Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 1 — page 40: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

> : . s orr t+ * =a oe * f © Rag SE 7 . > a te Z - Oe * L YF AY Ogee ae CEO ete oe OA = ¥ . \ THE WHITE GOLD PIRATE the place. Nearby was an empty quart bottle with a blood stain upon it, evidently the thing which had felled him. Beside the body the old man’s dog, his constant companion, mounted guard and refused to be driven away by another watchman, who had discovered the injured man as he passed on the way to the house on the island in which all of the guards lived. “We must get him over to the mainland to a hospital,” said Captain Thompson, awakened by one of the guards with the news. “Get Jim Elston and tell him to make my motorboat ready. I will be along as soon as I dress.” When the captain appeared, however, he was not alone. At his invitation, after Goodwin had insisted upon first going to the mainland and making much use of the long distance telephone, Goodwin and Barry had spent the night at the captain’s comfort- able cottage near the plant. Old Peter’s dog had yielded to the captain’s per- suasiveness and permitted his master to be moved. It was as if the animal recognized the officer as a friend. “Why, the poor brute is hurt, too. Catch him, Elston, and bring him along.” The electrician had come up to report the motor- boat in readiness. He stepped forward to pick up the animal. But the dog backed off, growled, bared his teeth and made one lightning snap at the man. “That’s funny,” remarked Captain Thompson, “he always seemed almost as fond of you as he was of Peter.” In his steady blue eyes as he fixed them upon the electrician there was the cold glint of suspicion. One of the other men took a hand then, and without fear the animal submitted to being picked up: and borne to the boat in the wake of his un- conscious master. Goodwin and Barry, in the scant clothing they had thrown on in the cottage, stood watching as the boat shot from the little wharf and headed across toward the mainland. “T think,” began the detective, “that our friend Jim probably knows more about how Old Peter was injured than anyone else around here. Thomp- son thinks so, too. Did you notice his remark that the dog always had seemed fond of Elston before?” Goodwin nodded. “Apparently the old man was slugged by someone who afterwards hit or kicked the dog,” he returned. “In view of what we heard over the radio yesterday, who more likely than Elston? Clearing the way for tonight, in my opin-. ion. Anyhow, it ought not to be hard to prove it. Whoever wielded the bottle left his fingerprints, no doubt, and if the experiment room is open, I can quickly photograph them.” He picked up the bottle and disappeared into the building with Barry at his heels. By one of the laboratory work-tables Goodwin paused, ran his eye quickly over the bottles, and picked up one labeled “Aluminum Dust.” Barry silently watched as the scientist sprinkled the bottle with the powder. This was familiar ground to him, this bringing into relief the greasy prints of fingers left on an object. Goodwin carefully smoothed down the aluminum dust with a soft brush and examined critically the whorls and loops that appeared. “Good thing that chap first picked the bottle up y the body instead of the neck,” he commented ae he ee at, tee. Sa wa ng Phe) pia - » Os <A?) eo = oe! ay i ee se nae ee . oF pete ee i my * alee “ih 5 ** oF o bad - ~ wo eee. - \ -_ Fw fies rs *> a - ee, 2 Ps (val ae s Ps ~ Me dip. baie Ie SE . Th ¥ « - s 7 7 39 “Gives us a perfect set of prints. Now we'll go into the darkroom and photograph them.” “The darkroom,” echoed Barry. “I thought light, not darkness, was essential in photography.” “Not in this instance,” replied the scientist, picking up from Captain Thompson’s desk an un- exposed roll of camera film. “Come on.” He led the way into the darkroom in one corner, turned on the ruby lamp, and asked the detective to shut the door. “Now,” his voice went on, “I am unrolling the film and rolling it about the body of the bottle. I am holding it in place with a bit of adhesive tape at top and bottom. We are ready now for the ex- posure. First, though, I am wrapping the bottle up in a heavy black cloth, leaving only the mouth open. Here goes!” A match flared up in the darkness and was plunged into the mouth of the bottle where it splut- tered, burned for a second, and was extinguished by the scientist’s breath blown into the bottle. “Thank goodness, developer and hypo are ready,” Goodwin was speaking again, and in the dim rays of the ruby lamp Barry could see that he was unrolling the film from the bottle. For several minutes he worked in silence, his hands running the roll of film through the developer. Then he held it up, peered through it toward the lamp, and sighed with relief. “A perfect negative,” he said, dropping the film in the hypo and wiping his hands. “You see, photographed in the ordinary way, we would be able to get only one or two finger prints on each negative. It would be necessary to turn the bottle for each print. This way, the film wrapped around the bottle records all the prints at once and on one negative.” “Wonders never cease,” commented Barry as they started back for the cottage to dress more fully and await Captain Thompson’s return. His companion chuckled. “My friend,” he said, “you haven’t seen anything yet. Unless I miss my guess I’ll have one or two more tricks for you before this is over. I telephoned to my laboratories in Chicago last night and ordered quite a boxful of scientific stuff sent down to me.” “How’s it going to get here?” was the doubtful query. “It’s five hundred miles from here to Chicago.” “The only way it could get here in time to be of any use,” answered the scientist. “An airplane carrying the box left Chicago at dawn. We’ll find it waiting for us shortly after dinner at the flying field over on the mainland. A couple of hours is all ’ll require to rig it up. Hello, here’s Thompson coming back.” Old Peter was not dangerously hurt, the captain said, in reply to their questions, but: he would be off duty for several days. “In the meanwhile,” he added, “Jim Elston has volunteered to stand guard for him in the laboratory building. I figured you’d want him to have all the rope possible, if he is the pirate’s confederate; so I consented and sent him off to his own cottage for the day to rest and sleep.” “Good stuff,” applauded Goodwin, “it gets him out of my way, too. I saw him only for a moment when Old Peter was being taken off to the boat, but unless I am a poor judge of character this is about the last chance Elston is going to have to sleep comicbooks.¢ ~:~. SS” 7 > ey . SS ea ge ee eee . ~ a oo 5 reo ae. 4 . oy iw ‘ Ae, Se Ete ee es et a le PD Sei = OR Sea} da PED ‘he oa eS paket! eT a, Oe ee Pe ee Me =: he ee Ae Oe as mS ete ee ee eae ‘ ate | " - Or i ll on =) a gt