Radio Digest (Nov 1929-Apr 1930)

1U ber something that should have been obvious to him as a physician. If he were treating intestinal disease there is one kind of capsule he would use, a coating that is not dissolved by the acids of the stomach juices but which is dissolved only by the digestive fluids of the intestine. He fell into an obvious trap!" His little audience seemed literally to gasp as Kennedy proceeded with the elucidation so simply of what had been insoluble. He drew the little white paper packet from his pocket and balanced it carefully between his finger and thumb. "There I have one of three packets of this strange poison, santonin, brought back by a certain person from the Near East. One packet he still has in his safe. The third he sold to the murderers of Lola Langhorne! Carefully, that poison was placed in the seeds of a bunch of white grapes, purchased from this same person by these same murderers. I am prepared to show the poison in some of the seeds that were eaten and found in her intestines with the coating over the seeds still undissolved by the intestinal juices. I am prepared to show the poison in the seeds that had been carefully extracted from some of the still uneaten grapes and replaced, coated with the same intestinal capsule coating. It is a perfect case— all but the possession of the poison with which to perpetrate the murder. And within the last hour I have been with the one person in the world who unwittingly sold both the poison and the grapes to parties on whom now I am able absolutely to prove possession — the one rock upon which so many poisoning cases have been wrecked. This case will not be wrecked on that rock!" "Them double-crossin' " Kennedy swung about again quickly and Ryder Smith cut the words short. "Beg yer pardon, sir, I wasn't meanin' any offense!" "It's all right, Cap'n," smiled Kennedy. "I know that, I know also that you are eager to clear yourself of the murder, whatever else may be hung on you. Go ahead! Now is your time. Tell it!" UT^HEM double-crossin' devils!" The A old sea-dog drew himself up to his full height. The withering scorn of his voice was as nothing to the withering scorn of his eyes. Whatever he might have done in his life he had the scorn of the sea for a traitor. "Mis' Lola — she found 'em out!" It was like a burst of a searchlight through the darkness as one sails a boat or of the headlights of a car as one rounds a curve in the blackness. Here was the hidden motive for the murder of the beautiful girl as plain and simple as daylight. "What double-crossing devils?" demanded McNaught leaning forward eagerly as if he had suddenly half outguessed the old seaman. Captain Ryder Smith drew back, uncertain whether not to include McNaught himself in the contempt he felt. "Them revenooers!" he boomed viciously. "That there Warner David and the gal, Jean Bartow! You ought to know who I mean! They was goin' to get the lion's share of that cargo for theirselves before it was over. They took me and Jake Merck and his gal, Maisie, in, they did. But I switched and I switched quick when I seen they done that murder on that Lola Langhorne, I did, — just because she got on to them and they knowed their game of doublecrossin' was up if she lived to get to shore. They double crossed Ev Barr, they double-crossed all the rest of us, they double-crossed the Government that was payin' 'em — and I just beat it out to Rum Row where it was safe, T did, until I heard how things reallv was from Mr. Kennedy. Then I was perfectly willin' to come back an' tell what I knew." "Tell them how it was done, Captain," prompted Craig. "How it was done?" he repeated. "Easy enough! You've told 'em more'n I could tell about the poison. I didn't know nothin' 'bout that, 'cept that there was a poison of some kind and it was given in some way and I knowed they hung out with the Turk and you might get a line on it that way." "Yes; but I mean what you saw. Your direct evidence." CiY^TELL, it was like this. You know VV Mr. Barr places me in charge of the Gigolo with Mis' Lola, bringing in as much stuff as we could carry each trip from the All Alone. This Davis and the Bartow woman was in the dory doin' the same thing. They was comin' back from shore empty and passed me with Mis' Lola comin' in with a load. They musta been lookin' for us in the Sound, for they signaled and I slowed up and they got aboard. "Now, Mis' Lola was always eatin' grapes, white grapes mostly. She loved 'em. We all knowed that. And she was in the cabin havin' her lunch, which was mostly grapes, as usual. They has a little basket of grapes. I don't know what they done. Maybe they switched the grapes. Maybe they just give 'em to hen I wasn't there. "But, by and by, I hears loud voices in the cabin. So I slows down again and goes aft to it. I couldn't help hearin'. She was accusin' them of bein' what they was — double-crossers. Some friend o' hers had put her wise and she was just waitin' to face 'em out when she saw 'em. They musta knowed it. She was nervous and eatin' grapes kinda rapid and they was all talkin' at once. "Alia sudden I hears her say, 'And you look yellow to me ' and she stops, kinda startled like. Then she catches sight of me. 'Cap'n,' she says and her voice was funny, 'there's somethin' wrong with me — get me to shore — and to a doctor — things are turnin' green!' I looked and her face was green. Before I knowed what to say, this Davis had a gun poked at me. I ducked just as he fired and, bulieve me, I didn't waste no time goin' overboard, I can tell ye! Some gal, that Mis' Lola. None o' the rest of yer knowed it. But she's wise. "They fired at me a couple of times in the water, but they didn't get me. When I dropped overboard I was swimmin' around and I cut a tender loose. But 1 didn't dare get in it. They was still lookin' and firin'. Then they seen somethin' and they got off in the dory right smart. I was swimmin' toward the little tender when I see what it was they seen. It was the revenoo boat. I don't knowwhy the revenoo boat don't see me, but they don't. They was lookin' for the Gigolo so hard, I guess. I made the little skiff and there I was tossin' about until a huckster goin' out to the Rum Fleet seen me, and picked me up. They musta set the Gigolo headed for shore4 when they got back in the dory and started out to the All Alone for an alibi. Anyhow, I didn't want to go ashore and this huckster took me out to the boat where he was goin', the Owlet, and I stayed there. I figured it was safer till this blowed over, or somethin'. I lets Don and Jake know where I was and to tell Deitz the fake revenooers ain't in it no more if they tries to shake him down." Slowly, as Captain Ryder Smith told it, with some show of pride and virtuosity at what he wouldn't stand for, T saw it, the double-crossing planned by Warner Davis and Jean Bartow and discovered by Lola. They had removed her, as they thought, with no suspicion on themselves. It was they that had done the informing on Ev Barr, to appear on the job while plotting to get the stuff for themselves. It was they on their last trip that planted the case in Judy's car and tipped off the officers to get her. The relief of Judy and Ev Barr was overwhelming as the two thoroughly frightened young people now stood beside Kennedy, begging him to intercede with old Mr. Hancock for them. "And, Dad, I promise, we'll settle down after the honeymoon " McNaught was a tableau to watch. He stood, arms akimbo, one clenched fist on each hip, legs wide apart, as he faced the cowering Davis and Jean Bartow. "I'll — be — damned!" he bellowed at the top of his voice. "Who's going to reform the reformers!" New Laws for Old (Continued from 43) "Shut up, damn you! what are you gittin' at?" He shivered and a pain went through his loins. He hoped it was fear, but he was afraid it was something worse. In a dumb longing either for companionship in terror or in the grave, he took Alice's hand in his and would not let it go. She felt that she was doomed as well as he, and that, their fate was ghastily prefigured in the wriggling of the repulsive victims they passed. She wanted to do something kind for somebody before she died, but she was ignorant of what to do. She longed to go among the perishing as a sister of charity but she did not know how to help them. In the earlier stages of their journey she had tried to comfort the blind Mr. Cheevers, by describing the comedy and the beauty they passed. She had wept with sympathy for him for what he could not see. And now she envied him his blindness. Alice had left Illinois with the thought only of wealth and travel. Her book of love, she supposed, had closed with her marriage. It had been a dull book and promised to be monotonous to the end, but she was prepared to plod to the finish with dogged fidelity. The flare of gold in the West had opened a new promise, but the way of it had been so long and doleful that it could never repay its cost. She had heard it said that humanity always puts into its mines more than it takes out; and she had proved it, for no splendor could efface the memory of this squalor. Fag and fright counselled her that she would never even find a nugget of gold. She was sure that her weary body would end its pilgrimage in a roadside pit for scavenger animals to mine with their paws. She was so weary that she sighed: "The wolves are welcome to my poor body. I'm tired of it." She was persuaded that Tom would leave her there in a muddy ditch and go on to riches to be spent on other women. She was not jealous of them. Or perhaps they would both perish and passersby would look at their twin headboards and think sweetly of their devotion. This made her smile with acridity. Or Tom might die and leave her a widow; and this would be no better. She had no heart for freedom; her heart was too tired to crave any more of the weary disappointments of love. Yet single blessedness in this rough world offered no rewards, either. AS THE sun was nearing the peak of the cloud-webbed sky, Tom Gammell began to cry aloud in pain. His brothers peered round the hoods of their wagons and made ready to take their last look of him. But they were also