He stepped over to a table in the far corner; a phonographic machine of some kind stood upon it. Indiman touched a lever, and again I heard that unforgettable melody, "Ah, fors e lui," and in her voice—her voice! A cry escaped me. Indiman pushed me back into my chair. "Be good enough to listen," he said, and I obeyed.
"While you have been laid up," he began, "I have been amusing myself with a little theory building. I had taken the liberty to sequestrate the remarkable phonographic apparatus of your quondam friend Dr. Gonzales; in fact, I carried it away in the same carriage with your honorable self from the house of the Philadelphia 'quizzing-glass.' The police didn't notice—that was all.
"Dr. Gonzales was a genius, and his instrument is a revolution in phonographs—purity of tone, perfect enunciation, and all that. But the really interesting thing (to me as to you) was not the machine, but the records that it used. To whom belonged the voice that these little disks and cylinders so faithfully reproduced? It was a real woman who had poured the passion and sorrow of life into this insentient mechanism. And the medium had been sufficient; your heart had responded.
"You were my friend, and I could not be indifferent to aught that concerned you. We are, neither of us, sentimental, so the bare statement of the fact is sufficient. You were on your back, and so it was my part to go to work. I did.
"It is unprofitable business looking for a needle in a hay-stack when you can buy a packet of the best helix No. 8's at any shop for a nickel. But after spending a blank week interviewing the makers of phonographic records I began to feel doubtful of my economic theory. Nowhere could I find the slightest trace of this particular job of record-making. And then one day I ran across a chap named Hugens, who was in the business in a small way. His place was three blocks east of the Bowery, but I've forgotten the name of the cross street.
"It was the usual experience at first—no information—but something told me that the man was lying. Finally, I pretended to give up the inquiry and left the shop. It was after dark on a snowy January afternoon, and I started to walk over to the Madison Avenue cars. I dawdled along purposely so as to give the telephone time to get in its work, and the affair turned out exactly as I had foreseen. At Elm Street a couple of fellows jostled against me, and when the mix-up was over the parcel containing my two sample records was gone. That was all that had been wanted; my watch, pin, and money had not been touched.
"It was plain, then, that some one had an interest in preventing my tracing up these particular records. Not Hugens, of course, but his client, whoever he might be. Well, at least, it made the case more interesting—yes, and more promising. Two nights later the house in Madison Avenue was entered by second-story men while I was at dinner. But the records and repeating apparatus had been removed to the safe-deposit vaults, and my unknown opponent had drawn another blank.
"Getting exciting, wasn't it? And then for a month or more nothing happened. You continued to convalesce and I kept on thinking.
"This impersonal opposition—well, there had been something of the same sort once or twice before. You remember, in particular, the affair of the private letter-box. A devilish intelligence had been at work there, and some day, as I told you, the mystery would be cleared up.
"Then did we ever know who Mr. Aram Balencourt really was? An agent of the 'Forty'? Well, perhaps so, but I can't help thinking that there was always a bigger man behind him. The same conclusion would apply to the case of that poor wretch Grenelli in the affair of the Russia and the box of dynamite. Some one with brains pulled the strings to make all these marionettes dance.