Average Jones

BIG PRINT

In the Cosmic Club Mr. Algernon Spofford was a figure of distinction.  Amidst the varied, curious, eccentric, brilliant, and even slightly unbalanced minds which made the organization unique, his was the only wholly stolid and stupid one.  Club tradition declared that he had been admitted solely for the beneficent purpose of keeping the more egotistic members in a permanent and pleasing glow of superiority.  He was very rich, but otherwise quite harmless.  In an access of unappreciated cynicism, Average Jones had once suggested to him, as a device for his newly acquired coat-of-arms, “Rocks et Praeterea Nihil.”

But the “praeterea nihil” was something less than fair to Mr. Spofford, with whom it was not strictly a case of “nothing further” besides his “rocks”.  Ambition, the vice of great souls, burned within Spofford’s pigeon-breast.  He longed to distinguish himself in the line of endeavor of his friend Jones and was prone to proffer suggestions, hints, and even advice, to the great tribulation of the recipient.

Hence it was with misgiving that the Ad-Visor opened the door of his sanctum to Mr. Spofford, on a harsh December noon.  But the misgivings were supplanted by pleased surprise when the caller laid in his hand a clipping from a small country town paper, to this effect: 

Ransom—­Lost lad from Harwick not drowned or harmed.  Retained for ransom.  Safe and sound to parents for $50,000.  Write, Mortimer Morley, General Delivery, N. Y. Post-Office.

“Thought that’d catch you,” chuckled Mr. Spofford, in great self-congratulation. “‘Jones’ll see into this,’ I says to myself.  ‘If he don’t, I’ll explain.’  Somethin’ to that, ay?”

Average Jones looked from the advertisement to the vacuous smile of Mr. Algernon Spofford.  “Oh, you’ll explain, will you?” he said softly.  “Well, the thing I’d like to have explained is—­come over here to the window a minute, will you, Algy?”

Mr. Spofford came, and gazed down upon a dispiriting area of rain-swept street and bedraggled wayfarers.

“See that ten-story office building across the way?” pursued Average Jones.  “What would you do if, coming in here at midnight, you were to see twenty-odd rats ooze out of that building and disperse about their business?”

“I—­I’d quit,” said the startled promptly.

“That’s the obvious solution,” retorted “but my question wasn’t intended to elicit a brand of music-hall humor.”

Spofford contemplated the building uneasily.  “I don’t know what you’re up to, Average,” he complained.  “Is it a catch?”

“No; it’s a test case.  What would you do?”

“I’d think it was Billy-be-dashed queer,” answered Spofford with profound conviction.

“You’re getting on,” said Jones tartly.  “And next?”

“Ay?  How do I know?  What’re you devilin’ me this way for?”

“You wouldn’t call a policeman?”

“No,” said Spofford, staring.

“You wouldn’t hustle around and ’phone Central?”

“Bosh!”

“Yet if any one told you you hadn’t the sense a policeman, you’d resent it.”

“Of course, I would!”

“Well, Jimmy McCue, the night special, who patrols past the corner, saw that very thing happen a few nights ago at the Sterriter Building.  Knowing that rats don’t go out at midnight for a saunter, two dozen strong, he began to suspect.”

“Suspect what?” growled Spofford.

“That there must be some abnormal cause for so abnormal a proceeding.  Think, now, Algy.”

“I’ve heard of rats leavin’ a sinkin’ ship.  The building might have been sinkin’,” suggested the visitor hopefully.

“Is that the best you can do?  I’ll give you one more try.”

“I know,” said Spofford.  “A cat.”

“On my soul,” declared Average Jones, gazing at his club-mate with increased interest, “you’re the most remarkable specimen of inverted mentality I’ve ever encountered.  D’you think a cat habitually rounds up two dozen rats and then chivies ’em out into the street for sport?  McCue didn’t have any cat theory.  He figured that when rats come out of a place that way the place is afire.  So he turned in an alarm and saved a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar building.”

“Umph!” grunted Spofford.  “Well, what’s that got to do with the advertisement I brought you?”

“Nothing in the world, directly.  I’m merely trying to figure out, in my own way, how a mind like yours could see under the surface print into the really interesting peculiarity of this clipping.  Now I know that your mind didn’t do anything of the sort.  Come on, now, Algy, who sent this to you?”

“Cousin of mine up in Harwick.  I wish you weren’t so Billy-be-dashed sharp, Average.  I used to visit in Harwick, so they asked me to get you interested in Bailey Prentice’s case.  He’s the lost boy.”

“You’ve done it.  Now tell me all you know.”

Spofford produced a letter which gave the outlines of the case.  Bailey Prentice’s disappearance it was set forth, was the lesser of two simultaneous phenomena which violently jarred the somnolent New England village of Harwick from its wonted calm.  The greater was the “Harwick meteor.”  At ten-fifteen on the night of December twelfth, the streets being full of people coming from the moving picture show, there was a startling concussion from the overhanging clouds and the astounded populace saw a ball of flame plunging earthward, to the northwest of the town, and waxing in intensity as it fell.  Darkness succeeded.  But, within a minute, a lurid radiance rose and spread in the night.  The aerial bolt had gone crashing through an old barn on the Tuxall place, setting it afire.

Bailey Prentice was among the very few who did not go to the fire.  Taken in connection with the fact that he was fourteen years old and very thoroughly a boy, this, in itself, was phenomenal.  In the excitement of the occasion, however, his absence was not noted.  But when, on the following morning, the Reverend Peter Prentice, going up to call his son, found the boy’s room empty and the bed untouched, the second sensation of the day was launched.  Bailey Prentice had, quite simply, vanished.

Some one offered the theory that, playing truant from the house while his father was engaged in work below stairs, he had been overwhelmed and perhaps wholly consumed by a detached fragment from the fiery visitant.  This picturesque suggestion found many supporters until, on the afternoon of December fourteenth, a coat and waistcoat were found on the seashore a mile north of the village.  The Reverend Mr. Prentice identified the clothes as his son’s.  Searching parties covered the beach for miles, looking for the body.  Preparations were made for the funeral services, when a new and astonishing factor was injected into the situation.  An advertisement, received by mail from New York, with stamps affixed to the “copy” to pay for its insertion, appeared in the local paper.

“And here’s the advertisement,” concluded Mr. Algernon Spofford, indicating the slip of paper which he had turned over to Average Jones.  “And if you are going up to Harwick and need help there, why I’ve got time to spare.”

“Thank you, Algy,” replied Average Jones gravely.  “But I think you’d better stay here in case anything turns up at this end.  Suppose,” he added with an inspiration, “you trace this Mortimer Morley through the general delivery.”

“All right,” agreed Spofford innocently satisfied with this wild-goose errand.  “Lemme know if anything good turns up.”

Average Jones took train for Harwick, and within a few hours was rubbing his hands over an open fire in the parsonage, whose stiff and cheerless aspect bespoke the lack of a woman’s humanizing touch for the Reverend Mr. Prentice was a widower.  Overwrought with anxiety and strain, the clergyman, as soon as he had taken his coat, began a hurried, inconsequential narrative, broke off, tried again, fell into an inextricable confusion of words, and, dropping his head in his hands, cried: 

“I can’t tell you.  It is all a hopeless jumble.”

“Come!” said the younger man encouragingly.  “Comfort yourself with the idea that your son is alive, at any rate.”

“But how can I be sure, even of that?”

Average Jones glanced at a copy of the advertisement which he held.  “I think we can take Mr. Morley’s word so far.”

“Even so; fifty thousand dollars ransom!” said the minister, and stopped with a groan.

“Nonsense!” said Average Jones heartily.  “That advertisement counts for nothing.  Professional kidnappers do not select the sons of impecunious ministers for their prey.  Nor do they give addresses through which they may be found.  You can dismiss the advertisement as a blind; the second blind, in fact.”

“The second?”

“Certainly.  The first was the clothing on the shore.  It was put there to create the impression that your son was drowned.”

“Yes; we all supposed that he must be.”

“By what possible hypothesis a boy should be supposed to take off coat and waistcoat and wade off-shore into a winter sea is beyond my poor powers of conjecture,” said the other.  “No.  Somebody ‘planted’ the clothes there.”

“It seems far-fetched to me,” said the Reverend Mr. Prentice doubtfully.  “Who would have any motive for doing such a thing?”

“That is what we have to find out.  What time did your son go to his room the night of his disappearance?”

“Earlier than usual, as I remember.  A little before nine o’clock.”

“Any special reason for his going up earlier?”

“He wanted to experiment with a new fishing outfit just given him for his birthday.”

“I see.  Will you take me to his room?”

They mounted to the boy’s quarters, which overlooked the roof of the side porch from a window facing north.  The charred ruins of a barn about, half a mile away were plainly visible through this window.

“The barn which the meteor destroyed,” said the Reverend Mr. Prentice, pointing it out.

One glance was all that Average Jones bestowed upon a spot which, for a few days, had been of national interest.  His concern was inside the room.  A stand against the wall was littered with bits of shining mechanism.  An unjointed fishing-rod lay on the bed.  Near at hand were a small screw-driver and a knife with a broken blade.

“Were things in this condition when you came to call Bailey in the morning and found him gone?” asked Average Jones.

“Nothing has been touched,” said the clergyman in a low voice.

Average Jones straightened up and stretched himself languidly.  His voice when he spoke again took on the slow drawl of boredom.  One might have thought that he had lost all interest in the case but for the thoughtful pucker of the broad forehead which belied his halting accents.

“Then—­er—­when Bailey left here he hadn’t any idea of—­er—­running away.”

“I don’t follow you, Mr. Jones.”

“Psychology,” said Average Jones.  “Elementary psychology.  Here’s your son’s new reel.  A normal boy doesn’t abandon a brand-new fad when he runs away.  It isn’t in boy nature.  No, he was taking this reel apart to study it when some unexpected occurrence checked him and drew him outside.”

“The meteor.”

“I made some inquiries in the village on my way, up.  None of the hundreds of people who turned out for the fire, remembers seeing Bailey about.”

 “That is true.”

“The meteor fell at ten-fifteen.  Bailey went upstairs before nine.  Allow half an hour for taking apart the reel.  I don’t believe he’d have been longer at it.  So, it’s probable that he was out of the house before the meteor fell.”

“I should have heard him go out of the front door.”

“That is, perhaps, why he went out of the window,” observed Average Jones, indicating certain marks on the sill.  Swinging his feet over, he stepped upon the roof of the porch, and peered at the ground below.

“And down the lightning rod,” he added.

For a moment he stood meditating.  “The ground is now frozen hard,” he said presently.  “Bailey’s footprints where he landed are deeply marked.  Therefore the soil must have been pretty soft at the time.”

“Very,” agreed the clergyman.  “There had been a three-day downpour, up to the evening of Bailey’s disappearance.  About nine o’clock the wind shift to the northeast, and everything froze hard.  There has been no thaw since.”

“You seem very clear on these points, Mr. Prentice.”

“I noted them specially, having in mind to write a paper on the meteorite for the Congregationalist.”

“Ah!  Perhaps you could tell me, then, how soon after the meteor’s fall, the barn yonder was discovered to be afire?”

“Almost instantly.  It was in full blaze within very short time after.”

“How short?  Five minutes or so?”

“Not so much.  Certainly not more than two.”

“H’m!  Peculiar!  Ra-a-a-ather peculiar.” drawled Average Jones.  “Particularly in view of the weather.”

“In what respect?”

“In respect to a barn, water-soaked by a three-day rain bursting into flame like tinder.”

“It had not occurred to me.  But the friction and heat of the meteorite must have been extremely great.”

“And extremely momentary except as to the lower floor, and the fire should have taken some time to spread from that.  However, to turn to other matters—­” He swung himself over the edge of the roof and went briskly down the lightning rod.  Across the frozen ground he moved, with his eyes on the soil, and presently called up to his, host: 

“At any rate, he started across lots in the direction of the barn.  Will you come down and let me in?”

Back in the study, Average Jones sat meditating a few moments.  Presently he asked: 

“Did you go to the spot where your son’s clothes were found?”

“Yes.  Some time after.”

“Where was it?”

“On the seashore, some half a mile to the east of the Tuxall place, and a little beyond.”

“Is there a roadway from the Tuxall place to the spot?”

“No; I believe not.  But one could go across the fields and through the barn to the old deserted roadway.”

“Ah.  There’s an old roadway, is there?”

“Yes.  It skirts the shore to join Boston Pike about three miles up.”

“And how far from this roadway were your son’s clothes found?”

“Just a few feet.”

“H’m.  Any tracks in the roadway?”

“Yes.  I recall seeing some buggy tracks and being surprised, because no one ever drives that way.”

“Then it is conceivable that your son’s clothes might have been tossed from a passing vehicle, to the spot where they were discovered.”

“Conceivable, certainly.  But I can see no grounds for such a conjecture.”

“How far down the road, in this direction, did tracks run?”

“Not beyond the fence-bar opening from the Tuxall field, if that is what you mean.”

“It is, exactly.  Do you know this Tuxall?”

“Hardly at all.  He is a recent comer among us.”

“Well, I shall probably want to make his acquaintance, later.”

“Have a care, then.  He is very jealous of his precious meteor, and guards the ruins of the barn, where it lies, with a shot gun.”

“Indeed?  He promises to be an interesting study.  Meantime, I’d like to look at your son’s clothes.”

From a closet Mr. Prentice brought out a coat and waistcoat of the “pepper-and-salt” pattern which is sold by the hundreds of thousands the whole country over.  These the visitor examined carefully.  The coat was caked with mud, particularly thick on one shoulder.  He called the minister’s attention to it.

“That would be from lying wet on the shore,” said the Reverend Mr. Prentice.

“Not at all.  This is mud, not sand.  And it’s ground or pressed in.  Has any one tampered with these since they were found?”

“I went through the pockets.”

Average Jones frowned.  “Find anything?”

“Nothing of importance.  A handkerchief, some odds and ends of string—­oh, and a paper with some gibberish on it.”

“What was the nature of this gibberish?”

“Why it might have been some sort of boyish secret code, though it was hardly decipherable enough to judge from.  I remember some flamboyant adjectives referring to something three feet high.  I threw the paper into the waste-basket.”

Turning that receptacle out on the table, Average Jones discovered in the debris a sheet of cheap, ruled paper, covered with penciled words in print characters.  Most of these had been crossed out in favor of other words or sentences, which in turn had been “scratched.”  Evidently the writer had been toilfully experimenting toward some elegance or emphasis of expression, which persistently eluded him.  Amidst the wreck and ruin of rhetoric, however, one phrase stood out clear: 

“Stupendous scientific sensation.”

Below this was a huddle and smudge of words, from which adjectives darted out like dim flame amidst smoke.  “Gigantic” showed in its entity followed by an unintelligible erasure.  At the end this line was the legend “3 Feet High.”  “Verita Visitor,” appeared below, and beyond it, what seemed to be the word “Void.”  And near the foot of the sheet the student of all this chaos could make faintly but unmistakably, “Marvelous Man-l—­” the rest of the word being cut off by a broad black smear.  “Monster 3 Feet.”  The remainder was wholly undecipherable.

Average Jones looked up from this curio, and there was a strange expression in the eyes which met the minister’s.

“You—­er—­threw this in the—­er—­waste-basket.” he drawled.  “In which pocket was it?”

“The waistcoat.  An upper one, I believe.  There was a pencil there, too.”

“Have you an old pair of shoes of Bailey’s,” asked the visitor abruptly.

“Why, I suppose so.  In the attic somewhere.”

“Please bring them to me.”

The Reverend Mr. Prentice left the room.  No sooner had the door closed after him than Average Jones jumped out of his chair stripped to his shirt, caught up the pepper-and-salt waistcoat, tried it on and buttoned it across his chest without difficulty; then thrust his arm into the coat which went with it, and wormed his way, effortfully, partly into that.  He laid it aside only when he had determined that he could get it no farther on.  He was clothed and in his right garments when the Reverend Mr. Prentice returned with a much-worn pair of shoes.

“Will these do?” he asked.

Average Jones hardly gave them the courtesy of a glance.  “Yes,” he said indifferently, and set them aside.  “Have you a time-table here?”

“You’re going to leave?” cried the clergyman, in sharp disappointment.

“In just half an hour,” replied the visitor, holding his finger on the time-table.

“But,” cried Mr. Prentice, “that is the train back to New York.”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re not going to see Tuxall?”

“No.”

“Nor to examine the place where the clothes were found?”

“Haven’t time.”

“Mr. Jones, are you giving up the attempt to discover what became of my boy?”

“I know what became of him.”

The minister put out a hand and grasped the back of a chair for support.  His lips parted.  No sound came from them.  Average Jones carefully folded the paper of “gibberish” and tucked it away in his card case.

“Bailey has been carried away by two people in a buggy.  They were strangers to the town.  He was injured and unconscious.  They still have him.  Incidentally, he has seriously interfered with a daring and highly ingenious enterprise.  That is all I can tell you at present.”

The clergyman found his voice.  “In heaven, Mr. Jones,” he cried, “tell me who and what these people are.”

“I don’t know who they are.  I do know what they are.  But it can do no good to tell you the one until I can find out the other.  Be sure of one thing, Bailey is in no further danger.  You’ll hear from me as soon as I have anything definite to report.”

With that the Reverend Mr. Prentice had to be content; that and a few days later, a sheet of letter-paper bearing the business imprint of the Ad-Visor, and enclosing this advertisement: 

     Wanted—­3 Ft. type for sensational Bill Work. 
     Show samples.  Delivery in two weeks.  A. Jones,
     Ad-Visor, Court Temple, N. Y. City.

Had the Reverend Mr. Prentice been a reader of journals devoted to the art and practice of printing he might have observed that message widely scattered to the trade.  It was answered by a number of printing shops.  But, as the answers came in to Average Jones, he put them aside, because none of the seekers for business was able to “show samples.”  Finally there came a letter from Hoke and Hollins of Rose Street.  They would like Mr. Jones to call and inspect some special type upon which they were then at work.  Mr. Jones called.  The junior member received him.

“Quite providential, Mr. Jones,” he said.  “We’re turning out some single-letter, hand-made type of just the size you want.  Only part of the alphabet, however.  Isn’t that a fine piece of lettering!”

He held up an enormous M to the admiration of his visitor.

“Excellent!” approved Average Jones.  “I’d like to see other letters; A, for example.”

Mr. Hollins produced a symmetrical A.

“And now, an R, if you please; and perhaps a V.”

Mr. Hollis looked at his visitor with suspicion.  “You appear to be selecting the very letters which I have,” he remarked.

“Those which—­er—­would make up the—­er—­legend, ’Marvelous Man-Like Monster,” drawled Average Jones.

“Then you know the Farleys,”’ said the print man.

“The Flying Farleys?” said Average Jones.  “They used to do ascensions with firework trimmings, didn’t they?  No; I don’t exactly know them.  But I’d like to.”

“That’s another matter,” retorted Mr. Hollins, annoyed at having betrayed himself.  “This type is decidedly a private—­even a secret-order.  I had no right to say anything about it or the customers who ordered it.”

“Still, you could see that a letter left here for them reached them, I suppose.”

After some hesitation, the other agreed.  Average Jones sat down to the composition of an epistle, which should be sufficiently imperative without being too alarming.  Having completed this delicate task to his satisfaction he handed the result to Hollins.

“If you haven’t already struck off a line, you might do so,” he suggested.  “I’ve asked the Farleys for a print of it; and I fancy they’ll be sending for one.”

Leaving the shop he went direct to a telegraph office, whence he dispatched two messages to Harwick.  One was to the Reverend Peter Prentice, the other was to the local chief of police.  On the following afternoon Mr. Prentice trembling in the anteroom of the Ad-Visor’s.  With the briefest word of greeting Average Jones led him into his private office, where a clear-eyed boy, with his head swathed in bandages sat waiting.  As the Ad-Visor closed the door after him, he heard the breathless, boyish “Hello, father,” merged in the broken cry of the Reverend Peter Prentice.

Five minutes he gave father and son.  When he returned to the room, carrying a loose roll of reddish paper, he was followed by a strange couple.  The woman was plumply muscular.  Her attractive face was both defiant and uneasy.  Behind her strode a wiry man of forty.  His chief claim to notice lay in an outrageously fancy waistcoat, which was ill-matched with his sober, commonplace, “pepper-and-salt” suit.

“Mr. and Mrs. Farley, the Reverend Mr. Prentice,” said Average Jones in introduction.

“The strangers in the wagon?” asked the clergyman quickly.

“The same,” admitted the woman briefly.

The Reverend Mr. Prentice turned upon Farley.  “Why did you want to steal my boy away?” he demanded.

“Didn’t want to.  Had to,” replied that gentleman succinctly.

“Let’s do this in order,” suggested Average Jones.  “The principal actor’s story first.  Speak up, Bailey.”

“Don’t know my own story,” said the boy with a grin.  “Only part of it.  Mrs. Farley’s been awful good to me, takin’ care of me an’ all that.  But she wouldn’t tell me how I got hurt or where I was when I woke up.”

“Naturally.  Well, we must piece it out among us.  Now, Bailey, you were working over your reel the night the meteor fell, when—­”

“What meteor?  I don’t know anything about a meteor.”

“Of course you don’t,” said Average Jones laughing.  “Stupid of me.  For the moment I had forgotten that you were out of the world then.  Well, about nine o’clock of the night you got the reel, you looked out of your window and saw a queer light over at the Tuxall place.”

“That’s right.  But say, Mr. Jones, how do you know about the light?”

“What else but a light could you have seen, on a pitch-black night?” counter-questioned Average Jones with a smile.  “And it must have been something unusual, or you wouldn’t have dropped everything to go to it.”

“That’s what!” corroborated the boy.  “A kind of flame shot up from the ground.  Then it spread a little.  Then it went out.  And there were people running around it.”

“Ah!  Some one must have got careless with the oil,” observed Average Jones.

“That fool Tuxall!” broke in Farley with an oath.  “It was him gummed the whole game.”

“Mr. Tuxall, I regret to say,” remarked Average Jones, “has left for parts unknown, so the Harwick authorities inform me, probably foreseeing a charge of arson.”

“Arson?” repeated the Reverend Mr. Prentice in astonishment.

“Of course.  Only oil and matches could have made a barn flare up, after a three-days’ rain, as his did.  Now, Bailey, to continue.  You ran across the fields to the Tuxall place and went around—­let me see; the wind had shifted to the northeast—­yes; to the northeast of the barn and quite a distance away.  There you saw a man at work in his shirt.”

“Well-I’ll-be-jiggered!” said the boy in measured tones.  “Where were you hiding, Mr. Jones?”

“Not behind the tree there, anyway,” returned the Ad-Visor with a chuckle.  “There is a tree there, I suppose?”

“Yes; and there was something alive tied up in it with a rope.”

“Well, not exactly alive,” returned Average Jones, “though the mistake is a natural one.”

“I tell you, I know,” persisted Bailey.  “While Mr. and Mrs. Farley were workin’ over some kind of a box, I shinned up the tree.”

“Bold young adventurer!  And what did you find?”

“One of the limbs was shakin’ and thrashin’.  I crawled out on it.  I guess it was kind o’ crazy me, but I was goin’ to find out what was what if I broke my neck.  There was a rope tied to it, and some big thing up above pullin’ and jerkin’ at it, tryin’ to get away.  Pretty soon, Mr. and Mrs. Farley came almost under me.  He says:  ’Is Tuxall all ready?’ and she says:  ’He thinks we ought to wait half an hour.  The street’ll be full of folks then.  Then he says:  ’Well, I hate to risk it, but maybe it’s better.’ just then, the rope gave a twist and came swingin’ over on me, and knocked me right off the limb.  I gave a yell and then I landed.  Next I knew I was in bed.  And that’s all.”

“Now I’ll take up the wondrous tale,” said Average Jones.  “The Farleys, naturally discomfited by Bailey’s abrupt and informal arrival, were in a quandary.  Here was an inert boy on their hands.  He might be dead, which would be bad.  Or, he might be alive, which would be worse, if they left him.”

“How so?” asked the Reverend Mr. Prentice.

“Why, you see,” explained Average Jones, “they couldn’t tell how much he might have seen and heard before he made his hasty descent.  He might have enough information to spoil their whole careful and elaborate plan.”

“But what in the world was their plan?” demanded the minister.

“That comes later.  They took off Bailey’s coat and waistcoat, perhaps to see if his back was broken (Farley nodded), and finding him alive, tossed his clothes into the buggy, where Farley had left his own, and completed their necessary work.  Of course, there was danger that Bailey might come to at any moment and ruin everything.  So they worked at top speed, and left the final performance to Tuxall.  In their excitement they forgot to find out from their accomplice who Bailey was.  Consequently, they found themselves presently driving across country with an unknown and undesired white elephant of a boy on their hands.  One of them conceived the idea of tossing his clothes upon the sea-beach to establish a false clue of drowning, until they could decide what was to be done with him.  In carrying this out they made the mistake which lighted up the whole trail.”

“Well, I don’t see it at all,” said Farley glumly.  “How did you ever get to us?”

Average Jones mildly contemplated the mathematical center of his questioner.

“New waistcoat?” he asked.

Farley glanced down at the outrageous pattern with pride.

“Yep.  Got it last week.”

“Lost the one that came with the pepper-and-salt suit you’re wearing?”

“Damn!” exploded Farley in sudden enlightenment.

“Just so.  Your waistcoat got mixed with the boy’s clothes, which are of the same common pattern, and was tossed out on the beach with his coat.”

“Well, I didn’t leave a card in it, did I?” retorted the other.

“Something just as good.”

“The ad, Tim!” cried the woman.  “Don’t you remember, you couldn’t find the rough draft you made while we were waiting?”

“That’s right, too,” he said.  “It was in that vest-pocket.  But it didn’t have no name on it.”

“Then, that,” put in the Reverend Peter Prentice, “was the scrawled nonsense—­”

“Which you—­er—­threw into the waste-basket,” drawled Average Jones with a smile.

“Those were not Bailey’s clothes at all?”

“The coat was his; not the waistcoat.  His waistcoat may have fallen out of the buggy, or it may be there yet.”

“But what does all this talk of people at work in the dark, and arson, and a mysterious creature tied in a tree lead to?”

“It leads,” said Average Jones, “to a very large rock, much scorched, and with a peculiar carving on it, which now lies imbedded in the earth beneath Tuxall’s barn.”

“If you’ve seen that,” said Farley, “it’s all up.”

“I haven’t seen it.  I’ve inferred it.  But it’s all up, nevertheless.”

“Serves us right,” said the woman disgustedly.  “I wish we’d never heard of Tuxall and his line of bunk.”

“Mystification upon mystification!” cried the clergyman.  “Will some one please give a clue to the maze?”

“In a word,” said Average Jones.  “The Harwick meteor.”

“What connection—­”

“Pardon me, one moment.  The ‘live thing’ in the tree was a captive balloon.  The box on the ground was a battery.  The wire from the battery was connected with a firework bomb, which, when Tuxall pressed the switch, exploded, releasing a flaming ‘dropper.’  About the time the ‘dropper’ reached the earth Tuxall lighted up his well-oiled barn.  All Harwick, having had its attention attracted by the explosion, and seen the portent with its own eyes, believed that a huge meteor had fired the building.  So Tuxall and Company had a well attested wonder from the heavens.  That’s the little plan which Bailey’s presence threatened to wreck.  Is it your opinion that the stars are inhabited, Prentice?”

“What!” cried the minister, gaping.

“Stars—­inhabited—­living, sentient creatures.”

“How should I know!”

“You’d be interested to know, though, wouldn’t you?”

“Why, certainly.  Any one would.”

“Exactly the point.  Any one would, and almost any one would pay money to see, with his own eye the attested evidence of human, or approximately human, life in other spheres.  It was a big stake that Tuxall, Farley and Company were playing for.  Do you begin to see the meaning of the big print now?”

“I’ve heard nothing about big prints,” said the puzzled clergyman.

“Pardon me, you’ve heard but you haven’t understood.  However, to go on, Tuxall and our friends here fixed up a plan on the prospects of a rich harvest from public curiosity and credulity.  Tuxall planted a big rock under the barn, fixed it up appropriately with torch and chisel and sent for the Farleys, who are expert firework and balloon people, to counterfeit a meteor.”

“Amazing!” cried the clergyman.

“Such a meteor, furthermore, as had never been dreamed of before.  If you were to visit Tuxall’s barn, you would undoubtedly find on the boulder underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more ambitious than the Cardiff Giant.  He carted the rock in from some quarry and did the scorching and carving himself, I suppose.”

“And you discovered all that in a half-day’s visit to Harwick?” asked the Reverend Mr. Prentice incredulously.

“No, but in half-minute’s reading of the ‘gibberish’ which you threw away.”

Taking from the desk the reddish roll which he had brought into the room with him, he sent the loose end of it wheeling across the floor, until it lay, fully outspread.  In black letters against red, the legend glared and blared its announcement: 

Marvelous man-like Monster!

“Those letters, Mr. Prentice,” pursued the Ad-Visor, “measure just three feet from top to bottom.  The phrase ‘three feet high’ which so puzzled you, as combined with the adjectives of great size, was obviously a printer’s direction.  All through the smudged ‘copy,’ which you threw away, there run alliterative lines, ’Stupendous Scientific Sensation,’ ‘Veritable Visitor Void’ and finally ‘Marvelous Man-l—­Monster.’  Only one trade is irretrievably committed to and indubitably hall-marked by alliteration, the circus trade.  You’ll recall that Farley insensibly fell into the habit even in his advertisement; ‘lost lad,’ ‘retained for ransom’ and ‘Mortimer Morley.’  Therefore I had the combination circus poster, an alleged meteor which burned a barn in a highly suspicious manner, and an apparently purposeless kidnapping.  The inference was as simple as it was certain.  The two strangers with Tuxall’s aid, had prepared the fake meteor with a view to exploiting the star-man.  Bailey had literally tumbled into the plot.  They didn’t know how much he had seen.  The whole affair hinged on his being kept quiet.  So they took him along.  All that I had to do, then, was to find the deviser of the three-foot poster.  He was sure to be Bailey’s abductor.”

“Say,” said Farley with conviction, “I believe you’re the devil’s first cousin.”

“When you left me in Harwick,” said the Reverend Peter Prentice, before Average Jones could acknowledge this flattering surmise, “you said that strangers had done the kidnapping.  How did you tell they were strangers then?”

“From the fact that they didn’t know who Bailey was, and had to advertise him, indefinitely, as ‘lost lad from Harwick.’”

“And that there were two of them?” pursued the minister.

“I surmised two minds:  one that schemed out the ‘planting’ of the clothes on the shore; the other, more compassionate, that promulgated the advertisement.”

“Finally, then, how could you know that Bailey was injured and unconscious?”

“If he hadn’t been unconscious then and for long after, he’d have revealed his identity to his captors, wouldn’t he?” explained the Ad-Visor.

There was a long pause.  Then the woman said timidly: 

“Well, and now what?”

“Nothing,” answered Average Jones.  “Tuxall has got away.  Mr. Prentice has recovered his son.  You and Farley have had your lesson.  And I—­”

“Yes, and you, Mr. Detective-man,” said the woman, as he paused.  “What do you get out of it?”

Average Jones cast an affectionate glance at the sprawling legend which disfigured his floor.

“A unique curio in my own special line,” he replied.  “An ad which never has been published and never will be.  That’s enough for me.”

There was a double knock at the door, and Mr. Algernon Spofford burst in, wearing a face of gloom.

“Say, Average,” he began, but broke off with a snort of amazement.  “You’ve found him!” cried.  “Hello, Mr. Prentice.  Well, Bailey, alive and kicking, eh?”

“Yes; I’ve found him and them,” replied Average Jones.

“You’ve done better than me, then.  I’ve been through the post-office department from the information window here to the postmaster-general in Washington, and nobody’ll help me find Mortimer Morley.”

“Then let me introduce him; Algy, this is Mortimer Morley; in less private life Mr. Tim Farley, and his wife, Mrs. Farley, Mr. Spofford.”

“Well, I’ll be Billy-be-dashed,” exploded Mr. Spofford.  “How did you work it out, Average?”

“On the previously enunciated principle,” returned Average Jones with a smile, “that when rats leave a sinking ship or a burning building there’s usually something behind, worth investigating.”