Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 2 (1925-02).djvu/46



VEN the most discerning person might be excused for failing to trace the connection between the report of a police inspector to his chief regarding the disappearance of a desired criminal, and an article in the newspapers concerning the mysterious absence of a noted professor of mathematics. Yet the connection existed and has come to light only now through a few disjointed notes in the dairy of Dr. Maurice Carrington and a letter received by the chief of police of Orland, a city in northern California.

Properly, the history of the affair begins with Inspector Bowman's report to Chief Conrad, and is as follows:

To the police, the clever crook operating under the name of "Professor" Parkes had been unusually successful in his nefarious trade until apprehended and sent across for five years.

Emerging from his confinement, he had remained in seclusion, and the chief's desire to interview him had been with regard to another case concerning whchwhich [sic] Parkes was supposed to possess information. Incidentally, the title "professor" was one to which Parkes had been entitled, as he had served on the faculty of a small university for a time as an assistant instructor in mathematics. But poor pay and small opportunity for advancement had evidently started him on a crooked course.

On the same day that Bowman sent his report to the chief, the following "story" appeared in the daily press of the city and was flashed over the wires of the news services. It was headed:

In part the article read as follows:

Where is Professor Maurice Carrington? The police would like to know, and also the public, following a fruitless effort to locate the missing scientist, whose house was partially destroyed by fire at 3 o'clock this morning. The blaze evidently originated in the study and laboratory of Dr. Carrington on the second floor of his Main Street resi-