"I'll tell you what I think, Mr. Royce," McGinity said; "we shall have to go back—and go back a long way, and find all we can about—Olinski."
"Olinski?" I exclaimed. "Surely, you don't suspect him?"
"He's a radio wizard, isn't he?" the reporter said. "He may have sent those alleged messages from Mars himself. He may have directed them to the moon, round ten o'clock, each night, during the experiments, and they were echoed, or bounced, back to earth. I understand he's quite an inventor besides. Now, he may have invented that rocket—everything—"
"You're forgetting, McGinity," I interrupted. "He couldn't possibly have invented Mr. Zzyx."
"That's so—I'd forgotten Mr. Zzyx," the reporter admitted. "All the same, just to be on the safe side, I think we'd better trace Olinski's career."
"We must remember this," I suggested, "that whoever is at the bottom of this fraud—if it is a fraud—had a definite purpose in putting it over. In criminology, that is called motive. Once you have the motive, the rest comes easier."
"I agree on that, Mr. Royce," said McGinity. "But the thought has just come to me that the perpetrator of this hoax—and I'm convinced now it is a hoax—has got nearly three months' start. Let's suppose, as you suggested, that he's a man who had some definite purpose in putting it over, the man we want to find. Very well, he pulls his two big tricks late in August, the Martian radio message in code, and the rocket from outer space, both occurring on the same night; and from that time, he passes into the unknown. No more messages from Mars. Everything cleaned up in one night."
"On that supposition," I said, "we shall, of course, have to eliminate Olinski, for which I shall be very glad."
"But suppose Olinski is the man we want," McGinity said, vehemently. "What about his having an accomplice? Olinski could be doing something else. And here's something that seems to have struck nobody. How could Olinski decode, so easily and expertly, those radio signals, and the cuneiform writing on the scroll? Besides, he's held on to this scroll like grim death, and never once allowed it to pass out of his hands until tonight, when I wheedled him into lending it to me, to be photographed for a Sunday article I'm writing for the Recorder."
"If you're convinced of Olinski's complicity in this, I'm not," I said, a little heatedly. "I've every confidence in him, and I've got to be shown. So, before we start in pursuit of knowledge of Olinski, you'd better let me follow up this clue of the water-mark, which may lead us to something in the way of success."