One of the officers awoke just as Macklin was stuffing the paper into his pocket.
“Anything wrong?” asked the policeman. “I thought someone was walkin’ ’round the room, or was I sleepin’?”
“You were sleeping all right,” said Donovan, “and you can go back to sleep if you want — I’ll watch.”
“What’s that?” whispered the officer, cocking an ear.
“Sounds like someone in Saran’s room,” replied Macklin in a low tone, at the same time moving cautiously toward the door.
The sound they had heard was a subdued crackling noise. Against the silence of the night, and coming as it did from the vacant room in which Saran had been murdered, it induced an impression of uncanniness that made both men shiver, innured though they were to dangers and to mysteries. Behind Donovan came the policeman and as the former laid his hand upon the knob of the door the other officer awakened.
Observing their silence and their stealthy movements at a glance he arose and followed them with equal quiet. Together the three crept out into the hallway and moved noiselessly toward Saran’s door, which stood open as it had since McGroarty had broken it in. Macklin was in the lead. He had reached the frame of the door and was on the point of looking into the interior of the room when a figure stepped from it into the hall. Instantly Macklin seized it — it was Greeves.
'THE butler was evidently surprised, but he remained cool. “Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “I did not see you.”
“No,” said Donovan, sarcastically; “but I saw you. I’ve been lookin’ for you, Greeves.”
“Oh, have you, sir?” exclaimed the butler, in his best official tones. “I am very sorry, sir. I have been in my room.”
“You’re a damned liar, Greeves,” exclaimed Donovan.
“Yes, sir!” replied the butler. “I was just looking for you, sir. You must not return to that room,” and he pointed along the hall toward Macklin’s door. “Why?” demanded Donovan.
“It is not safe, sir.”
“Why is it not safe?”
“I cannot tell you, sir; but please believe me, it is not safe,” and then he turned to the officers. “Do not allow him to return to that room, I beg of you,” he insisted. “Even if you remain with him he will be a dead man within five minutes after he crosses the threshold.”
Macklin Donovan stood eyeing the butler closely. The man was evidently very much in earnest, but what motives prompted the warning? Donovan had his own opinion — the gang wanted to keep him out of that room for some particular reason and they were trying to frighten him out, first by the note and now by means of Greeves. Well, he wouldn’t be frightened. He saw that the butler was out of breath and that his clothing was soiled here and there with dust and cobwebs.
“Where have you been all night?” he demanded suddenly.
“Attending to my duties,” responded the butler. “Once more, you are a liar.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Where is Miss Saran?”
“Is she not in her room, sir?”
“Where is she? Answer me!”
“You will pardon me, Mr. Donovan; but I have some other duties to attend to. I must be going,” and he moved toward the stairs leading to the upper floors.
“No you don’t!” cried Donovan, and grabbed for the man.
Greeves dodged him and started to run.
“Grab him!” cried Macklin to the officer who was nearest the butler.
The big Irishman jumped in front of the fugitive and held out both ponderous hands to seize him. It was a foolish move, for it left his chin exposed; but then who would expect a middle-aged butler to be so rough? Greeves struck the policeman once without even pausing and as the latter slumped to the floor the butler leaped across his body to the stairway.
Just as he turned into it Macklin drew his gun and fired, at the same, time leaping in pursuit with the second policeman at his heels. Macklin fired again as he reached the foot of the stairs and saw Greeves disappearing at the turn half way up. Donovan was young and active. He went up those stairs three or four at a time, but when he reached the top Greeves was nowhere to be seen.
Followed by the officer, Donovan ascended at a run to the fourth floor — no Greeves. He searched every apartment there and even found the scuttle that led to the roof, but that was fastened upon the inside, precluding the possibility that Greeves had escaped in this way, even had he had time to do so in the short interval of his lead over Donovan.
CRESTFALLEN, the two men returned to the third floor and searched it thoroughly. They were joined there by Terrance Donovan and McGroarty who had been attracted by Macklin’s shooting. Young Donovan narrated the incidents of the last few minutes to his father. “He just vanished—that was all — vanished,” he concluded.
Donovan senior scratched his head. “As I’ve said about forty times this night, Mackie, it’s got me, and I’ve been twenty-two years on the New York police force an’ seen some funny things. If I hadn’t pounded on walls tonight until I’ve near wore all the hide off me knuckles I’d say the place was full o’ phoney panels, but it ain’t—every wall’s as solid as every other one—there ain’t no air spaces nowhere. And then, too, boy, I’ve even paced off the length and breadth of the penthouse and the rooms and the closets, and there’s no space unaccounted for. And there’s no way into the tower below. Yes, sir—it’s got me.” “It’s getting me, too,” said his son; “but I’m goin’ to stick with it.”
“You keep out of that room, though,” said his father. “Better come down to the library with the others.”
Macklin shook his head. “I’ll go in the room across the hall from mine — that’s not being used,” he said.
“There ain’t any of ’em being used except the library,” remarked the lieutenant with a smile; “you can take your choice of a lot of rooms — but I wouldn’t care for Saran’s, myself.”
“Nor I,” said Macklin, “there’s something funny about that room.”
Together they descended to the second floor. “On your way down turn the light on the landing out. Dad,” said Macklin; “I want to listen up here in the dark for a while.”
“Keep to your room,” cautioned his father.
“If it’s dark they can’t see me to harm me and I can listen from my doorway without being seen,” explained Macklin.
“All right,” agreed his father and walked down the hallway toward the stairs leading to the library while Macklin and the two officers turned toward the room opposite that which young Donovan had occupied.
Macklin turned off the remaining hall lights leaving the second floor in utter darkness, then he entered the room with the policemen, switched on the lights there long enough for them to find chairs and then switched them off again. Before their eyes could become accustomed to the darkness he recrossed the room to the door and stepped out into the hall, making no noise. In equal silence he crossed to the door of the room he had formerly occupied.
Stealthily he turned the knob and opened the door. The darkness within was solid except for the two rectangular spaces that were the windows — areas that were but faintly visible against the deeper darkness of the room. As he stood just inside the door listening, he thought that he discerned something moving on one of the balconies — just a vague suggestion of a figure without, definite form or shape. It riveted his attention and held his eyes. Very softly he reached behind him and closed the door, fearing that one of the officers in the room across the hall, missing him, might switch on a light that would be sure to reveal him standing there in the doorway.
Drawing his pistol he moved slowly forward toward the window — inch by inch he moved, fearing that the slightest noise might frighten away whatever haunted his balcony. He had crossed to about the middle of the room, when, wfthout warning, the narrow beams of a flashlight burst from the closet full upon the window toward which he had been creeping. Macklin Donovan came up standing with a gasp as his eyes rested upon what the beams of the flashlight reveal
ed beyond the window — a face pressed close against the pane — the face of Saran, the dead man, with the blood upon its forehead.
Almost instantly the face vanished toward the left and then the flashlight swung slowly about the room, coming closer and closer to Macklin Donovan. His first impulse was to flee — there was something so uncanny about the silence and the seeming inevitableness of that grisly light searching him out in the darkness of the chamber of mystery. Then he sought to keep ahead of it, but at last it drove him into a corner where he halted and held his pistol ready. An instant later the light touched his face and stopped upon it, blinding him. Then it was that he raised his weapon and fired point-blank into its fiery eye. Instantly the light disappeared.
A moment of silence was followed by a weird crackling sound, coming, apparently, from the interior of the closet—then silence again. Donovan sprang through the darkness for the closet door. Fumbling for the knob, he found it; but the door was locked, and the key, which had been on the outside, was gone.
CHAPTER VI The Mystery of the Closet
SLIGHTLY bewildered by the rapidity with which the events of the past few moments had followed one another, and dazed by the inexplicable mystery of the weird light that had blazed through the panels of a locked door, Donovan hesitated briefly as he sought to adjust his reasoning faculties to the improbabilities of the facts that confronted them, and select a plan of action.
Long since had the call of duty merged with an over-mastering urge to discover the fate or the whereabouts of Nariva Saran, and to determine definitely her connection with the plotters, that he might fix her responsibility in the matter of the murder of Mason Thorn and the attempts upon his own life. Just how far she was involved with Greeves and Saran he could not know, and now the shooting of Saran had helped to upset whatever theories he had commenced to entertain relative to the connection existing between the three.
If Greeves and Saran had been in league with one another, and there was no doubt in Donovan’s mind but that they had been, it seemed unlikely that Greeves should have shot Saran, while the conclusion that Nariva had been guilty of the murder of her father was impossible of entertainment.
Who, then, had shot Saran? Was Saran dead? The fact that he had seen and recognized his face at the window but a moment since, would have, under ordinary circumstances, settled that question definitely; but the circumstances of the past few hours had been anything but ordinary.
Where was Nariva? If Saran were not dead, it was reasonable to assume that if he could find him, he could find Nariva, also, since the most natural conjecture would place father and daughter near one another. But where to search for them! They had not left the Thorn Building, yet they were not in the Thorn penthouse. Already had the place been searched until there remained no unrevealed hiding place where even a cat might have concealed itself successfully from the searchers. There remained but a single tenable conclusion — all others were preposterous, unthinkable, verging upon the demoniacal.
Sane judgment assured him that Saran was not dead — that the face he had seen at the window must have been the face of a living man, and that that man was John Saran. The thing to do, then, was to follow.
He walked quickly across the room, raised the window, and stepped out upon the balcony. The apparition, or the man, whichever it had been, had disappeared to the left, so toward the left Donovan looked. Three feet away was the balcony before the windows of the dressing room and bath, beyond that, at similar intervals, the balconies of the adjoining rooms. Below was the small garden between the rear of the penthouse and the landing deck of the skyscraper, whereon rested two ships—the police ship and the Thorn ship. Nowhere, upon the balconies nor in the garden, was anyone in sight, though he knew that directly beyond were the policemen guarding the building’s roof.
Stealthily, that he might not attract the attention of the officers, Donovan climbed over the hand-rail and stepped to the next balcony. There he paused for a moment, listening. He heard nothing other than the subdued night noises of the city from far below. A mile away loomed the twin tower, a giant searchlight sweeping the sky in ceaseless grandeur.
Cautiously he made his way to the nearest balcony. The window letting upon it was wide open. Within was darkness and silence. He threw a leg over the sill and drew himself into the interior, silently. His feet dropped softly to the floor and he stood erect. Eerily he sensed the room was not unoccupied. Of that he had startling proof immediately. From out of the darkness at his left came a low-toned whisper.
“Go back!” it warned. “In the name of heaven, go back before they kill you!”
For just a moment Donovan hesitated, then he turned and moved quickly across the room in the direction from which the voice had come. He walked with his left hand extended before him, in his right his needle gun.
“Who are you,” he demanded, “and who will kill me?”
“S-s-st!” warned the voice. “They will hear you.”
Before him a closet door opened, and he gazed blankly into its empty interior. It was lit with a dim radiance, seeming to glow from the very walls. Advancing cautiously, he entered, his weapon ready. The voice was no longer in evidence.
“Who is here?” demanded Donovan, his hair crawling on his scalp. “Where are you?”
There was no answer.
Donovan rapped with his knuckles sharply at the walls, but they were solid all around. His knocks gave forth no hollow sounds, only muffled solidity of tone. Several coat hangers caught his eye. In the odd glow that still permeated the place, like a sort of after-vision, one of them seemed to shine with a light all its own. He reached up, touched it. It seemed loose. He grasped it and pulled.
Instantly he let go. All about him a weird blue light shone, and a strange crackling noise came. A second, then it was gone, and he was plunged into utter darkness. Behind him the closet door was closed, and he backed hastily against it before he realized the fact. Bewildered he whirled, ready for a trap, and his hand shot to the knob.
The door was not locked. It opened under his thrust.
Simultaneously a door at the far end of the room opened, revealing the figure of a large man silhouetted against the doorway of a lighted room across a hall. Across the hall, a room that was not in the Thorn penthouse. A strange room!
“IS that you, Danard?” demanded the man in the doorway.
Beyond him Donovan caught a glimpse of several men and a woman, seated or standing about a table. At the gruff question of the man in the doorway, those who were facing him looked up, while the woman, whose back had been toward the door, turned around. Macklin Donovan caught but a fleeting glimpse of her face, as at the very instant that she turned a hand reached out of the darkness and powerful fingers seized his arm. He was jerked violently backward. His pistol was wrenched from his grasp and he heard the loud voice of the man in the doorway crying: “Answer me, damn you, or I fire! ”
Then a door closed behind him and there came to his ears, faintly, the muffled sigh of a needle pistol. He tried to grapple with the man who was dragging him along, half backward, through the darkness, but the man was very powerful and the whole incident lasted but a moment before he felt himself swung violently around and pushed heavily forward into the dark, where he stumbled and then sprawled headlong to the floor.
As he fell two thoughts animated his mind — one was that he must lie very quiet for the purpose of deceiving his assailant into the belief that he was stunned, that he might thus take advantage of the other and overpower him — the other was the realization that the woman he had seen in that weird lighted room that seemed to exist in some other space was Nariva Saran.
It seemed to him that he had scarcely fallen before he heard footsteps in front of him, running toward him. He heard a door fly open, and with the click of an electric switch the outer room was flooded with light. He leaped to his feet then to grapple with his assailants and as he faced them he uttered an oath of astonishment and stepped back in utter incredulity. T
hey were the two police officers whom he had left but a few minutes before. He was in the closet of the room from the window of which he had stepped a minute or two since. And behind him where had been a door through which he had just been thrust was a blank wall! The policemen looked at him.
“What happened?” asked one. “We thought we heard a scrap goin’ on in here.”
“No,” replied Donovan, his mind whirling. “I was just looking for something in the dark and stumbled into this closet.”
Donovan moved toward the hallway. Through the pall of mystery a light was breaking. What it would reveal he could scarce even guess, yet that it would illuminate several hitherto seemingly inexplicable occurrences seemed probable, and it might lead to complete revelations. It might also lead to deeper mystery, and there was even a greater chance that it might lead to death; but that was a chance that every man in the service expected to be called upon to face in the pursuance of duty.
In only one respect did the plan forming in his mind disregard the straight path of duty, and that lay in his determination to carry it through alone, notwithstanding the fact that he might enlist the co-operation of an ample force of police to assist him. The passion he felt for Nariva Saran prompted him to formulate his plan in secrecy and carry it out alone.
Whatever she might be, however guilty of attempts upon his life, love demanded that he give her every chance, and that he could not accomplish if he shared his suspicions with the police, even though one of them were his father, for the best of policemen appear to assume all those under suspicion as guilty until proven innocent.
If he led them, as he believed he could, to her hiding place, they would arrest her with the others, and all would be thrown into jail. He must, if possible, first discover the degree of her guilt. If he found her guilty, he assured himself sternly, no consideration of love would deter him from carrying on along the straight path of duty.
As he moved toward the doorway one of the officers pointed at the floor behind him.
The Scientists Revolt Page 4