The Flying Death, Samuel Hopkins Adams [books for students to read .TXT] 📗

In his own way, Professor Ravenden possessed as keen a detective instinct as Haynes himself.

The variation of a shade of a moth’s wing, the obscurest trait in the life-habit of some unconsidered larva form, was sufficient to set him to the trail, and sometimes with results that, to his compeers, seemed little short of marvellous. Science had been enriched by his acumen, in several notable instances, and thousands of farmers who had never heard his name owed to him the immunity of certain crops from the ravages of their most destructive insect enemy.

In this work the pedantic professor was a true zealot. So much did his enthusiasm partake of the ardour of the hunt that he had found himself in the readiest sympathy with Haynes’ sharp and practical capacities. Now, for the first time, he had seen a problem in his own department assume an aspect of immediate and tremendous human importance. That his part in the solution should be worked out with flawless perfection was become a matter of conscience, a test of honour. Sure as he was of his ground, he determined to prove to the utmost, the solidity of his foundation.

“Have you other fences than the one which I know, built of the cretaceous rock?” he asked Johnston.

“You’ll find some in the farthest lot back, I reckon,” said Johnston. “Look near the corners of the fence for them slabs.”

“If you have a wheelbarrow,” began the scientist when the other interrupted him.

“You wasn’t thinking of going up there now, was you?”

The professor assented.

“Alone?” said Johnston. “It’s gettin’ toward dark, too. Hadn’t I better go with you?”

“I shall be gone but a few moments,” said the professor with some impatience. “It was my design, in case I found any further imprints to bring back the rocks in the wheelbarrow for careful inspection.”

“You go in and get your revolver, Professor,” said Johnston, “and I’ll have Henkle run the barrow up there for ye.”

Henkle was a young Swedish boy, known to possess no English and suspected of having little more wits. With some difficulty he was made to understand what was expected of him; so, having had the barrow handles inserted in his hard young palms, and the professor pointed out to him he patiently trudged along in the wake of the savant, out across the hollows.

In a brief time the professor had found indications on half a dozen of the rocks. Glowing with enthusiasm, he loaded them into the barrow, and set a homeward pace, that made the sturdy little Swede gasp before he had covered half the distance.

McDale, the reporter for one of the “yellow” papers, saw them from his window, coming into the yard.

“A good chance to get something from the professor,” he thought, and ran down to accost him.

Henkle, the Swede boy, hung about, open-mouthed and staring stupidly.

“Go away. You’re through. Skip!” said McDale, indicating dismissal with a sweeping gesture.

Unfortunately the sweep of his arm was toward the field whence the pair had just come with their find. The tired boy uncomplainingly picked up the handles of his barrow again and trudged away, unnoticed by the professor, who was now deep in the study of the first rock.

“See,” he cried excitedly to McDale. “This is unquestionabIy the print of a smaller specimen than ours; a young pteranodon, doubtless, or perhaps a lesser sub-species.”

Pretending an absorbed interest, the reporter drew out the simple-hearted professor, who, showing rock after rock in explanation, elaborated his theory. McDale, hurrying upstairs to make his notes—he had been afraid to “pull a pencil” on the scientist, lest he check the enthusiastic flow of ideas—ran into Eldon Smith.

“Get anything?” asked Smith, in the brief formula of the newspaper world.

“Sunday stuff, and a corker!” said McDale. “You wouldn’t want it; but it’s hot stuff for us, with a scare-devil double-page drawing of the Pteranodaceus Dingbattius, and Professor Ravenden’s photograph as large as we can get it.”

“Pretty tough on the professor,” said Eldon Smith. “He’s rather a square old party.”

“Oh, I’m not going to fake him,” protested the other. “And of course I won’t guy him. That would put a crimp in the story.”

“You know what his reputation will be in the scientific world, after he’s been made to stand for a wild-eyed nightmare like this?” said the other.

“Oh, he’ll be down and out,” agreed the dealer in sensations. “But that ain’t my business. And the cream of it is that he believes in this gilly-loo bird, as if he’d seen it.”

Eldon Smith jumped to the window and throwing it up with a bang, leaned out into the darkness.

“Did you hear that?” he cried.

McDale was beside him instantly. They stood, rigid, intent, as a faint, woeful, high-pitched scream of abject terror quivered in the still air.

Instantly the house was alive. Somebody was calling for lanterns. Another voice was shouting to Professor Ravenden to come back, to wait, not to venture out into the night without light. The two reporters, with the Colton brothers, got to the piazza at the same time.

Meantime the shrieks grew louder. They came short and at regular intervals, with an almost mechanical effect.

“That’s like hysteria,” said Dick Colton. “Can anyone make out just where it comes from?”

As if in reply, the professor’s precise accents were heard.

“This way. He is here.”

There was a rush of the men. “I have him,” called Professor Ravenden.

Once more the voice was raised, but subsided into a long, sobbing moan. Then the savant staggered into view, carrying the limp form of the young Swede.

“He has fainted,” he said. “He was rushing by me, quite unheeding my call, when I caught him and he fell, as if shot. I trust he is not injured.”

“Unhurt,” said Dick Colton, “but literally frightened almost to death.”

Henkle came to half an hour later. No explanation could be had of him, other than a shuddering indication of some overhanging terror. Once he made a sweeping gesture of the arms, much as had Whalley on the night of the wreck. The physician gave him a sleeping powder and arranged to see him early in the morning.

He never saw the boy again. With the first light he was gone, and his little belongings with him. Afterward they found out that he had walked to the station, and taken the morning train.

“There’s a possible clue lost,” said Dick Colton to the professor, “that might have helped us.”

But Professor Ravenden was little concerned. He had discovered a print which might possibly indicate a rudimentary sixth toe on the pteranodon and he was absorbed in measurements.