“Did you hear that?” he whispered.
“You mean the wolf’s howl, so close?” Lila said. She felt like shivering, and Packer’s ghostly whisper added to the feeling, which annoyed her. So she spoke in a deliberately loud tone.
“Yes,” said Packer, still whispering. “It sounded as if the beast were right outside the building. And Mr. Morel isn’t in the laboratory. I just looked.”
“Dad’s not out there?” Lila said hastily. “Oh, but he must be!”
She went to the lab, herself. Its ghostly emptiness confronted her. Complete emptiness. The man with the blue eyes and the gray-blond hair was not at any of the workbenches.
“He… he must have gone out to walk around for a minute in the fresh air,” Lila faltered. “Packer, put on the lights.”
The servant clicked a switch. The great windows became pale-white jewels as floodlights outside lit up the clearing. Lila stepped out. Packer slid back out of sight.
Every pebble, every blade of grass, showed up in that pitiless light. You could have seen a field mouse scurry over the close-clipped lawn.
But there was no movement anywhere; no sound.
Lila drew the robe closer around her bare white throat.
“Dad,” she called.
There was no answer. She half ran and half walked around the laboratory building.
“Dad!”
No answer. And the gate was locked and could be opened from within the house only.
Morel had stepped into a clearing from which no man could go, and into which no man could climb. He stepped into it and disappeared!
There had been the far howl of a wolf, then one so close that it seemed in the clearing itself — and that was all.
CHAPTER II
The Search
If only Lila Morel had had something to work on! But she hadn’t.
A man walks along a city street, we’ll say. That man gets to a certain spot, and then just vanishes into thin air. How would you trace him?
That was Lila’s problem.
In the twenty hours that had passed since her father’s disappearance in the Maine laboratory, she had gotten over the feeling that there was something supernatural about it. She had decided there was a natural explanation. There simply must be! As her father had said, she was a scientist’s daughter and hence ought to be beyond superstition.
Her father must have had some way of getting out of the compound gate that she didn’t know about. He must have suffered an attack of amnesia or something and simply walked off into the night.
But inquiry all over that part of the country had not turned up anyone who had seen Morel. And besides, he was in splendid health with not one thing to hint at brain trouble such as amnesia.
So he must have gone off, sane but in some suddenly conceived hurry. Or he might have been kidnaped!
Lila was trying not to think of the latter possibility. She was acting as if her father had left of his own accord and in full possession of his faculties.
So she was coming to talk to his oldest friend.
The house she was approaching was set in acres of lawn, sloping off to the Hudson River, not many miles north of New York City. It was a beautiful estate that belonged to a well-known figure.
The owner was Edwin C. Ritter, wealthy owner of an inherited shoe company, who was now high in power in the political party which had always had his allegiance.
Ritter was Arthur Morel’s closest friend. The two men had gone to school together and had kept in close touch with each other ever since. Lila felt that if anyone would know where her father had gone it would be Ritter.
Anyhow, she hoped so.
It was about ten o’clock at night, but lights blazed from most windows of the country place. It looked as if her luck were in and that Ritter, a busy man seldom at home, was now here to be seen.
Lila stopped her modest coupé, got out and walked up the stone steps to a ponderous door. She pressed the button there and heard soft chimes within. Then the door opened.
For a moment Lila felt as if she were in a dream and was seeing a nightmare.
From the crack between door and jamb, peered out at her one of the ugliest faces she had ever seen. And it was set on a form equally ugly.
The man was hardly five feet high, with shoulders and back twisted subtly so that the malformation didn’t actually show, but was more sensed than seen. Over this dwarfish body was a face that seemed to have come from the Stone Age. The features were so heavy that it was like a mask of a face twice life-size. He had a great, jutting jaw, heavy cheekbones and a beak of a nose. The whole countenance was almost hairless so that it looked curiously naked.
But the eyes reassured her. In the midst of this grotesque, almost repellent malformation, the eyes were intelligent, clear, kindly.
“Yes, miss?” the ugly, dwarfish man said. Only then did Lila see that he wore servants’ livery.
“I’d like to see Mr. Ritter, please,” she said. “My name is Lila Morel.”
The twisted little man showed her into a small drawing room, then disappeared. In a moment the famous Edwin Ritter came in.
Ritter was over six feet, very handsome, with black eyes and heavy black brows and prematurely white hair. He had an orator’s large, mobile mouth. He came to Lila with both hands out.
“Fine to see you,” he boomed. “How is your father? I haven’t seen you and Arthur for much too long.”
Lila’s heart sank, and it must have showed on her face. For Ritter said quickly:
“What’s the matter? Anything wrong?”
“I was hoping you had seen Dad,” Lila answered. “I came here to ask if you’d seen him or heard from him.”
“No. I haven’t. What—”
Lila told what had happened. Ritter sat there with a slight frown on his handsome face.
“That is odd. Yet, there must be a natural explanation,” he decided at last.
Lila shook her head.
“Why would he simply walk off, in carpet slippers and with no money or anything else, at two or three o’clock in the morning, and without saying a word to Packer or me?”
“It does seem odd,” said Ritter. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know that there’s anything you can do,” said Lila. “Except to get in touch with me right away if you hear from him. I’ll be at our town apartment.”
Ritter nodded. His hand touched her shoulder in a fatherly way.
“Now don’t worry. I’m sure everything will be all right.” He stopped. “Hang it, I’m not at all sure of it! Tell me, is Packer still with you?”
“Yes,” said Lila.
“Is he perfectly all right? Are you sure of him?”
“Absolutely sure,” said Lila. “He’s above suspicion.”
Ritter chewed his lip, then shrugged. “This hits me as hard as it does you. Should we get in touch with the police?”
“I hate to do that, yet,” said Lila. “Dad has sometimes done eccentric things. Maybe this is one of those times. I’ll go to the apartment and wait. Tell me if you hear from him.”
She started toward the hall door, then looked at Ritter.
“You have a new butler?”
Ritter nodded, smiling a liitle. “Nothing of beauty, is he? But he is the perfect servant. In fact, he is more than a servant. Knarlie is my right-hand man, and I think I’ll make him my confidential secretary one of these days.”
“Knarlie?” Lila almost smiled, too. “What an odd name for an odd man!”