"The Chief has gone up-state," remarked Garrick, piecing together the conversation where we had broken into it.

"We had to hustle to make that boat," remarked a voice which I recognised as that of one of the men.

"But she got off all right, didn't she?"

"Sure—he had the tickets and everything, and her baggage had already gone aboard."

"That's Lucille, I suppose," supplied Garrick. "No doubt part of her bribe for getting Miss Winslow into their power was free passage back to France. We can't stop to take up her case, yet."

"My—but the Chief was mad," continued the voice of the man who must have been not only a machinist but a chauffeur when occasion demanded. "He had a package of letters. I don't know what they were—looked as if they might be from some woman."

"What did he do with them?" asked the Boss in a tone that showed that he knew something, at least, about them already.

"Why, he was so mad after that fellow Garrick and the other fellow beat him out, that when we went down along West Street to the boat with that other woman, he tore them up and threw them in the river."

"Did he say anything?"

"Why, I tell you he was mad. He tore 'em up and threw them in the river. I think he said there wasn't a damn thing in 'em except a lot of mush, anyhow."

An amused smile crossed Garrick's face as he added, parenthetically, "Good-bye to Warrington's love letters that they took from his safe."

"At least there has been nothing they managed to get that night of the fire that they have been able to use against Warrington," I remarked, with satisfaction.

"Listen," cautioned Garrick. "What's that they are saying? Someone has told the Boss—he's talking—that they can go over Dillon's head and get back all the gambling paraphernalia? Well, I've been there, at the raided place, to-day, and it doesn't look so. The stuff has all been taken down to headquarters. Ah, so that is the game that is in the wind, is it? Get it all back by a court order and open somewhere else. Here's our boy."

The improvised newsboy had apparently stuck his head in the door as he had been instructed, for we could hear them greet him with a growl, until he yelled lustily, "Extry, special extry! All about the big gambling exposure! Warrants out! Extry!"

"Hey, you kid," came a voice from the detectaphone, "let's see that paper. What is it—the Star? Well, I'll be—! Read that. Someone's snitched to the district attorney, I'll bet. That'll make the Chief sore, all right—and he's 'way up in the country, too. I don't dare wire it to him. No, someone'll have to take a copy of this paper up there to him and tip him off. He'll be redheaded if he doesn't know about it. He was the last time anything happened. Hurry up. Finish with this car. I'll take it myself."

Garrick laughed, almost gleefully.

"The plant has begun to work," he cried. "We'll wait here until just before he's ready to start. Three of us around our car on the street are too many. He must be getting ready for a long run."

"How much gas is there in this tank?" the gruff voice of the Boss demanded. "You dummy—not two gallons! No, you finish what you're doing. I'll fill it myself. There isn't any time for fooling now."

There was the steady trickle of the stream of gasoline as he drew it.

"Any extra tires? What! Not a new shoe in the place? Give me a couple of the best of those old ones. Never mind. Here are two over by the telephone. Say, what the devil is this wire back here- -cut in on the telephone wire? Well,—rip it out! That's some more of that fellow Garrick's work. We got rid of one thing the other night. Well, thank heaven, I didn't have any telephone calls to- day. While I'm gone, you go over this place thoroughly. God knows how many other things he may have put in here."

"Confound it!" muttered Garrick, as a pair of pliers made our second detectaphone die with an expiring gasp in the middle of a sentence of profanity.

"Come on, Tom," he shouted.

There was no use now in remaining any longer in the room. Gathering up the receiving apparatus, Garrick quickly carried it down and tossed it into the waiting car around the corner. Then he sent Warrington's man to hang around, up the street, and watch what was going on at the garage.

Garrick was to drive the car himself, and we were going to leave Warrington's man behind. We could tell by the actions of the man as he stood down the street that something was taking place at the garage.

We could hear a horn blow, and I knew that the doors had opened and a big car had been backed out, slowly. Our own engine was running perfectly in spite of the seeming trouble with which we had covered up our delay. Garrick jumped in at the wheel, and I followed. The man on the corner was signalling that the car was going in the opposite direction. We leaped ahead.

As the big car ahead slipped along eastward, we followed at such a distance as not to attract attention. It was easy enough to do that, but not so easy to avoid getting tied up among the trucks laden with foodstuffs of every description which blocked the streets over in this part of town.

Where the car ahead was bound, we did not know, but I could see that the driver was a stocky fellow, who slouched down into his seat, and handled his car almost as if it had been a mere toy. It was, I felt positive, the man whom McBirney had reported one night about the neighbourhood of Longacre Square in the car which had once been Warrington's. This, at least, was a different car, I knew. Now I realised the wisdom of allowing this man, whom they called the Boss, to go free. Under the influence of Garrick's "plant," he was to lead us to the right trail to the Chief.

It was easier now to follow the car since it had worked its way into lower Fifth Avenue. On uptown it went. We hung on doggedly in the mass of traffic going north at this congested hour.

At last it turned into Forty-seventh Street. It was stopping at the ladies' gambling joint, apparently to confirm the news. I had thought that the place was closed, until the present trouble blew over, but it seemed that there must be someone there. The Boss was evidently well known, for he was immediately admitted.

Garrick did not stop. He kept on around the corner to the raided poolroom on the next street. Dillon's man, who had been stationed there to watch the place, bowed and admitted him.

"I'm going to throw it into him good, this time," remarked Garrick, as he entered. "I've been planning this stunt for an emergency—and it's here. Now for the big scare!"



CHAPTER XX

THE SPEAKING ARC

"Looks pretty deserted here," remarked Garrick to Dillon's man, who had accompanied us from the door into the now deserted gambling den.

"Yes," he grinned, "there's not much use in keeping me here since they took all the stuff to headquarters. Now and then one of the old rounders who has been out of town and hasn't heard of the raid comes in. You should see their faces change when they catch sight of my uniform. They never stop to ask questions," he chuckled. "They just beat it."

I was wondering how the police regarded Garrick's part in the matter, and while Garrick was busy I asked, "Have you seen Inspector Herman lately?"

The man laughed.

"What's the matter?" I asked, "Is he sore at having the raid pulled off over his head?"

"Sore?" the roundsman repeated, "Oh, not a bit, not a bit. He enjoyed it. It gave him so much credit," the man added sarcastically, "especially after he fell down in getting the evidence against that other place around the corner."

"Was that his case, too?" I asked.

"Sure," replied the policeman. "Didn't you know that? That Rena Taylor was working under his orders when she was killed. They tell me at headquarters he's working overtime on the case and other things connected with it. He hasn't said much, but there's someone he is after—I know. Mark my words. Herman is always most dangerous when he's quiet. The other day he was in here, said there was a man who used to be seen here a good deal in the palmy days, who had disappeared. I don't know who he was, but Herman asked me to keep a particular lookout to see if he came back for any purpose. There's someone he suspects, all right."

I wondered why the man told me. He must have seen, by the look on my face, that I was thinking that.

"I wouldn't tell it to everybody," he added confidentially, "only, most of us don't like Herman any too well. He's always trying to hog it all—gets all the credit if we pick up a clew, and,—well, most of us wouldn't be exactly disappointed to see Mr. Garrick succeed—that's all."

Garrick was calling from the back room to me, and I excused myself, while the man went back to his post at the front door. Garrick carefully closed the door into the room.

While I had been busy getting the copies of the faked edition of the Star, which had so alarmed the owner of the garage and had set things moving rapidly, Garrick had also been busy, in another direction. He had explored not only the raided gambling den, but the little back yard which ran all the way to an extension on the rear of the house in the next street, in which was situated the woman's poolroom.

He had explored, also, the caved-in tunnel enough to make absolutely certain that his suspicions had been correct in the first place, and that it ran to this other joint, from which the gamblers had made their escape. That had satisfied him, however, and he had not unearthed the remains of the tunnel or taken any action in the matter yet. Something else appeared to interest him much more at the present moment.

"I found," he said when he was sure that we were alone, "that the feed wire of the arc light that burns all the time in that main room over there in the place on Forty-seventh Street—you recall it?—runs in through the back of the house."

He was examining two wires which, from his manner, I inferred were attached to this feed wire, leading to it from the room in which we now were. What the purpose of the connection was I had no idea. Perhaps, I thought, it was designed to get new evidence against the place, though I could not guess how it was to be done. So far, except for what we had seen on our one visit, there had appeared to be no real evidence against the place, except, possibly, that which had died with the unfortunate Rena Taylor.

"What's that?" I asked, as Garrick produced a package from a closet where he had left it, earlier in the day.

I saw, after he had unwrapped it, that it was a very powerful microphone and a couple of storage cells. He attached it to the wire leading out to the electric light feed wire.

"I had provided it to be used in an emergency," he replied. "I think the time has come sooner than I anticipated."

I watched him curiously, wondering what it would be that would come next.

There followed a most amazing series of groanings and mutterings from Garrick. I could not imagine what he was up to. The whole proceeding seemed so insane that, for the moment, it left me nonplussed and speechless.

Garrick caught the puzzled look on my face.

"What's the matter?" he laughed heartily, cutting out the microphone momentarily and seeming to enjoy the joke to the utmost.

"Would you prefer to be sent to a State or a private institution?" I rasped, testily. "What insanity is all this? It sounds like the fee-faw-fum and mummery of a voodoo man."

"Come, now, Tom," he rejoined, argumentatively. "You know as well as I do what sort of people those gamblers are—superstitious as the deuce. I did this once before to-day. This is a good time to do it again, before they persuade themselves that there is nothing in that story which we printed in the Star. That fellow is in there now, probably in that room where we were, and it is possible that they may reassure him and settle his fears. Now, just suppose a murder had been committed in a room, and you knew it, and heard groanings and mutterings—from nowhere, just in the air, about you, overhead—what would you do, if you were inclined to be superstitious?"

Before I could answer, he had resumed the antics which before I had found so inexplicable.

"Cut out and run, I suppose," I replied. "But what has that to do with the case? The groanings are here—not there. You haven't been able to get in over there to attach anything, have you? What do you mean?"

"No," he admitted, "but did you ever hear what you could do with a microphone, a rheostat, and a small transformer coil if you attached them properly to a direct-current electric lighting circuit? No? Well, an amateur with a little knowledge of electricity could do it. The thing is easily constructed, and the result is a most complicated matter."

"Well?" I queried, endeavouring to follow him.

"The electric arc," he continued, "isn't always just a silent electric light. You know that. You've heard them make noises. Under the right conditions such a light can be made to talk—the 'speaking arc,' as Professor Duddell calls it. In other words, an arc light can be made to act as a telephone receiver."

I could hardly believe the thing possible, but Garrick went on explaining.

"You might call it the arcophone, I suppose. The scientific fact of the matter is that the arc is sensitive to very small variations of the current. These variations may run over a wide range of frequency. That suggested to Duddell that a direct- current arc might be used as a telephone receiver. All that you need is to add a microphone current to the main arc current. The arc reproduces sounds and speech distinctly, loud enough, even, to be heard several feet away from the light."

He had cut out the microphone again while he was talking to me. He switched it in again with the words, "Now, get ready, Tom. Just one more; then we must hurry around in that car of ours and watch the fun."

This time he was talking into the microphone. In a most solemn, sepulchral voice he repeated, "Let the slayer of Rena Taylor beware. She will be avenged! Beware! It will be a life for a life!"

Three times he repeated it, to make sure that it would carry. Then, grabbing up his hat and coat, he dashed out of the room, past the surprised policeman at the door, and took the steps in front of the house almost at a bound.

We hardly had time to enter our own car and reach the corner of Forty-seventh Street, when the big black automobile which we had followed uptown shot by almost before the traffic man at the crossing could signal a clear road.

"We must hang onto him!" cried Garrick, turning to follow. "Did you catch a glimpse of his face? It's our man, the go-between, the keeper of the garage whom they call the Boss. He was as pale as if he had seen a ghost. I guess he did think he heard one. Between the news-paper fake and the speaking arc, I think we've got him going. There he is."

It was an exciting ride, for the man ahead was almost reckless, though he seemed to know instinctively still just when to put on bursts of speed and when to slow down to escape being arrested for speeding. We hung on, managing to keep something less than a couple of blocks behind him. It was evident that he was making for the ferry uptown across the river to New Jersey, and, taking advantage of this knowledge, Garrick was able to drop back a little, and approach the ferry by going down a different street so that there was no hint yet that we were following him.

By judicious jockeying we succeeded in getting on the boat on the opposite side from the car we were following, and in such a way that we could get off as soon as he could. We managed to cross the ferry, and, in the general scramble that attends the landing, to negotiate the hill on the other side of the river without attracting the attention of the man in the other car. His one idea seemed to be speed, and he had no suspicion, apparently, that in his flight he was being followed.

As we bowled along, forced by circumstances to take the fellow's dust, Garrick would quietly chuckle now and then to himself.

"Fancy what he must have thought," he chortled. "First the newspaper that sent him scurrying up to the gambling place for more news, or to spread the alarm, and then, while they were sitting about, perhaps while someone was talking about the strange voices they had already heard this morning, suddenly the voice from nowhere. Can you blame them if they thought it was a warning from the grave?"

Whatever actually had happened in the gambling house, the practical effect was all that even Garrick could have desired. Hour after hour, we hung to that car ahead, leaving behind the cities, and passing along the regular road through town after town.

Sometimes the road was well oiled, and we would have to drop back a bit to escape too close observation. Then we would strike a stretch where it was dry. The clouds of dust served to hide us. On we went until it was apparent that the man was now headed at least in the direction of Tuxedo.

We now passed the boundary between New York state and New Jersey and soon after that came to the house of Dr. Mead where Warrington had been convalescing until Garrick's warning had brought him, still half ill, down to the city to protect Violet Winslow. In fact, the road seemed replete with interesting reminiscences of the case, for a few miles back was the spot where Rena Taylor's body had been found, as well as the garage whence had come the rumour of the blood-stained car. There was no chance to stop and tell the surprised Dr. Mead just what had become of his patient and we had to trust that Warrington would explain his sudden disappearance himself. In fact, Garrick scarcely looked to either the right or left, so intent was he on not missing for an instant the car that was leading us in this long chase.

On we sped, around the bend where Warrington had been held up. It was a nasty curve, even in the daytime.

"I think this fellow ahead noticed the place," gritted Garrick, leaning forward. "He seemed to slow up a bit as he turned. I hope he didn't notice us as he turned his head back slightly."

It made no difference, if he did, for, the curve passed, he was evidently feeding the gas faster than ever. We turned the curve also, the forward car something more than a quarter of a mile ahead of us.

"We must take a chance and close up on him," said Garrick, as he, too, accelerated his speed, not a difficult thing to do with the almost perfect racer of Warrington's. "He may turn off at a crossroad at any time, now."

Still our man kept on, bowling northward along the fine state road that led to one of the richest parts of the country.

He came to the attractive entrance to Tuxedo Park. Almost, I had expected him to turn in. At least I should not have been surprised if he had done so.

However, he kept on northward, past the entrance to the Park. We hung doggedly on.

Where was he going? I wondered whether Garrick might have been wrong, after all. Half a mile lengthened into a mile. Still he was speeding on.

But Garrick had guessed right. Sure enough, at a cross road, the other car slowed down, then quickly swung around, off the main road.

"What are you going to do?" I asked Garrick quickly. "If we turn also, that will be too raw. Surely he'll notice that."

"Going to stop," cried Garrick, taking in the situation instantly. "Come on, Tom, jump out. We'll fake a little tire trouble, in case he should look around and see us stopping here. I'll keep the engine running."

We went back and stood ostentatiously by the rear wheel. Garrick bent over it, keeping his eye fixed on the other car, now perhaps half a mile along on the narrow crossroad.

It neared the top of a hill on the other side of the valley across which the road wound like a thin brown line, then dipped down over the crest and was lost on the other side.

Garrick leaped back into our car and I followed. He turned the bend almost on two wheels, and let her out as we swept down a short hill and then took the gentle incline on high speed, eating up the distance as though it had been inches instead of nearly a mile.

A short distance from the top of the hill, Garrick applied the brake, just in time so that the top of our car would not be visible to one who had passed on down the next incline into the valley beyond.

"Let us walk up the rest of the way," he said quickly, "and see what is on the other side of this hill."

We did so cautiously. Far down below us we could see the car which we had been trailing all the way up from the city, threading its way along the country road. We watched it, and as we did so, it slowed up and turned out, running up a sort of lane that led to what looked like a trim little country estate.

The car had stopped at an unpretentious house at the end of the lane. The driver got out and walked up to the back door, which seemed to be stealthily opened to admit him.

"Good!" exclaimed Garrick. "At last we are on a hot trail!"



CHAPTER XXI

THE SIEGE OF THE BANDITS

As we watched from the top of the hill, I wondered what Garrick's next move was to be. Surely he would not attempt to investigate the place yet. In fact, there seemed to be nothing that could be done now, as long as it was day-light, for any movement in this half-open country would have been viewed with suspicion by the occupants of the little house in the valley, whoever they might be.

We could not help viewing the place with a sort of awe. What secrets did the cottage hide, nestled down there in the valley among these green hills? Often I had heard that the gunmen of New York, when hard pressed, sought refuge in the country districts and mountains within a few miles of the city. There was something incongruous about it. Nature seemed so perfectly peaceful here that it was the very antithesis of those sections of the city in which he had found the gunman, whoever he was, indulging in practically every crime and vice of decadent civilization.

"So—the one they call the Boss has led up to the refuge of the Chief, the scientific gunman, at last," Garrick exclaimed, with marked satisfaction, as we turned and walked slowly back again to our car.

"Yes," I assented, "and now that we have found them—what are we to do with them?"

"It is still early in the day," Garrick remarked, looking at his watch. "They suspect no trouble up here. Here they evidently feel safe. No doubt they think we are still hunting for them fruitlessly in New York. I think we can afford to leave them here for a few hours. At any rate, I feel that I must return to the city. I must see Dillon, and then drop into my office, if we are to accomplish anything against them."

He had turned the car around and we made our way back to the main road, and then southward again, taking up in earnest the long return trip to the city and covering the distance in Warrington's racer in a much shorter time, now that we had not to follow another car and keep under cover. It was late in the afternoon, however, when we arrived and Garrick went directly to police headquarters where he held a hasty conference with Dillon.

Dillon was even more excited than we were when he learned how far we had gone in tracing out the scant clews that we had uncovered. As Garrick unfolded his plan, the commissioner immediately began to make arrangements to accompany us out into the country that night.

I did not hear all that was said, as Garrick and Dillon laid out their plans, but I could see that they were in perfect accord.

"Very well," I overheard Garrick, as we parted. "I shall go out in the car again. You will be up on the train?"

"Yes—on the seven-fifty," returned Dillon. "You needn't worry about my end of it. I'll be there with the goods—just the thing that you want. I have it."

"Fine," exclaimed Garrick, "I have to make a call at the office. I'll start as soon as I can, and try to beat you out."

They parted in good humour, for Dillon's passion for adventure was now thoroughly aroused and I doubt if we could have driven him off with a club, figuratively speaking.

At the office Garrick tarried only long enough to load the car with some paraphernalia which he had there, much of which, I knew, he had brought back with him after his study of police methods abroad. There were three coats of a peculiar texture, which he took from a wardrobe, a huge arrangement which looked like a reflector, a little thing that looked merely like the mouthpiece of a telephone transmitter, and a large heavy package which might have been anything from a field gun to a battering ram.

It was twilight when we arrived at the nearest railroad station to the little cottage in the valley, after another run up into the country in the car. Dillon who had come up by train to meet us, according to the arrangement with Garrick, was already waiting, and with him was one of the most trustworthy and experienced of the police department chauffeurs. Garrick looked about at the few loungers curiously, but there did not seem to be any of them who took any suspicious interest in new arrivals.

We four managed to crowd into a car built only for two, and Garrick started off. A few minutes later we arrived at the top of the hill from which we had already viewed the mysterious house earlier in the day. It was now quite dark. We had met no one since turning off into the crossroad, and could hear no sound except the continuous music of the night insects.

Just before crossing the brow of the last hill, we halted and Garrick turned out all the lights on the car. He was risking nothing that might lead to discovery yet. With the engine muffled down, we coasted slowly down the other side of the hill into the shadowy valley. There was no moon yet and we had to move cautiously, for there was only the faint light of the sky and stars to guide us.

What was the secret of that unpretentious little house below us? We peered out in the gathering blackness eagerly in the direction where we knew it must be, nestled among the trees. Whoever it sheltered was still there, and we could locate the place by a single gleam that came from an upper window. Whether there were lights below, we could not tell. If there were they must have been effectively concealed by blinds and shades.

"We'll stop here," announced Garrick at last when we had reached a point on the road a few hundred yards from the house.

He ran the car carefully off the road and into a little clearing in a clump of dark trees. We got out and pushed stealthily forward through the underbrush to the edge of the woods. There, on the slope, just a little way below us, stood the house of mystery.

Garrick and Dillon were busily conferring in an undertone, as I helped them bring the packages one after another from the car to the edge of the woods. Garrick had slipped the little telephone mouthpiece into his pocket, and was carrying the huge reflector carefully, so that it might not be injured in the darkness. I had the heavy coats of the peculiar texture over my arm, while Dillon and his man struggled along over the uncertain pathway, carrying between them the heavy, long, cylindrical package, which must have weighed some sixty pounds or so.

Garrick had selected as the site of our operations a corner of the grove where a very large tree raised itself as a landmark, silhouetted in black against a dark sky. We deposited the stuff there as he directed.

"Now, Jim," ordered Dillon, walking back to the car with his man, "I want you to take the car and go back along this road until you reach the top of the hill."

I could not hear the rest of the order, but it seemed that he was to meet someone who had preceded us on foot from the railway station and who must be about due to arrive. I did not know who or what it might be, but even the thought of someone else made me feel safer, for in so ticklish a piece of business as this, in dealing with at least a pair of desperate men such as we knew them to be in the ominously quiet little house, a second and even a third line of re-enforcements was not, I felt, amiss.

Garrick in the meantime had set to work putting into position the huge reflector. At first I thought it might be some method of throwing a powerful light on the house. But on closer examination I saw that it could not be a light. The reflector seemed to have been constructed so that in the focus was a peculiar coil of something, and to the ends of this coil, Garrick attached two wires which he fastened to an instrument, cylindrical, with a broadened end, like a telephone receiver.

Dillon, who had returned by this time, after sending his chauffeur back on his errand, appeared very much interested in what Garrick was doing.

"Now, Tom," said Garrick, "while I am fixing this thing, I wish you would help me by undoing that large package carefully."

While I was thus engaged, he continued talking with Dillon in a low voice, evidently explaining to him the use to which he wished the large reflector put.

I was working quickly to undo the large package, and as the wrappings finally came off, I could see that it was some bulky instrument that looked like a huge gun, or almost a mortar. It had a sort of barrel that might have been, say, forty inches in length, and where the breechlock should have been on an ordinary gun was a great hemispherical cavity. There was also a peculiar arrangement of springs and wheels in the butt.

"The coats?" he asked, as he took from the wrappings of the package several rather fragile looking tubes.

I had laid them down near us and handed them over to him. They were quite heavy, and had a rough feel.

"So-called bullet-proof cloth," explained Garrick. "At close range, quite powerful lunges of a dagger or knife recoil from it, and at a distance ordinary bullets rebound from it, flattened. We'll try it, anyway. It will do no harm, and it may do good. Now we are ready, Dillon."

"Wait just a minute," cautioned Dillon. "Let me see first whether that chauffeur has returned. He can run that engine so quietly that I myself can't hear it."

He had disappeared into the darkness toward the road, where he had despatched the car a few minutes before. Evidently the chauffeur had been successful in his mission, for Dillon was back directly with a hasty, "Yes, all right. He's backing the car around so that he can run it out on the road instantly in either direction. He'll be here in a moment."

Garrick had in the meantime been roughly sketching on the back of an old envelope taken from his pocket. Evidently he had been estimating the distance of the house from the tree back of which he stood, and worked with the light of a shaded pocket flashlight.

"Ready, then," he cried, jumping up and advancing to the peculiar instrument which I had unwrapped. He was in his element now. After all the weary hours of watching and preparation, here was action at last, and Garrick went to it like a starved man at food.

First he elevated the clumsy looking instrument pointed in the general direction of the house. He had fixed the angle at approximately that which he had hastily figured out on the envelope. Then he took a cylinder about twelve inches long, and almost half as much in diameter, a huge thing, constructed, it seemed, of a substance that was almost as brittle as an eggshell. Into the large hemispherical cavity in the breech of the gun he shoved it. He took another quick look at the light gleaming from the house in the darkness ahead of us.

"What is it?" I asked, indicating the "gun."

"This is what is known as the Mathiot gun," he explained as he brought it into action, "invented by a French scientist for the purpose, expressly, of giving the police a weapon to use against the automobile bandits who entrench themselves, when cornered, in houses and garages, as they have done in the outskirts of Paris, and as some anarchists did once in a house in London."

"What does it do?" asked Dillon, who had taken a great interest in the thing.

"It throws a bomb which emits suffocating gases without risking the lives of the police," answered Garrick. "In spite of the fragility of the bombs that I have here, it has been found that they will penetrate a wooden door or even a thin brick partition before the fuse explodes them. One bomb will render a room three hundred feet off uninhabitable in thirty seconds. Now—watch!"

He had exploded the gun by hand, striking the flat head of a hammer against the fulminating cap. The gun gave a bark. A low, whistling noise and a crash followed.

"Too short," muttered Garrick, elevating the angle of the gun a trifle.

Quite evidently someone was moving in the house. There was a shadow, as of someone passing between the light in the upper story and the window on our side of the house.

Again the gun barked, and another bomb went hurtling through the air. This time it hit the house squarely. Another followed in rapid succession, and the crash of glass told that it had struck a window. Garrick was sending them now as fast as he could. They had taken effect, too, for the light was out, whether extinguished by gases or by the hand of someone who realized that it afforded an excellent mark to shoot at. Still, it made no difference, now, for we had the range.

"The house must be full of the stifling gases," panted Garrick, as he stopped to wipe the perspiration from his face, after his rapid work, clad in the heavy coat. "No man could stand up against that. I wonder how our friend of the garage likes it, Tom? It is some of his own medicine—the Chief, I mean. He tried it on us on a small scale very successfully that night with his stupefying gun."

"I hope one of them hit him," ground out Dillon, who had no relish even for the recollection of that night. "What next? Do you have to wait until the gases clear away before we can make a break and go in there?"

Garrick had anticipated the question. Already he was buttoning up his long coat. We did the same, mechanically.

"No, Dillon. You and Jim stay here," ordered Garrick. "You will get the signal from us what to do next. Tom, come on."

He had already dashed ahead into the darkness, and I followed blindly, stumbling over a ploughed field, then a fence over which we climbed quickly, and found ourselves in the enclosure where was the house. I had no idea what we were running up against, but a dog which had been chained in the rear broke away from his fastening at sight of us, and ran at us with a lusty and savage growl. Garrick planted a shot squarely in his head.

Without wasting time on any formalities, such as ringing the bell, we kicked and battered in the back door. We paused a moment, not from fear but because the odor inside was terrific. No one could have stayed in that house and retained his senses. One by one, Garrick flung open the windows, and we were forced to stick our heads out every few minutes in order to keep our own breath.

From one room to another we proceeded, without finding anyone. Then we mounted to the second floor. The odour was worse there, but still we found no one.

The light on the third floor had been extinguished, as I have said. We made our way toward the corner where it had been. Room after room we entered, but still found no one. At last we came to a door that was locked. Together we wrenched it open.

There was surely nothing for us to fear in this room, for a bomb had penetrated it, and had filled it completely. As we rushed in, Garrick saw a figure sprawled on the floor, near the bed, in the corner.

"Quick, Tom!" he shouted, "Open that other window. I'll attend to this man. He's groggy, anyhow."

Garrick had dropped down on his knees and had deftly slipped a pair of handcuffs on the unresisting wrists of the man. Then he staggered to my side at the open window, for air.

"Heavens—this is awful!" he gasped and sputtered. "I wonder where they all went?"

"Who is this fellow?" I asked.

"I don't know yet. I couldn't see."

A moment later, together, we had dragged the unconscious man to the window with us, while I fanned him with my hat and Garrick was wetting his face with water from a pitcher of ice on the table.

"Good Lord!" Garrick exclaimed suddenly, as in the fitful light he bent over the figure. "Do you see who it is?"

I bent down too and peered more closely.

It was Angus Forbes.

Strange to say, here was the young gambler whom we had seen at the gambling joint before it was raided, the long-lost and long-sought Forbes who had disappeared after the raid, and from whom no one had yet heard a word.

I did not know his story, but I knew enough to be sure that he had been in love with Violet himself, and, although Warrington had once come to his rescue and settled thousands of dollars of his gambling debts, was sore at Warrington for closing the gambling joint where he hoped ultimately to recoup his losses. More than that, he was probably equally sore at Warrington for winning the favour of the girl whose fortune might have settled his own debts, if he had had a free field to court her.

Why was Forbes here, I asked myself. The fumes of the bombs from the Mathiot gun may have got into my head but, at least as far as I could see, they had not made my mind any the less active. I felt that his presence here, apparently as one of the gang, explained many things.

Who, I reasoned, would have been more eager to "get" Warrington at any cost than he? I never had any love for the fellow, who had allowed his faults and his temptations so far to get the upper hand of him. I had felt a sort of pity at first, but the incident of the cancelled markers in the gambling joint and now the discovery of him here had changed that original feeling into one that was purely of disgust.

These thoughts were coursing through my fevered brain while Garrick was working hard to bring him around.

Suddenly a mocking voice came from the hall.

"Yes, it's Forbes, all right, and much good may it do you to have him!"

The door to the room, which opened outward, banged shut. The lock had been broken by us in forcing an entrance. There must have been two of them out in the hall, for we heard the noise and scraping of feet, as they piled up heavy furniture against the door, dragging it from the next room before we could do anything. Piece after piece was wedged in between our door and the opposite wall.

We could hear them taunt us as they worked, and I thought I recognised at once the voice of the stocky keeper of the garage, the Boss, whom I had heard so often before over our detectaphone. The other voice, which seemed to me to be disguised, I found somewhat familiar, yet I could not place it. It must have been, I thought, that of the man whom we had come to know and fear under the appellation of the Chief.

We could hear them laugh, now, as they cursed us and wished us luck with our capture. It was galling.

Evidently, too, they had not much use for Forbes, and, indeed, at such a crisis I do not think he would have been much more than an additional piece of animated impedimenta. Dissipation had not added anything to the physical prowess of Forbes.

With a parting volley of profanity, they stamped down the narrow stairs to the ground floor, and a few seconds afterward we could hear them back of the house, working over the machine which we had followed up from New York earlier in the day. Evidently there were several machines in the barn which served them as garage, but this was the handiest.

They had cranked it up, and were debating which way they should go.

"The shots came from the direction of the main road," the Boss said. "We had better go in the opposite direction. There may be more of them coming. Hurry up!"

At least, it seemed, there had been only three of them in this refuge which they had sought up in the hills and valleys of the Ramapos. Of that we could now be reasonably certain. One of them we had captured—and had ourselves been captured into the bargain.

I stuck my head out of the window to look at the other two down below, only to feel myself dragged unceremoniously back by Garrick.

"What's the use of taking that risk, Tom?" he expostulated. "One shot from them and you would be a dead one."

Fortunately they had not seen me, so intent were they on getting away. They had now seated themselves in the car and, as Garrick had suspected, could not resist delivering a parting shot at us, emptying the contents of an automatic blindly up at our window. Garrick and I were, as it. happened, busy on the opposite side of the room.

All thought of Forbes was dropped for the present. Garrick said not a word but continued at work in the corner of the room by the other broken window.

"Either they must have succeeded in getting out after the first shot and so escaped the fumes," muttered Garrick finally, "and hid in the stable, or, perhaps, they were out there at work anyhow. Still that makes little difference now. They must have seen us go in, have followed us quietly, and then caught us here."

With a hasty final imprecation, the car below started forward with a jerk and was swallowed up in the darkness.



CHAPTER XXII

THE MAN HUNT

Here we were, locked in a little room on the top floor of the mysterious house. I looked out of both windows. There was no way to climb down and it was too far to jump, especially in the uncertain darkness. I threw myself at the door. It had been effectually braced by our captors.

Garrick, in the meantime, had lighted the light again, and placed it by the window.

Forbes, now partly recovered, was rambling along, and Garrick, with one eye on him and the other on something which he was working over in the light, was too busy to pay much attention to my futile efforts to find a means of escape.

At first we could not make out what it was that Forbes was trying to tell us, but soon, as the fresh air in the room revived him, his voice became stronger. Apparently he recognised us and was trying to offer an explanation of his presence here.

"He kidnapped me—brought me here," Forbes was muttering. "Three days—I've been shut up in this room."

"Who brought you here?" I demanded sharply.

"I don't know his name—man at the gambling place—after the raid- -said he'd take me in his car somewhere—from the other place back of it—last I remember—must have drugged me—woke up here—all I know."

"You've been a prisoner, then?" I queried.

"Yes," he murmured.

"A likely story," I remarked, looking questioningly at Garrick who had been listening but had not ceased his own work, whatever it was. "What are you going to do, Guy? We can't stay here and waste time over such talk as this while they are escaping. They must be almost to the road now, and turning down in the opposite direction from Dillon and his man."

Garrick said nothing. Either he was too busy solving our present troubles or he was, like myself, not impressed by Forbes' incoherent story. He continued to adjust the little instrument which I had seen him draw from his pocket and now recognised as the thing which looked like a telephone transmitter. Only, the back of it seemed to gleam with a curious brightness under the rays of the light, as he handled it.

"They have somehow contrived to escape the effect of the bombs," he was saying, "and have surprised us in the room on the top floor where the light is. We are up here with a young fellow named Forbes, whom we have captured. He's the young man that I saw several times at the gambling joint and was at dinner with Warrington the night when the car was stolen. He was pretty badly overcome by the fumes, but I've brought him around. He either doesn't know much or won't tell what he knows. That doesn't make any difference now, though. They have escaped in a car. They are leaving by the road. Wait. I'll see whether they have reached it yet. No, it's too dark to see and they have no light on the car. But they must have turned. They said they were going in the direction opposite from you."

"Well?" I asked, mystified. "What of it? I know all that, already."

"But Dillon doesn't," replied Garrick, in great excitement now. "I knew that we should have to have some way of communicating with him instantly if this fellow proved to be as resourceful as I believed him to be. So I thought of the radiophone or photophone of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. I have really been telephoning on a beam of light."

"Telephoning on a beam of light?" I repeated incredulously.

"Yes," he explained, feeling now at liberty to talk since he had delivered his call for help. "You see, I talk into this transmitter. The simplest transmitter for this purpose is a plane mirror of flexible material, silvered mica or microscope glass. Against the back of this mirror my voice is directed. In the carbon transmitter of the telephone a variable electrical resistance is produced by the pressure on the diaphragm, based on the fact that carbon is not as good a conductor of electricity under pressure as when not. Here, the mouthpiece is just a shell supporting a thin metal diaphragm to which the mirror on the back is attached, an apparatus for transforming the air vibrations produced by the voice into light vibrations of the projected beam, which is reflected from this light here in the room. The light reflected is thus thrown into vibrations corresponding to those in the diaphragm."

"And then?" I asked impatiently.

"That varying beam of light shoots out of this room, and is caught by the huge reflector which you saw me set up at the foot of that tall tree which you can just see against the dark sky over there. That parabolic mirror gathers in the scattered rays, focusses them on the selenium cell which you saw in the middle of the reflector, and that causes the cell to vary the amount of electric current passing through it from a battery of storage cells. It is connected with a very good telephone receiver. Every change in the beam of light due to the vibrations of my voice is caught by that receiving mirror, and the result is that the diaphragm in the receiver over there which Dillon is holding to his ear responds. The thing is good over several hundred yards, perhaps miles, sometimes. Only, I wish it would work both ways. I would like to feel sure that Dillon gets me."

I looked at the simple little instrument with a sort of reverence, for on it depended the momentous question of whether we should be released in time to pursue the two who were escaping in the automobile.

"You'll have to hurry," continued Garrick, speaking into his transmitter. "Give the signal. Get the car ready. Anything, so long as it is action. Use your own judgment."

There he was, flashing a message out of our prison by an invisible ray that shot across the Cimmerian darkness to the point where we knew that our friends were waiting anxiously. I could scarcely believe it. But Garrick had the utmost faith in the ability of the radiophone to make good.

"They MUST have started by this time," he cried, craning his neck out of the window and looking in every direction.

Forbes was still rambling along, but Garrick was not paying any attention to him. Instead, he began rummaging the room for possible evidence, more for something to do than because he hoped to find anything, while we were waiting anxiously for something to happen.

An exclamation from Garrick, however, brought me to his side. Tucked away in a bureau drawer under some soiled linen that plainly belonged to Forbes, he drew out what looked like a single blue-steel tube about three inches long. At its base was a hard- rubber cap, which fitted snugly into the palm of the hand as he held it. His first and middle fingers encircled the barrel, over a steel ring. A pull downward and the thing gave a click.

"Good that it wasn't loaded," Garrick remarked. "I knew what the thing was, all right, but I didn't think the spring was as delicate as all that. It is a new and terrible weapon of destruction of human life, one that can be carried by the thug or the burglar and no one be the wiser, unless he has occasion to use it. It is a gun that can be concealed in the palm of the hand. A pull downward on that spring discharges a thirty-two calibre, centre fire cartridge. The most dangerous feature of it is that the gun can be carried in an upper vest pocket as a fountain pen, or in a trousers pocket as a penknife."

I looked with added suspicion now, if not a sort of respect, on the young man who was tossing, half conscious, on the bed. Was he, after all, not the simple, gullible Forbes, but a real secret master of crime?

Garrick, keen though he had been over the discovery, was in reality much more interested just now in the result of his radiophone message. What would be the outcome?

I had been startled to see that almost instantly after his second call over the radiophone there seemed to rise on all sides of us lights and the low baying of dogs.

"What's all that?" I asked Garrick.

"Dillon had a dozen or so police dogs shipped up here quietly," answered Garrick, now straining his eyes and ears eagerly. "He started them out each in charge of an officer as soon as they arrived. I hope they had time to get around in that other direction and close in. That was what he sent the chauffeur back to see about, to make sure that they were placed by the man who is the trainer of the pack."

"What kind of dogs are they?"

"Some Airedales, but mostly Belgian sheep dogs. There is one in the pack, Cherry, who has a wonderful reputation. A great deal depends, now, on our dog-detectives."

"But," I objected, "what good will they be? Our men are in an automobile."

"We thought of that," replied Garrick confidently. "Here they are, at last," he cried, as a car swung up the lane from the road and stopped with a rush under our window. He leaned out and shouted, "Dillon—up here—quick!"

It was Dillon and his chauffeur, Jim. A moment later there was a tremendous shifting and pulling of heavy pieces of furniture in the hall, and, as the door swung open, the honest face of the commissioner appeared, inquiring anxiously if we were all right.

"Yes, all right," assured Garrick. "Come on, now. There isn't a minute to lose. Send Jim up here to take charge of Forbes. I'll drive the car myself."

Garrick accomplished in seconds what it takes minutes to tell. The chauffeur had already turned the car around and it was ready to start. We jumped in, leaving him to go upstairs and keep the manacled Forbes safely.

We gained the road and sped along, our lights now lighted and showing us plainly what was ahead. The dust-laden air told us that we were right as we turned into the narrow crossroad. I wondered how we were ever going to overtake them after they had such a start, at night, too, over roads which were presumably familiar to them.

"Drive carefully," shouted Dillon soon, "it must be along here, somewhere, Garrick."

A moment before we had been almost literally eating the dust the car ahead had raised. Garrick slowed down as we approached a bend in the road.

There, almost directly in our path, stood a car, turned half across the road and jammed up into a fence. I could scarcely believe it. It was the bandit's car—deserted!

"Good!" exclaimed Dillon as Garrick brought our own car to a stop with a jerk only a few feet away.

I looked about in amazement, first at the empty car and then into the darkness on either side of the road. For the moment I could not explain it. Why had they abandoned the car, especially when they had every prospect of eluding us in it?

They had not been forced to turn out for anybody, for no other vehicle had passed us. Was it tire trouble or engine trouble? I turned to the others for an explanation.

"I thought it must be about here," cried Dillon. "We had one of my men place an obstruction in the road. They didn't run into it, which shows clever driving, but they had to turn so sharply that they ran into the fence. I guess they realised that there was no use in turning and trying to go back."

"They have taken to the open country," shouted Garrick, leaping up on the seat of our car and looking about in a vain endeavour to catch some sign of them.

All was still, save here and there the sharp, distant bark of a dog.

"I wonder which way they went?" he asked, looking down at us.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE POLICE DOG

Dillon pulled a whistle from his pocket and blew a short blast sharply. Far down the road, we could hear faintly an answering bark. It came nearer.

"They're taught to obey a police whistle and nothing else," remarked Dillon, with satisfaction. "I wonder which one of the dogs that was. By the way, just keep out of sight as much as you can—get back up in our car. They are trained to worry anyone who hasn't a uniform. I'll take this dog in charge. I hope it's Cherry. She ought to be around here, if the men obeyed my orders. The others aren't keen on a scent even when it is fresh, but Cherry is a dandy and I had the man bring her up purposely."

We got back into our car and waited impatiently. Across the hills now and then we could catch the sounds of dogs scouting around here and there. It seemed as if every dog in the valley had been aroused. On the other slope of the hill from the main road we could see lights in the scattered houses.

"I doubt whether they have gone that way," commented Garrick following my gaze. "It looks less settled over here to the right of the road, in the direction of New York."

The low baying of the dog which had answered Dillon's call was growing nearer every moment. At last we could hear it quite close, at the deserted car ahead.

Cherry seemed to have many of the characteristics of the wild, prehistoric animal, among them the full, upright ears of the wild dog, which are such a great help to it. She was a fine, alert, up- standing dog, hardy, fierce, and literally untiring, of a tawny light brown like a lioness, about the same size and somewhat of the type of the smooth-coated collie, broad of chest and with a full brush of tail.

Untamed though she seemed, she was perfectly under Dillon's control, and rendered him absolute and unreasoning obedience.

"Now, Cherry, nice dog," we heard Dillon encouraging, "Here, up here. And here."

He was giving the dog the scent from the deserted car. His voice rang out sharply in the night air, "Come on Garrick and Marshall. She's got it. I've got her on leash. Follow along, now, just a few feet behind."

Cherry was on the trail and it was a hot one. We could just see her magnificent head, narrow and dome-like, between the keen ears. She was working like a regular sleuthhound, now, too, slowly, picking up the trail and following it, baying as she went.

She was now going without a halt or falter. Nose to the ground, she had leaped from the bandit's car and made straight across a field in the direction that Garrick had suspected they would take, only a little to the west.

"This is a regular, old-fashioned man hunt," called back Dillon, as we followed the dog and himself, as best we could.

It was pitch dark, but we plunged ahead over fields and through little clumps of trees, around hedges, and over fences.

There was no stopping, no cessation of the deep baying of the dog. Cherry was one of the best and most versatile that the police had ever acquired and trained.

We came to the next crossroad, and the dog started up in the direction of the main road, questing carefully.

We had gone not a hundred feet when a dark object darted out of the bushes at the side of the road, and I felt myself unceremoniously tumbled off my feet.

Garrick leaped aside, with a laugh.

"Dillon," he shouted ahead at the top of his voice, "one of the Airedales has discovered Marshall. Come back here. Lie still, Tom. The dog is trained to run between the legs and trip up anyone without a police uniform. By Jupiter—here's another one—after me. Dillon—I say—Dillon!"

The commissioner came back, laughing at our plight, and called off the dogs, who were now barking furiously. We let him get a little ahead, calling the Airedales to follow him. They were not much good on the scent, but keen and intelligent along the lines of their training, and perfectly willing to follow Dillon, who was trusting to the keen sense of Cherry.

A little further down, the fugitives had evidently left the road after getting their bearings.

"They must have heard the dogs," commented Garrick. "They are doubling on their tracks, now, and making for the Ramapo River in the hope of throwing the dogs off the scent. That's the game. It's an old trick."

We came, sure enough, in a few minutes to the river. That had indeed been their objective point. Cherry was baffled. We stuck close to Dillon, after our previous experience, as we stopped to talk over hastily what to do.

Had they gone up or down, or had they crossed? There was not much time that we could afford to lose here in speculation if we were going to catch them.

Cherry was casting backward in an instinctive endeavour to pick up the trail. Dillon had taken her across and she had not succeeded in finding the scent on the opposite bank for several hundred yards on either side.

"They started off toward the southwest," reasoned Garrick quickly. "Then they turned in this direction. The railroads are over there. Yes, that is what they would make for. Dillon," he called, "let us follow the right bank of the river down this way, and see if we can't pick them up again."

The river was shallow at this point, but full of rocks, which made it extremely hard, if not dangerous, to walk even close to the bank in the darkness. "I don't think they'd stand for much of this sort of going," remarked Garrick. "A little of it would satisfy them, and they'd strike out again."

He was right. Perhaps five minutes later, after wading in the cold water, clinging as close to the bank as we could, we came to a sort of rapids. Cherry, who had been urged on by Dillon, gave a jerk at her leash, as she sniffed along the bank.

"She has it," cried Garrick, springing up the bank after Dillon.

I followed and we three men and three dogs struck out again in earnest across country.

We had come upon a long stretch of woods, and the brambles and thick growth made the going exceedingly difficult. Still, if it was hard for us now, it must have been equally hard for them as they broke through in the first place.

At last we came to the end of the woods. The trail was now fresher than ever, and Dillon had difficulty in holding Cherry back so that the rest of us could follow. As we emerged from the shadow of the trees into the open field, it seemed as if guns were blazing on all sides of us.

We were almost up with them. They had separated and were not half a mile away, firing at random in our direction, as they heard the dogs. Dillon drew up, Cherry tugging ahead. He turned to the Airedales. They had already taken in the situation, and were now darting ahead at what they could see, if not scent.

I felt a "ping!" on my chest. I scarcely realized what it was until I heard something drop the next instant in the stubble at my feet, and felt a smarting sensation as if a sharp blow had struck me. I bent down and from the stubble picked up a distorted bullet.

"These bullet-proof coats are some good, anyhow, at a distance," remarked Garrick, close beside me, as he took the bullet from my fingers. "Duck! Back among the trees—until we get our bearings!"

Another bullet had whizzed just past his arm as he spoke.

We dodged back among the trees, and slowly skirted the edge of the wood, where it bent around a little on the flank of the position from which the continuous firing was coming.

At the edge we stopped again. We could go no further without coming out into the open, and the moon, just rising, above the trees, made us an excellent mark under such conditions. Garrick peered out to determine from just where they were firing.

"Lucky for us that we had these coats," he muttered, "or they would have croaked us, before we knew it. These are our old friends, the anaesthetic bullets, too. Even a little scratch from one of them and we should be hors de combat for an hour or two."

"Shall we take a chance?" urged Dillon.

"Just a minute," cautioned Garrick, listening.

The barking of the Airedales had ceased suddenly. Cherry was straining at her leash to go.

"They have winged the two dogs," exclaimed Garrick. "Yes—we must try it now—at any cost."

We broke from the cover, taking a chance, separating as much as we could, and pushing ahead rapidly, Dillon under his breath keeping Cherry from baying as much as possible.

I had expected a sharp fusillade to greet us as we advanced and wondered whether the coats would stand it at closer range. Instead, the firing seemed to have ceased altogether.

A quick dash and we had crossed the stretch of open field that separated us from a dark object which now loomed up, and from behind which it seemed had come the firing. As we approached, I saw it was a shed beside the railroad, which was depressed at this point some twelve or fifteen feet.

"They kept us off just long enough," exclaimed Garrick, glancing up at the lights of the block signals down the road. "They must be desperate, all right. Why, they must have jumped a freight as it slowed down for the curve, or perhaps one of them flagged it and held it up. See? The red signal shows that a train has just gone through toward New York. There is no chance to wire ahead, either, from this Ducktown siding. Here's where they stood—look!"

Garrick had picked up a handful of exploded cartridge shells, while he was speaking. They told a mute story of the last desperate stand of the gunmen.

"I'll keep these," he said, shoving them into his pocket. "They may be of some use later on in connecting to-night's doings with what has gone before."

We looked at each other blankly. There was nothing more to do that night but to return to the now deserted house in the valley where we had left Forbes in charge of Dillon's man.

Toilsomely and disgusted, we trudged back in silence.

Garrick, however, refused to be discouraged. Late as it was, he insisted on making a thorough search of the captured house. It proved to be a veritable arsenal. Here it seemed that all the new and deadly weapons of the scientific gunman had been made. The barn, turned into half garage and half workshop, was a mine of interest.

We found it unlocked and entered, Garrick flashing a light about.

"There's a sight that would do McBirney's eyes good," he exclaimed as he bent the rays of the light before us.

Before us, in the back of the barn, stood Warrington's stolen car- -at last.

"They won't plot anything more—at least not up here," remarked Garrick, bending over it.

In the house, we found Jim still with Forbes, who was now completely recovered. In the possession of his senses, Forbes' tongue which the anaesthetic gases seemed to have loosened, now became suddenly silent again. But he stuck doggedly to his story of kidnapping, although he would not or could not add anything to it. Who the kidnapper was he swore he did not know, except that he had known his face well, by sight, at the gambling joint.

I could make nothing of Forbes. But of one thing I was sure. Even if we had not captured the scientific gunman, we had dealt him a severe and crushing blow. Like Garrick, I had begun to look upon the escape philosophically.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE FRAME-UP

Although I felt discouraged on our return to the city, the morning following our exciting adventure at the mysterious house in the Ramapo valley, Garrick, who never let anything ruffle him long, seemed quite cheerful.

"Cheer up, Tom," he encouraged. "We are on the home stretch now."

"Perhaps—if they don't beat us to the tape," I answered disconsolately. "What are you going to do next?"

"While you were snatching a little sleep, I was rummaging around and found a number of letters in a table drawer, up there. One was a note, evidently to the garage keeper, and signed merely, 'Chief.' I'll wager that the handwriting is the same as that in the blackmailing letter to Miss Winslow."

"What of it?" I asked, refusing to be comforted. "We haven't got him and the prospects—"

"No, we haven't got him," interrupted Garrick, "but the note was just a line to tell the Boss, who seemed to have been up there in the country at the time, to meet the Chief at 'the Joint,' on Second Avenue."

I nodded, but before I could speak, he added, "It didn't say any more, but I think I know the place. It is the old International Cafe, a regular hang-out for crooks, where they come to gamble away the proceeds of their crimes in stuss, the great game of the East Side, now. Anyhow, we'll just drop into the place. We may not find them, but we'll have an interesting time. Then, there is the possibility of getting a strangle hold on someone, anyhow."

Garrick was evidently figuring on having driven our gunman back into the haunts of the underworld.

There seemed to be no other course that presented itself and therefore, rather than remain inactive until something new turned up, I consented to accompany him in his excursion.

Forbes, still uncommunicatively protesting that he would say nothing until he had an opportunity to consult a lawyer, had been taken down to New York by Dillon during the morning and was lodged in a West Side prison under a technical charge which was sufficient to hold him until Garrick could investigate his case and fix his real status.

We had taken a cross-town car, with the intention of looking over the dive where Garrick believed the crooks might drop in. The ride itself was uninteresting, but not so by any means the objective point of our journey.

Over on the East Side, we found the International Cafe, and slouched into the back room. It was not the room devoted to stuss, but the entrance to it, which Garrick informed me was through a heavy door concealed in a little hallway, so that its very existence would not be suspected except by the initiate.

We made no immediate attempt to get into the hang-out proper, which was a room perhaps thirty feet wide and seventy feet deep. Instead, we sat down at one of the dirty, round tables, and ordered something from the waiter, a fat and oily Muscowitz in a greasy and worn dinner coat.

It seemed that in the room where we were had gathered nearly every variety of the populous underworld. I studied the men and women at the tables curiously, without seeming to do so. But there could be no concealment here. Whatever we might be, they seemed to know that we were not of them, and they greeted us with black looks and now and then a furtive scowl.

It was not long, however, before it became evident that in some way word had been passed that we were not mere sightseers. Perhaps it was by a sort of wireless electric tension that seemed to pervade the air. At any rate, it was noticeable.

"There's no use staying here," remarked Garrick to me under his breath, affecting not to notice the scowls, "unless we do something. Are you game for trying to get into the stuss joint?"

He said it with such determination to go himself that I did not refuse. I had made up my mind that the only thing to do was to follow him, wherever he went.

Garrick rose, stretched himself, yawned as though bored, and together we lounged out into the public hall, just as someone from the outside clamoured for admission to the stuss joint through the strong door.

The door had already been opened, when Garrick deftly inserted his shoulder. Through the crack in the door, I could see the startled roomful of players of all degrees in crookdom, in the thick, curling tobacco smoke.

The man at the door called out to Garrick to get out, and raised his arm to strike. Garrick caught his fist, and slowly with his powerful grip bent it back until the man actually writhed. As his wrist went back by fractions of an inch, his fingers were forced to relax. I knew the trick. It was the scientific way to open a clenched fist. As the tendons refused to stretch any farther, his fingers straightened, and a murderous looking blackjack clattered to the floor.

All was confusion. Money which was on the various tables disappeared as if by magic. Cards were whisked away as if a ghost had taken them. In a moment there was no more evidence of gambling than is afforded by any roomful of men, so easy was it to hide the paraphernalia, or, rather, lack of paraphernalia of stuss.

It was the custom, I knew, for criminals, after they had made a haul to retire into such places as these stuss parlors, not only to spend the proceeds of their robberies, but for protection. Even though they were unmercifully fleeced by the gamblers, they might depend on them to warn of the approach of the "bulls" and if possible count on being hidden or spirited off to safety.

Apparently we had come just at a time when there were some criminals in hiding among the players. It was the only explanation I could offer of the strange action that greeted our simple attempt to gain admission to the stuss room. Whether they were criminals who had really made a haul or mere fugitives from justice, I could not guess. But that a warning had been given the man at the door to be on his guard, seemed evident from the manner in which we had been met.

There was a rush of feet in the room. I expected that we would be overwhelmed. Instead, as together we pushed on the now half-open door, the room emptied like a sieve. Whoever it might be who had taken refuge there had probably disappeared, among the first, by tacit understanding of the rest, for the whole thing had the air of being run off according to instructions.

"It's a collar!" had sounded through the room, the moment we had appeared at the door, and it was now empty.

I wondered whether the letter which Garrick had found might not, after all, have brought us straight to the last resort of those whom we sought.

"Where have they gone?" I panted, as the door opened at last, and we found only one man in the place.

There he stood apparently ready to be arrested, in fact courting it if we could show the proper authority, since he knew that it would be only a question of hours when he would be out again and the game would be resumed, in full blast.

The man shook his head blankly in answer to my question.

"There must be a trap door somewhere," cried Garrick. "It is no use to find it. They are all on the street by this time. Quick— before anyone catches us in the rear."

We had been not a moment too soon in gaining the street. Though we had done nothing but attempt to get into the stuss room, ostensibly as players, the crowd in the cafe was pressing forward.

On the street, we saw men filing quickly from a cellar, a few doors down the block. We mingled with the excited crowd in order to cover ourselves.

"That must have been where the trap door and passage led," whispered Garrick.

A familiar figure ducked out of the cellar, surrounded by others, and the crowd made for two taxicabs standing on the opposite side of the street near a restaurant which was really not a tough joint but made a play at catering to people from uptown who wanted a taste of near-crime and did not know when they were being buncoed.

Another cab swung up to the stand, just as the first two pulled away. Its sign was up: "Vacant."

Quick as a flash, Garrick was in it, dragging me after him. The driver must have thought that we, too, were escaping, for he needed only one order from Garrick to leap ahead in the wake of the cabs which had already started.

A moment later, Garrick's head was out of the window. He had drawn his revolver and was pegging away at the tires of the cabs ahead. An answering shot came back to us. Meanwhile, a policeman at a corner leaped on a passing trolley and urged the motorman to put on the full power in a vain effort to pursue us as we swept by up the broad avenue.

Even the East Side, accustomed to frequent running fights on the streets between rival gunmen and gangs, was roused by such an outburst. The crack of revolver shots, the honking of horns, the clang of the trolley bell, and the shouts of men along the street brought hundreds to the windows, as the cars lurched and swayed up the avenue.

The cars ahead swerved to dodge a knot of pedestrians, but their pace never slackened. Then the rearmost of the two began to buck and almost leap off the roadway. There came a rattle and roar from the rear wheels which told that the tires had been punctured and that the heavy wheels were riding on their rims, cutting the deflated tubes. At a cross street the first car turned, just in time to avoid a truck, and dodged down a maze of side streets, but the second ran squarely into the truck.

As the first car disappeared we caught a glimpse of a man leaning out of it. He seemed to be swinging something around and around at arm's length. Suddenly he let it go and it shot high up in the air on the roof of a tenement house.

"The automobile is the most dangerous weapon ever used by criminals," muttered Garrick, as the first car shot down through a mass of trucking which had backed up and shifted, making pursuit momentarily more impossible for us. "These people know how to use the automobile, too. But we've got someone here, anyhow," he cried, leaping out and pushing aside the crowd that had collected about the wrecked car.

In the bottom of it we found a man, stunned and crumpled into a heap. Blood flowed from his arm where one of the bullets had struck him. Several bullets had struck the back of the cab and both tires were cut by them.

As I came up and looked over Garrick's shoulder at the prostrate and unconscious figure in the car, I could not restrain an exclamation of surprise.

It was the garage keeper, the Boss—at last!

Policemen had come up in the meantime, and several minutes were consumed while Garrick proved to them his identity.

"What was that thing the fellow in the forward car whirled over his head?" I whispered.

"A revolver, I think," returned Garrick. "That's a favourite trick of the gunmen. With a stout cord tied to a gun you can catapult it far enough to destroy the evidence that will hold you under the Sullivan law, at least. I mean to get that gun as soon as we are through with this fellow here."

Someone had turned in a call for an ambulance which came jangling up soon after, and we stood in a group close to the young surgeon as he worked to bring around the captured gangster.

"Where's the Chief?" he mumbled, dazed.

Garrick motioned to us to be quiet.

The man rambled on with a few inconsequential remarks, then opened his eyes, caught sight of the white coated surgeon working over him, of us standing behind, and of the crowd about him.

Memory of what had happened flitted back to him. With an effort he was himself again, close-mouthed, after the manner of the gangsters.

The surgeon had done all in his power and the man was sufficiently recovered to be taken to the hospital, now, under arrest. As far as we were concerned, our work was done. The Boss could be found now, at any time that we needed him, but that he would speak all the traditions of gangland made impossible.

I wondered what Garrick would do. As for myself, I had no idea what move to make.

It surprised me, therefore, to see him with a smile of satisfaction on his face.

"I'll see you this afternoon, Tom," he said merely, as the ambulance bore the wounded Boss away. "Meanwhile, I wish you'd take the time to go over to headquarters and give Dillon our version of this affair. Tell him to hold to-night open, too. I have a little work to do this afternoon, and I'll call him up later."

Dillon, I found, was overjoyed when I reported to him the capture of at least one man whom we had failed to get the night before.

"Things seem to be clearing up, after all," he remarked. "Tell Garrick I shall hold open to-night for him. Meanwhile, good luck, and let me know the moment you get any word about the Chief. He must have been in. that first cab, all right."

As I left Dillon's office, I ran into Herman in the hall, coming in. I bowed to him and he nodded surlily. Evidently, I thought, he had heard of the result of our activities. I did not ask him what progress he had made in the case, for I had had experience with professional jealousy before, and thought that the less said on the subject the better.

Recalling what Garrick had said, I curbed my impatience as best I could, in order to give him ample time to complete the work that he had to do. It was not until the middle of the afternoon that I rejoined him in his office.

I found him at work at a table, still, with a microscope and an arrangement which I recognised as the apparatus for making microphotographs. Several cartridges, carefully labelled, were lying before him, as well as the peculiar pistol we had found when we had captured Forbes in the little room. There were also the guns we had captured in the garage and one found in the cab which we had chased and wrecked.

On the end of the table was a large number of photographs of a most peculiar nature. I picked up one. It looked like an enlarged photograph of an orange, or like some of the pictures which the astronomers make of the nearer planets.

"What are these?" I asked curiously, as he leaned back from his work, with a smile of quiet satisfaction.

"That is a collection of microphotographs which I have gathered," he answered, adding, "as well as some that I have just made. I hope to use them in a little stereopticon entertainment I am arranging to-night for those who have been interested in the case."

Garrick smiled. "Have you ever heard?" he asked, "that the rounded end of the firing pin of every rifle when it is examined under a microscope bears certain irregularities of marking different from those of every other firing pin and that the primer of every shell fired in a rifle is impressed with the particular markings of that firing pin?"

I had not, but Garrick went on, "I know that it is true. Such markings are distinctive for each rifle and can be made by no other. I have taken rifles bearing numbers preceding and following that of a particular one, as well as a large number of other firing pins. I have tried the rifles and the firing pins, one by one, and after I made microphotographs of the firing pins with special reference to the rounded ends and also photographs of the corresponding rounded depressions in the primers fired by them, it was forced upon me that cartridges fired by each individual firing pin could be positively identified."

I had been studying the photographs. It was a new idea, and it appealed to me strongly. "How about revolvers?" I asked quickly.

"Well, Dr. Balthazard, the French criminologist, has made experiments on the identification of revolver bullets and has a system that might be compared to that of Bertillon for identifying human beings. He has showed by greatly enlarged photographs that every gun barrel leaves marks on a bullet and that the marks are always the same for the same barrel but never identical for two different barrels. He has shown that the hammer of a revolver, say a centre fire, strikes the cartridge at a point which is never the exact centre of the cartridge, but is always the same for the same weapon. He has made negatives of bullets nearly a foot wide. Every detail appears very distinctly and it can be decided with absolute certainty whether a certain bullet or cartridge was fired by a certain revolver."

He had picked up one of the microphotographs and was looking at it attentively through a small glass.

"You will see," he explained, "on the edge of this photograph a rough sketch calling attention to a mark like an L which is the chief characteristic of this hammer, although there are other detailed markings which show well under the microscope but not in a photograph. You will note that the marks on a hammer are reversed on the primer in the same way that a metal type and the character printed by it are reversed as regards one another. Moreover, depressions on the end of a hammer become raised on the primer and raised markings on the hammer become depressions on the primer.

"Now, here is another. You can see that it is radically different from the first, which was from the cartridge used in killing poor Rena Taylor. This second one is from that gun which I found on the tenement roof this morning. It lacks the L mark as well as the concentric circles. Here is another. Its chief characteristics are a series of pits and elevations which, examined under the microscope and measured, will be found to afford a set of characters utterly different from those of any other hammer.

"In short," he concluded with an air of triumph, "the ends of firing pins are turned and finished in a lathe by the use of tools designed for that purpose. The metal tears and works unevenly so that microscopical examination shows many pits, lines, circles, and irregularities. The laws of chance are as much against two of these firing pins or hammers having the same appearance under the microscope as they are against the thumb prints of two human subjects being identical."

I picked up the curious little arrangement which we had found in the drawer in Forbes' room and examined it closely.

"I have been practicing with that pistol, if you may call it that," he remarked, "on cartridges of my own and examining the marks made by the peculiar hammer. I have studied marks of the gun which we found on the roof. I have compared them with the marks on cartridges which we have picked up at the finding of Rena Taylor's body, at the garage that night of the stupefying bullet, with bullets such as were aimed at Warrington, with others, both cartridges and bullets, at various times, and the conclusion is unescapable."

Who, I asked myself, was the scientific gunman? I knew it was useless to try to hurry Garrick. First, by a sort of intuition he had picked him out, then by the evidence of hammer and bullet he had made it practically certain. But I knew that to his scientific mind nothing but absolute certainty would suffice.

While I was waiting for him to proceed, he had already begun to work on some apparatus behind a screen at the end of his office. Close to the wall at the left was a stereopticon which, as nearly as I could make out, shot a beam of light through a tube to a galvanometer about three feet distant. In front of this beam whirled a five-spindled wheel governed by a chronometer which was so accurate, he said, that it erred only a second a day.

Between the poles of the galvanometer was stretched a slender thread of fused quartz plated with silver. It was the finest thread I could imagine, only a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter, far too tenuous to be seen. Three feet further away was a camera with a moving plate holder which carried a sensitized photographic plate. Its movement was regulated by a big fly-wheel at the extreme right.

"You see," remarked Garrick, now engrossed on the apparatus and forgetting the hammer evidence for the time, "the beam of light focussed on that fine thread in the galvanometer passes to this photographic plate. It is intercepted by the five spindles of the wheel, which turns once a second, thus marking the picture off in exact fifths of a second. The vibrations of the thread are enormously magnified on the plate by a lens and produce a series of wavy or zigzag lines. I have shielded the sensitized plate by a wooden hood which permits no light to strike it except the slender ray that is doing the work. The plate moves across the field slowly, its speed regulated by the fly-wheel. Don't you think it is neat and delicate? All these movements are produced by one of the finest little electric motors I ever saw."

I could not get the idea of the revolvers out of my head so quickly. I agreed with him, but all I could find to say was, "Do you think there was more than this one whom they call the Chief engaged in the shootings?"

"I can't say absolutely anything more than I have told you, yet," he answered in a tone that seemed to discourage further questioning along that line.

He continued to work on the delicate apparatus with its thread stretched between the stationary magnets of the galvanometer, a thread so delicate that it might have been spun by a microscopic spider, so light that no scales made by human hands could weigh it, so slender that the mind could hardly grasp it. It was about one-third the diameter of a red corpuscle of blood and its weight had been estimated as about .00685 milligrams, truly a fairy thread. It was finer than the most delicate cobweb and could be seen with the naked eye only when a strong light was thrown on it so as to catch the reflection.

"All I can say is," he admitted, "that the bullets which committed this horrible series of crimes have been proven all to be shot from the same gun, presumably, I think I shall show, by the same hand, and that hand is the same that wrote the blackmailing letter."

"Whose gun was it?" I asked. "Was there a way to connect it and the bullets and the cartridges with the owner—four things, all separated—and then that owner with the curious and tragic succession of events that had marked the case since the theft of Warrington's car?"

Garrick had apparently completed his present work of adjusting the delicate apparatus. He was now engaged on another piece which also had a powerful light in it and an attachment which bore a strong resemblance to a horn.

He paused a moment, regarding me quizzically. "I think you'll find it sufficiently novel to warrant your coming, Tom," he added. "I have already invited Dillon and his man, Herman, over the telephone just before you came in. McBirney will be there, and Forbes, of course. He'll have to come, if I want him. By the way, I wish you'd get in touch with Warrington and see how he is. If it is all right, tell him that I'd like to have him escort Miss Winslow and her aunt here, to-night. Meanwhile I shall find out how our friend the Boss is getting on. He ought to be here, at any cost, and I've put it off until to-night to make sure that he'll be in fit condition to come. To-night at nine—here in this office—remember," he concluded gayly. "In the meantime, not a word to anybody about what you have seen here this afternoon."



CHAPTER XXV

THE SCIENTIFIC GUNMAN

Our little audience arrived one by one, and, as master of ceremonies, it fell to me to greet them and place them as much at ease as the natural tension of the occasion would permit. Garrick spoke a word or two to each, but was still busy putting the finishing touches on the preparations for the "entertainment," as he called it facetiously, which he had arranged.

"Before I put to the test a rather novel combination which I have arranged," began Garrick, when they had all been seated, "I want to say a few words about some of the discoveries I have already made in this remarkable case."

He paused a moment to make sure that he had our attention, but it was unnecessary. We were all hanging eagerly on his words.

"There is, I believe," he resumed slowly, "no crime that is ever without a clew. The slightest trace, even a drop of blood no larger than a pin-head, may suffice to convict a murderer. So may a single hair found on the clothing of a suspect. In this case," he added quickly, "it is the impression made by the hammer of a pistol on the shell of a cartridge which leads unescapably to one conclusion."

The idea was so startling that we followed Garrick's every word as if weighted with tremendous importance, as indeed it was in the clearing up of this mysterious affair.

"I have made a collection from time to time," he pursued, "of the various exploded cartridges, the bullets, and the weapons left behind by the perpetrator of the dastardly series of crimes, from the shooting of the stool pigeon of the police, Rena Taylor, and the stealing of Mr. Warrington's car, down to the peculiar events of last night up in the Ramapos and the running fight through the streets of New York in taxicabs this morning.

"I have studied this evidence with the microscope and the microphotographic apparatus. I have secured excellent microphotographs of the marks made by various weapons on the cartridges and bullets. Taking those used in the commission of the greater crimes in this series, I find that the marks are the same, apparently, whether the gun shot off a bullet of wax or tallow which became liquid in the body, whether it discharged a stupefying gas, or whether the deadly anaesthetic bullet was fired. I have obtained a gun"—he threw it on the table with a clang—"the marks from the hammer of which correspond with the marks made on all the cartridges I have mentioned. One person owned that gun and used it. That is proved. It remains only to connect that gun positively and definitely, as a last link, with that person."

I noticed with a start that the revolver still had a stout cord tied to it.

As he concluded, Garrick had begun fitting a curious little device to each of our forearms. It looked to me like an electrode consisting of large plates of German silver, covered with felt and saturated with salt solution. From each electrode wires ran across the floor to some hidden apparatus.

"Back of this screen," he went on, indicating it in the corner of the room, "I have placed what is known as the string galvanometer, invented, or, perhaps better, perfected by Dr. Einthoven, of Leyden. It was designed primarily for the study of the beating of the heart in cases of disease, but it also may be used to record and study emotions as well,—love and hate, fear, joy, anger, remorse, all are revealed by this uncanny, cold, ruthlessly scientific instrument.

"The machine is connected by wires to each of you, and will make what are called electrocardiographs, in which every emotion, every sentiment, every passion is recorded inevitably, inexorably. For, the electric current that passes from each of you to the machine over these wires carrying the record of the secrets of your hearts is one of the feeblest currents known to science. Yet it can be caught and measured. The dynamo which generates this current is not a huge affair of steel castings and endless windings of copper wire. It is merely the heart of the sitter.

"The heart makes only one three-thousandth of a volt of electricity at each beat. It would take thousands of hearts to light one electric light, hundreds of thousands to run one trolley car. Yet just that slight little current from the heart is enough to sway a gossamer strand of quartz fibre in what I may call my 'heart station' here. This current, as I have told you, passes from each of you over a wire and vibrates a fine quartz fibre in unison with it, one of the most delicate bits of mechanism ever made, recording the result on a photographic film by means of a beam of light reflected from a delicate mirror."