THE INCENDIARY
"The Warrington estate owns another large apartment house, besides the
one where Warrington has his quarters, on the next street," remarked
Garrick, half an hour later, after we had met the boy from his office.
"I have arranged that we can get in there and use one of the empty
suites."
Garrick had secured two rather good-sized boxes from the boy, and was
carrying them rather carefully, as if they contained some very delicate
mechanism.
Warrington, we found, occupied a suite in a large apartment on
Seventy-second Street, and, as we entered, Garrick stopped and
whispered a few words to the hall-boy.
The boy seemed to be more than usually intelligent and had evidently
been told over the telephone by Warrington that we were coming. At
least we had no trouble, so far.
Warrington's suite was very tastefully furnished for bachelor quarters.
In the apartment, Garrick unwrapped one of the packages, and laid it
open on the table, while he busied himself opening the safe, using the
combination that Warrington had given him.
I waited nervously, for we could not be sure that no one had got ahead
of us, already. There was no need for anxiety, however.
"Here's the letter, just as Warrington left it," reported Garrick in a
few minutes, with some satisfaction, as he banged the safe door shut
and restored things so that it would not look as though the little
strong box had been touched.
Meanwhile, I had been looking curiously at the box on the table. It did
not seem to be like anything we had ever used before. One end was open,
and the lid lifted up on a pair of hinges. I lifted it and looked in.
About half way down the box from the open end was a partition which
looked almost as if some one had taken the end of the box and had just
shoved it in, until it reached the middle.
The open half was empty, but in the other half I saw a sort of plate of
some substance covering the outside of the shoved-in end. There was
also a dry cell and several arrangements for adjustments which I did
not understand. Back of the whole thing was a piece of mechanism, a
clockwork interrupter, as I learned later. Wires led out from the
closed end of the box.
Garrick shoved the precious letter into his pocket and then placed the
box in a corner, where it was hidden by a pile of books, with the open
end facing the room in the direction of the antiquated safe. The wires
from the box were quickly disposed of and dropped out of the window to
the yard, several stories below, where we could pick them up later as
we had done with the detectaphone.
"What's that?" I asked curiously, when at last he had finished and I
felt at liberty to question him.
"Well, you see," he explained, "there is no way of knowing yet just how
the apartment will be entered. They apparently have some way, though,
which they wouldn't discuss over the telephone. But it is certain that
as long as they know that there is anyone up here, they will put off
the attempt. They said that."
He was busily engaged restoring everything in the room as far as
possible to its former position.
"My scheme," he went on, "is for us now to leave the apartment
ostentatiously. I think that is calculated to insure the burglary, for
they must have someone watching by this time. Then we can get back to
that empty apartment in the house on the next street, and before they
can get around to start anything, we shall be prepared for them."
Garrick stopped to speak to the hall-boy again as we left, carrying the
other box. What he said I did not hear but the boy nodded intelligently.
After a turn down the street, a ride in a surface car for a few blocks
and back again, he was satisfied that no one was following us and we
made our way into the vacant apartment on Seventy-third Street, without
being observed.
Picking up the wires from the back yard of Warrington's and running
them across the back fence where he attached them to other wires
dropped down from the vacant apartment was accomplished easily, but it
all took time, and time was precious, just now.
In the darkness of the vacant room he uncovered and adjusted the other
box, connected one set of wires to those we had led in and another set
to an apparatus which looked precisely like the receiver of a wireless
telegraph, fitting over the head with an earpiece. He placed the
earpiece in position and began regulating the mechanism of the queer
looking box.
"I didn't want to use the detectaphone again," he explained as he
worked, "because we haven't any assurance that they'll talk, or, if
they do, that it will be worth while to listen. Besides, there may be
only one of them."
"Then what is this?" I asked.
"Well," he argued, "they certainly can't work without light of some
kind, can they?"
I acquiesced.
"This is an instrument which literally makes light audible," he pursued.
"Hear light?" I repeated, in amazement.
"Exactly," he reiterated. "You've said it. It was invented to assist
the blind, but I think I'll be able to show that it can be used to
assist justice--which is blind sometimes, they say. It is the
optophone."
He paused to adjust the thing more accurately and I looked at it with
an added respect.
"It was invented," he resumed, "by Professor Fournier d'Albe, a
lecturer on physics at the University of Birmingham, England, and has
been shown before many learned societies over there."
"You mean it enables the blind to see by hearing?" I asked.
"That's it," he nodded. "It actually enables the blind to locate many
things, purely by the light reflected by them. Its action is based on
the peculiar property of selenium, which, you probably know, changes
its electrical conductivity under the influence of light. Selenium in
the dark is a poor conductor of electricity; in the light it, strange
to say, becomes a good conductor. Variations of light can thus be
transmuted into variations of sound. That pushed-in end of the box
which we hid over in Warrington's had, as you might have noticed, a
selenium plate on the inside partition, facing the open end of the box."
"I understand," I agreed, vaguely.
"Now," he went on, "this property of selenium is used for producing or
rather allowing to be transmitted an electric current which is
interrupted by a special clockwork interrupter, and so is made audible
in this wireless telephone receiver which I have here connected with
this second box. The eye is replaced by the ear as the detector of
light--that is all."
It might have been all, but it was quite wonderful to me, even if he
spoke of it so simply. He continued to adjust the thing as he talked.
"The clockwork has been wound up by means of a small handle, and I have
moved that rod along a slit until I heard a purring sound. Then I moved
it until the purring sound became as faint as possible. The instrument
is at the present moment in its most sensitive state."
"What does it sound like?" I asked.
"Well, the passage of a hand or other object across the aperture is
indicated by a sort of murmuring sound," he replied, "the loudest sound
indicating the passage of the edges where the contrast is greatest. In
a fairly bright light, even the swiftest shadow is discoverable.
Prolonged exposure, however, blinds the optophone, just as it blinds
the eye."
"Do you hear anything now?" I asked watching his face curiously.
"No. When I turned the current on at first I heard a ticking or rasping
sound. I silenced that. But any change in the amount of light in that
dark room over there would restore the sound, and its intensity would
indicate the power of the light."
He continued to listen.
"When I first tried this, I found that a glimpse out of the window in
daylight sounded like a cinematograph reeling off a film. The ticking
sank almost into silence as the receiving apparatus was held in the
shadow of the office table, and leaped into a lively rattle again when
I brought it near an electric-light bulb. I blindfolded myself and
moved a piece of blotting paper between the receiver and the light. I
could actually hear the grating of the shadow, yes, I heard the shadow
pass. At night, too, I have found that it is even affected by the light
of the stars."
He glanced out of the window in the direction of Warrington's, which we
could not see, however, since it was around an angle of the building.
"See," he went on, "the moon is rising, and in a few minutes, I
calculate, it will shine right into that room over there on
Seventy-second Street. By using this optophone, I could tell you the
moment it does. Try the thing, yourself, Tom."
I did so. Though my ear was untrained to distinguish between sounds I
could hear just the faintest noise.
Suddenly there came a weird racket. Hastily I looked up at Garrick in
surprise.
"What is that?" I asked endeavouring to describe it. "Are they there
now?"
"No," he laughed. "That was the moon shining in. I wanted you to hear
what a difference it makes. When a ray of the sun, for instance,
strikes that 'feeler' over there, a harmonious and majestic sound like
the echo of a huge orchestra is heard. The light of the moon, on the
other hand, produces a different sound--lamenting, almost like the
groans of the wounded on a battlefield."
"So you can distinguish between various kinds of light?"
"Yes. Electric light, you would find if anyone came in and switched it
on over there, produces a most unpleasant sound, sometimes like two
pieces of glass rubbed against each other, sometimes like the tittering
laugh of ghosts, and I have heard it like the piercing cry of an
animal. Gaslight is sobbing and whispering, grating and ticking,
according to its intensity. By far the most melodious and pleasing
sound is produced by an ordinary wax candle. It sounds just like an
aeolian harp on which the chords of a solemn tune are struck. I have
even tried a glow-worm and it sounded like a bee buzzing. The light
from a red-hot piece of iron gives the shrillest and most ear-splitting
cry imaginable."
He took the receiver back from me and adjusted it to his own ear.
"Yes," he confirmed, "that was the moon, as I thought. It's a peculiar
sound. Once you have heard it you're not likely to forget it. I must
silence the machine to that."
We had waited patiently for a long time, and still there was no
evidence that anyone had entered the room.
"I'm afraid they decided not to attempt it after all," I said, finally.
"I don't think so," replied Garrick. "I took particular pains to make
it seem that the road was clear. You remember, I spoke to the hall-boy
twice, and we lingered about long enough when we left. It isn't much
after midnight. I wonder how it was that they expected to get in.
Ah--there goes the moon. I can hear it getting fainter all the time."
Suddenly Garrick's face was all animation. "What is it?" I asked
breathlessly.
"Someone has entered the room. There is a light which sounds just like
an electric flashlight which is being moved about. They haven't
switched on the electric light. Now, if I were sufficiently expert I
think I could tell by the varying sounds at just what that fellow is
flashing the light. There, something passed directly between the light
and the box. Yes, there must be two of them--that was the shadow of a
human being, all right. They are over in the corner by the safe, now.
The fellow with the flashlight is bending down. I can tell, because the
other fellow walked between the light and the box and the light must be
held very low, for I heard the shadows of both of his legs."
Garrick was apparently waiting only until the intruders, whoever they
were, were busily engaged in their search before he gave the alarm and
hurried over in an attempt to head off their escape by their secret
means of entrance.
"Tom," he cried, as he listened attentively, "call up the apartment
over there and get that hall-boy. Tell him he must not run that
elevator up until we get there. No one must leave or enter the
building. Tell him to lock the front door and conceal himself in the
door that leads down to the cellar. I will ring the night bell five
times to let him know when to let us in."
I was telephoning excitedly Garrick's instructions and as he waited for
me to finish he was taking a last turn at the optophone before we made
our dash on Warrington's.
A suppressed exclamation escaped him. I turned toward him quickly from
the telephone and hung up the receiver.
"What's the matter?" I asked anxiously.
For a moment he did not reply, but seemed to be listening with an
intensity that I knew betokened something unexpected.
"Tom," he cried abruptly, stripping the receiver from his head with a
jerk and clapping it over my own ears, "quick!--tell me what you hear.
What does it sound like to you? What is it? I can't be mistaken."
I listened feverishly. Not having had a former acquaintance with the
machine, I did not know just what to make of it. But from the receiver
of the little optophone there seemed to issue the most peculiar noise I
had ever heard a mechanical instrument make.
It was like a hoarse rumbling cry, now soft and almost plaintive, again
louder and like a shriek of a damned soul in the fires of the nether
world. Then it died down, only to spring up again, worse than before.
If I had been listening to real sounds instead of to light I should
have been convinced that the thing was recording a murder.
I described it as best I could. The fact was that the thing almost
frightened me by its weird novelty.
"Yes--yes," agreed Garrick, as the sensations I experienced seemed to
coincide with his own. "Exactly what I heard myself. I felt sure that I
could not be mistaken. Quick, Tom,--get central on that wire!"
A moment later he seized the telephone from me. I had expected him to
summon the police to assist us in capturing two crooks who had,
perhaps, devised some odd and scientific method of blowing up a safe.
"Hello, hello!" he shouted frantically over the wire. "The fire
department! This is eight hundred Seventy-second--on the corner; yes,
yes--northeast. I want to turn in an alarm. Yes--quick! There is a
fire--a bad one--incendiary--top floor. No, no--I'm not there. I can
see it. Hurry!"