Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

By noon he was known by sight to every man, woman and child who was able to walk past the lobby of the hotel.

At twelve thirty a motor truck drew up to the hotel and Kale went out to greet the driver. After a hurried conference the porter was summoned, two loafers were pressed into willing service, and great packages began to slide to the sidewalk, where Clint Kale himself supervised unpacking them.

It took three and one half minutes for the news to reach from one end of Main Street to the other, another two minutes for the crowd to gather.

They goggled open-mouthed at the assortment of machinery.

Clint Kale had secured this machinery by the simple expedient of calling upon certain manufacturers of laboratory and dental equipment, picking up the obsolete models they had traded in on newer equipment. Then he had done the same thing with the manufacturers of dictating machines, had also called at the salvage department of the railroad companies, picking up shipments of various paraphernalia which had been damaged in shipping, refused by the consignee and salvaged by the railroad.

There were obsolete dictating machines in which the motive power was furnished by a tread. There were dental drills which had long ago given up their last vestige of nickel plate. There were X-ray machines whose weak bulbs gave forth weird lighting effects and sputtered hissing sounds of static throughout the surrounding atmosphere. There were obsolete radio sets incapable of tuning in any single station, now that the air was crowded with programs. There were cameras on tripods, old studio cameras, obsolete equipment of all kind.

And, last to be unloaded, was a casket.

Under the direction of Clint Kale, Boston Blackie opened this casket upon the sidewalk. Within was another casket, slightly smaller. That casket was locked.

Clint Kale unlocked that casket, opened it. Boston Blackie disclosed another casket, opened that. Within was a box. There were three padlocks on the box, each requiring a different key.

Clint unlocked them with something of a flourish.

A small lead box came to view.

Clint opened the lead box. Within, carefully resting in an asbestos nest was a very small tube, something like a quarter of an inch in length.

Kale took some forceps from his pocket and lifted the capsule with tender reverence. Then he nodded and smiled at Boston Blackie.

“The radium’s there,” he said.

Boston Blackie frowned at the circle of eager faces which kept narrowing as outer pressure thrust the craning necks into a smaller area.

“Well, it won’t be long,” he prophesied.

Clint Kale turned to his audience, a compact ring of pushing, struggling, seething townspeople.

“That, gentlemen, is a tube of genuine radium, worth exactly ninety-three thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixteen cents — gold!”

And then he proceeded to cover the lead box, to snap the padlocks one at a time, to restore box to casket, casket to casket. When he had finished the task, he turned to the porters.

“Take it all up to my room. Blackie and I will handle the radium.”

There followed a shuffling of steps, the eager hum of voices, and the packing case wreckage was slid to the gutter, eager hands furnished motive power, and the variegated assortment of machinery was carried across the hotel lobby, up one flight of steps, and installed in Kale’s suite.

In the process the two assistants were swelled in number until some thirty volunteers were carrying equipment, all for the reward of one glance at the interior of the mysterious rooms where all this paraphernalia was to be used.

When it had all been finally adjusted to his liking, when X-ray machine was hooked up to obsolete radio. When the loud speaker thundered forth static which was duly recorded upon the wax cylinder of an old time dictating machine, Clint Kale announced himself as satisfied, thanked those who had assisted him, and announced a desire to be left alone that he might “get to work.”

The men shuffled down the stairs, out through the lobby. But they did not leave the vicinity. They milled into little groups, knots of men who talked in low voices. Not since the murder of Sam Pixley had there been quite so much excitement in the little town, and the loafers proposed to see that nothing escaped their observation.

Precisely fifteen minutes after the equipment had been adjusted, there came an imperative knock at the door.

At a word from Kale, Boston Blackie threw it open.

On the threshold stood a pasty-faced chap, an ancient collar around his neck, eager eyes peering from behind thick-rimmed spectacles. In his hand was a notebook.

“I’m Carl Rosamond from the Courier,” he said.

Clint Kale met him with grave courtesy.