XXIII
THE ACETYLENE TORCH
Do you suppose he really had the dagger, or was that a lie?" I asked,with an effort shaking off the fateful feeling that had come over me asif some one were casting a spell.
"There is one way to find out," returned Craig, as though glad of thesuggestion.
Though they hated him, they seemed forced to admit, for the time, hisleadership. He rose and the rest followed as he went into Whitney'slibrary.
He switched on the lights. There in a corner back of the desk stood asafe. Somehow or other it seemed to defy us, even though its master wasgone. I looked at it a moment. It was a most powerful affair, companionto that in the office of which Whitney was so proud, built of layer onlayer of chrome steel, with a door that was air tight and soup-proof,bidding defiance to all yeggmen and petermen.
Lockwood fingered the combination hopelessly. There were some millionsof combinations and permutations that only a mathematician couldcalculate. Only one was any good. That one was locked in the mind ofthe man who now seemed to baffle us as did his strong-box.
I placed my hand on the cold, defiant surface. It would take hours todrill a safe like that, and even then it might turn the points of thedrills. Explosives might sooner wreck the house and bring it down overthe head of the man who attacked this monster.
"What can we do?" asked Senora de Moche, seeming to mock us, as thoughthe safe itself were an inhuman thing that blocked our path.
"Do?" repeated Kennedy decisively, "I'll show you what we can do. IfLockwood will drive me down to the railroad station in his car, I'llshow you something that looks like action. Will you do it?"
The request was more like a command. Lockwood said nothing, but movedtoward the porte-cochere, where he had left his car parked just asidefrom the broad driveway.
"Walter, you will stay here," ordered Kennedy. "Let no one leave. Ifany one comes, don't let him get away. We shan't be gone long."
I sat awkwardly enough, scarcely speaking a word, as Kennedy dasheddown to the railroad station. Neither Alfonso nor his mother betrayedeither by word or action a hint of what was passing in their minds.Somehow, though I did not understand it, I felt that Lockwood mightsquare himself. But I could not help feeling that these two might verypossibly be at the bottom of almost anything.
It was with some relief that I heard the car approaching again. I hadno idea what Kennedy was after, whether it was dynamite or whether hecontemplated a trip to New York. I was surprised to see him, withLockwood, hurrying up the steps to the porch, each with a huge tankstudded with bolts like a boiler.
"There," ordered Craig, "set the oxygen there," as he placed his owntank on the opposite side. "That watchman thought I was bluffing when Isaid I'd get an order from the company, if I had to wake up thepresident of the road. It was too good a chance to miss. One doesn'tfind such a complete outfit ready to hand every day."
Out of the tanks stout tubes led, with stop-cocks and gauges at thetop. From a case under his arm Kennedy produced a curious arrangementlike a huge hook, with a curved neck and a sharp beak. Really itconsisted of two metal tubes which ran into a sort of cylinder, ormixing chamber, above the nozzle, while parallel to them ran a thirdseparate tube with a second nozzle of its own.
Quickly he joined the ends of the tubes from the tanks to the metalhook, the oxygen tank being joined to two of the tubes of the hook, andthe second tank being joined to the other. With a match he touched thenozzle gingerly. Instantly a hissing, spitting noise followed, and anintense, blinding needle of flame.
"Now we'll see what an oxyacetylene blow-pipe will do to you, oldstick-in-the-mud," cried Kennedy, as he advanced toward the safe,addressing it as though it had been a thing of life that stood in hisway. "I think this will make short work of you."
Almost as he said it, the steel beneath the blow-pipe becameincandescent. For some time he laboured to get a starting-point for theflame of the high-pressure torch.
It was a brilliant sight. The terrific heat from the first nozzlecaused the metal to glow under the torch as if in an open-hearthfurnace. From the second nozzle issued a stream of oxygen, under whichthe hot metal of the door was completely consumed.
The force of the blast, as the compressed oxygen and acetylene wereexpelled, carried a fine spray of the disintegrated metal visiblybefore it. And yet it was not a big hole that it made--scarcely aneighth of an inch wide, but clean and sharp as if a buzz-saw wereeating its way through a plank of white-pine.
With tense muscles Kennedy held this terrific engine of destruction andmoved it as easily as if it had been a mere pencil of light. He was thecalmest of all of us as we crowded about him, but at a respectfuldistance.
"I suppose you know," he remarked hastily, never pausing for a momentin his work, "that acetylene is composed of carbon and hydrogen. As itburns at the end of the nozzle it is broken into carbon andhydrogen--the carbon gives the high temperature and the hydrogen formsa cone that protects the end of the blow-pipe from being itself burntup."
"But isn't it dangerous?" I asked, amazed at the skill with which hehandled the blow-pipe.
"Not particularly--when you know how to do it. In that tank is a porousasbestos packing saturated with acetone, under pressure. Thus theycarry acetylene safely, for it is dissolved and the possibility ofexplosion is minimized.
"This mixing chamber, by which I am holding the torch, where the oxygenand acetylene mix, is also designed in such a way as to prevent aflash-back. The best thing about this style of blow-pipe is the easewith which it can be transported and the curious purposes--likethis--to which it can be put."
He paused a moment to test what had been burnt. The rest of the safeseemed as firm as ever.
"Humph!" I heard one of them, I think it was Alfonso, mutter. Iresented it, but Kennedy affected not to hear.
"When I shut off the oxygen in this second jet," he resumed, "you seethe torch merely heats the steel. I can get a heat of approximatelysixty-three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the flame will exert apressure of fifty pounds to the square inch."
"Wonderful!" exclaimed Lockwood, who had not heard the suppresseddisapproval of Alfonso, and was watching, in undisguised admiration atthe thing itself, regardless of consequences. "Kennedy, how did youever think of such a thing?"
"Why, it's used for welding, you know," answered Craig, as he continuedto work calmly in the growing excitement. "I first saw it in actual usein mending a cracked cylinder in an automobile. The cylinder wasrepaired without being taken out at all. I've seen it weld new teethand build up worn teeth on gearing, as good as new."
He paused to let us see the terrifically heated metal under the flame.
"You remember when we were talking to the watchman down there at thestation, Walter?" he asked. "I saw this thing in that complete littleshop of theirs. It interested me. See. I turn on the oxygen now in thesecond nozzle. The blow-pipe is no longer an instrument for joiningmetals together, but for cutting them asunder.
"The steel burns just as you, perhaps, have seen a watch-spring burn ina jar of oxygen. Steel, hard or soft, tempered, annealed, chrome, orHarveyized, it all burns just about as fast, and just about as easilyunder this torch. And it's cheap, too. This attack--aside from what itcosts to the safe--may amount to a couple of dollars as far as theblow-pipe is concerned--quite a difference from the thousands ofdollars' loss that would follow an attempt to blow a safe like thisone."
We had nothing to say. We stood in awe-struck amazement as the torchslowly, inexorably traced a thin line along the edge of the combination.
Minute after minute sped by, as the line burned by the blow-pipe cutaround the lock. It seemed hours, but really it was minutes. I wonderedwhen he would have cut about the whole lock. He was cutting clearthrough and around it, severing it as if with a superhuman knife.
With something more than half his work done, he paused a moment to rest.
"Walter," he directed, mopping his forehead, for it was real workdirecting that flaming knife, "ge
t New York on the wire. See ifO'Connor is at his office. If he has any report, I want to talk to him."
It was getting late and the service was slackening up. I had sometrouble, especially in getting a good connection, but at last I gotheadquarters and was overjoyed to hear O'Connor's bluff, Irish voiceboom back at me.
"Hello, Jameson," he called. "Where on earth are you? I've been tryingto get hold of Kennedy for a couple of hours. Rockledge? Well, isKennedy there? Put him on, will you?"
I called Craig and, as I did so, my curiosity got the better of me andI sought out an extension of the wire in a den across the hall from thelibrary, where I could listen in on what was said.
"Hello, O'Connor," answered Craig. "Anything from Burke yet?"
"Yes," came back the welcome news. "I think he has a clue. We found outfrom here that she received a long distance message during theafternoon. Where did Jameson say you were--Rockledge?--that's theplace. Of course we don't know what the message was, but anyhow shewent out to meet some one right after that. The time corresponds withwhat the maid says."
"Anything else?" asked Craig. "Have you found any one who saw her?"
"Yes. I think she went over to your laboratory. But you were out."
"Confound it!" interrupted Craig.
"Some one saw a woman there."
"It wasn't the maid?"
"No, this was earlier--in the afternoon. She left and walked across thecampus to the Museum."
"Oh, by the way, any word of Norton?"
"I'm coming to that. She inquired for Norton. The curator has given agood description. But he was out--hadn't been there for some time. Sheseemed to be very much upset over something. She went away. After thatwe've lost her."
"Not another trace?"
"Wait a minute. We had this Rockledge call to work on. So we startedbackward on that. It was Whitney's place, I found out. We could locatethe car at the start and at the finish. He left the Prince EdwardAlbert and went up there first. Then he must have come back to the cityagain. No one at the hotel saw him the second time.
"What then?" hastened Craig.
"She may have met him somewhere, though it's not likely she had anyintention of going away. All the rest of those people you have up thereseem to have gone prepared. We got something on each of them. Alsoyou'll be interested to know I've got a report of your own doings. Itwas right, Kennedy, I don't blame you. I'd have done the same withBurke on the job. How are you making out? What? You're cracking a crib?With what?"
O'Connor whistled as Kennedy related the story of the blow-pipe. "Ithink you're on the right track," he commended. "There's nothing toshow it, but I believe Whitney told her something that changed her mindabout going up there. Probably met her in some tea room, although wecan't find anything from the tea rooms. Anyhow, Burke's out trailingalong the road from New York to Rockledge and I'm getting reports fromhim whenever he hits a telephone."
"I wish you'd ask him to call me, here, if he gets anything."
"Sure I will. The last call was from the Chateau Rouge,--that's abouthalfway. There was a car with a man and a woman who answers herdescription. Then, there was another car, too."
"Another car?"
"Yes--that's where Norton crosses the trail again. We searched hisapartment. It was upset--like Whitney's. I haven't finished with that.But we have a list of all the private hacking places. I've located onethat hired a car to a man answering Norton's description. I think he'son the trail. That's what I meant by another car."
"What's he doing?"
"Maybe he has a hunch. I'm getting superstitious about this case. Youknow Luis de Mendoza has thirteen letters in it. Leslie told mesomething about a threat he had--a curse. You better look out for thosetwo greasers you have up there. They may have another knife for you."
Kennedy glanced over at the de Moches, not in fear but in amusement atwhat they would think if they could hear O'Connor's uncultured opinion.
"All right, O'Connor," said Craig, "everything seems to be going aswell as we can expect. Don't forget to tell Burke I'm here."
"I won't. Just a minute. He's on another wire for me."
Kennedy waited impatiently. He wanted to finish his job on the safebefore some one came walking in and stopped it, yet there was always achance that Burke might turn up something.
"Hello," called O'Connor a few minutes later. "He's still following thetwo cars. He thinks the one with the woman in it is Whitney's, allright. But they've got off the main road. They must think they're beingfollowed.
"Or else have changed their destination," returned Craig. "Tell himthat. Maybe Whitney had no intention of coming up here. He may havedone this thing just to throw these people off up here, too. I can'tsay. I can tell better whether he intended to come back after I've gotthis safe open. I'll let you know."
Kennedy rang off.
"Any news of Inez?" asked Lockwood who had been fuming with impatience.
"She's probably on her way up here," returned Craig briefly, taking upthe blow-pipe again.
Alfonso remained silent. The Senora could scarcely hide her excitement.If there were anything in telepathy, I am sure that she read everythingthat was said over the wire.
Quickly Craig resumed his work, biting through the solid steel as if ithad been mere pasteboard, the blow-pipe showering on each side abrilliant spray of sparks, a gaudy, pyrotechnic display.
Suddenly, with a quick motion, Kennedy turned off the acetylene andoxygen. The last bolt had been severed, the lock was useless. A gentlepush of the hand, and he swung the once impregnable door on itsdelicately poised hinges as easily as if he had merely said, "Opensesame."
Craig reached in and pulled open a steel drawer directly in front ofhim.
There in the shadow lay the dagger--with its incalculably valuablesecret, a poor, unattractive piece of metal, but with a fascinationsuch as no other object, I had ever seen, possessed.
There was a sudden cry. The Senora had darted ahead, as if to clasp itshandle and unloose the murderous blade that nestled in its three-sidedsheath.
Before she could reach it, Kennedy had seized her hand in his irongrasp, while with the other he picked up the dagger.
They stood there gazing into each other's eyes.
Then the Senora burst into a hysterical laugh.
"The curse is on all who possess it!"
"Thank you," smiled Kennedy quietly, releasing her wrist as he droppedthe dagger into his pocket, "I am only the trustee."