“Absolutely tremendous,” I cried, and Tom chimed in, his eyes blazing with enthusiasm. “Here’s to the successful working out of the new clue.”
The announcement of dinner made rather an anti-climax to our discovery.
Tom laughed—“Well, we’ve got to eat, anyway. Come on.”
No feast could equal a dinner with Dorothy as hostess. Never did her sweet face look more charming than when she presided at her own board. The talk soon became confined to technicalities, as Dorothy and Tom discussed the possibilities of the new apparatus, and I sat watching Dorothy’s expressive face, as she talked of velocities and lengths, methods of generation and of control. But her absorption in her subject lasted but a brief time. Dinner over she turned to the piano. Then for two hours her music wafted me through many a lofty old Iberian turret.
As I walked to my rooms from the Haldanes’, I revelled in every breath of the city air. The very noises of the street exhilarated me, as I strolled along, one of the crowd, and a free man. The unexpected setback of my arrest now safely over, I could attack the new clue with eagerness, and the early morning found all three of us at the Hamburg-American pier. No trace of any such invoice as Carl Denckel had described was to be found in any of the office records. Book after book was searched for some account of the shipment, but in vain. As a last resort, we went out to the huge warehouses and searched them, up and down, back and forth. The morning passed in unavailing work. We swung up town to lunch, and then turned again to our task. The most unruly of warehouse men turned into an obedient slave at Dorothy’s behest, and from one long bare shed to another we passed, escorted by a retinue of willing workers. We paused at length at the end of the pier, where the big doors looked out on the water, glowing beneath the sun. The burly Irishman who had been our escort from the first took off his cap and wiped his wet brow.
“I’m feared it’s no use, mum,” he said apologetically. “Shure and I’d go on fer hours huntin’ fer you, if ’twas anny use, but it’s niver a bit. We’ve been iverywhere that a machine loike thot could be.”
With regret we gave up our futile search and retraced our steps towards the waiting car. We had seated ourselves and were watching the chauffeur, as he bent to crank the machine, when we heard a cry behind us. We turned and saw our guide running at full speed, his arms waving wildly. As he came near he shouted, “There’s just wan chance. I remembered meself that a while ago, there was a lot of old unclaimed and seized stuff sint to the appraiser’s stores to be auctioned off. They’ve been havin’ the sale the day and to-morrer at three. You might find it there.”
“We’ll try,” said Tom, and we quickly ran across to the auction. As we stepped inside the room, we saw a motley assembly before us,—junk dealers, Jew peddlers, old clothes men, clerks, buyers of hardware houses, and a few reporters. A lot of fancy door bolts were being sold, and competition was running high. Foremost among the bidders was a woman who was evidently an old acquaintance of the auctioneer’s. She was a queer compromise between the old and the new. On the tight brown wig of the conservative old Jewish matron was set askew a gay lacy hat, such as adorns the head of an East Side belle on a Tammany picnic. Her costume was in harmony with her head gear, consisting of a black skirt, and a flaming red waist trimmed with gorgeous gold embroidery. Her keen eyes twinkled at the badinage of the auctioneer, and her face showed an acumen hard to overcome. One by one the bidders withdrew, till only this woman and another Jew, an old man, were left. The price was mounting by cents, till the last limit of the woman’s purse seemed reached, and she stopped bidding. In vain the auctioneer tried to rouse her to another bid. “Twenty-six, twenty-six. Absolutely thrown away at twenty-six. Come, Mrs. Rosnosky, give me thirty. You can sell the lot for fifty. It’s the chance of your life.” Mrs. Rosnosky was not to be moved.
Again the auctioneer appealed in vain and, glancing around him, he reached down beside him and brought up a dusty broken mixture of wires and metals, of cones and cylinders. “Here, Mrs. Rosnosky! Make it thirty, and I’ll throw this in.”
As the eyes of my companions lighted on the mass, they started forward. Tom opened his mouth to bid, but, before the words could come from his lips, Mrs. Rosnosky had nodded decisively. Her competitor behind her had shaken his head, and the cry of “Sold to Mrs. Rosnosky at thirty” came through the air. Tom looked at Dorothy expressively, and she nodded back and whispered. “It looks as if it might be the machine. We’ll get it from her.”