“The sucker-list,” continued Saidee, “is magnetized in the fine wire that is wound about the spools. Each few inches contains a name and address in dots and dashes. The Black Cougar had an apparatus to magnetize the wire. Marway’s assistant said this apparatus probably consisted of a small solenoid through which the wire was drawn at the beginning. A touch of a key would make a dot. A longer touch made a dash. The wire was special—hard and capable of being made into a permanent magnet.”
“Then he could read these same dots and dashes by running the wire through the relay-ticker on his desk?”
“Yes. That part of the idea has been used in duplex telegraphy and in seeing-over-a-wire-apparatus. You can find it in the technical books.”
“How did Marway demonstrate it?”
“By a small pocket-compass. It’s really very ingenious and simple. ‘The Black Cougar’ kept his whole sucker-list on the spools. He has no copy of it. He is beaten without it. He might as well go out of business. Marway and the assistant operative are going to mail every sucker on the list a warning letter authorized by the Government. Some of them will get wise.”
“But most of them will fall for another swindler.”
“We did our part—pulled ‘The Black Cougar’s’ claws.”
“And I pulled the chestnuts for you.”
“Thirty-seven thousand dollars and the satisfaction of knowing you did a good deed in a wicked world is no chestnut.”
“I’m going East on the first train tonight, Saidee.”