Outwardly the residence was shabby, neglected, much in the want of fresh paint. The grounds in front were grown up with weeds. At the rear was a level stretch of meadow, backed by woods, which LaRauche used as a flying field. He owned and operated a small plane, in which he carried on experiments in wireless and meteorological observations. Ample private means enabled him to gratify his tastes to the full in the various fields of scientific research and exploration.
Astronomy held a particular attraction for him; he was a geologist and botanist as well. What with one thing and another, his life had been one long mad quest into the mysteries of the universe, and some of them he had solved. An astounding genius, if ever there was one, who was destined, I firmly believed, to spend his last days in a padded cell.
In appearance, he was a ramrod of a man, with hawk-like features surmounted by a mass of untidy, bushy white hair. Endowed with vast energy, he carried his sixty odd years with an air of perpetual youth and freshness. The man in the street who read of his scientific explorations into the unknown—recently he had been entertaining the reading-public with accounts of his plans and preparations to ride in a rocket to the moon—had no conception of the zeal that animated him as a scientific investigator, nor knowledge of the jealous fury that would seize him whenever he was outshone by the superior success of a fellow scientist.
Hot-headed, violently controversial, always quarrelsome, he had a malignant way of convulsing the various learned scientific bodies, to which he belonged, with stinging impeachments of his rivals. He had a turn for the sensational, which is rare in a man of his genius.
The breach between LaRauche and Henry dated back two years. It grew out of the first showing by LaRauche of several reels of motion pictures at the Exploration Club, depicting the life and customs of a hitherto unknown race of dwarfs, or midgets, he claimed to have discovered, living in a most primitive state in the jungles of Central Africa.
Henry and I attended the première, and Henry, in his rather dumb way, with no intention of wounding the feelings of LaRauche, or injuring his reputation, voiced his opinion to one of his intimates that the pictures were fictitious. His chance remark reached the ears of a member of the board of governors of the club, who made an official report of it to that body. Secret investigation by the board disclosed that LaRauche had, indeed, resorted to faking. The official inquiry revealed that he had recruited a small company of Negro midgets from Harlem, dressed them in skins of wild beasts and put them through various African jungle stunts in a wild and wooded section of New Jersey. The midget tribe he so cleverly portrayed subsisted mainly on insects, frogs and toads, and their eating live toads was one of the most realistic and clever fakes I have ever seen.
As a result, LaRauche was expelled from membership for conduct prejudicial to the club. The fact that the club's action was made public turned the current of public feeling against him for a time. It should have covered him with shame and confusion—a very foolish trick for a scientist of his standing to perpetrate in the declining years of his career—but he assumed an utterly contemptuous attitude, and readily admitted once he was cornered that the pictures were intended as a fake, to fool his rivals in the African exploration field.
Naturally, he blamed Henry for his crushing defeat. There was no mistaking his ill will thereafter towards my brother, and he endeavored in many ways to injure Henry's reputation as a scientist. He wrote him letters, couched in violent terms; called him an "amateur meddler" in science; he wanted war to the knife. But it takes two to make a quarrel, and Henry, in his easy way, declined to enter the controversy.
Another crushing blow to LaRauche was Henry's discovery of the comet, which increased his rancor and violent antipathy towards my brother. So it was with no little trepidation that I approached his house.
Parking my car at the side of the road, I paused a few moments at the entrance gate to take a rapid, estimating view of the estate, apparently the only human habitation anywhere about. The grounds were fenced by a dilapidated hedge, and rows of maples and poplars.