David Henry Keller

“ The complaint of Moyer & Perkins was only one of a dozen similar ones which reached the Chamber of Commerce that day. In a secluded room of the Manufacturers' Club a dozen wealthy men met day after day, hearing and weighing evidence against a hundred forms of racketeering which was rapidly becoming a terrible and powerful enemy to the varied industries of the Metropolis. Practically every business had been threatened and more than one captain of industry blustered openly, but paid his weekly tribute silently in order to protect his business, family, and home. ”

“ But if I am, I will, naturally, try to destroy you. We might end up like the Kilkenny cats. But if we are allies, I have eight years of power and you have eight years of liberty in which to plunder the richest nation in the world. ”

“ The person at the other end wanted to protect my hotel from rats for the small compensation of twenty-five thousand dollars a week. He referred casually to the three warehouses and one laundry that had been wrecked last week. Right at the present time I have, on an average, twelve hundred guests a night. They are here to be entertained, not to be frightened by rats. But here is the point. If I yield, every other hotel in the city will be placed in a similar position. Three hundred thousand strangers are in the city every day. ”

“ Crawford," explained Willowby. "There is something peculiar happening in New York at the present time, and it has to do with rats and their actions. In some way rats of New York seem to be under the control of a set of racketeers who are able to force them to enter any building they select. The rats come and go suddenly. It is all over in a little while, but when they are in the building, they do a lot of damage." ”

“ Of course, that is for the coroner to say."
"Do you know who these men were?"
"I suppose they were business associates of Consuelo. At least, that is what he told me."
"They were the hundred biggest gangsters in America. They were the brains of everything vicious in American society. There is not a man there whom we have not been after for years, but we just couldn't pin anything on them. Their death in one night gives the decent people in our country a new lease on life. We can go ahead now and get the little fellows. But, tell me, Mr. Willowby, how did it happen?" ”

“ I saw a lemming migration in Norway, but that was different," explained Rastell. "It seems to me that if we actually saw one of these nocturnal attacks, we might learn why they wanted to do it."
"He is deadly right," agreed Professor Wilson. "A few actual facts are worth a hundred theories."
"That is why I have asked you to help me," explained the richest man in New York. "I have prepared some experimental stations for your use. I can put you in a grocery warehouse and guarantee that inside of a week you will see more rats than you ever dreamed of. I have a laundry and a small hotel. ”

“ If we fight, we will simply kill each other, but if we become allies who can stop us? But I must be sure of you, and the only way I can be sure is to have you talk to your men, and then let me talk to them. ”

“ I feel that they are only experimenting with us. They are after larger game than five thousand a week. We shall see and hear more of this rat business in a while. Write to them and tell them that we will pay the cash, and put the entire matter in the hands of the Chamber of Commerce. If it does not act soon, the entire city will be in the hands of the gangsters. ”

“ By the way, Crawford, in that story of the Piper, what was given the credit for drawing the rats out of the town?"
"The tune that he played on the pipes!"
"Check and double check. Now I would advise you gentlemen to locate some musical instrument in that warehouse, and if you find one, experiment with it. Of course, you will have to be rather clever to find it. In the first place, the people putting it there will have it under cover and just as soon as the mischief is done they will remove it."
"It is nothing like that," laughed Professor Wilson, almost in scorn. "These are New York rats. ”

“ The next morning Winifred Willowby called on the Chief of the Secret Service of New York. With him were several men from Washington.
"I want to tell you something," he said. "A large group of men borrowed my office to have a meeting last night. They wanted privacy and secrecy and they had heard of my place in the Empire Trust Building. So I loaned them the entire floor for the night. But my janitors tell me that something terrible happened. An army of rats invaded the place, as they have been doing with other places in the city, and literally ate every man there ”

“ At the other end a large man, with the torso of an ape, and the face of a Titan, a man who had conquered by crushing, ruthlessly and devastatingly, all who had dared to oppose him. The two were great men, but they were equally lonely. ”

“ They had all heard of Willowby, but none had ever seen him. No doubt all were rather disappointed at his apparent lack of color and personality. They quickly changed their mind when he started to talk, for there was a man who, when he had something to say, was able to say it briefly and to the point.
"You men are all interested in rats," he began, "and so am I. You have worked with rats in one way or another for a good many years. Perhaps I ought to introduce you to each other. Mr. William Rastell has written the best biological study of rats in the English language. ”

“ There is no evidence to show that those who paid were one hundred per cent free from rats in their warehouses, but within a week there was ample proof that at least three wholesale groceries and one laundry had been invaded overnight by rats in sufficient quantity to cause thousands of dollars' worth of damages. Moyer & Perkins heard the news and decided to pay another five thousand. ”

“ But in 1935 the short sword had been replaced by the ballot box and civil war by the primary election. Neither man had much that the other craved for, yet both prevented the other from the full enjoyment of life. ”

“ The following week they repeated the experiment in the laundry. The course of events was the same. The payment was refused, then the rats came, devoured and destroyed, stayed a night and left. Nothing was found. They decided to go and have a conference with Winifred Willowby, but he could not be located. The two scientists were left to their own resources. Having no other plausible plan of action, they selected the small hotel for their next experiment. This time they set a hundred wire traps and caught several hundred living rats. ”

“ They gave us the very tune the Piper played to make the rats follow him. It was a simple little thing, and we made some phonograph records of it. It seems that when the rats hear that tune, they want to get as close as they can to the source of the music. Then one old man—he gave us some additional bars which he claimed drove the rats frantic for blood, and we made a record of that also. ”

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“ We might as well close out the business. All our profits go toward supporting a gang of criminals who have muscled into every type of American industry." They were running out through the picture. A crazed man tore it from the wall. ”

“ Not so many rats there but enough to experiment with. We tried the short tune and the long tune and they worked on the American rats just like they did on the Hamelin ones. We put two and two together and decided that the rat racketeers in New York were using this method of attracting rats. Just put a repeating phonograph in a building and start it playing, and then the rats would come and eat everything to pieces. ”