The Poisoned Pen Part 9

"Wouldn't it be a good thing to fill the box with water?" I suggested, having read somewhere that that was the usual way of opening a bomb, under water.

"No," he replied, as he closed the lid, "that wouldn't do any good with a bomb of this sort. It would explode under water just as well as in air. This is a safety bomb-carrier. It is known as the Cardan suspension. It was invented by Professor Cardono, an Italian. You see, it is always held in a perfectly horizontal position, no matter how you jar it. I am now going to take the bomb to some safe and convenient place where I can examine it at my leisure. Meanwhile, Miss Nevsky, I will leave you in charge of Mr. Jameson."

"Thank you so much," she said. "I feel better now. I didn't dare go into my own room with that bomb at the door. If Mr. Jameson can only find out what has become of Mr. Kazanovitch, that is all I want. What do you suppose has happened to him? Is he, too, hurt or ill?"

"Very well, then," Craig replied. "I will commission you, Walter, to find Kazanovitch. I shall be back again shortly before noon to examine the wreck of Kharkoff's office. Meet me there. Goodbye, Miss Nevsky."

It was not the first time that I had had a roving commission to find some one who had disappeared in New York. I started by inquiring for every possible place that he might be found. No one at the Fifth Avenue house could tell me anything definite, though they were able to give me a number of places where he was known. I consumed practically the whole morning going from one place to another on the East Side. Some of the picturesque haunts of the revolutionists would have furnished material for a story in themselves. But nowhere had they any word of Kazanovitch, until I visited a Polish artist who was ill.u.s.trating his stories. He had been there, looking very worn and tired, and had talked vacantly about the sketches which the artist had showed him. After that I lost all trace of him again. It was nearly noon as I hurried to meet Craig at Kharkoff's.

Imagine my surprise to see Kazanovitch already there, seated in the wrecked office, furiously smoking cigarettes and showing evident signs of having something very disturbing on his mind. The moment he caught sight of me, he hurried forward.

"Is Professor Kennedy coming soon?" he inquired eagerly. "I was going up to his laboratory, but I called up Nevsky, and she said he would be here at noon." Then he put his hand up to my ear and whispered, "I have found out who it was who shadowed Kharkoff."

"Who?" I asked, saying nothing of my long search of the morning.

"His name is Revalenko--Feodor Revalenko. I saw him standing across the street in front of the house last night after you had gone. When Kharkoff left, he followed him. I hurried out quietly and followed both of them. Then the explosion came. This man slipped down a narrow street as soon as he saw Kharkoff fall. As people were running to Kharkoff's a.s.sistance, I did the same. He saw me following him and ran, and I ran, too, and overtook him. Mr. Jameson, when I looked into his face I could not believe it. Revalenko--he is one of the most ardent members of our organisation. He would not tell me why he had followed Kharkoff. I could make him confess nothing. But I am sure he is an agent provocateur of the Russian government, that he is secretly giving away the plans that we are making, everything. We have a plot on now--perhaps he has informed them of that. Of course he denied setting the bomb or trying to poison any of us, but he was very frightened. I shall denounce him at the first opportunity."

I said nothing. Kazanovitch regarded me keenly to see what impression the story made on me, but I did not let my looks betray anything, except proper surprise, and he seemed satisfied.

It might be true, after all, I reasoned, the more I thought of it. I had heard that the Russian consul-general had a very extensive spy system in the city. In fact, even that morning I had had pointed out to me some spies at work in the public libraries, watching what young Russians were reading. I did not doubt that there were spies in the very inner circle of the revolutionists themselves.

At last Kennedy appeared. While Kazanovitch poured forth his story, with here and there, I fancied, an elaboration of a particularly dramatic point, Kennedy quickly examined the walls and floor of the wrecked office with his magnifying-gla.s.s. When he had concluded his search, he turned to Kazanovitch.

"Would it be possible," he asked, "to let this Revalenko believe that he could trust you, that it would be safe for him to visit you to-night at Saratovsky's? Surely you can find some way of rea.s.suring him."

"Yes, I think that can be arranged," said Kazanovitch. "I will go to him, will make him think I have misunderstood him, that I have not lost faith in him, provided he can explain all. He will come. Trust me."

"Very well, then. To-night at eight I shall be there," promised Kennedy, as the novelist and he shook hands.

"What do you think of the Revalenko story?" I asked of Craig, as we started uptown again.

"Anything is possible in this case," he answered sententiously.

"Well," I exclaimed, "this all is truly Russian. For intrigue they are certainly the leaders of the world to-day. There is only one person that I have any real confidence in, and that is old Saratovsky himself.

Somebody is playing traitor, Craig. Who is it?"

"That is what science will tell us to-night," was his brief reply.

There was no getting anything out of Craig until he was absolutely sure that his proofs had piled up irresistibly.

Promptly at eight we met at the old house on Fifth Avenue. Kharkoff's wounds had proved less severe than had at first been suspected, and, having recovered from the shock, he insisted on being transferred from the hospital in a private ambulance so that he could be near his friends. Saratovsky, in spite of his high fever, ordered that the door to his room be left open and his bed moved so that he could hear and see what pa.s.sed in the room down the hall. Nevsky was there and Kazanovitch, and even brave Olga Samarova, her pretty face burning with the fever, would not be content until she was carried upstairs, although Dr. Kharkoff protested vigorously that it might have fatal consequences. Revalenko, an enigma of a man, sat stolidly. The only thing I noticed about him was an occasional look of malignity at Nevsky and Kazanovitch when he thought he was un.o.bserved.

It was indeed a strange gathering, the like of which the old house had never before harboured in all its varied history. Every one was on the qui vive, as Kennedy placed on the table a small wire basket containing some test-tubes, each tube corked with a small wadding of cotton. There was also a receptacle holding a dozen gla.s.s-handled platinum wires, a microscope, and a number of slides. The bomb, now rendered innocuous by having been crushed in a huge hydraulic press, lay in fragments in the box.

"First, I want you to consider the evidence of the bomb," began Kennedy. "No crime, I firmly believe, is ever perpetrated without leaving some clue. The slightest trace, even a drop of blood no larger than a pin-head, may suffice to convict a murderer. The impression made on a cartridge by the hammer of a pistol, or a single hair found on the clothing of a suspected person, may serve as valid proof of crime.

"Until lately, however, science was powerless against the bomb-thrower.

A bomb explodes into a thousand parts, and its contents suddenly become gaseous. You can't collect and investigate the gases. Still, the bomb-thrower is sadly deceived if he believes the bomb leaves no trace for the scientific detective. It is difficult for the chemist to find out the secrets of a shattered bomb. But it can be done.

"I examined the walls of Dr. Kharkoff's house, and fortunately was able to pick out a few small fragments of the contents of the bomb which had been thrown out before the flame ignited them. I have a.n.a.lysed them, and find them to be a peculiar species of blasting-gelatine. It is made at only one factory in this country, and I have a list of purchasers for some time back. One name, or rather the description of an a.s.sumed name, in the list agrees with other evidence I have been able to collect. Moreover, the explosive was placed in a lead tube. Lead tubes are common enough. However, there is no need of further evidence."

He paused, and the revolutionists stared fixedly at the fragments of the now harmless bomb before them.

"The exploded bomb," concluded Craig, "was composed of the same materials as this, which I found unexploded at the door of Miss Nevsky's room--the same sort of lead tube, the same blasting-gelatine.

The fuse, a long cord saturated in sulphur, was merely a blind. The real method of explosion was by means of a chemical contained in a gla.s.s tube which was inserted after the bomb was put in place. The least jar, such as opening a door, which would tip the bomb ever so little out of the horizontal, was all that was necessary to explode it.

The exploded bomb and the unexploded were in all respects identical--the same hand set both."

A gasp of astonishment ran through the circle. Could it be that one of their own number was playing false? In at least this instance in the warfare of the chemist and the dynamiter the chemist had come out ahead.

"But," Kennedy hurried along, "the thing that interests me most about this case is not the evidence of the bombs. Bombs are common enough weapons, after all. It is the evidence of almost diabolical cunning that has been shown in the effort to get rid of the father of the revolution, as you like to call him."

Craig cleared his throat and played with our feelings as a cat does with a mouse. "Strange to say, the most deadly, the most insidious, the most elusive agency for committing murder is one that can be obtained and distributed with practically no legal restrictions. Any doctor can purchase disease germs in quant.i.ties sufficient to cause thousands and thousands of deaths without giving any adequate explanation for what purpose he requires them. More than that, any person claiming to be a scientist or having some acquaintance with science and scientists can usually obtain germs without difficulty. Every pathological laboratory contains stores of disease germs, neatly sealed up in test-tubes, sufficient to depopulate whole cities and even nations. With almost no effort, I myself have actually cultivated enough germs to kill every person within a radius of a mile of the Washington Arch down the street. They are here in these test-tubes."

We scarcely breathed. Suppose Kennedy should let loose this deadly foe, these germs of death, whatever they were? Yet that was precisely what some fiend incarnate had done, and that fiend was sitting in the room with us.

"Here I have one of the most modern dark-field microscopes," he resumed. "On this slide I have placed a little pin-point of a culture made from the blood of Saratovsky. I will stain the culture.

Now--er--Walter, look through the microscope under this powerful light and tell us what you see on the slide."

I bent over. "In the darkened field I see a number of germs like dancing points of coloured light," I said. "They are wriggling about with a peculiar twisting motion."

"Like a corkscrew," interrupted Kennedy, impatient to go on. "They are of the species known as Spirilla. Here is another slide, a culture from the blood of Samarova."

"I see them there, too," I exclaimed.

Every one was now crowding about for a glimpse, as I raised my head.

"What is this germ?" asked a hollow voice from the doorway.

We looked, startled. There stood Saratovsky, more like a ghost than a living being. Kennedy sprang forward and caught him as he swayed, and I moved up an armchair for him.

"It is the spirillum Obermeieri," said Kennedy, "the germ of the relapsing fever, but of the most virulent Asiatic strain. Obermeyer, who discovered it, caught the disease and died of it, a martyr to science."

A shriek of consternation rang forth from Samarova. The rest of us paled, but repressed our feelings.

"One moment," added Kennedy hastily. "Don't be unnecessarily alarmed. I have something more to say. Be calm for a moment longer."

He unrolled a blue-print and placed it on the table.

"This," he continued, "is the photographic copy of a message which, I suppose, is now on its way to the Russian minister to France in Paris.

Some one in this room besides Mr. Jameson and myself has seen this letter before. I will hold it up as I pa.s.s around and let each one see it."

In intense silence Kennedy pa.s.sed before each of us, holding up the blue-print and searchingly scanning the faces. No one betrayed by any sign that he recognised it. At last it came to Revalenko himself.

"The checkerboard, the checkerboard!" he cried, his eyes half starting from their sockets as he gazed at it.

"Yes," said Kennedy in a low tone, "the checkerboard. It took me some time to figure it out. It is a cipher that would have baffled Poe. In fact, there is no means of deciphering it unless you chance to know its secret. I happened to have heard of it a long time ago abroad, yet my recollection was vague, and I had to reconstruct it with much difficulty. It took me all night to do it. It is a cipher, however, that is well known among the official cla.s.ses of Russia.

"Fortunately I remember the crucial point, without which I should still be puzzling over it. It is that a perfectly innocent message, on its face, may be used to carry a secret, hidden message. The letters which compose the words, instead of being written continuously along, as we ordinarily write, have, as you will observe if you look twice, breaks, here and there. These breaks in the letters stand for numbers.