in the middle of the main office, about three-fifths saltpeter and
two-fifths sulphur, I should say. Then he lighted it. The mass burned
with a bright flame but without explosion. We could smell the
suffocating fumes from it, and we retreated. For a moment or two we
watched it curiously at a distance.
"That's very good extinguishing-powder," explained Craig as we sniffed
at the odour. "It yields a large amount of carbon dioxide and sulphur
dioxide. Now--before it gets any worse--I guess it's safe to open the
door and let the ether out. You see this is as good a way as any to
render safe a room full of inflammable vapour. Come, we'll wait outside
the main office for a few minutes until the gases mix."
It seemed hours before Kennedy deemed it safe to enter the office again
with a light. When we did so, we made a rush for the little cubby-hole
of an office at the other end. On the floor was a little can of ether,
evaporated of course, and beside it a small apparatus apparently used
for producing electric sparks.
"So, that's how he does it," mused Kennedy, fingering the can
contemplatively. "He lets the ether evaporate in a room for a while and
then causes an explosion from a safe distance with this little electric
spark. There's where your wire comes in, McCormick. Say, my man, you
can switch on the lights from downstairs, now."
As we waited for the watchman to turn on the lights I exclaimed, "He
failed this time because the electricity was shut off."
"Precisely, Walter," assented Kennedy.
"But the flames which the night watchman saw, what of them?" put in
McCormick, considerably mystified. "He must have seen something."
Just then the lights winked up.
"Oh, that was before the fellow tried to touch off the ether vapour,"
explained Kennedy. "He had to make sure of his work of destruction
first--and, judging by the charred papers about, he did it well. See,
he tore leaves from the ledgers and lighted them on the floor. There
was an object in all that. What was it? Hello! Look at this mass of
charred paper in the corner."
He bent down and examined it carefully.
"Memoranda of some kind, I guess. I'll save this burnt paper and look
it over later. Don't disturb it. I'll take it away myself."
Search as we might, we could find no other trace of the firebug, and at
last we left. Kennedy carried the charred paper carefully in a large
hat-box.
"There'll be no more fires to-night, McCormick," he said. "But I'll
watch with you every night until we get this incendiary. Meanwhile I'll
see what I can decipher, if anything, in this burnt paper."
Next day McCormick dropped in to see us again. This time he had another
note, a disguised scrawl which read:
Chief: I'm not through. Watch me get another store yet. I won't fall
down this time.
A. SPARK.
Craig scowled as he read the note and handed it to me. "The man's
writing this time--like the second note," was all he said. "McCormick,
since we know where the lightning is going to strike, don't you think
it would be wiser to make our headquarters in one of the engine-houses
in that district?"
The fire marshal agreed, and that night saw us watching at the
fire-house nearest the department-store region.
Kennedy and I were assigned to places on the hose-cart and engine,
respectively, Kennedy being in the hose-cart so that he could be with
McCormick. We were taught to descend one of the four brass poles hand
under elbow, from the dormitory on the second floor. They showed us how
to jump into the "turn-outs"--a pair of trousers opened out over the
high top boots. We were given helmets which we placed in regulation
fashion on our rubber coats, turned inside out with the right armhole
up. Thus it came about that Craig and I joined the Fire Department
temporarily. It was a novel experience for us both.
"Now, Walter," said Kennedy, "as long as we have gone so far, we'll
'roll' to every fire, just like the regulars. We won't take any chances
of missing the firebug at any time of night or day."
It proved to be a remarkably quiet evening with only one little blaze
in a candy-shop on Seventh Avenue. Most of the time we sat around
trying to draw the men out about their thrilling experiences at fires.
But if there is one thing the fireman doesn't know it is the English
language when talking about himself. It was quite late when we turned
into the neat white cots upstairs.
We had scarcely fallen into a half doze in our strange surroundings
when the gong downstairs sounded. It was our signal.
We could hear the rapid clatter of the horses' hoofs as they were
automatically released from their stalls and the collars and harness
mechanically locked about them. All was stir, and motion, and shouts.
Craig and I had bounded awkwardly into our paraphernalia at the first
sound. We slid ungracefully down the pole and were pushed and shoved
into our places, for scientific management in a New York fire-house has
reached one hundred per cent. efficiency, and we were not to be allowed
to delay the game.
The oil-torch had been applied to the engine, and it rolled forth,
belching flames. I was hanging on for dear life, now and then catching
sight of the driver urging his plunging horses onward like a charioteer
in a modern Ben Hur race. The tender with Craig and McCormick was lost
in the clouds of smoke and sparks that trailed behind us. On we dashed
until we turned into Sixth Avenue. The glare of the sky told us that
this time the firebug had made good.
"I'll be hanged if it isn't the Stacey store again," shouted the man
next me on the engine as the horses lunged up the avenue and stopped at
the allotted hydrant. It was like a war game. Every move had been
planned out by the fire-strategists, even down to the hydrants that the
engines should take at a given fire.
Already several floors were aflame, the windows glowing like
open-hearth furnaces, the glass bulging and cracking and the flames
licking upward and shooting out in long streamers. The hose was coupled
up in an instant, the water turned on, and the limp rubber and canvas
became as rigid as a post with the high pressure of the water being
forced through it. Company after company dashed into the blazing
"fireproof" building, urged by the hoarse profanity of the chief.
Twenty or thirty men must have disappeared into the stifle from which
the police retreated. There was no haste, no hesitation. Everything
moved as smoothly as if by clockwork. Yet we could not see one of the
men who had disappeared into the burning building. They had been
swallowed up, as it were. For that is the way with the New York
firemen. They go straight to the heart of the fire. Now and then a
stream of a hose spat out of a window, showing that the men were still
alive and working. About the ground floors the red-helmeted salvage
corps were busy covering up what they could of the goods with rubber
sheets to protect them from water. Doctors with black bags and white
trousers were working over the injured. Kennedy and I were busy about
the engine, and there was plenty for us to do.
Above the shrill whistle for more coal I heard a voice shout, "Began
with an explosion--it's the firebug, all right." I looked up. It was
McCormick, dripping and grimy, in a high state of excitement, talking
to Kennedy.
I had been so busy trying to make myself believe that I was really of
some assistance about the engine that I had not taken time to watch the
fire itself. It was now under control. The sharp and scientific attack
had nipped what might have been one of New York's historic
conflagrations.
"Are you game to go inside?" I heard McCormick ask.
For answer Kennedy simply nodded. As for me, where Craig went I went.
The three of us drove through the scorching door, past twisted masses
of iron still glowing dull red in the smoke and steam, while the water
hissed and spattered and slopped. The smoke was still suffocating, and
every once in a while we were forced to find air close to the floor and
near the wall. My hands and arms and legs felt like lead, yet on we
drove.
Coughing and choking, we followed McCormick to what had been the heart
of the fire, the office. Men with picks and axes and all manner of
cunningly devised instruments were hacking and tearing at the walls and
woodwork, putting out the last smouldering sparks while a thousand
gallons of water were pouring in at various parts of the building where
the fire still showed spirit.
There on the floor of the office lay a charred, shapeless,
unrecognisable mass. What was that gruesome odour in the room? Burned
human flesh? I recoiled from what had once been the form of a woman.
McCormick uttered a cry, and as I turned my eyes away, I saw him
holding a wire with the insulation burned off. He had picked it up from
the wreckage of the floor. It led to a bent and blackened can--that had
once been a can of ether.
My mind worked rapidly, but McCormick blurted out the words before I
could form them, "Caught in her own trap at last!"
Kennedy said nothing, but as one of the firemen roughly but reverently
covered the remains with a rubber sheet, he stooped down and withdrew
from the breast of the woman a long letter-file. "Come, let us go," he
said.
Back in our apartment again we bathed our racking heads, gargled our
parched throats, and washed out our bloodshot eyes, in silence. The
whole adventure, though still fresh and vivid in my mind, seemed
unreal, like a dream. The choking air, the hissing steam, the ghastly
object under the tarpaulin--what did it all mean? Who was she? I strove
to reason it out, but could find no answer.
It was nearly dawn when the door opened and McCormick came in and
dropped wearily into a chair. "Do you know who that woman was?" he
gasped. "It was Miss Wend herself."
"Who identified her?" asked Kennedy calmly.
"Oh, several people. Stacey recognised her at once. Then Hartstein, the
adjuster for the insured, and Lazard, the adjuster for the company,
both of whom had had more or less to do with her in connection with
settling up for other fires, recognised her. She was a very clever
woman, was Miss Wend, and a very important cog in the Stacey
enterprises. And to think she was the firebug, after all. I can hardly
believe it."
"Why believe it?" asked Kennedy quietly.
"Why believe it?" echoed McCormick. "Stacey has found shortages in his
books due to the operation of her departments. The bookkeeper who had
charge of the accounts in her department, a man named Douglas, is
missing. She must have tried to cover up her operations by fires and
juggling the accounts. Failing in that she tried to destroy Stacey's
store itself, twice. She was one of the few that could get into the
office unobserved. Oh, it's a clear case now. To my mind, the heavy
vapours of ether--they are heavier than air, you know--must have
escaped along the surface of the floor last night and become ignited at
a considerable distance from where she expected. She was caught in a
back-draught, or something of the sort. Well, thank God, we've seen the
last of this firebug business. What's that?"
Kennedy had laid the letter-file on the table. "Nothing. Only I found
this embedded in Miss Wend's breast right over her heart."
"Then she was murdered?" exclaimed McCormick.
"We haven't come to the end of this case yet," replied Craig evasively.
"On the contrary, we have just got our first good clue. No, McCormick,
your theory will not hold water. The real point is to find this missing
bookkeeper at any cost. You must persuade him to confess what he knows.
Offer him immunity--he was only a pawn in the hands of those higher up."
McCormick was not hard to convince. Tired as he was, he grabbed up his
hat and started off to put the final machinery in motion to wind up the
long chase for the firebug.
"I must get a couple of hours' sleep," he yawned as he left us, "but
first I want to start something toward finding Douglas. I shall try to
see you about noon."
I was too exhausted to go to the office. In fact, I doubt if I could
have written a line. But I telephoned in a story of personal
experiences at the Stacey fire and told them they could fix it up as
they chose and even sign my name to it.
About noon McCormick came in again, looking as fresh as if nothing had
happened. He was used to it.
"I know where Douglas is," he announced breathlessly.
"Fine," said Kennedy, "and can you produce him at any time when it is
necessary?"
"Let me tell you what I have done. I went down to the district attorney
from here--routed him out of bed. He has promised to turn loose his
accountants to audit the reports of the adjusters, Hartstein and
Lazard, as well as to make a cursory examination of what Stacey books
there are left. He says he will have a preliminary report ready
to-night, but the detailed report will take days, of course.
"It's the Douglas problem that is difficult, though. I haven't seen
him, but one of the central-office men, by shadowing his wife, has
found that he is in hiding down on the East Side. He's safe there; he
can't make a move to get away without being arrested. The trouble is
that if I arrest him, the people higher up will know it and will escape
before I can get his confession and the warrants. I'd much rather have
the whole thing done at once. Isn't there some way we can get the whole
Stacey crowd together, make the arrest of Douglas and nab the guilty
ones in the case, all together without giving them a chance to escape
or to shield the real firebug?"
Kennedy thought a moment. "Yes," he answered slowly. "There is. If you
can get them all together at my laboratory to-night at, say, eight
o'clock, I'll give you two clear hours to make the arrest of Douglas,
get the confession, and swear out the warrants. All that you'll need to
do is to let me talk a few minutes this afternoon with the judge who
will sit in the night court to-night. I shall install a little machine
on his desk in the court, and we'll catch the real criminal--he'll
never get a chance to cross the state line or disappear in any way. You
see, my laboratory will be neutral ground. I think you can get them to
come, inasmuch as they know the bookkeeper is safe and that dead women
tell no tales."
When next I saw Kennedy it was late in the afternoon, in the
laboratory. He was arranging something in the top drawer of a flat-top
desk. It seemed to be two instruments composed of many levers and discs
and magnets, each instrument with a roll of paper about five inches
wide. On one was a sort of stylus with two silk cords attached at right
angles to each other near the point. On the other was a capillary glass
tube at the junction of two aluminum arms, also at right angles to each
other.
It was quite like old times to see Kennedy at work in his laboratory
preparing for a "seance." He said nothing as I watched him curiously,
and I asked nothing. Two sets of wires were attached to each of the
instruments, and these he carefully concealed and led out the window.
Then he arranged the chairs on the opposite side of the desk from his
own.
"Walter," he said, "when our guests begin to arrive I want you to be
master of ceremonies. Simply keep them on the opposite side of the desk
from me. Don't let them move their chairs around to the right or left.
And, above all, leave the doors open. I don't want any one to be
suspicious or to feel that he is shut in in any way. Create the
impression that they are free to go and come when they please."
Stacey arrived first in a limousine which he left standing at the door
of the Chemistry Building. Bloom and Warren came together in the
latter's car. Lazard came in a taxicab which he dismissed, and
Hartstein came up by the subway, being the last to arrive. Every one
seemed to be in good humour.
I seated them as Kennedy had directed. Kennedy pulled out the extension
on the left of his desk and leaned his elbow on it as he began to
apologise for taking up their time at such a critical moment. As near
as I could make out, he had quietly pulled out the top drawer of his
desk on the right, the drawer in which I had seen him place the
complicated apparatus. But as nothing further happened I almost forgot
about it in listening to him. He began by referring to the burned
papers he had found in the office.
"It is sometimes possible," he continued, "to decipher writing on
burned papers if one is careful. The processes of colour photography
have recently been applied to obtain a legible photograph of the
writing on burned manuscripts which are unreadable by any other known
means. As long as the sheet has not been entirely disintegrated
positive results can be obtained every time. The charred manuscript is
carefully arranged in as near its original shape as possible, on a
sheet of glass and covered with a drying varnish, after which it is
backed by another sheet of glass.
"By using carefully selected colour screens and orthochromatic plates a
perfectly legible photograph of the writing may be taken, although
there may be no marks on the charred remains that are visible to the
eye. This is the only known method in many cases. I have here some
burned fragments of paper which I gathered up after the first attempt
to fire your store, Mr. Stacey."
Stacey coughed in acknowledgment. As for Craig, he did not mince
matters in telling what he had found.
"Some were notes given in favour of Rebecca Wend and signed by Joseph
Stacey," he said quietly. "They represent a large sum of money in the
aggregate. Others were memoranda of Miss Wend's, and still others were
autograph letters to Miss Wend of a very incriminating nature in
connection with the fires by another person."
Here he laid the "A. Spark" letters on the desk before him. "Now," he
added "some one, in a spirit of bravado, sent these notes to the fire
marshal at various times. Curiously enough, I find that the handwriting
of the first one bears a peculiar resemblance to that of Miss Wend,
while the second and third, though disguised also, greatly suggest the
handwriting of Miss Wend's correspondent."
No one moved. But I sat aghast. She had been a part of the conspiracy,
after all, not a pawn. Had they played fair?
"Taking up next the remarkable succession of fires," resumed Kennedy,
"this case presents some unique features. In short, it is a clear case
of what is known as a 'firebug trust.' Now just what is a firebug
trust? Well, it is, as near as I can make out, a combination of
dishonest merchants and insurance adjusters engaged in the business of
deliberately setting fires for profit. These arson trusts are not the
ordinary kind of firebugs whom the firemen plentifully damn in the
fixed belief that one-fourth of all fires are kindled by incendiaries.
Such 'trusts' exist all over the country. They have operated in
Chicago, where they are said to have made seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars in one year. Another group is said to have its
headquarters in Kansas City. Others have worked in St. Louis,
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo. The fire marshals of Illinois,
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio have investigated their work. But until
recently New York has been singularly free from the organised work of
this sort. Of course we have plenty of firebugs and pyromaniacs in a
small way, but the big conspiracy has never come to my personal
attention before.
"Now, the Jones-Green fire, the Quadrangle fire, the Slawson Building
fire, and the rest, have all been set for one purpose--to collect
insurance. I may as well say right here that some people are in bad in
this case, but that others are in worse. Miss Wend was originally a
party to the scheme. Only the trouble with Miss Wend was that she was
too shrewd to be fooled. She insisted that she have her full share of
the pickings. In that case it seems to have been the whole field
against Miss Wend, not a very gallant thing, nor yet according to the
adage about honour among thieves.
"A certain person whose name I am frank to say I do not
know--yet--conceived the idea of destroying the obligations of the
Stacey companies to Miss Wend as well as the incriminating evidence
which she held of the 'firebug trust,' of which she was a member up to
this time. The plan only partly succeeded. The chief coup, which was to
destroy the Stacey store into the bargain, miscarried.
"What was the result? Miss Wend, who had been hand in glove with the
'trust,' was now a bitter enemy, perhaps would turn state's evidence.
What more natural than to complete the conspiracy by carrying out the
coup and at the same time get rid of the dangerous enemy of the
conspirators? I believe that Miss Wend was lured under some pretext or
other to the Stacey store on the night of the big fire. The person who
wrote the second and third 'A. Spark' letters did it. She was murdered
with this deadly instrument"--Craig laid the letter-file on the
table--"and it was planned to throw the entire burden of suspicion on
her by asserting that there was a shortage in the books of her
department."
"Pooh!" exclaimed Stacey, smoking complacently at his cigar. "We have
been victimised in those fires by people who have grudges against us,
labour unions and others. This talk of an arson trust is bosh--yellow
journalism. More than that, we have been systematically robbed by a
trusted head of a department, and the fire at Stacey's was the way the
thief took to cover--er--her stealings. At the proper time we shall
produce the bookkeeper Douglas and prove it."
Kennedy fumbled in the drawer of the desk, then drew forth a long strip
of paper covered with figures. "All the Stacey companies," he said,
"have been suffering from the depression that exists in the trade at
present. They are insolvent. Glance over that, Stacey. It is a summary
of the preliminary report of the accountants of the district attorney
who have been going over your books to-day."
Stacey gasped. "How did you get it? The report was not to be ready
until nine o'clock, and it is scarcely a quarter past now."
"Never mind how I got it. Go over it with the adjusters, anybody. I
think you will find that there was no shortage in Miss Wend's
department, that you were losing money, that you were in debt to Miss
Wend, and that she would have received the lion's share of the proceeds
of the insurance if the firebug scheme had turned out as planned."
"We absolutely repudiate these figures as fiction," said Stacey,
angrily turning toward Kennedy after a hurried consultation.
"Perhaps, then, you'll appreciate this," replied Craig, pulling another
piece of paper from the desk. "I'll read it. 'Henry Douglas, being duly
sworn, deposes and says that one'--we'll call him 'Blank' for the
present--'with force and arms did feloniously, wilfully, and
intentionally kill Rebecca Wend whilst said Blank was wilfully burning
and setting on fire--'"
"One moment," interrupted Stacey. "Let me see that paper."
Kennedy laid it down so that only the signature showed. The name was
signed in a full round hand, "Henry Douglas."
"It's a forgery," cried Stacey in rage. "Not an hour before I came into
this place I saw Henry Douglas. He had signed no such paper then. He
could not have signed it since, and you could not have received it. I
brand that document as a forgery."
Kennedy stood up and reached down into the open drawer on the right of
his desk. From it he lifted the two machines I had seen him place there
early in the evening.
"Gentlemen," he said, "this is the last scene of the play you are
enacting. You see here on the desk an instrument that was invented many
years ago, but has only recently become really practical. It is the
telautograph--the long-distance writer. In this new form it can be
introduced into the drawer of a desk for the use of any one who may
wish to make inquiries, say, of clerks without the knowledge of a
caller. It makes it possible to write a message under these conditions
and receive an answer concerning the personality or business of the
individual seated at one's elbow without leaving the desk or seeming to
make inquiries.
"With an ordinary pencil I have written on the paper of the
transmitter. The silk cord attached to the pencil regulates the current
which controls a pencil at the other end of the line. The receiving
pencil moves simultaneously with my pencil. It is the principle of the
pantagraph cut in half, one half here, the other half at the end of the
line, two telephone wires in this case connecting the halves.