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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Guy Garrick, by Arthur B. Reeve
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Guy Garrick
+
+Author: Arthur B. Reeve
+
+Posting Date: September 15, 2012 [EBook #5163]
+Release Date: February, 2004
+First Posted: May 24, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GUY GARRICK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CRAIG KENNEDY SERIES
+
+GUY GARRICK
+
+ARTHUR B. REEVE
+
+
+WITH FRONTISPIECE
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+  I. The Stolen Motor
+
+  II. The Murder Car
+
+ III. The Mystery of the Thicket
+
+  IV. The Liquid Bullet
+
+   V. The Blackmailer
+
+  VI. The Gambling Den
+
+ VII. The Motor Bandit
+
+ VIII. The Explanation
+
+  IX. The Raid
+
+  X. The Gambling Debt
+
+  XI. The Gangster's Garage
+
+ XII. The Detectaphone
+
+ XIII. The Incendiary
+
+ XIV. The Escape
+
+  XV. The Plot
+
+  XVI. The Poisoned Needle
+
+  XVII. The Newspaper Fake
+
+XVIII. The Vocaphone
+
+ XIX. The Eavesdropper Again
+
+  XX. The Speaking Arc
+
+ XXI. The Siege of the Bandits
+
+ XXII. The Man Hunt
+
+XXIII. The Police Dog
+
+ XXIV. The Frame-Up
+
+ XXV. The Scientific Gunman
+
+
+
+
+An Adventure in the New Crime Science
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE STOLEN MOTOR
+
+
+"You are aware, I suppose, Marshall, that there have been considerably
+over a million dollars' worth of automobiles stolen in this city during
+the past few months?" asked Guy Garrick one night when I had dropped
+into his office.
+
+"I wasn't aware of the exact extent of the thefts, though of course I
+knew of their existence," I replied. "What's the matter?"
+
+"If you can wait a few moments," he went on, "I think I can promise you
+a most interesting case--the first big case I've had to test my new
+knowledge of crime science since I returned from abroad. Have you time
+for it?"
+
+"Time for it?" I echoed. "Garrick, I'd make time for it, if necessary."
+
+We sat for several moments, in silence, waiting.
+
+I picked up an evening paper. I had already read it, but I looked
+through it again, to kill time, even reading the society notes.
+
+"By Jove, Garrick," I exclaimed as my eye travelled over the page,
+"newspaper pictures don't usually flatter people, but just look at
+those eyes! You can fairly see them dance even in the halftone."
+
+The picture which had attracted my attention was of Miss Violet
+Winslow, an heiress to a moderate fortune, a debutante well known in
+New York and at Tuxedo that season.
+
+As Garrick looked over my shoulder his mere tone set me wondering.
+
+"She IS stunning," he agreed simply. "Half the younger set are crazy
+over her."
+
+The buzzer on his door recalled us to the case in hand.
+
+One of our visitors was a sandy-haired, red-mustached, stocky man, with
+everything but the name detective written on him from his face to his
+mannerisms.
+
+He was accompanied by an athletically inclined, fresh-faced young
+fellow, whose clothes proclaimed him to be practically the last word in
+imported goods from London.
+
+I was not surprised at reading the name of James McBirney on the
+detective's card, underneath which was the title of the Automobile
+Underwriters' Association. But I was more than surprised when the
+younger of the visitors handed us a card with the simple name, Mortimer
+Warrington.
+
+For, Mortimer Warrington, I may say, was at that time one of the
+celebrities of the city, at least as far as the newspapers were
+concerned. He was one of the richest young men in the country, and good
+for a "story" almost every day.
+
+Warrington was not exactly a wild youth, in spite of the fact that his
+name appeared so frequently in the headlines. As a matter of fact, the
+worst that could be said of him with any degree of truth was that he
+was gifted with a large inheritance of good, red, restless blood, as
+well as considerable holdings of real estate in various active sections
+of the metropolis.
+
+More than that, it was scarcely his fault if the society columns had
+been busy in a concerted effort to marry him off--no doubt with a
+cynical eye on possible black-type headlines of future domestic
+discord. Among those mentioned by the enterprising society reporters of
+the papers had been the same Miss Violet Winslow whose picture I had
+admired. Evidently Garrick had recognized the coincidence.
+
+Miss Winslow, by the way, was rather closely guarded by a duenna-like
+aunt, Mrs. Beekman de Lancey, who at that time had achieved a certain
+amount of notoriety by a crusade which she had organized against
+gambling in society. She had reached that age when some women naturally
+turn toward righting the wrongs of humanity, and, in this instance, as
+in many others, humanity did not exactly appreciate it.
+
+"How are you, McBirney?" greeted Garrick, as he met his old friend,
+then, turning to young Warrington, added: "Have you had a car stolen?"
+
+"Have I?" chimed in the youth eagerly, and with just a trace of
+nervousness. "Worse than that. I can stand losing a big
+nine-thousand-dollar Mercedes, but--but--you tell it, McBirney. You
+have the facts at your tongue's end."
+
+Garrick looked questioningly at the detective.
+
+"I'm very much afraid," responded McBirney slowly, "that this theft
+about caps the climax of motor-car stealing in this city. Of course,
+you realize that the automobile as a means of committing crime and of
+escape has rendered detection much more difficult to-day than it ever
+was before." He paused. "There's been a murder done in or with or by
+that car of Mr. Warrington's, or I'm ready to resign from the
+profession!"
+
+McBirney had risen in the excitement of his revelation, and had handed
+Garrick what looked like a discharged shell of a cartridge.
+
+Garrick took it without a word, and turned it over and over critically,
+examining every side of it, and waiting for McBirney to resume.
+McBirney, however, said nothing.
+
+"Where did you find the car?" asked Garrick at length, still examining
+the cartridge. "We haven't found it," replied the detective with a
+discouraged sigh.
+
+"Haven't found it?" repeated Garrick. "Then how did you get this
+cartridge--or, at least why do you connect it with the disappearance of
+the car?"
+
+"Well," explained McBirney, getting down to the story, "you understand
+Mr. Warrington's car was insured against theft in a company which is a
+member of our association. When it was stolen we immediately put in
+motion the usual machinery for tracing stolen cars."
+
+"How about the police?" I queried.
+
+McBirney looked at me a moment--I thought pityingly. "With all
+deference to the police," he answered indulgently, "it is the insurance
+companies and not the police who get cars back--usually. I suppose it's
+natural. The man who loses a car notifies us first, and, as we are
+likely to lose money by it, we don't waste any time getting after the
+thief."
+
+"You have some clew, then?" persisted Garrick.
+
+McBirney nodded.
+
+"Late this afternoon word came to me that a man, all alone in a car,
+which, in some respects tallied with the description of Warrington's,
+although, of course, the license number and color had been altered, had
+stopped early this morning at a little garage over in the northern part
+of New Jersey."
+
+Warrington, excited, leaned forward and interrupted.
+
+"And, Garrick," he exclaimed, horrified, "the car was all stained with
+blood!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MURDER CAR
+
+
+Garrick looked from one to the other of his visitors intently. Here was
+an entirely unexpected development in the case which stamped it as set
+apart from the ordinary.
+
+"How did the driver manage to explain it and get away?" he asked
+quickly.
+
+McBirney shook his head in evident disgust at the affair.
+
+"He must be a clever one," he pursued thoughtfully. "When he came into
+the garage they say he was in a rather jovial mood. He said that he had
+run into a cow a few miles back on the road, and then began to cuss the
+farmer, who had stung him a hundred dollars for the animal."
+
+"And they believed it?" prompted Garrick.
+
+"Yes, the garage keeper's assistant swallowed the story and cleaned the
+car. There was some blood on the radiator and hood, but the strange
+part was that it was spattered even over the rear seat--in fact, was
+mostly in the rear."
+
+"How did he explain that?"
+
+"Said that he guessed the farmer who stung him wouldn't get much for
+the carcass, for it had been pretty well cut up and a part of it flung
+right back into the tonneau."
+
+"And the man believed that, too?"
+
+"Yes; but afterward the garage keeper himself was told. He met the
+farmer in town later, and the farmer denied that he had lost a cow.
+That set the garage keeper thinking. And then, while they were cleaning
+up the garage later in the day, they found that cartridge where the car
+had been washed down and swept out. We had already advertised a reward
+for information about the stolen car, and, when he heard of the reward,
+for there are plenty of people about looking for money in that way, he
+telephoned in, thinking the story might interest us. It did, for I am
+convinced that his description of the machine tallies closely with that
+of Mr. Warrington's."
+
+"How about the man who drove it?" cut in Garrick.
+
+"That's the unfortunate part of it," replied McBirney, chagrined.
+"These amateur detectives about the country rarely seem to have any
+foresight. Of course they could describe how the fellow was dressed,
+even the make of goggles he wore. But, when it came to telling one
+feature of his face accurately, they took refuge behind the fact that
+he kept his cap pulled down over his eyes, and talked like a 'city
+fellow.'"
+
+"All of which is highly important," agreed Garrick. "I suppose they'd
+consider a fingerprint, or the portrait parle the height of idiocy
+beside that."
+
+"Disgusting," ejaculated McBirney, who, whatever his own limitations
+might be, had a wholesome respect for Garrick's new methods.
+
+"Where did you leave the car?" asked Garrick of Warrington. "How did
+you lose it?"
+
+The young man seemed to hesitate.
+
+"I suppose," he said at length, with a sort of resigned smile, "I'll
+have to make a clean breast of it."
+
+"You can hardly expect us to do much, otherwise," encouraged Garrick
+dryly. "Besides, you can depend on us to keep anything you say
+confidential."
+
+"Why," he began, "the fact is that I had started out for a mild little
+sort of celebration, apropos of nothing at all in particular, beginning
+with dinner at the Mephistopheles Restaurant, with a friend of mine.
+You know the place, perhaps--just on the edge of the automobile
+district and the white lights."
+
+"Yes," encouraged Garrick, "near what ought to be named 'Crime Square.'
+Whom were you with?"
+
+"Well, Angus Forbes and I were going to dine together, and then later
+we were to meet several fellows who used to belong to the same
+upperclass club with us at Princeton. We were going to do a little
+slumming. No ladies, you understand," he added hastily.
+
+Garrick smiled.
+
+"It may not have been pure sociology," pursued Warrington,
+good-humouredly noticing the smile, "but it wasn't as bad as some of
+the newspapers might make it out if they got hold of it, anyhow. I may
+as well admit, I suppose, that Angus has been going the pace pretty
+lively since we graduated. I don't object to a little flyer now and
+then, myself, but I guess I'm not up to his class yet. But that doesn't
+make any difference. The slumming party never came off."
+
+"How?" prompted Garrick again.
+
+"Angus and I had a very good dinner at the Mephistopheles--they have a
+great cabaret there--and by and by the fellows began to drop in to join
+us. When I went out to look for the car, which I was going to drive
+myself, it was gone."
+
+"Where did you leave it?" asked McBirney, as if bringing out the
+evidence.
+
+"In the parking space half a block below the restaurant. A chauffeur
+standing near the curb told me that a man in a cap and goggles--"
+
+"Another amateur detective," cut in McBirney parenthetically.
+
+"--had come out of the restaurant, or seemed to do so, had spun the
+engine, climbed in, and rode off--just like that!"
+
+"What did you do then?" asked Garrick. "Did you fellows go anywhere?"
+
+"Oh, Forbes wanted to play the wheel, and went around to a place on
+Forty-eighth Street. I was all upset about the loss of the car, got in
+touch with the insurance company, who turned me over to McBirney here,
+and the rest of the fellows went down to the Club."
+
+"There was no trace of the car in the city?" asked Garrick, of the
+detective.
+
+"I was coming to that," replied McBirney. "There was at least a rumour.
+You see, I happen to know several of the police on fixed posts up
+there, and one of them has told me that he noticed a car, which might
+or might not have been Mr. Warrington's, pull up, about the time his
+car must have disappeared, at a place in Forty-seventh Street which is
+reputed to be a sort of poolroom for women."
+
+Garrick raised his eyebrows the fraction of an inch.
+
+"At any rate," pursued McBirney, "someone must have been having a wild
+time there, for they carried a girl out to the car. She seemed to be
+pretty far gone and even the air didn't revive her--that is, assuming
+that she had been celebrating not wisely but too well. Of course, the
+whole thing is pure speculation yet, as far as Warrington's car is
+concerned. Maybe it wasn't his car, after all. But I am repeating it
+only for what it may be worth."
+
+"Do you know the place?" asked Garrick, watching Warrington narrowly.
+
+"I've heard of it," he admitted, I thought a little evasively.
+
+Then it flashed over me that Mrs. de Lancey was leading the crusade
+against society gambling and that that perhaps accounted for
+Warrington's fears and evident desire for concealment.
+
+"I know that some of the faster ones in the smart set go there once in
+a while for a little poker, bridge, and even to play the races," went
+on Warrington carefully. "I've never been there myself, but I wouldn't
+be surprised if Angus could tell you all about it. He goes in for all
+that sort of thing."
+
+"After all," interrupted McBirney, "that's only rumour. Here's the
+point of the whole thing. For a long time my Association has been
+thinking that merely in working for the recovery of the cars we have
+been making a mistake. It hasn't put a stop to the stealing, and the
+stealing has gone quite far enough. We have got to do something about
+it. It struck me that here was a case on which to begin and that you,
+Garrick, are the one to begin it for us, while I carry on the regular
+work I am doing. The gang is growing bolder and more clever every day.
+And then, here's a murder, too, in all likelihood. If we don't round
+them up, there is no limit to what they may do in terrorizing the city."
+
+"How does this gang, as you call it, operate?" asked Garrick.
+
+"Most of the cars that are stolen," explained McBirney, "are taken from
+the automobile district, which embraces also not a small portion of the
+new Tenderloin and the theatre district. Actually, Garrick, more than
+nine out of ten cars have disappeared between Forty-second and
+Seventy-second Streets."
+
+Garrick was listening, without comment.
+
+"Some of the thefts, like this one of Warrington's car," continued
+McBirney, warming up to the subject, "have been so bold that you would
+be astonished. And it is those stolen cars, I believe, that are used in
+the wave of taxicab and motor car robberies, hold-ups, and other crimes
+that is sweeping over the city. The cars are taken to some obscure
+garage, without doubt, and their identity is destroyed by men who are
+expert in the practice."
+
+"And you have no confidence in the police?" I inquired cautiously,
+mindful of his former manner.
+
+"We have frequently had occasion to call on the police for assistance,"
+he answered, "but somehow or other it has seldom worked. They don't
+seem to be able to help us much. If anything is done, we must do it. If
+you will take the case, Garrick, I can promise you that the Association
+will pay you well for it."
+
+"I will add whatever is necessary, too," put in Warrington, eagerly. "I
+can stand the loss of the car--in fact, I don't care whether I ever get
+it back. I have others. But I can't stand the thought that my car is
+going about the country as the property of a gunman, perhaps--an engine
+of murder and destruction."
+
+Garrick had been thoughtfully balancing the exploded shell between his
+fingers during most of the interview. As Warrington concluded, he
+looked up.
+
+"I'll take the case," he said simply. "I think you'll find that there
+is more to it than even you suspect. Before we get through, I shall get
+a conviction on that empty shell, too. If there is a gunman back of it
+all, he is no ordinary fellow, but a scientific gunman, far ahead of
+anything of which you dream. No, don't thank me for taking the case. My
+thanks are to you for putting it in my way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MYSTERY OF THE THICKET
+
+
+"You know my ideas on modern detective work," Garrick remarked to me,
+reflectively, when they had gone.
+
+I nodded assent, for we had often discussed the subject.
+
+"There must be something new in order to catch criminals, nowadays," he
+pursued. "The old methods are all right--as far as they go. But while
+we have been using them, criminals have kept pace with modern science."
+
+I had met Garrick several months before on the return trip from abroad,
+and had found in him a companion spirit.
+
+For some years I had been editing a paper which I called "The
+Scientific World," and it had taxed my health to the point where my
+physician had told me that I must rest, or at least combine pleasure
+with business. Thus I had taken the voyage across the ocean to attend
+the International Electrical Congress in London, and had unexpectedly
+been thrown in with Guy Garrick, who later seemed destined to play such
+an important part in my life.
+
+Garrick was a detective, young, university bred, of good family, alert,
+and an interesting personality to me. He had travelled much, especially
+in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, where he had studied the amazing
+growth abroad of the new criminal science.
+
+Already I knew something, by hearsay, of the men he had seen, Gross,
+Lacassagne, Reiss, and the now immortal Bertillon. Our acquaintance,
+therefore, had rapidly ripened into friendship, and on our return, I
+had formed a habit of dropping in frequently on him of an evening, as I
+had this night, to smoke a pipe or two and talk over matters of common
+interest in his profession.
+
+He had paused a moment in what he was saying, but now resumed, less
+reflectively, "Fortunately, Marshall, the crime-hunters have gone ahead
+faster than the criminals. Now, it's my job to catch criminals. Yours,
+it seems to me, is to show people how they can never hope to beat the
+modern scientific detective. Let's strike a bargain."
+
+I was flattered by his confidence. More than that, the idea appealed to
+me, in fact was exactly in line with some plans I had already made for
+the "World," since our first acquaintance.
+
+And so it came about that the case brought to him by McBirney and young
+Warrington was responsible for clearing our ideas as to our mutual
+relationship and thus forming this strange partnership that has existed
+ever since.
+
+"Tom," he remarked, as we left the office quite late, after he had
+arranged affairs as if he expected to have no time to devote to his
+other work for several days, "come along and stay with me at my
+apartment to-night. It's too late to do anything now until to-morrow."
+
+I accepted his invitation without demur, for I knew that he meant it,
+but I doubt whether he slept much during the night. Certainly he was up
+and about early enough the following morning.
+
+"That's curious," I heard him remark, as he ran his eye hastily over
+the first page of the morning paper, "but I rather expected something
+of the sort. Read that in the first column, Tom."
+
+The story that he indicated had all the marks of having been dropped
+into place at the last moment as the city edition went to press in the
+small hours of the night.
+
+It was headed:
+
+GIRL'S BODY FOUND IN THICKET
+
+The despatch was from a little town in New Jersey, and, when I saw the
+date line, it at once suggested to me, as it had to Guy, that this was
+in the vicinity that must have been traversed in order to reach the
+point from which had come the report of the bloody car that had seemed
+to tally with the description of that which Warrington had lost. It
+read:
+
+"Hidden in the underbrush, not ten feet from one of the most travelled
+automobile roads in this section of the state, the body of a murdered
+girl was discovered late yesterday afternoon by a gang of Italian
+labourers employed on an estate nearby.
+
+"Suspicion was at first directed by the local authorities at the
+labourers, but the manner of the finding of the body renders it
+improbable. Most of them are housed in some rough shacks up the road
+toward Tuxedo and were able to prove themselves of good character.
+Indeed, the trampled condition of the thicket plainly indicates,
+according to the local coroner, that the girl was brought there,
+probably already dead, in an automobile which drew up off the road as
+far as possible. The body then must have been thrown where it would be
+screened from sight by the thick growth of trees and shrubbery.
+
+"There was only one wound, in the chest. It is, however, a most
+peculiar wound, and shows that a terrific force must have been exerted
+in order to make it. A blow could hardly have accomplished it, so
+jagged were its edges, and if the girl had been struck by a passing
+high-speed car, as was at first suggested, there is no way to account
+for the entire lack of other wounds which must naturally have been
+inflicted by such an accident.
+
+"Neither is the wound exactly like a pistol or gunshot wound, for,
+curiously enough, there was no mark showing the exit of a bullet, nor
+was any bullet found in the body after the most careful examination.
+The local authorities are completely mystified at the possible problems
+that may arise out of the case, especially as to the manner in which
+the unfortunate girl met her death.
+
+"Until a late hour the body, which is of a girl perhaps twenty-three or
+four, of medium height, fair, good looking, and stylishly dressed, was
+still unidentified. She was unknown in this part of the country."
+
+Almost before I had finished reading, Garrick had his hat and coat on
+and had shoved into his pocket a little detective camera.
+
+"Strange about the bullet," I ruminated. "I wonder who she can be?"
+
+"Very strange," agreed Garrick, urging me on. "I think we ought to
+investigate the case."
+
+As we hurried along to a restaurant for a bite of breakfast, he
+remarked, "The circumstances of the thing, coming so closely after the
+report about Warrington's car, are very suspicious--very. I feel sure
+that we shall find some connection between the two affairs."
+
+Accordingly, we caught an early train and at the nearest railroad
+station to the town mentioned in the despatch engaged a hackman who
+knew the coroner, a local doctor.
+
+The coroner was glad to assist us, though we were careful not to tell
+him too much of our own connection with the case. On the way over to
+the village undertaker's where the body had been moved, he volunteered
+the information that the New York police, whom he had notified
+immediately, had already sent a man up there, who had taken a
+description of the girl and finger prints, but had not, so far at
+least, succeeded in identifying the girl, at any rate on any of the
+lists of those reported missing.
+
+"You see," remarked Garrick to me, "that is where the police have us at
+a disadvantage. They have organization on their side. A good many
+detectives make the mistake of antagonizing the police. But if you want
+results, that's fatal."
+
+"Yes," I agreed, "it's impossible, just as it is to antagonize the
+newspapers."
+
+"Exactly," returned Garrick. "My idea of the thing, Marshall, is that I
+should work with, not against, the regular detectives. They are all
+right, in fact indispensable. Half the secret of success nowadays is
+efficiency and organization. What I do believe is that organization
+plus science is what is necessary."
+
+The local undertaking establishment was rather poorly equipped to take
+the place of a morgue and the authorities were making preparations to
+move the body to the nearest large city pending the disposal of the
+case. Local detectives had set to work, but so far had turned up
+nothing, not even the report which we had already received from
+McBirney regarding the blood-stained car that resembled Warrington's.
+
+We arrived with the coroner fortunately just before the removal of the
+body to the city and by his courtesy were able to see it without any
+trouble.
+
+Death, and especially violent death, are at best grewsome subjects, but
+when to that are added the sordid surroundings of a country
+undertaker's and the fact that the victim is a woman, it all becomes
+doubly tragic.
+
+She was a rather flashily dressed girl, but remarkably good looking, in
+spite of the rouge and powder which had long since spoiled what might
+otherwise have been a clear and fine complexion. The roots of her hair
+showed plainly that it had been bleached.
+
+Garrick examined the body closely, and more especially the jagged wound
+in the breast. I bent over also. It seemed utterly inexplicable. There
+was, he soon discovered, a sort of greasy, oleaginous deposit in the
+clotted blood of the huge cavity in the flesh. It interested him, and
+he studied it carefully for a long time, without saying a word.
+
+"Some have said she was wounded by some kind of blunt instrument," put
+in the coroner. "Others that she was struck by a car. But it's my
+opinion that she was killed by a rifle bullet of some kind, although
+what could have become of the bullet is beyond me. I've probed for it,
+but it isn't there."
+
+Garrick finished his minute examination of the wound without passing
+any comment on it of his own.
+
+"Now, if you will be kind enough to take us around to the place where
+the body was discovered," he concluded, "I think we shall not trespass
+on your time further."
+
+In his own car, the coroner drove us up the road in the direction of
+the New York state boundary to the spot where the body had been found.
+It was a fine, well-oiled road and I noticed the number and high
+quality of the cars which passed us.
+
+When we arrived at the spot where the body of the unfortunate girl had
+been discovered, Garrick began a minute search. I do not think for a
+moment that he expected to find any weapon, or even the trace of one.
+It seemed hopeless also to attempt to pick out any of the footprints.
+The earth was soft and even muddy, but so many feet had trodden it down
+since the first alarm had been given that it would have been impossible
+to extricate one set of footprints from another, much less to tell
+whether any of them had been made by the perpetrators of the crime.
+
+Still, there seemed to be something in the mud, just off the side of
+the road, that did interest Garrick. Very carefully, so as not to
+destroy anything himself which more careless searchers might have left,
+he began a minute study of the ground.
+
+Apparently he was rewarded, for, although he said nothing, he took a
+hasty glance at the direction of the sun, up-ended the camera he had
+brought, and began to photograph the ground itself, or rather some
+curious marks on it which I could barely distinguish.
+
+The coroner and I looked on without saying a word. He, at least, I am
+sure, thought that Garrick had suddenly taken leave of his senses.
+
+That concluded Garrick's investigation, and, after thanking the
+coroner, who had gone out of his way to accommodate us, we started back
+to town.
+
+"Well," I remarked, as we settled ourselves for the tedious ride into
+the city in the suburban train, "we don't seem to have added much to
+the sum of human knowledge by this trip."
+
+"Oh, yes, we have," he returned, almost cheerfully, patting the black
+camera which he had folded and slipped into his pocket. "We'll just
+preserve the records which I have here. Did you notice what it was that
+I photographed?"
+
+"I saw something," I replied, "but I couldn't tell you what it was."
+
+"Well," he explained slowly as I opened my eyes wide in amazement at
+the minuteness of his researches, "those were the marks of the tire of
+an automobile that had been run up into the bushes from the road. You
+know every automobile tire leaves its own distinctive mark, its thumb
+print, as it were. When I have developed my films, you will see that
+the marks that have been left there are precisely like those left by
+the make of tires used on Warrington's car, according to the
+advertisement sent out by McBirney. Of course, that mere fact alone
+doesn't prove anything. Many cars may use that make of tires. Still, it
+is an interesting coincidence, and if the make had been different I
+should not feel half so encouraged about going ahead with this clew. We
+can't say anything definite, however, until I can compare the actual
+marks made by the tires on the stolen car with these marks which I have
+photographed and preserved."
+
+If any one other than Garrick had conceived such a notion as the "thumb
+print" of an automobile tire, I might possibly have ventured to doubt
+it. As it was it gave food enough for thought to last the remainder of
+the journey back to town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LIQUID BULLET
+
+
+On our return to the city, I was not surprised after our conversation
+over in New Jersey to find that Garrick had decided on visiting police
+headquarters. It was, of course, Commissioner Dillon, one of the
+deputies, whom he wanted to see. I had met Dillon myself some time
+before in connection with my study of the finger print system, and
+consequently needed no second introduction.
+
+In his office on the second floor, the Commissioner greeted us
+cordially in his bluff and honest voice which both of us came to know
+and like so well later. Garrick had met him often and the cordiality of
+their relations was well testified to by Dillon's greeting.
+
+"I thought you'd be here before long," he beamed on Garrick, as he led
+us into an inner sanctum. "Did you read in the papers this morning
+about that murder of a girl whose body was found up in New Jersey in
+the underbrush?"
+
+"Not only that, but I've picked up a few things that your man
+overlooked," confided Garrick.
+
+Dillon looked at him sharply for a moment. "Say," he said frankly,
+"that's one of the things I like about you, Garrick. You're on the job.
+Also, you're on the square. You don't go gumshoeing it around behind a
+fellow's back, and talking the same way. You play fair. Now, look here.
+Haven't I always played fair with you, Garrick?"
+
+"Yes, Dillon," agreed Garrick, "you have always played fair. But what's
+the idea?"
+
+"You came up here for information, didn't you?" persisted the
+commissioner.
+
+Garrick nodded.
+
+"Well do you know who that girl was who was murdered?" he asked leaning
+forward.
+
+"No," admitted Garrick.
+
+"Of course not," asserted Dillon triumphantly. "We haven't given it out
+yet--and I don't know as we shall."
+
+"No," pursued Garrick, "I don't know and I'll admit that I'd like to
+know. My position is, as it always has been, that we shouldn't work at
+cross purposes. I have drawn my own conclusions on the case and, to put
+it bluntly, it seemed to me clear that she was of the demi-monde."
+
+"She was--in a sense," vouchsafed the commissioner. "Now," he added,
+leaning forward impressively, "I'm going to tell you something. That
+girl--was one of the best stool pigeons we have ever had."
+
+Both Garrick and I were listening intently at, the surprising
+revelation of the commissioner. He was pacing up and down, now,
+evidently much excited.
+
+"As for me," he continued, "I hate the stool pigeon method as much as
+anyone can. I don't like it. I don't relish the idea of being in
+partnership with crooks in any degree. I hate an informer who worms
+himself or herself into a person's friendship for the purpose of
+betraying it. But the system is here. I didn't start it and I can't
+change it. As long as it's here I must accept it and do business under
+it. And, that being the case, I can't afford to let matters like this
+killing pass without getting revenge, swift and sure. You understand?
+Someone's going to suffer for the killing of that girl, not only
+because it was a brutal murder, but because the department has got to
+make an example or no one whom we employ is safe."
+
+Dillon was shouldering his burly form up and down the office in his
+excitement. He paused in front of us, to proceed.
+
+"I've got one of my best men on the case now--Inspector Herman. I'll
+introduce you to him, if he happens to be around. Herman's all right.
+But here you come in, Garrick, and tell me you picked up something that
+my man missed up there in Jersey. I know it's the truth, too. I've
+worked with you and seen enough of you to know that you wouldn't say a
+thing like that as a bluff to me."
+
+Dillon was evidently debating something in his mind.
+
+"Herman'll have to stand it," he went on, half to himself. "I don't
+care whether he gets jealous or not."
+
+He paused and looked Garrick squarely in the eye, as he led up to his
+proposal. "Garrick," he said slowly, "I'd like to have you take up the
+case for us, too. I've heard already that you are working on the
+automobile cases. You see, I have ways of getting information myself.
+We're not so helpless as your friend McBirney, maybe, thinks."
+
+He faced us and it was almost as if he read our minds.
+
+"For instance," he proceeded, "it may interest you to know that we have
+just planned a new method to recover stolen automobiles and apprehend
+the thieves. A census of all cars in the questionable garages of the
+city has been taken, and each day every policeman is furnished with
+descriptions of cars stolen in the past twenty-four hours. The
+policeman then is supposed to inspect the garages in his district and
+if he finds a machine that shouldn't be there, according to the census,
+he sees to it that it isn't removed from the place until it is
+identified. The description of this Warrington car has gone out with
+extra special orders, and if it's in New York I think we'll find it."
+
+"I think you'll find," remarked Garrick quietly, "that this machine of
+Warrington's isn't in the city, at all."
+
+"I hardly think it is, myself," agreed Dillon. "Whoever it was who took
+it is probably posted about our new scheme. That's not the point I was
+driving at. You see, Garrick, our trails cross in these cases in a
+number of ways. Now, I have a little secret fund at my disposal. In so
+far as the affair involved the murder of that girl--and I'm convinced
+that it does--will you consider that you are working for the city, too?
+The whole thing dovetails. You don't have to neglect one client to
+serve another. I'll do anything I can to help you with the auto cases.
+In fact, you'll do better by both clients by joining the cases."
+
+"Dillon," answered Garrick quickly, "you've always been on the level
+with me. I can trust you. Consider that it is a bargain. We'll work
+together. Now, who was the girl?"
+
+"Her name was Rena Taylor," replied Dillon, apparently much gratified
+at the success of his proposal. "I had her at work getting evidence
+against a ladies' poolroom in Forty-seventh Street--an elusive place
+that we've never been able to 'get right.'"
+
+Garrick shot a quick glance at me. Evidently we were on the right
+trail, anyhow.
+
+"I don't know yet just what happened," continued Dillon, "but I do know
+that she had the goods on it. As nearly as I can find out, a stranger
+came to the place well introduced, a man, accompanied by a woman. They
+got into some of the games. The man seems to have excused himself.
+Apparently he found Rena Taylor alone in a room in some part of the
+house. No one heard a pistol shot, but then I think they would lie
+about that, all right."
+
+Dillon paused. "The strange thing is, however," he resumed, "that we
+haven't been able to find in the house a particle of evidence that a
+murder or violence of any kind has been done. One fact is established,
+though, incontrovertibly. Rena Taylor disappeared from that gambling
+house the same night and about the same time that Warrington's car
+disappeared. Then we find her dead over in New Jersey."
+
+"And I find reports and traces that the car has been in the vicinity,"
+added Garrick.
+
+"You see," beamed Dillon, "that's how we work together. Say you MUST
+meet Herman."
+
+He rang a bell and a blue-coated man opened the door. "Call Herman,
+Jim," he said, then, as the man disappeared, he went on to us, "I have
+given Herman carte-blanche instructions to conduct a thorough
+investigation. He has been getting the goods on another swell joint on
+the next street, in Forty-eighth, a joint that is just feeding on young
+millionaires in this town, and is or will be the cause of more crime
+and broken hearts if I don't land it and break it up than any such
+place has been for years." The door opened, and Dillon said, "Herman,
+shake hands with Mr. Garrick and Mr. Marshall."
+
+The detective was a quiet, gentlemanly sort of fellow who looked rugged
+and strong, a fighter to be respected. In fact I would much rather have
+had a man like him with us than against us. I knew Garrick's aversion
+to the regular detective and was not surprised that he did not
+overwhelm Mr. Herman by the cordiality of his greeting. Garrick always
+played a lone hand, preferred it and had taken Dillon into his
+confidence only because of his official position and authority.
+
+"These gentlemen are going to work independently on that Rena Taylor
+case," explained Dillon. "I want you to give Mr. Garrick every
+assistance, Herman."
+
+Garrick nodded with a show of cordiality and Herman replied in about
+the same spirit. I could not fancy our getting very much assistance
+from the regular detective force, with the exception of Dillon. And I
+noticed, also, that Garrick was not volunteering any information except
+what was necessary in good faith. Already I began to wonder how this
+peculiar bargain would turn out.
+
+"Just who and what was Rena Taylor?" asked Garrick finally.
+
+Inspector Herman shot a covert glance at Dillon before replying and the
+commissioner hastened to reassure him, "I have told Mr. Garrick that
+she was one of our best stool pigeons and had been working on the
+gambling cases."
+
+Like all detectives on a case, Herman was averse to parting with any
+information, and I felt that it was natural, for if he succeeded in
+working it out human nature was not such as to willingly share the
+glory.
+
+"Oh," he replied airily, "she was a girl who had knocked about
+considerably in the Tenderloin. I don't know just what her story was,
+but I suppose there was some fellow who got her to come to New York and
+then left her in the lurch. She wasn't a New Yorker. She seems to have
+drifted from one thing to another--until finally in order to get money
+she came down and offered her services to the police, in this gambling
+war."
+
+Herman had answered the question, but when I examined the answer I
+found it contained precious little. Perhaps it was indeed all he knew,
+for, although Garrick put several other questions to him and he
+answered quite readily and with apparent openness, there was very
+little more that we learned.
+
+"Yes," concluded Herman, "someone cooked her, all right. They don't
+take long to square things with anyone who raps to the 'bulls.'"
+
+"That's right," agreed Garrick. "And the underworld isn't alone in that
+feeling. No one likes a 'snitch.'"
+
+"Bet your life," emphasized Herman heartily, then edging toward the
+door, he said, "Well, gentlemen, I'm glad to meet you and I'll work
+with you. I wish you success, all right. It's a hard case. Why, there
+wasn't any trace of a murder or violence in that place in which Rena
+Taylor must have been murdered. I suppose you have heard that there
+wasn't any bullet found in the body, either?"
+
+"Yes," answered Garrick, "so far it does look inexplicable."
+
+Inspector Herman withdrew. One could see that he had little faith in
+these "amateur" detectives.
+
+A telephone message for Dillon about another departmental matter
+terminated our interview and we went our several ways.
+
+"Much help I've ever got from a regular detective like Herman,"
+remarked Garrick, phrasing my own idea of the matter, as we paid the
+fare of our cab a few minutes later and entered his office.
+
+"Yes," I agreed. "Why, he's even stumped at the start by the mystery of
+there being no bullet. I'm glad you said nothing about the cartridge,
+although I can't see for the life of me what good it is to us."
+
+I had ventured the remark, hoping to entice Garrick into talking. It
+worked, at least as far as Garrick wanted to talk yet.
+
+"You'll see about the cartridge soon enough, Tom," he rejoined. "As for
+there being no bullet, there was a bullet--only it was of a kind you
+never dreamed of before."
+
+He regarded me contemplatively for a moment, then leaned over and in a
+voice full of meaning, concluded, "That bullet was composed of
+something soft or liquid, probably confined in some kind of thin
+capsule. It mushroomed out like a dumdum bullet. It was deadly. But the
+chief advantage was that the heat that remained in Rena Taylor's body
+melted all evidence of the bullet. That was what caused that greasy,
+oleaginous appearance of the wound. The murderer thought he left no
+trail in the bullet in the corpse. In other words, it was practically a
+liquid bullet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BLACKMAILER
+
+
+It was late in the afternoon, while Garrick was still busy with a
+high-powered microscope, making innumerable micro-photographs, when the
+door of the office opened softly and a young lady entered.
+
+As she advanced timidly to us, we could see that she was tall and gave
+promise of developing with years into a stately woman--a pronounced
+brunette, with sparkling black eyes. I had not met her before, yet
+somehow I could not escape the feeling that she was familiar to me.
+
+It was not until she spoke that I realized that it was the eyes, not
+the face, which I recognized.
+
+"You are Mr. Garrick?" she asked of Guy in a soft, purring voice which,
+I felt, masked a woman who would fight to the end for anyone or
+anything she really loved.
+
+Then, before Guy could answer, she explained, "I am Miss Violet
+Winslow. A friend of mine, Mr. Warrington, has told me that you are
+investigating a peculiar case for him--the strange loss of his car."
+
+Garrick hastened to place a chair for her in the least cluttered and
+dusty part of the room. There she sat, looking up at him earnestly, a
+dainty contrast to the den in which Garrick was working out the capture
+of criminals, violent and vicious.
+
+"I have the honor to be able to say, 'Yes' to all that you have asked,
+Miss Winslow," he replied. "Is there any way in which I can be of
+service to you?"
+
+I thought a smile played over his face at the thought that perhaps she
+might have come to ask him to work for three clients instead of two.
+
+At any rate, the girl was very much excited and very much in earnest,
+as she opened her handbag and drew from it a letter which she handed to
+Garrick.
+
+"I received that letter," she explained, speaking rapidly, "in the noon
+mail to-day. I don't know what to make of it. It worries me to get such
+a thing. What do you suppose it was sent to me for? Who could have sent
+it?"
+
+She was leaning forward artlessly on her crossed knee looking
+expectantly up into Garrick's face, oblivious to everything else, even
+her own enticing beauty. There was something so simple and sincere
+about Violet Winslow that one felt instinctively that nothing was too
+great a price to shield her from the sordid and the evil in the world.
+Yet something had happened that had brought her already into the office
+of a detective.
+
+Garrick had glanced quickly at the outside of the slit envelope. The
+postmark showed that it had been mailed early that morning at the
+general post office and that there was slight chance of tracing
+anything in that direction.
+
+Then he opened it and read. The writing was in a bold scrawl and
+hastily executed:
+
+You have heard, no doubt, of the alleged loss of an automobile by Mr.
+Mortimer Warrington. I have seen your name mentioned in the society
+columns of the newspapers in connection with him several times lately.
+Let a disinterested person whom you do not know warn you in time. There
+is more back of it than he will care to tell. I can say nothing of the
+nefarious uses to which that car has been put, but you will learn more
+shortly. Meanwhile, let me inform you that he and some of the wilder of
+his set had that night planned a visit to a gambling house on
+Forty-eighth Street. I myself saw the car standing before another
+gambling den on Forty-seventh Street about the same time. This place, I
+may as well inform you, bears an unsavory reputation as a gambling
+joint to which young ladies of the fastest character are admitted. If
+you will ask someone in whom you have confidence and whom you can ask
+to work secretly for you to look up the records, you will find that
+much of the property on these two blocks, and these two places in
+particular, belongs to the Warrington estate. Need I say more?
+
+The letter was without superscription or date and was signed merely
+with the words, "A Well-Wisher." The innuendo of the thing was apparent.
+
+"Of course," she remarked, as Garrick finished reading, and before he
+could speak, "I know there is something back of it. Some person is
+trying to injure Mortimer. Still---"
+
+She did not finish the sentence. It was evident that the "well-wisher"
+need not have said more in order to sow the seeds of doubt.
+
+As I watched her narrowly, I fancied also that from her tone the
+newspapers had not been wholly wrong in mentioning their names together
+recently.
+
+"I hadn't intended to say anything more than to explain how I got the
+letter," she went on wistfully. "I thought that perhaps you might be
+interested in it."
+
+She paused and studied the toe of her dainty boot. "And, of course,"
+she murmured, "I know that Mr. Warrington isn't dependent for his
+income on the rent that comes in from such places. But--but I wish just
+the same that it wasn't true. I tried to call him up about the letter,
+but he wasn't at the office of the Warrington estate, and no one seemed
+to know just where he was."
+
+She kept her eyes downcast as though afraid to betray just what she
+felt.
+
+"You will leave this with me?" asked Garrick, still scrutinizing the
+letter.
+
+"Certainly," she replied. "That is what I brought it for. I thought it
+was only fair that he should know about it."
+
+Garrick regarded her keenly for a moment. "I am sure, Miss Winslow," he
+said, "that Mr. Warrington will thank you for your frankness. More than
+that, I feel sure that you need have no cause to worry about the
+insinuations of this letter. Don't judge harshly until you have heard
+his side. There's a good deal of graft and vice talk flying around
+loose these days. Miss Winslow, you may depend on me to dig the truth
+out and not deceive you."
+
+"Thank you so much," she said, as she rose to go; then, in a burst of
+confidence, added, "Of course, after all, I don't care so much about it
+myself--but, you know, my aunt--is so dreadfully prim and proper that
+she couldn't forgive a thing like this. She'd never let Mr. Warrington
+call on me again."
+
+Violet stopped and bit her lip. She had evidently not intended to say
+as much as that. But having once said it, she did not seem to wish to
+recall the words, either.
+
+"There, now," she smiled, "don't you even hint to him that that was one
+of the reasons I called."
+
+Garrick had risen and was standing beside her, looking down earnestly
+into her upturned face.
+
+"I think I understand, Miss Winslow," he said in a low voice, rapidly.
+"I cannot tell you all--yet. But I can promise you that even if all
+were told--the truth, I mean--your faith in Warrington would be
+justified." He leaned over. "Trust me," he said simply.
+
+As she placed her small hand in Garrick's, she looked up into his face,
+and with suppressed emotion, answered, "Thank you--I--I will."
+
+Then, with a quick gathering of her skirts, she turned and almost fled
+from the room.
+
+She had scarcely closed the door before Garrick was telephoning
+anxiously all over the city in order to get in touch with Warrington
+himself.
+
+"I'm not going to tell him too much about her visit," he remarked, with
+a pleased smile at the outcome of the interview, though his face
+clouded as his eye fell again on the blackmailing letter, lying before
+him. "It might make him think too highly of himself. Besides, I want to
+see, too, whether he has told us the whole truth about the affair that
+night."
+
+Somehow or other it seemed impossible to find Warrington in any of his
+usual haunts, either at his office or at his club.
+
+Garrick had given it up, almost, as a bad job, when, half an hour
+later, Warrington himself burst in on us, apparently expecting more
+news about his car.
+
+Instead, Garrick handed him the letter.
+
+"Say," he demanded as he ran through it with puckered face, then
+slapped it down on the table before Guy, in a high state of excitement,
+"what do you make of that?"
+
+He looked from one to the other of us blankly.
+
+"Isn't it bad enough to lose a car without being slandered about it
+into the bargain?" he asked heatedly, then adding in disgust, "And to
+do it in such an underhand way, writing to a girl like Violet, and
+never giving me a chance to square myself. If I could get my hands on
+that fellow," he added viciously, "I'd qualify him for the coroner!"
+
+Warrington had flown into a towering and quite justifiable rage.
+Garrick, however, ignored his anger as natural under the circumstances,
+and was about to ask him a question.
+
+"Just a moment, Garrick," forestalled Warrington. "I know just what you
+are going to say. You are going to ask me about those gambling places.
+Now, Garrick, I give you my word of honor that I did not know until
+to-day that the property in that neighborhood was owned by our estate.
+I have been in that joint on Forty-eighth Street--I'll admit that. But,
+you know, I'm no gambler. I've gone simply to see the life, and--well,
+it has no attraction for me. Racing cars and motorboats don't go with
+poker chips and the red and black--not with me. As for the other place,
+I don't know any more about it than--than you do," he concluded
+vehemently.
+
+Warrington faced Garrick, his steel-blue eye unwavering. "You see, it's
+like this," he resumed passionately, "since this vice investigation
+began, I have read a lot about landlords. Then, too," he interjected
+with a mock wry face, "I knew that Violet's Aunt Emma had been a
+crusader or something of the sort. You see, virtue is NOT its own
+reward. I don't get credit even for what I intended to do--quite the
+contrary."
+
+"How's that?" asked Garrick, respecting the young man's temper.
+
+"Why, it just occurred to me lately to go scouting around the city,
+looking at the Warrington holdings, making some personal inquiries as
+to the conditions of the leases, the character of the tenants, and the
+uses to which they put the properties. The police have compiled a list
+of all the questionable places in the city and I have compared it with
+the list of our properties. I hadn't come to this one yet. But I shall
+call up our agent, make him admit it, and cancel that lease. I'll close
+'em up. I'll fight until every---"
+
+"No," interrupted Garrick, quickly, "no--not yet. Don't make any move
+yet. I want to find out what the game is. It may be that it is someone
+who has tried and failed to get your tenant to come across with graft
+money. If we act without finding out first, we might be playing into
+the hands of this blackmailer."
+
+Garrick had been holding the letter in his hand, examining it
+critically. While he was speaking, he had taken a toothpick and was
+running it hastily over the words, carefully studying them. His face
+was wrinkled, as if he were in deep thought.
+
+Without saying anything more, Garrick walked over to the windows and
+pulled down the dark shades. Then he unrolled a huge white sheet at one
+end of the office.
+
+From a corner he drew out what looked like a flat-topped stand, about
+the height of his waist, with a curious box-like arrangement on it, in
+which was a powerful light. For several minutes, he occupied himself
+with the adjustment of this machine, switching the light off and on and
+focussing the lenses.
+
+Then he took the letter to Miss Winslow, laid it flat on the machine,
+switched on the light and immediately on the sheet appeared a very
+enlarged copy of the writing.
+
+"This is what has been called a rayograph by a detective of my
+acquaintance," explained Garrick. "In some ways it is much superior to
+using a microscope."
+
+He was tracing over the words with a pointer, much as he had already
+done with the toothpick.
+
+"Now, you must know," he continued, "or you may not know, but it is a
+well-proved fact, that those who suffer from various affections of the
+nerves or heart often betray the fact in their handwriting. Of course,
+in cases where the disease has progressed very far it may be evident to
+the naked eye even in the ordinary handwriting. But, it is there, to
+the eye of the expert, even in incipient cases.
+
+"In short," he continued, engrossed in his subject, "what really
+happens is that the pen acts as a sort of sphygmograph, registering the
+pulsations. I think you can readily see that when the writing is thrown
+on a screen, enlarged by the rayograph, the tremors of the pen are
+quite apparent."
+
+I studied the writing, following his pointer as it went over the lines
+and I began to understand vaguely what he was driving at.
+
+"The writer of that blackmailing letter," continued Garrick, "as I have
+discovered both by hastily running over it with a tooth-pick and, more
+accurately, by enlarging and studying it with the rayograph, is
+suffering from a peculiar conjunction of nervous trouble and disease of
+the heart which is latent and has not yet manifested itself, even to
+him."
+
+Garrick studied the writing, then added, thoughtfully, "if I knew him,
+I might warn him in time."
+
+"A fellow like that needs only the warning of a club or of a good pair
+of fists," growled Warrington, impatiently. "How are you going to work
+to find him?"
+
+"Well," reasoned Garrick, rolling up the sheet and restoring the room
+to its usual condition, "for one thing, the letter makes it pretty
+evident that he knows something about the gambling joint, perhaps is
+one of the regular habitues of the place. That was why I didn't want
+you to take any steps to close up the place immediately. I want to go
+there and look it over while it is in operation. Now, you admit that
+you have been in the place, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied, "I've been there with Forbes and the other
+fellows, but as I told you, I don't go in for that sort of thing."
+
+"Well," persisted Garrick, "you are sufficiently known, any way, to get
+in again."
+
+"Certainly. I can get in again. The man at the door will let me in--and
+a couple of friends, too, if that's what you mean."
+
+"That is exactly what I mean," returned Garrick. "It's no use to go
+early. I want to see the place in full blast, just as the after-theatre
+crowd is coming in. Suppose you meet us, Warrington, about half past
+ten or so. We can get in. They don't know anything yet about your
+intention to cancel the lease and close up the place, although
+apparently someone suspects it, or he wouldn't have been so anxious to
+get that letter off to Miss Winslow."
+
+"Very well," agreed Warrington, "I will meet you at the north end of
+'Crime Square,' as you call it, at that time. Good luck until then."
+
+"Not a bad fellow, at all," commented Garrick when Warrington had
+disappeared down the hall from the office. "I believe he means to do
+the square thing by every one. It's a shame he has been dragged into a
+mess like this, that may affect him in ways that he doesn't suspect.
+Oh, well, there is nothing we can do for the present. I'll just add
+this clew of the handwriting to the clew of the automobile tires
+against the day when we get--pshaw!--he has taken the letter with him.
+I suppose it is safe enough in his possession, though. He can't wait
+until he has proved to Violet that he is honest. I don't blame him
+much. I told you, you know, that the younger set are just crazy over
+Violet Winslow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GAMBLING DEN
+
+
+In spite of the agitation that was going on at the time in the city
+against gambling, we had no trouble in being admitted to the place in
+Forty-eighth Street. They seemed to recognise Warrington, for no sooner
+had the lookout at the door peered through a little grating and seen
+him than the light woodwork affair was opened.
+
+To me, with even my slender knowledge of such matters, it had seemed
+rather remarkable that only such a door should guard a place that was
+so notorious. Once inside, however, the reason was apparent. It didn't.
+On the outside there was merely such a door as not to distinguish the
+house, a three-story and basement dwelling, of old brownstone, from the
+others in the street.
+
+As the outside door shut quickly, we found ourselves in a sort of
+vestibule confronted by another door. Between the two the lookout had
+his station.
+
+The second door was of the "ice-box" variety, as it was popularly
+called at the time, of heavy oak, studded with ax-defying bolts, swung
+on delicately balanced and oiled hinges, carefully concealed, about as
+impregnable as a door of steel might be.
+
+There were, as we found later, some steel doors inside, leading to the
+roof and cellar, though not so thick. The windows were carefully
+guarded inside by immense steel bars. The approaches from the back were
+covered with a steel network and every staircase was guarded by a
+collapsible door. There seemed to be no point of attack that had been
+left unguarded.
+
+Yet, unless one had been like ourselves looking for these
+fortifications, they would not have appeared much in evidence in the
+face of the wealth of artistic furnishings that was lavished on every
+hand. Inside the great entrance door was a sort of marble reception
+hall, richly furnished, and giving anything but the impression of a
+gambling house. As a matter of fact, the first floor was pretty much of
+a blind. The gambling was all upstairs.
+
+We turned to a beautiful staircase of carved wood, and ascended.
+Everywhere were thick rugs into which the feet sank almost ankle deep.
+On the walls were pictures that must have cost a small fortune. The
+furniture was of the costliest; there were splendid bronzes and objects
+of art on every hand.
+
+Gambling was going on in several rooms that we passed, but the main
+room was on the second floor, a large room reconstructed in the old
+house, with a lofty ceiling and exquisitely carved trim. Concealed in
+huge vases were the lights, a new system, then, which shed its rays in
+every direction without seeming to cast a shadow anywhere. The room was
+apparently windowless, and yet, though everyone was smoking furiously,
+the ventilation must have been perfect.
+
+There was, apparently, a full-fledged poolroom in one part of the
+house, closed now, of course, as the races for the day were run. But I
+could imagine it doing a fine business in the afternoon. There were
+many other games now in progress, games of every description, from
+poker to faro, keno, klondike, and roulette. There was nothing of
+either high or low degree with which the venturesome might not be
+accommodated.
+
+As Warrington conducted us from one room to another, Garrick noted each
+carefully. Along the middle of the large room stretched a roulette
+table. We stopped to watch it.
+
+"Crooked as it can be," was Garrick's comment after watching it for
+five minutes or so.
+
+He had not said it aloud, naturally, for even the crowd in evening
+clothes about it, who had lost or would lose, would have resented such
+an imputation.
+
+For the most part there was a solemn quiet about the board, broken only
+by the rattle of the ball and the click of chips. There was an absence
+of the clink of gold pieces that one hears as the croupier rakes them
+in at the casinos on the continent. Nor did there seem to be the tense
+faces that one might expect. Often there was the glint of an eye, or a
+quick and muffled curse, but for the most part everyone, no matter how
+great a loser, seemed respectable and prosperous. The tragedies, as we
+came to know, were elsewhere.
+
+We sauntered into another room where they were playing keno. Keno was,
+we soon found, a development or an outgrowth of lotto, in which cards
+were sold to the players, bearing numbers which were covered with
+buttons, as in lotto. The game was won when a row was full after
+drawing forth the numbers on little balls from a "goose."
+
+"Like the roulette wheel," said Garrick grimly, "the 'goose' is
+crooked, and if I had time I could show you how it is done."
+
+We passed by the hazard boards as too complicated for the limited time
+at our disposal.
+
+It was, however, the roulette table which seemed to interest Garrick
+most, partly for the reason that most of the players flocked about it.
+
+The crowd around the table on the second floor was several deep, now.
+Among those who were playing I noticed a new face. It was of a tall,
+young man much the worse, apparently, for the supposed good time he had
+had already. The game seemed to have sobered him up a bit, for he was
+keen as to mind, now, although a trifle shaky as to legs.
+
+He glanced up momentarily from his close following of the play as we
+approached.
+
+"Hello, W.," he remarked, as he caught sight of our young companion.
+
+A moment later he had gone back to the game as keen as ever.
+
+"Hello, F.," greeted Warrington. Then, aside to us, he added, "You know
+they don't use names now in gambling places if they can help it.
+Initials do just as well. That is Forbes, of whom I told you. He's a
+young fellow of good family--but I am afraid he is going pretty much to
+the bad, or will go, if he doesn't quit soon. I wish I could stop him.
+He's a nice chap. I knew him well at college and we have chummed about
+a great deal. He's here too much of the time for his own good."
+
+The thing was fascinating, I must admit, no matter what the morals of
+it were. I became so engrossed that I did not notice a man standing
+opposite us. I was surprised when he edged over towards us slowly, then
+whispered to Garrick, "Meet me downstairs in the grill in five minutes,
+and have a bite to eat. I have something important to say. Only, be
+careful and don't get me 'in Dutch' here."
+
+The man had a sort of familiar look and his slang certainly reminded me
+of someone we had met.
+
+"Who was it?" I inquired under my breath, as he disappeared among the
+players.
+
+"Didn't you recognize him?" queried Garrick. "Why, that was Herman,
+Dillon's man,--the fellow, you know, who is investigating this place."
+
+I had not recognized the detective in evening clothes. Indeed, I felt
+that unless he were known here already his disguise was perfect.
+
+Garrick managed to leave Warrington for a time under the pretext that
+he wanted him to keep an eye on Forbes while we explored the place
+further. We walked leisurely down the handsome staircase into the grill
+and luncheon room downstairs.
+
+"Well, have you found out anything?" asked a voice behind us.
+
+We turned. It was Herman who had joined us. Without pausing for an
+answer he added, "I suppose you are aware of the character of this
+place? It looks fine, but the games are all crooked, and I guess there
+are some pretty desperate characters here, from all accounts. I
+shouldn't like to fall afoul of any of them, if I were you."
+
+"Oh, no," replied Garrick, "it wouldn't be pleasant. But we came in
+well introduced, and I don't believe anyone suspects."
+
+Several others, talking and laughing loudly to cover their chagrin over
+losses, perhaps, entered the buffet.
+
+With the gratuitous promise to stand by us in trouble of any kind,
+Herman excused himself, and returned to watch the play about the
+roulette table.
+
+Garrick and I leisurely finished the little bite of salad we had
+ordered, then strolled upstairs again.
+
+The play was becoming more and more furious. Forbes was losing again,
+but was sticking to it with a grim determination that was worthy of a
+better cause. Warrington had already made one attempt to get him away
+but had not succeeded.
+
+"Well," remarked Garrick, as we three made our way slowly to the
+coatroom downstairs, "I think we have seen enough of this for to-night.
+It isn't so very late, after all. I wonder if it would be possible to
+get into that ladies' poolroom on the next street? I should like to see
+that place."
+
+"Angus could get us in, if anyone could," replied Warrington
+thoughtfully. "Wait here a minute. I'll see if I can get him away from
+the wheel long enough."
+
+Five minutes later he came back, with Forbes in tow. He shook hands
+with us cordially, in fact a little effusively. Perhaps I might have
+liked the young fellow if I could have taken him in hand for a month or
+two, and knocked some of the silly ideas he had out of his head.
+
+Forbes called a taxicab, a taxicab apparently being the open sesame.
+One might have gone afoot and have looked ever so much like a "good
+thing" and he would not have been admitted. But such is the simplicity
+of the sophistication of the keepers of such places that a motor car
+opens all locks and bolts.
+
+It seemed to be a peculiar place and as nearly as I could make out was
+in a house almost in the rear of the one we had just come from.
+
+We were politely admitted by a negro maid, who offered to take our
+coats.
+
+"No," answered Forbes, apparently with an eye to getting out as quickly
+as possible, "we won't stay long tonight. I just came around to
+introduce my friends to Miss Lottie. I must get back right away."
+
+For some reason or other he seemed very anxious to leave us. I surmised
+that the gambling fever was running high and that he had hopes of a
+change of luck. At any rate, he was gone, and we had obtained
+admittance to the ladies' pool room.
+
+We strolled into one of the rooms in which the play was on. The game
+was at its height, with huge stacks of chips upon the tables and the
+players chatting gayly. There was no large crowd there, however.
+Indeed, as we found afterward, it was really in the afternoon that it
+was most crowded, for it was rather a poolroom than a gambling joint,
+although we gathered from the gossip that some stiff games of bridge
+were played there. Both men and women were seated at the poker game
+that was in progress before the little green table. The women were
+richly attired and looked as if they had come from good families.
+
+We were introduced to several, but as it was evident that they were
+passing under assumed names, whatever the proprietor of the place might
+know of them, I made little effort to remember the names, although I
+did study the faces carefully.
+
+It was not many minutes before we met Miss Lottie, as everyone called
+the woman who presided over this feminine realm of chance. Miss Lottie
+was a finely gowned woman, past middle age, but remarkably well
+preserved, and with a figure that must have occasioned much thought to
+fashion along the lines of the present slim styles. There seemed to be
+a man who assisted in the conduct of the place, a heavy-set fellow with
+a closely curling mustache. But as he kept discreetly in the offing, we
+did not see much of him.
+
+Miss Lottie was frankly glad to see us, coming so well introduced, and
+outspokenly disappointed that we would not take a seat in the game that
+was in progress. However, Garrick passed that over by promising to come
+around soon. Excise laws were apparently held in puny respect in this
+luxurious atmosphere, and while the hospitable Miss Lottie went to
+summon a servant to bring refreshments--at our expense--we had ample
+opportunity to glance about at the large room in which we were seated.
+
+Garrick gazed long and curiously at an arc-light enclosed in a soft
+glass globe in the center of the ceiling, as though it had suggested an
+idea of some sort to him.
+
+Miss Lottie, who had left us for a few moments, returned unexpectedly
+to find him still gazing at it.
+
+"We keep that light burning all the time," she remarked, noticing his
+gaze. "You see, in the daytime we never use the windows. It is always
+just like it is now, night or day. It makes no difference with us. You
+know, if we ever should be disturbed by the police," she rattled on,
+"this is my house and I am giving a little private party to a number of
+my friends."
+
+I had heard of such places but had never seen one before. I knew that
+well-dressed women, once having been caught in the toils of gambling,
+and perhaps afraid to admit their losses to their husbands, or, often
+having been introduced through gambling to far worse evils, were sent
+out from these poker rendezvous to the Broadway cafes, there to flirt
+with men, and rope them into the game.
+
+I could not help feeling that perhaps some of the richly gowned women
+in the house were in reality "cappers" for the game. As I studied the
+faces, I wondered what tragedies lay back of these rouged and painted
+faces. I saw broken homes, ruined lives, even lost honor written on
+them. Surely, I felt, this was a case worth taking up if by any chance
+we could put a stop or even set a limitation to this nefarious traffic.
+
+"Have you ever had any trouble?" Garrick asked as we sipped at the
+refreshments.
+
+"Very little," replied Miss Lottie, then as if the very manner of our
+introduction had stamped us all as "good fellows" to whom she could
+afford to be a little confidential in capturing our patronage, she
+added nonchalantly, "We had a sort of wild time a couple of nights ago."
+
+"How was that?" asked Garrick in a voice of studied politeness that
+carefully concealed the aching curiosity he had for her to talk.
+
+"Well," she answered slowly, "several ladies and gentlemen were here,
+playing a little high. They--well, they had a little too much to drink,
+I guess. There was one girl, who was the worst of all. She was pretty
+far gone. Why, we had to put her out--carry her out to the car that she
+had come in with her friend. You know we can't stand for any rough
+stuff like that--no sir. This house is perfectly respectable and proper
+and our patrons understand it."
+
+The story, or rather, the version of it, seemed to interest Garrick, as
+I knew it would.
+
+"Who was the girl?" he asked casually. "Did you know her? Was she one
+of your regular patrons?"
+
+"Knew her only by sight," returned Miss Lottie hastily, now a little
+vexed, I imagined, at Guy's persistence, "like lots of people who are
+introduced here--and come again several times."
+
+The woman was evidently sorry that she had mentioned the incident, and
+was trying to turn the conversation to the advantages of her
+establishment, not the least of which were her facilities for private
+games in little rooms in various parts of the house. It seemed all very
+risque to me, although I tried to appear to think it quite the usual
+thing, though I was careful to say that hers was the finest of such
+places I had ever seen. Still, the memory of Garrick's questioning
+seemed to linger. She had not expected, I knew, that we would take any
+further interest in her story than to accept it as proof of how careful
+she was of her clientele.
+
+Garrick was quick to take the cue. He did not arouse any further
+suspicion by pursuing the subject. Apparently he was convinced that it
+had been Rena Taylor of whom Miss Lottie spoke. What really happened we
+knew no more now than before. Perhaps Miss Lottie herself knew--or she
+might not know. Garrick quite evidently was willing to let future
+developments in the case show what had really happened. There was
+nothing to be gained by forcing things at this stage of the game,
+either in the gambling den around the corner or here.
+
+We chatted along for several minutes longer on inconsequential
+subjects, treating as important those trivialities which Bohemia
+considers important and scoffing at the really good and true things of
+life that the demi-monde despises. It was all banality now, for we had
+touched upon the real question in our minds and had bounded as lightly
+off it as a toy balloon bounds off an opposing surface.
+
+Warrington had kept silent during the visit, I noticed, and seemed
+relieved when it was over. I could not imagine that he was known here
+inasmuch as they treated him quite as they treated us.
+
+Apparently, though, he had no relish for a possible report of the
+excursion to get to Miss Winslow's ears. He was the first to leave, as
+Garrick, after paying for our refreshments and making a neat remark or
+two about the tasteful way in which the gambling room was furnished,
+rescued our hats and coats from the negro servant, and said good-night
+with a promise to drop in again.
+
+"What would Mrs. de Lancey think of THAT?" Garrick could not help
+saying, as we reached the street.
+
+Warrington gave a nervous little forced laugh, not at all such as he
+might have given had Mrs. de Lancey not been the aunt of the girl who
+had entered his life.
+
+Then he caught himself and said hastily, "I don't care what she thinks.
+It's none of her---"
+
+He cut the words short, as if fearing to be misinterpreted either way.
+
+For several squares he plodded along silently, then, as we had
+accomplished the object of the evening, excused himself, with the
+request that we keep him fully informed of every incident in the case.
+
+"Warrington doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve," commented Garrick as
+we bent our steps to our own, or rather his, apartment, "but it is
+evident enough that he is thinking all the time of Violet Winslow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MOTOR BANDIT
+
+
+Early the next morning, the telephone bell began to ring violently. The
+message must have been short, for I could not gather from Garrick's
+reply what it was about, although I could tell by the startled look on
+his face that something unexpected had happened.
+
+"Hurry and finish dressing, Tom," he called, as he hung up the receiver.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked, from my room, still struggling with my
+tie.
+
+"Warrington was severely injured in a motor-car accident late last
+night, or rather early this morning, near Tuxedo."
+
+"Near Tuxedo?" I repeated incredulously. "How could he have got up
+there? It was midnight when we left him in New York."
+
+"I know it. Apparently he must have wanted to see Miss Winslow. She is
+up there, you know. I suppose that in order to be there this morning,
+early, he decided to start after he left us. I thought he seemed
+anxious to get away. Besides, you remember he took that letter
+yesterday afternoon, and I totally forgot to ask him for it last night.
+I'll wager it was on account of that slanderous letter that he wanted
+to go, that he wanted to explain it to her as soon as he could."
+
+There had been no details in the hasty message over the wire, except
+that Warrington was now at the home of a Doctor Mead, a local physician
+in a little town across the border of New York and New Jersey. The more
+I thought about it, the more I felt that it was extremely unlikely that
+it could have been an accident, after all. Might it not have been the
+result of an attack or a trap laid by some strong-arm man who had set
+out to get him and had almost succeeded in accomplishing his purpose of
+"getting him right," to use the vernacular of the class?
+
+We made the trip by railroad, passing the town where the report had
+come to us before of the finding of the body of Rena Taylor. There was,
+of course, no one at the station to meet us, and, after wasting some
+time in learning the direction, we at last walked to Dr. Mead's
+cottage, a quaint home, facing the state road that led from Suffern up
+to the Park, and northward.
+
+Dr. Mead, who had telephoned, admitted us himself. We found Warrington
+swathed in bandages, and only half conscious. He had been under the
+influence of some drug, but, before that, the doctor told us, he had
+been unconscious and had only one or two intervals in which he was
+sufficiently lucid to talk.
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Garrick, almost as soon as we had entered
+the doctor's little office.
+
+"I had had a bad case up the road," replied the doctor slowly, "and it
+had kept me out late. I was driving my car along at a cautious pace
+homeward, some time near two o'clock, when I came to a point in the
+road where there are hills on one side and the river on the other. As I
+neared the curve, a rather sharp curve, too, I remember the lights on
+my own car were shining on the white fence that edged the river side of
+the road. I was keeping carefully on my own side, which was toward the
+hill.
+
+"As I was about to turn, I heard the loud purring of an engine coming
+in my direction, and a moment later I saw a car with glaring
+headlights, driven at a furious pace, coming right at me. It slowed up
+a little, and I hugged the hill as close as I could, for I know some of
+these reckless young drivers up that way, and this curve was in the
+direction where the temptation is for one going north to get on the
+wrong side of the road--that is, my side--in order to take advantage of
+the natural slope of the macadam in turning the curve at high speed.
+Still, this fellow didn't prove so bad, after all. He gave me a wide
+berth.
+
+"Just then there came a blinding flash right out of the darkness. Back
+of his car a huge, dark object had loomed up almost like a ghost. It
+was another car, back of the first one, without a single light,
+travelling apparently by the light shed by the forward car. It had
+overtaken the first and had cut in between us with not half a foot to
+spare on either side. It was the veriest piece of sheer luck I ever saw
+that we did not all go down together.
+
+"With the flash I heard what sounded like a bullet zip out of the
+darkness. The driver of the forward car stiffened out for a moment.
+Then he pitched forward, helpless, over the steering wheel. His car
+dashed ahead, straight into the fence instead of taking the curve, and
+threw the unconscious driver. Then the car wrecked itself."
+
+"And the car in the rear?" inquired Garrick eagerly.
+
+"Dashed ahead between us safely around the curve--and was gone. I
+caught just one glimpse of its driver--a man all huddled up, his collar
+up over his neck and chin, his cap pulled forward over his eyes,
+goggles covering the rest of his face, and shrouded in what seemed to
+be a black coat, absolutely as unrecognizable as if he had been a
+phantom bandit, or death itself. He was steering with one hand, and in
+the other he held what must have been a revolver."
+
+"And then?" prompted Garrick.
+
+"I had stopped with my heart in my mouth at the narrowness of my own
+escape from the rushing black death. Pursuit was impossible. My car was
+capable of no such burst of speed as his. And then, too, there was a
+groaning man down in the ravine below. I got out, clambered over the
+fence, and down in the shrubbery into the pitch darkness.
+
+"Fortunately, the man had been catapulted out before his car turned
+over. I found him, and with all the strength I could muster and as
+gently as I was able carried him up to the road. When I held him under
+the light of my lamps, I saw at once that there was not a moment to
+lose. I fixed him in the rear of my car as comfortably as I could and
+then began a race to get him home here where I have almost a private
+hospital of my own, as quickly as possible."
+
+Cards in his pocket had identified Warrington and Dr. Mead remembered
+having heard the name. The prompt attention of the doctor had
+undoubtedly saved the young man's life.
+
+Over and over again, Dr. Mead said, in his delirium Warrington had
+repeated the name, "Violet--Violet!" It was as Garrick had surmised,
+his desire to stand well in her eyes that had prompted the midnight
+journey. Yet who the assailant might be, neither Dr. Mead nor the
+broken raving of Warrington seemed to afford even the slightest clew.
+That he was a desperate character, without doubt in desperate straits
+over something, required no great acumen to deduce.
+
+Toward morning in a fleeting moment of lucidity, Warrington had
+mentioned Garrick's name in such a way that Dr. Mead had looked it up
+in the telephone directory and then at the earliest moment had called
+up.
+
+"Exactly the right thing," reassured Garrick. "Can't you think of
+anything else that would identify the driver of that other car?"
+
+"Only that he was a wonderful driver, that fellow," pursued the doctor,
+admiration getting the better of his horror now that the thing was
+over. "I couldn't describe the car, except that it was a big one and
+seemed to be of a foreign make. He was crowding Warrington as much as
+he dared with safety to himself--and not a light on his own car, too,
+remember."
+
+Garrick's face was puckered in thought.
+
+"And the most remarkable thing of all about it," added the doctor,
+rising and going over to a white enameled cabinet in the corner of his
+office, "was that wound from the pistol."
+
+The doctor paused to emphasize the point he was about to make.
+"Apparently it put Warrington out," he resumed. "And yet, after all, I
+find that it is only a very superficial flesh wound of the shoulder.
+Warrington's condition is really due to the contusions he received
+owing to his being thrown from the car. His car wasn't going very fast
+at the time, for it had slowed down for me. In one way that was
+fortunate--although one might say it was the cause of everything, since
+his slowing down gave the car behind a chance to creep up on him the
+few feet necessary.
+
+"Really I am sure that even the shock of such a wound wasn't enough to
+make an experienced driver like Warrington lose control of the machine.
+It is a fairly wide curve, after all, and--well, my contention is
+proved by the fact that I examined the wreck of the car this morning
+and found that he had had time to shut off the gas and cut out the
+engine. He had time to think of and do that before he lost absolute
+control of the car."
+
+Dr. Mead had been standing by the cabinet as he talked. Now he opened
+it and took from it the bullet which he had probed out of the wound. He
+looked at it a minute himself, then handed it to Garrick. I bent over
+also and examined it as it lay in Guy's hand.
+
+At first I thought it was an ordinary bullet. But the more I examined
+it the more I was convinced that there was something peculiar about it.
+In the nose, which was steel-jacketed, were several little round
+depressions, just the least fraction of an inch in depth.
+
+"It is no wonder Warrington was put out, even by that superficial
+wound," remarked Garrick at last. "His assailant's aim may have been
+bad, as it must necessarily have been from one rapidly approaching car
+at a person in another rapidly moving car, also. But the motor bandit,
+whoever he is, provided against that. That bullet is what is known as
+an anesthetic bullet."
+
+"An anesthetic bullet?" repeated both Dr. Mead and myself. "What is
+that?"
+
+"A narcotic bullet," Garrick explained, "a sleep-producing bullet, if
+you please, a sedative bullet that lulls its victim into almost instant
+slumber. It was invented quite recently by a Pittsburgh scientist. The
+anesthetic bullet provides the poor marksman with all the advantages of
+the expert gunman of unerring aim."
+
+I marvelled at the ingenuity of the man who could figure out how to
+overcome the seeming impossibility of accurate shooting from a car
+racing at high speed. Surely, he must be a desperate fellow.
+
+While we were talking, the doctor's wife who had been attending
+Warrington until a nurse arrived, came to inform him that the effect of
+the sedative, which he had administered while Warrington was restless
+and groaning, was wearing off. We waited a little while, and then Dr.
+Mead himself informed us that we might see our friend for a minute.
+
+Even in his half-drowsy state of pain Warrington appeared to recognise
+Garrick and assume that he had come in response to his own summons.
+Garrick bent down, and I could just distinguish what Warrington was
+trying to say to him.
+
+"Wh--where's Violet?" he whispered huskily, "Does she know? Don't let
+her get--frightened--I'll be--all right."
+
+Garrick laid his hand on Warrington's unbandaged shoulder, but said
+nothing.
+
+"The--the letter," he murmured ramblingly. "I have it--in my
+apartment--in the little safe. I was going to Tuxedo--to see
+Violet--explain slander--tell her closing place--didn't know it was
+mine before. Good thing to close it--Forbes is a heavy loser. She
+doesn't know that."
+
+Warrington lapsed back on his pillow and Dr. Mead beckoned to us to
+withdraw without exciting him any further.
+
+"What difference does it make whether she knows about Forbes or not?" I
+queried as we tiptoed down the hall.
+
+Garrick shook his head doubtfully. "Can't say," he replied succinctly.
+"It may be that Forbes, too, has aspirations."
+
+The idea sent me off into a maze of speculations, but it did not
+enlighten me much. At any rate, I felt, Warrington had said enough to
+explain his presence in that part of the country. On one thing, as I
+have said, Garrick had guessed right. The blackmailing letter and what
+we had seen the night before at the crooked gambling joint had been too
+much for him. He had not been able to rest as long as he was under a
+cloud with Miss Winslow until he had had a chance to set himself right
+in her eyes.
+
+There seemed to be nothing that we could do for him just then. He was
+in excellent hands, and now that the doctor knew who he was, a trained
+nurse had even been sent for from the city and arrived on the train
+following our own, thus relieving Mrs. Mead of her faithful care of him.
+
+Garrick gave the nurse strict instructions to make exact notes of
+anything that Warrington might say, and then requested the doctor to
+take us to the scene of the tragedy. We were about to start, when
+Garrick excused himself and hurried back into the house, reappearing in
+a few minutes.
+
+"I thought perhaps, after all, it would be best to let Miss Winslow
+know of the accident, as long as it isn't likely to turn out seriously
+in the end for Warrington," he explained, joining us again in Dr.
+Mead's car which was waiting in front of the house. "So I called up her
+aunt's at Tuxedo and when Miss Winslow answered the telephone I broke
+the news to her as gently as I could. Warrington need have no fear
+about that girl," he added.
+
+The wrecked car, we found, had not yet been moved, nor had the broken
+fence been repaired. It was, in fact, an accident worth studying
+topographically. That part of the road itself near the fence seemed to
+interest Garrick greatly. Two or three cars passed while we waited and
+he noted how carefully each of them seemed to avoid that side toward
+the broken fence, as though it were haunted.
+
+"I hope they've all done that," Garrick remarked, as he continued to
+examine the road, which was a trifle damp under the high trees that
+shaded it.
+
+As he worked, I could not believe that it was wholly fancy that caused
+me to think of him as searching with dilated nostrils, like a
+scientific human bloodhound. For, it was not long before I began to
+realize what he was looking for in the marks of cars left on the oiled
+roadway.
+
+During perhaps half an hour he continued studying the road, above and
+below the exact point of the accident. At length a low exclamation from
+him brought me to his side. He had dropped down in the grease,
+regardless of his knees and was peering at some rather deep imprints in
+the surface dressing. There, for a few feet, were plainly the marks of
+the outside tires of a car, still unobliterated.
+
+Garrick had pulled out copies of the photographs he had made of the
+tire marks that had been left at the scene of the finding of the
+unfortunate Rena Taylor's body, and was busy comparing them with the
+marks that were before him.
+
+"Of course," Garrick muttered to me, "if the anti-skid marks of the
+tires were different, it would have proved nothing, just as in the
+other case where we looked for the tire prints. But here, too, a glance
+shows that at least it is the same make of tires."
+
+He continued his comparison. It did not take me long to surmise what he
+was doing. He was taking the two sets of marks and, inch by inch, going
+over them, checking up the little round metal insertions that were
+placed in this style of tire to give it a firmer grip.
+
+"Here's one missing, there's another," he cried excitedly. "By Jove, it
+can't be mere coincidence. There's one that is worn--another broken.
+They correspond. Yes, that MUST be the same car, in each case. And if
+it was the stolen car, then it was Warrington's own car that was used
+in pursuing him and in almost making away with him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE EXPLANATION
+
+
+We had not noticed a car which had stopped just past us and Garrick was
+surprised at hearing his own name called.
+
+We looked up from contemplating the discovery he had made in the road,
+to see Miss Winslow waving to us. She had motored down from Tuxedo
+immediately after receiving the message over the telephone, and with
+her keen eye had picked out both the place of the accident and
+ourselves studying it.
+
+As we approached, I could see that she was much more pale than usual.
+Evidently her anxiety for Warrington was thoroughly genuine. The
+slanderous letter had not shaken her faith in him, yet.
+
+She had left her car and was walking back along the road with us toward
+the broken fence. Garrick had been talking to her earnestly and now,
+having introduced her to Dr. Mead, the doctor and he decided to climb
+down to inspect the wrecked car itself in the ravine below.
+
+Miss Winslow cast a quick look from the broken fence down at the torn
+and twisted wreckage of the car and gave a suppressed little cry and
+shudder.
+
+"How is Mortimer?" she asked of me eagerly, for I had agreed to stay
+with her while the others went down the slope. "I mean how is he
+really? Is he likely to be better soon, as Mr. Garrick said over the
+telephone?" she appealed.
+
+"Surely--absolutely," I assured her, knowing that if Garrick had said
+that he had meant it. "Miss Winslow, believe me, neither Mr. Garrick
+nor Dr. Mead is concealing anything. It is pretty bad, of course. Such
+things are always bad. But it might be far worse. And besides, the
+worst now has passed."
+
+Garrick had already promised to accompany her over to Dr. Mead's after
+he had made his examination of the wrecked car to confirm what the
+doctor had already observed. It took several minutes for them to
+satisfy themselves and meanwhile Violet Winslow, already highly
+unstrung by the news from Garrick, waited more and more nervously.
+
+In spite of his careful examination of the wrecked car, Garrick found
+practically nothing more than Dr. Mead had already told him. It was
+with considerable relief that Miss Winslow saw the two again climbing
+up the slope in the direction of the road.
+
+A few minutes later we were on our way back, Dr. Mead and Garrick
+leading the way in the doctor's car, while I accompanied Miss Winslow
+in her own car.
+
+She said little, and it was plain to see that she was consumed by
+anxiety. Now and then she would ask a question about the accident, and
+although I tried in every way to divert her mind to other subjects she
+unfailingly came back to that.
+
+Tempering the details as much as I could I repeated for her just what
+had happened to the best of our knowledge.
+
+"And you have no idea who it could have been?" she asked turning those
+liquid eyes of hers on my face.
+
+If there were any secret about it, it was perhaps fortunate that I did
+not know. I don't think I am more than ordinarily susceptible and I
+know I did not delude myself that Miss Winslow ever could be anything
+except a friend to either Garrick or myself. But I felt I could not
+resist the appeal in those eyes. I wondered if even they, by some magic
+intuition, might not pierce the very soul of man and uncover a lying
+heart. I felt that Warrington could not have been other than he said he
+was and still have been hastening to meet those eyes.
+
+"Miss Winslow," I answered, "I have no more idea than you have who it
+could be."
+
+I was telling the truth and I felt that I could meet her gaze.
+
+There must have been something about how I had phrased my answer that
+caused her to look at me more searchingly than before. Suddenly she
+turned her face away and gazed at the passing landscape from the car.
+
+She said nothing, but as I continued to watch her finely moulded
+features, I saw that she was making an effort to control herself. It
+flashed over me, somehow, that perhaps, after all, she herself
+suspected someone. It was not that she said anything. It was merely an
+indefinable impression I received.
+
+Had Warrington any enemies, not in the underworld, but among those of
+his own set, rivals, perhaps, who might even stoop to secure the aid of
+those of the underworld who could be bought to commit any crime in the
+calendar for a price? I did not pause to examine the plausibility or
+the impossibility of such a theory. What interested me was whether in
+her mind there was such a thought. Had she, perhaps, really more of an
+idea than I who it could be? She betrayed nothing of what her intuition
+told her, but I felt sure that, even though she knew nothing, there was
+at least something she feared.
+
+At last we arrived at Dr. Mead's and I handed her out of the car and
+into the tastefully furnished little house. There was an air of
+quietness about it that often indefinably pervades a house in which
+there is illness or a tragedy.
+
+"May I--see him?" pleaded Miss Winslow, as Dr. Mead placed a chair for
+her.
+
+I wondered what he would have done if there had been some good reason
+why he should resist the pleading of her deep eyes.
+
+"Why--er--for a minute--yes," he answered. "Later, soon, he may see
+visitors longer, but just now I think for a few hours the less he is
+disturbed the better."
+
+The doctor excused himself for a moment to look at his patient and
+prepare him for the visit. Meanwhile Miss Winslow waited in the
+reception room downstairs, still very pale and nervous.
+
+Warrington was in much less pain now than he had been when we left and
+Dr. Mead decided that, since the nurse had made him so much more
+comfortable, no further drug was necessary. In fact as his natural
+vitality due to his athletic habits and clean living asserted itself,
+it seemed as if his injuries which at first had looked so serious were
+not likely to prove as bad as the doctor had anticipated.
+
+Still, he was badly enough as it was. The new nurse smoothed out his
+pillows and deftly tried to conceal as much as she could that would
+suggest how badly he was injured and at last Violet Winslow was allowed
+to enter the room where the poor boy lay.
+
+Miss Winslow never for a moment let her wonderful self-control fail
+her. Quickly and noiselessly, like a ministering angel, she seemed to
+float rather than walk over the space from the door to the bed.
+
+As she bent over him and whispered, "Mortimer!" the simple tone seemed
+to have an almost magic effect on him.
+
+He opened his eyes which before had been languidly closed and gazed up
+at her face as if he saw a vision. Slowly the expression on his face
+changed as he realized that it was indeed Violet herself. In spite of
+the pain of his hurts which must have been intense a smile played over
+his features, as if he realized that it would never do to let her know
+how serious had been his condition.
+
+As she bent over her hand had rested on the white covers of the bed.
+Feebly, in spite of the bandages that swathed the arm nearest her, he
+put out his own brawny hand and rested it on hers. She did not withdraw
+it, but passed the other hand gently over his throbbing forehead. Never
+have I seen a greater transformation in an invalid than was evident in
+Mortimer Warrington. No tonic in all the pharmacopoeia of Dr. Mead
+could have worked a more wonderful change.
+
+Not a word was said by either Warrington or Violet for several seconds.
+They seemed content just to gaze into each other's faces, oblivious to
+us.
+
+Warrington was the first to break the silence, in answer to what he
+knew must be her unspoken question.
+
+"Your aunt--gambling," he murmured feebly, trying hard to connect his
+words so as to appear not so badly off as he had when he had spoken
+before. "I didn't know--till they told me--that the estate owned
+it--was coming to tell you--going to cancel the lease--close it up--no
+one ever lose money there again--"
+
+The words, jerky though they were, cost him a great physical effort to
+say. She seemed to realize it, but there was a look of triumph on her
+face as she understood.
+
+She had not been mistaken. Warrington was all that she had thought him
+to be.
+
+He was looking eagerly into her face and as he looked he read in it the
+answer to the questionings that had sent him off in the early hours of
+the morning on his fateful ride to Tuxedo.
+
+Dr. Mead cleared his throat. Miss Winslow recognised it as a signal
+that the time was growing short for the interview.
+
+Reluctantly, she withdrew her hand from his, their eyes met another
+instant, and with a hasty word of sympathy and encouragement she left
+the room, conscious now that other eyes were watching.
+
+"Oh, to think it was to tell me that that he got into it all," she
+cried, as she sank into a deep chair in the reception room,
+endeavouring not to give way to her feelings, now that the strain was
+off and she had no longer to keep a brave face. "I--I feel guilty!"
+
+"I wouldn't say that," soothed Garrick. "Who knows? Perhaps if he had
+stayed in the city--they might have succeeded,--whoever it was back of
+this thing."
+
+She looked up at Garrick, startled, I thought, with the same expression
+I had seen when she turned her face away in the car and I got the
+impression that she felt more than she knew of the case.
+
+"I may--see--Mr. Warrington again soon?" she asked, now again mistress
+of her feelings after Garrick's interruption that had served to take
+her mind off a morbid aspect of the affair.
+
+"Surely," agreed Dr. Mead. "I expect his progress to be rapid after
+this."
+
+"Thank you," she murmured, as she slowly rose and prepared to make the
+return trip to her aunt's home.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Garrick," she confided, as he helped her on with the wraps she
+had thrown carelessly on a chair when she entered, "I can't help it--I
+do feel guilty. Perhaps he thinks I am--like Aunt Emma---"
+
+"Perhaps it was quite as much to convince your aunt as you that he took
+the trip," suggested Garrick.
+
+Miss Winslow understood. "Why is it," she murmured, "that sometimes
+people with the best intentions manage to bring about things that
+are--more terrible?"
+
+Garrick smiled. Quite evidently she and her aunt were not exactly in
+tune. He said nothing.
+
+As for Dr. Mead he seemed really pleased, for the patient had
+brightened up considerably after even the momentary glimpse he had had
+of Violet. Altogether I felt that although they had seen each other
+only for a moment, it had done both good. Miss Winslow's fears had been
+quieted and Warrington had been encouraged by the realisation that, in
+spite of its disastrous ending, his journey had accomplished its
+purpose anyway.
+
+There was, as Dr. Mead assured us, every prospect now that Warrington
+would pull through after the murderous assault that had been made on
+him.
+
+We saw Miss Winslow safely off on her return trip, much relieved by the
+promise of the doctor that she might call once a day to see how the
+patient was getting along.
+
+Warrington was now resting more easily than he had since the accident
+and Garrick, having exhausted the possibilities of investigation at the
+scene of the accident, announced that he would return to the city.
+
+At the railroad terminus he called up both the apartment and the office
+in order to find out whether we had had any visitors during our
+absence. No one had called at the apartment, but the office boy
+downtown said that there was a man who had called and was coming back
+again.
+
+A half hour or so later when we arrived at the office we found McBirney
+seated there, patiently determined to find Garrick.
+
+Evidently the news of the assault on Warrington had travelled fast, for
+the first thing McBirney wanted to know was how it happened and how his
+client was. In a few words Garrick told him as much about it as was
+necessary. McBirney listened attentively, but we could see that he was
+bursting with his own budget of news.
+
+"And, McBirney," concluded Garrick, without going into the question of
+the marks of the tires, "most remarkable of all, I am convinced that
+the car in which his assailant rode was no other than the Mercedes that
+was stolen from Warrington in the first place."
+
+"Say," exclaimed McBirney in surprise, "that car must be all over at
+once!"
+
+"Why--what do you mean?"
+
+"You know I have my own underground sources of information," explained
+the detective with pardonable pride at adding even a rumour to the
+budget of news. "Of course you can't be certain of such things, but one
+of my men, who is scouting around the Tenderloin looking for what he
+can find, tells me that he saw a car near that gambling joint on
+Forty-eighth Street and that it may have been the repainted and
+renumbered Warrington car--at least it tallies with the description
+that we got from the garage keeper in north Jersey.
+
+"Did he see who drove it?" asked Garrick eagerly.
+
+"Not very well. It was a short, undersized man, as nearly as he could
+make out. Someone whom he did not recognize jumped in it from the
+gambling house and they disappeared. Even though my man, his suspicions
+aroused, tried to follow them in a taxicab they managed to leave him
+behind."
+
+"In what direction did they go?" asked Garrick.
+
+"Toward the West Side--where those fly-by-night garages are all
+located."
+
+"Or, perhaps, the Jersey ferries," suggested Garrick.
+
+"Well, I thought you might like to know about this undersized driver,"
+said McBirney a little sulkily because Garrick had not displayed as
+much enthusiasm as he expected.
+
+"I do," hastened Garrick. "Of course I do. And it may prove to be a
+very important clew. But I was just running ahead of your story. The
+undersized man couldn't have figured in the case afterward, assuming
+that it was the car. He must have left it, probably in the city. Have
+you any idea who it could be?"
+
+"Not unless he might be an employee or a keeper of one of those
+night-hawk garages," persisted McBirney. "That is possible."
+
+"Quite," agreed Garrick.
+
+McBirney had delivered his own news and in turn had received ours, or
+at least such of it as Garrick chose to tell at present. He was
+apparently satisfied and rose to go.
+
+"Keep after that undersized fellow, will you?" asked Garrick. "If you
+could find out who he is and he should happen to be connected with one
+of those garages we might get on the right trail at last."
+
+"I will," promised McBirney. "He's evidently an expert driver of motor
+cars himself; my man could see that."
+
+McBirney had gone. Garrick sat for several minutes gazing squarely at
+me. Then he leaned back in his chair, with his hands behind his head.
+
+"Mark my words, Marshall," he observed slowly, "someone connected with
+that gambling joint in some way has got wind of the fact that
+Warrington is going to revoke the lease and close it up. We've got to
+beat them to it--that's all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE RAID
+
+
+Garrick was evidently turning over and over in his mind some plan of
+action.
+
+"This thing has gone just about far enough," he remarked meditatively,
+looking at his watch. It was now well along in the afternoon.
+
+"But what do you intend doing?" I asked, regarding the whole affair so
+far as a hopeless mystery from which I could not see that we had
+extracted so much as a promising clew.
+
+"Doing?" he echoed. "Why, there is only one thing to do, and that is to
+take the bull by the horns, to play the game without any further
+attempt at finessing. I shall see Dillon, get a warrant, and raid that
+gambling place--that's all."
+
+I had no counter suggestion to offer. In fact the plan rather appealed
+to me. If any blow were to be struck it must be just a little bit ahead
+of any that the gamblers anticipated, and this was a blow they would
+not expect if they already had wind of Warrington's intention to cancel
+the lease.
+
+Garrick called up Dillon and made an appointment to meet him early in
+the evening, without telling him what was afoot.
+
+"Meet me down at police headquarters, Tom," was all that Garrick said
+to me. "I want to work here at the office for a little while, first,
+testing a new contrivance, or, rather, an old one that I think may be
+put to a new use."
+
+Meanwhile I decided to employ my time by visiting some newspaper
+friends that I had known a long time on the Star, one of the most
+enterprising papers in the city. Fortunately I found my friend,
+Davenport, the managing editor, at his desk and ready to talk in the
+infrequent lulls that came in his work.
+
+"What's on your mind, Marshall?" he asked as I sat down and began to
+wonder how he ever conducted his work in the chaotic clutter of stuff
+on the top of his desk.
+
+"I can't tell you--yet, Davenport," I explained carefully, "but it's a
+big story and when it breaks I'll promise that the Star has the first
+chance at it. I'm on the inside--working with that young detective,
+Garrick, you know."
+
+"Garrick--Garrick," he repeated. "Oh, yes, that fellow who came back
+from abroad with a lot of queer ideas. I remember. We had an interview
+with him when he left the steamer. Good stuff, too,--but what do you
+think of him? Is he--on the level?"
+
+"On the level and making good," I answered confidently. "I'm not at
+liberty to tell much about it now, but--well, the reason I came in was
+to find out what you could tell me about a Miss Winslow,--Violet
+Winslow and her aunt, Mrs. Beekman de Lancey."
+
+"The Miss Winslow who is reported engaged to young Warrington?" he
+repeated. "The gossip is that he has cut out Angus Forbes, entirely."
+
+I had hesitated to mention all the names at once, but I need not have
+done so, for on such things, particularly the fortunes in finance and
+love of such a person as Warrington, the eyes of the press were
+all-seeing.
+
+"Yes," I answered carefully, "that's the Miss Winslow. What do you know
+of her?"
+
+"Well," he replied, fumbling among the papers on his desk, "all I know
+is that in the social set to which she belongs our society reporters
+say that of all the young fellows who have set out to capture her--and
+she's a deuced pretty girl, even in the pictures we have published--it
+seems to have come down to Mortimer Warrington and Angus Forbes. Of
+course, as far as we newspapermen are concerned, the big story for us
+would be in the engagement of young Warrington. The eyes of people are
+fixed on him just now--the richest young man in the country, and all
+that sort of thing, you know. Seems to be a pretty decent sort of
+fellow, too, I believe--democratic and keen on other things besides
+tango and tennis. Oh, there's the thing I was hunting for. Mrs. de
+Lancey's a nut on gambling, I believe. Read that. It's a letter that
+came to us from her this morning."
+
+It was written in the stilted handwriting of a generation ago and read:
+
+"To the Editor of the Star, Dear Sir:--I believe that your paper prides
+itself on standing for reform and against the grafters. If that is so,
+why do you not join in the crusade to suppress gambling in New York?
+For the love that you must still bear towards your own mother, listen
+to the stories of other mothers torn by anxiety for their sons and
+daughters, and if there is any justice or righteousness in this great
+city close up those gambling hells that are sending to ruin scores of
+our finest young men--and women. You have taken up other fights against
+gambling and vice. Take up this one that appeals to women of wealth and
+social position. I know them and they are as human as mothers in any
+other station in life. Oh, if there is any way, close up these gilded
+society resorts that are dissipating the fortunes of many parents,
+ruining young men and women, and, in one case I know of, slowly
+bringing to the grave a grey-haired widow as worthy of protection as
+any mother of the poor whose plea has closed up a little poolroom or
+policy shop. One place I have in mind is at ---- West Forty-eighth
+Street. Investigate it, but keep this confidential.
+
+"Sincerely,
+
+"(MRS.) EMMA DE LANCEY."
+
+"Do you know anything about it?" I asked casually handing the letter
+back.
+
+"Only by hearsay. I understand it is the crookedest gambling joint in
+the city, at least judging by the stories they tell of the losses
+there. And so beastly aristocratic, too. They tell me young Forbes has
+lost a small fortune there--but I don't know how true it is. We get
+hundreds of these daintily perfumed and monogramed little missives in
+the course of a year."
+
+"You mean Angus Forbes?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," replied the managing editor, "the fellow that they say has been
+trying to capture your friend Miss Winslow."
+
+I did not reply for the moment. Forbes, I had already learned, was
+deeply in debt. Was it part of his plan to get control of the little
+fortune of Violet to recoup his losses?
+
+"Do you know Mrs. de Lancey?" pursued the editor.
+
+"No--not yet," I answered. "I was just wondering what sort of person
+she is."
+
+"Oh I suppose she's all right," he answered, "but they say she's pretty
+straight-laced--that cards and all sorts of dissipation are an
+obsession with her."
+
+"Well," I argued, "there might be worse things than that."
+
+"That's right," he agreed. "But I don't believe that such a puritanical
+atmosphere is--er--just the place to bring up a young woman like Violet
+Winslow."
+
+I said nothing. It did not seem to me that Mrs. de Lancey had succeeded
+in killing the natural human impulses in Violet, though perhaps the
+girl was not as well versed in some of the ways of the world as others
+of her set. Still, I felt that her own natural common sense would
+protect her, even though she had been kept from a knowledge of much
+that in others of her set was part of their "education."
+
+My friend's telephone had been tinkling constantly during the
+conversation and I saw that as the time advanced he was getting more
+and more busy. I thanked Davenport and excused myself.
+
+At least I had learned something about those who were concerned in the
+case. As I rode uptown I could not help thinking of Violet Winslow and
+her apparently intuitive fear concerning Warrington. I wondered how
+much she really knew about Angus Forbes. Undoubtedly he had not
+hesitated to express his own feelings toward her. Had she penetrated
+beneath the honeyed words he must have spoken to her? Was it that she
+feared that all things are fair in war and love and that the favour she
+must have bestowed on Warrington might have roused the jealousy of some
+of his rivals for her affections?
+
+I found no answer to my speculations, but a glance at my watch told me
+that it was nearing the time of my appointment with Guy.
+
+A few minutes later I jumped off the car at Headquarters and met
+Garrick, waiting for me in the lower hall. As we ascended the broad
+staircase to the second floor, where Dillon's office was, I told him
+briefly of what I had discovered.
+
+"The old lady will have her wish," he replied grimly as I related the
+incident of the letter to the editor. "I wonder just how much she
+really does know of that place. I hope it isn't enough to set her
+against Warrington. You know people like that are often likely to
+conceive violent prejudices--and then refuse to believe something
+that's all but proved about someone else."
+
+There was no time to pursue the subject further for we had reached
+Dillon's office and were admitted immediately.
+
+"What's the news?" asked Dillon greeting us cordially.
+
+"Plenty of it," returned Garrick, hastily sketching over what had
+transpired since we had seen him last.
+
+Garrick had scarcely begun to outline what he intended to do when I
+could see from the commissioner's face that he was very sceptical of
+success.
+
+"Herman tells me," he objected, "that the place is mighty well
+barricaded. We haven't tried raiding it yet, because you know the new
+plan is not only to raid those places, but first to watch them, trace
+out some of the regular habitues, and then to be able to rope them in
+in case we need them as evidence. Herman has been getting that all in
+shape so that when the case comes to trial, there'll be no slip-up."
+
+"If that's all you want, I can put my finger on some of the wildest
+scions of wealth that you will ever need for witnesses," Garrick
+replied confidently.
+
+"Well," pursued Dillon diffidently, "how are you going to pull it off,
+down through the sky-light, or up through the cellar?"
+
+"Oh, Dillon," returned Garrick reproachfully, "that's unworthy of you."
+
+"But, Garrick," persisted Dillon, "don't you know that it is a
+veritable National City Bank for protection. It isn't one of those
+common gambling joints. It's proof against all the old methods. Axes
+and sledgehammers would make no impression there. Why, that place has
+been proved bomb-proof--bomb-proof, sir. You remember recently the
+so-call 'gamblers' war' in which some rivals exploded a bomb on the
+steps because the proprietor of this place resented their intrusion
+uptown from the lower East Side, with their gunmen and lobbygows? It
+did more damage to the house next door than to the gambling joint."
+
+Dillon paused a moment to enumerate the difficulties. "You can get past
+the outside door all right. But inside is the famous ice-box door. It's
+no use to try it at all unless you can pass that door with reasonable
+quickness. All the evidence you will get will be of an innocent social
+club room downstairs. And you can't get on the other side of that door
+by strategy, either. It is strategy-proof. The system of lookouts is
+perfect. Herman---"
+
+"Can't help it," interrupted Garrick, "we've got to go over Herman's
+head this time. I'll guarantee you all the evidence you'll ever need."
+
+Dillon and Garrick faced each other for a moment.
+
+It was a supreme test of Dillon's sincerity.
+
+Finally he spoke slowly. "All right," he said, as if at last the die
+were cast and Garrick had carried his point, "but how are you going to
+do it? Won't you need some men with axes and crowbars?"
+
+"No, indeed," almost shouted Garrick as Dillon made a motion as if to
+find out who were available. "I've been preparing a little surprise in
+my office this afternoon for just such a case. It's a rather cumbersome
+arrangement and I've brought it along stowed away in a taxicab outside.
+I don't want anyone else to know about the raid until the last moment.
+Just before we begin the rough stuff, you can call up and have the
+reserves started around. That is all I shall want."
+
+"Very well," agreed Dillon, after a moment.
+
+He did not seem to relish the scheme, but he had promised at the outset
+to play fair and he had no disposition to go back on his word now in
+favor even of his judgment.
+
+"First of all," he planned, "we'll have to drop in on a judge and get a
+warrant to protect us."
+
+Garrick hastily gave me instructions what to do and I started uptown
+immediately, while they went to secure the secret warrant.
+
+I had been stationed on the corner which was not far from the
+Forty-eighth Street gambling joint that we were to raid. I had a keen
+sense of wickedness as I stood there with other loiterers watching the
+passing throng under the yellow flare of the flaming arc light.
+
+It was not difficult now to loiter about unnoticed because the streets
+were full of people, all bent on their own pleasure and not likely to
+notice one person more or less who stopped to watch the passing throng.
+
+From time to time I cast a quick glance at the house down the street,
+in order to note who was going in.
+
+It must have been over an hour that I waited. It was after ten, and it
+became more difficult to watch who was going into the gambling joint.
+In fact, several times the street was so blocked that I could not see
+very well. But I did happen to catch a glimpse of one familiar figure
+across the street from me.
+
+It was Angus Forbes. Where he kept himself in the daytime I did not
+know, but he seemed to emerge at night, like a rat, seeking what to him
+was now food and drink. I watched him narrowly as he turned the corner,
+but there was no use in being too inquisitive. He was bound as
+certainly for the gambling joint as a moth would have headed toward one
+of the arc lights. Evidently Forbes was making a vocation of gambling.
+
+Just then a taxicab pulled up hurriedly at the curb near where I was
+standing and a hand beckoned me, on the side away from the gambling
+house.
+
+I sauntered over and looked in through the open window. It was Garrick
+with Dillon sunk back into the dark corner of the cab, so as not to be
+seen.
+
+"Jump in!" whispered Garrick, opening the door. "We have the warrant
+all right. Has anything happened? No suspicion yet?"
+
+I did so and reassured Garrick while the cab started on a blind cruise
+around the block.
+
+On the floor was a curiously heavy instrument, on which I had stubbed
+my toe as I entered. I surmised that it must have been the thing which
+Garrick had brought from his office, but in the darkness I could not
+see what it was, nor was there a chance to ask a question.
+
+"Stop here," ordered Garrick, as we passed a drug store with a
+telephone booth.
+
+Dillon jumped out and disappeared into the booth.
+
+"He is calling the reserves from the nearest station," fretted Garrick.
+"Of course, we have to do that to cover the place, but we'll have to
+work quickly now, for I don't know how fast a tip may travel in this
+subterranean region. Here, I'll pay the taxi charges now and save some
+time."
+
+A moment later Dillon rejoined us, his face perspiring from the
+closeness of the air in the booth.
+
+"Now to that place on Forty-eighth Street, and we're square," ordered
+Garrick to the driver, mentioning the address. "Quick!"
+
+There had been, we could see, no chance for a tip to be given that a
+raid was about to be pulled off. We could see that, as Garrick and I
+jumped out of the cab and mounted the steps.
+
+The door was closed to us, however. Only someone like Warrington who
+was known there could have got us in peacefully, until we had become
+known in the place. Yet though there had been no tip, the lookout on
+the other side of the door, with his keen nose, had seemed to scent
+trouble.
+
+He had retreated and, we knew, had shut the inside, heavy door--perhaps
+even had had time already to give the alarm inside.
+
+The sharp rap of a small axe which Garrick had brought sounded on the
+flimsy outside door, in quick staccato. There was a noise and scurry of
+feet inside and we could hear the locks and bolts being drawn.
+
+Banging, ripping, tearing, the thin outer door was easily forced.
+Disregarding the melee I leaped through the wreckage with Garrick. The
+"ice-box" door barred all further progress. How was Garrick to surmount
+this last and most formidable barrier?
+
+"A raid! A raid!" cried a passer-by.
+
+Another instant, and the cry, taken up by others, brought a crowd
+swarming around from Broadway, as if it were noon instead of midnight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE GAMBLING DEBT
+
+
+There was no time to be lost now. Down the steps again dashed Garrick,
+after our expected failure both to get in peaceably and to pass the
+ice-box door by force. This time Dillon emerged from the cab with him.
+Together they were carrying the heavy apparatus up the steps.
+
+They set it down close to the door and I scrutinized it carefully. It
+looked, at first sight, like a short stubby piece of iron, about
+eighteen inches high. It must have weighed fifty or sixty pounds. Along
+one side was a handle, and on the opposite side an adjustable hook with
+a sharp, wide prong.
+
+Garrick bent down and managed to wedge the hook into the little space
+between the sill and the bottom of the ice-box door. Then he began
+pumping on the handle, up and down, up and down, as hard as he could.
+
+Meanwhile the crowd that had begun to collect was getting larger.
+Dillon went through the form of calling on them for aid, but the call
+was met with laughter. A Tenderloin crowd has no use for raids, except
+as a spectacle. Between us we held them back, while Garrick worked. The
+crowd jeered.
+
+It was the work of only a few seconds, however, before Garrick changed
+the jeers to a hearty round of exclamations of surprise. The door
+seemed to be lifted up, literally, until some of its bolts and hinges
+actually bulged and cracked. It was being crushed, like the flimsy
+outside door, before the unwonted attack.
+
+Upwards, by fractions of an inch, by millimeters, the door was being
+forced. There was such straining and stress of materials that I really
+began to wonder whether the building itself would stand it.
+
+"Scientific jimmying," gasped Garrick, as the door bulged more and more
+and seemed almost to threaten to topple in at any moment.
+
+I looked at the stubby little cylinder with its short stump of a lever.
+Garrick had taken it out now and had wedged it horizontally between the
+ice-box door and the outer stonework of the building itself. Then he
+jammed some pieces of wood in to wedge it tighter and again began to
+pump at the handle vigorously.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, almost in awe at the titanic power of the
+apparently insignificant little thing.
+
+"My scientific sledgehammer," he panted, still working the lever more
+vigorously than ever backward and forward. "In other words, a hydraulic
+ram. There is no swinging of axes or wielding of crow-bars necessary
+any more, Dillon, in breaking down a door like this. Such things are
+obsolete. This little jimmy, if you want to call it that, has a power
+of ten tons. I think that's about enough."
+
+It seemed as if the door were buckling and being literally wrenched off
+its hinges by the irresistible ten-ton punch of the hydraulic ram.
+
+Garrick sprang back, grasping me by the arm and pulling me too. But
+there was no need of caution. What was left of the door swung back on
+its loosened hinges, seemed to tremble a moment, and then, with a dull
+thud crashed down on the beautiful green marble of the reception hall,
+reverberating.
+
+We peered beyond. Inside all was darkness. At the very first sign of
+trouble the lights had been switched out downstairs. It was deserted.
+There was no answer to our shouts. It was as silent as a tomb.
+
+The clang of bells woke the rapid echoes. The crowd parted. It was the
+patrol wagons, come just in time, full of reserves, at Dillon's order.
+They swarmed up the steps, for there was nothing to do now, in the
+limelight of the public eye, except their duty. Besides Dillon was
+there, too.
+
+"Here," he ordered huskily, "four of you fellows jump into each of the
+next door houses and run up to the roof. Four more men go through to
+the rear of this house. The rest stay here and await orders," he
+directed, detailing them off quickly, as he endeavoured to grasp the
+strange situation.
+
+On both sides of the street heads were out of windows. On other houses
+the steps were full of spectators. Thousands of people must have
+swarmed in the street. It was pandemonium.
+
+Yet inside the house into which we had just broken it was all darkness
+and silence.
+
+The door had yielded to the scientific sledge-hammering where it would
+have shattered, otherwise, all the axes in the department. What was
+next?
+
+Garrick jumped briskly over the wreckage into the building. Instead of
+the lights and gayety which we had seen on the previous night, all was
+black mystery. The robbers' cave yawned before us. I think we were all
+prepared for some sort of gunplay, for we knew the crooks to be
+desperate characters. As we followed Garrick closely we were surprised
+to encounter not even physical force.
+
+Someone struck a light. Garrick, groping about in the shadows, found
+the switch, and one after another the lights in the various rooms
+winked up.
+
+I have seldom seen such confusion as greeted us as, with Dillon waiving
+his "John Doe" warrant over his head, we hurried upstairs to the main
+hall on the second floor, where the greater part of the gambling was
+done. Furniture was overturned and broken, and there had been no time
+to remove the heavier gambling apparatus. Playing cards, however,
+chips, racing sheets from the afternoon, dice, everything portable and
+tangible and small enough to be carried had disappeared.
+
+But the greatest surprise of all was in store. Though we had seen no
+one leave by any of the doors, nor by the doors of any of the houses on
+the block, nor by the roofs, or even by the back yard, according to the
+report of the police who had been sent in that direction, there was not
+a living soul in the house from roof to cellar. Search as we did, we
+could find not one of the scores of people whom I had seen enter in the
+course of the evening while I was watching on the corner.
+
+Dillon, ever mindful of some of the absurd rules of evidence in such
+cases laid down by the courts, had had an official photographer
+summoned and he was proceeding from room to room, snapping pictures of
+apparatus that was left in place and preserving a film record of the
+condition of things generally.
+
+Garrick was standing ruefully beside the roulette wheel at which so
+many fortunes had been dissipated.
+
+"Get me an axe," he asked of one of Dillon's men who was passing.
+
+With a well-directed blow he smashed the wheel.
+
+"Look," he exclaimed, "this is what they were up against."
+
+His forefinger indicated an ingenious but now twisted and tangled
+series of minute wires and electro-magnets in the delicate mechanism
+now broken open before us. Delicate brushes led the current into the
+wheel.
+
+With another blow of the axe, Garrick disclosed wires running down
+through the leg of the table to the floor and under the carpet to
+buttons operated by the man who ran the game.
+
+"What does it mean?" I asked blankly.
+
+"It means," he returned, "that they had little enough chance to win at
+a straight game of roulette. But this wheel wasn't even straight with
+all the odds in favor of the bank, as they are naturally. This game was
+electrically controlled. Others are mechanically controlled by what are
+called the 'mule's ear,' and other devices. You CAN'T win. These wires
+and magnets can be made to attract the little ball into any pocket the
+operator desires. Each one of the pockets contains an electro-magnet.
+One set of electro-magnets in the red pockets is connected with one
+button under the carpet and a set of batteries. The other series of
+little magnets in the black pockets is connected with another button
+and the batteries."
+
+He had picked up the little ball. "This ball," he said as he examined
+it, "is not really of ivory, but of a composition that looks like
+ivory, coating a hollow, soft-iron ball inside. Soft iron is attracted
+by an electro-magnet. Whichever set of magnets is energized attracts
+the ball and by this simple method it is in the power of the operator
+to let the ball go to red or black as he may wish. Other similar
+arrangements control the odd or even, and other combinations, also from
+push buttons. There isn't an honest gambling machine in the whole
+place. The whole thing is crooked from start to finish,--the men, the
+machines,----"
+
+"Then a fellow never had a chance?" repeated Dillon.
+
+"Not a chance," emphasized Garrick.
+
+We gathered about and gazed at magnets and wires, the buttons and
+switches. He did not need to say anything more to expose the character
+of the place.
+
+Amazing as we found everything about us in the palace of crooks,
+nothing made so deep an impression on me as the fact that it was
+deserted. It seemed as if the gamblers had disappeared as though in a
+fairy tale. Search room after room as Dillon's men did they were unable
+to find a living thing.
+
+One of the men had discovered, back of the gambling rooms on the second
+floor, a little office evidently used by those who ran the joint. It
+was scantily furnished, as though its purpose might have been merely a
+place where they could divide up the profits in private. A desk, a
+cabinet and a safe, besides a couple of chairs, were all that the room
+contained.
+
+Someone, however, had done some quick work in the little office during
+those minutes while Garrick was opening the great ice-box door with his
+hydraulic ram, for on every side were scattered papers, the desk had
+been rifled, and even from the safe practically everything of any value
+had been removed. It was all part of the general scheme of things in
+the gambling joint. Practically nothing that was evidential that could
+be readily removed had been left. Whoever had planned the place must
+have been a genius as far as laying out precautions against a raid were
+concerned.
+
+Garrick, Dillon and I ran hastily through some scattered correspondence
+and other documents that spilled out from some letter files on the
+floor, but as far as I could make out there was nothing of any great
+importance that had been overlooked.
+
+Dillon ordered the whole mass to be bundled up and taken off when the
+other paraphernalia was removed so that it could be gone through at our
+leisure, and the search continued.
+
+From the "office" a staircase led down by a back way and we followed
+it, looking carefully to see where it led.
+
+A low exclamation from Garrick arrested our attention. In a curve
+between landings he had kicked something and had bent down to pick it
+up. An electric pocket flashlight which one of the men had picked up
+disclosed under its rays a package of papers evidently dropped by
+someone who was carrying away in haste an armful of stuff.
+
+"Markers with the house," exclaimed Garrick as he ran over the contents
+of the package hurriedly. "I. O. U.'s for various amounts and all
+initialed--for several hundred thousands. Hello, here's a bunch with an
+'F.' That must mean Forbes--thousands of dollars worth."
+
+The markers were fastened together with a slip in order to separate
+them from the others, evidently.
+
+Garrick was hastily totalling them up and they seemed to amount to a
+tidy sum.
+
+"How can he ever pay?" I asked, amazed as the sum crept on upward in
+the direction of six figures.
+
+"Don't you see that they're cancelled?" interjected Garrick, still
+adding.
+
+I had not examined them closely, but as I now bent over to do so I saw
+that each bore the words, "Paid by W."
+
+Warrington himself had settled the gambling debts of his friend!
+
+In still greater amazement I continued to look and found that they all
+bore dates from several weeks before, down to within a few days. The
+tale they told was eloquent. Forbes, his own fortune gone, had gambled
+until rescued by his friend. Even that had not been sufficient to curb
+his mania. He had kept right on, hoping insanely to recoup. And the
+gamblers had been willing to take a chance with him, knowing that they
+already had so much of his money that they could not possibly lose.
+
+A horrid thought flashed over me. What if he had really planned to pay
+his losses by marrying a girl with a fortune? Forbes was the sort who
+would have gambled on even that slender prospect.
+
+As we stood on the landing while Garrick went over the markers, I found
+myself wondering, even, where Forbes had been that night after he
+hurried away from us at the ladies' poolroom and Warrington had taken
+the journey that had ended so disastrously for him. The more I learned
+of what had been taking place, the more I saw that Warrington stood out
+as a gentleman. Undoubtedly Violet Winslow had heard, had been informed
+by some kind unknown of the slight lapses of Warrington. I felt sure
+that the gross delinquencies of Forbes were concealed from her and from
+her aunt, at least as far as Warrington had it in his power to shield
+the man who was his friend--and rival.
+
+The voice of Dillon recalled me from a train of pure speculation to the
+more practical work in hand before us.
+
+"Well, at any rate, we've got evidence enough to protect ourselves and
+close the place, even if we didn't make any captures," congratulated
+Dillon, as he rejoined us, after a momentary excursion from which he
+returned still blinking from the effects of the flashlight powders
+which his photographer had been using freely. "After we get all the
+pictures of the place, I'll have the stuff here removed to
+headquarters--and it won't be handed back on any order of the courts,
+either, if I can help it!"
+
+Garrick had shoved the markers into his pocket and now was leading the
+way downstairs.
+
+"Still, Dillon," he remarked, as we followed, "that doesn't shed any
+light on the one remaining problem. How did they all manage to get out
+so quickly?"
+
+We had reached the basement which contained the kitchens for the buffet
+and quarters for the servants. A hasty excursion into the littered back
+yard under the guidance of Dillon's men who had been sent around that
+way netted us nothing in the way of information. They had not made
+their escape over the back fences. Such a number of people would
+certainly have left some trail, and there was none.
+
+We looked at Garrick, perplexed, and he remarked, with sudden energy,
+"Let's take a look at the cellar."
+
+As we groped down the final stairway into the cellar, it was only too
+evident that at last he had guessed right. Down in the subterranean
+depths we quickly discovered, at the rear, a sheet-iron door. Battering
+it down was the work of but a moment for the little ram. Beyond it,
+where we expected to see a yawning tunnel, we found nothing but a pile
+of bricks and earth and timbers that had been used for shoring.
+
+There had been a tunnel, but the last man who had gone through had
+evidently exploded a small dynamite cartridge, and the walls had been
+caved in. It was impossible to follow it until its course could be
+carefully excavated with proper tools in the daylight.
+
+We had captured the stronghold of gambling in New York, but the
+gamblers had managed to slip out of our grasp, at least for the present.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE GANGSTER'S GARAGE
+
+
+"I have it," exclaimed Garrick, as we were retracing our steps upstairs
+from the dank darkness of the cellar. "I would be willing to wager that
+that tunnel runs back from this house to that pool-room for women which
+we visited on Forty-seventh Street, Marshall. That must be the secret
+exit. Don't you see, it could be used in either direction."
+
+We climbed the stairs and stood again in the wreck of things, taking a
+hasty inventory of what was left, in hope of uncovering some new clew,
+even by chance.
+
+Garrick shook his head mournfully.
+
+"They had just time enough," he remarked, "to destroy about everything
+they wanted to and carry off the rest."
+
+"All except the markers," I corrected.
+
+"That was just a lucky chance," he returned. "Still, it throws an
+interesting sidelight on the case."
+
+"It doesn't add much in my estimation to the character of Forbes," I
+ventured, voicing my own suspicions.
+
+The telephone bell rang before Garrick had a chance to reply. Evidently
+in their haste they had not had time to cut the wires or to spread the
+news, yet, of the raid. Someone who knew nothing of what had happened
+was calling up.
+
+Garrick quickly unhooked the receiver, with a hasty motion to us to
+remain silent.
+
+"Hello," we heard him answer. "Yes, this is it. Who is this?"
+
+He had disguised his voice. We waited anxiously and watched his face to
+gather what response he received.
+
+"The deuce!" he exclaimed, with his hand over the transmitter so that
+his voice would not be heard at the other end.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked eagerly.
+
+"Whoever he was," replied Garrick, "he was too keen for me. He caught
+on. There must have been some password or form that they used which we
+don't know, for he hung up the receiver almost as soon as he heard me."
+
+Garrick waited a minute or two. Then he whistled into, the transmitter.
+It was done apparently to see whether there was anyone listening. But
+there was no answer. The man was gone.
+
+"Operator, operator!" Guy was calling, insistently moving the hook up
+and down rapidly. "Yes--I want Central. Central, can you tell me what
+number that was which just called up?"
+
+We all waited anxiously to learn whether the girl could find out or not.
+
+"Bleecker seven--one--eight--o? Thank you very much. Give me
+information, please."
+
+Again we waited as Garrick tried to trace the call out.
+
+"Hello! What is the street address of Bleecker seven--one--eight--o?
+Three hundred West Sixth. Thank you. A garage? Good-bye."
+
+"A garage?" echoed Dillon, his ears almost going up as he realized the
+importance of the news.
+
+"Yes," cried Garrick, himself excited. "Tom, call a cab. Let us hustle
+down there as quickly as we can."
+
+"One of those garages on the lower West Side," I heard Dillon say as I
+left. "Perhaps they did work for the gambling joint--sent drunks home,
+got rid of tough customers and all that. You know already that there
+are some pretty tough places down there. This is bully. I shouldn't be
+surprised if it gave us a line on the stealing of Warrington's car at
+last."
+
+I found a cab and Dillon and Garrick joined me in it.
+
+"I tried to get McBirney," said Garrick as we prepared to start on our
+new quest, "but he was out, and the night operator at his place didn't
+seem to know where he was. But if they can locate him, I imagine he'll
+be around at least shortly after we get there. I left the address."
+
+Dillon had issued his final orders to his raiders about guarding the
+raided gambling joint and stationing a man at the door. A moment later
+we were off, threading our way through the crowd which in spite of the
+late hour still lingered to gape at the place.
+
+On the way down we speculated much on the possibility that we might be
+going on a wild goose chase. But the very circumstances of the call and
+the promptness with which the man who had called had seemed to sense
+when something was wrong and to ring off seemed to point to the fact
+that we had uncovered a good lead of some kind.
+
+After a quick run downtown through the deserted avenues, we entered a
+series of narrow and sinuous streets that wound through some pretty
+tough looking neighborhoods. On the street corners were saloons that
+deserved no better name than common groggeries. They were all vicious
+looking joints and uniformly seemed to violate the law about closing.
+The fact was that they impressed one as though it would be as much as
+one's life was worth even to enter them with respectable looking
+clothes on.
+
+The further we proceeded into the tortuous twists of streets that stamp
+the old Greenwich village with a character all its own, the worse it
+seemed to get. Decrepit relics of every style of architecture from
+almost the earliest times in the city stood out in the darkness, like
+so many ghosts.
+
+"Anyone who would run a garage down here," remarked Garrick, "deserves
+to be arrested on sight."
+
+"Except possibly for commercial vehicles," I ventured, looking at the
+warehouses here and there.
+
+"There are no commercial vehicles out at this hour," added Garrick
+dryly.
+
+At last our cab turned down a street that was particularly dark.
+
+"This is it," announced Garrick, tapping on the glass for the driver to
+stop at the corner. "We had better get out and walk the rest of the
+way."
+
+The garage which we sought proved to be nothing but an old brick
+stable. It was of such a character that even charity could not have
+said that it had seen much better days for generations. It was dark,
+evil looking. Except for a slinking figure here and there in the
+distance the street about us was deserted. Even our footfalls echoed
+and Garrick warned us to tread softly. I longed for the big stick, that
+went with the other half of the phrase.
+
+He paused a moment to observe the place. It was near the corner and a
+dim-lighted Raines law saloon on the next cross street ran back almost
+squarely to the stable walls, leaving a narrow yard. Apparently the
+garage itself had been closed for the night, if, indeed, it was ever
+regularly open. Anyone who wanted to use it must have carried a key, I
+surmised.
+
+We crossed over stealthily. Garrick put his ear to an ordinary sized
+door which had been cut out of the big double swinging doors of the
+stable, and listened.
+
+Not a sound.
+
+Dillon, with the instinct of the roundsman in him still, tried the
+handle of the door gently. To our surprise it moved. I could not
+believe that anyone could have gone away and left it open, trusting
+that the place would not be looted by the neighbours before he
+returned. I felt instinctively that there must be somebody there, in
+spite of the darkness.
+
+The commissioner pushed in, however, followed closely by both of us,
+prepared for an on-rush or a hand-to-hand struggle with anything, man
+or beast.
+
+A quick succession of shots greeted us. I do not recall feeling the
+slightest sensation of pain, but with a sickening dizziness in the head
+I can just vaguely remember that I sank down on the oil and grease of
+the floor. I did not fall. It seemed as if I had time to catch myself
+and save, perhaps, a fractured skull. But then it was all blank.
+
+It seemed an age, though it could not have been more than ten minutes
+later when I came to. I felt an awful, choking sensation in my throat
+which was dry and parched. My lungs seemed to rasp my very ribs, as I
+struggled for breath. Garrick was bending anxiously over me, himself
+pale and gasping yet. The air was reeking with a smell that I did not
+understand.
+
+"Thank heaven, you're all right," he exclaimed, with much relief, as he
+helped me struggle up on my feet. My head was still in a whirl as he
+assisted me over to a cushioned seat in one of the automobiles standing
+there. "Now I'll go back to Dillon," he added, out of breath from the
+superhuman efforts he was putting forth both for us and to keep himself
+together. "Wh--what's the matter? What happened?" I gasped, gripping
+the back of the cushion to steady myself. "Am I wounded? Where was I
+hit? I--I don't feel anything--but, oh, my head and throat!"
+
+I glanced over at Dillon. He was pale and white as a ghost, but I could
+see that he was breathing, though with difficulty. In the glare of the
+headlight of a car which Garrick had turned on him, he looked ghastly.
+I looked again to discover traces of blood. But there was none anywhere.
+
+"We were all put out of business," muttered Garrick, as he worked over
+Dillon. Dillon opened his eyes blankly at last, then struggled up to
+his feet. "You got it worst, commissioner," remarked Garrick to him.
+"You were closest."
+
+"Got what?" he sputtered, "Was closest to what?"
+
+We were all still choking over the peculiar odor in the fetid air about
+us.
+
+"The bulletless gun," replied Garrick.
+
+Dillon looked at him a moment incredulously, in spite even of his
+trying physical condition.
+
+"It is a German invention," Garrick went on to explain, clearing his
+throat, "and shoots, instead of bullets, a stupefying gas which
+temporarily blinds and chokes its victims. The fellow who was in here
+didn't shoot bullets at us. He evidently didn't care about adding any
+more crimes to his list just now. Perhaps he thought that if he killed
+any of us there would be too much of a row. I'm glad it was as it was,
+anyway. He got us all, this way, before we knew it. Perhaps that was
+the reason he used the gun, for if he had shot one of us with a pistol
+I had my own automatic ready myself to blaze away. This way he got me,
+too.
+
+"A stupefying gun!" repeated Dillon. "I should say so. I don't know
+what happened--yet," he added, blinking.
+
+"I came to first," went on Garrick, now busily looking about, as we
+were all recovered. "I found that none of us was wounded, and so I
+guessed what had happened. However, while we were unconscious the
+villain, whoever he was, succeeded in running his car out of the garage
+and getting away. He locked the door after him, but I have managed to
+work it open again."
+
+Garrick was now examining the floor of the garage, turning the
+headlight of the machine as much as he could on successive parts of the
+floor.
+
+"By George, Tom," he exclaimed to me suddenly, "see those marks in the
+grease? Do you recognize them by this time? It is the same tire-mark
+again--Warrington's car--without a doubt!"
+
+Dillon had taken the photographs which Garrick had made several days
+before from the prints left by the side of the road in New Jersey, and
+was comparing them himself with the marks on the floor of the garage,
+while Garrick explained them to him hurriedly, as he had already done
+to me.
+
+"We are getting closer to him, every time,'" remarked Garrick. "Even if
+he did get away, we are on the trail and know that it is the right one.
+He could not have been at the gambling joint, or he would never have
+called up. Yet he must have known all about it. This has turned out
+better than I expected. I suppose you don't feel so, but you must think
+so."
+
+It was difficult not to catch the contagion of Garrick's enthusiasm.
+Dillon grunted assent.
+
+"This garage," he put in, looking it over critically, "must act as a
+fence for stolen cars and parts of cars. See, there over in the corner
+is the stuff for painting new license numbers. Here's enough material
+to rebuild a half dozen cars. Yes, this is one of the places that ought
+to interest you and McBirney, Garrick. I'll bet the fellow who owns
+this place is one of those who'd engage to sell you a second-hand car
+of any make you wanted to name. Then he'd go out on the street and hunt
+around until he got one. Of course, we'll find out his name, but I'll
+wager that when we get the nominal owner we won't be able to extract a
+thing from him in the way of actual facts."
+
+Garrick had continued his examination of the floor. In a corner, near
+the back, he had picked up an empty shell of a cartridge. He held it
+down in the light of the car, and examined it long and carefully. As he
+turned it over and over he seemed to be carefully considering it.
+Finally, he dropped it carefully into his inside vest pocket, as though
+it were a rare treasure.
+
+"As I said at the start," quoted Garrick, turning to me, "we might get
+a conviction merely on these cartridges. Anyhow, our man has escaped
+from here. You can be sure that he won't come back--perhaps
+never--certainly not at least for a long time, until he figures that
+this thing has completely blown over."
+
+"I'm going to keep my eye on the place, just the same," stoutly
+insisted Dillon.
+
+"Of course, by all means," reiterated Garrick. "The fact is, I expect
+our next important clew will come from this place. The only thing I
+want you to be careful of, Dillon, is not to be hasty and make an
+arrest."
+
+"Not make an arrest?" queried Dillon, who still felt the fumes in his
+throat, and evidently longed to make someone pay the price--at least by
+giving him the satisfaction of conducting a "third degree" down at
+headquarters.
+
+"No. You won't get the right man, and you may lose one who points
+straight at him. Take my advice. Watch the place. There's more to be
+gained by going at it cautiously. These people understand the old
+hammer-and-tongs game."
+
+Just then the smaller outside door grated on its rusty hinges. We
+sprang to our feet, startled. Dillon leaped forward. Stupefying guns
+had no taming effect on his nationality.
+
+"Well, commish, is that the way you greet an old friend?" laughed
+McBirney, as a threatened strangle-hold was narrowly averted and turned
+into a handshake. "How are you fellows? I got your message, Garrick,
+and thought I'd drop around. What's the matter? You all look as if
+you'd been drawn through a wringer."
+
+Briefly, to the accompaniment of many expressions of astonishment from
+the insurance detective, Garrick related what had happened, from the
+raid to the gas-gun.
+
+"Well," gasped McBirney, sniffing the remains of the gas in the air,
+"this is some place, isn't it? Neat, cozy, well-located--for a
+murder--hello!--that's that ninety horsepower Despard that was stolen
+from Murdock the other day, or I'll eat my hat."
+
+He had raised the hood and was straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of
+the maker's number on the engine, which had been all but obliterated by
+a few judicious blows of a hammer.
+
+Garrick was busy telling McBirney also about the marks of the tire on
+the floor, as the detective looked over one car after another, as if he
+had unearthed a veritable treasure-trove.
+
+"No, your man could not have been at either of the gambling joints,"
+agreed McBirney, as Garrick finished, "or he wouldn't have called up.
+But he must have known them intimately. Perhaps he was in the pay of
+someone there."
+
+McBirney was much interested in what had been discovered, and was
+trying to piece it together with what we had known before. "I wonder
+whether he's the short fellow who drove the car when it was seen up
+there, or the big fellow who was in the car when Warrington was shot,
+up-state?"
+
+The question was, as yet, unanswerable. None of us had been able to
+catch a glimpse of his figure, muffled, in the darkness when he shot us.
+
+All we knew was that even this man was unidentified and at large. The
+murderer, desperate as he was, was still free and unknown, too. Were
+they one and the same? What might not either one do next?
+
+We sat down in one of the stolen cars and held a midnight council of
+war. There were four of us, and that meant four different plans. Dillon
+was for immediate and wholesale arrests. McBirney was certain of one
+thing. He would claim the cars he could identify. The garage people
+could not help knowing now that we had been there, and we conceded the
+point to him with little argument, though it took great tact on
+Garrick's part to swing over Dillon.
+
+"I'm for arresting the garage-keeper, whoever he proves to be,"
+persisted Dillon, however.
+
+"It won't do any good," objected Garrick.
+
+"Don't you see that it will be better to accept his story, or rather
+seem to, and then watch him?"
+
+"Watch him?" I asked, eager to propose my own plan of waiting there and
+seizing each person who presented himself. "How can you watch one of
+these fellows? They are as slippery as eels,--and as silent as a
+muffler," I added, taking good-humouredly the general laugh that
+greeted my mixed metaphor.
+
+"You've suggested the precise idea, Marshall, by your very objection,"
+broke in Garrick, who up to this time had been silent as to his own
+plan.
+
+"I've a brand-new system of espionage. Trust it to me, and you can all
+have your way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE DETECTAPHONE
+
+
+I found it difficult to share Garrick's optimism, however. It seemed to
+me that again the best laid plans of one that I had come to consider
+among the cleverest of men had been defeated, and it is not pleasant to
+be defeated, even temporarily. But Garrick was certainly not
+discouraged.
+
+As he had said at the start, it was no ordinary criminal with whom we
+had to deal. That was clear. There had been gunmen and gangmen in New
+York for years, we knew, but this fellow seemed to be the last word,
+with his liquid bullets, his anesthetic shells and his stupefying gun.
+
+We had agreed that the garage keeper would, of course, shed little
+light on the mystery. He was a crook. But he would find no difficulty,
+doubtless, in showing that there was nothing on which to hold him.
+
+Still, Garrick had evidently figured out a way to go ahead while we had
+all been floundering around, helpless. His silence had merely masked
+his consideration of a plan.
+
+"You three stay here," he ordered. "If anyone should come in, hold him.
+Don't let anyone get away. But I don't think there will be anyone. I'll
+be back within an hour or so."
+
+It was far past midnight already, as we sat uncomfortably in the
+reeking atmosphere of the garage. The hours seemed to drag
+interminably. Almost I wished that something would happen to break the
+monotony and the suspense. Our lonely vigil went unrewarded, however.
+No one came; there was not even a ring at the telephone.
+
+As nearly as I could figure it out, McBirney was the only one who
+seemed to have gained much so far. He had looked over the cars most
+carefully. There were half a dozen of them, in all.
+
+"I don't doubt," he concluded, "that all of them have been stolen. But
+there are only two here that I can identify. They certainly are clever
+at fixing them up. Look at all the parts they keep ready for use. They
+could build a car, here."
+
+"Yes," agreed Dillon, looking at the expensive "junk" that was lying
+about. "There is quite enough to warrant closing the place, only I
+suppose Garrick is right. That would defeat our own purpose."
+
+At last Garrick returned from his hurried trip down to the office. I
+don't know what it was we expected him to bring, but I think we were
+more or less disappointed when it proved to be merely a simple oblong
+oak box with a handle.
+
+He opened it and we could see that it contained in reality nothing but
+a couple of ordinary dry cells, and some other paraphernalia. There
+were two black discs, attached to a metal headpiece, discs about two
+and a half inches in diameter, with a circular hole in the centre of
+each, perhaps an inch across, showing inside what looked like a piece
+of iron or steel.
+
+Garrick carefully tested the batteries with a little ammeter which he
+carried in a case.
+
+"Sixteen amperes," he remarked to himself, "I don't attempt to use the
+batteries when they fall below five. These are all right."
+
+From a case he took a little round black disc, about the same size as
+the other two. In its face it had a dozen or so small holes perforated
+and arranged in the shape of a six-pointed star.
+
+"I wonder where I can stow this away so that it won't attract
+attention?" he asked.
+
+Garrick looked about for the least used part of the garage and decided
+that it was the back. Near the barred window lay a pile of worn tires
+which looked as if it had been seldom disturbed except to be added to.
+When one got tires as cheaply as the users of this garage did, it was
+folly to bother much about the repair of old ones.
+
+Back of this pile, then, he threw the little black disc carelessly,
+only making sure that it was concealed. That was not difficult, for it
+was not much larger than a watch in size.
+
+To it, I noticed, he had attached two plugs that were
+"fool-proof"--that is, one small and the other large, so that they
+could not be inserted into the wrong holes. A long flexible green silk
+covered wire, or rather two wires together, led from the disc. By
+carefully moving the tires so as to preserve the rough appearance they
+had of being thrown down hastily into the discard, he was able to
+conceal this wire, also, in such a way as to bring it secretly to the
+barred window and through it.
+
+Next he turned his attention to the telephone itself. Another
+instrument which he had brought with him was inserted in place of the
+ordinary transmitter. It looked like it and had evidently been prepared
+with that in view. I assumed that it must act like the ordinary
+transmitter also, although it must have other uses as well. It was more
+of a job to trace out the course of the telephone wires and run in a
+sort of tap line at a point where it would not be likely to be noted.
+This was done by Garrick, still working in silence, and the wires from
+it led behind various things until they, too, reached another window
+and so went to the outside.
+
+As Garrick finished his mysterious tinkering and rose from his dusty
+job to brush off his clothes, he remarked, "There, now you may have
+your heart's desire, Dillon, if all you want to do is to watch these
+fellows."
+
+"What is it?" I hastened to ask, looking curiously at the oak box which
+contained still everything except the tiny black disc and the wires
+leading out of the window from it and from the new telephone
+transmitter.
+
+"This little instrument," he answered slowly, "is much more sensitive,
+I think, than any mechanical or electrical eavesdropper that has ever
+been employed before. It is the detectaphone--a new unseen listener."
+
+"The detectaphone?" repeated Dillon. "How does it work?"
+
+"Well, for instance," explained Garrick, "that attachment which I
+placed on the telephone is much more than a sensitive transmitter such
+as you are accustomed to use. It is a form of that black disc which you
+saw me hide behind the pile of tires. There are, in both, innumerable
+of the minutest globules of carbon which are floating around, as it
+were, making it alive at all times to every sound vibration and
+extremely sensitive even to the slightest sound waves. In the case of
+the detectaphone transmitter, it only replaces the regular telephone
+transmitter and its presence will never be suspected. It operates just
+as well when the receiver is hung up as when it is off the hook, as far
+as the purpose I have in mind is concerned, as you shall see soon. I
+have put both forms in so that even if they find the one back of the
+tires, even the most suspicious person would not think that anything
+was contained in the telephone itself. We are dealing with clever
+people and two anchors to windward are better than one."
+
+Dillon nodded approval, but by the look on his face it was evident that
+he did not understand the whole thing yet.
+
+"That other disc, back of the tires," went on Garrick, "is the ordinary
+detective form. All that we need now is to find a place to install this
+receiving box--all this stuff that is left over--the two batteries, the
+earpieces. You see the whole thing is very compact. I can get it down
+to six inches square and four inches thick, or I can have it arranged
+with earpieces so that at least six people can 'listen in' at
+once--forms that can be used in detective work to meet all sorts of
+conditions. Then there is another form of the thing, in a box about
+four inches square and, perhaps, nine or ten inches long which I may
+bring up later for another purpose when we find out what we are going
+to do with the ends of those wires that are now dangling on the outside
+of the window. We must pick up the connection in some safe and
+inconspicuous place outside the garage."
+
+The window through which the wires passed seemed to open, as I had
+already noticed, on a little yard not much larger than a court. Garrick
+opened the window and stuck his head out as far as the iron bars would
+permit. He sniffed. The odor was anything but pleasant. It was a
+combination of "gas" from the garage and stale beer from the saloon.
+
+"No doubt about it, that is a saloon," remarked Garrick, "and they must
+pile empty kegs out there in the yard. Let's take a walk around the
+corner and see what the front of the place looks like."
+
+It was a two and a half story building, with a sloping tin roof, of an
+archaic architecture, in a state of terrible decay and dilapidation,
+and quite in keeping with the neighbourhood. Nevertheless a bright gilt
+sign over a side door read, "Hotel Entrance."
+
+"I think we can get in there to-morrow on some pretext," decided
+Garrick after our inspection of the "Old Tavern," as the crazy letters,
+all askew, on one of the windows denoted the place. "The Old Tavern
+looks as if it might let lodgings to respectable gentlemen--if they
+were roughly enough dressed. We can get ourselves up as a couple of
+teamsters and when we get in that will give us a chance to pick up the
+ends of those wires to-morrow. That will be time enough, I'm sure, and
+it is the best we can do, anyhow."
+
+We returned from our walk around the block to the garage where Dillon
+and McBirney were waiting for us.
+
+"I leave you free to do what you please, Dillon," answered Garrick to
+the commissioner's inquiry, "as long as you don't pinch this place
+which promises to be a veritable gold-mine. McBirney, I know, will
+reduce the number of cars here tomorrow by at least two. But don't, for
+heaven's sake, let out any suspicion about those things I have just
+hidden here. And now, as for me, I'm going uptown and get a few hours'
+sleep."
+
+Dillon and McBirney followed, leaving us, shortly, to get a couple of
+men from the nearest police station to see that none of the cars were
+taken out before morning.
+
+We rode up to our apartment, where a message was awaiting us, telling
+that Warrington had passed a very good day and was making much more
+rapid progress than even Dr. Mead had dared hope. I could not help
+wondering how much was due to the mere tonic presence daily of Violet
+Winslow.
+
+I had a sound sleep, although it was a short one. Garrick had me up
+early, and, by digging back in his closet, unearthed the oldest clothes
+he had. We improved them by sundry smears of dirt in such a way that
+when we did start forth, no one would have accused us of being other
+than we were prepared to represent ourselves--workmen who had been laid
+off from a job on account of bad business conditions. We decided to say
+that we were seeking another position.
+
+"How do I look?" I asked seriously, for this was serious business to me.
+
+"I don't know whether to give you a meal ticket, or to call a cop when
+I look at you, Marshall," laughed Garrick.
+
+"Well, I feel a good deal safer in this rig than I did last night, in
+this part of the city," I replied as we hopped off a surface car not
+far from our destination. "I almost begin to feel my part. Did you see
+the old gink with the gold watch on the car? If he was here I believe
+I'd hold him up, just to see what it is like. I suppose we are going to
+apply for lodgings at the famous hostelry, the Old Tavern?"
+
+"I had that intention," replied Garrick who could see no humour in the
+situation, now that we were on the scene of action. "The place looks
+even more sordid in daylight than at night. Besides, it smells worse."
+
+We entered the tavern, and were greeted with a general air of rough
+curiosity, which was quickly dispelled by our spending ten cents, and
+getting change for a bill. At least we were good for anything
+reasonable, and doubts on that score settled by the man behind the bar,
+he consented to enter into conversation, which ultimately resulted in
+our hiring a large back room upstairs in the secluded caravansary which
+supplied "Furnished Rooms for Gentlemen Only."
+
+Garrick said that we would bring our things later, and we went
+upstairs. We were no sooner settled than he was at work. He had brought
+a rope ladder, and, after fastening it securely to the window ledge, he
+let himself down carefully into the narrow court below.
+
+That was the only part of the operation that seemed to be attended with
+any risk of discovery and it was accomplished safely. For one thing the
+dirt on the windows both of the garage and the tavern was so thick that
+I doubt whether so much caution was really necessary. Nevertheless, it
+was a relief when he secured the ends of the wires from the
+detectaphone and brought them up, pulling in the rope ladder after him.
+
+It was now the work of but a minute to attach one of the wires that led
+from the watchcase disc back of the pile of tires to the oak box with
+its two storage batteries. Garrick held the ear-pieces, one to each
+ear, then shoved them over his head, in place.
+
+"It works--it works," he cried, with as much delight as if he had not
+been positive all along that it would.
+
+"Here, try it yourself," he added, taking the headgear off and handing
+the receivers to me.
+
+I put the black discs at my ears, with the little round holes over the
+ear openings. It was marvellous. I could hear the men washing down one
+of the cars, the swash of water, and, best of all, the low-toned, gruff
+gossip.
+
+"Just a couple of the men there, now," explained Garrick. "I gather
+that they are talking about what happened last night. I heard one of
+them say that someone they call 'the Chief' was there last night and
+that another man, 'the Boss,' gave him orders to tell no one outside
+about it. I suppose the Chief is our friend with the stupefying gun.
+The Boss must be the fellow who runs the garage. What are they saying
+now? They were grumbling about their work when I handed the thing over
+to you."
+
+I listened, fascinated by the marvel of the thing. I could hear
+perfectly, although the men must have been in the front of the garage.
+
+"Well, there's two of them yer won't haveter wash no more," one man was
+saying. "A feller from the perlice come an' copped off two--that sixty
+tin can and the ninety Despard."
+
+"Huh--so the bulls are after him?"
+
+"Yeh. One was here all night after the fight."
+
+"Did they follow the Chief?"
+
+"Follow the Chief? Say, when anyone follows the Chief he's gotter be
+better than any bull that ever pounded a beat."
+
+"What did the Boss say when he heard it?"
+
+"Mad as---. We gotter lay low now."
+
+"The Chief's gone up-state, I guess."
+
+"We can guess all we want. The Boss knows. I don't."
+
+"Why didn't they make a pinch? Ain't there nobody watchin' now?"
+
+"Naw. They ain't got nothin' on us. Say, the Chief can put them fellers
+just where he wants 'em. See the paper this morning? That was some raid
+up at the joint--eh?"
+
+"You bet. That Garrick's a pretty smooth chap. But the Chief can put it
+all over him."
+
+"Yep," agreed the other speaker.
+
+I handed the receivers back to Garrick with a smile.
+
+"You are not without some admirers," I remarked, repeating the
+conversation substantially to him. "They'd shoot up the neighbourhood,
+I imagine, if they knew the truth."
+
+Hour after hour we took turns listening at the detectaphone. We
+gathered a choice collection of slang and epithets, but very little
+real news. However, it was evident that they had a wholesome respect
+for both the Chief and the Boss. It seemed that the real head of the
+gang, if it was a gang, had disappeared, as one of the men had already
+hinted "up-state."
+
+Garrick had meanwhile brought out the other detectaphone box, which was
+longer and larger than the oak box.
+
+"This isn't a regular detactaphone," he explained, "but it may vary the
+monotony of listening in and sometime I may find occasion to use it in
+another way, too."
+
+In one of the long faces were two square holes, from the edges of which
+the inside walls focussed back on two smaller, circular diaphragms.
+That made the two openings act somewhat like megaphone horns to still
+further magnify the sound which was emitted directly from this receiver
+without using any earpieces, and could be listened to anywhere in the
+room, if we chose. This was attached to the secret arrangement that had
+been connected with the telephone by replacing the regular by the
+prepared transmitter.
+
+One of us was in the room listening all the time. I remember once,
+while Guy had gone uptown for a short time, that I heard the telephone
+bell ring in the device at my ear. Out of the larger box issued a voice
+talking to one of the men.
+
+It was the man whom they referred to as the Chief. He had nothing to
+say when he learned that the Boss had not showed up since early morning
+after he had been quizzed by the police. But he left word that he would
+call up again.
+
+"At least I know that our gunman friend, the Chief, is going to call up
+to-night," I reported to Garrick on his return.
+
+"I think he'll be here, all right," commented Garrick. "I called up
+Dillon while I was out and he was convinced that the best way was, as I
+said, to seem to let up on them. They didn't get a word out of the
+fellow they call the Boss. He lives down here a couple of streets, I
+believe, in a pretty tough place, even worse than the Old Tavern. I let
+Dillon get a man in there, but I haven't much hope. He's only a tool of
+the other whom they call Chief. By the way, Forbes has disappeared. I
+can't find a trace of him since the raid on the gambling joint."
+
+"Any word from Warrington?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, he's getting along finely," answered Guy mechanically, as if his
+thoughts were far away from Warrington. "Queer about Forbes," he
+murmured, then cut himself short. "And, oh," he added, "I forgot to
+tell you that speaking about Forbes reminds me that Herman has been
+running out a clew on the Rena Taylor case. He has been all over the
+country up there, he reports to Dillon, and he says he thinks the car
+was seen making for Pennsylvania.
+
+"They have a peculiar license law there, you know--at least he says
+so--that enables one to conceal a car pretty well. Much good that does
+us."
+
+"Yes," I agreed, "you can always depend on a man like Herman to come
+along with something like that---"
+
+Just then the "master station" detectaphone connected with the
+telephone in the garage began to talk and I cut myself short. We seemed
+now at last about to learn something really important. It was a new
+voice that said, "Hello!"
+
+"Evidently the Boss has come in without making any noise," remarked
+Guy. "I certainly heard no one through the other instrument. I fancy he
+was waiting for it to get dark before coming around. Listen."
+
+It was a long distance call from the man they called Chief. Where he
+was we had no means of finding out, but we soon found out where he was
+going.
+
+"Hello, Boss," we heard come out of the detectaphone box.
+
+"Hello, Chief. You surely got us nearly pinched last night. What was
+the trouble?"
+
+"Oh, nothing much. Somehow or other they must have got on to us. I
+guess it was when I called up the joint on Forty-eighth Street. Three
+men surprised me, but fortunately I was ready. If they hadn't stopped
+at the door before they opened it, they might have got me. I put 'em
+all out with that gun, though. Say, I want you to help me on a little
+job that I am planning.
+
+"Yes? Is it a safe one? Don't you think we'd better keep quiet for a
+little while?"
+
+"But this won't keep quiet. Listen. You know I told you about writing
+that letter regarding Warrington to Miss Winslow, when I was so sore
+over the report that he was going to close up the Forty-eighth Street
+joint, right on top of finding that Rena Taylor had the 'goods' on the
+Forty-seventh Street place? Well, I was a fool. You said so, and I was."
+
+"You were--that's right."
+
+"I know it, but I was mad. I hadn't got all I wanted out of those
+places. Well, anyhow, I want that letter back--that's all. It's bad to
+have evidence like that lying around. Why, if they ever get a real
+handwriting expert they might get wise to something from that
+handwriting, I'm afraid. I must have been crazy to do it that way."
+
+"What became of the letter?"
+
+"She took it to that fellow Garrick and I happen to know that
+Warrington that night, after leaving Garrick, went to his apartment and
+put something into the safe he has there. Oh, Warrington has it, all
+right. What I want to do is to get that letter back while he is laid up
+near Tuxedo. It isn't much of a safe, I understand. I think a can
+opener would do the job. We can make the thing look like a regular
+robbery by a couple of yeggs. Are you on?"
+
+"No, I don't get you, Chief."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It's too risky."
+
+"Too risky?"
+
+"Yes. That fellow Garrick is just as likely as not to be nosing around
+up there. I'd go but for that."
+
+"I know. But suppose we find that he isn't there, that he isn't in the
+house--has been there and left it. That would be safe enough. You're
+right. Nothing doing if he's there. We must can him in some way. But,
+say,--I know how to get in all right without being seen. I'll tell you
+later. Come on, be a sport. We won't try it if anybody's there.
+Besides, if we succeed it will help to throw a scare into Warrington."
+
+The man on our end of the telephone appeared to hesitate.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do, Chief," he said at length. "I'll meet you
+at the same place as we met the other day--you know where I mean--some
+time after twelve. We'll talk it over. You're sure about the letter?"
+
+"As sure as if I'd seen it."
+
+"All right. Now, be there. I won't promise about this Warrington
+business. We'll talk that over. But I have other things I want to tell
+you--about this situation here at the garage. I want to know how to
+act."
+
+"All right. I'll be there. Good-bye."
+
+"So long, Chief."
+
+The conversation stopped. I looked anxiously at Garrick to see how he
+had taken it.
+
+"And so," he remarked simply, as after a moment's waiting we made sure
+that the machine had stopped talking, "it appears that our friends, the
+enemy, are watching us as closely as we are watching them--with the
+advantage that they know us and we don't know them, except this garage
+fellow."
+
+Garrick lapsed into silence. I was rapidly turning over in my mind what
+we had just overheard and trying to plan some way of checkmating their
+next move.
+
+"Here's a plot hatching to rob Warrington's safe," I exclaimed
+helplessly.
+
+"Yes," repeated Garrick slowly, "and if we are going to do anything
+about it, it must be done immediately, before we arouse suspicion and
+scare them off. Did you hear those footsteps over the detectaphone?
+That was the Boss going out of the garage. So, they expect me around
+there, nosing about Warrington's apartment. Well, if I do go there, and
+then ostentatiously go away again, that will lure them on."
+
+He reached his decision quickly. Grabbing his hat, he led the way out
+of the Old Tavern and up the street until we came to a drug store with
+a telephone.
+
+I heard him first talking with Warrington, getting from him the
+combination of the safe, over long distance. Then he called up his
+office and asked the boy to meet him at the Grand Central subway
+station with a package, the location of which he described minutely.
+
+"We'll beat them to it," he remarked joyously, as we started leisurely
+uptown to meet the boy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+THE INCENDIARY
+
+
+"The Warrington estate owns another large apartment house, besides the
+one where Warrington has his quarters, on the next street," remarked
+Garrick, half an hour later, after we had met the boy from his office.
+"I have arranged that we can get in there and use one of the empty
+suites."
+
+Garrick had secured two rather good-sized boxes from the boy, and was
+carrying them rather carefully, as if they contained some very delicate
+mechanism.
+
+Warrington, we found, occupied a suite in a large apartment on
+Seventy-second Street, and, as we entered, Garrick stopped and
+whispered a few words to the hall-boy.
+
+The boy seemed to be more than usually intelligent and had evidently
+been told over the telephone by Warrington that we were coming. At
+least we had no trouble, so far.
+
+Warrington's suite was very tastefully furnished for bachelor quarters.
+In the apartment, Garrick unwrapped one of the packages, and laid it
+open on the table, while he busied himself opening the safe, using the
+combination that Warrington had given him.
+
+I waited nervously, for we could not be sure that no one had got ahead
+of us, already. There was no need for anxiety, however.
+
+"Here's the letter, just as Warrington left it," reported Garrick in a
+few minutes, with some satisfaction, as he banged the safe door shut
+and restored things so that it would not look as though the little
+strong box had been touched.
+
+Meanwhile, I had been looking curiously at the box on the table. It did
+not seem to be like anything we had ever used before. One end was open,
+and the lid lifted up on a pair of hinges. I lifted it and looked in.
+About half way down the box from the open end was a partition which
+looked almost as if some one had taken the end of the box and had just
+shoved it in, until it reached the middle.
+
+The open half was empty, but in the other half I saw a sort of plate of
+some substance covering the outside of the shoved-in end. There was
+also a dry cell and several arrangements for adjustments which I did
+not understand. Back of the whole thing was a piece of mechanism, a
+clockwork interrupter, as I learned later. Wires led out from the
+closed end of the box.
+
+Garrick shoved the precious letter into his pocket and then placed the
+box in a corner, where it was hidden by a pile of books, with the open
+end facing the room in the direction of the antiquated safe. The wires
+from the box were quickly disposed of and dropped out of the window to
+the yard, several stories below, where we could pick them up later as
+we had done with the detectaphone.
+
+"What's that?" I asked curiously, when at last he had finished and I
+felt at liberty to question him.
+
+"Well, you see," he explained, "there is no way of knowing yet just how
+the apartment will be entered. They apparently have some way, though,
+which they wouldn't discuss over the telephone. But it is certain that
+as long as they know that there is anyone up here, they will put off
+the attempt. They said that."
+
+He was busily engaged restoring everything in the room as far as
+possible to its former position.
+
+"My scheme," he went on, "is for us now to leave the apartment
+ostentatiously. I think that is calculated to insure the burglary, for
+they must have someone watching by this time. Then we can get back to
+that empty apartment in the house on the next street, and before they
+can get around to start anything, we shall be prepared for them."
+
+Garrick stopped to speak to the hall-boy again as we left, carrying the
+other box. What he said I did not hear but the boy nodded intelligently.
+
+After a turn down the street, a ride in a surface car for a few blocks
+and back again, he was satisfied that no one was following us and we
+made our way into the vacant apartment on Seventy-third Street, without
+being observed.
+
+Picking up the wires from the back yard of Warrington's and running
+them across the back fence where he attached them to other wires
+dropped down from the vacant apartment was accomplished easily, but it
+all took time, and time was precious, just now.
+
+In the darkness of the vacant room he uncovered and adjusted the other
+box, connected one set of wires to those we had led in and another set
+to an apparatus which looked precisely like the receiver of a wireless
+telegraph, fitting over the head with an earpiece. He placed the
+earpiece in position and began regulating the mechanism of the queer
+looking box.
+
+"I didn't want to use the detectaphone again," he explained as he
+worked, "because we haven't any assurance that they'll talk, or, if
+they do, that it will be worth while to listen. Besides, there may be
+only one of them."
+
+"Then what is this?" I asked.
+
+"Well," he argued, "they certainly can't work without light of some
+kind, can they?"
+
+I acquiesced.
+
+"This is an instrument which literally makes light audible," he pursued.
+
+"Hear light?" I repeated, in amazement.
+
+"Exactly," he reiterated. "You've said it. It was invented to assist
+the blind, but I think I'll be able to show that it can be used to
+assist justice--which is blind sometimes, they say. It is the
+optophone."
+
+He paused to adjust the thing more accurately and I looked at it with
+an added respect.
+
+"It was invented," he resumed, "by Professor Fournier d'Albe, a
+lecturer on physics at the University of Birmingham, England, and has
+been shown before many learned societies over there."
+
+"You mean it enables the blind to see by hearing?" I asked.
+
+"That's it," he nodded. "It actually enables the blind to locate many
+things, purely by the light reflected by them. Its action is based on
+the peculiar property of selenium, which, you probably know, changes
+its electrical conductivity under the influence of light. Selenium in
+the dark is a poor conductor of electricity; in the light it, strange
+to say, becomes a good conductor. Variations of light can thus be
+transmuted into variations of sound. That pushed-in end of the box
+which we hid over in Warrington's had, as you might have noticed, a
+selenium plate on the inside partition, facing the open end of the box."
+
+"I understand," I agreed, vaguely.
+
+"Now," he went on, "this property of selenium is used for producing or
+rather allowing to be transmitted an electric current which is
+interrupted by a special clockwork interrupter, and so is made audible
+in this wireless telephone receiver which I have here connected with
+this second box. The eye is replaced by the ear as the detector of
+light--that is all."
+
+It might have been all, but it was quite wonderful to me, even if he
+spoke of it so simply. He continued to adjust the thing as he talked.
+
+"The clockwork has been wound up by means of a small handle, and I have
+moved that rod along a slit until I heard a purring sound. Then I moved
+it until the purring sound became as faint as possible. The instrument
+is at the present moment in its most sensitive state."
+
+"What does it sound like?" I asked.
+
+"Well, the passage of a hand or other object across the aperture is
+indicated by a sort of murmuring sound," he replied, "the loudest sound
+indicating the passage of the edges where the contrast is greatest. In
+a fairly bright light, even the swiftest shadow is discoverable.
+Prolonged exposure, however, blinds the optophone, just as it blinds
+the eye."
+
+"Do you hear anything now?" I asked watching his face curiously.
+
+"No. When I turned the current on at first I heard a ticking or rasping
+sound. I silenced that. But any change in the amount of light in that
+dark room over there would restore the sound, and its intensity would
+indicate the power of the light."
+
+He continued to listen.
+
+"When I first tried this, I found that a glimpse out of the window in
+daylight sounded like a cinematograph reeling off a film. The ticking
+sank almost into silence as the receiving apparatus was held in the
+shadow of the office table, and leaped into a lively rattle again when
+I brought it near an electric-light bulb. I blindfolded myself and
+moved a piece of blotting paper between the receiver and the light. I
+could actually hear the grating of the shadow, yes, I heard the shadow
+pass. At night, too, I have found that it is even affected by the light
+of the stars."
+
+He glanced out of the window in the direction of Warrington's, which we
+could not see, however, since it was around an angle of the building.
+
+"See," he went on, "the moon is rising, and in a few minutes, I
+calculate, it will shine right into that room over there on
+Seventy-second Street. By using this optophone, I could tell you the
+moment it does. Try the thing, yourself, Tom."
+
+I did so. Though my ear was untrained to distinguish between sounds I
+could hear just the faintest noise.
+
+Suddenly there came a weird racket. Hastily I looked up at Garrick in
+surprise.
+
+"What is that?" I asked endeavouring to describe it. "Are they there
+now?"
+
+"No," he laughed. "That was the moon shining in. I wanted you to hear
+what a difference it makes. When a ray of the sun, for instance,
+strikes that 'feeler' over there, a harmonious and majestic sound like
+the echo of a huge orchestra is heard. The light of the moon, on the
+other hand, produces a different sound--lamenting, almost like the
+groans of the wounded on a battlefield."
+
+"So you can distinguish between various kinds of light?"
+
+"Yes. Electric light, you would find if anyone came in and switched it
+on over there, produces a most unpleasant sound, sometimes like two
+pieces of glass rubbed against each other, sometimes like the tittering
+laugh of ghosts, and I have heard it like the piercing cry of an
+animal. Gaslight is sobbing and whispering, grating and ticking,
+according to its intensity. By far the most melodious and pleasing
+sound is produced by an ordinary wax candle. It sounds just like an
+aeolian harp on which the chords of a solemn tune are struck. I have
+even tried a glow-worm and it sounded like a bee buzzing. The light
+from a red-hot piece of iron gives the shrillest and most ear-splitting
+cry imaginable."
+
+He took the receiver back from me and adjusted it to his own ear.
+
+"Yes," he confirmed, "that was the moon, as I thought. It's a peculiar
+sound. Once you have heard it you're not likely to forget it. I must
+silence the machine to that."
+
+We had waited patiently for a long time, and still there was no
+evidence that anyone had entered the room.
+
+"I'm afraid they decided not to attempt it after all," I said, finally.
+
+"I don't think so," replied Garrick. "I took particular pains to make
+it seem that the road was clear. You remember, I spoke to the hall-boy
+twice, and we lingered about long enough when we left. It isn't much
+after midnight. I wonder how it was that they expected to get in.
+Ah--there goes the moon. I can hear it getting fainter all the time."
+
+Suddenly Garrick's face was all animation. "What is it?" I asked
+breathlessly.
+
+"Someone has entered the room. There is a light which sounds just like
+an electric flashlight which is being moved about. They haven't
+switched on the electric light. Now, if I were sufficiently expert I
+think I could tell by the varying sounds at just what that fellow is
+flashing the light. There, something passed directly between the light
+and the box. Yes, there must be two of them--that was the shadow of a
+human being, all right. They are over in the corner by the safe, now.
+The fellow with the flashlight is bending down. I can tell, because the
+other fellow walked between the light and the box and the light must be
+held very low, for I heard the shadows of both of his legs."
+
+Garrick was apparently waiting only until the intruders, whoever they
+were, were busily engaged in their search before he gave the alarm and
+hurried over in an attempt to head off their escape by their secret
+means of entrance.
+
+"Tom," he cried, as he listened attentively, "call up the apartment
+over there and get that hall-boy. Tell him he must not run that
+elevator up until we get there. No one must leave or enter the
+building. Tell him to lock the front door and conceal himself in the
+door that leads down to the cellar. I will ring the night bell five
+times to let him know when to let us in."
+
+I was telephoning excitedly Garrick's instructions and as he waited for
+me to finish he was taking a last turn at the optophone before we made
+our dash on Warrington's.
+
+A suppressed exclamation escaped him. I turned toward him quickly from
+the telephone and hung up the receiver.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked anxiously.
+
+For a moment he did not reply, but seemed to be listening with an
+intensity that I knew betokened something unexpected.
+
+"Tom," he cried abruptly, stripping the receiver from his head with a
+jerk and clapping it over my own ears, "quick!--tell me what you hear.
+What does it sound like to you? What is it? I can't be mistaken."
+
+I listened feverishly. Not having had a former acquaintance with the
+machine, I did not know just what to make of it. But from the receiver
+of the little optophone there seemed to issue the most peculiar noise I
+had ever heard a mechanical instrument make.
+
+It was like a hoarse rumbling cry, now soft and almost plaintive, again
+louder and like a shriek of a damned soul in the fires of the nether
+world. Then it died down, only to spring up again, worse than before.
+
+If I had been listening to real sounds instead of to light I should
+have been convinced that the thing was recording a murder.
+
+I described it as best I could. The fact was that the thing almost
+frightened me by its weird novelty.
+
+"Yes--yes," agreed Garrick, as the sensations I experienced seemed to
+coincide with his own. "Exactly what I heard myself. I felt sure that I
+could not be mistaken. Quick, Tom,--get central on that wire!"
+
+A moment later he seized the telephone from me. I had expected him to
+summon the police to assist us in capturing two crooks who had,
+perhaps, devised some odd and scientific method of blowing up a safe.
+
+"Hello, hello!" he shouted frantically over the wire. "The fire
+department! This is eight hundred Seventy-second--on the corner; yes,
+yes--northeast. I want to turn in an alarm. Yes--quick! There is a
+fire--a bad one--incendiary--top floor. No, no--I'm not there. I can
+see it. Hurry!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE ESCAPE
+
+
+He had dropped the telephone receiver without waiting to replace it on
+the hook and was now dashing madly out of the empty apartment and down
+the street.
+
+The hall-boy at Warrington's had done exactly as I had ordered him.
+There was the elevator waiting as Garrick gave the five short rings at
+the nightbell and the outside door was unlocked. No one had yet
+discovered the fire which we knew was now raging on the top floor of
+the apartment.
+
+We were whirled up there swiftly, just as we heard echoing through the
+hall and the elevator shaft from someone who had an apartment on the
+same floor the shrill cry of, "Fire, fire!"
+
+Tenants all the way up were now beginning to throw open their doors and
+run breathlessly about in various states of undress. The elevator bell
+was jangling insistently.
+
+In the face of the crisis the elevator boy looked at Garrick
+appealingly.
+
+"Run your car up and down until all are out who want to go," ordered
+Garrick. "Only tell them all that an alarm has already been turned in
+and that there is no danger except to the suite that is on fire. You
+may leave us here."
+
+We had reached the top floor and stepped out. I realised fully now what
+had happened. Either the robbers had found out only too quickly that
+they had been duped or else they had reasoned that the letter they
+sought had been hidden in a place in the apartment for which they had
+no time to hunt.
+
+It had probably been the latter idea which they had had and, instead of
+hunting further, they had taken a quicker and more unscrupulous method
+than Garrick had imagined and had set the room on fire. Fortunately
+that had been promptly and faithfully reported to us over the optophone
+in time to localize the damage.
+
+"At least we were able to turn in an alarm only a few seconds after
+they started the fire," panted Garrick, as he strained to burst in the
+door.
+
+Together we managed to push it in, and rushed into the stifle of
+Warrington's suite. The whole thing was in flames and it was impossible
+for us to remain there longer than to take in the situation.
+
+Accordingly we retreated slowly before the fierce blaze. One of the
+other tenants came running with a fire extinguisher in either hand from
+wall rack down the hall on this floor. As well try to drown a blast
+furnace. They made no impression whatever.
+
+Personally I had expected nothing like this. I had been prepared up to
+the time the optophone reported the fire to dash over and fight it out
+at close quarters with two as desperate and resourceful men as
+underworld conditions in New York at that time had created. Instead we
+saw no one at all.
+
+The robbers had evidently worked in seconds instead of minutes,
+realizing that they must take no risks in a showdown with Garrick.
+Rooms that might perhaps have given some clew of their presence,
+perhaps finger-prints which might have settled their identity at once,
+were now being destroyed. We had defeated them. We had the precious
+letter. But they had again slipped away.
+
+Firemen were now arriving. A hose had been run up, and a solid stream
+of water was now hissing on the fire. Smoke and steam were everywhere
+as the men hacked and cut their way at the very heart of the hungry red
+monster.
+
+"We are only in the way here, Tom," remarked Garrick, retreating
+finally. "Our friends must have entered and escaped by the roof. There
+is no other way."
+
+He had dashed up ahead of the firemen. I followed. Sure enough, the
+door out on the roof had been broken into. A rope tied around a chimney
+showed how they had pulled themselves up and later let themselves down
+to the roof of the next apartment some fifteen feet lower. We could see
+an open door leading to the roof there, which must also have been
+broken open. That had evidently been the secret method of which the
+Chief had spoken to the Boss, whoever they might be, who bore these
+epithets.
+
+Pursuit was useless, now. All was excitement. From the street we could
+hear the clang of engines and trucks arriving and taking their
+positions, almost as if the fire department had laid out the campaign
+beforehand for this very fire.
+
+Anyone who had waited a moment or so in the other apartment down the
+street might have gone downstairs without attracting any attention.
+Then he might have disappeared in or mingled with the very crowd on the
+street which he had caused to gather. Late as it was, the crowd seemed
+to spring from nowhere, and to grow momentarily as it had done during
+the raid on the gambling joint. It was one of the many interesting
+night phenomena of New York.
+
+What had been intended to be one of the worst fires and to injure a
+valuable property of the Warrington estate had, thanks to the prompt
+action of Garrick, been quickly turned into only a minor affair, at the
+worst. The fire had eaten its way into two other rooms of Warrington's
+own suite, but there it had been stopped. The building itself was
+nearly fireproof, and each suite was a unit so that, to all intents and
+purposes, it might burn out without injury to others.
+
+Still, it was interesting to watch the skill and intuition of the
+smoke-eaters as they took in the situation and almost instantly seemed
+to be able to cope with it.
+
+Sudden and well-planned though the incendiary assault had been, it was
+not many minutes before it was completely under control. Men in rubber
+coats and boots were soon tramping through the water-soaked rooms of
+Warrington. Windows were cracked open and the air in the rooms was
+clearing.
+
+We followed in cautiously after one of the firemen. Everywhere was the
+penetrating smell of burnt wood and cloth. In the corner was the safe,
+still hot and steaming. It had stood the strain. But it showed marks of
+having been tampered with.
+
+"Somebody used a 'can-opener' on it," commented Garrick, looking at it
+critically and then ruefully at the charred wreck of his optophone that
+had tumbled in the ashes of the pile of books under which it had been
+hidden, "Yes, that was the scheme they must have evolved after their
+midnight conference,--a robbery masked by a fire to cover the trail,
+and perhaps destroy it altogether."
+
+"If we had only known that," I agreed, "we might have saved what little
+there was in that safe for Warrington. But I guess he didn't keep much
+there."
+
+"No," answered Garrick, "I don't think he did. All I saw was some
+personal letters and a few things he apparently liked to have around
+here. I suppose all the really valuable stuff he has was in a
+safety-deposit vault somewhere. There was a packet of--it's gone! What
+do you think of that?" he exclaimed looking up from the safe to me in
+surprise.
+
+"Packet of what?" I asked. "What is gone?"
+
+"Why," replied Garrick, "I couldn't help noticing it when I opened the
+safe before, but Warrington had evidently saved every line and scrap of
+writing that Violet Winslow had ever given him and it was all in one of
+the compartments of the safe. The compartment is empty!"
+
+Neither of us could say a word. What reason might there be why anyone
+should want Warrington's love letters? Was it to learn something that
+might be used to embarrass him? Might it be for the purpose of holding
+him up for money? Did the robber want them for himself or was he
+employed by another? These and a score of other questions flashed,
+unanswered, through my mind.
+
+"I wonder who this fellow is that they call the Chief?" I ventured at
+last.
+
+"I can't say--yet," admitted Garrick. "But he's the cleverest I have
+ever met. His pace is rapid, but I think we are getting up with it, at
+last. There's no use sticking around here any longer, though. The place
+for us, I think, is downtown, getting an earful at the other end of
+that detectaphone."
+
+The engines and other apparatus were rolling away from the fire when we
+regained the street and things were settling themselves down to normal
+again.
+
+We rode downtown on the subway, and I was surprised when Garrick,
+instead of going all the way down to the crosstown line that would take
+us to the Old Tavern, got off at Forty-second Street.
+
+"What's the idea of this?" I asked.
+
+"Do you think I'm going to travel around the city with that letter in
+my pocket?" he asked. "Not much, since they seem to set such a value on
+getting it back. Of course, they don't know that I have it. But they
+might suspect it. At any rate I'm not going to run any chances of
+losing it."
+
+He had stopped at a well-known hotel where he knew the night clerk.
+There he made the letter into a little package, sealed it, and
+deposited it in the safe.
+
+"Why do you leave it here?" I asked.
+
+"If I go near the office, they might think I left it there, and I
+certainly won't leave it in my own apartment. They may or may not
+suspect that I have it. At any rate, I'd hate to risk meeting them down
+in their own region. But here we are not followed. I can leave it
+safely and to-morrow I'll get it and deposit it in a really safe place.
+Now, just to cover up my tracks, I'm going to call up Dillon, but I'm
+going up Broadway a bit before I do so, so that even he will not know
+I've been in this hotel. I think he ought to know what has happened
+to-day."
+
+"What did he say?" I asked as Garrick rejoined me from the telephone
+booth, his face wearing a scowl of perplexity.
+
+"Why, he knew about it already," replied Garrick. "I got him at his
+home. Herman, it seems, got back from some wild-goose chase over in New
+Jersey and saw the report in the records filed at police headquarters
+and telephoned him."
+
+"Herman is one of the brightest detectives I ever met," I commented in
+disgust. "He always manages to get in just after everybody else. Has he
+any more news?"
+
+"About the car?" asked Garrick absently. "Nothing except that he ran
+down the Pennsylvania report and found there was nothing in it. Now he
+says that he thinks the car may have returned to New York, perhaps by
+way of Staten Island, for he doubts whether it could have slipped in by
+New Jersey."
+
+"Clever," I ejaculated. "I suppose that occurred to him as soon as he
+read about the fire. I have to hand it to him for being a deducer."
+
+Garrick smiled.
+
+"There's one thing, though, he does know," he added, "and that is the
+gossip of the underworld right here in New York."
+
+"I should hope so," I replied. "That was his business to know. Why, has
+he found out anything really new?"
+
+"Why--er--yes. Dillon tells me that it now appears that Forbes had been
+intimate with that Rena Taylor."
+
+"Yes?" I repeated, not surprised.
+
+"At least that's what Herman has told him."
+
+"Well," I exclaimed in disgust, "Forbes is a fine one to run around
+with stool-pigeons and women of the Tenderloin, in addition to his
+other accomplishments, and then expect to associate with a girl like
+Violet Winslow."
+
+"It is scandalous," he agreed. "Why, according to Dillon and Herman,
+she must have been getting a good deal of evidence through her intimacy
+with Forbes. They probably gambled together, drank together, and---"
+
+"Do you suppose Forbes ever found out that she was really using him?"
+
+Garrick shook his head. "I can't say," he replied. "There isn't much
+value in this deductive, long distance detective work. You reason a
+thing out to your satisfaction and then one little fact knocks all your
+clever reasoning sky-high. The trouble here is that on this aspect of
+the case the truth seems to have been known by only two persons--and
+one of them is dead, while the other has disappeared."
+
+"Strange what has become of Forbes," I ruminated.
+
+"It is indeed," agreed Garrick. "But then he was such a night-hawk that
+anything might easily have happened and no one be the wiser. Since you
+saw him enter the gambling joint the night of the raid, I've been
+unable to get a line on him. He must have gone through the tunnel to
+the ladies' poolroom, but after he left that, presumably, I can't find
+a trace of him. Where he went no one seems to know. This bit of gossip
+that Herman has unearthed is the first thing I've heard of him,
+definitely, for two days."
+
+"If Rena Taylor were alive," I speculated, "I don't think you'd have to
+look further for Forbes than to find her."
+
+"But she isn't alive," concluded Garrick, "and there is nothing to show
+that there was anyone else at the poolroom for women who interested
+him--and--well, this isn't getting back to business."
+
+He turned toward the street.
+
+"Let's go down on a surface car," he said. "I think we ought to learn
+something down there at the Old Tavern, now. If these people have done
+nothing more, they'll think they have at least given an example of
+their resourcefulness and succeeded in throwing another scare into
+Warrington. But there's one thing I'd like to be able to tell Mr.
+Chief, however. He can't throw any scare into me, if that's his game."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE PLOT
+
+
+We had been able to secure a key to the hotel entrance of the Old
+Tavern, so that we felt free to come and go at any hour of the day or
+night. We let ourselves in and mounted the stairs cautiously to our
+room.
+
+"At least they haven't discovered anything, yet," Garrick congratulated
+himself, looking about, as I struck a light, and finding everything as
+we had left it.
+
+Late as it was, he picked up the detective receiver of the mechanical
+eavesdropper and held it to his ears, listening intently several
+moments.
+
+"There's someone in the garage, all right," he exclaimed. "I can hear
+sounds as if he were moving about among the cars. It must be the garage
+keeper himself--the one they call the Boss. I don't think our clever
+Chief would have the temerity to show up here yet, even at this hour."
+
+We waited some time, but not the sound of a voice came from the
+instrument.
+
+"It would be just like them to discover one of these detectaphones,"
+remarked Garrick at length. "This is a good opportunity. I believe I'll
+just let myself down there in the yard again and separate those two
+wires, further. There's no use in risking all the eggs in one basket."
+
+While I listened in, Garrick cautiously got out the rope ladder and
+descended. Through the detectaphone I could hear the noise of the man
+walking about the garage and was ready at the window to give Garrick
+the first alarm of danger if he approached the back of the shop, but
+nothing happened and he succeeded in accomplishing his purpose of
+further hiding the two wires and returning safely. Then we resumed
+listening in relays.
+
+It was early in the morning when there came a telephone call to the
+garage and the garage keeper answered it.
+
+"Where did you go afterward?" he asked of the man who was calling him.
+
+Garrick had quickly shifted to the instrument by which we could
+overhear what was said over the telephone.
+
+A voice which I recognised instantly as that of the man they called the
+Chief replied, "Oh, I had a little business to attend to--you
+understand. Say, they got that fire out pretty quickly, didn't they?
+How do you suppose the alarm could have been turned in so soon?"
+
+"I don't know. But they tell me that Garrick and that other fellow with
+him showed up, double quick. He must have been wise to something."
+
+"Yes. Do you know, I've been thinking about that ever since. Ever hear
+of a little thing called a detectaphone? No? Well, it's a little
+arrangement that can be concealed almost anywhere. I've been wondering
+whether there might not be one hidden about your garage. He might have
+put one in that night, you know. I'm sure he knows more about us than
+he has any right to know. Hunt around there, will you, and see if you
+can find anything?"
+
+"Hold the wire."
+
+We could hear the Boss poking around in corners, back of the piles of
+accessories, back of the gasoline tank, lifting things up and looking
+under them, apparently flashing his light everywhere so that nothing
+could escape him.
+
+A hasty exclamation was recorded faithfully over our detectaphone,
+close to the transmitter, evidently.
+
+"What the deuce is this?" growled a voice.
+
+Then over the telephone we could hear the Boss talking.
+
+"There's a round black thing back of a pile of tires, with a wire
+connected to it. One side of it is full of little round holes. Is that
+one of those things?"
+
+"Yes," came back the voice, "that's it." Then excitedly, "Smash it! Cut
+the wires--no, wait--look and see where they run. I thought you'd find
+something. Curse me for a fool for not thinking of that before."
+
+Garrick had quickly himself detached the wire from the receiving
+instrument in our room and, sticking his head cautiously out of the
+window, he swung the cut ends as far as he could in the direction of a
+big iron-shuttered warehouse down the street in the opposite direction
+from us.
+
+Then he closed the window softly and pulled down the switch on the
+other detectaphone connected with the fake telephone receiver.
+
+He smiled quietly at me. The thing worked still. We had one connection
+left with the garage, anyway.
+
+There was a noise of something being shattered to bits. It was the
+black disc back of the pile of tires. We could hear the Boss muttering
+to himself.
+
+"Say," he reported back over the telephone, "I've smashed the thing,
+all right, and cut the wires, too. They ran out of the back window to
+that mercantile warehouse, down the street, I think. I'll look after
+that in the morning. It's so dark over there now I can't see a thing."
+
+"Good!" exclaimed the other voice with satisfaction. "Now we can talk.
+That fellow Garrick isn't such a wise guy, after all. I tell you, Boss,
+I'm going to throw a good scare into them this time--one that will
+stick."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Well, I got Warrington, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You know I can't always be following that fellow, Garrick. He's too
+clever at dodging shadows. Besides, unless we give him something else
+to think about he may get a line on one of us,--on me. Don't you
+understand? Warrington's out of it for the present. I saw to that. Now,
+the thing is to fix up something to call them off, altogether,
+something that we can use to hold them up."
+
+"Yes--go on--what?"
+
+"Why--how about Violet Winslow?"
+
+My heart actually skipped beating for a second or two as I realised the
+boldness and desperation of the plan.
+
+"What do you mean--a robbery up there in Tuxedo?"
+
+"No, no, no. What good would a robbery do? I mean to get her--kidnap
+her. I guess Warrington would call the whole thing off to release
+her--eh?"
+
+"Say, Chief, that's going it pretty strong. I'd rather break in up
+there and leave a threat of some kind, something that would frighten
+them. But, this,--I'm afraid--"
+
+"Afraid--nothing. I tell you, we've got to do it. They're getting too
+close to us. We've either got to get Garrick or do something that'll
+call him off for good. Why, man, the whole game is up if he keeps on
+the way he has been going--let alone the risk we have of getting
+caught."
+
+The Boss seemed to be considering.
+
+"How will you get a chance to do it?" he asked at length.
+
+"Oh, I'll get a chance, all right. I'll make a chance," came back the
+self-confident reply.
+
+It sent a shiver through me merely to contemplate what might happen if
+Violet Winslow fell into such hands. Mentally I blessed Garrick for his
+forethought in having the phony 'phone in the garage against possible
+discovery of the detective instrument.
+
+"You know this poisoned needle stuff that's been in the papers?"
+pursued the Chief.
+
+"Bunk--all bunk," came back the Boss promptly.
+
+"Is that so?" returned the Chief. "Well, you're right about it as far
+as what has been in the papers is concerned. I don't know but I doubt
+about ninety-nine and ninety-nine hundredths per cent of it, too. But,
+I'll tell you,--it can be done. Take it from me--it can be done. I've
+got one of the best little sleepmakers you ever saw--right from Paris,
+too. There, what do you know about that?"
+
+I glanced hastily, in alarm, at Garrick. His face was set in hard
+lines, as he listened.
+
+"Sleepmaker--Paris," I heard him mutter under his breath, and just a
+flicker of a smile crossed the set lines of his fine face.
+
+"Yes, sir," pursued the voice of the Chief, "I can pull one of those
+poisoned needle cases off and I'm going to do it, if I get half a
+chance."
+
+"When would you do it?" asked the Boss, weakening.
+
+"As soon as I can. I've a scheme. I'm not going to tell you over the
+wire, though. Leave it to me. I'm going up to our place, where I left
+the car. I'll study the situation out, up there. Maybe I'll run over
+and look over the ground, see how she spends her time and all that sort
+of thing. I've got to reckon in with that aunt, too. She's a Tartar.
+I'll let you know. In the meantime, I want you to watch that place on
+Forty-seventh Street. Tell me if they make any move against it. Don't
+waste any time, either. I can't be out of touch with things the way I
+was the last time I went away. You see, they almost put one across on
+us--in fact they did put one across with that detectaphone thing. Now,
+we can't let that happen again. Just keep me posted, see?"
+
+They had finished talking and that was apparently all we were to get
+that night, or rather that morning, by way of warning of their plot for
+the worst move yet.
+
+It was enough. If they would murder and burn, what would they stop at
+in order to strike at us through the innocent figure of Violet Winslow?
+What might not happen to such a delicate slip of a girl in the power of
+such men?
+
+"At least," rapped out Garrick, himself smothering his alarm, "they
+can't do anything immediately. It gives us time to prepare and warn.
+Besides, before that we may have them rounded up. The time has come for
+something desperate. I won't be trifled with any longer. This last
+proposal goes just over the limit."
+
+As for me, I was speechless. The events of the past two days, the
+almost sleepless nights had sapped my energy. Even Garrick, though he
+was a perfect glutton for work, felt the strain.
+
+It was very late, or rather very early, and we determined to snatch a
+few moments of sleep at the Old Tavern before the rest of the world
+awoke to the new day. It was only a couple of hours that we could
+spare, but it was absolutely necessary.
+
+In spite of our fatigue, we were up again early and after another try
+at the phony 'phone which told us that only the men were working in the
+garage, we were on our way up to Garrick's apartment.
+
+We had scarcely entered when the telephone boy called up to say that
+there was a Mr. Warrington on long distance trying to get us. Garrick
+eagerly asked to have him put on our wire.
+
+Warrington, it seemed, had been informed of the fire by one of his
+agents and was inquiring anxiously for details, especially about the
+letter. Garrick quickly apologised for not calling up himself, and
+relieved his anxiety by assuring him that the letter was safe.
+
+"And how are you?" he asked of Warrington.
+
+"Convalescing rapidly," laughed back the patient, to whom the loss of
+anything was a mere bagatelle beside the letter. Garrick had not told
+him yet of the stealing of the other letters. "Getting along
+fine,--thanks to a new tonic which Dr. Mead has prescribed for me."
+
+"I can guess what it is."
+
+Warrington laughed again. "Yes--I've been allowed to take short motor
+trips with Violet," he explained.
+
+The natural manner in which "Violet" replaced "Miss Winslow" indicated
+that the trips had not been without result.
+
+"Say, Warrington," burst out Garrick, seeing an opportunity of
+introducing the latest news, "I hate to butt in, but if you'll take my
+advice, you'll just cut out those trips a few days. I don't want to
+alarm you unnecessarily, but after to-day I want Miss Winslow never to
+be out of sight of friends--friends, I said; not one, but several."
+
+"Why--what's the matter?" demanded Warrington in alarm.
+
+"I can't explain it all over the telephone," replied Garrick, sketching
+out hastily something of what we had overheard. "I'll try to see you
+before long--perhaps to-day. Don't forget. I want you to warn Miss
+Winslow yourself. You can't put it too strongly. Use your judgment
+about Mrs. de Lancey. I don't want to get you in wrong with her. But,
+remember, it's a matter of life or death--or perhaps worse. Try to do
+it without unnecessarily alarming Miss Winslow, if you can. Just fix it
+up as quietly as possible. But be positive about it. No, I can't
+explain more over the wire now. But--no more outings for either of you,
+and particularly Miss Winslow, until I raise the ban."
+
+Warrington had been inclined to argue the matter at first, but Garrick
+of course quickly prevailed, the more so because Warrington realised
+that in his condition he was anything but an adequate body-guard for
+her if something unexpected should happen.
+
+"Oh--I had a call the other day," reported Warrington as an
+afterthought before hanging up the receiver. "It was from McBirney. He
+says one of his unofficial scouts has told him of seeing a car that
+might have been mine up this way lately."
+
+Garrick acquiesced to the information which, to us, was not new. "Yes,"
+he said, "there have been several such reports. And, by the way, that
+reminds me of something. You will have to put at our disposal one of
+your cars down here."
+
+"Go as far as you like. What do you want--a racer?"
+
+"Why--yes, if it's in perfect condition. You see, we may have to do
+some unexpected sleuthing in it."
+
+"Go as far as you like," repeated Warrington, now thoroughly aroused by
+the latest development of the case. "Spare nothing, Garrick--nothing.
+Curse my luck for being laid up! Every dollar I have is at your
+disposal, Garrick, to protect her from those scoundrels--damn them!"
+
+"Trust me, Warrington," called back Garrick. "I give you my word that
+it's my fight now."
+
+"Garrick--you're a brick," came back Warrington as the conversation
+closed.
+
+"Good heavens, Guy," I exclaimed when he hung up the receiver after
+calling up Warrington's garage and finding out what cars were
+available, "Are we going to have to extend operations over the whole
+State, after all?"
+
+"We may have to do almost anything," he replied, "if our scientific
+murderer tries some of his smooth kidnapping tricks. It's possible that
+McBirney may be right about that car being up there. Certainly we know
+that it has been up there, whether it is now or not."
+
+"And Herman wrong about its being in the city?" I suggested. "Well, one
+guess is as good as another in a case like this, I suppose."
+
+It had been a great relief to get back to our rooms and live even for a
+few minutes like civilised beings. I suggested that we might have a
+real breakfast once more.
+
+I could tell, however, that Garrick's mind was far away from the
+thought of eating, and that he realised that a keen, perhaps the
+keenest, test of his ability lay ahead of him, if he was to come out
+successfully and protect Violet Winslow in the final battle with the
+scientific gunman. I did not interrupt him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE POISONED NEEDLE
+
+
+Over a still untasted grapefruit Garrick was considering what his next
+move should be. As for me, even this temporary return to a normal life
+caused me to view things in a different light.
+
+There had been, as the Chief and the Boss had hinted at in their
+conversation, a wave of hysteria which had swept over the city only a
+short time before regarding what had come to be called the "poisoned
+needle" cases. Personally I had doubted them and I had known many
+doctors and scientists as well as vice and graft investigators who had
+scouted them, too.
+
+"Garrick," I said at length, "do you really think that we have to deal
+with anything in this case but just plain attempted kidnapping of the
+old style?"
+
+He shook his head doubtfully. I knew him to be anything but an alarmist
+and waited impatiently for him to speak.
+
+"I wouldn't think so," he said at length slowly, "except for one thing."
+
+"What's that?" I asked eagerly.
+
+"His mention of the 'sleepmakers' and Paris," he replied briefly.
+
+Garrick had risen and walked over to a cabinet in the corner of his
+room. When he returned it was with something gleaming in the morning
+sunshine as he rolled it back and forth on a piece of paper, just a
+shining particle. He picked it up carefully.
+
+I bent over to look at it more closely and there, in Garrick's hand,
+was a tiny bit of steel, scarcely three-eighths of an inch long, a mere
+speck. It was like nothing of which I had ever heard or read. Yet
+Garrick himself seemed to regard the minute thing with a sort of awe.
+As for me, I knew not what to make of it. I wondered whether it might
+not be some new peril.
+
+"What is it?" I asked at length, seeing that Garrick might be disposed
+to talk, if I prompted him.
+
+"Well," he answered laconically, holding it up to the light so that I
+could see that it was in reality a very minute, pointed hollow tube,
+"what would you say if I told you it was the point of a
+new--er--poisoned needle?"
+
+He said it in such a simple tone that I reacted from it toward my own
+preconceived notions of the hysterical newspaper stories.
+
+"I've heard about all the poisoned needle stories," I returned. "I've
+investigated some of them and written about them for my paper, Guy. And
+I must say still that I doubt them. Now in the first place, the mere
+insertion of a hypodermic needle--of course, you've had it done,
+Guy--is something so painful that anyone in his senses would cry aloud.
+Then to administer a drug that way requires a great deal of skill and
+knowledge of anatomy, if it is to be done with full and quick effect."
+
+Garrick said nothing, but continued to regard the hollow point which he
+had obtained somewhere, perhaps on a previous case.
+
+"Why, such an injection," I continued, recalling the result of my
+former careful investigations on the subject, "couldn't act
+instantaneously anyhow, as it must if they are to get away with it.
+After the needle is inserted, the plunger has to be pushed down, and
+the whole thing would take at least thirty seconds. And then, the
+action of the drug. That would take time, too. It seems to me that in
+no case could it be done without the person's being instantly aware of
+it and, before lapsing into unconsciousness, calling for help or--"
+
+"On the contrary," interrupted Garrick quietly, "it is absurdly easy.
+Waiving the question whether they might not be able to get Violet
+Winslow in such a situation where even the old hypodermic method which
+you know would serve as well as any other, why, Marshall, just the hint
+that fellow dropped tells me that he could walk up to her on the street
+or anywhere else, and--"
+
+He did not finish the sentence, but left it to my imagination. It was
+my turn, now, to remain silent.
+
+"You are right, though, Tom, in one respect," he resumed a moment
+later. "It is not easy by the old methods that everyone now knows. For
+instance, take the use of chloral-knock-out drops, you know. That is
+crude, too. Hypodermics and knock-out drops may answer well enough,
+perhaps, for the criminals whose victims are found in cafes and dives
+of a low order. But for the operations of an aristocratic criminal of
+to-day--and our friend the Chief seems to belong to the aristocracy of
+the underworld--far more subtle methods are required. Let me show you
+something."
+
+Carefully, from the back of a drawer in the cabinet, where it was
+concealed in a false partition, he pulled out a little case. He opened
+it, and in it displayed a number of tiny globes and tubes of thin
+glass, each with a liquid in it, some lozenges, some bonbons, and
+several cigars and cigarettes.
+
+"I'm doing this," he remarked, "to show you, Tom, that I'm not unduly
+magnifying the danger that surrounds Violet Winslow, after hearing what
+I did over that detectaphone. Perhaps it didn't impress you, but I
+think I know something of what we're up against."
+
+From another part of the case he drew a peculiar looking affair and
+handed to me without a word. It consisted of a glass syringe about two
+inches long, fitted with a glass plunger and an asbestos washer. On the
+other end of the tube was a hollow point, about three-eighths of an
+inch long--just a shiny little bit of steel such as he had already
+showed me.
+
+I looked at it curiously and, in spite of my former assurance, began to
+wonder whether, after all, the possibility of a girl being struck down
+suddenly, without warning, in a public place and robbed--or
+worse--might not take on the guise of ghastly reality.
+
+"What do you make of it?" asked Garrick, evidently now enjoying the
+puzzled look on my face.
+
+I could merely shrug my shoulders.
+
+"Well," he drawled, "that is a weapon they hinted at last night. The
+possibilities of it are terrifying. Why, it could easily be plunged
+through a fur coat, without breaking."
+
+He took the needle and made an imaginary lunge at me.
+
+"When people tell you that the hypodermic needle cannot be employed in
+a case like this that they are planning," he continued, "they are
+thinking of ordinary hypodermics. Those things wouldn't be very
+successful usually, anyhow, under such circumstances. But this is
+different. The very form of this needle makes it particularly effective
+for anyone who wishes to use it for crime. For instance--take it on a
+railroad or steamship or in a hotel. Draw back the plunger--so--one
+quick jab--then drop it on the floor and grind it under your heel. The
+glass is splintered into a thousand bits. All evidence of guilt is
+destroyed, unless someone is looking for it practically with a
+microscope."
+
+"Yes," I persisted, "that is all right--but the pain and the moments
+before the drug begins to work?"
+
+With one hand Garrick reached into the case, selecting a little thin
+glass tube, and with the other he pulled out his handkerchief.
+
+"Smell that!" he exclaimed, bending over me so that I could see every
+move and be prepared for it.
+
+Yet it was done so quickly that I could not protect myself.
+
+"Ugh!" I ejaculated in surprise, as Garrick manipulated the thing with
+a legerdemain swiftness that quite baffled me, even though he had given
+me warning to expect something.
+
+Everyone has seen freak moving picture films where the actor suddenly
+bobs up in another place, without visibly crossing the intervening
+space. The next thing I knew, Garrick was standing across the room, in
+just that way. The handkerchief was folded up and in his pocket.
+
+It couldn't have been done possibly in less than a minute. What had
+happened? Where had that minute or so gone? I felt a sickening
+sensation.
+
+"Smell it again?" Garrick laughed, taking a step toward me.
+
+I put up my hand and shook my head negatively, slowly comprehending.
+
+"You mean to tell me," I gasped, "that I was--out?"
+
+"I could have jabbed a dozen needles into you and you would never have
+known it," asserted Garrick with a quiet smile playing over his face.
+
+"What is the stuff?" I asked, quite taken aback.
+
+"Kelene--ethyl chloride. Whiff!--and you are off almost in a second. It
+is an anaesthetic of nearly unbelievable volatility. It comes in little
+hermetically sealed tubes, with a tiny capillary orifice, to prevent
+its too rapid vaporising, even when opened for use. Such a tube may be
+held in the palm of the hand and the end crushed off. The warmth of the
+hand alone is sufficient to start a veritable spray. It acts violently
+on the senses, too. But kelene anaesthesia lasts only a minute or so.
+The fraction of time is long enough. Then comes the jab with the real
+needle--perhaps another whiff of kelene to give the injection a chance.
+In two or three minutes the injection itself is working and the victim
+is unconscious, without a murmur--perhaps, as in your case, without any
+clear idea of how it all happened--even without recollection of a
+handkerchief, unable to recall any sharp pain of a needle or anything
+else."
+
+He was holding up a little bottle in which was a thick, colorless syrup.
+
+"And what is that?" I asked, properly tamed and no longer disposed to
+be disputatious.
+
+"Hyoscine."
+
+"Is it powerful?"
+
+"One one-hundredth of a grain of this strength, perhaps less, will
+render a person unconscious," replied Garrick. "The first symptom is
+faintness; the pupils of the eyes dilate; speech is lost; vitality
+seems to be floating away, and the victim lapses into unconsciousness.
+It is derived from henbane, among ether things, and is a rapid,
+energetic alkaloid, more rapid than chloral and morphine. And, preceded
+by a whiff of kelene, not even the sensations I have described are
+remembered."
+
+I could only stare at the outfit before me, speechless.
+
+"In Paris, where I got this," continued Garrick, "they call these
+people who use it, 'endormeurs'--sleepmakers. That must have been what
+the Chief meant when he used that word. I knew it."
+
+"Sleepmakers," I repeated in horror at the very idea of such a thing
+being attempted on a young girl like Violet Winslow.
+
+"Yes. The standard equipment of such a criminal consists of these
+little thin glass globes, a tiny glass hypodermic syringe with a sharp
+steel point, doped cigars and cigarettes. They use various derivatives
+of opium, like morphine and heroin, also codeine, dionin, narcein,
+ethyl chloride and bromide, nitrite of amyl, amylin,--and the skill
+that they have acquired in the manipulation of these powerful drugs
+stamps them as the most dangerous coterie of criminals in existence.
+Now," he concluded, "doubt it or not, we have to deal with a man who is
+a proficient student of these sleepmakers. Who is he, where is he, and
+when will he strike?"
+
+Garrick was now pacing excitedly up and down the room.
+
+"You see," he added, "the police of Europe by their new scientific
+methods are driving such criminals out of the various countries. Thank
+heaven, I am now prepared to meet them if they come to America."
+
+"Then you think this is a foreigner?" I asked meekly.
+
+"I didn't say so," Garrick replied. "No. I think this is a criminal
+exceptionally wide awake, one who studies and adopts what he sees
+whenever he wants it. If you recall, I warned you to have a wholesome
+respect for this man at the very start, when we were looking at that
+empty cartridge."
+
+I could restrain my admiration of him no longer. "Guy," I exclaimed,
+heartily, astounded by what I had seen, "you--you are a wonder!"
+
+"No," he laughed, "not wonderful, Tom,--only very ordinary. I've had a
+chance to learn some things abroad, fortunately. I've taken the time to
+show you all this because I want you to appreciate what it is we are up
+against in this case of Violet Winslow. You can understand now why I
+was so particular about instructing Warrington not to let her go
+anywhere unattended by friends. There's nothing inherently impossible
+in these poisoned needle stories--given the right conjunction of
+circumstances. What we have to guard against principally is letting her
+get into any situation where the circumstances make such a thing
+possible. I've almost a notion to let the New York end of this case go
+altogether for a while and take a run up to Tuxedo to warn her and Mrs.
+de Lancey personally. Still, I think I put it strongly enough with
+Warrington so that--"
+
+Our telephone tinkled insistently.
+
+"Hello," answered Garrick. "Yes, this is Garrick. Who is this?
+Warrington? In Tuxedo? Why, my dear boy, you needn't have gone
+personally. Are you sure you're strong enough for such exertion?
+What--what's that? Warrington--it--it isn't--not to New York?"
+
+Garrick's face was actually pale as he fairly started back from the
+telephone and caught my eye.
+
+"Tom," he exclaimed huskily to me, "Violet Winslow left for New York on
+the early train this morning!"
+
+I felt my heart skip a beat, then pound away like a sledge-hammer at my
+ribs as the terrible possibilities of the situation were seared into my
+brain.
+
+"Yes, Warrington--a letter to her? Read it--quick," I heard Garrick's
+tense voice repeating. "I see. Her maid Lucille was taken very ill a
+few days ago and she allowed her to go to her brother who lives on
+Ninth Street. I understand. Now--the letter."
+
+I could not hear what was said over the telephone, but later Garrick
+repeated it to me and I afterwards saw the letter itself which I may as
+well reproduce here. It said:
+
+"Since I left you, mademoiselle, I am very ill here at the home of my
+brother. I have a nice room in the back of the house on the first floor
+and now that I am getting better I can sit up and look out of the
+window.
+
+"I am very ill yet, but the worst is past and some time when you are in
+New York I wish I could see you. You have always been so good to me,
+mademoiselle, that I hope I may soon be back again, if you have not a
+maid better than your poor Lucille.
+
+"Your faithful servant,
+
+"LUCILLE DE VEAU."
+
+"And she's already in the city?" asked Garrick of Warrington as he
+finished reading the letter. "Mrs. de Lancey has gone with her--to do
+some shopping. I see. That will take all day, she said? She is going to
+call on Lucille--to-night--that's what she told her new maid there?
+To-night? That's all right, my boy. I just wanted to be sure. Don't
+worry. We'll look out for her here, all right. Now, Warrington, you
+just keep perfectly quiet. No relapses, you know, old fellow. We can
+take care of everything. I'm glad you told me. Good-bye."
+
+Garrick had finished up his conversation with Warrington in a confident
+and reassuring tone, quite the opposite to that with which he had
+started and even more in contrast with the expression on his face as he
+talked.
+
+"I didn't want to alarm the boy unnecessarily," he explained to me, as
+he hung up the receiver. "I could tell that he was very weak yet and
+that the trip up to Tuxedo had almost done him up. It seems that she
+thought a good deal of Lucille--there's the address--99 Ninth. You can
+never tell about these maids, though. Lucille may be all right--or the
+other maid may be all bad, or vice versa. There's no telling. The worst
+of it is that she and her aunt are somewhere in the city, perhaps
+shopping. It only needs that they become separated for something,
+anything, to happen. There's been no time to warn her, either, and
+she's just as likely to visit that Lucille to-night alone as not.
+Gad--I'm glad I didn't fly off up there to Tuxedo, after all. She'll
+need someone here to protect her."
+
+Garrick was considering hastily what was to be done. Quickly he mapped
+out his course of action.
+
+"Come, Tom," he said hurriedly to me, as he wrapped up a little cedar
+box which he took from the cabinet where he kept the endormeur outfit.
+"Come--let's investigate that Ninth Street address while we have time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE NEWSPAPER FAKE
+
+
+Within a few minutes we were sauntering with enforced leisure along
+Ninth Street, in a rather sordid part, inhabited largely, I made out,
+by a slightly better class of foreigners than some other sections of
+the West Side.
+
+As we walked along, I felt Garrick tugging at my arm.
+
+"Slow up a bit," he whispered under his breath. "There's the house
+which was mentioned in the maid's note."
+
+It was an old three-story brownstone building with an entrance two or
+three steps up from the sidewalk level. Once, no doubt, it had housed
+people of some means, but the change in the character of the
+neighbourhood with shifting population had evidently brought it to the
+low estate where it now sheltered one family on each floor, if not
+more. At least that was the general impression one got from a glance at
+the cheapened air of the block.
+
+Garrick passed the house so as not to attract any attention, and a
+little further on paused before an apartment house, not of the modern
+elevator construction, but still of quiet and decent appearance. At
+least there were no children spilling out from its steps into the
+street, in imminent danger of their young lives from every passing
+automobile, as there were in the tenements of the block below.
+
+He entered the front door which happened to be unlatched and we had no
+trouble in mounting the stairs to the roof.
+
+What he intended doing I had no idea yet, but he went ahead with
+assurance and I followed, equally confident, for he must have had
+adventures something like this before. On the roof, a clothesline,
+which he commandeered and tied about a chimney, served to let him down
+the few feet from the higher apartment roof to that of the dwelling
+house next to it, one of the row in which number 99 was situated.
+
+Quickly he tiptoed over to the chimney of the brownstone house a few
+doors down and, as he did so, I saw him take from his pocket the cedar
+box. A string tied to a weight told him which of the flues reached down
+to the room on the first floor, back.
+
+That determined, he let the little cedar box fastened to an entwined
+pair of wires down the flue. He then ran the wires back across the roof
+to the apartment, up, and into a little storm shed at the top of the
+last flight of stairs which led from the upper hall to the roof.
+
+"There is nothing more that we can do here just yet," he remarked after
+he had hauled himself back to me on the higher roof. "We are lucky not
+to have been disturbed, but if we stay here we are likely to be
+observed."
+
+Cautiously we retraced our steps and were again on the street without
+having alarmed any of the tenants of the flat through which we had
+gained access to the roofs.
+
+It was now the forenoon and, although Garrick instituted a search in
+every place that he could think of where Mrs. de Laacey and Violet
+Winslow might go, including the homes of those of their friends whose
+names we could learn, it was without result. I don't think there can be
+many searches more hopeless than to try to find someone in New York
+when one has no idea where to look. Only chance could possibly have
+thrown them in our way and chance did not favour us.
+
+There was nothing to do but wait for the time when Miss Winslow might,
+of her own accord, turn up to visit her former maid for whom she
+apparently had a high regard.
+
+Inquiries as to the antecedents of Lucille De Veau were decidedly
+unsatisfactory, not that they gave her a bad character, but because
+there simply seemed to be nothing that we could find out. The maid
+seemed to be absolutely unknown. Her brother was a waiter, though where
+he worked we could not find out, for he seemed to be one of those who
+are constantly shifting their positions.
+
+Garrick had notified Dillon of what he had discovered, in a general
+way, and had asked him to detail some men to conduct the search
+secretly for Miss Winslow and her aunt, but without any better results
+than we had obtained. Apparently the department stores had swallowed
+them up for the time being and we could only wait impatiently, trusting
+that all would turn out right in the end. Still, I could not help
+having some forebodings in the matter.
+
+It was in the middle of the afternoon that we had gone downtown to
+Garrick's office, after stopping to secure the letter from the safe in
+the uptown hotel where it had been deposited for security during the
+night and placing it in a safety deposit vault where Garrick kept some
+of his own valuables. Garrick had selected his office as a vantage
+point to which any news of Miss Winslow and her aunt might be sent by
+those whom we had out searching. No word came, however, and the hours
+of suspense seemed to drag interminably.
+
+"You're pretty well acquainted on the STAR?" Garrick asked me at last,
+after we had been sitting in a sort of mournful silence wondering
+whether those on the other side might not be stealing a march on us.
+
+"Why, yes, I know several people there," I replied. "Why do you ask?"
+
+"I was just thinking of a possible plan of campaign that might be
+mapped out to bring these people from under cover," he remarked
+thoughtfully. "Do you think you could carry part of it through?"
+
+I said I would try and Garrick proceeded to unfold a scheme which he
+had been revolving all day. It consisted of as ingenious a "plant" as I
+could well imagine.
+
+"You see," he outlined, "if you could go over to the Star office and
+get them to run off a few copies of the paper, after they are through
+with the regular editions, I believe we can get the Chief started and
+then all we should have to do would be to follow him up--or someone who
+would lead us to him."
+
+The "plant," in short, consisted in writing a long and circumstantial
+story of the discovery of new evidence against the ladies' poolroom,
+which so far had been scarcely mentioned in the case. As Garrick laid
+it out, the story was to tell of a young gambler who was said to be in
+touch with the district attorney, in preference to saying the police.
+
+In fact, his idea was to write up the whole gambling situation as we
+knew it on lines that he suggested. Then a "fake" edition of the paper
+was to be run off, bearing our story on the front page. Only a few
+copies were to be printed, and they were to be delivered to us. The
+thing had been done before by detectives, I knew, and in this case
+Warrington was to foot the bill, which might prove to be considerable.
+
+At least it offered me some outlet for my energies during the rest of
+the afternoon when the failure to receive any reports about the two
+women whom we were seeking began to wear on my nerves.
+
+It took some time to arrange the thing with those in authority on the
+Star, but at last that was done and I hastened back to Garrick at his
+office to tell him that all that remained to do was the actual writing
+of the story.
+
+Garrick had just finished testing an arrangement in a large case,
+almost the size of a suitcase, and had stood it in a corner, ready to
+be picked up and carried off the instant there was any need for it.
+There was still no word of Miss Winslow and Mrs. de Lancey and it began
+to look as if we should not hear from them until Violet Winslow turned
+up on her visit to her former maid.
+
+Together we plunged into the preparation of the story, the writing of
+which fell to me while Garrick now and then threw in a suggestion or a
+word of criticism to make it sound stronger for his purpose. Thus the
+rest of the afternoon passed in getting the thing down "pat."
+
+I flatter myself that it was not such a bad piece of work when we got
+through with it. By dint of using such expressions as "It is said," "It
+is rumoured," "The report about the Criminal Courts Building is," "An
+informant high in the police department," and crediting much to a
+mythical "gambler who is operating quietly uptown," we managed to tell
+some amazing facts.
+
+The fake story began:
+
+"Since the raid by the police on the luxurious gambling house in
+Forty-eighth Street, a remarkable new phase of sporting life has been
+unfolded to the District Attorney, who is quietly gathering evidence
+against another place situated in the same district.
+
+"A former gambler who frequented the raided place has put many
+incriminating facts about the second place in the hands of the
+authorities who are contemplating an exposure that will stir even New
+York, accustomed as it is to such startling revelations. It involves
+one of the cleverest and most astute criminals who ever operated in
+this city.
+
+"This place, which is under observation, is one which has brought
+tragedy to many. Young women attracted by the treacherous lure of the
+spinning roulette wheel or the fascination of the shuffle of cards have
+squandered away their own and their husband's money with often tragic
+results, and many of them have gone even further into the moral
+quagmire in the hope of earning enough money to pay their losses and
+keep from their families the knowledge of their gambling.
+
+"This situation, one of the high lights in the city of lights and
+shadows, has been evolved, according to the official informant, through
+the countless number of gambling resorts that have gained existence in
+the most fashionable parts of the city.
+
+"The record of crime of the clever and astute individual already
+mentioned is being minutely investigated, and, it is said, shows some
+of the most astounding facts. It runs even to murder, which was
+accomplished in getting rid of an informer recently in the pay of the
+police.
+
+"Against those conducting the crusade every engine of the underworld
+has been used. The fight has been carried on bitterly, and within less
+than twenty-four hours arrests are promised as a result of confessions
+already in the hands of the authorities and being secretly and widely
+investigated by them before the final blow is delivered simultaneously,
+both in the city and in a town up-state where the criminal believes
+himself unknown and secure."
+
+There was more of the stuff, which I do not quote, describing the
+situation in detail and in general terms which could all have only one
+meaning to a person acquainted with the particular case with which we
+were dealing. It threw a scare, in type, as hard as could be done. I
+fancied that when it was read by the proper person he would be amazed
+that so much had, apparently, become known to the newspapers, and would
+begin to wonder how much more was known that was not printed.
+
+"That ought to make someone sit up and take notice," remarked Garrick
+with some satisfaction, as he corrected the typewritten copy late in
+the afternoon. "The printing of that will take some time and I don't
+suppose we shall get copies until pretty late. You can take it over to
+the Star, Tom, and complete the arrangements. I have a little more work
+to do before we go up there on Ninth Street. Suppose you meet me at
+eight in Washington Square, near the Arch?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE VOCAPHONE
+
+
+Promptly to the dot I met Garrick at the appointed place. Not a word so
+far had been heard, either from Violet Winslow or Mrs. de Lancey. There
+was one thing encouraging about it, however. If they had become
+separated while shopping, as sometimes happens, we should have been
+likely to hear of it, at least from her aunt.
+
+Garrick was tugging the heavy suitcase which I had seen standing ready
+down in his office during the afternoon, as well as a small package
+wrapped up in paper.
+
+"Let me carry that suitcase," I volunteered.
+
+We trudged along across the park, my load getting heavier at every step.
+
+"I'm not surprised at your being winded," I panted, soon finding myself
+in the same condition. "What's in this--lead?"
+
+"Something that we may need or may not," Garrick answered
+enigmatically, as we stopped in the shadow to rest.
+
+He carefully took an automatic revolver from an inside pocket and
+stowed it where it would be handy, in his coat.
+
+We resumed our walk and at last had come nearly up to the house on the
+first floor of which the maid Lucille was. The suitcase was engaging
+all my attention, as I shifted it from one hand to the other. Not so
+Garrick, however. He was looking keenly about us.
+
+"Gad, I must be seeing things to-night!" he exclaimed, his eyes fixed
+on a figure slouching along, his hat pulled down over his eyes, passing
+just about opposite us on the other side of the street. I looked also
+in the gathering dusk. The figure had something indefinably familiar
+about it, but a moment later it was gone, having turned the corner.
+
+Garrick shook his head. "No," he said half to himself, "it couldn't
+have been. Don't stop, Tom. We mustn't do anything to rouse suspicion,
+now."
+
+We came a moment later to the flat-house through the hall of which we
+had reached the roof that morning and in the excitement of the
+adventure I forgot, for the time, the mysterious figure across the
+street, which had attracted Garrick's attention.
+
+Again, we managed to elude the tenants, though it was harder in the
+early evening than it had been in the daytime. However, we reached the
+roof apparently unobserved. There at least, now that it was dark, we
+felt comparatively safe. No one was likely to disturb us there,
+provided we made no noise.
+
+Unwrapping the smaller, paper-covered package, Garrick quickly attached
+the wires, as he had left them, to another cedar box, like that which
+he had already let down the chimney up the street.
+
+I now had a chance to examine it more closely under the light of
+Garrick's little electric bull's-eye. I was surprised to find that it
+resembled one of the instruments we had used down in the room in the
+Old Tavern.
+
+It was oblong, with a sort of black disc fixed to the top. In the face
+of the box, just as in the other we had used, were two little square
+holes, with sides also of cedar, converging inward, making a pair of
+little quadrangular pyramidal holes which seemed to end in a small
+round black circle in the interior, small end.
+
+I said nothing, but I could see that it was a new form, to all intents
+and purposes, of the detectaphone which we had already used.
+
+The minutes that followed seemed like hours, as we waited, not daring
+to talk lest we should attract attention.
+
+I wondered whether Miss Winslow would come after all, or, if she did,
+whether she would come alone.
+
+"You're early," said a voice, softly, near us, of a sudden.
+
+I leaped to my feet, prepared to meet anything, man or devil. Garrick
+seized me and pulled me down, a strong hint to be quiet. Too surprised
+to remonstrate, since nothing happened, I waited, breathless.
+
+"Yes, but that is better than to be too late. Besides, we've got to
+watch that Garrick," said another voice. "He might be around."
+
+Garrick chuckled.
+
+I had noticed a peculiar metallic ring in the voices.
+
+"Where are they?" I whispered, "On the landing below?"
+
+Garrick laughed outright, not boisterously, but still in a way which to
+me was amazing in its bravado, if the tenants were really so near.
+
+"What's this?" I asked.
+
+"Don't you recognize it?" he answered.
+
+"Yes," I said doubtfully. "I suppose it's like that thing we used down
+at the Old Tavern."
+
+"Only more so," nodded Garrick, aloud, yet careful not to raise his
+voice, as before, so as not to disturb the flat dwellers below us. "A
+vocaphone."
+
+"A vocaphone?" I repeated.
+
+"Yes, the little box that hears and talks," he explained. "It does more
+than the detectaphone. It talks right out, you know, and it works both
+ways."
+
+I began to understand his scheme.
+
+"Those square holes in the face of it are just like the other
+instrument we used," Garrick went on. "They act like little megaphones
+to that receiver inside, you know,--magnify the sound and throw it out
+so that we can listen up here just as well, perhaps better than if we
+were down there in the room with them."
+
+They were down there in the back room, Lucille and a man.
+
+"Have you heard from her?" asked the man's voice, one that I did not
+recognise.
+
+"Non,--but she will come. Voila, but she thought the world of her
+Lucille, she did. She will come."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because--I know."
+
+"Oh, you women!"
+
+"Oh, you men!"
+
+It was evident that the two had a certain regard for each other, a sort
+of wild, animal affection, above, below, beyond, without the law. They
+seemed at least to understand each other.
+
+Who the man was I could not guess. It was a voice that sounded
+familiar, yet I could not place it.
+
+"She will come to see her Lucille," repeated the woman. "But you must
+not be seen."
+
+"No--by no means."
+
+The voice of the man was not that of a foreigner.
+
+"Here, Lucille, take this. Only get her interested--I will do the
+rest--and the money is yours. See--you crush it in the
+handkerchief--so. Be careful--you WILL crush it before you want to use
+it. There. Under her nose, you know. I shall be there in a moment and
+finish the work. That is all you need do--with the handkerchief."
+
+Garrick made a motion, as if to turn a switch in the little vocaphone,
+and rested his finger on it.
+
+"I could make those two jump out of the window with fright and
+surprise," he said to me, still fingering the switch impatiently. "You
+see, it works the other way, too, as I told you, if I choose to throw
+this switch. Suppose I should shout out, and they should hear,
+apparently coming from the fireplace, 'You are discovered. Thank you
+for telling me all your plans, but I am prepared for them already.'
+What do you suppose they would--"
+
+Garrick stopped short.
+
+From the vocaphone had come a sound like the ringing of a bell.
+
+"Sh!" whispered Lucille hoarsely. "Here she comes now. Didn't I tell
+you? Into the next room!"
+
+A moment later came a knock at a door and Lucille's silken rustle as
+she hurried to open it.
+
+"How do you do, Lucille?" we heard a sweetly tremulous voice repeated
+by the faithful little vocaphone.
+
+"Comment vous portez-vous, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Tres bien."
+
+"Mademoiselle honours her poor Lucille beyond her dreams. Will you not
+be seated here in this easy chair?"
+
+"My God!" exclaimed Garrick, starting back from the vocaphone. "She is
+there alone. Mrs. de Lancey is not with her. Oh, if we could only have
+prevented this!"
+
+I had recognized, too, even in the mechanical reproduction, the voice
+of Violet Winslow. It came as a shock. Even though I had been expecting
+some such thing for hours, still the reality meant just as much,
+perhaps more.
+
+Independent, self-reliant, Violet Winslow had gone alone on an act of
+mercy and charity, and it had taken her into a situation full of danger
+with her faithless maid.
+
+At once I was alive to the situation. All the stories of kidnappings
+and white slavery that I had ever read rioted through my head. I felt
+like calling out a warning. Garrick had his finger on the switch.
+
+"Since I have been ill, Mademoiselle, I have been doing some
+embroidery--handkerchiefs--are they not pretty?"
+
+It was coming. There was not time for an instant's delay now.
+
+Garrick quickly depressed the switch.
+
+Clear as a bell his voice rang out.
+
+"Miss Winslow--this is Garrick. Don't let her get that handkerchief
+under your nose. Out of the door--quick. Run! Call for help! I shall be
+with you in a minute!"
+
+A little cry came out of the machine.
+
+There was a moment of startled surprise in the room below. Then
+followed a mocking laugh.
+
+"Ha! Ha! I thought you'd pull something like that, Garrick. I don't
+know where you are, but it makes no difference. There are many ways of
+getting out of this place and at one of them I hare a high-powered car.
+Violet--will go--quietly--" there were sounds of a struggle--"after the
+needle--"
+
+A scream had followed immediately after a sound of shivering glass
+through the vocaphone. It was not Violet Winslow's scream, either.
+
+"Like hell, she'll go," shouted a wildly familiar voice.
+
+There was a gruff oath.
+
+We stayed to hear no more. Garrick had already picked up the heavy
+suitcase and was running down the steps two at a time, with myself hard
+after him.
+
+Without waiting to ring the bell at 99, he dashed the suitcase through
+the plate glass of the front door, reached in and turned the lock. We
+hurried into the back room.
+
+Violet was lying across a divan and bending over her was Warrington.
+
+"She--she's unconscious," he gasped, weak with the exertion of his
+forcible entrance into the place and carrying from the floor to the
+divan the lovely burden which he had found in the room. "They--they
+fled--two of them--the maid, Lucille--and a man I could not see."
+
+Down the street we heard a car dashing away to the sound of its
+changing gears.
+
+"She's--not--dying--is she, Garrick?" he panted bending closer over her.
+
+Garrick bent over, too, felt the fluttering pulse, looked into her
+dilated eyes.
+
+I saw him drop quickly on his knees beside the unconscious girl. He
+tore open the heavy suitcase and a moment later he had taken from it a
+sort of cap, at the end of a rubber tube, and had fastened it carefully
+over her beautiful, but now pale, face.
+
+"Pump!" Garrick muttered to me, quickly showing me what to do.
+
+I did, furiously.
+
+"Where did you come from?" he asked of Warrington. "I thought I saw
+someone across the street who looked like you as we came along, but you
+didn't recognise us and in a moment you were gone. Keep on with that
+pulmotor, Tom. Thank heaven I came prepared with it!"
+
+Eagerly I continued to supply oxygen to the girl on the divan before us.
+
+Garrick had stooped down and picked up both the handkerchief with its
+crushed bits of the kelene tube and near it a shattered glass
+hypodermic.
+
+"Oh, I got thinking about things, up there at Mead's," blurted out
+Warrington, "and I couldn't stand it. I should have gone crazy. While
+the doctor was out I managed to slip away and take a train to the city.
+I knew this address from the letter. I determined to stay around all
+night, if necessary. She got in before I could get to her, but I rang
+the bell and managed to get my foot in the door a minute later. I heard
+the struggle. Where were you? I heard your voice in here but you came
+through the front door."
+
+Garrick did not take time to explain. He was too busy over Violet
+Winslow.
+
+A feeble moan and a flutter of the eyelids told that she was coming out
+from the effects of the anaesthetic and the drug.
+
+"Mortimer--Mortimer!" she moaned, half conscious. "Don't let them take
+me. Oh where is--"
+
+Warrington leaned over, as Garrick removed the cap of the pulmotor, and
+gently raised her head on his arm.
+
+"It's all right--Violet," he whispered, his face close to hers as his
+warm breath fanned her now flushed and fevered cheek.
+
+She opened her eyes and vaguely understood as the mist cleared from her
+brain.
+
+Instinctively she clung to him as he pressed his lips lightly on her
+forehead, in a long passionate caress.
+
+"Get a cab, Tom," said Garrick turning his back suddenly on them and
+placing his hand on my shoulder as he edged me toward the hall. "It's
+too late to pursue that fellow, now. He's slipped through our fingers
+again--confound him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE EAVESDROPPER AGAIN
+
+
+It took our combined efforts now to take care not only of Violet
+Winslow but Warrington himself, who was on the verge of collapse after
+his heroic rescue of her.
+
+I found the cab and in perhaps half an hour Miss Winslow was so far
+recovered that she could be taken to the hotel where she and her aunt
+had engaged rooms for the night.
+
+We drew up at an unfrequented side carriage entrance of the hotel in
+order to avoid the eyes of the curious and Warrington jumped out to
+assist Violet. The strain had told on him and in spite of his desire to
+take care of her, he was glad to let Garrick guide him to the elevator,
+while I took Miss Winslow's arm to assist her.
+
+Our first object had been to get our two invalids where they could have
+quiet and so regain their strength and we rode up in the elevator,
+unannounced, to the suite of Violet and her aunt.
+
+"For heaven's sake--Violet--what's all this?" exclaimed Mrs. de Lancey
+as we four entered the room.
+
+It was the first time we had seen the redoubtable Aunt Emma. She was a
+large woman, well past middle age, and must have been handsome, rather
+than pretty, when she was younger. Everything about Mrs. de Lancey was
+correct, absolutely correct. Her dress looked like a form into which
+she had been poured, every line and curve being just as it should be,
+having "set" as if she had been made of reinforced concrete. In short,
+she was a woman of "force."
+
+An incursion such as we made seemed to pain her correct soul acutely.
+And yet, I fancied that underneath the marble exterior there was a
+heart and that secretly she was both proud and jealous of her dainty
+niece.
+
+Violet sank into a chair and Garrick deposited Warrington, thoroughly
+exhausted, on a couch.
+
+Mrs. de Lancey looked sternly at Warrington, as though in some way he
+might be responsible. I could not help feeling that she had a peculiar
+sense of conscientiousness about him, that she was just a bit more
+strict in gauging him than she would have been if he had not been the
+wealthy young Mr. Warrington whom scores and hundreds of mothers and
+guardians in society would have welcomed for the sake of marriageable
+daughters no matter how black and glaring his faults. I was glad to see
+the way Warrington took it. He seemed to want to rest not on the merits
+of the Warrington blood nor the Warrington gold, but on plain Mortimer
+Warrington himself.
+
+"What HAS happened, Violet?" repeated Mrs. de Lancey.
+
+Violet had, woman-like, in spite of her condition caught the stern look
+that her aunt had shot at Warrington.
+
+"Nothing, now," she replied with a note of defiance. "Lucille--seems to
+have been a--a bad woman--friendly with bad men. Mr. Garrick overheard
+a plot to carry me off and telephoned Mortimer. Fortunately when
+Mortimer went up home to warn us, he found the letter and knew where I
+was going to-night. Ill as he was, he came all the way to the city,
+followed me into that house, saved me--even before Mr. Garrick could
+get there."
+
+Violet's duenna was considerably mollified, though she tried hard not
+to admit it. Garrick seized the opportunity and poured forth a brief
+but connected story of what had happened.
+
+"Well," exclaimed Mrs. de Lancey as he finished, "you children ought to
+be very thankful it isn't worse. Violet, I think I'll call up the house
+physician. You certainly need a doctor. And as for you, Mortimer,--you
+can't go to your apartment. Violet tells me it is all burned out.
+There's an empty suite across the hall. I'll telephone the room clerk
+and engage it for you. And you need a doctor, too. Now--there's going
+to be no more foolishness. You're both going to stay right here in this
+hotel until you're all right. Your mother and I were great friends,
+Mortimer, when we were girls. I--you must let me PLAY mother--for her
+sake."
+
+I had been right about Mrs. de Lancey. Her voice softened and I saw a
+catch in Warrington's throat, too, at the mention of the mother he
+remembered only hazily as a small boy.
+
+Violet and Warrington exchanged glances. I fancied the wireless said,
+"We've won the old lady over, at last," for Warrington continued to
+look at her, while she blushed a bit, then dropped her eyes to hide a
+happy tear.
+
+Mrs. de Lancey was bustling about and I felt sure that in another
+minute every available bellhop in the hotel would be at work. As
+Warrington might have said in his slang, "Action is her middle name."
+
+Garrick rose and bade our two patients a hasty good-night, tactfully
+forgetting to be offended by their lack of interest now in anything
+except each other.
+
+"I doubt if they get much chance to be alone--not with that woman
+mothering them," he smiled to me, drawing me toward the door. "Don't
+let's spoil this chance."
+
+Mrs. de Lancey was busy in the next room, as we stopped to say good-bye
+to her.
+
+"I--I can't talk to you--now, Mr. Garrick," she cried, with a sudden,
+unwonted show of emotion, taking both his hands in hers. "You--you've
+saved my girl--there--there's nothing in this world you could have done
+for me--greater."
+
+"Mrs. de Lancey," replied Garrick, deftly changing the subject,
+"there's just one thing. I'm afraid you are--have been, I mean,--a
+little hard on Mr. Warrington. He isn't what you think--"
+
+"Mr. Garrick," she returned, in a sudden burst of confidence, "I'm
+afraid you, too, misunderstand me. I am not hard on the boy. But,
+remember. I knew his mother and father--intimately. Think of it,
+sir--the responsibilities that rest on that young man. Do you wonder
+that I--I want him better than others? Don't you see--that is why I
+want to hold him up to the highest standard. If Violet--marries him,"
+she seemed to choke over the word,--"they must meet tests that ordinary
+people never know. Don't you understand? I've seen other young men and
+other young women in our circle--they were our babies once--I've seen
+them--go down. But I--I am proud. The Winslows, yes, and the
+Warringtons, they,--they SHAN'T go down--not while I have an ounce of
+strength or a grain of sanity. Nothing--nothing but the best that is in
+us--counts."
+
+I think Mrs. de Lancey and Garrick understood each other perfectly
+after that. He said nothing, in fact did not need to say anything, for
+he looked it.
+
+"I feel that I can safely resign my job as guardian," was all he
+remarked, finally. "Neither of them could be in better hands. Only,
+keep that boy quiet a few days. You can do it better than I can--you
+and Miss Winslow. Trust me to do the rest."
+
+A moment later we were passing out through the hotel lobby, as Garrick
+glanced at his watch.
+
+"A wonderful woman, after all," he mused, in the manner of one who
+revises an estimate formed hastily on someone else's hearsay. "Well,
+it's too late to do anything more to-night. I suppose those papers are
+printed down at the Star. We'll stop and get them in the morning. Did
+you recognise the voice over the vocaphone?"
+
+"I can't say I did," I confessed.
+
+"Perhaps you aren't used to it and things sound too metallic to you.
+But I did. It was the Chief."
+
+"I suspected as much," I replied. "Where do you suppose he went?"
+
+Garrick shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I doubt whether we could find him in New York to-night," he answered,
+slowly. "I think he must feel by this time that the town is getting too
+hot for him."
+
+There was nothing that I could say, and I played the part admirably.
+
+"Come," he decided, as he turned from the hotel in the direction, now,
+of our apartment. "Let's snatch a little rest. We'll need it to-morrow
+for the final spurt."
+
+Tired and exhausted though I was I cannot say that I slept. At least,
+it may have been physical rest that I got. Certainly my mind never
+stopped in its dream play, as the kaleidoscopic stream of events passed
+before me, now in their true form, now in the fantastic shapes that
+constitute one of the most interesting studies of the modern psychology.
+
+I was glad when I heard Garrick stirring in his room in the early
+daylight and heard him call out, "Are you awake, Tom? There are some
+things I want to attend to, while you drop into the Star for those
+papers. I'm afraid you'll have to breakfast alone. Meet me at my office
+as soon as you can."
+
+He was off a few minutes later, as fresh as though he had been on a
+vacation instead of plunged into the fight of his life. I followed him,
+more leisurely, and then rode down in the infernal jam in the subway to
+execute his commission.
+
+Then for an hour or two I fidgeted impatiently in his office waiting
+for him, until finally he came downtown in the racing car which
+Warrington had placed at his disposal.
+
+He said nothing, but it was all the same to me. I had reached that
+nervous state where I craved something doing, as a drug-fiend craves
+the dope that sets his brain on fire again.
+
+I did not ask where he was going, for I knew it intuitively, and it was
+not long before we were again in the part of the city where the
+gangster's garage was located.
+
+We stopped and Garrick beckoned to an urchin, a couple of blocks below
+the garage.
+
+"Do you want to make a dollar, kid?" he asked, jingling four quarters
+enticingly.
+
+The boy's eyes never left the fist that held the tempting bait.
+"Betcherlife," he answered.
+
+"Well, then," instructed Garrick, "take these newspapers. I don't want
+you to sell any of them on the street. But when you come to that garage
+over there--see it?--I want you to yell, 'Extra--special extra! All
+about the great gambling exposure. Warrants out!' Just go in there.
+They'll buy, all right. And if you say a word about anyone giving you
+these papers to sell--I'll chase you and get back this dollar to the
+last cent. You'll go to the Gerry Society--get me?"
+
+The boy did. The bait was as alluring as the threat terrible. After
+Garrick had given him final instructions not to start with the papers
+for at least five minutes, we slipped quietly around the next street
+and came out near the Old Tavern, but not in front of it.
+
+Garrick left the car--I had been riding almost on the mud guard--in
+charge of Warrington's man, who was to appear to be tinkering with the
+engine as an excuse for waiting there, and to keep an eye on anything
+that happened down the street.
+
+We made our way into our room at the Tavern with more than ordinary
+caution, for fear that something might have been discovered.
+Apparently, however, the discovery of one detectaphone had been enough
+to disarm further suspicion, and the garage keeper had not thought it
+necessary to examine the telephone wires to see whether they had been
+tampered with in any way. The wire which he had thought led to the
+warehouse had seemed quite sufficient to explain everything.
+
+In the room which we had used so much, we found the other detectaphone
+working splendidly. Garrick picked it up.
+
+By the sound, evidently, someone in the garage was overhauling a car.
+It may have been that they were fixing one up so that its rightful
+owner would never recognize it, or they may have been getting ready to
+take one out. There was no way of determining.
+
+We could hear one of the workmen helping about the car, a man whom we
+had listened to when the instrument first introduced us to the place.
+The second machine, connected with the telephone, did not transmit
+quite as clearly as the broken detective device had done, but it served
+and, besides, we could both hear through this and could confirm
+anything that might be indistinct to either of us alone.
+
+"The Chief has gone up-state," remarked Garrick, piecing together the
+conversation where we had broken into it.
+
+"We had to hustle to make that boat," remarked a voice which I
+recognised as that of one of the men.
+
+"But she got off all right, didn't she?"
+
+"Sure--he had the tickets and everything, and her baggage had already
+gone aboard."
+
+"That's Lucille, I suppose," supplied Garrick. "No doubt part of her
+bribe for getting Miss Winslow into their power was free passage back
+to France. We can't stop to take up her case, yet."
+
+"My--but the Chief was mad," continued the voice of the man who must
+have been not only a machinist but a chauffeur when occasion demanded.
+"He had a package of letters. I don't know what they were--looked as if
+they might be from some woman."
+
+"What did he do with them?" asked the Boss in a tone that showed that
+he knew something, at least, about them already.
+
+"Why, he was so mad after that fellow Garrick and the other fellow beat
+him out, that when we went down along West Street to the boat with that
+other woman, he tore them up and threw them in the river."
+
+"Did he say anything?"
+
+"Why, I tell you he was mad. He tore 'em up and threw them in the
+river. I think he said there wasn't a damn thing in 'em except a lot of
+mush, anyhow."
+
+An amused smile crossed Garrick's face as he added, parenthetically,
+"Good-bye to Warrington's love letters that they took from his safe."
+
+"At least there has been nothing they managed to get that night of the
+fire that they have been able to use against Warrington," I remarked,
+with satisfaction.
+
+"Listen," cautioned Garrick. "What's that they are saying? Someone has
+told the Boss--he's talking--that they can go over Dillon's head and
+get back all the gambling paraphernalia? Well, I've been there, at the
+raided place, to-day, and it doesn't look so. The stuff has all been
+taken down to headquarters. Ah, so that is the game that is in the
+wind, is it? Get it all back by a court order and open somewhere else.
+Here's our boy."
+
+The improvised newsboy had apparently stuck his head in the door as he
+had been instructed, for we could hear them greet him with a growl,
+until he yelled lustily, "Extry, special extry! All about the big
+gambling exposure! Warrants out! Extry!"
+
+"Hey, you kid," came a voice from the detectaphone, "let's see that
+paper. What is it--the Star? Well, I'll be--! Read that. Someone's
+snitched to the district attorney, I'll bet. That'll make the Chief
+sore, all right--and he's 'way up in the country, too. I don't dare
+wire it to him. No, someone'll have to take a copy of this paper up
+there to him and tip him off. He'll be redheaded if he doesn't know
+about it. He was the last time anything happened. Hurry up. Finish with
+this car. I'll take it myself."
+
+Garrick laughed, almost gleefully.
+
+"The plant has begun to work," he cried. "We'll wait here until just
+before he's ready to start. Three of us around our car on the street
+are too many. He must be getting ready for a long run."
+
+"How much gas is there in this tank?" the gruff voice of the Boss
+demanded. "You dummy--not two gallons! No, you finish what you're
+doing. I'll fill it myself. There isn't any time for fooling now."
+
+There was the steady trickle of the stream of gasoline as he drew it.
+
+"Any extra tires? What! Not a new shoe in the place? Give me a couple
+of the best of those old ones. Never mind. Here are two over by the
+telephone. Say, what the devil is this wire back here--cut in on the
+telephone wire? Well,--rip it out! That's some more of that fellow
+Garrick's work. We got rid of one thing the other night. Well, thank
+heaven, I didn't have any telephone calls to-day. While I'm gone, you
+go over this place thoroughly. God knows how many other things he may
+have put in here."
+
+"Confound it!" muttered Garrick, as a pair of pliers made our second
+detectaphone die with an expiring gasp in the middle of a sentence of
+profanity.
+
+"Come on, Tom," he shouted.
+
+There was no use now in remaining any longer in the room. Gathering up
+the receiving apparatus, Garrick quickly carried it down and tossed it
+into the waiting car around the corner. Then he sent Warrington's man
+to hang around, up the street, and watch what was going on at the
+garage.
+
+Garrick was to drive the car himself, and we were going to leave
+Warrington's man behind. We could tell by the actions of the man as he
+stood down the street that something was taking place at the garage.
+
+We could hear a horn blow, and I knew that the doors had opened and a
+big car had been backed out, slowly. Our own engine was running
+perfectly in spite of the seeming trouble with which we had covered up
+our delay. Garrick jumped in at the wheel, and I followed. The man on
+the corner was signalling that the car was going in the opposite
+direction. We leaped ahead.
+
+As the big car ahead slipped along eastward, we followed at such a
+distance as not to attract attention. It was easy enough to do that,
+but not so easy to avoid getting tied up among the trucks laden with
+foodstuffs of every description which blocked the streets over in this
+part of town.
+
+Where the car ahead was bound, we did not know, but I could see that
+the driver was a stocky fellow, who slouched down into his seat, and
+handled his car almost as if it had been a mere toy. It was, I felt
+positive, the man whom McBirney had reported one night about the
+neighbourhood of Longacre Square in the car which had once been
+Warrington's. This, at least, was a different car, I knew. Now I
+realised the wisdom of allowing this man, whom they called the Boss, to
+go free. Under the influence of Garrick's "plant," he was to lead us to
+the right trail to the Chief.
+
+It was easier now to follow the car since it had worked its way into
+lower Fifth Avenue. On uptown it went. We hung on doggedly in the mass
+of traffic going north at this congested hour.
+
+At last it turned into Forty-seventh Street. It was stopping at the
+ladies' gambling joint, apparently to confirm the news. I had thought
+that the place was closed, until the present trouble blew over, but it
+seemed that there must be someone there. The Boss was evidently well
+known, for he was immediately admitted.
+
+Garrick did not stop. He kept on around the corner to the raided
+poolroom on the next street. Dillon's man, who had been stationed there
+to watch the place, bowed and admitted him.
+
+"I'm going to throw it into him good, this time," remarked Garrick, as
+he entered. "I've been planning this stunt for an emergency--and it's
+here. Now for the big scare!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE SPEAKING ARC
+
+
+"Looks pretty deserted here," remarked Garrick to Dillon's man, who had
+accompanied us from the door into the now deserted gambling den.
+
+"Yes," he grinned, "there's not much use in keeping me here since they
+took all the stuff to headquarters. Now and then one of the old
+rounders who has been out of town and hasn't heard of the raid comes
+in. You should see their faces change when they catch sight of my
+uniform. They never stop to ask questions," he chuckled. "They just
+beat it."
+
+I was wondering how the police regarded Garrick's part in the matter,
+and while Garrick was busy I asked, "Have you seen Inspector Herman
+lately?"
+
+The man laughed.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked, "Is he sore at having the raid pulled off
+over his head?"
+
+"Sore?" the roundsman repeated, "Oh, not a bit, not a bit. He enjoyed
+it. It gave him so much credit," the man added sarcastically,
+"especially after he fell down in getting the evidence against that
+other place around the corner."
+
+"Was that his case, too?" I asked.
+
+"Sure," replied the policeman. "Didn't you know that? That Rena Taylor
+was working under his orders when she was killed. They tell me at
+headquarters he's working overtime on the case and other things
+connected with it. He hasn't said much, but there's someone he is
+after--I know. Mark my words. Herman is always most dangerous when he's
+quiet. The other day he was in here, said there was a man who used to
+be seen here a good deal in the palmy days, who had disappeared. I
+don't know who he was, but Herman asked me to keep a particular lookout
+to see if he came back for any purpose. There's someone he suspects,
+all right."
+
+I wondered why the man told me. He must have seen, by the look on my
+face, that I was thinking that.
+
+"I wouldn't tell it to everybody," he added confidentially, "only, most
+of us don't like Herman any too well. He's always trying to hog it
+all--gets all the credit if we pick up a clew, and,--well, most of us
+wouldn't be exactly disappointed to see Mr. Garrick succeed--that's
+all."
+
+Garrick was calling from the back room to me, and I excused myself,
+while the man went back to his post at the front door. Garrick
+carefully closed the door into the room.
+
+While I had been busy getting the copies of the faked edition of the
+Star, which had so alarmed the owner of the garage and had set things
+moving rapidly, Garrick had also been busy, in another direction. He
+had explored not only the raided gambling den, but the little back yard
+which ran all the way to an extension on the rear of the house in the
+next street, in which was situated the woman's poolroom.
+
+He had explored, also, the caved-in tunnel enough to make absolutely
+certain that his suspicions had been correct in the first place, and
+that it ran to this other joint, from which the gamblers had made their
+escape. That had satisfied him, however, and he had not unearthed the
+remains of the tunnel or taken any action in the matter yet. Something
+else appeared to interest him much more at the present moment.
+
+"I found," he said when he was sure that we were alone, "that the feed
+wire of the arc light that burns all the time in that main room over
+there in the place on Forty-seventh Street--you recall it?--runs in
+through the back of the house."
+
+He was examining two wires which, from his manner, I inferred were
+attached to this feed wire, leading to it from the room in which we now
+were. What the purpose of the connection was I had no idea. Perhaps, I
+thought, it was designed to get new evidence against the place, though
+I could not guess how it was to be done. So far, except for what we had
+seen on our one visit, there had appeared to be no real evidence
+against the place, except, possibly, that which had died with the
+unfortunate Rena Taylor.
+
+"What's that?" I asked, as Garrick produced a package from a closet
+where he had left it, earlier in the day.
+
+I saw, after he had unwrapped it, that it was a very powerful
+microphone and a couple of storage cells. He attached it to the wire
+leading out to the electric light feed wire.
+
+"I had provided it to be used in an emergency," he replied. "I think
+the time has come sooner than I anticipated."
+
+I watched him curiously, wondering what it would be that would come
+next.
+
+There followed a most amazing series of groanings and mutterings from
+Garrick. I could not imagine what he was up to. The whole proceeding
+seemed so insane that, for the moment, it left me nonplussed and
+speechless.
+
+Garrick caught the puzzled look on my face.
+
+"What's the matter?" he laughed heartily, cutting out the microphone
+momentarily and seeming to enjoy the joke to the utmost.
+
+"Would you prefer to be sent to a State or a private institution?" I
+rasped, testily. "What insanity is all this? It sounds like the
+fee-faw-fum and mummery of a voodoo man."
+
+"Come, now, Tom," he rejoined, argumentatively. "You know as well as I
+do what sort of people those gamblers are--superstitious as the deuce.
+I did this once before to-day. This is a good time to do it again,
+before they persuade themselves that there is nothing in that story
+which we printed in the Star. That fellow is in there now, probably in
+that room where we were, and it is possible that they may reassure him
+and settle his fears. Now, just suppose a murder had been committed in
+a room, and you knew it, and heard groanings and mutterings--from
+nowhere, just in the air, about you, overhead--what would you do, if
+you were inclined to be superstitious?"
+
+Before I could answer, he had resumed the antics which before I had
+found so inexplicable.
+
+"Cut out and run, I suppose," I replied. "But what has that to do with
+the case? The groanings are here--not there. You haven't been able to
+get in over there to attach anything, have you? What do you mean?"
+
+"No," he admitted, "but did you ever hear what you could do with a
+microphone, a rheostat, and a small transformer coil if you attached
+them properly to a direct-current electric lighting circuit? No? Well,
+an amateur with a little knowledge of electricity could do it. The
+thing is easily constructed, and the result is a most complicated
+matter."
+
+"Well?" I queried, endeavouring to follow him.
+
+"The electric arc," he continued, "isn't always just a silent electric
+light. You know that. You've heard them make noises. Under the right
+conditions such a light can be made to talk--the 'speaking arc,' as
+Professor Duddell calls it. In other words, an arc light can be made to
+act as a telephone receiver."
+
+I could hardly believe the thing possible, but Garrick went on
+explaining.
+
+"You might call it the arcophone, I suppose. The scientific fact of the
+matter is that the arc is sensitive to very small variations of the
+current. These variations may run over a wide range of frequency. That
+suggested to Duddell that a direct-current arc might be used as a
+telephone receiver. All that you need is to add a microphone current to
+the main arc current. The arc reproduces sounds and speech distinctly,
+loud enough, even, to be heard several feet away from the light."
+
+He had cut out the microphone again while he was talking to me. He
+switched it in again with the words, "Now, get ready, Tom. Just one
+more; then we must hurry around in that car of ours and watch the fun."
+
+This time he was talking into the microphone. In a most solemn,
+sepulchral voice he repeated, "Let the slayer of Rena Taylor beware.
+She will be avenged! Beware! It will be a life for a life!"
+
+Three times he repeated it, to make sure that it would carry. Then,
+grabbing up his hat and coat, he dashed out of the room, past the
+surprised policeman at the door, and took the steps in front of the
+house almost at a bound.
+
+We hardly had time to enter our own car and reach the corner of
+Forty-seventh Street, when the big black automobile which we had
+followed uptown shot by almost before the traffic man at the crossing
+could signal a clear road.
+
+"We must hang onto him!" cried Garrick, turning to follow. "Did you
+catch a glimpse of his face? It's our man, the go-between, the keeper
+of the garage whom they call the Boss. He was as pale as if he had seen
+a ghost. I guess he did think he heard one. Between the news-paper fake
+and the speaking arc, I think we've got him going. There he is."
+
+It was an exciting ride, for the man ahead was almost reckless, though
+he seemed to know instinctively still just when to put on bursts of
+speed and when to slow down to escape being arrested for speeding. We
+hung on, managing to keep something less than a couple of blocks behind
+him. It was evident that he was making for the ferry uptown across the
+river to New Jersey, and, taking advantage of this knowledge, Garrick
+was able to drop back a little, and approach the ferry by going down a
+different street so that there was no hint yet that we were following
+him.
+
+By judicious jockeying we succeeded in getting on the boat on the
+opposite side from the car we were following, and in such a way that we
+could get off as soon as he could. We managed to cross the ferry, and,
+in the general scramble that attends the landing, to negotiate the hill
+on the other side of the river without attracting the attention of the
+man in the other car. His one idea seemed to be speed, and he had no
+suspicion, apparently, that in his flight he was being followed.
+
+As we bowled along, forced by circumstances to take the fellow's dust,
+Garrick would quietly chuckle now and then to himself.
+
+"Fancy what he must have thought," he chortled. "First the newspaper
+that sent him scurrying up to the gambling place for more news, or to
+spread the alarm, and then, while they were sitting about, perhaps
+while someone was talking about the strange voices they had already
+heard this morning, suddenly the voice from nowhere. Can you blame them
+if they thought it was a warning from the grave?"
+
+Whatever actually had happened in the gambling house, the practical
+effect was all that even Garrick could have desired. Hour after hour,
+we hung to that car ahead, leaving behind the cities, and passing along
+the regular road through town after town.
+
+Sometimes the road was well oiled, and we would have to drop back a bit
+to escape too close observation. Then we would strike a stretch where
+it was dry. The clouds of dust served to hide us. On we went until it
+was apparent that the man was now headed at least in the direction of
+Tuxedo.
+
+We now passed the boundary between New York state and New Jersey and
+soon after that came to the house of Dr. Mead where Warrington had been
+convalescing until Garrick's warning had brought him, still half ill,
+down to the city to protect Violet Winslow. In fact, the road seemed
+replete with interesting reminiscences of the case, for a few miles
+back was the spot where Rena Taylor's body had been found, as well as
+the garage whence had come the rumour of the blood-stained car. There
+was no chance to stop and tell the surprised Dr. Mead just what had
+become of his patient and we had to trust that Warrington would explain
+his sudden disappearance himself. In fact, Garrick scarcely looked to
+either the right or left, so intent was he on not missing for an
+instant the car that was leading us in this long chase.
+
+On we sped, around the bend where Warrington had been held up. It was a
+nasty curve, even in the daytime.
+
+"I think this fellow ahead noticed the place," gritted Garrick, leaning
+forward. "He seemed to slow up a bit as he turned. I hope he didn't
+notice us as he turned his head back slightly."
+
+It made no difference, if he did, for, the curve passed, he was
+evidently feeding the gas faster than ever. We turned the curve also,
+the forward car something more than a quarter of a mile ahead of us.
+
+"We must take a chance and close up on him," said Garrick, as he, too,
+accelerated his speed, not a difficult thing to do with the almost
+perfect racer of Warrington's. "He may turn off at a crossroad at any
+time, now."
+
+Still our man kept on, bowling northward along the fine state road that
+led to one of the richest parts of the country.
+
+He came to the attractive entrance to Tuxedo Park. Almost, I had
+expected him to turn in. At least I should not have been surprised if
+he had done so.
+
+However, he kept on northward, past the entrance to the Park. We hung
+doggedly on.
+
+Where was he going? I wondered whether Garrick might have been wrong,
+after all. Half a mile lengthened into a mile. Still he was speeding on.
+
+But Garrick had guessed right. Sure enough, at a cross road, the other
+car slowed down, then quickly swung around, off the main road.
+
+"What are you going to do?" I asked Garrick quickly. "If we turn also,
+that will be too raw. Surely he'll notice that."
+
+"Going to stop," cried Garrick, taking in the situation instantly.
+"Come on, Tom, jump out. We'll fake a little tire trouble, in case he
+should look around and see us stopping here. I'll keep the engine
+running."
+
+We went back and stood ostentatiously by the rear wheel. Garrick bent
+over it, keeping his eye fixed on the other car, now perhaps half a
+mile along on the narrow crossroad.
+
+It neared the top of a hill on the other side of the valley across
+which the road wound like a thin brown line, then dipped down over the
+crest and was lost on the other side.
+
+Garrick leaped back into our car and I followed. He turned the bend
+almost on two wheels, and let her out as we swept down a short hill and
+then took the gentle incline on high speed, eating up the distance as
+though it had been inches instead of nearly a mile.
+
+A short distance from the top of the hill, Garrick applied the brake,
+just in time so that the top of our car would not be visible to one who
+had passed on down the next incline into the valley beyond.
+
+"Let us walk up the rest of the way," he said quickly, "and see what is
+on the other side of this hill."
+
+We did so cautiously. Far down below us we could see the car which we
+had been trailing all the way up from the city, threading its way along
+the country road. We watched it, and as we did so, it slowed up and
+turned out, running up a sort of lane that led to what looked like a
+trim little country estate.
+
+The car had stopped at an unpretentious house at the end of the lane.
+The driver got out and walked up to the back door, which seemed to be
+stealthily opened to admit him.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Garrick. "At last we are on a hot trail!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE SIEGE OF THE BANDITS
+
+
+As we watched from the top of the hill, I wondered what Garrick's next
+move was to be. Surely he would not attempt to investigate the place
+yet. In fact, there seemed to be nothing that could be done now, as
+long as it was day-light, for any movement in this half-open country
+would have been viewed with suspicion by the occupants of the little
+house in the valley, whoever they might be.
+
+We could not help viewing the place with a sort of awe. What secrets
+did the cottage hide, nestled down there in the valley among these
+green hills? Often I had heard that the gunmen of New York, when hard
+pressed, sought refuge in the country districts and mountains within a
+few miles of the city. There was something incongruous about it. Nature
+seemed so perfectly peaceful here that it was the very antithesis of
+those sections of the city in which he had found the gunman, whoever he
+was, indulging in practically every crime and vice of decadent
+civilization.
+
+"So--the one they call the Boss has led up to the refuge of the Chief,
+the scientific gunman, at last," Garrick exclaimed, with marked
+satisfaction, as we turned and walked slowly back again to our car.
+
+"Yes," I assented, "and now that we have found them--what are we to do
+with them?"
+
+"It is still early in the day," Garrick remarked, looking at his watch.
+"They suspect no trouble up here. Here they evidently feel safe. No
+doubt they think we are still hunting for them fruitlessly in New York.
+I think we can afford to leave them here for a few hours. At any rate,
+I feel that I must return to the city. I must see Dillon, and then drop
+into my office, if we are to accomplish anything against them."
+
+He had turned the car around and we made our way back to the main road,
+and then southward again, taking up in earnest the long return trip to
+the city and covering the distance in Warrington's racer in a much
+shorter time, now that we had not to follow another car and keep under
+cover. It was late in the afternoon, however, when we arrived and
+Garrick went directly to police headquarters where he held a hasty
+conference with Dillon.
+
+Dillon was even more excited than we were when he learned how far we
+had gone in tracing out the scant clews that we had uncovered. As
+Garrick unfolded his plan, the commissioner immediately began to make
+arrangements to accompany us out into the country that night.
+
+I did not hear all that was said, as Garrick and Dillon laid out their
+plans, but I could see that they were in perfect accord.
+
+"Very well," I overheard Garrick, as we parted. "I shall go out in the
+car again. You will be up on the train?"
+
+"Yes--on the seven-fifty," returned Dillon. "You needn't worry about my
+end of it. I'll be there with the goods--just the thing that you want.
+I have it."
+
+"Fine," exclaimed Garrick, "I have to make a call at the office. I'll
+start as soon as I can, and try to beat you out."
+
+They parted in good humour, for Dillon's passion for adventure was now
+thoroughly aroused and I doubt if we could have driven him off with a
+club, figuratively speaking.
+
+At the office Garrick tarried only long enough to load the car with
+some paraphernalia which he had there, much of which, I knew, he had
+brought back with him after his study of police methods abroad. There
+were three coats of a peculiar texture, which he took from a wardrobe,
+a huge arrangement which looked like a reflector, a little thing that
+looked merely like the mouthpiece of a telephone transmitter, and a
+large heavy package which might have been anything from a field gun to
+a battering ram.
+
+It was twilight when we arrived at the nearest railroad station to the
+little cottage in the valley, after another run up into the country in
+the car. Dillon who had come up by train to meet us, according to the
+arrangement with Garrick, was already waiting, and with him was one of
+the most trustworthy and experienced of the police department
+chauffeurs. Garrick looked about at the few loungers curiously, but
+there did not seem to be any of them who took any suspicious interest
+in new arrivals.
+
+We four managed to crowd into a car built only for two, and Garrick
+started off. A few minutes later we arrived at the top of the hill from
+which we had already viewed the mysterious house earlier in the day. It
+was now quite dark. We had met no one since turning off into the
+crossroad, and could hear no sound except the continuous music of the
+night insects.
+
+Just before crossing the brow of the last hill, we halted and Garrick
+turned out all the lights on the car. He was risking nothing that might
+lead to discovery yet. With the engine muffled down, we coasted slowly
+down the other side of the hill into the shadowy valley. There was no
+moon yet and we had to move cautiously, for there was only the faint
+light of the sky and stars to guide us.
+
+What was the secret of that unpretentious little house below us? We
+peered out in the gathering blackness eagerly in the direction where we
+knew it must be, nestled among the trees. Whoever it sheltered was
+still there, and we could locate the place by a single gleam that came
+from an upper window. Whether there were lights below, we could not
+tell. If there were they must have been effectively concealed by blinds
+and shades.
+
+"We'll stop here," announced Garrick at last when we had reached a
+point on the road a few hundred yards from the house.
+
+He ran the car carefully off the road and into a little clearing in a
+clump of dark trees. We got out and pushed stealthily forward through
+the underbrush to the edge of the woods. There, on the slope, just a
+little way below us, stood the house of mystery.
+
+Garrick and Dillon were busily conferring in an undertone, as I helped
+them bring the packages one after another from the car to the edge of
+the woods. Garrick had slipped the little telephone mouthpiece into his
+pocket, and was carrying the huge reflector carefully, so that it might
+not be injured in the darkness. I had the heavy coats of the peculiar
+texture over my arm, while Dillon and his man struggled along over the
+uncertain pathway, carrying between them the heavy, long, cylindrical
+package, which must have weighed some sixty pounds or so.
+
+Garrick had selected as the site of our operations a corner of the
+grove where a very large tree raised itself as a landmark, silhouetted
+in black against a dark sky. We deposited the stuff there as he
+directed.
+
+"Now, Jim," ordered Dillon, walking back to the car with his man, "I
+want you to take the car and go back along this road until you reach
+the top of the hill."
+
+I could not hear the rest of the order, but it seemed that he was to
+meet someone who had preceded us on foot from the railway station and
+who must be about due to arrive. I did not know who or what it might
+be, but even the thought of someone else made me feel safer, for in so
+ticklish a piece of business as this, in dealing with at least a pair
+of desperate men such as we knew them to be in the ominously quiet
+little house, a second and even a third line of re-enforcements was
+not, I felt, amiss.
+
+Garrick in the meantime had set to work putting into position the huge
+reflector. At first I thought it might be some method of throwing a
+powerful light on the house. But on closer examination I saw that it
+could not be a light. The reflector seemed to have been constructed so
+that in the focus was a peculiar coil of something, and to the ends of
+this coil, Garrick attached two wires which he fastened to an
+instrument, cylindrical, with a broadened end, like a telephone
+receiver.
+
+Dillon, who had returned by this time, after sending his chauffeur back
+on his errand, appeared very much interested in what Garrick was doing.
+
+"Now, Tom," said Garrick, "while I am fixing this thing, I wish you
+would help me by undoing that large package carefully."
+
+While I was thus engaged, he continued talking with Dillon in a low
+voice, evidently explaining to him the use to which he wished the large
+reflector put.
+
+I was working quickly to undo the large package, and as the wrappings
+finally came off, I could see that it was some bulky instrument that
+looked like a huge gun, or almost a mortar. It had a sort of barrel
+that might have been, say, forty inches in length, and where the
+breechlock should have been on an ordinary gun was a great
+hemispherical cavity. There was also a peculiar arrangement of springs
+and wheels in the butt.
+
+"The coats?" he asked, as he took from the wrappings of the package
+several rather fragile looking tubes.
+
+I had laid them down near us and handed them over to him. They were
+quite heavy, and had a rough feel.
+
+"So-called bullet-proof cloth," explained Garrick. "At close range,
+quite powerful lunges of a dagger or knife recoil from it, and at a
+distance ordinary bullets rebound from it, flattened. We'll try it,
+anyway. It will do no harm, and it may do good. Now we are ready,
+Dillon."
+
+"Wait just a minute," cautioned Dillon. "Let me see first whether that
+chauffeur has returned. He can run that engine so quietly that I myself
+can't hear it."
+
+He had disappeared into the darkness toward the road, where he had
+despatched the car a few minutes before. Evidently the chauffeur had
+been successful in his mission, for Dillon was back directly with a
+hasty, "Yes, all right. He's backing the car around so that he can run
+it out on the road instantly in either direction. He'll be here in a
+moment."
+
+Garrick had in the meantime been roughly sketching on the back of an
+old envelope taken from his pocket. Evidently he had been estimating
+the distance of the house from the tree back of which he stood, and
+worked with the light of a shaded pocket flashlight.
+
+"Ready, then," he cried, jumping up and advancing to the peculiar
+instrument which I had unwrapped. He was in his element now. After all
+the weary hours of watching and preparation, here was action at last,
+and Garrick went to it like a starved man at food.
+
+First he elevated the clumsy looking instrument pointed in the general
+direction of the house. He had fixed the angle at approximately that
+which he had hastily figured out on the envelope. Then he took a
+cylinder about twelve inches long, and almost half as much in diameter,
+a huge thing, constructed, it seemed, of a substance that was almost as
+brittle as an eggshell. Into the large hemispherical cavity in the
+breech of the gun he shoved it. He took another quick look at the light
+gleaming from the house in the darkness ahead of us.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, indicating the "gun."
+
+"This is what is known as the Mathiot gun," he explained as he brought
+it into action, "invented by a French scientist for the purpose,
+expressly, of giving the police a weapon to use against the automobile
+bandits who entrench themselves, when cornered, in houses and garages,
+as they have done in the outskirts of Paris, and as some anarchists did
+once in a house in London."
+
+"What does it do?" asked Dillon, who had taken a great interest in the
+thing.
+
+"It throws a bomb which emits suffocating gases without risking the
+lives of the police," answered Garrick. "In spite of the fragility of
+the bombs that I have here, it has been found that they will penetrate
+a wooden door or even a thin brick partition before the fuse explodes
+them. One bomb will render a room three hundred feet off uninhabitable
+in thirty seconds. Now--watch!"
+
+He had exploded the gun by hand, striking the flat head of a hammer
+against the fulminating cap. The gun gave a bark. A low, whistling
+noise and a crash followed.
+
+"Too short," muttered Garrick, elevating the angle of the gun a trifle.
+
+Quite evidently someone was moving in the house. There was a shadow, as
+of someone passing between the light in the upper story and the window
+on our side of the house.
+
+Again the gun barked, and another bomb went hurtling through the air.
+This time it hit the house squarely. Another followed in rapid
+succession, and the crash of glass told that it had struck a window.
+Garrick was sending them now as fast as he could. They had taken
+effect, too, for the light was out, whether extinguished by gases or by
+the hand of someone who realized that it afforded an excellent mark to
+shoot at. Still, it made no difference, now, for we had the range.
+
+"The house must be full of the stifling gases," panted Garrick, as he
+stopped to wipe the perspiration from his face, after his rapid work,
+clad in the heavy coat. "No man could stand up against that. I wonder
+how our friend of the garage likes it, Tom? It is some of his own
+medicine--the Chief, I mean. He tried it on us on a small scale very
+successfully that night with his stupefying gun."
+
+"I hope one of them hit him," ground out Dillon, who had no relish even
+for the recollection of that night. "What next? Do you have to wait
+until the gases clear away before we can make a break and go in there?"
+
+Garrick had anticipated the question. Already he was buttoning up his
+long coat. We did the same, mechanically.
+
+"No, Dillon. You and Jim stay here," ordered Garrick. "You will get the
+signal from us what to do next. Tom, come on."
+
+He had already dashed ahead into the darkness, and I followed blindly,
+stumbling over a ploughed field, then a fence over which we climbed
+quickly, and found ourselves in the enclosure where was the house. I
+had no idea what we were running up against, but a dog which had been
+chained in the rear broke away from his fastening at sight of us, and
+ran at us with a lusty and savage growl. Garrick planted a shot
+squarely in his head.
+
+Without wasting time on any formalities, such as ringing the bell, we
+kicked and battered in the back door. We paused a moment, not from fear
+but because the odor inside was terrific. No one could have stayed in
+that house and retained his senses. One by one, Garrick flung open the
+windows, and we were forced to stick our heads out every few minutes in
+order to keep our own breath.
+
+From one room to another we proceeded, without finding anyone. Then we
+mounted to the second floor. The odour was worse there, but still we
+found no one.
+
+The light on the third floor had been extinguished, as I have said. We
+made our way toward the corner where it had been. Room after room we
+entered, but still found no one. At last we came to a door that was
+locked. Together we wrenched it open.
+
+There was surely nothing for us to fear in this room, for a bomb had
+penetrated it, and had filled it completely. As we rushed in, Garrick
+saw a figure sprawled on the floor, near the bed, in the corner.
+
+"Quick, Tom!" he shouted, "Open that other window. I'll attend to this
+man. He's groggy, anyhow."
+
+Garrick had dropped down on his knees and had deftly slipped a pair of
+handcuffs on the unresisting wrists of the man. Then he staggered to my
+side at the open window, for air.
+
+"Heavens--this is awful!" he gasped and sputtered. "I wonder where they
+all went?"
+
+"Who is this fellow?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know yet. I couldn't see."
+
+A moment later, together, we had dragged the unconscious man to the
+window with us, while I fanned him with my hat and Garrick was wetting
+his face with water from a pitcher of ice on the table.
+
+"Good Lord!" Garrick exclaimed suddenly, as in the fitful light he bent
+over the figure. "Do you see who it is?"
+
+I bent down too and peered more closely.
+
+It was Angus Forbes.
+
+Strange to say, here was the young gambler whom we had seen at the
+gambling joint before it was raided, the long-lost and long-sought
+Forbes who had disappeared after the raid, and from whom no one had yet
+heard a word.
+
+I did not know his story, but I knew enough to be sure that he had been
+in love with Violet himself, and, although Warrington had once come to
+his rescue and settled thousands of dollars of his gambling debts, was
+sore at Warrington for closing the gambling joint where he hoped
+ultimately to recoup his losses. More than that, he was probably
+equally sore at Warrington for winning the favour of the girl whose
+fortune might have settled his own debts, if he had had a free field to
+court her.
+
+Why was Forbes here, I asked myself. The fumes of the bombs from the
+Mathiot gun may have got into my head but, at least as far as I could
+see, they had not made my mind any the less active. I felt that his
+presence here, apparently as one of the gang, explained many things.
+
+Who, I reasoned, would have been more eager to "get" Warrington at any
+cost than he? I never had any love for the fellow, who had allowed his
+faults and his temptations so far to get the upper hand of him. I had
+felt a sort of pity at first, but the incident of the cancelled markers
+in the gambling joint and now the discovery of him here had changed
+that original feeling into one that was purely of disgust.
+
+These thoughts were coursing through my fevered brain while Garrick was
+working hard to bring him around.
+
+Suddenly a mocking voice came from the hall.
+
+"Yes, it's Forbes, all right, and much good may it do you to have him!"
+
+The door to the room, which opened outward, banged shut. The lock had
+been broken by us in forcing an entrance. There must have been two of
+them out in the hall, for we heard the noise and scraping of feet, as
+they piled up heavy furniture against the door, dragging it from the
+next room before we could do anything. Piece after piece was wedged in
+between our door and the opposite wall.
+
+We could hear them taunt us as they worked, and I thought I recognised
+at once the voice of the stocky keeper of the garage, the Boss, whom I
+had heard so often before over our detectaphone. The other voice, which
+seemed to me to be disguised, I found somewhat familiar, yet I could
+not place it. It must have been, I thought, that of the man whom we had
+come to know and fear under the appellation of the Chief.
+
+We could hear them laugh, now, as they cursed us and wished us luck
+with our capture. It was galling.
+
+Evidently, too, they had not much use for Forbes, and, indeed, at such
+a crisis I do not think he would have been much more than an additional
+piece of animated impedimenta. Dissipation had not added anything to
+the physical prowess of Forbes.
+
+With a parting volley of profanity, they stamped down the narrow stairs
+to the ground floor, and a few seconds afterward we could hear them
+back of the house, working over the machine which we had followed up
+from New York earlier in the day. Evidently there were several machines
+in the barn which served them as garage, but this was the handiest.
+
+They had cranked it up, and were debating which way they should go.
+
+"The shots came from the direction of the main road," the Boss said.
+"We had better go in the opposite direction. There may be more of them
+coming. Hurry up!"
+
+At least, it seemed, there had been only three of them in this refuge
+which they had sought up in the hills and valleys of the Ramapos. Of
+that we could now be reasonably certain. One of them we had
+captured--and had ourselves been captured into the bargain.
+
+I stuck my head out of the window to look at the other two down below,
+only to feel myself dragged unceremoniously back by Garrick.
+
+"What's the use of taking that risk, Tom?" he expostulated. "One shot
+from them and you would be a dead one."
+
+Fortunately they had not seen me, so intent were they on getting away.
+They had now seated themselves in the car and, as Garrick had
+suspected, could not resist delivering a parting shot at us, emptying
+the contents of an automatic blindly up at our window. Garrick and I
+were, as it happened, busy on the opposite side of the room.
+
+All thought of Forbes was dropped for the present. Garrick said not a
+word but continued at work in the corner of the room by the other
+broken window.
+
+"Either they must have succeeded in getting out after the first shot
+and so escaped the fumes," muttered Garrick finally, "and hid in the
+stable, or, perhaps, they were out there at work anyhow. Still that
+makes little difference now. They must have seen us go in, have
+followed us quietly, and then caught us here."
+
+With a hasty final imprecation, the car below started forward with a
+jerk and was swallowed up in the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE MAN HUNT
+
+
+Here we were, locked in a little room on the top floor of the
+mysterious house. I looked out of both windows. There was no way to
+climb down and it was too far to jump, especially in the uncertain
+darkness. I threw myself at the door. It had been effectually braced by
+our captors.
+
+Garrick, in the meantime, had lighted the light again, and placed it by
+the window.
+
+Forbes, now partly recovered, was rambling along, and Garrick, with one
+eye on him and the other on something which he was working over in the
+light, was too busy to pay much attention to my futile efforts to find
+a means of escape.
+
+At first we could not make out what it was that Forbes was trying to
+tell us, but soon, as the fresh air in the room revived him, his voice
+became stronger. Apparently he recognised us and was trying to offer an
+explanation of his presence here.
+
+"He kidnapped me--brought me here," Forbes was muttering. "Three
+days--I've been shut up in this room."
+
+"Who brought you here?" I demanded sharply.
+
+"I don't know his name--man at the gambling place--after the raid--said
+he'd take me in his car somewhere--from the other place back of
+it--last I remember--must have drugged me--woke up here--all I know."
+
+"You've been a prisoner, then?" I queried.
+
+"Yes," he murmured.
+
+"A likely story," I remarked, looking questioningly at Garrick who had
+been listening but had not ceased his own work, whatever it was. "What
+are you going to do, Guy? We can't stay here and waste time over such
+talk as this while they are escaping. They must be almost to the road
+now, and turning down in the opposite direction from Dillon and his
+man."
+
+Garrick said nothing. Either he was too busy solving our present
+troubles or he was, like myself, not impressed by Forbes' incoherent
+story. He continued to adjust the little instrument which I had seen
+him draw from his pocket and now recognised as the thing which looked
+like a telephone transmitter. Only, the back of it seemed to gleam with
+a curious brightness under the rays of the light, as he handled it.
+
+"They have somehow contrived to escape the effect of the bombs," he was
+saying, "and have surprised us in the room on the top floor where the
+light is. We are up here with a young fellow named Forbes, whom we have
+captured. He's the young man that I saw several times at the gambling
+joint and was at dinner with Warrington the night when the car was
+stolen. He was pretty badly overcome by the fumes, but I've brought him
+around. He either doesn't know much or won't tell what he knows. That
+doesn't make any difference now, though. They have escaped in a car.
+They are leaving by the road. Wait. I'll see whether they have reached
+it yet. No, it's too dark to see and they have no light on the car. But
+they must have turned. They said they were going in the direction
+opposite from you."
+
+"Well?" I asked, mystified. "What of it? I know all that, already."
+
+"But Dillon doesn't," replied Garrick, in great excitement now. "I knew
+that we should have to have some way of communicating with him
+instantly if this fellow proved to be as resourceful as I believed him
+to be. So I thought of the radiophone or photophone of Dr. Alexander
+Graham Bell. I have really been telephoning on a beam of light."
+
+"Telephoning on a beam of light?" I repeated incredulously.
+
+"Yes," he explained, feeling now at liberty to talk since he had
+delivered his call for help. "You see, I talk into this transmitter.
+The simplest transmitter for this purpose is a plane mirror of flexible
+material, silvered mica or microscope glass. Against the back of this
+mirror my voice is directed. In the carbon transmitter of the telephone
+a variable electrical resistance is produced by the pressure on the
+diaphragm, based on the fact that carbon is not as good a conductor of
+electricity under pressure as when not. Here, the mouthpiece is just a
+shell supporting a thin metal diaphragm to which the mirror on the back
+is attached, an apparatus for transforming the air vibrations produced
+by the voice into light vibrations of the projected beam, which is
+reflected from this light here in the room. The light reflected is thus
+thrown into vibrations corresponding to those in the diaphragm."
+
+"And then?" I asked impatiently.
+
+"That varying beam of light shoots out of this room, and is caught by
+the huge reflector which you saw me set up at the foot of that tall
+tree which you can just see against the dark sky over there. That
+parabolic mirror gathers in the scattered rays, focusses them on the
+selenium cell which you saw in the middle of the reflector, and that
+causes the cell to vary the amount of electric current passing through
+it from a battery of storage cells. It is connected with a very good
+telephone receiver. Every change in the beam of light due to the
+vibrations of my voice is caught by that receiving mirror, and the
+result is that the diaphragm in the receiver over there which Dillon is
+holding to his ear responds. The thing is good over several hundred
+yards, perhaps miles, sometimes. Only, I wish it would work both ways.
+I would like to feel sure that Dillon gets me."
+
+I looked at the simple little instrument with a sort of reverence, for
+on it depended the momentous question of whether we should be released
+in time to pursue the two who were escaping in the automobile.
+
+"You'll have to hurry," continued Garrick, speaking into his
+transmitter. "Give the signal. Get the car ready. Anything, so long as
+it is action. Use your own judgment."
+
+There he was, flashing a message out of our prison by an invisible ray
+that shot across the Cimmerian darkness to the point where we knew that
+our friends were waiting anxiously. I could scarcely believe it. But
+Garrick had the utmost faith in the ability of the radiophone to make
+good.
+
+"They MUST have started by this time," he cried, craning his neck out
+of the window and looking in every direction.
+
+Forbes was still rambling along, but Garrick was not paying any
+attention to him. Instead, he began rummaging the room for possible
+evidence, more for something to do than because he hoped to find
+anything, while we were waiting anxiously for something to happen.
+
+An exclamation from Garrick, however, brought me to his side. Tucked
+away in a bureau drawer under some soiled linen that plainly belonged
+to Forbes, he drew out what looked like a single blue-steel tube about
+three inches long. At its base was a hard-rubber cap, which fitted
+snugly into the palm of the hand as he held it. His first and middle
+fingers encircled the barrel, over a steel ring. A pull downward and
+the thing gave a click.
+
+"Good that it wasn't loaded," Garrick remarked. "I knew what the thing
+was, all right, but I didn't think the spring was as delicate as all
+that. It is a new and terrible weapon of destruction of human life, one
+that can be carried by the thug or the burglar and no one be the wiser,
+unless he has occasion to use it. It is a gun that can be concealed in
+the palm of the hand. A pull downward on that spring discharges a
+thirty-two calibre, centre fire cartridge. The most dangerous feature
+of it is that the gun can be carried in an upper vest pocket as a
+fountain pen, or in a trousers pocket as a penknife."
+
+I looked with added suspicion now, if not a sort of respect, on the
+young man who was tossing, half conscious, on the bed. Was he, after
+all, not the simple, gullible Forbes, but a real secret master of crime?
+
+Garrick, keen though he had been over the discovery, was in reality
+much more interested just now in the result of his radiophone message.
+What would be the outcome?
+
+I had been startled to see that almost instantly after his second call
+over the radiophone there seemed to rise on all sides of us lights and
+the low baying of dogs.
+
+"What's all that?" I asked Garrick.
+
+"Dillon had a dozen or so police dogs shipped up here quietly,"
+answered Garrick, now straining his eyes and ears eagerly. "He started
+them out each in charge of an officer as soon as they arrived. I hope
+they had time to get around in that other direction and close in. That
+was what he sent the chauffeur back to see about, to make sure that
+they were placed by the man who is the trainer of the pack."
+
+"What kind of dogs are they?"
+
+"Some Airedales, but mostly Belgian sheep dogs. There is one in the
+pack, Cherry, who has a wonderful reputation. A great deal depends,
+now, on our dog-detectives."
+
+"But," I objected, "what good will they be? Our men are in an
+automobile."
+
+"We thought of that," replied Garrick confidently. "Here they are, at
+last," he cried, as a car swung up the lane from the road and stopped
+with a rush under our window. He leaned out and shouted, "Dillon--up
+here--quick!"
+
+It was Dillon and his chauffeur, Jim. A moment later there was a
+tremendous shifting and pulling of heavy pieces of furniture in the
+hall, and, as the door swung open, the honest face of the commissioner
+appeared, inquiring anxiously if we were all right.
+
+"Yes, all right," assured Garrick. "Come on, now. There isn't a minute
+to lose. Send Jim up here to take charge of Forbes. I'll drive the car
+myself."
+
+Garrick accomplished in seconds what it takes minutes to tell. The
+chauffeur had already turned the car around and it was ready to start.
+We jumped in, leaving him to go upstairs and keep the manacled Forbes
+safely.
+
+We gained the road and sped along, our lights now lighted and showing
+us plainly what was ahead. The dust-laden air told us that we were
+right as we turned into the narrow crossroad. I wondered how we were
+ever going to overtake them after they had such a start, at night, too,
+over roads which were presumably familiar to them.
+
+"Drive carefully," shouted Dillon soon, "it must be along here,
+somewhere, Garrick."
+
+A moment before we had been almost literally eating the dust the car
+ahead had raised. Garrick slowed down as we approached a bend in the
+road.
+
+There, almost directly in our path, stood a car, turned half across the
+road and jammed up into a fence. I could scarcely believe it. It was
+the bandit's car--deserted!
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Dillon as Garrick brought our own car to a stop with
+a jerk only a few feet away.
+
+I looked about in amazement, first at the empty car and then into the
+darkness on either side of the road. For the moment I could not explain
+it. Why had they abandoned the car, especially when they had every
+prospect of eluding us in it?
+
+They had not been forced to turn out for anybody, for no other vehicle
+had passed us. Was it tire trouble or engine trouble? I turned to the
+others for an explanation.
+
+"I thought it must be about here," cried Dillon. "We had one of my men
+place an obstruction in the road. They didn't run into it, which shows
+clever driving, but they had to turn so sharply that they ran into the
+fence. I guess they realised that there was no use in turning and
+trying to go back."
+
+"They have taken to the open country," shouted Garrick, leaping up on
+the seat of our car and looking about in a vain endeavour to catch some
+sign of them.
+
+All was still, save here and there the sharp, distant bark of a dog.
+
+"I wonder which way they went?" he asked, looking down at us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE POLICE DOG
+
+
+Dillon pulled a whistle from his pocket and blew a short blast sharply.
+Far down the road, we could hear faintly an answering bark. It came
+nearer.
+
+"They're taught to obey a police whistle and nothing else," remarked
+Dillon, with satisfaction. "I wonder which one of the dogs that was. By
+the way, just keep out of sight as much as you can--get back up in our
+car. They are trained to worry anyone who hasn't a uniform. I'll take
+this dog in charge. I hope it's Cherry. She ought to be around here, if
+the men obeyed my orders. The others aren't keen on a scent even when
+it is fresh, but Cherry is a dandy and I had the man bring her up
+purposely."
+
+We got back into our car and waited impatiently. Across the hills now
+and then we could catch the sounds of dogs scouting around here and
+there. It seemed as if every dog in the valley had been aroused. On the
+other slope of the hill from the main road we could see lights in the
+scattered houses.
+
+"I doubt whether they have gone that way," commented Garrick following
+my gaze. "It looks less settled over here to the right of the road, in
+the direction of New York."
+
+The low baying of the dog which had answered Dillon's call was growing
+nearer every moment. At last we could hear it quite close, at the
+deserted car ahead.
+
+Cherry seemed to have many of the characteristics of the wild,
+prehistoric animal, among them the full, upright ears of the wild dog,
+which are such a great help to it. She was a fine, alert, up-standing
+dog, hardy, fierce, and literally untiring, of a tawny light brown like
+a lioness, about the same size and somewhat of the type of the
+smooth-coated collie, broad of chest and with a full brush of tail.
+
+Untamed though she seemed, she was perfectly under Dillon's control,
+and rendered him absolute and unreasoning obedience.
+
+"Now, Cherry, nice dog," we heard Dillon encouraging, "Here, up here.
+And here."
+
+He was giving the dog the scent from the deserted car. His voice rang
+out sharply in the night air, "Come on Garrick and Marshall. She's got
+it. I've got her on leash. Follow along, now, just a few feet behind."
+
+Cherry was on the trail and it was a hot one. We could just see her
+magnificent head, narrow and dome-like, between the keen ears. She was
+working like a regular sleuthhound, now, too, slowly, picking up the
+trail and following it, baying as she went.
+
+She was now going without a halt or falter. Nose to the ground, she had
+leaped from the bandit's car and made straight across a field in the
+direction that Garrick had suspected they would take, only a little to
+the west.
+
+"This is a regular, old-fashioned man hunt," called back Dillon, as we
+followed the dog and himself, as best we could.
+
+It was pitch dark, but we plunged ahead over fields and through little
+clumps of trees, around hedges, and over fences.
+
+There was no stopping, no cessation of the deep baying of the dog.
+Cherry was one of the best and most versatile that the police had ever
+acquired and trained.
+
+We came to the next crossroad, and the dog started up in the direction
+of the main road, questing carefully.
+
+We had gone not a hundred feet when a dark object darted out of the
+bushes at the side of the road, and I felt myself unceremoniously
+tumbled off my feet.
+
+Garrick leaped aside, with a laugh.
+
+"Dillon," he shouted ahead at the top of his voice, "one of the
+Airedales has discovered Marshall. Come back here. Lie still, Tom. The
+dog is trained to run between the legs and trip up anyone without a
+police uniform. By Jupiter--here's another one--after me. Dillon--I
+say--Dillon!"
+
+The commissioner came back, laughing at our plight, and called off the
+dogs, who were now barking furiously. We let him get a little ahead,
+calling the Airedales to follow him. They were not much good on the
+scent, but keen and intelligent along the lines of their training, and
+perfectly willing to follow Dillon, who was trusting to the keen sense
+of Cherry.
+
+A little further down, the fugitives had evidently left the road after
+getting their bearings.
+
+"They must have heard the dogs," commented Garrick. "They are doubling
+on their tracks, now, and making for the Ramapo River in the hope of
+throwing the dogs off the scent. That's the game. It's an old trick."
+
+We came, sure enough, in a few minutes to the river. That had indeed
+been their objective point. Cherry was baffled. We stuck close to
+Dillon, after our previous experience, as we stopped to talk over
+hastily what to do.
+
+Had they gone up or down, or had they crossed? There was not much time
+that we could afford to lose here in speculation if we were going to
+catch them.
+
+Cherry was casting backward in an instinctive endeavour to pick up the
+trail. Dillon had taken her across and she had not succeeded in finding
+the scent on the opposite bank for several hundred yards on either side.
+
+"They started off toward the southwest," reasoned Garrick quickly.
+"Then they turned in this direction. The railroads are over there. Yes,
+that is what they would make for. Dillon," he called, "let us follow
+the right bank of the river down this way, and see if we can't pick
+them up again."
+
+The river was shallow at this point, but full of rocks, which made it
+extremely hard, if not dangerous, to walk even close to the bank in the
+darkness. "I don't think they'd stand for much of this sort of going,"
+remarked Garrick. "A little of it would satisfy them, and they'd strike
+out again."
+
+He was right. Perhaps five minutes later, after wading in the cold
+water, clinging as close to the bank as we could, we came to a sort of
+rapids. Cherry, who had been urged on by Dillon, gave a jerk at her
+leash, as she sniffed along the bank.
+
+"She has it," cried Garrick, springing up the bank after Dillon.
+
+I followed and we three men and three dogs struck out again in earnest
+across country.
+
+We had come upon a long stretch of woods, and the brambles and thick
+growth made the going exceedingly difficult. Still, if it was hard for
+us now, it must have been equally hard for them as they broke through
+in the first place.
+
+At last we came to the end of the woods. The trail was now fresher than
+ever, and Dillon had difficulty in holding Cherry back so that the rest
+of us could follow. As we emerged from the shadow of the trees into the
+open field, it seemed as if guns were blazing on all sides of us.
+
+We were almost up with them. They had separated and were not half a
+mile away, firing at random in our direction, as they heard the dogs.
+Dillon drew up, Cherry tugging ahead. He turned to the Airedales. They
+had already taken in the situation, and were now darting ahead at what
+they could see, if not scent.
+
+I felt a "ping!" on my chest. I scarcely realized what it was until I
+heard something drop the next instant in the stubble at my feet, and
+felt a smarting sensation as if a sharp blow had struck me. I bent down
+and from the stubble picked up a distorted bullet.
+
+"These bullet-proof coats are some good, anyhow, at a distance,"
+remarked Garrick, close beside me, as he took the bullet from my
+fingers. "Duck! Back among the trees--until we get our bearings!"
+
+Another bullet had whizzed just past his arm as he spoke.
+
+We dodged back among the trees, and slowly skirted the edge of the
+wood, where it bent around a little on the flank of the position from
+which the continuous firing was coming.
+
+At the edge we stopped again. We could go no further without coming out
+into the open, and the moon, just rising, above the trees, made us an
+excellent mark under such conditions. Garrick peered out to determine
+from just where they were firing.
+
+"Lucky for us that we had these coats," he muttered, "or they would
+have croaked us, before we knew it. These are our old friends, the
+anaesthetic bullets, too. Even a little scratch from one of them and we
+should be hors de combat for an hour or two."
+
+"Shall we take a chance?" urged Dillon.
+
+"Just a minute," cautioned Garrick, listening.
+
+The barking of the Airedales had ceased suddenly. Cherry was straining
+at her leash to go.
+
+"They have winged the two dogs," exclaimed Garrick. "Yes--we must try
+it now--at any cost."
+
+We broke from the cover, taking a chance, separating as much as we
+could, and pushing ahead rapidly, Dillon under his breath keeping
+Cherry from baying as much as possible.
+
+I had expected a sharp fusillade to greet us as we advanced and
+wondered whether the coats would stand it at closer range. Instead, the
+firing seemed to have ceased altogether.
+
+A quick dash and we had crossed the stretch of open field that
+separated us from a dark object which now loomed up, and from behind
+which it seemed had come the firing. As we approached, I saw it was a
+shed beside the railroad, which was depressed at this point some twelve
+or fifteen feet.
+
+"They kept us off just long enough," exclaimed Garrick, glancing up at
+the lights of the block signals down the road. "They must be desperate,
+all right. Why, they must have jumped a freight as it slowed down for
+the curve, or perhaps one of them flagged it and held it up. See? The
+red signal shows that a train has just gone through toward New York.
+There is no chance to wire ahead, either, from this Ducktown siding.
+Here's where they stood--look!"
+
+Garrick had picked up a handful of exploded cartridge shells, while he
+was speaking. They told a mute story of the last desperate stand of the
+gunmen.
+
+"I'll keep these," he said, shoving them into his pocket. "They may be
+of some use later on in connecting to-night's doings with what has gone
+before."
+
+We looked at each other blankly. There was nothing more to do that
+night but to return to the now deserted house in the valley where we
+had left Forbes in charge of Dillon's man.
+
+Toilsomely and disgusted, we trudged back in silence.
+
+Garrick, however, refused to be discouraged. Late as it was, he
+insisted on making a thorough search of the captured house. It proved
+to be a veritable arsenal. Here it seemed that all the new and deadly
+weapons of the scientific gunman had been made. The barn, turned into
+half garage and half workshop, was a mine of interest.
+
+We found it unlocked and entered, Garrick flashing a light about.
+
+"There's a sight that would do McBirney's eyes good," he exclaimed as
+he bent the rays of the light before us.
+
+Before us, in the back of the barn, stood Warrington's stolen car--at
+last.
+
+"They won't plot anything more--at least not up here," remarked
+Garrick, bending over it.
+
+In the house, we found Jim still with Forbes, who was now completely
+recovered. In the possession of his senses, Forbes' tongue which the
+anaesthetic gases seemed to have loosened, now became suddenly silent
+again. But he stuck doggedly to his story of kidnapping, although he
+would not or could not add anything to it. Who the kidnapper was he
+swore he did not know, except that he had known his face well, by
+sight, at the gambling joint.
+
+I could make nothing of Forbes. But of one thing I was sure. Even if we
+had not captured the scientific gunman, we had dealt him a severe and
+crushing blow. Like Garrick, I had begun to look upon the escape
+philosophically.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE FRAME-UP
+
+
+Although I felt discouraged on our return to the city, the morning
+following our exciting adventure at the mysterious house in the Ramapo
+valley, Garrick, who never let anything ruffle him long, seemed quite
+cheerful.
+
+"Cheer up, Tom," he encouraged. "We are on the home stretch now."
+
+"Perhaps--if they don't beat us to the tape," I answered
+disconsolately. "What are you going to do next?"
+
+"While you were snatching a little sleep, I was rummaging around and
+found a number of letters in a table drawer, up there. One was a note,
+evidently to the garage keeper, and signed merely, 'Chief.' I'll wager
+that the handwriting is the same as that in the blackmailing letter to
+Miss Winslow."
+
+"What of it?" I asked, refusing to be comforted. "We haven't got him
+and the prospects--"
+
+"No, we haven't got him," interrupted Garrick, "but the note was just a
+line to tell the Boss, who seemed to have been up there in the country
+at the time, to meet the Chief at 'the Joint,' on Second Avenue."
+
+I nodded, but before I could speak, he added, "It didn't say any more,
+but I think I know the place. It is the old International Cafe, a
+regular hang-out for crooks, where they come to gamble away the
+proceeds of their crimes in stuss, the great game of the East Side,
+now. Anyhow, we'll just drop into the place. We may not find them, but
+we'll have an interesting time. Then, there is the possibility of
+getting a strangle hold on someone, anyhow."
+
+Garrick was evidently figuring on having driven our gunman back into
+the haunts of the underworld.
+
+There seemed to be no other course that presented itself and therefore,
+rather than remain inactive until something new turned up, I consented
+to accompany him in his excursion.
+
+Forbes, still uncommunicatively protesting that he would say nothing
+until he had an opportunity to consult a lawyer, had been taken down to
+New York by Dillon during the morning and was lodged in a West Side
+prison under a technical charge which was sufficient to hold him until
+Garrick could investigate his case and fix his real status.
+
+We had taken a cross-town car, with the intention of looking over the
+dive where Garrick believed the crooks might drop in. The ride itself
+was uninteresting, but not so by any means the objective point of our
+journey.
+
+Over on the East Side, we found the International Cafe, and slouched
+into the back room. It was not the room devoted to stuss, but the
+entrance to it, which Garrick informed me was through a heavy door
+concealed in a little hallway, so that its very existence would not be
+suspected except by the initiate.
+
+We made no immediate attempt to get into the hang-out proper, which was
+a room perhaps thirty feet wide and seventy feet deep. Instead, we sat
+down at one of the dirty, round tables, and ordered something from the
+waiter, a fat and oily Muscowitz in a greasy and worn dinner coat.
+
+It seemed that in the room where we were had gathered nearly every
+variety of the populous underworld. I studied the men and women at the
+tables curiously, without seeming to do so. But there could be no
+concealment here. Whatever we might be, they seemed to know that we
+were not of them, and they greeted us with black looks and now and then
+a furtive scowl.
+
+It was not long, however, before it became evident that in some way
+word had been passed that we were not mere sightseers. Perhaps it was
+by a sort of wireless electric tension that seemed to pervade the air.
+At any rate, it was noticeable.
+
+"There's no use staying here," remarked Garrick to me under his breath,
+affecting not to notice the scowls, "unless we do something. Are you
+game for trying to get into the stuss joint?"
+
+He said it with such determination to go himself that I did not refuse.
+I had made up my mind that the only thing to do was to follow him,
+wherever he went.
+
+Garrick rose, stretched himself, yawned as though bored, and together
+we lounged out into the public hall, just as someone from the outside
+clamoured for admission to the stuss joint through the strong door.
+
+The door had already been opened, when Garrick deftly inserted his
+shoulder. Through the crack in the door, I could see the startled
+roomful of players of all degrees in crookdom, in the thick, curling
+tobacco smoke.
+
+The man at the door called out to Garrick to get out, and raised his
+arm to strike. Garrick caught his fist, and slowly with his powerful
+grip bent it back until the man actually writhed. As his wrist went
+back by fractions of an inch, his fingers were forced to relax. I knew
+the trick. It was the scientific way to open a clenched fist. As the
+tendons refused to stretch any farther, his fingers straightened, and a
+murderous looking blackjack clattered to the floor.
+
+All was confusion. Money which was on the various tables disappeared as
+if by magic. Cards were whisked away as if a ghost had taken them. In a
+moment there was no more evidence of gambling than is afforded by any
+roomful of men, so easy was it to hide the paraphernalia, or, rather,
+lack of paraphernalia of stuss.
+
+It was the custom, I knew, for criminals, after they had made a haul to
+retire into such places as these stuss parlors, not only to spend the
+proceeds of their robberies, but for protection. Even though they were
+unmercifully fleeced by the gamblers, they might depend on them to warn
+of the approach of the "bulls" and if possible count on being hidden or
+spirited off to safety.
+
+Apparently we had come just at a time when there were some criminals in
+hiding among the players. It was the only explanation I could offer of
+the strange action that greeted our simple attempt to gain admission to
+the stuss room. Whether they were criminals who had really made a haul
+or mere fugitives from justice, I could not guess. But that a warning
+had been given the man at the door to be on his guard, seemed evident
+from the manner in which we had been met.
+
+There was a rush of feet in the room. I expected that we would be
+overwhelmed. Instead, as together we pushed on the now half-open door,
+the room emptied like a sieve. Whoever it might be who had taken refuge
+there had probably disappeared, among the first, by tacit understanding
+of the rest, for the whole thing had the air of being run off according
+to instructions.
+
+"It's a collar!" had sounded through the room, the moment we had
+appeared at the door, and it was now empty.
+
+I wondered whether the letter which Garrick had found might not, after
+all, have brought us straight to the last resort of those whom we
+sought.
+
+"Where have they gone?" I panted, as the door opened at last, and we
+found only one man in the place.
+
+There he stood apparently ready to be arrested, in fact courting it if
+we could show the proper authority, since he knew that it would be only
+a question of hours when he would be out again and the game would be
+resumed, in full blast.
+
+The man shook his head blankly in answer to my question.
+
+"There must be a trap door somewhere," cried Garrick. "It is no use to
+find it. They are all on the street by this time. Quick--before anyone
+catches us in the rear."
+
+We had been not a moment too soon in gaining the street. Though we had
+done nothing but attempt to get into the stuss room, ostensibly as
+players, the crowd in the cafe was pressing forward.
+
+On the street, we saw men filing quickly from a cellar, a few doors
+down the block. We mingled with the excited crowd in order to cover
+ourselves.
+
+"That must have been where the trap door and passage led," whispered
+Garrick.
+
+A familiar figure ducked out of the cellar, surrounded by others, and
+the crowd made for two taxicabs standing on the opposite side of the
+street near a restaurant which was really not a tough joint but made a
+play at catering to people from uptown who wanted a taste of near-crime
+and did not know when they were being buncoed.
+
+Another cab swung up to the stand, just as the first two pulled away.
+Its sign was up: "Vacant."
+
+Quick as a flash, Garrick was in it, dragging me after him. The driver
+must have thought that we, too, were escaping, for he needed only one
+order from Garrick to leap ahead in the wake of the cabs which had
+already started.
+
+A moment later, Garrick's head was out of the window. He had drawn his
+revolver and was pegging away at the tires of the cabs ahead. An
+answering shot came back to us. Meanwhile, a policeman at a corner
+leaped on a passing trolley and urged the motorman to put on the full
+power in a vain effort to pursue us as we swept by up the broad avenue.
+
+Even the East Side, accustomed to frequent running fights on the
+streets between rival gunmen and gangs, was roused by such an outburst.
+The crack of revolver shots, the honking of horns, the clang of the
+trolley bell, and the shouts of men along the street brought hundreds
+to the windows, as the cars lurched and swayed up the avenue.
+
+The cars ahead swerved to dodge a knot of pedestrians, but their pace
+never slackened. Then the rearmost of the two began to buck and almost
+leap off the roadway. There came a rattle and roar from the rear wheels
+which told that the tires had been punctured and that the heavy wheels
+were riding on their rims, cutting the deflated tubes. At a cross
+street the first car turned, just in time to avoid a truck, and dodged
+down a maze of side streets, but the second ran squarely into the truck.
+
+As the first car disappeared we caught a glimpse of a man leaning out
+of it. He seemed to be swinging something around and around at arm's
+length. Suddenly he let it go and it shot high up in the air on the
+roof of a tenement house.
+
+"The automobile is the most dangerous weapon ever used by criminals,"
+muttered Garrick, as the first car shot down through a mass of trucking
+which had backed up and shifted, making pursuit momentarily more
+impossible for us. "These people know how to use the automobile, too.
+But we've got someone here, anyhow," he cried, leaping out and pushing
+aside the crowd that had collected about the wrecked car.
+
+In the bottom of it we found a man, stunned and crumpled into a heap.
+Blood flowed from his arm where one of the bullets had struck him.
+Several bullets had struck the back of the cab and both tires were cut
+by them.
+
+As I came up and looked over Garrick's shoulder at the prostrate and
+unconscious figure in the car, I could not restrain an exclamation of
+surprise.
+
+It was the garage keeper, the Boss--at last!
+
+Policemen had come up in the meantime, and several minutes were
+consumed while Garrick proved to them his identity.
+
+"What was that thing the fellow in the forward car whirled over his
+head?" I whispered.
+
+"A revolver, I think," returned Garrick. "That's a favourite trick of
+the gunmen. With a stout cord tied to a gun you can catapult it far
+enough to destroy the evidence that will hold you under the Sullivan
+law, at least. I mean to get that gun as soon as we are through with
+this fellow here."
+
+Someone had turned in a call for an ambulance which came jangling up
+soon after, and we stood in a group close to the young surgeon as he
+worked to bring around the captured gangster.
+
+"Where's the Chief?" he mumbled, dazed.
+
+Garrick motioned to us to be quiet.
+
+The man rambled on with a few inconsequential remarks, then opened his
+eyes, caught sight of the white coated surgeon working over him, of us
+standing behind, and of the crowd about him.
+
+Memory of what had happened flitted back to him. With an effort he was
+himself again, close-mouthed, after the manner of the gangsters.
+
+The surgeon had done all in his power and the man was sufficiently
+recovered to be taken to the hospital, now, under arrest. As far as we
+were concerned, our work was done. The Boss could be found now, at any
+time that we needed him, but that he would speak all the traditions of
+gangland made impossible.
+
+I wondered what Garrick would do. As for myself, I had no idea what
+move to make.
+
+It surprised me, therefore, to see him with a smile of satisfaction on
+his face.
+
+"I'll see you this afternoon, Tom," he said merely, as the ambulance
+bore the wounded Boss away. "Meanwhile, I wish you'd take the time to
+go over to headquarters and give Dillon our version of this affair.
+Tell him to hold to-night open, too. I have a little work to do this
+afternoon, and I'll call him up later."
+
+Dillon, I found, was overjoyed when I reported to him the capture of at
+least one man whom we had failed to get the night before.
+
+"Things seem to be clearing up, after all," he remarked. "Tell Garrick
+I shall hold open to-night for him. Meanwhile, good luck, and let me
+know the moment you get any word about the Chief. He must have been in.
+that first cab, all right."
+
+As I left Dillon's office, I ran into Herman in the hall, coming in. I
+bowed to him and he nodded surlily. Evidently, I thought, he had heard
+of the result of our activities. I did not ask him what progress he had
+made in the case, for I had had experience with professional jealousy
+before, and thought that the less said on the subject the better.
+
+Recalling what Garrick had said, I curbed my impatience as best I
+could, in order to give him ample time to complete the work that he had
+to do. It was not until the middle of the afternoon that I rejoined him
+in his office.
+
+I found him at work at a table, still, with a microscope and an
+arrangement which I recognised as the apparatus for making
+microphotographs. Several cartridges, carefully labelled, were lying
+before him, as well as the peculiar pistol we had found when we had
+captured Forbes in the little room. There were also the guns we had
+captured in the garage and one found in the cab which we had chased and
+wrecked.
+
+On the end of the table was a large number of photographs of a most
+peculiar nature. I picked up one. It looked like an enlarged photograph
+of an orange, or like some of the pictures which the astronomers make
+of the nearer planets.
+
+"What are these?" I asked curiously, as he leaned back from his work,
+with a smile of quiet satisfaction.
+
+"That is a collection of microphotographs which I have gathered," he
+answered, adding, "as well as some that I have just made. I hope to use
+them in a little stereopticon entertainment I am arranging to-night for
+those who have been interested in the case."
+
+Garrick smiled. "Have you ever heard?" he asked, "that the rounded end
+of the firing pin of every rifle when it is examined under a microscope
+bears certain irregularities of marking different from those of every
+other firing pin and that the primer of every shell fired in a rifle is
+impressed with the particular markings of that firing pin?"
+
+I had not, but Garrick went on, "I know that it is true. Such markings
+are distinctive for each rifle and can be made by no other. I have
+taken rifles bearing numbers preceding and following that of a
+particular one, as well as a large number of other firing pins. I have
+tried the rifles and the firing pins, one by one, and after I made
+microphotographs of the firing pins with special reference to the
+rounded ends and also photographs of the corresponding rounded
+depressions in the primers fired by them, it was forced upon me that
+cartridges fired by each individual firing pin could be positively
+identified."
+
+I had been studying the photographs. It was a new idea, and it appealed
+to me strongly. "How about revolvers?" I asked quickly.
+
+"Well, Dr. Balthazard, the French criminologist, has made experiments
+on the identification of revolver bullets and has a system that might
+be compared to that of Bertillon for identifying human beings. He has
+showed by greatly enlarged photographs that every gun barrel leaves
+marks on a bullet and that the marks are always the same for the same
+barrel but never identical for two different barrels. He has shown that
+the hammer of a revolver, say a centre fire, strikes the cartridge at a
+point which is never the exact centre of the cartridge, but is always
+the same for the same weapon. He has made negatives of bullets nearly a
+foot wide. Every detail appears very distinctly and it can be decided
+with absolute certainty whether a certain bullet or cartridge was fired
+by a certain revolver."
+
+He had picked up one of the microphotographs and was looking at it
+attentively through a small glass.
+
+"You will see," he explained, "on the edge of this photograph a rough
+sketch calling attention to a mark like an L which is the chief
+characteristic of this hammer, although there are other detailed
+markings which show well under the microscope but not in a photograph.
+You will note that the marks on a hammer are reversed on the primer in
+the same way that a metal type and the character printed by it are
+reversed as regards one another. Moreover, depressions on the end of a
+hammer become raised on the primer and raised markings on the hammer
+become depressions on the primer.
+
+"Now, here is another. You can see that it is radically different from
+the first, which was from the cartridge used in killing poor Rena
+Taylor. This second one is from that gun which I found on the tenement
+roof this morning. It lacks the L mark as well as the concentric
+circles. Here is another. Its chief characteristics are a series of
+pits and elevations which, examined under the microscope and measured,
+will be found to afford a set of characters utterly different from
+those of any other hammer.
+
+"In short," he concluded with an air of triumph, "the ends of firing
+pins are turned and finished in a lathe by the use of tools designed
+for that purpose. The metal tears and works unevenly so that
+microscopical examination shows many pits, lines, circles, and
+irregularities. The laws of chance are as much against two of these
+firing pins or hammers having the same appearance under the microscope
+as they are against the thumb prints of two human subjects being
+identical."
+
+I picked up the curious little arrangement which we had found in the
+drawer in Forbes' room and examined it closely.
+
+"I have been practicing with that pistol, if you may call it that," he
+remarked, "on cartridges of my own and examining the marks made by the
+peculiar hammer. I have studied marks of the gun which we found on the
+roof. I have compared them with the marks on cartridges which we have
+picked up at the finding of Rena Taylor's body, at the garage that
+night of the stupefying bullet, with bullets such as were aimed at
+Warrington, with others, both cartridges and bullets, at various times,
+and the conclusion is unescapable."
+
+Who, I asked myself, was the scientific gunman? I knew it was useless
+to try to hurry Garrick. First, by a sort of intuition he had picked
+him out, then by the evidence of hammer and bullet he had made it
+practically certain. But I knew that to his scientific mind nothing but
+absolute certainty would suffice.
+
+While I was waiting for him to proceed, he had already begun to work on
+some apparatus behind a screen at the end of his office. Close to the
+wall at the left was a stereopticon which, as nearly as I could make
+out, shot a beam of light through a tube to a galvanometer about three
+feet distant. In front of this beam whirled a five-spindled wheel
+governed by a chronometer which was so accurate, he said, that it erred
+only a second a day.
+
+Between the poles of the galvanometer was stretched a slender thread of
+fused quartz plated with silver. It was the finest thread I could
+imagine, only a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter, far too tenuous
+to be seen. Three feet further away was a camera with a moving plate
+holder which carried a sensitized photographic plate. Its movement was
+regulated by a big fly-wheel at the extreme right.
+
+"You see," remarked Garrick, now engrossed on the apparatus and
+forgetting the hammer evidence for the time, "the beam of light
+focussed on that fine thread in the galvanometer passes to this
+photographic plate. It is intercepted by the five spindles of the
+wheel, which turns once a second, thus marking the picture off in exact
+fifths of a second. The vibrations of the thread are enormously
+magnified on the plate by a lens and produce a series of wavy or zigzag
+lines. I have shielded the sensitized plate by a wooden hood which
+permits no light to strike it except the slender ray that is doing the
+work. The plate moves across the field slowly, its speed regulated by
+the fly-wheel. Don't you think it is neat and delicate? All these
+movements are produced by one of the finest little electric motors I
+ever saw."
+
+I could not get the idea of the revolvers out of my head so quickly. I
+agreed with him, but all I could find to say was, "Do you think there
+was more than this one whom they call the Chief engaged in the
+shootings?"
+
+"I can't say absolutely anything more than I have told you, yet," he
+answered in a tone that seemed to discourage further questioning along
+that line.
+
+He continued to work on the delicate apparatus with its thread
+stretched between the stationary magnets of the galvanometer, a thread
+so delicate that it might have been spun by a microscopic spider, so
+light that no scales made by human hands could weigh it, so slender
+that the mind could hardly grasp it. It was about one-third the
+diameter of a red corpuscle of blood and its weight had been estimated
+as about .00685 milligrams, truly a fairy thread. It was finer than the
+most delicate cobweb and could be seen with the naked eye only when a
+strong light was thrown on it so as to catch the reflection.
+
+"All I can say is," he admitted, "that the bullets which committed this
+horrible series of crimes have been proven all to be shot from the same
+gun, presumably, I think I shall show, by the same hand, and that hand
+is the same that wrote the blackmailing letter."
+
+"Whose gun was it?" I asked. "Was there a way to connect it and the
+bullets and the cartridges with the owner--four things, all
+separated--and then that owner with the curious and tragic succession
+of events that had marked the case since the theft of Warrington's car?"
+
+Garrick had apparently completed his present work of adjusting the
+delicate apparatus. He was now engaged on another piece which also had
+a powerful light in it and an attachment which bore a strong
+resemblance to a horn.
+
+He paused a moment, regarding me quizzically. "I think you'll find it
+sufficiently novel to warrant your coming, Tom," he added. "I have
+already invited Dillon and his man, Herman, over the telephone just
+before you came in. McBirney will be there, and Forbes, of course.
+He'll have to come, if I want him. By the way, I wish you'd get in
+touch with Warrington and see how he is. If it is all right, tell him
+that I'd like to have him escort Miss Winslow and her aunt here,
+to-night. Meanwhile I shall find out how our friend the Boss is getting
+on. He ought to be here, at any cost, and I've put it off until
+to-night to make sure that he'll be in fit condition to come. To-night
+at nine--here in this office--remember," he concluded gayly. "In the
+meantime, not a word to anybody about what you have seen here this
+afternoon."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE SCIENTIFIC GUNMAN
+
+
+Our little audience arrived one by one, and, as master of ceremonies,
+it fell to me to greet them and place them as much at ease as the
+natural tension of the occasion would permit. Garrick spoke a word or
+two to each, but was still busy putting the finishing touches on the
+preparations for the "entertainment," as he called it facetiously,
+which he had arranged.
+
+"Before I put to the test a rather novel combination which I have
+arranged," began Garrick, when they had all been seated, "I want to say
+a few words about some of the discoveries I have already made in this
+remarkable case."
+
+He paused a moment to make sure that he had our attention, but it was
+unnecessary. We were all hanging eagerly on his words.
+
+"There is, I believe," he resumed slowly, "no crime that is ever
+without a clew. The slightest trace, even a drop of blood no larger
+than a pin-head, may suffice to convict a murderer. So may a single
+hair found on the clothing of a suspect. In this case," he added
+quickly, "it is the impression made by the hammer of a pistol on the
+shell of a cartridge which leads unescapably to one conclusion."
+
+The idea was so startling that we followed Garrick's every word as if
+weighted with tremendous importance, as indeed it was in the clearing
+up of this mysterious affair.
+
+"I have made a collection from time to time," he pursued, "of the
+various exploded cartridges, the bullets, and the weapons left behind
+by the perpetrator of the dastardly series of crimes, from the shooting
+of the stool pigeon of the police, Rena Taylor, and the stealing of Mr.
+Warrington's car, down to the peculiar events of last night up in the
+Ramapos and the running fight through the streets of New York in
+taxicabs this morning.
+
+"I have studied this evidence with the microscope and the
+microphotographic apparatus. I have secured excellent microphotographs
+of the marks made by various weapons on the cartridges and bullets.
+Taking those used in the commission of the greater crimes in this
+series, I find that the marks are the same, apparently, whether the gun
+shot off a bullet of wax or tallow which became liquid in the body,
+whether it discharged a stupefying gas, or whether the deadly
+anaesthetic bullet was fired. I have obtained a gun"--he threw it on
+the table with a clang--"the marks from the hammer of which correspond
+with the marks made on all the cartridges I have mentioned. One person
+owned that gun and used it. That is proved. It remains only to connect
+that gun positively and definitely, as a last link, with that person."
+
+I noticed with a start that the revolver still had a stout cord tied to
+it.
+
+As he concluded, Garrick had begun fitting a curious little device to
+each of our forearms. It looked to me like an electrode consisting of
+large plates of German silver, covered with felt and saturated with
+salt solution. From each electrode wires ran across the floor to some
+hidden apparatus.
+
+"Back of this screen," he went on, indicating it in the corner of the
+room, "I have placed what is known as the string galvanometer,
+invented, or, perhaps better, perfected by Dr. Einthoven, of Leyden. It
+was designed primarily for the study of the beating of the heart in
+cases of disease, but it also may be used to record and study emotions
+as well,--love and hate, fear, joy, anger, remorse, all are revealed by
+this uncanny, cold, ruthlessly scientific instrument.
+
+"The machine is connected by wires to each of you, and will make what
+are called electrocardiographs, in which every emotion, every
+sentiment, every passion is recorded inevitably, inexorably. For, the
+electric current that passes from each of you to the machine over these
+wires carrying the record of the secrets of your hearts is one of the
+feeblest currents known to science. Yet it can be caught and measured.
+The dynamo which generates this current is not a huge affair of steel
+castings and endless windings of copper wire. It is merely the heart of
+the sitter.
+
+"The heart makes only one three-thousandth of a volt of electricity at
+each beat. It would take thousands of hearts to light one electric
+light, hundreds of thousands to run one trolley car. Yet just that
+slight little current from the heart is enough to sway a gossamer
+strand of quartz fibre in what I may call my 'heart station' here. This
+current, as I have told you, passes from each of you over a wire and
+vibrates a fine quartz fibre in unison with it, one of the most
+delicate bits of mechanism ever made, recording the result on a
+photographic film by means of a beam of light reflected from a delicate
+mirror."
+
+We sat spellbound as Garrick unfolded the dreadful, awe-inspiring
+possibilities of the machine behind the screen. He walked slowly to the
+back of the room.
+
+"Now, here I have one of the latest of the inventions of the Wizard of
+West Orange--Edison," he resumed. "It is, as you perhaps have already
+guessed, the latest product of this genius of sound and sight, the
+kinetophone, the machine that combines moving pictures with the talking
+machine."
+
+A stranger stepped in from an outer office. He was the skilled operator
+of the kinetophone, whom Garrick had hired. In a few terse sentences he
+explained that back of a curtain which he pulled down before us was a
+phonograph with a megaphone, that from his booth behind us he operated
+the picture films, and that the two were absolutely synchronized.
+
+A moment later a picture began to move on the screen. Sounds and voices
+seemed to emerge as if from the very screen itself. There, before us,
+we saw a gambling joint operating in full blast. It was not the
+Forty-eighth Street resort. But it was strongly reminiscent of it. From
+the talking machine proceeded all the noises familiar to such a scene.
+
+Garrick had moved behind the screen that cut off our view of the
+galvanometer. One after another, he was studying the emotions of each
+of his audience.
+
+Suddenly the scene changed. A door was burst in, cards and gambling
+paraphernalia were scattered about and hidden, men rushed to escape,
+and the sounds were much like those on the night of the raid. Garrick
+was still engrossed in the study of what the galvanometer was showing.
+
+The film stopped. Without warning, the operator started another. It was
+a group of men and women playing cards. A man entered, and engaged in
+conversation with one of the women who was playing. They left the room.
+
+The next scene was in an entirely different room. But the connection
+which was implied with the last scene was obvious. Different actors
+entered the room, a man and a woman. There was a dispute--there was a
+crack of a revolver--and the woman fell. People rushed in. Everything
+was done to hide the crime. The girl was carried out into a waiting
+automobile, propped in as if overcome by alcohol and whisked away. I
+found myself almost looking to see if the car was of the make of
+Warrington's, so great was the impression the scene made on me. Of
+course it was not, but it all seemed so real that one might be pardoned
+for expecting the impossible, especially when her body was thrown, with
+many a muttered imprecation, by the roadside, and in the last picture
+the man was cleaning the exploded gun. One single still picture
+followed. It was a huge, enlarged cartridge.
+
+I followed the thing with eager eyes and ears. From a long list of
+canned and reeled plays, Garrick had selected here and there such
+scenes and acts as, interspersed with a few single, original pictures
+of his own, like the cartridge, would serve best to recapitulate the
+very case which we had been investigating. It carried me along step by
+step, wonderfully.
+
+Another moving and talking picture was under way. This time it seemed
+to be a race between two automobiles. They were tearing along, and the
+sound of the rapidly working cylinders was most real. The rearmost was
+rapidly overhauling that in front. Imagine our surprise as it crept up
+on the other to see the driver rise, whip out a pistol, and fire point
+blank at the other as he dashed ahead, and the picture stopped.
+
+A suppressed scream escaped Violet Winslow. It was too much like what
+had happened to Mortimer Warrington for her to repress the shudder that
+swept over her, and an involuntary movement toward him to make sure
+that it was not real.
+
+Still Garrick did not move from his post at the galvanometer. He was
+taking no chances. He had us thrilled, tense, and he meant to take
+advantage to the full in reading the truth in the dramatic situation he
+had so skilfully created.
+
+Another picture started almost on the heels of the last. It was of the
+robbery of a safe. Then came another, a firebug at work in starting a
+conflagration. We could hear the crackling of flames, the shouts of the
+people, the clang of bells, and the hasty tread of the firemen as they
+advanced and put out the blaze. The film play was one of those which
+never fail to attract, where the makers had gone to the utmost extent
+of realism and had actually set fire to a house to get the true effect.
+
+The next was a scene from a detective play, pure and simple, in which
+that marvellous little instrument which had served us in such good
+stead in this case was played up strongly, the detectaphone. Then
+followed a scene from another play in which a young girl was kidnapped
+and rescued by her lover just in the nick of time. Nothing could have
+been selected to arouse the feelings of the little audience to a higher
+pitch.
+
+The last of the series, which I knew was to be a climax, was not an
+American picture. It was quite evidently made in Paris and was from
+actual life. I myself had been startled when the title was announced by
+the voice and on the screen simultaneously, "The Siege of the Motor
+Bandits by the Paris Police."
+
+It was terrific. It began with the shouts of the crowd urging on the
+police, the crack of revolvers and guns from a little house or garage
+in the suburbs, the advance and retreat of the gendarmes on the
+stronghold. Back and forth the battle waged. One could hear the sharp
+orders of the police, the shrill taunts of the bandits, the sounds of
+battle.
+
+Then at a point where the bandits seemed to have beaten off the attack
+successfully, there came an automobile. From it I could see the police
+take an object which I now knew must be a Mathiot gun. The huge thing
+was set up and carefully aimed. Then with a dull roar it was fired.
+
+We could see the bomb hurtling through the air, see it strike the
+little house with a cloud of smoke and dust, hear the report of the
+explosion, the shouts of dismay of the bandits--then silence. A cry
+went up from the crowd as the police now pressed forward in a mass and
+rushed into the house, disclosing the last scene--in which the bandits
+were suffocated.
+
+The film suddenly stopped. Garrick's office, which had been ringing
+with firearms and shouts from the kinetophone, was again silent. It was
+an impressive silence, too. No one of us but had felt and lived the
+whole case over again in the brief time that the talking movies had
+been shown.
+
+The lights flashed up, and before we realised that the thing was over,
+Garrick was standing before us, holding in his hand a long sheet of
+paper. The look on his face told plainly that his novel experiment had
+succeeded.
+
+"I may say," he began, still studying the paper in his hand, although I
+knew he must have arrived at his conclusion already or he would never
+have quitted his "heart station," so soon, "I may say that some time
+ago a letter was sent to Miss Winslow purporting to reveal some of Mr.
+Warrington's alleged connections and escapades. It is needless to say
+that as far as the accusations were concerned he was able to meet them
+all adequately and, as for the innuendoes, they were pure baseless
+fabrications. The sender was urged on to do it by someone else who also
+had an interest of another kind in placing Mr. Warrington in a bad
+light with Miss Winslow. But the sender soon realised his mistake. The
+fact that he was willing to go to the length of a dangerous robbery
+accompanied by arson in order to get back or destroy the letter showed
+how afraid he was to have a sample of his handwriting fall into my
+hands. He blundered, but even then he did not realise how badly.
+
+"For, in certain cases the handwriting shows a great deal more than
+would be recognised even by the ordinary handwriting expert. This
+letter showed that the writer was, as I have already explained to Mr.
+Marshall, the victim of a peculiar kind of paralysis which begins to
+show itself in nerve tremours for days before the attack and exhibits
+itself even in the handwriting.
+
+"Now, my string galvanometer shows not only the effects of these moving
+and talking pictures on the emotions, but also, as it was really
+designed to do, the state of the heart with reference to normality. It
+shows to me plainly the effect of disease on the heart, even if it is
+latent in the subject. While I have been using the psychological law of
+suggestion, and have been recapitulating as well as I was able under
+the circumstances the whole story of the crime briefly in moving and
+talking pictures, I have found, in addition, that the same heart which
+shows the emotions I expected also shows the disease which I discovered
+in the blackmailing letter.
+
+"There was surprise at the sight of the gambling den, rage at the raid,
+fear at the murder of the girl in the other den and the disposal of her
+body, excitement over the racing motor cars, passion over the
+kidnapping of the girl, anger over the little detectaphone, and panic
+at the siege of the bandits, as I showed by the selection of the films
+that I was getting closer and closer to the truth. And there was the
+same abnormality of the heart exhibited throughout."
+
+Garrick paused. I scarcely breathed, nor did I move my eyes, which were
+riveted on his face. What was he going to reveal next? Was he going to
+accuse someone in the room?
+
+"Mr. Marshall," he resumed with a smile toward me, "I am glad to say is
+quite normal and innocent of all wrongdoing--in this instance," he
+added with a momentary flash of humour. "Commissioner Dillon also
+passes muster. Mr. Warrington--I shall come back to, later."
+
+I thought Violet Winslow gave a little, startled gasp. She turned
+toward him, anyhow, and I saw that not even science now could shake her
+faith in him.
+
+"Mr. Forbes," he continued, speaking rapidly as I bent forward to catch
+every word, "incriminated himself quite sufficiently in connection with
+the gambling joint, the raid and the slanderous letter, so that I
+should advise him when this case comes to trial to tell the whole truth
+and nothing but the truth about his helping a gunman in order to
+further what proved a hopeless love affair on his own part. Here, too,
+is a little vest-pocket gun that was found under such circumstances as
+would be likely to connect Forbes in the popular mind with the
+shootings."
+
+"My lawyer has my statement about that. I'll read--"
+
+"No, Forbes," interrupted Garrick. "You needn't read. Your lawyer may
+be interested to add this to the statement, however. A pistol that has
+been shot off has potassium sulphide from the powder in the barrel.
+Later, it oxidizes and iron oxide is found. This weapon has neither the
+sulphide nor the oxide, as far as I can determine. It has never even
+been discharged. No, it was not the pistol found on Forbes that figured
+in this case.
+
+"As far as that new-fangled gun goes, Forbes, it was a frame-up. You
+were kidnapped by a man whom you thought was your friend, and it was
+done for a purpose. He knew the situation you were in, your jealousy--I
+won't dwell on that here. He held you at the house up in the valley.
+You told the truth about that. He did it, the man who wrote the letter,
+because he hoped ultimately to shift all the guilt on you and himself
+go scot-free."
+
+Forbes stared dumbly. I knew he had known what was coming but had held
+back for fear of what he knew had always happened to informers in the
+circle to which he had sunk.
+
+"McBirney," continued Garrick, "your emotions, mostly astonishment,
+show that you have much to learn in this new business of modern
+detection, besides the recovery of stolen cars."
+
+Garrick had paused for effect again.
+
+"And now we come to the keeper of a nighthawk garage on the West Side,
+a man whom they seem to call the Boss. That is getting higher up. I
+find that he points, according to this scientific third degree, to one
+whom I have for a long time suspected--"
+
+A dull thud startled us.
+
+I turned. A man was lying, face down, on the floor.
+
+Before any of us could reach him, Garrick concluded, "This is the man
+who framed up the case against Forbes, who stole Warrington's car to
+use to get rid of the body of the informer, Rena Taylor, because she by
+her success interfered with his gambling graft, who wrote the letter to
+Miss Winslow to injure Warrington because he, too, was interfering with
+his graft collection from the gambling house by threatening to close it
+up. He committed the arson to cover up his identity by getting back the
+letter; he planned and nearly executed the kidnapping of Miss Winslow
+in order to hold up Warrington, and then hid in the country where we
+ferreted him out, not far from the very scene of a murderous attack on
+Warrington for his brave stand in suppressing gambling--from which this
+man was weekly shaking down a huge profit as the price of police
+protection of the vice."
+
+Garrick was kneeling by the prostrate form now, not so much the accuser
+as the scientist, studying a new phase of crime.
+
+The threatened paralysis had struck Inspector Herman sooner than even
+Garrick had expected.
+
+When we had made Herman as comfortable as we could, Garrick added to
+Dillon, who stood over us, speechless, "You had under you one of the
+strong links in the secret system of police protection of vice and
+crime, and you never knew it--the greatest grafter and scientific
+gunman that I ever knew. It has been a long, hard fight. But I have the
+goods on him at last."
+
+The exposure was startling in the extreme. Herman had gained for
+himself the reputation of being one of the shrewdest and most efficient
+men in the department. But he had felt the lure of graft. With the aid
+of the gamblers and unscrupulous politicians he had built up a huge,
+secret machine for collection of the profits from the sale of police
+protection against the enforcement of the law he was sworn to uphold.
+
+He had begun to mix with doubtful characters. But he was a genius and
+had become, by degrees, the worst of the gangmen and gunmen who ever
+operated in the metropolis. Detailed to catch the gamblers and
+gangsters, with official power to do almost as he pleased, he had
+enjoyed a fine holiday and employed his leisure both for new crimes and
+in covering up so successfully his tracks in the old ones, even with
+Garrick on his trail, that he had been able to completely hoodwink his
+superior, Dillon, by his long, detailed reports which sounded very
+convincing but which really meant nothing.
+
+As the strange truth of the case was established by Garrick, Dillon was
+the most amazed of us all. He had trusted Herman, and the revulsion of
+feeling was overwhelming.
+
+"And to think," he exclaimed, in disgust, "that I actually placed his
+own case in his own hands, with carte blanche instructions to go ahead.
+No wonder he never produced a clew that amounted to anything. Well,
+I'll be--"
+
+Words failed him, as he looked down and glared savagely at the man in
+silence.
+
+All were now crowding around Garrick eager to thank him for what he had
+done. As Warrington, now almost his former hearty wholesome self again,
+grasped Garrick's hand in the heartiness of his thanks, Garrick, with
+the electrocardiogram paper still in his other hand, smiled.
+
+He released himself and turned to touch the dainty little hand of
+Violet Winslow, whose eyes were so full of happy tears that she could
+scarcely speak.
+
+"Miss Winslow," he beamed, gazing earnestly and admiringly into her
+sweet face, "I promised to attend to the case of that man later,--" he
+added, with a nod at Warrington. "It may interest you to know
+scientifically what you already know by something that is greater than
+science, a woman's intuition."
+
+She blushed as he added, "Mr. Warrington has a good, strong, healthy
+heart. He wouldn't be alive to-day if he hadn't. But, more than that, I
+have observed throughout the evening that he has hardly taken his eyes
+off you. Even the 'talkies' and the 'movies' failed to stir him until
+the kidnapping scene overwhelmed him. Here on this strip of paper I
+have a billet-doux. His heart registers the current that only that
+consummate electrician, little Dan Cupid, can explain."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Guy Garrick, by Arthur B. Reeve
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