XVIII
THE "COKE" FIEND
I followed him in awe as he made a hasty inventory of what we haddiscovered. There were as many as a dozen finished and partly finishedinfernal machines of various sizes and kinds, some of tremendousdestructive capacity. Kennedy did not even attempt to study them. Allabout were high explosives, chemicals, dynamite. There was gunpowder ofall varieties, antimony, blasting-powder, mercury cyanide, chloralhydrate, chlorate of potash, samples of various kinds of shot, some ofthe outlawed soft-nosed dumdum bullets, cartridges, shells, pieces ofmetal purposely left with jagged edges, platinum, aluminum, iron,steel--a conglomerate mass of stuff that would have gladdened ananarchist.
Kennedy was examining a little quartz-lined electric furnace, which wasevidently used for heating soldering irons and other tools. Everythinghad been done, it seemed, to prevent explosions. There were no openlights and practically no chance for heat to be communicated far amongthe explosives. Indeed, everything had been arranged to protect theoperator himself in his diabolical work.
Kennedy had switched on the electric furnace, and from the variouspieces of metal on the table selected several. These he was placingtogether in a peculiar manner, and to them he attached some copper wirewhich lay in a corner in a roll.
Under the work-table, beneath the furnace, one could feel the warmth ofthe thing slightly. Quickly he took the curious affair, which he hadhastily shaped, and fastened it under the table at that point, then ledthe wires out through a little barred window to an air-shaft, the onlymeans of ventilation of the place except the door.
While he was working I had been gingerly inspecting the rest of theden. In a corner, just beside the door, I had found a set of shelvesand a cabinet. On both were innumerable packets done up in white paper.I opened one and found it contained several pinches of a white,crystalline substance.
"Little portions of cocaine," commented Kennedy, when I showed him whatI had found. "In the slang of the fiends, 'decks.'"
On the top of the cabinet he discovered a little enamelled box, muchlike a snuff-box, in which were also some of the white flakes. Quicklyhe emptied them out and replaced them with others from jars which hadnot been made up into packets.
"Why, there must be hundreds of ounces of the stuff here, to saynothing of the various things they adulterate it with," remarkedKennedy. "No wonder they are so careful when it is a felony even tohave it in your possession in such quantities. See how careful they areabout the adulteration, too. You could never tell except from theeffect whether it was the pure or only a few-per-cent.-pure article."
Kennedy took a last look at the den, to make sure that nothing had beendisturbed that would arouse suspicion.
"We may as well go," he remarked. "To-morrow, I want to be free to makethe connection outside with that wire in the shaft."
Imagine our surprise, the next morning, when a tap at our door revealedLoraine Keith herself.
"Is this Professor Kennedy?" she asked, gazing at us with a half-wildexpression which she was making a tremendous effort to control."Because if it is, I have something to tell him that may interest Mr.Carton."
We looked at her curiously. Without her make-up she was pallid andyellow in spots, her hands trembling, cold, and sweaty, her eyes sunkenand glistening, with pupils dilated, her breathing short and hurried,restless, irresolute, and careless of her personal appearance.
"Perhaps you wonder how I heard of you and why I have come to you," shewent on. "It is because I have a confession to make. I saw Mr. Haddonjust before he was--kidnapped."
She seemed to hesitate over the word.
"How did you know I was interested?" asked Kennedy keenly.
"I heard him mention your name with Mr. Carton's."
"Then he knew that I was more than a reporter for the Star," remarkedKennedy. "Kidnapped, you say? How?"
She shot a glance half of suspicion, half of frankness, at us.
"That's what I must confess. Whoever did it must have used me as atool. Mr. Haddon and I used to be good friends--I would be yet."
There was evident feeling in her tone which she did not have to assume."All I remember yesterday was that, after lunch, I was in the office ofthe Mayfair when he came in. On his desk was a package. I don't knowwhat has become of it. But he gave one look at it, seemed to turn pale,then caught sight of me. 'Loraine,' he whispered, 'we used to be goodfriends. Forgive me for turning you down. But you don't understand. Getme away from here--come with me--call a cab.'
"Well, I got into the cab with him. We had a chauffeur whom we used tohave in the old days. We drove furiously, avoiding the traffic men. Hetold the driver to take us to my apartment--and--and that is the last Iremember, except a scuffle in which I was dragged from the cab on oneside and he on the other."
She had opened her handbag and taken from it a little snuff-box, likethat which we had seen in the den.
"I--I can't go on," she apologised, "without this stuff."
"So you are a cocaine fiend, also?" remarked Kennedy.
"Yes, I can't help it. There is an indescribable excitement to dosomething great, to make a mark, that goes with it. It's soon gone, butwhile it lasts I can sing and dance, do anything until every part of mybody begins crying for it again. I was full of the stuff when thishappened yesterday; had taken too much, I guess."
The change in her after she had snuffed some of the crystals wasmagical. From a quivering wretch she had become now a self-confidentneurasthenic.
"You know where that stuff will land you, I presume?" questionedKennedy.
"I don't care," she laughed hollowly. "Yes, I know what you are goingto tell me. Soon I'll be hunting for the cocaine bug, as they call it,imagining that in my skin, under the flesh, are worms crawling, perhapssee them, see the little animals running around and biting me. Oh, youdon't know. There are two souls to the cocainist. One is tortured bythe suffering which the stuff brings; the other laughs at the fears andpains. But it brings such thoughts! It stimulates my mind, makes itwork without, against my will, gives me such visions--oh, I can not goon. They would kill me if they knew I had come to you. Why have I? Hasnot Haddon cast me off? What is he to me, now?"
It was evident that she was growing hysterical. I wondered whether,after all, the story of the kidnapping of Haddon might not be a figmentof her brain, simply an hallucination due to the drug.
"They?" inquired Kennedy, observing her narrowly. "Who?"
"I can't tell. I don't know. Why did I come? Why did I come?"
She was reaching again for the snuff-box, but Kennedy restrained her.
"Miss Keith," he remarked, "you are concealing something from me. Thereis some one," he paused a moment, "whom you are shielding."
"No, no," she cried. "He was taken. Brodie had nothing to do with it,nothing. That is what you mean. I know. This stuff increases mysensitiveness. Yet I hate Coke Brodie--oh--let me go. I am allunstrung. Let me see a doctor. To-night, when I am better, I will tellall."
Loraine Keith had torn herself from him, had instantly taken a pinch ofthe fatal crystals, with that same ominous change from fear toself-confidence. What had been her purpose in coming at all? It hadseemed at first to implicate Brodie, but she had been quick to shieldhim when she saw that danger. I wondered what the fascination might bewhich the wretch exercised over her.
"To-night--I will see you to-night," she cried, and a moment later shewas gone, as unexpectedly as she had come.
I looked at Kennedy blankly.
"What was the purpose of that outburst?" I asked.
"I can't say," he replied. "It was all so incoherent that, from what Iknow of drug fiends, I am sure she had a deep-laid purpose in it all.It does not change my plans."
Two hours later we had paid a deposit on an empty flat in thetenement-house in which the bomb-maker had his headquarters, and hadreceived a key to the apartment from the janitor. After considerabledifficulty, owing to the narrowness of the air-shaft, Kennedy managedto pick up the loose ends of the wire which had b
een led out of thelittle window at the base of the shaft, and had attached it to a coupleof curious arrangements which he had brought with him. One looked likea large taximeter from a motor cab; the other was a diminutivegas-metre, in looks at least. Attached to them were several bells andlights.
He had scarcely completed installing the thing, whatever it was, when agentle tap at the door startled me. Kennedy nodded, and I opened it. Itwas Carton.
"I have had my men watching the Mayfair," he announced. "There seems tobe a general feeling of alarm there, now. They can't even find LoraineKeith. Brodie, apparently, has not shown up in his usual haunts sincethe episode of last night."
"I wonder if the long arm of this vice trust could have reached out andgathered them in, too?" I asked.
"Quite likely," replied Carton, absorbed in watching Kennedy. "What'sthis?"
A little bell had tinkled sharply, and a light had flashed up on theattachments to the apparatus.
"Nothing. I was just testing it to see if it works. It does, althoughthe end which I installed down below was necessarily only a makeshift.It is not this red light with the shrill bell that we are interestedin. It is the green light and the low-toned bell. This is a thermopile."
"And what is a thermopile?"' queried Carton.
"For the sake of one who has forgotten his physics," smiled Kennedy, "Imay say this is only another illustration of how all science ultimatelyfinds practical application. You probably have forgotten that when twohalf-rings of dissimilar metals are joined together and one is suddenlyheated or chilled, there is produced at the opposite connecting point afeeble current which will flow until the junctures are both at the sametemperature. You might call this a thermo-electric thermometer, or atelethermometer, or a microthermometer, or any of a dozen names."
"Yes," I agreed mechanically, only vaguely guessing at what he had inmind.
"The accurate measurement of temperature is still a problem ofconsiderable difficulty," he resumed, adjusting the thermometer. "Aheated mass can impart vibratory motion to the ether which fills space,and the wave-motions of ether are able to reproduce in other bodiesmotions similar to those by which they are caused. At this end of theline I merely measure the electromotive force developed by thedifference in temperature of two similar thermo-electric junctions,opposed. We call those junctions in a thermopile 'couples,' and bygetting the recording instruments sensitive enough, we can measure oneone-thousandth of a degree.
"Becquerel was the first, I believe, to use this property. But themachine which you see here was one recently invented for registeringthe temperature of sea water so as to detect the approach of aniceberg. I saw no reason why it should not be used to measure heat aswell as cold.
"You see, down there I placed the couples of the thermopile beneath theelectric furnace on the table. Here I have the mechanism, operated bythe feeble current from the thermopile, opening and closing switches,and actuating bells and lights. Then, too, I have the recordinginstrument. The thing is fundamentally very simple and is based onwell-known phenomena. It is not uncertain and can be tested at anytime, just as I did then, when I showed a slight fall in temperature.Of course it is not the slight changes I am after, not the gradual butthe sudden changes in temperature."
"I see," said Carton. "If there is a drop, the current goes one way andwe see the red light; a rise and it goes the other, and we see a greenlight."
"Exactly," agreed Kennedy. "No one is going to approach that chamberdown-stairs as long as he thinks any one is watching, and we do notknow where they are watching. But the moment any sudden great change isregistered, such as turning on that electric furnace, we shall know ithere."
It must have been an hour that we sat there discussing the merits ofthe case and speculating on the strange actions of Loraine Keith.
Suddenly the red light flashed out brilliantly.
"What's that?" asked Carton quickly.
"I can't tell, yet," remarked Kennedy. "Perhaps it is nothing at all.Perhaps it is a draught of cold air from opening the door. We shallhave to wait and see."
We bent over the little machine, straining our eyes and ears to catchthe visual and audible signals which it gave.
Gradually the light faded, as the thermopile adjusted itself to thechange in temperature.
Suddenly, without warning, a low-toned bell rang before us and abright-green light flashed up.
"That can have only one meaning," cried Craig excitedly. "Some one isdown there in that inferno--perhaps the bomb-maker himself."
The bell continued to ring and the light to glow, showing that whoeverwas there had actually started the electric furnace. What was hepreparing to do? I felt that, even though we knew there was some onethere, it did us little good. I, for one, had no relish for the job ofbearding such a lion in his den.
We looked at Kennedy, wondering what he would do next. From the packagein which he had brought the two registering machines he quietly tookanother package, wrapped up, about eighteen inches long and apparentlyvery heavy. As he did so he kept his attention fixed on thetelethermometer. Was he going to wait until the bomb-maker had finishedwhat he had come to accomplish?
It was perhaps fifteen minutes after our first alarm that the signalsbegan to weaken.
"Does that mean that he has gone--escaped?" inquired Carton anxiously.
"No. It means that his furnace is going at full power and that he hasforgotten it. It is what I am waiting for. Come on."
Seizing the package as he hurried from the room, Kennedy dashed out onthe street and down the outside cellar stairs, followed by us.
He paused at the thick door and listened. Apparently there was not asound from the other side, except a whir of a motor and a roar whichmight have been from the furnace. Softly he tried the door. It waslocked on the inside.
Was the bomb-maker there still? He must be. Suppose he heard us. Wouldhe hesitate a moment to send us all to perdition along with himself?
How were we to get past that door? Really, the deathlike stillness onthe other side was more mysterious than would have been the detonationof some of the criminal's explosive.
Kennedy had evidently satisfied himself on one point. If we were to getinto that chamber we must do it ourselves, and we must do it quickly.
From the package which he carried he pulled out a stubby littlecylinder, perhaps eighteen inches long, very heavy, with a short stumpof a lever projecting from one side. Between the stonework of a chimneyand the barred door he laid it horizontally, jamming in some pieces ofwood to wedge it tighter.
Then he began to pump on the handle vigorously. The almost impregnabledoor seemed slowly to bulge. Still there was no sign of life fromwithin. Had the bomb-maker left before we arrived?
"This is my scientific sledge-hammer," panted Kennedy, as he worked thelittle lever backward and forward more quickly--"a hydraulic ram. Thereis no swinging of axes or wielding of crowbars necessary in breakingdown an obstruction like this, nowadays. Such things are obsolete. Thislittle jimmy, if you want to call it that, has a power of ten tons.That ought to be enough."
It seemed as if the door were slowly being crushed in before theirresistible ten-ton punch of the hydraulic ram.
Kennedy stopped. Evidently he did not dare to crush the door inaltogether. Quickly he released the ram and placed it vertically. Underthe now-yawning door jamb he inserted a powerful claw of the ram andagain he began to work the handle.
A moment later the powerful door buckled, and Kennedy deftly swung itoutward so that it fell with a crash on the cellar floor.
As the noise reverberated, there came a sound of a muttered curse fromthe cavern. Some one was there.
We pressed forward.
On the floor, in the weird glare of the little furnace, lay a man and awoman, the light playing over their ghastly, set features.
Kennedy knelt over the man, who was nearest the door.
"Call a doctor, quick," he ordered, reaching over and feeling the pulseof the woman, who had half fallen out of her c
hair. "They will, be allright soon. They took what they thought was their usual adulteratedcocaine--see, here is the box in which it was. Instead, I filled thebox with the pure drug. They'll come around. Besides, Carton needs bothof them in his fight."
"Don't take any more," muttered the woman, half conscious. "There'ssomething wrong with it, Haddon."
I looked more closely at the face in the half-darkness.
It was Haddon himself.
"I knew he'd come back when the craving for the drug became intenseenough," remarked Kennedy.
Carton looked at Kennedy in amazement. Haddon was the last person inthe world whom he had evidently expected to discover here.
"How--what do you mean?"
"The episode of the telephone booth gave me the first hint. That is thefavourite stunt of the drug fiend--a few minutes alone, and he thinksno one is the wiser about his habit. Then, too, there was the storyabout his speed mania. That is a frequent failing of the cocainist. Thedrug, too, was killing his interest in Loraine Keith--that is the laststage.
"Yet under its influence, just as with his lobbygow and lieutenant,Brodie, he found power and inspiration. With him it took the form ofbombs to protect himself in his graft."
"He can't--escape this time--Loraine. We'll leave it--at his house--youknow--Carton--"
We looked quickly at the work-table. On it was a gigantic bomb ofclockwork over which Haddon had been working. The cocaine which was tohave given him inspiration had, thanks to Kennedy, overcome him.
Beside Loraine Keith were a suit-case and a Gladstone. She hadevidently been stuffing the corners full of their favourite nepenthe,for, as Kennedy reached down and turned over the closely packed woman'sfinery and the few articles belonging to Haddon, innumerable packetsfrom the cabinet dropped out.
"Hulloa--what's this?" he exclaimed, as he came to a huge roll of billsand a mass of silver and gold coin. "Trying to double-cross us all thetime. That was her clever game--to give him the hours he needed togather what money he could save and make a clean getaway. Even cocainedoesn't destroy the interest of men and women in that," he concluded,turning over to Carton the wealth which Haddon had amassed as one ofthe meanest grafters of the city of graft.
Here was a case which I could not help letting the Star haveimmediately. Notes or no notes, it was local news of the first order.Besides, anything that concerned Carton was of the highest politicalsignificance.
It kept me late at the office and I overslept. Consequently I did notsee much of Craig the next morning, especially as he told me he hadnothing special, having turned down a case of a robbery of a safe, onthe ground that the police were much better fitted to catch ordinaryyeggmen than he was. During the day, therefore, I helped in directingthe following up of the Haddon case for the Star.
Then, suddenly, a new front page story crowded this one of the mainheadlines. With a sigh of relief, I glanced at the new thriller, foundit had something to do with the Navy Department, and that it came fromas far away as Washington. There was no reason now why others could notcarry on the graft story, and I left, not unwillingly. My special workjust now was keeping on the trail of Kennedy, and I was glad to go backto the apartment and wait for him.
"I suppose you saw that despatch from Washington in this afternoon'spapers?" he queried, as he came in, tossing a late edition of theRecord down on my desk.
Across the front page extended a huge black scare-head: "NAVY'S MOSTVITAL SECRET STOLEN."
"Yes," I shrugged, "but you can't get me much excited by what therewrite men on the Record say."
"Why?" he asked, going directly into his own room.
"Well," I replied, glancing through the text of the story, "the actualfacts are practically the same as in the other papers. Take this, forinstance, 'On the night of the celebration of the anniversary of thebattle of Manila there were stolen from the Navy Department plans whichthe Record learns exclusively represent the greatest naval secret inthe world.' So much for that paragraph--written in the office. Then itgoes on:
"The whole secret-service machinery of the Government has been put inoperation. No one has been able to extract from the authorities theexact secret which was stolen, but it is believed to be an inventionwhich will revolutionise the structure and construction of the mostmodern monster battleships. Such knowledge, it is said, in the hands ofexperts might prove fatal in almost any fight in which our newer shipsmet others of about equal fighting power, as with it marksmen mightdirect a shot that would disable our ships.
"It is the opinion of the experts that the theft was executed by askilled draughtsman or other civilian employe. At any rate, the thiefknew what to take and its value. There is, at least, one nation, it isasserted, which faces the problem of bringing its ships up to thestandard of our own to which the plans would be very valuable.
"The building had been thrown open to the public for the display offireworks on the Monument grounds before it. The plans are said to havebeen on one of the draughting-tables, drawn upon linen to be made intoblue-prints. They are known to have been on the tables when thedraughting-room was locked for the night.
"The room is on the third floor of the Department and has a balconylooking out on the Monument. Many officers and officials had theirfamilies and friends on the balcony to witness the celebration, thoughit is not known that any one was in the draughting-room itself. Allwere admitted to the building on passes. The plans were tacked to adraughting-board in the room, but when it was opened in the morning thelinen sheet was gone, and so were the thumb-tacks. The plans couldreadily have been rolled into a small bundle and carried under a coator wrap.
"While the authorities are trying to minimise the actual loss, it isbelieved that this position is only an attempt to allay the greatpublic concern."
I paused. "Now then," I added, picking up one of the other papers I hadbrought up-town myself, "take the Express. It says that the plans wereimportant, but would have been made public in a few months, anyhow.Here:
"The theft--or mislaying, as the Department hopes it will prove tobe--took place several days ago. Official confirmation of the report islacking, but from trustworthy unofficial sources it is learned thatonly unimportant parts of plans are missing, presumably minorstructural details of battle-ship construction, and other things of areally trivial character, such as copies of naval regulations, etc.
"The attempt to make a sensational connection between the loss and acontroversy which is now going on with a foreign government is greatlyto be deplored and is emphatically asserted to be utterly baseless. Itbears traces of the jingoism of those 'interests' which are urgingnaval increases.
"There is usually very little about a battle-ship that is not knownbefore her keel is laid, or even before the signing of the contracts.At any rate, when it is asserted that the plans represent the derniercri in some form of war preparation, it is well to remember that a'last cry' is last only until there is a later. Naval secrets are few,anyway, and as it takes some years to apply them, this loss cannot beof superlative value to any one. Still, there is, of course, a marketfor such information in spite of the progress toward disarmament, butthe rule in this case will be the rule as in a horse trade, 'Caveatemptor.'"
"So there you are," I concluded. "You pay your penny for a paper, andyou take your choice."
"And the Star," inquired Kennedy, coming to the door and adding with anaggravating grin, "the infallible?"
"The Star," I replied, unruffled, "hits the point squarely when it saysthat whether the plans were of immediate importance or not, the realpoint is that if they could be stolen, really important things could betaken also. For instance, 'The thought of what the thief might havestolen has caused much more alarm than the knowledge of what he hassucceeded in taking.' I think it is about time those people inWashington stopped the leak if--"
The telephone rang insistently.
"I think that's for me," exclaimed Craig, bounding out of his room andforgetting his quiz of me. "Hello--yes--is that you, Burke? At theGrand Central-
-half an hour--all right. I'm bringing Jameson. Good-bye."
Kennedy jammed down the receiver on the hook.