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