“I ordered a taxicab,” said McIlroy briefly. “I’ll not be going back to headquarters. I’m going from here now to see how the little woman is. You can come along with me, Kelsey.”
“The little woman?” ejaculated Kelsey in surprise. “The wife, chief?”
McIlroy nodded quietly. “While we were shooting up that Russian to-night, the little woman was being operated on in the Lake View Hospital, up at Clarendon and Montrose. She rolled away from the house in an ambulance to-night as I came to headquarters. I just called up. She’s doing well — but calling for me ever since she came out of the ether.”
Folwell gazed in unconcealed admiration at the old Scotsman. A hard, stern man McIlroy was, especially to those he thought had broken the law which he was sworn to uphold. And hard and stern he had been even to him, Folwell. But Folwell forgot all that now. Here was a man who had gone out to wager a sinister battle of life and death, when his own wife was passing through the dread shadows that the ether always imposes. Here was a man who had done his duty, bravely, fearlessly, and better, successfully, unwilling to entrust it to subordinates who might achieve more damage than good. Here was a Spartan, indeed — an official who saw public responsibility calling when his personal affairs tended to draw him aside. Folwell spoke, his voice trying to express the sentiments he felt.
“Chief McIlroy, in the last twenty-four hours I confess I’ve changed my whole opinion of you. There was a time yesterday when I hated you with all my heart. But now that my own ugly-appearing case has been solved, I’ve forgotten all that. As to the facts I gave you to-night, I want you to have them — credit them to your own department. They can do me no good — and they may help you.” He paused. “But I confess, if I’d dreamed to-night of what you were facing in your own family affairs, I don’t know whether I’d have had the cheek to call you up at your home.”
McIlroy chuckled a grim little shadow of a chuckle. “Well, it’s no harm that you called me away, I guess. I left a man by the name of Shanks and a little bald-headed lawyer waiting in my front hall, with some kind of a legal paper to serve on me. They’re still waiting, I guess, and they can wait the rest of the night.”
“Shanks!” said Folwell, “Shanks? That was Shanks who bought the Shanks Dictatograph from his invalid brother for $10 and put him in a home for incurables to die. I’ve had a few words with the gentleman.” His brow cleared up. “If I may ask it, what sort of a paper was he trying to serve on you, Inspector McIlroy?”
McIlroy laughed. “An injunction of some kind. That was as far as I learned. I never waited to find out the rest. The wife had just gone safely out in the ambulance. So I left Shanks and his lawyer sitting in the parlour while I slipped out the side door myself and came down to the bureau. I — well — here’s our machine.”
A yellow taxicab shot up to the curb. The driver peered from beneath the visor of his cap.
“Taxi ordered for Inspector McIlroy?” he asked “Corner o’ Division an’ Hickory?”
“Right here,” nodded McIlroy. “Folwell, where do you live?”
“At 3720 Rokeby Street,” replied Folwell.
“Jump in then,” ordered the old Scotsman. “I’m going your way.” He turned to Kelsey. “Kelsey, get in with you. I’ve several orders to give you, and I want also to hear those facts of yours concerning Michaelovitch — or whatever you call him. You can go back to headquarters in the machine after I leave you at the hospital.”
Together the three men climbed in. McIlroy gave his directions to the chauffeur, and the machine turned and rolled smoothly down Division Street. Once seated back in the soft cushions of the car, McIlroy turned to Kelsey.
“Now, the first thing, Camera Eye, that you’ll do when we part for to-night is to go on back to headquarters. There you’ll telephone Dr. Hugo Goldbeck and Dr. Willard Brazleton at their homes. Tell ‘em about this nut we took to-night, and tell ‘em I’d like for them to run in sometime to-morrow morning and make an examination of him for his sanity. They’re the best two alienists we have in the city. If the Russian’s a nut, they’re the ones to know it. Stick on the job to-night, Kelsey, and keep after this man every hour. Don’t let him sleep. Get his confession if you can. No strong-arm business, however. I won’t have it. I think he’ll talk before dawn, however. Hold young Parkley there all night to take down his statement when he does get ready to spill. That’s all.” He nodded to Folwell. “Lad, you’ve done much to-night that isn’t in your regular line of work eh? Now, if you can see your way clear to being down there to-morrow at — say — ten o’clock, when I reach there myself — we’ll see if we can’t close up for good this case of the murder of your employer and these other promoters.” He leaned back in his cushioned seat. Kelsey put away his note-book in which he had entered the names of the two alienists. “Now, Kelsey, shoot with your story.”
Folwell, fagged out, lay back a silent but not unwilling listener. He was a neophyte in such things as night battles in the slums of Chicago, unlike these veterans of the police department. And his body was beginning to feel the events of the evening sorely. Kelsey cleared his throat before he spoke. The machine was just crossing North Avenue, brightly lighted both east and west as far as the eye could see.
“Now, as to Michaelovitch,” he began. “You remember, chief, durin’ the war, when I left the department and took up a job — account of the limp in my left leg makin’ me ineligible for the trenches — on the police department at the Bureau of War in Washington?”
“Well, I should guess yes,” admitted his superior. “It was a patriotic thing to do, Kelsey, you with a hundred and fifty a month, throwing it over for thirty dollars when you didn’t have to serve at all if you didn’t want to.” McIlroy paused. “And it was there that you met Michael — that is, Bresloff, as you called him a while back?”
Kelsey nodded in the cab. “I was stationed, as you’ll no doubt recall, chief, in the department of war-waging devices. Bresloff came there to make an appointment. It was my business to take the full details of every man that wanted an appointment with Major Gorham of that department, an’ to size ‘em up well likewise, and so it was me that booked Bresloff up on the records. I remember all right he was a chemist, employed at different times by various Eastern firms, a graduate of a technical university in old St. Petersburg, a peculiar lookin’ guy with a stary look in his eyes — a look, chief, that I’ve seen on too many nuts in my life. I remember, too, him saying he had a daughter living in Buffalo.
“Finally,” continued Kelsey, “he got his appointment with Major Gorham, and thereafter followed a number of appointments. One day Gorham calls me in. ‘There’s a man, Kelsey,’ he says, ‘that of all the nuts that come in here with devices to overcome our friend Germany actually has the goods.’
“Says I: ‘He may have the goods, Major, but I’m saying he’s breezy in the upper story, goods or no goods.’
“The Major laughs. ‘Kelsey, the Allies have already got Germany on the run, but I’m thinking the Germans will run a bit faster when they get a sniff of dia-cyanosine up their noses, providing they don’t drop dead first.’
“ ‘So it’s a gas,’ says I sarcastically, ‘instead of a bullet that performs a shimmy and a whirligig every third foot in space?’
“And Major Gorham up and tells me something, then, seeing as I’m part of the armed forces of the United States, and, in a sense, on the inside of every move made in that room.
“ ‘Kelsey,’ he says, ‘the Germans tried and tried in the first part of this scrap to get up a method of carrying compressed hydrocyanic acid vapour in a shell. They knew if they could do it, they could wipe out a whole division at a time. One lungful of anhydrous hydrocyanic acid vapour, otherwise known as cyanogen, means instant death, Kelsey. But they had to fall back at last on the phosphorous compounds, such as phosgene, together with a few others such as chlorine and bromine. These were bad, yes, but even the phosgene didn’t have the instantaneous deadliness they wanted. Why couldn’t they do
it? Because they couldn’t hold the molecule of the gas — the tiny unit, Kelsey, that all matter is composed of — the way they wanted it. We have definite information that they worked themselves into a frazzle on the problem, trying out all the cyanides. The last and most hopeful — their experiments with allyl-iso thiocyanate came to nothing.’ Excuse me, chief,” Kelsey broke off, “for springing that one on you — it took me two days myself to learn it! ‘But they got always the same results,’ continues Gorham to me. ‘Under the compression and the heat of the explosion, the deadly molecule called H-CN broke down and became a harmless compound. Rathbone, the Philadelphia chemist, demonstrated that theoretically every unstable compound that tends to break down can be made stable by certain mixtures. He proved his case with several compositions. The Germans have tried to prove it with hydrocyanic acid. They have failed.’
“This, chief, was some of the inside technical info’ Gorham gives me. I’d been around there long enough to be able to digest little bits o’ such stuff. But I hope I’m not giving you too much. So much for that. I’ll jump back to where I left off.
“ ‘But Bresloff — your nut, as you call him,’ Gorham continues to me, ‘has solved the problem, Kelsey. He’s found the secret of stabilizing the molecule of hydrocyanic acid. Run the temperature up and down from 52 degrees Fahrenheit to where you will — compress it — heat it, cool it — and it’s still gas, it’s still what it was when it started, it’s still death, quick and sure. What he does with the unstable gas after he distils it from sulphuric acid and potassium ferrocyanide I don’t know. He makes no secret that he mixes with it a little nitric peroxide, less than two per cent.; but refuses to give the proportions. He also has a third ingredient. There’s but a trace of it he puts in — but it does the trick. Dia-cyanosine he calls the resulting compound. It sounds like a patent product, eh, Kelsey? But it isn’t. It’s simply hydrocyanic acid vapour that won’t break down into harmless elements. That — and nothing else. But it means all the difference in the world in warfare. Kelsey, that gas will never waste its good time in simply tangling up the morale in a trench and demoralizing defence a bit while the men jam their gas masks over their heads. It’s odourless. It’s almost colourless. It’ll kill ‘em off like flies. Send over enough of it under high compression in shells, and it’ll wipe out whole divisions of the enemy right in their tracks.’
“Those were the words Major Gorham says to me, chief,” Kelsey concluded. “And he wasn’t a man to be carried away by any claptrap discovery. He knew when he had the goods.”
“Hm,” was McIlroy’s comment. “Phosgene was deadly enough in the war. And if this hydrocyanic acid vapour worked anything like the single drop of prussic acid that was dropped in the eye of old Millionaire Hannly of the Hannly murder case, I’ll say Bresloff had something swift and sure. But go on with the story.”
“Well,” continued Kelsey, “they made lots of experiments on guinea pigs, rabbits, dogs and even big animals like horses and cows, out at some outlying farm that Major Gorham owned. The upshot of the tests was that the United States Government, on Gorham’s recommendation, was to pay Bresloff one hundred thousand dollars for his secret, he was to be put in charge across the water in the manufacturing of dia-cyanosine, and already they had mechanical engineers at work drawing up plans of a special shell to carry this gas across No-Man’s Land.”
“And why then is our friend Michaelovitch — or Bresloff — living in degradation to-day, a mechanic and autowasher?” asked McIlroy curiously.
“Because,” said Kelsey, “the day the payment was to be made to him, the word comes along the secret official channels in Washington that an armistice would be signed the following week, and payment for all new war devices was suddenly held up pending this development. Well — the armistice went into effect, all right, and Bresloff’s payment was stopped completely. I’ll never forget the look of bitterness on his face the morning that he received the news — that the very cheque that needed only Gorham’s O.K. was ordered returned to the auditing department of the Government. In the twinkling of an eye, so to speak, he had a hundred thousand snatched from his hand. He knew full well, chief, that the armistice was the end of the war. And the discovery wasn’t like an industrial secret that could be sold immediately to a competitor — it was a military invention. He knew that England, France, all o’ th’ countries, were working day an’ night, hard an’ fast, on deadly gases of their own, and bein’ a chemist he knew they were getting some place with the problem too. He knew that with a few months’ loss o’ time during an armistice, and then no further military activ’ty after that, his invention would be equalled — prob’ly surpassed by other forms of deadly gas developed in the labor’ties o’ Britain and the Continent. It wouldn’t have a sales price ninety days later — sixty days — thirty days, even. No, th’ last chance of his life was gone, chief — and the value of Mr. Invention went up into thin air.”
“Well,” commented McIlroy, “if I ever had a blow like that, I think I’d have been off my base for the rest of my life.” He shook his head. “It was typical, though, of some important nobody in the auditing department to save the Government a measly hundred thousand. Can you beat it?” He thought for a moment. “So you think, do you, Kelsey,” he added, “that one, two, or maybe three of Bresloff’s four victims came to their death through the administration of his dia-cyanosine?”
“I do,” returned Kelsey promptly. “The first three, perhaps. He found a way to gas ‘em and kill ‘em within a few seconds. I tell you, chief, Gorham himself told me that the stuff was the most dangerous gas that up to then could have been used in warfare; that one fair lungful would throw such a load of poison into the system that the heart muscles would be paralysed in a jiffy. As for the means and methods, and why he changed those methods in the case of Eaves, his fourth victim, we’ll know more after he’s been third degreed to-night, and after Delamater has come in from his tour you sent him out on. And as for Bresloff’s mental workings, we’ll know, too, more about them when Goldbeck and Brazleton look him over in the morning. Well — ”
His words were broken off by the chauffeur sticking his head in the cab. The machine came to a grating stop. “Wanted to drop a passenger at this address, sir?” Folwell, glancing out of the window, saw with some surprise that he was in front of his own place of residence, on Rokeby Street, with its long lines of trees and grassplots. He rose hastily, not to delay any more than necessary McIlroy’s progress to the Lake View Hospital and his waiting mate, and hopped out of the cab.
“Good-night, gentlemen,” he said. And to McIlroy: “I’ll be with you at ten in the morning.” The latter nodded. The door clanged shut. The cab drove away northward.
At ten in the morning!
As he ascended the steps, fitting his key into the lock, Folwell little dreamed that with his arrival at detective headquarters to-morrow at ten he was to witness a surprising and dramatic development in the quadruple murder case which was to constitute one of the most sensational newspaper stories of the month. And, with brain numb, and tired and fagged, neither did he dream that his prosaic engineering and mathematical faculties, quickened by a good night’s rest, were to make him the central figure in that same dramatic turn of events.
CHAPTER XIX
SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS
INSIDE the hallway of 3720 Rokeby Street, Folwell went at once upstairs to his room. The clock on his chiffonier showed the time to be eleven-thirty. He knew that it would be midnight or more before he could wash up and reach Wisconsin Street. How little had he dreamed when he had first started out with McIlroy’s men toward Goose Island that he was to be engaged in a struggle in which hours were to seem as minutes. He wondered perplexedly whether to go to Wisconsin Street — whether Avery would have waited this long for him. But he had promised. And he wanted to direct the girl what to do with Lionel’s judgment note.
His shoes, one of which was rather awkward to walk upon on account of the heel, which had been shot
away, he replaced with a new pair. Then, hastily washing away the dirt, plaster, sand and grime from the conflict, and changing his collar, he went down again into the night. He walked rapidly and boarded a lumbering night local on the North Side Rapid Transit Elevated some blocks away, and was soon dismounting at Sedgwick, the nearest station to the Reardon home. Down on the still brightly lighted corner of North Avenue and Sedgwick a newspaper wagon swung up to a stand and flung down a bundle of newspapers. His eye caught the heads. The black caption in the topmost corner of one — “Midnight Edition” — showed up from where he stood. Stepping over and throwing down some coins he unfolded the still damp sheets. The story that he found on the front page was a complete exoneration for him. The reporter to whom Lionel had talked, first by ‘phone and evidently later in person had made the most of his “scoop.” It bore a two-column head. It told in vivid language of the much-maligned employee who had signed the wrong paper, who had been so bullied and intimidated by the police that he had refused to talk, whose reputation had been craftily taken advantage of by an employer who did not wish to loan money on his own stock and who had used the mistakenly signed paper as an excuse; and not only did it bear a long complete statement by Lionel Pettibone describing how he had found the bonds exactly where Eaves must have left them, but gave a half-tone photograph of Eaves’s desk at home bearing the customary black cross-mark over one of the pigeon-holes which had ostensibly harboured these fateful documents.
Folwell folded it up, and started out for Wisconsin Street.
“It’s certainly a complete exoneration for me, and I certainly have it coming, but I’m glad I don’t have to carry that load of fairy stories on my own shoulders. My answers to-morrow to all the reporters on the other papers will be short and brief: ‘Nothing to say!’ ”
In front of the little cottage on Wisconsin Street he stopped. He had expected beyond doubt to find it dark, the girl discouraged at his coming having gone to bed. But the parlour was lighted with a soft subdued rose light. She sat in a big armchair near the window under the tall floor lamp, her head thrown back as though asleep. She had waited — he had said he would come — she had taken him at his word. Her eyes were closed. She wore a clinging sheeny thing of sea-green silk. Her face was pale, a bit tired. Her jet black hair fell over her forehead in entrancing little ringlets. He tiptoed up the steps and, in the shadows of the vine-covered stoop, rang. Watching her through the window he expected to see her wake suddenly, rub her eyes, and look about her dazedly. But to his surprise she arose quietly, and a second later was standing in the open door.
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