Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/26

10 lent appearance, the face showing weakness rather than resolution in its features. The hands were delicately shaped, with pointed slender fingers. He had been apparently a dreamer, a mystic, rather than a man of vigorous life and practical affairs. Astro turned to inspect the articles displayed before his gaze. The two-hundred-year calendar which had been mentioned in the newspaper corresponded exactly to the page found in Hudson's desk; and on opening it he found that page twenty-nine, containing table number fourteen, had been torn out. What was more remarkable, however, was the fact that with it was a collection of water-soaked, purple-stained cards. Each contained a "harmonic curve", such as had been found in Hudson's drawer. One such coincidence was unusual. Two pointed conclusively to some connection between the two men; if, indeed, the corpse were not that of Hudson himself.

This point, however, was soon settled. Calling up Mrs. Hudson, he found that her husband's hair was scant and brown. The hair of the dead man was strong, slightly curly, and reddish. It was not Hudson.

Astro walked slowly home, plunged in thought, and looked neither to the right nor the left as he advanced. A block before he reached his studio he stopped stock-still for a moment, gazing in front of him; then, with a quick turn, he walked rapidly back, took a cross-town car, and got off at Second Avenue. Along this he hurried till he came to a second-hand bookstore, where on one of the stands outside the window, there was a collection of pamphlets and magazines. He ran his eye over the names: The Swastika, Universal Brotherhood, Vibrations, The New Wisdom, and Cosmos. He