Black Box — Justice Cheated
CHAPTER XVI JUSTICE CHEATED
The first shock was over.
Craig's body had been removed, and the girls had taken Mary, half stunned with grief, to their room.
French and Quest were left alone.
"This is some disappointment," the former remarked gloomily.
"It is a disappointment," Quest said slowly, "which may clear the way to bigger things."
"What's in your mind now?"
French enquired.
Quest shook his head.
"A turmoil.
First of all, where is the Professor?"
"Must have scooted right away home," French suggested.
"He was looking pretty sick all the time.
Guess it must have been a powerful shock for him, and he isn't so young as he used to be."
"Give me that paper of Craig's again," Quest asked, stretching out his hand.
The Inspector produced the document from his inner pocket, and Quest, stretching it out upon his knee, read it word for word.
"Never to communicate or to have anything to do with any one of the name of Ashleigh, eh?"
he remarked, as he handed it back again.
"Rather a queer provision, that, French."
"I've been thinking that myself," the Inspector admitted.
"Seems to be rather reversing the positions, doesn't it?"
Quest glanced at the clock.
"Well," he said, "if you're ready, Inspector, we'll be getting along."
"Where to?"
French demanded.
Quest looked for a moment surprised.
Just then Lenora entered the room.
"Are you going out?"
she asked Quest.
He nodded.
"The Inspector and I are going to have a look for that black box," he told her.
"Won't you want me?"
He shook his head.
"I think you girls have had as much as is good for you of this sort of business," he declared grimly.
"But it's all over now," Lenora protested.
Quest buttoned up his coat and motioned to French to follow him.
"I'm not so sure," he said.
"I'll 'phone if we want you, Lenora.
We shall be at the Professor's." The two men drove to the outskirts of the city almost in silence, while several of the officers followed in another taxi.
The Professor's house seemed more than ever deserted as they drew up at the front door.
They entered without ringing and crossed the hall towards the library.
On the threshold Quest paused and held up his finger.
"Some one is in there," he whispered, stepping quickly forward.
"Come!"
He threw open the door.
The room was empty, yet both Quest and French were conscious of a curious conviction that it had been occupied within the last few seconds.
French even shook out the curtains and swung open the doors of a bureau.
There was no sign of anybody, however, nor any evidence as to how they could have left the room.
"Queer, but it seemed to me I heard some one," French muttered.
"I was sure of it," Quest replied, shaking the curtains at the back of the door.
They stood still for a moment and listened.
The silence in the empty house was almost unnatural.
Quest turned away with a shrug of the shoulders.
"At any rate," he said, "Craig's dying thoughts must have been truthful.
Come."
He led the way to the fireplace, went down on his knees and passed his hands over the bricks.
The third one he touched, shook.
He tapped it--without a doubt it was hollow.
With his penknife he loosened the mortar a little and drew it out easily.
The back was open.
Inside was the black box.
"Craig's secret at last!"
French muttered hoarsely.
"Bring it to the light, quick!"
They were unemotional men but the moment was supreme.
The key to the mystery of these tragical weeks was there in their hands!
Their eyes almost devoured those few hastily scrawled words buried with so much care: _See page 62, January number, American Medical Journal 1905. _ They looked at one another.
They repeated vaguely this most commonplace of messages.
As the final result of their strenuous enterprise, these cryptic words seemed pitifully inadequate.
Quest's face darkened.
He crumpled the paper in his fingers.
"There must be some meaning in this," he muttered.
"It can't be altogether a fool's game we're on.
Wait."
He moved towards a table which usually stood against the wall, but which had obviously been dragged out recently into the middle of the room.
It was covered with bound volumes.
Quest glanced at one and exclaimed softly.
"_American Medical Journal, 1905!
_ French, there's something in this message, after all."
He turned over the pages rapidly.
Then he came to a stop.
Page 60 was there; page 62 had been neatly removed with a pair of scissors.
"The Professor!"
he cried.
"The Professor's been at work here!"
The two men stood looking at one another across the table.
Strange thoughts were framing themselves in the brains of both of them.
Then there came a startling and in its way a dramatic interlude.
Through the empty house came the ringing of the electric bell from the front door, shrill and insistent.
Without a moment's hesitation, Quest hurried out, and French followed him.
On the door-step was another surprise.
Lenora and Laura were there, the former carrying a small, black-bound volume.
"Don't be cross," she begged quickly.
"We just had to come.
Look!
We picked this up underneath the chair where Craig was sitting.
It must have slipped from his pocket.
You see what is written on it?
DIARY OF JOHN
CRAIG."
Quest took it in his hand.
"This ought to be interesting," he remarked.
"Come along in."
They passed into the library.
French lingered behind for a moment and caught up with them just as they were opening the book underneath the electric lamp.
"See what I've found!"
he exclaimed.
"It was just by the side of the wall there.
Where's that journal?"
He spread out the piece of paper--it fitted exactly into the empty space.
They all read together: "Professor Ashleigh, after being bitten by the anthropoid, rapidly developed hydrophobia of a serious nature.
After treatment with a new serum the patient was relieved of the hydrophobic symptoms, but to my horror this mild-mannered, humane man seems possessed at times of all the characteristics of the brutal anthropoid--cunning, thievery, brutality.
I do not know what may come of this.
I hesitate to put even these words on to paper.
I am doubtful as to what course, in the interests of humanity, I ought to take.
(Signed) "JAMES MERRILL, M. D.
"Editor's Note.
Just as we go to press, a cable announces the terrible death of Doctor Merrill, the writer of the above notes.
He was attacked by wild animals while alone in a South American jungle, and torn to pieces."
There was a queer little silence among the company.
No one seemed inclined for speech.
They looked at one another in dumb, wondering horror.
Then Quest drew a penknife from his pocket and with a turn of his wrist forced the lock of the diary.
They all watched him with fascinated eyes.
It was something to escape from their thoughts.
They leaned over as he spread the book out before him.
Those first two sentences were almost in the light of a dedication: "For ten years I have protected my master, Professor Edgar Ashleigh, at the cost of my peace of mind, my happiness, my reputation.
This book, even though it be too late to help me, shall clear my reputation."
Quest closed the volume.
"French," he decided, "we must find the Professor.
Will you have your men search the house and grounds immediately?"
The Inspector left the room like a dazed man.
They could hear him giving orders outside.
"The next page," Lenora begged.
"Just one page more!"
Quest hesitated for a moment.
Then he turned it over.
All three read again: "Ten years of horror, struggling all the while to keep him from that other self, that thing of bestiality, to keep his horrible secret from the world, to cover up his crimes, even though their shadow should rest upon me.
Now Sanford Quest has come.
Will this mean discovery?"
"Another page," Lenora faltered.
"No more," Quest said.
"Don't you see where it is leading us?
We have the truth here.
Wait!"
He strode hastily to the door.
French and one of the plain-clothes men were descending the stairs.
"Well?"
Quest asked breathlessly.
"The Professor is not in the house," French reported.
"We are going to search the grounds."
Quest returned to the library.
Lenora clung to his arm.
The diary lay still upon the table.
Quest opened the volume slowly.
Again they all read together: "The evil nature is growing stronger every day.
He is developing a sort of ferocious cunning to help him in his crimes.
He wanders about in the dark, wearing a black velvet suit with holes for his eyes, and leaving only his hands exposed.
I have watched him come into a half-darkened room and one can see nothing but the hands and the eyes; sometimes if he closes his eyes, only the hands."
"Mrs. Rheinholdt!"
Quest muttered.
"Wait.
I know where that suit is."
He hastened to a cupboard at the farther end of the room, snatched some garments from it and vanished into the hall.
"One moment, girls," he said.
"I see now how he did it.
Wait.
I'll show you."
They stood quite still, a little terrified.
In a moment or two the door reopened.
A finger turned out all the electric lights but one.
Then there was nothing to be seen but a pair of white hands, which seemed to come floating towards them through the darkness--a pair of white hands and a pair of gleaming eyes.
Lenora screamed wildly.
Even Laura was unnerved.
"Stop that!"
she cried out.
"Who are you, anyway?"
The lights were suddenly turned on.
Quest threw off his disguise.
"There you are," he exclaimed triumphantly.
"Ingenious, but one ought to have seen through it long ago.
The stroke of genius about it was that as soon as he had used a dodge once or twice and set you thinking about it, he dropped it."
The door was suddenly opened and French entered.
"Beaten!"
he exclaimed tersely.
"You haven't found him?"
Quest asked.
French shook his head.
"We've searched every room, every cupboard, every scrap of the cellar in the house," he announced.
"We've been into every corner of the grounds, searched all the place inside and out.
There's no sign of the Professor."
Quest pocketed the diary.
"You're perfectly certain that he is not in this house or anywhere upon the premises?"
"Certain sure!"
French replied.
Quest shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, we'd better get back," he said.
"You come, too, French.
We'll sit down and figure out some scheme for finding him."
They made their way to the front door and crowded into the autos.
The two men left with marked reluctance.
The two girls had but one idea in their heads--to get away, and get away quickly.
"Do start, please," Lenora begged.
"There's just one thing in life I want, and that is to be in my own room, to feel myself away from his world of horrible, unnatural mysteries."
"The kid has the right idea," Laura agreed.
"I've had enough myself."
They were on the point of starting, the chauffeur with his hand upon the starting handle, French with the steering wheel of the police car already in his hand.
And then the little party seemed suddenly turned to stone.
For a few breathless seconds not one of them moved.
Out into the clammy night air came the echoes of a hideous, inhuman, blood-curdling scream.
Quest was the first to recover himself.
He leaped from his seat and rushed back across the empty hall into the study, followed a little way behind by French and the others.
An unsuspected panel door which led into the garden, stood slightly ajar.
The Professor, with his hand on the back of a chair, was staring at the fireplace, shaking as though with some horrible ague, his face distorted, his body curiously hunched-up.
He seemed suddenly to have dropped his humanity, to have fallen back into the world of some strange creatures.
He heard their footsteps, but he did not turn his head.
His hands were stretched out in front of him as though to keep away from his sight some hateful object.
"Stop him!"
he cried.
"Take him away!
It's Craig--his spirit!
He came to me in the garage, he followed me through the grounds, he mocked at me when I hid in the tree.
He's there now, kneeling before the fireplace.
Why can't I kill him!
He is coming!
Stop him, some one!"
No one spoke or moved; no one, indeed, had the power.
Then at last Quest found words.
"There is no one in the room, Professor," he said, "except us."
The sound of a human voice seemed to produce a strange effect.
The Professor straightened himself, shook his head, his hands dropped to his side.
He turned around and faced them.
He was ghastly pale, but his smile was once more the smile of the amiable naturalist.
"My friends," he said, "forgive me.
I am very old, and the events of these last few hours have unnerved me.
Forgive me."
He groped for a moment and sank into a chair.
Quest fetched a decanter and a glass from the sideboard, poured out some wine and held it to his lips.
The Professor drank it eagerly.
"My dear friend," he exclaimed, "you have saved me!
I have something to tell you, something I must tell you at once, but not here.
I loathe this place.
Let me come with you to your rooms."
"As you please," Quest answered calmly.
The Professor rose hastily to his feet.
As he turned around, he saw French concealing something in his hands.
He shivered.
"I don't need those!"
he cried.
"What are they?
Handcuffs?
Ah, no!
I am only too anxious to tell you all that I know.
Take care of me, Mr. Quest.
Take me with you."
He gripped Quest's arm.
In silence they passed from the room, in silence they took their places once more in the automobiles, in silence they drove without a pause to Quest's rooms.
The Professor seemed to breathe more freely as they left the neighbourhood of his house behind.
He walked up the stairs to Quest's library almost blithely.
If he was aware of it, he took no notice of French and the two plain-clothes men behind.
As he stepped into the room, he drew a long sigh of relief.
He made his way at once to his favourite easy-chair, threw off his overcoat and leaned back.
"Quest," he pronounced, "you are the best friend I have in my life!
It is you who have rid me of my great burden.
Tell me--help me a little with my story--have you read that page from the _Medical Journal_ which Craig has kept locked up all these years?"
"We have all read it," Quest replied.
"It was forged," the Professor declared firmly, "forged by Craig.
All the years since, he has blackmailed me.
I have been his servant and his tool.
I have been afraid to speak.
At last I am free of him.
Thank God!"
"Craig, after all," French muttered.
The Professor sat with a faint, wistful smile upon the corners of his lips, looking around at all of them.
His face had become like the face of a child, eager for sympathy and kindness.
"You will trust me, I know," he continued.
"You will believe me.
All my life I have laboured for science.
I have never been selfish.
I have laid up no store of gold or treasure.
Knowledge has been my mistress, knowledge has been my heaven.
If I had been a wise man, I would have ridden myself of this hideous burden, but I was foolish and afraid.
I wanted to pursue my studies, I wanted to be left in peace, so I let that fiend prey upon my fears.
But now--now I feel that the burden has rolled away.
I shall tell you my story, and afterwards I will do great things yet, great things for science, great things for the world."
They listened to him, spellbound.
Only Lenora stood a little apart with a faint frown upon her forehead.
She touched Quest on the shoulder.
"Mr. Quest," she murmured, "he is lying!"
Quest turned his head.
His lips scarcely moved.
"What do you mean?"
he whispered.
"He is lying!"
Lenora insisted.
"I tell you there's another creature there, something we don't understand.
Let me bring the Electro-thought transference apparatus; let us read his mind.
If I am wrong, I will go down on my knees and beg for forgiveness."
Quest nodded.
Lenora hastened to the further end of the room, snatched the cloth from the instrument and wheeled down the little mirror with its coils and levers.
