"Guy Fawkes himself would shudder in that mill. Think of it--five explosions on five
successive days, and not a clue!"
Our visitor had presented a card bearing the name of Donald MacLeod, chief of the
Nitropolis Powder Company's Secret Service. It was plain that he was greatly worried
over the case about which he had at last been forced to consult Kennedy.
As he spoke, I remembered having read in the despatches about the explosions, but the
accounts had been so meager that I had not realized that there was anything especially
unusual about them, for it was at the time when accidents in and attacks on the
munitions-plants were of common occurrence.
"Why," went on MacLeod, "the whole business is as mysterious as if there were some
phantom destroyer at work! The men are so frightened that they threaten to quit. Several
have been killed. There's something strange about that, too. There are ugly rumors of
poisonous gases being responsible, quite as much as the explosions, though, so far, I've
been able to find nothing in that notion."
"What sort of place is it?" asked Kennedy, interested at once.
"Well, you see," explained MacLeod, "since the company's business has increased so fast
lately, it has been forced to erect a new plant. Perhaps you have heard of the Old Grove
Amusement Park, which failed? It's not far from that."
MacLeod looked at us inquiringly, and Kennedy nodded to go on, though I am sure
neither of us was familiar with the place.
"They've called the new plant Nitropolis--rather a neat name for a powder-works, don't
you think?" resumed MacLeod. "Everything went along all right until a few days ago.
Then one of the buildings, a storehouse, was blown up. We couldn't be sure that it was an
accident, so we redoubled our precautions. It was of no use. That started it. The very next
day another building was blown up, then another, until now there have been five of them.
What may happen to-day Heaven only knows! I want to get back as soon as I can."
"Rather too frequent, I must admit, to be coincidences," remarked Kennedy.
"No; they can't all be accidents," asserted MacLeod, confidently. "There's too great
regularity for that. I think I've considered almost everything. I don't see how they can be
from bombs placed by workmen. At least, it's not a bit likely. Besides, the explosions all
occur in broad daylight, not at night. We're very careful about the men we employ, and
they're watched all the time. The company has a guard of its own, twenty-five picked
men, under me--all honorably discharged United States army men."
"You have formed no theory of your own?" queried Kennedy.
MacLeod paused, then drew from his pocket the clipping of a despatch from the front in
which one of the war correspondents reported the destruction of wire entanglements with
heat supposed to have been applied by the use of reflecting mirrors.
"I'm reduced to pure speculation," he remarked. "To-day they seem to be reviving all the
ancient practices. Maybe some one is going at it like Archimedes."
"Not impossible," returned Craig, handing back the clipping. "Buffon tested the
probability of the achievement of Archimedes in setting fire to the ships of Marcellus
with mirrors and the sun's rays. He constructed a composite mirror of a hundred and
twenty- eight plane mirrors, and with it he was able to ignite wood at two hundred and
ten feet. However, I shrewdly suspect that, even if this story is true, they are using
hydrogen or acetylene flares over there. But none of these things would be feasible in
your case. You'd know it."
"Could it be some one who is projecting a deadly wireless force which causes the
explosions?" I put in, mindful of a previous case of Kennedy's. "We all know that
inventors have been working for years on the idea of making explosives obsolete and
guns junk. If some one has hit on a way of guiding an electric wave through the air and
concentrating power at a point, munitions-plants could be wiped out."
MacLeod looked anxiously from me to Kennedy, but Craig betrayed nothing by his face
except his interest.
"Sometimes I have imagined I heard a peculiar, faint, whirring noise in the air," he
remarked, thoughtfully. "I thought of having the men on the watch for air-ships, but
they've never seen a trace of one. It might be some power either like this," he added,
shaking the clipping, "or like that which Mr. Jameson suggests."
"It's something like that you meant, I presume, when you called it a 'phantom destroyer' a
moment ago?" asked Kennedy.
MacLeod nodded.
"If you're interested," he pursued, hastily, "and feel like going down there to look things
over, I think the best place for you to go would be to the Sneddens'. They're some people
who have seen a chance to make a little money out of the boom. Many visitors are now
coming and going on business connected with the new works. They have started a
boarding-house--or, rather, Mrs. Snedden has. There's a daughter, too, who seems to be
very popular." Kennedy glanced whimsically at me.
"Well, Walter," he remarked, tentatively, "entirely aside from the young lady, this ought
to make a good story for the Star."
"Indeed it ought!" I replied, enthusiastically.
"Then you'll go down to Nitropolis?" queried MacLeod, eagerly. "You can catch a train
that will get you there about noon. And the company will pay you well."
"MacLeod, with the mystery, Miss Snedden, and the remuneration, you are irresistible,"
smiled Kennedy.
"Thank you," returned the detective. "You won't regret it. I can't tell you how much
relieved I feel to have some one else, and, above all, yourself, on the case. You can get a
train in half an hour. I think it would be best for you to go as though you had no
connection with me--at least for the present."
Kennedy agreed, and MacLeod excused himself, promising to be on the train, although
not to ride with us, in case we should be the target of too inquisitive eyes.
For a few moments, while our taxicab was coming, Kennedy considered thoughtfully
what the company detective had said. By the time the vehicle arrived he had hurriedly
packed up some apparatus in two large grips, one of which it fell to my lot to carry.
The trip down to Nitropolis was uninteresting, and we arrived at the little station shortly
after noon. MacLeod was on the train, but did not speak to us, and it was perhaps just as
well, for the cabmen and others hanging about the station were keenly watching new
arrivals, and any one with MacLeod must have attracted attention. We selected or were,
rather, selected by one of the cabmen and driven immediately to the Snedden house. Our
cover was, as Craig and I had decided, to pose as two newspaper men from New York,
that being the easiest way to account for any undue interest we might show in things.
The powder-company's plant was situated on a large tract of land which was surrounded
by a barbed-wire fence, six feet high and constructed in a manner very similar to the
fences used in protecting prison-camps in war-times. At various places along the several
miles of fence gates were placed, with armed guards. Many other features were
suggestive of war-times. One that impressed us most was that each workman had to carry
a pass similar, almost, to a passport. This entire fence, we learned, was patrolled day and
night by armed guards.
A mile or so from the plant, or just outside the main gate, quite a settlement had grown
up, like a mushroom, almost overnight--the product of a flood of new money. Originally,
there had been only one house for some distance about--that of the Sneddens. But now
there were scores of houses, mostly those of officials and managers, some of them really
pretentious affairs. MacLeod himself lived in one of them, and we could see him ahead of
us, being driven home.
The workmen lived farther along the line, in a sort of company town, which at present
greatly resembled a Western mining-camp, though ultimately it was to be a bungalow
town.
Just at present, however, it was the Snedden house that interested us most, for we felt the
need of getting ourselves established in this strange community. It was an old-fashioned
farm-house and had been purchased very cheaply by Snedden several years before. He
had altered it and brought it up to date, and the combination of old and new proved to be
typical of the owner as well as of the house.
Kennedy carried off well the critical situation of our introduction, and we found ourselves
welcomed rather than scrutinized as intruders.
Garfield Snedden was much older than his second wife, Ida. In fact, she did not seem to
be much older than Snedden's daughter Gertrude, whom MacLeod had already
mentioned--a dashing young lady, never intended by nature to vegetate in the rural
seclusion that her father had sought before the advent of the powder-works. Mrs.
Snedden was one of those capable women who can manage a man without his knowing
it. Indeed, one felt that Snedden, who was somewhat of both student and dreamer, needed
a manager.
"I'm glad your train was on time," bustled Mrs. Snedden. "Luncheon will be ready in a
few moments now."
We had barely time to look about before Gertrude led us into the dining-room and
introduced us to the other boarders.
Knowing human nature, Kennedy was careful to be struck with admiration and
amazement at everything we had seen in our brief whirl through Nitropolis. It was not a
difficult or entirely assumed feeling, either, when one realized that, only a few short
months before, the region had been nothing better than an almost hopeless wilderness of
scrub-pines.
We did not have to wait long before the subject uppermost in our minds was brought up--
the explosions.
Among the boarders there were at least two who, from the start, promised to be
interesting as well as important. One was a tall, slender chap named Garretson, whose
connection with the company, I gathered from the conversation, took him often on
important matters to New York. The other was an older man, Jackson, who seemed to be
connected with the management of the works, a reticent fellow, more given to listening to
others than to talking himself.
"Nothing has happened so far to-day, anyhow," remarked Garretson, tapping the back of
his chair with his knuckle, as a token of respect for that evil spirit who seems to be
exorcised by knocking wood.
"Oh," exclaimed Gertrude, with a little half-suppressed shudder, "I do hope those terrible
explosions are at last over!"
"If I had my way," asserted Garretson, savagely, "I'd put this town under martial law until
they WERE over."
"It may come to that," put in Jackson, quietly.
"Quite in keeping with the present tendency of the age," agreed Snedden, in a tone of
philosophical disagreement.
"I don't think it makes much difference how you accomplish the result, Garfield," chimed
in his wife, "as long as you accomplish it, and it is one that should be accomplished."
Snedden retreated into the refuge of silence. Though this was only a bit of the
conversation, we soon found out that he was an avowed pacifist. Garretson, on the other
hand, was an ardent militarist, a good deal of a fire-eater. I wondered whether there might
not be a good deal of the poseur about him, too.
It needed no second sight to discover that both he and Gertrude were deeply interested in
each other. Garretson was what Broadway would call "a live one," and, though there is
nothing essentially wrong in that, I fancied that I detected, now and then, an almost
maternal solicitude on the part of her stepmother, who seemed to be watching both the
young man and her husband alternately. Once Jackson and Mrs. Snedden exchanged
glances. There seemed to be some understanding between them.
The time to return to the works was approaching, and we all rose. Somehow, Gertrude
and Garretson seemed naturally to gravitate toward the door together.
Some distance from the house there was a large barn. Part of it had been turned into a
garage, where Garretson kept a fast car. Jackson, also, had a roadster. In fact, in this new
community, with its superabundant new wealth, everybody had a car.
Kennedy and I sauntered out after the rest. As we turned an angle of the house we came
suddenly upon Garretson in his racer, talking to Gertrude. The crunch of the gravel under
our feet warned them before we saw them, but not before we could catch a glimpse of a
warning finger on the rosy lips of Gertrude. As she saw us she blushed ever so slightly.
"You'll be late!" she cried, hastily. "Mr. Jackson has been gone five minutes."
"On foot," returned Garretson, nonchalantly. "I'll overtake him in thirty seconds."
Nevertheless, he did not wait longer, but swung up the road at a pace which was the
admiration of all speed-loving Nitropolitans.
Craig had ordered our taxicab driver to stop for us after lunch, and, without exciting
suspicion, managed to stow away the larger part of the contents of our grips in his car.
Still without openly showing our connection with MacLeod, Kennedy sought out the
manager of the works, and, though scores of correspondents and reporters from various
newspapers had vainly applied for permission to inspect the plant, somehow we seemed
to receive the freedom of the place and without exciting suspicion. Craig's first move was
to look the plant over. As we approached it our attention was instantly attracted to the
numerous one-story galvanized-iron buildings that appeared to stretch endlessly in every
direction. They seemed to be of a temporary nature, though the power-plants, offices, and
other necessary buildings were very substantially built. The framework of the factory-buildings was nothing but wood, covered by iron sheathing, and even the sides seemed to
be removable. The floors, however, were of concrete.
"They serve their purpose well," observed Kennedy, as we picked our way about.
"Explosions at powder-mills are frequent, anyhow. After an explosion there is very little
debris to clear away, as you may imagine. These buildings are easily repaired or replaced,
and they keep a large force of men for these purposes, as well as materials for any
emergency."
One felt instinctively the hazard of the employment. Everywhere were signs telling what
not and what to do. One that stuck in my mind was, "It is better to be careful than sorry."
Throughout the plant at frequent intervals were first-aid stations with kits for all sorts of
accidents, including respirators, for workmen were often overcome by ether or alcohol
fumes. Everything was done to minimize the hazard, yet one could not escape the
conviction that human life and limb were as much a cost of production in this industry as
fuel and raw material.
Once, in our wanderings about the plant, I recall we ran across both Garretson and
Jackson in one of the offices. They did not see us, but seemed to be talking very earnestly
about something. What it was we could not guess, but this time it seemed to be Jackson
who was doing most of the talking. Kennedy watched them as they parted.
"There's something peculiar under the surface with those people at the boarding-house,"
was all he observed. "Come; over there, about an eighth of a mile, I think I see evidences
of the latest of the explosions. Let's look at it."
MacLeod had evidently reasoned that, sooner of later, Kennedy would appear in this part
of the grounds, and as we passed one of the shops he joined us.
"You mentioned something about rumors of poisonous gases," hinted Craig, as we
walked along.
"Yes," assented MacLeod; "I don't know what there is in it. I suppose you know that
there is a very poisonous gas, carbon monoxide, or carbonic oxide, formed in
considerable quantity by the explosion of several of the powders commonly used in
shells. The gas has the curious power of combining with the blood and refusing to let go,
thus keeping out the oxygen necessary for life. It may be that that is what accounts for
what we've seen-- that it is actual poisoning to death of men not killed by the immediate
explosion."
We had reached the scene of the previous day's disaster. No effort had yet been made to
clear it up. Kennedy went over it carefully. What it was he found I do not know, but he
had not spent much time before he turned to me.
"Walter," he directed, "I wish you would go back to the office near the gate, where I left
that paraphernalia we brought down. Carry it over--let me see--there's an open space
there on that knoll. I'll join you there."
Whatever was in the packages was both bulky and heavy, and I was glad to reach the
hillside he had indicated.
Craig was waiting for me there with MacLeod, and at once opened the packages. From
them he took a thin steel rod, which he set up in the center of the open space. To it he
attached a frame and to the frame what looked like four reversed megaphones. Attached
to the frame, which was tubular, was an oak box with a little arrangement of hard rubber
and metal which fitted into the ears. For some time Kennedy's face wore a set, far-away
expression, as if he were studying something.
"The explosions seem always to occur in the middle of the afternoon," observed
MacLeod, fidgeting apprehensively.
Kennedy motioned petulantly for silence. Then suddenly he pulled the tubes out of his
ears and gazed about sharply.
"There's something in the air!" he cried. "I can hear it!"
MacLeod and I strained our eyes. There was nothing visible.
"This is an anti-aircraft listening-post, such as the French use," explained Craig,
hurriedly. "Between the horns and the microphone in the box you can catch the hum of an
engine, even when it is muffled. If there's an aeroplane or a Zeppelin about, this thing
would locate it."
Still, there was nothing that we could see, though now the sound was just perceptible to
the ear if one strained his attention a bit. I listened. It was plain in the detector; yet
nothing was visible. What strange power could it be that we could not see or feel in broad
daylight?
Just then came a low rumbling, and then a terrific roar from the direction of the plant. We
swung about in time to see a huge cloud of debris lifted literally into the air above the
tree-tops and dropped to earth again. The silence that succeeded the explosion was
eloquent. The phantom destroyer had delivered his blow again.
"The distillery--where we make the denatured alcohol!" cried MacLeod, gazing with
tense face as from other buildings, we could see men pouring forth, panic-stricken, and
the silence was punctured by shouts. Kennedy bent over his detector.
"That same mysterious buzzing," he muttered, "only fainter."
Together we hastened now toward the distillery, another of those corrugated-iron
buildings. It had been completely demolished. Here and there lay a dark, still mass. I
shuddered. They were men!
As we ran toward the ruin we crossed a baseball-field which the company had given the
men. I looked back for Kennedy. He had paused at the wire backstop behind the catcher.
Something caught in the wires interested him. By the time I reached him he had secured
it--a long, slender metal tube, cleverly weighted so as to fall straight.
"Not a hundred per cent. of hits, evidently," he muttered. "Still, one was enough."
"What is it?" asked MacLeod.
"An incendiary pastille. On contact, the nose burns away anything it hits, goes right
through corrugated iron. It carries a charge of thermit ignited by this piece of magnesium
ribbon. You know what thermit will penetrate with its thousands of degrees of heat. Only
the nose of this went through the netting and never touched a thing. This didn't explode
anything, but another one did. Thousands of gallons of alcohol did the rest."
Kennedy had picked up his other package as we ran, and was now busily unwrapping it. I
looked about at the crowd that had collected, and saw that there was nothing we could do
to help. Once I caught sight of Gertrude's face. She was pale, and seemed eagerly
searching for some one. Then, in the crowd, I lost her. I turned to MacLeod. He was
plainly overwhelmed. Kennedy was grimly silent and at work on something he had
jammed into the ground.
"Stand back!" he cautioned, as he touched a match to the thing. With a muffled
explosion, something whizzed and shrieked up into the air like a sky-rocket.
Far above, I could now see a thing open out like a parachute, while below it trailed
something that might have been the stick of the rocket. Eagerly Kennedy followed the
parachute as the wind wafted it along and it sank slowly to the earth. When, at last, he
recovered it I saw that between the parachute and the stick was fastened a small, peculiar
camera.
"A Scheimpflug multiple camera," he explained as he seized it almost ravenously. "Is
there a place in town where I can get the films in this developed quickly?"
MacLeod, himself excited now, hurried us from the scene of the explosion to a local
drug-store, which combined most of the functions of a general store, even being able to
improvise a dark- room in which Kennedy could work.
It was some time after the excitement over the explosion had quieted down that MacLeod
and I, standing impatiently before the drug-store, saw Snedden wildly tearing down the
street in his car. He saw us and pulled up at the curb with a jerk.
"Where's Gertrude?" he shouted, wildly. "Has any one seen my daughter?"
Breathlessly he explained that he had been out, had returned to find his house deserted,
Gertrude gone, his wife gone, even Jackson's car gone from the barn. He had been to the
works. Neither Garretson nor Jackson had been seen since the excitement of the
explosion, they told him. Garretson's racer was gone, too. There seemed to have been a
sort of family explosion, also.
Kennedy had heard the loud talking and had left his work to the druggist to carry on and
joined us. There was no concealment now of our connection with MacLeod, for it was to
him that every one in town came when in trouble.
In almost no time, so accurately did he keep his fingers on the fevered pulse of
Nitropolis, MacLeod had found out that Gertrude had been seen driving away from the
company's grounds with some one in Garretson's car, probably Garretson himself.
Jackson had been seen hurrying down the street. Some one else had seen Ida Snedden in
Jackson's car, alone.
Meanwhile, over the wire, MacLeod had sent out descriptions of the four people and the
two cars, in the hope of intercepting them before they could be plunged into the obscurity
of any near-by city. Not content with that, MacLeod and Kennedy started out in the
former's car, while I climbed in with Snedden, and we began a systematic search of the
roads out of Nitropolis.
As we sped along, I could not help feeling, though I said nothing, that, somehow, the
strange disappearances must have something to do with the mysterious phantom
destroyer. I did not tell even Snedden about the little that Kennedy had discovered, for I
had learned that it was best to let Craig himself tell, at his own time and in his own way.
But the man seemed frantic in his search, and I could not help the impression that there
was something, perhaps only a suspicion, that he knew which might shed some light.
We were coming down the river, or, rather, the bay, after a fruitless search of
unfrequented roads and were approaching the deserted Old Grove Amusement Park, to
which excursions used, years ago, to come in boats. No one could make it pay, and it was
closed and going to ruin. There had been some hint that Garretson's racer might have
disappeared down this unfrequented river road.
As we came to a turn in the road, we could see Kennedy and MacLeod in their car,
coming up. Instead of keeping on, however, they turned into the grove, Kennedy leaning
far over the running-board as MacLeod drove slowly, following his directions, as though
Craig were tracing something.
With a hurried exclamation of surprise, Snedden gave our car the gas and shot ahead,
swinging around after them. They were headed, following some kind of tire-tracks,
toward an old merry-go-round that was dismantled and all boarded up. They heard us
coming and stopped.
"Has any one told you that Garretson's car went down the river road, too?" called
Snedden, anxiously.
"No; but some one thought he saw Jackson's car come down here," called back MacLeod.
"Jackson's?" exclaimed Snedden.
"Maybe both are righ