one does not get over typhus in a week and have it again as
Saratovsky has."

I could see that Kennedy was growing impatient. An idea had occurred to
him, and only politeness kept him listening to Kazanovitch longer.

"Doctor," he said, as Kharkoff entered the room again, "do you suppose
you could get some perfectly clean test-tubes and sterile bouillon from
Miss Nevsky's laboratory? I think I saw a rack of tubes on the table."

"Surely," answered Kharkoff.

"You will excuse us, Mr. Kazanovitch," apologised Kennedy briskly, "but
I feel that I am going to have a hard day to-morrow and--by the way,
would you be so kind as to come up to my laboratory some time during
the day, and continue your story."

On the way out Craig took the doctor aside for a moment, and they
talked earnestly. At last Craig motioned to me.

"Walter," he explained, "Dr. Kharkoff is going to prepare some cultures
in the test-tubes to-night so that I can make a microscopic examination
of the blood of Saratovsky, Samarova, and later of his servant. The
tubes will be ready early in the morning, and I have arranged with the
doctor for you to call and get them if you have no objection."

I assented, and we started downstairs. As we passed a door on the
second floor, a woman's voice called out, "Is that you, Boris?"

"No, Olga, this is Nicholas," replied the doctor. "It is Samarova," he
said to us as he entered.

In a few moments he rejoined us. "She is no better," he continued, as
we again started away. "I may as well tell you, Professor Kennedy, just
how matters stand here. Samarova is head over heels in love with
Kazanovitch--you heard her call for him just now? Before they left
Paris, Kazanovitch showed some partiality for Olga, but now Nevsky has
captured him. She is indeed a fascinating woman, but as for me, if Olga
would consent to become Madame Kharkoff, it should be done tomorrow,
and she need worry no longer over her broken contract with the American
theatre managers. But women are not that way. She prefers the hopeless
love. Ah, well, I shall let you know if anything new happens.
Good-night, and a thou-sand thanks for your help, gentlemen."

Nothing was said by either of us on our journey uptown, for it was late
and I, at least, was tired.

But Kennedy had no intention of going to bed, I found. Instead, he sat
down in his easy chair and shaded his eyes, apparently in deep thought.
As I stood by the table to fill my pipe for a last smoke, I saw that he
was carefully regarding the letter he had picked up, turning it over
and over, and apparently debating with himself what to do with it.

"Some kinds of paper can be steamed open without leaving any trace," he
remarked in answer to my unspoken question, laying the letter down
before me.

I read the address: "M. Alexander Alexandrovitch Orloff,--Rue de----,
Paris, France."

"Letter-opening has been raised to a fine art by the secret service
agents of foreign countries," he continued. "Why not take a chance? The
simple operation of steaming a letter open is followed by reburnishing
the flap with a bone instrument, and no trace is left. I can't do that,
for this letter is sealed with wax. One way would be to take a matrix
of the seal before breaking the wax and then replace a duplicate of it.
No, I won't risk it. I'll try a scientific way."

Between two pieces of smooth wood, Craig laid the letter flat, so that
the edges projected about a thirty-second of an inch. He flattened the
projecting edge of the envelope, then roughened it, and finally slit it
open.

"You see, Walter, later I will place the letter back, apply a hair line
of strong white gum, and unite the edges of the envelope under
pressure. Let us see what we have here."

He drew out what seemed to be a manuscript on very thin paper, and
spread it out flat on the table before us. Apparently it was a
scientific paper on a rather unusual subject, "Spontaneous Generation
of Life." It was in longhand and read:

Many thanks for the copy of the paper by Prof. Betaillon of Dijon on
the artificial fertilization of the eggs of frogs. I consider it a most
important advance in the artificial generation of life.

I will not attempt to reproduce in facsimile the entire manuscript, for
it is unnecessary, and, in fact, I merely set down part of its contents
here because it seemed so utterly valueless to me at the time. It went
on to say:

While Betaillon punctured the eggs with a platinum needle and developed
them by means of electric discharges, Loeb in America placed eggs of
the sea-urchin in a strong solution of sea water, then in a bath where
they were subjected to the action of butyric acid. Finally they were
placed in ordinary sea water again, where they developed in the natural
manner. Delage at Roscorf used a liquid containing salts of magnesia
and tannate of ammonia to produce the same result.

In his latest book on the Origin of Life Dr. Charlton Bastian tells of
using two solutions. One consisted of two or three drops of dilute
sodium silicate with eight drops of liquor ferri pernitratis to one
ounce of distilled water. The other was composed of the same amount of
the silicate with six drops of dilute phosphoric acid and six grains of
ammonium phosphate. He filled sterilised tubes, sealed them
hermetically, and heated them to 125 or 145 degrees, Centigrade,
although 60 or 70 degrees would have killed any bacteria remaining in
them.

Next he exposed them to sunlight in a south window for from two to four
months. When the tubes were opened Dr. Bastian found organisms in them
which differed in no way from real bacteria. They grew and multiplied.
He contends that he has proved the possibility of spontaneous
generation of life.

Then there were the experiments of John Butler Burke of Cambridge, who
claimed that he had developed "radiobes" in tubes of sterilised
bouillon by means of radium emanations. Daniel Berthelot in France last
year announced that he had used the ultra-violet rays to duplicate
nature's own process of chlorophyll assimilation. He has broken up
carbon dioxide and water-vapour in the air in precisely the same way
that the green cells of plants do it.

Leduc at Nantes has made crystals grow from an artificial "egg"
composed of certain chemicals. These crystals show all the apparent
vital phenomena without being actually alive. His work is interesting,
for it shows the physical forces that probably control minute life
cells, once they are created.

"What do you make of it?" asked Kennedy, noting the puzzled look on my
face as I finished reading.

"Well, recent research in the problem of the origin of life may be very
interesting," I replied. "There are a good many chemicals mentioned
here--I wonder if any of them is poisonous? But I am of the opinion
that there is something more to this manuscript than a mere scientific
paper."

"Exactly, Walter," said Kennedy in half raillery. "What I wanted to
know was how you would suggest getting at that something."

Study as I might, I could make nothing out of it. Meanwhile Craig was
busily figuring with a piece of paper and a pencil.

"I give it up, Craig," I said at last. "It is late. Perhaps we had
better both turn in, and we may have some ideas on it in the morning."

For answer he merely shook his head and continued to scribble and
figure on the paper. With a reluctant good-night I shut my door,
determined to be up early in the morning and go for the tubes that
Kharkoff was to prepare.

But in the morning Kennedy was gone. I dressed hastily, and was just
about to go out when he hurried in, showing plainly the effects of
having spent a sleepless night. He flung an early edition of a
newspaper on the table.

"Too late," he exclaimed. "I tried to reach Kharkoff, but it was too
late."

"Another East Side Bomb Outrage," I read. "While returning at a late
hour last night from a patient, Dr. Nicholas Kharkoff, of--East
Broadway, was severely injured by a bomb which had been placed in his
hallway earlier in the evening. Dr. Kharkoff, who is a well-known
physician on the East Side, states that he has been constantly shadowed
by some one unknown for the past week or two. He attributes his escape
with his life to the fact that since he was shadowed he has observed
extreme caution. Yesterday his cook was poisoned and is now dangerously
ill. Dr. Kharkoff stands high in the Russian community, and it is
thought by the police that the bomb was placed by a Russian political
agent, as Kharkoff has been active in the ranks of the revolutionists."

"But what made you anticipate it?" I asked of Kennedy, considerably
mystified.

"The manuscript," he replied.

"The manuscript? How? Where is it?"

"After I found that it was too late to save Kharkoff and that he was
well cared for at the hospital, I hurried to Saratovsky's. Kharkoff had
fortunately left the tubes there, and I got them. Here they are. As for
the manuscript in the letter, I was going to ask you to slip upstairs
by some strategy and return it where I found it, when you went for the
tubes this morning. Kazanovitch was out, and I have returned it myself,
so you need not go, now."

"He's coming to see you today, isn't he?"

"I hope so. I left a note asking him to bring Miss Nevsky, if possible,
too. Come, let us breakfast and go over to the laboratory. They may
arrive at any moment. Besides, I'm interested to see what the tubes
disclose."

Instead of Kazanovitch awaiting us at the laboratory, however, we found
Miss Nevsky, haggard and worn. She was a tall, striking girl with more
of the Gaul than the Slav in her appearance. There was a slightly
sensuous curve to her mouth, but on the whole her face was striking and
intellectual. I felt that if she chose she could fascinate a man so
that he would dare anything. I never before understood why the Russian
police feared the women revolutionists so much. It was because they
were themselves, plus every man they could influence.

Nevsky appeared very excited. She talked rapidly, and fire flashed from
her grey eyes. "They tell me at the club," she began, "that you are
investigating the terrible things that are happening to us. Oh,
Professor Kennedy, it is awful! Last night I was staying with some
friends on East Broadway. Suddenly we heard a terrific explosion up the
street. It was in front of Dr. Kharkoff's house. Thank Heaven, he is
still alive I But I was so unnerved I could not sleep. I fancied I
might be the next to go.

"Early this morning I hastened to return to Fifth Avenue. As I entered
the door of my room I could not help thinking of the horrible fate of
Dr. Kharkoff. For some unknown reason, just as I was about to push the
door farther open, I hesitated and looked--I almost fainted. There
stood another bomb just inside. If I had moved the door a fraction of
an inch it would have exploded. I screamed, and Olga, sick as she was,
ran to my assistance--or perhaps she thought something had happened to
Boris. It is standing there yet. None of us dares touch it. Oh,
Professor Kennedy, it is dreadful, dreadful. And I cannot find
Boris--Mr. Kazanovitch, I mean. Saratovsky, who is like a father to us
all, is scarcely able to speak. Dr. Kharkoff is helpless in the
hospital. Oh, what are we to do, what are we to do?"

She stood trembling before us, imploring.

"Calm yourself, Miss Nevsky," said Kennedy in a reassuring tone. "Sit
down and let us plan. I take it that it was a chemical bomb and not one
with a fuse, or you would have a different story to tell. First of all,
we must remove it. That is easily done."

He called up a near-by garage and ordered an automobile. "I will drive
it myself," he ordered, "only send a man around with it immediately."

"No, no, no," she cried, running toward him, "you must not risk it. It
is bad enough that we should risk our lives. But strangers must not.
Think, Professor Kennedy. Suppose the bomb should explode at a touch!
Had we not better call the police and let them take the risk, even if
it does get into the papers?"

"No," replied Kennedy firmly. "Miss Nevsky, I am quite willing to take
the risk. Besides, here comes the automobile."

"You are too kind," she exclaimed. "Kazanovitch himself could do no
more. How am I ever to thank you?"

On the back of the automobile Kennedy placed a peculiar oblong box,
swung on two concentric rings balanced on pivots, like a most delicate
compass.

We rode quickly downtown, and Kennedy hurried into the house, bidding
us stand back. With a long pair of tongs he seized the bomb firmly. It
was a tense moment. Suppose his hand should unnecessarily tremble, or
he should tip it just a bit--it might explode and blow him to atoms.
Keeping it perfectly horizontal he carried it carefully out to the
waiting automobile and placed it gingerly in the box.

"Wouldn't it be a good thing to fill the box with water?" I suggested,
having read somewhere that that was the usual way of opening a bomb,
under water.

"No," he replied, as he closed the lid, "that wouldn't do any good with
a bomb of this sort. It would explode under water just as well as in
air. This is a safety bomb-carrier. It is known as the Cardan
suspension. It was invented by Professor Cardono, an Italian. You see,
it is always held in a perfectly horizontal position, no matter how you
jar it. I am now going to take the bomb to some safe and convenient
place where I can examine it at my leisure. Meanwhile, Miss Nevsky, I
will leave you in charge of Mr. Jameson."

"Thank you so much," she said. "I feel better now. I didn't dare go
into my own room with that bomb at the door. If Mr. Jameson can only
find out what has become of Mr. Kazanovitch, that is all I want. What
do you suppose has happened to him? Is he, too, hurt or ill?"

"Very well, then," Craig replied. "I will commission you, Walter, to
find Kazanovitch. I shall be back again shortly before noon to examine
the wreck of Kharkoff's office. Meet me there. Goodbye, Miss Nevsky."

It was not the first time that I had had a roving commission to find
some one who had disappeared in New York. I started by inquiring for
every possible place that he might be found. No one at the Fifth Avenue
house could tell me anything definite, though they were able to give me
a number of places where he was known. I consumed practically the whole
morning going from one place to another on the East Side. Some of the
picturesque haunts of the revolutionists would have furnished material
for a story in themselves. But nowhere had they any word of
Kazanovitch, until I visited a Polish artist who was illustrating his
stories. He had been there, looking very worn and tired, and had talked
vacantly about the sketches which the artist had showed him. After that
I lost all trace of him again. It was nearly noon as I hurried to meet
Craig at Kharkoff's.

Imagine my surprise to see Kazanovitch already there, seated in the
wrecked office, furiously smoking cigarettes and showing evident signs
of having something very disturbing on his mind. The moment he caught
sight of me, he hurried forward.

"Is Professor Kennedy coming soon?" he inquired eagerly. "I was going
up to his laboratory, but I called up Nevsky, and she said he would be
here at noon." Then he put his hand up to my ear and whispered, "I have
found out who it was who shadowed Kharkoff."

"Who?" I asked, saying nothing of my long search of the morning.

"His name is Revalenko--Feodor Revalenko. I saw him standing across the
street in front of the house last night after you had gone. When
Kharkoff left, he followed him. I hurried out quietly and followed both
of them. Then the explosion came. This man slipped down a narrow street
as soon as he saw Kharkoff fall. As people were running to Kharkoff's
assistance, I did the same. He saw me following him and ran, and I ran,
too, and overtook him. Mr. Jameson, when I looked into his face I could
not believe it. Revalenko--he is one of the most ardent members of our
organisation. He would not tell me why he had followed Kharkoff. I
could make him confess nothing. But I am sure he is an agent
provocateur of the Russian government, that he is secretly giving away
the plans that we are making, everything. We have a plot on
now--perhaps he has informed them of that. Of course he denied setting
the bomb or trying to poison any of us, but he was very frightened. I
shall denounce him at the first opportunity."

I said nothing. Kazanovitch regarded me keenly to see what impression
the story made on me, but I did not let my looks betray anything,
except proper surprise, and he seemed satisfied.

It might be true, after all, I reasoned, the more I thought of it. I
had heard that the Russian consul-general had a very extensive spy
system in the city. In fact, even that morning I had had pointed out to
me some spies at work in the public libraries, watching what young
Russians were reading. I did not doubt that there were spies in the
very inner circle of the revolutionists themselves.

At last Kennedy appeared. While Kazanovitch poured forth his story,
with here and there, I fancied, an elaboration of a particularly
dramatic point, Kennedy quickly examined the walls and floor of the
wrecked office with his magnifying-glass. When he had concluded his
search, he turned to Kazanovitch.

"Would it be possible," he asked, "to let this Revalenko believe that
he could trust you, that it would be safe for him to visit you to-night
at Saratovsky's? Surely you can find some way of reassuring him."

"Yes, I think that can be arranged," said Kazanovitch. "I will go to
him, will make him think I have misunderstood him, that I have not lost
faith in him, provided he can explain all. He will come. Trust me."

"Very well, then. To-night at eight I shall be there," promised
Kennedy, as the novelist and he shook hands.

"What do you think of the Revalenko story?" I asked of Craig, as we
started uptown again.

"Anything is possible in this case," he answered sententiously.

"Well," I exclaimed, "this all is truly Russian. For intrigue they are
certainly the leaders of the world to-day. There is only one person
that I have any real confidence in, and that is old Saratovsky himself.
Somebody is playing traitor, Craig. Who is it?"

"That is what science will tell us to-night," was his brief reply.
There was no getting anything out of Craig until he was absolutely sure
that his proofs had piled up irresistibly.

Promptly at eight we met at the old house on Fifth Avenue. Kharkoff's
wounds had proved less severe than had at first been suspected, and,
having recovered from the shock, he insisted on being transferred from
the hospital in a private ambulance so that he could be near his
friends. Saratovsky, in spite of his high fever, ordered that the door
to his room be left open and his bed moved so that he could hear and
see what passed in the room down the hall. Nevsky was there and
Kazanovitch, and even brave Olga Samarova, her pretty face burning with
the fever, would not be content until she was carried upstairs,
although Dr. Kharkoff protested vigorously that it might have fatal
consequences. Revalenko, an enigma of a man, sat stolidly. The only
thing I noticed about him was an occasional look of malignity at Nevsky
and Kazanovitch when he thought he was unobserved.

It was indeed a strange gathering, the like of which the old house had
never before harboured in all its varied history. Every one was on the
qui vive, as Kennedy placed on the table a small wire basket containing
some test-tubes, each tube corked with a small wadding of cotton. There
was also a receptacle holding a dozen glass-handled platinum wires, a
microscope, and a number of slides. The bomb, now rendered innocuous by
having been crushed in a huge hydraulic press, lay in fragments in the
box.

"First, I want you to consider the evidence of the bomb," began
Kennedy. "No crime, I firmly believe, is ever perpetrated without
leaving some clue. The slightest trace, even a drop of blood no larger
than a pin-head, may suffice to convict a murderer. The impression made
on a cartridge by the hammer of a pistol, or a single hair found on the
clothing of a suspected person, may serve as valid proof of crime.

"Until lately, however, science was powerless against the bomb-thrower.
A bomb explodes into a thousand parts, and its contents suddenly become
gaseous. You can't collect and investigate the gases. Still, the
bomb-thrower is sadly deceived if he believes the bomb leaves no trace
for the scientific detective. It is difficult for the chemist to find
out the secrets of a shattered bomb. But it can be done.

"I examined the walls of Dr. Kharkoff's house, and fortunately was able
to pick out a few small fragments of the contents of the bomb which had
been thrown out before the flame ignited them. I have analysed them,
and find them to be a peculiar species of blasting-gelatine. It is made
at only one factory in this country, and I have a list of purchasers
for some time back. One name, or rather the description of an assumed
name, in the list agrees with other evidence I have been able to
collect. Moreover, the explosive was placed in a lead tube. Lead tubes
are common enough. However, there is no need of further evidence."

He paused, and the revolutionists stared fixedly at the fragments of
the now harmless bomb before them.

"The exploded bomb," concluded Craig, "was composed of the same
materials as this, which I found unexploded at the door of Miss
Nevsky's room--the same sort of lead tube, the same blasting-gelatine.
The fuse, a long cord saturated in sulphur, was merely a blind. The
real method of explosion was by means of a chemical contained in a
glass tube which was inserted after the bomb was put in place. The
least jar, such as opening a door, which would tip the bomb ever so
little out of the horizontal, was all that was necessary to explode it.
The exploded bomb and the unexploded were in all respects
identical--the same hand set both."

A gasp of astonishment ran through the circle. Could it be that one of
their own number was playing false? In at least this instance in the
warfare of the chemist and the dynamiter the chemist had come out ahead.

"But," Kennedy hurried along, "the thing that interests me most about
this case is not the evidence of the bombs. Bombs are common enough
weapons, after all. It is the evidence of almost diabolical cunning
that has been shown in the effort to get rid of the father of the
revolution, as you like to call him."

Craig cleared his throat and played with our feelings as a cat does
with a mouse. "Strange to say, the most deadly, the most insidious, the
most elusive agency for committing murder is one that can be obtained
and distributed with practically no legal restrictions. Any doctor can
purchase disease germs in quantities sufficient to cause thousands and
thousands of deaths without giving any adequate explanation for what
purpose he requires them. More than that, any person claiming to be a
scientist or having some acquaintance with science and scientists can
usually obtain germs without difficulty. Every pathological laboratory
contains stores of disease germs, neatly sealed up in test-tubes,
sufficient to depopulate whole cities and even nations. With almost no
effort, I myself have actually cultivated enough germs to kill every
person within a radius of a mile of the Washington Arch down the
street. They are here in these test-tubes."

We scarcely breathed. Suppose Kennedy should let loose this deadly foe,
these germs of death, whatever they were? Yet that was precisely what
some fiend incarnate had done, and that fiend was sitting in the room
with us.

"Here I have one of the most modern dark-field microscopes," he
resumed. "On this slide I have placed a little pin-point of a culture
made from the blood of Saratovsky. I will stain the culture.
Now--er--Walter, look through the microscope under this powerful light
and tell us what you see on the slide."

I bent over. "In the darkened field I see a number of germs like
dancing points of coloured light," I said. "They are wriggling about
with a peculiar twisting motion."

"Like a corkscrew," interrupted Kennedy, impatient to go on. "They are
of the species known as Spirilla. Here is another slide, a culture from
the blood of Samarova."

"I see them there, too," I exclaimed.

Every one was now crowding about for a glimpse, as I raised my head.

"What is this germ?" asked a hollow voice from the doorway.

We looked, startled. There stood Saratovsky, more like a ghost than a
living being. Kennedy sprang forward and caught him as he swayed, and I
moved up an armchair for him.

"It is the spirillum Obermeieri," said Kennedy, "the germ of the
relapsing fever, but of the most virulent Asiatic strain. Obermeyer,
who discovered it, caught the disease and died of it, a martyr to
science."

A shriek of consternation rang forth from Samarova. The rest of us
paled, but repressed our feelings.

"One moment," added Kennedy hastily. "Don't be unnecessarily alarmed. I
have something more to say. Be calm for a moment longer."

He unrolled a blue-print and placed it on the table.

"This," he continued, "is the photographic copy of a message which, I
suppose, is now on its way to the Russian minister to France in Paris.
Some one in this room besides Mr. Jameson and myself has seen this
letter before. I will hold it up as I pass around and let each one see
it."

In intense silence Kennedy passed before each of us, holding up the
blue-print and searchingly scanning the faces. No one betrayed by any
sign that he recognised it. At last it came to Revalenko himself.

"The checkerboard, the checkerboard!" he cried, his eyes half starting
from their sockets as he gazed at it.

"Yes," said Kennedy in a low tone, "the checkerboard. It took me some
time to figure it out. It is a cipher that would have baffled Poe. In
fact, there is no means of deciphering it unless you chance to know its
secret. I happened to have heard of it a long time ago abroad, yet my
recollection was vague, and I had to reconstruct it with much
difficulty. It took me all night to do it. It is a cipher, however,
that is well known among the official classes of Russia.

"Fortunately I remember the crucial point, without which I should still
be puzzling over it. It is that a perfectly innocent message, on its
face, may be used to carry a secret, hidden message. The letters which
compose the words, instead of being written continuously along, as we
ordinarily write, have, as you will observe if you look twice, breaks,
here and there. These breaks in the letters stand for numbers.

"Thus the first words are 'Many thanks.' The first break is at the end
of the letter 'n,' between it and the 'y.' There are three letters
before this break. That stands for the number 3.

"When you come to the end of a word, if the stroke is down at the end
of the last letter, that means no break; if it is up, it means a break.
The stroke at the end of the 'y' is plainly down. Therefore there is no
break until after the 't.' That gives us the number 2. So we get 1
next, and again 1, and still again 1; then 5; then 5; then 1; and so on.

"Now, take these numbers in pairs, thus 3-2; 1-1; 1-5; 5-1. By
consulting this table you can arrive at the hidden message."

He held up a cardboard bearing the following arrangement of the letters
of the alphabet:

   1  2  3  4  5
 1 A  B  C  D  E
 2 F  G  H  IJ K
 3 L  M  N  O  P
 4 Q  R  S  T  U
 5 V  W  X  Y  Z

"Thus," he continued, "3-2 means the third column and second line. That
is 'H.' Then 1-1 is 'A '; 1-5 is 'V '; 5-1 is 'E'--and we get the word
'Have.'"

Not a soul stirred as Kennedy unfolded the cipher. What was the
terrible secret in that scientific essay I had puzzled so
unsuccessfully over, the night before?

"Even this can be complicated by choosing a series of fixed numbers to
be added to the real numbers over and over again. Or the order of the
alphabet can be changed. However, we have the straight cipher only to
deal with here."

"And what for Heaven's sake does it reveal?" asked Saratovsky, leaning
forward, forgetful of the fever that was consuming him.

Kennedy pulled out a piece of paper on which he had written the hidden
message and read:

"Have successfully inoculated S. with fever. Public opinion America
would condemn violence. Think best death should appear natural.
Samarova infected also. Cook unfortunately took dose in food intended
Kharkoff. Now have three cases. Shall stop there at present. Dangerous
excite further suspicion health authorities."

Rapidly I eliminated in my mind the persons mentioned, as Craig read.
Saratovsky of course was not guilty, for the plot had centred about
him. Nor was little Samarova, nor Dr. Kharkoff. I noted Revalenko and
Kazanovitch glaring at each other and hastily tried to decide which I
more strongly suspected.

"Will get K.," continued Kennedy. "Think bomb perhaps all right. K.
case different from S. No public sentiment."

"So Kharkoff had been marked for slaughter," I thought. Or was "K."
Kazanovitch? I regarded Revalenko more closely. He was suspiciously
sullen.

"Must have more money. Cable ten thousand rubles at once Russian
consul-general. Will advise you plot against Czar as details perfected
here. Expect break up New York band with death of S."

If Kennedy himself had thrown a bomb or scattered broadcast the
contents of the test-tubes, the effect could not have been more
startling than his last quiet sentence--and sentence it was in two
senses.

"Signed," he said, folding the paper up deliberately, "Ekaterina
Nevsky."

It was as if a cable had snapped and a weight had fallen. Revalenko
sprang up and grasped Kazanovitch by the hand. "Forgive me, comrade,
for ever suspecting you," he cried.

"And forgive me for suspecting you," replied Kazanovitch, "but how did
you come to shadow Kharkoff?"

"I ordered him to follow Kharkoff secretly and protect him," explained
Saratovsky.

Olga and Ekaterina faced each other fiercely. Olga was trembling with
emotion. Nevsky stood coldly, defiantly. If ever there was a consummate
actress it was she, who had put the bomb at her own door and had rushed
off to start Kennedy on a blind trail.

"You traitress," cried Olga passionately, forgetting all in her
outraged love. "You won his affections from me by your false
beauty--yet all the time you would have killed him like a dog for the
Czar's gold. At last you are unmasked--you Azeff in skirts. False
friend--you would have killed us all--Saratovsky, Kharkoff--"

"Be still, little fool," exclaimed Nevsky contemptuously. "The spirilla
fever has affected your brains. Bah! I will not stay with those who are
so ready to suspect an old comrade on the mere word of a charlatan.
Boris Kazanovitch, do you stand there SILENT and let this insult be
heaped upon me?"

For answer, Kazanovitch deliberately turned his back on his lover of a
moment ago and crossed the room. "Olga," he pleaded, "I have been a
fool. Some day I may be worthy of your love. Fever or not, I must beg
your forgiveness."

With a cry of delight the actress flung her arms about Boris, as he
imprinted a penitent kiss on her warm lips.

"Simpleton," hissed Nevsky with curling lips. "Now you, too, will die."

"One moment, Ekaterina Nevsky," interposed Kennedy, as he picked up
some vacuum tubes full of a golden-yellow powder, that lay on the
table. "The spirilla, as scientists now know, belong to the same family
as those which cause what we call, euphemistically, the 'black plague.'
It is the same species as that of the African sleeping sickness and the
Philippine yaws. Last year a famous doctor whose photograph I see in
the next room, Dr. Ehrlich of Frankfort, discovered a cure for all
these diseases. It will rid the blood of your victims of the Asiatic
relapsing fever germs in forty-eight hours. In these tubes I have the
now famous salvarsan."

With a piercing shriek of rage at seeing her deadly work so quickly and
completely undone, Nevsky flung herself into the little laboratory
behind her and bolted the door.

Her face still wore the same cold, contemptuous smile, as Kennedy
gently withdrew a sharp scalpel from her breast.

"Perhaps it is best this way, after all," he said simply.




IV

THE FIREBUG


A big, powerful, red touring-car, with a shining brass bell on the
front of it, was standing at the curb before our apartment late one
afternoon as I entered. It was such a machine as one frequently sees
threading its reckless course in and out among the trucks and
street-cars, breaking all rules and regulations, stopping at nothing,
the bell clanging with excitement, policemen holding back traffic
instead of trying to arrest the driver--in other words, a Fire
Department automobile.

I regarded it curiously for a moment, for everything connected with
modern fire-fighting is interesting. Then I forgot about it as I was
whisked up in the elevator, only to have it recalled sharply by the
sight of a strongly built, grizzled man in a blue uniform with red
lining. He was leaning forward, earnestly pouring forth a story into
Kennedy's ear.

"And back of the whole thing, sir," I heard him say as he brought his
large fist down on the table, "is a firebug--mark my words."

Before I could close the door, Craig caught my eye, and I read in his
look that he had a new case--one that interested him greatly. "Walter,"
he cried, "this is Fire Marshal McCormick. It's all right, McCormick.
Mr. Jameson is an accessory both before and after the fact in my
detective cases."

A firebug!--one of the most dangerous of criminals. The word excited my
imagination at once, for the newspapers had lately been making much of
the strange and appalling succession of apparently incendiary fires
that had terrorised the business section of the city.

"Just what makes you think that there is a firebug--one firebug, I
mean--back of this curious epidemic of fires?" asked Kennedy, leaning
back in his morrischair with his finger-tips together and his eyes half
closed as if expecting a revelation from some subconscious train of
thought while the fire marshal presented his case.

"Well, usually there is no rhyme or reason about the firebug," replied
McCormick, measuring his words, "but this time I think there is some
method in his madness. You know the Stacey department-stores and their
allied dry-goods and garment-trade interests?"

Craig nodded. Of course we knew of the gigantic dry-goods combination.
It had been the talk of the press at the time of its formation, a few
months ago, especially as it included among its organisers one very
clever business woman, Miss Rebecca Wend. There had been considerable
opposition to the combination in the trade, but Stacey had shattered it
by the sheer force of his personality.

McCormick leaned forward and, shaking his forefinger to emphasise his
point, replied slowly, "Practically every one of these fires has been
directed against a Stacey subsidiary or a corporation controlled by
them."

"But if it has gone as far as that," put in Kennedy, "surely the
regular police ought to be of more assistance to you than I."

"I have called in the police," answered McCormick wearily, "but they
haven't even made up their minds whether it is a single firebug or a
gang. And in the meantime, my God, Kennedy, the firebug may start a
fire that will get beyond control!"

"You say the police haven't a single clue to any one who might be
responsible for the fires?" I asked, hoping that perhaps the marshal
might talk more freely of his suspicions to us than he had already
expressed himself in the newspaper interviews I had read.

"Absolutely not a clue--except such as are ridiculous," replied
McCormick, twisting his cap viciously.

No one spoke. We were waiting for McCormick to go on.

"The first fire," he began, repeating his story for my benefit,
although Craig listened quite as attentively as if he had not heard it
already, "was at the big store of Jones, Green leaders have been
arrested, but I can't say we have anything against any of them. Still,
Max Bloom, the manager of this company, insists that the fire was set
for revenge, and indeed it looks as much like a fire for revenge as the
Jones-Green fire does"--here he lowered his voice confidentially--"for
the purpose of collecting insurance.

"Then came the fire in the Slawson Building, a new loft-building that
had been erected just off Fourth Avenue. Other than the fact that the
Stacey interests put up the money for financing this building there
seemed to be no reason for that fire at all. The building was reputed
to be earning a good return on the investment, and I was at a loss to
account for the fire. I have made no arrests for it--just set it down
as the work of a pure pyromaniac, a man who burns buildings for fun, a
man with an inordinate desire to hear the fire-engines screech through
the streets and perhaps get a chance to show a little heroism in
'rescuing' tenants. However, the adjuster for the insurance company,
Lazard, and the adjuster for the insured, Hartstein, have reached an
agreement, and I believe the insurance is to be paid."

"But," interposed Kennedy, "I see no evidence of organised arson so
far."

"Wait," replied the fire marshal. "That was only the beginning, you
understand. A little later came a fire that looked quite like an
attempt to mask a robbery by burning the building afterward. That was
in a silk-house near Spring Street. But after a controversy the
adjusters have reached an agreement on that case. I mention these fires
because they show practically all the types of work of the various
kinds of firebug--insurance, revenge, robbery, and plain insanity. But
since the Spring Street fire, the character of the fires has been more
uniform. They have all been in business places, or nearly all."

Here the fire marshal launched forth into a catalogue of fires of
suspected incendiary origin, at least eight in all. I took them down
hastily, intending to use the list some time in a box head with an
article in the Star. When he had finished his list I hastily counted up
the number of killed. There were six, two of them firemen, and four
employees. The money loss ranged into the millions.

McCormick passed his hand over his forehead to brush off the
perspiration. "I guess this thing has got on my nerves," he muttered
hoarsely. "Everywhere I go they talk about nothing else. If I drop into
the restaurant for lunch, my waiter talks of it. If I meet a newspaper
man, he talks of it. My barber talks of it--everybody. Sometimes I
dream of it; other times I lie awake thinking about it. I tell you,
gentlemen, I've sweated blood over this problem."

"But," insisted Kennedy, "I still can't see why you link all these
fires as due to one firebug. I admit there is an epidemic of fires. But
what makes you so positive that it is all the work of one man?"

"I was coming to that. For one thing, he isn't like the usual firebug
at all. Ordinarily they start their fires with excelsior and petroleum,
or they smear the wood with paraffin or they use gasoline, benzine, or
something of that sort. This fellow apparently scorns such crude
methods. I can't say how he starts his fires, but in every case I have
mentioned we have found the remains of a wire. It has something to do
with electricity--but what, I don't know. That's one reason why I think
these fires are all connected. Here's another."

McCormick pulled a dirty note out of his pocket and laid it on the
table. We read it eagerly:

Hello, Chief! Haven't found the firebug yet, have you? You will know
who he is only when I am dead and the fires stop. I don't suppose you
even realise that the firebug talks with you almost every day about
catching the firebug. That's me. I am the real firebug, that is writing
this letter. I am going to tell you why I am starting these fires.
There's money in it--an easy living. They never caught me in Chicago or
anywhere, so you might as well quit looking for me and take your
medicine.
                       A. SPARK.

"Humph!" ejaculated Kennedy, "he has a sense of humour, anyhow--A.
Spark!"

"Queer sense of humour," growled McCormick, gritting his teeth. "Here's
another I got to-day:

Say, Chief: We are going to get busy again and fire a big
department-store next. How does that suit Your Majesty? Wait till the
fun begins when the firebug gets to work again.
                       A. SPARK.

"Well, sir, when I got that letter," cried McCormick, "I was almost
ready to ring in a double-nine alarm at once--they have me that bluffed
out. But I said to myself, 'There's only one thing to do--see this man
Kennedy.' So here I am. You see what I am driving at? I believe that
firebug is an artist at the thing, does it for the mere fun of it and
the ready money in it. But more than that, there must be some one back
of him. Who is the man higher up--we must catch him. See?"

"A big department-store," mused Kennedy. "That's definite--there are
only a score or so of them, and the Stacey interests control several.
Mac, I'll tell you what I'll do. Let me sit up with you to-night at
headquarters until we get an alarm. By George, I'll see this case
through to a finish!"

The fire marshal leaped to his feet and bounded over to where Kennedy
was seated. With one hand on Craig's shoulder and the other grasping
Craig's hand, he started to speak, but his voice choked.

"Thanks," he blurted out huskily at last. "My reputation in the
department is at stake, my promotion, my position itself, my--my
family--er--er--"

"Not a word, sir," said Kennedy, his features working sympathetically.
"To-night at eight I will go on watch with you. By the way, leave me
those A. Spark notes."

McCormick had so far regained his composure as to say a hearty
farewell. He left the room as if ten years had been lifted off his
shoulders. A moment later he stuck his head in the door again. "I'll
have one of the Department machines call for you, gentlemen," he said.

After the marshal had gone, we sat for several minutes in silence.
Kennedy was reading and rereading the notes, scowling to himself as if
they presented a particularly perplexing problem. I said nothing,
though my mind was teeming with speculations. At length he placed the
notes very decisively on the table and snapped out the remark,

"Yes, it must be so."

"What?" I queried, still drumming away at my typewriter, copying the
list of incendiary fires against the moment when the case should be
complete and the story "released for publication," as it were.

"This note," he explained, picking up the first one and speaking
slowly, "was written by a woman."

I swung around in my chair quickly. "Get out!" I exclaimed sceptically.
"No woman ever used such phrases."

"I didn't say composed by a woman--I said written by a woman," he
replied.

"Oh," I said, rather chagrined.

"It is possible to determine sex from handwriting in perhaps eighty
cases out of a hundred," Kennedy went on, enjoying my discomfiture.
"Once I examined several hundred specimens of writing to decide that
point to my satisfaction. Just to test my conclusions I submitted the
specimens to two professional graphologists. I found that our results
were slightly different, but I averaged the thing up to four cases out
of five correct. The so-called sex signs are found to be largely
influenced by the amount of writing done, by age, and to a certain
extent by practice and professional requirements, as in the
conventional writing of teachers and the rapid hand of bookkeepers. Now
in this case the person who wrote the first note was only an
indifferent writer. Therefore the sex signs are pretty likely to be
accurate. Yes, I'm ready to go on the stand and swear that this note
was written by a woman and the second by a man."

"Then there's a woman in the case, and she wrote the first note for the
firebug--is that what you mean?" I asked.

"Exactly. There nearly always is a woman in the case, somehow or other.
This woman is closely connected with the firebug. As for the firebug,
whoever it may be, he performs his crimes with cold premeditation and,
as De Quincey said, in a spirit of pure artistry. The lust of fire
propels him, and he uses his art to secure wealth. The man may be a
tool in the hands of others, however. It's unsafe to generalise on the
meagre facts we now have. Oh, well, there is nothing we can do just
yet. Let's take a walk, get an early dinner, and be back here before
the automobile arrives."

Not a word more did Kennedy say about the case during our stroll or
even on the way downtown to fire headquarters.

We found McCormick anxiously waiting for us. High up in the sandstone
tower at headquarters, we sat with him in the maze of delicate
machinery with which the fire game is played in New York. In great
glass cases were glistening brass and nickel machines with discs and
levers and bells, tickers, sheets of paper, and annunciators without
number. This was the fire-alarm telegraph, the "roulettewheel of the
fire demon," as some one has aptly called it.

"All the alarms for fire from all the boroughs, both from the regular
alarm-boxes and the auxiliary systems, come here first over the network
of three thousand miles or more of wire nerves that stretch out through
the city," McCormick was explaining to us.

A buzzer hissed.

"Here's an alarm now," he exclaimed, all attention.

"Three," "six," "seven," the numbers appeared on the annunciator. The
clerks in the office moved as if they were part of the mechanism. Twice
the alarm was repeated, being sent out all over the city. McCormick
relapsed from his air of attention.

"That alarm was not in the shopping district," he explained, much
relieved. "Now the fire-houses in the particular district where that
fire is have received the alarm instantly. Four engines, two
hook-and-ladders, a water-tower, the battalion chief, and a deputy are
hurrying to that fire. Hello, here comes another."

Again the buzzer sounded. "One," "four," "five" showed in the
annunciator.

Even before the clerks could respond, McCormick had dragged us to the
door. In another instant we were wildly speeding uptown, the bell on
the front of the automobile clanging like a fire-engine, the siren horn
going continuously, the engine of the machine throbbing with energy
until the water boiled in the radiator.

"Let her out, Frank," called McCormick to his chauffeur, as we rounded
into a broad and now almost deserted thoroughfare.

Like a red streak in the night we flew up that avenue, turned into
Fourteenth Street on two wheels, and at last were on Sixth Avenue. With
a jerk and a skid we stopped. There were the engines, the hose-carts,
the hook-and-ladders, the salvage corps, the police establishing fire
lines--everything. But where was the fire?

The crowd indicated where it ought to be--it was Stacey's. Firemen and
policemen were entering the huge building. McCormick shouldered in
after them, and we followed.

"Who turned in the alarm?" he asked as we mounted the stairs with the
others.

"I did," replied a night watchman on the third landing. "Saw a light in
the office on the third floor back--something blazing. But it seems to
be out now."

We had at last come to the office. It was dark and deserted, yet with
the lanterns we could see the floor of the largest room littered with
torn books and ledgers.

Kennedy caught his foot in something. It was a loose wire on the floor.
He followed it. It led to an electric-light socket, where it was
attached.

"Can't you turn on the lights?" shouted McCormick to the watchman.

"Not here. They're turned on from downstairs, and they're off for the
night. I'll go down if you want me to and--"

"No," roared Kennedy. "Stay where you are until I follow the wire to
the other end."

At last we came to a little office partitioned off from the main room.
Kennedy carefully opened the door. One whiff of the air from it was
sufficient. He banged the door shut again.

"Stand back with those lanterns, boys," he ordered.

I sniffed, expecting to smell illuminating-gas. Instead, a peculiar,
sweetish odour pervaded the air. For a moment it made me think of a
hospital operating-room.

"Ether," exclaimed Kennedy. "Stand back farther with those lights and
hold them up from the floor."

For a moment he seemed to hesitate as if at loss what to do next.
Should he open the door and let this highly inflammable gas out or
should he wait patiently until the natural ventilation of the little
office had dispelled it?

While he was debating he happened to glance out of the window and catch
sight of a drug-store across the street.

"Walter," he said to me, "hurry across there and get all the saltpeter
and sulphur the man has in the shop."

I lost no time in doing so. Kennedy dumped the two chemicals into a pan
in the middle of the main office, about three-fifths saltpeter and
two-fifths sulphur, I should say. Then he lighted it. The mass burned
with a bright flame but without explosion. We could smell the
suffocating fumes from it, and we retreated. For a moment or two we
watched it curiously at a distance.

"That's very good extinguishing-powder," explained Craig as we sniffed
at the odour. "It yields a large amount of carbon dioxide and sulphur
dioxide. Now--before it gets any worse--I guess it's safe to open the
door and let the ether out. You see this is as good a way as any to
render safe a room full of inflammable vapour. Come, we'll wait outside
the main office for a few minutes until the gases mix."

It seemed hours before Kennedy deemed it safe to enter the office again
with a light. When we did so, we made a rush for the little cubby-hole
of an office at the other end. On the floor was a little can of ether,
evaporated of course, and beside it a small apparatus apparently used
for producing electric sparks.

"So, that's how he does it," mused Kennedy, fingering the can
contemplatively. "He lets the ether evaporate in a room for a while and
then causes an explosion from a safe distance with this little electric
spark. There's where your wire comes in, McCormick. Say, my man, you
can switch on the lights from downstairs, now."

As we waited for the watchman to turn on the lights I exclaimed, "He
failed this time because the electricity was shut off."

"Precisely, Walter," assented Kennedy.

"But the flames which the night watchman saw, what of them?" put in
McCormick, considerably mystified. "He must have seen something."

Just then the lights winked up.

"Oh, that was before the fellow tried to touch off the ether vapour,"
explained Kennedy. "He had to make sure of his work of destruction
first--and, judging by the charred papers about, he did it well. See,
he tore leaves from the ledgers and lighted them on the floor. There
was an object in all that. What was it? Hello! Look at this mass of
charred paper in the corner."

He bent down and examined it carefully.

"Memoranda of some kind, I guess. I'll save this burnt paper and look
it over later. Don't disturb it. I'll take it away myself."

Search as we might, we could find no other trace of the firebug, and at
last we left. Kennedy carried the charred paper carefully in a large
hat-box.

"There'll be no more fires to-night, McCormick," he said. "But I'll
watch with you every night until we get this incendiary. Meanwhile I'll
see what I can decipher, if anything, in this burnt paper."

Next day McCormick dropped in to see us again. This time he had another
note, a disguised scrawl which read:

Chief: I'm not through. Watch me get another store yet. I won't fall
down this time.
                       A. SPARK.

Craig scowled as he read the note and handed it to me. "The man's
writing this time--like the second note," was all he said. "McCormick,
since we know where the lightning is going to strike, don't you think
it would be wiser to make our headquarters in one of the engine-houses
in that district?"

The fire marshal agreed, and that night saw us watching at the
fire-house nearest the department-store region.

Kennedy and I were assigned to places on the hose-cart and engine,
respectively, Kennedy being in the hose-cart so that he could be with
McCormick. We were taught to descend one of the four brass poles hand
under elbow, from the dormitory on the second floor. They showed us how
to jump into the "turn-outs"--a pair of trousers opened out over the
high top boots. We were given helmets which we placed in regulation
fashion on our rubber coats, turned inside out with the right armhole
up. Thus it came about that Craig and I joined the Fire Department
temporarily. It was a novel experience for us both.

"Now, Walter," said Kennedy, "as long as we have gone so far, we'll
'roll' to every fire, just like the regulars. We won't take any chances
of missing the firebug at any time of night or day."

It proved to be a remarkably quiet evening with only one little blaze
in a candy-shop on Seventh Avenue. Most of the time we sat around
trying to draw the men out about their thrilling experiences at fires.
But if there is one thing the fireman doesn't know it is the English
language when talking about himself. It was quite late when we turned
into the neat white cots upstairs.

We had scarcely fallen into a half doze in our strange surroundings
when the gong downstairs sounded. It was our signal.

We could hear the rapid clatter of the horses' hoofs as they were
automatically released from their stalls and the collars and harness
mechanically locked about them. All was stir, and motion, and shouts.
Craig and I had bounded awkwardly into our paraphernalia at the first
sound. We slid ungracefully down the pole and were pushed and shoved
into our places, for scientific management in a New York fire-house has
reached one hundred per cent. efficiency, and we were not to be allowed
to delay the game.

The oil-torch had been applied to the engine, and it rolled forth,
belching flames. I was hanging on for dear life, now and then catching
sight of the driver urging his plunging horses onward like a charioteer
in a modern Ben Hur race. The tender with Craig and McCormick was lost
in the clouds of smoke and sparks that trailed behind us. On we dashed
until we turned into Sixth Avenue. The glare of the sky told us that
this time the firebug had made good.

"I'll be hanged if it isn't the Stacey store again," shouted the man
next me on the engine as the horses lunged up the avenue and stopped at
the allotted hydrant. It was like a war game. Every move had been
planned out by the fire-strategists, even down to the hydrants that the
engines should take at a given fire.

Already several floors were aflame, the windows glowing like
open-hearth furnaces, the glass bulging and cracking and the flames
licking upward and shooting out in long streamers. The hose was coupled
up in an instant, the water turned on, and the limp rubber and canvas
became as rigid as a post with the high pressure of the water being
forced through it. Company after company dashed into the blazing
"fireproof" building, urged by the hoarse profanity of the chief.

Twenty or thirty men must have disappeared into the stifle from which
the police retreated. There was no haste, no hesitation. Everything
moved as smoothly as if by clockwork. Yet we could not see one of the
men who had disappeared into the burning building. They had been
swallowed up, as it were. For that is the way with the New York
firemen. They go straight to the heart of the fire. Now and then a
stream of a hose spat out of a window, showing that the men were still
alive and working. About the ground floors the red-helmeted salvage
corps were busy covering up what they could of the goods with rubber
sheets to protect them from water. Doctors with black bags and white
trousers were working over the injured. Kennedy and I were busy about
the engine, and there was plenty for us to do.

Above the shrill whistle for more coal I heard a voice shout, "Began
with an explosion--it's the firebug, all right." I looked up. It was
McCormick, dripping and grimy, in a high state of excitement, talking
to Kennedy.

I had been so busy trying to make myself believe that I was really of
some assistance about the engine that I had not taken time to watch the
fire itself. It was now under control. The sharp and scientific attack
had nipped what might have been one of New York's historic
conflagrations.

"Are you game to go inside?" I heard McCormick ask.

For answer Kennedy simply nodded. As for me, where Craig went I went.

The three of us drove through the scorching door, past twisted masses
of iron still glowing dull red in the smoke and steam, while the water
hissed and spattered and slopped. The smoke was still suffocating, and
every once in a while we were forced to find air close to the floor and
near the wall. My hands and arms and legs felt like lead, yet on we
drove.

Coughing and choking, we followed McCormick to what had been the heart
of the fire, the office. Men with picks and axes and all manner of
cunningly devised instruments were hacking and tearing at the walls and
woodwork, putting out the last smouldering sparks while a thousand
gallons of water were pouring in at various parts of the building where
the fire still showed spirit.

There on the floor of the office lay a charred, shapeless,
unrecognisable mass. What was that gruesome odour in the room? Burned
human flesh? I recoiled from what had once been the form of a woman.

McCormick uttered a cry, and as I turned my eyes away, I saw him
holding a wire with the insulation burned off. He had picked it up from
the wreckage of the floor. It led to a bent and blackened can--that had
once been a can of ether.

My mind worked rapidly, but McCormick blurted out the words before I
could form them, "Caught in her own trap at last!"

Kennedy said nothing, but as one of the firemen roughly but reverently
covered the remains with a rubber sheet, he stooped down and withdrew
from the breast of the woman a long letter-file. "Come, let us go," he
said.

Back in our apartment again we bathed our racking heads, gargled our
parched throats, and washed out our bloodshot eyes, in silence. The
whole adventure, though still fresh and vivid in my mind, seemed
unreal, like a dream. The choking air, the hissing steam, the ghastly
object under the tarpaulin--what did it all mean? Who was she? I strove
to reason it out, but could find no answer.

It was nearly dawn when the door opened and McCormick came in and
dropped wearily into a chair. "Do you know who that woman was?" he
gasped. "It was Miss Wend herself."

"Who identified her?" asked Kennedy calmly.

"Oh, several people. Stacey recognised her at once. Then Hartstein, the
adjuster for the insured, and Lazard, the adjuster for the company,
both of whom had had more or less to do with her in connection with
settling up for other fires, recognised her. She was a very clever
woman, was Miss Wend, and a very important cog in the Stacey
enterprises. And to think she was the firebug, after all. I can hardly
believe it."

"Why believe it?" asked Kennedy quietly.

"Why believe it?" echoed McCormick. "Stacey has found shortages in his
books due to the operation of her departments. The bookkeeper who had
charge of the accounts in her department, a man named Douglas, is
missing. She must have tried to cover up her operations by fires and
juggling the accounts. Failing in that she tried to destroy Stacey's
store itself, twice. She was one of the few that could get into the
office unobserved. Oh, it's a clear case now. To my mind, the heavy
vapours of ether--they are heavier than air, you know--must have
escaped along the surface of the floor last night and become ignited at
a considerable distance from where she expected. She was caught in a
back-draught, or something of the sort. Well, thank God, we've seen the
last of this firebug business. What's that?"

Kennedy had laid the letter-file on the table. "Nothing. Only I found
this embedded in Miss Wend's breast right over her heart."

"Then she was murdered?" exclaimed McCormick.

"We haven't come to the end of this case yet," replied Craig evasively.
"On the contrary, we have just got our first good clue. No, McCormick,
your theory will not hold water. The real point is to find this missing
bookkeeper at any cost. You must persuade him to confess what he knows.
Offer him immunity--he was only a pawn in the hands of those higher up."

McCormick was not hard to convince. Tired as he was, he grabbed up his
hat and started off to put the final machinery in motion to wind up the
long chase for the firebug.

"I must get a couple of hours' sleep," he yawned as he left us, "but
first I want to start something toward finding Douglas. I shall try to
see you about noon."

I was too exhausted to go to the office. In fact, I doubt if I could
have written a line. But I telephoned in a story of personal
experiences at the Stacey fire and told them they could fix it up as
they chose and even sign my name to it.

About noon McCormick came in again, looking as fresh as if nothing had
happened. He was used to it.

"I know where Douglas is," he announced breathlessly.

"Fine," said Kennedy, "and can you produce him at any time when it is
necessary?"

"Let me tell you what I have done. I went down to the district attorney
from here--routed him out of bed. He has promised to turn loose his
accountants to audit the reports of the adjusters, Hartstein and
Lazard, as well as to make a cursory examination of what Stacey books
there are left. He says he will have a preliminary report ready
to-night, but the detailed report will take days, of course.

"It's the Douglas problem that is difficult, though. I haven't seen
him, but one of the central-office men, by shadowing his wife, has
found that he is in hiding down on the East Side. He's safe there; he
can't make a move to get away without being arrested. The trouble is
that if I arrest him, the people higher up will know it and will escape
before I can get his confession and the warrants. I'd much rather have
the whole thing done at once. Isn't there some way we can get the whole
Stacey crowd together, make the arrest of Douglas and nab the guilty
ones in the case, all together without giving them a chance to escape
or to shield the real firebug?"

Kennedy thought a moment. "Yes," he answered slowly. "There is. If you
can get them all together at my laboratory to-night at, say, eight
o'clock, I'll give you two clear hours to make the arrest of Douglas,
get the confession, and swear out the warrants. All that you'll need to
do is to let me talk a few minutes this afternoon with the judge who
will sit in the night court to-night. I shall install a little machine
on his desk in the court, and we'll catch the real criminal--he'll
never get a chance to cross the state line or disappear in any way. You
see, my laboratory will be neutral ground. I think you can get them to
come, inasmuch as they know the bookkeeper is safe and that dead women
tell no tales."

When next I saw Kennedy it was late in the afternoon, in the
laboratory. He was arranging something in the top drawer of a flat-top
desk. It seemed to be two instruments composed of many levers and discs
and magnets, each instrument with a roll of paper about five inches
wide. On one was a sort of stylus with two silk cords attached at right
angles to each other near the point. On the other was a capillary glass
tube at the junction of two aluminum arms, also at right angles to each
other.

It was quite like old times to see Kennedy at work in his laboratory
preparing for a "seance." He said nothing as I watched him curiously,
and I asked nothing. Two sets of wires were attached to each of the
instruments, and these he carefully concealed and led out the window.
Then he arranged the chairs on the opposite side of the desk from his
own.

"Walter," he said, "when our guests begin to arrive I want you to be
master of ceremonies. Simply keep them on the opposite side of the desk
from me. Don't let them move their chairs around to the right or left.
And, above all, leave the doors open. I don't want any one to be
suspicious or to feel that he is shut in in any way. Create the
impression that they are free to go and come when they please."

Stacey arrived first in a limousine which he left standing at the door
of the Chemistry Building. Bloom and Warren came together in the
latter's car. Lazard came in a taxicab which he dismissed, and
Hartstein came up by the subway, being the last to arrive. Every one
seemed to be in good humour.

I seated them as Kennedy had directed. Kennedy pulled out the extension
on the left of his desk and leaned his elbow on it as he began to
apologise for taking up their time at such a critical moment. As near
as I could make out, he had quietly pulled out the top drawer of his
desk on the right, the drawer in which I had seen him place the
complicated apparatus. But as nothing further happened I almost forgot
about it in listening to him. He began by referring to the burned
papers he had found in the office.

"It is sometimes possible," he continued, "to decipher writing on
burned papers if one is careful. The processes of colour photography
have recently been applied to obtain a legible photograph of the
writing on burned manuscripts which are unreadable by any other known
means. As long as the sheet has not been entirely disintegrated
positive results can be obtained every time. The charred manuscript is
carefully arranged in as near its original shape as possible, on a
sheet of glass and covered with a drying varnish, after which it is
backed by another sheet of glass.

"By using carefully selected colour screens and orthochromatic plates a
perfectly legible photograph of the writing may be taken, although
there may be no marks on the charred remains that are visible to the
eye. This is the only known method in many cases. I have here some
burned fragments of paper which I gathered up after the first attempt
to fire your store, Mr. Stacey."

Stacey coughed in acknowledgment. As for Craig, he did not mince
matters in telling what he had found.

"Some were notes given in favour of Rebecca Wend and signed by Joseph
Stacey," he said quietly. "They represent a large sum of money in the
aggregate. Others were memoranda of Miss Wend's, and still others were
autograph letters to Miss Wend of a very incriminating nature in
connection with the fires by another person."

Here he laid the "A. Spark" letters on the desk before him. "Now," he
added "some one, in a spirit of bravado, sent these notes to the fire
marshal at various times. Curiously enough, I find that the handwriting
of the first one bears a peculiar resemblance to that of Miss Wend,
while the second and third, though disguised also, greatly suggest the
handwriting of Miss Wend's correspondent."

No one moved. But I sat aghast. She had been a part of the conspiracy,
after all, not a pawn. Had they played fair?

"Taking up next the remarkable succession of fires," resumed Kennedy,
"this case presents some unique features. In short, it is a clear case
of what is known as a 'firebug trust.' Now just what is a firebug
trust? Well, it is, as near as I can make out, a combination of
dishonest merchants and insurance adjusters engaged in the business of
deliberately setting fires for profit. These arson trusts are not the
ordinary kind of firebugs whom the firemen plentifully damn in the
fixed belief that one-fourth of all fires are kindled by incendiaries.
Such 'trusts' exist all over the country. They have operated in
Chicago, where they are said to have made seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars in one year. Another group is said to have its
headquarters in Kansas City. Others have worked in St. Louis,
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo. The fire marshals of Illinois,
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio have investigated their work. But until
recently New York has been singularly free from the organised work of
this sort. Of course we have plenty of firebugs and pyromaniacs in a
small way, but the big conspiracy has never come to my personal
attention before.

"Now, the Jones-Green fire, the Quadrangle fire, the Slawson Building
fire, and the rest, have all been set for one purpose--to collect
insurance. I may as well say right here that some people are in bad in
this case, but that others are in worse. Miss Wend was originally a
party to the scheme. Only the trouble with Miss Wend was that she was
too shrewd to be fooled. She insisted that she have her full share of
the pickings. In that case it seems to have been the whole field
against Miss Wend, not a very gallant thing, nor yet according to the
adage about honour among thieves.

"A certain person whose name I am frank to say I do not
know--yet--conceived the idea of destroying the obligations of the
Stacey companies to Miss Wend as well as the incriminating evidence
which she held of the 'firebug trust,' of which she was a member up to
this time. The plan only partly succeeded. The chief coup, which was to
destroy the Stacey store into the bargain, miscarried.

"What was the result? Miss Wend, who had been hand in glove with the
'trust,' was now a bitter enemy, perhaps would turn state's evidence.
What more natural than to complete the conspiracy by carrying out the
coup and at the same time get rid of the dangerous enemy of the
conspirators? I believe that Miss Wend was lured under some pretext or
other to the Stacey store on the night of the big fire. The person who
wrote the second and third 'A. Spark' letters did it. She was murdered
with this deadly instrument"--Craig laid the letter-file on the
table--"and it was planned to throw the entire burden of suspicion on
her by asserting that there was a shortage in the books of her
department."

"Pooh!" exclaimed Stacey, smoking complacently at his cigar. "We have
been victimised in those fires by people who have grudges against us,
labour unions and others. This talk of an arson trust is bosh--yellow
journalism. More than that, we have been systematically robbed by a
trusted head of a department, and the fire at Stacey's was the way the
thief took to cover--er--her stealings. At the proper time we shall
produce the bookkeeper Douglas and prove it."

Kennedy fumbled in the drawer of the desk, then drew forth a long strip
of paper covered with figures. "All the Stacey companies," he said,
"have been suffering from the depression that exists in the trade at
present. They are insolvent. Glance over that, Stacey. It is a summary
of the preliminary report of the accountants of the district attorney
who have been going over your books to-day."

Stacey gasped. "How did you get it? The report was not to be ready
until nine o'clock, and it is scarcely a quarter past now."

"Never mind how I got it. Go over it with the adjusters, anybody. I
think you will find that there was no shortage in Miss Wend's
department, that you were losing money, that you were in debt to Miss
Wend, and that she would have received the lion's share of the proceeds
of the insurance if the firebug scheme had turned out as planned."

"We absolutely repudiate these figures as fiction," said Stacey,
angrily turning toward Kennedy after a hurried consultation.

"Perhaps, then, you'll appreciate this," replied Craig, pulling another
piece of paper from the desk. "I'll read it. 'Henry Douglas, being duly
sworn, deposes and says that one'--we'll call him 'Blank' for the
present--'with force and arms did feloniously, wilfully, and
intentionally kill Rebecca Wend whilst said Blank was wilfully burning
and setting on fire--'"

"One moment," interrupted Stacey. "Let me see that paper."

Kennedy laid it down so that only the signature showed. The name was
signed in a full round hand, "Henry Douglas."

"It's a forgery," cried Stacey in rage. "Not an hour before I came into
this place I saw Henry Douglas. He had signed no such paper then. He
could not have signed it since, and you could not have received it. I
brand that document as a forgery."

Kennedy stood up and reached down into the open drawer on the right of
his desk. From it he lifted the two machines I had seen him place there
early in the evening.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this is the last scene of the play you are
enacting. You see here on the desk an instrument that was invented many
years ago, but has only recently become really practical. It is the
telautograph--the long-distance writer. In this new form it can be
introduced into the drawer of a desk for the use of any one who may
wish to make inquiries, say, of clerks without the knowledge of a
caller. It makes it possible to write a message under these conditions
and receive an answer concerning the personality or business of the
individual seated at one's elbow without leaving the desk or seeming to
make inquiries.

"With an ordinary pencil I have written on the paper of the
transmitter. The silk cord attached to the pencil regulates the current
which controls a pencil at the other end of the line. The receiving
pencil moves simultaneously with my pencil. It is the principle of the
pantagraph cut in half, one half here, the other half at the end of the
line, two telephone wires in this case connecting the halves.

"While we have been sitting here I have had my right hand in the
half-open drawer of my desk writing with this pencil notes of what has
transpired in this room. These notes, with other evidence, have been
simultaneously placed before Magistrate Brenner in the night court. At
the same time, on this other, the receiving, instrument the figures of
the accountants written in court have been reproduced here. You have
seen them. Meanwhile, Douglas was arrested, taken before the
magistrate, and the information for a charge of murder in the first
degree perpetrated in committing arson has been obtained. You have seen
it. It came in while you were reading the figures."

The conspirators seemed dazed.

"And now," continued Kennedy, "I see that the pencil of the receiving
instrument is writing again. Let us see what it is."

We bent over. The writing started: "County of New York. In the name of
the People of the State of New York--"

Kennedy did not wait for us to finish reading. He tore the writing from
the telautograph and waved it over his head.

"It is a warrant. You are all under arrest for arson. But you, Samuel
Lazard, are also under arrest for the murder of Rebecca Wend and six
other persons in fires which you have set. You are the real firebug,
the tool of Joseph Stacey, perhaps, but that will all come out in the
trial. McCormick, McCormick," called Craig, "it's all right. I have the
warrant. Are the police there?"

There was no answer.

Lazard and Stacey made a sudden dash for the door, and in an instant
they were in Stacey's waiting car. The chauffeur took off the brake and
pulled the lever. Suddenly Craig's pistol flashed, and the chauffeur's
arms hung limp and useless on the steering-wheel.

As McCormick with the police loomed up, a moment late, out of the
darkness and after a short struggle clapped the irons on Stacey and
Lazard in Stacey's own magnificently upholstered car, I remarked
reproachfully to Kennedy: "But, Craig, you have shot the innocent
chauffeur. Aren't you going to attend to him?"

"Oh," replied Kennedy nonchalantly, "don't worry about that. They were
only rock-salt bullets. They didn't penetrate far. They'll sting for
some time, but they're antiseptic, and they'll dissolve and absorb
quickly."




V

THE CONFIDENCE KING


"Shake hands with Mr. Burke of the secret service, Professor Kennedy."

It was our old friend First Deputy O'Connor who thus in his bluff way
introduced a well-groomed and prosperous-looking man whom he brought up
to our apartment one evening.

The formalities were quickly over. "Mr. Burke and I are old friends,"
explained O'Connor. "We try to work together when we can, and very
often the city department can give the government service a lift, and
then again it's the other way--as it was in the trunk-murder mystery.
Show Professor Kennedy the 'queer,' Tom."

Burke drew a wallet out of his pocket, and from it slowly and
deliberately selected a crisp, yellow-backed hundred-dollar bill. He
laid it flat on the table before us. Diagonally across its face from
the upper left-to the lower right-hand corner extended two parallel
scorings in indelible ink.

Not being initiated into the secrets of the gentle art of "shoving the
queer," otherwise known as passing counterfeit money, I suppose my
questioning look betrayed me.

"A counterfeit, Walter," explained Kennedy. "That's what they do with
bills when they wish to preserve them as records in the secret service
and yet render them valueless."

Without a word Burke handed Kennedy a pocket magnifying-glass, and
Kennedy carefully studied the bill. He was about to say something when
Burke opened his capacious wallet again and laid down a Bank of England
five-pound note which had been similarly treated.

Again Kennedy looked through the glass with growing amazement written
on his face, but before he could say anything, Burke laid down an
express money-order on the International Express Company.

"I say," exclaimed Kennedy, putting down the glass, "stop! How many
more of these are there?"

Burke smiled. "That's all," he replied, "but it's not the worst."

"Not the worst? Good heavens, man, next you'll tell me that the
government is counterfeiting its own notes! How much of this stuff do
you suppose has been put into circulation?"

Burke chewed a pencil thoughtfully, jotted down some figures on a piece
of paper, and thought some more. "Of course I can't say exactly, but
from hints I have received here and there I should think that a safe
bet would be that some one has cashed in upward of half a million
dollars already."

"Whew," whistled Kennedy, "that's going some. And I suppose it is all
salted away in some portable form. What an inventory it must be--good
bills, gold, diamonds, and jewellery. This is a stake worth playing
for."

"Yes," broke in O'Connor, "but from my standpoint, professionally, I
mean, the case is even worse than that. It's not the counterfeits that
bother us. We understand that, all right. But," and he leaned forward
earnestly and brought his fist down hard on the table with a resounding
Irish oath, "the finger-print system, the infallible finger-print
system, has gone to pieces. We've just imported this new 'portrait
parle' fresh from Paris and London, invented by Bertillon and all that
sort of thing--it has gone to pieces, too. It's a fine case, this is,
with nothing left of either scientific or unscientific
criminal-catching to rely on. There--what do you know about that?"

"You'll have to tell me the facts first," said Kennedy. "I can't
diagnose your disease until I know the symptoms."

"It's like this," explained Burke, the detective in him showing now
with no effort at concealment. "A man, an Englishman, apparently, went
into a downtown banker's office about three months ago and asked to
have some English bank-notes exchanged for American money. After he had
gone away, the cashier began to get suspicious. He thought there was
something phoney in the feel of the notes. Under the glass he noticed
that the little curl on the 'e' of the 'Five' was missing. It's the
protective mark. The water-mark was quite equal to that of the
genuine--maybe better. Hold that note up to the light and see for
yourself.

"Well, the next day, down to the Custom House, where my office is, a
man came who runs a swell gambling-house uptown. He laid ten brand-new
bills on my desk. An Englishman had been betting on the wheel. He
didn't seem to care about winning, and he cashed in each time with a
new one-hundred-dollar bill. Of course he didn't care about winning. He
cared about the change--that was his winning. The bill on the table is
one of the original ten, though since then scores have been put into
circulation. I made up my mind that it was the same Englishman in both
cases.

"Then within a week, in walked the manager of the Mozambique Hotel--he
had been stung with the fake International Express money-order--same
Englishman, too, I believe."

"And you have no trace of him?" asked Kennedy eagerly.

"We had him under arrest once--we thought. A general alarm was sent
out, of course, to all the banks and banking-houses. But the man was
too clever to turn up in that way again. In one gambling-joint which
women frequent a good deal, a classy dame who might have been a duchess
or a--well, she was a pretty good loser and always paid with
hundred-dollar bills. Now, you know women are NOT good losers. Besides,
the hundred-dollar-bill story had got around among the gambling-houses.
This joint thought it worth taking a chance, so they called me up on
the 'phone, extracted a promise that I'd play fair and keep O'Connor
from raiding them, but wouldn't I please come up and look over the dame
of the yellow bills? Of course I made a jump at it. Sure enough, they
were the same counterfeits. I could tell because the silk threads were
drawn in with coloured ink. But instead of making an arrest I decided
to trail the lady.

"Now, here comes the strange part of it. Let me see, this must have
been over two months ago. I followed her out to a suburban town,
Riverwood along the Hudson, and to a swell country house overlooking
the river, private drive, stone gate, hedges, old trees, and all that
sort of thing. A sporty-looking Englishman met her at the gate with one
of those big imported touring-cars, and they took a spin.

"I waited a day or so, but nothing more happened, and I began to get
anxious. Perhaps I was a bit hasty. Anyhow I watched my chance and made
an arrest of both of them when they came to New York on a shopping
expedition. You should have heard that Englishman swear. I didn't know
such language was possible. But in his pocket we found twenty more of
those hundred-dollar bills--that was all. Do you think he owned up? Not
a bit of it. He swore he had picked the notes up in a pocketbook on the
pier as he left the steamer. I laughed. But when he was arraigned in
court he told the magistrate the same story and that he had advertised
his find at the time. Sure enough, in the files of the papers we
discovered in the lost-and-found column the ad., just as he claimed. We
couldn't even prove that he had passed the bills. So the magistrate
refused to hold them, and they were both released. But we had had them
in our power long enough to take their finger-prints and get
descriptions and measurements of them, particularly by this new
'portrait parle' system. We felt we could send out a strange detective
and have him pick them out of a crowd--you know the system, I presume?"

Kennedy nodded, and I made a mental note of finding out more about the
"portrait parle" later.

Burke paused, and O'Connor prompted, "Tell them about Scotland Yard,
Tom."

"Oh, yes," resumed Burke. "Of course I sent copies of the finger-prints
to Scotland Yard. Within two weeks they replied that one set belonged
to William Forbes, a noted counterfeiter, who, they understood, had
sailed for South Africa but had never arrived there. They were glad to
learn that he was in America, and advised me to look after him sharply.
The woman was also a noted character--Harriet Wollstone, an
adventuress."

"I suppose you have shadowed them ever since?" Kennedy asked.

"Yes, a few days after they were arrested the man had an accident with
his car. It was said he was cranking the engine and that it kicked back
and splintered the bone in his forearm. Anyhow, he went about with his
hand and arm in a sling."

"And then?"

"They gave my man the slip that night in their fast touring-car. You
know automobiles have about made shadowing impossible in these days.
The house was closed up, and it was said by the neighbours that
Williams and Mrs. Williams--as they called themselves--had gone to
visit a specialist in Philadelphia. Still, as they had a year's lease
on the house, I detailed a man to watch it more or less all the time.
They went to Philadelphia all right; some of the bills turned up there.
But we saw nothing of them.

"A short time ago, word came to me that the house was open again. It
wasn't two hours later that the telephone rang like mad. A Fifth Avenue
jeweller had just sold a rope of pearls to an Englishwoman who paid for
it herself in crisp new one-hundred-dollar bills. The bank had returned
them to him that very afternoon--counterfeits. I didn't lose any time
making a second arrest up at the house of mystery at Riverwood. I had
the county authorities hold them--and, now, O'Connor, tell the rest of
it. You took the finger-prints up there."

O'Connor cleared his throat as if something stuck in it, in the
telling. "The Riverwood authorities refused to hold them," he said with
evident chagrin. "As soon as I heard of the arrest I started up myself
with the finger-print records to help Burke. It was the same man, all
right--I'll swear to that on a stack of Bibles. So will Burke. I'll
never forget that snub nose--the concave nose, the nose being the first
point of identification in the 'portrait parle.' And the ears, too--oh,
it was the same man, all right. But when we produced the London
finger-prints which tallied with the New York fingerprints which we had
made--believe it or not, but it is a fact, the Riverwood finger-prints
did not tally at all."

He laid the prints on the table. Kennedy examined them closely. His
face clouded. It was quite evident that he was stumped, and he said so.
"There are some points of agreement," he remarked, "but more points of
difference. Any points of difference are usually considered fatal to
the finger-print theory."

"We had to let the man go," concluded Burke. "We could have held the
woman, but we let her go, too, because she was not the principal in the
case. My men are shadowing the house now and have been ever since then.
But the next day after the last arrest, a man from New York, who looked
like a doctor, made a visit. The secret-service man on the job didn't
dare leave the house to follow him, but as he never came again perhaps
it doesn't matter. Since then the house has been closed."

The telephone rang. It was Burke's office calling him. As he talked we
could gather that something tragic must have happened at Riverwood, and
we could hardly wait until he had finished.

"There has been an accident up there," he remarked as he hung up the
receiver rather petulantly. "They returned in the car this afternoon
with a large package in the back of the tonneau. But they didn't stay
long. After dark they started out again in the car. The accident was at
the bad railroad crossing just above Riverwood. It SEEMS Williams's car
got stalled on the track just as the Buffalo express was due. No one
saw it, but a man in a buggy around the bend in the road heard a woman
scream. He hurried down. The train had smashed the car to bits. How the
woman escaped was a miracle, but they found the man's body up the
tracks, horribly mangled. It was Williams, they say. They identified
him by the clothes and by letters in his pockets. But my man tells me
he found a watch on him with 'W. F.' engraved on it. His hands and arms
and head must have been right under the locomotive when it struck him,
I judge."

"I guess that winds the case up, eh?" exclaimed O'Connor with evident
chagrin. "Where's the woman?"

"They said she was in the little local hospital, but not much hurt.
Just the shock and a few bruises."

O'Connor's question seemed to suggest an idea to Burke, and he reached
for the telephone again. "Riverwood 297," he ordered; then to us as he
waited he said: "We must hold the woman. Hello, 297? The hospital? This
is Burke of the secret service. Will you tell my man, who must be
somewhere about, that I would like to have him hold that woman who was
in the auto smash until I can--what? Gone? The deuce!"

He hung up the receiver angrily. "She left with a man who called for
her about half an hour ago," he said. "There must be a gang of them.
Forbes is dead, but we must get the rest. Mr. Kennedy, I'm sorry to
have bothered you, but I guess we can handle this alone, after all. It
was the finger-prints that fooled us, but now that Forbes is out of the
way it's just a straight case of detective work of the old style which
won't interest you."

"On the contrary," answered Kennedy, "I'm just beginning to be
interested. Does it occur to you that, after all, Forbes may not be
dead?"

"Not dead?" echoed Burke and O'Connor together.

"Exactly; that's just what I said--not dead. Now stop and think a
moment. Would the great Forbes be so foolish as to go about with a
watch marked 'W. F.' if he knew, as he must have known, that you would
communicate with London and by means of the prints find out all about
him?"

"Yes," agreed Burke, "all we have to go by is his watch found on
Williams. I suppose there is some possibility that Forbes may still be
alive."

"Who is this third man who comes in and with whom Harriet Wollstone
goes away so willingly?" put in O'Connor. "You said the house had been
closed--absolutely closed?"

Burke nodded. "Been closed ever since the last arrest. There's a
servant who goes in now and then, but the car hasn't been there before
to-night, wherever it has been."

"I should like to watch that house myself for a while," mused Kennedy.
"I suppose you have no objections to my doing so?"

"Of course not. Go ahead," said Burke. "I will go along with you if you
wish, or my man can go with you."

"No," said Kennedy, "too many of us might spoil the broth. I'll watch
alone to-night and will see you in the morning. You needn't even say
anything to your man there about us."

"Walter, what's on for to-night?" he asked when they had gone. "How are
you fixed for a little trip out to Riverwood?"

"To tell the truth, I had an engagement at the College Club with some
of the fellows."

"Oh, cut it."

"That's what I intend to do," I replied.

It was a raw night, and we bundled ourselves up in old football
sweaters under our overcoats. Half an hour later we were on our way up
to Riverwood.

"By the way, Craig," I asked, "I didn't like to say anything before
those fellows. They'd think I was a dub. But I don't mind asking you.
What is this 'portrait parle' they talk about, anyway?"

"Why, it's a word-picture--a 'spoken picture,' to be literal. I took
some lessons in it at Bertillon's school when I was in Paris. It's a
method of scientific apprehension of criminals, a sort of necessary
addition and completion to the methods of scientific identification of
them after they are arrested. For instance, in trying to pick out a
given criminal from his mere description you begin with the nose. Now,
noses are all concave, straight, or convex. This Forbes had a nose that
was concave, Burke says. Suppose you were sent out to find him. Of all
the people you met, we'll say, roughly, two-thirds wouldn't interest
you. You'd pass up all with straight or convex noses. Now the next
point to observe is the ear. There are four general kinds of
ears-triangular, square, oval, and round, besides a number of other
differences which are clear enough after you study ears. This fellow is
a pale man with square ears and a peculiar lobe to his ear. So you
wouldn't give a second glance to, say, three-fourths of the
square-eared people. So by a process of elimination of various
features, the eyes, the mouth, the hair, wrinkles, and so forth, you
would be able to pick your man out of a thousand--that is, if you were
trained."

"And it works?" I asked rather doubtfully.

"Oh, yes. That's why I'm taking up this case. I believe science can
really be used to detect crime, any crime, and in the present instance
I've just pride enough to stick to this thing until--until they begin
to cut ice on the Styx. Whew, but it will be cold out in the country
to-night, Walter--speaking about ice."

It was quite late when we reached Riverwood, and Kennedy hurried along
the dimly lighted streets, avoiding the main street lest some one might
be watching or following us. He pushed on, following the directions
Burke had given him. The house in question was a large, newly built
affair of concrete, surrounded by trees and a hedge, directly
overlooking the river. A bitter wind swept in from the west, but in the
shadow of an evergreen tree and of the hedge Kennedy established our
watch.

Of all fruitless errands this seemed to me to be the acme. The house
was deserted; that was apparent, I thought, and I said so. Hardly had I
said it when I heard the baying of a dog. It did not come from the
house, however, and I concluded that it must have come from the next
estate.

"It's in the garage," whispered Kennedy. "I can hardly think they would
go away and leave a dog locked up in it. They would at least turn him
loose."

Hour after hour we waited. Midnight passed, and still nothing happened.
At last when the moon had disappeared under the clouds, Kennedy pulled
me along. We had seen not a sign of life in the house, yet he observed
all the caution he would have if it had been well guarded. Quickly we
advanced over the open space to the house, approaching in the shadow as
much as possible, on the side farthest from the river.

Tiptoeing over the porch, Kennedy tried a window. It was fastened.
Without hesitation he pulled out some instruments. One of them was a
rubber suction-cup, which he fastened to the window-pane. Then with a
very fine diamond-cutter he proceeded to cut out a large section. It
soon fell and was prevented from smashing on the floor by the string
and the suction-cup. Kennedy put his hand in and unlatched the window,
and we stepped in.

All was silent. Apparently the house was deserted.

Cautiously Kennedy pressed the button of his pocket storage-battery
lamp and flashed it slowly about the room. It was a sort of library,
handsomely furnished. At last the beam of light rested on a huge desk
at the opposite end. It seemed to interest Kennedy, and we tiptoed over
to it. One after another he opened the drawers. One was locked, and he
saved that until the last.

Quietly as he could, he jimmied it open, muffling the jimmy in a felt
cloth that was on a table. Most people do not realise the disruptive
force that there is in a simple jimmy. I didn't until I saw the solid
drawer with its heavy lock yield with just the trace of a noise.
Kennedy waited an instant and listened. Nothing happened.

Inside the drawer was a most nondescript collection of useless
articles. There were a number of pieces of fine sponge, some of them
very thin and cut in a flat oval shape, smelling of lysol strongly;
several bottles, a set of sharp little knives, some paraffin, bandages,
antiseptic gauze, cotton--in fact, it looked like a first-aid kit. As
soon as he saw it Kennedy seemed astonished but not at a loss to
account for it.

"I thought he left that sort of thing to the doctors, but I guess he
took a hand in it himself," he muttered, continuing to fumble with the
knives in the drawer. It was no time to ask questions, and I did not.
Kennedy rapidly stowed away the things in his pockets. One bottle he
opened and held to his nose. I could distinguish immediately the
volatile smell of ether. He closed it quickly, and it, too, went into
his pocket with the remark, "Somebody must have known how to administer
an anaesthetic--probably the Wollstone woman."

A suppressed exclamation from Kennedy caused me to look. The drawer had
a false back. Safely tucked away in it reposed a tin box, one of those
so-called strong-boxes which are so handy in that they save a burglar
much time and trouble in hunting all over for the valuables he has come
after. Kennedy drew it forth and laid it on the desk. It was locked.

Even that did not seem to satisfy Kennedy, who continued to scrutinise
the walls and corners of the room as if looking for a safe or something
of that sort.

"Let's look in the room across the hall," he whispered.

Suddenly a piercing scream of a woman rang out upstairs. "Help! Help!
There's some one in the house! Billy, help!"

I felt an arm grasp me tightly, and for a moment a chill ran over me at
being caught in the nefarious work of breaking and entering a
dwelling-house at night. But it was only Kennedy, who had already
tucked the precious little tin box under his arm.

With a leap he dragged me to the open window, cleared it, vaulted over
the porch, and we were running for the clump of woods that adjoined the
estate on one side. Lights flashed in all the windows of the house at
once. There must have been some sort of electric-light system that
could be lighted instantly as a "burglar-expeller." Anyhow, we had made
good our escape.

As we lost ourselves in the woods I gave a last glance back and saw a
lantern carried from the house to the garage. As the door was unlocked
I could see, in the moonlight, a huge dog leap out and lick the hands
and face of a man.

Quickly we now crashed through the frozen underbrush. Evidently Kennedy
was making for the station by a direct route across country instead of
the circuitous way by the road and town. Behind us we could hear a deep
baying.

"By the Lord, Walter," cried Kennedy, for once in his life thoroughly
alarmed, "it's a bloodhound, and our trail is fresh."

Closer it came. Press forward as we might, we could never expect to
beat that dog.

"Oh, for a stream," groaned Kennedy, "but they are all frozen--even the
river."

He stopped short, fumbled in his pocket, and drew out the bottle of
ether.

"Raise your foot, Walter," he ordered.

I did so and he smeared first mine and then his with the ether. Then we
doubled on our trail once or twice and ran again.

"The dog will never be able to pick up the ether as our trail," panted
Kennedy; "that is, if he is any good and trained not to go off on
wild-goose chases."

On we hurried from the woods to the now dark and silent town. It was
indeed fortunate that the dog had been thrown off our scent, for the
station was closed, and, indeed, if it had been open I am sure the
station agent would have felt more like locking the door against two
such tramps as we were, carrying a tin box and pursued by a dog, than
opening it for us. The best we could do was to huddle into a corner
until we succeeded in jumping a milk-train that luckily slowed down as
it passed Riverwood station.

Neither of us could wait to open the tin box in our apartment, and
instead of going uptown Kennedy decided it would be best to go to a
hotel near the station. Somehow we succeeded in getting a room without
exciting suspicion. Hardly had the bellboy's footsteps ceased echoing
in the corridor than Kennedy was at work wrenching off the lid of the
box with such leverage as the scanty furnishings of the room afforded.

At last it yielded, and we looked in curiously, expecting to find
fabulous wealth in some form. A few hundred dollars and a rope of
pearls lay in it. It was a good "haul," but where was the vast spoil
the counterfeiters had accumulated? We had missed it. So far we were
completely baffled.

"Perhaps we had better snatch a couple of hours' sleep," was all that
Craig said, stifling his chagrin.

Over and over in my mind I was turning the problem of where they had
hidden the spoil. I dozed off, still thinking about it and thinking
that, even should they be captured, they might have stowed away perhaps
a million dollars to which they could go back after their sentences
were served.

It was still early for New York when Kennedy roused me by talking over
the telephone in the room. In fact, I doubt if he had slept at all.

Burke was at the other end of the wire. His man had just reported that
something had happened during the night at Riverwood, but he couldn't
give a very clear account. Craig seemed to enjoy the joke immensely as
he told his story to Burke.

The last words I heard were: "All right. Send a man up here to the
station--one who knows all the descriptions of these people. I'm sure
they will have to come into town to-day, and they will have to come by
train, for their car is wrecked. Better watch at the uptown stations,
also."

After a hasty breakfast we met Burke's man and took our places at the
exit from the train platforms. Evidently Kennedy had figured out that
the counterfeiters would have to come into town for some reason or
other. The incoming passengers were passing us in a steady stream, for
a new station was then being built, and there was only a temporary
structure with one large exit.

"Here is where the 'portrait parle' ought to come in, if ever,"
commented Kennedy as he watched eagerly.

And yet neither man nor woman passed us who fitted the description.
Train after train emptied its human freight, yet the p

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