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Charles Dickens - "Hunted Down"

Max Beerbohm - "James Pethel"

Agatha Christie - "The Mysterious Affair at Styles"

Rebecca Davis - "Frances Waldeaux, by Rebecca Harding Davis"

The Poisoned Pen

A >> Arthur B. Reeve >> The Poisoned Pen




Once within the door, however, no one paid much attention to us.
They seemed to take it for granted that we had some right there.
We boarded the ship by one of the many entrances and then proceeded
down to a deck where apparently no one was working. It was more
like a great house than a ship, I felt, and I wondered whether
Kennedy's search was not more of a hunt for a needle in a haystack
than anything else. Yet he seemed to know what he was after.

We had descended to what I imagined must be the quarters of the
steward. About us were many large cases and chests, stacked up
and marked as belonging to the ship. Kennedy's attention was
attracted to them immediately. All at once it flashed on me what
his purpose was. In some of those cases were the smuggled goods!

Before I could say a word and before Kennedy had a chance even to
try to verify his suspicions, a sudden approach of footsteps
startled us. He drew me into a cabin or room full of shelves with
ship's stores.

"Why didn't you bring Herndon over and break into the boxes, if you
think the stuff is hidden in one of them?" I whispered.

"And let those higher up escape while their tools take all the
blame?" he answered. "Sh-h."

The men who had come into the compartment looked about as if
expecting to see some one.

"Two of them came down," a gruff voice said. "Where are they?"

>From the noise I inferred that there must be four or five men, and
from the ease with which they shifted the cases about some of them
must have been pretty husky stevedores.

"I don't know," a more polished but unfamiliar voice answered.

The door to our hiding-place was opened roughly and then banged
shut before we realised it. With a taunting laugh, some one turned
a key in the lock and before we could move a quick shift of packing
cases against the door made escape impossible.

Here we were marooned, shanghaied, as it were, within sight if not
call of Herndon and our friends. We had run up against professional
smugglers, of whom I had vaguely read, disguised as stewards,
deckhands, stokers, and other workers.

The only other opening to the cabin was a sort of porthole, more
for ventilation than anything else. Kennedy stuck his head through
it, but it was impossible for a man to squeeze out. There was one
of the lower decks directly before us while a bright arc light
gleamed tantalisingly over it, throwing a round circle of light
into our prison. I reflected bitterly on our shipwreck within
sight of port.

Kennedy remained silent, and I did not know what was working in his
mind. Together we made out the outline of the freighter at the next
wharf and speculated as to the location where we had left Herndon
with the huge reflector. There was no moon and it was as black as
ink in that direction, but if we could have got out I would have
trusted to luck to reach it by swimming.

Below us, from the restless water lapping on the sides of the hulk
of La Montaigne, we could now hear muffled sounds. It was a
motor-boat which had come crawling up the river front, with lights
extinguished, and had pushed a cautious nose into the slip where
our ship lay at the quay. None of your romantic low-lying, rakish
craft of the old smuggling yarns was this, ready for deeds of
desperation in the dark hours of midnight. It was just a modern
little motor-boat, up-to-date, and swift.

"Perhaps we'll get out of this finally," I grumbled as I understood
now what was afoot, "but not in time to be of any use."

A smothered sound as of something going over the vessel's side
followed. It was one of the boxes which we had seen outside in
the storeroom. Another followed, and a third and a fourth.

Then came a subdued parley. "We have two customs detectives locked
in a cabin here. We can't stay now. You'll have to take us and
our things off, too."

"Can't do it," called up another muffled voice. "Make your things
into a little bundle. We'll take that, but you'll have to get past
the night-watchman yourselves and meet us at Riverledge."

A moment later something else went over the side, and from the
sound we could infer that the engine of the motor-boat was being
started.

A Voice sounded mockingly outside our door. "Bon soir, you fellows
in there. We're going up the dock. Sorry to leave you here till
morning, but they'll let you out then. Au revoir."

Below I could hear just the faintest well-muffled chug-chug. Kennedy
in the meantime had been coolly craning his neck out of our porthole
under the rays of the arc light overhead. He was holding something
in his hand. It seemed like a little silver-backed piece of thin
glass with a flaring funnel-like thing back of it, which he held most
particularly. Though he heard the parting taunt outside he paid no
attention.

"You go to the deuce, whoever you are," I cried, beating on the door,
to which only a coarse laugh echoed back down the passageway.

"Be quiet, Walter," ordered Kennedy. "We have located the smuggled
goods in the storeroom of the steward, four wooden cases of them.
I think the stuff must have been brought on the ship in the trunks
and then transferred to the cases, perhaps after the code wireless
message was received. But we have been overpowered and locked in
a cabin with a port too small to crawl through. The cases have
been lowered over the side of the ship to a motor-boat that was
waiting below. The lights on the boat are out, but if you hurry
you can get it. The accomplices who locked us in are going to
disappear up the wharf. If you could only get the night watchman
quickly enough you could catch them, too, before they reach the
street."

I had turned, half expecting to see Kennedy talking to a ship's
officer who might have chanced on the deck outside. There was no
one. The only thing of life was the still sputtering arc light.
Had the man gone crazy?

"What of it?" I growled. "Don't you suppose I know all that?
What's the use of repeating it now? The thing to do is to get
out of this hole. Come, help me at this door. Maybe we can
batter it down."

Kennedy paid no attention to me, however, but kept his eyes
glued on the Cimmerian blackness outside the porthole.

He had done nothing apparently, yet a long finger of light seemed
to shoot out into the sky from the pier across from us and begin
waving back and forth as it was lowered to the dark waters of the
river. It was a searchlight. At once I thought of the huge
reflector which I had seen set up. But that had been on our side
of the next pier and this light came from the far side where the
Mohican lay.

"What is it?" I asked eagerly. "What has happened?"

It was as if a prayer had been answered from our dungeon on La
Montaigne.

"I knew we should need some means to communicate with Herndon,"
he explained simply, "and the wireless telephone wasn't practicable.
So I have used Dr. Alexander Graham Bell's photophone. Any of the
lights on this side of La Montaigne, I knew, would serve. What I
did, Walter, was merely to talk into the mouthpiece back of this
little silvered mirror which reflects light. The vibrations of the
voice caused a diaphragm in it to vibrate and thus the beam of
reflected light was made to pulsate. In other words, this little
thing is just a simple apparatus to transform the air vibrations
of the voice into light vibrations.

"The parabolic reflector over there catches these light vibrations
and focuses them on the cell of selenium which you perhaps noticed
in the centre of the reflector. You remember doubtless that the
element selenium varies its electrical resistance under light?
Thus there are reproduced similar variations in the cell to those
vibrations here in this transmitter. The cell is connected with
a telephone receiver and batteries over there and there you are.
It is very simple. In the ordinary carbon telephone transmitter
a variable electrical resistance is produced by pressure, since
carbon is not so good a conductor under pressure. Then these
variations are transmitted along two wires. This photophone is
wireless. Selenium even emits notes under a vibratory beam of
light, the pitch depending on the frequency. Changes in the
intensity of the light focused by the reflector on the cell alter
its electrical resistance and vary the current from the dry
batteries. Hence the telephone receiver over there is affected.
Bell used the photophone or radiophone over several hundred feet,
Ruhmer over several miles. When you thought I was talking to
myself I was really telling Herndon what had happened and what
to do - talking to him literally over a beam of light."

I could scarcely believe it, but an exclamation from Kennedy as
he drew his head in quickly recalled my attention. "Look out
on the river, Walter," he cried. "The Mohican has her searchlight
sweeping up and down. What do you see?"

The long finger of light had now come to rest. In its pathway I
saw a lightless motor-boat bobbing up and down, crowding on all
speed, yet followed relentlessly by the accusing finger. The
river front was now alive with shouting.

Suddenly the Mohican shot out from behind the pier where she
had been hidden. In spite of Lang's expertness it was an unequal
race. Nor would it have made much difference if it had been
otherwise, for a shot rang out from the Mohican which commanded
instant respect. The powerful revenue cutter rapidly overhauled
the little craft.

A hurried tread down the passageway followed. Cases were being
shoved aside and a key in the door of our compartment turned
quickly. I waited with clenched fists, prepared for an attack.

"You're all right?" Herndon's voice inquired anxiously. "We've
got that steward and the other fellows all right."

"Yes, come on," shouted Craig. "The cutter has made a capture."

We had reached the stern of the ship, and far out in the river
the Mohican was now headed toward us. She came alongside, and
Herndon quickly seized a rope, fastened it to the rail, and let
himself down to the deck of the cutter. Kennedy and I followed.

"This is a high-handed proceeding," I heard a voice that must
have been Lang's protesting. "By what right do you stop me? You
shall suffer for this."

"The Mohican," broke in Herndon, "has the right to appear anywhere
from Southshoal Lightship off Nantucket to the capes of the
Delaware, demand an inspection of any vessel's manifest and papers,
board anything from La Montaigne to your little motor-boat, inspect
it, seize it, if necessary put a crew on it." He slapped the little
cannon. "That commands respect. Besides, you were violating the
regulations - no lights."

On the deck of the cutter now lay four cases. A man broke one of
them open, then another. Inside he disclosed thousands of dollars'
worth of finery, while from a tray he drew several large chamois
bags of glittering diamonds and pearls.

Pierre looked on, crushed, all his jauntiness gone.

"So," exclaimed Kennedy, facing him, "you have your jilted fiancee,
Mademoiselle Violette, to thank for this - her letters and her
suicide. It wasn't as easy as you thought to throw her over for a
new soul mate, this Mademoiselle Gabrielle whom you were going to
set up as a rival in business to Violette. Violette has her revenge
for making a plaything of her heart, and if the dead can take any
satisfaction she"

With a quick movement Kennedy anticipated a motion of Pierre's.
The ruined smuggler had contemplated either an attack on himself
or his captor, but Craig had seized him by the wrist and ground
his knuckles into the back of Pierre's clenched fist until he
winced with pain. An Apache dagger similar to that which the
little modiste had used to end her life tragedy clattered to the
deck of the ship, a mute testimonial to the high class of society
Pierre and his associates must have cultivated.

"None of that, Pierre," Craig muttered, releasing him. "You can't
cheat the government out of its just dues even in the matter of
punishment."



XI

THE INVISIBLE RAY


"I won't deny that I had some expectations from the old man
myself."

Kennedy's client was speaking in a low, full chested, vibrating
voice, with some emotion, so low that I had entered the room without
being aware that any one was there until it was too late to retreat.

"As his physician for over twelve years," the man pursued, "I
certainly had been led to hope to be remembered in his will. But,
Professor Kennedy, I can't put it too strongly when I say that there
is no selfish motive in my coming to you about the case. There is
something wrong - depend on
that."

Craig had glanced up at me and, as I hesitated, I could see in an
instant that the speaker was a practitioner of a type that is
rapidly passing away, the old-fashioned family doctor.

"Dr. Burnham, I should like to have you know Mr. Jameson," introduced
Craig. "You can talk as freely before him as you have to me alone.
We always work together."

I shook hands with the visitor.

"The doctor has succeeded in interesting me greatly in a case which
has some unique features," Kennedy explained. "It has to do with
Stephen Haswell, the eccentric old millionaire of Brooklyn. Have
you ever heard of him?"

"Yes, indeed," I replied, recalling an occasional article which had
appeared in the newspapers regarding a dusty and dirty old house in
that part of the Heights in Brooklyn whence all that is fashionable
had not yet taken flight, a house of mystery, yet not more mysterious
than its owner in his secretive comings and goings in the affairs
of men of a generation beyond his time. Further than the facts that
he was reputed to be very wealthy and led, in the heart of a great
city, what was as nearly like the life of a hermit as possible, I
knew little or nothing. "What has he been doing now?" I asked.

"About a week ago," repeated the doctor, in answer to a nod of
encouragement from Kennedy, "I was summoned in the middle of the
night to attend Mr. Haswell, who, as I have been telling Professor
Kennedy, had been a patient of mine for over twelve years. He had
been suddenly stricken with total blindness. Since then he appears
to be failing fast, that is, he appeared so the last time I saw him,
a few days ago, after I had been superseded by a younger man. It
is a curious case and I have thought about it a great deal. But I
didn't like to speak to the authorities; there wasn't enough to
warrant that, and I should have been laughed out of court for my
pains. The more I have thought about it, however, the more I have
felt it my duty to say something to somebody, and so, having heard
of Professor Kennedy, I decided to consult him. The fact of the
matter is, I very much fear that there are circumstances which will
bear sharp looking into, perhaps a scheme to get control of the old
man's fortune."

The doctor paused, and Craig inclined his head, as much as to
signify his appreciation of the delicate position in which Burnham
stood in the case. Before the doctor could proceed further, Kennedy
handed me a letter which had been lying before him on the table.
It had evidently been torn into small pieces and then carefully
pasted together.

The superscription gave a small town in Ohio and a date about a
fortnight previous.

Dear Father [it read]: I hope you will pardon me for writing,=20
but I cannot let the occasion of your seventy-fifth birthday=20
pass without a word of affection and congratulation. I am alive=20
and well. Time has dealt leniently with me in that respect, if=20
not in money matters. I do not say this in the hope of
reconciling you to me. I know that is impossible after all these
cruel years. But I do wish that I could see you again. Remember,
I am your only child and even if you still think I have been a
foolish one, please let me come to see you once before it is too
late. We are constantly travelling from place to place, but shall
be here for a few days.

Your loving daughter,
GRACE HASWELL MARTIN.


"Some fourteen or fifteen years ago," explained the doctor as I
looked up from reading the note, "Mr. Haswell's only daughter eloped
with an artist named Martin. He had been engaged to paint a portrait
of the late Mrs. Haswell from a photograph. It was the first time
that Grace Haswell had ever been able to find expression for the
artistic yearning which had always been repressed by the cold,
practical sense of her father. She remembered her mother perfectly
since the sad bereavement of her girlhood and naturally she watched
and helped the artist eagerly. The result was a portrait which might
well have been painted from the subject herself rather than from a
cold photograph.

"Haswell saw the growing intimacy of his daughter and the artist.
His bent of mind was solely toward money and material things, and
he at once conceived a bitter and unreasoning hatred for Martin,
who, he believed, had 'schemed' to capture his daughter and an
easy living. Art was as foreign to his nature as possible.=20
Nevertheless they went ahead and married, and, well, it resulted
in the old man disinheriting the girl. The young couple disappeared
bravely to make their way by their chosen profession and, as far as
I know, have never been heard from since until now. Haswell made a
new will, and I have always understood that practically all of his
fortune is to be devoted to founding the technology department in
a projected university of Brooklyn."

"You have never seen this Mrs. Martin or her husband?" asked Kennedy.

"No, never. But in some way she must have learned that I had some
influence with her father, for she wrote to me not long ago,
enclosing a note for him and asking me to intercede for her. I did
so. I took the letter to him as diplomatically as I could. The old
man flew into a towering rage, refused even to look at the letter,
tore it up into bits, and ordered me never to mention the subject
to him again. That is her note, which I saved. However, it is the
sequel about which I wish your help."

The physician folded up the patched letter carefully before he
continued. "Mr. Haswell, as you perhaps know, has for many years
been a prominent figure in various curious speculations, or rather
in loaning money to many curious speculators. It is not necessary
to go into the different schemes which he has helped to finance.
Even though most of them have been unknown to the public they have
certainly given him such a reputation that he is much sought after
by inventors.

"Not long ago Haswell became interested in the work of an obscure
chemist over in Brooklyn, Morgan Prescott. Prescott claims, as I
understand, to be able to transmute copper into gold. Whatever you
think of it offhand, you should visit his laboratory yourselves,
gentlemen. I am told it is wonderful, though I have never seen it
and can't explain it. I have met Prescott several times while he
was trying to persuade Mr. Haswell to back him in his scheme, but
he was never disposed to talk to me, for I had no money to invest.
So far as I know about it the thing sounds scientific and plausible
enough. I leave you to judge of that. It is only an incident in
my story and I will pass over it quickly. Prescott, then, believes
that the elements are merely progressive variations of an original
substance or base called 'protyle,' from which everything is derived.
But this fellow Prescott goes much further than any of the former
theorists. He does not stop with matter. He believes that he has
the secret of life also, that he can make the transition from the
inorganic to the organic, from inert matter to living protoplasm,
and thence from living protoplasm to mind and what we call soul,
whatever that may be."

"And here is where the weird and uncanny part of it comes in,"
commented Craig, turning from the doctor to me to call my attention
particularly to what was about to follow.

"Having arrived at the point where he asserts that he can create and
destroy matter, life, and mind," continued the doctor, as if himself
fascinated by the idea," Prescott very naturally does not have to go
far before he also claims a control over telepathy and even a
communication with the dead. He even calls the messages which he
receives by a word which he has coined himself, 'telepagrams.' Thus
he says he has unified the physical, the physiological, and the
psychical - a system of absolute scientific monism."

The doctor paused again, then resumed. "One afternoon, about a week
ago, apparently, as far as I am able to piece together the story,
Prescott was demonstrating his marvellous discovery of the unity
of nature. Suddenly he faced Mr. Haswell.

"'Shall I tell you a fact, sir, about yourself?' he asked quickly.
'The truth as I see it by means of my wonderful invention? If it
is the truth, will you believe in me? Will you put money into my
invention? Will you share in becoming fabulously rich?'

"Haswell made some noncommittal answer. But Prescott seemed to
look into the machine through a very thick plate-glass window, with
Haswell placed directly before it. He gave a cry. 'Mr. Haswell,'
he exclaimed, 'I regret to tell you what I see. You have
disinherited your daughter; she has passed out of your life and at
the present moment you do not know where she is.'

"'That's true,' replied the old man bitterly, 'and more than that
I don't care. Is that all you see? That's nothing new.'

"'No, unfortunately, that is not all I see. Can you bear something
further? I think you ought to know it. I have here a most
mysterious telepagram.'

"'Yes. What is it? Is she dead?'

"'No, it is not about her. It is about yourself. To-night at
midnight or perhaps a little later,' repeated Prescott solemnly,
'you will lose your sight as a punishment for your action.'

"'Pouf!' exclaimed the old man in a dudgeon, 'if that is all your
invention can tell me, good-bye. You told me you were able to make
gold. Instead, you make foolish prophecies. I'll put no money into
such tomfoolery. I'm a practical man,' and with that he stamped out
of the laboratory.

"Well, that night, about one o'clock, in the silence of the lonely
old house, the aged caretaker, Jane, whom he had hired after he
banished his daughter from his life, heard a wild shout of 'Help!
Help!' Haswell, alone in his room on the second floor, was
groping about in the dark.

"'Jane,' he ordered, 'a light - a light.'

"'I have lighted the gas, Mr. Haswell,' she cried.

"A groan followed. He had himself found a match, had struck it,
had even burnt his fingers with it, yet he saw nothing.

"The blow had fallen. At almost the very hour which Prescott, by
means of his weird telepagram had predicted, old Haswell was stricken.

I'm blind,' he gasped. 'Send for Dr. Burnham.'

"I went to him immediately when the maid roused me, but there was
nothing I could do except prescribe perfect rest for his eyes and
keeping in a dark room in the hope that his sight might be restored
as suddenly and miraculously as it had been taken away.

"The next morning, with his own hand, trembling and scrawling in his
blindness, he wrote the following on a piece of paper:

"'Mrs. GRACE MARTIN. - Information wanted about the present
whereabouts of Mrs. Grace Martin, formerly Grace Haswell of
Brooklyn.


STEPHEN HASWELL,
Pierrepont St., Brooklyn.


"This advertisement he caused to be placed in all the New York
papers and to be wired to the leading Western papers. Haswell
himself was a changed man after his experience. He spoke bitterly
of Prescott, yet his attitude toward his daughter was completely
reversed. Whether he admitted to himself a belief in the prediction
of the inventor, I do not know. Certainly he scouted such an idea
in telling me about it.

"A day or two after the advertisements appeared a telegram came to
the old man from a little town in Indiana. It read simply: 'Dear
Father: Am starting for Brooklyn to-day. Grace.'

"The upshot was that Grace Haswell, or rather Grace Martin, appeared
the next day, forgave and was forgiven with much weeping, although
the old man still refused resolutely to be reconciled with and
receive her husband. Mrs. Martin started in to clean up the old
house. A vacuum cleaner sucked a ton or two of dust from it.
Everything was changed. Jane grumbled a great deal, but there was
no doubt a great improvement. Meals were served regularly. The
old man was taken care of as never before. Nothing was too good
for him. Everywhere the touch of a woman was evident in the house.
The change was complete. It even extended to me. Some friend had
told her of an eye and ear specialist, a Dr. Scott, who was engaged.
Since then, I understand, a new will has been made, much to the
chagrin of the trustees of the projected school. Of course I am
cut out of the new will, and that with the knowledge at least of
the woman who once appealed to me, but it does not influence me in
coming to you."

"But what has happened since to arouse suspicion?" asked Kennedy,
watching the doctor furtively.

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