CHAPTER FIFTEEN--THE PROFESSOR ACTS
PROMPTITUDE was one of Professor Ravenden's many virtues. Only onething could make him forget the obligation of an engagement; that washis dominant ardour for the hunt. In time this had become an instinct.So it is not strange that, on leaving Third House to keep his rendezvouswith Dick Colton, he should have absentmindedly hung his heavypoison-jar for specimens around his neck, and taken up his butterflynet, while entirely forgetting his revolver.
As chance would have it, there rose about the same hour as ProfessorRavenden a delicate little butterfly with wings like the azure gloryof the mid-June heavens. It was taking the air on a leaf of scrub-oak,while waiting for the sun to come out, when the entomologist camestriding over the knolls, and brushed against the shrub. Up flutteredthe beautiful insect, and the blue of its wings caught the eager eyeof Professor Ravenden. It was of the same species which once before hadlured him from the greater pursuit.
"_Lycama pseudargiolus_," he muttered, as he hastily affixed hiscollapsible net. "From its brightness, it should be a fall specimen, andundoubtedly shows the variations on the lower wing which I am studying.Wait one moment, my friend, and I shall welcome you to the hospitalityof my cyanide jar."
After a brief flight the insect settled down well toward the centreof another patch of shrubbery. Having prepared his net, the hunter setabout forcing his way into this patch, but before he was in reach ofhis prey the pressure on the close-knit vegetation had disturbed thesensitive insect and again it rose, this time in alarm. Though barelyan inch across the wings, this species exhibits capacities for flightgreater than that of much larger butterflies. When again it alighted,the pursuer, panting and perspiring, had been drawn in a semicircularcourse, some hundreds of yards inland. This time he did not get nearenough for a trial of his net before the elusive creature was off again.The third flight was a briefer one. After tentative flutterings, the_pseudargiolm_ alighted on a marshmallow leaf in a hollow. Taking profitof his previous failures, Professor Ravenden sat down and got hisbreath while waiting for the quarry to lapse into a state of undisturbedquietude. Thus, it was easy presently for the hunter to net it andtransfer it to the cyanide jar. This done, he realised with a start ofconscience that he had wasted ten minutes, and was a quarter of a mileoff the track of his engagement. With all speed, he pointed across theknolls toward the beach.
Fog was drifting in from the ocean, giving added incentive to haste.Wisest it would be, the professor judged, to make for the near point ofthe cliff, so that he might have a line to follow should mist blot thelandscape. The beach below was just dimming with the advance of thefirst folds of grey when Professor Ravenden reached the brink. Thenearer sands were cut off from his vision by a rise between himself andthe rendezvous. As his eye ranged to the west for the readiest accessto the level, it was caught and held by the outstretched body of DickColton lying upon the hard sand out from the mouth of the ravine whereSerdholm and Haynes had met their death.
For the moment the scientist was stunned into inaction. Suddenly thebody twitched, and there swept over the unhappy entomologist a dreadfulsense of his own negligence and responsibility. Along the heightsparalleling the beach-line he ran at utmost speed, dipped down into ahollow where, for the time, the prospect was shut off, and surmountedthe slope beyond, which brought him almost above the body, and a littleto the east of the gully. Meantime the fog had been closing down, andnow, as the professor reached the spot, it spread a grey and waveringmantle between him and what lay below.
Already he had attained the gully's edge, when there moved out upon thehard sand a thing so out of all conception, an apparition so monstrous,that the professor's net fell from his hand, and a loud cry burstfrom him. Through the enveloping medium of the mist, the figure swayedvaguely, and assumed shapes beyond comprehension. Suddenly it doubled onitself, contracted to a compact blur, underwent a swift inversion, andbefore the scientist's straining vision there arose a man, dreadful ofaspect indeed, but still a human being, and as such, not beyond humanpowers to cope with. The man had been moving toward the body of Coltonwhen the professor's shout arrested him. Now he whirled about and stoodfacing the height with squinted eyes and bestially gnashing teeth.
To delay him was the one chance for Colton's life, if Colton indeed werenot already beyond help.
"If I only could get down the gully!" thought the professor, anddismissed the thought instantly. Time for any course except the directone now was lacking. The one way lay over the cliff.
"Stand where you are!" he shouted in a voice of command, and before thewords were fairly done he was in mid-air, a giddy terror dulling hisbrain as he plunged down through the fog. Fortunately--for the bonesof fifty-odd years are brittle--he landed upon a slope of soft sand.Pitching forward, he threw himself completely over, and carried to hisfeet by the impetus, charged down the slope upon the man.
It was the juggler. So much the professor realised as he sped forward.Mania of murder was written unmistakably on the seamed and malignantface and in the eyes, as the man turned them on the professor. Hisposture was that of a startled beast, alert and alarmed. Beyond him,near the sprawled body of Colton, a huge knife with an inordinatelybroad blade stuck, half upright, in the sand. Toward this the maniac hadstarted, but turned swiftly with a snarl, and crouched, as the intrepidscientist ran in upon him.
Exultation, savage and keen, a most unscientific emotion, blazed upin Professor Ravenden as he noted that his opponent had little theadvantage of him in size and weight. What little there was would beoffset by his own natural wiriness of frame which a rigid habit of lifeand out-of-door exercise had kept from the deterioration of age. Thescientist came in, stooping low, and, stooping low, the murderer met theonset. The two closed. With a sudden, daunting shock the entomologistrealised, as Whalley's muscles tightened on his, that he had metthe strength of fury. For a moment they strained, Professor Ravendenstriving for a grip which should enable him to break the other'sfoothold. Then with a rabid scream the creature dashed his face intothe professor's shoulder. Through cloth and flesh sheared the raveningteeth, until they grated on the shoulder-blade.
Instantly the aspect of the duel changed. For, upon the outrage of thatassault, a fury not less insane than the maniac's fired the professor,and he who always had prided himself upon a considered austerity of theemotions, was roused to the world-old, baresark thirst of murder whichlies somewhere, black and terrible, in the soul of every courageous man,and, sends him, at the last, straight to the throat of his enemy.
Power flushed through his veins; his muscles distended with the strengthof steel. Driving his fingers deep under the chin, he tore the hideous,distorted face from his shoulder. His right hand, drawn back for a blow,twitched upon the cord from which depended his heavy poison-bottle.Shouting aloud, he swung up the formidable weapon and brought it downupon the juggler's head with repeated blows. The man's grasp relaxed.Back for a fuller swing Professor Ravenden leaped, and crushed him tothe ground. The thick glass was shattered, and on the blood-stainedsands a little spot of heaven's blue fluttered in the breeze, instantlyto be trampled under foot.
Suddenly the scientist swayed and lurched forward. An influence aspotent for death as the most murderous weapons of man was abroad, loosedwhen the glass shattered. The deadly fumes of the cyanide, rising fromthe base of the jar which its owner still held, were doing their work.With barely sense enough surviving to realise his new peril, he flungit far from him. A mist fell, like a curtain, somewhere between his eyesand his brain, befogging the processes of thought. Heavily he droppedto his hands and knees over the feet of the senseless juggler, his facetoward Colton.
Colton seemed to have risen. This the professor took to be a figment ofhis reeling brain. It annoyed him.
"Lie down! Be quiet!" he muttered. "You are dead, and I am going to killyour murderer!"
Calling up all his will-power, he crawled to the juggler's head and sethis fingers to the palpitating throat. Another moment and the death ofa fellow-man
would have been upon the soul of the scholarly scientist,when an arm under his chest and an insistent voice in his ear broughthim back to reason.
"In God's name, Professor, don't strangle the poor devil!"
The baresark grip relaxed. Professor Ravenden collapsed, rolled over onhis back and looked up stupidly into the white face of Dick Colton.
"Where--where--is my _pseudargiolus?_" he asked plaintively.
"It's all right, professor; there wasn't any _pseudargiolus_. Just liequiet for a moment."
Professor Ravenden struggled up to a sitting posture. "Let me rise," hecried. "I have lost my specimen of _pseudargiolus_. It fell when the jarbroke."
He looked about him, and his eyes fell on the juggler.
"The pteranodon?" he queried. The mist was clearing from his brain, andhis mind swung dizzily back to the great speculation.
"What does it all mean?" he groaned.
"There is the pteranodon!" And Colton laughed shakily as he pointed tothe blood-smeared form lying quietly on the sand.
"But those footprints! Those footprints! The fossil marks on the rocks!"
"Footprints on the rock. Handprints here."
"Handprints?" repeated the professor. "Tell me slowly, I implore you. Imust confess to an unaccustomed condition of bewilderment."
"No wonder. The juggler killed his men by knife-play. He lay hidden inthe mouth of the gully, and threw the knife as they came along. Afterkilling them he had to recover his knife. So he walked out upon hishands, leaving the marks which have puzzled us so."
"But why?"
"He is coming to. We'll ask him."
In a few minutes "The Wonderful Whalley" was able to sit up and answerquestions. All his rage seemed to have gone, and all his cunning. He wascowed and weak and indifferent.
"Why did you kill Serdholm?" asked Colton.
"He beat me," was the reply.
"And what had you against Mr. Haynes?"
"He sink I was murderer; zat I kill ze sailor."
"And against me?"
"I see you follow ze trail. I sink you find me."
"So I probably should. I just had seen the resemblance between myhandprint and yours and had jumped forward to examine the next print,when I was struck."
"Zat jomp safe you," said the juggler. "Ze butt of ze knife hit as itturn or you would be dead." He spoke in a matter-of-fact way. Whilewaiting until he should be able to walk, they got a detailed confessionfrom him. He told with perfect frankness of the killing of Serdholm andHaynes and the attack on Colton; but he flatly and rather nonchalantlydenied the murder of Petersen the sailor, and the slaying of the sheep.
Coming to the killing of the kite-flier, Colton set a trap for him. "Whydid you club him after you had given him the knife?"
"Who?" said the juggler, his eyes growing wide. "Mr. Ely, the man wefound dead two nights ago with your knife-wound in his back."
Whalley displayed a pitiable agitation.
"Ze tall, still man, ze man at ze fisher-house? He ees dead?" he cried.
"You ought to know."
"I sink he was dead," said the juggler simply. "I hear zat sound up inze air."
Once more he threw his hands upward in that shuddering gesture which hadstartled them the night of the wreck.
"Zen I hear him cry like a dead man. A great an' terreeble cry! I run tomy place an' hide away."
"He heard the kites," said Colton to Professor Ravenden. Then to thejuggler:
"Now, Whalley, what put it into your head to walk out on your handsafter your knife when you killed Mr. Haynes and Serdholm?"
"To make it like ze ozzer tracks," he replied promptly.
"What other tracks?" cried the two men in a breath.
"Ze tracks of eet I do not know. I see zem; but I do not know. Come, Ishow you."
He got unsteadily to his feet, and, guarded on either side, led themdown the beach toward the Sand Spit station. After walking about a thirdof a mile he stopped and cast about him.
"Zere!" he said triumphantly, pointing. Following the instruction, theymade out traces of blood and the prints of a lamb's hoof. Leading out tothe spot was the dreadful familiar double spoor of talons.
"You did that too," accused Colton.
For refutation "The Wonderful Whalley" dropped to his knees and laid hishand over one of the marks. The hand more than completely covered theprints.
"You zee?" he said triumphantly.
"Whalley, what made that mark there?" said Professor Ravenden.
Again that strange gesture from the juggler and the quick shudderingin-draw of the shoulders. "Ze death-bird, maybe," he said.
Nothing more could be gotten from him. They delivered him at thecoast-guard station to be turned over to the authorities. When he wasout of their hands, Professor Ravenden insisted on returning to look forthe remains of his lost specimen, and was relieved at finding one wingintact. Not until he had carefully folded this in paper did he turn toDick Colton with the question:
"What is your opinion of our problem now?"
"I'm at my wit's end," said Dick. "Possibly we've got on the trail ofanother hand-walking knife-thrower."
"Or the death-bird, the pteranodon," returned Professor Ravendenquietly.