Clint unlocked them with something of a flourish.
A small lead box came to view.
Clint opened the lead box. Within, carefully resting in an asbestos nest was a very small tube, something like a quarter of an inch in length.
Kale took some forceps from his pocket and lifted the capsule with tender reverence. Then he nodded and smiled at Boston Blackie.
“The radium’s there,” he said.
Boston Blackie frowned at the circle of eager faces which kept narrowing as outer pressure thrust the craning necks into a smaller area.
“Well, it won’t be long,” he prophesied.
Clint Kale turned to his audience, a compact ring of pushing, struggling, seething townspeople.
“That, gentlemen, is a tube of genuine radium, worth exactly ninety-three thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixteen cents — gold!”
And then he proceeded to cover the lead box, to snap the padlocks one at a time, to restore box to casket, casket to casket. When he had finished the task, he turned to the porters.
“Take it all up to my room. Blackie and I will handle the radium.”
There followed a shuffling of steps, the eager hum of voices, and the packing case wreckage was slid to the gutter, eager hands furnished motive power, and the variegated assortment of machinery was carried across the hotel lobby, up one flight of steps, and installed in Kale’s suite.
In the process the two assistants were swelled in number until some thirty volunteers were carrying equipment, all for the reward of one glance at the interior of the mysterious rooms where all this paraphernalia was to be used.
When it had all been finally adjusted to his liking, when X-ray machine was hooked up to obsolete radio. When the loud speaker thundered forth static which was duly recorded upon the wax cylinder of an old time dictating machine, Clint Kale announced himself as satisfied, thanked those who had assisted him, and announced a desire to be left alone that he might “get to work.”
The men shuffled down the stairs, out through the lobby. But they did not leave the vicinity. They milled into little groups, knots of men who talked in low voices. Not since the murder of Sam Pixley had there been quite so much excitement in the little town, and the loafers proposed to see that nothing escaped their observation.
Precisely fifteen minutes after the equipment had been adjusted, there came an imperative knock at the door.
At a word from Kale, Boston Blackie threw it open.
On the threshold stood a pasty-faced chap, an ancient collar around his neck, eager eyes peering from behind thick-rimmed spectacles. In his hand was a notebook.
“I’m Carl Rosamond from the Courier,” he said.
Clint Kale met him with grave courtesy.
“It is a pleasure, Mr. Rosamond. I am not like those detectives who shrink from the press and seek to carry on their work in mystery and seclusion. I am fully aware of the power of the press. I know that they can ferret out any secret, that nothing is obscure to them. Therefore, I have adopted the policy of confiding to the press in the fullest detail. I give them my most confidential plans, my secret findings, my every thought.
“And I only ask of them to treat my confidences with respect. Such as I wish to have published, I release for publication. Such as I wish to remain a secret, I intrust to the honor of the high class gentlemen who comprise the fourth estate.
“Do come in and sit down, my dear chap.”
Carl Rosamond blinked.
“You have questions?” asked Kale.
The reporter pulled out pencil and notebook.
“This stuff?” he asked, waving a soiled hand at the pile of equipment.
“Ah yes,” purred Clint Kale. “I am a detective. There’s no use concealing the fact from your keen eyes, my dear Mr. Rosamond. But I am no mere blundering detective. I am a scientific detective who supplements the fallibility of human judgment by the unerring accuracy of mechanical investigations.”
Boston Blackie coughed.
Carl Rosamond gulped.
“This thing?” he asked, and waved toward the X-ray machine.
“Ah!” exclaimed Clint Kale, and began to talk with the rapidity of a machine gun. “As you are doubtless aware the metaphysicians have long claimed that the human body is encased in a subtle emanation of the life force which has been referred to as the ’aura.’
“For many years their claims were ridiculed by science. But, of more recent years, it has been determined that science was in error. By the use of a certain coal tar product the aura can be seen, even photographed.
“Now, to diverge, for the moment. We originally considered the atom to be the smallest unit of mass. In recent years the atom has been resolved into electrons. We have, therefore, all matter reduced to a series of disembodied negative electrical impulses grouped about a positive, central electrical nucleus of vibratory composition.
“It has even been said that all matter is electrical, vibrational, intangible. It is, in short, but a light whorl, a vortex of vibration in a sea of vibrations.
“And you may well ask how all this is connected with my work. Simply thus. I place a witness before this machine which amplifies the aura. I send that amplification through two stages of radio audition. I record the resulting sound vibration upon a wax cylinder which, in turn, is synchronized with certain questions. At the same time the amplified aura of the witness is subject to the photographic recordation of the ultra violet emanations. The result, my dear Rosamond, is infallible.
“You have my permission to publish that.”
The reporter gulped, asked more questions.
Those questions were answered in a pattern of scientific jargon which contained the nucleus of thought, clothed in an almost impenetrable covering of scientific terminology.
When he had finished, the reporter had the flattering feeling of having been taken into the confidence of a great man. His brain reeled with the stuff he was permitted to publish. His notebook was crammed with misspelled words which he could never afterward decipher, and which wouldn’t have made sense if he could have done so.
He sprinted from the room in time to make the afternoon paper with a brief note of his interview. That interview found headlines across the entire front of the Middlevale Courier. “Scientific detective reduces crime detection to certainty,” read the headlines. There followed much about guilt detectors, lie arrestors, aura, static, vibration, electrons, radium, photography, aura amplification, light vortexes and kindred matters.
Clint Kale read the account and nodded his head with pleasure.
In the meantime the occupants of the hotel had heard the roar of the stuttering sparks, resounding through a loud speaker, the whir of electric motors. The scientific detective was at work. The question was, what was he detecting?
The Courier had been on the streets less than half an hour when important steps thudded their way down the corridor, paused before the door of Kale’s room. There sounded an imperative hammering on the door panels.
Clint Kale signed to Boston Blackie. That individual, through the pessimistic habit of long years in the underworld, stood well to one side as he flung open the door.
The man who blocked the opening was built somewhat the shape of a huge barrel. His great torso, resting on huge hips, was as broad as it was thick. The shoulders were slightly rounded. The neck was a great pillar of fat-incased muscle. A long, walrus mustache swept down from either side of the upper lip. The forehead was low. The eves were a glitter of malevolent concentration.
“What’s comin’ off here?” he demanded.
Clint Kale regarded him with casual indifference. He remained seated in one of the hotel’s uncomfortable chairs, his slippered feet resting on the bed.