CHAPTER FOUR of The Ark of the Covenant Two Clues I DID not mean to leave Dan Lamont that afternoon until we had gone over all the points of the robbery very thoroughly. I have the greatest respect for my friend's mind. One of the first things Dan did was to point out where I had made the very sap-headed break in my theorizing. When I told him that the sleep-producing gas was what had stopped the engines of the automobiles, he grinned at me in a sort of sarcastic way. "Are you chemist enough to tell me what there is in the air that enables the automatic engine to combust its gasoline?" he asked. "Don't be funny, Dan," said I, and innocently answered him, "Oxygen, of course." "Clever fellow, he purred. "And now will you tell me what the human engine gets out of the air to help its combustion?" Right there I saw where I had pulled the bone. It was obvious that a gas strong enough to deprive an automobile engine of its oxygen would have deprived humans of their lives. I dare say I deserved all the chaffing he gave me, but he rubbed it in all afternoon. By and by he was sprawling on the floor of his sitting-room, searching the newspapers for further information that might throw light on the mystery. He had managed to get his mop of flaxen hair so tangled up and over his eyes that he looked like one of those silky-haired Scots dogs. "A clue, a clue, a clue,--let's find a clue," he was chaffing me."Let's find a clue on which to base a reasonable hypothesis, my dear Jimmy. I said, mark you, a reasonable hypothesis. The gas that stopped the engines doped the bulls! It may sound all right--but the reasoning is just what might be expected from a mere mechanic. "Oh, shut it, Dan!" He shut one eye and recited at me: "The famous airman, looking for a gas, pulls a large bone and proves himself an--egregious mechanic!" "You might have rhymed," said I, and threw a cushion at him. "Oh, that that brain which did the ether penetrate Should ossify and fattily degenerate!" he finished and threw the cushion back at me. "I've found another curious robbery of last night that seems to have escaped you, you slug," said he. "Come and look at this, Jimmy." I got down on the floor beside him. He had one of the stubby fingers of his childish hand on a paragraph in a newspaper. This briefly stated that five thousand litres of high-grade gasoline had vanished in some mysterious fashion, during the night, from one of the big containers in New Jersey belonging to the Standard Oil Company. "That's a curious thing," said I. "It is a curious thing," Dan agreed. "Somebody gets away from the financial district with over three thousand kilos weight of gold--and on the same night some one else gets away with five thousand litres of gasoline. What do you know about it, son?" "Seems to be a craze for weight-lifting sprung up." "Looks like it," he murmured. "Now, here's another funny story--" He pointed to another paragraph tucked away on the same page. This reported the abstraction of a large amount of eatables from a big provision store, also in New Jersey, during the night, but here gold dollars had been left to pay for the goods taken away. "You're not connecting those two things up with the Wall Street affair, are you, Dan?" He took out his watch. "It's now twenty minutes to four," he said calmly. "We can be over beyond Newark inside the hour with my roadster, if you'll drive. We'll see if the things do connect up." At the gasoline station we got little information. Nobody could tell how thefuel had been taken. The station had been closed on the Sunday night, and had been left in charge of a watchman, the manager informed us, and thewatchman had sworn he knew nothing about it. "Did the watchman by any chance confess to having fallen asleep?" I asked themanager. "He swore he hadn't," said that official, "but I expect he did. If he didn't, he's in league with the crooks, and the police have got him." "Stop a bit," Dan Lamont interposed. "You're perfectly certain that thegasoline has been stolen? Isn't it possible that some mechanical device in the tank has failed, that the oil has slipped back to supply?" "We thought of that," said the manager, "and the mechanism has been thoroughly overhauled. But there isn't any doubt that the outlet pipe was opened in the night and the gasoline taken away." "The watchman is unshaken in his statement that he did not fall asleep?" Iasked. "Oh, yes. He's fixed on that--but he might be lying, don't you see? He's supposed to be awake all night, and to make his rounds at definite intervals.If he had fallen asleep, he wouldn't like to confess it." "Where has he been taken to?" asked Dan. "He's at the local station." "Right," said Dan. "Let's go there, Jimmy." The watchman was an elderly Irishman, and just the type one would expect to find at the job. He was stubborn to begin with and refused to talk at all. It was the merest chance that Dan addressed me by my surname, and at that the old boy's attitude changed. "Are ye Mr. Boon, the flyin' man?" he asked. "That's me," I admitted, "unless there's another of the name." "But are ye the Mr. Boon that has the works out at the top end av LongIsland?" "That's me." "Well, ye've got a son av mine workin' for ye--name av McGinty!" "McGinty your son?" said I. "Well, he's a good fellow, Mr. McGinty, and one of my best mechanics." "Ye make me proud to hear it, sorr," said the old man. "He swears by you, so he does." After that, everything was easy. The old man admitted that he'd fallen asleep about one o'clock in the morning, but that he didn't understand how it happened. We pointed out to him that it would be better to confess to having fallen asleep, rather than leave the idea that he was in league with the gang that had emptied the tank. He then said he had been sound asleep between oneand three in the morning. We questioned him closely, and began to have little doubt that he was victim to the same dope that had put Wall Street to sleep. He had not heard of the bank robberies. We left old McGinty with the assurance that he was not to blame in any way, and that there was every prospect of speedy release if only he'd be frank to the questioning of the detectives in charge of the case. Theories DAN and I spoke to the officer in charge of the district, and got a promise from him that he would put the idea to the investigator who had the matter in hand. "It's just as well that you've got that out of the old man," said the police officer. "It seems to me that we're on the way to saving two of our bestmen." "How's that?" "You'll have heard that Schomberg's Stores were broken into about two this morning?" "Yes. To find out what we can about that is part of our business over here." "Well, you can hardly call the affair a robbery," the inspector said, "what with money being left to cover the loss and damage to the Stores. But how the place was broken into without the complicity of at least two of our patrolmen, we don't know, and we didn't like the idea. After the news came out about the Wall Street affair, these two men came back with a confession that they'd been asleep, but we had a suspicion that they had only seized on the chance to clear themselves. It did seem a bit far- fetched that the gang that doped the folk around Wall Street, and got away with the haul, would bother to raid a New Jersey provision store and leave money to pay for what they took. But if the old man didn't know about Wall Street, before he admitted he'd fallen asleep, the chances are that he's telling the truth." "There was no watchman at Schomberg's Stores?" "No, the place is shut up at night--nobody left on the premises." "Could we see two patrolmen in question ?" asked Dan. "Easy," said the inspector. "They sleep at the station, and are sort ofconfined to barracks." A short interview with the two policemen convinced my friend and myself that their story was true. They had concealed the fact of having fallen asleep in fear of losing their jobs, and it was only the news of Wall Street that had given them the courage to tell the truth. Dan and I had heard as much as we needed and as we drove to the Cortlandt Street Ferry at an easy pace, my scientific friend weighed the thing up. "They do connect up, Jimmy," he said. "I'm sure they do," I agreed. "They link up, so far, only through the use of the anaesthetic," he went on. "But I can find no sane connection in the things stolen. Two and a half millions in gold, a hundred kilos of provisions, and five thousand litres of gasoline. It's a mad thing, however you look at it." "It's crazy," I admitted. "Jackdaw crazy." "If we could find out what they wanted with such a queer collection," said Dan,"we'd be on the track of what they are." "Suppose," said I, "that it's a gang with headquarters in the country somewhere, a regular band of raiders operating on a large scale. They have a fleet of trucks, each equipped with the latest appliances for bank-breaking. They want the gasoline for the fleet of cars, and the provisions for feeding the gang---" "A concentration of that sort would immediately arouse suspicion in the country, Jimmy." "I don't know so much about that, Dan. It might be quite an innocent-looking factory, or foundry, with accommodations for the men---" "Yes, asking folks to notice it by never dealing with the local stores--" "Shucks, Danny!" said I. "Look at my own experimental shops. Right on a lonely strip of beach, and two or three kilometres from the nearest village. Except for a governme...
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