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?"