The Star Reporter Mystery

by Norvin Pallas LLC

  “The female is rather greenish the year round,” said the professor mildly, “and the male’s coat becomes more greenish in winter, too. The youngsters are very dull.” He didn’t seem to be an arguing type of man, but merely liked to be accurate. However, not wishing to provoke a dispute between himself and Mr. Bogus, he referred the matter to their host. “What do you think, Hank?”

  This placed the proprietor in the difficult position of siding with one guest against another, and he tried to compromise. “I believe the male is somewhat splotched with red even in winter, and although I’ve never seen a scarlet tanager here in winter, I suppose even in a migrating group there will be a few individuals who stay behind.”

  “This one did,” said Mr. Bogus decidedly, and he wasn’t the sort of man who could be easily contradicted.

  Hank led the conversation away from birds and back to food. Everyone joined in an enthusiastic appreciation of their meal, which was everything that could be expected.

  Mr. Knight also was a congenial talker and had an interesting story to tell about how he had worked his passage across seas on a tramp steamer. It was the sort of story that was rather endless, and could easily be built up if his listeners’ response justified it, or brought to a speedy conclusion when interest lagged. This time he had a responsive audience, and sensing it, he carried on to some length. But at last he had no other choice than to bring the freighter limping safely into port after a disastrous storm.

  By chance the professor had been seated between Ronald and Ted, and although he was a little harder to draw out, he didn’t mind talking about himself when he had been sufficiently encouraged.

  “I’m up here on a college grant,” he explained. “They’re interested in making a study of avalanches, and this seemed a good place for a season’s study.”

  “I told him he’s wasting his time here,” Hank broke in, for the topic appeared to be an unwelcome one to him. “We’ve never had any trouble here with snowslides,” and Ronald could not help but notice that he avoided the use of the more terrifying word, “avalanches.”

  “No,” said Professor Villinger, “but this has been an unusual year, with especially heavy snowfall, and now this thaw. Anyway, the university is just as interested in finding out why we don’t have avalanches on certain hills. There are many different types of natural catastrophes that can strike people. Earthquakes are something we can hardly predict at all; storms, volcanic action, and floods can be predicted with a certain degree of accuracy; but with tidal waves and avalanches we ought to be able to approach almost complete accuracy.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought that predicting an avalanche was such a difficult thing,” Ronald remarked. “It’s merely a question of getting too much snow and then it starts to slide, isn’t it?”

  “If that were so, nobody except a few foolhardy people would ever get caught in an avalanche. No, it’s an enormously complicated subject, which may be the reason it attracts me. For one thing there are different types of slides. A loose snowslide takes on the shape of a developing fan. If the snow is dry, it slides partly as a big cloud, and you are just as likely to be suffocated as you are to be buried. A wet loose snowslide is more destructive. However, it usually happens directly after the snow has piled up through snowfall or wind, so that it’s not much of a surprise. A slab snowslide is altogether different. The dangerous situation may have been building up for months, until something triggers a sudden break, and it lets go.”

  “What sort of trigger?” Ted questioned.

  “It can be a loud noise, or a light fall of new snow, even a skier cutting across a slope. Of course none of these things would cause an avalanche unless the slope was already dangerous, and that’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to determine. It depends on so many factors, such as the character and moisture content of the snow when it fell, the angle of slope, the cohesion between the ground and the snow, and between the different layers of snow, the rate of settlement, temperature, wind, and so on. The whole battle is between the weight of the snow which is pulling it down, and cohesion which is holding it up. During a thaw your cohesion is lessening, and the snow may begin to slide.”

  “Don’t you do anything interesting during the summer?” asked Hank, a little bitterly.

  “Oh, yes, I correlate my results from the winter before, and make my plans for the next winter,” said the professor with a smile.

  “Is there any danger on the hills around here?” Ronald inquired.

  “Not at this very moment, if my calculations are correct.” He acted as though he would just as soon be buried under a snowslide as to live to find out his calculations were in error. “But I’m watching the hills at the mouth of Lonely Valley. They may give me some trouble if this thaw continues. I may have to take steps.”

  “What steps can you take?” Ted asked. “You can’t prevent an avalanche, can you?”

  “Not prevent it, exactly. The simplest thing would be for everyone to stay away from the dangerous hills, but people being what they are, it is often safer to start the avalanches ourselves by means of explosions, rather than to wait for nature to do it.”

  “You said our hills are safe now, didn’t you?” Hank persisted.

  “Certainly, unless I’ve made an error.” He spoke with resolution, as if this were sufficient assurance for him and ought to be enough for the others.

  Mr. Bogus, who had been silent for a long time for him, now spoke up. “I can imagine a scientist blowing up a city, and his last coherent thought would be: ‘Oops! A pinch too much thorium.’”

  “From what I’ve seen of scientists,” said Mr. Lane, “they always claim to be saving lives, and if they lose a few doing it, they don’t mind, as long as it isn’t their own.”

  There was a little laugh at the professor’s expense, but he was unperturbed. “I have the equipment and the necessary permission from the state for conducting a few experiments on controlled avalanches. I may undertake them a little later.”

  “After the winter tourist season is over, I hope,” said Hank, rather disturbed.

  “Yes, unless I find it necessary beforehand.” It was hard to tell if he was completely serious or merely choosing to string his host along.

  After supper they settled down in the reception room. As part of the rustic atmosphere, there was no radio or television set, but it was a pleasant place to read or talk quietly. However, fearing that they might become a little bored, Hank finally suggested that he run off some of his home movies, and the guests were all agreeable.

  It turned out that he was a good photographer, and his colorful movies represented some good amateur work, if perhaps a little long for strangers. Ronald congratulated him afterward, and Hank’s good humor appeared restored. After all, it was easy to understand why he disliked the talk about avalanches, which might have a serious effect on his trade, and it was a little inconsiderate of the professor to pursue the subject when he realized how much he was bothering his host. Devotion to science may be a good thing, but it shouldn’t override all social considerations.

  “Your uncle’s quite a talker, isn’t he?” said Hank to Ronald, who was momentarily puzzled that Hank should have mistaken Mr. Knight for a relative, but did not bother to deny the relationship. “I’d sort of like to have him up here next holiday season at my expense, just to create atmosphere for the other guests. Do you think he might feel insulted if I offered him a proposition like that?”

  “I think it would take a good deal more than that to insult him,” said Ronald with a laugh.

  The group broke up early, and Mr. Knight left for his room about the same time they did.

  “That was quite a yarn you spun,” Ronald said to him. “But I thought you had worked on the railroad all your life. I didn’t know you’d been on a tramp steamer.”

  “Well, of course it never really happened to me,” Mr. Knight admitted, “although it was a true story—mostly. But people appreciate a story more if you make it sound like a personal ex
perience.”

  They left him at his door, parting with a friendly exchange of good nights, and went on farther down the hall to their own room.

  “Well, what do you think, Ted?” said Ronald, sprawling out on the bed for a few minutes. “Look the three guests over: a scientist who’s anxious to set off some dynamite explosions as though he were playing with a new toy; a businessman who’d like to make us think his only interest is birds; and Mr. Lane-Payne, who pretends to be hiding out from his secretary and admittedly comes from Detroit. Which of these three men, if any, is Walter Desmond?”

  “Bogus sounds like a phony name to me,” Ted observed.

  “It’s certainly unusual, to say the least, although I’ve learned not to be too surprised at anybody’s last name. But it does sound just like the sort of name somebody might make up. Mr. Bogus may have a high degree of everyday, hard-rock commonsense, but I don’t think he’s a particularly imaginative person. He might invent a name like this and think he is being very subtle, without realizing how obvious he is.”

  “Doesn’t anybody ever use his right name?” Ted wondered. “I never before heard of so many people traveling under aliases.”

  “It does look that way, Ted,” Ronald agreed with a smile. “Hank ought to have a double-entry register listing everybody’s real name and the name they’re going under. Mr. Lane-Payne of Detroit is another character I’m wondering about.”

  “There must be about half a million men in Detroit, Ron, and probably not more than a dozen of them would be interested in Walter Desmond’s invention.”

  “Yes, I suppose so, and another thing is that he was so open about admitting he came from Detroit and was using a false name. That hardly makes him sound very suspicious, unless it was just his way of covering up. And then there’s our scientist friend. He has the technical background and he just might be interested in an invention. He’s a complex man who could have much more behind him than we realize. However, putting them all together, I must admit that none of these three men quite matches the picture of Walter Desmond I had been building up in my mind. I didn’t picture him as quite as well educated as the professor, or as aggressive as Mr. Bogus, or as gabby and flighty as Mr. Lane-Payne. I wonder if we’re off on a wrong tack altogether?”

  “What about the other guest?” asked Ted.

  “What other guest?” said Ronald, straightening up and staring at Ted with quick interest.

  “Just after she got finished serving us, I saw Mrs. Hudson carrying a tray toward the stairs, and I’m sure as shootin’ it wasn’t for the cat.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The Northeast Room

  “A tray of food,” Ronald mused. “I suppose it’s possible they have another guest we don’t know anything about. Still, it could be some employee of theirs who is sick. This is a pretty big place for Hank and his wife, to run all by themselves.”

  “But I think they do run it by themselves when they’re as empty as this,” Ted maintained. “Something Hank said to me when I was talking to him about skiing made me think that they depend on part-time help from the village when they’re full up. He said he didn’t have anyone just then who could help me out with my skiing, because they’d let their temporary help go.”

  “Well, you could be right, Ted. Stay here awhile. I want to scout around a little.”

  He returned to their room in less than ten minutes. “I’ve looked the situation over as well as I can, Ted. Discounting the rooms where I know guests are staying, and the empty rooms that are standing with the doors ajar, there’s one room left over. It could be the room at the end of the side corridor, the northeast room, only it’s still fairly early, and I didn’t see any light under the door.”

  “The northeast room,” Ted pondered as he tried to remember.

  “Why, do you know something about it?”

  “Just a minute until I get my directions straight. I looked the place over from the outside, and I noticed there was an outside stairway leading up to one of the rooms. Yes, that would be the northeast room. I remember now.”

  “Well, so our mysterious guest has a private stairway, apparently so he can get in and out without being disturbed. That certainly doesn’t sound very much like a sick person, now does it? And if they did have a sick guest, wouldn’t Hank have mentioned it to us? Another thing, I happened to run into Mr. Lane-Payne, and I asked him casually if there had been a sick guest. He looked very vague about it, and thought I must be referring to one of the men who had just left. It looks very much to me as though this guest suddenly got sick just when we arrived.”

  “Then who do you think it is?” Ted demanded. “I know we came here hoping to find both Walter Desmond and Barry Knight, and we haven’t found either of them. Which one do you think it is?”

  “Well, if it is either one of them,” said Ronald thoughtfully, “I imagine it would be Barry. Remember Walter Desmond doesn’t know us from Adam, unless Barry has told him about us. Even then he wouldn’t have any reason to hide from us, especially if he was using a false name, since we don’t know what he looks like.”

  “He might think you had a picture of him,” Ted reminded him.

  “That’s so, I might, except that the Imperial paper covering the trial didn’t print his picture. I don’t know whether the warden at the prison would have showed me his picture or not, but anyway I didn’t ask. Regardless of that, I still think it’s more likely to be Barry than it is Desmond. If Desmond was here, I think Barry would have found him. If Desmond isn’t here, Barry may have come along on a false scent the way we did. I can imagine Desmond and Barry Knight together, or I can imagine Barry here alone, but I can’t imagine Desmond here alone.”

  “Maybe they’re both in the same room,” suggested Ted.

  “Well, I suppose that’s possible, too, although not very likely if Barry was pursuing Desmond and Desmond was trying to elude him.”

  Ronald considered the matter very carefully as Ted watched him in silence. Finally, as Ronald seemed to have made up his mind, Ted said:

  “What have you decided to do, Ron?”

  “I wonder, Ted, if the time hasn’t come for a showdown with Barry. This trying to run away from everything is beginning to seem pretty silly. If I’ve managed to find him, then that means Uglancie’s men will be on to him soon as well. I think I ought to warn him about that. He may need our help, and it’s about time that we let him know we’re on his side.”

  “That’s all very nice, but how are you going about it?”

  “In the simplest, most direct way I can think of. I’ll simply go over there and knock on his door. I don’t think he’d be foolish enough to pretend not to recognize me, or to try to get rid of me after I’ve come this far to find him. If I can just get him to talk frankly with me, we’ll be able to figure out what the score is.”

  “What if it isn’t Barry Knight?”

  “If it’s a stranger I’ll simply make my apologies and withdraw, and just where that’ll leave us I don’t know. But I’m going to play along that it’s Barry till I find out otherwise. There’s only one thing that bothers me, Ted. I don’t want our phony Mr. Knight to get on to what I’m doing. He’s probably carried everything back to Uglancie already, and that’s something I want to put a stop to right now. I’ll tell you, our room’s between his room and the northeast room, so I don’t think he can follow me without passing this door. While I’m gone I want you to listen very carefully just inside the door for anyone coming along the corridor. If someone comes, you open the door as though by accident and engage him in loud conversation so I’ll hear you. Or if it should be Mr. Knight, you can ask him in, tell him I want him to wait for me because I’ve got something important to talk to him about. Whatever you do, don’t let him go near the northeast room.”

  Ted was agreeable and took up his station, prepared to execute his mission faithfully. Meanwhile, Ronald turned down the dimly lighted corridor and into the near blackness of the shorter side corridor. No doubt he could ha
ve turned on a light, had he bothered to hunt for the switch, but he felt that that was too likely to attract attention to him. So he half felt his way along the wall until he reached the door of the northeast room. There was still no light beneath the door, but he decided not to let that deter him.

  He knocked lightly on the door, then listened carefully for a response. There was no sound from within, not even a telltale rustle. Was the occupant asleep, or was he simply determined to ignore any intrusion? Ronald rapped once more, a little louder, then waited once more, still without results. He decided to try one last time and knocked as loudly as he dared without disturbing the guests in the nearest occupied rooms. There was no answer.

  He tried the doorknob gently, and to his surprise it turned. His pulse began to pick up tempo. If he was caught entering a room occupied by a stranger, he was likely to find himself in hot water. If it was Barry Knight, of course it wouldn’t matter, and he had already decided to play it that way. He pushed the door wide open and went in.

  It was nearly black inside, and he could see very little. He closed the door gently behind him and groped for the switch. He found it presently and turned on the light. There was no one in the room—fortune had favored him that far—but he hadn’t found Barry Knight either. The bed was mussed, and the supper dishes were neatly stacked upon the tray. The room had been occupied, all right, but that outside staircase had fulfilled its purpose.

  Some personal effects were scattered about, indicating that the occupant intended to return. By examining them, Ronald might have been able to determine whether they belonged to Barry Knight, but he felt that if he were caught he would be placed in too compromising a position. He silently withdrew, turned out the light, and closed the door carefully behind him. Then he made his way back to his own room.

  Ted was still on guard but had nothing to report. There had been no disturbance of any kind at his end, but he was surprised to see Ronald back so soon. Ronald recounted his failure, and Ted commiserated with him in silence.