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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The Blue Book of Fiction, April 1937, with "Sinister Hollow"
The thrill-charged mystery of a strangely stricken town
is here wrought in-
to a specially attractive novelette by the author of "Some Call It Courage."
THE highway down from Burlington and Montpelier, Vermont, follows the Goosebone River, until that rushing Green Mountain stream empties into the White. The region for twelve miles by three, just before the White River is reached, is lush bottom-land of exceptional fertility for New England.
Some one with the powers of seer and prophet must have named it Sinister Hollow; for until the afternoon Cyanide Neilan stopped his paintless fourth-hand flivver to grin at a signboard, nothing more awesome than the usual births and deaths of humanity had occurred in the valley. Cyanide had a pleasant grin, and no one would have suspected that his two front teeth had been knocked out while boxing with a fellow-football-player in the college gym, and that this inconspicuous pair were the handiwork of a local dentist.
Since graduation he had taken two years toward a doctors degree in science. Money running low, he had become an instructor in freshman chemistry. Each summer he added a couple of credits at Columbia, and would get his degree eventually. This had been a trout-fishing trip after summer school and before college opened.
The young man's legal signature was C. Neilan. Few associates ever learned that the first initial, bestowed by his archeologist father at the time of some excavations at the Throne of Chosroes, stood for Ctesiphon. Naturally the students to whom he lectured on inorganic chemistry took both his initials, and called him Cyanide. But they liked him, especially in the laboratory, where admittedly he knew his stuff....
The signboard there where a gravel road led away south from the concrete highway, read as follows:
SINISTER HOLLOW
CRAWFISH FLAT 2m
STRAIGHT AHEAD
An arrow pointing to the gravel road slanting downhill to the right, bore the amusing legend:
SOG MEADOW lm
BOODLE CORNERS 3m
SENTSBURY 7m
"Us fer Sawg Medder," smiled Cyanide, giving a bad imitation of the Vermont pronunciation. He turned the car downhill on the gravel road, shrugging as he happened to think of possible mudholes in or near Sog Meadow. But he was in no hurry to get back to New Hampshire; and it was a stroke of luck for many people that this was the case.
The town of Sog Meadow consisted of three farmhouses,
backed by fields where the timothy hay stood in blanketed
stacks, and browned areas where the last of the mammoth
strawberries for this year had been gathered. Beyond, toward
Boodle Corners, the valley was more rolling. Here and there
a power thresher roared in the midst of harvested fields,
sending aloft fine chaff.
There were no politicians here, save those of the stove and cracker-box variety. A family named Boodle had run a general store here at the crossroads since the days of witch-burning. It still served the farmhands with overalls, cut plug, bandannas and rock candy.
Neilan bought a bottled soft drink, then drove onward. Sinister Hollow was prosperous-looking, in spite of the fact that no railway came near. The fences were taut, the farmhouses painted almost as well as the barns.
"I'll eat at Sentsbury," the young man told himself. "Hope it's a village, not just a crossroads store."
The valley became more wooded and rolling. Climbing a hill where wash-outs made him drop to low gear, Neilan saw a fence of granite boulders on his left—and something that looked, from a distance uphill, suspiciously like a wrecked car.
Had some one failed to make that easy curve? Frowning, the young man drove ahead, then parked in the ditch opposite. The car, one of the long tortoise shapes, did not seem damaged. It looked as though it had merely wandered from the highway, and halted with the front bumper against that granite wall!
TWENTY seconds later Neilan was lifting out from behind the wheel, and trying to awaken, a young woman who seemed to have decided to take a nap right here. Neilan was puzzled.
"Breathes normally. Heart pumping along at seventy-two." And he frowned. "Mighty funny! No smell of liquor...."
He could not bring to mind any sedative which would act in this manner, leaving the heart-action and respiration practically perfect. So after the usual chafing of wrists, and trying to get the girl to swallow some tepid coffee from his thermos,--with no success,--he lifted her into the tonneau of her car. The seat was wide. She would not fall unless he hit a bad bump.
Cyanide Neilan realized this young woman must be in the neighborhood of twenty years of age. Probably pretty when she opened her eyes, though it was hard to tell. Well dressed for country motoring, in felt hat, tan polo coat, knitted sport dress, suede shoes and heavy silk stockings of shade to match.
One thing to do before driving away: Neilan searched the car pockets, found the license. The car, a 1936 model, belonged to Lester Manties, M.D., of Gorham Road, Sentsbury, Vermont. The sleeping girl's leather handbag yielded a driving-license, but of New York State, not Vermont. The name given was Cecile Haight. Age 21, white, female, five feet, five inches tall, eyes blue, hair brown, weight 118. Residence: Ticonderoga, N. Y. That was not far away, just across the southern end of Lake Champlain.
Beside the usual compact, lipstick, keys, handkerchief and cigarette-case, the envelope bag contained four ten-dollar bills, a five, two ones and some change. Neilan tossed the bag in beside the sleeping girl and took his place under the wheel of her car, leaving his own puddle-jumper there in the ditch.
"If this girl is ill, I'm an Ogalalla!" he said to himself. Her cheeks had faint color. Yes, she was good looking....
Only thing was to get her to Dr. Manties. Probably her uncle or guardian. A medico, anyhow. Neilan began to smile as he felt the smooth surge of power in the car. Some different from his antique!
Just across the crest of the first low hill, Neilan hastily braked. Two horses and an overstuffed load of hay occupied three-fourths of the road. The horses had heads down, and were browsing at some grass and shrubbery. The driver had wound reins about whipstock, and was lying back, snoring!
"Say, for the love of some dago woman!" snapped Cyanide half angrily. "Hey! Wake up! Get out of the way!"
He suddenly knew, however, with a queer presentiment, that this man on the hay load was not going to wake up the instant his shoulder was shaken! There was something queer, alarming, going on! Why should these two people sleep this soundly in the middle of the day?
The driver refused to awaken. Goose-flesh beginning to creep along his forearms, Neilan quit trying, after a minute. He gazed down the road in the direction of Sentsbury, with the beginning of a scare in his eyes. He had read some Wellsian fiction, dealing with electrical anesthesia of whole nations; and now for the first time he began to question whether such a thing might be possible. He was leading the hay-wagon team out of the road, when from the same direction he had come, a twelve-cylinder Packard full of people, probably tourists, sounded a three-tone request for the road and the big car flashed by, scarcely slowing as it brushed the projecting hay. Well, they would know nothing about this business, anyhow.
Really worried, though telling himself he was letting imagination run away, he tied the hay team, and resumed his place in the girl's car. She had not moved. Driving perhaps a half mile, he sighted a white-painted farmhouse, with a big red barn and a tall silo. With a breath of relief he saw a telephone wire leading in. Dr. Manties surely would have a phone.
He found a slow-tongued but courteous Swedish hired man in overalls, busy mending harness beside the barn. "Yah, Mees Yonson, she lat you talaphone, sure... Oh, Mees Yonson!" The last was a stentorian bellow which brought to the door a rather cross-looking blonde woman with a broom in her hand.
The exasperation of the housewife proved to be due to the fact that her phone had gone dead: It seemed that Mrs. Johnson had promised to call up Mrs. Christianson, who was expecting, and find out if it was time for a little neighborly assistance.
"But I can't even get Central!" she told Neilan, after he had explained finding the young woman unconscious in her car. Mrs. Johnson only sniffed at that, evidently thinking it a matter of drinking; and Neilan did not disabuse her mind. Instead, he asked if she knew where Dr. Manties lived.
"The Doctor? Why, yes. He has that big place, the Knoll, right on the road to town—the way you're going," she answered. "You can't miss it. Big creosote-stained cypress house, only the tile roof and the second story windows showing over the big stone wall on the road."
Ten minutes later Neilan stopped the car outside a walled estate he knew to be the Knoll. From this eminence he looked down on the village of Sentsbury, less than a mile distant—and caught his breath in a gasp.
Down the road a short distance was another auto, turned on its side! And there in the main street of Sentsbury not a creature moved! No cars. No horses. Not a sign of life of any kind!
"By heavens!" Neilan breathed in an awed voice. "Down there on the sidewalk there are three or four bundles! Are those people, lying there asleep?"
AS Neilan was to learn, this strange lethargy had come to the village queerly enough. Not all of a sudden, as is the case when a town in the war zone is shelled with gas; but over the whole of a rainy week there had been signs of sleepiness in many of the inhabitants. Of course no one paid any attention, except to grin, when Sam Volk, paying teller in the bank, yawned many times and finally slumped forward against his brass grille, sound asleep. That would have been a minor scandal—except that President Elias Hawkins, who would have had the job of reprimanding Sam, was found at his desk just as sound asleep as his employee!
Others were yawning too. The weather, was the general verdict.
But all this Thursday morning the sun had been shining. Blankets of white fog had lain in the hollows at dawn; but by noon the last vestige had disappeared, and the day was as clear and crisp as ever a third of September had been.
Just the same, the proprietors and employees of the stores in the bank block, Sentsbury's business section, came to work yawning. By noon most had made excuses and had started home to rest. Some had not got home. When the electric siren in the firehouse marked noon, everyone in the immediate vicinity of the bank block was as dead to the world as Rameses.
Farmers and tourists, stopping, became furious at the lack of attention. But in several cases that fury did not spur them to prompt-enough action. They stayed—and slept!
MAKING a last cautious attempt to waken his charge,
Cyanide Neilan left the car at the roadside, and banged the
antique cast-iron knocker of the studded oaken door. This
was the only approach to the brown-stained house from this
side; apparently. Somewhere else there must be a drive to the
garage, but the young man was too excited to waste time.
When there came no response to his first thunderous banging, he shouted. Damn people who didn't put electric bells on their garden gates, if they intended to lock them against intruders!
Two things happened at once. From the car at his back came a cry, as the girl swung open the door and stared dazedly about her. And simultaneously the top half of the studded oaken barrier in front of Neilan gave back a few inches, revealing a scowling and wholly inhospitable face.
"Oh! Where—what has happened?" Cecile Haight cried, and immediately descended from the sedan, staring at Neilan. "I have been asleep! You—did you find me somewhere?" She colored with a rush of embarrassment. "It's all right, Moebus," she added hurriedly, speaking to the black-browed creature at the half-door, who now had revealed himself as a hunchback no more than five feet in height.
Neilan had a sudden urge to caution. "You had just a slight accident, Miss Haight," he said, inwardly glad that this hunchback was not the physician whom he sought. "I just looked at the car license, and drove you over here, thinking that Dr. Manties had better see you. Now—" He noted that the dwarf was still there, scowling with inexplicable enmity. So Neilan suddenly dropped his voice to a whisper. "There's something awfully queer, Miss Haight. Could I speak to you a moment alone?"
"I'll say it's queer!" she agreed in a low tone, flashing an appraising glance at his tanned, earnest face—and apparently finding it reassuring. "Yes. It's all right, Moebus. I'm just going out for a few minutes now. Be right back."
With a disgruntled snarl the black-browed creature slammed the upper half of the door.
"If you're all right, I'll drive you back to where I left my car," offered Neilan. "I can tell you the whole thing on the way. But first, come here. Look down there into town. What do you see?"
Cecile Haight stiffened, and the color drained from her cheeks. "Then I didn't dream it!" she whispered. "The town, the people lying there on the sidewalk—oh, heavens! I—I felt myself getting drowsy too, so I hurried up the hill. I thought the air was stifling, and—"
Neilan nodded, handed her into the car, then took his place and drove away. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen a white curtain whisked away from an upper window of the house, and the ugly countenance of the servitor called Moebus, frowning down at them; though any connection between Moebus and the mystery of Sentsbury seemed far-fetched.
BRIEFLY he told about himself, gave his name and
occupation—and noted that the girl started slightly. It
had been at the mention of chemistry.
"But I swear to you I know nothing of this, if it does prove to be some gas which has put you all to sleep!" he assured. "By the way, have you any ill effects now? Does your head ache?"
"Not a bit. The only thing is,"—and here she yawned,—"I feel terribly much like lying down and going right back to sleep! You don't suppose there's anything all over this country? Anything like a gas from some earth-crack?"
Neilan could not answer that offhand, but said he would do his best to find out. He was not due back at college for several days; and this phenomenon had him absorbedly interested.
"We'll have to report this to the State police right away," he added. "D'you know where I can reach them? The phone-line seems to have gone dead."
With an odd reluctance Cecile Haight gave in to this, and showed him a turn which led to the main highway by a shortcut. Here they soon came upon a motorcycle officer, and Neilan said briefly that something very funny was going on down there in Sentsbury—people sleeping on the sidewalks! He let the motorcycle policeman believe that he, Neilan, had not wanted to stop, thinking this might be a gang raid of some kind, with machine-guns popping.
The officer recognized the name of Dr. Manties, and evidently held it in respect, for he let Neilan and the girl go along, while he thundered down the hill in the direction of the stricken town.
NEILAN drove back for his own car. He saw that the hay-wagon was gone. It seemed this sleepiness, or whatever it was, affected people profoundly, but for only a short space of time. When it passed, they were all right, and able to go on about their concerns. Neilan itched to go right down into Sentsbury to hear, see, taste and smell; but he knew enough of gases and their effects to want at least an impromptu mask before venturing. If the cop was gassed, it would be necessary for some one outside to send for a gas squad and ambulances, lest all these people breathed enough so that they died!
In spite of the exciting problem, Neilan was aware of the nearness of Cecile Haight. Yet she evaded his hints with smiles, even when he said impetuously: "Oh, I hope you don't think I'm just going to let you drive away out of my life now!"
"Why 'now'?" she smiled. "Oh, of course well be friends. Only, you have this funny business to investigate; and then—well, there are difficulties." She turned clear eyes on his.
"I know you think me unnecessarily secretive, Mr. Neilan," she added in a troubled tone. "It's not myself, though. I'd like to see you again sometime. Dr. Manties, for whom I work—Hm."
"You didn't mean to say that," he broke in quietly. "I'll try to forget it."
"Oh, you don't understand. I—But do you know, I'd like to ask a favor. Come back to the Knoll with me again. Never mind Moebus, who is the world's worst grouch. I want you to meet Dr. Manties, tell him immediately that you are in the chemistry department, and then tell him what you've observed in regard to Sentsbury. Will you do it?" Neilan agreed eagerly. "All right, you follow me. If you and the Doctor can get along, perhaps we can learn about this queer business at Sentsbury, right this afternoon. He—might lend you a gas-mask!"
A thrill that was almost a shiver skidded the length of Neilan's spine as he trod on his starter, and followed the other car. Dr. Manties, whoever he might be, had something to do with war or gases! Could he also have some connection with this strange occurrence at Sentsbury? Manties—the name was completely new to Neilan, and he would have heard of any scientist this near who was concerned with any sort of chemical experiments. Northern New England did not exactly bristle with them.
Cecile Haight had more than hinted at some such thing. Yet if she worked for a chemist, at least she did nothing in the laboratory. It is impossible to keep hands unstained, particularly the fingernails; and hers were beautifully manicured, and perfect.
Manties! Perhaps he was nothing but a country G.P. with independent means, and a slight bent for research. Neilan racked his brains for men hooked up with late developments in anesthesia—Goodenow, Stallmyer, Rast.... Yes, if he had been Isidor Rast, for instance, the man at Rochester who had put his surgical patients to sleep without their ever knowing they were taking gas!
THEY reached the Knoll. With another cautionary word not
to pay any attention to the hunchback Moebus, Cecile rapped
loudly on the outer door.
"The garage is around there," she said in a low voice, nodding toward the west. "I thought we'd be using the cars again in a few moments, though. I hope—"
She stopped short as the ugly face of the servitor appeared. One glance, and he snarled: "You come. Not him. Not anybody!"
"Look here, Moebus," she said icily, "take word in to Dr. Manties at once. I want him to meet my friend, and I don't care whether we are admitted, or the Doctor comes out here. The Doctor is at home, isn't he?"
"Yah, he's home.. I ask," he answered sullenly, and slammed the top half of the door squarely in the girl's face.
"What a sweetheart he is!" frowned Neilan.
"Oh, don't mind him. He's just a sort of—watchdog. The Doctor is very particular about visitors. He doesn't even let tradesmen deliver here. I have to go and bring home all the food, milk, and even the ice. But I mustn't talk to you about him."
"Mystery, M.D.," thought Neilan grimly, but he said nothing aloud. The thought of a splendid girl like Cecile Haight in a household with that human wart Moebus, and the queer recluse doctor, exasperated and worried him. Not his business up till now, of course; but that tingling sensation of mutual attraction between himself and Cecile Haight had altered everything.
MINUTES passed, with no sign from the house. Cecile was
growing momentarily more nervous.
"Oh, perhaps you'd better not stay!" she exclaimed, pacing up and down. "I don't know. The Doctor is so queer—"
"I'll take the responsibility," said Neilan. "You couldn't get rid of me now."
The girl half-smiled, and seemed relieved for a moment. But nothing happened. More minutes passed. Neilan himself took the initiative, stepping forward and sending a thunderous succession of knocks into the inner court or garden.
Nothing happened. There was no face at the upstairs window looking down at them. Finally Cecile could stand it no longer.
"Come. Drive around to the garage. I can get in there—unless something is seriously wrong. Sometimes he—he bolts the doors on the inside, and my key won't work."
With a sense of disaster growing, Neilan obeyed, going out to the car. There he halted, pointing downhill into the town, the other hand on the girl's arm.
"Look!" he whispered. "See that something at the curb over at the right? Isn't that a motorcycle and a man—lying down?"
"Oh, my God!" breathed Cecile, not meaning blasphemy. Her eyes held fullblown terror now. "Oh, let's hurry! Dr. Manties maybe can do something. I wouldn't wonder—"
The lurching start of a clutch let in too suddenly cut off her sentence. Following her direction, given with a gesture, Cyanide Neilan drove downhill a matter of fifty yards, then inward along the high wall. Here the roof of a double garage showed, attached to the farther side of the house. He swerved the car, backed, and then came forward again so the bonnet was headed for the near side, as Cecile indicated.
She leaped out, taking a jingling key-ring from her envelope bag. Neilan waited while she unlocked the small door and swung it open, then bethought himself and descended to help open the swing doors. Cecile disappeared into the dark garage, and a moment later electric lights flashed on.
Neilan stepped in, just in time to hear her ejaculation of surprise. There was another car there.
"Why—that one was being fixed!" she said wonderingly. "It wasn't there when I—"
Neilan had seen the thing which caused her to break off short, and had come swiftly to the front left-side door of the big car. A hatless man with gray hair, and wisps of curious cheek-beard of the same hue just below the prominent cheekbones of his seamed face, lay back from the wheel, his mouth open. His head rested on the cushioned back of the seat, and his right hand still clutched the gear-shift lever.
"Oh! It's Dr. Manties! And he's snoring!" cried the astounded girl. This evidently upset some unspoken suspicion.
In spite of himself Neilan chuckled grimly. "Victim, it seems, not villain!" he said. "All right, let's wake him and see what it's all about!"
THE job was not difficult. At almost the first touch and mild shaking of his shoulder, the physician moved, grunted and yawned widely. Neilan stepped back, watching as Cecile Haight spoke to the man. It seemed to the visitor, experiencing a curious twinge not unlike jealousy, that there was far more intimacy and understanding between this girl and the sixty-year-old doctor than the situation demanded or explained.
But Lester Manties awoke with a start, blinking—then letting a veil droop over the brilliance of his black eyes as he saw a stranger was present.
"Who is this?" he demanded in a whisper, gripping Cecile's wrist. "You know I don't like strangers around! I—heavens and earth, you don't mean I've been asleep! Me?" He sat up, suddenly realizing his unusual position. "Asleep? What does this mean? What—Oh!" And it seemed that sudden memory came to him. He got out of the car, staggering a little as he took the first steps, but shaking his head impatiently when Cecile caught his arm.
"I'm all right. But something very queer is going on! That can wait, though. Who are you, sir?"
NEILAN had been sizing up the medico, certain that Manties
belonged somewhere in the middle of this breathless mystery of
the quiet Vermont countryside. He saw a short, chunky man in
black, shiny-worn broadcloth coat and gray striped trousers.
Manties was a little round-shouldered, and his eyes showed a
streaking of red arteries across the whites—which might
mean dissipation, or merely late hours and much reading or
microscope work.
(Or it might be the irritating effect of gases, was Neilan's afterthought.)
Nothing was to be gained by anything save frankness, though. In a score of sentences Neilan explained himself and what he had seen, his rescue of the sleeping girl, and his sending of the motorcycle policeman down into Sentsbury.
"I suppose you must have been there?" he queried in conclusion. "The gas—if that's what it is—seems to do its work down there in the town. Are there any illuminating-gas mains?"
"In a town of four hundred people?" snorted Manties. "No! Yes, I walked down there, and got this car at the garage. The horn and headlights had been shorted, and I'd left it there overnight to be fixed. Hm! You say you teach chemistry? Well, young man, you seem all right. I have certain connections with that science myself, as I suppose Miss Haight has told you."
This was an offhand observation containing the quality of a question. Neilan was suddenly alert. It would be advisable to avoid getting the girl in wrong.
"I know nothing about you, Dr. Manties—except that you're a doctor, and as such you probably will be able to advise me on this strange thing that seems to be happening in Sentsbury!" he replied seriously. "Can't we—or you—get on a phone, if it's in working order now, and really find out what this is? I take it you did not get any real information down there?"
"No, I certainly did not!" said the Doctor, knitting his brows. "Now you speak of it, I did see a couple of men lying in the gutter. But I thought it was just one of our usual hard-cider jags, and that Jeb Conley would take care of them. Jeb is the constable....
"Hm! The young man at the garage certainly yawned. I thought it was just watching him that made me so sleepy. I got away as soon as I could. I remember getting here, opening the doors, and driving in. After that—well, it's a blank!"
"And may we phone?" repeated Neilan pointedly.
The Doctor nodded. There was manifest reluctance in his manner as he invited Neilan to accompany him and Cecile Haight into the house. But he did so, and ushered them through a hallway into a gloomy, book-lined room which had heavy purple drapes on the three windows, and which smelled unmistakably like formic acid—the disagreeable scent which arises when ants are crushed.
"My laboratory is next door. You'll have to pardon the incense," said Manties with forced jocularity. "Have a seat. Mix him a highball if he wants once, Cecile."
AGAIN this familiarity toward the girl! Neilan seated
himself, and saw Manties pull out a lattice arm on the
end of which was a phone. He lifted the receiver. Cecile,
meanwhile, went over and touched a button on the wall. Back
somewhere a buzzer whirred like a disturbed sidewinder. No
doubt summoning the disagreeable hunchback, thought Neilan, as
there were no signs of a buffet or sideboard in this gloomy
library-lounge.
The phone remained dead. No one came to answer Cecile's ring. Both people seemed perplexed; and in the case of the girl, Neilan knew this was genuine. They both had seen the hunchback only a short time before. Was he sulking back in a corner somewhere like a misshapen spider, waiting to pounce upon some one and inject his deadly venom?
What went on then for some minutes did not matter much. The Doctor tried again and again to rouse Central, without success. Finally Cecile ran to him, her face pale.
"Oh, it's no use, Doctor!" she cried in a stifled voice. "Moebus doesn't answer—and I'm afraid to go look for him! You and Mr. Neilan must send out a general alarm. I just know all of Sentsbury is sound asleep. Probably Moebus too! This horror is creeping up around us all!"
"Nonsense!" snapped Manties. "We're living in the Twentieth Century! Go back and see what's wrong with Moebus. Meanwhile, if you'll excuse me—" He paused, placing a key in the door of an adjoining room, probably his laboratory, from which the acid smell emanated.
NEILAN nodded. His attention was centered more on
Cecile Haight. Had the girl some premonition? "Let me
go along," he was suggesting in a whisper, when Manties
disappeared—and locked the laboratory door behind
him!
"Oh, no, I'm just—foolish. Only—" She essayed a wraithlike smile, then disappeared into the hall leading back into the body of the house.
Manties reappeared, unlocking and then locking the door again before turning to the visitor. His left arm was filled with apparatus which Neilan recognized with a tingling thrill. Oxygen tanks and helmets! Far better than gas-masks, particularly when the very existence and nature of the gas in question still was problematical with them.
"I'm experimenting with formic acid," explained Manties, rather unnecessarily, since the stench had come in through the door in almost overpowering concentration. "Bad for the lungs. So I use one of these. They'll come in handy now.
"Shall we take them, and go down to see just what idiotic thing has been happening in Sentsbury?" Manties shoved one of the helmet-masks with its cylinder into Neilan's hands. "We can leave Cecile here, so if anything really extraordinary is wrong down there, she—"
That was as far as he got. Neilan was willing enough to go, but he intended to have a word of warning with the girl first. Now there was no necessity to ask for it. From somewhere beyond the short dark hall, whence she had gone in search of Moebus, shriek upon shriek in the girl's voice came to their ears.
They stood spellbound a long second. Then simultaneously Dr. Manties and the younger man rushed for the hall, and the doorways beyond.
"Cecile!" Manties cried out sharply. "Where are you?"
But she came stumbling out to meet them, chalk-white of face, and holding both hands away from her as if they stung.
No need to ask why! Both her palms were dripping scarlet!
"Moebus! He's dead!" she gasped, and sank into Neilan's arms. It was odd, but even in that crazy moment his mind worked in detached fashion, making him glow inwardly with the knowledge that she had deliberately chosen his protection, over that of the man who employed her, and seemed to know her so very well.
Manties paid no attention. He dashed forward. Neilan felt the girl's figure wilt from the rigidity of shock, so he swiftly lifted and carried her back into the lounge. There he laid her upon a mousy velour davenport, took out his own handkerchief, and swiftly wiped away the gory stains from her hands and wrists.
The blood was fresh, no sign of clotting. Throwing the handkerchief into the hearth, on which a small fire of cannel coal smoldered, Neilan ran to see the worst. Sinister Hollow was beginning in earnest to live up to its name!
AT the foot of the narrow back stairway leading upward to the second floor from the serving-pantry off the kitchen, lay what was left of Edward Moebus. Afflicted and misshapen in life, he was pitiable now. The thin arms and legs with their coverings of clothes seemed almost boneless; mere tatters of humanity surrounding the big dish-faced head and awesome hump which took the place of shoulders and neck.
He had been shot or stabbed in the neck—without a close examination it was difficult to say which—and had fallen forward down this steep flight of stairs. Blood was everywhere. While Dr. Manties, after one horrified exclamation, hunkered down to make a certainty of the fact of death, Neilan avoided the dead man, and concentrated upon the stair and the blood-stains.
"You'll be able to tell more exactly, Doctor," he said in a low voice, coming down and stepping carefully to avoid the awesome gouts of blood, "but according to these stains, your servant cannot have been dead more than a few minutes."
"Eh? Eh?" Manties seemed to be brought back with a jerk, from some unwelcome problem. "Hm, not long. But I can't tell just how long. His body has cooled a little. He was something of a bleeder—a haemophile."
Well, that would account for the fresh redness of the blood. But Neilan, glancing at his wrist-watch, knew that less than an hour had elapsed since he had gone with Cecile Haight to retrieve his own car, and seen Moebus staring down at them from the upstairs window. The assassin must have been lurking there even then!
Privately the visitor entertained certain grim thoughts regarding the Doctor himself. Manties had been there, probably had come up from the village at almost the moment that Cecile and Neilan had left. Motive was completely unknown; but if the medico had not been asleep there in his car, but shamming, he certainly had to be granted opportunity!
The back door was unlocked. It seemed the only way a killer could have escaped. But if he had gone this way—
Neilan abruptly excused himself, and made sure by a circuit of the house and grounds. There were no other ways of exit save the drive into the garage, and the locked oaken door opening to the Sentsbury road! Climbing the wall was possible; but there were no natural advantages such as trees with convenient limbs, and there was no sign of a ladder anywhere.
It was by no means water-tight—one of these classic, hermetically sealed rooms so loved by concocters of the sensational; but if one barred a careful long-distance planner who meant to slay the unimportant Moebus and conceal every trace of his coming and going, then it surely looked as though the killer had remained right there on the premises!
Neilan went back to the lounge, and there found Cecile almost cowering at one end of the davenport.
"This is a place where I'm not going to leave you," he said quietly, sitting down and taking one of the girl's icy hands in his own. "In fact, Miss Haight, since I'm not sure what your employer intends, I suggest that you and I take my old jaloppy right now, and beetle over to Tunbridge or Stafford, where we can feel safe. Take a few clothes, so you can stay—"
"While you come back here, I suppose?" she put in with a flash of spirit. "No, thanks! I'll tell you what, though: Let's you and I take those—" She indicated the oxygen helmets and cylinders where Manties and Neilan had dumped them incontinently.
"You can show me how to work one of them, can't you? Well then, let's go!"
"You mean—Sentsbury?" he queried incredulously.
"Of course. Dr. Manties will take care of this part. I think we ought to see if there's anyone there we could help, and then—"
"Then call in the reserves!" he finished grimly. "All right, Miss Haight. It's a chance for you, but no worse than staying here, the way I see it."
Neilan took the apparatus, and led the way on tiptoe. Once he had this girl away from the gloomy house, he meant to get down to cases with her in respect to Manties. There was no doubt she knew something about his activities, and more than suspected that they had to do with the disaster at Sentsbury—if not, indeed, with the murder of Moebus.
They reached the garage in safety, slid open the door; and suddenly they heard Dr. Manties' voice:
"Cecile! Where are you?"
Neilan trod on the starter. The car went right into reverse, and then he swung it swiftly, shooting into second immediately. It left the vicinity of the garage with a roar and a rush. Glancing backward, Neilan saw through the rear window that Manties had come running out after them, just too late.
And the Doctor held something in his right hand—something that glittered!
The visitor said nothing of this to Cecile. Instead he reached over, distracting her attention momentarily by lifting the heavy oxygen cylinders from her knees to the floor of the car.
When they were safely out of sight of the Knoll, Neilan turned up a side road a short distance. Then he took out the two helmets with their tanks and harnesses, and tested them. Both worked. He showed Cecile how to use hers, and put it in place. Then he donned his own, and smiled at her through the goggles. The ludicrous flex-tube respirator gave the effect of a hideous proboscis. Had there been anyone looking, it must have seemed that two monsters from another planet were descending upon the seemingly peaceful Vermont countryside.
IN a moment more, however, both of them forgot themselves
in the tense excitement of a close look at Sentsbury. Just
on the outskirts, stretched in the road, lay a tall man whom
anyone could guess was the parish priest—from his
garb, and the fact that he had been using a tight-rolled and
sheathed umbrella as a walking-stick.
Neilan got down and carried him to the roadside, arranging him as comfortably as possible. Then they went on. The first building of the town proper was a hay-and-feed store. Out in front were two bearded worthies leaning against the wall in tipped-back chairs. No need to ask about them. They slumbered.
"Look!" pointed Neilan, lifting an arm. His lips voiced the warning, which of course was not heard.
Down at the bank block, the business district, three police cars were drawn up at the curb, and behind them a big white car, an ambulance. The warning, then, had been given by others. Men in respirators similar to those Cecile and Neilan wore, were carrying unconscious forms from the bank and other establishments of the block, and stacking them in the ambulance like cordwood. Two men were just placing the figures of a little girl and a boy on a stretcher. These had been taken from a big sedan which had stopped at the dead gas-pump of the garage. This was the car which had passed him while he was engaged with the hay-wagon, more than an hour earlier.
THEIR arrest came suddenly. Intending to help, Neilan
drew up opposite the police cars. All of a sudden two
determined-looking fellows with respirators—State
police—stepped up on the running-boards, flourishing
pistols. They motioned imperatively for Neilan to turn around,
and drive out of town in the direction from which they had
come.
"Good Lord, I don't blame them!" thought the young man in sudden mental panic. "Both of us coming right down here, equipped with oxygen! Lucky if we aren't lynched before we can explain!"
They did their explaining ten minutes later, with handcuffs on Neilan, and a frowning, skeptical State trooper keeping Cecile under guard.
"G'wan," scoffed one of the uniformed men. "You knew all right this village was gassed! You are the bird who told Trent" (so that was the motorcycle cop), "and got him to go down and take a dose of the same so's he wouldn't run you in!
"And now you tell me there's been murder? Okay! Drive up there to the Doctor's place, Ramsey. I'll see these two don't start nothin'!" He stared from cold, disbelieving eyes at the bewildered, half-demoralized pair. The only thing in the world Cyanide Neilan could think of to be thankful for was that he had not mentioned the fact that he taught chemistry at college. These men would soon find it out from Dr. Manties, however.
"Were—there any serious casualties in the town?" asked Neilan, determined now to find out the worst.
"Oh, it'll be murder, all right!" the man called Ramsey turned back from the wheel to snarl. "Some of these guys we carted out from the bank are practic'ly cold right now!"
"But no one was really dead, was he?" persisted Neilan.
"Wasn't you just tellin' me?" sneered the policeman, who seemed determined to give his prisoners no information at all.
"Oh, it's a nightmare!" said Cecile in a stifled voice. She clasped the hand of the man at her side, who returned the pressure and kept hold. Of course it would all come out all right; and the chances were strong that he would be thanking his lucky stars for the break of having met Cecile Haight, even under the shadow of a murder indictment.
During those minutes following their first interrogation, and until the police brought them again to the Knoll, Cyanide took on years of maturity. He saw the predicament with clearness: No chance, of course, to convict him of any crime. Yet in the breath-taking sensation which this murder of a hunchback would make when added to the inexplicable mystery of Sentsbury, he would get the spotlight—and even liberal colleges are not overanxious to have exonerated murder-suspects on their faculties.
UP to now Neilan had been a carefree young man who had
turned to teaching, when a somewhat formless notion of
getting a job in the chemical department of a big paper mill
had been blasted by the depression years in which research
and discoveries of new processes were worthless. Now he saw
clearly that he either would come out of this mess in a hurry
and with something more than mere exoneration, or he would
be up against it—with no more than six hundred dollars
left, to his name.
The young man's jaw set with resolution. He would come through some way. He had to! Without realizing the fact, he clenched his fists—which was perfectly all right, save for the fact that one of Cecile's hands happened to be inside. Her wince and gasp brought him to the present, with a quick apology, but she smiled rather wanly. Probably she guessed some of the stirring thoughts in his mind, and was by no means displeased.
They reached the Knoll; and the State police acted with quick efficiency. Knocking at the gate brought no answer from inside. Dr. Manties appeared to be too absorbed to pay attention.
That was quite the truth, though not in exactly the manner they surmised.
"We can get in at the garage, probably," Cecile suggested in a low voice. So the same maneuver was repeated, and her key again opened the small door for their entry.
The other car still stood there, but when Cecile tremblingly unlocked the door leading into the house proper, the medico still failed to put in an appearance.
"DR. MANTIES!" shouted one of the uniformed men, when
quieter alarms failed to produce the owner of the property. No
answer. The voice echoed hollowly.
"A'right, he aint here, I guess," said the frowning officer. "You sure he was here, huh?" He was ready, evidently, to disbelieve anything and everything that had been told him by the two prisoners; and what was to follow did not lessen his skepticism. .
"Oh, yes! Why, he must still be here!" answered the pair almost in chorus. Then Neilan's voice alone: "Why don't you go look there at the kitchen stairs, where the body of Moebus is? He—the Doctor—might be too busy. Or he—" It was on the tip of his tongue to say Manties might have fainted, but that was too absurd. He just might have dropped off to sleep again, however. Cecile had said she felt much like lying down and sleeping again, when Neilan had first wakened her.
With a grunt the officer went back to the kitchen. There came the sound of a door slamming, and some movements. Two minutes later he returned.
"C'mon, you two," he said gruffly. "Show me this here dead dwarf you been talkin' about! Sam, you look around. See if the Doc is upstairs, or down in the basement somewheres. I think we got a couple prizes in these two—loonies, or whatever!"
"Look—in the laboratory!" breathed Cecile. "Dr. Manties may have gone there! Break the door down, if you have to. I—I'm afraid something awful has happened to him too!"
"Now what d'ye mean, too?" almost snarled the policeman, when Cecile and the astounded Neilan stood staring at the empty stairs leading upward from the kitchen.
The body of Edward Moebus had disappeared!
What was more, some one had wiped up the bloodstains rather carefully--though not carefully enough so Neilan could not indicate where they had been.
"Look!" he whispered excitedly. "The body was here, all right! We both saw it, and we left the Doctor kneeling down beside it. If you look close you can see the smear where the blood has been wiped up since we left. Some of it is caught in this stair-crack! There ought to be more above here, too, as Moebus fell all the way down the stairs after he was wounded."
"Know a lot about it, don't yuh?" gritted the officer.
Nevertheless he did look closely at step after step, and evidently found enough sign of gore to make Neilan's tale of a corpse plausible.
"I'm gonna call Captain Raines," he decided, when the other policeman came back, reporting that there was no sign of the well-known Dr. Manties anywhere in the house—not even in the laboratory, the door of which he surprisingly had found unlocked!
"This business looks like hoke to me. But if it aint—then it'll be just too bad for you, young fella!" He glared at Neilan a promise of dire things.
"From your standpoint, I'd say hocus-pocus would be the only thing I had to fear," Neilan retorted. "I'm not guilty of anything and neither is Miss Haight. And the sooner you take off these silly handcuffs and let us really help, the sooner you'll find out what you want to know in this case!"
For a long instant the policeman wavered. Then he shrugged heavy shoulders. "I don't s'pose you'll try to run away," he admitted finally, and took out his key to the cuffs.
BY sundown a brisk northeast wind was blowing; and in
Sentsbury the cobwebs of daylight lethargy seemed to be
whisked away. There had been no serious casualties—two
or three bruised patients, and one, whose car had turned
on its side, with a broken collarbone. The big city papers
decided to treat the matter with elephantine derision,
contending that a Vermont hamlet miles from a railway scarcely
would know whether it was awake or asleep, anyhow!
The police did not feel that way about it. Nor did those who had been interrupted in their daylight pursuits by the uncanny somnolence. And the police proved quickly, of course, that an ugly-tempered hunchback named Moebus really had taken care of the Knoll for Dr. Manties. Moebus was gone, and there was blood on the back stairs. Dr. Lester Manties—a physician who had performed many a near-miracle in medicine and surgery over this part of Vermont, and was highly respected for his skill—also had vanished. He had not taken his car. He had not even taken a hat, it seemed, when Cecile Haight checked over his wardrobe for the police.
TELETYPE and radio carried descriptions of the two missing
men. Every policeman in New England, whether trooper,
constable or city patrolman, was on a sharp lookout.
Yet through the hours of that long evening no word was
received.
"Of course," Neilan said to Cecile Haight the first time they had an opportunity to speak to each other alone, "if Dr. Manties did murder Moebus, we can see why Manties is missing; but somehow I don't credit that."
"Not for one minute!" agreed Cecile with a forceful nod. "I have reasons to know Doctor Manties was odd. But he wasn't crazy. He—he is a sort of cousin of mine. I didn't mean to tell you that, but it's true. I had never heard of him, but Mother had. When he wrote, asking if I wanted a position—I'd just graduated from college, you know—I was delighted.. We had quite a correspondence. I didn't have any special training, you see, but that seemed to be exactly what he wanted in a secretary. He didn't dictate any letters at all. Wrote them all himself, when he had to."
"But then what did you do, if you were his secretary?"
The girl frowned slightly. Then she shook her head, and the blue eyes were troubled. "If anything has happened to Dr. Manties," she said slowly, "I'll have to explain. I'll tell you first, and see what you think. But right now, until we find the Doctor, I—well, I've given my solemn word not to tell!"
Neilan reached over to grip her hand momentarily. "Good for you!" he answered. "Some day I might want you to give your word to me.... Isn't that the trooper captain? Raines, I think was the name."
CECILE flashed a look of relief. "Oh, I hope he's got
sense!" she breathed.
Not only did he exhibit what the girl considered sense, but he provided a real surprise for Neilan. A younger brother, whom Dave Raines was helping put through college, had been taking freshman chemistry the previous year, and had written of the instructors. Within five seconds Dave placed Neilan, and asked gruffly if the latter recalled a sophomore named Johnny Raines.
Fortunately Neilan did recall that eager freshman of the previous year. So the crusty Dave unbent, listened to the wild story of happenings at the Knoll—and then, if he shared the skepticism of his subordinate, Troper Ramsey, he concealed the fact. The press, when it questioned him, was told that the Vermont police were exceptionally fortunate in securing the services of a well-known university chemist, Mr. C. Neilan, to assist in the unraveling of the Sentsbury mystery!
Best of all, Captain Raines shared Neilan's belief that some chemical jiggery-pokery must be at the bottom of all the trouble. Sensibly he demanded from Cecile just what had been going on at the Knoll—and if the laboratory research of the Doctor had been responsible for the extraordinary precautions against intrusion.
Cecile shook her head. "I suspect it's the reason, all right," she admitted; "sorry to tell you, though, but I know nothing whatever about it. You see,"—and here she smiled at Neilan rather sadly,—"I got my place here chiefly because I had never taken even one semester hour either in chemistry or physics!
"Oh, yes, I know just how fishy that sounds, but it's the truth. And you can verify it in a hurry. My mother is an invalid. She lives over in Ticonderoga, New York, and she has all the correspondence with Dr. Manties. Send a man to her, if you don't believe me."
"I believe you, Miss Haight," said Raines quietly. "That would fit in with the notion of secret experiments. The Doctor apparently wanted no one around him who would be capable of understanding just what he was doing."
"Good!" applauded Neilan. "And now, Captain, if you'll let me prowl about a bit, it may be that I can begin to make some kind of guess at what it was that had to be guarded."
Raines agreed to Neilan's "prowl," then told Cecile a trooper would drive her to Leicester Junction. There he would put her on a train which would get her into Ticonderoga before midnight.
At the moment Cecile only frowned, as she was too happy over the manner in which Neilan's connection had been established. But the instant Raines left them, she shook her head stubbornly.
"Until Dr. Manties returns, I stay here!" she declared. "You can just tell Captain Raines that, too!"
Neilan thought fast. There was reason, of course, in the girl's stand; and as far as he was concerned, he did not want her to leave.
"Look here, Miss Haight—" he began worriedly, however.
"The name is Cecile," she interrupted with a defiant smile. "And yours?"
"Call me Cyanide—and you don't have to smile!" he returned. "But in regard to staying. Don't you see this place is going to be inhabited entirely by police? If Dr. Manties does return—and I'm grimly afraid he won't—you can get back within a few hours."
"That's not good enough," she denied with a shake of her head. "I'm here until—well, until I know more about what is really happening. Don't you see? I am the only one who knows anything about the way things have gone here!"
"I'm a little bit afraid you may know too much!" said Neilan. But he gave in, and sought Raines. The latter dubiously gave permission for Cecile to stay, and promised to send for a police matron to keep her company.
MEANWHILE the girl, worn out by all that had happened,
went to her own apartment, which consisted of a bedroom,
dressing-room and bath—and which the anxious Neilan
searched thoroughly before taking his leave. With the doors
locked and bolted, and the windows all held fast shut by
patent burglar latches as well as the ordinary flange locks,
it did not appear that anything could get in to harm her.
Neilan went down to the gloomy library-lounge, which Raines had converted into headquarters for the time being, and announced his ideas.
"You tell me that the people have recovered, and that most of them have gone back to their homes in Sentsbury?"
"Yes. Nobody badly hurt, thank the Lord!"
"Then I'm going to take a look at the Doctor's big car—the one in which we found him asleep. After that I'll begin work in the lab—although if there aren't some filed notes around, I'll probably learn mighty little. Didn't come upon a safe or a steel filing-cabinet anywhere, did you?"
Captain Raines shook his head. "One of my men says the Doctor banks in Montpelier, and he also has a safety deposit box there. If he doesn't show up—well, we can get an order to open it, tomorrow."
NEILAN went to the garage, snapped on the lights and
started an almost microscopic examination of the floor rugs,
the car pockets, the upholstery.
After ten minutes he looked up, disappointed.
Then he went over the outside of the shiny car—a three-year-old model, but one which had been driven only nineteen thousand miles, and which was not scratched, dented or sun-faded. The result again was zero.
Thinking hard, he placed himself behind the wheel, leaned over in the position Dr. Manties had been in when they discovered him.
All of a sudden his eyes fastened upon an odd lever, just below the cowl and instrument board. This was something surely not placed there by the manufacturers of this fine car! It was a plain bar of iron, seemingly a lever. From the forward end a taut wire stretched downward, through a hole in rug and floorboard.
Neilan depressed it, let go. It returned to place with a snap! A spring which looked as though it might have been taken from a screen door, brought it sharply back to place.
Nothing, however, had happened. Going over all the old-fashioned gadgets which tinkerers used to put upon their cars, the investigator rejected all of them. He began to be immensely interested, since the car he owned had been a road wreck when he bought it. He had bought parts, and tooled it into shape himself.
Now he followed down that wire, and found that it ran on a spool pulley, straight back to a sort of tin can shaped like a gigantic pepper-box, set immediately above the exhaust muffler near the rear end, and below. Pulling the wire evidently made something happen inside the pepper-box.
With a screw-driver the young man removed the container, which was heavy in his hand. As he shook it gently, there was a faint rattling sound; but the shaker opener had a spring on it, and stayed tightly closed unless the arm attached to the wire were moved.
His face serious with what he thought the imminence of discovery, Neilan took the container with him into Manties' laboratory. There he carefully shook out on a plate of glass some of the contents, and peered at them, frowning.
They looked unexciting enough, much like very minute iron shavings and filings. Taking a few of the ordinary reagents and some test-tubes in a rack, he used extreme caution in dropping first some fuming nitric acid, then some hydrochloric, then some sulphuric—and finally, a few drops of concentrated ammonia, on four individual specimens.
In no case, not with any of the three strong mineral acids, or with the strong alkaline reagent, was there the slightest perceptible reaction!
"Hell, don't tell me that's platinum!" growled Neilan aloud, mentioning one of the very few elements which yields not at all to ordinary acids. He made a test for the valuable metal, and it also was completely negative.
He shook a few grains in his hand, then on impulse put a bit on his tongue.
Nothing happened. Except for a very faint aroma of machine-oil, this substance he had discovered had no taste or smell whatsoever! Half disappointed that it had not started to deliquesce or burn upon his tongue, he spat out the particle.
ENSUED then a routine of tests for a laboratory
"unknown"—and this specimen stubbornly intended to
remain unknown, too. It was not until Neilan took a Bunsen
burner and plate, with inverted cup above to try for melting
and possible sublimation, that anything happened. Then the
little heap of black particles changed to red heat, then to
white. But it refused to melt!
This in itself was interesting, since in the full combustion of the burner a heat approximating 3000 degrees F. was generated—sufficient to melt almost anything save a few substances which can be handled only in an electric furnace.
But the real discovery came a few moments later, when, despairing of melting the stuff, Neilan lifted it away with wooden-handled pincers. He saw it glint queerly, and appear to give off a taint grayish vapor!
Watching, every nerve tense, he let minutes pass by—nearly half an hour. And the substance still smoked!
Neilan backed away and opened the windows. He took out the pepper-box can, and sought Captain Raines.
"GOT a piece of your mystery, I think!" he said in a tense
whisper. "D'you think Ramsey or some one could scare up a
canary bird—or a rabbit—or a chicken?"
"Gas test?" demanded Raines crisply, understanding.
"Something like that—and the means used to put Sentsbury to sleep, I believe!" promised Neilan with a thrill of jubilance.
"Oh-h!" It was the scared voice of Cecile Haight. She had come down, and was staring at the container clutched in the hand of the detective. "D-don't you think you'd better wait till Dr. Manties comes back?" she faltered. "I—I've seen him filling that thing, and I'm afraid—"
"Look here, Cecile! Do you really know what this is?" demanded Neilan seriously, while for the first time a veil of suspicion appeared in the eyes of the trooper captain.
"No—only, it is something he was extremely careful nobody else touched! It came from the laboratory; that much I know. And oh, Cy, I'm afraid!"
In spite of the seriousness of the moment, the young man had to grin. This was a new departure in names, and he liked it.
"We'll be careful," he promised. "You know, this is my business, Cecile. You can come and watch, if you'd like. There won't be any danger, I'm pretty sure."
But the experiment, carried out under the glare of police-car headlights, plus the ordinary lights of the garage, was a puzzling failure. After restoring the pepper-box can to its place, where by manipulation of the spring bar on the dash it could be made to dump a little of the unknown material into the baffle compartments of the muffler, Neilan ran the big car out of the garage. He then turned it around, and placed it so the exhaust pipe was just inside the open garage door.
By this time Trooper Ramsey had returned with a ruffled and indignant Plymouth Rock hen, and this was shooed into the garage. There it blinked and wandered around in the bright lights, pecking desultorily at this and that.
Neilan started the car. When it was idling smoothly, he depressed the bar on the dash. A moment later a rippling gray stream of smoke or dust poured from the pipe. This hung in the air, then slowly settled—much of it around the hen, which was almost hidden from view of the watchers.
But when the air had cleared again, with the car motor stopped, the hen went right on pecking experimentally at things on the floor. The mysterious substance seemed to have no effect at all! Neilan's face grew red. He had been so sure of his theory, that failure irked him—particularly with Cecile Haight looking on. He tried again, but the gray dust or smoke made no difference at all to the hen. He realized, too, that in the laboratory he must have inhaled a certain amount of the fumes from the roasting metal, without as much as a yawn to show for it. So he surrendered.
"I was wrong. Sorry. But I'll do my best now to figure out just what this stuff can be meant to do! Certainly it has nothing like carbon-extracting as a purpose."
He ran the car back into the garage. The hen was restored to her home roost. And Neilan took back the mysterious can, with its remaining contents, to the laboratory.
Cecile accompanied him rather fearfully, for this was her first visit to the forbidden room. It looked much like any small laboratory, however, with white-tiled walls on which racks of bottled reagents stood, and two zinc-topped tables with arrays of clean test-tubes, beakers, and other small apparatus such as Bunsen burners, a microscope, a sterilizer and "cooker" for bacterial cultures, and several small retorts arranged neatly.
There were no mysterious experiments in progress. The only unusual features were a large and expensive fluoroscopic screen and X-ray machine (though the Doctor undoubtedly used this in his practice), and a big mercury-arc sunlamp of the sort used by people who wish to acquire tan in the winter months.
"Why is this sun-lamp bent down over the table?" asked Cecile.
Neilan started to make some facetious remark, but a sudden change came in his expression. "Holy Moses!" he breathed. "I—say, that may be the explanation! Wait now, let me think!"
Cecile watched him wonderingly as he ran back to the table—running water into a beaker and dropping some of the mystery substance into that.
"We'll see, Cecile dear!" he said with repressed excitement. "If I get it now, you are the one who gave me the hint!"
Captain David Raines was willing enough to allow Neilan full scope for his experiments; but when eleven o'clock came around, and the young chemist remained in the laboratory with Cecile Haight, the officer began to wonder. The case had bogged down, as far as he and his men were concerned. Search for the hunchback and the Doctor would be resumed everywhere at daybreak—with special attention to new graves, and places where bodies could be hidden. But now the Captain had let his men retire, and intended to snatch a few hours' rest himself. This young man and girl, however, ought to go to bed first, he thought. There was a police matron to keep Miss Haight company now.
The Captain went to the closed door and knocked. This was just because he shrewdly suspected these two young people had not been concerned for three whole hours with chemistry alone.
He turned the knob and entered. One foot across the threshold, one glance, and Dave Raines turned back, shouting for his men, who had draped themselves on couches and chairs in the various rooms. Panic and sudden anger was in his voice.
In a heap down there beside the zinc table where the sun-lamp burned, lay Neilan, snoring peacefully—and of his companion, Cecile Haight, there was no sign in the room!
THE only person at the Knoll that night who slept another minute, was the one who would have given ten years of his life to be up and doing—Cyanide Neilan.
Captain Raines guessed that the young chemist had penetrated the secret, and had him taken out of the laboratory instantly by policemen who held their breaths while they worked.
Nothing could wake up Neilan, seemingly. They filled a tub with ice-cold water, held him by shoulders and ankles, and doused him up and down. No use. They rubbed him with rough Turkish towels. His skin glowed. He stopped snoring, a bad habit to which he was not usually addicted. But he refused to awaken. Pulse was good, if a trifle slow. The police physician finally said that he could administer a hypodermic which might or might not succeed, but that he advised letting the man sleep until an ordinary shaking would do the work.
"Not a chance!" snapped Captain Raines. "If you've got anything in your bag that'll do it, shoot!" And for that, Neilan would bless him, he knew.
But even with the shot in the arm, Neilan was not stirring and looking around wildly for Cecile, until half-past one in the morning. Then when he finally understood that the girl he loved, and who had stood at his elbow while he solved the mystery of the sleep that had come to Sentsbury, had vanished without trace, he was an extremely quiet, grim man whose bloodshot eyes turned this way and that, and whose mind raced between possibilities.
"I'm going to find her. Lend me a loaded pistol and a couple extra clips!" he demanded from Raines. In his left hand he held one of the police flashlights.
The policeman complied. "There isn't a thing you can do till morning—but God bless you!" he said.
"There is something!" said Neilan, from between clenched teeth. "Whoever it was took Cecile Haight came in that lab window we found open. He or they must have had a car waiting; but in thinking this thing out, I've come to the conclusion that the man I'm looking for is right close!"
"Have to be, probably," frowned Raines, "in order to dispose of a body and kidnap the Doctor—if that's what really did happen."
"It did. And now Cecile! Good-by!" snapped Neilan, and stepped out of the open laboratory window, leaping the short distance to the ground and immediately spraying the shrubbery with the oval beam of his flash.
"Come here, Porter!" said Raines, turning back to one of his silent, uncomprehending men. "Don't let Neilan know you're doing it, but keep him in sight. Ought to be easy at night. If anything happens, shoot—and we'll come running!"
JUST too late the trooper captain realized that his
chemist-detective had been too wrapped up in thoughts of the
missing girl, to elucidate the chemical problem.
"Well, it's got something to do with that stuff in the can, and probably with that sun-lamp!" said Raines sensibly to himself. "I reckon another chem' shark could work it out now, if worst came to worst."
He bethought himself of one test, and sent the annoyed Trooper Ramsey out to rob the convenient hen-roost again. This time, when Raines himself tossed the Plymouth Rock fluttering to the floor of the laboratory, she pecked only five or six times. Then her wings slowly spread sidewise. Her head drooped, the eyelids closing. And a few seconds later she slumped down, sounder asleep than she had ever been with the bar of a roost between her calloused talons.
"Well, he wasn't faking, anyhow!" said Raines with satisfaction. He had suffered moments of doubt. Young Neilan just might have been in this somewhere, and playing the captain for a stooge. Now those fears vanished.
AS for the instructor, he was outside with his flashlight, following the prints of two pairs of men's shoes, large ones, straight to the garden wall. In this direction all was in darkness. There had been no watch kept, since the last thing expected was for some one to wish to break in to the Knoll!
The visitors must have had a ladder, for there were slight scratches, and a leaf of ivy was crushed near the top of the wall. With some difficulty, taking chances on the rather flimsy ivy branches, Neilan climbed to the top and jumped down.
There were heavy prints in the moist earth, and two round holes to show where the ladder had stood.
"Bet they used the ladder as a stretcher, damn them!" he snarled to himself. "Then with a cover over Cecile, they could walk right down the road. Nobody would question but what it was just some one overcome, and being cared for by the cops!"
A quarter moon and a firmament of bright stars gave enough light so he could see fairly well, once he reached the road and emerged from the trees.
"If they had a car here, no telling how far they went," he reflected despairingly. "But to hell with that! Right now I've got to imagine they didn't use a car; that they were right close to the Knoll somewhere. That'd be the sensible thing, anyway."
He wasted a good half-hour in following the gravel road on foot for a mile, as it curved aimlessly about the rolling contours of the hollow. But by the time he had retraced his steps, he felt sure that Cecile, the Doctor and the dead hunchback could not have been carried in that direction.
Downhill from the knoll in the opposite direction lay Sentsbury, still showing a dozen or more lights at this early morning hour for what was probably the first time in the town's history. After that day of drugged sleep and of queer awakenings, the inhabitants would have too much to talk about, for thoughts of natural rest.
"Nothing that way," Neilan decided. He turned in at the vestigial side road which gave entrance to the Doctor's garage, As he had hoped,—not having paid much attention to the matter before,—it did not come to an end at the garage, but meandered on through the green-black pines.
Neilan followed it, finding it a mere track across the granite hillside. The trees were heavy, and several times he found difficulty in keeping to the faint, weed-grown ruts. But a feeling of restrained excitement, a premonition, kept him from using the electric torch. If there should prove to be any estate or even a hut along here, this would be a logical hide-out for a criminal band. Likely enough, except for Dr. Mantles' use of this track as a shortcut to somewhere, no vehicles at all were in the habit of coming this way.
The track wound about so aimlessly that Neilan had difficulty keeping sense of direction; but he thought he was traveling In the general direction of the concrete highway on the north, and the mountain ridge which delimited the Hollow.
Of a sudden Neilan stopped. There ahead of him the trees thinned, and the gray bedrock showed through the surface. Lying there on the rock was something which brought a tight constriction and a throbbing in his throat. Glancing ahead to make sure no one was near, he darted forward and seized the object. It was a woman's brown suede sports shoe!
Recklessly turning the beam of his flash to the inside, Neilan read exactly what he feared and hoped to find. There was the name of the retailer: Littleton's, Ticonderoga, N.Y.
Cecile Haight came from that town. The chances of any other girl or woman losing such a shoe on this unfrequented track were practically nil. Her abductors, then, had carried her this way!
That second, from somewhere just behind him, came the alarming sound of a dry twig breaking. Neilan whirled, automatic ready. Then as he saw no one, he backed slowly out of the road until he was concealed in the bushes.
SEVERAL yards to the rear Trooper Porter, however, had got
himself in difficulties he could not surmount. Unable to see,
he had stepped into the midst of a heap of dry branches. After
holding his breath a matter of seconds, he stepped again. Like
the explosion of a firecracker another stick broke, and this
time he cursed audibly.
"Nemmind, Mr. Neilan," he said disgustedly. "Cap Raines just wanted me to sorta see you didn't get in Dutch." With that, he moved out into the moonlight, and Neilan breathed deeply in relief as he recognized the uniform.
"Take this back to Captain Raines!" bade Neilan in a whisper. "It's Miss Haight's shoe! They've taken her somewhere right ahead! Have all the men you have follow me. I'm going immediately!"
"I'm s'posed to stick to you—and let go a shot if anything happens," the man said stubbornly. "How'd we ever know where you went? Nope, I'm going along!"
"All right, come!" agreed Neilan from between clenched teeth. "But for the love of Mike, make less noise than you did just now!"
THE two went on, and more than a quarter mile of the vague
road passed before they came to a corner fence. This was tight
mesh, surmounted by two barbed wires, and reminded Neilan
at once of something he had seen recently. In driving down
light-heartedly into Sinister Hollow he had not been thinking
of fences. Just the same, this arrangement was unusual.
A few moments later he knew. This was the farmhouse where he had come in hope of telephoning to Dr. Mantles, after finding Cecile Haight sleeping in her car.
A cross-looking blonde woman with a broom—a Swedish hired man who had called her "Mees Yonson"—and Neilan had not managed to get in to try the telephone!
This was the point where the wandering side road came back to meet the gravel highway from Boodle Corners. On this side stood the big barn and silo, with the farmhouse out nearer the main road. Not a light showed in any window of the latter, yet Neilan felt in his bones this had to be the place. What better camouflage for a gang headquarters than a farm couple and a hired man—who might have lived there all their lives?
In a whisper Neilan told the trooper that the latter should stay outside the fence and listen. Neilan himself intended to get over the fence, and examine both the barn and house.
"If I do start anything, get Raines immediately. Don't take a chance!" was his parting adjuration, one which he feared the stubborn policeman would not heed.
With that he took hold of a stanch peeled cedar post, stepping cautiously in the wire mesh, and climbing. Each upward step was tested by his weight gradually applied; but even this was not sufficient. In lifting one leg over the barbed wires on top, his trousers caught momentarily.
Instantly from somewhere in the farmhouse came the brr-ing ring of an electric alarm bell! The fence was wired to give warning of trespassers!
"That tells the story! Go get Captain Raines!" commanded Neilan.
He leaped to the ground and darted forward to the rounded side of the silo. To his chagrin, he saw the policeman still standing there, but there was nothing to be done about that now. The electric alarm was still ringing. Dropping down to hands and knees, Neilan crawled across to the side of the barn, and peered around. There was no sound of movement anywhere, but suddenly the bell stopped.
TWO or three minutes that seemed like hours, dragged past.
Then something exceedingly peculiar occurred. There along the
ground, at the side of the farmhouse which was in deepest
shadow, a slanting line of yellow light suddenly appeared!
It gradually widened to an oblong, and then Neilan understood. This was a slanting wooden door to the cellar, and it was being opened gradually by one of the house occupants.
There was a growled word which Neilan could not catch. Then half of the door was lifted and turned back, and out of the lighted cellar came two men—fully dressed!
One of them carried some kind of firearm, either rifle or shotgun, and the other a walking-stick. They started toward the locked gate and the fence in front. Then they caught sight of that stubborn trooper waiting there on the other side of the fence. Neilan was so angry with the man he almost hoped he did get shot; but even with all his dunderheadedness, he was to provide an opportunity for the investigator.
"Who are you? What d'you want?" came the quick challenge, and both men strode rapidly over to the fence. "Oh, a policeman? Is there something wrong, Officer?" This was a greatly changed tone in which there was more than a hint of alarm.
Porter cleared his throat. "That's what I'd like to know!" he said surlily. "We're patrolling this whole district now, you know. I just touched this-here fence... Say, are you the owner of this farm?"
"Why, no," answered the spokesman. "This is Mr. Johnson, the owner. We were sitting up, having a few glasses of cider, and talking about that funny thing that happened in Sentsbury—"
BUT Neilan waited to hear no more. A daring idea had come
full blown. Crouching, moving swiftly but silently on tiptoe,
he left the protection of the barn and made straight for that
oblong of light which opened into the cellar!
He almost made it. Just as he reached the stairs leading down, however, there came a yell of alarm from behind. Then a rifle cracked, the bullet smacking into the slanted door.
"Hold 'em there, Porter!" yelled Neilan, without any real hope that the patrolman would think fast enough to do it.
Hurtling down the steep flight, Neilan caromed headlong into the blonde Mrs. Johnson. She screamed, and raised a wicked blade to strike at him. A sickle!
There was no time to think of her sex. Neilan side-swiped his pistol, crunching it against the bone of the upraised wrist.
Now the woman shrieked in earnest, and sat down abruptly on the dirt floor, the sickle clattering from her grasp. Neilan grabbed it in his left hand, and turned to fire one warning shot up and out, in hope of keeping the men from coming right down after him.
From upstairs came sounds of some one running and shouting. Probably the hired man, thought Neilan. Well, the goose certainly was cooked now, unless his guess had been right. If these seemingly suspicious circumstances proved to be nothing more than precautions taken by an innocent householder, Neilan probably would go to prison for life. Even the policeman's being along would not excuse assaulting a woman, and entering with a gun in his hand.
These thoughts came in a flash as he dashed back in the basement, looking for some proof that Cecile Haight was here. He tried a door, which came open—and out of the room stumbled Dr. Lester Manties, hands tied behind his back, and a cord looped loosely about his ankles!
"Cut my hands free!" he demanded huskily. "Look out! There at the window!"
Neilan sidestepped, whirling about. He heard a shot and a spraying of glass. Across the basement was a small window, now broken. Behind it was a malignant face dimly seen. Neilan swung up his pistol and snapped three shots through the window. The face disappeared.
That second the heavy-footed man who had been running upstairs, came down the flight and yelled at sight of the intruder. It was the Swede hired man, and he had no weapon. But he thrust out two muscular arms and ran to seize Neilan. The latter backed away, then struck downward with the pistol.
The blow landed fairly on top of the tow thatch of hair. The man went straight on into the wall, and fell, completely knocked out.
Dr. Manties cried some other warning, and Neilan spun around, thinking it was the sniper at the window.
Something seared his left side, and he felt the horrid grating scrape of keen steel on his ribs.
This was the other man who had been at the fence! He had come down swiftly, and struck with a long, slender weapon—a sword-cane!
Hurt—and at the moment Neilan had the suspicion that the sword-cane had transfixed his vitals—he let out a savage yell, threw the sickle straight at the grim duelist's countenance, then flung up the pistol and fired pointblank, just as the dapper, gray-haired man disengaged his blade and lunged again.
In a sickening surge of pain which sent clotted red spirals before his eyes, then blackness, Cyanide Neilan fell to the floor even as the swordsman toppled, his throat pierced by that final shot.
NEILAN was not unconscious anywhere near as long as would have pleased him. He came to his senses—partially—to find himself on an ambulance stretcher, being speeded along a smooth road toward a hospital in Montpelier. Riding with him, one hand holding his wrist, was the pale-faced Cecile Haight, who had refused to leave him until she could be assured that he would recover.
That was very much of an improbability at this moment. Dr. Manties and the police surgeon had granted him one chance in ten. The sword cane had gone through his left lung, avoiding the heart and aorta by a slender margin.
"What—what happened?" came his weak, pain-racked query.
THE interne immediately cautioned him not to try to speak.
In the end, because fever had come from the shock, making
him unreasonable, Cecile had to tell in a low voice what had
occurred at the Johnson farm—Shambles Farm, as Captain
Raines had named it after an inventory of the dead and
wounded.
"This man who was behind everything, dear," she explained, "was an old associate of Dr. Manties. Dr. Humber was the name. He was a surgeon, and a clever man, but finally was barred from practice because of something he did—employed euthanasia on an old woman patient who had some incurable illness, I think.
"Anyhow, Dr. Manties has discovered a terrifically important chemical compound. I mustn't talk much about it even now, though everyone can guess it puts people to sleep. He has named it comatite, and Cy, dear, he says that you are going to be a full partner in the sale of it!
"Dr. Manties made the mistake of showing his results, on animals, to his old crony. Dr. Humber did not let on, but knowing that Dr. Manties was not going to dispose of the secret before he had it at the point of absolute perfection and purity, Dr. Humber stole some of it.
"He could not make it work! Realizing that Dr. Manties must have held back something, Dr. Humber came to steal the formula and notes. He was caught by Moebus, and killed him with a thrust of that sword-cane. Ugh! That awful thing!
"One really peculiar thing came right then. Dr. Manties had been investigating the results of his invention, and had been overcome by it. Once we had run away, with those respirators, he sat down—and immediately fell asleep. Dr. Humber and that man Johnson kidnaped him, and took him over to the cellar of the farmhouse, where they trussed him. They intended to make him tell his secret, but even when he woke up really, he pretended to be asleep.
"So they came after me. They knew that I had been copying the formula for Dr. Manties, every time he changed it, and thought I would remember it.
"Imagine! The thing takes me about four days just to copy once! I have to be absolutely exact, you see, and show the steps by which everything is added to what Dr. Manties calls the most complex molecule in Christendom. I—"
"What enormous molecules you have!" broke in Neilan in a sepulchral voice. "I thought they were ears once, but now—"
Cecile gasped, raising both hands to those small and maligned appendages.
"Out of his head! Don't talk any more!" said the interne.
WHEN college opened, for the first time in decades the
student body had an autumn hero who did not wear a football
suit.
But Cyanide Neilan was not there to teach inorganic chemistry. He still battled for life in the hospital; and while recovery now seemed much more probable, it was certain that he would have to take a long convalescence, and give up all idea of teaching until the second semester, at least.
He was in command of his faculties now, and if contented happiness could cure a man, he would be on his feet again soon. He had read all the clippings, smiling at the great detective they had created out of what the sword-cane had left of him—and shaking his head sadly over the havoc wrought at the Johnson farm.
"I'd never shot at a living target before—or not since I was a kid with an air-rifle," he whispered to Cecile. "It seems unreal that I actually killed two men!"
"Well, they certainly deserved it!" she reassured him. "I'm glad I was still asleep, and knew nothing of all that was happening. That patrolman, Porter, wants to see you one of these days. He got hung up on the fence there with a bad wound from that sword-cane, but he's well again. He wants you to know he tried to come and help. But if Captain Raines had not heard the firing—"
She shivered. "That awful Swede woman comes up for trial next week. They say she'll get twenty years. I hope it's all of that, because she's a terror—swears she's going to get you for killing her husband; he was the one who shot at you through the window.
"The hired man, Oleson, won't even be tried. He was just plain dumb, and never did know what it was all about. He did what the Johnsons told him to do."
"I'm glad of that," he whispered. "Where's Manties?"
CECILE smiled. "He's in jail. Didn't you know? Yes. It
seems that he went a little too far in strewing that stuff
along the road in Sentsbury, and that motorist who came along
couldn't see the joke. Neither could the one who broke his
collarbone... But the Doctor will have plenty to pay damages.
And he'll be ready to see you as soon as he gets free. You're
his partner in the comatite now, you know."
"The papers scarcely mention it anywhere!" he whispered. "If I'm a partner in it, don't I rate knowing what use the stuff is going to be? Is it a practicable anesthetic for surgical use?"
She smiled tantalizingly. "Oh, of course. Would you really like to take a look at it?"
She went to the door, and the nurse came in, holding what looked like a rolled-up window shade, colored black. With thumb-tacks she put up this yard square on the inside of the door, and then closed the door.
"Great Caesar's ghost!" said Neilan. He was staring at white symbols all over that nine square feet of black surface—letters connected with other letters either by one line, two or several. Of course he knew it to be a structural formula, but ten times as complicated as anything he ever had seen diagrammed!
"That's not really comatite!" confided Cecile, leaning close. "Dr. Manties says that this is just the 'mirror picture' of it, and that you'd understand what that meant."
"Oh sure, like dextrose and laevulose are the mirror pictures of each other."
"But you mustn't ever tell that. The United States Government is buying. They're going to put a couple pounds of it in every big shell they manufacture. Then when they shell a territory, they'll simply put everyone to sleep, go over, and take them prisoner without bloodshed! Isn't that marvelous?"
Neilan smiled. "Well, Cecile dear," he said, "it'll be a splendid thing for warfare—unless and until somebody else like Dr. Manties comes along with another discovery that nullifies it. Did—was there much money coming for it?" He slowly colored, not because of any false modesty in taking a share of the comatite he had saved, but because of the use he would have for any money he got out of it. Actually, until that moment, he had discounted the worth of the substance, unless it had real virtues for use as a surgical anesthetic.
"They paid a quarter of a million for the formula; and they will let Dr. Manties—and you—work out the slightly different one for use in surgery," she replied.
"A—a—quarter million!" gasped Neilan, his eyes fairly bulging. "You mean—"
"Your share is $125,000. I was always very good at math'!" she smiled. "But wait. No, you mustn't. Not till—you're better! Tell me, what was it there in the laboratory? I mean, what idea did I give you, so you did solve the problem?"
A BIT impatiently Neilan explained. He had known that the
Doctor must have spilled some of the comatite on the streets
of Sentsbury. The history there was that for a week it had
rained most of the time. The inhabitants had been getting
progressively sleepy. Then when the sun came out warmly,
they all surrendered—all of those in the immediate
neighborhood of the bank block, at any rate.
"I guessed from your hint," he concluded wearily. "The stuff was inert until it had been drenched in water, then heated by the actinic rays of the sun. Whereupon—it worked.
"But Cecile dearest, you will marry me? Being the wife of an instructor won't be so bad—when we've got some capital, and income from it. I love you so!"
She shook her head, but there was a sparkle in her blue eyes. "I've decided to stay here, with Dr. Manties, and marry his assistant!" she declared. Then she paused for emphasis: "But Cy, dear,—that job is open to you!"
"No, no! Cy, dear, I'll bend down and kiss you just once. Wait till you're stronger. Just once—or well, twice! Now—you must sleep. Please, dear, or I'll have to call for the comatite!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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