Chapter XXXVII: The Main Resource

Although the Camera Chap had so provokingly slipped through their hands, Mayor Henkle, Chief Hodgins, and young Gale were confident that no legal technicality could save his friend Carroll.

True, he was no longer in danger of going to the electric chair. The surgeons at the hospital, who at first believed that old Delancey Gale was fatally injured, had a little later revised that opinion, and announced that, barring unforeseen complications, he would pull through all right. But Carroll’s enemies were not greatly disappointed at the thought of his escaping capital punishment. A sentence of life imprisonment for the proprietor of the _Bulletin_ would be quite satisfactory to them.

That they had enough evidence to convict him of “assault with intent to kill” they felt sure. Chief Hodgins, with the assistance of his young friend Gale, had built up a strong case against Carroll.

In the first place, there was the box in which the infernal machine had been inclosed. The explosion had smashed this box, but the pieces were all there, and they had managed to put them together again.

It was a small, oblong wooden box, and undoubtedly it had come from the _Bulletin_ office. This could be proved by the marks stenciled on the lid.

Carroll had been in the habit of receiving each day from a New York syndicate two half-tone cuts of woman’s fashions for publication in the _Bulletin_. These cuts were shipped in small, oblong wooden boxes. It was one of these boxes which had been used for the infernal machine.

But the strongest proof of all that Carroll had sent the explosive package to the _Chronicle_ office was the fact that the package was addressed in his own handwriting.

Chief Hodgins had on file at police headquarters a personal letter which the proprietor of the _Bulletin_ had once sent to him. He had taken this letter from the file, and compared it with the handwriting on the wrapper of the infernal machine. Although he was not a handwriting expert, he was willing to wager every dollar he had in the world that both had been penned by the same hand.

So confident was he that Carroll could not succeed in breaking down the case against him that when young Gale asked to be allowed to photograph the wrapper of the infernal machine and reproduce it on the front page of the _Chronicle_, the chief consented.

“Generally speaking, it’s a bad thing to let the other side get a glimpse at your evidence the day of the trial,” he said; “but I can’t see that it’s going to do any harm in this case. Even that pink-whiskered lawyer fellow from New York won’t be able to make a jury believe that the address wasn’t written by Carroll. So go ahead, my boy, and publish it, if you want to.”

When the Camera Chap and Lawyer Hands saw this exhibit on the front page of the _Chronicle_, they were greatly interested.

“It certainly does look like Fred’s handwriting,” Hawley declared. “But it must be a clever forgery.”

The lawyer shook his head. “I’m not so sure that it is a forgery at all,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t be surprised if it were really Carroll’s own handwriting.”

Hawley stared at him in astonishment. “But I don’t understand. How could it have been written by him if he didn’t send the bomb--and I am quite sure that he didn’t.”

“So am I,” the lawyer answered, with a smile. “But let me read you a paragraph from to-day’s _Chronicle_. Then I think a solution of the mystery will suggest itself to you.”

Hawley listened intently while Mr. Hands read aloud this extract from the article which young Gale had written for the front page of his father’s newspaper:

“‘The cut published on this page is a photographic reproduction of
the wrapper in which the deadly infernal machine was inclosed. The
mechanism was packed in a small wooden box. This box was wrapped in
stout blue paper, on which was pasted a small label of white paper.
On this label the words, “Delancey Gale, Esquire, Chronicle
Building, Personal,” was written in ink. That this address is the
handwriting of Frederick Carroll, proprietor of the Oldham’s
_Bulletin_, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt.’”

The Camera Chap’s face lighted up. “A label of white paper, eh?” he exclaimed, with a grin. “About the size of an ordinary correspondence envelope, I suppose?”

The lawyer nodded. “I see that you get the idea. At some time or other Carroll must have had occasion to send a personal letter to Gale. They happened to save the envelope of that letter, and they used the front part of it as the label for the infernal machine.”

“That’s a very likely theory,” the Camera Chap agreed. “Quite an ingenious idea on their part, wasn’t it? But do you really think that old Gale fixed up that bomb himself?”

“Certainly. Don’t you? The whole thing is perfectly clear to me. They wanted to discredit Carroll in the eyes of the public, to make it impossible for him to win at the coming election, so they planned this bomb outrage. I think ‘planted’ is the word you newspaper men use, is it not?”

“But is it logical to suppose that old Gale would go to the length of deliberately blowing himself up?” the Camera Chap exclaimed.

“It is not,” the lawyer answered, with a smile. “And I don’t suppose anything of the kind. I feel perfectly sure that Gale had no intention of having that bomb explode in his hands.”

“Then how do you suppose it happened?”

“It was an accident, of course. My theory is that the Gales didn’t intend to have the bomb explode at all. They planned merely to have it ‘discovered’ in the Chronicle Building, timed to go off at a certain hour. They were going to send for Chief Hodgins, and have him remove the package to police headquarters. If the plan had gone through all right, Hodgins would have taken the package to headquarters, soaked it in a pail of water, and then examined its contents. He would have announced that it was a genuine, sure-enough infernal machine of the most deadly type. Within a few hours everybody in Oldham would have heard of the dastardly attempt to blow up the Chronicle Building.”

“And that Fred Carroll was responsible for it,” the Camera Chap added, with a grim smile.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” the lawyer answered. “I don’t think that they would have sprung that sensation right away. If they had a proper sense of the dramatic, they would have allowed the identity of the sender of the infernal machine to remain a mystery for several days. Then, when the people of Oldham were keyed up to a proper pitch of excitement, Hodgins would suddenly have announced that the infernal machine had been sent by Carroll, and would have produced his evidence to prove his startling charge.”

“You certainly possess a vivid imagination, Mr. Hands,” the Camera Chap declared. “I have no doubt, though, that that is just about what they intended to do, if the bomb hadn’t gone off accidentally while old Gale was handling it in his private office, and made the thing much more serious than they contemplated.”

“I am confident that my theory is correct,” said the lawyer; “but the trouble is, we are going to have a hard job proving it. In order to do so, we shall have to show that Gale made the infernal machine himself. I am afraid that is going to be a poser.”

“I’ve got an idea, Mr. Hands,” said Hawley. “I think if I were to go out and take a snapshot of young Gale it might help us a lot.”

“How?” the lawyer queried, with a bewildered frown. “A snapshot of young Gale? I must confess that I can’t perceive what good that’ll do.”

But when Hawley had explained what he intended to do with the picture when he got it, Mr. Hands smiled upon him approvingly.

“An excellent plan!” he cried enthusiastically. “Go ahead and carry it out. I congratulate you upon your bright idea. If it succeeds, it will surely get your friend Carroll out of his predicament; and I have strong hopes that it will succeed.”