"Here's the bullet. What I want you to do, Professor Kennedy, is to catch the crank who
fired it."
Capt. Lansing Marlowe, head of the new American Shipbuilding Trust, had summoned
us in haste to the Belleclaire and had met us in his suite with his daughter Marjorie. Only
a glance was needed to see that it was she, far more than her father, who was worried.
"You must catch him," she appealed. "Father's life is in danger. Oh, you simply MUST."
I knew Captain Marlowe to be a proverbial fire-eater, but in this case, at least, he was no
alarmist. For, on the table, as he spoke, he laid a real bullet.
Marjorie Marlowe shuddered at the mere sight of it and glanced apprehensively at him as
if to reassure herself. She was a tall, slender girl, scarcely out of her teens, whose face
was one of those quite as striking for its character as its beauty. The death of her mother a
few years before had placed on her much of the responsibility of the captain's household
and with it a charm added to youth.
More under the spell of her plea than even Marlowe's vigorous urging, Kennedy, without
a word, picked up the bullet and examined it. It was one of the modern spitzer type, quite
short, conical in shape, tapering gradually, with the center of gravity back near the base.
"I suppose you know," went on the captain, eagerly, "that our company is getting ready
to-morrow to launch the Usona, the largest liner that has ever been built on this side of
the water-- the name is made up of the initials of the United States of North America.
"Just now," he added, enthusiastically, "is what I call the golden opportunity for
American shipping. While England and Germany are crippled, it's our chance to put the
American flag on the sea as it was in the old days, and we're going to do it. Why, the
shipyards of my company are worked beyond their capacity now."
Somehow the captain's enthusiasm was contagious. I could see that his daughter felt it,
that she was full of fire over the idea. But at the same time something vastly more
personal weighed on her mind.
"But, father," she interrupted, anxiously, "tell them about the BULLET."
The captain smiled indulgently as though he would say that he was a tough old bird to
wing. It was only a mask to hide the fighting spirit underneath.
"We've had nothing but trouble ever since we laid the keel of that ship," he continued,
pugnaciously, "strikes, a fire in the yard, delays, about everything that could happen.
Lately we've noticed a motor-boat hanging about the river-front of the yards. So I've had
a boat of my own patrolling the river."
"What sort of craft is this other?" inquired Kennedy, interested at once.
"A very fast one--like those express cruisers that we hear so much about now."
"Whose is it? Who was in it? Have you any idea?"
Marlowe shook his head doubtfully. "No idea. I don't know who owns the boat or who
runs it. My men tell me they think they've seen a woman in it sometimes, though. I've
been trying to figure it out. Why should it be hanging about? It can't be spying. There
isn't any secrecy about the Usona. Why is it? It's a mystery."
"And the shot?" prompted Craig, tapping the bullet.
"Oh yes, let me tell you. Last night, Marjorie and I arrived from Bar Harbor on my yacht,
for the launching. It's anchored off the yard now. Well, early this morning, while it was
still gray and misty, I was up. I'll confess I'm worried over to-morrow. I hadn't been able
to forget that cruiser. I was out on the deck, peering into the mist, when I'm sure I saw
her. I was just giving a signal to the boat we have patrolling, when a shot whistled past
me and the bullet buried itself in the woodwork of the main saloon back of me. I dug it
out of the wood with my knife--so you see I got it almost unflattened. That's all I have
got, too. The cruiser made a getaway, clean."
"I'm sure it was aimed at him," Marjorie exclaimed. "I don't think it was chance. Don't
you see? They've tried everything else. Now if they could get my father, the head of the
company, that would be a blow that would cripple the trust."
Marlowe patted his daughter's hand reassuringly and smiled again, as though not to
magnify the incident.
"Marjorie was so alarmed," he confessed, "that nothing would satisfy her but that I should
come ashore and stay here at the Belleclaire, where we always put up when we are in
town."
The telephone rang and Marjorie answered it. "I hope you'll pardon me," she excused,
hanging up the receiver. "They want me very much down-stairs." Then appealing, she
added: "I'll have to leave you with father. But, please, you must catch that crank who is
threatening him."
"I shall do my level best," promised Kennedy. "You may depend on that."
"You see," explained the captain as she left us, "I've invited quite a large party to attend
the launching, for one reason or another. Marjorie must play hostess. They're mostly here
at the hotel. Perhaps you saw some of them as you came in."
Craig was still scanning the bullet. "It looks almost as if some one had dum-dummed it,"
he remarked, finally. "It's curiously done, too. Just look at those grooves."
Both the captain and I looked. It had a hard jacket of cupro- nickel, like the army bullet,
covering a core of softer metal. Some one had notched or scored the jacket as if with a
sharp knife, though not completely through it. Had it been done for the purpose of
inflicting a more frightful wound if it struck the captain?
"There've been other shots, too," went on Marlowe. "One of my watchmen was wounded
the night before. It didn't took like a serious wound, in the leg. Yet the poor fellow seems
to be in a bad way, they tell me."
"How is that?" asked Craig, glancing up quickly from studying the bullet.
"The wound seems to be all puffed up, and very painful. It won't heal, and he seems to be
weak and feverish. Why, I'm afraid the man will die."
"I'd like to see that case," remarked Kennedy, thoughtfully.
"Very well. I'll have you driven to the hospital where we have had to take him."
"I'd like to see the yards, too, and the Usona," he added.
"All right. After you go to the hospital I'll meet you at the yards at noon. Now if you'll
come down-stairs with me, I'll get my car and have you taken to the hospital first."
We followed Marlowe into the elevator and rode down. In the large parlor we saw that
Marjorie Marlowe had joined a group of the guests, and the captain turned aside to
introduce us.
Among them I noticed a striking-looking woman, somewhat older than Marjorie. She
turned as we approached and greeted the captain cordially.
"I'm so glad there was nothing serious this morning," she remarked, extending her hand
to him.
"Oh, nothing at all, nothing at all," he returned, holding the hand, I thought, just a bit
longer than was necessary. Then he turned to us, "Miss Alma Hillman, let me present
Professor Kennedy and Mr. Jameson."
I was not so preoccupied in taking in the group that I did not notice that the captain was
more than ordinarily attentive to her. Nor can I say that I blamed him, for, although he
might almost have been her father in age, there was a fascination about her that youth
does not often possess.
Talking with her had been a young man, slender, good-looking, with almost a military
bearing.
"Mr. Ogilvie Fitzhugh," introduced Marjorie, seeing that her father was neglecting his
duties.
Fitzhugh bowed and shook hands, murmured something stereotyped, and turned again to
speak to Marjorie.
I watched the young people closely. If Captain Marlowe was interested in Alma, it was
more than evident that Fitzhugh was absolutely captivated by Marjorie, and I fancied that
Marjorie was not averse to him, for he had a personality and a manner which were very
pleasing.
As the conversation ran gaily on to the launching and the gathering party of notables who
were expected that night and the next day, I noticed that a dark-eyed, dark-haired, olive-complexioned young man approached and joined us.
"Doctor Gavira," said Marlowe, turning to us, his tone indicating that he was well
acquainted about the hotel. "He is our house physician."
Gavira also was welcomed in the party, chatting with animation. It was apparent that the
physician also was very popular with the ladies, and it needed only half an eye to discern
that Fitzhugh was jealous when he talked to Marjorie, while Marlowe but ill concealed
his restlessness when Gavira spoke to Alma. As for Alma, she seemed to treat all men
impartially, except that just now it pleased her to bestow the favor of her attention on the
captain.
Just then a young lady, all in white, passed. Plainly she did not belong to the group,
though she was much interested in it. As his eye roved over the parlor, Gavira caught her
glance and bowed. She returned it, but her look did not linger. For a moment she glanced
sharply at Fitzhugh, still talking to Marjorie, then at Marlowe and Alma Hillman. She
was a very pretty girl with eyes that it was impossible to control. Perhaps there was
somewhat of the flirt in her. It was not that that interested me. For there was something
almost akin to jealousy in the look she gave the other woman. Marlowe was too
engrossed to see her and she passed on slowly. What did it mean, if anything?
The conversation, as usual at such times, consisted mostly of witticisms, and just at
present we had a rather serious bit of business in hand. Kennedy did not betray any of the
impatience that I felt, yet I knew he was glad when Marlowe excused himself and we left
the party and passed down the corridor while the captain called his car.
"I don't know how you are going to get at this thing," he remarked, pausing after he had
sent a boy for his driver. "But I'll have to rely on you. I've told you all I know. I'll see you
at noon, at the yards. My man will take you there."
As he turned and left us I saw that he was going in the direction of the barber-shop. Next
to it and in connection with it, though in a separate room, was a manicure. As we passed
we looked in. There, at the manicure's table, sat the girl who had gone by us in the parlor
and had looked so sharply at Marlowe and Alma.
The boy had told us that the car was waiting at a side entrance, but Kennedy seemed now
in no haste to go, the more so when Marlowe, instead of going into the barber-shop,
apparently changed his mind and entered the manicure's. Craig stopped and watched.
Prom where we were we could see Marlowe, though his back was turned, and neither he
nor the manicure could see us.
For a moment the captain paused and spoke, then sat down. Quite evidently he had a keen
eye for a pretty face and trim figure. Nor was there any mistaking the pains which the
manicure took to please her rich and elderly customer. After watching them a moment
Kennedy lounged over to the desk in the lobby.
"Who is the little manicure girl?" he asked.
The clerk smiled. "Seems as if she was a good drawing-card for the house, doesn't it?" he
returned. "All the men notice her. Why, her name is Rae Melzer." He turned to speak to
another guest before Kennedy could follow with another inquiry.
As we stood before the desk, a postman, with the parcel post, arrived. "Here's a package
addressed to Dr. Fernando Gavira," he said, brusquely. "It was broken in the mail. See?"
Kennedy, waiting for the clerk to be free again, glanced casually at the package at first,
then with a sudden, though concealed, interest. I followed his eye. In the crushed box
could be seen some thin broken pieces of glass and a wadding of cotton-wool.
As the clerk signed for another package Craig saw a chance, reached over and abstracted
two or three of the broken pieces of glass, then turned with his back to the postman and
clerk and examined them.
One I saw at once had a rim around it. It was quite apparently the top of a test-tube. The
other, to which some cotton-wool still adhered, was part of the rounded bowl. Quickly
Craig dropped the pieces into one of the hotel envelopes that stood in a rack on the desk,
then, changing his mind about asking more now about the little manicure, strode out of
the side entrance where Marlowe's car was waiting for us.
Hurriedly we drove across town to the City Hospital, where we had no difficulty in being
admitted and finding, in a ward, on a white cot, the wounded guard. Though his wound
was one that should not have bothered him much, it had, as Marlowe said, puffed up
angrily and in a most peculiar manner. He was in great pain with it and was plainly in a
bad way.
Though he questioned the man, Craig did not get anything out of him except that the shot
had come from a cruiser which had been hanging about and was much faster than the
patrol boat. The nurse and a young intern seemed inclined to be reticent, as though we
might imply that the mail's condition reflected on the care he had received, which they
were at pains to convince us had been perfect.
Puzzled himself, Craig did not say much, but as he pondered the case, shook his head
gravely to himself and finally walked out of the hospital abstractedly.
"We have almost an hour before we are to meet Marlowe at the yard," he considered, as
we came to the car. "I think I'll go up to the laboratory first."
In the quiet of his own workshop, Kennedy carefully examined again the peculiar
grooves on the bullet. He was about to scrape it, but paused. Instead, he filled a tube with
a soapy solution, placed the bullet in it, and let it stand. Next he did the same with the
pieces of glass from the envelope.
Then he opened a drawer and from a number of capillary pipettes selected a plain
capillary tube of glass. He held it in the flame of a burner until it was red hot. Then
carefully he drew out one end of the tube until it was hair fine. Again he heated the other
end, but this time he let the end alone, except that he allowed it to bend by gravity, then
cool. It now had a siphon curve. Another tube he treated in the same way.
By this time he was ready to proceed with what he had in mind. He took a glass slide and
on it placed a drop from each of the tubes containing the bullet and the glass. That done,
he placed the bent, larger end of the capillary tubes in turn on each of the drops on the
slide. The liquid ascended the tubes by capillary attraction and siphoned over the curve,
running as he turned the tubes up to the finely pointed ends.
Next in a watch glass he placed some caustic soda and in another some pyrogallic acid,
from each of which he took just a drop, as he had done before, inclining the tubes to let
the fluid gravitate to the throttle end. Finally in the flame he sealed both the tip and butt
of the tubes.
"There's a bubble of air in there," he remarked. "The acid and the soda will absorb the
oxygen from it. Then I can tell whether I'm right. By the way, we'll have to hurry if we're
to be on time to meet Marlowe in the yard," he announced, glancing at his watch as he
placed the tubes in his little electric incubator.
We were a little late as the chauffeur pulled in at the executive offices at the gate of the
shipyard, and Marlowe was waiting impatiently for us. Evidently he wanted action, but
Kennedy said nothing yet of what he suspected and appeared now to be interested only in
the yard.
It was indeed something to interest any one. Everywhere were tokens of feverish activity,
in office, shop, and slip. As we picked our way across, little narrow and big wide gauge
engines and trains whistled and steamed about. We passed rolling-mills, forging-machines, and giant shearing-machines, furnaces for heating the frames or ribs, stone
floors on which they could be pegged out and bent to shape, places for rolling and
trimming the plates, everything needed from the keel plates to the deck.
In the towering superstructure of the building slip we at last came to the huge steel
monster itself, the Usona. As we approached, above us rose her bow, higher than a house,
with poppets both there and at the stern, as well as bracing to support her. All had been
done up to the launching, the stem and stern posts set in place, her sides framed and
plated up, decks laid, bulkheads and casings completed, even much of her internal fitting
done.
Overhead and all about the huge monster was a fairy network of steel, the vast permanent
construction of columns and overhead girders. Suspended beneath was a series of tracks
carrying traveling and revolving cranes capable of handling the heaviest pieces. We
climbed to the top and looked down at the vast stretch of hundreds of feet of deck. It was
so vast that it seemed rather the work of a superman than of the puny little humans
working on her.
As I looked down the slip where the Usona stood inclined about half an inch to the foot, I
appreciated as never before what a task it was merely to get her into the water.
Below again, Marlowe explained to us how the launching ways were composed of the
ground ways, fastened to the ground as the name implied, and the sliding ways that were
to move over them. The sliding ways, he said, were composed of a lower course and an
upper course, on which rested the "cradle," fitting closely the side of the ship.
To launch her, she must be lifted slightly by the sliding ways and cradle from the keel
blocks and bilge blocks, and this was done by oak wedges, hundreds of which we could
see jammed between the upper and lower courses of sliding ways. Next he pointed out
the rib-bands which were to keep the sliding ways on the ground ways, and at the bow the
points on either side where the sliding and ground ways were bolted together by two huge
timbers known as sole pieces.
"You see," he concluded, "it is a gigantic task to lift thousands of tons of steel and
literally carry it a quarter of a mile to forty feet of water in less than a minute. Everything
has to be calculated to a nicety. It's a matter of mathematics--the moment of weight, the
moment of buoyancy, and all that. This launching apparatus is strong, but compared to
the weight it has to carry it is really delicate. Why, even a stray bolt in the ways would be
a serious matter. That's why we have to have this eternal vigilance."
As he spoke with a significant look at Kennedy, I felt that it was no wonder that Marlowe
was alarmed for the safety of the ship. Millions were at stake for just that minute of
launching.
It was all very interesting and we talked with men whom it was a pleasure to see handling
great problems so capably. But none could shed any light on the problem which it was
Kennedy's to solve. And yet I felt sure, as I watched Craig, that unsatisfactory as it
appeared to Marlowe and to myself, he was slowly forming some kind of theory, or at
least plan of action, in his head.
"You'll find me either here or at the hotel--I imagine," returned Marlowe to Kennedy's
inquiry as we parted from him. "I've instructed all the men to keep their eyes open. I hope
some of us have something to report soon."
Whether or not the remark was intended as a hint to Kennedy, it was unnecessary. He
was working as fast and as surely as he could, going over in hours what others had failed
to fathom in weeks.
Late in the afternoon we got back to the laboratory and Craig began immediately by
taking from the little electric incubator the two crooked tubes he had left there. Breaking
off the ends with tweezers, he began examining on slides the two drops that exuded,
using his most powerful microscope. I was forced to curb my impatience as he proceeded
carefully, but I knew that Craig was making sure of his ground at each step.
"I suppose you're bursting with curiosity," he remarked at last, looking up from his
examination of one of the slides. "Well, here is a drop that shows what was in the grooves
of that bullet. Just take a look."
I applied my eye to the microscope. All I could see was some dots and rods, sometimes
something that looked like chains of dots and rods, the rods straight with square ends,
sometimes isolated, but more usually joined end to end in long strings.
"What is it?" I asked, not much enlightened by what he had permitted me to see.
"Anaerobic bacilli and spores," he replied, excitedly. "The things that produce the well-known 'gas gangrene' of the trenches, the gas phlegmon bacilli--all sorts, the bacillus
aerogenes capsulatus, bacillus proteus, pyogenic cocci, and others, actively gas-forming
microbes that can't live in air. The method I took to develop and discover them was that
of Col. Sir Almroth Wright of the British army medical corps."
"And that is what was on the bullet?" I queried.
"The spores or seeds," he replied. "In the tubes, by excluding the air, I have developed the
bacilli. Why, Walter," he went on, seriously, "those are among the microbes most
dreaded in the infection of wounds. The spores live in the earth, it has been discovered,
especially in cultivated soil, and they are extraordinarily long-lived, lying dormant for
years, waiting for a chance to develop. These rods you saw are only from five to fifteen
thousandths of a millimeter long and not more than one- thousandth of a millimeter
broad.
"You can't see them move here, because the air has paralyzed them. But these vibrios
move among the corpuscles of the blood just as a snake moves through the grass, to quote
Pasteur. If I colored them you would see that each is covered with fine vibrating hairs
three or four times as long as itself. At certain times an oval mass forms in them. That is
the spore which lives so long and is so hard to kill. It was the spores that were on the
bullet. They resist any temperature except comparatively high and prolonged, and even
resist antiseptics for a long time. On the surface of a wound they aren't so bad; but deep
in they distil minute gas bubbles, puff up the surrounding tissues, and are almost
impossible to combat."
As he explained what he had found, I could only stare at him while the diabolical nature
of the attack impressed itself on my mind. Some one had tried to murder Marlowe in this
most hideous way. No need to be an accurate marksman when a mere scratch from such a
bullet meant ultimate death anyhow.
Why had it been done and where had the cultures come from? I asked myself. I realized
fully the difficulty of trying to trace them. Any one could purchase germs, I knew. There
was no law governing the sale.
Craig was at work again over his microscope. Again he looked up at me. "Here on this
other film I find the same sort of wisp-like anaerobes," he announced. "There was the
same thing on those pieces of glass that I got."
In my horror at the discovery, I had forgotten the broken package that had come to the
hotel desk while we stood there.
"Then it was Gavira who was receiving spores and cultures of the anaerobes!" I
exclaimed, excitedly.
"But that doesn't prove that it was he who used them," cautioned Craig, adding, "not yet,
at least."
Important as the discoveries were which he had made, I was not much farther along in
fixing the guilt of anybody in particular in the case. Kennedy, however, did not seem to
be perturbed, though I wondered what theory he could have worked out.
"I think the best thing for us to do will be to run over to the Belleclaire," he decided as he
doffed his laboratory coat and carefully cleansed his hands in an antiseptic almost boiling
hot. "I should like to see Marlowe again, and, besides, there we can watch some of these
people around him."
Whom he meant other than Gavira I had no idea, but I felt sure that with the launching
now only a matter of hours something was bound to happen soon.
Marlowe was out when we arrived; in fact, had not yet returned from the yard. Nor had
many of the guests remained at the hotel during the day. Most of them had been out
sightseeing, though now they were returning, and as they began to gather in the hotel
parlor Marjorie was again called on to put them at their ease.
Fitzhugh had returned and had wasted no time dressing and getting down-stairs again to
be near Marjorie. Gavira also appeared, having been out on a case.
"I wish you would call up the shipyard, Walter," asked Kennedy, as we stood in the
lobby, where we could see best what was going on. "Tell him I would like to see him
very urgently."
I found the number and entered a booth, but, as often happens, the telephone central was
overwhelmed by the rush of early-evening calls, and after waiting some time the only
satisfaction I got was that the line was busy.
Meanwhile I decided to stick about the booth so