THE SUNDAY FICTION MAGAZINE, OCTOBER 8, 1916
TfV
.HE. CURVE OF THE CATEMARY
,'VE been thinking: all
day," said Hazel. "I
haven't had much
else to do." Her voice
was wistful, and I
knew she was think
ing of the office, and
the war order have I
paid it was a war order? It was. Shells.
"And you'll have to know about things.
I can't let you think I wander about the
streets at night, but now that the mill 'Is
on double time, and he Is trying to get
things organized, be has very little
time."
"I guess you know you can count on
me," I said.
My voice wasn't exactly steady. It
was great to have her turn to me, but of
course it hurt, too, with Martin's ring on
a ribbon around her neck, and all the
rest of it. "I'll go over the bank. If you
say the word, like the whatever it was.""
''I want you to do something. Do you
think you could get to the roof at Bols
seau's?" "I don't see why not."
"In daylight?"
"In daylight. Sure. To tell you the
truth, I'm beginning to prefer daylight
for most things.. It's safer."
"We have lost something, and I think,
at least there's a chance, it is on Bols
seau's roof. If it Isn't, It may be on an
other near by. I should think you could
see from Boisseau's."
"I think I know what you have lost."
"You know!"
She put her hand cn my arm, and it
was shaking1.
"I may be wrong. I'm no sleuth. But
If it is what I think it is, I know where
it is. Only I'm hanged Jf I know why
there's so much trouble about the thing.
It's a camera, isn't it?"
'Yes."
I told her about it. It was rather a
long story. She stirred a trifle when I
sajd I had seen her -pick up the spring,
and when I said that Sehmerz, the po
liceman, had stooped for one like it when
he was hurt, she gave a little cry. I
took her band then, and she let me
hold it.
Queer about hands, isn't It, how the
touch of a girl's mite of a hand will
make a fellow either a king or a fool?
Honest, I was older and well, better is
the only word I can think of the minute
I felt her cold little paw under mine.
The tear in the awning, the lens, the
camera dealer's window, I told her the
whole thing. But she stopped me when
I told her how I'd lost the lens when I
was showing it to Martin.
"But he must have known!" she said.
"He would know that it was a lens, and
that probably " Her voice trailed off.
I don't always have to stand under a
lile-dviver to get things driven home. I
s:iw the whole thing in a minute. Martin -..t.
upset his glass of water, you re-
. oer, and the cloth had been changed.
He'd had plenty of time to put the lens
in his pocket before I missed it.
"As far as I know, he has the lens
now."
"Of course he would get 11, if he
could." Then she rose to his defense
gallantly. That's a good word, and it fits
her. "Probably he is waiting to get the
rest of the camera. He felt quite sure
he could recover it. He knows how vi
tally important It is."
I felt, rather than saw, that she
touched the ribbon around her neck. I
patted ber hand and let It go. It came
over me like seasickness that she be
longed to him and that I'd better get
used to doing wfthout the hand. It
couldn't belong to me.
I've got the camera, you see," I told
her. "At least I know where it Is. It's
damaged a bit, but the glass affair that
plate, is not broken."
Wen, It was worth the price of ad
mission to hear the relief in her voice.
-I
By Mary Roberts Rinehart
Illustrated by Dorothy Dulin
1 SYNOPSIS.
jf T T IS the murder of Oliver Gray's taxicab driver and an unknown
X woman that first involves him in the mystery, and he is kept
jj in it because of his interest in HazeL, his father's stenographer,
j who seems mysteriously connected with the crimes of the evening
jj the murder, and the robbery of the dowagers at the assembly
I ball, Ollie's mother being one of those robbed. Two steel springs
H and a lost camera fifgure in the mystery, one of the springs being
n Hazel's possession, and the other Ollie has. The camera has
1 a broken lens and an undeveloped plate int. Ollie calls on Hazel
and hears a bit of mysterious conversation between Hazel and
JMartin. After Martins departure Ollie proposes to Hazel. His
g answer is to be shown a diamond ring which she wears around
'"1 her neck she is engaged to Martin.
After a visit from an officer Ollie's suspicions against his 1
valet. Sharp, are lessened. He suspected Sharp who had left 1
- the Gray household while Ollie was absent on pretense of re- 1
turning to England to join the army of using his ticket to the I
j assembly ball the night of the robbery, and that he was in some
I wy connected with the crime. The officer tells Ollie that he knows
j all about the camera, but Ollie is very noncommittal on the sub- 1
ject. That night he calls on Hazel. As he approaches the house 1
Hazels father comes out and he is forced to hide. After the old
man leaves Ollie goes up to the- front door. He hears two blows 1
struck, silence, then two more. He is about to see what the
trouble is when he is struck a swift, stinging blow, drawing the
blood to his face. In terror, he flees down the embankment and 1
g finds Hazel there, nervous and frightened. , 1 1
She didn't cry, I think, although she
gave a dry little sob.
"Then everything is all right," she
said. "Except what can never be made
right."
I turned around on the bench and
faced her.
"There is nothing that can never he
made right, except death, Hazel," I paid.
"That is what I mean."
But even when I'd got her story, and
was wondering why I hadn't known it all
from the fh-st, for it was so simple, I
knew I was not at the end of things.
Where did the robbery come in?
Here was a straight and direct story,
an accident and its results. There was
not a break in It; cause and result, both
were there. But I was not satisfied.
I'd better tell Hazel's story myself.
It took a long time. We heard her fa
ther come in from his walk and enter
the house. It got cooler, and I put my
heavy motor coat around her shoulders.
She was so Intent that I don't believe
she knew it.
This is what had happened.
THE old man liked to take pictures.
He had a lot of time on his hands, and
he used to sit on the brow of the hill and
take views of the city. It grew on him.
He experimented, tried color work, went
through all the phases, even to making
cameras of his own. He turned a pantry
into a workroom, and pottered about all
day.
Then one day he saw some boys with
a kite, and he tried fastening a small
camera to a kite and snapping the shut
ter by pulling the string.
He used to get the kite out over the
edge of the hill, and the day he got "a
view of a steamboat from above be
couldn't eat from excitement
But the string system was bad. The
string jerked the camera. So for months
he worked on an arrangement to set off
the spring automatically. I
Did you ever, when you were a kid,
send, a message up to a kite?
You put a bit of paper or something
light on the kite string, and it crawls p
and up. I did it when I was a youngster
named the kite for my governess, and
used to send up notes saying I Wish
she d die, or take scarlet fever, or some
thing. I made quite a reputation on it
among the children in the neighborhood.
He made what be called a messenger,
but it was too heavy. It wouldn't climb,
or the string broke. Something was al
ways wrong.
"It was pathetic," Hazel said. "He
got box kites, and the camera would
have done the work. But the messenger
was the trouble. He designed it to
touch the camera and make the expo
sure. But he lost several cameras in the
river, and even when it did take the pic
ture, the messenger set it to oscillating,
and the plate was useless."
Then the war came, and he got the
idea of patenting an arrangement for
sending .kites at night over the enemy's
trenches and taking photographs when
the sun came up. He worked day and
night.
It would be a smaller target than an
aeroplane, he insisted, and the camera
did not make mistakes. With an ob
server on an aeroplane tb human ele
ment had to be figured on. He planned
to discount the human element. Crazy?
I don't know. It didn't sound crazy to
me when she told me.
He got to be quite a kite flyer. He
connected box kites in a series, and once
he darned near got carried over the hill
and dropped in the river. On quiet days
he worked at .the messenger, and on
windy days he was out at dawn, playing.
It made him happy, Hazel said; he
improved In health and slept like a kid.
And at last he wrote to the British gov
ernment. Well, he never heard from them, and
that fretted him. But he. worked on.
He made kites of a sort of sky-blue col
or, so they could not be seen, and one
day he came in from his workshop, with
his voice shaking, and said he'd got the
' idea at last
He had. He'd built a canvas messen
ger that would climb to the kite touch a
pneumatic tuj&e, give the? camera thirty
seconds to steady Itself after the impact,
and then make the exposure. He was so
excited that he cried over it, poor old
chap.
"He started that night to make the
drawings and the model," Hazel said. "I
had spoken to Mr. Martin and he seemed
interested. I hardly knew Mr. Martin
Ra then, but Tasked him about it one day
g at the office, and he said he would like
g to see it That that was the beginning
1 of things."
H As the kites and cameras got larger,
the strongest cord would snap in a gale.
H They solved that difficulty by using wire.
j Fine piano wire. The old man made a
jj big reel, with a hand-crank, and let the
I wind run the kite out. Then he brought
g It in by hand. It was hard work, and
jj once he let go of it, and the crank came
jj around and struck him.
H Hazel found him lying senseless when
g she came home, and the kites were In the
H river camera messenger, everything,
jj "Then we got the motor," she said,
j "It was a cheap gasoline engine, and it
g worked wonderfully. All the trouble
1 seemed to be over. But it was necessary,
1 for his purpose, to make it exact. He
m worked out a lot of formulas. To do
H what he wanted, it was necessary to
g know when it was over a given spot. He
g had a map of the city, and n instru-
S ment for measuring the direction and
H velocity of the wind. Of course, with the
H engine in one place, he had to follow the
wind. But, in case It Wfs adopted by
jj any army, he said it would be placed on
g a motor truck, and he could send It wher-
ji ever he wanted. He spent a lot of time
j over the formulas."
H "I know," I said. "The curve of the
g catenary!"
"That is the dip in the wire." she told
me. "You have to allow for it The kite
is never as far away as the wire out
would indicate."
"Arjd the little symbol in red ink that
looked like an ice tongs?"
''Angle of the-kite with the true hori
zon." "How many, many things you know:"
"I know some very terrible things,"
she said, with a shudder. And I let ber
go on without interruption.
IT SEEMED that things begun to go
wrong about a month before. In his
abstraction the old man forgot to put the
rubber cover over the reel one night,
and it rained and the wire rusted.
He oiled and polished for a week, but
the life seemed to be out of the stuff. It
kinked and twisted, I believe, and he got T
nervous.
"Howard Martin warned him," she
said, "that an accident might be danger
ous. A thin steel wire, you see, dropping
across a city might do terrible things.
He advised him to send out the kites at
night, when the streets were empty, and
he did it"
I give you my word, up to that min
ute I hadn't seen what she was driving
at. I saw it then, all right. A thin steel
wire across a city! Great Scott!
The wire had come from Germany,
and there was no more of It to be had.
They got a new wire, but it was not ex
actly right, and on the night before the
robbery it had broken.
"We were terrified," she said. "Mr.
Martin took his car and went through 5
the streets, but nothing seemed to be
wrong, except that it had short-circuited
the wires in part of the city. Do you re
member how nervous I was that morning
in the office? I think I cried."
Did I remember
Well, the old man was not as fright
ened as the rest ojt them. Some new
wire had come and he spent the day get
ting it on the reel. And Martin had
traced the kites out into tbe country and
brought back the camera. Martin went
up in the afternoon and helped him with "
the wire and by 5 o'clock it was ready.
But he charged Hazel to hold the old
gentleman back until at least two hours
after midnight, when the streets were
empty.
She was tired, poor kkl, and havinf