Anthony Pelcher

“ Jouret ended his speech with a loud and hearty guffaw.
"I will call my daughter," Jouret appended. "She will be glad to meet you." He left the room.
Lees had taken occasion to note the size of Jouret's feet. They were small, almost effeminate. More likely fives or sixes than nines.
Soon Jouret returned with a girl in her early twenties. She was blond and radiantly beautiful.
DORIS JOURET bowed and smiled in a perfectly friendly manner. Lees noted that there was something about her eyes that made her appear dazed. ”

“ Ferguson called the Medical Center. They permitted him to talk to a doctor and a nurse. The nurse referred him to the doctor, who said:
"He is unconscious. There is a wicked fracture at the base of the brain. He was struck from the back—a club, I believe. He may die without regaining consciousness. I am hoping he will rally and that he will be all right."
Ferguson ordered his car and, with Lees at his heels, jumped in the tonneau. He heard a humming sound back of him. He looked back and saw nothing. Both he and Lees were too impressed for words. ”

“ He switched on a big electric bunch-light in the center of the room, for it was dusk.
"We have been told that you are a retired circus man," said Lees, in his usual frank manner.
"Not exactly," said Jouret. "I traveled on the continent, finally journeying to Australia and then to the States. I crossed the country from San Francisco and settled down here. I was known as 'Elias, the Great.' I had my own company and property. It was a magic show. It was not a circus, although we did carry two elephants, three camels, some ponies, snakes, and birds and smaller animals. ”

“ That is, it caused every solid object, within this atmospheric field, to vibrate at the rate, tone, or speed of invisibility. This machine was in no sense rotary. It departed from the original example of a revolving wheel and entered instead into general vibration in a given or measured field.
"The pulsations or vibrations of an ordinary automobile engine will cause every ounce of metal, or solid, in the automobile—including the driver—to vibrate at the same rate or momentum. This is a known fact, and it provided the basis for Darrow's experiments. ”

“ Lees and his detectives were fighting with no respect for the rules. Lees managed to get his two hands on the bull-neck of Jouret just as one detective connected a duet of blows to the man's wind.
Lees' hands closed in a steely grip, and soon Jouret was limp and helpless.
They held him there. An ambulance arrived. A few minutes later a police auto with reserves came on the scene. The police shackled Jouret.
The car that had been hit by the phantom was a light sedan. It was occupied by two women. Their bodies were drawn from the wreckage. ”

“ Ferguson sent for Walter Lees, the young engineer of whom he had spoken to the directorate. Assigned to the task of unraveling the Darrow death mystery, Lees ran true to form by getting busy at once. This was at midnight of the day of the surprising directors' meeting. Lees owned a big car; he piled into it and started for the scene of the crime.
Daybreak found him examining every inch of the road around the Darrow estate. Then he searched the hedge along the east road, where the phantom auto had disappeared after the crime. ”

“ Jouret never let but one girl be seen at a time. The reason was that he and the father had planned to use the girls, when grown, to create a surprising stage illusion. In this illusion, one girl was to act as the earthly body and the other girls as the astral bodies of the same purported individual. ”

“ Lees, first to see Jouret, called his detectives. They came running. Their car was waiting in the road.
The Porto Rican was seen to jump from the Jouret car just as it started south towards New York.
Lees took up the race. Both cars had plenty of power, but the Jouret car suddenly disappeared as a low humming noise began to break the stillness of the night.
One of the detectives was at the wheel. Lees, as usual, was giving orders:
"Keep close to that hum. Never mind that you cannot see the car. It is there all right. If you can gain on it enough, drive right into it." ”

“ He bowed Lees out and Doris bowed with him.
"She is a beautiful girl," mused Lees once he was outside.
Lees ran over in his mind the circumstances of his visit to Jouret. There was no doubt in his mind that Jouret's shoes were too small to be number nines, and he reasoned that that fact might tend to eliminate Jouret. But he was not satisfied.
"I am going to get some gas," he told himself, "and then I am going to get two private detectives to assist me, for I'm going right back there. For the first time in my life I am going to be a Peeping Tom.
"There is no moon. ”

“ Get wise to yourself. We are in a position to destroy you and all the pot-bellies in the Wall Street crowd. If you want to die of old age, remember what happened to Darrow and begin declaring us in on Wall Street dividends. If you do not you will follow Darrow in the same way. "Our first demand is for $100,000. Leave this amount in hundreds and fifties in the rubbish can at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway at 10 A. M. next Thursday. If you fail we will break your damned neck. Bring the police with you if you like.
Invisible Death. FERGUSON passed the letter around for inspection. ”

“ We just—well, we were not interested."
"You do not approve of circus people?"
"It is not that. Any honest work is honorable. It seems commendable to furnish amusement for the public. I know little about people of his profession but I am sure they are perfectly all right. It was Jouret, personally. He seemed noisy and insincere. The girl was nice. I loved her."
"That is all you know of the Jourets?"
"That is all."
"Mrs. Darrow, I wish to go through this house from attic to basement. Have you any objections?" ”

“ He had to have the second and larger machine, however, to make his auto disappear. He stole the larger machine at the time of the Darrow murder, and with it he had his auto vanish, as the gardener testified.
"Both machines were hopelessly smashed in the wreck, but with Darrow's documents at hand, we might be able to construct another and a larger model. A machine built on the proper scale will make a plane or a battleship invisible and should, as Darrow said, make war against this country impossible.
"DIGGING into Jouret's history we found that the 'Misses Jouret' were one-cell triplets. ”

“ The pair climbed into Ferguson's car discussing the Darrow death case with furrowed brows.
WHAT might be termed an extraordinary meeting of the directors of the Schefert Engineering Corporation, was held a few days later in a big building in the financial district.
The rich furnishings of the directors' room indicated, better than Bradstreet's, the great wealth of the corporation. Uniformed pages stood at attention at each end of the long, mahogany table at which were seated the fourteen directors of the company. All were men of wealth, standing and engineering knowledge. ”

“ He lives there with his daughter. They built a magnificent place. The brook that traverses our grounds rises at a spring back of his house. Save for two West Indian servants, they are alone. The servants live in Farsdale and motor back and forth."
"WHAT do you know of this—what's his name?" queried Lees, who had assumed the role of examiner.
"Jouret? Very little. He is some sort of a circus man or showman, or was before he retired. He once had wealth, but my husband, some weeks ago, said that because of ill-advised investments he was not so well rated as formerly. ”

“ We will deposit a roll of newspapers, around which has been wrapped a fifty dollar bill and then we will stand by while the awaiting detectives do their duty."
"You do not think anyone is going to call for any supposed package of money at one of the most congested corners in the world in broad daylight?" asked a director at the end of the table.
"Why not?" asked Ferguson. "A seedy individual could pick a package from a rubbish bin at that corner without attracting the least attention." ”

“ My husband peered in over my shoulder. I closed the door. We turned away in each other's arms."
HERE the little old woman fell to weeping softly into her lace handkerchief. Minutes lapsed as the court waited, respecting her grief.
"Were these rooms locked?" asked the attorney finally.
"No," said the widow, recovering, as she dabbed at her eyes. "We feared no one. All the rooms were closed, but not locked. The outside doors were seldom locked. We lived in our own world. For appearance sake we kept up the grounds. Peck, the gardener, kept the grounds, as you know. ”

“ Watching smoke float over a hill from army camp fires caused an early French scientist to dream of filling a bag full of smoke and riding with it over the hill. The first balloon was the answer to this dream. ”

“ This was accepted in practically all engineering research plants, long before it was perfected by Darrow.
"The facts are that any rapidly vibrating object becomes more and more difficult to outline as its rate of vibration increases. All that was left for Darrow was to arrive at the exact mathematical time, tone, or rate of vibration producing invisibility and to construct a vibrator tuned to produce this condition.
"His first machine produced the vibrations of invisibility in a field with a three-foot radius in all directions. ”

“ He oiled it and went into the laboratory."
THE idea of one of the world's greatest mechanical engineers stopping his work to oil a towel hanger caused Lees to smile, but Mrs. Darrow did not smile.
"My husband was a genius at repairing about the house," she said, in all seriousness.
"I can imagine so," agreed Lees.
The conversation ceased. Lees sat for a few minutes with his head in his hands, thinking deeply. Finally he said:
"I am convinced that someone who was well aware of your husband's habits committed this crime. Do you believe, positively, that the gardener is above suspicion?" ”

“ One of these was about the size of an ordinary kitchen coffee-mill, and the other slightly larger.
REGARDING these machines, Lees wrote in a report:
"While making a fourth search of Darrow's laboratory, I found the equations, specifications and what I believe to be the full plans for the last invention of the ingenious Darius Darrow.
"Many of the most astounding inventions and discoveries have resulted from theories which were laughed to scorn at the time they were advanced. Roebling's plans for the Brooklyn Bridge resulted in a meeting of the foremost engineers of the day. ”

“ The decoy package fairly jumped out of the rubbish can and disappeared in thin air.
The humming sound seemed to round the corner into 50th Street. Detectives followed on the jump. The humming approached an auto at the curb and the auto's self starter began to function. As the police stood near by, enough to have jumped into the auto, the whole machine, a big touring car, actually disappeared before their eyes.
Consternation is a mild word when used to describe the result. ”

“ That's where the circus report came from.
"When I retired I sold my stock to a circus. The newspapers regarded it as funny, and one of them printed a half page story with pictures about the public sale. It was very much exaggerated. They mentioned giraffes, hyenas, and a lot of other animals I never possessed. ”