"
"I would take a hand 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 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 for 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.
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