Arthur B. Reeve Crime & Mystery Boxed Set. Arthur B. Reeve
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Название: Arthur B. Reeve Crime & Mystery Boxed Set
Автор: Arthur B. Reeve
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027242962
isbn:
"Now—beat it," we heard the dip whisper hoarsely, "and if you raise a holler, we'll get you right, next time."
Brodie fled as fast as his weakened nerves would permit his shaky limbs to move. As he disappeared, the dip sent something dark hurtling over the roof of the house across the street and hurried toward us.
"What was that?" I asked.
"I think it was the pistol on the end of a stout cord. That is a favourite trick of the gunmen after a job. It destroys at least a part of the evidence. You can't throw a gun very far alone, you know. But with it at the end of a string you can lift it up over the roof of a tenement. If Brodie squeals to a copper and these people are caught, they can't hold them under the pistol law, anyhow."
The dip had caught sight of us, with his ferret eyes, in the doorway. Quickly Kennedy passed over the money in return for the motley array of objects taken from Brodie. The dip and his gun-moll disappeared into the darkness as quickly as they had emerged.
There was a curious assortment—the paraphernalia of a drug fiend, old letters, a key, and several other useless articles. The pickpocket had retained the money from the sale of the dope as his own particular honorarium.
"Brodie has led us up to the source of his supply," remarked Kennedy, thoughtfully regarding the stuff. "And the dip has given us the key to it. Are you game to go in?"
A glance up and down the street showed it still deserted. We wormed our way in the shadow to the cellar before which Brodie had stood. The outside door was open. We entered, and Craig stealthily struck a match, shading it in his hands.
At one end we were confronted by a little door of mystery, barred with iron and held by an innocent enough looking padlock. It was this lock, evidently, to which the key fitted, opening the way into the subterranean vault of brick and stone.
Kennedy opened it and pushed back the door. There was a little square compartment, dark as pitch and delightfully cool and damp. He lighted a match, then hastily blew it out and switched on an electric bulb which it disclosed.
"Can't afford risks like that here," he exclaimed, carefully disposing of the match, as our eyes became accustomed to the light.
On every side were pieces of gas-pipe, boxes, and paper, and on shelves were jars of various materials. There was a work-table littered with tools, pieces of wire, boxes, and scraps of metal.
"My word!" exclaimed Kennedy, as he surveyed the curious scene before us, "this is a regular bomb factory—one of the most amazing exhibits that the history of crime has ever produced."
Chapter XVIII
The “Coke” Fiend
I FOLLOWED him in awe as he made a hasty inventory of what we had discovered. There were as many as a dozen finished and partly finished infernal machines of various sizes and kinds, some of tremendous destructive capacity. Kennedy did not even attempt to study them. All about were high explosives, chemicals, dynamite. There was gunpowder of all varieties, antimony, blasting-powder, mercury cyanide, chloral hydrate, chlorate of potash, samples of various kinds of shot, some of the outlawed soft-nosed dumdum bullets, cartridges, shells, pieces of metal purposely left with jagged edges, platinum, aluminum, iron, steel—a conglomerate mass of stuff that would have gladdened an anarchist.
Kennedy was examining a little quartz-lined electric furnace, which was evidently used for heating soldering-irons and other tools. Everything had been done, it seemed, to prevent explosions. There were no open lights and practically no chance for heat to be communicated far among the explosives. Indeed, everything had been arranged to protect the operator himself in his diabolical work.
Kennedy had switched on the electric furnace, and from the various pieces of metal on the table selected several. These he was placing together in a peculiar manner, and to them he attached some copper wire which lay in a corner in a roll.
Under the work-table, beneath the furnace, one could feel the warmth of the thing slightly. Quickly he took the curious affair, which he had hastily shaped, and fastened it under the table at that point, then led the wires out through a little barred window to an air-shaft, the only means of ventilation of the place except the door.
While he was working I had been gingerly inspecting the rest of the den. In a corner, just beside the door, I had found a set of shelves and a cabinet. On both were innumerable packets done up in white paper. I opened one and found it contained several pinches of a white, crystalline substance.
"Little portions of cocaine," commented Kennedy, when I showed him what I had found. "In the slang of the fiends, 'decks.'"
On the top of the cabinet he discovered a little enamelled box, much like a snuff-box, in which were also some of the white flakes. Quickly he emptied them out and replaced them with others from jars which had not been made up into packets.
"Why, there must be hundreds of ounces of the stuff here, to say nothing of the various things they adulterate it with," remarked Kennedy. "No wonder they are so careful when it is a felony even to have it in your possession in such quantities. See how careful they are about the adulteration, too. You could never tell except from the effect whether it was the pure or only a few-per-cent.-pure article."
Kennedy took a last look at the den, to make sure that nothing had been disturbed that would arouse suspicion.
"We may as well go," he remarked. "To-morrow, I want to be free to make the connection outside with that wire in the shaft."
Imagine our surprise, the next morning, when a tap at our door revealed Loraine Keith herself.
"Is this Professor Kennedy?" she asked, gazing at us with a half-wild expression which she was making a tremendous effort to control. "Because if it is, I have something to tell him that may interest Mr. Carton."
We looked at her curiously. Without her make-up she was pallid and yellow in spots, her hands trembling, cold, and sweaty, her eyes sunken and glistening, with pupils dilated, her breathing short and hurried, restless, irresolute, and careless of her personal appearance.
"Perhaps you wonder how I heard of you and why I have come to you," she went on. "It is because I have a confession to make. I saw Mr. Haddon just before he was—kidnapped."
She seemed to hesitate over the word.
"How did you know I was interested?" asked Kennedy keenly.
"I heard him mention your name with Mr. Carton's."
"Then he knew that I was more than a reporter for the Star," remarked Kennedy. "Kidnapped, you say? How?"
She shot a glance half of suspicion, half of frankness, at us.
"That's what I must confess. Whoever did it must have used me as a tool. Mr. Haddon and I used to be good friends—I would be yet."
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