The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “Are you sure, Mr. Haynes—are you quite sure that this is substantially correct?”

  “Minor details may be inexact. In all essentials that will correspond to the marks made by a thing that walked from the mouth of the gully to the spot where we found the body, and back again.”

  Before I had fairly finished the Professor was out of the room. He returned almost immediately with a flat slab of considerable weight. This he laid on the table, and taking my drawing sedulously compared it with an impression, deep-sunken into the slab. For me a single glance was enough. That impression, stamped as it was on my brain, I would have identified as far as the eye could see it.

  “That’s it,” I cried, with the eagerness of triumphant discovery. “The bird from whose foot that cast was made is the thing that killed Serdholm.”

  “Mr. Haynes,” said the entomologist, drily, “this is not a cast.”

  “Not a cast?” I said, in bewilderment. “What is it, then?”

  “It is a rock of the Cretaceous period.”

  “A rock?” I repeated, dully. “Of what period?”

  “The Cretaceous. The creature whose footprint you see there trod that rock when it was soft ooze. That may have been one hundred million years ago. It was at least ten million.”

  I looked again at the rock, and strange emotions stirred among the roots of my hair.

  “Where did you find it?” I asked.

  “It formed a part of Mr. Stratton’s stone fence. Probably he picked it up in his pasture yonder. The maker of the mark inhabited the island where we now are—this land was then distinct from Long Island—in the incalculably ancient ages.”

  “What did this bird thing call itself?” I demanded.

  “It was not a bird. It was a reptile. Science knows it as the Pteranodon.”

  “Could it kill a man with its beak?”

  “The first man came millions of years later—or so science thinks,” said the Professor. “However, primeval man, unarmed, would have fallen an easy prey to so formidable a brute as this. The Pteranodon was a creature of prey,” he continued, with an attempt at pedantry which was obviously a ruse to conquer his own excitement. “From what we can reconstruct, a reptile stands forth spreading more than twenty feet of bat-like wings, and bearing a four-foot beak as terrible as a bayonet. This monster was the undisputed lord of the air; as dreadful as his cousins of the earth, the Dinosaurs, whose very name carries the significance of terror.”

  “And you mean to tell me that this billion-years-dead flying sword-fish has flitted out of the darkness of eternity to kill a miserable coastguard within a hundred miles of New York in the year 1902?” I cried. He had told me nothing of the sort. I didn’t want to be told anything of the sort. I wanted reassuring. But I was long past weighing words.

  “I have not said so,” replied the entomologist, quickly. “But if your diagram is correct, Mr. Haynes—if it is reasonably accurate—I can tell you that no living bird ever made the print which it reproduces, that science knows no five-toed bird and no bird whatsoever of sufficiently formidable beak to kill a man. Furthermore, that the one creature known to science which could make that print, and could slay man or a creature far more powerful than man, is the tiger of the air, the Pteranodon. Probably, however, your natural excitement, due to the distressing circumstances, has led you into error, and your diagram is inaccurate.”

  “Will you come with me and see?” I demanded.

  “Willingly. I shall have to ask your help, however, with the rock.”

  We got a light, for it was now very dark, and, taking turns with the lantern and the Cretaceous slab (which hadn’t lost any weight with age, by the way), we went direct to the shore and turned westward. Presently a light appeared around the face of the cliff and Colton hailed us. He was on his way back to Third House, but, of course, joined us in our excursion.

  I hastily explained to him the matter of the footprints, the diagram, and the fossil marks. “Professor Ravenden would have us believe that Serdholm was killed by a beaked ghoul that lived a hundred million years ago.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” said Colton, gravely. “He wasn’t killed by a bullet. It was a stab wound—a broad-bladed knife or something of that sort, but driven with terrific power. The post-mortem settled that. You lose your bet, Haynes. Why,” he cried, suddenly, “if you come to that it wasn’t unlike what a heavy, sharp beak would make. But—but—this Pteranodon—is that it? Oh, the deuce! I thought all those Pterano-things were dead and buried before Adam’s great-grandfather was a protoplasm.”

  “Science has assumed that they were extinct,” said the Professor. “But a scientific assumption is a mere makeshift, useful only until it is overthrown by new facts. We have prehistoric survivals—the gar of our rivers is unchanged from his ancestors of fifteen million years ago. The creature of the water has endured; why not the creature of the air?”

  “Oh, come off,” said Colton, seriously. “Where could it live and not have been discovered?”

  “Perhaps at the North or South Pole,” said the Professor. “Perhaps in the depths of unexplored islands. Or possibly inside the globe. Geographers are accustomed to say loosely that the earth is an open book. Setting aside the exceptions which I have noted, there still remains the interior, as unknown and mysterious as the planets. In its possible vast caverns there may well be reproduced the conditions in which the Pteranodon and its terrific contemporaries found their suitable environment on the earth’s surface ages ago.”

  “Then how would it get out?”

  “The violent volcanic disturbances of this summer might have opened an exit. However, I am merely defending the Pteranodon’s survival as an interesting possibility. My own belief is that your diagram, Mr. Haynes, is faulty.”

  “Hold the light here, then,” I said, laying down the slab, for we were now at the spot. “I will convince you as to that.”

  While the Professor held the light I uncovered one of the tracks. A quick exclamation escaped him. He fell on his knees beside the print, and as he compared the today’s mark on the sand with the rock print of millions of years ago his breath came hard. When he lifted his head his face was twitching nervously, but his voice was steady.

  “I have to ask your pardon, Mr. Haynes,” he said. “Your drawing was faithful. The marks are the same.”

  “But what in Heaven’s name does it mean?” cried Colton.

  “It means that we are on the verge of the most important discovery of modern times,” said the Professor. “Savants have hitherto scouted the suggestions to be deduced from the persistent legend of the roc, and from certain almost universal North American Indian lore, notwithstanding that the theory of some monstrous winged creature widely different from any recognised existing forms is supported by more convincing proofs. In the North of England, in 1844, reputable witnesses found the tracks, after a night’s fall of snow, of a creature with a pendent tail, which made flights over houses and other obstructions, leaving a trail much like this before us. There are other corroborative instances of a similar nature. In view of the present evidence I would say that this was unquestionably a Pteranodon, or a descendant little altered, and a very large specimen, as the tracks are distinctly larger than the fossil prints. Gentlemen, I congratulate you both on your part in so epoch-making a discovery.”

  “Do you expect a sane man to believe this thing?” I demanded.

  “That’s what I feel,” said Colton. “But, on your own showing of the evidence, what else is there to believe?”

  “But see here,” I expostulated, all the time feeling as if I were arguing in and against a dream. “If this is a flying creature, how explain the footprints leading up to Serdholm’s body as well as away from it?”

  “Owing to its structure,” said the Professor, “the Pteranodon could not rapidly rise from the ground in flight. It either sought an acclivity from which to launch itself or ran swiftly along the ground, gathering impetus for a leap into the air with outspread
wings. Similarly, in alighting, it probably ran along on its hind feet before coming to a halt. Now, suppose the Pteranodon to be on the cliff’s edge, about to start upon its evening flight. Below it appears a man. Its ferocious nature is aroused. Down it swoops, skims swiftly with pattering feet toward him, impales him on its dreadful beak, then returns to climb the cliff and again launch itself for flight.”

  “If the shore was covered with these footprints,” I said vehemently, “I wouldn’t believe it. It’s too——”

  I never finished that sentence. From out of the darkness there came a hoarse cry. Heavy wings beat the air with swift strokes. In that instant panic seized me. I ran for the shelter of the cliff, and after me came Colton. Only the Professor stood his ground, but it was with a tremulous voice that he called to us:

  “That was a common marsh or short-eared owl that arose; the Asio accipitrinus is not rare hereabouts. There is nothing further to do tonight, and I believe that we are in some peril in remaining here, as the Pteranodon appears to be nocturnal.”

  We returned to him ashamed. But all the way home, despite my better sense, I walked under an obsession of terror hovering in the blackness above.

  So here is the case as clearly as I can put it. I shall have time to work it out unhampered, as the remoteness of the place is a safeguard so far as news is concerned, and only we three know of the Pteranodon prints.

  It seems like a nightmare—formless, meaningless. What you will think of it I can only conjecture. But you must not think that I have lost my senses. I am sane enough; so is Colton; so, to all appearances, is Professor Ravenden. The facts are exactly as I have written them down. I have left no clue untouched thus far. I will stake my life on the absence of footprints. And it all comes down to this, Mr. Clare: Pteranodon or no Pteranodon, as sure as my name is Haynes, the thing that killed Paul Serdholm never walked on human feet.

  Very sincerely yours,

  HARRIS D. HAYNES.

  Document No. 2—Extract from letter written by Stanford Colton to his father, John Colton, Esq., of New York City. Date, September 21st, 4 p.m.

  So there, my dear dad, is the case against the Pteranodon. To your hard business sense it will seem a thing for laughter. You wouldn’t put a cent in Pteranodon stock on the word of an idealistic, scientific theorist like old Ravenden, backed by a few queer marks on a beach. Very well, neither would I. All the same, I ducked and ran when the owl flapped out from the cliff. And I wonder if you wouldn’t have been dragging us to shelter yourself if you had been there.

  At six o’clock this morning Haynes woke me out of a troubled dream by walking along the hall.

  “Is that you, Haynes?” I called.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m off for the beach.”

  “Wait fifteen minutes and I’ll go with you,” I suggested.

  “If you don’t mind, Colton, I’d rather you wouldn’t. I want to go over the ground alone first. A good night’s rest has scared the Professor’s Cretaceous jub-jub bird out of my mental premises.”

  I was now up and at the door.

  “Well, good luck!” I said and for some reason I reached out and shook hands with him.

  He looked rather surprised—perhaps just a bit startled—but he only said, “See you in a couple of hours.”

  Sleep was not for me after that. I tried it, but it was no go. The Stratton family almost expired of amazement when I showed up for seven o’clock breakfast. Half an hour later I was on the way to find Haynes. I went direct down the beach. Haynes had gone this way before me, as I saw by his tracks. It was a dead-and-alive sort of morning—grey, with a mist that seemed to smother sound as well as sight. I went forward with damped spirits and little heart in the enterprise. As I came to the turn of the cliff that opens up the view down the shore I halloaed for Haynes. No reply came. Again I shouted, and this time, as my call drew no answer, I confess that a clammy feeling of loneliness hastened my steps. I rounded the cliff at a good pace and saw ahead what checked me like a blow.

  Almost at the spot where we had found Serdholm a man lay sprawled grotesquely. Though the face was hidden and the posture distorted, I knew him instantly for Haynes, and as instantly knew that he was dead. I went forward to the body, sickening at every step.

  Haynes had been struck opposite the gully. The weapon that killed him had been driven with fearful impetus between his ribs, from the back. A dozen staggering prints showed where he had plunged forward before he fell. The heart was touched, and he must have been dead almost on the stroke. His flight was involuntary—the blind, mechanical instinct of escape from death. To one who had seen its like before there was no mistaking that great gash in his back. Haynes had been killed as Serdholm was. But for what cause? What possible motive of murder could embrace those two who had never known or so much as spoken to each other? No; it was motiveless: the act of a thing without mind, inspired by no motive but the blood-thirst, the passion of slaughter. At that the picture of the Pteranodon, as the Professor had drawn it, took hold of my mind. I ran to the point whence Haynes had staggered. Beginning there, in double line over the clean sand, stretched the grisly track of the talons. Except for them the sand was untouched.

  Of the formalities that succeeded there is no need to speak; but following what I thought Haynes’s method would have been, I investigated the movements of Schenck, the coastguard, that morning. From six o’clock till eight he was at the station. His alibi is perfect. In the killing of poor Haynes he had no part. That being proved sufficiently establishes his innocence of the Serdholm crime. Both were done by the same murderer.

  Professor Ravenden is now fixed in his belief that the Pteranodon, or some little-altered descendant, did the murders. I am struggling not to believe it, yet it lies at the back of all my surmises as a hideous probability. One thing I know, that nothing would tempt me alone upon that beach tonight. Tomorrow morning I shall load my Colt and go down there with the Professor, who is a game old theorist, and can be counted on to see this through. He is sketching out, this afternoon, a monograph on the survival of the Pteranodon. It will make a stir in the scientific world. Don’t be worried about my part in this. I’ll be cautious tomorrow. No other news to tell; nothing but this counts.

  Your affectionate son,

  STANFORD.

  Document No. 3—Statement by Stanford Colton regarding his part in the events of the morning of September 22nd, 1902.

  On the morning of the day after the killing of Harris Haynes I went to the beach opposite Stony Gully. It was seven o’clock when I reached the point where the bodies were found. Professor Ravenden was to have accompanied me. He had started out while I was at breakfast, however, through a misunderstanding as to time. His route was a roundabout one, bringing him to the spot after my arrival, as will appear in his report. I went directly down the shore. In my belt was a forty-five-calibre revolver.

  As I came opposite Stony Gully I carefully examined the sand. The five-taloned tracks were in several places almost as distinct as on the previous day. Fortunately, owing to the scanty population and the slow transmission of news, there had been very few visitors to the scene, and those few had been careful in their movements, so the evidence was not trodden out.

  For a closer examination I got down on my hands and knees above one of the tracks. There was the secret, if I could but read it. The mark was in all respects the counterpart of the sketch made by Haynes, and of the impress on the Cretaceous rock of Professor Ravenden. I might have been in that posture two or three minutes, my mind immersed in conjecture. Then I rose, and as I stood and looked down there suddenly flashed into my brain the solution. I started forward to the next mark, and as I advanced something sang in the air behind me. I knew it was some swiftly flying thing; knew in the same agonizing moment that I was doomed; tried to face my death; and then there was a dreadful, grinding shock, a flame tore through my brain, and I fell forward into darkness.

  Document No. 4—The explanation by Professor Willis Ravenden, F.R.S., etc.
, of the events of September 20th, 21st, and 22nd, 1902, surrounding the deaths of Paul Serdholm and Harris Haynes and the striking down of Stanford Colton.

  Upon the death of my esteemed young friend, Mr. Haynes, I made minute examination of the vestigia near the body. These were obviously the footprints of the same creature that killed Serdholm, the coastguard. Not only the measurements and depth of indentation, but the intervals corresponded exactly to those observed in the first investigation. The non-existence of any known five-toed birds drove me to consideration of other winged creatures, and certainly none may say that, with the evidence on hand, my hypothesis of the survival and reappearance of the Pteranodon was not justified.

  Having concluded my examination into the circumstances of Mr. Haynes’s death, I returned to Third House and set about embodying the remarkable events in a monograph. In this work I employed the entire afternoon and evening, with the exception of an inconsiderable space devoted to a letter which it seemed proper to write to the afflicted family of Mr. Haynes, and in which I suggested for their comfort the fact that he met his death in the noble cause of scientific investigation. In pursuance of an understanding with Mr. Colton, he and I were to have visited, early on the following morning, the scene of the tragedies. By a misconception of the plan I set out before he left, thinking that he had already gone. My purpose was to proceed to the spot along the cliffs instead of by the beach, this route affording a more favourable view, though an intermittent one, as it presents a succession of smoothly rolling hillocks. Hardly had I left the house when the disturbance of the grasses incidental to my passage put to flight a fine specimen of the Lycaena pseudoargiolus, whose variations I have been investigating. I had, of course, taken my net with me, partly, indeed, as a weapon of defence, as the butt is readily detachable and heavily loaded.