Below again, Marlowe explained to us how the launching ways were composed of the ground ways, fastened to the ground as the name implied, and the sliding ways that were to move over them. The sliding ways, he said, were composed of a lower course and an upper course, on which rested the “cradle,” fitting closely the side of the ship.
To launch her, she must be lifted slightly by the sliding ways and cradle from the keel blocks and bilge blocks, and this was done by oak wedges, hundreds of which we could see jammed between the upper and lower courses of sliding ways. Next he pointed out the rib-bands which were to keep the sliding ways on the ground ways, and at the bow the points on either side where the sliding and ground ways were bolted together by two huge timbers known as sole pieces.
“You see,” he concluded, “it is a gigantic task to lift thousands of tons of steel and literally carry it a quarter of a mile to forty feet of water in less than a minute. Everything has to be calculated to a nicety. It’s a matter of mathematics—the moment of weight, the moment of buoyancy, and all that. This launching apparatus is strong, but compared to the weight it has to carry it is really delicate. Why, even a stray bolt in the ways would be a serious matter. That’s why we have to have this eternal vigilance.”
As he spoke with a significant look at Kennedy, I felt that it was no wonder that Marlowe was alarmed for the safety of the ship. Millions were at stake for just that minute of launching.
It was all very interesting and we talked with men whom it was a pleasure to see handling great problems so capably. But none could shed any light on the problem which it was Kennedy’s to solve. And yet I felt sure, as I watched Craig, that unsatisfactory as it appeared to Marlowe and to myself, he was slowly forming some kind of theory, or at least plan of action, in his head.
“You’ll find me either here or at the hotel—I imagine,” returned Marlowe to Kennedy’s inquiry as we parted from him. “I’ve instructed all the men to keep their eyes open. I hope some of us have something to report soon.”
Whether or not the remark was intended as a hint to Kennedy, it was unnecessary. He was working as fast and as surely as he could, going over in hours what others had failed to fathom in weeks.
Late in the afternoon we got back to the laboratory and Craig began immediately by taking from the little electric incubator the two crooked tubes he had left there. Breaking off the ends with tweezers, he began examining on slides the two drops that exuded, using his most powerful microscope. I was forced to curb my impatience as he proceeded carefully, but I knew that Craig was making sure of his ground at each step.
“I suppose you’re bursting with curiosity,” he remarked at last, looking up from his examination of one of the slides. “Well, here is a drop that shows what was in the grooves of that bullet. Just take a look.”
I applied my eye to the microscope. All I could see was some dots and rods, sometimes something that looked like chains of dots and rods, the rods straight with square ends, sometimes isolated, but more usually joined end to end in long strings.
“What is it?” I asked, not much enlightened by what he had permitted me to see. “Anaerobic bacilli and spores,” he replied, excitedly. “The things that produce the well-known ‘gas gangrene’ of the trenches, the gas phlegmon bacilli—all sorts, the bacillus aerogenes capsulatus, bacillus proteus, pyogenic cocci, and others, actively gas-forming microbes that can’t live in air. The method I took to develop and discover them was that of Col. Sir Almroth Wright of the British army medical corps.”
“And that is what was on the bullet?” I queried.
“The spores or seeds,” he replied. “In the tubes, by excluding the air, I have developed the bacilli. Why, Walter,” he went on, seriously, “those are among the microbes most dreaded in the infection of wounds. The spores live in the earth, it has been discovered, especially in cultivated soil, and they are extraordinarily long-lived, lying dormant for years, waiting for a chance to develop. These rods you saw are only from five to fifteen thousandths of a millimeter long and not more than one-thousandth of a millimeter broad.
“You can’t see them move here, because the air has paralyzed them. But these vibrios move among the corpuscles of the blood just as a snake moves through the grass, to quote Pasteur. If I colored them you would see that each is covered with fine vibrating hairs three or four times as long as itself. At certain times an oval mass forms in them. That is the spore which lives so long and is so hard to kill. It was the spores that were on the bullet. They resist any temperature except comparatively high and prolonged, and even resist antiseptics for a long time. On the surface of a wound they aren’t so bad; but deep in they distil minute gas bubbles, puff up the surrounding tissues, and are almost impossible to combat.”
As he explained what he had found, I could only stare at him while the diabolical nature of the attack impressed itself on my mind. Some one had tried to murder Marlowe in this most hideous way. No need to be an accurate marksman when a mere scratch from such a bullet meant ultimate death anyhow.
Why had it been done and where had the cultures come from? I asked myself. I realized fully the difficulty of trying to trace them. Any one could purchase germs, I knew. There was no law governing the sale.
Craig was at work again over his microscope. Again he looked up at me. “Here on this other film I find the same sort of wisp-like anaerobes,” he announced. “There was the same thing on those pieces of glass that I got.”
In my horror at the discovery, I had forgotten the broken package that had come to the hotel desk while we stood there.
“Then it was Gavira who was receiving spores and cultures of the anaerobes!” I exclaimed, excitedly.
“But that doesn’t prove that it was he who used them,” cautioned Craig, adding, “not yet, at least.”
Important as the discoveries were which he had made, I was not much farther along in fixing the guilt of anybody in particular in the case. Kennedy, however, did not seem to be perturbed, though I wondered what theory he could have worked out.
“I think the best thing for us to do will be to run over to the Belleclaire,” he decided as he doffed his laboratory coat and carefully cleansed his hands in an antiseptic almost boiling hot. “I should like to see Marlowe again, and, besides, there we can watch some of these people around him.”
Whom he meant other than Gavira I had no idea, but I felt sure that with the launching now only a matter of hours something was bound to happen soon.
Marlowe was out when we arrived; in fact, had not yet returned from the yard. Nor had many of the guests remained at the hotel during the day. Most of them had been out sightseeing, though now they were returning, and as they began to gather in the hotel parlor Marjorie was again called on to put them at their ease.
Fitzhugh had returned and had wasted no time dressing and getting downstairs again to be near Marjorie. Gavira also appeared, having been out on a case.
“I wish you would call up the shipyard, Walter,” asked Kennedy, as we stood in the lobby, where we could see best what was going on. “Tell him I would like to see him very urgently.”
I found the number and entered a booth, but, as often happens, the telephone central was overwhelmed by the rush of early-evening calls, and after waiting some time the only satisfaction I got was that the line was busy.
Meanwhile I decided to stick about the booth so that I could get the yard as soon as possible. From where I stood I could see that Kennedy was closely watching the little manicure, Rae Melzer. A moment later I saw Alma Hillman come out of the manicure shop, and before any one else could get in to monopolize the fascinating little manicure I saw Craig saunter over and enter.
I was so interested in what he was doing that for the moment I forgot about my call and found myself unconsciously moving over in that direction, too. As I looked in I saw that he was seated at the little white table, in much the same position as Marlowe had been, deeply in conversation with the girl, though of course I could not make out what they were talking