Chapter XXVI

I quickly recovered from the amazement which had momentarily possessed me. I had no doubt, hearing the mysterious voice on the telephone, that at last I had hit on something of a clue to the mystery of the Martian hoax. The voice, faintly familiar, had stirred up my recollections, and had established at once in my mind a positive suspect. Why this individual had not entered into my suspicions before is just one of those things that can't be explained. There was every chance now that he was mixed up in this. If so, I was convinced we were reaching the climax of the case.

"Well," I said, finally, turning to McGinity, "I think the stage is being set for the last interesting act of this affair."

He smiled a little dubiously. "Don't make me laugh, Mr. Royce," he said.

Having made an important discovery, I thought McGinity ought to know, so I told him briefly what had been said on the telephone, and my suspicions. He was silent for a moment, then he said: "Why didn't you think of this person before?"

It was on the tip of my tongue to reply: "Too stupid;" but I refrained from showing up my asinine denseness. Instead, I said: "The first thing to think of now is to trace that phone call."

"That'll be dead easy if the speaker used one of those old-time manual phones," he said; "but if the call was made on a dial instrument, there's no way of tracing it. You're sunk!"

A few minutes' conversation with the information operator proved the reporter's contentions to be true; I was "sunk." But not entirely.

"McGinity!" I exclaimed, "I must go to this place at once, and you must go with me. I'll lay anything I'm on the right track. I have a feeling too that every minute may be of importance."

To my surprise, the reporter hesitated. "Are you sure you recognized the woman who phoned by her voice?" he asked. "You may be mistaken, and with break number five liable to come any minute now, we can't afford to go off on some wild goose chase."

"Dead certain," I affirmed. "I'll stake all I've got on it. However, if you're so sure of number five breaking, we can stop at the Sands Cliff Police Station on our way, and you can notify them where we can be found."

"Queer doings, and not very plausible," McGinity remarked, after agreeing to my plan. "Yet--you may be right."

Feeling certain that on this expedition we should meet with some probably perilous adventure, I took good care to put one of Henry's revolvers in my pocket. It was an old-fashioned weapon, heavy and cumbersome, and just to prove that it was in good working order, I fired it off, up in the air, as we drove along the dark, unfrequented road bordering on our estate. McGinity, who was driving, gave vent to an exclamation of mingled surprise and amusement. Heretofore, he had been the one inclined to the impetuous, while I was always of a more cautious nature.

"That old horse-pistol has certainly got a bang to it," he remarked, laughing. "But we're not going to hunt elephants, you know."

"You never can tell," I countered. "I've an idea--instinct--McGinity," I went on, "that we've a night's work before us. And it's quite possible that we may encounter an elephant, or a lion, before we get through;" my mind slipping back to my thrilling encounter with the grizzly bear on the LaRauche estate. "Now, for the police station."

Fortunately, we found Chief of Police Meigs at his desk, and to him I poured out my suspicions.

"Oh! so you believe old Rene LaRauche to be implicated in this Martian fake?" he said.

"LaRauche was obsessed with a jealous hatred of my brother, Henry," I replied, "and his motive may have been revenge. He's heaven high above my brother in his knowledge and application of science, and mentally equipped to perpetrate a hoax like this. Besides, he's always had the reputation of being brutally cruel to his wife, and apparently he had some good reason for choking her off when she sought aid from the outside on the phone. She's always been very friendly and charming to Henry and myself."

"Sounds like the act of a crazy man," the Chief offered. "If my belief's correct, he'll probably show fight if you start any inquiry, and go nosing about his place."

"As a matter of protection, McGinity and I are both armed," I informed him, "as this is hardly a case for police investigation. The perpetration of this hoax, as I understand it, is quite within the law, and while not something to be called a crime, it is none the less dastardly."

"I have a hunch that before you get through with it, you'll have to call in the police," said the Chief. "I'm very much interested in the case. I drove past LaRauche's place yesterday, and I noticed it was all locked up, like he had closed the house, and gone to the city for the winter. I believe he has one manservant."

"A snoopy, unreliable person, who answers to the name of Orkins," I said; "formerly in our employ as a butler."

"He's been pointed out to me," said the Chief, "but I never knew his name. He often comes to the village for groceries. I haven't noticed him around lately. Come to think of it, I haven't laid eyes on LaRauche for several months."

At that juncture, a motorcycle policeman, who had been standing by, evidently listening in, motioned his chief to step to one side. After a few minutes' conversation, Chief Meigs returned to us, and said:

"I've just been informed that LaRauche hasn't been seen around these parts for three months, at least. Looks like he's been in hiding. This motorcycle policeman also tells me that in passing the LaRauche house, on his daily route, two days ago, he saw a woman looking out of a top-story window, and waving. As there was no indication that she was in distress, or even signaling to him, he passed on. She was scantily clothed, he says; looked like she was wearing a nightgown. If that may be of any interest to you."

"I consider it very important information, Chief," said McGinity. "It confirms the intimation that Mr. Royce got on the phone, that Mrs. LaRauche is virtually a prisoner in her own home, and that her life is in danger. She was probably trying to attract the policeman's attention."

"If, in your inquiries, you find that to be the case," the Chief suggested, "all you've got to do is to get me word. If it's necessary, we'll get a search-warrant, and open the house and search it ourselves. I'll be at the station here for another hour, so you'll know where to find me, in case there's something I can do."

I thanked him for the suggestion, and in less than five minutes, McGinity and I were leaving the lights of the village behind, and were speeding over a winding, hilly road, along which I should have preferred to travel in daylight if I had been driving alone. As we neared the LaRauche place, the country became wilder and more solitary. I often wondered what could have brought LaRauche to these lonely, frowning hills.

Suddenly, I signaled a stop, and we halted a short ways from the gateway, taking care to dim our headlights. As we walked cautiously up the footpath, which led from the road to the house, I told McGinity about my encounter with the grizzly bear.

By that time, we could make out the outline of the old house quite clearly against the starlit sky. But there was not a gleam of light; the whole house looked black. For a few minutes, in order to get the lay of the land, we crouched behind some bushes directly in front of the residence.

Blinds were drawn; some of the windows were shuttered. There was an atmosphere of silence about the place that was uncanny; no sound, not even the distant bark of a dog one usually hears in the country at night. Certainly no sign of human life. I glanced over my shoulder, to the right, in the direction of the old brick farm-house, in the hollow, where the Italian animal trainer lived, but I might just as well have been staring at a brick wall. No light--no sound--in that direction.

Presently, we crept upon the front porch. I tiptoed along the porch in the hope of getting a peep in at the lower windows, but the blinds were drawn, and I could see nothing of the interior. I knew where to find the bell, and I rang it once, twice, thrice. It was an old-fashioned, jangling bell that echoed dismally in the silence of the night.

When there was no response, we retraced our steps as far as the friendly bushes, and continued to watch the house from that point until we were both equally certain that the place, after all, was unoccupied. We were about to turn away, feeling that we might as well return to the police station, when something happened. That something was the sudden lighting up of a window in the top-story.

Silhouetted against this light, we saw a figure, unmistakably that of a woman. A few seconds later, another figure appeared in the window-frame of light. What followed was like old-time shadowgraphs, which used to delight me when I was a child: black, shadowy figures in action against a dimly lighted background. We saw an arm upraised and then fall, as though a blow had been delivered, and then two arms thrusting the woman-like figure away from the window, by force. Then the window went dark again.

There was nothing to do but turn away, and return to the car. On the way, I suggested to McGinity that we drive back about a mile, where I recalled seeing a light gleaming among a dense growth of pine trees. If it was a human habitation, I figured that the occupants, living so near the LaRauche estate, might give us some much desired information.

We found a light burning in a small cabin, in a clearing in the woods, set well back from the road. Our knock was answered by an elderly, gray-haired man, with a laborer's stoop in his shoulders. He inspected us a moment over his spectacles, then invited us to enter.

He turned out to be a carpenter and wood-chopper. His wife and daughter, he explained, had gone to the movies, in the village, with his wife's sister, who evidently was better placed in life and owned a car.

"Now, can I be of any service?" he asked, showing us to chairs in front of a blazing log-fire, in a plain but cheerful room, modern enough to have electric lights and a telephone.

I made a polite reply, without giving ourselves away. I was a friend of Dr. LaRauche, and had been surprised, on calling, to find his house dark. There had been no answer to the bell.

The carpenter smiled grimly, and said: "I'm afraid, stranger, you'll never git eny response to the ringin' of that bell, if you ring till Judgment Day. Others have tried, unsuccessfully, myself included. Old Doc LaRauche owes me considerable fer some wood-choppin' I done fer 'im."

"How do you explain it?" I asked.

"A lot of mysterious goin's on in that 'er house, of late," the carpenter answered, wagging his head, "which I, for one, can't answer fer. A very mysterious family!"

"From which I gather that Mrs. LaRauche is there, with her husband?" I said. "It's very urgent that I see her at once."

"No one 'ereabouts knows exactly what's happened to the poor lady," replied the carpenter. "It's common report that the old man keeps 'er locked up. Only yisterday, my wife went over with a paper bag of fruit, oranges and the like, which she intended leavin' fer the poor soul, but nary an answer to the bell."

"It's very lonely over there," I remarked. "No neighbors--"

"Ah, but they did have a close neighbor," the carpenter interrupted, "till the law stepped in and took 'im away. That old brick house, in the hollow. Maybe, now, you remember seein' it?"

"That's so--I'd forgotten," I said. "But tell me, what happened?"

"Last Spring, an Eytalian by the name of Antonio Ranzetti moved into the farm-house, vacant it was fer the last five years, and gone to ruin, like. He made a business of trainin' animals fer the circus, but he was cruel to 'em, awful cruel, so I 'eerd. So Doc LaRauche, wantin' to git rid of an undesirable neighbor, reported 'im to some society that protects animals--"

"Probably the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," I interjected.

"Anyhow," the carpenter continued, "the Eytalian was arrested, tried, and sent to the hoose-gow fer ninety days."

"Oh, indeed!" I murmured.

"Yes; and he oughta be gittin' out, now, one of these fine days," said the carpenter. Then he added: "Now, is there anythin' else you'd like to know, stranger?"

I shook my head, as I realized at once that we were not likely to get any more valuable information than this. As we rose to leave, a bright idea struck McGinity. Why not get in touch with Chief of Police Meigs while we had a telephone handy?

I did what he suggested, and spent a few minutes talking to the Chief, while McGinity collared the carpenter and engaged him in conversation until I had finished. Outside, I gripped the reporter by the arm, and exclaimed: "Things are still breaking. As sure as fate, LaRauche and Orkins are at the bottom of all this."

"What's happened?" asked McGinity.

"Chief Meigs says that five minutes after we'd left the station, a local garage owner called, and reported that he had rented a small, light truck to Orkins, night before last, who had explained that he was moving some of LaRauche's household belongings into the city. The description of the truck that carried off the rocket from the Museum of Science, in New York, as given over the air, and in the newspapers, he said, tallied with his own vehicle, which he found parked in front of his garage when he opened up this morning."

"Good!" the reporter exclaimed. "What else did he tell you?"

"This. He's getting a search warrant, and says he'll join us in about half an hour. We're to wait for him, at the side of the road, about a quarter of a mile beyond this cabin."