Page:Amazing Stories Volume 02 Number 06.pdf/35

554 it quickly through a flame, and with one sweep cut off the blackened skin and flesh. He put on a compress-dressing to stop the bleeding, and went on unconcernedly with his work, totally oblivious of me standing there and shuddering.

That was the kind of man he was. I was afraid of him. The friendship that I continued with him was one of those things that we do against the protests of our better judgment. I envied him his comfortable wealth, his astonishing intellect, and his beautiful daughter; for I had to work hard for a living with just a mediocre equipment of brains, and all I had to love and worry about was a nephew who could take better care of himself than I could. I enjoyed Dr. Fleckinger's society during his amiable intervals, and delighted in his wonderful private collection of marble and bronze statuary. But, at other times I was uncomfortable in his society. Though I was his oldest and best friend, I had a feeling that he would cut me in pieces did the conditions of an experiment demand it, with the same unfeeling precision with which he had whirled guinea-pigs in a centrifuge during our college days, to determine the effect on the circulation.

Miss Lila and Brian were so interested in some mutual matter that they had not noticed the uncanny performance. In a quarter of an hour the doctor seemed to have come to a stopping place in his work, for he put it aside and entertained me so pleasantly that I forgot and forgave his previous abstraction. It was when Brian and I were taking our departure that he showed us the stone cat. It was on a low pillar, in a room with a lot of small sculptured figures. I did not look at it much, yet it stuck in my memory, and sticks there yet, haunting me when I try to think of pleasanter things. It was natural size, of some black stone, and was no doubt an admirable piece of sculptural art, with its arched back, straight tail, and angry appearance.

But I didn’t like it. Brian hardly noticed it, but Miss Lila stood on the stairs and shuddered. The three year old girl of Dr. Fleckinger’s housekeeper was toddling around the room after her mother who was dusting the statuary; and seeing us looking at the cat, came over to join us in her small, sociable way. Spying the cat, she stopped suddenly, looked at it a moment, and let out a wail of lamentation. She continued to weep piteously until she was carried out, crying something about her “kitty.” As I went out, I wondered why the stone figure of a cat should make me feel so creepy and cause Miss Lila to shudder, and the child to cry.

Brian and I parted at the corner of the block, and that was the last time anybody saw him. He was missed from his office and his rooms, and the places he usually frequented. His affairs hung in suspense; a case which he was to try the following day had to be put off, and in the evening an opera party with whom he and Miss Lila had engaged a box, waited for him in vain. The newspapers blazed out in big headlines about the utter and untraceable disappearance of the prominent young lawyer.

I had never taken any particular interest in him. That was to come now, for the responsibility of investigating his case would devolve on my department. One thing about him, perhaps held my attention, and that of many others: he was the successful suitor of Dr. Fleckinger’s daughter, Lila. The list of young men who had unsuccessfully aspired for this honor was large, and my own nephew, Richard, was among them. It was pretty generally known that it was the doctor himself who stood in the way; he made it so uncomfortable for the young fellows who tried to get acquainted with the girl that they desisted. Richard, who was pretty hard hit, and spent a good many despondent months after his defeat, told me that the “selfish old devil cared less about his daughter’s future than he did about his own whims.” So, when young Brian, by his persistence and his gracious ways, continued not only in the favor of the young lady, but also in the good graces of her eccentric father, there was a good deal of speculation as to why he, particularly, had been selected.

My nephew, Richard, who is a sergeant in my department of the detective bureau, came to me and asked me to assign him specially to the investigation of Brian’s disappearance. I did so gladly, for I had to admit that he was clever, even if most of the time it was difficult for me to believe that the golden-haired lad was really grown up.

“I am looking up Brian’s contacts,” he reported. “His own record is an easy job; his life is an open book. Miss Fleckinger I know pretty well myself. But, her father seems to be a sort of mystery. You know him intimately. Tell me about him.” His brows were dark with angry suspicion.

“Well,” I mused; “he and I went to school together. We were drawn together and apart from others by a common streak of intellect, a sort of analytical and investigative faculty that would give us no rest. Out of me, it made a detective, out of him a research scientist. He inherited enough money to make that possible. He keeps to himself, and does not even publish the results of very much of his work. What he is working on, is as profound a riddle to the rest of the scientific world as the secret of the Sphinx. However, I can make my surmises, if he does things like those he used to do. I remember once that he blew a steam whistle for ten days close to a rabbit’s ear, and then killed it and made microscopic sections to see the effects on the nerves of hearing.”

Richard shut his teeth with a click and said nothing. “I saw the doctor this afternoon,” I continued. “He takes a queer attitude toward this affair. His daughter is all broken up about it, but he acts as though he were relieved. He remarked something to the effect that he was glad that he wouldn’t lose his daughter after all. Then he had the nerve to ask me if I wouldn’t come in to see a new statue which had just arrived. He was all enthused about the statue, and I left in disgust.”

“He’s a smooth brute,” Richard said.

E worked hard on the case. I saw him seldom, but when I did, I noted that he was losing weight and growing haggard. He was taking it seriously,