Читать книгу Caught by the Camera - Roy J. Snell - Страница 4

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“Well, you got barked at, all right.” Peter Grim laughed as he bounced from the elevator. “Come on over to the corner and have a cup of coffee.”

“Make mine ice cream,” said Jimmie, as a moment later they dropped into seats at the small eating place.

“Peter Grim!” Jimmie’s voice dropped. “What sort of apparatus was that?”

“Behind those closed cabinet doors? You’d be surprised.” Peter Grim’s face broke into a strange smile. “There’re only a few like it in the country. It’s for talking down a beam of light.”

“Talking down a beam of light!” Jimmie stared. “I never heard of such a thing!”

“I suppose not,” said Peter. “It’s practically unheard of. Yet it can be done, thirty or forty miles at least.”

“But why?”

“Secrecy, that magic word secrecy,” Peter whispered. “You talk on the phone and they tap in on your conversations. Use the radio, and they get your wave length. But this, they must get into direct line with your beam of light. They must own equipment that costs a small fortune to hear it then. If you change direction ever so little, they must go groping about to find that beam of light. You can’t see it, that beam, not twenty or thirty miles away. Why, man! It’s almost impossible to listen in! It—it’s practically perfect!

“Question is,” his voice changed, “why is it there in that tenth floor camera shop?”

“Yes,” Jimmie agreed, “that’s the question.”

“And yet,” Peter chuckled, “why should it be a question? There’s no law against talking down a beam of light any more than there is talking over a short-wave radio.

“In a case like this,” he settled back in his chair, “we always begin at the wrong end, the big end. We think these people must be crooks directing the activities of other crooks by talking over a beam of light. Or—” he hesitated. “Or, perhaps we think they’re spies directing other spies. Chances are they are neither one. We should start with the simplest possible solution and build up from there.

“Here’s a similar case.” His eyes shone. “I have a way of taking a gamble now and then by buying a trunkful of things that have belonged to someone else at an unclaimed express auction. Mostly the stuff is junk,—rags. Now and then I get something real. Once I got a fine trunk. It had been owned by a trained nurse. There were bridge sets, cup and saucer sets, a fine camera, rare books, surgical instruments,—just wonderful things. And,” he laughed to himself,—“two hundred letters from Bill!”

“Who was Bill?”

“The man in the case. The girl was Margie. A romance had developed. Bill, it seems, was something of a bounder. But he wanted Margie to marry him. She consented at last, planned to send her trunk ahead, travel by bus from New York, stop a day or two somewhere along the line, and then come on. And there,” he paused. “There the story ended.”

“Ended?” Jimmy exclaimed.

“I bought the trunk a year later,” Peter went on after a pause. “It had been sent to Bill’s office and never was claimed. What would you say to that?”

“Margie was killed in an accident on the way,” Jimmie suggested.

“But in that case, Bill would have claimed the trunk.”

“That’s right. Then—well—Bill, you say, was more or less of a bad one? He murdered her. Then he was afraid to claim the trunk.”

“Good enough logic,” Peter smiled. “But, don’t you see, you’ve proved my point, you started at the top. You thought of the most tragic solution.

“What really happened was the dullest thing possible. They were married. Bill’s business was bad. Money was scarce. There was nothing in the trunk that Margie really had to have. They postponed claiming it and paying the express. This went on from month to month. Each month storage charges were added. In the end, their time for claiming it expired, and the trunk was sold to me for charges. When I found Bill and Margie,” he concluded, “they had a baby and were living quite happily on next to nothing, without the trunk and its contents. So I left it all on their doorstep and went away.”

“That was keen!” said Jimmie. “But say! Where’s that auction place?”

“Somewhere on Monroe, just west of the river,” Peter grinned broadly. “Today they hold their weekly auction. You are going there. I can read that in your eyes. But you’ve missed the point of my story.”

“No—no I haven’t!” Jimmie insisted. “The point is that those people in the camera shop probably are neither crooks nor spies.”

“And,” Peter added, “that the equipment is merely stored there, or that the big man who barks at boys who open cabinet doors, is something of an amateur electrician and inventor who likes to try unusual experiments.”

“All the same,” Jimmie insisted, “he did bark at me. It was a dangerous sounding bark. If he is an innocent amateur, what does he care if I have a look at his playthings?”

“That’s the question,” Peter agreed. “Why?

“Glad to have met you,” he said a moment later. “Thanks for your help. I must toddle along. Hope you find gold and diamonds in that trunk you’re going to buy.”

“Why! I’m not——”

“Oh! Yes! You’re going to that auction!” Peter laughed heartily, and was gone.

Of course Jimmie went to the auction! He walked across the Loop and out on Monroe Street toward the river.

At the same time he was thinking “Who is this man Peter Grim? I’ve never met a more interesting fellow. Why didn’t I ask him what his business was and where he was bound for or where he could be found?”

He knew the answer to that last question. Somehow he had never been able to crowd his way into another fellow’s personal affairs. If Peter Grim had wished to tell more, he would have told it. If it was written in the stars that he, Jimmie, was to meet Peter Grim again, why then he would meet him! This was a large city, but strangely enough, people who should know one another went round and round, meeting each other constantly. Musicians met musicians, artists met artists. He, Jimmie, was a youthful detective of a sort, and had done a thing or two with his candid camera. If, along with John Nightingale, the reporter, and Tom Howe, the detective, Peter Grim belonged to this little circle, why then they would meet again!

“But this talking down a beam of light,” he thought. “I wonder if there truly is something of the sort. And, if there is, I wonder what that big man’s purpose is in having the apparatus there?” In spite of Peter Grim’s theory regarding the manner in which one should approach a puzzling problem, he had a feeling that the strange device in that cabinet, whether Peter Grim had told him the precise truth about it or not, was of considerable importance.

But here, to his left, was the auctioneer’s red flag. This must be the place. Would he buy a trunk filled with all manner of unusual things? A mildly thrilling adventure, that would be. His step quickened as he reached the door for already he had caught the drone of the auctioneer’s voice.