At last he came to the door and looked out into the street. The sun
was shining and the life and pulse was rising from the city. It was
daylight; plain, healthy day. It was good to look at. On the threshold
of the door he felt himself standing on the border of two worlds. What
had become of the doctor and who was the old lady; and lastly and just
as important, who was the Rhamda and his beautiful companion?
Jerome telephoned to headquarters.
It was a strange case.
At the precise minute when his would-be auditors were beginning to
fidget over his absence, the police of San Francisco had started the
search for the great doctor. Jerome had followed his intuition. It had
led him into a tragedy and he was ready to swear almost on his soul
that it was twofold. The prominence of the professor, together with his
startling announcement of the day previous and the world-wide comment
that it had aroused, elevated the case to a national interest.
What was the Blind Spot? The world conjectured, and like the world has
been since beginning, it scoffed and derided. Some there were, however,
men well up in the latest discoveries of science, who did not laugh.
They counselled forbearance; they would wait for the doctor and his
lecture.
There was no lecture. In the teeth of our expectation came the startling
word that the doctor had disappeared. Apparently when on the very verge
of announcing his discovery he had been swallowed by the very force that
he had loosened. There was nothing in known science outside of optics,
that could in any way be blended with the Blind Spot. There were but two
solutions; either the professor had been a victim of a clever rogue, or
he had been overcome by the rashness of his own wisdom. At any rate, it
was known from that minute on as “THE BLIND SPOT.”
Perhaps it is just as well to take up the findings of the police. The
police of course never entertained any suggestion of the occult. They
are material; and were convinced from the start that the case had its
origin in downright villainy. Man is complex; but being so, is oft
overbalanced by evil Some genius had made a fool of the doctor.
In the first place a thorough search was made for the professor. The
house at No. 288 Chatterton Place was ransacked from cellar to attic.
The records were gone over and it was found that the property had for
some time been vacant; that the real ownership was vested in a number of
heirs scattered about the country.
The old lady had apparently been living on the place simply through
sufferance. No one could find out who she was. A few tradesman in the
vicinity had sold her some scant supplies and that was all. The stress
that Jerome placed upon her actions and words was; given its due
account. There were undoubtedly two villains; but there were two
victims. That the old lady was such as well as the professor no one has
doubted. The whole secret lay in the gentleman with the Eastern cast and
complexion. Who was Rhamda Avec?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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