THE AIR PIRATE
Rounding up the “Group” took several days, and it proved to be a great
story for the _Star_. I was pretty fagged when it was all over, but
there was a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that we had
frustrated one of the most daring anarchist plots of recent years.
“Can you arrange to spend the week-end with me at Stuyvesant
Verplanck’s at Bluffwood?” asked Kennedy over the telephone, the
afternoon that I had completed my work on the newspaper of undoing what
Annenberg and the rest had attempted.
“How long since society took you up?” I asked airily, adding, “Is it a
large house party you are getting up?”
“You have heard of the so-called ‘phantom bandit’ of Bluffwood, haven’t
you?” he returned rather brusquely, as though there was no time now for
bantering.
I confess that in the excitement of the anarchists I had forgotten it,
but now I recalled that for several days I had been reading little
paragraphs about robberies on the big estates on the Long Island shore
of the Sound. One of the local correspondents had called the robber a
“phantom bandit,” but I had thought it nothing more than an attempt to
make good copy out of a rather ordinary occurrence.
“Well,” he hurried on, “that’s the reason why I have been ‘taken up by
society,’ as you so elegantly phrase it. From the secret hiding-places
of the boudoirs and safes of fashionable women at Bluffwood, thousands
of dollars’ worth of jewels and other trinkets have mysteriously
vanished. Of course you’ll come along. Why, it will be just the story
to tone up that alleged page of society news you hand out in the Sunday
_Star_. There—we’re quits now. Seriously, though, Walter, it really
seems to be a very baffling case, or rather series of cases. The whole
colony out there is terrorized. They don’t know who the robber is, or
how he operates, or who will be the next victim, but his skill and
success seem almost uncanny. Mr. Verplanck has put one of his cars at
my disposal and I’m up here at the laboratory gathering some apparatus
that may be useful. I’ll pick you up anywhere between this and the
Bridge—how about Columbus Circle in half an hour?”
“Good,” I agreed, deciding quickly from his tone and manner of
assurance that it would be a case I could not afford to miss.
The Stuyvesant Verplancks, I knew, were among the leaders of the rather
recherché society at Bluffwood, and the pace at which Bluffwood moved
and had its being was such as to guarantee a good story in one way or
another.
“Why,” remarked Kennedy, as we sped out over the picturesque roads of
the north shore of Long Island, “this fellow, or fellows, seems to have
taken the measure of all the wealthy members of the exclusive
organizations out there—the Westport Yacht Club, the Bluffwood Country
Club, the North Shore Hunt, and all of them. It’s a positive scandal,
the ease with which he seems to come and go without detection, striking
now here, now there, often at places that it seems physically
impossible to get at, and yet always with the same diabolical skill and
success. One night he will take some baubles worth thousands, the next
pass them by for something apparently of no value at all, a piece of
bric-à-brac, a bundle of letters, anything.”
“Seems purposeless, insane, doesn’t it?” I put in.
“Not when he always takes something—often more valuable than money,”
returned Craig.
He leaned back in the car and surveyed the glimpses of bay and
countryside as we were whisked by the breaks in the trees.
“Walter,” he remarked meditatively, “have you ever considered the
possibilities of blackmail if the right sort of evidence were obtained
under this new ‘white-slavery act’? Scandals that some of the fast set
may be inclined to wink at, that at worst used to end in Reno, become
felonies with federal prison sentences looming up in the background.
Think it over.”
Stuyvesant Verplanck had telephoned rather hurriedly to Craig earlier
in the day, retaining his services, but telling only in the briefest
way of the extent of the depredations, and hinting that more than
jewelry might be at stake.
It was a pleasant ride, but we finished it in silence. Verplanck was,
as I recalled, a large masterful man, one of those who demanded and
liked large things—such as the estate of several hundred acres which we
at last entered.
It was on a neck of land with the restless waters of the Sound on one
side and the calmer waters of the bay on the other. Westport Bay lay in
a beautifully wooded, hilly country, and the house itself was on an
elevation, with a huge sweep of terraced lawn before it down to the
water’s edge. All around, for miles, were other large estates, a
veritable colony of wealth.
As we pulled up under the broad stone porte-cochère, Verplanck, who had
been expecting us, led the way into his library, a great room,
literally crowded with curios and objects of art which he had collected
on his travels. It was a superb mental workshop, overlooking the bay,
with a stretch of several miles of sheltered water.
“You will recall,” began Verplanck, wasting no time over preliminaries,
but plunging directly into the subject, “that the prominent robberies
of late have been at seacoast resorts, especially on the shores of Long
Island Sound, within, say, a hundred miles of New York. There has been
a great deal of talk about dark and muffled automobiles that have
conveyed mysterious parties swiftly and silently across country.
“My theory,” he went on self-assertively, “is that the attack has been
made always along water routes. Under shadow of darkness, it is easy to
slip into one of the sheltered coves or miniature fiords with which the
north coast of the Island abounds, land a cut-throat crew primed with
exact information of the treasure on some of these estates. Once the
booty is secured, the criminal could put out again into the Sound
without leaving a clue.”
He seemed to be considering his theory. “Perhaps the robberies last
summer at Narragansett, Newport, and a dozen other New England places
were perpetrated by the same cracksman. I believe,” he concluded,
lowering his voice, “that there plies to-day on the wide waters of the
Sound a slim, swift motor boat which wears the air of a pleasure craft,
yet is as black a pirate as ever flew the Jolly Roger. She may at this
moment be anchored off some exclusive yacht club, flying the
respectable burgee of the club—who knows?”
He paused as if his deductions settled the case so far. He would have
resumed in the same vein, if the door had not opened. A lady in a
cobwebby gown entered the room. She was of middle age, but had retained
her youth with a skill that her sisters of less leisure always envy.
Evidently she had not expected to find anyone, yet nothing seemed to
disconcert her.
“Mrs. Verplanck,” her husband introduced, “Professor Kennedy and his
associate, Mr. Jameson—those detectives we have heard about. We were
discussing the robberies.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling, “my husband has been thinking of forming
himself into a vigilance committee. The local authorities are all at
sea.”
I thought there was a trace of something veiled in the remark and
fancied, not only then but later, that there was an air of constraint
between the couple.
“You have not been robbed yourself?” queried Craig tentatively.
“Indeed we have,” exclaimed Verplanck quickly. “The other night I was
awakened by the noise of some one down here in this very library. I
fired a shot, wild, and shouted, but before I could get down here the
intruder had fled through a window, and half rolling down the terraces.
Mrs. Verplanck was awakened by the rumpus and both of us heard a
peculiar whirring noise.”
“Like an automobile muffled down,” she put in.
“No,” he asserted vigorously, “more like a powerful motor boat, one
with the exhaust under water.”
“Well,” she shrugged, “at any rate, we saw no one.”
“Did the intruder get anything?”
“That’s the lucky part. He had just opened this safe apparently and
begun to ransack it. This is my private safe. Mrs. Verplanck has
another built into her own room upstairs where she keeps her jewels.”
“It is not a very modern safe, is it?” ventured Kennedy. “The fellow
ripped off the outer casing with what they call a ‘can-opener.’”
“No. I keep it against fire rather than burglars. But he overlooked a
box of valuable heirlooms, some silver with the Verplanck arms. I think
I must have scared him off just in time. He seized a package in the
safe, but it was only some business correspondence. I don’t relish
having lost it, particularly. It related to a gentlemen’s agreement a
number of us had in the recent cotton corner. I suppose the Government
would like to have it. But—here’s the point. If it is so easy to get in
and get away, no one in Bluffwood is safe.”
“Why, he robbed the Montgomery Carter place the other night,” remarked
Mrs. Verplanck, “and almost got a lot of old Mrs. Carter’s jewels as
well as stuff belonging to her son, Montgomery, Junior. That was the
first robbery. Mr. Carter, that is Junior—Monty, everyone calls him—and
his chauffeur almost captured the fellow, but he managed to escape in
the woods.”
“In the woods?” repeated Craig.
Mrs. Verplanck nodded. “But they saved the loot he was about to take.”
“Oh, no one is safe any more,” reiterated Verplanck. “Carter seems to
be the only one who has had a real chance at him, and he was able to
get away neatly.”
“But he’s not the only one who got off without a loss,” she put in
significantly. “The last visit—” Then she paused.
“Where was the last attempt?” asked Kennedy.
“At the house of Mrs. Hollingsworth—around the point on this side of
the bay. You can’t see it from here.”
“I’d like to go there,” remarked Kennedy.
“Very well. Car or boat?”
“Boat, I think.”
“Suppose we go in my little runabout, the _Streamline II_? She’s as
fast as any ordinary automobile.”
“Very good. Then we can get an idea of the harbor.”
“I’ll telephone first that we are coming,” said Verplanck.
“I think I’ll go, too,” considered Mrs. Verplanck, ringing for a heavy
wrap.
“Just as you please,” said Verplanck.
The _Streamline_ was a three-stepped boat which. Verplanck had built
for racing, a beautiful craft, managed much like a racing automobile.
As she started from the dock, the purring drone of her eight cylinders
sent her feathering over the waves like a skipping stone. She sank back
into the water, her bow leaping upward, a cloud of spray in her wake,
like a waterspout.
Mrs. Hollingsworth was a wealthy divorcée, living rather quietly with
her two children, of whom the courts had awarded her the care. She was
a striking woman, one of those for whom the new styles of dress seem
especially to have been designed. I gathered, however, that she was not
on very good terms with the little Westport clique in which the
Verplancks moved, or at least not with Mrs. Verplanck. The two women
seemed to regard each other rather coldly, I thought, although Mr.
Verplanck, man-like, seemed to scorn any distinctions and was more than
cordial. I wondered why Mrs. Verplanck had come.
The Hollingsworth house was a beautiful little place down the bay from
the Yacht Club, but not as far as Verplanck’s, or the Carter estate,
which was opposite.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Hollingsworth when the reason for our visit had
been explained, “the attempt was a failure. I happened to be awake,
rather late, or perhaps you would call it early. I thought I heard a
noise as if some one was trying to break into the drawing-room through
the window. I switched on all the lights. I have them arranged so for
just that purpose of scaring off intruders. Then, as I looked out of my
window on the second floor, I fancied I could see a dark figure slink
into the shadow of the shrubbery at the side of the house. Then there
was a whirr. It might have been an automobile, although it sounded
differently from that—more like a motor boat. At any rate, there was no
trace of a car that we could discover in the morning. The road had been
oiled, too, and a car would have left marks. And yet some one was here.
There were marks on the drawing-room window just where I heard the
sounds.”
Who could it be? I asked myself as we left. I knew that the great army
of chauffeurs was infested with thieves, thugs and gunmen. Then, too,
there were maids, always useful as scouts for these corsairs who prey
on the rich. Yet so adroitly had everything been done in these cases
that not a clue seemed to have been left behind by which to trace the
thief.
We returned to Verplanck’s in the _Streamline_ in record time, dined,
and then found McNeill, a local detective, waiting to add his quota of
information. McNeill was of the square-toed, double-chinned,
bull-necked variety, just the man to take along if there was any
fighting. He had, however, very little to add to the solution of the
mystery, apparently believing in the chauffeur-and-maid theory.
It was too late to do anything more that night, and we sat on the
Verplanck porch, overlooking the beautiful harbor. It was a black, inky
night, with no moon, one of those nights when the myriad lights on the
boats were mere points in the darkness. As we looked out over the
water, considering the case which as yet we had hardly started on,
Kennedy seemed engrossed in the study in black.
“I thought I saw a moving light for an instant across the bay, above
the boats, and as though it were in the darkness of the hills on the
other side. Is there a road over there, above the Carter house?” he
asked suddenly.
“There is a road part of the way on the crest of the hill,” replied
Mrs. Verplanck. “You can see a car on it, now and then, through the
trees, like a moving light.”
“Over there, I mean,” reiterated Kennedy, indicating the light as it
flashed now faintly, then disappeared, to reappear further along, like
a gigantic firefly in the night.
“N-no,” said Verplanck. “I don’t think the road runs down as far as
that. It is further up the bay.”
“What is it then?” asked Kennedy, half to himself. “It seems to be
traveling rapidly. Now it must be about opposite the Carter house.
There—it has gone.”
We continued to watch for several minutes, but it did not reappear.
Could it have been a light on the mast of a boat moving rapidly up the
bay and perhaps nearer to us than we suspected? Nothing further
happened, however, and we retired early, expecting to start with fresh
minds on the case in the morning. Several watchmen whom Verplanck
employed both on the shore and along the driveways were left guarding
every possible entrance to the estate.
Yet the next morning as we met in the cheery east breakfast room,
Verplanck’s gardener came in, hat in hand, with much suppressed
excitement.
In his hand he held an orange which he had found in the shrubbery
underneath the windows of the house. In it was stuck a long nail and to
the nail was fastened a tag.
Kennedy read it quickly.
“If this had been a bomb, you and your detectives would never have
known what struck you.
“AQUAERO.”