There was not much to see when I unrolled the scroll, and inspected it
against the lamplight, as McGinity had directed, but what there was
assured me that the reporter was right when he said that he had made a
find. Now, we knew something.
For a moment, the discovery completely overwhelmed me; I felt a little
giddy. It affected me personally, more closely than anything I had ever
had to deal with, mainly because of Henry. A sort of vision rose before
my eyes. I saw the whole thing about Mars exposed, and my brother
crushed in ignominy.
What the reporter had found was in line with what had been running in
both our minds, the conviction that a superior intellect was at the
bottom of all this Martian mystery, and its various resultants. It
revealed a carefully conceived, highly ingenious conspiracy; a cruel
and cold-blooded fraud, done in such a fashion as to leave no clue,
which would make the tracing of the adroit and utterly unscrupulous
perpetrator concerned, very difficult, if not impossible.
But here was a clue, thanks to McGinity's power of observation and
reportorial inquisitiveness, even if it was only the ghost of one, that
might put us on to the track of the perpetrator. A water-mark, a small
translucent design, appeared in the body of the parchment paper, which
proved that the scroll had not been made on Mars, but on earth. There
it was, as plain as day: "Royal Bond--Made in U. S. A."
McGinity's reportorial and detective instincts combined--all newspaper
reporters seem to have been born with a detective complex--quickly
sent him again to the secretary, this time to look for a Manhattan
telephone book; and while he was thumbing hastily through its pages, I
took another squint at the water-mark, in the parchment scroll. I could
hardly believe my eyes.
"What we want to find out now," the reporter said, "is the name of the
manufacturer of that particular brand of parchment paper. Hello!--here
it is. 'Royal Parchment Paper Company, 158 Beekman Street.'"
"Indeed?" I said, as calmly as I could.
"Now, one of us must take the scroll, and call on this firm, the first
thing in the morning," he suggested. "They may be able to throw some
light on the matter."
"I'll go," I quickly volunteered.
"Good," said McGinity. "Our job now is to find and bring to light the
actual perpetrator of this fraud. This water-mark in the parchment may
put us on his trail. That's about the situation, isn't it?"
"As far as I'm concerned," I replied, "that is the situation. But I'm
afraid we're facing a many-sided problem. You must remember that we are
dealing with events so stupendous that they can hardly be conceived by
the human mind."
"But we're in possession of one thread now that may guide us through
the maze," said McGinity, settling down finally in a chair opposite me.
"I admit that what we have to deal with is most extraordinary--almost
inexplicable--" he went on; "but here's this much to remember--your own
idea, by the way--if this mystery was contrived and worked out by a
human mind, then a human mind can discover what it is."
"Quite right," I agreed. "And if the person who made the scroll is
the same one who sent those Martian radio messages, and dropped the
rocket--"
"Dropped?" McGinity exclaimed, interrupting me. "Of course, that rocket
was _dropped_ on the water-front. Dropped! That idea had never occurred
to me before. It wouldn't surprise me, Mr. Royce, if you've hit on
another clue."
"Yes?" I said, a little bewildered. "Anyway," I began again, "if it is
the same person, then I'm sure we can trace him."
"I'll tell you what I think, Mr. Royce," McGinity said; "we shall have
to go back--and go back a long way, and find all we can about--Olinski."
"Olinski?" I exclaimed. "Surely, you don't suspect him?"
"He's a radio wizard, isn't he?" the reporter said. "He may have sent
those alleged messages from Mars himself. He may have directed them to
the moon, round ten o'clock, each night, during the experiments, and
they were echoed, or bounced, back to earth. I understand he's quite an
inventor besides. Now, he may have invented that rocket--everything--"
"You're forgetting, McGinity," I interrupted. "He couldn't possibly
have invented Mr. Zzyx."
"That's so--I'd forgotten Mr. Zzyx," the reporter admitted. "All the
same, just to be on the safe side, I think we'd better trace Olinski's
career."
"We must remember this," I suggested, "that whoever is at the bottom
of this fraud--if it is a fraud--had a definite purpose in putting it
over. In criminology, that is called motive. Once you have the motive,
the rest comes easier."
"I agree on that, Mr. Royce," said McGinity. "But the thought has just
come to me that the perpetrator of this hoax--and I'm convinced now it
is a hoax--has got nearly three months' start. Let's suppose, as you
suggested, that he's a man who had some definite purpose in putting it
over, the man we want to find. Very well, he pulls his two big tricks
late in August, the Martian radio message in code, and the rocket from
outer space, both occurring on the same night; and from that time, he
passes into the unknown. No more messages from Mars. Everything cleaned
up in one night."
"On that supposition," I said, "we shall, of course, have to eliminate
Olinski, for which I shall be very glad."
"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.