companion, to whom it was no comfort to feel him, now and again, shaken
by a violent shudder. They had nearly reached the station, when
Professor Ravenden and Colton came down to the beach in front of them.
Colton had nothing to tell. The professor reported having started up a
fine specimen of sky-blue butterfly, which led him astray. This went to
show, he observed, that a man never should venture out lacking his net.
“Whalley might have bumped into him, and he probably wouldn’t have
noticed it,” remarked Haynes aside to Colton. “It takes something
really important, like a bug, to attract the scientific notice. A mere
murderer doesn’t count.”
“Then you’ve found evidence against the juggler?” asked Colton eagerly.
“I’ve found nothing,” returned the reporter, “that’s any clearer than a
bucket of mud.”
He refused to say anything more until they were close to the station.
Then he tested a hopeless theory.
“The man wasn’t stabbed; he was shot,” he observed.
“What’s the use?” said Colton. “You know that’s no bullet wound. You’ve
seen the same thing twice before, not counting the sheep, and you ought
to know. The bullet was never cast that could open such a gap in a
man’s head. It was a broad-bladed, sharp instrument with power behind
it.”
“To Dr. Colton’s opinion I must add my own for what it is worth,” said
Professor Ravenden.
“Can you qualify as an expert?” asked the reporter with the rudeness of
rasped nerves. He was surprised at the tone of certainty in the
scientist’s voice as he replied:
“When in search of a sub-species of the _Papirlionido in the Orinoco
region, my party was attacked by the Indians that infest the river.
After we had beaten them off, it fell to my lot to attend the wounded.
I thus had opportunity to observe the wounds made by their slender
spears. The incision under consideration bears a rather striking
resemblance to the spear gashes which I saw then. I may add that I
brought away my specimens of _Papilionidointact, although we lost most
of our provisions.”
“No man has been near enough the spot where Serdholm was struck down to
stab him,” Haynes said. “Our footprints are plain: so are his. There
are no others. What do you make of that?” He was not yet ready to
reveal the whole astounding circumstance.
“Didn’t I hear somethin’ about that juggler that was cast ashore from
the _Milly Esham_ bein’ a knife-thrower?” asked Bruce timidly. “Maybe
he spiked Serdholm from the gully.”
“Then where’s the knife!” said Haynes. “He’d have to walk out to get
it, wouldn’t he?”
“You must have overlooked some vestigia,” said the professor quietly.
“The foot may have left a very faint mark, but it must have pressed
there.”
“No; I’m not mistaken. Had you used your eyes, you would have seen.”
“How far did Bruce’s footprints go?” asked Colton.
The three looked at the coast-guard, who stirred uneasily. “Gentlemen,”
said he, “I’m afraid there’s likely to be trouble for me over this.”
His harassed eyes roved from one to the other.
“Quite likely,” said Haynes. “They may arrest you.”
“God knows, I never thought of killing Serd-holm or any other man!” he
said earnestly. “But I had a grudge against him, and I wasn’t far away
when he was killed. Your evidence will help me, unless-” he swallowed
hard.
“No; I don’t believe you had any part in it,” said Haynes, answering
the unfinished part of the sentence. “I don’t see how you could have
unless you can fly.”
The man smiled dismally. “And then about those queer tracks——”
“Nothing about that now,” interrupted Haynes quickly. “You’d better
report to your captain and keep quiet about this thing.”
“All right,” said Bruce. “Good-night, gentlemen.”
“What’s that about tracks?” asked Colton.
“I want you and the professor to come to my room sometime this
evening,” said the reporter. “I’ll have a full map drawn out by then,
and I want your views. Perhaps you’d better feel my pulse first,” he
added, with a slant smile.
Colton looked at him hard. “You’re excited, Haynes,” he said. “I
haven’t seen you this much worked up. You’ve got something big, haven’t
you?”
“Just how big I don’t know. But it’s too big for me.”
“Well, after you’ve got it off your mind on paper you’ll probably feel
better.”
“On paper?”
“Yes; you’ll report it for your office, won’t you?”
“Colton,” said the reporter earnestly, “if I sent in this story as I
now see it, it would hit old Deacon Stilley on the telegraph desk. The
Deacon would say: ‘Another good man gone wrong,’ and he’d take it over
to Mr. Clare, the managing editor. Mr. Clare would read it and say:
‘Too bad, too bad!’ Then he’d work one of the many pulls that he’s
always using for his friends and never for himself, and get board and
lodging for one, for an indefinite period at reduced rates, in some
first-class private sanitarium. The ‘one’ would be I. Let’s go inside.”
For two hours Haynes talked with the men in the life-saving station.
Then he and Professor Ravenden and Colton walked home in silence,
broken only by the professor.
“I wish I could have captured that _Lyccena_” he said wistfully.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE SENATUS
ALL five of the men who composed the male populace of Third House
gathered in Haynes’ room at ten o’clock that night. Everard Colton and
old Johnston had been told briefly of the killing of Serdholm.
“Thus far,” said Haynes, addressing the meeting, “this vigilance
committee has been a dismal failure. Had anyone told me that five
intelligent men could fail in finding the murderer, with all the
evidence at hand, I should have laughed at him.”
“Some features which might be regarded as unusual have presented
themselves,” suggested Professor Ravenden mildly.
“Unusual? They’re absurd, insane, impossible! But there are the dead
bodies, man and brute. We’ve got to explain them, or no one knows who
may come next.”
“We’ve got to be careful, certainly,” said Colton; “but I think if we
can capture Whalley, we’ll have no more mysterious killings.”
“Oh, that does very well in part; but it doesn’t fill out the
requirements,” said the reporter impatiently. “Now, I’m going to run
over my notes briefly, and if anyone can add anything, speak up. First,
the killing of the seaman, Petersen, on the night of the shipwreck.
That was on the thirteenth, an uncanny date, sure enough. Next, the
killing of the sheep by the same wound, on the fourteenth, and on the
same evening Professor Ravenden’s experience with some threatening
object overhead.”
“Pardon me; I did not ascribe any threatening motive or purpose to the
manifestation,” put in the professor. “Indeed, if I may challenge your
memory, I suggested an air-ship. It seems that the unhappy
aero-expert’s kites well may have been the source of the sound I
heard.”
“Let us assume so for the present. Next we come to Mr. Colton’s
encounter and the death of the mare on the evening of the fifteenth.”
“The kites again, of course,” said Everard. “Even allowing that—and I
expect to get conclusive proof against it later—what, then, chased the
animal over the cliff?”
“Maybe the kites came down later and blew along the ground after her.
If you were a horse, and a string of six-foot kites came bounding along
in the darkness after you, wouldn’t you jump a cliff?”
“Ask Professor Ravenden,” suggested Haynes maliciously.
“The jest is not an unfair one,” said the scientist good-humouredly. “I
fear that I should.”
“Charge the death of the mare to the kites, then. Pity we can’t lay the
sheep to their account too. The third count against them is Professor
Ravenden’s adventure of the eighteenth, and the death of the aeronaut.
As to Professor Ravenden’s part, there remains to be explained the
cutting of the kite strings, if they were cut.”
“That must have been done, it would seem, in mid-air, just as Petersen
the sailor was killed,” said Dick Colton.
Haynes looked at him quickly. “Colton, you’re beginning to show signs
of reasoning powers,” he said. “I think I’d better appoint you my
legatee for the work, if my turn should come next.”
“My dear Haynes,” Professor Ravenden protested, “under the
circumstances that remark at least is somewhat discomforting.”
“You’re quite right, Professor. Down with presentiments! Well, as Dr.
Colton suggests, there’s a rather interesting parallel between the
mid-air killing of the sailor and the mid-air cutting of the kite cord.
Let that go, for the present. Mr. Ely’s death we can hardly ascribe to
his own kites. There’s the cutting of the string near his hand.”
“That blasted Portuguese murderer, Whalley,” said Johnston.
“Most probably. The wound is such as his big knife would make; we know
he’s abroad on the knolls. But why should he kill Mr. Ely, whom he
never saw before, and why in the name of all that’s dark should he cut
the kite strings?”
“Murderous mania; the same motive that drove him to kill the sheep,”
said Dick Colton. “As for the kite string, perhaps he got tangled in
it.”
“There is no tangle,” replied the reporter, “except in the evidence.
But we’ll call that Whalley’s work. We come to to-day’s murder now. Who
did that?”
“Without assuming any certainty in the matter, I should assume the
suspicion to rest upon the juggler,” said Professor Ravenden.
“Motive is there,” said Dick Colton. “What Serdholm told us about his
thumping Whalley shows that.”
“Yes; but there is motive in the case of Bruce also. And we know that
Bruce was there. Moreover, he was on the cliff-head when Petersen came
in, and the two wounds are the same.”
“Surely,” began the young doctor, “you don’t believe that Bruce-”
“No, I don’t believe it,” interrupted the reporter; “but it’s a
hypothesis we’ve got to consider. Suppose Bruce and Serdholm recognised
this man Petersen as an enemy, and Bruce slipped a knife into him as he
took him from the buoy?”
“But I thought Petersen was killed halfway to the shore.”
“So we suppose; but it is partly on the testimony of these two that we
believe it, corroborated by circumstantial evidence. Now, if Bruce
killed the sailor, Serdholm knew it. The two guards quarrelled and
fought. Bruce had reason to fear Serdholm. There’s the motive for the
murder of Serdholm. He met him alone—there is opportunity. I think the
case against him is stronger than that against Whalley, in this
instance. I’ve looked into his movements on the night of the
sheep-killing and the murder of Mr. Ely. He was out on the former, and
in on the latter.”
“That weakens the case,” said Everard Colton. “Yes; but what ruins the
case against both Bruce and Whalley in the killing of Serdholm is
this.” Haynes spread out on his table a map which he had drawn. “There
is the situation, sketched on the spot. You will see that there are no
footprints other than our own leading to or going down from the body.
Gentlemen, as sure as my name is Haynes, the thing that killed Paul
Serdholm never walked on human feet!”
There was a dead silence in the room. Dick Colton’s eyes, narrowed to a
mere slit, were fixed on the reporter’s face. Johnston’s jaw dropped
and hung. Everard Colton gave a little nervous laugh. Professor
Ravenden bent over the map and studied it with calm interest.
“No,” continued Haynes, “I’m perfectly sane. There are the facts. I’d
like to see anyone make anything else out of it.”
“There is only one other solution,” said Professor Ravenden presently:
“the fallibility of the human senses. May I venture to suggest again
that there may be evidences present which you, in your natural
perturbation, failed to note?”
“No,” said the reporter positively. “I know my business. I missed
nothing. Here’s one thing I didn’t fail to note. Johnston, you know
this neck of land?”
“Lived here for fifty-seven years,” said the innkeeper.
“Ever hear of an ostrich farm hereabouts?”
“No. Couldn’t keep ostriches here. Freeze the tail-faithers off’em
before Thanksgiving.”
“Professor Ravenden, would it be possible for a wandering ostrich or
other huge bird, escaped from some zoo, to have its home on Montauk?”
“Scientifically quite possible in the summer months. In winter, as Mr.
Johnston suggests, the climate would be too rigorous, though I doubt
whether it would have the precise effect specified by him. May I
inquire the purpose of this? Can it be that the tracks referred to by
the patrol were the cloven hoof-prints of-”
“Cloven hoofs?” Haynes cried in sharp disappointment. “Is there no
member of the ostrich family that has claws?”
“None now extant. In the processes of evolution the claws of the
ostrich, like its wings, have gradually——”
“Is there any huge-clawed bird large enough and powerful enough to kill
a man with a blow of its beak?”
“No, sir,” said the professor. “I know of no bird which would venture
to attack man except the ostrich, emu or cassowary, and the fighting
weapon of this family is the hoof, not the beak.”
“Professor,” interrupted Haynes, “the only thing that approached
Serdholm within striking distance walked on a foot armed with five
great claws. You can see the trail on this map.” He produced a large
sheet of paper on which was a crude but careful drawing. “And there is
its sign-manual, life-size,” he added, pushing a second sheet across
the table to the scientist.
Imagination could hardly picture a more precise, unemotional and
conventially scientific man than Professor Ravenden. Yet, at sight of
the paper his eyes sparkled, he half started from his chair, a flush
rose in his cheeks, he looked keenly from the sketch to the artist, and
spoke in a voice that rang with a deep under-thrill of excitement:
“Are you sure, Mr. Haynes—are you quite sure that this is substantially
correct?”
“Minor details may be inexact. In all essentials that will correspond
to the marks made by something that walked from the mouth of the gully
to the spot where we found the body and back again.” Before he had
fairly finished the professor was out of the room. He returned almost
immediately with a flat slab of considerable weight. This he laid on
the table, and taking the drawing, sedulously compared it with an
impression, deep-sunken into the slab. For Haynes a single glance was
enough. That impression, stamped as it was on his brain, he would have
identified as far as the eye could see it.
“That’s it!” he cried with the eagerness of triumphant discovery. “The
bird from whose foot that cast was made is the thing that killed
Serdholm.”
“Mr. Haynes,” said the entomologist dryly, “this is not a cast.”
“Not a cast?” said the reporter in bewilderment. “What is it, then?”
“It is a rock of the cretaceous period.”
“A rock?” he repeated dully. “Of what period?”
“The cretaceous. The creature whose footprint you see there trod that
rock when it was soft ooze. That may have been one hundred million
years ago. It was at least ten million.”
Haynes looked again at the rock, and superfluous emotions stirred among
the roots of his hair. “Where did you find it?” he asked presently.
“It formed a part of Mr. Johnston’s stone fence. Probably he picked it
up in his pasture yonder. The maker of the mark inhabited the island
where we now are—this land then was distinct from Long Island—in the
incalculably ancient ages.”
“What did this bird thing call itself?” Haynes demanded. A sense of the
ghastly ridiculousness of the affair was jostling, in the core of his
brain, a strong shudder of mental nausea born of the void into which he
was gazing.
“It was not a bird. It was a reptile. Science knows it as the
pteranodon.”
“Could it kill a man with its beak?”
“The first man came millions of years later—or so science thinks,” said
the professor. “However, primeval man, unarmed, would have fallen a
helpless victim to so formidable a brute as this. The pteranodon was a
creature of prey,” he continued, with an attempt at pedantry which was
obviously a ruse to conquer his own excitement. “From what we can
reconstruct, a reptile stands forth spreading more than twenty feet of
bat-like wings, and bearing a four-foot beak as terrible as a bayonet.
This monster was the undisputed lord of the air; as dreadful as his
cousins of the earth, the dinosaurs, whose very name carries the
significance of terror.”
“And you mean to tell us that this billion-years-dead flying swordfish
has flitted out of the darkness of eternity to kill a miserable
coast-guard within a hundred miles of New York, in the year 1902?”
broke in Everard Colton.
“I have not said so,” replied the entomologist quickly. “But if your
diagram is correct, Mr. Haynes, if it is reasonably accurate, I can
tell you that no living bird ever made the prints which it reproduces,
that science knows no five-toed bird, and no bird whatsoever of
sufficiently formidable beak to kill a man; furthermore, that the one
creature known to science which could make that print, and could slay a
man or a creature far more powerful than man, is the tiger of the air,
the pteranodon.”
“Evidence wanted from the doctor!” cried Haynes. “Colton, can you add
anything to this theory that Serdholm was killed by a bayonet-beaked
ghoul that lived ten or a hundred or a thousand million years ago?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said the doctor: “The wound isn’t unlike
what a heavy, sharp beak would make.”
“And that would explain the sailor being killed while he was coming in
on the buoy!” exclaimed Everard Colton. “But—but this pteranodon—is
that it? Oh, the deuce! I thought all those pteranothings were dead and
buried long before Adam’s great-grandfather was a protoplasm.”
“My own belief is that Mr. Haynes’ diagram is faulty,” said Professor
Ravenden, to whom he had turned.
“Will you come and see?” challenged Haynes.
“Willingly. Would it not be well to take the rock along for
comparison?”
“Then we’d better all go,” said Everard Colton, “and carry the rock in
shifts. It doesn’t look as if it had lost any weight with age.”
As the party reached the large living-room, Helga Johnston sprang up
from the long cushioned rest near the fireplace. Her face was flushed
with sleep. In the glow of the firelight an expression of affright lent
her beauty an uncanny aspect. Her breath came in little gasps, and her
hands groped and trembled.
“What is it, Miss Helga?” cried Everard, running eagerly forward.
Unconsciously her fingers closed on his outstretched hand, and clung
there.
“A dream!” she said breathlessly. “A horrid dream!” Then turning to
Haynes: “Petit Père, you aren’t going out to-night?” she said, glancing
at the lanterns which her foster-father had brought.
“Yes, Princess, we’re all going.”
“Into danger?” asked the girl. She had freed herself from Colton’s
grasp, but now her eyes fell on his again.
“No; just to clear up a little point. We shall all hang together.”
“Don’t go to-night, Petit Père!” There was an imploring intonation in
the girl’s flute-like voice.
Haynes crossed over to her rapidly. “Princess, you’re tired out and
nervous. Go to bed, won’t you?”
“Yes; but promise me—father, you too, all of you—promise me you won’t
any of you let yourselves be alone.”
“My dear child,” said Professor Ravenden, “I’ll give you my word for
the party, as I am the occasion of the expedition.”
“I—I suppose I am foolish,” Helga said; “but I have dreamed so
persistently of some terrible danger overhanging—floating down like a
pall.” With a sudden gesture she caught Haynes’ hand to her cheek. “It
hung over you, Petit Père!” she whispered.
“I’ll throw a pebble at your window to let you know I’m back alive and
well,” he said gaily. “I’ve never seen you so nervous before,
Princess.”
“You’ll hardly need the lantern,” said the girl, walking to the door,
and looking up at the splendid moon, sailing in the unflecked sea of
the Heavens.
“When you’re looking for foot-prints on the sands of time,” observed
Everard, “you need the light that never was on sea or land.”
He dropped back as the exploring party filed out into the night, and
fell into step with Professor Ravenden.
“Isn’t it true,” he asked, “that all these flying monsters are
extinct?”
“Science has assumed that they were extinct,” said the Professor. “But
a scientific assumption is a mere makeshift, useful only until it is
overthrown by new facts. We have prehistoric survivals. The gar of our
rivers is unchanged from its ancestors of fifteen million years ago.
The creature of the water has endured; why not the creature of the
air?”
“But,” said Colton combatively, “where could it live and not have been
discovered?”
“Perhaps at the North or South Pole,” said the professor. “Perhaps in
the depths of unexplored islands; or possibly inside the globe.
Geographers are accustomed to say loosely that the earth is an open
book. Setting aside the exceptions which I have noted, there still
remains the interior, as unknown and mysterious as the planets. In its
possible vast caverns there well may be reproduced the conditions in
which the pteranodon and its terrific contemporaries found their
suitable environment on the earth’s surface, ages ago.”
“Then how would it get out?”
“The recent violent volcanic disturbances might have opened an exit.”
“Oh, that’s too much!” Haynes broke in. “I was at Martinique myself,
and if you expect me to believe that anything came out of that welter
of flame and boiling rocks alive-”
“You misinterpret me again,” said the professor blandly. “What I
intended to convey was that these eruptions were indicative of great
seismic changes, in the course of which vast openings might well have
occurred in far parts of the earth. However, I am merely defending the
pteranodon’s survival as an interesting possibility. As I stated
before, Mr. Haynes, I believe the gist of the matter to lie in some
error of your diagram.”
“We’ll see in a moment,” said Haynes; “for here’s the place. Let it
down easy, Johnston. Wait, Professor, here’s the light. Now I’ll
convince you.”
Holding the lantern with one hand, he uncovered one of the tracks with
the other. The mark was perfectly preserved. “Good God!” said the
professor under his breath.
He dropped on his hands and knees beside the print, and as he compared
the to-day’s mark on the sand with the rock print of millions of years
ago, his breath came hard. Indeed, none of the party breathed as
regularly as usual. When the scientist lifted his head, his face was
twitching nervously.
“I have to ask your pardon, Mr. Haynes,” he said. “Your drawing was
faithful.”
“But what in Heaven’s name does it mean?” cried Dick Colton.
“It means that we are on the verge of the most important discovery of
modern times,” said the professor. “Savants have hitherto scouted the
suggestions to be deduced from the persistent legend of the roc and
from certain almost universal North American Indian lore,
notwithstanding that the theory of some monstrous, winged creature
widely different from any recognised existing forms is supported by
more convincing proofs. In the north of England, in 1844, reputable
witnesses found the tracks, after a night’s fall of snow, of a creature
with a pendent tail, which made flights over houses and other
obstructions, leaving a trail much like this before us. There are other
corroborative instances of a similar nature. In view of the present
evidence, I would say that this unquestionably was a pteranodon, or a
descendant little altered, and a gigantic specimen, for these tracks
are distinctly larger than the fossil marks. Gentlemen, I congratulate
you both on your part in so epoch-making a discovery.”
“Do you expect a sane man to believe this thing?” Haynes demanded.
“That’s what I feel,” said Everard Colton. “But, on your own showing of
the evidence, what else is there to believe?”
“But, see here,” Haynes expostulated, all the time feeling as if he
were arguing in and against a dream. “If this is a flying creature, how
explain the footprints leading up to Serdholm’s body, as well as away
from it?”