The matilda hunter murde.., p.6
The Matilda Hunter Murder, page 6
“At first I kept thinkin’ that mebbe we’d all get blowed up or somethin’ before we covered a block, but we kept gettin’ nearer and nearer to the Devonshire here on Scott Street and nothin’ whatever happened. And when at last the little nigger maid you was tellin’ me about—Lily White—let us all in downstairs, and in turn we reached your room, and I found you was in, I was mighty glad that everythin’ had come out all right after all. And that’s all. And here I am.” Mrs. Hunter’s story was over.
But Jerry made no reply. In fact, all he did was to sit exactly where he was and wrinkle up his forehead, thinking about the facts she had just detailed to him. Finally, however, with a sigh of doubt, he arose from his seat on the bed and stepped over to the bureau, where he stood with his hands in his pockets, surveying the black satchel intently. And not before fifteen seconds had passed thus did he spin around and face his aunt.
“Aunt Matilda,” he agreed, “the whole aflair is decidedly unusual, to say the least. I can’t divest my mind, somehow, of the obsession that your roomer is a bootlegger, or a racketeer of some peculiar sort. I will admit, however, that if that thing really did contain a machine presenting some new simple principle for disintegrating the atom—as it’s called—and transforming the energy into a fatal ray—or fatal rays—of some kind, it would be absolutely invaluable to a foreign government. Japan included, of course. And it would be confoundedly uncomfortable for a fellow to have to stay in the same room with it—you’ll have to admit that.”
“Well, Jeremy,” she replied, rocking back and forth, “I know that I’d oughtn’t to have tried to saddle you with the thing. But I was all alone in the house there, and when I got to thinkin’ about them secret agents I just got unstrung—especially account of little Rags bein’ dead.”
“As to Rags,” ventured Jerry, “it’s possible, of course, that he tried to chew on the thing, or to jerk it back and forth as a dog always will with an article of of leather—and he could have set some clockwork to going for a second or so. But all the jogging it got from your two boy streets did nothing like that, it seems. Well, whatever it is, it’s here, standing quiet on my bureau and everybody safe and sound. And so I move that we let sleeping dogs snore.” He shook his head, “Gad, auntie, the whole thing still sounds as fishy to me as an eel tastes.” He paused, thinking. Then he went on: “There is, as I said a few minutes ago, one individual I actually know of in the world who could say right off the bat whether experiments in producing fatal rays had gotten anything like so far as a device of this small nature. He’s a man who has devoted his entire life to the study of the atom, on which principle I think you said this Michaux claimed his device was based; he’s a genius in his field and even happens, like many other geniuses, to have six fingers on each hand. What do you think of that, aunt? Furthermore, this man as I happen to be in a position to know, is living right in Chicago today—and will be till the electrical Convention in December—at the residence of the British Trade Commissioner with Canada—Sir Wilfred—what the devil was that name Percy told me?—Sir Wilfred—Hambleton—yes, that was it!
“He is supposed,” Jerry went on, “to have been the first to suggest some peculiar method for bringing electrons to a stop with radium rays—X-rays, I believe—Lord knows what the mathematics of it are, however. I don’t. Except that I do happen to know that X-rays are identical with the delta-rays of radium. Now it could of course be possible for a tiny automatic X-ray machine to be inside that case—fixed to act somehow on some highly rarefied argon or neon gas.” Jerry paused. He felt himself getting out far beyond his depths in matters scientific. “However, I don’t see that we would have any moral rights, if that satchel contained an invention, practical or useless, to call in Mr. Cyril Burthrick, C.E., E.E., F.L.R.S., another inventor. Do you?”
Mrs. Hunter’s face was the picture of despair at what must have sounded very much like a corroboration of all of her strange roomer’s statements. Jerry smiled reassuringly. Then he went on. “Of all the people in the world, this man Burthrick could say whether the thing your man Michaux claims, is still only theoretical or whether there’s a practical way to accomplish it. There’s a dozen simple tests, beyond doubt, that he could apply from the outside of that case that would prove, for instance, whether X-rays, as an example, were being used to impede atomic vibration.” Again he stopped as a sudden idea struck him. “And there’s old Doc MacPherson downstairs on the first floor front. You may have seen his old battered-up Chevrolet coupe parked across the street where he keeps it all the time. He’s retired now, but he used to be an X-ray specialist. He knows his stuff, too, aunt. He was the one who told me about the X-rays being really identical with the delta-rays of radium; that their vibrations are 10,000 times more rapid than that of ordinary light; that they can be changed by using different targets in the X-ray tube. He claims that the man who finds a ray that’s more powerful than the one gotten by sending an electrical discharge through a Crooke’s tube can use it in medicine in briefer dosages—that is, shorter times of exposure-killing cancerous tissue by the fraction of a second’s application and not the rest of the patient’s good cells too! He says that such a man will make a huge fortune. Not very ethical, thinks I! But anyway, Doc’s ’way up on X-rays. And Z is only a couple of letters away from X, aunt!”
“Well, Jeremy,” she said, “the point of the matter is this: Whatever it contains, that black case belongs yet to Mr. Michaux. That’s certain. And now that you’ve heard everything, do you believe the thing is dangerous? And if you ain’t afraid of it, will you—that is, is it askin’ too much of you?—to keep the thing here overnight, even if you have to put it downstairs in one of your landlady’s storerooms?”
“Why of course I’ll keep it,” he replied. “I wouldn’t want to feel that I was bluffed out by a tale spun by a Chicago bootlegger who happened to read a few scientific newspaper stories such as one of my honorable Eastern cousins writes!” He crossed over to the bureau again and recommenced studying the satchel. Finally he stretched forth his two hands and lifted it, once more, but this time, it is to be admitted, with a little greater care and respect than the first time. “Heavy as the deuce, all right,” he commented. “Bootlegger or no, it isn’t booze he’s got sewed up in this container, aunt. Must weigh forty—fifty pounds at least.”
She nodded. “Good thing your aunt got them lads, else she mightn’t never have been able to tote it herself as far as this.”
She paused. “But don’t it seem to show, Jeremy, that it’s got some kind of a machine in it?”
“Pineapples, maybe,” he hazarded suddenly. For some reason best known to his subconscious mind, this was the first time the theory of bombs had occurred to him. He looked over and around it. “But there’s no fuses sticking out.” He stood thinking. The sudden recollection of a compass used on a camping trip a year back in the North Woods flashed across his mind. And at the same time the realization of the electro-magnetic character of all X-ray devices and kindred scientific machines came forcibly to him. With which he hurriedly stooped down and drew out the bottom drawer of the bureau.
“I’ve got an idea,” he assured her, as he rummaged through a mass of fishing tackle, camping hats, and other miscellaneous articles, “that we can get some inkling of what’s inside that satchel. At least if I can find my old—” His hand suddenly closed on the very article. “Here it is. Now for a little experiment.”
He brought up the round brass box that housed the delicate magnetic needle, and closed the drawer cautiously. Then he returned to Mrs. Hunter and took up a seat near her on the bed.
“Now, Aunt Matilda,” he explained, “you may not be aware of it, but it’s a well-known fact in science that any article of iron, any magnet, any steel used in electric machinery, will deflect the needle of a compass that ordinarily points north and south. And it’s an equally well-known fact that in the coils and loops and cores of all devices for changing electricity into different currents, or interrupting it, or transforming it, there’s a certain amount of magnetism stored up in the form of what we call “inductive magnetism’.”
He placed the brass case on his knee and released the depression. At once the delicately poised needle swung slowly around and became stationary. By the bright light from the two overhanging electric bulbs, Mrs. Hunter watched the performance wonderingly.
“See,” he said, “how it points?”
“Yes, Jeremy, I do. One end’s a-pointin’ t’ords South Chicago and the other end t’ords Rogers Park.”
“Good enough, then,” he asserted. “Now if this alleged invention in the black satchel—of which I’m completely in doubt, however—were some sort of a chemical apparatus for transforming the atom and producing a fatal ray, which of course I don’t believe at all, we couldn’t expect to see the needle affected by the tenth of a degree. But, on the other hand, if it’s some kind of an electro-magnetic device, designed by your Mr. Michaux to bombard suspended atoms with X-rays and thus achieve—say—Z-rays, we would see the needle play all sorts of little tricks. All clear, aunt?”
She nodded half comprehendingly. “I think so, Jeremy.” But by the way in which she rose eagerly from her rocking chair and led the way to the bureau, it was plain either that woman’s curiosity was far from being in abeyance in her soul, or else that she wished once and for all to quell her fears about the black leather case. She nodded her head avidly. “Well, Jeremy, one thing’s certain: your compass ain’t goin’ to show nohow what Mr. Michaux’s ever had to do in his life with this here old Chineeman, Mr. Confucius. But it may show us somethin’ a good deal more important. So put them together, Jeremy. And let’s see what the needle does.”
CHAPTER V
While Lovers Talked
Acting on his aunt’s command, or his own suggestion, whichever it may have been, Jerry crossed over to her side and brought the compass close to the satchel. Closer and still closer. Both of them watched the needle with extreme care. Now the brass case and the leather case were in actual contact. But the needle made no attempt at swerving from the true north and south; in fact, it did not even tremble. He held it thus for a few seconds, then passed the brass case over the satchel, around each end, and up and down both sides. But still the compass needle remained absolutely unaffected.
He suddenly laughed out loud at his own fears, which, kindled by startling facts concerning the fatal effect which could lurk in atomic energy, as presented in T. Percy’s first signed news-story, he had not thus far admitted even to himself. Placing the compass case on the bureau, he lifted the black satchel up with a big effort and swung it gaily back and forth as one might toy with a stage bomb made of papier-mache and sawdust! And finally he replaced it to the tune of a reassuring thump by the side of the brass case and turned to his aunt.
“Aunt Matilda,” he said, “it contains no electric machinery, no pineapples with cast-iron cases devised for rival breweries, no dynamos or motors, batteries, coils or helixes. You have seen for yourself that the magnetic needle hasn’t budged in the least.” She nodded sheepishly, still staring at the satchel, and presented the appearance of one who was wondering whether her own fears of the past few minutes had not placed her in a most ridiculous light with her nephew, a modern young man. “As for the little dog Rags,” Jerry continued, “he wasn’t such a young dog any more, aunt. He just died, that’s all. He’d probably been failing—and you didn’t know it. As for this Michaux’s lying story, I could formulate a number of logical hypotheses. I could even—”
But his words were cut short by the loud sound of a buzzer on the wall.
“The telephone!” he exclaimed quickly, wondering perplexedly who it could be, and staring at it stupidly. And suddenly one name came to his lips: “Carolle!” and he turned back to his aunt.
“Aunt, make yourself comfortable again in the rocker while I do a marathon clear to the basement. That buzzer means that somebody wants me on the phone. I think it’s Carolle Harbison. She’s supposed to be in Indianapolis attending a wedding between a man friend of mine and a girl friend of hers. If she’s home from it sooner than she expected, it’s likely to be she. And I’ll be back in a few minutes at most.”
She dropped back into the lone chair with the sigh of righteous middle-age disturbed in its tranquillity of thought and deed. “Go ahead,” she returned. “I was young myself, once.”
With no further delay, Jerry flew out of the room, closing the door behind him. He shot down the green carpeted stairway, taking three steps at a time. In turn he passed the shaded electric bulbs that marked the third floor landing, the second floor, and the first floor. As he sped down the stairway that led to the telephone booth in the basement, he glanced at the big hall clock and noticed that its hands pointed to 6:25. “May the gods be good,” he prayed intently, “and we’ll have the whole evening. That is—if it’s Carolle!”
He reached the telephone booth, stepped in, and closed the soundproof door. The receiver was standing endwise on the oak shelf where the negro maid of the Devonshire had left it. Impatiently he snatched it up, and held it to his ear.
“Hello,” came a girl’s laughing voice. “Do you know who this is, Jerry?”
“I have strong evidence from the beating of my heart that it’s a certain Miss Carolle Harbison—recently of Indianapolis.”
“Be yourself, Jerry! You know your heart isn’t skipping a beat. Or if it is, it’s because you came down four flights of stairs too fast.” She laughed, teasingly. “Maybe I can make it skip one teeny beat, at that. Well—here goes for a trial. This—isn’t—exactly—Carolle Harbison: it’s—it’s the future Mrs. Jeremy Evans. It—oh, is it skipping now? Good!” She laughed again, her charming lilting laugh that made him laugh contentedly on his own end. “Well, Jerry, ’tis I all right, I got back from Indianapolis sooner than I expected—yes, Jerry, paid $7 extra fare and flew back on the Hoosier Air Lines instead of coming back by train—and so I’m home—and it’s Sunday night—and I’m going to be very lonely—and I was wondering whether—”
“Wonder no longer,” he said gratefully. A lover, parched in a desert of poignant loneliness, had suddenly been drenched with a cloudburst of morning dew! “I’m coming over tonight—that is, honey, if you’re really sure you’re not too tired to have me. And tell me all about the marriage of those two infants. Gad, Carolle, I never thought she’d marry that fellow. Did she look happy at the wedding? How did he act? He was always such a bashful yokel. Did her father come with a shotgun as he swore he would? Did his mother weep all through the ceremony as she threatened to do? What kind of a turnout did they have? Did they serve real wine at the wedding dinner? Where did they go for a honeymoon? For Lord’s sake, Carolle, tell me all!”
She laughed at his thirst for details. And as the little god of Time who measures off eons or seconds with equal imperturbability turned his minute-glass first this way and that, a minute for each up-ending, Jerry was regaled with the curious details of the final culmination of that curious romance which had developed so unexpectedly between his friend and her friend, a romance unhampered by any sordid consideration such as frustrated his own—of twenty-five hundred difficult dollars in cash of the realm to be obtained before the nuptials should be celebrated. And fifteen times did the little god turn his minute glass before Central suddenly stepped in and demanded her pound of flesh in the shape of a second five-cent coin. Then and then only did Jerry Evans remember that he had been entertaining a visitor upstairs; so he quickly brought the conversation to a close.
“Carolle dear, my aunt from Locust Street, Mrs. Hunter, is upstairs visiting me,” he explained hastily. “So I may be a little delayed in getting over to your place. I don’t know how long she’ll be with me, and when she goes I’ll be taking her home of course. But look for me without fail, Carolle, even as late as eight-thirty or nine o’clock. I’ll positively arrive. I’ll say goodbye now before we get cut off.” And as her own goodbye tinkled back over the wire, he hung up the receiver and proceeded to make the long climb back to the top floor.
When he reached the top landing he was just a bit winded, and he resolved then and there to skip all ads advertising Camel cigarettes for a while, or at least every other ad! And puffing a bit, he walked slowly down the green carpeted hallway and threw open the door of his room. Mrs. Hunter was still sitting in the rocking chair with her back to the door, and the black satchel, he noticed, still stood in the same position on the bureau. So he marched in and proceeded to explain the cause of his delay.
“It was Carolle Harbison, after all,” he said. “And I—”
He stopped abruptly. There was such a strange expression in his aunt’s face, such a staring look in her eyes, a look which did not, somehow, concur facially with the half-formed corrugations in her forehead which themselves suggested a questioning puzzlement within her.
“It was Carolle,” he began again. “She got back from Indianap—” But for the second time he stopped.
“Why aunt,” he broke out, “how queer you look! Did you—get tired of waiting?”
She made no reply whatever. Indeed, she did not even move.
Nor did the questioning look in the half-contracted brow relax itself, much less her undeviating stare towards him—or was it beyond him? With a strange, tingling sense of fear he strode over to her and touched her on the shoulder. The rocker tipped forward slightly, and he was dumfounded to see her body slide out of it and fall in a crumpled heap on the floor, where it remained motionless. For an instant his breath seemed to leave him completely, and with a feeling of sudden terror he glanced immediately toward the black satchel on the bureau. And then, as his gaze jumped quickly to the compass needle by its side, and he took two long strides toward the bureau to peer down in utter consternation at it, to corroborate what he saw, the long pent-up gasp issued from him. The compass needle was pointing nearly east and west!
