In the Cosmic Club Mr. Algernon Spofford was a figure of distinction.
Amidst the varied, curious, eccentric, brilliant, and even slightly
unbalanced minds which made the organization unique, his was the only
wholly stolid and stupid one. Club tradition declared that he had been
admitted solely for the beneficent purpose of keeping the more
egotistic members in a permanent and pleasing glow of superiority. He
was very rich, but otherwise quite harmless. In an access of
unappreciated cynicism, Average Jones had once suggested to him, as a
device for his newly acquired coat-of-arms, “Rocks et Praeterea Nihil.”
But the “praeterea nihil” was something less than fair to Mr. Spofford,
with whom it was not strictly a case of “nothing further” besides his
“rocks”. Ambition, the vice of great souls, burned within Spofford’s
pigeon-breast. He longed to distinguish himself in the line of endeavor
of his friend Jones and was prone to proffer suggestions, hints, and
even advice, to the great tribulation of the recipient.
Hence it was with misgiving that the Ad-Visor opened the door of his
sanctum to Mr. Spofford, on a harsh December noon. But the misgivings
were supplanted by pleased surprise when the caller laid in his hand a
clipping from a small country town paper, to this effect:
RANSOM—Lost lad from Harwick not drowned or harmed. Retained for
ransom. Safe and sound to parents for $50,000. Write, Mortimer Morley,
General Delivery, N. Y. Post-Office.
“Thought that’d catch you,” chuckled Mr. Spofford, in great
self-congratulation. “‘Jones’ll see into this,’ I says to myself. ‘If
he don’t, I’ll explain.’ Somethin’ _to_ that, ay?”
Average Jones looked from the advertisement to the vacuous smile of Mr.
Algernon Spofford. “Oh, you’ll explain, will you?” he said softly.
“Well, the thing I’d like to have explained is—come over here to the
window a minute, will you, Algy?”
Mr. Spofford came, and gazed down upon a dispiriting area of rain-swept
street and bedraggled wayfarers.
“See that ten-story office building across the way?” pursued Average
Jones. “What would you do if, coming in here at midnight, you were to
see twenty-odd rats ooze out of that building and disperse about their
business?”
“I—I’d quit,” said the startled promptly.
“That’s the obvious solution,” retorted “but my question wasn’t
intended to elicit a brand of music-hall humor.”
Spofford contemplated the building uneasily. “I don’t know what you’re
up to, Average,” he complained. “Is it a catch?”
“No; it’s a test case. What would you do?”
“I’d think it was Billy-be-dashed queer,” answered Spofford with
profound conviction.
“You’re getting on,” said Jones tartly. “And next?”
“Ay? How do I know? What’re you devilin’ me this way for?”
“You wouldn’t call a policeman?”
“No,” said Spofford, staring.
“You wouldn’t hustle around and ’phone Central?”
“Bosh!”
“Yet if any one told you you hadn’t the sense of a policeman, you’d
resent it.”
“Of course, I would!”
“Well, Jimmy McCue, the night special, who patrols past the corner, saw
that very thing happen a few nights ago at the Sterriter Building.
Knowing that rats don’t go out at midnight for a saunter, two dozen
strong, he began to suspect.”
“Suspect what?” growled Spofford.
“That there must be some abnormal cause for so abnormal a proceeding.
Think, now, Algy.”
“I’ve heard of rats leavin’ a sinkin’ ship. The building might have
been sinkin’,” suggested the visitor hopefully.
“Is that the best you can do? I’ll give you one more try.”
“I know,” said Spofford. “A cat.”
“On my soul,” declared Average Jones, gazing at his club-mate with
increased interest, “you’re the most remarkable specimen of inverted
mentality I’ve ever encountered. D’you think a cat habitually rounds up
two dozen rats and then chivies ’em out into the street for sport?
McCue didn’t have any cat theory. He figured that when rats come out of
a place that way the place is afire. So he turned in an alarm and saved
a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar building.”
“Umph!” grunted Spofford. “Well, what’s that got to do with the
advertisement I brought you?”
“Nothing in the world, directly. I’m merely trying to figure out, in my
own way, how a mind like yours could see under the surface print into
the really interesting peculiarity of this clipping. Now I know that
your mind didn’t do anything of the sort. Come on, now, Algy, who sent
this to you?”
“Cousin of mine up in Harwick. I wish you weren’t so Billy-be-dashed
sharp, Average. I used to visit in Harwick, so they asked me to get you
interested in Bailey Prentice’s case. He’s the lost boy.”
“You’ve done it. Now tell me all you know.”
Spofford produced a letter which gave the outlines of the case. Bailey
Prentice’s disappearance it was set forth, was the lesser of two
simultaneous phenomena which violently jarred the somnolent New England
village of Harwick from its wonted calm. The greater was the “Harwick
meteor.” At ten-fifteen on the night of December twelfth, the streets
being full of people coming from the moving picture show, there was a
startling concussion from the overhanging clouds and the astounded
populace saw a ball of flame plunging earthward, to the northwest of
the town, and waxing in intensity as it fell. Darkness succeeded. But,
within a minute, a lurid radiance rose and spread in the night. The
aerial bolt had gone crashing through an old barn on the Tuxall place,
setting it afire.
Bailey Prentice was among the very few who did not go to the fire.
Taken in connection with the fact that he was fourteen years old and
very thoroughly a boy, this, in itself, was phenomenal. In the
excitement of the occasion, however, his absence was not noted. But
when, on the following morning, the Reverend Peter Prentice, going up
to call his son, found the boy’s room empty and the bed untouched, the
second sensation of the day was launched. Bailey Prentice had, quite
simply, vanished.
Some one offered the theory that, playing truant from the house while
his father was engaged in work below stairs, he had been overwhelmed
and perhaps wholly consumed by a detached fragment from the fiery
visitant. This picturesque suggestion found many supporters until, on
the afternoon of December fourteenth, a coat and waistcoat were found
on the seashore a mile north of the village. The Reverend Mr. Prentice
identified the clothes as his son’s. Searching parties covered the
beach for miles, looking for the body. Preparations were made for the
funeral services, when a new and astonishing factor was injected into
the situation. An advertisement, received by mail from New York, with
stamps affixed to the “copy” to pay for its insertion, appeared in the
local paper.
“And here’s the advertisement,” concluded Mr. Algernon Spofford,
indicating the slip of paper which he had turned over to Average Jones.
“And if you are going up to Harwick and need help there, why I’ve got
time to spare.”
“Thank you, Algy,” replied Average Jones gravely. “But I think you’d
better stay here in case anything turns up at this end. Suppose,” he
added with an inspiration, “you trace this Mortimer Morley through the
general delivery.”
“All right,” agreed Spofford innocently satisfied with this wild-goose
errand. “Lemme know if anything good turns up.”
Average Jones took train for Harwick, and within a few hours was
rubbing his hands over an open fire in the parsonage, whose stiff and
cheerless aspect bespoke the lack of a woman’s humanizing touch for the
Reverend Mr. Prentice was a widower. Overwrought with anxiety and
strain, the clergyman, as soon as he had taken his coat, began a
hurried, inconsequential narrative, broke off, tried again, fell into
an inextricable confusion of words, and, dropping his head in his
hands, cried:
“I can’t tell you. It is all a hopeless jumble.”
“Come!” said the younger man encouragingly. “Comfort yourself with the
idea that your son is alive, at any rate.”
“But how can I be sure, even of that?”
Average Jones glanced at a copy of the advertisement which he held. “I
think we can take Mr. Morley’s word so far.”
“Even so; fifty thousand dollars ransom!” said the minister, and
stopped with a groan.
“Nonsense!” said Average Jones heartily. “That advertisement counts for
nothing. Professional kidnappers do not select the sons of impecunious
ministers for their prey. Nor do they give addresses through which they
may be found. You can dismiss the advertisement as a blind; the second
blind, in fact.”
“The second?”
“Certainly. The first was the clothing on the shore. It was put there
to create the impression that your son was drowned.”
“Yes; we all supposed that he must be.”
“By what possible hypothesis a boy should be supposed to take off coat
and waistcoat and wade off-shore into a winter sea is beyond my poor
powers of conjecture,” said the other. “No. Somebody ‘planted’ the
clothes there.”
“It seems far-fetched to me,” said the Reverend Mr. Prentice
doubtfully. “Who would have any motive for doing such a thing?”
“That is what we have to find out. What time did your son go to his
room the night of his disappearance?”
“Earlier than usual, as I remember. A little before nine o’clock.”
“Any special reason for his going up earlier?”
“He wanted to experiment with a new fishing outfit just given him for
his birthday.”
“I see. Will you take me to his room?”
They mounted to the boy’s quarters, which overlooked the roof of the
side porch from a window facing north. The charred ruins of a barn
about, half a mile away were plainly visible through this window.
“The barn which the meteor destroyed,” said the Reverend Mr. Prentice,
pointing it out.
One glance was all that Average Jones bestowed upon a spot which, for a
few days, had been of national interest. His concern was inside the
room. A stand against the wall was littered with bits of shining
mechanism. An unjointed fishing-rod lay on the bed. Near at hand were a
small screw-driver and a knife with a broken blade.
“Were things in this condition when you came to call Bailey in the
morning and found him gone?” asked Average Jones.
“Nothing has been touched,” said the clergyman in a low voice.
Average Jones straightened up and stretched himself languidly. His
voice when he spoke again took on the slow drawl of boredom. One might
have thought that he had lost all interest in the case but for the
thoughtful pucker of the broad forehead which belied his halting
accents.
“Then—er—when Bailey left here he hadn’t any idea of—er—running away.”
“I don’t follow you, Mr. Jones.”
“Psychology,” said Average Jones. “Elementary psychology. Here’s your
son’s new reel. A normal boy doesn’t abandon a brand-new fad when he
runs away. It isn’t in boy nature. No, he was taking this reel apart to
study it when some unexpected occurrence checked him and drew him
outside.”
“The meteor.”
“I made some inquiries in the village on my way, up. None of the
hundreds of people who turned out for the fire, remembers seeing Bailey
about.”
“That is true.”
“The meteor fell at ten-fifteen. Bailey went upstairs before nine.
Allow half an hour for taking apart the reel. I don’t believe he’d have
been longer at it. So, it’s probable that he was out of the house
before the meteor fell.”
“I should have heard him go out of the front door.”
“That is, perhaps, why he went out of the window,” observed Average
Jones, indicating certain marks on the sill. Swinging his feet over, he
stepped upon the roof of the porch, and peered at the ground below.
“And down the lightning rod,” he added.
For a moment he stood meditating. “The ground is now frozen hard,” he
said presently. “Bailey’s footprints where he landed are deeply marked.
Therefore the soil must have been pretty soft at the time.”
“Very,” agreed the clergyman. “There had been a three-day downpour, up
to the evening of Bailey’s disappearance. About nine o’clock the wind
shift to the northeast, and everything froze hard. There has been no
thaw since.”
“You seem very clear on these points, Mr. Prentice.”
“I noted them specially, having in mind to write a paper on the
meteorite for the _Congregationalist_.”
“Ah! Perhaps you could tell me, then, how soon after the meteor’s fall,
the barn yonder was discovered to be afire?”
“Almost instantly. It was in full blaze within very short time after.”
“How short? Five minutes or so?”
“Not so much. Certainly not more than two.”
“H’m! Peculiar! Ra-a-a-ather peculiar.” drawled Average Jones.
“Particularly in view of the weather.”
“In what respect?”
“In respect to a barn, water-soaked by a three-day rain bursting into
flame like tinder.”
“It had not occurred to me. But the friction and heat of the meteorite
must have been extremely great.”
“And extremely momentary except as to the lower floor, and the fire
should have taken some time to spread from that. However, to turn to
other matters—” He swung himself over the edge of the roof and went
briskly down the lightning rod. Across the frozen ground he moved, with
his eyes on the soil, and presently called up to his, host:
“At any rate, he started across lots in the direction of the barn. Will
you come down and let me in?”
Back in the study, Average Jones sat meditating a few moments.
Presently he asked:
“Did you go to the spot where your son’s clothes were found?”
“Yes. Some time after.”
“Where was it?”
“On the seashore, some half a mile to the east of the Tuxall place, and
a little beyond.”
“Is there a roadway from the Tuxall place to the spot?”
“No; I believe not. But one could go across the fields and through the
barn to the old deserted roadway.”
“Ah. There’s an old roadway, is there?”
“Yes. It skirts the shore to join Boston Pike about three miles up.”
“And how far from this roadway were your son’s clothes found?”
“Just a few feet.”
“H’m. Any tracks in the roadway?”
“Yes. I recall seeing some buggy tracks and being surprised, because no
one ever drives that way.”
“Then it is conceivable that your son’s clothes might have been tossed
from a passing vehicle, to the spot where they were discovered.”
“Conceivable, certainly. But I can see no grounds for such a
conjecture.”
“How far down the road, in this direction, did tracks run?”
“Not beyond the fence-bar opening from the Tuxall field, if that is
what you mean.”
“It is, exactly. Do you know this Tuxall?”
“Hardly at all. He is a recent comer among us.”
“Well, I shall probably want to make his acquaintance, later.”
“Have a care, then. He is very jealous of his precious meteor, and
guards the ruins of the barn, where it lies, with a shot gun.”
“Indeed? He promises to be an interesting study. Meantime, I’d like to
look at your son’s clothes.”
From a closet Mr. Prentice brought out a coat and waistcoat of the
“pepper-and-salt” pattern which is sold by the hundreds of thousands
the whole country over. These the visitor examined carefully. The coat
was caked with mud, particularly thick on one shoulder. He called the
minister’s attention to it.
“That would be from lying wet on the shore,” said the Reverend Mr.
Prentice.
“Not at all. This is mud, not sand. And it’s ground or pressed in. Has
any one tampered with these since they were found?”
“I went through the pockets.”
Average Jones frowned. “Find anything?”
“Nothing of importance. A handkerchief, some odds and ends of
string—oh, and a paper with some gibberish on it.”
“What was the nature of this gibberish?”
“Why it might have been some sort of boyish secret code, though it was
hardly decipherable enough to judge from. I remember some flamboyant
adjectives referring to something three feet high. I threw the paper
into the waste-basket.”
Turning that receptacle out on the table, Average Jones discovered in
the debris a sheet of cheap, ruled paper, covered with penciled words
in print characters. Most of these had been crossed out in favor of
other words or sentences, which in turn had been “scratched.” Evidently
the writer had been toilfully experimenting toward some elegance or
emphasis of expression, which persistently eluded him. Amidst the wreck
and ruin of rhetoric, however, one phrase stood out clear:
“Stupendous scientific sensation.”
Below this was a huddle and smudge of words, from which adjectives
darted out like dim flame amidst smoke. “Gigantic” showed in its
entirety followed by an unintelligible erasure. At the end this line
was the legend “3 Feet High.” “Verita Visitor,” appeared below, and
beyond it, what seemed to be the word “Void.” And near the foot of the
sheet the student of all this chaos could make faintly but
unmistakably, “Marvelous Man-l—” the rest of the word being cut off by
a broad black smear. “Monster 3 Feet.” The remainder was wholly
undecipherable.
Average Jones looked up from this curio, and there was a strange
expression in the eyes which met the minister’s.
“You—er—threw this in the—er—waste-basket.” he drawled. “In which
pocket was it?”
“The waistcoat. An upper one, I believe. There was a pencil there,
too.”
“Have you an old pair of shoes of Bailey’s,” asked the visitor
abruptly.
“Why, I suppose so. In the attic somewhere.”
“Please bring them to me.”
The Reverend Mr. Prentice left the room. No sooner had the door closed
after him than Average Jones jumped out of his chair stripped to his
shirt, caught up the pepper-and-salt waistcoat, tried it on and
buttoned it across his chest without difficulty; then thrust his arm
into the coat which went with it, and wormed his way, effortfully,
partly into that. He laid it aside only when he had determined that he
could get it no farther on. He was clothed and in his right garments
when the Reverend Mr. Prentice returned with a much-worn pair of shoes.
“Will these do?” he asked.
Average Jones hardly gave them the courtesy of a glance. “Yes,” he said
indifferently, and set them aside. “Have you a time-table here?”
“You’re going to leave?” cried the clergyman, in sharp disappointment.
“In just half an hour,” replied the visitor, holding his finger on the
time-table.
“But,” cried Mr. Prentice, “that is the train back to New York.”
“Exactly.”
“And you’re not going to see Tuxall?”
“No.”
“Nor to examine the place where the clothes were found?”
“Haven’t time.”
“Mr. Jones, are you giving up the attempt to discover what became of my
boy?”
“I know what became of him.”
The minister put out a hand and grasped the back of a chair for
support. His lips parted. No sound came from them. Average Jones
carefully folded the paper of “gibberish” and tucked it away in his
card case.
“Bailey has been carried away by two people in a buggy. They were
strangers to the town. He was injured and unconscious. They still have
him. Incidentally, he has seriously interfered with a daring and highly
ingenious enterprise. That is all I can tell you at present.”
The clergyman found his voice. “In heaven, Mr. Jones,” he cried, “tell
me who and what these people are.”
“I don’t know who they are. I do know what they are. But it can do no
good to tell you the one until I can find out the other. Be sure of one
thing, Bailey is in no further danger. You’ll hear from me as soon as I
have anything definite to report.”
With that the Reverend Mr. Prentice had to be content; that and a few
days later, a sheet of letter-paper bearing the business imprint of the
Ad-Visor, and enclosing this advertisement:
WANTED—3 Ft. type for sensational Bill Work. Show samples. Delivery in
two weeks. A. Jones, Ad-Visor, Court Temple, N. Y. City.
Had the Reverend Mr. Prentice been a reader of journals devoted to the
art and practice of printing he might have observed that message widely
scattered to the trade. It was answered by a number of printing shops.
But, as the answers came in to Average Jones, he put them aside,
because none of the seekers for business was able to “show samples.”
Finally there came a letter from Hoke and Hollins of Rose Street. They
would like Mr. Jones to call and inspect some special type upon which
they were then at work. Mr. Jones called. The junior member received
him.
“Quite providential, Mr. Jones,” he said. “We’re turning out some
single-letter, hand-made type of just the size you want. Only part of
the alphabet, however. Isn’t that a fine piece of lettering!”
He held up an enormous M to the admiration of his visitor.
“Excellent!” approved Average Jones. “I’d like to see other letters; A,
for example.”
Mr. Hollins produced a symmetrical A.
“And now, an R, if you please; and perhaps a V.”
Mr. Hollis looked at his visitor with suspicion. “You appear to be
selecting the very letters which I have,” he remarked.
“Those which—er—would make up the—er—legend, ‘Marvelous Man-Like
Monster,” drawled Average Jones.
“Then you know the Farleys,” said the print man.
“The Flying Farleys?” said Average Jones. “They used to do ascensions
with firework trimmings, didn’t they? No; I don’t exactly know them.
But I’d like to.”
“That’s another matter,” retorted Mr. Hollins, annoyed at having
betrayed himself. “This type is decidedly a private—even a
secret-order. I had no right to say anything about it or the customers
who ordered it.”
“Still, you could see that a letter left here for them reached them, I
suppose.”
After some hesitation, the other agreed. Average Jones sat down to the
composition of an epistle, which should be sufficiently imperative
without being too alarming. Having completed this delicate task to his
satisfaction he handed the result to Hollins.
“If you haven’t already struck off a line, you might do so,” he
suggested. “I’ve asked the Farleys for a print of it; and I fancy
they’ll be sending for one.”
Leaving the shop he went direct to a telegraph office, whence he
dispatched two messages to Harwick. One was to the Reverend Peter
Prentice, the other was to the local chief of police. On the following
afternoon Mr. Prentice trembling in the anteroom of the Ad-Visor’s.
With the briefest word of greeting Average Jones led him into his
private office, where a clear-eyed boy, with his head swathed in
bandages sat waiting. As the Ad-Visor closed the door after him, he
heard the breathless, boyish “Hello, father,” merged in the broken cry
of the Reverend Peter Prentice.
Five minutes he gave father and son. When he returned to the room,
carrying a loose roll of reddish paper, he was followed by a strange
couple. The woman was plumply muscular. Her attractive face was both
defiant and uneasy. Behind her strode a wiry man of forty. His chief
claim to notice lay in an outrageously fancy waistcoat, which was
ill-matched with his sober, commonplace, “pepper-and-salt” suit.
“Mr. and Mrs. Farley, the Reverend Mr. Prentice,” said Average Jones in
introduction.
“The strangers in the wagon?” asked the clergyman quickly.
“The same,” admitted the woman briefly.
The Reverend Mr. Prentice turned upon Farley. “Why did you want to
steal my boy away?” he demanded.
“Didn’t want to. Had to,” replied that gentleman succinctly.
“Let’s do this in order,” suggested Average Jones. “The principal
actor’s story first. Speak up, Bailey.”
“Don’t know my own story,” said the boy with a grin. “Only part of it.
Mrs. Farley’s been awful good to me, takin’ care of me an’ all that.
But she wouldn’t tell me how I got hurt or where I was when I woke up.”
“Naturally. Well, we must piece it out among us. Now, Bailey, you were
working over your reel the night the meteor fell, when—”
“What meteor? I don’t know anything about a meteor.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Average Jones laughing. “Stupid of me. For
the moment I had forgotten that you were out of the world then. Well,
about nine o’clock of the night you got the reel, you looked out of
your window and saw a queer light over at the Tuxall place.”
“That’s right. But say, Mr. Jones, how do you know about the light?”
“What else but a light could you have seen, on a pitch-black night?”
counter-questioned Average Jones with a smile. “And it must have been
something unusual, or you wouldn’t have dropped everything to go to
it.”
“That’s what!” corroborated the boy. “A kind of flame shot up from the
ground. Then it spread a little. Then it went out. And there were
people running around it.”
“Ah! Some one must have got careless with the oil,” observed Average
Jones.
“That fool Tuxall!” broke in Farley with an oath. “It was him gummed
the whole game.”
“Mr. Tuxall, I regret to say,” remarked Average Jones, “has left for
parts unknown, so the Harwick authorities inform me, probably
foreseeing a charge of arson.”
“Arson?” repeated the Reverend Mr. Prentice in astonishment.
“Of course. Only oil and matches could have made a barn flare up, after
a three-days’ rain, as his did. Now, Bailey, to continue. You ran
across the fields to the Tuxall place and went around—let me see; the
wind had shifted to the northeast—yes; to the northeast of the barn and
quite a distance away. There you saw a man at work in his shirt.”
“Well-I’ll-be-jiggered!” said the boy in measured tones. “Where were
you hiding, Mr. Jones?”
“Not behind the tree there, anyway,” returned the Ad-Visor with a
chuckle. “There is a tree there, I suppose?”
“Yes; and there was something alive tied up in it with a rope.”
“Well, not exactly alive,” returned Average Jones, “though the mistake
is a natural one.”
“I tell you, I know,” persisted Bailey. “While Mr. and Mrs. Farley were
workin’ over some kind of a box, I shinned up the tree.”
“Bold young adventurer! And what did you find?”
“One of the limbs was shakin’ and thrashin’. I crawled out on it. I
guess it was kind o’ crazy me, but I was goin’ to find out what was
what if I broke my neck. There was a rope tied to it, and some big
thing up above pullin’ and jerkin’ at it, tryin’ to get away. Pretty
soon, Mr. and Mrs. Farley came almost under me. He says: ‘Is Tuxall all
ready?’ and she says: ‘He thinks we ought to wait half an hour. The
street’ll be full of folks then. Then he says: ‘Well, I hate to risk
it, but maybe it’s better.’ just then, the rope gave a twist and came
swingin’ over on me, and knocked me right off the limb. I gave a yell
and then I landed. Next I knew I was in bed. And that’s all.”
“Now I’ll take up the wondrous tale,” said Average Jones. “The Farleys,
naturally discomfited by Bailey’s abrupt and informal arrival, were in
a quandary. Here was an inert boy on their hands. He might be dead,
which would be bad. Or, he might be alive, which would be worse, if
they left him.”
“How so?” asked the Reverend Mr. Prentice.
“Why, you see,” explained Average Jones, “they couldn’t tell how much
he might have seen and heard before he made his hasty descent. He might
have enough information to spoil their whole careful and elaborate
plan.”
“But what in the world was their plan?” demanded the minister.
“That comes later. They took off Bailey’s coat and waistcoat, perhaps
to see if his back was broken (Farley nodded), and finding him alive,
tossed his clothes into the buggy, where Farley had left his own, and
completed their necessary work. Of course, there was danger that Bailey
might come to at any moment and ruin everything. So they worked at top
speed, and left the final performance to Tuxall. In their excitement
they forgot to find out from their accomplice who Bailey was.
Consequently, they found themselves presently driving across country
with an unknown and undesired white elephant of a boy on their hands.
One of them conceived the idea of tossing his clothes upon the
sea-beach to establish a false clue of drowning, until they could
decide what was to be done with him. In carrying this out they made the
mistake which lighted up the whole trail.”
“Well, I don’t see it at all,” said Farley glumly. “How did you ever
get to us?”
Average Jones mildly contemplated the mathematical center of his
questioner.
“New waistcoat?” he asked.
Farley glanced down at the outrageous pattern with pride.
“Yep. Got it last week.”
“Lost the one that came with the pepper-and-salt suit you’re wearing?”
“Damn!” exploded Farley in sudden enlightenment.
“Just so. Your waistcoat got mixed with the boy’s clothes, which are of
the same common pattern, and was tossed out on the beach with his
coat.”
“Well, I didn’t leave a card in it, did I?” retorted the other.
“Something just as good.”
“The ad, Tim!” cried the woman. “Don’t you remember, you couldn’t find
the rough draft you made while we were waiting?”
“That’s right, too,” he said. “It was in that vest-pocket. But it
didn’t have no name on it.”
“Then, that,” put in the Reverend Peter Prentice, “was the scrawled
nonsense—”
“Which you—er—threw into the waste-basket,” drawled Average Jones with
a smile.
“Those were not Bailey’s clothes at all?”
“The coat was his; not the waistcoat. His waistcoat may have fallen out
of the buggy, or it may be there yet.”
“But what does all this talk of people at work in the dark, and arson,
and a mysterious creature tied in a tree lead to?”
“It leads,” said Average Jones, “to a very large rock, much scorched,
and with a peculiar carving on it, which now lies imbedded in the earth
beneath Tuxall’s barn.”
“If you’ve seen that,” said Farley, “it’s all up.”
“I haven’t seen it. I’ve inferred it. But it’s all up, nevertheless.”
“Serves us right,” said the woman disgustedly. “I wish we’d never heard
of Tuxall and his line of bunk.”
“Mystification upon mystification!” cried the clergyman. “Will some one
please give a clue to the maze?”
“In a word,” said Average Jones. “The Harwick meteor.”
“What connection—”
“Pardon me, one moment. The ‘live thing’ in the tree was a captive
balloon. The box on the ground was a battery. The wire from the battery
was connected with a firework bomb, which, when Tuxall pressed the
switch, exploded, releasing a flaming ‘dropper.’ About the time the
‘dropper’ reached the earth Tuxall lighted up his well-oiled barn. All
Harwick, having had its attention attracted by the explosion, and seen
the portent with its own eyes, believed that a huge meteor had fired
the building. So Tuxall and Company had a well attested wonder from the
heavens. That’s the little plan which Bailey’s presence threatened to
wreck. Is it your opinion that the stars are inhabited, Prentice?”
“What!” cried the minister, gaping.
“Stars—inhabited—living, sentient creatures.”
“How should I know!”
“You’d be interested to know, though, wouldn’t you?”
“Why, certainly. Any one would.”
“Exactly the point. Any one would, and almost any one would pay money
to see, with his own eye the attested evidence of human, or
approximately human, life in other spheres. It was a big stake that
Tuxall, Farley and Company were playing for. Do you begin to see the
meaning of the big print now?”
“I’ve heard nothing about big prints,” said the puzzled clergyman.
“Pardon me, you’ve heard but you haven’t understood. However, to go on,
Tuxall and our friends here fixed up a plan on the prospects of a rich
harvest from public curiosity and credulity. Tuxall planted a big rock
under the barn, fixed it up appropriately with torch and chisel and
sent for the Farleys, who are expert firework and balloon people, to
counterfeit a meteor.”
“Amazing!” cried the clergyman.
“Such a meteor, furthermore, as had never been dreamed of before. If
you were to visit Tuxall’s barn, you would undoubtedly find on the
boulder underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more
ambitious than the Cardiff Giant. He carted the rock in from some
quarry and did the scorching and carving himself, I suppose.”
“And you discovered all that in a half-day’s visit to Harwick?” asked
the Reverend Mr. Prentice incredulously.
“No, but in half-minute’s reading of the ‘gibberish’ which you threw
away.”
Taking from the desk the reddish roll which he had brought into the
room with him, he sent the loose end of it wheeling across the floor,
until it lay, fully outspread. In black letters against red, the legend
glared and blared its announcement:
MARVELOUS MAN-LIKE MONSTER!
“Those letters, Mr. Prentice,” pursued the Ad-Visor, “measure just
three feet from top to bottom. The phrase ‘three feet high’ which so
puzzled you, as combined with the adjectives of great size, was
obviously a printer’s direction. All through the smudged ‘copy,’ which
you threw away, there run alliterative lines, ‘Stupendous Scientific
Sensation,’ ‘Veritable Visitor Void’ and finally ‘Marvelous
Man-l—Monster.’ Only one trade is irretrievably committed to and
indubitably hall-marked by alliteration, the circus trade. You’ll
recall that Farley insensibly fell into the habit even in his
advertisement; ‘lost lad,’ ‘retained for ransom’ and ‘Mortimer Morley.’
Therefore I had the combination circus poster, an alleged meteor which
burned a barn in a highly suspicious manner, and an apparently
purposeless kidnapping. The inference was as simple as it was certain.
The two strangers with Tuxall’s aid, had prepared the fake meteor with
a view to exploiting the star-man. Bailey had literally tumbled into
the plot. They didn’t know how much he had seen. The whole affair
hinged on his being kept quiet. So they took him along. All that I had
to do, then, was to find the deviser of the three-foot poster. He was
sure to be Bailey’s abductor.”
“Say,” said Farley with conviction, “I believe you’re the devil’s first
cousin.”
“When you left me in Harwick,” said the Reverend Peter Prentice, before
Average Jones could acknowledge this flattering surmise, “you said that
strangers had done the kidnapping. How did you tell they were strangers
then?”
“From the fact that they didn’t know who Bailey was, and had to
advertise him, indefinitely, as ‘lost lad from Harwick.’”
“And that there were two of them?” pursued the minister.
“I surmised two minds: one that schemed out the ‘planting’ of the
clothes on the shore; the other, more compassionate, that promulgated
the advertisement.”
“Finally, then, how could you know that Bailey was injured and
unconscious?”
“If he hadn’t been unconscious then and for long after, he’d have
revealed his identity to his captors, wouldn’t he?” explained the
Ad-Visor.
There was a long pause. Then the woman said timidly:
“Well, and now what?”
“Nothing,” answered Average Jones. “Tuxall has got away. Mr. Prentice
has recovered his son. You and Farley have had your lesson. And I—”
“Yes, and you, Mr. Detective-man,” said the woman, as he paused. “What
do you get out of it?”
Average Jones cast an affectionate glance at the sprawling legend which
disfigured his floor.
“A unique curio in my own special line,” he replied. “An ad which never
has been published and never will be. That’s enough for me.”
There was a double knock at the door, and Mr. Algernon Spofford burst
in, wearing a face of gloom.
“Say, Average,” he began, but broke off with a snort of amazement.
“You’ve found him!” cried. “Hello, Mr. Prentice. Well, Bailey, alive
and kicking, eh?”
“Yes; I’ve found him and them,” replied Average Jones.
“You’ve done better than me, then. I’ve been through the post-office
department from the information window here to the postmaster-general
in Washington, and nobody’ll help me find Mortimer Morley.”
“Then let me introduce him; Algy, this is Mortimer Morley; in less
private life Mr. Tim Farley, and his wife, Mrs. Farley, Mr. Spofford.”
“Well, I’ll be Billy-be-dashed,” exploded Mr. Spofford. “How did you
work it out, Average?”
“On the previously enunciated principle,” returned Average Jones with a
smile, “that when rats leave a sinking ship or a burning building
there’s usually something behind, worth investigating.”