CHAPTER XXV
THE SCIENTIFIC GUNMAN
Our little audience arrived one by one, and, as master of ceremonies,it fell to me to greet them and place them as much at ease as thenatural tension of the occasion would permit. Garrick spoke a word ortwo to each, but was still busy putting the finishing touches on thepreparations for the "entertainment," as he called it facetiously,which he had arranged.
"Before I put to the test a rather novel combination which I havearranged," began Garrick, when they had all been seated, "I want to saya few words about some of the discoveries I have already made in thisremarkable case."
He paused a moment to make sure that he had our attention, but it wasunnecessary. We were all hanging eagerly on his words.
"There is, I believe," he resumed slowly, "no crime that is everwithout a clew. The slightest trace, even a drop of blood no largerthan a pin-head, may suffice to convict a murderer. So may a singlehair found on the clothing of a suspect. In this case," he addedquickly, "it is the impression made by the hammer of a pistol on theshell of a cartridge which leads unescapably to one conclusion."
The idea was so startling that we followed Garrick's every word as ifweighted with tremendous importance, as indeed it was in the clearingup of this mysterious affair.
"I have made a collection from time to time," he pursued, "of thevarious exploded cartridges, the bullets, and the weapons left behindby the perpetrator of the dastardly series of crimes, from the shootingof the stool pigeon of the police, Rena Taylor, and the stealing of Mr.Warrington's car, down to the peculiar events of last night up in theRamapos and the running fight through the streets of New York intaxicabs this morning.
"I have studied this evidence with the microscope and themicrophotographic apparatus. I have secured excellent microphotographsof the marks made by various weapons on the cartridges and bullets.Taking those used in the commission of the greater crimes in thisseries, I find that the marks are the same, apparently, whether the gunshot off a bullet of wax or tallow which became liquid in the body,whether it discharged a stupefying gas, or whether the deadlyanaesthetic bullet was fired. I have obtained a gun"--he threw it onthe table with a clang--"the marks from the hammer of which correspondwith the marks made on all the cartridges I have mentioned. One personowned that gun and used it. That is proved. It remains only to connectthat gun positively and definitely, as a last link, with that person."
I noticed with a start that the revolver still had a stout cord tied toit.
As he concluded, Garrick had begun fitting a curious little device toeach of our forearms. It looked to me like an electrode consisting oflarge plates of German silver, covered with felt and saturated withsalt solution. From each electrode wires ran across the floor to somehidden apparatus.
"Back of this screen," he went on, indicating it in the corner of theroom, "I have placed what is known as the string galvanometer,invented, or, perhaps better, perfected by Dr. Einthoven, of Leyden. Itwas designed primarily for the study of the beating of the heart incases of disease, but it also may be used to record and study emotionsas well,--love and hate, fear, joy, anger, remorse, all are revealed bythis uncanny, cold, ruthlessly scientific instrument.
"The machine is connected by wires to each of you, and will make whatare called electrocardiographs, in which every emotion, everysentiment, every passion is recorded inevitably, inexorably. For, theelectric current that passes from each of you to the machine over thesewires carrying the record of the secrets of your hearts is one of thefeeblest currents known to science. Yet it can be caught and measured.The dynamo which generates this current is not a huge affair of steelcastings and endless windings of copper wire. It is merely the heart ofthe sitter.
"The heart makes only one three-thousandth of a volt of electricity ateach beat. It would take thousands of hearts to light one electriclight, hundreds of thousands to run one trolley car. Yet just thatslight little current from the heart is enough to sway a gossamerstrand of quartz fibre in what I may call my 'heart station' here. Thiscurrent, as I have told you, passes from each of you over a wire andvibrates a fine quartz fibre in unison with it, one of the mostdelicate bits of mechanism ever made, recording the result on aphotographic film by means of a beam of light reflected from a delicatemirror."
We sat spellbound as Garrick unfolded the dreadful, awe-inspiringpossibilities of the machine behind the screen. He walked slowly to theback of the room.
"Now, here I have one of the latest of the inventions of the Wizard ofWest Orange--Edison," he resumed. "It is, as you perhaps have alreadyguessed, the latest product of this genius of sound and sight, thekinetophone, the machine that combines moving pictures with the talkingmachine."
A stranger stepped in from an outer office. He was the skilled operatorof the kinetophone, whom Garrick had hired. In a few terse sentences heexplained that back of a curtain which he pulled down before us was aphonograph with a megaphone, that from his booth behind us he operatedthe picture films, and that the two were absolutely synchronized.
A moment later a picture began to move on the screen. Sounds and voicesseemed to emerge as if from the very screen itself. There, before us,we saw a gambling joint operating in full blast. It was not theForty-eighth Street resort. But it was strongly reminiscent of it. Fromthe talking machine proceeded all the noises familiar to such a scene.
Garrick had moved behind the screen that cut off our view of thegalvanometer. One after another, he was studying the emotions of eachof his audience.
Suddenly the scene changed. A door was burst in, cards and gamblingparaphernalia were scattered about and hidden, men rushed to escape,and the sounds were much like those on the night of the raid. Garrickwas still engrossed in the study of what the galvanometer was showing.
The film stopped. Without warning, the operator started another. It wasa group of men and women playing cards. A man entered, and engaged inconversation with one of the women who was playing. They left the room.
The next scene was in an entirely different room. But the connectionwhich was implied with the last scene was obvious. Different actorsentered the room, a man and a woman. There was a dispute--there was acrack of a revolver--and the woman fell. People rushed in. Everythingwas done to hide the crime. The girl was carried out into a waitingautomobile, propped in as if overcome by alcohol and whisked away. Ifound myself almost looking to see if the car was of the make ofWarrington's, so great was the impression the scene made on me. Ofcourse it was not, but it all seemed so real that one might be pardonedfor expecting the impossible, especially when her body was thrown, withmany a muttered imprecation, by the roadside, and in the last picturethe man was cleaning the exploded gun. One single still picturefollowed. It was a huge, enlarged cartridge.
I followed the thing with eager eyes and ears. From a long list ofcanned and reeled plays, Garrick had selected here and there suchscenes and acts as, interspersed with a few single, original picturesof his own, like the cartridge, would serve best to recapitulate thevery case which we had been investigating. It carried me along step bystep, wonderfully.
Another moving and talking picture was under way. This time it seemedto be a race between two automobiles. They were tearing along, and thesound of the rapidly working cylinders was most real. The rearmost wasrapidly overhauling that in front. Imagine our surprise as it crept upon the other to see the driver rise, whip out a pistol, and fire pointblank at the other as he dashed ahead, and the picture stopped.
A suppressed scream escaped Violet Winslow. It was too much like whathad happened to Mortimer Warrington for her to repress the shudder thatswept over her, and an involuntary movement toward him to make surethat it was not real.
Still Garrick did not move from his post at the galvanometer. He wastaking no chances. He had us thrilled, tense, and he meant to takeadvantage to the full in reading the truth in the dramatic situation hehad so skilfully created.
Another picture started almost on the heels of the last. It was of therobbery of a
safe. Then came another, a firebug at work in starting aconflagration. We could hear the crackling of flames, the shouts of thepeople, the clang of bells, and the hasty tread of the firemen as theyadvanced and put out the blaze. The film play was one of those whichnever fail to attract, where the makers had gone to the utmost extentof realism and had actually set fire to a house to get the true effect.
The next was a scene from a detective play, pure and simple, in whichthat marvellous little instrument which had served us in such goodstead in this case was played up strongly, the detectaphone. Thenfollowed a scene from another play in which a young girl was kidnappedand rescued by her lover just in the nick of time. Nothing could havebeen selected to arouse the feelings of the little audience to a higherpitch.
The last of the series, which I knew was to be a climax, was not anAmerican picture. It was quite evidently made in Paris and was fromactual life. I myself had been startled when the title was announced bythe voice and on the screen simultaneously, "The Siege of the MotorBandits by the Paris Police."
It was terrific. It began with the shouts of the crowd urging on thepolice, the crack of revolvers and guns from a little house or garagein the suburbs, the advance and retreat of the gendarmes on thestronghold. Back and forth the battle waged. One could hear the sharporders of the police, the shrill taunts of the bandits, the sounds ofbattle.
Then at a point where the bandits seemed to have beaten off the attacksuccessfully, there came an automobile. From it I could see the policetake an object which I now knew must be a Mathiot gun. The huge thingwas set up and carefully aimed. Then with a dull roar it was fired.
We could see the bomb hurtling through the air, see it strike thelittle house with a cloud of smoke and dust, hear the report of theexplosion, the shouts of dismay of the bandits--then silence. A crywent up from the crowd as the police now pressed forward in a mass andrushed into the house, disclosing the last scene--in which the banditswere suffocated.
The film suddenly stopped. Garrick's office, which had been ringingwith firearms and shouts from the kinetophone, was again silent. It wasan impressive silence, too. No one of us but had felt and lived thewhole case over again in the brief time that the talking movies hadbeen shown.
The lights flashed up, and before we realised that the thing was over,Garrick was standing before us, holding in his hand a long sheet ofpaper. The look on his face told plainly that his novel experiment hadsucceeded.
"I may say," he began, still studying the paper in his hand, although Iknew he must have arrived at his conclusion already or he would neverhave quitted his "heart station," so soon, "I may say that some timeago a letter was sent to Miss Winslow purporting to reveal some of Mr.Warrington's alleged connections and escapades. It is needless to saythat as far as the accusations were concerned he was able to meet themall adequately and, as for the innuendoes, they were pure baselessfabrications. The sender was urged on to do it by someone else who alsohad an interest of another kind in placing Mr. Warrington in a badlight with Miss Winslow. But the sender soon realised his mistake. Thefact that he was willing to go to the length of a dangerous robberyaccompanied by arson in order to get back or destroy the letter showedhow afraid he was to have a sample of his handwriting fall into myhands. He blundered, but even then he did not realise how badly.
"For, in certain cases the handwriting shows a great deal more thanwould be recognised even by the ordinary handwriting expert. Thisletter showed that the writer was, as I have already explained to Mr.Marshall, the victim of a peculiar kind of paralysis which begins toshow itself in nerve tremours for days before the attack and exhibitsitself even in the handwriting.
"Now, my string galvanometer shows not only the effects of these movingand talking pictures on the emotions, but also, as it was reallydesigned to do, the state of the heart with reference to normality. Itshows to me plainly the effect of disease on the heart, even if it islatent in the subject. While I have been using the psychological law ofsuggestion, and have been recapitulating as well as I was able underthe circumstances the whole story of the crime briefly in moving andtalking pictures, I have found, in addition, that the same heart whichshows the emotions I expected also shows the disease which I discoveredin the blackmailing letter.
"There was surprise at the sight of the gambling den, rage at the raid,fear at the murder of the girl in the other den and the disposal of herbody, excitement over the racing motor cars, passion over thekidnapping of the girl, anger over the little detectaphone, and panicat the siege of the bandits, as I showed by the selection of the filmsthat I was getting closer and closer to the truth. And there was thesame abnormality of the heart exhibited throughout."
Garrick paused. I scarcely breathed, nor did I move my eyes, which wereriveted on his face. What was he going to reveal next? Was he going toaccuse someone in the room?
"Mr. Marshall," he resumed with a smile toward me, "I am glad to say isquite normal and innocent of all wrongdoing--in this instance," headded with a momentary flash of humour. "Commissioner Dillon alsopasses muster. Mr. Warrington--I shall come back to, later."
I thought Violet Winslow gave a little, startled gasp. She turnedtoward him, anyhow, and I saw that not even science now could shake herfaith in him.
"Mr. Forbes," he continued, speaking rapidly as I bent forward to catchevery word, "incriminated himself quite sufficiently in connection withthe gambling joint, the raid and the slanderous letter, so that Ishould advise him when this case comes to trial to tell the whole truthand nothing but the truth about his helping a gunman in order tofurther what proved a hopeless love affair on his own part. Here, too,is a little vest-pocket gun that was found under such circumstances aswould be likely to connect Forbes in the popular mind with theshootings."
"My lawyer has my statement about that. I'll read--"
"No, Forbes," interrupted Garrick. "You needn't read. Your lawyer maybe interested to add this to the statement, however. A pistol that hasbeen shot off has potassium sulphide from the powder in the barrel.Later, it oxidizes and iron oxide is found. This weapon has neither thesulphide nor the oxide, as far as I can determine. It has never evenbeen discharged. No, it was not the pistol found on Forbes that figuredin this case.
"As far as that new-fangled gun goes, Forbes, it was a frame-up. Youwere kidnapped by a man whom you thought was your friend, and it wasdone for a purpose. He knew the situation you were in, your jealousy--Iwon't dwell on that here. He held you at the house up in the valley.You told the truth about that. He did it, the man who wrote the letter,because he hoped ultimately to shift all the guilt on you and himselfgo scot-free."
Forbes stared dumbly. I knew he had known what was coming but had heldback for fear of what he knew had always happened to informers in thecircle to which he had sunk.
"McBirney," continued Garrick, "your emotions, mostly astonishment,show that you have much to learn in this new business of moderndetection, besides the recovery of stolen cars."
Garrick had paused for effect again.
"And now we come to the keeper of a nighthawk garage on the West Side,a man whom they seem to call the Boss. That is getting higher up. Ifind that he points, according to this scientific third degree, to onewhom I have for a long time suspected--"
A dull thud startled us.
I turned. A man was lying, face down, on the floor.
Before any of us could reach him, Garrick concluded, "This is the manwho framed up the case against Forbes, who stole Warrington's car touse to get rid of the body of the informer, Rena Taylor, because she byher success interfered with his gambling graft, who wrote the letter toMiss Winslow to injure Warrington because he, too, was interfering withhis graft collection from the gambling house by threatening to close itup. He committed the arson to cover up his identity by getting back theletter; he planned and nearly executed the kidnapping of Miss Winslowin order to hold up Warrington, and then hid in the country where weferreted him out, not far from the very scene of a murderous attack onWarrington for his
brave stand in suppressing gambling--from which thisman was weekly shaking down a huge profit as the price of policeprotection of the vice."
Garrick was kneeling by the prostrate form now, not so much the accuseras the scientist, studying a new phase of crime.
The threatened paralysis had struck Inspector Herman sooner than evenGarrick had expected.
When we had made Herman as comfortable as we could, Garrick added toDillon, who stood over us, speechless, "You had under you one of thestrong links in the secret system of police protection of vice andcrime, and you never knew it--the greatest grafter and scientificgunman that I ever knew. It has been a long, hard fight. But I have thegoods on him at last."
The exposure was startling in the extreme. Herman had gained forhimself the reputation of being one of the shrewdest and most efficientmen in the department. But he had felt the lure of graft. With the aidof the gamblers and unscrupulous politicians he had built up a huge,secret machine for collection of the profits from the sale of policeprotection against the enforcement of the law he was sworn to uphold.
He had begun to mix with doubtful characters. But he was a genius andhad become, by degrees, the worst of the gangmen and gunmen who everoperated in the metropolis. Detailed to catch the gamblers andgangsters, with official power to do almost as he pleased, he hadenjoyed a fine holiday and employed his leisure both for new crimes andin covering up so successfully his tracks in the old ones, even withGarrick on his trail, that he had been able to completely hoodwink hissuperior, Dillon, by his long, detailed reports which sounded veryconvincing but which really meant nothing.
As the strange truth of the case was established by Garrick, Dillon wasthe most amazed of us all. He had trusted Herman, and the revulsion offeeling was overwhelming.
"And to think," he exclaimed, in disgust, "that I actually placed hisown case in his own hands, with carte blanche instructions to go ahead.No wonder he never produced a clew that amounted to anything. Well,I'll be--"
Words failed him, as he looked down and glared savagely at the man insilence.
All were now crowding around Garrick eager to thank him for what he haddone. As Warrington, now almost his former hearty wholesome self again,grasped Garrick's hand in the heartiness of his thanks, Garrick, withthe electrocardiogram paper still in his other hand, smiled.
He released himself and turned to touch the dainty little hand ofViolet Winslow, whose eyes were so full of happy tears that she couldscarcely speak.
"Miss Winslow," he beamed, gazing earnestly and admiringly into hersweet face, "I promised to attend to the case of that man later,--" headded, with a nod at Warrington. "It may interest you to knowscientifically what you already know by something that is greater thanscience, a woman's intuition."
She blushed as he added, "Mr. Warrington has a good, strong, healthyheart. He wouldn't be alive to-day if he hadn't. But, more than that, Ihave observed throughout the evening that he has hardly taken his eyesoff you. Even the 'talkies' and the 'movies' failed to stir him untilthe kidnapping scene overwhelmed him. Here on this strip of paper Ihave a billet-doux. His heart registers the current that only thatconsummate electrician, little Dan Cupid, can explain."
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends