“Yes, sir,” said Stevenson.
The reporter showed up two days later. He was ushered into the squad room, where he showed his press card to Stevenson, smiled amiably and said, “My editor sent me out on a wild-goose chase. Would you mind chatting with me a couple minutes?”
“Not at all,” said Stevenson.
The reporter, whose press card gave his name as Tom Roberts, settled himself comfortably in the chair beside Stevenson’s desk. “You were the one handled that bank job down the street back in June, weren’t you?”
Stevenson nodded.
Roberts gave an embarrassed chuckle and said, “Okay, I’ve got just one question. You answer no, and then we can talk about football or something. I mean, this is just a silly wild-goose chase, frankly. I’m a little embarrassed about it.”
“Go ahead and ask,” Stevenson told him.
“Okay, I will. Was there the word ‘scorpion’ connected with that bank job at all? In any way at all.”
Stevenson looked at the reporter and smiled. He said, “As a matter of fact, Mr. Roberts, there was.”
Roberts blinked. “There was?”
“Yes, indeedy. There certainly was.” And Stevenson told him the full story of the bank job.
“I see,” said Roberts dazedly when Stevenson was finished. “I see. Or, I don’t see. I don’t see it at all.”
“Your turn,” Stevenson told him. “Now you tell me what made you ask that.”
“This,” said Roberts. He reached into the inside pocket of his sport jacket and withdrew a business-size envelope, which he handed over to Stevenson.
It was another crank letter, in the same newspaper clipping form as the first two. It read:
Dear Mr. Editor,
The bad boys were captured. They could not escape the Scorpion. I left the mark of the Scorpion On their jackets. Criminals fear the mark of the Scorpion. They cannot escape. This is my third letter to you. You should warn all criminals to leave the city. They cannot escape the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.
Sincerely yours,
Stevenson read the letter. “Well, well,” he said.
“He says that’s the third letter,” Roberts pointed out. “We asked around in the office, and we found out who got the first two. They were both back a ways. The first one was early in the summer, and the guy who read it remembered it said something about a bank robbery. So I was sent out this morning to check up on bank robberies in June and July. You’re the third one I’ve talked to this morning. The first two figured me for some kind of nut.”
“My Captain figures me the same way,” Stevenson told him. “What about the second letter? Or, wait, don’t tell me, I’ll tell you. It’s that guy in August, the one who ran amok over in Canarsie.”
“Right you are,” said Roberts. “How did you know?”
“I was there. He left his mark on the rifle stock.”
“Okay,” said Roberts. “So there’s something in it, after all.”
“There’s something in it,” said Stevenson. “The question is, what?”
“Well,” said Roberts, “what have we got so far? Somebody — call it person or persons unknown, for the fun of it — is stepping in every once in a while when there’s a crime being committed. He stops it. He calls himself the Scorpion, and he uses some pretty dizzy methods. He melts automobile tires, makes a rifle too hot to hold, makes knives and leather jackets ice cold — how in heck does he do things like that?”
“Yeah,” said Stevenson. “And just incidentally, who is he?”
“Well,” said Roberts, “he’s a kid, that much is obvious. That whole letter sounds like a kid. Talking about ‘the bad boys’ and stuff like that.”
“What do you figure, some scientist’s kid maybe?”
“Maybe,” said Roberts. “His old man is working on something in his little old laboratory in the cellar, and every once in a while the kid sneaks in and makes off with the ray gun or whatever it is.” Roberts laughed. “I feel silly even talking about it,” he said.
“I’d feel silly, too,” Stevenson told him, “if I hadn’t seen what this kid can do.”
“Can we work anything out from the timing?” Roberts asked him. “He seems to show up once every couple of months.”
“Let me check.”
Stevenson went over to the filing cabinet and looked up the dates. “The bank job,” he said, “was on Wednesday, June 29th. At eleven o’clock in the morning. That Higgins guy was on — here it is — Friday, August 5th, around noon. And this last one was on Hallowe’en, Monday, October 31st at eleven o’clock at night.”
“If you can see a pattern in there,” Roberts told him, “you’re a better man than I am.”
“Well, the first two,” Stevenson said, “were in the daytime, during the summer, when school was out. That’s all I can figure.”
“Why just those three?” Roberts asked. “If he’s out to fight crime, he’s pretty inefficient about it. He’s only gone to work three times in four months.”
“Well, he’s a kid,” said Stevenson. “I suppose he has to wait until he stumbles across something.”
“And then rush home for Daddy’s ray gun?”
Stevenson shook his head. “It beats me. The only one that makes sense is the second one. That one was televised. He probably saw it that way. The other two times, he just happened to be around.”
“I don’t know,” said Roberts. “Does a kid happen to be around twice in four months when there’s crimes being committed? Now, the Hallowe’en thing, I can see that. A kid is liable to be out wandering around, maybe go off to a strange neighborhood after he’s done with his trick-or-treat stuff. Hallowe’en is a good time for a kid to see some other kids breaking a law. And the thing in Canarsie, like you say, he probably saw that on television. But what about the bank job?”
“That was the first,” said Stevenson thoughtfully. “That was what set him off. He was there at the time. Just by accident. And he saw they were getting away, so he zapped them. And right away he put the drama into it, right on the spur of the moment he decided to be the Scorpion. Then he sent the letter to your paper. But nothing else happened, and the paper didn’t print anything about his letter or what he’d done, and he kind of forgot about it. Until he was watching television and saw the Higgins thing. Pow, the Scorpion rides again. And then it died down again until a couple of nights ago he saw the rumble, and pow all over again.”
“What you’re saying,” Roberts told him, “is that this kid wanders around with Daddy’s zap gun all the time. That doesn’t seem very likely.”
“Face it,” said Stevenson. “Daddy’s zap gun isn’t the likeliest thing I ever heard of, either. I don’t know how the kid does this. For that matter, it’s only an educated guess that it’s a kid we’re after.”