The Hawk (Reeve)

by Arthur B. Reeve

A New Craig Kennedy Detective Story

The Hawk

 

Craig Kennedy Goes Duck-Hunting and Brings Down Alien Game to the Long Island Sands

 

By Arthur B. Reeve

 

“ASTA HARLEY came running down the stairs, screaming at the top of of her voice: 'The Doctor! The Doctor! Quick!' … And, Kennedy, when we got there, we found Dr. Sanford—you know him—dead, in the trophy room, here at the Lodge!”

“Dr. Sanford—yes. … Who is this Asta Harley?”

“Never mind, now. Come over to the Lodge, Kennedy—and hurry! I don't trust any one over here—now!”

At the mention of Dr. Sanford's name, I knew that the call must be about the surgeon who had gained great prominence recently as a rejuvenator of old age, a surgeon with a practise now that no two doctors could handle. He had taken as his assistant a brilliant medical student who had just spent two years in postgraduate work with Steinach and Voronoff in Vienna and Paris, Dr. Wallace Griffith.

Craig hung up, frowned as he looked out of the window into the blackness. It was almost midnight and raining torrents. In the doorway of the old Peconic farmhouse stood Waldo Penny, mouth open with country curiosity.

“It's a good thing you told me that was John Carter, Cap'n,” smiled Craig. “He was as crazy as one of those coots we didn't get to-day.”

“Yes, yes. He was excited, Mr. Kennedy. Yes, yes. Are you goin'?”

A moment before we had been stretching our legs wearily before the grateful blazing logs, too tired to take off the flannels that burdened our sensitive backs. Up at four, before daylight, and out all day until dark in the blinds over on the Point with only a brace of blacks and a stray broadbill to show for it, we had been consoling ourselves with the knowledge, that we were getting health and relaxation even if the ducks were not flying.

“Crimes seem to follow you,” I grumbled. Then, catching Waldo's eye: “Are you going?” I repeated.

“Get back into your boots, Walter. Put a slicker over your hunting togs. Carter is too big a man to lose his head without a mighty serious reason. Yes, I'm going. Waldo will take us over in the flivver.”

Kennedy and I had gone out to Peconic and Shinnecock for our yearly duck-hunting vacation and put up at Penny's quaint old farmhouse. Waldo had answered the telephone and told us that it was the banker, John Carter, calling from the Hunting Lodge on Hampton Beach, a private hunting club on a secluded spit of sand between ocean and bay, connected by a narrow neck to the shore. It was, according to local report, a favorite spot of rum runners in the off season.

As we turned into the Lodge grounds, the big pillars, like white sentinels in the darkness and the rain, seemed to challenge us. Their lights illuminated the winding drive over the sand dunes, but could not penetrate far in the murk. We had to crawl along the crushed shell road to the Lodge.

The rear wheel sank into the sand up to the hub. I jumped out, holding my hat with both hands and peered up the drive. My slicker snapped in the wind like a broken sail. A few yards ahead was the Lodge. It was a rumbling structure of concrete, pebble-dashed, not high, but spread out over a lot of ground. Lights glowed in all the windows and the rays died off in the darkness like a half-hearted invitation to warmth and cheer, an apology to compensate weakly for the crime that had called us out on su a night. All about the Lodge was a porch at least twenty feet wide.

“Waldo,” said Kennedy, “cover that hood to keep the water out of the motor. We'll leave the car where it is.”

We walked quickly, breasting the gale, toward the porch and had almost reached it when Craig put his hand on my arm.

Out of the darkness came a girl's voice.

“A fine lover! Every thought a thought of distrust, suspicion! I came out here to meet you, to tell you something. … What it was you can find out for yourself, now! I'll not be talked to like a child by you!”

“Wait—Asta—please!” There was real alarm in the tones of the man's voice.

A bitter laugh, but musical, was the answer. Then a scurrying of feet as the girl retreated to a window, low, down to the porch level. She was young, enveloped in a poncho, head covered. As she entered she looked about hurriedly, and there was fear in her eyes.

“Just a minute, Walter,” cautioned Craig above the whistle of wind. “See what happens.”

I stood. It wasn't much. Just a man walking excitedly to a door at the other end, where he let himself in with a latch key. Then silence except for the wind and the booming surf, a sinister silence. Kennedy shrugged. There was no time for further thought. He found a bell which we could hear echoing loudly in the Lodge.

A MOMENT later we were alone with old John Carter. I say old, because a man who had been in his prime in the great trust-building days at the beginning of this century was certainly no longer young. Yet he looked younger even than he had then, clear-eyed, tall, iron-gray of hair, distinguished in feature and tearing.

Carter led us to the trophy room of the Hampton Hunting Lodge. There, surrounded by paintings and prints of the chase, silver cups, stuffed mallards, blacks, redheads, Canada geese, we found Dr. Sanford, still in his chair before a table, dead.

Kennedy made a hasty examination. What I noted most was his blue, cyanosed, gaspy look. Before him was what had once been a highball. I looked about. The trophy room must have been a quiet room, the quietest in the Lodge, with the big writing table, a few books, a wide divan before a driftwood fire in the huge fireplace.

“How was he discovered?” asked Craig. “Who found him?”

“Well,” returned Carter, “you see, it was here that Asta Harley kept her little portable typewriter. She had come up here to transcribe some notes of conversations and agreements. … She opened the door. There was the doctor sprawled back in the big chair before the table—dead. On the table before him, as if just written, ready to be sealed and mailed, was a letter … a scurrilous letter, about Asta Harley herself.”

“What do you mean, transcribe notes? I thought this was a place of recreation—not business.”

Carter cleared his throat. “Well, it happens that some of us were talking business this time. Armand Cadman is here—he and some associates are promoting the Caucasian clay concession and want to interest me and some banking friends. In Georgia, in the Caucasus, there are mineral springs that yield a peculiar clay. You know how famous the Georgian girls are for their beauty?”

“Yes.” Kennedy had walked over to the little typewriter on a stand near the fireplace. In it were some half-typed notes. He bent over and so did I. “What do you think of this, Walter?”

“Think of it? In what way?”

“The peculiar color of the typing—faded.”

“H'm. It looks like typing that has aged.”

He struck the keys. “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.”

“Look,” he muttered, as he pulled the sheet out of the machine. “The ribbon has faded, too!” He turned to Carter. “Who else is here?”

“The Princess Anastasia Barytinsky—Princess Stasie, you know.”

Carter paused. I did know something about her. The Princess Anastasia had formerly been an Italian show girl in New York named Serpico. Her voice had shown promise and somehow she had managed to go abroad to cultivate it. She had married Prince Shamyl Barytinsky in Monte Carlo and, not long ago, had divorced him in Paris.

“You know,” resumed Carter as I nodded recollection, “the prince turned out to be something of a roué. But he had influential friends who admired the Princess Stasie. That was how she got the Caucasian clay concession. Among others she consulted Monsieur Cadman—who is, as you know, an international lawyer—and he suggested getting American capital. So they came to New York. I have known the princess for some time.”

It was then that I remembered having heard vague rumors connecting the name of the princess with Carter. There had even been reports of his engagement to the singer.

“They brought Asta Harley along with them as secretary,” Carter added. “The real proposal was to organize what we have decided to call 'Love, Incorporated.'”

Kennedy looked up quickly but Carter continued seriously, “To join rejuvenation by gland extracts and all that sort of thing with the actual rejuvenation of faces.” I watched Craig's face keenly as he spoke but Craig did not move a muscle. “It was a matter of financing. Then, too, they knew that it was only my influence that could bring a man like Dr. Sanford into such a scheme.” Carter glanced uneasily at the dead man in the chair. “Suppose we go down to the gun room and talk,” he suggested.

Kennedy dropped back a moment on the way down, and whispered to Waldo Penny. Penny took his sou'wester and his slicker and disappeared.

“What do you think of it?” inquired Carter anxiously.

Kennedy looked about the room at the guns in the racks. “Well, Sanford wasn't shot, anyhow.” He paused. “He was poisoned.”

“The drink?” asked Carter quickly.

Kennedy shook his head. “No; and not the food. It wasn't in the cigar or cigarette, either. And there wasn't a mark on him like a needle, so far as I could discover.”

“Then—how?”

“A gas!” Kennedy paused again, decided to do the questioning himself. “You said he was discovered dead by Asta Harley, that before him was an unfinished, scurrilous letter, about her. Where's the letter?”

“Here.” Carter drew it from his pocket.

Craig took the letter, apparently freshly typed in black.

It was addressed to Dr. Wallace Griffith, and warned him against Asta. She was, it said, not interested in him, but was bent upon leading John Carter on to marry her. How, he was asked, did he account for Asta's mysterious disappearances, when, for weeks at a time, she would be away, only to return with plenty of money?

CARTER told Craig what he knew of the other letters. He had had one, warning him against Anastasia—saying she had been a denizen of the old Haymarket in New York, and had submitted to rejuvenation only to lure him into marrying her.

“I see,” said Kennedy. “You ignored this?”

“Of course,” said Carter, stiffly. But I saw the lingering doubt in his eyes.

“I want to see Asta Harley,” said Craig. Then, “Will you send for her, Mr. Carter?”

He did so, and, in a few minutes, she came. She was a lovely creature, gowned in white lace—as different from the fierce, poncho-covered girl we had seen in the storm outside as it was possible to imagine. Quietly she entered the room and crossed to Carter's side.

“You sent for me?” she asked.

“Yes, Asta, I did, and I'm sorry to have had to do so. I sent for Mr. Kennedy, who happened to be staying at a farmhouse over on the shore. I thought he might help us.”

The girl looked at us quizzically and a smile flitted over her face as she murmured: “Mr. Kennedy. Are you one of those … detectives who ask everybody questions the hour after the murder … and then give the real murderer a chance to escape?”

Craig smiled good-humoredly. I would have answered her with asperity. Carter turned her remark adroitly.

“Yes, Asta, you are to be questioned. You guessed correctly. But all we want to know is what you saw.”

She smiled back a smile that wafted the banker on a cloud of delight.

“Miss Harley,” said Kennedy, “I want to find out what you can tell us. Would you mind going over all you have been doing since—well, say from half an hour before you found out about the murder to the moment when Mr. Carter's message reached you just now?”

She looked startled and, I thought, angry. She stared hard at Craig, then turned to Carter.

“Why should I account for my time to this man?” she asked. “No—I will not.”

Before Carter could speak, Craig asked, “Why?” in a tone of simple wonder, but at once smiled. “Very well—tell us just what you saw, then.”

Asta breathed more easily. Raising her big eyes frankly to his, she told her apparently truthful story. “I had some typing to finish,” she said, “and I had gone to the trophy room where I keep my typewriter. I saw the doctor sitting with his back to me, it seemed, in the chair. When I spoke to him, he didn't answer. I went over to him. I screamed when I found he was dead. I never stopped to look for anything or anybody, but ran, ran as quickly as I could from the room. There … that's just what I saw, and as I saw it—all.”

“But suppose you tell me what you know?”

“Know? I don't know anything about it.”

“But,” insisted Craig, “tell me what the young lady was going to tell the young man out in the rain, on the porch!”

“Asta! Don't answer anything. You don't have to do it!” The interruption came from a young and handsome man about twenty-eight who had just entered the gun room.

Asta looked more amused than angry. She turned to young Dr. Griffith sarcastically. “I can take care of myself. You needn't worry.” She turned her back on him and appealed to John Carter with her eyes.

Griffith remained standing, arms folded tensely as if holding himself in leash.

“Carter, might I see those other letters?” asked Craig.

“Surely,” said Carter. “I asked Cadman and the princess to wait in the grill. We might go to them there——”

In the grill the princess's extremely daring gown and the garish lighting were incongruous. But what at once struck me was the obvious fact that she and the French lawyer had been quarreling. She turned toward Carter, her eyes full of appeal—but he was looking at Asta, who had taken her place by Griffith, across the room.

Neither Cadman nor the princess hesitated to show us the letters they had received. I was struck at once by their identity with the ones we had already seen—and by the fact that, like Asta's, the typing was of a clear black, not at all faded. Cadman was warned against the princess—she, against him. It was a vicious circle.

“I'd like to keep these,” said Kennedy, “if I may?”

There was no objection. And now, as we all waited, there came a clamorous pealing of the bell at the door. The coroner and the undertaker had come. While they were seeing the body all the guests and servants were assembled in the grill. I took the opportunity to draw Kennedy out into the hall. We could hear the coroner and the undertaker down the hall. “All right, Sidney, I give you permission to remove the body. You'd better do it the first thing in the morning.”

I felt Kennedy's hand on my arm. We slipped behind the portières into the grill and stood there, apparently watching the others, but really listening. I looked inquiringly at Craig.

“I caught a glimpse of the princess watching the trophy room down the hall. They ought to meet about here. … Sh!”

"DOCTOR!” Evidently the princess had buttonholed the coroner and drawn him aside near the doorway where we were standing. “There's something I want to tell you, privately, in confidence.”

“Yes?” He was evidently impressed.

“When Asta Harley was coming out of her faint, I heard her say, 'Why isn't the doctor here?' I asked 'Who?' She had a moment to think, then, 'Dr. Sanford,' she said. Then we carried her to her room. Fifteen minutes later—even sooner—she was out in the storm with a poncho over her. I think she went up on the roof, that this young Dr. Griffith saw her coming down. Now, where had he been? …”

We could not catch any more. Her hand was on the portière and we had to move away. She was trying, plainly, to involve Griffith—as well as Asta. And I was prepared to believe Griffith knew a good deal.

My speculations were interrupted when the coroner began, rather informally, to ask questions. “I believe you discovered the body of the deceased, Miss Harley? May I ask, was it usual for you to use your typewriter so near midnight?”

“Not usual—no. But I did want to use it, to-night.”

“Where was Dr. Griffith in the evening?”

“I don't know.”

He turned to Griffith and repeated the question.

With a sullen, half-defiant air the young doctor answered. “Over at Hampton, to see Conklin, the druggist, who happens to be a friend of mine. I didn't get back until at least half an hour after this thing was discovered.”

“Did you see Miss Harley at any time during the night?”

“Yes, before I left, and just now with Mr. Kennedy.”

“At any other time?”

I fancied I caught a telltale flush on Asta's face.

“I cannot recall.”

“Miss Harley, do you know why the doctor was out?”

“I do not.”

“Did it give you any concern?”

Asta answer wearily. “I didn't care!”

“What did you want to see Conklin about. Doctor, on a night like this?”

“It has nothing to do with this—this murder. I refuse to answer.”

The coroner hammered at Dr. Griffith awhile. He would admit nothing, but the impression conveyed was that he had, in spite of his denials, seen Asta in the storm, getting down from the roof.

IT WAS so late when the coroner had gone that Kennedy decided to stay at the Lodge. Carter provided us with two large rooms and a bath and a smaller room, adjoining, for Waldo. Kennedy telephoned a telegram to the local office in the town, and we then went to our rooms.

“What gas was it that killed him?” I asked Craig when we were alone. “Have you any idea?”

“Our old enemy in the war—chlorine.”

“What makes you think so?”

“His appearance, the symptoms, the circumstances.”

He had laid down on a little table the sheet of paper he had taken from the typewriter.

“You saw the faded, aged appearance of the typewriting on this sheet in the machine? Well, chlorine is a splendid bleaching agent. Look at this line I wrote. Even the typewriter ribbon was bleached a little by it. Perhaps you didn't notice. But there were other things in that room whose color looked a bit faded.”

“But,” I interposed, “why didn't Asta get it, too?”

“She must have come in after the gas was gone. You know how the wind was blowing. There probably was a sudden cloud of the gas, heavy, overwhelming, lingering long enough to kill. Then it must have been dissipated, carried outdoors.”

“Yes—and the draft up the wide flue of that chimney.”

Kennedy merely smiled and shook his head. “Now, let's look at the letters.”

For a moment he studied them.

“All written on the same fine linen paper with the same water mark.”

He began to examine the typewriting through a little ruled glass strip which he always carried in a case in his pocket, a device by which one could measure the “finger-prints” of a typewriter. He glanced up from his study and measurements. “All written on the same machine, including the letter found before Sanford on the table.”

“What machine?” I asked.

“That portable machine in the trophy room—Asta's!”

We were interrupted by the entrance of Waldo, dripping and half frozen. But his face wore a quiet smile. Waldo felt that he was a detective.

With a great show of caution he drew from under his coat a can and exhibited it proudly. I gasped, literally. It was an empty container for chloroform. Craig smiled with thoughtful satisfaction.

“I found it in the gutter of the lower roof. The roof slopes. Way up on top it is flat, a sort of roof garden, with steps. After I had hunted around and around the Lodge, I saw water coming over the roof gutter at one place as if it was stopped up. I climbed a pillar. The can must have rolled there and lodged in the gutter.”

“Just what I thought,” remarked Kennedy, turning over the can. “Something was dropped down that wide flue, on the fire.”

“But wouldn't Sanford have noticed it?” I objected. “Why didn't he get out?”

Kennedy shook his head. “1 thought first of cyanogen. Maybe some might have been formed, somehow. I can't say. But the point is that some one on that flat roof poured a can of chloroform down the chimney on the fire—slowly—so that it would not put the fire out. It was ticklish. Too much of it would smother the fire—and the fire was necessary. Perhaps the chloroform answers your question. I can't say, offhand.”

“Wouldn't it explode?”

“The vapor might, if it were contained and mixed with the right proportion of air. But as a liquid, free, the attacker had rather to be careful not to put out the fire. Chloroform, in that way, would be suddenly decomposed by the heat into chlorine gas and hydrochloric acid. I noticed on his cuff a spot that must have been iodide of potassium. One part was turned brown. But where it had been on the starch it was blue. It gave me a hint. Oh, it could have been only chlorine and hydrochloric acid, when we consider all the circumstances. Besides, here is the container!”

I looked toward the letters. “Who wrote them?” I was endeavoring to form a hypothesis. “Dr. Sanford, himself? He was the father confessor of the sex sins of society.”

KENNEDY shook his head again sententiously. “You saw that letter about Asta Harley?” I nodded. “A perfect, unfaded black in the typewriting.” I nodded again. “And the sheet of notes in the machine?”

“Yes. Faded, aged.”

“Is it possible that the letter was placed there after the fumes had cleared?” queried Craig. “It is not only possible; it must have been so!”

“Then who put it there? Asta?”

“About herself?” he returned. “Poison-pen writers have been known to do that. I incline to believe that whoever killed Sanford placed that letter there for a purpose.”

Seeing a motive, I thought of the victims of the letters. But all had been victims—Princess Stasie, Asta Harley, Armand Cadman, John Carter, and Dr. Griffith. “Any one in this Love, Incorporated, scheme might have done it,” I exclaimed.

“Yes, but who did?” Craig smiled quietly.

“Well, why were the letters written?” I asked. “Usually there's some pathological reason for such letters, isn't there?”

Craig nodded. “Not in this case, I think. There was a purpose.”

Waldo had been following, open-mouthed. Now he broke in with his Montauk twang. “Blacks, coots, broadbill, mallards, geese, high-fliers, all of them, I know. But these people, these women—no.” He cast about with his native Montauk common sense. “Mr. Kennedy, some one in this case is—is a hawk!”

I had always had admiration for Waldo's native qualities. I thought it a good expression—“the Hawk.” “Yes,” I exclaimed. “But who is the Hawk?” I turned suddenly to Kennedy. “Where do you suppose this Prince Shamyl is?”

Kennedy merely shrugged. He was getting ready to turn in. “I can tell more if I get an answer to my telegram in the morning.”

Every one was late the next morning. Breakfast might as well have been luncheon. As Asta entered the breakfast room with John Carter, I saw that a change had taken place overnight. It seemed as if distrust and suspicion were brewed in the percolator on the serving-table. Each was deeply engrossed in the other. The disparity in age was apparent, yet I could not help thinking what a handsome couple they made. Griffith was with the princess at one side.

Princess Stasie's voice was musical and the tones carried. I caught two parts of sentences that set me thinking: “The concession is really mine, you know” and “Yes—with another name—the Fountain of Youth Company—something like that.”

I jumped at a conclusion. The princess had deserted Cadman. Dr. Griffith was not only young and good-looking, but he was the logical successor to Dr. Sanford's practise. These two might combine rejuvenation and beautification. As I watched Griffith, talking earnestly and inaudibly, and the sparkle of the dark eyes of the princess, I felt confirmed in this idea.

It was some time after this strange breakfast that the clerk at the desk informed Carter that his schooner with several thousand cases aboard had arrived in Little Peconic from Nassau. There was no secret about his liquor-running at the Lodge. Ten minutes later Carter, muffled to the ears in a huge ulster, was leaving in his coupé to open his house in Shinnecock Hills so that the stuff might be safely stowed in his strongroom cellar.

In the glass sun-room about the entrance I heard him whisper to Asta, “Then you'll be at the rectory, dear, at four?”

She smiled up at him. “Yes, John.”

They saw me. Otherwise I am sure he would have kissed her.

THE storm had subsided. It was a gray day. The sandy soil had absorbed the torrents of moisture almost immediately. Yet, though it was an ideal day for shooting, that seemed to be the last thing in any one's mind.

Kennedy had about made up his mind, now that Waldo had dug the flivver out of the sand, to go over to the village and intercept the reply to his telegram before it was broadcast by the rural central over the telephone, when a furniture van pulled up at the Lodge.

I gasped. Two men were carrying in a wicker basket, one of the gruesome objects undertakers use for handling bodies.

“Tuthill,” read Kennedy on the side of the van. “That was the name of the undertaker—who happens to be in the furniture business in the village, too.”

My first gasp was nothing compared to my second. The two men opened the basket in the hall and began taking out bottle after bottle of liquor. The van was loaded with it—the supply of the Lodge for the coming summer, which Carter was providing.

I marveled at this example of Long Island thrift. Tuthill himself had been out already in his flivver. He knew he had to send for the body of Sanford and he had delayed because he also knew his van would have to make the trip out to the Lodge with its precious freight of bottles. He was killing two birds at once. I smiled. This would certainly have pleased the prohibition director who had resorted to page advertisements in the papers warning in black type against “Smuggling Bottled Death!” Here it was in that wicker basket.

In the trophy room now Dr. Griffith was busy superintending the preparations to remove the body of Sanford as the basket made its slow trips from the van to the cellar. Cadman showed great interest in the movers and their freight as the very genuine-looking bottles were unpacked and stowed in the wine cellar.

Kennedy had been watching an opportunity to do a little second-story work. It came now with every one excited over the hootch. As I stood lookout he began by picking the lock to the room of Cadman. Inside he tried the bolt on the door between that suite and the princess's.

“Unbolted on this side. Bolted on the other. Keep the hall door at a crack, Walter. Let me know if any one is coming.”

He started to open a chiffonier, went through it, was just about to open a big closet, when I raised my hand. “Sh! Cadman—himself! My word! He is at Barytinsky's lock—with a pass key!”

I closed the door softly and waited for him to get in. That would give us a chance to slip out into the hall safely.

SUDDENLY the communicating door opened. Craig had not bolted our side. I saw the back of a girl, still peeping into Barytinsky's room. She shut the door, shot the bolt softly, and turned with a smile, clutching to her bosom a packet of letters. Then she saw us. The smile faded. It was Asta Harley. But she kept her poise.

“Some more poison-pen letters?” whispered Craig.

“No. John Carter's love letters to the princess.” She said it with an obvious challenge.

“May I have them for safe keeping?” demanded Kennedy.

She drew away toward the door through which she had come. “No!”

There was a sudden exclamation of anger from the next room. “Sh!” cautioned Asta. “The princess!” Asta smoothed the bosom of her dress furtively over the packet. “Do they show?”

“Armand!” Anastasia's voice was biting, bitter. “How dare you! What are you here for? That little box is open! Come—hand over those letters—or I'll call the whole house!”

“I haven't got them,” protested Cadman's voice.

“You lie! Give them to me! Hurry!”

Kennedy saw his chance. He opened the hall door quietly and we three slipped out of Cadman's room.

“The box was open, like that, when I came in.”

“You thought the game was up! You would leave me—flat! Steal the one weapon I have to get money!”

“Then—you read my letters?”

“Armand, you are a fool!”

Down the hall now we could hear steps. It was Griffith. “What's all the row?”

He saw us coming the other way. Cadman and the princess saw us. It was the only thing that averted a fight.

The princess glared at Asta. “It takes a woman to see through your devilish ways, you clay-faced child!”

“I may be a child,” retorted Asta sweetly. “But you can't despise that so much. You work hard enough to acquire the appearance of one!”

Cadman shrugged and turned toward the grill again. There was a call for Griffith to know whether Sanford's body was ready. The princess glared but said nothing. A second later she slammed her door.

Waldo, who had seen enough to make gossip for a whole winter, came to tell us that he was ready to drive us to the village and, as every one at the Lodge was on guard now, Kennedy decided to go.

At the telegraph office no message had yet been received but Kennedy left orders that any answer was to be brought to Conklin's pharmacy.

SINCE prohibition the drug store and the garage divide the gossip that once belonged to the saloon. Kennedy sought judiciously to draw out Conklin and we found that Griffith had indeed been there the night before. Even a direct question failed to elicit a clue to any can of chloroform, however. Our conversation drifted toward the attitude of the county toward the rum runners.

“They're tricky,” commented the pharmacist cautiously.

A customer dropped in. We learned that Sanford's body was now at Tuthill's being prepared for its journey to New York.

A boy on a bicycle stopped at the door. “Telegram for Mr. Kennedy. Is he here?”

Craig took the envelope, opened it, and read the message.

Two men entered the store.

“Here's Waldo!”

“Hello, Willetts! Mr. Kennedy, this is Sheriff Willetts.” Waldo did not seem to know the other man.

“Want you to meet Mr. Boyle, of the Internal Revenue office—Waldo Penny,” nodded Willetts. “Boyle tells me I have the right to call any citizens we need. You see, there's been a tip to the revenooers that a rum runner's unloading down at the Old Landing.”

“But I'm busy, Sheriff, with Mr. Kennedy.”

“Can't help it. I appoint you special deputy, under my orders, see? Now, come along.”

Waldo looked ruefully at Kennedy. This was an untoward end of a perfect day to him. “Maybe you could get out of it, sir. I can't. They'll get me in court—contempt, or somethin'.”

“Mr. Kennedy!”

Conklin was holding the telephone. He seemed bursting with importance as he handed over the receiver.

“That Asta Harley out to the Lodge has disappeared. It was Mr. Carter callin' from the rectory.” Conklin's eyes expanded as he began to build on it. “They ain't seen nothin' of her at the Lodge. Nobody ain't seen her leave. She ain't there. Where is she?”

Kennedy had shoved the telegram into his pocket and after a few seconds of hasty conversation was back with us.

“How did she get away?” I asked eagerly.

Kennedy thought a moment. “There was one way. Asta, also, must have been carried out in that wicker basket!”

“But where?”

“There is one place to go. That van was working down at the Lading. Don't argue, Waldo. Go with Boyle, now. We'll go with you!”

In the grayness verging on dusk we climbed into Waldo's car, following the other. Over the heather hills of Shinnecock we sped. They must have almost completed the unloading of the rum runner by this time. Would we get there before the schooner cast off?

As Penny's flivver bore down the road leading to the dock following the sheriff's car, we could hear the little gas engine that raised the sails on the schooner, put-a-put, put-a-put.

“Getting under way,” cried Waldo. “We better hurry and try an' surprise 'em!”

Already the mainsail, patched and mildewed, was flapping in the winter wind, as the schooner lay off the decrepit dock. At the shore end stood the van, engine running. Farther up was parked a rather flashy maroon sport car.

“The revenooers!”

At the shout the van began to move. It happened quicker than I can tell it. It made straight for us. The sheriff's car ahead was nm off the road; Waldo's flivver piled up on top of it.

I felt myself hurled through the air. Also I found that a revenue man can swear just as fluently as a rum runner. It did no good. The van kept right on. As I sat up, dazed, I caught sight of Craig, Penny, the sheriff and Boyle crawling from the wreckage.

“Duck, Walter, quick!” shouted Craig.

I flopped behind the wreckage as bullets from the dock whizzed overhead. It was a close call. By the time I had my gun the van was far up the road. We couldn't follow.

“Pick your man and clip his ear!” muttered Craig.

We delivered a volley, then another. All five of us rose and made a dash over the dock. The volleys or the surprise did it. The crew at the shore end broke for the woods that ran down on that side. A few scattered shots kept them going.

Kennedy leaped aboard the schooner. It seemed empty, both of rum runners and rum. I saw Craig pause, intently.

“Did you hear anything?” he asked.

“Sounded like moaning in the hold. Maybe we got one!”

Down the hatch sprang Craig and we followed. There, stretched motionless, was the body of a woman under a dirty piece of old sail. Kennedy raised the sail cloth. Underneath was the pretty face of Asta Harley, pale, with blood clots on a cut on her head.

“Is she—alive?” I asked anxiously as Craig dropped down to feel her pulse, listen to her heart.

“Yes—coming to.”

ASTA moved. Her lips seemed to try to frame a word. I listened. “The grip—grip!” Then she slipped away into faintness again. I looked about the hold. There was no bag there, certainly.

“Help me with her up on deck out of this smell of bilge,” pant Kennedy. Then, as we laid her on the deck, he motioned. “Quick—look in that sport car. Maybe it's there.”

Sure enough, in the maroon car was a bag, a huge one. Asta was still unconscious as I lugged and tugged it down the dock. Kennedy cleansed the wound and bound it up as best he could, trying to revive her with a little brandy from the cabin of the rum runner.

Down the road which we had come now tore a closed car. As it came to a stop I saw that the princess had her head out of the door, full of curiosity. She almost fell out when she saw who we were. But it was too late to get away.

“Did—did they get him?” she stammered.

Kennedy did not stop to inquire who “he” was. “No—but we got here in time to save Asta.”

The princess turned as if she would have gone. Just then the heavy coupé rolled up, blocking the road, and Carter hopped out.

“Then they didn't get the van?” he panted. He caught sight of Asta. “My god! Is she badly hurt?”

Kennedy motioned to me to keep him away and quiet as he brought Asta around.

There was a deep-lunged throbbing as of a car with muffler cut out. Up the road along which the van had fled now I could make out a man in the uniform of a state trooper hanging on to that identical van. The van stopped and the trooper, gun in hand, came across, Griffith on one side of him, Cadman on the other.

The instant Griffith caught sight of Asta lying on our coats on the wharf he dropped beside her and took up with a more practised hand the work that Kennedy had been doing.

Anastasia faced Cadman scornfully. “So—you leave me—alone—to shift for myself—while you disappear—safe—in Nassau—St. Pierre-Miquelon—anywhere—eh? Then you change your plan—to get rid of her—eh?” She paused. “If they can smuggle in rum, drugs, Chinese, anything into the country, what is it to shanghai people out?”

Asta opened her eyes, saw Griffith, smiled weakly, then with an effort whispered, “Did—he—get—away?”

“No. The princess told me. I gave the tip to the revenue men. Then we covered the roads with troopers. They've brought him back on the van.”

“And the grip?”

“Over there. I see it.”

Asta was getting stronger. Carter was now on the other side of her. She saw him and smiled.

“I never did get to the rectory, John. It was all right. I wasn't going to marry you—just going to give you these.” Weakly she plucked at the packet of letters in her bosom, the packet of foolish letters he had written to Princess Stasie. “I got them. Then I thought I had a chance to search Cadman's room. But he surprised me—knocked me out with chloroform, bribed your men, dragged me off here in the van, before I came to.”

“Letters?” Carter stammered.

Kennedy had pulled the telegram from his pocket. “My man Clews in the city whom I use for investigations wires me that he finds from the Soviet trade representative that the Caucasian clay concession had a purpose. One of the surest ways to attack capitalism is to involve capitalists in scandals.”

Asta smiled at Kennedy, too, now. “I was a little sore when you came into it. I had everything going so nicely. I wanted all the credit with the Department of Justice. I'm a good operative—really!”

“Department of Justice!” echoed Carter blankly.

“Yes. She's clever,” cut in Kennedy. “I had to learn that from my agent in New York myself. Sanford had made inquiries secretly of the Department of Justice, and Asta Harley had been assigned to the case.”

Asta nodded. “Once, when he had the princess under an anesthetic, what she said confirmed his suspicions.”

Kennedy smiled down at her. “I think you will find,” he said, “that Asta Harley wrote those letters herself, that she did it to break up this gang and Love, Incorporated, too. It was her way of doing the job she had set herself to do for the department—to protect foolish, impressionable American millionaires. All but that letter placed before Sanford.”

Craig opened and dug into the grip that I had set on the dock. He drew out a pair of heavy Cordovan leather shoes and under them a pair of gray golf stockings, rolled up tightly. As he turned them out, I saw that the shoes, although new, were still wet—and faded. The stockings, also wet, were almost bleached.

Then I realized it. They had been worn on the roof in the rain. That was how they had got wet. When the wearer had gone into the room as the chlorine was beginning to dissipate out of a partly open window, with only a bit of the gas, heavier than air, remaining close to the floor, the wet shoes and stockings had been bleached. It was then that the murderer had placed the Griffith-Asta letter on the table, the letter itself unaffected by the bleaching gas.

“That letter,” remarked Kennedy, “was written on Asta's own paper with her own machine by the real criminal, the attacker, the international blackmailer and swindler, the 'Hawk'—Armand Cadman.”

“Yes—after he began to realize who I was,” put in Asta. “I was getting desperate. As a last resort I took Dr. Sanford into my confidence. I asked him and he promised to tell John Carter the truth about it—then he was killed.”

Anastasia had turned on Cadman in a fury. “There are some things, too, that I can tell, if they want to know,” she hissed at him, “about his Love, Incorporated, scheme!”

I saw that Griffith had taken Asta's hand. It was not her pulse that he was taking, either. She did not withdraw her hand. Asta was feeling better. He propped her head up a bit and as he did so he smiled into her eyes.