Part 14 (1/2)

”Can't they find out by--er, interference?” I asked, repeating the term I had so often heard.

Kennedy laughed. ”No, not for radio apparatus which merely receives radiograms and is not equipped for sending. I am setting up only one side of a wireless outfit here. All I want to do is to hear what is being said. I don't care about saying anything.”

He unwrapped another package which had been loaned to him by the radio station and we watched him curiously as he tested it and set it up.

Some parts of it I recognized such as the very sensitive microphone, and another part I could have sworn was a phonograph cylinder, though Craig was so busy testing his apparatus that now we could not ask questions.

It was late in the afternoon when he finished, and we had just time to run up to the dock at Seaville and stop off at the Lucie to see if anything had happened in the intervening hours before dinner. There was nothing, except that I found time to file a message to the Star and meet several fellow newspaper men who had been sent down by other papers on the chance of picking up a good story.

We had the Nautilus to ourselves, and as she was a very comfortable little craft, we really had a very congenial time, a plunge over her side, a good dinner, and then a long talk out on deck under the stars, in which we went over every phase of the case. As we discussed it, Waldon followed keenly, and it was quite evident from his remarks that he had come to the conclusion that Dr. Jermyn at least knew more than he had told about the case.

Still, the day wore away with no solution yet of the mystery.

CHAPTER IX

THE RADIO DETECTIVE

It was early the following morning when a launch drew up beside the Nautilus. In it were Edwards and Dr. Jermyn, wildly excited.

”What's the matter?” called out Waldon.

”They--they have found the body,” Edwards blurted out.

Waldon paled and clutched the rail. He had thought the world of his sister, and not until the last moment had he given up hope that perhaps she might be found to have disappeared in some other way than had become increasingly evident.

”Where?” cried Kennedy. ”Who?”

”Over on Ten Mile Beach,” answered Edwards. ”Some fishermen who had been out on a cruise and hadn't heard the story. They took the body to town, and there it was recognized. They sent word out to us immediately.”

Waldon had already spun the engine of his tender, which was about the fastest thing afloat about Seaville, had taken Edwards over, and we were off in a cloud of spray, the nose of the boat many inches above the surface of the water.

In the little undertaking establishment at Seaville lay the body of the beautiful young matron about whom so much anxiety had been felt. I could not help thinking what an end was this for the incomparable beauty. At the very height of her brief career the poor little woman's life had been suddenly snuffed out. But by what? The body had been found, but the mystery had been far from solved.

As Kennedy bent over the body, I heard him murmur to himself, ”She had everything--everything except happiness.”

”Was it drowning that caused her death?” asked Kennedy of the local doctor, who also happened to be coroner and had already arrived on the scene.

The doctor shook his head. ”I don't know,” he said doubtfully. ”There was congestion of the lungs--but I--I can't say but what she might have been dead before she fell or was thrown into the water.”

Dr. Jermyn stood on one side, now and then putting in a word, but for the most part silent unless spoken to. Kennedy, however, was making a most minute examination.

As he turned the beautiful head, almost reverently, he saw something that evidently attracted his attention. I was standing next to him and, between us, I think we cut off the view of the others. There on the back of the neck, carefully, had been smeared something transparent, almost skin-like, which had easily escaped the attention of the rest.

Kennedy tried to pick it off, but only succeeded in pulling off a very minute piece to which the flesh seemed to adhere.

”That's queer,” he whispered to me. ”Water, naturally, has no effect on it, else it would have been washed off long before. Walter,” he added, ”just slip across the street quietly to the drug store and get me a piece of gauze soaked with acetone.”

As quickly and unostentatiously as I could I did so and handed him the wet cloth, contriving at the same time to add Waldon to our barrier, for I could see that Kennedy was anxious to be observed as little as possible.

”What is it?” I whispered, as he rubbed the transparent skin-like stuff off, and dropped the gauze into his pocket.

”A sort of skin varnish,” he remarked under his breath, ”waterproof and so adhesive that it resists pulling off even with a knife without taking the cuticle with it.”