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“I should say so,” I agreed. “But is that all?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t believe it is. Hayti is the hotbed of voodoo worship. The cult has inaugurated a sort of priesthood–often a priest and a priestess, called ‘papaloi’ and ‘mammaloi’–papa and mamma, probably with a corruption of the French word, ‘roi,’ king. They are, as it were, heads of the community, father and mother, king and queen. Some of the leading men of the communities in the islands of the Caribbean are secret voodoists and leaders. Just what is going on under the surface in this case, I cannot even hazard a guess. But there is some deviltry afoot.”

Just then the telephone rang and Craig answered it.

“It was from Burke,” he said as he hung up the receiver. “Confidential agents of his have been about. No one from the ship seems to have been down to see Forsythe, but Forsythe has had people over at the ship. Burke says someone is sending off great bunches of messages to Hayti–he thinks the powerful wireless apparatus of the Haytien is being used.”

For a moment Kennedy stood in the center of the laboratory, thinking. Then he appeared to make up his mind to something.

“Has that taxicab gone?” he asked, opening a cabinet from which he took several packages.

I looked out of the window. The ambulance had gone back, but the driver of the car had evidently waited to call up his office for instructions. I beckoned to him, and together Kennedy and I placed the packages in the car.

Thus we were able quickly to get back again to the wharf where the Haytien was berthed. Instead of going aboard again, however, Kennedy stopped just outside, where he was not observed and got out of the car, dismissing it.

In the office of the steamship company, he sought one of the employes and handed him a card, explaining that we were aiding Burke in the case. The result of the parley was that Kennedy succeeded in getting to the roof of the covered pier on the opposite side from that where the ship lay.

There he set to work on a strange apparatus, wires from which ran up to a flag pole on which he was constructing what looked like a hastily improvised wireless aerial. That part arranged, Kennedy followed his wires down again and took them in by a window to a sort of lumber-room back of the office. Outside everyone was too busy to watch what we were doing there and Craig could work uninterrupted.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Installing a wireless plant?”

“Not quite,” he smiled quietly. “This is a home-made wireless photo-recording set. Of course, wireless aerials of amateurs don’t hum any more since war has caused the strict censorship of all wireless. But there is no reason why one can’t receive messages, even if they can’t be sent by everybody.

“This is a fairly easy and inexpensive means by which automatic records can be taken. It involves no delicate instruments and the principal part of it can be made in a few hours from materials that I have in my laboratory. The basis is the capillary electrometer.”

“Sounds very simple,” I volunteered, trying not to be sarcastic.

“Well, here it is,” he indicated, touching what looked like an ordinary soft glass tube of perhaps a quarter of an inch diameter, bent U-shaped, with one limb shorter than the other.

“It is filled nearly to the top of the shorter limb with chemically pure mercury,” he went on. “On the top of it, I have poured a little twenty per cent sulphuric acid. Dipping into the acid is a small piece of capillary tube drawn out to a very fine point at the lower end.”

He filled the little tube with mercury also. “The point of this,” he observed, “is fine enough to prevent the mercury running through of its own weight–about as fine as a hair.”

He dipped the point and held it in the sulphuric acid and blew through the capillary tube. When the mercury bubbled through the point in minute drops, he stopped blowing. It drew back for a short distance by capillary attraction and the acid followed it up.

“You can see that connections are made to the mercury in the arm and the tube by short pieces of platinum wire,” he continued. “It isn’t necessary to go into the theory of the instrument. But the most minute difference of potential between the two masses of mercury will cause the fine point at the junction of the liquids to move up and down.

“Connected to the aerial and the earth, with a crystal detector in series, it is only a matter of applying an ordinary photo-recording drum, and the machine is made.”

He had been setting up a light-tight box, inside of which was a little electric lamp. Opposite was a drum covered with bromide paper. He started the clockwork going and after a few moments’ careful observation, we went away, and left the thing, trusting that no one was the wiser.

Nothing further occurred that day, except for frequent reports from Burke, who told us how his men were getting on in their shadowing of Forsythe & Co. Apparently, the death of Leon had put a stop to revolutionary plots, or at least had caused the plotters to change their methods radically.

The time was shortening, too, during which Burke could keep the passengers of the Haytien under such close surveillance, and it was finally decided that on the next morning they should be released, while all those suspected were to be shadowed separately by Secret Service agents, in the hope that once free they would commit some overt act that might lead to a clew.