Craig Kennedy Stories

“It has always seemed strange to me that no one has ever endowed a professorship in criminal science in any of our large universities.”

Craig Kennedy laid down his evening paper and filled his pipe with my tobacco. In college we had roomed together, had shared everything, even poverty, and now that Craig was a professor of chemistry and I was on the staff of the Star, we had continued the arrangement. Prosperity found us in a rather neat bachelor apartment on the Heights, not far from the University.

“Why should there be a chair in criminal science?” I remarked argumentatively, settling back in my chair. “I’ve done my turn at police headquarters reporting, and I can tell you, Craig, it’s no place for a college professor. Crime is just crime. And as for dealing with it, the good detective is born and bred to it. College professors for the sociology of the thing, yes; for the detection of it, give me a Byrnes.”

“On the contrary,” replied Kennedy, his clean-cut features betraying an earnestness which I knew indicated that he was leading up to something important, “there is a distinct place for science in the detection of crime. On the Continent they are far in advance of us in that respect. We are mere children beside a dozen crime-specialists in Paris, whom I could name.”

“Yes, but where does the college professor come in?” I asked, rather doubtfully.

“You must remember, Walter,” he pursued, warming up to his subject, “that it’s only within the last ten years or so that we have had the really practical college professor who could do it. The silk-stockinged variety is out of date now.

“This is a most baffling case, Professor Kennedy, this case of Kerr Parker,” said the inspector, launching at once into his subject. “Here is a broker heavily interested in Mexican rubber. It looks like a good thing⁠—plantations right in the same territory as those of the Rubber Trust. Now in addition to that he is branching out into coastwise steamship lines; another man associated with him is heavily engaged in a railway scheme from the United States down into Mexico. Altogether the steamships and railroads are tapping rubber, oil, copper, and I don’t know what other regions. Here in New York they have been pyramiding stocks, borrowing money from two trust companies which they control. It’s a lovely scheme⁠—you’ve read about it, I suppose. Also you’ve read that it comes into competition with a certain group of capitalists whom we will call ‘the System.’

“Well, this depression in the market comes along. At once rumours are spread about the weakness of the trust companies; runs start on both of them. The System⁠—you know them⁠—make a great show of supporting the market. Yet the runs continue. God knows whether they will spread or the trust companies stand up under it tomorrow after what happened today. It was a good thing the market was closed when it happened.

“Kerr Parker was surrounded by a group of people who were in his schemes with him. They are holding a council of war in the directors’ room. Suddenly Parker rises, staggers toward the window, falls, and is dead before a doctor can get to him.

“There is something about my guardian’s death,” she began in a low and tremulous voice, “that I am sure will bear investigating. It may be only a woman’s foolish fears, but⁠—I haven’t told this to a soul till now, except Mrs. Fletcher. My guardian had, as you perhaps know, spent his summer at his country place at Bisbee Hall, New Jersey, from which he returned rather suddenly about a week ago. Our friends thought it merely a strange whim that he should return to the city before the summer was fairly over, but it was not. The day before he returned, his gardener fell sick of typhoid. That decided Mr. Bisbee to return to the city on the following day. Imagine his consternation to find his valet stricken the very next morning. Of course they motored to New York immediately, then he wired to me at Newport, and together we opened his apartment at the Louis Quinze.

“But that was not to be the end of it. One after another, the servants at Bisbee Hall were taken with the disease until five of them were down. Then came the last blow⁠—Mr. Bisbee fell a victim in New York. So far I have been spared. But who knows how much longer it will last? I have been so frightened that I haven’t eaten a meal in the apartment since I came back. When I am hungry I simply steal out to a hotel⁠—a different one every time. I never drink any water except that which I have surreptitiously boiled in my own room over a gas-stove.

“I’ve called, Professor Kennedy, to see if we can retain you in a case which I am sure will tax even your resources. Heaven knows it has taxed ours.”

The visitor was a large, well-built man. He placed his hat on the table and, without taking off his gloves, sat down in an easy chair which he completely filled.

“Andrews is my name⁠—third vice-president of the Great Eastern Life Insurance Company. I am the nominal head of the company’s private detective force, and though I have some pretty clever fellows on my staff we’ve got a case that, so far, none of us has been able to unravel. I’d like to consult you about it.”

Kennedy expressed his entire willingness to be consulted, and after the usual formalities were over, Mr. Andrews proceeded.

“I suppose you are aware that the large insurance companies maintain quite elaborate detective forces and follow very keenly such of the cases of their policyholders as look at all suspicious. This case which I wish to put in your hands is that of Mr. Solomon Morowitch, a wealthy Maiden Lane jeweller. I suppose you have read something in the papers about his sudden death and the strange robbery of his safe?”

“Very little,” replied Craig. “There hasn’t been much to read.”

Kennedy and I had been dining rather late one evening at Luigi’s, a little Italian restaurant on the lower West Side. We had known the place well in our student days, and had made a point of visiting it once a month since, in order to keep in practice in the fine art of gracefully handling long shreds of spaghetti. Therefore we did not think it strange when the proprietor himself stopped a moment at our table to greet us. Glancing furtively around at the other diners, mostly Italians, he suddenly leaned over and whispered to Kennedy:

“I have heard of your wonderful detective work, Professor. Could you give a little advice in the case of a friend of mine?”

“Surely, Luigi. What is the case?” asked Craig, leaning back in his chair.

Luigi glanced around again apprehensively and lowered his voice. “Not so loud, sir. When you pay your check, go out, walk around Washington Square, and come in at the private entrance. I’ll be waiting in the hall. My friend is dining privately upstairs.”

We lingered a while over our Chianti, then quietly paid the check and departed.

True to his word, Luigi was waiting for us in the dark hall. With a motion that indicated silence, he led us up the stairs to the second floor, and quickly opened a door into what seemed to be a fair-sized private dining-room. A man was pacing the floor nervously. On a table was some food, untouched. As the door opened I thought he started as if in fear, and I am sure his dark face blanched, if only for an instant.