The Flying Death - Samuel Hopkins Adams (story reading .txt) 📗

first. “You suggested, before, an air-craft of some kind, perhaps in joke.”

“Partly,” agreed the professor. “But these were by no means large enough. Air-ships, as you doubtless are aware, are of vast extent.”

“Besides, they usually don’t travel in pairs,” said Haynes. “You can locate the spot where you saw the things, I suppose, Professor?”

“Approximately.”

“Then let’s start at once,” said the reporter, rising.

They made good speed to the lake, and examined its western shore without making any discovery. Spreading out, they scouted carefully, and had gone perhaps fifty yards, studying the ground for possible signs, when Dick Colton, who was in the middle, gave a shout and began to exhibit signs of strangulation. The others ran to him, and he turned a suffused and twitching face toward them, pointing to an oak patch near by.

“Excuse me,” he gasped; “but look at that!”

Tangled in the patch was the dilapidated ruin of a large kite of the Malay or tailless type. Most of the paper had blown away, but what remained was of an oily finish, and exhaled a slight odour. Professor Ravenden looked at it carefully, and an expression of deep humiliation overspread his mild face.

“I do not resent your amusement, Dr. Colton,” he said. “To you gentlemen I must seem, as indeed I do to myself, an unworthy and fearful disciple of science.”

“Not in the least,” said Haynes quickly. “Your experience was enough to frighten anyone.”

“I should have run like a rabbit,” declared Colton positively. “I laughed because it seemed such a ridiculous ending to my own forebodings.”

“Perhaps it isn’t entirely ridiculous either,” said Haynes, who had been examining the kite cord, slowly. “There’s something queer about this. Where did those kites come from, and how?”

“Broke away, of course,” said Dick.

“Supposing you try to break that string. You’re a husky specimen.”

“Can’t do it,” said the doctor, after exerting his strength. “It’s the finest kind of light braided line.”

“And it hasn’t been broken, in my opinion,” said the reporter. “Look at those ends.”

“Cut! Clean cut!” exclaimed Colton.

“And within twenty feet of the bellyband,” added Haynes. “Now, if someone will kindly explain to me how—”

“This line,” said the professor, who had been studying it, “is, if I mistake not, one of a string such as are used for aerostatic experiments. The oiled paper is for rain-shedding purposes. It is a subsidiary kite, used to raise the slack of the main line. Therefore the string has not parted at the point of greatest tension.”

“And it’s as badly crumpled up,” added Colton, “as if it had collided with a brick block.”

“Its mate ought to have drifted to the opposite shore of the lake,” said Haynes. “I’ll go look.”

Presently he returned with the second kite. It was twin in size and type to the first. The skeleton was intact, though the paper showed signs of its rough trip across the ground before it reached the lake.

“About sixty feet of string left on this one,” said the reporter. “Cut clean, just like the other.” He laughed nervously. “Begins to look pretty interesting, doesn’t it?”

“How many kites do you think there were in the string?” Colton asked the professor.

“Seven is by no means an unusual number in experiments of this nature.”

“Then where are the rest?”

“If the main line was severed they may well have been carried out over the ocean. Particularly this would be true if these were the two lowest subsidiary kites.”

“Hello! What’s this?” said Colton, looking up.

Over the breast of the hill toward the Sound strolled a man. He wore the characteristic garb of the Montauk fishermen, and evidently was from the little colony on the north shore. Haynes walked forward to meet him.

“G’-morning,” he said pleasantly. “Did you happen to see anything of a gentleman in a black suit an’ eye-glasses, wanderin’ absentmindedly about this part of the world?”

“No,” said Haynes. “Have you lost such a one?”

“Reckon he’s lost himself. Hain’t showed up since last evenin’. Just the kind o’ man to lose himself in open country. Sort o’ crank, always makin’ exper’ments.”

“What kind of experiments?”

“Foolish doin’s with kites, like a kid.”

“Is he staying with you?”

“Boardin’. Been there a week. Says he’s studyin’ air currents. Goes out in the evenin’s an’ puts up a lot o’ kites. I’ve seen him with as many as seven onto one string. Ee’s mighty smart at it.”

“What time did he start out yesterday evening?” asked Haynes.

“Long about ha’-past seven. Looked for him back when the wind dropped and come again so uneasy, just before that shower. But no Mr. Ely.”

“Is that one of his kites?” asked the reporter, pointing to the broken rhomboid which he had laid in the long grass.

“Certain, sure!” said the fisherman. “Where’d you find it?”

“It came down near here. So did one of the others.”

“That so?” said the fisherman, seeming somewhat concerned. “Hope he ain’t come to no harm.”

While they were talking Professor Ravenden had been making a rapid calculation on a pad.

“I believe that I can lead you approximately to the point whence these kites were flown,” he said. “Will you follow me?”

For more than a mile the small and slight professor set them an astonishing pace. Presently he stopped short and picked up the end of a string at the foot of a small hillock.

“This also seems to have been cut,” he said, and followed its course.

Beyond the knoll was a hollow, and on the slope of this a small windlass.

“That’s his’n! ” cried the fisherman. “But where’s he?”

Haynes walked over to a small oak patch beyond. For several yards in from the edge the shrubbery showed, by its bent twigs, the passage of a large body. Patches of cloth on the twigs told that a man had torn through in hot haste. On the soil underneath were footprints. But at the end of the path and the footprints was nothing.

“Look here!” Haynes exclaimed. “He rushed in here to escape something. Here’s where the trail ends. You can see —”

“My God! Come quick!”

It was the fisherman on the other side of the oak patch. They ran around and found him bending over a body almost hidden in the edge of the thicket, where the scrub was low.

“That’s Mr. Ely!” he cried. “He’s been murdered!”

The head was crushed in as by a terrific blow. Near the right shoulder the arm-bone protruded from the flesh. Colton lifted the corpse, and there through the breast was the same kind of gash that had slain Petersen.

“It’s that cursed juggler,” said Haynes bitterly. “Why did we let him get away?”

“This man has been dead for several hours,” said the young doctor in a low tone.

“As long ago as ten o’clock last night?” asked Haynes

“Very probably.”

“What killed him; the crushing of the skull or the stab-wound?”

“Whichever came first.”

“Assuming the correctness of your hypothesis that this unhappy man rushed into the oak patch from the other side, Mr. Haynes, how is the fact that we find his body here, several rods distant from the apparent end of his flight, to be explained?” asked the professor.

“On the ground that he rushed out again,” replied the reporter dryly.

“Then you discerned returning footprints?”

“No; there was none there, so far as I could see.”

“And there is none here,” said Colton, who had been examining the grassless soil under the thick canopy. “But see how the thicket is broken, almost as if he had flung himself upon it. Haynes! What’s wrong?”

Without any warning the reporter had thrown up his hands and fallen at full length into the oak. They rushed to his aid, but he was up at once.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, smiling. “I’m all right. Just an experiment. I shall go over with this man to make some inquiries at the fishing colony and arrange for the disposal of the body. It may take me all day. In that case, I’ll see you this evening.”

He took the fisherman by the arm. The man seemed dazed with horror, and went along with hanging jaw. Colton and Professor Ravenden returned to Third House, in pondering silence.

At the house Dick found himself suffering from a return of his old restlessness. In the afternoon he saw Miss Ravenden, but she evaded even the necessity of speaking to him. With a vague hope of diverting his mind and perhaps of finding some fresh clue, he returned to the lake, and studied the land not only near the spot where the kites had fallen, but between there and the sea-cliff, without finding anything to lighten the mystery.

At nine o’clock Haynes came in, pale and tired, and stopped at Dick’s room.

“They have arranged to ship Mr. Ely’s body back to Connecticut where he lived,” he said. “The fishermen are in a state of almost superstitious terror.”

“Anything new?”

“Yes and no. It’s too indefinite to talk about. What little there is only tends to make the whole question more fantastic and less possible.”

Colton looked at him. “You need sleep, and you need it badly,” he said. “Any pain?”

“Oh, the usual. A little more, perhaps.”

“Take this,” said the other, giving him a powder. “That’ll fix you. I wish it would me; I feel tonight as if sleep had become a lost art.”

Nodding his thanks, the reporter left. Dick threw himself on his bed; but the strange events of the few days at Montauk crowded his brain and fevered it with empty conjectures. When finally he closed his eyes there returned upon him the nauseating procession of medicine bottles. Then came a bloody sheep, which fled screaming from some impending horror. The sheep became a man frantically struggling in an oak patch, and the man became Dick himself. Almost he could discern the horror; almost the secret was solved. Blackness descended upon him. He threw himself upward with a shriek—and was awake again. When at length he lay back, the visions were gone; a soft drowsiness overcame him, and at the end the deep eyes of Dorothy Ravenden blessed him with peace.