"I'm developing connections with the city editors of several of the larger papers," Barnett replied. "They will supply the basic facts — for a fee, of course. If the story seems to warrant it, there are several free-lance reporters I can hire to develop additional facts. I also do reporting work myself, but at present I have a private client who will take up much of my time away from the office."
"A private client, Mr. Barnett?"
The incredulous question made Barnett realize how strange the idea of a news bureau having a private client sounded to anyone with even a rudimentary notion of how such a business worked. "I am engaged in, ah, research, Miss Perrine, among the indigent and criminal classes in London. A private charitable foundation is supplying the financing."
"How fascinating!" Miss Perrine said. "You will have to tell me all about it!"
"I certainly shall," Barnett agreed. "Now as to your duties. At first they will be mainly secretarial, but as the service expands there will be an increasing amount of in-house journalistic writing to be done. If you can handle the work, it's yours."
"There's the matter of remuneration, Mr. Barnett," Miss Perrine reminded him.
"True," Barnett said. "I have no idea… What is the standard rate for secretarial help around here?"
"I believe that a capable secretary would command fifteen to twenty pounds a quarter. That is, a woman would. A man, of course, would get more. Say twenty-five or thirty pounds."
"Well, why don't we flout custom, Miss Perrine, and start you at twenty-five pounds a quarter. I have a feeling that your initiative and intelligence will prove invaluable to this organization. Perhaps even more than if you had been a man."
Miss Perrine gave Barnett a searching look, but his answering gaze was innocence itself. "Very well," she said, "when do you want me to begin?"
"You do use a typewriter, don't you?" Barnett asked.
Miss Perrine looked disapprovingly at his machine. "The Grandall is a good typewriter," she said, "but I prefer the Remington."
"As I shall need my own machine at any rate, I was planning to get a second. It shall be a Remington, as you say."
"Thank you, Mr. Barnett."
"As for starting, right now would seem a suitable time."
"Very good. What would you have me do?"
Barnett indicated the pile of letters on his desk. "Answer these," he said.
FOURTEEN — PASSING STRANGE
The City is
of
Night, perchance
of
Death But Certainly
of
Night.
— James Thomson
Cecily Perrine proved to be more than Barnett could have hoped for. He had advertised for a secretary and he had found a wonder. She handled the business side of American News Service so well that it almost immediately ceased being merely a front for Barnett's other activity and became a profitable enterprise in its own right. Very quickly she became adept at providing what American newspapers would pay for, from crime news to war news, feature articles to in-depth studies of European affairs. Barnett suppressed his infatuation with her as best he could, and replaced it with admiration for her ability.
In the meantime, he was busy with his own task: searching through the crime news, the society pages, the letters to the editors (published and un-), and even the agony columns for that hint of the bizarre which might indicate the presence of Trepoff or the Belye Krystall.
The bizarre was not hard to find in London, but identifying the elusive hand of Trepoff was another matter. The head of a small child was found in a hatbox in the parcel room of Kensington station. Was Trepoff involved? A man in Walling left his house in the morning, was seen going back for his umbrella, and then disappeared from the face of the Earth. A strange explosion destroyed the house of a Paddington chalk-merchant, who was then found in the cellar, dead of the bite of a giant tropical spider. Was Trepoff the agent, and if so, to what end?
The great safe deposit vaults of the London & Midlands Bank were opened one Monday morning and discovered to be completely empty, with no discernible trace of how the event had happened. The police professed themselves to be baffled in one sentence, and in the next promised an "early arrest."
"It really is quite puzzling," Barnett told Moriarty that evening, "although I see no sign that our mysterious Trepoff is involved in it. The only set of keys, without which I am assured no man could have opened the vault doors unless he employed sufficient explosive to bring the building down around him, was in the hands of the branch manager continuously from the time he left the bank on Friday until he returned on Monday morning. The time clock on the vault was set by the assistant manager, in the manager's presence, as is their custom, and, indeed, did not release the mechanism until eight o'clock Monday morning. The electric alarm system, which connects with the local police station, was not set off. And the guard, who is locked in for the weekend, saw nothing unusual. Nevertheless, two large vaults have been completely emptied of their contents."
"It does not concern us," Moriarty told Barnett. "Trepoff was not involved."
"How can you be sure?"
Moriarty was bent over the small worktable in his study, titrating a clear reagent into a test tube half-full of brown liquid. For a time he did not answer, but continued to critically observe the liquid. All at once the brown color faded and the test tube was clear. Moriarty made a note in his notebook and kept watching as the reagent mixed with the now-clear liquid drop by drop. Within a minute there was another change, this one more gradual, until the liquid had turned a deep blue. Moriarty put the test tube aside and wrote a couple of quick lines in the notebook. Then he turned to Barnett.
"The bank manager keeps the keys to his branch — the entire set, mind you — on his dresser while he sleeps. Does this strike you as being a safe procedure?"
"I, ah, don't know," Barnett said. "I suppose not."
"Further, he does not share a bedroom with his wife, but sleeps alone. And he is a heavy sleeper. It would be no trick for a clever man to obtain impressions of the keys."
"I see," Barnett said, and by now he thought he was beginning to.
"The Briggs-Murcheson time clock is a fascinating device," Moriarty said, going over to his desk and sitting down. "Mr. Murcheson — Mr. Briggs is deceased — Mr. Murcheson would no doubt be quite surprised to discover that if a powerful electromagnet is placed in the proximity of the escapement mechanism and the current applied to it is reversed fifty times a second, the clock is speeded up to approximately twice its normal speed. Which means that if the clock were set for, let us say, the sixty-one hours between Friday at seven P.M. and Monday at eight A.M., and someone were to apply such an electromagnet in the appropriate place shortly after midnight Friday, he might expect the timing mechanism to be released at about four-thirty Sunday morning. It could, of course, be reset after someone had gained access to the interior of the vault."
"This is all just a theory, of course," Barnett said. "What of the guard?"
"Theoretically," Moriarty said, smiling, "we may assume that the gentleman, as is common with many of his sort, is fond of the bottle. A little laudanum mixed into the flask that he takes to work would effectively render him non compos mentis for the required period. And he could hardly be expected to mention it afterward, as it would cost him his job."