The Adventuress

by Arthur B. Reeve

  Was he pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp?

  For a moment he regarded it thoughtfully. ‘If I were in the laboratory,’ he ruminated, ‘I could tell pretty quick whether— Wait!—that’s foolish. She hasn’t any laboratory here. Walter, fill that basin with warm water.’

  In the bottom of the basin Craig laid the sheet of paper and we bent over it.

  ‘Nothing doing,’ I remarked, disappointed.

  ‘Why not?’ he returned eagerly, turning the wet paper. ‘We had it wrong side up!’

  There, before our eyes, under the water, characters of some sort were appearing.

  ‘You can make a perfectly good sympathetic ink from linseed oil, liquor of ammonia, and any of several other ingredients,’ he said, watching with me. ‘When writing with it dries it is invisible. Only water will bring it out. Then when it dries it is invisible again. Look.’

  I did, but could not yet make out what it was, except that it seemed to be a hodge-podge of figures:

  251533331514543245434412152515354433331552

  543442254533442431521521243324432323154215

  ‘It’s a cipher!’ I exclaimed with that usual acumen that made Kennedy smile indulgently.

  ‘Quite right,’ he agreed, studying the peculiar scrawl of the figures. ‘But if are going to get to New York at anything like the time she does, we must get that train. I can’t stop to decipher it now. We’ll have plenty of time later in the morning. There’s no use staying here, with the bird flown from the cage. I wonder whether Hastings is up yet.’

  The lawyer, who was not as young as he used to be, was not awake, and it took some pounding on his door to wake him. As he opened it sleepily he was prepared to give someone a piece of his mind, until he saw that it was Kennedy and myself.

  ‘Hallo!’ he suppressed a surly growl. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  Quickly Craig told him of the strange departure of Paquita.

  ‘Up to something again,’ muttered Hastings, finding someone at least on whom he could vent his spleen, although by this time he was fully awake. ‘But, man, I can’t get away for that early train!’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ reassured Kennedy. ‘I think it will be enough if you come down on the express. But I wanted to tell you that when Riley called up and said he was off after Paquita, I could not think of a place in the city that was more central than your office and I took the liberty of telling him to call me up there, without thinking how early it would be.’

  ‘I’ll let you have the key,’ returned Hastings, taking one from a ring. ‘I’ll join you as soon as I can get away.’

  ‘Just what I wanted,’ commented Kennedy, as we left the lawyer and hurried down to the dining-room for the few remaining minutes before the hotel ’bus left for the station. ‘Besides, I wanted to get there when no one was around, so that I could have a chance to look at that confounded detectaphone again. Whoever it was who installed it was clever.’

  ‘Might not that be the purpose of Paquita’s trip to New York?’ I queried.

  ‘I was thinking of that. Between us, Riley and ourselves ought to be able to find that out.’

  There was just time for a hasty bite of breakfast and we went into the dining-room, where Burke was evidently looking for us, for he came over and sat down. No one else was about and he felt free to talk.

  ‘If you’re going,’ he decided, after telling us of Riley’s report to him also of Paquita, ‘I think I had better stay. We ought not to let any of them remain here unobserved—not after last night,’ he added.

  ‘Quite right,’ agreed Kennedy. ‘Have you heard anything more about the attack on Winifred?’

  Burke negatived. He was still sore at Sanchez, who seemed to have come out of the affair with credit. I fancied that if ever the sallow-faced man ran afoul of Burke it would go hard with him.

  ‘I didn’t get that business straight last night,’ mused the detective. ‘Why should anyone have wanted to kidnap Winifred? It couldn’t have been to hurt her—for there was plenty of opportunity to do that. It must have been to hold her somewhere and force someone to do something. What do you think of that, Kennedy?’

  ‘Your reasoning is very logical,’ agreed Craig. ‘There is only one thing missing—who was it and what was it for?’

  ‘Pretty large questions,’ agreed Burke, good-humouredly now. ‘There must have been some big reason for it. Well, I hope this trip of Paquita’s proves to be the key to something. I almost wish I had told Riley to stay. I’d like to go with you.’

  ‘No,’ reassured Craig. ‘It’s better that you should be here. We must not leave any loopholes. You’ll communicate with me if anything happens?’

  Burke nodded and glanced hastily at his watch as a hint to us to hurry. With a parting assurance from him, we made the dash for the train in the hotel ’bus.

  The crisp morning air as we spun up to the station was a tonic to Kennedy. He seemed to enjoy the excitement of the chase keenly and I must admit that I, too, felt the pleasing uncertainty of our errand.

  I had found by this time that there was an entirely different crowd that regularly took each train. None of those whom we had seen the previous day on the express were on this train, although I felt sure that some of them at least would take their regular trip to the city later, especially Shelby. Whatever happened, at least we were ahead of them, although I doubted whether we would be ahead of Paquita unless she had some trouble on the road.

  Nothing was to be gained by the study of the other passengers, and there was not even a chair car on the accommodation. The papers had not arrived from New York in spite of the fact that Westport was not very far out, and the time consumed in stopping at every station on the road seemed to hang heavy.

  Kennedy, however, was never at a loss for something to do. We had no more than settled ourselves in the smoker with its seats of hot, dirty, worn, antiquated railroad plush, when he pulled from his pocket a copy he had made of the figures that had appeared on the wet paper.

  In a moment he was deeply engaged in a study of them, trying all manner of tricks, combining them, adding them, setting figures opposite the letters of the alphabet, everything that could occur to him on the spur of the moment, although I knew that he had worked out a scientific manner of reading any cipher. Still, his system of deciphering would take time, and in the brief interval of the railroad journey it was his intention to see whether he might not save the labour and perhaps stumble on some simple key.

  Evidently the cipher was not so simple. One after another he used up sheets from his loose-leaf note-book, tearing up the scrawls and throwing them out of the window, but never seeming to become discouraged or to lose his temper at each fresh failure.

  ‘I can’t say I’m making much progress,’ he admitted finally, closing his note-book and taking from his wallet carefully the original crumpled sheet I had found in the scrap-basket. ‘There’s just one thing I’d like to try—not to decipher it, for that will take time, I see—but to see if there is anything else that I missed as I looked at it so hastily up there in that room.’

  At the ice-water cooler, which never had any ice in it, nor cups about it, he held the sheet of paper for a moment under the tepid running water. Since he had first wet it, it had dried out and the figures were again invisible. Then he returned to our seat and soon was deep in the study of the original this time.

  ‘I can say one thing,’ he remarked, folding the cipher carefully so as not to tear the weakened fibres, as we rolled into the New York terminus, ‘the person who wrote that thing is a crook—has the instincts of a spy and traitor.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I inquired.

  ‘How?’ he repeated quietly, glancing up sharply from a final look at the thing. ‘Did you ever hear of the science of graphology—the study of character in handwriting? Much the same thing applies to figures. It’s all there in the way those figures are made, just as plain as the nose on your face, even if the meaning of the cipher is still hidden. We have a crook
to deal with, and a very clever one, too, even if we don’t know yet who it is. It’s possible to hide a good deal, but not everything—not everything.’

  From the station Kennedy and I went immediately down to the office of Hastings. It was still very early and few offices were occupied. Kennedy opened the door and, as I anticipated, went directly to the spot in the office where he had unearthed, or rather unwalled, the detectaphone transmitter.

  There was not a chance that anyone would be listening at the other end, yet he proceeded cautiously. The transmitter had been placed close to the plaster which had not been disturbed in Hastings’s office. So efficient was the little machine that even the plaster did not prevent sound waves from affecting its sensitive diaphragm.

  ‘But how could it have been put in place?’ I asked as Kennedy explored the hole he had made in the wall.

  ‘That’s new plaster back there,’ he pointed out, peering in. ‘Someone must have had access on a pretence to the next office and placed the transmitter that way, plastering up the wall again and painting it over. You see, Hastings wouldn’t know about that.’

  ‘Still,’ I objected, ‘anyone going in and out of the next office would be likely to be seen. Who has the office?’

  ‘It’s no use to look,’ replied Kennedy, as I started for the hall. ‘They are as ignorant as we are. See—the wire doesn’t go there. It goes horizontally to that box or casing in the corner which carries steam-pipes. Then it goes down. It’s not likely it goes down very many floors. Let’s see what’s under us.’

  The office beneath bore on its doors the name of a well-known brokerage firm. There was no reason to suspect them, and Kennedy and I walked down another floor. There, in a little office, directly under that occupied by Hastings, gilt letters announced simply ‘Public Stenographer Exchange.’ Without a doubt that was the other end of the eavesdropper.

  ‘There’s no one in yet, sir,’ informed a cleaning woman who happened to see us trying the door.

  Kennedy was ready with a story. ‘That’s too bad,’ he hastened, with a glance at his watch. ‘They want to sublet it to me and I’d like to look at it before I decide on another office at nine o’clock.’

  ‘I can let you see it,’ hinted the woman, rattling a string of keys.

  ‘Can you?’ encouraged Kennedy, slipping a silver coin into her hand. ‘Thank you. It will save me another trip.’

  She opened the door and we saw at once why Kennedy’s chance story had seemed so plausible. Whatever furniture had been there had been moved out, except a single plain chair and a very small table. But on the table stood a box, the receiving end of the detectaphone. It was the eavesdropper’s station, all right.

  The woman left us a moment and we made the best of the opportunity. Not even a scrap of paper had been left. Except for what greeted us on our first entrance, there was nothing.

  Who had rented the place? Who had listened in, had heard and anticipated even our careful frame-up?

  Could it have been that this was the objective of the hasty visit of Paquita, that it had been she who was so eager to destroy the evidence of the eavesdropping on Hastings?

  It was galling to have to stand here in inaction at a time when we felt that we might be learning much if we had only so much as a hint where else to look.

  ‘The easiest way of finding out is to watch,’ concluded Kennedy. ‘We can’t just stand about in the hall. That in itself will look suspicious. You wait here a few minutes while I see if I can find the agent of the building.’

  Around a bend in the hall I waited, trying to seem interested more in some other office down the hall No one appeared, however, looking for any of the offices and it was only a few minutes before Kennedy returned.

  ‘I found him,’ he announced. ‘Of course he could tell me next to nothing. It was as I had supposed, just someone who was an emissary of our criminal. I doubt if it would do us much good to catch the person now, anyway. Still, it’s worth while taking a chance on. A girl who said she was a typewriter and stenographer hired the place, and paid for it in cash in advance. I managed to persuade the agent to let me have the key to this vacant office opposite. We can watch better from that.’

  We let ourselves into the opposite office, which was bare, and I could see that I was in for a tiresome wait.

  No one had arrived yet in Hastings’s office and Kennedy was eager to receive some word from Riley as well as watch the eavesdropping plant. Accordingly, he left me to watch while he returned to the lawyer’s office.

  Every footfall in the hall raised my hopes, only to dash them again as the newcomer entered some other office than the one I was watching.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE CIPHER LETTER

  IRKSOME though it was to be compelled to do fruitless watching in a vacant office, there was nothing to do but stick at it. What Paquita might be up to was a mystery, but I knew that until we heard from Riley we could have only the most slender chance to locate her in the big city.

  It was perhaps half an hour later when, to my relief, Kennedy returned, bringing with him a strange man. I looked at him inquiringly.

  ‘You’re just wasting time here, Walter,’ Craig explained. ‘I’ve got one of the Secret Service men here in the city to relieve you of your job. But I very much suspect that, after what happened last night, whoever had that place across the hall is through and would rather lose the detectaphone receiver than risk being caught.’

  ‘Have you had any word from Riley?’

  ‘Not a word. I’m getting anxious,’ he replied, turning to the new man and instructing him what to do.

  Kennedy was eager to get back, in case there might be a hasty call about Paquita. I could see, too, that he was convinced that we were baffled, at least as far as discovering who had been using the detectaphone was concerned.

  We returned quickly to Hastings’s office, which was still deserted, and there, as we waited nervously, Kennedy drew forth the cipher and began to study it again, but this time on an entirely different line, following his own scientific principles, which he had laid down after investigating the work of other expert decipherers.

  My hopes rose momentarily when we heard footsteps in the hall and the door was burst open. It was, however, merely a messenger boy.

  ‘Telegram for Mr Kennedy,’ he shouted, penetrating even the sacred inner office of Hastings.

  Craig tore open the yellow envelope, read the message, and tossed it over to me. It was from Burke at Westport.

  ‘Wireless operators at Seaville Station,’ it read, ‘report strange interference. May be in reference to telautomaton. Will keep you advised if anything happens.’

  The possibility of a new twist to events was very fascinating, though I did not understand it. I was just about to question Kennedy about the telautomaton when the door opened again. This time it was Hastings himself.

  ‘Has there been any word?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘Nothing so far,’ replied Craig. ‘You came on the express, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, his face wearing a puzzled expression. ‘I don’t quite understand what is going on.’

  ‘What in particular?’ queried Craig, seeing that there was something on Hastings’s mind.

  ‘Why, Shelby, of course,’ he answered. ‘Some change has taken place in him. He’s not like the Shelby I used to know. Yesterday he came into town. He was on the train again today. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Johnson Walcott was on the train, too. He noticed it—called my attention to it, as a matter of fact. I saw some of the younger men, too. Shelby as a regular commuter is a joke to them. But it’s more than a joke, I’m thinking. Shelby never came near Wall Street—or Broad Street—before. But now they tell me he seems to be taking an active interest in the Maddox Munitions stock on the curb. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Could he be trying to put through some deal?’ I inquired hastily. ‘Perhaps he’s trying to get the control his brother would have had.’

  ‘I
don’t doubt that he has some such scheme,’ agreed Hastings. ‘But—well, what do you say, Kennedy? Doesn’t it look suspicious, so soon afterward? It may be real ambition, now. He may have changed. But—’

  Hastings’s ‘but’ meant volumes.

  Just then the telephone rang and the lawyer answered it, handing the instrument over to Kennedy.

  We listened eagerly. It was the first long-delayed report of Paquita from Riley, and as Kennedy pursued the one-sided conversation that we heard I gathered that, far from clearing up things, the actions of Paquita had further muddled them.

  Hastings glanced at me and shook his head sagely, whispering, ‘That’s a clever and a dangerous woman: When she looks most innocent is the time to be wary.’

  I tried to pay no attention to his banal remarks, but still was unable to follow, from what I heard, the course of the report from Riley.

  Finally it seemed as if Kennedy were cut off in the middle of a remark or that Riley had hung up suddenly. Kennedy jiggled the hook but was unable to get anyone back again, though Central tried for some time.

  ‘What was it?’ I asked, keenly interested.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s putting one over on us again,’ commented Kennedy as he hung up the receiver.

  ‘How’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, it’s evidently a purposeless visit to the city, as nearly as I can make it out. Riley followed her in—had no difficulty. In fact, he thinks that she knew she was being followed before they reached the turnpike from Westport.’

  ‘Where did she go after she got here?’ I asked, hoping that at last there was some clue that might lead to the ‘gang’ which Burke suspected, but which I was almost tempted to believe was mythical.

  ‘Just stopped at her city apartment,’ returned Craig. ‘There wasn’t any telephone handy and Riley was afraid to leave her for fear she might come out and get away before he could get back. It was very early. When it came time for the offices to open she made a call at her theatrical agents again. After that she came down-town. She wasn’t far away from us here. This will interest you, Mr Hastings.’