The Poisoned Pen Part 13

My mind worked rapidly, but McCormick blurted out the words before I could form them, "Caught in her own trap at last!"

Kennedy said nothing, but as one of the firemen roughly but reverently covered the remains with a rubber sheet, he stooped down and withdrew from the breast of the woman a long letter-file. "Come, let us go," he said.

Back in our apartment again we bathed our racking heads, gargled our parched throats, and washed out our bloodshot eyes, in silence. The whole adventure, though still fresh and vivid in my mind, seemed unreal, like a dream. The choking air, the hissing steam, the ghastly object under the tarpaulin--what did it all mean? Who was she? I strove to reason it out, but could find no answer.

It was nearly dawn when the door opened and McCormick came in and dropped wearily into a chair. "Do you know who that woman was?" he gasped. "It was Miss Wend herself."

"Who identified her?" asked Kennedy calmly.

"Oh, several people. Stacey recognised her at once. Then Hartstein, the adjuster for the insured, and Lazard, the adjuster for the company, both of whom had had more or less to do with her in connection with settling up for other fires, recognised her. She was a very clever woman, was Miss Wend, and a very important cog in the Stacey enterprises. And to think she was the firebug, after all. I can hardly believe it."

"Why believe it?" asked Kennedy quietly.

"Why believe it?" echoed McCormick. "Stacey has found shortages in his books due to the operation of her departments. The bookkeeper who had charge of the accounts in her department, a man named Douglas, is missing. She must have tried to cover up her operations by fires and juggling the accounts. Failing in that she tried to destroy Stacey's store itself, twice. She was one of the few that could get into the office un.o.bserved. Oh, it's a clear case now. To my mind, the heavy vapours of ether--they are heavier than air, you know--must have escaped along the surface of the floor last night and become ignited at a considerable distance from where she expected. She was caught in a back-draught, or something of the sort. Well, thank G.o.d, we've seen the last of this firebug business. What's that?"

Kennedy had laid the letter-file on the table. "Nothing. Only I found this embedded in Miss Wend's breast right over her heart."

"Then she was murdered?" exclaimed McCormick.

"We haven't come to the end of this case yet," replied Craig evasively.

"On the contrary, we have just got our first good clue. No, McCormick, your theory will not hold water. The real point is to find this missing bookkeeper at any cost. You must persuade him to confess what he knows.

Offer him immunity--he was only a p.a.w.n in the hands of those higher up."

McCormick was not hard to convince. Tired as he was, he grabbed up his hat and started off to put the final machinery in motion to wind up the long chase for the firebug.

"I must get a couple of hours' sleep," he yawned as he left us, "but first I want to start something toward finding Douglas. I shall try to see you about noon."

I was too exhausted to go to the office. In fact, I doubt if I could have written a line. But I telephoned in a story of personal experiences at the Stacey fire and told them they could fix it up as they chose and even sign my name to it.

About noon McCormick came in again, looking as fresh as if nothing had happened. He was used to it.

"I know where Douglas is," he announced breathlessly.

"Fine," said Kennedy, "and can you produce him at any time when it is necessary?"

"Let me tell you what I have done. I went down to the district attorney from here--routed him out of bed. He has promised to turn loose his accountants to audit the reports of the adjusters, Hartstein and Lazard, as well as to make a cursory examination of what Stacey books there are left. He says he will have a preliminary report ready to-night, but the detailed report will take days, of course.

"It's the Douglas problem that is difficult, though. I haven't seen him, but one of the central-office men, by shadowing his wife, has found that he is in hiding down on the East Side. He's safe there; he can't make a move to get away without being arrested. The trouble is that if I arrest him, the people higher up will know it and will escape before I can get his confession and the warrants. I'd much rather have the whole thing done at once. Isn't there some way we can get the whole Stacey crowd together, make the arrest of Douglas and nab the guilty ones in the case, all together without giving them a chance to escape or to s.h.i.+eld the real firebug?"

Kennedy thought a moment. "Yes," he answered slowly. "There is. If you can get them all together at my laboratory to-night at, say, eight o'clock, I'll give you two clear hours to make the arrest of Douglas, get the confession, and swear out the warrants. All that you'll need to do is to let me talk a few minutes this afternoon with the judge who will sit in the night court to-night. I shall install a little machine on his desk in the court, and we'll catch the real criminal--he'll never get a chance to cross the state line or disappear in any way. You see, my laboratory will be neutral ground. I think you can get them to come, inasmuch as they know the bookkeeper is safe and that dead women tell no tales."

When next I saw Kennedy it was late in the afternoon, in the laboratory. He was arranging something in the top drawer of a flat-top desk. It seemed to be two instruments composed of many levers and discs and magnets, each instrument with a roll of paper about five inches wide. On one was a sort of stylus with two silk cords attached at right angles to each other near the point. On the other was a capillary gla.s.s tube at the junction of two aluminum arms, also at right angles to each other.

It was quite like old times to see Kennedy at work in his laboratory preparing for a "seance." He said nothing as I watched him curiously, and I asked nothing. Two sets of wires were attached to each of the instruments, and these he carefully concealed and led out the window.

Then he arranged the chairs on the opposite side of the desk from his own.

"Walter," he said, "when our guests begin to arrive I want you to be master of ceremonies. Simply keep them on the opposite side of the desk from me. Don't let them move their chairs around to the right or left.

And, above all, leave the doors open. I don't want any one to be suspicious or to feel that he is shut in in any way. Create the impression that they are free to go and come when they please."

Stacey arrived first in a limousine which he left standing at the door of the Chemistry Building. Bloom and Warren came together in the latter's car. Lazard came in a taxicab which he dismissed, and Hartstein came up by the subway, being the last to arrive. Every one seemed to be in good humour.

I seated them as Kennedy had directed. Kennedy pulled out the extension on the left of his desk and leaned his elbow on it as he began to apologise for taking up their time at such a critical moment. As near as I could make out, he had quietly pulled out the top drawer of his desk on the right, the drawer in which I had seen him place the complicated apparatus. But as nothing further happened I almost forgot about it in listening to him. He began by referring to the burned papers he had found in the office.

"It is sometimes possible," he continued, "to decipher writing on burned papers if one is careful. The processes of colour photography have recently been applied to obtain a legible photograph of the writing on burned ma.n.u.scripts which are unreadable by any other known means. As long as the sheet has not been entirely disintegrated positive results can be obtained every time. The charred ma.n.u.script is carefully arranged in as near its original shape as possible, on a sheet of gla.s.s and covered with a drying varnish, after which it is backed by another sheet of gla.s.s.

"By using carefully selected colour screens and orthochromatic plates a perfectly legible photograph of the writing may be taken, although there may be no marks on the charred remains that are visible to the eye. This is the only known method in many cases. I have here some burned fragments of paper which I gathered up after the first attempt to fire your store, Mr. Stacey."

Stacey coughed in acknowledgment. As for Craig, he did not mince matters in telling what he had found.

"Some were notes given in favour of Rebecca Wend and signed by Joseph Stacey," he said quietly. "They represent a large sum of money in the aggregate. Others were memoranda of Miss Wend's, and still others were autograph letters to Miss Wend of a very incriminating nature in connection with the fires by another person."

Here he laid the "A. Spark" letters on the desk before him. "Now," he added "some one, in a spirit of bravado, sent these notes to the fire marshal at various times. Curiously enough, I find that the handwriting of the first one bears a peculiar resemblance to that of Miss Wend, while the second and third, though disguised also, greatly suggest the handwriting of Miss Wend's correspondent."

No one moved. But I sat aghast. She had been a part of the conspiracy, after all, not a p.a.w.n. Had they played fair?

"Taking up next the remarkable succession of fires," resumed Kennedy, "this case presents some unique features. In short, it is a clear case of what is known as a 'firebug trust.' Now just what is a firebug trust? Well, it is, as near as I can make out, a combination of dishonest merchants and insurance adjusters engaged in the business of deliberately setting fires for profit. These arson trusts are not the ordinary kind of firebugs whom the firemen plentifully d.a.m.n in the fixed belief that one-fourth of all fires are kindled by incendiaries.

Such 'trusts' exist all over the country. They have operated in Chicago, where they are said to have made seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in one year. Another group is said to have its headquarters in Kansas City. Others have worked in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo. The fire marshals of Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio have investigated their work. But until recently New York has been singularly free from the organised work of this sort. Of course we have plenty of firebugs and pyromaniacs in a small way, but the big conspiracy has never come to my personal attention before.

"Now, the Jones-Green fire, the Quadrangle fire, the Slawson Building fire, and the rest, have all been set for one purpose--to collect insurance. I may as well say right here that some people are in bad in this case, but that others are in worse. Miss Wend was originally a party to the scheme. Only the trouble with Miss Wend was that she was too shrewd to be fooled. She insisted that she have her full share of the pickings. In that case it seems to have been the whole field against Miss Wend, not a very gallant thing, nor yet according to the adage about honour among thieves.

"A certain person whose name I am frank to say I do not know--yet--conceived the idea of destroying the obligations of the Stacey companies to Miss Wend as well as the incriminating evidence which she held of the 'firebug trust,' of which she was a member up to this time. The plan only partly succeeded. The chief coup, which was to destroy the Stacey store into the bargain, miscarried.

"What was the result? Miss Wend, who had been hand in glove with the 'trust,' was now a bitter enemy, perhaps would turn state's evidence.

What more natural than to complete the conspiracy by carrying out the coup and at the same time get rid of the dangerous enemy of the conspirators? I believe that Miss Wend was lured under some pretext or other to the Stacey store on the night of the big fire. The person who wrote the second and third 'A. Spark' letters did it. She was murdered with this deadly instrument"--Craig laid the letter-file on the table--"and it was planned to throw the entire burden of suspicion on her by a.s.serting that there was a shortage in the books of her department."

"Pooh!" exclaimed Stacey, smoking complacently at his cigar. "We have been victimised in those fires by people who have grudges against us, labour unions and others. This talk of an arson trust is bosh--yellow journalism. More than that, we have been systematically robbed by a trusted head of a department, and the fire at Stacey's was the way the thief took to cover--er--her stealings. At the proper time we shall produce the bookkeeper Douglas and prove it."

Kennedy fumbled in the drawer of the desk, then drew forth a long strip of paper covered with figures. "All the Stacey companies," he said, "have been suffering from the depression that exists in the trade at present. They are insolvent. Glance over that, Stacey. It is a summary of the preliminary report of the accountants of the district attorney who have been going over your books to-day."

Stacey gasped. "How did you get it? The report was not to be ready until nine o'clock, and it is scarcely a quarter past now."

"Never mind how I got it. Go over it with the adjusters, anybody. I think you will find that there was no shortage in Miss Wend's department, that you were losing money, that you were in debt to Miss Wend, and that she would have received the lion's share of the proceeds of the insurance if the firebug scheme had turned out as planned."

"We absolutely repudiate these figures as fiction," said Stacey, angrily turning toward Kennedy after a hurried consultation.

"Perhaps, then, you'll appreciate this," replied Craig, pulling another piece of paper from the desk. "I'll read it. 'Henry Douglas, being duly sworn, deposes and says that one'--we'll call him 'Blank' for the present--'with force and arms did feloniously, wilfully, and intentionally kill Rebecca Wend whilst said Blank was wilfully burning and setting on fire--'"

"One moment," interrupted Stacey. "Let me see that paper."

Kennedy laid it down so that only the signature showed. The name was signed in a full round hand, "Henry Douglas."

"It's a forgery," cried Stacey in rage. "Not an hour before I came into this place I saw Henry Douglas. He had signed no such paper then. He could not have signed it since, and you could not have received it. I brand that doc.u.ment as a forgery."

Kennedy stood up and reached down into the open drawer on the right of his desk. From it he lifted the two machines I had seen him place there early in the evening.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this is the last scene of the play you are enacting. You see here on the desk an instrument that was invented many years ago, but has only recently become really practical. It is the telautograph--the long-distance writer. In this new form it can be introduced into the drawer of a desk for the use of any one who may wish to make inquiries, say, of clerks without the knowledge of a caller. It makes it possible to write a message under these conditions and receive an answer concerning the personality or business of the individual seated at one's elbow without leaving the desk or seeming to make inquiries.

"With an ordinary pencil I have written on the paper of the transmitter. The silk cord attached to the pencil regulates the current which controls a pencil at the other end of the line. The receiving pencil moves simultaneously with my pencil. It is the principle of the pantagraph cut in half, one half here, the other half at the end of the line, two telephone wires in this case connecting the halves.