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."