The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective MEGAPACK ®. Brander Matthews
it. But—you know what condition he is in. I don’t know what to do, whether to surround the office by a squad of detectives or remove the radium to a regular safety deposit vault, even at the loss of the emanation. Haughton has left it to me.”
Suddenly the thought flashed across my mind that perhaps Haughton could act in this uninterested fashion because he had no fear of ruin either way. Might he not be playing a game with the combination in which he had protected himself so that he would win, no matter what happened?
“What shall I do?” asked Denison. “It is getting late.”
“Neither,” decided Kennedy.
Denison shook his head. “No,” he said, “I shall have some one watch there, anyhow.”
CHAPTER XV
THE ASPHYXIATING SAFE
Denison had scarcely gone to arrange for some one to watch the office that night, when Kennedy, having gathered up his radioscope and packed into a parcel a few other things from various cabinets, announced: “Walter, I must see that Miss Wallace, right away. Denison has already given me her address. Call a cab while I finish clearing up here. I don’t like the looks of this thing, even if Haughton does neglect it.”
We found Miss Wallace at a modest boarding-house in an old but still respectable part of the city. She was a very pretty girl, of the slender type, rather a business woman than one given much to amusement. She had been ill and was still ill. That was evident from the solicitous way in which the motherly landlady scrutinized two strange callers.
Kennedy presented a card from Denison, and she came down to the parlor to see us.
“Miss Wallace,” began Kennedy, “I know it is almost cruel to trouble you when you are not feeling like office work, but since the robbery of the safe at Pittsburgh, there have been threats of a robbery of the New York office.”
She started involuntarily, and it was evident, I thought, that she was in a very high-strung state.
“Oh,” she cried, “why, the loss means ruin to Mr. Denison!”
There were genuine tears in her eyes as she said it.
“I thought you would be willing to aid us,” pursued Kennedy sympathetically. “Now, for one thing, I want to be perfectly sure just how much radium the Corporation owns, or rather owned before the first robbery.”
“The books will show it,” she said simply.
“They will?” commented Kennedy. “Then if you will explain to me briefly just the system you used in keeping account of it, perhaps I need not trouble you any more.”
“I’ll go down there with you,” she answered bravely. “I’m better today, anyhow, I think.”
She had risen, but it was evident that she was not as strong as she wanted us to think.
“The least I can do is to make it as easy as possible by going in a car,” remarked Kennedy, following her into the hall where there was a telephone.
The hallway was perfectly dark, yet as she preceded us I could see that the diamond pin which held her collar in the back sparkled as if a lighted candle had been brought near it. I had noticed in the parlor that she wore a handsome tortoiseshell comb set with what I thought were other brilliants, but when I looked I saw now that there was not the same sparkle to the comb which held her dark hair in a soft mass. I noticed these little things at the time, not because I thought they had any importance, but merely by chance, wondering at the sparkle of the one diamond which had caught my eye.
“What do you make of her?” I asked as Kennedy finished telephoning.
“A very charming and capable girl,” he answered noncommittally.
“Did you notice how that diamond in her neck sparkled?” I asked quickly.
He nodded. Evidently it had attracted his attention, too.
“What makes it?” I pursued.
“Well, you know radium rays will make a diamond fluoresce in the dark.”
“Yes,” I objected, “but how about those in the comb?”
“Paste, probably,” he answered tersely, as we heard her foot on the landing. “The rays won’t affect paste.”
It was indeed a shame to take advantage of Miss Wallace’s loyalty to Denison, but she was so game about it that I knew only the utmost necessity on Kennedy’s part would have prompted him to do it. She had a key to the office so that it was not necessary to wait for Denison, if indeed we could have found him.
Together she and Kennedy went over the records. It seemed that there were in the safe twenty-five platinum tubes of one hundred milligrams each, and that there had been twelve of the same amount at Pittsburgh. Little as it seemed in weight it represented a fabulous fortune.
“You have not the combination?” inquired Kennedy.
“No. Only Mr. Denison has that. What are you going to do to protect the safe tonight?” she asked.
“Nothing especially,” evaded Kennedy.
“Nothing?” she repeated in amazement.
“I have another plan,” he said, watching her intently. “Miss Wallace, it was too much to ask you to come down here. You are ill.”
She was indeed quite pale, as if the excitement had been an overexertion.
“No, indeed,” she persisted. Then, feeling her own weakness, she moved toward the door of Denison’s office where there was a leather couch. “Let me rest here a moment. I do feel queer. I—”
She would have fallen if he had not sprung forward and caught her as she sank to the floor, overcome by the exertion.
Together we carried her in to the couch, and as we did so the comb from her hair clattered to the floor.
Craig threw open the window, and bathed her face with water until there was a faint flutter of the eyelids.
“Walter,” he said, as she began to revive, “I leave her to you. Keep her quiet for a few moments. She has unintentionally given me just the opportunity I want.”
While she was yet hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness on the couch, he had unwrapped the package which he had brought with him. For a moment he held the comb which she had dropped near the radioscope. With a low exclamation of surprise he shoved it into his pocket.
Then from the package he drew a heavy piece of apparatus which looked as if it might be the motor part of an electric fan, only in place of the fan he fitted a long, slim, vicious-looking steel bit. A flexible wire attached the thing to the electric light circuit and I knew that it was an electric drill. With his coat off he tugged at the little radium safe until he had moved it out, then dropped on his knees behind it and switched the current on in the electric drill.
It was a tedious process to drill through the steel of the outer casing of the safe and it was getting late. I shut the door to the office so that Miss Wallace could not see.
At last by the cessation of the low hum of the boring, I knew that he had struck the inner lead lining. Quietly I opened the door and stepped out. He was injecting something from an hermetically sealed lead tube into the opening he had made and allowing it to run between the two linings of lead and steel. Then using the tube itself he sealed the opening he had made and dabbed a little black over it.
Quickly he shoved the safe back, then around it concealed several small coils with wires also concealed and leading out through a window to a court.
“We’ll catch the fellow this time,” he remarked as he worked. “If you ever have any idea, Walter, of going into the burglary business, it would be well to ascertain if the safes have any of these little selenium cells as suggested by my friend, Mr. Hammer, the inventor. For by them an alarm can be given miles away the moment an intruder’s bull’s-eye falls