XXV
AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR
I dropped the paper in dismay. Charlotte looked up, startled, gave me asingle look, and turned pale,
"What--what's the matter?" she stammered fearfully.
I showed her. Then I ran to the phone. In a few seconds I was talking tothe very man who had taken the note from the messenger the day before.
"Yes, I handed it in along with the rest," he replied to my excitedquery. Then--"Wait a minute," said he; and a moment later added: "Say,Mr. Fenton, I've made a mistake! Here's the darned ad on the counter; itmust have slipped under the blotter."
I went back and told Charlotte. We stared at one another blankly. Whyin the name of all that was baffling had our ad "slipped" under thatblotter? And what were we to do?
This was the second day!
Well, we did what we could. We arranged for the insertion of the samenotice in each of the three afternoon papers. There would still be timefor the Rhamda to act, if he saw it.
The hours dragged by. Never did time pass more slowly; and yet, Ibegrudged every one. So much for being absolutely helpless.
About ten o'clock the next morning--that is to say, today; I am writingthis the same evening--the front door bell rang. Charlotte answered andin a moment came back with a card. It read:
SIR HENRY HODGES
I nearly upset the table in my excitement. I ran into the hall. Whowouldn't? Sir Henry Hodges! The English scientist about whom the wholeworld was talking! The most gifted investigator of the day; the mostwidely informed; of all men on the face of the globe, the best equipped,mentally, to explore the unknown! Without the slightest formality Igrabbed his hand and shook it until he smiled at my enthusiasm.
"My dear Sir Henry," I told him, "I'm immensely glad to see you! Thetruth is, I've been hoping you'd be interested in our case; but I didn'thave the nerve to bother you with it!"
"And I," he admitted in his quiet way, "have been longing to take a handin it, ever since I first heard of Professor Holcomb's disappearance.Didn't like to offer myself; understood that the matter had been hushedup and--"
"For the very simple reason," I explained, "that there was nothing to begained by publicity. If we had given the public the facts, we would havebeen swamped with volunteers to help us. I didn't know whom to confidein, Sir Henry; couldn't make up my mind. I only knew that one such manas yourself was just what I needed."
He overlooked the compliment, and pulled out the newspaper from hispocket. "Bought this a few minutes ago. Saw your ad, and jumped to theconclusion that matters had reached an acute stage. Let me have thewhole story, my boy, as briefly as you can."
He already knew the published details. Also, he seemed to beacquainted--in some manner which puzzled me--with much that had not beenprinted. I sketched the affair as quickly as I could, making it clearthat we were face to face with a crisis. When I wound up by saying thatit was Dr. Higgins who gave Ariadne three days, ending about midnight,in which she might recover if we could secure Rhamda Avec, he saidkindly:
"I'm afraid you made a mistake, my boy, in not seeking some help. Thegame has reached a point where you cannot have too many brains on yourside. Time is short for reinforcements!"
He heartily approved of my course in enlisting the aid of Miss Clarkeand her colleagues. "That is the sort of thing you need! People withmentality; plenty of intellectual force!" And he went on to makesuggestions.
As a result, within an hour and a half our house was sheltering fivemore persons.
Miss Clarke has already been introduced. She was easily one of the tenmost advanced practitioners in her line. And she had the advantage ofa curiosity that was interested in everything odd, even though shelabelled it "non-existent." She said it helped her faith in the realtruths to be conversant with the unreal.
Dr. Malloy was from the university, an out-and-out materialist, apsychologist who made life interesting for those who agreed with WilliamJames. His investigations of abnormal psychology are world-acknowledged.
Mme. Le Fabre, we afterwards learned, had come from Versaillesespecially to investigate the matter that was bothering us. Shepossessed no mediumistic properties of her own but was a staunchproponent of spiritualism, believing firmly in immortality and theomnipotence of "translated" souls.
Professor Herold is most widely known as the inventor of certainapparatus connected with wireless. But he is also considered the West'smost advanced student of electrical and radio-active subjects.
I was enormously glad to have this man's expert, high-tension knowledgeright on tap.
The remaining member of the quintet which Sir Henry advised me to summonrequires a little explanation. Also, I am obliged to give him a namenot his own; for it is not often that brigadier-generals of the UnitedStates army can openly lend their names to anything so far removedapparently from militarism as the searching of the occult.
Yet we knew that this man possessed a power that few scientists havedeveloped; the power of co-ordination, of handling and balancing greatfacts and forces, and of deciding promptly how best to meet any givensituation. Not that we looked for anything militaristic out of the BlindSpot; far from it. We merely knew not what to expect, which was exactlywhy we wanted to have him with us; his type of mind is, perhaps, themost solidly comforting sort that any mystery-bound person can have athis side.
By the time these five had gathered, Jerome had neither returnednor telephoned. There was not the slightest trace of Rhamda Avec; noguessing as to whether he had seen the ad. It was then one o'clock inthe afternoon. Only six hours ago! It doesn't seem possible.
So there were eight of us--three women and five men--who went upstairsand quietly inspected the all but lifeless form of Ariadne andafterwards gathered in the library below.
All were thoroughly familiar with the situation. Miss Clarke calmlycommented to the effect that the entire Blind Spot affair was due whollyand simply to the cumulative effects of so many, many subjects; theresult, in other words, of error.
Dr. Malloy was equally outspoken in his announcement that he proposedto deal with the matter from the standpoint of psychic aberration. Hementioned dissociated personalities, group hypnosis, and so on. But hedeclared that he was open to conviction, and anxious to get any and allfacts.
Sir Henry had a good deal of difficulty in getting Mme. Le Fabre tocommit herself. Probably she felt that, since Sir Henry had gone onrecord as being doubtful of the spiritistic explanation of psychicphenomena, she might get into a controversy with him. But in the endshe stated that she expected to find our little mystery simply a novelvariation on what was so familiar to her.
As might be supposed, General Hume had no opinion. He merely expressedhimself as being prepared to accept any sound theory, or portions ofsuch theories as might be advanced, and arrive at a workable conclusiontherefrom. Which was exactly what we wanted of him.
Of them all, Professor Herold showed the most enthusiasm. Perhaps thiswas because, despite his attainments, he is still young. At any rate, hemade it clear that he was fully prepared to learn something entirely newin science. And he was almost eager to adjust his previous notions andfacts to the new discoveries.
When all these various viewpoints had been cleared up, and we felt thatwe understood each other, it was inevitable that we should look to SirHenry to state his position. This one man combined a large amount of thevarious, specialised abilities for which the others were noted, and theyall knew and respected him accordingly. Had he stood and theorised halfthe afternoon, they would willingly have sat and listened. But insteadhe glanced at his watch, and observed:
"To me, the most important development of all was hearing the sound of adog's bark coming from the ring. As I recall the details, the sound wasemitted just after the gem had been submitted to considerable handling,from Miss Fenton's fingers to her brother's and back again. In otherwords, it was subjected to a mixture of opposing animal magnetisms.Suppose we experiment further with it now."
Charlotte slipped the gem from he
r finger and passed it around. Each ofus held it for a second or two; after which Charlotte clasped the ringtightly in her palm, while we all joined hands.
It was, as I have said, broad daylight; the hour, shortly after one.Scarcely had our hands completed the circuit than something happened.
From out of Charlotte's closed hand there issued an entirely new sound.At first it was so faint and fragmentary that only two of us heard it.Then it became stronger and more continuous, and presently we were allgazing at each other in wonderment.
For the sound was that of footsteps.
The Blind Spot Page 27