She laid a sheet of typewriting on the laboratory table.

"How did you get it?" asked Kennedy in eager approbation.

"When I left you at the Futurist Tea Room to follow that woman Marie in the cab, I had a good deal of trouble. I guess people thought I was crazy, the way I was ordering that driver about, but he was so stupid and he would get tangled up in the traffic on Fifth Avenue. Still, I managed to hang on, principally because I had a notion already that she was going to the Montmartre. Sure enough, she turned down that block, but she didn't go into the hotel after all. She stopped and went into a place two doors down- -Mme. Margot's Beauty Parlour."

"Just where we finally saw Harris go," exclaimed Kennedy. "I beg your pardon for interrupting."

"Of course I couldn't go in right after her, so I drove around the corner. Then it occurred to me that it would be a good time to stop in to see Dr. Harris—when he was out. You know my experience with the fakers has made me pretty good at faking up ailments. Then, too, I knew that it would be easy when he was not there. I said I was an old patient and had an appointment and that I'd wait, although I knew those were not his regular office hours. He has an alleged trained nurse there all the time. She let me into his waiting-room on the second floor in front—you remember the private dining-rooms are in back. I waited in momentary fear that he WOULD come back. You see, I had a scheme of my own. Well, I waited until at last the nurse had to leave the office for a short time.

"That was my chance. I tiptoed over to his desk in the next room. On it were a lot of letters. I looked over them but could find nothing that seemed to be of interest. They were all letters from other people. But they showed that he must have quite an extensive practice, and that he is not over-scrupulous. I didn't want to take anything that would excite suspicion unless I had to. Just then I heard someone coming down the corridor from the elevator. I had just time to get back to a chair in the waiting-room when the door opened and there was that Titian from the office, you remember. She saw me without recognizing me, went in and laid some papers on his desk. As soon as she was gone, I went in again and looked them over. Here was one that she had copied for him."

Kennedy had been carefully scrutinizing the sheet of paper as she told how she obtained it.

"It couldn't be better as far as our purposes are concerned," he congratulated. "It seems to consist of some notes he had made and wished to preserve about drugs."

I leaned over and read:

VERONAL.—Diethylmalonyl or diethylbarbituric acid. A hypnotic used extensively. White, crystalline, odourless, slightly bitter. Best in ten to fifteen grain cachets. Does not affect circulatory or respiratory systems or temperature. Toxicity low: 135 gr. taken with no serious result. Unreasonable use for insomnia, however, may lead to death.

HEROIN.—Constant use of heroin has been known to lead to—

I looked inquiringly at Kennedy.

"Just some fragmentary notes which he had evidently been making. Rather interesting in themselves as showing perhaps something of his practice, but not necessarily incriminating."

While we were discussing the contents of the notes, Kennedy had laid over the typewritten sheet the rules and graduated strip of glass which he had used in examining the strange letter signed "An Outcast."

A moment later he pulled the letter itself from a drawer and laid the two pieces of writing side by side, comparing them, going from one to the other successively.

"People generally, who have not investigated the subject," he remarked as he worked, "hold the opinion that the typewriter has no individuality. Fortunately that is not true. The typewriting machine does not always afford an effective protection to the criminal. On the contrary, the typewriting may be a direct means of tracing a document to its source and showing it to be what it really is. This is especially true of typewritten anonymous letters. Without careful investigation it is impossible to say what can be determined from the examination of any particular piece of typewriting, but typewriting can often be positively identified as being the work of a certain particular typewriting machine and even the date of writing can sometimes be found out."

He had been carefully counting something under the lens of a pocket glass. "Even the number of threads to the inch in the ribbon, as shown in the type impression, plainly seen and accurately measured by the microscope or in an enlarged photograph, may show something about the identity of a disputed writing."

He was pointing to a letter "r." Under the glass I noticed that there was a break in the little curl at the top.

"Now if you find such a break in the same letter in another piece of typewriting, what would you think?"

"That they were from the same machine," I replied.

"Not so fast," he cautioned. "True, it might raise a presumption that it was from the same machine. But the laws of chance would be against your enthusiasm, Walter."

"Of course," I admitted on second thought.

"It's just like the finger-print theory. There must be a sort of summation of individual characteristics. Now here's a broken 'l' and there is an 'a' that is twisted. Now, if the same defects are found in another piece of writing, that makes the presumption all the stronger, and when you have massed together a number of such characteristics it raises the presumption to a mathematical certainty, does it not?"

I nodded and he went on. "The faces of many letters inevitably become broken, worn, or battered. Not only does that tend to identify a particular machine, but it is sometimes possible, if you have certain admitted standard specimens of writing covering a long period, to tell just when a disputed writing was made. There are two steps in such an inquiry, the first the determination of the fact that a document was written on a certain particular kind of machine and the second that it was written on a certain individual machine of that make. I have here specimens of the writing of all the leading machines. It is easy to pick out the make used, say in the 'Outcast' letter. Moreover, as I said when I first saw that letter, it is in the regular pica type. So are they all, but as ninety-five per cent, use the pica style that in itself proved nothing."

"What is that bit of ruled glass?" asked Clare, bending over the letters in deep interest.

"In ordinary typewriting," replied Craig, "each letter occupies an imaginary square, ten to the inch horizontally and six to the inch vertically. Typewriting letters are in line both ways. This ruled glass plate is an alinement test plate for detecting defects in alinement. I have also here another glass plate in which the lines diverge each at a very slightly different angle—a typewriting protractor for measuring the slant of divergence of various letters that have become twisted, so to speak.

"When it is in perfect alinement the letter occupies the middle of each square and when out of alinement it may be in any of the four corners, or either side of the middle position or at the top or bottom above or below the middle. That, you see, makes nine positions in all—or eight possible divergences from normal in this particular alone."

Clare had been using the protractor herself, quickly familiarizing herself with it.

"Another possible divergence," went on Kennedy, "is the perpendicular position of the letter in relation to the line. That is of great value in individualizing a machine. It is very seldom that machines, even when they are new, are perfect in this particular. It does not seem much until you magnify it. Then anyone can see it, and it is a characteristic that is fixed, continuous, and not much changed by variations in speed or methods of writing.

"Here's another thing. Typewriter faces are not flat like printing type, but are concaved to conform to the curve of the printing surface of the roller. When they are properly adjusted all portions should print uniformly. But when they are slightly out of position in any direction the two curved surfaces of type and roller are not exactly parallel and therefore don't come together with uniform pressure. The result is a difference in intensity in different parts of the impression."

It was fascinating to see Craig at work over such minute points which we had never suspected in so common a thing as ordinary typewriting.

"Then you can identify these letters positively?" asked Clare.

"Positively," answered Craig. "If two machines of the same make were perfect to begin with and in perfect condition—which is never found to be the case when they are critically examined—the work from one would be theoretically indistinguishable from that of another until actual use had affected them differently. The work of any number of machines begins inevitably to diverge as soon as they are used. Since there are thousands of possible particulars in which differences may develop, it very soon becomes possible to identify positively the work of a particular typewriting machine."

"How about the operator?" I asked curiously.

"Different habits of touch, spacing, speed, arrangement, and punctuation all may also tend to show that a particular piece of writing was or was not done by one operator. In other words, typewriting individuality in many cases is of the most positive and convincing character and reaches a degree of certainty which may almost be described as absolute proof. The identification of a typewritten document in many cases is exactly parallel to the identification of an individual who precisely answers a general description as to features, complexion, size, and in addition matches a long detailed list of scars, birthmarks, deformities, and individual peculiarities."

Together we three began an exhaustive examination of the letters, and as Kennedy called off the various characteristics of each type on the standard keyboard we checked them up. It did not take long to convince us, nor would it have failed to convince the most sceptical, that both had come from the same source and the same writer.

"You see," concluded Kennedy triumphantly, "we have advanced a long step nearer the solution of at least one of the problems of this case."

Miss Kendall had evidently been thinking quickly and turning the matter over in her mind.

"But," she spoke up quickly, "even that does not point to the same person as the author—not the writer, but the author—of the three pieces of writing."

"No indeed," agreed Craig. "There is much left to be done. As a matter of fact, there might have been one author, or there might have been two, although all the mechanical work was done by one person. But we are at least sure that we have localized the source of the writing. We know that it is from the Montmartre that the letter came. We know that it is in some way that that place and some of the people who frequent it are connected with the disappearance of Betty Blackwell."

"In other words," supplied Clare, "we are going to get at the truth through that Titian-haired stenographer."

"Exactly."

Clare had risen to go.

"It quite takes my breath away to think that we are really making such progress against the impregnable Montmartre. At various times my investigators have been piecing together little bits of information about that place. I shall have the whole record put together to-night. I shall let you know about it the first thing in the morning."

The door had scarcely closed when Kennedy turned quickly to me and remarked, "That girl has something on her mind. I wonder what it is?"



XII

THE "PORTRAIT PARLE"

What it was that Clare Kendall had on her mind, appeared the following day.

"There's something I want to try," she volunteered, evidently unable to repress it any longer. "I have a plan—or half a plan. Don't you think it would be just the thing, under the circumstances, to ring up District Attorney Carton, tell him what we have accomplished and take him into our confidence? Perhaps he can suggest something. At any rate we have all got to work together, for there is going to be a great fight when they find out how far we have gone."

"Bully idea," agreed Craig.

Twenty minutes later we were seated in the District Attorney's office in the Criminal Courts Building, pouring into his sympathetic ear the story of our progress so far.

Carton seemed to be delighted, as Kennedy proceeded to outline the case, at the fact that he and Miss Kendall had found it possible to co-operate. His own experience in trying to get others to work with the District Attorney's office, particularly the police, had been quite the reverse.

"I wish to heaven you could get the right kind of evidence against the Montmartre gang," he sighed. "It is a gang, too—a high-class gang. In fact—well, it must be done. That place is a blot on the city. The police never have really tried to get anything on it. Miss Kendall never could, could you? I admit I never have. It seems to be understood that it is practically impossible to prove anything against it. They openly defy us. The thing can't go on. It demoralizes all our other work. Just one good blow at the Montmartre and we could drive every one of these vile crooks to cover." He brought his fist down with a thud on the desk, swung around in his chair, and emphasized his words with his forefinger.

"And yet, I know as well as I know that you are all in this room that graft is being paid to the police and the politicians by that place and in fact by all those places along there. If we are to do anything with them, that must be proved. That is the first step and I'm glad the whole thing hinges on the Blackwell case. People always sit up and take notice when there is something personal involved, some human interest which even the newspapers can see. That Montmartre crowd, whoever they are, must be made to feel the strong arm of the law. That's what I am in this office to do. Now, Kennedy, there must be some way to catch those crooks with the goods."

"They aren't ordinary crooks, you know," ruminated Kennedy.

"I know they are not. But you and Miss Kendall and Jameson ought to be able to think out a scheme."

"But you see, Mr. Carton," put in Clare, "this is a brand new situation. Your gambling and vice and graft exposures have made all of them so wary that they won't pass a bill from their right to their left pockets for fear it is marked."

Carton laughed.

"Well, you are a brand new combination against them. Let me see; you want suggestions. Why don't you use the detectaphone—get our own little Black Book?"

Kennedy shook his head.

"The detectaphone is all right, as Dorgan knows. It might work again. But I don't think I'll take any chances. No, these grafters wouldn't say 'Thank you' in an open boat in mid-ocean, for fear of wireless, now. They've been educated up to a lot of things lately. No, it must be something new. What do you know about graft up there?"

"The people who are running those places in the fifties are making barrels of money," summarized Carton quickly. "No one ever interferes with them, either. I know from reliable sources, too, that the police are 'getting theirs.' But although I know it I can't prove it; I can't even tell who is getting it. But once a week a collector for the police calls around in that district and shakes them all down. By Jove, to-day is the day. The trouble with it all is that they have made the thing so underground that no one but the principals know anything about it—not even the agents. I guess you are right about the detectaphone."

"To-day's the day, is it?" mused Craig.

"So I understand."

"I think I can get them with a new machine they never dreamed of," exclaimed Kennedy, who had been turning something over in his mind.

He reached for the telephone and called the Montmartre.

"Julius, please," he said when they answered; then, placing his hand over the transmitter, he turned to Clare. "That was your friend the Titian, Miss Kendall."

"No friend of mine if she happens to remember seeing me in Dr. Harris's office the other day. Still, I doubt if she would."

"Hello—Julius? Good morning. How about a private dining-room for three, Julius?"

We could not hear the reply, but Craig added quickly, "I thought there were two?"

Evidently the answer was in the affirmative, for Craig asked next, "Well, can't we have the small one?"

He hung up the receiver with a satisfied smile after closing with "That's the way to talk. Thank you, Julius. Good-bye."

"What was the difficulty?" I asked.

"Why, I thought I'd take a chance—and it took. Now figure it out for yourself. Carton says it's dough day, so to speak, up there. What is more natural than that the money for all those places leased to various people should be passed over in a place that is public and yet is not public? For instance, there is the Montmartre itself. Now think it out. Where would that be done in the Montmartre? Why, in one of the private dining-rooms, of course."

"That seems reasonable," agreed Carton.

"That was the way I doped it," pursued Craig. "I thought I'd confirm it if I could. You remember they told us to call up always if I wanted a private dining-room and it would be reserved for me. So it was the most natural thing in the world for me to call up. If they had said yes, I should have been disappointed. But they said no, and straightway I wanted one of those rooms the worst way. One seems to be engaged—the large one. He said nothing about the other, so I asked him. Since I knew about it, he could hardly say no. Well, I have engaged it for lunch—an early luncheon, too."

"It sounds all right, as though you were on the right trail," remarked Carton. "But, remember, only the best sort of evidence will go against those people. They can afford to hire the best lawyers that money can retain. And be careful not to let them get anything on you, for they are fearful liars, and they'll go the limit to discredit you."

"Trust us," assured Craig. "Now, Miss Kendall, if you will give us the pleasure of lunching with you at the Montmartre again, I think we may be able to get the Judge just the sort of open and shut evidence he is after."

"I shall be glad to do it. I'm ready now."

Kennedy glanced at his watch. "It's a little early yet. If we take a taxicab we shall have plenty of time to stop at the laboratory on our way."

Arriving at the laboratory, he went to a drawer, from which he took a little box which contained a long tube, and carefully placed it in the breast pocket of his coat. Then from a chest of tools he drew several steel sections that apparently fitted together, and began stuffing the parts into various pockets.

"Here, Walter," he said, "these make me bulge like a yeggman with his outfit under his coat. Can't you help me with some of these parts?"

I jammed several into various pockets—heavy pieces of metal—and we were ready.

Our previous visits to the Montmartre seemed to have given us the entree and the precaution of telephoning made it even easier. Indeed, it appeared that about all that was necessary there was to be known and to be thought "right." We carefully avoided the office, where the stenographer might possibly have recognized Clare, and entered the elevator.

"Is Dr. Harris in?" asked Craig, both by way of getting information and showing that he was no stranger.

The black elevator boy gave an ivory grin. "No, sah. He done gone on one o' them things."

Another question developed the fact that whenever Harris was away it was generally assumed that he was tinting the metropolis vermilion from the Battery to the Bronx.

We passed down the hall to the smaller of the two dining-rooms, and as we went by the larger we could see the door open and that no one was there.

We had ordered and the waiter had scarcely shut the door before Kennedy had divested himself of the heavy steel sections which he had hidden in his pockets. I did the same.

With a quick glance he seemed to be observing just how the furniture was placed. The smaller dining-room was quite as elaborately furnished as the larger, though of course the furniture was more crowded.

He moved the settee and was on his knees in a corner. "Let me see," he considered. "There was nothing on this side of the larger room except the divan in the centre."

As nearly as he could judge he was measuring off just where the divan stood on the opposite side of the wall, and its height. Then he began fitting together the pieces of steel. As he added one to another, I saw that they made a sectional brace and bit of his own design, a long, vicious-looking affair such as a burglar might have been glad to own.

Carefully he started to bore through the plaster and lath back of the settee and to one side of where the divan must have been. He was making just as small a hole as possible, now and then stopping to listen.

There was no noise from the next room, but a tap on the door announced the waiter with luncheon. He shoved the settee back and joined us. The discreet waiter placed the food on the table and departed without a word or look. Kennedy resumed his work and we left the luncheon still untasted.

The bit seemed to have gone through as Kennedy, turning it carefully, withdrew it now and then to make sure. At last he seemed to be satisfied with the opening he had made.

From the package in his breast pocket he drew a long brass tube which looked as if it might be a putty-blower. Slowly he inserted it into the hole he had bored.

"What is it?" I asked, unable to restrain my curiosity longer.

"I felt sure that there would be no talking done in that room, especially as we are in this one and anyone knows that even if you can't put a detectaphone in a room, it will often work if merely placed against a wall or door, on the other side, in the next room. So I thought I'd use this instead. Put your eye down here."

I did so and was amazed to find that through a hole less than a quarter of an inch in diameter the brass tube enabled me to see the entire room next to us.

I looked up at Kennedy in surprise. "What do you think of this, Miss Kendall?" I asked, moving the settee out of her way. "What do you call it?"

"That is a detectascope," he replied, "a little contrivance which makes use of the fish-eye lens.

"Yes. The detectascope enables you to see what is going on in another room. The focus may be altered in range so that the faces of those in the room may be recognized and the act of passing money or signing cheques, for instance, may be detected. The instrument is fashioned somewhat after the cytoscope of the doctors, with which the human interior may be seen."

"Very remarkable," exclaimed Clare. "But I can't understand how it is possible to see so much through such a little tube. Why, I almost fancy I can see more in that room than I could with my own eyes if I were placed so that I could not move my head."

Kennedy laughed.

"That's the secret," he went on. "For instance, take a drop of water. Professor Wood of Johns Hopkins has demonstrated recently the remarkable refracting power of a drop of water, using the camera and the drop of water as a lens. It is especially interesting to scientists because it illustrates the range of vision of some fishes. They have eyes that see over half a circle. Hence the lens gets its name—'the fish-eye lens.' A globe refracts the light that reaches it from all directions, and if it is placed as the lens is in the detectascope so that one half of it catches the light, all this light will be refracted through it. Ordinary lenses, because of their flatness, have a range of only a few degrees, the widest in use, I believe, taking in only ninety- six degrees, or a little over a quarter of a circle. So you see my detectascope has a range almost twice as wide as that of any other lens."

The little tube was fascinating, and although there was no one in the next room yet, I could not resist the desire to keep on looking through it.

"Since you are so interested, Walter," laughed Craig, "we'll appoint you to take the first shift at watching. Meanwhile we may as well eat since we shall certainly have to pay. When you are tired or hungry I'll take a turn."

Kennedy and I had been taking turns at watching through the detectascope while Miss Kendall told us more about how she had come to be associated with the organization to clean up New York.

"We have struck some delicate situations before," she was saying, "times when it meant either that we must surrender and compromise the work of the investigation or offend an interest that might turn out to be more powerful than we realized. Our rule from the start was, 'No Compromise.' You know the moment you compromise with one, all the others hear it and it weakens your position. We've made some powerful enemies, but our idea is that as long as we keep perfectly straight and honest they will never be able to beat us. We shall win in the end, because so far it has never come to a show-down, when we appealed to the public itself, that the public had not risen and backed us strongly."

I had come to have the utmost confidence in Clare Kendall and her frank way of handling a ticklish yet most important subject without fear or prudishness. There was a refreshing newness about her method. It was neither the holier-than-thou attitude of many religionists, nor the smug monopoly of all knowledge of the social worker, nor the brutal wantonness of the man or woman of the world who excuses everything "because it is human nature, always has been and always will be."

"We have no illusions on the subject," she pursued. "We don't expect to change human nature until the individual standard changes. But we are convinced of this—and it is as far as we go and is what we are out to accomplish—and that is that we can, and are going to, smash protected, commercialized vice as one of the big businesses of New York."

"Sh-h," cautioned Kennedy, whose turn it happened to be just then to watch. "Someone has just entered the room."

"Who is it?" I whispered eagerly.

"A man. I can't see his face. His back is toward me, but there is something familiar about him. There—he is turning around. For Heaven's sake—it's Ike the Dropper!"

We had already recounted to Miss Kendall our experiences in following Dr. Harris to the black and tan joint and the meeting with Ike the Dropper.

"Then Ike the Dropper is the collector for the police or the politicians higher up," she exclaimed under her breath. "If we learned nothing more, that would be enough. It would tell us whom to watch."

Hastily we took turns at getting a good look at Ike through the wonderful little detectascope. Then Kennedy resumed his watch, whispering now and then what he saw. Apparently Ike had proceeded to make himself comfortable in the luxurious surroundings of the private dining-room, against the arrival of the graft payers.

"I wonder who the man higher up is," whispered Miss Kendall.

"Someone is coming in," reported Kennedy. "By George, it is that stenographer from the office downstairs. She is handing him an envelope. Good for her! He tried to kiss her and she backed away in disgust. The scoundrel!

"Isn't it clever, though? Not a word is said by anyone. I don't suppose she could swear to knowing anything about what is in the envelope. There she goes out. He is opening the envelope and counting out the money—ten one-hundred-dollar bills. There they go into the fob pocket of his trousers. I imagined he learned something from my pick-pocket. That is the safest pocket a man has. That little contribution, I take it, was from the Montmartre itself."

Then followed an interval in which Ike puffed away on his cigar in silent state.

"Here's another now," announced Craig. "Another woman. I never saw her before."

Both Miss Kendall and I looked and neither of us recognized her. She was slim and would have been young-looking if she had not made such obvious efforts to imitate the healthy colour of the cheeks which she probably would have had if she had lived sensibly and left cosmetics alone.

Kennedy was hastily jotting down some notes on the back of an envelope.

"They are going through the same proceedings again. I guess Ike doesn't like her. There she goes. Only two hundred this time."

Another wait followed, during which Ike smoked down his cigar and lighted another from the stub. Then the door opened again.

Kennedy motioned quickly to Clare to look through the detectascope. Meanwhile he pulled from his pocket the piece of paper he had written on and torn from the back of the menu at the Futurist.

"Marie!" exclaimed Clare under her breath.

"The same," whispered Kennedy. "Miss Kendall, you have the true 'camera eye' of the born detective. Now—please—let me see if I can get what occurs."

She yielded her place to him.

"Three hundred more," he murmured. "Marie must be in the game, though. He didn't wait for her to leave before he tore open the envelope. Now they are burning the envelopes in the ash tray. And still not a word. This is clever, clever. Think of it—fifteen hundred dollars of easy money like that! I wonder how much of it sticks to Ike's hands on the way up. He must have a capacious fob pocket for that. Say, he's a regular fellow with the ladies, Ike is. Only this one doesn't seem to resent it. By George, I wonder if this fellow Ike isn't giving the police or the politicians the double-cross. He couldn't be on such intimate terms with one who was paying graft to him as collector otherwise; do you think so?"

Craig looked up without waiting for an answer. "You will excuse any levity, but that was some kiss she just gave him."

Kennedy resumed his position for looking through the detectascope, occasionally glancing down at the notes he had made the day before and now and then making a slight alteration.

"There. She is going away now. Well, I guess the collection is all over. He has his hat on and a third cigar, ready to go as soon as somebody signals that the coast is clear. That was a good day's work for Ike and the man higher up, whoever he is. Ah—there he goes. It was a signal from the waiter he was after. Now we may as well finish this luncheon. It cost enough."

For several minutes we ate in silence.

"I wish I could have followed Ike," observed Craig. "But of course it would have been of no use. To go out right after him would have given the whole thing away."

"Who is that dark-haired, dark-skinned woman, Marie, do you suppose?" asked Clare. "Sometimes I almost think she is part negro."

"I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if you were right. If you have any investigators to spare, they might try to find out who she is and something of her history. I will give them a copy of these notes which I intend to turn over to the Department of Justice men who have been making the white slave investigation for the Federal Government."

Kennedy had laid the notes which he had made on the menu before us and was copying them. Both Clare and I leaned over to read them. It was Greek to me:

Nose—straight, base elevated, nostrils thick, slightly flaring.

Ears—lobe descending oval, traversed by a hollow, antitragus concave; lobe separated from cheek.

Lips—large.

Mouth—large.

Chin—receding.

There was much more that he had jotted down and added to the description.

"Oh," exclaimed Clare, as she ran through the writing, "that is this new portrait parle, the spoken picture, isn't it?"

"Yes," replied Kennedy. "You may know that the Government has been using it in its white slave inquiry and has several thousands of such descriptions. Under the circumstances, I understand that the Government agents find it superior to finger-prints. Finger-prints are all right for identification, as we have found right here, for instance, in the Night Court. But Bertillon's new portrait parle is the thing for apprehension."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Well, take the case before us. We have had no chance to finger- print that woman and what good would it do if we had? No one could recognize her that way until she was arrested or some means had been taken to get the prints again.

"But the portrait parle is scientific apprehension, the step that comes before scientific identification by finger-prints. It means giving the detective an actual portrait of the person he is sent after without burdening him with a photograph. As descriptions are now given, together with a photograph, a person is described as of such a weight, height, general appearance, and so on. A clever crook knows that. He knows how to change his appearance so that there are few even of the best detectives who can recognize him. This new system describes the features so that a man can carry them in his mind systematically, features that cannot be changed.

"Take the nose, for example," explained Kennedy. "There are only three kinds, as Bertillon calls them—convex, straight, and concave. A detective, we will say, is sent out after a man with a concave nose or, as in this case a woman with a straight nose. Thus he is freed from the necessity of taking a second glance at two-thirds of the women, roughly, that he meets—that is, theoretically. He passes by all with convex and concave noses.

"There are four classes of ears—triangular, square, oval, and round, as they may be called. Having narrowed his search to women with straight noses, the detective needs to concern himself with only one-fourth of the women with straight noses. Having come down to women with straight noses and, say, oval ears, he will eliminate all those that do not have the mouth, lips, chin, eyes, forehead, and so on that have been given him. Besides that, there are other striking differences in noses and ears that make his work much easier than you would imagine, once he has been trained to observe such things quickly."

"It sounds all right," I agreed haltingly.

"It is all right, too," he argued warmly. "The proof of it is its use in Paris and other cities abroad and the fact that it has been imported here to New York in the Police Department and has been used by the Government. I could tell you many interesting stories about how it has succeeded where photographs would have failed."

I had been reading over the description again and trying to apply it.

"For instance," Craig resumed thoughtfully. "I believe that this woman is a mulatto, but that is a long way from proving it. Still, I hope that by using the portrait parle and other things we may be able to draw the loose threads together into a net that will catch her—providing, of course, that she ought to be caught."

He had finished making copies of the portrait parle and had called for a cheque for the lunch.

"So you see," he concluded, "this is without any doubt the woman we saw at the Futurist, whom Miss Kendall followed to Madame Margot's Beauty Shop, two doors down."

Kennedy handed a copy to Miss Kendall.

"Using that and whatever other means you may have, Miss Kendall," he said, "I wish that you would try to find this woman and all you can about her. Walter, take this other copy and see Carton. I think he has a county detective who knows the system. I shall spend the rest of the day getting in touch with the Federal authorities in this city and in Washington trying to find out whether they know anything about her."

We left the Montmartre with as much care as we had entered and seemingly without having yet aroused any suspicion. The rest of the day was spent in setting to work those whom we felt we could trust to use the portrait parle to locate the mysterious dark- haired Marie who seemed to cross our trail at every turn, yet who proved so elusive.



XIII

THE CONVICTION

Meanwhile, the organization was using every effort to get possession of the Black Book, as Kennedy had suspected.

Miss Ashton had been busy on the case of the missing Betty Blackwell, but as yet there was no report from any of the agencies which she had set in motion to locate the girl. She had seen Langhorne, and, although she did not say much about the result of the interview, I felt sure that it had resulted in a further estrangement between them, perhaps a suspicion on the part of Langhorne that Carton had been responsible for it.

In as tactful a way as possible, Miss Ashton had also warned Mrs. Ogleby of the danger she ran, but, as I had already supposed, the warning had been unnecessary. The rumours about the detectaphone record of the dinner had been quite enough. As for the dinner itself, what happened, and who were present, it remained still a mystery, perhaps only to be explained when at last we managed to locate the book.

Since the visit of Kahn, we had had no direct or indirect communications with either Dorgan or Murtha. They were, however, far from inactive, and I felt that their very secrecy, which had always been the strong card of the organization, boded no good. Although both Carton and Kennedy were straining every nerve to make progress in the case, there was indeed very little to report, either the next day or for some time after the episode which had placed Kahn in our power.

Carton was careful not to say anything about the graphic record we had taken of Kahn's attempt to throw the case. It was better so, he felt. The jury fixing evidence would keep and it would prove all the stronger trump to play when the right occasion arose. That time rapidly approached, now, with the day set for the trial of Dopey Jack.

The morning of the trial found both Kennedy and myself in the part of General Sessions to which the case had been assigned to be tried under Justice Pomeroy.

To one who would watch the sieve through which justice vigorously tries to separate the wheat from the chaff, the innocent from the guilty, a visit to General Sessions is the best means. For it is fed through the channels that lead through the police courts, the Grand Jury chambers, and the District Attorney's office. There one can study the largest assortment of criminals outside of a penal institution, from the Artful Dodger and Bill Sykes, Fagin and Jim the Penman, to the most modern of noted crooks of fact or fiction, all done here in real flesh and blood. It is the busiest of criminal courts. More serious offenders against the law are sentenced here than in any other court in New York. The final chapter in nearly every big crime is written there, sooner or later.

As we crowded in, thanks to the courtesy of Carton, we found a roomy chamber, with high ceiling, and grey, impressive walls in the southeast corner of the second floor of the Criminal Courts Building. Heavy carved oaken doors afforded entrance and exit for the hundreds of lawyers, witnesses, friends, and relatives of defendants and complainants who flocked thither.

Rows upon rows of dark-brown stained chairs filled the west half of the courtroom, facing a three-foot railing that enclosed a jury box and space reserved for counsel tables, the clerk and the District Attorney representing the people.

At the extreme east rose in severe dignity the dais or bench above which ascended a draped canopy of rich brown plush. Here Justice Pomeroy presided, in his robes of silk, a striking, white-haired figure of a man, whose face was seamed and whose eyes were keen with thought and observation.

Across the street, reached by the famous Bridge of Sighs, loomed the great grey hulk of stone and steel bars, the city prison, usually referred to as "The Tombs." As if there had been some cunning design in the juxtaposition, the massive jail reared itself outside the windows as an object lesson. It was a perpetual warning to the lawbreaker. Its towers and projections jutted out as so many rocks on a dangerous shore where had been wrecked thousands of promising careers just embarked on the troublesome seas of life.

Skirting the line of southern windows through which The Tombs was visible, ran a steel wire screen, eight feet high, marking off a narrow chute that hugged the walls to a door at the rear of the courtroom leading to the detention pen. Ordinarily prisoners were brought over the Bridge of Sighs in small droves and herded in the detention pens just outside the courtroom until their cases were called.

The line-up of prisoners at such times awaiting their turn at the bar of justice affords ample opportunity for study to the professional or the amateur criminalist.

Almost daily in this court one might look upon murderers, bank looters, clever forgers, taxicab robbers, safe crackers, highwaymen, second-story men, shoplifters, pickpockets, thieves, big and little—all sorts and conditions of crooks come to pay the price.

The court was crowded, for the gang leaders knew that this was a show-down for them. Carton himself, not one of his assistants, was to conduct the case. If Dopey Jack, who had violated almost every law in the revised statutes and had never suffered anything worse than a suspended sentence, could not get off, then no one could. And it was unthinkable that Dopey should not only be arrested and held in jail without bail, but even be convicted on such a trivial matter as slight irregularities that swung the primaries in a large section of the city for his superior, "higher up."

Rubano's father, a decent, sorrowing old man, sat in the rear of the courtroom, probably wondering how it had all happened, for he came evidently of a clean, law-abiding family.

But there was nothing in the appearance of the insolent criminal at the bar to show that he was of the same breed. He was no longer the athlete, whom "prize fighting" had inculcated with principles of manliness and fair play as well as a strong body. All that, as I had seen often before, was a pitiful lie. He was rat-eyed and soft-handed. His skin had the pastiness that comes of more exposure to the glare of vile dance halls than the sunlight of day. His black hair was slicked down; he was faultlessly tailored and his shoes had those high, bulging toes which are the extreme of Fourteenth Street fashion.

Outside, overflowing into the corridor, were gangsters, followers and friends of Dopey Jack. Only an overpowering show of force preserved the orderliness of the court from their boasting, bragging, and threats.

The work of selecting the jury began, and we watched it carefully. Kahn, cool and cunning, had evidently no idea of what Carton was holding out against him. In the panel I could see the anemic- looking fellow whom we had caught with the goods up at Farrell's. Carton's men had shadowed him and had learned of every man with whom he had spoken. As each, for some reason or other, was objected to by Carton, Kahn began to show exasperation.

At last the anemic fellow came up for examination. Kahn accepted him.

For a moment Carton seemed to fumble among his papers, without even looking at the prospective juror. Then he drew out the print which Kennedy had made. Quietly, without letting anyone else see it, he deliberately walked to Kahn's table and showed it to the lawyer, without a word, in fact without anyone else in the court knowing anything about it.

Kahn's face was a study, as he realized for the first time what it was that Carton and Kennedy had been doing that night at Farrell's. He paled. His hand shook. It was with the utmost effort that he could control his voice. He had been cornered and the yellow streak in him showed through.

In a husky voice he withdrew the juror, and Carton, in the same cold, self-possessed manner resumed his former position, not even a trace of a smile on his features.

It was all done so quickly that scarcely a soul in the court besides ourselves realized that anything had happened.

"Isn't he going to say anything about it?" I whispered to Craig.

"That will come later," was all that Kennedy replied, his eyes riveted still on Carton.

Though no one besides ourselves realized it, Carton had thrown a bombshell that had demolished the defence. Others noticed it, but as yet did not know the cause. Kahn, the great Kahn by whom all the forces of the underworld had conjured, was completely unnerved. Carton had fixed it so that he could not retreat and leave the case to someone else. He had knocked the props from under his defence by uncannily turning down every man whom he had any reason of suspecting of having been approached. Then he had given Kahn just a glimpse of the evidence that hinted at what was in store for himself personally. Kahn was never the same after that.

Judge Pomeroy, who had been following the progress of the case attentively, threw another bombshell when he announced that he would direct that the names of the jurors be kept secret until it was absolutely necessary to disclose them, a most unusual proceeding designed to protect them from reprisals of gangmen.

At last the real trial began. Carton had been careful to see that none of the witnesses for the people should be "stiffened" as the process was elegantly expressed by those of Dopey Jack's class—in other words, intimidated, bribed, or otherwise rendered innocuous. One after another, Carton rammed home the facts of the case, the fraudulent registration and voting, the use of the names of dead men to pad the polling lists, the bribery of election officials at the primaries—the whole sordid, debasing story of how Dopey Jack had intimidated and swung one entire district.

It was clever, as he presented it, with scarcely a reference to the name of Murtha, the beneficiary of such tactics—as though, perhaps, Murtha's case was in his mind separate and would be attended to later when his turn came.

Rapidly, concisely, convincingly, Carton presented the facts. Now and then Kahn would rise to object to something as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. But there was lacking something in his method. It was not the old Kahn. In fact, one almost felt that Carton was disappointed in his adversary, that he would have preferred a stiff, straight from the shoulder, stand-up fight.

Now and then we could hear a whisper circulating about among the spectators. What was the matter with Kahn? Was he ill? Gangdom was in a daze itself, little knowing the smooth stone that Carton had slung between the eyes of the great underworld Goliath of the law.

At last Carton's case was all in, and Kahn rose to present his own, a forced smile on his face.

There was an attempt at a demonstration, but Judge Pomeroy rapped sharply for order, and alert court attendants were about to nip effectively any such outburst. Still, it was enough to show the undercurrent of open defiance of the court, of law, of the people.

What it was no one but ourselves knew but Kahn was not himself. Others saw it, but did not understand. They had waited patiently through the sledge-hammer pounding of Carton, waiting expectantly for Kahn to explode a mine that would demolish the work of the District Attorney as if it had been so much paper. Carton had figuratively dampened the fuse. It sputtered, but the mine did not explode.

Once or twice there were flashes of the old Kahn, but for the most part he seemed to have crumpled up. Often I thought he was not the equal of even a police court lawyer. The spectators seemed to know that something was wrong, though they could not tell just what it was. Kahn's colleagues whispered among themselves. He made his points, but they lacked the fire and dash and audacity that once had caused the epigram that Kahn's appearance in court indicated two things—the guilt of the accused and a verdict of acquittal.

Even Justice Pomeroy seemed to notice it. Kahn had tried many a case before him and the old judge had a wholesome respect for the wiley lawyer. But to-day the court found nothing so grave as the strange dilatoriness of the counsel.

Once the judge had to interfere with the remark, "I may remind the learned counsel for the defence that the court intends to finish this case before adjournment for the day, if possible; if not, then we shall sit to-night."

Kahn seemed not to grasp the situation, as he had of old. He actually hurried up the presentation of the case, oblivious to the now black looks that were directed at him by his own client. If he had expected to recover his old-time equanimity as the case proceeded, he failed. For no one better than he knew what that little photograph of Carton's meant—disgrace, disbarment, perhaps prison itself. What was this Dopey Jack when ruin stared himself so relentlessly in the face in the person of Carton, calm and cool?

At last the summing up was concluded and both sides rested. Judge Pomeroy charged the jury, I thought with eminent fairness and impartiality, even, perhaps, glossing over some points which Kahn's weak presentation might have allowed him to make more of if Kahn had been bolder and stronger in pressing them.

The jury filed out and the anxious waiting began. On all sides was the buzz of conversation. Kahn himself sat silent, gazing for the most part at the papers before him. There must have been some wrangling of the jury, for twice hope of the gangsters revived when they sent in for the record.

But it was not over an hour later when the jury finally filed back again into their box. As Judge Pomeroy faced them and asked the usual question, the spectators hung, breathless, on the words of the foreman as the jurors stood up silently in their places. There was a tense hush in the courtroom, as every eye was fastened on the face of the foreman.

The hush seemed to embarrass him. But finally he found his voice. Nervously, as if he were taking his own life in his hands he delivered the verdict.

"We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment!"

Instantly, before anyone could move, the dignified judge faced the prisoner deliberately.

"You have heard the verdict," he said colourlessly. "I shall sentence you Friday."

Three court attendants were at Dopey Jack's side in a moment, but none too soon. The pent-up feeling of the man idolized by blackmailers, and man-killers, and batteners on street-women, who held nothing as disgrace but a sign of respect for law or remorse for capture, burst forth.

He cast one baleful look at Kahn as they hurried him to the wire- screened passageway. "It's all a frame-up—a damned frame-up!" he shouted.

As he disappeared a murmer of amazement ran through the room. The unthinkable had happened. An East Side idol had fallen.



XIV

THE BEAUTY PARLOUR

"It seems strange," remarked Kennedy the following morning when we had met in his laboratory for our daily conference to plan our campaign, "that although we seem to be on the right trail we have not a word yet about Betty Blackwell herself. Carton has just telephoned that her mother, poor woman, is worrying her heart out and is a mere shadow of her former self."

"We must get some word," asserted Miss Kendall. "This silence is almost like the silence of death."

"I'm afraid I shall have to impose on you that task," said Kennedy thoughtfully to her. "There seems to be no course open to us but to transfer our watch from Dr. Harris to this Marie. Of course it is too early to hear from our search by means of the portrait parle. But we have both seen Dr. Harris and Marie enter the beauty parlour of Madame Margot. Now, I don't mean to cast aspersions on your own good looks, Miss Kendall. They are of the sort with which no beauty parlour except Nature can compete."

A girl of another type than Clare would probably have read a half dozen meanings into his sincere compliment. But then, I reflected that a man of another type than Craig could not have made the remark without expecting her to do so. There was a frankness between them which, I must confess, considerably relieved me. I was not prepared to lose Kennedy, even to Miss Kendall.

She smiled. "You want me to try a course in artificial beautification, don't you?"

"Yes. Walter doesn't need it, and as for me, nothing could make me a modern Adonis. Seriously, though, a man couldn't get in there, I suppose. At least that is one of the many things I want you to find out. Under the circumstances, you are the only person in whom I have confidence enough to believe that she can get at the facts there. Find out all you can about the character of the place and the people who frequent it. And if you can learn anything about that Madame Margot who runs the place, so much the better."

"I'll try," she said simply.

Kennedy resumed his tests of the powder in the packets which Dr. Harris had been distributing, and I endeavoured to make myself as little in the way as possible. It was not until the close of the afternoon that a taxicab drove up and deposited Miss Kendall at the door.

"What luck?" greeted Kennedy eagerly, as she entered. "Do you feel thoroughly beautified?"

"Don't make me smile," she replied, as she swept in with an air that would have done credit to the star in a comic opera. "I'd hate to crack or even crease the enamel on my face. I've been steamed and frozen, beaten and painted and—-"

"I'm sorry to have been the cause of such cruel and unusual punishment," apologized Craig.

"No, indeed. Why, I enjoyed it. Let me tell you about the place."

She leaned against the laboratory table, certainly an incongruous picture in her new role as contrasted with the stained and dirty background of paraphernalia of medico-legal investigation. I could not help feeling that if Clare Kendall ever had decided to go in for such things, Marie herself would have had to look sharp to her laurels.

"As you enter the place," she began, "you feel a delightful warmth and there is an odour of attar of roses in the air. There are thick half-inch carpets that make walking a pleasure and dreamy Sleepy Hollow rockers that make it an impossibility. It is all very fascinating.

"There are dull-green lattices, little gateways with roses, white enamel with cute little diamond panes of glass for windows, inviting bowers of artificial flowers and dim yellow lights. It makes you feel like a sybarite just to see it. It's a cosmetic Arcadia for that fundamental feminine longing for beauty.

"Well, first there are the little dressing-rooms, each with a bed, a dresser and mirror, and everything in such good taste. After you leave them you go to a white, steamy room and there they bake you. It's a long process of gentle showers, hot and cold, after that, and massage.

"I thought I was through. But it seems that I had only just started. There was a battery of white manicure tables, and then the hairdressers and the artists who lay on these complexions— what do you think of mine? I can't begin to tell all the secrets of the curls and puffs, and reinforcements, hygienic rolls, transformations, fluffy puffers, and all that, or of the complexions. Why, you can choose a complexion, like wall-paper or upholstery. They can make you as pale as a sickly heroine or they can make you as yellow as a bathing girl. There is nothing they can't do. I asked just for fun. I could have come out as dusky as a gipsy.

"They tried electrolysis on my eyebrows, and one attendant suggested a hypodermic injection of perfume. Ever hear of that? She thought 'new mown hay' was the best to saturate the skin with. Then another suggested, as long as I had chosen this moonbeam make-up, that perhaps I'd like a couple of dimples. They could make them permanent or lasting only a few hours. I declined. But there is nothing so wild that they haven't either thought of themselves or imported from Paris or somewhere else. I heard them discussing someone who wanted odd eyes—made by pouring in certain liquids. They don't seem to care how they affect sight, hearing, skin, or health. It is decoration run mad."

"How about the people there?" asked Kennedy.

"Oh, I must tell you about that. There's so much to tell, I hardly know where to begin—or stop. I saw some flashy people. You know one customer attracts her friends and so on. There is every class there from the demi-monde up to actresses and really truly society. And they have things for all prices from the comparatively cheap to the most extravagant. They're very accommodating and, in a way, democratic."

"Did it seem—straight?" asked Kennedy.

"On the surface, yes, as far as I could judge. But I'll have to go back again for that. For instance, there was one thing that seemed queer to me. I had finished the steaming and freezing and was resting. A maid brought a tray of cigarettes, those dainty little thin ones with gilt tips. There seemed to be several kinds. I managed to try some of them. One at least I know was doped, although I only had a whiff of it. I think after they got to know you they'd serve anything from a cocktail in a teacup to the latest fads. I am sure that I saw one woman taking some veronal in her coffee."

"Veronal?" commented Craig. "Then that may be where Dr. Harris comes in."

"Partly, I think. I've got to find out more about what is hidden there. Once I heard a man's voice and I know it was Dr. Harris's."

"Harris! Why, the elevator boy at the Montmartre said he was painting the town," I observed.

"I don't believe it. I think he has all he can do keeping up with the beauty shop. You see, it is more than a massage parlour. They do real decorative surgery, as it is called. They'll engage to give you a new skin as soft and pink as a baby's. Or they will straighten a nose, or turn an ear. They have light treatment for complexions—the ruby ray, the violet ray, the phosphorescent ray.

"You would laugh at the fake science that is being handed out to those gullible fools. They can get rid of freckles and superfluous hair, of course. But they'll even tell you that they can change your mouth and chin, your eyes, your cheeks. I should be positively afraid of some of their electrical appliances there. They sweat down your figure or build it up—just as you please.

"Oh, no one need be plain in these days, not as long as Madame Margot's exists. That is where I think Dr. Harris comes in. He can pose as a full-fledged, blown-in-the-bottle cosmetic surgeon. I'll bet there is no limit to the agonized beautification that they can put you through if they think they can play you for a sucker."

"By the way, did you see Madame Margot herself?" asked Craig.

"No. I made all sorts of discreet inquiries after her, but they seemed to know nothing. The nearest I could get was a hint from one of the girls that she was away. But I'll tell you whom I think I heard, talking to the man whose voice sounded like Dr. Harris's, and that was Marie. Of course I couldn't see, but in the part of the shop that looks like a fake hospital I heard two voices and I would wager that Marie is going through some of this beautification herself. Of course she is. You remember how artificial she looked?"

"Did you see anyone else?"

"Oh, yes. You know the place is two doors from the Montmartre. Well, I think they have some connection with that place between them and the Montmartre. Anyhow it looks as if they did, for after I had been there a little while a girl came in, apparently from nowhere. She was the girl we saw paying money to Ike the Dropper, you remember—the one none of us recognized? There's something in that next house, and she seems to have charge of it."

"Well, you have done a good day's work," complimented Kennedy.

"I feel that I have made a start, anyhow," she admitted. "There is a lot yet to be learned of Margot's. You remember it was early in the day that I was there. I want to go back sometime in the afternoon or evening."

"Dr. Harris is apparently the oracle on beauty," mused Kennedy.

"Yes. He must make a lot of money there."

"They must have some graft, though, besides the beauty parlour," went on Kennedy. "They wouldn't be giving up money to Ike the Dropper if that was all there was."

"No, and that is where the doped cigarette comes in. That is why I want to go again. I imagine it's like the Montmartre. They have to know you and think you are all right before you get the real inside of the place."

"I don't doubt it." "I can't go around looking like a chorus girl," remarked Miss Kendall finally, with a glance at a little mirror she carried in her bag. "I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me until I get rid of this beautification."

The telephone rang sharply.

As Kennedy answered, we gathered that it was Carton. A few minutes of conversation, mostly on Carton's part, followed. Kennedy hung up the receiver with an exclamation of vexation.

"I'm afraid I did wrong to start anything with the portrait parle yet," he said. "Why, this thing we are investigating has so many queer turns that you hardly know whom to trust."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know who could have given the thing away, but Carton says it wasn't an hour after the inquiries began about Marie that it became known in the underworld that she was being looked for in this way. Oh, they are clever, those grafters. They have all sorts of ways of keeping in touch. I suppose they remember they had one experience with the portrait parle and it has made them as wary as a burglar is over finger-prints. Carton tells me that Marie has disappeared."

"I could swear I heard her or someone at Margot's," said Clare.

"And Harris has disappeared. Of course you thought you overheard him, too. But you may have been mistaken."

"Why?"

"As nearly as Carton can find out," said Kennedy quickly, "Marie is Madame Margot herself."



XV

THE PHANTOM CIRCUIT

"I want to go to Margot's again to-day," volunteered Miss Kendall the following morning, adding with a smile, "You see, I've got the habit. Really, though, there is a mystery about that place that fascinates me. I want to find out more about this Marie, or Margot, or whoever it was that I thought I heard there. And then those doped cigarettes interest me. You see, I haven't forgotten what you said about dope the first time we talked about Dr. Harris. They will be more free with me, too, now that I am no longer a stranger."

"That is a good idea," agreed Kennedy, who was now chafing under the enforced inaction of the case. "I hope that this time they will let you into some of the secrets. There is one thing, though, I wish you'd look out for especially."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I should like to know what ways there are of communicating with the outside. You realize, of course, that it is very easy for them, if they come to suspect you, to frame up something in a place like that. There are strong-arm women as well as men, and I'm not at all sure that there may not be some men besides Dr. Harris who are acquainted with that place. At any rate Dr. Harris is unscrupulous enough himself."

"I shall make it a point to observe that," she said as she left us. "I hope I'll have something to tell you when I come back."

"Walter," remarked Craig as the door closed, "that is one of the gamest girls I ever knew."

I looked across at him inquiringly.

"Don't worry, my boy," he added, reading my expression. "She's not of the marrying kind, any more than I am."

The morning passed and half of the afternoon without any word from Miss Kendall. Kennedy was plainly becoming uneasy, when a hurried footstep in the hall was followed by a more hurried opening of the door.

"Let me sit down, just a minute, to collect myself," panted Miss Kendall, pressing her hands to her temples where the blue veins stood out and literally throbbed. "I'm all in."

"Why, what is the matter?" asked Kennedy, placing a chair and switching on an electric fan, while he quickly found a bottle of restorative salts which was always handy for emergencies in the laboratory.

"Oh—such a time as I've had! Wait—let me see whether I can recollect it in order."

A few minutes later she resumed. "I went in, as before. There seemed to be quite a change in the way they treated me. I must have made a good impression the first time. A second visit seemed to have opened the way for everything. Evidently they think I am all right.

"Well, I went through much the same thing as I did before, only I tried to make it not quite so elaborate, down to the point where several of us were sitting in loose robes in the lounging-room. That was the part, you know, that interested me before.

"The maid came in with the cigarettes and I smoked one of the doped ones. They watch everything that you do so closely there, and the moment I smoked one they offered me another. I don't know what was in them, but I fancy there must be just a trace of opium. They made me feel exhilarated, then just a bit drowsy. I managed to make away with the second without inhaling much of the smoke, for my head was in a whirl by this time. It wasn't so much that I was afraid I couldn't take care of myself as it was that I was afraid that it would blunt the keenness of my observation and I might miss something."

"Besides the cigarettes, was there anything else?" asked Craig.

"Yes, indeed. I didn't see anyone there I recognized, but I heard some of them talk. One was taking a little veronal; another said something about heroin. It was high-toned hitting the pipe, if you call it that—a Turkish bath, followed by massage, and then a safe complement of anything you wanted, taken leisurely by these aristocratic dope fiends.

"There was one woman there who I am sure was snuffing cocaine. She had a little gold and enamelled box like a snuff box beside her from which she would take from time to time a pinch of some white crystals and inhale it vigorously, now and then taking a little sip of a liqueur that was brought in to her."

"That's the way," observed Kennedy. "There are always a considerable number of inhuman beings who are willing to make capital out of the weaknesses of others. This illicit sale of cocaine is one example. Such conditions have existed with the opium products a long time. Now it seems to be the 'coke fiend.'"

"I was glad I did just as I did," resumed Clare, "because it wasn't long before I saw that the thing to do was to feign drowsiness. A maid came over to me and in a most plausible and insinuating way hinted that perhaps I might feel like resting and that if the noise in the beauty parlour annoyed me, they had the entire next house—the one next to the Montmartre, you know—which had been fitted up as a dormitory."

"You didn't go?" cut in Craig immediately.

"I did not. I pleaded an engagement. Why, the place is a regular dope joint."

"Exactly. I suspected as much as you went along. Everything seems to have moved uptown lately, to have been veneered over to meet the fastidious second decade of the twentieth century. But underneath it all are the same old vices. I'm glad you didn't attempt to go into the next house. Anyhow, now we are certain about the character of the place. Did you notice anything about the means of communicating with the outside—the telephones, for instance?"

Miss Kendall was evidently feeling much better now.

"Oh, yes," she answered. "I took particular care to observe that. They have a telephone, but there is a girl who attends to it, although they don't really need one. She listens to everything. Then, too, in the other house—You remember I spoke about the girl whom we saw paying Ike the Dropper? It seems that she has a similar position at the telephone over there."

"So they have two telephones," repeated Craig.

"Yes."

"Good. There are always likely to be some desperate characters in places like that. If we ever have anyone go into that dope joint we must have some way of keeping in touch and protecting the person."

Miss Kendall had gone home for a few hours of rest after her exciting experience. Craig was idly tapping with his fingers on the broad arm of his chair.

Suddenly he jumped up. "I'm going up there to look that joint over from the outside," he announced.

We walked past the front of it without seeing anything in particular, then turned the corner and were on the Avenue. Kennedy paused and looked at a cheap apartment house on which was a sign, "Flats to Let."

"I think I'll get the janitor to show me one of them," he said.

One was on the first floor in the rear. Kennedy did not seem to be very much interested in the rent. A glance out of the window sufficed to show him that he could see the back of the Montmartre and some of the houses. It took only a minute to hire it, at least conditionally, and a bill to the janitor gave us a key.

"What are you going to do?"

"We can't do anything just yet, but it will be dark by the time I get over to the laboratory and back and then we can do something."

That night we started prowling over the back fences down the street. Fortunately it was a very black night and Craig was careful not to use even the electric bull's-eye which he had brought over from the laboratory together with some wire and telephone instruments.

As we crouched in the shadow of one of the fences, he remarked: "Just as I expected; the telephone wires run along the tops of the fences. Here's where they run into 72—that's the beauty parlour. These run into 70—that's the dope joint. Then next comes the Montmartre itself, reaching all the way back as far as the lot extends."

We had come up close to the backs of the houses by this time. The shades were all drawn and the blinds were closed in both of them, so that we had really nothing to fear provided we kept quiet. Besides the back yards looked unkempt, as if no one cared much about them.

Kennedy flashed the electric bull's-eye momentarily on the wires. They branched off from the back fence down the party fence to the houses, both sets on one fence.

"Good!" he exclaimed. "It is better than I hoped. The two sets go on up to the first floor together, then separate. One set goes into the beauty parlour; the other into the dope joint."

Craig had quietly climbed up on a shed over the basements of both the houses. He was working quickly with all the dexterity of a lineman. To two of the four wires he had attached one other. Then to two others he attached another, all the connections being made at exactly corresponding points.

The next step was to lead these two newly connected wires to a window on the first floor of the house next to the Montmartre. He fastened them lightly to the closed shutter, let himself down to the yard again and we beat a slow and careful retreat to our flat.

In one of the yards down near the corner, however, he paused. Here was an iron box fastened to one of the fences, a switch box or something of the sort belonging to the telephone company. To it were led all the wires from the various houses on the block and to each wire was fastened a little ticket on which was scrawled in indelible pencil the number of the house to which the wire ran.

Kennedy found the two pairs that ran to 70 and 72, cut in on them in the same way that he had done before and fastened two other wires, one to each pair. This pair he led along and into the flat.

"I've fixed it," he explained, "so that anyone who can get into that room on the back of the first floor of the dope joint can communicate with the outside very easily over the telephone, without being overheard, either."

"How?" I asked completely mystified by the apparent simplicity of the proceeding.

"I have left two wires sticking on the outside shutter of that room," he replied. "All that anyone who gets into that room has to do is to open the window softly, reach out and secure them. With them fastened to a transmitter which I have, he can talk to me in the flat around the corner and no one will ever know it."

There was nothing more that we could do that night and we waited impatiently until Clare Kendall came to make her daily report in the morning.

"The question is, whom are we going to get whom we can trust to go to that dope joint and explore it?" remarked Kennedy, after we had finished telling Miss Kendall about our experiences of the night before.

"Carton must have someone who can take a course in beauty and dope," I replied. "Or perhaps Miss Kendall has one of her investigators whom she can trust."

"If the thing gets too rough," added Craig, "whoever is in there can telephone to us, if she will only be careful first to get that back room in the 'dormitory,' as they call it. Then all we'll have to do will be to jump in there and—-"

"I'll do it," interrupted Clare.

"No, Miss Kendall," denied Kennedy firmly.

"Let me do it. There is no one whom I can trust more than myself. Besides, I know the places now."

She said it with an air of quiet determination, as if she had been thinking it over ever since she returned from her visit of the day before.

Kennedy and Miss Kendall faced each other for a moment. It was evident that it was against just this that he had been trying to provide. On her part it was equally evident that she had made up her mind.

"Miss Kendall," said Kennedy, meeting her calm eye, "you are the most nervy detective, barring none, that it has ever been my pleasure to meet. I yield under protest."

I must say that it was with a great deal of misgiving that I saw Clare enter Margot's. We had gone as far as the corner with her, had watched her go in, and then hurried into the unfurnished apartment which Craig had rented on the Avenue.

As we sat on the rickety chairs which we had borrowed from the janitor under pretence of wanting to reach something, the minutes that passed seemed like hours.

I wondered what had happened to the plucky girl in her devotion to the cause in which she had enlisted, and several times I could see from the expression of Craig's face that he more and more regretted that he had given in to her and had allowed her to go, instead of adhering to his original plan. From what she had told us about the two places, I tried to imagine what she was doing, but each time I ended by having an increased feeling of apprehension.

Kennedy sat grimly silent with the receiver of the telephone glued to his ear, straining his hearing to catch even the faintest sound.

At last his face brightened.

"She's there all right," he exclaimed to me. "Managed to make them think in the beauty parlour that she was a dope fiend and pretty far gone. Insisted that she must have the back room on the first floor because she was afraid of fire. She kept the door open so that she would not miss anything, but it was a long time before she got a chance to reach out of the window and get the wires and connect them with the instruments I gave her. But it's all right now.

"Yes, Miss Kendall, right here, listening to everything you get a chance to say. Only be careful. There is no use spoiling the game by trying to talk to me until you have all that you think you can obtain in the way of evidence. Don't let them think you have any means of communication with the outside or they'll go to any length to silence you. We'll be here all the time and the moment you think there is any danger, call us."

Kennedy seemed visibly relieved by the message.

"She says that she has found out a great deal already, but didn't dare take the time to tell it just yet," he explained. "By the way, Walter, while we are waiting, I wish you would go out and see whether there is a policeman on fixed post anywhere around here."

Five minutes later when I returned, having located the nearest peg post a long block away on Broadway, Kennedy raised a warning hand. She was telephoning again.

"She says that attendants come and go in her room so often that it's hard to get a chance to say anything, but she is sure that there is someone hidden there, perhaps Marie or Madame Margot, whoever she is, or it may even be Betty Blackwell. They watch very closely."

"But," I asked, almost in a whisper, as if someone over there might hear me, "isn't this a very dangerous proceeding, Craig? It seems to me you are taking long chances. Suppose one of the telephone girls in either house, whom she told us keep such sharp watch over the wires, should happen to be calling up or answering a call. She would hear someone else talking over the wire and it wouldn't be difficult for her to decide who it was. Then there'd be a row."

"Not a chance," smiled Kennedy. "No one except ourselves, not even Central, can hear a word of what is said over these connections I have made. This is what is called a phantom circuit."

"A phantom circuit?" I repeated. "What kind of a weird thing is that?"

"It is possible to superimpose another circuit over the four telephone wires of two existing circuits, making a so-called phantom line," he explained, as we waited for the next message. "It seems fantastic at first, but it is really in accordance with the laws of electricity. You use each pair of wires as if it were one wire and do not interfere in the least with them, but are perfectly independent of both. The current for the third circuit enters the two wires of one of the first circuits, divides, reunites, so to speak, at the other end, then returns through the wires of the second circuit, dividing and reuniting again, thus just balancing the two divisions of the current and not causing any effect on either of the two original circuits. Rather wonderful, isn't it?"

"I should say that it was," I marvelled. "I am glad I see it actually working rather than have to believe it second hand."

"It's all due to a special repeating coil of high efficiency absolutely balanced as to resistances, number of turns of wire, and so on which I have used—Yes—Miss Kendall—we are here. Now please don't let things go on too far. At the first sign of danger, call. We can get in all right. You have the evidence now that will hold in any court as far as closing up that joint goes, and I'll take a chance of breaking into—well, Hades, to get to you. Good-bye.

"I guess it is Hades there," he resumed to me. "She has just telephoned that one of the dope fiends upstairs—a man, so that you see they admit both men and women there, after all—had become violent and Harris had to be called to quiet him before he ran amuck. She said she was absolutely sure, this time at least, that it was Harris. As I was saying about this phantom circuit, it is used a good deal now. Sometimes they superimpose a telephone conversation over the proper arrangement of telegraph messages and vice versa.

"What's that?" cried Craig, suddenly breaking off. "They heard you talking that last time, and you have locked the door against them? They are battering it down? Move something heavy, if you can, up against it—the bureau, anything to brace it. We'll be there directly. Come on, Walter. There isn't time to get around Broadway for that fixed post cop. We must do it ourselves. Hurry."

Craig dashed breathlessly out on the street. I followed closely.

"Hurry," he panted. "Those people haven't any use for anyone that they think will snitch on them."

As we turned the corner, we ran squarely into a sergeant slowly going his rounds with eyes conveniently closed to what he was paid not to see.

Kennedy stopped and grabbed his arm.

"There's a girl up here in 72 who is being mistreated," he cried. "Come. You must help us get her out."

"Aw, g'wan. Whatyer givin' us? 72? That's a residence."

"Say—look here. I've got your number. You'll be up on the most serious charges of your whole career if you don't act on the information I have. All of Ike the Dropper's money'll go for attorney's fees and someone will land in Sing Sing. Now, come!"

We had gained the steps of the house. Outside all was dark, blank, and bare. There was every evidence of the most excessive outward order and decency—not a sign of the conflict that was raging within.

Before the policeman could pull the bell, which would have been a first warning of trouble to the inmates, Kennedy had jumped from the high stoop to a narrow balcony running along the front windows of the first story, had smashed the glass into splinters with a heavy object which he had carried concealed under his coat, and was engaged in a herculean effort to wrench apart some iron bars which had been carefully concealed behind the discreetly drawn shades.

As one yielded, he panted, "No use to try the door. The grill work inside guards that too well. There goes another."

Inside now we could hear cries that told us that the whole house was roused, that even the worst of the drug fiends had come at least partly to his senses and begun to realize his peril. From Margot's beauty parlour a couple of girls and a man staggered forth in a vain effort to seem to leave quietly.

"Close that place, too, officer," cried Kennedy to the now astounded policeman. "We'll attend to this house."

The sergeant slowly lumbered across in time to let two more couples escape. It was evident that he hated the job; indeed, would have arrested Kennedy in the old days before Carton had thrown such a scare into the grafters. But Kennedy's assurance had flabbergasted him and he obeyed.

Another bar yielded, and another. Together we squeezed in and found ourselves in a dark front parlour. There was nothing to distinguish it from any ordinary reception room in the blackness.

Hurried footsteps were heard as if several people were retreating into the next house. Down the hall we hastened to the back room.

A second we listened. All was silent. Was Clare safe? It looked ominous. Still the door, partly battered in, was closed.

"Miss Kendall!" called Craig, bending down close to the door.

"Is it you, Professor Kennedy?" came back a faint voice from the other side.

"Yes. Are you all right?"

There was no answer, but she was evidently tugging at something which appeared to be a heavy piece of furniture braced against the door. At last the bolt was slipped back, and there in the doorway she swayed, half exhausted but safe.

"Yes, all right," murmured Clare, bracing herself against the chiffonier which she had moved away from the door, "just a little shaky from the drugs—but all right. Don't bother about me, now. I can take care of myself. I'll feel better in a minute. Upstairs— that is where I think that woman is. Please, please don't—I'm all right—truly. Upstairs."

Kennedy had taken her gently by the arm and she sank down in an easy chair.

"Please hurry," she implored. "You may be too late."

She had risen again in spite of us and was out in the lower hall. We could hear a footstep on the stairs.

"There she goes, the woman who has been hiding up there, Madame—"

Clare cut the words short.

A woman had hastily descended the steps, evidently seeing her opportunity to escape while we were in the back of the house. She had reached the street door, which now was open, and the flaming arc light in front of the house shone brightly on her.

I looked, expecting to see our dark-haired, olive-skinned Marie. I stared in amazement. Instead, this woman was fair, her hair was flaxen, her figure more slim, even her features were different. She was a stranger. I could not recollect ever having seen her.

Again I strained my eyes, thinking it might be Betty Blackwell at last, but this woman bore no resemblance apparently to her. She looked older, more mature.

In my haste I noted that she had a bandage about her face, as if she had been injured recently, for there seemed to be blood on it where it had worked itself loose in her flight. She gave one glance at us, and quickened her pace at seeing us so close. The bandage, already loose, slipped off her face and fell to the floor. Still she did not seem other than a stranger to me, though I had a half-formed notion that I had seen that face somewhere before. She did not stop to pick the bandage up. She had gained the door and was down the front step on the sidewalk before we could stop her.

Taxicabs in droves seemed to have collected, like buzzards over a dead body. They were doing a thriving business carrying away those who sought to escape. Into one by which a man was waiting in the shadow the woman hurried. The man looked for all the world like Dr. Harris. An instant later the chauffeur was gone.

The policeman had the front door of Madame Margot's covered all right, so efficiently that he was neglecting everything else. From the basement now and then a scurrying figure catapulted itself out and was lost in the curious crowd that always collects at any time of day or night on a New York street when there is any excitement.

"It is of no use to expect to capture anyone now," exclaimed Craig, as we hurried back into the dope joint. "I hardly expected to do it. All I panted was to protect Miss Kendall. But we have the evidence against this joint that will close it for good."

He stooped and picked up the bandage.

"I think I'll keep that," he remarked thoughtfully. "I wonder what that blonde woman wore that for?"

"She MUST be up there," reiterated Clare, who had followed us. "I heard them talking, it seemed to me only the moment before I heard you in the hall."

The excitement seemed now to have the effect of quieting her unstrung nerves and carrying her through.

"Let us go upstairs," said Kennedy.

From room to room we hurried in the darkness, lighting the lights. They were all empty, yet each one gave its mute testimony to the character of its use and its former occupants. There were opium lay-outs with pipes, lamps, yen haucks, and other paraphernalia in some. In others had been cocaine snuffers. There seemed to be everything for drug users of every kind.

At last in a small room in front on the top floor we came upon a girl, half insensible from a drug. She was vainly trying to make herself presentable for the street, ramblingly talking to herself in the meantime.

Again my hopes rose that we had found either the mysterious Marie Margot or Betty Blackwell. A second glance caused us all to pause in surprise and disappointment.

It was the Titian-haired girl from the Montmartre office.

Miss Kendall, recovering from the effects of the drugs which she had been compelled to take in her heroic attempt to get at the dope joint, was endeavouring to quiet the girl from the Montmartre, who, now vaguely recollecting us, seemed to realize that something had gone wrong and was trembling and crying pitifully.

"What's the matter with her?" I asked.

"Chloral," replied Miss Kendall in a low voice aside. "I suppose she has had a wild night which she has followed by chloral to quiet her nerves, with little effect. Didn't you ever see them? They will go into a drug store in this part of the city where such things are sold, weak, shaky, nervous wrecks. The clerk will sell them the stuff and they will retire for a moment into the telephone booth. Sometimes they will come out looking as though they had never felt a moment's effect from their wild debauches. But there are other times when they are too weakened to get over it so quickly. That is her case, poor girl."

The soothing hand which she laid on the girl's throbbing head was quite in contrast with the manner in which I recalled her to have spoken of the girl when first we saw her at the Montmartre. She must have seen the look of surprise on my face.

"I can't condemn these girls too strongly when I see them themselves," she remarked. "It would be so easy for them to stop and lead a decent life, if they only would forget the white lights and the gay life that allures them. It is when they are so down and out that I long to give them a hand to help them up again and show them how foolish it is to make slaves of themselves."

"Call a cab, Walter," said Kennedy, who had been observing the girl closely. "There is nothing more that we can expect to accomplish here. Everybody has escaped by this time. But we must get this poor girl in a private hospital or sanitarium where she can recover."

Clare had disappeared. A moment later she returned from the room she had had downstairs with her hat on.

"I'm going with her," she announced simply.

"What—you, Miss Kendall?"

"Yes. If a girl ever needed a friend, it is this girl now. There is nothing I can do for the moment. I will take care of her in my apartment until she is herself again."

The girl seemed to half understand, and to be grateful to Clare. Kennedy watched her hovering over the drug victim without attempting to express the admiration which he felt.

Just as the cab was announced, he drew Miss Kendall aside. "You're a trump," he said frankly. "Most people would pass by on the other side from such as she is."

They talked for a moment as to the best place to go, then decided on a quiet little place uptown where convalescents were taken in.

"I think you can still be working on the case, if you care to do so," suggested Craig as Miss Kendall and her charge were leaving.

"How?" she asked.

"When you get her to this sanitarium, try to be with her as much as you can. I think if anyone can get anything out of her, you can. Remember it is more than this girl's rescue that is at stake. If she can be got to talk she may prove an important link toward piecing together the solution of the mystery of Betty Blackwell. She must know many of the inside secrets of the Montmartre," he added significantly.

They had gone, and Craig and I had started to go also when we came across a negro caretaker who seemed to have stuck by the place during all the excitement.

"Do you know that girl who just went out?" asked Craig.

"No, sah," she replied glibly.

"Look here," demanded Craig, facing her. "You know better than that. She has been here before, and you know it. I've a good mind to have you held for being in charge of this place. If I do, all the Marie Margots and Ike the Droppers can't get you out again."

The negress seemed to understand that this was no ordinary raid.

"Who is she?" demanded Craig.

"I dunno, sah. She come from next door."

"I know she did. She's the girl in the office of the Montmartre. Now, you know her. What is her name?"

The negress seemed to consider a moment, then quickly answered, "Dey always calls her Miss Sybil here, sah, Sybil Seymour, sah."

"Thank you. I knew you had some name for her. Come, Walter. This is over for the present. A raid without arrests, too! It will be all over town in half an hour. If we are going to do anything it must be done quickly."

We called on Carton and lost no time in having the men he could spare placed in watching the railroads and steamship lines to prevent if we could any of the gang from getting out of the city that way. It was a night of hard work with no results. I began to wonder whether they might not have escaped finally after all. There seemed to be no trace. Harris had disappeared, there was no clue to Marie Margot, no trace of the new blonde woman, not a syllable yet about Betty Blackwell.



XVI

THE SANITARIUM

"It seems as if the forces of Dorgan are demoralized," I remarked the afternoon after the raid on Margot's.

"We have them on the run—that's true," agreed Kennedy, "but there's plenty of fight in them, yet. We're not through, by any means."