automobile, probably at rest, with Brown in it. The matter of faking
Travis or any one else by his side is simple. If with an enlarging
lantern the image of this faked picture is thrown on the paper like a
lantern slide, and if the right hand side is a little further away than
the left, the top further away than the bottom, you can print a
fraudulent high speed ahead picture. True, everything else in, the
picture, even if motionless, is distorted, and the difference between
this faking and the distortion of the shutter can be seen by an expert.
But it will pass. In this case, however, the faker was so sure of that
that he was careless. Instead of getting the plate further from the
paper on the right he did so on the left. It was further away on the
bottom than on the top. He got distortion all right, enough still to
satisfy the uninitiated. But it was distortion in the wrong way! The
top of the wheel, which goes fastest and ought to be most indistinct,
is, in the fake, as sharp as any other part. It is a small mistake, but
fatal. That picture is really at high speed--backwards! It is too raw,
too raw."
"You don't think people are going to swallow all that stuff, do you?"
asked Hanford coolly, in spite of the exposures.
Kennedy paid no attention. He was looking at McLoughlin. The Boss was
regarding him surlily. "Well," he said at length, "what of all this? I
had nothing to do with it. Why do you come to me? Take it to the proper
parties."
"Shall I?" asked Kennedy quietly.
He had uncovered another picture carefully. We could not see it, but as
he looked at it McLoughlin fairly staggered.
"Wh--where did you get that?" he gasped.
"I got it where I got it, and it is no fake," replied Kennedy
enigmatically. Then he appeared to think better of it. "This," he
explained, "is what is known as a pinhole photograph. Three hundred
years ago della Porta knew the camera obscura, and but for the lack of
a sensitive plate would have made photographs. A box, thoroughly
light-tight, slotted inside to receive plates, covered with black, and
glued tight, a needle hole made by a number 10 needle in a thin sheet
of paper--and you have the apparatus for lensless photography. It has a
correctness such as no image-forming means by lenses can have. It is
literally rectigraphic, rectilinear, it needs no focussing, and it
takes a wide angle with equal effect. Even pinhole snapshots are
possible where the light is abundant, with a ten to fifteen second
exposure.
"That picture, McLoughlin, was taken yesterday at Hanford's. After Miss
Ashton left I saw who came out, but this picture shows what happened
before. At a critical moment Miss Ashton stuck a needle in the wall of
the studio, counted fifteen, closed the needle-hole, and there is the
record. Walter, Hanford,--leave us alone an instant."
When Kennedy passed out of the Boss's office there was a look of quiet
satisfaction on his face which I could not fathom. Not a word could I
extract from him either that night or on the following day, which was
the last before the election.
I must say that I was keenly disappointed by the lack of developments,
however. The whole thing seemed to me to be a mess. Everybody was
involved. What had Miss Ashton overheard and what had Kennedy said to
McLoughlin? Above all, what was his game? Was he playing to spare the
girl's feelings by allowing the election to go on without a scandal for
Travis?
At last election night arrived. We were all at the Travis headquarters,
Kennedy, Travis, Bennett, and myself. Miss Ashton was not present, but
the first returns had scarcely begun to trickle in when Craig whispered
to me to go out and find her, either at her home or club. I found her
at home. She had apparently lost interest in the election, and it was
with difficulty that I persuaded her to accompany me. The excitement of
any other night in the year paled to insignificance before this.
Distracted crowds everywhere were cheering and blowing horns. Now a
series of wild shouts broke forth from the dense mass of people before
a newspaper bulletin board. Now came sullen groans, hisses, and
catcalls, or all together with cheers as the returns swung in another
direction. Not even baseball could call out such a crowd as this.
Lights blazed everywhere. Automobiles honked and ground their gears.
The lobster palaces were thronged. Police were everywhere. People with
horns and bells and all manner of noise-making devices pushed up one
side of the thoroughfares and down the other. Hungrily, ravenously they
were feeding on the meagre bulletins of news.
Yet back of all the noise and human energy I could only think of the
silent, systematic gathering and editing of the news. High up in the
League headquarters, when we returned, a corps of clerks was tabulating
returns, comparing official and semi-official reports. As first the
state swung one way, then another, our hopes rose and fell. Miss Ashton
seemed cold and ill at ease, while Travis looked more worried and paid
less attention to the returns than would have seemed natural. She
avoided him and he seemed to hesitate to seek her out.
Would the up-state returns, I had wondered at first, be large enough to
overcome the hostile city vote? I was amazed now to see how strongly
the city was turning to Travis.
"McLoughlin has kept his word," ejaculated Kennedy as district after
district showed that the Boss's pluralities were being seriously cut
into.
"His word? What do you mean?" we asked almost together.
"I mean that he has kept his word given to me at a conference which Mr.
Jameson saw but did not hear. I told him I would publish the whole
thing, not caring whom or where or when it hit if he did not let up on
Travis. I advised him to read his Revised Statutes again about money in
elections, and I ended up with the threat, 'There will be no dough day,
McLoughlin, or this will be prosecuted to the limit.' There was no
dough day. You see the effect in the returns."
"But how did you do it?" I asked, not comprehending. "The faked
photographs did not move him, that I could see."
The words, "faked photographs," caused Miss Ashton to glance up
quickly. I saw that Kennedy had not told her or any one yet, until the
Boss had made good. He had simply arranged one of his little dramas.
"Shall I tell, Miss Ashton?" he asked, adding, "Before I complete my
part of the compact and blot out the whole affair?"
"I have no right to say no," she answered tremulously, but with a look
of happiness that I had not seen since our first introduction.
Kennedy laid down a print on a table. It was the pinhole photograph, a
little blurry, but quite convincing. On a desk in the picture was a
pile of bills. McLoughlin was shoving them away from him toward
Bennett. A man who was facing forward in the picture was talking
earnestly to some one who did not appear. I felt intuitively, even
before Kennedy said so, that the person was Miss Ashton herself as she
stuck the needle into the wall. The man was Cadwalader Brown.
"Travis," demanded Kennedy, "bring the account books of your campaign.
I want the miscellaneous account particularly."
The books were brought, and he continued, turning the leaves, "It
seemed to me to show a shortage of nearly twenty thousand dollars the
other day. Why, it has been made up. How was that, Bennett?"
Bennett was speechless. "I will tell you," Craig proceeded inexorably.
"Bennett, you embezzled that money for your business. Rather than be
found out, you went to Billy McLoughlin and offered to sell out the
Reform campaign for money to replace it. With the aid of the crook,
Hanford, McLoughlin's tool, you worked out the scheme to extort money
from Travis by forged photographs. You knew enough about Travis's house
and library to frame up a robbery one night when you were staying there
with him. It was inside work, I found, at a glance. Travis, I am sorry
to have to tell you that your confidence was misplaced. It was Bennett
who robbed you--and worse.
"But Cadwalader Brown, always close to his creature, Billy McLoughlin,
heard of it. To him it presented another idea. To him it offered a
chance to overthrow a political enemy and a hated rival for Miss
Ashton's hand. Perhaps into the bargain it would disgust her with
politics, disillusion her, and shake her faith in what he believed to
be some of her 'radical' notions. All could be gained at one blow. They
say that a check-book knows no politics, but Bennett has learned some,
I venture to say, and to save his reputation he will pay back what he
has tried to graft."
Travis could scarcely believe it yet. "How did you get your first
hint?" he gasped.
Kennedy was digging into the wall with a bill file at the place where
he had buried the little vulcanised disc. I had already guessed that it
was a dictograph, though I could not tell how it was used or who used
it. There it was, set squarely in the plaster. There also were the
wires running under the carpet. As he lifted the rug under Miss
Ashton's desk there also lay the huge circles of wire. That was all.
At this moment Miss Ashton stepped forward. "Last Friday," she said in
a low tone, "I wore a belt which concealed a coil of wire about my
waist. From it a wire ran under my coat, connecting with a small dry
battery in a pocket. Over my head I had an arrangement such as the
telephone girls wear with a receiver at one ear connected with the
battery. No one saw it, for I wore a large hat which completely hid it.
If any one had known, and there were plenty of eyes watching, the whole
thing would have fallen through. I could walk around; no one could
suspect anything; but when I stood or sat at my desk I could hear
everything that was said in Mr. Bennett's office."
"By induction," explained Kennedy. "The impulses set up in the
concealed dictograph set up currents in these coils of wire concealed
under the carpet. They were wirelessly duplicated by induction in the
coil about Miss Ashton's waist and so affected the receiver under her
very becoming hat. Tell the rest, Miss Ashton."
"I heard the deal arranged with this Hanford," she added, almost as if
she were confessing something, "but not understanding it as Mr. Kennedy
did, I very hastily condemned Mr. Travis. I heard talk of putting back
twenty thousand into the campaign accounts, of five thousand given to
Hanford for his photographic work, and of the way Mr. Travis was to be
defeated whether he paid or not. I heard them say that one condition
was that I should carry the purchase money. I heard much that must have
confirmed Mr. Kennedy's suspicion in one way, and my own in an opposite
way, which I know now was wrong. And then Cadwalader Brown in the
studio taunted me cynically and-and it cut me, for he seemed right. I
hope that Mr. Travis will forgive me for thinking that Mr. Bennett's
treachery was his----"
A terrific cheer broke out among the clerks in the outer office. A boy
rushed in with a still unblotted report. Kennedy seized it and read:
"McLoughlin concedes the city by a small majority to Travis, fifteen
election districts estimated. This clinches the Reform League victory
in the state."
I turned to Travis. He was paying no attention except to the pretty
apology of Margaret Ashton.
Kennedy drew me to the door. "We might as well concede Miss Ashton to
Travis," he said, adding gaily, "by induction of an arm about the
waist. Let's go out and watch the crowd."