To the Mayor and Officials of New York:Having shown in these last few days what the rule of the Invisible Master means to your city, I am ready now without fear of disbelief on your part to state the terms on which my reign of terror over this city will end. Those terms are—the immediate payment of five million dollars in assorted denominations. This money, in a steel box of moderate size, is to be placed in the following spot: Two miles north of the village of Pernview, on Long Island, on the west road, is a milestone. In the forest three hundred yards east of this milestone is a large oak. You will place the box on the boulder beneath this tree on tomorrow night, between eleven and twelve o'clock. You are at liberty to attempt to prevent me from getting the box, but it will only result disastrously for yourselves.If this is done my activities will cease. If it is not done I will commence an even greater campaign of terror that will make a chaos of New York in hours. No troops or forces are of any use against me. I leave the raising of the money to you, but suggest that the city's business men be called on for it. Either they pay or I will make their city a desert of terror.The Invisible Master.
To the Mayor and Officials of New York:
Having shown in these last few days what the rule of the Invisible Master means to your city, I am ready now without fear of disbelief on your part to state the terms on which my reign of terror over this city will end. Those terms are—the immediate payment of five million dollars in assorted denominations. This money, in a steel box of moderate size, is to be placed in the following spot: Two miles north of the village of Pernview, on Long Island, on the west road, is a milestone. In the forest three hundred yards east of this milestone is a large oak. You will place the box on the boulder beneath this tree on tomorrow night, between eleven and twelve o'clock. You are at liberty to attempt to prevent me from getting the box, but it will only result disastrously for yourselves.
If this is done my activities will cease. If it is not done I will commence an even greater campaign of terror that will make a chaos of New York in hours. No troops or forces are of any use against me. I leave the raising of the money to you, but suggest that the city's business men be called on for it. Either they pay or I will make their city a desert of terror.
The Invisible Master.
CHAPTER IV
Blackmail
Carton spoke softly through the darkness to the man beside him as their car stopped. "Is this the place, Wade?"
Wade nodded. "There's the milestone—you're ready, Grantham?"
Grantham nodded. "All ready—Kingston has the box."
As they emerged from the car onto the road that gleamed white in the darkness, Carton glimpsed behind it other cars from which dark shapes of men were emerging, rifles and pistols gleaming in their hands. All had turned off their lights, and the scrubby woods that rose on either side of the road seemed impenetrable walls of blackness.
It had been little more than a day, Carton reflected as he stood in the road with the others, since the Invisible Master's astonishing demand had been received by the New York authorities. There had been no doubt or dispute whatever as to whether that demand should be met. With wild crowds besieging the City Hall, with all New York's customary organized life sinking into chaos beneath the panic-pall of the Invisible Master's presence, there was no other course to follow, and a subscription for raising the money had instantly been started.
Through the rest of that day and the next the money had poured in, mostly in great sums from the banks and big business houses of the city who realized that it was only by payment of this tribute that the metropolis could be saved from chaotic ruin. Later on, they reasoned, the Invisible Master could be hunted down and dealt with, but now the thing was to lift his menace from New York. Five millions was a great sum, but not in comparison with the daily loss the city's businesses were undergoing. By the next afternoon the five millions were ready, a compact mass of securities and highest-denomination bills.
It had been placed in the specified small steel box, and given into the charge of Kingston, a representative of the city's government who was to place the money as requested. And since the Invisible Master had mockingly given full permission for any to attempt his capture who wished to, Wade and Grantham had worked out the scheme that held a slender chance of trapping the unseen criminal. With their two-score of armed men waiting behind them, Grantham explained the plan in the lowest of voices to Carton and Kingston.
"Kingston and I will take the box in and place it on the boulder," he whispered, "and when we do so I'll stretch in a circle of yards around it this thread of wire, and connect it to this pocket-battery and bell. Kingston and I will wait with the money, behind the big oak, and Wade's men will lie in a circle all around the spot.
"When the Invisible Master comes he'll make for the boulder, and must necessarily strike the stretched wire and ring the bell just before he reaches it. Then your men can rush in from all sides to enclose him in their circle, while Kingston and I will be there and armed to prevent the money from being taken by him. It's our one hope of catching him, for we'll never have this chance again, I think."
The Trap
Wade nodded. "We all understand the plan, Grantham. We'll wait for him if it takes until daylight."
"I think he'll appear tonight," Grantham said. "I imagine he is rather anxious to get the money and have it all over with."
"Well, good luck," whispered Wade, extending his hand, which the physicist grasped. Kingston too, a little nervously, shook hands with the officer, and then the two disappeared silently into the dark wall of the wood eastward.
Wade and Carton waited for a moment as silent as the grouped silent men behind them, and then as Wade passed a whispered order to them, they all were melting into the dark forest likewise. Swiftly they formed a circle of a hundred feet in radius around the great oak at whose foot was the stone the Invisible Master had specified. On that stone by then, Carton knew, the steel box would be resting, with Grantham and Kingston watching from close beside for the warning bell. The circle of men had in a moment crouched down here and there in the brush, Wade beside Carton, and the wood settled back into its accustomed night silence.
The trap was ready. Would the Invisible Master dare to enter it?
Carton remembered afterward the time of waiting that followed as a period of almost infinite length. Crouching silent and motionless with Wade in a clump of brush he listened tensely. Out to right and left of him, he knew, were crouching the dozens of men who made up the circle, each ready with rifle or pistol and electric torch, each listening as intently as themselves. And at the circle's center, Grantham and Kingston. All waiting for the unseen man who was to come to claim the price of the terror he had loosed upon New York.
Was it a twig that snapped somewhere to the left, Carton wondered? Every slightest sound seemed intensified in the unnatural stillness of the place. A half-hour had passed but there came still no alarm. Wade was chewing gum as softly and silently as ever beside him, his heavy pistol ready in his hand. The desolate hum of crickets came to their ears.
Through the branches above Carton could see the moon drifting past. He began to try estimating by it how long they had waited. Then suddenly a sound came that shattered the stillness of the woods as with a tangible blow. The jangling of a bell!
"At him!" Wade cried as they leapt up, forward. All around them the dark shapes of men were running toward the towering oak!
They heard hoarse cries from Kingston and Grantham ahead—a single brief exclamation in a deeper voice—and then—crash!—crash!—crash! three shots echoing through the forest from ahead like the crash of cannon!
"He's there—don't let him get through!" Wade cried. The circle of running men was contracting and merging in an instant upon the central oak. Their guns leapt in their hands as they burst into the little clearing beneath it. They stopped.
Kingston lay on the ground in a grotesque attitude beneath the light of their torches, shot through the heart. Grantham, blood welling from his left shoulder, was twisted in a half-sitting position beside him. There was no one else in the clearing and of the steel box that had rested on the boulder there was no sign!
"He got it!" Grantham whispered, his face distorted with pain. "He got it and got away—the Invisible Master!"
"Beat the woods!" Wade's voice flared. "Carry your torches and shoot at every sound of steps when there's no one visible with them! He's slipping out somewhere now!"
Grantham shook his head. "No use," he said. "We can't fight him, Wade. Kingston and I were crouched behind the oak with our wire ready, and we heard the bell ring, then as we leapt forward an instant later saw the steel case disappearing from off the stone! Kingston had grasped him, I think, was struggling with something invisible as we both cried out, and I heard an exclamation from him and then the shots roared out of the empty air just beside Kingston. Kingston fell like a stone, I heard one of the shots rip past me and another caught my shoulder. Then I heard the sound of leaping feet beside me just a moment before you burst into the clearing."
Whose Voice?
"But you heard his voice close beside you!" Wade exclaimed. "Was it Gray's?"
Grantham's pale face took on a certain puzzlement. "It may have been, Wade—I heard it for but an instant in that exclamation—I don't know whether that was Gray's or another's, it was a voice I had heard often before."
Wade nodded decisively. "That ends all doubt as to it's being Gray, at least. Carton, do what you can for Grantham's shoulder, while I see if any of the men have run across him."
But in minutes the men were streaming back with Wade, their search fruitless. They had found no one—could have found no one, Carton realized, in that search through the darkness for a being invisible. Wade shook his head.
"It's all over," he said, "and I realize now that we never really had a chance of capturing him. We can only hope that he'll be content with the five million and never again loose terror on any city as he did upon New York. Five millions—well, it may be best, after all."
Silently the party drove back to the city, and after they had taken Grantham to his rooms near the university and summoned a doctor for his wound, Carton and Wade rode together downtown. It was with a rueful shake of the head on the detective's part that they parted; he to his headquarters and Carton to theInquirer'scity-room to pound out an abridged account of the night's events. By the time that Carton went wearily across the city to his own rooms newsboys were shouting in the streets the welcome news that the Invisible Master had been bought off and that his reign of terror was ended.
Carton, in his tired sleep, lived again the tense events of the night, and it seemed to his sleep-numbed mind that the warning bell they had heard was jangling again and again. It woke him finally, to find that it was his doorbell, and when he opened it Wade stood before him. The detective's sleepy eyes were more wakeful than ever Carton had seen them, but to the reporter's first excited question he snapped but a single order.
"Dress, Carton—we're going up to the university."
In minutes they were flying out along Riverside Drive through the growing morning sunlight. Around them the city was waking to a day of heart-felt rejoicing that the terror was lifted. Wade seemed the container of a strange grim force, and to Carton's questions returned no answer. But when they had drawn up before the familiar gray physics building and had entered the equally familiar little laboratory and ante-room, Carton found Grantham awaiting them, his shoulder bound and his face haggard from a sleepless night.
"You called me, Wade?" he asked. "Something you'd found?"
Wade nodded. "Yes. But first I'd like to have President Ellsworth here. He's near here, isn't he?"
Grantham nodded, frowning. "His home is—yes. I heard he'd been away for a day or two but he ought to be back by now."
He turned to the telephone, spoke briefly into it, and when he had finished turned to Wade. "He's coming," he said.
They sat silent until President Ellsworth entered minutes later. As he came in Carton noted that the two officers who had accompanied Wade and himself were lounging in the hall outside. The President's ordinarily genial face held some irritation.
Wade Makes a Statement
"What's this—a sort of post-mortem?" he asked. "I've just heard all about last night, Sergeant Wade—and it was too bad that the Invisible Master slipped through yours and Grantham's hands. But perhaps it's best that it's all over."
"It is not all over yet," Wade said quietly.
Ellsworth stared, as did Grantham and Carton. "You mean—" the President began.
"I mean that I know at last who the Invisible Master is and where he is!" said Wade.
Ellsworth seemed too astounded to speak, but Grantham leaned to grasp Wade's arm. "Is that true, Wade?" he asked. "You've actually found him?"
"I have," Wade told them quietly.
And then as the three others stared at him he went on. "You remember, Grantham, that you told me that in a case like this the ordinary police-routine, the gathering of fact after fact to apprehend a criminal, was useless? You may have been right, but I followed that routine and I've finally gathered among other facts, three facts that tell me everything I want to know about the Invisible Master. Had I had these three facts last night I could have saved us that struggle and Kingston's life, but I did not have them then. I have them now, though."
"And the three facts?" Grantham asked. Ellsworth was staring as though bewilderedly, Carton leaning tensely forward.
"The first fact," said Wade, "is something that President Ellsworth happened to say the other night—when we spoke of Gray—saying how Grantham and he had been hampered in their scientific work by lack of funds, and how it would be almost justifiable to take some of the city's pleasure-spent millions for the aiding of research."
They were all silent. Ellsworth's face had flushed.
"The second fact is one that not all of you may understand and that I myself was ignorant of until last night—it is the peculiar optical properties of tourmaline crystals."
Carton and Ellsworth stared at him blankly, but Grantham's eyes gleamed with sudden understanding.
"The third fact, which I also learned last night and which is the most significant perhaps of all, is the simple record of a stockbroker's account carried some weeks ago by Mr. Peter Harkness."
Wade was silent, and Carton, astounded and bewildered, could only stare at him still. Ellsworth was about to burst into questions but was interrupted by Grantham's voice. The physicist had risen and turned from them toward the window. His voice came over his shoulder to them.
"I think I can give you a fourth fact that will clinch it, Wade." His right arm crooked—
Wade leapt, but an instant too late. For when he spun Grantham around the physicist was already falling, his lips writhing with cyanide grains still upon them, a faint peachy odor in the air. He was still, dead, when Wade lowered his body to the floor. The detective straightened, mopping his brow.
"I was afraid of that," he panted. "I was afraid of it—but damned if I don't think it was his best way out!"
Carton and Ellsworth gazed as though petrified. Then Carton's voice—shaking—
"Then Grantham—Grantham himself—was the Invisible Master?"
Wade turned.
"There never was any Invisible Master at all," he said.
Back to the Laboratory
Carton and Ellsworth stared at him for moments before they could speak.
"But Grantham's power of making things invisible!" Carton finally cried. "We saw him do it here—"
Wade shook his head. "You didn't Carton, but you thought you did."
He strode to the laboratory's long table, they with him. He searched along it for a time and found what he sought, a round disk of glass-like material, clear and transparent. He placed it against one small pane of the window, through which the sunlight was pouring, and to their amazement it showed black and opaque against the sunlight. Wade slowly turned the disk in his hand, keeping its flat side parallel to the window. As he turned it, it became less and less opaque until by the time he had given it a quarter-turn it was completely transparent, and was in fact wholly invisible because of the brilliant sunlight streaming through it from behind into their eyes!
Slowly Wade revolved the disk another quarter-turn and as he did so it became cloudy and translucent and then more and more opaque until at the end of the half-turn it was as dead black and visible against the sunlight as ever! Carton and Ellsworth stared unbelievingly, and Wade handed the disk to them.
"A tourmaline-crystal," he said. "There's another set in that small window pane. Their property is well enough known to physicists, and is a result and proof of the polarization of light. When two tourmaline crystals are placed together with their axes parallel, light streams through both unchecked. If one is turned so that its axis is at right angles to the axis of the other, though, light cannot pass through them and they become thus opaque. A quarter-turn of the one will make them transparent again.
"Grantham had one tourmaline-crystal set in the window-pane and the other in the disk form. He showed you the black glass paper-weight disk he was going to make invisible, but when he leaned forward to put it on the little projector he palmed it and put there instead this tourmaline disk. It showed black, like the paper-weight, though, because he placed it on the projector's framework with axis at right angles to that of the crystal in the window-pane.
"The sunlight was coming straight through the window into your eyes (he had chosen the hour), and you saw the black disk against it, resting on the projector's framework. Grantham and Gray had some sort of mechanism inside the projector to make an appropriate sound, but the switches Grantham turned actually controlled the framework above the projector, which was made so as to turn the disk resting in it a quarter-turn when desired.
"You see how it was done? Grantham turned his switches, and as the tourmaline disk was turned slowly in its framework you saw it growing more and more transparent until when it had been turned a quarter-turn in the framework it was perfectly transparent and so invisible to your eyes in the strong sunlight streaming through it. Grantham let it remain so but a moment and then with his switch or rheostat control turned it back again a quarter-turn. It grew more and more cloudy and black until at a quarter-turn it was again black and opaque against the light. He reached for it, and when he turned to you again palmed it and could hand you the paper-weight disk."
Carton shook his head like one dazed. "And it seemed such a perfectly open demonstration," he said.
"But that doesn't explain the Invisible Master!" Ellsworth exclaimed. "If Grantham's power was faked, who committed those three crimes that no one but an invisible person could have committed? Who took the money last night?"
Wade Reconstructs
"I think I can reconstruct the thing from the first," Wade said, "though some of the secret died with Grantham here. You told me yourself that he and Gray had long been prevented from engaging in the lines of research they desired because of their lack of funds. Well, I think that Grantham grew resentful at this, and then determined, and that he and Gray resolved to lay hands on the money they needed in their own fashion. To do it they worked out an elaborate and incredibly ingenious plan, that hinged upon Grantham's known reputation as a great physicist.
"Grantham and Gray prepared the tourmaline-crystal set-up, and then let it be known in one way or another that Grantham had discovered a method of making things invisible. Of course there was excitement, and of course the reporters, Carton among them, rushed out here to learn all about it. Then Grantham reluctantly consented to a demonstration, and after pulling this tourmaline-crystal stunt, sent them away, and you too, perfectly convinced that he had actually found a way to make matter invisible. That was his first great step—to implant in the minds of reputable witnesses the absolute conviction that he had really the power of making things invisible.
"Just what happened on that afternoon between Grantham and Gray may never be known fully, but there seems little doubt that Gray, who had been sullen at the demonstration that morning, had come to the point where he had resolved not to go on with the scheme. Probably he threatened to expose Grantham if he did not stop it, and no doubt Grantham saw exposure and oblivion on the way. Fearing Gray's confession, he killed him, and disposed of his body here in the laboratory. He had the knowledge to do that, and I've found that on that afternoon he received from the supply-rooms here an inordinate order of acids which were without doubt used in the disposition of Gray's body. However it was done, there is not the slightest doubt that on that afternoon Gray, and even his body, passed out of existence in this laboratory.
"Then Grantham went on with his plan, changing it somewhat, no doubt, to fit in with this new circumstance. That night he struck himself a painful but not heavy blow on the head with some wooden object—you remember the doctor said the blow was from the side?—and pretended to be lying stunned when you, President Ellsworth, came in. When the police came he, without seeming to want to do so, threw the responsibility of the attack on Gray as much as possible, and told of his projector that had been stolen by his attacker, and that would make a man invisible. He had already prepared a mocking letter addressed to himself as from the Invisible Master, and while talking with Carton and me, laid the letter on the table where I found it. The officers at the door had seen no one go in or out, we knew or thought we knew that someone was at large with an apparatus for attaining invisibility, and since we never dreamed of Grantham having left the letter, we had no doubt whatever but that the Invisible Master, whether Gray or another, had actually entered the room invisibly and left the letter for us.
"This was Grantham's second step, his establishing the idea that someone was at large with a projector that could make him invisible, that the Invisible Master was at large and ready to commit any crime. That idea was established in all the city by the newspapers in the next day or so, and so strong was the evidence in the demonstration of his discovery that Grantham had given, and the greatness of his reputation as a scientist, that almost all did believe that such an invisible man, an Invisible Master, was at large.
"Now what would naturally result when almost all in the city believed that? Would it not result in many people seeing a chance to commit crimes and then blame them on the Invisible Master? You know that there are hundreds of thousands in a city like this who long to commit some crime, theft or murder or the like, but dare not because there would be no chance to shift suspicion on someone else. A man in an apartment with neighbors all around can't shoot his wife and claim someone else came in and did it, for he knows that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it would soon be established that no one had gone in or out of his apartment at that time. But if he could blame it on someone invisible? You see what it means? Grantham had spread, had insisted upon spreading, over all the city the thought that the Invisible Master was at large in it. So at once there would be countless people who would see a chance to commit crimes and blame them on the Invisible Master! The thing was as certain as human nature!
CHAPTER V
From Beginning to End
"The first was young Harkness, the teller at the Vance National. He had been speculating in stocks, had lost thousands of the bank's money, and was desperate, with discovery near. All around him people were talking of the Invisible Master and of what he could do, and Harkness saw in that an idea, grasped at it as at a last straw. He arranged his accounts to show right when it was over, then on that afternoon simply cried out and gave the alarm, stammering that the money had been taken by someone invisible who had snatched it from before him. All believed quite naturally that the Invisible Master had done it! Their thoughts had been full of him for two days, and what else could they, could we, believe?
"Thus the Invisible Master was established still farther as a reality, a criminal who walked unseen. Hardly any in New York doubted his existence after that first amazing robbery, and it was probably that robbery that gave Taylor, the pay-clerk at the Etna Construction Company, his idea for his robbery and murder that night. For it was Taylor who took the money and who killed his fellow-clerk, Barsoff, on that night. He believed like everyone else that the bank-robbery that afternoon had been committed by the Invisible Master, and saw a chance to commit a crime that would inevitably be blamed upon the same unseen criminal.
"He and Barsoff were in the pay-office building, both armed. Taylor had the packages of money ready, and at the moment selected he flung the door open from inside without showing himself to the guards outside. In the next instant he drew his gun and shot Barsoff through the heart, then stuck the gun and money alike into his pockets and was staggering against the wall a moment later when the guards burst in. They never thought of questioning or searching him, so strong was their own belief in the Invisible Master, and that it was he who had rushed unseen into the little office and committed the murder and theft!
"By the next morning all New York was cold with fear of the Invisible Master, and hardly a living soul doubted by then his existence. The evidence was too strong! And seeing this, Allen saw his chance to commit the triple murder of his partners which was the third crime to be laid to the Invisible Master's credit. There had been bad blood between the four partners—they were meeting on that day, you remember, to dissolve their partnership because of their enmity, and Allen had resolved to revenge himself on the other three.
"He wrote a letter purporting to be a threat from the Invisible Master, a demand for a hundred thousand dollars, and mailed it at a time calculated to bring it to their office before noon on the next day. They were settling their accounts, the letter was opened and brought by their excited secretary, and Allen led them in laughing it down. When the hour of eleven came, though, the hour specified in the threat, Allen rose and walked behind his three partners, who were bent over the accounts. Three shots sent quick bullets crashing into their skulls, from behind, and another shot a bullet into the opposite wall. Allen leaped back to that wall, pocketing the gun, and when the others who had heard rushed into the room they found him standing by the bullet-pierced wall, apparently overcome with horror. There was the threatening letter lying on the table, and none doubted for a moment but that the Invisible Master had carried out his threat and had slain three of the partners but had been forced to flee before he could kill the fourth or snatch any of the securities on the table.
The Three Crimes
"Thus three crimes had been committed that every soul in the city believed implicitly had been committed by the Invisible Master! For the obsession of his presence had been spread so that all believed him roaming its ways, and no suspicion fell on Harkness or Taylor or Allen because in the ordinary course of things they would never have committed crimes which would be blamed so swiftly and inevitably upon them. What all forgot was that the ordinary course of things had been changed, and that the three had in each case counted, and counted correctly, upon the Invisible Master obsession turning away all suspicion from themselves toward the unseen criminal. As it happened, I ordered the usual routine investigation of Harkness in the first crime, though not for a moment believing him guilty, so strong was my own belief in the Invisible Master. But it was that bit of routine that shattered the whole great scheme in the end.
"As it was, though, Grantham had achieved his third great step, and all New York was in panic from the crimes which it believed the Invisible Master had committed. And Grantham himself had not needed to be concerned with a single one of those crimes! He had needed only to sit back, knowing that as surely as human nature was human nature, crime after crime would be committed by those who would blame it on the Invisible Master, and that those crimes would as surely raise up a greater and greater terror for the Invisible Master's name! If it had not been Harkness and Taylor and Allen, it would have been others!
"Thus the fear of the Invisible Master, as Grantham had foreseen, was now convulsing all the great city, and that was what he had waited for. He sent in instantly that letter demanding the payment of five million dollars as the price of the Invisible Master's departure from the city. It was sheer, colossal bluff, and it succeeded! For with the peoples of New York mad with fear of the Invisible Master, with its ordinary life falling into chaos under that fear, the money was swiftly raised by the city's leaders who were losing far more than that in this storm of panic. Kingston was appointed to place the money at the requested spot, and since the letter had mockingly given the police liberty to attempt the capture of the Invisible Master, Grantham was able to suggest a scheme by which he might be captured, using his warning bell.
"That scheme, of course, was devised only to the end that Grantham might accompany Kingston in to place the money. For Grantham, before he had written the letter specifying the spot where the money was to be placed, had been to that spot and had arranged a clever hiding-place near the boulder, a niche in the earth covered by an earth-masked trap-door. He and Kingston went in, they placed the steel box on the boulder, after stretching their wire around, and then waited with drawn guns, no doubt, while we all waited around them in a great circle.
"Then when Grantham judged the wait long enough, he himself rang the bell beside him by making contact with its batteries, and as Kingston naturally cried out in astonishment he cried out with him, then gave an exclamation in a feigned deeper voice and at the same moment shot Kingston dead, and sent another bullet through his own left shoulder, the last touch of verisimilitude needed to remove any trace of suspicion from him. It was but the work of an instant to grasp the box and stow it in the niche beside him, all prepared, and slam down the masked door of it and then crouch beside Kingston. None of us doubted for a moment his story that the Invisible Master had shot Kingston and himself and escaped with the money. We came back to town believing that the whole thing was over.
Over the Trail
"But when I got back to headquarters I found awaiting me the report of the man I had given the routine job of looking up young Harkness. The report stated that Harkness was a young man without any known income but his salary, but stated also that he had in the last few weeks lost nearly fifty thousand dollars through a certain broker on stocks. I was amazed. Where had he gotten the money? I recalled that it had been almost exactly that amount the Invisible Master had been blamed with taking from the bank, and for the first time I was suspicious of Harkness.
"I had them bring him to headquarters at once, and we hadn't sweated him fifteen minutes before he confessed that he'd seen the chance to cover his embezzlement by blaming a theft on the Invisible Master. I didn't know what to think. Could it be that the other crimes were the same in nature? I had them round up Taylor and Allen at once. Taylor was found on the point of sailing for Europe, having resigned his position on the ostensible account of shattered nerves. He proved a harder case than Harkness, but an hour of grilling brought from him the admission that he too had blamed his theft of the money and killing of Barsoff on the Invisible Master, and had only planned the crime because he saw a chance to do it thus free of all suspicion. I don't think he'd ever have come clean if we hadn't found most of the money involved there in his grips.
"Allen, though, went to pieces at our first question and confessed volubly that his crazy hatred of his three partners had made him plan a killing of them that all would think the Invisible Master's work. The funny thing, was, too, that each one of the three believed that the other two crimes had been really the Invisible Master's work!
"I was amazed, stupefied. If the Invisible Master had not committed those crimes, then his demand for the five millions was simply a gigantic bluff. Was there, then, any Invisible Master at all? Was there, the thought flashed over me for the first time, any such power of invisibility as Grantham claimed to have discovered? I boiled it all down and found that the only real evidence of the invisibility part of it was the demonstration Grantham had given. I grabbed all the books on optics I could find in an effort to learn whether such a demonstration could be faked, and soon found out about the tourmaline crystals and their remarkable property. It all fitted in exactly with the demonstration as it had been described to me. Grantham had made no demonstrations at all since that first one, nor had we dreamed of asking him for them, so utter was our belief in his word and in the Invisible Master's existence.
"I made some swift inquiries and the whole thing burst clear on me. There had never been any invisibility or any Invisible Master at all. Grantham had planned the great bluff that was to wring five millions out of the city, had built it up from the trick of that first demonstration and from the circumstantial evidence he was able to gather to support the thing, had used the crimes that inevitably resulted from the city's belief in the Invisible Master to make that belief even stronger. I drove out to the place where we were last night and it took but minutes of searching to find the concealed niche beside the stone where the money still lay.
"Undoubtedly Grantham meant to retrieve it later on, and undoubtedly he would have refused ever to give out any information or any demonstrations of his invisibility-method, by saying that he would take no chances on loosing another invisible criminal on the world. Gray would never have been found, and would then have been believed always the unseen criminal. Almost Grantham won, and would have won had not that one routine and unthinking step of mine defeated him. Yet he must have known, too, that there was always a chance of losing, for when I came out this morning after telling him over the phone to be waiting here for some new information I was bringing, he had the cyanide with him. And the rest—you saw how he took his one way out."
When Wade had finished Carton and Ellsworth gazed at him across the sunlit laboratory, spellbound. It was Carton who at last found his voice.
"And we never guessed—we never dreamed—that there was never any Invisible Master!"
Wade was looking thoughtfully out of the window. "Did I say there wasn't? I think I was wrong in that, after all—I think there was an Invisible Master whose hand has lain heavy on New York for these last days. Fear!—the fear that Grantham loosed on the city for his own ends, the fear that stalked its ways and was by day and night its unseen lord! It was that that was the true Invisible Master!"
THE END