The matilda hunter murde.., p.42
The Matilda Hunter Murder, page 42
“She could very easily have moved from that chair,” he rumbled. “Might have gotten up to look out the front window. Still everything outside was dark. Maybe she found some print or picture on the wall that interested her. And if she did get up—” His spoken words trailed away.
Now he lowered his gaze and straightening out his recalcitrant glasses allowed his scrutiny to travel at close range all over her shirtwaist. Once he stopped and intently surveyed a tiny jagged tear in the material, at length taking the sides of the tear and ripping it further apart, only to reveal that the garment beneath was not in the least torn or sundered. He stood immobile for a long minute. Then he spoke, as though impatient with himself.
“Well, I’m wasting time. She couldn’t in the least interpret it; so it must have come beyond doubt at a point she herself couldn’t see. And it went straight to her nervous system. That is absolutely certain. Mighty selective thing that—er—Z-ray! So the thing to do is to survey first the very switchboard of the nervous system itself. The spinal region. Yes. Which concurs perfectly with hypothesis I.” He turned to the undertaker. “Smith, can you get me a pair of scissors?”
Gordon Smith inserted a hand beneath the buttons of his great ulster, and fumbling in some breast pocket within produced a slender pair of scissors with a black cord, their blades encased in a leather receptacle. Trotter seized them without a word.
“Now, Smith,” he directed, “help me to turn her over on her face. I think I’ll begin around her spine. Step outside, youngster, if things are getting a little too gruesome for you.”
“I’ve stuck it all out this long,” said Jerry grimly, “so I’ll see it through.”
With Mrs. Hunter’s body completely turned over, Trotter again surveyed the rippling surface of the black silk waist carefully. The only tear he now found was one that had been neatly sewed with black silk thread. At length he unsheathed the scissors blades with a sigh, and thrust the point carefully under the belted hem of the black waist. Then, from that point nearly to the neck, he snipped it open. This done, he followed the same procedure with the underlying garment, and then, in turn, reaching the corset itself with its criss-cross lacings, cut the garment lying beneath that vestment only from the top of the stiff structure of whalebone upward. When he had finished, he laid down the scissors, and pinching the various thicknesses of clothing which ran from the left of his cloth-cutting operations in his left thumb and forefinger, drew them as one integument well aside, watching carefully as he did so, as the undermost garment peeled away from the corset top upward, revealing, on that side at least, her white back, remarkably smooth and fair despite her age. Evidently he found nothing that satisfied him in this procedure, and still grasping the clothing in his left digits, he proceeded to repeat the identical operation with that on the right side. But as he pulled, and most guardedly, on this side, the undermost garment stuck markedly to the flesh at one point. In a trice, though, it came away. And Trotter, leaning forward with an ejaculation, peered carefully, not at the symmetrical area of back that was now fully exposed, but at this particular point. Almost immediately he ejaculated:
“There youngster—Smith! There’s the point which a certain—er—Z-ray selected to attack this woman. Can you see it?”
Both Gordon Smith and Jerry stepped forward and looked down at the point which Trotter, in the absence of any hands with which to motion, was trying to indicate by wagging his head. And there, about five or six inches down from her neck, and just to the right of what constituted obviously the very median line of her backbone, was a small black spot, or better, perhaps, a large dot, which, although it showed markedly against the unnatural whiteness of the surrounding flesh, would not have been as particularly evident from its discoloration so much as from the fact that it was slightly raised, and that a single drop of blood had oozed from it to coagulate with the fibres of the garment directly next the skin at that point.
“Yes,” remarked Trotter calmly, tucking the garments in on each side so that they would remain put, “the insensate Z-ray, which possesses, seemingly, a piercing action like a bolt of lightning, picked out her spine and landed right in the region where the cervical vertebrae become dorsal vertebrae.” He stood erect, surveying the exposed flesh, and the single raised black dot he had brought to light. Fumbling inside his ulster, even as Gordon Smith had done, he produced from somewhere in his inner clothes a jeweler’s black rubber magnifying eyepiece which, by raising his steel-bowed spectacles up to his forehead and making a terrific grimace with his facial muscles, he managed to clutch into place over one eye; and leaning down he surveyed the dot, on its tiny raised platform of flesh, from a distance of several inches by dint of swinging the overhanging light off to one side and focusing it onto the very site. “Hm,” he muttered. “Fibres forced right in, even.” He appeared more than satisfied now as to something, for he stood erect again and dropping his eye piece absently into one of the ulster pockets, resumed his spectacles. “Hm,” he ruminated. “No sensory nerves in the underlying muscle tissue so close to the vertebral spine itself. Still there would be skin pain—hm.” He scratched his head through the quaint knitted cap. “Velocity! Aye, velocity of impact. Mighty high velocity would reduce the skin pain to a still somewhat recognizable minimum. Still—if that were the case, it must positively have struck the underlying vertebral segment where it flares out wider within—or, if at any angle, against the spine of the segment itself. And it could even have happened then that—by George, it couldn’t have been avoided!” He looked eagerly about him. “Smith, I daresay this is all Greek to you. But I want to do a little post-mortem dissecting, if you can get me the scalpels and other instruments. I—”
But Smith had pursed up his cold lips. “I’m sorry, Trotter, but there’s virtually a coroner’s order on this body. In a sense, that is. Not yet a written order, to be sure, but a verbal assurance from your own superior that one’s coming. So I simply couldn’t permit anything like that. I—”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Trotter, biting his lips in impatient vexation with himself. “You’re right, Smith. I’m crazy to think of dissecting. Under the circumstances the coroner will have to have the field to himself. But I’ve been given forty-eight hours on this Z-ray manslaughter case—yes, I know you don’t know what it’s all about—and that will mean no coroner for that length of time. And I don’t want to—Hm. Let me see. Let me see.” He frowned deeply. “Well, how soon then can you get me the aspirating syringe and draw me a sample of this woman’s blood? We can take it from—say—the vein in her wrist. We—” He paused again, but only for the fraction of a second. “By golly, I’ve a better idea than dissecting. It won’t involve any cutting at all. Only I’ll need something very special. I’d need—well—it would be known technically as an adducto-voltaic tract—” He stopped short and turned the battery of his gaze full on the undertaker. “Smith, I presume you’re wired for alternating current here in the 22nd Street district like practically the whole of Chicago? So you—”
“No,” returned Gordon Smith slowly. “We’re still hooked up to the same old private generating plant in the block that we were hooked up to twenty-five years ago. Direct current.”
“The devil you say!” Trotter was delighted. “Then I need go no further. Smith, I want you to bring down Big Olaf.”
“Big Olaf?” repeated Gordon Smith. There was in his whole mien a crestfallen attitude. Gone was the pompous, gelid Smith.
“Yes, Big Olaf, Smith. Or Smith’s Folly, as I’ve also heard it referred to.”
And now a flood of embarrassed red surged over Gordon Smith’s entire cold emotionless face.
“Big Olaf,” he repeated with manifest reluctance. “You—you want Big Olaf?”
“Exactly,” snapped Trotter impatiently. “Next to dissection, it’s my only logical step outside of a call to all the surgical supply houses in Chicago, and countless delay. Don’t look so embarrassed, Smith. Haven’t you still got Big Olaf?”
“Yes,” muttered Smith. “Somewhere up on the attic floor, I suppose, gathering dust. But I honestly don’t think I can find it just now, Trotter. I—”
“Oh nonsense, Smith. Nonsense. If it was up on the attic floor once, it’s up there now. Go on, Smith. I must have it, I tell you.”
Smith stood, staring dourly at the dead body. Then he sighed deeply. “Well, I don’t know what this is all about,” he remarked somewhat testily. “But I’ll get it. It’ll be filthy with dust, though. It’s on your own head.”
And ulster still buttoned about him, knit cap still drawn tight on his head, and obviously radiating an irritable distrust of all the investigators in the world, he left the room and the clank of the tiny elevator outside was audible to the two left within.
Trotter was now walking up and down, hands behind him, paying no attention to the corpse near by, a man highly impatient of every delay. As for Jerry, his own mind was, to say the least, a chaos of conflicting thoughts. But he deemed it wiser, at this juncture, to say nothing. After all, he was but the veriest spectator in all this cryptic manoeuvering, motivated by facts unknown. At length, though, he did venture a single question, to break the tension of that gruesome chamber.
“I don’t want to question whatever you’re trying to do, Mr. Trotter; but Big Olaf—what is Big—”
“Big Olaf?” said Trotter, stopping for a moment. He laughed dryly. “Or Smith’s Folly!” He chuckled again. “Big Olaf is one of the most powerful and painstakingly constructed electromagnets ever devised and wound solely by hand,” he explained. “Some old Norwegian inventor here in Chicago worked on it for years. He made the core of specially treated and annealed Norwegian iron. Soft as butter. Windings carried out in an amazing combination of series and parallel circuits, to work out certain theories he had, and every convolution laid lovingly on by hand. Poor Smith! He thought the old fellow’s estate consisted of a vaultful of expensive scientific apparatus, and gave him a good burial. And all he got from the public administrator was all the old fellow left—namely, Big Olaf. Oh, it’s a well-known story in the undertaking world. Smith’s Folly, the rest of the trade called it. But Folly or not, when the thing is energized by an 110-volt current, it creates a magnetic field of nearly 500,000 gauss, as such things are measured—it will actually produce powerful magnetic phenomena a hundred feet from itself.”
“Such as,” remarked Jerry glumly, hands in pockets, moodily staring at that marble slab, “giving the compass needles of aviators flying low over the house at the time hysteria, and sending the pilots off to the Municipal Airport by mistake, instead of the Curtiss-Reynolds air field?”
“Quite so,” said Trotter amiably, resuming once more his walking up and down. “An apt metaphor that, for a compass needle. Hysteria! That’s good.” He paused. “Only, my son, it happens that aviators fly by the earth-inductor compass, not the magnetic one of the old three-masters. But let that pass.” He turned back in his pacing, one mitten flapping out of his coat sleeve. “Well, Big Olaf will save me considerable delay. And Smith’s wired for D.C. too, in the bargain. That’s just fine. That’s—that’s just topping, as our English friend Burthrick might say. For you see, youngster, the whole city is A.C. now—except for that small district up where you and I live—between the river and North Avenue.”
“Of which fact I’m well aware,” Jerry replied. “Because nobody in that region can install a Majestic radio.”
“Yes. You’re right. Well, Big Olaf wouldn’t be much of a utility if it weren’t for the current here being—”
But Trotter stopped short, actually pricking up the one ear visible from beneath one side of his knitted cap, as the tiny elevator outside clanged, and Gordon Smith entered the door a second later, closing it carefully behind him with his heel. As for the latter, he might almost, as a very belligerent confirmation of his warning, have taken a trowel and literally shoveled dust upon the thing he carried, for its top surface was completely submerged with the fine grey powder that collects in every nook and corner, and on every beam, of a Chicago attic. “Big Olaf” itself was not a horseshoe type magnet at all, but was a great squarish stubby affair, rather squat in shape, perhaps eight inches long from one end of its straight core to the other, but fully a foot in any direction through its windings; it was, however, neither a cylinder nor a parallelepiped, for its corners were all rounded, and its entire surface, other than the ends of its core, was encased in some shiny fabric that had been varnished a light brown at some bygone date. Braided and spliced skillfully about it, as though by the fingers of one who in his youth might have put in a few years on some Norwegian sailing vessel, was an ingenious tight rope sling by which the heavy thing might be transported, and to the sling on each side of “Big Olaf” had been spliced a powerful rope handle. Wound entirely about it in an opposite direction, and loosely, was a thick flexible insulated cable on one end of which was a standard plug with bright brassy prongs, and in whose length had been incorporated a curious single-throw spring switch, mounted on a narrow flat black ebonite base, and with small carbon blocks for contacts.
With a grunt that sounded strangely like disapproval, Gordon Smith set the ponderous thing down on the floor with a resounding thump, and fell to shaking off the dust which stood on its upper surface at least, following that by dusting it generally off with a funereally black cloth that hitherto had been almost imperceptible where it hung over the shoulder of his black ulster.
“Well, here you are, Trotter,” he declared, his fishlike eyes still showing in their depths an asperity of some sort. “I threw my lights over on to the special big fuses we use with the stone-floor scraping machine. There’s a particularly low-resistance winding among the many on this thing, as I happen to know, and I don’t want you to be throwing my whole place into darkness. I hope you know just what you’re doing.”
“Quite, Smith.” Trotter was already uncoiling the flexible cable, and laying on its back on the floor the curious ebonite switch. The switch being wide open, he thrust the plug in the wall where an outlet gleamed forth near the baseboard. Now he came back to Big Olaf, and turning it vertically up on one end kneeled down on one knee and lovingly dusted off, with his bandanna handkerchief, the upper visible end of the strange core within it, running the palm of one hand entirely over its surface, and then even polishing it as he might a spectacle lens. He gave a terrific grunt as he lifted it up by the stout rope handle on one side of it, and groped for one which he found on the other.
“Now, youngster,” he directed, “when I lower this core nose down on this—er—Z-ray foramen, I want you to throw in that switch. And leave it till I tell you.”
And raising Big Olaf over Mrs. Hunter’s body, Trotter lowered it carefully till its nose touched—even seemingly pressed—on the very fleshy site which had been eliciting all his interest. Jerry, in readiness for his own simple task, had moved over silently to the ebonite switch.
“All ready,” ordered Trotter. He was puffing a bit from the weight on his arm muscles. “Throw—throw her in.”
Jerry bent down and did so. Nothing happened for a second or so, as the voltage flung itself vainly against the tremendous inductance of this thing of countless turns of wire. Then suddenly, as the inductance was overcome, and the current rushed into the great magnet like an invisible flood or torrent, the light above the corpse dimmed appreciably, remained so for a few seconds and slowly came back as that distant generator somewhere in the block speeded automatically up under the new load thrown upon it. Now there was silence in the room. Trotter stiffened one of his knees, and tightened one of his arms. “I hope,” he remarked facetiously, with a puff here and there in his words, “that our aviator with—with the magnetic compass isn’t passing over the—the place right now, youngster. If he is—whew—he’s seeing things.” He stopped. For almost ten long seconds the magnet had stood where it was. He looked once back at Jerry. “Whew—this thing is warm already. Now, youngster, when I order you later to pull the switch, put your foot on the edge of its base and stand back from those carbon contacts. The stupendous magnetic energy of the circuit will all try to transform back in a second into what will be a high-tension reversed current.”
With which, grunting audibly and fearfully now, he lifted away the tremendous weight, and lowered it rapidly to the floor, turning it so that the end that had just now been lowest, was upward instead. Smith, standing by in utter silence, politely turned the light to focus upon it. And Trotter kneeling down, staring with his nose close to it, spoke eagerly, tensely.
“Eureka!” he cried. “We’ve got it! We’re done. Pull your switch, youngster, so I can pluck it off—and mind the carbon contacts.”
