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Murder or suicide? This is the question for Craig Kennedy to solve in the matter of Mrs. Edwards' sudden death. Was there a motive for murder? Was there sufficient reason for this beautiful woman to take her own life? The mystery seems impenetrable—even to Wizard Craig, when he is called to the scene. However, he knows a thing or two more than anybody else about what can be done with wireless telegraphy, and the result is as unexpected to him as to others more vitally concerned in the tragedy.
"BOUND for Seaville, I'll wager," sounded a familiar voice in my ear, as I hurried up to the train-entrance at the Long Island corner of the Pennsylvania Station.
I turned, quickly to find Kennedy just behind me, breathless and perspiring.
"Er—yes," I stammered, in surprise. "But where did you come from? How did you know?"
"Let me introduce Mr. Jack Waldon," he went on, as we edged our way toward the gate, "the brother of Mrs. Tracy Edwards, who disappeared so strangely from the house-boat Lucie last night, at Seaville."
It was then for the first time that I noticed that the excited young man beside Kennedy was really his companion.
I shook hands with Waldon, who gave me a grip that was both a greeting and an added impulse in our general direction through the wicket.
"Might have known the Star would assign you to this Edwards case," panted Kennedy, mopping his forehead, for the heat in the terminal was oppressive, and the crowd, though not large, was closely packed. "Mr. Jameson is my right-hand man," he explained to Waldon, taking us each by the arm and urging us forward. "Waldon was afraid we might miss the train or I should have tried to get you, Walter, at the office."
It was all done so suddenly that they quite took away what remaining breath I had as we settled ourselves to swelter in the smoker instead of in the concourse. I did not even protest at the matter-of-fact assurance with which Craig assumed that his deduction as to my destination was correct.
Waldon, a handsome young fellow in a flannel suit and yachting-cap, somewhat the worse for his evidently perturbed state of mind, seemed to eye me, for the moment, doubtfully.
"I've had all the first editions of the evening papers," I hinted, as we sped through the tunnel, "but the stories seemed to be quite the same—pretty meager in details."
"Yes," returned Waldon, with a glance at Kennedy; "I tried to keep as much out of the papers as I could, just now, for Lucie's sake."
"You needn't fear Jameson," remarked Kennedy.
He fumbled in his pocket, then paused a moment and shot a glance of inquiry at Waldon, who nodded a mute acquiescence to him.
"There seem to have been a number of very peculiar disappearances lately," resumed Kennedy, "but this case of Mrs. Edwards is by far the most extraordinary. Of course, the Star hasn't had that yet," he concluded, handing me a sheet of note-paper. "Mr. Waldon didn't give it out, hoping to avoid scandal."
I took the paper and read eagerly, in a woman's hand:
My dear Miss Fox:
I have been down here at Seaville on our houseboat, the "Lucie," for several days, for a purpose which now is accomplished.
Already I had my suspicions of you, from a source which I need not name. Therefore, when the "Kronprinz" got into wireless communication with the station at Seaville, I determined, through our own wireless on the "Lucie," to overhear whether there would be any exchange of messages between my husband and yourself.
I was able to overhear the whole thing, and I want you to know that your secret is no longer a secret from me, and that I have already told Mr. Edwards that I know it. You may ruin his life by your intimacy, which you seem to want to keep up, although you know you have no right to do it, but you shall not ruin mine....
Only a casual glance was necessary to show me that the writing
seemed to grow more and more weak as it progressed, and the note
stopped abruptly, as if the writer had been suddenly interrupted
or some new idea had occurred to her.
Hastily, I tried to figure it out. Lucie Waldon, as everybody knew, was a famous beauty, a marvel of charm and daintiness, slender, with big, soulful, wistful eyes. Her marriage to Tracy Edwards, the wealthy plunger and stockbroker, had been a great social event the year before, and it was reputed, at the time, that Edwards had showered her with jewels and dresses to the wonder and talk even of society.
As for Valerie Fox, I knew she had won quick recognition and even fame as a dancer in New York during the previous winter, and I recalled reading, three or four days before, that she had just returned on the Kronprinz from a trip abroad.
"I don't suppose you have had time to see Miss Fox," I remarked. "Where is she?"
"At Beach Park now, I think," replied Waldon, "a resort a few miles nearer the city, on the South Shore."
I handed back the letter to Kennedy.
"What do you make of it?" he asked, as he folded it up and put it back into his pocket.
"I hardly know what to say," I replied. "Of course, there have been rumors, I believe, that all was not exactly like a honeymoon still with the Tracy Edwardses."
"Yes," returned Waldon slowly; "I know myself that there has been some trouble, but nothing definite until I found this letter, last night, in my sister's room. She never said anything about it, either to mother or myself. They haven't been much together during the summer, and last night, when she disappeared, Tracy was in the city. But I hadn't thought much about it before, for, of course, you know he has large financial interests that make him keep in pretty close touch with New York, and this summer hasn't been a particularly good one on the Stock Exchange."
"And," I put in, "a plunger doesn't always make the best of husbands. Perhaps there is temperament to be reckoned with here."
"There seem to be a good many things to be reckoned with," Craig considered. "For example, here's a house-boat, the Lucie, a palatial affair, cruising about aimlessly, with a beautiful woman on it. She gives a little party, in the absence of her husband, to her brother, his fiance, and her mother. They visit her from Waldon's yacht, the Nautilus. They break up, those living on the Lucie going to their rooms, and the rest back to the yacht, which is anchored out further in the deeper water of the bay.
"Sometime in the middle of the night, her maid, Juanita, finds that she is not in her room. Her brother is summoned back from his yacht, and finds that she has left this pathetic, unfinished letter. But otherwise there is no trace of her. Her husband is notified and hurries out here, but he can find no clue. Meanwhile, Mr. Waldon, in despair, hurries down to the city to engage me quietly."
"You remember I told you," suggested Waldon, "that my sister hadn't been feeling well for several days. In fact, it seemed that the sea air wasn't doing her much good, and some one, last night, suggested that she try the mountains."
"Had there been anything that would foreshadow the—er—disappearance?" asked Kennedy.
"Only, as I say, that for two or three days she seemed to be listless, to be sinking by slow and easy stages into a sort of vacant, moody state of ill health."
"She had a doctor, I suppose?" I asked.
"Yes; Doctor Jermyn, Tracy's own personal physician, came down from the city several days ago."
"What did he say?"
"He simply said that it was congestion of the lungs. As far as he could see, there was no apparent cause for it. I don't think he was very enthusiastic about the mountain-air idea. The fact is, he was like a good many doctors under the circumstances, non-committal—wanted her under observation, and all that sort of thing."
"What's your opinion?" I pressed Craig. "Do you think she has run away?"
"Naturally I'd rather not attempt to say, yet," Craig replied cautiously. "But there are several possibilities. Yes; she might have left the house-boat in some other boat, of course. Then there is the possibility of accident. It was a hot night. She might have been leaning from the window and have lost her balance. I have even thought of drugs—that she might have taken something in her despondency and have fallen overboard while under the influence of it. Then, of course, there are the two deductions that everyone has made already—either suicide or murder."
Waldon had evidently been turning something over in his mind.
"There was a wireless outfit aboard the house-boat," he ventured, at length.
"What of that?" I asked, wondering why he was changing the subject so abruptly.
"Why, only this," he replied: "I have been reading about wireless a good deal lately, and if the theories of some scientists are correct, the wireless age is not without its dangers as well as its wonders. I recall reading, not long ago, of a German professor who says there is no essential difference between wireless waves and the X-rays, and we know the terrible physical effects of X-rays. I believe he estimated that only one three-hundred-millionth part of the electrical energy generated by sending a message from one station to another nearby is actually used up in transmitting the message. The rest is dispersed in the atmosphere. There must be a good deal of such stray electrical energy about Seaville. Isn't it possible that it might hit some one, somewhere, who was susceptible? She might have been mentally unbalanced."
Kennedy said nothing. Waldon's was, at least, a novel idea, whether it was plausible or not. The only way to test it out, as far as I could determine, was to see whether it fitted with the facts, after a careful investigation of the case itself.
It was still early in the day, and the trains were not as crowded as they would be later. Consequently, our journey was comfortable enough, and we found ourselves at last at the little vine-covered station at Seaville.
I myself began to feel the spell of mystery about the case as I had not felt it among the distractions of the city. Perhaps I imagined it, but there even seemed to be something strange about the house-boat, which we could descry at anchor, far down the bay, as we approached the wharf.
We were met, as Waldon had arranged, by a high-powered runabout, the tender to his own yacht, a slim little craft of mahogany and brass, driven like an automobile and capable of perhaps twenty-five or thirty miles an hour. We jumped in and were soon skimming over the waters of the bay like a skipping-stone.
The Lucie was perhaps seventy feet long and a most attractive craft, with a hull yachty in appearance and of a type which could safely make long runs along the coast, a staunch, seaworthy boat, of course without the speed of the regularly designed yacht, but more than making up in comfort for those on board what was lost in that way. Waldon pointed out, with obvious pride, his own trim yacht swinging gracefully at anchor a half-mile or so away.
As we approached the house-boat, I looked her over carefully. One of the first things I noticed was that there rose from the roof the primitive inverted V-aerial of a wireless telegraph. I thought immediately of the unfinished letter and its contents, and shaded my eyes as I took a good look at the powerful Seaville transatlantic station on the spit of sand perhaps three or four miles distant, with its tall steel masts of the latest inverted L-type and the cluster of little houses below in which the operators and the plant were.
Waldon noticed what I was looking at, and remarked, "It's a wonderful station, and well worth a visit."
"How did the Lucie come to be equipped with wireless?" asked Craig quickly. "It's a little unusual for a private boat."
"Mr. Edwards had it done when she was built," explained Waldon. "His idea was to use it to keep in touch with the stock-market on trips."
"And it has proved effective?" asked Craig.
"Oh, yes—that is, it was all right, last winter, when he went on a short cruise down in Florida."
"Who operates it?"
"He used to hire a licensed operator, although I believe the engineer, Pedersen, understands the thing pretty well and could use it if necessary."
"Do you think it was Pedersen who used it for Mrs. Edwards?" asked Kennedy.
"I really don't know," confessed Waldon. "Pedersen denies absolutely that he has touched the thing for weeks. I want you to quiz him."
We had, by this time, swung around to the side of the house-boat. I realized, as we mounted the ladder, that the marine gasoline engine had materially changed the old-time house-boat from a mere scow, or barge, with a low, flat house on it, moored in a bay or river, and only with difficulty and expense towed from one place to another. Now, the house-boat was really a fair-sized yacht.
The Lucie was built high, in order to give plenty of accommodation for the living-quarters. The staterooms, dining-room, and saloon were really rooms, with seven or eight feet of headroom, and furnished just as one would find a tasteful and expensive house.
Down in the hull, of course, was the gasoline motor which drove the propeller, so that, when the owner wanted a change of scene, all that was necessary was to get up anchor, start the motor, and navigate the yacht house-boat to some other harbor.
Edwards himself met us on the deck. He was a tall man, with a red face, a man of action, of outdoor life, apparently a hard worker and a hard player. It was quite evident that he had been waiting for the return of Waldon anxiously.
"You find us considerably upset, Professor Kennedy," he greeted Craig, as his brother-in-law introduced us.
Edwards turned and led the way toward the saloon. As he entered and bade us be seated in the cosily-cushioned wicker chairs, I noticed how sumptuously it was furnished, and particularly its mechanical piano, its phonograph, and the splendid hardwood floor, which seemed to invite one to dance in the cool breeze that floated across from one set of open windows to the others.
"You were not here last night, I understand," remarked Kennedy, taking in the room at a glance.
"Unfortunately, no," replied Edwards. "Business has kept me with my nose pretty close to the grindstone this summer. Waldon called me up in the middle of the night, however, and I started down in my car, which enabled me to get here before the first train. I haven't been able to do a thing since I got here, except just wait—wait—wait. I confess that I don't know what else to do. Waldon seemed to think we ought to have some one down here—and I guess he was right. Anyhow, I'm glad to see you."
I watched Edwards keenly. For the first time, I realized that I had neglected to ask Waldon whether he had seen the unfinished letter. The question was unnecessary. It was evident that he had not.
"Let me see, Waldon, if I've got this thing straight," Edwards went on, pacing restlessly up and down the saloon. "Correct me if I haven't. Last night, as I understand it, there was a sort of little family party here, you and Miss Verrall and her mother, and Mrs. Edwards and Doctor Jermyn."
"Yes," replied Waldon, with, I thought, a touch of defiance at the words "family party." He paused, as if he would have added that the Nautilus would have been more congenial, anyhow, then added: "We danced a little bit, all except Lucie. She said she wasn't feeling any too well."
Edwards had paused by the door. "If you'll excuse me a minute," he said, "I'll call Jermyn and Mrs. Edwards' maid, Juanita. You ought to go over the whole thing immediately, Professor Kennedy."
"Why didn't you say anything about the letter to him?" asked Kennedy, under his breath.
"What was the use?" returned Waldon. "I didn't know how he'd take it. Besides, I wanted your advice on the whole thing. Do you want to show it to him?"
"Perhaps it's just as well as it is," ruminated Kennedy. "It may be possible to clear the thing up without involving anybody's name. At any rate, some one is coming down the passage this way."
Edwards entered with Doctor Jermyn, a clean-shaven man, youthful in appearance yet approaching middle age. I had heard of him before. He had studied several years abroad, and had gained considerable reputation since his return to America.
Doctor Jermyn shook hands with us cordially enough, made some passing comment on the tragedy, and stood evidently waiting for us to disclose our hands.
"You have been Mrs. Edwards' physician for some time, I believe?" queried Kennedy, fencing for an opening.
"Only since her marriage," replied the doctor briefly.
"She hadn't been feeling well for several days, had she?" ventured Kennedy again.
"No," replied Doctor Jermyn quickly. "I doubt whether I can add much to what you already know. I suppose Mr. Waldon has told you about her illness. The fact is, I suppose her maid, Juanita, will be able to tell you really more than I can."
I could not help feeling that Doctor Jermyn showed a great deal of reluctance in talking.
"You have been with her several days, though, haven't you?"
"Four days, I think. She was complaining of feeling nervous and telegraphed me to come down here. I came prepared to stay overnight, but Mr. Edwards happened to run down that day, too, and he asked me if I wouldn't remain longer. My practise in the summer is such that I can easily leave it with my assistant in the city; so I agreed. Really, that is about all I can say."
He stood facing us, thoughtfully stroking his chin, as a very pretty and petite maid nervously entered and stood in the doorway.
"Come in, Juanita," encouraged Edwards. "I want you to tell these gentlemen just what you told me—and anything else that you may recall now."
"It was Juanita who discovered that madame was gone, you know," put in Waldon.
"How did you discover it?" prompted Craig.
"It was very hot," replied the maid, "and often, on hot nights, I would come in and fan madame, since she was so wakeful. Last night I went to the door and knocked. There was no reply. I called to her: 'Madame! Madame!' Still there was no answer. The worst I supposed was that she had fainted. I continued to call."
"The door was locked?" inquired Kennedy.
"The door was locked?" inquired Kennedy.
"Yes, sir. My call aroused the others on the boat. Doctor Jermyn came, and he broke open the door with his shoulder. But the room was empty. Madame was gone!"
"How about the windows?" asked Kennedy.
"Open. They were always open these nights. Sometimes madame would sit by the window when there was not much breeze."
"I should like to see the room," remarked Craig, with an inquiring glance at Edwards. "Certainly," he answered. Mrs. Edwards's room was on the starboard side, with wide windows instead of port-holes. It was furnished magnificently, and there was little about it that suggested the nautical except the view from the window.
"The bed had not been slept in," Edwards remarked, as we looked about curiously.
Kennedy walked over quickly to the wide series of windows, before which was a leather-cushioned window-seat almost level with the window, several feet above the water. It was by this window, evidently, that Juanita meant that Mrs. Edwards often sat. It was a delightful position; but I could readily see that from it it would be comparatively easy for anyone accidentally or purposely to fall.
"I think myself," Waldon remarked to Kennedy, "that it must have been from the open window that she made her way to the outside. It seems that all agree that the door was locked, while the window was wide open."
"There had been no sound—no cry to alarm you?" shot out Kennedy suddenly to Juanita.
"No, sir, nothing. I could not sleep myself, and I thought of madame."
"You heard nothing?" he asked of Doctor Jermyn.
"Nothing, until I heard the maid call," he replied briefly.
Mentally I ran over again Kennedy's first list of possibilities—taken off by another boat, accident, drugs, suicide, murder.
Was there, I asked myself, sufficient reason for suicide? The letter seemed to me to show too proud a spirit for that. In fact, the last sentence seemed to show that she was rather contemplating the surest method of revenge rather than surrender. As for accident, why should a person fall overboard from a large house-boat into a perfectly calm harbor? Then, too, there had been no outcry. Somehow, I could not seem to fit any of the theories in with the facts.
Suddenly, I recalled the theory that Waldon himself had advanced regarding the wireless either from the boat itself or from the wireless station. For the moment, at least, it seemed plausible that she might have been seated at the window, that she might have been affected by escaped wireless waves or by electrolysis. I knew that some physicians had described a disease which they attributed to wireless—a sort of anemia, with a marked diminution in the number of red corpuscles in the blood, due partly to the over-etherization of the air by reason of the alternating currents used to generate the waves.
"I should like, now, to inspect the little wireless plant you have here on the Lucie," remarked Kennedy. "I noticed the mast as we were approaching, a few minutes ago."
I had turned at the sound of his voice in time to catch Edwards and Doctor Jermyn eyeing each other furtively. Did they know about the letter, after all, I wondered? Was each in doubt about just how much the other knew?
There was no time to pursue these speculations.
"Certainly," agreed Mr. Edwards.
Kennedy seemed keenly interested in inspecting the little wireless plant, which was of a curious type and not exactly like any that I had seen before.
"Wireless apparatus," he remarked, as he looked it over, "is divided into three parts—the source of power, whether battery or dynamo; the making and sending of wireless waves, including the key, spark-condenser, and tuning-coil; and the receiving apparatus, head-telephones, antennae, ground, and detector."
Pedersen, the engineer, came in while we were looking the plant over, but seemed uncommunicative to all Kennedy's efforts to engage him in conversation.
"I see," remarked Kennedy, "that it is a very compact system with facilities for a quick change from one wave-length to another."
"Yes," grunted Pedersen, as averse to talking, evidently, as others on the Lucie.
"Spark-gap, quenched type," I heard Kennedy mutter, almost to himself, with a view to showing Pedersen that he knew something about it. "Break-system relay—operator can overhear any interference while transmitting—transformation by a single throw of a six-point switch which tunes the oscillating and open circuits to resonance. Very clever—very efficient. By the way, Pedersen, are you the only person aboard who can operate this?"
"Pedersen, are you the only person aboard who can operate this?"
"How should I know?" he answered almost surlily.
"You ought to know, if anybody," answered Kennedy, unruffled. "I know that it has been operated within the past few days."
Pedersen shrugged his shoulders. "You might ask the others aboard," was all he said. "Mr. Edwards pays me to operate it only for himself."
Kennedy did not pursue the subject, evidently from fear of saying too much just at present.
"I wonder if there is anyone else who could have operated it," said Waldon, as we mounted again to the deck.
"I don't know," replied Kennedy, pausing on the way up. "You haven't a wireless on the Nautilus, have you?"
Waldon shook his head. "Never had any particular use for it, myself," he answered.
"You say that Miss Verrall and her mother have gone back to the city?" pursued Kennedy, taking care that, as before, the others were out of ear-shot.
"Yes."
"I'd like to stay with you to-night, then," decided Kennedy. "Might we go over with you, now? There doesn't seem to be anything more I can do here, unless we get some news about Mrs. Edwards."
Waldon seemed only too glad to agree.
We arrived at the Nautilus a few minutes later, and, while we were lunching, Kennedy despatched the tender to the Marconi station with a note.
It was early in the afternoon when the tender returned with several packages and coils of wire. Kennedy immediately set to work on the Nautilus, stretching out some of the wire.
"What is it you are planning?" asked Waldon, to whom every action of Kennedy's seemed to be a mystery of the highest interest.
"Improvising my own wireless," he replied, not averse to talking to the young man, to whom he seemed to have taken a fancy. "For short distances, you know, it isn't necessary to construct an aerial pole or even to use outside wires to receive messages. All that is needed is to use a few wires stretched inside a room. The rest is just the apparatus."
I was quite as much interested as Waldon. "In wireless," Craig went on, "the signals are not sent in one direction but in all, so that a person within range of the ethereal disturbance can get them if only he has the necessary receiving apparatus. This apparatus need not be so elaborate and expensive as used to be thought needful, if a sensitive detector is employed, and I sent over to the station for a new piece of apparatus which I knew they had in almost any Marconi station. Why, I've got wireless signals using only twelve feet of number-eighteen copper wire stretched across a room and grounded with a water-pipe. You might even use a wire mattress on an iron bedstead."
"Can't they find out what you are doing here by—er—interference?" I asked.
Kennedy laughed. "No, not for radio apparatus which merely receives radiograms and is not equipped for sending. I am setting up only one side of a wireless outfit here. All I want to do is to hear what is being said."
He unwrapped another package which had been loaned to him by the radio station, and we watched him curiously as he tested it and set it up. Some parts of it I recognized, such as the very sensitive microphone. Another part I could have sworn was a phonograph cylinder, though Craig was so busy testing his apparatus that now we could not ask questions.
It was late in the afternoon when he finished, and we had just time to run up to the dock at Seaville and stop off at the Lucie to see if anything had happened in the intervening hours before dinner. There was nothing, except that I found time to file a message to the Star and meet several fellow newspaper men who had been sent down by other papers.
We had the Nautilus to ourselves, and, as she was a very comfortable little craft, we really had a very congenial time—a plunge over her side, a good dinner, and then a long talk out on deck under the stars. We went over every phase of the case. As we discussed it, Waldon followed keenly, and it was quite evident, from his remarks, that he had come to the conclusion that Doctor Jermyn, at least, knew more than he had told about the case. Still, the day wore away with no solution, yet, of the mystery.
It was early the following morning when a launch drew up beside the Nautilus. In it were Edwards and Doctor Jermyn, wildly excited.
"What's the matter?" called out Waldon.
"They—they have found the body," Edwards blurted out.
Waldon paled and clutched the rail. He had thought the world of his sister, and not until the last moment had he given up hope that perhaps she might be found to have disappeared in some other way than had become increasingly evident.
"Where?" cried Kennedy. "Who?"
"Over on Ten Mile Beach," answered Edwards. "Some fishermen who had been out on a cruise and hadn't heard the story. They took the body to town, and there it was recognized."
Waldon had already spun the engine of his tender, which was about the fastest thing afloat about Seaville, had taken Jermyn and Edwards over, and we were off in a cloud of spray, the nose of the boat many inches above the surface of the water.
In the little undertaking establishment at Seaville lay the body of the beautiful young matron about whom so much anxiety had been felt. I could not help thinking what an end was this for the incomparable beauty. At the very height of her brief career, the poor little woman's life had been suddenly snuffed out. But by what?
"Was it drowning that caused her death?" asked Kennedy of the local doctor, who also happened to be coroner and had already arrived on the scene.
The doctor shook his head. "I don't know," he said doubtfully. "There was congestion of the lungs—still I—I can't say but that she might have been dead before she fell or was thrown into the water."
Doctor Jermyn stood on one side, now and then putting in a word, but for the most part silent unless spoken to. Kennedy, however, was making a most minute examination.
As he turned the beautiful head, almost reverently, he saw something that evidently attracted his attention. I was standing next to him, and, between us, I think we cut off the view of the others. There on the back of the neck, carefully, had been smeared something transparent, almost skin-like, which had easily escaped the attention of the rest.
Kennedy tried to pick it off, but only succeeded in pulling off a very minute piece to which the flesh seemed to adhere.
"That's queer," he whispered to me. "Water, naturally, has no effect on it, else it would have been washed off long before. Walter," he added, "just slip across the street quietly to the drug store and get me a piece of gauze soaked with acetone."
As quickly and unostentatiously as I could, I did so, and handed him the wet cloth, contriving, at the same time, to add Waldon to our barrier, for I could see that Kennedy was anxious to be observed as little as possible.
"What is it?" I whispered, as he rubbed the transparent, skin-like stuff off, and dropped the gauze into his pocket.
"A sort of skin-varnish," he remarked, under his breath, "water-proof and so adhesive that it resists pulling off, even with a knife, without taking the cuticle with it."
Beneath, as the skin-varnish had slowly dissolved under his gentle rubbing, he had disclosed several very small reddish spots, like little cuts that had been made by means of a very sharp instrument. As he did so, he gave them a hasty glance, turned the now stony beautiful head straight again, stood up, and resumed his talk with the coroner.
Edwards, who had completed the arrangements with the undertaker for the care of the body as soon as the coroner released it, seemed completely unnerved.
"Jermyn," he said to the doctor, as he turned away and hid his eyes, "I can't stand this. The undertaker wants some stuff from the—er—boat." His voice broke over the name which had been hers. "Will you get it for me? I'm going up to a hotel here, and I'll wait for you there. But I can't go out to the boat—yet."
"I think Mr. Waldon will be glad to take you out in his tender," suggested Kennedy. "Besides, I feel that I'd like a little fresh air as a bracer, too, after such a shock."
"What were those little cuts?" I asked, as Waldon and Doctor Jermyn preceded us, through the crowd outside, to the pier.
"Some one," he answered in a low tone, "has severed the pneumogastric nerve."
"The pneumogastric nerve?" I repeated.
"Yes, the vagus, or wandering nerve, the so-called tenth cranial nerve. Unlike the other cranial nerves, which are concerned with the special senses or distributed to the skin and muscles of the head and neck, the vagus, as its name implies, strays downward into the chest and abdomen, supplying branches to the throat, lungs, heart, and stomach, and forms an important connecting link between the brain and the sympathetic nervous system."
We had reached the pier, and a nod from Kennedy discouraged further conversation on the subject.
A few minutes later, we had reached the Lucie and gone up over her side. Kennedy waited until Jermyn had disappeared into the room of Mrs. Edwards to get what the undertaker had desired. A moment, and he had passed quietly into Doctor Jermyn's own room, followed by me. Several quick glances about told him what not to waste time over, and at last his eye fell on a little portable case of medicines and surgical instruments. He opened it quickly and took out a bottle of golden-yellow liquid.
Kennedy smelled it, then quickly painted some on the back of his hand. It dried quickly, like an artificial skin. He had found a bottle of skin-varnish in Doctor Jermyn's own medicine-chest!
Kennedy quickly painted some on the back of his hand.
We hurried back to the deck, and, a few minutes later, the doctor appeared with a large package.
"Did you ever hear of coating the skin by a substance which is impervious to water, smooth, and elastic?" asked Kennedy quietly, as Waldon's tender sped along back to Seaville.
"Why—er, yes," he said frankly, raising his eyes and looking at Craig in surprise. "There have been a dozen or more such substances. The best is one which I use, made of pyroxylin, the soluble cotton of commerce, dissolved in amyl acetate and acetone, with some other substances that make it perfectly sterile. Why do you ask?"
"Because some one has used a little bit of it to cover a few slight cuts on the back of Mrs. Edwards' neck."
"Indeed?" he said simply, in a tone of mild surprise.
"Yes," pursued Kennedy; "they seem to me to be subcutaneous incisions of the neck with a very fine scalpel, dividing the two great pneumogastric nerves. Of course, you know what that would mean—the victim would pass away naturally by slow and easy stages in three or four days, and all that would appear might be congestion of the lungs. They are delicate little punctures and elusive nerves to locate, but, after all, it might be done as painlessly, as simply, and as safely as a barber might remove some dead hairs. A country coroner might easily pass over such evidence at an autopsy—especially if it were concealed by skin-varnish."
I was surprised at the frankness with which Kennedy spoke, but absolutely amazed at the coolness of Jermyn. At first, he said nothing. He seemed to be as set in his reticence as he had been when we first met.
I watched him narrowly. Waldon, who was driving the boat, had not heard what was said, but I had, and I could not conceive how anyone could take it so calmly.
Finally, Jermyn turned to Kennedy and looked him squarely in the eye. "Kennedy," he said slowly, "this is extraordinary—most extraordinary," then pausing, added, "if true."
"There can be no doubt of the truth," replied Kennedy, eyeing Doctor Jermyn just as squarely.
"What do you purpose to do about it?" asked the doctor.
"Investigate," replied Kennedy simply. "While Waldon takes these things up to the undertaker's, we may as well wait here in the boat. I want him to stop on the way back for Mr. Edwards. Then we shall go out to the Lucie. He must go, whether he likes it or not."
It was indeed a most peculiar situation, as Kennedy and I sat in the tender with Doctor Jermyn, waiting for Waldon to return with Edwards. Not a word was spoken.
The tenseness of the situation was not relieved by the return of Waldon with Edwards. Waldon seemed to realize, without knowing just what it was, that something was about to happen. He drove his boat back to the Lucie again in record time. This was Kennedy's turn to be reticent. Whatever it was he was revolving in his mind, he answered in scarcely more than monosyllables whatever questions were put to him.
"You are not coming aboard?" inquired Edwards, in surprise, as he and Jermyn mounted the steps of the house-boat ladder, and Kennedy remained seated in the tender.
"Not yet," replied Craig coolly.
"But I thought you had something to show me. Waldon told me you had."
"I think I shall have, in a short time," returned Kennedy. "We shall be back immediately. I'm just going to ask Waldon to run over to the Nautilus for a few minutes. We'll tow back your launch, too, in case you need it."
Waldon had cast off obediently.
"There's one thing sure," I remarked. "Jermyn can't get away from the Lucie until we return—unless he swims."
Kennedy did not seem to pay much attention to the remark, for his only reply was: "I'm taking a chance by this maneuvering, but I think it will work out that I am correct. By the way, Waldon, you needn't put on so much speed. I'm in no great hurry to get back. Half an hour will be time enough."
"'Jermyn?' What did you mean by 'Jermyn?'" asked Waldon, as we climbed to the deck of the Nautilus.
He had evidently learned, as I had, that it was little use to try to quiz Kennedy until he was ready to be questioned, and had decided to try it on me.
I had nothing to conceal, and I told him quite fully all that I knew. Actually, I believe if Jermyn had been there, it would have taken both Kennedy and myself to prevent violence. As it was, I had a veritable madman to deal with, while Kennedy gathered up leisurely the wireless outfit he had installed on the deck of Waldon's yacht. It was only by telling him that I would certainly demand that Kennedy leave him behind if he did not control his feelings, that I could calm him before Craig had finished his work on the yacht.
Waldon relieved himself by driving the tender back at top speed to the Lucie, and now it seemed that Kennedy had no objection to traveling as fast as the many-cylindered engine was capable of going.
As we entered the saloon of the houseboat, I kept close watch over Waldon.
Kennedy began by slipping a record on the phonograph in the corner of the saloon, then facing us and addressing Edwards particularly, "You may be interested to know, Mr. Edwards," he said, "that your wireless outfit here has been put to a use for which you never intended it."
No one said anything, but I am sure that some one in the room, then, for the first time, began to suspect what was coming.
"As you know, by the use of an aerial pole, messages may be easily received from any number of stations," continued Craig. "Laws, rules, and regulations may be adopted to shut out interlopers and plug busybody ears, but the greater part of whatever is transmitted by the Hertzian waves can be snatched down by other wireless apparatus.
"Down below, in that little room of yours," went on Craig, "might sit an operator with his ear-'phone clamped to his head, drinking in the news conveyed surely and swiftly to him through the wireless signals— plucking from the sky secrets of finance and," he added, leaning forward, "love." In his usual dramatic manner. Kennedy had swung his little audience completely with him.
"In other words," he resumed, "it might be used for eavesdropping by a wireless wire-tapper. Now," he concluded, "I thought that if there was any radio-detective work being done, I might as well do some, too."
He toyed for a moment with the phonograph record.
"I have used," he explained, "Marconi's radiotelephone, because, in connection with his receivers, Marconi uses phonographic recorders, and on them has captured wireless-telegraph signals over hundreds of miles.
"He has found that it is possible to receive wireless signals, although ordinary records are not loud enough, by using a small microphone on the repeating diaphragm and connected with a loud-speaking telephone. The chief difficulty was to get a microphone that would carry a sufficient current without burning up. There were other difficulties, but they have been surmounted, and now wireless-telegraph messages may be automatically recorded and made audible."
Kennedy started the phonograph, running it along, stopping it, taking up the record at a new point.
"Listen," he exclaimed at length, "there's something interesting, the W.X.Y. call— Seaville station—from some one on the Lucie, only a few minutes ago, sending a message to be relayed by Seaville to the station at Beach Park. It seems impossible, but buzzing and ticking forth is this message from some one of this very houseboat. It reads: 'Miss Valerie Fox, Beach Park. I am suspected of the murder of Mrs. Edwards. I appeal to you to help me. You must allow me to tell the truth about the messages I intercepted for Mrs. Edwards, which passed between yourself on the ocean and Mr. Edwards in New York, via Seaville. You rejected me and would not let me save you. Now you must save me.'"
Kennedy paused for an instant, then added, "The message is signed by Doctor Jermyn!"
At once I saw it all. Jermyn had been the unsuccessful suitor for Miss Fox's affection.
But before I could piece out the rest of the tragic story, Kennedy had started the phonograph record at an earlier point, which he had skipped for the present.
"Here's another record—a brief one— also to Valerie Fox, from the house-boat: 'Refuse all interviews. Deny everything. Will see you as soon as present excitement dies down.'"
Before Kennedy could finish, Waldon had leaped forward, unable longer to control his feelings.
If Kennedy had not seized his arm, I verily believe he would have cast Doctor Jermyn into the bay into which his sister had fallen, two nights before, in her terribly weakened condition.
"Waldon," cried Kennedy, "for God's sake, man—wait! Don't you understand? The second message is signed 'Tracy Edwards.'"
It came quite as much a shock of surprise to me as to Waldon. "Don't you understand?" Craig repeated. "Your sister first learned from Doctor Jermyn what was going on. She moved the Lucie down here, near Seaville, in order to be near the wireless station when the ship bearing her rival, Valerie Fox, got in touch with land. With the help of Doctor Jermyn she intercepted the wireless messages from the Kronprinz to the shore—between her husband and Valerie Fox."
Kennedy was hurrying on now to his irresistible conclusion. "She found that he was infatuated with the famous stage beauty, that he was planning to marry her rival. She accused him of it, threatened to defeat his plans. He knew she knew his unfaithfulness. Instead of being your sister's murderer, Doctor Jermyn was helping her get the evidence that would save both her and perhaps win Miss Fox back to himself."
Kennedy had turned sharply on Edwards.
"But," he added, with a glance that crushed any lingering hope that the truth had been concealed, "the same night that Doctor Jermyn arrived here, you visited your wife. As she slept, you severed the nerves that meant life or death to her. Then you covered the cuts with the preparation which you knew Doctor Jermyn used. You asked him to stay while you went away, thinking that, when death came, you would have a perfect alibi—perhaps a scapegoat. Edwards, the radio-detective convicts you!"
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