Criminals -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Physicists -- Fiction; Science fiction
"Beat the woods!" Wade's voice flared. "Carry your torches and shoot
at every sound of steps when there's no one visible with them! He's
slipping out somewhere now!"
Grantham shook his head. "No use," he said. "We can't fight him, Wade.
Kingston and I were crouched behind the oak with our wire ready, and
we heard the bell ring, then as we leapt forward an instant later saw
the steel case disappearing from off the stone! Kingston had grasped
him, I think, was struggling with something invisible as we both cried
out, and I heard an exclamation from him and then the shots roared out
of the empty air just beside Kingston. Kingston fell like a stone, I
heard one of the shots rip past me and another caught my shoulder. Then
I heard the sound of leaping feet beside me just a moment before you
burst into the clearing."
Whose Voice?
"But you heard his voice close beside you!" Wade exclaimed. "Was it
Gray's?"
Grantham's pale face took on a certain puzzlement. "It may have been,
Wade--I heard it for but an instant in that exclamation--I don't know
whether that was Gray's or another's, it was a voice I had heard often
before."
Wade nodded decisively. "That ends all doubt as to it's being Gray, at
least. Carton, do what you can for Grantham's shoulder, while I see if
any of the men have run across him."
But in minutes the men were streaming back with Wade, their search
fruitless. They had found no one--could have found no one, Carton
realized, in that search through the darkness for a being invisible.
Wade shook his head.
"It's all over," he said, "and I realize now that we never really had
a chance of capturing him. We can only hope that he'll be content with
the five million and never again loose terror on any city as he did
upon New York. Five millions--well, it may be best, after all."
Silently the party drove back to the city, and after they had taken
Grantham to his rooms near the university and summoned a doctor for his
wound, Carton and Wade rode together downtown. It was with a rueful
shake of the head on the detective's part that they parted; he to his
headquarters and Carton to the _Inquirer's_ city-room to pound out an
abridged account of the night's events. By the time that Carton went
wearily across the city to his own rooms newsboys were shouting in the
streets the welcome news that the Invisible Master had been bought off
and that his reign of terror was ended.
Carton, in his tired sleep, lived again the tense events of the night,
and it seemed to his sleep-numbed mind that the warning bell they had
heard was jangling again and again. It woke him finally, to find that
it was his doorbell, and when he opened it Wade stood before him. The
detective's sleepy eyes were more wakeful than ever Carton had seen
them, but to the reporter's first excited question he snapped but a
single order.
"Dress, Carton--we're going up to the university."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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