THE MYSTERIOUS MR. RANDOLPH.
Rather less than twenty-four hours later Dick Merriwell entered the
lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel and walked directly to the desk.
“Anything for me on that last mail, Fred?” he asked.
The clerk turned to the rack behind him.
“I believe there is, Mr. Merriwell,” he answered. “Yes, here it is.
Only one, though.”
“That’s all I was expecting,” he returned.
He walked slowly from the desk, tearing open the envelope as he went.
Close by the door he stopped to glance through the several sheets it
contained.
“He’s well and flourishing, that’s one good thing,” he murmured. “It’s
so long since the last letter that I was beginning---- By Jove, what a
peculiar coincidence!”
Without pausing to read further, he folded the letter hastily and
hurried out of the door and down the steps. Waiting at the curb stood
the _Wizard_ in the front seat of which was Brad Buckhart. Letter in
hand, Merriwell sprang up beside him.
“Say, Brad,” he began eagerly, “talking about coincidences, I’ve got
one here that beats the Dutch. Do you remember that interesting scrap
of conversation we couldn’t help hearing last night in the dining room?”
“I sure do,” the Texan returned promptly. “The one between the dressy
little Jew and the pudgy gent with the china-blue eyes, you mean?”
Dick nodded emphatically.
“That’s it,” he returned quickly. “They were talking about somebody by
the name of Randolph--Scott Randolph, who evidently had something to do
with diamonds.”
“If I got their lingo straight, he had quite some to do with them,”
Buckhart put in. “Unless I’m a whole lot wrong, those same two gents
were saying that this Randolph manufactured ’em.”
“It did sound that way,” Merriwell returned; “but of course, that’s
impossible. We must have misunderstood them. At any rate, they were
very secretive about it, for the minute the little fellow noticed us,
he nudged the big man and they shut up like clams.”
He paused and unfolded the letter he had just received from his brother.
“Here’s a letter which just came from Frank,” he went on. “He’s well
and very busy and all that. Glad we’re having a nice trip and a lot
more that won’t interest you. Then comes the coincidence. I just want
you to listen to this:
“‘This will reach you while you are in Denver,’” Dick read. “‘I wish,
if you have time, you would look up an old friend of mine who is
located somewhere near there. He’s a rather retiring chap and doesn’t
care at all for company; but we got to be pretty good friends at Yale,
and afterward kept up a more or less regular correspondence for some
time. I haven’t heard from him in over two years, and several letters
of mine have been unanswered. I’d like to know whether he is still
in the land of the living; and, if so, what he is doing and why he
doesn’t write occasionally. He was a great fellow for experimenting
with chemicals and had the most extraordinary inventive ability and
talent for mechanics that I have ever seen. I fancy he is doing a lot
of experimenting, though he never told me just what he was after. His
name is Scott Randolph. If you find him, tell him I should very much
like to hear from him again.’”
Dick folded the letter and restored it to the envelope. As he did so, a
card dropped out of the latter and he stooped over to pick it up.
“Scott Randolph!” the big Texan exclaimed. “Now what do you think
of that? This is a sure enough interesting gent. Mebbe he’s got the
receipt of making diamonds out of these chemicals he experiments with.”
Dick secured the card from the bottom of the car and tucked it into his
pocket.
“Just one of Frank’s cards introducing me to his friend,” he said. “I
think I shall do my best to present it. From the way Frank writes about
him, Randolph must be a good sort of a chap, and I’d like to meet him
for other reasons.”
Buckhart laughed.
“A chap that can make diamonds must be a very good sort,” he observed.
“I’d sure like to put my blinkers on him. Mebbe he’d present us with a
bushel or two. You hear me softly warble!”
“That’s all nonsense, of course,” Dick smiled. “We must have
misunderstood those men last night. You know we only heard a few words.
But, all the same, I’d like to meet this Randolph. Now we’ve seen
Tucker and Bigelow off for Colorado Springs, we haven’t a thing on hand
for the rest of the day, and we might as well start on a still hunt
for this friend of Frank’s. I’ll run in and see if Fred knows anything
about where he can be found.”
He stepped out of the car and reëntered the hotel lobby, walking up to
the desk. The clerk was not busy and turned to him at once.
“Say, Fred,” Merriwell began, “I’m looking for a man by the name of
Scott Randolph, who is supposed to live in or around Denver. Ever heard
of him? That’s a pretty big order, I know, but you seem to be wise to
the life history of about every one in town.”
The hotel clerk laughed.
“You’ve got me this time,” he said. “Scott Randolph? I don’t think I
ever heard of him. What does he do? In business here at all?”
“I don’t think so,” Dick answered. “I believe he spends most of his
time experimenting with chemicals, or something like that.”
There was a puzzled look on the clerk’s face as he looked meditatively
across the lobby. All at once his eyes brightened.
“Say, there’s old Captain Winters sitting over there,” he said. “He’s
the boy that can tell you what you want if anybody can. He’s a regular
old man gossip, and there isn’t much that gets away from him, I can
tell you. If he ever wrote a book and put in it all he knows about
people in this town, you bet your life there’d be things doing. Come
over and I’ll introduce you.”
He slipped from behind the desk and walked across the lobby, with Dick
at his side, approaching a little, weazened-up old man who was reading
a paper in an armchair close by one of the big windows.
“Captain Winters,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Mr. Merriwell, who is
looking for some information about a party in town. I told him you’d be
able to give it to him if anybody could.”
The old man peered at Dick over the tops of his spectacles, extending a
palsied hand.
“Pleased to meet you, young man,” he piped in a shrill voice. “Pleased
to meet you. Fred’s a great boy to talk. Mebbe I know a thing or two
about folks, but I ain’t telling it all. He, he! I wouldn’t dast. What
was it you was wanting to find out?”
“I’m looking for a man named Scott Randolph, Captain Winters,” Dick
smiled. “I think he lives somewhere on the outskirts of town.”
“Scott Randolph!” the old man said sharply. “Why, I’m surprised at
ye, Fred. You’d oughter know who that is. He’s the one that come here
seven or eight years ago an’ built that crazy house like a fort in the
mountains off Bonnet Trail a piece.”
“Oh, is that the man?” the clerk exclaimed. “I didn’t know his name
was Randolph. Well, I guess you can tell Mr. Merriwell how to get out
there. I must go back to the desk.”
He left them and Dick dropped into a chair beside the captain.
“Folks call it ‘The Folly,’” resumed the old man with the peculiar zest
and relish of a born gossip. “It’s built like a fort, with bars to the
winders and a door like a safe. Nobody knows what he does there, but
they do say he invents things. Folks going by has heard enjines going
fit to kill, an’ onct Jake Pettigrew, that keeps the store in Duncan,
seen a great flame o’ fire shoot out o’ the roof. Whatever he’s doing,
he ain’t up to no good, you can depend. It’s agin’ nater an’ the Bible
to fool with the powers o’ darkness.”
“Did you ever see him, Captain Winters?” Dick asked curiously.
“Not more’n a couple o’ times, my boy. He don’t come around often.
Sometimes folks don’t set eyes on him for weeks at a time; then again,
he’ll come down to town in his autermobile. He’s a smallish, bald man,
not much to look at. Some say he’s cracked, but I ain’t comitten’
myself.”
The captain pursed up his lips and shook his head slowly with the air
of one who could tell a good deal more if he only would. In reality,
he had already exhausted his small store of wisdom regarding Scott
Randolph, who remained a perplexing mystery that the old gossip had
never been able to solve.
“Can you tell me how I can find this place?” Dick asked.
“I kin,” answered the captain, “but it ain’t likely to do you much
good, cause he never lets anybody inside the door. Howsomever, you kin
try, if you have a mind to. You know where Bonnet Trail is, I s’pose?”
“Runs out to the mountains a little south of Georgetown, doesn’t it?”
Dick asked.
“Yep. About twenty miles out is Duncan. It ain’t much of a place; jest
a few houses an’ Jake Pettigrew’s store. Randolph’s place is some four
miles from there, as I recollect. You’d better ask Jake, though, an’
he’ll tell you right.”
Dick arose from the chair.
“Thank you very much, Captain Winters,” he said, holding out his hand.
“I’m very glad to have met you, and shall see you again while I’m here.”
“Don’t mention it,” returned the old man. “Let me know if you get inter
Randolph’s. I’m kinder curious.”
“I will,” Dick laughed, turning toward the door.
Buckhart yawned openly as his friend appeared beside the car.
“Say, pard,” he drawled, “why didn’t you stay a couple of minutes
longer and clean up the hour. I reckoned you were plumb lost and was
just thinking of organizing a searching party of one to locate you.”
Cranking the engine, Dick squeezed past the Texan and took his seat at
the wheel.
“I couldn’t break away from the old party who was telling me about our
friend Randolph,” he explained. “He seems to be something of a mystery
to the people around here. In fact, it is quite doubtful whether we
shall be let into his place, once we’ve found it.”
“Say you so?” Brad inquired interestedly. “Let’s hear about it.”
Threading his way through the streets, Merriwell narrated for
Buckhart’s benefit the curious story, or rather fragment of a story, he
had just heard from Captain Winters; and by the time they reached the
outskirts of the city and wheeled into Bonnet Trail, the Westerner had
all the particulars and was as much interested as his chum.
“Looks like there was something queer about this gent, pard,” he
remarked. “My curiosity has sure riz up on its hind legs.”
The road was extremely bad, being full of ruts and bumps and apparently
not much traveled, so that it took them a good two hours to reach
Duncan, where Dick drew up in front of the one store the small place
boasted. A tall, lank individual in shirt sleeves and cowhide boots
lounged in the doorway, chewing a straw.
“Are you Mr. Pettigrew?” Dick asked, stopping the engine.
“I are,” was the laconic reply.
“Can you tell me how I can get to Mr. Randolph’s place?”
Jake Pettigrew nearly swallowed the straw in his surprise, and was some
time recovering it. When he had done so, his face was rather flushed
and in his eyes there was a look of unmistakable interest.
“Randolph’s place?” he exclaimed. “The Folly, you mean?”
“That’s what they call it, I believe,” Merriwell answered.
“Take the footpath just beyond Injun Head Rock,” the lanky man
directed, resuming with an evident effort his air of indifference.
“It’s about four miles along the trail. You can’t miss it, ’cause
the rock looks like the head of an Injun. ’Tain’t of’en Randolph has
callers.”
“So I understand,” Dick said. “Is he at home, do you know?”
“So help me, no,” the man answered hastily. “He may be, or he mayn’t. I
don’t know nothin’ about him.”
The Yale man thanked him, and with the engine started, the car
continued up the hilly trail on second speed. They passed the rocky
peak which, strange to say, really did bear some resemblance to an
Indian’s head, and a few hundred yards beyond came to a clearly defined
track leading from Bonnet Trail up into the foothills.
Dick turned the car in to one side of the road well out of the way.
Pocketing the coil plug, he followed Buckhart out of the machine, and
they started up the narrow, rocky track on foot.
It wound straight up into the mountains, hugging the steep wall on one
side, while on the other the ground fell away abruptly into a multitude
of gorges and ravines. Sometimes the descent was precipitous and the
track seemed almost to be hung in mid-air over an abyss, while at other
places the slope was more gradual and covered with great boulders,
mingled with a heavy growth of pine and bushes.
At length they rounded a sharp turn and came out on a fairly level
plateau, perhaps a hundred yards in diameter, completely hemmed in on
three sides by high cliffs, while on the fourth it fell away abruptly
into a deep ravine.
Facing them, and built against the highest cliff, was a stone house,
which they at once made certain was the one they sought.
It was large and square, and composed entirely of the same dark, somber
rock of which the surrounding mountains were made. Hugging, as it did,
the cliff, it was somewhat hard to distinguish just where the natural
rock ended and the house began. This difficulty was increased by the
fact that the dwelling was in reality built into a sort of depression
in the side of the cliff, the jagged top of which overhung the roof.
In the middle of the front side was a large door that seemed to be
closed by a single sheet of iron or steel, while the windows, even on
the upper floors, were protected by stout iron bars and some sort of
inside shutters.
Taken all in all, it was a most dreary, desolate, prison-like
structure, to which the surrounding barriers of jagged, gray cliffs,
hard, bare, with no relieving touch of green, added an almost sinister
grimness.
“By George, pard, what a place to live in!” Buckhart said in a low
tone. “I’d as soon bunk up in a prison.”
The depressing influence of the surroundings was so great that,
unconsciously, the Texan had lowered his voice almost to a whisper.
His companion did not answer. His head was bent slightly forward and
there was look of keen intentness in his eyes. The next moment he spoke.
“Listen!” he said softly. “What’s that noise?”
In the silence which followed, a faint, regular, scraping sound came
from their right. It was so slight that for a minute or two neither of
them could place it. At length they decided that it came from around
the corner of the building, a spot which they could not see from their
present position at the entrance of the plateau.
Scrape, scrape, scrape. Scratch, scratch, scratch. It sounded, with the
regularity of clockwork.
Buckhart eyed his chum with a puzzled expression on his face.
“What the deuce is it?” he whispered.
“I’m not sure,” Dick returned, “but it sounds like filing--as though
somebody was filing an iron bar. I’m going to find out.”
He dropped down on his hands and knees and commenced to creep slowly
through the scattered boulders to the right. Brad promptly followed
him, and in less than five minutes they were ensconced behind a great
rock, from which a very good view of that side of the house could be
obtained.
There was a momentary pause, and then they both peered cautiously
around the corner of the boulder.
The next moment the Texan caught his breath with a sudden, swift
intake, his eyes widened with astonishment. Dick, crouching beside him,
pressed his chum’s arm warningly, without for an instant averting his
own gaze from the surprising sight before them.