Parchment crinkled as Rick received the scroll in the darkness. It was followed by a statement, that came a bit shakily.
“I’ll have to keep going.” Reggie’s tone was troubled. “Tell The Creeper why I left. I’ll communicate with him later. Maybe the old man’s friends will wonder who killed him.”
“That’ll be taken care of,” returned Rick. “Slide on down to your car and get going. I’ve got a couple of men watching; they’ll see that you get away. You pulled your job; I’ve got mine; and then there’s others besides us.”
Rick waited in the darkness, listening to hurried departing footsteps that were punctuated by the occasional clicks of Reggie Spaylor’s cane. A hush followed; after a short interval, the motor of the roadster started. The car slid away; its lights did not come on until it had neared the next corner.
Rick was already on his way, hurrying past the side of the house, down toward the Sound, where he gained a parked coupe. The scroll came into the glare of the dashlight; like Reggie, Rick grinned when he saw the bloodstain. Then Rick, too, was on the move. He drove toward the center of town; then skirted the lighted district to reach a through road.
Rick stopped near a driveway. A man came up to his car. The fellow was Carning. He was with Gus; the two had been in a parked sedan. Carning gave the information that he wanted.
“The roadster went by,” he stated. “Gus and I spotted the license number. It’s all jake.”
“Good,” decided Rick. “Listen: Before you and Gus pull out, blink your rear light three times. Before you start. Get it?”
“Blink the rear light?”
“You heard me.”
“All right, Rick.”
The coupe drove away. Carning returned to the sedan and told Gus what to do. Though the driver was puzzled, he followed the order, blinking the lights thrice. The sedan rolled from the drive toward Manhattan.
A FEW moments later, lights blinked from the innermost recess of that deserted drive beside the road.
Another car had been parked there; neither Gus nor Carning had known of its presence. It moved forward — a rakish touring car — and swung toward the hamlet of Ridley.
Five minutes later, the touring car stopped near the old house with the gables. The man at the wheel growled an order. The driver of the touring car was Zimmer Funson. At his command, three touts dropped to the ground. Carrying cans that gurgled with liquid contents, they approached the gabled house and entered.
Five minutes was all they needed. They returned, climbed aboard with the empty cans, and huddled low while Zimmer started the car. Soon this crew was speeding along the road. One of the touts — Jocko — was telling of their procedure.
“Poured out all the kerosene, Zimmer,” stated Jocko. “In every room — up the stairs. Found plenty of newspapers besides the ones we carried. Soaked all of them. Boy, will that joint blaze!”
BACK near Long Island Sound, a crackling roar was rising from within the house with the gables. Huge flames were sweeping the ground floor; catching the tinderlike walls, they consumed the frame building like dried kindling. Shouts were coming from about the town. People were racing out into the night to see the conflagration.
A puny fire engine came clanging from an old fire house. By the time it reached the corner, the flames were past control. No one dared enter the gabled house to see if any person needed rescue. Watchers saw the licking fire tongue to the third floor; then came a burst that formed the climax of the holocaust.
A puffing explosion ripped the gable on the right. Fire had reached the gas-filled room; the blast shattered beams and walls. The summit of the gable quivered; then, as the lower floors gave way, the roofed peak tumbled pell-mell into the roaring furnace beneath.
With it went the dead body that had lain upon the floor of the third-story room. Should any traces of it remain after the fire had subsided, investigators would decide that Montague Rayne had died amid the conflagration. But they would never guess that the victim in that house had first received a bullet through his heart.
That death had been covered, by order of The Creeper. Never would Reggie Spaylor be charged with the murder of Montague Rayne. The Creeper had prepared to protect the lieutenant whom he had sent forth to deliver murder. Death was the price that The Creeper had deliberately planned to pay for Bigelow Doyd’s great secret.
CHAPTER XIX. THE CREEPER’S GOAL
STREWN papers were lying beneath the light of a table lamp. These were pages of a copied code list, checked with pencil marks. Upon one sheet were the top words that began the special vocabulary needed for the decoding of the Latin scroll. The first column read:
acerbus — house
adhuc — wealth
adsum — jewels
autem — address
bellum — inspect
bonum — lock
The column could be read no further. The rest of that code list was covered by a sheet of parchment, the Latin scroll itself. Upon the parchment lay a piece of paper which bore written words, selected — with their English equivalents — from the code list. Nine words formed the group:
autem — address
cadaver — avenue
continente — to
discedit — vault
esse — bank
homine — use
ratus — old
spiritum — number
ursus — open
Old Bigelow Doyd had been crafty. In preparing his secret message, he had not trusted to an ordinary code. Such, had it been prematurely discovered, would have encouraged persons to decipher it. To guard his secret, the old man had simply taken a random sentence from a Latin textbook. He had given nine words arbitrary meanings in English — meanings that corresponded with a short sentence of his own formation.
From a Latin vocabulary, he had prepared a list of a few hundred words; many of them with significant meanings, such as acerbus for house; adhuc for wealth; adsum for jewels. Interspersed through the long list were his nine important words, each in its proper place alphabetically.
A finder of the scroll could learn nothing from that sentence taken out of a chance proverb. Reggie Spaylor had heard Montague Rayne pronounce the usual translation, from Latin into English. The sentence had lacked significance.
Nor could a holder of the code lists gain results by trying to shift words about. From hundreds of words that served as blinds, no one could have hoped to pick out the ones that were needed to make an actual message. No one, not even the keenest of cryptographers. Only by holding both the scroll and a copy of the code list could any one gain the message.
HERE lay scroll and code list; one upon the other. They were in the light of The Creeper’s lair. The nine important words had been checked into a list of their own. Upon another sheet of paper were inscribed both sentences, formed in The Creeper’s own handwriting. The ciphered message stated:
Homine autem spiritum
USE ADDRESS NUMBER
continente ursus ratus cadaver
TO OPEN OLD AVENUE
esse discedit
BANK VAULT
Many hands had held that valued scroll; some without knowledge of its existence; others without realization of its high value. Myram had possessed the casket with the scroll still hidden; so had Dopey.
Slugger had gained the scroll itself. All three of those possessors were dead.
Then Jerry Kobal’s hands had held the scroll; next, it had been gripped by the long, clutching fingers of Montague Rayne; after that, it had come into the grasp of Reggie Spaylor. Of those three, two had been slated to die; but only one of the trio had met with doom.