Part 12

“How can that be?”

Kennedy shrugged. “I don’t know. Riley promised to call up the next chance he got.”

“Why not go over to Dexter’s?” suggested Hastings.

“She can’t be there,” returned Kennedy. “If she was, Riley would have had a chance to make a second call. Therefore I reason that she must have gone away after she had seen the clerk and when Shelby appeared. I think I’ll stay here awhile, until I hear again――especially as I have nowhere else to go,” he decided, pulling out the cipher from his pocket again. “We may hear some more about Shelby and his schemes.”

Kennedy had now fallen into an earnest study of the peculiar cryptogram which we had discovered.

“I suppose you’ve noticed that there’s no figure above five in it,” he remarked to me, looking up for an instant from several sheets of paper which he was covering with a hopeless jam of figures and letters.

“I had not,” I confessed. “What of it?”

“Well, I’ve tried the numbers in all sorts of combinations and permutations. They don’t work. Let me see. Suppose we take them in pairs.”

For several moments he continued to figure and his face became continuously brighter.

“There are six pairs of 33’s,” he remarked, almost to himself. “Now, it’s well known that the letter ‘e’ is the most commonly used letter. That’s the starting point usually in working out a cipher. Wait――there are eight ‘15’s’――that must be ‘e.’ Yes, the chances are all for it. Now what letter is 33, if any?”

He appeared to be in a dream as he recalled from his studies of cryptograms what were the probabilities of the occurrence of the particular letters. Suddenly he exclaimed:

“Perhaps it’s ‘n’――let’s see.”

Hastily he wrote down some letters and numbers in the following order――“25enne1454.”

He looked at it for a moment, and then his face registered the dawn of an idea.

“By George!” he exclaimed, “we don’t have to go any further! I have it. It’s my own name――Kennedy. Let me see how that works. I believe it’s the system we call――”

Kennedy was again interrupted by the entrance of the messenger-boy with another telegram. He tore it open and, as I expected, it was a second message from Burke.

“Seaville Station has reported interference to Government. Just received orders Washington to take up investigation. Not wireless messages that interfere. Some mystery. When can you come out?”

Kennedy read and reread the message. To neither Hastings nor myself did it convey any idea upon which we could build. But to Kennedy, seemingly, it suggested a thousand and one things.

It was evident that the appeal from Burke had moved Kennedy very much. Paquita had lured us into town, but I cannot say that it was giving us much to show for our pains.

“What do you suppose that message can mean?” I questioned. “What does Burke mean about the telautomaton?”

“I can’t say at this distance. There must be more to it than he has put into the telegram. But at least it is possible that the men at the station have stumbled over some attempt to use the wireless in testing out the little model. It’s pretty hard to tell. Really, I wish I was out there. A clue like this interests me much more than our little adventuress.”

Kennedy had scarcely laid down the message from Burke when the telephone tinkled again. He seized the receiver expectantly. By his excitement I could see that it was Riley again.

“Yes, Riley,” we heard him answer. “Where are you now?”

The conversation was rapid-fire. As Kennedy hung up his face showed considerable interest.

“That woman is just making sport of Riley,” exclaimed Kennedy, hotly, facing us in perplexity.

“Why, what is she doing?”

“Seems to be aimlessly driving about the city. I’ll bet she is just laughing at him. I wonder what the game may be?”

“Where is she now?”

“Up-town again. I suppose that we could jump up there and probably catch Riley somewhere, by keeping in touch with this office, if both of us kept calling up here. But what good it would do I can’t see. I’m disappointed. This thing has degenerated into a wild-goose chase.”

His eye fell on the telegram from Burke, and I knew that the two things had placed Kennedy in a dilemma. If he might have been in two places at once, he would have been satisfied. Should he drop everything and go to Burke or should he wait for Riley?

“We’ll let the cipher decide,” concluded Kennedy, turning to the scribbled papers before him.

“What is the cipher system?” I asked, mechanically, my head rather in a whirl at the fast-crowding events.

“Don’t you understand?” he cried, almost gleefully, working at the solution of the secret writing. “I’ve got it! How stupid of me before not to think of it. Why, it’s the old checkerboard cipher again!”

Quickly he drew on paper a series of five squares horizontally and five vertically and filled them in with the letters of the alphabet, placing I and J in the same square, thus using twenty-five squares. Over the top he wrote the numbers to 5 and down the side he did the same, as follows:

1 2 3 4 5 ――――――――――――――――――――- 1 | A | B | C | D | E | ――――――――――――――――――――- 2 | F | G | H | IJ| K | ――――――――――――――――――――- 3 | L | M | N | O | P | ――――――――――――――――――――- 4 | Q | R | S | T | U | ――――――――――――――――――――- 5 | V | W | X | Y | Z | ――――――――――――――――――――-

“Do you see?” he cried, eagerly. “The letter ‘e’ is in the first row, the fifth letter――15. The letter ‘n’ is the third letter in the third row――33. Why, it’s simple!”

It might have been simple to him now, but to Hastings and myself, as Kennedy figured the thing out, it was little short of marvelous. For all we could have done it, I suppose the blank scrap of paper would still have been a hidden book.

We were crowded about Kennedy, eagerly watching what his deciphering might yield, when the office-boy announced, “Mr. Shelby Maddox to see you, Mr. Hastings.”

Kennedy quickly covered the papers on which he was writing with some others on the desk, just as Shelby entered.

“Is Kennedy here?” cried Shelby. “Oh――I thought maybe you might be. They told me that you’d gone early to the city.”

Our greeting was none too cordial, but Shelby either did not notice it or affected not to do so.

“I wanted to ask you about that kidnapping,” he explained. “You see, I wasn’t about when they found Mito, and it wasn’t until later that I heard of it and the attempt on Winifred. What do you suppose, Mr. Kennedy, was the reason? Who could have wanted to carry her off?”

Kennedy shrugged. “So far I haven’t been able to give a final explanation,” he remarked, keenly.

“Then the kidnappers got away clean?” asked Shelby.

“It was very clever,” temporized Kennedy, “but I would hardly say that there is no clue.”

Shelby eyed Craig keenly, as though he would have liked to read his mind. But Kennedy’s face did not betray whether it was much or little that he knew.

“Well,” added Shelby, “all I’ve got to say is that some one is going to get into trouble if anything happens to that girl.”

I was listening attentively. Was this a bluff, or not? From the expression on Hastings’s face one would have said that he was convinced it must have been Shelby himself who kidnapped her. I wondered whether it was wholly interest in Winifred that prompted Shelby’s visit and inquiry.

“At any rate,” he went on, “you’ll all be watching now against a repetition of such a thing, won’t you? I don’t need to remind you, Kennedy, of your promise when I talked to you before?”

Craig nodded. “I’ll give you a square deal, Mr. Maddox,” returned Craig. “Of course I can’t work for two people at once. But I shall do nothing for any client that I am not convinced is perfectly right. You need not fear for Miss Walcott as long as I can protect her.”

Maddox seemed to be relieved, although he had found nothing that pointed to the origin of the attack. Or was it because of that?

He glanced at his watch uneasily. “You’ll pardon me,” he said, rising. “I had a few minutes and I thought I’d drop in and see you. I must keep an appointment. Thank you for what you have said about Winifred.”

As he withdrew I shot a hasty glance at Craig. Should I follow him? Kennedy negatived.

Apparently not even the intrusion of Shelby had got out of his mind either the dilemma we were in or the hidden message that he seemed on the point of reading.

“An engagement,” commented Hastings, incredulously. “Since when has Shelby had important engagements? More than likely it is something to do with this Paquita woman.”

There was no mistaking the opinion that Hastings had of the youngest scion of the house of Maddox. Nor was it unjustified. Shelby’s escapades had been notorious, though I had always noticed that, in the aftermath of the stories, Shelby was quite as much, if not more, sinned against than sinning. Young men of his stamp are subject to many more temptations than some of the rest of us. If Shelby were coming through all right, I reflected, so much the greater credit for him.

Kennedy either shared my own feelings toward Shelby or had decided that he was not at present worth considering to the delay of something more important.

I looked over his shoulder, fascinated, as he fell to work again immediately on the cipher with the same zest which he had displayed before Shelby’s interruption.

Rapidly Kennedy translated the figures into letters and, as each word was set down on paper, became more and more excited.

Finally he leaped up and seized his hat.

“Confound her!” he exclaimed, “that explains it all! Look!”

Hastings and I read what he had written:

“KENNEDY MUST BE KEPT IN NEW YORK UNTIL WE FINISH HERE.”

XVIII

THE RADIO DETECTIVE

Here, it seemed, was a new danger. Was it to be taken as a proof of Burke’s theory that some one, perhaps a gang, was back of Paquita! I was almost inclined to Hastings’ opinion, for the moment. What was the reason that Shelby had been so interested in Kennedy as to seek him out even in the office of the lawyer of his brother who hated him?

I could evolve no answer in my own inner consciousness for the questions. As far as I could see we were still fighting in the dark, and fighting an unknown.

Kennedy quickly chose one horn of the dilemma that had been presented to him. Both the wording of the cipher and Burke’s enigmatic message regarding the wireless which came so close on its heels quite decided him to hurry back to Westport――that is, if one might so call traveling on midday trains that lounged along from station to station.

We left Hastings in a high state of excitement. Some pressing business prevented his immediate return to Westport, and Kennedy was evidently rather pleased than otherwise, for he did not urge him to go.

“There’s just one thing that I must stop for, and we shall have plenty of time, if we don’t waste it,” he planned. “I must go to the laboratory. There’s some stuff there I want to take out if, as I foresee, we are to have to deal with wireless in some way. Besides, I may need some expert assistance and I want to arrange with one of the graduate students at the university, if I can.”

In the laboratory he found what he wanted and began gathering it into bundles, packing up some head telephone receivers, coils of wire, and other apparatus, some of which was very cumbersome. The last he placed in a pile by itself.

The door opened and a young man entered.

“Oh, Watkins,” Craig directed, as I recognized one of the students who had attended his courses, “there’s a lot of apparatus I would like you to take out to Westport for me.”

They talked briefly in a wireless jargon which I did not understand, and the student agreed to carry the stuff out on a late train, meeting us at the Harbor House. At the last moment Kennedy was off for the railroad station. It was making close connections, but we succeeded.

The ride out was nerve-racking to us under the circumstances. We had taken the bait so temptingly displayed by Paquita and had gone to New York. Now we could not get back fast enough. We had not been in the city long, it is true. But had it been too long? What had happened out in the town we were anxious to learn. I felt sure that in our absence some of the Maddoxes might well have attempted something which our presence would have restrained.

Burke met us at the station with a car, so sure was he that Kennedy would return immediately on receipt of his second message, and it was evident that he felt a great sense of relief at regaining Kennedy’s help.

As we spun along down from the station Kennedy hastened to tell Burke what had happened, first about Paquita as Riley had reported, then his deciphering of the cipher message, our failure to discover anything in the scantily furnished office at the other end of the detectaphone wire, Shelby’s visit, and the whole peculiar train of circumstances.

Instead of going directly to the Harbor House Burke drove us around by the hotel dock, where we saw that there was a stranger in a power boat apparently waiting for him.

Kennedy was just finishing his recital of our unsatisfactory experience as we approached.

“Perhaps it all has something to do with what I wired you about,” returned Burke, thoughtfully. “This new affair is something that I know you’ll be interested in. You see, among my other jobs for the Government I’m what you might call a radio-detective, I guess. You know that there are laws aimed against these amateur wireless operators, I suppose?”

Kennedy nodded, and Burke went on, “Well, whenever regular operators find anything illegal going on in the air, they notify the Government, and so the thing is passed along for me to take up. Heaven knows I don’t know much about wireless. But that doesn’t matter. They don’t want a wireless man so much as they do a detective to ferret out from the operator’s evidence who can be violating the law of the air, and where. So that is how I happened to get hold of this evidence which, I think, may prove valuable to us.”

As we pulled up near the hotel dock Burke beckoned to the strange man who had been waiting for him.

“Let me introduce you to Steel, whom they have sent to me on that matter I told you about.”

Kennedy and I shook hands with the man, who glanced out over the harbor as he explained briefly, “I’m an operator over there at the Seaville Station, which you can see on the point.”

We also gazed out over the water. The powerful station which he indicated was on a spit of sand perhaps two miles distant and stood out sharply against the horizon, with its tall steel masts and cluster of little houses below, in which the operators and the plant were.

“It’s a wonderful station,” Steel remarked, noticing that we were looking at it also. “We’d be glad to have you over there, Mr. Kennedy. Perhaps you could help us.”

“How’s that?” asked Craig, keenly.

“Why,” explained the operator, with a sort of reflective growl, “for the past day or so, now and then, when we least expect it, our apparatus has been put out of business. It’s only temporary. But it looks as though there was too much interference. It isn’t static. It’s almost as though some one was jamming the air. And we don’t know of any one around here that’s capable of doing it. None of us can explain it, but there are some powerful impulses in the air. I can’t make it out.”

Kennedy’s eye rested on the graceful white hull of the _Sybarite_ as she lay still at anchor off the Harbor House. I had not noticed, although Kennedy had, that the yacht was equipped with wireless.

“It’s not likely that it is any one on the _Sybarite_ who is responsible?” he considered, tentatively.

The operator shook his head. “No, the apparatus isn’t strong enough. We would be more likely to put them out of business.”

Burke turned the car around and drove up to the Harbor House. Kennedy jumped out of the car and carried part of the stuff he had brought from the laboratory, while I took the rest, followed by Burke and Steel.

“When I got your message, Burke,” he said, “I thought that there might be something going on such as you’ve told me. So I came out prepared. I’ve got some more apparatus coming, too, in case we don’t get what we want with this. Will you see if we can get permission to go up on the roof――and do it without attracting attention, too?”

Burke quickly made the arrangements and we quietly went up-stairs by a back way, finally coming out on a flat portion of the Lodge roof.

From one of the packages Kennedy took some wire and hastily and ingeniously strung it so that in a short time it was quite evident that he was improvising the aerial of a wireless outfit of some sort. Finally, when he had finished, he led the proper wires down over the edge of the roof.

“One of these,” he said, preparing to leave the roof, “I want to carry down to the ground, the other to our own room.”

We went down again by the back stairs and outside, where Kennedy picked up the wire that hung down to the earth.

Having completed this part of his preparations, Kennedy entered the Harbor House and we followed.

We were passing through the corridor when a page stepped up to Kennedy. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he announced, “but there is a lady in the parlor who would like to speak to you and Mr. Jameson, sir.”

Kennedy excused himself from Burke and Steel, and together we went in the direction of the parlor, eager to discover who it was that sent for us.

To my surprise, it was Winifred Walcott whom we saw sitting all alone.

“How are you after your thrilling experience last night?” inquired Kennedy. “It was so early this morning when we left that we really could not disturb any one to find out. I trust that you are feeling better?”

“Yes――better,” she repeated, her eyes with an absent look, as though she was not thinking of how she felt. “I wanted to thank you ever so much for what you did. Without you, who knows what might have happened to me or where I should be now?”

There was genuine feeling in her words now, as she went on, “Professor Kennedy, after what has happened I am afraid that I shall have to appeal to you for protection. I have thought about it all a great deal, and still there is no explanation of the strange events of last night.”

“You have no idea who it was who carried you off?”

She shook her head. “You may not believe it, but I have not. All I remember was being seized from behind and before I knew it I was half choked, half smothered. That thing wrapped about my head kept me from seeing or crying out until it was too late. Even then I could not see. There is only one thing I can say I really know, and that is that whoever it was that carried me off, it was some one of great strength. You see, I am no light-weight and pretty strong. Yet I never had a chance until you and Mr. Jameson and the rest came up back of me. Oh, I am so sorry I came to your laboratory that day with her!”

Winifred paused. It was evident that she was in a very nervous and high-strung state, and naturally so. The one thing that seemed uppermost in her mind was that she had listened to the biased interpretations of Irene Maddox. The dénouement had proved how wrong they had been, at least in their suggested characterization of Kennedy. And she hastened to apologize.

“Not a word about that,” insisted Kennedy. “There was no reason why you should not have come to see me on any errand and with anybody.”

“Just the same, I am sorry.”

“Has anything more happened to-day?” queried Kennedy, changing the subject deftly.

“N-no, nothing in particular. I have been thinking mostly of what it all was about last night. Some one wanted to hold me――but didn’t want to hurt me. Who could it be? Why?”

“That is exactly what I am trying to find out,” assured Craig. “We went in to the city on what looked as though it might prove to be a very promising clue, but nothing came of it. However, it is only a short while, now, and we shall soon have something to report, I am convinced.”

“Did you see――Mr. Maddox?” she asked, hesitatingly, and I knew that the mention of Shelby’s name had cost her some effort, after the serious tiff of the evening before. “He was very solicitous, sent up word, and some flowers, but could not miss the express, he wrote, on account of an important engagement.”

“Yes, we saw him for just a minute――down in Wall Street. I believe he has taken some interest in business lately and has spent much time at the office of his brokers down-town.”

The look of relief that passed over her face could not easily be concealed. It was evident that she knew of the sudden early departure of Paquita and, like Hastings, in her suspicions, had been afraid that there might be some connection with Shelby. Kennedy did not say anything about the appearance of Paquita in Wall Street; and, on reflection, I reasoned that he was right, for it could have no effect except to arouse unjust suspicions.

Winifred said nothing for a few moments. I wondered what was passing in her mind. Was she sorry that she had not taken Shelby at his word the night before? At any rate, she said nothing, nor should I have expected her to admit anything to us.

“What do your brother and sister-in-law think?” asked Kennedy, at length.

“Johnson promised to get a detective himself if there was anything new on which to base suspicions,” she replied. “He seemed rather vexed at me that I could tell no more, said that no detective could be expected to catch any one on my hazy description――which, I suppose, is true.”

“And Mrs. Maddox?”

“Oh, she seems to think――well, it’s pretty hard to tell what poor Irene thinks from one moment to another. She says it’s what I might expect for being mixed up with the Maddoxes. I can’t see what that has to do with it, though. I’m not mixed up with them, even if Johnson is.”