Chapter XVIII: The Light in the Window

Cole’s only response to Professor Carmody’s soft-spoken ultimatum was a smile. He knew that the scientist was the kind of foe who is the most dangerous when he uses his gentlest tones. It struck him as droll that he was risking his life for the sake of a few letters which, as far as he could see, he could put to no earthly use. He would not know what to do with them even if he should be able to depart with them safely. It was only Carmody’s earnestness in the matter that convinced him the letters must have a hidden significance.

“Well, professor,” he said easily, “it looks like a deadlock. I don’t want to give up the letters, and you seem in no hurry to shoot.”

The professor smiled still more blandly and took a tighter grip on the pistol. Cole believed he would shoot rather than see him depart with the letters. There was a certain grimness about the gaunt form and the sallow face which warned him that Carmody was playing a desperate game for high stakes. As often happens in tense moments, his mind turned to trivial things. He pictured Carlin waiting peevishly on the roof. He imagined Ballinger in the midst of another humorous yarn. A ludicrous vision of the hunchback, chained to the operating table in Doctor Latham’s house, flitted through his mind.

But the pistol in Carmody’s hand baffled him. He felt no fear, but neither did he care to throw his life away needlessly. Once before in the past forty-eight hours he had looked into the muzzle of a pistol, but that one had been in Doctor Latham’s hand. He had laughed then and dared the physician to shoot, knowing that Latham, whatever other villainies he might be guilty of, was not the type that can shoot down a defenseless man in cold blood. He was too proud and high-spirited for that. With Carmody it was different. The professor was made of coarser stuff. He was not hampered by considerations of chivalry and fair play. He would shoot as soon as Cole’s back was turned.

And so he restrained the impulse to laugh in the professor’s face and walk away. He preferred to bide his chance and watch for a sign of wavering in the hand that held the pistol. Growing tired of waiting, he decided to try a little stratagem that he had found successful in the past. It was a simple trick and based on one of the many queer antics of the human mind.

He looked away from the pistol and began to gaze fixedly at a point on the opposite wall. Moments passed and grew into minutes, and still he stared rigidly, not a muscle in his face moving. His eyes were slanting upward, at a level of about a foot and a half above the professor’s head. The latter could not see what he was looking at, for he dared not turn his head, knowing that Cole would jump the moment he did so. At first he was mildly puzzled. Then his face showed signs of bewilderment. His curiosity changed into nervous concern.

By and by he seemed plainly worried. It was evident that Cole’s fixed and silent scrutiny of something which the professor could not see was seriously affecting his nerves.

Cole’s rapt expression did not change in the slightest degree. He just looked and looked at that blank point somewhere behind the professor’s back and just above his head. Carmody grew more and more disconcerted. A tension, which he was doing his best to check, was taking hold of him. He shifted from one foot to the other. A sense of something weird and unaccountable was stealing over him, despite his scientific poise of mind.

At last came the chance for which Cole had waited. It was merely an uneasy flicker in Carmody’s eyes, accompanied by a slight turn of the head. It was not much, but Cole knew that, for the moment, the professor’s mind was diverted from the pistol. It was risky, but he might not get another chance. He flexed his muscles, and leaped, first to one side, then straight at Carmody, wrenching the pistol from his hand.

A squeallike cry broke from the professor’s lips. Cole chuckled as he ran. The scientist started in pursuit, but Cole slammed the door in his face. In another instant, putting the pistol in his pocket, he was climbing through the window. Soon he was hurrying up the fire escape. A dark figure, with coat tails flapping in the wind, hastened toward him, as he swung over the parapet and landed on the roof.

“Where on earth have you been?” asked Carlin reproachfully. “I was just 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.