“Exactly the point. Any one would, and almost any one would pay money to see, with his own eye the attested evidence of human, or approximately human, life in other spheres. It was a big stake that Tuxall, Farley and Company were playing for. Do you begin to see the meaning of the big print now?”
“I’ve heard nothing about big prints,” said the puzzled clergyman.
“Pardon me, you’ve heard but you haven’t understood. However, to go on, Tuxall and our friends here fixed up a plan on the prospects of a rich harvest from public curiosity and credulity. Tuxall planted a big rock under the barn, fixed it up appropriately with torch and chisel and sent for the Farleys, who are expert firework and balloon people, to counterfeit a meteor.”
“Amazing!” cried the clergyman.
“Such a meteor, furthermore, as had never been dreamed of before. If you were to visit Tuxall’s barn, you would undoubtedly find on the boulder underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more ambitious than the Cardiff Giant. He carted the rock in from some quarry and did the scorching and carving himself, I suppose.”
“And you discovered all that in a half-day’s visit to Harwick?” asked the Reverend Mr. Prentice incredulously.
“No, but in half-minute’s reading of the ‘gibberish’ which you threw away.”
Taking from the desk the reddish roll which he had brought into the room with him, he sent the loose end of it wheeling across the floor, until it lay, fully outspread. In black letters against red, the legend glared and blared its announcement:
MARVELOUS MAN-LIKE MONSTER!
“Those letters, Mr. Prentice,” pursued the Ad-Visor, “measure just three feet from top to bottom. The phrase ‘three feet high’ which so puzzled you, as combined with the adjectives of great size, was obviously a printer’s direction. All through the smudged ‘copy,’ which you threw away, there run alliterative lines, ‘Stupendous Scientific Sensation,’ ‘Veritable Visitor Void’ and finally ‘Marvelous Man-l—Monster.’ Only one trade is irretrievably committed to and indubitably hall-marked by alliteration, the circus trade. You’ll recall that Farley insensibly fell into the habit even in his advertisement; ‘lost lad,’ ‘retained for ransom’ and ‘Mortimer Morley.’ Therefore I had the combination circus poster, an alleged meteor which burned a barn in a highly suspicious manner, and an apparently purposeless kidnapping. The inference was as simple as it was certain. The two strangers with Tuxall’s aid, had prepared the fake meteor with a view to exploiting the star-man. Bailey had literally tumbled into the plot. They didn’t know how much he had seen. The whole affair hinged on his being kept quiet. So they took him along. All that I had to do, then, was to find the deviser of the three-foot poster. He was sure to be Bailey’s abductor.”