"Sure enough, the next day the man with a beard turned up for the plate.The photographer tells me that he had it all wrapped up ready to mail, just to call the fellow's bluff.The man was equal to the occasion, paid the money, wrote an address on the package which the photographer did not see, and as there was a box for mailing packages right at the door on the boardwalk there was no excuse for not mailing it directly.Now if I could get hold of that plate or a print from it I could identify Dawson in his disguise in a moment.I've started the post-office trying to trace that package both at Atlantic City and in Chicago, where Ithink it must have been mailed.I may hear from them at any moment - at least, I hope."The rest of the afternoon we spent in canvassing the drug stores in the vicinity of the Amsterdam, Kennedy's idea being that if Dawson was a habitual morphine fiend he must have replenished his supply of the drug in New York, particularly if he was contemplating a long journey where it might be difficult to obtain.
After many disappointments we finally succeeded in finding a shop where a man posing as a doctor had made a rather large purchase.
The name he gave was of course of no importance.What did interest us was that again we crossed the trail of a man with a Van Dyke beard.He had been accompanied by a woman whom the druggist described as rather flashily dressed, though her face was hidden under a huge hat and a veil."Looked very attractive," as the druggist put it, "but she might have been a negress for all I could tell you of her face.""Humph," grunted Kennedy, as we were leaving the store."You wouldn't believe it, but it is the hardest thing in the world to get an accurate description of any one.The psychologists have said enough about it, but you don't realise it until you are up against it.Why, that might have been the DeMott woman just as well as the former Miss Sanderson, and the man might have been Bolton Brown as well as Dawson, for all we know.They've both disappeared now.I wish we could get some word about that photograph.That would settle it."In the last mail that night Kennedy received back the letter which he had addressed to Michael Dawson.On it was stamped "Returned to sender.Owner not found."Kennedy turned the letter over slowly and looked at the back of it carefully.
"On the contrary," he remarked, half to himself, "the owner was found.Only he returned the letter back to the postman after he had opened it and found that it was just a note of no importance which I scribbled just to see if he was keeping in touch with things from his hiding-place, wherever it is.
"How do you know he opened it?" I asked.
"Do you see those blots on the back? I had several of these envelopes prepared ready for use when I needed them.I had some tannin placed on the flap and then covered thickly with gum.On the envelope itself was some iron sulphate under more gum.Icarefully sealed the letter, using very little moisture.The gum then separated the two prepared parts.Now if that letter were steamed open the tannin and the sulphate would come together, run, and leave a smudge.You see the blots? The inference is obvious."Clearly, then, our chase was getting warmer.Dawson had been in Atlantic City at least within a few days.The fruit company steamer to South America on which Carroll believed he was booked to sail under an assumed name and with an assumed face was to sail the following noon.And still we had no word from Chicago as to the destination of the photograph, or the identity of the man in the Van Dyke beard who had been so particular to disarm suspicion in the purchase of the plate from the photographer a few days before.
The mail also contained a message from Williams of the Surety Company with the interesting information that Bolton Brown's attorney had refused to say where his client had gone since he had been released on bail, but that he would be produced when wanted.
Adele DeMott had not been seen for several days in Chicago and the police there were of the opinion that she had gone to New York, where it would be pretty easy for her to pass unnoticed.These facts further complicated the case and made the finding of the photograph even more imperative.
If we were going to do anything it must be done quickly.There was no time to lose.The last of the fast trains for the day had left and the photograph, even though it were found, could not possibly reach us in time to be of use before the steamer sailed from Brooklyn.It was an emergency such as Kennedy had never yet faced, apparently physically insuperable.
But, as usual, Craig was not without some resource, though it looked impossible to me to do anything but make a hit or miss arrest at the boat.It was late in the evening when he returned from a conference with an officer of the Telegraph and Telephone Company to whom Williams had given him a card of introduction.The upshot had been that he had called up Chicago and talked for a long time with Professor Clark, a former classmate of ours who was now in the technology school of the university out there.Kennedy and Clark had been in correspondence for some time, I knew, about some technical matters, though I had no idea what it was they concerned.
"There's one thing we can always do," I remarked as we walked slowly over to the laboratory from our apartment.
"What's that?" he asked absent-mindedly, more from politeness than anything else.
"Arrest every one with a Van Dyke beard who goes on the boat to-morrow," I replied.
Kennedy smiled."I don't feel prepared to stand a suit for false arrest," he said simply, " especially as the victim would feel pretty hot if we caused him to miss his boat.Men with beards are not so uncommon, after all."We had reached the laboratory.Linemen were stringing wires under the electric lights of the campus from the street to the Chemistry Building and into Kennedy's sanctum.
