The Ear in the Wall Page 11

  XI

  THE TYPEWRITER CLUE

  Ike was nowhere to be seen when we reached the street, but down theblock we caught sight of Dr. Harris on the next corner. Kennedyhastened our pace until we were safely in his wake, then managed tokeep just a few paces behind him.

  Instead of turning into the street where the Futurist was, Harris kepton up Broadway. It was easy enough to follow him in the crowd nowwithout being perceived.

  He turned into the street where the Little Montmartre was preparing fora long evening of entertainment. We turned, and to cover ourselves gotinto a conversation with a hack driver who seemed suddenly to havesprung from nowhere with the cryptic whisper, "Drive you to the Ladies'Club, gents?"

  Out of the tail of his eye Kennedy watched Harris. Instead of turninginto the Montmartre and his office, he went past to a high-stoopedbrownstone house, two doors away, climbed the steps and entered.

  We sauntered down the street and looked quickly at the house. A brasssign on the wall beside the door read, "Mme. Margot's Beauty Shop."

  "I see," commented Kennedy. "You know women of the type who frequentthe Futurist and the Montmartre are always running to the hairdressingand manicure parlours. They make themselves 'beautiful' under theexpert care of the various specialists and beauty doctors. Then, too,they keep in touch that way with what is going on in the demi-monde.That is their club, so to speak. It is part of the beauty shop's tradeto impart such information--at least of a beauty shop in thisneighbourhood."

  I regarded the place curiously.

  "Come, Walter, don't stare," nudged Kennedy. "Let's take a turn down tothe Prince Henry and wait. We can get a bite to eat, too."

  I had hardly expected that the pickpocket would play fair, butevidently the lure of the remaining twenty dollars was too strong. Wehad scarcely finished our dinner when he came in.

  "Here it is," he whispered. "The house man here at the Prince Henryknows me. Slip me the twenty."

  Kennedy leisurely tore the wrappings from the packet.

  "I suppose you have already looked at this first and found that itisn't worth anything to you compared to twenty dollars. Anyhow, youkept your word. Hello--what is it?"

  He had disclosed several small packets. Inside each, sealed, was apeculiar glistening whitish powder.

  "H'm," mused Kennedy, "another job for the chemist. Here's thebankroll."

  "Thanks," grinned the dip as he disappeared through the revolving door.

  We had returned to the laboratory that night where Kennedy waspreparing to experiment on the white powder which he had secured in thepacket that came from Dr. Harris. The door opened and Clare Kendallentered.

  "I've been calling you up all over town," she said, "and couldn't findyou. I have something that will interest you, I think. You said youwanted something written by Dr. Harris. Well, there it is."

  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 inthe cab, I had a good deal of trouble. I guess people thought I wascrazy, the way I was ordering that driver about, but he was so stupidand he would get tangled up in the traffic on Fifth Avenue. Still, Imanaged to hang on, principally because I had a notion already that shewas 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 aplace two doors down--Mme. Margot's Beauty Parlour."

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

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

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

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

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

  I leaned over and read:

  VERONAL.--Diethylmalonyl or diethylbarbituric acid. A hypnotic usedextensively. White, crystalline, odourless, slightly bitter. Best inten to fifteen grain cachets. Does not affect circulatory orrespiratory systems or temperature. Toxicity low: 135 gr. taken with noserious result. Unreasonable use for insomnia, however, may lead todeath.

  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. Ratherinteresting in themselves as showing perhaps something of his practice,but not necessarily incriminating."

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

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

  "People generally, who have not investigated the subject," he remarkedas he worked, "hold the opinion that the typewriter has noindividuality. Fortunately that is not true. The typewriting machinedoes not always afford an effective protection to the criminal. On thecontrary, the typewriting may be a direct means of tracing a documentto its source and showing it to be what it really is. This isespecially true of typewritten anonymous letters. Without carefulinvestigation it is impossible to say what can be determined from theexamination of any particular piece of typewriting, but typewriting canoften be positively identified as being the work of a certainparticular typewriting machine and even the date of writing cansometimes be found out."

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

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

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

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

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

  "Of course," I admitted on second thought.

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

  I nodded and he went on. "The faces of many letters inevitably becomebroken, worn, or battered. Not only does that tend to identify aparticular machine, but it is sometimes possible, if you have certainadmitted standard specimens of writing covering a long period, to telljust when a disputed writing was made. There are two steps in such aninquiry, the first the determination of the fact that a document waswritten on a certain particular kind of machine and the second that itwas written on a certain individual machine of that make. I have herespecimens of the writing of all the leading machines. It is easy topick out the make used, say in the 'Outcast' letter. Moreover, as Isaid when I first saw that letter, it is in the regular pica type. Soare they all, but as ninety-five per cent, use the pica style that initself proved nothing."

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

  "In ordinary typewriting," replied Craig, "each letter occupies animaginary square, ten to the inch horizontally and six to the inchvertically. Typewriting letters are in line both ways. This ruled glassplate is an alinement test plate for detecting defects in alinement. Ihave also here another glass plate in which the lines diverge each at avery slightly different angle--a typewriting protractor for measuringthe slant of divergence of various letters that have become twisted, soto speak.

  "When it is in perfect alinement the letter occupies the middle of eachsquare 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 orbelow the middle. That, you see, makes nine positions in all--or eightpossible divergences from normal in this particular alone."

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

  "Another possible divergence," went on Kennedy, "is the perpendicularposition of the letter in relation to the line. That is of great valuein individualizing a machine. It is very seldom that machines, evenwhen they are new, are perfect in this particular. It does not seemmuch until you magnify it. Then anyone can see it, and it is acharacteristic that is fixed, continuous, and not much changed byvariations in speed or methods of writing.

  "Here's another thing. Typewriter faces are not flat like printingtype, but are concaved to conform to the curve of the printing surfaceof the roller. When they are properly adjusted all portions shouldprint uniformly. But when they are slightly out of position in anydirection the two curved surfaces of type and roller are not exactlyparallel and therefore don't come together with uniform pressure. Theresult is a difference in intensity in different parts of theimpression."

  It was fascinating to see Craig at work over such minute points whichwe 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 wereperfect to begin with and in perfect condition--which is never found tobe the case when they are critically examined--the work from one wouldbe theoretically indistinguishable from that of another until actualuse had affected them differently. The work of any number of machinesbegins inevitably to diverge as soon as they are used. Since there arethousands of possible particulars in which differences may develop, itvery soon becomes possible to identify positively the work of aparticular typewriting machine."

  "How about the operator?" I asked curiously.

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

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

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

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

  "But," she spoke up quickly, "even that does not point to the sameperson as the author--not the writer, but the author--of the threepieces of writing."

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

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

  "Exactly."

  Clare had risen to go.

  "It quite takes my breath away to think that we are really making suchprogress against the impregnable Montmartre. At various times myinvestigators have been piecing together little bits of informationabout 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 andremarked, "That girl has something on her mind. I wonder what it is?"