"What!" shouted Pratt. "Bald! Beard! Hook nose! Like a professor! Great heavens--my uncle!"
CHAPTER XVIII
ZERO
A half truth, some one has said, is the greatest of lies: perhaps there is nothing more staggering to the intelligence than a half discovery--a discovery which solves one problem only to propound another.
"My old uncle, for a certainty," said Pratt. "He has been bald as long as I can remember him: lost his hair in the wilds of Africa, I believe. Years ago his man stuffed me up with the tale that a lion clawed his tresses out by the roots. Lucky he didn't marry, or his wife might have plagued him about wearing a wig, like Mother Rogers. That's the mystery of the signal solved, then."
"Is it?" said Armstrong. "No signal was ever shown from the window of that top room; that I'd swear. The light we saw to-night was the merest streak: came through a slit certainly not more than a quarter of an inch wide."
"But hang it all!--there's the poor old chap a prisoner: who else would signal for help?"
"I thought you suggested Molly Rogers," remarked Warrender.
"I've given that up. Didn't Rogers say she knows nothing about signals? But that doesn't matter. The point is that those foreign blackguards have him under lock and key while they're committing a criminal offence on his premises. I shouldn't wonder if it killed him, or made him clean potty. He's over sixty, and solitary confinement----"
"I say, it's very late," Armstrong interrupted. "We've none of us had much sleep lately. Let's see what's to be done and then get all the rest we can before morning. I foresee a thick time to-morrow."