where a man posing as a doctor had made a rather large purchase.
The name he gave was of course of no importance. What did interest
us was that again we crossed the trail of a man with a Van Dyke
beard. He had been accompanied by a woman whom the druggist
described as rather flashily dressed, though her face was hidden
under a huge hat and a veil. "Looked very attractive," as the
druggist put it, "but she might have been a negress for all I could
tell you of her face."
"Humph," grunted Kennedy, as we were leaving the store. "You
wouldn't believe it, but it is the hardest thing in the world to
get an accurate description of any one. The psychologists have
said enough about it, but you don't realise it until you are up
against it. Why, that might have been the DeMott woman just as
well as the former Miss Sanderson, and the man might have been
Bolton Brown as well as Dawson, for all we know. They've both
disappeared now. I wish we could get some word about that
photograph. That would settle it."
In the last mail that night Kennedy received back the letter which
he had addressed to Michael Dawson. On it was stamped "Returned
to sender. Owner not found."
Kennedy turned the letter over slowly and looked at the back of
it carefully.
"On the contrary," he remarked, half to himself, "the owner was
found. Only he returned the letter back to the postman after he had
opened it and found that it was just a note of no importance which
I scribbled just to see if he was keeping in touch with things from
his hiding-place, wherever it is.
"How do you know he opened it?" I asked.
"Do you see those blots on the back? I had several of these
envelopes prepared ready for use when I needed them. I had some
tannin placed on the flap and then covered thickly with gum. On
the envelope itself was some iron sulphate under more gum. I
carefully sealed the letter, using very little moisture. The gum
then separated the two prepared parts. Now if that letter were
steamed open the tannin and the sulphate would come together, run,
and leave a smudge. You see the blots? The inference is obvious."
Clearly, then, our chase was getting warmer. Dawson had been in
Atlantic City at least within a few days. The fruit company steamer
to South America on which Carroll believed he was booked to sail
under an assumed name and with an assumed face was to sail the
following noon. And still we had no word from Chicago as to the
destination of the photograph, or the identity of the man in the
Van Dyke beard who had been so particular to disarm suspicion in
the purchase of the plate from the photographer a few days before.
The mail also contained a message from Williams of the Surety
Company with the interesting information that Bolton Brown's
attorney had refused to say where his client had gone since he had
been released on bail, but that he would be produced when wanted.
Adele DeMott had not been seen for several days in Chicago and
the police there were of the opinion that she had gone to New York,
where it would be pretty easy for her to pass unnoticed. These
facts further complicated the case and made the finding of the
photograph even more imperative.
If we were going to do anything it must be done quickly. There
was no time to lose. The last of the fast trains for the day had
left and the photograph, even though it were found, could not
possibly reach us in time to be of use before the steamer sailed
from Brooklyn. It was an emergency such as Kennedy had never yet
faced, apparently physically insuperable.
But, as usual, Craig was not without some resource, though it looked
impossible to me to do anything but make a hit or miss arrest at the
boat. It was late in the evening when he returned from a conference
with an officer of the Telegraph and Telephone Company to whom
Williams had given him a card of introduction. The upshot had been
that he had called up Chicago and talked for a long time with
Professor Clark, a former classmate of ours who was now in the
technology school of the university out there. Kennedy and Clark
had been in correspondence for some time, I knew, about some
technical matters, though I had no idea what it was they concerned.
"There's one thing we can always do," I remarked as we walked slowly
over to the laboratory from our apartment.
"What's that?" he asked absent-mindedly, more from politeness than
anything else.
"Arrest every one with a Van Dyke beard who goes on the boat
to-morrow," I replied.
Kennedy smiled. "I don't feel prepared to stand a suit for false
arrest," he said simply, " especially as the victim would feel
pretty hot if we caused him to miss his boat. Men with beards are
not so uncommon, after all."
We had reached the laboratory. Linemen were stringing wires under
the electric lights of the campus from the street to the Chemistry
Building and into Kennedy's sanctum.
That night and far into the morning Kennedy was working in the
laboratory on a peculiarly complicated piece of mechanism consisting
of electro-magnets, rolls, and a stylus and numerous other
contrivances which did not suggest to my mind anything he had ever
used before in our adventures. I killed time as best I could
watching him adjust the thing with the most minute care and precision.
Finally I came to the conclusion that as I was not likely to be of
the least assistance, even if I had been initiated into what was
afoot, I had as well retire.
"There is one thing you can do for me in the morning, Walter," said
Kennedy, continuing to work over a delicate piece of clockwork which
formed a part of the apparatus. "In case I do not see you then, get
in touch with Williams and Carroll and have them come here about
ten o'clock with an automobile. If I am not ready for them then I'm
afraid I never shall be, and we shall have to finish the job with
the lack of finesse you suggested by arresting all the bearded men."
Kennedy could not have slept much during the night, for though his
bed had been slept in he was up and away before I could see him
again. I made a hurried trip downtown to catch Carroll and Williams
and then returned to the laboratory, where Craig had evidently just
finished a satisfactory preliminary test of his machine.
"Still no message," he began in reply to my unspoken question. He
was plainly growing restless with the inaction, though frequent
talks over long-distance with Chicago seemed to reassure him. Thanks
to the influence of Williams he had at least a direct wire from his
laboratory to the city which was now the scene of action.
As nearly as I could gather from the one-sided conversations I heard
and the remarks which Kennedy dropped, the Chicago post-office
inspectors were still searching for a trace of the package from
Atlantic City which was to reveal the identity of the man who had
passed the bogus checks and sold the forged certificates of stock.
Somewhere in that great city was a photograph of the promoter and
of the woman who was aiding him to escape, taken in Atlantic City
and sent by mail to Chicago. Who had received it? Would it be
found in time to be of use? What would it reveal? It was like
hunting for a needle in a haystack, and yet the latest reports
seemed to encourage Kennedy with the hope that the authorities
were at last on the trail of the secret office from which the stock
had been sold. He was fuming and wishing that he could be at both
ends of the line at once.
"Any word from Chicago yet?" appealed an anxious voice from the
doorway.
We turned. There were Carroll and Williams who had come for us
with an automobile to go over to watch at the wharf in Brooklyn for
our man. It was Carroll who spoke. The strain of the suspense
was telling on him and I could readily imagine that he, like so
many others who had never seen Kennedy in action, had not the faith
in Craig's ability which I had seen tested so many times.
"Not yet," replied Kennedy, still busy about his apparatus on the
table. "I suppose you have heard nothing?"
"Nothing since my note of last night," returned Williams impatiently.
"Our detectives still insist that Bolton Brown is the man to watch,
and the disappearance of Adele DeMott at this time certainly looks
bad for him."
"It does, I admit," said Carroll reluctantly. "What's all this
stuff on the table?" he asked, indicating the magnets, rolls, and
clockwork.
Kennedy did not have time to reply, for the telephone bell was
tinkling insistently.
"I've got Chicago on the wire," Craig informed us, placing his hand
over the transmitter as he waited for long-distance to make the
final connection. "I'll try to repeat as much of the conversation
as I can so that you can follow it. Hello - yes - this is Kennedy.
Is that you, Clark? It's all arranged at this end. How's your end
of the line? Have you a good connection? Yes? My synchroniser
is working fine here, too. All right. Suppose we try it. Go
ahead."
As Kennedy gave a few final touches to the peculiar apparatus on
the table, the cylindrical drum before us began slowly to revolve
and the stylus or needle pressed down on the sensitised paper with
which the drum was covered, apparently with varying intensity as it
turned. Round and round the cylinder revolved like a graphophone.
"This," exclaimed Kennedy proudly, "is the 'electric eye,' the
telelectrograph invented by Thorne Baker in England. Clark and I
have been intending to try it out for a long time. It at last
makes possible the electric transmission of photographs, using the
telephone wires because they are much better for such a purpose
than the telegraph wires.
Slowly the needle was tracing out a picture on the paper. It was
only a thin band yet, but gradually it was widening, though we
could not guess what it was about to reveal as the ceaseless
revolutions widened the photographic print.
"I may say," explained Kennedy as we waited breathlessly, "that
another system known as the Korn system of telegraphing pictures
has also been in use in London, Paris, Berlin, and other cities
at various times for some years. Korn's apparatus depends on the
ability of the element selenium to vary the strength of an electric
current passing through it in proportion to the brightness with
which the selenium is illuminated. A new field has been opened by
these inventions which are now becoming more and more numerous,
since the Korn system did the pioneering.
"The various steps in sending a photograph by the Baker
telelectrograph are not so difficult to understand, after all.
First an ordinary photograph is taken and a negative made. Then
a print is made and a wet plate negative is printed on a sheet
of sensitised tinfoil which has been treated with a single-line
screen. You know a halftone consists of a photograph through a
screen composed of lines running perpendicular to each other - a
coarse screen for newspaper work, and a fine screen for better
work, such as in magazines. Well, in this case the screen is
composed of lines running parallel in one direction only, not
crossing at right angles. A halftone is composed of minute points,
some light, some dark. This print is composed of long shaded lines,
some parts light, others dark, giving the effect of a picture, you
understand?"
"Yes, yes," I exclaimed, thoroughly excited.
"Well, he resumed as the print widened visibly, this tinfoil negative
is wrapped around a cylinder at the other end of the line and a
stylus with a very delicate, sensitive point begins passing over it,
crossing the parallel lines at right angles, like the other lines
of a regular halftone. Whenever the point of the stylus passes over
one of the lighter spots on the photographic print it sends on a
longer electrical vibration, over the darker spots a shorter
vibration. The ever changing electrical current passes up through
the stylus, vibrates with ever varying degrees of intensity over
the thousand miles of telephone wire between Chicago and this
instrument here at the other end of the line.
"In this receiving apparatus the current causes another stylus to
pass over a sheet of sensitised chemical paper such as we have here.
The receiving stylus passes over the paper here synchronously with
the transmitting stylus in Chicago. The impression which each
stroke of the receiving stylus makes on the paper is black or light,
according to the length of the very quickly changing vibrations of
the electric current. White spots on the photographic print come
out as black spots here on the sensitised paper over which this
stylus is passing, and vice versa. In that way you can see the
positive print growing here before your very eyes as the picture
is transmitted from the negative which Clark has prepared and is
sending from Chicago."
As we bent over eagerly we could indeed now see what the thing was
doing. It was reproducing faithfully in New York what could be
seen by the mortal eye only in Chicago.
"What is it?" asked Williams, still half incredulous in spite of
the testimony of his eyes.
"It is a photograph which I think may aid us in deciding whether it
is Dawson or Brown who is responsible for the forgeries," answered
Kennedy, "and it may help us to penetrate the man's disguise yet,
before he escapes to South America or wherever he plans to go."
"You'll have to hurry," interposed Carroll, nervously looking at
his watch. "She sails in an hour and a half and it is a long ride
over to the pier even with a fast car."
"The print is almost ready," repeated Kennedy calmly. "By the
way, it is a photograph which was taken at Atlantic City a few days
ago for a booklet which the Lorraine was getting out. The
By-Products forger happened to get in it and he bribed the
photographer to give him the plate and take another picture for
the booklet which would leave him out. The plate was sent to a
little office in Chicago, discovered by the post-office inspectors,
where the forged stock certificates were sold. I understood from
what Clark told me over the telephone before he started to transmit
the picture that the woman in it looked very much like Adel DeMott.
Let us see."=20
The machine had ceased to revolve. Craig stripped a still wet
photograph off the telelectrograph instrument and stood regarding
it with intense satisfaction. Outside, the car which had been
engaged to hurry us over to Brooklyn waited. "Morphine fiends,"
said Kennedy as he fanned the print to dry it, " are the most
unreliable sort of people. They cover their tracks with almost
diabolical cunning. In fact they seem to enjoy it. For instance,
the crimes committed by morphinists are usually against property
and character and based upon selfishness, not brutal crimes such
as alcohol and other drugs induce. Kleptomania, forgery, swindling,
are among the most common.
"Then, too, one of the most marked phases of morphinism is the
pleasure its victims take in concealing their motives and conduct.
They have a mania for leading a double life, and enjoy the
deception and mask which they draw about themselves. Persons under
the influence of the drug have less power to resist physical and
mental impressions and they easily succumb to temptations and
suggestions from others. Morphine stands unequalled as a perverter
of the moral sense. It creates a person whom the father of lies
must recognise as kindred to himself. I know of a case where a
judge charged a jury that the prisoner, a morphine addict, was
mentally irresponsible for that reason. The judge knew what he
was talking about. It subsequently developed that he had been a
secret morphine fiend himself for years."
Come, come," broke in Carroll impatiently, we're wasting time. The
ship sails in an hour and unless you want to go down the bay on a
tug you've got to catch Dawson now or never. The morphine business
explains, but it does not excuse. Come on, the car is waiting. How
long do you think it will take us to get over to - "
"Police headquarters?" interrupted Craig. "About fifteen minutes.
This photograph shows, as I had hoped, the real forger. John Carroll,
this is a peculiar case. You have forged the name of the president
of your company, but you have also traced your own name very cleverly
to look like a forgery. It is what is technically known as
auto-forgery, forging one's own handwriting. At your convenience
we'll ride down to Centre Street directly."
Carroll was sputtering and almost frothing at the mouth with rage
which he made no effort to suppress. Williams was hesitating,
nonplussed, until Kennedy reached over unexpectedly and grasped
Carroll by the arm. As he shoved up Carroll's sleeve he disclosed
the forearm literally covered with little punctures made by the
hypodermic needle.
"It may interest you," remarked Kennedy, still holding Carroll in
his vise-like grip, while the drug fiend's shattered nerves caused
him to cower and tremble, "to know that a special detective working
for me has located Mr. and Mrs. Dawson at Bar Harbor, where they
are enjoying a quiet honeymoon. Brown is safely in the custody of
his counsel, ready to appear and clear himself as soon as the public
opinion which has been falsely inflamed against him subsides. Your
plan to give us the slip at the last moment at the wharf and board
the steamer for South America has miscarried. It is now too late
to catch it, but I shall send a wireless that will cause the arrest
of Miss DeMott the moment the ship touches an American port at
Colon, even if she succeeds in eluding the British authorities at
Kingston. The fact is, I don't much care about her, anyway. Thanks
to the telelectrograph here we have the real criminal."
Kennedy slapped down the now dry print that had come in over his
"seeing over a wire machine." Barring the false Van Dyke beard, it
was the face of John Carroll, forger and morphine fiend. Next to him
in the picture in the brilliant and fashionable dining-room of the
Lorraine was sitting Adele DeMott who had used her victim, Bolton
Brown, to shield her employer, Carroll.
IX
THE UNOFFICIAL SPY
"Craig, do you see that fellow over by the desk, talking to the
night clerk?" I asked Kennedy as we lounged into the lobby of the
new Hotel Vanderveer one evening after reclaiming our hats from
the plutocrat who had acquired the checking privilege. We had
dined on the roof garden of the Vanderveer apropos of nothing at
all except our desire to become acquainted with a new hotel.
"Yes," replied Kennedy, "what of him?"
"He's the house detective, McBride. Would you like to meet him?
He's full of good stories, an interesting chap. I met him at a
dinner given to the President not long ago and he told me a great
yarn about how the secret service, the police, and the hotel
combined to guard the President during the dinner. You know, a
big hotel is the stamping ground for all sorts of cranks and crooks."
The house detective had turned and had caught my eye. Much to my
surprise, he advanced to
meet me.
"Say, - er - er - Jameson," he began, at last recalling my name,
though he had seen me only once and then for only a short time.
"You're on the Star, I believe?"
"Yes," I replied, wondering what he could want.
"Well - er - do you suppose you could do the house a little - er -=20
favour?" he asked, hesitating and dropping his voice.
"What is it?" I queried, not feeling certain but that it was a
veiled attempt to secure a little free advertising for the
Vanderveer. "By the way, let me introduce you to my friend Kennedy,
McBride."
"Craig Kennedy?" he whispered aside, turning quickly to me. I
nodded.
"Mr. Kennedy," exclaimed the house man deferentially, "are you very
busy just now?"
"Not especially so," replied Craig. "My friend Jameson was telling
me that you knew some interesting yarns about hotel detective life.
I should like to hear you tell some of them, if you are not yourself
too - "
"Perhaps you'd rather see one instead?" interrupted the house
detective, eagerly scanning Craig's face.
"Indeed, nothing could please me more. What is it - a 'con' man or
a hotel 'beat'?"
McBride looked about to make sure that no one was listening.
"Neither," he whispered. "It's either a suicide or a murder. Come
upstairs with me. There isn't a man in the world I would rather
have met at this very instant, Mr. Kennedy, than yourself."
We followed McBride into an elevator which he stopped at the fifteenth
floor. With a nod to the young woman who was the floor clerk, the house
detective led the way down the thickly carpeted hall, stopping at a
room which, we could see through the transom, was lighted. He drew a
bunch of keys from his pocket and inserted a pass key into the lock.
The door swung open into a sumptuously fitted sitting-room. I
looked in, half fearfully, but, although all the lights were turned
on, the room was empty. McBride crossed the room quickly, opened
a door to a bedroom, and jerked his head back with a quick motion,
signifying his desire for us to follow.
Stretched lifeless on the white linen of the immaculate bed lay the
form of a woman, a beautiful woman she had been, too, though not
with the freshness which makes American women so attractive. There
was something artificial about her beauty, the artificiality which
hinted at a hidden story of a woman with a past.
She was a foreigner, apparently of one of the Latin races, although
at the moment in the horror of the tragedy before us I could not
guess her nationality. It was enough for me that here lay this cold,
stony, rigid beauty, robed in the latest creations of Paris, alone
in an elegantly furnished room of an exclusive hotel where hundreds
of gay guests were dining and chatting and laughing without a
suspicion of the terrible secret only a few feet distant from them.
We stood awestruck for the moment.
"The coroner ought to be here any moment," remarked McBride and even
the callousness of the regular detective was not sufficient to hide
the real feelings of the man. His practical sense soon returned,
however, and he continued, "Now, Jameson, don't you think you could
use a little influence with the newspaper men to keep this thing off
the front pages? Of course something has to be printed about it.
But we don't want to hoodoo the hotel right at the start. We had a
suicide the other day who left an apologetic note that was played up
by some of the papers. Now comes this affair. The management are
just as anxious to have the crime cleared up as any one - if it is
a crime. But can't it be done with the soft pedal? We will stop
at nothing in the way of expense - just so long as the name of the
Vanderveer is kept in the background. Only, I'm afraid the coroner
will try to rub it in and make the thing sensational."
"What was her name?" asked Kennedy. "At least, under what name was
she registered?
"She was registered as Madame de Nevers. It is not quite a week
now since she came here, came directly from the steamer Tripolitania.
See, there are her trunks and things, all pasted over with foreign
labels, not an American label among them. I haven't the slightest
doubt that her name was fictitious, for as far as I can see all the
ordinary marks of identification have been obliterated. It will
take time to identify her at the best, and in the meantime, if a
crime has been committed, the guilty person may escape. What I want
now, right away, is action."
"Has nothing in her actions about the hotel offered any clue, no
matter how slight?" asked Kennedy.
"Plenty of things," replied McBride quickly. "For one thing, she
didn't speak very much English and her maid seemed to do all the
talking for her, even to ordering her meals, which were always
served here. I did notice Madame a few times about the hotel,
though she spent most of her time in her rooms. She was attractive
as the deuce, and the men all looked at her whenever she stirred out.
She never even noticed them. But she was evidently expecting some
one, for her maid had left word at the desk that if a Mr. Gonzales
called, she was at home; if any one else, she was out. For the
first day or two she kept herself closely confined, except that at
the end of the second day she took a short spin through the park in
a taxicab - closed, even in this hot weather. Where she went I
cannot say, but when they returned the maid seemed rather agitated.
At least she was a few minutes later when she came all the way
downstairs to telephone from a booth, instead of using the room
telephone. At various times the maid was sent out to execute certain
errands, but always returned promptly. Madame de Nevers was a
genuine woman of mystery, but as long as she was a quiet mystery, I
thought it no business of ours to pry into the affairs of Madame."
"Did she have any visitors? Did this Mr. Gonzales call?" asked
Kennedy at length.