The Adventuress

by Arthur B. Reeve

  Burke regarded the lawyer keenly, as though he might be concealing something. But Hastings merely shook his head.

  ‘Mr Maddox did not confide his weaknesses to me,’ Hastings remarked coldly.

  ‘If we are going back to the city,’ returned Burke, cheerfully changing the subject, to the evident surprise of Hastings, ‘I must find my operative, Riley, and let him know what to do while we are gone.’

  ‘Look,’ muttered Kennedy under his breath to us and nodding down the lobby.

  Shelby Maddox had sought and found Winifred, and was chatting as animatedly as if there had been no Paquita in the world less than five minutes before.

  As we watched, Hastings remarked: ‘It was only the day before the murder that Shelby first met Winifred Walcott. I believe he had never seen his brother-in-law’s sister before. She had been away in the West ever since Frances Maddox married Walcott. Winifred seems to have made a quick conquest.’

  Remembering what had happened before, I took a quick look about to see whether anyone else was as interested as ourselves. Seeing no one, Kennedy and I strolled down the corridor quietly.

  We had not gone far before we stopped simultaneously. Nestled in the protecting wings of a big wicker chair was Paquita, and as we watched her she never took her eyes from the couple ahead.

  What did this constant espionage of Shelby mean? For one thing, we must place this little adventuress in the drama of the Maddox house of hate. We moved back a bit where we could see them all.

  A light footfall beside us caused us to turn suddenly. It was Mito, padding along on some errand to his master. As he passed I saw that his beady eyes had noted that we were watching Shelby. There was no use to retreat now. We had been observed. Mito passed, bestowing a quick sidewise glance on Paquita as he did so. A moment later he approached Shelby deferentially and stood waiting a few feet away.

  Shelby looked up and saw his valet, bowed an excuse to Winifred, and strode over to where Mito was standing. The conversation was brief. What it was about we had no means of determining, but of one thing we were certain. Mito had not neglected a hasty word to his master that he was watched. For, an instant later when Mito had been dismissed, Shelby returned to Winifred and they walked deliberately out of the hotel across a wide stretch of open lawn in the direction of the tennis-courts. To follow him was a confession that we were watching. Evidently, too, that had been Shelby’s purpose, for as he chatted he turned half-way, now and then, to see if they were observed. Again Mito padded by and I fancied I caught a subtle smile on his saturnine face. If we were watching, we were ourselves no less watched.

  There was nothing to be gained in this blind game of hide-and-seek, and Kennedy was evidently not yet prepared to come out into the open. Paquita, too, seemed to relinquish the espionage for the moment, for she rose and walked slowly toward the Casino, where she was quickly joined by some of her more ardent admirers.

  I glanced at Kennedy.

  ‘I think we had better go back to Burke and Hastings,’ he decided. ‘Burke is right. His men can do almost as much here as we could at present. Besides, if we go away the mice may play. They will think we have been caught napping. That telautomaton robbery is surely our next big point of attack. Here it is first of all the mystery of Marshall Maddox’s death, and I cannot do anything more until the coroner sends me, as he has promised, the materials from the autopsy. Even then I shall need to be in my laboratory if I am to discover anything.’

  ‘Your sallow-faced friend seemed quite interested in you,’ commented Burke as we rejoined him.

  ‘How’s that?’ inquired Kennedy.

  ‘From here I could see him, following every move you made,’ explained the Secret Service man.

  Kennedy bit his lip. Not only had Mito seen us and conveyed a warning to Shelby, but the dark-skinned man of mystery had been watching us all. Evidently the situation was considerably mixed. Perhaps if we went away it would really clear itself up and we might place these people more accurately with reference to one another.

  Burke looked at his watch hurriedly. ‘There’s a train that leaves in twenty minutes,’ he announced. ‘We can make the station in a car in fifteen.’

  Kennedy and I followed him to the door, while Hastings trailed along reluctantly, not yet assured that it would be safe to leave Westport so soon.

  At the door a man stepped up deferentially to Burke, with a glance of inquiry at us.

  ‘It’s all right, Riley,’ reassured Burke. ‘You can talk before them. One of my best operatives, Riley, gentlemen. I shall leave this end in your charge, Val.’

  ‘All right, sir,’ returned the Secret Service operative. ‘I was just going to say, about that dark fellow we saw gum-shoeing it about. We’re watching him. We picked him up on the beach during the bathing hour. Do you know who he is? He’s the private detective whom Mrs Maddox had watching her husband and that Paquita woman. I don’t know what he’s watching her yet for, sir, but,’ Riley lowered his voice for emphasis, ‘once one of the men saw him talking to Paquita. Between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to double-cross Mrs Maddox.’

  Hastings opened his eyes in wonder at the news. As for me, I began to wonder if I had not been quite mistaken in my estimate of Irene Maddox. Was she the victim, the cat’s-paw of someone?

  Riley was not finished, however. ‘Another thing before you leave, Mr Burke,’ he added. ‘The night watchman at the Harbour House tells me that he saw that Japanese servant of Shelby Maddox last night, or, rather, early this morning. He didn’t go down to the dock and the watchman thought that perhaps he had been left ashore by mistake and couldn’t get out on the Sybarite.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ cut in Hastings quickly. ‘He was on the yacht last night when we went to bed and he woke me up this morning.’

  ‘I know it,’ nodded Riley. ‘You see, I figure that he might have come off the yacht in a row-boat and landed down the shore on the beach. Then he might have got back. But what for?’

  The question was unanswered, but not, we felt, unanswerable.

  ‘Very well, Riley,’ approved Burke. ‘Keep right after anything that turns up. And don’t let that Paquita out of sight of some of the men a minute. Goodbye. We’ve just time to catch the train.’

  Hastings was still unreconciled to the idea of leaving town, in spite of the urgency of the developments in New York.

  ‘I think it’s all right,’ reassured Kennedy. ‘You see, if I stayed I’d have to call on an agency, anyhow. Besides, I got all I could and the only thing left would be to watch them. Perhaps if I go away they may do something they wouldn’t dare otherwise. In that case we have planted a fine trap. You can depend on it that Burke’s men will do more for us, now, than any private agency.’

  Hastings agreed reluctantly, and as we hurried back to New York on the train Kennedy quizzed Burke as he had Hastings on the journey out.

  There was not much that Burke could add to what he had already told us. The robbery of the safe in the Maddox office had been so cleverly executed that I felt that it would rank along with the historic cases. No ordinary yeggs or petermen had performed this operation, and as the train neared the city we were all on edge to learn what possibly might have been uncovered during the hours that we had been working on the other end of the case out at Westport.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE BURGLAR’S MICROPHONE

  AS we crossed the city Hastings, remembering the sudden attack that had been made on him on the occasion of his last visit, looked about nervously in the crowds.

  Sometimes I wondered whether the lawyer had been frank with us and told all he knew. However, no one seemed to be following him and we lost no time in hustling from the railroad terminal to the office of Maddox Munitions.

  The office was on the top floor of the new Maddox Building, I knew, one of the recent tower skyscrapers down-town.

  As we turned into the building and were passing down the corridor to the express elevator a man stepped ou
t from behind a pillar. Hastings drew back nervously. But it was Burke that the man wanted to see. He dropped back and we halted, catching only the first whispered sentence.

  ‘We’ve been watching Randall, sir,’ I overheard the man say, ‘but he hasn’t done anything—yet.

  There was a hasty conference between the man and Burke, who rejoined us in a few seconds, while the man went back to his post of watching, apparently, every face of the crowd that thronged forward to the elevators or bustled away from them.

  ‘My men have been at work ever since I was called in on the case,’ explained Burke to Kennedy. ‘You see, I had only time to map out a first campaign for them, and then I decided to hurry off to find you and later to look over the ground at Westport. Randall is the cashier. I can’t say that I had anything on him—really—but then you never can tell, you know.’

  We rode up in the elevator and entered the imposing offices of the great munitions corporation, where the executive business was conducted for the score or more plants owned or controlled by the company in various parts of the country.

  Hastings led the way familiarly past the girl sitting at a desk in the outside office and we soon found ourselves in the section that was set apart for the accounting department, over which Randall had charge.

  It seemed that the lawyer was well acquainted with the cashier as he introduced him to us, and we noted that Randall was a man approaching middle age, at least outwardly, with that solid appearance that seems to come to men who deal with numbers and handle large sums of money.

  While we talked I looked about curiously. Randall had an inner office, though in the outer office stood the huge safe which was evidently the one which had been rifled.

  The cashier himself seemed to have lost, for the time, some of his customary poise. Trying to make him out, I fancied that he was nearly frantic with fear lest he might be suspected, not so much, perhaps, of having had anything to do with the loss of the telautomaton as of being remiss in his duties, which included the guardianship of the safe.

  The very anxiety of the man seemed to be a pretty good guarantee of his honesty. There could be no doubt of how deeply he felt the loss, not only because it was of such vital importance, but from the mere fact that it might reflect on his own management of his department.

  ‘It seems almost incredible,’ Randall exclaimed as we stood talking. ‘The most careful search has failed to reveal any clue that would show even how access to the office was gained. Not a lock on any of the doors has been tampered with, not a scratch indicates the use of a jimmy on them or on the windows. In fact, entrance by the windows at such a height above the surrounding buildings is almost beyond the range of possibility as well as probability. How could it have been accomplished? I am forced to come back to the explanation that the outer office doors had been opened by a key!’

  ‘There were keys—in the hands of several people, I suppose?’ inquired Kennedy.

  ‘Oh, yes! There are in every large office like this,’ hastened Randall.

  ‘Mr Maddox had a key, of course?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘The agent of the building.’

  ‘I mean who else in the office?’

  ‘My assistant—oh, several. Still, I am sure that no one had a key except those whom we could trust.’

  ‘Did Shelby Maddox ever have a key?’ cut in Hastings.

  The cashier nodded in the negative, for the moment surprised, apparently, at the very idea that Shelby would ever have had interest enough in business to have such a thing.

  I saw Burke looking in covert surprise at Hastings as he asked the question. For the moment I wondered why he asked it. Had he really thought that Shelby might have a key? Or was he trying hard to make a case? What was his own connection with the affair? Kennedy had been looking keenly about.

  ‘Is that the safe over there?’ he indicated. ‘I should like to examine it.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it, and that’s the strangest part of it,’ hastened Randall, as though eager to satisfy us on all points, leading the way to a modern chrome-steel strong-box of a size almost to suggest a miniature bank vault: surely a most formidable thing to tackle.

  ‘You see,’ he went on nervously, as though eager to convince us, ‘there is not a mark on it to show that it has been tampered with. Yet the telautomaton is gone. I know that it was there last night, all right, for I looked in the compartment where we keep the little model, as well as the papers relating to it. It is a small model, and of course was not charged with explosive. But it is quite sufficient for its purpose, and if its war-head were actually filled with a high explosive it would be sufficiently deadly against any ordinary ship in spite of its miniature size.’

  Kennedy had already begun his examination, first of all assuring himself that it was useless to try to look for finger-prints, inasmuch as nearly everybody had touched the safe since the robbery and any such clue, had it once existed, must have been rendered valueless.

  ‘How did you discover the loss?’ I ventured as Craig bent to his work. ‘Did anything excite your suspicion?’

  ‘N-no,’ returned the cashier. ‘Only I have been very methodical about the safe. The model was kept in that compartment at the bottom. I make it a practice in opening and closing the safe to see that that and several other valuable things we keep in it are there. This morning nothing about the office and certainly nothing about the safe suggested that there was anything wrong until I worked the combination. The door swung open and I looked through it. I could scarcely believe my own eyes when I saw that that model was gone. I couldn’t have been more astonished if I had come in and found the door open. I am the only one who knows the combination—except for a copy kept in a safety deposit box known only to Marshall Maddox and Mr Hastings.

  Before any of us could say a word Kennedy had completed his first examination and was facing us. ‘I can’t find a mark on it,’ he confessed. ‘No “soup” has been used to blow it. Nitroglycerin enough might have wrecked the building. The old “can-opener” is of course out of the question with a safe like this. No instrument could possibly rip a plate off this safe unless you gave the ripper unlimited time. There’s not a hint that thermit or the oxy-acetylene blow-pipe have been used. Not a spot on the safe indicates the presence of anything that can produce those high temperatures.’

  ‘Yet the telautomaton is gone!’ persisted Hastings.

  Kennedy was looking about, making a quick search of the office.

  As his eye travelled over the floor he took a step or two forward and bent down. Under a sanitary desk, near a window, he picked up what looked like a small piece of rubber tubing. He looked at it with interest, though it conveyed no idea to me. It was simply a piece of rubber tubing. Then he took another step to the window and raised it, looking out. Far below, some hundred or more feet, was the roof of the next building, itself no mean structure for height.

  ‘Have you searched the roof below?’ he asked, turning to Burke.

  Burke shook his head. ‘How could anyone get in that way?’ he negatived.

  ‘Well—search the roof below,’ repeated Kennedy.

  Even though he did not understand what good might come of such a strange request, Burke had known Kennedy long enough not to question his actions. He moved away, seeking one of his men whom he could send on the errand.

  While we waited Kennedy continued to question Randall.

  ‘Mr Maddox was very careful of his key, I suppose?’ he ventured.

  ‘Yes, sir, very careful. So we all were of the combination, too. Not even my assistant knows that. If I should drop dead, there would be only one way to get it—to open that safety deposit box, and that must be done by someone with the proper authority. It has all been carefully safeguarded.’

  ‘You know of no one intmate with Mr Maddox—who might have obtained the key—or the combination?’

  I wondered at wh
at Kennedy was driving. Had he the little dancer, Paquita, in mind? Did he suspect that she might have wormed from Maddox the secret? Or was he, too, thinking of Shelby?

  Randall shook his head, and Kennedy continued his quick examination of the office, questioning the assistant, who was unable to add anything of value.

  So far there had been nothing to show that the robbery might not have been an inside job. As Kennedy was still pondering on the new mystery that confronted us Burke approached with the man whom he had sent to make the search.

  His face indicated that he was puzzled. In his hand he was holding a disc that was something like the flat telephone receivers one sees often on interior office telephones. To it was attached a rubber tube like that which Kennedy had picked up in the office a few minutes before.

  ‘My man found this thing on the roof below,’ explained Burke, with a look of inquiry. ‘What do you suppose it is? How did it get there?’

  Kennedy took the disc and began examining it carefully, fitting on the other rubber tube.

  ‘Perhaps it had served its purpose—was no longer of use,’ he meditated. ‘At any rate, if someone had to get away with that telautomaton he would not want to burden himself with anything else that was unnecessary. He might very well have discarded this.’

  What the thing was I could not imagine. We all crowded about, examining it, not even Burke offering an explanation.

  Suddenly Craig’s face lightened up. He thrust the tubes into his ears and walked over to a smaller safe that was still locked. As he turned the combination handle he held the black disc up close to the safe. The intent look on his face caused us all to watch without a word. Around and around he turned the handle slowly. Finally he stopped. Then, with a few quick turns, he gave the door a pull and it swung open on its oiled hinges.

  We fairly gasped. ‘What is it?’ I demanded. ‘Magic?’

  Kennedy smiled. ‘Not magic, but black science,’ he replied. ‘This is a burglar’s microphone.’