The Stolen War Secret/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE SECRET SERVICE
WE HAD scarcely turned down the street when I noticed that a man in a slouch-hat, pulled down over his eyes, was walking toward us.
As he passed I thought he peered out at us suspiciously from under the shelter of the hat.
He turned and followed us a step or two.
“Kennedy!” he exclaimed.
If a fourteen-inch gun had been fired off directly behind us, I could not have been more startled. Here, in spite of all our haste and secrecy, we were followed, watched—even known.
Craig had wheeled about suddenly, prepared for anything.
For an instant we looked at the man, wondering what to expect next from him.
“By Jove! Walter!” exclaimed Kennedy, almost before I had time to take in the situation. “It’s Burke of the Secret Service!”
“The same,” greeted a now familiar voice. “How are you?” he asked joining us and walking slowly down the street.
“Working on a case,” replied Kennedy colorlessly, meantime searching Burke’s face to discover whether it might be to our advantage to take him in on the secret.
“How did you come here?”
We had turned the corner and were standing in the deserted street near an electric light. Burke unfolded a newspaper which he had rolled up and was carrying in his hand.
“These newspaper fellows don’t let much get past them,” he said with a nod and a twinkle of his eye toward me. “I suppose you have seen this?”
He handed us a “war” extra.
We had not seen it, for our prolonged stay in the Mexican cabaret had, for the time being at least, superseded the interest which had taken us into the Vanderveer in the first place to look at the ticker. In the meantime an enterprising newspaper had rushed out its late edition with an extra.
Across the top of the page in big red-ink letters sprawled the headline:
WAR SECRETS STOLEN
The news account, in a little box at the bottom of the page where it had evidently been dropped in at the last moment, was also in red. It was meager, but exciting:
Plans which represent the greatest war secret of the Government have been stolen, it was learned today semi-officially in Washington.
The entire machinery of the Secret Service has been put into operation to recover the stolen documents.
Just what the loss is could not be learned by our correspondent from any one in authority, but the general activity of both the Secret Service and the War College seems to confirm the rumors current in the capital tonight.
As nearly as can be ascertained, it is believed that the information, if it has fallen into the hands of the Mexican Government, may prove particularly dangerous, and, while official Washington is either denying or minimizing the loss, it is reported indirectly that if the truth were known it would arouse great public concern.
That was all. Only pressure of time and the limited space of the box in which the news appeared had prevented its elaboration into a column or two of conjecture.
“What were the plans?” both Craig and I asked almost together as we read the extra. “Is that what brings you to New York?”
Burke leaned over to us excitedly and though there was no possibility of being overheard whispered hoarsely—
“I couldn’t have met any one I’d rather see just at this very moment.”
He regarded us frankly a few seconds, then queried—
“You remember that case we had where the anarchist used wireless?”
“Yes,” replied Kennedy, “telautomatics—exploding bombs at long range by Hertzian wave impulses.”
“Exactly. Well—this case goes far beyond even that,” pursued Burke with another glance around. “I need not ask you fellows if I can trust you. We understand each other.” He lowered his voice even more. “The secret that has been stolen is the wireless control of aeroplanes and aerial torpedoes. They use a gyroscope in it—and—oh—I don’t know anything much about mechanics,” he added floundering hopelessly, “but I do know about crime and criminals, and there is some big criminal at work here. That’s in my line, even if I don’t know much about science.”
“Where were the plans stolen?” asked Kennedy. “Surely not from the Government itself in Washington?”
“No,” answered Burke. “They were stolen out on Long Island, at Westport. Colonel Sinclair, the retired army engineer, had a model”
“Colonel Sinclair?” broke in Kennedy, in turn surprised.
“Yes. You know him?”
Burke looked at Craig for a moment as if he were positively uncanny, and perhaps knew all about what the Secret Service man was about to say, even before he had said it.
Kennedy smiled.
“Not personally,” he replied. “But I have run across him in connection with a case which I am interested in. I understood that he was a friend of a Madame Valcour who has just been discovered dead up at the Vanderveer. It is a most mysterious case. She”
“Madame Valcour?” interrupted Burke, now in turn himself surprised. “What sort of looking woman was she?”
Kennedy described her briefly, and ran over as much of the case as he felt it prudent to talk about at present.
“She’s one of the very persons I’m trying to get a line on!” ejaculated Burke. “There’s a sort of colony of Latin-Americans out there, across the bay from Sinclair’s. Sinclair knew her—had been automobiling and motor-boating with her. And she’s dead, you say?”
Kennedy nodded.
“Only my old friend the coroner, Dr. Leslie, stands in the way of saying how and by what,” he confirmed impatiently. “What do you know about her?”
Burke had fallen into a study.
“I suspected some of those people out there at Seaville,” he resumed slowly. “I found out that when they are in the city they usually drop in at that Mexican cabaret down the street.”
“We have just come from it,” interjected Kennedy.
“There seemed to be hardly any of them left out at Seaville,” went on Burke. “If any of them has pulled off anything, they have all come to New York for cover. My people at Washington hurried me up to Westport first, and after I looked over the ground I saw nothing to do but come back to New York to watch these Mexicans. I am told they make a sort of rendezvous out of this cabaret.”
“That’s strange,” considered Kennedy thoughtfully.
“Whom did you meet in the cabaret?” asked Burke.
“We just went in, like any other sightseers,” replied Craig. “There was a Señora Ruiz, dancing there”
“Yes,” put in Burke. “She lives out there at Seaville. Has a cottage on the hill back of the hotel which she had leased for the season. Any one else?”
“There was a man named Sanchez.”
“Another one,” added Burke excitedly. “He stayed at the hotel—jealous as the the deuce of Valcour, too, they say. She was stopping at the hotel. You can imagine that Sanchez and Sinclair are not—well—just exactly pals,” finished Burke. “Any one else?”
“Oh, several others,” said Kennedy. “We were introduced and sat next to a Mrs. Hawley.”
“She’s a peculiar woman, as nearly as I can learn,” remarked Burke. “I don’t think she liked Valcour much. I haven’t been able to make out yet whether it was just because her interests were similar to those of Sinclair or whether there was something more to it, but if the Colonel would only say the word, I guess she wouldn’t stop long in saying ‘Yes.’ You see, I’ve only started on the case—just got into New York and haven’t had a chance to see any of these people yet. I’m giving you only the impressions I got out there from the people I talked to. Sinclair, as nearly as I can make out, ‘loves the ladies,’ to quote the cabaret song to that effect, but I don’t think there is any particular lady.”
“It’s a peculiar situation,” chimed in Craig. “Señora Ruiz, it seemed to me, thinks that Sanchez is just about right. And he is a rather striking-looking fellow, too. There’s one person, though, Burke, that I didn’t see or hear about, who interests me. Did you hear anything about a chap named Morelos?”
“Morelos—Morelos,” repeated Burke. “The name is familiar. No—I didn’t hear anything about him, in this case. But—why, yes. He wouldn’t be with these people. He’s one of the Revolutionist junta, here in the city. These people are all Government supporters.”
“I thought as much,” agreed Kennedy. “But you know him?”
“I never had anything to do with him,” replied Burke. “But I believe the Government—our Government—has had a good deal of trouble with him about the embargo on arms, since it was reestablished. He has been shipping them down there when he gets a chance. I can find out all about him for you, though.”
“I wish you would,” said Craig, “but the plans—how did they happen to be in Westport? What connection did Sinclair have with them?”
“Well, you see, the thing was the invention of Colonel Sinclair,” explained Burke. “I saw him, and although I couldn’t get him to talk much about these people—I suppose he was afraid to, for fear of his interests in Mexico—he was ready enough to talk about his invention. He told me he had never patented it, that it was too valuable to patent. He has been working on it for years, and only recently perfected it. As soon as it seemed likely that there might eventually be hostilities, he took a trip to Washington and gave it outright to the Government.”
“Mighty patriotic,” I commented.
“Yes,” agreed Burke. “The Colonel is a big man all right. You see this was one of his hobbies. He has spent thousands of dollars of his own money on it. There were two sets of plans made—one which he took to Washington and one which he kept him self out on his estate on Long Island. His own plans out there are those that have been stolen, not the plans that he gave to the Government.”
“The Government had accepted them, then?” queried Craig.
“Yes, indeed. They sent experts up to look at his machine, went over the thing thoroughly. Oh, there is no doubt about it.”
“You certainly have made a good start,” commented Kennedy.
“I haven’t had much time, it’s true,” said Burke modestly. “Sinclair had Washington on long-distance as soon as he discovered the theft, and I was taken off a case and hustled up to Westport immediately, without much chance to find out what it was all about.”
“What did you find up there?” asked Kennedy.
Burke shook his head.
“As far as I can make out,” he answered, “it must have been a most remarkable theft. The plans were stolen from Sinclair’s safe, in his own library. And you can imagine that Sinclair is not the sort who would have an old-fashioned, antiquated safe, either. It was small, but one of the latest type.”
“What did they do—drill it or use soup?” cut in Craig.
“Neither, as far as I could see,” replied Burke. “That’s perhaps the most remarkable feature of the whole thing. How the fellow got into the safe is more than I can figure out. There wasn’t a mark of violence on it. Yet it had been opened. Not a soul in the world knew the combination except Sinclair, and he says that if he should happen to forget it or to die the safe would have to be drilled open. But they got in, nevertheless, and they seemed to know just what to take and the value that might be attached to it.”
As Burke proceeded with the details of the amazing case, Kennedy became more and more interested. For the moment, he forgot all about Valcour, or at least concluded that we had unexpectedly crossed a trail that would aid in the solution of that case.
BURKE had drawn from his capacious pocket a small but rather heavy apparatus, and, as we gathered about, displayed it under the light of the electric lamp overhead.
“Sinclair found this thing in his study the next morning,” he explained. “The thieves, whoever they were, must have left it in their hurry to get away after they found the plans.”
I looked at it uncomprehendingly. It was a small box, flattened so that it could be easily carried in a coat-pocket.
Craig opened it. Inside was what seemed to be a little specially constructed dry battery, and in another compartment a most peculiar instrument, something like a diminutive flat telephone transmitter. It was connected by flexible silk-covered wires to ear-pieces that fitted over the head, after the manner of the headgear used by telephone operators or operators in wireless.
“I can make nothing out of it,” confessed Burke, as Kennedy turned the thing over and over, shook it, fitted it on his head, examined it again, and then replaced the whole thing in its neat, compact box.
“I suppose you have no objection to my keeping this for a day or so?” he asked.
“None—if you can tell me what it is,” agreed Burke.
“You are positive that the safe had been opened?” asked Kennedy a moment later.
“We have Sinclair’s word,” asserted Burke. “That is all I know, and I assume that he is telling the truth. There couldn’t be any object in giving the invention to the Government and then robbing himself. No, if you knew Sinclair you’d know that about a thing like this he is as straight as a string. I feel that I can say positively that the papers were in the safe when it was locked by him for the night. He told me he put them there himself. And when he opened the safe in the morning they were gone.
“And, mind you, Kennedy, there wasn’t a mark of any kind on the safe—not a mark. I went over it with a glass and couldn’t find a thing, not a scratch—not even a finger-print—nothing except this queer arrangement which Sinclair himself found.”
“Why,” I exclaimed, “it sounds incredible—supernatural.”
“It does indeed,” asserted Burke. “It’s beyond me.”
Kennedy closed the cover of the little case and slipped the thing into his pocket, still pondering.
“It grows more incredible, too,” pursued Burke, looking at us frankly. “And then, to top it all off, when I do get back to the city I happen to run across you fellows hot on the trail of the death of Valcour herself—whatever she may be or have to do with the case. There’s only one thing Sinclair will not talk about freely and that is women—and this precious crew of Mexican friends of his. I’m afraid we shall have to go it alone on that end of it, without any assistance from him. All I was able to get, besides a word or two from him, was the gossip out there.” He paused, then went on, “I wonder if we can’t pool our interests, Kennedy, and work together on these cases?”
“Burke,” exclaimed Craig, for the moment showing a glimpse of the excitement that was surging through his mind, “I had no idea when I took up this case of Valcour for McBride of the Vanderveer that I should be doing my country a service also. When are you going up to Westport again?”
Burke looked at his watch. He was evidently considering what Kennedy had told him about the Mexican cabaret. It was growing late and there was little chance of his getting anything there now, or in fact tomorrow, until night-time came again.
“I can go tomorrow,” he answered, evidently only too glad to have Kennedy’s co-operation. “I’ll go up there with you myself at any time you say.”
“I shall be ready and meet you at the earliest train,” replied Craig.
Burke extended a hand to each of us as we parted.
Kennedy shook it cordially.
“We must succeed in unraveling this affair now at any cost,” he said simply.