"Who was it?" he asked. "Somebody that we want?"
"Yes; I think so," I replied, almost breathlessly. "Yes; I'm sure it is."
The voice on the telephone had set my memory working; stimulating my forgetful mind. I had a sort of vision. In fancy, I could see the outline of an old house, silhouetted against the night sky. But there was not a speck of light to be seen in any of the windows.
And then, suddenly, as my mind groped in the darkness, a light dawned on me.
XXVI
I quickly recovered from the amazement which had momentarily possessed me. I had no doubt, hearing the mysterious voice on the telephone, that at last I had hit on something of a clue to the mystery of the Martian hoax. The voice, faintly familiar, had stirred up my recollections, and had established at once in my mind a positive suspect. Why this individual had not entered into my suspicions before is just one of those things that can't be explained. There was every chance now that he was mixed up in this. If so, I was convinced we were reaching the climax of the case.
"Well," I said, finally, turning to McGinity, "I think the stage is being set for the last interesting act of this affair."
He smiled a little dubiously. "Don't make me laugh, Mr. Royce," he said.
Having made an important discovery, I thought McGinity ought to know, so I told him briefly what had been said on the telephone, and my suspicions. He was silent for a moment, then he said: "Why didn't you think of this person before?"
It was on the tip of my tongue to reply: "Too stupid;" but I refrained from showing up my asinine denseness. Instead, I said: "The first thing to think of now is to trace that phone call."
"That'll be dead easy if the speaker used one of those old-time manual phones," he said; "but if the call was made on a dial instrument, there's no way of tracing it. You're sunk!"
A few minutes' conversation with the information operator proved the reporter's contentions to be true; I was "sunk." But not entirely.
"McGinity!" I exclaimed, "I must go to this place at once, and you must go with me. I'll lay anything I'm on the right track. I have a feeling too that every minute may be of importance."
To my surprise, the reporter hesitated. "Are you sure you recognized the woman who phoned by her voice?" he asked. "You may be mistaken, and with break number five liable to come any minute now, we can't afford to go off on some wild goose chase."
"Dead certain," I affirmed. "I'll stake all I've got on it. However, if you're so sure of number five breaking, we can stop at the Sands Cliff Police Station on our way, and you can notify them where we can be found."
"Queer doings, and not very plausible," McGinity remarked, after agreeing to my plan. "Yet—you may be right."
Feeling certain that on this expedition we should meet with some probably perilous adventure, I took good care to put one of Henry's revolvers in my pocket. It was an old-fashioned weapon, heavy and cumbersome, and just to prove that it was in good working order, I fired it off, up in the air, as we drove along the dark, unfrequented road bordering on our estate. McGinity, who was driving, gave vent to an exclamation of mingled surprise and amusement. Heretofore, he had been the one inclined to the impetuous, while I was always of a more cautious nature.
"That old horse-pistol has certainly got a bang to it," he remarked, laughing. "But we're not going to hunt elephants, you know."
"You never can tell," I countered. "I've an idea—instinct—McGinity," I went on, "that we've a night's work before us. And it's quite possible that we may encounter an elephant, or a lion, before we get through;" my mind slipping back to my thrilling encounter with the grizzly bear on the LaRauche estate. "Now, for the police station."
Fortunately, we found Chief of Police Meigs at his desk, and to him I poured out my suspicions.
"Oh! so you believe old Rene LaRauche to be implicated in this Martian fake?" he said.
"LaRauche was obsessed with a jealous hatred of my brother, Henry," I replied, "and his motive may have been revenge. He's heaven high above my brother in his knowledge and application of science, and mentally equipped to perpetrate a hoax like this. Besides, he's always had the reputation of being brutally cruel to his wife, and apparently he had some good reason for choking her off when she sought aid from the outside on the phone. She's always been very friendly and charming to Henry and myself."
"Sounds like the act of a crazy man," the Chief offered. "If my belief's correct, he'll probably show fight if you start any inquiry, and go nosing about his place."
"As a matter of protection, McGinity and I are both armed," I informed him, "as this is hardly a case for police investigation. The perpetration of this hoax, as I understand it, is quite within the law, and while not something to be called a crime, it is none the less dastardly."
"I have a hunch that before you get through with it, you'll have to call in the police," said the Chief. "I'm very much interested in the case. I drove past LaRauche's place yesterday, and I noticed it was all locked up, like he had closed the house, and gone to the city for the winter. I believe he has one manservant."
"A snoopy, unreliable person, who answers to the name of Orkins," I said; "formerly in our employ as a butler."
"He's been pointed out to me," said the Chief, "but I never knew his name. He often comes to the village for groceries. I haven't noticed him around lately. Come to think of it, I haven't laid eyes on LaRauche for several months."
At that juncture, a motorcycle policeman, who had been standing by, evidently listening in, motioned his chief to step to one side. After a few minutes' conversation, Chief Meigs returned to us, and said:
"I've just been informed that LaRauche hasn't been seen around these parts for three months, at least. Looks like he's been in hiding. This motorcycle policeman also tells me that in passing the LaRauche house, on his daily route, two days ago, he saw a woman looking out of a top-story window, and waving. As there was no indication that she was in distress, or even signaling to him, he passed on. She was scantily clothed, he says; looked like she was wearing a nightgown. If that may be of any interest to you."
"I consider it very important information, Chief," said McGinity. "It confirms the intimation that Mr. Royce got on the phone, that Mrs. LaRauche is virtually a prisoner in her own home, and that her life is in danger. She was probably trying to attract the policeman's attention."
"If, in your inquiries, you find that to be the case," the Chief suggested, "all you've got to do is to get me word. If it's necessary, we'll get a search-warrant, and open the house and search it ourselves. I'll be at the station here for another hour, so you'll know where to find me, in case there's something I can do."
I thanked him for the suggestion, and in less than five minutes, McGinity and I were leaving the lights of the village behind, and were speeding over a winding, hilly road, along which I should have preferred to travel in daylight if I had been driving alone. As we neared the LaRauche place, the country became wilder and more solitary. I often wondered what could have brought LaRauche to these lonely, frowning hills.
Suddenly, I signaled a stop, and we halted a short ways from the gateway, taking care to dim our headlights. As we walked cautiously up the footpath, which led from the road to the house, I told McGinity about my encounter with the grizzly bear.
By that time, we could make out the outline of the old house quite clearly against the starlit sky. But there was not a gleam of light; the whole house looked black. For a few minutes, in order to get the lay of the land, we crouched behind some bushes directly in front of the residence.
Blinds were drawn; some of the windows were shuttered. There was an atmosphere of silence about the place that was uncanny; no sound, not even the distant bark of a dog one usually hears in the country at night. Certainly no sign of human life. I glanced over my shoulder, to the right, in the direction of the old brick farm-house, in the hollow, where the Italian animal trainer lived, but I might just as well have been staring at a brick wall. No light—no sound—in that direction.
Presently, we crept upon the front porch. I tiptoed along the porch in the hope of getting a peep in at the lower windows, but the blinds were drawn, and I could see nothing of the interior. I knew where to find the bell, and I rang it once, twice, thrice. It was an old-fashioned, jangling bell that echoed dismally in the silence of the night.
When there was no response, we retraced our steps as far as the friendly bushes, and continued to watch the house from that point until we were both equally certain that the place, after all, was unoccupied. We were about to turn away, feeling that we might as well return to the police station, when something happened. That something was the sudden lighting up of a window in the top-story.
Silhouetted against this light, we saw a figure, unmistakably that of a woman. A few seconds later, another figure appeared in the window-frame of light. What followed was like old-time shadowgraphs, which used to delight me when I was a child: black, shadowy figures in action against a dimly lighted background. We saw an arm upraised and then fall, as though a blow had been delivered, and then two arms thrusting the woman-like figure away from the window, by force. Then the window went dark again.
There was nothing to do but turn away, and return to the car. On the way, I suggested to McGinity that we drive back about a mile, where I recalled seeing a light gleaming among a dense growth of pine trees. If it was a human habitation, I figured that the occupants, living so near the LaRauche estate, might give us some much desired information.
We found a light burning in a small cabin, in a clearing in the woods, set well back from the road. Our knock was answered by an elderly, gray-haired man, with a laborer's stoop in his shoulders. He inspected us a moment over his spectacles, then invited us to enter.
He turned out to be a carpenter and wood-chopper. His wife and daughter, he explained, had gone to the movies, in the village, with his wife's sister, who evidently was better placed in life and owned a car.
"Now, can I be of any service?" he asked, showing us to chairs in front of a blazing log-fire, in a plain but cheerful room, modern enough to have electric lights and a telephone.
I made a polite reply, without giving ourselves away. I was a friend of Dr. LaRauche, and had been surprised, on calling, to find his house dark. There had been no answer to the bell.
The carpenter smiled grimly, and said: "I'm afraid, stranger, you'll never git eny response to the ringin' of that bell, if you ring till Judgment Day. Others have tried, unsuccessfully, myself included. Old Doc LaRauche owes me considerable fer some wood-choppin' I done fer 'im."
"How do you explain it?" I asked.
"A lot of mysterious goin's on in that 'er house, of late," the carpenter answered, wagging his head, "which I, for one, can't answer fer. A very mysterious family!"
"From which I gather that Mrs. LaRauche is there, with her husband?" I said. "It's very urgent that I see her at once."
"No one 'ereabouts knows exactly what's happened to the poor lady," replied the carpenter. "It's common report that the old man keeps 'er locked up. Only yisterday, my wife went over with a paper bag of fruit, oranges and the like, which she intended leavin' fer the poor soul, but nary an answer to the bell."
"It's very lonely over there," I remarked. "No neighbors—"
"Ah, but they did have a close neighbor," the carpenter interrupted, "till the law stepped in and took 'im away. That old brick house, in the hollow. Maybe, now, you remember seein' it?"
"That's so—I'd forgotten," I said. "But tell me, what happened?"
"Last Spring, an Eytalian by the name of Antonio Ranzetti moved into the farm-house, vacant it was fer the last five years, and gone to ruin, like. He made a business of trainin' animals fer the circus, but he was cruel to 'em, awful cruel, so I 'eerd. So Doc LaRauche, wantin' to git rid of an undesirable neighbor, reported 'im to some society that protects animals—"
"Probably the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," I interjected.
"Anyhow," the carpenter continued, "the Eytalian was arrested, tried, and sent to the hoose-gow fer ninety days."
"Oh, indeed!" I murmured.
"Yes; and he oughta be gittin' out, now, one of these fine days," said the carpenter. Then he added: "Now, is there anythin' else you'd like to know, stranger?"
I shook my head, as I realized at once that we were not likely to get any more valuable information than this. As we rose to leave, a bright idea struck McGinity. Why not get in touch with Chief of Police Meigs while we had a telephone handy?
I did what he suggested, and spent a few minutes talking to the Chief, while McGinity collared the carpenter and engaged him in conversation until I had finished. Outside, I gripped the reporter by the arm, and exclaimed: "Things are still breaking. As sure as fate, LaRauche and Orkins are at the bottom of all this."
"What's happened?" asked McGinity.
"Chief Meigs says that five minutes after we'd left the station, a local garage owner called, and reported that he had rented a small, light truck to Orkins, night before last, who had explained that he was moving some of LaRauche's household belongings into the city. The description of the truck that carried off the rocket from the Museum of Science, in New York, as given over the air, and in the newspapers, he said, tallied with his own vehicle, which he found parked in front of his garage when he opened up this morning."
"Good!" the reporter exclaimed. "What else did he tell you?"
"This. He's getting a search warrant, and says he'll join us in about half an hour. We're to wait for him, at the side of the road, about a quarter of a mile beyond this cabin."
XXVII
The time of waiting came to an end, and as soon as Chief Meigs arrived in his car, armed with a search warrant and a short-handled axe, we drove straight on to the LaRauche estate, parking our cars about a hundred yards from the gate. As we strode along the high road, three abreast, the Chief imparted some more startling information, so particularly important that instinctively we quickened our steps.
"Listen," he began. "I had just hung up on you, Mr. Royce, when the phone rang. I answered. It was a man's voice, with an English-like accent, and low and trembly, if you know what I mean."
"Orkins, without a doubt," I said. "But he's not English. That accent is only a cultivated one."
"Well, he wanted to consult with the Chief of Police," the officer went on, "about the $5,000 reward. When I informed him the Chief was speaking, he wanted to know if he came to the police station, and disclosed the name of the man who had stolen the rocket, would he stand a good chance in getting the reward. I told him I thought he would, and to come right along."
"Didn't he say who he was?" McGinity asked.
"No. And he was very particular that I promise not to reveal his identity after he had given me the necessary information. Finally, when I agreed to this, he said: 'I'll be with you inside an hour.'"
"Then what?" I inquired, agitatedly.
"Apparently we were cut off," the Chief replied; "and yet we weren't exactly disconnected, as I will explain. Something must have happened that caused him to drop the receiver, and get away from the phone in a hurry. I could hear two voices, now—muffled-like, and growing more distinct. Then came a sound like heavy and hurried footfalls would make on a bare floor, followed by two distinct crashes, like some furniture had been overturned. All of a sudden, there was a report, like the crack of a whip. It might have been a pistol shot, but that's only a guess."
"I think you've guessed right, Chief," I said. "It's my belief that LaRauche overheard Orkins, while he was phoning to you, and attacked him. There was a scuffle, and one of them got shot."
"Double-crossing the old man, no doubt," McGinity suggested.
"Just that," I approved. "Orkins is as double-faced and treacherous as he's avaricious."
"Looks like we're going to have an interesting night," the reporter remarked. "Things seem to be getting a bit hot."
"Yes; and they're going to get still hotter, if I know my business," the Chief muttered.
We entered the estate, and went along the path to the dark, lonely house where there was so much mystery; and where there's mystery, there's always danger. Blinds were still drawn, and windows shuttered. After I had jangled the bell, several times, and there was no response, Chief Meigs began to hammer on the door. We waited outside for five minutes, ringing and hammering at intervals. Presently, the police officer took out his axe, and smashed a panel in the door, and thrust his arm through. I heard the snap of the lock as he pushed the door open.
I followed him into the entrance hall, and then I did something very foolish. I blew my police whistle. McGinity chuckled. "What are you scared about, Mr. Royce?" he asked. "Calling the police?"
"I'm scared," I admitted, in an embarrassed undertone. "I have a feeling that the man we're after—LaRauche—is not going to worry very much about your life or mine."
At that I turned, to give vent to an exclamation of horror. My flesh crept. The Chief's flashlight was trained on the stairs. The beam of light disclosed a body, spread-eagled halfway down the uncarpeted steps, head down, arms outflung, as though it had plunged backwards from the first landing which was rather spacious, and ornamented by an old grandfather's clock.
After a brief inspection, I identified the gruesome thing as Orkins, our former butler. "Is it not suicide?" I asked.
The Chief shook his head. "Looks like plain murder," he answered. "Shot through the back, by LaRauche, from the bottom of the stairs, probably, just as he reached the first landing, in a futile attempt to escape."
I stood looking down at the dead man. "So passes poor old Orkins," I thought. "Too bad he got the worst of it." But there was no time for sentimentalizing over the crafty, avaricious butler, who, apparently, had paid with his life for attempting to betray his employer.
Already Chief Meigs had found a switch, and he and McGinity were inspecting the library, where the dial telephone was, in the faint glow of an overhead light. The telephone receiver was dangling at the end of its cord; two chairs were overturned; all mute and unmistakable evidence of the grisly encounter the Chief had heard on the telephone, climaxed by the pistol shot.
Everything looked dingy and untidy; there was a musty smell about the room. After a quick search there, we passed through several other rooms on the ground floor, including the kitchen, where there were many greasy plates and plenty of unwashed china and cooking utensils. A door, under a back stairway in the kitchen, evidently led to the basement; it was fastened with a patent lock.
As none of the rooms on the ground floor, except the library and kitchen, bore evidence of recent occupation, Chief Meigs suggested that we make a quick search of the upper floors. "LaRauche, no doubt," he said, "is in hiding somewhere about the house, and I think we're going to have some trouble before we get him."
"That is, if he hasn't already escaped us," McGinity ventured.
"There's some doubt about that," the Chief answered. "All the doors and windows on this floor are locked, and fastened on the inside, and he couldn't possibly have snapped that patent lock on the door in the kitchen, from the inside, if he had wanted to hide in the basement."
"But Mrs. LaRauche!" I said. "Where is she? We've got to find her!"
In reply, the Chief signaled to McGinity and me, to follow him up the dark, back stairway to the second floor. Feeling along the wall in the hall, on this floor, I found a switch, and snapped on the lights. But they were very dim, of low candle-power, and in searching the bedrooms and closets, we had to again resort to the use of the flashlight. Two of the bedrooms seemed to have been recently tenanted, with beds unmade, and men's clothing and soiled linen lying about in great disorder. One of these, apparently Orkins' room, contained a small radio, over which he had undoubtedly heard the announcement of the $5,000 reward. The whole interior of the house showed the absence of a domesticated hand. At the end of the corridor, we looked into a large double room, which LaRauche had equipped as a laboratory.
Finally, we reached the narrow corridor in the top story, where we were faced by four doors. Three of them were unlocked. Pushing them open, we looked into two unfurnished rooms, and another used for storage. The fourth door, at the end of the passageway, was locked. Repeated knocking brought no answer.
This was the last unexplored room in the house. The room particularly interested me because it was there that McGinity and I had witnessed the dramatic shadowgraph episode in the window. So far we had failed to trace LaRauche's movements in the house, or gain the slightest clue to his hiding-place. Was he hiding in this attic room? And where was Mrs. LaRauche?
Chief Meigs was a man of infinite resources. He had either anticipated this, or had become expert in unlocking doors. He produced a heavy bunch of keys, from which he selected three. His first two attempts failed to open the door. The third time, proverbially the charm, the key turned in the lock, and the door swung open.
I would have been the first to step through, but the Chief stopped me. "Stay where you are," he whispered; "it's a little dangerous."
Standing in the doorway, the Chief trained the beam of his electric torch on various objects in the room. Finally it rested on an arm-chair beside an iron bedstead. Something was in that chair, and it was covered with a sheet. He strode over, and pulled back the sheet, and then we began to understand the secret which the old house held.
I gasped and stared. Huddled in the chair was Mrs. LaRauche, deadly pale and hollow cheeked, and apparently unconscious, her emaciated form showing under the folds of a quilted silk dressing-gown which had once been lavender in hue. Adhesive tape had been placed over her mouth, and her arms were bound to the side-rests of the chair by picture wire.
"Thank God, she's alive!" Chief Meigs murmured, as he stooped over her. "Looks like nothing very much wrong with her, except that she's had a pretty bad shock."
As he finished speaking, the woman's head moved; her eyelids fluttered, and then she opened her eyes. We saw at once that she was in a panic of fear. I could hardly realize that this pitiful, ghostly shadow was the same woman I had met several months ago.
Swiftly we released her from the tape and wire that silenced and bound her; then, to our astonishment, we found that she was chained by the ankle to an iron post of the bed. The Chief immediately set to work to unfasten the chain, which looked like an ordinary dog-chain.
By this time, McGinity had discovered a light fixture in the wall, near the front window, containing one bulb, which he turned on. Mrs. LaRauche stared dazedly from one to the other of us, giving me no sign of recognition, although I addressed her by name. But she appeared to comprehend what we were up to. Still unable to speak, she raised one hand weakly, and pointed towards the window in the back of the room, behind the bed.
In doing this, she furnished us with an important clue. LaRauche had escaped through this window, which was set in the Mansard roof, and gave on to a broadish ledge, sufficient wide for a person to walk on. This ledge extended clear around the house.
"We've got to get LaRauche!" Chief Meigs exclaimed, but he couldn't get through the window because of his rather portly physique. Nor could I. McGinity, slim in figure, managed it nicely. He had such good eye-sight that he could distinguish objects which were beyond the view of normal-sighted people. And he was hardly outside, on the ledge, and debating whether he should turn to the left or the right, when he espied a figure, crouching in the dark, at the far end of the roof extension.
"You see it?" he asked Chief Meigs, who was leaning out of the window.
"I can't see a damn thing," the Chief replied.
"Next time, you'd better bring your opera-glasses," the reporter suggested, ironically.
"I wonder if it is LaRauche?" said the Chief, thoughtfully.
"It's a man, at any rate," said McGinity. "Looks like he's wearing black trousers and a white shirt. No coat or hat at all. He's got bushy white hair."
"Then it's LaRauche," the Chief exclaimed. "Call to him, and tell him to come back into the house. Say it's no use trying to escape."
McGinity did as the Chief requested, and there came in reply a cackling laugh.
"I heard that," said the Chief. "It's the laugh of a maniac." Then he added quickly: "What's he doing now?"
McGinity did not reply immediately. He had seen something very strange happen. LaRauche had mysteriously disappeared—vanished into the air.
"He's gone!" the reporter cried at last. "Escaped! He just flew off the roof."
The Chief gave a groan of disappointment. "Oh, come back in!" he ordered gruffly. "Don't be funny!"
McGinity came back through the window, his knees a little unsteady. Then he explained what he had seen. LaRauche had floated off the roof, into the air, lightly but swiftly, taking a downward course, and had been swallowed up in the darkness below.
"You don't expect me to believe a fairy story like that?" Chief Meigs growled. "Here, let's get downstairs. We're wasting time."
"It's the gospel truth, officer," McGinity declared, vehemently; "but how he did it is a puzzle to me."
It was no puzzle to me. I had always considered LaRauche mad, and mad scientists work in a strange, mysterious way. His vanishing into the air, from the roof, might have a perfectly natural explanation. Having my own views, which I was not inclined at the moment to expose, for fear of further disgruntling the Chief, I said nothing.
Five minutes after the Chief and McGinity had gone downstairs, the reporter to search for LaRauche in the back-yard, while Chief Meigs reported the mysterious death of Orkins, and summoned medical aid for Mrs. LaRauche, by telephone, my attention was again attracted to the back window. This time it was by a bright glare of light.
Hurrying to the window, I was made speedily conscious of what was happening. LaRauche had, indeed, escaped from the house by way of the roof, in a manner yet to be revealed, and was now, apparently, making a quick getaway in his plane.
He had set off a magnesium flare. The small hangar and flying field were bathed in a weird and eerie silver-colored haze. His plane was in sight. Even at this distance, I caught the glint of its wings in the silver-colored light as it taxied across the field. With a roar, it shot upward, and was lost in the blackness of the night.
McGinity had heard the noise of the take-off, and came running up, to learn from me, and make sure his speculations, that LaRauche had really vanished from the roof, as if by magic, and was now escaping in his plane. I assured him on these two points very firmly and quickly.
And while he hurriedly retraced his steps downstairs, to report to Meigs, I again turned my attention to Mrs. LaRauche, whose mind, although still in confusion, was slowly clearing.
Later, we were to hear some very remarkable things from her.
XXVIII
My intuitive feeling that we had a night's work before us, which I had voiced prophetically to McGinity earlier in the evening, as we started for the LaRauche place, with only the faint clue of a woman's voice on the telephone to go on, proved conformable to fact. Dawn was breaking when we returned to the castle, weary and heavy at heart. The place was silent; the only sound that came to us was the swish-swish of the incoming tide, as it broke against the rocks at the foot of the cliff.
We were both so saddened and unstrung over our unpleasant and tragic experiences during the past twenty-four hours, and so physically dog-tired, that we were averse to talking them over.
The three tragedies, occurring so closely together, first, Niki, then Mr. Zzyx, and now, Orkins, after all, seemed to have been so unnecessary; or, as Henry had voiced his opinion about Mr. Zzyx's fearful death, so senseless. And while there was a logical connection between them and the perpetration of the Martian hoax, so far they had contributed little or nothing in clearing up the mystery which was still baffling us both.
It was here that Mrs. LaRauche came into the picture. My conviction, from the time I recognized her voice on the telephone, was that she knew more than any one else did. I had been shocked rather than distressed at the death of Orkins. A providential death, perhaps, with LaRauche gone now, and his wife holding the secret.
But where was LaRauche going? Evidently, after the systematic manner of his escape, he had a set goal. He was an experienced pilot, and a very expert one, considering his age, and probably knew of many places where a man could land safely in the dark.
Word of his escape by plane had been broadcast; the machinery of police watchfulness set in motion along the entire eastern seaboard, and far inland, as well. Somewhere in the air, a man was flying—wanted by the police.
Mrs. LaRauche was a badly shaken woman, but her condition was not serious. I remained at her side until the arrival of an ambulance physician from the county hospital. He was accompanied by a nurse, who took her immediately in charge. But she had other ideas than of going to the hospital. Her brain had cleared considerably, and she insisted on remaining in her home. I agreed with her on this, and to the inconvenience of the proprietor of an employment agency in the village, who had retired for the night, I soon had a competent manservant, with his wife, on the premises.
By the time they arrived, bringing ample provisions and milk, which I had the foresight to order, the police had removed the body of Orkins, as well as all traces of his death. The couple set to work at once, systematically clearing up and setting things in order. By midnight, the house was freshened up considerably, and Mrs. LaRauche made as comfortable as possible in her own, redressed bedroom, with the hospital nurse in attendance.
What she needed most, the physician decreed, was absolute rest and quiet. The kindly attentions showered upon her appeared for the moment to compensate for the loss of her demented husband. She had come out of a horror, but she was not thinking—or allowing herself to think—it seemed to me.
The house still seemed empty and queer as McGinity and I drove away, around one o'clock, trailing Chief Meigs' car back to the village. The Chief's last act was to station a policeman on guard, which made me a lot easier in my mind.
The situation was still lamentable enough, but McGinity and I, with an air of bravado, continued our inquiries on reaching the village. With police assistance, we had no difficulty in locating the light truck which Orkins had rented, and once located and properly inspected, we found nothing to indicate that it had been used to transport the stolen rocket from the Museum of Science to the East River.
And then McGinity suddenly found something, which was vitally important. A screw from the rocket. Chief Meigs chuckled; he couldn't see that a screw could possibly have any bearing on our situation. When we returned to the police station, I showed him.
"Why, that's just an ordinary screw," he said, after inspecting the screw more closely. "I don't see how it could mean anything."
"No?" I said. "Then you don't know how they make screws on Mars. If you think it's just ordinary, here's a screw-driver and a piece of pine wood. Now, drive it in!"
"That doesn't worry me at all," Meigs bantered. He went to his task cheerfully, even whistling, and giving a wink to several policemen who were looking on. But the screw refused to function in the ordinary way. Finally, he gave it up. "Why the damn thing won't go into the wood is a mystery to me," he remarked, as he handed the screw and screw-driver back to me.
"Because it works in reverse to our screws," I explained, as I drove the screw into the soft wood easily enough by a reverse motion. "There, I've done the job," I concluded, "which proves conclusively that only a Martian screw could be jolted out of a Martian rocket. And as the screw was found in the truck, the van therefore must have carried the rocket."
The Chief of Police grew pop-eyed in amazement.
"Everything about the rocket has this unusual element," I continued, "except the metal from which it was constructed, and it is a scientific fact that the metallic ores which abound on the earth are to be found in other planets."
The Chief's look of blank astonishment prompted me to go on.
"Now, whatever we may have thought at first about this rocket having originated on Mars, we know now that LaRauche manufactured it himself. He had the brain power necessary to create this fantasy in mechanism, and the means and method of carrying out his motive, which was to bring my brother Henry to shame."
"All of which stirred the popular imagination, and increased the circulation of the Daily Recorder half a million," McGinity interjected.
"Well," Chief Meigs drawled, "all I got to say is this. If making screws that go in backwards is not the act of a lunatic, then I'm crazy myself."
For several hours, McGinity and I remained at the police station, occupying ourselves piecing together from this and that all the information at our command; and at the end, it was as clear as daylight that we knew no more about the actual perpetration of the hoax than we did twenty-four hours back. The impression we both had gained was that tragedy had been obtruded into LaRauche's suave scheme that was shockingly disturbing, but had nothing whatever to do with clearing up the case.
There was little or nothing at the LaRauche home for the police to go on with. No trace of the revolver that had pierced Orkins' heart with its deadly bullet; no firearms of any sort, in fact. Mrs. LaRauche heightened the mystery by declaring her husband had an inherent fear of the use of firearms, as he had of fire, and had never owned a revolver. Nor was any sort of weapon discovered during the inspection of his laboratory, or workrooms, in the observatory and hangar, in which he operated outside his dwelling. No evidence even was found that would in the slightest degree incriminate him in the Martian fraud.
The city papers had come by plane, after midnight, and I read them all with interest. McGinity, fed up on the story, waved them away. They contained a very full account of what had occurred at the castle, Orkins' mysterious death, and LaRauche's escape by plane.
About three o'clock, I succeeded in reaching Olinski on the telephone, at his city home, and he was so upset over the whole affair, as reported in the papers, that at first all he could seem to do was to sputter into the mouthpiece.
"I fear, my dear Mr. Royce," he managed to say, finally, "that you and that reporter fellow have made a great mistake—a serious error. You have found nothing to prove that the radio message, and the rocket, did not originate in Mars, now, have you?"
"Nothing," I replied, "except that water-mark we found in the scroll."
"That proves nothing," he fairly shouted. "Some utterly unscrupulous and wicked person may have changed that scroll after it passed out of my possession."
"That is your theory, Mr. Olinski?" I asked.
"Can you suggest any other?" he countered. "No; because there can be no other. Unless you are accusing me of complicity—"
"I didn't say so, Mr. Olinski," I interrupted.
"Yet you believe this Dr. LaRauche, the scientist you've been telling me about, is at the bottom of this so-called hoax?"
"That is highly possible," I answered. "I myself think so."
"But you have, of course, no idea just how he did it?"
"No idea whatever, but it's quite plain that for motives of his own he had the opportunity."
"And that," Olinski declared, "that's as far as you've got?"
"At present," I replied.
"And that's as far as you'll ever get, my dear Mr. Royce," he rejoined in a bitter, sardonic tone, and then suddenly hung up.
When we had thus made an end, a dead silence followed, during which McGinity and I looked at each other for a moment or two, in silence. After I had told him what Olinski had said, the reporter spoke.
"I've put it out of my mind that Olinski had anything to do with this affair," he said. "The more I think of it, Mr. Royce, the more I'm dead certain that Mrs. LaRauche is our only hope. Finding her husband will be a police detail, and several days may elapse before he's apprehended. Now, if we could get to her, the first thing in the morning. Do you think that would be possible?"
Before I could answer, Chief Meigs walked in to say that a plane, answering the description of LaRauche's machine, had passed over Montauk Point, heading south, a little before three o'clock, had been picked up by a coast-guard searchlight, but had dodged out of the light. With this announcement, all thoughts of Mrs. LaRauche vanished, and—to me, at any rate—did not recur until we had driven back to the castle at the break of dawn, after a weary vigil of waiting at the police station to hear further word of LaRauche. But the reports were blank and disappointing.
XXIX
Interviewing Mrs. LaRauche did not prove as difficult as we had anticipated. At ten o'clock—McGinity and I were still in bed—the manservant I had installed at the LaRauche house, telephoned that Mrs. LaRauche was feeling much stronger, and was most anxious to see Henry and me on a matter of very urgent business; and would we please bring along the village Chief of Police, also the young newspaper reporter who had accompanied the officer and me to the house the night before.
At eleven o'clock, we drove off. On our way through the village, we picked up Chief Meigs, and the first thing he did after boarding the car was to give me a wink, and mutter: "Screws!" Henry was pallid and trembling. He had been deeply shocked when he learned of Orkins' death. He seemed to have aged ten years during the night.
McGinity was in a state of excitement. After a late and hasty breakfast, he and Pat had taken a stroll on the terrace. In spite of the tragedies and excitement, Pat had come downstairs looking as fresh and as bright as I had ever known her. I met them as I came out to get into the car. McGinity had just reached out to take her hand in his, and she had not drawn it away. She seemed a little breathless.
The strain of the past twenty-four hours, and loss of sleep, had been too much for me. As we breezed along in the crisp, morning air, I was no more capable of keeping my eyes open than I was of writing poetry. My conversation was limited to monosyllabic answers; between monosyllables, I fell into a light doze.
Nearing the LaRauche place, I became more wide-awake, and began to speculate whether Mrs. LaRauche knew, and was in a position to tell, the whole truth. Doubt had entered my mind. Even after we had been admitted into the house, and had gathered around her, in a sitting-room adjoining her bedchamber, I felt certain that she would be able to contribute very little to the sum of information which we had.
She was dressed in a dark morning gown, and seated in an easy chair. The heavy window curtains were drawn, to save her eye-sight, after long imprisonment in a darkened room. In the dim glow of a shaded lamp, her face appeared pale and worn. Yet her poise was serene; to all appearances, she was very much mistress of herself. This was a great relief to me. I was afraid we would have a quivering, sobbing woman on our hands, and the thought was terrifying. Only once, when she grasped Henry's hand, on our arrival, did she show that she was under a strain which was almost at a breaking point.
She was a comely woman, even in her present pitiable state, and she had the voice of a woman of refinement and education. I had often wondered why she had married a man so much older than herself, and so eccentric. She was LaRauche's second wife. God knows what became of the first one!
After we had quietly taken seats, Chief Meigs broke the tension of silence. "Do you feel strong enough to answer our questions, Mrs. LaRauche?" he inquired.
She nodded, and replied: "I think so."
Then Henry spoke. "I wish to heaven, Mrs. LaRauche, you'd got in touch sooner with Livingston and me. We've always prized your friendship very highly, and if it had not been for—"
"Yes; I know," Mrs. LaRauche broke in, as though anticipating his closing remark; "but I've been unable to communicate with any one on the outside for several weeks. A day or so ago, I managed to get the front window open, and waved to a motorcycle policeman, but apparently he did not see me." She stopped, and glanced nervously over her shoulder, and added, with a little shiver: "Oh, you don't know how I've grown to hate this house!" Then, quickly regaining her self-possession, she looked at McGinity steadily for a moment, and said: "I haven't the slightest idea who you are. I only know that you were a very thoughtful and kind young man last night. Are you the newspaper reporter?"
McGinity nodded, with an embarrassed smile, and was about to reply when I interjected: "A thousand pardons, Mrs. LaRauche," I said. "Allow me to present Mr. Robert McGinity, of the New York Daily Recorder, a young but very capable reporter, in whom we place every confidence. In fact, we've grown so fond of him, he seems like one of the family." Turning to Henry for confirmation, I concluded: "I am quite right, am I not, Henry?"
"Of course, you're right," Henry answered, loudly. "And I don't know what we're going to do without him when this—er—Martian affair—I was about to say, Martian inquest—is finished."
I gasped with astonishment at Henry's remarks, while McGinity turned very red, and said, stammeringly: "Thanks, Mr. Royce." Then he began to fumble nervously with his inevitable bunch of copy paper and pencil.
Mrs. LaRauche smiled wanly, and addressed herself again to the reporter. "I'm so glad you've come, Mr. McGinity," she said, "for what I'm going to tell, I wish to be given as much publicity as possible. I want the public to know that Henry Royce was imposed upon, and that my husband, now a fugitive, although I refuse to believe he's a murderer, was wholly responsible, with the connivance of Orkins, his manservant, in carrying out this cruel deception, which, I know, is still puzzling all of you."
"Even at that, it doesn't seem so incredulous," Henry commented. "I guess I'm one of the die-hard kind."
There was a little pause, then Mrs. LaRauche turned to Chief Meigs. "Tell me," she said, "how is the search going? Have the police discovered any clue to my husband's whereabouts?"
"I'm afraid I can't give you any information," Meigs replied; "no clue at all."
"It isn't that I want him back," she said firmly, "or would ever want to see him again, after the many cruelties he practiced on me. But he's been out of his mind—insane—I'm sure, for weeks now, and is really unaccountable for his acts."
Her voice had grown shaky, and her face went whiter than it had been. We remained silent, recognizing the futility of questioning her until she got control of herself. Our chief interest, of course, lay in the unraveling of the mystery which still baffled us, and when she finally got to it, she answered all our questions in a cool collected way.
On my suggestion, McGinity began the questioning, giving us a specimen of his powers of observation. He omitted no detail of importance, carefully marshaling his facts and presenting them to Mrs. LaRauche as expertly as a lawyer examining a witness before a jury.
"Your married life has been a very unhappy one, hasn't it, Mrs. LaRauche?" he began.
"Very unhappy," she replied, sighing. "Insolent, quarrelsome, Rene LaRauche humiliated me in every possible way. I was simply his housekeeper—a vassal. He was the mighty, brainy scientist, and he never allowed me to forget it—not for one instant."
"Apparently he did not confide in you?"
"Orkins had been his manservant for some years prior to our marriage, and to him he entrusted the secrets of his scientific discoveries and inventions, rather than to me. This was only one of his many eccentricities, and I submitted to the indignity with exemplary patience."
"How do you account for his making Orkins a confidant?"
"He was too self-centered, too egotistical, to invite the confidence of brainy people. He seemed to like to impress—startle—inferior minds with his discoveries. Orkins was a highly trained servant, and a general handy man, but he was not intellectual."
"But you could easily have escaped all this bullying and domineering on the part of your husband?"
"I often considered divorce," was the reply, "but a latent sense of duty to my marriage vows prevented me from taking that step."
Here McGinity suddenly switched off that line of inquiry, and turned to another. "Why have you brought us here today?" he asked.
"To disclose certain facts which prove my husband tricked Henry Royce shamelessly in these Martian revelations."
"When did you come into possession of these facts?"
"Less than a month ago. Up to that time I had been as keenly interested in the matter, and as gullible as the rest of you, and the public at large. When Rene found that I had acquired this knowledge, and that, motivated by a deep sense of justice and fair play, I meant to disclose the real meaning of these revelations, he hid my clothes, and locked me up in that attic room, where you found me."
"How did you manage to get downstairs and phone to the Royce house, last evening?"
"Orkins, who served my meals, forgot to lock the door after him. He seemed preoccupied and nervous. It was my first opportunity to seek outside aid since my imprisonment. I stole out quietly, and crept downstairs, to the phone in the library, unaware that my husband was shadowing me."
"And he cut you short, it seems."
"Before I had a chance even to tell my name, he sprang upon me and choked me off, and then, in his usual cruel manner, bound me to the chair and bed. He acted like a maniac, I was terribly frightened." She paused, a little breathlessly, then added: "I am still in some dilemma as to how my unfinished message was understood."
"You may recall, Mrs. LaRauche, that you spoke to me," I answered. "Your voice was familiar, yet I couldn't place it at first. Finally, when I was convinced that it was your voice, the incident put us on the right track. Mr. McGinity and I already were in possession of several vital, suspicious facts, and your phone call gave us another important clue."
Then Henry spoke. "About Orkins. Had you any misgivings, Mrs. LaRauche, when he entered my service as butler? I took him, you know, on your husband's recommendation."
"It was not clear at the time," she answered. "Rene invented some explanation that Orkins wanted to make more money. Now, I know that he was deliberately planted in your house as a spy, and that he kept my husband advised on all your secret workings in science. He betrayed your confidence, as he cold-bloodedly tried to betray Rene, for that $5,000 reward."
"Do you know anything at all about Orkins' death?" Chief Meigs broke in, abruptly.
It was a pertinent question to put, but a little cruel. "No," Mrs. LaRauche replied, almost defiantly. "I do recall hearing a distant, sharp sound of some sort—it may have been the shot that killed him—but I associated it with the back-firing of an automobile on the highway. About an hour later, I heard a noise downstairs."
"That was when I smashed a panel in your front door, probably," the Chief put in.
"Shortly afterwards," Mrs. LaRauche went on, "my husband entered the attic room, looking very excited. He threw a sheet over me, and then I heard him open the back window, and climb through, on to the roof. I had the uncomfortable feeling that something sinister had occurred, and that he was bent on escape. But I was bound to the chair and helpless, and in too much anguish to think clearly."
"Mrs. LaRauche!" McGinity asked suddenly. "We are very anxious to know how your husband escaped so magically from the roof, like he had flown to the ground. Have you any theory?"
She smiled faintly, and replied: "Rene invented many peculiar things, like the robot, now used in all New York subway and railroad stations, where the traveler's usual questions are answered by a phonographic voice, by simply pressing a button. He had a great fear of fire, of being trapped by fire. Some months ago, he installed a safety device, in case of fire, on our roof."
"What was it like?" I asked, eagerly.
"Simply a heavy wire stretched tautly from the roof to the ground, and terminating at some distance away from the house, to make the descent more gradual," she replied. "In case of fire, you step into a sort of trapeze, which is attached to the wire by a grooved wheel, and your descent to the ground is something like the 'slide for life,' often seen at the circus, or in film melodramas. I can see how, in the dark, it would give the illusion of flying."
XXX
After the concerted gasp of surprise over LaRauche's weird method of escape from the roof had died away, McGinity put another important question: "How did you first discover that your husband was implicated in these Martian revelations, and that they were a fraud? Did you find anything—papers?"
"Something like that," she replied.
She took out of the little bag, which lay in her lap, a charred slip of paper, which she handed to McGinity; and while he passed it round for our inspection, she continued: "I found this paper in the charred rubbish, in the log fire-place, in my husband's laboratory, which Orkins had neglected to clean out. You'll recognize the lettering it contains as a portion of the code used for the radio messages from Mars, and its deciphering into English. After I had studied this, I began a secret investigation on my own, and gradually the scheme was unveiled to me."
"This detecting business must have been a new and novel experience," Henry remarked, good humoredly.
"Not exactly," Mrs. LaRauche replied. "You probably don't know—not many do—that I have written several mystery novels under the pen name of Martha Claxton."
This disclosure was followed by another concerted gasp of surprise. After it had subsided, McGinity exclaimed: "Well, that's certainly a knockout, Mrs. LaRauche! Why, I've read all of your novels, including the latest one, 'The Country House Mystery,' and I consider Martha Claxton—you—a close runner to the English Agatha Christie—a feminine J. S. Fletcher. No wonder your husband, with his jealous temperament, had this constitutional antagonism against any rival in his household, in the field of fame."
"Combine jealousy and revenge," Mrs. LaRauche said, "and in these two forces you have the most perverse evil in the world. Rene was not only intensely jealous of Henry Royce for his successful findings as an amateur scientist and astronomer, but he nursed a revenge against him for the exposé of those faked African jungle films, and his subsequent expulsion from the Exploration Club. He blamed—"
"Officially, I had nothing to do with it," Henry interrupted, vehemently. "I simply voiced my belief to a fellow member of the club that the films looked like fakes to me."
"What raised your suspicions?" Mrs. LaRauche asked.
"Well, I recognized, among those African jungle midgets," Henry replied, "a Negro dwarf I had seen years ago at a circus side-show. She was exhibited as a human crow. She had the remarkable physiognomy and jet blackness of a crow, and she could caw like one. She must be an old woman by now. In your husband's faked film, she took the part of a chattering, pigmy grandmother, who was thrown into the river and drowned because of her great age and uselessness. As she was engulfed in the river torrent, and sank, I recognized her pitiful 'caw-caw'."
"Fancy your remembering that," Mrs. LaRauche remarked.
Again Chief Meigs spoke abruptly. "Pardon me, Mrs. LaRauche," he said, "but how long do you reckon your husband has been out of his mind?"
She looked startled for a moment, then calmly replied. "He was silent and brooding for some months past, but I attributed this to his being deeply engrossed in some new scientific research. It's rather difficult to say when he passed into the stage of actual insanity. It's my opinion that all inventive scientists are a little bit cracked." She hesitated a moment, and smiled apologetically at Henry. "It's my belief, though," she went on, "that he became definitely deranged when the success of his scheme centered the attention of the world upon Henry Royce, and raised him to the heights of fame. Rene had not figured on this. It was like a boomerang. When he realized that his scheme was reacting to his own damage, then, perhaps, something in his brain snapped."
"Have you any personal knowledge of the implication of your husband and Orkins in the theft of the rocket?" McGinity asked.
She shook her head. "Only a suspicion," she replied. "There were many, many nights, while I was locked in the attic, when I couldn't sleep, so I used to listen for sounds from the lower part of the house. The night the rocket was stolen, I remember distinctly the house was as quiet as a tomb. I remained awake all night, terrorized at the thought of being left alone. Towards morning, I heard familiar sounds again—footfalls in the hall—voices—and went to sleep."
"I wonder what motive prompted LaRauche to do a crazy thing like that?" I interrogated.
"Dispose of the rocket, and he would be less liable to detection," Mrs. LaRauche replied. "He must have become suddenly fearful of some one tracing the workmanship of the rocket to him. It was public knowledge that he had made considerable progress in the creation of a metal rocket, which he hoped, eventually, to catapult to the moon. No doubt he reconditioned this rocket to meet the requirements of his mad Martian scheme."
"It's one of the most intricate and puzzling pieces of craftsmanship and mechanism I've ever seen," I said, glancing at Chief Meigs, who punctuated my remark with a smile and a wink, and the silent mouthing of "Screws!"
By this time, McGinity was showing signs of impatience. "If there is no reason why we shouldn't," he said, emphatically, "I think we'd better get through with this business now, as quickly as possible. Mrs. LaRauche is under a great strain, and we must spare her all we can. So why not let her tell us, in as few words as she can, all she knows. I leave it to her."
"Very well, Mr. McGinity," she assented, nodding her head two or three times. Then she began. "There are a great many things I know nothing whatever about. Some things I say may be true, or partly true; the rest will be based on my deductions.
"As I've already told you," she continued, "my husband carried on this work in the greatest secrecy. My curiosity, rather than suspicion, was aroused when he began to collect scientific books on Mars, and studies of the ancient inscriptions, cuneiforms and hieroglyphics, of Babylon and Egypt. He began sending Orkins on frequent visits to the city. It was Orkins, no doubt, who ordered the making of the scroll. He fits the old bookseller's description to a nicety—'middle-aged, well-dressed, well-bred.'
"The time came when Rene dropped his preliminary studies and research, and applied himself wholly to his work, in the laboratory, and at his workshop in the hangar. He worked at all hours of the day and night, in a kind of frenzy. Finally, late in the summer, as I reconstruct it, matters began to take shape. He must have had in his possession by that time all the information Orkins had obtained, surreptitiously, in relation to Henry Royce's and Serge Olinski's experiments in trying to establish radio communication with Mars.
"Early in August, he did a lot of night flying, always accompanied by Orkins. The trust he put in that scoundrel, and the money Orkins must have bled him for! They were usually in the air from nine to eleven. When I quizzed Rene on the purpose of these night flights, he said he was conducting a series of meteorological experiments. But what he was really doing—if my surmise is correct—was flying high over the Royce castle, or Radio Center, and testing his carefully thought out Martian code on Mr. Royce and Mr. Olinski, wherever they happened to be conducting their radio experiments; sort of baiting them.
"He was perfectly able to do this with the powerful wireless sending outfit with which he had equipped his plane. Apparently Mr. Royce and his co-worker were finally satisfied that these signals in code came from Mars, for we next heard of Mr. Royce erecting two stations, one designed for transmitting, the other for receiving Martian radio messages.
"Now, comes the strange story of the public demonstration of direct radio communication with Mars, at Radio Center. I happened to be in town that night, having gone there to visit friends, over the week-end, at Rene's persistent urging that I take a holiday, which was a rather strange attitude for him to adopt. Up to that time, I was not in the least suspicious, and listened in that night with a great deal of enjoyment, although I thought the Martian message, as decoded and broadcast—well, somehow it seemed perfectly incredulous to me.
"If any man was pleased with the success of this undertaking, Rene must have been. He achieved it with great risk, in a hazardous flight into the sub-stratosphere. We must at least give him credit for this daring feat, also for the cleverness of his Martian code, which he sent by wireless from this great height, and the perfect artistry of English into which it was so easily transcribed by Mr. Olinski. My suspicions of Rene's sub-stratosphere performance, in his plane, were confirmed after I had discovered a visored aluminum helmet, and a rubber fabric suit, in which he had received oxygen, hidden under some rubbish in the hangar.
"It is perfectly amazing to me how he accomplished two such remarkable feats in one night, transmitting the Martian message from the sub-stratosphere, garbling it and fading out, to indicate ethereal disturbance, and dropping the rocket on the water-front. Oh, he must have dropped it from his plane while flying low over the beach! There can be no other explanation. He had plenty of time in which to return to the field, after the altitude flight, attach the rocket under the plane, on the principle of a bomber, with Orkins' assistance, of course, and soar off again. The rocket appears heavy, but, as you know, it is constructed of comparatively light metal, and, without fuel, is easily handled. The exterior of the rocket was purposely fired in advance, I found, to give the effect of its having traveled through the earth's atmosphere at great speed.
"In this stunt, he had the spectacular accessory of the falling meteors, and he added to the realism by sending off a great quantity of fire-works from the plane when he dropped the rocket on the beach. There was little chance of his plane being detected at this time of night; he was just another strange traveler in the sky. He carried enough fire-works to equip a Fourth of July celebration. In my investigation, I found a dozen or so burned out Roman candles, and other unused fire-works, which he had secreted under his work-bench in the hangar.
"His mission achieved, he went into retreat. For weeks we lived in practical isolation, while the world buzzed with the great Martian revelations, and honors were heaped upon Mr. Royce. It is not easy for the mind to grasp how Rene managed to put over this stupendous hoax, having as its object the humiliation of a bitterly hated rival, unless one considers that it was the cold-blooded scheme of a great mind gone wrong. And into that deranged mind there must have gleamed some light of inspiration. His detailed description of life as it exists at present on Mars, which he set forth in the cuneiform code, contained in the scroll, I consider marvelous—absolutely marvelous. It is logical, and it rings true. No scientist, ancient or modern, has ever given a more plausible picture of the history of Mars, and conditions of life there. No scientist in his right mind would have been so fearless. But Rene—the madman—dared.
"I'm sorry it isn't true. I want it to be true. I want to think there are people like ourselves living on Mars. We know now that it is technically possible to bridge the space between us with radio, to register our music, our ideas, in that planet. And we need the Martian ideas, and their hopes and illusions, as well, to buoy up our drooping spirit, just as much as they need ours. Perhaps, after we're all dead and buried, this revelation from Mars will come. Radio was given to the world to bring about universal harmony, to bring nations closer together. Why not interstellar harmony? Oh, it's coming! Who knows?
"And now, my friends, since I've given you every detail I can think of, what have you to say?"
There was deep silence for a few moments, and then I spoke. "Your findings and deductions, Mrs. LaRauche, are all very wonderful, and very convincing," I said; "but there is still one very important matter to be cleared up. It may be that your memory is at fault."
"Something important that I've overlooked?" Mrs. LaRauche asked, thoughtfully.
"Quite so," I replied. "We have awaited breathlessly for your theory regarding the passenger in the rocket—the man-ape."
"The dear, lamented ambassador of good will from Mars," Henry burst out, with a deep tremor in his voice; "the late Mr. Zzyx!"
She considered a moment before answering, and then said, very frankly: "As a matter of fact, I did not touch on that point because, I must admit, I haven't the slightest information that would throw any light on this very mysterious phase of the case. I have been puzzled, completely puzzled, and after careful investigation, I have failed to discover the origin of Mr. Zzyx. I have no idea how he came to be in the rocket."
"We're all puzzled, for that matter," McGinity remarked; "and I think it's very necessary that we should establish his origin in order to settle the whole case."
"Of course it is," Mrs. LaRauche assented. "But his presence in the rocket is just one of those irregular happenings that can't be explained. I saw Mr. Zzyx on several public occasions, and I was terribly impressed. He answered in every detail the fairest description that could ever be given of some strange creature from another planet. Recalling my first impressions of him, as an ape-man from the jungles of Mars, I feel, even now, as if I might have been imagining all that I've just told you, and that Mr. Zzyx, the rocket and the radio messages after all, did originate on Mars."
"In other words, the Martian mystery is still a mystery," McGinity said, "and will continue to be so until the origin and identity of Mr. Zzyx are established."
"And that's going to be rather difficult, I'm afraid," murmured Mrs. LaRauche.
And, then, the unexpected happened. The door-bell jangled loudly, and in an incredibly short time, the manservant, whom I had engaged the night before, entered the room, and politely announced a visitor who wouldn't give his name.
"I can't imagine what this means," said Mrs. LaRauche, "but I hope it's nothing unpleasant. So, whoever he is, send him in," she concluded, with an impressive gesture of command to the manservant.
XXXI
The visitor turned out to be a stout, middle-aged Italian, rather furtive-looking; a stranger to me, but evidently not unfamiliar to Chief of Police Meigs, who moved towards him the moment he entered the room.
"Oh, hello, Antonio!" the Chief accosted him. "When did you get out of the bastile? You've shaved off your mustache. Trying to disguise yourself?"
"I am no crook," the Italian retorted. "I come to see de lady of de house."
"Oh, that explains your visit, eh?" the Chief said. Then he turned to Mrs. LaRauche. "Do you know this man?"
"Yes," she replied. "He's our former, and particularly objectionable, neighbor, who got ninety days in jail for mistreating the animals he was training."
"Excuse, ma'am," the Italian said, wriggling uncomfortably, "but dat is not true."
"No matter," she rejoined. "I dare say it never struck you, Mr. Ranzetti, that I was made very uneasy and unhappy by members of your menagerie roaming at large on our place."
There was no reply to this, I felt. By that time, I had the visitor all straightened out in my mind.
"At any rate, why have you come to see me?" Mrs. LaRauche continued.
"I don' know what to doa about it, lady," the Italian stammered; "dat's why I coma to you."
"About what?" she asked, her eyes twinkling good-humoredly.
"About—Peter," the man faltered; and then, to our great surprise, the tears began to roll down his prison-pale, furrowed, cheeks.
"What do you suppose is the matter with the poor fellow?" Mrs. LaRauche asked, turning to Chief Meigs.
The Chief shook his head, and then tapped the visitor on the shoulder. "What's on your mind, Antonio?" he inquired.
The Italian swallowed hard, then clutched the Chief by the arm. "Maybe you can helpa me, Meester Policesamans," he wailed. "I search every place since I got out of de jug, for my poor Peter. In the zoo, I find my bears, my seals, my monkeys, but no Peter."
"One of your animals missing? Is that it?" the officer inquired.
"I no can finda Peter," the animal trainer replied, unshed tears glistening in his eyes. "Maybe, he escape in de night, after de cops tooka me away."
"And when was that?" I interrogated.
The reply to my question came from Mrs. LaRauche. "I happen to know," she said. "Strangely enough, Mr. Ranzetti was arrested on the very night Rene made his flight into the sub-stratosphere, transmitted that spurious message from Mars, and afterwards dropped the rocket near your beach. He was arrested, and taken to jail, early in the evening."
I caught my breath, rose, and made straight for the visitor. "Who was this—Peter?" I asked. "A chimpanzee?"
"I tought he was a chimpanzee, Meester, when I boughta him, as a baby, in East Africa," the Italian replied, "but he got bigger and bigger, and he done t'ings no chimpanzee never has done. Sometimes, Meester, he looka and acta so mucha lika de biga, reala man, I t'ink I snuffa da coke. I traina him in secret. Teacha him de grand tricks. I mean, someday, to maka de great sensation with my Peter. He maka my fortune. But, now, poor Peter, he gone! I no finda him. I looka every place—every place."
My eyes wandered to McGinity, and he read my thoughts. He jumped from his chair, and moved to the side of the tearful trainer. He handed him a cigarette; even lit it for him.
"T'anka you, Meester," the Italian breathed fervently.
"That's better, now,—what?" McGinity said, patting him on the shoulder. "Well, I think I can tell you what happened to Peter," he went on, "but first you must tell me what tricks you taught him."
The Italian brightened perceptibly. "Oh, Meester!" he exclaimed, proudly, "I teacha Peter to act lika de gentlemans, to sit at de table, and eata and smoka de cigarettes, like de big millionaire, and never to maka de spit on de floor. I teacha him to sleep in de bed, to look at de picture books, to ride de bike, and lock and unlock de door of his cage."
"Was Peter always tractable? I mean by that—did you find it easy to teach him these tricks!"
The Italian shrugged his shoulders. "Peter, he was a funny fellow. Sometimes, he doa whata I say, and, sometimes, Meester, he doa nothing at all. He go hide in de closet, or under de bed. He act veery bad."
"Lapses, eh? He did things you didn't want him to do?" McGinity interrogated further.
"Once, Meester, he go nuts—clean nuts. He maka de fight wid de pillow. He tried to smother me—killa me! What doa you say for dat? Killa me! For two days, I lock him up in de dark closet, den he hammer on de door, lika I teacha him to doa, and cry to git out—cry lika a leetle boy cry for his spaghetti."