The Ear in the Wall Read online

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  THE EAR IN THE WALL

  BY

  ARTHUR B. REEVE

  FRONTISPIECE BY WILL FOSTER

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I THE VANISHER

  II THE BLACK BOOK

  III THE SAFE ROBBERY

  IV THE ANONYMOUS LETTER

  V THE SUFFRAGETTE SECRETARY

  VI THE WOMAN DETECTIVE

  VII THE GANG LEADER

  VIII THE SHYSTER LAWYER

  IX THE JURY FIXER

  X THE AFTERNOON DANCE

  XI THE TYPEWRITER CLUE

  XII THE "PORTRAIT PARLE"

  XIII THE CONVICTION

  XIV THE BEAUTY PARLOUR

  XV THE PHANTOM CIRCUIT

  XVI THE SANITARIUM

  XVII THE SOCIETY SCANDAL

  XVIII THE WALL STREET WOLF

  XIX THE ESCAPE

  XX THE METRIC PHOTOGRAPH

  XXI THE MORGUE

  XXII THE CANARD

  XXIII THE CONFESSION

  XXIV THE DEBACLE OF DORGAN

  XXV THE BLOOD CRYSTALS

  XXVI THE WHITE SLAVE

  XXVII THE ELECTION NIGHT

  I

  THE VANISHER

  "Hello, Jameson, is Kennedy in?"

  I glanced up from the evening papers to encounter the square-jawed,alert face of District Attorney Carton in the doorway of our apartment.

  "How do you do, Judge?" I exclaimed. "No, but I expect him any secondnow. Won't you sit down?"

  The District Attorney dropped, rather wearily I thought, into a chairand looked at his watch.

  I had made Carton's acquaintance some years before as a cub reporter onthe Star while he was a judge of an inferior court. Our acquaintancehad grown through several political campaigns in which I had hadassignments that brought me into contact with him. More recently somespecial writing had led me across his trail again in telling the storyof his clean-up of graft in the city. At present his weariness waseasily accounted for. He was in the midst of the fight of his life forre-election against the so-called "System," headed by Boss Dorgan, inwhich he had gone far in exposing evils that ranged all the way fromvice and the drug traffic to bald election frauds.

  "I expect a Mrs. Blackwell here in a few minutes," he remarked,glancing again at his watch. His eye caught the headline of the newsstory I had been reading and he added quickly, "What do the boys on theStar think of that Blackwell case, anyhow?"

  It was, I may say, a case deeply shrouded in mystery--the disappearancewithout warning of a beautiful young girl, Betty Blackwell, barelyeighteen. Her family, the police, and now the District Attorney hadsought to solve it in vain. Some had thought it a kidnaping, others asuicide, and others had even hinted at murder. All sorts of theorieshad been advanced without in the least changing the original dominantnote of mystery. Photographs of the young woman had been publishedbroadcast, I knew, without eliciting a word in reply. Young men whomshe had known and girls with whom she had been intimate had beenquestioned without so much as a clue being obtained. Reports that shehad been seen had come in from all over the country, as they always doin such cases. All had been investigated and had turned out to be basedon nothing more than imagination. The mystery remained unsolved.

  "Well," I replied, "of course there's a lot of talk now in the papersabout aphasia and amnesia and all that stuff. But, you know, wereporters are a sceptical lot. We have to be shown. I can't say we putmuch faith in THAT."

  "But what is your explanation? You fellows always have an opinion.Sometimes I think the newspapermen are our best detectives."

  "I can't say that we have any opinion in this case--yet," I returnedfrankly. "When a girl just simply disappears on Fifth Avenue and thereisn't even the hint of a clue as to any place she went or how,well--oh, there's Kennedy now. Put it up to him."

  "We were just talking of that Betty Blackwell disappearance case,"resumed Carton, when the greetings were over. "What do you think of it?"

  "Think of it?" repeated Kennedy promptly with a keen glance at theDistrict Attorney; "why, Judge, I think of it the same as you evidentlydo. If you didn't think it was a case that was in some way connectedwith your vice and graft investigation, you wouldn't be here. And if Ididn't feel that it promised surprising results, aside from theinterest I always have naturally in solving such mysteries, I wouldn'tbe ready to take up the offer which you came here to make."

  "You're a wizard, Kennedy," laughed Carton, though it was easily seenthat he was both pleased and relieved to think that he had enlistedCraig's services so easily.

  "Not much of a wizard. In the first place, I know the fight you'remaking. Also, I know that you wouldn't go to the police in the presentstate of armed truce between your office and Headquarters. You wantsomeone outside. Well, I'm more than willing to be that person. Thewhole thing, in its larger aspects, interests me. Betty Blackwell inparticular, arouses my sympathies. That's all."

  "Exactly, Kennedy. This fight I'm in is going to be the fight of mylife. Just now, in addition to everything else, people are looking tome to find Betty Blackwell. Her mother was in to see me today; thereisn't much that she could add to what has already been said. Betty wasa most attractive girl. The family is an excellent one, but in reducedcircumstances. She had been used to a great deal as a child, but now,since the death of her father, she has had to go to work--and you knowwhat that means to a girl like that."

  Carton laid down a new photograph which the newspapers had not printedyet. Betty Blackwell was slender, petite, chic. Her dark hair wascarefully groomed, and there was an air with which she wore her clothesand carried herself, even in a portrait, which showed that she was noordinary girl.

  Her soft brown eyes had that magnetic look which is dangerous to theirowner if she does not know how to control it, eyes that arrested one'sgaze, invited notice. Even the lens must have felt the spell. It hadcaught, also, the soft richness of the skin of her oval face and fullthroat and neck. Indeed one could not help remarking that she wasreally the girl to grace a fortune. Only a turn of the hand of thatfickle goddess had prevented her from doing so.

  I had picked up one of the evening papers and was looking at thenewspaper half-tone which more than failed to do justice to her. Justthen my eye happened on an item which I had been about to discuss withCarton when Kennedy entered.

  "As a scientist, does the amnesia theory appeal to you, Craig?" Iasked. "Now, here is an explanation by one of the special writers,headed, 'Personalities Lost Through Amnesia.' Listen."

  The article was brief:

  Mysterious disappearances, such as that of Betty Blackwell, havealarmed the public and baffled the police before this--disappearancesthat have in their suddenness, apparent lack of purpose, andinexplicability much in common with her case. Leaving out of accountthe class of disappearances for their own convenience--embezzlers,blackmailers, and so forth--there is still a large number of recordedcases where the subjects have dropped out of sight without apparentcause or reason and have left behind them untarnished reputations andsolvent back accounts. Of these, a small percentage are found to havemet with violence; others have been victims of suicidal mania, andsooner or later a clue has come to light which has established thefact. The dead are often easier to find than the living.

  Of the remaining small proportion, there are on record, however, anumber of carefully authenticated cases where the subject has been thevictim of a sudden and complete loss of memory.

  This dislocation of memory is a variety of aphasia known as amnesia,and when the memory is recurrently lost and restored, we havealternating personality. The Society
for Psychical Research and manyeminent psychologists, among them the late William James, Dr. WeirMitchell, Dr. Hodgson of Boston, and Dr. A. E. Osborn of San Francisco,have reported many cases of alternating personality.

  Studious efforts are being made to understand and to explain thestrange type of mental phenomena exhibited in these cases, but as yetno one has given a clear and comprehensive explanation of them. Suchcases are by no means always connected with disappearances, andexhaustive studies have been made of types of alternating personalitythat have from first to last been carefully watched by scientists ofthe first rank.

  The variety known as the ambulatory type, where the patient suddenlyloses all knowledge of his own identity and of the past and takeshimself off, leaving no trace or clue, is the variety which the presentcase of Miss Blackwell seems to suggest.

  There followed a number of most interesting cases and an elaborateargument by the writer to show that Betty Blackwell was a victim ofthis psychological aberration, that she was, in other words, "avanisher."

  I laid down the paper with a questioning look at Kennedy.

  "As a scientist," he replied deliberately, "the theory, of course, doesappeal to me, especially in the ingenious way in which that writerapplied it. However, as a detective"--he shook his head slowly--"I mustdeal with facts--not speculations. It leaves much to be explained, tosay the least."

  Just then the door buzzer sounded and Carton himself sprang to answerit.

  "That's Mrs. Blackwell now--her mother. I told her that I was going totake the case to you, Kennedy, and took the liberty of asking her tocome up here to meet you. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Blackwell. Let meintroduce Professor Kennedy and Mr. Jameson, of whom I spoke to you."

  She bowed and murmured a tremulous greeting. Kennedy placed a chair forher and she thanked him.

  Mrs. Blackwell was a slender little woman in black, well past middleage. Her face and dress spoke of years of economy, even of privation,but her manner was plainly that of a woman of gentle breeding andformer luxury. She was precisely of the type of decayed gentlewomanthat one meets often in the city, especially at some of themiddle-class boarding-houses.

  Deeply as the disappearance of her daughter had affected her, Mrs.Blackwell was facing it bravely. That was her nature. One could imaginethat only when Betty was actually found would this plucky little womancollapse. Instinctively, one felt that she claimed his assistance inthe unequal fight she was waging against the complexities of modernlife for which she had been so ill prepared.

  "I do hope you will be able to find my daughter," she began,controlling her voice with an effort. "Mr. Carton has been so kind,more than kind, I am sure, in getting your aid. The police seem to beable to do nothing. They make out reports, put me off, tell me they aremaking progress--but they don't find Betty."

  There was a tragic pathos in the way she said it.

  "Betty was such a good girl, too," she went on, her emotions rising."Oh, I was so proud of her when she got her position down in WallStreet, with the broker, Mr. Langhorne."

  "Tell Mr. Kennedy just what you told me of her disappearance," put inCarton.

  Again Mrs. Blackwell controlled her feelings. "I don't know much aboutit," she faltered, "but last Saturday, when she left the office early,she said she was going to do some shopping on Fifth Avenue. I know shewent there, did shop a bit, then walked on the Avenue several blocks.But after that there is no trace of her."

  "You have heard nothing, have no idea where she might have gone--evenfor a time?" queried Kennedy.

  He asked it with a keen look at the face of Mrs. Blackwell. I recalledone case where a girl had disappeared in which Kennedy had alwaysasserted that if the family had been perfectly frank at the start muchmore might have been accomplished in unravelling the mystery.

  There was evident sincerity in Mrs. Blackwell as she replied quickly,"Absolutely none. Another girl from the office was with her part of thetime, then left her to take the subway. We don't live far uptown. Itwouldn't have taken Betty long to get home, even if she had walked,after that, through a crowded street, too."

  "Of course, she may have met a friend, may have gone somewhere with thefriend," put in Kennedy, as if trying out the remark to see what effectit might have.

  "Where could she go?" asked Mrs. Blackwell in naive surprise, lookingat him with a counterpart of the eyes we had seen in the picture. "Ihope you don't think that Betty---"

  The little widow was on the verge of tears again at the mere hint thather daughter might have had friends that were not all, perhaps, thatthey should be.

  Carton came to the rescue. "Miss Blackwell," he interposed, "was a veryattractive girl, very. She had hosts of admirers, as every attractivegirl must have. Most of them, all of them, as far as Mrs. Blackwellknows and I have been able to find out, were young men at the officewhere she worked, or friends of that sort--not the ordinary clerk, butof the rising, younger, self-made generation. Still, they don't seem tohave interested her particularly as far as I have been able todiscover. She merely liked them. There is absolutely nothing known topoint to the fact that she was any different from thousands of girls inthat respect. She was vivacious, full of fun and life, a girl anyfellow would have been more than proud to take to a dance. She wasambitious, I suppose, but nothing more."

  "Betty was not a bad girl," asserted Mrs. Blackwell vehemently. "Shewas a good girl. I don't believe there was much, in fact anythingimportant, on which she did not make me her confidante. Yes, she wasambitious. So am I. I have always hoped that Betty would bring ourfamily--her younger sister--back to the station where we were beforethe panic wiped out our fortune and killed my husband. That is all."

  "Yes," added Carton, "nothing at all is known that would make one thinkthat she was what young men call a 'good fellow' with them."

  Kennedy looked up, but said nothing. I thought I could read theunspoken word on his lips, as he glanced from Carton to Mrs. Blackwell,"known."

  She had risen and was facing us.

  "Is there no one in all this great city," appealed the distractedlittle woman with outstretched arms, "who can find my daughter? Is itpossible that a girl can disappear in broad daylight in the streets andnever be heard of again? Oh, won't you find her? Tell me she issafe--that she is still the little girl I---"

  Her voice failed and she was crying softly in her lace handkerchief. Itwas touching and I saw that Kennedy was deeply moved, although at onceto his practical mind the thought must have occurred that nothing wasto be gained by further questions of Mrs. Blackwell.

  "Believe me, Mrs. Blackwell," he said in a low tone, taking her hand,"I will do all that is in my power to find her."

  "Thank you," murmured the mother, overcome.

  A moment later, however, she had recovered her composure to some degreeand rose to go. There was a flattering look of relief on her face whichin itself must have been ample reward to Craig, a retainer worth moreto him in a case like this than money.

  "I'm going back to my office," remarked Carton. "If I learn anything, Ishall let you know."

  The District Attorney went out with Mrs. Blackwell. Busy as he was, hehad time to turn aside to help this bereaved woman, and I admired himfor it.

  "Do you think it is one of those cases like some that Carton hasuncovered on the East Side and among girls newly arrived in the city?"I asked Craig when the door was shut.

  "Can't say," he returned, in an abstracted study.

  "It's awful if it is," I pursued. "And if it is, I suppose all thatwill result from it will be a momentary thrill of thenewspaper-readers, and then they will fall back on the old saying thatafter all it is only a result of human nature that such thingshappen--they always have happened and always will--that old line oftalk."

  "That sort of thing is NOT a result of human nature," returned Kennedyearnestly. "It's a System. I mean to say that if it should turn out tobe connected with the vice investigations of Carton, and not a case ofaphasia, such a disappearance you would find to be due to thepersistent, cunnin
g, and unprincipled exploitation of young girls.

  "No, Walter, it is not that women are weak or that men are inherentlyvicious. That doesn't account for a case like this. Then, too, somemawkish people to-day are fond of putting the whole evil on low wagesas a cause. It isn't that--alone. It isn't even lack of education or ofmoral training. Human nature is not so bad in the mass as some goodpeople think. No, don't you, as a reporter, see it? It is big business,in its way, that Carton is fighting--big business in the commercializedruin of girls, such, perhaps, as Betty Blackwell--a vicious system thatenmeshes even those who are its tools. I'm glad if I can have a chanceto help smash it.

  "Now, I'll tell you what I want you to do, just so that we can startthis thing with a clear understanding of what it amounts to. I want youto look up just what the situation is. I know there is an army of'vanishers' in New York. I want to know something about them in themass. Can't you dig up something from your Star connections?"

  Kennedy had some matters concerning other cases to clear up before hefelt free to devote his whole time to this. As there was nothing wecould do immediately, I spent some time getting at the facts he wanted.Indeed, it did not take me long to discover that the disappearance ofBetty Blackwell, in spite of the prominence it had been given, was byno means an isolated case. I found that the Star alone had chronicledscores of such disappearances during the past few months, cases ofgirls who had simply been swallowed up in the big city. They were thedaughters of neither the rich nor of the poor, most of them, but girlsrather in ordinary circumstances.

  Even the police records showed upward of a thousand missing younggirls, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-one years and I knew thatthe police lists scarcely approximated the total number of missingpersons in the great city, especially in those cases where a hesitancyon the part of parents and relatives often concealed the loss frompublic records.

  I came away with the impression that there were literally hundreds ofcases every bit as baffling as that of Betty Blackwell, of young girlswho had left absolutely no trace behind, who had made no preparationsfor departure and of whom few had been heard from since theydisappeared. Many from homes of refinement and even high financialstanding had disappeared, leaving no clues behind. It was not alone thedaughters of the poor that were affected--it was all society.

  Many reasons, I found, had been assigned for the disappearances. I knewthat there must be many causes at work, that no one cause could beresponsible for all or perhaps a majority of the cases. There weresuicides and murders and elopements, family troubles, poverty, desirefor freedom and adventure; innumerable complex causes, even down tokidnapping.

  The question was, however, which of these causes had been in operationin the case of Betty Blackwell? Where had she gone? Where had thiswhole army of vanishers disappeared? Were these disappearances merelyaccidents--or was there an epidemic of amnesia? I could bring myself tono such conclusions, but was forced to answer my own queries in lieu ofan answer from Kennedy, by propounding another. Was there an organizedband?

  And, after I had tried to reason it all out, I still found myself backat the original question, as I rejoined Kennedy at the laboratory,"Where had they all--where had Betty Blackwell gone?"