THE RADIUM ROBBER
Kennedy simply reached for the telephone and called an ambulance. But
it was purely perfunctory. Dr. Leslie himself was the only official who
could handle Sato’s case now.
We had planned a little vacation for ourselves, but the planning came
to naught. The next night we spent on a sleeper. That in itself is work
to me.
It all came about through a hurried message from Murray Denison,
president of the Federal Radium Corporation. Nothing would do but that
he should take both Kennedy and myself with him post-haste to
Pittsburgh at the first news of what had immediately been called “the
great radium robbery.”
Of course the newspapers were full of it. The very novelty of an
ultra-modern cracksman going off with something worth upward of a
couple of hundred thousand dollars—and all contained in a few platinum
tubes which could be tucked away in a vest pocket—had something about
it powerfully appealing to the imagination.
“Most ingenious, but, you see, the trouble with that safe is that it
was built to keep radium _in_—not cracksmen _out_,” remarked Kennedy,
when Denison had rushed us from the train to take a look at the little
safe in the works of the Corporation.
“Breaking into such a safe as this,” added Kennedy, after a cursory
examination, “is simple enough, after all.”
It was, however, a remarkably ingenious contrivance, about three feet
in height and of a weight of perhaps a ton and a half, and all to house
something weighing only a few grains.
“But,” Denison hastened to explain, “we had to protect the radium not
only against burglars, but, so to speak, against itself. Radium
emanations pass through steel and experiments have shown that the best
metal to contain them is lead. So, the difficulty was solved by making
a steel outer case enclosing an inside leaden shell three inches
thick.”
Kennedy had been toying thoughtfully with the door.
“Then the door, too, had to be contrived so as to prevent any escape of
the emanations through joints. It is lathe turned and circular, a ‘dead
fit.’ By means of a special contrivance any slight looseness caused by
wear and tear of closing can be adjusted. And another feature. That is
the appliance for preventing the loss of emanation when the door is
opened. Two valves have been inserted into the door and before it is
opened tubes with mercury are passed through which collect and store
the emanation.”
“All very nice for the radium,” remarked Craig cheerfully. “But the
fellow had only to use an electric drill and the gram or more of radium
was his.”
“I know that—now,” ruefully persisted Denison. “But the safe was
designed for us specially. The fellow got into it and got away, as far
as I can see, without leaving a clue.”
“Except one, of course,” interrupted Kennedy quickly.
Denison looked at him a moment keenly, then nodded and said, “Yes—you
are right. You mean one which he must bear on himself?”
“Exactly. You can’t carry a gram or more of radium bromide long with
impunity. The man to look for is one who in a few days will have
somewhere on his body a radium burn which will take months to heal. The
very thing he stole is a veritable Frankenstein’s monster bent on the
destruction of the thief himself!”
Kennedy had meanwhile picked up one of the Corporation’s circulars
lying on a desk. He ran his eye down the list of names.
“So, Hartley Haughton, the broker, is one of your stockholders,” mused
Kennedy.
“Not only one but _the_ one,” replied Denison with obvious pride.
Haughton was a young man who had come recently into his fortune, and,
while no one believed it to be large, he had cut quite a figure in Wall
Street.
“You know, I suppose,” added Denison, “that he is engaged to Felicie
Woods, the daughter of Mrs. Courtney Woods?”
Kennedy did not, but said nothing.
“A most delightful little girl,” continued Denison thoughtfully. “I
have known Mrs. Woods for some time. She wanted to invest, but I told
her frankly that this is, after all, a speculation. We may not be able
to swing so big a proposition, but, if not, no one can say we have
taken a dollar of money from widows and orphans.”
“I should like to see the works,” nodded Kennedy approvingly.
“By all means.”
The plant was a row of long low buildings of brick on the outskirts of
the city, once devoted to the making of vanadium steel. The ore, as
Denison explained, was brought to Pittsburgh because he had found here
already a factory which could readily be turned into a plant for the
extraction of radium. Huge baths and vats and crucibles for the various
acids and alkalis and other processes used in treating the ore stood at
various points.
“This must be like extracting gold from sea water,” remarked Kennedy
jocosely, impressed by the size of the plant as compared to the
product.
“Except that after we get through we have something infinitely more
precious than gold,” replied Denison, “something which warrants the
trouble and outlay. Yes, the fact is that the percentage of radium in
all such ores is even less than of gold in sea water.”
“Everything seems to be most carefully guarded,” remarked Kennedy as we
concluded our tour of the well-appointed works.
He had gone over everything in silence, and now at last we had returned
to the safe.
“Yes,” he repeated slowly, as if confirming his original impression,
“such an amount of radium as was stolen wouldn’t occasion immediate
discomfort to the thief, I suppose, but later no infernal machine could
be more dangerous to him.”
I pictured to myself the series of fearful works of mischief and terror
that might follow, a curse on the thief worse than that of the weirdest
curses of the Orient, the danger to the innocent, and the fact that in
the hands of a criminal it was an instrument for committing crimes that
might defy detection.
“There is nothing more to do here now,” he concluded. “I can see
nothing for the present except to go back to New York. The telltale
burn may not be the only clue, but if the thief is going to profit by
his spoils we shall hear about it best in New York or by cable from
London, Paris, or some other European city.”
Our hurried departure from New York had not given us a chance to visit
the offices of the Radium Corporation for the distribution of the salts
themselves. They were in a little old office building on William
Street, near the drug district and yet scarcely a moment’s walk from
the financial district.
“Our head bookkeeper, Miss Wallace, is ill,” remarked Denison when we
arrived at the office, “but if there is anything I can do to help you,
I shall be glad to do it. We depend on Miss Wallace a great deal.
Haughton says she is the brains of the office.”
Kennedy looked about the well-appointed suite curiously.
“Is this another of those radium safes?” he asked, approaching one
similar in appearance to that which had been broken open already.
“Yes, only a little larger.”
“How much is in it?”
“Most of our supply. I should say about two and a half grams. Miss
Wallace has the record.”
“It is of the same construction, I presume,” pursued Kennedy. “I wonder
whether the lead lining fits closely to the steel?”
“I think not,” considered Denison. “As I remember there was a sort of
insulating air cushion or something of the sort.”
Denison was quite eager to show us about. In fact ever since he had
hustled us out to view the scene of the robbery, his high nervous
tension had given us scarcely a moment’s rest. For hours he had talked
radium, until I felt that he, like his metal, must have an
inexhaustible emanation of words. He was one of those nervous, active
little men, a born salesman, whether of ribbons or radium.
“We have just gone into furnishing radium water,” he went on, bustling
about and patting a little glass tank.
I looked closely and could see that the water glowed in the dark with a
peculiar phosphorescence.
“The apparatus for the treatment,” he continued, “consists of two glass
and porcelain receptacles. Inside the larger receptacle is placed the
smaller, which contains a tiny quantity of radium. Into the larger
receptacle is poured about a gallon of filtered water. The emanation
from that little speck of radium is powerful enough to penetrate its
porcelain holder and charge the water with its curative properties.
From a tap at the bottom of the tank the patient draws the number of
glasses of water a day prescribed. For such purposes the emanation
within a day or two of being collected is as good as radium itself.
Why, this water is five thousand times as radioactive as the most
radioactive natural spring water.”
“You must have control of a comparatively large amount of the metal,”
suggested Kennedy.
“We are, I believe, the largest holders of radium in the world,” he
answered. “I have estimated that all told there are not much more than
ten grams, of which Madame Curie has perhaps three, while Sir Ernest
Cassel of London is the holder of perhaps as much. We have nearly four
grams, leaving about six or seven for the rest of the world.”
Kennedy nodded and continued to look about.
“The Radium Corporation,” went on Denison, “has several large deposits
of radioactive ore in Utah in what is known as the Poor Little Rich
Valley, a valley so named because from being about the barrenest and
most unproductive mineral or agricultural hole in the hills, the sudden
discovery of the radioactive deposits has made it almost priceless.”
He had entered a private office and was looking over some mail that had
been left on his desk during his absence.
“Look at this,” he called, picking up a clipping from a newspaper which
had been laid there for his attention. “You see, we have them aroused.”
We read the clipping together hastily:
PLAN TO CORNER WORLD’S RADIUM
LONDON.—Plans are being matured to form a large corporation for the
monopoly of the existing and future supply of radium throughout the
world. The company is to be called Universal Radium, Limited, and the
capital of ten million dollars will be offered for public subscription
at par simultaneously in London, Paris and New York.
The company’s business will be to acquire mines and deposits of
radioactive substances as well as the control of patents and processes
connected with the production of radium. The outspoken purpose of the
new company is to obtain a world-wide monopoly and maintain the price.
“Ah—a competitor,” commented Kennedy, handing back the clipping.
“Yes. You know radium salts used always to come from Europe. Now we are
getting ready to do some exporting ourselves. Say,” he added excitedly,
“there’s an idea, possibly, in that.”
“How?” queried Craig.
“Why, since we should be the principal competitors to the foreign
mines, couldn’t this robbery have been due to the machinations of these
schemers? To my mind, the United States, because of its supply of
radium-bearing ores, will have to be reckoned with first in cornering
the market. This is the point, Kennedy. Would those people who seem to
be trying to extend their new company all over the world stop at
anything in order to cripple us at the start?”
How much longer Denison would have rattled on in his effort to explain
the robbery, I do not know. The telephone rang and a reporter from the
_Record_, who had just read my own story in the _Star_, asked for an
interview. I knew that it would be only a question of minutes now
before the other men were wearing a path out on the stairs, and we
managed to get away before the onrush began.
“Walter,” said Kennedy, as soon as we had reached the street. “I want
to get in touch with Halsey Haughton. How can it be done?”
I could think of nothing better at that moment than to inquire at the
_Star’s_ Wall Street office, which happened to be around the corner. I
knew the men down there intimately, and a few minutes later we were
whisked up in the elevator to the office.
They were as glad to see me as I was to see them, for the story of the
robbery had interested the financial district perhaps more than any
other.
“Where can I find Halsey Haughton at this hour?” I asked.
“Say,” exclaimed one of the men, “what’s the matter? There have been
all kinds of rumors in the Street about him to-day. Did you know he was
ill?”
“No,” I answered. “Where is he?”
“Out at the home of his fiancee, who is the daughter of Mrs. Courtney
Woods, at Glenclair.”
“What’s the matter?” I persisted.
“That’s just it. No one seems to know. They say—well—they say he has a
cancer.”
Halsey Haughton suffering from cancer? It was such an uncommon thing to
hear of a young man that I looked up quickly in surprise. Then all at
once it flashed over me that Denison and Kennedy had discussed the
matter of burns from the stolen radium. Might not this be, instead of
cancer, a radium burn?
Kennedy, who had been standing a little apart from me while I was
talking with the boys, signaled to me with a quick glance not to say
too much, and a few minutes later we were on the street again.
I knew without being told that he was bound by the next train to the
pretty little New Jersey suburb of Glenclair.
It was late when we arrived, yet Kennedy had no hesitation in calling
at the quaint home of Mrs. Courtney Woods on Woodridge Avenue.
Mrs. Woods, a well-set-up woman of middle age, who had retained her
youth and good looks in a remarkable manner, met us in the foyer.
Briefly, Kennedy explained that we had just come in from Pittsburgh
with Mr. Denison and that it was very important that we should see
Haughton at once.
We had hardly told her the object of our visit when a young woman of
perhaps twenty-two or three, a very pretty girl, with all the good
looks of her mother and a freshness which only youth can possess,
tiptoed quietly downstairs. Her face told plainly that she was deeply
worried over the illness of her fiance.
“Who is it, mother?” she whispered from the turn in the stairs. “Some
gentlemen from the company? Hartley’s door was open when the bell rang,
and he thought he heard something said about the Pittsburgh affair.”
Though she had whispered, it had not been for the purpose of concealing
anything from us, but rather that the keen ears of her patient might
not catch the words. She cast an inquiring glance at us.
“Yes,” responded Kennedy in answer to her look, modulating his tone.
“We have just left Mr. Denison at the office. Might we see Mr. Haughton
for a moment? I am sure that nothing we can say or do will be as bad
for him as our going away, now that he knows that we are here.”
The two women appeared to consult for a moment.
“Felicie,” called a rather nervous voice from the second floor, “is it
some one from the company?”
“Just a moment, Hartley,” she answered, then, lower to her mother,
added, “I don’t think it can do any harm, do you, mother?”
“You remember the doctor’s orders, my dear.”
Again the voice called her.
“Hang the doctor’s orders,” the girl exclaimed, with an air of almost
masculinity. “It can’t be half so bad as to have him worry. Will you
promise not to stay long? We expect Dr. Bryant in a few moments,
anyway.”