"Furthermore, it is safe to say that in a short time we will solve the murders of the Tontine group. You were right, Mr. McCall and you Hale. This kidnapping is intimately bound up with those murders. I am beginning to see light. Let us notify the police,"
he concluded decisively.
Chapter XVII
Stark fear stalked the camp of Justice Isaac Higginbotham. By the time Professor Brierly had returned from his momentous trip to New York this fear was naked, unashamed. The men now made no attempt to dissemble.
All these men had fought; they had faced death in various forms.
They could each be counted on to act like soldiers in the face of ordinary danger. It was the fear of the unknown; the dread that at any moment of the day or night they might become the victims of a deadly attack from an unknown and unexpected source that was visibly having its effect on these octogenarians.
It finally took form in a strange manner. As if by unanimous consent, they each avoided being left alone with one of their comrades. They would gather at meals or on the porch or in the large living-room, but they avoided being left in pairs.
They all took solitary walks. Some of them went out on the lake.
Some of them went to Lentone or elsewhere; always alone. Whether this was sheer bravado, or some strange reaction to the psychological elements involved, no observer could determine. They apparently reached an unspoken and unannounced resolution, all of them, to stay at the camp until the murders were cleared up. Some of them went about armed, although that was merely a gesture.
To the four men who had been taken into their confidence fell the task of keeping the strange unhappy group from going mad. Even this solace was denied them during the past two days. The kidnapping of the child now took, in the minds of at least two of the men, a place equal in importance to the murders of their three comrades.
Professor Brierly now spent all of his waking moments between receiving and sending telegrams at the camp of the Tontine group.
The men were gathered on the porch. There was talk, jerky sentences. Only a man finely and delicately balanced and organized as was the old scientist could have resisted the pall of gloom and dread that permeated the group.
"Any news of the little boy, Professor?" asked McGuire.
"No, none. The mother is frantic, of course. I myself am not easy in mind about it. I do not believe, however, that harm is intended the boy."
"Why don"t you take the police into it, Professor," asked Judge Fletcher. "It can"t be worse than it is. The Canadian police are a very efficient organization, almost as efficient as fiction makes them out to be."
"I have given it to the police this morning. We have decided there is nothing to be gained by further silence. The police now have it in hand."
"You had a note asking you to go to New York and meet the kidnappers and their representatives didn"t you?"
"Why didn"t you go, Professor?"
The old man, who was glad of this opportunity of taking their minds off their own tragedy even for the moment, answered slowly, his keen eyes darting from one member of the group to the other.
"It seemed to Mr. McCall and Hale, Matthews agreed with this, that the communication addressed to me was designed to take me away from here. It seems very probable that the entire kidnapping plan is closely tied up with your own deplorable affair, gentlemen."
They were looking at him with concern. He went on.
"I have had some little part in exposing the role that some person, at present unknown, had in the murders of at least three of your comrades." His keen eyes shaded by their thick lashes and eyebrows were watching intently. "It may be that the man or men we are seeking intend some more mischief, right here. They may wish me out of the way.
"They sent a deciduous tooth, a baby tooth as evidence of the lengths to which they are prepared to go to enforce their demands on me. Sending that tooth was almost ludicrous in its futility.
Mrs. Van Orden was distracted, of course, until I informed her that the tooth did not come out of her son"s mouth.
"Why should they have selected that boy for kidnapping, if ransom was the object? Mrs. Van Orden is a poor woman. I am comparatively so. John has no money, he is just starting life. Why did they make that futile gesture with the tooth?"
Goldberg, who was sitting near the edge of the porch, said with bitter sarcasm, pointing to the overhanging rock:
"Now there is a fine chance for a man to destroy this group. If that overhanging rock came down here while we"re sitting here it would wipe out the survivors of the Tontine agreement like that!"
He snapped his fingers.
"There is no danger of that, Sam," rea.s.sured Justice Higginbotham.
"That has been that way since I came up here; that is about thirty-five years. I and others have expressed uneasiness over the position of that rock, but there is no danger. When--er soon, I shall have it cleared away."
Vasiliewski burst out:
"Professor, we"re sitting here talking of everything except that which is uppermost in our minds. We are trying to mask our feelings. You know what we are all thinking of. Is there any hope, Professor."
Professor Brierly answered slowly, gravely.
"I have reason to believe that we will solve this--problem shortly.
Habits of a lifetime prevent me from being more specific. I have learned, and paid dearly for learning, that jumping at conclusions may often prove disastrous. That is why I am not given to making guesses, surmises. I wish I could say something more definite."
"My G.o.d, Professor, do you mean to say that you suspect--"
Professor Brierly shook his head regretfully and was about to speak when Vasiliewski impulsively interrupted.
"But can"t you see, Professor, that this is not a cold scientific problem, that our lives are at stake. This is a human problem, Professor."
"a.s.suming, Mr. Vasiliewski, that I took your view of it. Persons are p.r.o.ne to regard me as a thinking machine. I am not. Let us a.s.sume, I say, that I took your view of it. Just see what might happen. I might accuse the wrong man. We might even convict the wrong man. The guilty man might then go on, doing incalculable evil. Guessing is dangerous and is--fallible. Scientific induction and deductions, conclusions based on irrefutable fact, fact that can be weighed and measured, is infallible."
There was real concern in his eyes as he rose to depart.
"All I can say, gentlemen, is that I shall be able to free you from the terrible thing you fear in a very short time now."
To the scores of press representatives who hounded him for a statement he resolutely turned a deaf ear. He was besieged by a constant horde of visitors. The news hunters realized that where Professor Brierly was, was the real source of news. It had been necessary to divulge the part he had taken in the three murders.
He would have denied himself to callers, either personal or to those calling on the telephone, but this was now impossible. He might miss now an important communication bearing on the murders or, what for the time was to him more important, the kidnapping.
The search went on relentlessly, the police of all the near--by cities and states taking part in the search. It soon began to be felt that the kidnapping was closely tied up with the murders of the octogenarians. It was at the request of the survivors of the Tontine group that Justice Higginbotham"s camp was not molested.
It was readily seen that constant surveillance by the press and police would be a highly undesirable and perhaps a very dangerous thing for the ten aged survivors.
Arrangements were, therefore, set up for periodic statements by a member of the group. The press of the country nevertheless felt free to make its own search and indulge in its own surmises and guesses.
One week after the first murder was announced it became apparent that they were no nearer a solution than they were at the beginning. Moral publications were beginning to clamor for results. The people of New York City were clamoring for results.
Editors were profanely wiring their expensive representatives for results. The patience of the police and the reporters was wearing thin. During all this clamor the only thing that came from the camps over the Canadian border, from the hundreds of star reporters was--nothing. Even Jimmy was unmercifully berated for falling down on the job, Jimmy, who one short week before was praised to the skies for springing one of the greater newspaper stories in history.
It was apparent to those who were close to him that Professor Brierly was forging in silence a chain, link by link, that would bridge the gap between doubt and certainty. He was sending and receiving telegrams, without for one moment relaxing his vigilance of the Higginbotham camp and its ten old men. The evening of the day after the receipt of the last telegram, McCall in the hope of drawing the old man out said:
"My vacation ends next week, Professor. When I get back to New York I may be able to speed up things in the matter of the Schurman murder. You"re staying here the rest of the summer aren"t you?" he concluded innocently.
"Yes."
"Really, Professor, I know you don"t like to make guesses, but this is getting on all our nerves. How near to a solution are you?"
"If I were a lawyer or a newspaper man," the old man said tartly, "I should make a guess and arrest the murderer tomorrow. But lawyers and newspaper men use a weird type of logic. That is why lawyers and newspaper men are as often right as wrong. Legal logic, particularly, is something awful to contemplate."
"Legal logic," began McCall stiffly.
"Is precisely what I said," snapped the old man. "How can you defend the logic of a judge who hands down a decision basing it on the statement that a dining car is not a railroad car. There is also the logic of a judge who handed down a decision basing it on the hypothesis that an overcoat is real estate. That is legal logic, Mr. McCall."