THE SCIENTIFIC GUNMAN
Our little audience arrived one by one, and, as master of ceremonies,
it fell to me to greet them and place them as much at ease as the
natural tension of the occasion would permit. Garrick spoke a word or
two to each, but was still busy putting the finishing touches on the
preparations for the "entertainment," as he called it facetiously,
which he had arranged.
"Before I put to the test a rather novel combination which I have
arranged," began Garrick, when they had all been seated, "I want to say
a few words about some of the discoveries I have already made in this
remarkable case."
He paused a moment to make sure that he had our attention, but it was
unnecessary. We were all hanging eagerly on his words.
"There is, I believe," he resumed slowly, "no crime that is ever
without a clew. The slightest trace, even a drop of blood no larger
than a pin-head, may suffice to convict a murderer. So may a single
hair found on the clothing of a suspect. In this case," he added
quickly, "it is the impression made by the hammer of a pistol on the
shell of a cartridge which leads unescapably to one conclusion."
The idea was so startling that we followed Garrick's every word as if
weighted with tremendous importance, as indeed it was in the clearing
up of this mysterious affair.
"I have made a collection from time to time," he pursued, "of the
various exploded cartridges, the bullets, and the weapons left behind
by the perpetrator of the dastardly series of crimes, from the shooting
of the stool pigeon of the police, Rena Taylor, and the stealing of Mr.
Warrington's car, down to the peculiar events of last night up in the
Ramapos and the running fight through the streets of New York in
taxicabs this morning.
"I have studied this evidence with the microscope and the
microphotographic apparatus. I have secured excellent microphotographs
of the marks made by various weapons on the cartridges and bullets.
Taking those used in the commission of the greater crimes in this
series, I find that the marks are the same, apparently, whether the gun
shot off a bullet of wax or tallow which became liquid in the body,
whether it discharged a stupefying gas, or whether the deadly
anaesthetic bullet was fired. I have obtained a gun"--he threw it on
the table with a clang--"the marks from the hammer of which correspond
with the marks made on all the cartridges I have mentioned. One person
owned that gun and used it. That is proved. It remains only to connect
that gun positively and definitely, as a last link, with that person."
I noticed with a start that the revolver still had a stout cord tied to
it.
As he concluded, Garrick had begun fitting a curious little device to
each of our forearms. It looked to me like an electrode consisting of
large plates of German silver, covered with felt and saturated with
salt solution. From each electrode wires ran across the floor to some
hidden apparatus.
"Back of this screen," he went on, indicating it in the corner of the
room, "I have placed what is known as the string galvanometer,
invented, or, perhaps better, perfected by Dr. Einthoven, of Leyden. It
was designed primarily for the study of the beating of the heart in
cases of disease, but it also may be used to record and study emotions
as well,--love and hate, fear, joy, anger, remorse, all are revealed by
this uncanny, cold, ruthlessly scientific instrument.
"The machine is connected by wires to each of you, and will make what
are called electrocardiographs, in which every emotion, every
sentiment, every passion is recorded inevitably, inexorably. For, the
electric current that passes from each of you to the machine over these
wires carrying the record of the secrets of your hearts is one of the
feeblest currents known to science. Yet it can be caught and measured.
The dynamo which generates this current is not a huge affair of steel
castings and endless windings of copper wire. It is merely the heart of
the sitter.
"The heart makes only one three-thousandth of a volt of electricity at
each beat. It would take thousands of hearts to light one electric
light, hundreds of thousands to run one trolley car. Yet just that
slight little current from the heart is enough to sway a gossamer
strand of quartz fibre in what I may call my 'heart station' here. This
current, as I have told you, passes from each of you over a wire and
vibrates a fine quartz fibre in unison with it, one of the most
delicate bits of mechanism ever made, recording the result on a
photographic film by means of a beam of light reflected from a delicate
mirror."
We sat spellbound as Garrick unfolded the dreadful, awe-inspiring
possibilities of the machine behind the screen. He walked slowly to the
back of the room.
"Now, here I have one of the latest of the inventions of the Wizard of
West Orange--Edison," he resumed. "It is, as you perhaps have already
guessed, the latest product of this genius of sound and sight, the
kinetophone, the machine that combines moving pictures with the talking
machine."
A stranger stepped in from an outer office. He was the skilled operator
of the kinetophone, whom Garrick had hired. In a few terse sentences he
explained that back of a curtain which he pulled down before us was a
phonograph with a megaphone, that from his booth behind us he operated
the picture films, and that the two were absolutely synchronized.
A moment later a picture began to move on the screen. Sounds and voices
seemed to emerge as if from the very screen itself. There, before us,
we saw a gambling joint operating in full blast. It was not the
Forty-eighth Street resort. But it was strongly reminiscent of it. From
the talking machine proceeded all the noises familiar to such a scene.
Garrick had moved behind the screen that cut off our view of the
galvanometer. One after another, he was studying the emotions of each
of his audience.
Suddenly the scene changed. A door was burst in, cards and gambling
paraphernalia were scattered about and hidden, men rushed to escape,
and the sounds were much like those on the night of the raid. Garrick
was still engrossed in the study of what the galvanometer was showing.
The film stopped. Without warning, the operator started another. It was
a group of men and women playing cards. A man entered, and engaged in
conversation with one of the women who was playing. They left the room.
The next scene was in an entirely different room. But the connection
which was implied with the last scene was obvious. Different actors
entered the room, a man and a woman. There was a dispute--there was a
crack of a revolver--and the woman fell. People rushed in. Everything
was done to hide the crime. The girl was carried out into a waiting
automobile, propped in as if overcome by alcohol and whisked away. I
found myself almost looking to see if the car was of the make of
Warrington's, so great was the impression the scene made on me. Of
course it was not, but it all seemed so real that one might be pardoned
for expecting the impossible, especially when her body was thrown, with
many a muttered imprecation, by the roadside, and in the last picture
the man was cleaning the exploded gun. One single still picture
followed. It was a huge, enlarged cartridge.
I followed the thing with eager eyes and ears. From a long list of
canned and reeled plays, Garrick had selected here and there such
scenes and acts as, interspersed with a few single, original pictures
of his own, like the cartridge, would serve best to recapitulate the
very case which we had been investigating. It carried me along step by
step, wonderfully.
Another moving and talking picture was under way. This time it seemed
to be a race between two automobiles. They were tearing along, and the
sound of the rapidly working cylinders was most real. The rearmost was
rapidly overhauling that in front. Imagine our surprise as it crept up
on the other to see the driver rise, whip out a pistol, and fire point
blank at the other as he dashed ahead, and the picture stopped.
A suppressed scream escaped Violet Winslow. It was too much like what
had happened to Mortimer Warrington for her to repress the shudder that
swept over her, and an involuntary movement toward him to make sure
that it was not real.
Still Garrick did not move from his post at the galvanometer. He was
taking no chances. He had us thrilled, tense, and he meant to take
advantage to the full in reading the truth in the dramatic situation he
had so skilfully created.
Another picture started almost on the heels of the last. It was of the
robbery of a safe. Then came another, a firebug at work in starting a
conflagration. We could hear the crackling of flames, the shouts of the
people, the clang of bells, and the hasty tread of the firemen as they
advanced and put out the blaze. The film play was one of those which
never fail to attract, where the makers had gone to the utmost extent
of realism and had actually set fire to a house to get the true effect.
The next was a scene from a detective play, pure and simple, in which
that marvellous little instrument which had served us in such good
stead in this case was played up strongly, the detectaphone. Then
followed a scene from another play in which a young girl was kidnapped
and rescued by her lover just in the nick of time. Nothing could have
been selected to arouse the feelings of the little audience to a higher
pitch.
The last of the series, which I knew was to be a climax, was not an
American picture. It was quite evidently made in Paris and was from
actual life. I myself had been startled when the title was announced by
the voice and on the screen simultaneously, "The Siege of the Motor
Bandits by the Paris Police."
It was terrific. It began with the shouts of the crowd urging on the
police, the crack of revolvers and guns from a little house or garage
in the suburbs, the advance and retreat of the gendarmes on the
stronghold. Back and forth the battle waged. One could hear the sharp
orders of the police, the shrill taunts of the bandits, the sounds of
battle.
Then at a point where the bandits seemed to have beaten off the attack
successfully, there came an automobile. From it I could see the police
take an object which I now knew must be a Mathiot gun. The huge thing
was set up and carefully aimed. Then with a dull roar it was fired.
We could see the bomb hurtling through the air, see it strike the
little house with a cloud of smoke and dust, hear the report of the
explosion, the shouts of dismay of the bandits--then silence. A cry
went up from the crowd as the police now pressed forward in a mass and
rushed into the house, disclosing the last scene--in which the bandits
were suffocated.
The film suddenly stopped. Garrick's office, which had been ringing
with firearms and shouts from the kinetophone, was again silent. It was
an impressive silence, too. No one of us but had felt and lived the
whole case over again in the brief time that the talking movies had
been shown.
The lights flashed up, and before we realised that the thing was over,
Garrick was standing before us, holding in his hand a long sheet of
paper. The look on his face told plainly that his novel experiment had
succeeded.
"I may say," he began, still studying the paper in his hand, although I
knew he must have arrived at his conclusion already or he would never
have quitted his "heart station," so soon, "I may say that some time
ago a letter was sent to Miss Winslow purporting to reveal some of Mr.
Warrington's alleged connections and escapades. It is needless to say
that as far as the accusations were concerned he was able to meet them
all adequately and, as for the innuendoes, they were pure baseless
fabrications. The sender was urged on to do it by someone else who also
had an interest of another kind in placing Mr. Warrington in a bad
light with Miss Winslow. But the sender soon realised his mistake. The
fact that he was willing to go to the length of a dangerous robbery
accompanied by arson in order to get back or destroy the letter showed
how afraid he was to have a sample of his handwriting fall into my
hands. He blundered, but even then he did not realise how badly.
"For, in certain cases the handwriting shows a great deal more than
would be recognised even by the ordinary handwriting expert. This
letter showed that the writer was, as I have already explained to Mr.
Marshall, the victim of a peculiar kind of paralysis which begins to
show itself in nerve tremours for days before the attack and exhibits
itself even in the handwriting.
"Now, my string galvanometer shows not only the effects of these moving
and talking pictures on the emotions, but also, as it was really
designed to do, the state of the heart with reference to normality. It
shows to me plainly the effect of disease on the heart, even if it is
latent in the subject. While I have been using the psychological law of
suggestion, and have been recapitulating as well as I was able under
the circumstances the whole story of the crime briefly in moving and
talking pictures, I have found, in addition, that the same heart which
shows the emotions I expected also shows the disease which I discovered
in the blackmailing letter.
"There was surprise at the sight of the gambling den, rage at the raid,
fear at the murder of the girl in the other den and the disposal of her
body, excitement over the racing motor cars, passion over the
kidnapping of the girl, anger over the little detectaphone, and panic
at the siege of the bandits, as I showed by the selection of the films
that I was getting closer and closer to the truth. And there was the
same abnormality of the heart exhibited throughout."
Garrick paused. I scarcely breathed, nor did I move my eyes, which were
riveted on his face. What was he going to reveal next? Was he going to
accuse someone in the room?
"Mr. Marshall," he resumed with a smile toward me, "I am glad to say is
quite normal and innocent of all wrongdoing--in this instance," he
added with a momentary flash of humour. "Commissioner Dillon also
passes muster. Mr. Warrington--I shall come back to, later."
I thought Violet Winslow gave a little, startled gasp. She turned
toward him, anyhow, and I saw that not even science now could shake her
faith in him.
"Mr. Forbes," he continued, speaking rapidly as I bent forward to catch
every word, "incriminated himself quite sufficiently in connection with
the gambling joint, the raid and the slanderous letter, so that I
should advise him when this case comes to trial to tell the whole truth
and nothing but the truth about his helping a gunman in order to
further what proved a hopeless love affair on his own part. Here, too,
is a little vest-pocket gun that was found under such circumstances as
would be likely to connect Forbes in the popular mind with the
shootings."
"My lawyer has my statement about that. I'll read--"
"No, Forbes," interrupted Garrick. "You needn't read. Your lawyer may
be interested to add this to the statement, however. A pistol that has
been shot off has potassium sulphide from the powder in the barrel.
Later, it oxidizes and iron oxide is found. This weapon has neither the
sulphide nor the oxide, as far as I can determine. It has never even
been discharged. No, it was not the pistol found on Forbes that figured
in this case.
"As far as that new-fangled gun goes, Forbes, it was a frame-up. You
were kidnapped by a man whom you thought was your friend, and it was
done for a purpose. He knew the situation you were in, your jealousy--I
won't dwell on that here. He held you at the house up in the valley.
You told the truth about that. He did it, the man who wrote the letter,
because he hoped ultimately to shift all the guilt on you and himself
go scot-free."
Forbes stared dumbly. I knew he had known what was coming but had held
back for fear of what he knew had always happened to informers in the
circle to which he had sunk.
"McBirney," continued Garrick, "your emotions, mostly astonishment,
show that you have much to learn in this new business of modern
detection, besides the recovery of stolen cars."
Garrick had paused for effect again.
"And now we come to the keeper of a nighthawk garage on the West Side,
a man whom they seem to call the Boss. That is getting higher up. I
find that he points, according to this scientific third degree, to one
whom I have for a long time suspected--"
A dull thud startled us.
I turned. A man was lying, face down, on the floor.
Before any of us could reach him, Garrick concluded, "This is the man
who framed up the case against Forbes, who stole Warrington's car to
use to get rid of the body of the informer, Rena Taylor, because she by
her success interfered with his gambling graft, who wrote the letter to
Miss Winslow to injure Warrington because he, too, was interfering with
his graft collection from the gambling house by threatening to close it
up. He committed the arson to cover up his identity by getting back the
letter; he planned and nearly executed the kidnapping of Miss Winslow
in order to hold up Warrington, and then hid in the country where we
ferreted him out, not far from the very scene of a murderous attack on
Warrington for his brave stand in suppressing gambling--from which this
man was weekly shaking down a huge profit as the price of police
protection of the vice."
Garrick was kneeling by the prostrate form now, not so much the accuser
as the scientist, studying a new phase of crime.
The threatened paralysis had struck Inspector Herman sooner than even
Garrick had expected.
When we had made Herman as comfortable as we could, Garrick added to
Dillon, who stood over us, speechless, "You had under you one of the
strong links in the secret system of police protection of vice and
crime, and you never knew it--the greatest grafter and scientific
gunman that I ever knew. It has been a long, hard fight. But I have the
goods on him at last."
The exposure was startling in the extreme. Herman had gained for
himself the reputation of being one of the shrewdest and most efficient
men in the department. But he had felt the lure of graft. With the aid
of the gamblers and unscrupulous politicians he had built up a huge,
secret machine for collection of the profits from the sale of police
protection against the enforcement of the law he was sworn to uphold.
He had begun to mix with doubtful characters. But he was a genius and
had become, by degrees, the worst of the gangmen and gunmen who ever
operated in the metropolis. Detailed to catch the gamblers and
gangsters, with official power to do almost as he pleased, he had
enjoyed a fine holiday and employed his leisure both for new crimes and
in covering up so successfully his tracks in the old ones, even with
Garrick on his trail, that he had been able to completely hoodwink his
superior, Dillon, by his long, detailed reports which sounded very
convincing but which really meant nothing.
As the strange truth of the case was established by Garrick, Dillon was
the most amazed of us all. He had trusted Herman, and the revulsion of
feeling was overwhelming.
"And to think," he exclaimed, in disgust, "that I actually placed his
own case in his own hands, with carte blanche instructions to go ahead.
No wonder he never produced a clew that amounted to anything. Well,
I'll be--"
Words failed him, as he looked down and glared savagely at the man in
silence.
All were now crowding around Garrick eager to thank him for what he had
done. As Warrington, now almost his former hearty wholesome self again,
grasped Garrick's hand in the heartiness of his thanks, Garrick, with
the electrocardiogram paper still in his other hand, smiled.
He released himself and turned to touch the dainty little hand of
Violet Winslow, whose eyes were so full of happy tears that she could
scarcely speak.
"Miss Winslow," he beamed, gazing earnestly and admiringly into her
sweet face, "I promised to attend to the case of that man later,--" he
added, with a nod at Warrington. "It may interest you to know
scientifically what you already know by something that is greater than
science, a woman's intuition."
She blushed as he added, "Mr. Warrington has a good, strong, healthy
heart. He wouldn't be alive to-day if he hadn't. But, more than that, I
have observed throughout the evening that he has hardly taken his eyes
off you. Even the 'talkies' and the 'movies' failed to stir him until
the kidnapping scene overwhelmed him. Here on this strip of paper I
have a billet-doux. His heart registers the current that only that
consummate electrician, little Dan Cupid, can explain."