CHAPTER THREE of The Ark of the Covenant 
The Merlin 


THE cluster of buildings close to Gardiner Bay, where we did our construction 
and experimenting, was beginning to find definition on the white margin of the 
sea, when there dropped from the clouds in front and above the Sieve a beautiful 
silver shape. It was the Merlin which Milliken had out for a trial flight. 
Until that moment I had never seen her in the air. She was my design and had 
been built in the sheds on the beach under my supervision. Her tests had all 
been carried out at my hands, and she had never been in the air without me. 
Milliken had often handled her, but always with myself at his elbow. Until now 
he had not taken her up on a solo spin. 
To see her so, as an outsider would, was a queer experience for me. I felt 
pretty much as a dramatist might if he saw a play of his acted for the first 
time. I wish I could write down just what that moment meant to me, but I can't. 
The clean look of the Merlin gave me a thrill. I wanted to fly her myself and be 
able, at the same time, to watch her from a distance. 
It was something of a surprise to me to see her up in the hands of Milliken, 
though I couldn't say that he had exceeded his privilege. It was quite a natural 
thing for him to do, considering the way I trusted him. But even while I was 
admitting that he handled her splendidly, a sort of jealousy had hold of me for 
a minute or two. He passed me, and I signaled half angrily that I would land 
first. 
The graceful silver shape swept dizzily over my bows, turned banking into a 
sideways loop round me, and righted again to come about after the clumsy 
oldSieve like a great, slim-winged bird. No, I'm wrong. There isn't a bird that 
could repeat the manoeuvre, and I had thought, until I saw Milliken do it, that 
only the Merlin and myself had the knack, but the mechanic had copied my stunt. 
Stupidly annoyed, I planed down for the shore and flattened out to taxi up to 
the jetty. The mechanics ran out and brought the old seaplane to rest in the 
shed, and I disembarked to watch Milliken bring in the Merlin. She came down 
perfectly in the hovering flight that had been designed into her, and landed on 
the water so like some great seagull that the expectation was she would next 
fold her wings. It was gracefully done and by the time Millikenstepped ashore my 
jealousy and irritation were swept from me by a feeling of gratitude. 
"What's she like, Milliken?" I asked. 
"Oh, sir! Oh, sir!" he cried, ablaze with delight. "She's a dream! There's 
nothing to touch her on sea or land--and we made her, sir--we made her!" 
Now Milliken, as a rule, is prone neither to call other men "sir," nor to wax 
enthusiastic, and his excitement surprised me. 
"You handled her well," I said casually. "You've got the hang of that side loop 
all right." 
"Oh, that!" said Milliken. "Why, do you know, a baby could handle her. She's a 
credit to you, Mr. Boon--it's all in the design." 
This from Milliken was by way of an amende honorable. When I first introduced 
him to the design of the Merlin, and showed him the wing modifications that were 
meant to achieve the steep hovering which now distinguished her, he had thought 
the notion impossible. The idea had evolved from stalling, and he then had the 
old fixed idea that the only safe way of landing was to plane down on a thin 
angle and flatten. The idea of perfecting a continuous stalling, in which the 
machine got into neither tail nor nose dive, nor even into a spin, but simply 
floated to earth as a feather might, seemed mad to him. The principle is now a 
commonplace in aeronautics, and how Milliken and I arrived at it, very nearly at 
the cost of our lives, has little to do with the story I have to tell. I mention 
Milliken's apology to give just what sidelight it may on the man's character, 
for he wants some explaining. 
If I know anything about Milliken, he will never bother to read these pages, 
even if he is told he comes into them--Shakespeare and real belles lettres are 
more in his way than this sort of production--so I may say what I like about 
him. In any case, I won't say anything that I wouldn't tell him to his own ugly 
old face if the need arose. 
I have never met a man with as great a passion so carefully hidden as Milliken 
and his love for air machines, nor anybody with half his practical experience 
and skill. He has the strongest hands and the gentlest. No fractious nut is too 
firmly fixed for his spanner, and no adjustment too delicate for his fingers, 
and I am open to bet that he has never stripped a screw in his life. He looks 
about as broad as he is long--which, since he is little over five feet in 
height, is perhaps not saying such a lot--and with the most equitable of tempers 
the habitual expression of his face is one of untamed ferocity. If Milliken had 
wanted to, he could have cleared the workshops in quick time, and I have seen 
him rise under three big men, during a rag, and carry them off like so many 
feather pillows. Like most good men of their hands, he can control his fists. I 
take it he knows too well the power in them and behind them to use them 
unworthily. 
Milliken is the sort of mechanic who always has about him a lump of cotton 
waste, and as we inspected the Merlin that day--I suppose for about the 
thousandth time--he was rubbing the frosted aluminum of the fuselage and of the 
shuttered wings, or was polishing up the glass of the portholes. It was as if he 
could not get his darling clean enough, for he fussed about the machine like a 
mother over a spoiled child. 
I am not going to say that the Merlin did not deserve all his affection. From 
the gleaming 1,000 h.p. radial engine, weighing just about half as many 
kilograms, to her rudder, and from wing-tip to wing-tip, she was all frosted 
aluminum, save only for a thin line of gentian blue that ran along her sides to 
spread out and cover her rear plane. Through the portholes and windows of the 
control cabin, a glimpse could be had of the sparrow's-egg blue that decorated 
her interior, of the shining nickel of the dials and controls. She looked the 
littlest thing. Yet at a pinch she could carry a dozen and a half fighting men. 
She seemed the most innocent and peaceable of machines, but her speed and her 
power of rapid manoeuvre made her just about the deadliest thing that ever took 
the air. 
We could take off the whole top of the cabin above the blue line and fit a 
fighting top, and round the inside of the fusilage were set stanchions for 
sixguns. Two of these guns, the fore and aft, were belt-guns firing 
half-kiloshells, the forward one synchronized with and firing between the 
propeller blades. Beneath were hatches for bomb-dropping and torpedo release. 
Of course, at the moment I'm writing of, when Milliken and I were standing byher 
on the jetty, all the fighting kit of the Merlin was unshipped. I had every 
permit from the government, but as the law forbade any private machine to carry 
armament and I did not want any inspectors dodging around until she was quite 
ready, her fighting capacity still remained secret. I was putting off the time 
when I would have to say she was perfect and would have to offer the design to 
the U. S. government, so she remained a peaceable machine ostensibly built for 
pleasure, and her fighting kit lay oiled and ready in the strong-room of the 
workshops. 



The Bird Flies 
AS I watched Milliken dance round his pet, I began to have an absurd feeling of 
guilt about taking her away. The mechanic was sure to be aggrieved, and I 
wondered how I was going to break the news to him. He stepped back and gazed at 
the machine with a rapt expression. 
"Don't you think," he said slowly, "that the band round her could be widened, 
Mr. Boon? I don't mean much, Ju-u-st a morsel. Ju-u-st about a sixteenth of an 
inch either side, to show up her lines prettier ?" 
"I had a notion of widening the band considerably," said I solemnly, to string 
him a bit, "about four inches altogether. Then I thought of bringing the blue 
right round the engine boss, and stenciling a wreath of emerald-green leaves 
round her nose, bringing the design right round with the band. Then perhaps a 
row of vermilion dots either side of the blue strip would brighten her up--" 
He was gazing at me with his jaw dropped. 
"Huh!" he said contemptuously. "Why don't you finish her off like a circus wagon 
and be done with it? Want to make her look like a swing-boat at a fair---?" 
He broke off and grinned. 
"You got me that time," he admitted. 
"Looks like it," said I. "You and your 'ju-u-st a morsel !' Come up to the 
office, Milliken. I want to talk to you." 
When I had finished telling him of the robbery and of my plans, he put a hand on 
each knee and scowled at me fiercely. 
"Do you mean to tell me you're giving up your work here to go crook-hunting?" he 
demanded. 
"You've said it," I replied. "I've got to stand by the old man in the best way I 
can, Milliken. He's up against a big thing." 
He thought for a minute. 
"Well," he said slowly. "I don't know that I blame you. Your father's worth all 
you can do. But turning the Merlin into a private limousine--huh!" 
"I have to give him the best I've got, don't you see?" 
"Why don't you recondition the J. V. B. 7?" he asked. "She's quite a good bus 
yet, up to about three hundred kilometres per, and more of a passenger machine 
than the Merlin--plenty quick enough for your dad's purpose, I'd say. It'd be a 
shame to use the Merlin. You don't want everybody down at Battery Park swarming 
over the old girl, do you?" 
"Wouldn't do them much good if they did," said I, "but you're right. I'd rather 
they didn't all the same. I tell you what, Milliken. I'll take you with me to 
the Battery and you can fly the Merlin back. Then I'll phone you in the late 
afternoon and tell you when to come and pick my father and me up in the evening. 
Meantime, you can be putting the engine back into theSeven, and getting her into 
order. And, let me see--who is there among the men who could handle her for my 
father if you and I were otherwise occupied?" 
"Young Didcot could. He has his ticket, and knows the Seven. He's a good 
pilot--only, a bit careful." 
"Didcot, of course," I agreed, for he was a pupil of my own. "I like the careful 
streak in him, especially as it doesn't come from concern for his own skin. 
Well, that's the idea. We'll have a bite of lunch, Milliken, and then we'll get 
back to the Battery as quick as we can." 
Soon after noon Milliken and myself boarded the Merlin and set off for New York. 
The silencer was on, and before we had been in the air a couple of minutes she 
was nipping along quietly at three hundred and eighty. 
"Let her out, Mr. Boon!" Milliken, the tempter, whispered in my ear. "Open the 
cut-out and let her rip!" 
I pulled back the cut-out lever--and the air suddenly was hideous with noise. I 
opened the throttle carefully. 
Breathless, we watched the speed dial. The pointer travelled in tiny jerks up 
the scale: three- eighty-five--six, seven, eight, nine--three-ninety! Gradually, 
steadily, and the roar of the engine now a screaming, rising note, the pointer 
crawled round the dial. 
A quick look at Milliken, who was sitting in the toggled seat behind me, showed 
me his ugly old mug streaming with perspiration. His gaze was fixed on the speed 
dial, and his lips were moving. For myself, my jaws were clenched enough to 
hurt. Round, round went the pointer: Four-eighty-five--six, seven--back to 
six--seven, eight--eight--a little more throttle--nine, nine--four-ninety! 
Creeping, jerking, the pointer travelled--five hundred! 
That was the extent of the dial. I had a curious fear that to open the throttle 
any more would be to burst something. The dial said five hundred, and that was 
the limit of endurance. I couldn't stand any more and I throttled down. The 
pointer went back quickly--and I whipped in the cut-out. 
Milliken saw the movement, and his lips went quicker. But I could not hear him. 
My ears were still filled with the roar. The silence was appalling. I tried to 
speak, but could not hear myself. Then, gradually the sound of a voice came to 
me as from a great distance. 
"Hell !--I knew she would! Heaven!--I knew she would!" it came. "By the holy old 
keeno, Methuselah, there's nothing to touch her. She's a daisy and a duck! Why'n 
hell can't they make six- hundred dials? You peach--oh, you little bird! Oh, 
boy!" 
It was Milliken, the normally silent, unpacking his heart of words! 
Eighteen minutes after leaving Gardiner Bay we were tying up at the Battery 
seaplane jetty, I had to shake Milliken to make him realize we were there. 
"Wake up, Milliken! We're there!" 
"Yes, yes. I know." He cast a look of scorn at the fleet of machines round the 
jetty. "Look at them!" he cried. "Just you look at the pack of baby carriages! 
Oh, you bird!" he apostrophized the Merlin. 
"Bird be damned!" said I. "There isn't a thing on land or sea that's like her!" 
"Take her back, Milliken," I told him, "before the rubbernecks get to 
prying--but don't for the life of you let her touch more than three-fifty at the 
very most. Go over her carefully. She may have strained something." 
I watched him take her out, and followed her until she was lost in the clouds. 
Then I turned and walked up to Broadway. It may be imagined that I was in high 
feather, for the Merlin had made the latest speed record look silly by an extra 
eighty kilometres an hour, and I knew very well that she had not been anything 
like full out. Given that amazing speed, her power of quick and easy descent her 
manoeuverability, and her quick climb, I had every reason to think my machine 
was a world- beater. 
A feeling of great exhilaration possessed me as I walked up Broadway. My mind 
worked at amazing speed, and I found myself gathering impressions of the things 
around me quicker than I had ever picked them up before. The traffic appeared to 
crawl, and although I was whacking along as quickly as my legs would let me, I 
seemed to be travelling at a snail's pace. It was an uncanny feeling, I may tell 
you. 



Five Calculations 
MY father, when I got to him, had an astonishing piece of news. 
"The stolen securities have been found !" he said right away. 
"What! Where?" 
"In the Post Office. The lot of them, from all five banks, in envelopes 
addressed to various hospitals and institutions--" 
"Good heavens?" I yelled. "Then that ass Glover was right!" 
"What's that?" my father asked in a bewildered sort of way. "Glover? Who's 
Glover?" 
I told him of the interview with the Post Office official. 
"It's a mighty queer affair, Jimmy," he said, "and a mighty queer gang of 
crooks. They got away with a couple of million in securities--all of which have 
been recovered at the Post Office. In gold they've got away with about two and a 
half million--" 
"If you get the scrip back, what's your total loss?" 
"Two hundred and fifty-three thousand odd dollars in gold. It's a tidy sum, but 
in itself could not affect a bank like ours seriously. The danger is in the 
rumours that all our gold was taken and in the loss of public confidence.There 
might be a scare, and a run on the banks." 
"No sign of that yet?" 
"Not so far, but the news hasn't got into the country yet," said my father. 
"There's something of a panic in Wall Street already. The markets have all gone 
bluey." 
"I hope you're wrong in your prophecy, dad." 
"I hope I am," he said calmly. "But the cheap press is working up a fine scare. 
A lot of harm will be done if they keep on with it. You'd think the facts 
amazing enough without distortion, but some of these newspaper fellows have let 
their imaginations run riot." 
A new point came to my mind. 
"Two and a half million in gold, dad," I asked him, "what would that weigh?" 
"Eh, what's that? Let me see now." He figured for a minute on a sheet of paper. 
"Over three tons, I make it." 
"Bother your old scale of weights," I laughed. 
"What's that in kilos?" *** 
"You'd better figure it for yourself," the old man said grumpily. "I've just 
worked the thing out from ounces troy to avoirdupois." 
"My word," said I presently. "That's over three thousand kilos--three, nought, 
four, eight--to be exact. Say a man can heft twenty-five kilos at a time. That 
makes a hundred and twenty-two journeys to remove the stuff." 
"Trying to work out the composition of the gang ?" 
"That's the notion. How long would you say it would take a man to carry 
twenty-five kilos from the strong-room to the front door?" 
"How much is twenty-five kilos?" 
"Fifty-five pounds, old scale--as near as doesn't matter," said I. 
"That's a pretty good rough guess for an ingot of gold," the old man said. "Let 
me see now! Up the stairs--round-swing door--better make it three minutes for 
the double journey." 
"A hundred and twenty-two journeys of three minutes each makes it six hours six 
minutes to remove the stuff--that is, given that the other banks average the 
same for carrying distance. Even with old-fashioned oxyacetylene plant--and it 
seems to me something better was used--they could get into the banks and vaults 
in about fifteen minutes, but to cover any difficulties, as for instance the 
bursting of the internal compartments of the strongroom and such, let's say 
twenty minutes altogether. Five banks at twenty minutes each adds one hundred 
minutes to the total, and brings us up to eight hours working time." 
My father scratched his head at this. 
"It was all done inside two hours," he protested. 
"Yes, I know," said I, "but eight hours has to be distributed among a certain 
number of men. Four men could handle the work in two hours, were it not for the 
cumulated hundred minutes that must have been spent in breaking into the banks 
one after the other--supposing they had only one oxyacetylene plant. Let's say 
five men for a start and see how long they'd take to do the trick. Have you the 
actual figures of the gold taken from each bank ?" 
He handed me a list. On a basis of journeys of three minutes each, adding twenty 
minutes for the breaking-in in each case, I worked out the bare time that five 
would need to handle the contract: 
Nat. Met................... $ 253, 500 or 13 journeys........................... 
28 minutes 
Guaranty T. ............. 360, 250 " 18 "............................ 31 " 
Subtreas. .................. 1, 056, 000 " 52 "............................ 52 " 

Dyers' Nat. ............... 450, 100 " 23 "............................ 35 " 
Trade Bank ............... 480, 250 " 24 "............................. 36 " 
"Then five men with only one cutting plant couldn't do it?" said myfather. 
"No, nor could ten men with only one plant do it inside the two hours. Ten men 
with two acetylene sets could, though. But fifteen men with three sets could do 
it better. One squad for this bank and the Guaranty, another for the 
Subtreasury, and a third for the Dyers' and the Trade." 
"M'm," the old man murmured. "Well, how do you think they worked it?" 
"The thing that stops our theorizing right off is the anaesthetic that was used. 
What puzzles me is that the thing is possible with poison gas, and that no 
crooks have hit on the dodge before. But say that some one has discovered a new 
general anaesthetizing gas leaving no ill effects. A big four-thousand-kilo 
truck-- three and a half tons, dad-- comes down Broadway, drops a gas bomb and 
five men in gas masks with a cutting plant at this bank. It drops another bomb 
by the Guaranty Trust. Goes on to the Subtreasury, where it drops another bomb 
and another five men. It drops a fourth bomb at the Dyers' and goes on to the 
Trade, where the last gang and bomb are dropped. It waits until the Subtreasury 
is cleared, then it picks up the stuff from theTrade and Dyers', Guaranty, 
National Metallurgical, with the men, then goes onto the Post Office and drops 
the securities in the box." 
"You think that's the way of it, do you?" said my father. "It sounds reasonable 
enough, especially as we know the district was not properly surrounded by the 
police until the two hours were over--" 
"That's the point," said I. "They might have used three trucks, or four--or even 
five. The thing must have been organized to go like clockwork in any case. If I 
were the police I'd be searching every garage in the city. The brain that 
organized the coup would see at once that to take the stuff into the country 
would be to extend the time in which they'd be in danger of capture red-handed 
on the open road." 
"It's a notion," said the old man. "I'll phone it to the detective staff right 
off." 
"By the way," I asked, "has anything come out about the boxes found at the Post 
Office?" 
"Not a thing, so far. I haven't heard anything." 
"Then I'll go uptown and see if Dan Lamont has made anything out of the gold 
tarnishing. What time will you be ready to start for Hazeldene?" 
"Make it seven o'clock." 
I left him at the telephone, and in passing out dictated a telegram to Milliken 
asking him to be at the Battery at seven. 
The newsboys were still busy about the streets and were doing an enormous trade. 
I bought several of the staider journals before calling up an automobile to take 
me to Dan Lamont's. The first one I opened in the car had a piece of information 
that, if true, knocked the bottom out of my theory of the trucks straight away. 
It appeared from the accounts given by several individuals who had been driving 
automobiles in the smitten district that when the drivers became unconscious the 
engines of their vehicles had stopped. One man, who had been driving an electric 
truck, had switched off the power just as soon as he felt himself go faint. 
To my mind the fact about the gasoline-driven cars strongly confirmed my idea of 
a gas. I imagined then that only some agent present in the air could have 
affected all the automobiles round Wall Street in the same way, and I was 
chagrined to see that the one vehicle driven by electricity in the district at 
the time was ruled out as evidence by the fact that its driver had stopped it 
himself. The street cars were of no value in this regard, because of their 
self-stopping devices. What would have happened to the truck if the driver had 
fallen asleep before he could switch off the power? I was inclined to think that 
only a wall or something of the sort would have stopped that truck, and that it 
would have come to a smash. 
If my idea of a gas was right--and I could see no other explanation for the 
mysterious sleep or for the stopping of the internal-combustion engines of the 
automobiles--my notion that the thieves had used trucks for their coup was 
useless. There was the possibility, however, that knowing the effects of their 
gas on engines using the air to carburet the gasoline, the thieves either used 
electric lorries or had some specially arranged engines using compressed air. 
Such was my fantastic theory, based on a very crude mistake which with all my 
training I should have avoided. I ought to have had more sense. 



A Dramatic Story 
IT WAS beginning to be difficult to keep track of all the threads that were 
woven into the mystery, and I'll confess that right there in the automobile I 
was in something of a panic when I thought of the job I had taken on. Every new 
point that came up deepened the obscurity in which the whole affair was wrapped, 
and I was entirely in sympathy with one of the newspaper men whose business it 
was to write up the robbery. This fellow attributed the whole thing to a master 
criminal: 
THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY! 
The Sleeping City. 
BIGGEST BURGLARY IN HISTORY BAFFLES THE BULLS! 
Master Mind Behind the Wall Street Mystery? 
The imagination is staggered by the possibilities opened up by this morning's 
outrage on the five banks. If by wiping out the consciousness of the denizens of 
the Business Center of a Great City for two hours a gang of criminals can clean 
that area of all its movable wealth (for the loss was vastly exaggerated) who 
can foretell where such operations will stop? Millions of dollars have been lost 
in the robbery. Five of the most important banks in the country have been 
crippled. The criminal no longer is satisfied with guerilla raids on the 
law-abiding world. He has declared War! 
Organized efficiency is the keynote of this startling coup. In the execution of 
their fell purpose the gang of criminals have not wasted a single movement. The 
attack was made with the precision that indicates a leader of genius. Behind it 
is the brain of a master crook, a Napoleon of Crime. The mind that could 
conceive the plan of doping a whole district by mysterious means and so organize 
the manoeuvres of his subordinates is not the mind of the ordinary denizen or 
the Underworld. It is the mind of a Warped Genius. 
To connote the evidence is a matter of difficulty for there is no evidence to 
connote. The mind of the master crook has seen to that. 
The writer goes on for half a column and succeeds in telling how bewildered 
heis. Then he draws a dramatic picture of the scene, as he imagines it, 
duringthe two hours: 
...It is like a City of the Dead. About the silent streets recumbent forms of 
sleeping men are huddled in the doorways or are spread across the sidewalks. 
Here and there, with his useless club beside him, lies the blue-coated guardian 
of the peace. A faint gleam of white from another inert figure shows where the 
clubman has been overcome stricken down by the mysterious sleep that has fallen 
like death upon the idle and the occupied alike. Automobiles with their 
brilliant headlights throwing the level beams insisted upon by law are drawn up 
in the roadways and seem to carry cargoes of dead men. It is as though some 
intangible power had stopped all movement with the wave of a magic wand. From 
the elevated railway on Sixth comes the roar and hum of a passing train.... 
That was a point I had missed--and what about the subways? 
. . . and from pleasure districts uptown is heard the quiet murmur of the 
traffic, the subdued echoes of moving people. Except for these, the silence is 
the silence of Death. 
Suddenly under the pillared mass of a great building, a pinpoint of light 
emerges and it grows into a blinding glare. Oxyacetylene! It lights up a cluster 
of masked men and flashes off their goggles of blue glass. With unhurrying speed 
they do their work and in their unconcern cast no glance at the huddled forms 
around them.... 
There's a lot more like that, before he begins to tell of the first glimmer of 
dawn, in which shadowy companies assemble and break up, man by man, each going 
his own way--I suppose with twenty-five kilos of gold apiece! Well, I had not 
thought of a perfect army of crooks to manhandle the stuff. He finishes up on a 
great note, like an old-time "movie" subtitle: 
And the Mind that conceived all this, the Arch-crook, the Master Criminal, 
brooded the while over the conquered City. For the thousandth time, maybe, he 
connoted his plan of campaign and smiled to think that it could not fail. The 
whole of civilized America lay at his mercy and he had the power, plus the will, 
to bring ruin and chaos to its prosperous centers. The wealth of the nation was 
his for the grasping. 
Malign this personality must be, but is it the motive power of a new anarchistic 
movement against established order? Is it by any chance the Master Mind behind a 
recrudescence of the Idea we used to know as Bolshevism? Until the identity of 
this Napoleon of Crime is established, until he is immured in our strongest 
prison, he with his secret and mysterious weapons, has the wealth of the Nation 
at his Mercy! 
If this Master Mind is to be beaten only a Master Mind can do it and we beg 
leave to doubt if the present Chief of Police, the spineless and supine Conrad 
Dickermann, fits the Bill! 
With all my own theories gone astray I was, as I say, quite in sympathy with 
this writer in his bewilderment. What sort of crooks were they who were capable 
of relinquishing two million dollars in negotiable securities? It is true that 
there would have been some difficulty in disposing of the scrip, in the face of 
the broadcasting by radio of the descriptions, but the thing was not impossible. 
The newspaper man was right when he said that the robbery was a masterpiece of 
organization, for in whatever way it was effected, there must have been the 
slickest co-ordination between the members of the gang. Nor was he far wrong in 
attributing the organization to a "Master Mind." Something of the kind was 
behind it all. Where neither he nor his fellows were at all helpful was in 
suggesting a reasonable explanation of the anaesthesia. 



Philanthropy Abroad 
I WAS hoping that Dan Lamont would perhaps have come on something that would 
help to explain the mystery, for I was certain that if any scientist in America 
was better equipped than Dan for making the discovery, he was so obscure as to 
be useless. Dan is a top-notcher. 
I found the little chap in a great state of excitement, and as soon as he saw me 
he pulled out his loose change and began to rattle it in his cupped hands like 
mad. 
"You've found the thing that tarnished the gold !" I exclaimed. 
"No," he said. 
"Then you've hit on the dope that was used?" 
"No." 
"Then what the devil's all the excitement about Dan?" 
"Jimmy," he said solemnly, "a wonderful thing has happened. At this moment there 
is in New York more radium bromide than was ever known to exist in the whole 
world!" 
"Well, what about it?" 
"What about it! What a phlegmatic ass you are, Jimmy! Don't you realize what it 
means?" 
"No," said I, merely to egg him on. 
"It means that experiments in radio-activity, in physics, in therapeutics, can 
be carried on on a scale undreamt of up to now. It is immense! Great Christopher 
and the hard-boiled egg! Do you know what it means in money alone--the value of 
the stuff?" 
"Thousands, I suppose?" 
"Don't be a fat-head, Jimmy. It means millions, millions! Radium worth several 
millions of dollars was sent to five of the scientific and surgical institutes 
in the city this morning." 
It came to me in a flash. 
"In square black boxes, unstamped through the Post Office!" I yelled. 
"Yes," cried Dan. "How did you know?" 
"Because I just missed seeing them this morning," I said. "Is there any clue to 
who sent them?" 
"Not a thing," said he. "Where they come from nobody knows. Just after you left 
me this morning, I was called up by the Post Office to go down there in a hurry. 
You know I'm supposed to be all right about explosives ever since I handled that 
I. W. W. outrage for them in 1925? Well, they had an idea that something of the 
sort was on again, and they called me in. 
"When I got down there, I found a group of officials round five black 
boxes,containing heavy lead cases. I thought their explosives idea was mad, and 
I pried up the thick lid of one of the cases with a screwdriver. Inside the case 
was a heap of pinkish salts. I could hardly believe my eyes, for it seemed to me 
to be one of the radium compounds--either chloride or bromide--with the usual 
barium impurity in it. I got away from it, quick, and had them shutter all the 
windows. By good luck I had a tiny scrap of willemite in my pocket, and in the 
darkness, held above the salts, it gave off a lovely glow. I had no doubt. It 
was radium--heaps and heaps of it--and worth a fortune !" 
"Was anything said about the envelopes ?" 
"You mean the big envelopes with the securities stolen from the banks? That's 
the funny thing about the whole affair. No two of the envelopes or packages were 
addressed in the same handwriting. We tried to connect them up from the fact 
that they were all unstamped, but it was apparent that ten different hands had 
written the ten different addresses." 
"I think it binds it. Wouldn't you say that the crooks who broke into thebanks 
this morning sent the radium to the institutes?" 
"Would you? You can be safe, perhaps, in assuming that the radium was sent by 
one individual, or group of individuals, and that the envelopes were sent by the 
thieves, but can you be certain that the two groups are identical? Is it likely 
that people capable of the Wall Street affair would be the sort to send radium 
round--like tea?" 
"It sounds contradictory--but they sent the securities, that's certain," said I. 
"And I've got a notion that the mind that could conceive the robbery, and the 
gas, and the sending of the securities, is quite capable of doing the other. I'm 
not going to lose sight of the possibility. Have you formed any opinion of how 
the anaesthetic was administered, Dan? Have you come on anything to explain the 
tarnishing of the gold?" 
Dan rattled his loose change before replying. 
"I haven't a ghost of a notion," he said. "The whole thing's a complete mystery. 
But I have turned the entire laboratory to testing for the stuff that fixed the 
gold--and I'll explain the anaesthetic somehow--even if it means discovering one 
with the same powers myself. This thing's got me going! 



*** The U. S. A. adopted the metric system for weights, etc., in 1930.