Читать книгу Doctor Zero and Others - Paul Chadwick - Страница 6

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ORNSTEIN began slipping out of his white jacket. He put on his overcoat, and in a moment he and Wade were descending in the elevator together. Two minutes later they turned out of the campus driveway in Wade's car and began speeding through the night toward the home of Arlene Munn's aunt.

When they reached it Wade saw more evidences of wealth, though the house wasn't quite as pretentious as Gordon Munn's. The dead man's sister, a large, florid woman of about forty, was in the drawing room with a bottle of smelling salts in her hand. She was close to hysteria, and the servants were running about panic stricken.

"Have you called the police?" asked Wade. The woman nodded. Her voice was a wail.

"This is terrible, terrible, terrible! Arlene came to me for protection--and now the poor girl is gone, and my poor dear brother, too!"

"She's not dead yet," said Wade. "We'll get her back."

With a flashlight in his hand he went outside. He saw that nothing had been touched. The window was still open in the room Arlene had been given for the night. The ladder still leaned against the house.

He walked carefully so as not to disturb any footprints before men from the bureau of identification came with their cameras and measuring instruments. He stooped over once, and a puzzled look flashed into his eyes. Two imprints of a girl's high-heeled slipper showed in a spot where the grass was thin. It looked to him as though Arlene Munn had walked calmly away from the house.

He waited till the police arrived, then left them to their methodical search for clews of the missing girl and drove Ornstein back to his quarters near the Technological Institute. Behind the professor's calm exterior Wade was aware of nervous tenseness. But Ornstein refused to admit that he was worried.

"Arlene has a lot of spirit," he said. "She can generally take care of herself."

THE next day Wade began systematically checking up on Zadok Smith. No trace of Smith had been found as yet. Arlene Munn hadn't been located, and the killing of Gordon Munn was still veiled in mystery.

The morning editions of the papers had run the stories of the Purple Peril and newsboys were still shouting in the streets. The whole city was agog with dread interest over the sinister series of murders which had taken place the previous night. The police department was coming in for a storm of criticism and Inspector Thompson was beside himself.

At a little after nine Wade Hammond drove into the campus grounds of the Technological Institute again. He went directly to the administration office and asked to see Professor Hartz.

"The police are anxious to check up on one of the students here named Zadok Smith," he told the girl at the desk. "Perhaps you've seen the morning papers. I believe Smith's name is mentioned."

The girl nodded. There was a scared look in her eyes.

"Professor Hartz has his laboratory in No. 14, Newton Hall," she said. "Follow the walk at the right as you go out."

Wade did as directed and found Hartz located in the top of one of the old brick buildings which had formed the nucleus of the institute before modern additions had been made. The Professor, with his woolly, white hair and his long, benign face, seemed as much a fixture as the building itself. He was dressed with comfortable simplicity in a baggy gray suit. The only touches of ornateness about him were the large diamond ring on his finger and the diamond scarf pin in his tie. These looked like heirlooms. A morning paper was carefully folded on the desk before him.

Wade introduced himself, displaying his special investigator's card.

"Sit down," said Hartz in a rumbling bass voice. "I suppose you've come about young Smith, one of my students. I see he's got his name in the papers." There was, thought Wade, a note of sadness in the professor's voice.

He nodded.

"Smith's wanted as a witness in connection with the murder of Gordon Munn and those two detectives. He's technically under arrest now. What's your opinion of his character?"

Hartz shook his white head slowly, and tapped the paper.

"They already have him branded as the murderer here," he said. "He was a brilliant student but an erratic one. I don't know what to say. It's hard to believe he'd do a thing like this."

"Where is he, then?" asked Wade. "What made him refuse to answer questions, and what was he doing on Munn's lawn?"

"I can't imagine where he is," said Hartz. "Curiosity might have led him to the scene of the murder; but none of it looks right."

"Professor Ornstein says that Smith is inclined to be impertinent," said Wade.

Hartz smiled and shrugged. His tone was slightly bitter.

"There's jealousy even in the halls of learning, Mr. Hammond. I sometimes think Professor Ornstein fears Smith as a future rival. Ornstein is a little erratic himself at times. He works too hard---often late at night. And he goes in for social life a great deal. We all wonder how he stands up under it."

After his interview with Professor Hartz, Wade got permission to search Zadok Smith's dormitory room. He hoped to find a diary, or papers that might throw more light on his character. But he found only an endless quantity of scientific notes written in Smith's painfully neat hand.

The room was neat, too, and Smith's few personal belongings had been chosen with care. He was evidently a serious-minded student who felt that he had a career before him.

Wade spent the rest of the day going over every detail of the case with Inspector Thompson.

A footprint had been found outside the window of Arlene Munn's room, just beside the ladder. It compared with another footprint discovered on the lawn of Munn's house. Both had been made by Zadok Smith apparently. This led to the belief that he had kidnapped her. A police dragnet was thrown out in an effort to trap the missing man.

Wade went back to his apartment late that evening and for a time paced the floor in deep thought.

He wondered grimly if the Purple Peril would strike again. Would the police find the man who hid behind the name of Doctor Zero before another victim had been claimed?

HE went to bed toward eleven that night and read a book for half an hour before dropping off to sleep. His brain was tired but restless from beating against the blank wall that had been reached in the Munn murder case.

Sometime after midnight he woke up suddenly. His nerves were tingling oddly and he had a strange feeling--a sense that someone or something had been in the room with him while he slept.

Was it a dream brought on by the happenings of the past twenty-four hours? Or had someone really entered his apartment?

He got up, half ashamed of himself, and snapped on the lights. So far as he could see nothing had been disturbed. There was no one hiding in the place, and the doorway into the hall was locked. But he had used skeleton keys often enough himself to know that locks were not invulnerable. Someone might have entered.

He took the precaution now of snapping the special night latch on his door into place. Then he turned off the lights and went back to bed again.

But he couldn't sleep. Back in his mind was a feeling of uneasiness that refused to be shaken off. Something else was growing out of it--an intangible sense of menace which deepened steadily like a thickening gray cloud.

He tried to ignore it, tried to tell himself that it was only his imagination playing tricks on him. But he kept on tossing restlessly.

He turned on his pillow for the tenth time and faced the window. Then suddenly his body tensed and his eyes grew wide with horror.

The oblong patch of sky that he could see was growing lighter, turning from the dark of night into a weird purple.

He leaped out of bed and reached the window with one bound. There, over the housetops, he could see it plainly now--a strange pinpoint of light like a shooting star. As he watched, it gained in size, revolving itself into a whirling, eerie ball of fire.

The Purple Peril! The beacon of death itself!

With cold fingers clutching at his heart, Wade Hammond realized that the sinister ball of light was coming straight toward the window of his own apartment!