The Adventuress

by Arthur B. Reeve

  For a moment we looked blankly at Kennedy. Then Shelby began to talk again.

  ‘Suppose the bear raid continues?’ he murmured. ‘I must meet it—I must!’

  The doctor leaned over to Craig. ‘He can’t go on that way,’ he whispered. ‘It will use up his strength in worry.’

  Kennedy was thinking about that, too, as he considered the very difficult situation the telautomaton attack had placed Shelby in. It was more than a guess that the attack had been carefully calculated. Someone else, perhaps some hidden group, was engaged in taking advantage of the death of Marshall Maddox in one way, Shelby in another.

  As for Shelby, here he was, helpless, at the Harbour House. Surrounded by spies, as he seemed to be, what could he do? Every message in and out of the hotel was most likely tapped. To use the telephone was like publishing abroad one’s secrets.

  Kennedy moved over quietly to the bedside, as Winifred looked appealingly at him, as much as to say, ‘Isn’t there something you can do to quiet him?’

  He bent down and took Shelby’s hand.

  ‘Oh—it’s you, Kennedy—is it?’ wandered Shelby, not quite clear yet where he was, in the fantasy of impressions that crowded his mind since the accident. ‘I asked you to work with me once. You said you would play fair.’

  ‘I will,’ repeated Kennedy, ‘as far as the interests of my client go, I’ll give you every assistance. But if you are to do anything at all tomorrow, you must rest tonight.’

  ‘Have I—have I been talking?’ queried Shelby, as though in doubt whether he had been thinking to himself or aloud.

  Kennedy ignored the question. ‘You need rest,’ he said simply. ‘Let the doctor fix you up now. In the morning—well, tomorrow will be another day.’

  Shelby passed his hand wearily over his aching head. He was too weak to argue.

  While the doctor prepared a mild opiate Kennedy and I quietly withdrew into the next room.

  ‘Professor Kennedy, won’t you help us?’ pleaded Miss Walcott, who had followed. ‘Surely something can be done.’

  I could not help noticing that she said ‘us,’ not ‘him.’ As I watched her the scene on the float, hours before, flashed over me. There another woman, under quite different circumstances, had made the same appeal. Where did Paquita fit into the scheme of things? Two women had been striving over Shelby’s life. Did one represent his better nature, the other his worse?

  Kennedy looked frankly at Winifred Walcott.

  ‘You will trust me?’ he asked in a low tone.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, simply, meeting his eyes in turn.

  ‘Then when the nurse arrives,’ he directed, ‘get some rest. I shall need you tomorrow.’

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE CURB MARKET

  ‘IT’S impossible to trace all the telephone lines back,’ considered Kennedy, thinking still of the eavesdropping, as we met Burke again downstairs. ‘Perhaps if we begin at the other end, and follow the wires from the point where they enter the building to the switchboard, we may find something. If we don’t, then we shall have to work harder, that’s all.’

  With the aid of Burke, who had ways of getting what he wanted from the management of anything, from a bank to a hotel, we succeeded in getting down into the cellar quietly.

  Kennedy began by locating the point in the huge cellar of the Lodge where the wires of the two telephones, 100 and 101 Main, entered underground, that system having been adopted so as to avoid unsightly wires outside the hotel.

  Carefully Craig began a systematic search as he followed the two lines to the point underneath the switchboard upstairs. So far nothing irregular had been apparent.

  Craig looked up perplexed, and I feared that he was about to say that the search must be continued wherever the wires led through the house, a gigantic and almost impossible task.

  Instead, he was looking at a little dark store-room that was near the point where we were standing. He walked over to it curiously and peered in. Then he struck a match. In the flickering light we could see a telephone receiver and a little switchboard standing beside it.

  For a moment his hand hesitated on the receiver, as though he were afraid that by taking it off the hook it might call or alarm somebody. Finally he seemed to decide that unless something were risked nothing would be gained. He took the receiver deliberately and held it up to his ear.

  ‘Do you hear anything?’ I asked.

  He shook his head as if to discourage conversation. Then he changed the plugs and listened again. Several times he repeated it. At last he kept the plugs in for some time, while we waited in the darkness, in silence.

  ‘Evidently someone has tapped the regular telephone wires,’ he said to us at length, ‘and has run extensions to this little switchboard in the store-room, prepared to overhear almost anything that goes on over either set of wires that come in. And they have done more. They must have tampered with the switchboard upstairs. Just now I heard the girl call Shelby’s room. The doctor answered. That trained nurse has arrived and Miss Walcott has gone to her room as she promised. We can’t take the time to trace out how it is done, and besides it is too dark at night to do it, anyhow. Shelby was right.’

  For a moment Kennedy tried to puzzle the thing out, as though determining what was the best course to pursue. Then he stooped down and began picking up even the burnt matches he had dropped.

  ‘Don’t disturb a thing,’ he said to Burke. ‘We must circumvent this scheme. Has the last train back to the city gone?’

  Burke looked at his watch. ‘Yes, unfortunately,’ he nodded.

  ‘Then I’ll have to send someone back to the city to my laboratory by automobile,’ continued Kennedy. ‘I can’t wait until morning, for we shall have to go to the city then. There’s that student of mine—but he’s pretty tired.’

  ‘I can get a car and a fresh driver for him,’ remarked Burke. ‘Perhaps he could doze off during the ride. How would that do?’

  ‘It will have to do,’ decided Kennedy. ‘Get the car.’

  We went back upstairs by the way of the kitchen to avoid suspicion, and while Burke hunted up a car and driver Kennedy found Watkins and gave him detailed instructions about what he wanted.

  ‘I calculate that it will take him at least four hours to go and get back,’ remarked Kennedy, a few minutes later. ‘There isn’t anything we can do yet. I think we had better get a little rest, for I anticipate a strenuous time tomorrow.’

  We passed through the lobby. There was Sanchez, talking to the night clerk.

  ‘I was down on the dock in front of the Casino when the explosion came,’ we could hear him telling the clerk. ‘Yes, sir, it’s a wonder any of them were saved.’

  ‘What do you think of that?’ queried Burke, in the elevator. ‘A crude attempt at an alibi?’

  Kennedy shrugged non-committally.

  ‘I think I’ll have Riley watch him until he goes to bed,’ continued the Secret Service man. ‘I can telephone down from the room. No one is listening now, at least.’

  ‘By all means,’ agreed Craig.

  Tired though we were, I do not think we slept very much as we waited for the return of the car from New York. Still, we were at least resting, although to me the hours seemed to pass as a shifting phantasmagoria of fire-balls and explosions strangely blended with the faces of the two beautiful women who had become the chief actresses in the little drama. From one very realistic dream in which I saw Winifred, Paquita, Irene Maddox, and Frances Walcott all fantastically seated as telephone operators and furiously ringing Shelby’s bell, I woke with a start to find that it was our own bell ringing and that Kennedy was answering it.

  ‘The car is back from the city,’ he said to me. ‘You needn’t get up. I can do this job alone.’

  There was no sleep for me, however, I knew, and with a final yawn I pulled myself together and joined Craig and Burke in the hall as we went downstairs as quietly as we could.

  Riley had left a hastily-scribbled report in the letter
box for Burke, saying that Sanchez had done nothing further suspicious, but had gone to bed. Paquita was in her room. Winifred, Mr and Mrs Walcott, Irene Maddox, and all the rest were present and accounted for, and he had decided on resting, too.

  Kennedy sent Watkins off to bed, after taking from him the things he had brought back from the city, and the early morning, just as it was beginning to lighten a bit, found us three again in the cellar.

  Kennedy carefully reconnoitred the store-room where the telephone outfit had been placed. It was deserted, and he set to work quickly. First he located the wires that represented the number 100 Main and connected them with what looked very much like a seamless iron tube, perhaps six inches long and three inches in diameter. Then he connected in a similar manner the other end of the tube with the wires of Main 101.

  ‘This is a special repeating coil of high efficiency,’ he explained to Burke, whom he was instructing, as it occurred to him, just what he wanted done later. ‘It is absolutely balanced as to resistance, number of turns, everything. I shall run this third line from the coil itself outside and upstairs through Shelby’s window. Before I go to the city I want you to see that the local telephone company keeps a couple of wires to the city clear for us. I’ll get them on the wire and explain the thing, if you’ll use your authority at this end of the line.’

  In spite of the risk of disturbing Shelby Maddox Kennedy finished leading the wires from the coil up to his room and placed a telephone set on a table near the bed. Then he carefully concealed the tube in the cellar so that under ordinary circumstances no one could find it or even guess that anything had been done with the two trunk lines.

  Shelby was resting quietly under an opiate and the nurse was watching faithfully. I did not hear Kennedy’s instructions entirely, but I remember he said that Burke was to be allowed into the outer room and that Shelby Maddox and Winifred were to talk only over the new line as he would direct later.

  Again we retired to our rooms, and I fell asleep listening to Kennedy instruct Burke minutely in something which I think was just as much Greek to the Secret Service man as it was to me. Kennedy saw that it was and wrote down what he had already said, to make doubly sure.

  My sleep was dreamless this time, for I was thoroughly tired. Whether Kennedy slept I do not know, but I suspect that he did not, for when he was conducting a case he seemed unable to rest as long as there was something over which he could work or think.

  It seemed almost no time before Kennedy roused me. He was already dressed—in fact, I don’t think he had taken time for more than a change of linen.

  A hasty bite of breakfast and we were again on the first accommodation train that went into the city in the cool grey dawn, leaving Burke with instructions to keep us informed of anything important that he discovered.

  No one for whom we cared saw us leave and we had the satisfaction of knowing that we should be in the city and at work long before anyone probably knew it. That was a quality of Kennedy’s vigilance and sleeplessness.

  ‘It’s just as important to guard against prying ears at this end of the line as the other,’ remarked Kennedy, after hurriedly mapping out a course for ourselves, which included, first of all, calling out of bed an officer of the telephone company with whom he was intimately acquainted and whom he could therefore afford to take into his confidence.

  Without a moment’s more delay we hurried down-town from the railroad station.

  Shelby Maddox had given Craig the names of two Curb brokers with whom he was dealing in confidence, for, although Maddox Munitions was being traded in largely, it was still a Curb-market stock and not listed on the big exchange.

  ‘They are in the same building on Broad Street,’ remarked Kennedy as we left the Subway at the Wall Street station and took the shortest cuts through the basements of several tall buildings in the financial district. ‘And I don’t trust either one of them any farther than I can see him.’

  It was very early, and comparatively few people were about. Craig, however, managed to find the janitor of the building where the brokers’ offices were—a rather old structure overlooking that point where Broad Street widens out and has been seized on by that excited, heterogeneous collection of speculators who gather daily in a corner roped off from the traffic, known as the Curb market. From the janitor he learned that there was one small office in the front of the building for rent at a seemingly prohibitive rate. It was no time to haggle over money, and Kennedy laid down a liberal deposit for the use of the room.

  His tentative arrangements with the janitor had scarcely been completed when two men from the telephone company arrived. Into our new and unfurnished office Craig led them, while the janitor, for another fee, agreed to get us a flat-topped desk and some chairs.

  ‘Whatever we do,’ began Craig in a manner that inspired enthusiasm, ‘must be done quickly. You have the orders of the company to go ahead. There’s one line that runs into the office of Dexter and Co., on the second floor, another to Merrill and Moore on the fourth. I want you to locate the wires, cut in on them, and run the cut-in extensions to this office. It’s not a wire-tapping game, so you need have no fear that there will be any comeback on what you do.’

  While the telephone men were busy locating the two sets of wires, Kennedy laid out on the desk which the janitor brought up on the freight elevator a tube and coil similar to that which I had already seen him employ at Westport.

  Though the telephone men were as clever as any that the official of the company could have sent, it was a complicated task to locate the wires and carry out the instructions that Kennedy had given, and it took much longer than he had anticipated. At least, it seemed long, in our excited frame of mind. Every minute counted now, for the advance guard of office boys, stenographers and clerks had already begun to arrive at the offices in preparation for the work of the day.

  We had fortunately been able to start early enough, so that that part of the work which would have excited comment was already done before the office workers arrived. As for the rest, on the surface it appeared only as though someone had rented the vacant office and had been able to hurry the telephone company along in installing its service.

  There was no difficulty about connecting up our own regular telephone, and as soon as it was done Kennedy hastened to call Westport and the Lodge on long distance.

  ‘Shelby has awakened much improved after his night’s rest,’ he announced, after a rapid-fire conversation. ‘Miss Walcott is with him now, as well as the nurse. I think we can depend on Burke to handle things properly out there. It’s an emergency and we’ll have to take chances. I don’t blame Shelby for feeling impatient and wishing he could be here. But I told the doctor that as long as things were as they are he had better humour his patient by giving him an outlet for his excitement than to keep him fuming and eating his heart out in bed, helpless. Between Winifred and ourselves we ought to keep him occupied.’

  I do not think that the telephone men had the faintest idea what it was that Kennedy was planning to do, and I am quite sure that I did not. For, in addition to the outfit like that at Westport, he now laid on the table a peculiar arrangement. It seemed to consist of a metal base, which he placed near the telephone receiver. From the base three prongs reached up, and there was attached to it on one side one of those little flat, watch-case receivers such as are used on office telephones.

  It was getting late, and Kennedy and the men from the telephone company were working as rapidly as possible, testing and adjusting the connections he had caused to be made.

  As I stood by the window, watching the gathering crowd below, I suddenly realised that the market had opened.

  It was as Kennedy had expected. Pandemonium seemed to reign on the Curb. Buyers and sellers crowded and elbowed one another, wildly shouting and gesticulating. From the thick of what looked like a huge free-for-all fight orders and sales were relayed by word of mouth to clerks standing on the sidewalk, who in turn shouted them to other clerks in the wi
ndows of our own building or others about, or despatched messengers to offices farther away. It was a curious sight, and one never to be forgotten.

  Passers-by stopped on both sides of the street to look and listen to the struggling mob, and I soon saw that even the usually electrified atmosphere of the Curb was this morning more than ordinarily surcharged with excitement. Far above all the noise and bustle I made out that there had been overnight a veritable flood of orders from weak holders, as well as others, to sell Maddox Munitions. It was not the weak holders we feared so much as the hidden ‘others’ who were seeking to manipulate the stock.

  Our telephone rang and Craig answered it, while the men still worked on the new line. It was Shelby. He had called up his brokers and had heard of the market opening.

  ‘Not quite ready yet,’ hastened Kennedy. ‘Go ahead and place your orders over the regular wire with the brokers. I’ll let you know when we’re ready and what to do. Don’t worry.’

  Kennedy had stationed me now permanently at the window to report what was happening below. From my eery point of vantage I could now see that the first flood of selling orders was receding, as Shelby’s brokers wormed their way in and now and then snapped up a lot of stock offered for sale. The buying momentarily seemed to stiffen the price which before had threatened to toboggan.

  Yet no sooner had the buying begun than it seemed as if other blocks of stock were brought up for sale. It was, for all the world, like a gigantic battle in which forces were hurled here and there, with reinforcements held in reserve to be loosed at just the right moment. Who was back of it?

  Gradually, in spite of the large purchases which Shelby had made, the price of the stock worked its way down. I began to understand something of what was going on. Actually it seemed as though every time there was an order to buy, coming from either Dexter or Merrill and Moore, there was a corresponding new order to sell by some other broker. Thousands of shares were thus being dumped on the market, recklessly, relentlessly.