Part 12 (1/2)

The railroad station, a store, an apothecary's shop, and a cobbler's little den seemed to comprise the entire commercial street.

Garrison inquired his way to the home of his man--the inventor.

Scott, whom he found at a workshop, back of his home, was a thin, stooped figure, gray as a wolf, wrinkled as a prune, and stained about the mouth by tobacco. His eyes, beneath their overhanging brows of gray, were singularly sharp and brilliant. Garrison made up his mind that the blaze in their depths was none other than the light of fanaticism.

”How do you do, Mr. Scott?” said the detective, who had determined to pose as an upper-air enthusiast. ”I was stopping in Branchville for a day or two, and heard of your fame as a fellow inventor. I've been interested in aeroplanes and dirigible balloons so long that I thought I'd give myself the pleasure of a call.”

”Um!” said Scott, closing the door of his shop behind him, as if to guard a precious secret. ”What did you say is your name?”

Garrison informed him duly.

”I haven't yet made myself famous as a navigator of the air, but we all have our hopes.”

”You'll never be able to steer a balloon,” said Scott, with a touch of asperity. ”I can tell you that.”

”I begin to believe you're right,” a.s.sented Garrison artfully. ”It's a mighty discouraging and expensive business, any way you try it.”

”I'll do the trick! I've got it all worked out,” said Scott, betrayed into ardor and a.s.surance by a nearness of the triumph that he felt to be approaching. ”I'll have plenty of money to complete it soon--plenty--plenty--but it's a long time coming, even now.”

”That's the trouble with most of us,” Garrison observed, to draw his man. ”The lack of money.”

”Why can't they pay it, now the man is dead?” demanded Scott, as if he felt that everyone knew his affairs by heart and could understand his meaning. ”I need the money now--to-day--this minute! It's bad enough when a man stays healthy so long, and looks as if he'd last for twenty years. That's bad enough without me having to wait and wait and wait, now that he's dead and in the ground.”

It was clear to Garrison the man's singleness of purpose had left his mind impaired. He began to see how a creature so bent on some wondrous solution of the flying-machine enigma could even become so obsessed in his mind that to murder for money, insurance benefits, or anything else, would seem a fair means to an end.

”Some friend of yours has recently died?” he asked. ”You've been left some needed funds for your labors?”

”Funny kind of friends.h.i.+p when a man goes on living so long,” said the alert fanatic. ”And I don't get the money; that's what's delaying me now.”

”You're far more fortunate than some of us,” said Garrison. ”Some friend, I suppose, here in town.”

”No, he was here two days,” answered Scott. ”I saw him but little. He died in the night, up to the village.” His sharp eyes swung on Garrison peculiarly the moment his speech was concluded.

He demanded sharply; ”What's all this business to you?”

”Nothing--only that it shows the world's great inventors are not always neglected, after all,” answered Garrison. ”Some of us never enjoy such good fortune.”

”The world don't know how great I am,” declared the inventor, instantly off, on the hint supplied by his visitor. ”But just the minute that insurance company gives me the money, I'll be ready to startle the skies! I'll blot out the stars for 'em! I'll show New York! I know what I'm doing! And nothing on earth is going to stop me! All these fool balloonists, with their big silk floating cigars! Deadly cigars is what they are--deadly! You wait!”

Garrison was staring at him fixedly, fascinated by a new idea which had crept upon his mind with startling abruptness. His one idea was to get away for a vital two minutes by himself.

”Well, perhaps I'll try to get around again,” he said. ”I can see you're very busy, and I mustn't keep you longer from your work. Good luck and good-day.”

”The only principle,” the old man answered, his gaze directed to the sky.

Garrison looked up, beholding a bird, far off in the azure vault, soaring in the majesty of flight. Then he hastened again to the quiet little street, and down by a fence at a vacant lot, where he paused and looked about. He was quite alone. Drawing from his pocket the envelope containing the old cigar that Hardy had undoubtedly let fall as he died at the porch of the ”haunted” house, he turned up the raggedly bitten end.

”By George!” he exclaimed beneath his breath.