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The Ear in the Wall, a novel by Arthur B. Reeve |
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Chapter 11. The Typewriter Clue |
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_ CHAPTER XI. THE TYPEWRITER CLUE Ike was nowhere to be seen when we reached the street, but down the block we caught sight of Dr. Harris on the next corner. Kennedy hastened our pace until we were safely in his wake, then managed to keep just a few paces behind him. Instead of turning into the street where the Futurist was, Harris kept on up Broadway. It was easy enough to follow him in the crowd now without being perceived. He turned into the street where the Little Montmartre was preparing for a long evening of entertainment. We turned, and to cover ourselves got into a conversation with a hack driver who seemed suddenly to have sprung from nowhere with the cryptic whisper, "Drive you to the Ladies' Club, gents?" Out of the tail of his eye Kennedy watched Harris. Instead of turning into the Montmartre and his office, he went past to a high-stooped brownstone house, two doors away, climbed the steps and entered. We sauntered down the street and looked quickly at the house. A brass sign on the wall beside the door read, "Mme. Margot's Beauty Shop." "I see," commented Kennedy. "You know women of the type who frequent the Futurist and the Montmartre are always running to the hairdressing and manicure parlours. They make themselves 'beautiful' under the expert care of the various specialists and beauty doctors. Then, too, they keep in touch that way with what is going on in the demi-monde. That is their club, so to speak. It is part of the beauty shop's trade to impart such information--at least of a beauty shop in this neighbourhood." I regarded the place curiously. "Come, Walter, don't stare," nudged Kennedy. "Let's take a turn down to the Prince Henry and wait. We can get a bite to eat, too." I had hardly expected that the pickpocket would play fair, but evidently the lure of the remaining twenty dollars was too strong. We had scarcely finished our dinner when he came in. "Here it is," he whispered. "The house man here at the Prince Henry knows me. Slip me the twenty." Kennedy leisurely tore the wrappings from the packet. "I suppose you have already looked at this first and found that it isn't worth anything to you compared to twenty dollars. Anyhow, you kept your word. Hello--what is it?" He had disclosed several small packets. Inside each, sealed, was a peculiar glistening whitish powder. "H'm," mused Kennedy, "another job for the chemist. Here's the bankroll." "Thanks," grinned the dip as he disappeared through the revolving door. We had returned to the laboratory that night where Kennedy was preparing to experiment on the white powder which he had secured in the packet that came from Dr. Harris. The door opened and Clare Kendall entered. "I've been calling you up all over town," she said, "and couldn't find you. I have something that will interest you, I think. You said you wanted something written by Dr. Harris. Well, there it is." She laid a sheet of typewriting on the laboratory table. "How did you get it?" asked Kennedy in eager approbation. "When I left you at the Futurist Tea Room to follow that woman Marie in the cab, I had a good deal of trouble. I guess people thought I was crazy, the way I was ordering that driver about, but he was so stupid and he would get tangled up in the traffic on Fifth Avenue. Still, I managed to hang on, principally because I had a notion already that she was going to the Montmartre. Sure enough, she turned down that block, but she didn't go into the hotel after all. She stopped and went into a place two doors down- -Mme. Margot's Beauty Parlour." "Just where we finally saw Harris go," exclaimed Kennedy. "I beg your pardon for interrupting." "Of course I couldn't go in right after her, so I drove around the corner. Then it occurred to me that it would be a good time to stop in to see Dr. Harris--when he was out. You know my experience with the fakers has made me pretty good at faking up ailments. Then, too, I knew that it would be easy when he was not there. I said I was an old patient and had an appointment and that I'd wait, although I knew those were not his regular office hours. He has an alleged trained nurse there all the time. She let me into his waiting-room on the second floor in front--you remember the private dining-rooms are in back. I waited in momentary fear that he WOULD come back. You see, I had a scheme of my own. Well, I waited until at last the nurse had to leave the office for a short time. "That was my chance. I tiptoed over to his desk in the next room. On it were a lot of letters. I looked over them but could find nothing that seemed to be of interest. They were all letters from other people. But they showed that he must have quite an extensive practice, and that he is not over-scrupulous. I didn't want to take anything that would excite suspicion unless I had to. Just then I heard someone coming down the corridor from the elevator. I had just time to get back to a chair in the waiting-room when the door opened and there was that Titian from the office, you remember. She saw me without recognizing me, went in and laid some papers on his desk. As soon as she was gone, I went in again and looked them over. Here was one that she had copied for him." Kennedy had been carefully scrutinizing the sheet of paper as she told how she obtained it. "It couldn't be better as far as our purposes are concerned," he congratulated. "It seems to consist of some notes he had made and wished to preserve about drugs." I leaned over and read: VERONAL.--Diethylmalonyl or diethylbarbituric acid. A hypnotic used extensively. White, crystalline, odourless, slightly bitter. Best in ten to fifteen grain cachets. Does not affect circulatory or respiratory systems or temperature. Toxicity low: 135 gr. taken with no serious result. Unreasonable use for insomnia, however, may lead to death. HEROIN.--Constant use of heroin has been known to lead to-- I looked inquiringly at Kennedy. "Just some fragmentary notes which he had evidently been making. Rather interesting in themselves as showing perhaps something of his practice, but not necessarily incriminating." While we were discussing the contents of the notes, Kennedy had laid over the typewritten sheet the rules and graduated strip of glass which he had used in examining the strange letter signed "An Outcast." A moment later he pulled the letter itself from a drawer and laid the two pieces of writing side by side, comparing them, going from one to the other successively. "People generally, who have not investigated the subject," he remarked as he worked, "hold the opinion that the typewriter has no individuality. Fortunately that is not true. The typewriting machine does not always afford an effective protection to the criminal. On the contrary, the typewriting may be a direct means of tracing a document to its source and showing it to be what it really is. This is especially true of typewritten anonymous letters. Without careful investigation it is impossible to say what can be determined from the examination of any particular piece of typewriting, but typewriting can often be positively identified as being the work of a certain particular typewriting machine and even the date of writing can sometimes be found out." He had been carefully counting something under the lens of a pocket glass. "Even the number of threads to the inch in the ribbon, as shown in the type impression, plainly seen and accurately measured by the microscope or in an enlarged photograph, may show something about the identity of a disputed writing." He was pointing to a letter "r." Under the glass I noticed that there was a break in the little curl at the top. "Now if you find such a break in the same letter in another piece of typewriting, what would you think?" "That they were from the same machine," I replied. "Not so fast," he cautioned. "True, it might raise a presumption that it was from the same machine. But the laws of chance would be against your enthusiasm, Walter." "Of course," I admitted on second thought. "It's just like the finger-print theory. There must be a sort of summation of individual characteristics. Now here's a broken 'l' and there is an 'a' that is twisted. Now, if the same defects are found in another piece of writing, that makes the presumption all the stronger, and when you have massed together a number of such characteristics it raises the presumption to a mathematical certainty, does it not?" I nodded and he went on. "The faces of many letters inevitably become broken, worn, or battered. Not only does that tend to identify a particular machine, but it is sometimes possible, if you have certain admitted standard specimens of writing covering a long period, to tell just when a disputed writing was made. There are two steps in such an inquiry, the first the determination of the fact that a document was written on a certain particular kind of machine and the second that it was written on a certain individual machine of that make. I have here specimens of the writing of all the leading machines. It is easy to pick out the make used, say in the 'Outcast' letter. Moreover, as I said when I first saw that letter, it is in the regular pica type. So are they all, but as ninety-five per cent, use the pica style that in itself proved nothing." "What is that bit of ruled glass?" asked Clare, bending over the letters in deep interest. "In ordinary typewriting," replied Craig, "each letter occupies an imaginary square, ten to the inch horizontally and six to the inch vertically. Typewriting letters are in line both ways. This ruled glass plate is an alinement test plate for detecting defects in alinement. I have also here another glass plate in which the lines diverge each at a very slightly different angle--a typewriting protractor for measuring the slant of divergence of various letters that have become twisted, so to speak. "When it is in perfect alinement the letter occupies the middle of each square and when out of alinement it may be in any of the four corners, or either side of the middle position or at the top or bottom above or below the middle. That, you see, makes nine positions in all--or eight possible divergences from normal in this particular alone." Clare had been using the protractor herself, quickly familiarizing herself with it. "Another possible divergence," went on Kennedy, "is the perpendicular position of the letter in relation to the line. That is of great value in individualizing a machine. It is very seldom that machines, even when they are new, are perfect in this particular. It does not seem much until you magnify it. Then anyone can see it, and it is a characteristic that is fixed, continuous, and not much changed by variations in speed or methods of writing. "Here's another thing. Typewriter faces are not flat like printing type, but are concaved to conform to the curve of the printing surface of the roller. When they are properly adjusted all portions should print uniformly. But when they are slightly out of position in any direction the two curved surfaces of type and roller are not exactly parallel and therefore don't come together with uniform pressure. The result is a difference in intensity in different parts of the impression." It was fascinating to see Craig at work over such minute points which we had never suspected in so common a thing as ordinary typewriting. "Then you can identify these letters positively?" asked Clare. "Positively," answered Craig. "If two machines of the same make were perfect to begin with and in perfect condition--which is never found to be the case when they are critically examined--the work from one would be theoretically indistinguishable from that of another until actual use had affected them differently. The work of any number of machines begins inevitably to diverge as soon as they are used. Since there are thousands of possible particulars in which differences may develop, it very soon becomes possible to identify positively the work of a particular typewriting machine." "How about the operator?" I asked curiously. "Different habits of touch, spacing, speed, arrangement, and punctuation all may also tend to show that a particular piece of writing was or was not done by one operator. In other words, typewriting individuality in many cases is of the most positive and convincing character and reaches a degree of certainty which may almost be described as absolute proof. The identification of a typewritten document in many cases is exactly parallel to the identification of an individual who precisely answers a general description as to features, complexion, size, and in addition matches a long detailed list of scars, birthmarks, deformities, and individual peculiarities." Together we three began an exhaustive examination of the letters, and as Kennedy called off the various characteristics of each type on the standard keyboard we checked them up. It did not take long to convince us, nor would it have failed to convince the most sceptical, that both had come from the same source and the same writer. "You see," concluded Kennedy triumphantly, "we have advanced a long step nearer the solution of at least one of the problems of this case." Miss Kendall had evidently been thinking quickly and turning the matter over in her mind. "But," she spoke up quickly, "even that does not point to the same person as the author--not the writer, but the author--of the three pieces of writing." "No indeed," agreed Craig. "There is much left to be done. As a matter of fact, there might have been one author, or there might have been two, although all the mechanical work was done by one person. But we are at least sure that we have localized the source of the writing. We know that it is from the Montmartre that the letter came. We know that it is in some way that that place and some of the people who frequent it are connected with the disappearance of Betty Blackwell." "In other words," supplied Clare, "we are going to get at the truth through that Titian-haired stenographer." "Exactly." Clare had risen to go. "It quite takes my breath away to think that we are really making such progress against the impregnable Montmartre. At various times my investigators have been piecing together little bits of information about that place. I shall have the whole record put together to-night. I shall let you know about it the first thing in the morning." The door had scarcely closed when Kennedy turned quickly to me and remarked, "That girl has something on her mind. I wonder what it is?" _ |
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