“I have used,” he explained, “Marconi’s radiotelephone, because in connection with his receivers Marconi uses phonographic recorders and on them has captured wireless telegraph signals over hundreds of miles.
“He has found that it is possible to receive wireless signals, although ordinary records are not loud enough, by using a small microphone on the repeating diaphragm and connected with a loud-speaking telephone. The chief difficulty was to get a microphone that would carry a sufficient current without burning up. There were other difficulties, but they have been surmounted and now wireless telegraph messages may be automatically recorded and made audible.”
Kennedy started the phonograph, running it along, stopping it, taking up the record at a new point.
“Listen,” he exclaimed at length, “there’s something interesting, the WXY call—Seaville station—from some one on the Lucie only a few minutes ago, sending a message to be relayed by Seaville to the station at Beach Park. It seems impossible, but buzzing and ticking forth is this message from some one off this very houseboat. It reads: “Miss Valerie Fox, Beach Park. I am suspected of the murder of Mrs. Edwards. I appeal to you to help me. You must allow me to tell the truth about the messages I intercepted for Mrs. Edwards which passed between yourself on the ocean and Mr. Edwards in New York via Seaville. You rejected me and would not let me save you. Now you must save me.”
Kennedy paused, then added, “The message is signed by Dr. Jermyn!”
At once I saw it all. Jermyn had been the unsuccessful suitor for Miss Fox’s affections. But before I could piece out the rest of the tragic story, Kennedy had started the phonograph record at an earlier point which he had skipped for the present.
“Here’s another record—a brief one—also to Valerie Fox from the houseboat: ‘Refuse all interviews. Deny everything. Will see you as soon as present excitement dies down.’”
Before Kennedy could finish, Waldon had leaped forward, unable longer to control his feelings. If Kennedy had not seized his arm, I verily believe he would have cast Dr. Jermyn into the bay into which his sister had fallen two nights before in her terribly weakened condition.
“Waldon,” cried Kennedy, “for God’s sake, man—wait! Don’t you understand? The second message is signed Tracy Edwards.”
It came as quite as much a shock of surprise to me as to Waldon.
“Don’t you understand?” he repeated. “Your sister first learned from Dr. Jermyn what was going on. She moved the Lucie down here near Seaville in order to be near the wireless station when the ship bearing her rival, Valerie Fox, got in touch with land. With the help of Dr. Jermyn she intercepted the wireless messages from the Kronprinz to the shore—between her husband and Valerie Fox.”
Kennedy was hurrying on now to his irresistible conclusion. “She found that he was infatuated with the famous stage beauty, that he was planning to marry another, her rival. She accused him of it, threatened to defeat his plans. He knew she knew his unfaithfulness. Instead of being your sister’s murderer, Dr. Jermyn was helping her get the evidence that would save both her and perhaps win Miss Fox back to himself.”
Kennedy had turned sharply on Edwards.
“But,” he added, with a glance that crushed any lingering hope that the truth had been concealed, “the same night that Dr. Jermyn arrived here, you visited your wife. As she slept you severed the nerves that meant life or death to her. Then you covered the cuts with the preparation which you knew Dr. Jermyn used. You asked him to stay, while you went away, thinking that when death came you would have a perfect alibi—perhaps a scapegoat. Edwards, the radio detective convicts you!”
CHAPTER X
THE CURIO SHOP
Edwards crumpled up as Kennedy and I faced him. There was no escape. In fact our greatest difficulty was to protect him from Waldon.
Kennedy’s work in the case was over when we had got Edwards ashore and in the hands of the authorities. But mine had just begun and it was late when I got my story on the wire for the Star.
I felt pretty tired and determined to make up for it by sleeping the next day. It was no use, however.
“Why, what’s the matter, Mrs. Northrop?” I heard Kennedy ask as he opened our door the next morning, just as I had finished dressing.
He had admitted a young woman, who greeted us with nervous, wide-staring eyes.
“It’s—it’s about Archer,” she cried, sinking into the nearest chair and staring from one to the other of us.
She was the wife of Professor Archer Northrop, director of the archeological department at the university. Both Craig and I had known her ever since her marriage to Northrop, for she was one of the most attractive ladies in the younger set of the faculty, to which Craig naturally belonged. Archer had been of the class below us in the university. We had hazed him, and out of the mild hazing there had, strangely enough, grown a strong friendship.
I recollected quickly that Northrop, according to last reports, had been down in the south of Mexico on an archeological expedition. But before I could frame, even in my mind, the natural question in a form that would not alarm his wife further, Kennedy had it on his lips.
“No bad news from Mitla, I hope?” he asked gently, recalling one of the main working stations chosen by the expedition and the reported unsettled condition of the country about it. She looked up quickly.
“Didn’t you know—he—came back from Vera Cruz yesterday?” she asked slowly, then added, speaking in a broken tone, “and—he seems—suddenly—to have disappeared. Oh, such a terrible night of worry! No word—and I called up the museum, but Doctor Bernardo, the curator, had gone, and no one answered. And this morning—I couldn’t stand it any longer—so I came to you.”
“You have no idea, I suppose, of anything that was weighing on his mind?” suggested Kennedy.
“No,” she answered promptly.
In default of any further information, Kennedy did not pursue this line of questioning. I could not determine from his face or manner whether he thought the matter might involve another than Mrs. Northrop, or, perhaps, something connected with the unsettled condition of the country from which her husband had just arrived.
“Have you any of the letters that Archer wrote home?” asked Craig, at length.
“Yes,” she replied eagerly, taking a little packet from her handbag. “I thought you might ask that. I brought them.”
“You are an ideal client,” commented Craig encouragingly, taking the letters. “Now, Mrs. Northrop, be brave. Trust me to run this thing down, and if you hear anything let me know immediately.”
She left us a moment later, visibly relieved.
Scarcely had she gone when Craig, stuffing the letters into his pocket unread, seized his hat, and a moment later was striding along toward the museum with his habitual rapid, abstracted step which told me that he sensed a mystery.
In the museum we met Doctor Bernardo, a man slightly older than Northrop, with whom he had been very intimate. He had just arrived and was already deeply immersed in the study of some new and beautiful colored plates from the National Museum of Mexico City.
“Do you remember seeing Northrop here yesterday afternoon?” greeted Craig, without explaining what had happened.
“Yes,” he answered promptly. “I was here with him until very late. At least, he was in his own room, working hard, when I left.”
“Did you see him go?”
“Why—er—no,” replied Bernardo, as if that were a new idea. “I left him here—at least, I didn’t see him go out.”
Kennedy tried the door of Northrop’s room, which was at the far end, in a corner, and communicated with the hall only through the main floor of the museum. It was locked. A pass-key from the janitor quickly opened