Chapter XXVII

The time of waiting came to an end, and as soon as Chief Meigs arrived in his car, armed with a search warrant and a short-handled axe, we drove straight on to the LaRauche estate, parking our cars about a hundred yards from the gate. As we strode along the high road, three abreast, the Chief imparted some more startling information, so particularly important that instinctively we quickened our steps.

"Listen," he began. "I had just hung up on you, Mr. Royce, when the phone rang. I answered. It was a man's voice, with an English-like accent, and low and trembly, if you know what I mean."

"Orkins, without a doubt," I said. "But he's not English. That accent is only a cultivated one."

"Well, he wanted to consult with the Chief of Police," the officer went on, "about the $5,000 reward. When I informed him the Chief was speaking, he wanted to know if he came to the police station, and disclosed the name of the man who had stolen the rocket, would he stand a good chance in getting the reward. I told him I thought he would, and to come right along."

"Didn't he say who he was?" McGinity asked.

"No. And he was very particular that I promise not to reveal his identity after he had given me the necessary information. Finally, when I agreed to this, he said: 'I'll be with you inside an hour.'"

"Then what?" I inquired, agitatedly.

"Apparently we were cut off," the Chief replied; "and yet we weren't exactly disconnected, as I will explain. Something must have happened that caused him to drop the receiver, and get away from the phone in a hurry. I could hear two voices, now--muffled-like, and growing more distinct. Then came a sound like heavy and hurried footfalls would make on a bare floor, followed by two distinct crashes, like some furniture had been overturned. All of a sudden, there was a report, like the crack of a whip. It might have been a pistol shot, but that's only a guess."

"I think you've guessed right, Chief," I said. "It's my belief that LaRauche overheard Orkins, while he was phoning to you, and attacked him. There was a scuffle, and one of them got shot."

"Double-crossing the old man, no doubt," McGinity suggested.

"Just that," I approved. "Orkins is as double-faced and treacherous as he's avaricious."

"Looks like we're going to have an interesting night," the reporter remarked. "Things seem to be getting a bit hot."

"Yes; and they're going to get still hotter, if I know my business," the Chief muttered.

We entered the estate, and went along the path to the dark, lonely house where there was so much mystery; and where there's mystery, there's always danger. Blinds were still drawn, and windows shuttered. After I had jangled the bell, several times, and there was no response, Chief Meigs began to hammer on the door. We waited outside for five minutes, ringing and hammering at intervals. Presently, the police officer took out his axe, and smashed a panel in the door, and thrust his arm through. I heard the snap of the lock as he pushed the door open.

I followed him into the entrance hall, and then I did something very foolish. I blew my police whistle. McGinity chuckled. "What are you scared about, Mr. Royce?" he asked. "Calling the police?"

"I'm scared," I admitted, in an embarrassed undertone. "I have a feeling that the man we're after--LaRauche--is not going to worry very much about your life or mine."

At that I turned, to give vent to an exclamation of horror. My flesh crept. The Chief's flashlight was trained on the stairs. The beam of light disclosed a body, spread-eagled halfway down the uncarpeted steps, head down, arms outflung, as though it had plunged backwards from the first landing which was rather spacious, and ornamented by an old grandfather's clock.

After a brief inspection, I identified the gruesome thing as Orkins, our former butler. "Is it not suicide?" I asked.

The Chief shook his head. "Looks like plain murder," he answered. "Shot through the back, by LaRauche, from the bottom of the stairs, probably, just as he reached the first landing, in a futile attempt to escape."

I stood looking down at the dead man. "So passes poor old Orkins," I thought. "Too bad he got the worst of it." But there was no time for sentimentalizing over the crafty, avaricious butler, who, apparently, had paid with his life for attempting to betray his employer.

Already Chief Meigs had found a switch, and he and McGinity were inspecting the library, where the dial telephone was, in the faint glow of an overhead light. The telephone receiver was dangling at the end of its cord; two chairs were overturned; all mute and unmistakable evidence of the grisly encounter the Chief had heard on the telephone, climaxed by the pistol shot.

Everything looked dingy and untidy; there was a musty smell about the room. After a quick search there, we passed through several other rooms on the ground floor, including the kitchen, where there were many greasy plates and plenty of unwashed china and cooking utensils. A door, under a back stairway in the kitchen, evidently led to the basement; it was fastened with a patent lock.

As none of the rooms on the ground floor, except the library and kitchen, bore evidence of recent occupation, Chief Meigs suggested that we make a quick search of the upper floors. "LaRauche, no doubt," he said, "is in hiding somewhere about the house, and I think we're going to have some trouble before we get him."

"That is, if he hasn't already escaped us," McGinity ventured.

"There's some doubt about that," the Chief answered. "All the doors and windows on this floor are locked, and fastened on the inside, and he couldn't possibly have snapped that patent lock on the door in the kitchen, from the inside, if he had wanted to hide in the basement."

"But Mrs. LaRauche!" I said. "Where is she? We've got to find her!"

In reply, the Chief signaled to McGinity and me, to follow him up the dark, back stairway to the second floor. Feeling along the wall in the hall, on this floor, I found a switch, and snapped on the lights. But they were very dim, of low candle-power, and in searching the bedrooms and closets, we had to again resort to the use of the flashlight. Two of the bedrooms seemed to have been recently tenanted, with beds unmade, and men's clothing and soiled linen lying about in great disorder. One of these, apparently Orkins' room, contained a small radio, over which he had undoubtedly heard the announcement of the $5,000 reward. The whole interior of the house showed the absence of a domesticated hand. At the end of the corridor, we looked into a large double room, which LaRauche had equipped as a laboratory.

Finally, we reached the narrow corridor in the top story, where we were faced by four doors. Three of them were unlocked. Pushing them open, we looked into two unfurnished rooms, and another used for storage. The fourth door, at the end of the passageway, was locked. Repeated knocking brought no answer.

This was the last unexplored room in the house. The room particularly interested me because it was there that McGinity and I had witnessed the dramatic shadowgraph episode in the window. So far we had failed to trace LaRauche's movements in the house, or gain the slightest clue to his hiding-place. Was he hiding in this attic room? And where was Mrs. LaRauche?

Chief Meigs was a man of infinite resources. He had either anticipated this, or had become expert in unlocking doors. He produced a heavy bunch of keys, from which he selected three. His first two attempts failed to open the door. The third time, proverbially the charm, the key turned in the lock, and the door swung open.

I would have been the first to step through, but the Chief stopped me. "Stay where you are," he whispered; "it's a little dangerous."

Standing in the doorway, the Chief trained the beam of his electric torch on various objects in the room. Finally it rested on an arm-chair beside an iron bedstead. Something was in that chair, and it was covered with a sheet. He strode over, and pulled back the sheet, and then we began to understand the secret which the old house held.

I gasped and stared. Huddled in the chair was Mrs. LaRauche, deadly pale and hollow cheeked, and apparently unconscious, her emaciated form showing under the folds of a quilted silk dressing-gown which had once been lavender in hue. Adhesive tape had been placed over her mouth, and her arms were bound to the side-rests of the chair by picture wire.

"Thank God, she's alive!" Chief Meigs murmured, as he stooped over her. "Looks like nothing very much wrong with her, except that she's had a pretty bad shock."

As he finished speaking, the woman's head moved; her eyelids fluttered, and then she opened her eyes. We saw at once that she was in a panic of fear. I could hardly realize that this pitiful, ghostly shadow was the same woman I had met several months ago.

Swiftly we released her from the tape and wire that silenced and bound her; then, to our astonishment, we found that she was chained by the ankle to an iron post of the bed. The Chief immediately set to work to unfasten the chain, which looked like an ordinary dog-chain.

By this time, McGinity had discovered a light fixture in the wall, near the front window, containing one bulb, which he turned on. Mrs. LaRauche stared dazedly from one to the other of us, giving me no sign of recognition, although I addressed her by name. But she appeared to comprehend what we were up to. Still unable to speak, she raised one hand weakly, and pointed towards the window in the back of the room, behind the bed.

In doing this, she furnished us with an important clue. LaRauche had escaped through this window, which was set in the Mansard roof, and gave on to a broadish ledge, sufficient wide for a person to walk on. This ledge extended clear around the house.

"We've got to get LaRauche!" Chief Meigs exclaimed, but he couldn't get through the window because of his rather portly physique. Nor could I. McGinity, slim in figure, managed it nicely. He had such good eye-sight that he could distinguish objects which were beyond the view of normal-sighted people. And he was hardly outside, on the ledge, and debating whether he should turn to the left or the right, when he espied a figure, crouching in the dark, at the far end of the roof extension.

"You see it?" he asked Chief Meigs, who was leaning out of the window.

"I can't see a damn thing," the Chief replied.

"Next time, you'd better bring your opera-glasses," the reporter suggested, ironically.

"I wonder if it is LaRauche?" said the Chief, thoughtfully.

"It's a man, at any rate," said McGinity. "Looks like he's wearing black trousers and a white shirt. No coat or hat at all. He's got bushy white hair."

"Then it's LaRauche," the Chief exclaimed. "Call to him, and tell him to come back into the house. Say it's no use trying to escape."

McGinity did as the Chief requested, and there came in reply a cackling laugh.

"I heard that," said the Chief. "It's the laugh of a maniac." Then he added quickly: "What's he doing now?"

McGinity did not reply immediately. He had seen something very strange happen. LaRauche had mysteriously disappeared--vanished into the air.

"He's gone!" the reporter cried at last. "Escaped! He just flew off the roof."

The Chief gave a groan of disappointment. "Oh, come back in!" he ordered gruffly. "Don't be funny!"

McGinity came back through the window, his knees a little unsteady. Then he explained what he had seen. LaRauche had floated off the roof, into the air, lightly but swiftly, taking a downward course, and had been swallowed up in the darkness below.

"You don't expect me to believe a fairy story like that?" Chief Meigs growled. "Here, let's get downstairs. We're wasting time."

"It's the gospel truth, officer," McGinity declared, vehemently; "but how he did it is a puzzle to me."

It was no puzzle to me. I had always considered LaRauche mad, and mad scientists work in a strange, mysterious way. His vanishing into the air, from the roof, might have a perfectly natural explanation. Having my own views, which I was not inclined at the moment to expose, for fear of further disgruntling the Chief, I said nothing.

Five minutes after the Chief and McGinity had gone downstairs, the reporter to search for LaRauche in the back-yard, while Chief Meigs reported the mysterious death of Orkins, and summoned medical aid for Mrs. LaRauche, by telephone, my attention was again attracted to the back window. This time it was by a bright glare of light.

Hurrying to the window, I was made speedily conscious of what was happening. LaRauche had, indeed, escaped from the house by way of the roof, in a manner yet to be revealed, and was now, apparently, making a quick getaway in his plane.

He had set off a magnesium flare. The small hangar and flying field were bathed in a weird and eerie silver-colored haze. His plane was in sight. Even at this distance, I caught the glint of its wings in the silver-colored light as it taxied across the field. With a roar, it shot upward, and was lost in the blackness of the night.

McGinity had heard the noise of the take-off, and came running up, to learn from me, and make sure his speculations, that LaRauche had really vanished from the roof, as if by magic, and was now escaping in his plane. I assured him on these two points very firmly and quickly.

And while he hurriedly retraced his steps downstairs, to report to Meigs, I again turned my attention to Mrs. LaRauche, whose mind, although still in confusion, was slowly clearing.

Later, we were to hear some very remarkable things from her.