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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The illustrations for this story have been omitted. They were drawn by George Brehm (1878-1966), whose works are not in the public domain.
The Red Book Magazine, November 1914,
with "The House of a Thousand Murders"
DID you ever realize that typewriting shows personality almost as clearly as penmanship? Of course you didn't. But it is by grasping just such little points that Guy Garrick solves mysteries—and makes mighty good reading.
The hand that has killed the others will get you yet. It is only a question of time. Your death warrant is signed by La Mano Nera.
"LA MANO NERA—the Black Hand!" exclaimed Garrick, reading the crudely-typewritten sheet of paper which a short, stocky Irishman laid before him.
AS he took the note from his visitor, he noticed that the forefinger of the man's hand was gone. A hasty glance had disclosed a peculiar, nervous twitching of his face, and marks that looked as if gunpowder had pitted his skin.
"Yes, Mr. Garrick, the Black Hand," repeated the visitor breathlessly. "I received it to-day. I have heard of you and I thought that perhaps you would take up the case. I can pay you, sir—not out of city funds, but from a special fund that has been given me by Mr. Townsend Cooke, of Rockcrest, to catch—"
"And you are?" interrupted Garrick, looking up inquiringly at the man.
"Dennis Riley—expert in infernal machines, specialist in the dissection of bombs, student of everything ready to burst and blow things to kingdom come," the man replied.
Garrick nodded. "Dennis Riley of the Bureau of Combustibles, then?" he queried.
"The same," replied Riley, obviously flattered. "No one wants my job, I guess," he added whimsically. "That's probably what the people who wrote the note count on. They seem to think that if they can get rid of me, they will be free to do everything they choose—and, sir. that's plenty!"
"But about Townsend Cooke," prompted Garrick. "How does a millionaire broker figure in it?"
"Why, it's like this," began Riley: "There has been an epidemic of bombs up there in the rich colony at Rockcrest on the Hudson. First it was the employees on the estates. Now, since some of their employers are fighting to protect them, the letter-writers and bomb-throwers have gone higher up for revenge. There have been all kinds of killings among the Italians—I couldn't say off hand how many. But the question is now, will it be one of the millionaires next?"
"Cooke hasn't been threatened, himself, has he?" asked Garrick quickly.
Riley leaned over excitedly. "A bomb was sent to him last night," he exclaimed. "Fortunately it didn't explode. But here is the address on the package as it was mailed at the general post office, here in New York."
Riley produced a typewritten label from his capacious wallet, and Garrick fairly pounced on it, studying it carefully.
"I have taken the bomb," Riley went on, "as well as others—what was left of the exploded ones, and another that was sent to one of the men and did not explode. I have analyzed and catalogued them. And, Mr. Garrick," he concluded, "there is a gang of blackmailers and extortioners at work—men of daring and great mechanical skill, as well as practical knowledge of explosives. They must be caught before they do any more damage."
Garrick was glancing eagerly from the letter to the typewritten label.
"Mr. Cooke called me in," pursued Riley, "and then came this threatening letter to me. Often I've said to myself, 'Dennis, you'll get a bomb yourself some day—what'll you do?' So, I thought I'd just come around and see you."
GARRICK had meanwhile pulled out of his desk a transparent
glass plate, ruled in regular little oblongs.
"That's right, Riley," he agreed. "People, especially public officers, receive lots of threatening letters, and too often they throw them away. I'm glad you brought this to me."
He was carefully examining both letter and label under the ruled glass.
"Of course," apologized Riley. "I don't know who these bomb-senders are, and I suppose the letter isn't of much account as a clue, but I thought I'd better show it to you rather than to the police. If it had only been written, then it might—"
"On the contrary," interrupted Garrick, still poring over it, "I suppose you don't know, but there is an increasing use of the typewriter for such things. Most likely it is due to the false idea that typewriting somehow can't be identified. But the fact is that the typewriter is perhaps a worse means of concealing identity than is disguised handwriting.
"It doesn't afford the effective protection the criminal supposes—quite the opposite. It may be the direct means of tracing a letter to its source, of determining first the kind of machine on which the letter was written, then what particular individual machine was used. For instance, I can count the number of threads to the inch in the ribbon that was employed, and find out by my tintometer the exact color of it."
Riley was listening intently, as Garrick talked.
"Not only that, but this alignment test-plate enables me to study accurately the spacing and alignment of the typewritten characters. There are, in this pica type, ten to the inch, horizontally, and six to the inch, vertically. That is usual. Perhaps, too, you are not acquainted with the fact that typewritten characters are in line both ways, horizontally and vertically.
"Then there are nine possible positions for each character which may be assumed with reference to one of these little standard squares of the test-plate. Not only that, but the faces of many letters inevitably become broken, worn, battered, as well as out of alignment, or slightly shifted in their position on the type-bar. The type faces are not flat, but a little concave to conform to the roller. There are thousands of possible divergences, scars, and deformities in the type of each machine."
Garrick was proceeding enthusiastically with his work of comparison.
"You cannot fail to appreciate what an immense impossibility there is, that one machine should duplicate all the breaks and variations out of the true, which the alignment test-plate detects on the characters of another machine. Why, typewriting has an individuality like that of the Bertillon system, the finger-print, or the celebrated portrait parlé.
"This writing, for example, is from a particularly old and battered machine. The label and letter came from the same source. The fact is, I could identify the sender—only, of course," he added, with a smile, "first, we must locate the machine."
Riley nodded, much impressed.
"Which means," added Garrick, "that we have only just taken up the case. Can you tell me any more about it?"
"I wish you could go out to Rockcrest with me," ventured Riley. "I'm sure you'd not regret meeting Mr. Cooke."
"I shall be glad to do so later, but, first, have these Black Handers no connections in the city?"
"Yes," replied Riley slowly, "the bomb to Mr. Cooke was mailed here, as I told you. I can't say how many of the hundreds of killings in the city are the work of this gang. But just now it is Rockcrest that is terrorized."
Garrick already knew something of Townsend Cooke—a big man, big of stature and big in action.
"The Cooke place covers hundreds of acres," went on Riley. "At present perhaps fifty men are employed in grading it over at one end. It was the blackmailing of these men that started the trouble, as nearly as I can find out. I have been observing the men at work about the place. Among them is one Giuseppe, the contractor, whose refusal to pay blackmail, in which he was supported by Mr. Cooke, has precipitated the trouble on the Cooke estate."
"I should like to see Giuseppe," mused Garrick.
"I suppose he is in the city now," put in Riley. "At least, I have heard mention now and then among the men under him of a little wine-shop kept by Luigi on Mulberry Street."
"Would you like to take me there?" asked Garrick. "Will you go with me?"
"I—go with you?" gasped Riley. "Why, man alive, they all know me down there, and they'd shoot both of us, merely on sight. I'll help you all you want in any other way. But you simply might just as well invite suicide, as myself."
"Thanks—no!" laughed Garrick. "Very well, then. I'll go alone. Only—keep in touch with me, Riley, and as soon as I have anything to report, I'll let you know."
The bomb expert had risen and now departed with profuse expressions of gratitude to Garrick.
HALF an hour later, Garrick shouldered his way through the
crowded streets, pulsing with life, walking east through
the hurly-burly of races until he came to Mulberry Street.
On he went past the little shops, decked with flags and huge streamers of cheap red, white and blue, and red, white and green—America and Italy entwined,—for it was a feast day. One by one, the lights in the windows were winking up, making the scene more picturesque than ever.
Circumspectly he dodged the swarms of children in this colony of hundreds of thousands of Italians—a population within the metropolis greater than that of many cities in their native land—of whose life most of New York knew little and cared little.
At last, glancing from right to left for the place, he came to Luigi's, a little wine-shop, dark, evil, malodorous.
He entered. Several customers were standing and sitting about. Luigi himself was a greasy, lowering fellow with beady, black, cunning eyes.
"Where can I find Giuseppe, the contractor?" he asked by way of introduction. "I have a job for him to figure on."
Luigi shrugged his shoulders. "He might come in," was his brief and surly answer.
Garrick said he would wait a little while, ordered something, and sat down.
A sinister-looking man, with a sort of unscrupulous intelligence, was writing at a table not far from him. As he wrote he pulled at a cheap cigar with a straw through it.
Garrick sat and smoked and sipped at the "red ink." careful not to seem too observant. This was indeed the mala vita.
As Garrick watched furtively, Luigi from time to time went into a back room to serve other customers. It was after one of these trips that he beckoned to the ominous-looking man at the table, as if some one had come in and inquired for him. The man rose quickly and went into the back room.
Garrick, under pretense of seeking a match, shifted his position. Through the half-open door, he could see the man talking to a girl, a pretty girl, whose face, however, was marred by the too-evident marks of dissipation.
Garrick lounged back to his original seat.
A moment later Luigi returned to his customers in the front room. Again Garrick rose and this time sought to engage him in conversation.
"I've got a tract of land down on Staten Island," he explained, placing it as far as possible from Rockcrest. "There's a lot of work to be done, grading and filling in. I wonder if our friend who was sitting over there"—he motioned casually toward the place that the man had just vacated—"knows anything of where I could find Giuseppe?"
Luigi shot a suspicious glance which was not lost on Garrick, but Garrick's obvious sincerity evidently disarmed him. Strangers always excited suspicion in Luigi's, especially strangers of another race.
Most naturally, Garrick, too, had turned in the direction of the door through which the man had gone, caught sight of the girl, then turned slowly to Luigi with a smile.
"I guess he has something better to do," he laughed.
Luigi grunted.
FROM his position now, Garrick could see the couple talking
earnestly. It was apparent that the woman thought much of
the man. and that he regarded her with a sort of jealous
pride.
At last, at the end of the conversation, the man rose, went out by a side door, and left her alone, evidently intending to return shortly.
Garrick glanced in through the door, and could not resist smiling at her.
Instantly, Luigi, watchful, leaned over with a frown.
"She is Francesca—Dominico's girl," he remarked savagely. "Once she was what you call a stenographer and typewriter—a fine girl. Now she does not have to work—he gives her everything—American dresses, hires automobiles—everything."
Garrick merely raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch. "Is Dominico a contractor?" he asked with apparent innocence.
Luigi laughed loudly at the very idea. Garrick took it good-naturedly, but did not pursue the subject.
It was, as he had noticed, the evening of a feast day. The whole Italian colony crowded the streets with merrymakers.
A keen observer, if he had been outside Luigi's, however, might have noticed three men threading their way through the revelers in the direction of the little wine-shop.
Suddenly, without any warning, above the babble of voices in the street, a volley of shots rang out.
The gay throngs were immediately thrown into panic. They rushed for safety from the flying bullets.
Garrick, inside the shop, sprang up from the seat which he had resumed, and rushed to the door.
A man had fallen on the sidewalk, almost in front of the shop. He was quickly surrounded by others, excitedly calling for a priest. Women knelt in the street and invoked vengeance of the saints on the slayers. Men sought eagerly for a doctor, for a policeman.
"Kill them!" cried some one, more excitable than the rest, without any very clear idea whom to kill.
The three assassins, however, had disappeared, even before the cry for a mob had been thought of. It was just one of those sudden shooting affrays which the gangs seem to be able to pull off with impunity, if they act boldly and unexpectedly. Yet the mob did form and seemed likely to prove dangerous. And as mobs are always unreasonable, it was not unlikely that Luigi's might in some way obtain an unsavory publicity out of it.
"He is a Black Hander! Beware la Mano Nera!" cried a gruff voice behind Garrick.
It was Luigi himself, shouting above all the rest. It was wonderful to see the effect of the words. As if by magic, the women shrank back, and the men stilled their cries for help. In the excitement, Luigi himself seemed to fade away.
Suddenly, from the doorway of the wine-shop, as the crowd parted enough to disclose the heap on the sidewalk, rushed the figure of a young woman, dropping down by the body with a piercing cry of anguish.
It was Francesca.
There the woman knelt on the sidewalk over the man. The first surprise over, the crowd surged forward again.
Wildly, she was putting the knuckle of the forefinger of her right hand into her mouth, and biting it until the blood flowed.
"It is the sign!" muttered some one beside Garrick.
He understood. She was openly declaring a vendetta against the murderers—the sign of a blood-feud.
A PATROLMAN arrived, on the run. The crowd scattered for
him, and he too bent down over the prostrate figure,
endeavoring to offer first aid.
It was too late. The man was dead on the pavement, deserted now by all those who a few minutes before had been crying so loudly for vengeance—all except one.
Garrick peered forward in the murky light. The man's cheeks were slit from mouth to ear, and his tongue was cleft.
He looked more closely: it was Dominico!
On him had been placed the dread mark of the Black Hand upon one who had talked too much.
What did it all mean? For the moment, Garrick saw nothing but the girl.
Quickly, it flashed through his mind that if the police got her. she would probably be detained as a witness and pressure would be brought to bear by the assassins or their friends to silence her. Another would be added to the host of inexplicable murders.
A priest arrived, and the policeman deferentially yielded to him. Garrick determined on a bold action.
Gently he reached over and touched the girl's elbow. She looked up, dazed, and seemed to recognize the face of the man who had smiled at her through the doorway. She made no outcry, as she would if she had been afraid of him.
"Subito—l'urgenzia—polizia." he whispered.
She seemed to comprehend that the presence of the police was not indeed just the thing for her, and instinctively to turn to his offered aid in the emergency.
Quickly, in silence, the two managed to squeeze through the now rapidly-increasing crowd.
Crying hysterically, vowing vengeance, she seemed scarcely to know where she was, or what she was doing. Garrick endeavored to quiet her, so that they would not attract attention. They turned a corner, and breathed easier.
At last the fugitives came upon an East Side restaurant in the next avenue, much frequented by sightseers.
Garrick motioned to a cabman. Francesca entered, evidently now imbued with the one idea of getting away from the tragedy.
"UPTOWN—Fourth Avenue," he ordered the cabman, trying
to show no haste, and thinking of the quickest way to get
out of the East Side and into a changed environment.
The cab rolled along swiftly, every block a new guarantee of safety.
"Who are you?" he asked soothingly, at length. "I am your friend. Where can I take you?"
The girl was still sobbing hysterically in the corner of the cab.
"I am Francesca," she blurted out; "Francesca of the Dark Hair, they call me."
Garrick looked at her more closely as they passed an occasional street light. She was indeed beautiful. Her masses of dark hair had fallen over her eyes, and the excitement had flushed her cheeks. Night had drawn a veil over the marks of dissipation which the light in Luigi's had disclosed.
Garrick was thinking rapidly.
"You write on the typewriter," he shot out quickly.
Francesca looked up, startled.
"Labels—addresses—letters," he pursued, seeing his advantage. "It is an old typewriter, with the letters out of line and some of them broken."
She had stopped crying and now was regarding him almost with superstitious dread.
Through she said nothing, Garrick knew that he had guessed right. In some way she was connected with the Black Handers.
And yet, though he did seem to know something about her, intuitively she did not fear him. as she looked deeply into his eyes. In fact, the look on his face invited confidence, and from her own heart, which was bursting, she poured it forth.
"I am only twenty," she said in a low voice in answer to his continued questioning. "I loved Dominico and he loved me. I was forced into the gang—with the others. But I did it to help Dominico—not them."
"The gang—what gang?" questioned Garrick, as though he had never thought of such a thing before.
It did not interrupt her own train of thought, however. "I know now—have known for some time," she went on. "They have made me lure their victims—anywhere. I was useful to them. But it was Dominico I did it for."
She paused, controlling herself heroically. "They all wanted me," she continued bitterly. "Once Dominico and I ran away. But they found us and brought us back. Now. they think that because the authorities are after them, some one has snitched. But he did not tell—no—no—it was not Dominico. It was no one. No—they know it. It was only an excuse—to get me—all—for themselves. It was—the gang—they killed him," she wailed, trailing off into a low moan in Italian.
Garrick waited until the flood of her pent-up feelings had subsided.
"Who is the leader?" he asked softly.
"Gaetano—the Fox," she replied, unhesitatingly, and it was evident that she both feared and hated the man.
"Suppose the police had arrested you to-night," he suggested. "Would you 'snitch' for revenge?"
She bent her dark eyes on him. She said nothing, but merely pressed both temples with her thumbs, and drew her slim forefinger ominously under her chin and throat. Garrick understood that sign, too. It was the Black Hand signal which has shut up many a witness in the middle of his testimony, even in open court.
"Aren't you afraid to talk to me, then?" he ventured.
She looked at him frankly. "Yes," she murmured. "I am. But where shall I go? I can hide nowhere. They will find me—they found me before," she added, hopelessly.
JUST then a huge granite building loomed up before them.
Something about it seemed to recall her to herself, to the
cab, to the stranger with her. Garrick looked out of the
window. They had reached the Grand Central Station.
He wondered whether the railroad had suggested flight. Another look told him that it had suggested just the opposite. There was evidently no part of the world where she felt she could go and be safe from the long arm of the Black Hand pursuit.
"Oh, sir," she cried. "You have been kind—very kind to me. But you had better let me go, before they—"
She cut the words short herself, as if language could not express the hypnotic terror of Gaetano and the rest.
Garrick leaned over closer to her.
"But you want revenge?" he whispered sharply into her ear.
The flash of hatred in the girl's dark eyes and the tense lines of her face told him that he had struck the right chord. Quickly, he took a card from his pocket and pressed it into her hand.
"Go back to them, then, if you are afraid to flee," he whispered. "If you need help at any time—you can get me always at that address."
She read the card and re-read it mechanically. Then she deliberately tore it up and threw the pieces out of the window.
"You will not, then?" he asked keenly.
"Yes—yes," she cried passionately, then tapped her forehead significantly. "It is there now," she said simply "If they found the card—they might kill you. I have memorized it. Give me another."
Tremblingly, she wrote. Garrick had stopped the cab so that the jolting might not make it more difficult for her.
"That is where I shall go," she said, handing the second card back to him. "I have a room at that little hotel in Westchester—Bardo's—not far from Rockcrest."
Garrick read it eagerly, and was about to ask a question, when impulsively she reached over and opened the cab door near the curb.
He did not attempt to restrain her, for she had placed the other hand in his, and was murmuring thanks that he knew were sincere. Instantly he had figured it out. It was better to have her a friend, within the organization, than a fugitive, without.
He returned the pressure with a clear, frank look. She seemed to appreciate it. Probably it was the first time she had ever had a man look at her that way.
Then, without a word, she disappeared in the throng entering the station, to take a train that would involve her again in the meshes of the web from which she could not escape.
IT was not until the next day, when Garrick reached his
office, that he saw Riley again. The bomb-expert was
waiting for him in a high state of excitement.
"Another bomb has been sent to Mr. Cooke," he blurted out, even before Garrick could say a word about the strange succession of events through which he had gone the night before.
"Have you opened it yet?" asked Garrick.
"No. I thought perhaps you would like to see it."
"Indeed I should," agreed Garrick. "Where is it?"
"At my workshop," answered Riley, leading the way.
Briefly, as they sped up-town, Garrick detailed what had already happened; Riley listened with intense amazement.
At last, under the brow of a beetling tenement row, in a vacant lot surrounded by a high fence, Riley led him. There, in the middle of the lot, was a little brick house, with just one door and a small-barred, ground-glass window. It was not an unusual looking door, barred with iron and held by an innocent padlock. But there was something mysterious about it, nevertheless.
Riley entered. In the dim recesses of the secret magazine maintained by the Fire Department, was a collection of weird-looking messengers of death. Riley pointed out on a work-bench the package in question.
Garrick bent over it and read the address to Townsend Cooke. "The same typewriting!" he exclaimed.
Carefully, Riley set to work to open and dissect the bomb. "I don't put them in water," he remarked, as he worked, "and have given specific instructions at all station houses not to do so. A large number of bombs are chemical, and often if you put them in water that may be just what is necessary to set them off."
As he separated and analyzed it, it was evident that the bomb was of an unusual and clever construction. The whole arrangement was encased in a wooden box. The cover of the box, inside, was marked with skull and cross-bones, and a huge black hand.
In the teeth of the skull were innumerable match-heads, so arranged that when the box was opened they would ignite the bomb.
As Riley separated the last of the constituents and laid each by itself in an innocuous pile, they shuddered at the diabolical cunning of the secret assassin. It was just one more piece of evidence that was piling up against him.
Late in the afternoon came a brief but urgent message from Cooke. Giuseppe, his contractor, had disappeared and there was no trace of him to be found. "Can you come out to Rockcrest immediately?" the message closed.
"It is time for action," exclaimed Garrick, who had been chafing at the hours of comparative inaction. "Tonight we must raid Bardo's."
Townsend Cooke more than ratified the action of Riley in calling in Garrick. In fact, he seemed disposed to place the case unreservedly in his hands. As Garrick sketched what he had found out already. Cooke was keenly interested. For what had formerly been merely a matter of pride in protecting his own men, was now a matter of life and death for himself.
"I don't dare trust to the local authorities," remarked the broker, as Garrick outlined his plan for the raid of Bardo's. "We'll do it ourselves—and they'll never get wind of it until we descend on them. No one can tip them off to that."
SO great had been the terrorism at Rockcrest that already
there was a small army of private detectives guarding the
various estates. It was the work of only a few hours,
therefore, to mass secretly a raiding force that could
swoop down on Bardo's at any preconcerted moment.
Garrick waited, however, until well along in the evening, so that their movements might have as much cover as possible.
Then in three swift, high-powered cars, the posse shot out. and with engines muffled down, pulled up beside the road not far from the appointed place.
Bardo's was one of those squalid country taverns that have fallen to a viciously low estate. It was a frame building, on the first floor of which was a saloon. Above were two or three sleeping-rooms on the second floor, and a small attic.
Strange to say, not a light showed in the place as the raiders took their positions about it, half expecting to be welcomed at any minute by a volley of shots from the desperate characters that were believed to be within.
At a signal they closed in on it. Still not a sound. The doors and windows were barred. Now that they had made an overt attack, no time was to be wasted. Law or no law, Garrick and Riley bore down the front door, off its hinges. Still not a sound, save the echoes. Not a light.
Bardo's was deserted!
Could it have been that Francesca. after all, had started him off on a blind trail? Garrick, pocket-flash in hand, hastily rushed through the house. Where was Francesca? She was not upstairs.
"There, however, is the typewriter," he exclaimed, as he bent the rays of his light on an old and worn machine, and ran a sheet of paper through it, glancing keenly at the position and breaks in the characters it wrote.
Still, there was no one in the hotel, and no evidence of life. The raiders looked at each other blankly.
"The cellar!" cried Garrick.
Groping, stumbling, they made their way down the crazy, rickety stairs, fearful of what the dank air of the cavern might hide.
Garrick had found a switch and turned on an electric light.
A gruesome sight greeted them.
Hanging from a couple of hooks in a beam, was a body, strung up by its thumbs, horribly mutilated.
"Giuseppe!" cried Cooke, horror-stricken.
The raiders fell back in awe at the terrible discovery.
"Look!" exclaimed Riley, digging his knife into the wall back of him. "Rounds of lead bullets embedded here—not from bombs. Ah! I have it. Here the gang must have practised shooting."
Garrick seized a spade and was turning over some whitish earth in a corner.
"A mass of quicklime," he muttered, bending down.
In it, without a doubt, were human remains—unidentifiable, but not to be looked on without a shudder.
Side by side, almost, with the enormous wealth and the culture that existed at Rockcrest, was a condition of barbarism that rivaled the Middle Ages. Here it was that all the crimes of this band of Black Handers were plotted if not actually carried out—blackmail, extortion, arson, kidnaping, torture and even murder. Here at last were the headquarters of the gang that operated all over the country—the house of a thousand murders!
But Gaetano, the Fox, was gone. There was no trace of Francesca.
Had he carried her off with him, under the compulsion of fear, to some other hiding-place? Or—no one expressed the thought in words, but it was present in every mind—was the crowning crime the murder of the beautiful girl and the absolute destruction of the evidence in the quicklime of the cellar.
"What are we to do?" asked Cooke and Riley, together, looking helplessly at Garrick.
Garrick had been doing some quick thinking. "I'm prepared," he answered confidently. "They shall never get away. Some time ago I sent new instruments of mine to people I can trust in several cities—Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston—others. All I shall need is a leased telephone wire for a few minutes. This is one of the situations in which the organization of the regular police is indispensable."
BACK in the city again that night, Garrick, through the
police, issued a general alarm, country-wide. Everywhere
that the net could be spread, lines were out.
One of the first things he had decided on was a watch of Luigi's. To the surprise of everyone, it was reported that Luigi too had disappeared. Nor had the police any trace whatever of the three assassins who had so ruthlessly shot down Dominico, one of their own number, within hearing of the girl the band had wanted so much for their own purposes.
Down in his office, Garrick had set up a peculiar instrument and had made arrangements for the leasing, at short notice, of a telephone wire to almost any part of the country.
That night and far into the morning he was working over a peculiarly complicated mechanism consisting of electro-magnet rolls, and a stylus. With the most minute care and precision, he adjusted a delicate piece of clockwork which formed a part of the apparatus.
The next morning saw him at Rockcrest again, with Cooke and Riley, looking over Bardo's in the daylight. There was little additional evidence, except that in a room which had apparently been occupied by Francesca, there were evident marks of a struggle. What it signified could not he guessed.
The ransacking of the place was far from complete when a swift roadster from Cooke's pulled up and the driver hopped out, calling breathlessly. "There's just been a message from the Boston police. They received an anonymous letter telling them to watch two men who are sailing for Genoa this morning. They have no evidence against them, and are afraid to detain them, for fear of damages for false arrest."
"An anonymous letter," thought Garrick to himself. "Could Francesca be having her revenge?"
"Two men?" repeated Riley, in a tone that grated on Garrick's nerves.
"What's to be done?" asked Cooke, looking at the detective blankly. "I'd spend anything to get that Gaetano—but here it's a case of something more than money—a miracle!"
Garrick did not answer. They clambered into the roadster, and hurried to the nearest town. There Garrick fumed until he got long distance and was in touch with his agent in Boston, a young man named Clark. A brief conversation followed, and a few minutes later Garrick was speeding to his office with Cooke and Riley.
"What's all this?" asked Cooke, indicating the magnets, rolls, and clockwork, as they entered the office at last.
Before Garrick could answer, his own telephone tinkled.
"Hello," he answered. "Yes—this is Garrick. Hello, Clark. It's all arranged at this end, too. Have you a good connection? Bully! My synchronizer is working fine here, too. All right, old man—shoot!"
AS Garrick gave the final touches to the peculiar
apparatus on the table, the cylindrical drum began slowly
to revolve, and the stylus, or needle, pressed down on a
roll of sensitized paper, with which the drum was covered,
apparently with varying intensity as it turned.
Around and around the cylinder revolved, like a strange sort of graphophone.
"This, Mr. Cooke," cried Garrick excitedly, "is the electric eye—the telelectrograph, invented by the Englishman, Thorne Baker. It at last makes possible the electric transmission of photographs, using the telephone wires because they are much better fitted for it than the telegraph."
Cooke and Riley were watching eagerly. Slowly the stylus traced out the beginning of a picture on the paper. It was only a thin band, now, yet, line by line, it widened. Still, they could not guess what it was about to reveal as the ceaseless revolutions widened the print.
"There is a brand new field opened by these various systems of long distance vision," Garrick explained as they gathered about, thrilled. "It will revolutionize detective work some day."
"What is this telelectrograph?" queried Cooke.
"In the Baker apparatus," answered Garrick slowly, "the various steps are not so difficult to understand, after all. First an ordinary photograph is taken and a negative made. Clark has done that, with the aid of the Boston police. Then a print is made and a wet plate negative is printed on a sheet of sensitized tinfoil which has been treated with a single line screen.
"Perhaps I'd better say a word about that. You know, an ordinary half-tone consists of a photograph through a screen, composed of perpendicular lines—a coarse screen for newspaper work, and a fine screen for better work, such as in the magazines. Well, in this case, Clark uses a screen composed of lines running parallel in one direction only, instead of crossing at right angles. An ordinary half tone is composed of minute points, therefore, some light, some dark. This print is composed of long lines, some shaded in part light, in part dark, giving the effect of a picture—such as artists often draw as freaks just to show how clever they are at shading." Garrick paused to adjust the machine, and Cooke nodded to him to go on.
"Well," he resumed, as the print before them widened visibly, "this tinfoil negative is wrapped around a cylinder at the Boston end of the line, and a stylus with a very delicate sensitive point begins passing over it, crossing the parallel lines at right angles—like the other lines of the regular newspaper or magazine half-tone.
"Whenever the point of the stylus passes over one of the lighter spots on the photographic print, it sends a longer electrical vibration; over the darker spots, a shorter vibration. The ever-changing electrical current passes up through the stylus and vibrates with varying intensity over the hundreds of miles of telephone wire between Boston and this instrument here at the other end of this special line."
"Wonderful!" ejaculated Cooke, much impressed.
"In this receiving apparatus the current causes another stylus to pass over a sheet of sensitized chemical paper, such as we have here. The receiving stylus passes over the paper here synchronously with the transmitting stylus in Boston.
"The impression that each stroke of the receiving stylus makes on the paper is black or light, according to the length of the quickly varying vibrations of the electric current transmitted to it.
"White spots on the photographic print come out here as black spots on the sensitized paper, over which the stylus before us is passing—and vice versa. In that way, you can see, the positive print grows here before your very eyes as the picture is transmitted from the negative which Clark has prepared and is sending us from Boston. We shall soon know now who these men are."
"I wonder whether it can be Gaetano and Luigi, or other members of the gang?" speculated Riley.
GARRICK said nothing. Uppermost in his mind was what had
become of Francesca. He tried to put out of his thoughts
the possibility that hers might have been the body
destroyed in the quicklime in the cellar.
They bent anxiously over to see what the telelectrograph was doing. It was indeed reproducing faithfully in New York what mortal eye otherwise could see only in Boston.
Gradually the picture began to take form. As it did so Garrick watched it carefully.
The machine had ceased to revolve. Garrick stripped the still wet photograph off the telelectrograph and stood regarding it with surprise.
"Luigi!" he exclaimed, slapping down the now dry print that had come in by the "seeing over a wire" machine.
He was plainly mystified. Who was the other—Gaetano? Where was Francesca?
The machine had started again.
Slowly the second picture was printed.
It was of a young man, handsome. Surely that was not Gaetano.
Garrick uttered a low exclamation. Suddenly disappointment had turned into intense satisfaction.
"Don't you see?" he cried excitedly. "Luigi himself is Gaetano—the Fox. He was carrying her off, disguised. Look at the features. That is Francesca. Her anonymous note gave the clue. She is revenged at last!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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