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Cosmopolitan, July 1918, with "The Treason Trust"
Craig Kennedy, ever seeking opportunity to combat the enemy within our gates, eagerly responds to a summons from a manufacturing town of considerable importance in war-time. The situation he finds there would completely baffle anyone who did not possess his wonderful detective insight and scientific knowledge.
"I WOULD have been a traitor to the country if I had not resigned from the company to perfect my invention and give it to the American people."
Harvey Fenwick had been, I remembered, one of Kennedy's most promising early students at the university.
The young man seemed to be very worried over something, for he began by informing us that he had made a journey of several hours to New York and had come directly from the station to the laboratory.
Craig welcomed him, as he always did his former students, and, indeed, one could not help liking Fenwick, He was a clean-cut, clear-eyed young fellow, keen of mind and athletic of body. There was something about him that impressed one with his possession of a reserve of power.
"You see," he hastened to explain, "in my own laboratory—for I have always kept one, no matter whom I worked for—I have been perfecting a very cheap and improved process for the extraction of nitrates from the air. It was only lately that I began to run into trouble——"
Fenwick paused. Kennedy was at once alert. The invention was of basic importance, and the hint of some mystery in connection with it greatly whetted Craig's interest.
"I knew that, if I continued in the position I was holding as a chemical engineer, the process would be claimed by the company for which I was working, in spite of the fact that I had gone far to perfect it long before I ever went with them," hurried on Fenwick. "I long ago determined that I would not take a penny of profit out of it, but would dedicate it to the government. I wanted the United Slates to profit by it—not the Coalton Coal Tar Company. I consulted one of the principal stockholders—Dr—Miss Seward, Miss Anastasia Seward."
Kennedy shot a quick glance at the young man. The hesitation over the name had been enough to catch Kennedy's attention. Fenwick tried to look blankly unconcerned for a moment, then was forced to smile.
"I knew I couldn't say it and get away with it with you, Professor Kennedy," he admitted, coloring a bit. "Well, I consulted her, anyway—and she is one of the principal stockholders. She's a splendid, patriotic girl. I told her all about it—what it would mean for her company if they got the process; what it might mean for me if I secured a patent, and, finally, what it would mean for the people of the United States if all the companies got it, instead of one which most likely would use it to build up a trust. I asked her what she would decide in my place. She agreed with me absolutely—that I resign and perfect it, and then present it to the nation. She promised to keep my secret.
"So I did resign some time ago. I had a little money of my own. I hired a laboratory in a basement of an old building in Coalton, and I employed an assistant, Webster Powell, a splendid young fellow, self-educated and eager to learn. Everything went along all right. We had to work hard, Powell and I, but now we are at the end of it—only a few minor things to be cleared up."
Fenwick laid on the laboratory table three curious scrawls of penmanship, all palpably disguised, written on common wrapping-paper, and all unsigned. Kennedy picked up the paper on top. It was merely a broken sentence:
Leave Coalton at once and destroy your process,
The menace of the threat was continued in the second scrawl, which continued,
or both will be done for you.
As though to emphasize the warning, the third read,
This is the final day.
"They've been coming in the first mail each day for the past three days," went on Fenwick. "This morning, I stole out of town quietly. I thought you might help me. If it was something in the open, I might fight it. But when it comes to this secret stuff, I'm no good at doping it out. Won't you go back to Coalton with me?"
Kennedy had been listening with eagerness. There was no need to argue with him to persuade him. In a sense, it was partly his own fight, for no one had been more active in organizing America's chemical warfare than he. He could hardly fail to accept the challenge.
IT was a long journey out to Coalton, and we had plenty of
time to discuss the case. Kennedy began by asking Fenwick his own
story of what had happened.
"Briefly, it is this," answered the young man: "After I graduated from the university, I entered the service of the Coalton Coal Tar Company, of Coalton, Pennsylvania. Formerly it had been a partnership, Vincent & Seward, but at present Warner Vincent is president of the corporation, which was formed just before the death of his partner, the father of Anastasia Seward, who inherited his one-third stock interest. Miss Seward is a very clever and remarkable girl. She knows more than enough to take a hand in the business, but—well—there are conventionalities in Coalton."
Kennedy smiled at his enthusiasm.
"You make me quite eager to meet Miss Seward," he commented sympathetically.
"I don't suppose you know," continued Fenwick, "that there is a rival company in the town, the Coalton Anilin and Soda Works. The president of that is a young man, Carter Snaith, who inherited the business from his father. Outwardly, Snaith and Vincent are friendly enough. But they are rivals all right. If one company does a thing, the other follows suit. They keep neck and neck. Snaith is pretty popular in the younger set, too."
Fenwick saw that both Kennedy and I were observing him rather closely, and he quickly changed the subject.
"There's another thing I want to tell you about," he hastened on. "About a month ago, there came into town a young labor agitator—Victor Raver. He seems to be a fellow of fiery temper—never quite so happy as when stirring up trouble. His speeches and actions are always veiled, though. He's clever. He doesn't dare say what he really thinks. But, underneath, you can see what he is driving at. He really believes that the industries that are prolonging the war, as he expresses it, must be stopped. He covers his secret incitement to sabotage with his campaign against war-profiteers. And he has a following."
"Is there a large group of agitators?" inquired Craig.
"No; not a large group."
"But who is in it?" persisted Craig.
"Some who oughtn't to be," returned Fenwick reluctantly. "You will meet them. One is Olga Lockhart, the niece of Mr. Vincent—once a friend of Anastasia's. She calls herself a pacifist, although I call her a camoufleuse for Raver, to hide his real schemes. A few months ago I thought that Olga and Snaith were going to become engaged. Everything seemed ready, but, no—it seems it was not. I don't know what brought it about. But, shortly after that, Snaith began cultivating the acquaintance of Anastasia."
BY the time we arrived in Coalton, Kennedy had pumped himself
full of facts about the place and its people. He was all set now.
It was early in the evening, and darkness was just beginning to
settle down as we rode through the streets of the famous little
town of anthracite.
Finally, in a sparsely-settled district, we came at last upon an old ramshackle house. It was there that Fenwick indicated that his laboratory was. We went down a flight of steps and came to the basement, which was really the cellar.
Fenwick rapped on the door. There was no answer.
"Guess Powell must have got tired and gone to dinner," he commented, trying the door.
It was locked on the inside. Fenwick drew from his the pocket a key and inserted it in the lock. He pushed open the door, and we entered as he took a step over to a wall switch. As the light flooded the laboratory, Fenwick uttered a startled exclamation, pointing. There on the floor, just beyond the laboratory table, lay Powell—dead!
Kennedy crossed swiftly and with Fenwick bent over the body. Powell had been dead for several hours.
"How could it have happened?" gasped Fenwick. "Door locked—we know that. Not a window or anything else disturbed," he added, looking carefully at the barred cellar windows. "No way that anyone could have got in."
"There's been something that produced a very caustic effect on the air-passages," Kennedy remarked, looking up. "Apparently the lungs and the central nervous system have been paralyzed."
As Kennedy rose, he glanced at the table. In a jar was a quantity of blue litmus paper. Fenwick followed his gaze and, as he did so, exclaimed,
"That was fresh—should have been red!"
Seizing a glass tube, about which he wrapped a wad of cotton, Kennedy bent over again and swabbed out Powell's nose and throat. Then he opened a bottle of hydrochloric acid, pouring some into a beaker. As he plunged the glass tube in it, white fumes arose.
"Gassed!" he exclaimed simply.
"But how? There's no trace of gas."
"Ammonia—I am sure," added Kennedy, completing his tests.
Fenwick gazed sadly at Powell's body.
"The threats!" exclaimed Fenwick. "Don't you see? It was intended for me. Poor fellow! And they got him. What had we better do?"
"Notify the police first," answered Kennedy.
Fenwick picked up the telephone-receiver and jiggled the hook. There was no answer. He waited. Still there was no answer.
"Dead!" he cried. "Some one has cut the wires outside." He gazed at us in consternation as the full significance of the situation dawned on him. "Kennedy," he said impressively, "there's a traitor somewhere in this town. That's all that this thing is—treason—industrial treason. At a time like this, such an act is striking America in the back. I'll run that murderer down if it costs me my life."
IT was to be expected that the news of an event like this
would spread rapidly in Coalton. Hardly had Fenwick returned from
calling up the police from an outside telephone than the
officials themselves arrived.
"Some of Raver's work—you can bet," swore the chief under his breath, as he looked wisely over the lack of evidence and said nothing about it. "He'll pay for it! We'll watch him. And we'll get him with the goods—you'll see!"
There was the humming of a motor outside, and the door opened.
"Tell me, Harvey—it isn't true—is it? It cant be!" cried a girl, as she hurried in, followed by a tall man several years older than herself.
The solemn group was answer enough, and she paused, while Fenwick started toward her, then stopped also. I knew at once that it was Anastasia Seward, even before he introduced her. And it did not take a mind-reader to divine from the tableau that the man who had come with her was Snaith.
Anastasia was everything that Fenwick had described and implied. She had youth, beauty, wealth, and—what is greater—a strong, lovable personality. I saw that Kennedy was an interested onlooker as Fenwick turned to present him. As for Fenwick and Snaith, their greetings were cold—Snaith's rather supercilious. All listened eagerly to every scrap of conversation between the police and Kennedy.
"You sure it was ammonia gas?" asked an officer, who came up, interrupting Kennedy as Anastasia was making troubled inquiries.
"Absolutely," reiterated Kennedy.
"Gassed! Ammonia!" exclaimed Snaith, turning and addressing Fenwick for the first time in the hearing of all. "Perhaps the gas came from your own apparatus—some defect or accident."
Fenwick was plainly angry at the implication.
"Not likely. I don't believe it. Powell was never careless. Nor have I discovered anything defective. There is no way it could have happened like that."
"Then how?" challenged Snaith.
Fenwick was at a loss. It was a question in the minds of us all; but without a scintilla of answer—yet.
One thing I noted, however, which pleased me greatly: From her manner. Anastasia was keenly sympathetic. Once I saw her cast a glance of encouragement at Fenwick, which I knew set his heart leaping. But when she finally turned, urged by Snaith that this was no place for her and that he would see her home, Fenwick's face fell. He glanced hastily at us, then at her retreating form. His face clouded. His place was here just now, and he could not desert, even for her.
THE coroner had arrived in the mean time, and, as there was
nothing that we could do immediately, Kennedy decided that we had
better let the authorities have their innings, then come back
again after we had established ourselves in the town, for it
began to look as if we might be there some time. A walk through
the crisp night air freshened us after the terrible event we had
witnessed, and we came at last to the business section of the
place. As we walked along, we saw that on the corner of Main and
Market Streets a large crowd had gathered.
"There's Raver, the agitator, now!" exclaimed Fenwick, pressing forward.
It was a typical soap-box crowd, into which we mixed unobtrusively, getting closer to the speaker as it shifted.
Raver was a rather handsome fellow, affecting long hair, a loose, flowing, frayed tie, shirt none too clean, with a collar displaying the inevitable Adam's apple of the revolutionist. If clothes proclaim the man. Ravers shouted it.
He was denouncing capital with every art known to rhetoric. No evangelist ever painted Satan more colorfully than Raver encrimsoned the war-profiteer, who was his especial target. The trouble was, however, that everybody who didn't agree with Raver was a war-profiteer.
"They do not even stop at murder at home!" he shouted, as he grew more impassioned. "Why, comrades, to-day, right here in your own little peaceful town, they have done it. Let me tell you something. Why was that poor slave of the capitalistic system, Powell, killed? Do you know? I do. I tell you it was because, in their haste to make money out of some invention that would kill others, he was industrially murdered by the very murderous gas that he was seeking to make in such quantities and so cheaply that he might reduce the cost of making the very materials that are killing men three thousand miles away. I tell you, good friends, it is a system—a system! The system, greed, capital did it."
Fenwick, beside me, was getting more and more excited at this reference to Powell, plainly intended to reflect on himself.
"You lie!" he cried, shouldering his way through the crowd. "And if you don't, the police are looking for just what information you can give them!"
The crowd turned, undecided whether to listen or not.
"It is nothing, I know, in your own system," followed up Fenwick, "if the invention he was working on was for the people of the United States."
Raver was about to shoot back one of his clever thrusts that begged the question by injecting something entirely extraneous into the argument when, from the crowd of sympathizers close to him, came the voice of a girl.
"You—we—the government—the people are all merely cogs in the wheels of this capitalistic system!"
I felt sure it was Olga Lockhart. And I was right. Fenwick hesitated a moment. He did not relish the idea of engaging in a controversy with one who had been a friend.
I watched the young woman with interest. Olga was really a girl of great beauty, with big brown eyes, a full throat, and finely-poised head. She wore a low collar, and her hair was parted very simply. But there was more affectation in Olga's plainness than there would have been in hundreds of dollars' worth of furs and frills on a girl of the usual type.
Whatever Fenwick might have thought of restraint, Olga had no such compunction. There was grave danger of a scene.
"If we are cogs in a system," interrupted the voice of another girl, "then are not you emery dust in the bearings—nothing better than the sabotage of life?"
I turned in time to see Anastasia facing forward with flaming eyes. The two girls confronted each other, while Raver seemed to assume the chance to attack Fenwick alone.
"You 'bitter-enders' can never understand those of us who hate war and all that makes for it."
Anastasia met her directly.
"No; and we don't want to understand—if it involves some other things we do understand."
She glanced significantly at Raver, surrounded by the crowd, arguing hot and heavy with Fenwick. There was something in the tone of the remark that made Olga color.
"Come, Stasie; I think we'd better go," interrupted a man.
It was Snaith, who had pressed forward. At that moment, Olga caught sight of him. He bowed. She colored even deeper, then turned to Raver. He was again addressing the crowd, waving his arms—first at the big mills in the distance and then linking Fenwick in his invective.
The meeting was by this time in an uproar, as Raver and Fenwick were shouting back and forth. As for the crowd, it seemed to be divided—part of it, the rougher, favoring Raver, while another part cheered Fenwick at every point.
The excitement had now reached a climax. Cries from the part that adhered to Fenwick urged: "Tar and feather him! Run him out of town." Raver's sympathizers were growling and gathering closer as though for a rush at Fenwick. One burly fellow edged up and raised his arm.
"Just a moment!" shouted a clear voice.
It was Kennedy, who, up to this time, had been a silent observer. He jumped to Fenwick's side, catching his would-be assailant's arm. The crowd paused at this diversion. But there was no stopping them. There was a chorus of howls and hisses, then a storm of blows. The fight was becoming wild when some one yelled suddenly:
"The cops! The cops! Run!"
The patrol had swung in at some distance, unnoticed. As the squad ran forward, with clubs and drawn revolvers, there was a general scramble.
The fight was over more sharply than it had begun, leaving the police in the field.
I remembered having seen Snaith, as he darted forward and pushed back an angry mob from Olga. Fenwick had taken the chance to place Anastasia in a car and send her home. Raver had escaped.
WE decided that Fenwick would most likely return to the
laboratory, and we walked back to it. He was there. By this time,
the coroner had removed Powell's body.
Looking over the apparatus which had meant so much to him, Fenwick seemed more disposed to talk.
"I know that you understand what we are doing here," he said, speaking to Kennedy, "but I may as well tell you about it. I have been seeking to improve the German Haver and Rossignol processes for making synthetic ammonia from the air.
"Let me give you a brief idea of the thing. We have coke and lime in abundance about Coalton, and we have one other very important thing—water-power. That, as you know, means that we can get very cheap electricity. The anilin and soda works have the best power plant, siphoning water for power through the mountain back of the town.
"Well, first coke and lime are placed in an electric furnace and there they are fused at a high temperature until we get carbide. That carbide is packed in ovens with carbon rods. The mass is fused into what is called cyanamid. Of course, you know as well as I do that Germany would be nowhere if it were not that she possessed this synthetic process which I am perfecting.
"Then we heat the cyanamid and, under the heat, ammonia is given off. In my work I have been very careful. There is no way that the ammonia could escape so that it would have overwhelmed poor Powell. That is what Snaith was trying to make out, and Raver, too.
"The next step is to oxidize that ammonia, and we do that with what we call a platinum catalyzer. That combines the ammonia with oxygen from the air. Then we have the nitric, king of acids, which we want. As you know, without nitric acid there would be no explosives. Our only other source is saltpeter from the Chilean nitrate fields.
"My new process with cyanamid will lie at the basis of our manufacture of dyes, for without it we would get none of the intermediates or the chemicals. All we need is coal, lime, sulphur, and salt, and we have great industries started. From the process we will get benzol, toluol, naphthalene, sulphuric acid, chlorine gas, caustic soda—countless direct and indirect products."
Fenwick's explanation served to open my eyes to the magnitude of the interests at stake. For several minutes Kennedy sat quiet, deeply pondering where to start. Finally he decided.
"Early to-morrow," he outlined, "I intend to talk to Mr. Vincent. Then I must see Snaith. I will meet you, Fenwick, here at ten o'clock."
"I THINK I will begin right at the top," decided Kennedy,
while we were breakfasting the next morning at the Coalton House.
"There is Vincent, the head of the coal-tar company. Miss
Lockhart is his niece. Perhaps if we can see him, we may learn
something before it is too late."
Vincent, we found, lived in a palatial house on a hill overlooking the town. We were driven out there and, luckily, found our man enjoying an early-morning stroll in his famous garden.
Kennedy contrived to introduce himself on some pretext, and Vincent, whose mind was always on business, was not averse to discussing what was on his mind. We spoke of the future of Coalton and of its coal-tar products during the war and after. Kennedy led the conversation about deftly, touching upon improvements in the various processes until, finally, he managed to refer to the work that Fenwick was doing. There was no doubt that he had touched on a sore spot. Vincent became almost apoplectic.
"It's hard to tell," he roared, "which makes the most trouble—people with ideals like him or people like this Raver, the agitator, who has come here lately! One puts wrong ideas into the head of good American working men; the other into the foreigners. I don't know but that I prefer Raver. I think I can handle him—and if I can't, the police can!"
Kennedy was bound to get in one remark.
"Your niece, Olga Lockhart, seems to understand him," he suggested.
"I cannot help what Miss Lockhart does," Vincent returned testily. "Do you know what the women of to-day want? If I did, by Jove, I'd let 'em have it! They're not as bad as some of the men."
He stormed over toward the house, calling for his chauffeur to drive him down to the mills. Kennedy smiled slyly at me. Even though we hadn't learned much, we, at least, had caught the man's point of view.
We had left the car which we had hired down the road, and now, as we came back to it, Kennedy asked the driver if he knew where the Seward house was. He nodded that he did, and whirled us over a beautiful road, along the side of the mountain, overlooking the valley.
As we approached the house, which, though not so elaborate as Vincent's, was the more attractive of the two, I noticed that a speedster was drawn up on the driveway, not far from the porte-cochère. Our car pulled up behind it, and we inquired for Miss Seward.
The servant professed not to know just where she was, and we waited in a sort of sun-parlor, from which a pair of open French windows looked out upon a veranda and a sunken garden beyond.
"Did you notice the monogram, 'C.S.' on the speedster outside?" asked Kennedy.
I had not, but the initials were enough.
"Snaith?" I inquired, in a low tone.
Kennedy nodded and cautioned silence, indicating the sunken garden below. I looked out. There, from behind a formal hedge, I could see Anastasia and Snaith coming slowly toward the house. He was talking very earnestly to her, pleading. They approached closer, where we could not now see them but could hear.
"Don't you see, Stasie," he was saying, "in your way you are almost as foolish as Olga? No good ever comes of a girl's going outside of her own class—at least not downward."
"You said that before, Carter," rippled up her fresh voice. "Remember, though, that it was only a generation ago that your father and mine——"
The rest was lost. But it was not difficult to gather the drift. He had been pleading his own case against Fenwick's. She had not been convinced.
The sound of another motor outside caused us to turn, and on the driveway I saw none other than Olga Lockhart herself. I wondered what could have brought her to Anastasia's. Had she felt that she had gone too far the night before and wanted to apologize? Or was she merely spying? I thought we were going to find out, when, instead, without stopping her car as she caught sight of the speedster in front of our own, she deliberately turned down the driveway again, and shot up into high speed and away. There was no doubt in my mind now that Olga was jealous, whatever else she might be. If she had only known of the scrap of conversation we had just overheard, I could imagine that she would have been delighted.
Snaith left, and, a moment later, Miss Seward entered, greeting us eagerly. For perhaps half an hour she plied us with questions regarding Kennedy's theories of the case. To the best of his ability, on the slender information at his disposal, Kennedy tried to reply, but it did not satisfy her. Finally she leaned over toward him.
"Mr. Kennedy," she said, in a low voice, "I can say to you what I cannot to—Mr. Fenwick—" She paused over the words, then added hastily: "If it is a question of money—the uncovering of the crime, I mean—don't stop at anything—anything! Only, you won't tell——"
"It is not money," answered Craig, as she paused, and, as his eyes met hers, she knew that he was a detective of hearts as well.
"Thank you," she murmured. "I thought not. But you will let me know—whatever happens?"
Kennedy promised, and we were soon on our way back to the town, where we spent another half-hour in useless effort to locate Raver at the now deserted pacifist headquarters.
IN the car it was a matter of only a few moments when we were
whisked out to the laboratory, a bit late, to keep our
appointment with Fenwick.
Kennedy knocked at the door. There was no answer. I bent down, as he did, to the keyhole, but could see nothing. But there was a pungent odor, as of a gas.
Without even a word between us. Kennedy and I both threw ourselves against the door. It yielded to our combined pressure. As it did so, the rush of the ammonia gas almost overwhelmed us.
Hastily, with wet handkerchiefs over our noses, we dashed into the fumes, staggering and groping about. We found the form of Fenwick, and together carried it out into the fresh air. I looked at it in consternation. Had the strange attacker also gathered in our friend? Kennedy was on his knees, examining him.
"He's breathing, thank God!" murmured Craig. "If he survives a short time, he is more than likely to live and escape permanent injury. Get back there, Walter, and see if you can get me some weak acid."
I tied the handkerchief over my nose and entered again as he called after me,
"Don't strike any matches—it's explosive."
Somehow, the air in the room seemed much purer, and although the handkerchief fell off my nose as I found the acid, I did not need to replace it.
It was an anxious quarter of an hour before we brought Fenwick through delirium to a husky inquiry as to what was the matter. He had no recollection, remembered nothing. Weak, but still game, he at last struggled to his feet. The air in the laboratory had cleared by this time and, with doors and windows open, we returned.
Kennedy at once began a close examination. He came at last to a very heavy cabinet on which I had to lend a hand. As we pulled it out, there, from the wall, projected a small one-inch pipe.
Fenwick looked at it in amazement.
"What is it?" he asked huskily. "It wasn't there when I hired this basement."
Kennedy bent down and smelled of it, puckering up his nose. Then he examined the end of it. What did it all mean?
Without a word he hurried out, and, in an outhouse, as he passed, seized a spade. Out on the lawn he began digging several feet from the spot where he calculated that the cabinet had stood. We watched him in silence, until, at last, some three or four feet down, he struck something metallic—a pipe! Again he advanced ten or fifteen feet away and dug, and again, at about the same depth, he struck a pipe, clearly the same one.
"There's no use digging any more holes!" he exclaimed, sighting back along those he had already dug. "It must run in a straight line." Going back, he sighted ahead as he had established the line of pipe. "Let us investigate that," he concluded, indicating an old unoccupied house some three or four hundred feet away.
No one was about, and it was an easy job to break through a window and enter. We did so cautiously. But there was not a sound except a rat scurrying away from us. Search as we did, we could find nothing until we arrived in the cellar.
As we entered cautiously, Kennedy stumbled. There was the pungent odor of ammonia. We must be right. It was over one of two empty carboys that he had stumbled. As our eyes became accustomed lo the darkness, we could vaguely make out the rubbish in the cellar. But there was no one there.
An exclamation from Kennedy brought us over to the side nearest Fenwick. Here was a curious piece of apparatus, dismantled.
"What can it be?" I asked.
"A pipe-forcing jack," he replied. "A modification of the lifting jack, in which a ratchet and the jack function horizontally instead of vertically. Let me see—yes, here in this cellar it is deep enough to reach that one of Fenwick's underground. And there is plenty of room for the jack and the man operating it, as well as for the unit-length of a section of pipe."
We looked in silence as Craig demonstrated.
"At the forward end of the leading section is a short piece of slightly larger pipe—the pilot, which has a cutting-edge. This edge is keen enough lo cut through roots and any ordinary substances except rock. Whoever planned this used a one-inch pipe, but he might have used a four-inch pipe through the ground if he had cared to. They do it in the trenches.
"The sections must have been fourteen feet long. One section is forced forward; then the jack is withdrawn to the end of the ratchet. A new section is joined to the rear end of the buried pipe. The jack is then brought into operation again by a pumping or rocking motion of the lever, which forces the pipe forward, pushing the cutting section ahead of it, length after length.
"By careful calculation, the heading must have been made to come out into your laboratory, Fenwick, and stop just back of that cabinet, where you would not be likely to discover it. Then the ammonia gas was pumped in. After it had done its work, it might have been withdrawn in the same way. That would remove the evidence. It was a diabolically clever scheme."
Fenwick regarded the jack thoughtfully.
"And only chance saved me from following Powell, too!" he exclaimed. "We must get that fellow, Kennedy!"
Search though we did, there was no other clue to the perpetrator of this horrible attack. Fenwick was still weak, and, now that it was safe, there was no reason why we should not remain with him in the laboratory until he had recuperated.
NOTHING further happened until late in the afternoon, when a
hurried call from the police informed us that they had obtained
an order for Raver's arrest and a raid on the headquarters, the
warrants being based on other grounds than suspicion connected
with the death of Powell and attack on Fenwick.
Premature though Kennedy protested the move to be, the police were bent on making it. We decided, therefore, to go along.
It was precisely as Kennedy had predicted—lame. The headquarters were in a room over a store on Main Street. Some one had evidently tipped off the agitators. When the police broke into the room, papers were scattered about, and apparently books had been taken away; letters had been burned.
Kennedy, however, poking about among some charred remains in the stove, managed to pull out one bundle of letters, practically destroyed but with just a fragment intact, referring to a sum of money contributed for "the work you know of," as it read, and signed by "Charles Gledhill."
As he looked it over, he remarked:
"Some one has been putting up money for the propaganda here. It begins to look like a deeply-laid plot—a sort of treason trust. If we could find out who Charles Gledhill is, we might clear up many things."
Fenwick was keenly interested in another product of the raid—a personal letter written by Raver, but apparently never posted and meant to be destroyed. One sentence he studied intently, finally handing it to us.
There is really no competition between the Coalton Coal-Tar Company and the anilin-and-soda works. It is all on the surface, for the ultimate purpose of evading the laws of monopoly. The coal-tar company really owns and controls the works. What looks like competition, you will find is only their method of doing business so as to cover up the secret connection.
As Kennedy read it, he looked inquiringly at Fenwick.
"I don't know anything about it," shrugged Fenwick. "It's not the first time I have heard it. But I never believed it. Still—I'm not on the inside. Anastasia is not. Besides, what would the minority stockholders know of such a secret understanding and control? It may be true—even if Raver does believe it."
As I considered the new suggestion. I hastily reviewed my own opinions. Coming to look things over, I was forced to ask myself whether Snaith was all he openly professed himself to be. As for Anastasia, might not Snaith want to get Fenwick out of the way so that he could have a clear field to win her?
Then, too, there was Olga Lockhart, Vincent's niece. Was it possible that she might be, as I indeed suspected, insincere in the whole business of her activities with the agitators? Was she still in love with Snaith? What did her visit that morning mean—pique or espionage? I had felt all along that her intimacy with Raver was a pose.
The raid had netted the police very little, and they were now more disposed to listen to Kennedy. The order for Raver's arrest was still unexecuted. He had disappeared. Yet there was every reason to believe that he was still in the neighborhood, for both the roads and the railways had been watched without result. Kennedy's advice was simple—to concentrate upon watching Olga, in the hope that she might furnish the clue.
That day passed without anything new developing. We had almost decided that the police had muddled everything, that we should have to take the case up all over again on a new angle in the morning. Fenwick had left us and gone over to visit Anastasia, while Kennedy and I decided to retire to the hotel.
IT was nearly midnight when our room telephone-hell rang, and
Kennedy answered it. It was a call from Fenwick. Somehow, one of
the Seward servants had learned that Olga's chauffeur, who had
been idle all day, had received hurried orders to drive over to
the anilin-and-soda works on some mysterious errand. We had no
time to lose if we wanted to get there. Fenwick and Anastasia
were starting immediately.
Whatever there might be in it, it at least promised some action, and Kennedy and I hastened afoot up the street, that being quicker than to wait for a car.
As we approached the anilin works, in the darkness loomed up the brick buildings, dark and forbidding.
The works were large. If we were to run across anything, we must cover them quickly. Besides, Fenwick and Anastasia would arrive soon. We agreed to separate and on the slightest indication of trouble to signal on police whistles—three short, three long, three short.
The works at night gave me many thrills but none that warranted the signal, and I was about to sound it for the sake of getting back to the hotel for rest, when suddenly, far off, I heard whistles. At the first sound, I ran, counting. Sure enough it was three short, three long, three short.
As I ran, I saw that I was getting past the line of buildings. Far up the hillside I knew there was the tunnel which had been bored through the hill to divert the river higher up on the other side to furnish the water-power that made the anilin works coveted by the coal-tar company.
As I emerged from the shadows of the buildings, far ahead of me, I saw what I knew was the figure of Craig close by the mouth of the tunnel. I shouted, but he did not pay any attention. As I ran and strained my eyes, I made out the figure of a woman darting from the shrubbery in the darkness. Was it Olga?
In spite of my shouts, perhaps because of them, Kennedy disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel some hundred feet ahead. I ran even faster.
As I came within fifty feet of the dark, yawning passageway of the tunnel with its foot-bridge, under which the water for the power-plant swept in a swift, dark stream, I heard the peculiar reverberation of a shot from the tunnel.
At the entrance was the figure of the woman. As I came up behind her, I heard her laugh hysterically. Whatever she might be up to, I believed I was in time to prevent it. Through my brain, though, whirled only one tense thought now: Was Kennedy killed? Had he been lured into an ambush in the tunnel?
I dashed in and had gone not three feet when the body of a man knocked against me, almost toppling me off the foot-way into the swirling waters.
Olga, behind me now, screamed.
"There's a man in there needs assistance," coolly said a quiet voice which I recognized. "The flash has sort of blinded me."
I seized the hand I felt. It was Kennedy, safe.
Before I could say a word, another man appeared from the direction I had run. It was Fenwick. Together, we groped in. Thirty or forty feet farther on we saw a huddled mass, half on the foot-way, half over the swirling waters. We seized it. It was wet, not with water but with something warm. As we staggered back, the man groaned and writhed with pain. He was conscious, at least.
"He betrayed me!" he muttered.
At the mouth of the cavern. Craig's bull's-eye flashed on the face of the form we were bearing. It was Raver.
Olga, bewildered, stood pale and speechless. Raver looked at her bitterly.
"I should have known," he muttered bitterly; "you are not the sort for the likes of me!"
From the shadows toward the works came another figure, breathless.
"What's all this?" demanded Snaith. "In the office—I must have fallen asleep over my annual report. What's the trouble?"
He bent over Raver to get a good look at his face.
"Oh, it's you!" he scorned. "You! Why, you are as much a profiteer as any of the rest of us. I know the story. With the blood-money of the crime, you planned to win her—to marry her—to marry ease, wealth, ambition! Let it break him and you—I don't care now."
As she began to realize what had happened, Anastasia, who had come up just behind Fenwick from her car, swayed toward him and he impulsively caught her. She did not draw away. Olga stared blankly—disillusioned. Then, her face still blanched, she turned slowly toward Snaith.
"Will—will you—forgive me?"
Snaith's face softened.
"Is it a lesson?"
Kennedy ignored the little love-tangle. He had eyes only for Raver, as he lay there, his life fast ebbing.
"Who is Charles Gledhill?" he demanded.
Raver seemed to realize that he had been duped and played with. If it was the last thing he ever did, I knew he would have his revenge—he would tell the truth.
"It was a trust—I knew it—the company and the works—a treason trust. I knew it. He knew I knew. Charles Gledhill? Why, the profiteer who saw his dividends fading—if the invention escaped him—to the people—the head of it all, who paid me—Vincent!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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