The War Terror Page 14

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE SPINTHARISCOPE

  We followed her upstairs and into Haughton's room, where he was lyingin bed, propped up by pillows. Haughton certainly was ill. There was nomistake about that. He was a tall, gaunt man with an air about him thatshowed that he found illness very irksome. Around his neck was abandage, and some adhesive tape at the back showed that a plaster ofsome sort had been placed there.

  As we entered his eyes traveled restlessly from the face of the girl toour own in an inquiring manner. He stretched out a nervous hand to us,while Kennedy in a few short sentences explained how we had becomeassociated with the case and what we had seen already.

  "And there is not a clue?" he repeated as Craig finished.

  "Nothing tangible yet," reiterated Kennedy. "I suppose you have heardof this rumor from London of a trust that is going into the radiumfield internationally?"

  "Yes," he answered, "that is the thing you read to me in the morningpapers, you remember, Felicie. Denison and I have heard such rumorsbefore. If it is a fight, then we shall give them a fight. They can'thold us up, if Denison is right in thinking that they are at the bottomof this--this robbery."

  "Then you think he may be right?" shot out Kennedy quickly.

  Haughton glanced nervously from Kennedy to me.

  "Really," he answered, "you see how impossible it is for me to have anopinion? You and Denison have been over the ground. You know much moreabout it than I do. I am afraid I shall have to defer to you."

  Again we heard the bell downstairs, and a moment later a cheery voice,as Mrs. Woods met some one down in the foyer, asked, "How is thepatient to-night?"

  We could not catch the reply.

  "Dr. Bryant, my physician," put in Haughton. "Don't go. I will assumethe responsibility for your being here. Hello, Doctor. Why, I'm muchthe same to-night, thank you. At least no worse since I took youradvice and went to bed."

  Dr. Bryant was a bluff, hearty man, with the personal magnetism whichgoes with the making of a successful physician. He had mounted thestairs quietly but rapidly, evidently prepared to see us.

  "Would you mind waiting in this little dressing room?" asked thedoctor, motioning to another, smaller room adjoining.

  He had taken from his pocket a little instrument with a dial face likea watch, which he attached to Haughton's wrist. "A pocket instrument tomeasure blood pressure," whispered Craig, as we entered the little room.

  While the others were gathered about Haughton, we stood in the nextroom, out of earshot. Kennedy had leaned his elbow on a chiffonier. Ashe looked about the little room, more from force of habit than becausehe thought he might discover anything, Kennedy's eye rested on a glasstray on the top in which lay some pins, a collar button or two, whichHaughton had apparently just taken off, and several other littleunimportant articles.

  Kennedy bent over to look at the glass tray more closely, a puzzledlook crossed his face, and with a glance at the other room he gatheredup the tray and its contents.

  "Keep up a good courage," said Dr. Bryant. "You'll come out all right,Haughton." Then as he left the bedroom he added to us, "Gentlemen, Ihope you will pardon me, but if you could postpone the remainder ofyour visit until a later day, I am sure you will find it moresatisfactory."

  There was an air of finality about the doctor, though nothingunpleasant in it. We followed him down the stairs, and as we did so,Felicie, who had been waiting in a reception room, appeared before theportieres, her earnest eyes fixed on his kindly face.

  "Dr. Bryant," she appealed, "is he--is he, really--so badly?"

  The Doctor, who had apparently known her all her life, reached down andtook one of her hands, patting it with his own in a fatherly way."Don't worry, little girl," he encouraged. "We are going to come outall right--all right."

  She turned from him to us and, with a bright forced smile which showedthe stuff she was made of, bade us good night.

  Outside, the Doctor, apparently regretting that he had virtually forcedus out, paused before his car. "Are you going down toward the station?Yes? I am going that far. I should be glad to drive you there."

  Kennedy climbed into the front seat, leaving me in the rear where thewind wafted me their brief conversation as we sped down WoodbridgeAvenue.

  "What seems to be the trouble?" asked Craig.

  "Very high blood pressure, for one thing," replied the Doctor frankly.

  "For which the latest thing is the radium water cure, I suppose?"ventured Kennedy.

  "Well, radioactive water is one cure for hardening of the arteries. ButI didn't say he had hardening of the arteries. Still, he is taking thewater, with good results. You are from the company?"

  Kennedy nodded.

  "It was the radium water that first interested him in it. Why, we founda pressure of 230 pounds, which is frightful, and we have brought itdown to 150, not far from normal."

  "Still that could have nothing to do with the sore on his neck,"hazarded Kennedy.

  The Doctor looked at him quickly, then ahead at the path of light whichhis motor shed on the road.

  He said nothing, but I fancied that even he felt there was somethingstrange in his silence over the new complication. He did not giveKennedy a chance to ask whether there were any other such sores.

  "At any rate," he said, as he throttled down his engine with a flourishbefore the pretty little Glenclair station, "that girl needn't worry."

  There was evidently no use in trying to extract anything further fromhim. He had said all that medical ethics or detective skill could getfrom him. We thanked him and turned to the ticket window to see howlong we should have to wait.

  "Either that doctor doesn't know what he is talking about or he isconcealing something," remarked Craig, as we paced up and down theplatform. "I am inclined to read the enigma in the latter way."

  Nothing more passed between us during the journey back, and we hurrieddirectly to the laboratory, late as it was. Kennedy had evidently beenrevolving something over and over in his mind, for the moment he hadswitched on the light, he unlocked one of his air-and dust-proofcabinets and took from it an instrument which he placed on a tablebefore him.

  It was a peculiar-looking instrument, like a round glass electricbattery with a cylinder atop, smaller and sticking up like a safetyvalve. On that were an arm, a dial, and a lens fixed in such a way asto read the dial. I could not see what else the rather complicatedlittle apparatus consisted of, but inside, when Kennedy brought near itthe pole of a static electric machine two delicate thin leaves of goldseemed to fly wide apart when it was charged.

  Kennedy had brought the glass tray near the thing. Instantly the leavescollapsed and he made a reading through the lens.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "A radioscope," he replied, still observing the scale. "Really a verysensitive gold leaf electroscope, devised by one of the students ofMadame Curie. This method of detection is far more sensitive even thanthe spectroscope."

  "What does it mean when the leaves collapse?" I asked.

  "Radium has been near that tray," he answered. "It is radioactive. Isuspected it first when I saw that violet color. That is what radiumdoes to that kind of glass. You see, if radium exists in a gram ofinactive matter only to the extent of one in ten-thousand million partsits presence can be readily detected by this radioscope, and everythingthat has been rendered radioactive is the same. Ordinarily the airbetween the gold leaves is insulating. Bringing something radioactivenear them renders the air a good conductor and the leaves fall underthe radiation."

  "Wonderful!" I exclaimed, marveling at the delicacy of it.

  "Take radium water," he went on, "sufficiently impregnated with radiumemanations to be luminous in the dark, like that water of Denison's. Itwould do the same. In fact all mineral waters and the so-calledcurarive muds like fango are slightly radioactive. There seems to be alittle radium everywhere on earth that experiments have been made, evenin the interiors of buildings. It is ubiquitous. We are surrounded andpermeated
by radiations--that soil out there on the campus, the air ofthis room, all. But," he added contemplatively, "there is somethingdifferent about that tray. A lot of radium has been near that, andrecently."

  "How about that bandage about Haughton's neck?" I asked suddenly. "Doyou think radium could have had anything to do with that?" "Well, as toburns, there is no particular immediate effect usually, and sometimeseven up to two weeks or more, unless the exposure has been long and toa considerable quantity. Of course radium keeps itself three or fourdegrees warmer than other things about it constantly. But that isn'twhat does the harm. It is continually emitting little corpuscles, whichI'll explain some other time, traveling all the way from twenty to onehundred and thirty thousand miles a second, and these corpusclesblister and corrode the flesh like quick-moving missiles bombarding it.The gravity of such lesions increases with the purity of the radium.For instance I have known an exposure of half an hour to acomparatively small quantity through a tube, a box and the clothes toproduce a blister fifteen days later. Curie said he wouldn't trusthimself in a room with a kilogram of it. It would destroy his eyesight,burn off his skin and kill him eventually. Why, even after a slightexposure your clothes are radioactive--the electroscope will show that."

  He was still fumbling with the glass plate and the various articles onit.

  "There's something very peculiar about all this," he muttered, almostto himself.

  Tired by the quick succession of events of the past two days, I leftKennedy still experimenting in his laboratory and retired, stillwondering when the real clue was to develop. Who could it have been whobore the tell-tale burn? Was the mark hidden by the bandage aboutHaughton's neck the brand of the stolen tubes? Or were there othermarks on his body which we could not see?

  No answer came to me, and I fell asleep and woke up without a radiationof light on the subject. Kennedy spent the greater part of the daystill at work at his laboratory, performing some very delicateexperiments. Finding nothing to do there, I went down to the Staroffice and spent my time reading the reports that came in from thesmall army of reporters who had been assigned to run down clues in thecase which was the sensation of the moment. I have always felt my ownlips sealed in such cases, until the time came that the story wascomplete and Kennedy released me from any further need of silence. Theweird and impossible stories which came in not only to the Star but tothe other papers surely did make passable copy in this instance, butwith my knowledge of the case I could see that not one of them broughtus a step nearer the truth.

  One thing which uniformly puzzled the newspapers was the illness ofHaughton and his enforced idleness at a time which was of so muchimportance to the company which he had promoted and indeed very largelyfinanced. Then, of course, there was the romantic side of hisengagement to Felicie Woods.

  Just what connection Felicie Woods had with the radium robbery if any,I was myself unable quite to fathom. Still, that made no difference tothe papers. She was pretty and therefore they published her picture,three columns deep, with Haughton and Denison, who were intimatelyconcerned with the real loss in little ovals perhaps an inch across andtwo inches in the opposite dimension.

  The late afternoon news editions had gone to press, and I had given upin despair, determined to go up to the laboratory and sit around idlywatching Kennedy with his mystifying experiments, in preference towaiting for him to summon me.

  I had scarcely arrived and settled myself to an impatient watch, whenan automobile drove up furiously, and Denison himself, very excited,jumped out and dashed into the laboratory.

  "What's the matter?" asked Kennedy, looking up from a test tube whichhe had been examining, with an air for all the world expressive of "Whyso hot, little man?"

  "I've had a threat," ejaculated Denison.

  He laid on one of the laboratory tables a letter, without heading andwithout signature, written in a disguised hand, with an evident attemptto simulate the cramped script of a foreign penmanship.

  "I know who did the Pittsburgh job. The same party is out to ruinFederal Radium. Remember Pittsburgh and be prepared!

  "A STOCKHOLDER."

  "Well?" demanded Kennedy, looking up.

  "That can have only one meaning," asserted Denison.

  "What is that?" inquired Kennedy coolly, as if to confirm his owninterpretation.

  "Why, another robbery--here in New York, of course."

  "But who would do it?" I asked.

  "Who?" repeated Denison. "Some one representing that European combine,of course. That is only part of the Trust method--ruin of competitorswhom they cannot absorb."

  "Then you have refused to go into the combine? You know who is backingit?"

  "No--no," admitted Denison reluctantly. "We have only signified ourintent to go it alone, as often as anyone either with or withoutauthority has offered to buy us out. No, I do not even know who thepeople are. They never act in the open. The only hints I have everreceived were through perfectly reputable brokers acting for others."

  "Does Haughton know of this note?" asked Kennedy.

  "Yes. As soon as I received it, I called him up."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said to disregard it. But--you know what condition he is in. Idon't know what to do, whether to surround the office by a squad ofdetectives or remove the radium to a regular safety deposit vault, evenat the loss of the emanation. Haughton has left it to me."

  Suddenly the thought flashed across my mind that perhaps Haughton couldact in this uninterested fashion because he had no fear of ruin eitherway. Might he not be playing a game with the combination in which hehad 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 watchthere, anyhow."