WE TOOK MY SMALL FLYER from the roof stage and headed north. It was a handsome night, warm and almost cloudless with the upper air so clear that the stars were packed solid on the purple-blue vault of the heavens. Shorty and I didn’t theorize, during the brief trip up to the White Mountains, on what Dr. Johns might have to say. Shorty wasn’t much interested in astronomy, anyway—to him, as he often said, it was an uninteresting enigma. He mentioned that tonight.
“Good,” I said. “Then, how is crime coming? Many people missing lately?”
Things were dull, he assured me. Nothing but the usual run of stuff that you couldn’t write up or broadcast because nobody but a few relatives were interested. As it happened, the Crimson Comet affair caused five mysterious disappearances, Shorty, myself and
