Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE EAR IN THE WALL
BY
ARTHUR B. REEVE
FRONTISPIECE BY WILL FOSTER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE VANISHER
II THE BLACK BOOK
III THE SAFE ROBBERY
IV THE ANONYMOUS LETTER
V THE SUFFRAGETTE SECRETARY
VI THE WOMAN DETECTIVE
VII THE GANG LEADER
VIII THE SHYSTER LAWYER
IX THE JURY FIXER
X THE AFTERNOON DANCE
XI THE TYPEWRITER CLUE
XII THE "PORTRAIT PARLE"
XIII THE CONVICTION
XIV THE BEAUTY PARLOUR
XV THE PHANTOM CIRCUIT
XVI THE SANITARIUM
XVII THE SOCIETY SCANDAL
XVIII THE WALL STREET WOLF
XIX THE ESCAPE
XX THE METRIC PHOTOGRAPH
XXI THE MORGUE
XXII THE CANARD
XXIII THE CONFESSION
XXIV THE DEBACLE OF DORGAN
XXV THE BLOOD CRYSTALS
XXVI THE WHITE SLAVE
XXVII THE ELECTION NIGHT
I
THE VANISHER
"Hello, Jameson, is Kennedy in?"
I glanced up from the evening papers to encounter the square-jawed,
alert face of District Attorney Carton in the doorway of our apartment.
"How do you do, Judge?" I exclaimed. "No, but I expect him any second
now. Won't you sit down?"
The District Attorney dropped, rather wearily I thought, into a chair
and looked at his watch.
I had made Carton's acquaintance some years before as a cub reporter on
the Star while he was a judge of an inferior court. Our acquaintance
had grown through several political campaigns in which I had had
assignments that brought me into contact with him. More recently some
special writing had led me across his trail again in telling the story
of his clean-up of graft in the city. At present his weariness was
easily accounted for. He was in the midst of the fight of his life for
re-election against the so-called "System," headed by Boss Dorgan, in
which he had gone far in exposing evils that ranged all the way from
vice and the drug traffic to bald election frauds.
"I expect a Mrs. Blackwell here in a few minutes," he remarked,
glancing again at his watch. His eye caught the headline of the news
story I had been reading and he added quickly, "What do the boys on the
Star think of that Blackwell case, anyhow?"
It was, I may say, a case deeply shrouded in mystery--the disappearance
without warning of a beautiful young girl, Betty Blackwell, barely
eighteen. Her family, the police, and now the District Attorney had
sought to solve it in vain. Some had thought it a kidnaping, others a
suicide, and others had even hinted at murder. All sorts of theories
had been advanced without in the least changing the original dominant
note of mystery. Photographs of the young woman had been published
broadcast, I knew, without eliciting a word in reply. Young men whom
she had known and girls with whom she had been intimate had been
questioned without so much as a clue being obtained. Reports that she
had been seen had come in from all over the country, as they always do
in such cases. All had been investigated and had turned out to be based
on nothing more than imagination. The mystery remained unsolved.
"Well," I replied, "of course there's a lot of talk now in the papers
about aphasia and amnesia and all that stuff. But, you know, we
reporters are a sceptical lot. We have to be shown. I can't say we put
much faith in THAT."
"But what is your explanation? You fellows always have an opinion.
Sometimes I think the newspapermen are our best detectives."
"I can't say that we have any opinion in this case--yet," I returned
frankly. "When a girl just simply disappears on Fifth Avenue and there
isn't even the hint of a clue as to any place she went or how,
well--oh, there's Kennedy now. Put it up to him."
"We were just talking of that Betty Blackwell disappearance case,"
resumed Carton, when the greetings were over. "What do you think of it?"
"Think of it?" repeated Kennedy promptly with a keen glance at the
District Attorney; "why, Judge, I think of it the same as you evidently
do. If you didn't think it was a case that was in some way connected
with your vice and graft investigation, you wouldn't be here. And if I
didn't feel that it promised surprising results, aside from the
interest I always have naturally in solving such mysteries, I wouldn't
be ready to take up the offer which you came here to make."
"You're a wizard, Kennedy," laughed Carton, though it was easily seen
that he was both pleased and relieved to think that he had enlisted
Craig's services so easily.
"Not much of a wizard. In the first place, I know the fight you're
making. Also, I know that you wouldn't go to the police in the present
state of armed truce between your office and Headquarters. You want
someone outside. Well, I'm more than willing to be that person. The
whole thing, in its larger aspects, interests me. Betty Blackwell in
particular, arouses my sympathies. That's all."
"Exactly, Kennedy. This fight I'm in is going to be the fight of my
life. Just now, in addition to everything else, people are looking to
me to find Betty Blackwell. Her mother was in to see me today; there
isn't much that she could add to what has already been said. Betty was
a most attractive girl. The family is an excellent one, but in reduced
circumstances. She had been used to a great deal as a child, but now,
since the death of her father, she has had to go to work--and you know
what that means to a girl like that."
Carton laid down a new photograph which the newspapers had not printed
yet. Betty Blackwell was slender, petite, chic. Her dark hair was
carefully groomed, and there was an air with which she wore her clothes
and carried herself, even in a portrait, which showed that she was no
ordinary girl.
Her soft brown eyes had that magnetic look which is dangerous to their
owner if she does not know how to control it, eyes that arrested one's
gaze, invited notice. Even the lens must have felt the spell. It had
caught, also, the soft richness of the skin of her oval face and full
throat and neck. Indeed one could not help remarking that she was
really the girl to grace a fortune. Only a turn of the hand of that
fickle goddess had prevented her from doing so.
I had picked up one of the evening papers and was looking at the
newspaper half-tone which more than failed to do justice to her. Just
then my eye happened on an item which I had been about to discuss with
Carton when Kennedy entered.
"As a scientist, does the amnesia theory appeal to you, Craig?" I
asked. "Now, here is an explanation by one of the special writers,
headed, 'Personalities Lost Through Amnesia.' Listen."
The article was brief:
Mysterious disappearances, such as that of Betty Blackwell, have
alarmed the public and baffled the police before this--disappearances
that have in their suddenness, apparent lack of purpose, and
inexplicability much in common with her case. Leaving out of account
the class of disappearances for their own convenience--embezzlers,
blackmailers, and so forth--there is still a large number of recorded
cases where the subjects have dropped out of sight without apparent
cause or reason and have left behind them untarnished reputations and
solvent back accounts. Of these, a small percentage are found to have
met with violence; others have been victims of suicidal mania, and
sooner or later a clue has come to light which has established the
fact. The dead are often easier to find than the living.
Of the remaining small proportion, there are on record, however, a
number of carefully authenticated cases where the subject has been the
victim of a sudden and complete loss of memory.
This dislocation of memory is a variety of aphasia known as amnesia,
and when the memory is recurrently lost and restored, we have
alternating personality. The Society for Psychical Research and many
eminent psychologists, among them the late William James, Dr. Weir
Mitchell, Dr. Hodgson of Boston, and Dr. A. E. Osborn of San Francisco,
have reported many cases of alternating personality.
Studious efforts are being made to understand and to explain the
strange type of mental phenomena exhibited in these cases, but as yet
no one has given a clear and comprehensive explanation of them. Such
cases are by no means always connected with disappearances, and
exhaustive studies have been made of types of alternating personality
that have from first to last been carefully watched by scientists of
the first rank.
The variety known as the ambulatory type, where the patient suddenly
loses all knowledge of his own identity and of the past and takes
himself off, leaving no trace or clue, is the variety which the present
case of Miss Blackwell seems to suggest.
There followed a number of most interesting cases and an elaborate
argument by the writer to show that Betty Blackwell was a victim of
this psychological aberration, that she was, in other words, "a
vanisher."
I laid down the paper with a questioning look at Kennedy.
"As a scientist," he replied deliberately, "the theory, of course, does
appeal to me, especially in the ingenious way in which that writer
applied it. However, as a detective"--he shook his head slowly--"I must
deal with facts--not speculations. It leaves much to be explained, to
say the least."
Just then the door buzzer sounded and Carton himself sprang to answer
it.
"That's Mrs. Blackwell now--her mother. I told her that I was going to
take the case to you, Kennedy, and took the liberty of asking her to
come up here to meet you. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Blackwell. Let me
introduce Professor Kennedy and Mr. Jameson, of whom I spoke to you."
She bowed and murmured a tremulous greeting. Kennedy placed a chair for
her and she thanked him.
Mrs. Blackwell was a slender little woman in black, well past middle
age. Her face and dress spoke of years of economy, even of privation,
but her manner was plainly that of a woman of gentle breeding and
former luxury. She was precisely of the type of decayed gentlewoman
that one meets often in the city, especially at some of the
middle-class boarding-houses.
Deeply as the disappearance of her daughter had affected her, Mrs.
Blackwell was facing it bravely. That was her nature. One could imagine
that only when Betty was actually found would this plucky little woman
collapse. Instinctively, one felt that she claimed his assistance in
the unequal fight she was waging against the complexities of modern
life for which she had been so ill prepared.
"I do hope you will be able to find my daughter," she began,
controlling her voice with an effort. "Mr. Carton has been so kind,
more than kind, I am sure, in getting your aid. The police seem to be
able to do nothing. They make out reports, put me off, tell me they are
making progress--but they don't find Betty."
There was a tragic pathos in the way she said it.
"Betty was such a good girl, too," she went on, her emotions rising.
"Oh, I was so proud of her when she got her position down in Wall
Street, with the broker, Mr. Langhorne."
"Tell Mr. Kennedy just what you told me of her disappearance," put in
Carton.
Again Mrs. Blackwell controlled her feelings. "I don't know much about
it," she faltered, "but last Saturday, when she left the office early,
she said she was going to do some shopping on Fifth Avenue. I know she
went there, did shop a bit, then walked on the Avenue several blocks.
But after that there is no trace of her."
"You have heard nothing, have no idea where she might have gone--even
for a time?" queried Kennedy.
He asked it with a keen look at the face of Mrs. Blackwell. I recalled
one case where a girl had disappeared in which Kennedy had always
asserted that if the family had been perfectly frank at the start much
more might have been accomplished in unravelling the mystery.
There was evident sincerity in Mrs. Blackwell as she replied quickly,
"Absolutely none. Another girl from the office was with her part of the
time, then left her to take the subway. We don't live far uptown. It
wouldn't have taken Betty long to get home, even if she had walked,
after that, through a crowded street, too."
"Of course, she may have met a friend, may have gone somewhere with the
friend," put in Kennedy, as if trying out the remark to see what effect
it might have.
"Where could she go?" asked Mrs. Blackwell in naive surprise, looking
at him with a counterpart of the eyes we had seen in the picture. "I
hope you don't think that Betty---"
The little widow was on the verge of tears again at the mere hint that
her daughter might have had friends that were not all, perhaps, that
they should be.
Carton came to the rescue. "Miss Blackwell," he interposed, "was a very
attractive girl, very. She had hosts of admirers, as every attractive
girl must have. Most of them, all of them, as far as Mrs. Blackwell
knows and I have been able to find out, were young men at the office
where she worked, or friends of that sort--not the ordinary clerk, but
of the rising, younger, self-made generation. Still, they don't seem to
have interested her particularly as far as I have been able to
discover. She merely liked them. There is absolutely nothing known to
point to the fact that she was any different from thousands of girls in
that respect. She was vivacious, full of fun and life, a girl any
fellow would have been more than proud to take to a dance. She was
ambitious, I suppose, but nothing more."
"Betty was not a bad girl," asserted Mrs. Blackwell vehemently. "She
was a good girl. I don't believe there was much, in fact anything
important, on which she did not make me her confidante. Yes, she was
ambitious. So am I. I have always hoped that Betty would bring our
family--her younger sister--back to the station where we were before
the panic wiped out our fortune and killed my husband. That is all."
"Yes," added Carton, "nothing at all is known that would make one think
that she was what young men call a 'good fellow' with them."
Kennedy looked up, but said nothing. I thought I could read the
unspoken word on his lips, as he glanced from Carton to Mrs. Blackwell,
"known."
She had risen and was facing us.
"Is there no one in all this great city," appealed the distracted
little woman with outstretched arms, "who can find my daughter? Is it
possible that a girl can disappear in broad daylight in the streets and
never be heard of again? Oh, won't you find her? Tell me she is
safe--that she is still the little girl I---"
Her voice failed and she was crying softly in her lace handkerchief. It
was touching and I saw that Kennedy was deeply moved, although at once
to his practical mind the thought must have occurred that nothing was
to be gained by further questions of Mrs. Blackwell.
"Believe me, Mrs. Blackwell," he said in a low tone, taking her hand,
"I will do all that is in my power to find her."
"Thank you," murmured the mother, overcome.
A moment later, however, she had recovered her composure to some degree
and rose to go. There was a flattering look of relief on her face which
in itself must have been ample reward to Craig, a retainer worth more
to him in a case like this than money.
"I'm going back to my office," remarked Carton. "If I learn anything, I
shall let you know."
The District Attorney went out with Mrs. Blackwell. Busy as he was, he
had time to turn aside to help this bereaved woman, and I admired him
for it.
"Do you think it is one of those cases like some that Carton has
uncovered on the East Side and among girls newly arrived in the city?"
I asked Craig when the door was shut.
"Can't say," he returned, in an abstracted study.
"It's awful if it is," I pursued. "And if it is, I suppose all that
will result from it will be a momentary thrill of the
newspaper-readers, and then they will fall back on the old saying that
after all it is only a result of human nature that such things
happen--they always have happened and always will--that old line of
talk."
"That sort of thing is NOT a result of human nature," returned Kennedy
earnestly. "It's a System. I mean to say that if it should turn out to
be connected with the vice investigations of Carton, and not a case of
aphasia, such a disappearance you would find to be due to the
persistent, cunning, and unprincipled exploitation of young girls.
"No, Walter, it is not that women are weak or that men are inherently
vicious. That doesn't account for a case like this. Then, too, some
mawkish people to-day are fond of putting the whole evil on low wages
as a cause. It isn't that--alone. It isn't even lack of education or of
moral training. Human nature is not so bad in the mass as some good
people think. No, don't you, as a reporter, see it? It is big business,
in its way, that Carton is fighting--big business in the commercialized
ruin of girls, such, perhaps, as Betty Blackwell--a vicious system that
enmeshes even those who are its tools. I'm glad if I can have a chance
to help smash it.
"Now, I'll tell you what I want you to do, just so that we can start
this thing with a clear understanding of what it amounts to. I want you
to look up just what the situation is. I know there is an army of
'vanishers' in New York. I want to know something about them in the
mass. Can't you dig up something from your Star connections?"
Kennedy had some matters concerning other cases to clear up before he
felt free to devote his whole time to this. As there was nothing we
could do immediately, I spent some time getting at the facts he wanted.
Indeed, it did not take me long to discover that the disappearance of
Betty Blackwell, in spite of the prominence it had been given, was by
no means an isolated case. I found that the Star alone had chronicled
scores of such disappearances during the past few months, cases of
girls who had simply been swallowed up in the big city. They were the
daughters of neither the rich nor of the poor, most of them, but girls
rather in ordinary circumstances.
Even the police records showed upward of a thousand missing young
girls, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-one years and I knew that
the police lists scarcely approximated the total number of missing
persons in the great city, especially in those cases where a hesitancy
on the part of parents and relatives often concealed the loss from
public records.
I came away with the impression that there were literally hundreds of
cases every bit as baffling as that of Betty Blackwell, of young girls
who had left absolutely no trace behind, who had made no preparations
for departure and of whom few had been heard from since they
disappeared. Many from homes of refinement and even high financial
standing had disappeared, leaving no clues behind. It was not alone the
daughters of the poor that were affected--it was all society.
Many reasons, I found, had been assigned for the disappearances. I knew
that there must be many causes at work, that no one cause could be
responsible for all or perhaps a majority of the cases. There were
suicides and murders and elopements, family troubles, poverty, desire
for freedom and adventure; innumerable complex causes, even down to
kidnapping.
The question was, however, which of these causes had been in operation
in the case of Betty Blackwell? Where had she gone? Where had this
whole army of vanishers disappeared? Were these disappearances merely
accidents--or was there an epidemic of amnesia? I could bring myself to
no such conclusions, but was forced to answer my own queries in lieu of
an answer from Kennedy, by propounding another. Was there an organized
band?
And, after I had tried to reason it all out, I still found myself back
at the original question, as I rejoined Kennedy at the laboratory,
"Where had they all--where had Betty Blackwell gone?"
II
THE BLACK BOOK
I had scarcely finished pouring out my suspicions to Kennedy when the
telephone rang.
It was Carton on the wire, in a state of unsuppressed excitement.
Kennedy answered the call himself, but the conversation was brief and,
to me, unenlightening, until he hung up the receiver.
"Dorgan--the Boss," he exclaimed, "has just found a detectaphone in his
private dining-room at Gastron's."
At once I saw the importance of the news and for the moment it obscured
even the case of Betty Blackwell.
Dorgan was the political boss of the city at that time, apparently
entrenched, with an organization that seemed impregnable. I knew him as
a big, bullnecked fellow, taciturn to the point of surliness, owing his
influence to his ability to "deliver the goods" in the shape of graft
of all sorts, the archenemy of Carton, a type of politician who now is
rapidly passing.
"Carton wants to see us immediately at his office," added Craig,
jamming his hat on his head. "Come on."
Without waiting for further comment or answer from me, Kennedy, caught
by the infectious excitement of Carton's message, dashed from our
apartment and a few minutes later we were whirling downtown on the
subway.
"You know, I suppose," he whispered rather hoarsely above the rumble
and roar of the train, but so as not to be overheard, "that Dorgan
always has kept a suite of rooms at Gastron's, on Fifth Avenue, for
dinners and conferences."
I nodded. Some of the things that must have gone on in the secret suite
in the fashionable restaurant I knew would make interesting reading, if
the walls had ears.
"Apparently he must have found out about the eavesdropping in time and
nipped it," pursued Kennedy.
"What do you mean?" I asked, for I had not been able to gather much
from the one-sided conversation over the telephone, and the lightning
change from the case of Betty Blackwell to this had left me somewhat
bewildered. "What has he done?"
"Smashed the transmitter of the machine," replied Kennedy tersely. "Cut
the wires."
"Where did it lead?" I asked. "How do you know?"
Kennedy shook his head. Either he did not know, yet, or he felt that
the subway was no place in which to continue the conversation beyond
the mere skeleton that he had given me.
We finished the ride in comparative silence and hurried into Carton's
office down in the Criminal Courts Building.
Carton greeted us cordially, with an air of intense relief, as if he
were glad to have been able to turn to Kennedy in the growing
perplexities that beset him.
What surprised me most, however, was that, seated beside his desk, in
an easy chair, was a striking looking woman, not exactly young, but of
an age that is perhaps more interesting than youth, certainly more
sophisticated. She, too, I noticed, had a tense, excited expression on
her face. As Kennedy and I entered she had looked us over searchingly.
"Let me present Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Jameson, Mrs. Ogleby," said Carton
quickly. "Both of them know as much about how experts use those little
mechanical eavesdroppers as anyone--except the inventor."
We bowed and waited for an explanation.
"You understand," continued Carton slowly to us in a tone that enjoined
secrecy, "Mrs. Ogleby, who is a friend of Mr. Murtha, Dorgan's
right-hand man, naturally is alarmed and doesn't want her name to
appear in this thing."
"Oh--it is terrible--terrible," Mrs. Ogleby chimed in in great
agitation. "I don't care about anything else. But, my reputation--it
will be ruined if they connect my name with the case. As soon as I
heard of it--I thought of you, Mr. Carton. I came here immediately.
There must be some way in which you can protect me--some way that you
can get along without using--"
"But, my dear Mrs. Ogleby," interrupted the District Attorney, "I have
told you half a dozen times, I think, that I didn't put the
detectaphone in--"
"Yes, but you will get the record," she persisted excitedly. "Can't you
do something?" she pleaded.
I fancied that she said it with the air of one who almost had some
right in the matter.
"Mrs. Ogleby," reiterated Carton earnestly, "I will do all I can--on my
word of honour--to protect your name, but--"
He paused and looked at us helplessly.
"What was it that was overheard?" asked Craig point-blank, watching
Mrs. Ogleby's face carefully.
"Why," she replied nervously, "there was a big dinner last night which
Mr. Dorgan gave at Gastron's. Mr. Murtha took me and--oh--there were
lots of others--" She stopped suddenly.
"Yes," prompted Kennedy. "Who else was there?"
She was on her guard, however. Evidently she had come to Carton for one
purpose and that was solely to protect herself against the scandal
which she thought might attach to having been present at one of the
rather notorious little affairs of the Boss.
"Really," she answered, colouring slightly, "I can't tell you. I
mustn't say a word about who was there--or anything about it. Good
heavens--it is bad enough as it is--to think that my name may be
dragged into politics and all sorts of false stories set in motion
about me. You must protect me, Mr. Carton, you must."
"How did you find out about the detectaphone being there?" asked
Kennedy.
"Why," she replied evasively, "I thought it was just an ordinary little
social dinner. That's what Mr. Murtha told me it was. I didn't think
anyone outside was interested in it or in who was there or what went
on. But, this morning, a--a friend--called me up and told me--something
that made me think others besides those invited knew of it, knew too
much."
She paused, then resumed hastily to forestall questioning, "I began to
think it over myself, and the more I thought of it, the stranger it
seemed that anyone else, outside, should know. I began to wonder how it
leaked out, for I understood that it was a strictly private affair. I
asked Mr. Murtha and he told Mr. Dorgan. Mr. Dorgan at once guessed
that there had been something queer. He looked about his rooms there,
and, sure enough, they found the detectaphone concealed in the wall. I
can't tell any more," she added, facing Carton and using her bewitching
eyes to their best advantage. "I can't ask you to shield Mr. Dorgan and
Mr. Murtha. They are your opponents. But I have done nothing to you,
Mr. Carton. You must suppress--that part of it--about me. Why, it would
ruin---"
She cut her words short. But I knew what she meant, and to a certain
extent I could understand, if not sympathize with her. Her husband,
Martin Ogleby, club-man and man about town, had a reputation none too
savoury. But, man-like, I knew, he would condone not even the
appearance of anything that caused gossip in his wife's actions. I
could understand how desperate she felt.
"But, my dear lady," repeated Carton, in a manner that showed that he
felt keenly, for some reason or other, the appeal she was making to
him, "must I say again that I had nothing whatever to do with it? I
have sent for Mr. Kennedy and---"
"Nothing--on your honour?" she asked, facing him squarely.
"Nothing--on my honour," he asserted frankly.
She appeared to be dazed. Apparently all along she had assumed that
Carton must be the person to see, that he alone could do anything for
her, would do something.
Her face paled as she met his earnest look. She had risen and now, half
chagrined, half frightened, she stood irresolute. Her lips quivered and
tears stood in her eyes as she realized that, instead of protecting
herself by her confidence, she had, perhaps, made matters worse by
telling an outsider.
Carton, too, had risen and in a low voice which we could not overhear
was trying to reassure her.
In her confusion she was moving toward the door, utterly oblivious,
now, to us. Carton tactfully took her arm and led her to a private
entrance that opened from his office down the corridor and out of sight
of the watchful eyes of the reporters and attendants in the outer hall.
I did not understand just what it was all about, but I could see
Kennedy's eye following Carton keenly.
"What was that--a plant?" he asked, still trying to read Carton's face,
as he returned to us alone a moment later. "Did she come to see whether
you got the record?"
"No--I don't think so," replied Carton quickly. "No, I think that was
all on the level--her part of it."
"But who did put in the instrument, really--did you?" asked Kennedy,
still quizzing.
"No," exclaimed Carton hastily, this time meeting Craig's eye frankly.
"No. I wish I had. Why--the fact is, I don't know who did--no one seems
to know, yet, evidently. But," he added, leaning forward and speaking
rapidly, "I think I could give a shrewd guess."
Kennedy said nothing, but nodded encouragingly.
"I think," continued Carton impressively, "that it must have been
Langhorne and the Wall Street crowd he represents."
"Langhorne," repeated Kennedy, his mind working rapidly. "Why, it was
his stenographer that Miss Blackwell was. Why do you suspect Langhorne?"
"Because," exclaimed Carton, more excited than ever at Kennedy's quick
deduction, bringing his fist down on the desk to emphasize his own
suspicion, "because they aren't getting their share of the graft that
Dorgan is passing out--probably are sore, and think that if they can
get something on the Boss or some of those who are close to him, they
may force him to take them into partnership in the deals."
Carton looked from Kennedy to me, to see what impression his theory
made. On me at least it did make an impression. Hartley Langhorne, I
knew, was a Wall Street broker and speculator who dealt in real estate,
securities, in fact in anything that would appeal to a plunger as
promising a quick and easy return.
Kennedy made no direct comment on the theory. "In what shape is the
record, do you suppose?" he asked merely.
"I gathered from Mrs. Ogleby," returned Carton watchfully, "that it had
been taken down by a stenographer at the receiving end of the
detectaphone, transcribed in typewriting, and loosely bound in a book
of limp black leather. Oh," he concluded, "Dorgan would give almost
anything to find out what is in that little record, you may be sure.
Perhaps even, rather than have such a thing out, he would come to terms
with Langhorne."
Kennedy said nothing. He was merely absorbing the case as Carton
presented it.
"Don't you see?" continued the District Attorney, pacing his office and
gazing now and then out of the window, "here's this record hidden away
somewhere in the city. If I could only get it--I'd win my fight against
Dorgan--and Mrs. Ogleby need not suffer for her mistake in coming to
me, at all."
He was apparently thinking aloud. Kennedy did not attempt to quiz him.
He was considering the importance of the situation. For, as I have
said, it was at the height of the political campaign in which Carton
had been renominated independently by the Reform League--of which, more
later.
"You don't think that Langhorne is really in the inner ring, then?"
questioned Craig.
"No, not yet."
"Well, then," I put in hastily, "can't you approach him or someone
close to him, and get---"
"Say," interrupted Carton, "anything that took place in that private
dining-room at Gastron's would be just as likely to incriminate
Langhorne and some of his crowd as not. It is a difference in degree of
graft--that is all. They don't want an open fight. It was just a piece
of finesse on Langhorne's part. You may be sure of that. No, neither of
them wants a fight. That's the last thing. They're both afraid. What
Langhorne wanted was a line on Dorgan. And we should never have known
anything about this Black Book, if some of the women, I suppose, hadn't
talked too much. Mrs. Ogleby added two and two and got five. She
thought it must be I who put the instrument in."
Carton was growing more and more excited again, "It's exasperating," he
continued. "There's the record--somewhere--if I could only get it.
Think of it, Kennedy--an election going on and never so much talk about
graft and vice before!"
"What was in the book--mostly, do you imagine?" asked Craig, still
imperturbable.
Carton shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, almost anything. For instance, you
know, Dorgan has just put through a new scheme of city planning--with
the able assistance of some theoretical reformers. That will be a big
piece of real estate graft, unless I am mistaken. Langhorne and his
crowd know it. They don't want to be frozen out."
As they talked, I had been revolving the thing over in my head.
Dorgan's little parties, as reported privately among the men on the
Star whom I knew, were notorious. The more I considered, the more
possible phases of the problem I thought of. It was not even impossible
that in some way it might bear on the Betty Blackwell case.
"Do you think Dorgan and Murtha are hunting the book as anxiously
as--some others?" I ventured.
"You have heard of the character of some of those dinners?" answered
Carton by asking another question, then went on: "Why, Dorgan has had
some of our leading lawyers, financiers, and legislators there. He
usually surrounds them with brilliant, clever women, as unscrupulous as
himself, and--well--you can imagine the result. Poor little Mrs.
Ogleby," he added sympathetically. "They could twist her any way they
chose for their purposes."
My own impression had been that Mrs. Ogleby was better able to take
care of herself than his words gave her credit for, but I said nothing.
Carton paused before the window and gazed out at the Bridge of Sighs
that led from his building across to the city prison.
"What a record that Black Book must hold!" he exclaimed meditatively.
"Why, if it was only that I could 'get' Murtha--I'd be happy," he
added, turning to us.
Murtha, as I have said, was Boss Dorgan's right bower, a clever and
unscrupulous politician and leader in a district where he succeeded
somehow or other in absolutely crushing opposition. I had run across
him now and then in the course of my newspaper career and, aside from
his well-known character in delivering the "goods" to the organization
whenever it was necessary, I had found him a most interesting character.
It was due to such men as Murtha that the organization kept its grip,
though one wave of reform after another lashed its fury on it. For
Murtha understood his people. He worked at politics every hour--whether
it was patting the babies of the district on the head, or bailing their
fathers out of jail, handing out shoes to the shiftless or judiciously
distributing coal and ice to the deserving.
Yet I had seen enough to know the inherent viciousness of the
circle--of how the organization took dollars from the people with one
concealed hand and distributed pennies from the other hand, held aloft
and in the spotlight. Again and again, Kennedy and I in our excursions
into scientific warfare on crime in the underworld had run squarely up
against the refined as well as the debased creatures of the "System."
Pyramided on what looked like open-handed charity and good-fellowship
we had seen vice and crime of all degrees.
And yet, somehow or other, I must confess to a sort of admiration for
Murtha and his stamp--if for nothing else than because of the frankness
with which he did what he sought to do. Neither Kennedy nor I could be
accused of undue sympathy with the System, yet, like many who had been
brought in close contact with it, it had earned our respect in many
ways.
And so, I contemplated the situation with more than ordinary interest.
Carton wanted the Black Book to use in order to win his political fight
for a clean city and to prosecute the grafters. Dorgan wanted it in
order to suppress and thus protect himself and Murtha. Mrs. Ogleby
wanted it to save her good name and prevent even the appearance of
scandal. Langhorne wanted it in order to coerce Dorgan to share in the
graft, yet was afraid of Carton also.
Was ever a situation of such peculiar, mixed motives?
"I would move heaven and earth for that Black Book!" exclaimed Carton
finally, turning from the window and facing us.
Kennedy, too, had risen.
"You can count on me, then, Carton," he said simply, as the
recollection of the many fights in which we had stood shoulder to
shoulder with the young District Attorney came over him.
A moment later Carton had us each by the hand.
"Thank you," he cried. "I knew you fellows would be with me."
III
THE SAFE ROBBERY
It was late that night that Kennedy and I left Carton after laying out
a campaign and setting in motion various forces, official and
unofficial, which might serve to keep us in touch with what Dorgan and
the organization were doing.
Not until the following morning, however, did anything new develop in
such a way that we could work on it.
Kennedy had picked up the morning papers which had been left at the
door of our apartment and was hastily running his eye over the
headlines on the first page, as was his custom.
"By Jove, Walter," I heard him exclaim. "What do you think of that--a
robbery below the deadline--and in Langhorne's office, too."
I hurried out of my room and glanced at the papers, also. Sure enough,
there it was:
SAFE ROBBED IN WALL ST. OFFICE
Door Into Office of Langhorne & Westlake, Brokers, Forced and Safe
Robbed.
One of the strangest robberies ever perpetrated was pulled off last
night in the office of Langhorne & Westlake, the brokers, at-----Wall
Street, some time during the regular closing time of the office and
eight o'clock.
Mr. Langhorne had returned to his office after dining with some friends
in order to work on some papers. When he arrived, about eight o'clock,
he found that the door had been forced. The office was in darkness, but
when he switched on the lights it was discovered that the office safe
had been entered.
Nothing was said about the manner in which the safe robbery was
perpetrated, but it is understood to have been very peculiar. So far no
details have been announced and the robbery was not reported to the
police until a late hour.
Mr. Langhorne, when seen by the reporters, stated positively that
nothing of great value had been taken and that the firm would not
suffer in any way as a result of the robbery.
One of the stenographers in the office, Miss Betty Blackwell, who acted
as private secretary to Mr. Langhorne, is missing and the case has
already attracted wide attention. Whether or not her disappearance had
anything to do with the robbery is not known.
"Naturally he would not report it to the police," commented Kennedy;
"that is, if it had anything to do with that Black Book, as I am sure
that it must have had."
"It was certainly a most peculiar affair if it did not," I remarked.
"There must be some way of finding that out. It's strange about Betty
Blackwell."
Kennedy was turning something over in his mind. "Of course," he
remarked, "we don't want to come out into the open just yet, but it
would be interesting to know what happened down there at Langhorne's.
Have you any objection to going down with me and posing as a reporter
from the Star?"
"None whatever," I returned.
We stopped at the laboratory on the campus of the University where
Craig still retained his professorship. Kennedy secured a rather bulky
piece of apparatus, which, as nearly as I can describe, consisted of a
steel frame, which could be attached by screws to any wooden table. It
contained a lower plate which could move forward and back, two lateral
uprights stiffened by curved braces, and a cross piece of steel
attached by strong bolts to the tops of the posts. In the face of the
machine was a dial with a pointer.
Kennedy quickly took the apparatus apart and made it up into two
packages so that between us we could carry it easily, and at about the
time that Wall Street offices were opening we were on our way downtown.
Langhorne proved to be a tall, rather slim, man of what might be called
youngish middle age. One did not have to be introduced to him to read
his character or his occupation. Every line of his faultlessly fitting
clothes and every expression of his keen and carefully cared-for face
betokened the plunger, the man who lived by his wits and found the
process both fascinating and congenial.
"Mr. Langhorne," began Kennedy, after I had taken upon myself the duty
of introducing ourselves as reporters, "we are preparing an article for
our paper about a new apparatus which the Star has imported especially
from Paris. It is a machine invented by Monsieur Bertillon just before
he died, for the purpose of furnishing exact measurements of the
muscular efforts exerted in the violent entry of a door or desk by
making it possible to reproduce the traces of the work that a burglar
has left on doors and articles of furniture. We've been waiting for a
case that the instrument would fit into and it seemed to us that
perhaps it might be of some use to you in getting at the real robber of
your office. Would you mind if we made an attempt to apply it?"
Langhorne could not very well refuse to allow us to try the thing,
though it was plainly evident that he did not want to talk and did not
relish the publicity that the news of the morning had brought him.
Kennedy had laid the apparatus down on a table as he spoke and was
assembling the parts which he had separated in order to carry it.
"These are the marks on the door, I presume?" he continued, examining
some indentations of the woodwork near the lock.
Langhorne assented.
"The door was open when you returned?" asked Kennedy.
"Closed," replied Langhorne briefly. "Before I put the key into the
lock, I turned the knob, as I have a habit of doing. Instead of
catching, it yielded and the door swung open without any trouble."
He repeated the story substantially as we had already read it in the
papers.
Kennedy had taken a step or two into the office, and was now facing the
safe. It was not a large safe, but was one of the most modern
construction and was supposed to be burglar proof.
"And you say you lost practically nothing?" persisted Craig.
"Nothing of importance," reiterated Langhorne.
Kennedy had been watching him closely. The man was at least baffling.
There was nothing excited or perturbed about his manner. Indeed, one
might easily have thought that it was not his safe at all that had been
robbed. I wondered whether, after all, he had had the Black Book.
Certainly, I felt, if he had lost it he was very cool about the loss.
Craig had by this time reached the safe itself. In spite of Langhorne's
reluctance, his assurance had taken Kennedy even up to the point which
he wished. He was examining the safe.
On the front it showed no evidence of having been "souped" or drilled.
There was not a mark on it. Nor, as we learned later from the police,
was there any evidence of a finger-print having been left by the
burglar.
Langhorne now but ill concealed his interest. It was natural, too, for
here he had one of the most modern of small strong-boxes, built up of
the latest chrome steel and designed to withstand any reasonable
assault of cracksman or fire.
I was on the point of inquiring how on earth it had been possible to
rob the safe, when Kennedy, standing on a chair, as Langhorne directed,
uttered a low exclamation.
I craned my neck to look also.
There, in the very top of the safe, yawned a huge hole large enough to
thrust one's arm through, with something to spare.
As I looked at the yawning dark hole in the top of what had been only a
short time ago a safe worthy of the latest state of the art, it seemed
incomprehensible.
Try as I could to reason it out, I could find no explanation. How it
had been possible for a burglar to make such an opening in the little
more than two hours between closing and the arrival of Langhorne after
dinner, I could not even guess. As far as I knew it would have taken
many long hours of patient labour with the finest bits to have made
anything at all comparable to the destruction which we saw before us.
A score of questions were on my lips, but I said nothing, although I
could not help noticing the strange look on Langhorne's face. It
plainly showed that he would like to have known what had taken place
during the two or more hours when his office had been unguarded, yet
was averse to betraying any such interest.
Mystified as I was by what I saw, I was even more amazed at the cool
manner in which Kennedy passed it all by.
He seemed merely to be giving the hole in the top of the safe a passing
glance, as though it was of no importance that someone should have in
such an incredibly short time made a hole through which one might
easily reach his arm and secure anything he wanted out of the interior
of the powerful little safe.
Langhorne, too, seemed surprised at Kennedy's matter of fact passing by
of what was almost beyond the range of possibility.
"After all," remarked Kennedy, "it is not the safe that we care to
study so much as the door. For one thing, I want to make sure whether
the marks show a genuine breaking and entering or whether they were
placed there afterwards merely to cover the trail, supposing someone
had used a key to get into the office."
The remark suggested many things to me. Was it that he meant to imply
that, after all, the missing Betty Blackwell had had something to do
with it? In fact, could the thing have been done by a woman?
"Most persons," remarked Craig, as he studied the marks on the door,
"don't know enough about jimmies. Against them an ordinary door-lock or
window-catch is no protection. With a jimmy eighteen inches long, even
an anemic burglar can exert a pressure sufficient to lift two tons. Not
one door-lock in ten thousand can stand this strain. It's like using a
hammer to kill a fly. Really, the only use of locks is to keep out
sneak thieves and to compel the modern, scientific educated burglar to
make a noise. This fellow, however, was no sneak thief."
He continued to adjust the machine which he had brought. Langhorne
watched minutely, but did not say anything.
"Bertillon used to call this his mechanical burglar detector,"
continued Kennedy. "As you see, this frame carries two dynamometers of
unequal power. The stronger, which has a high maximum capacity of
several tons, is designed for the measurement of vertical efforts. The
other measures horizontal efforts. The test is made by inserting the
end of a jimmy or other burglar's tool and endeavouring to produce
impressions similar to those which have been found on doors or windows.
The index of the dynamometer moves in such a way as to make a permanent
record of the pressure exerted. The horizontal or traction dynamometer
registers the other component of pressure."
He pressed down on the machine. "There was a pressure here of
considerably over two tons," he remarked at length, "with a very high
horizontal traction of over four hundred pounds. What I wanted to get
at was whether this could have been done by a man, woman, or child, or
perhaps by several persons. In this case, it was clearly no mere fake
to cover up the opening of the door by a key. It was a genuine attempt.
Nor could it have been done by a woman. No, that is the work of a man,
a powerful man, too, accustomed to the use of the jimmy."
I fancied that a shade of satisfaction crossed the otherwise impassive
face of Langhorne. Was it because the Bertillon dynamometer appeared at
first sight to exonerate Betty Blackwell, at least so far, from any
connection with the crime? It was difficult to say.
Important though it was, however, to clear up at the start just what
sort of person was connected with the breaking of the door I could not
but feel that Kennedy had some purpose in deferring and minimizing for
the present what, to me at least, was the greater mystery, the entering
of the safe itself.
He was still studying and comparing the marks on the door and the
record made on the dynamometer, when the office telephone rang and
Langhorne was summoned to answer it. Instead of taking the call in his
own office, he chose to answer it at the switchboard, perhaps because
that would allow him to keep an eye also on us.
Whatever his purpose, it likewise enabled us to keep an ear on him, and
it was with surprise which both Kennedy and I had great difficulty in
concealing, that we heard him reply, "Hello--yes--oh, Mrs. Ogleby,
good-morning. How are you? That's good. So you, too, read the papers.
No, I haven't lost anything of importance, thank you. Nothing serious,
you know. The papers like to get hold of such things and play them up.
I have a couple of reporters here now. Heaven knows what they are
doing, but I can foresee some more unpaid advertising for the firm in
it. Thank you again for your interest. You haven't forgotten the studio
dance I'm giving on the twelfth? No--that's fine. I hope you'll come,
even if Martin has another engagement. Fine. Well-good-bye."
He hung up the receiver with a mingled air of gratification and
exasperation, I fancied.
"Haven't you fellows finished yet?" he asked finally, coming over to
us, a little brusquely.
"Just about," returned Kennedy, who had by this time begun slowly to
dismember and pack up the dynamometer, determined to take advantage of
every minute both to observe Langhorne and to fix in his mind the
general lay-out of the office.