Grantham shook his head. "No use," he said. "We can't fight him, Wade. Kingston and I were crouched behind the oak with our wire ready, and we heard the bell ring, then as we leapt forward an instant later saw the steel case disappearing from off the stone! Kingston had grasped him, I think, was struggling with something invisible as we both cried out, and I heard an exclamation from him and then the shots roared out of the empty air just beside Kingston. Kingston fell like a stone, I heard one of the shots rip past me and another caught my shoulder. Then I heard the sound of leaping feet beside me just a moment before you burst into the clearing."
Whose Voice?
"But you heard his voice close beside you!" Wade exclaimed. "Was it Gray's?"
Grantham's pale face took on a certain puzzlement. "It may have been, Wade—I heard it for but an instant in that exclamation—I don't know whether that was Gray's or another's, it was a voice I had heard often before."
Wade nodded decisively. "That ends all doubt as to it's being Gray, at least. Carton, do what you can for Grantham's shoulder, while I see if any of the men have run across him."
But in minutes the men were streaming back with Wade, their search fruitless. They had found no one—could have found no one, Carton realized, in that search through the darkness for a being invisible. Wade shook his head.
"It's all over," he said, "and I realize now that we never really had a chance of capturing him. We can only hope that he'll be content with the five million and never again loose terror on any city as he did upon New York. Five millions—well, it may be best, after all."
Silently the party drove back to the city, and after they had taken Grantham to his rooms near the university and summoned a doctor for his wound, Carton and Wade rode together downtown. It was with a rueful shake of the head on the detective's part that they parted; he to his headquarters and Carton to the Inquirer's city-room to pound out an abridged account of the night's events. By the time that Carton went wearily across the city to his own rooms newsboys were shouting in the streets the welcome news that the Invisible Master had been bought off and that his reign of terror was ended.
Carton, in his tired sleep, lived again the tense events of the night, and it seemed to his sleep-numbed mind that the warning bell they had heard was jangling again and again. It woke him finally, to find that it was his doorbell, and when he opened it Wade stood before him. The detective's sleepy eyes were more wakeful than ever Carton had seen them, but to the reporter's first excited question he snapped but a single order.