The War Terror Part 14

"Can't they find out by--er, interference?" I asked, repeating the term I had so often heard.

Kennedy laughed. "No, not for radio apparatus which merely receives radiograms and is not equipped for sending. I am setting up only one side of a wireless outfit here. All I want to do is to hear what is being said. I don't care about saying anything."

He unwrapped another package which had been loaned to him by the radio station and we watched him curiously as he tested it and set it up.

Some parts of it I recognized such as the very sensitive microphone, and another part I could have sworn was a phonograph cylinder, though Craig was so busy testing his apparatus that now we could not ask questions.

It was late in the afternoon when he finished, and we had just time to run up to the dock at Seaville and stop off at the Lucie to see if anything had happened in the intervening hours before dinner. There was nothing, except that I found time to file a message to the Star and meet several fellow newspaper men who had been sent down by other papers on the chance of picking up a good story.

We had the Nautilus to ourselves, and as she was a very comfortable little craft, we really had a very congenial time, a plunge over her side, a good dinner, and then a long talk out on deck under the stars, in which we went over every phase of the case. As we discussed it, Waldon followed keenly, and it was quite evident from his remarks that he had come to the conclusion that Dr. Jermyn at least knew more than he had told about the case.

Still, the day wore away with no solution yet of the mystery.

CHAPTER IX

THE RADIO DETECTIVE

It was early the following morning when a launch drew up beside the Nautilus. In it were Edwards and Dr. Jermyn, wildly excited.

"What's the matter?" called out Waldon.

"They--they have found the body," Edwards blurted out.

Waldon paled and clutched the rail. He had thought the world of his sister, and not until the last moment had he given up hope that perhaps she might be found to have disappeared in some other way than had become increasingly evident.

"Where?" cried Kennedy. "Who?"

"Over on Ten Mile Beach," answered Edwards. "Some fishermen who had been out on a cruise and hadn't heard the story. They took the body to town, and there it was recognized. They sent word out to us immediately."

Waldon had already spun the engine of his tender, which was about the fastest thing afloat about Seaville, had taken Edwards over, and we were off in a cloud of spray, the nose of the boat many inches above the surface of the water.

In the little undertaking establishment at Seaville lay the body of the beautiful young matron about whom so much anxiety had been felt. I could not help thinking what an end was this for the incomparable beauty. At the very height of her brief career the poor little woman's life had been suddenly snuffed out. But by what? The body had been found, but the mystery had been far from solved.

As Kennedy bent over the body, I heard him murmur to himself, "She had everything--everything except happiness."

"Was it drowning that caused her death?" asked Kennedy of the local doctor, who also happened to be coroner and had already arrived on the scene.

The doctor shook his head. "I don't know," he said doubtfully. "There was congestion of the lungs--but I--I can't say but what she might have been dead before she fell or was thrown into the water."

Dr. Jermyn stood on one side, now and then putting in a word, but for the most part silent unless spoken to. Kennedy, however, was making a most minute examination.

As he turned the beautiful head, almost reverently, he saw something that evidently attracted his attention. I was standing next to him and, between us, I think we cut off the view of the others. There on the back of the neck, carefully, had been smeared something transparent, almost skin-like, which had easily escaped the attention of the rest.

Kennedy tried to pick it off, but only succeeded in pulling off a very minute piece to which the flesh seemed to adhere.

"That's queer," he whispered to me. "Water, naturally, has no effect on it, else it would have been washed off long before. Walter," he added, "just slip across the street quietly to the drug store and get me a piece of gauze soaked with acetone."

As quickly and unostentatiously as I could I did so and handed him the wet cloth, contriving at the same time to add Waldon to our barrier, for I could see that Kennedy was anxious to be observed as little as possible.

"What is it?" I whispered, as he rubbed the transparent skin-like stuff off, and dropped the gauze into his pocket.

"A sort of skin varnish," he remarked under his breath, "waterproof and so adhesive that it resists pulling off even with a knife without taking the cuticle with it."

Beneath, as the skin varnish slowly dissolved under his gentle rubbing, he had disclosed several very small reddish spots, like little cuts that had been made by means of a very sharp instrument. As he did so, he gave them a hasty glance, turned the now stony beautiful head straight again, stood up, and resumed his talk with the coroner, who was evidently getting more and more bewildered by the case.

Edwards, who had completed the arrangements with the undertaker for the care of the body as soon as the coroner released it, seemed completely unnerved.

"Jermyn," he said to the doctor, as he turned away and hid his eyes, "I can't stand this. The undertaker wants some stuff from the--er--boat,"

his voice broke over the name which had been hers. "Will you get it for me? I'm going up to a hotel here, and I'll wait for you there. But I can't go out to the boat--yet."

"I think Mr. Waldon will be glad to take you out in his tender,"

suggested Kennedy. "Besides, I feel that I'd like a little fresh air as a bracer, too, after such a shock."

"What were those little cuts?" I asked as Waldon and Dr. Jermyn preceded us through the crowd outside to the pier.

"Some one," he answered in a low tone, "has severed the pneumogastric nerves."

"The pneumogastric nerves?" I repeated.

"Yes, the vagus or wandering nerve, the so-called tenth cranial nerve.

Unlike the other cranial nerves, which are concerned with the special senses or distributed to the skin and muscles of the head and neck, the vagus, as its name implies, strays downward into the chest and abdomen supplying branches to the throat, lungs, heart and stomach and forms an important connecting link between the brain and the sympathetic nervous system."

We had reached the pier, and a nod from Kennedy discouraged further conversation on the subject.

A few minutes later we had reached the Lucie and gone up over her side.

Kennedy waited until Jermyn had disappeared into the room of Mrs.

Edwards to get what the undertaker had desired. A moment and he had pa.s.sed quietly into Dr. Jermyn's own room, followed by me. Several quick glances about told him what not to waste time over, and at last his eye fell on a little portable case of medicines and surgical instruments. He opened it quickly and took out a bottle of golden yellow liquid.

Kennedy smelled it, then quickly painted some on the back of his hand.

It dried quickly, like an artificial skin. He had found a bottle of skin varnish in Dr. Jermyn's own medicine chest!

We hurried back to the deck, and a few minutes later the doctor appeared with a large package.

"Did you ever hear of coating the skin by a substance which is impervious to water, smooth and elastic?" asked Kennedy quietly as Waldon's tender sped along back to Seaville.

"Why--er, yes," he said frankly, raising his eyes and looking at Craig in surprise. "There have been a dozen or more such substances. The best is one which I use, made of pyroxylin, the soluble cotton of commerce, dissolved in amyl acetate and acetone with some other substances that make it perfectly sterile. Why do you ask?"

"Because some one has used a little bit of it to cover a few slight cuts on the back of the neck of Mrs. Edwards."

"Indeed?" he said simply, in a tone of mild surprise.

"Yes," pursued Kennedy. "They seem to me to be subcutaneous incisions of the neck with a very fine scalpel dividing the two great pneumogastric nerves. Of course you know what that would mean--the victim would pa.s.s away naturally by slow and easy stages in three or four days, and all that would appear might be congestion of the lungs.

They are delicate little punctures and elusive nerves to locate, but after all it might be done as painlessly, as simply and as safely as a barber might remove some dead hairs. A country coroner might easily pa.s.s over such evidence at an autopsy--especially if it was concealed by skin varnish."

I was surprised at the frankness with which Kennedy spoke, but absolutely amazed at the coolness of Jermyn. At first he said absolutely nothing. He seemed to be as set in his reticence as he had been when we first met.