by Jack Steele
CHAPTER VII
A STARTLING DISCOVERY
Garrison walked along the road to Hickwood out of sheer love of beingin the open, and also the better to think.
Unfortunately for the case in hand, however, his thoughts wanderedtruantly back to New York and the mystery about the girl masqueradingto the world as his wife. His meditations were decidedly mixed. Hethought of Dorothy always with a thrill of strong emotions, despite thehalf-formed suspicions which had crossed his mind at least a dozentimes.
Her jewels were still in his pocket--a burden she had apparently foundtoo heavy to carry. How he wished he might accept her confidence inhim freely, unreservedly--with the thrill it could bring to his heart!
The distance to Hickwood seemed to slip away beneath his feet. Hearrived in the hamlet far too soon, for the day had charmed brightdreams into being, and business seemed wholly out of place.
The railroad station, a store, an apothecary's shop, and a cobbler'slittle 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 aboutthe mouth by tobacco. His eyes, beneath their overhanging brows ofgray, were singularly sharp and brilliant. Garrison made up his mindthat the blaze in their depths was none other than the light offanaticism.
"How do you do, Mr. Scott?" said the detective, who had determined topose as an upper-air enthusiast. "I was stopping in Branchville for aday or two, and heard of your fame as a fellow inventor. I've beeninterested in aeroplanes and dirigible balloons so long that I thoughtI'd give myself the pleasure of a call."
"Um!" said Scott, closing the door of his shop behind him, as if toguard 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 allhave our hopes."
"You'll never be able to steer a balloon," said Scott, with a touch ofasperity. "I can tell you that."
"I begin to believe you're right," assented Garrison artfully. "It's amighty discouraging and expensive business, any way you try it."
"I'll do the trick! I've got it all worked out," said Scott, betrayedinto ardor and assurance by a nearness of the triumph that he felt tobe approaching. "I'll have plenty of money to complete itsoon--plenty--plenty--but it's a long time coming, even now."
"That's the trouble with most of us," Garrison observed, to draw hisman. "The lack of money."
"Why can't they pay it, now the man is dead?" demanded Scott, as if hefelt that everyone knew his affairs by heart and could understand hismeaning. "I need the money now--to-day--this minute! It's bad enoughwhen a man stays healthy so long, and looks as if he'd last for twentyyears. 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 hismind impaired. He began to see how a creature so bent on some wondroussolution of the flying-machine enigma could even become so obsessed inhis mind that to murder for money, insurance benefits, or anythingelse, would seem a fair means to an end.
"Some friend of yours has recently died?" he asked. "You've been leftsome needed funds for your labors?"
"Funny kind of friendship when a man goes on living so long," said thealert fanatic. "And I don't get the money; that's what's delaying menow."
"You're far more fortunate than some of us," said Garrison. "Somefriend, I suppose, here in town."
"No, he was here two days," answered Scott. "I saw him but little. Hedied in the night, up to the village." His sharp eyes swung onGarrison 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 alwaysneglected, after all," answered Garrison. "Some of us never enjoy suchgood fortune."
"The world don't know how great I am," declared the inventor, instantlyoff, on the hint supplied by his visitor. "But just the minute thatinsurance company gives me the money, I'll be ready to startle theskies! I'll blot out the stars for 'em! I'll show New York! I knowwhat I'm doing! And nothing on earth is going to stop me! All thesefool balloonists, with their big silk floating cigars! Deadly cigarsis what they are--deadly! You wait!"
Garrison was staring at him fixedly, fascinated by a new idea which hadcrept upon his mind with startling abruptness. His one idea was to getaway for a vital two minutes by himself.
"Well, perhaps I'll try to get around again," he said. "I can seeyou're very busy, and I mustn't keep you longer from your work. Goodluck and good-day."
"The only principle," the old man answered, his gaze directed to thesky.
Garrison looked up, beholding a bird, far off in the azure vault,soaring in the majesty of flight. Then he hastened again to the quietlittle street, and down by a fence at a vacant lot, where he paused andlooked about. He was quite alone. Drawing from his pocket theenvelope containing the old cigar that Hardy had undoubtedly let fallas he died at the porch of the "haunted" house, he turned up theraggedly bitten end.
"By George!" he exclaimed beneath his breath.
Tucked within the tobacco folds, in a small hollow space which waspartially closed by the filler which had once been bitten together, wasa powdery stuff that seemed comprised of small, hard particles, as ofcrystals, roughly broken up.
His breath came fast. His heart was pumping rapidly. He raised thecigar to his nostrils and smelled, but could only detect the pungentodor of tobacco.
That the powder was a poison he had not the slightest doubt. Awarethat one poison only, thus administered, would have the potency to slayan adult human being practically on the instant, he realized at oncethat here, at the little, unimportant drug-shop of the place, thesimple test for such a stuff could be made in a matter of two minutes.
Eager and feverish to inform himself without delay, he took out hisknife and carefully removed all the powder from its place and wrappedit most cautiously about in the paper of the envelope in hand. Thecigar he returned to his pocket.
Five minutes later, at the drug-store down the street, an obliging andclever young chemist at the place was holding up a test-tube made ofglass, with perhaps two thimblefuls of acidulated solution which hadfirst been formed by dissolving the powder under inspection.
"If this is what you suppose," he said, "a slight admixture of thisiron will turn it Prussian blue."
He poured in the iron, which was likewise in solution, and instantlythe azure tint was created in all its deadly beauty.
Garrison was watching excitedly.
"No mistake about it," said the chemist triumphantly. "Where did youfind this poison?"
"Why--in a scrap of meat," said Garrison, inventing an answer withready ingenuity; "enough to have killed my dog in half a shake!"