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THE MASTER MYSTERY

Novelized by

ARTHUR B. REEVE and JOHN W. GREY

From Scenarios by Arthur B. Reeve in Collaboration with John W. Grey
and C.A. Logue

Profusely Illustrated with Photographic Reproductions Taken from the
Houdini Super-Serial of the Same Name. A B. A. Rolfe Production.

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

Published May, 1919







THE MASTER MYSTERY




CHAPTER I


Peter Brent sat nervously smoking in the library of his great house,
Brent Rock.

He was a man of about forty-five or -six--a typical, shrewd business man.
Something, however, was evidently on his mind, for, though he tried to
conceal it, he lacked the self-assurance that was habitually his before
the world.

A scowl clouded his face as the door of the library was flung open and
he heard voices in the hall. A tall, spare, long-haired man forced his
way in, crushing his soft black hat in his hands.

"I _will_ see Mr. Brent," insisted the new-comer, as he pushed past the
butler. "Mr. Brent!" he cried, advancing with a wild light in his eyes.
"I'm tired of excuses. I want justice regarding that water-motor of
mine." He paused, then added, shaking his finger threateningly, "Put it
on the market--or I will call in the Department of Justice!"

Brent scowled again. For years he had been amassing a fortune by a
process that was scarcely within the law.

For, when inventions threaten to render useless already existing
patents, necessitating the scrapping of millions of dollars' worth of
machinery, vested interests must be protected.

Thus, Brent and his partner, Herbert Balcom, had evolved a simple method
of protecting corporations against troublesome inventors and inventions.
They had formed their own corporation, International Patents,
Incorporated.

Their method was effective--though desperate. It was to suppress the
inventor and his labor. They bought the sole rights from the inventor,
promising him glittering royalties. The joker was that the invention was
suppressed. None were ever manufactured. Hence there were no royalties
and the corporations went on undisturbed while Brent and Balcom
collected huge retainers for the protection they afforded them.

Thus Brent Rock had come to be hated by scores of inventors defrauded in
this unequal conflict with big business.

The inventor looked about at the library, richly paneled in oak and
luxuriously furnished. Through a pair of folding-doors he could see the
dining-room and a conservatory beyond. All this had been paid for by
himself and such as he.

"Sit down, sir," nodded Brent, suavely.

The man continued to stand, growing more and more excited. Had he been a
keener observer he would have seen that under Brent's suavity there was
a scarcely hidden nervousness.

Finally Brent leaned over and spoke in a whisper, looking about as
though the very walls might have ears.

"My dear fellow," he confided, "for some time I have been considering
your water-motor. I will return the model to you--release the patent to
the world."

He drew back to watch the effect on the aged inventor. Could it be that
Brent was lying? Or was it fear? Could it be that at last his seared
conscience was troubling him?

At that exact moment, up-stairs, in a private laboratory in the house,
sat a young man at a desk--a handsome, strong-faced, clean-cut chap. All
about him were the scientific instruments which he used to test
inventions offered to Brent.

A look of intent eagerness passed over his face. For Quentin Locke was
not testing any of Brent's patents just now. Over his head he had the
receivers of a dictagraph.

It was a strange act for one so recently employed as manager of Brent's
private laboratory. Yet such a man must have had his reasons.

One who was interested might have followed the wire from the
dictagraph-box in the top drawer of the desk down the leg of the desk,
through the very walls to the huge chandelier in the library below,
where, in the ornamented brass-work, reposed a small black disk about
the size of a watch. It was the receiving-end of the dictagraph.

Suddenly the young man's face broke out into a smile and without
thinking he stopped writing what the little mechanical eavesdropper was
conveying him from below. He listened intently as he heard a silvery
laugh over the wire.

"Oh, I didn't know you were busy. I thought these flowers--Well, never
mind. I'll leave them, anyway."

It was Eva Brent, daughter of the head of the firm, who had danced in
from the conservatory like a June zephyr in December.

"My dear," Locke could hear the patent magnate welcome, "it is all
right. Stay a moment and talk to this gentleman while I go down to the
museum."

Locke listened eagerly, glancing now and then at a photograph of Eva
Brent on his own desk, while she chatted gaily with the inventor. It was
evident that Eva had not the faintest idea of the hard nature of the
business of her father.

Meanwhile, Brent himself had left the library and passed through the
portiered door into the hall. He did not turn up the grand staircase in
the center of the wide hall, but hurried, preoccupied, to a door under
the stairs that opened down to the cellar.

He started to open it to pass down. As he did so he did not hear a light
footstep on the stairs as his secretary, Zita Dane, came down. But he
did not escape her watchful eye.

"Mr. Brent," she called, "is there anything I can do?"

Brent paused. "Wait a moment for me in the library," he directed, as he
turned again to enter the cellar.

He closed the door and Zita watched him with an almost uncanny interest,
then turned to the library to join Eva and the new-comer.

Down the cellar steps Brent made his way, and across the cellar floor,
pausing at the rocky wall of the foundation of the house blasted and
hewn out of the cliff on which it towered above the river. A heavy steel
door in the rock wall barred the way.

Brent whirled the combination and shot the bolts, and the door swung
ponderously open, disclosing a rock-hewn cavern. Three walls of the
cavern were lined with shelves containing inventions of all
kinds--telegraph and telephone instruments, engine models,
railroad-signaling and safety devices, racks of bottles containing
dangerous chemicals and their antidotes--all conceivable manner of
mechanical and scientific paraphernalia. It was literally a Graveyard of
Genius--harboring the ghosts of a thousand inventors' dead hopes.

Brent entered hastily and went directly to a shelf. There he picked up a
model of a motor. He blew the dust from it and examined it approvingly.

Suddenly he saw something that caused him to start. He looked down at
his feet. There was a piece of paper on the floor.

He picked it up and read it, and as he did so he started back,
frightened--then angry. He looked about at the rock-hewn cavern
walls--then read again:

BRENT--This is my last warning. If you persist in your course you
will be struck down by the Madagascar madness.
Q.

Under his breath, Brent swore. Again he looked about the cavern, then
turned hurriedly, picked up the motor, passed out the steel door,
clanged it shut, and locked it.

No sooner had Brent shut the door, however, than it seemed as if the
very face of the outer rocky wall of the cavern began to move--to tilt,
as if on hinges.

If a human eye had been in the Graveyard of Genius at that instant it
would have sworn that it perceived in the inky blackness of the tilting
rock a passage, and in the shadows of that passage a huge, weird,
grotesque figure peering in.

Then the tilting rock door closed again, as the figure disappeared down
the rocky passage on the opposite side--a menace and a threat to the
owner of Brent Rock, insecure even in his millions.



CHAPTER II


When Brent arrived back at the library he had quite recovered his poise,
at least to the eyes of those in the library. Zita had joined Eva with
the old inventor, Davis.

As Brent entered, Davis uttered an exclamation of joy at the sight of
his motor. For the moment Brent almost glowed.

"Along with your invention," he beamed, as he handed the model to the
old man, "I am going to release many others to the world."

All this not only Locke was noting, but Zita, too, appeared to be an
almost too interested listener.

The others were chatting when Zita heard a noise in the hall and hurried
out. She was just in time to see a rather hard-visaged man, with cruel,
penetrating eyes. It was Herbert Balcom, vice-president of the company.

Zita whispered to him a moment and Balcom's hard face grew harder.

"Go up-stairs--watch _him_," he ordered, passing down the hall.

Balcom entered the library just as Davis was about to leave, hugging
close to him his brain child. Davis clutched it a bit closer at sight of
the other partner.

A glance would have been sufficient to show that Brent was secretly
afraid of his partner, Balcom, and that Balcom dominated him.

"Go to the gate with him, my dear," whispered Brent to his daughter, who
was clinging to his arm, convinced of the goodness of her father,
ignorant of the very basis on which the Brent and Balcom fortune rested.

Balcom's mouth tightened as he came closer to Brent, menacing, the
moment they were alone.

"How long has this double crossing been going on?" sneered Balcom,
jerking his head toward the door through which Eva had just gone with
the inventor, and shoving his face close to Brent's.

"It's not double crossing, Balcom," Brent attempted to conciliate,
"but--"

"No 'buts,'" interrupted Balcom, with deadly coldness. "Keep on, and
you'll have the government down on us for violating the anti-trust law.
What's the matter? Have you lost your nerve?"

As Balcom almost hissed the question, up in the laboratory Locke was now
writing furiously in his note-book, when he was interrupted by a knock
at the door. He whipped the dictagraph receiver off his head and jumped
to his feet, hiding all traces of the dictagraph in the desk drawer.
Then he moved over to the door, unlocked it, and flung it open.

"Oh, I hope I haven't interrupted you in any important experiment,"
apologized Zita, innocently enough.

"Nothing important," camouflaged Locke.

Though Locke did not seem to notice it, another would have seen that
Zita cared a great deal for him.

"May I come in?" she asked, wheedling.

"Certainly. I am charmed, I assure you."

While Zita was gushingly effusive, Locke was correct and formally polite
as he bowed his acquiescence. Zita felt it.

For a moment she stood looking at a half-finished experiment on the
laboratory table, then finally she turned to Locke with a calculated
impulsiveness.

"Why do you treat me so coldly," she asked, "when you know I admire your
wonderful work?"

"Really, Miss Dane," he apologized, "I didn't mean to be rude."

Yet there was an air of constraint in his very tone.

"Do you know," she flashed, "I can't help feeling that you are so
brilliant--you must be something more than you seem."

Locke suppressed a quick look of surprise. Was she trying to worm some
secret from him? He masked his face cleverly.

"Indeed, you must be imagining things," he replied, quietly, turning and
strolling toward the window of his laboratory.

The moment his back was turned Zita picked up the photograph of Eva on
the desk. For a moment she stood glaring at it jealously.

Out of the window Locke smiled. For, down on the gravel path, walking
slowly toward the gate to the Brent Rock grounds, he could see Eva and
Davis.

The smile faded into a scowl. He had seen a young man enter the gate. It
was Paul Balcom, son of Herbert Balcom, and Paul was engaged to
Eva--thus giving Balcom a stronger hold over Brent.

Locke knew enough about Paul to dislike him thoroughly and to distrust
him. Had Locke been able to see over the hedge he would have confirmed
his suspicions. For Paul had actually driven up to Brent Rock in the
runabout of as notorious a woman as could have been found in the night
life of the city--one known as De Luxe Dora in the unsavory half-world
in which both were leaders. Had his dictagraph been extended to the
hedge he would have heard her voice rasp at Paul:

"Your father may make you pay attention to this girl, Paul, but
remember--you had not better double cross me."

Paul's protestations of underworld fidelity, would have added to Locke's
fury.

However, Locke had not seen or heard. Still, it was unbearable that this
fellow Paul should be engaged to a girl like Eva. Tall, dark, handsome
though he was, Locke knew him to be a man not to be trusted.

Paul hurried up to Eva, not a bit disconcerted at the near discovery of
his intimacy with Dora. And, whatever one may believe about woman's
intuition, there must have been something in it, for even at a distance
one could see that Eva mistrusted Paul Balcom, her fiance. Locke scowled
blackly.

Paul thrust himself almost rudely between Davis and Eva. Again Davis
shrank, as he had from the young man's father, then bowed, excused
himself, and hurried off, hugging his motor to him, while Paul took
Eva's hand, which she was not any too willing to give him. Locke
watched, motionless, as the couple turned back to the house.

Somehow Eva must have felt his gaze. She turned and looked upward at the
laboratory window. As she saw Locke her face broke into a smile and she
waved her hand gaily. Paul saw it and a swift flush of anger crossed his
face. He pulled Eva abruptly by the arm.

"Let's go into the house," he said, almost angrily.

Seeing the action, Locke also turned from the window to encounter Zita,
still watching. Without a word he left the laboratory.

While this little quadrangle of conflicting emotions of Locke, Eva,
Paul, and Zita was being enacted the two partners in the library were
disputing hot and heavy. As they argued, almost it seemed as if Balcom's
very face limned his thoughts--that he desired Brent out of the way, as
a weakling in whom he had discovered some traces of conscience which, to
Balcom, meant weakness.

Balcom leaned forward excitedly. "I do not intend to let you wreck this
company because your conscience, as you call it, has begun to trouble
you," he hissed.

Brent's hand clutched nervously. He was afraid of Balcom--so much so
that he fought back only weakly.

Locke was down in the hallway just in time to meet Eva and Paul as they
entered.

"Oh--do you know, I'm so glad--I think my father is the most
kind-hearted of men," Eva trilled to Locke, as she recounted what had
happened in the library with Davis.

Locke listened with restrained admiration for the girl, whatever might
have been his secret opinion of her father or of the story he already
knew.

On his part, Paul did not relish the situation, nor did he take any
pains to conceal it. He shrugged and turned away.

"Come," he said, with a tone of surly authority, "I think I hear my
father in the library."

Eva looked back swiftly at Locke and smiled as Paul led her toward the
library door. But that, also, made Paul more furious.

"Why do you make me ridiculous before that fellow?" he demanded.

"I'm sorry," replied Eva, in surprise. "I didn't meant to do that."

Vaguely Paul understood. The girl was too unsophisticated to have meant
it. Somehow that made it worse. Though she did not know it, he did.
Unknown to herself, there was a response in the presence of Locke which
was not inspired in his own society. He hurried her into the library.

It was as though the entrance of Paul and Eva had been preconcerted. The
partners, in their dispute, stopped and turned as the young people
entered and moved over to a divan. Balcom lowered his voice and plucked
at Brent's sleeve as he nodded toward the couple.

"I could trust you better if they were married within a week," suggested
Balcom.

Brent recoiled, but Balcom affected not to notice.

"Then I will believe that you are dealing fairly with me," he
emphasized.

Brent studied a moment, then nodded assent. Balcom extended a cold,
commanding hand and the partners shook hands.

Outside, Locke had paused, about to enter the library. The pause had
been just long enough for him to hear--and it was a blow to him. He
watched, dazed, as the two older men walked over to the younger couple;
then he turned away, heart sick.

"My dear," began Brent, as he patted the shoulder of the girl, the one
spot of goodness that had shone in the otherwise blackness of his life,
making him at last realize the depth to which lust of money had made him
sink, "we were just saying that perhaps it would be advisable
to--er--hasten your marriage to Paul--say--perhaps next week."

The words seemed to stick in his throat.

As for Eva, she felt a shiver pass over her. Without knowing why, she
drew back from Paul, at her side, shrank even closer to her father,
trying not to tremble. Did Paul realize it?

Brent felt the shudder with a pang. He leaned over. "Promise to do
this--for my sake," he whispered, so low that there was no chance of the
others hearing. "By to-morrow all may be changed."

There was something ominous about the very words.



CHAPTER III


Brent had no intention of keeping the promise which Balcom had extracted
from him by a species of moral duress that afternoon.

In fact, already he had gone too far in his plans for restitution--or
was it self-preservation?--to turn back. It was late in the night that
he himself secretly admitted to the house a tall, dark-haired stranger
who evidently called by appointment.

"Well, Flint," he greeted, in a hushed tone, "what was it you asked to
see me about?"

Flint replied not a word, but impressively tapped a bundle which he
carried under his arm and began to undo the cord which bound it.

Brent looked startled, then caught himself. He had known Flint for some
time--an adventurer, more or less unscrupulous, who had been the foreign
representative of International Patents.

Flint took off his coat and threw it on a chair with an air of assurance
that seemed to increase Brent's anxiety, then began again to untie the
bulky package.

"Just a moment, Flint," cautioned Brent, stopping him.

With an air of uneasy secrecy Brent hurried to the door that led from
the dining-room to the conservatory and bolted it securely. Then he made
sure that the door to the library was bolted.

As he did so he did not see his secretary, Zita, watching in the hall,
for the footsteps of Locke, approaching, had caught her quick ear and
she had fled.

"Locke!" called Brent, hearing his laboratory, manager. "Under no
circumstances allow me to be disturbed to-night."

"Very well, sir," responded Locke.

Just then the light step of Eva was heard on the stairs.

"What's the matter, father?" she asked, still upset by the events of the
afternoon. "Is there anything wrong?"

"No, my dear, nothing," hastily replied Brent. "In the morning I shall
have something to say to you. Now run along like a good girl."

Dutifully Eva turned. Brent watched her out of sight. Then with a keen
look at Locke he pulled out a paper from his pocket and handed it to the
young scientist, who read:

BRENT,--This is my last warning. If you persist in your course you
will be struck down by the Madagascar madness.
Q.

Locke looked up from the scrawl in alarmed perplexity.

"What does this mean?" he queried.

Brent merely shook his head cryptically.

"Study this message. I shall have something very important to tell you
in the morning."

As Brent turned back into the library he paused a moment and looked
after Locke, hesitating, as if he would call him back. Then he decided
not to do so, turned, and carefully locked the door from the dining-room
into the hallway.

Eva was waiting at the head of the stairs as Locke, perplexed by the
strange actions of his employer, came up.

"What _is_ the trouble?" she repeated, anxiously. "Please tell me. Is
there anything wrong?"

"No--nothing," reassured Locke, in spite of his own doubt. "Everything
is all right."

"I hope so." Eva lingered. "Good night."

Locke bowed admiringly. But there was the same restraint in his look
that had been shown in the afternoon.

"Good night," he murmured, slowly.

Eva quite understood, and there was a smile of encouragement on her face
as she turned away and flitted down the hall to her room.

Outside, Zita had hurried from the house to the nearest public
telephone-booth and was frantically calling Balcom at his apartment.

"Mr. Balcom," she repeated, breathlessly, as the junior partner
answered, "Flint has returned. I have seen him."

"The devil!" exclaimed Balcom, angrily, then checked himself before he
said any more. "Keep me informed."

Abruptly he hung up.

It was scarcely a moment later that Paul Balcom entered the Balcom
apartment, admitted by a turbaned black suggestive of the Orient.

Paul was surly and had evidently been drinking, for he shoved the
servant roughly out of the way as he strode toward his father.

Apparently outside Paul had overheard and had gathered the drift of what
Balcom had been saying. Or perhaps, from his own sources of information,
he already knew. At any rate, as Balcom turned from the telephone,
father and son faced each other angrily.

"Brent's lying," exclaimed Paul. "That marriage to me must take place
to-morrow."

Talking angrily, sometimes in agreement, at others far apart, the two
left the room.

Back in the dining-room by this time Brent had rejoined Flint and now
watched him eagerly as he took the last wrappings from the package which
he had carried so carefully.

As the last wrapping was stripped from it, on the table before them lay
a small steel model, perhaps three feet high--a weird-looking thing in
the miniature shape of a man, designed along lines that only a cubist
could have conceived--jointed, mobile, truly a contrivance at which to
marvel.

Brent gazed incredulously at the strange thing. "An automaton!" he
exclaimed.

"More than that," replied Flint, calmly.

Flint unrolled a chart of the human nervous system and spread it out on
the table. Pointing to the brain, he leaned over tensely, and whispered:

"This model is merely a piece of mechanism. But the real automaton
possesses a human brain which has been transplanted into it and made to
guide it."

For a moment Brent listened incredulously, then sat back in his chair
and laughed skeptically. But even Flint recognized that there was a
hollowness in the laughter.

"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Brent, "that a human brain has been
made to control a thing of no use except as a terrible engine of
destruction?"

"Not only possible," reiterated Flint, "but it is true."

"Oh, Flint," rallied Brent, with a sort of uneasiness, "you can't tell
_me_ that!"

"Believe it or not," insisted the adventurer, "I have been in Madagascar
and I know."

For a moment Brent paused at the vehemence of Flint's answer. What had
Flint to gain by misrepresentation? A thousand images of the past
flitted through Brent's brain. Then slowly a look of terror came over
Brent's face. Suppose it were indeed true--this Frankenstein, this
conscienceless inhuman superman? Brent gripped himself and composed his
features and his voice.

"But this thing," he rasped. "What does this prove?"

"Oh, this is merely automatic--a piece of mechanism--a model which I
stole. It works when it is wound up--not like the real one. Look."

Flint put a pencil in the little steel hand of the model and pressed a
lever as he held a piece of paper under the pencil. Brent leaned over,
fascinated.

Instantly the tiny hand began to trace on the paper one letter--the
simple letter "Q."

As the hand finished the tail of the "Q" Brent gripped the table for
support. His eyes bulged and stared wildly.

"My God!" burst from his lips. "It is the warning--Q!"

For minutes Brent strove to regain his composure.

Nor was Flint less impressed than the man before him.

What would have been the emotions of both if they had been able to
penetrate with the eye through the rocky cliffs on which the stately
mansion of Brent Rock stood would have been hard to say.

For, down in a rock-hewn cavern, not many hundred yards away and below
them, reached by a secret entrance from the shrubbery of the cliffs near
the shore, already had congregated several rough characters. They were
playing cards and drinking, now and then glancing furtively at the
passage entrance, as though they were expecting the arrival of some one
or something.

Suddenly came a dull metallic clank through the passage, strangely
echoing. At once all leaped to their feet, at attention, not unmixed
with awe and fear that sat strangely on their desperate features. What
was it that they, who feared neither God nor man, feared?

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