The Exploits of Elaine Part 49

She welcomed the suggestion, for she had been thinking that perhaps Bennett might be hinting too seriously at a solitaire.

"So that strikes your fancy?" he asked. "Then let's all go to the shop.

Miss Martin will personally conduct the tour, and we shall have our pick of the finest stock."

A moment later the three young people went out and were quickly whirled off down the Avenue in the Dodge town car.

It was too gay a party to notice a sinister figure following them in a cab. But as they entered the fas.h.i.+onable jewelry shop, Spike, who had alighted, walked slowly down the street.

Chatting with animation, the three moved over to the watch counter, while the crook, with a determination not to risk missing anything, entered the shop door, too.

"Mr. Thomas," asked Susie as her father's clerk bowed to them, "please show Miss Dodge the wrist watches father was telling about."

With another deferential bow, the clerk hastened to display a case of watches and they bent over them. As each new watch was pointed out, Elaine was delighted.

Un.o.bserved, the crook walked over near enough to hear what was going on.

At last, with much banter and yet care, Elaine selected one that was indeed a beauty and was about to snap it on her dainty wrist, when the clerk interrupted.

"I beg pardon," he suggested, "but I'd advise you to leave it to be regulated, if you please."

"Yes, indeed," chimed in Susie. "Father always advises that."

Reluctantly, Elaine handed it over to the clerk.

"Oh, thank you, ever so much, Mr. Bennett," she said as he un.o.btrusively paid for the watch and gave the address to which it was to be sent when ready.

A moment later they went out and entered the car again.

As they did so, Spike, who had been looking various things in the next case over as if undecided, came up to the watch counter.

"I'm making a present," he remarked confidentially to the clerk. "How about those bracelet watches?"

The clerk pulled out some of the cheaper ones.

"No," he said thoughtfully, pointing out a tray in the show case, "something like those."

He ended by picking out one identically like that which Elaine had selected, and started to pay for it.

"Better have it regulated," repeated the clerk.

"No," he objected hastily, shaking his head and paying the money quickly. "It's a present--and I want it tonight."

He took the watch and left the store hurriedly.

In the laboratory, Kennedy was working over an oblong oak box, perhaps eighteen inches in length and half as high. In the box I could see, besides other apparatus, two good sized spools of fine wire.

"What's all that?" I asked inquisitively.

"Another of the new instruments that scientific detectives use," he responded, scarcely looking up, "a little magnetic wizard, the telegraphone."

"Which is?" I prompted.

"Something we detectives might use to take down and 'can' telephone and other conversations. When it is attached properly to a telephone, it records everything that is said over the wire."

"How does it work?" I asked, much mystified.

"Well, it is based on an entirely new principle, in every way different from the phonograph," he explained. "As you can see there are no discs or cylinders, but these spools of extremely fine steel wire. The record is not made mechanically on a cylinder, but electromagnetically on this wire."

"How?" I asked, almost incredulously.

"To put it briefly," he went on, "small portions of magnetism, as it were, are imparted to fractions of the steel wire as it pa.s.ses between two carbon electric magnets. Each impression represents a sound wave.

There is no apparent difference in the wire, yet each particle of steel undergoes an electromagnetic transformation by which the sound is indelibly imprinted on it."

"Then you sc.r.a.pe the wire, just as you shave records to use it over again?" I suggested.

"No," he replied. "You pa.s.s a magnet over it and the magnet automatically erases the record. Rust has no effect. The record lasts as long as steel lasts."

Craig continued to tinker tantalizingly with the machine which had been invented by a Dane, Valdemar Poulsen.

He had scarcely finished testing out the telegraphone, when the laboratory door opened and a clean-cut young man entered.

Kennedy, I knew, had found that the routine work of the Clutching Hand case was beyond his limited time and had retained this young man, Raymond Chase, to attend to that.

Chase was a young detective whom Craig had employed on shadowing jobs and as a stool pigeon on other cases, and we had all the confidence in the world in him.

Just now what worried Craig was the situation with Elaine, and I fancied that he had given Chase some commission in connection with that.

"I've got it, Mr. Kennedy," greeted Chase with quiet modesty.

"Good," responded Craig heartily. "I knew you would."

"Got what?" I asked a moment later.

Kennedy nodded for Chase to answer.

"I've located the new residence of Flirty Florrie," he replied.

I saw what Kennedy was after at once. Flirty Florrie and Dan the Dude had caused the quarrel between himself and Elaine. Dan the Dude was dead. But Flirty Florrie might be forced to explain it.

"That's fine," he added, exultingly. "Now, I'll clear that thing up."

He took a hasty step to the telephone, put his hand on the receiver and was about to take it off the hook. Then he paused, and I saw his face working. The wound Elaine had given his feelings was deep. It had not yet quite healed.

Finally, his pride, for Kennedy's was a highly sensitive nature, got the better of him.

"No," he said, half to himself, "not--yet."