The Ear in the Wall

XXIV. The Debacle of Dorgan

Sunday morning came and with it the huge batch of papers which we always took. I looked at them eagerly, though Kennedy did not seem to evince much interest, to see whether the Carton photographs had been used. There were none.

Kennedy employed the time in directing some work of his own and had disappeared, I knew not where, though I surmised it was on one of his periodic excursions into the underworld in which he often knocked about, collecting all sorts of valuable and interesting bits of information to fit together in the mosaic of a case.

Monday came, also, the last day before the election, with its lull in the heart-breaking activities of the campaign. There were still no pictures published, but Kennedy was working in the laboratory over a peculiar piece of apparatus.

"I've been helping out my own shadows," was all the explanation he vouchsafed of his disappearances, as he continued to work.

"Watching Mrs. Ogleby?" I hinted.

"No, I didn't interfere any more with Miss Kendall. This was someone else--in another part of the city."

He said it with an air that seemed to imply that I would learn all about it shortly and I did not pursue the subject.

Meanwhile, he was arranging something on the top of a large, flat table. It seemed to be an instrument in two parts, composed of many levers and discs and magnets, each part with a roll of paper about five inches wide.

On one was a sort of stylus with two silk cords attached at right angles to each other near the point. On the other was a capillary glass tube at the junction of two aluminum arms, also at right angles to each other.

It was quite like old times to see Kennedy at work in his laboratory again, and I watched him curiously. Two sets of wires were attached to each of the instruments, and they lead out of the window to some other wires which had been strung by telephone linemen only a few hours before.

Craig had scarcely completed his preparations when Carton arrived. Things were going all right in the campaign again, I knew, at least as far as appeared on the surface. But his face showed that Carton was clearly dissatisfied with what Craig had apparently accomplished, for, as yet, he had not told Carton about his discovery after studying the photographs, and matters between Carton and Margaret Ashton stood in the same strained condition that they had when last we saw her.

I must say that I, too, was keenly disappointed by the lack of developments in this phase of the case. Aside from the fact that the photographs had not actually been published, the whole thing seemed to me to be a mess. What had Craig said to Dorgan? Above all, what was his game? Was he playing to spare the girl's feelings merely by allowing the election to go on without a scandal to Carton? I knew the result of the election was now the least of Carton's worries.

Carton did not say much, but he showed that he thought it high time for Kennedy to do something.

We were seated about the flat table, wondering when Kennedy would break his silence, when suddenly, as if by a spirit hand, the stylus before us began to move across one of the rolls of paper.

We watched it uncomprehendingly.

At last I saw that it was actually writing the words. "How is it working?"

Quickly Craig seized the stylus on the lower part of the instrument and wrote in his characteristic scrawl, "All right, go ahead."

"What is the thing?" asked Carton, momentarily forgetting his own worries at the new marvel before us.

"An instrument that was invented many years ago, but has only recently been perfected for practical, every-day use, the telautograph, the long-distance writer," replied Kennedy, as we waited. "You see, with what amounts to an ordinary pencil I have written on the paper of the transmitter. The silk cord attached to the pencil regulates the current which controls another capillary glass tube-pen at the other end of the line. The receiving pen moves simultaneously with my stylus. It is the same principle as the pantagraph, cut in half as it were, one half here, the other half at the other end of the line, two telephone wires in this case connecting the halves. Ah,--that's it. The pencil of the receiving instrument is writing again. Just a moment. Let us see what it is."

I almost gasped in astonishment at the words that I saw. I looked again, for I could not believe my eyes. Still, there it was. My first glance had been correct, impossible as it was.

"I, Patrick Murtha," wrote the pen.

"What is it?" asked Carton, awestruck. "A dead hand?"

"Stop a minute," wrote Kennedy hastily.

We bent over him closely. Craig had drawn from a packet several letters, which he had evidently secured in some way from the effects of Murtha. Carefully, minutely, he compared the words before us with the signatures at the bottom of the letters.

"It is genuine!" he cried excitedly.

"Genuine!" Carton and I echoed.

What did he mean? Was this some kind of spiritism? Had Kennedy turned medium and sought a message from the other world to solve the inexplicable problems of this? It was weird, uncanny, unthinkable. We turned to him blankly for an explanation of the mystery.

"That wasn't Murtha at all whose body we saw at the Morgue," he hurried to explain. "That was all a frame-up. I thought as soon as I saw it that there was something queer."

I recalled now the peculiar look on his face which I had interpreted as indicating that he thought Murtha had been the victim of foul play.

"And the other night, when we were in Carton's office and someone called up threatening you, Carton, and Dopey Jack, I saw at once that the voice was concealed. Yet there was something about it that was familiar, though I couldn't quite place it. I had heard that voice before, perhaps while we were getting the records to discover the 'wolf.' It occurred to me that if I had a record of it I might identify it by comparing it with those we had already taken. I got the record. I studied it. I compared it with what I already had, line, and wave, and overtone. You can imagine how I felt when I found there was only one voice with which it corresponded, and that man was supposed to be dead. Something more than intuition as I looked at the body that night had roused my suspicions. Now they were confirmed. Fancy how that information must have burned in my mind, during these days while I knew that Murtha was alive, but could say nothing!"

Neither Carton nor I could say a word as we thought of this voice from the dead, as it almost seemed.

"I hadn't found him," continued Craig, "but I knew he had used a pay station on the West Side. I began shadowing everyone who might have helped him, Dorgan, Kahn, Langhorne, all. I didn't find him. They were too clever. He was hiding somewhere in the city, a changed personality, waiting for the thing to blow over. He knew that of all places a city is the best to hide in, and of all cities New York is safest.

"But, though I didn't actually find his hiding place, I had enough on some of his friends so that I could get word to him that his secret was known to me, at least. I made him an offer of safety. He need not come out of his hiding place and I would agree to let him go where and when he pleased without further pursuit from me, if he would let me install a telautograph in a neutral place which he could select and the other end in this laboratory. I myself do not know where the other place is. Only a mechanic sworn to secrecy knows and neither Murtha nor myself know him. If Murtha comes across, I have given my word of honour that before the world he shall remain a dead man, free to go where he pleases and enjoy such of his fortune as he was able to fix so that he could carry it with him into his new life."

Carton and I were entranced by the romance of the thing.

Murtha was alive!

The commitment to the asylum, the escape, the search, the finding of a substitute body, mutilated beyond ordinary recognition, the mysterious transfers, and finally the identification in the Morgue--all had been part of an elaborately staged play!

We saw it all, now. Carton had got too close to him in the conviction of Dopey Jack and the proceedings against Kahn. He had seen the handwriting on the wall for himself. In Carton's gradual climbing, step by step, for the man higher up, he would have been the next to go.

Murtha had decided that it was time to get out, to save himself.

Suddenly, I saw another aspect of it. By dropping out as though dead, he destroyed a link in the chain that would reach Dorgan. There was no way of repairing that link if he were dead. It was missing and missing for good.

Dorgan had known it. Had it been a hint as to that which had finally clinched whatever it was that Kennedy had whispered to the Silent Boss that morning when we had seen him in his office?

All these thoughts and more flashed through my head with lightning-like rapidity.

The telautograph was writing again, obedient to Kennedy's signal that he was satisfied with the signature.

"... in consideration of Craig Kennedy's agreement to destroy even this record, agree to give him such information as he has asked for, after which no further demands are to be made and the facts as already publicly recorded are to stand."

"Just witness it," asked Kennedy of us. "It is a gentleman's agreement among us all."

Nervously we set our names to the thing, only too eager to keep the secret if we could further the case on which we had been almost literally sweating blood so long.

Prepared though we were for some startling disclosures, it was, nevertheless, with a feeling almost of faintness that we saw the stylus above moving again.

"The Black Book, as you call it," it wrote, "has been sent by messenger to be deposited in escrow with the Gotham Trust Company to be delivered, Tuesday, the third of November, on the written order of Craig Kennedy and John Carton. An officer of the trust company will notify you of its receipt immediately, which will close the entire transaction as far as I am concerned."

Kennedy could not wait. He had already seized his own telephone and was calling a number.

"They have it," he announced a moment later, scrawling the information on the transmitter of the telautograph.

A moment it was still, then it wrote again.

"Good-bye and good luck," it traced. "Murtha!"

The Smiling Boss could not resist his little joke at the end, even now.

"Can--we--get it?" asked Carton, almost stunned at the unexpected turn of events.

"No," cautioned Kennedy, "not yet. To-morrow. I made the same promise to Murtha that I made to Dorgan, when I went to him with Walter, although Walter did not hear it. This is to be a fair fight, for the election, now."

"Then," said Carton earnestly, "I may as well tell you that I shall not sleep to-night. I can't, even if I can use the book only after election in the clean-up of the city!"

Kennedy laughed.

"Perhaps I can entertain you with some other things," he said gleefully, adding, "About those photographs."

Carton was as good as his word. He did not sleep, and the greater part of the night we spent in telling him about what Craig had discovered by his scientific analysis of the faked pictures.

At last morning came. Though Kennedy and I had slept soundly in our apartment, Carton had in reality only dozed in a chair, after we closed the laboratory.

Slowly the hours slipped away until the trust company opened.

We were the first to be admitted, with our order ready signed and personally delivered.

As the officer handed over the package, Craig tore the wrapper off eagerly.

There, at last, was the Black Book!

Carton almost seized it from Kennedy, turning the pages, skimming over it, gloating like a veritable miser.

It was the debacle of Dorgan--the end of the man highest up!