CHAPTER XIX
WHEN DUNCAN Maclain left the International Aircraft plant he was carrying a brief case loaned to him by Bunny Carter. Inside the pigskin bag was the stencil cut by Miss Tavestock, and an Ediphone record from Bunny’s machine. On that record was a verbal copy of the advertising letter as read to Maclain in Bunny’s most formal dictating tone. The contents of the letter not only were engraved on the cylinder, but were equally impressed on the sensitive receptiveness of Duncan Maclain’s brain.
For thirty minutes after Bunny had recorded the letter, the Captain had sat in the seclusion of the president’s office with headphones clamped to his ears, playing the record repetitiously through and through. Once or twice Bunny had looked in from his secretary’s office, where he was watching Miss Tavestock cut the stencil with conscientious accuracy. Each time, the Captain’s head had raised alertly and one of his expressive hands had motioned Bunny impatiently away.
“What do you make of it?” Bunny had asked when he returned carrying the stencil and the original letter. “It looks like an ordinary enough circular to me.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” said Maclain. “That’s the beauty of everything we’re dealing with. It looks so ordinary that even the most alert investigator is likely to glance at it but once, and then turn away.”
Bunny asked him, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take this record, the letter, and the stencil to Middletown, if you’ll lend me a brief case to carry them in. That is, if you don’t mind my using your car.”
“Not at all,” said Bunny immediately, “but why Middletown? What do you expect to find there?”
“A State Police laboratory.” The Captain carefully put the letters and the record into the brief case and snapped it shut. “Sometimes there’s more writing on a piece of paper than appears on the surface. Police laboratories have curious means of bringing it to light with chemicals and ultraviolet rays.”
Word by word the Captain mentally sifted the contents of the letter as Bunny’s Lincoln drove him on his way. There weren’t more than a hundred and twenty words on the single sheet of fine bond typewriter paper embossed with the heading: —
THE HOUSE OF BONNÉE
TANNER BUILDING
EAST 57TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY
The words were simple, carrying no hint of espionage or intrigue, carrying nothing except some advertising man’s conception of an angle which might induce a recipient of the letter to buy the products of the House of Bonnée.
The Captain gave it up after a while and relaxed in a corner of the car. He remained motionless, head back, with his finger tips pressed gently against his eyes, until he sensed by the sound of the car that they were crossing the long bridge leading into Middletown. Then he sat up and grasped the handle of the brief case beside him. There were still many things he couldn’t understand. One of them was why that lingering scent of violets should be in Bunny Carter’s car.
2
Dr. Jellicoe, a neat, precise man in his early fifties, tapped the edge of his pince-nez against his teeth and stared across his desk at Schnucke and Duncan Maclain.
“You think there’s a message of some kind written on this piece of paper in invisible ink, Captain?” The Doctor replaced his pince-nez and stared down once more at the letter in his hand.
“I haven’t any idea,” said Maclain, “but it’s something I’d like very much to know.”
“It’s a type of work that’s a little outside of my field.” Dr. Jellicoe’s unlined forehead was momentarily marred with a tiny frown. “I’ve used iodine fumes for bringing out latent fingerprints, and I believe there’s a process with a combination of sodium nitrate and silver nitrate solution that’s very effective.”
“Two solutions in the latter method, to be exact,” said Maclain. “It’s what they call a sulphate picture. After the sodium nitrate and the silver nitrate you’d have to use Formalin and sodium hydroxide, but I’m afraid it won’t do. It’s apt to destroy the visible writing which I want to keep particularly.”
Dr. Jellicoe checked a question and said, “You might make a copy.”
The Captain smiled. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t do much good either. You see, I want to throw this letter away.”
“Yes, certainly,” Dr. Jellicoe agreed a shade too quickly. He began to wonder if Duncan Maclain knew that he was an accredited member of the staff of the Connecticut State Hospital for the Insane.
The Captain continued. “That may sound funny to you, Doctor, but I want to see who finds it.”
“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Jellicoe, studying a button on the desk by his side and wondering if an attendant was near. “Yes, I have that same urge at times, myself. I think it exists in everyone in a greater or lesser degree.”
“Pardon me?” said Maclain.
“Oh, think nothing of it,” said Dr. Jellicoe. “There was some writing you wanted to see?”
“That’s it.” The Captain felt himself slipping. “Suppose we try the ultraviolet ray.”
The Doctor took his pince-nez off again and looked with twinkling eyes at Maclain. There were flashes when he almost thought that this blind man was really sane. He had letters from the Commissioner of State Police and Colonel Gray of G-2. At least, those documents seemed to be in order.
Dr. Jellicoe shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, it might be a good idea at that. Come along with me.”
He started to place a hand on the Captain’s arm, but abandoned the idea precipitantly as Schnucke with gentle firmness nosed him out of the way. Instead, he took a position safely in front and led the way to a darkroom farther down the hall.
Once inside, he hesitated a moment before closing the door. Then his years of practice came to his rescue. Duncan Maclain was powerful, but he was blind, and the agile little Doctor had gotten himself out of plenty of tight spots before.
He switched on a quartz lamp filled with mercury gas, seated the Captain in a chair, and searched around until he found a light filter.
“I’m going to test it with nickel oxide glass,” the Doctor explained, keeping a wary eye on Maclain. “It lets through rays of about thirty-six hundred and fifty angstrom units.”
“Yes,” said Maclain placidly. “At least both of us are on an equal basis. Thirty-six hundred and fifty angstrom units are something that neither of us can see. I believe that four thousand angstroms are the least that are visible to the human eye.”
“That’s right,” said Dr. Jellicoe. He felt a little easier. The blind man seemed to know what he was talking about after all.
He held the paper up in front of the filter for quite a while, then turned it so that the rays would strike the other side. “It’s almost certain,” he said, “that any invisible ink would show up luminescence in the ultraviolet ray.”
He clucked disparagingly. “I’m afraid there’s nothing here at all.”
“I didn’t think there would be,” said Duncan Maclain. “I guess I’ll just have to throw it away.”
“By all means.” Dr. Jellicoe switched on overhead lights and turned out the quartz lamp. He had reached the stage where he acted automatically when he restored the letter to Maclain’s outstretched hand.
The Captain turned and unhesitatingly found the doorknob. “Thank you so much, Doctor,” he said cordially as he stepped out into the hall.
The Doctor stood in the doorway and watched the Captain and his canine guide stride confidently away. Suddenly he reached a momentous decision. He put out the lights in the darkroom, closed the door, and almost scurried down the hall. In his office he sat down beside his desk and said, “Hell, I need a drink. This working around in an insane asylum is beginning to get me.”
3
“Home now, Captain?” asked Al Rutgers when Maclain was back in the car.
“Except for one stop,” the Captain told him. “I want to go to a drugstore at the corner of Albany Avenue and Burton Street. It’s called the Ideal Drug Company.”
He settled back in the car. The seventeen-mile run into Hartford seemed distractingly long. Maclain doubted that the scented letter in the bag beside him could be a coincidence in the chain of events which had already cost two lives and which might cost many more. He was a firm believer in cause and effect and for a brief moment the fact that the ultraviolet ray had disclosed nothing weighed on him heavily.
He was finally convinced that Paul Gerente’s murder, Babs’s kidnaping, and the guillotining of Bella, the maid, were steps in a definite plan of some highly organized band. Such a band must have a source, some recognized headquarters. If perfume was their signal, then what better source, what better headquarters, might be found than an outfit so innocent-appearing as the House of Bonnée? Yet his test of the letter had drawn a blank.
His strong teeth clamped down tightly, setting his jaw into fighting lines. He was using weak tactics by hoping for carelessness in adversaries who had shown none so far. Code letters were careless when a message could be detected by the pet of every police department in the country—the ultraviolet ray.
A small touch of ice started at his neck and traveled slowly down his spine. Once again he was face to face with the name of that tiny flower. He began to trace its course: the odor on the Braille instructions; the odor in Paul Gerente’s secret drawer; the odor in the darkness of the Tredwill hall; the scent on the letter in Norma’s morning mail; the perfume in Bella’s room; and traces of it with him right now in Bunny Carter’s car. Then once again he had run against it unwittingly—the ultraviolet ray.
His clenched hand pounded impatiently on his knee. There must be some tie-up, something about those violets, that would break the whole thing; some clue that would bring out a message cleverly buried in the letter from the House of Bonnée. He knew one man, or thought he did—Madoc, who had spoken to Bunny Carter at the plant; but that hung on a slender, easily broken strand—the inadvertent drawling of a vowel and nothing more. Far too little to set in motion the complicated machinery of G-2. He must wait. Piece by piece, as he built his puzzles, he must tie them up together.
“When I strike,” he muttered viciously under his breath, “I can’t be wrong, and I think I know the way to strike at them all.”
The window slid back in front of him and Al Rutgers said, “Captain Maclain, here’s your store.”