I stuck my head out of the window to look at the other two down below, only to feel myself dragged unceremoniously back by Garrick.
"What's the use of taking that risk, Tom?" he expostulated. "One shot from them and you would be a dead one."
Fortunately they had not seen me, so intent were they on getting away. They had now seated themselves in the car and, as Garrick had suspected, could not resist delivering a parting shot at us, emptying the contents of an automatic blindly up at our window. Garrick and I were, as it happened, busy on the opposite side of the room.
All thought of Forbes was dropped for the present. Garrick said not a word but continued at work in the corner of the room by the other broken window.
"Either they must have succeeded in getting out after the first shot and so escaped the fumes," muttered Garrick finally, "and hid in the stable, or, perhaps, they were out there at work anyhow. Still that makes little difference now. They must have seen us go in, have followed us quietly, and then caught us here."
With a hasty final imprecation, the car below started forward with a jerk and was swallowed up in the darkness.
CHAPTER XXII
THE MAN HUNT
Here we were, locked in a little room on the top floor of the mysterious house. I looked out of both windows. There was no way to climb down and it was too far to jump, especially in the uncertain darkness. I threw myself at the door. It had been effectually braced by our captors.
Garrick, in the meantime, had lighted the light again, and placed it by the window.
Forbes, now partly recovered, was rambling along, and Garrick, with one eye on him and the other on something which he was working over in the light, was too busy to pay much attention to my futile efforts to find a means of escape.
At first we could not make out what it was that Forbes was trying to tell us, but soon, as the fresh air in the room revived him, his voice became stronger. Apparently he recognised us and was trying to offer an explanation of his presence here.
"He kidnapped me—brought me here," Forbes was muttering. "Three days—I've been shut up in this room."
"Who brought you here?" I demanded sharply.
"I don't know his name—man at the gambling place—after the raid—said he'd take me in his car somewhere—from the other place back of it—last I remember—must have drugged me—woke up here—all I know."
"You've been a prisoner, then?" I queried.
"Yes," he murmured.
"A likely story," I remarked, looking questioningly at Garrick who had been listening but had not ceased his own work, whatever it was. "What are you going to do, Guy? We can't stay here and waste time over such talk as this while they are escaping. They must be almost to the road now, and turning down in the opposite direction from Dillon and his man."
Garrick said nothing. Either he was too busy solving our present troubles or he was, like myself, not impressed by Forbes' incoherent story. He continued to adjust the little instrument which I had seen him draw from his pocket and now recognised as the thing which looked like a telephone transmitter. Only, the back of it seemed to gleam with a curious brightness under the rays of the light, as he handled it.
"They have somehow contrived to escape the effect of the bombs," he was saying, "and have surprised us in the room on the top floor where the light is. We are up here with a young fellow named Forbes, whom we have captured. He's the young man that I saw several times at the gambling joint and was at dinner with Warrington the night when the car was stolen. He was pretty badly overcome by the fumes, but I've brought him around. He either doesn't know much or won't tell what he knows. That doesn't make any difference now, though. They have escaped in a car. They are leaving by the road. Wait. I'll see whether they have reached it yet. No, it's too dark to see and they have no light on the car. But they must have turned. They said they were going in the direction opposite from you."
"Well?" I asked, mystified. "What of it? I know all that, already."
"But Dillon doesn't," replied Garrick, in great excitement now. "I knew that we should have to have some way of communicating with him instantly if this fellow proved to be as resourceful as I believed him to be. So I thought of the radiophone or photophone of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. I have really been telephoning on a beam of light."
"Telephoning on a beam of light?" I repeated incredulously.
"Yes," he explained, feeling now at liberty to talk since he had delivered his call for help. "You see, I talk into this transmitter. The simplest transmitter for this purpose is a plane mirror of flexible material, silvered mica or microscope glass. Against the back of this mirror my voice is directed. In the carbon transmitter of the telephone a variable electrical resistance is produced by the pressure on the diaphragm, based on the fact that carbon is not as good a conductor of electricity under pressure as when not. Here, the mouthpiece is just a shell supporting a thin metal diaphragm to which the mirror on the back is attached, an apparatus for transforming the air vibrations produced by the voice into light vibrations of the projected beam, which is reflected from this light here in the room. The light reflected is thus thrown into vibrations corresponding to those in the diaphragm."
"And then?" I asked impatiently.
"That varying beam of light shoots out of this room, and is caught by the huge reflector which you saw me set up at the foot of that tall tree which you can just see against the dark sky over there. That parabolic mirror gathers in the scattered rays, focusses them on the selenium cell which you saw in the middle of the reflector, and that causes the cell to vary the amount of electric current passing through it from a battery of storage cells. It is connected with a very good telephone receiver. Every change in the beam of light due to the vibrations of my voice is caught by that receiving mirror, and the result is that the diaphragm in the receiver over there which Dillon is holding to his ear responds. The thing is good over several hundred yards, perhaps miles, sometimes. Only, I wish it would work both ways. I would like to feel sure that Dillon gets me."
I looked at the simple little instrument with a sort of reverence, for on it depended the momentous question of whether we should be released in time to pursue the two who were escaping in the automobile.
"You'll have to hurry," continued Garrick, speaking into his transmitter. "Give the signal. Get the car ready. Anything, so long as it is action. Use your own judgment."
There he was, flashing a message out of our prison by an invisible ray that shot across the Cimmerian darkness to the point where we knew that our friends were waiting anxiously. I could scarcely believe it. But Garrick had the utmost faith in the ability of the radiophone to make good.
"They MUST have started by this time," he cried, craning his neck out of the window and looking in every direction.
Forbes was still rambling along, but Garrick was not paying any attention to him. Instead, he began rummaging the room for possible evidence, more for something to do than because he hoped to find anything, while we were waiting anxiously for something to happen.
An exclamation from Garrick, however, brought me to his side. Tucked away in a bureau drawer under some soiled linen that plainly belonged to Forbes, he drew out what looked like a single blue-steel tube about three inches long. At its base was a hard-rubber cap, which fitted snugly into the palm of the hand as he held it. His first and middle fingers encircled the barrel, over a steel ring. A pull downward and the thing gave a click.
"Good that it wasn't loaded," Garrick remarked. "I knew what the thing was, all right, but I didn't think the spring was as delicate as all that. It is a new and terrible weapon of destruction of human life, one that can be carried by the thug or the burglar and no one be the wiser, unless he has occasion to use it. It is a gun that can be concealed in the palm of the hand. A pull downward on that spring discharges a thirty-two calibre, centre fire cartridge. The most dangerous feature of it is that the gun can be carried in an upper vest pocket as a fountain pen, or in a trousers pocket as a penknife."
I looked with added suspicion now, if not a sort of respect, on the young man who was tossing, half conscious, on the bed. Was he, after all, not the simple, gullible Forbes, but a real secret master of crime?
Garrick, keen though he had been over the discovery, was in reality much more interested just now in the result of his radiophone message. What would be the outcome?
I had been startled to see that almost instantly after his second call over the radiophone there seemed to rise on all sides of us lights and the low baying of dogs.
"What's all that?" I asked Garrick.
"Dillon had a dozen or so police dogs shipped up here quietly," answered Garrick, now straining his eyes and ears eagerly. "He started them out each in charge of an officer as soon as they arrived. I hope they had time to get around in that other direction and close in. That was what he sent the chauffeur back to see about, to make sure that they were placed by the man who is the trainer of the pack."
"What kind of dogs are they?"
"Some Airedales, but mostly Belgian sheep dogs. There is one in the pack, Cherry, who has a wonderful reputation. A great deal depends, now, on our dog-detectives."
"But," I objected, "what good will they be? Our men are in an automobile."
"We thought of that," replied Garrick confidently. "Here they are, at last," he cried, as a car swung up the lane from the road and stopped with a rush under our window. He leaned out and shouted, "Dillon—up here—quick!"
It was Dillon and his chauffeur, Jim. A moment later there was a tremendous shifting and pulling of heavy pieces of furniture in the hall, and, as the door swung open, the honest face of the commissioner appeared, inquiring anxiously if we were all right.
"Yes, all right," assured Garrick. "Come on, now. There isn't a minute to lose. Send Jim up here to take charge of Forbes. I'll drive the car myself."
Garrick accomplished in seconds what it takes minutes to tell. The chauffeur had already turned the car around and it was ready to start. We jumped in, leaving him to go upstairs and keep the manacled Forbes safely.
We gained the road and sped along, our lights now lighted and showing us plainly what was ahead. The dust-laden air told us that we were right as we turned into the narrow crossroad. I wondered how we were ever going to overtake them after they had such a start, at night, too, over roads which were presumably familiar to them.
"Drive carefully," shouted Dillon soon, "it must be along here, somewhere, Garrick."
A moment before we had been almost literally eating the dust the car ahead had raised. Garrick slowed down as we approached a bend in the road.
There, almost directly in our path, stood a car, turned half across the road and jammed up into a fence. I could scarcely believe it. It was the bandit's car—deserted!
"Good!" exclaimed Dillon as Garrick brought our own car to a stop with a jerk only a few feet away.
I looked about in amazement, first at the empty car and then into the darkness on either side of the road. For the moment I could not explain it. Why had they abandoned the car, especially when they had every prospect of eluding us in it?
They had not been forced to turn out for anybody, for no other vehicle had passed us. Was it tire trouble or engine trouble? I turned to the others for an explanation.
"I thought it must be about here," cried Dillon. "We had one of my men place an obstruction in the road. They didn't run into it, which shows clever driving, but they had to turn so sharply that they ran into the fence. I guess they realised that there was no use in turning and trying to go back."
"They have taken to the open country," shouted Garrick, leaping up on the seat of our car and looking about in a vain endeavour to catch some sign of them.
All was still, save here and there the sharp, distant bark of a dog.
"I wonder which way they went?" he asked, looking down at us.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE POLICE DOG
Dillon pulled a whistle from his pocket and blew a short blast sharply. Far down the road, we could hear faintly an answering bark. It came nearer.
"They're taught to obey a police whistle and nothing else," remarked Dillon, with satisfaction. "I wonder which one of the dogs that was. By the way, just keep out of sight as much as you can—get back up in our car. They are trained to worry anyone who hasn't a uniform. I'll take this dog in charge. I hope it's Cherry. She ought to be around here, if the men obeyed my orders. The others aren't keen on a scent even when it is fresh, but Cherry is a dandy and I had the man bring her up purposely."
We got back into our car and waited impatiently. Across the hills now and then we could catch the sounds of dogs scouting around here and there. It seemed as if every dog in the valley had been aroused. On the other slope of the hill from the main road we could see lights in the scattered houses.
"I doubt whether they have gone that way," commented Garrick following my gaze. "It looks less settled over here to the right of the road, in the direction of New York."
The low baying of the dog which had answered Dillon's call was growing nearer every moment. At last we could hear it quite close, at the deserted car ahead.
Cherry seemed to have many of the characteristics of the wild, prehistoric animal, among them the full, upright ears of the wild dog, which are such a great help to it. She was a fine, alert, up-standing dog, hardy, fierce, and literally untiring, of a tawny light brown like a lioness, about the same size and somewhat of the type of the smooth-coated collie, broad of chest and with a full brush of tail.
Untamed though she seemed, she was perfectly under Dillon's control, and rendered him absolute and unreasoning obedience.
"Now, Cherry, nice dog," we heard Dillon encouraging, "Here, up here.
And here."
He was giving the dog the scent from the deserted car. His voice rang out sharply in the night air, "Come on Garrick and Marshall. She's got it. I've got her on leash. Follow along, now, just a few feet behind."
Cherry was on the trail and it was a hot one. We could just see her magnificent head, narrow and dome-like, between the keen ears. She was working like a regular sleuthhound, now, too, slowly, picking up the trail and following it, baying as she went.
She was now going without a halt or falter. Nose to the ground, she had leaped from the bandit's car and made straight across a field in the direction that Garrick had suspected they would take, only a little to the west.
"This is a regular, old-fashioned man hunt," called back Dillon, as we followed the dog and himself, as best we could.
It was pitch dark, but we plunged ahead over fields and through little clumps of trees, around hedges, and over fences.
There was no stopping, no cessation of the deep baying of the dog. Cherry was one of the best and most versatile that the police had ever acquired and trained.
We came to the next crossroad, and the dog started up in the direction of the main road, questing carefully.
We had gone not a hundred feet when a dark object darted out of the bushes at the side of the road, and I felt myself unceremoniously tumbled off my feet.
Garrick leaped aside, with a laugh.
"Dillon," he shouted ahead at the top of his voice, "one of the Airedales has discovered Marshall. Come back here. Lie still, Tom. The dog is trained to run between the legs and trip up anyone without a police uniform. By Jupiter—here's another one—after me. Dillon—I say—Dillon!"
The commissioner came back, laughing at our plight, and called off the dogs, who were now barking furiously. We let him get a little ahead, calling the Airedales to follow him. They were not much good on the scent, but keen and intelligent along the lines of their training, and perfectly willing to follow Dillon, who was trusting to the keen sense of Cherry.
A little further down, the fugitives had evidently left the road after getting their bearings.
"They must have heard the dogs," commented Garrick. "They are doubling on their tracks, now, and making for the Ramapo River in the hope of throwing the dogs off the scent. That's the game. It's an old trick."
We came, sure enough, in a few minutes to the river. That had indeed been their objective point. Cherry was baffled. We stuck close to Dillon, after our previous experience, as we stopped to talk over hastily what to do.
Had they gone up or down, or had they crossed? There was not much time that we could afford to lose here in speculation if we were going to catch them.
Cherry was casting backward in an instinctive endeavour to pick up the trail. Dillon had taken her across and she had not succeeded in finding the scent on the opposite bank for several hundred yards on either side.
"They started off toward the southwest," reasoned Garrick quickly. "Then they turned in this direction. The railroads are over there. Yes, that is what they would make for. Dillon," he called, "let us follow the right bank of the river down this way, and see if we can't pick them up again."
The river was shallow at this point, but full of rocks, which made it extremely hard, if not dangerous, to walk even close to the bank in the darkness. "I don't think they'd stand for much of this sort of going," remarked Garrick. "A little of it would satisfy them, and they'd strike out again."
He was right. Perhaps five minutes later, after wading in the cold water, clinging as close to the bank as we could, we came to a sort of rapids. Cherry, who had been urged on by Dillon, gave a jerk at her leash, as she sniffed along the bank.
"She has it," cried Garrick, springing up the bank after Dillon.
I followed and we three men and three dogs struck out again in earnest across country.
We had come upon a long stretch of woods, and the brambles and thick growth made the going exceedingly difficult. Still, if it was hard for us now, it must have been equally hard for them as they broke through in the first place.
At last we came to the end of the woods. The trail was now fresher than ever, and Dillon had difficulty in holding Cherry back so that the rest of us could follow. As we emerged from the shadow of the trees into the open field, it seemed as if guns were blazing on all sides of us.
We were almost up with them. They had separated and were not half a mile away, firing at random in our direction, as they heard the dogs. Dillon drew up, Cherry tugging ahead. He turned to the Airedales. They had already taken in the situation, and were now darting ahead at what they could see, if not scent.
I felt a "ping!" on my chest. I scarcely realized what it was until I heard something drop the next instant in the stubble at my feet, and felt a smarting sensation as if a sharp blow had struck me. I bent down and from the stubble picked up a distorted bullet.
"These bullet-proof coats are some good, anyhow, at a distance," remarked Garrick, close beside me, as he took the bullet from my fingers. "Duck! Back among the trees—until we get our bearings!"
Another bullet had whizzed just past his arm as he spoke.
We dodged back among the trees, and slowly skirted the edge of the wood, where it bent around a little on the flank of the position from which the continuous firing was coming.
At the edge we stopped again. We could go no further without coming out into the open, and the moon, just rising, above the trees, made us an excellent mark under such conditions. Garrick peered out to determine from just where they were firing.
"Lucky for us that we had these coats," he muttered, "or they would have croaked us, before we knew it. These are our old friends, the anaesthetic bullets, too. Even a little scratch from one of them and we should be hors de combat for an hour or two."
"Shall we take a chance?" urged Dillon.
"Just a minute," cautioned Garrick, listening.
The barking of the Airedales had ceased suddenly. Cherry was straining at her leash to go.
"They have winged the two dogs," exclaimed Garrick. "Yes—we must try it now—at any cost."
We broke from the cover, taking a chance, separating as much as we could, and pushing ahead rapidly, Dillon under his breath keeping Cherry from baying as much as possible.
I had expected a sharp fusillade to greet us as we advanced and wondered whether the coats would stand it at closer range. Instead, the firing seemed to have ceased altogether.
A quick dash and we had crossed the stretch of open field that separated us from a dark object which now loomed up, and from behind which it seemed had come the firing. As we approached, I saw it was a shed beside the railroad, which was depressed at this point some twelve or fifteen feet.
"They kept us off just long enough," exclaimed Garrick, glancing up at the lights of the block signals down the road. "They must be desperate, all right. Why, they must have jumped a freight as it slowed down for the curve, or perhaps one of them flagged it and held it up. See? The red signal shows that a train has just gone through toward New York. There is no chance to wire ahead, either, from this Ducktown siding. Here's where they stood—look!"
Garrick had picked up a handful of exploded cartridge shells, while he was speaking. They told a mute story of the last desperate stand of the gunmen.
"I'll keep these," he said, shoving them into his pocket. "They may be of some use later on in connecting to-night's doings with what has gone before."
We looked at each other blankly. There was nothing more to do that night but to return to the now deserted house in the valley where we had left Forbes in charge of Dillon's man.
Toilsomely and disgusted, we trudged back in silence.
Garrick, however, refused to be discouraged. Late as it was, he insisted on making a thorough search of the captured house. It proved to be a veritable arsenal. Here it seemed that all the new and deadly weapons of the scientific gunman had been made. The barn, turned into half garage and half workshop, was a mine of interest.
We found it unlocked and entered, Garrick flashing a light about.
"There's a sight that would do McBirney's eyes good," he exclaimed as he bent the rays of the light before us.
Before us, in the back of the barn, stood Warrington's stolen car—at last.
"They won't plot anything more—at least not up here," remarked
Garrick, bending over it.
In the house, we found Jim still with Forbes, who was now completely recovered. In the possession of his senses, Forbes' tongue which the anaesthetic gases seemed to have loosened, now became suddenly silent again. But he stuck doggedly to his story of kidnapping, although he would not or could not add anything to it. Who the kidnapper was he swore he did not know, except that he had known his face well, by sight, at the gambling joint.
I could make nothing of Forbes. But of one thing I was sure. Even if we had not captured the scientific gunman, we had dealt him a severe and crushing blow. Like Garrick, I had begun to look upon the escape philosophically.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FRAME-UP
Although I felt discouraged on our return to the city, the morning following our exciting adventure at the mysterious house in the Ramapo valley, Garrick, who never let anything ruffle him long, seemed quite cheerful.
"Cheer up, Tom," he encouraged. "We are on the home stretch now."
"Perhaps—if they don't beat us to the tape," I answered disconsolately. "What are you going to do next?"
"While you were snatching a little sleep, I was rummaging around and found a number of letters in a table drawer, up there. One was a note, evidently to the garage keeper, and signed merely, 'Chief.' I'll wager that the handwriting is the same as that in the blackmailing letter to Miss Winslow."
"What of it?" I asked, refusing to be comforted. "We haven't got him and the prospects—"
"No, we haven't got him," interrupted Garrick, "but the note was just a line to tell the Boss, who seemed to have been up there in the country at the time, to meet the Chief at 'the Joint,' on Second Avenue."
I nodded, but before I could speak, he added, "It didn't say any more, but I think I know the place. It is the old International Cafe, a regular hang-out for crooks, where they come to gamble away the proceeds of their crimes in stuss, the great game of the East Side, now. Anyhow, we'll just drop into the place. We may not find them, but we'll have an interesting time. Then, there is the possibility of getting a strangle hold on someone, anyhow."
Garrick was evidently figuring on having driven our gunman back into the haunts of the underworld.
There seemed to be no other course that presented itself and therefore, rather than remain inactive until something new turned up, I consented to accompany him in his excursion.
Forbes, still uncommunicatively protesting that he would say nothing until he had an opportunity to consult a lawyer, had been taken down to New York by Dillon during the morning and was lodged in a West Side prison under a technical charge which was sufficient to hold him until Garrick could investigate his case and fix his real status.
We had taken a cross-town car, with the intention of looking over the dive where Garrick believed the crooks might drop in. The ride itself was uninteresting, but not so by any means the objective point of our journey.
Over on the East Side, we found the International Cafe, and slouched into the back room. It was not the room devoted to stuss, but the entrance to it, which Garrick informed me was through a heavy door concealed in a little hallway, so that its very existence would not be suspected except by the initiate.
We made no immediate attempt to get into the hang-out proper, which was a room perhaps thirty feet wide and seventy feet deep. Instead, we sat down at one of the dirty, round tables, and ordered something from the waiter, a fat and oily Muscowitz in a greasy and worn dinner coat.
It seemed that in the room where we were had gathered nearly every variety of the populous underworld. I studied the men and women at the tables curiously, without seeming to do so. But there could be no concealment here. Whatever we might be, they seemed to know that we were not of them, and they greeted us with black looks and now and then a furtive scowl.
It was not long, however, before it became evident that in some way word had been passed that we were not mere sightseers. Perhaps it was by a sort of wireless electric tension that seemed to pervade the air. At any rate, it was noticeable.
"There's no use staying here," remarked Garrick to me under his breath, affecting not to notice the scowls, "unless we do something. Are you game for trying to get into the stuss joint?"
He said it with such determination to go himself that I did not refuse. I had made up my mind that the only thing to do was to follow him, wherever he went.
Garrick rose, stretched himself, yawned as though bored, and together we lounged out into the public hall, just as someone from the outside clamoured for admission to the stuss joint through the strong door.
The door had already been opened, when Garrick deftly inserted his shoulder. Through the crack in the door, I could see the startled roomful of players of all degrees in crookdom, in the thick, curling tobacco smoke.
The man at the door called out to Garrick to get out, and raised his arm to strike. Garrick caught his fist, and slowly with his powerful grip bent it back until the man actually writhed. As his wrist went back by fractions of an inch, his fingers were forced to relax. I knew the trick. It was the scientific way to open a clenched fist. As the tendons refused to stretch any farther, his fingers straightened, and a murderous looking blackjack clattered to the floor.
All was confusion. Money which was on the various tables disappeared as if by magic. Cards were whisked away as if a ghost had taken them. In a moment there was no more evidence of gambling than is afforded by any roomful of men, so easy was it to hide the paraphernalia, or, rather, lack of paraphernalia of stuss.
It was the custom, I knew, for criminals, after they had made a haul to retire into such places as these stuss parlors, not only to spend the proceeds of their robberies, but for protection. Even though they were unmercifully fleeced by the gamblers, they might depend on them to warn of the approach of the "bulls" and if possible count on being hidden or spirited off to safety.
Apparently we had come just at a time when there were some criminals in hiding among the players. It was the only explanation I could offer of the strange action that greeted our simple attempt to gain admission to the stuss room. Whether they were criminals who had really made a haul or mere fugitives from justice, I could not guess. But that a warning had been given the man at the door to be on his guard, seemed evident from the manner in which we had been met.
There was a rush of feet in the room. I expected that we would be overwhelmed. Instead, as together we pushed on the now half-open door, the room emptied like a sieve. Whoever it might be who had taken refuge there had probably disappeared, among the first, by tacit understanding of the rest, for the whole thing had the air of being run off according to instructions.
"It's a collar!" had sounded through the room, the moment we had appeared at the door, and it was now empty.
I wondered whether the letter which Garrick had found might not, after all, have brought us straight to the last resort of those whom we sought.
"Where have they gone?" I panted, as the door opened at last, and we found only one man in the place.
There he stood apparently ready to be arrested, in fact courting it if we could show the proper authority, since he knew that it would be only a question of hours when he would be out again and the game would be resumed, in full blast.
The man shook his head blankly in answer to my question.
"There must be a trap door somewhere," cried Garrick. "It is no use to find it. They are all on the street by this time. Quick—before anyone catches us in the rear."
We had been not a moment too soon in gaining the street. Though we had done nothing but attempt to get into the stuss room, ostensibly as players, the crowd in the cafe was pressing forward.
On the street, we saw men filing quickly from a cellar, a few doors down the block. We mingled with the excited crowd in order to cover ourselves.
"That must have been where the trap door and passage led," whispered
Garrick.
A familiar figure ducked out of the cellar, surrounded by others, and the crowd made for two taxicabs standing on the opposite side of the street near a restaurant which was really not a tough joint but made a play at catering to people from uptown who wanted a taste of near-crime and did not know when they were being buncoed.
Another cab swung up to the stand, just as the first two pulled away.
Its sign was up: "Vacant."
Quick as a flash, Garrick was in it, dragging me after him. The driver must have thought that we, too, were escaping, for he needed only one order from Garrick to leap ahead in the wake of the cabs which had already started.
A moment later, Garrick's head was out of the window. He had drawn his revolver and was pegging away at the tires of the cabs ahead. An answering shot came back to us. Meanwhile, a policeman at a corner leaped on a passing trolley and urged the motorman to put on the full power in a vain effort to pursue us as we swept by up the broad avenue.
Even the East Side, accustomed to frequent running fights on the streets between rival gunmen and gangs, was roused by such an outburst. The crack of revolver shots, the honking of horns, the clang of the trolley bell, and the shouts of men along the street brought hundreds to the windows, as the cars lurched and swayed up the avenue.
The cars ahead swerved to dodge a knot of pedestrians, but their pace never slackened. Then the rearmost of the two began to buck and almost leap off the roadway. There came a rattle and roar from the rear wheels which told that the tires had been punctured and that the heavy wheels were riding on their rims, cutting the deflated tubes. At a cross street the first car turned, just in time to avoid a truck, and dodged down a maze of side streets, but the second ran squarely into the truck.
As the first car disappeared we caught a glimpse of a man leaning out of it. He seemed to be swinging something around and around at arm's length. Suddenly he let it go and it shot high up in the air on the roof of a tenement house.
"The automobile is the most dangerous weapon ever used by criminals," muttered Garrick, as the first car shot down through a mass of trucking which had backed up and shifted, making pursuit momentarily more impossible for us. "These people know how to use the automobile, too. But we've got someone here, anyhow," he cried, leaping out and pushing aside the crowd that had collected about the wrecked car.
In the bottom of it we found a man, stunned and crumpled into a heap.
Blood flowed from his arm where one of the bullets had struck him.
Several bullets had struck the back of the cab and both tires were cut
by them.
As I came up and looked over Garrick's shoulder at the prostrate and unconscious figure in the car, I could not restrain an exclamation of surprise.
It was the garage keeper, the Boss—at last!
Policemen had come up in the meantime, and several minutes were consumed while Garrick proved to them his identity.
"What was that thing the fellow in the forward car whirled over his head?" I whispered.
"A revolver, I think," returned Garrick. "That's a favourite trick of the gunmen. With a stout cord tied to a gun you can catapult it far enough to destroy the evidence that will hold you under the Sullivan law, at least. I mean to get that gun as soon as we are through with this fellow here."
Someone had turned in a call for an ambulance which came jangling up soon after, and we stood in a group close to the young surgeon as he worked to bring around the captured gangster.
"Where's the Chief?" he mumbled, dazed.
Garrick motioned to us to be quiet.
The man rambled on with a few inconsequential remarks, then opened his eyes, caught sight of the white coated surgeon working over him, of us standing behind, and of the crowd about him.
Memory of what had happened flitted back to him. With an effort he was himself again, close-mouthed, after the manner of the gangsters.
The surgeon had done all in his power and the man was sufficiently recovered to be taken to the hospital, now, under arrest. As far as we were concerned, our work was done. The Boss could be found now, at any time that we needed him, but that he would speak all the traditions of gangland made impossible.
I wondered what Garrick would do. As for myself, I had no idea what move to make.
It surprised me, therefore, to see him with a smile of satisfaction on his face.
"I'll see you this afternoon, Tom," he said merely, as the ambulance bore the wounded Boss away. "Meanwhile, I wish you'd take the time to go over to headquarters and give Dillon our version of this affair. Tell him to hold to-night open, too. I have a little work to do this afternoon, and I'll call him up later."
Dillon, I found, was overjoyed when I reported to him the capture of at least one man whom we had failed to get the night before.
"Things seem to be clearing up, after all," he remarked. "Tell Garrick I shall hold open to-night for him. Meanwhile, good luck, and let me know the moment you get any word about the Chief. He must have been in. that first cab, all right."
As I left Dillon's office, I ran into Herman in the hall, coming in. I bowed to him and he nodded surlily. Evidently, I thought, he had heard of the result of our activities. I did not ask him what progress he had made in the case, for I had had experience with professional jealousy before, and thought that the less said on the subject the better.
Recalling what Garrick had said, I curbed my impatience as best I could, in order to give him ample time to complete the work that he had to do. It was not until the middle of the afternoon that I rejoined him in his office.
I found him at work at a table, still, with a microscope and an arrangement which I recognised as the apparatus for making microphotographs. Several cartridges, carefully labelled, were lying before him, as well as the peculiar pistol we had found when we had captured Forbes in the little room. There were also the guns we had captured in the garage and one found in the cab which we had chased and wrecked.
On the end of the table was a large number of photographs of a most peculiar nature. I picked up one. It looked like an enlarged photograph of an orange, or like some of the pictures which the astronomers make of the nearer planets.
"What are these?" I asked curiously, as he leaned back from his work, with a smile of quiet satisfaction.
"That is a collection of microphotographs which I have gathered," he answered, adding, "as well as some that I have just made. I hope to use them in a little stereopticon entertainment I am arranging to-night for those who have been interested in the case."
Garrick smiled. "Have you ever heard?" he asked, "that the rounded end of the firing pin of every rifle when it is examined under a microscope bears certain irregularities of marking different from those of every other firing pin and that the primer of every shell fired in a rifle is impressed with the particular markings of that firing pin?"
I had not, but Garrick went on, "I know that it is true. Such markings are distinctive for each rifle and can be made by no other. I have taken rifles bearing numbers preceding and following that of a particular one, as well as a large number of other firing pins. I have tried the rifles and the firing pins, one by one, and after I made microphotographs of the firing pins with special reference to the rounded ends and also photographs of the corresponding rounded depressions in the primers fired by them, it was forced upon me that cartridges fired by each individual firing pin could be positively identified."
I had been studying the photographs. It was a new idea, and it appealed to me strongly. "How about revolvers?" I asked quickly.
"Well, Dr. Balthazard, the French criminologist, has made experiments on the identification of revolver bullets and has a system that might be compared to that of Bertillon for identifying human beings. He has showed by greatly enlarged photographs that every gun barrel leaves marks on a bullet and that the marks are always the same for the same barrel but never identical for two different barrels. He has shown that the hammer of a revolver, say a centre fire, strikes the cartridge at a point which is never the exact centre of the cartridge, but is always the same for the same weapon. He has made negatives of bullets nearly a foot wide. Every detail appears very distinctly and it can be decided with absolute certainty whether a certain bullet or cartridge was fired by a certain revolver."
He had picked up one of the microphotographs and was looking at it attentively through a small glass.
"You will see," he explained, "on the edge of this photograph a rough sketch calling attention to a mark like an L which is the chief characteristic of this hammer, although there are other detailed markings which show well under the microscope but not in a photograph. You will note that the marks on a hammer are reversed on the primer in the same way that a metal type and the character printed by it are reversed as regards one another. Moreover, depressions on the end of a hammer become raised on the primer and raised markings on the hammer become depressions on the primer.
"Now, here is another. You can see that it is radically different from the first, which was from the cartridge used in killing poor Rena Taylor. This second one is from that gun which I found on the tenement roof this morning. It lacks the L mark as well as the concentric circles. Here is another. Its chief characteristics are a series of pits and elevations which, examined under the microscope and measured, will be found to afford a set of characters utterly different from those of any other hammer.
"In short," he concluded with an air of triumph, "the ends of firing pins are turned and finished in a lathe by the use of tools designed for that purpose. The metal tears and works unevenly so that microscopical examination shows many pits, lines, circles, and irregularities. The laws of chance are as much against two of these firing pins or hammers having the same appearance under the microscope as they are against the thumb prints of two human subjects being identical."
I picked up the curious little arrangement which we had found in the drawer in Forbes' room and examined it closely.
"I have been practicing with that pistol, if you may call it that," he remarked, "on cartridges of my own and examining the marks made by the peculiar hammer. I have studied marks of the gun which we found on the roof. I have compared them with the marks on cartridges which we have picked up at the finding of Rena Taylor's body, at the garage that night of the stupefying bullet, with bullets such as were aimed at Warrington, with others, both cartridges and bullets, at various times, and the conclusion is unescapable."
Who, I asked myself, was the scientific gunman? I knew it was useless to try to hurry Garrick. First, by a sort of intuition he had picked him out, then by the evidence of hammer and bullet he had made it practically certain. But I knew that to his scientific mind nothing but absolute certainty would suffice.
While I was waiting for him to proceed, he had already begun to work on some apparatus behind a screen at the end of his office. Close to the wall at the left was a stereopticon which, as nearly as I could make out, shot a beam of light through a tube to a galvanometer about three feet distant. In front of this beam whirled a five-spindled wheel governed by a chronometer which was so accurate, he said, that it erred only a second a day.
Between the poles of the galvanometer was stretched a slender thread of fused quartz plated with silver. It was the finest thread I could imagine, only a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter, far too tenuous to be seen. Three feet further away was a camera with a moving plate holder which carried a sensitized photographic plate. Its movement was regulated by a big fly-wheel at the extreme right.
"You see," remarked Garrick, now engrossed on the apparatus and forgetting the hammer evidence for the time, "the beam of light focussed on that fine thread in the galvanometer passes to this photographic plate. It is intercepted by the five spindles of the wheel, which turns once a second, thus marking the picture off in exact fifths of a second. The vibrations of the thread are enormously magnified on the plate by a lens and produce a series of wavy or zigzag lines. I have shielded the sensitized plate by a wooden hood which permits no light to strike it except the slender ray that is doing the work. The plate moves across the field slowly, its speed regulated by the fly-wheel. Don't you think it is neat and delicate? All these movements are produced by one of the finest little electric motors I ever saw."
I could not get the idea of the revolvers out of my head so quickly. I agreed with him, but all I could find to say was, "Do you think there was more than this one whom they call the Chief engaged in the shootings?"
"I can't say absolutely anything more than I have told you, yet," he answered in a tone that seemed to discourage further questioning along that line.
He continued to work on the delicate apparatus with its thread stretched between the stationary magnets of the galvanometer, a thread so delicate that it might have been spun by a microscopic spider, so light that no scales made by human hands could weigh it, so slender that the mind could hardly grasp it. It was about one-third the diameter of a red corpuscle of blood and its weight had been estimated as about .00685 milligrams, truly a fairy thread. It was finer than the most delicate cobweb and could be seen with the naked eye only when a strong light was thrown on it so as to catch the reflection.
"All I can say is," he admitted, "that the bullets which committed this horrible series of crimes have been proven all to be shot from the same gun, presumably, I think I shall show, by the same hand, and that hand is the same that wrote the blackmailing letter."
"Whose gun was it?" I asked. "Was there a way to connect it and the bullets and the cartridges with the owner—four things, all separated—and then that owner with the curious and tragic succession of events that had marked the case since the theft of Warrington's car?"
Garrick had apparently completed his present work of adjusting the delicate apparatus. He was now engaged on another piece which also had a powerful light in it and an attachment which bore a strong resemblance to a horn.
He paused a moment, regarding me quizzically. "I think you'll find it sufficiently novel to warrant your coming, Tom," he added. "I have already invited Dillon and his man, Herman, over the telephone just before you came in. McBirney will be there, and Forbes, of course. He'll have to come, if I want him. By the way, I wish you'd get in touch with Warrington and see how he is. If it is all right, tell him that I'd like to have him escort Miss Winslow and her aunt here, to-night. Meanwhile I shall find out how our friend the Boss is getting on. He ought to be here, at any cost, and I've put it off until to-night to make sure that he'll be in fit condition to come. To-night at nine—here in this office—remember," he concluded gayly. "In the meantime, not a word to anybody about what you have seen here this afternoon."
CHAPTER XXV
THE SCIENTIFIC GUNMAN
Our little audience arrived one by one, and, as master of ceremonies, it fell to me to greet them and place them as much at ease as the natural tension of the occasion would permit. Garrick spoke a word or two to each, but was still busy putting the finishing touches on the preparations for the "entertainment," as he called it facetiously, which he had arranged.
"Before I put to the test a rather novel combination which I have arranged," began Garrick, when they had all been seated, "I want to say a few words about some of the discoveries I have already made in this remarkable case."
He paused a moment to make sure that he had our attention, but it was unnecessary. We were all hanging eagerly on his words.
"There is, I believe," he resumed slowly, "no crime that is ever without a clew. The slightest trace, even a drop of blood no larger than a pin-head, may suffice to convict a murderer. So may a single hair found on the clothing of a suspect. In this case," he added quickly, "it is the impression made by the hammer of a pistol on the shell of a cartridge which leads unescapably to one conclusion."
The idea was so startling that we followed Garrick's every word as if weighted with tremendous importance, as indeed it was in the clearing up of this mysterious affair.
"I have made a collection from time to time," he pursued, "of the various exploded cartridges, the bullets, and the weapons left behind by the perpetrator of the dastardly series of crimes, from the shooting of the stool pigeon of the police, Rena Taylor, and the stealing of Mr. Warrington's car, down to the peculiar events of last night up in the Ramapos and the running fight through the streets of New York in taxicabs this morning.
"I have studied this evidence with the microscope and the microphotographic apparatus. I have secured excellent microphotographs of the marks made by various weapons on the cartridges and bullets. Taking those used in the commission of the greater crimes in this series, I find that the marks are the same, apparently, whether the gun shot off a bullet of wax or tallow which became liquid in the body, whether it discharged a stupefying gas, or whether the deadly anaesthetic bullet was fired. I have obtained a gun"—he threw it on the table with a clang—"the marks from the hammer of which correspond with the marks made on all the cartridges I have mentioned. One person owned that gun and used it. That is proved. It remains only to connect that gun positively and definitely, as a last link, with that person."
I noticed with a start that the revolver still had a stout cord tied to it.
As he concluded, Garrick had begun fitting a curious little device to each of our forearms. It looked to me like an electrode consisting of large plates of German silver, covered with felt and saturated with salt solution. From each electrode wires ran across the floor to some hidden apparatus.
"Back of this screen," he went on, indicating it in the corner of the room, "I have placed what is known as the string galvanometer, invented, or, perhaps better, perfected by Dr. Einthoven, of Leyden. It was designed primarily for the study of the beating of the heart in cases of disease, but it also may be used to record and study emotions as well,—love and hate, fear, joy, anger, remorse, all are revealed by this uncanny, cold, ruthlessly scientific instrument.
"The machine is connected by wires to each of you, and will make what are called electrocardiographs, in which every emotion, every sentiment, every passion is recorded inevitably, inexorably. For, the electric current that passes from each of you to the machine over these wires carrying the record of the secrets of your hearts is one of the feeblest currents known to science. Yet it can be caught and measured. The dynamo which generates this current is not a huge affair of steel castings and endless windings of copper wire. It is merely the heart of the sitter.
"The heart makes only one three-thousandth of a volt of electricity at each beat. It would take thousands of hearts to light one electric light, hundreds of thousands to run one trolley car. Yet just that slight little current from the heart is enough to sway a gossamer strand of quartz fibre in what I may call my 'heart station' here. This current, as I have told you, passes from each of you over a wire and vibrates a fine quartz fibre in unison with it, one of the most delicate bits of mechanism ever made, recording the result on a photographic film by means of a beam of light reflected from a delicate mirror."
We sat spellbound as Garrick unfolded the dreadful, awe-inspiring possibilities of the machine behind the screen. He walked slowly to the back of the room.
"Now, here I have one of the latest of the inventions of the Wizard of West Orange—Edison," he resumed. "It is, as you perhaps have already guessed, the latest product of this genius of sound and sight, the kinetophone, the machine that combines moving pictures with the talking machine."
A stranger stepped in from an outer office. He was the skilled operator of the kinetophone, whom Garrick had hired. In a few terse sentences he explained that back of a curtain which he pulled down before us was a phonograph with a megaphone, that from his booth behind us he operated the picture films, and that the two were absolutely synchronized.
A moment later a picture began to move on the screen. Sounds and voices seemed to emerge as if from the very screen itself. There, before us, we saw a gambling joint operating in full blast. It was not the Forty-eighth Street resort. But it was strongly reminiscent of it. From the talking machine proceeded all the noises familiar to such a scene.
Garrick had moved behind the screen that cut off our view of the galvanometer. One after another, he was studying the emotions of each of his audience.
Suddenly the scene changed. A door was burst in, cards and gambling paraphernalia were scattered about and hidden, men rushed to escape, and the sounds were much like those on the night of the raid. Garrick was still engrossed in the study of what the galvanometer was showing.
The film stopped. Without warning, the operator started another. It was a group of men and women playing cards. A man entered, and engaged in conversation with one of the women who was playing. They left the room.
The next scene was in an entirely different room. But the connection which was implied with the last scene was obvious. Different actors entered the room, a man and a woman. There was a dispute—there was a crack of a revolver—and the woman fell. People rushed in. Everything was done to hide the crime. The girl was carried out into a waiting automobile, propped in as if overcome by alcohol and whisked away. I found myself almost looking to see if the car was of the make of Warrington's, so great was the impression the scene made on me. Of course it was not, but it all seemed so real that one might be pardoned for expecting the impossible, especially when her body was thrown, with many a muttered imprecation, by the roadside, and in the last picture the man was cleaning the exploded gun. One single still picture followed. It was a huge, enlarged cartridge.
I followed the thing with eager eyes and ears. From a long list of canned and reeled plays, Garrick had selected here and there such scenes and acts as, interspersed with a few single, original pictures of his own, like the cartridge, would serve best to recapitulate the very case which we had been investigating. It carried me along step by step, wonderfully.
Another moving and talking picture was under way. This time it seemed to be a race between two automobiles. They were tearing along, and the sound of the rapidly working cylinders was most real. The rearmost was rapidly overhauling that in front. Imagine our surprise as it crept up on the other to see the driver rise, whip out a pistol, and fire point blank at the other as he dashed ahead, and the picture stopped.
A suppressed scream escaped Violet Winslow. It was too much like what had happened to Mortimer Warrington for her to repress the shudder that swept over her, and an involuntary movement toward him to make sure that it was not real.
Still Garrick did not move from his post at the galvanometer. He was taking no chances. He had us thrilled, tense, and he meant to take advantage to the full in reading the truth in the dramatic situation he had so skilfully created.
Another picture started almost on the heels of the last. It was of the robbery of a safe. Then came another, a firebug at work in starting a conflagration. We could hear the crackling of flames, the shouts of the people, the clang of bells, and the hasty tread of the firemen as they advanced and put out the blaze. The film play was one of those which never fail to attract, where the makers had gone to the utmost extent of realism and had actually set fire to a house to get the true effect.
The next was a scene from a detective play, pure and simple, in which that marvellous little instrument which had served us in such good stead in this case was played up strongly, the detectaphone. Then followed a scene from another play in which a young girl was kidnapped and rescued by her lover just in the nick of time. Nothing could have been selected to arouse the feelings of the little audience to a higher pitch.
The last of the series, which I knew was to be a climax, was not an American picture. It was quite evidently made in Paris and was from actual life. I myself had been startled when the title was announced by the voice and on the screen simultaneously, "The Siege of the Motor Bandits by the Paris Police."
It was terrific. It began with the shouts of the crowd urging on the police, the crack of revolvers and guns from a little house or garage in the suburbs, the advance and retreat of the gendarmes on the stronghold. Back and forth the battle waged. One could hear the sharp orders of the police, the shrill taunts of the bandits, the sounds of battle.
Then at a point where the bandits seemed to have beaten off the attack successfully, there came an automobile. From it I could see the police take an object which I now knew must be a Mathiot gun. The huge thing was set up and carefully aimed. Then with a dull roar it was fired.
We could see the bomb hurtling through the air, see it strike the little house with a cloud of smoke and dust, hear the report of the explosion, the shouts of dismay of the bandits—then silence. A cry went up from the crowd as the police now pressed forward in a mass and rushed into the house, disclosing the last scene—in which the bandits were suffocated.
The film suddenly stopped. Garrick's office, which had been ringing with firearms and shouts from the kinetophone, was again silent. It was an impressive silence, too. No one of us but had felt and lived the whole case over again in the brief time that the talking movies had been shown.
The lights flashed up, and before we realised that the thing was over, Garrick was standing before us, holding in his hand a long sheet of paper. The look on his face told plainly that his novel experiment had succeeded.
"I may say," he began, still studying the paper in his hand, although I knew he must have arrived at his conclusion already or he would never have quitted his "heart station," so soon, "I may say that some time ago a letter was sent to Miss Winslow purporting to reveal some of Mr. Warrington's alleged connections and escapades. It is needless to say that as far as the accusations were concerned he was able to meet them all adequately and, as for the innuendoes, they were pure baseless fabrications. The sender was urged on to do it by someone else who also had an interest of another kind in placing Mr. Warrington in a bad light with Miss Winslow. But the sender soon realised his mistake. The fact that he was willing to go to the length of a dangerous robbery accompanied by arson in order to get back or destroy the letter showed how afraid he was to have a sample of his handwriting fall into my hands. He blundered, but even then he did not realise how badly.
"For, in certain cases the handwriting shows a great deal more than would be recognised even by the ordinary handwriting expert. This letter showed that the writer was, as I have already explained to Mr. Marshall, the victim of a peculiar kind of paralysis which begins to show itself in nerve tremours for days before the attack and exhibits itself even in the handwriting.
"Now, my string galvanometer shows not only the effects of these moving and talking pictures on the emotions, but also, as it was really designed to do, the state of the heart with reference to normality. It shows to me plainly the effect of disease on the heart, even if it is latent in the subject. While I have been using the psychological law of suggestion, and have been recapitulating as well as I was able under the circumstances the whole story of the crime briefly in moving and talking pictures, I have found, in addition, that the same heart which shows the emotions I expected also shows the disease which I discovered in the blackmailing letter.
"There was surprise at the sight of the gambling den, rage at the raid, fear at the murder of the girl in the other den and the disposal of her body, excitement over the racing motor cars, passion over the kidnapping of the girl, anger over the little detectaphone, and panic at the siege of the bandits, as I showed by the selection of the films that I was getting closer and closer to the truth. And there was the same abnormality of the heart exhibited throughout."
Garrick paused. I scarcely breathed, nor did I move my eyes, which were riveted on his face. What was he going to reveal next? Was he going to accuse someone in the room?
"Mr. Marshall," he resumed with a smile toward me, "I am glad to say is quite normal and innocent of all wrongdoing—in this instance," he added with a momentary flash of humour. "Commissioner Dillon also passes muster. Mr. Warrington—I shall come back to, later."
I thought Violet Winslow gave a little, startled gasp. She turned toward him, anyhow, and I saw that not even science now could shake her faith in him.
"Mr. Forbes," he continued, speaking rapidly as I bent forward to catch every word, "incriminated himself quite sufficiently in connection with the gambling joint, the raid and the slanderous letter, so that I should advise him when this case comes to trial to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about his helping a gunman in order to further what proved a hopeless love affair on his own part. Here, too, is a little vest-pocket gun that was found under such circumstances as would be likely to connect Forbes in the popular mind with the shootings."
"My lawyer has my statement about that. I'll read—"
"No, Forbes," interrupted Garrick. "You needn't read. Your lawyer may be interested to add this to the statement, however. A pistol that has been shot off has potassium sulphide from the powder in the barrel. Later, it oxidizes and iron oxide is found. This weapon has neither the sulphide nor the oxide, as far as I can determine. It has never even been discharged. No, it was not the pistol found on Forbes that figured in this case.
"As far as that new-fangled gun goes, Forbes, it was a frame-up. You were kidnapped by a man whom you thought was your friend, and it was done for a purpose. He knew the situation you were in, your jealousy—I won't dwell on that here. He held you at the house up in the valley. You told the truth about that. He did it, the man who wrote the letter, because he hoped ultimately to shift all the guilt on you and himself go scot-free."
Forbes stared dumbly. I knew he had known what was coming but had held back for fear of what he knew had always happened to informers in the circle to which he had sunk.
"McBirney," continued Garrick, "your emotions, mostly astonishment, show that you have much to learn in this new business of modern detection, besides the recovery of stolen cars."
Garrick had paused for effect again.
"And now we come to the keeper of a nighthawk garage on the West Side, a man whom they seem to call the Boss. That is getting higher up. I find that he points, according to this scientific third degree, to one whom I have for a long time suspected—"
A dull thud startled us.
I turned. A man was lying, face down, on the floor.
Before any of us could reach him, Garrick concluded, "This is the man who framed up the case against Forbes, who stole Warrington's car to use to get rid of the body of the informer, Rena Taylor, because she by her success interfered with his gambling graft, who wrote the letter to Miss Winslow to injure Warrington because he, too, was interfering with his graft collection from the gambling house by threatening to close it up. He committed the arson to cover up his identity by getting back the letter; he planned and nearly executed the kidnapping of Miss Winslow in order to hold up Warrington, and then hid in the country where we ferreted him out, not far from the very scene of a murderous attack on Warrington for his brave stand in suppressing gambling—from which this man was weekly shaking down a huge profit as the price of police protection of the vice."
Garrick was kneeling by the prostrate form now, not so much the accuser as the scientist, studying a new phase of crime.
The threatened paralysis had struck Inspector Herman sooner than even
Garrick had expected.
When we had made Herman as comfortable as we could, Garrick added to Dillon, who stood over us, speechless, "You had under you one of the strong links in the secret system of police protection of vice and crime, and you never knew it—the greatest grafter and scientific gunman that I ever knew. It has been a long, hard fight. But I have the goods on him at last."
The exposure was startling in the extreme. Herman had gained for himself the reputation of being one of the shrewdest and most efficient men in the department. But he had felt the lure of graft. With the aid of the gamblers and unscrupulous politicians he had built up a huge, secret machine for collection of the profits from the sale of police protection against the enforcement of the law he was sworn to uphold.
He had begun to mix with doubtful characters. But he was a genius and had become, by degrees, the worst of the gangmen and gunmen who ever operated in the metropolis. Detailed to catch the gamblers and gangsters, with official power to do almost as he pleased, he had enjoyed a fine holiday and employed his leisure both for new crimes and in covering up so successfully his tracks in the old ones, even with Garrick on his trail, that he had been able to completely hoodwink his superior, Dillon, by his long, detailed reports which sounded very convincing but which really meant nothing.
As the strange truth of the case was established by Garrick, Dillon was the most amazed of us all. He had trusted Herman, and the revulsion of feeling was overwhelming.
"And to think," he exclaimed, in disgust, "that I actually placed his
own case in his own hands, with carte blanche instructions to go ahead.
No wonder he never produced a clew that amounted to anything. Well,
I'll be—"
Words failed him, as he looked down and glared savagely at the man in silence.
All were now crowding around Garrick eager to thank him for what he had done. As Warrington, now almost his former hearty wholesome self again, grasped Garrick's hand in the heartiness of his thanks, Garrick, with the electrocardiogram paper still in his other hand, smiled.
He released himself and turned to touch the dainty little hand of Violet Winslow, whose eyes were so full of happy tears that she could scarcely speak.
"Miss Winslow," he beamed, gazing earnestly and admiringly into her sweet face, "I promised to attend to the case of that man later,—" he added, with a nod at Warrington. "It may interest you to know scientifically what you already know by something that is greater than science, a woman's intuition."