The Ear in the Wall Part 5

IV

THE ANONYMOUS LETTER

"What do you make of that?" inquired Carton half an hour later as he met us breathlessly at the laboratory.

He unfolded a letter over which he had evidently been puzzling considerably. It was written, or rather typewritten, on plain paper.

The envelope was plain and bore no marks of identification, except possibly that it had been mailed uptown.

The letter ran:

DEAR SIR:

Although this is an anonymous letter, I beg that you will not consider it such, since it will be plain to you that there is good reason for my wishing to remain nameless.

I want to tell you of some things that have taken place recently at a little hotel in the West Fifties. No doubt you know of the place already--the Little Montmartre.

There are several young and wealthy men who frequent this resort. I do not dare tell you their names, but one is a well-known club-man and man about town, another is a banker and broker, also well known, and a third is a lawyer. I might also mention an intimate friend of theirs, though not of their position in society--a doctor who has somewhat of a reputation among the cla.s.s of people who frequent the Little Montmartre, ready to furnish them with anything from a medical certificate to drugs and treatment.

I have read a great deal in the newspapers lately of the disappearance of Betty Blackwell, and her case interests me. I think you will find that it will repay you to look into the hint I have given. I don't think it is necessary to say any more. Indeed it may be dangerous to me, and I beg that you will not even show this letter to anyone except those a.s.sociated with you and then, please, only with the understanding that it is to go no farther.

Betty Blackwell is not at this hotel, but I am sure that some of those whose wild orgies have scandalized even the Little Montmartre know something about her.

Yours truly, AN OUTCAST.

Kennedy looked up quickly at Carton as he finished reading the letter.

"Typical," he remarked. "Anonymous letters occasionally are of a friendly nature, but usually they reflect with more or less severity upon the conduct or character of someone. They usually receive little attention, but sometimes they are of the most serious character. In many instances they are most important links in chains of evidence pointing to grave crimes.

"It is possible to draw certain conclusions from such letters at once.

For instance, it is a surprising fact that in a large number of cases the anonymous letter writer is a woman, who may write what it does not seem possible she could write. Such letters often by their writing, materials used, composition and general form indicate at once the s.e.x of the writer and frequently show nationality, age, education, and occupation. These facts may often point to the probable author.

"Now in this case the writer evidently was well educated. a.s.sumed illiteracy is a frequent disguise, but it is impossible for an author to a.s.sume a literacy he or she does not possess. Then, too, women are more apt to a.s.sume the characteristics of men than men of women. There are many things to be considered. Too bad it wasn't in ordinary handwriting. That would have shown much more. However, we shall try our best with what we have here. What impressed you about it?"

"Well," remarked Carton, "the thing that impressed me was that as usual and as I fully expected, the trail leads right back to protected vice and commercialized graft. This Little Montmartre is one of the swellest of such resorts in the city, the legitimate successor to the scores and hundreds of places which the authorities and the vice investigators have closed recently. In fact, Kennedy, I consider it more dangerous, because it is run, on the surface at least, just like any of the first-cla.s.s hotels. There's no violation of law there, at least not openly."

Craig had continued to examine the letter closely. "So, you have already investigated the Little Montmartre?" he queried, drawing from his pocket a little strip of gla.s.s and laying it down carefully over the letter.

"Indeed I have," returned the District Attorney, watching Kennedy curiously. "It is a place with a very unsavoury reputation. And yet I have been able to get nothing on it. They are so confounded clever.

There is never any outward violation of law; they adhere strictly to the letter of the rule of outward decency."

Over the typewritten characters Kennedy had placed the strip of gla.s.s and I could see that it was ruled into little oblongs, into each of which one of the type of the typewritten sheet seemed to fall.

Apparently he had forgotten the contents of the letter in his interest in the text itself. He held the paper up to the light and seemed to study its texture and thickness. Then he examined the typed characters more closely with a little pocket magnifying gla.s.s, his lips moving as if he were counting something. Next he seized a ma.s.s of correspondence on his desk and began comparing the letter with others, apparently to determine just the shade of writing of the ribbon. Finally he gave it up and leaned back in his chair regarding us.

"It is written in the regular pica type," he remarked thoughtfully, "and on a machine that has seen considerable rough usage, although it is not an old machine. It will take me a little time to identify the make, but after I have done that, I think I could identify the particular machine itself the moment I saw it. You see, it is only a clue that would serve to fix it once you found that machine. The point is, after all, to find it. But once found, I am sure we shall be close to the source of the letter. I may keep this and study it at my leisure?"

"Certainly."

For a moment Carton was silent. Then it seemed as though the matter of Betty Blackwell brought to mind what he had read in the morning papers.

"That robbery of Langhorne's safe was a most peculiar thing, wasn't it?" he meditated. "I suppose you know what Miss Blackwell was?"

"Langhorne's stenographer and secretary, of course," I replied quickly.

"Yes, I know. But I mean what she had actually done? I don't believe you do. My county detectives found out only last night." Kennedy paused in his rummaging among some bottles to which he had turned at the mention of the safe robbery. "No--what was it?" he asked.

Carton bent forward as if our own walls might have ears and said in a low voice: "She was the operator who took down the detectaphone conversations at the other end of the wire in a furnished room in the house next to Gastron's."

He drew back to see what effect the intelligence had on us, then resumed slowly: "Yes, I've had my men out on the case. That is what they think. I believe she often executed little confidential commissions for Langhorne, sometimes things that took her on short trips out of town. There is a possibility that she may be on a mission of that sort. But I think--it's this Black Book case that involves her now."

"Langhorne wouldn't talk much about anything," I put in, hastily remembering his manner. "He may not be responsible--but from his actions I'd wager he knows more about her than appears."

"Just so," agreed Carton. "If my men can find out that she was the operator who 'listened in' and got the notes and the transcript of the Black Book, then she becomes a person of importance in the case and the fact must be known to others who are interested. Why," he pursued, "don't you see what it means? If she is out of the way, there is no one to swear to the accuracy of the notes in the record, no one to identify the voices--even if we do manage finally to locate the thing."

"Dorgan and the rest are certainly leaving nothing undone to shake the validity of the record," ruminated Kennedy, accepting for the moment at least Carton's explanation of the disappearance of Miss Blackwell.

"Have you any idea what might have happened to her?"

Carton shook his head negatively. "There are several explanations," he replied slowly. "As far as we have been able to find out she led a model life, at home with her mother and sister. Except for the few commissions for Langhorne and lately when she was out rather late taking the detectaphone notes, she was very quiet,--in fact devoted to her mother and the education of her younger sister."

"What sort of place was it in which the receivers of the detectaphone were located--do you know?" asked Kennedy quickly.

"Yes, it seems to be a very respectable boardinghouse," answered Carton. "She came there with a grip about a week ago and hired a room, saying she was out of town a great deal. Just about the same time a young man, who posed as a student in electrical engineering at some school uptown, left. It must have been he who installed the detectaphone--perhaps with the aid of a waiter in Gastron's. At any rate, she seems to have been alone in the boarding-house--that is, I mean, not acquainted with any of the other guests--during the time when she was taking down the record. Dorgan traced the wires, outside the two buildings, to her rooms, but she was not there. In fact there was nothing there but a grip with a few articles that give no clue to anything. Somehow she must have heard of it, for no one knows anything about her, since then."

"Perhaps Langhorne is keeping her out of the way so that no one can tamper with her testimony," I suggested.

"It's possible," said Carton in a tone that showed that he did not believe in that explanation. "How about that safe robbery, Kennedy?

Some of the papers hinted that she might have known something of that.

I had a man down there watching, afterwards, but I had cautioned him to be careful and keep under cover. One of the elevator boys told him that the robbers had made a hole in the safe. What did he mean? Did you see it?"

Rapidly Kennedy sketched what we had done, telling the story of how the dynamometer had at least partly exonerated Betty Blackwell.

When he reached the description of the hole in the safe, Carton was absolutely incredulous. As for myself, it presented a mystery which I found absolutely inexplicable. How it was possible in such a short time to make a hole in a safe by any known means, I could not understand. In fact, if I had not seen it myself, I should have been even more sceptical than Carton.

Kennedy, however, made no reply immediately to our expressions of doubt. He had found and set apart from the rest a couple of little gla.s.s bottles with ground gla.s.s stoppers. Then he took a thick piece of steel and laid it across a couple of blocks of wood, under which was a second steel plate.

Without a word of explanation, he took the gla.s.s stopper out of the larger bottle and poured some of the contents on the upper plate of steel. There it lay, a little mound of reddish powder. Then he took a little powder of another kind from the other bottle.

He lighted a match and ignited the second pile of powder.

"Stand back--close to the wall--shield your eyes," he called to us.

He had dropped the burning ma.s.s on the red powder and in two or three leaps he joined us at the far end of the room.

Almost instantly a dazzling, intense flame broke out. It seemed to sizzle and crackle. With bated breath we waited and, as best we could, shielding our eyes from the glare, watched.