The unknown seven A detective story
on the point of going down to look for you.”
“Is there a man on the staff who understands ciphers?” inquired Cole,
taking the lawyer’s arm and hurrying him down from the roof.
“Ciphers? Why, yes. Findlay Abbott is one of the best cipher experts in
the country. What do you want of him?”
“Find him and send him to my office,” said Cole hurriedly. Leaving the
bewildered lawyer several paces behind, he ran down the corridor and
entered his office. He had been there only a few moments when Abbott, a
fat and pink-faced little man, trundled in. Behind him walked Carlin.
Cole took the letters from his pocket and handed them to the expert.
“See if you can make anything out of these, Abbott,” he directed. “All
I know about them is that they are so important to one man that he was
ready to shoot me on account of them. They may be in code.”
Abbott looked as though he relished the task. He sat down, wiped his
spectacles, and fell to work. In the meantime Cole told the lawyer of
the episode in room 2512.
Carlin’s eyes popped as he listened. He glanced with keen interest
at the papers under Abbott’s nose. “You don’t think the offices of
the Bureau of Civic Research are the headquarters of the gang we are
fighting?”
“No,” said Cole thoughtfully. “In the morning you might inquire of
your agent how long the bureau has been located there. From what I
saw, though, it looked as though the concern was on the square. It’s
more likely that certain parties are using the offices as a listening
post, because of their close proximity to this establishment. Knowing
that we are fighting them, those fellows naturally want to find out how
much we know and what our plans are. I have a strong suspicion that the
dictaphone wires ran into the rooms below. What do you make of those
letters, Abbott?”
But Abbott was too deeply engrossed in his task to hear the question.
The other two watched him in silence for a time. His puckered brow told
that the letters presented a knotty problem. Finally he looked up.
“No code here,” he declared. “These are just ordinary letters.”
“Sure of that?” demanded Cole sharply.
“As sure as one can be of anything. I’ll wager my salary for the next
ten years that these are just plain letters.”
“Then why did Carmody——” Cole suddenly gave the desk a resounding
thwack. A light of comprehension dawned in his eyes. “I take my hat
off to the professor. He is a slick little trickster. He wanted to get
me away from there, having private business to attend to, and so he
pulled the wool over my eyes and made me think that these letters were
a matter of life or death. Carlin, I’m a boob!”
He bounded from the office, leaving the lawyer and Abbott to stare
at each other. He was angry, but only with himself. For the crafty
professor he felt an unwilling admiration, but he was also determined
not to let Carmody have the last laugh.
The discovery that Englebreth’s letters were genuine had given him a
sharp mental jolt. A suspicion had been gradually assuming shape and
clarity in his mind, but the cipher expert’s report had uprooted it
completely. All that those letters now meant to Cole was a wasted hour
and a sense of humiliation.
He hurried up to the roof, then down the fire escape, and soon he
stood once more outside the door of room 2512. Carmody had had ample
time to dispose of whatever business had brought him there, but it was
just possible that he had not yet left, so Cole entered as quietly as
he could. The moment he closed the door behind him he knew he was too
late. The light that appeared at his touch on the button revealed two
empty rooms.
Cole moved forward, looking sharply over walls and behind furniture.
Perhaps Carmody had accidentally left some clew to his mysterious
errand. It was even possible that Cole might get an inkling as to the
discovery that had cost McKendrick his life. He searched carefully, but
at first with no results. There were fresh, but very faint, footprints
on the floor, and he could easily locate the spot where he and Carmody
had stood, while the professor was pointing the pistol at him. Which
way had Carmody turned after Cole left the offices? The footprints
reached to the door and then back into the inner office. Evidently
Carmody had locked himself in before attending to his errand. With some
difficulty Cole traced the faint marks across the floor, muttering a
short exclamation when he found that they led straight to the safe,
standing in a corner of the room.
Cole had given the safe only a cursory glance on his previous visit
to the office. Carmody’s entrance had prevented him from making a
more careful examination. Now he saw that the safe was one of the best
and latest makes. There was a look of freshness about the blue steel
surface and the bright nickel trimmings which suggested it had not
been there long. He remembered that this particular brand of safe, in
addition to its other advertised merits, was supposed to be air-tight
and absolutely burglar proof. It seemed rather large for a concern
whose affairs were transacted in two small rooms, but, perhaps, it had
been selected with a view to growing needs.
The course of the footprints made it plain that Carmody’s errand had
been related to the safe in some way, but that was as far as Cole’s
deductions reached. Whether the professor had removed something from
the steel box, or put something in, he had no means of knowing, and the
locked door prevented him from gratifying his curiosity on that point.
It did not stop him from exercising his imagination, however. With a
grim nod and a tightening of the lips he made a guess in regard to
Carmody’s business with the safe.
There was nothing more he could do for the present, so he made his
way back to the headquarters of The Unknown Seven. In the hall he met
Carlin.
“Well?” asked the lawyer. “Found out anything?”
“The more I find out about this case the less I know,” confessed Cole.
“All the same, I think I know what it was McKendrick saw that cost him
his life.”
Carlin’s brows came up.
“But I’m not going to tell you what it was,” Cole added quickly. “I may
be mistaken, you see, and I don’t propose to jeopardize my reputation
with you. By the way, there’s a new safe in number 2512, as nifty an
article of that kind as I ever saw. Pretty good size, too. Big enough
for a man of your dimensions to sit down in, Carlin.”
“You’re not going to ask me to crawl into it, I hope?”
“No, nothing like that. I just have a hunch that in the morning that
safe is going to be taken out of 2512.”
“Anything unusual in that?”
“Nothing at all, and that’s just what certain parties are counting
on, I think. There are times when it is expedient to do the unusual
thing under cover of the usual. I want you to detail a man to see what
happens to that safe, Carlin.”
The lawyer nodded, but in the next instant his eyes opened wide in
astonishment. “You don’t think that——”
“As I said before,” Cole interrupted, “I don’t care to risk my
reputation on a guess that may prove unfounded. Seen anything of
Ballinger lately?”
“Not for half an hour or so. Been busy in the main office.”
Cole gave him a keen glance. “What’s the matter, Carlin? You look
worried.”
The lawyer forced a smile. “It’s just a—a premonition. I guess that’s
what you would call it. I have a feeling that the gang knows we are
closing in around them, and that they are getting ready to cash in. We
must strike quickly, or it will be too late.”
“I don’t know but what you are right. I’ve felt something of the same
kind myself. We must not only strike quickly, but with both fists.” As
if he had meant it literally, Cole looked down at his clenched hands.
“But where, Cole? Where are we going to strike? We don’t know who the
leader of the gang is. That is, we can’t be sure. We don’t know where
the plant is located. We don’t even know——”
“You make me dizzy,” said Cole with a chuckle, and then he turned
abruptly and walked into his private office. There he pressed a button,
and in a few moments Sambo entered.
“Ask Miss Brownell to step in here,” Cole told the big negro.
Sambo’s eyes opened wide, showing a generous expanse of white. “Why,
she done lef’ a hour ago, sah. She went out in a mighty rush, too.”
“Sure of that, Sambo?”
“Course I’s sure. I seed her mahself. It was just after Doc Ballinger
lef’, sah.”
“Doctor Ballinger?”
“Yes, sah. The doc looked lahk he was wurried. The wurriedest man I
eveh seed, sah. He tried not to let on, but he didn’t fool mah a-tall,
sah.”
“And you say Miss Brownell left shortly afterward?”
“Yes, sah. Not more’n a minute, sah.”
Cole jumped up from his chair. For a moment he stared at the gigantic
negro, then waved a hand in dismissal. He had instructed Miss Brownell
to put one of the men on Ballinger’s trail, in case the physician
should go out. Now it seemed evident that the girl herself had started
out to shadow the doctor. Cole could only hope that her audacity would
not lead her into trouble. His acquaintance with women had been only
casual, and he had an impression that they either fainted in a crisis,
or else burst into tears. Miss Brownell was, of course, a variant from
the usual type, but just the same——
Cole sat down again. After all, he could do nothing for the present,
and Miss Brownell seemed to have a surprising capacity for taking care
of herself. He would stay close to the telephone, and, in due time,
she would undoubtedly call him up. He waited, but the instrument at
his side remained tantalisingly silent. When at length it shrilled a
summons, he jumped nervously.
But the person calling was not Miss Brownell. Instead, it was Sloane,
the operative whom Cole had detailed to watch Doctor Latham’s
residence. Latham and the hunchback had been far from his mind for
several hours.
“What is it, Sloane?” he asked quietly.
Sloane reported that for the last hour a mysterious light had appeared
at intervals in one of the windows of the doctor’s house. It might mean
anything or nothing, and Sloane did not know what to make of it, so he
was telephoning in for instructions.
“Stay where you are,” Cole told him. “I’ll be with you in a little
while.”
For a few moments longer he sat at the desk, his mind working quickly.
It was just possible that at Latham’s house he would find some clew to
the movements of Ballinger and Miss Brownell. There was a fog in his
mind, the result of too many conflicting developments, but there were a
few things that seemed clear.
Soon he was out on the street. In less than half an hour he reached
the corner nearest Latham’s house and walked east on the opposite side
of the street. He cast sharp glances into the shadows along the row of
buildings. Suddenly he stopped. “Sloane,” he said in a low tone.
The scholarly looking operative stepped out of a gloomy doorway. “Glad
you came, sir,” he whispered. “Things look queer.”
“What about the light you mentioned?”
“It comes and goes, every two minutes or so. Look! There it is!”
He pointed to a window on the second floor of the physician’s
residence. A small, flickering light had just appeared. It wavered
for a few moments, then faded out. The two men waited in silence, and
presently the mysterious light came back. All the other windows were
dark, and the solitary glow had an eerie look.
“Stay here,” said Cole. “Don’t move unless I signal you by whistling
three times from one of the windows.”
Briskly he crossed the street. A bunch of skeleton keys rattled in his
hand, as he vanished from sight in the dark basement entrance.
CHAPTER XIX
A WARNING
Very softly Cole crept up the stairs. On the ground floor he stopped