The War Terror Page 30

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE ELECTROLYTIC MURDER

  We dined leisurely, which seemed strange to me, for it was notKennedy's custom to let moments fly uselessly when he was on a case.However, I soon found out why it was. He was waiting for darkness.

  As soon as the lights began to glow in the little stores on the mainstreet, we sallied forth, taking the direction of the Pearcy andMinturn houses.

  On the way he dropped into the hardware store and purchased a lightspade and one of the small pocket electric flashlights, about which hewrapped a piece of cardboard in such a way as to make a most effectivedark lantern.

  We trudged along in silence, occasionally changing from carrying theheavy package to the light spade.

  Both the Pearcy and Minturn houses were in nearly total darkness whenwe arrived. They set well back from the road and were plentifullyshielded by shrubbery. Then, too, at night it was not a much frequentedneighborhood. We could easily hear the footsteps of anyone approachingon the walk, and an occasional automobile gliding past did not worry usin the least.

  "I have calculated carefully from an examination of the water company'smap," said Craig, "just where the water pipe of the two houses branchesoff from the main in the road."

  After a measurement or two from some landmark, we set to work a fewfeet inside, under cover of the bushes and the shadows, like two gravediggers.

  Kennedy had been wielding the spade vigorously for a few minutes whenit touched something metallic. There, just beneath the frost line, wecame upon the service pipe.

  He widened the hole, and carefully scraped off the damp earth thatadhered to the pipe. Next he found a valve where he shut off the waterand cut out a small piece of the pipe.

  "I hope they don't suspect anything like this in the houses with theirwater cut off," he remarked as he carefully split the piece openlengthwise and examined it under the light.

  On the interior of the pipe could be seen patchy lumps of white whichprojected about an eighth of an inch above the internal surface. As thepipe dried in the warm night air, they could easily be brushed off as awhite powder.

  "What is it--strychnine?" I asked.

  "No," he replied, regarding it thoughtfully with some satisfaction."That is lead carbonate. There can be no doubt that the turbidity ofthe water was due to this powder in suspension. A little dissolves inthe water, while the scales and incrustations in fine particles arecarried along in the current. As a matter of fact the amount necessaryto make the water poisonous need not be large."

  He applied a little instrument to the cut ends of the pipe. As I bentover, I could see the needle on its dial deflected just a bit.

  "My voltmeter," he said, reading it, "shows that there is a current ofabout 1.8 volts passing through this pipe all the time."

  "Electrolysis of water pipes!" I exclaimed, thinking of statements Ihad heard by engineers. "That's what they mean by stray or vagabondcurrents, isn't it?"

  He had seized the lantern and was eagerly following up and down theline of the water pipe. At last he stopped, with a low exclamation, ata point where an electric light wire supplying the Minturn cottagecrossed overhead. Fastened inconspicuously to the trunk of a tree whichserved as a support for the wire was another wire which led down fromit and was buried in the ground.

  Craig turned up the soft earth as fast as he could, until he reachedthe pipe at this point. There was the buried wire wound several timesaround it.

  As quickly and as neatly as he could he inserted a connection betweenthe severed ends of the pipe to restore the flow of water to thehouses, turned on the water and covered up the holes he had dug. Thenhe unwrapped the package which we had tugged about all day, and in anarrow path between the bushes which led to the point where the wirehad tapped the electric light feed he placed in a shallow hole in theground a peculiar apparatus.

  As nearly as I could make it out, it consisted of two flat platformsbetween which, covered over and projected, was a slip of paper whichmoved forward, actuated by clockwork, and pressed on by a sort ofstylus. Then he covered it over lightly with dirt so that, unlessanyone had been looking for it, it would never be noticed.

  It was late when we reached the city again, but Kennedy had one morepiece of work and that devolved on me. All the way down on the train hehad been writing and rewriting something.

  "Walter," he said, as the train pulled into the station, "I want thatpublished in to-morrow's papers."

  I looked over what he had written. It was one of the most sensationalstories I have ever fathered, beginning, "Latest of the victims of theunknown poisoner of whole families in Stratfield, Connecticut, is MissIsabel Pearcy, whose father, Randall Pearcy, died last week."

  I knew that it was a "plant" of some kind, for so far he had discoveredno evidence that Miss Pearcy had been affected. What his purpose was, Icould not guess, but I got the story printed.

  The next morning early Kennedy was quietly at work in the laboratory.

  "What is this treatment of lead poisoning by electrolysis?" I asked,now that there had come a lull when I might get an intelligible answer."How does it work?"

  "Brand new, Walter," replied Kennedy. "It has been discovered that ionswill flow directly through the membranes."

  "Ions?" I repeated. "What are ions?"

  "Travelers," he answered, smiling, "so named by Faraday from the Greekverb, io, to go. They are little positive and negative charges ofelectricity of which molecules are composed. You know some believe nowthat matter is really composed of electrical energy. I think I canexplain it best by a simile I use with my classes. It is as though youhad a ballroom in which the dancers in couples represent the neutralmolecules. There are a certain number of isolated ladies andgentlemen--dissociated ions--" "Who don't know these new dances?" Iinterrupted.

  "They all know this dance," he laughed. "But, to be serious in thesimile, suppose at one end of the room there is a large mirror and atthe other a buffet with cigars and champagne. What happens to thedissociated ions?"

  "Well, I suppose you want me to say that the ladies gather about themirror and the men about the buffet."

  "Exactly. And some of the dancing partners separate and follow thecrowd. Well, that room presents a picture of what happens in anelectrolytic solution at the moment when the electric current ispassing through it."

  "Thanks," I laughed. "That was quite adequate to my immatureunderstanding."

  Kennedy continued at work, checking up and arranging his data until themiddle of the afternoon, when he went up to Stratfield.

  Having nothing better to do, I wandered out about town in the hope ofrunning across some one with whom to while away the hours until Kennedyreturned. I found out that, since yesterday, Broadway had woven anentirely new background for the mystery. Now it was rumored that thelawyer Minturn himself had been on very intimate terms with Mrs.Pearcy. I did not pay much attention to the rumor, for I knew thatBroadway is constitutionally unable to believe that anybody is straight.

  Kennedy had commissioned me to keep in touch with Josephson and Ifinally managed to get around to the Baths, to find them still closed.

  As I was talking with him, a very muddy and dusty car pulled up at thedoor and a young man whose face was marred by the red congested bloodvessels that are in some a mark of dissipation burst in on us.

  "What--closed up yet--Joe?" he asked. "Haven't they taken Minturn'sbody away?"

  "Yes, it was sent up to Stratfield to-day," replied the masseur, "butthe coroner seems to want to worry me all he can."

  "Too bad. I was up almost all last night, and to-day I have been out inmy car--tired to death. Thought I might get some rest here. Where areyou sending the boys--to the Longacre?"

  "Yes. They'll take good care of you till I open up again. Hope to seeyou back again, then, Mr. Pearcy," he added, as the young man turnedand hurried out to his car again. "That was that young Pearcy, youknow. Nice boy--but living the life too fast. What's Kennedydoing--anything?"

  I did not like the jau
nty bravado of the masseur which now seemed to bereturning, since nothing definite had taken shape. I determined that heshould not pump me, as he evidently was trying to do. I had at leastfulfilled Kennedy's commission and felt that the sooner I leftJosephson the better for both of us.

  I was surprised at dinner to receive a wire from Craig saying that hewas bringing down Dr. Gunther, Mrs. Pearcy and Isabel to New York andasking me to have Warner Pearcy and Josephson at the laboratory at nineo'clock.

  By strategy I managed to persuade Pearcy to come, and as for Josephson,he could not very well escape, though I saw that as long as nothingmore had happened, he was more interested in "fixing" the police sothat he could resume business than anything else.

  As we entered the laboratory that night, Kennedy, who had left hisparty at a downtown hotel to freshen up, met us each at the door.Instead of conducting us in front of his laboratory table, which wasthe natural way, he led us singly around through the narrow space backof it.

  I recall that as I followed him, I half imagined that the floor gaveway just a bit, and there flashed over me, by a queer association ofideas, the recollection of having visited an amusement park not longbefore where merely stepping on an innocent-looking section of theflooring had resulted in a tremendous knocking and banging beneath,much to the delight of the lovers of slap-stick humor. This was seriousbusiness, however, and I quickly banished the frivolous thought from mymind.

  "The discovery of poison, and its identification," began Craig at lastwhen we had all arrived and were seated about him, "often involves notonly the use of chemistry but also a knowledge of the chemical effectof the poison on the body, and the gross as well as microscopic changeswhich it produces in various tissues and organs--changes, some due tomere contact, others to the actual chemicophysiological reactionbetween the poison and the body."

  His hand was resting on the poles of a large battery, as he proceeded:"Every day the medical detective plays a more and more important partin the detection of crime, and I might say that, except in the case ofcrime complicated by a lunacy plea, his work has earned the respect ofthe courts and of detectives, while in the case of insanity thediscredit is the fault rather of the law itself. The ways in which thedoctor can be of use in untangling the facts in many forms of crimehave become so numerous that the profession of medical detective mayalmost be called a specialty."

  Kennedy repeated what he had already told me about electrolysis, thenplaced between the poles of the battery a large piece of raw beef.

  He covered the negative electrode with blotting paper and soaked it ina beaker near at hand.

  "This solution," he explained, "is composed of potassium iodide. Inthis other beaker I have a mixture of ordinary starch."

  He soaked the positive electrode in the starch and then jammed the twoagainst the soft red meat. Then he applied the current.

  A few moments later he withdrew the positive electrode. Both it and themeat under it were blue!

  "What has happened?" he asked. "The iodine ions have actually passedthrough the beef to the positive pole and the paper on the electrode.Here we have starch iodide."

  It was a startling idea, this of the introduction of a substance byelectrolysis.

  "I may say," he resumed, "that the medical view of electricity ischanging, due in large measure to the genius of the Frenchman, Dr.Leduc. The body, we know, is composed largely of water, with salts ofsoda and potash. It is an excellent electrolyte. Yet most doctorsregard the introduction of substances by the electric current asinsignificant or nonexistent. But on the contrary the introduction ofdrugs by electrolysis is regular and far from being insignificant mayvery easily bring about death.

  "That action," he went on, looking from one of us to another, "may betherapeutic, as in the cure for lead poisoning by removing the lead, orit may be toxic--as in the case of actually introducing such a poisonas strychnine into the body by the same forces that will remove thelead."

  He paused a moment, to enforce the point which had already beensuggested. I glanced about hastily. If anyone in his little audiencewas guilty, no one betrayed it, for all were following him, fascinated.Yet in the wildly throbbing brain of some one of them the guiltyknowledge must be seared indelibly. Would the mere accusation be enoughto dissociate the truth from, that brain or would Kennedy have toresort to other means?

  "Some one," he went on, in a low, tense voice, leaning forward, "someone who knew this effect placed strychnine salts on one of theelectrodes of the bath which Owen Minturn was to use."

  He did not pause. Evidently he was planning to let the force of hisexposure be cumulative, until from its sheer momentum it carriedeverything before it.

  "Walter," he ordered quickly. "Lend me a hand."

  Together we moved the laboratory table as he directed.

  There, in the floor, concealed by the shadow, he had placed the sameapparatus which I had seen him bury in the path between the Pearcy andMinturn estates at Stratfield.

  We scarcely breathed.

  "This," he explained rapidly, "is what is known as a kinograph--theinvention of Professor HeleShaw of London. It enables me to identify aperson by his or her walk. Each of you as you entered this room haspassed over this apparatus and has left a different mark on the paperwhich registers."

  For a moment he stopped, as if gathering strength for the final assault.

  "Until late this afternoon I had this kinograph secreted at a certainplace in Stratfield. Some one had tampered with the leaden water pipesand the electric light cable. Fearful that the lead poisoning broughton by electrolysis might not produce its result in the intended victim,that person took advantage of the new discoveries in electrolysis tocomplete that work by introducing the deadly strychnine during the veryprocess of cure of the lead poisoning."

  He slapped down a copy of a newspaper. "In the news this morning I toldjust enough of what I had discovered and colored it in such a way thatI was sure I would arouse apprehension. I did it because I wanted tomake the criminal revisit the real scene of the crime. There was adouble motive now--to remove the evidence and to check the spread ofthe poisoning."

  He reached over, tore off the paper with a quick, decisive motion, andlaid it beside another strip, a little discolored by moisture, asthough the damp earth had touched it.

  "That person, alarmed lest something in the cleverly laid plot, mightbe discovered, went to a certain spot to remove the traces of thediabolical work which were hidden there. My kinograph shows thefootsteps, shows as plainly as if I had been present, the exact personwho tried to obliterate the evidence."

  An ashen pallor seemed to spread over the face of Miss Pearcy, asKennedy shot out the words.

  "That person," he emphasized, "had planned to put out of the way onewho had brought disgrace on the Pearcy family. It was an act of privatejustice."

  Mrs. Pearcy could stand the strain no longer. She had broken down andwas weeping incoherently. I strained my ears to catch what she wasmurmuring. It was Minturn's name, not Gunther's, that was on her lips.

  "But," cried Kennedy, raising an accusatory finger from the kinographtracing and pointing it like the finger of Fate itself, "but theself-appointed avenger forgot that the leaden water pipe was common tothe two houses. Old Mr. Pearcy, the wronged, died first. Isabel hasguessed the family skeleton--has tried hard to shield you, but, WarnerPearcy, you are the murderer!"