PAGE 9
The Firebug
by
“It’s the Douglas problem that is difficult, though. I haven’t seen him, but one of the central-office men, by shadowing his wife, has found that he is in hiding down on the East Side. He’s safe there; he can’t make a move to get away without being arrested. The trouble is that if I arrest him, the people higher up will know it and will escape before I can get his confession and the warrants. I’d much rather have the whole thing done at once. Isn’t there some way we can get the whole Stacey crowd together, make the arrest of Douglas and nab the guilty ones in the case, all together without giving them a chance to escape or to shield the real firebug?”
Kennedy thought a moment. “Yes,” he answered slowly. “There is. If you can get them all together at my laboratory to-night at, say, eight o’clock, I’ll give you two clear hours to make the arrest of Douglas, get the confession, and swear out the warrants. All that you’ll need to do is to let me talk a few minutes this afternoon with the judge who will sit in the night court to-night. I shall install a little machine on his desk in the court, and we’ll catch the real criminal – he’ll never get a chance to cross the state line or disappear in any way. You see, my laboratory will be neutral ground. I think you can get them to come, inasmuch as they know the bookkeeper is safe and that dead women tell no tales.”
When next I saw Kennedy it was late in the afternoon, in the laboratory. He was arranging something in the top drawer of a flat-top desk. It seemed to be two instruments composed of many levers and discs and magnets, each instrument 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 preparing for a “seance.” He said nothing as I watched him curiously, and I asked nothing. Two sets of wires were attached to each of the instruments, and these he carefully concealed and led out the window. Then he arranged the chairs on the opposite side of the desk from his own.
“Walter,” he said, “when our guests begin to arrive I want you to be master of ceremonies. Simply keep them on the opposite side of the desk from me. Don’t let them move their chairs around to the right or left. And, above all, leave the doors open. I don’t want any one to be suspicious or to feel that he is shut in in any way. Create the impression that they are free to go and come when they please.”
Stacey arrived first in a limousine which he left standing at the door of the Chemistry Building. Bloom and Warren came together in the latter’s car. Lazard came in a taxicab which he dismissed, and Hartstein came up by the subway, being the last to arrive. Every one seemed to be in good humour.
I seated them as Kennedy had directed. Kennedy pulled out the extension on the left of his desk and leaned his elbow on it as he began to apologise for taking up their time at such a critical moment. As near as I could make out, he had quietly pulled out the top drawer of his desk on the right, the drawer in which I had seen him place the complicated apparatus. But as nothing further happened I almost forgot about it in listening to him. He began by referring to the burned papers he had found in the office.