Part 22 (1/2)
He had entered a private office and was looking over some mail that had been left on his desk during his absence.
”Look at this,” he called, picking up a clipping from a newspaper which had been laid there for his attention. ”You see, we have them aroused.”
We read the clipping together hastily:
PLAN TO CORNER WORLD'S RADIUM
LONDON.--Plans are being matured to form a large corporation for the monopoly of the existing and future supply of radium throughout the world. The company is to be called Universal Radium, Limited, and the capital of ten million dollars will be offered for public subscription at par simultaneously in London, Paris and New York.
The company's business will be to acquire mines and deposits of radioactive substances as well as the control of patents and processes connected with the production of radium. The outspoken purpose of the new company is to obtain a world-wide monopoly and maintain the price.
”Ah--a compet.i.tor,” commented Kennedy, handing back the clipping.
”Yes. You know radium salts used always to come from Europe. Now we are getting ready to do some exporting ourselves. Say,” he added excitedly, ”there's an idea, possibly, in that.”
”How?” queried Craig.
”Why, since we should be the princ.i.p.al compet.i.tors to the foreign mines, couldn't this robbery have been due to the machinations of these schemers? To my mind, the United States, because of its supply of radium-bearing ores, will have to be reckoned with first in cornering the market. This is the point, Kennedy. Would those people who seem to be trying to extend their new company all over the world stop at anything in order to cripple us at the start?”
How much longer Denison would have rattled on in his effort to explain the robbery, I do not know. The telephone rang and a reporter from the Record, who had just read my own story in the Star, asked for an interview. I knew that it would be only a question of minutes now before the other men were wearing a path out on the stairs, and we managed to get away before the onrush began.
”Walter,” said Kennedy, as soon as we had reached the street. ”I want to get in touch with Halsey Haughton. How can it be done?”
I could think of nothing better at that moment than to inquire at the Star's Wall Street office, which happened to be around the corner. I knew the men down there intimately, and a few minutes later we were whisked up in the elevator to the office.
They were as glad to see me as I was to see them, for the story of the robbery had interested the financial district perhaps more than any other.
”Where can I find Halsey Haughton at this hour?” I asked.
”Say,” exclaimed one of the men, ”what's the matter? There have been all kinds of rumors in the Street about him to-day. Did you know he was ill?”
”No,” I answered. ”Where is he?”
”Out at the home of his fiancee, who is the daughter of Mrs. Courtney Woods, at Glenclair.”
”What's the matter?” I persisted.
”That's just it. No one seems to know. They say--well--they say he has a cancer.”
Halsey Haughton suffering from cancer? It was such an uncommon thing to hear of a young man that I looked up quickly in surprise. Then all at once it flashed over me that Denison and Kennedy had discussed the matter of burns from the stolen radium. Might not this be, instead of cancer, a radium burn?
Kennedy, who had been standing a little apart from me while I was talking with the boys, signaled to me with a quick glance not to say too much, and a few minutes later we were on the street again.
I knew without being told that he was bound by the next train to the pretty little New Jersey suburb of Glenclair.
It was late when we arrived, yet Kennedy had no hesitation in calling at the quaint home of Mrs. Courtney Woods on Woodridge Avenue.
Mrs. Woods, a well-set-up woman of middle age, who had retained her youth and good looks in a remarkable manner, met us in the foyer.