Part 15

"But suppose Olinski is the man we want," McGinity said, vehemently. "What about his having an accomplice? Olinski could be doing something else. And here's something that seems to have struck nobody. How could Olinski decode, so easily and expertly, those radio signals, and the cuneiform writing on the scroll? Besides, he's held on to this scroll like grim death, and never once allowed it to pass out of his hands until tonight, when I wheedled him into lending it to me, to be photographed for a Sunday article I'm writing for the Recorder."

"If you're convinced of Olinski's complicity in this, I'm not," I said, a little heatedly. "I've every confidence in him, and I've got to be shown. So, before we start in pursuit of knowledge of Olinski, you'd better let me follow up this clue of the water-mark, which may lead us to something in the way of success."

McGinity, after some hesitation, agreed to this, and after remaining silent for a few minutes, he said: "You have, of course, no idea who this perpetrator might be?"

"No idea whatever," I promptly replied.

The thing to do, we decided after some further discussion, was to keep everything to ourselves, while we combed out things that might give us a further clue. Above all, neither Henry, nor Olinski, were to know anything whatever about our mistrust.

Meantime, McGinity was to acquaint the editorial executives of his paper with our suspicions, and to ease up on his sensational stories about Mars. On this subject, I felt pretty much at a loss at to what to suggest, but McGinity seemed to know his business. Before we parted for the night, he convinced me that slowing up on a newspaper story, removing it from the front page, reducing it to a few paragraphs, and finally dropping it altogether, was a much easier thing to do than most folk imagine. Besides, he said, the public forgets so easily and quickly.

It was in my mind to make a good start in the morning. I felt sure that the Royal Parchment Paper Company could tell me something that might be of great importance in guiding us to the solution of one of the most devilishly contrived plots I've ever known of.

All that the reporter and I had discussed was passing through my mind, after I had said good-night to him, and was heading down the hall to my own apartment. It was long after midnight. The castle was in darkness, and as quiet as a tomb. But just as I was about to enter my door, Pat came running down the hall, after me. Nearly breathless, she panted out her message. Would I go back to her room, at once? We hurried back, to find Jane there, all in a tremble, and her face showing ashen.

"It's that dreadful thing again," Jane exclaimed. She gave a little shudder, and turned away to get her smelling salts.

"What's up?" I asked. "Everything about the castle seems perfectly normal."

"But they're not," Pat said, miserably. "If you hadn't slept so soundly last night, you might have heard Mr. Zzyx, as I did, sneaking along the hall. Auntie wouldn't believe it when I told her. She said it was impossible for him to get out of his locked room without Niki knowing it."

"Now, dear Pat," I said reassuringly; "haven't you been having another nightmare? I'm positive that Mr. Zzyx was locked in his room, and asleep, at this hour last night, as he is now, tonight--tired out, like all of us, after a very exacting night at the banquet."

"But I'm certain he's not in his room, now," said Pat. "In fact, I've proved he's out, and wandering about."

"Proved?" I asked, amazed, as Jane moved to my side.

"Yes, proved, dear Livingston," Jane whispered. "She tied a silk thread across the hall, between her door and mine, after we came home from the banquet."

"Oh, I see!" I remarked, lightly.

"Nothing to be amused about," said Pat, with a wan, twisted smile. "I did it to prove to Aunt Jane that Mr. Zzyx was snooping about. She stayed in here with me, and we waited to see if anything happened."

"And nothing happened for half an hour," Jane supplemented, taking a good sniff of her sal volatile.

"When, suddenly, we heard something moving outside, in the hall," Pat resumed. "After a few minutes, and we didn't hear anything more, I switched off the lights in here, opened the door a few inches, and looked out. The hall was dark. I could hear the muffled sound of your voice, and Bob's, in his room. That gave me courage, so I stole outside to investigate. I found the thread had been broken."

"That's queer," I observed. "Still, it might have been broken by the butler. Schweizer suffers terribly from insomnia, and has a habit of roaming about the place at night, at unearthly hours. I really don't understand."

"But I do," Jane said, in a low, guttural voice; "and it's your business, Livingston, to rid this place of that terrible creature at once. If you don't, and I should see him roving about, in the dark, I know I'll die of heart failure, instantly." She placed strong emphasis on the last word, and took another strong whiff of her smelling salts.

At that Pat turned to me, the tears welling in her eyes. "Oh, Uncle Livingston!" she said, earnestly and pleadingly; "isn't there any chance at all of ending this terrible mystery business about Mr. Zzyx and Mars? Uncle Henry must be losing his mind, or he wouldn't be associated with anything so unearthly and--spooky!"

"While we are still utterly in the dark, my dear," I said, consolingly, "I have a feeling that it's only a question of time when the whole matter will be cleared up." I wished then I could have taken her into my confidence, and told her what McGinity had discovered, about the scroll, but I knew it would be unwise to make any announcement at that stage of the proceedings, when we had only the wildest suspicions to go on. "And, now," I concluded, "I think we'll get to business at once."

"What are you going to do?" Pat asked, eagerly.

"I'm going to rouse McGinity," I replied, "and if your suspicions are correct, we'll find Mr. Zzyx, and put him back where he belongs."

"Lock him up!" Jane exclaimed. "And, for heaven's sake, keep him locked up!"

"Now, you two compose yourselves, and go to bed," I admonished gently but firmly. "You're both quite safe now."

I left the room, and went to my own apartment, where I got my flashlight. A few minutes later, I knocked at McGinity's door. Fortunately, he had not gone to bed. He was still pacing the floor and smoking furiously. The first thing he did, after I had poured out Pat's story to him, was to slip a small revolver in his hip pocket.

"There's no time to lose," I murmured, as we crept out into the hall. "Follow me--and not a sound."

I led the way to the State Apartment. Our difficulty was to effect an entrance into Mr. Zzyx's bedroom without awakening Niki, who slept in the adjoining room. As I stood racking my brains how to get into the creature's room, McGinity, on impulse, tried the door knob. To my amazement, the door opened. We walked into the room. As I trained my flashlight on the bed, he chuckled low, and said: "There's the bed, and, as you see, Pat's right. There's nobody in it."

The bedclothes were in disorder, showing that the bed had been recently occupied. Immediately, we turned our attention to the lock on the door, and found that it was not in working condition. A long brass bolt, on the inside, fitted into a deep groove in the jamb, and that was all there was to fasten the door. This would account for Mr. Zzyx's freedom of egress and ingress, and I smiled to myself at our utter stupidity in not having the lock examined. I wondered why Niki had not informed us about it, long before this. In many things, he was just plain dumb.

After creeping quietly upstairs, we explored the two upper floors, including Henry's observatory. We searched in many queer places, and looked into all the cavernous and gloomy chambers. And then we stumbled on something.

A room at the end of the corridor, on the third floor, used mostly for storage of furniture, bore traces of recent occupancy. A chair had been drawn up to a small table, on which there was a half-burned candle, a picture magazine of quite recent date, and an ash tray containing charred cigarette ends.

As I was examining the room and its contents in the light of my electric torch, a quick exclamation from McGinity directed my attention to a French window, which gave on to an iron-railed, stone balcony.

"There he is!" whispered the reporter; "out on the balcony."

I quickly turned off the flashlight. All I could discern was a black something standing on the balcony, silhouetted against a bright, starlit sky. The next moment, the shadow started to move towards the window. It was perhaps a little foolish of me, but I dashed forward, threw the window open wide, and turned a flood of light upon--Schweizer.

The butler, I immediately recalled, was occupying a bedroom a few doors down the hall from the one we were exploring. After he had explained that he often read and smoked in this room, and walked out on the balcony for fresh air, when he was troubled with insomnia, I dismissed him, without telling him what we were searching for. But he must have guessed it, for I heard him running down the hall to his bedroom.

He had no sooner gone when I was struck by a sudden idea. "It's possible," I suggested, "that Mr. Zzyx, in his after-midnight excursions, visits the butler's pantry, and makes a raid on our refrigerator. He has the appetite and stomach capacity of an ostrich. What do you say?"

"Possible," McGinity concurred. "Let's go."

As I crept stealthily downstairs, with the reporter at my side, I fully expected, at any moment, to be confronted with a long hairy arm, stretching out from some dark corner, to clutch at my throat. My feeling of nervousness increased when, in the midst of our search on the ground floor, my flashlight suddenly failed. We had just stepped into the dining room. I was reluctant to switch on the wall, or ceiling lights, for fear of alarming the servants, or attracting the attention of the night watchman who patrolled the grounds. Under no consideration could we afford to arouse the household, especially Henry.

So we elected to sit down in the darkness and wait for something to happen, possibly the discovery of the prowling Mr. Zzyx. I marveled at the instinct which enabled him to move about so freely in the dark. It was so quiet in the dining room that we could hear the ticking of the grandfather's clock in the library. There we sat, waiting, in the utter silence of the night. One o'clock struck--then half-past.

All the time we were seated there, I fancied I heard a sound quite distinct above the ticking of the clock; a faint, crackling sound, like a dog makes when it is crunching bones between its teeth. I made no mention of it to McGinity, but my heart was going in great sickening thumps. Another ten minutes of strained silence in the darkness, and my nerves were stretched to the limit.

As it turned out, McGinity had heard the same mysterious sound. Also, his eyes becoming more quickly adjusted to the darkness, being so much younger than mine, he saw something that had so far escaped my notice. Flecks of white on the floor, just to the right of us, in front of the heavily curtained French window.

Suddenly, he put his hand on my arm warningly. I heard him draw his breath sharply as he slowly rose, and tiptoed a few steps beyond where we were seated. As I craned forward to try to see what he was up to, he lit his cigarette lighter.

"My God! Look!" I heard him breathe; and, rising, I saw, in the flickering glimmer, a lot of white feathers on the floor. As his lighter quickly burned itself out, the room once more was in darkness. But I had seen enough in that momentary flash to realize that at last we had found something we were waiting for.

"What do you make out of those white feathers?" McGinity whispered, gripping my arm.

"It wouldn't surprise me a bit," I replied, "to find that Mr. Zzyx has killed Pat's white cockatoo."

"Yes; and I'll bet you anything he's somewhere close by, in one of these rooms, enjoying a cold bird, bones and all," his quick whisper came back. "That will account for the funny sound I've been hearing all the time we've been sitting here. Let's turn on the light--take a chance. What do you say?"

My memory of what immediately followed is rather blurred and confused. I have some memory of feeling my way through the library doorway, although how I accomplished it in the dark is more than I can figure out. What I most remember clearly is the strange, eerie sight that met our startled gaze after I had turned on the lights.

Crouching on the floor of the library, confronting us, was Mr. Zzyx, in his pajamas, and surrounded by feathers and bits of bone of the cockatoo, which obviously he had so cruelly slaughtered and devoured. And as we stood there gazing at him, he snarled at us like a wild beast defending its spoils.

Quick as a flash, McGinity's hand went to his hip pocket, but I restrained him. "Leave him alone," I advised. "Let him finish his feast."

"Pat's heart will be broken," McGinity sighed. "How could he do such a horrible, cruel thing?" He lit a cigarette.

"Because he's more animal than man," I answered; "a very dangerous and vicious animal."

We continued to watch him in silence until he had finished crunching the last bone. Then he got to his feet, and started to walk towards McGinity, round whose head spirals of tobacco smoke were curling. There was a dark stain all around the creature's mouth, which made him more repellent and disgusting.

"He wants a cigarette," I suggested.

McGinity gave him one, and lit it. And then, to our amazement, he followed us meekly as we led the way upstairs, and opened the door of his bedroom. He climbed into bed, and pulled the bedclothes over his head, like a child who has been caught in the act and is ashamed of his wrong-doing. Presently he was fast asleep.

XXIII

The after-midnight experience, especially the cruel killing of Pat's pet cockatoo, distressed me terribly. I was still feeling nervous and depressed the next morning when, after a hasty breakfast, I caught an early train for the city. I took a taxi-cab at the railroad terminal, and drove straight to the office of the Royal Parchment Paper Company, in Beekman Street, which is in the downtown district.

I did not reveal my identity--there was no reason why I should--simply explaining that I was interested in seeking out the maker of a very interesting scroll that had come into my possession, the parchment paper of which bore the firm's water-mark. In less than ten minutes, a point of high importance was settled. The parchment paper used in the scroll was identified as a heavy grade formerly manufactured by this concern but discontinued about three years before.

As it was a wholesale house, selling its products only in bulk to retailers, I was beginning to lose hope that I should ever be able to track this particular brand of parchment paper when, by great good luck, one of the assistant officials recalled having sold a small quantity of it, from the remaining store-room stock, to an aged, silver-haired man, four months back.

He remembered the transaction very well indeed because the customer explained that he had been looking for some time for this special, heavy grade of parchment paper, as he made it a business of transforming newly manufactured parchment into ancient-looking family and historical documents, for which he found a ready market among dealers in antiques.

He walked out of the office carrying his purchase, leaving no name and no address. As it was raining heavily at the time, the assistant official, because of the customer's age and apparent infirmities, followed him to the door with an umbrella, and politely volunteered to call a taxi. After he had done this, he put the old man into the cab. And now, after an interval of four months, he recalled the address the customer had given the taxi-driver: "Stuyvesant Place and Twelfth Street."

This remarkable display of memory sent me off at once to another field of inquiry. In a small, musty, corner curio and book shop, at Stuyvesant Place and Twelfth Street, I found a courteous, white-haired old man, looking rather shaggy and unkempt, who recognized the scroll at once as a sample of his own handicraft. He did not know, of course, he said, for what purpose it was to be used, nor did he seem to care; and he appeared equally unconcerned over the strange inscriptions it contained. He seemed both surprised and grieved when I showed him the water-mark. Apparently, he believed that I had been taken in by some antique dealer, in the purchase of the scroll as an ancient document.

"I do not often make a slip like that," he said, "and I am very sorry indeed if I've caused my customer any embarrassment. He did not specify that it should look old, but just different from the usual run of scrolls. For instance, he requested me to perfume the gum that holds the parchment securely to the ebony roller."

"That's all very interesting," I said, as calmly as I could. "Now, there's just one more question--did your customer reveal his name?"

The old bookseller shook his head. "I have no idea who he is," he replied; "no idea at all of his actual identity. He paid me a pretty stiff price in advance for my work. That's all that interested me."

"Can you describe him?" I asked.

He took off his spectacles, and wiped them carefully on a frayed, white silk handkerchief. "No," he said, finally and slowly. "I'm afraid I can't describe him. My memory and eye-sight are both failing fast. If you were to leave here now, and an hour later, some one was to ask me to describe your appearance, I would be utterly at a loss. I do recall, however, that he was middle-aged, well-dressed, and well bred--a gentleman, I should say."

"And that is all you know of him?" I persisted.

"That's all I know of him," the old man assented. "Well, yes, I do just remember one other thing. The day he called for the scroll, he apologized for his hurried departure, saying that he had only a few minutes in which to keep an important engagement in Radio Center, and make his train."

"Ah!" I breathed. "Did he mention taking a train on any particular railroad?"

"No," was the reply. "But after he'd gone, I found a Long Island Railroad time-table on my desk. Evidently he had left it behind--forgotten it in his haste."

After some further questioning, I went away. At noon, I met McGinity, having promised the night before to join him at lunch, in town, and submit all the evidence I had collected about the water-mark in the scroll. The restaurant was one of his own choosing, a cheerful but obscure eating-place in the Times Square section, noted for its home-cooking and excellent beer, and largely patronized by newspaper reporters working in that district.

The reporter listened to my story with signs of ever increasing interest, as we sat together in a dining nook, and when it came to an end, he exclaimed: "'Middle-aged--well-dressed--well bred!' You see? Olinski! without a doubt."

"No, I don't see it at all," I answered. "The old bookseller's vague description of the man who gave him the order for the scroll, in my opinion, doesn't fit Olinski. True, there's evidence that the man left hurriedly for an important engagement at Radio Center, and later, to catch a train on the Long Island Railroad, but that proves nothing against Olinski. Why should he rush off to keep an appointment in Radio Center, when he spends most of his time in his laboratory there? Besides, he's perfectly familiar with the time schedules of the railroad, so far as Sands Cliff is concerned."

"Then, if it wasn't Olinski, it must have been his accomplice," McGinity persisted. "There's more than one person mixed up in this."

"Undoubtedly you're right," I concurred. "But it would be just as easy and logical to suspect Prince Matani. Personally, I would suspect the Prince of doing anything, short of murder, for money. He's been trying to force Henry's hand for some time, in regard to Pat, and failing, this may have been his revenge. But acting only as a paid agent for a superior intellect, who put the thing over in a much bigger way, perhaps, than the Prince had anticipated."

"If this is true, then it will account for the Prince falling in a fit the first time he set eyes on Mr. Zzyx," the reporter suggested. "He expected to find a small baboon, and he finds a monster. Then, he vanishes. Very odd that he should go off to California--disappear like that."

"You've taken the words right out of my mouth," I rejoined, with a benign smile. "However, as matters are now shaping themselves, it's my opinion that any suspicions we may have regarding either Olinski or the Prince are coming to a quick end. We might as well attach suspicion to Mamie Sparks, our colored laundress."

"Well, at any rate, Mr. Royce," said McGinity, "one thing is pretty well established in my mind, and that is--if the perpetrator of this gigantic fraud isn't a lunatic, he's certainly been carried away by some strange fanatical motive."

"The facts of the case are all very strange, and very puzzling," I observed. "I have been reflecting on the matter for the last hour or so, since leaving the old bookseller, and I'm beginning to feel that we're up against a pretty difficult task--perhaps an impossible one."

"Oh, please, don't say that, Mr. Royce!" the reporter said, earnestly. "We may be all tangled up in this web of mystery, but we've got a start--just a thread of a clue--haven't we? Not such a big one but still a start. If we keep on the alert, we may run into something else that will put us in possession of another thread of a clue. That'll be two threads, won't it?"

"Yes," I replied, lugubriously; "but as far as I can see at present, things look pretty hopeless, and we might as well stop now with our investigations, and let matters take their natural course."

"That I'll never do," said McGinity, bringing his fist down on the table, as though to accentuate his determination to see things through. "You must remember, I've been taken in, as well as your brother Henry, and on my shoulders rests the responsibility of all those printed articles of mine."

"And not inventions, either," I said, "but stories founded on facts. You can excuse--facts."

"Not if they're fictitious facts," said McGinity; "and it's my duty now to expose their falsity to the public. No, Mr. Royce, we can't turn back now!"

As he spoke the last word, a boy selling a special extra of an afternoon paper, entered the restaurant, and came straight to our table. "Want a paper, Mister?" the boy asked me. I shook my head, but as soon as McGinity had glimpsed the big, front page headline he snatched a paper out of the boy's hand.

Within a second he was directing my attention to the glaring headline, which read: "Martian Rocket Disappears--Stolen!" and then to a space in the center of the page, headed: "Very Latest News," under which appeared a few lines, printed in red ink. Together we read them:

"New York police notified today by officials of New York Museum of Science that the Martian rocket, found on Long Island, near the estate of Henry Royce, millionaire scientist, and placed on exhibition in the museum, was stolen from its glass-case during the night. Watchman found bound and drugged. While nothing uncovered so far to establish clue to identity of daring thieves, police have obtained information showing theft was committed by two men, who were seen to leave the museum, carrying the rocket, and drive off in a small van, about three o'clock this morning."

Before I could speak, McGinity jumped to his feet, and made for a telephone booth. Five tense minutes passed, then he burst out of the booth, and came to me.

"Ah!" he said, excitedly; "now, we're getting somewhere."

"What do you mean?" I asked.