says that he has developed it for its war value."
As fast as Mrs. Brackett's chauffeur could drive us, we motored down to South Side Beach and sought out the little workshop directly on the ocean where Franconi had told us that we should always be welcome.
He was not there, but an assistant was. Kennedy showed him the card that Franconi had given us.
"Show me how the machine works," he asked, while Mrs. Brackett and I waited aside, scarcely able to curb our impatience.
"Well," began the assistant, "this is a screen of very minute and sensitive selenium cells. I don't know how to describe the process better than to say that the tones of sound, the human voice, have hundreds of gradations which are transmitted, as you know, by wireless, now. Gradations of light, which are all that are necessary to produce the illusion of a picture, are far simpler than those of sound. Here, in this projector—"
"That is the transmitting part of the apparatus?" interrupted Kennedy brusquely. "That holder?"
"Yes. You see there are hundreds of alternating conductors and insulators, all synchronized with hundreds of similar receivers at the—"
"Let me see you try this photograph," interrupted Kennedy again, handing over the picture of Gloria which Mrs. Brackett had given him. "Signor Franconi told me he had the telephote on several outgoing liners. Let me see if you can transmit it. Is there any way of sending a wireless message from this place?"
The assistant had shoved the photograph into the holder from which each section was projected on the selenium cell screen.
"I have a fairly powerful plant here," he replied.
Quickly Kennedy wrote out a message, briefly describing the reason why the picture was transmitted and asking that any station on shipboard that received it would have a careful search made of the passengers for any young woman, no matter what name was assumed, who might resemble the photograph.
Though nothing could be expected immediately at best, it was at least some satisfaction to know that through the invisible air waves, wirelessly, the only means now of identifying Gloria was being flashed far and wide to all the big ships within a day's distance or less on which Franconi had established his system as a test.
The telephote had finished its work. Now there was nothing to do but wait. It was a slender thread on which hung the hope of success.
While we waited, Mrs. Brackett was eating her heart out with anxiety. Kennedy took the occasion to call up the New York police on long distance. They had no clew to Gloria. Nor had they been able to find a trace of Du Mond. Mrs. Du Mond also had disappeared. At the Cabaret Rouge, Bernice Bentley had been held and put through a third degree, without disclosing a thing, if indeed she knew anything. I wondered whether, at such a crisis, Du Mond, too, might not have taken the opportunity to flee the country.
We had almost given up hope, when suddenly a little buzzer on the telephote warned the operator that something was coming over it.
"The Monfalcone," he remarked, interpreting the source of the impulses.
"We gathered breathlessly about the complicated instrument as, on a receiving screen composed of innumerable pencils of light polarized and acting on a set of mirrors, each corresponding to the cells of the selenium screen and tuned to them, as it were, a thin film or veil seemed gradually to clear up, as the telephote slowly got itself into equilibrium at both ends of the air line. Gradually the face of a girl appeared.
"Gloria!" gasped Mrs. Brackett in a tone that sounded as if ten years had been added to her life.
"Wait," cautioned the operator. "There is a written message to follow."
On the same screen now came in letters that Mrs. Brackett in her joy recognized the message: "I couldn't help it. I was blackmailed into taking the necklace. Even at the hunt I received another demand. I did not mean to go, but I was carried off by force before I could pay the second demand. Now I'm glad of it. Forgive us. Gloria."
"Us?" repeated Mrs. Brackett, not comprehending.
"Look—another picture," pointed Kennedy.
We bent over as the face of a man seemed to dissolve more clearly in place of the writing.
"Thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Brackett fervently, reading the face by a sort of intuition before it cleared enough for us to recognize. "He has saved her from herself!"
It was Franconi!
Slowly it faded and in its place appeared another written message.
"Recalled to Italy for war service. I took her with me by force. It was the only way. Civil ceremony in New York yesterday. Religious will follow at Rome."
Chapter IV
The Tango Thief
"My husband has such a jealous disposition. He will never believe the truth—never!"
Agatha Seabury moved nervously in the deep easy chair beside Kennedy's desk, leaning forward, uncomfortably, the tense lines marring the beauty of her fine features.
Kennedy tilted his desk chair back in order to study her face.
"You say you have never written a line to the fellow nor he to you?" he asked.
"Not a line, not a scrap,—until I received that typewritten letter about which I just told you," she repeated vehemently, meeting his penetrating gaze without flinching. "Why, Professor Kennedy, as heaven is my witness, I have never done a wrong thing—except to meet him now and then at afternoon dances."
I felt that the nerve-racked society woman before us must be either telling the truth or else that she was one of the cleverest actresses I had ever seen.
"Have you the letter here?" asked Craig quickly.
Mrs. Seabury reached into her neat leather party case and pulled out a carefully folded sheet of note paper.
It was all typewritten, down to the very signature itself. Evidently the blackmailer had taken every precaution to protect himself, for even if the typewriting could be studied and identified, it would be next to impossible to get at the writer through it and locate the machine on which it was written among the thousands in the city.
Kennedy studied the letter carefully, then, with a low exclamation, handed it over to me, nodding to Mrs. Seabury that it was all right for me to see it.
"No ordinary fellow, I'm afraid," he commented musingly, adding, "this thief of reputations."
I read, beginning with the insolent familiarity of "Dear Agatha."
"I hope you will pardon me for writing to you," the letter continued, "but I find that I am in a rather difficult position financially. As you know, in the present disorganized state of the stock market, investments which in normal times are good are now almost valueless. Still, I must protect those I already have without sacrificing them.
"It is therefore necessary that I raise fifty thousand dollars before the
