The Social Gangster

  CHAPTER III

  THE FOX HUNT

  The next day was that of the hunt and we motored out to the North ShoreHunt Club. It was a splendid day and the ride was just enough to put anedge on the meet that was to follow.

  We pulled up at last before the rambling colonial building which theHunt Club boasted as its home. Mrs. Brackett was waiting for us alreadywith horses from the Brackett stables.

  "I'm so glad you came," she greeted us aside. "Gloria is here--underprotest. That young man over there, talking to her, is Ritter Smith.'Rhine' Brown, as they call him, was about a moment ago--oh, yes, therehe is, coming over on that chestnut mare to talk to them. I wanted youto see them here. After the hunt, if you care to, I think you might goover to the Cabaret Rouge out here. You might find out something."

  She was evidently quite proud of her handsome daughter and that anythingshould come up to smirch her name cut her deeply.

  The Hunt Club was a swagger organization, even in these degenerate dayswhen farmers will not tolerate broken fences and trampled crops, andwhen democratic ideas interfere sadly with the follies of the rich. In acap with a big peak, a scarlet hunting coat and white breeches with topboots, Brackett himself made a striking figure of M. F. H.

  There were thirty or forty in the field, the men in silk hats. For themost part one could not see that the men treated Gloria muchdifferently. But it was evident that the women did. In fact the coldnesseven extended to her mother, who would literally have been frozen out ifit had not been for her quasi-official position. I could see now that itwas also a fight for Mrs. Brackett's social life.

  As we watched Gloria, we could see that Franconi was hovering around,unsuccessfully trying to get an opportunity to say a word to her alone.Just before we were off a telegram came to her, which she read andhastily stuffed into a pocket of her riding habit.

  But that was all that happened and I fell to studying the various typesof human nature, from the beginner who rode very hard and very badly andmade himself generally odious to the M. F. H., to the old seasonedhunter who talked of the old days of real foxes and how he used to knowall the short cuts to the coverts.

  It was a keen, crisp day. Already a man had been over the field pullingalong the ground a little bag of aniseed, and now the hunt was about tostart.

  Noses down, sterns feathering zigzag over the ground, sniffing earth andleaves and grass, the hounds were brought up. One seemed to get a goodwhiff of the trail and lifted his head with a half yelp, half whine,high pitched, frenzied, never-to-be-forgotten. Others joined in themusic. "Gone away!" sounded a huntsman as if there were a real fox. Wewere off after them. Drag hounds, however, for the most part run muteand very fast, so that that picturesque feature was missing. But thelight soil and rail fences of Long Island were ideal for drag hunting.Nor was it so easy as it seemed to follow. Also there was the spice ofdanger, risk to the hunters, the horses and the dogs.

  We went for four or five miles. Then there was a check for thestragglers to come up. Some had fresh mounts, and all of us were glad ofthe breathing space while the M. F. H. "held" the hounds.

  While we waited we saw that Mrs. Brackett was riding about quickly, asif something were on her mind. A moment she stopped to speak to herhusband, then galloped over to us.

  Her face was almost white. "Gloria hasn't come up with the rest!" sheexclaimed breathlessly.

  Already Brackett had told those about him and all was confusion. It wasonly a moment when the members of the hunt were scouring the countryover which we had passed, with something really definite to find.

  Kennedy did not pause. "Come on, Walter," he shouted, striking out downthe road, with me hard after him.

  We pulled up before a road-house of remarkable quaintness and luxury ofappointment, one of the hundreds about New York which the automobile hasrecreated. Before it swung the weathered sign: Cabaret Rouge.

  To our hurried inquiries the manager admitted that Du Mond had beenthere, but alone, and had left, also alone. Gloria had not come there.

  A moment later sounds of hoofs on the hard road interrupted us andRitter Smith dashed up.

  "Just overtook a farmer down the road," he panted. "Says he saw anautomobile waiting at the stone bridge and later it passed him with agirl and a man in it. He couldn't recognize them. The top was up andthey went so fast."

  Together we retraced the way to the stone bridge. Sure enough, there onthe side of the road were marks where a car had pulled up. The grassabout was trampled and as we searched Kennedy reached down and picked upsomething white. At least it had been white. But now it was spotted withfresh blood, as though someone had tried to stop a nose-bleed.

  He looked at it more closely. In the corner was embroidered a little"G."

  Evidently there had been a struggle and a car had whizzed off. Gloriawas gone. But with whom? Had the message which we had seen her read atthe start been from Du Mond? Was the plan to elope and so avoid hiswife? Then why the struggle?

  Absolutely nothing more developed from the search. An alarm was at oncesent out and the police all over the country notified. There was nothingto do now but wait. Mrs. Brackett was frantic. But it was not now thescandal that worried her. It was Gloria's safety.

  That night, in the laboratory, Kennedy took the handkerchief and withthe blood on it made a most peculiar test before a strange-lookinglittle instrument.

  It seemed to consist of a little cylinder of glass immersed in waterkept at the temperature of the body. Between two minute wire pincers orserres, in the cylinder, was a very small piece of some tissue. To thelower serre was attached a thread. The upper one was attached to a sortof lever ending in a pen that moved over a ruled card.

  "Every emotion," remarked Kennedy as he watched the movement of the penin fine zigzag lines over the card, "produces its physiological effect.Fear, rage, pain, hunger are primitive experiences, the most powerfulthat determine the actions of man. I suppose you have heard of therecent studies of Dr. Walter Cannon of Harvard of the group ofremarkable alterations in bodily economy under emotion?"

  I nodded and Kennedy resumed. "On the surface one may see the effect ofblood vessels contracting, in pallor; one may see cold sweat, or thesaliva stop when the tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth, or one maysee the pupils dilate, hairs raise, respiration become quick, or thebeating of the heart, or trembling of the muscles, notably the lips. Butone cannot see such evidences of emotion if he is not present at thetime. How can we reconstruct them?"

  He paused a moment, then resumed. "There are organs hidden deep in thebody which do not reveal so easily the emotions. But the effect oftenoutlasts the actual emotion. There are special methods by which one canstudy the feelings. That is what I have been doing here."

  "But how can you?" I queried.

  "There is what is called the sympathetic nervous system," he explained."Above the kidney there are also glands called the suprarenal whichexcrete a substance known as adrenin. In extraordinarily small amountsadrenin affects this sympathetic system. In emotions of various kinds areflex action is sent to the suprarenal glands which causes a pouringinto the blood of adrenin.

  "On the handkerchief of Gloria Brackett I obtained plenty ofcomparatively fresh blood. Here in this machine I have between these twopincers a minute segment of rabbit intestine."

  He withdrew the solution from the cylinder with a pipette, thenintroduced some more of the dissolved blood from the handkerchief. Thefirst effect was a strong contraction of the rabbit intestine, then in aminute or so the contractions became fairly even with the base line onthe card.

  "Such tissue," he remarked, "is noticeably affected by even one part inover a million of adrenin. See. Here, by the writing lever, therhythmical contractions are recorded. Such a strip of tissue will livefor hours, will contract and relax beautifully with a regular rhythmwhich, as you see, can be graphically recorded. This is my adrenintest."

  Carefully he withdrew the ruled paper with its tracings.

  "It's a very simple test
after all," he said, laying beside this tracinganother which he had made previously. "There you see the differencebetween what I may call 'quiet blood' and 'excited blood.'"

  I looked at the two sets of tracings. Though they were markedlydifferent, I did not, of course, understand what they meant. "What dothey show to an expert?" I asked, perplexed.

  "Fear," he answered laconically. "Gloria Brackett did not govoluntarily. She did not elope. She was forced to go!"

  "Attacked and carried off?" I queried.

  "I did not say that," he replied. "Perhaps our original theory that hernose was bleeding may be correct. It might have started in theexcitement, the anger and fear at what happened, whatever it was.Certainly the amount of adrenin in her blood shows that she was laboringunder strong enough emotion."

  Our telephone rang insistently and Kennedy answered it. As he talked,although I could hear only one side of the conversation, I knew that themessage was from Chase and that he had found something important aboutthe missing necklace.

  "What was it?" I asked eagerly as he hung up the receiver.

  "Chase has traced the necklace," he reported; "that is, he hasdiscovered the separate stones, unset, pawned in several shops. Thetickets were issued to a girl whose description exactly fits GloriaBrackett."

  I could only stare at him. What we had all feared had actually takenplace. Gloria must have taken the necklace herself. Though we had fearedit and tried to discount it, nevertheless the certainty came as a shock.

  "Why should she have taken it?" I considered.

  "For many possible reasons," returned Kennedy. "You saw the life she wasleading. Her own income probably went to keeping those harpies going.Besides, her mother had cut her allowance. She may have needed moneyvery badly."

  "Perhaps they had run her into debt," I agreed, though the thought wasdisagreeable.

  "How about that other little woman we saw?" suggested Kennedy. "Youremember how Gloria seemed to stand in fear of Du Mond? Who knows butthat he made her get it to save her reputation? A girl in Gloria'sposition might do many foolish things. But to be named as co-respondent,that would be fatal."

  There was not much comfort to be had by either alternative, and we satfor a moment regarding each other in silence.

  Suddenly the door opened. Mrs. Brackett entered. Never have I seen agreater contrast in so short a time than that between the strikingsociety matron who first called on us and the broken woman now beforeus. She was a pathetic figure as Kennedy placed an easy chair for her.

  "Why, what's the matter?" asked Kennedy. "Have you heard anything new?"

  She did not answer directly, but silently handed him a yellow slip ofpaper. On a telegraph blank were written simply the words, "Don't try tofollow me. I've gone to be a war nurse. When I make good I will let youknow. Gloria."

  We looked at each other in blank amazement. That was hardly an easy wayto trace her. How could one ever find out now where she was, in thepresent state of affairs abroad, even supposing it were not a ruse tocover up something?

  Somehow I felt that the message did not tell the story. Where was DuMond? Had he fled, too,--perhaps forced her to go with him when Mrs. DuMond appeared? The message did not explain the struggle and the fear.

  "Oh, Mr. Kennedy," pleaded Mrs. Brackett, all thought of her formerpride gone, as she actually held out her hands imploringly and almostfell on her knees, "can't you find her--can't you _do_ something?"

  "Have you a photograph of Gloria?" he asked hurriedly.

  "Yes," she cried eagerly, reaching into her mesh bag and drawing oneout. "I carry it with me always. Why?"

  "Come," exclaimed Kennedy, seizing it. "It occurs to me that it is nowor never that this device of Franconi's must prove that it is some good.If she really went, she wasted no time. There's just a bare chance thatthe telephote has been placed on some of these vessels that are carryingmunitions abroad. Franconi says that he has developed it for its warvalue."

  As fast as Mrs. Brackett's chauffeur could drive us, we motored down toSouth Side Beach and sought out the little workshop directly on theocean where Franconi had told us that we should always be welcome.

  He was not there, but an assistant was. Kennedy showed him the card thatFranconi had given us.

  "Show me how the machine works," he asked, while Mrs. Brackett and Iwaited aside, scarcely able to curb our impatience.

  "Well," began the assistant, "this is a screen of very minute andsensitive selenium cells. I don't know how to describe the processbetter than to say that the tones of sound, the human voice, havehundreds of gradations which are transmitted, as you know, by wireless,now. Gradations of light, which are all that are necessary to producethe illusion of a picture, are far simpler than those of sound. Here, inthis projector--"

  "That is the transmitting part of the apparatus?" interrupted Kennedybrusquely. "That holder?"

  "Yes. You see there are hundreds of alternating conductors andinsulators, all synchronized with hundreds of similar receivers atthe--"

  "Let me see you try this photograph," interrupted Kennedy again, handingover the picture of Gloria which Mrs. Brackett had given him. "SignorFranconi told me he had the telephote on several outgoing liners. Let mesee if you can transmit it. Is there any way of sending a wirelessmessage from this place?"

  The assistant had shoved the photograph into the holder from which eachsection was projected on the selenium cell screen.

  "I have a fairly powerful plant here," he replied.

  Quickly Kennedy wrote out a message, briefly describing the reason whythe picture was transmitted and asking that any station on shipboardthat received it would have a careful search made of the passengers forany young woman, no matter what name was assumed, who might resemble thephotograph.

  Though nothing could be expected immediately at best, it was at leastsome satisfaction to know that through the invisible air waves,wirelessly, the only means now of identifying Gloria was being flashedfar and wide to all the big ships within a day's distance or less onwhich Franconi had established his system as a test.

  The telephote had finished its work. Now there was nothing to do butwait. It was a slender thread on which hung the hope of success.

  While we waited, Mrs. Brackett was eating her heart out with anxiety.Kennedy took the occasion to call up the New York police on longdistance. They had no clew to Gloria. Nor had they been able to find atrace of Du Mond. Mrs. Du Mond also had disappeared. At the CabaretRouge, Bernice Bentley had been held and put through a third degree,without disclosing a thing, if indeed she knew anything. I wonderedwhether, at such a crisis, Du Mond, too, might not have taken theopportunity to flee the country.

  We had almost given up hope, when suddenly a little buzzer on thetelephote warned the operator that something was coming over it.

  "The _Monfalcone_," he remarked, interpreting the source of theimpulses.

  "We gathered breathlessly about the complicated instrument as, on areceiving screen composed of innumerable pencils of light polarized andacting on a set of mirrors, each corresponding to the cells of theselenium screen and tuned to them, as it were, a thin film or veilseemed gradually to clear up, as the telephote slowly got itself intoequilibrium at both ends of the air line. Gradually the face of a girlappeared.

  "Gloria!" gasped Mrs. Brackett in a tone that sounded as if ten yearshad been added to her life.

  "Wait," cautioned the operator. "There is a written message to follow."

  On the same screen now came in letters that Mrs. Brackett in her joyrecognized the message: "I couldn't help it. I was blackmailed intotaking the necklace. Even at the hunt I received another demand. I didnot mean to go, but I was carried off by force before I could pay thesecond demand. Now I'm glad of it. Forgive us. Gloria."

  "Us?" repeated Mrs. Brackett, not comprehending.

  "Look--another picture," pointed Kennedy.

  We bent over as the face of a man seemed to dissolve more clearly inplace of the writing.

  "Thank God!" exclaim
ed Mrs. Brackett fervently, reading the face by asort of intuition before it cleared enough for us to recognize. "He hassaved her from herself!"

  It was Franconi!

  Slowly it faded and in its place appeared another written message.

  "Recalled to Italy for war service. I took her with me by force. It wasthe only way. Civil ceremony in New York yesterday. Religious willfollow at Rome."