There was nothing that could be discovered, not a false book with
a secret spring that might disclose instead of reading matter a
heap of almost priceless jewels, not a suspicious bulging of any
garment or of the lining of a trunk or grip. Some of the goods
might have been on his person, but not much, and certainly there
was no excuse for ordering a personal examination, for he could not
have hidden a tenth part of what we knew he had, even under the
proverbial porous plaster. He was impeccable. Accordingly there
was nothing for the inspector to do but to declare a polite
armistice.
"So you didn't find 'Mona Lisa' in a false bottom, and my trunks
were not lined with smuggled cigars after all," he rasped savagely
as the stamp "Passed" was at last affixed and he paid in cash at
the little window with its sign, "Pay Duty Here: U.S. Custom House,"
some hundred dollars instead of the thousands Herndon had been
hoping to collect, if not to seize.
All through the inspection, an extra close scrutiny had been kept
on the other passengers as well, to prevent any of them from being
in league with the smugglers, though there was no direct or indirect
evidence to show that any of the others were.
We were about to leave the wharf, also, when Craig's attention was
called to a stack of trunks still remaining.
"Whose are those?" he asked as he lifted one. It felt suspiciously
light.
"Some of them belong to a Mr. Pierre and the rest to a Miss
Gabrielle," answered an inspector. "Bonded for Troy and waiting to
be transferred by the express company."
Here, perhaps, at last was an explanation, and Craig took advantage
of it. Could it be that the real seat of trouble was not here but
at some other place, that some exchange was to be made en route or
perhaps an attempt at bribery?
Herndon, too, was willing to run a risk. He ordered the trunks
opened immediately. But to our disappointment they were almost
empty. There was scarcely a thing of value in them. Most of
the contents consisted of clothes that had plainly been made in
America and were being brought back here. It was another false
scent. We had been played with and baffled at every turn. Perhaps
this had been the method originally agreed on. At any rate it had
been changed.
"Could they have left the goods in Paris, after all?" I queried.
"With the fall and winter trade just coming on?" Kennedy replied,
with an air of finality that set at rest any doubts about his
opinion on that score. "I thought perhaps we had a case of what do
you call it, Herndon, when they leave trunks that are to be secretly
removed by dishonest expressmen from the wharf at night?
"Sleepers. Oh, we've broken that up, too. No expressman would
dare try it now. I must confess this thing is beyond me, Craig."
Kennedy made no answer. Evidently there was nothing to do but to
await developments and see what Herndon's men reported. We had
been beaten at every turn in the game. Herndon seemed to feel that
there was a bitter sting in the defeat, particularly because the
smuggler or smugglers had actually been in our grasp so long to do
with as we pleased, and had so cleverly slipped out again, leaving
us holding the bag.
Kennedy was especially thoughtful as he told over the facts of the
case in his mind. "Of course," he remarked, " Mademoiselle
Gabrielle wasn't an actress. But we can't deny that she had very
little that would justify Herndon in holding her, unless he simply
wants a newspaper row."
"But I thought Pierre was quite intimate with her at first," I
ventured. "That was a dirty trick of his."
Craig laughed. "You mean an old one. That was simply a blind, to
divert attention from himself. I suspect they talked that over
between themselves for days before."
It was plainly more perplexing than ever. What had happened? Had
Pierre been a prestidigitator and had he merely said presto when
our backs were turned and whisked the goods invisibly into the
country? I could find no explanation for the little drama on the
pier. If Herndon's men had any genius in detecting smuggling,
their professional opponent certainly had greater genius in
perpetrating it.
We did not see Herndon again until after a hasty luncheon. He was
in his office and inclined to take a pessimistic view of the whole
affair. He brightened up when a telephone message came in from one
of his shadows. The men trailing Pierre and Mademoiselle Gabrielle
had crossed trails and run together at a little French restaurant
on the lower West Side, where Pierre, Lang, and Mademoiselle
Gabrielle had met and were dining in a most friendly spirit.
Kennedy was right. She had been merely a cog in the machinery of
the plot.
The man reported that even when a newsboy had been sent in by him
with the afternoon papers displaying in big headlines the mystery
of the death of Mademoiselle Violette, they had paid no attention.
It seemed evident that whatever the fate of the little modiste,
Mademoiselle Gabrielle had quite replaced her in the affections of
Pierre. There was nothing for us to do but to separate and await
developments.
It was late in the afternoon when Craig and I received a hurried
message from Herndon. One of his men had just called him up over
long distance from Riverledge. The party had left the restaurant
hurriedly, and though they had taken the only taxicab in sight he
had been able to follow them in time to find out that they were
going up to Riverledge. They were now preparing to go out for a
sail in one of Lang's motor-boats and he would be unable, of course,
to follow them further.
For the remainder of the afternoon Kennedy remained pondering the
case. At last an idea seemed to dawn on him. He found Herndon
still at his office and made an appointment to meet on the
waterfront near La Montaigne's pier, after dinner. The change in
Kennedy's spirits was obvious, though it did not in the least
enlighten my curiosity. Even after a dinner which was lengthened
out considerably, I thought, I did not get appreciably nearer a
solution, for we strolled over to the laboratory, where Craig
loaded me down with a huge package which was wrapped up in heavy
paper.
We arrived on the corner opposite the wharf just as it was growing
dusk. The neighbourhood did not appeal to me at night, and even
though there were two of us I was rather glad when we met Herndon,
who was waiting in the shadow of a fruit stall.
But instead of proceeding across to the pier by the side of which
La Montaigne was moored, we cut across the wide street and turned
down the next pier, where a couple of freighters were lying. The
odour of salt water, sewage, rotting wood, and the night air was
not inspiring. Nevertheless I was now carried away with the
strangeness of our adventure.
Halfway down the pier Kennedy paused before one of the gangways that
was shrouded in darkness. The door was opened and we followed
gingerly across the dirty deck of the freight ship. Below we could
hear the water lapping the piles of the pier. Across a dark abyss
lay the grim monster La Montaigne with here and there a light
gleaming on one of her decks. The sounds of the city seemed
miles away.
"What a fine place for a murder," laughed Kennedy coolly. He was
unwrapping the package which he had taken from me. It proved to
be a huge reflector in front of which was placed a little arrangement
which, under the light of a shaded lantern carried by Herndon, looked
like a coil of wire of some kind.
To the back of the reflector Craig attached two other flexible wires
which led to a couple of dry cells and a cylinder with a broadened
end, made of vulcanised rubber. It might have been a telephone
receiver, for all I could tell in the darkness.
While I was still speculating on the possible use of the enormous
parabolic reflector, a slight commotion on the opposite side of the
pier distracted my attention. A ship was coming in and was being
carefully and quietly berthed alongside the other big iron freighter
on that side. Herndon had left us.
"The Mohican is here," he remarked as he rejoined us. To my look
of inquiry he added, "The revenue cutter."
Kennedy had now finished and had pointed the reflector full at La
Montaigne. With a whispered hasty word of caution and advice to
Herndon, he drew me along with him down the wharf again.
At the little door which was cut in the barrier guarding the shore
end of La Montaigne's wharf Kennedy stopped. The customs service
night watchman - there is always a watchman of some kind aboard
every ship, passenger or freighter, all the time she is in port -
seemed to understand, for he admitted us after a word with Kennedy.
Threading our way carefully among the boxes, and bales, and crates
which were piled high, we proceeded down the wharf. Under the
electric lights the longshoremen were working feverishly, for the
unloading and loading of a giant transAtlantic vessel in the rush
season is a long and tedious process at best, requiring night work
and overtime, for every moment, like every cubic foot of space,
counts.
Once within the door, however, no one paid much attention to us.
They seemed to take it for granted that we had some right there.
We boarded the ship by one of the many entrances and then proceeded
down to a deck where apparently no one was working. It was more
like a great house than a ship, I felt, and I wondered whether
Kennedy's search was not more of a hunt for a needle in a haystack
than anything else. Yet he seemed to know what he was after.
We had descended to what I imagined must be the quarters of the
steward. About us were many large cases and chests, stacked up
and marked as belonging to the ship. Kennedy's attention was
attracted to them immediately. All at once it flashed on me what
his purpose was. In some of those cases were the smuggled goods!
Before I could say a word and before Kennedy had a chance even to
try to verify his suspicions, a sudden approach of footsteps
startled us. He drew me into a cabin or room full of shelves with
ship's stores.
"Why didn't you bring Herndon over and break into the boxes, if you
think the stuff is hidden in one of them?" I whispered.
"And let those higher up escape while their tools take all the
blame?" he answered. "Sh-h."
The men who had come into the compartment looked about as if
expecting to see some one.
"Two of them came down," a gruff voice said. "Where are they?"
>From the noise I inferred that there must be four or five men, and
from the ease with which they shifted the cases about some of them
must have been pretty husky stevedores.
"I don't know," a more polished but unfamiliar voice answered.
The door to our hiding-place was opened roughly and then banged
shut before we realised it. With a taunting laugh, some one turned
a key in the lock and before we could move a quick shift of packing
cases against the door made escape impossible.
Here we were marooned, shanghaied, as it were, within sight if not
call of Herndon and our friends. We had run up against professional
smugglers, of whom I had vaguely read, disguised as stewards,
deckhands, stokers, and other workers.
The only other opening to the cabin was a sort of porthole, more
for ventilation than anything else. Kennedy stuck his head through
it, but it was impossible for a man to squeeze out. There was one
of the lower decks directly before us while a bright arc light
gleamed tantalisingly over it, throwing a round circle of light
into our prison. I reflected bitterly on our shipwreck within
sight of port.
Kennedy remained silent, and I did not know what was working in his
mind. Together we made out the outline of the freighter at the next
wharf and speculated as to the location where we had left Herndon
with the huge reflector. There was no moon and it was as black as
ink in that direction, but if we could have got out I would have
trusted to luck to reach it by swimming.
Below us, from the restless water lapping on the sides of the hulk
of La Montaigne, we could now hear muffled sounds. It was a
motor-boat which had come crawling up the river front, with lights
extinguished, and had pushed a cautious nose into the slip where
our ship lay at the quay. None of your romantic low-lying, rakish
craft of the old smuggling yarns was this, ready for deeds of
desperation in the dark hours of midnight. It was just a modern
little motor-boat, up-to-date, and swift.
"Perhaps we'll get out of this finally," I grumbled as I understood
now what was afoot, "but not in time to be of any use."
A smothered sound as of something going over the vessel's side
followed. It was one of the boxes which we had seen outside in
the storeroom. Another followed, and a third and a fourth.
Then came a subdued parley. "We have two customs detectives locked
in a cabin here. We can't stay now. You'll have to take us and
our things off, too."
"Can't do it," called up another muffled voice. "Make your things
into a little bundle. We'll take that, but you'll have to get past
the night-watchman yourselves and meet us at Riverledge."
A moment later something else went over the side, and from the
sound we could infer that the engine of the motor-boat was being
started.
A Voice sounded mockingly outside our door. "Bon soir, you fellows
in there. We're going up the dock. Sorry to leave you here till
morning, but they'll let you out then. Au revoir."
Below I could hear just the faintest well-muffled chug-chug. Kennedy
in the meantime had been coolly craning his neck out of our porthole
under the rays of the arc light overhead. He was holding something
in his hand. It seemed like a little silver-backed piece of thin
glass with a flaring funnel-like thing back of it, which he held most
particularly. Though he heard the parting taunt outside he paid no
attention.
"You go to the deuce, whoever you are," I cried, beating on the door,
to which only a coarse laugh echoed back down the passageway.
"Be quiet, Walter," ordered Kennedy. "We have located the smuggled
goods in the storeroom of the steward, four wooden cases of them.
I think the stuff must have been brought on the ship in the trunks
and then transferred to the cases, perhaps after the code wireless
message was received. But we have been overpowered and locked in
a cabin with a port too small to crawl through. The cases have
been lowered over the side of the ship to a motor-boat that was
waiting below. The lights on the boat are out, but if you hurry
you can get it. The accomplices who locked us in are going to
disappear up the wharf. If you could only get the night watchman
quickly enough you could catch them, too, before they reach the
street."
I had turned, half expecting to see Kennedy talking to a ship's
officer who might have chanced on the deck outside. There was no
one. The only thing of life was the still sputtering arc light.
Had the man gone crazy?
"What of it?" I growled. "Don't you suppose I know all that?
What's the use of repeating it now? The thing to do is to get
out of this hole. Come, help me at this door. Maybe we can
batter it down."
Kennedy paid no attention to me, however, but kept his eyes
glued on the Cimmerian blackness outside the porthole.
He had done nothing apparently, yet a long finger of light seemed
to shoot out into the sky from the pier across from us and begin
waving back and forth as it was lowered to the dark waters of the
river. It was a searchlight. At once I thought of the huge
reflector which I had seen set up. But that had been on our side
of the next pier and this light came from the far side where the
Mohican lay.
"What is it?" I asked eagerly. "What has happened?"
It was as if a prayer had been answered from our dungeon on La
Montaigne.
"I knew we should need some means to communicate with Herndon,"
he explained simply, "and the wireless telephone wasn't practicable.
So I have used Dr. Alexander Graham Bell's photophone. Any of the
lights on this side of La Montaigne, I knew, would serve. What I
did, Walter, was merely to talk into the mouthpiece back of this
little silvered mirror which reflects light. The vibrations of the
voice caused a diaphragm in it to vibrate and thus the beam of
reflected light was made to pulsate. In other words, this little
thing is just a simple apparatus to transform the air vibrations
of the voice into light vibrations.
"The parabolic reflector over there catches these light vibrations
and focuses them on the cell of selenium which you perhaps noticed
in the centre of the reflector. You remember doubtless that the
element selenium varies its electrical resistance under light?
Thus there are reproduced similar variations in the cell to those
vibrations here in this transmitter. The cell is connected with
a telephone receiver and batteries over there and there you are.
It is very simple. In the ordinary carbon telephone transmitter
a variable electrical resistance is produced by pressure, since
carbon is not so good a conductor under pressure. Then these
variations are transmitted along two wires. This photophone is
wireless. Selenium even emits notes under a vibratory beam of
light, the pitch depending on the frequency. Changes in the
intensity of the light focused by the reflector on the cell alter
its electrical resistance and vary the current from the dry
batteries. Hence the telephone receiver over there is affected.
Bell used the photophone or radiophone over several hundred feet,
Ruhmer over several miles. When you thought I was talking to
myself I was really telling Herndon what had happened and what
to do - talking to him literally over a beam of light."
I could scarcely believe it, but an exclamation from Kennedy as
he drew his head in quickly recalled my attention. "Look out
on the river, Walter," he cried. "The Mohican has her searchlight
sweeping up and down. What do you see?"
The long finger of light had now come to rest. In its pathway I
saw a lightless motor-boat bobbing up and down, crowding on all
speed, yet followed relentlessly by the accusing finger. The
river front was now alive with shouting.
Suddenly the Mohican shot out from behind the pier where she
had been hidden. In spite of Lang's expertness it was an unequal
race. Nor would it have made much difference if it had been
otherwise, for a shot rang out from the Mohican which commanded
instant respect. The powerful revenue cutter rapidly overhauled
the little craft.
A hurried tread down the passageway followed. Cases were being
shoved aside and a key in the door of our compartment turned
quickly. I waited with clenched fists, prepared for an attack.
"You're all right?" Herndon's voice inquired anxiously. "We've
got that steward and the other fellows all right."
"Yes, come on," shouted Craig. "The cutter has made a capture."
We had reached the stern of the ship, and far out in the river
the Mohican was now headed toward us. She came alongside, and
Herndon quickly seized a rope, fastened it to the rail, and let
himself down to the deck of the cutter. Kennedy and I followed.
"This is a high-handed proceeding," I heard a voice that must
have been Lang's protesting. "By what right do you stop me? You
shall suffer for this."
"The Mohican," broke in Herndon, "has the right to appear anywhere
from Southshoal Lightship off Nantucket to the capes of the
Delaware, demand an inspection of any vessel's manifest and papers,
board anything from La Montaigne to your little motor-boat, inspect
it, seize it, if necessary put a crew on it." He slapped the little
cannon. "That commands respect. Besides, you were violating the
regulations - no lights."
On the deck of the cutter now lay four cases. A man broke one of
them open, then another. Inside he disclosed thousands of dollars'
worth of finery, while from a tray he drew several large chamois
bags of glittering diamonds and pearls.
Pierre looked on, crushed, all his jauntiness gone.
"So," exclaimed Kennedy, facing him, "you have your jilted fiancee,
Mademoiselle Violette, to thank for this - her letters and her
suicide. It wasn't as easy as you thought to throw her over for a
new soul mate, this Mademoiselle Gabrielle whom you were going to
set up as a rival in business to Violette. Violette has her revenge
for making a plaything of her heart, and if the dead can take any
satisfaction she"
With a quick movement Kennedy anticipated a motion of Pierre's.
The ruined smuggler had contemplated either an attack on himself
or his captor, but Craig had seized him by the wrist and ground
his knuckles into the back of Pierre's clenched fist until he
winced with pain. An Apache dagger similar to that which the
little modiste had used to end her life tragedy clattered to the
deck of the ship, a mute testimonial to the high class of society
Pierre and his associates must have cultivated.
"None of that, Pierre," Craig muttered, releasing him. "You can't
cheat the government out of its just dues even in the matter of
punishment."
XI
THE INVISIBLE RAY
"I won't deny that I had some expectations from the old man
myself."
Kennedy's client was speaking in a low, full chested, vibrating
voice, with some emotion, so low that I had entered the room without
being aware that any one was there until it was too late to retreat.
"As his physician for over twelve years," the man pursued, "I
certainly had been led to hope to be remembered in his will. But,
Professor Kennedy, I can't put it too strongly when I say that there
is no selfish motive in my coming to you about the case. There is
something wrong - depend on
that."
Craig had glanced up at me and, as I hesitated, I could see in an
instant that the speaker was a practitioner of a type that is
rapidly passing away, the old-fashioned family doctor.
"Dr. Burnham, I should like to have you know Mr. Jameson," introduced
Craig. "You can talk as freely before him as you have to me alone.
We always work together."
I shook hands with the visitor.
"The doctor has succeeded in interesting me greatly in a case which
has some unique features," Kennedy explained. "It has to do with
Stephen Haswell, the eccentric old millionaire of Brooklyn. Have
you ever heard of him?"
"Yes, indeed," I replied, recalling an occasional article which had
appeared in the newspapers regarding a dusty and dirty old house in
that part of the Heights in Brooklyn whence all that is fashionable
had not yet taken flight, a house of mystery, yet not more mysterious
than its owner in his secretive comings and goings in the affairs
of men of a generation beyond his time. Further than the facts that
he was reputed to be very wealthy and led, in the heart of a great
city, what was as nearly like the life of a hermit as possible, I
knew little or nothing. "What has he been doing now?" I asked.
"About a week ago," repeated the doctor, in answer to a nod of
encouragement from Kennedy, "I was summoned in the middle of the
night to attend Mr. Haswell, who, as I have been telling Professor
Kennedy, had been a patient of mine for over twelve years. He had
been suddenly stricken with total blindness. Since then he appears
to be failing fast, that is, he appeared so the last time I saw him,
a few days ago, after I had been superseded by a younger man. It
is a curious case and I have thought about it a great deal. But I
didn't like to speak to the authorities; there wasn't enough to
warrant that, and I should have been laughed out of court for my
pains. The more I have thought about it, however, the more I have
felt it my duty to say something to somebody, and so, having heard
of Professor Kennedy, I decided to consult him. The fact of the
matter is, I very much fear that there are circumstances which will
bear sharp looking into, perhaps a scheme to get control of the old
man's fortune."
The doctor paused, and Craig inclined his head, as much as to
signify his appreciation of the delicate position in which Burnham
stood in the case. Before the doctor could proceed further, Kennedy
handed me a letter which had been lying before him on the table.
It had evidently been torn into small pieces and then carefully
pasted together.
The superscription gave a small town in Ohio and a date about a
fortnight previous.