The Stolen War Secret/Chapter 7

ATE as it was, Kennedy insisted on plunging into work in his laboratory. To all appearances the mescal had had no great effect upon him, and indeed I myself felt nothing except a lassitude which I knew I could overcome by an effort of will, if the occasion demanded.

I watched him indolently, however, and as nearly as I could make out he was working over what looked like an X-ray tube, though of a different pattern from any that I had seen before.

“What is that, Craig?” I asked at length, “an X-ray outfit?”

“Yes,” he replied scarcely looking up from the apparatus. “These are what are known as ‘low’ tubes. They give out the so-called ‘soft’ rays.”

He did not seem disposed to interrupt his work to talk and I kept silent, wondering why he was working so feverishly.

At last he was ready to go ahead and I was glad of it, for the pungent odor of ozone from the electrical discharge was not adding to my physical comfort.

Kennedy had placed the letter that had been addressed to Valcour in the machine, radiographed it, then rapidly laid aside the plate and placed another letter in it, repeating the process. The second letter, I observed, had been addressed to Sanchez and was postmarked Mexico City several days before. Quite eveidently [sic] Sanchez and the rest of the party had, in the suppressed excitement of the day and evening, neglected to look in the letter boxes to see whether there was anything for them. It was a fortunate opportunity of which Kennedy was taking advantage, though it aroused my curiosity to know just what he was doing.

I was on the point of breaking my silence and asking when he volunteered the explanation himself.

“The possibility of reading the contents of documents enclosed in a sealed envelope,” he explained, “has already been established by the well-known English X-ray expert, Dr. J. F. Hall-Edwards.

“Dr. Edwards has been experimenting with the method of using the Roentgen rays recently perfected by a German scientist. By this new method radiographs of very thin substances, such as a sheet of paper, a leaf, an insect’s body, may be obtained. These thin substances through which the rays used formerly to pass without leaving any trace on the sensitized plate can now be radiographed.”

He pointed to some examples of the work he had already done on other cases to show what results might be expected when he developed the plates in this. I looked closely. On the negatives it was easily possible to read the words inscribed on the sheet of paper inside the envelope. So admirably defined were all the details that even the gum on the envelope and the very edges of the folded sheets inside the envelope could be distinguished.

“Any letter written with ink having a mineral basis can be radiographed,” went on Craig, still working over those which he had abstracted from the cabaret. “Even when the sheet of paper is folded in the usual way it is possible by taking a radiograph stereoscopically, as I am doing, to distinguish the writing. Every detail stands out in relief. Besides, the pictures of the writing can be greatly magnified and, with the help of a mirror where it is backed up, what is written can be accurately read if you are careful.”

He had completed his work and it had taken only a few minutes to do it. As he finished he handed me the letters.

“Walter,” he said, “while I am going ahead here, I wish you would take that cab back again to the cabaret. Get in there again, if you can—make some excuse about having lost or forgotten something—then watch your chance and restore these letters to their pigeonholes before any one notices that they are gone. You needn’t come back. I have just a little more to do here and I’ll meet you at the apartment. I think by tomorrow that I shall have something interesting to show you.”

I hurried back to the Mexican cabaret and succeeded in getting past the look-out who was posted at the door after the regular closing time by telling him that I had made a mistake and taken the wrong hat when we left. He nodded and I mounted the stairs.

Down the hall I could hear sounds from the private dining-room that told me that the mescal party was still in progress. I did not wait, however, for to be seen again would certainly arouse suspicion. It was the work of only a moment to return the letters, and without being seen by any of the party I reached the street door again and with a smile bade the look-out good night.

Kennedy did not come in until some time after I reached the apartment, and then only because there was nothing else that he could accomplish that night.

HE WAS up early in the morning, looking eagerly at the papers, but there was nothing in them that had any bearing on the cases that interested us.

Kennedy was much excited when I met him later in the morning in the laboratory. He had been endeavoring to decipher the letter that had been written to Valcour.

“It was from Morelos,” he cried, showing me the copy as he had pieced it together from the radiogrph [sic].

Evidently it was written hastily the night of the tragedy, before the writer had heard of it. It read:

The note was, as Kennedy pointed out, signed “Morelos.”

“Burke has just called up,” he went on. “Fortunately I was able to read him the letter. He could make nothing of it. But he told me he had been making inquiries, both of the Government and among the newspapers that are best informed on Mexican affairs. Morelos is one of the rebel junta here in New York. They have a headquarters down on South Street, and as soon as we can get a chance I want to go down and look them over. Just at present, though, these letters seem to be the most important thing.”

Kennedy shoved over to me the copy, as he had made it out, of another of the letters.

“It is to Sanchez and arrived only today, after being delayed and crossing the ocean twice in order to get past our blockade down in Mexico. I think you will find that sufficiently interesting.”

The letter read, being written evidently from Mexico City:

As I finished reading I turned quickly to Kennedy.

“Some one down at that Mexican cabaret knows more about the death of Neumeyer than appears on the surface,” I remarked. “What do you suppose the inscription really was about?”

“Well,” considered Kennedy thoughtfully, “Mexico is full of historical treasure. As you might gather from the letter, the Government, to all intents and purposes, says to the scientist, ‘Come and dig.’ And then when he finds anything, the Government steps in and seizes the finds for its own national museum. The finder never gets a chance to keep his discoveries. It isn’t difficult to see that Neumeyer thought that this was the time to smuggle something out of the country.”

“Rather a dangerous proceeding, evidently,” I remarked, thinking of the tragedy that had overtaken the savant.

“Yes, even now it could not be done without exciting all kinds of rumors and suspicions.”

Kennedy read over the letter again.

“What do you suppose the inscription was about?” I asked.

“I can only guess,” he answered after a bit. “You recall the remark we overheard Neumeyer make the night we saw him and the letter Colonel Sinclair read us?”

I nodded.

“You have read of the wealth that Cortez found during his conquest of Mexico?” Kennedy went on. “Did it ever occur to you what had become of the gold and silver of the conquistadores?”

“Gone to the melting-pot, centuries ago,” I replied.

“Yes,” he argued. “But is there none left?”

He paused.

“The Indians believe so. Sinclair believes so. That, in my opinion, accounts in large measure for his interest in archeology of the brand that Neumeyer practised.”

“True,” I agreed. “Sinclair is above all a practical man.”

Kennedy looked at me abstractedly.

“There are persons,” he resumed, “who would stop at nothing—not even at the murder of German-American savants—murder of their own colleagues—to get such a secret.”

He had risen and was pacing the laboratory, thinking aloud.

“Yes,” he resumed, “there is a possible clue in that. Suppose some one had discovered the mysterious place where Montezuma or some of those other old kings obtained their gold, or better yet the place where they hid great quantities of it from the Spanish invaders? That place has never been revealed. I have heard a great deal about it, Some say it is in Guerrero, others in Cuernavaca, but there is no one who really knows.”

It was a fascinating thought.

“Then you think Neumeyer may have found the secret?” I asked.

“Possibly,” Craig answered. “It may have been gold—not ore, but actual bullion or golden ornaments, vessels, plates, anything—that Neumeyer was seeking to locate.”

“Could Sinclair have known the secret, too?” I asked, recalling now the intimacy between the two men, and the ill-concealed anxiety of Sinclair when we were looking over Neumeyer’s effects on the day of the murder.

“Quite likely,” acquiesced Kennedy. “I have had Burke watching Sinclair himself since he came to New York. I don’t know that the Colonel has been quite frank with us on everything.”

“Has he found anything?” I asked.

“Not when I called up this morning,” replied Kennedy. “Sinclair has seen no one since we left him except Mrs. Hawley.”

“Perhaps she had ambitions to learn the secret too,” I put in.

“She called on him; he did not call on her,” volunteered Kennedy.

“What of Alvarez?” I asked.

“A man of rare ability,” remarked Kennedy, “a past master at the art of intrigue. Sanchez is a typical soldier of fortune, but Alvarez has the polish of the man of the world. Burke tells me he is one of the most trusted of the agents of the Federal Government. He has been in New York only a few days. But as far as I can see there isn’t much to connect him with the case.”

Kennedy had been clearing away his X-ray apparatus and was still revolving the matter of the letters in his mind.

“There may be something more to it than even the stolen plans of Sinclair’s machine and this conjecture of buried treasure,” he remarked at length, when he had finished. “Alvarez evidently has an eye on international relations. I wonder if we can’t get a line on him in that way? We must find that curio-shop of Nichi’s.”

He had reached for the telephone-book.

“Here it is,” he remarked, as he ran his finger down the list of N’s. “It’s a slender chance, but let us go down and look over the yellow peril.”