Читать книгу The Black Box - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 23

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The exact spot where the bone of the missing skeleton was discovered, was easily located. It was about twenty yards from a gate which led into the back part of the Professor’s grounds. The neighbourhood was dreary in the extreme. There were half-finished houses, little piles of building materials, heaps of stones, a watchman’s shed, and all the dreary paraphernalia of an abandoned building enterprise. Quest wasted very little time before arriving at a decision.

“The discovery of the bone so near the Professor’s house,” he decided, “cannot be coincidence only. We will waste no time out here, Lenora. We will search the grounds. Come on.”

They advanced towards the gate but found it locked. The wall was unusually high as though to obscure a view of anything that lay on the other side. Quest noticed with interest that, in places where it had shown signs of crumbling away, it had been repaired. He contemplated the lock thoughtfully and drew a little instrument from his pocket, an instrument which had the appearance of a many-sided key.

“Looks like storming the fortress, eh?” he remarked. “Here goes, any way.”

The gate swung open with a single turn of the wrist. Quest glanced for a moment at the lock and replaced the instrument in his pocket.

“The Professor’s not looking for visitors,” he muttered. “Gee! What a wilderness!”

It was hard to know which way to turn. Every path was choked with tangled weeds and bushes. Here and there remained one or two wonderful old trees, but the vegetation for the greater part consisted of laurel and other shrubs, which from lack of attention had grown almost into a jungle. They wandered about almost aimlessly for nearly half-an-hour. Then Quest came to a sudden standstill. Lenora gripped his arm. They had both heard the same sound—a queer, crooning little cry, half plaintive, half angry. Quest looked over his right shoulder along a narrow, overgrown path which seemed to end abruptly in an evergreen hedge.

“What’s that?” he exclaimed.

Lenora still clung to his arm.

“I hate this place,” she whispered. “It terrifies me. What are we looking for, Mr. Quest?”

“Can’t say that I know exactly,” the latter answered, “but I guess we’ll find out where that cry came from. Sounded to me uncommonly like a human effort.”

They made their way up as far as the hedge, which they skirted for a few yards until they found an opening. Then Quest gave vent to a little exclamation. Immediately in front of them was a small hut, built apparently of sticks and bamboos, with a stronger framework behind. The sloping roof was grass-grown and entwined with rushes. The only apology for a window was a queer little hole set quite close to the roof.

“The sort of place where the Professor might keep some of his pets,” Quest observed thoughtfully. “We’ll have a look inside, any way.”

There was a rude-looking door, but Quest, on trying it, found it locked. They walked around the place but found no other opening. All the time from inside they could hear queer, scuffling sounds. Lenora’s cheeks grew paler.

“Must we stay?” she murmured. “I don’t think I want to see what’s inside. Mr. Quest! Mr. Quest!”

She clung to his arm. They were opposite the little aperture which served as a window, and at that moment it suddenly framed the face of a creature, human in features, diabolical in expression. Long hair drooped over one cheek, the close-set eyes were filled with fury, the white teeth gleamed menacingly. Quest felt in his pocket for his revolver.

“Say, that’s some face!” he remarked. “I’d hate to spoil it.”

Even as he spoke, it disappeared. Quest took out the little gate opening apparatus from his pocket.

“We’ve got to get inside there, Lenora,” he announced, stepping forward.

She followed him silently. A few turns of the wrist and the door yielded. Keeping Lenora a little behind him, Quest gazed around eagerly. Exactly in front of him, clad only in a loin cloth, with hunched-up shoulders, a necklace around his neck, with blazing eyes and ugly gleaming teeth, crouched some unrecognisable creature, human yet inhuman, a monkey and yet a man. There were a couple of monkeys swinging by their tails from a bar, and a leopard chained to a staple in the ground, walking round and round in the far corner, snapping and snarling every time he glanced towards the new-comers. The creature in front of him stretched out a hairy hand towards a club, and gripped it. Quest drew a long breath. His eyes were set hard.

“Drop that club,” he ordered.

The creature suddenly sprang up. The club was waved around his head.

“Drop it,” Quest repeated firmly. “You will sit down in your corner. You will take no more notice of us. Do you hear? You will drop the club. You will sit down in your corner. You will sleep.”

The club slipped from the hairy fingers. The tense frame, which had been already crouched for the spring, was suddenly relaxed. The knees trembled.

“Back to that corner,” Quest ordered, pointing.

Slowly and dejectedly, the ape-man crept to where he had been ordered and sat there with dull, non-comprehending stare. It was a new force, this, a note of which he had felt—the superman raising the voice of authority. Quest touched his forehead and found it damp. The strain of those few seconds had been intolerable.

“I don’t think these other animals will hurt,” he said. “Let’s have a look around the place.”

The search took only a few moments. The monkeys ran and jumped around them, gibbering as though with pleasure. The leopard watched them always with a snarl and an evil light in his eye. They found nothing unusual until they came to the distant corner, where a huge piano box lay on its side with the opening turned to the wall.

“This is where the brute sleeps, I suppose,” Quest remarked. “We’ll turn it round, any way.”

They dragged it a few feet away from the wall, so that the opening faced them. Then Lenora gave a little cry and Quest stood suddenly still.

“The skeleton!” Lenora shrieked. “It’s the skeleton!”

Quest stooped down and drew away the matting which concealed some portion of this strange-looking object. It was a skeleton so old that the bones had turned to a dull grey. Yet so far as regards its limbs, it was almost complete. Quest glanced towards the hands.

“Little fingers both missing,” he muttered. “That’s the skeleton all right, Lenora.”

“Remember the message!” she exclaimed. “ ‘Where the skeleton is, the necklace may be also.’ ”

Quest nodded shortly.

“We’ll search.”

They turned over everything in the place fruitlessly. There was no sign of the necklace. At last they gave it up.

“You get outside, Lenora,” Quest directed. “I’ll just bring this beast round again and then we’ll tackle the Professor.”

Lenora stepped back into the fresh air with a little murmur of relief. Quest turned towards the creature which crouched still huddled up in its corner, its eyes half-closed, rolling a little from side to side.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

The creature obeyed. Once more its frame seemed to grow more virile and natural.

“You need sleep no longer,” Quest said. “Wake up and be yourself.”

The effect of his words was instantaneous. Almost as he spoke, the creature crouched for a spring. There was wild hatred in its close-set eyes, the snarl of something fiend-like in its contorted mouth. Quest slipped quickly through the door.

“Any one may have that for a pet!” he remarked grimly. “Come, Lenora, there’s a word or two to be said to the Professor. There’s something here will need a little explanation.”

He lit a cigar as they struggled back along the path. Presently they reached the untidy-looking avenue, and a few minutes later arrived at the house. Quest looked around him in something like bewilderment.

“Say, fancy keeping a big place like this, all overgrown and like a wilderness!” he exclaimed. “If the Professor can’t afford a few gardeners, why doesn’t he take a comfortable flat down town.”

“I think it’s a horrible place,” Lenora agreed. “I hope I never come here again.”

“Pretty well obsessed, these scientific men get,” Quest muttered. “I suppose this is the front door.”

They passed under the portico and knocked. There was no reply. Quest searched in vain for a bell. They walked round the piazza. There were no signs of any human life. The windows were curtainless and displayed vistas of rooms practically devoid of furniture. They came back to the front door. Quest tried the handle and found it open. They passed into the hall.

“Hospitable sort of place, any way,” he remarked. “We’ll go in and wait, Lenora.”

They found their way to the study, which seemed to be the only habitable room. Lenora glanced around at its strange contents with an expression almost of awe.

“Fancy a man living in a muddle like this!” she exclaimed. “Not a picture, scarcely a carpet, uncomfortable chairs—nothing but bones and skeletons and mummies and dried-up animals. A man with tastes like this, Mr. Quest, must have a very different outlook upon life from ordinary human beings.”

Quest nodded.

“He generally has,” he admitted. “Here comes our host, any way.”

A small motor-car passed the window, driven by Craig. The Professor descended. A moment or two later he entered the room. He gazed from Quest to Lenora at first in blank surprise. Then he held out his hands.

“You have good news for me, my friends!” he exclaimed. “I am sure of it. How unfortunate that I was not at home to receive you! Tell me—don’t keep me in suspense, if you please—you have discovered my skeleton?”

“We have found the skeleton,” Quest announced.

For a single moment the new-comer stood as though turned to stone. There was a silence which was not without its curious dramatic significance. Then a light broke across the Professor’s face. He gave a great gulp of relief.

“My skeleton!” he murmured. “Mr. Quest, I knew it. You are the greatest man alive. Now tell me quickly—I want to know everything, but this first of all.—Where did you find the skeleton? Who was the thief?”

“We found the skeleton, Professor,” Quest replied, “within a hundred yards of this house.”

The Professor’s mouth was wide open. He looked like a bewildered child. It was several seconds before he spoke.

“Within a hundred yards of this house? Then it wasn’t stolen by one of my rivals?”

“I should say not,” Quest admitted.

“Where? Where exactly did you find it?” the other insisted.

Quest was standing very still, his manner more reserved even than usual, his eyes studying the Professor, weighing every spoken word.

“I found it in a hut,” he said, “hidden in a piano box. I found there, also, a creature—a human being, I must call him—in a state of captivity.”

“Hidden in a piano box?” the Professor repeated wonderingly. “Why, you mean in Hartoo’s sleeping box, then?”

“If Mr. Hartoo is the gentleman who tried to club me, you are right,” Quest admitted. “Mr. Ashleigh, before we go any further I must ask you for an explanation as to the presence of that person in your grounds!”

The Professor hesitated for a moment. Then he slowly crossed the room, opened the drawer of a small escritoire, and drew out a letter.

“You have heard of Sir William Raysmore, the President of the Royal Society?” he asked.

Quest nodded.

“This letter is from him,” the Professor continued. “You had better read it.”

The criminologist read it aloud. Lenora looked over his shoulder:—

“To Professor Edgar Ashleigh, New York.

“My dear Professor,

“Your communication gratifies and amazes me. I can say no more. It fell to your lot to discover the skeleton of the anthropoid, a marvellous thing, in its way, and needing only its corollary to form the greatest discovery since the dark ages. Now you tell me that in the person of Hartoo, the last of the Inyamo Race of South America, you have found that corollary. You have supplied the missing link. You are in a position to give to the world a definite and logical explanation of the evolution of man. Let me give you one word of warning, Professor, before I write you at greater length on this matter. Anthropologists are afflicted more, even, than any other race of scientific men, with jealousy. Guard your secret well, lest the honour of this discovery should be stolen from you.

“William Raysmore.”