The Silent Bullet | Page 5

in it if they'd let me," said he simply.
That night, without saying anything, I sauntered down to the imposing
new police building amid the squalor of Center Street. They were very
busy at headquarters, but, having once had that assignment for the Star,
I had no trouble in getting in. Inspector Barney O'Connor of the Central
Office carefully shifted a cigar from corner to corner of his mouth as I
poured forth my suggestion to him.

"Well, Jameson," he said at length, "do you think this professor fellow
is the goods?"
I didn't mince matters in my opinion of Kennedy. I told him of the
Price case and showed him a copy of the telegram. That settled it.
"Can you bring him down here to-night?" he asked quickly.
I reached for the telephone, found Craig in his laboratory finally, and in
less than an hour he was in the office.
"This is a most bating 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 to-morrow after what happened
to-day. 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. Every effort is made to keep the
thing quiet. It is given out that he committed suicide. The papers don't
seem to accept the suicide theory, however. Neither do we. The coroner,

who is working with us, has kept his mouth shut so far, and will say
nothing till the inquest. For, Professor Kennedy, my first man on the
spot found that--Kerr Parker-was--murdered.
"Now here comes the amazing part of the story. The doors to the
offices on both sides were open at the time. There were lots of people
in each office. There was the usual click of typewriters, and the buzz of
the ticker, and the hum of conversation. We have any number of
witnesses of the whole affair, but as far as any of them knows no shot
was fired, no smoke was seen, no noise was heard, nor was any weapon
found. Yet here on my desk is a thirty-two-calibre bullet. The coroner's
physician probed it out of Parker's neck this afternoon and turned it
over to us."
Kennedy reached for the bullet, and turned it thoughtfully in his fingers
for a moment. One side of it had apparently struck a bone in the neck of
the murdered man, and was flattened. The other side was still perfectly
smooth. With his inevitable magnifying-glass he scrutinised the bullet
on every side. I watched his face anxiously, and I could see that he was
very intent and very excited.
"Extraordinary, most extraordinary," he said to himself as he turned it
over and over. "Where did you say this bullet struck?"
"In the fleshy part of the neck, quite a little back of and below his ear
and just above his collar. There wasn't much bleeding. I think it must
have struck the base of his brain."
"It didn't strike his collar or hair?"
"No," replied the inspector.
"Inspector, I think we shall be able to put our hands on the murderer --I
think we can get a conviction, sir, on the evidence that I shall get from
this bullet in my laboratory."
"That's pretty much like a story-book," drawled the inspector
incredulously, shaking his head.

"Perhaps," smiled Kennedy. "But there will still be plenty of work for
the police to do, too. I've only got a clue to the murderer. It will take
the whole organisation to follow it