Guy Garrick

by Arthur B. Reeve

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE VOCAPHONE

  Promptly to the dot I met Garrick at the appointed place. Not a word sofar had been heard, either from Violet Winslow or Mrs. de Lancey. Therewas one thing encouraging about it, however. If they had becomeseparated while shopping, as sometimes happens, we should have beenlikely to hear of it, at least from her aunt.

  Garrick was tugging the heavy suitcase which I had seen standing readydown in his office during the afternoon, as well as a small packagewrapped up in paper.

  "Let me carry that suitcase," I volunteered.

  We trudged along across the park, my load getting heavier at every step.

  "I'm not surprised at your being winded," I panted, soon finding myselfin the same condition. "What's in this--lead?"

  "Something that we may need or may not," Garrick answeredenigmatically, as we stopped in the shadow to rest.

  He carefully took an automatic revolver from an inside pocket andstowed it where it would be handy, in his coat.

  We resumed our walk and at last had come nearly up to the house on thefirst floor of which the maid Lucille was. The suitcase was engagingall my attention, as I shifted it from one hand to the other. Not soGarrick, however. He was looking keenly about us.

  "Gad, I must be seeing things to-night!" he exclaimed, his eyes fixedon a figure slouching along, his hat pulled down over his eyes, passingjust about opposite us on the other side of the street. I looked alsoin the gathering dusk. The figure had something indefinably familiarabout it, but a moment later it was gone, having turned the corner.

  Garrick shook his head. "No," he said half to himself, "it couldn'thave been. Don't stop, Tom. We mustn't do anything to rouse suspicion,now."

  We came a moment later to the flat-house through the hall of which wehad reached the roof that morning and in the excitement of theadventure I forgot, for the time, the mysterious figure across thestreet, which had attracted Garrick's attention.

  Again, we managed to elude the tenants, though it was harder in theearly evening than it had been in the daytime. However, we reached theroof apparently unobserved. There at least, now that it was dark, wefelt comparatively safe. No one was likely to disturb us there,provided we made no noise.

  Unwrapping the smaller, paper-covered package, Garrick quickly attachedthe wires, as he had left them, to another cedar box, like that whichhe had already let down the chimney up the street.

  I now had a chance to examine it more closely under the light ofGarrick's little electric bull's-eye. I was surprised to find that itresembled one of the instruments we had used down in the room in theOld Tavern.

  It was oblong, with a sort of black disc fixed to the top. In the faceof the box, just as in the other we had used, were two little squareholes, with sides also of cedar, converging inward, making a pair oflittle quadrangular pyramidal holes which seemed to end in a smallround black circle in the interior, small end.

  I said nothing, but I could see that it was a new form, to all intentsand purposes, of the detectaphone which we had already used.

  The minutes that followed seemed like hours, as we waited, not daringto talk lest we should attract attention.

  I wondered whether Miss Winslow would come after all, or, if she did,whether she would come alone.

  "You're early," said a voice, softly, near us, of a sudden.

  I leaped to my feet, prepared to meet anything, man or devil. Garrickseized me and pulled me down, a strong hint to be quiet. Too surprisedto remonstrate, since nothing happened, I waited, breathless.

  "Yes, but that is better than to be too late. Besides, we've got towatch that Garrick," said another voice. "He might be around."

  Garrick chuckled.

  I had noticed a peculiar metallic ring in the voices.

  "Where are they?" I whispered, "On the landing below?"

  Garrick laughed outright, not boisterously, but still in a way which tome was amazing in its bravado, if the tenants were really so near.

  "What's this?" I asked.

  "Don't you recognize it?" he answered.

  "Yes," I said doubtfully. "I suppose it's like that thing we used downat the Old Tavern."

  "Only more so," nodded Garrick, aloud, yet careful not to raise hisvoice, as before, so as not to disturb the flat dwellers below us. "Avocaphone."

  "A vocaphone?" I repeated.

  "Yes, the little box that hears and talks," he explained. "It does morethan the detectaphone. It talks right out, you know, and it works bothways."

  I began to understand his scheme.

  "Those square holes in the face of it are just like the otherinstrument we used," Garrick went on. "They act like little megaphonesto that receiver inside, you know,--magnify the sound and throw it outso that we can listen up here just as well, perhaps better than if wewere down there in the room with them."

  They were down there in the back room, Lucille and a man.

  "Have you heard from her?" asked the man's voice, one that I did notrecognise.

  "Non,--but she will come. Voila, but she thought the world of herLucille, she did. She will come."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because--I know."

  "Oh, you women!"

  "Oh, you men!"

  It was evident that the two had a certain regard for each other, a sortof wild, animal affection, above, below, beyond, without the law. Theyseemed at least to understand each other.

  Who the man was I could not guess. It was a voice that soundedfamiliar, yet I could not place it.

  "She will come to see her Lucille," repeated the woman. "But you mustnot be seen."

  "No--by no means."

  The voice of the man was not that of a foreigner.

  "Here, Lucille, take this. Only get her interested--I will do therest--and the money is yours. See--you crush it in thehandkerchief--so. Be careful--you WILL crush it before you want to useit. There. Under her nose, you know. I shall be there in a moment andfinish the work. That is all you need do--with the handkerchief."

  Garrick made a motion, as if to turn a switch in the little vocaphone,and rested his finger on it.

  "I could make those two jump out of the window with fright andsurprise," he said to me, still fingering the switch impatiently. "Yousee, it works the other way, too, as I told you, if I choose to throwthis switch. Suppose I should shout out, and they should hear,apparently coming from the fireplace, 'You are discovered. Thank youfor telling me all your plans, but I am prepared for them already.'What do you suppose they would--"

  Garrick stopped short.

  From the vocaphone had come a sound like the ringing of a bell.

  "Sh!" whispered Lucille hoarsely. "Here she comes now. Didn't I tellyou? Into the next room!"

  A moment later came a knock at a door and Lucille's silken rustle asshe hurried to open it.

  "How do you do, Lucille?" we heard a sweetly tremulous voice repeatedby the faithful little vocaphone.

  "Comment vous portez-vous, Mademoiselle?"

  "Tres bien."

  "Mademoiselle honours her poor Lucille beyond her dreams. Will you notbe seated here in this easy chair?"

  "My God!" exclaimed Garrick, starting back from the vocaphone. "She isthere alone. Mrs. de Lancey is not with her. Oh, if we could only haveprevented this!"

  I had recognized, too, even in the mechanical reproduction, the voiceof Violet Winslow. It came as a shock. Even though I had been expectingsome such thing for hours, still the reality meant just as much,perhaps more.

  Independent, self-reliant, Violet Winslow had gone alone on an act ofmercy and charity, and it had taken her into a situation full of dangerwith her faithless maid.

  At once I was alive to the situation. All the stories of kidnappingsand white slavery that I had ever read rioted through my head. I feltlike calling out a warning. Garrick had his finger on the switch.

  "Since I have been ill, Mademoiselle, I have been doing someembroidery--handkerchiefs--are they not pretty?"

  It was coming
. There was not time for an instant's delay now.

  Garrick quickly depressed the switch.

  Clear as a bell his voice rang out.

  "Miss Winslow--this is Garrick. Don't let her get that handkerchiefunder your nose. Out of the door--quick. Run! Call for help! I shall bewith you in a minute!"

  A little cry came out of the machine.

  There was a moment of startled surprise in the room below. Thenfollowed a mocking laugh.

  "Ha! Ha! I thought you'd pull something like that, Garrick. I don'tknow where you are, but it makes no difference. There are many ways ofgetting out of this place and at one of them I hare a high-powered car.Violet--will go--quietly--" there were sounds of a struggle--"after theneedle--"

  A scream had followed immediately after a sound of shivering glassthrough the vocaphone. It was not Violet Winslow's scream, either.

  "Like hell, she'll go," shouted a wildly familiar voice.

  There was a gruff oath.

  We stayed to hear no more. Garrick had already picked up the heavysuitcase and was running down the steps two at a time, with myself hardafter him.

  Without waiting to ring the bell at 99, he dashed the suitcase throughthe plate glass of the front door, reached in and turned the lock. Wehurried into the back room.

  Violet was lying across a divan and bending over her was Warrington.

  "She--she's unconscious," he gasped, weak with the exertion of hisforcible entrance into the place and carrying from the floor to thedivan the lovely burden which he had found in the room. "They--theyfled--two of them--the maid, Lucille--and a man I could not see."

  Down the street we heard a car dashing away to the sound of itschanging gears.

  "She's--not--dying--is she, Garrick?" he panted bending closer over her.

  Garrick bent over, too, felt the fluttering pulse, looked into herdilated eyes.

  I saw him drop quickly on his knees beside the unconscious girl. Hetore open the heavy suitcase and a moment later he had taken from it asort of cap, at the end of a rubber tube, and had fastened it carefullyover her beautiful, but now pale, face.

  "Pump!" Garrick muttered to me, quickly showing me what to do.

  I did, furiously.

  "Where did you come from?" he asked of Warrington. "I thought I sawsomeone across the street who looked like you as we came along, but youdidn't recognise us and in a moment you were gone. Keep on with thatpulmotor, Tom. Thank heaven I came prepared with it!"

  Eagerly I continued to supply oxygen to the girl on the divan before us.

  Garrick had stooped down and picked up both the handkerchief with itscrushed bits of the kelene tube and near it a shattered glasshypodermic.

  "Oh, I got thinking about things, up there at Mead's," blurted outWarrington, "and I couldn't stand it. I should have gone crazy. Whilethe doctor was out I managed to slip away and take a train to the city.I knew this address from the letter. I determined to stay around allnight, if necessary. She got in before I could get to her, but I rangthe bell and managed to get my foot in the door a minute later. I heardthe struggle. Where were you? I heard your voice in here but you camethrough the front door."

  Garrick did not take time to explain. He was too busy over VioletWinslow.

  A feeble moan and a flutter of the eyelids told that she was coming outfrom the effects of the anaesthetic and the drug.

  "Mortimer--Mortimer!" she moaned, half conscious. "Don't let them takeme. Oh where is--"

  Warrington leaned over, as Garrick removed the cap of the pulmotor, andgently raised her head on his arm.

  "It's all right--Violet," he whispered, his face close to hers as hiswarm breath fanned her now flushed and fevered cheek.

  She opened her eyes and vaguely understood as the mist cleared from herbrain.

  Instinctively she clung to him as he pressed his lips lightly on herforehead, in a long passionate caress.

  "Get a cab, Tom," said Garrick turning his back suddenly on them andplacing his hand on my shoulder as he edged me toward the hall. "It'stoo late to pursue that fellow, now. He's slipped through our fingersagain--confound him!"