The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective MEGAPACK ®. Brander Matthews
works.
He had gone over everything in silence, and now at last we had returned to the safe.
“Yes,” he repeated slowly, as if confirming his original impression, “such an amount of radium as was stolen wouldn’t occasion immediate discomfort to the thief, I suppose, but later no infernal machine could be more dangerous to him.”
I pictured to myself the series of fearful works of mischief and terror that might follow, a curse on the thief worse than that of the weirdest curses of the Orient, the danger to the innocent, and the fact that in the hands of a criminal it was an instrument for committing crimes that might defy detection.
“There is nothing more to do here now,” he concluded. “I can see nothing for the present except to go back to New York. The telltale burn may not be the only clue, but if the thief is going to profit by his spoils we shall hear about it best in New York or by cable from London, Paris, or some other European city.”
Our hurried departure from New York had not given us a chance to visit the offices of the Radium Corporation for the distribution of the salts themselves. They were in a little old office building on William Street, near the drug district and yet scarcely a moment’s walk from the financial district.
“Our head bookkeeper, Miss Wallace, is ill,” remarked Denison when we arrived at the office, “but if there is anything I can do to help you, I shall be glad to do it. We depend on Miss Wallace a great deal. Haughton says she is the brains of the office.”
Kennedy looked about the well-appointed suite curiously.
“Is this another of those radium safes?” he asked, approaching one similar in appearance to that which had been broken open already.
“Yes, only a little larger.”
“How much is in it?”
“Most of our supply. I should say about two and a half grams. Miss Wallace has the record.”
“It is of the same construction, I presume,” pursued Kennedy. “I wonder whether the lead lining fits closely to the steel?”
“I think not,” considered Denison. “As I remember there was a sort of insulating air cushion or something of the sort.”
Denison was quite eager to show us about. In fact ever since he had hustled us out to view the scene of the robbery, his high nervous tension had given us scarcely a moment’s rest. For hours he had talked radium, until I felt that he, like his metal, must have an inexhaustible emanation of words. He was one of those nervous, active little men, a born salesman, whether of ribbons or radium.
“We have just gone into furnishing radium water,” he went on, bustling about and patting a little glass tank.
I looked closely and could see that the water glowed in the dark with a peculiar phosphorescence.
“The apparatus for the treatment,” he continued, “consists of two glass and porcelain receptacles. Inside the larger receptacle is placed the smaller, which contains a tiny quantity of radium. Into the larger receptacle is poured about a gallon of filtered water. The emanation from that little speck of radium is powerful enough to penetrate its porcelain holder and charge the water with its curative properties. From a tap at the bottom of the tank the patient draws the number of glasses of water a day prescribed. For such purposes the emanation within a day or two of being collected is as good as radium itself. Why, this water is five thousand times as radioactive as the most radioactive natural spring water.”
“You must have control of a comparatively large amount of the metal,” suggested Kennedy.
“We are, I believe, the largest holders of radium in the world,” he answered. “I have estimated that all told there are not much more than ten grams, of which Madame Curie has perhaps three, while Sir Ernest Cassel of London is the holder of perhaps as much. We have nearly four grams, leaving about six or seven for the rest of the world.”
Kennedy nodded and continued to look about.
“The Radium Corporation,” went on Denison, “has several large deposits of radioactive ore in Utah in what is known as the Poor Little Rich Valley, a valley so named because from being about the barrenest and most unproductive mineral or agricultural hole in the hills, the sudden discovery of the radioactive deposits has made it almost priceless.”
He had entered a private office and was looking over some mail that had been left on his desk during his absence.
“Look at this,” he called, picking up a clipping from a newspaper which had been laid there for his attention. “You see, we have them aroused.”
We read the clipping together hastily:
PLAN TO CORNER WORLD’S RADIUM
LONDON.—Plans are being matured to form a large corporation for the monopoly of the existing and future supply of radium throughout the world. The company is to be called Universal Radium, Limited, and the capital of ten million dollars will be offered for public subscription at par simultaneously in London, Paris and New York.
The company’s business will be to acquire mines and deposits of radioactive substances as well as the control of patents and processes connected with the production of radium. The outspoken purpose of the new company is to obtain a world-wide monopoly and maintain the price.
“Ah—a competitor,” commented Kennedy, handing back the clipping.
“Yes. You know radium salts used always to come from Europe. Now we are getting ready to do some exporting ourselves. Say,” he added excitedly, “there’s an idea, possibly, in that.”
“How?” queried Craig.
“Why, since we should be the principal competitors to the foreign mines, couldn’t this robbery have been due to the machinations of these schemers? To my mind, the United States, because of its supply of radium-bearing ores, will have to be reckoned with first in cornering the market. This is the point, Kennedy. Would those people who seem to be trying to extend their new company all over the world stop at anything in order to cripple us at the start?”
How much longer Denison would have rattled on in his effort to explain the robbery, I do not know. The telephone rang and a reporter from the Record, who had just read my own story in the Star, asked for an interview. I knew that it would be only a question of minutes now before the other men were wearing a path out on the stairs, and we managed to get away before the onrush began.
“Walter,” said Kennedy, as soon as we had reached the street. “I want to get in touch with Halsey Haughton. How can it be done?”
I could think of nothing better at that moment than to inquire at the Star’s Wall Street office, which happened to be around the corner. I knew the men down there intimately, and a few minutes later we were whisked up in the elevator to the office.
They were as glad to see me as I was to see them, for the story of the robbery had interested the financial district perhaps more than any other.
“Where can I find Halsey Haughton at this hour?” I asked.
“Say,” exclaimed one of the men, “what’s the matter? There have been all kinds of rumors in the Street about him today. Did you know he was ill?”
“No,” I answered. “Where is he?”
“Out at the home of his fiancee, who is the daughter of Mrs. Courtney Woods, at Glenclair.”
“What’s the matter?” I persisted.
“That’s just it. No one seems to know. They say—well—they say he has a cancer.”
Halsey Haughton suffering from cancer? It was such an uncommon thing to hear of a young man that I looked up quickly in surprise. Then all at once it flashed over me that Denison and Kennedy had discussed the matter of burns from the stolen radium. Might not this be, instead of cancer, a radium burn?
Kennedy, who had been standing a little apart from me while