THE BLACK SATCHEL
When Josie reached the hotel it was nearly midnight. Half the lights in
the office had been extinguished and behind the desk, reading a novel,
the night clerk sprawled in an easy chair.
She hadn't seen the night clerk before. He was a sallow-faced boy,
scarcely twenty years old, attired in a very striking suit of clothes
and wearing a gorgeous jewelled scarf-pin in his cravat. As he read, he
smoked a cigarette.
"Hello," said this brilliant individual, as Josie leaned over the
counter and regarded him with a faint smile. "You're No. 43, I guess,
and it's lucky old Boyle ain't here to read you a lecture--or to turn
you out. He won't stand for unmarried lady guests bein' out till this
hour, an' you may as well know it first as last."
"He's quite right," was Josie's calm reply. "I'll not do it again. My
key, please!"
He rose reluctantly and gave her the key.
"Do you sit up all night?" she asked sweetly.
"I'm s'posed to," he answered in a tone less gruff, "but towards
mornin' I snooze a little. Only way to pass the time, with noth'n' to
do an' nobody to talk to. It's a beastly job, at the best, an' I'm
goin' to quit it."
"Why don't you start a hotel of your own?" she suggested.
"You think you're kiddin' me, don't you? But I might even do that, if I
wanted to," he asserted, glaring at her as if he challenged
contradiction. "It ain't money that stops me, but hotel keepin' is a
dog's life. I've made a bid for a cigar-store down the street, an' if
they take me up, somebody can have this job."
"I see you're ambitious," said Josie. "Well, I hope you get the
cigar-store. Good night, Mr.--"
"My name's Tom Linnet. I won't tell the ol' boy you was out so late. So
long."
The elevator had stopped running, so Josie climbed the stairs and went
thoughtfully to her room. Kauffman had preceded her. She heard him drop
his shoes heavily upon the floor as he undressed.
She turned on the light and made some notes on her tablets, using the
same queer characters that she always employed. The last note read:
"Tom Linnet, night clerk at the Mansion House. New clothes; new
jewelry. Has money. Recently acquired, for no one with money would be a
night clerk. Wants to quit his job and buy a cigar store. Query: Who
staked Tom? And why?"
As she crawled into bed Josie reflected: "Mary Louise would be
astonished if she knew what I have learned to-night. But then, I'm
astonished myself. I feel like the boy who went fishing for sunfish and
caught a whale."
Next morning she was up early, alert to continue her investigations.
When she heard Mr. Kauffman go down to breakfast she took a bunch of
pass-keys from her bag, went boldly through the hall to the door of 45,
unlocked it with ease and walked in. A hurried glance showed her a
large suitcase lying open upon a table. She examined its contents. One
side was filled with samples of suspenders, the other with
miscellaneous articles of male apparel.
Josie was not satisfied. She peered under the bed, softly opened all
the drawers in the dresser and finally entered the closet. Here, on the
rear shelf, a newspaper was placed in such manner as to hide from
observation anything behind it. To an ordinary person, glancing toward
it, the newspaper meant nothing; to Josie's practised eye it was
plainly a shield. Being short of stature, the girl had to drag in a
chair in order to reach the high shelf. She removed the newspaper, took
down a black hand-satchel--it was dreadfully heavy and she almost
dropped it--and then replaced the paper as it had been before.
Josie was jubilant. She removed the chair, again closed the closet
door, and leaving the room practically as she had found it stole back
to her own apartment, the heavy satchel concealed in the folds of her
frock. But no one saw her, the hall being vacant, and she breathed a
sigh of relief as she locked her own door against possible intruders.
Then she placed the black satchel on a stand and bent over it. The lock
was an unusual one. She tried all the slender keys upon her bunch
without effect--they were either too large or did not fit the keyhole.
Next she took a thin hairpin, bent and twisted it this way and that and
tried to pry the lock open. Failure. However, she was beginning to
understand the mechanism of the lock by this time. From that
all-containing handbag which was her inseparable companion she drew out
a file, and taking one of the master-keys, began to file it to fit the
lock of the black satchel.
This operation consumed more time than she was aware, so interesting
was the intricate work. She was presently startled by a sound in the
corridor. Mr. Kauffman was coming back to his room, whistling an aria
from "Die Walkure." Josie paused, motionless; her heart almost stopped
beating.
The man unlocked his door and entered, still whistling. Sometimes the
whistle was soft and low, again it was louder and more cheerful. Josie
listened in suspense. As long as the whistling continued she realized
that the theft of the black satchel remained undiscovered.
Kauffman remained in his room but a few moments. When he departed,
carefully locking his door after him, he was still whistling. Josie ran
to her own door and when he had passed it opened it just a crack, to
enable her to gaze after him. Underneath his arm he carried a bundle of
the sample suspenders.
"Good!" she whispered softly, retreating to bend over the satchel
again. "Mr. Abe Kauffman will sell suspenders this morning as a blind
to his more important industries, so I needn't hurry."
Sooner than she expected the lock clicked and sprang open. Her eyes at
first fell upon some crumpled, soiled shirts, but these she hurriedly
removed. The remainder of the satchel contained something enclosed in a
green flannel bag. It was heavy, as she found when she tried to lift it
out, and a sudden suspicion led her to handle the thing very gingerly.
She put it on the table beside the satchel and cautiously untied the
drawstring at the mouth of the bag. A moment later she had uncovered a
round ball of polished blue steel, to which was attached a tube covered
with woven white cotton.
Josie fell back on a chair, fairly gasping, and stared with big eyes at
the ball. In her desire to investigate the possessions of the suspender
salesman she had scarcely expected to find anything like this. The most
she had hoped to discover were incriminating papers.
"It's a bomb!" she stammered, regarding the thing fearfully; "a real,
honest-for-true bomb. And it is meant to carry death and destruction to
loyal supporters of our government. There's no doubt of that. But--"
The thoughts that followed so amazing an assertion were too bewildering
to be readily classified. They involved a long string of conjectures,
implicating in their wide ramifications several persons of important
standing in the community. The mere suggestion of what she had
uncovered sufficed to fill Josie's heart and brain with terror.
"Here! I mustn't try to think it out just yet," she told herself,
trying with a little shiver of repulsion for the thing to collect her
wits. "One idea at a time, Josie, my girl, or you'll go nutty and spoil
everything! Now, here's a bomb--a live, death-dealing bomb--and that's
the first and only thing to be considered at present."
Controlling her aversion and fear, the girl turned the bomb over and
over, giving it a thorough examination. She had never seen such a thing
before, but they had often been explained to her and she had an inkling
as to the general method of their construction. This one before her was
of beautiful workmanship, its surface as carefully turned and polished
as if it had been intended for public exhibition. Grooves had been cut
in the outer surface and within these grooves lay the coils of the time
fuse, which was marked with black ink into regular sections. The first
section from the end of the fuse was marked "6;" the next section "5"
and so on down to the section nearest the bomb, which was divided by
the marks "1"--"1/2"--"1/4."
"I see," said Josie, nodding her head with intelligent perception.
"Each section, when lighted, will burn for one hour, running along its
groove but harmless until the end of the fuse is reached. If the entire
fuse is lighted, it will require just six hours to explode the bomb,
while if it is cut off to the last mark and then lighted, the bomb will
explode in fifteen minutes. The operator can set it to suit himself, as
circumstances require."
The manner in which the fuse was attached to the bomb was simple. The
hole made in the bomb was exactly the size of the fuse inserted into
it. There were two little knobs, one on each side the hole. After
pushing the fuse into the hole a fine wire was wound around it and
attached to the tiny knobs, thus holding it firmly in place.
Josie took a pair of small pincers, unwound the wire and cautiously
withdrew the fuse from the hole. Examining the end of the fuse she saw
it was filled with a powdery substance which, when ignited, would
explode the bomb. She had recourse to her hairpin again and carefully
picked the powder out of the fuse for the distance of the entire first
section. This proved difficult and painstaking work, but when completed
not a grain of the powder remained in the woven cotton casing for the
distance of six inches from the end.
Having accomplished that much, Josie sat looking at the thing in a
speculative way. She could not have told you, at the moment, why her
first act had been to render the bomb impotent in so queer a manner
when she could have simply destroyed the entire fuse. But, of course,
no one would try to use the fiendish contrivance unless it was supplied
with a fuse.
After a period of thought the girl decided what to do next. She removed
the bomb, fuse, green bag--even the satchel--to the big lower drawer of
her bureau, and turned the lock.
"No one is likely to come in but the chambermaid, and she will be too
busy to disturb anything," Josie decided; and then she locked her room
door and went down stairs to breakfast.