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Cosmopolitan, May 1914, with "The Dead-Line"
What do you know about poroscopy? Nothing, of course. It takes Craig Kennedy to know all these up-to-the-minute scientific stunts. But at the same time, do you think it could save a human being—yourself, for instance? In this story, several people are trying to baffle Kennedy while pretending to lend all possible aid in solving a complex mystery. Read the story. It will give you a thrill and an idea of a brand-new and up-to-date method of crime-detection.
"PROFESSOR KENNEDY, I—I feel that I can—trust you."
There was a note of appeal in the hesitating voice of the tall, heavily-veiled woman whose card had been sent up to us with a nervous "Urgent" written across its face.
It was very early in the morning, but our visitor was evidently completely unnerved by some news which she had just received and which had sent her post-haste to see Craig.
Kennedy met her gaze directly, with a look that arrested her involuntary effort to avoid it again. She must have read in his eyes, more than in his words, that she might trust him.
"I—I have a confession to make," she faltered.
"Please sit down, Mrs. Moulton," he said simply. "It is my business to receive confidences—and to keep them."
She sank into, rather than sat down in, the deep, leather rocker beside his desk, and now for the first time raised her veil.
Antoinette Moulton was indeed stunning, an exquisite creature, with a wonderful charm of slender youth, brightness of eye, and brunette radiance.
I knew that she had been on the musical-comedy stage and had had a rapid rise to a star part before her marriage to Lynn Moulton, the wealthy lawyer, almost twice her age. I knew, also, that she had given up the stage, apparently without a regret. Yet there was something strange about the air of secrecy of her visit. Was there a hint in it of a disagreement between the Moultons, I wondered, as I waited while Kennedy reassured her?
Her distress was so unconcealed that Craig, for the moment, laid aside his ordinary inquisitorial manner.
"Tell me just as much or just as little as you choose, Mrs. Moulton," he added tactfully. "I will do my best."
A look almost of gratitude crossed her face.
"When we were married," she began again, "my husband gave me a beautiful diamond necklace. Oh, it must have been worth a hundred thousand dollars, easily. It was brilliant. Every one has heard of it. You know, Lynn—er—Mr. Moulton has always been an enthusiastic collector of jewels."
She paused again, and Kennedy nodded reassuringly. I knew the thought in his mind. Moulton had collected one gem that was incomparable with all the hundred-thousand-dollar necklaces in existence.
"Several months ago," she went on rapidly, still avoiding his eyes and forcing the words from her reluctant lips, "I—oh, I needed money—terribly."
She had risen and faced him, pressing her daintily gloved hands together in a little tremble of emotion, which was none the less genuine because she had studied the art of emotion.
"I took the necklace to a jeweler, Herman Schloss, of Maiden Lane, a man with whom my husband had often had dealings and whom I thought I could trust. Under a promise of secrecy he loaned me fifty thousand dollars on it, and had an exact replica in paste made by one of his best workmen. This morning, just now, Mr. Schloss telephoned me that his safe had been robbed last night. My necklace is gone!"
She threw out her hands in a wildly appealing gesture.
"And if Lynn finds that the necklace in our wall safe is of paste—as he will find, for he is an expert in diamonds—oh—what shall I do? Can't you—can't you find my necklace?"
Kennedy was following her, now, eagerly. "You were blackmailed out of the money?" he queried casually, masking his question.
There was a sudden, impulsive drooping of her mouth, an evasion and keen wariness in her eyes.
"I can't see that that has anything to do with the robbery," she answered, in a low voice.
"I beg your pardon," corrected Kennedy quickly. "Perhaps not. I'm sorry. Force of habit, I suppose. You don't know anything more about the robbery?"
"N-no; only that it seems impossible that it could have happened in a place that has the wonderful burglar-alarm protection that Mr. Schloss described to me."
"You know him pretty well?"
"Only through this transaction," she replied hastily. "I wish to heaven I had never heard of him!"
The telephone-bell rang insistently.
"Mrs. Moulton," said Kennedy, as he returned the receiver to the hook, "it may interest you to know that the burglar-alarm company has just called me up about the same case. If I had need of an added incentive, and I hope you will believe I have not, that might furnish it. I will do my best."
"Thank you—a thousand times," she cried fervently, and, had I been Craig, I think I should have needed no more thanks than the look she gave him as he accompanied her to the door of our apartment.
IT was still early, and eager crowds were pushing their way to
business through the narrow network of down-town streets as
Kennedy and I entered a large office on lower Broadway, in the
heart of the jewelry-trade and financial district.
"One of the most amazing robberies that has ever been attempted has been reported to us this morning," announced James McLear, manager of the Hale Electric Protection, adding, with a look half of anxiety, half of skepticism, "that is, if it is true."
McLear was a stocky man, of powerful build and voice, and a general appearance of having been once well connected with the city detective force before an attractive offer had taken him into this position of great responsibility.
"Herman Schloss, one of the best known of Maiden Lane jewelers," he continued, "has been robbed of goods worth two or three hundred thousand dollars—and in spite of every modern protection. So that you will get it clearly, let me show you what we do here."
He ushered us into a large room, on the walls of which were hundreds of little indicators. From the front they looked like rows of little square compartments, tier on tier, about the size of ordinary post-office boxes. Closer examination showed that each was equipped with a delicate needle, arranged to oscillate backward and forward upon the very minutest interference with the electric current. Under the boxes, each of which bore a number, was a series of drops and buzzers, numbered to correspond with the boxes.
"In nearly every office in Maiden Lane where gems and valuable jewelry are stored," explained McLear, "this electrical system of ours is installed. When the safes are closed at night and the doors swung together, a current of electricity is constantly shooting around the safes, conducted by cleverly concealed wires. These wires are picked up by a cable system which finds its way to this central office. Once here, the wires are safeguarded in such manner that foreign currents from other wires or from lightning cannot disturb the system."
We looked with intense interest at this huge electrical pulse that felt every change over so vast and rich an area.
"Passing a big dividing-board," he went on, "they are distributed and connected, each in its place, to the delicate tangent galvanometers and sensitive indicators you see in this room. These instantly announce the most minute change in the working of the current, and each office has a distinct, separate metallic circuit. Why, even a hole as small as a lead-pencil in anything protected would sound the alarm here."
Kennedy nodded appreciatively.
"You see," continued McLear, glad to be able to talk to one who followed him so closely, "it is another evidence of science finding for us greater security in the use of a tiny electric wire than in massive walls of steel and intricate lock-devices. But here is a case in which, it seems, every known protection has failed. We can't afford to pass that by. If we have fallen down, we want to know how, as well as to catch the burglar."
"How are the signals given?" I asked.
"Well, when the day's business is over, for instance, Schloss would swing the heavy safe doors together and over them place the doors of a wooden cabinet. That signals an alarm to us here. We answer it, and if the proper signal is returned, all right. After that, no one can tamper with the safe later in the night without sounding an alarm that would bring a quick investigation."
"But suppose that it became necessary to open the safe before the next morning. Might not some trusted employee return to the office, open it, give the proper signal, and loot the safe?"
"No, indeed," he answered confidently. "The very moment anyone touches the cabinet, the alarm is sounded. Even if the proper code-signal is returned, it is not sufficient. A couple of our trusted men from the central office hustle around there, anyhow, and they don't leave until they are satisfied that everything is right. We have the authorized signatures on hand of those who are supposed to open the safe, and a duplicate of one of them must be given, or there is an arrest."
McLear considered for a moment.
"For instance, Schloss, like all the rest, was assigned a box in which was deposited a sealed envelope containing a key to the office and his own signature, in this case, since he alone knew the combination. Now, when an alarm is sounded, as it was last night, and the key removed to gain entrance to the office, a record is made, and the key has to be sealed up again by Schloss. A report is also submitted, showing when the signals are received and everything else that is worth recording. Last night, our men found nothing wrong, apparently. But this morning we learn of the robbery."
"The point is, then," ruminated Kennedy: "What happened in the interval between the ringing of the alarm and the arrival of the special officers? I think I'll drop around and look Schloss' place over," he added quietly, evidently eager to begin at the actual scene of the crime.
ON the door of the office to which McLear took us was one of
those small blue plates which chance visitors to Maiden Lane must
have seen often. To the initiated—be he crook or
jeweler—this simple sign means that the merchant is a
member of the Jewelers' Security Alliance—enough in itself,
it would seem, to make the boldest burglar hesitate. For it is
the motto of this organization to "get" the thief at any cost and
at any time. Still, it had not deterred the burglar in this
instance.
"I know people are going to think it is a fake burglary," exclaimed Schloss, a tall, prosperous-looking gem-broker, as we introduced ourselves. "But over two hundred thousand dollars' worth of stones are gone," he half groaned. "Think of it, man," he added, "one of the greatest robberies since the dead-line was established. And if they can get away with it, why, no one down here is protected any more. Half a billion dollars in jewels in Maiden Lane and John Street are easy prey for the cracksmen."
Staggering though the loss must have been to him, he had apparently recovered from the first shock of the discovery, and had begun the fight to get back what had been lost.
It was, as McLear had intimated, a most amazing burglary. The door of Schloss' safe was open when Kennedy and I arrived and found the excited jeweler nervously pacing the office. Surrounding the safe, I noticed a wooden framework, constructed in such a way as to be a part of the decorative scheme of the office.
Schloss banged the heavy door shut.
"There, that's just how it was—shut as tight as a drum. There was absolutely no mark of anyone tampering with the combination lock. And yet the safe was looted."
"How did you discover it?" asked Craig. "I presume you carry burglary insurance?"
Schloss looked up quickly. "That's what I expected as a first question. No; I carry very little insurance. You see, I thought the safe, one of those new chrome-steel affairs, was about impregnable. I never lost a moment's sleep over it; didn't think it possible for anyone to get into it. For, as you see, it is completely wired by the Hale Electric Protection—that wooden framework about it. No one could touch that when it was set without jangling a bell at the central office, which would send men scurrying here to protect the place."
"But they must have got past it," suggested Kennedy.
"Yes—they must have. At least, this morning I received the regular Hale report. It said that their wires registered last night as though some one was tampering with the safe. But by the time they got around, in less than five minutes, there was no one here; nothing seemed to be disturbed. So they set it down to induction or electrolysis or something the matter with the wires. I got the report the first thing when I arrived here with my assistant, Muller."
Kennedy was on his knees, going over the safe with a fine brush and some powder, looking now and then through a small magnifying glass.
"Not a finger-print," he muttered, "the cracksman must have worn gloves. But how did he get in? There isn't a mark of 'soup' having been used to blow it up, or of a 'can-opener' to rip it open, if that were possible, or of an electric or any other kind of drill."
"I've read of those fellows who burn their way in," said Schloss.
"But there is no hole," objected Kennedy; "not a trace of the use of thermit to burn the way in, or of the oxyacetylene blowpipe to cut a piece out. Most extraordinary," he murmured.
"You see," shrugged Schloss, "everyone will say it must have been opened by one who knew the combination. But I am the only one. I have never written it down or told anyone, not even Muller. You understand what I am up against?"
"There's the touch-system," I suggested. "You remember, Craig, the old fellow who used to file his finger-tips to the quick until they were so sensitive that he could actually feel when he had turned the combination to the right plunger? Might not that explain the lack of finger-prints, also?" I added eagerly.
"Nothing like that in this case, Walter," objected Craig positively. "This fellow wore gloves, all right. No; this safe has been opened and looted by no ordinarily known method. It's the most amazing case I ever saw in that respect—almost as if we had a cracksman in the fourth dimension to whom the inside of a closed cube is as accessible as is the inside of a plane square to us three-dimensional creatures. It is almost incomprehensible."
I fancied I saw Schloss' face brighten as Kennedy took this view. So far, evidently, he had run across only skepticism.
"The stones were unset?" resumed Craig.
"Mostly; not all."
"You would recognize some of them if you saw them?"
"Yes, indeed. Some could be changed only by re-cutting. Even some of those that were set were of odd cut and size— some from a diamond necklace which belonged to a—"
There was something peculiar in both his tone and manner as he cut short the words.
"To whom?" asked Kennedy casually.
"Oh, once to a well-known woman in society," he said carefully. "It is mine, though, now—at least it was mine. I should prefer to mention no names. I will give a description of the stones."
"Mrs. Lynn Moulton, for instance?" suggested Craig quietly.
Schloss jumped almost as if a burglar-alarm had sounded under his very ears. "How did you know? Yes—but it was a secret. I made a large loan on it, and the time has expired."
"Why did she need money so badly?" asked Kennedy.
"How should I know?" demanded Schloss.
Here was a deepening mystery, not to be elucidated by continuing this line of inquiry with Schloss, it seemed.
CAREFULLY Craig was going over the office. Outside of the
safe, there had apparently been nothing of value. The rest of the
office was not even wired, and it seemed to have been Schloss'
idea that the few thousands of burglary insurance amply protected
him against such loss. As for the safe, its own strength and the
careful wiring might well have been considered quite sufficient
under any hitherto-to-be-foreseen circumstances.
A glass door, around the bend of a partition, opened from the hallway into the office, and had apparently been designed with the object of making visible the safe, so that anyone passing might see whether an intruder was tampering with it.
Kennedy had examined the door, perhaps in the expectation of finding fingerprints there, and was passing on to other things, when a change in his position caused his eye to catch a large oval smudge on the glass, which was visible when the light struck it at the right angle. Quickly he dusted it over with the powder, and brought out the detail more clearly. As I examined it, while Craig made preparations to cut out the glass to preserve it, it seemed to contain a number of minute points and several more or less broken parallel lines. The edges gradually trailed off into an indistinct faintness.
Business, naturally, was at a standstill, and as we were working near the door, we could see that the news of Schloss' strange robbery had leaked out and was spreading rapidly. Scores of acquaintances in the trade stopped at the door to inquire about the rumor.
To each, it seemed that Morris Muller, the working jeweler employed by Schloss, repeated the same story.
"Oh," he said, "it is a big loss—yes— but big as it is, it will not break Mr. Schloss. And," he would add, with the tradesman's idea of humor, "I guess he has enough to play a game of poker—eh?"
"Poker?" asked Kennedy, smiling. "Is he much of a player?"
"Yes. Nearly every night with his friends he plays."
Kennedy made a mental note of it. Evidently Schloss trusted Muller implicitly. He seemed like a partner, rather than an employee, even though he had not been entrusted with the secret combination.
OUTSIDE, we ran into a city detective,
Lieutenant Winters, the officer who was stationed at the Maiden Lane post, guarding that famous section of the dead-line established by the immortal Byrnes at Fulton Street, below which no crook was supposed to dare even to be seen. Winters had been detailed on the case.
"You have seen the safe in there?" asked Kennedy, as he was leaving to carry on his investigation elsewhere.
Winters seemed to be quite as skeptical as Schloss had intimated the public would be.
"Yes," he replied, "there's been an epidemic of robbery with the dull times— people who want to collect their burglary insurance, I guess."
"But," objected Kennedy, "Schloss carried so little."
"Well, there was the Hale Protection. How about that?"
Craig looked up quickly, unruffled by the patronizing air of the professional toward the amateur detective.
"What is your theory?" he asked. "Do you think he robbed himself?"
Winters shrugged his shoulders. "I've been interested in Schloss for some time," he said enigmatically. "He has had some pretty swell customers. I'll keep you wised up if anything happens," he added, in a burst of graciousness, walking off.
On the way to the subway, we paused again to see McLear.
"Well," he asked, "what do you think of it, now?"
"All most extraordinary," ruminated Craig. "And the queerest feature of all is that the chief loss consists of a diamond necklace that belonged once to Mrs. Antoinette Moulton."
"Mrs. Lynn Moulton?" repeated McLear.
"The same," assured Kennedy.
McLear appeared somewhat puzzled. "Her husband is one of our old subscribers," he pursued. "He is a lawyer on Wall Street and quite a gem collector. Last night his safe was tampered with, but this morning he reports no loss. Not half an hour ago he had us on the wire congratulating us on scaring off the burglars, if there had been any."
"What is your opinion," I asked. "Is there a gang operating?"
"My belief is," he answered, reminiscently of his days on the detective force, "that none of the loot will be recovered until they start to 'fence' it. That would be my lay—to look for the fence. Why, think of all the big robberies that have been pulled off lately. Remember," he went on, "the spoils of a burglary consist generally of precious stones. They are not currency. They must be turned into currency—or what's the use of robbery?
"But merely to offer them for sale at an ordinary jeweler's would be suspicious. Even pawnbrokers are on the watch. You see what I am driving at? I think there is a man or a group of men whose business it is to pay cash for stolen property and who have ways of returning gems into the regular trade channels. In all these robberies we get a glimpse of as dark and mysterious a criminal as has ever been recorded. He may be—anybody. About his legitimacy, I believe, no question has ever been raised. And, I tell you, his arrest is going to create a greater sensation than even the remarkable series of robberies that he has planned or made possible. The question is, to my mind: Who is this fence?"
MCLEAR'S telephone-bell rang, and he handed the instrument to
Craig.
"Yes, this is Professor Kennedy," answered Craig. "Oh, too bad you've had to try all over to get me! I've been going from one place to another gathering clues and have made good progress, considering I've hardly started. Why—what's the matter? Really?"
An interval followed, during which McLear left to answer a personal call on another wire.
As Kennedy hung up the receiver, his face wore a peculiar look. "It was Mrs. Moulton," he blurted out. "She thinks that her husband has found out that the necklace is paste."
"How?" I asked.
"The paste replica is gone from her wall safe in the Deluxe."
I turned, startled at the information. Even Kennedy himself was perplexed at the sudden succession of events. I had nothing to say.
Evidently, however, his rule was: when in doubt play a trump, for, twenty minutes later found us in the office of Lynn Moulton, the famous corporation lawyer, in Wall Street.
Moulton was a handsome man of past fifty with a youthful face against his iron-gray hair and mustache, well dressed, genial, a man who seemed keenly in love with the good things of life.
"It is rumored," began Kennedy, "that an attempt was made on your safe, here, at the office last night."
"Yes," he admitted, taking off his glasses and polishing them carefully. "I suppose there is no need of concealment, especially as I hear that a somewhat similar attempt was made on the safe of my friend, Herman Schloss, in Maiden Lane."
"You lost nothing?"
Moulton put his glasses on and looked Kennedy in the face frankly.
"Nothing, fortunately," he said, then went on slowly: "You see, in my later years I have been something of a collector of precious stones, myself. I don't wear them, but I have always taken the keenest pleasure in owning them, and when I was married it gave me a great deal more pleasure to have them set in rings, pendants, tiaras, necklaces, and other forms, for my wife."
He had risen, with the air of a busy man who had given the subject all the consideration he could afford and whose work proceeded almost by schedule. "This morning, I found my safe tampered with, but, as I said, fortunately something must have scared off the burglars."
He bowed us out politely. What was the explanation, I wondered. It seemed, on the face of things, that Antoinette Moulton feared her husband. Did he know something else already, and did she know he knew? To all appearances he took it very calmly, if he did know. Perhaps that was what she feared, his very calmness.
"I must see Mrs. Moulton again," remarked Kennedy, as we left.
THE Moultons lived, we found, in one of the largest suites of
a new apartment-hotel, the Deluxe, and, in spite of the fact that
our arrival had been announced some minutes before we saw Mrs.
Moulton, it was evident that she had been crying hysterically
over the loss of the paste jewels and what it implied.
"I missed it this morning, after my return from seeing you," she replied, in answer to Craig's inquiry, then added, wide-eyed with alarm: "What shall I do? He must have opened the wall safe and found the replica. I don't dare ask him pointblank."
"Are you sure he did it?" asked Kennedy, more, I felt, for its moral effect on her than through any doubt in his own mind.
"Not sure. But then the wall safe shows no marks, and the replica is gone."
"Might I see your jewel-case?" he asked. "Surely. I'll get it. The wall safe is in Lynn's room. I shall probably have to fuss a long time with the combination."
In fact, she could not have been very familiar with it, for it was several minutes before she returned. Meanwhile, Kennedy, who had been drumming absently on the arms of his chair, suddenly rose and walked quietly over to a scrap-basket that stood beside an escritoire. It had evidently been emptied, for the rooms must have been cleaned several hours before. He bent down over it and picked up two scraps of paper adhering to the wickerwork. The rest had evidently been thrown away.
I bent over to read them. One was:
—rest Nettie — dying to see —
The other read:
—cherche to-d —love and ma —rman.
What did it mean? Hastily, I could fill in "Dearest Nettie," and "I am dying to see you." Kennedy added, "The Recherché to-day"—that being the name of a new apartment-house—as well as "love and many kisses." But "—rman"—what did that mean? Could it be Herman— Herman Schloss?
She was returning, and we resumed our seats quickly.
Kennedy took the jewel-case from her and examined it carefully. There was not a mark on it.
Kennedy took the jewel-case from her and examined
it carefully. There was not a mark on it.
"Mrs. Moulton," he said slowly, rising and handing it back to her, "have you told me all?"
"Why—yes," she answered.
Kennedy shook his head gravely.
"I'm afraid not. You must tell me everything."
"No—no," she cried vehemently, "there is nothing more."
We left, and outside the Deluxe he paused, looked about, caught sight of a taxi-cab, and hailed it.
"Where?" asked the driver.
"Across the street," he said, "and wait. Put the window in back of you down, so I can talk. I'll tell you where to go presently. Now, Walter, sit back as far as you can. This may seem like an underhand thing to do, but we've got to get what that woman won't tell us, or give up the case."
PERHAPS half an hour we waited, still puzzling over the scraps
of paper. Suddenly I felt a nudge from Kennedy. Antoinette
Moulton was standing in the doorway across the street. Evidently
she preferred not to ride in her own car, for a moment later she
entered a taxi-cab.
"Follow that black cab," said Kennedy, to our driver.
Sure enough, it stopped in front of the Recherché Apartments, and Mrs. Moulton stepped out and almost ran in.
We waited a moment; then Kennedy followed. The elevator that had taken her up had just returned to the ground floor.
"The same floor again," remarked Kennedy, jauntily stepping in and nodding familiarly to the elevator-boy.
Then he paused suddenly, looked at his watch, fixed his gaze thoughtfully on me an instant, and exclaimed: "By George— no! I can't go up yet. I clean forgot that engagement at the hotel. One moment, son. Let us out. We'll be back again."
Considerably mystified, I followed him to the sidewalk.
"You're entitled to an explanation," he laughed, catching my bewildered look as he opened the cab door. "I didn't want to go up now, while she is there, but I wanted to get on good terms with that boy. We'll wait until she comes down, then go up."
"Where?" I asked.
"That's what I am going through all this elaborate preparation to find out. I have no more idea than you have."
It could not have been more than twenty minutes later when Mrs. Moulton emerged rather hurriedly, and drove away.
While we had been waiting, I had observed a man on the other side of the street who seemed unduly interested in the Recherché, too, for he walked up and down the block no less than six times. Kennedy saw him, and as he made no effort to follow Mrs. Moulton, Kennedy did not do so, either. In fact, a little quick glance which she had given at our cab had raised a fear that she might have discovered that she was being followed.
Kennedy and I paid off our cabman and sauntered into the Recherché in the most debonair manner we could assume.
"Now, son, we'll go up," he said, to the boy who, remembering us, and now not at all clear in his mind that he might not have seen us before that, whisked us to the tenth floor.
"Let me see," said Kennedy, "it's number one hundred and—er—"
"Three," prompted the boy.
He pressed the buzzer, and a neatly dressed colored maid responded.
"I had an appointment here with Mrs. Moulton this morning," remarked Kennedy.
"She has just gone," replied the maid, off her guard.
"And was to meet Mr. Schloss here in half an hour," he added quickly.
It was the maid's turn to look surprised.
"I didn't think he was to be here," she said. "He's had some—"
"Trouble at the office," supplied Kennedy. "That's what it was about. Perhaps he hasn't been able to get away yet. But I had the appointment. Ah, I see a telephone in the hall. May I?"
He had stepped politely in, and by dint of cleverly keeping his finger on the hook in the half-light, he carried on a one-sided conversation with himself long enough to get a good chance to look about.
There was an air of quiet and refinement about the apartment in the Recherché. It was darkened to give the little glowing electric bulbs in their silken shades a full chance to simulate night. The deep, velvety carpets were noiseless to the foot, and the draperies, the pictures, the bronzes— all bespoke taste.
But the chief objects of interest to Craig were the little square green-baize-covered tables, on one of which lay, neatly stacked, a pile of gilt-edged cards and a mahogany box full of ivory chips of red, white, and blue.
It was none of the old-time gambling-places, like Danfield's, with its steel door which Craig had once cut through with an oxyacetylene blowpipe, in order to rescue a young spendthrift from himself.
Kennedy seemed perfectly well satisfied merely with a cursory view of the place, as he hung up the receiver and thanked the maid politely for allowing him to use it.
"This is up-to-date gambling in cleaned-up New York," he remarked, as we waited for the elevator to return for us. "And the worst of it all is that it gets the women as well as the men. Once they are caught in the net, they are the most powerful lure to men that the gamblers have yet devised."
We rode down in silence, and as we went down the steps to the street, I noticed the man whom we had seen watching the place, lurking down at the lower corner. Kennedy quickened his pace and came up behind him.
"Why, Winters!" exclaimed Craig. "You here?"
"I might say the same to you," grinned the detective, not displeased, evidently, that our trail had crossed his. "I suppose you are looking for Schloss, too. He's up in the Recherché a great deal, playing poker. I understand he owns an interest in the game up there."
Kennedy nodded, but said nothing.
"I just saw one of the cappers for the place go out before you went in."
"Capper?" repeated Kennedy, surprised. "Antoinette Moulton a steerer for a gambling-joint? What can a rich society woman have to do with a place like that, or a man like Schloss?"
Winters smiled sardonically. "Society ladies to-day often get into scrapes of which their husbands know nothing," he remarked. "You didn't know before that Antoinette Moulton, like many of her friends in the smart set, was a gambler—and loser— did you?"
Craig shook his head. He had more of human than scientific interest in a case of a woman of her caliber gone wrong.
"But you must have read of the famous Moulton diamonds?"
"Yes," said Craig blankly, as if it were all news to him.
"Schloss has them—or at least had them. The jewels she wore at the opera this winter were paste, I understand."
"Does Moulton play?" he asked.
"I think so—but not here, naturally. In a way, I suppose it is his fault. They all do it. The example of one drives on another."
INSTANTLY there flashed over my mind a host of possibilities.
Perhaps, after all, Winters had been right. Schloss had taken
this way to make sure of the jewels, so that she could not redeem
them. Suddenly another explanation crowded that out. Had Mrs.
Moulton robbed the safe herself, or hired some one else to do it
for her, and had that person gone back on her?
Then a horrid possibility occurred to me. Whatever Antoinette Moulton may have been and done, some one must have her in his power. What a situation for the woman! My sympathy went out to her in her supreme struggle. Even if it had been a real robbery, Schloss might easily recover from it. But, for her, every event spelt ruin and seemed only to be bringing that ruin closer.
We left Winters, still watching on the trail of Schloss, and went on up-town to the laboratory.
That night I was sitting brooding over the case, while Craig was studying a photograph which he had made of the smudge on the glass door down at Schloss'. He paused in his scrutiny of the print to answer the telephone.
"Something has happened to Schloss," he exclaimed, seizing his hat and coat.
"Winters has been watching him. He didn't go to the Recherché. Winters wants me to meet him at a place several blocks below it. Come on! He wouldn't say over the wire what it was. Hurry!"
We met Winters in less than ten minutes at the address he had given, a bachelor apartment in the neighborhood of the Recherché.
"Schloss kept rooms here," explained Winters, hurrying us quickly up-stairs. "I wanted you to see before anyone else."
As we entered the large and luxuriously furnished living-room of the jeweler's suite, a gruesome sight greeted us.
There lay Schloss on the floor, face down, in a horribly contorted position. In one hand, clenched under him partly, the torn sleeve of a woman's dress was grasped convulsively. The room bore unmistakable traces of a violent struggle, but, except for the hideous object on the floor, was vacant.
A gruesome sight greeted us. There lay Schloss on the
floor, face down, in a horribly contorted position.
Kennedy bent down over him. Schloss was dead.
In a corner, by the door, stood a pile of grips, stacked up, packed, and undisturbed.
Winters, who had been studying the room while we got our bearings, picked up a queer-looking revolver from the floor. As he held it up, I could see that along the top of the barrel was a long cylinder with a ratchet, or catch, at the butt end. He turned it over and over carefully.
"By George," he muttered, "it has been fired off!"
Kennedy glanced more minutely at the body. There was not a mark on it. I stared about vacantly at the place where Winters had picked the thing up.
"Look," I cried, my eye catching a little hole in the baseboard of the woodwork near it.
"It must have fallen and exploded on the floor," remarked Kennedy. "Let me see it, Winters."
Craig held it at arm's length and pulled the catch. Instead of an explosion, there came a cone of light from the top of the gun. As Kennedy moved it over the wall, I saw in the center of the circle of light a dark spot.
"A new invention," Craig explained. "All you need to do is to move it so that little dark spot falls directly on an object. Pull the trigger—the bullet strikes the dark spot. Even a nervous and unskilled marksman becomes a good shot in the dark. He can even shoot from behind the protection of something—and hit accurately."
It was too much for me. I could only stand and watch Kennedy as he deftly bent over Schloss again and placed a piece of chemically prepared paper flat on the forehead of the dead man.
When he withdrew it, I could see that it bore marks of the lines on his head. Without a word, Kennedy drew from his pocket a print of the photograph of the smudge on Schloss' door.
"It is possible," he said, half to himself, "to identify a person by means of the arrangement of the sweat-glands or -pores. Poroscopy, Doctor Edmond Locard, director of the Police Laboratory, at Lyons, calls it. The shape, arrangement, number per square centimeter—all vary in different individuals. Besides, here we have added the lines of the forehead."
He was studying the two impressions intently. When he looked up from his examination, his face wore a peculiar expression.
"This is not the head which was placed so close to the glass of the door of Schloss' office, peering through, on the night of the robbery, in order to see, before picking the lock, whether the office was empty and everything ready for the hasty attack on the safe."
"That disposes of my theory that Schloss robbed himself," remarked Winters reluctantly. "But the struggle here—the sleeve of the dress, the pistol—could he have been shot?"
"No, I think not," considered Kennedy. "It looks to me more like a case of apoplexy."
"What shall we do?" asked Winters. "Far from clearing anything up, this complicates it."
"Where's Muller?" asked Kennedy. "Does he know? Perhaps he can shed some light on it."
The clang of an ambulance-bell outside told that the aid summoned by Winters had arrived.
We left the body in charge of the surgeon and of a policeman who arrived about the same time, and followed Winters.
MULLER lived in a cheap boarding-house in a shabbily
respectable street down-town, and, without announcing ourselves,
we climbed the stairs to his room. He looked up, surprised but
not disconcerted, as we entered.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Muller," shot out Winters, "we have just found Mr. Schloss dead!"
"D-dead!" he stammered.
The man seemed speechless with horror.
"Yes, and with his grips packed as if to run away."
Muller looked dazedly from one of us to the other, but shut up like a clam.
"I think you had better come along with us as a material witness," burst out Winters roughly.
Kennedy said nothing, leaving that sort of third-degree work to the detective. But he was not idle as Winters tried to extract more than the monosyllables, "I don't know," in answer to every inquiry of Muller about his employer's life and business.
A low exclamation from Craig attracted my attention from Winters. In a corner he had discovered a small box and had opened it. Inside was a dry battery and a most peculiar instrument, something like a little flat telephone transmitter yet attached by wires to ear-pieces that fitted over the head, after the manner of those of a wireless detector.
"What's this?" asked Kennedy, dangling it before Muller.
He looked at it phlegmatically. "A deaf-instrument I have been working on," replied the jeweler. "My hearing is getting poor."
Kennedy looked hastily from the instrument to the man.
"I think I'll take it along with us," he said quietly.
Winters, true to his instincts, had been searching Muller in the meantime. Besides the usual assortment that a man carries in his pockets, including pens, pencils, note-books, a watch, a handkerchief, a bunch of keys—one of which was large enough to open a castle—there was a bunch of blank and unissued pawn-tickets bearing the name, "Stein's One Per Cent. a Month Loans" and an address on the Bowery.
Was Muller the fence we were seeking, or only a tool for the fence higher up? Who was this Stein?
What it all meant, I could only guess. It was a far cry from the wealth of Maiden Lane to a dingy Bowery pawn-shop, even though pawnbroking at one per cent. a month—and more, on the side—pays. I knew, too, that diamonds are hoarded on the East Side as nowhere else in the world outside of India. It was no uncommon thing, I had heard, for a pawnbroker whose shop seemed dirty and greasy to the casual visitor to have stored away in his vault gems running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"Mrs. Moulton must know of this," remarked Kennedy. "Winters, you and Jameson bring Muller along. I am going up to the Deluxe."
I MUST say that I was surprised at finding Mrs. Moulton there.
Outside the suite, Winters and I waited with the unresisting
Muller, while Kennedy entered. But, through the door which he
left ajar, I could hear what passed.
"Mrs. Moulton," he began, "something terrible has happened—"
He broke off, and I gathered that her pale face and agitated manner told him that she knew already.
"Where is Mr. Moulton?" he went on, changing his question.
"Mr. Moulton is at his office," she answered tremulously. "He telephoned while I was out that he had to work to-night. Oh, Mr. Kennedy—he knows—he knows! I know it. He has avoided me ever since I missed the replica from—"
"Sh!" cautioned Craig. He had risen and gone to the door.
"Winters," he whispered, "I want you to go down to Lynn Moulton's office. Meanwhile, Jameson can take care of Muller. I am going over to that place of Stein's, presently. Bring Moulton up there. You will wait here, Walter, for the present," he nodded.
He returned to the room, where I could hear Mrs. Moulton crying softly.
"Now, Mrs. Moulton," he said gently, "I'm afraid I must trouble you to go with me. I am going over to a pawnbroker's on the Bowery."
"The Bowery?" she repeated, with a genuinely surprised shudder. "Oh, no, Mr. Kennedy. Don't ask me to go anywhere to-night. I am—I am in no condition to go anywhere—to do anything."
"But you must," said Kennedy, in a low voice.
"I can't. Oh—have mercy on me! I am terribly upset. You—"
"It is your duty to go, Mrs. Moulton," he repeated.
"I don't understand," she murmured. "A pawnbroker's?"
"Come," urged Kennedy, not harshly but firmly, then, as she held back, added, playing a trump-card: "We must work quickly. In his hands we found the fragments of a torn dress. When the police—"
She uttered a shriek. A glance had told her, if she had deceived herself before, that Kennedy knew her secret.
Antoinette Moulton was standing before him, talking rapidly.
"Some one has told Lynn. I know it. There is nothing, now, that I can conceal. If you had come half an hour later, you would not have found me. He had written to Mr. Schloss, threatening him that if he did not leave the country he would shoot him at sight. Mr. Schloss showed me the letter.
"It had come to this: I must either elope with Schloss, or lose his aid. The thought of either was unendurable. I hated him— yet was dependent on him.
"To-night, I met him in his empty apartment, alone. I knew that he had what was left of his money with him, that everything was packed up. I went prepared. I would not elope. My plan was no less than to make him pay the balance on the necklace that he had lost—or to murder him.
"I carried a new pistol in my muff, one which Lynn had just bought. I don't know how I did it. I was desperate.
"He told me he loved me, that Lynn did not, never had—that Lynn had married me only to show off his wealth and diamonds, to give him a social position—that I was merely a—a piece of property—a dummy.
"He tried to kiss me. It was revolting. I struggled away from him. And in the struggle, the revolver fell from my muff and exploded on the floor. At once he was aflame with suspicion.
"'So—it's murder you want!' he shouted. 'Well, murder it shall be!'
"I saw death in his eye as he seized my arm. I screamed. With a wild effort, I twisted away from him. He raised his hand to strike me; I saw his eyes, glassy. Then he sank back—fell to the floor—dead of apoplexy—dead of his furious emotions.
"I saw death in his eye as he seized my arm. I screamed.
With a wild effort, I twisted away from him."
"I fled. And now you have found me."
She had turned, hastily, to leave the room. Kennedy blocked the door.
"Mrs. Moulton," he said firmly, "listen to me. What was the first question you asked me? 'Can I trust you?' And I told you you could. This is no time for—for suicide." He shot the word out bluntly. "All may not be lost. I have sent for your husband. Muller is outside."
"Muller!" she cried. "He made the replica."
"Very well. I am going to clear this thing up. Come. You must."
It was all confused to me, the dash in a car to the little pawnbroker's on the first floor of a five-story tenement, the quick entry into the place by one of Muller's keys.
Over the safe in back was a framework like that which had covered Schloss' safe. Kennedy tore it away, regardless of the alarm which it must have sounded. In a moment he was down before it on his knees.
"This is how Schloss' safe was opened so quickly," he muttered, working feverishly. "Here is some of their own medicine."
He had placed the peculiar telephone-like transmitter close to the combination lock and was turning the combination rapidly.
Suddenly he rose, gave the bolts a twist, and the ponderous doors swung open.
"What is it?" I asked eagerly.
"A burglar's microphone," he answered, hastily looking over the contents of the safe. "The microphone is now used by burglars for picking combination locks. When you turn the lock, a slight sound is made when the proper number comes opposite the working-point. It can be heard sometimes by a sensitive ear, although it is imperceptible to most persons. But, by using a microphone, it is an easy matter to hear the sounds which allow of opening the lock."
He had taken a yellow chamois bag out of the safe and opened it.
Inside sparkled the famous Moulton diamonds. He held them up—in all their wicked brilliancy. No one spoke.
Then he took another yellow bag, more dirty and worn than the first. As he opened it, Mrs. Moulton could restrain herself no longer.
"The replica!" she cried. "The replica!"
Without a word, Craig handed the real necklace to her. Then he slipped the paste jewels into the newer of the bags and restored both it and the empty one to their places, banged shut the door of the safe, and replaced the wooden screen.
"Quick," he said to her, "you have still a minute to get away! Hurry—anywhere— away—only away!"
The look of gratitude that came over her face, as she understood the full meaning of it, was such as I had never seen before.
"Quick!" he repeated.
It was too late.
"For God's sake, Kennedy," shouted a voice at the street door, "what are you doing here?"
It was McLear himself. He had come with the Hale patrol, on his mettle, now, to take care of the epidemic of robberies.
Before Craig could reply, a cab drew up with a rush at the curb, and two men, half fighting, half cursing, catapulted themselves into the shop.
It was Winters and Moulton.
Without a word, taking advantage of the first shock of surprise, Kennedy had clapped a piece of the chemical paper on the foreheads of Mrs. Moulton, then of Moulton and on Muller's. Oblivious to the rest of us, he studied the impressions in the full light of the counter.
Moulton was facing his wife, with a scornful curl of the lip.
"I've been told of the paste replica— and I wrote Schloss that I'd shoot him down like the dog he is, you—you traitress!" he hissed.
She drew herself up scornfully.
"And I have been told why you married me—to show off your wicked jewels and help you in your—"
"You lie!" he cried fiercely. "Muller— some one—open this safe—whosesoever it is! If what I have been told is true, there is in it one new bag containing the necklace. It was stolen from Schloss, to whom you sold my jewels. The other old bag, stolen from me, contains the paste replica you had made to deceive me."
It was all so confused that I do not know how it happened. I think it was Muller who opened the safe.
"There is the new yellow bag," cried Moulton, "from Schloss' own safe. Open it."
McLear had taken it. He did so. There sparkled not the real gems, but the replica.
"The devil!" Moulton exclaimed, breaking from Winters and seizing the old bag.
He tore it open and—it was empty.
"One moment," interrupted Kennedy, looking up quietly from the counter. "Seal that safe again, McLear. In it are the Schloss jewels and the products of half a dozen other robberies which the dupe Muller—or Stein, as you please—pulled off, some as a blind to conceal the real criminal. You may have shown him how to leave no finger-prints, but you yourself have left what is just as good—your own forehead-print. McLear—you were right. There's your criminal—Lynn Moulton, professional fence, the brains of the thing."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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