CHAPTER SEVENTEEN--THE PROFESSOR'S SERMON
FOLLOWING the injunction left by Haynes, they buried him in thewind-swept knoll behind the Third House. A clergyman who had been sentfor from New York took charge of the services, which were attended bythe score of newspaper men and the little Third House group. A pompous,precise, and rather important person, was the clergyman; encased withina shell of prejudice which shut him off from any true estimate of theman over whose body he was to speak.
In Haynes he was able to see only an agent in a rather disapprovedenterprise, mighty, indeed, but, to his unseeing eye, without the idealswhich he had formulated for himself, and for those upon whom he imposedhis standards. So his address was purely formal; with a note of thepatronising and the exculpatory as if there were something to becondoned in the life which the reporter had laid down.
At the end there were sneering faces among the newspaper men. Helgawore an expression of piteous bewilderment; Dick Colton's teeth were sethard; and Dolly Ravenden's dark beauty glowed with suppressed wrath. Tothe surprise of all, as the minister closed, Professor Ravenden got tohis feet hesitantly and nervously.
"My friends," he said, "before we part I wish to add a slight tributeto what little we may say of the dead. For me to speak to you of hisqualifications of mind and character would be an impertinence. But as afollower of what we call science I have one word to speak.
"To see the truth, exact and clear, is given to no human. Now and againare born and matured minds which solve some small portion of the greatproblem that we live in. These are the world's master intellects, theDarwins, the Linnaeuses, the Cuviers, the Pasteurs. Borrowing theirlight, we perhaps may illuminate some tiny crevice, and thus pay ourpart of the human debt. That is the task to which the scientist sets hislong and patient efforts.
"And this is achieved how? By an instinct which asserts itself potentlyin a certain type of humanity, in the highest type which we know.For want of a better term, I may call it the truth-vocation. Thetruth-seeker may concern himself with the smallest scale of a moth'swing; he may devote himself to the study of the human soul in its mostprofound recesses; or he may strive with the immediate facts of life.Lie his field of endeavour where it may, his is the one great calling.Your friend and my friend who lies dead before us was of that world-oldarmy. He died under its flag and on the field of honour.
"His part was to seek the truth in the whirling incidents of the moment.With what complete absorption and self-forgetfulness he gave himself tothe task, you know better than I. Perhaps you do not know, as I did notuntil after his death, that he clung to his appointed work against theravages of a slow, pain-racked and mortal illness. The great Master ofDestiny whose universe proceeds by immutable laws has seen no priestof old called to martyrdom, no prophet risen to warn the nations, nodiscoverer inspired to enlarge the ken of mankind, with a truer vocationthan the seeker in a lesser field whom we honour here.
"He has gone to his own place. Whether he still seeks or has found,is not for us. For us is the legacy of a single-minded devotion and astraightforward nobility of character that cannot but have made and leftits impress wherever exerted."
How strangely work the influences of sympathy! The reporters wholistened with warming hearts to the simple man of science had come toHaynes' funeral primarily as a mark of respect, but secondarily becauseof their interest in a remarkable "story." Whispers of the professor'spteranodon theory had passed about. One or two of the men besides McDaleof the "yellow," had questioned him shrewdly, and had seen that he wouldcommit himself to that theory. This meant a big sensation. The practiceof journalism tends to dwarf the imagination and to make men skepticalof all that lies beyond the bounds of the usual. Not one of thereporters there took the slightest stock in the theory of a prehistoricmonster. Nevertheless, the mere word of a man so eminent in thescientific world as the entomologist would be enough to "carry thestory," and make it a tremendous feature. Columns of space were in it.But it meant also, as every reporter there believed, the downfall ofProfessor Ravenden's repute in a cataract of ridicule. As soon as thenewspaper group re-gathered at Third House, McDale spoke.
"I'm going to do what I never expected to do," he said. "I'm going tothrow my paper down."
"On the Ravenden story?" asked Eldon Smith.
McDale nodded gloomily. "It would have been such a screamer!" he said,shaking his head. "But it goes to the scrap-heap. Not for mine--afterthat little sermon."
"I think we're all agreed, fellows," said Chal-loner of the _MorningScript_, the dean of the gathering. "We all feel alike, I guess, aboutProfessor Ravenden. I've heard funeral sermons by the greatest in thecountry; but nothing that ever came home to me personally. Now, if weprint this pter-anodon story and back it up with interviews, it's a bigthing; but where does the professor come in? We've got to save himfrom himself. The pter-anodon feature has got to be suppressed. Is thatunderstood?"
There was no dissent. In all the days while the reporters stayed aboutwaiting for the "news interest" to peter out of the mystery, not onehint of the professor's "wild theory" found its way into print.
As time passed with no new developments, the reporters dropped in one byone to say good-bye to Professor Ravenden before they took train forNew York. Since then the professor often has had cause to wonder why,whenever he has spoken in public, the newspapers all over the countryhave treated him with such marked consideration, often overshadowingthe utterances of more prominent speakers with his. He does not knowhow small is the world of journalism and how widely and swiftly travels"inside news."
Of the newspaper crowd, Eldon Smith was the last to leave. He had a talkwith Dick Colton, who rode over to the train with him.
"Are you satisfied that Whalley was the author of all the killings?"asked the reporter.
"No, I'm not," returned the doctor. "It leaves altogether too muchunexplained. I wish I could believe in the professor's pteranodon."
"On account of the marks that Whalley showed you?"
"Not that alone. Just consider all the weak points in the theory thatWhalley is guilty of all the crimes. First: why should he confess partand not all?"
"That's not unusual."
"But have you ever known such a case where the murderer was as frank asWhalley? How are you going to ascribe any part in Petersen's death tothe juggler? He couldn't have thrown his knife in that blackness."
"I suppose it must have been done aboard the vessel before the man leftin the breeches-buoy."
"The evidence of the sailors is all against that. However, let it go atthat. How about the sheep? Why did he kill that?"
"For food. He was camping somewhere on the knolls, and he had to eat."
"And he was frightened away before he could make way with the carcass?Well, that's tenable. Now we come to the unhorsing of my brother. Thatmight have been caused by poor Ely's kites, as I figure it. They brokeaway, came zigzagging past and frightened the mare into insanity.Afterward they scared her over the cliff."
"I don't think so," said Eldon Smith. "In fact, it's impossible."
"Impossible? How?"
"Dr. Colton, did it ever occur to you to look up the weather records forthat night?"
"No."
"I've looked them up. The wind was from the southeast. Your brother wasless than a mile from the south shore. Mr. Ely was staying on the Soundshore, northwest of there, and almost directly down the wind. Now, howcould the kites travel upwind from Ely to the place where your brotherhad his alarm?"
Colton shook his head.
"Moreover," continued the reporter, "the mare when she rushed todestruction ran in the face of the wind. So the loose kites couldn'thave pursued her."
"That's true; but I see no reason why Ely mightn't have walked acrossthe point and flown from the ocean side that evening."
"Here is what I copied from his calendar diary for that night: 'Sept.17th. Temperature notes of no value. Upper currents fluctuant. Flew fromhillock 14 mile from Sound. Kites moving northward out over th
e Sound.Furled kites at 9:30.' (The time of your brother's experience more thantwo miles away.) 'Results unsatisfactory.' Is that definite enough?"
"Certainly, it seems so."
"It certainly does. Now, about the aerologist. What was the cause ofdeath?"
"It might have been either the stab-wound or the crushing of the skull."
"The skull was badly crushed?"
"Yes, and the right arm and shoulder were fractured."
"From what cause?"
"My reading of it is this: Whalley, crazy with desire to murder, creptup on this poor fellow. Ely heard or saw him coming and fled into theoak patch; but Whalley's knife-throw cut him down. Then the juggler, ina murderous frenzy, beat his victim with a heavy club."
"Picked up his body and flung it to the spot where it was found?"suggested the reporter as a conclusion.
"What do you mean? No man could throw a body that far."
"That would be my judgment."
"No," mused Dick. "Whalley must have carried the body out and dropped itwhere it was found."
"For what conceivable reason."
"Perhaps some idea that he was hiding it better. Perhaps for no reasonat all. Reason plays little part in an insane murderer's processes."
"But an insane murderer leave tracks the same as any other man, andunless Haynes was completely fooled there were no such tracks orbreakage of the shrubbery around the spot where you found the body, asmust have been made by a man breaking his way through, particularly ifhe were carrying a heavy body."
"What are you driving at?" asked Colton. "Well," said the reporterthoughtfully, "this Ely business seems to me just about thestrangest phase of this whole mystery. And it's the strangest, mostincomprehensible features of a problem that most often give you yourclue."
"Have you found one?"
"I've been thinking of another possible cause of such fractures as youdescribed. Might not a fall have caused them?"
"Not unless it was from a height. And how could he have fallen from aheight?"
"That is what I should like to know," said Eldon Smith. "The scrub-oakwhere you found the body is badly smashed down--much more crushed andbroken than the mere toppling over of a man would account for."
Swift light broke in upon Colton. "That is what Haynes was trying todetermine when he fell into the oak," he cried.
"Trust him for that. Did he get down on his hands and knees afterward?"
"Yes," cried the doctor. "What was he after?"
"He was examining a deep indentation in the ground beneath the shrubberythat just fits a man's head and shoulders as it would strike were theman falling headlong."
"Headlong? From the empty air?"
"From the empty air," assented the other.
"You mean that his kites were a sort of flying-machine?"
"It may be. Or he may have become entangled in the lines and carried upafter vainly struggling through the shrubbery."
"But the wound? Could he have struck on some sharp-pointed stake, andwriggled off in his death convulsions?" mused Colton.
"You're a physician. Could he?"
"No, no, a thousand times no!"
"Well?"
"It was Whalley," said Dick Colton reflectively. "Perhaps the kite-flyerfell near him, and in his unreasoning terror Whalley used his knife.And his own fear that he spoke of, of the terror impending over him, mayhave driven him to the murder."
"It must be so," said the reporter. "I see nothing else for it. But Idon't believe it all the same."
"Well, I don't know that I do, either, for that matter," said Colton, asthey drew in at the station.