"Yes, indeedy. There certainly was." And Stevenson told him the full
story of the bank job.
"I see," said Roberts dazedly when Stevenson was finished. "I see. Or,
I don't see. I don't see it at all."
"Your turn," Stevenson told him. "Now you tell me what made you ask
that."
"This," said Roberts. He reached into the inside pocket of his sport
jacket and withdrew a business-size envelope, which he handed over to
Stevenson.
It was another crank letter, in the same newspaper clipping form as the
first two. It read:
Dear Mr. Editor,
The bad boys were captured. They could not escape the Scorpion. I
left the mark of the Scorpion on their jackets. Criminals fear the
mark of the Scorpion. They cannot escape. This is my third letter
to you. You should warn all criminals to leave the city. They
cannot escape the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.
Sincerely yours,
THE SCORPION
Stevenson read the letter. "Well, well," he said.
"He says that's the third letter," Roberts pointed out. "We asked
around in the office, and we found out who got the first two. They were
both back a ways. The first one was early in the summer, and the guy
who read it remembered it said something about a bank robbery. So I was
sent out this morning to check up on bank robberies in June and July.
You're the third one I've talked to this morning. The first two figured
me for some kind of nut."
* * * * *
"My Captain figures me the same way," Stevenson told him. "What about
the second letter? Or, wait, don't tell me, I'll tell you. It's that
guy in August, the one who ran amok over in Canarsie."
"Right you are," said Roberts. "How did you know?"
"I was there. He left his mark on the rifle stock."
"Okay," said Roberts. "So there's something in it, after all."
"There's _something_ in it," said Stevenson. "The question is, what?"
"Well," said Roberts, "what have we got so far? Somebody--call it
person or persons unknown, for the fun of it--is stepping in every once
in a while when there's a crime being committed. He stops it. He calls
himself the Scorpion, and he uses some pretty dizzy methods. He melts
automobile tires, makes a rifle too hot to hold, makes knives and
leather jackets ice cold--how in heck does he do things like that?"
"Yeah," said Stevenson. "And just incidentally, who is he?"
"Well," said Roberts, "he's a kid, that much is obvious. That whole
letter _sounds_ like a kid. Talking about 'the bad boys' and stuff like
that."
"What do you figure, some scientist's kid maybe?"
"Maybe," said Roberts. "His old man is working on something in his
little old laboratory in the cellar, and every once in a while the kid
sneaks in and makes off with the ray gun or whatever it is." Roberts
laughed. "I feel silly even talking about it," he said.
"I'd feel silly, too," Stevenson told him, "if I hadn't seen what this
kid can do."
"Can we work anything out from the timing?" Roberts asked him. "He
seems to show up once every couple of months."
"Let me check."
Stevenson went over to the filing cabinet and looked up the dates. "The
bank job," he said, "was on Wednesday, June 29th. At eleven o'clock in
the morning. That Higgins guy was on--here it is--Friday, August 5th,
around noon. And this last one was on Hallowe'en, Monday, October 31st,
at eleven o'clock at night."
"If you can see a pattern in there," Roberts told him, "you're a
better man than I am."
"Well, the first two," Stevenson said, "were in the daytime, during the
summer, when school was out. That's all I can figure."
"Why just those three?" Roberts asked. "If he's out to fight crime,
he's pretty inefficient about it. He's only gone to work three times in
four months."
"Well, he's a kid," said Stevenson. "I suppose he has to wait until he
stumbles across something."
"And then rush home for Daddy's ray gun?"
Stevenson shook his head. "It beats me. The only one that makes sense
is the second one. That one was televised. He probably saw it that way.
The other two times, he just happened to be around."
"I don't know," said Roberts. "Does a kid happen to be around twice in
four months when there's crimes being committed? Now, the Hallowe'en
thing, I can see that. A kid is liable to be out wandering around,
maybe go off to a strange neighborhood after he's done with his
trick-or-treat stuff. Hallowe'en is a good time for a kid to see some
other kids breaking a law. And the thing in Canarsie, like you say, he
probably saw that on television. But what about the bank job?"
"That was the first," said Stevenson thoughtfully. "That was what set
him off. He was there at the time. Just by accident. And he saw they
were getting away, so he zapped them. And right away he put the drama
into it, right on the spur of the moment he decided to be the Scorpion.
Then he sent the letter to your paper. But nothing else happened, and
the paper didn't print anything about his letter or what he'd done, and
he kind of forgot about it. Until he was watching television and saw
the Higgins thing. Pow, the Scorpion rides again. And then it died down
again until a couple of nights ago he saw the rumble, and pow all over
again."
"What you're saying," Roberts told him, "is that this kid wanders
around with Daddy's zap gun all the time. That doesn't seem very
likely."
"Face it," said Stevenson. "Daddy's zap gun isn't the likeliest thing
I ever heard of, either. I don't know how the kid does this. For that
matter, it's only an educated guess that it's a kid we're after."
"Okay," said Roberts. "So what do we do now?"
"Now," said Stevenson, "I think we talk to the captain. And then I have
a feeling we'll be talking to the FBI."